Kmflett's Blog

Below are two letters about new research by Emily Chung into Engels book on the condition of the Manchester working class in 1844 (published in German in 1845). The research uses some new techniques to suggest, broadly, that Engels work was perhaps more polemic than entirely accurate social description. Who knew? That point summarises a point Engels biographer Tristram Hunt made in a letter to the Times (23rd October)

Ralph Darlington takes issue with Dr Chung’s research, reasonably so I think, as do I in typically Flettian way by looking at where and what Engels drank in mid-nineteenth century Manchester.

If Dr Chung’s research, which received a good deal of publicity, gets people who have not looked at Engels book to do so- its available free on-line- that will at least be a positive.

On a personal note, I’m sure not known to the Guardian, Ralph Darlington and myself have known each other since we came up as socialist activists in North London fifty years ago now.

The research on which you report (Friedrich Engels ‘took creative liberties’ with descriptions of class divides in Manchester, 21 October) reads like a deliberate attempt to diminish the nature and extent of class differences that Engels observed and wrote about.

There clearly were areas of the inner city marked by extreme residential segregation, such as Little Ireland, where Engels’ companion Mary Burns lived and showed him around and informed his book. You report that the study says that “in Manchester’s ‘slums’, more than 10% of the population was from the better-off … classes”. In Moss Side and Hume in the 1970s and 80s there were some professional people living there whom I knew, but the overwhelming majority of inhabitants were working class, and many of them impoverished and discriminated against. To suggest class was not that important is surely to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Prof Ralph Darlington
Manchester

Emily Chung has used modern historical research methods to suggest that Friedrich Engels’ 1844 study of the Manchester working class was as much polemic as social investigation. The same might be said of Henry Mayhew’s journalistic investigations of the London working class from 1849. Chung notes that while middle-class and working-class housing was not as differentiated as Engels suggested in reality, while the middle class went to church, the working classes went to the pub. Here Engels, and his Irish proletarian partner Lizzie Burns, broke the mould. They might be found drinking Manchester beer in the Thatched House, Market Street, a pub knocked down for the Arndale Centre. But Engels as a Manchester businessman also drank German pilsner in the Albert Club and Schiller-Anstalt Club.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London

Catherine Connolly received the most first preference votes in the history of Irish Presidential elections when she was elected on 24th October on the first round of voting. She was backed by the Labour Party, the Social Democratic Party, People Before Profit and Sinn Fein

There has been UK media coverage but so far nothing on the obvious point. Left wing policies can win elections

Ideologically left-wing, Connolly describes herself as a socialist and pacifist.^[5] A supporter of Irish neutrality, her foreign policy views were described by Politico as “often anti-Western“;^[6] she is critical of NATO, the European Union and what she describes as European “militarisation”.^[7] Connolly has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine but also described NATO’s attitude toward Russia as “warmongering”.^[8] An outspoken supporter of Palestine, Connolly is a staunch critic of Israel and has called it a “genocidal state”. Connolly advocates for Irish reunification. Domestically, she supported the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the legalisation of abortion. Connolly is an Irish speaker and has worked as a clinical psychologist and as a barrister.

Wikipedia

Lucy Powell was elected Labour Deputy Leader on 25th October. Pictured here with Keir Starmer it appears she has twigged that he has the black lily which featured in an early episode of celebrity traitors.

Alan Carr touched the black lily and then the face of Paloma Faith releasing a slow poison that saw her ‘murdered’

Reform failed to win the by-election for the Caerphilly Senned seat on 23rd October, coming second behind Plaid, despite having a victory party, balloons etc already to celebrate.

The word on the street is seen above.

The left candidate Catherine Connolly has been elected President of Ireland on the first round of voting. She had the backing of the Social Democratic Party, the Labour Party, Sinn Fein, People Before Profit and amongst musicians Christy Moore and the Mary Wallopers

The turn out at 46% was low and there were a large number of spoiled ballots, but the result is a reflection of the inability of the right to field a credible candidate.

The role of President is largely ceremonial but has gained a significantly higher profile in the last 25 years.

Connolly’s election is however a reflection of a left and radical mood perhaps particularly amongst younger voters and a striking change from the great moving right show in many other European countries

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/23/catherine-connolly-the-outspoken-leftwinger-set-to-be-irelands-next-president?CMP=share_btn_url

Beard Liberation Front

25th October

contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, is celebrating World Pasta Day on 25th October but in doing so noted that eating some types of pasta may require a snood to be worn to protect the follicles

Examples of pasta that is beard friendly include

Macaroni & other shaped pastas

Most Noodles including Udon

Orzo

Examples of pasta dishes that are unlikely to be beard friendly

Tagliatelle

Spaghettj

The Beard Liberation Front says that getting tagliatelle or spaghetti entangled in the follicles can lead to beard damage and encourage pogonophobia.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, when it comes to pasta we say, enjoy, but take care out there.

Caerphilly. Farage thought it would be a coronation for ‘Welsh Dave’. When it wasn’t he cleared off

Below is an extract from a Guardian piece by the Welsh investigative journalist Will Hayward underlining the scale of Reform’s vote in Caerphilly compared to its ambitions. Even the Reform friendly media has managed to note this from Chris Mason, BBC to the Telegraph, but the implications are worth pondering.

Voters want change but not Farage’s racism. They voted for Plaid to keep ‘Welsh Dave’ out but that suggests, elsewhere, electoral possibilities for the Greens, Your Party and community independents. The times they are a changin..

Then we have Reform. I was at the count last night. Reform supporters came in like princelings heading to a collective coronation. The bookies certainly backed them. As the polls closed, a £10 bet on a Reform win would have bagged you a tidy £2.50 profit. But within an hour, it became very clear that Plaid Cymru knew it had this in the bag. Reform’s candidate Llyr Powell (who Farage calls “Welsh Dave” because he seemingly struggles with Llyr) struck a sad figure. Farage himself, who had been in Caerphilly all day seemingly to celebrate Welsh Dave’s victory, was nowhere to be seen at the count itself.

Reform threw a huge amount of resources at this byelection. Llyr Powell told me that his party was calling Wales “ground zero” and was excited to show favoured journalists reams of constituency data displayed on screens in the office that it was using to target its campaign.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/24/reform-caerphilly-byelection-britain-labour?CMP=share_btn_url

1981. The last time a ‘stand-alone’ Labour Deputy leader was elected

Lucy Powell has been elected Labour Deputy leader beating Bridget Phillipson. It’s the first time since 1981 that an election only for that position has been held. Normally the Leader and Deputy are elected at the same time.

In January 1981 a Labour Conference at Wembley had agreed to introduce an Electoral College for Leader and Deputy Leader. Previously only MPs had vote. Michael Foot, the leader at the 1981 Conference had been the last to be elected by MPs only. The right had wanted a one member, one vote system (to cut the unions out of it). When they lost, many, but not all, left to form the SDP.

At the Election for Deputy Leader on Sunday 27^th September 1981, Benn and Denis Healey were the second round ballot candidates. Both were political heavyweights with considerable experience of Government, Benn on the left, Healey on the right.

The Labour left, what in a sense became the ‘Bennite left’, mounted an energetic campaign but the assumption was the Healey would get much of the union vote and win.

Benn recorded in his diary that as he entered the conference hall at 5pm he was ‘prepared for a massive defeat’

In the first round ballot Healey got 44.536% Benn 36.639% and John Silkin 18%. He was eliminated. The T&G (now part of Unite) who had backed Silkin switched their vote to Benn.

In the second ballot Healey got 50.426% while Benn got 49.547%. He lost by 0.8%. Benn noted that he then went off to a rally called by London Labour Briefing.

Benn lost but in doing so laid at least part of the basis for a left-wing presence in the Labour Party that still in some form exists today…..Lucy Powell does not fit the mould however. She appears as a left wing critic of Starmerism only because the Labour leader’s Great Moving Right Show continues to lurch rightwards.

The above is from More In Common, a polling organisation that in my view produces not Psephology but Ephology.

What questions were asked (or indeed not asked, what about those of us who do not believe in heaven or hell) is of course never disclosed.

Even so a mindset that thinks hell is the likely final destination, has echoes of an end of days view of the world, familiar for example to historians of the British working class in the early nineteenth century- a close relation to millenarianism.

I thought the poll might be entirely as opposed to mostly made up but I have checked on the Twitter account of Luke Tryl who heads More in Common and its posted there more than once on October 23rd 2025 and indeed features in the Times Diary (24th October)

Tristram Hunt has written a readable book on Engels. He has also been a Labour MP and has on occasion been noted for crossing picket lines.

He has a letter in the Times (24th October) on new research by the historian Emily Chung on Engels 1844 study of the working class in Manchester. The research is published in the Historical Journal on open access

If the research leads more people to be aware of Engels work on Manchester it will serve a purpose, even if its findings may be argued about. Indeed Prof Ralph Darlington and myself are doing just that in the Guardian (25th October)