Kmflett's Blog

Picture Al Jazeera

ICE used rubber bullets and pepper spray during an ‘immigration raid.

Tory Conference starts in Manchester on 5th October and Tory leader Badenoch has called for a UK version of ICE

On Saturday 4^th October the Met Police say that they arrested 488 people for protesting largely under a Defend Our Juries basis for mentioning words about Palestine that the latest authoritarian Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood thinks should not be mentioned. Its one of the biggest exercises of wasting police time and resources in recent years (The Met are specialists).

It’s clear except clearly to Mahmood who was not paying attention in history lessons that more protesters will step forward. There is a well-known precedent in British history.

Around the period of Peterloo in 1819 the (Tory) Government was determined to crack down on radical opinion and calls for democratic rights. Prosecutions for seditious libel were common and the taxes on knowledge(levied on newspapers) saw the rise of an unstamped, illegal press. Many who published it went to jail, but that didn’t stop publication.

One of the best known was the freethinker Richard Carlile. In the early 1820s he ran a radical bookshop in Fleet Street known as the Temple of Reason. Carlile was frequently jailed but he had an important principle: THE SHOP IN FLEET STREET WILL NOT BE CLOSED AS A MATTER OF COURSE’

It wasn’t. Before the Government gave in 150 volunteers, shopmen, printers, newsvendors, had been jailed and served over 200 years of imprisonment between them.

Whose were these people? E P Thompson noted in the Making of the English Working Class:

The men and women who came forward were, in nearly every case, entirely unknown to Carlile. They simply came out of London; or arrived on the coach from Lincolnshire, Dorset, Liverpool and Leeds. They came out of a culture.

Interestingly though Thompson was also clear that while those who broke the law and fought for press freedom were part of the rise of a radical working class movement, they themselves were not usually workers, with the power to organise and challenge capital at the point of production, but artisans.

However the reading culture they promoted and developed fed into the rising working class movement and was one of the motors for Chartism from the later 1830s.

Perhaps the protests on mentioning words that must not be mentioned won’t change the world but they might help create a movement that does

Monday 6^th October 22.00 Maggie’s 100th Celebration Party Manchester Deansgate Hotel, Cloud 23 Cocktail Bar & Club Join us for a retro disco-themed club night celebrating Margaret Thatcher, featuring iconic hits and invited VIPs. Step back in time to the 1980s at the celebrity nightspot located on the 23rd floor overlooking Manchester. Join us for a retro disco-themed club night celebrating Margaret Thatcher, featuring iconic hits from everyone’s favourite dance decade. “Maggie’s 100th” will transport you back to a decade renowned for its incredible parties, hosted by The London Region in association with The Standard Hotel, Ibiza, and The Connoisseur Travel Collection.

E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class discussed the ‘Freeborn Englishman’ the archetypal British patriot. He was referring to the early nineteenth century and the ‘man’ is related to historical evidence and documentation. Even so work on the ‘Freeborn Englishwoman’ is long overdue.

Thompson makes the point that the English patriot can be on the political left or the political right depending on the specific times and context.

He identified some key characteristics. The first he noted is ‘freedom from foreign domination’ which in a modern context was a feature of the  EU Referendum campaign, whether genuinely so or not.

Many others relate not to economic or social liberty but political liberty. These included, freedom from arbitrary arrest, trial by jury, equality before the law and freedom from the home being arbitrarily entered by the authorities.

Thompson also indicated the notion of some specific political freedoms around elections, free thought and speech and Parliamentary opposition.

The bottom line however was what Thompson called a ‘moral consensus’ of limits beyond which the patriotic Englishman would not be pushed. In short the Freeborn Englishman wanted the right to be ‘left alone’.

Starmer and Mahmood’s call for peaceful static protests not to go ahead because they are ‘UnBritish’ shifts the emphasis from people who are actively involved in planning a terrorist attack to a wider layer of people who may, for example, have strong views about British foreign policy, but have no idea of taking that further than making a peaceful political point.

The plan is in short not to leave people alone, free to speak out.

4^th October 1936. Anniversary of Cable St. A Which Side Are You On issue

Sunday marks the anniversary of the battle of Cable St when an attempt by  Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists to march through and intimidate Jewish communities in London’s East End was stopped by a mass mobilisation of thousands of ordinary Londoners, Jews and non-Jews, trade unionists, socialists, communists and many others.

It was not a protest that received the support of any part of the Establishment. It was organised from below and it worked.

David Rosenberg the socialist historian who has done so much work on the radical East End has written in the Morning Star about why Cable St remains important and the continuing battle against fascism

The same old story – fascism in London’s East End | Morning Star

As he notes the fight to stop fascists from marching and intimidating communities is not something that is over. It needs to be done again and again.

It was and still is a which side are you on question. Those who supported who at the very least did not want to oppose Mosely on 4^th October 1936 are very much the same in 2026 from the political Establishment to the media to the police

US armed forces leaders were summoned to a meeting by US Defence (or War as he calls it) Secretary Hegseth. He used the occasion to announce a ban on ‘beardos’ and long hair, although this appears to have been existing policy

Brewdog, market capitalism & profit & loss

Brewdog has posted its annual results at Companies House. Some headlines are below and my analysis is linked below.

BrewDog has had losses of £12.5m in 2020, £9.4m in 2021, £30.5m in 2022 and £59.2m in 2023. 2024 £36.9m

BrewDog’s annual interest payments rose by £4m to £17.3m

The firm said it achieved a record 4.56% share of the UK beer market in 2024 – with the equivalent of 4.5 cans sold every second in UK supermarkets.

The accounts show staff numbers have decreased from 2,618 in 2023 to 2,411 in 2024 with the wage bill reaching £76m.

My analysis of Brewdog, Punk IPA and market capitalism

The story of Punk IPA and market capitalism – Culture Matters

After a period of accommodating to what passes for the policies for Nigel Farage and Reform UK, it’s good to see Keir Starmer come out and clearly oppose them (‘Decency or division’: Britain faces era-defining choice, Keir Starmer warns, 30 September). However, words on a conference platform are only a start. If the drift to the right in British politics is to be halted, Labour will need to end its obsessive factional war with the left and work with forces at the grassroots – in workplaces, pubs and cafes, communities – who are challenging Reform day in and day out.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London

This Fletter appeared in the Guardian on 1st October 2025. It’s what I suppose might be called a transitional demand Fletter….

A BBC Panorama programme on 1st October covered the latest update on racist, misogynist and corrupt behaviour by officers at Charing Cross police station in central London.

The head of the Met Police Rowley responded by refusing to resign (he was appointed after similar revelations about the same police station in 2022) and claimed it would take 10 years to sort out the Met (by which time he will have retired).

An indication of how unprofessional Rowley is can be found in a press release from Defend Our Juries the group that have organised protests on the ban of Palestine Action and faced mass arrests. Rowley simply hasn’t bothered to respond to communications from the group. That is not policing for London’s communities it is policing for an authoritarian State. He stands to be fair in a very long line of Met Commissioners who have done the same. Calling him out for it is important even so

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/oct/02/police-ask-for-palestine-action-protest-to-be-postponed-to-free-up-officers-in-wake-of-terror-attack?CMP=share_btn_url

From the Brewery History Society

The hop picking season is largely if not entirely done (late August through to mid/late September) and in 2025 is mechanised with limited labour. In the 1950s it was done by hand and provided a sort of working holiday for Londoners to spend several weeks in the Kent hopfields.

It was a significant enough movement of labour for special trains to be used. A world we have lost although short term and badly paid labour is still very much with us.