Kmflett's Blog

Obituary of black leader of London Chartism, William Cuffay(d July 1870) “I’m old, I’m poor, I’m out of work, and I’m in debt, and therefore I have cause to complain.”

DEATH OF A CELEBRITY.
At a meeting of the Board of Management of the Brickfields Invalid Depot yesterday, four deaths were reported as having taken place since the previous meeting. One was the death of William Cuffey, aged 82, who had been an inmate since last October. He was a tailor by trade, and had been employed during his residence in the colony by one of the principal shops in Hobart Town; but ill health and advancing years prevented his earning a livelihood for some time past, and he ultimately had to succumb to the stern necessity of taking refuge at the Brickfields asylum. The deceased was known as one of the London Chartists of 1848, and he arrived here with others in the ship Adelaide about the latter end of 1850, as a victim of his prominence in the disturbances in connection with the turmoil in France, when the final effort of the Chartists to obtain those extensive political reforms, which contemplated univeral suffrage, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, no property qualification for members, and payment of members of Parliament for their services, was made. The London Times of the period referred to Wm. Cuffey, as having, like Hannibal,” sworn his children to eternal enmity to the enemies of his country.” Deceased availed himself, within the last sixteen or eighteen years, of many opportunities to express his strong political feelings, against which, in the extreme freedom of the Tasmanian constitution, there was no barrier. He particularly distinguished himself in the agitation for the amendment of the Masters’ and Servants’ law of the colony, and being a fluent and an effective speaker, he was always popular with the working classes. The agitation of Cuffey and other prominent advocates for the rights of the operative classes, contributed in a great degree to the settlement of the Masters’ and Servants’ question on a satisfactory basis. An amended Act was passed by the Legislature of the day, and we are not aware that the provisions of the Act have since been taken exception to. Deceased took a prominent part in election matters, and always went in strongly for the individual rights of working men. One of his last appearances on the platform was on the occasion of the meeting at the Theatre Royal, against the Whyte-Meredith ministry, when he urged his right to complain by such characteristic expressions as “Follow-slaves,” and “I’m old, I’m poor, I’m out of work, and I’m in debt, and therefore I have cause to complain.” For the most of the time he was at the Brickfields establishment Cuffey was an occupant of the sick ward. The Superintendent states that he was a quiet man, and an inveterate reader. His remains were interred in the Trinity burying-ground, and by special desire his grave has been marked, in case friendly sympathisers should hereafter desire to place a memorial stone on the spot.

The Hobart Mercury obituary above was reprinted in full in the Tasmanian newspaper Cornwall Chronicle of 6 August 1870:

William Cuffay: 1778 – 1870: William Cuffay: Obituaries

The private equity firm TSG invested £213 million into BrewDog, split as follows:

£110 million to buy preferred shares from the founders. This represented a financial gain for James Watt and Martin Dickie

£102 million of new capital into BrewDog via more preference shares and warrants. The investment allowed Brewdog to raise more capital. Before the TSG deal they had raised £26m, after the deal they raised £67m

TSG’s have 22.3% stake in the company, valuing BrewDog at £895 million. But the shares TSG acquired weren’t ordinary equity, they came with an 18% compounding return, one of the most aggressive quasi-equity terms ever seen. This compounding appreciation is described as ‘remorseless

In 2025 TSG’s original £213 million has now compounded to over £800 million, giving it first priority in any sale, IPO, or distribution. That’smore than the likely value of the company today, circa £500 million.

That means that the stakes held by Watt and Dickie, by equity for punks and shareholders and staff shares are likely to be worthless.

However for TSG to recover their investment, in effect a debt, a sale has to take place. They however do not own a majority share, and would need to persuade other significant share holders to back them, even though they would probably get no financial benefit

There could be trouble ahead

Those who glance at my blog will know I am critical of opinion polls which often seek to mould views rather than reflect them. E P Thompson called it Ephology over 60 years ago.

The poll above was carried out by Survation and commissioned by the eco activist and businessman Dale Vince. We don’t know of course the precise format of the questions and there were clearly a considerable number who had no definitive view.

Keir Starmer’s statement on 29th July which said Britain would recognise a Palestinian State (etc) in September unless Netanyahu does several things that he is not going to do, (many would say Netanyahu has done far too much already) as often from the current Government misses the point.

The UK Government can and should stop arms sales and military collaboration with Israel and that will make a difference, although of course Trump has the trump cards here (see the golfing conversations). The rest may be symbolic but it is a question of where Britain stands. With the terror state or against it.

Session Beers, strength, price & being sociable

Melissa Cole has written an interesting post on session ales and, related, drinking sessions in pubs and bars.

She relates the history of restrictions on drinking hours in pubs and, equally important, restrictions on strength, promoted largely by taxation.

I agree with her about the characteristics of a session ale, in the sense that it should be enjoyable to drink, and promote a visit to the bar for another. It should also be of a strength that allows a few to be consumed without descending into incoherent speech and thought.

I’m not sure I totally agree about a 4% strength cut off, although I wouldn’t go far above- Timothy Taylor’s Landlord perhaps.

In my much younger days when I apparently had less to do than I have now, sessions on Younger’s Scotch (a cask ale) in North London Wetherspoons happened. It was not my favourite beer, but it was drinkable. You could sink a few pints and still leave only mildly inebriated at best. Here cost was important too. The beer was often part of Wetherspoons ‘how low can we go’ promotions at around 59p a pint but more often 69p or 79p from memory.

Times change but while Wetherspoons prices vary pints of Greene King Ruddles and Greene King IPA will allow you to buy four or five beers and get change from a tenner. And both are well under 4%. Not perhaps the Jaipur IPA many Spoons currently have on tap but multiple pints of a 5.9% beer are not a session but a piss-up.

https://www.wsetglobal.com/knowledge-centre/blog/2025/what-is-a-session-beer?utm_medium=social&utm_source=linktree&utm_campaign=what+is+a+session+beer%3F&fbclid=IwY2xjawL1dg1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHnDQ9szfknWhViPWpmBNA9pXjYOiIBTrx2hNCBMPHQfsJyC85mH61iHtvAiR_aem_ZMo-CFWWK4oXeiPvc3-12A

156^th anniversary of the death of the black leader of London Chartism, William Cuffay. Still no London memorial. All history matters

The black leader of London Chartism in 1848 William Cuffay died 156 years ago on 29^th July 1870 in Tasmania.

Black Lives Matter and fighting racism is about far more than statues but while hard right Reform and Tory MPs chunter on about Winston Churchill, about whom there is a great deal of public history, the long delayed memorial to the black leader of London Chartism William Cuffay remains…delayed.

There is a case for erecting a statue or memorial in central London, much discussed but never actually happening

William Cuffay was born in Gillingham in the Medway Towns in 1788, the son of a local woman and a former slave from St Kitts who had made his way to Britain by working on a Royal Navy ship. Many of those aboard Navy vessels in the late eighteenth century were black.

Little is known about Cuffay’s time in Medway.

We do know however that by 1819 Cuffay was in London and had learnt the trade of a tailor.

No doubt Cuffay would have been exposed to the radical working class politics of London in the 1820s and he was certainly involved in the strike called by the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in 1834.

Cuffay went on to become, by the end of the 1830s, a leader of a group of London Chartist tailors.

In 1840 Cuffay was 52- very old for a Chartist activist at that time- and he became a central and trusted figure in London Chartism.

The best way to understand him is as the key ‘backroom’ organiser of Chartism in the Capital- raising money for jailed Chartists and being appointed to oversee the funds of the Chartist Land Bank.

By 1842 Cuffay had been elected from London to the national Chartist Executive. These positions were fiercely contested, so Cuffay will have had a considerable constituency of support.

Details of Cuffay’s work in this period can be tracked in the Chartist paper, the Northern Star, which is now available in digital format free on-line.

Martin Hoyles 2013 book on Cuffay has also revealed that during this period Cuffay was performing as a singer on the London stage.

Although more research is required it now seems clear that Cuffay was the organiser of the great Chartist demonstration on Monday 10th April 1848.

Chartists gathered at various points across London and marched south to rally at Kennington Common. The idea was then to proceed back across Blackfriars Bridge to present a giant petition for the vote to Parliament.

It was a strategic mistake- it’s unclear what part Cuffay played in deciding the venue for the rally. Police and soldiers blocked the way back over the River Thames and the national leader of Chartism Feargus O’Connor agreed with the police that the Chartists would not try to march.

Cuffay was understandably very annoyed at this decision and is reported as arguing that the march should go ahead.

We now know that there was hand to hand fighting between Chartists and troops on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge but a heavy April shower caused the attempt to be abandoned.

Later in the year, in August 1848, Cuffay was arrested for his part in an alleged revolutionary conspiracy at Seven Dials, Covent Garden. Arms were found in Cuffay’s house. His precise role in the events is unclear but it is very likely that as the London Chartist leader he was at the very least aware of what was planned.

Tried at the Old Bailey, Cuffay was sentenced to 21 years transportation to Australia.

Arriving in Hobart Tasmania, now over 60, Cuffay could have been forgiven for retiring from political activity. He did not. Instead he was active in a range of radical causes in the earliest years of the Australian labour movement. He was pardoned after 3 years but remained in Australia, dying in 1870.

Modern interest in Cuffay can be traced back to a chapter in Staying Power by the late Peter Fryer which recovered much of the history of black people in Britain.

Cuffay left no diary, autobiography or papers, but research to uncover details of his life and activity is continuing. There has been considerable effort in Australia and in Britain there have been plans to erect a blue plaque for Cuffay in the Strand. So far over some years they have got nowhere.

The Times in 1848 referred to Cuffay and the Chartists as ‘the black man and his party’ and we can now see that this was not hyperbole but a recognition that the London organisation of the world’s first working class movement was led by the son of an ex-slave from St Kitts.

Cuffay came from the imperial diaspora to challenge imperialism at its heart in London to find himself exiled to another part of the British Empire in Australia as a reward for his efforts

Time to recognise William Cuffay as one of the great figures in British history

Cuffay website

http://cuffay.blogspot.co.uk/

The Culture War on National Trust Scones. Slight reprise. No longer accused of being Woke

As recently as November 2024 the Daily Telegraph was claiming that scones sold in National Trust cafes were woke and vegan.

The National Trust has been the subject of a Culture War backed by the likes of Farage and Rees Mogg for a while now. There is an organisation, Restore, in fact like Reform UK, a company, that perpetually tries to get members elected to the Trust’s governing body and challenge policy.

Meanwhile William S*itwell, the Telegraph’s restaurant critic and fanatical anti-vegan wrote a piece criticising a motion passed at the 2024 Newcastle AGM which said NT cafes should look to sell more plant based food. This of course  was  in line with the Trust’s climate change policies.

It did not suggest that any cafe should become vegan or indeed dictate any change to the recipe for scones. The scones have long been an obsession of the Restore mob and Sitwell quotes someone who thinks the scones are ‘woke’

Moving on to July 2025 The Times has published an article and an Editorial raising concerns that some NT cafes will no longer sell fresh scones baked on the premises but bought in scones which might not be as fresh. Apparently the scones are no longer regarded as Woke.

Unlike most stories about the NT in the right-wing media the story does have substance to it. The NT are trying to push through job cuts that would mean redundancies including chefs. Around 10% of the NT’s cafes- the smaller one- will under the proposals not sell scones made on the premises as a result. Prospect the union representing NT workers is challenging the changes.

A campaign to Save Jobs & Save Scones is required

Take care out there….

Nigel Farage doesn’t do his own social media (not too many politicians do) but in Farage’s case there are clues. He may be a good speaker (even if the words that come out are far from good) but of his  written work there is little evidence. He does write columns for the Telegraph (etc) but I doubt he actually writes them anymore than Starmer does his regular pieces in the S*n.  After all if he did write, surely by now we would have had the Collected Thoughts of Nigel (at least one volume) and of course ‘I did Brexit and I’d do it again’.

So after ignoring the Women’s Euro football final until after the result was known Farage’s Twitter account posted ‘what an absolutely fantastic watch. Well done, girls!’ that was almost certainly a Reform PR man.

Of course it tells you a bit about Reform, although many might note ‘we knew’. The Lionesses are not professional women footballers but ‘girls’ who perhaps would be better employed serving Farage in his favourite Boisdale restaurant.

There is another clue. There is little evidence that Farage is hugely interested in football- he claims to be a Crystal Palace fan- but he is obsessed by cricket. He has appeared as a guest on Test Match Special’s Beyond a Boundary and can sometimes be spotted at Lords if the social occasion warrants it. Yet there is never anything on Farage’s social media about cricket. No comment for example about the on field issues on the final day of the Manchester Test. Somehow I doubt he has much interest in women’s or as he would have it girl’s cricket.

Keir Starmer & his partner Victoria paid homage to Donald Trump who has been holding court at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland on 28th July.

According to the Mirror, Trump explained the advantages of the Turnberry course to Arsenal fan Starmer

“You’ve got the wind off the coast, it moves the ball, it plays with your head. The best players love that. That’s what we built – proper championship golf.” After Starmer said the course looks “spectacular”, Trump revealed that it was completely rebuilt over the cliffs of the Scottish town and said there is “nothing like it”

As a video posted over the weekend of Trump out on the Turnberry course showed if the wind doesn’t move the ball to the players liking then a caddy can be employed to drop it in advantageous position