Kmflett's Blog

Pete Brown starts the first broadsheet beer column for 20 years. Will he appear naked on the cover like Richard Boston?

I was pleased to see that Pete Brown has started a beer column in the Sunday Times magazine. As he notes it’s the first regular column on beer for twenty years.

Details via @petebrownbeer.bsky.social

The ‘broadsheet’ papers tend to focus on wine, regarding beer as rather plebeian (at best). Both the FT and Telegraph do publish on beer but not on a regular basis, while the Daily Star has Adrian Tierney Jones beer of the week.

Much beer writing is confined to specialist or niche publications and sites. You can find my occasional column on beer politics here: The fight against Global Big Beer in 2025: Part One – Knowing the enemy – Culture Matters

The Guardian also publishes on beer politics from time to time but has no beer column. It’s a pity because with Boston on Beer it had the first in the 1970s and it was genuinely pioneering.

We await to see whether Pete Brown will appear in a state of undress on the ST Magazine cover as Boston did on (the now defunct) Guardian Weekend

The cover of the first edition carried an (almost) naked picture of Richard Boston (1938-2006) the original beer columnist who did much to expose the realities of Big Beer in the 1970s and promote the early activities of CAMRA

At the beginning, the new Weekend Guardian was run on a shoestring. The first cover story was written by beer columnist Richard Boston – he’d gone on a trip to the south of France where he attempted to live with a group of naturists. But the Guardian refused to budget for a photographer to go with him – “So a London-based freelance, Nobby Clark, was dispatched to Aldworth in Berkshire to shoot a naked Boston in a deckchair,” Rusbridger says. Boston’s modesty was hidden only by a portable computer.

Guardian Weekend 18^th September 2021

Cato St 206^th anniversary an alternative tradition of protest

It is 206 years since the Cato St conspiracy was ‘uncovered’ on 23^rd February 1820 and the leaders duly despatched at the scaffold or to Australia

It warrants a section in E P Thompson’s classic account of the Making of the English Working Class (1963) but until recently has been largely overlooked both by mainstream and left historians.

The conspirators, who like others before them, had been infiltrated by Government spies, a reminder that Spycops are nothing new, planned to attack a ‘Cabinet Dinner’ in central London, murder the Prime Minister, Home Secretary etc and display their heads on poles.

The dinner did not exist except with the purpose of entrapping the conspirators led by veteran activist Arthur Thistlewood.

The plan was to spark a series of uprisings around the country in revenge for the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in August 1819 where troops killed and injured numbers in a crowd protesting for the vote.

Cato St, off the Edgware Rd near Marble Arch, hinted at the existence of a revolutionary underground network, which has been historically controversial.

Thompson doesn’t dismiss the idea but there remains remarkably little work into the armed tradition in British working class politics. Many in 2026 might be surprised that it existed at all.

Certainly the conspirators had the support of some sections of the London working class, notably the shoemakers, who might well have risen had the conspiracy to murder the Cabinet worked. How widespread support for a rising was remains the subject of research. Certainly a significant section of Irish nationalists backed it, and Irish workers were a key part of London radical politics. There are also suggestions that there was a broader sympathy amongst middle-class radicals.

The Government had restricted the right to democratic organisation and protest with the Six Acts in December 1819 and 1820 saw Governments overthrown in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Thompson argues that the likely result if Cato St has succeeded would have been a bloody few days in London while the army restored order.

The Cato St conspirators Thompson points out were amongst the last outcrop of those in a Jacobin political tradition who preferred to plot secretly rather than agitate and organise openly. That of course was the path eventually taken by the British working class notwithstanding a very nearly successful armed Chartist Rising at Newport in November 1839.

Recent research has suggested a much wider perspective to Cato St than previously supposed. News of it was celebrated by French radicals as an indication that the revolutionary traditions of that country also existed in Britain.

Further one of the conspirators William Davidson was a black man born in Jamaica and he brought to the politics of Cato St a knowledge of the resistance to slavery and an imperial angle to the matter.

Thompson however argues that it was not Cato St or the Six Acts that had the lasting influence on events but Peterloo itself. He notes ‘it served notice on the middle class reformers and Whigs as to the consequences that would flow from their loss of influence over the unrepresented masses… Second the experience of the post-war agitation shook the confidence of the ancient regime in itself and some of the loyalists of 1819 became, in the 1820s, willing to admit the need for limited concessions’.

It was the road of mass organisation not conspiracy that was the way forward

Thompson’s point remains valid although it now seems likely that there was a much wider context to and impact of Cato St than he allowed for

This post originally appeared in the Morning Star

Monday 3rd March 17.30 hrs. Link to recording

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/Mq8DWNaGTrQ85QNlFXRhB6J-KvUZ3pIHOyzLkXMeTu32imYa3R6poZ8rP6JI-ODE.sTTq7PpEVd6_wSXJ

To order a copy of the book:

http://www.minerstrike.com

To mark the anniversary of the end of the 1984-85 miners’ strike we were joined by Mike Simons, a journalist and film maker who covered the strike 40 years ago and has tried to keep the memory of what happened alive in the years since.

Forty years ago Mike helped produce  Blood Sweat & Tears, a photo book about the 1984-85 miners’ strike. Ten years ago Ihe helped produce Still the Enemy Within, the award winning film about the 1984-85 strike. He had hoped to reprint Blood Sweat & Tears back in 2014. It didn’t happen. Ten years on, we finally have an expanded edition of what we produced in 1985. 

This book features many of the images used in the film Still the Enemy Within and showcases images that have never been seen in public before or that have not been published for 40 years. 

Organised by the London Socialist Historians Group

Contact Dr Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Ceredigion Archives

23rd February

Contact @keithbeard.bsky.social

Beard of Wales 2025 Voting open

The annual vote which aims to determine the St David’s Day Beard of Wales, the Welsh beard that offers the most positive national image, has opened with the first of two close shave rounds open

The Beard Liberation Front says that images of St David suggest that the Welsh Saint himself may have had an organic beard

Welsh rugby prop Adam Jones won the Award in 2013, voted for by BLF supporters, just shaving former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Another rugby player Leigh Halfpenny won in 2014. In 2015 the Award went to Thee Faction musician Chris Fox in 2016 footballer Joe Ledley and in 2017 to Charcutier Illtud Llyr Dunsford, with Chris Fox winning again in 2018. In 2019 journalist Grant Tucker shaved the opposition to claim the accolade. Michael Sheen has won four times. In 2024 Plaid Assembly member Peredur Owen Griffiths won the coveted title

It is the thirteenth time the Award has been given following the traditional UK Beard of the Year at the end December each year and the BLF says it is a mark of Wales as a modern nation on St David’s Day that beards are now playing an increasingly significant role in national life.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, beards are blossoming in Wales, and competition is sure to bristle

There are two Close Shave Rounds followed by a Beard Off Final

The top two from each round will go to the Beard Off vote

The winner will be declared on March 1st

Shortlist

Hefin David, politician

Martin Shipton, journalist

Matt Sherratt, Welsh rugby coach

Tom Jones, musician

Chris Roberts, chef

Keifer Moore, footballer

Mark Williams, Snooker Player

Jack Sargeant, politician

The Ambridge Socialist

23^rd February

Protesting at Borchester Water: Occupy, Nationalise

Borsetshire Water are denying any culpability for the Great Stink of Ambridge. Pat Archer remembering she was once a ‘firebrand’ is looking to protest with Parish Cllr Emma at her side. We say: Occupy, Nationalise

Wayne’s World

Wayne the long serving chef at the Bull has resigned. Having been on a cruise he has alighted in Panama and been offered a music gig in a bar. Rumours that he had eloped with Sgt Knacker Burns appear incorrect. Fallon is set to take charge in the Bull kitchen. Probably

The art of the deal

Helen has succeeded in finding a buyer for the Bridge Farm milk they can’t sell on the open market after the sewage issue. Its fellow cheese maker Celia Sparrow who Helen corruptly cheated out of a cheese contract with Grey Gables.

Bird Watching

Khalil and Zainab have been bird watching with Robert at Arkwright Lake. A reminder that it has been half term in Ambridge this week.

At Home Farm

Mick and Joy are housesitting for the Gills at Home Farm. The Gills are the greatest of the non-speaking characters of Ambridge. They arrived and now they’ve gone and never a word. Nothing works but there is a sauna

The Future is Orange No news yet of Donald Trump’s visit to Ambridge

Remembering Beavertown’s 4^th Birthday event February 2016. A World We Have Lost

Megan and myself were sampling some barrel aged wild beers from Terra Tempo at Pop and Hops in Cardiff on Friday 21^st February and the conversation turned to the Beavertown barrel store at Tottenham Hale. Some  truly great beers came out of there. I think the 2025 word would be innovative.

These days Beavertown means Neck Oil and Gamma Ray at Heineken prices. I cant speak for the quality as I don’t drink Big Beer.

Below is an unedited post about Beavertown’s 4^th Birthday Party held at their old Tottenham Hale site on 14^th February 2016. There was something great beer wise going on there but market capitalism intervened. Perhaps that was inevitable, perhaps it wasn’t. Either way its world we have lost

2014

I was at Beavertown’s 4th birthday event at Tottenham Hale on Saturday (14^th February 2016)

It has attracted some comment on social media and muttering elsewhere.

In my view the idea of holding a festival of some of the most interesting ‘craft’ beers in the UK was a good one and the principle of making it a free and un-ticketed event was also right on this occasion.

But as any CAMRA remember will remind you (I joined in 1975) organising beer festivals is much harder than might be thought.

I’ve since ‘ascended’ to higher things but I was once a trade union organiser and I know very well that when you organise things, if something goes wrong you get the blame. If it goes OK, it’s taken for granted (see CAMRA fests). That’s fine by me since I’m invariably organising something for a purpose.

Anyway I did get in on Saturday and yes I do live very nearby in the proletarian utopia of Tottenham Hale. However I queued with the rest from just after 1pm (having come from doing some union organising work with the local MP David Lammy).

It was at least not raining and the free can of Gamma Ray while we waited was a nice gesture. That said I am no fan of queues and I am rarely to be found joining one.

Inside it was indeed very busy, sometimes too busy. That said there were lots of interesting beers and provided you picked your bar there was no wait.

The pricing at £2 a third, irrespective of style and strength, was also an important feature. It encouraged an equality of sampling of new beers, not always seen in similar events run on strict commercial lines.

And the weather wasn’t as bad as it often is in the middle of the Six Nations rugby series.

Criticisms I have a few. More toilets are needed. Drinking beer particularly when it’s cold tends to provoke the need to urinate.

I also had a good deal of sympathy for those who travelled from outside London and found the wait to get in just too long. Just last week I was the Celt Firefest in Caerphilly having booked a nearby hotel with my partner Megan for an overnight stay. The event was ticketed but if it hadn’t been and we hadn’t been able to get in I would have felt seriously grumpy. This needs to be looked at (entrance arrangements not how grumpy I am)

Finally I note on social media suggestions that since the event had 4,000 likes on Facebook, the organisers should have known it would be very busy and ramped things up accordingly.

Hmm. Anyone who organises anything that is un-ticketed knows that attendance is quite unpredictable and FB is no guide. Clicking like on FB does not translate into feet on the ground in Tottenham Hale (if only).

So perhaps at least some ticketing is going to be needed for future Beaver events on such a scale to manage numbers and expectations about getting in or not.That aside it was a great day. It showed an admirable ambition and deserves a ‘well done’

Marika Sherwood 1937-2025. Historian determined to make sure that Black Lives do Matter in British History

Marika Sherwood who has sadly died at 87 on 16^th February 2025 was a co-founder

of the Black and Asian Studies Association.

She was for many years a key researcher into the history of the slave trade, slavery and on a wider front Black History.

She spoke on a number of occasions to the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. Her final contribution was on October 4^th 2021:

George Orwell told us that ‘the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their own history’. What has been obliterated from ‘our’ history here in the UK and in what used to be our colonies?

She was involved in a (too) long running project under my control to look at gaps and issues in E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class and I worked with her closely on that. Hopefully her contribution on Thompson’s failure to look at the struggles of black people in Britain in the first decades of the nineteenth century will see the light of day.

In June 2020 she wrote to then Tory Minister Gavin Williamson on the subject of black history and black studies

As I trust you now agree that Black Lives Matter, it is more important than ever to change the school curricula. How would you feel if you attended school from the age of 4 till 18, and you just did not exist in any section of the school curricula! ‘English’ courses should include novels and poetry by Black authors, from Africa, the Caribbean and Britain. As Art courses should include the work of Black artists, whether these are paintings, sculptures, drawing/carvings. History courses should include not only the presence of peoples of African origin/descent in the UK since they arrived as a regiment within the conquering Roman army, but also the history of Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans.

If you don’t exist in the school curricula, wouldn’t you join a gang to become ‘somebody’? And as probably someone in your family has been at least once subject to ‘stop & search’, and probably experienced some level of racial discrimination while searching for work and at work, how would you feel towards the ‘mother country’?

We also need Black Studies departments in our universities with funding for research, as the history of Africans (and Indians) here has generally been ignored. (Many of the published works are by non-academics like me.) And our Teacher Training colleges/institutions need to include this in their curricula, which probably means training their lecturers – as well as the existing school teachers. Equally important is the need to educate the police!

Please, Mr Williamson, include the above in your response to Black Lives Matter.

I must conclude by telling you that when with a colleague I founded the Black & Asian Studies Association in 1991, this necessary change in the curricula and teacher training was one of the issues we took up. Even met with one Secretary of State many years ago. But got nowhere.

Marika Sherwood was an essential voice in modern British history and her work needs to be continued by others

Marika Sherwood – Wikipedia

Nigel Farage the self styled MP for Clacton has been representing it on the world stage again.

He was a speaker at conference of the Trump fan club CPAC in Washington on Thursday.

The Commons is in half-term recess so Farage didn’t need to be in Parliament (he has amongst the worst voting record of all MPs since July 2024) but many spent the time in their Constituencies.

Farage’s speech didnt actually have anything to say of course. He praised Trump:

Donald Trump. “Suddenly, post-November 5th America is optimistic. It’s upbeat. It’s the beginning of a golden age in America,” he said. “And it is all because of one totally extraordinary individual.”

He also hailed Musk as a free speech hero and demanded to be able to say whatever he wants. Its known as the Farage Riots.

How all this went down with the Big Fat Greek Taverna in Clacton where Reform has its local office is not yet clear.

SIBA has published figures underlining that around 100 smaller breweries have closed in the last year. The rate of closure is slowing but the figure is significantly up on earlier years. There are however still over 1700 independent breweries in the UK and new ones are still appearing (which SIBA dont seem to have counted)

The issues are familiar ones including pandemic debt, business rates and a continuing cost of living crisis.

Beer prices continue to rise and despite a recent tax tweak it remains far cheaper to buy beer in a supermarket and drink it at home than to visit the pub. That is not a healthy situation if we understand the pub as being the hub of many communities.

A Guardian report has the two paragraphs below which appear consecutively

Margins in the sector have been eroded by wage and ingredient inflation in recent years, while many smaller players are still paying off loans taken to tide them through the Covid-19 pandemic.

The cost of living crisis has also made it harder for drinkers to afford craft beers, which are often more expensive because their hops and malts are often higher quality or imported.

Note that ‘wage inflation’ is an issue for breweries but the cost of living crisis means drinkers struggle to afford craft beers. There is a problem with the market here. If breweries cant afford to pay their workers a decent wage (and to be clear many have good records on this) then perhaps its not surprising that they struggle to sell beer to other workers whose employers take the same view.

The national living wage is set to rise (aged 21 and above) to £12.21. As the saying goes a rising tide floats all boats. If breweries cant afford to pay a living wage the difficult issue is whether they really have an functioning business.

Capitalism after all is a system of boom and bust. That said if as Tim Martin regularly calls for the tax regime for beer was less slanted to supermarkets and more to pubs, and the importance of pubs was related to sensible business rates matters could look very different.

There remains the key issue as the report notes over whether smaller breweries can get their beer on the bar in pubs faced with the market dominance of global big beer

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/21/britain-lost-100-indie-breweries-last-year-says-trade-body?CMP=share_btn_url

The Daily Mirror has reported that Elon Musk has been waving what he called the chainsaw of democracy at a conference of the pro-Trump hard right CPAC in Washington.

He got the chainsaw from Argentinian President Milei who was last heard of facing potential impeachment in a crypto scandal.

JD Vance, Farage and Truss have also spoken at the conference

It can only be concluded that in the case of Musk the drugs do work even if they dont work for anyone else