Credit: Helen Robinson-Little, Pat Harvey and Maria O’Reilly in Liverpool Photograph: Josh Halliday/The Guardian
Large protests against fascism took place in many towns in England on 7th August 2024. Many were at least in part organised by Stand Up To Racism which had co-sponsored a Unity appeal against racism and fascism after recent events and rightly so.
Hand made placards and banners always give a specific flavour to a protest and the one above is from the Guardian.
A year on opposing racists and fascists remains essential work. They do not have ‘legitimate concerns’
Zoe Williams has written in the Guardian on Greggs and Tottenham Cake. There is of course no comparable Arsenal cake.
I was already a fan, on account of its Tottenham cake, an outsized slab of sponge with an unnaturally pink icing. That treat was invented by a Quaker in Tottenham and originally sold for a penny a slice, although that was 150 years ago; the price, at the peak of my fandom (2007), was £1.20.
Tottenham Cake may be a little sweet for modern tastes, certainly mine even if I do live in Tottenham A chilli version might go down well.
Zoe Williams is keen on Greggs as opposed to other fast food restaurants. I like their breakfast sausage bap. I also like that they are unionised, unlike some of their competitors.
Tottenham pudding as Martyn Day noted in the Guardian in 2021 is not something for human consumption. Just as now during World War two weekly collections of food waste were made in the area. At that time they ended up at the Down Lane refuse site at Tottenham Hale (very close to my abode) where they were turned into animal food as part of the war effort
It is important not to confuse the school dinner offering Tottenham cake (Pass notes, 3 March) with Tottenham pudding, an industrially produced boil-up of waste fruit and vegetables for consumption by chickens and pigs.
Martyn Day
Twickenham, London
Guardian Letters 6th March 2021
How did school dinner cake first become associated with school? That’s unclear, but the recipe bears more than a passing resemblance to Tottenham cake. Although Tottenham cake traditionally has pink icing, whereas school dinner cake is traditionally served with a weirdly thin, pink custard.
Tottenham cake comes from London. From the early 20th-century bakery of the Quaker Henry Chalkley, to be precise. The cake was handed out free to schoolchildren when Tottenham Hotspur first won the FA Cup in 1901.
Reactionary Church & King mobs terrorised radicals & dissenters in the early nineteenth century, but who backed them?
Posting on the far right mob thuggery at various English locations I was tweeted by someone who rightly pointed out that while left-wing protest has been chronicled by a lot of historians that of the right has not (leaving aside the often related but specific activities of fascists).
In fact as I noted in response most protest falls into neither category but is often about specific issues- for example climate change.
E P Thompson challenged by a review of the book by Geoffrey Best noted in the 1968 postscript to the Making of the English Working Class that the activities of those opposed to radical and democratic reform and organised labour were too little written about and too little understood.
He was referring specifically to reactionary Church and King mobs and indeed the academic literature on their activities is quite thin.
Thompson perhaps undersold himself however since references to Church and King mobs stretch into double figures in the Making. Thompson’s 1968 point was that despite reactionary opposition a class conscious working class still developed.
Church and King was one of the main slogans of gangs of loyalists who opposed supporters of democratic politics- Corresponding Societies- and the French Revolution in the last period of the eighteenth and the first period of the nineteenth century. Other slogans focused on Tom Paine the author of the Rights of Man.
The gangs could range in size from hundreds to on occasion. They were inevitably fuelled by drink and they were violent. Homes of reformers were attacked as were meetings in pubs. In most cases the police and magistrates who supported them did nothing. The aim was to disrupt, terrify and destroy radical organisation.
Where the early labour movement and radicalism were stronger, as Thompson noted of London, Church and King mobs were less effective.
One did operate in the Gordon Riot in 1780 in central London. Encouraged by authority the mob targeted the houses of religious dissenters. However it moved on to free prisoners at Newgate and then marched on the Bank of England. The army were called out.
The motivations of the Church and King mob were mixed. Against reform and the French Revolution some at least saw themselves as upholding the limited liberties of the Freeborn Englishman.
They were however a mob not a democratic crowd. Their opinions were formed by picking up on the reactionary prejudices of those in power and they were sometimes financed by authority too.
We can trace a clear link between the Church and King mob and authority. The magistrate who gave the order to send the Yeomanry in at Peterloo in Manchester in August 1819 killing and injuring protesters for the vote was William Hulton (1787-1864). His mother had a prize horse named Church and King. Hulton left another legacy aside from Peterloo.
As EP Thompson notes in 1832 the Reform Act, a result of Peterloo in 1819, saw the Tories lose South Lancashire in the Election of that year. Hulton was one of those who met in a beer house in 1834 to form the South Lancashire Conservative Association dedicated to defending, like the family horse, Church and King.
That organisation was one of the forerunners of the modern Tory Party.
Noting that Suella Braverman will not be a candidate for the Tory leadership (Report, 28 July), I think we can now declare a resounding victory for the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”. Keith Flett Tottenham, London
Guardian 1st August 2024
I had thought that describing Guardian readers as “tofu eaters” was merely a desperate slur by Tory politicians (Letters, 31 July). On adding up the ingredients of all the recipes in Saturday’s Feast supplement, there was of total of 0g seafood, 100g jamón and a healthy 580g of tofu. Are the Tories right in their characterisation? Neil Hanson Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire
London Beard Week 2024 Can a London Craft Beard be identified?
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that London Beard Week which runs until 10th August will mark the continued growth of beards in the Capital.
It traditionally coincides with the Campaign For Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival at Olympia often the source of anti-beard stories in the media. This is not running in 2024 but the London Craft Beer Festival does take place at Tobacco Dock on 9th and 10th August.
London Beard Week is posing the question of whether there is such a thing as a London Craft Beard?
The campaigners say that aside from the many more beards to be seen in workplaces, shops and pubs, there is also a growth of specialist beard care shops and hairdressers offering beard trims and treatments, although the BLF advises against beard trims in barbers shops.
London Beard Week is a celebration of London, now one of the most beard friendly Capital cities in the world, and of London’s great hirsute heritage from Charles Dickens to Karl Marx through to modern day beards such as England football captain Harry Kane and author and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen.
As part of the week the BLF is running a poll to find the most impactful and impressive figure with a beard who is associated with London, past and present.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, London is striking a decisive blow against pogonophobia, the irrational dislike of facial hair. It’s now respectable to wear a beard in London but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for hirsute innovation and in particular a London Craft Beard style.
London Beard Week poll to find London’s most Iconic Beard.
Farage held his 60th birthday party at the Canary Wharf branch of the Scots themed restaurant Boisdale. The original and one he appears to frequent is near Victoria Station.
Perhaps needless to say I havent been or intend to. However the Times sent its right-wing restaurant critic Charlotee Ivers (arguably not as right-wing as its other restaurant critic Giles Coren) who took along right-wing TalkTalk operative Mike Graham for company.
The restaurant she reports is decorated in tartan with the feel of a gentleman’s club. It has a separate pub like bar and a smoking terrace. It describes itself as a British restaurant with the menu printed on a Union Jack but the food appears relentlessly Scottish (a variant of).
Food includes cullen skink, pickled Orkney herring, Isle of Uist scallop, smoked eel, smoked salmon etc.
3 oysters cost £14, Shetland mussles in white wine sauce £25, haggis with neeps & tatties £24.50.
I’m Scottish and it looks good to me and for central London not excessively priced. Its not exactly fine dining and there some Scottish restaurants around that do that well.
The clue as to why Farage likes it comes elsewhere I think. Ivers and Graham admit to two bottles of wine, one priced at £69.50 and one at £59. And of course there is the smoking terrace. Drinking and smoking being more of the Reform Ltd’s owner’s thing than the food one suspects.
Engels died aged 74 on 5th August 1895. His ashes were scattered off Beachy Head.
He had cancer but in the last month of his life he still managed a varied and interesting diet, albeit it seems without his beloved Pilsner beer.
To Eleanor-Marx Aveling from Engels, 9 Royal Parade,Eastbourne, 9th July 1895
…...I was pretty fairly going on till Sunday night, since then had two bad nights and days, maybe partly from the acceleration, by the sea air, of the processus of elimination going on in my neck, but chiefly from the decreasing effects of the anaesthetics which I now have been using daily and in increasing quantities for about eight weeks. On the other hand I have found out several weak sides of my capricious appetite and take lait de poulec(milk egg flip) with brandy, custards with stewed fruits, oysters up to nine a day etc. Love to you both F.E.
Truss appears at Edinburgh Festival fringe, gets booed & heckled
Liz Truss’s appearance at the Edinburgh Festival today does strongly suggest that she should perform her own stand-up comedy show.
As usual she refused to apologise for her 49 day Premiership, blaming others, as usual the deep state and the OBR, and argued that there is a place in the Tory Party for Nigel Farage.
The audience according to the Mirror account heckled and booed Truss.
That of course is a great British democratic tradition.
Truss did find time to post a picture of herself in Edinburgh, a trademark Truss activity
London Beard Week 2024 Promoting style in the Capital
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that London Beard Week which begins on 5th August will mark the continued growth of beards in the Capital.
It traditionally coincides with the Campaign For Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival at Olympia often the source of anti-beard stories in the media. However this is not running in 2024.
The campaigners say that aside from the many more beards to be seen in workplaces, shops and pubs, there is also a growth of specialist beard care shops and hairdressers offering beard trims and treatments, although the BLF advises against beard trims in barbers shops.
London Beard Week is a celebration of London, now one of the most beard friendly Capital cities in the world, and of London’s great hirsute heritage from Charles Dickens to Karl Marx through to modern day beards such as England football captain Harry Kane and author and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen.
As part of the week the BLF is running a poll to find the most impactful and impressive figure with a beard who is associated with London, past and present.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, London is striking a decisive blow against pogonophobia, the irrational dislike of facial hair. It’s now respectable to wear a beard in London but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for stylish beards to be promoted further
London Beard Week poll to find London’s most Iconic Beard.
The long running and apparently never ending saga of Denise, Alistair, Paul, John and now Jakob has made it into another week of the Archers. While competition is always stiff Alistair has been for many years a top contestant for most boring Ambridge resident.
Given the amount of time the matter is taking and the increasing number of people involved the Ambridge Socialist suggests a public meeting in the village hall with a vote on the way forward for the lot of them. If there is one.
George confesses…
George has finally confessed to Emma about what really happened on the night of the crash. It seems the threat of a fish and chip dinner at a Hollerton pub caused him to crack. George has rightly concluded that the full force of the law could apply. See below
In other news
George has had his hair cut. George has issues, quite a few in fact. He could seek help were there not a long waiting list to obtain it thanks to the austerity years. See above
Hen-Do at Brookfield’s Barn. Noted
Jill’s return. Jill has returned after a long absence. Leonard is away. Jill isnt perhaps quite her old self but the actress who is her alter ego Patricia Greene is both quite old and not in great health. The Ambridge Socialist send solidarity.
Alice
Class war is still smouldering as Jazzer issues an excellent tirade at Brian. Alice herself remains fragile
Alistair and Jazzer have consumed a bottle of the Professor’s best malt whisky
