James C Scott 1936-2024: Populariser of the moral economy
The anthropologist James C Scott died on 19th July aged 87. He is perhaps best known for taking the concept of a moral economy developed, though certainly not ‘invented’ by the socialist historian E P Thompson and developing it in anthropological studies.
Thompson himself had understood the importance of and links with anthropology and some of his ideas can be found in the last collection of his work published while he was still alive (d1993) Customs in Common.
In my own work across a range of platforms I’ve found Scott’s Weapons of the Weak particularly insightful and useful. In the book Scott looks at how peasants, often thought to lack social and economic power still found ways to fight back against employers and authorities.
Often this included strategies such as mumbling where an employer thought something critical had been said (it had) but was unable to properly hear what was it and therefore could do little about it.
It’s a strategy Ive used myself on occasions.
Obviously Scott’s discussion of strategies ranged far wider and his work will repay a read for anyone interested in how people fight back in unfavourable circumstances
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with Joe Biden standing down as US Presidential candidate, the Democrats must learn the lesson of Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance who has a beard.
The campaigners say that the reactionary beard and politics of Vance are not the way forward. However Trump, who is a veteran beard hater, has recognised that beards and beard power are electorally popular in 2024.
While Kamala Harris may well be the Democrats Presidential nominee it is essential that this is balanced by an appropriate hirsute VP pick.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Joe Biden always ignored our suggestions that he should grow a beard. His decision to stand down leaves the way clear for the Democrats to grasp the importance of progressive Beard Power
Open Golf: campaigners salute Xander Schauffele, the third winner with a beard since 1882
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has saluted Xander Schauffele the winner of the Open Golf at Troon as he became only the third person with a beard to take the claret jug since 1882. The first was Shane Lowry in 2019, and the second Brian Harman in 2023
All the winners of The Open since 1945 until 2019 had been clean shaven although there were some moustache wearers in the earlier years of the twentieth century.
The last winner to wear a beard before 2019 was Scotsman Bob Ferguson who won The Open three times from 1880 to 1882
The campaigners say it’s not just about the beard but how golfers have managed to get their follicles to interact with what were often difficult air currents to allow maximum advantage in terms of both ball distance and accuracy.
Golf has been the most clean-shaven of sports for so long that the media have struggled to grasp the historic significance of a series of hirsute winners.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, golf has gone from being one of the most clean-shaven of all sports ten years ago to one where Beard Power was centre stage on the last day of The Open. It’s truly a sign of the hirsute times.
With Trump adopting hirsute JD Vance as his Presidential running mate this week, the question has been raised with the Beard Liberation Front as to whether Tony Blair banned beards.
Blair certainly never wore a beard but he was not always successful despite winning three elections and it might be noted that David Blunkett, Robin Cook and Frank Dobson did end up serving in an actual Blair Cabinet.
However when Frank Dobson stood against Ken Livingstone for the London Mayoral election in 2000 there were rumours that New Labour had trialled pictures of a clean shaven Dobbo with electors to see if that would increase votes.
Whether this was really true or a piece of Mandelsonian spin (who shaved off his then trademark moustache) remains unclear.
However a subsequent Labour by-election candidate with a beard did tell me that the same process had been tried with him. He kept the beard but didn’t win the election, as did Dobson.
Keir Starmer’s father was a long time beard wearers but as with Blair, Starmer has never knowingly worn a beard, despite or perhaps because of a long time relationship with hair dressers.
Starmer has yet to ban beards however, as Jonathan Reynolds currently sits in the Cabinet
Milo Haywood, according to the BBC a celeb chef, has been doing a masterclass at Grey Gables. This involves foraging and clearly this week’s scriptwriter is an enthusiast. Neil and Susan go foraging and in the end Susan gets to meet Milo. Lily thinks Milo is a bully, which seems likely, as well as being charming of course. Expect Gregg Wallace to make an Archers appearance in due course..
Bullying
As well as Milo, Freddie tells Vince he is being bullied by workers at the abbatoir because of his role in getting one of their number sacked. Vince, unimpressed, tells Freddie to get on with being a manager. He needs to join a union. Indeed quite a few things in Ambridge would go better if there were more union members
Hen Party
Chelsea and Fallon are involved in catering in various ways for a hen party. It is Ambridge but no actual hens seem to be involved. Natasha claims that is moonlighting (it isnt they were taking time off and not using the tea room facilities) but suggests, in fact demands, that in future the tea rooms officially offer such gigs.
Denise and Alastair
We ask yet again: how long has this been going on???
After worst ever Election defeat the Tories are down to their last £3m. A Party of Capital that is no good at capitalism?
Depending on how you want to read the statistics the defeat of the Tory Party on July 4th, winning 121 seats, was the worst since 1911 or 1832. Some may wonder what happens next.
Rishi Sunak remains as leader for the moment and the pre-Election talk of a merger between the Tories and Reform, or a split from the Tories to Reform- in other words a realignment on the right continues. The I Paper reported (20th July) that if Braverman can’t get enough backing for a Tory leadership bid she may defect to Reform in the Autumn. Presumably that would be timed for the Tory Conference.
Yet there is the near future too. Sunak has made it clear that he is not hanging around for long, so a new leader, interim or permanent, is required.
When Labour lost in 2019 the Labour right spun it as the worst result since 1935 (when the Party was recovering from the 1931 split- the parallel is too little explored) but that was on seats not total votes. It can hardly have been missed that Labour won in 2024 by getting less votes than Corbyn in 2017 but getting them in the right places. As an Election strategy it worked well..
This post is not about Labour however, simply to note that for a long while after December 2019 much of the media was full of stories and comment about Labour’s travails.
Look for similar media on the Tories post July 4th and you will struggle. The Spectator and the Times have carried stories. In short new officers of the backbench 1922 Committee have been elected (there was controversy because not all Tory MPs were told about the closing time of the vote) and they met this week to decide what to do about the leadership.
The Observer (21st July) reported that some former Tory MPs want an extended leadership campaign possibly running into 2025 while a discussion about what future the Party has takes place. Some also apparently plan a ‘swift’ return to Parliament although quite how that might be achieved is not explained, given that the 121 Tory MPs elected on 4th July was probably at the upper end of the potential
In essence they could not decide so will meet again next week. Some want a fairly quick leadership election before Sunak clears off. If that doesnt happen and the matter is determined at the Tory Conference at the end of September a temporary leader may be needed.
This is in the context of a financial crisis. The Tories are the party of capital but post-election the Sunday Times has reported that they have only £5m in funds, £2m of which is needed to cover redundancies following the July 4th defeat. In essence the Tories are down to their last £3m.
Meanwhile the contenders for the leadership await. There seem to be around half a dozen. They are all of course hard to far right-wing and very unpleasant. It’s a sign of the scale of the defeat that leadership candidates will need the initial backing of 10 Tory MPs. This doesn’t matter in Parliamentary or Electoral terms just now.
But with the far and fascist right on the rise across Europe and Farage and Yaxley Lennon stirring it here, there could be trouble ahead if a close watch is not kept on what is happening here. Yaxley Lennon’s central London gathering on 27th July is the first occasion that requires opposition.
Eric Hobsbawm noted in the Age of Empire 1875-1914 that as well as the rise of a distinct working class identity in the late nineteenth century-partly focused on the wearing of caps- there was also a middle-class culture under development. For example in the West Riding of Yorkshire between 1890 and 1895, 29 golf courses opened.
The class nature of golf was not lost on Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Both were bad at the game, although Che had been a golf caddie when younger to earn money. They did however appreciate the politics.
They are pictured playing golf apparently to mock President Eisenhower in a dispute about sugar quotas after the Cuban Revolution. A meeting had been due to address the matter but Eisenhower had been too busy playing golf. Very Trumpian
The Times Editorials on the Tolpuddle Martyrs (March 1834) to Just Stop Oil (July 2024)
190 years have passed by The Times is still in favour of stiff sentences for those who have the temerity to organise and protest
The Times Editorial on the Tolpuddle Martyrs (21st March 1834) makes interesting reading. It said (in part):
The offence of swearing agricultural labourers, and binding them to the observance of an illegal oath, by ceremonial partaking of mingled folly, superstition and ferocity was brought home to the accused and the conviction was followed by a sentence of transportation for seven years against the whole of them, six in number. This sentence as regards the poor deluded men who are the objects of it seems to us too severe, but it may be useful if spreads alarm among those more powerful and acute disturbers of the town populations throughout England who combine in spite of high wages and whose combinations are as destructive to honest workmen as they are to all but the richest masters.
Meanwhile The Times has Editorialised on prison sentences for Just Stop Oil protesters (20th July 2024)
..Labour backbenchers and climate activists are among those calling the sentences draconian and clamouring for government intervention. Wisely, and constitutionally, Ministers say that is impossible. Nor will they repeal the new laws aimed at stopping attempts to paralyse cities, deface cultural monuments and disrupt public life. A strong signal has been sent. Just Stop Oil is not above the law.
In 1834 The Times was the paper of middle class radicalism, the Whigs (later Liberals) sending a message to working class radicals that there were limits to protest and the Martyrs sentence reminded of the consequences of exceeding them.
In 2024 The Times is the paper of the middle class but certainly not even vaguely radical. Even so the Editorial song remains the same. The Just Stop Oil Zoom call was not really the issue in the sentences passed. It was sending a message to other protesters that was the point.
The problem The Times has is that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were returned from Australia after a mass campaign. However set in stone the paper thinks the JSO sentences are they can also be overturned by protest. It’s called democracy
After Donald Trump chose JD Vance as his Presidential running mate the New York Times has taken a look at beards in US political culture. It has identified problems with beards..
Facial hair is often seen as suspicious. Facial hair hides something — maybe something even more telling than a weak chin. It suggests subterfuge. Neatly trimmed, it has been associated with the demon Mephistopheles, who was often pictured with a goatee, and Dracula. When left unchecked, it recalls rebels like Fidel Castro, and hippies.
“Shaved faces were a mark of urbanity and good grooming,” said Richard T. Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.” “Beards became associated with rural lifestyles (‘mountain men’), old men, college professors and the counterculture. None of those associations were likely to appeal to a mass electorate.
“The counterculture vibe was especially problematic,” he continued, “but the other associations suggested either a lack of good breeding or a dubious eccentricity.”
The weekend sees that final two rounds of the Open Golf at Troon. Golf is a more working class sport in Scotland than England but that still didn’t impress the miners leader & Communist Mick McGahey who died in 1999.
The Open in 2024 is being led by an Irishman with a beard Shane Lowry. I can testify though that golf is seen as a people’s game by bosses, even when the people are not always so sure. In the 1980s the union which I’m a long standing activist in had a Field Office in Victoria St, Central London. The building was a series of offices. It was not uncommon to bump into Denis Thatcher at lunchtime carrying his golf clubs and off to play a round well out of sight of Margaret Thatcher at No.10
In his Chesterfield constituency on 7th July 1984 at the height of the miners strike Tony Benn met miners leader Peter Heathfield. Heathfield told Benn about a recent negotiating meeting with Coal Board boss Ian MacGregor. MacGregor had invited fellow union leader Mick McGahey for a game of golf. McGahey had responded ‘I’ve never played golf in my life, it’s a total waste of time
