On 6th May the Guardian published a number of letters about the May 2nd Elections in England and Wales, focused on Labour. One theme is that Labour has moved too far to the right, perhaps interesting given this is the Guardian and not the Morning Star or Socialist Worker. There is a call for PR, which I’m a long standing supporter of, even with the well known downsides.
My own Fletter focuses on Starmer’s Narrow Church and suggests that a return to the Labour Broad Church is needed to gather an election winning left of centre vote. I will post further (& again) on the Broad Church concept. While Starmer said on 5th May (Observer) that Labour is for everyone this can be translated as saying football is for everyone provided they support Arsenal.
Labour’s current strategy seems to be to accept votes will be lost in areas where it is strong but seats will mostly still be held. The focus being on seats where Labour is less strong. It is a strategy but one that probably doesnt work with a Broad Church perspective.
If the Narrow Church remains, the subtext of my Fletter, then votes will go elsewhere to Independents and Greens. An issue is whether there is enough momentum in this in a first past the post system to get a handful of people elected.
Colm Murphy. The forgotten rival of Marxism Today: The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the business of political culture in the late Twentieth Century
The 1980s were perhaps a key time for glossy socialist magazine, and ones that could be found not just on the traditional street corners but in mainstream newsagents. Marxism Today is certainly the best known but the Labour Party launched New Socialist, while a third Living Marxism was perhaps the most controversial of the lot.
In a short summer seminar series Colm Murphy looks at the New Socialist. As a contrast the Editor of Socialist Alternatives Benjamin Schoendorff looks at what the project was trying to achieve and reflects on the input of its most well known contributor, Keir Starmer
Michael Rosen joins Beard Hall of Fame on his 78th Birthday
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that author,broadcaster and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen has joined the Beard Hall of Fame on his 78th Birthday.
The Beard Hall of Fame is a virtual construct reserved for beard wearers who have had a significant and sustained impact in the public sphere.
Entries are quite rare, often no more than one or two beard wearers a year.
Rosen joins others such as Spike Milligan, Brian Blessed, Frank Dobson, Sir Mo Farah, Kofi Annan and Alexei Sayle in the Beard Hall of Fame
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we congratulate Michael Rosen on joining the Beard of Hall Fame. While we appreciate that the honour he was looking for in May was Arsenal winning the Premiership, the Beard Hall of Fame once entered, rather like the Hotel California, can never be left. It is a permanent accolade.
May Day Public Holidays: 1978-2024: a lasting memorial to Michael Foot
The May Day Bank Holiday on 6th May looks set to be somewhat mixed weatherwise as often befalls Bank Holidays
The current structure goes back to the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 which recognised the principle of a very small amount of paid time off for the new industrial workforce, and of course bank employees.
The framework has been tweaked since then to add New Year’s Day and differs in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Another recent addition is the May Day Bank Holiday. 2024 is the 46th anniversary of its introduction in 1978 by the Callaghan Labour Government. The Minister responsible was Michael Foot.
The Tories didn’t much like it then and many still don’t. Calls for its abolition and replacement by Trafalgar Day later in the year, or very probably a Thatcher Day, are heard from time to time.
The TUC’s view remains that Britain has the fewest public holidays in Europe- but by no means the highest workplace productivity- so a few more holidays in the interests of work-life balance would be a good idea whatever they are called.
May Day has been a traditional day of celebration, both of spring and of Labour and it is marked in one or other and sometimes both contexts around the world.
The introduction of the official holiday in 1978 did not come without some issues.
Firstly a labour movement tradition has been not to work on May Day, or at least the afternoon of May Day so people could actually walk out of work, even if this meant taking unofficial strike action.
The traditional London May Day March is still held on the day itself, and prior to 1978 strike action in some years was quite widespread.
The appearance of the official holiday can be seen as a way of trying to stop such- to those in authority- unfortunate occurrences.
At the same time the complaint of many in the labour movement was that the bank holiday was only on May Day itself if it coincided with a Monday. Otherwise it was on the next available Monday- this year May 6th.
It is interesting to look back on views of that May Day 46 years ago- when incidentally a BBC report complained that too many shops and public venues were shut to make it enjoyable. This was a feature of all British public holidays until very recently.
Fortunately we can do this via a House of Lords debate on the holiday that took place on May 9th 1978.
The debate was led off by Viscount Davidson who asked the question whether the Government thought having a May Day bank-holiday was ‘wise’ and whether they planned to continue with it.
The Tory Peer claimed that the idea of having a public holiday on May Day was a matter of ‘political ideology’.
Lord Wallace for Labour pointed out that the Christian church had for centuries celebrated May 1st as the day of St Joseph the Worker so the decision to have a UK public holiday was clearly a ‘very respectable’ one.
He went on to point out that the only bad thing about the 1978 May Day holiday had been that it rained but even the then Lib-Lab Pact could not control the elements. In response Lord Alport demanded that if the Government planned to persist with a May Day holiday they must act to ensure that the weather was better. It would be very optimistic to think that the present administration can forecast or influence the weather.
One might have thought the Thatcher Government after 1979 would have abolished the May Day holiday. Checking the Thatcher Archive however one finds that on Monday May 4th 1981 Mrs T enjoyed lunch with Denis, Mark and Carol, happy as others to have a day off.
In the meantime raising a glass to the late Michael Foot on 6th May seems entirely appropriate
Well known for a number of roles one of his earlier ones was that of Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From the Blackstuff. Shown on the BBC in 1982 it focused on a group of Liverpudlian tarmac layers working around Middlesbrough
Yosser Hughes cry of Gissa a Job symbolised the early Thatcher years when unemployment hit 3 million.
Appropriately given the times James Graham’s adaptation of Boys from the Blackstuff has a brief run at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank from 22nd May to 8th June and then transfers to the Garrick in the West End for an eight week run from June 13th. An unplanned but fitting tribute to the late Bernard Hill
Woke Wins: Truss memoir out of best seller list after just one week
The Tories had a disastrous performance at the polls on 2nd May and 49 day Liz Truss was certainly a factor. Her memoir published a couple of weeks ago is mirroring the performance
Via the Spectator’s Steerpike column (28th April) Truss rubbished a Guardian report that her new memoir was only 70th in the best seller lists in its first week of publication. The Guardian pointed out that Truss’s book had sold 2,228 copies.
According to the Sunday Times best seller list which claims to be more accurate that figure was correct (2,230). However as the Spectator noted Truss’s tome is currently only in hardback and sales are much less than a paperback. The Guardian’s comparison was with all sales.
The Sunday Times did point out that on the scale of the first week of publication of political memoirs recently Truss has sold 1,000 copies less than Matt Hancock.
In the second week of publication Truss’s tome has dropped out of the Sunday Times best seller list altogether (5th May). The 10th entry sold 1,285 copies last week, so Truss sold less than that.
It looks like Woke has beaten Truss here and her book is heading for the remainder bins and then landfill
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has raised concerns of instances where beard wearers were refused the right to vote on May 2nd because their beard did not match their PhotoID.
The Electoral Reform Society has highlighted one instance of someone whose beard was more fully grown than on their PhotoID and as a result were refused the right to vote.
The campaigners say this has been an age old issue with Passport photos, now being at least partly overcome by biometric passports. The PhotoID legislation introduced by Boris Johnson was ill thought out and botched with numerous issues around what documentation can and cant be used and what issues might arise.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, what a surprise that one of the most clean shaven Governments of recent times didnt think about the issue of beards and PollingID.
The Times reports (4th May) that French campus protests about Gaza are linked to the events of May 1968 and some of the thinkers whose views were popular after including Deleuze and Foucault. Sartre has yet to get a mention. Perhaps that is problematic.
In France this is known as Le Wokeism but is apparently linked into US campus protests which have also been inspired by the likes of Foucault reportedly.
This is Liz Truss conspiracy theory territory and I havent made that up as she has drawn those links in several speeches.
Woke of course is a Culture War term for something the right dont like. It was not a term used in 1968. However if the point is that students then as now are protesting about the military-industrial complex and University links with it, its a correct one and also one that should be celebrated.
As Engels said of the new activists on the 1890 London May Day march, a new generation is coming into the struggle
The BBC continues to cover the activities of George Grundy who is still claiming to be an influencer. Who he influences is open to question. Probably not most Archers listeners but the bottom line of course is to monetise the influencing.
So far Eddie Grundy who prefers more traditional methods seems to have done better persauding passing persons to part with cash to have their fortune told by Bartleby.
Meanwhile Jakob is on a campaign to protect Bartleby from the Grundy’s activities
As often the Archers is making fun out of Ambridge’s leading proletarian dynasty
May Days in Ambridge. Ferrett Alliance poll success?
According to reports from DumDeDum success by the Ferrett’s Alliance has seen the Tories lose their majority on the South Borsetshire Council. The Ambridge Socialist is investigating.
In Other News
It appears Kate cooks excellent vegan food. Masterchef in Ambridge surely beckons
Chelsea has mentioned Taylor Swift.
Denise has suggested to Alistair that they get a hotel room. Does Borchester have a Travelodge?
Alice is lying about her drinking and apparently Jakob is to blame and certainly not Brian. This won’t end well but for is not clear
The resounding re-election of Sadiq Khan as London Mayor for an historic third term will not be good news for the Islamophobes and anti-ULEZ fanatics who relentlessly attack him on social media.
The voting system had changed at the behest of the Government so perhaps its no surprise that Labour was twitchy about the result. However in the Starmer era the Party clearly has fewer who are prepared to go out on the knocker and discover what actual voters are thinking so there was perhaps also a disconnect there.
There is rightly anger at Labour’s position on Gaza although Sadiq Khan, whose position has not been ideal, did at least call for a ceasefire before Labour nationally got around to a version of it.
The historian David Olusoga wrote (Standard 3rd October 2023) that ‘the centrality of the capital has made it London)the postal child for resentment at England’s demographic and political power’. While that is undeniably true it’s not the whole picture.
London is also a working class city. It’s here we find of course the HQs of most trade unions and the Labour Party mirroring the power structure of capital. But it’s a city with an organised working class and a labour movement.
As Eric Hobsbawm wrote in his essay on Labour and the Great Cities (New Left Review 1/166) London became and remained a Labour stronghold after 1923 when it elected 20 per cent of the national total of Labour MPs’.
As a labour movement activist and socialist in London for almost 50 years now I’d also note that the London labour movement has echoed that of capital containing people from all over the UK who have come to work in London and indeed people from all over the world who have done likewise and are one of its great strengths.
In London the power of capital is faced by that of organised labour but tempered by the reality that just as the City has areas of great wealth it also has areas of very significant poverty. It’s important to capture all the dimensions here.
Most of all though the election of the London Mayor in 2024 is a resounding two fingers to the bigots from people who actually live and work in the Capital.
Dr Keith Flett is a Convenor of the London Socialist Historians Group, born in North London and resident in Tottenham
