Kmflett's Blog

Wes Streeting has criticised ‘middle class lefties’ who he thinks are standing in the way of his efforts to privatise bits of the NHS should he get to be Health Secretary in the next Government. He might well find that the mostly not middle class UNISON and RCN are even more formidable opponents.

Streeting will only fit the definition of a ‘leftie’ if it’s one drawn up by Lee Anderson. However his £90K desk job as an MP marks him out as definitively middle class. Social being defines consciousness as any middle class lefty could tell him.

I’m not sure what Streeting studied at Cambridge, even after checking but it probably wasn’t history.

I did however consult Raymond Williams Keywords on the history of the term middle class. As might be expected it’s quite complicated. The modern usage dates from the earlier decades of the nineteenth century and developed in the decades after.

Before the 1832 Reform Act there are instances of references to the middling and lower orders as forming a broadly distinct grouping. That Act enfranchised some middle class male voters but left the working class without the vote.

The distinction began to arise between the lower or working classes and the upper classes. In between were the middle classes- quite small in numbers at this point.

By the 1880s there was a difference widely understood between workers who did manual work and got paid a wage and the middle class- also workers- who however attracted a salary and did desk jobs ranging from clerks to managers and professionals.

Williams did not touch on more modern developments (reasonably given the book was published in 1975. However certainly from the late 1960s there developed a trend for middle class workers to become unionised. The Robbins Report, by the 1964 Labour Government saw a significant extension of University education. It drew thousands more into higher education and created graduates who were able to use their degrees to advance in society. In short the kind of social mobility that Keir Starmer is promoting and which allowed Wes Streeting to go to University and become a student leader

The political hold that the Tory Party held over the middle class also began to crack, perhaps in some cases because the salaries the new graduates were paid did not lend themselves to a supposed middle class lifestyle.

From the formation of the Labour Party in 1900 middle class also had a specific political meaning. Two key figures were Sidney and Beatrice Webb. They founded the London School of Economics and were responsible for the first Labour Party Constitution in 1918. Sidney Webb was a member of the first 1924 Labour Government.

In political outlook they were Fabians. In a Communist Party Training Manual published in 1926 Tom Bell described the Fabian Society as a ‘middle class body with a petty bourgeois outlook’. So in fact not ‘lefty’ at all and something a right-wing Labour figure like Streeting could quite happily align themselves with.

As E P Thompson noted class is not a static category but determined in practice in relations between people and struggles coming out of that. This will certainly be the fact if Streeting does in fact between Health Minister in the next Government.

There is a wider point

Given that Labour is an electoral party seeking a broad base of support Streeting’s comments reflect a narrow factionalism which suggests a lack of genuine experience of life as it is actually lived on the shop floor and in the office.

This post originally appeared in the Morning Star

Press TAB five times to redirect to the Accessibility page.

St George & the flag remain disputed territory.

Ahead of St George’s Day on 23^rd April Keir Starmer took to social media urging Labour supporters to support the occasion and wave the national St George’s flag. It is of course that national flag of only one of the four UK nations and even that can be argued about.

Even so it can regularly be seen at sporting occasions when England teams are playing mostly un-controversially so. It is a relatively recent thing as was demonstrated by the recent culture war over exactly what form it should take on players shirts.

There has been a long history of the left trying to claim or reclaim the flag from the right. Whether Starmer knows about that is another matter but broadly its fits into to some kind of patriotic people’s history approach to at least English life. It might be argued that E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class fits somewhere in that except Thompson’s flag remained resolutely led, tinged with a Chartist green.

It was not long before a reminder of the disputed nature of the flag took place. A large group of mostly well refreshed far right and fascist men grappled with police in Whitehall. The right who spend their time attacking peaceful and hugely larger Palestinian protests were generally silent except for GBNews that backed the mob against the police, as it would.

There are St George’s Fields around England but perhaps the best known is in inner South London. It was an historic location for mass protest in the eighteenth century. On 10^th May 1768 there was a riot in support of the maverick MP John Wilkes (later Mayor of London and Boris Johnson’s hero) who had been jailed. There were cries of No Liberty, No King. Troops were called in and there were dead and injured.

In 1780 as part of the Gordon Riots another large crowd assembled and burnt property particularly that belonging to religious minorities and specifically Catholics.

By 1795 a huge crowd of 100,000 assembled in June calling for the vote and annual parliaments.

Disputed history is a reality. It can be harnessed to political causes but with more nuance and insight than Starmer managed

The Fletter below appears in the Guardian on 24th April

Prejudice against the follicly challenged is unacceptable, and so is that against beard wearers (Letters, 19 April). People should be appraised on who they are and what they do, not how they appear.Keith FlettOrganiser, Beard Liberation Front

One of the founding principles of the Beard Liberation Front back in the mid-1990s was that people should be able to dress and appear as they want. It was focused on Victorian dress codes that demanded suits, ties and dresses depending on who it was aimed at.

Of course there are few if any absolutes. While the Beard Liberation Front is firmly of the view that you are never naked with a beard, in general there is an expectation that clothes will be worn and a ZZ Top lookalike doesn’t serve you at the Deli counter without a beardnet.

2024 is an Election year and the BLF is considering a relaunch of its Baldies and Beardies Alliance. Image is important in politics, sometimes too important. Certainly for senior politicians being follicly challenged or wearing a beard does not always seem to be a vote winner. Until that changes the work of the BLF is not done.

Blairism 2024 update

The Times magazine carried a 6 page interview with Tony Blair on April 21^st. Blair who has previously claimed that he makes only rare public utterances has been popping up more frequently. What his personal influence on Starmer and likely Starmer Government is and will be remains a matter of speculation.

For anyone familiar with Blair’s worldview the long interview has few insights. There is a lot on the Tony Blair Institute. A very well-funded global institution advises mostly dodgy Governments around the world. Blair’s claim is that the aim is to make them less dodgy. Given that Israel is one and Blair remains on speaking terms with Netanyahu a view can be taken.

Whatever the Starmer-Blair relationship is, there is little question that consultants from TBI will play important roles in a Starmer Government.

The interview also references Blair’s abiding obsession with ID Cards and new technology. Given that Blair himself still has zero social media presence (TBI does have) we may also take a view on this.

 However there are actually some interesting points. Blair argues that the twentieth century divide between a Big State and public spending and a free market no longer works. New Labour said that 25 years ago and PFI and the Third Way were deployed and got nowhere. Even so the relationship between Government, public spending and the market is clearly wildly awry currently so its an important issue.

Blair also argues that political systems with PR allow new political forces and ideas to emerge. However with FTP in the UK political change is worked through within existing parties leading to a Tory Party a long way from traditional Toryism and a Labour Party in flux.

A conclusion is not mentioned but Blair has previously argued for a reconfiguration of progressive or centrist politics. A sort of New New Labour.

One might conclude that in 2024 he really is Yesterday’s Man still trying to sort things that didn’t work after 1997. Perhaps that is where official British politics is though

It appears that a St George’s Day tradition (possibly made up) is that the Royal Family award themselves honours. Prince William has been appointed Great Master of the Order of the Bath, while Catherine becomes a Companion of Honour. This was a title also held by the late marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, amongst others, but it doesnt seem likely that there is a connection.

One might have thought that the Royals had enough titles, medals and silly hats already but tradition demands…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68882308

Liz Truss claims Foucault was the founding father of Woke

In a speech made on 17^th December 2020 then Equalities Minister Liz Truss launched an early Tory Culture War on equalities.

It didn’t of course actually say much specific except that the Tories planned to end unconscious bias training in the Civil Service.

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/fight-for-fairness

One entertaining passage referred to the late French philosopher Michel Foucault who died in 1984.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

In 2020 Truss was yet to discover Woke and Wokery. However in a speech to the hard right Heritage Foundation in Washington on 22^nd April 2024 to promote her Ten Days book, she claimed Foucault was the founding father of Woke. She argued that it is ‘another bad neo-marxist idea developed from Foucault and all those crazy postmodernists in the 1960s’ (Guardian).

Its not clear how much Truss has read of Foucault or postmodernist thinkers (not the same thing) but as with most things her understanding appears to be very limited

Truss on Foucault in 2020

“While we were taught about racism and sexism, there was too little time spent making sure everyone could read and write.

“These ideas have their roots in postmodernist philosophy – pioneered by Foucault – that puts societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours.

“In this school of thought, there is no space for evidence, as there is no objective view – truth and morality are all relative.

“Rather than promote policies that would have been a game-changer for the disenfranchised like better education and business opportunities, there was a preference for symbolic gestures.”

The Battle of Wood Green took place 49 years ago today (it was a Saturday). The fascist National Front having assembled well over a thousand on Ducketts Common, Turnpike Lane, marched into Wood Green High Rd full of Saturday shoppers.

A large counter protest and lots of shoppers attacked the march and it was partially broken. The front marched on to a rally in Arnos Grove, in the Borough of Enfield.

The organiser of the united counter protest was a young Haringey Councillor who went on to become rather better known- Jeremy Corbyn.

Some of those who organised the protest and were there that day are no longer with us. I was 20 and hope to go on for a bit yet- I’m still out protesting for Palestine.

The reality is however that in terms of living memory 23rd April 1977 in Wood Green is moving out of living memory and into the history books.

So why remember it? Firstly because there are still racists and fascists and efforts to oppose them. Remembering past efforts, perhaps particularly when they were successful as on that Saturday afternoon 49 years ago, is important.

Also because its important to remember that struggles for a better world have a past as well as a present and a future. The Labour Party is, mostly, poor on this, often as a matter of deliberate policy. The labour movement is much better.

We remember and continue efforts to make that future now.

Brewdog’s James Watt seems to be spending his time at the moment trying to defend his Lost Forest project in the Highlands. Backed by the Scottish Government it had laudable environmental aims. However many of the trees are dead

Meanwhile the TUC @The_TUC has given Watt the Bad Boss of the Month Award.

On social media TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak, suitably attired in a dinner jacket and bow tie, pointed out that Watt’s presence at Nigel Farage’s 60th birthday party was not very punk. Watt was there as a plus one for his current partner but as someone who has launched so many stunts he must know that image is important.

Nowak however focused on Brewdog’s decision to stop paying the real living wage to its employees- a key part of its ‘progressive employer’ image in order, it claimed, to invest in its people. Its workers seem to have a different view on that.

Brewdog has consistently refused to recognise a trade union, despite many workplace issues, so the TUC Award is a welcome reminder to those that might see Brewdog as an alternative to global Big Beer that actually it is not.

Lenin, b 22 April 1870. Cats, dogs & socialism

Making a connection between the politics of Lenin who was born 154 years ago today with cats and dogs is a complex and dialectical question.

Lenin however was certainly a cat lover, having several in his Kremlin apartment from 1918.

John S Clarke who was a professional lion tamer visited Moscow in 1920 and reportedly helped to train and organise cats. However while attending the Second Congress of the Comintern Clarke cured Lenin’s dog of an illness. Clarke went on to become a Labour MP (those were the days)

The picture of Lenin with a cat was taken in the village of Gorki in 1922

We should however be cautious about assuming an automatic link between cats and any particular trend on the left, Rosa Luxemburg described what happened when her cat Mimi met Lenin:

“She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him,” Luxemburg writes. “But when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.”

Key policy announcement of the week came from Liz Truss in the Financial Times: there are no Woke pubs in south-west Norfolk she claimed. She is compiling her Anti-Woke Good Beer & Sauvignon Blanc Guide.

According to the FT she is a regular at the Bedingfield Arms, Oxborough, a gastropub. Do such things still exist? (details of what Truss ate to follow)

Truss is a well known sauvignon blanc drinker, requesting a bottle as a rider on overseas trips. Its unclear if she knows much about pubs or beer, but lack of understanding clearly does not stop her from opining.

Its not clear what an Anti-Woke Pub might be. I suppose a Woke Pub might for example display a rainbow flag which however would invariably pass-by any Anti-Woke customers. They might want to know perhaps why their beer was not served in Farage glasses (£16 from the GBNews website)

The Bedingfield Arms is in the Good Beer Guide btw but CAMRA sensibly keeps clear of made up things like Woke and just focuses on the quality of the beer and pub