Suella Braverman has been speaking at a National Conservatism conference in Brussels on 16th April.
Others down to speak are from the European far right including Orban and Zemmour, while Britain is also represented by Farage, Miriam Cates, Melanie Philips, Matthew Goodwin, Mick Hume and Frank Furedi who is one of the leaders of Orban’s fan club (and funded to be).
The Mayor of Brussels attempted to ban the conference and despatched police to do so. The far right needs opposing politically not administratively, although the action of the Mayor appears to have been influenced by protests in this case.
The kind of ideas Braverman is promoting won’t be defeated by bans however configured. Shutting such an event down by virtue of a mass protest is different to ordering it closed. In this case there clearly was a mobilisation and protest by Belgian anti-fascist groups which may well have influenced the Mayor’s decision. As often reality is messy.
Even so it is concerning in the context of a growing authoritarian trend across Europe with German police shutting down a Palestinian Conference a few days ago.
Authority determining who can and more particularly can’t speak never ends well for the left. If Braverman was still Home Secretary, as she was until six months ago,banning political events she did not agree with would be very high on her agenda
In the meantime what exactly is Sunak doing about Braverman appearing at such an event? Despite the fact that he held a short notice Friday evening press conference at Downing St a few weeks back complaining about the impact of extreme politics- of which this conference is an example- he has expressed concern at the actions of the Belgian authorities. Braverman who one might have thought should have been in the Commons today got a free pass from Sunak
The BBC’s cricket correspondent (he is stepping down later this year but will continue with Test Match Special) has given an interview to the Sunday Times. More on that in another post. However one comment is that he dislikes the introduction of the gender neutral term batter to cover both the womens and mens game. Watching the IPL some might think using the term Whacker, definitely neutral, would work as well.
Its surprising that the array of Tory Culture Warriors is not on the job particularly as at least one, Priti Patel is an MCC member.
The Times (15& 16 April) has reported that a similar culture war is going on in the City of London (where I work) over whether chairman should be replaced by the word chair. Most larger companies have changed to chair but there are complaints that this is simply following the MCC’s demotion of batsman. One senses an old boys club mentality here.
The Times does not like chair preferring chairman or chairwoman depending on relevance but can apparently live with chair.
As a Union Officer I cant see what is wrong with using the gender neutral word Convenor
Nadine Dorries posted these pictures of Boris Johnson and herself in a small boat on her FB & Insta accounts. If Rishi Sunak can’t even stop this one small boat from making political waves his wider policy looks sunk.
Mark Seddon commented on X that the water is covered in algae probably a sign that a privateering water company has been discharging sewage into it. Sunak hasnt sorted that either
Truss: I’ll be back (the view of her Oxford tutor remains correct)
Speaking to the media following the release of her book Ten Years to Save the West on Tuesday Liz Truss has said that she has unfinished business in politics and can’t rule out returning as Prime Minister
It underlines that the view of her Oxford tutor on her outlook on life and politics remains correct.
Marc Stears(now at UCL) wrote about the time he was Liz Truss’s tutor during her period as an undergraduate at Oxford in the Murdoch Sunday Times (31st July 2022)
According to Stears Truss’s years at Oxford were marked by an ability to come up with unusual angles on issues and stick to them even when informed that facts showed she was wrong. Secondly an ability to fiercely argue a position only to drop it and equally fiercely promote something different.
The more we continue to hear, unfortunately, from Truss the more Marc Stears seems to be right
It can be argued that both Liz Truss and Boris Johnson occupied 10 Downing St for too long. In Johnson’s case it was several years. In Truss’s case 49 days.
Truss’s memoir/manifesto Ten Years to Save the West is published this week. It should really have been called 49 Days That Shook The World. However she (or someone) has actually written it and she received an advance of £1,512.88. Truss did better in the US where she got an advance of £6.141.40. The publisher specialises in books promoting conspiracy theories
Boris Johnson’s Memoir of his time at No.10 may or may not get written. His book on Shakespeare is long overdue. He has been paid an advance of more than £500,000
Both politicians worship the free market and its clear where market forces have focused here
The debate, heightened by the pandemic, but in reality taking place well before that, about working from home is much in the news. Most reasonable employers (see also employers who recognise a union) have a system of hybrid working. Sometime in the office, sometime working from home or other appropriate location.
There are controversies. PCS has a live strike ballot at the ONS on the question.
The Sunday Times Business News (14th April) takes the matter to another level. It reports that for the wealthy who can afford a luxury yacht (around £390,000 plus VAT, starting price) and prefer to keep out of the way, working from the yacht is now a thing. It appears that there can be issues about how well the wi-fi works if the yacht goes too far away from the coast. It appears that the favourite places to work from yacht are the Med and the Caribbean.
Perhaps something for Jacob Rees Mogg to think about when he loses his seat at the Election
A theme is developing in Ambridge which will be familiar to those who are looking at the crisis of the capitalist economy, which will include all readers of the Ambridge Socialist. There is a labour shortage in Hospitality. Fallon is struggling at the tea rooms, as Emma is pursuing her new career with trees. Jolene is struggling at the Bull for the same reason.
Lilian who after all is the owner is serving at the Bull, but Fallon has had to resort to George for the team rooms on a very temporary basis. George is unreliable… However all these issues could be solved if both the Bull and the Tearooms paid above the National Living Wage
Cricket team
It seems a little early for the club cricket season to be starting but Ambridge are due to play Darrington on Sunday. If there isn’t a riot then something will have gone wrong
George: Influencer
George is continuing to make videos featuring the ancient animal Bartleby while Eddie adds silly voices. To be fair they have been focusing on some of the residents of Ambridge who lack a sense of humour from Derek Fletcher to Susan with Justin next in line. However unless we can get to see the videos its a little on the tedious side.
Chainsaws
Ed & Emma have successfully bid for a second hand chainsaw. Just as long as George doesn’t get hold of it.
Harold Wilson the only ‘left’ Labour Prime Minister
Labour has had six Prime Ministers: McDonald, Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan Blair and Brown. Starmer may be a sixth but only Wilson came from anything like the left. He had been a supporter of Nye Bevan and after Gaitskell died was certainly the left candidate.
David Edgerton has written a typically interesting piece in the New Statesman on Wilson as Labour’s only social democratic PM. That was certainly how some sections of the left- Edgerton focuses on Perry Anderson- saw him. To be fair they quite quickly realised that Wilson in Office was not leaning left.
Even so Edgerton’s analysis of Wilson’s 1960s Premiership suggests that his analysis of what was wrong with Britain and what to do about it- in essence a strategy of Productivism-was to some extent implemented. Implemented enough as Edgerton underlines for Thatcher to have to reverse it
1963 was a year of change at the top of British politics.
Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell had died and been replaced by Harold Wilson, the left-wing candidate. By September, in the wake of the Profumo affair, Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had resigned and been replaced by the aristocratic Alec Douglas Home.
A General Election was expected although it did not in fact take place until 1964.
Labour met in conference at Scarborough in the first week of October 1963 with Wilson set to make his first speech as Labour leader and lay out the Party’s position for the Election.
Labour had lost in 1951, 1955 and 1959 and some argued that the Party would never again achieve office. A document, Signposts for the Sixties, was before delegates. In the week of the conference the No.1 record in the charts was She Loves You Yeah Yeah by an up and coming group from Liverpool, the Beatles.
Recordings of the speech are very hard to come by, but on the 50th anniversary, 1st October 2013, the Peoples History Museum used the actor Colin Smith to read it in character as Harold Wilson, with commentary by the historian Steve Fielding.
Some of the speech, now 60 years on, now seems very dated. Wilson, for example, was clearly unpersuaded by the need for colour television. As Edgerton notes Wilson was not persuaded by consumerism.
His general drift however was one that had some distinctly modern echoes.
He argued that at the top of British industry was to be found aristocratic wealth and speculative finance but that the world was changing. The old boy network which could always rely on a special relationship to get it out of trouble was becoming outdated. Sixty years on however this remains an issue
Wilson focused on the themes of science, socialism and planning.
He argued that automation and an end to the arms race leading to disarmament would lead to massive job losses and this must be addressed by creating new jobs.
Wilson was both too pessimistic and too optimistic here. The arms race did not end. While automation and new technology certainly did appear, and jobs were hit, it was on nothing like the scale in many areas that Wilson thought.
The Labour leader underlined that the Party must embrace progress- ‘ no room for Luddites in the socialist party’ he argued but also Britain must provide far more educational opportunities through new Universities- Labour created the new Universities, implementing the Robbins Report, the Open University and the Polytechnics followed-and through State investment in the utilisation of the skills of chemical engineers.
While the speech was Wilson’s apparently written the night before, many of the ideas that inspired it came from a young Labour MP, newly returned to Parliament in August 1963. His name was Tony Benn and he was employed at that time as Wilson’s speech writer and media man. By 1966 Benn had become the first Minister of Technology.
The ideas behind the speech although some sound radical 60 years on were problematic for the left. Firstly because Wilson attacked ‘restrictive practices’ on both sides of industry, heralding the battles over productivity to come with the trade unions.
Secondly because as New Left Review noted at the time for Wilson the problem of British industry was essentially one of the need for more efficient managership. For socialists by contrast it was about who controlled the levers of production- ordinary people or the wealthy.
Wilson’s speech positioned Labour as the party of progress and modernisation, a point not lost on Tony Blair when he created New Labour and one that is arguably echoed faintly and much less eloquently by Keir Starmer.
Fundamentally though if Britain and the British economy has been changed significantly since the 1960s this was done by Thatcher. The challenge for not just the left but even the most modestly social democratic Government is not to build on that miserable legacy but to develop an alternative to it. Specifically one that focuses on the many not the few.
Vere Gordon Childe was born on 14th April 1892 and died in 1957. He remains probably the most widely archaeologist, even if new research will have updated some of his work.
Gordon Childe was born in Australia and was a socialist activist both in that country and in Britain. In his later years he held an academic position at what is now UCL. An annual Gordon Childe lecture was started in 2016.
Childe was a marxist and worked with the Communist Party of GB but was never a member. His views on Stalin and Trotsky do not appear to have been central to his political or academic activity. The fact that he died shortly after 1956 meant that he never became associated with the new left.
Gordon Childe worked with the Communist Party Historians Group in the 1940s and 1950s but, not a CP member, was not according to Eric Hobsbawm’s memoir of the Group centrally involved for that reason.
However his alignment but non affiliation meant that he played a central role in the formation of the journal Past and Present which aimed to bring together marxist and non-marxist historical research, initially from 1952,at the height of the Cold War.
Gordon Childe’s multi-faceted life brings to mind that of E P Thompson. He was a member of the CP until 1956 and active on its Yorkshire Committee- a senior role. Thompson although famous in 2024 as an historian primarily focused on English literature at this time.
Gordon Childe’s life and work deserves to be better known to new generations of the left. A recent review of a biography with much more detail is here:
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has praised Jeremy Paxman, now with a full-time organic beard, for his role in campaigning for more action to help those who have Parkinson’s disease.
Paxman struck what turned out to be a decisive blow for beard liberation by presenting Newsnight with a beard in 2013. He went for 147 days without shaving before removing the beard following pressure from clean shaven BBC suits.
Paxman has often worn a beard since but always appeared clean shaven while presenting University Challenge from which he recently stepped down.
The campaigners say that Paxman brings beard power to the campaign for better treatment for Parkinson’s sufferers, with the hope that his added hirsute gravitas will finally get the Government to take action
