On 12th August 1839 the Chartists declared a Grand National Holiday until the profit system was ended.
The Government expected armed revolt (that came in November 1839) but there were no models for the Chartists to work on.
It was partly a General Strike as Chartists marched from workplace to workplace bringing people out. Rallies and meetings were held daily.
But aside from collective action the focus was on individual action to deprive the Government of funds.
This meant:
No buying from shops
No smoking of tobacco
No drinking of alcohol
Instead herbal tea and herbal tobacco could be used
In addition any savings should be withdrawn from banks- something that still happens in modern crisis
I ran a Twitter poll to see how many would back such specific action in 2023 with a collective but also an individual impact. 52% would and 48% would not…
Almost 4 million strike days in the last 12 months, but is it working?
According to the Resolution Foundation around 4 million days have been taken in strike action in the last 12 months or ‘lost’ as its officially known.
The strikes have focused on the post, rails, education and health where the Government has a considerable say on what wage rises are given.
Strike action has achieved wage offers well above what has been originally tabled but mostly still below inflation. The large scale action has largely been in the public sector where wages are still lagging significantly behind inflation. This does suggest that the link between the two is not quite what the Bank of England claims.
The gap in the private sector is less but without Government intervention at least in some areas employers have given rises of inflation or above.
One way of looking at this might be to suggest that matters would play out differently with a Labour Government. The experience of Wales where there have been less strikes and more agreements suggests there is something in this but wage increases still don’t match inflation. In addition its difficult to see Rachel ‘fiscal’ Reeves conceding large rises.
Another way of looking at it is to suggest that perhaps all out rather than strike days might get better results. There are currently all out strikes at St Mungos (Unite) and Brighton University (UCU). The focus is often on terms and conditions and jobs as well as wages.
The issue is there is whether there is the confidence to sustain all out strikes when even left union leaders are not pursuing the strategy and how to change that
These issues are discussed a lot in workplaces, pubs, clubs and cafes but not of course in the national media.
Working class organisation at the grassroots which recently won victories at Hinckley Point comes as much of a surprise to official society as it did 40 years ago. We might reflect however that despite more and more anti-union laws the pressure of having to exist tolerably motivates workplace action come what may
Price of bread up 30%: The Corn Laws were an issue at Peterloo on 16th August 1819
This week sees the 204th anniversary of Peterloo a central Manchester protest for the vote but one where the price of bread was also an issue.
According to a report in the Guardian (14th August) bakery items such as bread are up 30% in price from a year ago
The demand for cheaper bread was raised at Peterloo but there can be few that think that this was the fundamental reason why thousands gathered in central Manchester on the August Monday in 1819. Bread was a staple of the working-class diet (as it still is in some areas of the world) and its cost was a symbol of wider system of oppression in which change was demanded. The change was around democracy and the vote.
Yet while Chartism was the main successor to the democratic demands of Peterloo there was another, the Anti-Corn Law League, founded and based in Manchester. Well known ACLL activists had been at Peterloo so they could reasonably claim a connection. The ACLL also had some branches of ‘operatives’- workers. Yet it was primarily an organisation of industrialists, well-funded and effective. So effective indeed that it won the battle to repeal the Corn Laws (taxes on imported wheat) splitting the Tory Party in the process.
Cheaper bread certainly followed on but so did something else- reductions in wages as employers reasoned that workers could now live more cheaply and so required less pay. That arguably was the bottom line of what the ACLL were after.
To underline their connection to Peterloo they constructed the Free Trade Hall on the site of St Petersfield. It’s now a Radisson hotel but the façade still stands.
Cheaper bread in 2023, part of a cost of living crisis, might well require the kind of democratic upheaval that was sought at Peterloo, one that could put a stop to the greedflation of supermarkets and producers
The Culture Wars move on: Memoirs of an activist sociology teacher
It appears that as an activist sociology teacher in the late 1970s I was one of those who sowed the seeds of Wokery (letter to The Times 15th August)
Andrea Jenkyns who is a Tory Minister who has some responsibility for higher education claimed at the Tory Conference in October 2022 that Universities were teaching critical race theory, anti-British history and social (or possibly sociological) Marxism and this was a bad thing.
Anti-British presumably means covering all of British history with nothing left out, which Boris Johnson sometimes claimed he supported.
Social Marxism is more problematic since it has no clear meaning beyond its use by far right US Republicans to cover views they consider as ‘woke’.
Culture Wars move on and The Times (14th August) reports that ‘activist teenagers’ are increasingly studying sociology at A Level. It is the fifth most studied subject up from ninth five years ago. The view is that with capitalism in crisis, climate change etc there is an increasing interest in how society works, or doesn’t. The Times (Editorial 14th August) concedes this is not entirely bad although it still thinks students would be better off studying classics
In the late 1970s I was myself a promoter of social or sociological Marxism. I studied Marxism as part of my first degree, (and indeed often turned theory into practice with college sit-ins and demos) and then went on to get a PGCE teaching qualification as Sociology teacher.
I was of course then as now an activist
I was briefly unleashed on the pupils of Birmingham but the wider world intervened. Mrs Thatcher was elected in May 1979 and she was no keener on sociology or Marxism than Andrea Jenkyns. I looked elsewhere for employment..
Sociological Marxism essentially sees Marx as one of the great thinkers alongside others such as Weber. It significantly underplays the importance of Marx’s beard something I have always emphasised
Saturday saw further deaths of Afghans in the Channel, fleeing the Taliban Government. Britain despite commitments has no safe and legal route for Afghan refugees to enter the country.
You might not know that given the racist furore created by right-wing media on the issue and you might not know that safe and legal routes is Labour policy because Labour spokespersons don’t focus on it much.
The Sunday Times Business News (13th August) looks at the companies who profit from the Tories failure to deal humanely and efficiently with asylum seekers. Jack Straw is quoted to the effect that in 2002 the Labour Government faced a similar 100,000 people backlog of asylum seekers and reduced it by 40% in a year by employing more people to deal with it.
The Tories meanwhile have so far got a barge moored at Portland currently empty while legionnaires disease is dealt with. The FBU has warned the barge is not safe but this is not something that interests the Government.
The barge is owned by Bibby Marine but is managed by Australian company Corporate Travel Management. Its core business is executive travel but it as received £2.6billion in uncompetitive contracts since 2016 including ships in Scotland for Ukrainian refugees and the debacle of hotel quarantine during the pandemic.
CTM profit out of others misery, the costs come from public funds and the whole thing is used by the Tories as a Culture War
From Engels on the Irwell in 1844 to 2023: England’s rivers are a polluted mess
An Observer report has found that of 40 English rivers with protected habits 90% are polluted with agricultural waste and raw sewage.
It’s a reminder of what an unregulated and more importantly mostly unpoliced system of market capitalism produces as one of the side effects of profit making.
Its not a new reminder either.
Engels writing on the Condition of the Working Class in 1844 noted the condition of the Irk a tributary of the River Irwell that runs between Manchester and Salford:]
A narrow coal black foul smelling stream, full of debris and refuse…in dry weather a long stream of the most disgusting blackish-green slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise..
According to the Daily Heil the Archers is Woke. The Heil hates Woke but the Ambridge Socialist has no issue with it although its not a formulation to be found in Marx.
The specific point at issue was the putting down of Stella’s dog after Ed had run it over. Apparently this was too serious for the Archers which is about light drama, at least in the view of those that never listen to it.
Stella and Pip
Stella and Pip were planning to camp in a tent for the night but it was too smelly. However Pip did kiss Stella. Pip was concerned about this expression of her sexuality while Stella was not. They need a shower not a tent
George
George is up to no good. See Alf Grundy
Tea Room crisis
Village idiot Tom has turned down Fallon’s plan for a longer term lease to allow investment and security from potential competition from the new charging station. In the meantime her partner Sgt Knacker Burns has reduced his hours. Perhaps if he was employed as a doorman at the Tea Room business would look up
Ferret news
Marvin has been found without the assistance of Knacker
Harry Kane has been one of Tottenham’s greatest players, and Spurs fans who live in the area (many of course actually live in Essex as Harry himself does) will be sorry to see him go to Bayern.
Some including myself will reflect on the autocratic way that Daniel Levy and others have run the club in recent times but of course that’s no different to other Premiership clubs.
I suspect that most in Tottenham will look at the £100m fee for Kane and reflect how such sums can slosh around at a club that stands in one of the poorest area of Britain.
It’s a solid mostly working class community, with may positive points, but there are also foodbanks, lack of jobs and badly paid jobs, a struggle for affordable housing and much else. What £100m could have done to help all that a bit.
There have been a number of calls for the pub to be rebuilt as was. There is precedence for this but it would clearly be costly. The present owners of the site might be required to do so by legal action. However even if the action was successful there is no real guarantee they’d do it and even less of one that it’d reopen as a pub. Perhaps Marstons who set the whole sorry chain of events off should be prevailed upon to face the consequences of their actions and then act on them
The Crooked House Pub near Dudley has been in the news,not least because while it is an historic building and thought to be the wonkiest pub in Britain it currently does not exist.
It was sold by Marstons to private buyers in July with a clear view of it not continuing as a pub. Subsquently it caught fire and was subsequently bulldozed.
The police are investigating the fire as arson and the the knocking down of the pub is under investigation by Staffordshire Council for breach of planning permissions and laws.
The issue has raised a focus on pubs that have disappeared in similar circumstances and the Campaign for Real Ale and others have made public statements.
The focus on Marstons though has been developed. Since they entered into a partnership with global brewer Carlsberg they are essentially a pub company and one with links to the Tory Party. The link is known historically as the Beerage. In the last 10 years both Dave Cameron and Rishi Sunak have made PR visits to Marstons.
The question must be asked why Marstons decided to get rid of the Crooked House pub. Perhaps after the pandemic it wasnt profitable but that should not have stopped them from selling it to someone who wanted to run it, perhaps for example the local community or a local business.
What has happened to the Crooked House is vandalism but its also the politics of pre-1832 Old Corruption where decisions were made that benefited the few rather than the many with no real framework of democratic accountability
