The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it is suspending the use of twitter polls for BLF Awards, four seasonal Beard Awards and Beard of the Year in December with immediate effect.
The move comes after the current owner of Twitter Elon Musk created chaos on the platform by limiting the number of tweets users could access. His reasons for the move were vague and not evidence based.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, twitter polls were an effective way to assess support in our regular beard polling and relatively immune to malign influence. We hope to return to using them but at the moment twitter is unfortunately not fit for our purpose
Notes
The current Beard of the Year is England cricketer Moeen Ali. He shaved author Michael Rosen for the annual honour in a well supported twitter poll in December 2022
There has been a fourth night of protest in France over the police shooting of a teenager.
The media refer to riots and Macron has ordered a law and order crack down. Arrests continue as do protests
The Kaiser Chiefs famously sang that they ‘predict a riot’ but in fact this is not possible.
While many riots are not quite the spontaneous events they seem to authority- there is usually some spark, often the intervention of authority in a protest, that provokes them- they are not and cant be pre=planned events like a big demonstration.
Historically, are riots for abstract principles like Brexit common. Action over rising food prices while wages dont keep pace would be a more likely focus. Police racism is another
Expect more protests and riots
Keith Flett is the Editor of A History of Riots (CSP 2015)
It is 40 years since Billy Bragg’s first record, Life’s a Riot With Spy v Spy was released on Go-Discs.
The Bard of Barking of course is still very much a feature of the music scene but he has also after 40 years found a place in social and labour history, albeit necessarily a provisional one.
Those who remember Bragg from that the early 1980s- I caught him carrying around his own amplifier at a union event in Battersea Park- will remember the impact he made in that post-punk, post-Falklands war period.
That first record includes one of his most well-known songs a New England where he sang ‘I’m not trying to change the world’. But after 40 years it might be argued that just a little bit he has.
His first national political engagement was with Red Wedge, a loose group of musicians including Paul Weller, the Communards and others, who played in support of a Labour victory in 1987. It didn’t happen but the idea of intertwining music and politics- dating in modern times from Rock Against Racism ten years earlier- is something Bragg above others has kept going.
His regular appearances at the end of the TUC’s Tolpuddle Festival in July each year are under written by the more sustained work behind Jail Guitar Doors, a title taken from the ‘b’ side of the Clash single Clash City Rockers, which is a project to give guitars and develop musical activity for prisoners and those released from prison. It runs both in the UK and the US
He has also, with the US band Wilco, done much to rescue some of the unrecorded music of Woody Guthrie releasing a series of Mermaid Avenue records and he has been a consistent presence in anti-fascist campaigns with another of his trade mark songs ‘All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose’
Bragg’s politics outside of music have proved more controversial, particularly his decision to support a tactical vote for the LibDems in his Dorset constituency in 2010. He has also campaigned around the House of Lords and proportional representation on an agenda of democratising British politics.
His record English, Half English about national identity sparked a debate on the left, again underlining the ability of Bragg’s music to inspire wider debate.
The generation that grew up with Billy Bragg in the 1980s were those who opposed Thatcher, supported the 1984/5 miners strike and demonstrated with CND. Many of them no doubt remain active in the labour movement, numbers as senior Labour MPs and union leaders.
In that sense Bragg’s music has provided the musical backdrop and, often the theme tunes, for the left’s activities over four decades
It is also worth reflecting that the political right have nothing similar, reflecting the cultural roots of the labour movement that the Tories simply don’t have. Perhaps that is because has Bragg himself underlines he doesn’t see himself particularly as political or protest singer but someone who writes songs about the realities of everyday life, some of which do, of necessity make political points.
If as the US singer Randy Newman often claims every musician who was on the road in 1973 is still on the road we’ll be enjoying Billy Bragg for many years to come yet. After all he didn’t really get going until ten years after that.
Its LGBTQ+ London Pride this Saturday the 53rd anniversary of the first US gay pride march.
The UK Gay Liberation Front was formed in October 1970 and the first Pride march took place in 1972.
I was slightly too young to be involved in 1970 but certainly was active by the mid-1970s by which time the original GLF had of course in the tradition of all the best movements splintered.
Its correct to assume then the Beard Liberation Front owes its name and some of its inspiration to the GLF.
A brief note on the relationship between gay liberation and beard liberation seems in order.
The idea of ‘liberation’ which means a good deal more than having ‘rights’ on equality, important though those are, is not one perhaps that has a wide a currency as it did have decades ago.
Even so the Beard Liberation Front, formed in the mid-1990s, to campaign for the rights of the hirsute, was a nod to the idea of liberation, albeit a much more light hearted one, in the main.
It’s a while since I’ve had a discussion with a journalist about the matter so it’s worth underlining that while you can be oppressed as a result of your sexuality this is not the case with wearing a beard in general. For most people if there is an issue with having a beard the best solution is to shave it off, albeit hopefully only on a temporary basis. That is not the case if the beard is worn for religious or related cultural reasons, but here if pogonophobia raises its head, the oppression is on the basis of religion or sometimes race, not because of the beard as such.
Having, hopefully, cleared up that important and serious point back to the wider and hopefully more fun bit.
Why beard liberation? Because wearing a beard can be a liberation in terms of being able to dress and appear as you want rather than the wait society expects or wants you to appear. The link with the early days of gay liberation is hopefully clear. Outrageous sometimes, but why not?
The specific link is of course with Bear culture, the aspect of LGBT culture that focuses on beards…
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that continuing media speculation about the future of Spurs and England footballer Harry Kane fails to take into account that beards are not for profit.
Harry Kane is one of the most high profile sporting beards in Britain and the beard power he brings to football is not something that can be or should be quantified in monetary terms
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, hands off Harry Kane’s beard, its not for sale
The Interim report of the first tranche of the SpyCops Inquiry was published on 29th June. It concluded that the special police units that spied on the left served no useful purpose and should have been disbanded
On the 29th November 1979 at 8-00pm I found myself, a 23-year-old socialist, in the small upstairs room of the Ship pub on Tottenham High Rd attending a pre-conference meeting of the local SWP branch. The main speaker was Steve Jeffries, then a leading member, who wanted a change in the structure of the Party.
At more than 40 years distance I can only recall the old detail. I do recall Jeffries throwing his hands in the air at one point and exclaiming ‘so the line flips again’
However the Undercover Policing Inquiry tabled a full report written by a police spy who was also present. This is likely to be ‘Colin Clark’ HN80 whose lengthy statement to the inquiry notes problems in the Haringey branch
There was a list of 14 people who attended. Its redacted now but then it was sent to Special Branch who had the habit of opening files on the individuals on such lists. I’d rather like to know what is in mine.
Earlier this week John Harris wrote a gloomy piece about life in Frome (where a by-election is due) arguing that no one was interested in anything much. I don’t want to depress people further but it is easily Googable.
A Fletter in response focused on Lenin’s opposition to such miserabilist politics. That’s not to say that Lenin or the Marxist tradition is one of super optimism either. Marx criticised the Chartist leader Harney for being ‘citizen hurrah hurrah’ cheering on movements that had no real substance.
Rather, staring reality in the face with all the contradictions that can bring
Appeal Court Judges have found that Government plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda are unlawful. Unfortunately they did not find the Government’s whole asylum policy to be unlawful.
Even so Sunak has said he will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Could this be the same Court which Boris Johnson accused of intefering in politics when it found his attempt to prorogue Parliament over Brexit to be illegal? Indeed it could.
Campaigners express serious concern at promotion of beard topiarists in The Guardian
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers has expressed serious concern at the content of Pass notes 4,577 which appeared in the Guardian G2 on 28th June.
The column features the recent activities of the self-styled World Beard and Moustache Championship.
The Championships which pop up in various countries focus on people who have shaped facial hair into various shapes much as a hedge might be shaped as topiary.
The campaigners say that barbers, those who cut and shape hair, rather than promote its growth are behind the Championships.
The Guardian article focuses on women contestants who are in a category that allows false beards. The Beard Liberation Front has no issue with and has long promoted organic knitted beards for those who for whatever reason cannot grow their own beard
