Multiple Beard Award Winner Michael Rosen congratulated on being awarded PEN Pinter Prize
The Beard Liberation Front has congratulated, author, broadcaster and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen on being awarded the PEN Pinter Prize.
Michael Rosen was voted Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year as part of National Beard Week earlier in June and is a former winner of the coveted Beard of the Year Award.
The PEN Pinter Prize is given for someone who has outstanding literary merit and takes an ‘unflinching’ look at the world
The campaigners say that Rosen’s books on refugees and migrants, as well his active anti-racism, and support for the NHS demonstrate the very best qualities of beard wearing.
His children’s books, also much read by adults, featuring chocolate cake and bear hunts add a further dimension to his work and impact
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, when it comes to Michael Rosen we see beard power personified and we congratulate him on the PEN Pinter Prize.
The British ruling class is in a period of crisis which dates back at least to the June 2016 Brexit vote. Some sections of Capital want Britain to lead a race to the bottom in terms of the exploitation of workers, outside of the EU. Other sections would prefer to be part of an EU if not a global market where the framework of profit and exploitation is regulated to prevent advantage to any specific area of business.
Most recently the crisis has seen the Tory Party deeply divided politically. Former Tory leader and Prime Minister Johnson has resigned as an MP and been excluded from Parliament on the basis of Committee report where the majority were Tory MPs. Yet when it came to a vote in the Commons a majority of Tory MPs and Sunak the PM were nowhere to be seen.
As Truss’s brief tenure at No.10 in the autumn of 2022 underlined the Tories are not sure if they want to promote economic growth- that is profit at the expense of workers- or whether State intervention to make sure such a process does not lead to a revolt from below is needed. The latter faction around Sunak and Hunt are currently in charge and trying to engineer a recession.
Such splits should provide the labour movement and the left with an opportunity to promote positive change. Historically they certainly have done so but not unproblematically so.
The Tory split over the Corn Laws in 1846/7 is the most well-known. Peel, had been elected as Tory Prime Minister in 1841 with the support of many rural landowners, came to the conclusion that the wider interests of capital demanded not protectionism but free trade. The Corn Laws were abolished and the Tories split. By 1859 Peelite Tories had linked up with the Whigs to form the Liberal Party.
The political crisis of the later 1840s saw the success of a Ten Hours Bill designed to limit the hours of work.
The next crisis of ruling class politics came in 1866. The Liberal Government was under pressure to extend the suffrage and give more working men the vote. How it was to be done proved controversial. The Government fell and the 1867 Reform Act was the work of a Tory Government. However the impetus for change had come from outside Parliament, with the Reform League. The extension of the vote came after a mass demonstration in Hyde Park in May 1867. It had been banned and the military were on stand by but the numbers were simply too great and too well organised to stop.
The realignment of ruling class politics was a feature of the last quarter of the nineteenth century with the main issue being Home Rule for Ireland, promoted by Gladstone’s Liberal Government. This led to a move in the reverse direction as Liberal Unionists moved to the Tory Party.
In 1912 Asquith’s Liberal Government introduced the Third Home Rule Bill since 1886. The practical consequence of this was the consolidation of Liberal opponents of the Bill into the Tory Party. The background was the Great Unrest of 1910-14. As ruling class politics at Westminster was divided, the labour movement and the left advanced, with significant increases in union membership and many victories against employers.
None of these historical crisis led on to wider political change on the left however. That remains a conundrum. How to take advantage of splits in the ruling class and in doing so use this to build an organisation that can change the world
Just Stop Oil at Lords: the politics of performative protest
The final day of the Leeds Test between England and Australia in 1975 was abandoned because campaigners damaged the pitch. They were protesting the innocence of George Davis (who was innocent btw on this occasion)
Protests at cricket matches in England and Wales are not particularly common- perhaps the best known are those with those associated with stopping an apartheid South African cricket team from touring in 1970(they did not in fact tour).
On the first day of the Lords Test Just Stop Oil protesters ran on to the pitch with orange paint powder. It followed the pattern of similar protests. No harm was fortunately done but the aim of the protest was performative. It got some publicity. Whether it actually does much to change policies on climate change can be debated but it might also be argued that its better than doing nothing.
Cost of Living & Greedflation. Why Tories focus on wages & interest rates
The IMF not a friend of working people has published figures which underline that the key motor for inflation in the EU Zone is excess profits, what is known as Greedflation.
An Editorial in the Times (27th June) notes that action on excess profits, on energy companies and supermarkets is essentially performative. It claims that only control of wages and interest rates can bring down inflation.
There is of course a political agenda here. Controlling excess profits, a genuine motor of inflation, hits the rich. Controlling wage increases below the level of inflation and interest rate rises keep profits going while making the less well off in society pay.
Bernie Grant, the Haringey Cricket College & fighting racism in cricket
The long delayed ICEC report on English and Welsh cricket is damning about the levels of discrimination that exist in all areas of the game.
These have not gone entirely unchallenged and the report gives an honourable mention to the Haringey Cricket College.
The College was based at the Selby Centre in North Tottenham between 1984 and 1997. Then as now it is an area of poverty. The establishment of the College was in part the inspiration of a local Councillor and cricket fan Bernie Grant who went on to become the Labour MP for Tottenham.
During its existence the College provided cricket training for young mostly black men and women. It produced 25 cricketers who went on to play First Class cricket an astounding rate of success given what followed.
In 1997 its Lottery funding was halved and the ECB were asked to step in and make up the shortfall. It declined and the ICEC Report details the institutional racism that was no doubt behind that decision.
The legacy of Haringey Cricket College is surely that with effort and funding at the grass roots English cricket can become more diverse at a senior level but only if institutional blocks to that happening are removed.
Tory Deputy Chair Lee Anderson probably as only a small chance of holding his seat at the next Election. If he loses that will probably put paid to his £100K a year ‘job’ at GB News. However with his robust views perhaps he could be the next Tim Martin
*thanks to David Jesudason author of an excellent new book on Desi Pubs (CAMRA) for RTing this delightful picture into my timeline
For a example a school student did not identify as a cat. Keir Starmer who commented on the story is probably not the kind of person who wishes he was better informed though.
More importantly we are in Daily Mail, Telegraph and Times territory here. News media that retail stories that, if they had been investigated, would have been found either to be entirely untrue or a lot more complex than a culture war soundbite.
It’s the way that a section of the right gains currency for its prejudices and bigotry. Its aim is to divide and its being going on for a very long time. The Free Born Englishman of the 1820s disliked authoritarian Governments but he also disliked foreigners.
Fortunately progressives and the left can counter this and its by having people rooted in workplaces and communities that can patiently explain and challenge and promote positive alternatives. Its how campaigns are built and have been built and come to that, historically, how Labour wins election.
If you want to see the alternative check John Harris’s hymn to miserabilism in the Guardian (26th June)
On Friday and Saturday catering empire boss and reported leader of the Wagner group of Russian provisional soldiers organised an armed march on Moscow. On Saturday he reversed and is reported to be in Belarus.
It is reasonable to deduce that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its inability to progress its aims is creating tensions in the Russian ruling class. (there are also tensions in the US ruling class around funding of the war in Ukraine and whether they should focus more on China but an immediate repeat of January 6th appears unlikely).
Beyond this the reasons for Prigozhin’s march, its timing and reversal remain unknown. This has of course not stopped an alternative army of armchair generals, warmongers and neo-liberalists from pontificating. They write and talk not from knowledge of what happened but what they would like to have happened and might happen in future.
It’s the fog of war.
Arthur Ponsonby was a Liberal who opposed the First World War and investigated the truth, or usually otherwise, of anti-German atrocity stories promoted by its opponents in the war. In 1928 he published a book looking at wartime propaganda. The key points were later summarised and are shown below.
Truth is regarded as the first casualty of war and the current conflict between Russia and the Ukraine is no exception. Russia as the aggressor obviously promotes its own perspective, but Ukraine has to counter that by promoting its own. Hence BBC reporting is valued in both countries but of course itself is subject to pro-NATO and US stories which to be fair are mostly checked out by BBC journalists in so far as they can be. The selection of lead news stories remains a key area of potential bias.
Newspaper reporting is rarely worth bothering with, certainly in the mainstream, where narratives are promoted with little or no space for critical and alternative views. These do appear but are exceptions to the general drift of news and opinion.
Approaching all reporting of the current conflict with a critical and analytical perspective is essential.
1.We do not want war.
2.The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
3.The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4.We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.(Just war theory)
5.The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
6.The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7.We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
8.Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
The mainstream press were initially not keen on reporting Glastonbury (including the Guardian) but as they realised their readers were going that had to change. Below is an extract from the Telegraph’s report of the festival in 1994
Here are 500 market stalls offering ‘skins, bhongs and chillums, bootleg reggae tapes, Thai, Chinese and Mexican food and the ‘great British bacon sandwich,,, there is ‘’sugar free astrology, a ‘rent an argument’ tent and ‘chanting with Avril and Mike’ for anyone who honestly thinks they can take it.
There is also an abundance of new technology in the shape of wind powered telephones, a computerised message screen enabling Mad Dog to meet Rat Face under the mushroom cloud and a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer enabling members of the Avon and Somerset CID to make on the spot analysis of any suspicious substances seized on the festival site (Mick Brown)
Eavis acknowledges that the festival is no longer quite so much outside the mainstream as it once was although whether Glastonbury has changed or the rest of England is hard to say
What Telegraph readers made of this I’m not sure but I’m also fairly certain that in 2024 numbers of them will be on site and more watching it on the BBC. Progress in history?
The Russian ‘Coup’, Jean Baudrillard & the Fog of War
Nigel Wilmott who was for many years the letters editor of the Guardian, reminded on twitter that events in Russia on Friday and Saturday could be seen very much in the same framework as the late French theorist Jean Baudrillard, saw the first Gulf War
His view was not that the war didn’t take place but rather how it was depicted was more a construction of the media than reality.
One could of course read endless media reports about what Prigozhin was or was not up to, Ditto Putin. We know of course that Prigozhin served time in jail (a good while ago) then built a catering empire and is now central to the Wagner group of provisional soldiers fighting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
What we really don’t know is what he was up to on Saturday, as Alex Callinicos rightly tweeted. There is no significant independent media in Russia, and although individuals did post on social media they obviously had only insights not the whole picture. There are more independent sources in Ukraine but they would be unlikely to know what Prigozhin was doing. Most UK outlets reported views manufactured in the Pentagon and the White House. In Baudrillardian fashion these are based on what the US hoped might happen rather than what was really happening.
The fog of war indeed and while Baudrillard was criticised for his view of the first Gulf War his perspective works better here.
