Ferretts were a central part of the late Joe Grundy’s repertoire but they have been little heard of in Ambridge recently. However after Eddie Grundy had a ferret stall at Lower Loxley’s late May event, its clear that ferrets are back. He has joined the Ambridge Fete Committee despite Lynda’s concerns and suggests several possible events including ferret dolls (made by Clarrie) and ferret racing against people.
Knacker Burns: everything’s gone green
PC Sgt Knacker Burns has queried whether he wants to continue his career as a police officer. Given his failure to find the missing bunting it’s understandable. His thought of getting involved with matters green and natural suggests that he has been watching Springwatch. He might check the views of the Ambridge ruling class on that, where nature is not to enjoy but to make profit from.
Lee is on restricted duties
After Lee whacked Titchener he was questioned by the police about assault. He of course proclaims his innocence but it remains to be seen how Titchener wants to proceed. After a meeting with Dominic, a solicitor on Friday, it became clear that Titchener wants a F2F discussion with Lee. The Ambridge Socialist suggests an arm wrestling contest.
Meanwhile Lee has prudently told his manager at the Laurels and attended a meeting with his union rep. He is now on restricted duties which is, arguably prudent all round.
Beyond Woke, & the Blob. The Lefty Twittersphere. Johnson coins a new culture war phrase
Boris Johnson may be out of Parliament but he still has his Daily Mail column (Google if interested) for which he is reportedly paid well above £500,000 a year.
In this week’s missive from the Cotswolds (24th June) praises the heroism of those who died in the Titan submersible which by any standards was a most unfortunate event.
His focus is those who have suggested that if people had the very large sums of money required for such an expedition it rather suggests that the tax system is not working as it should.
Johnson claims such comments are part of the ‘Leftie Twittersphere’ presumably for people who are Woke and promoted by the Blob.
In the Julian Calendar 24th June is Midsummer’s Day, rather than the date of the Summer Solstice (21st June).
Traditionally it was marked by the lighting of bonfires, beer & the appearance of Lords of Misrule who aimed to turn the world upside down, albeit only temporarily.
The tradition is rarely marked now, a reminder that traditions that are seen to offer a chance of subversion tend to be officially discouraged
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that while Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll didn’t make Labour’s shortlist for Mayor of the North-East, he not only made the equivalent list for Beard of Summer but topped the poll when voting ended at midnight on Friday.
There were two rounds of voting for the coveted seasonal accolade and in the final Beard Off round Driscoll easily shaved other contenders including Stephen Fry and new Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, clean shaven revisionism may be in fashion politically but Jamie Driscoll’s beard brings gravitas to his Mayoral job
National Beard Week 2023
Monday 19th June: Hirsute Personality of the Year: the beard wearer who has made the positive public impact during the year. 2023 winner- Moeen Ali
Tuesday 20th June: Beard Friendly Sandwich of the Year: the sandwich that goes in the mouth not the beard. 2023: Chip Butty
Wednesday 21st June: Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year: the broadcaster whose beard has had the most public impact. 2023 Michael Rosen
Thursday 22nd June: Pogonophobe of the Year: the most notorious beard hater of the year; 2023 Ron DeSantis
Friday 23rd June: Beard Friendly Employer of the Year: the field grows wider each year 2023 Redemption Brewery
Saturday 24th June: Beard of Summer 2023: the third of the four quarterly seasonal Awards 2023 Jamie Driscoll
The Guardian has a story that when a student Keir Starmer had a summer job selling ice-cream on the French Riviera. It was not illegal and according to the report his ice-creams were confiscated.
The paper focuses on an apparent contradiction between Starmer’s current obsession with the rule of law (or his law anyway) and this illegal act, for which he was not arrested
The point is being missed.
When I was a student in the late 1970s I was of course a socialist and the summer was not spent selling ice cream. Rather, certainly from late July and through August the time was spent organising to get people to attend protests at the appropriate Party conferences in September (in the late 70s that was Labour). In those pre-mobile pre-e-mail days that required hard slog. Actually visiting people, getting money for the coach and noting their details.
Starmer during this period was involved in a Trotskyisant organisation and publication for which wrote (inevitably) dull articles. None mention ice cream or the French Riveria.
Redemption Brewery named Beard Friendly Employer of the Year
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Tottenham’s Redemption Brewery has been named Beard Friendly Employer of the Year 2023
Redemption was one of the first wave of new craft breweries in London 2010, located close to the Spurs ground in Tottenham its well known for its cask beers including Hopspur
Past winners of the accolade in recent times have ranged from the BBC and the Church of England to the craft brewer Hackney’s Five Points
The Beard Friendly Employer Award is more focused on an employer that promotes a diverse workforce and decent working conditions.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, a beard friendly employer is one that welcomes all, including those with beards, has good working conditions and is solidly rooted in the communities it serves. Redemption Brewery ticks all the boxes!
National Beard Week 2023
Monday 19th June: Hirsute Personality of the Year: the beard wearer who has made the positive public impact during the year. 2023 winner- Moeen Ali
Tuesday 20th June: Beard Friendly Sandwich of the Year: the sandwich that goes in the mouth not the beard. 2023: Chip Butty
Wednesday 21st June: Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year: the broadcaster whose beard has had the most public impact. 2023 Michael Rosen
Thursday 22nd June: Pogonophobe of the Year: the most notorious beard hater of the year; 2023 Ron DeSantis
Friday 23rd June: Beard Friendly Employer of the Year: the field grows wider each year 2023 Redemption Brewery
Saturday 24th June: Beard of Summer 2023: the third of the four quarterly seasonal Awards 2023 TBA
Willie Thompson (1939-2023) Socialist Historian on the Communist Party Historians Group
Willie Thompson died earlier this week, a distinguished socialist historian and activist. In recent years he was a leading figure in the Socialist History Society, formerly the Communist Party Historians Group.
I had discussions and exchanges with Willie down the years. They were always friendly even if our perspectives didn’t always meet. On occasion I shared a platform with him, for example, a 2014 meeting on the legacy of Tony Benn at Conway Hall.
I’m sure there will be many tributes and appreciations. Below is a piece I wrote in 2020 on the CP Historians which provides a link to Thompson’s definitive piece on the Group
The Editorial Board of Past & Present
I am not now and have never been a CP member. In fact I’m a lifelong anti-Stalinist. As the former Daily Worker journalist Peter Fryer, who left the party in 1956, noted at one of the meetings after the CPGB wound itself up in 1991, if the CP had ever got power in Britain I’d quite probably be in jail, if not dead.
My late father Graham, born on Clydebank was a member, and growing up in Muswell Hill in the 1960s and 1970s, obtaining a copy of the Morning Star was not a problem. The area had one of the largest CP memberships in the country.
I always found it a strange mixture of reports of industrial struggles and details of the supposed glorious advance of socialism in Russia.
It’s fair to say I think that the CPGB had some impressive episodes in its history and some very much less than impressive ones, to put it mildly.
Anyway, enough of the preamble. I write history focused columns in the Morning Star these days and have done for 15 years or so. The world changed after 1989 and when the Soviet Union no longer existed to defend, common ground was to be found in that many members of what became the CPB had a much better grasp of Marxism, its theory and practice, than much of the rest of the left. This was a recipe for a degree of peaceful co-existence.
So while I was never a CP member as a socialist historian I was associated with the CP History Group which became in 1991 the Socialist History Society.
A decent summary of the historians history by Willie Thompson is here:
As Thompson notes the CP Historians managed to avoid too much direction from King St (the old Covent Garden HQ of the CPGB) because they did mostly pre-C20th English history which didn’t interest Russia much.
That allowed them to be instrumental in founding the journal Past and Present
Eric Hobsbawm’s call after 1956 for the reconstituted group to ‘become historians of the present too’ must be seen in that context. He did indeed follow the point himself although whether interventions like the Forward March of Labour Halted will stand the test of time remains to be seen.
Again as Thompson notes many of the significant works of Marxist history after 1956 were written by former members of the Historians Group. One thinks of E P Thompson, John Saville, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton and others, all of whom I knew to one degree or another and all except for Thompson spoke at London Socialist Historians meetings in later life.
One historian I knew well and did some work with was the late Brian Manning who was a student of Christopher Hill and a leading historian of the English Civil War:
The London Socialist Historians Group which I continue to convene stands of course to a very modest amount on the shoulders of those who became known as the ‘British Marxist Historians’. One thing we took from the Group in particular was to involve non-academic historians and understand that their contributions are at least as important as those who are officially employed as academics.
Wage Stagnation, the Cost of Living, Interest Rates & Recession. Are we hearing the full conversation?
The Bank of England raised interest rates for a thirteenth time on the 22nd June to 5% meaning those with mortgages will sooner or later have to pay more and have less disposable income. There is a knock impact on those that rent too.
The Bank follows an orthodoxy that believes that higher interest rates will control inflation even if it means a recession.
The unspoken point here is that what is really be defended is profit and that is reflected by continued resistance from employers to pay rises that meet the cost of inflation, which is at 8.3% in May 2023
Figures from the ONS suggest that over the last twenty years wages have stagnated for the longest period since the Napoleonic Wars.
The Wars ran from 1803-1815 and the period after up to the Great Exhibition in 1851 have been the subject of considerable historical debate. Right wing economic historians argued that wages and the standard of living improved during this period. E P Thompson, in one of the less satisfactory parts of the Making of the English Working Class argued that far from all wages increased and that their wider issues, for example the intensity of the exploitation of labour, which simple statistics can’t effectively measure.
Average weekly pay is now no higher than it was in 2005. The ONS figures suggest that with inflation at 8.3% (food inflation is 18.3%) it won’t be until the start of 2025 that real wages start to rise.
As with E P Thompson there is a wider conversation that needs to be had. Even where workers are winning wage rises through union action few exceed 10%. Meanwhile profit levels and the pay of bosses are not, in general, declining but increasing.
So far nothing has been done to direct the profits of banks to ease the mortgage crisis. Energy prices are declining slightly but nowhere as fast as forecast and certainly not because the energy companies are reducing their profits
It’s not just real term wage cuts that provoke anger but the knowledge that we are definitely not all in it together.
Windrush at 75: Thatcher’s Swamped to Theresa May’s Hostile Environment to Suella Braverman’s invasion. Migrants remain welcome here
With the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the first of the Windrush generation in Britain its time to celebrate the positive impact migrants have had and also to underline that migrants continue to be welcome here.
When Enoch Powell made his rivers of blood speech in 1968 he was a senior Tory MP who found himself with no future in the party. This was the tail end of a period when the Government was welcoming migrants to fill, mostly badly paid, gaps in the labour force.
After the oil focused economic crisis of 1973 matters began to change. The racism inherent in much Tory politics began to be more openly displayed.
In the mid-1970s organised fascists regrouped around the National Front. It had some electoral success but also engaged in a series of highly provocative street marches in inner-city locations such as Lewisham and Wood Green. The NF was opposed by the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and others and made little impact at the next Election
Before that 1979 General Election Tory leader Margaret Thatcher made a speech claiming that people felt ‘swamped’ by those of a ‘different culture’.
There was a discussion on the left as to how far street opposition to the fascists had achieved their demise compared to Margaret Thatcher’s promotion of State institutional racism, underlining that racists could feel comfortable both with voting Tory and the actions of a Tory Government.
Fast Forward several decades and the policy of former Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, architect, when she was Home Secretary, of the hostile environment towards ethnic minorities. It was a policy which led directly to the abuse of numbers of the Windrush generation, rightfully in the UK, but harassed by the authorities.
Those who had arrived without complete paperwork in the 1960s found themselves targeted for potential and sometimes actual deportation, splitting them from families who had been born in the UK. This example of institutional racism went in parallel with the rise of the English Defence League, identified with the fascist Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Again their trademarks were street marches and general thuggery. Again they found themselves opposed by anti-racists such as Stand Up to Racism and eventually like the National Front before them fell apart.
Now Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman is talking the language of the far and fascist right about an ‘invasion’ of migrants into Southern England.
Before that 1979 General Election Tory leader Margaret Thatcher made a speech claiming that people felt ‘swamped’ by those of a ‘different culture’.
There was a discussion on the left as to how far street opposition to the fascists had achieved their demise compared to Margaret Thatcher’s promotion of State institutional racism, underlining that racists could feel comfortable both with voting Tory and the actions of a Tory Government.
Fast Forward several decades and the policy of former Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, architect, when she was Home Secretary, of the hostile environment towards ethnic minorities. It was a policy which led directly to the abuse of numbers of the Windrush generation, rightfully in the UK, but harassed by the authorities.
Those who had arrived without complete paperwork in the 1960s found themselves targeted for potential and sometimes actual deportation, splitting them from families who had been born in the UK. This example of institutional racism went in parallel with the rise of the English Defence League, identified with the fascist Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Again their trademarks were street marches and general thuggery. Again they found themselves opposed by anti-racists such as Stand Up to Racism and eventually like the National Front before them fell apart.
Now Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman is talking the language of the far and fascist right about an ‘invasion’ of migrants into Southern England.
Braverman is a hard right Tory politician and the language is designed to provoke and stir racist sentiment.
She has doubled down on her plans to deport legitimate asylum seekers not only to Rwanda but to other countries.
It is a Tory policy that arguably goes further than the words that got Enoch Powell excluded from the Party. At the same time it is promoting a rise in street racism.
Both need to be opposed by anti-racists and the left. Racism is integral to a market capitalist society but how much it is promoted varies. The success with stopping the National Front and the EDL underlines how important anti-racist activity has been and still is.
US Politician Ron DeSantis named Pogonophobe of the Year
Beard Liberation Front
Press release 22nd June
contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266
Ron DeSantis named Pogonophobe of the Year
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has named Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis as Pogonophobe of the Year as part of National Beard Week.
Previous recipients of the perhaps unwanted accolade include Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump
DeSantis is known for launching an ill-defined and often incoherent War on Woke
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, beard wearers are proud to be Woke and perpetually clean shaven Ron DeSantis clearly hates beards, making him Pogonophobe of the Year
National Beard Week 2023
Monday 19th June: Hirsute Personality of the Year: the beard wearer who has made the positive public impact during the year. 2023 winner- Moeen Ali
Tuesday 20th June: Beard Friendly Sandwich of the Year: the sandwich that goes in the mouth not the beard. 2023: Chip Butty
Wednesday 21st June: Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year: the broadcaster whose beard has had the most public impact. 2023 Michael Rosen
Thursday 22nd June: Pogonophobe of the Year: the most notorious beard hater of the year; 2023 Ron DeSantis
Friday 23rd June: Beard Friendly Employer of the Year: the field grows wider each year 2023 TBA Saturday
24th June: Beard of Summer 2023: the third of the four quarterly seasonal Awards 2023 TBA
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, beard wearers are proud to be Woke and perpetually clean shaven Ron DeSantis clearly hates beards, making him Pogonophobe of the Year
National Beard Week 2023
Monday 19th June: Hirsute Personality of the Year: the beard wearer who has made the positive public impact during the year. 2023 winner- Moeen Ali
Tuesday 20th June: Beard Friendly Sandwich of the Year: the sandwich that goes in the mouth not the beard. 2023: Chip Butty
Wednesday 21st June: Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year: the broadcaster whose beard has had the most public impact. 2023 Michael Rosen
Thursday 22nd June: Pogonophobe of the Year: the most notorious beard hater of the year; 2023 Ron DeSantis
Friday 23rd June: Beard Friendly Employer of the Year: the field grows wider each year 2023 TBA Saturday
24th June: Beard of Summer 2023: the third of the four quarterly seasonal Awards 2023 TBA
