Kmflett's Blog

The Times (8th June) has reported that after a protacted delay Sunak has decided to give the nod to Boris Johnson’s resignation Honours List which will be published in the next few weeks. It appears that the number of people on it is now more like 50 than the 100 originally reported.

Its who is not on it, or on it with a downgraded gong that interests particularly. Michael Gove has reportedly been purged for blocking Johnson’s attempted comeback as Tory leader. Guto Hari, Johnson’s former comms man will no longer get a Knighthood but a CBE. He has publicly blown the whistle on some of Johnson’s No.10 activities.

This underlines that the Honours system really is one of pre-democratic Old Corruption. Titles handed out or not as sinecures not because of the competency of an individual but because of favours they have or have not done or might do in future. Its nothing to do with a functioning Parliamentary Democracy in 2023

Update

The Johnson Resignation Honours List now released underlines the analysis above. A number of people who worked with Johnson in Downing St are honoured, most are implicated in potential COVID law breaking. Also honoured is the Mayor of Teesside, also under investigation.

The Parliamentary hair dresser gets a gong arguably justified as they laboured to hide Johnson’s bald patch and a friend of Carrie Johnson who walks Dilys the dog.

In short hairdresser aside its hard to find anyone on the list who actually deserves an honour were they not part of Johnson’s patronage. Old Corruption writ large

Jaipur IPA at 19

Today according to quite a few tweets from Thornbridge marks the 19^th birthday of Jaipur IPA

It remains a craft flagship beer that has crossed over into the mainstream in can and bottle format. I’ve seen it piled high in Lidl from time to time which is a useful benchmark for that.

It is however still available in cask and keg as well. I certainly can’t claim to have been aware of it or had a pint of it until 2010/11 probably at the Jolly Butchers in Stoke Newington or the Euston Tap.

Its 5.9% strength seemed strong at the time (it still is) although in a world where 6%plus beers are easy to find it might be argued the world has moved on.

That would be wrong because Thornbridge is still innovating and building the brand

Thornbridge have produced variants a DDH version and a 10% Jaipur X and in the last few weeks a Jaipur Black and a Jaipur (Burton) Union both cask beers

The original remains a distinctive addition to the list of great British beers. Proof that tradition can develop in a modern day context not just be something for the history books.

Rishi Sunak has a clear preference for travelling by helicopter but what of other ways of getting around?

Helicopter: to be preferred, if at public expense (Millionaire class)

Train: to be avoided. Boris Johnson has been seen on trains (Second Class)

Small Boats: dangerous. Why would a multi-millionaire use them?

Barges: excellent if stationary but to be used by the plebs only (Plebs Class)

Beard Liberation Front

17th June

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the news that Beard of the Year 2022 Moeen Ali is part of the England cricket squad to face Australia in the Ashes.

Moeen shaved author Michael Rosen to win the Beard of the Year vote in December 2022

He joined the squad after an unfortunate injury to Jack Leach.

The BLF says that Moeen is a leading exponent of the use of beard power in cricket

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we expect Moeen to shave the mainly clean shaven Australian team and taking the wicket of Travis Head on the Saturday of the Edgbaston Test is just the start

London Socialist Historians Seminars. Complete listing for 2022/23

Below is a listing of the seminars run by the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research 2022/23. We will resume in early October with a mixture of in person & Zoom seminars. Offers of papers, preferably featuring research in progress or recently published are welcome. Details via the London Socialist Historians website or @LSHGOfficial

The past we inherit the future we build so the 2022/23 seminar series is dedicated to UCU members fighting for decent terms and conditions in the academy against a hardline employer and to all those fighting for a better future

Autumn 2022

Mon 24th October 5.30pm. Keith McLoughlin. The British Left and the Defence Economy: competing visions of social democracy.

Mon 7th November 5.30pm Jane McChrystal and Anne Padfield. The Splendid Mrs McCheyne & the East London Federation of Suffragettes.

Mon 21st November 5.30pm. Catherine Howe, Chartism in London in 1848. Postponed. Further date tba

Spring Term 2023

Monday January 23rd 5.30pm Steve Cushion. The Drax Family Dynasty and the Business of Slavery: Reparations for Enslavement as a Trade Union Issue

Monday February 13th 5.30pm John Foot, The Left and Italian Fascism. Violence and Victims?

Monday February 20th 5.30pm, Judy Greenway, ‘A Poet among the Social Reformers’: Elizabeth Gibson Cheyne, Suffragist, Socialist and Freethinker.

Monday March 6th 5.30pm Merilyn Moos, Living With Shadows. A memoir of a daughter of German Anti-Nazi activists.

Summer Term Seminars 2023

Monday 15th May 5.30pm Keith Flett: The Coronation. Inventing and Reinventing Royal Traditions.

Monday 22nd May 5.30pm Duncan Stone: Gentlemen v Players 60 years on. Deconstructing the Gentleman Amateur

Monday 5th June 5.30pm Ralph Darlington, Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-1914. In person seminar only Room 301. Institute of Historical Research

Check the London Socialist Historians website for updates

https://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/

Guardian Fletter 4^th June 2023: On the Milibands

We do indeed need the return of Miliband the elder (Letters, 1 June). Unfortunately, Ralph – who wrote the classic book on the history of the Labour party, Parliamentary Socialism – is no longer with us.

Keith Flett

Tottenham, London

A letter writer to The Guardian suggested that it was time for the return of David Miliband to British politics. While that might seem like a very centrist point, in fact it relates to his speech at the Hay Festival where he pointed out that many countries in the world were either neutral or opposed to European and NATO military campaigns in Ukraine. He argued that part of the reason why was the legacy of the Iraq War.

It was perhaps a surprising point and seemed to suggest that in reality he had no intention of returning to UK politics at the moment since such a view would hardly fit with Starmer’s Labour.

In reality though the Miliband we really need back is the father of David and Ed, Ralph. The author of Parliamentary Socialism and the State and Capitalist Society, as well as an Editor of the annual Socialist Register, he was an incisive analyst of and commentator on the left, capitalism and how to achieve progressive change. Sadly he is no longer with us.

Beard Liberation Front

5th June

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has expressed caution on the appointment of Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou at the new Spurs manager at White Hart Lane.

The campaigners say that while Ange has had excellent record at Celtic at Spurs he will have to face a clean shaven hierarchy starting with co-owner Daniel Levy that has already seen one hirsute manager, Nuno, leave in frustration.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, with Spurs main Beard Power Harry Kane rumoured to be leaving, Ange Postecoglou will face a follicle fight at the Lane. We wish him well. He may well feature on the forthcoming Beard of Summer shortlist

Beard Liberation Front

5th June

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that there are concerns that Prince Harry’s trademark beard faces trial by media this week, as he appears at the High Court in case involving MGN newspapers

The campaigners say that while the detail of the case is not a BLF issue, media coverage of it is with news media prone to making demeaning comment’s about the Prince’s beard

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we are on Prince Harry Beard Watch this week

Beard Liberation Front

5th June

North Tyne Mayor a victim of clean shaven Starmerism say campaigners

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the decision of Labour’s NEC not to shortlist the North Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll for a new Mayoral post bears the hallmarks of clean shaven Starmerism.

Like his predecessor Tony Blair, Starmer has never knowingly worn a beard.

The campaigners say that the decision to bar Driscoll suggests that there is pogonophobia, a fear of beards, in play.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Jamie Driscoll is a good example of positive political beard power and will feature on the Beard of Summer shortlist later this month

Ken Loach & Labour as a ‘Broad Church’

The late Ralph Miliband wrote one of the best books about the history of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Socialism,1961, albeit of course it doesn’t cover the last 60 years.

Miliband, the father of David and Ed, opens the book by making the statement that as a democratic socialist party Labour had always been amongst the most dogmatic. Not about socialism but about the use of Parliamentary as opposed to extra-Parliamentary forms of struggle.

His view at that time was that Labour under Hugh Gaitskell was not a vehicle for socialist advance and the leadership of the rather more ‘left-wing’ Harold Wilson did nothing to change his mind.

He did however keep the matter under review and sometimes returned to the subject, for example in the Socialist Register 1983:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1983/xx/advance.htm

Here he saw the rise of the Bennite left as a sign that maybe Labour could be claimed for socialism. Significantly perhaps it appeared in the year that a, then young, Jeremy Corbyn first became an MP.

Tom Watson before he stepped down as an MP described an effort to abolish his then Deputy Leader position as going against the idea of Labour as a ‘broad church’. Harold Wilson was probably right that Labour owes more to Methodism than Marx but as Miliband noted the ‘broad’ part of the description is harder to justify historically.

Pious references to the Labour Party being a ‘broad church’ which has always incorporated many different strands of thought fail to take account of a crucial fact, namely that the ‘broad church’ of Labour only functioned effectively in the past because one side – the Right and Centre – determined the nature of the services that were to be held, and excluded or threatened with exclusion any clergy too deviant in its dissent.

Socialists can certainly be active in the Labour Party and have been but managing to control it as an institution and grapple with its Parliamentary focus is much harder.

A recent episode in Labour as a Broad Church saw veteran film maker Ken Loach expelled because he continued to support others who had been expelled by the current right-wing leadership.

Some don’t like at best some of the things Loach has said over the years. While I’ve never been part of exactly the same left variant as him, and clearly would have disagreements about all kinds of things, I don’t think anything he has said or done warrants excommunication. Far from it when others in the Labour Party, sometimes elected officers, continue to make racist or transphobic remarks without sanction.

They of course are no threat to a right-wing ascendancy in Labour and nor really is Ken Loach. Perhaps his expulsion underlines how insecure the leadership thinks its grip on things is. Perhaps. As likely it’s just another reminder that Ralph Miliband 60 years ago was right. Labour’s broad church is not that broad.