Kmflett's Blog

William Morris, Earth Day, Parliament & Dung Heaps

Extinction Rebellion have been holding the Big One protest in central London today, which is also Earth Day. Its part of a 4 day protest which has had a dual focus of mass mobilisation- reportedly around 60,000 today- and protests at key Government and Commercial locations.

Interestingly William Morris (1834-1896) the Victorian designer, socialist and environmentalist prefigured today’s protests in his Utopian novel News From Nowhere.

He saw the Houses of Parliament replaced by an environmentally friendly dung heap and democracy taken to the grassroots with people’s assemblies across the country

‘Now,’ said I, ‘I have come to the point of asking questions which I suppose will be dry for you to answer and difficult for you to explain; but I have foreseen for some time past that I must ask them, will I nill I. What kind of a government have you? Has republicanism finally triumphed? or have you come to a mere dictatorship, which some persons in the nineteenth century used to prophesy as the ultimate outcome of democracy? Indeed, this last question does not seem so very unreasonable, since you have turned your Parliament House into a dung-market. Or where do you house your present Parliament?’

The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said: ‘Well, well, dung is not the worst kind of corruption; fertility may come of that, whereas mere dearth came from the other kind, of which those walls once held the great supporters. Now, dear guest, let me tell you that our present parliament would be hard to house in one place, because the whole people is our parliament.’

Lenin (b April 22 1870) cats & socialism

Making a connection between the politics of Lenin who was born 153 years ago today and cats is a complex and dialectical question.

Lenin however was certainly a cat lover, having several in his Kremlin apartment from 1918.

John S Clarke who was a professional lion tamer visited Moscow in 1920 and reportedly helped to train and organise cats. Clarke went on to become a Labour MP (those were the days)

The picture of Lenin with a cat was taken in the village of Gorki in 1922

We should however be cautious about assuming an automatic link between cats and any particular trend on the left, Rosa Luxemburg described what happened when her cat Mimi met Lenin:

“She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him,” Luxemburg writes. “But when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.”

Until Charles 1st British Monarchs claimed to get their authority direct from God, the Divine Right of Kings. In the 1640s Parliament became increasingly unhappy about this, partly for religious reasons, but partly because it was clear that the King did just what he felt like and God was not involved.

On 30th January 1649 King Charles 1 lost his head in Whitehall and a period of Parliamentary rule followed. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 with King Charles 11 it was in a constitutional framework. The King ruled through Parliament not God albeit he remained head of the Church of England.

While Charles III is reported to want a Coronation where a range of faiths participate the Church of England is sticking by the Divine Right of Kings.

The latest episode is the production of a special Coronation Bible, The tradition dates back to 1689 and the Archbishop of Canterbury commissioned Oxford University Press to produce a suitably embelished 2023 version. Welby is quoted as saying that the ‘Coronation will be a service of Christian Worship deeply rooted in the wisdom we find in Scripture’

Cromwell had a point

Those seeking to change the world, even modestly, will look for methods that can help achieve their objective. The sociologist Charles Tilly saw a repertoire of contention from petitions and public meeting to strikes and revolutions.

Most will look at the minimum form of protest that will achieve the maximum impact.

Of course authority views some forms of protest as legitimate- petitions for example-and others- various forms of direct action as at best questionable. The draconianian sentences currently being given to some climate protesters underlines the point.

The Times in an Editorial (22nd April 2023) provided a guide to what protest at sporting events is OK and what is not.

Disrupting the Grand National is OK, but protesting at the snooker or London Marathon is not. Protests at football are a grey area.

Those seeking change may wonder if a paper with a long history of defending the status quo is the best judge of such things

Dominic Raab has resigned as Deputy PM and Justice Secretary after a report by an employment lawyer found that at least some complaints of bullying against him were well founded. As TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak noted Raab’s resignation letter to Sunak was of the ‘sorry, not sorry’ genre.

Raab later underlined the point by attacking ‘over unionised’ and ‘activist’ civil servants. What this mainly tells us is that Raab is both a bully and very right-wing.

Civil servants joined a union for collective protection and representation and when they met a boss like Raab they will have been glad they did.

There is a wider issue.Tony Benn and others in the 1970s and 1980s used to criticise civil servants for frustrating their sometimes radical plans in Government and the sitcomYes Minister rather echoed the point. Of course civil servants, professionals, were concerned about whether what was being put forward would actually work.

Tony Blair, impatient for change after 1997, faced the same issue. Civil Servants knew how complex and time consuming the practice of change could be, whatever the headline issue. New Labour perhaps rightly found that frustrating.

In more recent times we can be glad that civil servants who are experts at their jobs were able to grapple with the off the wall policies of Johnson and Truss.We should be grateful to them that they managed to both annoy Raab and ultimately rumble his dictatorial style

Beard Liberation Front

21st April

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has bid farewell to Deputy PM and Justice Secretary Dominic Raab who has resigned after a report found that some complaints of bullying against him were well founded.

The campaigners say that Raab who is aggressively clean shaven and has never knowingly worn a beard is reported to have difficulty in distinguishing between beard wearers.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, one of our founding principles is that people should be able to dress and appear as they want. Clearly Mr Raab’s choice was to be aggressively clean shaven but in his case this seems to have been a clue to his wider personal interactions and behaviour. Never trust a man without a beard remains a useful guideline, albeit one to be kept under review

Never knowingly verified. On not turning rebellion into money

Fresh from his very costly disassembling rocket and successive staff cuts at Twitter Elon Musk has been busy (not personally obviously) removing blue ticks from the verified who have not signed up for twitter blue, the paid for service.

Lots of celebs and well known types including it appears the Pope, have lost their blue ticks. Of course blue ticks have been the subject of some derision perhaps to some extent rightly. On the other hand they were also a way of making sure that official accounts of official organisations were as it were really real.

No doubt all that is solid will melt into air but one increasingly wonders if Musk actually knows how to run business. Of course lots of users myself included use twitter for low level exchanges on, in my case, beer, politics, history, sport etc etc.

Twitter is however a business that in a market capitalist society needs to make a profit. It makes a profit by attracting advertising. How much it attracts depends on the size and impact of its audience and that depends to a large extent on the tweets of very well know celebs in the main. Celebs that is who have lost their blue ticks and can now be impersonated by any twerp.

I have never knowingly been verified by the way. The Flett brand is unique

The start of the English and Welsh First Class County Cricket season.. in 1968

The County Cricket season has been underway for several weeks. The weather predictably is not great. The refrain of shortage of spectators and lack of money can be heard in some quarters. In addition plans to mess around with the structure of domestic cricket continue to be on the agenda despite considerable controversy. The general focus is around how to get more people to watch and hence how to get more money into the game at local levels.

While researching quite different matters recently I came across a piece in the Daily Telegraph about the start of the County cricket season, 50 years ago, in 1968. Strangely it seemed rather familiar.

1968 was a year when the Australians visited but the piece started by noting the ‘enduring problems of making ends meet’. It goes on to mention ‘reduced gates and falling membership’ in many Counties and questions how County Cricket continued to survive.

According Wilf Wooller of Glamorgan ‘cricket had been tottering on the edge of bankruptcy for 90 years’.

The article ponders how clubs like Gloucestershire which ‘has had little success in recent years’ survive. The answer in 1968 was partly through indulgent bank managers but mainly through the work of supporter’s clubs.

However the Telegraph reports that ‘County Secretaries hope that the Sunday League due to start in 1969 will inject greater interest’. Meanwhile Michael Turner of Leicestershire thought that financial stability would only come when the ‘valuable acreages’ around the grounds were developed for multi-purpose activities that took place year round.

55 years on there are some enduring themes here and supporters are still keeping the Counties going. The interesting thing is that in the main they are not same ones as those in 1968 but new generations. How did that happen? Perhaps someone should investigate

Coronation traditions. Just making it up now.

The Pope has given King Charles two splinters from the cross on which Christ allegedly died to use in the Coronation.

The splinters of 5mm and 10mm are now in a new Silver Cross of Wales.

Holy relics are generally taken to be faked and the splinters are likely to be no exception. Even the Times admits that the authenticity of them has been ‘debated for centuries (19^th April). There are no accounts of the cross used in the Crucifixion being saved or indeed of it being recovered 300 years later. Splinters are widely held as relics and regarded as key to the survival of the churches that hold them.

It may be time for a remake of Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech 57 years on

It is 57 years ago 20^th April 1968, coincidentally, or not, the anniversary of Hitler’s birth, that Enoch Powell gave his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech to a Birmingham Conservative Association.

No complete recording of the speech exists, but on the 50^th anniversary the BBC broadcast a recreation which was read by an actor in segments with critical comment in each section.

Powell was sacked as a Shadow Minister for the speech and never recovered his standing in the Conservative Party.

The speech is an important part of British history and should certainly be recalled 57 years on. The question is how it is appropriate to do so. There is no reason why it should not be available in appropriate archives and libraries, together with any other related documentation, for researchers and other interested parties to review. However at the same time, amplifying Powell’s sentiments is highly questionable. Fortunately there appears to be little attempt to do that at least in terms of the speech.

Perhaps with Nigel Farage an ever present media figure there is no need to do so.

Powell’s speech however is a reminder that far right racist views and the Tory Party are not a recent phenomena.