Cleverley & Gullis excluded from Beard of Spring shortlist
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the Beard of Spring 2023 shortlist will be announced shortly with the winner revealed after an on-line vote on Easter Saturday.
Beard of Spring is the second of four seasonal awards that go towards the annual Beard of the Year vote in December.
The campaigners say that Foreign Secretary James Cleverley and backbench Tory MP Jonathan Gullis will not feature as they have failed to meet the criteria.
The criteria are:
A beard worn during the season in the public eye
Presenting a positive image of the hirsute
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, neither Cleverley or Gullis reach the required standard on the second criteria. Their beards are fully acceptable. They do not however, for many, present a positive public image of the hirsute.
The Narrow Church of Labour: where is Starmer going?
Labour, it is often argued, is a political broad church ,comprising socialists and social democrats, left and right. Historically however the right has set the rules of admission to the church which is why the period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was celebrated by some and regarded as problematic by some-primarily those who see Labour as tweaking rather than challenging the status quo.
In that context Starmer’s latest diktat, another attempt to bar Jeremy Corbyn as standing as a Labour candidate at the next Election, suggests Starmer wants not a broad but a doctrinally pure narrow church.
There are some analytical problems with this. It is not for example the project Tony Blair sometimes speaks on. In his repeated view the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900/1906 was a mistake because it split progressive thought electorally. A renewed Lib-Labism would find little space for the left or robust trade unionism. It would however still have a broad base, albeit different to that of the Labour Party and more like the US Democratic Party.
Starmer’s project appears different. Firstly its difficult to avoid the point that he really wants to be Director of Public Prosecutions and not Labour leader or PM. In a High Performance podcast(27th March) he compared his role to that of the England football manager but made clear his unease at and dislike of Westminster politics.
Starmer said he hated the adversarial nature of British politics. “The moment you stand up at the dispatch box almost every friendly face is now behind you and you’ve got a wall of faces that are going to vehemently disagree with what you’re saying,” he said. “It’s a very, very tribal, divided way of doing things. There are other chambers or other parliaments around the world that are horseshoe-shaped to avoid that.
“I have to say coming in from outside of politics I don’t find it at all comfortable. I don’t think it achieves very much. The best part of the week for me is when prime minister’s questions are over and I can get out of parliament.”
He is also often to be found talking of ‘My’ Labour Party as if it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Starmer plc, rather than a democratic membership organisation.
I don’t think Starmer does ideas or doctrines (mission statements are another matter) hence he is no Blair (with all the issues that has). In fact he seems to want run the Labour Party as a mix between the DPP and a football manager. The latter often get sacked.
Jeremy Corbyn’s long record as an anti-racist campaigner and activist
Sir Keir Starmer’s decision, via a Labour NEC majority vote today, to stop Jeremy Corbyn from being a Labour Party candidate at the next Election shows disdain for anti-racists and the left in general. Starmer has certainly made firm statements against racism, although his description of Black Lives Matter as a moment not a movement wasn’t one.
It’s difficult to argue though that Starmer is an anti-racist activist and campaigner or has a record of it.
Corbyn by contrast has always been up front about it.
We were both young men with beards in the North London labour movement in the 1970s (and we still are except not young) even if we had diverging views on the best way to achieve socialist advance.
Corbyn played a key role in the Battle of Wood Green on 23rd April 1977, one of the landmark battles which grappled with the rise of the fascist National Front, eventually successfully:
Corbyn was the organiser of that demonstration. He made sure that Councillors of all parties were on board and managed to unite those who wanted a peaceful protest and those who wanted to confront the fascists as well.
The local Hornsey Journal paper had the following quote from him:
From Haringey Councillor Jeremy Corbyn on behalf of the organisers of the counter-demonstrations ‘Why did the police allow the National Front to march through the busiest shopping area of North London, an area populated by several of London’s largest immigrant communities? It must be clear from Saturday’s demonstration that there is the widest possible opposition to these modern day fascists. How much longer must it be before fascism is banned from our streets?’
Since then Corbyn has continued to be an anti-racist activist. Some politicians as they progress through their careers prefer to play down or rewrite their past. By contrast Corbyn is always prepared to remember what he did on that April day in 1977 and was the keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary event in 2017.
He continues too to appear on Stand Up to Racism platforms and, where appropriate in days like these, attend protests.
It is an impressive and principled record which is more I’m afraid than can be said for the current leader.
The Guardian has published the results of an on-going research project into the Manchester cotton trade and slavery that reveal that the paper’s founder John Edward Taylor founded the paper, in the wake of Peterloo in 1819 on money from the cotton trade which rested on slavery
As the paper’s Editor Katharine Viner underlines the issue has been hiding in plain sight. And its been hiding for a long time.
Engels in his 1844 Condition of the Working Classes in England, written while he was living and working in Manchester, is critical of the bourgeois attitudes of the Guardian but doesn’t make a specific link to the slave trade. He would have been aware of the link between slavery and the cotton trade but not perhaps of the paper’s funding.
A one-dimensional approach has continued until recently. Mike Leigh’s excellent film Peterloo does not focus on the links between the cotton trade and slavery although despite scenes in the film most of those in St Petersfield on Monday August 16th 1819 were not mill workers.
However historians from Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic to Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Reddiker’s The Many Headed Hydra have been very clear on links.
The Chartist movement of which Manchester was a centre supported the abolition of slavery and joined with the abolitionists in demanding compensation for slaves rather than slave owners. The Guardian, not surprisingly, thought it should be the other way round.
There was a debate about the relationship between chattel slavery and wage slavery. Both of course were forms of exploitation from which owners profited. In the latter case however workers were free to organise and demand better conditions in trade unions. Black slaves trying the same thing were likely to end up dead, which is not minimise the importance of numerous slave revolts.
The whole thing is a reminder that history is a living project not something to be preserved in aspic and glorified as the likes of Boris Johnson have repeatedly said it should be.
End of an era: Wetherspoons closes last remaining original pub
Wetherspoons announced in September 2022 that the Tollgate pub in Turnpike Lane, London N8 was up for sale. Originally a car showroom it opened in 1989 and was the last remaining original Spoons pub in Haringey.
The Tollgate closed on Sunday 26th March having been sold for a reported £1.25m. It appears that it will continue as a licensed premises in some form.
Wetherspoons started out in 1979 at Marlers Bar, Colney Hatch Lane Muswell Hill. That was then owned by Andrew Marler but Tim Martin soon took over and started to build a Wetherspoons pub empire almost entirely in the London Borough of Haringey. Pubs included, the White Lion of Mortimer in Stroud Green, the Moon Under Water on the Roundway, Tottenham, the Elbow Room, Tottenham, the Goat in West Green Rd and the Old Suffolk Punch in Green Lanes Harringay. Most are no longer pubs and Wetherspoons now has just two outlets in Haringey, in Wood Green and Muswell Hill.
Parliamentary Beard of the Year Jeremy Corbyn defended against clean shaven revisionist Starmer
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has come to the defence of Islington North MP and current Parliamentary Beard of the Year Jeremy Corbyn.
Clean shaven revisionist Keir Starmer has issued yet another diktat in his long running efforts to stop Corbyn being the Labour candidate for Islington North at the next Election. The campaigners say that while this is largely an internal Labour issue, its seems clear that Starmer is at the least partly motivated by a fear of beards, pogonophobia.
Jeremy Corbyn has been voted Parliamentary Beard of the Year more often than any other MP. The annual award is given to the MP who best promotes a positive image of the hirsute in the public eye.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, part of the reason the BLF was originally founded was to oppose the clean shaven revisionist politics of Tony Blair. Yet Blair was smart of enough to understand that he had to promote a degree of peaceful co-existence with the hirsute and had beard wearers like Robin Cook and Frank Dobson in his Cabinet. Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair and his war on hirsute socialism deserves to fail.
Beard Liberation Front welcomes Humza Yousaf first Four Nations leader with a beard
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it welcomes Humza Yousaf as the new SNP leader.
Mr Yousaf was one of three contenders for the role and has a distinctive beard. As SNP leader he breaks the clean shaven mould of leadership across the four UK nations.
The campaigners say there is no issue with Mr Yousaf’s beard and note that many of his policies are beard friendly. However he has been an SNP Minister for an extended period and there is a question over whether he will always presents a positive public image of the hirsute in this respect.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, of course we welcome a hirsute leader in Scotland but this must be something that promotes the positive public image of beard wearers. Mr Yousaf may have won by a whisker but he is the first SNP leader with a beard since Douglas Young (1942-5) and the first ever hirsute First Minister.
Conte pays the price for ignoring Beard Liberation Front advice on Beard Power
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, reacted earlier in March to a suggestion by Arsenal fan and potential North London Super League Supremo Michael Rosen, that Spurs manager Antonio Conte might do better with a beard.
Conte famously had a beard when managing Chelsea but shaved it off after ‘advice’ from his partner and daughter.
The BLF says that at Chelsea Conte showed signs of understanding footballing beard power but this didn’t work at Spurs because Conte refused to grow a match winning beard
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Beard Power is important in modern football. Spurs fans need only look across North London to the example of Arsenal Manager Arteta. Conte has now paid the price for a period of inconsistent clean shaven football management.
Beard Liberation Front poll. Who should be the next Spurs manager?
On Saturday a small group of fascists from ‘Patriotic Alternative’ appeared in the Welsh town of Llantwit Major. They claimed they were protesting at plans to house refugees in the area.
Unlike Suella Braverman Wales is clear that it is a country that welcomes refugees and that was underlined by the turn-out of largely local people. The fascists were outnumbered by at least ten to one and had to beat a retreat.
A perhaps unlikely symbol of the day was the Welsh Cake. For those unfamiliar, while recipes vary they are usually flat and round, dusted with sugar and contain currants. They were handed out in Llantwit Major on Saturday as a way of underlining a community united.
Some social media commentators suggested they might also be thrown at fascists. Certainly artisan Welsh Cakes have the heft for that but really they are better off eaten.
It started with Jim Lloyd mentioning Eldridge Cleaver to Justin Elliott in the village shop. Justin of course had never heard of him. Justin grasped enough however to warn Daveed in the Bull that a protest against the proposed Vehicle Charging Station was underway.
He also alerted Damara Capital, who are in fact behind the project. In doing so it became clear why Elliott is volunteering to work in the village shop. He wanted to display his local community credentials knowing that he was a key player in a move to undermine it.
Subsequently Lloyd together with what might be charitably described as a popular front of protesters held a picket at Brookfield. Daveed blocked them with hay bales. Not to be deterred Lloyd booked himself into the B&B room at Brookfield and dropped a protest banner out of the window.
His tactic to publicise a sit-in on social media failed due to his own ineptitude. Chelsea, better at protest tactics, persuaded Jim that he would win on the arguments not stunts.
What We Think
Opposition to a Vehicle Charging Station (for electronic cars) might look like Nimbyism. It might hit trade in the village, but it might equally lead to more. However the fact that Damara Capital is behind the scheme shows that a bigger plan is in play. Their aim is to make profit out of the Borsetshire countryside. For the people they care not. We shall have more to say on tactics and strategies
The Ambridge Socialist poll. Vehicle Charging Protesters. Right or Wrong?
Debbie fell out with Brian. Eventually he tried to persuade her to return from Hungary and run the farm. She refused. After all Tamsin Greig has a busy acting career as well.
The new viewing window at the dairy has been unveiled
Paul at a Eurovision planning meeting convened by Sgt Knacker Burns has commended Justin (who attended because he is ‘patriotic) for being a LBGTQ ally. Justin is confused
