The Royal Family have been inventing and reinventing traditions for centuries and the first Coronation since 1953 is providing ample space for traditions to be tweaked and modernised.
One tradition which dates from 1685 is for Westminster School students to sing Vivat Rex Carolus at the moment the crown is placed on the Royal bonce. Its Latin for Long Live the King in case you didnt go to public school.
There will be 32 male students 8 female students. This is a new tradition since until now all the scholars were male.
It appears unclear if the tradition did place at Queen Victoria’s Coronation in 1837 and there was argument as to whether it should take place at the next Coronation in 1902.
140 years on Marx, Engels, Beards & Capitalist Crisis
Karl Marx died 140 years ago today on 14th March 1883 in North London.
He would not have been surprised to find that the anniversary coincides with another capitalist crisis- specifically in banking around the closure of Silicon Valley Bank. Marx wrote frequently about banking crisis and indeed the more general crisis of 1857/8
A rather less important question, although one not without some importance, is what role the beards of Marx and Engels played in capitalist crisis, their analysis of them, and ability to influence socialist organisation in relation to them.
Analysis of the issue is limited but the core text is an Appendix to Volume 2 of Hal Draper’s Marx’s Theory of Revolution, where he summarises at least some of the comments Marx and Engels made on facial hair.
He notes that the radical Hegelian D F Strauss preferred an autocratic or police state to a ‘proliferation of beards’ and goes on to interpret a remark in the memoirs of the late Victorian socialist Belfort Bax that it might be suspected ‘that Engels preserved his beard in order to encourage the overthrow of the State’.
Towards the end of his life when in Algiers, Marx wrote to Engels (28th April 1882) that he had shaved his prophet’s beard. Why he did this is not fully clear. Photographs were taken but they are not known to be extant. The one that can be found on the interwebs is a fake.
By contrast Engels maintained his full beard into his last years in the 1890s.
The key theoretical point was the importance of the beard in analysing capitalist crisis. Whether this was best done with a full organic beard as sported by Engels or the trimmed down version worn by Marx in 1882 is a matter of legitimate debate.
Tony Benn, Eleven Years On 3 April 1925-March 14th 2014. History Man
Tony Benn died eleven years ago
His published Diaries remain an important historical resource. The eleven published volumes represent a fraction of his total archive. It is to be hoped that just as the papers of Mrs Thatcher are being deposited in an academic archive and made available on-line by the Thatcher Foundation, so Benn’s equally if not more important- not least for its longevity- documentation can be made accessible to the public in its entirety.
Tony Benn was a rarity among modern politicians in that he also had a sense of history and specifically labour and democratic history.
Media commentary after his death suggested that he did not have a grasp of historical perspective when was a Labour Minister in the 1960s. Rather his experience of power led him to reflect on lessons that might be learnt from a study of the past.
Benn however was not an historian, and nor did he claim to be.
He did not spend his time researching matters in archives or wondering if a study of history might throw up distinctly awkward questions for present practice.
He did though understand the historical context he which he operated.
I’m grateful to Professor Owen Ashton, the Editor of the invaluable Merlin Press Chartist Studies series, for reminding me how much Benn focused on the Chartist movement.
Ashton has argued that Benn was in the tradition of dissenting ‘Gentleman Leaders; who were radical ‘Friends of the People’. In the nineteenth century one might look to figures like Henry Hunt who spoke at Peterloo, William Cobbett and the great Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor who became MP for Nottingham, as broadly comparable figures.
Benn himself saw the Chartists in the context of a broad democratic heritage including the Peasants Revolt the English Revolution of the 1640s and the Suffragettes of the early years of the twentieth century. It was an historical list he often spoke about and recounted in a 1999 article for History Today
He became he a regular attender at the TUC’s Tolpuddle Festivals in July and that was very much part of his awareness of labour history. He was also to be found often at the Durham miner’s gala for the same reason.
He also spoke at a London Socialist Historians conference on the history of the vote that we organised at the Institute of Historical Research
His Diaries contain several references to the Chartists. He wrote in 1981 about Paul Foot’s book Red Shelley and argued that Shelley’s influence on Chartism and the working-class movement had been all but hidden.
More poignantly in his General Election defeat in Bristol in 1983, on changed constituency boundaries, he nevertheless paid tribute in his after-poll speech to the Chartists and the suffragettes, who had fought for the democracy that had allowed him to stand.
Historians can argue that Benn’s understanding was too uncritical perhaps even to a degree hagiographic. Yet that itself misses the times in which Benn was active as a leader of the labour movement.
Relatively few other Labour MPs or Union leaders knew much if anything about labour history and even fewer made any reference to it when they spoke in public.
The importance of Tony Benn as an educator of the labour movement should not be overlooked. When he spoke at large public meetings and rallies about the Chartists or the Levellers he inspired numbers to go away and find out more about who those people were, why and how they fought and what they did and did not achieve.
Marx d. 14th March 1883. Engels ‘intellect of genius had ceased to think’
Engels on the death of Marx 14th March 1883: this intellect of genius had ceased to think
Only someone who constantly kept company with him could have any idea of how valuable this man was to us in regard to theory and also, at every critical moment, in regard to practice. Along with him, his great breadth of vision will also disappear from the stage for years to come. These are things we others are not equal to. The movement will continue on its way but it will miss the calm, timely, considered interventions which have hitherto saved it many a weary digression.
Suella Braverman is noted for her use of robust language, for example on refugees, for which Gary Lineker rightly criticised her. She has also been critical of tofu eaters, Guardian readers and a blob of activist lawyers and lefties (although she claims that these last points were not her words but simply appeared in an e-mail referring to her)
Even so she is keen to defend the right, and definitely her right, to be offensive.
In The Times, where she is occasionally to be found writing comment pieces she notes (13th March) that she has ordered police not to record non-crime hate incidents in most cases. She argues that ‘people are perfectly entitled to say things about politics,gender and religion that others find offensive’. Of course she has mind the ‘rights’ of transphobes and islamophobes here.
She also defends humour, satire and personally held views,irreverence and mockery.
One hopes therefore that the police will stop arresting people for protesting about the Royal Family.
In the meantime in the spirit of Ms Braverman one can only echo Gary Lineker’s tweet that her words on refugees have some comparison to the demonising language used in Nazi Germany,and indeed elsewhere where the far and fascist right have held power
It’s the anniversary of the death of Karl Marx on 14th March and he would surely have been interested in the news that HSBC has bought Silicon Valley Bank for £1.
SVB has gone bankrupt in the US and its smaller UK operation was wound up on Sunday. It also has operations elsewhere around the world, in Germany and China.
Reports indicate that it was the bank of choice for new start ups in the tech sector. HSBC will of course have taken on the liabilities and debts of SVB but that is the bank’s problem. Mostly.
In essence SVB failed to hedge (take financial account of) rises in interest rates which the US Government (as in the UK) is using to control inflation (whether that works is another matter). As a result the value of its assets fell and it found itself needing to seek additional funds. This set off the specific crisis.
It may lead as in 2008 to a wider banking crisis- Biden argues it won’t but this will become clear in fairly short order.
The wider point is that Marx, who was no stranger to personal financial crisis, wrote a lot about banking crisis in mid-nineteenth century England. The specific details of each crisis were of course different to that behind the issues at SVB. However Marx’s point was that capitalism itself is a system which revolves around crisis. Gordon Brown may have though he could go beyond boom and slump but 2008 proved otherwise and 15 years on may be back there again.
After the Tories unveiled further ‘xenophobic’ (Guardian) legislation to demonise refugees last week, Gary Lineker criticised the language used by Suella Braverman. Clearly they saw the possibility of a Culture War where their bigoted views on the matter would triumph over Linekers.
He was suspended from his role as Match of the Day anchor and given the preponderance of Tory linked suit wearers at the very top of the BBC political pressure, no doubt informal, might be suspected.
That of course is where it all went wrong for the Tories. The BBC’s weekend football coverage was ‘disrupted’ as fellow presenters refused to work in support of Lineker. It could be seen as an unofficial strike, and as freelancers were involved, no ballot was needed (just like in the old pre-Thatcher days..).
On Monday the BBC backed down, apologised to Lineker and reinstated him. He tweeted that Britain was in the main a tolerant country and drew attention again to the plight of refugees.
The Mail and Express, GBNews and bigoted Tory MPs have lost the Culture War they started.
Braverman will attempt to press on with legislation though.
Stand Up to Racism has called protests in London, Glasgow and Cardiff this weekend to resist racism. To underline the Tories Culture War defeat they need to be as big as possible.
Its sad to read the news that the veteran cartoonist Bill Tidy has died at 89.
Tidy is best known for the Cloggies (a satirical take on the Archers) and the Fosdyke Saga but for many years he drew a back page strip for the paper of the Campaign For Real Ale, What’s Brewing. Kegbuster was determined to champion the cause of cask ale against the first wave of Big Beer owned industrial keg beer. What Kegbuster would have made of craft keg is perhaps another matter, although one can hear the word ‘murk’ being uttered.
Roger Protz tells the Bill Tidy story far better than I can here:
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called for Crufts, which concludes today, to feature a Best Beard Award in future years.
The campaigners say that a range of dogs have excellent beards, although they are not gender specific as with humans.
A Best Beard Award would highlight the magnificent facial hair that several breeds of dogs proudly have
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, dogs with beards have been overlooked at Crufts and its time for this to change.
As he is promoting the history of Lower Loxley Noluthando has pointed out to Freddie Pargetter that a large painting on display portrays a slave ship.
Freddie is concerned that leaving the painting on display will impact on his efforts to attract a greater diversity of visitors. He covered the painting with a sheet. Elizabeth taking the Telegraph line wants the caption underneath the painting amended and it left as is. She argues that it is history that must be told. Lily Pargetter has suggested that the painting is auctioned and the proceeds used to pay reparations. Elizabeth reluctantly agrees but notes this will require the approval of the Trustees. In this Culture War the Ambridge Socialist backs Freddie and Lily
Electric Charging station dispute has echoes of Clarkson..
Daveed and Rooth had to sell some land before Xmas to pay off a debt to Vince Casey. The new owners plan an electric car charging station on the site. What’s not to like? Such a development is environmentally friendly. There is an issue however. The charging station may come with a shop and a café, threatening Ambridge business and jobs. At the same time it will create jobs. It’s a Clarkson moment. His efforts to develop hospitality at his Diddly Squat farm have long been frustrated by the local Council on the basis that it will damage existing local business. Another Culture War of sorts
Changing Places
Ben is moving out of the Stables and Lily is moving in from Grey Gables. There is a third place but Freddie doesn’t want it.
Adam seeks out Paddy Redmond
Adam, Ian and Kate have been going through Jennifer’s clothes and ephemera. Adam has found a letter from his actual father Paddy Redmond and decided after counselling from Susan to see if he can locate him.
In Other News
Helen has decided to put a viewing window in the diary so visitors can see Clarrie and Susan at work. Again it,s all very Clarkson and therefore contentious
