Kmflett's Blog

The fight against the Tories and Pressure From Without

The scale of the attack the Tories plan on working people and trade unions is significant. Billions of pounds of cuts in public spending are threatened. The impact will be felt across public services not least in the NHS and in terms of jobs and pay too. At the same time the Tories plan to make it even more difficult for trade unions to take strike action to defend living standards.

Whether any of this actually happens depends on a range of factors. Firstly the Tory Party and in particular its MPs are split over what is called Trussonomics is actually a sensible and workable plan. Its not clear Truss can command a Parliamentary majority for some of her programme.

Secondly there is the question of Labour. The Party is a very long way ahead in the polls, thanks very largely to Tory economic incompetence and Keir Starmer may well become the next Prime Minister. Labour will do things differently to the Tories in some respects- although clearly not on immigration-but there is little to suggest that it will act in a way radical enough to address over a decade of Tory austerity.

In the present there are a number of ways to address the question of what is to be done to fight the Tories, not least the Enough is Enough campaign and industrial action being taken by ASLEF, CWU, RMT, UCU and others.

However history also offers some pointers.

In nineteenth century Britain there was no independent working class political representation in Parliament, although individual MPs who represented workers interests such as the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor were occasionally elected even on the very limited franchise then used.

Rather there were two bourgeois parties, the Tories and the Whigs (from 1859 the Liberals). However significant political change did occur. The suffrage was extended to include rather more working men in 1867 and 188*. Trade Unionism was given a legal status and the right to strike guaranteed in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

These changes which went through Parliament were achieved by what is known as pressure from without.

The term has an interesting history. It was the title of a 1974 volume edited by the feminist and socialist historian Patricia Hollis. She went on to become Junior Minister in the Blair Governments. The book clearly represented an historical intervention into what was an earlier period of working class upsurge against a right-wing Tory Government with policies similar to the present one.

Reviewing the book Dorothy Thompson was critical, arguing that its chapters failed to address the range of activities that made up pressure from without.

The Anti-Corn Law League, run by Manchester industrialists, was perhaps the prototype for modern campaigns. Well organised with membership cards, regular publicity and lobbying of Parliament it succeeded in getting the Corn Laws scrapped. That reduced the price of bread. This allowed its core support of business owners to reduce wages, something working class members of the League, of which there were numbers, no doubt reflected on.

A rather different form of pressure from without, aimed at the very types who ran the Anti Corn Law League was what some historians have called ‘collective bargaining by riot’. Here organised crowds, or mobs as the media still call them, gathered to pressure those who sold essentials like bread and beer to do so at affordable prices.  Actual riots were rare.  The pressure of the crowd was usually sufficient.

A combination of the efficient organisation and lobbying of the ACCL and the mobilisation of the protest crowd suggests pressure from without can still work today

Beard Liberation Front

12th October

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard of Autumn Beard Off Final as Michael Rosen faces Stephen Fry

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the vote for the final Beard Off round for the Beard of Autumn is now open.

There were two preliminary rounds leading to the Beard Off final where the top two beards from each of the earlier rounds try to beard the others.

In the first round Mick Whelan and Stephen Fry shaved opponents to be the first two to go through to the final Beard Off. In the second round Moeen Ali and Michael Rosen prevailed

The winner will be announced on 15th October

The Beard of Autumn is the final quarterly award of the year with the vote for the coveted Beard of the Year 2022 getting underway at the beginning of December

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard Off Final does not mean of course that the losers have to shave their beards off. It’s a hirsute play-off where the beard wearer who has demonstrated the most positive image of the hirsute in the public eye prevails

Beard of Autumn

Mick Whelan, General Secretary ASLEF

Moeen Ali, England cricketer

Michael Rosen, author & Arsenal fan

Tim Dunn, railway historian

Alan Shearer, football pundit

Stephen Fry, cricket lover

Lionel Messi, footballer

Paul Hollywood, Great British Bake Off

Just Stop Oil protests: E P Thompson on Britain as a police state

Just Stop Oil protesters are disrupting London life every day during October, primarily by small scale road protests. It is effective in terms of publicity for an extremely important issue. Those involved face arrest and likely imprisonment.

How effective the protests will be in getting the Government to act can be debated elsewhere. In a democratic society there is a right to peaceful protest including civil disobedience, balanced with the possibility of a legal penalty.

Britain however has become an increasingly authoritarian society. Hence The Times (Editorial 11^th October while claiming that the right to protest is ‘sacred’ believes this to be so only if it does nothing to disrupt the day to day profit making of capital.  In the case of Just Stop Oil protests therefore it demands that the police use ‘pre-emptive’ powers to stop them before they even take place.

The current Home Secretary Suella Braverman might notionally agree that there is a right to protest but In practice can’t find any context in which it should be legal.

In 1980 the now defunct journal Camerawork published an issue (No.19) which contained amongst other things a page long commentary by the socialist historian E P Thompson together with a photomontage by Peter Kennard.

Thompson focused on the inquest into the death of Blair Peach, a socialist who was killed by a blow from a police truncheon at an anti-fascist demonstration in Southall in 1979. Thompson was very critical of the decision of the Coroner in the case Dr Burton not to appoint a jury.

He went on to criticise the views expressed in the memoir of the Head of the Metropolitan police Sir Robert Mark (1972-1977) as ‘illiberal’

Thompson concluded that:

As a historian I can say that I know of no period when the police have had such a loud and didactic presence, and when they have offered themselves as a distinct interest, as one of the great institutions

The undermining of democracy is certainly going on and at an inflationary rate

They wish to push us into a managed society, whose managing director is money, and whose production manager is the police…

The complete issue of Camerawork 19 is at this link

https://www.fourcornersarchive.org/archive/view/0000020

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 11^th October

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners to discuss whether a King Charles beard would help the cause of the hirsute

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, is set to discuss whether King Charles growing a beard would help the cause of the hirsute. The King wore a stylish beard in his younger days but has long been clean shaven.

The campaigners say that a beard could add gravitas to the new King.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we think there is little doubt that a beard would add to King Charles standing and presence. Our issue is whether a Royal beard would make facial hair too ‘establishment’ and remove the sense of rebellion that often goes with growing a beard. The BLF will be considering its position in the next few weeks

Have we passed Peak Wetherspoons?

The pub company JD Wetherspoon recently announced the sale of over 30 of their pubs. Some at least are well used community locals.

Of course Wetherspoons has its detractors. Its founder Tim Martin is a relentless promoter of reactionary views and it’s also not trade union friendly. I’m with its many critics on these points but what is overlooked is that many other pub companies and brewers have similar views and policies. They just don’t shout so loudly about them.

Meanwhile those who have a limited income and like the social context of a pub may find themselves bereft of a Spoons where they can get a keenly priced pint.

Much commentary focused on the fact that Wetherspoons was making a loss and hence had to sell the pubs.

Its recent financial results suggest a different picture.  Pre-tax losses fell from a Covid impacted £102.5m to £30.4m. More significantly operating margins fell from 7.3% in 2019 to 1.5%. Wetherspoons has carried over its debts until October 2023, hardly unusual in hospitality currently.

£30.1m was paid out in bonuses and shares to employees, 98.8% below board level. Not the end of the world for those who got the money but not a replacement for a decent pay rise.

Wetherspoons had 951 pubs in 2015. It now has 852 and if the sale of the 32 goes through will have 820 in 2023.

On this basis Peak Wetherspoons has been passed. However as ever there is complexity. Spoons are looking to exit rented premises where costly repairs and maintenance ultimately benefit someone else and focus on its freehold estate.

None of which makes Tim Martin a more pleasant person

Beard Liberation Front

10th October

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that veteran comedian John Cleese has been suspended after he announced he would be presenting a programme on the hard-right GB News TV station in the New Year.

The BLF does not formally engage with GB News although it has not officially listed it as pogonophobic.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, John Cleese could be a great positive ambassador for the hirsute but in taking a GB News role we are concerned that he will end up bringing the hirsute into disrepute

The Tories rediscover the moral economy

The Truss Government may be about naked hard right class war, and after all the Tories have largely got away with it since 2010, but looking at the polls, some Tories have started to ponder whether just bashing the poor is enough to sustain them in Office.

The idea of Trussonomics based on Thatcherite economist Patrick Minford’s perspectives is of a trickle down market economy where the Government has a hands off approach. It’s a system that gained dominance in the early nineteenth century replacing what some historians including E P Thompson have called a moral economy.

The moral economy of the eighteenth century focused on the point that there was a relation between Government and people that meant, for example, that the price of a basic foodstuff like bread must be affordable and of an acceptable quality. Where the market failed to do this the Government intervened. The wider interest was in obtaining a degree of social stability. A recognition that if people could not afford to eat disorder might well follow.

Interestingly Michael Gove (lunch with the Financial Times 8^th October) has started to echo the point. At a Tory Conference fringe event he talked of a ‘social capitalism’ and he told the FT: ‘you don’t try to defy economic gravity, but you recognise there is a role for Government and for values other than those of the market and that is proper Conservatism.

How genuine Gove is we can’t be sure, but the signs of popular revolt against Trussonomics may have influenced his thinking, just as revolt underwrote the moral economy of the eighteenth century.

Gove had seared calves liver and treacle bacon for lunch by the way

The Ambridge Socialist

Reporting on the class struggle in Borsetshire

9th October

Three Years On A Farewell, Joe Grundy, Proletarian Hero

Joe Grundy’s death was reported on the Archers three years ago this week. It came after he had started production of the 2019 Grundy cider vintage.  Below is what the Ambridge Socialist wrote at the time:

The actor who played Joe Grundy in the Archers, lifelong trade unionist Edward Kelsey , died in April. On Thursday night Joe Grundy himself took his final departure from Ambridge. After watching the start of the pressing of apples for the 2019 Grundy cider vintage he retired to bed early and slipped peacefully away in his sleep.

Joe Grundy was a true proletarian hero of Ambridge and wisely the BBC have decided he is irreplaceable. That said the number of traditional characters in Ambridge now looks to be down to Bert Fry and when Bert goes a whole way of rural life will have gone

The cider press: missing part

Grundy’s 2019 cider was only possible thanks to Elizabeth relenting and letting Eddie and Will have crucial piece from a Lower Loxley exhibition that replaced a broken part of the Grundy’s cider press. She mentioned that she would do this reluctantly on one condition. What was the condition. Unfortunately it does not appear to have been that Eddie Grundy should ride naked strapped backwards on a donkey through the village but that cider making should be filmed

Call for a Public Subscription to Erect a Statue of Joe Grundy outside The Bull

Forget the Archers. The real family of Ambridge are the Grundys. With Joe Grundy now passed away at 98 it is time to raise funds to erect a statue of him outside The Bull as a reminder to future generations of what the real centre of rural life is.

Tories vote against UN Resolution on Reparations for the slave trade. What price British history?

The Government has voted against a UN Resolution that called for Governments to make reparations for slavery and the slave trade.

The UK Human Rights Ambassador Rita French said in part:

We do not agree with claims made in this resolution that states are required to make reparations for the slave trade and colonialism, which caused great suffering to many but were not, at that time, violations of international law.

According to Ms French the UK doesn’t need to do anything about its imperial history and the profits that were made out of it by businessmen in the UK but it wasn’t illegal at the time.

It suggests that there are some parts of British history that at least the current Government doesn’t want to think about let alone act on

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/un-human-rights-council-51-uk-explanation-of-vote-on-racism-resolution

The Ambridge Socialist

9^th October

Patronising the Grundys: their scams & ours

The Archers is not called that for no reason. It represents the BBC’s interest in the affairs of the ruling dynasty of Ambridge. They may be criticised and get up to some doubtful things but they are never patronised.

The two leading proletarian families of the village the Grundys and the Horrobins are however regularly lampooned for getting up to foolish things. This week George Grundy persuaded Eddie to tell Kenton that he was greatly offended by the fact that his youth diary noted that he had once kissed Clarrie. Eddie used this to try and claim free pints of Shires at The Bull. And  why not? What is wrong with scamming an Archer?

Its noticeable that while the scam is the stock in trade of Justin Elliott, whether it be the Stables or Berrow Farm, he is always portrayed as a businessman taking appropriate actions.

Underpants and soil

The great Ambridge underpants saga continues with Eddie Grundy claiming that his soil is more organic than Tony Archers. Class war underpants

Jill Archer (Patricia Greene) is 92

It was Jill’s 92^nd this week. Leaving aside Beth’s sensible refusal to appear in an Archers Dynasty photo, we salute Jill, (and Patricia Greene her alter ego who is 91) the only really sound Archer

The Leaving of Ambridge

Peggy, Shula, Toby who’s next for the Ambridge purge…