Kmflett's Blog

The Financial Times (16thJuly) has published a note on an OECD reporton drink trends to 2026.

It reports that COVID and lockdowns did not hit sales overall-people drank at home.

It appears that Europeans are drinking less wine while in the UK less ‘warm ales’ are being drunk looking at the period 2016-21.

The trend to 2026 may come as no surprise. A predicted $10bn market forno and low alcohol drinks. As I’m currently on medication I can temporarily drink to that

Michael Rosen has written in the Guardian about the lack of a national moment to reflect onthe impact Covid has had on us. He is right but what kind of national moment? He suggests St Pauls but such an occasion would surely end up with the ‘great and the good’ reflecting on what had happened to ‘us’.

Perhaps something more robust and fully in line with British history is called for. In 1780 the Gordon Riots started as a Government sponsored ‘mob’ aiming to terrorise ‘foreigners’ in central London. The crowd had other ideas though and turned to freeing prisoners from Newgate prison before laying siege to the Bank of England.

Or more recently the 2003 march against war in Iraq which remains the biggest in UK history and is thought to have contained people from every community in the UK?

Personally I’d go for a mass protest inWhitehall tearing down the Downing St gates and ejecting the Tories from office physically. Very much in line with the best traditions of British history whatever Boris Johnson may think

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/16/covid-deaths-virus-200000-britain-trauma-loss

15th July

The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers convened an emergency meeting of its climate change sub committee on Saturday to provide emergency guidelines to the hirsute for a red high temperature warning for some parts of the UK for the start of this week from the Met Office.

The BLF has long argued that not shaving saves natural resources and can help to combat climate change.

However beyond this important principle practical guidelines will be issued. These will go beyond the normal BLF warm weather advice and take into full account that trimming or shaving the beard is not the preferred option of many.

BLF organiser Keith Flett said, when Marx shaved his beard in Algiers in April1882 the temperature was around 28C so we are breaking new ground for the UK here unfortunately

Urgent advice:

The Tory leadership crisis and one dimensional society

In the late 1960s Herbert Marcuse a member of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, wrote a widely read book, One Dimensional Man. The core of his point was that late capitalist society allowed no space for opposition or alternatives. I didn’t and still don’t agree with that. Empirical evidence of revolt suggests Marcuse was wrong.

But then I look at the current Tory leadership contest. It has wall to wall media coverage of a contest that amounts to choosing one right wing candidate over another. There are TV debates and commentary. Yet the actual decision is not made by the electorate but by at best a few hundred thousand Tory members.

The winner will become Prime Minister without the need for a General Election. As Guardianista Tom Davies pointed out on twitter only once in the last 25 years has the PM been chosen by voters-in 2010.

One dimensional democracy? Aside from Keir Starmer’s calls for a General Election, revolt from below can change things, and strikes and discontent are growing.

Tolpuddle 2022. Not just history. The Tories want to take us back to 1834

It sounds like a slogan but as a full Tolpuddle festival returns this week,Tory ideologues including the leadership candidates would be comfortable with a return to the days of the Martyrs.

Legislation to allow strike breakers during legal strikes underlines the Tories class hatred of working people combining to protect their conditions of employment. Employers combining to undermine them is not an issue

The Tories disgraceful efforts  to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda underline that in the Tory mind  despatching ‘undesirables ’to far away places remains entirely acceptable

Tolpuddle 2022 is a celebration of our history and organisation but its  a reminder that the fights of1834 will need to be fought again 2022 and beyond

Jacob Rees Mogg on socialism and  history

Jacob Rees Mogg is quoted in the Financial Times (14^th July) as calling Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a socialist. Given his wealth this seems improbable. The actual source of the story was an interview JRM gave to the Mail where he argued that Sunak had raised taxes to a level  not seen since the 1950s (high taxes being socialist). One problem in Rees Mogg’s analysis is that from 1951 to 1960 there was a Tory Government.

I’m not sure Rees Mogg’s grasp of history has improved since his book of essays on the Victorians

https://wordpress.com/posts/kmflett.wordpress.com?s=the+victorians

Tory leadership candidates and the NHS. Time for a history of the present

Ive just spent two months being cared for by the NHS in Cardiff. Lots of hard working people were involved but they are underpaid and under resourced. Successive Tory  Governments have talked about building new hospitals while also cutting funds and handing contracts to their mates. With another Tory leadership contest underway its time to put candidates on the spot

Tory leadership crisis can help workers fights but not always

The resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and his likely eventual departure from No.10 is a moment of crisis for the Tory Party. Post 1945 history shows that it’s a crisis they can overcome though.

The wooden image of Keir Starmer correctly calling for the Tories to go will hearten them. Perhaps the worst that could happen Tory wise is for them to lose an Election to be replaced by a similar Labour one.

In 1957 Anthony Eden resigned after the Suez Canal war which Britain lost. Eden claimed he was unwell. Labour did improve its poll ratings but Eden’s successor Harold Macmillan easily won the 1959 Election

Macmillan himself had to go in 1962 following a spy scandal involving Tory Ministers. Again Macmillan claimed he was unwell and was replaced by old Etonian Lord Home.

Despite all this and a slightly more left wing leader Harold Wilson, Labour only just won the 1964 Election. With the economy on the up it won again in 1966 but then came the 1970s

Labour lost the 1970 Election to Ted Heath’s Tories with Heath determined to break union power using an Industrial Relations Act. A decidedly not left wing Harold Wilson continued as Labour leader. Under threats of fines most Unions complied with the Act. Not all did though.

Indeed the socialist historian Ralph Darlington has described 1972 as the peak year of

labour for the whole of the century, a glorious summer as calls it. The case of the Pentonville dockers who took on the Tory Act and broke it is still recalled and should remain so but 1972 was also the year that the then might miners struck for the first time since 1926 and won a substantial rise as a special case.

The tone was set. It wasn’t what a Labour opposition did, though much was done, but what organised workers did  from below. When the miners planned more industrial action in early 1974 Heath imposed a 3 day working week. He also called on 28^th February 1974 a Who Governs Britain election, the Tories or the unions. The electors decided it was the latter.

What we got though was not a workers Government but a Labour one determined to reverse the gains of the last 4 years. Hence a Tory crisis was diverted. It went further than that. During this period the Tories built Thatcherism and crushed Labour at the 1979 election.

Chances still came. In 1984 both the dockers and miners took on Thatcher. Had Labour fully backed the fight for jobs and communities it might have won. It didn’t.

Rather Labour focused on building New Labour a broad class alliance. Election victories there were but the strength of trade unions declined, allowing 10 years plus of vicious austerity policies from 2010.

The prolonged crisis of Johnson’s leadership offers yet another chance. The TUC demand better march provided a framework. Since then a wave of strikes and strike ballots have hit the Tories. The Johnson crisis constrains their ability to hit back.

Labour should be pushed to take the right side but as in 1972 the key thing is what workplaces and communities do. That’s the history lesson of past Tory leadership crisis. We don’t wait for them to decide. We decide how to resolve matters ourselves

Keith Flett 7^th July

Beard Liberation Front

The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers has said that while it holds no brief for his politics Sajid Javid has become the latest victim of prejudice against the follicly challenged in UK public life

Javid was knocked out of the Tory leadership contest on Tuesday.

The last bald Prime Minister was Clem Attlee to 1951

BLF organiser Keith Flett said we sympathise with Mr Javid on this matter only

13th July

The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers has named the TUC as the Beard Friendly Employer of 2022

The award given annually is about the commitment of an employer to equality and diversity rather than the number of beards it employs

BLF organiser Keith Flett said the new TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak is follicularly challenged but this just adds to the diversity. No dumping on baldies here

The Bearr