Kmflett's Blog

May 1997: an unreliable memoir

As an historian I’m not keen on memory which I think is often unreliable, so my memories of May 1st and 2nd are unreliable.

Not surprisingly there have been numbers of memoirs of May 1st and 2nd 1997 on social media to go with those already published in print.

I’ve put together the below, which is not reliable in the specifics any more than any memory is to underline that even those on the left who were no fans of Blair before 1997 were very happy to see the end of the Tories. There was also a sense of hope.

The archival world is currently in something of a turmoil moving away from the old print copies in libraries to digital back pages on-line (some chargeable some not). Even so I’ve spent time in the British Library checking my back pages. I can’t find a fletter criticising the new Labour Government until one in the Guardian at the 100 day mark.

On Thursday May 1st after voting Labour in Tottenham (the late Bernie Grant) I was on the May Day march organised as it still is by the London May Day Organising Committee. It was (I think) one of those years when it focused on NE London. I recall Clissold Park in Stoke Newington.

Later beer was involved, where I can’t really recall, but given the pubs in those days in North London it was probably the Tollgate- a Wetherspoons in Turnpike Lane. Later still, there was a results party in Tottenham.

The result we were waiting for was Portillo in Enfield Southgate, a nearby constituency familiar to at least some of us. I had been out in that area in the previous few days and remember thinking- are these houses with two cars out at the front really going to vote Labour?

The answer was yes. The party was marked (in my memory) by someone- now a senior union official- shouting at regular intervals that we wanted Portillo out.

The morning brought a hangover but there was a picket line to attend- bakers at Arnoutti in North Tottenham were out on strike. I attended and returned to bed.

Later it was off to Reading for the CAMRA beer festival. The sun was still shining and it was a pleasant later Friday afternoon. The festival was a much less extensive event (and much cheaper to get in) than it is now.

In those pre interwebs, pre mobile phone days, I was listening to Labour Cabinet appointments on a transistor radio. The world seem a slightly better place.

The Tories were out at last and clearly not coming back for a good while. Perhaps a change for the better was possible.

Perhaps…

The Ambridge Socialist

1^st May

Celebrating May Day on the Village Green: join a union!

The Ambridge Socialist and Borsetshire Trades Council are holding a May Day rally on the Village Green with theme of ‘join a union’.

2022 has been a tough year so far for workers in Ambridge. Berrow Farm pig unit has made redundancies and may close. Grey Gables has closed and illegally sacked all its workers. Employment opportunities beyond seasonal farm work are limited. Tracy has failed to get a job in Telesales at a kitchen equipment company, although Jazzer, redundant from the pig farm has got one. Tracy has considered working at the non-union minimum wage (at best) chicken factory but so far has swerved it.

Workers in Ambridge need to get organised, unionise and fight back. Otherwise they will continue to be picked off piecemeal by an increasingly ruthless Borsetshire ruling class.

Redundancy and class

Tracy will get little money from statutory redundancy at Grey Gables even with an enhanced pay off. There are bills to pay, living expenses and food to buy. Meanwhile Ian and Adam have been reviewing how to spend his redundancy money which according to some reports may be towards £30K with a 3 month enhancement on statutory terms. That is not a huge amount but in a low wage economy far from insignificant. They have invested in a pizza oven with Ian looking to set up a street food business.

Betting the farm

With a divorce settlement between Alice and Chris potentially pending, the issue of the valuation of the farm and its possible split up and sale is being reviewed by Brian. Stella has pointed out Alice’s share could be brought out by other family members. This would be expensive and Brian has sounded out Adam if Ian’s redundancy money might help. It won’t. Firstly because it’s not enough and secondly because Ian has already spent a chunk of what he is due to receive on the pizza oven.

In other news

Clarrie has suffered an injury at cricket practice

Boris Johnson noted for ‘stolid’ style of tractor driving (1983/4)

After finishing at Eton and before going to Oxford Boris Johnson took a gap year (1983/4). He spent it teaching English and Latin at Geelong School. Its campus was ‘in the wilderness’ and teachers were expected to help maintain its extensive bushland grounds. It taught the sons of the Australian and New Zealand class in a robust setting. No TV or alcohol was allowed.

Johnson was noted in the school magazine as having an ‘inimitably stolid style of tractor driving’. Quite what this means I’m not sure as I’m not familiar with tractors, although it appears they are thing with some Tory MPs..

(Source Sonia Purnell, Just Boris’)

30th April 1978: Rocking Against Racism in Victoria Park East London. Still relevant

44 years ago a march made its (lengthy way) from Trafalgar Square via Bethnal Green Rd to Victoria Park in East London to protest against racism and fascism and in particular the National Front.

It probably wouldn’t be the route you’d take today designed as it was to confront the (considerable) support for the Front in Tower Hamlets and Hackney with a mass show of anti-racist strength. Of course there are still racists in East London but not so many currently.

In those days my preferred footwear were Doc Martens and leaving the house you’d always be on the look-out for a Fronter coming the other way. Eventually I moved to a (then) obscure part of Tottenham to feel safer but even now there is a bullet hole in the (fortunately double glazed) front window to mark where a passing fascist took a pot shot.

The Victoria Park Carnival marked what Victor Serge might have called the ‘birth of our power’. We didn’t expect 100,000 and while the Front had been physically confronted at Wood Green and Lewisham in 1978 mass mobilisation proved an effective way to marginalise them.

Building the Carnival required a lot of work on the ground. No social media or mobiles then. It required mass flyposting and leafleting often in areas where the Front had support.

The paper mache heads of fascist leaders Tyndall and Webster that accompanied the march were designed by Fluck and Law (of Spitting Image). The posters were by the late David King.

Thousands of people (myself included) marched six miles from Trafalgar Square to Victoria Park where yet more thousands had gathered to hear X Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, Tom Robinson and the Clash.

Its part of history now, but also part of our present as the fight against racism and fascism continues, as does the celebration of our music and our culture-the kind Boris Johnson has never heard of.

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 30th April

Contact Keith Flett      07803 167266

HIRSUTE SAY MAY DAY BEARD WAGGLE CAN LEVITATE JOHNSON OUT OF No.10

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the ancient May Day tradition of Beard Waggling will be revived once again on Sunday May 1st as, with the weather set reasonably fair in many areas, the hirsute will celebrate the coming of Spring by waggling their beards

The beard waggle, a traditional British May Day custom, involves shaking the beard vigorously from side to side and in doing so stimulating air currents that can cause objects to levitate slightly.

In 2022 campaigners are aiming to stimulate a collective air current by the beard waggle that will levitate Boris Johnson out of No.10.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, the Beard Waggle is one of the great May Day traditions. In 2022 we believe that if enough people waggle their beards collectively at midday we can levitate Johnson out of Downing St using the air currents created

Beard Liberation Front guide on how to train for May Day beard waggling

1] Ensure the beard is supple. This may be done by moistening is slightly with water or, if preferred, craft beer.

2] Choose a suitable location to waggle, preferably in the sun rather than the shade

3] Move the beard vigorously from side to side and then up and down while otherwise standing still. Repeat several times

4] While waggling the traditional chant is, Hail the Beard, Hail Spring

5] Alternatively beard wagglers may simply intone Om, Om, Om

6) Beard Waggling may be done standing up or sitting down. The latter may help beard stability while waggling*

*thanks to the South Wales Breakaway Faction of the BLF

50 years since the release of David Bowie’s Starman (28^th April 1972)

It’s 50 years since the release of David Bowie’s Starman as a 45 single. The B Side was Suffragette City. Both tracks were taken from the LP Ziggy Stardust released on 16^th June 1972. It was Bowie’s performance of the song on Top of the Tops on 5^th July 1972 that propelled it into the Top 10 and boosted the LP too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starman_(song)

I doubt I would have noticed the release of single (the album I certainly would) as by 1972 most youthful lovers of what was often called ‘progressive’ music regarded the album as the legitimate form with the single not really representing serious artistic endeavour. It took us a few years to recover- until the release of New Rose by the Damned in fact.

Starman is not one of my favourite Bowie tracks (as often I seem to be in a minority) but the wider impact of glam rock of which Bowie was a leading figure among young people in North London(I’m well aware it was not the same everywhere else- combined and uneven development applied)was huge. I didn’t wear make-up, having an organic beard- but the idea that sexuality was not absolutely fixed combined with the rise of the women’s liberation movement and the early days of the Gay Liberation Front, raised many ideas and possibilities. When Bowie appeared on TOTP it was in effect legitimating some of that, a liberating experience, although probably not what we would have called it at the time.

Of course many from those days, including friends of mine, ended up in family relationships little different to their parents. But the idea was not to stop that but to open up possibilities. Pandora’s Box had been opened and the lid has never quite been put back in place.

Sunday drinking before 1988, ‘rowdyism’ & Lords cricket ground

Those with long memories will recall that before the law changed in 1988, Sunday drinking hours in England were 12-2 and 7-10.30. It did not make for a relaxing drinking experience. This was not I think the motivation of the Thatcher Government but rather the desire to ‘liberalise’ and de-regulate things.

There were of course ways to get a drink on a Sunday afternoon. One could be a member of a private members club (never my idea of fun) or in the summer you could get a drink at a Sunday cricket match.

My late father and I often made our way to Lords on a Sunday- to watch the cricket. The bars were open but latterly they shut at 2pm and opened at 4pm because of what was described as ‘rowdyism’. The old Taverners Bar was the location for this activity, where you could stand and view the cricket. Unfortunately the beer was Watneys keg and so undrinkable (the Pavilion for members sold Fullers on cask..). Even so seating was introduced to stop people standing and drinking and eventually the bar was closed altogether.

The issue of drinking and ‘rowdyism’ at Lords, if the Hundred in 2021 was anything to go by appears to continue anyway..

A year since the last ‘If’ cartoon by Steve Bell in the Guardian

The last ‘If’ cartoon strip for the Guardian appeared on 29th April 2021. Bell held out the prospect in an interview with Press Gazette that it might continue elsewhere- pending a suitable offer- but unfortunately that hasn’t happened.

He also noted that doing a colour cartoon strip four days a week- which he had been doing for 40 years at the Guardian- is a lot of work and he and his beard turned 70 in 2021.

He did not of course give up or retire but has continued to draw one off cartoons for the paper. While the Guardian’s issues with some of Bell’s cartoons- which have a long history (see link below) are well known Bell pointed out to Press Gazette that the reason for the change and his new contract with the paper was due to financial constraints particularly in the COVID era.

While Steve Bell is not history his cartoons certainly form part of the social history of Britain since the 1970s.

I first came across his work while teaching in Birmingham in the late 1970s (Bell had been doing the same- though I did history and politics not art) when he drew a strip in the Birmingham Broadside one of a number of alternative press publications that then flourished in the UK post 1968.

His Maggies Farm strip (first in Time Out then City Limits) was an important part of the left’s reaction to Thatcher while his Lord God Almighty cartoons for the Leveller were equally striking.

Then of course came If. The characters and caricatures were a commentary on modern times. The penguins and Kipling were from the Falklands era, John Major with his underpants displayed firmly outside and the Inner London Wildlife branch of the Labour Party- again still going and very much needed in times like these.

As Bell has noted(again see link) while print culture is held to be in decline (the print edition of the Guardian doesn’t sell much more than 100,000 on average and that figure is boosted by a much higher sale for the Saturday edition) we live in an increasingly visual culture and cartoons are ideally suited to it.

So not only has Steve Bell made history his cartoons continue to do so. If though remains much missed. There is no commentary on the times of Johnson and Starmer, that comes anywhere near it.

https://www.cartoons.ac.uk/cartoonist-biographies/a-b/SteveBell.html

Beard Liberation Front

28^th April

Ben Stokes becomes first fully bearded England Men’s Test captain since Flintoff

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the news that Durham cricketer Ben Stokes has been appointed as the 81^st England Test captain.

He becomes the first full bearded men’s Test Captain since Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff (2005-07). After W G Grace there was an informal rule that Test Captain’s should not wear a beard and this was only broken with Mike Brearley’s famous Ashes beard (1979-80). Brearley is 80 today although has long since reverted to a clean shaven appearance.

A number of bearded captains followed including Ian Botham and Graham Gooch but in recent years while Alastair Cook and Joe Root have sometimes sported facial hair none has managed a full beard.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we wish Ben Stokes well in his new role as Captain. We are sure that his well known Beard Power will make a significant difference to the performance of the England Men’s red ball team. Freddie Flintoff was voted Beard of the Year during his tenure as captain so Ben Stokes has a high bar.

Workers Memorial Day: COVID, London bus drivers & Boris Johnson

Whether or not Boris Johnson said ‘let the bodies pile up’ before the third national lockdown, this is sadly and disgracefully exactly what happened.

One area was been that of London bus drivers who helped keep essential matters running in the Capital during the pandemic.

It was established during the first wave of COVID-19 in the spring and early summer of 2020 that the disease had a differential impact depending on class and ethnicity.

There were more infections and sadly more deaths amongst ethnic minorities. This was briefly highlighted and is occasionally referenced by ONS studies but of course nothing was or is being done by the Johnson Government.

It appears that some ethnic groups may be more susceptible to COVID than others but there are many other factors in the mix including social class, occupation, geography and so on.

In 2021 the matter was highlighted again. Unite the Union which represents London bus drivers noted Transport for London figures that 54(October 2021) London bus drivers had died of COVID-19.

Bus driving in London where many key workers use the bus to get to work in London is an occupation where bus drivers in a cab for a lengthy period were more likely than many to be exposed to COVID-19.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56455845

It’s wort keeping in mind that the Government did nothing on raising sick pay to a level where lower paid workers could actually afford to self-isolate and eat. It then cut Universal Credit benefits.

The average salary for a London bus driver will vary depending on hours worked but it is a bit above the average wage at around £30K, perhaps about or a little below the London average wage.

Many London workers from supermarket employees to cleaners and security guards earn less. They will often live in shared housing and need to earn a living come what may.

These are the people Boris Johnson doesn’t know exist..