Britons Protection Pub in Manchester is under threat. Our history deserves protection.
The Britons Protection is an historic pub in central Manchester situated near the site of the Peterloo Massacre. While the pub has interesting murals on Peterloo and was open in the years before August 16th 1819 there is little evidence that it had any direct involvement on the day. It’s name possibly refers to the British war with France which immediately preceded Peterloo,
Even so it is a part of our historical heritage, Grade 11 listed, but also very much a functioning and well supported pub in 2022. It now faces two threats. Firstly there is a plan to build adjacent to it a 26 storey building which would leave the site in permanent shade. Secondly the current owners Heineken want to terminate the lease of the current landlords who have successfully run the pub for some years and install a manager. This would undoubtedly lead to a restriction in the range of local cask beers it sells and its renowned whisky selection and very probably lead to a drop off in trade with an obvious conclusion.
There is a petition to challenge the Heineken move here:
3rd April is the Fifth Sunday of Lent. The plebeian tradition of peas fried in butter
3rd April 2022 is the fifth Sunday of Lent and is known as Passion Sunday in some religious traditions.
Down below however something more basic is celebrated.
The Sundays of Lent were not fasting days and on the fifth Sunday the tradition was to eat black peas left to soak overnight and then (after the Reformation) fried in butter. The tradition appears to have been particularly strong in the north-east of England.
Peas (or sometimes beans) were cheaper and easier to obtain for the poor and known as Carlins.
As Ronald Hutton notes in his of British seasonal traditions, Stations of the Sun, Carlin Sunday was ‘a feast of the poor’
Berrow Farm reprieved after protests. The fight to save jobs goes on
After a protest at a meeting of Borchester Land (not covered by the BBC unfortunately) the Board has decided to reprieve Berrow Farm for 3 months when the matter will be reviewed again.
However the issue of job cuts remains firmly on BL’s agenda and Tuesday’s protest was just the start of the campaign. Brian Aldridge has unilaterally cut Jazzer’s hours without consultation or due notice. Whether he can do this depends to an extent on Jazzer’s contract of employment, but either way he urgently needs to join a trade union (Unite in this case). The BBC won’t report this but the Ambridge Socialist always will.
We say: Save Berrow Farm, no job losses. Maintain existing terms and conditions
Make Justin Elliott pay
Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, the bosses of Borsetshire have had it their own way for far too long. Its time for workers to organise and fight back starting with Berrow Farm
Sign the Ambridge Socialist Petition. Make Borchester Land Bosses pay
Ambridge Socialist.Save Berrow Farm, No Job Losses – Sign the Petition! https://chng.it/LTWYRyHQ
Kate & the Vicar fall out over God
Kate who follows the religion of ‘self’ lectured the vicar after his usual pompous Church sermon on Sunday to the effect that given he is the father of Amy, he clearly wasn’t a very good Christian. Words were exchanged. Kate failed to grasp that by definition the vicar gets to determine what a good Christian is. They late agreed to leave the matter on the grounds that they both believe in God although possibly not the same one..
In Other News
Roy the fish is dead, murdered by Kate
Alice has left for Nottingham
Pat & Tony are preparing for their appearance on Great British Bake Off
I was at one of the People’s Assembly Protests over the cost of living and the sacking of P&O workers on Saturday. On this occasion I was in central Cardiff at the Nye Bevan statue. Fair to say Nye would have had a few well chosen words to say to Rishi Sunak.
Of there are statistics. Energy costs are doubling while in France they are rising 4% and in Portugal not at all. Same energy crisis, different Governments. Many will struggle to pay bills and a millionaire Chancellor has no conception what that means let alone the will to do anything about it.
Of course Parliamentary challenges can and will be made and it can only be hoped that Labour has an impact whatever one may think about its current direction.
But the real work has to be done from below in workplaces and communities. The TUC has called a national protest on June 18th and that will be an important display of resolve. It needs to go further than that. We know after 10 years and more austerity that those who have the most cause to protest also have little energy to do so. They are too busy just trying to survive day to day.
But protest is needed and it does need to be rooted in people. In the Making of the English Working Class E P Thompson grappled with the standard of living debate in the first half of the nineteenth century. Thompson was not an economic historian but disliked the pro-market perspectives that many who were held. His views were challenged at the time and there has been a lot more research since.
However some basic points remain. Thompson wondered why, if it was the case that working class living standards were rising in the 1830s and 1840s when Booth surveyed working class areas much later in the century so many were found to be in abject poverty.
He turned to Mayhew whose work on London Labour and the London Poor moved beyond official statistics and sought to engage workers and understand what their actual experiences were. For example standard of living stats might be based on people in regular and reliable employment but the reality for many both in the 1840s and 2020s was very different.
Thompson noted in a fact finding age he looked for the facts the enumerators forgot: he wrote consciously against the economic orthodoxies of the day, discovering his own outrageous ‘laws’ of political economy- ‘under-pay makes over-work’ and ‘over-work makes under-pay’
After Amazon Staten Island workers unionise, Brewdog next?
Workers at a giant Amazon workplace at Staten Island NY have voted 2,654 to 2,131 to unionise with the grassroots led Amazon Labour Union. Needless to say Jeff Bezos is virulently anti-union and commentators have hailed it as the greatest union victory in a generation.
Perhaps the next stop should be Brewdog of Ellon. The size of the company is nowhere near that of Amazon but it is just as strongly anti-union.
After a series of complaints from former and current workers about a ‘toxic workplace’ culture, Brewdog has threatened legal action but also claimed to be engaging in a process of mediation via @handandheart_eu who are presenting numbers of those who have raised issues in various locations around the globe.
Recent developments suggest that Brewdog are not really engaging with the mediation and reconciliation process seriously and I’m afraid that is no surprise. Employer-employee relations can of course be handled in an agreed framework and disagreements dealt with. Industrial action and strikes can and do occur but only where there are fundamental differences. Individual issues and concerns and wider workplace problems are handled by negotiation.
That is done by a trade union, entirely independent of the employer, whose funding comes from the subs of its members, and has a democratic structure allowing those members to influence and guide policy.
Some employers however eschew all that and prefer class war. Amazon and Brewdog are two examples. They will claim they prefer a direct relationship with employees, or to put it another way one without transparency or agreed process.
As Amazon underlines unions can still win recognition via laws(which exist in the US and UK) which require companies to recognise and negotiate with unions where membership levels justify it.
Unite (Hospitality) has membership at Brewdog and Unite under the current General Secretary Sharon Graham has shown itself ready to stand up to rogue employers. Let’s hope there is a positive way out of the situation Brewdog is currently in, not just for its workers but for the reputation of craft beer too.
Hands Off Dublin police officers beards say campaigners
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has slammed attempts to interfere with the length and style of Dublin police officers beards.
Irish police officers have only recently been allowed to wear beards and there are requirements not to have them at ZZ Top length. However The Guardian (2.4) has reported that a Dublin police inspector has declared that some officers beards are too ‘patchy’ and decreed that if what he claims is a ‘proper’ beard cant be grownwithin 2 weeks then the facial hair should be shaved.
The campaigners say that a requirement for a police officer to be smart on duty, and not adopt a trademark dishevelled look like Boris Johnson, is entirely prudent. However the length and style of beard within the allowed framework should be up to the individual.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, pogonophobia is always lurking in the official mind and the edict of the Dublin police inspector is a case in point. We say let a thousand follicles bloom on the faces of Dublin police officers (where appropriate)
The below of course was posted on April 1st so I can confirm that I’m NOT calling time on writing letters. Even so, the points made here remain relevant. Much comment is now on-line and that poses significant issues for future generations who want to discover what people were thinking and saying before them. Very far from all letters written either personally or to publication survive for posterity, but many do. By contrast while some electronic comment is archived there is no guarantee that it will be available in future decades as technology moves on…
According to my (not particularly accurate) Wiki entry I’m a ‘prolific letter writer to the British press’.
That bit at least is true. I write less these days but I haven’t stopped, despite occasional suggestions that I have.
I started in the mid-1980s writing to the Guardian (which I still do)with the expressed aim of trying to provide some historical perspectives to a media that seemed even then to be obsessed with out of context for the moment reports.
The letters don’t and never have covered just that though. Beer, beards, cricket, cheese and of course socialist politics all feature.
Now however I’ve decided after 35 plus years or so to call it a day.
While I still see the value of the edited (in effect moderated) letters page compared to social media and below the line commentary, the sad reality is that the audience for letters to the editor has diminished over the years. So too have the publications that one can write to, as many either go on-line only or close altogether.
What’s Brewing, the monthly paper of the Campaign for Real Ale, has published its last print edition. I used to write letters regularly, but no more. Beer discussion has moved almost entirely on-line some time since.
I comment on Twitter and Facebook and run a blog. All excite considerable comment on occasion. I’m afraid published Fletters mostly pass by more or less un-noticed by comparison. Those that ask me, for example, if I’ve stopped writing to the Guardian I suspect mostly don’t read the print edition anymore (nor do I) where the letters are prominent in the comment section. The letters appear in the various Guardian digital versions (which I subscribe to) but you have to search them out.
If you do actually want to read what I’m saying a good point of entry is on twitter @kmflett. If you don’t you won’t come across me inadvertently as you’re flicking through a paper or magazine anymore
Keir Starmer on energy prices, reform and revolution
It being the start of a new financial year, today is also the time when the price cap on energy is raised and many will see prices for electricity and gas rocket. Of course profits for the companies that provide energy are doing the same, which poses the question of what is to be done.
Labour leader Keir Starmer meeting pensioners in Stevenage has concluded that they do not want revolution but they do want to know how they will be able to pay food and energy bills (on a largely fixed income).
Starmer is clearly right but then a former Director of Public Prosecutions would hardly be the person to ask about revolutionary strategy. The fact the he mentioned it all, reflects an interesting point, about people that used to have very left wing views but no longer do. They often mention them when no one much else was actually on that page. Starmer was a member of an organisation in the mid-1980s, Socialist Alternative, which was at least notionally on the far left, and clearly it still lurks somewhere in his memory.
The reality is that in a market economy energy prices can be properly regulated as can profits if the political will is there to do it. Starmer need only have pointed to the current example of France.
Of course Johnson, Sunak and co have no intention of doing any such thing. Social change and how it is achieved is a matter of experience and process not some fixed thing (see the postscript E P Thompson wrote to the 1968 edition of the Making of the English Working Class where he argues that class is ‘the friction of interests-the movement itself, the heat, the thundering noise’).
If Labour and the unions can build a protest that forces the Government to intervene properly on energy prices, the pensioners of Stevenage certainly wont be thinking about revolution. If they can’t, or won’t, then they might think again.
Some reading this may think that revolution as much as reform stands the best chance of challenging capital. That is a conversation,a process that starts with organisation and protest. Getting that on energy prices is key,
According to my (not particularly accurate) Wiki entry I’m a ‘prolific letter writer to the British press’.
That bit at least is true. I write less these days but I haven’t stopped, despite occasional suggestions that I have.
I started in the mid-1980s writing to the Guardian (which I still do)with the expressed aim of trying to provide some historical perspectives to a media that seemed even then to be obsessed with out of context for the moment reports.
The letters don’t and never have covered just that though. Beer, beards, cricket, cheese and of course socialist politics all feature.
Now however I’ve decided after 35 plus years or so to call it a day.
While I still see the value of the edited (in effect moderated) letters page compared to social media and below the line commentary, the sad reality is that the audience for letters to the editor has diminished over the years. So too have the publications that one can write to, as many either go on-line only or close altogether.
What’s Brewing, the monthly paper of the Campaign for Real Ale, has published its last print edition. I used to write letters regularly, but no more. Beer discussion has moved almost entirely on-line some time since.
I comment on Twitter and Facebook and run a blog. All excite considerable comment on occasion. I’m afraid published Fletters mostly pass by more or less un-noticed by comparison. Those that ask me, for example, if I’ve stopped writing to the Guardian I suspect mostly don’t read the print edition anymore (nor do I) where the letters are prominent in the comment section. The letters appear in the various Guardian digital versions (which I subscribe to) but you have to search them out.
If you do actually want to read what I’m saying a good point of entry is on twitter. If you don’t you won’t come across me inadvertently as you’re flicking through a paper or magazine anymore
