Kmflett's Blog

Taking down a statue of Engels in Manchester won’t help Ukraine repulse Putin

Manchester has a statue of Engels which is not particularly remarkable as he lived and worked in the City for many years.

It has become controversial for some because the statue was originally in Ukraine. It was brought to Manchester by the artist Phil Collins legally in 2017. In the Guardian article below he explained at the time that from 2015 such statues were illegal in Ukraine. The Engels statue had been removed and dumped but there was no official process to actually get rid of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jun/30/phil-collins-why-i-took-a-soviet-statue-of-engels-across-europe-to-manchester

Demands now to take it down or move it are performative, meaning they are gestures which help the Ukrainian fight against Putin not at all in a practical way. Some might argue that it amounts to Russophobia, which has the effect of linking everything to do with Russia, past and present, with the Putin regime and saying its bad. Engels however died well before the Russian Revolution, and when alive was a critic of Russian imperial ambitions. Putin himself is virulently anti-Communist

Beard Liberation Front

5^th March

Tribute paid to Shane Warne, greatest ever spin bowler & beard wearer

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has paid tribute to Shane Warne the Australian cricketer who has died at 52.

Warne was by most measures the greatest ever spin bowler. In a Test career between 1992 and 2007 he took a record 708 wickets.

During his playing career Warne was invariably clean shaven. However after he retired from the game and became a cricket commentator amongst other pursuits, he was sometimes spotted wearing an outstanding gravitas enhancing beard.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the beard was not central to Shane Warne’s life but as with his cricketing career, when he wore one he impressed

Beard Liberation Front

Press release 5th March

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

BEARD OF IRELAND 2022 POLL SEES COMPETITION BRISTLING

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that competition for the Irish Beard of the Year 2022 is officially open

The 2017 winner was politician Colum Eastwood who bearded broadcaster William Crawley for the annual Award.

In 2018 the DUP’s Lee Reynolds shaved writer Dominic O’Reilly for the honour with Colum Eastwood in a steady third place.

In 2019 Lee Reynolds retained the title

The 2020 winner was Maynooth academic Peter Coles

In 2021 Aodhan Connolly shaved opponents to win the coveted title

The BLF says that while traditionally a land of predominantly clean-shaven cultures, Ireland has in recent times become something of a centre for stylish and trendy beards.

Contenders for the title in 2022 include a diverse range of the hirsute- a golfer, rugby player, political and trade union activists, a broadcaster, an academic as well as a Health Minister.

The campaigners say the poll is specifically about the impact the beard of an individual has made in Irish public life and no other factor.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, competition for the 2022 Beard of Ireland Award will no doubt bristle with the winner announced on 17th March

There will be two preliminary Beard Off votes between 5-7th March and 9-11th March. The top two from each round will then go on to a Best Beard of Ireland vote between 13-15th March

Vote at this link:

Beard of Ireland 2022

William Crawley, broadcaster

Matthew O’Toole, politician

Jamison Gibson-Park, rugby player

Peter Coles, academic, Maynooth University

Shane Lowry, golfer

Aodhán Connolly, Businessman

Robin Swann, Health Minister, Belfast

Owen Reidy, ICTU officer

First Class Stamp to cost 95p. Is it the end for the letter?

The price of a first class stamp is to rise 10p to 95p on 4^th April, with second class up from 66p to 68p. Royal Mail says that since the peak year of 2004/5,letter volumes are down 60%. However 7 billion letters are still delivered a year and to 3.5 million more addresses than existed in 2004.

Of course many of these letters are official comms from local Councils, the NHS and others are bills. It begs the question of whether the traditional art of the hand written letter still exists, whether between individuals or to newspapers.

My letters, or fletters as they are known (see also the Rosennote) have long since been sent by e-mail. My hand writing, even in the days when it was the main form of transmission for written communication was not the most legible. I still use the traditional letter format for e-mailed letters though.

Of course there are many other ways to electronically communicate,  via social media, WhatsApp, IM, SMS etc. I use all of them but they are essentially for short form comms. My fletters often tend to be brief so that can work well but it raises a further problem.

As a socialist historian I quite often refer to the collected letters of Marx and Engels. There are a very large number although far from all have survived for a range of reasons. If they had not been in a written format the chances of them having survived for the best part of 150 years for historians to research would have been small.

There is a further class based point about the written letter. During the lockdowns in my area of North London there were many issues for the predominantly poor population. Those who were broadly middle-class would often send their points to the local MP by e-mail, while working class people tended to use the written letter. There could be a number of reasons for this, but one is cost. To send something electronically requires a device of some sort to write it on and a connection to the internet to send it. Both cost money, and when you are on Universal credit money is in very short supply. Sending a letter might often be cheaper, but it is about to cost more.

The letter is still with us and for the above reason at the very least is likely to remain so much as this will annoy authority who see cost saving in using only electronic forms of communication. As for historians, we have a problem..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60620378

The Spring 2022 issue of the London Socialist Historians Newsletter is now on-line:

http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/

John Newsinger writes on how the US fundamentalist right is re-writing history, Ian Birchall reviews Merilyn Moos on her work on how Germans opposed the Nazis and there is a review of Duncan Stone’s new book on the history of English cricket, Different Class

The newsletter has been produced three times a year since 1997 and a full index with links is also on-line

Beard Liberation Front

3^rd March

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners congratulate Anna Lundberg & Beard of Wales Michael Sheen on news of 2^nd baby

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has congratulated Michael Sheen and his partner Anna Lundberg on news that a second baby is expected.

The announcement came just a day after Michael Sheen was declared the St David’s Day Beard of Wales for the third consecutive year, shaving opponents such as Senedd member Hefin David and veteran singer Tom Jones in the annual on-line poll.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we don’t expect there was any direct connection between Michael Sheen’s beard and the baby but we do hope that if it turns out to be a boy that in time it grows a beard has magnificently organic as his,provided Anna Lundberg concurs obviously.

Update

In response to a tweet from Beard of the Year 2021 Michael Rosen as to whether the new baby will be born with a beard Michael Sheen has responded that he is hopeful it will

I was in fact delivered beard first and fully expect the same to happen again. 4th March)

World Book Day: A bread and cheese diet in E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class

I’d choose E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class (1963 still in print) as my book for World Book Day. I’m conscious of the fact that the day is aimed at younger people and encouraging reading and Thompson’s book is a weighty tome, which might put some off.

That said it is full of characters who might spark interest and indeed passages that can be read aloud.

In fact Thompson compiled a good deal of the detail in the book and arguably some of the approaches to it while teaching WEA night classes in Yorkshire in the 1950s. His engagement with working-class students underlines the point he made in the 1968 postscript that the book is far from being a dry academic tome.

E P Thompson on what people ate in the 1790s

The southern rural labourer refused to abandon his diet of bread and cheese, even when near the point of starvation, and for nearly fifty years a regular dietary class war took place, with potatoes encroaching on bread in the south, and with oatmeal and potatoes encroaching in the north

Making of the English Working Class, Standards and Experiences, Goods

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 3rd March

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett      07803 167266

HIRSUTE URGE: GIVE UP SHAVING FOR LENT

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with Lent now underway it is the ideal opportunity for people to give up shaving

The BLF says that a beard grown between now and Easter, can add significantly to the diversity of British life.

The Lent beard is a long religious tradition which in recent times has crossed over into secular fashion as well.

The BLF is not religious though it respects those who grow Lent beards for that reason. However the pre-Easter beard also has a place in British folk custom, with the facial hair representing the new growth of Spring to come.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said it is the best time of year to grow a beard as Spring blossoms so do beards. It is time to revolt into style and grow an organic beard for Lent. I personally will not be shaving during Lent, or pruning my beard in that period

Duncan Stone: Different Class, cricket from below

Duncan Stone’s book on the history of English cricket, Different Class, has not been popular with the cricket Establishment. A discussion on Test Match Special remains unlikely, and mainstream media reviews, both positive,are limited. These were in the Yorkshire Post and the Northern Echo and let’s face it Yorkshire cricket has problems that need explaining. The left press has also had good coverage.

Stone did a PhD at Huddersfield and is a keen cricketer. We are talking here about grassroots cricket not the County structures let alone England.

The book looks at his early attempts to become a league cricketer in Surrey where, compared to the North of England, the cricket was organised on a relatively exclusive class focused basis. He looks at class discrimination in cricket from the bottom up and how this has to an extent, but only to an extent, changed over time. After all the majority of the current England red ball team attended public school  as did the England Under-19 squad.

Of course this point reflects the reality that facilities to learn the skills of cricket for teenagers are often only to be found at public schools now, so attendance, as for example in the case of Joe Root, was a matter of necessity, rather than privilege. The disappearance of school playing fields and the lack of cricket played in State schools, as well as the decline of company cricket facilities in recent decades underlines the point.

Stone’s conclusion argues that the ECB which runs English and Welsh cricket cannot be reformed. It has to be replaced and a body with different assumptions about cricket brought into being. Here Stone sees the dominant, conservative, history of cricket as a key issue. The assumption cricket is about fair play and gentlemanly conduct reflects a game with origins in the ruling class. Cricket’s future lies with the grassroots, where it is played between equals and which school someone went to or club they belong to is not a relevant issue.

Stone then rightly overlays this with the rise of cricket competitions and leagues played by ethnic minority cricketers. These are separate to the existing leagues again no doubt with discrimination being a key issue. Official efforts to integrate and promote players into the upper professional structures of English cricket, for example Chance to Shine, have perhaps been well intentioned but had relatively little impact. The recent revelations about Yorkshire cricket underline the point and one of the key reasons for it: racism.

Work in very slow progress at best, not that you’d know it from much media coverage. I think Jonathan Agnew is a superb cricketer broadcaster. However when he pitched up on Monday 11th July 2022 for Yorkshire v Surrey at Scarborough the occasion was an invitation lunch with the now sadly late Michael Parkison and Geoffrey Boycott. Boycott one senses is being rehabilitated again. Fun though this may be in some ways. Enough !!

Stone’s book is an important historical intervention into an sporting debate that is touching on some of the key issues facing British society. Well beyond 50 over cricket, The Hundred and the Blast Stone looks at some of the fundamental problems and crisis of the English game

Why Cromwell banned Lent

Lent 2022 starts on Wednesday and runs until Easter.

It remains part of the religious calendar but in 2022 no one is checking if you are doing it or not. If you are respect. If not move on (I’m not)

Cromwell however banned it.

It was said that the only opponents of Lent in the seventeenth century were butchers, butcher’s dogs and Puritans. The reason for this is clear. The one thing that was consistently forbidden to be eaten at Lent was meat. Butchers it appears could live with this, using the time to sort out their business for the rest of the year. We don’t know what the dogs thought but we do know that Puritans didn’t like Lent or any other occasion supported by the established Church.

Indeed after the Commonwealth took power following the departure of King Charles and his head (separately) in 1649 Lent was banned along with Christmas and Easter. These last two made a vigorous come back at various points after the monarchy was restored in 1660 but Lent did not. King Charles 11 did indeed restore Lent and penalties for being found eating things like meat during it, but these were it appears not enforced for long.

The view nowadays tends to be that Cromwell banned Christmas because he was a killjoy but he achieved precisely the reverse impact by banning Lent which of course may be why the ban ultimately worked.