The last scheduled Eton v Harrow match at Lords was held on 28th June 2022. A 5 day Test Match between England and South Africa women was taking place at Taunton. Over time priorities change…
Eton v Harrow & Oxford v Cambridge ‘cancelled’ by Lords. Class War in cricket(The Spectator)
Lords will no longer routinely stage the annual cricket games between Eton and Harrow (started 1805) and Oxford and Cambridge (started 1827). The point is that only so much cricket can be played at the Home of Cricket each year and there is increasing demand with the important growth of women’s cricket (little played at Lords) and attempts being made to broaden participation in the game.
Predictably this has sparked outrage from the usual Culture War warriors. The Spectator called it Class War something it must be noted that has been practiced at Lords for many years. Letters have been written to the Times, not least by David Gower, demanding the matches are retained and some MCC members are protesting and calling the decision ‘woke’. The idea that Lords fits any definition of ‘woke’ is laughable but Culture War warriors deploy the verbiage they have to hand.
Lords is not noted for enlightened policies or the speed of change-except arguably in building new stands to attract more spectators and their money. The move is to be welcomed but also a reminder that genuine progress in history never comes without opposition.
E P Thompson to Roman Abramovich From Omsk to Tottenham High Rd
Omsk is a major city in Siberia. In the twentieth century it was the HQ of the reactionary to fascist White Army which fought the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution (Britain backed the White Army obviously) until the city came under Soviet rule in 1919. It would have been the HQ of the USSR had the Nazis captured Moscow during World War Two.
It has a reputation of being a rather cold and austere place. On his way out of the Communist Party in 1956 after the ‘Secret Speech’ detailing the crimes of the Stalin era, E P Thompson wrote an article ‘Winter Wheat in Omsk’ critical of Stalinism that was published, edited, in World News.
I mention all this because in Simon Kuper’s 30 year history of the Premier League published in the Financial Times on 19th February he notes that when Roman Abramovich was looking for an English football club to buy he thought of acquiring Spurs until he found that Tottenham High Rd was in his view similar to Omsk…
Socialist Historians back continuing UCU strike action. The supply of historical research is at risk
The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, has backed continued strike action by members of the University and College Union (UCU) which will take place on 10 days between 14th February and 3rd March and begins its second week on 21st February
The academics and professional support staff are taking strike action over further planned cuts to pensions, and continuing attacks on pay and conditions.
The historians say that a continuing supply of historical research is at risk as academics are made redundant or look for jobs elsewhere in the face of a relentless attack by employers on their pay and pensions.
LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett, the reality of academic life in 2022 is very different from the liberal University of 50 years ago. It is a neo-liberal workplace where academics face pressure to work harder and harder for poorer terms and conditions, including a slashing of their pension by a third. The impact on things like historical research is significant. The UCU are right to strike and they continue to have our full support.
How Pandemic Restrictions have ended since the nineteenth century: Profit Before People
Boris Johnson has announced the end of COVID restrictions in England. Self-isolation after a positive test and payments for those who have to isolate will end. Free tests will end on April 1st
Covid infections and deaths are thankfully reducing but remain high. In 2021 it was suggested in the other three UK nations that to lift restrictions entirely would mean infections had dropped below 50 people in 100,000. In my area of North London cases have dropped from what they were at the start of January and now stand at 300 people in 100,000.
The impact of deaths from COVID, long COVID and economic hardship has been felt in all sections of society including most recently the Queen. If it hadn’t been Johnson would have done nothing as the ruling classes of Europe did on cholera in the nineteenth century until they started dying from it as well.
Getting on for two years in certainly in England we are also at another stage familiar to nineteenth century historians. Namely that it has been determined that the economic cost of the pandemic outweighs the importance of controlling it and so ‘let it rip’ in a phrase Johnson may or may not have used at some point.
The difference thankfully with the nineteenth century is that thanks to science and the NHS we have an effective vaccine which means that while infections remain high at the moment, serious illness and death are much less. The continued impact of COVID-mild doesn’t always mean no impact-and Long Covid are breezily passed over. As are the concerns of many who have medical conditions or are simply getting on in years-as I am-when even mild COVID can be more serious, even where triple jabbed (as I am).
Hundreds are still dying from COVID most days. The disease doesn’t discriminate but class society does. It’s a fair bet that as in the COVID first wave, many of those dying will be the less well off, those in poor housing and poorly paid jobs that can’t be done from home. Numbers may not have been vaccinated but in many cases that won’t be because they have ‘researched’ matters on the interweb but because they are from sections of society whose interface with official society is very limited. In places that is recognised and addressed by local Councils and health authorities. In No.10 it is a world and a people of whom they still have no conception.
Meanwhile whatever their status they are people with names not just numbers, except obviously to Boris Johnson, whose concern is not people but the bottom line of profit.
Hefin David and Sir Tom Jones through to Beard of Wales 2022 Beard Off Final. Round 2 open
The annual vote which aims to determine the St David’s Day Beard of Wales, the Welsh beard that offers the most positive national image, is once again underway.
The Beard Liberation Front says that images of St David suggest that the Welsh Saint himself may have had an organic beard
Welsh rugby prop Adam Jones won the Award in 2013, voted for by BLF supporters, just shaving former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Another rugby player Leigh Halfpenny won in 2014. In 2015 the Award went to Thee Faction musician Chris Fox in 2016 footballer Joe Ledley and in 2017 to Charcutier Illtud Llyr Dunsford, with Chris Fox winning again in 2018. In 2019 journalist Grant Tucker shaved the opposition to claim the accolade. Michael Sheen won in 2020 and went on to share the Beard of the Year Award with Michael Rosen in December 2020. In 2021 Michael Sheen again shaved opponents for a second time.
It is the tenth time the Award has been given following the traditional UK Beard of the Year at the end December each year and the BLF says it is a mark of Wales as a modern nation on St David’s Day that beards are now playing an increasingly significant role in national life.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, congratulations to the winners of the First Trim Off round of voting, with round two now open we’ll soon know who will be in the 2022 Beard Off Final
There are two preliminary rounds leading to the final Best Beard of Wales 2022 vote between 25-27 February.
In the first round politician Hefin David and veteran musician Tom Jones shaved opponents to go through to the Beard Off Final
Storm Franklin: Beard Wearers warned of possible follicle damage from high winds
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that as high winds caused by Storm Franklin hit the UK beard wearers are strongly advised to take special care of their beards.
The campaigners say that while danger to life and limb is the central issue when extreme weather hits, a secondary concern for organic beard wearers is that exposing the beard to high and blustery winds may blow the beard out of shape and can cause permanent hair and cause serious follicle damage in some cases.
The BLF advises the following precautions:
Only venture out if absolutely necessary (i.e. to visit the pub)
If venturing out secure the beard follicles to the face by wearing a securely fitting snood.
In all other cases stay indoors and wait for the wind to drop
BLF organiser Keith Flett said, the answer is most definitely not blowin’ in the wind. Storm Franklin poses the threat of serious follicle damage. We urge the hirsute to take care out there if they do venture out
English cricket has been much in the news recently. There have of course been the poor performances by both the women’s and men’s teams in Ashes series in Australia but the real headlines have focused on racism in the game and how inclusive or otherwise it is, with many leading men’s players having gone to public schools (although sometimes this is because they are the only places that offer cricket facilities for young players)
Duncan Stone’s book is a history of English cricket that looks at the origins of the crisis not at the top but at the grassroots. What he finds suggests significant legacy issues which have led directly to current problems
Chris is divorcing Alice and that means a reckoning of assets. Brian has consulted a lawyer and discovered that a settlement with Chris could be ‘eye-watering’ in terms of the future of Home Farm. But if he sold the remaining house and lived with Jennifer in a Yurt it might be ok. Meanwhile this could be one of the most meaningful examples of the redistribution of wealth in Ambridge for a very long time.
Rewilding Ambridge Crisis
With Phoebe leaving for Scotland a new person is required to help Rex with the rewilding Ambridge project. The God Mother Peggy who funds and ultimately controls it thinks Kate is ideal. She wants to turn it into a tourist attraction. Rex has the idea of recruiting a far more suitable candidate, Kirsty. However she is off to Bulgaria. We wonder who else is being purged from the village.
Tracey & Chelsea & Jazzer: Steak Bake crisis
Tracey and Chelsea have occupied the Prof’s house while the heating in their own is being sorted. Chelsea seems to get on well with the Prof, an antithesis to his thesis. Both seemed more human than usual, which in Ambridge is unusual. A pity about Jazzer’s steak bake though…
Storm Eunice in Ambridge
The Ambridge Socialist understands that Kate’s yurts are now in Darrington and the gales have blown some mysterious bunting on to the village green. Sgt Knacker Burns is not investigating
In other news
Prof Jim is like a spellcheck(according to Chelsea). When is Wordle coming to Ambridge?
Boris Johnson is once again banging the war drum on Ukraine certain, he says, that based on Western and US ‘intelligence’ a Russian invasion is imminent. Anyone who remembers the 45 minute story of the Iraq War will spot quickly that such claims have a purpose but are not reality based. Putin might well invade but not simply because the CIA manufactures stories about it.
Until very recently Johnson looked as if he would have to resign as PM a complete failure. Now he is posing as a war leader. Below is the conclusion from an Observer analysis on the Ukraine. The Observer is obsessively pro-EU and would probably back war if it occurs. However in the meantime Simon Tisdall both calls out Johnson’s warmongering and underlines his actual role in matters- as a nodding dog for the White House and the Pentagon
Britain’s emphasis on muscular deterrence has come at the expense of diplomacy. It has contributed almost nothing to peace-making efforts. When Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, met Lavrov in Moscow, their talks ended in an icy standoff.
Johnson has gratuitously undermined Macron’s Moscow initiative while Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, spoke disparagingly of a “whiff of Munich”. Meanwhile, the government has yet to enforce effective measures to curb Russian money-laundering in London.
All else aside, the Ukraine crisis has brutally underscored Britain’s diminished international influence abroad. Separated by choice from the EU, the UK is now viewed in Russia (and much of Europe) as little more than a cheerleader and errand boy for America.
When Johnson asked Biden what else the UK could do in a phone call last week, the US president replied: “We’re not going anywhere without you, pal.” That summed up Britain’s war to date. The rule of thumb for post-Brexit foreign policy: ask politely what Washington wants, then follow directions.
The late Ralph Miliband wrote one of the best books about the history of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Socialism,1961, albeit of course it doesn’t cover the last 60 years.
Miliband, the father of David and Ed, opens the book by making the statement that as a democratic socialist party Labour had always been amongst the most dogmatic. Not about socialism but about the use of Parliamentary as opposed to extra-Parliamentary forms of struggle.
His view at that time was that Labour under Hugh Gaitskell was not a vehicle for socialist advance and the leadership of the rather more ‘left-wing’ Harold Wilson did nothing to change his mind.
He did however keep the matter under review and sometimes returned to the subject, for example in the 1983 edition of the Socialist Register
Here he saw the rise of a left around Tony Benn from the early 1980s as a sign that maybe Labour could be claimed for socialism. Significantly perhaps it appeared in the year that a, then young, Jeremy Corbyn first became an MP.
Tom Watson before he stepped down and out of Labour politics described an effort to abolish his then Deputy Party Leader position as going against the idea of Labour as a ‘broad church’.
Miliband wrote
Pious references to the Labour Party being a ‘broad church’ which has always incorporated many different strands of thought fail to take account of a crucial fact, namely that the ‘broad church’ of Labour only functioned effectively in the past because one side – the Right and Centre – determined the nature of the services that were to be held, and excluded or threatened with exclusion any clergy too deviant in its dissent.
Much more recently however The Guardian argued in an Editorial on 22nd September 2019
The Labour party is nothing if not a broad church, encompassing different traditions working with – not against – each other….Over decades, Labour activists, interests and voters have broadly agreed on a common purpose – to elect Labour governments that can redress the imbalance of economic, social and political power in Britain. That broad-church approach has served Labour well and has served Britain well too
Socialists can certainly be active in the Labour Party have been and remain so but managing to control it as an institution and grapple with its Parliamentary focus is much harder.
Ralph Miliband never reached a definitive conclusion as to whether socialists could best organise effectively within the Labour Party or outside it, or perhaps both. Laura Pidcock resigned from Labour’s NEC at the end of January on the grounds that it was no place for socialists it’s a question that remains relevant for the left.
There is however another Broad Church project, one long trumpeted by Tony Blair and clearly attractive to some around Keir Starmer. This rolls history back to before the foundation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 which led to the Labour Party. It sees this is a mistake. Rather what is needed is a progressive Liberal-Labour alliance similar to that which existed in some areas in the final quarter of the nineteenth century.
This project needs to be contested by the left- firstly because it had and has no place for organised socialists but secondly because the practice of the Lib-Lab MPs in the early twentieth century was very far from any meaning of progressive.
The key point though remains to organise to fight the impact of Tory rule in 2022, debating the best vehicle for carrying that forward flows from that, rather than coming before it.
