Kmflett's Blog

The Ambridge Socialist

13^th February

Gender & Class in Ambridge

The BBC’s daily reports from Ambridge this week focused on attempts by some of the younger men of the village to appear human, something they have previously struggled with. The issue cut across class as working class Chris, a Horrobin, came to terms with his existence post his pending divorce from Alice and Tom, part of the ruling Archer dynasty, tried to come to terms with the stillborn baby Kirsty and he had produced in earlier years.

Amy helped Chris deal with his angst as he struggled to appear human, while both Natasha and Kirsty helped Tom grapple with the memory of Wren, their sadly stillborn child.

In related news Mia Grundy tried to ground Jake’s pretensions of having a liaison with Chelsea. It would have been one of the great proletarian pairings in Ambridge, equal to the marriage of Clarrie Larkin and Eddie Grundy. However as Jake took Chelsea to see a film on the bus it was made clear that she had no interest in him, beyond companionship.

In short the men of Ambridge are making a little bit of slow progress. Meanwhile the women remain by far the most level headed of village inhabitants. We don’t include Jennifer or Lilian in this by the way.

Valentine’s Night at The Bull

Valentine’s Night at The Bull beckons and the Ambridge Socialist still hopes for a 2022 shower scene. It’s more than time for lurve in the Bull car park…

Ambridge: don’t mention in Boris

BBC reports from Ambridge rarely mention politics not least because being recorded well in advance of transmission requires either a crystal ball or doing a ‘topical insert’ in the days before broadcast. Hence there has been no mention of Boris in the Archers. That said party gate has gone on for so long there is surely space for the odd comment about, for example, work meetings…

Campaigners celebrate Darwin day: a trend setter in practical & iconic beards

Beard Liberation Front

12th February

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has celebrated Darwin Day, on the 213th anniversary of his birth by noting that Darwin set a trend for beards that are both practical and iconic.

Darwin had a beard in his younger days, on and off. He grew a beard while on scientific voyages on ship, as was the normal practice amongst sailors to protect against the elements, but often shaved it off on his return.

Darwin’s full time beard dates from June 1862 when he grew a beard, on medical advice, due to eczema which made shaving difficult. However his beard quickly became one of the most iconic scientific beards of the Victorian era and is still celebrated to this days.

The iconic picture of him that appears on bank notes was taken by Julia Cameron when Darwin stayed in the Isle of Wight for some weeks in 1868.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Darwin’s beard evolved over time into what remains a style classic

More information on Charles Darwin’s beard can be found in Kathryn Hughes book on the byways of Victorian society

Beyond Starmer? ‘Sir’ Tony Blair & the future of a Labour ‘broad church’

Labour is often claimed to be an electoral broad church combining socialists and social democrats. In recent times perhaps particularly with what some see as Keir Starmer’s Great Moving Right Show, the question is raised as to which church Labour is holding services in.

In one of his ‘rare’ public interventions, an interview in The Murdoch Times (12^th Feb) ‘Sir’ Tony Blair has offered some thoughts.

He considers Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership a ‘terrible period’ while Starmer is regarded as a ‘work in progress’. What then might be the direction of travel?

Blair argues ‘The Labour Party has to think of this an historic moment, where if it really wants to win sustainedly, it has to think of itself as a different type of party. Otherwise it will always be there just to give the Tories a breather’.

This is an implicit criticism of Starmer who appears to want to project Labour as close to the Tories in many areas but rather more responsible and prudent. Rather it is an echo of Harold Wilson’s never achieved aim of making Labour the natural party of Government.

Blair had a chance to do that in 1997 and indeed it was widely mooted that a realignment with the LibDems would occur to leave the Tories in a permanent minority. It didn’t happen. Blair however is on record as thinking the split from 1900 between Labour and the Liberals was an error and that a progressive alliance of both was and is the way forward.

It might be a broad church but not one many Labour members and supporters currently worship in

New Zealand authorities play Barry Manilow at anti-vax protesters

New Zealand is one of a number of countries which have seen anti-vax protests in recent days. While some protesters are on the far right or conspiracy fans, there is usually a mixed bunch with some disliking State authority. (I’m fully jabbed and pro-vax btw).

In Paris on 12^th February police fired tear gas at protesters but New Zealand has tried different tactic. A relatively small protest of around 100 has been outside the Parliament building in Wellington for some days. Keen to get them to disperse a new strategy was tried on Friday- one that is beyond the conception of Priti Patel. Barry Manilow songs were played at the protesters. It may not be a great reflection on them that it doesn’t seem to have worked…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-60362529

By evening, Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard had come up with a new plan to make the protesters uncomfortable: using a sound system to blast out vaccine messages, decades-old Barry Manilow songs and the 1990s earworm hit “Macarena” on a repeat loop.

Peter Mandelson, the Broad Church & the future of Labour(from 1998)

Peter Mandelson has been a very public presence at Labour’s 2023 Conference in Liverpool

He held various Ministerial positions in the early New Labour years from 1997. He was and remains a controversial figure for various reasons but I’m concerned here about his political perspectives.

He has no formal role in the Labour Party of 2023 but Lord Mandelson is widely though to advise Keir Starmer on strategy. He has spoken out in 2022 claiming that while he accepts that Labour is a ‘broad church’ if left-wing Labour MPs don’t stick to the Manifesto at the next Election they’ll no longer be welcome:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/mandelson-tells-left-wing-mps-26196431

This is, as might be expected, somewhat hypocritical from someone who spent a good deal of time rubbishing the Manifestos on which Labour fought the 2017 and 2019 General Elections.

Thanks to Government papers released by the National Archives at the start of 2022 we do have a record of Mandelson’s vision for Labour at the time he was Minister Without Portfolio (May 1997-July 1998). Effectively this meant he was policy advisor to Blair and the papers contain a note he sent to him about what he thought New Labour should be. It read in part:

Its political genesis is a synthesis between the historical position of left and right. It is too simplistic to say it adopts ‘left’ values but is rightward in how to achieve them. It is probably more accurate to say that it has left values but is open about to achieve them and recognises that it was the right, not the left, that up to the end of the 80s was prepared to think more freely. Privatisation of certain industries or the sale of council homes or greater autonomy for schools could have been left ideas

National Archives File PREM 49/244

It might be called triangulation or it might be building the wrong hegemonic project

Starmer opposed the Iraq War in 2003 but on Ukraine he’s not so sure

Keir Starmer has reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to NATO pointing out that Ernie Bevin Labour Foreign Secretary in the Attlee Government signed the founding statement in 1949. Starmer is right that Labour’s commitment to NATO has remained but has left out some other bits of history.

NATO was a US backed Cold War alliance designed to face off against the Moscow backed Warsaw Pact. This it did until 1989 when the Soviet Union ended. Starmer claims it maintained peace in Europe (as did the Warsaw Pact). This was done by outsourcing military conflicts elsewhere in the world- Vietnam being the most obvious place.

Since 1989 there has been no Communist ‘menace’ to oppose so what is NATO doing. Essentially there is a battle between rival world powers for economic purposes. After 1989 the US saw the chance to increase its influence in Eastern Europe. More recently Russia, seeing the US consumed in domestic crisis has sought to do the reverse.

What interest does Britain have in this? Little one might think except the country is aligned with the US.

Starmer has written in the Guardian backing NATO and attacking the Stop the War Coalition and Jeremy Corbyn. It’s a classic Cold War two camps argument. Starmer is in the US camp and claims STWC  is in the Russian one. It has pointed out that it isn’t. Its focus is on stopping murderous imperial wars.

Starmer once understood this and wrote in the Guardian in 2003 when he was a human rights lawyer that the Iraq War was likely to be illegal. Even as recently as last year he was noting the need to win back Labour voters alienated by Iraq.

Now he is clearly prepared to back a war in Ukraine and to use classic Cold War arguments that even Blair kept clear of

Lindsey German on Starmer & war

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/11/keir-starmer-nato-labour-anti-war?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

How Pandemic Restrictions end 1830s-2020s Profit Before People

Boris Johnson has announced the likely end of most COVID restrictions in England at the end of February. On the same day it was announced there were 68,214 COVID infections in the UK and 276 reported deaths. The figures were a reduction 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 600 people in 100,000.

The impact of deaths from COVID, long COVID and economic hardship has been felt in all sections of society. 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.

Labour on NATO at 77. From Ernie Bevan via Tony Benn to Keir Starmer

It may be a little muted thanks to Easter but senior Labour figures have been posting support for NATO on the occasion of its 77th anniversary

Starmer has previously pointed out that Labour Foreign Secretary in the 1945 Attlee Government Ernie Bevin was a keen supported of NATO as it was set up. He is certainly correct since Britain was firmly part of the post Second World War geography of Europe which saw NATO(underwritten by the US) face off against the Warsaw Pact(underwritten by Russia) which was formed in 1955 as a reaction to NATO. I cant say I was a fan of either but this cold war ended in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that point, for example, British troops stationed in mainland Europe began to be scaled back.

Even before then many in Labour had been critical of NATO

Michael Foot was a founder of CND but supported NATO critically. He consistently opposed nuclear weapons and while he backed the Falklands War he strongly condemned the Iraq War,

Tony Benn argued that both NATO and the Warsaw Pact should be dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was indeed wound up after 1989 but NATO not only remained but considerably expanded

Tony Benn diary 7^th June 1982

President Reagan arrived in Britain today and we(Labour NEC) considered a letter drafted by Denis Healey to Reagan from the Party…I moved that we should make clear that our ultimate aim was the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and that was carried by 10 votes to 9.

Jeremy Corbyn was also critical of NATO which he saw, rightly in my view, as having become something of a front for US imperial interests. However Labour support for NATO was maintained at the 2019 Election. Starmer has a point but NATO has always been controversial in Labour too, even if he wants to try and ignore the historical reality.

Current events and random blurtings from Trump are putting the future of NATO in the spotlight. This post is concerned with history rather than crystal ball gazing but unwinding the structure of NATO would cause significant issues for imperialism, including the US whether Trump understands that or not…

thanks to John Walker for a correction on the formation of the Warsaw Pact

The Battle of Saltley Gate 10^th February 1972

53 years ago today one of the most famous labour disputes of the post-1945 period concluded with a victory for the workers over a Tory Government.

The workers involved were the coal miners- then a mass industry. The dispute, the first national coal strike since 1926, was about a substantial pay rise. The mines had been nationalised by the Labour Government in 1948 but wages had fallen far behind an appropriate rate for what was a dirty and dangerous job.

After the miners struck in January 1972 all pits were shut but supplies of fuel, coke then being essential, were still getting through. The focus became a coke depot in Birmingham, which by early February was the main source of fuel for the country.

Picketing started but large numbers of police were deployed to keep the depot open. Several thousand Yorkshire and Welsh miners arrived to build a mass picket but it was not enough. Arthur Scargill, then a Yorkshire miners official, and part of an informal left in the NUM, spoke to meetings of union reps in Birmingham engineering factories. Some of this was organised by the Communist Party, and Labour, much by shop stewards with rank and file pressure. On 10^th February the engineering factories struck unofficially and several thousand marched to join the picket. The police were out-numbered. There were two ways forward for the Government. They could call the army in and risk bloodshed or they could close the gates. The latter course was taken and the miners had won.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saltley_Gate

The miners continued to organise and in February 1974 beat the Tories again with further industrial action. Tory PM Ted Heath called a General Election with the slogan ‘who governs Britain?’ Labour won, the electorate giving the answer ‘not you’. The Tories took their revenge in 1984/5 and 1992.

Saltley Gate is now part of British history though not a bit one suspects the lovers of all British history with nothing left out will be celebrating. There are few pits and the NUM is a small union. The Communist Party still exists but is certainly not currently in a position to call a strike in Birmingham engineering factories, where post-Thatcher they exist. Coal is no longer a key source of fuel in most areas.

Its not just history though because there are lessons for 2025. Firstly that mass working class action, organised not from a union HQ but from lower down can win. Secondly it was action outside of Parliament based in working class workplaces and communities that won, not a vote in Parliament. Both of these things can happen again.

Arthur Scargill interview in the Morning Star on the 50th anniversary of Saltley Gate:

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/arthur-scargill-saltley-gate-was-proudest-moment-my-life

Scargill calls for monument to be erected in Birmingham: An important part of history

One thing that I will be asking is that a monument to that event be erected in Birmingham because it runs alongside the General Strike, the Suffragettes, any event we can think about. They really did march into history.”

Boris Johnson’s Christmas Parties. A tradition but in December 2020 not a legal one

Boris Johnson is the elected leader of a political party a job he doesn’t really seem that interested in doing. By contrast he is a great enthusiast for another kind of party-the one involving champagne and nibbles (tbh sausage rolls and crisps don’t cut it). Sonia Purnell’s biography of Johnson, Just Boris, has numerous accounts of parties he has attended. A lot were thrown by his erstwhile employers the Spectator and the Telegraph. When he was married to Marina Wheeler and lived in Islington he was also, according to Purnell, a frequent attender at dinner parties.

When he was elected London Mayor in 2008 he threw his own parties(paid for by the taxpayer obviously) and in that year The Tatler described him as ‘party viagra’.

He has not denied that a Christmas party was held at Downing St in December 2020, the one that started off the whole parties investigation. The Daily Mirror has published a picture of the Christmas Quiz which took place via Zoom on 15^th December 2020 which clearly shows an open bottle of champagne. No problem with that except in the context of the times when COVID laws banned social mixing in London. It clearly was not really a work event either but a social quiz.

 It’s almost impossible to see how this didn’t break the then lockdown rules. No doubt the Met Police will now have a think about it in due course.

What though of pre-restrictions 2019. Johnson had just won an Election and was celebrating.

According to the perhaps not totally reliable source of Tom Bower (Boris Johnson, the Gambler) on Friday December 13th after returning to Downing St from Buckingham Palace where he had seen the Queen, Johnson headed to Brown’s hotel off Piccadilly. The hotel is owned by Brexiteer Rocco Forte and a celebration party was being held.

One party however was not enough for Johnson. He then went to Evgeny Lebedev’s ‘traditional’ Xmas party which was in his house overlooking Regents Park. Unlimited caviar and champagne were available. In 2020 Johnson made Lebedev a Peer..