The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with what seems set to be the most hirsute Six Nations Rugby Championship ever underway, the Beard of the Six Nations poll will be reset in 2022.
Beards were until quite recently a rarity in the Six Nations. In 2022 it is more of a rarity for players to be clean shaven.
The campaigners say that the Beard of the Six Nations is not just about beards in the abstract but also crucially about the impact they make on play.
This impact of beards on the field has meant that even noted pogonophobes such as Clive Woodward who argued in 2013 on the BBC that he wouldn’t select players with beards, are now marginal voices.
The Beard Liberation Front’s long campaign against the Woodward’s of the rugby world has achieved considerable success so much so that in 2022 there are too many hirsute players to run a weekly poll.
Rather the a one-off Best Beard of the Six Nations will take place on the final Saturday of the Championship 19th March. This will focus on the beards that have made the most impact across the five rounds
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, our panel of beard experts will be reviewing the play in each match but ultimately it’s not only the best beards, but the best beards that have the most impact on play that we’re looking for
I am very sorry to read of the death from cancer of Neil Faulkner, the historian and activist at 64.
Neil was perhaps best known as an archaeologist-he supported archaeology from below-but he wrote more widely on modern history too.
Perhaps his landmark book is a Marxist History of the World from Neanderthals to Neo-Liberals (Pluto). It is classic text firmly in the traditions of Marxist history.
My review from the London Socialist Historians website is here:
I had known Neil for over 40 years. He arrived in Tottenham as a fresh faced student and SWP member keen to engage in political activity. He remained a member for many years but his enthusiasm and sharp minded approach were also to be found his history.
A brief obituary and some links to his work can be found on the anti capitalist resistance site
Mirza has worked for Johnson since his days as London Mayor in 2008. In 2010 her salary as arts advisor to Johnson was £127,874 (Sonia Purnell Just Boris). As someone with one presumes some grasp of marxism, Mirza will have understood the material benefits of Boris. Its not the kind of money one could attract from a job anywhere in left wing politics (rightly so). At No.10 she was paid £145,000 a year
Accounts wonder how Ms Mirza, who wrote for Living Marxism in the 1990s and was associated with the small Revolutionary Communist Party (not to be confused with the then CPGB or the CPB now) became such an important figure in a Tory Government.
In recent times Ms Mirza has said that she is not a Conservative and I suspect that is right, though she may share a range of policy positions with the Tories.
To understand her politics its necessary (briefly) to understand what the RCP and LM were about. The Guardian once erroneously claimed I was the editor of the magazine- in fact I was nothing to do with it and didn’t share its politics. However to know that I did need to understand what they were. While the RCP appeared on the left in reality its specialism was to have a positions that distinguished itself from the rest of the left. While most for example wanted to no platform the fascist BNP, the RCP was in favour of arguing with them. There was a degree of what is now called climate scepticism and a frankly disgraceful position that AIDS was no big issue. This added up to a contrarian politics, striking positions to be different.
The RCP and LM disappeared but its ideas and numbers of its personnel are to be found in a range of positions now. Perhaps the most well known is Spiked which continues the contrarian tradition, very largely on the right.
What is the connection with Johnson? Clearly he has never been in anyway on the left. However as must be clear to many he is fairly elastic in the views he holds. He is ready to take positions to create political turbulence if it suits him even if they are ones he doesn’t particularly subscribe to 100%
While at Downing St Ms Mirza has been robust in pursuing Culture Wars particularly on matters of race and ethnicity. Johnson has a poor record in these areas but also clearly saw advantage in the political controversy debates around statues, British history and so on have promoted. In short like Mirza, Johnson is quite capable of striking contrarian positions to promote his own interests
George Monbiot from the Guardian in 2003 on the LM diaspora
Boris Johnson ‘clarifies’ Starmer smear. Apology still awaited
Boris Johnson’s trademark is to make outrageous remarks and then apologise if they annoyed anyone.
On 3rd February after Keir Starmer had pointed out in the Commons that Johnson’s claim that he failed while DPP to prosecute Jimmy Savile was taken from far right social media sites (it was also a lie) Johnson issued a clarification:
I want to be very clear about this because a lot of people have got very hot under the collar, and I understand why.
Let’s be absolutely clear, I’m talking not about the leader of the opposition’s personal record when he was DPP and I totally understand that he had nothing to do personally with those decisions.
I was making a point about his responsibility for the organisation as a whole. And I think people can see that. And I really do want to clarify that because it is important.
Guardian
It’s a start but where is that apology? Most recently Johnson offered a ‘heartfelt apology’ to the Commons for his participation in a Downing St garden party on 20th May 2020 which he claimed he thought was a work event. Johnson’s career is littered with apologies but they are invariably for the impact what he has done is on himself rather than what he actually did.
As Sonia Purnell notes in her biography of the current PM Just Boris he has become an almost habitual apologiser for ‘any offence’ that his earlier words, often racist, have caused.
Johnson has a long standing history of racist comments and of dismissing reports that highlight the role racism had and has in British society, to go along with his history of apologising for these when called to account.
One example is the 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence that found institutionalise racism in the Met Police. Johnson dismissed the findings as ‘Orwellian’ ‘weird’ and ‘crazy’.
Purnell points out that following discussions with his then wife, prominent lawyer Marina Wheeler, by 2001 he was prepared to concede that Macpherson may have had a point. Not of course that when he later became Mayor of London he did anything about this.
More recently Johnson made a speech about ‘levelling up’ on 15th July 2021. Afterwards he was asked by the Independent if he would disown earlier comments about Muslim women he said:
‘The best thing I can say is that I’ve obviously apologised in the past for the things that I’ve said that have caused offence and continue to apologise for them’.
So carry on apologising and carry on making the remarks and causing offence too, and now it seems clarifying as well.
It appears that the situation was too much for Johnson’s Head of Policy who has been with him since his days as London Mayor (from 2008) Munira Mirza. She is the likely architect of Johnson’s apology policy and is clearly fed up he has failed to deploy it here:
Wordle the daily word puzzle that has moved from attracting a few thousand people in the late Autumn to several million now, has been the subject of an exchange between the Head of M16 and GCHQ. Clearly the ruling class is taking the matter seriously and Boris is a five letter word although not one that would work in Wordle (or anywhere else it seems)
Personally I employ a dialectical approach. Starting with the thesis-the five letters I think might usefully and quickly lead to a solution, I then review the antithesis- finding out how many of those are actually correct- and finally the synthesis, hopefully in as few lines as possible.
Which particular perspective on the dialectic to take is more complex. I prefer the Fred Casey method (he demonstrated in the 1920s the dialectic via the example of the boiling kettle) or that of TA Jackson who wrote what is in my view the best book on Dialectics. But one can of course deploy the method of Dietzgen, Engels or Hegel and perhaps others as well.
Turning theory into practice is daily work in practice.
Wordle has been sold to the New York Times and the Guardian has published an Editorial calling for it to remain free. Why not nationalise it under players control?
February 2nd is the start of Spring in the traditional calendar.
We’ve taken back control but don’t expect to find Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage tweeting about Candlemas which is the religious name for the day in the Christian Church.
It represents in the Christian calendar the end of the period after Xmas and the beginning of the time when the days are starting to get lighter. That meant, for example, beginning to put livestock out to graze on farm land again after winter confinement.
Of course the weather is often dreadful in February and March but you have to start somewhere.
Candlemas relates specifically to the tradition of lighting candles in churches on the day which was banned after the Church split under Henry V111.
In any case as with many such festival the Christian Church had appropriated it from other religious and non-religious festivals at the same time of year, notably for example St Brigids’ Day held on 1st February:
Typically while St Brigid’s Day was celebrated with much eating and drinking on 1st February, ahead of Candlemas bread and water was the dictated diet although that was relaxed on the day itself
Beard Campaigners Back CAMRA’s Inclusivity, Diversity & Equality Review
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed a review by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) of its inclusivity, diversity and equality policies and practices
The review initially comes in the form of a questionnaire which is open to all including non CAMRA members.
The campaigners say that while beards do feature in the beer world, and the BLF organises the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year vote, beer drinking and pubs is about a great deal more than beards. While there is now more diversity and awareness of poor practices there is a still a lot to be done to achieve anything like inclusivity and equality.
The BLF believes that to exclude anyone on the basis of gender, race, sexuality, disability and other protected characteristics is fundamentally wrong and damages the world of beer and pubs where it occurs.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we welcome CAMRA’s review and encourage people to fill it in. There has been perhaps unsurprising negativity and some media coverage suggesting that the world of beer is all about men with beards. It isn’t and nor should it be.
Beer Writer Pete Brown (@petebrownbeer) has written a post that is rightly critical of the reactionary below the line comments in a Daily Mail article on the survey and urged people to fill it in. You have until 14th February, please do!
Link to review, open to all (including non-CAMRA members) until 14th February
Johnson’s School Reports at Eton reveal the Politician of 2022
Sonia Purnell’s 2012 biography of Boris Johnson which is generally sympathetic to him was no doubt not written with the reality that 7 years later he would take the Tory Party into a General Election. I doubt she could have for seen then that he would also win it which makes her account of his Eton years even more interesting
It contains some interesting extracts from his school reports at Eton which suggest that he learnt what he could get away with there and has not changed since.
His personal tutor Andrew Hobson wrote a report which says in part ‘I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else’.
In a report of 5th April 1981 his Master in College Martin Hammond raises concerns about ‘lateness, non-appearance of work and a lack of organisation’.
In 1982 Hobson noted ‘Boris seems affronted when confronted with what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility’.
In July 1982 Hammond wrote, ‘Boris has something of a tendency to assume that success and honours will drop into his lap’. He went on to note that ‘efficiency and organisation have been constant problems’
None of the above of course prevented Boris Johnson from shining at Eton or, on occasion, since, but the juggling trick between bluster and substance cant work for ever.
From Keir Starmer to Harold Wilson: The history of smears against Labour leaders.
Boris Johnson’s absurd allegation that when Keir Starmer was DPP he failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile has been taken up by some sections of the right-wing media. In reality the decision not to prosecute was not Starmers and he ordered an inquiry into why it had not been made and what changes were required to avoid such things happening again.
Of course for Johnson such remarks are just throw away comments but the media is a different matter with a long history of smears on Labour leaders. Jeremy Corbyn was smeared as a Czech spy and much else, which as laughable as it was, was picked up and not just by Tories. His predecessor Ed Miliband was also smeared by the Mail because it claimed his father Ralph was an unpatriotic Marxist. The latter he was and he also served for three years in the Royal Navy.
Michael Foot claimed the Sunday Times was a Russian spy an actionable claim. It lost. Harold Wilson was also smeared as a Russian spy, which given he allowed US troops to use UK military bases in the far east for the Vietnam War seems unlikely.
Of course Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were not smeared in the same way. The New Labour strategy was to befriend the press-at least the Murdoch bit- and thereby undermine any smears. It worked but its reasonable to ask what the political price was.
The counter to all this of course, which Corbyn managed in 2017 but not later (for well documented reasons) is to mobilise popular grassroots support well beyond the worlds of Parliament and the national media.
Consistency in calling out smears against Labour leaders is also important, recognising that the hard right media finds even centre and right-wing Labour leaders far too left-wing
Alan Turing and the 1950s: a world of which we have no conception?
LGBT+ history month runs from 1st February
In 2013 the World War Two codebreaker and computer Wizard Alan Turing, a national hero by any reasonable benchmark, received a Royal pardon after he was persecuted and ultimately driven to his death because of his sexuality. It received a broad welcome. That was tempered by the thought of all those others who were similarly persecuted because post-1945 Britain was virulently homophobic.
It is a reminder that 1950s Britain was not perhaps, from the perspective of 2023, the best place to be.
There are good social histories of Britain in the 1950s with the always excellent Peter Hennessy’s Having It So Good probably the best. Attlee’s Labour Government called an election in 1951 that it didn’t need to have, lost and the rest of the 1950s was Tory Britain, under Churchill, Eden and Macmillan.
The 1950s is the decade that most of the present Cabinet would actually like to be living in and possibly in some cases think they actually are living in.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph in 2011 Norman Tebbit argued that the 1950s was one where the family was the cornerstone of British life, and there was social peace, stability and harmony.
The reality of what happened to Alan Turing suggests that this is at best a partial take on historical reality. In fact as Dominic Seabrook’s less than satisfactory history of the Cold War recently aired on BBC2 underlined post-1945 Britain was not only anti-Communist but also anti-homosexual and sometimes , as with various spy scandals, managed to link the two.
I have a personal interest here because I was born in the mid-1950s, in 1956 as the Russian tanks rolled into Budapest in fact. My memories of that period are of course not reliable but they have remained with me.
This was a period before youth culture- which nevertheless had its origins in the 1950s. It was a Britain of the bomb [hence at the end of the decade the appearance of CND] but most of all it was post-Second World War. Even when I started work in 1971 [summer holidays only obviously] ex-military men were to be found in senior civilian jobs.
The memory is one of a stifling conservatism. Of Sunday dinners with relentlessly over cooked vegetables [my late parents were later to recover from this affliction] and Two Way Family favourites [a programme that played requests for the vast number of British service personnel then in Germany]. It was a Britain of the early years of the Archers [when it was acceptable listening for Telegraph readers] and the late Brian Matthew.
The 1960s changed all this and it did so for the good. Abortion and homosexuality were legalised, and the people who fought for that had experienced and lived through the 1950s. Most modern Tories hate the 1960s as well of course.
Was there anything to like about the 1950s then? If you were Maurice Glasman and Blue Labour you might well say yes. This was not just Tebbit’s Britain but a country of a mass membership Labour Party, of growing trade union power and solidarity.
It sounds impressive but it was just as stifling in its conservatism. It was a labour movement where one instruction from a Union General Secretary and most fell in line, whether the instruction was a good one or not.
Personally I prefer the labour movement of today which welcomes women, ethnic minorities and LGBT people and thinks about what General Secretaries have to say before deciding whether to agree.
Alan Turing may have been pardoned but if the 1950s means anything it was as a stepping stone to a world where people don’t need to be pardoned for being themselves
