Kmflett's Blog

Plough Monday: the start of a year of revolt

In the traditional calendar the first Sunday after Epiphany (Twelfth Night) is Plough Sunday.

This is the ritual start of the agricultural year when land is ploughed ready for the sowing of crops.

The ritual was also carried out on Plough Monday.

Poorer land holders didn’t usually own a plough and a communal one was held by the local church( the source of authority in pre-industrial times).

As often with such rituals rebellion was never far away.

George Ewart Evans in The Pattern Under the Plough (1965) noted:

The ploughman dragged a gaily decorated plough from door to door asking for money to buy drink…if any householder refused to contribute to this foolery,the mummers put their shoulders to the plough, and ploughed up the greensward in front of his door. There was also a lot of dancing and high stepping antics performed by the mummers

Jo Draper on Plough Monday in Dorchester

In Dorchester, Freddie James, Agricultural Trades Union worker and Mayor of the town from 1934 to 1936, had decided that this was a festival worth reviving because it marked the beginning of the farming year. He said, ‘When we cease to recognise the importance of the plough, it will be a bad day for this country. This Festival will help agriculture, for the more people think about its real meaning, the more honourable will they find the profession. There is a greater skill required in handling a plough than in some of the leading crafts of the day.’ He managed to coincide Plough Monday with a visit by the Minister of Agriculture, who addressed a large meeting of Conservatives at Weymouth and then came up to Dorchester to ‘toast the plough’.

http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2010/01/plough-monday-in-dorchester/

But the great event of the day was when they came before some house which bore signs that the owner was well-to-do in the world, and nothing was given to them. Bossy rattled his box and the ploughmen danced, while the country lads blew their bullocks’ horns, or shouted with all their might; but if there was still no sign, no coming forth of either bread-and-cheese or ale, then the word was given, the ploughshare driven into the ground before the door or window, the whole twenty men yoked pulling like one, and in a minute or two the ground before the house was as brown, barren, and ridgy as a newly-ploughed field. But this was rarely done, for everybody gave something, and were it but little the men never murmured, though they might talk about the stinginess of the giver afterwards amongst themselves, more especially if the party was what they called ” well off in the world.” We are notaware that the ploughmen were ever summoned to answer for such a breach of the law, for they believe, to use their own expressive language, ” they can stand by it, and no law in the world can touch ’em,’ cause it’s an old charter;” and we are sure it would spoil their ” folly to be wise.”

Chambers Book of Days (11th Jan 1864)

Dry January,temperance & the left

It’s Dry January an annual campaign that suggests people should abstain from alcohol during the month to recover from possible festive excesses and just generally to cut down on drinking. Drinking in moderation is certainly prudent, abstention, and what from (spirits, beer, the whole lot) has been historically contentious.

Temperance was once an important part of working-class and labour politics and the tradition is far from dead, even if the commercial weight of the promotion of mass market beers and lagers somewhat obscures it. Keir Hardie was a temperance supporter and while current Labour leader Keir Starmer is known to like a glass of beer he doesn’t make a thing of it.

It is an honourable tradition rooted in dislike of giving money to (Tory) drinks manufacturers and a realisation that unsober people rarely get to change the world for the better.

We might however also be reminded what the Labour MP Victor Grayson had to say about efforts to promote temperance in law in the House of Commons over a hundred years ago:

In October 1908 he tried to adjourn a Licensing Debate in the Commons so the question of unemployment could be considered. The next day he underlined the point: ‘there are thousands of people dying in the streets while you are trifling with this Bill’.

Drink or not this January, it’s a matter of personal choice. If you want to campaign there might be more urgent matters just now.

A farewell to Bubs: craft beer in Cardiff in 2022

This is a brief post about a deeply unfashionable subject, apart from those who live in Cardiff and its environs (as I partly do).

What most would see as the leading craft beer bar in Cardiff, Bubs closed on 8^th January. The landlord has found a burger chain that will pay a lot more rent. Ive been a regular visitor to the bar going back to the days when it was, briefly, an outpost of Bristol’s Small Bar. As someone who frequents the beard and beer bars and taprooms of north-east London I think the beer range in Bubs equalled and sometimes surpassed what could be found in those- many- venues. That’s a tribute to the staff who’ve always ensured a friendly and in recent times COVID safe bar.

What will happen to craft beer in Cardiff in 2022 after Bubs its fair to say will not be discussed in the craft beer scene in London. Most other areas of the UK warrant interest and attention but the question I’m asked about Wales is whether I know anything about a particular Welsh brewery. There are in fact lots of them which mainly produce cask beer. Cask is not a big feature of the craft beer scene in Cardiff but it is a place where a lot of cask is still drunk (more so than in London).

Anyway fortunately there is a future post-Bubs and Chris Rowlands the owner has posted an update which you can find on FB and Insta or via their twitter @BubsCardiff. I have enough trouble grappling with the machinations of big business in my day job as a union officer so I’m sure Chris knows what he is doing small business wise but the upshot seems to be that there will be a new central Cardiff venue probably by early Spring.

The craft beer scene in Cardiff, Bubs aside, is actually not too bad as we enter 2022 but perhaps not flourishing as it still is, mostly, in London. That no doubt reflects issues around the economy with Wales being in the main a low wage area.

There are several well established bars such as Tiny Rebel and Brewdog in the centre as well as the newer arrival of the Head of Steam- ironically next door to what was Bubs. Brains sell out to Marstons means that the City Arms by the Principality Stadium is no longer the craft beer pub it was sadly. However the Brew Monster tap room near the Castle remains open and Mad Dog have got permission to open a tap room just up from Tiny Rebel.

Just outside the centre- but taking into account that public transport in Cardiff is poor- the Crafty Devil tap is still flourishing and Pop’n’Hops  a drink-in craft beer bottle/can shop with draught promised is an excellent location (but check bus times). There are two well established craft bottle shops in Roath and Cathays and of course the Discount Supermarket (just up from Pop’n’Hops) is still providing an interesting bottle and can range.

Once the latest round of the pandemic declines somewhat I’ll be venturing out to try some beer…

The Ambridge Socialist

9^th January

The dialectic of Alice and Chris

BBC reports from Ambridge this week involved sweeping up after the Mystery Plays. The Ambridge Socialist has still not seen a picture of Sgt Knacker Burns nailed the cross as he claimed to be Jesus but we are sure there must be one.

However the main focus was on the still just about unhappily married Alice and Chris. Alice has generally been an unsympathetic character, a privileged member of the ruling elite. Her alcoholism has been treated sympathetically with only occasional nods towards temperance and this week was perhaps amongst the best of the storyline.

Chris deciding he must immediately have a divorce led Alice to be tempted to drink vodka again. She didn’t however and was helped through the crisis by Amy. Small victories like this matter in anyone’s life.

Chris meanwhile who as a Carter in invariably one-dimensional revealed again why he should stick to being the village blacksmith and avoid any interactions with other people. May be one day he will become human but he’s not there yet.

In Other News

Mike Tucker is painting Brookfield grey and enjoying pints down the Bull

Tony and Pat think Natasha’s coffee is undrinkable

A visitor to the Dairy mistook temporary hand Adam as the manager and Susan as a new hire. Sexist assumptions in the workplace remain far too common. Adam cant manage anything. Susan actually does a decent job at the village shop.

150,000 dead, not much said by Boris Johnson

Saturday marked the 150,000 death from COVID within 28 days of testing positive in the UK since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. Of course there were those busy checking where this put the UK in the world league table of COVID deaths and others claiming that the real figure is rather higher.

These are the Gradgrinds of COVID obsessed with facts and rather overlooking that actual people are involved here.

Boris Johnson managed a platitudinous tweet while of course avoiding any suggestion that he might be in part at least to blame for all this. There is due to be an official inquiry. If you want an example of how good the British State is at holding inquiries which go on for a long time and take even longer to report while nothing actually happens check Chilcott on Iraq. That’s not say that inquiry should not be held btw.

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 are huge at the moment, serious illness and death are much less.

But hundreds are still dying from COVID each day. 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 wont 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..

Beard Liberation Front

 January 8th

Beard of Winter 2022 Vote. Should Jonny Bairstow or Jurgen Klopp be on the list?

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called for nominations for the Beard of Winter 2021 poll.

The list will contain a diverse range of contenders for the annual seasonal accolade.

It is the first of four seasonal awards that lead to the Beard of the Year Award in December 2022.

The Beard of Winter focuses both on fuller organic beards, suitable for winter weather but also on beards that have made an early New Year impact in the public eye.

Informal votes are being run to check on potential nominations. In the first author Philip Ardagh topped the poll and is likely to feature on the shortlist.

A second vote featuring England cricketer Jonny Bairstow and Liverpool football manager Jurgen Klopp is now open

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it will be as ever it is a wide ranging, eclectic, list but one very much focused on the winter season. We are keen to make sure we don’t miss beards that have been making a significant positive impact in the public eye in the last few weeks.

The poll opens on 17^th January and closes on 30th January 2022

There will be two ‘Trim-Off’ rounds from 17-20 January and then from 21-24 January. Each will feature four contenders. The top two from each round will feature in a final ‘Beard-Off’ vote from 25-30th January

Reminder of the Beard of Winter 2021 Shortlist

Arnie Schwarzenegger, actor

Tim Farron, MP

Brian Blessed, actor

Daniel Norcross, broadcaster

Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter

Steve Bell, Guardian cartoonist

Jimmy Wales, founder Wikipedia

Michael Rosen, author and broadcaster

David Bowie at 75. The man who changed the world(a little bit)?

David Bowie would have been 75 today and there are of course TV programmes and wider comment to mark the occasion.

I’m so old that I got Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust when they were first released in the early 1970s.

Bowie was an iconoclast in terms of music and ideas and you could certainly never say he was a man of the left in political terms.

Yet the world is often not so simple. There are those whose professed aim is to make the world a better place who achieve little in that respect (sometimes not for want of trying) and there are those who manage to change things a bit even though it was probably wasn’t particularly the main thing they had in mind. Bowie I think is in the second category.

As Tom Robinson tweeted after Bowie’s death in 2016, the Ziggy persona and arguably Aladdin Sane too gave hope to a generation of LGBT youth that it was ok to express their sexuality. In 1970s Britain that was something significant.

The Thin White Duke of the Heroes period may have been an impressive persona but it was not something that could be lived with on the left. Bowie was looking at fascist ideas and imagery at a time when the genuine fascists of the National Front were a growing force in Britain.

I doubt too many NFers saw the videos of Heroes (the German language one in particular is memorable, though hardly for the best of reasons) and certainly the impact was nothing like the remarks of Eric Clapton that led to the founding of Rock Against Racism.

Bowie later donated money to the Anti-Nazi League, a reminder that above all he was playing with ideas and music, experimenting with forms, rather than aiming to make overt political statements.

Aside from noting that Bowie looked better without a beard, perhaps his legacy, aside from great music, is a discussion about whether a musician now could have the wider impact on society he had in various ways in the 1970s, even though, as above, it was probably not something he was striving to have.

His flirtation with fascist ideas and symbolism can’t be ignored but it was one moment in a complex artistic career. Another was in the early 1970s when he helped to shift the stifling social and sexual relations of post 1945 Britain into a rather better place

Rees-Mogg on Garlic, France & Refugees: wrong on all counts

Jacob Rees-Mogg is the leader of the House of Commons. Below is an extract from an answer he gave to a question from a Tory MP (Jacob Young, Redcar)

Young has previously asked Rees-Mogg if he would a Parmo, a Teesside delicacy consisting of chicken, bechamel sauce and parmesan cheese. For some reason Young thinks it comes with a garlic sauce. Rees-Mogg does not like garlic, presumably because he associates it with the French.

Rees-Mogg in fact doesn’t appear keen on the French in general. His worst selling ‘history’ book The Victorians joins the word ‘revolutionary’ with France on a number of occasions. Rees-Mogg presumably doesn’t have an issue with the English Revolution of 1688 just French ones.

Lastly he appears to think that refugees are ok, provided they stay in France, irrespective of whether it is appropriate or safe for them to do so.

Just another moment in Rees-Mogg’s political career

I wonder how often France has been called “safe” in this Chamber over the centuries, but I think we can accept that it is safe for most refugees— except for those who do not like garlic, who may need to escape. What has been going on in the channel is appalling and should concern us all, because it is led by people smugglers; it is led by evil people and it has led to deaths, and we need to prevent further lives from being lost on this dangerous crossing and break the business model of the criminal gangs who exploit desperation.

House of Commons 6^th January 2022

Henry Hunt Monument erected 25^th March 1842 Every St Ancoats, Manchester

Henry Hunt was the speaker at Peterloo on August 16^th 1819 had a monument erected to him by the Chartists on  Good Friday 25^th March 1842. Fergus O’Connor, George Julian Harney and others spoke and there was a large demonstration to mark the occasion. There is a report in the Northern Star for 2^nd April 1842.

The monument is long since gone as is the building in whose grounds it stood, details of which are below.

However a picture of the original building has been posted on FB by a Manchester local history group (We Grew Up In Manchester)

Every St is still there just a few minutes-walk from the Cloudwater Brewery Tap room should you be passing..

What was the Round House Chapel?

The Round House chapel on Every Street, off Great Ancoats Street, was built by Reverend Dr James Scholefield (1790-1855). He was a Peterloo veteran, preacher and doctor, and follower of William Cowherd, ‘the founder of vegetarianism’. The chapel opened on the anniversary of Peterloo in 1823. The Working Class Political Union held their meetings here during the 1831 Reform Bill agitation. Trade union and Chartist meetings were held here, as well as a radical Sunday School. A public meeting about the Tolpuddle Martyrs took place there in 1834.

The Chartists erected a monument to Henry Hunt in the burial ground in 1842. It was unveiled by Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor on the anniversary of Peterloo. Hunt’s monument only survived a few decades before it fell down.

From 1897 to 1963, the old chapel was used by Manchester University for their Settlement, where students lived and volunteered among the working classes. The Round House was demolished in 1986. The foundations and gravestones still exist – go and see them!

Peoples History Museum exhibition 2019 on the most radical street in Manchester. The words above are by Dr Katrina Navickas

Cats and socialism

Cats can sometimes be socialists in the sense that they often plan to share a catch- mice or a bird-with their people. At other times they can be iconoclastic. Even so there have been strong links between the left and cats

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn caused a mild media ripple when he revealed to the Independent that his black and white cat does not have a name but is addressed simply as El Gato. More recently further ripples were caused when the Daily Mail reported that he named a cat he had in the 1970s Harold Wilson

There is a picture of the late British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm with his cat. Perhaps there is something about Marxist historians and cats as E P Thompson also had one:

Such pictures appear to suggest a missing link between cats and socialism

If you were looking for a conspiracy, while Lenin was a cat lover there is no record that it had a name either (no, it was not Joe). However that is most probably due to a failure in cat history rather than anything else.

Not all politicians have been cat lovers. There is no record, for example, of a cat in Tony Benn’s Diaries except an entry where he notes he was given a ‘black woolly’ cat to hold for a photo shot.

Harold Wilson by contrast brought his own cat into Downing St when he became Prime Minister, while Churchill patriotically named his Nelson.

The New Labour period, perhaps inevitably, was beset by cat controversy. It was thought Cherie Blair didn’t like cats much and in November 1997 Alistair Campbell announced that the veteran Downing St cat Humphrey had gone to a quiet suburban location. Journalists inquired whether this was code for ‘cemetery’ and photos had to be produced of Humphrey happily in retirement..

We should however be cautious about assuming an automatic link between cats and any particular trend on the left, Rosa Luxemburg described what happened when her cat Mimi met Lenin:

“She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him,” Luxemburg writes. “But when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.”

Some names of Politician’s cats

Engels- Tidlums

Lenin- cat no known name

Churchill- Nelson

Wilson- nemo (Siamese)

Corbyn Harold Wilson; El Gato

Blair- Humphrey (until Nov 25 1997)

Thatcher Marvin (2007)

Rosa Luxemburg, Mimi