Appeal for return of symbolic Cockerel to Hackney’s Beard Friendly Pub of the Year
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has backed an appeal for the return of the iconic stuffed cockerel to the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year, the Cock Tavern in Hackney.
The cockerel disappeared over the weekend and is thought to have been removed from the premises. The pub’s owner Pete Holt has told the Hackney Citizen that he can ‘forgive and forget’ if the stuffed bird is returned.
The campaigners say that the cockerel is an important part of the image of the pub and it is to be hoped that it is returned.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, given the number of beard wearers who use the pub we rather suspect that the individual who wandered off with the cockerel may be hirsute. If so we’d appeal to them not to bring the hirsute into disrepute at Christmas and return the bird to its rightful place in the pub
It was Parliament not Cromwell that banned Christmas in a law passed in June 1847 (there had been a one year ban in 1844) and while Cromwell certainly did not speak out on the ban he was not centrally involved in the matter either.
The beard ban question is a little more complex. The New Model Army were known by opponents as Roundheads because they had short hair and often were clean shaven. Of course we are only going by reports and occasional paintings here, this was a couple of centuries before the first photographs.
The most likely reason for having short hair in an army in the mid-16th was for reasons of personal health and cleanliness. Beard historian Alun Withey (Exeter) has opined that for the Puritans beards were seen as a ‘bauble’. Perhaps and clearly images of Royalists do suggest considerable facial hair.
However the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon has commented (@MuseumCromwell):
NB: any idea that Royalists had long hair and beards and Parliamentarians had short hair/clean shaven is a wildly inaccurate Victorian stereotype. There was little to distinguish the two sides in terms of dress in reality, hence many accounts of ‘friendly fire’ incidents then…
Cromwell himself is show in portraits as wearing a ‘frugal’ moustache and woodcut in the Royal Collection and his Death Mask suggest he did wear a beard.
Looking more widely the Puritans who occupied New England and eventually declared independence had some concept of dress and appearance that may have focused on being clean shaven. In 1654 a colonialist Thomas Hall published a tract on the ‘Loathsomeness of Long Hair’ which he saw as being a feature of (Catholic) French and Spanish society.
However to return to the original point Cromwell was not a pogonophobe and despite not celebrating Christmas liked a jug or two of ale as well (coming from a brewing family)
CAMRA warns against asset stripping in Punch Pubs sale. Time for a new Beer Orders?
CAMRA has reacted to the sale of Punch Pubs to a US Private Equity Investor by, rightly warning against asset stripping. 90% of the pubs are freehold and while thanks to Asset of Community Value legislation, selling them off for housing is not as easy as it once was, it’s a concern
There has been comment that the origins of this latest pubs issue is the 1989-2003 Beer Orders, which CAMRA pushed for. This forced breweries to sell some of the tied estate and allow guest beers. It promoted beer choice and provided a market for smaller brewers.
There is perhaps an unfortunate irony that the current sale involves 53 pubs formerly owned by Youngs that had already given up brewing and moved to being a Pub Company itself.
It also however led to the setting up of Pub Companies, often large ones. The Beer Orders were revoked in 2003 on the basis that there was no longer the dominance of individual business such as breweries in pubs.
Perhaps so but Pub Companies with thousands of pubs and limited beer ranges in many cases are replicating the pre-1989 position. The Punch Pubs sale involves for example 1300 pubs employing 20,000 people. The move from Punch Taverns in 2016 had seen the sale of an even larger number of pubs to Heineken.
It may be time for new Beer Orders, although the precise format would certainly require close consideration.
Tory attacks on the right to protest go back to the Six Acts in 1819. In 2022 protesting to survive will be essential
The Tories Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was back in the Commons early in December. From earlier rounds Priti Patel added another 18 pages of illiberal measures to restrict and ban protests
The Bill is a ragbag of measures which proposes amongst other things a possible 10 years in prison for damaging a statue, rather more than the penalty for rape. It also gives the police even greater power to restrict protests.
The Tories have a long history of this sort of thing.
One of the Six Acts, which were actually formally passed in December 1819 after Peterloo, was the Seditious Meetings Act.
Under the Act all meetings of more than 50 people- in reality no more than 49 persons- were allowed. This included any meeting: “for the purpose…of deliberating upon any public grievance, or upon any matter or thing relating to any trade, manufacture, business, or profession, or upon any matter in church or state,”.
The only exception were meetings called by an ‘authorised official’. In addition a meeting of people in one specific area could be called provided permission was given by a Justice of the Peace. He of course required six days-notice. At such meetings no banners, flags or emblems of any sort were allowed.
While the Act was repealed in 1824 a related limit of no more than 49 delegates at any representative gathering remained in place through the Chartist period up to1848.
Indeed in order to try and avoid official interference in protest meetings, these were often held out of town in remote rural spots well away from the reach of the authorities.
It took many years of political organising by the trade unions, the Chartists and others to get rid of these restrictions. It is a perpetual fight but the perspective is important. That can be seen from the jailing of more Insulate Britain protesters this week and the trial of people in Bristol for participating in the pulling down of the Colston statue in the summer of 2020. In both cases the protests were ways of addressing things that just were not happening under the existing processes and that surely is one of the key reasons to take to the streets.
The Tories talk of freedom and democratic rights, in practice its actual defenders come from a rather different place.
A Merry Xmas for the few not the many. Punch Pubs sold to Investor for £1bn
Punch the pub company that currently owns around 1300 pubs, including 56 it recently bought from Youngs, has been sold to US private equity investor Fortress for £1bn.
Punch had a lot more pub 5 years ago but a large number were sold to Heineken and the company was subsequently taken into private hands and has been owned by Patron a European private equity investor.
Its the latest in a long series of pub deals involving Punch
Significantly 90% of the pubs sold are freehold which might make them good development opportunities. The general point of private equity is to make money from an investment over a period of a few years and the move on.
Punch also indirectly employs 20,000 or so people. While Punch investors will have a merry Christmas I doubt those keeping the pubs going will.
From Henry Mayhew to Engels. Christmas, Plum Pudding & seasonal labour
The Plum Pudding was a staple of the Victorian Christmas, even for the poor. Henry Mayhew described how much seasonal employment the pudding and decorating them with holly provided. Engels was also clearly a big enough fan, of the pudding and the holly, to send on to Germany as a Christmas present.
It’s a reminder at time when further Christmas restrictions on employment without financial support appear possible how much the seasonal trade in December was relied on by those who knew that the months of January and February would be tough.
Victorian capitalism and capitalism in 2021 both rely on a casualised labour market. We still eat lots of plum pudding too- its another name for the Christmas pudding, and signified simply that dried fruit was involved. On the market for holly I’m less sure
“Well, then, consider,” said another informant, “the plum-puddings! Why, at least there’s a hundred thousand of ’em eaten, in London, through Christmas and the month following. That’s nearly one pudding to every twenty of the population, is it, sir? Well, perhaps, that’s too much. But, then, there’s the great numbers eaten at public dinners and suppers; and there’s more plum-pudding clubs at the small grocers and public-houses than there used to be, so, say full a hundred thousand, flinging in any mince-pies that may be decorated with evergreens. Well, sir, every plum-pudding will have a sprig of holly in him. If it’s bought just for the occasion, it may cost 1d., to be really prime and nicely berried. If it’s part of a lot, why it won’t cost a halfpenny, so reckon it all at a halfpenny. What does that come to? Above 200l. Think of that, then, just for sprigging puddings!”
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor
Engels to Philipp Pauli 16th Dec 1876
Yesterday I sent you, carriage paid, per CONTINENTAL PARCELS EXPRESS and thereon per German Imperial parcel post, a crate addressed to: Dr Pauli, Mannheim (Chemical Works, Rheinau),
Germany, containing a PLUM PUDDING for your wife, a currant cake baked for you by my wife, a book, a small box of handkerchiefs and a small ink-pot for Pumps….
…..The small crate also contains some Christmas evergreen, holly with its ritual red berries, for sticking into the pudding when it’s dished up. The holly’s right on top, so that the customs men get their fingers pricked.
Eight Follicle Fashionistas compete for Beard of the Year 2021 accolade
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the first Beard Off final round for Beard of the Year 2021 is now open. There are two Beard Off rounds where the top two in each will go on to compete in a final Follicle Fight round.
The first Close Shave round for the Beard of the Year 2021 saw poet and author Benjamin Zephaniah shave opponents to reach December’s Beard Off rounds. Cricket broadcaster Daniel Norcross came second. The second Close Shave round saw cricketer Mooen Ali and musician Billy Bragg bristle to a place in the finals
Author and broadcaster Michael Rosen and England football manager Gareth Southgate are among four beard wearers guaranteed a place in the final Beard Off rounds from 15th December. They have won hirsute accolades during the year.
Eight others featured in two preliminary rounds to determine a further four follicle fashionistas who also feature in the December Beard Off rounds.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Beard of the Year is the hairiest and most hotly anticipated event of the beard wearers year. Ultimately it’s all down to hirsute democracy and the voters.
Beard of the Year 2021. First final Beard Off round. Top 2 go through to the Follicle Fight
101 Tory MPs voted against the Government’s PlanB COVID measures in the Commons on Tuesday. They were passed thanks to Labour support. One might have thought that given the numbers it might have been a good time to get movement on sick pay (£95 a week) for self isolating people and furlough for those who find the measures hit their employment. However the Labour leader remains on what seems to be a very long and steep political learning curve so it didnt happen.
However the revolt was not the biggest in modern Parliamentary history. That is still the 139 MPs who voted against Blair’s illegal Iraq War in 2003. Lest we forget. It was however as the political scientist Philip Cowley pointed out still one of the biggest Parliamentary defeats since the Corn Laws in the 1840s when the modern Party system did not exist-that came when the Liberal Party was formed in 1859.
Tim Martin gets something right about pubs(but there are more important things to say)
In his latest COVID related rant Wetherspoons Tim Martin has actually got something right for a change.
He noted:
“The typical British pub, contrary to received opinion in academia, is usually a bastion of social distancing.”
Of course those that frequent pubs can think of occasions when they are busy (I’d tend to give those a swerve even in pre-COVID times) just as one can think of being on crowded train journeys for several hours or particularly at this time of year in busy shopping centres.
Generally though people go into pubs for a quiet drink and perhaps a chat with friends, usually seated. Again that wont apply on Friday nights but most of the time it does.
There are however more important things to say about pubs and hospitality at the moment and they are things Tim Martin will never be found saying. I don’t have an issue with the Government’s Plan B as it impacts pubs at the moment but the mood music (sometimes it must be said from the usual temperance quarters, but not always)has seen a significant drop in custom.
That will probably lead to less business at the traditionally busiest time of year and less jobs too. Yet support for pubs and hospitality and furlough are absent. Further for those who do have to isolate sick pay (where available) is still a woeful £96 a week. It’s a pity Keir Starmer didn’t press that point in his TV response to Johnson.
TUC Research Officer Alex Collinson has posted that many in hospitality either will only get standard sick pay or nothing at all if absent.
One can see Scrooge being approving of this but that was in 1843…
Jeremy Corbyn marks 20th anniversary of first Parliamentary Beard of the Year win with 9th victory
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that voting in the final Beard Off round of the Parliamentary Beard of the Year Award saw Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn shave opponents getting 80.6% of the poll. His nearest rival Stephen Kinnock got 9.3%.
It marks the 20th anniversary of the first time the now veteran MP won the Award back in 2001.
It is the first time Corbyn has won the title since 2018 and his ninth victory overall. He has previously won in 2001,2007,2011, 2012 (shared) 2014,2015, 2016 and 2018
Eight initial candidates attempted to shave each other for the coveted annual accolade. Last year’s winner Stuart Anderson MP has mislaid his beard during the year and did not feature.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Conservative MPs have held the title in recent years but this year were eliminated in the earlier close shave rounds. It is a tribute to the resilience of Jeremy Corbyn’s beard that this is the 20th anniversary of his first victory.
Parliamentary Beard of the Year 2021 shortlist. Final Beard Off
Jeremy Corbyn, (Independent Labour, Islington North)
