Kmflett's Blog

Kicking over the statues, Colston, Fallism & the politics of statues

Professor Dan Hicks has written an important piece on the statue of slaver Edward Colston, currently on display in the M-Shed Museum in Bristol.

He focuses, rightly in my view, on the issues of anti-racism and anti-colonialism and whether not the statue of Colston but its fall and how it fell could be a positive. As he argues simply preserving it somewhere as a statue has the reverse impact, a reminder that even when statues which symbolise racism and oppression fall, they still remain.

https://artreview.com/lets-keep-colston-falling/

This is part of a wider statues debate. Leave aside the Culture Wars posturings of Oliver Dowden and the self-styled ‘Commonsense’ Group of Tory MPs.

Gary Younge has argued in the Guardian that we’d better off without any statues as they are a very poor way of remembering and contextualising history. Eric Hobsbawm made the point in Fractured Times that from 1918 the Bolsheviks took down statues put up by the Tsarist regimes and replaced them with those of revolutionary heroes.

Indeed the general theme on the left for many years has been little or nothing to do with taking down statues of any sort but rather of putting up ones to mark figures like Sylvia Pankhurst and William Cuffay part of British history that has somehow been previously ‘overlooked’.

Despite Dowden’s much proclaimed desire to put up statues nothing of course is actually happening about either.

Beard Liberation Front

17^th June

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Roy Keane will feature in Beard of Summer 2021 poll despite shaving beard

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that football pundit Roy Keane, currently commentating on matches in the European Championships, will feature in the vote for Beard of Summer 2021 despite shaving his beard off on Wednesday.

The vote for Beard of Summer will open at the weekend with the winner announced on 26^th June as part of National Beard Week 2021.

The campaigners say that Keane has form on suddenly shaving his beard and was dropped from a poll as long ago as 2013 for precisely that reason.

However there are rules around the matter and on this occasion Keane has not transgressed. He has had a beard during the period covered by the Beard of Summer, which is a quarterly award. Only if he had shaved the beard off while voting was underway would there have been an issue.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said. When Roy Keane’s beard is in its full organic state, it is imposing feature, which adds some gravitas to his punditry. The quarterly beard awards are about capturing those who don’t always have a full-time beard so he will be on the vote for Beard of Summer.

A significant sporting event you might have missed today

There was a lot of focus on football today as Wales beat Turkey 2-0 in the Euros. I was cheering them on (quietly) in a beer and beard bar in central Cardiff.

You might have missed, and Sports Minister Oliver Dowden certainly did, that it was also the start of a too rare Test Match between England women and India women in Bristol.

The pre-match discussion was about playing on a pitch that had already been used (that should not have happened).

The play itself though was engrossing. England were in charge for the first two sessions up to tea with England captain Heather Knight (in her 100^th Test as captain) getting 95. The final session though belonged to India with England ending on 269-6:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/scorecard/ECKO50984

In short it was a day when the game ebbed and flowed- a superb example of Test cricket.

Notable too was that the first ever black woman to play a Test for England Sophia Dunkley was given her cap. She was 12 not out at the close.

Its not too late to send a tweet of congratulation Mr Dowden.

As the former Beard of Ireland Peter Coles once noted on twitter there are 59 references to beards in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

On Bloomsday 2026 the Beard Liberation Front salutes the hirsute canon of Joyce.

A typical Ulysses reference is below:

Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom

(page 438)

Not just what Hancock didn’t do, but he did. The continuing stench of Cobbett’s Old Corruption

Its no secret that Dominic Cummings wants Matt Hancock sacked as a Minister. Precisely why is less clear but his latest revelations, if true, reflect a dreadful absence of competence in the first weeks of the Pandemic in March 2020

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57498845

But there remains the question, which should not be forgotten of the things Hancock actually did.

In February 2021 a Court ruled that the Government and in particular Health Secretary Hancock had failed in a legal duty to be sufficiently transparent to whom they have awarded contracts related to the pandemic to.

The Government legislated to remove the usual safeguards around tendering for contracts given the COVID emergency but this did remove a requirement for accountability on what had been done

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56125462

The BBC reported as a lead item on its news website that:

Labour claimed the government’s awarding of contracts was “plagued by a lack of transparency, cronyism and waste”.

It’s something that has an echo in British history perhaps particularly in the views of William Cobbett

EP Thompson encapsulated the Cobbettian worldview in the Making of the English Working Class. Describing Cobbett’s intervention in the 1806 election for the Westminster seat in the unreformed Parliament, he noted how Cobbett summed up the opponents of the radical candidate:

relations of placemen and pensioners’, ‘tax-gatherers, magistrates, policemen and dependent clergy’, ‘play-actors, scene-shifters, candle-snuffers, and persons following.. immoral callings’.

In his Rural Rides, Cobbett criticised ‘pensions, sinecures, tithes and the other ‘glorious institutions’ of this ‘mighty empire’. He referred to this collectively as The Thing.

That world eventually began to change as Parliamentary Democracy started itself to be renewed with the 1832 Reform Act. It might be noted however that the passage of the Act was a fine call between reform and a plebeian revolution.

Hancock’s behaviour belongs in a pre-democratic age before the 1832 Reform Act.

Beard Liberation Front

15^th June

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners confirm ex-DUP advisor Lee Reynolds will be eligible for Beard of Ireland 2022

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has confirmed that Northern Ireland politician Lee Reynolds will be eligible for the 2022 Beard of Ireland poll in March 2022.

Mr Reynolds held the title in 2018 and 2019 before losing out to Maynooth academic Peter Coles in 2020.

He wasn’t in the running in 2021 as he became advisor to former First Minister Arlene Foster and dipped out of the wider public eye in this role.

However he and his award winning beard are now back before the public.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the annual Beard of Ireland Award, as all others we run, is not about the politics of an individual. It focuses on their beard and whether it represents, on balance, a positive image of the hirsute in public life.

Competition for the Irish Beard of the Year 2021 saw a record vote.

Northern Ireland Retail supremo Aodhan Connolly, last year’s runner up, won with 79% of the vote. Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann came a creditable second.

The 2017 winner was politician Colum Eastwood who bearded broadcaster William Crawley for the annual Award.

In 2018 the DUP’s Lee Reynolds shaved writer Dominic O’Reilly for the honour with Colum Eastwood in a steady third place.

In 2019 Lee Reynolds retained the title

The 2020 winner was Maynooth academic Peter Coles

FT on Johnson’s image at the G7 ‘a schoolboy busting into the classroom 10 minutes late, trailing rumpled papers’

Image matters in the modern, highly visual, world and the Financial Times fashion correspondent has cast an eye over the dress sense of the leaders attending last weekend’s G7 meeting in Cornwall. If you have access the whole thing is on-line (paywalled).

As the convenor of the Beard Liberation Front I of course agree that image is important. It was good to see one beard at the G7, that of Justin Trudeau though the FT was more interested in his hair.

Critical comments were appropriately reserved for Johnson.

The FT notes that he: ‘even by his own disarrayed standards (looked) downright strange. His trousers are so large they make him look knock-kneed, and they appear to be falling down. The jacket fits like it’s borrowed from a hard-drinking uncle. His collar doesn’t want to lay down on his chest, and one cuff is sticking out erratically’

They summarise this as Johnson conveying ‘the feeling of a schoolboy busting into the classroom 10 minutes late, trailing rumpled homework papers. Clothes are fundamentally diplomatic. They show other people that we made an effort on their behalf’.

Indeed, but as we know Johnson has other matters on his mind, usually related to himself not how he appears to others.

Home Secretary backs those who want to boo taking the knee. Sign to stand up to racism

Home Secretary Priti Patel has told an obscure digital news channel that she has no problem with people who want to boo the England football team taking the knee against racism at the Euro football championships.

Even Boris Johnson has stated that people should cheer not boo England.

There is a Stand Up to Racism statement that backs the players stand here, that can be signed:

http://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/statement-signed-by-politicians-union-leaders-and-campaigners-opposing-the-booing-of-players-taketheknee-government-failure-to-act/

A brief history of the tradition of taking the knee against racism & why its important

Brewdog announces new chair & diversity consultant. Still nothing on a trade union

The Punks With Purpose whose statement about the workplace culture at Brewdog rocked the brewer last week continue to press James Watt on what actual changes will occur as opposed to words of regret.

Widely reported over the weekend is that Blythe Jack has been appointed the new chair of Brewdog. Reports make something of her gender- and indeed female chairs of Companies are still far fewer than would be merited if that was the criteria for appointment.

However she is in fact a senior figure in Brewdog’s private equity investor TSG and one suspects her appointment is as much to do with protecting their investment after last week’s furore. There is some speculation that she might also be preparing Brewdog for an IPO.

More interesting perhaps is the appointment of Ren Navarro who is a diversity consultant who has worked widely in the hospitality area in North America. A glance at her social media indicates that she does indeed ‘walk the walk’ on issues of discrimination.

How welcome that will be to quite everyone at senior levels in Brewdog remains to be seen.

My experience as a union officer in private sector companies hugely larger than Brewdog is that while people who work in the diversity area are invariably well intentioned and look to make positive change they often do better when they are in partnership with recognised unions.

Senior figures in Companies have many issues to pursue and may need persuading that diversity is up there with the most important. If they see that not only their own specialist team but the unions who represent their workers are on board, that is often a key motivator to make progress.

However there is still no recognition from Brewdog that recognising an independent trade union is a way out of the mess its currently in.

Beard Liberation Front

14^th June

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Hot Weather beard trimming permitted as campaigners advise against a Marxist approach

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued updated guidelines for trimming or shaving the beard, as hot weather continues across much of England and Wales.

The campaigners say that many will prefer to keep their beards, which can offer some protection from the sun.

However hot weather combined with high levels of humidity can make organic beards in particular problematic.

The updated BLF guidelines are based on what Karl Marx did following humid weather on a visit to Algiers at the end of April 1882 when he had his beard trimmed.

In a letter to Engels from Algiers in April 1882 Marx described the weather as very changeable with rain and high winds. He wrote to Engels on Friday 28th April 1882:

‘Apropos; because of the sun I have done away with my prophet’s beard and my crowning glory (but in deference to my daughters) had myself photographed before offering up my hair on the altar of an Algerian barber.

However, unfortunately, the photograph is not known to have survived

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, I’ve trimmed my beard, very much along the guidelines provided by Marx with the exception that I did not visit a barber. This is not advised.

June 2021 Hot Weather beard trimming and shaving guidelines

1 DO NOT visit a barbers. There is a serious risk of over-trimming

2 Before trimming, dampen the beard with a little water so that the hairs are supple

3 Use a pair of fine scissors and a comb. DO NOT use any form of battery or electric powered shaver.

4 Make sure you are in front of a good sized mirror in a well-lit room

5 Be sure to cover the area where beard trimmings may fall and collect these afterwards. They may be useful to spread on the garden.

6 Snip judiciously and lightly and take time to review regularly

7 Make sure that trimming is symmetrical on both sides

8 When satisfied, wash the beard and comb it through.