The 1854 Labour Parliament. Is it a model for 2021? Socialist history seminar 24th May 5.30pm
The 1854 Labour Parliament was held in Manchester.
It was neither like a Labour Party Conference or a TUC Congress, taking place before either existed.
The moving spirit was the leader of post-1848 Chartism and ally of Marx and Engels, Ernest Jones. The Parliament was focused around one of the best known nineteenth century industrial disputes, the 1854 Preston Lock-Out, which features in Dickens Hard Times.
Yet the Labour Parliament was not about trade union struggle, although it welcomed trade unionists, or about political representation in the Commons. Rather it sort to organise to find a way to change the world in favour of ordinary people.
Seminar Details
Monday 24th May at 5.30pm when Simon Hannah will speak on the Labour Parliament of 1854. Zoom details can be accessed at this link(click the Book Now link):
Hirsute wind warning. As Dylan reaches 80 the answer is not blowin’ in the wind
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that as high winds feature across much of the UK until Friday afternoon beard wearers are strongly advised to take special care of their beards.
The campaigners say that while danger to life and limb is the central issue when extreme weather hits, a secondary concern for organic beard wearers is that exposing the beard to high and blustery winds may blow the beard out of shape and can cause permanent hair and follicle damage in some cases.
It is less likely that designer and some hipster beards will suffer significant wind damage
The BLF advises the following precautions:
Keep the beard slightly damp at all times by immersing it in a glass of hazy IPA or imperial stout. This will give solidity to the beard hairs and prevent them being blown around.
Use a scarf or snood to protect the beard at all times
Secure the beard with elastic bands, strapping the hairs to the chin
If the beard is blown out of shape use a hair dryer to re-form the hairs in the correct position and then stay indoors for a several hours to allow the hairs and follicles to recover
BLF organiser Keith Flett said, the answer is most definitely not blowin’ in the wind this week even on Bob Dylan’s 80th. We advise the hirsute to take care out there
Eric Hobsbawm & the (male) gendered space of socialist history before 1968
Jacobin have published a fascinating piece about the building of an electronic bibliography of all the writings of the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm (link below). It raises many interesting and important issues about how we understand, categorise and use the work and ideas of an important historian like Hobsbawm.
One caveat well worth underlining is that certainly before the late 1960s when the women’s liberation movement arose in part from the Ruskin History Workshop meetings socialist history was a very male space.
It is better now 50 years on but there is still much progress required
Beyond Hobsbawm himself, the bibliography speaks to the shape of both the historical profession and left-wing intellectual life in postwar Europe. One of the most obvious points is that these were overwhelmingly male spaces. There are vanishingly few women listed in the bibliography. They do not appear much as coeditors, collaborators, or even subjects of research. Even the interviews listed in the database are invariably with men or by men.
Historians say that after Commission Report Oriel College Rhodes statue must go
The London Socialist Historians Group, which convenes the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London, has called on Oxford University to accept the report of an independent Commission and remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes as Oriel College Oxford.
The Commission was appointed nearly a year ago after demands that the statue be taken down by supporters of Black Lives Matter and many others.
Reports now suggest that while the University will implement many of the commission’s recommendations it will not remove the Rhodes statue for legal and financial reasons.
The historians say that while it is accepted that the statue is a symbol of wider issues relating to Cecil Rhodes historic association with the University, it is in a very public position in the centre of Oxford. They believe it should be taken down and be displayed elsewhere with appropriate contextual details. If this can’t yet be done at the very least the statue should be covered up.
Cecil Rhodes achieved cult status in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century with roads and buildings named after him. However from the 1960s on there has been a much wider appreciation of the imperial role Rhodes played and his personal racism.
LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, it is not acceptable that after a year has passed Oxford University still doesn’t plan to take down the Rhodes statue, despite the report of the independent commission. Some may reflect that the protesters who took down the Colston statue in Bristol last year found a better way of addressing official inertia on parts of British history that cannot and should not be ignored.
Alexei Sayle gets Lifetime Achievement Award from Beard Liberation Front
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that ahead of National Beard Week in June it can announce that one of the founders of alternative comedy and long-time beard wearer Alexei Sayle is set to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Sayle, 68, has one of the most iconic beards in British public life along with Brian Blessed and Michael Eavis.
Alexei Sayle was the first MC at the Comedy Store in London as far back as 1979 and has had five decades of radical and sometimes challenging comedy across a range of mediums
The campaigners say that the Lifetime Achievement Award is for the positive image that Sayle has presented of the hirsute in public life.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, we are pleased to honour Alexei Sayle with a Lifetime Achievement Award. His beard proved sustainable through the dark days of pogonophobia in Britain and while he remains a controversial figure to some we are in doubt that he is a great ambassador for the hirsute.
Lidl run what they term craft beer weeks a few times a year. This involves them expanding their normal beer range to include offerings from some well known and some less well known breweries.
In the past both Brewdog and Oakham have participated in Lidl Craft Beer Weeks but currently (the week notionally finishes on 19th May but stocks will probably be around for a while longer) they are not participating.
This time there are cans from Boss (Swansea) and bottles from Wychwood along with several beers from Love Lane (including a sour). My interest is drawn (these beers have featured previously) to a NEIPA which sells for £1.79(440ml can, 5.3%) and a DIPA which sells at £2.19 (440ml can 7.4%).
Both beers are decent examples of the style but are really representatives of what the Victorians called the ‘slop’ trade. That didn’t refer to beer slops btw but to the practice of undercutting on price (and often quality)for things like shoes and clothes.
I’m not sure any quality sacrifice is particularly involved here- though cheaper ingredients may be used.
The price however is arguably beyond competitive, undercutting by far what bottle shops can do and even lower in general than much larger retails such as Tesco manage. Most 440ml craft beer cans in Tesco sell for £3.
That is not really a good thing in my view and I should underline that my purpose of visiting Lidl was not primarily to buy beer although I was aware that a craft beer week was on-and indeed you could hardly miss the large display towards the front of the store.
On the other hand given the price might it not attract drinkers who haven’t tried NEIPAs and DIPAs before and persuade them to try more? Lidl doesn’t stock these as part of its core range so they would need to look elsewhere-possibly even a bottle shop.
It’s a complex dialectic and to some extent an unknowable one. Its also however we ponder it, a reality of current and historic commercial practice too.
Flapjacks and Feudalism: the class struggle in the Archers. The Academic Archers book is out now
The last week has seen class hostilities between the Aldridges and the Horrabins in Ambridge. Jennifer Aldridge is concerned that her daughter Alice is being blamed for abandoning her new baby and accused of alcoholism by her currently ex-husband Chris Carter (Horrabin).
It is a battle between the Ambridge ruling class and one of the area’s leading proletarian families. Jennifer Aldridge is in fact an Archer and the Chris’s sister Emma is in fact a Grundy.
For the latest on this see last Sunday’s Ambridge Socialist.
The class struggle has been an ever present feature of the Archers and it is probably not because the scriptwriters were Marxists. In fact until the modern era they were more likely to have been Tories.
Rather its because of a fundamental understanding that at the centre of rural society lay a class battle between the haves and the have nots.
A new book by the estimable Academic Archers, Flapjacks and Feudalism, has a series of 15 chapters on class in the Archers including the first chapter by (ahem) myself on the Grundys. Rest assured it is a serious and robust Marxist analysis.
Beard Liberation Front offers free consultancy to ‘Starmer, The Movie’
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that after reports that Keir Starmer plans a short film to explain who he is to the public, it stand ready to offer free image consultancy to the production.
The campaigners say that the main criticisms of the Labour leader appear to fall into two areas. Firstly that he doesn’t have a distinctive policy offering. Beyond urging Starmer to adopt beard friendly policies this is beyond the BLF’s specific remit.
Secondly that he comes across as something of a rather wooden, clean shaven, stuffed suit. Here the BLF stands ready to help, as image is central to its campaigning work.
Keir Starmer needs a complete change of image. In real life he is an Arsenal supporting, football player who enjoys good beer and lives in North London. The vast majority of people who fall into this category in 2021 wear beards and are usually regarded as more genuine and organic for doing so.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, for Starmer, The Movie, the Labour Leader needs a complete change of image. He needs to ditch the suits and the shaving brush and come out with a beard. It’s the authentic look for 2021 and will underline that Keir is a genuine person beneath the Knighthood and DPP background.
Culture Minister Oliver Dowden claims he is not a Maoist
Culture Minister Oliver Dowden has been opining again on his favourite subject-culture wars. He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph (16.5) that he was not a Maoist but a Moreist.
By this he means (he claims) that he is in favour of more statues not less and more history. Dowden’s statements are invariably amusing. There seem to have been very few (if any)statues erected on his watch any more than, despite his insistence, there is any great move to take statues down. Further the ‘more history’ Dowden wants most definitely does not include anymore detail about British imperial activities.
Dowden also notes that he believes that museums and cultural institutions should be free of Government meddling and to make sure he has set up a committee to, er, well meddle. Its primary purpose is to promote Dowden’s Moreist perspective.
I don’t think Dowden understands what Maoism is or was. The Cultural Revolution led by Mao led to the purging and indeed deaths of numbers.
Dowden doesn’t do death fortunately but he has already been purging the wrong kind of person from Trustee Boards. Indeed so blatant has he been that Charles Dunstone, who is believed to be not unfavourable to the Tory Party, resigned as Chair of the Royal Museums, Greenwich in protest.
The irony is that much of society is beyond Dowden’s reach and this is where his cultural revolution fails. Private institutions, large companies and churches have continued to pursue an anti-racist agenda based on Black Lives Matter including removing where appropriate symbols of slavery.
There isn’t a thing Dowden can do about it which is of no comfort to those in areas where he continues to meddle.
Rise of facial hair in Irish politics continues as new UUP leader is beard wearer
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has noted the further rise of facial hair in Irish politics as Doug Beattie becomes the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
The campaigners say that the appearance of facial hair in the UUP is relatively recent. Former leader Robin Swann, who is currently Northern Ireland Health Minister, was a contender for the 2021 Beard of Ireland, but only grew the beard after he stepped down as leader.
The only other UUP leader to have facial hair was Viscount Brookeborough in 1963 who however wore only a moustache.
The campaigners say that given the UUP’s historic links with the Conservative Party Boris Johnson may wish to take note.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the rise of facial hair in Northern Irish politics is welcome and with a hirsute UUP leader who can possibly claim that beard wearers are subversive
