From Cinderloo 1821 to Shrewsbury Pickets 1972: employers & the law in North Wales & Shropshire
This week has since both the 200th anniversary of the event known as Cinderloo , where miners protesting about wage cuts, were attacked by the Shropshire Yeomanry, several were killed and others put on trial at Shrewsbury.
This week has also seen the long overdue appeal by building workers convicted as part of the 1972 national building strike, where the events at issue also took place in the Shrewsbury area.
One interesting connection is the links between the leading employers in the area, law enforcement and the Courts.
In 1821 several of the key figures in the Shropshire Yeomanry were ironmasters whose earlier wage cutting efforts had provoked the miners protest
An article by Neil Clarke on page 2 of the link below draws out the links:
In 1972 it was McAlpines who exercised great influence in the area as the Shrewsbury 24 campaign website underlines:
The Construction Industry’s Powerful Friends
Robert Alistair McAlpine became the Treasurer of the Conservative Party in 1975. The McAlpine family had great political influence in the North Wales area. The High Sheriff of Denbighshire, which is a large part of the county of Gwynedd, is the senior person responsible for law and order. Up to the 1970’s the past nine High Sheriffs had been members of the McAlpine family. The person appointed in April 1974 was Mr Peter Bell, a director of McAlpine and the son-in-law of the late Sir Alfred McAlpine, who was also Mr Bell’s predecessor as High Sheriff. McAlpines were the main contractors of the Brookside building site in Shrewsbury, which featured prominently in the charges against the pickets.
Campaigners concerned ‘dressing smartly’ Labour strategy means a ‘beard ban’
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has expressed concerns that a Labour strategy document leaked to the Guardian, could mean a return to the days of peak New Labour when beards were frowned upon if not banned altogether as the public face of the Party.
The report says that Labour should be about, amongst other things, ‘dressing smartly’.
The Beard Liberation Front has long had a policy that people in public facing roles should dress in a presentable manner but that does not mean they need be clean shaven.
The campaigners fear that clean shaven leader Keir Starmer wants to take the Party back to the peak days of New Labour image wise.
In the London Mayor Election of 2000 veteran beard wearer, the late Frank Dobson, stood as Labour candidate. Labour strategists actively canvassed photoshopped pictures of a clean shaven Dobson with voters to see if it would win votes. Ultimately Dobson kept the beard and lost the Election.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we are concerned. Some argued that the Frank Dobson beard story was fake, put about by spin doctors. However we were able later to check with Labour insiders who confirmed that it was entirely true. 2021 is not the time for a return to clean shaven suited Labour.
The Beard Liberation Front has expressed its concerns directly to Keir Starmer.
In Uncategorized on February 2, 2020 by kmflett Edit
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
200th anniversary of the ‘Cinderloo Massacre’ 1st & 2nd February 1821
200 years ago 70 members of the Shropshire Yeomanry shot dead 2 miners and injured more in a dispute over wage cuts. The event became known as Cinderloo a conscious echo of Peterloo in1819.
There is an excellent website and there are commemorative events:
The origins of the dispute lay in attempts by local ironmasters to cut wages. Miners fearing that if this happened they too would face cuts went on strike on 1st February 1821 and protested at what became known as ‘Cinderloo’ in East Shropshire.
The massacre warrants a brief mention in E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class. Thompson sees it in the context of the relationship between Methodism and the early labour movement.
The right-wing historian Halevy had argued that it was the influence of Methodism that had prevented revolution in England during this period. Eric Hobsbawm by contrast argued that Methodism and working-class politics went hand in hand. Thompson developed a third and controversial position. He argued that the impact of Methodism during this period represented the ‘chiliasm of despair’.
Cinderloo had a limited impact in terms of addressing an employers offensive and it was met by a vicious local ruling class response. It was one of a series of defeats in this period that led workers to look elsewhere for explanations of events
Thompson argued his case in respect of Cinderloo particularly in the Postscript published in the 1968 paperback edition of the book.
Clearly Heineken having taken a good look at the brewery and its beer has determined that it has a bright future and that is good news both for the continued production of the beer and its 25 employees in very difficult times.
As the beer writer Matthew Curtis noted on twitter it is no huge surprise. Its roughly the same timescale as Heineken had to take full control of Lagunitas after earlier buying a stake. It also raises questions over the independence of Beavertown Brewery where Heineken also have a considerable interest.
As with Camden Brewery which has been subsumed directly into ABI after a 5 year period one suspects that eventually Brixton may become just another Heineken brand. The owners are staying on (as they would, its not a hostile buyout) but while they talk of eccentricity that doesn’t play well with corporate culture. Men in suits like KPIs and targets. Experiments less so.
The wider issue for independent and craft brewers is that Brixton beers decent as they are, with the full weight of Heineken behind them will reduce space in the on and off trade for others.
It’s a reminder that capitalism while it promotes the ideas of free markets and competition in fact left to its own devices tends to monopoly.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has launched its annual search for My Hairy Valentine ahead of Valentine’s Day on 14th February.
This year it has been refocused to include two categories:
1 Beards that are sexy, allowing for the reality that this is in the eye of the beholder
2 Beards that are loved because they add a reassuring presence to public life and should be celebrated.
There will be a round covering each category with a final Lovers Beard poll featuring the top two from each category
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we know that not all beards are sexy, think Ted Cruz, but at Valentine’s each year we celebrate those that are.
Should there be toasted sandwich breaks in cricket matches?
The world of cricket is changing and not just because of COVID.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald about the Australian cricket coach Justin Langer noted Langer as saying that in the recent Australia v India Test in Brisbane (which Australia lost) he had to have a discussion with a player about taking a toasted sandwich onto the field of play in his pocket.
‘During the Brisbane Test Langer ordered a player not to persist with a habit of jamming a toasted sandwich in his pocket to eat on the field’. Sydney Morning Herald
A wider discussion on social media included Test Match Special commentator (and beard wearer) Daniel Norcross
The whole shape of the cricketing day might be about to change. Not just lunch and tea breaks. We could have scheduled toastie breaks, and maybe pause for macarons after 67 overs have been bowled. @danielnorcross
His point was that cricket is a social and collective activity as eating should be, and more short breaks in the game might not be such a bad thing given the often elongated playing times (due to slow over rates) that now feature regularly.
It might of course be not that healthy but then traditionally cricket was a game that often featured the portly…
The Ambridge Socialist doesn’t generally have much time for Phoebe but our assessments are always fact based.
Pip has decided to withdraw from the rewilding project after earlier disputes with Rex. This is essentially an intra-ruling class battle over the future direction of land use around Ambridge.
At a meeting chaired by Borchester Land’s Brian Aldridge, Justin Elliott revealed that he was pulling out of the project. Phoebe opined that this was ok because the re-wilders were keen to avoid being tainted by any association with modern slavery. She also noted that Brian Aldridge is a dinosaur. He later denied this self-evident truth.
Menage a Trois
The Ambridge Socialist suspects that three in a bed is not that unusual in Ambridge its just that the BBC avoids reporting it. Certainly while Freddie declined to participate in one when offered by Stephanie Casey he knew exactly what she was going on about.
Natasha discovered to be human
Natasha who was previously thought to be the new face of Ambridge neo-liberalism has revealed that she may be human. After Tom had second thoughts about helping Kirsty with her hunt for Moss’s slaves, Natasha stepped in instead. Work in progress.
Saint Shula no more?
After her prison encounter with Moss and an argument with Elizabeth about it Shula has noted doubts about whether she should pursue her religious calling. While the Ambridge Socialist is no expert in such matters doesn’t God send these occasions along to test people to see if they are suitable recruits?
A World We Have Lost. Tony Benn on Winston Churchill’s funeral 30th January 1965
Winston Churchill died aged 90, fifty years ago, on 24th January 1965. He had a State funeral on 30th January 1965.
I Watched the re-run of the funeral on BBC Parliament on the 50th anniversary in 2015 (in black and white, but then it was a more black and white world then) with commentary by Richard Dimbleby. I could just recall watching it at the time (I was 8 years old) though my parents were no fans of Churchill. It was a conservative world based on rank and privilege. It was also a very white and a very male world. Britain has changed but one wonders, at root, by quite how much. Certainly one suspects that most of the present Cabinet hanker for an imperial past.
Many on the left remember Churchill has a class warrior, at the Siege of Sidney St in 1911, sending troops to Tonypandy a year earlier, but later during World War Two as the leader of a National Government that charted a course that saw Allied forces to defeat the Nazis. Also however as someone who also, for example, didn’t intervene in the Bengal Famine of 1943 but did intervene to prevent the left from taking power in Athens in 1944/5. At the war’s conclusion in May 1945 he was decisively rejected by electors in favour Labour and Clem Attlee.
He is still a figure of veneration for the right- Boris Johnson produced a badly researched biography in 2014.
It is interesting however to reflect how he was remembered at the time of his death in 1965 by Tony Benn.
Benn records in his Diary that Churchill had been in touch with the family in the 1940s and had been a supporter of his campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage and become an MP again in 1963.
Perhaps it is not surprising that on the day of Churchill’s death Benn wrote in his diary that he was ‘one of the greatest Englishmen of our time’. Partly Benn had not yet fully made the move to the left that he took in the 1970s. Indeed in 1965 he was Postmaster General in Harold Wilson’s Labour Government. Partly no doubt his personal dealings with the Tory leader coloured his view.
Benn records that politics would be put into ‘cold storage’ for a week and it is probably the case that Churchill was the last political leader- partly because of his wartime role- where there was an element of agreement on the significance of his life and death, however viewed. Certainly there were none of the protests and dissent seen when Mrs Thatcher died.
The Postmaster General’s first move was to approach Wilson with a plan to issue a commemorative stamp featuring the picture of the Queen and Churchill. It related to Benn’s campaign to remove the monarch’s image from stamps altogether and it is clear that even with a figure like Churchill, Wilson regarded the idea as doubtful.
Later in that final week of January fifty years ago Benn took his family to see Churchill lying in state at Westminster Hall. He notes that young Joshua Benn thought he was going to a Lyons Steak house and was perplexed as to who Churchill was.
Benn returned to this theme on the day of the funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral which he attended with Caroline Benn. He notes in his diary that ‘there were thousands of troops standing there and the crowds on each side were extremely heavy’.
His regard for Churchill notwithstanding Benn noted that the funeral made him feel uneasy. It was attended by an array of world leaders but Benn thought it the ‘last great Victorian festival’ and left as soon as decently possible.
Some might argue that over 50 years on Britain is now a long way off the imperial era represented by Churchill, yet the State pomp and circumstance seen at his funeral is still very much part of the way the British Establishment goes on. The same monarch remains on the throne and politicians with very much the same kind of class and educational pedigree of Churchill himself sit in the Cabinet.
As the Sex Pistols noted in 1977 ‘there is no future in England’s dreaming…’
Historians renew call for 30th January to be a national holiday
The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in central London, has renewed its call for January 30th to be made a national holiday from 2022.
January 30th in 2021 marks the 372nd anniversary of the Regicide that saw King Charles executed in Whitehall for treason.
This ushered in the Commonwealth and the idea that Parliament not the Divine Right of Kings and Queens should decide what happens. The despatch of King Charles was the beginning of a modern Parliamentary Democracy (in fact since 1660 a Constitutional Monarchy)
The historians say that the event rather cuts against the idea that nothing particularly exciting or dramatic ever happens in British history.
Oliver Cromwell who headed the post-1649 Government died in 1658 and was succeeded by his son Richard.
However in 1660 the monarchy was restored and King Charles 11 dated the start of his reign from 30th January 1649 in the first attempt to write the Commonwealth period out of history. That is probably a key reason why the day is not a national holiday (as it certainly would be in France for example).
LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, you don’t need to be a republican to grasp that the moment when Parliamentary Democracy laid down its first roots is worth marking and a day off at the end of the bleak month of January would surely be no bad thing.
He continued, of course history is complex and while England and Wales can rightfully celebrate the events of 30th January 1649 as a democratic advance, in Ireland where Cromwell’s armies waged a bloody war things look rather different.
