Kmflett's Blog

Its 30 years today since Mrs Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister. It is an important anniversary although as it turned out it did not mark the end of an era in British politics.

Mrs Thatcher resigned but Thatcherism lived and lives on. As Michael White made clear in a Guardian article on 23rd November 1990 the key purpose of Thatcher’s resignation was to achieve that aim. Her chosen successor John Major did indeed see off Michael Heseltine in the Tory leadership contest. He won the 1992 Election and stayed in Office until 1997 privatising the railways in the meantime.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/thatcher-resigns-from-archive

Of course there was a cause for celebration in Thatcher’s departure since the key reason for it was not the adversial brilliance of Labour leader Neil Kinnock but the mass movement of 1990 against the Poll Tax. Thatcher had been warned that it was unpopular, ignored the warnings and paid the price.

Tony Benn in his diary (22nd November 1990) noted that her resignation was ‘dazzling’ news but recorded that her performance in a Commons censure debate later in the day still far outshone Kinnock because she had her ‘ideology’ to fall back on.

The Ambridge Socialist

22^nd November

70 years of class struggle in Borsetshire

Eddie Grundy MUST appear in the Christmas Show

In what can only be seen as a blatant case of class discrimination Freddie Pargetter has failed to cast Eddie Grundy in the forthcoming Ambridge Christmas Show. Eddie is rightly upset about this as is the show’s sponsor Lynda Snell. Snell is well aware that without Grundy’s presence the masses of Borsetshire wont engage with the show and it will be a disaster.

Eddie Grundy wins the franchise to search for Roman coins at Brookfield

Eddie Grundy has again demonstrated where the intellectual firepower of Ambridge lies this week. Its not with the Archers but with the Grundys. David Archer had previously seized Eddie’s metal detector (without realising it was his) and threatened to go to the police. Now Eddie has persuaded Archer to return it on the promise of protecting the area from treasure hunters. He of course will now hold the single franchise for searching for Roman coins at Brookfield.

Scruff gin sell-out to Shires Brewery

The two genuine craft products produced in Ambridge are cheese and Scruff gin.  Toby has now taken up an earlier offer to sell the brand to Shires Brewery which certainly needs some kind of craft angle to its rather tired portfolio.

Alice seeks help

Alice has finally been forced to seek professional help for her drinking problem this week. Its likely that the root of the problem lay in being an Archer and the implications of that in Ambridge. Its perhaps worth noting however that her problem related largely to drinking spirits rather than sampling Shires bitter or Tumble Tussocks cider

Did British Communists ban beards?

It’s the 100^th anniversary of the Communist Party of Great Britain this year. Its founding conference was held in London in August 1920. The Party dissolved itself in 1990 although a successor, the Communist Party of Britain and the daily paper, the Morning Star live on in 2020.

There have been a range of events to mark the anniversary some organised by the CPB, others by the Socialist History Society (the broad successor to the Communist Party Historians Group) and one I attended today under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Labour History.

Prof. Kevin Morgan (Manchester)a noted authority on the CPGB spoke about the symbolism and structure of the early Conferences and Congresses of the Party up until the early 1940s.

There is a fair bit of detail about these events from published official accounts to detailed reports (these are held in the Moscow archives). There are also some photographs of delegates (later representatives)who attended.

One incidental detail was who those attending were. There are break downs by age and gender but as interesting to anyone on the left in 2020 is the dress and appearance of attendees.

I haven’t spotted one beard and Prof. Morgan opined that the emphasis was on respectability with bohemians and eccentrics strongly discouraged by the 1930s. Photos show rows of clean shaven men in suits and ties and (fewer) women wearing dresses and hats.

Raphael Samuel in his social history of the CPGB The Lost World of British Communism notes that while appearance as such was not an issue (rather taking care to produce a particular appearance- hair styles etc was frowned upon) the whole emphasis was on party members as part of the respectable working-class.

While this may have been more of a priority for the CPGB in terms of how it positioned itself in the labour movement there isn’t much evidence that the Labour Party or other left-wing organisations were significantly different.

It wasnt really a question of formally banning beards, its just that the beard wearer was not a Communist type of person.

Things have changed.

Beard Liberation Front

21st November

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Bill Bailey wins place on Beard of the Year shortlist

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Bill Bailey and Lenny Henry have won the first ‘trim-off’ vote for places on the Beard of the Year shortlist.

Bill Bailey easily topped the poll with 65% of the vote with Lenny Henry second on 18%

The long list consists of twelve names of whom eight will feature in the Beard of the Year vote

The first four listed on the long list have either won or featured consistently in the quarterly Beard of the Season votes held during the year as well as other regular polls. These four will feature in the ‘Beard-Off’ votes for Beard of the Year 2020 which will open on 1st December and close on 24th December. Beard of the Year will be announced on 28th December.

The remaining eight names will go to two deciding votes (four names in each vote) which will run for five days on 16th and 23rd November via Twitter. The top two from each round will join the first four to create a final list of eight on December 1st.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Bill Bailey’s Strictly Come Dancing performances have clearly helped his beard profile. The second ‘Trim-Off’ vote starts on 23^rd November and will determine the final two coveted places on the Beard of the Year shortlist.

Beard of the Year 2020 Longlist

Automatically on the final ‘Beard-Off’ votes from 1st December

Michael Rosen (winner Beard of Summer & Autumn)

Michael Sheen (winner Beard of Wales)

Peter Coles (winner Beard of Ireland)

Richard Osman (winner Beard of Spring)

Trim-Off

David Olusoga (historian)

George Alagiah (journalist)

Jurgen Klopp (football manager)

Stormzy (musician)

_____________________________________________________

Graham Norton (broadcaster)

Peter Alliss (golf commentator)

Bill Bailey (comedian)

Lenny Henry (actor)

Pubs, police spies & the left

The pub has been a traditional meeting place for radicals and the left (although some sections of the movement that disavowed drink met in a range of other locations).

The 200^th anniversary of the Cato St Conspiracy (a plot to kill the Cabinet in the wake of Peterloo) was marked in February. Police evidence at the trial of the conspirators noted a number of central London pubs where radicals were known to meet and both police and conspirators mingled in the Horse and Groom in Cato St itself.

200 years on not much has changed.

The evidence and tabled reports from undercover police officers in the first days of public hearings of the SpyCops Inquiry covered the late 1960s and early 1970s. Frequent reference is made to police spies having a drink with people they were watching in pubs after meetings. Reference can also be found to the point that more useful information was to be gathered this way than in meetings themselves:

Unfortunately no reference is made to what was being drunk, although at Cato St 200 years ago it would have been London porter.

The officers note that they claimed drinks they had back on expenses,they were after all ‘working’.

Tom Foot a journalist on the Camden New Journal has provided a detailed report of Spycops activities in Camden, including details of pubs that were used for left-wing meetings where police spies had been in attendance.

He notes that police monitored meetings of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the Laurel Tree pub in Bayham St which is now Camden Town Brewdog

http://camdennewjournal.com/article/secret-mission-how-detective-grew-a-beard-and-started-to-wear-corduroy-to-infiltrate-activist-groups

A new volume on the German SPD before 1914 also underlines the point about the links between police surveillance and pubs:

A particularly valuable source of working-class opinion is the collection of police surveillance reports of workers’ pubs in the Hamburg State Archives

Andrew Bonnell Red Banners, Books and Beer Mugs, the Mental World of German Social Democrats 1863-1914 (Brill 2021)

The Spycops sessions have contained only one reference to an officer getting drunk on a surveillance mission in a pub but we might recall the Alex Glasgow and Henry Livings song from Close the Coalhouse Door: A Soon As This Pub Closes (The Revolution Starts)

Equal Pay Day: 50 years since the Equal Pay Act the fight continues

20^th November is Equal Pay Day:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/women-in-mid-30s-may-never-know-equal-pay-in-their-working-lives

In summary due to unequal pay with men, women at work will in effect work for the rest of 2020 for nothing compared with how much their male colleagues are paid.

The Government has suspended the requirement to report the equal pay gap due to COVID-19 but there is solid evidence that in many areas it remains significant as does the related gender pension gap.

It is 50 years since the Equal Pay Act was passed and 45 since it was implemented in 1975

50 years of the Equal Pay Act: changes to the law needed but workplace organisation is key

Given that it has been illegal to pay unequally for equal or like work since the 1970s one might question how it is that there is still an equal pay issue at all. After all there are meant to be no, no go areas for law and order so one might expect transgressing employers to face the full force of the law.

A problem of course is that law doesn’t come cheap and people earning an average wage are certainly not in a position to engage a lawyer unless of course they are a member of a trade union.

Unionised workplaces generally have lower equal pay gaps because workers can address the issue collectively.

That said while the focus on the lack of equal pay and the recognition that it is an issue does represent progress the fact that unequal pay remains a significant issue underlines how difficult it is to make lasting progress and while persistence across generations is the key to doing so.

Beard Liberation Front

20^th November

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Liberation Front launches inquiry into possible ‘Spycops’ police infiltration

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has launched an investigation as to whether it was infiltrated by political police known as the Special Demonstration Squad.

The SDS was formed in 1968 and disbanded in 2008:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Demonstration_Squad

The Beard Liberation Front was formed in 1995 but this would still have left a considerable period when the organisation could have been infiltrated by SDS operatives.

The BLF says that prior to the SpyCops Inquiry which has held opening virtual public sessions it would not have thought itself a likely target. While its name sometimes causes an assumption that it is a militant political organisation in fact, as the BLF has made clear from the start, it is actually a broadly based campaign group which aims to tackle prejudice against facial hair.

The campaigners say concerns have arisen because at the SpyCops Inquiry it has become clear that officers believed the SDS was actually called the ‘Hairies’ and that growing a beard was de rigueur for its members as they believed that facial hair was a key signifier of members of the radical groups they infiltrated.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, of course beards can be subversive and there is nothing more status quo than a clean shaven man in a suit but that would hardly merit police surveillance. We are carrying out a review of the period 1995-2008 to see if there is any evidence of undercover police activity in the BLF.

A tale of two lockdowns: Boris Johnson’s England & Labour Wales

As the World Health Organisation makes clear from time to time lockdowns are very blunt instruments for dealing with epidemics and pandemics.

However if for various reasons other measures have failed or are not in place they can work to bring transmission and infection rates down. They do this essentially by reducing social interactions and getting people to stay at home more.

Below are a couple of statements that focus on this that relate to the Welsh firebreak lockdown now ended and the current lockdown in England.

It is interesting to note that the Welsh firebreak did reduce people moving around, social interactions and the rate of infection. Schools were also closed for part of it. The policy of the Welsh Government has never changed from advising people to work from home where they can.

In England, schools have remained open and early indications are that people movement has not reduced with working from home not being a key message.

(Vaughan Gething, Health Minister) thanked the people of Wales for their sacrifice during the lockdown, saying: “We have seen significant reductions in movement, we’re confident there’s been a reduction in household contact and all of those things will make a difference.

BBC Wales 8^th November

So-called high frequency indicators of the broader economy, including volumes of people travelling to workplaces and heavy goods vehicle traffic, remained largely unchanged compared with before the restrictions were imposed…

Financial Times 17^th November

The Small Breweries Duty Relief, class politics & the Minister

On 9^th November Plaid MP Liz Saville Roberts secured an adjournment debate (last of the day) in Commons on the Small Brewers Duty Relief.

Full credit to her for doing so. Living partly in Wales as I do Plaid’s leadership often comes across as being firmly in the camp of temperance(which has a solid and respectable Welsh tradition btw) but clearly there are other strands too.

The full debate from Hansard is here:

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2020-11-09/debates/F1EDB851-91FC-4F38-917A-A6E382D4D9CD/SmallBreweriesRelief

It was notable for attracting a reply from the Minister Kim Badenoch. Her bottom line was that the brewers were divided over the SBDR and that the Government as an honest broker was simply sorting things out. Further despite COVID more delay would not help.

Up to a point Lord Copper. As a union officer I sometimes hear employers telling people I’m representing that they will feel better once a particular process has completed and in all likelihood they end up sacked. They will of course until they look at their bank balance.

Badenoch correctly pointed out that some breweries that were not huge supported the changes to SBDR and named three, Lancaster, Theakstons and Michael Gove’s favourite Hogs Back.

Significantly though the clear majority of MPs who spoke up against the SBDR changes were Tories. There were two Labour MPs but unfortunately it seems that this is not an informal priority for Sir Keir Starmer despite the fact he is a noted craft beer drinker.

Even so that reflects a clear split in the Tories ranks between those who back smaller breweries, backbench MPs obviously, and the Government who back larger regional ones who represent what’s left of the Beerage.

If you were interested in playing the games of Parliamentary politics (hardly my department, my politics lie mostly outside Parliament) or even if you were interested in promoting an effective campaign on the SBDR changes (for or against) intervening in that Tory divide might produce interesting results. After all despite having a majority of 80 in times like these Johnson’s Government is far from a stable one.

CAMRA and SIBA reaction

Michael Gove & Hog’s Back

A story of Small Brewers Duty Relief,a Surrey brewery & Michael Gove