Kmflett's Blog

Johnson didn’t mark the 200^th anniversary of Peterloo as PM. His contempt for Manchester continues

The Conservative Party Conference met at Manchester Central for its 2019 Conference which stands on an area that was part of where the Peterloo Massacre took place. The new monument to the Massacre by Jeremy Deller is immediately adjacent.

The Massacre in which 18 died and hundreds were injured in a protest to demand the vote took place two hundred years ago on 16th August 1819. Boris Johnson was silent on the anniversary itself.

There is no question that the Conservatives have baggage when it comes to Peterloo as the man who sent the Yeomanry in on horseback to disperse the crowd, William Hulton (1787-1864) was a lifelong Tory and after the 1832 Reform Act a founder of the South Lancashire Conservative Association.

It would be odd even so if the leader of a democratic political party meeting on the site of Peterloo in the 200th anniversary year had not acknowledged both the dreadful events of that day and the important role they played in the history of British Parliamentary Democracy.

Johnson did not.

A little over a year later he provoked a row with the Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham over Government financial aid to cover the impact of increased COVID-19 restrictions for the area. In the end it appears an amount £5m short of the minimum amount the Mayor thought essential is being paid, £60M.

The £5m difference to Burnham’s £65m is neither here nor there to Johnson financially, the man who wasted millions on a non-existent garden bridge,

Ideologically it is key though. The shortfall means those who cant work as a result of the restrictions wont get anything like a full wage and will struggle to pay costs.

Just as in ignoring the anniversary of Peterloo Johnson is still putting two fingers up to Manchester.

Geoffrey Boycott at 80 ‘Teach him to whack it!’

Its Geoffrey Boycott’s 80^th birthday today.

He is a controversial character who many feel we have already heard quite enough from.

He has given an interview of Nick Hoult the Telegraph’s cricket correspondent which of course is behind a paywall. If you are keen there are ways to read it still, visiting your local supermarket for instance.

It will not be a surprise however that he simply underlines many of the positions he is well known for (aside from blocking cricket balls). These include:

A continuing denial that he did anything wrong in the French Court case

A belief that life is faster now than when he was a lad so it should be 4 day Tests and bowlers should bowl overs more quickly.

A view that the BBC should be privatised although he doesn’t think this will happen for a while

His repeated point that Test Match Special is focused on questions of gender and race (& by inference that tedious right-wing views are not wanted)

On more interesting notes;

He wants his ashes scattered in the North Sea off Scarborough. His family don’t seem to agree with this plan.

He can’t find it within himself to believe in God because of the suffering he has seen in others in local hospices and so on.

He also understands the attraction of T20 cricket particularly for players who can stand to make good money at a young age.

His advice to his new grandson Joshua is below:

he will not be teaching young Joshua the merits of a solid forward defensive stroke any time soon. “Teach him to whack it!” he cries. “If he does that he can be rich before he is 30.”

Solidarity with Manchester. People ‘forgotten by those in power’ North & South

The breakdown of talks between the Government and Manchester leaders on financial support to cover the impact of additional COVID-19 restrictions is styled in some media as a north-south issue.

It isn’t as a comparison of the October 2020 claimant count for Tottenham in North London and Manchester Central below underlines (other Manchester Constituencies have similar figures)

It is about working people ‘forgotten’ by the Tory Government or perhaps as likely people they never knew existed.

People here have been living under restrictions for three months, he says – and it’s taken “a heavy toll”

“To accept any further restrictions would be certain to increase levels of poverty, homelessness and hardship,” he says.

People “too often forgotten by those in power” are most affected, he says.

Andy Burnham (reported BBC)

This isn’t about Manchester, Liverpool or any other part of the North vs London. It’s about communities up & down this country who are ignored, their representatives sidelined & belittled by an ideologically driven, out of touch & centralising Westminster & Whitehall #solidarity

Philip Glanville, Mayor of Hackney

Claimant Count October 2020

Manchester Central 9,740 7.8%

Tottenham 12,665; 12.7%

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/datasets/claimantcountbyparliamentaryconstituencyexperimental

Brexit, The Freeborn Englishman & No Wooden Shoes.

Edward Royle in his book Revolutionary Britannia suggests that the Freeborn Englishman saw patriotism as meaning three key things at the most basic level:

Roast beef

White bread

No Wooden Shoes

We can perhaps understand what the beef and bread  were about (although I will post further on that)  but in 2020 the ‘no wooden shoes’ seems odd.

There was in fact a serious politics behind it

In 1768 Joshua Reynolds wrote to Edmund Burke from Paris that he was ‘well acquainted with the opinion the English entertain in regard to the French that they wear nothing but wooden shoes

The slogan ‘Popery and Wooden Shoes’ was a reminder of the priest ridden and clog wearing peasants on the other side of the Channel.

This became a particular focus after the French Revolution when reactionary opinion in England sought to claim that it was the English who had political rights (not including the vote) whereas the French were impoverished by revolutionary events and ideas.

E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class notes of a meeting in this late eighteenth century period:

In Lancaster a ‘Jacobinical mob’ was addressed by a lady who told them the ‘contest was between shoes and wooden clogs, between fine shirts and coarse ones, between the opulent and the poor and that the people were everything if they chose to assert their rights’

Here a class aspect is added. A meeting supporting the French Revolution saw clogs as something the poor had to wear for lack of money to buy shoes.

At Peterloo once the crowd protesting for the vote had been violently dispersed by the Yeomanry both discarded shoes and clogs were to be found.

As with most things to do with the Freeborn Englishman there is a mixture of progressive and reactionary ideas in play.

The modern parallel with statements by right-wing Brexiteers is however striking. Brexit will reinforce traditional British superiority and make a break from the practices of the EU which have been holding the country back, at least according to them.

Beard Liberation Front

19^th October

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners say US Presidential Election is no place for men with beards

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the US Presidential Election in its last weeks of campaigning it is no place for men with beards.

There has not been a US President with a beard since Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) and pogonophobia rules at the highest levels in US politics.

Donald Trump is a notorious beard hater who agonised over appointing warmonger John Bolton, who has a moustache, as National Security Advisor at one point.

More recently he has said that he disapproves of the beard of Eric Trump

Business Insider magazine has commented that ‘Trump reportedly does not like facial hair. None of Trump’s close associates have facial hair, a pattern dating back decades’.

Joe Biden is also consistently clean shaven although he doesn’t have a record of pogonophobic remarks.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the message from the US Presidential Election is that if you’ve got a beard the two main candidates don’t want to hear from you. We expect Donald Trump might ban beards if re-elected. Joe Biden might not go that far but don’t expect a Beard Friendly White House from him either.

Black History Month: still no memorial for black Chartist leader William Cuffay

Those who used direct action to remove the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston earlier in the year were criticised, not least by Labour leader Keir Starmer, for failing to follow the correct democratic process for doing so.

Starmer was in favour of the statue being put in a museum and felt it should have happened a while ago, but not by the method by which it will now get there.

The point was of course that local campaigners had been trying for some years to get the Colston statue taken down and had met resistance and delay at every turn.

There is the view point, usually found on the political right, that Colston is part of British history- which is certainly correct- and so the statue should have remained but with a new plaque to reflect is activities as a slaver.

That had been tried too, at some length, and ultimately got nowhere.

With Black History Month in progress its worth recalling that there is still no memorial to the black leader of London Chartism William Cuffay either where he lived most of his life in central London or in the Medway Towns where he grew up.

Until quite recently, and this reflects how partial the history written of the British working class, even by those who were on its side, has been, he was an obscure figure.

I checked on a book about English radicalism in the first half of the nineteenth century by respected historians Edward Royle and James Walvin published almost 40 years ago. It has a chapter on the Chartist movement including 1848 but has not one mention of Cuffay.

That is not a reflection on the historians as much as the reality that it took Peter Fryer’s Staying Power, to  give William Cuffay his rightful place in history.

The reality is that he was referred to by the Times in 1848 in the terms of ‘the black man and his party’. That was because he was the London organiser of Chartism in that year of revolutions and a key figure behind the great Chartist demonstration on Kennington Common on April 10^th 1848.

Cuffay was to the left of the national Chartist leadership, arguably someone with revolutionary politics. He was also a central figure in a key part of the fight for what is now known as Parliamentary democracy.

Yet just as all official efforts to get the Colston statue taken down failed so all attempts to get any kind of memorial to Cuffay- who died 150 years ago this month- have also so far got nowhere.

There was a long running campaign to get a plaque put up on a premises in central London near where Cuffay had lived in the Seven Dials area. This has got nowhere because the private owner refused permission and ultimately nothing more has been done.

Medway looks a little bit more promising. I was one of the speakers at a well-attended public meeting organised by Medway Trades Council in July on Cuffay where plans to re-name an area to mark Cuffay’s origins in the area, were discussed.

There is a lot of local campaigning effort behind it so hopefully, unlike in London, something may actually happen.

It is a reminder of one of the key lessons of the Black Lives Matter movement. Certainly official channels should not be ignored. However changing the attitudes and the memorials of centuries of racism and imperial endeavours requires more than polite requests. Campaigns and protests on the ground are central, as William Cuffay himself well knew.

18th October

Following the science on COVID-19 pub restrictions?

Below are a couple of paragraphs from an Observer report (18.10) on COVID-19 pub restrictions. A link to the full article is also below.

If such restrictions were reasonably certain to limit infections they would be worth it-with a furlough for staff and support for businesses. As it is the report suggests that what is being proposed is not science at all but simply a mantra.

Manchester leaders had also had problematic meetings with Prof Jonathan Van Tam, the government’s deputy chief medical officer for England, which made them wonder if there was any science at all behind the plan. They had asked Van Tam if he could guarantee that closing pubs and clubs would bring the virus under control in their areas – and Van Tam said he couldn’t.

At 10.30am, things got even more fractious when the 29 local Labour and Tory MPs began a meeting with junior health minister Helen Whately. Van Tam was present again. When Van Tam told the MPs – who included five Tories who had won their “red wall” seats for the first time last December – that people in pubs and bars who talked above loud music were more likely to spread the virus, the Labour MP Lucy Powell was so cross she un-muted herself and told him in no uncertain terms that for 12 weeks it had been table service only in Greater Manchester, and that households had only been able to mix outside anyway.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/18/how-coronavirus-diktats-from-downing-street-tore-britain-apart

The Ambridge Socialist

18^th October

Modern Slavery Day. Philip & Gavin Moss confess to the BBC

As the Ambridge Socialist has previously reported while Philip and Gavin Moss’s gangmaster activities are bad enough it is the cover-up that is likely to get them caught. Kirsty has continued to be on the job of Gavin’s apparent problems with the ‘horses’ in fact of course slave labourers with two legs not four.

This week Gavin has had to listen to a lecture from Alastair about how he addressed his gambling addiction. Philip has clearly taken the view that the pretence is likely to end badly before long and started floating the idea of moving back to Wales.

18^th October is Modern Slavery Day and you can find Philip and Gavin Moss speaking out about the horses @BBCTheArchers in a short video.

One wonders if Sergeant Harrison ‘Sherlock’ Burns will take a look at their confession

Alice & the bottle

It has been another week of angst for Alice. On the one hand yet more temperance on advice. On the other hand zero attempts to deal with her actual drink problem. Abstention may well be the answer to that but it will be a process not an urging.

The search for Roman coins. Eddie Grundy retrains as a local history expert.

The Government has been urging people to re-train recently as unemployment rockets. Eddie Grundy is never knowingly unemployed when potential cash is around and so has styled himself as a local historian. He has an excellent claim to the title and predictably the Archers Dynasty are sneering at him

Vince Casey: do the Elbow Bump

Philip and Gavin Moss could take a few lessons from Vince Casey about how to be a dodgy businessman legally (ish). This week he has told Elizabeth that he hasn’t quite perfected his elbow bump technique yet. We wonder….

Beyond statistics: the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minorities

All deaths matter and it is right that those who sadly die from COVID-19 are recorded and statistics kept.

The ONS published on 16^th October updated statistics on the impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minorities which underlines the point, occasionally mentioned in the media, that death rates are considerably higher.

I have extracted a couple of paragraphs from the reports Executive summary and a link to the full report below:

In England and Wales, males of Black African ethnic background had the highest rate of death involving COVID-19, 2.7 times higher than males of White ethnic background; females of Black Caribbean ethnic background had the highest rate, 2.0 times higher than females of White ethnic background.

“Our statistical modelling shows that a large proportion of the difference in the risk of COVID-19 mortality between ethnic groups can be explained by demographic, geographical and socioeconomic factors, such as where you live or the occupation you’re in. It also found that although specific pre-existing conditions place people at greater risk of COVID-19 mortality generally, it does not explain the remaining ethnic background differences in mortality.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/updatingethniccontrastsindeathsinvolvingthecoronaviruscovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurring2marchto28july2020#main-points

As the report notes the reasons for the higher death rates are not primarily related to existing health conditions but rather to ‘demographic, geographical and socioeconomic’ factors.

That is far as statistics can take us but there are real people here, with friends and families and tragedies when they fall ill and die.

Our understanding of that is poor to non-existent. Who after all is inquiring?

One example comes from Tottenham in North London where the Borough of Haringey’s basketball coach Hesketh Benoit reports on the deaths from COVID-19 of 37 people he knew. All but one were from ethnic minorities.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-black-people-disproportionate-32-black-friends-died-hesketh-benoit-bame_uk_5f64a681c5b6b9795b0f3671

As infections rise again this issue cannot be ignored again and nor can the people and communities where the impact is.

A problem is that as a study by the GMB union has shown even now 25% of BAME workers do not have proper PPE. The history and lessons from earlier in the year are being ignored: