Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

13^th September

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Friendly Pub of Summer 2020 Shortlist

The Beard Liberation Front has said that nominations for the Beard Friendly Pub of Summer 2020 closed at midnight on 12^th September, with a vote to follow between 14th and 30th September.

The on-line poll will feature ten of the most beard friendly pub and bars and the order of appearance on the poll will be determined by the number of nominations each has received.

The Beard Friendly Pub of the Year is an annual feature in January each year and the vote will run as usual in January 2021.

However in the extraordinary circumstances of summer 2020, the Beard Liberation Front has decided to run a one-off additional vote to find the Beard Friendly Pub of the Summer.

The decisive winner in the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year 2020 poll which saw 11,000 votes cast in 10 days was the Bumble Inn micropub in Peterborough. The runner up was the Cock Tavern in Hackney

Both of these pubs will be automatically on the poll.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we appreciate that not all pubs have felt it’s safe to re-open and equally that not everyone will want to venture to a pub. However for those who have been able to re-open safely we felt a chance to discover which is the most beard friendly in such exceptional circumstances would be an appropriate thing to do.

The criteria for the Award include:

A safe environment for all. Hand Sanitiser, Customer details taken for track and trace, socially distanced seating, safe serving methods, safe toilet facilities

Beard Friendly Pub: a pub that welcomes the hirsute and often has a significant number of hirsute customers, including but certainly not confined to those with modern styles of beards.

Beard Friendly Ambience: a pub that may have fewer hirsute customers but is welcoming to the hirsute through some bearded bar staff and beard friendly beers, plus has a generally relaxed atmosphere for all.

The campaign group says it welcomes diversity in both appearance and drinking. The truly beard friendly pub will have a genuine mix of customers not just a load of old blokes grumbling about life.

Write in a nomination OR post a comment to the post

Beard Friendly Pub Summer 2020

Shortlist

Tom’s Tap & Brew, Crewe

The Cock Tavern, Hackney

The Bumble Inn. Peterborough

The High Cross, Tottenham

The Crafty Devil Cellar, Cardiff

The Maltings, York

The Three Horseshoes, Bradford on Avon

The Tipsy Pig, Romsey

Euston Tap, London

Fell Brewery Tap, Kendal

The Ambridge Socialist

13^th September

David Archer stands ready as the Tories press on with badger cull

SONY DSC

Tory Minister George Eustice announced an extension to the badger cull in England this week despite a Tory pledge earlier in the year to end the cull of the protected species.

It is thought that badgers may be linked to Bovine-TB, a continuing problem, although specific evidence is lacking. The alternative to culling is to vaccinate badgers against TB, a programme that is proven to work. However Ambridge Socialist readers will be aware of the problem the present Government has with anything to do with vaccinations.

It will give the green light to well known badger murderer David Archer who was apprehended for shooting a badger some years back. The cull has been underway in Gloucestershire and Borsetshire for some while. A mystery is why we don’t hear any news of Archer’s badger murder lust in BBC reports from Ambridge.

Prospero the Peacock provides appropriate and measured response

After Kenton murdered The Bull’s previous peacock (an act which obviously interested neither Sgt Burns or the RSPCA) a new one, Prospero has arrived. It has promptly roamed and was to be found attacking Sergeant Burns this week. Knacker claimed it was because Prospero had been concerned about some peacock feathers but all Ambridge Socialist readers will know the peacock had spotted a class enemy and decided to take direct action. Later on Radio Borechester Susan Carter claimed that peacocks are dangerous. Not as dangerous as police officers though.

Theft from the Village shop

Susan and Tracy, the Inspector Clouseau’s of Ambridge are investigating thefts from the village shop. While the obvious candidates are David Archer and Prospero so far they have managed to put Joy and Gavin in the frame. Gavin is definitely guilty though his numerous crimes are rather more significant than shoplifting.

Who is stealing from the village shop?

In Other News

Lynda and Robert are still trying to sort out their marriage and sex lives. This clearly fascinates a certain cohort of Archers listeners

Britannia’s sons,though slaves ye be,

God your Creator made you free,

He, life and thought and being gave,

But never,never made a slave.

All men are equal in his sight,

The bond,the free, the black, the white,

He made them all, them freedom gave,

He made the man- Man made the slave

These words attributed to the Chartist Thomas Cooper, were sung at a Yorkshire Chartist camp open air meeting in February 1848 held to support the French Revolution of that year. They are quoted in the Dignity of Chartism, a collection of the writings of the late socialist and feminist historian Dorothy Thompson.

The references to God are a reminder of the strong religious element to some of English radicalism (much criticised by Engels) although there was also a freethough tradition associated with the followers of Robert Owen. The emphasis on ‘men’ is a reminder too that while there were many female Chartists the immediate demand was for adult male suffrage.

Finally as Rule Britannia is sung at the Last Night of the Proms  these words remind us that many saw slavery relating to the labour relationship and to black and white even in 1848..

Rule Britannia. A much disputed part of British history

After something of a media and social media furore, largely confected as a culture war by the right it might be suggested, the BBC have determined that Rule Britannia will be played at the Last Night of the Proms this year and after several policy changes the words will be sung as well.

This suggests that the BBC is still on the page of thinking that Black Lives Matter is a moment not a movement.

Objections to the song came not just because of the words but also because of the nationalistic context it is now sung in. When you get Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage backing a cause you know something is very wrong.

While the whole matter was whipped up by the right as a distraction from many more important matters-a failing Tory Government being a key one- it wasn’t entirely without substance.

The BBC website did in fact report that the appropriateness of the song was being considered before the media furore.

One striking aspect of the whole thing was an absence even in commentaries by left of centre writers was an understanding that the nature of Rule Britannia as a patriotic dirge has been disputed more or less since it was first written

The song itself has a mixed history. Written as patriotic, the tune was often played but with different words sung.

It was for example played at Peterloo on 16th August 1819 when 18 people died and hundreds were injured by the Yeomanry after peacefully protesting for the vote.

It’s not fully clear if words were also sung but one likely version included the verse:

Will ye yield to die with hunger?

Shall the dungeon hide each head?

Shall the scoundrel Borough-monger

Rob you of your hard earn’d bread?

The history of the usage of the song is certainly complex.

Radicals held to a concept of the Freeborn Englishman with a number of liberties and rights. While these in theory accorded with how Governments of the day saw things, the practice often diverged. Hence on occasion the singing of Rule Britannia could be subversive.

E P Thompson gives an example in the Making of the English Working Class.

In the Middlesex By-Election of 1804 the radical candidate was Sir Francis Burdett. He won the poll (in pre-1832 Reform Act conditions) but his opponent was declared the winner by one vote by the Sheriff who determined that the poll had  closed when his opponent was ahead after 15 days of voting.

Even so a moral victory was celebrated by Burdett’s supporters:

An exultant crowd dragged him through London ‘amidst a cavalcade, that appeared like a moving wood- the carriages and horsemen being covered with green boughs’, while the band played ‘Rule Britannia’ and a flag flew above Burdett’s coverage painted with Hercules treading on the Hydra’.

It may be however that the subversion in such cases was that by playing Rule Britannia radicals could claim they were patriotic and were simply pursuing rights and liberties which in that context they should already have had.

The song was also sung in the Chartist period from the late 1830s at radical protests, dinners and meetings.

Here the line about Britons never being slaves had more complexity. There was a link made between African slavery and the conditions of many workers in Britain. There is a significant difference between unfree and free labour although both involve exploitation. However the practice of payment in kind known as Truck was common up to the 1830s.

Rule Britannia is not a song of the left in 2020 but that doesn’t mean the right should own its history

This post originally appeared in the Morning Star

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

12^th September

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Final Call for Nominations for Beard Friendly Pub of Summer 2020

The Beard Liberation Front has said that nominations for the Beard Friendly Pub of Summer 2020 will close at midnight on 12^th September, with a vote to follow between 14th and 30th September.

The on-line poll will feature ten of the most beard friendly pub and bars and the order of appearance on the poll will be determined by the number of nominations each has received.

The Beard Friendly Pub of the Year is an annual feature in January each year and the vote will run as usual in January 2021.

However in the extraordinary circumstances of summer 2020, the Beard Liberation Front has decided to run a one-off additional vote to find the Beard Friendly Pub of the Summer.

The decisive winner in the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year 2020 poll which saw 11,000 votes cast in 10 days was the Bumble Inn micropub in Peterborough. The runner up was the Cock Tavern in Hackney

Both of these pubs will be automatically on the poll.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we appreciate that not all pubs have felt it’s safe to re-open and equally that not everyone will want to venture to a pub. However for those who have been able to re-open safely we felt a chance to discover which is the most beard friendly in such exceptional circumstances would be an appropriate thing to do.

The criteria for the Award include:

A safe environment for all. Hand Sanitiser, Customer details taken for track and trace, socially distanced seating, safe serving methods, safe toilet facilities

Beard Friendly Pub: a pub that welcomes the hirsute and often has a significant number of hirsute customers, including but certainly not confined to those with modern styles of beards.

Beard Friendly Ambience: a pub that may have fewer hirsute customers but is welcoming to the hirsute through some bearded bar staff and beard friendly beers, plus has a generally relaxed atmosphere for all.

The campaign group says it welcomes diversity in both appearance and drinking. The truly beard friendly pub will have a genuine mix of customers not just a load of old blokes grumbling about life.

Write in a nomination OR post a comment to the post

Beard Friendly Pub Summer 2020

Rule Britannia will be sung at the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday night and no doubt Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson will be raising a large glass of French wine or several somewhere.

In the Making of the English Working Class (1963) the late E P Thompson reminded that radicals in the nineteenth century were keen on puncturing the patriotism of Britannia and all her works…

The Sheffield Register (30th November 1792) reported a demonstration of five or six thousand people in support of the French Revolution:

(it) drew a quartered roasted ox through the streets amid the firing of a cannon. In the procession were:

‘a caricature painting representing Britannia- Burke* riding on a swine- and a figure, the upper part of which was the likeness of a Scotch Secretary+, and the lower part that of an Ass..the pole of Liberty lying broken on the ground,inscribed ‘Truth is Libel’-the Sun breaking from behind a cloud, and the Angel of Peace, with one hand dropping the ‘Rights of Man’,and extending the other to raise up Britannia.

As resolute and determine a set of villains as I ever saw, remarked a hostile observer.

*Edmund Burke was a reactionary writer and politician

+ the reference is to Henry Dundas the Home Secretary

Still as Boris Johnson said “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history,”

Beard Liberation Front

11^th September

Financial Times dubs lockdown beards a sign of social change

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has backed a perspective that suggests the lockdown beard is a sign of social change.

According to an FT article by Gillian Tett lockdown beards are a sign of liminality, that is something that marks a situation that has changed significantly from the existing status quo.

In this particular instance the lockdown beard has marked a period when some have worked from home.

The FT piece argues that as some people return to the office the clean shaven approach may reassert itself.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we suspect many will prefer to keep their beards and stay working from home. Of course many have always had beards but have allowed them to grow more organically. This is a nuance the FT is unaware of.

https://www.ft.com/content/b4dcddd0-baf7-4a0b-95c9-245e6096f355

Michael Rosen has been voted Beard of Lockdown 2020. He shaved Michael Sheen for the honour

https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2020/07/25/author-michael-rosen-voted-best-beard-of-lockdown/

Remembering the two 9/11s. Not yet ready for the history books

Few will need reminding that it is the 19th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, 11th September 2001.

Rather more might need a reminder of the other 9/11 in 1973 when a democratically elected socialist Government in Chile was brutally ousted by a US backed fascist coup.

Both the 9/11s are not yet history. The US is still intervening in the South of the Americas and the aftermath of the Iraq War which developed from the dreadful attack in New York is still with us.

For the most part the Twin Towers attack saw ordinary people quite unconnected to the US policies which provided the pretext for the attack left dead and injured.

Many others will be able to remember with more than usual clarity where they were on that September day 19 years ago. I was at the TUC in Brighton. This was well before the days of instant access to the web via a smart phone.

It became clear in the hall that something had happened. That year’s TUC Chair Bill Morris made an announcement that a plane had hit the twin towers. At that stage the extent of devastation was unknown.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was due to address the gathering immediately after lunch. He appeared briefly said a speech would be inappropriate and hurried off to London. Business was suspended.

Delegates were stunned. Indeed so dazed was I that I recall shaking hands with the then General Secretary of my Union, not a normal event by any means.

I then retired to the Evening Star pub. After all when the world falls apart some things stay in place and it was definitely one of those days. Unexpected and unfathomable for the moment.

Blair of course had a very distinct reaction to those events. Afghanistan was in the frame for the start of what became the ‘war on terror’. That eventually led to an illegal war in Iraq and the biggest demonstration ever in British history against it on 15^th February 2003. I was of course there.

As for Pinochet and Chile his bloody regime eventually met its end but if you were looking at a Government in the Americas that might suggest intervention by an outside power in 2020 it would surely be that in Washington.

Anniversary of the death of Gerrard Winstanley & the need to keep remembering history

Thanks to English Radical History and author Michael Rosen for reminding that today is the anniversary of the death of the Digger Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676)

His Wiki entry is here:

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

Winstanley is perhaps best known for being part of a group that set up a settlement at St George’s Hill in Surrey in April 1649 as part of the radical Diggers movement- essentially claiming the land for the people. Today the area is a prosperous part of the Home Counties.

Winstanley and the Diggers have been celebrated in radical history and by radical historians. Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down remains in print and available as an e-book (2019/2020, Penguin). Various editions of Winstanley’s own writings should also be available although they could also do with being republished for a new audience.

Yet while Winstanley and the history of the Diggers is probably well known to generations on the left, inspiring the Billy Bragg song for example, it cant be assumed that this historical knowledge simply continues on. Often what is known in one decade has become obscured several decades later.

The work of radical historians in continuing not just to draw attention to the traditions and the histories of the left but also to research them further and understand what they mean in the context of 2020 remains essential.

Gerrard Winstanley, political and religious reformer, died #OnThisDay 1676. Regarding the earth ‘a common treasury’, Winstanley was the leader of the agrarian Civil War-era Diggers movement that established communities across England to cultivate waste and common land.

@englishradical

The Campaign for Real Conkers

Media Release. Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

10^th September

As World Conker Championships are cancelled, campaigners promote socially distanced game

The Campaign for Real Conkers, that opposes bans on conker playing and unnecessary rules and regulations in games has said that that with the cancellation of the World Conker Championships this year the way is open for people to stop watching others play conkers and play the game themselves.

The conker season is now open and the campaigners say it is the ideal game for new social distancing regulations in England that will apply from 14^th September.

Early indications are that 2020 will see a good crop of conkers and windy weather has already seen some fall from trees.

The campaigners say that while they are maintaining their usual ‘anything goes’ approach to conker games, to encourage people to play without arbitrary rules, in 2020 some COVID-19 safety guidelines will apply.

Campaign Organiser Keith Flett said, we have maintained for years that the World Conker Championships with their rigid and outdated rules discourage people from actually playing the game. Of course it is bad news for the charities supported but it is good news for those who believe that conkers is a game to be played not spectated on.

World Conker Championship 2020 Cancellation

https://www.worldconkerchampionships.com/

Guide on how to play real conkers safely in 2020

1] Select your conker. Do this yourself. DO NOT use a conker provided by someone else who may give you a poor specimen.

2] Do not allow your chosen conker to be handled by others and once selected immediately sanitise it.

3] There is no specific kind of conker that makes a good game winner. Large conkers may more easily splinter for example. Some prefer conkers with flat and sharp edges

4] You may use the conker ‘as is’ known as ‘organic’. Alternatively you may seek to harden it by baking it, soaking it in vinegar etc. There is no guarantee that an artificially enhanced conker will perform any better than an organic one.

5] Drill a small hole through the conker. A nail will often achieve this. Again you must do this yourself

6] Thread the conker through the hole you have drilled. A strong chord, perhaps a shoelace is best

7] You are now ready to play.

8] Please wear a mask when playing and make sure your opponent is also wearing one

9] Make sure that the chord is long enough to allow you to stand at least 1 metre plus away from your opponent. This would generally be the case as space is required for the conker swing.

10] Players take alternate turns to try and hit and destroy their opponent’s conker

11] Those with poor aim may hit the knuckles of their opponent more often than the conker so you may wish to wear gloves.

12] If the conker does come into contact with an opponent please sanitise it before a further round

13] The winner is the player who determines their opponents conker unusable in further rounds, usually by causing it to splinter into two or more pieces

14] Play safely and enjoy!