Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

17^th April

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Radio beards & broadcasting gravitas: Nick Robinson v Justin Webb

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that after considerable social media interest in the facial hair of two presenters of BBC Radio4’s Today programme, Nick Robinson and Justin Webb it has decided to test which beard bristles with more broadcasting gravitas.

Nick Robinson wore a beard in 2019 while presenting Today but is currently clean shaven. Justin Webb has grown a lockdown beard while presenting the programme from his home office. This week Robinson tweeted criticism of Webb’s beard suggesting that there may be a round of BBC Beard Wars in progress.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, there is no question that radio beards can add broadcasting gravitas. Former The World Tonight presenter who was voted Beard of the Year 2012. In 2020 we’re checking to see if Nick Robinson or Justin Webb can hope to match that level of hirsute profundity in future.

11^th April 1820: the last of the revolutionary risings sparked by Cato Street in February 1820

Following attempted risings at Huddersfield in on April 1^st 1820 and a General Strike and armed battle in the West of Scotland from 4^th April 1820, the night of April 11^th 1820 saw the last attempted risings and strikes in Yorkshire.

They had all been sparked by the Cato St Conspiracy in London on 23^rd February 1820 which in turn was one reaction to the Peterloo Massacre in August 1819:

https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2020/02/23/the-cato-st-conspiracy-at-200-an-outcrop-of-peterloo-the-armed-tradition-in-working-class-politics/

Malcolm Chase makes the point in his book on the year 1820 that after Cato St Ministers expected and feared armed risings.

What E P Thompson made of the events of early April 1820 remains of interest and I’ll post separately on that.

The events of April 11^th are detailed below by Fred Donnelly.

late in the evening of 11 April, the men of Barnsley assembled and met up with contingents from Dodworth and Monkbretton. They passed through Worsborough and went on towards Huddersfield at one a.m., now numbering perhaps 400 in all. Their military leaders were two local weavers (and ‘Waterloo men’), William Comstive and Richard Addy, who marched them along to the beat of a drum. The Dodworth men were likewise led by John Pickering, a 26-year-old weaver who had served in the infantry. They had flags with political slogans, which they had previously used at meetings in 1819. In addition to pikes and guns, the men carried various provisions in knapsacks on their backs. Scouts with local knowledge went ahead to identify houses where more guns might be seized. In true military style, the insurgents were equipped to issue civilians with receipts for any goods confiscated.

Arriving at Grange Moor in the early hours of 12 April, the Barnsley men were greeted by twenty local radicals from Huddersfield rather than the thousands they had expected. Comstive formed the men into a line and posted sentinels while the leaders discussed the situation. Thomas Farrimond cried out that they had been betrayed, and panic set in. Men fled in all directions, discarded their weapons, and dropped their flags. No military engagement took place, and the troops sent to confront the insurgents simply arrested seventeen persons and collected weapons from the ground. [Various depositions in T.S. 11 979/3573 which are more accurate than exaggerated accounts in Leeds Mercury, 15 Apr. 1820 and Leeds Intelligencer, 17 April 1820.]

Elsewhere in the clothing district, support for the uprising was guarded. At Mirfield and Dewsbury there were general strikes. [Byng to Harewood, 12 Apr. 1820, Harewood Mss.] At Halifax on 12 April 1820 there was a march of radicals who fired off a rocket and demonstrated loudly, but non-violently, on Beacon Hill before dispersing. [Leeds Intelligencer, 17 Apr. 1820.]

Indeed, the Grange Moor rising had turned out to be another failure. Yorkshire radicals did not come out in force to support the Barnsley men, and the anticipated support from Lancashire radicals never materialised. As one Yorkshire radical put it, somewhat cryptically, “…our Musick in Yorkshire [h]as played twise where yours in Lankshire has never struck at all. Is your Musicians sick [?]” [Message of J. Brooke contained in letter of J. Tyas, 14 Apr. 1820, T.S. 11 1013/4131.]

The Ambridge Socialist

16th April

The Bull is the only pub open in the UK currently (thankfully). However the BBC has reported that on Easter Monday the final victory to keep The Bull as a community pub was achieved.

The new Bull sign was unveiled in the presence of Lynda Snell whose ReBulls were part of the campaign.

The misjudged B @ Ambridge has passed into history

Thanks to all those who supported the campaign. Let’s hope for a great future for The Bull after lockdown.

In the meantime the Ambridge Socialist will be raising a glass tonight to the pub and the campaign

Fantasy sports rankings & E P Thompson’s ‘unhistorical shit’

I’m not sure that E P Thompson makes that many appearances in the Guardian’s sports pages but Barney Ronay managed a highly relevant reference in a column on 11^th April. An extract and a link is below and below that is the section from Poverty of Theory where Thompson made the reference.

His point is that things change because of the actions of people not because a model or a statistic suggests they should. At the moment unfortunately there are no sporting actions being made by people. Period.

What is Expected Goals, or the Expected Points Table, or a counterintuitive stats-based gallery of the leading creative left-backs in Europe (No 5 will surprise you!) if not the type of “unhistorical shit” that so enraged the 20th-century historian EP Thompson? What is a revisionist colour sidebar take on the managerial achievements of José Mourinho, but the kind of counterfactual “parlour game” EH Carr, chronicler of the early Soviet Union, would have raged against?

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2020/apr/10/vacuum-month-sport-that-never-was-barney-ronay

We might define the present situation more precisely if we employed a category found frequently in Marx’s correspondence with Engels, but a category which evaded Althusser’s vigilant symptomatic scrutiny. All this ‘shit’ (Geschichten-scheissenschlopff), in which both bourgeois sociology and Marxist structuralism stand up to their chins (Dahrendorf beside Poulantzas, modernization theory beside theoretical practice) has been shat upon as by conceptual paralysis, by the de-historicising of process, and by reducing class, ideology, social formations, and almost everything else, to categorical stasis. The sociological section: the elaborate differential rotations within the closure of the orrery; the self-extrapolating programmed developmental series; the mildly disequilibrated equilibrium models, in which dissensus strays unhappily down strange corridors, searching for a reconciliation with consensus; the systems-analyses and structuralisms, with their torques and their combinatories; the counter-factual fictions; the econometric and cleometric groovers – all of these theories hobble along programmed routes from one static category to the next. And all of them are Geschichtenscheissenschlopff, unhistorical shit.

The 1830 Beer Act and Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt

Henry Hunt who had been the speaker at Peterloo on 16^th August 1819 was a farmer and for a period 10 years or so before Peterloo he owned a brewery producing what would now be called organic beer in Bristol.

https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2018/11/03/how-ownership-of-a-bristol-brewery-set-henry-hunt-in-the-road-to-peterloo/

While Hunt later ran a range of businesses that specialised in producing non-excisable alternatives to taxable ones for a radical audience he clearly retained a love for beer and pubs.

The Malt Tax passed in 1816 had made beer more expensive and led according to E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class both to a decline in beer consumption and a rise in home brewing.

Thompson notes that some felt that the Malt Tax was an ‘incitement to revolution’. When in the 1830 Britain came close to revolution, it was repealed and replaced with the Beer Act.

This allowed houses selling only beer to open with minimal regulation. Thompson reports that by 1835 35,000 Beer Houses had appeared from nowhere.

From 1830 until 1833 Hunt was MP for Preston.

On 31^st May 1832 the Durham MP Arthur Trevor sought agreement to bring in a Bill to make conditions for Beer Shops stricter:

leave to bring in a Bill to amend the existing enactments relative to the sale of Beer in Beer-shops. He was aware he should have several prejudices to contend with, in combatting a Bill which was considered a boon at the time. He had, however, for some time watched the operation of the Act which had been passed for placing the sale of beer upon a different footing from that upon which licensed victuallers were placed. From all that he had observed, the alteration had been productive of increased drunkenness and disorder, and he thought that the time was arrived when some amendments ought to be made. The evidence of the Magistracy and the Clergy, in districts both great and small, and even of some of the working classes, was, that the great number of these beer-shops, spread over the country, led the labouring people into idleness and drunkenness, which, not unfrequently, was the means of the consummation of crime

Hunt opposed the change in the following terms:

opposed the Bill, and expressed a wish that beer-shops and public houses might be placed on the same footing; and, above all, hoped that the power of licensing, as hitherto exercised, would not be allowed to remain in the hands of Magistrates, lay and ecclesiastical.

In short Hunt wanted less regulation of Beer Houses not more, knowing they were meeting places for radicals.

Beard Liberation Front

15^th April

Media Release: contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Liberation Front gives guidance as Lockdown beard trimming crisis develops

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has reacted to a growing Lockdown crisis of beard trimming.

The campaigners say that they are regularly contacted by people who have grown full Lockdown beards since the end of March but faced with closed barbers and hairdressers shops, face the task of trimming their new beard themselves.

The BLF has drawn up a guide on how to safely trim the beard for Lockdown beard wearers.

They say the first rule for new trimmers is NOT to use an electric shaver or trimmer. These may be useful tools in the hands of experienced beard wearers but for the newly hirsute they provide too much chance of over or under trimming.

Lockdown beard trimming guidelines

1 First you will need to decide what kind of beard shape you are trimming to. If it’s a full Brian Blessed type beard only judicious tweaks will likely be required. If by contrast you’re aiming for a goatee or a chin beard a more extensive trim may be needed

2 The beard should first be brushed with a comb. Any out of place hairs or split ends should be identified and plucked out at this stage

3 Determine the beard-line on your face. How far do you want your Lockdown beard to grow towards your eyes and nose?

4 Make sure that the beard has a reasonably well defined neckline. Hairs below this should be clipped back with a pair of fine scissors, preferably with blunt ends.

5 Make sure that the moustache is not unruly and that no hairs are hanging over the upper lip. Generally scissors and a comb can achieve this.

6 Trim back to the desired length and style referenced in point 1 again using scissors

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, of course for the experienced beard wearer, trimming will often be a more complex and detailed activity but for the Lockdown beard wearer this should make their beard serviceable for several weeks ahead.

Turning the World Upside Down after Easter: Hocktide

British traditions are varied and confusing and those around Easter are no exception.

A strand of radicalism is a frequent thread. That is, the existing order of power relations is subverted in some way. The most common form of this is the Lord of Misrule, a character who is the precise reverse of the existing order of monarchs and other leaders. The figure is meant to be one of fun but as often disorder and riot are also present.

Easter has little association with Misrule but there is still a subverting tradition- that of Hocktide. In more recent times (and I’m not sure it existed beyond the early nineteenth century) it took place on Easter Monday or Tuesday. Earlier it was to be found at the end of a much longer Easter festival- two weeks or so after Easter Sunday.

Hocktide involved most commonly groups of women, married or single, kidnapping men and holding them to ransom for money. Originally the money raised went to local Church funds but it appears that later it was used to fund sporting activities.

In a male dominated society it was a rare expression of female power.

Hocktide, like many other religious associated customs was discouraged under the Long Parliament in the 1640s and even more so during the period of Cromwellian Government in the 1650s.

With the Restoration in 1660 it returned and it wouldn’t be surprising to find even today some echoes of the tradition taking place. Although clearly in 2020 Hocktide will be virtual

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27214352

Hugh Rossi. Tory MP for Hornsey 1927-1920. A North London that has passed into history

Sir Hugh Rossi who was the Tory MP for Hornsey and then Hornsey & Wood Green from 1966 until 1992 has died at 92 is a reminder of a North London that has passed into history.

The idea that the present Constituency would elect a Tory MP is more or less unimaginable so much has the area changed in terms of residents (though not perhaps in terms of wealth).

Yet Hornsey in the 1960s and 1970s while one of the centres of an emerging counter-culture was also a well to do area of people whose world outlook tended to be Conservative.After all Stanley Johnson and a very youthful Boris Johnson lived in the Constituency for a few months (there was strong minority Communist Party tradition too..)

The current Labour MP Catherine West tweeted that she had never met Mr Rossi and that I think was something that most constituents of Mr Rossi also felt when he was an MP. This was an era when MPs by and large were not expected to be seen that much in their local area (though he lived locally just outside the Constituency) except at Election times.

I certainly encountered him at Election times in Crouch End Broadway but in my memory the deployment of my socialist megaphone was invariably sufficient to see him off.

According to his Wiki entry he was a one nation Tory who served as a junior Minister in Thatcher’s administrations. That wasn’t quite my memory but in truth a review of his Hansard speeches reflects a concern for environmental issues probably much in tune with many who live in the area now.

Obviously I’m no fan of Tories but the historical context of local politics and MPs is still worth recording.

No doubt Jeremy Corbyn who was Labour agent in the last 1979 General Election campaign for the old Constituency where Rossi beat Ted Knight has more focused memories…

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

https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/sir-hugh-rossi-hornsey-mp-haringey-councillor-dies-1-6606918

Ralph Miliband on Labour as a ‘Broad Church’

The late Ralph Miliband wrote one of the best books about the history of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Socialism,1961, albeit of course it doesn’t cover the last 60 years.

Miliband, the father of David and Ed, opens the book by making the statement that as a democratic socialist party Labour had always been amongst the most dogmatic. Not about socialism but about the use of Parliamentary as opposed to extra-Parliamentary forms of struggle.

His view at that time was that Labour under Hugh Gaitskell was not a vehicle for socialist advance and the leadership of the rather more ‘left-wing’ Harold Wilson did nothing to change his mind.

He did however keep the matter under review and sometimes returned to the subject, for example in the Socialist Register 1983:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/miliband/1983/xx/advance.htm

Here he see the rise of the Bennite left as a sign that may be Labour could be claimed for socialism. Significantly perhaps it appeared in the year that a, then young, Jeremy Corbyn first became an MP.

Tom Watson before he stepped down described an effort to abolish his then Deputy Leader position as going against the idea of Labour as a ‘broad church’. Harold Wilson was probably right that Labour owes more to Methodism than Marx but as Miliband noted the ‘broad’ part of the description is harder to justify historically.

Pious references to the Labour Party being a ‘broad church’ which has always incorporated many different strands of thought fail to take account of a crucial fact, namely that the ‘broad church’ of Labour only functioned effectively in the past because one side – the Right and Centre – determined the nature of the services that were to be held, and excluded or threatened with exclusion any clergy too deviant in its dissent.

Socialists can certainly be active in the Labour Party and have been but managing to control it as an institution and grapple with its Parliamentary focus is much harder as the leak of a document about Labour HQ officials thoughts and activities in the early years of Corbyn’s Premiership underlines.

No doubt the material leaked is partial but beyond that who makes derogatory comments on WhatsApp or other electronic mediums without realising they may ultimately be seen by others unless they believe they never will because ‘they’ will always ultimately be in charge?

Beard Liberation Front

14th April

Media Release

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Guide to growing a Working From Home beard: Week 4 Decision Time

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with many working from home, and barbers closed, the numbers of people growing beards has increased significantly. It has previously provided a 6 step guide on how to do this.

With many work meetings now taking place virtually via Skype or Zoom a working from home beard can add gravitas to the wearers on-line presence.

The campaigners say that with a Working From Home beard now at Week 4 it will be for many, decision time. The question to be determined in the next few days is whether the beard is suitable in style, substance and length for it to stay

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, even organic beards need to be kept regularly under review. Week 4 of a Working From Home beard is a time for a serious review of how the beard is going and whether progress is acceptable or whether remedial work is required.

Working From Home beard. How to assess progress

1 Carry out an initial check for split hair ends or hair growth where it is not suitable for style

2 An organic beard grows naturally. Check for length. An unstyled beard might be 3 inches long from the lower lip or more (in time)

3 If you have been aiming to grow a beard of a certain style check from progress and shape and prune accordingly.

4 Check for broad equality of hair growth across the beard. If there are small gaps or under developed areas it may be worth reviewing the style of beard to suit.

5 Only the individual can decide it the beard ‘works’ or if it needs to be reviewed further or even shaved off and re-grown. However, remember, a beard is for life not just for lockdown