The history of the relationship between Labour leaders, beer and pubs is an interesting and not always a happy one. That is for another post.
Motivated by a discussion in the CAMRA award winning Old Spot Inn in Dursley I’ve had a look at what the current Labour leadership contenders are saying on matters.
What Ive discovered below is ephemeral rather than exhaustive but given that the 2019 Labour Manifesto rightly highlighted the pub as the hub of community life it is certainly a matter of interest
The Campaign for Real Ale has invited the leadership contenders to discuss over a pint at their local the issue of pubs and the community
Lisa Nandy is on record from 2010 as supporting community pubs in her constituency. Keir Starmer’s local is a well-known real ale pub in North London, while Rebecca Long Bailey took time last year to support a beer brewed for Salford Pride. Hopefully all the contenders will say more to CAMRA and more widely.
Lisa Nandy
Lisa supports Wigan’s community pubs
FEBRUARY 26, 2010
Lisa Nandy today called for more support for local community pub and local brewers. Lisa has signed the Campaign for Real Ale pledge to champion well run community pubs who help to tackle alcohol abuse in their communities, and press for more support for small brewers. Lisa said: “well run, local pubs play a key role in the community. I am proud to support the CAMRA campaign.
Keir Starmer
@Keir_Starmer
Well said
@ThePineapplePub
! Great pub.
Tweet Dec 27th 2016 to Pineapple Pub tweet noting it pays above the London Living Wage
Rebecca Long-Bailey
@RLong_Bailey
Great to catch up with @JackDoesPride of Salford Pride @The_Pink_Picnic to hear about their plans for 2019, as well as their new partnership with
@SEVENBRO7HERS
on the Salford Pride beer coming to a pub near you soon. Keep up the good work! Rainbow flag #LGBTHM19 #LGBTHistoryMonth
The naming ceremony for Adam and Ian’s new baby has taken place. Improbably Brian Aldridge read a poem. The Ambridge Socialist however wonders why the name Joseph was not included in honour and memory of the late Joe Grundy? Wrong class perhaps?
Kate & Jakob
They have both agreed that they are impossible to live with so that’s OK then and their relationship is going fine
The Ambridge Socialist poll. How would you describe Kate & Jakob?
Keep The Bull’s name, ditch the ‘modern new sign’. No to modernisation for the sake of it
Pancake day evening at The Bull (NOT The B at Ambridge) went well with one downside. The owner has now erected a ‘modern new sign’. We say: keep The Bull’s traditional name & keep the traditional sign too. Modernisation for the sake of it won’t end well
Campaign Update
A brief campaign meeting took place on Tuesday evening 25th February in central London
We have proposed a united front of protest with the Rebulls starting with a joint protest workshop to look at the best strategies for a collective campaign.
In the meantime the more signatures we can get on the real Save The Bull petition the more pressure we can put on Lilian Bellamy so please encourage people to sign
Michael Sheen shaves opponents to be named St David’s Day Beard of Wales
The Beard Liberation Front is calling on supporters to back Michael Sheen’s Wales storm fundraising appeal. Show real beard power where it matters gofundme.com/f/helpwalesaft…
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that actor Michael Sheen has been voted the 2020 St David’s Day Beard of Wales in the annual on-line poll.
He attracted worldwide support getting over 75% of the vote. Labour AM Hefin David was second and ITV Wales Political Editor Adrian Masters just beat Huw Irranca-Davies AM by a whisker (0.24% of the vote) for third place
The vote aims to determine the St David’s Day Beard of Wales, the Welsh beard that offers the most positive national image.
The campaigners say that images of St David suggest that the Welsh Saint himself may have had an organic beard
Welsh rugby prop Adam Jones won the Award in 2013, voted for by BLF supporters, just shaving former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Another rugby player Leigh Halfpenny won in 2014. In 2015 the Award went to Thee Faction musician Chris Fox in 2016 footballer Joe Ledley and in 2017 to Charcutier Illtud Llyr Dunsford, with Chris Fox winning again in 2018. In 2019 journalist Grant Tucker shaved the opposition to claim the accolade
It is the eighth time the Award has been given following the traditional UK Beard of the Year at the end December each year and the BLF says it is a mark of Wales as a modern nation on St David’s Day that beards are now playing an increasingly significant role in national life.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, other things are to the forefront of the minds of many in Wales this weekend, but on St David’s Day we celebrate the best of Wales and that includes the best beards. Congratulations to Michael Sheen who becomes the 8th Beard of Wales.
Its not about Lilian Bellamy or Lynda Snell, its about Saving The Bull. Sign the Petition
Lilian Bellamy & Lynda Snell have had a row. Behind the row was clearly Lynda’s disdain for Lilian over the renaming of The Bull. We dont find either person a particularly engaging type but this campaign is not about individuals. Its about keeping The Bull and its name as a traditional Borsetshire pub and keeping it open as a result. Sign the petition today & encourage others to do
Boris Johnson has been criticised by Jeremy Corbyn for being a ‘part-time’ Prime Minister and he has been notable by his complete absence as floods have caused misery for communities around the UK and look set to do so again this weekend.
Katy Balls, who works for the Spectator as written in The Guardian(28.2) that this is a deliberate Tory strategy involving Johnson ignoring the media. Ms Balls might do well to ask around at the Spectator for what Johnson was like when he edited the magazine.
A summary is below and it appears to suggest a pattern of behaviour…
He would habitually not answer his phone, commission articles, turn up to lunches, or meet dignitaries, important advertisers or even his own deadlines.
Johnson as Editor of the Spectator (Sonia Purnell, Just Boris 2012)
Beavertown at Intergalatic 8: A farewell to Tottenham Hale
I’m not at Beavertown’s 8th birthday party at their Tottenham Hale tap on 29th February. I’m not boycotting, just doing something else somewhere else in the UK.
Indeed the collabs including the likes of Queer Brewing, Mars of the Desert and Salt look very decent and I’ve pencilled in a tasting at one of the bars the Birthday Beers are being rolled out in next week.
Of course Beavertown has moved on a good deal since the first such Birthday event held in 2016. My account of that sort of landmark event in craft beer is below.
Most of the original team have long since departed and Heineken now call the shots at Beavertown in terms of the opening of the new brewery and tap 3 miles up the road a bit later in 2020.
Things have changed. For the better or worse? The jury is out I think.
Beavertown at Four: Unconditional but critical support
I was at Beavertown’s 4th birthday event at Tottenham Hale on Saturday.
It has attracted some comment on social media and muttering elsewhere.
In my view the idea of holding a festival of some of the most interesting ‘craft’ beers in the UK was a good one and the principle of making it a free and un-ticketed event was also right on this occasion.
But as any CAMRA remember will remind you (I joined in 1975) organising beer festivals is much harder than might be thought.
I’ve since ‘ascended’ to higher things but I was once a trade union organiser and I know very well that when you organise things, if something goes wrong you get the blame. If it goes OK, it’s taken for granted (see CAMRA fests). That’s fine by me since I’m invariably organising something for a purpose.
Anyway I did get in on Saturday and yes I do live very nearby in the proletarian utopia of Tottenham Hale. However I queued with the rest from just after 1pm (having come from doing some union organising work with the local MP David Lammy).
It was at least not raining and the free can of Gamma Ray while we waited was a nice gesture. That said I am no fan of queues and I am rarely to be found joining one.
Inside it was indeed very busy, sometimes too busy. That said there were lots of interesting beers and provided you picked your bar there was no wait.
The pricing at £2 a third, irrespective of style and strength, was also an important feature. It encouraged an equality of sampling of new beers, not always seen in similar events run on strict commercial lines.
And the weather wasn’t as bad as it often is in the middle of the Six Nations rugby series.
Criticisms I have a few. More toilets are needed. Drinking beer particularly when it’s cold tends to provoke the need to urinate.
I also had a good deal of sympathy for those who travelled from outside London and found the wait to get in just too long. Just last week I was the Celt Firefest in Caerphilly having booked a nearby hotel with my partner Megan for an overnight stay. The event was ticketed but if it hadn’t been and we hadn’t been able to get in I would have felt seriously grumpy. This needs to be looked at (entrance arrangements not how grumpy I am)
Finally I note on social media suggestions that since the event had 4,000 likes on Facebook, the organisers should have known it would be very busy and ramped things up accordingly.
Hmm. Anyone who organises anything that is un-ticketed knows that attendance is quite unpredictable and FB is no guide. Clicking like on FB does not translate into feet on the ground in Tottenham Hale (if only).
So perhaps at least some ticketing is going to be needed for future Beaver events on such a scale to manage numbers and expectations about getting in or not.
That aside it was a great day. It showed an admirable ambition and deserves a ‘well done’, unconditionally, but also critically for the future.
Lent 2020 started on Wednesday and runs until Easter.
It remains part of the religious calendar but in 2020 no one is checking if you are doing it or not. If you are respect. If not move on (I’m not)
Cromwell however banned it.
It was said that the only opponents of Lent in the seventeenth century were butchers, butcher’s dogs and Puritans. The reason for this is clear. The one thing that was consistently forbidden to be eaten at Lent was meat. Butchers it appears could live with this, using the time to sort out their business for the rest of the year. We dont know what the dogs thought but we do know that Puritans didnt like Lent or any other occasion supported by the established Church.
Indeed after the Commonwealth took power following the departure of King Charles and his head (separately) in 1649 Lent was banned along with Christmas and Easter. These last two made a vigorous come back at various points after the monarchy was restored in 1660 but Lent did not. King Charles 11 did indeed restore Lent and penalties for being found eating things like meat during it, but these were it appears not enforced for long.
The view nowadays tends to be that Cromwell banned Christmas because he was a killjoy but he achieved precisely the reverse impact by banning Lent which of course may be why the ban ultimately worked.
Last Chance to vote for St David’s Day Beard of Wales. Ends Midnight Friday
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that voting will close at midnight on Friday 28th February in the 2020 St David’s Day Beard of Wales poll.
Actor Michael Sheen has attracted worldwide support and looks likely to shave opponents. However the battle is firmly on for runner-up between Labour AMs Hefin David and Huw Irranca-Davies and Labour MP Chris Elmore
The vote aims to determine the St David’s Day Beard of Wales, the Welsh beard that offers the most positive national image.
The campaigners say that images of St David suggest that the Welsh Saint himself may have had an organic beard
Welsh rugby prop Adam Jones won the Award in 2013, voted for by BLF supporters, just shaving former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Another rugby player Leigh Halfpenny won in 2014. In 2015 the Award went to Thee Faction musician Chris Fox in 2016 footballer Joe Ledley and in 2017 to Charcutier Illtud Llyr Dunsford, with Chris Fox winning again in 2018. In 2019 journalist Grant Tucker shaved the opposition to claim the accolade
It is the eighth time the Award has been given following the traditional UK Beard of the Year at the end December each year and the BLF says it is a mark of Wales as a modern nation on St David’s Day that beards are now playing an increasingly significant role in national life.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it is perhaps fitting that on the 120th anniversary of the foundation of the Labour Representation Committee, led by Keir Hardie, that three hirsute Labour representatives are well placed for a position in the Beard of Wales 2020 vote
The Labour Representation Committee was founded 125 years ago at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon St (26th and 27th February 1900). A plaque still exists but the hall is now an office block near to Ludgate Circus.
The LRC led to the formation of the Labour Party in 1906 when 29 Labour MPs were elected.
The man who moved the resolution at the 1899 TUC that called for the LRC conference to be held was James Holmes.
Holmes was a delegate from and officer of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (now the RMT in effect).
He was at that time based in South Wales and lived in Cathays Cardiff. He was central in the early 1900s to the Taff Vale dispute, one of the landmark issues in the development of trade union and Labour politics in the UK.
His political and union activity is a fascinating snapshot of the transition in the labour movement from Liberal to independent Labour politics and a reminder of the role that trade union officials had in the formation of the Labour Party.
