Kmflett's Blog

London Socialist Historians Group

February 2020

Contact Dr Keith Flett 07803 167266

Historians set to look at leading C19th black actor Ira Aldridge who suffered racist abuse

Portrait of Ira Aldridge by James Northcote (Manchester City Galleries

The London Socialist Historians Group will hear from Martin Hoyles on his new book covering the life and work of black Victorian actor Ira Aldridge.

Aldridge performed many leading Shakespearean roles in theatres across Europe until his death in 1867

In London he was subject to racist abuse from some critics:

Significantly, some racist responses from London critics advising him to seek a job as “footman or street-sweeper, that level for which his colour appears to have rendered him peculiarly qualified” were not shared either by adulatory provincial British or foreign audiences, many of the latter being introduced to Shakespeare for the first time. (Morning Star)

Martin Hoyles will look not only  as his acting career but also at his work as an anti-slavery campaigner and black political activist

LSHG Convenor  Dr Keith Flett said, Martin Hoyles work is a very timely reminder that leading black figures in the arts and theatre are nothing new and nor disgracefully is the racist abuse they may suffer.

Details

Monday 17^th February 5.30pm, Room 304 Institute of Historical Research, Malet St, London WC1.

Free, open to all without ticket

Beard Liberation Front

In the week of the 1992 General Election where Labour was expected to defeat the Tories the New Musical Express letters page, Angst, was a Vote Labour special.

I contributed a letter headed ‘Left Wing? Yes Indeed’ with a rather longer Editorial response underneath.

Whether the misprint of my name as Keith Flutt was deliberate or just a typo is one of the unresolved mysteries of modern history.

Suffice to say it didnt work and Kinnock’s Labour lost

The NME letters page, appropriately called Angst, published on 11th April 1992 was a General Election issue, hence it was headed ‘Vote Labour’.

History records it didnt quite work. Labour under Neil Kinnock made electoral progress but John Major became Prime Minister

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_Kingdom_general_election

How helpful the NME’s intervention was is a matter of historical speculation. Red Wedge which had been a feature of the 1987 Election had wound up in 1990.

Kinnock was expected to win but didnt. The fact that Major did probably helped keep the Tories out of Office from 1997 to 2010.

There is of course a fletter on the page, headed Left Wing? Yes indeed.

Notably the letter’s Editor acerbic response is about twice as long as my original letter.

Those were the days….

The idea that Labour has gone from being a ‘pie and a pint’ working class party of northern proletarians to quinoa lovers in North London has been promoted by Deborah Mattinson on social media and on BBC politics this week.

The story dates from September 2018:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/10/swing-voters-say-labour-is-the-party-of-quinoa

The quinoa story relates to a discussion had with a tiny number of people in a  focus group in Crewe

It was called out for being a caricature then and has now been recycled.

Of course caricatures only work if there is as it were a grain of truth in them and for a more entertaining view see George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier.

Meanwhile my local craft bar in Tottenham (Labour majority 76%) serves a lot of pie and mash with pints of beer. That’s a sort of stereotype too of course

The London Socialist Historians newsletter No.69, Spring 2020 is now on-line. The newsletter is now part of socialist history itself, starting in 1997 just as Tony Blair and New Labour came to Office. The entire back archive is now on-line at the link below as is the current issue.

Thanks to John Burton who has designed and put together the newsletter for many years and to LSHG webmaster Christian Hogsbjerg who these days makes sure it appears on-line (a few hard copies are also produced!)

Labour leaders & labour history

The current Labour Leadership contest has raised an issue that is not raised that much, Labour leaders and there knowledge of labour history.

Rebecca Long Bailey raised the far from uncontroversial idea of progressive patriotism, something that has been discussed on the left since at least the Falklands War. She did give an historical example of the American Civil War but the history of British workers attitudes to it is not a simple one.

Keir Starmer wrote a piece for the Guardian about making a case for moral socialism without managing even a nod to Harold Wilson’s phrase that Labour is a moral crusade or it is nothing (associated with the origins of War on Want). Starmer however also managed to tweet on the 165^th anniversary of the birth of Eleanor Marx (16^th January). His background makes it difficult to call his knowledge of labour history.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/labour-socialism-values-election-economic-model.

While Jeremy Corbyn, like Tony Benn, has an abiding interest in history he is not by any means an historian. One Labour leader who was definitely in that category was Tony Blair. A University librarian once told me that, before he was leader, Blair had to give a speech involving a mention of the Webbs. He had no idea who they were and turned up to borrow a book on them.

Blair however was the anti-history leader. If New Labour was to be really ‘new’ it could by definition keep on banging on about the past. Blair did go as far though as to unveil the statue of Harold Wilson outside Huddersfield station.

Wilson himself operated in the framework of a slightly different Labour politics. Not one to miss a Durham miners gala, or to call out Communists, or those like, trade unionist John Prescott, who he thought were.

As a socialist historian I think its useful for Labour leaders to know something of Labour and labour history. Perhaps being leader should require a test on the matter. Its probably too much to hope they’d learn from it but certainly a critical awareness of recent labour history and the way Labour has reacted to and handled electoral defeats in the past 50 years would not go amiss

Link to newsletter

http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/

Beard Liberation Front

February 2020

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

‘MY HAIRY VALENTINE’ POLL CLOSES MIDDAY, THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13th

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has said that the annual poll to find the My Hairy Valentine poll, the sexiest beard, will end on Thursday February 13^th at midday.

The winner will be announced on Friday 14^th February, Valentine’s Day

Craft beer beard Peter Mac Ciarrai leads the poll but several challengers could still give him a close shave

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we believe that beards are sexy, but who has the sexiest Valentine’s beard of the lot? We’ll find out on Friday

What is the criteria for the sexiest Valentine’s Day Beard?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder & likewise what people find sexy can vary widely

1] A beard from Clint Eastwood stubble to full Brian Blessed organic

2] A stylish deployment of the beard, at least sometimes in the public eye

3] An attractive disposition in relation to the beard (the fulfillment of this criteria is up to the voter)

4] An appealing beard in terms of length, colour, style. Again its a matter for the voter

My Hairy Valentine Shortlist

Idris Elba

Prince Harry

Tom Jones

Gary Lineker

Mauricio Pochettino

George Clooney

Mo Salah

Justin Trudeau

Chris Woakes

Peter Mac Ciarrai

Drew McIntyre

Union Week 2020: time for trade unions in craft beer

10-16th February 2020 is ‘heart’ unions week. Of course 14th February is Valentine’s Day but the week underlines that ‘love’, or perhaps fellowship, is collective as well as individual.

https://www.tuc.org.uk/heartunions

Events are going on across the world of work. On Monday evening for example I joined a call with TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady and other union representatives about sexual harassment at work which is a key theme of Union Week 2020.

The bottom line idea is to get people to join a union.

I thought about that over the weekend when news appeared on social media of a craft brewery worker sacked on day one for being a trade union member. It appears his previous employer had been in touch with his new one.

That suggests an employer’s blacklist in some craft beer companies and that is illegal as is the disclosure without their permission of someone’s union membership.

Sacking someone on day one btw is not illegal in general. Because under the Tories ‘workers party’ Government you don’t get employment rights for two years.

It would be good to see craft beer unionised. Only a few craft breweries currently employ enough people to justify a full-scale recognition and negotiation framework. Where they do they’d find that their brewery worked a lot better for having a mechanism for properly sorting out issues. They would also find they’d lose a lot less skilled workers who walk out because they have an issue they cant see a way of resolving.

For craft beer workers even in small breweries there are significant benefits to union membership. Representation when appropriate of course but also professional advice and help across a wide range of issues.

The reality is though that if you are not a trade union member your ability to do much about issues at work except leave is very limited indeed. And if you are a member then there is the perpetual work of making sure the union effectively represents people- that only comes from an active membership not a benign General Secretary! It will also help if you are actively politically. A change of Government that is actually on the side of working people remains long overdue sadly.

However self-activity is the start. As the late Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm noted the world wont change itself for the better on its own. People are required for that, and people organised in some form of collective activity, which is why being in a union is as important now as it was a hundred years ago

Beard Liberation Front

11^th February

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Justin Trudeau’s beard: electoral hit or miss?

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that elections in the last two months of thrown in sharp relief the electability of Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau’s beard.

Trudeau’s beard has been the subject of attack by pogonophobes not least in the Guardian, but the concern is that this may reflect an element of pogonophobic sentiment amongst the electorate.

First Jeremy Corbyn failed on December 12^th 2019 to become the first UK Prime Minister with a beard since 1902. More recently Sinn Fein have led the poll in the Irish General Election after replacing their hirsute leader Gerry Adams.

The campaigners say that Trudeau can break the model but he needs to positively promote his beard

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, Trudeau could be the beard wearer that breaks the clean shaven mould though he is not doing well in the current Hairy Valentine poll

Murdoch’s plan to kill Radio 4: Times Radio

Rupert Murdoch is set to launch a new talk radio station designed, its reported to challenge Radio4 and 5 which face Tory inspired budget cuts.

You don’t need a licence to listen to BBC radio but it remains public service broadcasting, the concept of which is under attack from the Tories and their associates like Murdoch.

Times Radio will be available on DAB and on-line and will apparently compliment Murdoch owned TalkSport.

The reported aim is to expand the influence of the Times. The sport is probably the only actually readable bit of the paper but that it seems wont be covered if Talksport continues.

Rather it will focus on political comment.

There appears to be a problem here. For those who don’t read the Times due to its ownership its comment section consists of the following: right centrists; centre rightists, right-wingers, very right-wingers, raving right-wingers. Exclusively.

You could actually just listen to Radio4 Today.

What you wont be hearing and what Murdoch wont be investing in is the Archers, radio drama in full, ‘comedy’ (mostly unfunny ex-public school types on Radio4 currently) and the extensive network of reporters the BBC has (we know their reporting is partial, but it still exists)

Times Radio will be free to air and wont have adverts but will aim to have sponsored programmes like the Nigel Farage beer & fags hour for example featuring important discussions from the saloon bar of the Bollock & Brexit pub

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51292803

I welcome diversity in broadcasting but not if it is anything to do with Murdoch and not if it is designed, as it is, to undermine public service broadcasting.