Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 7^th February

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

‘MY HAIRY VALENTINE’ POLL: WHO HAS THE ‘HOTTEST’ BEARD?

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has said that with Valentine’s Day a week off competition is hotting up in the vote for the ‘sexiest’ beard of 2020.

Jeremy Paxman joined the poll earlier in the week and well-known portrait artist Daniel Fooks now completes the hairy list after specially growing a Valentine’s beard

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the weather may not be too hot but we’re looking for the beard that can make it hotter

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

Jeremy Paxman

Daniel Fooks

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

Amongst other things I’m a research historian. I convene the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London School of Advanced Study and have done for many years.

As socialist historians we’re left-wing of course but we’re robust in our research. Rigour is expected as are awkward questions and uncomfortable findings.

I mention this because a brief review of Michael Rosen’s Missing, about what happened to some of his relatives in World War Two,has been in the queue for a while.

Rosen is known as an author and broadcaster, a socialist and anti-racist and come to that a beard wearer and Arsenal fan.

He is not known as a research historian but that doesnt mean he cant be one.

The Missing is a brief volume of short chapters and some poems.

It does have references and an index at the end but it lacks the kind of academic apparatus that we look for in research history. Where for example are the footnotes??

Partly the answer is that the Missing is a book aimed primarily at young people, aiming to get across in deeply personal terms what the Holocaust actually meant.

But partly it doesnt matter. Rosen has spent decades researching his family history and the research methods cannot be faulted.

Of course in 2020 the internet can be helpful but cant be relied on as a definitive source. Rosen doesnt do that. He seeks out obscure books that mention his family and contacts libraries in France to see if they have any records.

What he finds doesnt make for particularly happy reading but it is important, vital, even reading for our times.

He notes:

With every passing year, the number of Holocaust survivors gets smaller. We need to keep them the memory of them alive: the people who died and those who survived. That’s partly why I wrote this book.

The other reason, Rosen notes, is because the wider message of The Missing is about refugees and that is still with us.

That means the book is not only fascinating and important history but it has relevance now, as the best history should have.

And the awkward questions raised? Surely why there is not more research on this that gets out of the seminar room and into the public domain, because it needs to be read, understood and discussed

You can buy it here:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-missing/michael-rosen//9781406386752

Brewdog have announced a re-brand. Details are here:

https://www.brewdog.com/blog/the-new-brewdog-starts-here

For those like me who dont like market capitalism,what is required out of a brewery is decent beer, which Brewdog sometimes manage.

However we do actually live in a market capitalist economy (in fact we currently live in a market society)so image and brand are important ways of differentiating products and selling them.

As at least some who read this blog know I’m a union officer who represents managers and professionals in the private sector. In that capacity I represent people whose job it is to brand and re-brand large companies.

They tend to move around because its quite rare to create a brand that escapes criticism from some.

Brewdog have evidently employed some brand consultants and provided some appropriate words about climate change and responsible capitalism (which is where progressive business is)

They have not however totally avoided basic BS as the rebranding announcement ends with the following line:

We are determined to continuously raise the bar and set a new standard for beer and business.

Raise the bar is not currently in use as management speak in 2020 because it was called out as completely meaningless twaddle. Oh well. There always the next re-brand

William Morris

Met Police Chief Cressida Dick wants new laws on protest…

….The Chartist, Radical Liberal, Irish Nationalist and formative Labour movements were distinguished by their sensitivity to libertarian issues, and their suspicion of the polity of statism. When the police forces were enlarged and rationalized (or, as some would have it today, ’modernized’) in the mid-nineteenth century, this was a victory for bourgeois utilitarian bureaucratic policy in the face of intense resistance extending from old Tory localism through Radical Liberalism to outright Chartist opposition— for Chartists and trade unionists very well understood what kind of imperatives dictated government policies. As a consequence of this opposition, the presence of the police in British public life remained unusually subdued. They must be seen as ‘servants’ of… either the gentry or ’the public’, and they must in no circumstances exhibit a brash public presence. And, as a more concrete evidence of the old libertarian tradition, which endures to this day, the British police (at least in Britain) must go about the streets unarmed.

There were some anticipations of the statism of the twentieth century in the increasingly intrusive and punitive presence of the police in Britain in the 1880s. This was a natural reaction of the propertied classes, who reacted to the rumour that there were now socialist agitators in the streets (making speeches against their property!) with seemly terror. In general the police were impartial, attempting to sweep off the streets with an equable hand street-traders, beggars, prostitutes, street-entertainers, pickets, children playing football and free-thinking and socialist speakers alike. The pretext, very often, was that a complaint of interruption of trade had been received from a shopkeeper. William Morris remarked on the impatience of ’the more luxurious part of society’ to ’clear the streets of costermongers, organs, processions, and lecturers of all kinds, and make them a sort of decent prison corridors, with people just trudging to and from their work’….

E P Thompson, the Secret State

Beard Liberation Front

6th February

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has paid tribute to the actor Kirk Douglas who has died at 103.

Douglas was often hirsute in later life, often sporting a magnificent beard.

However for perhaps his best known character, Spartacus, 1960, he was clean shaven.

This was despite the fact that while the imperial oppressors, the Romans, were known to prize a clean shaven appearance, slaves, of whom Spartacus  was an outstanding example, were usually beard wearers, due to lacking the means to shave regularly.

The campaigners say that clean shaven US film culture was not yet ready to accept a bearded hero in 1960.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Kirk Douglas was an outstanding actor. In 1960 as Spartacus film culture dictated that he could not wear a beard even though it would have been historically accurate. He made up for it in later life though.

According to a Mr J. Rotten, late of Finsbury Park:

How many ways to get what you want

I use the best, I use the rest

I use the NME

I use anarchy

(Anarchy in the UK)

On Tuesday someone tweeted to me to ask if I could remember what I wrote letters to the NME about in the 1980s and 1990s.

I certainly did write letters to the NME, no doubt about left-wing politics, anti-racism and probably beards, but their specific content I cant recall. The only exception is a comment by an unnamed NME staffer under a letter I wrote. Their comment (not my letter) referred in a slightly unkind way to my role in the closure of the Sunday Correspondent in November 1990.

I asked twitter if anyone could remember what the fletters were about with little success, with the exception of a former NME journalist David Stubbs who noted I had once been a bit rude about his views of the Iraq War.

There is, as there is often is, a wider point. As a research historian I am wary of using memory to construct an historical record. Memory is often partial and sometimes just mistaken. I prefer archives:

Alan Rusbridger, archives & preserving modern historical records

Fortunately there is a relatively easy way of resolving the question of what the subject matter of the NME Fletters  were about. Watch this space as it were…

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

5^th February

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Friendly Pub of the Year raises funds for food banks

The Bumble Inn in Peterborough received its certificate for being voted Beard Friendly Pub of the Year on Tuesday evening.

The Award was handed to landlord Tom Beran by BLF Organiser Keith Flett

The Award is hosted by the Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, and the winner is determined after an annual on-line poll held in the first half of January

It is the first time a pub outside of London has won the annual award and the campaigners say it reflects the continued growth of beard friendly pubs

The pub also handed over £121 raised for Trussell Trust Food Banks, the proceeds from selling a commemorative badge to mark its victory, organised by pub regular and senior Peterborough citizen Toby Wood.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, of course the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year is a bit of seasonal fun but its all about promoting an open and tolerant society too. Raising funds for Trussell Food Banks underlines that beards and beer are a progressive force in society

There were as usual three categories within the overall poll:

1 Overall Winner & runner-up

The Bumble Inn, Peterborough

The Cock, London,E8

2 London Winner & runner-up

The Cock, London E8

Kernel Brewery Tap,Bermondsey

3 Regional Winner & runners-up

The Bumble Inn, Peterborough

The Stoneworks, Peterborough (tied)

Tom’s Tap & Brewhouse Crewe (tied)

BLF Inspectors surveyed pubs for beard friendliness and finalised a list including several nominations from drinkers.

The criteria for the Award included:

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.

The list includes a range of pubs, bars and tap rooms without attempting to classify into sections

Proposed new law on protest doesn’t understand the purpose of protest

The veteran right-wing LBC commentator Nick Ferrari has written in the Telegraph (where else?) that he wants new laws to crack down on protest groups like Extinction Rebellion.

Ferrari defends a general right to protest but what he means of course is any protest that sticks within narrow Parliamentary confines and if it is noticed at all takes a while to make any difference. Think of a protest march that delivers a petition for example

Of course the repertoire of protest (Charles Tilly) extends from an indoor protest meeting, to petitions, marches, strikes, riots and revolts. At this end of the protest spectrum it is unlikely that the existing order will simply stand by. The point is that there must be, and in fact there is a well-known framework, where its clear to all what will be tolerated even if it is a nuisance and where it wont be.

Of course inevitably the boundaries are not that clear and protests will often push at them (Ive done it myself over the years when organising protest). But that and the inconvenience it may cause is all part, no doubt to some an annoying part, of how protest takes place.

Ferrari seems to have in mind protests by Extinction Rebellion. He allows they raise important issues but claims some associated with them are ‘extremists’. That’s true of the Government too of course and the police have circulated a list of domestic extremists which might have been titled protest groups who we find annoying.

I’m not an unequivocal fan of some of the tactics used by XR, particularly the civil disobedience arrest axis, also used by the Committee of 100 in the early 1960s, because its very individualistic and I prefer protest to be collective.

However those disagreements are for the movement.

In reality XR stage what might be called ‘stunts’ to get publicity and protests which occupy spaces and roads for a limited time.

Its not really clear why a democratic society cant manage to cope with that without the need for any extra laws…

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

5^th February

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Bumble Inn Peterborough gets Beard Friendly Pub of the Year certificate

Tom Beran of the Bumble Inn & BLF Organiser Keith Flett

The Bumble Inn in Peterborough received its certificate for being voted Beard Friendly Pub of the Year on Tuesday evening.

The Award was handed to landlord Tom Beran by BLF Organiser Keith Flett

The Award is hosted by the Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, and the winner is determined after an annual on-line poll held in the first half of January

It is the first time a pub outside of London has won the annual award and the campaigners say it reflects the continued growth of beard friendly pubs

The pub also handed over £121 raised for Trussell Trust Food Banks, the proceeds from selling a commemorative badge to mark its victory, organised by pub regular and senior Peterborough citizen Toby Wood.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it was about time a pub outside of London won the award. It reflects the fact that decent beer and decent beer are popular across the country not just in parts of London

There were as usual three categories within the overall poll:

1 Overall Winner & runner-up

The Bumble Inn, Peterborough

The Cock, London,E8

2 London Winner & runner-up

The Cock, London E8

Kernel Brewery Tap,Bermondsey

3 Regional Winner & runners-up

The Bumble Inn, Peterborough

The Stoneworks, Peterborough (tied)

Tom’s Tap & Brewhouse Crewe (tied)

BLF Inspectors surveyed pubs for beard friendliness and finalised a list including several nominations from drinkers.

The criteria for the Award include:

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.

The list includes a range of pubs, bars and tap rooms without attempting to classify into sections

The 2019 winner was the Cock Tavern in Hackney

The Beard Friendly Pub, Bar, Tap of the Year Short List 2020

Bundobust, Manchester/Leeds/Liverpool

Bubs, Cardiff

The Chesham Arms, Hackney

Cock Tavern, Hackney

Hanging Bat, Edinburgh

Mother Kelly’s (Bethnal Green)

Small Bar, Bristol

Stoneworks, Peterborough

Whitelocks/Turks Head, Leeds

Magic Rock Brewery Tap, Huddersfield

Wellington, Birmingham

Tom’s Tap & Brewhouse, Crewe

The Experiment, Hackney

Fell Brewery Taproom, Kendal

High Cross, Tottenham

Bumble Inn, Peterborough

Cloudwater Tap Manchester

Ship & Mitre, Liverpool

Kernel Tap, Bermondsey

If you are in London this week a must visit is the Four Corners Gallery in Roman Rd E2 (Bethnal Green tube).

Until Saturday there is a free and quite extensive exhibition of the work of John Heartfield the German anti-Nazi and anti-war photomontage artist.

http://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/another-eye

His images are not only relevant once again in 2020 unfortunately, but many will probably be familiar so widely copied are they.

Heartfield was 5th on the Gestapo’s wanted list when he fled Germany for Britain. He returned to the former East Germany after the war and died in 1968

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