Beard Liberation Front
31st December
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the decade now ending, may have been the best for hirsute cricketers since the era of W G Grace.
Even some Umpires now wear beards, although cricket commentators remain notably clean shaven.
The BLF has picked some of its Cricket Beards of the Decade
PRESS RELEASE 31st December
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
CAMPAIGNERS SAY NEW YEAR TRADITION OF FIRST BEARDING IS INCREASINGLY POPULAR
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it is again reviving the ancient New Year tradition of first bearding this year.
At midnight on New Year’s morning the first person with a beard across the doorstep of a house, or on this occasion only a false beard, must be given a glass of imperial stout to marinade their beard in. In return the beard wearer will bring good fortune for the coming year.
First bearding can be when a stranger with a beard comes to the house, as in first footing, or when someone with a beard already inside steps outside to return again.
The campaign group which opposes irrational prejudice against the hirsute says that the tradition of first bearding is thought to have been as popular as first footing but declined with the more clean-shaven culture after 1945
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, while it seems first footing may be in decline first bearding is growing as an important New Year tradition. We expect many of those who have grown a beard over the Xmas holiday to participate this year for the first time in this ancient and now revived tradition.
GUIDELINES ON FIRST BEARDING
On or immediately after the stroke of midnight on December 31/January 1 await a knock on the door
If the person has a beard welcome them in as a First Bearder
Be sure to answer the door promptly as otherwise the First Bearder may sustain weather damage to the beard.
If they attempt to give you a lump of coal, ignore this. It is not part of the modern tradition of First Bearding
Give them a glass of imperial stout to marinade their beard in & wish them a Happy Hirsute New Year
Notes
National No Shaving Day is 1st January 2020
Once again on 5 day Test Matches
As cricket fans could hardly have missed cricket in 2019 and beyond is all about playing more and more games. These are designed to make money to keep the game going so more games can be played and so on.
The end of the year sees fresh pressure to reduce Test Matches from 5 to 4 days. Michael Vaughan writing in (obviously) the Telegraph argues that most Tests now end in 4 days (except for those that don’t due to rain etc) and the most recent stats (for the last two years) do show a significant increase in Tests ending before the 5th day.
Vaughan argues that money is wasted on the 5th day that could be reinvested in promoting the sport. It seems an obvious point but I doubt the relationship is anything like as simple as that.
Vaughan also argues that Test matches need a new audience. Not in England they don’t where they invariably sell out. But elsewhere for a variety of reasons that is true. He writes
We always have to remember that cricket is an entertainment business. At the minute the white-ball game has overtaken Test cricket. Apart from those of us who already love Test cricket, I don’t think Test cricket has done enough to reach a new audience. So we need to make it more relevant and more appealing. It might just bring a little more relevance if it gets shortened.
The longer term logic of course is to scrap Tests altogether and rely on the one or less than one day format.
A separate Telegraph report notes that the ICC plan to consult on moving to 4 day Tests in 2020 and to agree it in 2023. The report suggests that any decision could be 50.50 but that England back it to ease fixture congestion. Obviously what everyone wants is more and more England international matches…..
Personally I think that if a stop to this commercially driven mania is not made cricket will eat itself before long and nothing like the traditional game will exist at all.
In her pitch for the Labour leadership Rebecca Long Bailey has raised the idea of a ‘progressive patriotism’.
Some have already noted that this looks like an alternative to Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-imperialism. Some may well find that attractive but with a bellicose Tory like Boris Johnson in No,10 a starting point of opposition to at best doubtful imperial adventures would surely be no bad thing.
That said coming as I do from a tradition that is not keen (to put it mildly) on supporting any super power Corbyn’s take on the matter was not always mine own. These are debates for another time.
Of the moment is the meaning of progressive patriotism, a phrase which has both a complex history and refers in certain ways to complex history.
Long Bailey gives the example of the US Civil War and solidarity offered by mill workers in Lancashire in the early 1860s and E P Thompson’s Peculiarities of the English is also a key text here. I’ll return to both in later posts.
In the mean time below is an extract from an interview the late marxist theorist Stuart Hall gave to the New Statesman in 2012 where he touches on some of the issues with progressive patriotism as he saw it.
What Thompson called the “peculiarities of the English” (and especially the peculiarities of English socialism) have been on Hall’s mind a good deal lately. He has been talking about the New Left and Englishness with, among others, Jonathan Rutherford, his colleague on the editorial board of the journal Soundings and a prime mover in “Blue Labour”, and Jon Cruddas, entrusted by Ed Miliband with responsibility for the Labour Party’s policy review.
Hall says he understands the impulse behind Rutherford’s and Cruddas’s attempt to find intellectual resources for a new politics of “common life” in ancient English radical traditions. Yet he insists that such traditions cannot be revived “at will”. “I talked to Cruddas about this,” he tells me. “I think I understand his preoccupations rather more than Maurice Glasman’s. In a constituency like Cruddas’s, where you’re fighting the far right, you have to think about those things [English identity, immigration]. But you have to be careful about how you recruit them. He came to talk to me about the New Left, which, of course, was interested in the popular language of the nation. But I had the feeling he was raiding the past, out of context, in a way.”
The Feast of Fools & black puddings
The Feast of Fools was part of the traditional 12 days of Christmas and took place around January 1st.
It was a world turned upside down affair where authority (in Medieval times that meant religious authority) was relentlessly mocked. Needless to say over time authority hit back and there is little evidence of the feast beyond the eighteenth century.
It was more celebrated in France than England and the example below is from the former country.
Black puddings, boudin noir, were seen as delicacies in the Middle Ages which may explain their otherwise rather surprising role in the proceedings
Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste. (1445)
(words via Gerry Bowler)
Beard Liberation Front
30th December
contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Beard Liberation Front agrees with criticism that there were too few Asian beards in Beard of Year poll
Paul Chowdhry
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said it agrees with criticisms that there were too few prominent Asian beard wearers in the 2019 Beard of the Year poll.
The vote was won by Strictly It Takes Two star Rylan Clark Neal.
The campaigners say that they have been aware for some time that shortlists for quarterly and annual Beard Awards drawn from figures in the public eye can exclude popular beards from ethnic minorities, who themselves may not feature in the media as much as their public impact warrants.
From the Beard of Winter shortlist in January 2020 the BLF says it will be making a particular effort to make contenders more representative and inclusive of British society
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we’ve been aware for a long time that shortlists of prominent beard wearers can look ‘hideously white’ and we have begun to address that. However there is much more work needed and we agree with the criticism that the Beard of the Year 2019 shortlist was not as representative as it should have been.
The Ambridge Socialist
December 29th
Reporting on the Class Struggle in Borsetshire
Kenton murders Eccles
Angus, a pub consultant, familiar so he claims with Shoreditch, has visited the Bull to advise on the way forward. He notes that the outside seating is covered in bird poo. Kenton suggests this is due to the Bull’s resident peacock, Eccles. Later driving to the cash and carry for supplies of tonic Kenton runs over and murders Eccles. He pleads with Alastair to say nothing but the Ambridge Socialist is not afraid to report the truth
Who in Ambridge most needs refurbishment?
Oliver promotes a moral economy
Inviting Clarrie and Eddie to a Christmas Day meal at Grey Gables (the first Christmas without Joe Grundy sadly) Oliver indicates to them that he is prepared to let them stay at Grange Farm for the foreseeable future. If Boris Johnson is looking for an example of one-nation Toryism (highly unlikely) he could do much worse than this application of the moral economy.
Joe Grundy remembered
On Sunday 29th December at 19.15 Radio 4 remembers the late Ted Kelsey (Joe Grundy) trade union activist and one of the early supporters of the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s.
In Other News
The Professor’s ghost stories have sold out
Tom has made an idiot of himself again
In next week’s issue. The Ambridge Socialist’s view of Borsetshire in 2020
12 Days of Christmas: Lords of Misrule & bans on football
As time allows I’ve been continuing to delve (research wise) into the Lords of Misrule that appear at various times in the traditional calendar but certainly in the twelve days of Christmas after 25th December.
There is interesting discussion in correspondence between the US historian Natalie Zemon Davis and the late EP Thompson in 1971/2 published in Past and Present (May 2017).
This refers back to an article Davis wrote in Past and Present 50 (1971) the Reasons for Misrule.
Here she argues that the Lords of Misrule elected on 26th December were categorised by age and gender, that is they were young men.
She writes in a footnote about English examples:
The Lords of Misrule seem to be an example of youth officers..not the Lords of Misrule elected at the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn or at Court but the ‘wildheads of the parish’ (described in 1585 by Philipp Stubbs in his Anatomie of Abuses) who elect a captain of mischief called ‘my Lord of Misrule’ and who go about with hobby horses and pipers and drummers..’
Was this subversive of the existing order, a real rebellion or a licensed way of ‘letting off steam’ at a time of year when little rural work could be done?
One piece of evidence that weighs in favour of rebellion is that on the first Christmas that Cromwell succeeded in banning festivities,1647, in Canterbury part of the response was to engage in a mass game of street football (which was definitely banned)
Work still in progress.
Beard Liberation Front
PRESS RELEASE 29th December
contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
CAMPAIGNERS CALL FOR A RECALIBRATION OF VAR TO DEAL WITH BEARD RELATED DECISIONS
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, pogonophobia, has said that after several controversial incidents it is time to recalibrate VAR, the technology used to review decisions in Premiership football games, to be recalibrated to take account of beards.
The campaigners say that in the modern game many players have distinctive beards. Issues may arise when VAR checks to see if a player is offside, or if a ball has touched a player which can lead to a penalty decision.
A concern is often whether the beard has interfered with or impacted on play.
The BLF says that VAR can only take the matter so far and the Referee must decide the crucial issue of whether the player was in control of their beard at the time of a particular incident.
As many Referees are also clean shaven they may need to undergo special beard awareness training
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, VAR is beard deficient currently and this important issue in the game needs to be addressed to avoid more controversy.
Beard Liberation Front
PRESS RELEASE 28th December
contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
BEARD LIBERATION FRONT CALLS FOR GUARDIAN APOLOGY ON POGONOPHOBIC COMMENT
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has called out the Guardian for pogonophobia, after columnist Jonathan Freedland referred to Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘scraggily beard’ in the 21st December 2019 edition of the paper.
The full reference is,’ with a scraggily beard trimmed only once he won the leadership..’.
Freedland, while displaying his own prejudices, is clearly unaware that Jeremy Corbyn has won the Parliamentary Beard of the Year Award more times than any other MP.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, perhaps of all papers there should be no place for pogonophobia in The Guardian. We have raised the matter with the paper and we are calling on Mr Freedland to make a full apology.
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