Kmflett's Blog

Brendan O’Neill calls for riots: he should be careful what he wishes for

Former self-styled Marxist, now right-wing Editor of Spiked On-Line Brendan O’Neill has called on Politics Live (27th September) for there to be riots. Riots from below cant be organised but they can, up to a point, be promoted by authority.

Perhaps Mr O’Neill has in mind an official mob informally sponsored by Dominic Cummings similar in some ways to the Gordon rioters. Mr O’Neill should however be careful what he wishes for. The Gordon rioters may have started out as a reactionary mob but some at least turned into a revolutionary crowd quite out of control of their original sponsors.

The world is more complex than Mr O’Neill imagines

The desire to reduce history to one thing or another thing but too often not nuance or, both things, is probably growing in the age of social media. It does not however accord with the complexities of reality where issues constantly ebb, flow and interact.

E.P Thompson wrote about the Gordon Riots of 1780 in central London in the Making of the English Working Class. The rioters were officially sanctioned in the sense that they were raising a reactionary demand to Parliament against Catholic toleration.

Thompson notes: the riots were directed in the first place against Catholic chapels and the houses of wealthy Catholics, then against prominent personalities in authority- including Lord Chief Justice Mansfield and the Archbishop of York.. then against prisons- whose inmates were released- and finally culminated in an attack on the Bank (of England) itself’.

At this point official toleration ended and the army were called out.

As Thompson notes, we have here something of a mixture of manipulated mob and revolutionary crowd’

Campaign for Real Conkers

Press Release September 27th Contact Keith Flett, 07803 167266

As 2019 Conker season reaches peak, the problem is a shortage of players not conkers

E8CWGN Playing conkers in England, UK – close up

The Campaign for Real Conkers, the group that opposes bans on conker playing, has said that as the 2019 conker playing season is reaches a peak, with large numbers of conkers falling to ground, the problem remains a lack of players

Campaigners say that despite new claims that conker trees are dying out due to disease, the real problem is that conkers lie on the ground uncollected.

The CFRC has warned that the game of conkers is in significant decline in some areas and unless a new generation of players is found it may not exist in 20 years-time as screen-based games become increasingly popular.

The campaign believes that conkers is a game that is free to all play and should also be free of rules and regulations whether imposed in contests or petty bureaucrats who argue wrongly that playing conkers is in some way dangerous.

Campaign organiser Keith Flett said, our message is a game that is free to play, with rules you can set yourself, and its great fun. The indifferent weather has caused conker fall and these conkers can be used to play a game as soon as they have been strung

The Campaign for Real Conkers promotes free for all conker playing across the UK an alternative event to the World Conker Championships on Sunday October 13th where it encourages people to have a go at playing conkers without the need for rules, regulations and teams.

Where We Stand

The CFRC believes that conkers is one of the few sports that can be played for free. All that is required is a conker and some string.

It is opposed to championships, rules, regulations and commercial sponsorship.

It seeks to encourage young people to play conkers. It should not be the preserve purely of those of mature years.

‘World Conker Championships’

https://www.worldconkerchampionships.com/

Can you predict a riot?

According to the front page of the Murdoch Times (not a source one should take too seriously) a ‘senior Cabinet Minister’ claims that there will be civil unrest and riots similar to the Gilets Jaunes in France (whose protests continue largely unreported in the UK) if Brexit doesn’t happen on 31^st October

Many will be familiar with the Kaiser Chief’s song I Predict a Riot. It is a question I and others researched after the 2011 riot which followed the still problematic death of Mark Duggan in August 2011 in Tottenham.

Living in Tottenham I have a personal and representative interest in such matters but my researches were mostly directed by a conference I organised on the History of Riots at the Institute of Historical Research in 2012 which was later published as a book by CSP.

It is a vast subject and a conference can’t cover more than a few issues but central to it was what can be learnt from the history of riots.

In North London after the 2011 events there was no shortage of investigations into riots. There was an official Government riot panel, a citizens inquiry and the Reading the Riots project sponsored by the Guardian and the London School of Economics.

This last had some historical framework around it- mainly the riots in American cities from the 1960s on- but otherwise an historical understanding was absent.

When history has been referred to it is often used to underline the unsurprising but unhelpful thought that while riots in history may have had important reasons, contemporary ones by definition do not.

The problem with this view is that when you do look at the history of riots the key thing is that while the causes may differ the actuality is very similar.

A crowd gathers, a melee occurs, windows are broken, occasionally properties are burned and even more occasionally people are actually hurt. That is hardly something to celebrate, but nor can it be ignored or simply brushed aside.

It is not the most effective form of protest, but when it takes place, it underlines that something has gone very wrong indeed

Likewise historically, and again this point has contemporary echoes, the State has been quite reluctant to intervene. A local figure of authority- a judge for example- arguing with rioters that they were better off not rioting has possibly had more impact than the use of force.

Definitions of what constitutes a riot-even before the Riot Act was abolished in 1973- were less than clear on what exactly was supposed to happen in the hour between its reading and the authorities actually dispersing any remaining rioters.

Equally problematic was how much force could legally be deployed- again echoed recently in debates about whether the use of water cannon would be appropriate.

The issue of whether a riot can be predicted has become one of some importance in legal and financial terms.

Historically a division is drawn between the causes of riots- food shortages, local political issues and national protests, the nature of the riot that ensues and its predictability.

It has been an issue recently because at the moment only the police have the power to determine whether a riot has taken place or not.

If they decide it has then they, or the State, are liable for any costs that have arisen has a result of damage to property. If it has not then insurers must carry the liability under policies which exclude riot from being a cause of paying out insurance money.

I doubt if the police look too carefully at history books to determine the matter. Rather they will look at their budget.

Will Brexit or a delay to Brexit cause unrest and riots? To a large extent it depends on how authority responds to any issues or problems that do occur. Beyond that however it is not possible, whatever senior Tories think, to predict riots

Its 50 years ago today since the release of The Beatles last recorded album, Abbey Road.

The late NME journalist and music journalist Ian Macdonald claimed in his detailed Beatles discography that one track in particular represented the start of the downfall of Western civilisation. Which track was it though?

Update

To mark the 50th anniversary of Abbey Road the Guardian has ranked all 22 Beatles UK singles. One of them is the answer to the poll below…

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/26/the-beatles-singles-ranked

The Cask Report 2019/20: Temperature, Quality & Craft

I joined CAMRA in 1975 and remain a member so I have some interest in and have drunk a good deal of cask beer over the years.

These days I also drink keykeg and sometimes keg as well. After all the days of Watneys Red Barrel and Double Diamond are, for the moment anyway, done.

I always read the annual Cask Report with interest, it contains lots of material of interest (link below to the new update) and full marks to Pete Brown and others for the hard work they do in researching it and producing it.

I’d highlight three areas from this year’s report:

Temperature. According to John Major cask beer should be served at the same temperature as a tepid cup of tea- 12C. In 1975 I could probably have lived with that (and did) and in the long hot summer of 1976 if your cask beer was too hot you put some ice in it..

Things have moved on. The report rightly notes that 14C is too warm for cask and I’m now more happy with at 9-11C (not lower). Of course it’s the influence of drinking chilled craft keg that underwrites this but keeping beer cool-ish but not frozen in a decent cellar is important.

Quality: the report notes that people who are served a poor quality pint of cask are put off, not surprisingly. I’d say its more common than might be thought even in pubs that look after their beer and have a reputation for doing so.

If you’re in a pub in the earlier part of the week it may well be quiet and the handpumps may not get much use. Yet cask is a living product and it won’t wait until busier times later in the week. My experience is not so much of poor quality but of an average pint when I expect a great one. In this sense the report’s finding that cask ale ranges on bars have reduced it may be no bad thing, though of course it does raise issues of competition for micro-brewers

Craft. I probably now drink more craft keg than cask. I rarely drink pints nowadays, more often two-thirds or halves. There is a lot more to sample than in the days when the choice (in North London) was one or two handpumps on the bar (in the better pubs). I noticed in the report references to drinking at lunchtime. I’m not sure who does that now (Wetherspoons aside) which may explain why so many bars and pubs certainly in London don’t open until 4pm npw.

That said I note a customer preference in pubs I frequent in North London (and indeed now to some extent in Cardiff) for craft keg over cask with a decline in the number of pubs. People who are interested in their beer are making a choice here. However, if the choice on the cask side was Marble Pint, Five Points Best or Harveys Best maybe the choice would be different….

Click to access Cask-Report-2019-20.pdf

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release 26^th September

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Pochettino must have more consistent facial hair policy if Spurs are to prosper

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that following an uneven start to the season both in the Premiership and other competitions, Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino needs a more consistent facial hair policy if Spurs are to prosper.

The campaigners say that Spurs best match day performances tend to be when Pochettino wears a full beard, adding gravitas to his tactical decisions. By contrast when he is either clean shaven of stubble-ish Spurs performances can be marked by in decision

BLF organiser Keith Flett said, we’re saying Pochettino must act on his facial hair policy or we could face a clean shaven revisionist in charge at the Lane

Conservative Party MP Jacob Rees-Mogg attends a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party’s conference in Manchester, Britain October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble – RC159C3DC020

Jacob Rees Mogg, Tory leader of the House of Commons, is an admirer of Victorian constitutional expert  A V Dicey (he was indeed a relation of the Venn who the diagram was named after).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._V._Dicey

Dicey was known above all for popularising the term ‘Rule of Law’. A classical liberal he saw individual rights under the law as key and dismissed the idea of any collective presence. Hence he disapproved of trade union law which placed a group of people in a different legal position to an individual. Its likely Rees Mogg agrees though he doesnt bang on about this much in The Victorians.

The book however does devote a whole chapter to Dicey.

Rees Mogg writes in the book about Dicey’s classic text Introduction to the Study of Law of the Constitution:

it told a story about Victorian Britain.. The ‘Rule of Law’ for example meant here simply that we had regular law, rather than arbitrary or even discretionary law. .. Englishmen Dicey declared ‘are ruled by the law, and by the law alone’

Not perhaps the words of someone who thinks the decision of the Supreme Court on the sovereignty of Parliament is a ‘constitutional coup’.

A contradiction in Rees Mogg Thought it would seem

Beard Liberation Front

25th September

Contact keith flett 07803 167266

Belper Councillor Ben Bellamy shaves Corbyn in Beard of Labour Conference vote

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with this year’s Labour Party Conference in Brighton concluding, beards as much as Brexit have characterised the proceedings.

As the on-line poll closed for Beard of Labour Conference 2019 at 9am on Wednesday Belper Labour Councillor Ben Bellamy had clearly shaved Jeremy Corbyn to be proclaimed Beard of Labour Conference 2019.  Jeremy Corbyn claimed second place with Alan Gibbons and Mick Whelan runners up

On the first afternoon distinctively bearded ASLEF General Secretary Mick Whelan chaired the conference, adding significant beard power to the proceedings.

In the following sessions a number of hirsute speakers appeared. However the criteria for the Beard of Labour Party Conference is not just the beard but the gravitas it adds to proceedings

Contenders for 2019 were:

Ben Bellamy, Belper Labour Councillor

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader

Alan Gibbons, Liverpool Walton CLP  delegate

Mick Whelan General Secretary ASLEF

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, as Jeremy Corbyn underlined in his Leader’s Speech to the Conference on Tuesday afternoon, beard power is important in politics in 2019. However as Ben Bellamy’s victory underlines there is more beard power in the Labour Party than just the Leader

Jacob Rees Mogg on why the Rule of Law is a core part of British democracy

Jacob Rees Mogg, Leader of the House, will speak for the Tories in the reconvened, by Supreme Court order, House of Commons on Wednesday.

According to reports he has called the Court judgement a ‘constitutional coup’.

Mr Rees Mogg really ought to consult his own book The Victorians (2019)

In the introduction he writes of ‘the good fortune of Britain, as a nation blessed by being the first to receive the benefit of a good Constitution and the rule of law’.

He goes on to note that ‘Democracy, the rule of law, the rights of property and freedom of speech led for the Victorians and for us, to a stable and prosperous state.

While it is pleasing to see that Rees Mogg supports the Rule of Law he must understand surely that in order for the concept to work it must be seen to apply equally to all, even to Joris Bohnson

Is Boris Johnson the worst British Prime Minister ever?

Some argue that Theresa May, was the worst Prime MInister ever. There is however stiff competition. After all, then came Boris Johnson

David Cameron has published his ‘memoirs’ this week where he blames Gove and Johnson for everything. Some may think that Cameron himself was also in the frame

The Worst PM?

Lord Liverpool, a Tory, (1812-27) who presided over the Peterloo Massacre in 1819,introduced the repressive Six Acts that cracked down on democratic political activity and introduced the 1825 anti-union Combination Acts is a serious contender for the title.

Earl Grey who was a Liberal (1830-34) is also up there. He was PM when the Tolpuddle Martyrs stood trial and he introduced the Poor Law and the Workhouse. On the plus side he abolished slavery (as it was then).

Ramsay MacDonald (1924;1929-1935). First Labour Prime Minister; Later First National Government Prime Minister. An idea that has recently reappeared but still means Tory Government under another name.

Margaret Thatcher, Tory, (1979-1990) Falklands War, miner’s strike, poll tax. An impressive record

Tony Blair, Labour (1997-2007) not perhaps an obvious contender compared to others but features primarily because of the Iraq War.

David Cameron (2010-2016) Lost Referendum on Europe he was supposed to win. Then resigned.

Theresa May (2016-2019) Called an Election to increase her majority and ended up with a minority Government (at best). The spent years trying and failing to ‘save’ the Tory Party

Boris Johnson (2019) Broke the Law