Kmflett's Blog

Hop Stuff brewing in South London has been brought out by Molson Coors. It hasnt brewed for a few months after issues with the landlord of its Thamesmead Brewery.

Ive tried the beers from time to time and if not cutting edge I thought they were drinkable and decent enough.

Aside from the brewery Hopstuff also have 3 taprooms and all these were based on crowdfunding.

With the buy out by Coors all the investors have lost their money. This hasnt gone down well in South London where many of the investors were local people

https://853london.com/2019/07/12/hop-stuff-brewery-sells-out-to-carling-owner-and-leaves-local-investors-with-nothing/

Of course crowdfunding comes with a clear warning that capital is at risk for investors. Hopstuff is not the first crowdfunded beer project to go under this year. Redchurch did recently.

The problem lies not with the beer but with the business model and how the business is run. James Yeomans who runs HopStuff will, it appears, carry on doing so. Its not clear what hit, if any, he has taken from the failure of the business but the Sunday Times (28th April 2019) did describe him as man that couldnt run a party in a crowdfunded brewery.

Start up small businesses quite often fail and the owners may well face a considerable financial impact as well as those who they traded with. Others do not. With crowdfunding it is the small investors who take the hit while, as it would seem here, those who were running things carry on.

It is unsatisfactory.

I’m a socialist and would prefer the economy to be run differently. However dont take it that I write the above simply because I dislike capitalism. I’m a trade union officer based in the Square Mile of the City of London. I represent who do their bit to keep capitalism going and, yes, I do own shares.

All this is regulated although often not as well as one might like. The concern with things like HopStuff is that regulation such as it is, is bringing into disrepute some models of funding business and to an extent also bringing into disrepute craft beer

Tony Benn on the Durham Miners gala, 35 years ago, at the height of the 1984/5 miner’s strike

Photo credit: Sunderland Echo

Sunday 15^th July 1984

Alan Meale rang to tell me about the Durham Miners’ Gala yesterday. Apparently 100,000 people were there. Dennis Skinner made a brilliant speech which got a standing ovation but, when Neil Kinnock got up to speak, three bands started playing and moving off the field, and about 85,000 people with twelve banners just began moving away. All Neil did was to attack the Tories- he didn’t give support to the miners.

While Tony Benn’s Diary entry has an anecdotal quality it reflects the mood of the times. Dennis Skinner was, and is, a former miner and on the left. Neil Kinnock who had become Labour leader in 1983 after Michael Foot’s defeat at the General Election of that year was widely criticised for not supporting the miner’s strike more robustly. It must be said however that until the current leadership, historically it has been unusual for Labour leaders to back strikes and historical hindsight might note that at least Kinnock did show up. Blair who was an MP for a north-east constituency never spoke at the Gala.

It is a reminder too that the Durham Miners Gala is not just some entertaining exercise in labour movement archaeology, celebrating the glorious victories (and more often defeats) of the past. There is a lot of living current politics being discussed.

Thanks to CWU officer Nigel Cotgrove for reminding of this image.

The Cricket World Cup Final takes place on Sunday at Lords between England and Australia. Its free to air on Channel 4 combined of course with the essential commentary from the BBC’s Test Match Special Team.

The impact of such an event is unfortunately not what it would be if it was the England football team but the link of a cricketing image into a wider message is a reminder of a time when cricket had a more central place in national life. I’d hope it can go there again.

The connection between the Paris Commune & Marmite

During the 1871 Paris Commune a number of street food feeding places were set up called La Marmite- in English the pot.

I was reminded by new research* that when some Communards were exiled to London a La Marmite was set up just off Tottenham Court Rd.

What is the connection with Marmite? It was not unfortunately made to celebrate the Paris Commune. However it was originally sold in earthenware pots, and the jar today still carries something of that shape..

* THE PARIS COMMUNE IN LONDON AND THE SPATIAL HISTORY OF IDEAS, 1871–1900 Laura C Forster (Historical Journal 2019)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/paris-commune-in-london-and-the-spatial-history-of-ideas-18711900/5EC3B5B783605207AEAC23713E6C1704/share/96d7b00f0c712042223125a90b37a7965afae0e2

Commenting on twitter about the first Cricket World Cup Semi Final between India and New Zealand, the Editor of the New Statesman Jason Cowley tweeted:

A cricket World Cup semi-final was played today in England but hardly anyone cares. The English Cricket Board – in all its greed and myopia – has failed to create a national moment. It had years to prepare for the tournament and has blown it.

Today England are playing Australia in the second semi-final at Edgbaston. It is available on Sky subscription where it will probably be seen by a million or so people (11 million watched the Women’s World Cup Semi-Final which was free to air on the BBC)

Interviewed by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special on Tuesday the outgoing Head of the ICC (which organises the World Cup) Dave Richardson noted that the ICC has contracted the TV broadcasting rights to Star who then sub-contract across the world. In the UK’s case Sky have the contract and have the decision on whether to make matches free to air.

Richardson noted that in some countries such as Australia legislation requires matches featuring the home team to be free to air while in India Star itself allows games to be shown on a free to air channel. Not in the UK.

In this case the ECB who run cricket in England and Wales have had the responsibility of organising the detail of the World Cup within the ICC’s framework. One might think however that in order to publicise it in the wider interests of cricket they might have had a word with Sky which has the contract for domestic cricket on TV from them. Perhaps they did.

In the meantime the always professional and entertaining Test Match Special at least keeps the majority of cricket fans uptodate on events

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

11th July

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard of the Cricket World Cup. Vital Beard Off between Bairstow & Warner at Edgbaston

The Beard Liberation Front has said that with the search for the Beard of the 2019 Cricket World Cup  into the deciding phase, there is a vital Beard Off today at Edgbaston between England’s Jonny Bairstow and Australia’s David Warner

Both player’s beards have had a significant impact on the World Cup so though Warner’s record is slightly better than Bairstows

The poll of well-known hirsute cricketers who are playing in the World Cup is on-line

In the beginning was WG Grace but in the twentieth century cricket went to the barbers. So much so that by the early 1960s a major shaving company was sponsoring one day cricket and players deemed insufficiently clean shaven were sometimes sent from the field to sort it out.

In the twenty first century beards in cricket are back from Moeen to Hashim and Virat. Its now understood that a beard can have a psychological impact on opponents after Mike Brearley pioneered the point. Beards can also have an aero-dynamic impact on play itself.

Beards are playing an important, perhaps vital, role in the World Cup. But who will have the winning whiskers?

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, no question, in the battle for the Beard of the World Cup, Edgbaston represents Beard Wars between England and Australia

Post Panorama a reminder of the history of Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition to racism & fascism

No doubt there will be a variety of views on the Panorama programme on 10^th July which in part attacked Jeremy Corbyn’s record as an anti-racist and anti-fascist. I don’t think it accords with reality and below is an important part of the reason why.

Of course 1977 is a long time ago but on the 40^th anniversary of the largely successful attempt to stop the fascist National Front marching in North London, Corbyn turned up and spoke at a large gathering on the spot where the NF had marched from.

Further he often refers to it, correctly, as an important part of recent labour history and is invariably to be found speaking at meetings and protests now that call out and oppose racists. Would that many of his opponents were so energetic in such an important cause

On 23rd April 1977 the National Front decided to march from Ducketts Common by Turnpike Lane tube in North London down a busy London High Road packed with Saturday afternoon shoppers. There were several thousand fascists but they were outnumbered by opponents, including many people out shopping, appalled that fascists were marching on the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday.

The National Front were an avowedly anti-Semitic party.

It would be bad enough now but this was a mere three decades after the end of the Second World War and numbers who had been actively involved in fighting Hitler were no doubt around on that Spring day.

In reality only a small part of the NF march made it to a concluding rally as it was broken by protesters.

40 years on 23rd April 2017* that day was marked with a festival to celebrate diversity and oppose racism on the very same Ducketts Common. The fascists never returned in any numbers to the Borough, but the fight against racism always needs to be maintained in each generation.

One of the keynote speakers on 23rd April was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. It was of course the kind of event that one might expect he would attend, but it is little bit more specific than that.

In 1977, before he became the long serving MP for Islington North, Corbyn was a trade union official and Labour Councillor in Haringey for the area adjacent to Ducketts Common. He is still remembered for the hard work he did then.

Part of that was to act as the co-ordinator for all of the local Haringey Councillors, including Tories on 23rd April.

The Councillors had called for the National Front march to be banned, recognising the provocation it was designed to be. The police had declined. On the day all of the Councillors assembled on Ducketts Common, before the fascists marched, holding a giant banner making clear they stood firm against racism.

But there was another group of people, anti-fascists, trade-unionists, socialists, who were determined that the National Front would not march. The main aim was simply to stop them by force of numbers but some physical engagement with the fascists was envisaged.

Using his influence Jeremy Corbyn was able to act as the spokesperson for both groups of people, presenting in effect a unified protest against the NF. Indeed the following week he was quoted in the local Hornsey Journal paper in just this role.

That day was one of the occasions that led to the formation of the Anti-Nazi League and the first huge Carnival in conjunction with Rock Against Racism at Victoria Park in May 1978.

Corbyn’s role in some of the events that led to the birth of the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement that did much to stop the National Front from becoming, as it threated to in the late 1970s, a major political force, should not be forgotten.

Given that it is not unknown for labour movement leaders to develop hazy memories of how they came to be leaders in the first place, it’s also good that the current Labour leader has not forgotten those days either.

July: the month of labour movement festivals from Durham to Tolpuddle. Politics, solidarity, beer & fun

They seem to do celebrations and festivals better in other Labour movements in other countries, or at least that is the mythology that has grown up around the British labour movement.

It isn’t true as festivals this weekend and next demonstrate. There is the annual celebration of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in the agricultural village of Tolpuddle near Dorchester in Dorset next weekend and this weekend there is the Durham miner’s gala, in the ex-mining but still very much university and cathedral city of Durham.

These festivals commemorate the formative period of the labour movement from the struggles of Dorset farm workers to join a trade union in the 1830s to the industrial might of Durham miners from the late nineteenth century

Different struggles in different localities but ones that taken together form a history of resistance.

The specific forms of resistance, all focusing on a united fight for a better world, need to be understood in their own sense.

In 1834 when a group Dorset farm workers met to swear allegiance to and form a trade union, it was less than ten years, since the repeal of the Combination Acts in 1825 which had made unions completely illegal. It was still very difficult to join a union, as the labourers found.

They signed up to the Grand Consolidated National Trade Union, the first general union associated with the early socialist Robert Owen. The news that farm workers were getting organised alarmed local employers who were also the local political leaders and magistrates. They determined to prosecute George Loveless and the other Tolpuddle trade unionists under an obscure 1797 Act which forbade the swearing of oaths.

After a trial at Dorchester the men were, unsurprisingly, found guilty and sentenced to transportation to Australia for seven years. There they found tough conditions, but a massive campaign was already underway for their release. There was a demonstration in central London and the question was raised in the House of Commons. Eventually Russell the Home Secretary pardoned the men and they returned to England.

It was a hugely important battle for the right to organise and it was won. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, mostly Methodists, were neither militants or revolutionaries. They had simply made a stand for what was right.

At the other end of the country around the pits of County Durham similar struggles for trade union organisation were underway, but unions were often short lived as battles with employers were fought and lost. However by the 1860s there was a stable union structure and in 1871 the first ‘big meeting’ of Durham miners, the miners gala was held.

It has continued ever since with breaks for the World Wars, the 1926 General Strike and the 1984/5 miner’s strike. Several things characterise the gala. Firstly the parade of banners from individual pits, many famously political, depicting figures such as Lenin and Keir Hardie. Secondly the presence of brass bands, a traditional form of music associated with collieries. Thirdly the speakers; down the years the Durham Miners Gala has been the key place for Labour and trade union leaders to speak. Every Labour leader bar one has spoken. The exception of course was Blair who never bothered despite being an MP local to the area. The famous names of British labour have spoken from Nye Bevan a former miner’s leader and founder of the NHS to Tony Benn, and, as importantly international speakers from struggles around world from South Africa to Chile.

The gala attracted as many as 300,000 people in the 1950s and it might seem to be an event dominated by men but the reality is rather different, There was also a tradition of a separate women’s gala and there was a crèche from 1937. Despite the fact that the actions of Mrs Thatcher means there are no working pits left in Durham the tradition of the gala continues. Attendances are on the increase and new banners are appearing reinventing the festival as one of a celebration of community solidarity.

In the age of neo-liberalism to remember and celebrate the Tolpuddle trade unionists and the Durham miners who stood up very publicly for what is right and decent in public life- the dignity of organisation and the fight against repression-is itself an act of resistance.

The twin motors of religion and politics can be seen at work here, the Methodism of the farm workers and miners and the religious views that can inspire the fight against racism. But alongside that are left-wing politics and the desire to fight-back against those who would oppress.

These festivals are of the left and a place for the left to argue it’s politics, but they are also about fun. There is a lot of respectability involved with the public culture of the British left but there are some unrespectable bits as well. Not only the music and dancing, but also in many cases the beer. We find in 1960 complaints that Durham pub owners were putting up the price of a pint on gala days such was the demand.

If you believe that the British left is dull and boring compared to that elsewhere getting along to one of the great labour movement festivals this weekend and next might just cause you to think again. Solidarity can be mixed with some history and a good time.

I should add though that historically some of the time it did rain. Surely not this year though!

This post originally appeared in 2018

Stephen Yaxley Lennon ahead of his sentencing at the Old Bailey has asked Donald Trump for asylum.

There has been no response but a People’s Vote was run on twitter to check the popular view. Aside from the 4 published options Rockall, Heligoland and others were mentioned.

The result based on a 24 hour poll is below

Belmarsh 75%

Ambridge 12%

Elba 11%

Isle of Wight 2%

So Belmarsh for Mr Yaxley Lennon’s asylum it is

Beard Liberation Front

9th July

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners slam clean shaven white men in suits Tory leadership ‘debate’

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that after Tuesday’s Tory leadership ‘debate’ its time to call it out for what it is, Namely two clean shaven white men in suits that do not represent in anyway what the majority of the country thinks or looks like.

The campaigners say that Hunt and Johnson do sum up the Tory Party as the least diverse of the main parties and one that is not hugely concerned about addressing the issue either.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said. Hunt and Johnson are good news for the shaving and suit industries and very bad news indeed for absolutely everyone else.