Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release 3^rd May

Contact: Keith Flett 07803 167266

Failure of LibDem Santa lookalike in Lewisham Council By-Election may be down to pogonophobia

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the failure of a hirsute LibDem candidate, Max Brockbank, in a Council By-Election for the Whitefoot Ward in Lewisham on Thursday may reflect an element of pogonophobia amongst voters

The campaigners say that while they are not party political they have been concerned for some time about the apparent decline of the LibDems as the traditional party of beard wearers (often with sandals) and welcome a fully hirsute LibDem candidate.

Political candidates who do not conform to the clean-shaven male in a suit image can face discrimination whether this is due to lack of follicles on the top of their heads- a concern for Party leaders from Neil Kinnock to William Hague and now Vince Cable- or because they have beards. This may have been a factor for Mr Brockbank as well unfortunately.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we congratulate the winning Labour candidate and clearly Labour unlike the clean-shaven Tories is a beard friendly party. However we hope Max Brockbank will continue to deport his beard in the political arena

Result

https://lewisham.gov.uk/mayorandcouncil/elections/results/election-results-2019/whitefoot-by-election-2019-results

London Socialist Historians Group

3^rd May

Media Release

Contact: Dr Keith Flett 07803 167266 Twitter @LSHGOfficial. Website: http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.co.uk/

Socialist Historians renew call for funding for Peterloo tableaux

The London Socialist Historians Group which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research as the University of London (currently suspended in support of an IWGB boycott over outsourcing) has renewed a call for funding from veteran socialist photographer and montage creator Red Saunders who is creating a tableaux to mark the 200th anniversary of Peterloo.

The historians have worked with Red on a number of projects such as William Cuffay and Chartism and say that his work represents an important part of the effort to reclaim our history, the history of those who have fought back

Red Saunders has commented:

Two hundred years ago, on 16 August 1819,  Manchester’s Yeomanry Cavalry rode into thousands of unarmed protesters who were campaigning for political representation. They killed 18 and injured more than 650.

Journalists called the massacre Peterloo after Waterloo, where four years earlier British forces had won a famous battle against Napoleon. Peterloo was the war on the home front – it was a war on the emerging working-class movement that was demanding votes and social justice’.

The Hidden Project is asking for your help in commemorating this event. Hidden is an ongoing series of photographic tableaux by internationally acclaimed artist and a founder of ‘Rock Against Racism’ Red Saunders, which re-imagine events from our history, from a time before the era of photography.

LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, this is an important project in the 200^th anniversary year of Peterloo. However in a market capitalist society it requires funding and so far progress has been too slow! The link is below

https://www.gofundme.com/peterloo-massacre-hidden-project?fbclid=IwAR3p6FuGwR48UjadPFm3_E0ko-i4wRNeyjA9g2DQVLOqeTDBqFEwrCpyzAk

From John Profumo to Gavin Willamson: the bottom line for Tory leaders in Tory Defence scandals

John Profumo

The sacking of Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (University of Bradford) over the leaking of information about the Chinese telecoms company Huawei to the Daily Telegraph (he denies the leak, at least at the moment) raises the spectre of the Profumo Affair which took place just within living memory in 1963.

There are similarities, some differences but I suspect what is likely to be a very similar bottom line.

Its not clear what information Williamson allegedly leaked to the Torygraph but its unlikely to have been earth shattering. The context was twofold. The first was Williamson’s (now departed) ambition to be Tory leader. The second was that while the UK Government can apparently live with Huawei (which is in essence run by the Chinese Government) helping to construct a 5G network the US (which shares security with the UK) is much less happy.

The crucial point in the Williamson affair then is likely to have been the fact of the leak, a matter of trust.

In a sense the Profumo Affair was similar. John Profumo (Harrow and Oxford) was Secretary of State for War (they called a spade a spade in the early 1960s). He was involved with a younger woman Christine Keeler who was also friendly with a Soviet naval attache. This was the era of the Cold War. There was no suggestion that Profumo had given Keeler any secret information. The matter again was one of trust.

While Theresa May sacked Williamson who denied his guilt, Profumo, aided by the Tory Government initially tried to cover matters up. Only when Labour leader Harold Wilson made it clear to Tory PM Macmillan that if nothing was done the matter would go public did Profumo resign. As the Guardian appreciation on his death underlines he later did much to redeem himself.

A few months after Profumo resigned Macmillan stood down as Tory leader. It was officially claimed that it was a health issue (which did exist) but in reality he could not continue after being aware of the cover-up.

One suspects that May who is already on borrowed time as PM will find that the similarity between Profumo and Williamson as a bottom line is that its not only the Minister who has to go but the Prime Minister too.

Wiki on Profumo

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

Guardian appreciation of Profumo from journalist who covered the affair

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/mar/10/guardianobituaries.conservatives

E P Thompson on J A Hobson & the British social democratic tradition

There has been a manufactured furore about a brief introduction to a new edition of J A Hobson’s volume on imperialism written by Jeremy Corbyn in 2011 when he was an obscure Labour backbencher. It was started by Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein and then amplified in a very poor piece by Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland.

The Freedland piece is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/jeremy-corbyn-blind-antisemitism-hobson?CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium=&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1556716305

It concludes naturally with yet another of Freedland’s regular calls for Corbyn to depart as Labour leader.

Let me be clear I am not a fan of Hobson’s view of imperialism. I prefer that of Lenin. It may be debated by some how relevant Lenin’s views on imperialism are in 2019 but around the period of World War One they were very relevant.

Lenin’s view of Hobson’s general position on the development of capitalism is here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/apr/hobson.htm

I’m no fan either of Hobson’s anti-Semitism, far from uncommon at the time, and until now largely unremarked on perhaps because of that.

I often post on William Cobbett, another important figure in the British radical tradition (albeit he was actually a Tory) and point out that readers need to be very wary of his anti-Semitism. Comment there comes none.

Why however was Corbyn writing an introduction to Hobson rather than Lenin.?

The reason why, apparently unknown to Freedland, is because Hobson was a key part of the British social-democratic tradition.

In his Peculiarities of the English E P Thompson attacked Perry Anderson’s point that while the European left had theory the British left did not.

Thompson identified three traditions. Firstly the ‘social reformers within a Liberal tradition’ He named J A Hobson, Beveridge and Boyd Orr. Secondly the marxisant independents. Here he named Brailsford, Laski, Strachey and Cole. Thirdly the ethical socialists, Tawney and Orwell.

How many of these beyond Hobson had any anti-Semitic views I’m not aware.

Donald Sassoon has made a relevant point on that in The Guardian (3rd May).

He writes in part:

And how about Sidney Webb, one of the founders of the Fabian Society, when secretary of state for the colonies in the 1929 Labour government, explaining that he was pleased that there were “no Jews in the British Labour party” and that while “French, German, Russian Socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free”, adding that was probably the case because there was “no money in it”.(Paul Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism: The History of a Divorce, Manchester University Press 2012, p.20).

The full letter is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/02/jeremy-corbyn-hobsons-imperialism-and-antisemitism

The point is Hobson was part of the social democratic tradition. That is why Corbyn wrote the introduction in 2011 and why Gordon Brown mentioned Hobson approvingly in a speech in 2008. Jonathan Freedland please note and perhaps especially note that like much else while the social democratic tradition has strengths it also, historically, has some much less happy elements to it. Often the two exist side by side.

My thanks to Roger Huddle for reminding me this, drawn by Walter Crane for the Commonweal, paper of the Socialist League which was associated with one of the great socialist beard wearers William Morris. Solidarity now is just as essential as it was in 1890 when London’s first May Day marches took place

The Hidden History of May Day

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 30th April

Contact Keith Flett      07803 167266

HIRSUTE PREPARE FOR TRADITIONAL MAY DAY BEARD WAGGLE

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the ancient May Day tradition of Beard Waggling will be revived once again on Wednesday May 1st as, with the weather set reasonably fair in many areas, the hirsute will celebrate the coming of Spring by waggling their beards

The beard waggle, a traditional British May Day custom, involves shaking the beard vigorously from side to side and in doing so stimulating air currents that can cause objects to levitate slightly.

Waggling the beard when it has become damp due to rain however is problematic. The BLF says that those preparing for a beard waggle need to pay careful attention to the weather forecast as some rain is possible.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, the Beard Waggle is one of the great May Day traditions but it went into decline with the rise of the safety razor. Now with the hipster culture of beards, the waggle is firmly back and is gaining in popularity each year.

Beard Liberation Front guide on how to train for May Day beard waggling

1] Ensure the beard is supple. This may be done by moistening is slightly with water or, if preferred, craft beer.

2] Choose a suitable location to waggle, preferably in the sun rather than the shade

3] Move the beard vigorously from side to side and then up and down while otherwise standing still. Repeat several times

4] While waggling the traditional chant is, Hail the Beard, Hail Spring

5] Alternatively beard wagglers may simply intone Om, Om, Om

From Peterloo to Extinction Rebellion: the politics of space

Space was important to the recent Extinction Rebelllion climate protests in central London. Key spaces such as Oxford Circus and Waterloo Bridge were held by the protest despite police arrests.

Holding the spaces was totemic but the politics of space has been around a long time.

One of the leading social historians of space in the nineteenth century Katrina Navickas has recently posted on the History Workshop site about Peterloo and the politics of space:

http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/peterloo-place-matters/

The site of Peterloo became the Free Trade Hall, originally the Anti-Corn Law League’s space

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

This was the building where Bob Dylan played his first electric gig in 1966.

More recently it has become a Radisson hotel. I stayed there during the 2018 TUC. The politics of space indeed:

https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2018/09/15/sleeping-on-the-site-of-peterloo/

E P Thompson v Roger Scruton on wine

I drank a glass or two of real ale with EP Thompson over the years (mainly from memory Courage Directors bitter in Worcester) but not wine.

I was motivated to check his view on wine while looking at the controversy surrounding Roger Scruton’s comments about him in the 1985 volume Thinkers of the New Left and Thompson’s subsequent response.

Scruton who died in 2020 published a book on philosophers and wine.

But what of Thompson and wine?

Perry Anderson in a note after Thompson’s untimely death in 1993 noted a time when Thompson stayed with him in London in 1962 (LRB 21^st October 1993):

Coming home one evening in the last weeks of 1962, I found a bottle of wine in the vacated room, with a note underneath. Edward Thompson had been completing The Making of the English Working-Class.

Thompson’s criticism of staying in the old EEC published in the Sunday Times in 1975 (27^th April 1975), Going into Europe, noted that one thing Europhiles liked about Europe was the ‘vintage wines’.

Thompson’s views on wine in his classic Making of the English Working Class were mixed. He noted that one of those who rode with the Yeomanry at Peterloo on 16^th August 1819 was a wine merchant. On the other hand the leading Chartist Bronterre O’Brien (1805-64) was the son of an Irish wine merchant.

Scruton in I Drink Therefore I am argues that ‘while societies differ over which intoxicants should be encouraged…there has been a convergence of opinion around one all important rule: that the result must not threaten public order’

That is certainly what the wine merchant did at Peterloo and what the son of a wine merchant Bronterre O’Brien intended in some degree, although in different ways.

We may conclude that philosopher though he may be (and a number of other much less satisfactory things) historian Scruton is not.