Lenin & the Russian Revolution.

 

If Lenin was such an orthodox Marxist as the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, believed, then Lenin would have held to the view that Russia had to go through a period of capitalist industrial development and bourgeois democracy before there could be a revolution. Marxist revolutions are supposed to take place not in agrarian societies like Russia, but in highly industrialised economies like Britain, France or Germany. 

In February 1917, when the Russian Revolution broke out in Petrograd, Lenin was in Zurich and Trotsky was touring America. When he was in Zurich in 1917, Lenin had told students that he didn't think the revolution would happen in his or his generations lifetime. The Bolsheviks who were in Petrograd were taken completely by surprise. They were preparing for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. 

In 1917, around 80% of the Russian population would've been peasants. Lenin was taken to Petrograd by the Germans in the so-called "sealed train." When he arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station on April 3, 1917, he addressed a crowd of workers and Bolsheviks, and denounced the Provisional Government and demanded an immediate socialist revolution. He outlined his radical 'April Theses' calling for the Soviets to take power. 

The Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, because nobody really wanted it. The Petrograd Soviet had the power but didn't want the responsibility and the Provisional Government had the responsibility but not the power. Had Lenin not arrived in Petrograd in April 1917; events may have taken a completely different course in Russia. Such is the power of agency. Lenin basically responded to events that had been initiated spontaneously. 

Between 1918 and 1921, the country was plunged into civil war with the Bolsheviks fighting the counter revolutionary ‘White Army' and a war with the Russian peasantry.

Reform UK launches legal challenge against government plans to delay May local elections.

 

It looks like Labour are running scared of the electorate and are giving local councils the opportunity to delay elections until 2027. They say this is because the government are planning an overhaul of local government and this will take time and many councils lack the capacity for reorganisation. Labour also knows from the opinion polls that they're likely to get slaughtered in the forthcoming May local elections, which will seen as a vote of no confidence in the leadership of Spineless Starmer and his Labour government.

Reform UK have now launched a legal challenge against these attempts to delay local elections. It seems to me that the longer Starmer remains PM and leader of the Labour Party, the more likely it is that we will see Farage in Downing Street at the next general election.

Most British mainstream political leaders are supine and prostrate themselves before Donald Trump and American global interests, but a British government, led by a charlatan like Nigel Farage, would turn Britain into the 51 state of America. It's already bad enough Britain being an aircraft carrier for the Yanks. Under Farage, we can look forward to eating U.S. chlorinated chicken and beef from U.S. cattle, fed on growth promoting hormones. We can also expect a Greater role for U.S. private health care companies within the NHS and charges for NHS health care services. Farage also thinks that  the Americans should take over Greenland from Denmark. 

Your Party wants to nationalize the British economy. Would this be in the interest of the state or the workers?

 

We had nationalization in the past in Britain before Maggie Thatcher and I once worked for a utility, but I wouldn't call it worker's control, it was more like the TV series 'Upstairs and Downstairs'. 

Labour's 'Clause 4', was never about "workers control" it involved the acquisition of the means of production by the state for the benefit of the state. Mine owners were compensated when they nationalised coal and some were better off.  

If the workers are going to run the "entire economy", as Zara Sultana, of 'Your Party" wants, through co-operatives, does that mean the abolition of capitalism and the private ownership of the means of production, and if that is the case, why doesn't she say so? Given that many former nationalised industries are now privatised would the owners and their shareholders, be compensated, or would their businesses be expropriated? If they are to be compensated where would the money come from to compensate them? If it involves expropriation, does she think that it's likely that the capitalists would acquiesce in this? If history tells us anything, it is likely to lead to a counter revolution, a conservative reaction, and fascism. 

If everything is under the control of the workers, how is all this co-ordinated and organised in the general interest of society and what role does the state play in all this? Are we really all working for the state and if this is the case, doesn't the state become our sole employer?  That doesn't sound like much fun to me. What happens to us if we don't obey the state? Do we starve?

The French anarchist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, did say that "property is theft", but he drew a distinction between personal possession and the private ownership of the means of production. He thought that a certain amount of private property, small holdings, was necessary for independence. It is also argued that private property acts as a counterweight to state power. 

Rough sleeper found frozen death in Manchester City centre on Boxing Day.

 

On Boxing Day, a man was found dead under a bridge in Manchester City centre near to the Bridgewater Hall. The police said there were no suspicions circumstances. What they couldn't say, and this was reported in the Manchester Evening News (MEN), was that this man had frozen to death because he was a rough sleeper. The temperature that night was -4 degrees.

It was also reported in the MEN, that last Monday, the Holiday Inn, on Oxford Road, Manchester, refused two people accommodation because they were people off the streets. Apparently, a charity had taken pity on them and had paid their accommodation costs and the rooms had been pre-booked. The receptionist told them that he knew they were people off the streets and that it was the policy of the hotel, not to admit rough sleepers. The temperature that day was -6 degrees. I believe the two individuals were eventually accommodated in a Travel Lodge.

British politicians like to describe Britain as an "inclusive society". When people are freezing to death on the streets of Britain, one of the richest countries in the world, because they're homeless and people are being denied access to accommodation because they're off the streets, you can hardly call that an inclusive society. I'm afraid that we seem to be returning to Victorian times when these kinds of deaths among the homeless and destitute were commonplace.

Trump bombs Venezuela and kidnaps its President!

 

Nicolas Maduro

People will obviously question the legality of the kidnapping of the leftist Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, in terms of international law. The kidnapping of the Venezuelan President, and the bombing of the Venezuelan capital, is illegal under international law, but the Americans have never bothered too much about that. The Americans consider Maduro a 'Narco-Terrorist' and a New York court indicted Maduro in March 2020, and issued an arrest warrant for him. The American government wants to put him on trial. They don't consider Maduro to have diplomatic immunity.

They did the same thing in 1999 when they invaded Panama and captured the dictator, Manuel Noriega. The U.S. courts ruled in (United States v Noriega) that "jurisdiction is not defeated by abduction." If the U.S. military can physically drag you into a courtroom, even illegally, you can still be tried. This is backed up by the U.S. Supreme Court which relies on the doctrine based on the legal case (Ker v Illinois) which essentially states ("Bad capture, good detention").

Despite their abductions, both Maduro and Noriega, have fared better than Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist President of Chile, and Maurice Bishop, the leftist Prime Minister of Grenada, who all died following CIA inspired coups.

The Yanks will install a Transitional puppet Government in Venezuela, who will retroactively consent to the U.S. operation, and transform the kidnapping into a legal "cooperative extradition." This is what happened in Panama in 1990. It says something that the Americans were able to capture Maduro so easily and to take control of Venezuela and its oil supplies. Will Iran be next? Many Iranians are hoping so.

Are the free market and immigration control incompatible?

 

Eddie Dempsey - RMT General Secretary

The leader of the RMT union, Eddie Dempsey, is right to point out that very often those who do the hard graft in society are often the least recognised and the least rewarded -they keep the show on the road.

But the market doesn't always determine the wages for some people. The wages of many workers are regulated and are not determined by a Dutch auction. Remuneration committees often determine the salaries of banking officials. An MPs salary is set and so are the wages of Eddie Dempsey as a trade union official. What's the going rate for an MP? The wages of police officers will be regulated along with many legal officials like judges. The wages of civil servants and local government workers are also regulated.

If you believe in the so-called "free-market", then you can't really be in favour of immigration control and must be in favour of the free movement of Labour. What does Donald Trump's crackdown on "undocumented" workers have to do with free markets? Many migrant workers may better at doing your job and may be prepared to do it for less money, but very few free-market economists are bold enough to speak out against immigration control.

In America, many immigrants work in food processing, construction, agriculture and hospitality. Undocumented workers, who still pay state and federal taxes in the U.S., make up 25% of all farm workers. There are 7 million workers in the U.S. who are undocumented.

In his book entitled '23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism', the Cambridge economist, Ha-Joon Chang, wrote: "We are persuaded to accept what I call the L'Oréal principle - if some people are paid tens of millions of pounds per year, it must be because they are worth it." We know that many top bosses get well paid even when the companies they run, are losing money and even if they resign, they're given a huge pay off. They're a nepotistic class who have basically got their fingers in the till.

In a class ridden country like Britain, the options that people can choose from, are usually severely limited by a lack of resources or education. Our preferences are strongly formed by our social environment - family, neighbourhood, schooling and social class. The social bank of mum and dad, opens as many doors, as the financial bank of mum and dad. 

Orwell & the Americans.

 

The American military authorities in Europe, rounded up all the copies of George Orwell's novella Animal Farm that they could find and turned them over to the Red Army to be burned.

George Orwell was the first to use the phrase 'The Cold War' in print. Eastern Europe had the appearance of a "New Class" system with gross privileges for the ruling elite and grinding mediocrity of existence for the majority. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had a meeting with Zhou Enlai just before the Sino-Soviet split. He told the Chinaman,

"I am the son of coal miners and you are the son of feudal mandarins. We have nothing in common." "Perhaps we do", murmured his Chinese antagonist. "What?" blustered Khrushchev. Zhou responded, "We are both traitors to our class " (Christopher Hitchens - Arguably)

The CIA secretly bought the film rights to Animal Farm and altered the ending of the film so that the pigs, who represent the communists, were overthrown by the other animals on the farm. 

Orwell & the Communists in Spain.

 

Bob Edwards MP

George Orwell spent six months in Spain and got shot through the neck on the Aragon front. His wife, Eileen, also went to Spain. Both of them were involved with a Marxist group called the POUM. The Communists denounced the POUM as Trotskyists and planned to liquidate them. I believe Orwell and his wife were on the death list. They were being spied on and there were NKVD agents working in the POUM offices in Barcelona.

These were not idle threats because the Stalinists had murdered the POUM leader, Andres Nin. Orwell and his wife fled Spain not because of Franco, but to get away from the communists who were murdering Republicans. Orwell never forgot or forgave this treachery.

Orwell was never really popular with the British communists.  They didn't like him because he was an Etonian with a posh accent and fought with the anti-Stalinist POUM. They thought he was in Spain to get material for a book. One person called him a "supercilious bastard" and the CPGB leader, Harry Pollitt, from Droylsden, accused Orwell of slumming it. The POUM had fraternal affiliations with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Orwell was in the ILP.

Bob Edwards, who also fought with the POUM, had mixed feelings about Orwell, but he didn't doubt his bravery under fire. Edwards became a Labour MP and was later exposed as a KGB British agent by the Soviet defector, Oleg Gordievsky. As a youth, Edwards had met both Stalin and Trotsky in the Soviet Union in 1926. Edwards received in secret, the Soviet Union's third highest medal, the 'Order of the People's Friendship'.

Orwell's book, 'Homage to Catalonia', is probably the book that most British people encounter when they first read about the Spanish Civil War. Having read books on Spain by the historian Paul Preston, I was struck by his determination to trash the reputation of Orwell when it comes to his personal account about the Spanish Civil War. Orwell wasn't a professional historian, but he fought in Spain and lived through those events, and Preston didn't. 

The Russians say they have no plans to invade other countries in Europe, but NATO is talking up plans for a war against Russia.

 

The Russians say they have no plans to invade other European countries, but I remember Putin saying that he had no plans to invade the Ukraine and then they tried to take Kiev in February 2022, but got bogged down and had to turn back. The Russian invasion was a complete fiasco and that didn't go unnoticed. That Russian convoy stretched back for many miles and they would have been sitting ducks for any country with a decent air force or a missile system. Although the Ukraine as a Jewish President, Putin called it a "special operation' aimed at the denazification of the Ukraine.

Is it really credible that Putin would want to extend this war into a war against the rest of Europe? I don't believe for moment that most Russians feel threatened by NATO, but many eastern European countries, feel threatened by Russia. Putin certainly wants to destabilize Europe and he must be rubbing his hands with glee, in the way in which, he's managed to drive a wedge between Europe and America. However, I think Trump's isolationism and is MAGA movement, is more responsible for that.

The Russians have struggled to get anywhere in the Ukraine and that war has been going on since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea. The Russians are now using troops from North Korea. When Russia annexed the Crimea, most European countries did nothing. Denmark has called Donald Trump a security threat and Trump definitely seems to be dancing to Putin's tune. NATO is now talking up a war against Russia, but for the last 80 years, Europe has relied on American military might for its security. Under Donald Trump, America is no longer a reliable ally and the transatlantic alliance, has never looked more fragile. NATO is effectively American military power and if that can't be relied on, then NATO is nothing.

In Britain, the Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer seems to be itching to drag Britain into the war raging in the Ukraine. Both Starmer and his Labour government are so unpopular that they're desperate for a diversion and Starmer is clinging on to power. It's a 'Wag the Dog' scenario.

It's not that many weeks ago, that we were being told that in the event of a full-scale war, Britain would run out of ammunition within ten days. Russia does have many nuclear weapons and so do other European countries, but I don't think there's any winners in a nuclear war. It's mutually assured self-destruction.

Is social housing in Tameside being allocated on the basis of economic apartheid?

 

The housing developer Bankfoot APM has submitted plans to build 102 homes on land owned by the Greater Manchester Pension Fund.

The development (see above), is to take place on a four-acre site off Harrop Street, Market Street and Chapel Street in Stalybridge and will comprise 44 town houses and 58 apartments. Although the developers say that all the homes will be "affordable" (at mid-market rent levels), the allocation of housing on this project seems to be discriminatory because the new homes are to be targeted on young families, key workers and young professionals. This was the criteria that was used to allocate housing when they opened the Summers Quay project in Stalybridge.

Obviously, pensioners, those in urgent need of housing and those on state benefits are lesser citizens and are not part of the criteria when it comes to allocating housing on this project. 

The big shots who run local authorities like Tameside Council, talk a lot of humbug about diversity, equality and inclusivity, but when it comes to the allocation of new housing in Tameside, we seem to have economic apartheid. The scheme is the first phase of the wider Stalybridge West masterplan being promoted by Tameside Council. 

Starmer blames the benefit system for youth unemployment.

 

Britain's lame duck Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, thinks the benefit system is responsible for trapping young people into unemployment. He also thinks they suffer from a "poverty of aspiration." Automation and AI is likely to make a lot more people jobless and lead to displacement as machines replace workers.  It will also lead to a reduction in aggregate national income as people lose their incomes. This will lead to more business closing and more unemployment.

Hospitality offers a lot of entry level jobs to young people, but increased business costs are now leading to cuts in staff hours and a freeze on recruitment as existing employees are expected to do more for the same money. According to press reports, there has been an increase in the use of temporary workers.

Pubs in Britain are closing at a colossal rate. What I see on a daily basis in my part of Britain, is a lot of under-employment. Supermarkets with nobody working on the checkout tills because they've now introduced self-service machines and made shop lifting easier. Post offices having to close early because of staff shortages since they've been privatised. You make a phone call about a utility bill, and you could be talking to somebody in Timbuktu or an automaton. You phone for a taxi and you're talking to someone in Mumbai who hasn't a clue about the geography of the area.

Too many useful machines leads to too many useless people. If people can't make an income who is going to buy the goods that capitalist wants to sell? It's a contradiction of capitalism. What might be needed is a universal unconditional citizens basic income.

The People of the Abyss - Jack London

 

I read the book 'The People of the Abyss', many years ago. It is Jack London's account of several weeks that he spent living in the East End of London in 1902. I think he described walking down Mile End Road with two unemployed men. Every now and then, one man would bend down to pick something up off the pavement. Jack London thought he was picking up fag ends, but it turned out to be bits of food which he would put in his mouth. He saw people covered in small pox pustules.

As an American from California, I suspect that Jack London would be a far healthier specimen than many of the working-class Londoner's that he encountered. We shouldn't forget that in 1902, Britain was one of the richest countries in the world but many of its people lived in abject poverty. It was paradise for 30,000 and hell for 30,000,000, and it didn't have a problem with boat people.

"To hell or Connaught", Cromwell in Manchester and Ireland.

 

Massacre at Drogheda

Oliver Cromwell's statue in Manchester city centre was removed in 1968 ostensibly because of road development. Some believe that it was removed because it was vandalised and there were demands for it to be removed. The Irish community also found it offensive. I believe it was taken to Wythenshawe Park, where it now resides.  Out of sight out of mind.

They've kept Cromwell's statue outside the House of Commons. Not long ago there was an exhibition about Cromwell in London which was entitled "warts and all." I believe there was no mention of Cromwell's campaign in Ireland. Some years ago, I was watching Michael Portillo's railway journeys in Ireland. He stopped off at Drogheda, but he never mentioned the massacre that took place there in 1641. After the garrison at Drogheda refused to surrender, they were given no quarter and Cromwell ordered that people be put to the sword. It's said that the governor of Drogheda, Sir Arthur Aston, an English royalist, was beaten to death with his own wooden leg. Many fled into St Peter's Church to avoid being killed, scurrying up the church steeple. Cromwell ordered that the church to be set on fire. Cromwell wrote that he thought a hundred people died in that church. He admitted that many civilians including women and clergymen had been killed, either shot at in error, or out of cruelty. In a letter to speaker Lenthall, Cromwell wrote:

"I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town...I think that night they put to the sword about 2,000 men." He told Lenthall that what had happened "was the righteous judgement of God upon those barbarous wretches and that it would prevent the effusion of blood for the future." Colonel John Hewson, a parliamentary officer, claimed that there must have been 3,000 bodies lying in the streets of Drogheda, of whom, he thought, 150 were his comrades.

Cromwell's behaviour in Ireland has never been forgotten or forgiven. The deaths and loses in Ireland following the invasion of 1649, were catastrophic. Many more died in those wars than had died in the English civil wars of the 1640s - if not from fighting, then from subsequent plague and starvation. The Irish Catholics were given the choice of either being killed or deported to Connaught, when Cromwell sought to seize Irish lands for English and Protestant settlers. Many died in the brutal migration. "To hell or Connaught", is attributed to Cromwell. 

Starmer blames the benefit system for youth unemployment.

 

Keir Starmer

Britain's lame duck Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, thinks the benefit system is responsible for trapping young people into unemployment. He also thinks they suffer from a "poverty of aspiration."

Automation and AI is likely to make a lot more people jobless and lead to displacement as machines replace workers.  It will also lead to a reduction in aggregate national income as people lose their incomes. This will lead to more business closing and more unemployment. Hospitality offers a lot of entry level jobs to young people, but increased business costs is now leading to cuts in staff hours and a freeze on recruitment as existing employees are expected to do more for the same money. Pubs in Britain are closing at a colossal rate.

What I see on a daily basis in my part of Britain, is a lot of under-employment. Supermarkets with nobody working on the checkout tills because they've now introduced self-service machines and made shop lifting easier. Post offices having to close early because of staff shortages since they've been privatised. You make a phone call about a utility bill, and you could be talking to somebody in Timbuktu or an automaton. You phone for a taxi and you're talking to someone in Mumbai who hasn't a clue about the geography of the area.

Too many useful machines leads to too many useless people. If people can't make an income who is going to buy the goods that capitalist wants to sell? It's a contradiction of capitalism. What might be needed is a universal, unconditional, citizens basic income.

Did financial market liberalisation lead to the 2008 financial crash?

 

A country like Britain is governed by people who are amateurs and who have not only never run a company, but really don't have much of an idea, about the working lives of ordinary people, because many of them have never had a proper job in their lives.

There isn't one type of capitalism but variations of it. You will find worker participation and co-determination in both Sweden and Germany. There are worker directors on the boards of many companies in both these countries and there is a high level of trade union membership.

Since the 1980s, the countries with the most marked increase in income inequality have been the U.K. and the U.S. which led the world in pursuing pro-rich policies - tax cuts for the rich, privatization and deregulation. Markets are routinely rigged in favour of the rich and there is mis-selling of financial products and lies told to regulators. Money gives the super-rich the power to legally or illegally buy up politicians and political offices.

The financial crash in 2008, that nearly brought the whole capitalist financial system to its knees, was man-made and didn't arise from any war or economic slump. Many blamed it on easy credit and sub-prime lending, but a lot of the blame lies with the deregulation of financial markets and a belief in something called the "Efficient Markets Hypotheses" that made policy-makers believe that financial markets needed no regulation. The 2008 financial crises was presaged by many earlier smaller crises following radical financial market liberalization. 

The politics of Nigel Farage.

 

Nigel Farage

Occasionally, Nigel Farage does say something honest. He did say, "Politicians? Let's face it, they're all wankers, the lot of them." When he was the leader of UKIP, he described himself as a "Thatcherite." After Margaret Thatcher's death in 2013, Farage said that he was the only politician "keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive." He's also said that Vladimir Putin is the world leader that he most admires "as an operator."

An inquiry into the death of the ex-Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with polonium-210 by two Russian agents, concluded that his murder was 'probably' approved by Vladimir Putin. Nathan Gill, the former Welsh leader of Reform UK, has just been jailed for over ten years for taking bribes to make pro-Russian statements. I would be surprised, if many people who support Reform UK, actually know what their policies are. Reform UK are definitely committed to massively reducing public spending and some think they're a threat to the NHS and would introduce an American-style insurance system. 

Britain's class divide: the Cutteslowe Walls of Oxford.

 

Cutteslowe Walls Oxford

The English nationalism of people like Rupert Lowe, the former Reform UK MP, hardly bears scrutiny. I don't feel I have anything in common with Rupert Lowe at all. I'm not a multimillionaire and didn't go to a public school like Radley College.

Is there really such a thing as a British national identity? Have we all got the same identical interests - socially, politically, economically? Very often the British can't get on with one another. Regional and social class identities are often stronger in England than a British national identity. We have the Scouser, Geordie and the Tyke. A Scottish lorry driver, who once gave me a lift, said to me that as far as he was concerned, you could bomb everything south of Birmingham.

The Irish author and playwright, George Bernard Shaw, wrote: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

In North Oxford, the Cutteslowe Walls, stood for a quarter of a century before they were demolished in 1959. They were built on an estate in an area known as Summertown, to divide the English middle-class residents from the working-class residents. The walls were seven feet high and topped with rotating iron spikes.

They say that in Berwick upon Tweed, some of the inhabitants consider themselves Scottish and some identify as English. Some inhabitants don't identify with either and consider themselves 'Berwickers' first.

Richard Cromwell

 

Richard Cromwell

They didn't fight the English civil war to behead a king, abolish monarchy, or to introduce democracy. General Thomas Fairfax, the leader of England’s ‘New Model Army’ claimed that he was fighting “to maintain the rights of the crown and kingdom jointly”, and for a King who would heed the advice of Parliament. We know from the transcripts of the Putney debates what Cromwell and Henry Ireton felt about manhood suffrage.

Cromwell called the execution of King Charles I, “a cruel necessity.” They felt that they had no choice because of the Kings intransigence and his refusal to bow to the will of Parliament. Oliver Cromwell ruled for less than a decade. He was constantly suspending Parliament because of factionalism. In March 1653, Cromwell staged a military coup. He accused MPs of corruption, procrastination and self-interest. He called some “whoremasters and others were drunkards.” They made him Lord Protector on December 16, 1653, when he was already Lord General.

At one period the country was ruled by Cromwell's Major Generals, who were very unpopular. The Major Generals were instructed to root out sin, discipline the nation, reform its manners and provide for the poor. They cracked down on blasphemy, swearing, drinking, adultery. They banned horse racing, bear baiting and cockfights.

Oliver Cromwell died in September 1658, and was succeeded by his son, Richard Cromwell. Richard Cromwell was nicknamed 'Queen Dick' and 'Tumble-down Dick'. He was seen as a weak leader and he didn't have the support of the army. He abdicated as Lord Protector on 25 May 1659, and fled to France to avoid his creditors. As a visiting Englishman, Richard Cromwell, was once invited to dine with Armand de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, who was unware of who he was. The prince questioned Cromwell about the affairs in England and remarked:

“Well, that Oliver, tho’ he was a traitor and a villain, was a brave man, had great parts, great courage, and was worthy to command; but that Richard, that coxcomb and poltroon, was surely the basest fellow alive; what is become of that fool?” Cromwell replied, “He was betrayed by those he most trusted, and who had been most obliged by his father.”

When he returned to England in 1680, his wife Dorothy, had died. He lived out his days in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire and used the name, John Clarke. He died in 1712, aged 85. Although King Charles I, executed or sought to capture the Regicides, he didn’t go after Cromwell's son because he hadn't signed the death warrant.

Former Reform UK Welsh leader jailed for ten years for bribery.

 

Although many British politicians are suspected of being on the take, it's almost unheard of to charge and convict a British politician with bribery. Nevertheless, they've just given a 10-and-a-half-year jail sentence to Nathan Gill, the former Reform UK Welsh leader, for taking financial Russian bribes.

Gill, 52, from Llangefni, Anglesey, pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery. As an MEP, and a key member of UKIP and Brexit party groups, he was paid by an alleged Russian asset, Oleg Voloshyn, to make pro-Russian speeches. Voloshyn, who is wanted for treason in the Ukraine, had described Gill's work as "outstanding." A Reform UK spokesman said they welcomed the sentence that Nathan Gill had received and described his actions as "reprehensible, treasonous and unforgivable."

Although the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has said in the past that Vladimir Putin is the world leader that he most admires, praising his skills "as an operator", he described Gill as a 'bad apple" who had betrayed him. The police believe that Gill was primarily motivated by financial need, but they also said that he had sympathy with the positions that he was being bribed to take. There have been calls for Farage's party to launch a thorough investigation to guarantee that pro-Russia links are rooted out of Reform UK.

Over many years, there have been numerous press reports about Russian money being used to finance anti-EU, ultra conservative, and far-rights groups, throughout Europe, with the aim of destabilising Europe. In France, the former political party Front Nationale, led by Marine Le Pen, is known to have accepted Russian money.

Sentencing Gill at the Old Bailey, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb, said the former Reform UK Welsh leader, had betrayed trust placed in him by the public and had "advanced narratives advantageous to Russian interests concerning the Ukraine." Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: "A traitor was at the very top of Reform UK, aiding and abetting a foreign adversary. Nigel Farage and his party are a danger to national security." 

Enoch Burke returned to jail.

 

Enoch Burke

Enoch Burke is the Irish school teacher who was dismissed from his job for gross misconduct because he refused to use the preferred pronoun 'they' in respect of a transgendered pupil. I understand that he did so on the grounds that it conflicted with his Christian religious beliefs and conscience. The school where he taught, Wilson's Hospital School, in County Westmeath, is a Church of Ireland, fee paying private school.

After his dismissal, Mr Burke, continued to turn up for work, and the school sought an injunction restraining Mr Burke from trespassing on school premises. Due to him defying the injunction, Enoch Burke has incurred fines of €225,000 and has served a number of prison sentences. A judge in the High Court in Dublin has now returned Mr Burke to prison, for what he called a "deliberate, sustained and concerted attack" on the authority of the civil courts and the rule of law. Mr Justice Cregan accused Mr Burke of pursuing a "fanatical campaign" for the last three years and said his decision was not about transgenderism. He said: "despite his time in prison, and despite these fines, Mr Burke persists in disobeying the court order."

The case of Enoch Burke is not a unique or isolated case but it's one of the most extreme cases. In Britain, there have been a number of cases where people have been dismissed from their jobs under similar circumstances, for refusing to act in a way that was contrary to their Christian beliefs and principles and conscience. But many of these people didn't choose to turn themselves into Christian martyrs, in the way that Mr Burke has chosen to do, by defying the law.

Freedom of conscience and the right to hold religious beliefs and principles, is protected under Article 9 the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998, but it's not an absolute right. Many of the articles contained within the HRA are either 'limited' or 'qualified', meaning they can be restricted under specific, lawful circumstances, provided the restriction is necessary, legitimate, and proportionate, to achieve a specific aim such as protecting public safety or the rights of others.

Labour to make shotgun ownership Section 1. Will air weapons be next?

 

I think the issue of legal gun ownership in Britain is really about social class. When I used to shoot 12 bore shotguns, every shotgun owner that I knew, always said that the police do not like "people like us having guns." They meant the working-class having access to guns. There's a mind-set in Britain that seems to think that shooting and hunting should be the preserve of only landowners and the green welly brigade.

If you look at the history of gun laws in Britain, you will see that during the reign of Queen Victoria, gun laws in Britain were virtually non-existent, and gun deaths were virtually unheard of. When I was growing up, many of us had airguns and I knew neighbours, who had shotguns. People went rabbiting with lurcher’s and ferrets.

Two events seem to have led to the tightening up of gun laws in Britain. One of these events, was the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the second, was the demobilisation of British troops at the end of WWI. In recent years, there's been a crackdown when there has been a shooting incident such as Hungerford. A gun owner told me recently that in the 1960s, you could buy a shotgun license for 10 shillings at a British post office.

If shotguns become Section 1, instead of Section 2, it will become far more difficult for people to own a shotgun. This could affect clay pigeon shooters and shooting clubs as well as farmers.  In law, there's an assumption that people are entitled to own a shotgun, but not a rifle. I believe you can also appeal against a refusal to be issued with a shotgun certificate.

Labour are very much anti-gun urbanites. I expect that they will target airgun owners next along with crossbow owners and the owners of catapults. In Scotland you already need an Air Weapon Certificate, to own or purchase an air weapon.

On being sane in insane places.

 

Jack Nicholson - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', is possibly one of the greatest films of all time. There's really nothing mentally ill about Randle Patrick McMurphy but he contrives to get himself sent to a psychiatric hospital because he doesn't like doing prison work. He's a recusant who likes to take the piss and have a good time. He actually thinks everybody else in the hospital is a nutter but discovers that he's the only one that has been committed. Nurse Ratched is a complete control freak who takes a dislike to McMurphy because he won't conform or comply. After he attacks nurse Ratched, following a patient's attempted suicide, McMurphy is given a lobotomy and turned into a vegetable.

I remember some years ago reading about something called the 'Thud experiment', or what was correctly called, the Rosenhan experiment.  A group of psychologists and their students at Stanford University sought to test the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. The participants in the experiment, all psychology students or their mentors, submitted themselves to various psychiatric institutions across the west coast of America and feigned auditory hallucinations. David Rosenhan, who arranged the experiment, a Stamford University professor, and eight other people, five men and three women, entered 12 hospitals and submitted themselves for evaluation. All the participants claimed to be hearing a voice utter the words 'empty', 'hollow' or 'thud' and nothing else. Once accepted, they acted normally. Each was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given antipsychotic medication. Some of the participants were actually admitted to the hospital for brief periods of time, ranging from 7 to 52 days. Although they presented with identical symptoms, five were diagnosed with schizophrenia and one with manic depressive psychosis. None of the pseudo-patients were identified as impostors by hospital staff, though some psychiatric patients, seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors. One nurse observed the note taking behaviour of one pseudo-patient, and consider it pathological.

The study was eventually published in the journal 'Science' in 1973, with the title, 'On Being Sane In Insane Places'. Many defended psychiatry against the experiment's conclusions, but the experiment is said to have accelerated the move towards reforming mental institutions and the release of many patients from mental institutions. 

The founder of Sinn Fein called for strikers during the Dublin Lockout to be bayonetted.

 

Arthur Griffith

During the eleven months of the Irish Civil War (1922-23), more Irish were killed than had been killed during the War of Independence during (1919-21). Approximately 2000 people were killed during the War of Independence and it's believed that some 4,000-5,000 people were killed, during the Irish Civil War.

Ireland never became the socialist republic of James Connolly, it became the Catholic, Conservative, Nationalist, country, of Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fail. Abortion and contraception were banned and young pregnant unmarried girls, were incarcerated in Magdalene laundries run by sadistic nuns. Many leading Irish nationalists, like Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera and Arthur Griffith, were not socialists. They often believed that class struggle undermined Irish national unity.

During the Dublin Lockout of 1913, Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein, had called for the strikers to be bayonetted. In 1905, Sinn Fein's membership was based on shopkeepers, employers and large farmers. It opposed strikes for higher wages because it believed that it would harm the interests of Irish business.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), opposed the Marxist-Leninist direction of the Official IRA and viewed communism as an 'alien ideology' and a dangerous distraction from the primary goal of establishing an independent united Ireland. An early PIRA slogan was "We serve neither Queen nor Commissar." Some PIRA members did develop revolutionary ideas while imprisoned but the organisation remained nationalist rather than communist.

Child Exploitation in Victorian Britain.

 

Victorian child exploitation

Many Victorian working-class kids were literally worked to death. Some of these children died of exhaustion. This is mentioned in E.P. Thompson's book 'The Making of the English Working Class'. He refers to the death of a young boy in Cragg Dale, in West Yorkshire. An Anglican minister, told a social reformer that he'd recently buried a boy who had died. The boy had been found asleep at work with his arms full of wood and had been beaten awake. He had worked 17 hours and was carried home by his father. He was unable to eat his supper and woke at 4.00 a.m. the next morning. He asked his brother's if they could see the lights in the mill as he was afraid of being late for work, and then died. His younger brother aged nine, had died previously. The father was described as "sober and industrious" and a Sunday school teacher.

The exploitation of children on this scale and intensity, was one of most shameful events in Britain's history. Thompson says that many English middle-class people of this period, were infected with class hatred for the labouring classes and suffered from "atrophy of conscience" and a "deformity of the sensibility." Lord Shaftesbury had said that the Anglican clergy as "a body...will do nothing on the children's behalf."

In Chapter 25, of 'Das Kapital', Karl Marx, quoted extensively from the work of Reverend Joseph Townsend called "A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, by a Well-wisher of Mankind.” (1786). Marx referred to Townsend as that "delicate priestly sycophant." Townsend had argued that poverty and hunger are necessary to force the working-class to labour for capitalists. He had written:

"It seems to be a law of nature that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident, that there may always be some to perform the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved of drudgery - but are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their various dispositions..."

Like Edmund Burke, Townsend believed that the laws of commerce were the laws of nature and therefore the laws of God. 

Of the 346 soldiers executed by the British army in WWI, only three were British army officers.

 

Shot At Dawn

There were 3,080 deaths sentences given to soldiers serving in the British army during WWI, of which, 346 were actually carried out. The overwhelming majority of soldiers executed (266 out of 346), were shot for desertion. Most of these soldiers were private soldiers. Only three British officers were executed during WWI. (Source: Tommy - Richard Holmes).

In his book called 'Memoirs of a British Infantry Officer', Siegfried Sassoon, says that many British army officers lost their nerve, but they weren't shot for cowardice. Many of these remained in the barracks or were given desk jobs back in Blighty. Sassoon said you couldn't do this with Tommy. The ordinary soldier was given a No. 9 pill and he stayed where he was until he was wounded or killed.

In October 1915, Second Lieutenant Edward Underhill, "wrote bitterly that his county men had no idea what the war was about." Many did think that they were fighting a war to keep Britain from being ruled by the Germans. Although the Germans did shell and bomb parts of Britain, an invasion of Britain, was not really part of Germany's war aims. A British infantry officer, remarked on, "how much more seriously the company would take the war were the (Ypres) Salient, around Preston, or Bolton, or Manchester.”

Richard Holmes writes that, "Two general truths define the British soldier's relationship with his enemy on the West Front: the first is that he generally had a high regard for the Germans and the second, is that the fighting man, rarely felt a high degree of personal hostility towards them."

It seems that the Saxon Germans disliked the Prussians, more than they did the British. The same can be said of men from Alsace who were fighting in the German army. If Robert Graves is to be believed, both the Germans and the British, disliked the French, because they ripped both sides off. 

The Britain of my father's generation, was a lot less complicated than it is today.

 

The Home Guard

My Dad died in 2015 and would've been 100 next September 2026. He was called up as the war was coming to an end and he spent his army service in Britain. He was told that they were going to be used to fight the Japs.

Britain today, is not the country that my father or the elderly gentleman, on Good Morning Britain, grew up in. Before he was conscripted, my father was in the Home Guard aged 17 and that would have been, in 1943. He told me that on one occasion he was asked to go and check on an ammunition dump in the town where he lived. My father and another young man, were issued with two .303 Lee Enfield rifles and both were given five rounds of live ammunition. Can you imagine doing that today with a 17-year-old youth, who doesn't know what discipline or respect is? I believe that today, suicide is now the biggest killer of men in Britain, aged under 50.

For most of his adult life, my father drove articulated lorries, and he was never required to sit a driving test in his life, nor was he ever unemployed. He said that when he started driving there was no requirement to sit a test. He said you bought a car and if you could prove you hadn't a knock within six months, they gave you a driving license.

The Britain of my father's day, was a lot less complicated than it is today. Despite his age, I never heard my father ever grumble about the way in which he thought Britain had changed. He just got on with living and tried to adapt accordingly. He used to say to me that there was good and bad in every kind and just treat people as you find them. 

Those young lads who fought in WWII, were fighting the Nazis and Hitler. It's thanks to them that we never finished up with a Nazi jackboot stomping on our faces and a Europe dominated by Fascist dictators.