Amnesty International India has to shut its offices!

Hi John,

Since 2018, Indian authorities have harassed and targeted human rights defenders and organisations in the country.

Unfortunately, Amnesty International India was forced to close its offices yesterday. With its bank accounts frozen by the Indian Government, sadly staff have had to be let go.

This shocking and shameful act by the Indian Government, has forced us to stop the crucial human rights work that Amnesty International India was leading. Vital research on the human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as a report looking at the conduct of the Delhi police following riots in February, which claimed the lives of at least 53 people, have been affected.

However, this does not mean an end to our firm commitment to continue to support the struggle for human rights in India.

Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs this week and we’re looking at ways to support them. We will also continue our call on the Indian Government to end its shameful crackdown on those standing up for human rights in their society.

We will not be silenced by these attacks from the Indian Government. Please watch and share this video to show your support. Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

Thank you for your support,

Kate Allen

Director

Amnesty International UK

Seven Arrested After Rochdale Police Drug's Raid

YESTERDAY, ROCHDALE ONLINE reported that seven people had been arrested after police executed warrants in Rochdale. Three warrants were executed on Taylor Street, Middleton, Blanche Street, Rochdale, and White Lees Road, Littleborough.

Four men - aged 22, 26, 35 and 42 - were arrested on suspicion of section 45 of the Serious Crime Act.

The men aged 22 and 42 were also held on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs and the 26-year-old man was additionally arrested on suspicion of conspiring to supply class A drugs.

A 23-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of possession of class A and class B drugs and section 45 of the Serious Crime Act.

All are now in police custody for questioning.

These new arrests follow other Rochdale arrests on the 28th, August in which three people were arrested after police executed warrants on Sykes Street and Hardwicke Street in Rochdale, as part of an investigation in to the supply of drugs in the Deeplish and Newbold areas. On that occasion Inspector Andrew Fern, of GMP's Rochdale district, said: "Enquiries are ongoing but the initial indication is that, this morning, officers seized class A drugs with an estimated street value of £900,000. Drugs blight communities so this is a really positive result."

It is worth noting that Newbold is recognised as a notorious 'hotspot' in a problematic district, and that the police have set up Operation Beehive to try to help the local communities there.

Inspector Andrew Fern said: "Investigations of this nature rely partly on intelligence from members of the public living in our communities so I would like to use this opportunity to appeal to anyone who thinks they may know something which may help us rid the streets of drugs to get in touch."

Earlier this year Northern Voices together with others had a meeting at Rochdale police station about the difficulties with regard to the Newbold district in which we raised our concerns about drugs and gangsterism.

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NHS haemophilia scandal: 'IN COLD BLOOD'

Editorial Note: WHAT follows below must be of great concern at a time when people are proclaiming 'DEFEND THE NHS'. It was clear to those of us that watched this program that people responsible at the top both in the NHS and within government were aware that possible contaminated blood products were being imported from the USA and that patients were being urged to inject themselves. The people in charge were prepared to take the risk seemingly because not to do so would have detrimental commercial consequences for the NHS. What will be of interest here is would a less centralised body have done the same?

From the Daily Mirror:

ITV documentary In Cold Blood delves into chilling 1980s haemophilia scandal in UK

The stories of lives destroyed by the haemophilia scandal, which killed more people than any other UK disaster, are revealed in a new ITV documentary

It exposes a 1980s cover-up over bleeding disorder patients receiving a treatment made from US donor blood – some of which was infected with the HIV and hepatitis C viruses.

Some victims were compensated, but with a gagging clause attached.

Colin and Denise Turton lost their son, Lee, at the age of 10, six years after he was infected with HIV.

Denise says on camera he suffered years of “hell”.

Over 4,000 people were infected with hepatitis C and 1,300 with HIV.

Documents revealing blunders that saw thousands killed by contaminated blood products were destroyed as the scandal emerged.

Officials at the Department of Health feared their failures to protect haemophiliacs would be made public, so dispatched records for shredding, say campaigners.

In the 1970s the Factor 8 treatment for haemophilia was prescribed on the NHS, but demand saw surplus sourced from America where donors were paid.

This encouraged them to lie about their medical past, and saw diseased products given to Brits.

More than 1,300 people were given HIV, and more than 4,000 people got Hepatitis C.

Around 2,400 died due to the infected blood products and a public inquiry into the scandal is ongoing.

Campaigners say the Government knew blood was dodgy and did nothing, then tried to hide their failure.

Former health minister David Owen this week told the infected blood inquiry victims had been failed by politicians and medics alike.

He said he “deeply regretted” that the UK had not become self-sufficient in blood products and continued to import them from the US.

In Cold Blood was on Sunday at 10.20 on ITV.

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Harold Evans: a Northern Campaigner Dies!

HAROLD EVANS who started his career on independently-owned Tameside Reporter, which was first published in 1855 died last week at the age of 92. The 157-year-old title was known as the Ashton-under-Lyne Weekly Reporter when future Sunday Times editor Sir Harold started there as a 16-year-old school leaver in the 1940s.

Harold Evans, was the Patricroft, Eccles born journalist who was widely regarded as the greatest newspaper editor of our times.

He was famous for his work on the Sunday Times, particularly for his long battle to get compensation for victims of the Thalidomide drug.

In 1944, in a bomb-ravaged city, he was just another 16-year-old who got on his bike and pedalled from his home in Newton Heath to the offices of the Ashton-under-Lyne Reporter. He was to be paid just £1 a week on a three-month trial, about half of what his mates were earning working in factories. He was one of a number of schoolboy reporters, filling in for men fighting the war.

Perhaps his most remarkable campaign concerned Timothy Evans (no relation) who had been hanged for murdering his wife and child at 10 Rillington Place in London in 1950. Evans would be regarded now as a vulnerable adult, and it later transpired that mass murderer John Christie had been living, and indeed killing, in the flat beneath. Christie was, in all probability, guilty of murdering Evans’ family, yet the unfortunate man, unable to mount his own defence, had hanged.

As editor he campaigned to have his namesake pardoned, and when Home Secretary Roy Jenkins granted it in 1966, it effectively ended the death sentence for all but high treason.

When Evans arrived at the Northern Echo, it was deeply rooted in its community but hadn't done much campaigning for decades. 'A rocket needs a solid base and The Northern Echo was deeply rooted in the region,' he once said. 'All I had to do was put some fuel in the engine…'

He modernised the Echo so that it sounded like a newspaper for the 1960s. He channelled the 'vigour and bluntness' which he found in the North-East cultural scene through writers like Sid Chaplin and artists like the pitman painter Norman Cornish to create a sharp and punchy paper.

He gained a national fame by presenting What the Papers Say on Granada Television, and left the Echo to edit the Sunday Times where he ultimately won compensation for victims of the thalidomide morning sickness drug.

Since 1984 Sir Harold has been living, writing and editing in New York, with his second wife, Tina Brown. He founded Conde Nast Traveler magazine and served as president and publisher of Random House from 1990 to 1997, and was Reuters' editor-at-large.

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Managed Decline ? ( Unpublished letter to Rochdale Observer Letters Page )

from Andy Wastling

Readers might also want to watch the latest Communities, Regeneration and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Committee from 24 September discussing the fire safety issues at Rochdale's Seven Sisters flats and other potential sites across the Township at :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPK1yiRqlUc&feature=youtu.be

23/09/2020

Dear Editor , Viewpoints ,

Managed Decline ?

Yet more controversy over the widely opposed & universally unpopular plans by Rochdale Borough Housing (RBH) to College Bank flats , 'Take responsibility and resign' : Councillor sends message to landlord's top brass after fire safety issues discovered at Rochdale's Seven Sisters flats' , Manchester Evening News ( Nick StathamLocal Democracy Reporter 23/09/2020 ) reminds me that a whole host of organisations have seriously failed the residents of College Bank over a number of years to the point of managed decline.

For example on the issue of fire safety only last year an important consultation in September 2019 designed to inform constituents [1] regarding Proposals for £12.8million in cuts to the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, including reductions of fire engines, crew numbers and fire stations. Quite understandably this too has been the subject of controversy due to a woeful lack of participation from our elected representatives from elected Councillors across Greater Manchester .

The consultation report notes that "Updates were sent to councillors from across Greater Manchester through the consultation, to encourage them to respond and spread the information out to their local constituents. The email update was sent to 637 Councillors and 259 opened the email '

.

This means that 378 Greater Manchester Councillors did not open this email . I just wonder if a spokesperson for Rochdale Council would like to write in to ' Viewpoints ' and let readers know exactly how many Rochdale Borough Councillors bothered to open this email and contributed to the consultation ?

I'd also be interested to know exactly how many if any , local voters received an email from their local ward councillor cascading information to them regarding the proposals to cut the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service by £12. million and asking for their opinions to feedback to the Public Consultation ?

Yours faithfully ANDREW WASTLING

Drake Street , Rochdale

APPENDIX :

[1]. https://democracy.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/documents/s1927/Consultation%20report%20230719%20final.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3YfKyCULj9g4xioEjBbJAE9CffLPUEXQjcEftye5X0cips0RdqLGCZzJc

Our 'Kakistocracy' plumbs new depths!

by ANDY WASTLING

Kakistocracy (English pronunciation: /kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi/) is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.Origin of kakistocracy. Greek kakistos worst superlative of Kakos bad.

This unpublished letter ( below ) to the local media in Manchester last Summer, was an attempt to respond to the declining professional standards of our local political class in Rochdale exposed in the Zoom broadcast of a local council meeting in July subsequently covered in Manchester Evening News article : a Councillor called a 'bitch' for voting with Tories in stormy virtual meeting 'after the mic was left on by mistake' , (Nick Statham - Local Democracy Reporter Manchester Evening News , 17 July 20202 ) .

Such juvenile shenanigans from our elected councillors will come as no surprise to those amongst us who have sought to hold the ' three ring circus ' masquerading as local democracy to public account . Having been outed in the local media the link to the previously broadcast zoom meeting mysteriously vanished into the ether leading some local campaigners to suspect the usual Rochdale Council cover up from the councils digital media team (mal) practiced as they are in the devious & dark arts of censorship & obfuscation..

Indeed a follow up Freedom Information Request :

Location of public link to view Zoom Meeting for Rochdale North Township Committee Meeting 16/07/2020 seemed to confirm this when the eventual response indicated that the council does not have a requirement to publish pretty much anything they don't wish to publish :

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/678543/response/1618283/attach/html/6/Legal%20FOI%20Townships.doc.html

This reluctance from our local authorities to respond to reasonable requests from members of the public for information is just the latest example of Local Kakistocracy plumbing new depths .

We live after all in a town that has has ' 36 cameras operated on behalf of the council plus 41 run by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing ' (1) observing the daily activities of local citizens like ourselves . But not a single electronic device filming RMB Councillors Meetings on a permanent basis as they perform their civic duties on behalf of the local electorate. You'd almost think our councillors have something to hide ?

APPENDIX : (1) . https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/big-brother-watching-youall-day-8987905

Dear Editor , Rochdale Observer / Manchester Evening News :

Comedy Gold !

As a local taxpayer I was blessed to hear live the controversial Council Meeting broadcast on Zoom and discussed in your Local Democracy Reporters recent excellent article : ' Councillor called a 'bitch' for voting with Tories in stormy virtual meeting 'after mic left on by mistake' , ( Nick StathamLocal Democracy Reporter Manchester Evening News , 17 July 20202 ) .

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/councillor-called-bitch-after-voting-18613624

I often hear local people deriding the standards of professionalism , common sense ( or lack of ) and the lack of value for money our sixty strong cohort of councillors represent to the public purse in an era of increasing austerity.

However I strongly disagree, and think perhaps that we are all missing a trick ? Could we not hire outour Councillors to the highest bidder as travelling Troubadours an Alternative Comedy Group who can be leased out to the Alternative Comedy Circuit to bring laughter & merriment to the North during such dark times ? The latest production from the sketch writers at No.1 Riverside was sheer brilliance ! Situation comedy at its very apogee I'd have thought !

So far audiences to Council Meetings have been limited to a small but fanatical fan base ( I include myself in this definition ) .However after some considerable reflection I feel it's clearly now time to further widen audience participation. I've been trying to syndicate this latest episode to try and garner an interest from the program commissioners at BBC Comedy who are keen to see the profile of right wing comedians reach a wider & more divergent national audience . I'm sure the vast majority of our Council Meetings have any potential as pilot episodes of a new comedy series of 30 minute duration .Working title : It's Dim Up North !

It seems obvious that we have huge local resources of as yet untapped comedy potential lying dormant - along with many of our councillors. I feel we could generate much needed funds for our struggling local exchequer if we could only divest or sub contract our Councillors undoubted talents as comedians to be shared with the nation.It's obvious to many talent spotters that with such a rich comedy acting pool of sixty or so under-employed councillors that we have almost unlimited potential for numerous combinations of comedy duos , solo performers, and background extras. However the Zoom meeting with most comedy potential has been inexplicably expunged from the public record? Could someone at Rochdale Council explain its disappearance and direct me to a public link so I can take this project forward to ensure Rochdale Council is given the prominence on the UK Comedy Circuit it so richly deserves?

Thank you.

Yours,

Andrew Wastling Drake Street , ROCHDALE

Who does Tony Lloyd MP think he is kidding?

Is ROCHDALE Becoming Queen Of The Rotten Boroughs?

EDITORIAL NOTE:

PRIVATE EYE may yet award Rochdale the prize of the 2020 Queen of the ROTTEN BOROUGHS if things carry on as they are at Rochdale Council. At least two of the town's wards have given cause for serious concern in recent years owing to the curious customs of some of the residents, and both are within the boundaries of what is Tony Lloyd's constituency of Rochdale.

Readers may be well aware of the distasteful historic nature of the politics of Rochdale stemming from Cyril Smith's terms in office first as a Rochdale Labour councillor, and later as the town's Liberal MP from 1972 to 1992; then there is Simon Danczuk's time as Rochdale MP from 2010 until 2017 when he ended up in fifth place standing as an independent candidate following his suspension from the Labour Party for what he himself called "inappropriate and stupid" behaviour in 2015, when he exchanged perverse messages with a young 17-year-old girl; thus it was that Tony Lloyd became the new Rochdale MP on the back of Simon Danczuk's disgrace. In both the earlier cases of Smith and Danczuk it was suggested that the authorities turned a blind-eye to what was taking place in Rochdale's political arena.

Now the concerns raised by Carl Faulkner in his letter below suggest that Rochdale's current MP, Tony Lloyd, may be oblivious to some strange goings on inside the Rochdale Labour Party: for example in 2018, Rochdalian Faisal Rana received a police caution after registering himself at two different addresses and managing to vote twice, he later became a local Rochdale councillor. Most decent people would regard this as disgraceful conduct, but not it seems some in the Rochdale Labour Party. Now, it seems, Councillor Rana is promoting himself as a possible heir to Tony Lloyd and a future MP for the town.

What is perhaps even more worrying is that some weeks ago Carl sent this letter to the Rochdale Observer and it has yet to be published. The Rochdale Observer, it will be recalled, was one of the newspapers that failed to report the story when Rochdale's Alternative Paper first tried to expose Cyril Smith.

The leopard, it seems, cannot change its spots!

**********************************************************************

Dear Sir/Madam,

WHO does Tony Lloyd MP think he is kidding? He has recently raised concerns about the fairness of elections in a faraway country called Belarus. This is not a one-off. He has a long standing record of ‘concern’ about fraud in elections. Back in 2004 he stood up in Parliament and said that electoral fraudsters should know they would be sent to prison. His own website boasts of his multi-country involvement in helping to ensure fair and fraud-free elections.

So, it would be easy to assume that this man would speak out about electoral fraud wherever it occurs. Especially if it happened here in Rochdale. Anybody believing that would be wrong.

This is because in 2018, electoral fraud came to Rochdale and made the national news. It was the year a councillor in his own Rochdale Labour Party, was outed as an electoral fraudster. A man who had dishonestly registered himself at two different addresses, applied for two separate postal votes and then voted twice in the Rochdale’s local elections. Despite being caught out, the hard-faced electoral fraud councillor refused to resign. This person was not unknown to Tony Lloyd. It was someone who had been closely involved in Tony Lloyd’s 2017 General Election campaign.

At the time of the fraud, decent folk quickly and publicly condemned the councillor and called for him to resign. From Tony Lloyd there was only silence. But his hypocrisy did not end there. I wrote to him, asking that as my MP, would he make representations to the Attorney General and request a change in the law that would automatically prevent future electoral fraudsters from serving as councillors.

His initial response was to try and fob me off. He then attempted to ignore me. Eventually, he simply said it was something that I could do myself. Not quite what you would expect from an MP who likes to portrays himself as the protector and promoter of fraud-free elections.

However, his hypocrisy knew no bounds and he still wasn’t finished. In 2019 a Tony Lloyd General Election leaflet dropped through my letter box. There, staring out from the leaflet was the gurning fizog of his friend, the electoral fraudster Labour councillor.

What a shameless hypocrite of an MP we really have. Rochdale deserves better.

Regards,

Carl Faulkner

ROCHDALE

NB All the above can be verified if requested.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/councillor-who-voted-twice-rochdale-15028865

British Elites Know Who Isn’t Quite Their Type

The term “posh” appeals to foreigners, but the British know there are teeth underneath the smile.

As a British journalist living abroad, I get asked many questions, from the role of the queen to the peculiarities of Parliament. But one theme comes up again and again: poshness. What does it really mean? What’s posh, and what isn’t? Outsiders think they know the term, but they don’t understand it viscerally. And they often miss that when the British deploy the term, it comes with an edge whetted on the stone of class.

Understanding poshness matters, especially since it is in the air again: Like the damp in an old country house, it never truly goes away. And it’s back now with the current British prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, an alumni of Eton College, the University of Oxford, and the Bullingdon Club. It can be seen plainly in the leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man whose aristocratic self-fashioning is so risibly parodic he’s been labeled the “honorable member for the 18th century.”

Americans, in particular, lap it up. The notion of poshness seems to stir in them a kind of longing for the orderly hierarchies of the old world. They think of it as classy. They chuckle at those Brits and their cute accents, or they gasp in admiration or bewilderment at Downton Abbey. In fact, outsiders everywhere seem to admire it—but they miss the underlying complexities of class, and, as a result, they misunderstand Britain.

Poshness has frayed and faded over the years, but it lives on in a series of customs and habits, many of them inherited from feudal times: riding to hounds; murdering pheasants, rabbits, foxes, squirrels, and really anything with a pulse in the right season; drinking too much wine; and occasionally bonking each other’s spouses. It’s an attitude better suited to times of indulgence than ones of moral rectitude; the Victorian era, with its great surge of the middle class, was distinctly anti-posh, until it swung back the other way with the bulgy sybarite Edward VII.

More than anything else, to be posh is to reside at the top end of an ancient caste system. This is what outsiders all too often miss about class. They admire the aesthetics and the charm of what appears posh but miss the unforgiving social stratification that class imposes on Britain.

Johnson is the 20th prime minister to have attended Eton—a single astonishingly dominant school. Under Boris and his Etonian predecessor David Cameron, homelessness in the United Kingdom nearly tripled. Posh people, meanwhile, still own much of the country. Research published in 2019 found that some 25,000 people—and a few corporations—own more than 50 percent of land in the U.K. The Duke of Buccleuch’s estates, for example, extend to nearly half a percent of the entire country. And even when working-class people break into the professions, they earn 17 percent less a year than their posh contemporaries.

At the core of poshness is a network, a tapestry of titled aristocrats, gentry, and the fanciest of the upper-upper-middle classes. They attend the same schools (Eton, Harrow, Downe House, Marlborough, Winchester) and universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Bristol, St. Andrews) and eventually intermarry to keep the whole show on the road. Poshness derives much of its power from educational hegemony. Even as the number of privately educated pupils at Oxbridge has declined, the grip of the elite high schools has tightened. A 2018 report revealed that eight top schools in the U.K. get as many pupils into Oxford and Cambridge as three-quarters of all schools and colleges put together.

And that’s key to poshness: It’s not just about money. It’s about signaling your access to wellsprings of power that have flowed through the U.K. for centuries—to being “the right kind of person.” Poshness usually comes with wealth but not always. You can be posh but not rich, though it’s difficult to sustain indefinitely, and you can certainly be rich but not posh. Self-made moguls such as Philip Green (of Topshop) and Alan Sugar (of Amstrad) are seen as decidedly gauche. What poshness guarantees is access to wealth, even when you’re broke: the ability, for example, to bum around friends’ house parties and borrow holiday homes in Italy or France. And it can catapult you into the top; going to the right school makes you 94 times more likely to reach the country’s professional elite.

Posh is also an aesthetic, the original shabby chic—one that signals not just possession of land but also the antiquity and confidence of its ownership. Grand houses, yes, but with fraying rugs and dreadful central heating, full of tweed jackets and Wellington boots that don’t belong to anyone in particular but line up muddily by the front door for whoever is nominated to take the dogs out.

Poshness is a voice, sometimes described as cut glass—pronounced clearly and carefully. And with the voice comes a dialect: Say loo, not toilet; scent, not perfume; and napkin, not serviette. The forbidden terms are French and thus associated with middle-class social climbers striving to use seemingly classy language.

Many foreigners think posh is a compliment, but only posh people view it as such—and even then not always. Everyone else in Britain uses it as an insult. To be called posh outside of the houses of the posh is to be called spoiled, entitled, or pretentious.

The British monitor class carefully. And maybe that gives them an edge, a certain realism, especially over their trans-Atlantic cousins. Class is not the story America chooses to tell about itself today. People don’t write about it. They don’t make movies about it. The national myth is founded on the idea of freedom, wealth, and opportunity unshackled from the conventions of the old world. And if one doesn’t like that story, well, then there’s a far gloomier one to tell about racial oppression and native genocide. Class doesn’t usually come into it, much as the British often overlook race.

But when you examine the numbers, the British have a slight edge on social mobility over Americans. A child born into a family in the bottom 20th percentile of income levels has an 11.4 percent chance of making it to the top 20th percentile in the U.K.—as compared with a 7.8 percent chance in the United States. Tellingly, Americans are much more likely to overestimate social mobility in their country, even though the middle class has grown in Britain while it has shrunk in the United States. Much of Britain’s relative success on that front has been driven by traditional equalizers such as universal health care and low-cost higher education. Yet those systems were in fact created in part because of poshness—the middle-class politicians who created them despised and campaigned against the aristocracy. So too, ironically enough, was the Thatcherite revolution of the 1980s—a grocer’s daughter who taught herself a posh accent but whose contempt for antique institutions was legendary. A country that thinks about class so obsessively also understands its power better.

The specifics of British poshness might be unique, but to understand its core, take a look at the people who have power almost anywhere in the world—and examine whose kids they are and what schools they went to. They might speak with a different accent, be less charming, and have less of a fondness for dogs and horses—but they will likely embody the inherited privilege that comes with being posh.

Josh Glancy is the Washington bureau chief for the Sunday Times. Twitter: @joshglancy.

Foreign Policy

Published from Foreign Policy & the George Orwell facebook page

George Orwell’s FREE SPEECH

Etched in stone outside the BBC’s headquarters in London, George Orwell’s quotation on the sanctity of free speech serves as a daily reminder to the hundreds of journalists who work for the Corporation.

But Left-wing activist and musician Billy Bragg has sparked fury by claiming the famous words – ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’ – make him ‘cringe’ and have nothing to do with liberty.

He says the quotation, which featured in the preface to Orwell’s 1945 novella Animal Farm, is a ‘demand for licence’ and that young people now ‘prioritise accountability over free speech’.

Writing in The Guardian newspaper, Bragg, 62, added that the words, inscribed next to Orwell’s bronze statue outside New Broadcasting House, make him shudder every time he sees them.

Left-wing activist and musician Billy Bragg has sparked fury by claiming the famous words etched in stone outside the BBC’s headquarters in London – ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’ – make him ‘cringe’

‘It’s a snappy slogan that fits neatly into a tweet, but whenever I walk past this effigy of the English writer that I most admire, it makes me cringe,’ he said.

David Graeber (1961-2020): ethnographer, anthropologist and the study of everyday life

David Graeber (February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020

David Graeber, anthropologist and anarchist author of bestselling books on bureaucracy and economics including Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Debt: The First 5,000 Years, has died aged 59.

On Thursday Graeber’s wife, the artist and writer Nika Dubrovsky, announced on Twitter that Graeber had died in hospital in Venice the previous day. The cause of death is not yet known.

Renowned for his biting and incisive writing about bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death. His final book, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrow, will be published in autumn 2021.

THE GUARDIAN

Sian Cain

Thu 3 Sep 2020 16.18 BST

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AS an ethnomethodologist I immediately recognise the anthropological approach of David Graeber. For example in an essay he asks:

'If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?'

IN the 1990s, members of our Ethnography group John Lee and a colleague at Manchester University did some research work on queuing in France and found that although people didn't queue in a line at metro stations in Paris etc. there was none the less a pattern with rules that could be applied without any formal enforcement. I notice that in Spain that people didn't form lines at stalls in the market place but when approaching a stall simply asked the question 'Quien es el ultimo?'. Once that was known it was not necessary to stand in a rigid line and one could freely chat and wait one's turn.*

In the UK there are regional differences and Northerners will, I think, notice a difference between people using the Underground in London and between folk waiting for the No.11 bus in say Chelsea. The Underground will seem a rougher experience for the first time user I think.

The Spanish experience will also vary according to where you are and what context: villages and small shops have slightly different customs. In Morocco, I noticed that people sleep in the bus stations over night before catching an early morning bus. Tickets were often not on sale in advance of the bus ariving because touts would buy them up and offer them for resale at a premium. And when the bus arrived at Rabat bus station a wrestling match would break out as to who could get to the front. When this happen once to me and I was forced to wait flexing my muscles I ostentatiously took off my jacket and handed it to my wife; whereupon an observant man selling the tickets quickly arranged that we got a seat on the next bus.

TIM HARFORD the 'Undercover Economist on the FT' has examined the problem of queuing thus:

Mathematicians reckon the odds are against you. If you choose a queue at random, there will be a line on either side of you, and thus a two-thirds chance that one will be faster.

Economists take a more sophisticated view. David Friedman, for instance, argues that the relevant discipline is financial market theory. Choosing the right queue is like picking the right portfolio of shares: if it were obvious which shares were good value, they wouldn’t be good value any more. If it were obvious which queue would be quickest, everyone would join it. Naive attempts to “beat the market” will fail.

Then there is “efficient market” theory – you can’t out-perform a random choice of shares because public information is immediately incorporated into share prices. In truth, most markets are not efficient and thus it is possible for an informed decision-maker to beat them. Even if supermarket queues were efficient, no queue would be a superior bet, because expert supermarket customers would quickly join any queue that was likely to be quicker.

More likely, queues are not efficient because few have much to gain from becoming expert queuers. Some have other considerations, such as minimising the distance walked, while others shop rarely, so the calculations are more trouble than they are worth.

And unlike the stock market, which a financial wizard can make more efficient by outweighing the foolish decisions of small traders, in the supermarket a single expert queuer has a limited effect on the distribution of queuing times.

I can advise you to steer clear of elderly ladies with vouchers, but more advice would be self-defeating. Too many of your rivals would read it.

First published at ft.com.

Many on the left, including some anarchists, would regard this focus on queuing as trivial. Yet the queue is central to most people's lives. In some cases in some countries it has led to riots.

Yet, Davd Graeber, the anarchist, has written: 'The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles — which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency.'

* How NOT to Queue in Spain

If there was one thing that would set aside a Brit from say a Spaniard more than anything else it would probably be their attitude to queuing.

Whether a Brit examining the etiquette of queuing in Spain, or - worse still - a Brit berating a foreigner´s lack of understanding of queuing etiquette in the UK one thing is clear : Queuing etiquette is - or lack of it - is quite possibly the one thing that will drive a mild mannered granny into in a raving psychotic.

I was having a conversation on this subject with my intercambio language exchange partner the other day : What exactly is the etiquette with regards to queuing in Spain, and ditto with the UK ?

Juanjo explained to me that there wasn´t any etiquette when it came to queuing in general in Spain. In smaller Towns and Villages it may be considered polite to let the elder generation go first in certain circumstance, however, in shops it was usual practice to simply ask "¿ Quien es la Ultima ?" - which means " Who is last one [in the queue]? ".

It seem that this is time honoured tradition that has served generations of Spaniards perfectly well for generations, ensuring that the last person to enter a shop knows who the customer to be served in front of them is. That way everybody knows there place and is free to wander off or chat with friends etc...

The system only becomes problematic when in wanders clueless Guiri and either jumps his place, or fails to inform the person entering the shop behind him, where his place in the queuing system is.

As far as said Guiri is concerned, the fact that there is not a linear column of people stretching neatly away from the counter, means that there is in fact no queue.

And because said Guiri is both unaware of the existence of the etiquette he alone is responsible for the total collapse of law and order in the local Panaderia, and quite often leaves the shop frustrated at the "bunfight" that he has just caused (see what I did ? that Grammar school education wasn´t for nothing ...) and convinced that the very concept of queuing in Spain does not exist.

Juanjo conceded that as far as getting served in a bar, restaurant or market stall was concerned then queuing, as us Brits would know it, didn´t exist, and he just laughed when I asked about the etiquette of queuing for public transport.

(Have you ever wondered why you never see bus loads of Spaniards at Alton Towers ?)

On the subject of Public transport, Juanjo told me he was almost lynched once whilst on a business trip to the UK when he saw his bus approaching whilst walking with colleagues towards the Bus stop. Worried that the Bus wasn´t going to hang about longer than was necessary to let the passengers get off he sprinted down the pavement and leapt onto the Bus - seemingly ignoring the column of passengers waiting in the rain. His British colleagues did the decent thing and let him do so, casually joining the end of the queue, and letting each of the passengers shoot him their best icy glare in turn whilst waiting their turn in the queue.

I explained that I wouldn´t have been at all surprised to hear that there would have been queues of British women waiting quietly in a queue to take their place for a lifeboat on the deck of the Titanic.

Even when waiting in the Casualty department of A&E you still see some people at the triage station smiling sheepishly as the duty nurse decides that the 9" nail that they have embedded through their eyeball warrants them jumping further along the queue than the guy who just stubbed his toe.

It´s a disease we Brits are born with and will more than likely never be cured.

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Lear, Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Orwell

The Play’s the Thing: Orwell and Drama (Last of Three)

by Richard Lance Keeble of the ORWELL SOCIETY

19th September 2020

Drama at the BBC: The next act

Orwell’s work for the BBC is not to end in November 1943. For through his friendship with Rayner Heppenstall, a producer at the corporation, he goes on to write two fine dramatic adaptations – of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, for the Home Service on 29 March 1946 (CWGO XIII: 179-201). The second, too often neglected, is of Little Red Riding Hood (ibid: 345-354). Just like the earlier adaptation of Andersen’s ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ for the BBC’s Eastern Service, this reflects Orwell’s deep interest in the fairy story genre – which finds its most famous flowering in Animal Farm – A Fairy Story, in 1945. And Orwell is to adapt his famous satire on the Russian revolution for the BBC in 1947. Crick describes it as ‘very stilted’ (1980: 493) while Orwell told his friend, Mamaine Paget: ‘I had the feeling that they had spoilt it but one nearly always does with anything one writes for the air’ (Lynskey 2019: 157).

ORWELL’s fascination with the theatre and Shakespeare in particular culminates in two remarkable ways. This first is his essay, ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’, published in Polemic, in March 1947. It has been strangely missed, or its significance downplayed, by the biographers.

There is no mention of the essay at all in either Shelden (1991) or Meyers (2000) while D. J. Taylor (2003) and Bowker (2003) only comment on it en passant. Crick (op cit: 438, 520, 522) first focuses on Orwell’s critique of anarchism and pacifism; in the third reference he points out Orwell’s ‘tempered pessimism’; only in the second reference is there any mention of Shakespeare as he describes it as ‘a profound comparison of the didacticism of Tolstoy with the tolerant humanism of Shakespeare’.

From British Library’s blog on Tolstoy and Orwell

Orwell bases his critique of Tolstoy on an obscure pamphlet in which he has damned King Lear as ‘stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic, vulgar, tedious’ etc. (1980 [1947]: 793). Tolstoy fails to consider Shakespeare as a poet. ‘Those who care most for Shakespeare value him in the first place for his use of language, the “verbal music” which even Bernard Shaw, another hostile critic, admits to be “irresistible”’ (ibid: 796). Tolstoy sees no justification for the presence of the Fool. But for Orwell it’s crucial. ‘He acts not only as a sort of chorus, making the central situation clearer by commenting on it more intelligently than the other characters, but as a foil to Lear’s frenzies. His jokes, riddles and scraps of rhyme, and his endless digs at Lear’s high-minded folly … are like a trickle of sanity running through the play….'

But Tolstoy’s essential ‘anti-human’ stance draws Orwell’s special venom. Indeed, what Tolstoy probably most dislikes about Shakespeare ‘is a sort of exuberance, a tendency to take – not so much a pleasure as simply an interest in the actual process of life’ (ibid). In other words, it’s a ‘quarrel between the religious and humanist attitudes towards life’.

An early English language edition of Tolstoy’s essay.

The plot of King Lear, Orwell argues, is essentially about renunciation. And this clearly resonates with Tolstoy’s own history. ‘In his old age he renounced his estate, his title and his copyrights and made an attempt – a sincere attempt though it was not successful – to escape from his privileged position and live the life of a peasant. … Ultimately, therefore, Tolstoy renounced the world under the expectation that this would make him happier. But there is one thing certain about his later years, it is that he was not happy’ (ibid: 799, italics in the original). Indeed, one of the morals of the play is that ‘to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack’. Moreover, all of Shakespeare’s later tragedies ‘start out with the humanist assumption that life, although full of sorrow, is worth living and that Man is a noble animal – a belief which Tolstoy in his old age did not share’. Against Tolstoy’s ‘other-worldliness’, Orwell celebrates Shakespeare’s worldly vitality, his love of life which he conveys, above all, in the ‘music of language’.

Orwell next moves on to Tolstoy’s pacifism – criticising it, along with anarchism, for being intolerant. ‘For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone should be bullied into thinking likewise’ (ibid: 802).

In many respects, Orwell is presenting a very slanted view of Tolstoy. For instance, Peter Marshall offers a totally different picture of him in his monumental history of anarchism: ‘Although Tolstoy condemned the passions of greed, anger and lust as vigorously as any tub-thumping Puritan, he was no other-worldly moralist. He recommended the happiness which is to be found in a life close to nature, voluntary work, family, friendship and a painless death.’ Moreover, Tolstoy’s promotion of anarchistic pacifism stresses its impact on people’s well-being here and now. ‘He rejects the charge that without government there will be chaos or a foreign invasion. His experience of Cossack communities in the Urals had shown him that order and well-being are possible without the organized violence of government’ (Marshall 2008 [1992]: 370, 374).

Yet Orwell is using his picture of Tolstoy for essential rhetorical purposes – and as a foil against which he can deliver his wonderfully profound celebration of life – and the music of words of his hero, William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare not forgotten in Nineteen Eighty-Four

In Orwell’s last novel, the dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four (2000 [1949]), women are represented as both highly sexualised or the complete opposite – desexualised madonnas. In her essay, ‘Desire is Thoughtcrime’, Jenny Taylor highlights the novel’s ‘dichotomy between lust and utopian desire, between woman as Madonna and whore’ (1983: 28). Julia, the ‘girl from the Fiction Department’ – though perhaps also a Party spy engaged in a honeytrap operation – conducts a passionate, secret affair with Winston Smith. Yet in another crucial scene, Winston dreams of his mother, the good breast, as part of an Arcadian Golden age of plenitude. A girl comes towards him across the field. ‘With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside’ (op cit: 36). But her naked body arouses no desire in him. Rather ‘What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to an ancient time.’ And he concludes the scene triumphantly: ‘Winston woke up with the word “Shakespeare” on his lips’ (ibid).

This split in the representation of women, then, is highly problematic. Yet is it not significant that Orwell brings together the worlds of the unconscious, utopian desire and High Art with his final evocation of the name of Shakespeare?

Conclusions

Orwell’s love of the theatre begins in his childhood and remains constant throughout his life. It has been too often missed by biographers and Orwell scholars. Theatrical plot lines are dotted about – often wittily and imaginatively – A Clergyman’s Daughter. For instance, when Dorothy, while recovering from her breakdown, teaches at Mrs Creevy’s appalling school, Orwell has a great deal of fun describing the hoo-ha and parental protests that follow her class on Macbeth with its oh so controversial/shocking line ‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d’ (1976 [1935]: 387). ‘I do so adore Macbeth,’ he writes to his friend Eleanor Jaques, on 18 November 1932 and is keen to take her to see a production at the Old Vic (Orwell and Angus 1970, 1: 130-131).

Orwell does not particularly distinguish himself during his stint as drama critic (1940-1941) but many of his reviews capture his sense of humour, his love of bawdy, Max Miller-ish jokes and show him playing with ideas later to be taken up in longer essays. Then while working at the BBC, his drama interests inevitably spill over into his output. Along with all his often inventive and highly original arts feature programmes and political commentaries, he designs thirteen courses based on Calcutta and Bombay University syllabuses in English and American literature, science, medicine, agriculture and psychology and runs a series introducing drama and the mechanics of production, backed up with shortened versions of Indian plays. According to Peter Davison: ‘This had a direct effect in that two participants, Balraj and Damyanti Sahni, set up a travelling drama company in India on their return’ (1996: 117).

Interestingly, his fascination with fairy stories is reflected in two dramatic adaptions he writes for the BBC – of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ while his own version of Animal Farm is broadcast in 1947.

Moreover, the work of dramatists such as Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare is constantly reflected upon during his writing career (though D. H. Lawrence’s short stories and poems especially interest him rather than the plays). The Collected Works, edited by Peter Davison (1998), indicates more than 120 references to Shakespeare, 96 to Shaw, around 30 to Wilde and 11 to Chekhov. Even while fighting in the trenches alongside Republican militiamen during the Spanish civil war in 1937, Orwell is reported by his comrade, Douglas Moyle, to find time to read his favourite dramatist: ‘I was surprised to find him sitting quietly by himself, sheltering from the cold wind, reading a little volume of Shakespeare’s plays. He didn’t speak, and I realized he would rather be left alone’ (quoted in Wadhams 1984: 80).

From British Library’s blog on Olivier and Leigh’s Macbeth

Davison even suggests that the concept of ‘Doublethink’ (the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time) of Nineteen Eighty-Four could have been drawn from Macbeth. In this play, the Porter refers satirically to equivocation. Standing at the Door of Hell, the Porter asks who knocks: ‘Faith, here’s an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to Heaven: O come in [to Hell] equivocator’ (Davison 1996: 132). An intriguing idea.

One thing is certain, however: for it’s the Bard’s sexiness and love of life that Orwell, the theatre man, celebrates so movingly and memorably in his essay ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’.

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Orwell's Politics and the English Language

From THE LANCETT:

Richard Horton

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GEORGE ORWELL, in his 1945 essay Politics and the English Language, wrote that “to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration”.

The Moscow press briefing held last week on the Russian COVID-19 vaccine quickly turned into a platform for national rivalry. The research, led by scientists at the N F Gamaleya National Research Centre for Epidemiology and Microbiology, found encouraging evidence of an immune response using their prime boost strategy of a two-component, human recombinant adenovirus vector-based vaccine. The study was small, non-randomised, uncontrolled, and did not include those most at risk of severe disease. The Russian team recognise these limitations and are proceeding with large randomised trials. The first results were released by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug 13. “I know that it works quite effectively”, he said, “forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the needed checks”. At last week's event, more big claims were made. The “poorly researched approaches” by “western” nations were criticised, and one speaker challenged western governments to respond to these alleged concerns—“would you please show your citizens” evidence about the safety of western vaccine candidates given the “poorly developed platforms” you are using, he said. “It doesn't make any sense to use poorly researched approaches”, he argued. His view was that a human adenovirus vector was safer than a chimpanzee adenovirus vector (the basis for the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine, for example). A press conference to present the results of a scientific study became the venue for renewed Cold War conflict.

Russia isn't the only country to use COVID-19 as a tool to fight perceived adversaries. US President Donald Trump routinely refers to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus”. He is seeking to amplify the American public's fear of China to wound his opponent in the current presidential campaign. In Latrobe, PA, on Sept 3, President Trump suggested that, “Joe Biden wants to surrender your jobs to China”. The message is clear—China is America's enemy, it is the cause of a pandemic that has destroyed the US economy, and the policies of the Democrat candidate will only strengthen America's chief international competitor. There is not one shred of evidence to support these claims. The twisting of language in public discussion of the pandemic is now standard fare. “Thanks to the efforts of Operation Warp Speed”, said President Trump in Wilmington, NC, on Sept 2, “we remain on track to deliver a vaccine very rapidly, in record time”. He has suggested a vaccine might be available by the end of October—an important claim given that the US election will take place on Nov 3. Yet there is no possibility that a COVID-19 vaccine will be ready for public use before the US election. Orwell's reflection that language is used “with intent to deceive” in “the sordid processes of international politics” could not be more apposite.

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Regarding Stuart Christie by Martin Gilbert

I ONLY met him once. It was outside the gates of Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, in 1963, Stuart had only been in London a short while. His accent was so thick I had difficulty understanding him. We were both selling papers. I had PEACE NEWS, and SANITY, (now long-gone, published by national CND). Also, we were both selling FREEDOM, a very different paper from what it has declined into. Stuart indicated that the papers were selling very well. Soon, we were were both busy chatting with different people and I never saw him again.

When he was arrested [in August 1964] reactions were very mixed. Predictabley, the media’s response was something like”….typical anarchists...”. Young CNDers and our fellow travellers showed 100% solidarity with Stuart. We had an old motor coach to aid our campaigning, so drove to Blackpool for the Labour party conference.

Readers may know that back then CND was much more establishment oriented. The line was only to approve of traditional methods of getting our messages across. This was years before national CND voted to support non violent direct action; thanks to the women at Greenham Common in 1980. So instead of following the (then) strict line we lobbied for Stuart’s release. Old campaigners were furious with us. In mitigation we claimed, incorrectly, that he was only carrying literature; which was also illegal in Franco’s Spain.

Lessons were gained from it all. One was awareness of the extent of Franco’s spies. Also, how open we and other groups were to infiltration from different kinds of Cops. But too much caution can only lead to quietism.

martin gilbert Sept. ‘20

Stuart Christie: an insider's study of an authentic classical anarchist by Brian Bamford - Part Two

ANARCHISM IS not a very well understood doctrine in British politics. I realised this when Tameside Trade Union Council first published a booklet commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006 with Durruti on the cover. The then delegates of the Greater Manchester County Association of Trade Union Council clearly didn't appreciate the publication at the time, but during the meeting a large party of French trade unionists from the CGT [communist] happened to be present and while many of the local English trade unionists held back the French delegation waded-in to buy up most of the commemorative booklets we had to hand, and even later following me to the toilets to get extra copies.

It struck us at the time how utterly frigid the English trade unionists were compared to their French 'communist' CGT comrades.

This thought occurs to me now as I now with sadness write my friend and comrade, Stuart Christie's obituary. I remember that sometime after Stuart wrote the first volume of his autobiography 'GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST', I wrote a critique of it entitled 'God Help the Anarchist movement that Needs Heroes'. This in turn led to a bitter altercation between me and Stuart on the website 'Libcom' in which I believe he labelled me 'an arsehole'. However, in 2006, it was a measure of Stuart's nobility that when I invited him to write an introduction to Tameside TUC's Spanish commemorative booklet he had no hesitation in agreeing to do the job.

He probably did it because he knew me from when I first met him in Paris in August 1964, when he was about to go on to embrace the risky venture in his ill-fated journey to Madrid and ultimately to a Spanish jail for his part in a proposed attempt to assassinate General Franco. At that time we were all staying in a 'safe house' with Germinal Garcia at his apartment near Place de la République*. My wife Joan and I were returning from Spain, having first worked in Denia, Alicante throughout 1963, and later on in early 1964 moved on to La Linea on the border with Gibraltar where I worked for the MOD at the Gibraltar airport. While in Denia my eldest lad was born at the clinica there in September 1963. While in Spain and later Gib. we had taken photos of the conditions in the shanty towns in Barcelona and we sent back reports on working conditions over there for the FIJL publication Nueva Senda. At that time we were being debriefed, and thought Stuart may have been on a similar mission to us, but soon found out that they had other plans for him. At one stage he asked for our advice and was naturally interested in our own experiences.

Stuart was still in Carabanchel jail [Madrid] when my family again returned to Spain in early 1967 on our way to work in Gibraltar having had difficulties working as an electrician in Rochdale following my involvement supporting the national engineering apprentice strikes in November 1964 and February 1964. Having been blacklisted by the British MOD and throughout Gibraltar with private companies with contracts with the MOD and other contracts with the British authorities the only place on the Rock that I had a serious chance of work was with the Gibraltar City Council, supported by the Transport & General Worker's Union and Albert Risso who had close links with Sir Joshua Hassan the Chief Minister.

The anarchists on Gibraltar at that time were active within the Transport & General Workers Union and were basically anarcho-syndicalists. Stuart identified with the syndicalists, and had fallen under the influence of Bobby Lynn who he says 'had become the backbone of the Glasgow anarchist movement'. I'd stayed with Bobby Lynn in the Gorbals in 1961 and he gave me his copy of 'The Sexual Revolution' by Wilhelm Reich. Bobby was a member of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation when I stayed with him in 1961. As news leaked of Stuart's arrest Peter Turner [FREEDOM EDITOR] had contacted Bobby Lynn in Glasgow and up there they had assured him that Stuart was so dedicated to the peace movement and that it was not likely that he was guilty as claimed by the Spanish authorities. This may have influenced the report in the syndicalist Direct Action which took the line that he must be innocent, and Wynford Hicks on behalf of the anarchists argued on TV news that he was probably the victim of an 'agent-provocateur'. Another Freedom editor Vernon Richards argued more sensibly that it mattered little whether Stuart was innocent or guilty the anarchist position should be to support him.

For my part I knew what had taken place, but anticipating returning to work in Spain and expecting to continue to help the group of young Spanish exiles of the FIJL involved with the failed attempt, I decided to remain silent. Stuart himself had not been prudent before his departure for Spain and had actually participated in a BBC2 program entitled 'Let Me Speak' hosted by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge, who had been a friend of George Orwell, had often identified morally and intellectually with Tolstoy and anarchism.

In his autobiography 'MY GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST'[2004] Stuart documents the sequence of events in the summer of 1964: 'In mid-July Salvador and Bernado [Gurucharri] told me I should be ready to leave for Paris by the end of the month. Everything was now in hand for my trip to Spain. Shortly before I left... I was invited to appear on what later turned out to be, for me, an almost disastrous chat show called Let Me Speak, on ...BBC2. Having a small spectrum of anarchists, with me and another young lad called Vincent Johnson representing the "revolutionary anarchists" Muggeridge asked me if I was sincere in my revolutionary aims...would I, for instance, given the opportunity, assassinate Franco?" It was an unlucky shot in the dark, for that was pretty damn close to what I was hoping to do. What could I say but yes?.'

It is an extraordinary admission for a revolutionary anarchist to make! I doubt that the Spaniards I knew in Paris or in Spain in the 1960s would have made such a confession on the BBC or before going on a mission such as Stuart anticipated. It's almost as if he had a death wish or secretly wanted to get caught. When we knew him in Paris in August 1964 he was hopelessly naive and clearly knew little of the reality of everyday Spanish life or working conditions. He struggled to pronounce the Spanish word for 'workers'.

On page 107 of his autobiography he writes: 'I may not have been wise or competent in what I did or the way I went about it, but I did not have the benefit of hindsight'.

Never mind 'hindsight' given what he had done did he have the benefit of foresight or even a glimpse of common sense? I say this knowing, as Stuart did, that other people suffered as a consequence of what he did and the mistakes that he and his handlers made at the time. I also say this as a friend of Stuart who exchanged correspondence with him regularly over the last few years, and had documented and detailed our differences in my earlier pamphlet. One thing that troubles me is not that he wore a kilt, but that he sported a war resister badge of a broken rifle on his chest while walking around Paris in 1964 as he carried our one-year-old son Deon. He told us that he'd visited Paris the year before in the Spring; it was more 'romantic' than in August. Being romantic was probably what attracted most people to Stuart as it was part on his charm.

Yet, when we had visited Ken Hawkes, then secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Fed., and his wife before we went to Spain in February 1963, the worst winter since 1947, they treated us to a bottle of Champagne as we'd just got married and reminded us to remove our Ban the Bomb badges before we left their house on Parliament Hill for Spain. I wonder why none of us thought to urged Stuart Christie to take off his tell-tale War resister badge?

I suppose that in August 1964, we were all a bit intoxicated by the atmosphere of a time in which Franco had just celebrated 25-years of peace, and a pale-faced Salvador Gurucharri and others had just been released from jail. In Paris, at that time, we were all in high spirits as things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

While there Stuart met other major figures in the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, the organised FIJL [Fed. of young libertarians] around the Internal Defence (DI), and including militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola* and Luis Andres Edo.

In his autobiography he describes what he did as 'the act of an adolescent' and he quotes a verse from Longfellow:

'A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' [page 120]

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

and 'I cannot claim, either, that it was entirely altruistic - my motives were certainly in part a desire for excitement and adventure.'

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

Essentially he was doing what we had done a year earlier when we went to Spain to escape from what then seemed like dreary Manchester; he was he says not satisfied with what would now be called 'gesture politics' of petitions and protests, and sought to engage directly with a struggle in Spain. Foresight or prudence would make cowards of us all; it was not part of his engaging personality at that time. It set Stuart outside the smelly little left wing orthodoxies which he left behind. Yet it led him to get a 'GO TO JAIL' card to a Madrid prison cell, and was for him a life changing event.

Once in Paris Stuart had made contact with the action groups of the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, organised around Internal Defence (DI) and involving militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola and Luis Andres Edo. As such during his disastrous mission he was later arrested in Madrid and charged with the possession of explosives. These were intended for an attempt on Franco’s life and he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Thanks to a continuing international pressure he was freed after 3 years.

Why was General Franco and the Francoist regime so susceptible to international public opinion in the 1960s?

I think it was in his book 'The Face of Spain' [1950] that Gerald Brenan tried to explain the mellowing of the Franco regime. In that book he explained how the Falange and those who adhered to Franco began invest in real estate and escape the relative poverty of the 1940s and 1950s. We too quickly forget that it was not just the Spanish working-class that suffered after the Civil War, but the Spanish middle-classes experienced insecurity also. My boss Senor Such told me of how in the 1940s everyone in the fishing village where I lived and worked in 1963-4 had suffered depravation after the war and some had to eat cats. Later on it had become possible to make some progress and by the time we got there in the early 1960s things were looking up as the tourists began to arrive and with the development building work on the costas things were much more prosperous for many including the low-level Falangists. This allowed some softening of the regime which may some helped Stuart Christie escape with what turned out to be a relatively short sentence of 3-years in the end. Had he been arrested some ten years earlier for the same offence it may have been an altogether different story, but by the mid-1960s the supporters of the Franco regime felt much more secure than they had been during the Second World War or in its aftermath when to some extent Spain had been isolated internationally.

* FOOTNOTE: In the early hours of 11 May 2011, 86-year-old Germinal García, a militant of the Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) and the Paris Local Federation of the CNT in the 1950s and 1960s, passed away (in Paris). At the end of the Spanish Civil War, 13-year old Germinal had been interned in Argeles-sur-Mer concentration camp where an unknown English woman, to whom he was ever grateful, cared for him. Stowing away on a Danish freighter, the Kitty Skov, from the port of Barcelona, he escaped to the United States, where he remained for a time in New York, passing himself off as a French citizen, returning later to France to became active in the anti-Francoist struggle. Shunning the limelight, but always in the background with his strong sense of solidarity, Germinal’s apartment in the Rue Lancry was a safe haven for comrades who had escaped from Franco’s Spain — and for guerrillas such as Quico Sabaté whenever he was in Paris (it was also used by Stuart Christie prior to his trip to Spain in 1964). For that and for his ongoing service to the libertarian movement, Germinal won the respect and friendship of all who knew him. With his passing, we have the satisfying memories and the privilege of having known the friendship of a good comrade. Germinal’s remains were cremated in Paris on 17 May 2011.

Octavio Alberola, May 12, 2011 SEE ALSO https://www.facebook.com/TheOrwellSociety The Orwell Society - Home | Facebook The Orwell Society. 1.4K likes. The Orwell Society aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell. Join here:... www.facebook.com

STUART CHRISTIE DIES! Intro. by Brian Bamford

PART ONE - THE AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION:

Stuart Christie: a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. Who when aged 18, Christie was arrested in Madrid while carrying explosives to assassinate the Spanish caudillo, General Francisco Franco. He was later alleged to be a member of the Angry Brigade, but was acquitted of related charges.

Born: July 10, 1946, Partick, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Died: August 15, 2020

Movies: The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group Organizations founded: Anarchist Black Cross Federation, Cienfuegos Press

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BEYOND an OBITUARY!:

STUART Christie was an anarchist who had quality and consistency as well as quantity and a prolific output. From the early 1960s when he first engaged with Bobby Lynn and the Glasgow anarchists to his death bed listening to 'Pennies from Heaven' Stuart sternly stuck to his beliefs dedicated to a classical version of anarchism.

My last contact with Stuart was an unusually brief e-mail from him last November in which he wrote: 'Bearing up, Brian. Hope you are too. Un abrazo!.'

However I must offer a health warning, as in the 56 years since we first became acquainted in Paris in 1964, our paths have been very different. His commitment was to internationalist view while mine since the 1960s when I lived and worked in Spain has been mostly more parochial. My engagement with the anarchist movement in Spain and later Gibraltar was very different from that of Stuart even though we were functioning in the same organisation: the FIJL (DI). My role was purely one of propaganda and intelligence, and at no time was I involved in the violent activist deeds which were designed to discourage tourism or strike at General Franco.

My task and that of my then wife, Joan, was the much more humdrum; in my case one of working on the tools as an electrician, and delivering Butane Gas to the villages on the Cabo San Antonio in Alicante. Much more boring than 'daring-do' and prison life, but a way of soaking-up Spanish culture and everyday life as it was lived by many young Spaniards at that time who migrated to the coast from places like Albacete and Andalucia: working a six day week and paid 750 pesetas. Meanwhile, our FIJL campaign against Spanish tourism clearly failed, yet fortunately less tragically than Stuart's failed mission to kill Franco.

Among the many obituaries published on Stuart the most perceptive that I have yet seen has been that of the historian Julián Casanova in El País 'El escocés de la FAI que trató de matar a Franco' Casanova argues that Stuart Christie believed that 'a fusion of different forms of resistance such as the workers, the students, the greens into the language of political anarchism. Just as Bakunin, thought it was possible to harmonise individualism with the socialist collectivism.' Casanova writes: 'He [Stuart] liked the men of action, but in reality he [Stuart] and his wife Brenda went on to propagate forms of idelogy with various cultural manifestations, which demonstrated the force of culture with ideas.'

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Stuart's wife Brenda died last year aged 70 years, from cancer. Casanova writes: 'The obituaries now record that his prime intention was to kill Franco. Yet he was a committed anarchist using his pen and the engaged in cultural aggitation, in times when the revolutionaries with "consciences" have past into history. Anarchist solidarity, that reflects on the concequences of industrial capilalism, nuclear disarmament, and abuses by the State. He was a Scot who would have loved to live in the golden epoch of Spanish anarchism.'

Julián Casanova knew Stuart Christie from when he met him at Queen Mary College, London, in the Autumn of 1985. At that event were other hispanistas like Ronald Fraser, and he speaks warmly of the seminars, dinners and debates over the Spanish Civil War, Franco, the monarchy, Juan Carlos and the transistion.

It strikes me that Casanova understood Stuart better than most of us.

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Think You’re Not A Racist? Take The Test!

by Les May

I LIVE in Rochdale; it is an ethnically diverse town and the district I live in is no exception. Recently I fell into a physically distanced conversation with an old man who lives in the neighbourhood about an incident in which he had been involved a week or so ago.

It seems the he and his somewhat younger wife, who has underlying health problems, had encountered a group of secondary school children in a narrow passage. Needing to negotiate the passage and the children, his wife explained that she was ‘shielding’ and went through without further ado.

When it came the turn of the old man to negotiate the group one of the teenagers, a boy, coughed over him. I don’t know exactly the old man’s age, but I do know it must be in the region of eighty, so his age significantly increases the risk of him dying if he were to become infected with Coronavirus.

The old man’s assessment was that being deliberately coughed over in the middle of a pandemic can reasonably be construed as an assault. Certainly it resulted in alarm and distress for the old man as he told me.

But there’s a twist to this story. As I mentioned earlier, Rochdale is an ethnically diverse town and the old man and the schoolboy belong to different ethnic groups. One of them would I think identify, or be identified by others, as Asian or British Asian, the other as White British. Does this fact propel what happened into a racially motivated action which ought to be reported to the police as a hate incident?

So there we are; we have a ‘perpetrator’, we have a ‘victim’ and we have the fact that the two are from different ethnic groups. In this case does context matter? Should we be ‘colour blind’ in reaching a judgement, or should we take into account the ethnicity of the ‘perpetrator’ and the ‘victim’?

Comments are welcome.

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Octavio Alberola says goodbye to Stuart Christie

Octavio Alberola, who was in charge of Defensa Interior and was a close friend of Stuart’s has left us this farewell message to his friend.

Stuart Christie, comrade and friend

by OCTAVIO ALBEROLA

THE news of Stuart Christie’s death arrived by phone halfway through yesterday afternoon from comrade René after he asked if I had heard the bad news and after I quizzed him brusquely: Who’s dead? I could tell from his tone of voice that it must have been somebody close who had passed away.

René’s answer stopped me in my tracks, because even though Stuart had told me a week before that the cancer had left him still hoarse and that the findings of his medical tests were none too encouraging, it never at any moment occurred to me that he would be taken so quickly. I am surrounded by several male and female comrades – more or less of my own age – who are in none too rude health and at my age (due to turn 93 shortly) the thought that one’s days are numbered is just “normal”.

But in Stuart’s case, how could this be when he was eighteen years my junior? Besides, we had both been working on joint projects and both had been determined to plough ahead with our battles with the world of authority and exploitation.

To me, his death represents not just the loss of a comrade and friend but an end to long years collaborating on joint actions and initiatives designed to expose the injustices of the world in which we live and the fight for a fairer, freer world. A world that is possible for all of us who have not given up on wishing and trying to work towards a consistent practice of active, internationalist revolutionary solidarity.

We have known many years of brotherly relations ever since our first meeting back in August 1964 and up until 2020, without interruption. Half a century of our lives in tandem, one way or another, working on behalf of a common cause, heedless of borders. That struggle, though centred on the Spanish people’s political and social vagaries, initially under the Franco dictatorship and later under this phoney democracy spawned by the Transition/Transaction, has at all times carried the imprint of an internationalist revolutionary outlook.

The evidence of that, in Stuart’s case, was the time he spent behind bars in Spain and England, and in the case of Brenda his partner, in Germany and, in the cases of Ariane and myself, in Belgium and France. Experiences that bear witness to struggles that knew no borders as we knew that a characteristic of freedom is that it is the right of every man and woman.

So how could I not feel impelled to remember it now that our fraternization with Stuart has ended with his death? As well as with the death just a few days ago of the German comrade Doris Ensinger, the partner of Luis Andrés Edo, with whom Stuart shared some of his prison experiences and with whom he rubbed shoulders in their struggles; obviously, speaking for myself, the loss of Doris in a way represented the final ending of my fraternization-in-struggle with Luis. A finale that started some years back with Luis’s own death.

The fact is that in the case of Doris’s death too I was stopped in my tracks, startled by the news of her demise communicated to me by Manel, as barely a week earlier she had sent Tomás and me an email to let us know that she had been abruptly recalled to the hospital and undergone a transplant operation … But was now back home and feeling well …

Meaning that yet again I am brought face to face with the tenuousness of our existence and the need to preserve the memory of what we strove to be and do, to the very death.

Perpignan, 17 August 2020

Octavio Alberola

From RojoyNegro_Digital el Mar, 18/08/20; 15:02 http://rojoynegro.info/articulo/memoria/octavio-alberola-se-despide-stuart-christie Translated by: Paul Sharkey & REPRINTED BY KATE SHARPLEY

Conserving Deference by Christopher Draper

“The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate.”

(C F Alexander 1848)

OR so the NATIONAL TRUST would have us believe for 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' above all conserves Britain’s class system. Whilst the National Trust's Country Houses celebrate wealth, power and aristocratic privilege, Chairman, Tim Parker, 'a private-equity asset stripper' with 'a record of brutality and heartlessness towards workers' is sacking 1,200 people, 13% of the Trust’s workforce.

A Strange Kind of Conservation

The gullible swallow the excuse of 'Covid-related income loss' but the National Trust has over a billion pounds of investments to tide it over, not to mention the two hundred million pound personal fortune Chairman Tim Parker made by closing Clark’s shoe factories, sacking workers and outsourcing to Vietnam and then asset-stripping the AA (4,000 sacked) and KwikFit (3,500 sacked).

Charity for the Over-Privileged

National Trust is indispensable to the aristocracy as a mechanism for maintaining social status whilst avoiding taxation. The State is complicit in this game, granting the National Trust a unique legal status (1937 National Trust Act) that facilitates aristocratic tax avoidance (1953 Finance Act). Off-loading liabilities onto National Trust the toffs who remain in residence, retaining title to valuable contents which they permit the Trust to display, maintain and insure then claim back and sell when financially opportune – all for merely allowing limited public access. Income-producing assets such as shops, farms, pubs, holiday cottages etc are also retained. It is a cynically perpetuated myth that there’s been any fundamental redistribution of landed wealth and power in Britain since the Victorian era.

Welcome to Dudmaston Hall

'I am Elfrida and I live here with Mark and our two children, Oscar and Rachel, plus a few family pets! We have followed in the footsteps of Mark’s parents, James and Alison Hamilton-Russell…The photographs we have spread around the Entrance Hall and family rooms belong to the Hamilton-Russell family – most of which have been taken somewhere here at Dudmaston – see if you can spot where! As a visitor to the house, not many people realise that your front door is our front door…' This drivel continues and comprises the introductory leaflet I was handed on arrival at Dudmaston, as volunteer room guides, with hushed deference, revealed that lady bountiful herself was arranging flowers in the hallway. The Trust fosters this reverential aura of enduring aristocracy, inviting visitors to share their jaundiced view of reality.

Thoughts of Chairman Tim

Tim approves of this nonsense and is so pleased with the “history” projected by the Trust’s country houses that he told the Daily Express, 'Immigrants should visit stately homes to feel more British…we all of us need to have a sense of how we arrive at where we are today' - although not all of us arrived in a Porsche, with £200m in the bank and owning expensive homes in Hampshire and Chelsea.

The British?

Managing mansions is NT’s core business and each embodies, promotes and celebrates an air-brushed version of aristocracy from which all reference to slavery, exploitation, racism, criminality and colonial oppression has been excised; a picture of the past in which the great mass of ordinary, working class people are invisible. When immigrants, on Tim’s recommendation, visit the grand houses over which he presides the only “British” they see represented, from Francis Drake to Robert Clive, were in large part rapacious racists and ruthless exploiters sufficiently deferential to monarchy to be 'ennobled'. 'Their story' never was 'Our story'.

Who Lives in a House Like This?

The Trust’s selection of whose story is told starts with its acquisition of properties – a portfolio stuffed with grand country houses but no mining villages, holiday camps, allotments or council flats. As Times correspondent Brian Hughes observed in 2007 'The National Trust has always been keener on conserving the houses of the rich and powerful than those of the riff-raff…' In recent years Trust made a token effort to acquire a few less than grand houses, usually because they’re associated with 'celebrity' but of all the hundreds of National Trust properties only one represents radical challenge to class privilege and that’s Rosedene an 1840’s Chartist cottage. Even then the Trust restricts visits and uses the cottage as a holiday let. 'English Heritage' criticises the National Trust’s misrepresentation of the property as 'visitors are presented with a slightly rosy interpretation of rural life rather than the revolutionary force that Chartism represented in the mid-nineteenth century.'

Kedleston Hall

In contrast, the National Trust is keen that you 'Experience the ambitious grandeur of this lavishly decorated 1760’s show palace, lived in over the centuries by the Curzon family. Discover the treasures of the Eastern Museum, a collection amassed by Lord Curzon while he travelled through Asia and during his service as the Viceroy of India...” There’s no hint from NT that Curzon imposed divide and rule, setting Hindu against Muslim, - an arrogant Imperialist, even Balliol, his old college has hidden away his portrait out of post-colonial embarrassment. Nor does the Trust care to mention that Kedleston’s current incumbent, the Hon. Richard Francis Nathaniel Curzon was in 2016 jailed for serial convictions of driving whilst banned. His older brother, the Rt Hon. Peter Ghislaine Nathaniel Curzon, the 4th Viscount Scarsdale is the rightful occupant of Kedleston’s 23-roomed Georgian Wing and two servants’ flats granted rent free in perpetuity by the Trust but he was imprisoned for refusing to pay his divorce settlement and never returned. Perhaps fear rather than prejudice prevents the National Trust/i> from including such unsavoury aristocratic history for Peter Curzon warned a Daily Mail reporter who tracked him down, 'Be careful what you write because people like us are very powerful – how do think Earls can do away with their nannies and disappear?'

Conserving Privilege

It’s difficult to unearth the range of privileges NT concedes to 'donors' as it refuses to publish these 'gentleman’s agreements'. They’re often arrived at informally, 'between friends', only for this imprecision to cause rifts when subsequent generations claim title to valuable contents. This occurred, for example, at Chirk Castle where descendants reclaimed and sold several valuable items before NT formalised contracts.

At Penrhyn Castle, Richard Charles Harper Douglas-Pennant retains title to a mansion in the grounds as well as 75% of the castle’s contents. NT’s Castle guidebook originally featured Jan Steen’s painting of the 'Burgomeister of Delft', until in 2004 it was withdrawn from exhibition on Douglas-Pennant’s instruction and sold for £8.1m. The current edition of the guidebook features Rembrandt’s portrait of 'Catrina Hoogsaet – the masterpiece of the collection', unfortunately Douglas-Pennant reclaimed and sold that in 2015 for £35m. In lieu of paying inheritance tax on that sale the government accepted title of 34 minor paintings already on show in the castle, including six eighteenth century watercolours of Jamaica where the family owned sugar plantations until 1943.

Skeletons

Bodnant Gardens is unusual amongst NT properties, as it wasn’t financed from profits of the slave trade but here, as elsewhere, NT assists in hiding aristocratic skeletons. There’s a deafening silence over the curious disinheritance of John Pochin, the only son of the garden’s founder (hence the estate passed from the “Pochins” down the female line to the “McLarens”). Then there’s Charles Melville McLaren’s guilty secret - until three years before he died, Lord Aberconway, father of the present incumbent, concealed the fact that he was amongst a group of seven British businessmen who secretly met Goering and other leading Nazis on an island off the German coast, just three weeks before war was declared in a last ditch appeasement attempt to offer Hitler a 'second Munich agreement'. The tragic effect of this meeting was to encourage the Nazis to invade Poland in the belief that Britain would not fight.

At Bodnant the Trust maintains the accessible 82 acre gardens but the family retain ownership of the 5,000 acre estate which includes farms, forestry, holiday cottages and retail outlets that the National Trust obligingly channels 260,000 visitors through each year. Michael Duncan McLaren forbids access to Bodnant Hall even though he works in London as a highly successful commercial barrister owning multi-million pound houses in Kensington and Tuscany.

Venite Adoremus

Plas Newydd was given to the Trust by the Marquis of Anglesey in 1976 but the family retain ownership of Parys Mountain which supplied invaluable copper to the African slave trade. You wouldn’t learn this from the National Trust’s presentation of the property nor would you discover much about the extraordinary life of the flamboyantly camp fifth Marquis of Anglesey as the family don’t want this publicised. The Marchioness does wish that her late husband’s study remains on view, unchanged and maintained as a shrine to his memory and NT duly complies. The Trust’s site manager, Jane Richardson, did clash with the Marchioness over her insistence on limiting public access to the gardens but was forced to concede after she was 'given a very, very clear steer' by the Trust’s Director General 'That I have a responsibility to work with the donor family and to keep them happy'!

Conserving Control

The National Trust’s Constitution provides for the restraint rather than representation of members’ views. It is a centralised and hierarchical organisation with a Chairman heading a ruling Council while the executive wing is controlled by a 'Director-General' and 'Executive Team'. Although NT comprises 14,000 staff, 65,000 volunteers and 5.6 million members they have little opportunity to influence policy.

In 2013 the National Trust bosses commissioned Leicester Business School to investigate disaffection amongst volunteers. In 2015 it concluded, 'Volunteers often felt a sense of marginalisation with respect to decision making, property developments, skills utilisation and creative input.' A staff member reported, 'I agree with the volunteers. The volunteers’ complaints are being dismissed as 'bad behaviour' by management. 'As paid staff we cannot express our opinions or feelings, we just have to toe the line.' 'Kim' articulated management’s response, 'We need them to buy into what we are ultimately trying to achieve!'

Sheep and Goats

Trust bosses claim “Our pay policy recognises that our staff are not motivated or attracted solely by pay…” and reflecting the organisation’s charitable status most of the workforce are indeed modestly remunerated although the bosses employ a different yardstick in calculating their own pay and, conveniently, “The pay arrangements for senior managers are not covered by the Partnership Agreement”. The National Trust’s top 15 bosses pocket two million pounds a year between them while Director-General Hilary McGrady “earns” £190,000 plus perks. Perks for top managers include accommodation in properties donated to the Trust but not open to the public. Thomas Hardy’s home, “Max Gate”, for instance was quietly acquired by the Trust in 1940 but kept under wraps and only opened to visitors 54 years later. Scotney Castle was donated to the Trust in 1970 but wasn’t opened to the public until 2007. For most of the 1970’s and 1980’s Margaret Thatcher occupied a three-bedroomed apartment at Scotney but despite the determined efforts of M.P.Dennis Skinner, National Trust bosses refused to disclose details of this cosy arrangement.

Manipulating the Membership

National Trust members can stand for a position on the ruling Council or submit a motion for debate at the AGM, where nominations and resolutions are decided by members’ votes, but there’s an important proviso. Members not attending routinely authorise the Chairman to vote on their behalf. Most people assume this provides a casting vote in the event of a stalemate but this isn’t the practice at the Trust. The National Trust chairmen, past and present, employ thousands of these 'proxy votes' to systematically vote down motions otherwise endorsed by the majority of members. The anti-democratic effect of this procedure has been denounced at AGM’s for more than fifty years, prompting one unsuccessful nominee, Nicholas Fry a trustee of Chester Cathedral, to describe the Council as a 'a self-perpetuating oligarchy'

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In 2000 two Q.C.’s, who were also Trust members, successfully proposed a resolution banning the use of the Chair’s 'block vote' only for it to be overturned by the Chairman’s 'block vote'! Facing a membership increasingly angry at the Trust continuing to allow fox hunting on its land, in 2002 the Chairman made free use of the 100,000 'proxies' in his pocket to pack the Council with blood-sports enthusiasts including Clarissa Dickson Wright and Nicholas Soames MP. With a curious irony the National Trust’s 'democratic deficit' was denounced by the House of Lords! Forced to reform, the Trust’s Chair was compelled to reveal to members, for the first time, exactly how many proxy votes he cast at AGM’s and proxy voting for Council membership was abolished. Members were then directed which candidates to vote for and these names were printed in bold-type on ballot papers! In a rare victory, at the 2015 AGM, members finally voted out this disgraceful practice despite the chairman casting 4,065 proxy votes against. Of the total of 18 members’ resolutions submitted to the last 7 AGM’s the Chair opposed every single one including motions on ending trail hunting, on banning barbed wire and even on serving Fairtrade tea in the Trust's cafes.

At the 2017 AGM members would have finally banned trail hunts (which are a ruse to continue fox hunting with terrier men convicted for releasing foxes to be ripped to pieces by trail hounds) but the Chair cast 3,460 proxy votes to 'keep on killing'. Seventy or so trail hunts operate on National Trust land but with the 3-year exclusion rule (for resubmitting resolutions) expiring in 2020 the ban was due to be voted on again at this year’s AGM and members were confident of victory. Curiously the National Trust bosses decided to cancel the meeting. Meanwhile the Scottish National Trust responded to Covid by moving its 2020 AGM online. the National Trust adamantly rejects its members’ calls to follow suit.

Beyond Reform

As I’ve illustrated in this series of articles, the National Trust is fundamentally class-biased, racist, uninterested in ending animal cruelty or supporting environmentally friendly transport and the bosses are antipathetic to the views of volunteers, workers and members. It is an undemocratic corporation that’s proved itself incapable of internal reform and must be broken up to create numerous smaller, localised, perhaps county-sized, independent Trusts more willing and better able to reflect the many and varied histories of the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Christopher Draper (Part 4 of 4-part NT series)

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