Spanish translation of obituary to Brian Bamford by Carlos Figueroa.

 ADIOS, AMIGO.BRIAN BAMFORD,nació el 14 de diciembre de 1940,murió el 18 de Febrero de 2022

Aunque lo esperaba,sigue siendo una triste noticia saber de la muerte de Brian Bamford,con 81 años.Murió en su casa a primera hora de la mañana del pasado 18 de febrero tras una larga enfermedad.Era un buen compañero y camarada y le echaré mucho de menos .Se me hace extraño no escuchar su voz por teléfono ya que hablamos varias veces por semana durante años.Aunque a menudo discutíamos sobre algún que otro tema ,yo le quería mucho y le respetaba.Sin embargo,teníamos muchas cosas en común y pienso que llegamos a conseguir algunas cosas a través de nuestra amistad y colaboración. 

Brian tenía un carácter único.Era de naturaleza generosa y vivía y respiraba  la política.Estoy  seguro de  que no carecía de agallas y siempre iba de frente.Era un hombre que iría a la cárcel antes que pagar una multa y sería arrestado con frecuencia por sus actividades políticas.A veces de manera chistosa le decía que se metía en todos los fregados.Pero como anarquista,Brian no estaba interesado en puestos políticos o la vía parlamentaria hacia el socialismo.Era más un militante  de la industria que un periodista. 

En 2003 ,un grupo de nosotros,incluyendo anarquistas como Brian,habíamos fundado la revista Northern Voices tras reunirnos en el bar Buffet de Stalybridge.Brian fue elegido como editor.Nuestra pretensión era realizar una publicación regional dedicada a las noticias locales y a temas culturales del norte de Inglaterra .La revista se vendía por el Gran Manchester también como en partes de Yorkshire y Lancashire.Se vendía incluso en la librería Houseman de Londres y en la librería Freedom de Whitechapel,en el East End de Londres. También vendimos la revista en la librería Hydra de Bristol.El último número de la revista Northern Voices salió en 2015.Nos habíamos pasado al formato digital y tanto yo mismo como Brian conjuntamente nos convertimos en editores del blog Northern Voices.

Como editores  de Northern Voices ,peleamos al menos contra cuatro acusaciones de difamación  con las que nos amenazaron o a las que nos llevaron.La más seria fue una acusación contra nosotros ,el periódico "The Guardian",el "Morning Star",el sindicato GMB y una página web llamada Union Solidarity Internacional ,de un antiguo policía camuflado llamado Gordon Mills ,que había trabajado para una unidad de policía secreta llamada NETCU.También escribimos sobre Mills en un panfleto llamado,"Chicos en la lista negra".Con la ayuda de Dave Smith y el grupo de apoyo contra la lista negra (BSG) y Unite the Union,nosotros resistimos con éxito ante esta amenaza y ni pedimos perdón ni pagamos un penique a Gordon Mills.

Brian fue miembro de Unite y secretario de la sección en Bury del sindicato.Tambien fue secretario del consejo sindical de Tameside.A lo largo de su vida ,Brian habia estado implicado en muchos conflictos industriales. En los primeros 60 ,se implicó en la huelga general de aprendices de ingeniería. También tuvo alguna implicación el la huelga de Robers Arundel de Stockport y fue detenido en una huelga en Arrow Mill,Rochdale ,donde trabajó y fue delegado sindical .Muchos de los huelguistas eran trabajadores asiáticos.Los dos estuvimos también implicados en la huelga de cuidadores de Tameside.Hizo campaña  con fuerza contra la lista negra de la industria de la construcción  y apoyó a Seteve Acheson y los demás electricistas que habían sido despedidos bajo falsa premisa de despido por el contratista ,DAF Eléctrica. Brian lo supo gracias a Ricky Tomlinson,que formaba parte de la  Lista Negra de la Liga Económica. 

Tanto Brian como yo éramos miembros de la Federación de trabajadores sindicalistas(SWF) y habíamos sido muy influenciados por la CNT.En sus días jóvenes ,Brian habia sido de las juventudes liberales.Creo que una vez me dijo que lo que había llevado a la política anarquista  fue un libro de un anarquista ruso.el Príncipe Piotr Kropotkin,titulado "A los jóvenes "que había estado circulando entre las juventudes liberales.Admiraba mucho a George Orwell y al escritor italiano Ignazio Silone,que había escrito la novela antifascista "Fontamara" y "La escuela de los  dictadores"...Una novela que le gustaba especialmente era "Nostromo" de Joseph Conrad.

Durante los 60 ,Brian y su primera esposa Joan habían trabajado y vivido en España  bajo la Dictadura del General Franco.Hablaba español y podía discutir e insultar en español.Una vez fue arrestado en la estación Victoria  de Manchester porque no sacar del tren a su cabra a la que estaba llevando al veterinario en Bolton.Cuando los polis le sacaron a rastras del tren ,se podía escuchar a Brian gritando CABRON,CABRON,un insulto español que significa...mamon,hijo de puta,bastardo y cabra macho.Se pasó el resto del día encerrado en la comisaría de Boodle Street.Escribí un reportaje para Freedom Press sobre  los juicios en el tribunal de primera instancia y el tribunal superior que  llevó su apelación. Puedo aseguraros que el proceso fue graciosisimo.Todos nosotros estuvimos  absolutamente entretenidos.

Brian tuvo una gran influencia sobre mí y aprendí mucho de él.Le había  conocido desde el comienzo de mis 20 años  y  colaboramos juntos durante más de 40 años.Siempre le recordaré con el afecto más profundo. ADIOS, AMIGO.RIP

Dereck Pattison

Northern Voices 

Adios, Amigo. Brian Bamford - born 14/12/1940 - died 18/2/2022

      Brian Bamford -Editor of Northern Voices

Although I was expecting it, it is still very sad news to hear of the death of Brian Bamford, at 81. He died at home in the early hours of last Friday morning (18th February) after a long illness. He was a good mate and comrade and I will miss him greatly. It's strange not to hear his voice on the phone as he rang me many times a week for years. Although we often argued with one another over some issue or other, I liked him very much and respected him. Nevertheless, we had a great deal in common and I think we achieved something through our friendship and collaboration. 

Brian was a unique character. He had a generous nature and he lived and breathed politics. He certainly wasn't lacking when it came to having guts and he always led from the front. He was a man who would go to jail rather than pay a fine and he'd been frequently arrested for his political activities. I would sometimes jokingly say to him that he'd had more porridge than the three bears. But as an anarchist, Brian wasn't interested in political office or the parliamentary road to socialism. He was more of an industrial militant and journalist. 

In 2003, a group of us, including anarchists like Brian, had founded Northern Voices magazine after meeting in the Buffet bar in Stalybridge. Brian was elected the editor. Our aim was to produce a regional publication dedicated to local news and cultural issues in the north of England. The magazine was sold throughout Greater Manchester as well as parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. It was even sold in Houseman's Bookshop in London and at the Freedom Bookshop, in Whitechapel, in London's East End. We also sold the magazine at the Hydra Bookshop in Bristol. The last issue of Northern Voices magazine was in 2015. We'd already gone online and both myself and Brian, became joint editors of the Northern Voices blog.

As joints editors of Northern Voices blog, we fought at least four defamation actions threatened or brought against against us. The most serious, was an action brought against us, the Guardian newspaper, the Morning Star, the GMB union, and a website called Union Solidarity International, by a former undercover police officer called Gordon Mills, who had worked for a secret police unit called NETCU. We'd also written about Mills in a booklet we wrote called 'Boys on the Blacklist'. With the help of Dave Smith and the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), and Unite the Union, we successfully resisted this action and neither apologised or paid a penny to Gordon Mills. 

Brian was a member of Unite and was the secretary of the Bury Branch of Unite. He was also the secretary of Tameside Trades Union Council. Throughout his life, Brian had been involved in many industrial disputes. In the early 1960s, he was involved in the national strike of engineering apprentices. He'd also had some involvement in the strike at Roberts Arundel in Stockport and was arrested during a strike at Arrow Mill, in Rochdale, where he worked and was the union representative. Many of the strikers were Asian workers. Both of us were also involved in the Tameside Careworkers' strike. He campaigned vigorously against the blacklist in the construction industry, and supported Steve Acheson and the other electricians, who'd been sacked on the spurious grounds of redundancy by the contractor, DAF electrical. Brian found out from Ricky Tomlinson, that he was also on the Economic League Blacklist. 

Both Brian and myself had been members of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF), and had been greatly influenced by the Spanish anarcho-syndicalism of the CNT. In his younger days, Brian had been a Young Liberal. I think he once told me that what had drawn him into anarchist politics, was a book by the Russian anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, called 'An Appeal to the Young', which had been circulated by the Young Liberals. He greatly admired both George Orwell and the Italian writer, Ignazio Silone, who had written the anti fascist novel 'Fontamara' and 'The School for Dictators'. A novel he particularly liked, was Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad. 

During the 1960s, Brian and his first wife Joan, had worked and lived in Spain under the Dictatorship of General Franco. He spoke Spanish and could argue and curse in Spanish. He was once arrested by the police at Victoria Train Station in Manchester because he wouldn't remove his goat from the train which he was taking to the vets near Bolton. As the copper dragged him off the train, Brian could be heard shouting - 'Cabron', 'Cabron', a Spanish insult that means arsehole, son of a bitch, bastard, and male goat'. He spent the rest of the day, locked up in Boodle Street police station. I wrote a report for Freedom Press on both of his trials at the City Magistrates Court and the Crown Court which heard his appeal. I can assure you that the proceedings were hilarious. We were all thoroughly entertained. 

Brian was a great influence on me and I learned a lot from him. I had known him since my early twenties and we collaborated closely for over forty years. I will remember him always with the deepest affection. Adios, Amigo. RIP.

Derek Pattison,

Northern Voices.

Farewell, Brian

I first met Brian over fifty years ago, when we were launching Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP); our friendship was cemented then and thrived until his sad demise last Friday.

Our first encounter was over a story I wrote, in which he displayed a number of characteristics that were, for me, to help define his life. Always a staunch trade unionist, for him the rights of his fellow beings trumped any formal structures. So, the story - in brief - was of a number of Asian workers who were being abused, discriminated against and under-paid on the night shift of Arrow Mill, one of Rochdale’s last functioning textile mills. Neither management nor textile trade union cared a hoot - the latter was happy to turn a blind eye. Brian’s instinctive decency and concern for his fellow worker came to the fore, and he was able to organise the shift, from the outside and provide support that saw many of their grievances addressed.

Brian’s pro-worker, anti-union bureaucrat stance was often to get him into trouble. Others will know more of his more recent struggles on behalf of the anti-black-listing campaigns.

The gratitude of many of those he supported at Arrow Mill remained until Brian’s dying days, as some, who had long departed Rochdale remained in touch. The fact “the lads” were recent Pakistani immigrants was of no concern to Brian. His support was driven by his discomfort at the injustice they experienced. That “colour blindness” later got him denounced as a racist, when he was vocal in condemning textile sweatshop labour in the town, because it was perceived, by the hyper-sensitive, to be anti immigrant, rather than pro workers rights and working conditions that had been fought for over the previous century and a half.

Brian played a significant role in helping uncover RAP’s biggest story, and later national scandal - the exposure of Cyril Smith as a child abuser. Brian knew some of the victims and helped RAP trace them, in the 1970s, and later assisted distinguished national journalist and son of Rochdale, Paul Waugh, with his revelations thirty five years later. He had no truck with the trashy “drama-documentary” on the subject published by local disgraced MP, Simon Danczuk and his side kick eight years or so, ago.

Brian assisted RAP in much of the unglamorous stuff too - the collation, folding and the distribution. It was early mornings and late nights, with zero recognition or reward, except for feeling that you were attempting to get messages of injustice publicised and showing solidarity with the under-dog. Brian was no glory hunter, although his struggles often gained attention, he never sought it.

Often intense and serious, Brian was not without a mischievous sense of humour, as many who recall his hearty cackle will testify. On one occasion in the 70s we persuaded him to stand as a candidate in the Rochdale municipal elections, to represent Rochdale’s Alternative Party (RAP). He stood in the town’s most affluent ward, which just so happened to be called Bamford (“Bamford for Bamford” had a certain campaigning appeal!). Among his pledges was to have a Travellers’ Site erected on Norford Way (the poshest road in town, which at the time housed a member of pop group 10cc and a Lancashire and England cricketer, as well as the area’s wealthier professionals and business owners. To nobody’s surprise and Brian’s great relief, he was spectacularly unsuccessful!

On a more serious note was Brian’s great love of Spain, brought about initially by periods working as an electrician in Gibraltar. At some considerable personal risk, he was involved in supplying anti-fascist resisters in Franco’s Spain with literature and materials he was able to smuggle over the border. He had little truck with other more celebrated anarchists who publicised their actions and put others at risk, as a consequence.

His periods in Spain engendered in him a love of the country, its literature and cuisine, and he was a dab hand at putting together a tasty Spanish culinary delight or two.

Brian has always been a polemicist and publisher - not only through RAP, but with any number of leftist/anarchist publications. The original, paper copy of Northern Voices and this blog being the latest manifestation. It is hard work, particularly trailing round newsagents and bookshops, often by public transport to deliver copies and pick up returns and payments. It’s the nature of small publications that they rarely get pride of place in shop displays, and sales can be hit and miss and often disappointing. Brian would not be put off - he always soldiered on, without complaint.

I left Rochdale 40 years ago, but we maintained our friendship. He was a frequent visitor, and always stayed when he was down for conferences and the annual Anarchist Bookfair. There was always a campaign to be fought, and important discussion to be had, by his ever inquisitive mind.

He was a frequent phone caller, to discuss current affairs, or just plain gossip. For a while the calls always lasted 59 minutes and 30 seconds- the maximum free call time allowed by his service provider. His timing was immaculate!

In recent years we came to share a delight of holidays in Norfolk (although never together); Brian with Pat, his partner over 30 years and wife for the last two months of his life, and me, my wife and two dogs (I am writing from there now). We took great delight in our respective times in this glorious county: we in our rented cottage. And Brian, until his 80s, never one for ceremony or appearance, with Pat in youth hostels. 

And how fitting, because Brian was Forever Young (yes the works and songs of Bob Dylan were frequent topics of discussion.

Farewell, Brian.

I’ll miss you, comrade.

My Friend Brian Bamford. By Les May

My oldest friend died today. Readers of NV will know him as ‘Bammy’; I knew him as Brian. We first came to know each other sixty years ago through CND, which perhaps tells you something about where on the political spectrum we were and are to be found. But our politics were not the same. Brian was a lifelong anarcho-syndicalist, I’m a democratic socialist. So this isn’t a political obituary, it’s a memoir of my friend, with a few political comments thrown in. I tend to think of most anarchists as incurable romantics; Brian was not like that. He certainly had a romantic view of what anarchists achieved during the Spanish Civil war, but he had an essentially practical view about anarchism too and was strongly drawn to the ideas of Colin Ward. If he was a bit of a romantic about the anarchism in Spain, he was also very knowledgable about its history and went to Spain in 1963 to find out for himself. He went on to visit Spain for extended periods several more times in later years and learned to speak and read Spanish sufficiently well to be able to translate pieces from Spanish newspapers which found their way onto the NV blog. Brian’s other political preoccupation was trades unionism which I imagine derived from the syndicalism bit of his political philosophy. A year or so ago a piece on the NV blog drew the comment from someone who thinks that indulging in such name calling will change the world, that it was ‘racist’, an easy comment to make sitting in an armchair, rather than heading to jail. What I, and no doubt many others know, is that in the early 1970s Brian had been arrested whilst supporting ‘asian’ workers at the Arrow mill. Brian continued his involvement in the trades unions until he became ill. This included co-authoring a booklet on ‘Blacklisting’ and acting as Secretary of Bury Unite Commercial Branch. Brian started Northern Voices as a print publication and worked extremely hard not only at the writing and editing, but also at the distribution. Only later did it develop into a ‘blog’ which was available on the World Wide Web. Initially NV was intended as a cultural and political publication. Brian tried to keep the ‘cultural’ side alive with book, film and theatre reviews many of which he wrote himself. I started contributing regularly only after the publication of Simon Danzcuk’s book about Cyril Smith. Before Smith died in 2010 Brian had used NV to remind people of the 1979 story about Cyril’s antics at Cambridge House in Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP). Brian knew a lot more about this story than Danzcuk and Baker because he had been involved in the distribution of RAP when national newspapers were sending taxis to buy multiple copies of the paper and because of his continued friendship with one of the editors, John Walker. As a co-editor of NV Brian took a robust attitude to freedom of expression. He was happy to give space to people whose views he strongly disagreed with. He had no time for the people who used words like racist, islamophobic, antisemtic, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic etc as weapons to prevent others expressing views they did not like. He took as his motto the words on the wall of Broadcasting House behind a statue of his hero George Orwell, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", from an unused preface to Animal Farm. That is how I shall always remember him.

Death of Brian Bamford - Joint Editor Northernvoice.

It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Brian Bamford who died today aged 81. Brian was the joint editor of Northernvoices blog and for over a decade edited Northervoices Magazine. We send our sincere condolensces to his wife and family.

Boy Racers - Nietzsche's Restless Children - By Andrew Wallace

If the generation gap is a permanent ingrained feature of human relationships as suggested by ancient apocryphal quotes, the idea of youth cultures does indeed suggest something stridently modern, manufactured and set apart from previous history. Sociologists have delineated the rise of distinctive and often challenging youth cultures over the course of the 20th century, particularly during the affluence of the post war boom. Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)1 being the seminal work demonstrating how media outlets typically framed understandings of high visibility skirmishes and public disorder. Tabloid reportage was critical in providing the terms of reference and conceptual baggage in which readers would come to understand the travails of the respective groupings of ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’. However the sociologists who provided the seminal criminological theory on the back of 1960s radicalism and counter culture often betrayed a rather quirky and romantic attachment to the idea of miscreant youth as a pedigree of non-conformist banditry, pregnant with possibilities for anti-capitalist challenges to the Establishment. Today’s 21st century Boy Racers have been apprehended by analysists deploying much of Cohen’s work and the engagement with labelling theory and symbolic interactionism, a nuanced and dynamic appraisal of the different social actors and the contested meanings at the heart of ongoing struggles. Although there is a long lineage of car culture from America (hot rodding and drag racing), the conspicuous boy racer phenomena we are accustomed to today seems to have surfaced in the 1990s with the new permissive capitalism of easy credit, financial deregulation and the great turbo charged car economy. Campbell’s2 work on social unrest at the time of the 1991 riots remains prescient also for the riots of 2011 and to the malaise of today. With sleek high performance vehicles available on lease to those of moderate income the environment was conducive to the carnivalesque of performative exhibitionism. The confluence of new technologies such as the camcorder, the potency and repurposing of the car and the lure and accessibility of large urban spaces and an audience receptive to the spectacle were all well-established ingredients back then. The transgressive inclinations of the ‘tarmac cowboys’, drawn to the urban retail parks like moths to a flame, speaks to the voracious appetite for adrenal stimulation. The lure of wild abandon and Dionysian frenzy has typically been ceded to psychologists and been difficult to understand within the limited horizons of traditionalist criminology. This deficit has now been challenged by the pioneering ideas of Edgework3 whereby criminal acts are conceptualised anew as sensation seeking activity on the edge or periphery of acceptable behaviours. The high octane activities are engaged precisely because of the existential thrills provided against the mundane, stultifying and banal confinements of the regular habitat. Since the post-modern society is constantly in flux and negotiating its fragile domestic settlement, the rules of living are daily contested and feeding into the sense of sociological anomie and general urban malaise. Whereas traditional bourgeois capitalism had aligned itself within a conservative moral universe, the new right individualism of the 1970s onwards introduced a radical antinomy into the mix. Thatcherism’s Calvinist restraints were soon consigned to the margins as the more uncompromising buccaneers of the unfettered free market came to the fore. Deferred gratification gave way to the orgy of instant gratification courtesy of deregulated credit and wild financialisation. The new capitalism increasingly vanquished cultural conservativism in favour of an open celebration of the permissive, even seeking to appropriate much of the bohemian and counter-cultural ‘hippy’ ethos of ‘do your own thing’. Social attitudes to sexuality had been liberalised, homosexuality decriminalised, censorship of arts and cinema relaxed and non-marital relationships and children born out of wedlock now no longer subject to moral sanction. It seems there is ample evidence that commercialism and market forces will inevitably find an outlet for the decadent and even subversive in the absence of restraint. Markets cater to our needs and cravings so long as the material basis for their realisation exists. If there are moral prescriptions that trump the economics, then canny market forces prove more than capable in providing the necessary furtive adjustments. Niche markets establish themselves alongside the mainstream. If there are serious fortunes to be made by catering for an increasingly unconservative appetite for mayhem and debauchery, then capitalism naturally pushes at an open door (or Overton Window4) with regards to what is morally and culturally permissible. If the bad boy antics of a few anti-heroes had been tacitly indulged in 1960s television and cinema, then the next few decades would push the envelope ever further from the chaste guidelines of the Hays Code.5 If the staple Hollywood action film had celebrated masculinity and high octane car chases for many years, then this had evolved apace to celebrate criminality and gangsters for gaming platforms. Carmaggedon and Grand Theft Auto remain controversial because of their open celebration of violence and cruelty whilst the Fast and the Furious film franchise have exulted in the world of boy racers and illegal street racing. And if capitalism is doing its best to shuffle off the inconvenient ballast of social conservativism, the Conservative Party’s relationship to one of their traditionally favourite planks of law and order has been chafing away of late, given the extensive cuts to police numbers.6 Hence the increasing conspicuous presence of antisocial driving and occasional conveys of Mad Max style off road vehicles taking to our main roads in a narcissistic exhibition of dangerous pyrotechnics. Indeed I defy anyone in the vicinity to take an hour’s walk across the inner township wards of Rochdale or an equivalent town and not experience for themselves various spectacles of antisocial driving or other troublesome manifestations of what we might quaintly term urban malaise. 7,8,9,10 If Rochdale is a template for such dysfunctionality it is not an exceptional one. Indeed on a recent holiday that took us as far as Southampton and Jersey I was witness to the same kinds of antisocial crudities that blight us back here. Perhaps Rochdale and other Northern towns have the dubious distinction of being in the vanguard of this post-industrial malaise, since they were amongst the first regions of the country to feel the impact of Thatcherite deindustrialisation and then a horrific descent of a segment of its populace into maladaptive substance abuse. The malaise has now spread much further afield as former affluent regions of the country have grimly discovered. Indeed the problems of Nietzsche’s restless children decked out in their transgressive apparel is something of an international quandary, with Sweden, New Zealand, Australia and North America highlighting the same maladies. 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_devil 2 Beatrix Campbell – Goliath – Britain’s Dangerous Places (1993) 3 https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/edgework-taking-risks-for-the-fun-of-it/ 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window#:~:text=The%20Overton%20window%20is%20the,as%20the%20window%20of%20discourse. 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code 6 https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/shock-figures-reveal-23500-police-staff-cut-under-tories 7 http://rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/8828/police-target-boy-racers 8 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1189167/Judge-blasts-hopelessly-inadequate-sentence-Fast-And-The-Furious-boy-racers-left-woman-brain-damaged.html 9 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3101081/Pictured-Driver-18-boasting-hits-142mph-night-killed-innocent-motorist-drove-high-powered-Audi-red-light.html 10 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/06/boy-racers-blamed-as-manchester-road-deaths-rise-during-lockdown