Still Failing? by Les May

ON 7 July last year Northern Voices published an article I wrote with the title ‘Why Black Lives Matter Will Fail’. In it I suggested that the proximate factor in the murder of George Floyd was that the USA has a militarised police force. I went on to say;

‘As of 30 June 2020 a total of 506 civilians were shot in the US, 105 of whom were black. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. For comparison the rate of shootings per million of the population was: black 31, hispanic, 23, white 13, other 4. These figures speak for themselves. By comparison the average number of fatal police shootings per year in England and Wales in the 15 year period 2004/5 to 2018/9 was less than 3 in a population of about 60,000,000, that is about 0.05 per million.’

‘Faced with a fatality rate from police shooting which is 200 to 600 times higher than in the UK one might have thought that saving lives, black, brown and white, by demilitarising US police forces, would be central to any widespread response to the murder of George Floyd. Seemingly it isn’t.’

‘Instead of attempting to attain measurable objectives like improving police training and making officers accountable every time they use a firearm, the emphasis is on "racism", something for which there is no objective measure and having all the explanatory power of asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’ It’s a popular badge to display because it allows the wearer to get a warm glow of satisfaction from ‘calling out’ racists. If by chance the murder of George Floyd causes anyone to remember their humanity and dare to say they think all lives matter, you can call that racist too!’

Anyone viewing the recent video of the events just before a female officer drew her gun thinking she was drawing her Taser, cannot fail to notice the abrasive, bullying behaviour shown by the male officer. It’s the attitude of the police to people they are arresting not the colour of the skin of the victim 20 year old Daunte Wright which led to his death.

If you still think that ‘racism’ is at the root of the problem with policing in the USA try typing the words ‘73 year old woman dementia’ into your favourite search engine. (Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Google) You’ll be presented with more than two dozen reports and a YouTube video relating to the story of a 73 year old woman suffering from dementia being thrown to the ground, and cuffed so violently that she had her arm broken and her shoulder dislocated when she was arrested in Colorado.

After the killing of George Floyd a group calling itself ‘Black Lives Matter; Activist Coalition’ received donations totalling £1.2 million from a gullible British public.

Question; Are Age Concern, Dementia UK and Alzheimer’s Society about to be beneficiaries of similar largess? I think not!

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Bristol TUC motion on the Bristol protests

March 30th 2021

Forwarded to NV by Dave Chapple

This Council strongly oppose the ill-conceived and dangerous Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill being proposed by the Home Secretary. To push through repressive legislation under the cover of the pandemic is awful politics and will make dreadful law. As it stands, the Bill seeks to:

· Erode fundamental rights of protest including vital trade union actions and activities that support working people

·

Draw false links between violence and the Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion protests

·

Attack those marginalised from society, such as traveller communities and other minority groups

·

Create a fake ‘culture war’ where moves to establish a more tolerant and diverse society is somehow destroying our history.

We are saddened by the violent scenes in our city. As a trade union movement, we believe in the right for workers to be able to protest without police harassment or violence. We condemn the police violence towards peaceful demonstrators and members of the press. Furthermore, we note with concern the reports of police intimidation towards journalists as they are trying to carry out their job, as well as preventing independent media coverage. These incidents need to be fully independently investigated and those responsible held to account.

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Government new restrictions to the right to protest!

from Andrew Wasting

THE coronavirus pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on our ability to take to the streets. Now the Home Office is busy preparing, in readiness for when public health restrictions start to ease, to make sweeping changes to public order legislation that will give the police extra powers to restrict future protests.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill announced today includes plans to “strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament”.

Home Secretary Priti Patel’s anger is aimed in particular at Extinction Rebellion and the rejuvenated Black Lives Matter movement. Last year she attacked Extinction Rebellion as “so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals” and denounced their direct action and civil disobedience tactics as “a shameful attack on our way of life, our economy and the livelihoods of the hard-working majority”.

Patel has also condemned Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 – some of the biggest seen in recent years. Although protesters took to streets that were largely empty because of the pandemic to demand racial justice and most protests passed without incident, Patel characterised them as “dreadful” and demonised those who took part in them “hooligans and thugs”. The new Bill will increase the maximum penalty for criminal damage of a memorial – like the statue to Bristol slave trader Edward Colston toppled in June last year – from 3 months to 10 years.

Netpol’s report last year highlighted, however, how it was Black-led demonstrations that were more likely to experience aggressive, more confrontational policing.

In the aftermath of a summer of demonstrations in 2020, Patel requested a review by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue (HMICFR) to look at the way protests are policed and whether police forces should have new public order laws to protect “the rights of others to go about their daily business”

.

In the course of its consultation for the review, HMICFR indicated to Netpol that the government wants to challenge the perceived legitimacy of certain protest tactics by groups like Extinction Rebellion, as well as to give the police the power to more widely interpret whether protests like Black Lives Matter constitute “significant disruption” and are therefore likely to justify arrests.

Even before protests by Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, the police seemed to believe that rights to freedom of assembly are “abused” by even minor breaches of the law, such as blocking roads. A much-delayed draft ‘Protest Operational Advice’ for local forces, produced by the National Police Chiefs Council in 2018 and based largely on the policing of five years of opposition to fracking, relied heavily on the notion that human rights protections for protests should not extend to activities that negate the rights of others, including companies.

As Netpol’s Lawyers Group said in a submission at the time, there is absolutely no legal basis for such a claim, which would “constitute a doctrinal leap of massive proportions on current case-law principles”. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that the police have continued to lobby hard for tougher new laws.

The Home Secretary’s plans look, on the face of it, like a combination of defending business interests and petty vengeance against political and social movements she dislikes. However, they are unlikely to frighten off many campaign groups from returning to the streets once the current restrictions end. With institutional racism and climate change still acutely critical issues, more arrests and more criminalisation therefore seems inevitable.

Resisting attacks on the freedom to protest

We are opposing planned changes to the law that threaten our right to protest and are calling on other organisations and individuals to join us.

However, in responding to these latest challenges, Netpol argues that unless we advocate for positive demands, the government will simply keep chipping away at our rights.

This is why we are also launching a new “Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights”, which calls on the government and the police to accept greater transparency and accountability for the way protests are policed. We are demanding police respect existing international human rights standards – or explain why they refuse to do so.

Amongst its eleven points, the Charter calls for:

Proper protections – not more restrictions – for the right to protest. This includes an end to treating direct action and civil disobedience as an excuse to shut down protests completely.

An end to routine surveillance of protesters. This includes strict limitations on the use of police video recording, use of facial recognition, and surveillance of social media sites used by campaigners.

An end to discriminatory policing of Black-led protests, which in particular disproportionately face excessive and violent interventions.

An end to targeting the most vulnerable. The police have a particular duty to protect the rights of young people, vulnerable and disabled people wishing to exercise their rights to freedom of assembly.

Next week, we are formally launching the Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights. Please ask your organisation to add its name in support of the Charter.

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A Comment On the Sukuta Project by Les May

THE most striking thing about the recent piece by John Walker on the Sukuta Project which intends to renovate the Gambia’s largest primary school is the relatively small amount of money, £60,000, which will be needed to accomplish a project which will benefit 2,000 children immediately and go on benefiting similar sized cohorts for many years to come.

In July 2020, I wrote an article for NV with the title ‘Why Black Lives Matter Will Fail’. Something I wrote at the end of that piece seems pertinent here.

In the article I mentioned a disclaimer which read ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’

If you check out the website https://uk.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund which appears to be the group referred to in the disclaimer, you will find passages like ‘a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people’ and ‘we lift up the experiences of the most marginalised in our communities, including but not limited to working class queer, trans, undocumented, disabled, Muslim, sex workers, women/non-binary, HIV+ people.’

You’ll also find the group have been given £1.2 million by 35,000 donors. At the risk of being tedious I will mention that this sum would change the lives of almost 7500 black children in Africa who were born with a cleft palate and face a lifetime of ridicule and social isolation, or pay for nearly 75,000 ingrowing eye lash operations or nearly seven and a half million doses of a drug to cure trachoma and prevent this many black people going blind.

Clearly all those donors have different priorities to mine.

£1.2 million would fund 20 similar projects in Africa meaning that 40,000 black children would benefit immediately and would be followed by the same number of children benefiting long into the future.

As someone recently wrote to me, ‘organisations like BLM are more concerned about displaying sentiments rather than addressing issues.’

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'Joint Enterprise'* and deportation!

by John Wilkins

AN article in The Guardian caught my eye this week because it dealt with the use of what it termed “controversial and discriminatory joint enterprise law.” It also involved the order to deport the person involved in a crime.

I will outline the case first but then look at how double standards seem to be involved when it is a 'black' person rather than a 'white' or 'brown' person involved.

Osime Brown is 21 years old Jamaican born man who came to the UK aged just 4. He is autistic and was slow as a child even in learning to walk. He had behavioural and learning problems at school and it resulted in exclusion aged 16. It would seem his problems had not been forensically diagnosed until then so he never received adequate support, merely being labelled disruptive.

He had been engaged in low level criminal behaviour but the latest crime involved the theft of a mobile phone. Although he was part of the group who took the phone witnesses said he had asked the other teenagers he was with to stop the street robbery, but he was convicted under the joint enterprise law which anyone considered complicit in a crime can be arrested even if they played no part in the crime. Critics say this law has disproportionately criminalised many young black men with those imprisoned through it being 11 times their presence in the community.

I used the term double standards in the headline for a reason. Our local Campaign Group, BOLD, have been following up the way our local authority have appeared to 'sweep under the carpet' the conviction of only 4 out of nearly 20 men who were present when a local workman suffered three broken ribs, a punctures lung and nearly had his hand severed in an axe attack. They were summoned by one of the gang by phone after the victim interceded in a dispute between the man and a lady driver.

The judge quite clearly termed it gangsterism and when local MP was asked to condemn the case as gangsterism he was happy to publicly acknowledge it as such also. Despite councillors, including the leader, the Local Authority officials being asked not just to condemn the gangsterism and how they can work with the police to reduce it in area no one is prepared to comment. A contrast here is that the police have been very open and forthright about how they are working on this issue.

That is one comparison with how Osime has been treated but let me turn to a more startling disparity, that of deportation. The effect of imprisonment itself on Osime has been considerable. He has suffered racial abuse and bullying. Without, his mother says, a mentor or support worker his health has deteriorated and he is self harming. He does not fully comprehend how he would cope in Jamaica, thinking he could catch a bus to visit mum from there!

I have over time felt that those now termed Immigration Enforcement Officers will use easy targets to boost their figures for deportations. Now I come to another very worrying comparison again from my town Rochdale.

Few people will not have knowledge of the grooming scandal involving vulnerable young girls in Rochdale. Three members of the grooming gang remain in the UK more than 18 months after they lost an appeal against losing their British citizenship. I concur with the Independent's sub headline: 'Home Office accused of prioritising offenders with Jamaican roots over sex abusers.'

Yes Osime has been involved in low level crime, but deportation would be extremely cruel for him with no family support in Jamaica and a condition which will make him even more vulnerable there. It is known that at least 11 have died as a result of unjust deportation from the Windrush scandal, it is likely that Osime could be another unnecessary death. I urge you to sign the Change.org petition for Osime Brown.

* Editor's note on Joint Enterprise:

'Why joint enterprise is unfair and needs changing' by Sandra Paul in The Law Society Gazette 23 December 2014

Exactly two years ago, I stood in tears outside Wood Green Crown Court, having just left my 16-year-old client, one of four teenage black males of previous good character, in the cells facing a three-year custodial sentence for GBH. Some 18 months earlier, he had been part of an altercation at Hendon tube station.

He was guilty of common assault, even ABH, and certainly affray. All of these were offered as guilty pleas to the prosecution. However, they were rejected on the basis that joint enterprise would convict a group of the more serious offence of GBH.

CCTV footage shows my client was as far as 20 feet away from the victim at the time he was stabbed. However, my client was convicted of section 18 GBH on the basis that it was ‘reasonably foreseeable’ that others might get involved when he punched the complainant and that ‘serious harm might’ result, irrespective of whether that was what he intended. My client was 14 at the time of the incident and I am convinced could not have forseen that his action could have led to the ultimate outcome which resulted.

Looking at the CPS guideline published since then, I am hopeful, but not convinced, that a review on the same facts would lead to a different result. Consideration of the judge’s directions for the jury outlined in the Crown Court Bench Book is equally problematic for young people.

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

The Wrong Colour Of Black? by Les May

IN November 2018, I wrote an article for Northern Voices with the title ‘The Silent Sisterhood’. It raised the question of why feminist politicians and journalists had so little to say about the plight of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who had fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, had spent eight years in jail, had finally been declared innocent by the Supreme Court, and was still being held in custody so that the court’s decision could be ‘reviewed’ as a sop to the mobs demanding that she be hanged.

As I pointed out at the time there has never been any shortage of white, affluent, western feminists ready to discover examples of ‘misogyny’. Just another case of selective outrage it would seem. Is it going to happen all over again with the Black Lives Matter supporters displaying their own unique brand of selective outrage?

On Tuesday a 22-year-old woman died of severe injuries in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after being gang raped. The same day another 19-year-old woman died two weeks after she was gang-raped and strangled by upper caste men. Both were Dalits and in India's caste-based hierarchy Dalits are ranked the lowest and have been referred to as ‘untouchables’ in the past. Last month, a 13 year old Dalit girl was raped and murdered in the same state. Last year, two Dalit children were allegedly beaten to death after defecating in the open.

As with religious minorities in Pakistan where Christians like Asia Bibi are persecuted and young Hindu women forcibly converted to Islam before being married to older men, India’s caste system is structural discrimination because although in both cases technically illegal, it is built into the fabric of those societies.

Concern is expressed about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter becoming echo chambers reinforcing the existing attitudes and prejudices of their users. We hear nothing about how the choice of issues by the mainstream media determines what is ‘news’ and what is not; what causes outrage and what does not. We all know and can remember the name of George Floyd because his murder has been extensively covered in the press and on television. Unlike the USA, India and Pakistan are not part of the affluent West where ‘people are just like us’ and those of us who happen to have been born with a white skin can be made to feel guilty about events which happened a long time ago and in which we played no part.

Will anyone be asked if they will ‘take a knee’ in memory of these two young Dalit women; will some ‘Royal’ chip in his four penn’orth? I doubt it; selective outrage is the order of the day!

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Curious History of 'Ethnic' Politics in Rochdale

Editorial comment:  
Below are the contents of a post on the personal Blog
of the very notorious Rochdale Councillor Faisal Rana.
He is notorious because he managed to get a police
caution for voting twice at the local elections in 2018.
 As the Labour member for Spotland and Falinge he
insisted he ‘didn’t realise’ that casting votes in two
wards in the same council borough was an offence. 

In a tweet on July 22 Cllr Rana says:  

'Too few Black Asian Minority Ethnic [BAME]
councillors leads to bad decisions.'  

Yet some would say Rochdale has tended to be 

over-represented by Muslim councillors, and it is worth 

examining if this has been in historic terms healthy for

democracy and the moral status of the town.  

I say this because since the early 1970s I have had a close 

personal and political relationship with the Kashmir community 
in this town, and even accompanied a party of supporters of 
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front supporters when in 1992 
they went to the House of Commons to appeal to get the support 
of Paddy  Ashdown, the then Lib Dem leader, in their conflict on

the Indian sub-continent between the Jammu and Kashmir 
Liberation Front (JKLF), and the India government.  
Worries have been voiced in Rochdale about the problems 
of the Indian sub-continent becoming too much of an issue 
in the town's politics.

Cllr Faisal Rana@FaisalRana48·Jul 22
Cllr Rana tweets: 'Too few BAME councillors leads to bad decisions.'

Cllr Rana continues as follows:
'BAME councillors are hugely under-represented on councils'

A REPORT just out that BAME councillors are hugely under-represented on councils across the UK was depressing, if not predictable.
'Sky News reported that only seven percent of all UK councillors are from a minority ethnic background, which is half the percentage BAME people make up of the country's overall population (14 per cent). The report, by Professor Maria Sobolewska and Dr Neema Begum from the University of Manchester, highlighted for the first time the scale of under-representation in councils.
'They said under-representation on councils - where decisions are made on where money is spent - "creates a potential for perpetuating and reinforcing racial inequality and disadvantage."
'To those like me working in local government, it does not come as a surprise. All too often, an ingrained if unspoken prejudice exists in many Labour Party branches that BAME candidates cannot win in predominantly white seats. The selection process and selection meetings are poorly run and often loaded against minority ethnic minority candidates. How many branches, even today, meet on licenced premises discouraging many mumslim [sic] members from taking part? Even when a BAME member is selected as a candidate, it is likely to be in a seat that the party has little or no chance in winning.'

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ROCHDALE'S HISTORY OF ETHNIC POLITICS

by Brian Bamford

RACIAL participation in the politics of Rochdale stems from the 1970s, when the then Rochdale MP Cyril Smith established a close relationship with the Muslim community.  This was later well documented in the book 'Cyril Smith: Smile for the Camera' by the now disgraced former Rochdale MP, Simon Danzcuk.*  For more than 20 years 1972 during the period Smith was in office as the local MP, the Asian community there continually supported the Liberals and the Liberal Democrats.  Only later after Liz Lynne, who succeeded Smith as the Rochdale MP, lost the seat to Labour in 1997 did the Muslims in the town begin to transfer their affections to the Labour Party.  After the now disgraced MP Simon Danzcuk, became the Rochdale MP in 2010 the links between the the local Asians and the party accelerated, and the Labour Councillor Faisal Rana has now been able to boast in a post on his Blog entitled:  'How Labour In Rochdale Is Becoming A More Inclusive Party.'
 

Councillor Rana writes:  'To those like me working in local government, it does not come as a surprise. All too often, an ingrained if unspoken prejudice exists in many Labour Party branches that BAME candidates cannot win in predominantly white seats. The selection process and selection meetings are poorly run and often loaded against minority ethnic minority candidates. How many branches, even today, meet on licenced premises discouraging many mumslim [sic] members from taking part? Even when a BAME member is selected as a candidate, it is likely to be in a seat that the party has little or no chance in winning.'

At present according to Carl Faulkner 'Rochdale Council has 12 ‘Asian’ councillors – that equates to 20% and is way over the Rochdale Asian population %.'

After he was elected Councillor Rana was cautioned for electoral fraud by the police for voting twice in the local elections.  Yet, he still retained his seat and has since been promoted.  When I spoke to another Rochdale Muslim councillor about the shame that Rana was bringing upon the Labour Party by his conduct I was told that he (Rana) has too much influence over the leader of the Rochdale Labour Party Alan Brett.

Despite what Cllr Rana and the community of scholars might say  'Ethnic identity politics' doesn't have a very noble tradition in Rochdale.

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

*  In his book about Cyril Smith, Smile for the Camera, co-written with a fellow Labour activist, Matthew Baker, Simon Danczuk details Smith's close relationship with the Muslim community in Rochdale, including the encouragement of electoral fraud amongst them, apparently. According to Danczuk, Cyril Smith "transformed politics in the Asian community and became a powerful voice," as they switched from Labour to Liberal en bloc, and Smith prevented people being deported as illegal immigrants and supported the building of the first mosque in the Lancashire town. Danczuk continues: "It was in this community that Cyril unquestionably had the biggest influence."

Black Lives Matter; Who To?

by Les May

AS I pointed out in my piece ‘Unpalatable Truths About The Slave Trade’ in June, today we still have millions of people who are enslaved, and that the slaves and those who exploit them, are often the same skin colour, ethnicity, race, call it what you will, as the slaves themselves.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2020/06/unpalatable-truths-about-slave-trade.html

The Al Jazeera news channel at Freeview 235 will carry the programme ‘A 21^st Century Evil’ at 11.30pm this evening (27 July).   It is presented by Rageh Omaar who goes inside Pakistan’s brick kiln industry to find the families of slaves working for nothing to repay bogus ‘debts’.

It is one of a number of programmes which ask the question;

Hundreds of years after it was legally abolished, why does slavery persist?

From impoverished and often illiterate Thai farmers to women forced into prostitution; from men tricked into servitude in Brazil's brutal charcoal industry to entire families trapped as bonded labourers in Pakistan's feudal brick kilns - Al Jazeera investigates the flourishing modern slave trade, asking why millions of people are are enslaved today.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/slaverya21stcenturyevil/slaverya21stcenturyevil.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/spiraling-debt-trapping-pakistan-brick-kiln-workers-190903135224452.html

https://www.endslaverynow.org/bonded-labour-liberation-front

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/19/asia/pakistan-humans-new-york-bonded-labor/index.html

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‘Two Votes Rana’ Plays The Race Card

by Les May

THE extract from Rochdale Cllr. Faisal Rana’s blog published recently in the article at the link below must surely be one of the most brazen attempts to ‘play the race card’ that we have seen in Rochdale.  In a few lines he effectively accuses the Labour Party of playing host to people who are prejudiced towards non-white candidates and organising selection meetings which are designed to discriminate against and so exclude non-white candidates.   With friends like that the Labour Party does not need enemies.  At this point I should say that I live in a ward which has re-elected a councillor from the group which Faisal Rana claims to champion and I am entirely happy with the situation.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2020/07/rochdale-cllr-faisal-ranas-ethnic.html

As for his claim that ‘The selection process and selection meetings are poorly run… ‘ we can assume he has some knowledge of this. In February 2019 Northern Voices published a piece drawing attention to the strange goings on at a selection meeting held in the ward he represents.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2019/02/rochdale-fair-dos-in-selection-process.html

Of course, just as with his Tweet 'Too few BAME councillors leads to bad decisions', he provides not a scrap of evidence to substantiate his claims and before repeating them he should do so.  His use of the acronym ‘BAME’ suggests that he is trying to ride on the coat tails of the protests against the murder of George Floyd and is trying to draw some sort of moral equivalence between that and his claims.

Not content with trying to make an issue out of ‘race’ he throws religion into the pot as well, implying that Labour also turns a blind eye to discrimination against Muslims.  Whether someone will make a formal complaint to the Labour Party about Faisal Rana’s insinuations is a matter for the future, but what we can say with certainty is that some people reading his comments will not take kindly to them.   If these are not a claims which brings the Labour party into disrepute, what is?

Of course his blog and his Tweet aren’t meant to influence the people he is attacking.  They are directed towards the people who some would view as his ‘natural constituency’.  There’s a not altogether subtle hint here that he is ambitious to become an MP and looking to be seen as the ‘BAME’ champion, and that if he fails to be selected for a safe seat it will be because of prejudice. It is not altogether clear to me were the community of interest lies between say, Asian Muslims and African Christians.

What Faisal Rana fails to grasp is that respect for other people’s culture and views is a two way street. His comments about meetings being held on licensed premises looks like a classic case of the tail trying to wag the dog.  The Labour movement has a long history and there may be good reasons why this is the case, and why a lot of people feel entirely comfortable with it.  Being in the presence of alcoholic drink does not mean that one has to indulge in it oneself. Couching his comment in terms of ‘discouraging Muslims’ just ends up looking like a demand for exceptionalism of the type we are familiar with hearing from a certain US president.

I judge people on the basis of their behaviour not their skin colour. If I feel uncomfortable that Councillor Rana is in a position to influence planning decisions and looks to be being groomed to handle the Finance Portfolio it is because he violated the basic principle of our democratic system, ‘one person, one vote’. If he fails to make further progress in the Labour party he should look to that as the cause not institutionalised discrimination. 

********************************* 

Blackballing the Busybodies

by Les May

I’M sure that the good people of Rossendale will sleep easier in their beds knowing that judgement has been given and they have permission to continue with having a ‘blacked up’ face amongst their local street dance troupe.  But as I have suggested elsewhere this part of the tradition may have nothing whatsoever to do with coal mining.  So does this change anything?

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1043332942481206469&postID=5262991119134861655&bpli=1

The answer would seem to be ‘No’.  Clearly the writer of this comment realises that context and intent have to be borne in mind. It’s the same ‘blacked up’ face whether it relates to coal mining in the area or to Pace Egg street plays.  Only the context has changed. As for intention, no-one has suggested that in either context the intention is to denigrate another group. My recollection of watching the Rochdale Pace Egg on seven occasions is that it presented the ‘Moorish’ Prince as a brave and noble character.

So it seems that what we are left with is that the complainers are just busybodies who think that their perception and interpretation is all that matters; that we must accept the meaning they give to actions and events. Anyone who has followed Donald Trump’s long term detachment from reality will be able to see the dangers in this.

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

Blacked Up Faces And Browned Up Eggs

by Les May

I think that the linking of a ‘blacked up’ face character amongst the Britannia Coconut dancers with the local mining industry is a neat bit of ‘post facto rationalisation’.  A more likely explanation can be found in the fact that the dance is performed at Easter.   In parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire Pace Egg plays were performed in the streets at Easter and still are in some areas.   The term was also applied to eggs hard boiled along with onion skins which make the shells brown.  This tradition with eggs certainly goes back to the medieval period which is recapitulated in the plays themselves

These involve a set of characters which may include St George, Hector, Bold Slasher, The ‘Moorish’ Prince, The Doctor, The Fool, and Tosspot who collects the money thrown at the end.  The OTT action of the play consists of ritualised combat between the first four characters from which, naturally, St George emerges the victor.  Unlike in real life the Doctor miraculously brings the dead combatants back to life, sometimes with a bit of magic involving a few drops of alkali and a colourless solution of Phenolphthalein.

Blackening the face, which may be just that, daubs of black, crudely applied, are used to identify the character of the ‘Moorish’ Prince. In these more affluent times he may be seen dressed like a present day Arab or someone who looks like an escapee from the Arabian Nights.

On Easter morning do you think the White Leghorn hens ever complain that their eggs had been ‘browned up’ and made to look as if they came from Rhode Island Red hens?

https://folklore-society.com/book/the-lancashire-pace-egg-play/

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

Black Lives Matter Movement: A New Inquisition?

 a Spaniard questions new craze
by  Carlos Figueroa [Madrid]

Diego Mateo López Zapata in his cell 
before his trial by the Inquisition Court of Cuenca

IT IS VERY interesting to hear in the post below about this dance in Lancashire, related to Moors in UK!!!  Of course [in Spain] we have many traditions related to this 7 centuries, Santiago Matamoros, the parties in the East Coast called Moros y Cristianos...  My opinion is that this fight is related to the Black Lives Matter Movement, anti-slavery demonstrations and this sort of thing.  I know they threw Colton statue in Bristol... I don't like these new forms of "Inquisicion".

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

Will Po-faced Politics Trump Local Custom?

Britannia Coconut Dancers

by Brian Bamford

BELOW is a news report this month by Stuart Pike , the 
Rossendale Free Press Deputy Editor, which claims
that the public up Bacup and beyond, are backing
the rights of the Britannia Coconut Dancers* to
continue to black-up to do their traditional clog dancing. 
Meanwhile Northern Voices has spoken to Gavin McNulty
for the Britannia coconutters and he says that the motion for
them to wash their faces has come from 'down South' 

*  The Britannia Coco-nut Dancers or Nutters are a troupe of Lancastrian clog dancers who perform every Easter in Bacup, dancing 7 miles (11 km) across the town.^[1] There are eight dancers and a whipper-in, who controls the proceedings.^[2]

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

In an e-mail Derek Pattison asks:

'After toppling statues, the woke / trendy left, have now got the Rossendale coconut dancers in their cross hairs. Should the Nutters remove their black face paint which they say has no racial connotations but is connected with the mining industry and is a Lancashire tradition.  Northern Voices writers, Brian Bamford and Chris Draper, have fond memories of the anarchist Julian Pilling who was a celebrated and legendary Lancashire Nutter.  What do they think?'

Chris Draper replies:

'Definitely not! The whole "Nutter" tradition is demonstrably laced with irreverent humour and irony - it is not an unwarranted celebration of dominance, celebrity, exploitation and savagery as exemplified by the memorialisation of Colston, Hawkins, Churchill, Gladstone et al.  It is an eccentric historical anachronism that reminds all true Northerners of those glory days when off-duty, unwashed miners laboured in the vast Rossendale Coconut Plantations.'

Row over use of face paint for Britannia Coconut Dancers routines

The [Irwell] Valley public are firmly behind the Britannia Coconut Dancers in a row over the use of face paint, the group has said.

The popular dance troupe say they are among folk dancing groups affected by a potential ban on the use of full-face skin tone makeup - in the light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Coconutters, which date back to the mid-19th century, say their full-face black makeup has no racial connotations and reflects the origins of the dance in the mining community.

Three Morris [Dancer] organisations issued a joint statement this week calling on the use of full-face black or skin tone makeup to be eliminated by member groups.

A motion will be put forward to the AGM in September moving that the Morris Federation should not renew membership for teams that do not comply.
Group secretary Gavin McNulty told LancsLive they are working with their Morris governing organisation, but said if they were unable to agree “a compromise” the Nutters would be forced to go “on our own”.
He said: “There’s been a lot of strong support for the team to carry on as it is. It’s infuriating that people think they don’t like something or don’t agree with it and they want to change it.
“It’s a tradition that’s been going and will be kept going. We move forward how we think is best. Teams like ourselves have been there for hundreds of years. Our tradition is going to remain.”


He said they would know more once they have been able to convene a meeting - probably next month.

The Coconutters website states: “The dances the team perform are ‘folk dances’ and the custom of blackened faces are thought to reflect a pagan tradition as a disguise from the evil spirits / and part of the mining connections.”

The Morris Dancer's Federation statement said:  “While no morris dancer wants to cause offence, we must recognise that full-face black or other skin tone makeup is a practice that has the potential to cause deep hurt.
“Morris is a living tradition and it is right that it has always adapted and evolved to reflect society.
"We want people from all races and backgrounds to share in this pride and not be made to feel unwelcome or uncomfortable by any element of a performance.”

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Why 'Black Lives Matter' Will Fail!

by Les May

THE proximate factor in the murder of George Floyd is that the USA has militarised police forces; the notion of ‘policing by consent’ is absent. Trump does not want any international legal oversight of the actions of the the US military with regard to possible ‘war crimes’; should we be surprised that strong legal oversight of US police officers is resisted?

As of 30 June 2020 a total of 506 civilians were shot in the US, 105 of whom were black. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004.  For comparison the rate of shootings per million of the population was: black 31, hispanic, 23, white 13, other 4.  These figures speak for themselves.   By comparison the average number of fatal police shootings per year in England and Wales in the 15 year period 2004/5 to 2018/9 was less than 3 in a population of about 60,000,000, that is about 0.05 per million.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/319246/police-fatal-shootings-england-wales/

Faced with a fatality rate from police shooting which is 200 to 600 times higher than in the UK one might have thought that saving lives, black, brown and white, by demilitarising US police forces, would be central to any widespread response to the murder of George Floyd. Seemingly it isn’t.

Instead of attempting to attain measurable objectives like improving police training and making officers accountable every time they use a firearm, the emphasis is on ‘racism’, something for which there is no objective measure and having all the explanatory power of asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’ It’s a popular badge to display because it allows the wearer to get a warm glow of satisfaction from ‘calling out’ racists. If by chance the murder of George Floyd causes anyone to remember their humanity and dare to say they think all lives matter, you can call that racist too!

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/07/13/why-saying-all-lives-matter-opposite-black-lives-matter/87025190/

And if you have any time left over from combating racism you can always spend it ‘dismantling cisgender privilege and uplifting Black trans folk’ or ‘disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure’ or you could ‘dismantle patriarchal practice’ or even ‘foster a queer‐affirming network’. You will find the quotes by scrolling down the page at:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

But if all this is too much for you then why not buy the tee-shirt for a mere $25* and get back to denouncing someone on Twitter?

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Things are not much better in the UK. Check out the website at https://www.blacklivesmatter.uk/ and you will find the disclaimer, ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’

In the UK the response to the murder of George Floyd has been to facilitate the rise of groups of ‘activists’ who think that symbolic gestures like tearing down statues actually achieves something which will improve the lives of real people, and the energising of self promoting academics.

The media are for now superficially supportive, but this is all too reminiscent of the #MeToo movement. Dr David Starkey has unwittingly managed to contribute a couple of ways of keeping BLM in the news, but eventually the media will move on to another story.  Unfortunately it won’t be the one about inequality in the UK and the US. Getting a few black faces in the boardroom won’t solve that.

*$25 would pay for one sixth of an operation to correct cleft palate, or all of an operation to correct ingrowing eyelashes plus 40 doses of antibiotic to treat an eye infection of children and adults in Africa.

https://smiletrain.org.uk/sightsavers uksmile train

https://www.sightsavers.org/

AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTE:

In the article I mentioned a disclaimer which read ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’

If you check out the website https://uk.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund which appears to be the group referred to in the disclaimer, you will find passages like ‘a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people’ and ‘we lift up the experiences of the most marginalised in our communities, including but not limited to working class queer, trans, undocumented, disabled, Muslim, sex workers, women/non-binary, HIV+ people.’

You’ll also find the group have been given £1.2 million by 35,000 donors. At the risk of being tedious I will mention that this sum would change the lives of almost 7500 black children in Africa who were born with a cleft palate and face a lifetime of ridicule and social isolation, or pay for nearly 75,000 ingrowing eye lash operations or nearly seven and a half million doses of a drug to cure trachoma and prevent this many black people going blind.

Clearly all those donors have different priorities to mine.

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