Book by Dave Douglass on end of Coal Mining?

'Coal, Climate Change & The Total Destruction of the British Coal Mining Industry'

David John Douglass

Proud to announce the book will be out next week, easiest to order it from me, e-mail: douglassdavid705@gmail.com, £15 post paid, send me your address, or Friend me on Facebook we can communicate on messenger or whatever. Its important before we all get swept away in a flood of terror and misinformation that the argument for clean coal, and a calm assessment of climate change is heard. Boris’s ‘green deal’ will bankrupt the country and dive down the living standards of the working class on an unprecedented scale. Time to read an alternative view.

Took delivery today of my book Coal, Climate Change and the Total Destruction of the British Mining Industry, so I thought Id inform my friends in case they want to order a signed (or unsigned) copy. £15 post paid, either a cheque made out to Mining Communities Advice Service, co 193 Osborne Ave South Shields NE333BY Tyne and Wear, or bank transfer, will send you those details if you order, ta

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Fifth Annual Commemoration of events in Jarrow

Including the Fifth Annual Commemoration of events in Jarrow in the 1830s.

SATURDAY, 3rd, JULY, 2021

Assemble at 11am, by Pedestrian Tunnel

SPEAKERS:

MR.ARTHUR SCARGILL Leader Socialist Labour Party, former National President NUM

KATE OSBORNE MP: Member for Jarrow

MR. DAVID JOHN DOUGLASS: Follonsby Miners Lodge Association & former NUM official

Mr. V. WYNNE, NEU,

TRACEY DIXON, Leader of South Tyneside Council and others

Presided over by: Mr. ALAN MARDGHUM, General Secretary Durham Miners Association

Speeches of welcome by The Mayor and Deputy Mayoress of South Tyneside Gladys Hobson and Marie Hobson

Felling Silver Band & Follonsby Wardley Miners Lodge Banner

Followed by Refreshments and Music at the Albion Gin & Ale House

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FOLKS OF JARROW REBEL TOWN FESTIVAL Follonsby Miners Lodge Banner Heritage and Community Association Secretary: David John Douglass djdouglass@hotmail.co.uk 193 Osborne Ave, South Shields, NE 33 3BY Tyne and Wear,07596 503 360 Treasurer: Dr Lewis Mates

West Cumberland Mining by David J. Douglass

Will This Be The Last Great Fight Of The BRITISH MINERS?

IT SEEMS utterly ridiculous that the plan to open ONE very small coal mine in Whitehaven which will provide essential steel coal for the steel industry, and supply the work starved area with a total of 2500 jobs should have become such a global battleground. Given the ongoing destruction of the rain forests and jungles, the never-ending consumption of trees one would have thought the ecological warriors would have other things to focus on. Yet here we have the Labour Party as a National Institution ensuring that their Shadow cabinet, and Shadow spokespeople on all subjects took every opportunity to use the TV platforms they had been called to discuss China, or the Far East, the NHS or whatever, to dive straight in an stamp and scream about this coal mine.

Labour has made stopping this mine front and centre of its politics, it tells you that its former alleged commitment to the miners and our communities was skin deep at best and sheer hypocrisy in all probability. Now John Kerry, the architect of the global green capitalist revolution and US ambassador for the Environment and Global Warming has an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister and what is top his agenda? US coal mining, strip mining, world drought, starvation, destruction of forests and natural environments???

NO, our wee coal mine. Remember that at present the coal for British steel, comes from coal shipped from the USA, is he telling us this will now stop? Will US coal be prevented from coming here or being shipped to China or anywhere? No its our mine he wants to stop not theirs. Is American steel now going to stop production, and stop using steel coal? No of course not. So now Boris tells Jenrick to overturn his previous decision to leave the question to the Cumberland County Council who have approved it four times. The Government will now set up 'an enquiry' of course Jenrick has already studied in detail the massive reams of evidence considered at Council public enquiries which had dozens of expert witnesses. He already defacto agreed the case for the mine by not pulling the plug before.

So, its hard to know just what 'new evidence' other than Kerry and the Green hysterics, and Labour and Lib Dem's and the Climate Committee all talking out of their backsides; can look at. If he is genuinely looking at this, I hope I get the chance to speak. The 2500 people of Whitehaven who seen the chance for a new tomorrow and desperately needed jobs and new lives will have their lives left dangling over the crevasse of enduring social deprivation and poverty in one of the most socially neglected areas of Britain meantime, while the well-heeled middle class green liberals are doubtless dancing a jig.

If the mine is stopped, will steel imports and production be stopped, will all steel manufacture be stopped? No, it will not, so will any 'emissions' from coke and steel manufacture be saved? Not at all, not one once of c02 or methane will be 'saved' in fact it will increase because of the extra emissions caused by shipping the steel or coal across the Atlantic or from the Baltic or Australia. This is an exercise in self-serving virtue signalling hypocrisy with more than a touch of class hatred.

This may turn out to be the last great fight of the British miners, we ought never to forget whose side our self declared friends fought on.

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Bullying & Arm-Twisting Halts Cumberland County Council Approval of a New Mine

by David John Douglass

I AM so disappointed that the Woodhouse Mine which had passed every test and been approved by the County Council has been suddenly pulled to a halt. This Labour Council had considered the question three times over three years, with a bevy of expert witnesses and public intervention and open debates and approved it three times by substantial majorities.

Every aspect of the application had been examined in forensic detail and no fault could be found in it. Climate extremists had kept up a nonstop campaign to stop the mine. Despite a mass public consultation which overwhelmingly backed the mine, the ‘greens’ would not accept any democratic decision of the council or the locals. First, they sought a Judicial Review, and this was withdrawn by the courts as having no grounds. Then it went to the High Court on the absurd claim that the Council hadn’t considered their arguments, the court struck it down. Then they kicked and screamed and set up a national petition to get people, mainly from the middle class and from the south of England who had never seen a mine or even knew where Whitehaven was to demand a stop to the jobs. They expected Jenrick the Communities Secretary, being a Tory with no love of coal miners or coal mines to block it. They lobbied the Prime Minister to override the Council. They failed, after every obstacle had been overcome and all that was needed now was for the Council to engage in the formality of approving the application (again).

Today Council leaders came to the shocking decision that the judgement will be referred back to their Committee 'after advice from Climate Advisers' obviously with a view to reconsidering the previous overwhelming approvals of the full Council.

So what happened? There has as said been a three-year campaign of bullying, and lobbying against all of the Councillors, XR and Greenpeace moved their full time agents into the area and full time Press Officers have ensure that their friends in the TV and Radio and National Press kept up a nonstop and one sided barrage against the mine and against the Councillors. Doorstepping them, ambushing them on the street, filming outside their houses and through windows of Council meetings.

But there is not the slightest doubt in my mind where this rapid application of brakes comes from and that is the Labour Party PLP and Shadow cabinet.

Firstly, we had Catherine West MP Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Shadow Minister. Brought onto the TV news channels to discus the election of Biden and British American relations she instead launches into an attack on the new mine! Nothing to do with her brief, nothing to do with the programme but Starmer had obviously given the steer to oppose the mine and win votes from the nice liberal greens in the London elections. West was of course the PA to David Lammy who was next in line to carry the torch on Any Questions. Admitting he knew nothing about the mine and nothing about steel making he argued that it should be cancelled because ‘we don’t need coal in this day and age’ and thus proving the point he in fact didn’t know anything about steel making or the need for this mine. But the Prime Directive undoubtedly came from Ed Miliband the Shadow Energy Minister on the Marr programme on Sunday. Once again, this topic had not been on the agenda or Marr’s script but Miliband was determined to let the country in general and Cumberland Council in particular know that Labour wants Dole Not Coal. Obviously, some senior Labour Party Council leaders have been got at and warned to pull the approval. To be a fly on the wall of the calls that must have come thick and fast from London labour Party HQ would have been a great illustration of political duplicity.

Its literally physically and politically sickening. We have yet to discover the date of the Committee Meeting and whether it will be public or we will get to find out who the mysterious ‘Climate Advisers’ are and what they have said that hadn’t already been said in the last three years.

The Committee isn’t bound to withdraw consent, and the full council isn’t bound to agree with them if they did, but it all adds an impossible mental and political strain on decent Councillors men and women who had been trying to the best for their community.

I will be writing to the Council with a view to urging them to hold their nerve and stand their ground and approve the mine. I hope you will join me and do so yourselves.

So next time we think back in anger when they try to unveil the statue of Thatcher and we turn up to protest at the slaughter of our mines and robbing the miners and our families of secure futures. We should also remember that Starmer and Labour have just banged a stake through our hearts to ensure we don’t come back to haunt them. With a Labour Parliamentary Party like this who needs bloody Tories?

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J.K. ROWLING & tyranny of historical processes

ON the 10th, June 2020, J.K. Rowling Wrote about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues:

'But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces.'

She added: 'The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people. All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.'

Evolution of Fashionable Addiction in the Cultural Realm

When I read the above address from a children's author of which I must admit to having only read the occasional oddments in newspapers, and I haven't even seen any of the associated films related to her work; I was drawn back to George Orwell's essay 'Inside the Whale' written in 1940. Orwell was then aware and worried about the poor state of English literature and he wrote of the period: 'Symptomatically, that is more significant than the mere fact that five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.'

Back in 1940, Orwell was clearly as pessimistic, as J.K. Rowling seems to be today, and he felt the writer was living in 'an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction'. He believed that: 'As for the writer, he [sic] is sitting on a melting iceberg: he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from a bourgeois age...'

A few years earlier in 1936 Orwell clarified the problem while reviewing 'The Novel Today' by the Marxist critic Philip Henderson, when he wrote that the official 'art for art's sake' school was finished and it was then being replaced by two gangs of extremists: 'Both the Catholic and Communist usually believe, though unfortunately they do not often say, that abstract aesthetic standards are bunkum and that a book is only a "good" book it it preaches the right sermon. To the Communist, good literature means "proletarian" literature. (Mr Henderson is careful to explain, however that this doesn't mean literature written by proletarians; which is just as well, because there isn't any.)'

Sermons and the Winter of Anarchistic Free Thinking

In that bleak world of 1940 with the bombs falling, the year in which I was born, Orwell pinned his hopes on Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' and a novel 'With No sermons, merely subjective truth'

Orwell during the war regarded Henry Miller then as the best bet in the circumstances: 'a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceper of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.' Not very edifying but once read never forgotten; J.K. Rowling is clearly a much more fragrant specimen and one more easy to get behind in the battle against the current cancel culture fanatics. For freedom of expression is under attack now just as much as it was in the 1930s when the Marxists held the sway; today it is now the obsessive identity politicians cracking the whip, and as a consequence writing and literature is suffering under the current historical process.

Nowadays though, it's not just the general message which is under threat from the 'cancel culture' clans, but anyone can pulled-up for some throwaway remark: a recent example is J.K.Rowling for mentioning 'Never trust a man in a dress' in her book 'Troubled Blood[' a 900-page novel that is said to be Dickensian in its scope.

Nick Cohen in The Spectator [15/09/20] reviewed Ms. Rowling's sin thus: 'Troubled Blood is a 900-page novel that is Dickensian in its scope and gallery of characters. Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott are hired by a middle-aged woman to investigate the disappearance of her mother in the 1970s. Detectives at the time thought Creed had killed her, but no one knew the truth and the woman’s body had never been found. Strike and Ellacott investigate Creed, but then they investigate a good dozen others. You have to search hard to find a justification for the belief that the book’s moral 'seems' to be "never trust a man in a dress". But then relentless searches for the tiniest evidence of guilt are the marks of heresy hunters.'

The trouble is that this kind of censorship is that it is not just the preserve of the usual suspects among the political authoritarians on the left and the right. Curiously, the socalled libertarians at the 'anarchist' Freedom Press have been vigously rooting out dissidents who have supported people like Helen Steel and J.K.Rowling. Dave Douglass, an anarcho-syndicalist, and in August 2019 a member of the Friends of Freedom Press, was told by the secretary of the group Steve Sorba that he had 'had embarrassed his fellow Director colleagues by favouring a booklet which questions some of the stranger aspects of gender politics'. Dave was then encouraged to spare his colleagues blushes as directors of Freedom Press and to step down.

The Freedom Press directors have had a troubled history since it was found that Secretary Sorba had been been running the show without reference to his fellow directors, and even placing the names directors on the Company's House register without their knowledge. Since that was discovered and exposed on the NV Blog, Secretary Sorba is believed to have cleaned-up his act.

The Seed within el Culo de un Burro

There was a time more than two decades ago when the anarchist newspaper Freedom had a good reputation for being courageous, controversal and a kind of political Daniel in the lion's den, but that seems no longer to be the case. Its current publishers seem shy and quite willing to censor folk, and to court any fashionable fad no matter how despicable.

When a few years ago two distinguished academics and historians, David Goodway and Peter Marshall, gained entry as directors of Friends of Freedom Press it was thought that things may improve. Alas, it has not really happened. Not only was Dave Douglass effectively shown the door by Secretary Soba, but the rest of the directors have not covered themselves with glory and their committee seems to continually side with censorship and the prescriptions of the cancel culture.

In 2005, David Goodway wrote 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow - left libertarian thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward' which tried to show that anarchistic forms and projects can be discovered within the structures of everyday life if we seek them and that these 'seeds beneath the snow' should be thrown into relief and promoted by anarchists. It is a seductive theory and can easily be shown to have some credibility substance by focusing upon the ordinary and everyday activities of 'people's methods' which Orwell himself had long ago advocated as a form of common place sociology. In 1967, Harold Garfinkel had even introduced what he came to 'ethnomethodology' [people's methods], which became a form of response to the then conventional sociology of Talcott Parsons with social action theory and structural functionalism.

Colin Ward had long ago criticised British anarchists for being too obsessed with history when he thought they would do better by focussing on a more sociological approach. The work of Colin Ward is very popular in Italy, and the original author of the novel 'The Seed Beneath the Snow'* Ignazio Silone is Italian. But Goodway and Peter Marshall are themselves both English historians, and both are historians presenting artful historical naratives. Now Silone was one of those writers who Orwell in 1944 said belonged to the school of foreign writers who are 'what one might call concentration-camp literature' in that they had seen and understood totalitarianism from the inside. In his book Silone has the seed hidden from the police by the peasants, not beneath the snow, but up the culo of a donkey. It is perhaps a more approprate place since neither of the two historians on the Friends of Freedom Press directorate have covered themselves with glory.

* The Seed Beneath the Snow, the final novel in The Abruzzo Trilogy, follows the fugitive Pietro Spina as he refuses to accept the conditions of pardon for his transgressions against the fascist state and flees to the mountains. As in Fontamara and Bread and Wine, Silone achieves a rich harmony of allegory and realism in his portrayal of the cafoni of Abruzzo and their struggle for freedom. An extraordinary, unburnished vision of the conflict between good and evil, communicating to its reader, in the words of F. W. Dupee, “Silone’s deep integrity, his sufferings and aspirations, his radical sense of the world’s wrongs.” ****************************************************************

'Undercover War': David John Douglass' review

Undercover War Harry McCallion

Britain’s Special Forces And Their Secret War Against the IRA

9781 78946 285 2 John Blake Publishing

£8-99

HARRY McCallion is in a position to know, seven tours of the occupied counties with the Parachute Regiment and the Intelligence Company together with six years with the SAS he also served with the RUC.

The British Army’s war against the PIRA between 1970 and 1998 and its associated war against the republican community is one of its most bitter and controversial in the history of the British Empire. The fact that this is acknowledged within the first two pages of the book “murderous ill-discipline” and “The British Army’s reputation was damaged for decades” was a refreshing piece of honesty at least. The author lays the blame of the early disasters on Brigadier Frank Kitson, a person well known to many of us on the left at this period an open advocate if push comes to shove of a ‘A very British Coup’.

McCallion describes Kitson’s ‘Military Reaction Force’ as basically a self-acting terrorist organisation under no outside control and revolving almost entirely round Kitson and his anti-guerrilla warfare techniques perfected in Kenya fighting the Mau Mau. We are told SAS, SBU, and other covert sections of the army where banned from operating in Ulster initially, but all these regiments assigned men to MRF. They operated in civilian clothes, they attempted to don the hair styles and clothes,beards and dress common to young males of the period and to all intent and purpose where indeed a state terrorist organisation with no formal connection to the armed forces, this was especially so when they went to murder people. There were no ‘rules of engagement’.

The British state took no responsibility for them and troops assigned to them were instructed of the ‘Deniable missions'. There was something of MO and Organisational rational of the Black and Tans in much of this. Their murders of which there were many, and McCallion exposes this early on with many of the names and circumstances of the murders, were either not reported at all, it being left for the RUC and public at large to conclude these were sectarian murders or para-military executions. Or else where they called it in, they were explained as ‘returning fire’ or ‘caught in an ambush’ the crimes were investigated by the Military Police and the ‘Murder Squad’ version recorded as fact without further enquiry. Their so called ‘intelligence’ was woeful, having been brutalised and tortured out of basically anyone from the community and chosen it seems because of their Non-involvement with the armed struggle, on the twisted logic such innocents would have no loyalty the republican military and point the figure. In fact, the attitude of this unit was that everyone in the community was guilty or potentially guilty, so innocence or ‘guilt’ was not a prime concern.

A consequence of the murder of unarmed catholic civilians in drive-by shootings was that the RUC and more generally the British Army blamed the Loyalist militias which often resulted in counter attacks or worse sectarian attacks on unarmed loyalist civilians. One would be naive indeed to see this as an unintended bonus rather than part of the overall reign of state authorised terror. MRF Sergeant ‘Taff’ Williams machine gunned three Catholic men standing by a car in the same spot where innocent car passenger Jean Smyth had been murdered in an attack on their car just previously. Williams used a Thompson machine, a weapon favoured by the Provisionals. Another man in his own house was injured in the fire that killed the Catholic men. By sheer flook the MSR car was intercepted by a RUC patrol and Williams arrested. He was prosecuted for attempted murder. His cover story that the men had been armed was disproved by forensic evidence and eyewitnesses. He was acquitted and stayed with the unit. Indeed, fellow unit members swore to the author they knew he had killed at least 15 civilians to their knowledge. Concern at the cavalier murder and indiscipline were highly counterproductive and solidarizing the community further to the republican movement set alarms bells ringing among more conventional of the states armed forces. By the time they moved to disband them, had killed at least 40 identifiable innocent civilians, comrades in the republican communities say this is a gross underestimate and put numbers over 100. The author says, “the total number of people killed by MRF will never be known.”

The mantle of conducting Britain’s undercover surveillance and counter insurgency would pass to the SAS. But the problem for the Government would be one of recognising the war in Ireland as just that, when they had throughout claimed the violence was just down to criminal gangs and not a political liberation struggle. B company SAS was consequently ‘disbanded’ or ‘debadged’ half the unit was engaged in recruiting and training a force to replace the MRF, the other half were formally disengaged from SAS but were posted as an operational surveillance team operating armed in plain clothes. ‘Debadged under ongoing deniability‘ and the legitimacy they thought they owned, they were operating officially as the SAS. Far from being a clean replacement for the murderous MRF the new force aspired to be a more efficient version of the old one taking over their old barracks in Hollywood. It is interesting that the Author mentions the briefings given to this new team on republican and loyalist militias were built on MI5 infiltration, sleepers and informers within the respective ranks.

After a period of strenuous operations to break the command chain of the Belfast brigade by regular identification and arrest of Brigade Commanders the debadged unit was disbanded, it was replaced by the other half of what had been ‘B’ Company, now under the new title status 14 Intelligence Company nick-named The Det (officially titled the Special Reconnaissance Unit). From its inception this Unit had the operational strength of a normal Infantry Company. That’s a lot of plain clothes civilian looking assassins, in normal cars with lethal weaponry coming and going without apparent constraint and control. The Author was a leading member of this Unit. Operators were allowed to grow long hair and moustaches fashionable among young men of their age in civilian life. A nice touch was the inclusion of shopping bags, cots or child seats to their civilian cars. Operators were taught to imitate and Ulster accent for at least one sentence replies to questions. CQB (close quarter battle) techniques, close range use of the Browning 9mm pistol “the workhorse of the Det”, “most operators could draw and hit a target in less than a second”. The weapons we are told were frequently ‘customised’ an extended 20 round magazine for example a feature one wouldn’t have normally associated with ‘targeted’ still less ‘low key surveillance operations’. All operators would carry a ‘car weapon’ a machine gun or American MAC-10 . This latter is highly inaccurate rapid firing weapon but sprays large numbers of lethal bullets in the shortest possible time, never mind the accuracy feel the death count. This weapon didn’t fall out of popular usage with Det or the SBS until the 1980s when it was replaced by the Heckler and Kosh MP5. The Author makes no apology that the purpose of the Det was to wage war on the insurgency, although by 1976 the ‘non-political’ game was up, and the SAS was officially sent into Ulster where of course in one hat or another it had been throughout.

McCallan while trying to persuade us his unit were now the good guys admits to the murder of two protestant civilian’s with no political or military affiliations, who they had assumed were members of the PIRA. The two men who had been shooting pigeons, had had the air let out of their tyres while they were at their sport. The passing 14 Unit was laughing loudly as they drove by and the men assumed these were people who had done it and set off in hot pursuit. Only to be shot dead as they confronted the unit. McCallan, with more honesty than most, in his cover for other deaths associated with the Unit, as mistakes, or ‘not us’. Indeed as his story unfolds the number of innocent people they accidently or mistakenly kill is quite breath-taking, we had always previously been accused of making this stuff up, or else it was blamed on republican or loyalist fighters, here we have the horse’s mouth. Additionally, the explanation repeated more than once that captured republicans ‘had attempted to grab weapons and were shot dead’ must be taken with a large pinch of salt, I think. 'The Murder on the Rock’ (Gibraltar) in which three unarmed members of the IRA were shot dead in public because they went for their non-existent guns, or in the case of the women attempted to detonate a car bomb in a car found to have had no explosives in it, are repeated in the teeth of witnesses evidence and agreement from the author that in fact they were unarmed without any bomb. Republicans of course will not be surprised by the events they lived through in their communities, but the British public might well be, suppose this book gets wide distribution as it surely should. In among his whole review of the struggles and chronicles of who shot who and how it happened Bloody Sunday is notable by the absence of any description or analysis. Although “bloody Sunday” is mentioned as just one of the ‘events’ of the war, there is a deafening silence as to justification or explanation for what is acknowledged now by the British state to be cold blooded murder.

One of the most pressing absent analysis on the republican left, is the degree of penetration by states forces into commanding areas of the IRA and through them the political direction of the movement. Some of this has broken the surface following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, with senior Provisionals breaking deep cover. This book would be unlikely to provide us chapter and verse or any comprehensive revelation even suppose he knew, and he doubtless knows much more than he says as do current Key players in the Provisional movement in my view. The early highly accurate targeting of Commanders of the Belfast Brigade revealed in this book, was not as suggested due to their intelligence work when so much else of it was so wrong. Someone on ‘our side’ was simply tipping them off even to quite sophisticated undercover identities and safe remote house operations. The author tells us that “increasing penetration of their organisation by both MI5 and RUC Special Branch” the Provo’s formed an internal security organisation aimed at discovering and eliminating informers and sleepers. The author happily tells us that the senior officer of the PIRA charged with setting up and operating the Unit was in fact an RUC Special Branch double agent.

It is literally breath-taking how so many respected and trusted ‘leaders’ of the republican movement, in full knowledge of the sacrifice and loss were all the while pissing up our backs. It is hard to credit that even tiny breakaway teams like the Irish Peoples Liberation Organisation (a split from INLA but with some left dissident PIRA members) in one of its few anti state operations had also been penetrated and the RUC knew about the attack before it happened.

It is illustrative the book claims that the major strategy of the undercover units was recruiting informers and having deep plants inside the PIRA together with misdirecting the movements own internal security unit to killing men totally innocent of collaboration. McCallan claims one of the main drives to abandon the armed struggle was the degree of penetration with three out of every four operations known to the army in advance. The heavy penetration of Belfast Brigade meant three of every four actions were notified to the security forces, the Special Branch claiming one in every twenty members of the Brigade was an informer or enemy plant. Their penetration could not have happened without the gross treachery we had long suspected and this book confirms it. It must also be said that the book reluctantly admits they were far from having things all their own way and many daring and skilful engagements by the Provo’s are recounted in which the occupation forces paid the ultimate price. The author conceding that for every operation that ended in capture or the death of a terrorist, there were hundreds that did not.

One of the not well-known facts from SAS operations is that they used American fragmentation grenades without official authorisation, the author confesses that they were deployed with attack units and their use threatened though they were not in fact deployed. We are not told how they were able to have large numbers of unauthorised American weapons present on raids and how they got them.

One very telling line used by McCallion given the subsequent unprovoked mass civilian murders on Bloody Sunday. In a lull in operations on all sides, he tells us, the SAS troop decided to make themselves a target “and invite the PIRA to come out and play”. I have always thought the Parachute Regiment was doing just that when it went into Derry into what the Para’s considered was the Provo’s backyard and certainly the community in which their families lived. It was a come-on meant to draw out an enraged PIRA into a full blown no holds barred shoot out. Republican units had under agreement with the marchers withdrawn from the area, to prevent just such an excuse for murder. As we know no one was there to be drawn out, and the people who were shot down were all unarmed civilians, but that throwaway line has a wider ring of truth to it.

The heavy penetration of the leadership of the PIRA caused the ASU (operational units) to become almost self-acting & self-contained, with only a loose overall control of operations. This was aimed at stopping plants and informers, but the downside was very dubious not to say murderous targets without any clear strategy aimed at the whole purpose of the armed struggle. For the Provisionals, the ostensible overall control tactics and direction were the eight-member Army Council. The overall political and military leadership by the mid 70’s had moved to Adams and McGuiness who had by that time lost any belief in a military victory for the republican movement, though this wasn’t their public face. It had serious implications for the military campaign and the poor sods at the front end of it. Politically it meant moving the movement back to the positions which it marched out of in their formation. It meant steering the whole movement away from military insurgency and toward at first radical politics and then ultimately constitutional politics. Opposition within the military and the political movement by key individuals was put down with the up-front threat of assassination in the case of Ivor Bell. Other less isolated military and political leaders moved into open opposition to the Leadership and its new strategy. Not only that they devised new military tactics which were proved to be the most successful during the whole campaign. From then on in, a well-placed double agent within the IRA and possibly at least one of the eight on the Army Council started to work for the defeat of the revised military campaign. The SAS spent the five years between 85-90 directing its operations against this new military initiative and leadership. From this point on the most meticulous of operations skilfully planned and prepared for, became excuses for mass executions as ‘senior sources with the PIRA’ gave away the full operational details directly to the MI5 to set up ambushes. The Provisionals ‘dissidents’ were being purged with direct help from the SAS. The authenticity of this evidence, quoting who was being set up and what was known of the plans which were supposed to be highly secret, can hardly be in question.

McCallion had earlier in his book expressed Adams and McGuinesses intention to wage war on anyone within or without the organisation in order to be the only game in town and one whose aims would be directed by them. But speaking either for himself or the SAS and their handlers this was seen as mutually beneficial. “Ultimately the crushing of internal dissent and the forging of a largely unified republican policy was to be one of the most decisive factors in bringing the Troubles to an end” (143). The leading opposition faction within the IRA was focused round East Tyrone Brigade, it had become the main focus of the states war in a conscious effort to intervene into the internal political division (not for the first time in republican history) “In the coming decade, the SAS acting on high level source intelligence from the very top pf the PIRA, would further degrade the capabilities of the East Tyrone Brigade. By the time a political compromise was reached between the Republican Movement and the British Government, the Tyrone Brigade would be in no position to challenge its own leadership’s new commitment to peace.” (219) South Armagh and Tyrone Brigades were also the only main units of PIRA which the states forces were totally unable to penetrate or compromise from within. The author claims it wasn’t until the 1994 ceasefire when these units on instruction lower their guard which allows the conditions for penetration of these Brigades as well.

The suggestion from the author is that Gerry Adams himself was the MI5 informer and the Mail ran with a double page inside story focusing solely on the accusation while ignoring the army’s history of murder also revealed in it. For us of course the two are inseparably connected.

This is a valuable book, it is as said ‘from the horse mouth’ it gives credence to the long held suspicions that the Provisional leadership both political and military were both penetrated from without, and from internal political degeneration and treachery. For ordinary members of the British public who have believed at face value the story of brave and principled British soldiers fighting a ruthless enemy by Queensbury Rules this book should be a revelation. For that reason, I doubt it will be given wide publicity and distribution, I can’t for example see any ‘Panorama TV documentary based upon it. The book is of course written by a faithful member of many of the assassination squads he writes about and has doubtless kept to his chest far for than he has revealed. That he has had permission to publish this book, begs a number of questions. But I totally recommend it , the implications of which are shocking and far reaching.

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

Dave Douglass: Why I'm No Longer a 'Wobbly'! *

 Farewell British Isles Industrial Workers of the World
by Dave Douglass

Follonsby Miners Lodge Banner

FOR almost fifty years I have been a member of the IWW since it reformed in Britain in the late 70’s.  At that time it did what it said on the tin, it was a revolutionary union based on the principles on which it was founded in 1905 in Chicago, the principle of One Industry One Union, with all workers in one industry in the same union regardless of craft or skill or grade. United through their industries to One Big Union of all workers.  It sought not just a fair days wage but abolition of wage slavery, it fought for the next slice of bread and demanded the bakery.  Unions like the NUM and NUR at that time were based upon the principle after the early Industrial Unionists and Syndicalists in 1908/ 1909 and programmes like The Miners Next Step, and Industrial Union Britain had a profound influence on the trade union and labour movement.  We (The IWW through the 70’s 80’s and 90’s) continued to work within the mass unions as cells and duel members, we of course worked within communities on community issues too.  During the decades I was associated with the IWW I worked a lifetime in the mines and during that time South Yorkshire and North East IWW branches.  We organised large conferences and rallies within the heart of working-class communities and in mass mobilisations of the class and militant sections of it.  North Eastern IWW hosted a conference on Clean Coal technology and Climate change and commissioned a pamphlet in support of the coal communities and industry in defence of the miners union on the basis of clean coal technology.

The IWW internationally had had a significant impact on the pre-WW1 war and post WW1 war period, particularly within the Irish Socialist Republican Movement and coalfields Miners Federation of GB.

George Harvey first national organiser of the IWW in Britain, creator of the Follonsby (Red)Banner. Lodge Secretary Follonsby Wardley Lodge.

It is the inspiration of the miners ‘red banners’ and northern IWW members were influential in recreating the red miners Follonsby banner and forming the Follonsby Miners Lodge Association.  It carries the portrait of Harvey first British organiser of the IWW Connolly first national organiser of the IWW and founder member, Arthur Cook syndicalist president of the Miners Federation during the 26 lock out and General Strike, and V I Lenin whose slogan All Power to the Soviets sounded like the same aims of the IWW and the international Industrial Unions.

It has toured the country and been used as a central plank for lectures on our revolutionary history and culture, as well as publications on the banner and founder members of Industrial Unionism in Britain.  We had been regular guests at the James Connell commemoration in Kills County Meath, a Wobbly and author of The Red Flag, our banners and his influence inspired a radical red RMT union banner.  In major commemorations of 1912, 1926, and annually the Durham Miners Gala where we always had a marquee and bookstall and organised major rallies and discussions about revolutionary class politics.  From time to time we organised workers into the union and represented them at work and tribunals.  I had the honour last year of having the Follonsby Banner as the backdrop to a lecture on the struggles of the IWW and the Wobblies in Irish revolutionary history and the British mines, at the Socialist Republican commemoration of the Hunger Strikers.

To cut a decades long story short, over the last ten years and more I have been more and more distanced and disillusioned with the team calling itself the British IWW , to start with it has become hugely more centralised than it has ever been in its creation.  The decentralised democratic function of the branches is now controlled and centralised into a national leadership.  Sad to say the ‘union’ has become dominated by the south of England and within that a largely middle class London based membership who have carried their liberal left agenda’s straight from that milieu into the policy of the union.  You could be listening to the young liberal leftist Corbynista’s, Climate Extinction or now the IWW.  The social outlook of this milieu has grated for some time.  I was amazed for example as a person who fought for my class for ten years from 83 to 93 against pit closures and the slaughter of the coal industry and miners union and community, to hear anti coal anti mining agenda’s rolled out in the name of the union.  It was simply assumed this being the attitude among the southern middle class it was generally agreed, it wasn’t, not by any of us in the rust belts.  But the final straw for me is the wholesale adoption of Identity Politics, the sectarian politics of sex and gender with enforced PC positions again just assumed to be common sense and currency.  The agenda of class struggle and the sovereignty of the working class as a whole the bedrock upon which all other forms of oppression stem and around which we unite as a common class is the absolute bedrock of the IWW or has been up to now.

IWW picket line Gateshead 2014

Today I get sent this:-

Gemma (East Scotland area organiser) and Maddi (Clydeside Branch co-communications officer) are inviting you to the IWW's first online welcome session for women & non-binary members: Wednesday 15th July, at 7pm on Zoom (details below).

Please note: This message is being sent to all IWW members so that everyone can help spread the word. The welcome session on the 15th is specifically for women (trans-inclusive) and non-binary members. If you are a cis-gender man (you were assigned male at birth, and are still male now) then please stay tuned for news of future welcome sessions, or reply to this email if you'd like to speak to someone from your local branch or in your industry.

And today I resign, it’s a long way from Fellow Worker to cis-gender man and designating me not on my class and class orientation but whether I have a problem with the gender I was born with and actually assuming that that is some common feature of humanity.

The IWW for a long time, even when we were doing great things was always a very poor tribute band to the original, today it is no longer a class struggle organisation and is completely shot through with Middle class PC Identity liberal leftist politics.  A Sad and sorry end to a once great organisation, but they can't take away its fine past and heroic contribution. 

*  Origin of Wobbly Theory #1 - "Eye Wobble Wobble"

Also known as the "Chinese Restaurant Owner Theory", this is the most often cited and embellished theory.  There exists plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this theory as having a grain of truth to it.  Although it is equally likely to be little more than a cleverly crafted tall tale or yarn. We quote from Three Original Sources:
(1) The earliest known reference to the term:

In Vancouver, in 1911, we had a number of Chinese members, and one restaurant keeper would trust any member for means. He could not pronounce the letter "w" (due to the "l" sounds in the pronunciation of the letter), but called it "wobble" and would ask, "you Eye Wobble Wobble?" and when the [red] card was shown credit was unlimited. Thereafter the laughing term amongst us was "I Wobbly Wobbly".

--Mortimer Downing, IWW Member. Quoted in Jack Scott, "How the Wobblies Got their Name," in his Plunderbund and Proletariat (Vancouver, BC.: North Star Books, 1975), p. 153. Also quoted in Jerry Lembcke and William M. Tattam, One Union in Wood, A Political History of the International Woodworkers of America (New York, NY.: International Publishers and Madeira Park, BC.: Harbour Publishing, © 1984), pp. 188-89 n31.
(2) The following account is from the Official IWW History:

It was at this time (1912 during a "thousand mile picket line" railway strike in British Columbia) that the term "Wobbly" as nick-name for IWW came into use. Previously they had been called many things from International Wonder Workers to I Won't Works. The origin of the expression "Wobbly" is uncertain. Legend assigns it to the lingual difficulties of a Chinese restaurant keeper with whom arrangements had been made during this strike to feed members passing through his town. When he tried to ask "Are you I.W.W.?" it is said to have come out: "All loo eye wobble wobble?" The same situation, but in Vancouver is given as the 1911 origin of the term by Mortimer Downing in a letter quoted in Nation, Sept. 5, 1923..."

--From The IWW: Its First 100 Years by Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken, 2006, IWW: Cincinnati, page 60..
3) This account is further elaborated in the following quote:

The word "Wobbly", a nickname for IWW members, humorously illustrates the union's efforts to combat racism. A Chinese restaurant keeper in Vancouver in 1911 supported the union and would extend credit to members. Unable to pronounce the letter "w", he would ask if a man was in the "I Wobble Wobble". Local members jokingly referred to themselves as part of the "I Wobbly Wobbly," and by the time of the Wheatland strike of 1913, "Wobbly" had become a permanent moniker for workers who carried the red card. Mortimer Downing, a Wobbly who first explained the etymology, noted that the nickname "hints of a fine, practical internationalism, a human brotherhood based on a community of interests and of understanding."

--Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows, The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver, BC.: New Star Books, 1990), page 35.

Weighing the Evidence

Conceivably, Downing's account could be the honest truth. According to Dan Cornford (in Workers and Dissent in the Redwood Empire, ©1987, Temple University Press), The IWW was the first labor union in North America to refuse to discriminate against Chinese and Chinese Americans. (Many earlier left-wing organizations, including the Greenback Labor Party and the Knights of Labor discriminated vehemently against Chinese and Japanese Americans. Former members of these organizations (such as George Speed) later joined the IWW and jettisoned their racism). Such interracial solidarity most certainly did not go unnoticed in the Chinese American community, and they would likely have responded favorably to the IWW.
However, all the evidence of the "Chinese Restaurateur Theory" apparently stems from Downing's letter. There is no known independent source that verifies Downing's story. His account may just as easily be a romanticized embellishment of the truth, or it could be pure fiction, and there is no credible proof that it isn't. Downing's narrative also suggests deeply ingrained stereotypical views of Chinese and Chinese-American speech patterns, even by 1911 standards.
Quoting Mark Leier again:

In a letter to the author, dated 31 January 1989, Craig M. Carver, managing editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English states that the Chinese restaurateur version is not given "much credence ... because the story is simply unverifiable." Those with a scientific bent must conclude that the etymology is unknown; romantics may choose to stick with Downing.

--Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows, The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver, BC.: New Star Books, 1990), p 35.

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New Alliance of Northern Anarchists Meeting

New Alliance of Northern Anarchists

Meeting for Free Debate: against Censorship & Blacklists.
Noam Chomsky:  ‘Free speech is an achievement and a right’.

On Sat. 14th, Dec. 2019.
At the Town Hall Tavern
20, Tib Lane, Manchester M2 4JA, England
EVENT
Starts at 12 Noon & ends at 5p.m.
Food available Pie & Mash & vegan options.

Speakers include:
Dave Douglass, retired miner, and former Friend &
Director of Freedom Press

Brian Bamford, Joint Editor of the Northern Voices Blog,
  a former Northern Editor of Freedom & the editor of
 a series of essays entitled ‘Chomsky & his critics’.

Brandon, "New Offensive Collective"
Which has recently published ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids’,
a counter punch to identity politics
*

The purpose of this meeting is to bring together those
libertarians who wish to uphold liberty of expression.

Contact e-mail:  northernvoices@hotmail.com

Blogspot: 

Tuesday, 10 December 2019

 www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com
e-mail:  northernvoices@hotmail.com
 
**********

The 'New Offensive' on the Bullshit Generation?

&

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT from 'NEW OFFENSIVE'

Editorial note on background to 'New Offensive'

Constructive Dismissal at the Anarchist HQ:

'Murder in the Central Committee' (Asesinato en el Comité Central) is a novel by the Catalan novelist and Marxist writer Manuel Vázquez Montalban, who wrote the book in 1981.  The plot of the book is about  how during a meeting in Madrid of the Central Committee of Spain’s Communist Party a crime is committed when there is a brief power failure.  The lights are back on a few seconds later, but in that short span of time the Secretary General, Fernando Garrido, is killed, stabbed in the chest.  (1)

Who stabbed Dave Douglass?

 ON the day of the Glorious Twelfth of August this year a stabbing was enacted at the meeting of the Friends of Freedom Press Directors at Angel Alley in Whitechapel in London's East End; the stabbing was announced when Steve Sorba told the Freedom Friend's directorate meeting that the highly respected former miner Dave Douglass had embarrassed his fellow Director colleagues by favouring a booklet which questions some of the stranger aspects of gender politics and their censorious brethren; describe as 'Cocks in Frocks' in the contentious booklet.*

THE statement below from 'NEW OFFENSIVE' comes from one of the author of the controversial booklet 'Shit Wigs & Steriods'.  A recent consequence of this publication has been that the former public schoolboy Simon Saunders employed by Freedom had urged the Friends of Freedom Company Secretary, Steve Sorba, to ban a formerly appointed Friend of Freedom director, the highly respected ex-miner Dave Douglass from South Shields.  The reasoning for this effective constructive dismissal and no-platforming of Dave Douglass was that he had been accused of commenting sympathetically on this booklet.  In a panicky email issued on the eve of the weekend before the meeting of the Freedom Friends directors, Secretary Sorba was to declare to his fellow directors in an e-mail:  'It has been brought to my attention that Dave Douglass has made public comments supporting a pamphlet which is fundementally transphobic (and in places homophobic as well).'  **

Dave Douglass told Secretary Sorba that nothing he had ever said was 'transphobic' or 'homophobic'!

Yet as Secretary Soba insisted that he had 'embarrassed the "committee"', Dave Douglass agreed to take the bullet as he didn't want to be on a committee that was 'embarrased' by him in such a way.  In other words just as in Vázquez Montalban's noir detective novel Spanish Communist Party's Secretary General, Fernando Garrido, is killed, stabbed in the chest so Dave Douglass wasn't stabbed in the back, but he was stabbed in the chest by Secretary Sorba acting at the behest of posh public schoolboy Simon Saunders, a Morning Star hack using his smart phone weapon he sometimes uses for blacklisting folk.  ***

Northern Voices believes that Freedom should adopt an approach which encourages free debate and we avoid a party-line in our columns.  How can an organisation that claims to be anarchist possibly uphold a postion that seeks to avoid drama and controversy?   Clearly Secretary Sorba is a businessman, a manager and a Director, but has not understood anything about anarchism.  Moreover, Secretary Sorba is short-sighted if he believes that he can have a quiet life by disposing of Dave Douglass in this way: does he not realise that by seeking to avoid complicated issues like this merely allows them to fester.  Dave Douglass is merely the canary in the coal mine for Secretary Sorba, Simon Saunders and Freedom Press.  We judge this by considering the statement of support for Northern Voices below; it states that those who are those who are attacking Dave Douglass, Helen Steel**** and those who support free speech will 'wipe the floor' with the enemies of liberty and free discussion.  

After the debacle that led to the closing of the London bookfair when Helen Steel was surrounded, bullied and intimidated for defending free speech, Freedom hesitated before finally adopting a stand supporting the 'Cocks in Frocks.  It seems now that they backed the wrong horse.

*  northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2019/07 › review-transsexuals-vs-cock...

** (https://tinyurl.com/y3msflq6 )

***northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2016/07 › pensioner-attacked-at-anarc...

****northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2019/08 › helen-is-feminist-who-holds...

 ***********

Solidarity Statement for Northern Voices from 'New Offensive':

 I WANT TO STATE that the New Offensive Booklet: ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids’ is a series of short articles and it contains considerable references to more in-depth discussions around the subject of Transgender.  These articles are by Women, Lesbians and Gay activists, victims of male violence and many other critical thinkers on the subject of gender politics.  The gang of us who put it together are not connected with Northern Voices, so seeing the same tactics used on some of us used on yourselves, shows patterns of censorship that are in no way acceptable, fair, just or logical.

We are proud to have done this booklet and to see the positive impact it is having.  Our use of language, is the language that we use.  We are not conservative in our approach, nor approach issues touching us as working class people with the privilege of objective viewpoints.

Class privileges? we are exempt of!

We had proof readers and discussions covering all aspects of the booklet (yes there are a few spelling errors in spite of our abilities).

We are engaged with many people in this discussion, both in England and amongst other European working class radicals and anarchists.  We are very pleased to state we are in this (as always) for the long game.  We hope to force people out of their self identified ‘safe spaces’.  We will name and confront them if they have played roles in trying to shut down or discredit working class activists, or bullying them into silence.

Those of us who put the booklet together and stand proudly by it are not lightweights intellectually. We are seeing it picked up by all kinds of people that are open to discussion.  We understand Simon Saunders declared the booklet ‘homophobic’, considering it is in defence of  lesbian and gay identity, we do expect an explanation of  such absurd claims.  We are proud to stand our ground.  As working class people.

Basically we don’t give a fuck if you find our ‘crude’ language demeaning, abrasive, provocative, or threatening.  At ‘New Offensive' we still have a sense of humour, irony and determination to straighten out some bullshit.

We hope any future attention our publication gets will actually focus on the blacklisting of activists, the right to self defence, and the rejection of authoritarian and bogus ideologies etc. 

'Door policies' to publiseed events simply seem to protect a minority of people from ridicule, scrutiny and the harsh criticism of their Thatcherite indulgent identity politics. 

One point that is clear is that anyone looking seriously at gender politics, has to include prisons; Suicide rates; sexual abuse; health and inequalities; class bias; and the enviromental  brutalisation of the working classes.  To see gender politics, just being reduced to nothing in the hands of  the likes of Pablo, Steve Moss, Simon Saunders (public school boy) is beyond cringeworthy.  To look at Transgender as an issue without looking at 'De-Transitioning'; drug dependancy; the erasing of Lesbian and Gay identity; health issues; etc. etc. is irresponsible. 

So rather than being supporters of the issues surrounding gender and sexual politics, this group of wannabe gate-keepers, are silencing the issues on the very subjects they claim to be the champions of.   Thankfully the discussion does exist  outside of their declared safe spaces.   The discussion is now in full flow without them!! 

From us at 'New Offensive' it is time to call out these sponging bastards . When Rob Ray (Simon Saunders) comes to terms with the wider discussions around Transgender, he might also  take a look at his own class privilege and the way he is using that as a weapon to demonise, control and shut down working class anarchists.  So quite simply,   Solidarity with you at Northern Voices, we are proud to see you take this stuff seriously.  Shit Wigs and Steroids is us documenting the absurdity of the situation for the wider working class movement and for sincere discussion amongst  class struggle anarchists .

'WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO WIPING THE FLOOR WITH A FEW PEOPLE'.


(1)  Murder in the Central Committee (Spanish: Asesinato en el Comité Central) is a 1982 Spanish thriller film directed by Vicente Aranda. It stars Patxi Andión and Victoria Abril.^[1] The plot follows a private detective, an ex-communist and former CIA agent, who travels from Barcelona to Madrid to discover the identity of the assassin of the leader of the Spanish Communist Party who was stabbed during a blackout while presiding over a meeting of the party's Central Committee. The film is a thriller with ironic political overtones.
The script was written by director Vicente Aranda. It was based on a book of the same name by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, one of a series of novels that featured the character of a hard-boiled detective called Pepe Carvalho. It was adapted for the screen the year after its publication.^[2] Asesinato en el Comité Central was Aranda’s first work shot in Madrid instead of his native Barcelona. The film received a cold commercial response.^[3]

 
'Murder in the Central Committee' (1981) has Pepe leaving his beloved Barcelona to investigate the murder of the General Secretary of the PCP and is a profound -- and often hilarious -- commentary on the changing face of post Cold War Europe.

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

WARDLEY COLLIERY HERITAGE MARCH

WARDLEY COLLIERY HERITAGE
MARCH WITH THE WARDLEY COLLIERY MINERS LODGE BANNER AND FELLING SILVER BAND.

  TOMMY HEPBURN MEMORIAL
St Mary’s Church Heworth
29th Sept 2018-
Assemble by the Wardley Colliery ‘miner’s lamp’ Memorial 9 am for a march through the village and Ellen Wilkinson Est. To St Mary’s Church Heworth. Service commencing 11 am.
Then join us for the Durham Miners Association Reception at Wardley Club
Followed by Follonsby (Wardley) Miners Lodge Association
Social from 5-30pm down in The Lounge
‘Music of the River, the Region and the Mines’
(The parade will cause a moving obstruction for a few minutes on each road, drivers please be patient or take alternative route)
*******