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”

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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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Forget Slavery – Have a Scone!

by  Christopher Draper

THE downfall of Edward Colston sent shock waves through the massed ranks of NATIONAL TRUST top brass.  Founded in 1895 primarily to protect threatened landscapes, over succeeding decades NT has increasingly focussed on acquiring, conserving and celebrating the legacy of the genocidal colonial adventurers, aristocratic land grabbers and grubby financiers that created Britain’s despicable slave trade. These blood money palaces, stately homes and grand gardens were designed to flaunt their patron’s social standing and aesthetic good taste and camouflage the barbaric reality.  It was myth-making on a grand scale and it’s a tradition the NATIONAL TRUST has assiduously maintained and enhanced.

Rattling the Tea Cups

Suddenly the hierarchy feel exposed and vulnerable – Colston’s statue was pulled down on the 7^th June 2020 and within four days NT bosses had spirited away and hidden the “Kneeling Slave” statue that formerly greeted visitors to Dunham Massey Hall, Altrincham.  Visitors had long questioned the Trust’s failure to explain and justify the prominent exhibition of this racially demeaning icon and in response NT bosses defended the racist imagery with an outrageous lie…

Whitewash

NT management refuse to admit any failure of moral or historical judgement and instead claim they belatedly acted solely out of concern for visitors’ emotions;

“The statue has caused upset and distress because of the way it depicts a black person and because of its prominence at the front of the house”

Typical NT weasel words, in truth it acted to pre-empt the embarrassment of a public toppling in a Black-Lives-Matter related incident.  This is evident from NT’s application to the planning authorities for retroactive “listed structure” consent for the statue’s removal.  A spokesman for Trafford Council confirms that,

“The NATIONAL TRUST have written to the council’s planning service to advise that the statue was removed in order to preserve the structure”!

NT continue to claim,

“We don’t want to censor or deny the way colonial histories are woven into the fabric of our buildings…”

But this is precisely the reverse of the truth…

The BIG LIE!

In response to visitors’ critical enquiries, a decade ago NT erected an “interpretive” plaque alongside the Dunham Massey statue,

“This sundial is in the style of one commissioned by King William III. It represents Africa, one of four continents known at the time.  The figure depicts a Moor, not a slave…”!

No-one, apart from the NATIONAL TRUST, has ever made such an absurdly dishonest claim. Academics routinely refer to this and similar statues as “Kneeling Slaves”, sometimes as “Blackamoors”, never a Moor and always acknowledging the servile pose and colonial context.  A 1725 inventory details the figure as, “A negro Slave kneeling on one knee and bearing a Sun Dyall on his head” (sic).   The slave’s bent, kneeling posture bearing the full weight of a stone sundial for the benefit of aristocratic observers (and latterly modern visitors) offends everyone but the NATIONAL TRUST for as Madge Dresser emphasises, “The Blackamoor’s humanity is subsumed by his utilitarian function”.

The NT is structurally and philosophically wedded to a White Supremacist version of history.  It polishes, maintains and reproduces the reactionary views of a politico-cultural elite and denies the life histories of the exploited.  Despite being a mass membership organisation the NT is essentially a rich, powerful corporation that makes only occasional, spasmodic efforts to portray the lives of the lower orders.  The organisation eschews vital historical analysis preferring to retail romanticism, infotainment, refreshments and pseudo-historical nick-knackery – enter through the car-park and exit through the gift shop.

I’ll tackle more aspects of NT racism, greenwash and assorted flummery in future posts but focus here on the iconography of the “Kneeling Slave” and there’s another one on the other side of the Pennines…

A Telling Alternative

Wentworth Castle near Barnsley was built by a notorious slave trading family whose “Blackamoor” statue is now housed in the conservatory, which, along with extensive parklands is administered by the NATIONAL TRUST.  It’s a similar “Kneeling Slave” bearing a stone sundial, although it’s slightly earlier c.1720 rather than Dunham’s c.1735, it’s in much better condition.  This is not simply because it’s now kept indoors but because it was sensitively restored in 2011 by conservators who took great care to create a realistic black skin tone. When installed in the conservatory further scrupulous work was undertaken to research the context and historical significance of the figure most notably by Patrick Eyres.  Eyres subsequently led public walks around the grounds explaining the politico-historical context of the house and gardens and the particular significance of the “Blackamoor”.  These researches culminated in publication of his (highly recommended) book “Blackamoors in the Georgian Garden” (New Arcadian Press) and the erection of accurate and insightful interpretive signage at Wentworth, eg;

“Sir Thomas Wentworth helped to negotiate the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This international treaty confirmed Britain as the most important commercial power in Europe. It included a lucrative monopoly over the Atlantic slave trade. Wentworth represented this in his house and gardens, including a statue of a kneeling African man supporting a sundial that now stands in the conservatory. Like many of his contemporaries, Wentworth made a great deal of money from the sale and labour of enslaved Africans. This human misery helped pay for the house and gardens he built.”

Exception Proves the Rule

Wentworth’s enlightened admissions contrast sharply with Dunham Massey’s denial and the explanation isn’t hard to find for NT only gained control of Wentworth Castle Gardens a year ago.  Wentworth’s admirable research and restoration had already been completed by volunteers who formed a community “Heritage Trust” that administered the gardens for two decades until shortage of funds forced them to hand over to NT in 2019.  The community trust recognised the Blackamoor as an icon of colonial exploitation that if exhibited unexplained would embody and perpetuate a racist world-view but when sensitively restored and contextualised offered enormous potential for critical re-evaluation of imperial history.  It’s imperative that the local trust’s interpretation endures and that visitors monitor the possible “re-interpretation” of the “Kneeling Slave” under NT stewardship.

“Not Another One!”

“Kneeling Slaves” were the eighteenth century’s best selling lead garden statues after William III, who owned both house and plantation slaves, commissioned a couple from Van Nost in 1701 for his Hampton Court Garden.  Supply and demand collapsed with the demise of the last London manufacturer, John Cheere in 1787, the year the Committee for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade was formed. Rather than boast of personal involvement in the slave trade, stately home owners grew embarrassed by the origins of their wealth and “Blackamoors” disappeared from grand gardens to be sold on, hidden away or melted down. Now only eight “Kneeling Slaves” continue to occupy their original garden, including our two NT examples but if the celebrated “Brenda of Bristol” were to visit her local NT property, she might well utter her famous catchphrase, “Oh no, not another one!”

Unbelievably a bedroom on show at the NATIONAL TRUST’s Dyrham Park “boasts” not just one but two “Kneeling Slaves”!  As house rather than garden slave, they’re borne down by the weight of huge exotic seashells rather than stone sundials but the pose is identical and leaving absolutely no scope for denial their servility is emphasised by their shackling with slave collar and chains.

Wilful Ignorance or Worse?

Wentworth’s sensitive restoration, display and interpretation exemplifies how these figures can be properly exhibited but distortion, denial and obfuscation more typically characterises NT’s approach.  Although NT received a copy of Eyres’ research it continued to exhibit the Dunham and Dyrham “Blackamoors” in the de-contextualised aesthetic fashion favoured by their original aristocratic owners.  In February 2018 a visitor was so shocked by Dyrham’s “Blackamoors” display that they complained on TRIPADVISOR;

“I was deeply disturbed during my visit to Dyrham Hall when I witnessed chained depictions of enslaved human beings in subservient positions casually being displayed as ornamental features…there was no explanation of these artefacts in the room or in the interpretation leaflets (there was only information about paintings and pottery)…”

Another post registered “revulsion” at the racist display.  Six months later Dyrham Park’s “Public Relations Manager” responded by insisting there are,“information leaflets on display next to the stands which put them into context”. However, no leaflets or info boards are apparent in extant photographs and although NT did recently supply me with an undated copy of a leaflet contextualising the “Blackamoor Stands” its value is academic as NT have now removed both Dyrham’s “Chained Slaves” from public view.

As I write, visitors can still gain sight of Wentworth’s “Blackamoor” through the windows of a locked conservatory but the Dunham and Dyrham “slaves” have been hidden away and their images removed from the NT website.  In future posts I’ll explain further how black lives don’t matter much to NT, and neither do white working class lives, nor internal democracy but in the meantime Northern Voices would appreciate readers’ feedback on your opinions and experiences of the NATIONAL TRUST.

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'Cult of Colston' & the 'Constipated Clerks'

by Brian Bamford
In a comment on this NV Blog John Pearson said:
 'The British ruling class can take lessons from no-one on efforts to "bury the past, hide it, and sanitize it".

 & that
'Those Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol, descendants of slaves, many of whom will have been trafficked by Colston's company, were not erasing history they were making history.' *

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THE LAST time I was in Bristol it was at the invite of the Bristol Radical History Group at a Bookfair in 2011 to give a talk on 'The varieties of historical investigation and experience'.  The Bristol Radical History Group has been at the forefront of the campaign against the slave trader Edward Colston whose statue was recently toppled in Bristol. **


Marxists writers often vary between those like John Pearson, who credit the British ruling class as superbly cunning little Machiavellian's, and those who rate the boss class as little more than incompetent buffoons.

In Bristol it was, where over recent years my friend Roger Ball would take folk on a pedestrian stroll round the city to appraise and provide an alternative view of the ‘cult of Colston’ that was said to "form part of our city’s ‘identity’."*  Only to culminate at Bristol Cathedral, to discuss 'how the institutions of the Church of England and the Merchant Venturers collide within the education of our children to promote Colston as a Parable of the Good Samaritan.'


George Orwell once remarked that 'whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.'

As long as I have lived my life the British Empire has been in a state of decline.  Men like Edward Colston, were a  bygone thing even between the wars.  As Orwell argued in The Lion & The Unicorn:  'Men like Clive, Nelson, Nicholson, Gordon would find no place for themselves in the modern British Empire.  By 1920 nearly every inch of the colonial empire was in the grip of Whitehall.' [1941]

Yet it is unlikely that either Comrade Pearson or Dr. Ball would ever venture to unleash their passions against the constipated clerks who had by then taken over from the empire builders of yesterday.  So as long as I have been alive its been the clerks that have been in the driving seat, but no one is going to launch a war against these clerks and managers, because these are the very people who sign the cheques and give the research grants so that these post-modern historians can get awarded their PhDs.  These constipated clerks are the modern managerial class who have taken over not just in the universities; and you just don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Instinctively both John Pearson and Roger Ball will identify with the clerks who among other things administer our universities and so vividly contrast with the one-time empire builders, because it is now as fashionable as it was in the 1930s for the shallow leftists to look down on physical prowess and snigger at the very idea of Englishness.

The last time I saw Roger Ball was at the Casa Club in Liverpool on the 8th, June 2018, at an event organised by Ian Gwinn and was entitled 'Fuck May 1968'; at that time Roger had been anxiously scouring the thoroughfares of the city looking for suitable architectural monuments to condemn owing to their links with slavery.  Though I have great respect for the research work Roger Ball has put into this issue, I do share the concerns of others like Derek Pattison and Les May about as to what will be the logical outcome of this kind of fetish for censorship.

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*    After popular demand the Countering-Colston group are re-running their recent history walk.

Starting with St Mary Redcliffe church, this walk takes in other historic Diocese of Bristol churches in the city centre where ‘the life and work’ of Edward Colston is still provided religious legitimacy on an annual basis.

Along the way we will share the most recent historical research regarding this man’s involvement with the transatlantic slave trade and discover how the Victorian elite created a ‘cult of Colston’ that is now said to form part of our city’s ‘identity’.

At our final stop, Bristol Cathedral, we discuss how the institutions of the Church of England and the Merchant Venturers collide within the education of our children to promote Colston as a Parable of the Good Samaritan.

**https://twitter.com/i/status/1269634408069435392

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WOW-take a deep breath and give this a listen

 Forwarded to NorthernVoices by Dave Chapple

 

WOW-take a deep breath and give this a listen: 

Hope she's active in a trade union!

Can the TUC get Kimberley over to the UK for  BLM speaking tour?

:  https://www.instagram.com/tv/CBGUPgBApio/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

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 Don’t think she’d be too upset about Colston going to a watery grave.

Trevor Noah on Instagram: “@kimberlylatricejones @djonesmedia” 190.5k Likes, 10.2k Comments - Trevor Noah (@trevornoah) on Instagram: “@kimberlylatricejones @djonesmedia” www.instagram.com

When Edward Colston Plaque was ammended

THE Daily Telegraph reported on the 25 March 2019 that a plaque paying homage to the reputation of the 17th century merchant and Member of Parliament Edward Colston, under what was then his statue in Bristol has been scrapped after the Mayor complained it watered down his links to slavery.

In February, 2019 Bristol City Council agreed to affix a new plaque under the statue of the controversial figure, to inform visitors of the slave trafficking he was involved in.

The current plaque was made when the statue was erected in 1895.  It makes no mention of the slave trade and reads:  'Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city'.
A new plaque was commissioned and made after debate.  Bristol historian Francis Greenacre, on behalf of the Merchant Venturers, the organisation Colston belonged to, made changes to it before it was sent to be cast.

For example, rather than writing that he 'trafficked' slaves, the proposed plaque read that he 'transported' them.

The inscription read:  
'He supported and endowed schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. Many of his charitable foundations continue. This statue was erected in 1895 to commemorate his philanthropy.
'A significant proportion of Colston’s wealth came from investments in slave trading, sugar and other slave-produced goods.

'As an official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, he was also involved in the transportation of approximately 84,000 enslaved African men, women and young children, of whom 19,000 died on voyages from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas.'

At that time the Mayor Marvin Rees deemed this 'unacceptable', and his office said in a statement:
'It was extremely naive of the Merchant Venturers to believe they should have the final say on the words for a new plaque for the statue of Edward Colston without reference to the communities of descendants of those Africans who were enslaved and treated as commodities by merchants like Colston.
'It’s an oversight to put it mildly not to even have had a conversation with Mayor Marvin Rees, Europe’s first mayor of African heritage and the mayor of a city whose wealth has been inseparable from slavery and plantations and who is himself the descendant of enslaved Africans.
'The proposed words are unacceptable. We will pick this back up as part of our wider work on improving our cultural offer around the transatlantic slave trade.'

Today however, following the dismantling of the Colston statue yesterday, the same Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, while refusing to act as 'cheer leader' for the police inquiry into possible criminal damage over the dunking of the Colston statute in the Bristol Harbour, he did admit that he was not sorry to see the monument to Edward Colston was no longer in situ.  

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Put Away The Airbrush!

by Les May

WHEN I was at school I studied ‘British and European History, 1789 to 1914’. At least that is how it was billed.  But as I now realise it should have been called ‘English and European History, 1789 to 1914’.   We studied the disestablishment of the Welsh church and what was happening in Ireland, but these were largely in the context of what Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone had to say on the subject.  But of the history of Scotland during this time, I was in ignorance.

One thing which burned itself in my memory was the events at Peterloo in 1819. Last year we had a film, a re-enactment, meetings, speeches and sundry exhibitions which we ‘lefties’ dutifully trooped off to see and hear.  But until I watched an interview with Kenny MacAskill, the author of ‘Radical Scotland’, earlier this year, I knew nothing of ‘The Scottish Rising’ of 1820 which was put down even more harshly than Peterloo.  The man in charge at the time was Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville.

I went to see the film about Peterloo with a Scottish lady who had lived and been educated in Edinburgh.   So well has this event been wiped from history that when I asked her about the Martyr’s Memorial in Edinburgh, erected some twenty years later to commemorate those executed and transported for their part in the rising, she knew nothing of it.  Nor did her brothers.

We seem to have a casual attitude to our history.  That’s not the case with some people who are always ready to air their grievances about how we remember it in our buildings and statues and monuments, and go on to demand we tear them down, effectively airbrushing them from history.  Should we who see ourselves as being ‘of the Left’ adopt their strident tones or should we put away the airbrush and set about telling the truth about historical figures, ‘warts and all’?

You can find the story at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_War

the book at:

https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/radical-scotland

and some of the truth about Henry Dundas at:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16416274.edinburgh-ready-to-face-up-to-dark-past-of-henry-dundas-philanthropist-who-also-championed-slavery/

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Bye bye Edward Colston!

Subject: BRISTOL COLSTON STATUE PULLED DOWN 

Momentum Bristol

@MomentumBristol

Bye bye Edward Colston! If anyone misses this statue they need to have a long hard think about their priorities. Slave traders are not heroes! #BlackLivesMatter

#BLMbristol #Bristol

Click on live link below to see video:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1269634408069435392

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