Curtain Theatre Review: Spring and Port Wine

by Les May

THE FIRST production of the Rochdale Curtain Theatre for the 2019-20 season is Spring and Port Wine.  It’s an everyday story of Northern folks in the shape of the Crompton family; Father Rafe, Mother Daisy, their four children who are young adults, and a cadging neighbour who manages her affairs by ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.  You’ll find all the cliches, all the stereotypes and, to use a word currently in vogue, all the tropes, of Northern family life, including Brass Bands, The Messiah and Huddersfield Choral Society.  It’s a ‘feelgood play’, and I loved every minute of it!

It first saw light as a radio play in 1957 under a different name, then a stage play and had to wait until 1965 before it got its present title.   Knowing when it was written, and hence when it is set, helps make sense of the part of the play when Rafe tells how he and Daisy met a party of Hunger Marchers in the 1930s, men who, as he puts it were whistling because they hadn’t the strength to sing.

As ever the acting was first class, but for me the star was the lady who played Daisy, not because she had taken over the part at very short notice and had to work from the script, something she did almost transparently, but because she brought to the role just the the right amount of fluster, patience, stoicism, loyalty and resolve.  An excellent and very believable performance.

For more details of this and upcoming shows visit

https://www.curtaintheatrerochdale.co.uk/

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Grooming Scandals & Cover-ups

 Editorial Note:   Normally we at Northern Voices are uneasy about publishing anonymous comments and accounts, because they clearly do not in the nature of things carry the level of credibility of a signed authorised opinion.  And yet, we feel obliged to give space to the views expressed below about 'voting irregularities' in Rochdale even though we have no way of authenticating the details expressed.  When the Smith case was considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the 1970s, it is said that it was decided that it was not in the public interest to pursue the matter.   Similarly in the light of current publicity about more cases of Asian grooming gangs in Huddersfield following earlier cases in Rochdale and Rotherham etc, it would seem that local authorities have been guilty of what we would describe as aspect blindness, and what others have entitled 'political correctness'.  For this reason we publish the unverified text by the anonymous author below.

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Anonymous said...

Voting irregularities are rife in this town.  My partner who is of South East Asian extraction knows of friends who only know how they have voted when their husbands tell them ( or not as the case may be) how they filled the postal vote form in.  Criminal prosecutions would be the result anywhere else but Rochdale.  Why does this kind of behaviour go unchallenged by the authorities I wonder?

In this town there is a proactive dysfunctional culture of wilful denial of inconvenient facts - a culture that allowed monsters like Smith to go unchallenged for decades and the Grooming Scandal to be allowed, then ignored - with a collective 'blind eye' being turned yet again - with a collective cognitive dissonance by the guilty, and complicit to allow the same abysmally piss-poor services to then make warped claims that because they are no longer as criminally incompetent and negligent at delivering basic service standards that they have as a result achieved some kind of magnificent improvement as a consequence.

I suspect there is so much more to be exposed in the political cess-pit that Rochdale has become ?

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Your Building Society ???

by Christopher Draper

BUILDING societies, like most good things, were invented in the North.

Founded by workers as mutual aid organisations, building societies provided a safe home for meagre savings so that in the long term members could secure homes for themselves and their families.  Over the decades the money men and city spivs moved in, privatised many societies and subverted democratic control of the rest.  You won’t see many millionaire money men walking the streets of Bradford these days but you’ll find a fair few if you pop into the Boardroom of the Yorkshire Building Society (YBS), a mutual aid for the wealthy.

Hell and Halifax

YBS isn’t the only example of the hollowing-out of the mutualist ideas and working class ideals of the original building societies.  The capitalist feeding frenzy that privatised the ‘Halifax Building Society’ (then Britain’s biggest) and then almost destroyed it shows YBS and other remaining ‘mutuals’ have further to fall from their idealistic origins.  A comprehensive analysis of every surviving mutual would be onerous to compile and boring to read so I’ll concentrate on contrasting the professed ideals of YBS with the actualite but the critique applies across the board.

'Our Society'

YBS ‘members’ who legally own the ‘society’ nowadays play no greater role in the business than they do in MacDonalds, Google, Asda or any other retailer yet YBS, like the other fake mutuals, constantly claims we do. ‘Our Society a Place Where We Belong', “Members…at the heart of everything we do’, ‘As a building society we are set up specifically to help people rather than make money from them’.  In the last few years YBS wasted millions of pounds of members’ savings settling fines and compensation claims imposed as a consequence of negligent and cynical trading practices. 

The Financial Conduct Authority discovered YBS indulged in mis-selling PPI; YBS neglected and improperly overcharged mortgage customers experiencing repayment difficulties and YBS promoted and sold bonds that promised financial returns that were virtually impossible to achieve.

Even a cursory examination of YBS documents reveals a focus on growth and expansion rather than member involvement. The truth is that bigger businesses bring bigger bonuses for bosses and for Mike Regnier, YBS CEO, this year’s bonus added a further £275,000 to his already massive salary. A YBS survey of “customer experience” over an identical period recorded a drop from 27^th to 87^th place (comparable organisations) yet had no negative impact on Mike’s bonus.

Once Upon a Time in Huddersfield

YBS started in the nineteenth century with the creation of 'The Huddersfield Equitable Permanent Benefit Building Society' by a handful of workers and tradesmen in a small building on the corner of King Street and Queen Street. In the twentieth century the 'Huddersfield' amalgamated with Dewsbury’s 'West Yorkshire' and then Bradford’s 'Self Help' to, in 1982, form the 'YBS'. 

 

From its foundation in 1864 until 1896 none of the Directors of the ‘Huddersfield’ drew any salary from the Society’s funds now the YBS Director’s trough is lavishly swilled with members’ savings.

The YBS Board comprises 9 directors and includes 6 non-executive directors. In 2017, the executive directors received a total remuneration of two million and fifty-six thousand pounds with CEO Mike Regnier alone getting almost a million (£930,000). As the average local wage is £20,929, Mike gets more every year than a Bradford worker would earn in a lifetime!

Keeping Members Informed

You’ve doubtless received one of those booklets that building societies send out to members as an annual report.  The first thing to note is that these documents are not actually ‘Annual Reports’ but selective, propaganda pamphlets that Directors employ to bamboozle members into thinking they’re involved.  For YBS the official 2017 ‘Annual Report’ is double the page size (A4 rather than A5) and six times the length of the ‘Annual Review’ sent out to members.  Both documents are essentially sales brochures boasting of how brilliantly the ‘business’ is being run but occasionally key details can be gleaned from the full document omitted from the dumbed-down version.   This year (2017/18) the YBS members’ pamphlet made no mention of the gender pay gap that all big organisations are legally obliged to publicly report but tucked away at the foot of the inner column of the ‘full’ document on page 71 we find that YBS operates a 31% gender pay gap but of course even here there’s no admission of guilt rather a statement of pious bullshit, ‘The Group strives to create an environment where diversity in all forms is encouraged and barriers in the way of colleagues fulfilling their potential are removed.’

The full 190 page Report includes lovely full-page, full-colour pictures of Chairman John (Uriah) Heaps and CEO Mike Regnier yet still doesn’t fully report YBS’s legally required analysis of its gender pay-gap (it’s available online).  This records women are very much in the minority among its highest paid employees (top quartile: 42% women/58% men) whilst down at the bottom end (quartile) the lowest paid YBS employees are overwhelmingly female (80% women/20% men).  In place of these facts the Report obfuscates:

‘In simple terms there are more females occupying less senior roles. It is this imbalance that results in the gender pay gap’.

YBS Democracy

Like all fake democracies YBS have the problem of manufacturing consent.  Pictures of people of all types and colour are an essential ingredient of all YBS booklets, sites and propaganda accompanied by slogans asserting ‘inclusivity’.   The aim is to make members think everyone else is involved and if you’re not it’s your lazy fault.  The truth is that YBS is as mutual as the Co-op is cooperative, it’s been captured and run by money men with no radical, socialist or even cooperative agenda.  Any claims to mutualism are utterly superficial.

In 1864, there was a plumber amongst the originators of the Huddersfield Building Society but you won’t find a ‘butcher, baker or candlestick maker’ amongst the directors now, most come from the banking world with a leavening of hotels, pubs and gambling directorships.

Directors know few members turn up at the AGM and there’s little likelihood they’ll be challenged.  Even if they were the Chairman wields thousands of proxy votes from members who returned their voting paper in response to whatever gimmicky inducement YBS offers that particular year (in 2018 it’s a donation to charity).  Few notice or understand the import of the inconspicuous phrase, ‘The Chairman will be your proxy unless you choose someone else by completing the box on the back of this form’.  Although almost fifteen thousand members voted against last years lavish directors’ emoluments with a further three thousand withholding their agreement the Chairman claimed the backing of 128,159 proxies as authorisation for the Board to stuff their wallets.  Business as usual and triples all round, Cheers!

Some more Equitable than Others

In 1864, the Huddersfield Equitable offered members the prospect of a home and interest on their savings of 5% interest (at a time that inflation was zero).  In 2018 Chairman Heaps claims YBS 'are proud of our 150 year commitment to our mutual values – delivering long term value' but consider what has been delivered by Heaps and his fellow buildings society money men.  'Our mortgage customers face average house prices that are almost eight times average earnings – an all-time high…By 2020 only a quarter of 30-year olds will own their own home, in contrast, more than half the generation currently approaching retirement were homeowners by their thirtieth birthday.'   Whilst consumer price inflation is running at around 3% per annum YBS savers are offered only 0.85% so even labelling them 'savings accounts' smacks of 'mis-selling'.

 

Branch closures reduce the service to members, increase centralisation and bring banks bad publicity but YBS is equally guilty with 48 branches closed last year with a further 18 closures already planned for 2018.

Progress?

YBS isn’t doing anything illegal and is typical of the building society sector and that’s precisely the problem, the rot is endemic.  What started as local mutual-aid societies founded by workers and tradesmen to shelter themselves and their families from the ravages of the marketplace have been gradually infiltrated by the values and personnel of commercialism.  Poorly paid, largely female, workers are welcomed at YBS to do the donkey work at the counters and computers but money-men run the show on classic capitalist lines. 

In 1994 YBS was the first building society to operate its own share-dealing service (subsequently sold) and members were encouraged to redirect their mutual saving into stock market speculation.

In 2018, as ordinary YBS members suffer miserable, below inflation, returns on their savings there’s rich pickings for the boys in the boardroom.  The members 'Annual Review' prominently boasts of £1.5m'contributed to our local communities' but fails to mention that this is less than the amount 'contributed' to board members Mike Regnier and Stephen White.

Re-building Society

The nineteenth century working class created a rich variety of mutual aid organisations, Building Societies, Benefit Societies, Trade Unions, Political Parties, Burial Clubs, Reading Rooms and much more.  Like YBS, most are now ideologically moribund zombies with some appearance of the original but devoid of humanity and political idealism.  The causes are complex but in almost every case a tendency to apathy and materialism amongst workers was exploited by lawyers and city slickers to gain control and extract value.  Hierarchies and huge pay differentials replaced equitable ideals and egalitarian practice. 

 

There’s no quick solution but we can all do a bit to reclaim our moribund organisations.  If you’re a building society member don’t ever return the paper giving the Chairman your vote, either tick all the 'against' or 'vote withheld' boxes. 

 

It’s optimistic to dream of reversing the decline in building societies and similar mutual aid organisations but we can at least try to stop the rot.  Recognise the rips-offs and speak out, don’t be complicit, expose the injustice and ridicule the rapacious.  Even YBS is not entirely immune to activism, every creative act of protest supports, encourages and incites others – You’d Be Surprised…

The Yorkshire Rebellion of 1820

Comrades

On the evening of 31 March 1820 there was a rising in the textile villages around Huddersfield.  Several hundred men marched on the town itself with the intention of taking it from the garrison stationed there.  However when backup failed to materialise the plan was aborted and the men dispersed.  Four of their number -John Lindley, John Peacock, Nathaniel Buckley and Thomas Blackburn- were later committed to the York Assizes.
Then on 11 April several hundred men from Barnsley and the nearby villages of Dodsworth and Monk Bretton marched to Grange Moor near Huddersfield.  They believed that they were part of a rising postponed from 1 April.  This time they had arms and provisions, marched to a drum beat and had colourful political banners.  There was even talk of a march on London.  But yet again they were to be disappointed.  Only 20 men from Huddersfield were there to back them up.  Dejected, the group quickly dispersed -though 18 of the Barnsley men would later be indicted for high treason.
In Sheffield on the same day there had been plans by 200 men to take Attercliffe Barracks.  They had assembled in the Haymarket chanting "Hunt and Liberty", "The Revolution, The Revolution!"  Their leader John Blackwell symbolically fired off a pistol but at the last minute the attack was aborted.  Blackwell got 30 months in prison (Stevenson 1979)

On Saturday 25 June at 1pm  at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1 the Wakefield Socialist History Group will be hold a meeting about the 1820 Yorkshire Rebellion.  The main speaker is Shaun Cohen (Ford Maguire Society).  The chair is Adrian Cruden (Green Party).
Admission to the meeting is free and there is a free light buffet.  There is also a bar with excellent real ale.

Fraternally
Alan Stewart
Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group.

Northern Citizens' Convention

 Northern Citizens' Convention



http:// www.northerncitizensconvention.org.uk/ 

Venue:
Yorkshire Children’s Centre
Brian Jackson House
New North Parade
Huddersfield, HD1 5JP
Telephone: 01484 519988
www.yorkshirechildrenscentre.org.uk

Date:
Saturday 20th June
10:00 (registration and coffee), 
for 10:30 start
15:45 Close

This is a polite reminder to those who may wish to attend but have not yet pre-registered their intention to do so. Places are now limited and reducing on a daily basis so if you wish to attend the event, please visit the following Eventbrite page to book your (free) ticket. This will provide the organisers with a more definite picture of the total attendance for catering purposes.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/northern-citizens-convention-conference-tickets-16873146034 


Lunch will be provided on the day (a purely optional and very modest donation to cover the cost of lunch would be appreciated)

Scotland: Federalism and the English

The problem of idée fixe in the politics of the Left   

LATE last year, Paul Salveson, a Labour councillor for Golcar, a constituency near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, submitted an article for a forthcoming printed issue of Northern Voices in which he argued that whatever the result of the Scottish referendum this September, that there would be far reaching constitutional consequences and that things would never be the same after that.  Yesterday, a leader writer in an editorial in the Yorkshire Post echoed these sentiments: 

'Whether or not Scotland opts for independence on Thursday, the one certainty is that the governance of Britain will be changed forever by the result.'   

The issue, as Mr. Salveson foresaw it, is that while a Yes vote may cause confusion, constitutional disarray and the break up the United Kingdom; a success for the No lobby will still bring in a range of devolved powers (labelled Devo-Max) and possible demands for further referendums.   

 In last Saturday's FT the economist, Martin Wolf, described the prospects in the following terms:

'If the vote is a Yes, it will be forever.  But what about a narrow No (vote)?  That too would be a nightmare.  We could then look forward to more referendums.'   

Even as I write this I understand that the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), are proposing to develop proposals to put to the Chancellor George Osborne before his Autumn Statement in December, in which he has already promised to have thew northern economy at its heart, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg  launched his 'Northern Futures' project in Leeds in July, calling for ideas on creating an 'economic hub' in the North. 

The editor of the Yorkshire Post goes much further in the leader yesterday: 

'The new mood for a move to a more federal Britain certainly shames the pitiful power-sharing efforts made so far by Westminster...  This must now change.  With a population and an economy of similar size to those of Scotland, there is no logical reason why Yorkshire should be denied far greater powers of its own.'   

The problem in Britain is that it is a nation state whose power has been for so long centred upon London, and that its people don't have a great understanding of federalism.   Its English culture, even on the Left among the radicals and so-called revolutionaries, is one of 'Utilitarian liberalism' in which seemingly everyone wants to protect his or her pension, career, dole, or other perks and benefits provided by the centralised state.  Thus, the British Left is instinctively centralist, including paradoxically many who describe themselves as anarchists. 

In Europe, especially in France and Spain the reaction to the reality of the centralism imposed by both the French Revolution with its destruction of local interests and privileges, and the Spanish Liberal Revolution, was inspired by the anarchist Proudhon.   In France, Proudhon believed that the French Revolution had come into existence to fulfil the notion of greater local and municipal liberty, but had been diverted in this task by the ruthless political actions of the Jacobins.  In Spain, federalism was  rescued by a Catalan, Pi y Margall, who had read Proudhon, and saw how the Frenchman's ideas would suit the regional aspirations of the Spanish people.   

Pi y Margall wrote:  'Every man who has power over another is a tyrant.'  And the Englishman, Gerald Brenan, writing about Py y Margall says: 

'Discussing the meaning of “order” – that word which for more than a hundred years had been the excuse for every act of violence and injustice – he (Margall) says that true order cannot be obtained by applying force.'   

Given that Pi y Margall's federalism in Spain evolved and developed into a form of Spanish anarchism, it is surprising in England that the current tiny tribe of anarchists have not had much to say about the issue of Scottish independence and regional devolution.  It is something that I would have thought their more distinguished predecessors at Freedom Press such as Colin Ward and Nicholas Walter, would have had much to say.  Instead today, it is left to the main stream parties and the likes of Paul Salveson (who someone from the anarchist federation, recently described as a 'Labour Party hack') to wrestle with the issues of federalism and Scottish independence.  The problem with much of the English left, including the anarchist faction, is that it suffers from a form of  idée fixe* that serves to cut it off from real life situations.

 
*  idée fixe, ( French: “fixed idea”) in music and literature, a recurring theme or character trait that serves as the structural foundation of a work. The term was later used in psychology to refer to an irrational obsession that so dominates an individual’s thoughts as to determine his or her actions.

The Third Unofficial Histories Conference

THE details and appeal for Participation at the third Unofficial Histories conference, to be held on Saturday 7^th and Sunday 8^th June 2014 in Huddersfield at the University of Huddersfield , UK., are as follows:

 

The Unofficial Histories conference aims to explore how society produces, presents, and consumes history beyond official and elite versions of the past. It seeks to bring together those who wish to consider the value and purpose of historical engagements and understandings that take place within, on the edges of, or outside “official” sites that produce and transmit historical knowledge and ideas.

The third Unofficial Histories conference will take place in Huddersfield over two days:

·        Saturday 7 June 2014 will be a day of papers, presentations and debate at University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield.

·        Sunday 8 June 2014 will be a relaxed day of informal activities in Huddersfield exploring the theme of ’Unofficial Histories’.

We now invite presentation proposals for the meeting on Saturday 7th June 2014 to be held at University of Huddersfield.

You can find the full Call for Participation at http://unofficialhistories.wordpress.com/cfp2014/

Different approaches to communication are encouraged, and the deadline for proposals isWednesday 28 February 2014.

Please email proposals to unofficialhistories@outlook.com

For more information about Unofficial Histories, please see the conference website atwww.unofficialhistories.wordpress.com .

For additional details contact:

Fiona Cosson, Ian Gwinn & UH Collective

Unofficial Histories

http://unofficialhistories.wordpress.com

From Family History & Socialism with a Northern Accent to the Conspiracy Against the Person's Act

NORTHERN RADICAL HISTORY NETWORK

THE seats almost ran out at the Town Hall Tavern in Manchester last Saturday for the Northern Radical History Conference.  The attendance had a good geographical spread across the North from Cumbria in the North West to Derby and Sheffield in the South East, with Leeds, York, Huddersfield, Liverpool and Shropshire in between, not to mention Greater Manchester and Salford:  no-one came from Northumbria alas, unless we count Martin who is in exile from Durham.  There was a good mix of political tendencies including the SWP, the Labour Party as well as anarchists and libertarians , and a quarter of those present were women.  People sent in over a dozen apologies for none attendance.

As Steve Higginson from Liverpool, who was down to speak on 'Writing on the Wall', had been called to London on union business his spot was filled by Martin Bashford doing an item entitled 'Can Family History be Radical?'  Martin claimed that this kind of history could represent 'history from below'.  He said that from the 1950s there had been an evolution of family history alongside that of radical history and he referred to Raphael Samuel as hitting on the idea of studying family history and oral history.  Martin gave an example of Louise Rawe's study of the 'Match Girl's Strike' as an example of family history and likened it to investigative journalism.

Paul Salveson, as a well known northern historian living in Golcar near Huddersfield, argued that there was a distinctive Northern Socialism which, unlike the London socialists, was less influenced by Marx and more  by John Ruskin.  Paul said that Northern Socialism owed more to Carlyle, Robert Blatchford, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, Edward Carpenter, the Bolton lad Alan Clarke as well as Ruskin, and he insisted that socialism up here had a more environmental content.

The star turn of the day was Karen Springer (Derby People's History Group) speaking on 'The Alice Wheeldon Case'.  This strange First World War case, which seems to have slipped off the political and historical radar, involves a woman of working class origins, Alice Wheeldon, who became a radical and whose family living at 12, Pear Tree Road, Derby, sheltered conscientious objectors in 1916.  This ultimately led to her and her kids becoming of interest to both MI5 and the Russian KVD.  Alice was ultimately charged under the Conspiracy Against the Person's Act in 1916 and sentenced to a term of imprisonment.  This followed a trial involving witnesses like the 'amateur spy', Alex Gordon, who couldn't 'For Reasons of State' be cross-examined by the defence.  The prosecution had alleged Alice Wheeldon had acquired a quantity of poison with the intention of assassinating David Lloyd George, the then Prime Minister.  She was released from prison in late 1918 and died in early 1919.