Will Po-faced Politics Trump Local Custom?

Britannia Coconut Dancers

by Brian Bamford

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

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

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In an e-mail Derek Pattison asks:

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

Chris Draper replies:

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

Row over use of face paint for Britannia Coconut Dancers routines

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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Jamie Oliver Accused of 'Cultural Appropriation'

by Brian Bamford

JAMIE Oliver has been today accused of cultural appropriation for describing a new product as  'punchy jerk rice'..

A decision to label the microwavable rice 'jerk' has been criticised, because the product doesn't contain many of the ingredients traditionally used in a Jamaican jerk marinade.

'I'm just wondering do you know what Jamaican jerk actually is?', Labour MP Dawn Butler asked the celebrity chef.

Jamie claimed he used the name 'punchy jerk rice'..to show where he drew his culinary inspiration from. 

Jerk seasoning is usually used on chicken or fish.  The dish is often barbecued, and Jerk Rice is not an item for barbecuing.  The spice mix contains allspice and Scotch bonnet peppers - neither of which are on the ingredients list for Jamie's jerk rice product.

In October 2016, Jamie Oliver offended some Spaniards when he posted a link to a unorthodox paella recipe on his Twitter account which included chorizo: 

'Good Spanish food doesn’t get much better than paella,' the innocuous-seeming tweet read. 'My version combines chicken thighs & chorizo.' 

Furious replies came thick and fast:  'Come to Valencia to try the real paella and stop making ‘rice with whatever’, wrote Spanish journalist Vicent Marco.  'Your dish is everything but paella.'.  Other critics were less restrained.  'Your paella is an abomination,' wrote one.   'An insult not only to our gastronomy but to our culture,' said another.

When I lived in the fishing village of Denia, Alicante, in the days of General Franco, we used to go to Senora Lola's villa on the coast and after Salvador had dived to catch some sea urchins we would build a fire for the paella pan, which we would then eat a portion direct from the pan; as it was divided up equally.  When in 1919, Gerald Brenan, fresh from England where he was a member of the Bloomsbury Group,shared a meal of this kind with some local peasants he says he was immediately won over to the Spanish way of life.  Besides the sea urchin mussels and chicken, which was then cheaper than rabbit, we would include some of the chicken.giblets such as the heart.

Anna MacMiadhachain in her book 'Spanish Regional Cookery' wrote:
'The ingredients for a paella are fairly elastic and may include all kinds of seafood, including squid, prawns, lobster, mussels, clams, snail and pieces of white fish.  Chicken, rabbit and pork are the meats used,,, The methods of preparation differ too...'

Meanwhile, Francis Bissell in 'The REAL MEAT Cookbook' writes that 'According to Tinuca Lasala, a Spanish cookery teacher .... an authentic paella is not a multi-coloured mixture of fish, shellfish, chicken and sausage, decorated with stripes of pimento to look like the Spanish flag.  It is a rather plain dish, with a main ingredient of rabbit or chicken, to which in season might be added a handful of snails.'

Both the Spaniards in 2016, and the Jamaicans now, seem to be questioning the claims to authenticity of the brands now being promoted by Jamie Oliver.  Scotch bonnet chillies, de-seeded and finely chopped and 2 tsp ground allspice, seem to be the vital ingredients Jerk to go with chicken or fish.

In response to Jamie's concoction David Llewellyn wrote online: "On what planet can "garlic, ginger and jalapenos" be described as "Jerk"?

Although I must confess to using chorizo and tinned artichokes in my paella I haven't witnessed it used in dishes in Spain.  As for Jerk, my Jamaican relatives have made it for me, but I don't care for fierce Scotch bonnet chillies, and generally prefer jalapeño.

Cultural appropriation is defined as 'the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, of one people or society by members of a typically more dominant people or society'.

Probably the most important ingredient in paella, I don't know about Jerk, but I suspect it is the variety of rice used that is vital.   Francis Bissell suggests Valencia or Arborio rice to get an authenticity paella, but I often use Carnaroli.  Alas, Carnaroli is a medium-grained rice grown in the Pavia, Novara and Vercelli provinces of northern Italy.

I don't know what the Senora Lola would have said.

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Is it time to Breed for Britain?

by Les May

IN a recent article I made reference to the fall in the UK birth rate since 1960, and the impact this will have on my children's generation.  But the UK is not alone in this regard.  A fall in the birth rate since 1960 is a phenomenon which is common to all 28 EU countries according to William Reville,  emeritus professor of biochemistry at University College Cork.

In an article headed 'Why is Europe losing the will to breed?' in last Thursday's Irish Times Reville points out that to keep the population of a country constant it is necessary for each woman to give birth to 2.1 children on average.  He provides data which shows that the mean birthrate throughout the EU is only 1.56.  Ireland has the highest birth rate of 1.94 and Portugal the lowest at 1.23, though there are four more countries where the birth rate is less than 1.4.  For comparison the present birth rate in the UK is 1.81.

He goes on to say :

'European societies increasingly are no longer self sustaining.  For example, if current trends continue, every new generation of Spaniards will be 40% smaller than the previous one.  In Italy the percentage of the population over 65 will increase from 2.7% now to 18.8% in 2050.  By 2060 the population of Germany is projected to drop from 81 millions to 67 millions and by 2030 the UN projects that by 2030 the percentage of Germans in the work force will drop by 7% to 54%.  In order to compensate for this shortage Germany needs to absorb 533,000 immigrants per year, which puts Angela Merkel's current immigration policy into context.'

As I have argued in an earlier article this matters because the non-working section of the population, children, older people, the sick and the disabled, rely upon the surplus generated by the fraction of the population which is working.  Such a situation is only sustainable if the fraction of the working, i.e. younger, population is sufficiently high both to support themselves and generate a large enough surplus.

But as Reville points out in the longer term this immigration is not a solution because when the birth rate falls to about 1.5 even immigration will not hold the population steady over time.

Whilst I have focussed upon the fact that for the immediate future there seems little alternative to continued immigration whichever side is victorious in the upcoming referendum, the economic case is only part of the picture.  Large scale migration has an impact upon the host society.

As Reville puts i:

 'European civilisation has given the world many cherished values, freedoms and institutions, including the classical legacy of Greece and Rome; the rule of law; the separation of church and state; modern science; individual freedom; a fabulous heritage of music, painting, sculpture and architecture, and more.'

This too matters, because quoting Reville again:

'European values are not universal and there is no necessary reason to expect other civilisations to adopt these values simply because they come to Europe to partake of the technical and commercial fruits of western civilisation.'  

It is fashionable to ignore such concerns and to dismiss those who raise them as 'xenophobic' or 'racist', but there is a good moral case to be made for taking a more robust approach to immigration.  

Immigration benefits the individual migrant;  immigrants make the journey in search of a better life. 

It benefits a receiving nation like the UK by adding to the workforce and helps produce that surplus which will pay the pensions of those retiring around the year 2030.  But it impoverishes the donor nation especially when the migrant is a well qualified young person who has been trained at the expense of the donor nation.

There is nothing new in this.  After the WW2 the UK needed to produce and export as much as possible, (and build the Welfare State on the surplus).  So immigration from countries like Ireland was encouraged. An elderly friend who died a year ago came from Ireland at the age of 26 in 1948 to work in a Castleton (Rochdale) mill and did not think it an indignity that a medical check was made to make sure she was not pregnant.  Being as she put it 'a big strong farm girl' she was given better paid 'men's work' and became a mule spinner.  And very happy she was to spend the rest of her life here.

In Germany, Angela Merkel's cabinet has approved new measures to help the country to deal with the influx of more than a million new immigrants.  In return for a package providing immigrants with better access to the job market and the creation of 100,000 government funded 'job opportunities', migrants will be expected to undertake orientation and language courses.  The cabinet statement said:

'Learning the German language quickly, rapid integration in training, studies and the labour market, and an understanding of and compliance with the principles of living together in our society and compliance with our laws are essential for successful integration... The newcomers are to become good neighbours and citizens, which will enable us to strengthen social cohesion and prevent parallel structures in our country.'

This contrast sharply with what to date has been the UK approach which has sometimes generated an exceptionalism in the name of multi-culturalism.  Recently Labour MP Chuka Umunna has launched a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on social integration.  Whether it will 'bite the bullet' in quite the way that the German cabinet has I don't know.  Unless it argues the case for investment in integrating migrants into our way of life it may just prove to be another talking shop.

If you don't like my argument that immigration is necessary to pay the pensions of my children's generation the answer is in your own hands.  Go forth and multiply.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/brexit-and-wars-of-roses.html

http://www.chuka.org.uk/social_integration_launch

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-151319/Birth-rate-drops-lowest-ever.html

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Fertility_statistics