KEN Loach's film 'I, Daniel' Blake'* was been overlooked in the 2017 Oscar nominations. The picture which was filmed in Newcastle, and starred the Geordie comedian, Dave Johns, had been expected to grab the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science.
Since winning the Palme d’Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, two awards at the British Independent Film
Awards (Dave Johns for Best Actor and co-star Hayley Squires for Most
Promising Newcomer), last Sunday the film got five Bafta
nominations.
It got Best Film - where it will be up against the all
singing, all dancing and very lovely La La Land among others - and
Outstanding British Film, the list of Bafta possibilities also
includes Best Director for Ken Loach, Best Original Screenplay for
Paul Laverty and Best Supporting actress for the aforementioned
Hayley Squires.
So, you can see why everyone expected the film, which tells the terrifying tale of two people thwarted by the bureaucractic British Benefit's system, to be among those read out during the big reveal of the
nominations, which came direct from Los Angeles last Tuesday afternoon.
Jessica Cripps discussing I, Daniel Blake‘s
controversial exclusion from the Oscars on 'epigram' wrote:
'Successful cinema leaves an
impact on its audiences. I,
Daniel Blake reached
parliament when MP Jeremy Corbyn recommended Prime Minister May watch
the film as an example of the government’s ‘institutionalised
barbarity.'
She concludes by saying:
'The gritty realism may have failed to create a buzz in Hollywood,
but the honesty has touched the hearts of audiences worldwide; it
lives on in political ripples rather than in an Academy Award.'
* The indie winner: I, Daniel Blake
It won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, comes from a beloved British
auteur and has garnered critical acclaim, but would Ken
Loach’s I, Daniel Blake prove too tough a sell for cinema
audiences? If UK distributor eOne had any qualms, they have surely
evaporated now that I, Daniel Blake has opened with an impressive
£404,000 from 94 cinemas, and £445,000 including previews.
Stripping out the previews, site average is a very robust £4,298.
Showing posts with label newcastle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newcastle. Show all posts
Friday, 17 February 2017
Saturday, 10 December 2016
'Always Look On The Sour Side of Life'
How Ken Loach Renders Reality on Film
Reviewing 'I, Daniel Blake' & the impact of 'Social
Realism'
by Brian Bamford
Reverend David Grey, a former friar, at Ashton Jobcentre
Reverend David Grey, a former friar, at Ashton Jobcentre
THE film Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake' had the biggest domestic opening of its director's career with receipts of more than £2 million after its first three weeks. Audiences predictably have been massive in Newcastle where the film is staged. But also on social media, where the hashtag #iamdanielblake took off. It is to be released in the USA on December 23rd.
The Euro-septic MP, Iain Duncan Smith at one
point complained that the film was unkind to the staff at the job-centres and
benefit offices, who were enforcing the sanctions which is central to the
film's message.
As things turned out audiences in this country
have been flocking to see the film, which portrays the difficulties experienced
by a Newcastle joiner with an heart condition trying to make sense of the
British benefit's system.
Working class culture has a rich tradition in
many post-war British films. In 1996 I
interviewed Jim Allen, one of Ken Loach's screen-writers and a former building
site worker, who had just collaborated with Loach on the film
'Land & Freedom' about the Spanish Civil War, and had previously
worked with him on 'Raining Stones' (1993).
At that time in an essay entitled 'Rendering
Reality on Film: art and the emotion racket' (The Raven, Spring 1996),
I wrote:
'... in Raining Stones in 1993 (based on a council estate in Middleton, Greater
Manchester), they are concerned with the
problems of survival on the dole in Britain today. How to get by on a council estate amid the
loan sharks and drug pushers. Making out
and leading a decent family life, in the aftermath of an era of social blight
and desperation for the poor that shows no
sign of ending in the near future.'
Loach himself is uneasy about being identified
with 'social realism' because he
thinks it pigeon-holes his films puts off the public, he has said: 'It's
a way for critics to isolate someone's work... As a film-maker you just want
people to come with an open mind.'
Some doubt the accuracy and truth of the events
in the film, although Mr Iain Duncan Smith has given a radio interview in which
he said:that the film showed 'the very worst of anything that could
happen'.
The benefit agencies and jobcentres have long
been held responsible for inflicting suffering upon people at the bottom of
society's pile. Only last week the
National Audit Office which found that
the Government spent £147 million more on administering the system than
was saved through sanctions. In my
capacity as a Trade Union Council Secretary in Tameside, Manchester, I recently
wrote to Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the PCS union that represents
jobcentre workers:
'... the protests at Ashton Jobcentre
are now in their second year... During
the last two-years, staff working at Ashton Jobcentre, have made numerous
complaints that they have felt threatened by protests taking place outside
Ashton Jobcentre. While this has often
led to police intervention, no protestor has ever been arrested, cautioned, or
rebuked in anyway. The police have often
considered these complaints, as time-wasting or baseless... You may be interested to know that on one
occasion, the Reverend David Grey, a former friar from Gorton Monastery,
entered Ashton Jobcentre dressed in clerical vestments (see picture) to offer
staff spiritual guidance and counselling..
We were later told that the Jobcentre had summoned the police on the
pretext that staff felt threatened and intimidated by this man of God.'
This kind of corny confrontation between the
British benefit bureaucracy and the claimants has been going on for as long as
I can remember. It's an authentic
long-running farce played out daily up and down the country. Towards the end of the film, Daniel Blake
asks to sign-off as a claimant saying that applying for work with a heart
condition like his was just wasting everyone's time and only served to
humiliate him as a claimant. The film
critic Antonia Quirke has written: 'Very few people can hit you in the thoracic
cavity like Loach. Of course I cried, as
I always do...'.
This is what my mother would have called a 'tear jerker' or Bertold Brecht the 'emotion racket', but while social realism may scare some off the
cinema Danny Leigh in the Financial Times suggests:
'That is the essence of modern social realism – a place on the screen
for people often seen as statistics'.
The film has already won the Palm d'Or at this
year's Cannes Film Festival, and has scored as
a hit at the British box office.
Saturday, 3 December 2016
Blacklist Round-up
1. Spycops
http://morningstaronline.co.uk
CONFIRMED: ''Carlo Neri' who spied on picket lines was an undercover police officer.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk
https://www.theguardian.com/uk
2. Crossrail hit by action over pay and bosses victimization of UNITE steward
Defend Terry Wilson - victimized UNITE steward
6:30am Monday 5th December
Tottenham Court Rd Crossrail site
3. Laing O'Rourke
Early Day Motion
Motion S5M-02472: Colin Smyth, South Scotland, Scottish Labour, Date Lodged: 11/11/2016
Denial of Union Access by Laing O'Rourke
That the Parliament notes the recent demonstration by the construction workers’ union, UCATT, at the site of the new £212 million Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary in response to the reports that the principal contractor, Laing O’Rourke, has refused the union access; believes that this company has previously prevented union access from other publicly-funded infrastructure projects; understands that it was a member of the Consulting Association, which was reportedly involved in the blacklisting of construction workers; believes that the Scottish Government expects companies that are awarded public contracts to maintain high standards of business and professional conduct; considers that this type of activity by a contractor toward trade unions undermines the remedial steps called for in the government's procurement note on blacklisting, does not support the aspirations of the Fair Work Convention to promote a fair and balanced economy and undermines workers’ rights and increases exploitation, and supports the freedom of trade unions to organise and represent workers across the economy.
Denial of Union Access by Laing O'Rourke
That the Parliament notes the recent demonstration by the construction workers’ union, UCATT, at the site of the new £212 million Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary in response to the reports that the principal contractor, Laing O’Rourke, has refused the union access; believes that this company has previously prevented union access from other publicly-funded infrastructure projects; understands that it was a member of the Consulting Association, which was reportedly involved in the blacklisting of construction workers; believes that the Scottish Government expects companies that are awarded public contracts to maintain high standards of business and professional conduct; considers that this type of activity by a contractor toward trade unions undermines the remedial steps called for in the government's procurement note on blacklisting, does not support the aspirations of the Fair Work Convention to promote a fair and balanced economy and undermines workers’ rights and increases exploitation, and supports the freedom of trade unions to organise and represent workers across the economy.
4. US blacklist of leftwing academics
5. Thank you to Salford TUC, SNP Trade Union Group, PCS Independent Left, Unite Liverpool construction branch for invites in the past few weeks. Thank you John Bryan and Steve Acheson for representing.
Steve Acheson speaking at Salford TUC:
Steve Acheson speaking at Salford TUC:
"I was blacklisted after a safety dispute at Pfizers in Kent. I was repeatedly sacked from jobs time and again. I appeared in the Royal Courts of Justice over terrorism. The High Court was not a full victory that blacklisted workers deserved. I will be relentless until we get justice".
6. Shrewsbury Pickets
Shrewsbury Pickets have engaged Mike Mansfield QC who has submitted papers to the Court of Appeal against the continued refusal to release the official government papers for the Shrewsbury trial.
7. Ongoing:
Durham TAs
Construction Rank & File - national meeting
Sat 10th December - Newcastle
Sat 10th December - Newcastle
London Hazards AGM
Tues 13th December
Friday, 13 May 2016
Frank Kapper’s 'Utopia-on-Tyne':
Northern Anarchist Lives – No. 5 by Christopher Draper
NEWCASTLE was slow to embrace anarchism. Previous Northern Anarchist Lives instalments illustrated how Oldham, Leeds, Liverpool and Chesterfield all pioneered anarchy, but Newcastle soon made up for lost time. Once Francis Kapper arrived in 1889 he began a chain of events that gained Tyneside a unique position in international anarchist history.
Born in 1858 in the Bohemian town of Slany, twenty-five kilometres north-west of Prague, Kapper grew up in a cultural vortex of nationalist and revolutionary politics. Nowadays in the Czech Republic, Slany was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and more commonly referred to by its German name of Schlan. Inspired by the violent rhetoric of Johann Most, in 1882 Francis declared himself a revolutionary anarchist. When his activism attracted the unwelcome attention of the authorities Kapper opted for exile.
Around 1887 Francis arrived in London, where he worked as a ladies’ tailor and helped establish the Autonomie Club and its associated newspaper, “Die Autonomie”, edited by Norwegian anarchist Rasmus Gunderson. After a couple of years work dried up and Kapper headed north in search of employment. Settling in Newcastle, in November 1890 he founded the town’s first 'Anarchist-Communist Group'. By the middle of the following month he was confident enough to advertise weekly meetings at Lockhart’s Café, Bigg Market. Newcastle Anarchist-Communist Group’s (NACG) first guest speaker, on Sunday 28 December 1890 was 'Comrade Andrew Hall – the Socialist Navvy of Chesterfield' (see Northern Anarchist Lives 4), who 'addressed a large workmen’s
meeting on the Quay, and in the evening spoke against Parliamentary action.'
In those halcyon days before 'Labourism' suffocated activism, NACG wasted no opportunity in steering the local labour movement away from the illusory appeal of electoral politics. In the new year NACG hosted a series of public debates where anarchist speakers opposed the statist program of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). In March the libertarians explained their positive alternative with a talk on, 'Organisation under Anarchism'. Underlining the revolutionary aspect of their politics, on “Monday 22, Comrade Kapper opened a discussion on the Paris Commune. The opening was a very interesting review of the Commune and the events which led up to it. Great interest was evinced by the asking of many questions afterwards.”
Lockhart’s chain of refreshment rooms was a much loved feature of old Newcastle and in 1892 NACG switched their Saturday 8.30pm open meetings from the Bigg Market branch to “Lockhart’s Cocoa Room” at 37 Clayton Street. In the same place on Mondays at 7.30pm, Kapper offered French classes to the general public. An accomplished linguist, Kapper wasted no opportunity for politicking by providing students with excerpts from Kropotkin’s books as translation exercises. The group also organised Tuesday classes at the Cocoa Room for the study of Herbert Spencer’s “Data of Ethics” and even the NACG’s street corner agit-prop invariably included elements of education. This reflected the development of Kapper’s own anarchism which had moved away from revolutionary violence towards voluntary cooperation, yet still accepting others might find themselves trapped in circumstances leaving little alternative.
With NACG well-established, at the end of 1892 Kapper moved a few miles south to Sunderland to take up a tailoring job with Alexander Corder, a prominent local shopkeeper. Corder had recently moved into prestigious purpose-built premises (now Grade II listed) at 21 Fawcett Street, Sunderland after his previous shop had burned to the ground. “Lady Clara Vere de Vere invariably consults Messrs Corder about her bewitching ball costumes, and there could be no more bewitching ball costumes! The firm have taken a workshop on the ground floor 36ft X 24ft for the confection of tailor-made dresses and have a most superior cutter on the premises so that an elegant fit may be guaranteed.” Alexander Corder proved a sympathetic employer and as a Quaker activist he publicly opposed the government’s “Irish Coercion Act” and he wasn’t the only patron Kapper acquired in Sunderland.
His new job didn’t divert Francis from politics as Freedom reported; “ A new group has been formed in Sunderland and as our energetic comrade Kapper is there now we expect it will soon be a big group”. In May 1894 the retail co-operative movement held its annual Congress in Sunderland and Kapper secured a ticket enabling him to attend discussions and debates. A few speakers urged the organisation to go beyond cooperative retailing to promote producer co-ops and this ignited Kapper’s imagination. Since translating Kropotkin’s books for his Newcastle French classes he’d pondered the idea of growing crops under glass in cooperative enterprise as “anarchy in action”. The Congress helped him formulate a cunning plan. Conversations with two inspiring individuals at the Congress provided further encouragement. Tolstoyan anarchist John Coleman Kenworthy (future biog) supplied ideological support whilst John Key, a government contractor and public house licensee offered finance.
In March 1895 Kapper and Key published a prospectus addressed “To all Friends and Sympathisers of Land Colonisation” and especially to the “more fortunate brothers and sisters” with jobs and therefore money to help launch “A Free Communist and Co-operative Colony.” Instead of waiting for the revolution, Kapper aimed to show Kropotkin’s theories of mutual aid and anarchist-communism could be effected immediately. He wrote asking him to act as treasurer for their intended agricultural colony, recognising that Kropotkin’s reputation would attract publicity and financial support for their scheme. Kropotkin replied: “By no means should I like to discourage you and your comrades…” but he nevertheless declined to act as treasurer as he “had little confidence in schemes of communistic communes started under present conditions.”
Kropotkin offered advice but other anarchists came up with cash. William Morris’s Hammersmith Socialist Society sent money, so did an anonymous “Wealthy London Anarchist” (possibly George Davison) whilst Nannie Dryhurst and her lover Henry Nevison sent eight pounds. Sufficiently encouraged Francis Kapper got on his bike (bought on hire-purchase) and cycled around looking for a suitable site before settling on a smallholding near Heaton on the north-eastern fringe of Newcastle. A couple of year later the Clarion concisely described the enterprise:
'Several Newcastle Communists resolve to test experimentally theories propounded by Prince Kropotkin in his work La Conquete de Pain. With that object they took a farm at Clousden Hill, consisting of twenty acres of inferior land… There is, we believe, nothing else like it throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles. It is an experiment in Communism as applied to farm life.'
There was huge interest in the scheme and lots of applicants asked to join. Although colonists came and went, a core of about twenty-four, including half a dozen children, settled. Of these, only about a third could fairly be described as anarchists with the rest assorted socialists (SDF, Home Colonisation Association and ILP). Some were local but they included Southerners, Scots, a Belgian, a German, a Dane, two Czechs and a Swiss. There were tailors, a shoemaker, a philosopher, coal miner, engineer, a clerk and a couple of gardeners but precious few had any farming experience. On the face of it, a mixed bunch facing a stiff challenge.
Even the anarchist faction weren’t of one mind and it’s worth examining who they were. Besides Kapper there were six more anarchists, four single men, Richard Gundersen, Christopher Davis, Ladislaus Gumplowitz and Francis Sedlak and married couple, “Frank” and “Elizabeth” Starr and their four year old daughter, Amy. Richard was the nineteen year old son of Rasmus Gundersen, Kapper’s comrade back in the days of the Autonomie Club. Frances Joseph Starr (1866-1931) and Amy Elizabeth Starr (b.1869) were a London couple keen to give practical effect to their Tolstoyan beliefs. Francis Sedlak (1873-1935) was a countryman of Kapper’s and a Tolstoyan who’d travelled widely, including a trip to Russia to meet the man himself. A determined pacifist, Sedlak had already seen the inside of several jails. Gumplowicz (1869-1942), an old comrade of Gustave Landauer, was a German
Professor of Law, recently released from a Berlin prison for upsetting the authorities by speaking up for the unemployed. Christopher Charles Davis (b.1863) was also not long out of gaol. Cruelly abused as a child by his father, in the words of his friends:
'Davis grew up to be a street-ruffian, a terror to all respectable folk, oftener in prison than out, until (in 1886) chancing to be on Clerkenwell Green he heard an exposition of Socialism…a hope was kindled in his mind…the old rackety life became a thing of the past”. In 1893 Davis made a dramatic political protest, smashing a Birmingham jeweller’s window with a brick and hurling the valuable contents across the highway. In court Davis made an impassioned political plea from the dock concluding with an invitation to the jury to refuse judgement and instead walk out of the building. They declined to do so and as he was sentenced to 15 months with hard labour he defiantly yelled, “Hurrah for Anarchy!'
At Clousden, even the jailbirds proved pacific. Chris Davies was celebrated for his entertaining recitations whilst one of the state-socialists, Rudolph Wunderlich (1869-1933), was a wizard on the mandolin but finance remained a continuing anxiety; there was sufficient to cover the lease but seeds, animals, greenhouses, tools and much besides also had to be paid for. A few colonists contributed a little capital to the scheme and Kapper kept working at Corder’s for a while to supply supplementary income but money was tight. When anarchist pioneer of the Garden City Movement, Bernhard Kampffmeyer, visited in October 1895 he reported his admiration and anxiety to Freedom:
'All that I saw there seemed to me very interesting; the men appeared to me skilful, practical, industrious and to possess the essential quality of being able to agree with each other. In short the general conditions promise a success in my opinion. But one thing is lacking: - Too eager to realise their ideal, too sanguine to wait any longer, these men made perhaps the mistake of starting without the necessary capital…'
Kropotkin visited in January 1896 and appeared reassured, “he was much gratified with what he had seen and the manner in which the farm was being worked.” Tom Mann, Jim Connell, Tom Maguire and Elisee Reclus all witnessed Clousden’s anarchy in action. There was so much interest that eventually the community asked intending visitors to book ahead and arrive at convenient times, allowing colonists adequate opportunity to work their smallholding.
Visited by a reporter from the Northern Echo in August 1896:
'Whilst we stood in the tomato house admiring the splendid fruit produced by the Excelsior, General Grant and Perfection varieties Mr Kapper related the conditions under which they first set to work. The holding consisted of twelve acres of grassland, six acres of standing oats and a quarter acre of potatoes. There was a house, barn, pig-sty, cow-byre, stable etc. and we took over for £100 the stock, implements, standing crop of oats and the hay crop. The latter was cut and we only had to stack it. The oats we mowed by hand and found it very stiff work. In November we purchased a cow which paid well for herself bringing in £1 a week for seven or eight weeks. We also fed up two pigs. We did what we could in the way of breaking up the ground with the spade for garden purposes. Altogether we brought about four acres of ground into garden state and planted it with peas (which gave a very good return) cabbages, potatoes etc.'
'We have bought' said Comrade Kapper 'about 2,000 fruit bushes – currants, gooseberries etc. – to replace the old wood that we found on the place when we took it. We are also starting a small orchard.'
Both Newcastle and Sunderland Co-operative Societies supported the project by purchasing produce and sales were generally good but production was problematic. The large glasshouse blew down twice in the course of construction and a tall chimney collapsed of its own accord because of inept, unskilled construction. Despite the colony’s formally stated principles, women ended up doing “women’s work” whilst many of the men did little work at all. In truth, most colonists rapidly discovered their view of living the good life on the land didn’t match the reality of long gruelling hours labouring in cold, muddy fields sustained only by idealism and a basic monotonous diet.
Despite the difficulties Kapper remained upbeat and in October 1897 travelled down to Essex to help fellow anarchist James Evans establish another settlement, as Reynold’s News reported:
'Mr Kapper the founder of the successful Anarchist colony at Clousden Hill Farm, near Newcastle-on-Tyne is a working tailor. The colony is managed on purely Anarchist principles. There is no Government Committee, no majority rule, all business being settled by unanimous agreement and in a public meeting of colonists. The question of wages has also received a solution, every member of the community taking sufficient for his needs from the wealth accumulated by the labour of all.'
To one disillusioned ex-colonist, Kapper’s encomium was a red rag to a bull as Reynold’s News observed: 'With reference to the Kapper Anarchist Colony at Clousden Hill Farm, Forest Hall near Newcastle, Charles Richardson, an ex-colonist, 54, Hall Street, South Shields, denies that the colony is a success. It is, he says, in debt and members are leaving for the towns to seek work. He also alleges that the majority of the members are not Anarchists, one member frequently blocking all business.'
The colony struggled on but the cat was out of the bag and confidence both externally and internally collapsed. Ideological fault lines widened into unbridgeable divisions and within a year all pretence of Anarchist-Communism was abandoned. The colony broke up leaving just two non-anarchist gardeners, Rudolph Wunderlich and Hans Rasmussen to run the smallholding on strictly commercial lines until their business was declared bankrupt in 1902.
Of the six anarchist colonists only Sedlak wanted to continue the experiment. He walked from Newcastle to join an Essex colony but on discovering that too had disintegrated, continued on to the Cotswolds. There he joined the Whiteway colony where he formed a “free-union” with anarchist author, Nellie Shaw, with whom he lived happily ever after until his death in 1935.
Kapper, in the worst anarchist tradition, neglected to evaluate the results of this unique libertarian experiment, reinforcing the opinion of critics who consider the failure of Clousden as the inevitable result of naive politics. After the collapse Francis resumed full-time ladies’ tailoring, moved to Southampton, embraced bourgeois values and in 1910 married tailoress Ethel May Slawson. Ethel Kapper operated her own business, “RITA – COSTUMIER & MILLINER” from Commercial Road, Southampton whilst Francis ran a separate tailoring business from home at 8 Cranbury Place. Kapper was only once reminded of Newcastle, when he supplied clothes to Charles Gulliver, an actor appearing in pantomime there. After Gulliver failed to pay his bill, Kapper had no hesitation in suing him for the money.
Francis Sedlak 'attributed the failure of the Communistic colony to the fact that theorists who promoted it looked only to the good qualities of mankind, forgetting the ill – Egotism is inherent in this – he said, and it is idle to pretend not to be conscious of it.'
Frank Starr largely agreed with this conclusion:
'The cause of its non-success was our poor human nature. All wanted to lead and none would follow…many had shirked the work, or had only done it when and how they pleased… None were there with a view to making money and if a few were the poorer for it they had gained experience and health, which as Emerson says is the first wealth…In conclusion, he said he had enough of Communism. We were a bit too previous. In another existence – say 5,000 years hence – a Communistic settlement might have a chance.'
In 1901 Whiteway also abandoned anarchist-communism as unworkable but unlike Clousden it didn’t disintegrate but instead embraced a more practical mutualist, Proudhonian model. Regretably, most anarchists ignored these practical demonstrations of Kropotkin’s over-optimism but we don’t know what Kapper concluded for he lost interest in anarchism; dying, aged 72 in 1930 in Southampton, a respected businessman.
For Peace, Love & Anarchism
Christopher Draper
Saturday, 30 April 2016
Chesterfield’s 'Anarchist of the Abyss'
by Christopher Draper
FOR seven weeks in 1903 Jack London dossed down with drifters and derelicts in East End lodging houses. On returning to America, Jack famously published his account of these exploits as the hugely influential, 'People of the Abyss'. Three years earlier, a Chesterfield anarchist published an account of life in common lodging houses drawn from a lifetime’s experience tramping around the North as a militant navvy. Andrew Hall’s historic account has been completely ignored and his activism unappreciated, until now.
Hall was defiantly bottom drawer, a navvy who looked, lived and spoke the part and no intellectual slouch. According to the local paper, at a Hull 'Paris Commune Commemoration' in 1893, Andrew 'traced back the history of the fight now pending for more bread and more pleasures of life for the toilers…He held that it was better to die fighting than starve like a rat in a hole.' Andrew Hall was a navvy with attitude.
Born in Coatbridge in 1851, as a teenager Andrew laboured in coal mines until, aged 17, a protracted strike forced him to leave home and seek work south of the border. On the tramp around Newcastle, Bishop Auckland and Durham, Andrew slept in common lodging houses until he found employment navvying on the railways. After a period in the early eighties employed on the 'Hull to Barnsley', Hall followed the line south to London.
Years wielding a pick in cold, wet, dangerous conditions meant “Navvy Hall” didn’t need lectures from metropolitan soap box agitators to hate bosses but he lapped up their ideas of an organised fight back. In 1886 Andy joined the Hampstead branch of Britain’s first Marxist party, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF).
To militants of the SDF Andrew certainly looked the business. In complete contrast to frock-coated, top-hatted stockbroker Henry Mayhew Hyndman, the party’s self-appointed leader. Hall’s fustian jacket, flat cap and twisted muffler shouted “navvy”. Both cap and jacket were flamboyantly discarded as Andy invariably introduced himself to audiences with the words, “I’m Andrew Hall the navvy!” Crowds loved him but the authorities despised the rabble-rousing “Navvy Hall”.
Hall’s agitational ability was immediately exploited by the party elite who allotted him a prime spot on the “Number 2 platform” at the NW corner of Trafalgar Square for their Sunday 29th August 1886 demo. The rambling resolution put to the crowd concluded by urging the SDF, “to secure for the producing classes collective control over the railways, shipping, mines, factories, machinery and land…and to recommence at once their vigorous agitation in favour of the organization of the labour of the unemployed.”
The press denounced the rhetoric but praised the attire of most platform performers, 'Nearly all the orators wore red ties, scarf, rosette, ribbon or red flowers. Not a few were well dressed and wore top hats'. Sartorial standards were maintained by the socialists at the evening’s celebratory dinner, 'The company might have been one entire and perfect bourgeoisie in the predominance of black coat and the hat of civilisation…one of the few exceptions was the navvy Hall, who literally came in his working clothes, though they were very clean ones and who sat at meal with his shirt sleeves tucked up and showing the brown arms as high as the elbows and in his belcher twisted with nautical freedom round his sinewy throat.'
In September Hall was arrested for “obstruction”, along with comrade Ernest Rossiter, for speaking from a chair in Bell Street, London. According to police, “He was surrounded by about 500 people, entirely blocking the roadway and footway…During the meeting three cabs passed along Bell Street and had to pull up and stop, while the speakers got off their stand and a way was made through the crowd for them to pass. The cabmen and the fares were booed by the crowd and one cab and fare was followed and chased into Edgeware Road.”
Religionists and temperance soap-boxers who caused similar obstruction were ignored by public authorities who confined their efforts to driving socialist agitators off the streets.
A month later, the Sussex Courier, suggested the SDF’s new roving agitator was guilty of more than obstruction and dress-code faux pas, intimating that, “Navvy Andrew Hall whose outrageous threats and language towards the upper and trading classes” had incited Tunbridge Wells’ socialists to embark on an incendiary spree causing considerable damage to three commercial premises.
On 9 November 1886, the day of the London Lord Mayor’s Show, Andrew Hall, Tom Mann and comrades organised an unofficial Trafalgar Square counter-demonstration to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed and the public’s right to free speech. It was promptly banned by the authorities but as a defiant crowd gathered, “Andrew Hall - who previous to addressing the crowd, took off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves – said, amid great cheering, that they meant to show Sir Charles Warren that no unauthorised and irresponsible Chief Constable was to be allowed to proclaim a meeting of British subjects…at no distant date the working men would raise in their strength and sweep away the last vestiges of despotism…The speaker’s gesture bespoke a considerable acquaintance with the art of self-defence – Looks as if he wanted to hit him a clip under the jaw – remarked a critical bearer – and this won him the sympathy of the crowd.”
“The resolutions had scarcely been passed when the police…commenced to clear the Square. The foot police pushed and elbowed the people off as well as they could and were aided by mounted police. A body of Life Guards was sent by Sir Charles Warren and immediately rode up”. Andrew’s politics were too revolutionary for the SDF, not straightforward Marxism nor undiluted anarchy but more an iconoclastic libertarian communism. He was deeply suspicious of constitutional politics and a powerful advocate of insurrection.
After the Trafalgar Square demo the SDF sent Hall north. According to the Times, “The relief of the unemployed is becoming a serious question in Northampton. Many persons are out of employment and meetings of Socialists and the unemployed are held on Sunday mornings. A London Socialist named Hall appeared at the police-court yesterday with a following of unemployed and Socialists. He asked the magistrates for assistance and on account of his behaviour was ordered out of the place. Hall then harangued the crowd outside the Town-Hall…Hall advised the men to attend the police court in hundreds next morning and show the magistrates they would not be trampled on by the police nor by the upper classes…The following day police arrested two local men assisting Hall’s campaign. They were questioned and following their eventually release an open-air demonstration was held on the large market square, when the navvy Hall made a bitter speech against the Corporation.”
The following Sunday Andrew was recalled to London to speak from the platform at another mass demo in Trafalgar Square. “Sir Charles Warren has at his disposal not less than 4,000 men, nearly a hundred of whom are mounted… and two guns of the Royal Horse Artillery battery will be located in the vicinity of Charing Cross…loose stones and debris, which might be used as missiles were removed from the streets…” but they needn’t have worried, the socialists were well behaved. Not so the following February when Hall played a leading role in disrupting a religious service at St Paul’s Cathedral. The SDF issued the following (abbreviated) statement, “The Archbishop of Canterbury has been asked to preach to the unemployed next Sunday in St Paul’s Cathedral on a text chosen by one of our comrades, Let him that stole steal no more but rather let him labour…Modern Christianity is essentially a middle-class creed with a capitalist paradise here and hereafter held up before its votaries to cheer them on in their struggle for personal gain on earth and individual glorification in Heaven.” Andrew and chums secreted themselves inside the Cathedral whilst most of the demonstrators stayed outside with banners and flags, “Most of which were red but some were black with white letters…one sentence ran, I was hungry and ye gave me no meat . Another was, I was naked and ye clothed me not. The red flags were
surmounted by caps of Liberty”. “That the purpose of the gathering was to disturb the congregation and to scoff at religion was very early seen…The doors were closed and then there were heard by those under the dome the sounds of speech-making and cheering…from the spot where the disturbance occurred came the navvy Andrew Hall.” No arrests were made and Navvy Hall continued campaigning for revolution without regard for the approval of the authorities or the party hierarchy.
In February 1887, after the authorities banned a torchlit parade Andrew had organised to pass through the West End he held a token demonstration at Clerkenwell Green. Torches were defiantly lit, Hall’s incendiary rhetoric delivered and an hour’s frenzied window smashing and riot ensued before the police finally regained control of the streets. A few weeks later, after one of Andrew’s SDF colleagues was harassed and then arrested by police, Hall organised an “Indignation Meeting” at Marble Arch that thousands attended. “Mr Hall (a navvy who took his coat off to speak though a few snowflakes were falling) said that for the future when one comrade was arrested Sir Charles Warren would find that ten men would jump into the breach (Cheers).”
By 1888 Andrew had already accrued eleven arrests and considered it expedient to go navvying on the “Towcester & Olney”. Revisiting Northampton he supported the SDF election campaign with Hyndman but his help proved a two-edged sword as the local candidate observed, “The press boycotted (his campaign) until the services of Navvy Hall were obtained and no sooner did he use rough language that his remarks were inserted.” Hall’s rough language offended polite society and Mr Hyndman was not amused but this only encouraged Andrew to ditch SDF Marxism and embrace the anti-parliamentary politics of the Socialist League (SL).
In 1889 Navvy Hall moved north to Chesterfield where he helped Raymond Unwin start an SL inspired socialist group and attracted the favourable attention of Edward Carpenter. In June, Edward cycled over from Millthorpe with his friend Jim Shortland, “with a bicycle between us, to Chesterfield for an evening meeting in the market-place. There is a navvy there – Andrew Hall – a regular rough looking chap who lives in a common lodging house, who speaks on Socialism every Sunday evening. He has read a lot of history and all sorts and speaks well. There was an attentive audience of 400 to 500.”
On Sunday 1st June 1890 the pair shared a platform, “In the morning Andrew spoke on Brimmington Common and in the evening a large audience assembled in the Market Place and in spite of the rain kept together and listened attentively to the addresses given by comrades Hall and Carpenter”. In Sheffield, a couple of weeks later, “Our comrade Andrew Hall, from Chesterfield, addressed some very large meetings.” Two weeks after that, in Nottingham, Andrew addressed a conference of socialist clubs. Hall returned to Nottingham in late July where his militant brand of socialism was much appreciated, “Andrew Hall of Chesterfield gave three stirring addresses to very large audiences. He created great interest by the way in which he spoke of gaining our object by any means. He advocated the same methods in defence of our cause as were used against us. We are expecting some lively meetings when our comrade again visits us which he has promised to do in a few weeks time.” When he visited Leicester in early August, “Hall’s evening address was truly eloquent and the audience was much impressed.” The Hull dockers were equally impressed a couple of weeks later, though the unappreciative police arrested him for “obstruction”. Fined five shillings plus costs, Andrew refused to pay and was sent down for seven days. When Tyneside libertarians founded Newcastle Communist Anarchist group in December, Navvy Hall was the man they chose to headline their first public event where he “addressed a large workmen’s meeting on the Quay and in the evening spoke against Parliamentary action.”
Andrew’s fiery spirit struck a chord with Sheffield navvies who begged him to represent them against the bosses. In autumn 1890 the Working Man’s Times reported that, “Mr Andrew
Hall, the Secretary of the Sheffield and District General Labourer’s Union has been actively engaged during the past weeks organising men at various firms in the town and much credit is due to him for the energy he has shown in that direction…We are bound to admit that whilst admiring the ability of the lecturer, we think such statements as ”that if all capitalists went to ---- tomorrow we could do without them”, are calculated to do more harm than good and would counsel moderation on some of these points.” Forty years on one old labourer recalled Andrew’s militancy in the Sheffield Daily Independent, “Navvy Hall’s policy was Strike first and negotiate afterwards!”
It wasn’t long before Andrew’s men exercised their collective muscle as trouble erupted at Messrs Samuel Osborne and Company’s Rutland Works. After a foreman tried to discipline eight labourers the rest came out in sympathy and instructed the management to negotiate through Secretary Hall. “The men have today chalked the walls with the word STRIKE and on the door has been written: Don’t come to work here there is a strike!”
Invariably labelled “Socialist”, Navvy Hall’s politics were roughly anarchist and he often accompanied well-known libertarian speakers on the most advanced platforms. In November 1890 Andrew commemorated the judicial killing of the Chicago anarchists alongside Cores, Samuels, Charles and Maguire at Leeds. At another Commemoration alongside Cores, Creaghe, Samuels et al at Sheffield Hall was “received with the utmost enthusiasm by the large audience”. By then Andrew’s fiery rhetoric had begun to worry the more pacific Carpenter faction. George Hukin recorded his own anxiety in a letter to Carpenter, “I suppose you’ll have heard how Andrew Hall during his speech dropped to his knees and, well I’ll give you his own words; “With the shadow of the rope hanging over me, I call upon each of you to vow with me that we will never rest till the murder of our Comrade has been avenged, blood for blood and life for life” and etc. There was a good big meeting and nearly everybody held up their hands for the vow. I must say I didn’t like the proceedings much – too much blood and vengeance about it.”
Undeterred, in 1891 Andrew commemorated Chicago at the old Alhambra Palace in Porter Street, Hull alongside anarchists Naewiger (future biog), Gustav Smith, George Cores and Chas Reynolds. His political principals proved more enduring than his union career. Despite adding the endorsement of Tyneside labourers to his appointment by the Sheffield men he soon met opposition from union “moderates”. As local unions merged to create a national organisation a bureaucratic mentality and strike-averse policy developed, which Hall virulently opposed and he didn’t expect any support from Sheffield Trades Council; “The gravamen of the charges was that that body was the tool of the Liberal Party and that it was doing nothing in the interests of the working classes…The working classes did not get a fair share of what they produced and would not do so as long as they had trade union officials who were drawing their £2, £3 and £4 per week for doing nothing. He did not believe in paying such high salaries. They ought to be paid at the same rate as when they were working in the shop and then they would not go among the better classes for he found when they did and they got onto Town councils and other offices they were no good to working men.” In 1892 Hall resigned in disgust from the union he’d help create.
Throughout the 1890’s Hall was based at the Beehive Common Lodging House, Knifesmith Gate, Chesterfield. The Derbyshire Courier published a brief description, “The rooms on the ground floor are dark and the ceilings low and broken. The walls of the bedrooms on the ground floor are damp and the floor is paved with bricks. The living room for the lodgers is dark, its floor is in bad repair and it is unfit for use. The scullery and pantry are roofed with glass skylights which are in a very bad state of repair. The back yard is small and its surface in bad repair as are the also the floors of the slop-closet privies. Only three of the eight bedrooms on the first floor are fit for use…” but according to Andrew it was preferable to other doss houses. At Alfreton “there’s three men, or if there is a double bed, six men for each bed (or rather bundle of rags, which is a more accurate description) every 24 hours: the moment one man gets out there is another waiting to take his place”.
In March 1893 Andrew Hall revisited Hull to speak at the Liberty Club Commune Celebration (as referred to in the introduction). Andrew “held that the worker was kept, in a large extent, in ignorance by the parson who sometimes stated that it is God’s will that some people should be poor…it was the will of the profit monger and sweater. He referred to the gallant conduct of the soldiers of ’71 who, when ordered to fire on the people, refused to do so, and fraternised with the people. He held that it was better to die fighting than starve like a rat in a hole; and a bullet at a barricade was more preferable than a crust in a slum. He held that a man who starved was a coward.”
Andrew spent the summer of 1893 navvying at the Loughborough sewage works. By September he was back at the Beehive when a fellow lodger and his mate were killed navvying in separate incidents at Calow tunnel. Thomas Carrigan was crushed by a fall of dirt in a “shoot hole” following the death just the day before of John Morris who was hit by a runaway wagon. Mr Busby, the coroner made no criticism of safety on site, simply recording both fatalities as “Accidental death”.
Without abandoning his revolutionary ideas in 1893 Andrew Hall joined the newly founded Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the following July at a huge gathering in Sheffield he spoke from the platform alongside Labour luminaries Keir Hardie, Pete Curran and Emmiline Pankhurst. Ignoring ILP policy, Andrew continued to also speak up for anarchism. As late as November 1896 Hall was billed alongside Louise Michel, Joseph Perry, Alfred Marsh, John Turner, Will Banham and Herbert Stockton (future biog) at what Freedom described as “the largest ever commemoration of the Chicago anarchists” at Holborn Town Hall.
As the century came to a close so (almost) did the English anarchist movement, eclipsed by Labourism. Andrew Hall was too old for navvying and in September 1900 was glad to accept an offer of employment as live-in manager of the Beehive. As a local personality, the editor of the Derbyshire Times commissioned Andrew to reflect on his lifetime’s experience of common lodging houses across the North. The result was a fascinating series of articles published in the paper as, “Sketches of Lodging House Life”; and then nothing.
In 1905 Chesterfield Council condemned the Beehive as “unfit for human habitation” and it was pulled down without a murmur from Andrew. Where was he? He wasn’t among a handful of anarchists whose activism survived until the 1910 syndicalist revival and he never rose through the ranks of the Labour Party. Did he just retire from activism or perhaps succumb to early death and an unmarked grave?
Peace & Love
Christopher Draper
(Northern Anarchist Lives – 4)
(NAL: 1 Oldham Anarchism, 2 Lupton from Leeds, 3 A Liverpool Nut Case…next month… NAL 5 – “Frank Kapper’s Cunning Plan”)
Wednesday, 19 November 2014
Newcastle Rank & File Conference
LAST Saturday, the rank and file construction
workers held their conference in Newcastle.
It was attended by some 80 workers in the British building trade from
Scotland, Yorkshire, Liverpool, Manchester and London, as well as
Newcastle. Topics under discussion
included 'Umbrella Companies'; the JIB; the blacklist; and the by-election for
the position on Unite's National Executive Council, a position left vacant by
the surprise resignation of John Sheridan.
Media representatives from Channel Four's Dispatches program were present
and conducted interviews after the conference.
Tameside TUC's book 'Boys on the Blacklist' was
promoted and supported by many of the electricians and building workers
present. Concern was expressed by the
delegate from Tameside TUC about revelations that Pluto Press, the intended
publishers of the forthcoming book about blacklist by the journalist, Phil
Chamberlain and the activist Dave Smith, had indicated that they were no longer
willing to publish it. This came as the
Tameside TUC delegate to the conference told of a secret e-mail from a senior
Unite official to the Unite legal department, in which it was stated that 'Boys
on the Blacklist' had 'material in it that had not been approved (by Unite)'
and effectively dismissing the book as an 'amatuer effort'.
We were told well over a month ago by sources close
to the Blacklist Support Group that at least one solicitor's letter had been
sent to threaten the forthcoming book on blacklisting. If it turns out that both the employers and
some trade senior union officers are trying to hinder publication and distribution
of literature about the history of blacklisting in the British building trade
it is a sad day for democracy in this country.
Meanwhile, the Rank
& File conference agreed to support the forthcoming strike action in
November; to promote a campaign against Laing O'Rourke; and to back Frank
Morris for the vacant position on the National Executive Council.
Monday, 17 February 2014
High Court Planning Decision
A Judicial Review is took place at the High Court, London on the 12th, February, at which SAVE Britain’s Heritage challenged Gateshead Council over plans to demolish 300 houses in Saltwell and Bensham in a blatant continuation of the destructive Pathfinder policy.
SAVE is challenging Gateshead Council over retrospective planning permission that they granted themselves last summer for the demolition of 115 houses two years previously without the requisite documents, and for permission to demolish a further 180 houses, some of which are still occupied. In order to secure retrospective planning permission, the Environmental Impact Assessment dictates that ‘exceptional circumstances’ must be proved.
In addition Richard Harwood QC has argued that Gateshead council failed to consider the views of English Heritage, is in breach of regulations and the EIA directive. Gateshead consulted English Heritage after it had decided to grant planning permission and did not consider EH’s reply. EH indicated that the information provided by Gateshead on the significance of the housing to be demolished was inadequate in planning policy and EIA terms and that the housing in question has heritage significance. Gateshead Council also failed to take into consideration conservation advice from their own officers.
Despite Judicial Review proceedings being underway the Council proceeded to commence demolition last November, following which SAVE secured an injunction, that it was necessary to renew following more demolition activity on one of the streets. The Council said they were making the buildings sound following the storm and blamed SAVE for being unable to do so.
1,240 houses in the area were to have been demolished under Pathfinder, which sought to address alleged ‘market failure’ in housing in certain parts of Northern cities. The housing targeted has been predominantly Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing. The issue was not one of vacancy or of uninhabitable homes – prior to the announcement of these schemes, occupation levels were normal, homes were perfectly habitable and the cost of repairs and updating would be modest. The claim of market failure was essentially that house prices were lower than elsewhere. Of the 1,240 earmarked for demolition only 115 have been demolished.
The houses in question are handsome rows of terraced houses built on a hill with an attractive vista opening out towards Newcastle. The repetitive terraces create an atmosphere of order and calm. The area is low-rise and of a human scale. The entire area is made up these houses, most of them ‘Tyneside flats’ and have two main entrances leading to two separate flats. Some residents in non-threatened areas have chosen to knock them through two-into-one. The area, apart from the condemned terraces, are fully occupied and popular homes.
The area of 115 demolished homes is beside Saltwell Road. Residents say that businesses have suffered following the loss of 115 houses. Many shops on Saltwell Road are now boarded up due to the blight. The blight is ongoing on the two other blocks of housing that the council has earmarked for demolition.
SAVE's position is clear: refurbished, the terraces still standing would make handsome homes, as can be found in the rest of the area. This would be in line with the government's line on empty homes and in line with the advice from the Ambassador of Empty Homes, native of Gateshead George Clarke, who clearly states in his 12 recommendation to the government:
'Refurbishing and upgrading existing homes should always be the first and preferred option rather than demolition.'
Planning permission was granted in August 2013. SAVE requested a public inquiry but it was refused, despite the fact that an application of similar scale for the Welsh Streets was ‘called in’ in Liverpool at the same time.
SAVE Britain’s Heritage is standing shoulder to shoulder with the Saltwell and Bensham Residents’Association.
SAVE is challenging Gateshead Council over retrospective planning permission that they granted themselves last summer for the demolition of 115 houses two years previously without the requisite documents, and for permission to demolish a further 180 houses, some of which are still occupied. In order to secure retrospective planning permission, the Environmental Impact Assessment dictates that ‘exceptional circumstances’ must be proved.
In addition Richard Harwood QC has argued that Gateshead council failed to consider the views of English Heritage, is in breach of regulations and the EIA directive. Gateshead consulted English Heritage after it had decided to grant planning permission and did not consider EH’s reply. EH indicated that the information provided by Gateshead on the significance of the housing to be demolished was inadequate in planning policy and EIA terms and that the housing in question has heritage significance. Gateshead Council also failed to take into consideration conservation advice from their own officers.
Despite Judicial Review proceedings being underway the Council proceeded to commence demolition last November, following which SAVE secured an injunction, that it was necessary to renew following more demolition activity on one of the streets. The Council said they were making the buildings sound following the storm and blamed SAVE for being unable to do so.
1,240 houses in the area were to have been demolished under Pathfinder, which sought to address alleged ‘market failure’ in housing in certain parts of Northern cities. The housing targeted has been predominantly Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing. The issue was not one of vacancy or of uninhabitable homes – prior to the announcement of these schemes, occupation levels were normal, homes were perfectly habitable and the cost of repairs and updating would be modest. The claim of market failure was essentially that house prices were lower than elsewhere. Of the 1,240 earmarked for demolition only 115 have been demolished.
The houses in question are handsome rows of terraced houses built on a hill with an attractive vista opening out towards Newcastle. The repetitive terraces create an atmosphere of order and calm. The area is low-rise and of a human scale. The entire area is made up these houses, most of them ‘Tyneside flats’ and have two main entrances leading to two separate flats. Some residents in non-threatened areas have chosen to knock them through two-into-one. The area, apart from the condemned terraces, are fully occupied and popular homes.
The area of 115 demolished homes is beside Saltwell Road. Residents say that businesses have suffered following the loss of 115 houses. Many shops on Saltwell Road are now boarded up due to the blight. The blight is ongoing on the two other blocks of housing that the council has earmarked for demolition.
SAVE's position is clear: refurbished, the terraces still standing would make handsome homes, as can be found in the rest of the area. This would be in line with the government's line on empty homes and in line with the advice from the Ambassador of Empty Homes, native of Gateshead George Clarke, who clearly states in his 12 recommendation to the government:
'Refurbishing and upgrading existing homes should always be the first and preferred option rather than demolition.'
Planning permission was granted in August 2013. SAVE requested a public inquiry but it was refused, despite the fact that an application of similar scale for the Welsh Streets was ‘called in’ in Liverpool at the same time.
SAVE Britain’s Heritage is standing shoulder to shoulder with the Saltwell and Bensham Residents’Association.
Friday, 27 April 2012
Miss Julie
IN THE current Northern Voices 13, now on sale at most of our outlets, Chris Draper judges his Six O' the Best Theatres of the North of England. The Royal Exchange, Manchester must figure in his thinking here as he ponders the architectural gems among his 'six superlative venues' of the North: up for consideration here must be such wonderful towns and cities as Leeds, Newcastle, Scarborough, Blackpool, York, Liverpool, Hull, and Keswick's Theatre on the Lake; which will come out top?
Currently the Exchange must be a runner with northerner, Maxine Peake,now performing as 'Miss Julie' in August Strindberg's play of the same name.
Of this play The Guardian reviewer of 'Miss Julie' at Manchester's Royal Exchange writes:
'Maxine Peake stated in a 2011 Guardian interview that the two things that make her most unhappy are 'misogyny and capitalism'. It's a fine sentiment, though it makes you wonder if she's finding much joy in the role of an aristocratic woman whose transgression below stairs earns her the contempt of her father's valet.'
While The Telegraph reviewer writes:
'This is a production that penetrates the heart of Strindberg’s disconcerting masterpiece, and one of the best productions I have ever seen at the Royal Exchange.'
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Royal Exchange, Manchester: Until 12 May
Box office:
0161 833 9833 Venue website David Eldridge's new version sticks closely to Strindberg's original recipe of seduction and remorse. Though the language has been roughened up a bit (the Italian lake district is dismissed as 'a pisshole'), the location, a late-19th-century Swedish estate on midsummer eve, remains unaltered.
Northern Voices' leading cultural critic, Chris Draper, admits 'I'm biased against Manchester' arguing 'it's too big and boastful and we don't need another London in the North...', but what does he have to say about the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre? To find out send £2.50 (or £5 for the next two issues)cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' for a copy of the printed version of 'Northern Voices' to Northern Voices: c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH. Tel. 0161 793 5122. E-mail: northernvoices@hotmail.com
'Maxine Peake stated in a 2011 Guardian interview that the two things that make her most unhappy are 'misogyny and capitalism'. It's a fine sentiment, though it makes you wonder if she's finding much joy in the role of an aristocratic woman whose transgression below stairs earns her the contempt of her father's valet.'
While The Telegraph reviewer writes:
'This is a production that penetrates the heart of Strindberg’s disconcerting masterpiece, and one of the best productions I have ever seen at the Royal Exchange.'
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Royal Exchange, Manchester: Until 12 May
Box office:
0161 833 9833 Venue website David Eldridge's new version sticks closely to Strindberg's original recipe of seduction and remorse. Though the language has been roughened up a bit (the Italian lake district is dismissed as 'a pisshole'), the location, a late-19th-century Swedish estate on midsummer eve, remains unaltered.
Northern Voices' leading cultural critic, Chris Draper, admits 'I'm biased against Manchester' arguing 'it's too big and boastful and we don't need another London in the North...', but what does he have to say about the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre? To find out send £2.50 (or £5 for the next two issues)cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' for a copy of the printed version of 'Northern Voices' to Northern Voices: c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH. Tel. 0161 793 5122. E-mail: northernvoices@hotmail.com
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Strong Stomachs & Narrow Minds
Intellectually & Morally Bankrupt: British Left
IN the January issue of Freedom, the anarchist paper, Dave Douglass a former miner wrote: 'Sunday 6th November 2011 I am confronted out of the blue, by a political development in anarchism which has knocked me off my feet. Surrounded by comrades in a fairly well attended meeting of the Northern Anarchist Network (NAN), and the North East Anarchists last Sunday at The Bridge Hotel Newcastle I listened with my jaw dropping to the item on the agenda marked Libyan Solidarity Campaign.' He added: 'The Support NATO bombing tendency is how I would roughly designate it ...' and he went on to claim that Ian Bone’s blog was the origin 'of this absurd and reactionary viewpoint'.
As I write this the shells of the security forces of the Syrian army fall on Homs for the 19th consecutive day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of trapped civilians. Meanwhile, at CND and Stop the War meetings white skinned and left-wing militants on these islands of ours, urge that there be no intervention despite the bloodshed. One supporter of the NAN even told me that we must always oppose our own British forces no matter what the cause.
If anything could illustrate the utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the British left these conflicts in Syria and Libia bring it into focus. Dave Douglass admitted that Gaddafi's agents may have marched with Stop the War supporters in London last year but claimed that he understood why they were there.
To support his argument Dave Douglass quoted from the Morning Star: 'The Morning Star Thurs Nov 10th (p13) reported on the Al-Qaida flag flying over the main Benghazi Courthouse, not that having the flag flying next to the new ‘official’ Libyan flag of the former kind, demonstrates the level of political support, but the fact no-one dared take it down might.' Dave trusts the Morning Star as his authority, but Barry Woodling who spoke at the Northern Anarchist Network conference last November has taken the trouble over the last few years to contact Libian exiles and address this matter empirically. He may still get it wrong, he may still develop a faulty analysis, it may be that Libya could turn out to be another tragedy but at least he is doing some homework which is more than I can say for Dave Douglass and those cookbook politicians in the Stop the War movement.
___________________________________________
NORTHERN VOICES 13
Postal subscription: £5 for two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com
The next issue of Northern Voices, NV13 out in February, will include an interview between Barry Woodling and a member of the Libyan community in Manchester: this Libyan lad has now returned to Benghazi to participate in the unfolding events there.
Also in the Northern Voices 13 will be an article by the Jim Petty on the militant pacifist Philip Morrell, MP for Burnley 1910-1918, who almost alone in the House of Commons opposed the First World War forcing a debate.
IN the January issue of Freedom, the anarchist paper, Dave Douglass a former miner wrote: 'Sunday 6th November 2011 I am confronted out of the blue, by a political development in anarchism which has knocked me off my feet. Surrounded by comrades in a fairly well attended meeting of the Northern Anarchist Network (NAN), and the North East Anarchists last Sunday at The Bridge Hotel Newcastle I listened with my jaw dropping to the item on the agenda marked Libyan Solidarity Campaign.' He added: 'The Support NATO bombing tendency is how I would roughly designate it ...' and he went on to claim that Ian Bone’s blog was the origin 'of this absurd and reactionary viewpoint'.
As I write this the shells of the security forces of the Syrian army fall on Homs for the 19th consecutive day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of trapped civilians. Meanwhile, at CND and Stop the War meetings white skinned and left-wing militants on these islands of ours, urge that there be no intervention despite the bloodshed. One supporter of the NAN even told me that we must always oppose our own British forces no matter what the cause.
If anything could illustrate the utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the British left these conflicts in Syria and Libia bring it into focus. Dave Douglass admitted that Gaddafi's agents may have marched with Stop the War supporters in London last year but claimed that he understood why they were there.
To support his argument Dave Douglass quoted from the Morning Star: 'The Morning Star Thurs Nov 10th (p13) reported on the Al-Qaida flag flying over the main Benghazi Courthouse, not that having the flag flying next to the new ‘official’ Libyan flag of the former kind, demonstrates the level of political support, but the fact no-one dared take it down might.' Dave trusts the Morning Star as his authority, but Barry Woodling who spoke at the Northern Anarchist Network conference last November has taken the trouble over the last few years to contact Libian exiles and address this matter empirically. He may still get it wrong, he may still develop a faulty analysis, it may be that Libya could turn out to be another tragedy but at least he is doing some homework which is more than I can say for Dave Douglass and those cookbook politicians in the Stop the War movement.
___________________________________________
NORTHERN VOICES 13
Postal subscription: £5 for two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com
The next issue of Northern Voices, NV13 out in February, will include an interview between Barry Woodling and a member of the Libyan community in Manchester: this Libyan lad has now returned to Benghazi to participate in the unfolding events there.
Also in the Northern Voices 13 will be an article by the Jim Petty on the militant pacifist Philip Morrell, MP for Burnley 1910-1918, who almost alone in the House of Commons opposed the First World War forcing a debate.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Rank & File demo gets the goods at Unite offices in Newcastle?
We told him we wanted printing of our leaflets done, we want union offices used as resource centres where people can meet and plan actions. We want phone and email, we want transport to places of actions. We want up to date contact lists of all construction workers. We want to see that Unite officials are on our side.
Tim Bush said the union could not be seen to back or organise any form of unofficial demonstrations calling for strike action or any other unlawful actions. We understood and agreed that the union had to protect itself, but there were lots of things it could do anonymously in the background.
One such thing we said could be for the union to hire a mini bus to go to various actions. Tim Bush attacked us for cancelling the bus Unite officials had organised to go to London on the 9th November. The official union bus was to get to London for 11 a.m. to hear speeches from the union full time officials. We had to remind Tim Bush that we organised our own transport to get to London for the 7 a.m. demonstration at the Pinnacle because the union had refused to do what we wanted.
We then wanted to know about using the union offices as a resource centre where we could have meetings and do printing. He wasn't hostile to these suggestions, but he said printing leaflets could be problematical, he had to discuss what we wanted with "others". So we then invited ourselves inside the union offices for tea and coffee. We went to the top floor into a wonderful sort of canteen with settees and armchairs and all mod cons. Ideal for what we wanted as a place to meet other activists. Tim wasn't too sure about this because he said the room was used by staff who operated the union national computer system.
After a fairly friendly, certainly not antagonistic, meeting we agreed to send him our list of proposals that we would like the union to agree to.
These are the brief notes made of what we would like from the union the full list or any amendments would be made after talking to people on Teeside after the demonstration at Conoco:
1 Printing & communication resources
2 Meeting room
3 Minibus
4 Meetings with recallable Rank & File delegates
5 An unofficial presence of unite officials on demos/pickets
6 A continuing updated list of new construction sites and date when they start
7 A national demonstration to be called on Teeside at say Conoco, Corus or Heerema
8 Provide up to date contact lists of ALL construction workers
One thing that came out of the meeting was that the union had to appeal to members and to those who were not members that the union was on their side, it was not remote and that it would defend their jobs, their wages and their terms and conditions.
Also a VERY big thank you for the Unite members and all the others who turned out. None of us were particularly happy about taking part in a public demonstration against our union but we all felt that it had been a worthwhile exercise. We also hoped there would be no need for it to be repeated.
Monday, 31 October 2011
GUY FAWKES BOOKFAIR in Newcastle
Saturday 11.30am to 5pm on November 5th, 2011
The Bridge Hotel,
Castlegarth, Newcastle
Free Event: Books, good chat, drinks (alcohol & non-alcoholic).
For details and a stall call: 07931 301901.
Local & general history, shipyards, unemployment, Environment, football & other sport, culture, railways, mining, Marxism, social science, economics, Anarchism, international relations, socialism, trade unions and more, stalls from various groups.
http://workingclassbookfair.vpweb.com
To be followed the next day on Sunday 6th November by the Northern Anarchist Network meeting starting at 12 noon until 4 p.m.
The Bridge Hotel,
Castlegarth, Newcastle
Free Event: Books, good chat, drinks (alcohol & non-alcoholic).
For details and a stall call: 07931 301901.
Local & general history, shipyards, unemployment, Environment, football & other sport, culture, railways, mining, Marxism, social science, economics, Anarchism, international relations, socialism, trade unions and more, stalls from various groups.
http://workingclassbookfair.vpweb.com
To be followed the next day on Sunday 6th November by the Northern Anarchist Network meeting starting at 12 noon until 4 p.m.
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