ECCLES CAKES, but not made in Eccles

WITHIN a week or so of Chris Draper declaring Waites Confectioners of Burnley Road, Mytholmroyd near Hebden Bridge, to have produced the 'best Eccles Cakes' in the North of England (see Northern Voices 11: Six o' the Best' - The North's Top Teatime Treats!), Simon Majumdar brought out his book entitled 'Eating for Britain' which makes the claim that the Eccles Cakes produced at The Hastings in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, was the winner in the Pudding Class of his 'The Perfect Day's Eating in Britain' category. Chris Draper in NV11 denounced Salford for abandoning 'its finest creation'; most of the mass production of Eccles Cakes has now shifted to Ardwick (on't t'other side of Manchester) from where Tescos get their supplies. The resulting product is a hard underneath, soft on top, version not a patch on the job Waites does in Yorkshire. And yet, despite Eccles failure to create the 'perfect Eccles Cake' as witnessed by Mr Draper in NV and Mr Majumdar in 'Eating for Britain', Salford City Council's website, according to Mr. Majumdar, insists: 'The secret dies with me'. This shows, according to Simon Majumdar, 'how fiercely [the town] protect their recipe'. But, if Chris Draper is right, this is hypocritical because the town has already handed the recipe over to a company in Ardwick.

NV sales

EARLY indications suggest Northern Voices 11 is selling well in our central Manchester outlets. The newly opened Peoples' History Museum has sold out once and had to be restocked, as has the Cornerhouse bookshop. We haven't checked our pub outlets there yet, but there are indications that some new city centre newsagents may for the first time take it on a sale or return basis. We now have several outlets in the Glossop area for the first time, though for the first time sales in Eccles went down for NV10. Barry suggested it was down to a 'poor front cover' for NV10. Sales of NV11 in Hebden Bridge are moderate but Waites bakery said some people had already commented on Chris Draper's review of 'Tea Time Treats' that gave their shop top marks for Eccles Cakes. Views about the contents of NV11 are mixed but almost everyone regards it as the best looking issue yet. There has been strong reactions in certain quarters to our editorial response to the question of some Freedom Press photos of Spanish Civil War exiles taken at a camp near Chorley which were supplied to the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, but there has been little interest in this from our general readership. The campaigners in Derker, Oldham, fighting against the former Labour Government's Pathfinder Project have expressed their delight at our coverage of their situation and our report on their MP Phil Woolas's election expenses. Woolas only got re-elected by the skin of his teeth in May. The pub sales in Oldham for NV10 was a surprising sell out. In Rochdale, there has been reaction to the piece by Les May attacking local protest groups. Littleborough artist, Walter Kershaw, is dead chuffed about NV's report on his winter exhibition in Sale. Over in Ashton-under-Lyne, since our piece on a blue plaque for Jimmy Keogh, the Arts & Events Advisory Panel has agreed to let Tameside TUC put their case in person at their next meeting this Summer. In Madrid, among members of the anarcho-syndicalist CGT trade union there has been some questioning of our comments in NV11 of one of their union leaders Carlos Beltran, but Carlos himself has taken it in good humour. Chris Draper has challenged the presence of nudes on some NV front covers which he thinks are 'sexist'.

'Can tha' keep a Secret?' - An old Yorkshire tale of class war, conspiracy, murder …and a nice day out! by Chris Draper

(Due to an editing error in the latest issue of Northern Voices, we've accidentally 'cropped' an article by valued contributor Chris Draper. We hope we can make up for this mistake - to both Chris and our readers - by reproducing the article in full on the blog. The introduction follows and the rest of the article can be read after the 'read more' link below)

In February 1812 at the Shears Inn, Hightown, West Yorkshire a secret meeting of working men took place in an upstairs room. The talk was of desperate measures, how could croppers defend themselves, their families and their community from the destitution wrought by the cloth masters? The men determined to stop the new shearing machines being imported into the Spen Valley. They planned an all out campaign of direct action. A campaign that would climax with an armed assault on Rawfolds Mill and a notorious attempt by the local vicar to force an injured Luddite to reveal the names of his fellow conspirators…

Northern Voices 11 - now available

The long awaited 11th issue of Northern Voices is now available. Contents include:

'Villains & Victims' - the contrasting fortunes of villainous Northern MPs (including James Purnell, Hazel Blears, Tom Levitt & Phil Woolas) and their victims such as 'regenerated' communities in Derker and Toxteth, Blacklisted workers Keaveney & Anderson & agency binmen in Bury.

'On the banks of the River Roch, Jacky Brook, Healey Dell in Rochdale & the Cheonggyecheon in Seoul' by Brian Bamford

'Leeds: Royal Park School - More Municipal Vandalism by Stealth' by John Lawrence

'Six o' Best: Northern Tea Time Treats' by Chris Draper - featuring Eccles Cakes from Salford or maybe, Hebden Bridge; Fat Rascals from Harrogate; Sad Cakes from Burnley; Chorley Cakes from North Lancs.; Bakewell Tarts from Derbyshire; Curd Tarts from the West Riding of Yorkshire; Singing Hinnies from Newcastle and Yorkshire Parkin.

'Glossop North End go to Wembley on a shoestring' by Richard Holland

'Can tha' keep a secret?: An old Yorkshire tale of class war, conspiracy, murder' by Christopher Draper; a history of Ned Ludd in the West Riding of Yorkshire (which can be read in full here).

'The Golden Days of Municipal Motoring' by Chris the Clippy on the disappearance of the North's regional buses and their unique colour schemes.

...plus much more. Also included are the usual local columns (Salford Spy, Tameside Eye), plus restaurant reviews (Sam's Chop House in Manchester and The Plate @ Backridge in the Forest of Bowland), exhibition reviews, the lively letters page, plus an obituary for Pedro Cuadrado, a Bolton local of Spanish origin, involved in the Spanish Civil War and imprisoned by the Nazis, Americans and the British in turn.

Price £1.50 [£2.00 post included] cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' obtainable from c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.

And on sale at a large number of newsagents in Greater Manchester, Rochdale, Tameside, Salford, Swinton, Eccles, Burnley and bookshops in other areas such as News From Nowhere in Liverpool, Bob's Bookshop in Oldham and Bookcase in Hebden Bridge, as well as The Cornerhouse and People's History Museum in Manchester. Northern Voices is also on sale in Glossop at Bay Tree Books, George Street Books and Bestsellers in the Market Arcade.

Hegel or Wittgenstein: The Patria Chica & its enemies

NORTHERN VOICES 11, out next week, features a clash involving Eccles Cakes, Curd Tarts & Yorkshire Rascals over a philosophical point made by Ludwig Wittgenstein who said to his friend Maurice Drury (see Ray Monk's autobiography: 'Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius') that 'Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same ... Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different.' Wittgenstien was, like Tolstoy a critic of Shakespeare, yet he was considering embellishing one of his philosophical books with the motto taken from a phrase the Earl of Kent uses in 'King Lear' (Act 1, scene iv): 'I will teach you differences'. Ray Monk writes of Wittgenstein: 'His concern was to stress life's irreducible variety'. The opening editorial in Northern Voices 1 backed Wittgenstein's view over that of Hegel.

In a letter to NV10 our Midland correspondent, Rachel Whittaker wrote: 'Do we not seek to exploit the common thread of humanity or is our idea of equality based on the idea that some geographical locations make you more friendly, more reserved, or even more anarchist, than others?' Well, if Rachel is right to argue against geographical locations and the variety of human peculiarities that go with them, then how do we explain the flowering of something so anthropologically strange as anarchism occurring in Andalucia or anarcho-syndicalism in Barcelona and Catalonia in the 20th Century? How do we explain Makhno and Zapata in the Ukraine and Mexico? All of these movements had strong elements of the patria chica, and the cultural and regional diversity that goes with it.

One solution may be thought to be Colin Ward's analysis of universal anarchism suggesting that anarchism, far from being anthropologically strange, is really commonplace and can be found all over the show in many social settings, as the seed beneath the snow. And yet, even this doesn't necessarily support the homogenious 'common thread' position as proposed by Rachel Whittaker, because examples of Colin Ward's micro-anarchism, just as much as the macro-anarchism of Spain, Mexico and the Ukraine, all have their own diversity and 'irreducible variety'.

With these things in mind NV11 goes in search of the NORTHERN STOMACH as represented in Chris Draper's 'Six O' Best Northern Tea Time Treats', asking how for instance, does it differ from a Spanish Stomach or a Southern Stomach, and are we betraying our northern souls as well as our stomachs by enjoying ethnic cuisine and foreign food?

New Year 2010 - Northern Voices 11 preview

Contents include:

'Six o' Best: Northern Tea Time Treats' by Chris Draper:
Eccles Cakes from Salford or maybe, Hebden Bridge; Fat Rascals from Harrogate; Sad Cakes from Burnley;  Chorley Cakes from North Lancs.; Bakewell Tarts from Derbyshire; Turd Tarts from the West Riding of Yorkshire; Singing Hinnies from Newcastle and Yorkshire Parkin.  Which is going to be the best that the North has to offer?

Municipal Motoring by Chris the Clippy on the disappearance of the North's regional buses and their unique colour schemes.

'Can tha' keep a secret?: An old Yorkshire tale of class war, conspiracy, murder' by Christopher Draper;  a history of Ned Ludd in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

'On the banks of the River Roach, Jacky Brook, Healey Dell in Rochdale & the Cheonggyecheon in Seoul' by Brian Bamford.

Price £1.50 [£2.00 post included] cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' obtainable from c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10  4AH.

And on sale at a large number of newsagents in Greater Manchester, Rochdale, Tameside, Salford, Swinton, Eccles, Burnley and bookshops in other areas such as News From Nowhere in Liverpool, Bob's Bookshop in Oldham and Bookcase in Hebden Bridge. Northern Voices is also on sale in Glossop at Bay Tree Books, George Street Books and Bestsellers in the Market Arcade.