This Cotton-Built Town by Trevor Hoyle

[after Betjeman. A long way after]

It once were great, this cotton-built town

A grand night out for half-a-crown,

Go out now you get knocked down

Or summat worse

We had cobbles and ginnels and gaslit streets,

A clip round th’ear from bobbies on beats.

No muggers or druggies, no benefits cheats,

Our nation’s curse.

Gradely folk they were back then

Slogged all week at mill for six-pound-ten:

Lancashire’s best – la crème de la crème,

Gone and forgot.

Walk down Drake Street now and weep

For Ivesons, Fashion Corner, the Carlton creep,

The legacy of civic pride sold cheap.

Who gives a jot?

It’s council top brass in the main

Who’ve least to lose and most to gain.

(1st class seats on the gravy train!)

Just hear their cries:

Sack the workers but keep the bosses!

That’s the way to cut the losses!

And round our necks like albatrosses

Hang the PFIs.

And where do all our taxes go?

You must be joking – don’t you know?

On bods with clipboards on go slow,

On Manchester Road –

Where roundabouts once did the job

The planners have incensed the mob,

Who write in fury to the Ob:

“Stop this load

Of nonsense, quick, it’s puerile,

Are they trying to compete in style

With illuminations on’t Golden Mile

And make things worse?”

Come, gentle Kong, and dump on Dale

Bury it deep so it can’t inhale.

Beyond a joke, beyond the pale,

Armpit of the universe.

**********************************************

'White Lives Matter': In defence of doggerel

 Black and White who is right?

 by Brian Bamford

 'Eliot’s fondness for doggerel and light verse, in particular, was intertwined with a racist notion of blackness as a gateway to cultural disruption and linguistic play.'*

• The New YorkerDec 16, 2019

IT was announced last night that the Lancashire police have said that no criminal offence took place when a banner reading 'White Lives Matter Burnley' was towed past the football stadium during Monday night’s Premier League game between Manchester City and Burnley.  It is perfectly clear by now that the language being used here has become 'a gateway to cultural disruption and linguistic play' that is having massive consequences even as I write.

We at Northern Voices would find broad qualified agreement with what Iffy Onuora, the equalities officer of the Professional Footballers’ Association, said on Tuesday that he was hoping that the widespread condemnation of the banner would act as a catalyst for further conversations about the Black Lives Matter movement.  And he concluded:

'The words themselves aren’t offensive, it’s just the context.  It’s the rejection of the conversation we’re having at the moment.  That’s what it represents,' Onoura told the BBC.  'I guess people have the right to do it. For me it’s just proof again that these things can lead to positive things because all that’s been said in the 12 hours since the game finished has been, again, a catalyst, another conversation to have.'

Let's have conversations yes, yet I think we would add that it throws light on the two-faced hypocrisy of some people who are obsessed with skin colour.  What has happened since the flight on Monday night is that it brought forth a barrage of unbelievable humbug and virtue signalling by the most feeble minded elements on the left.

Meanwhile the police have said that after assessing all the information available surrounding the incident, the force had concluded 'that there are no criminal offences that have been disclosed at this time'.
'We will continue to work with our partners at the football club and within the local authority,' added Ch Supt Russ Procter.

I accept that the meaning of words are in their use rather than in the dictionary definition.  But the use of doggerel can be problematic. When more than a decade ago in moving a motion, I broke into some doggerel at a Trade Union Council conference; I was denouncing what are called scabs or sometimes dare I say 'blacklegs' - unskilled workers, who were being used I used rhyming slang or doggerel as 'Chancers - Bengal Lancers' to describe the strike breakers, sadly and predictably, I was challenged for 'racist' talk. 

I do worry about all this po-faced lack of humour on the British left.

*  

Sometimes doggerel has a non-critical meaning: plenty of popular comic poets (like Lewis Carroll or any limerick inventor) had no aim to make great art, just great light verse, and they succeeded brilliantly. They were masters of doggerel. But pity the earnest highbrow poet like the immortal Scotsman William McGonagall whose doggerel was so bad his audience frequently pelted him with eggs and rotting vegetables. Now his poetry was only fit for the dogs.

*******************************

Jigsaw II by Louis Macneice

IN April 2004, someone had posted a request on a blog asking

for poems on the Influences of Technology.  I already knew 

about the Louis Macneice Jigsaw II from A level in the 1960.

It strikes me that this is relevant to our time now with Greta  

 Thunberg addressing the UK today.  People are so easily dazzled

by technology.   In the 19th century, John Ruskin and William 
Morris wanted us to bring nature into our homes.  
And yet, people today prefer to inflict technology upon themselves. 

**************

Posted by: Johnny (---.nasd.k12.pa.us)

Date: April 22, 2004  Hi,
I'm looking for poems reflecting on the influences of technology on culture.
 *****************
How about Jigsaw II by Louis Macneice?

Property! Property! Let us extend
Soul and body without end:
A box to live in, with airs and graces,
A box on wheels that shows its paces,
A box that talks or that makes faces,
And curtains and fences as good as the neighbours'
To keep out the neighbours and keep us immured
Enjoying the cold canned fruit of our labours
In a sterilised cell, unshaved, insured.

Property! Property! When will it end
When will the poltergeist ascend
Out of the sewer with chopper and squib
To burn the mink and the baby's bib
And cut the tattling wire to town
And smash all the plastics, clowning and clouting
And stop all the boxes shouting and pouting
And wreck the house from the aerial down
And give these ingrown souls an outing?

*********

Bread & Roses Song & Spoken Word Award

THE Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) and Culture Matters are pleased to announce the second edition of their successful Songwriting and Spoken Word Award.   The Musicians’ Union is also sponsoring and supporting the Award this time.

The Award is now open for submissions. The new Award is a practical example of cultural democracy, with the aim of encouraging musicians and performers to write material meaningful to working class people and communities, and to encourage those communities to develop and practice their creativity.

There is a £100 cash prize for each of the top five entries.  The judges will be drawn from practising performers, the CWU, the Musician's Union, and members of Culture Matters.

Dave Ward, General Secretary of the CWU, said:

I welcome this continuing partnership with Culture Matters. The arts and culture generally are vital to the labour movement, and working class communities across the country. We want to build on the grassroots DIY ethic started by punk music, celebrate the new opportunities for working class people to write songs, make music and perform spoken word, and encourage contributions from people who might otherwise not consider entering competitions.

We are sponsoring this Award because we want to encourage our members in the CWU, and working people everywhere, to express themselves creatively on themes that matter to them as workers and which help develop understanding of the cultural struggle for a better world.

So get writing and get performing, and send your entries in!

Attila the Stockbroker, one of the judges, said:

This new Award is a great idea. There’s a real need to encourage younger and emerging performers to write and perform songs and poetry that mean something to ordinary working- class people rather than the mind-numbingly bland rubbish force-fed us by the mainstream music business and media.

Get involved – and encourage people you know to get involved!

Submission Guidelines and Award Rules:

Entry is open to all, regardless of trade union membership. The submission guidelines are as follows:

Entries should broadly deal with any aspect of working-class life, communities, culture and concerns.

Entries can be from solo or duo artists/performers, and are actively encouraged from grassroots, younger and emerging performers.

Entries should consist of one song or performance of original material, in English, whether previously published or not.

Entries should be submitted as audio or live/pre-recorded video files (MP3/4 format or video) via email. All entries will be judged equally, but some video entries may be also selected to feature on the Culture Matters YouTube channel, which is currently in development.

Entry is free and is open to all residents of Great Britain, regardless of trade union membership.

Culture Matters will fund five prizes of £100 each.

All entries will remain the copyright of the entrant, but CWU and Culture Matters will have the right to publish them online and in other media.

The organisers accept no responsibility for entries that are incorrectly submitted or not delivered due to technical faults.

By entering the Award, entrants agree to accept and be bound by the rules of the Award and the decisions of the judges.

Due to the likely volume of entries, the organisers regret that they cannot enter into correspondence with individual entrants.

Entries should be sent via email to: entriesculturematters@gmail.com

The deadline for receipt of submissions is midnight on March 2nd 2019. When emailing submissions, please provide your full name, postal address and phone number.

************

Burnley Literary Festival

From Mike Waite
Event on 1968 / counterculture at Burnley Literary Festival

THE third annual Burnley Literary Festival runs from 28 September to 1 October, and features a wide range of events, including street theatre about the campaign for womens’ suffrage, lectures on Sylvia Plath, interactive workshops and much more: www.burnleyliteraryfestival.co.uk

We thought that you / your readers / people you are in contact with could be particularly interested in one of the sessions:  ‘Anarchist poets and Burnley Wood communes: ‘1968’ counterculture around Burnley & East Lancashire’.

This will run at Burnley Central Library on Saturday 29^th September, starting at 11.30 a.m., and finishing a little after 12.30.

The key inputs will be from Tina Morris, a poet and children’s writer, who contributed to Michael Horovitz's landmark anthology Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (Penguin Books, 1969), and Bruce Wilkinson, author of Hidden Culture, Forgotten History: a northern poetic underground and its countercultural history  (Penniless Press, 2017) : http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/books/hidden_culture.htm

More details: The ‘summer of love’ and radical counter-culture didn’t just happen at the Woodstock music festival or amongst student protestors in Paris. ‘1968’ and its promise of alternative lifestyles and new progressive values drew in young people in Burnley and Blackburn.  The culture and politics of East Lancashire were enlivened by theatrical ‘happenings’ on the streets, and a lively subculture of poetry readings and little magazines. This session will include discussion, reminiscence and declarations, touching on a 1960s obscenity trial in Blackburn, and the beginnings of local co-operative housing and environmental politics.

Tickets are free, but must be booked in advance:

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/whats-on/burnley/burnley-central-library/anarchist-poets-and-burnley-wood-communes-1968-counterculture-around-burnley

Tameside TUC joins THE ORWELL SOCIETY

North West trade unionists merge with poet of common decency
by Brian Bamford

THIS year, Tameside Trade Union Council [TUC] in Greater Manchester became the first corporate affiliate of the ORWELL SOCIETY.  This SOCIETY is dedicated to the understanding and appreciation of George Orwell's life and work as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

The Society is a registered charity in the UK and it aims to keep the study of Orwell alive through its educational activities.  The Orwell Society is without political affiliation,and was founded in 2011, and though it is based in the UK its membership is worldwide.  George Orwell (the pen-name for Eric Blair; 1903-1950), was the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Society's intention is to embrace a grasp of Orwell's life and writings, from his literary criticism to his diaries, and from his political writings to his poetry. . 

Last Friday, the President of Tameside, Derek Pattison, announcing this said:  'In an Age of Post Truth, Fake News, and Alternative Facts, we need George Orwell's guidance more than ever.'  

When I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Orwell Society on the 28th, April this year, I spoke to Richard Blair, the son of George Orwell, and to Quintin Kopp, the son of George Kopp Orwell's commander as captain in the general staff of the 45th Mixed Brigade of the Spanish Republican Army.  Both were anxious to get more participation in the Society from trade unionists such as ourselves.

Since Tameside TUC  first published our booklet commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006, and followed this up with the unveiling of a blue plaque for James Keogh in 2011 who died fighting with the republicans in the Spanish Civil War, this trade union council has had a special interest in both George Orwell and his experiences of the Spanish Civil War.

Malcolm Muggeridge in his essay 'A Knight of the Woeful Countenance' wrote about this:
'I FIRST became aware of the existence of George Orwell in the middle thirties when I read some articles of his on the Spanish Civil War which appeared in the New English Weekly, a publication founded by A.R. Orage to expound the principles of Social Credit.  They provided the basis for Homage to Catalonia, one of his best books.  These articles made a great impression on me.  I liked their clear, simple style, and the obvious honesty of purpose which informed them,  They touched a chord of personal sympathy, too.  I saw in Orwell's strong reaction to the villainies of Communist apparat in Spain a compatible experience to my own disgust some years previously with the Soviet regime and its fawning admirers among the intelligentsia of the West as a result of a stint as Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian....'

When we at Tameside TUC began to produce and publish a balanced account of the Spanish Civil War  in 2006, we were confronted with resistance from some elements within the more narrow-minded political left of the trade union movement in Greater Manchester.   These people deliberately tried to stiffle our efforts and those of other local trade unionists to bring about publication.  Both Orwell and Muggeridge had had difficultes getting their articles published by the so-called progressive publishers like Kingsley Martin at the New Statesman and C.P. Scott at the Manchester Guardian, and perhaps even more absurd, was the Victor Gollancz rejection of Animal Farm.

Muggeridge relates how when Orwell and he were lunching together in a Greek restaurant in Percy Street, Orwell asked if he would mind changing places?  When Muggeridge asked him why?  Orwell just said 'he just couldn't bear to look at Kingsley Martin's corrupt face, which, as Kingsley was lunching at an adjoining table, was unavoidable from where he had been sitting before.'

I feel much the same when I am forced to gaze into the faces of Ronald Marsden and his friend Mike Luft of the International Brigade Memorial Trust:  two people who did their utmost to undermine the production of the Tameside TUC memorial booklet about the Spanish Civil War.

******

This Cotton-Built Town

Poem sent to Northern Voices by the Rochdalianm, Trevor Hoyle.

[after Betjeman.  A long way after]

It once were great, this cotton-built town

A grand night out for half-a-crown,

Go out now you get knocked down

Or summat worse.

We had cobbles and ginnels and gaslit streets,

A clip round th’ear from bobbies on beats.

No muggers or druggies, no benefits cheats,

Our nation’s curse.

Gradely folk they were back then

Slogged all week at mill for six-pound-ten:

Lancashire’s best – la crème de la crème,

Gone and forgot.

Walk down Drake Street now and weep

For Ivesons, Fashion Corner, the Carlton creep,

The legacy of civic pride sold cheap.

Who gives a jot?

It’s council top brass in the main

Who’ve least to lose and most to gain.

(1^st class seats on the gravy train!)

Just hear their cries:

Sack the workers but keep the bosses!

That’s the way to cut the losses!

And round our necks like albatrosses

Hang the PFIs.

And where do all our taxes go?

You must be joking – don’t you know?

On bods with clipboards on go slow,

On Manchester Road –

Where roundabouts once did the job

The planners have incensed the mob,

Who write in fury to the Ob:

“Stop this load

Of nonsense, quick, it’s puerile,

Are they trying to compete in style

With illuminations on’t Golden Mile

And make things worse?”

Come, gentle Kong, and dump on Dale

Bury it deep so it can’t inhale.

Beyond a joke, beyond the pale,

Armpit of the universe.

******

Angela Merkel Threatens Free Speech

CHARLIE Chaplin’s granddaughter has compared Angela Merkel ‘s decision to allow the prosecution of a German comedian for insulting the Turkish president to the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s.

Jan Böhmermann faces up to five years in prison for insulting a foreign head of state, after Mrs Merkel gave permission for him to be prosecuted under Germany’s controversial lese-majeste law. The comedian had read a poem mocking Mr Erdogan on his TV show as a test of free expression after the Turkish leader demanded German action over a satirical song which poked fun at his policies and extravagant lifestyle.

Now, Laura Chaplin has compared the current Böhmermann case to the American and British attempts to prevent her grandfather filming The Great Dictator, his satire of the Nazi regime, over fears it would offend the Fuhrer.

Laura Chaplin's decision spoke out as a new poll showed the depth of German public opposition to the prosecution of Böhmermann for insulting the Turkish leader. 

An overwhelming 66 per cent of Germans believe Mrs Merkel was wrong to allow the prosecution to go ahead, according to the poll for Bild. 

Only 22 per cent of respondents supported her decision, with 12 per cent undecided. 

Having survived public opposition to her principled 'open-doors' refugee policy, Merkel has now, it seems, fallen on her face over an unpopular position on this new case.  Free speech, it's like a candle in the wind!

Working Class Movement Library Talks

Easter Rising talk

On  Wednesday 13 April at 2pm Robin Stocks visits the Library to talk about his book on Manchester and Salford volunteers in the Easter Rising.

We mark the centenary of the Rising with an account of how, in the middle of WW1, members of the Irish community in Manchester and other British cities resolved to travel to Dublin to prepare for a rebellion to achieve independence for Ireland.  Admission free; light refreshments after.


Last chance to see our WW1 exhibition - and news of our next one!Our exhibition To End All Wars, marking the centenary of the introduction of conscription in early 1916, ends on Thursday 14 April at 5pm.  It is open during our drop-in times of Wednesday to Friday 1-5pm.

Our next exhibition To Make That Future Now! - 150 years of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council opens on Friday 29 April and runs until 26 August. It's open Wednesdays to Fridays 1-5pm and the first Saturday in May, June and July 10am-4pm.  More information here.


Poetry, fiction and painting at the LibraryOn Wednesday 27 April at 2pm artist Richard Milward presents Luddites’ Nightmares.

Taking inspiration from the machine-breaking Luddites of the early 19^th century, Richard is producing a series of paintings which, in his words, ‘expose, exaggerate and ridicule the ways in which modern technology encroaches on – and distorts – everyday life’.  A loan to WCML of one of these paintings is marked by this event, when we are delighted to welcome three authors to read from their own work on themes surrounding our relationship with technology.

Joe Stretch, novelist from Stockport who recently won the W Somerset Maugham Award for his book The Adult, will be reading, alongside London poet Salena Godden and Richard Milward himself.

Admission free, light refreshments after.

Richard's painting ‘TV Interference’ can be viewed at the Library between 20 and 27 April, Tuesdays-Fridays 10am-5pm.  The painting is based around the idea that today ‘technology is in the saddle and rides humankind’ (Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against The Future), as well as the potentially disruptive influence of mass media on the general public.

The Luddites' Nightmares paintings are being exhibited individually at a series of events this Spring/Summer (with readings from other contemporary authors on the technology theme) in what was the ‘Luddite Triangle’ where the original revolts took place 200 years ago: Lancashire/Cheshire to Yorkshire to Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire.


'TV Interference' (finished version)


Frow Lecture A reminder that Richard Cleminson will give the Library's 7^th annual Frow Lecture in the Old Fire Station, University of Salford on Saturday 7 May at 2pm. His topic is “A new world in our hearts”: anarchism and the Spanish Civil War. Admission free; light refreshments after.  All welcome.
Salford's Sarsaparilla SoundsThree institutions, Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Islington Mill and ourselves, join forces to fly the flag for Salford on the evening of Thursday 12 May as part of Manchester After Hours 2016. Using WCML and Salford Museum as locations, Islington Mill will curate a live programme of music and spoken word that’s in tune with these unusual locations.

The night starts from 5pm onwards at WCML with the focus on spoken word performance. We will hear from:
Louise Woodcock / Sue Fox / Bob Clowrey / Lauren Bolger / Alex Cook / Rachel Margettes / Rebecca Hurst - and more TBA.

In keeping with the ethics of the library founders there will be no alcohol served for the spoken word performances -  instead Steep Soda will be running a temperance bar, serving delicious and unusual soft drinks.

After 7pm the audience will be led across the road to Salford Museum & Art Gallery where they will spend the rest of the evening. Islington Mill will produce a live music programme, and there will be a bar serving alcohol and other refreshments.

More information here.

For more information about events across the cities on Thursday 12 May visit manchesterafterhours.com.

Benny Rothman book launchOn Friday 8 April at 1.30pm the Library hosts the launch of a new book about activist Benny Rothman.  Unite the union's biography Benny Rothman: a fighter for the right to roam, workers' rights and socialism, written by Mark Metcalf, covers not only the part played by Benny in the Kinder Scout mass trespass but also his battles against Mosley's fascist Blackshirts and his wide-ranging campaigns as a trade unionist and environmentalist.

Benny's son Harry will be in attendance at the event, and everyone who comes along will get a free copy of the 64-page book.   All welcome.


A poem, a cup of tea and a biscuit... The first of a series of events devised by University of Salford Chancellor Jackie Kay takes place on Thursday 21 April at 4pm at the Clifford Whitworth Library at the University.  Flight, Feathers and Quilt is an opportunity to view the Curated by Jackie Kay exhibition and to hear Jackie talk about her selection from the University Art Collection. Poet Patience Agbabi will read from Refugee Tales and Anna Pincus from the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group will also speak - the exhibition includes a unique quilt made by refugees from the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group..

All are welcome to this free event. Booking is essential.  Please reserve a ticket here.
 
Manchester May Day Festival 2016A series of events including talks, plays and music takes place on Saturday 30 April to mark May Day in Manchester.  Full details here. The Library is compiling exhibition boards at the Manchester Mechanics Institute about our collections, and specifically about the 150th anniversary of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council which falls this year. (Our exhibition about the Trades Council opens shortly - see above).

In the evening (8.30pm) Banner Theatre presents Chicago: the great teachers’ strike. Chicago tells the story of the 2012 teachers' union strike and explores the successful organising agenda that empowered the union members and mobilised parents, students and the wider community.  Tickets price £10 available here.

Marie Stopes symposiumThroughout her life Marie Stopes courted controversy and it is sometimes difficult to disentangle fact from the fiction that she created about herself. An international symposium on 23 June at the University of Manchester draws together leading experts from a variety of different disciplines to investigate 'the real Marie Stopes'.
The Symposium is open to both academics and members of the general public. It is free but must be booked in advance as places are limited. To book a place please email: info@symposiummanchester.com
More information at www.symposiummanchester.com.

Message from Salford Community Theatre

Salford Community Theatre are now recruiting for a team of volunteers to help with the running of their play
Love On The Dole which will be performed from 5–10 July, with two performances on the 10th.
They say: 'You don’t have to be available for all of these dates, if there is an aspect of theatre production, be that in costume and props or front of house and marketing, that you would like to try your hand at we will come up with a schedule to match your availability.
If any of this is sparking your appetite for community and theatre, or even just your curiosity we have a couple of events coming up where the production team and the cast will be more than happy to tell you more.
You can register your interest with an email to Rose.Fowler@salfordcommunitytheatre.org or give us a call on 07519344668'.

Steve Platt on Colin Ward & John Rety

In the 2010 April / May issue of Red Pepper

Steve Platt wrote in his column 'PLATTITUDES'

a feature on the deaths of Colin Ward, aged 85, and

John Rety, 79.  He said that this 'had deprived the

British anarchist movement of two of its most

original and influential thinkers.' 

He added:

'I first came across them through squatting campaigns in the 1970s, by which time they were already veterans of the pre-1960s generation of political activists who kept a left libertarian flag flying before it became fashionable to do so.

'Both men helped with Squatting-the Real story (Bay Leaf Books, 1980), a book for which I was the main writer.  Colin wrote a chapter on the post-war seizure of army camps, hotels and other buildings, when tens of thousands od ex-servicemen and their families laid down a challenge to the 1945 Labour government to deliver on its promise of decent homes for all. 

'John, who was a key squatting activist in Camden Town, gave generously of his time, knowledge and activist energy in helping me to assemble the history of the later squatting movement that emerged in Britain from the late 1960s.

'Indeed, the survival of Camden Town as we know it today owes much to the resistance initiated by John and his partner Susan Johns in 1973 to their eviction by a property developer from the shop they ran at 220, Camden High Street.  At the time, companies associated with Cromdale Holdings owned a quarter of the properties in the area;  50 shops were empty pending redevelopment.

John and Susan's squatting of their old shp acted as a catalyst for the fight to save the high street, which was eventually won...

'For me, Colin and John were key communicators of the message that there was life on the left beyond state socialism.  From housing cooperatives to allotments, from holiday chalets to garden sheds, Colin's approach to "anarchy" in action ( the title he chose for what is still the best - and certainly most readable - book on the subject around) was rooted in the practice and everyday in a manner that made his most utopian of visions seem no more than ordinary common sense. 

John's anarchism sparkled most fully in his love of poetry and commitment to live performance, notably at Torriano Meeting House.  First squatted as a arts centre, which provided early platforms for artists as diverse as Emma Thompson and John Hegley.  There was delicious irony, that one-time bastion of the British Communist Party.

'I was too young to enjoy Colin's editorship of the journal Anarchy and John's of the paper  Freedom at the time they were published.  But the back issues I saw later helped to inspire in me a belief in the potential of small-circulation publications with often esoteric interests to have an influence way beyond their immediate readerships.  That's one reason why I'm associated with the magazine I'm writing for here.'



Middleton's Age of Enlightenment Film

AN Age of the Enlightenment film is to be première on Tuesday, September 30th, at Long Street Methodist Church in Middleton.  It has sprung from an idea by local film-maker Anthony Dolan, and is funded with a grant of £1,975,800 from the local Council and the Edgar Wood and Middleton Townscape Initiative.

Mr. Dolan got together with other volunteers to examine Middleton's Enlightenment past in the 18th and early 19th Centuries.  Middleton is fortunate in its local architecture especially some of its Churches.

Besides the botanist, George Caley (1770-1829) the film examines the life of local hero Samuel Bamford (1788-1972), poet, writer, and social campaigner who took part in what became known as the Peterloo Massacre in August 1919.

The public's imagination was stired by Shelley's Mask of Anarchy poem about the Massacre.

Gradely Things on Lancashire Day at Number Ten Gallery

NUMBER TEN GALLERY

ON the 27th, & 28th, November 2013, there will be a celebration of 'Gradely Things' to commemorate LANCASHIRE DAY at Number Ten Gallery, 10, Baille Street, Rochdale.
(tel. 01706 354076).

Tickets £10 (Book in advance):

 

Food, Music, Poetry, Ghost Stories &

 

an exhibition of Lancashire Art - photos &

 

paintings by local artists.

BLACK ROSES: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster

IN Northern Voices No.13 - the Summer 2012 issue, I interviewed Sylvia Lancaster about her daughter  Sophie Lancaster, who on 11th, August 2007 was beaten unconscious in Stubbeylee Park, Bacup and later died from her injuries in hospital. Sophie then was 20 years old, had just passed her A-Levels and was working out what to do with her life:  She was killed because she was different.

On the 19th, September The Studio of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester will be putting on a performance of 'BLACK ROSES' with words by Sylvia Lancaster; Poetry by Simon Armitage.  The production will be co-directed by Sarah Frankcom and Susan Roberts.  In Northern Voices No.13, our arts correspondent, Christopher Draper placed the Royal Exchange among the top six theatres in the North of England.  BLACK ROSES continues showing until the 29th, September:  Box Office 0845 450 4808.
Website www.royalexchange.co.uk

 

A MOVING RESPONSE TO THE DEATH OF YOUNG GAP-YEAR STUDENT SOPHIE LANCASTER

BLACK ROSES is an elegy for Sophie in which she tells her own story through a series of poems by the award-winning poet Simon Armitage, alongside the words of her mother, Sylvia Lancaster, remembering her daughter’s shortened life.

The piece provoked an unprecedented response when it premiered on Radio Four last year, winning the BBC Audio and Music Best Speech Programme of the Year Award.

Now re-imagined for the theatre with Rachel Austin and Julie Hesmondhalgh (CORONATION STREET), BLACK ROSES is co-directed by Royal Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom and award-winning BBC Radio Drama Producer Susan Roberts.
_________________________________________________________


The printed version of NORTHERN VOICES No.13, now on sale with all sorts of stuff others won't touch and may be obtained as follows:

Postal subscription: £5 for the next 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

"Tis time to dance a reckoning" A homage to the spirit of revolutionary song!

Red Rag To A Bull

A Poem by Gary Peter Ferguson - From Stalybridge.

To all their misdemeanours
To all their folly and lies
Thy theft, thy fraud, thy treachery
So spoken so despised
Like cattle with nought in fodder
So forced I stand to shudder
Tis locked out factory gates
To all thy bricks and mortar
Thy bankrupt welfare states
To bankers pound and sold
Like in oozing festering sores
So neat a Cowell sum
To sweet and candy divas
Thy swindling musical scores
For neat Beijing sandwiches
In seas of China tea
Thy despot Gordon Brown
Laid his fiddle down on me
AY- In all their misdemeanours
To all their folly and lies
Where Elgar’s sweet fine music
Sold in beauty to thine skies
Where Liberals bought their powers
To votes so sold by knaves
Thy Tories sold this story
Tis Land of Hope and Glory
In all thy light was shattered
Like low Pound high yield Dollars
Thine only God is profit
Ye well heeled toffee scholars
AY- For all thy rent and mortgages
Thy thieving wretched lies
Thy tax avoidance fillies
And their cheating corporate flies
Tis time to show our red rag
Show the red rag to the bull
Tis time to hang our red rag
Hang our red rag round a bull
Tis time to dance a reckoning
To level out thine score
Set all the church bells ringing
Let thy anger voice be heard
I’ve only just a started Lord
Let not their gun smoke quell
I’m sure if you are listening Lord
My slumber with eternity
Would not be spent in Hell
Tis time to show our red rag
Show the red rag to the bull
Tis time to hang the red rag
Hang the red rag round a bull
So be driven hard like nails boys
With hearts of English oak
Tis time to dig our furrows
Let thy toffees wear the yolk
To sweat them like an oxen
In the fields of their theft
Even up thy averages
Hang red rags round their necks
AY-For all my misdemeanours
For all my folly and lies
I cannot hold my tongue no more
For those I so despise
To Shelley, Keats, and Byron
I write these words for thee
Rise up my sleeping giants
For its time to come to tea
Tis time to wear the red rag
Show the red rag to the gun
So come my friends, my comrades
My Sisters, Brothers too
Be not ye all afraid or a mind confused to dull
Tis time to hang our red rag
Hang thine red rag round the bull
Tis time.

In homage to the spirit of revolutionary song, both past and present.
Wherever, whenever, by whatever means foul or fair.
Without fear of their religion, laws, corruption, deceit, bullets, torture and death. Onward, onward.
It is the very least we owe to humanity.
It is the debt we must all render to our salvation, prosperity, and future.
In the words of the Prime Minister of our Nation State
We are all in this together.