The outcome of the Batley investigation is a surrender of liberal principles

Posted: Thu, 27 May 2021 by Stephen Evans on the National Secular Society website

As an investigation into the Batley Grammar affair concludes, Stephen Evans says we should recognise the censorious precedent it has set.

Earlier this year a number of teachers were suspended after an image of the prophet Muhammad was used in a lesson to initiate a discussion about blasphemy at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire.

Pupils were forced out of school as angry protesters gathered at the gates demanding action against one of the teachers for 'offending' "the whole Muslim community". Some protesters accused him of stirring up anti-Muslim hatred.

The school's head teacher apologised "unequivocally" and sought to placate the protestors by saying the use of the image was "totally inappropriate". Meanwhile, one teacher and his family were forced into hiding after receiving threats.

An independent investigation launched by the academy trust behind the school has now concluded. It's found that the image was used for an "educational purpose" to benefit students and was not used with the intention of causing offence. The suspensions have been lifted – and rightly so.

Everyone's primary concern should be for the safety and wellbeing of the teacher at the centre of this and his family. We should hope they can now move on and rebuild their lives. I would be surprised if the teacher returns to the school.

But we should also recognise that the investigators have given the protesters what they craved by imposing a de facto blasphemy code on the school.

The executive summary of the investigation says: "It is not necessary for staff to use the material in question to deliver the learning outcomes on the subject of blasphemy; or any such images of the type used… in any trust RS lessons, or any other lessons."

Nobody claimed it was "necessary". But if you're teaching about blasphemy and freedom of expression, you may reasonably think the most effective way of exploring this subject involves using images that have caused controversy. You may also think that if you don't show them, pupils will look them up on the internet anyway, and the best environment for this learning is a teacher facilitated discussion. Teachers appreciate the diversity of their students and can foster civility to ensure students learn about sensitive topics in authentic, sensitive, engaging and meaningful ways.

On a fundamental point, the outcome of this investigation represents a capitulation to the mob. The reason this school and others won't use such resources again is not because they aren't educationally justified, but because they don't want to cause offence. Not because they aren't conducive to learning, but because of the threat of disruption and violence. This is how a de facto blasphemy law works.

Right from the start, the National Secular Society urged the government to take the lead on this issue. We warned that treating it as little more than a local dispute would leave the investigation more vulnerable to pressure from assertive, intolerant religious voices.

And that has now happened. The outcome of the investigation has been influenced by unreasonable religious demands and intimidation and threats from religious extremists.

In many ways, the trust's response is a clever fudge. It endeavours to conciliate between the various parties by offering them all something, while selling out on liberal, secularist principles. It says it's committed to "ensuring offence is not caused". This is a route to censorship that sets a very dangerous precedent.

And the outcome of this local investigation will inevitably affect teachers' ability to do their jobs across the country. One trainee teacher at Manchester Metropolitan University who expressed concern over the weak response to the Batley Grammar affair and said he would be willing to use images of religious figures in class has already been called to a 'fitness to practise' meeting.

Teachers have been given the message that they should censor themselves. And that message could be relevant on any other number of sensitive subjects where well-organised and vocal groups could take offence.

When the incident first happened the Department for Education said it was "never acceptable to threaten or intimidate teachers", adding that schools are "free to include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their curriculum". With fundamental principles at stake, the government should now launch its own investigation into the handling of the affair and consider how we got ourselves into the position where religious extremists have a veto on which resources teachers can use in the classroom.

But instead the DfE has simply said "parents, families and the local community" should "recognise the findings of the investigation" and "welcome and support" the trust's plan to "strengthen its oversight of the curriculum".

Everyone will understandably want to move on from this now. But before we do, we should recognise that an Islamic blasphemy code has been quietly imposed. Teachers' and pupils' freedoms have been sacrificed to appease offence takers.

The outcome of the Batley affair is another damaging chip away at the fundamental right to free expression and inquiry.

Additional note - Friday 28 May

The NSS has today written to the DfE about this. The letter urged the department to investigate the handling of the protests outside Batley Grammar School.

It added that the investigation should consider the wider context of religious fundamentalism being imposed on schools through protests and intimidation, and ask what can be done to protect and support schools in such situations.

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NEU: An Apology For A Union by Les May

FIRST a declaration of interests:

I spent 44 of my 49 years of working life in education; twenty five of them in secondary schools, hence my interest in the action, or more correctly, the inaction, of the National Education Union (NEU) in defending the teachers at Batley Grammar School.

The National Education Union (NEU) is determined to avoid any scrutiny by the media of what is actually happening at the school by claiming that the matter is close to being resolved. Not only is scrutiny by the media unwelcome but the NEU is keeping its own members in the dark, members who pay their union subscriptions in the hope that if their livelihood and well being come under attack for any reason connected with their employment, the union will defend them.

The events which have led to one teacher going into hiding in fear of his life took place on 22 March. A group of parents demanding that he be sacked and they be allowed to determine the contents of the Religious Studies curriculum began to demonstrate in the days following as was widely reported at the time.

The May/June 2021 edition of ‘educate’ the magazine published bimonthly by the NEU contains a four page report of the online annual conference held between 7 and 9 April including a short 150 word piece which uses the words ‘free speech’ no less than four times, but no mention of the goings on at Batley Grammar School, though there was plenty of time for a piece to be included and members informed of the union’s stance.

Donald Trump was widely attacked in the media by those who uphold basic democratic values for his unwillingness to condemn those who peddle extremist philosophies. When it comes to making an unequivocal statement utterly condemning the behaviour of those who have brought about this threat to the life of one of the teachers concerned and who continue to try to dictate to our society what should be taught in our schools, the NEU has shown itself to be an abject failure and an apology for a union. Insisting that those of us who are not followers of Islam should be forced to follow any of its precepts is an extremist philosophy. It is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say so and it is time NEU said so.

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'With Banners Held High' ends in Green Mush!

by Dave Douglass

WITH Banners Held High over the few years of its existence has been an increasingly contradictory event. At first it had a strong focus on the Miners and the NUM and the struggles of the mining communities. Miners’ banners predominated. Miners and their families turned out to celebrate our identity and heritage and use it as an excuse for a canny drink and meet old comrades. Alongside this came the ‘left’ which had over the last couple of decades become more and more infused with a middle class largely southern based liberal agenda, the Identity Politics obsession, and an adoption of the politics of climate alarmism. Climate hysteria for those who are rapidly consumed by it until it becomes an unchallengeable article of faith, simply assume their acceptance of the whole panic and ‘emergency’ agenda is commonly accepted, it isn’t of course. The political demands of Climate Extinction and the Green Party, Green Peace etc confront the very idea of an industrial proletariat, traditional British industry is fighting for life against a war of extermination. That Yorkshire and Humberside TUC have gone over wholesale to their politics and changed the Banners platform into a carnival of green mush and anti-industry propaganda. So, we found in previous years while miners banners and miners proclaimed the fight against pit closures in defence of coal, coal does not dole, and the whole pro mining struggles of the period 83-93 and down to the last three mines. At the same time stalls at the event everywhere called for an end to coal, and much of industry.

This current proposed event marks really an end to the miners connection and its wholesale adaptation to the politics of ‘Climate Emergency’. Where in this ‘virtual event’, which one presumes will be a zoom rally, is the case for coal? Where are the speakers to DEBATE and CHALLENGE the assumption of ‘Climate Emergency’ the degree of ‘Man Made Climate Change’ against an ongoing natural process? Where are speakers from NUM or UNITE to talk in defence of Steel, and coal which is vital to make it? Where are the speakers from the Cement industry who rely on coal for cement and concrete the building industry, including Turbine installation? Where are speakers on the absolute necessity of coal and steel for Boris’s ‘Green Deal’ or Labour’s version of it? Nobody from the NUM invited to speak on the struggle to develop our new mine in Whitehaven, bringing with it 2500 new jobs, and the prospect of mining our own coal again and supplying a steel industry making for example our own wind turbines and our own electric cars or solar frames. None of us from coal, steel, construction, cement, car manufacture etc have been invited to speak on the necessity of fossil fuel in any green manufacturing programme. Where is the workshop on Clean Coal Technology, Carbon Capture and Storage etc? It does not feature.

One thing which made my blood run cold is the session on Labour’s plan to bring in compulsory climate panic lessons into every classroom, with lectures on ‘climate change’ which I for one doubt in the extreme will be an objective assessment of climate change over the last 4.6 billion years before we got here. The dramatic changes in atmospheric composition and weather and temperature and extinctions before we arrived and the context for current changes, mild by comparison and only partially due to our presence. Objectivity, debate, discussion and different points of view and science are not being encouraged here.

I am frankly disgusted at this platform and programme which ignores everything we fought for as miners and steelworkers and our unions. It shows how deeply the climate panic propaganda has entered into the ideology and leadership of even the Trade Union Movement and more shockingly the Northern industry-based Trade Union Movement, one wonders who is running this show and just what are their credentials?

All of that being the case, I don’t think there is any room for miners’ banners on this event, as we have been treated with gross contempt.

I would urge the organisers whoever they are, to think long and hard before next years event, to allow a proper debate and discussion around the question of what is ‘green’ and how does coal and steel meet any challenge of climate concerns. What is the role of clean coal technologies and carbon capture and most importantly the hypocrisy of exporting OUR carbon emissions abroad, our coal and steel requirements abroad, in order that we can use the imported produce here but claim to be emissions free ourselves? Any Labour Movement body let alone Yorkshire and Humberside TUC worthy of its manufacturing traditions would be debating these real issues and facts rather than joining the anti-industry middle class green liberal chorus.

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Sleaze And Dynamic Alternatives. by Les May

MY Dad was born in Walsden, which is hardly deepest Yorkshire, and moved west at the age of two to spend all his life in Lancashire. But he liked to parade his ‘Yorkshireness’ by quoting what he claimed was the county motto of I’ tha’ dos owt’ for nowt, do it fo’ thi’ sen. Not exactly an ennobling aspiration, but a reminder that when anyone hands favours in cash or kind to a politician or their party, something is expected in return.

Boris Johnson may be telling the truth that he (eventually) paid for his change of décor, but if it is found that he initially approached someone else to foot the bill, there will be a quest to find out what favours Johnson bestowed in return. And irrespective of what emerges the aura of sleaze will envelope Johnson for the rest of his time in public life.

But even if those ‘favours’ turn out to be on an epic scale, will it be enough to tarnish the Tories enough to lead to the start of that long slide in public distrust which led to the demise of the John Major government’s support and his election defeat in 1997?

Speaking on Saturday’s BBC programme, Dateline London, the political commentator Steve Richards pointed out that in 1997 there was what he called a ‘dynamic alternative’ to Major and the Tories in the shape of Tony Blair.

Given what we now know about Blair it is easy to forget the enthusiasm and hope with which Labour people greeted his becoming Prime Minister with a huge mandate for change in the shape of his parliamentary majority. Whether you like Blair or not, Richard’s analysis is spot on.

So ultimately whether Johnson’s present little difficulties represent the beginning of the end for the Tories may depend on one thing; ‘Is Labour under Keir Starmer a dynamic alternative?’ Answers on a postage stamp please.

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Muhammad cartoon teacher fundraiser under scrutiny by Tom Belger in 'SCHOOLS WEEK'

Mon 5th Apr 2021, 5.00

A fundraising campaign for the teacher at the centre of the Muhammad cartoon row is being led by an activist accused of stirring up local ethnic tensions.

It comes as a petition demanding the teacher’s reinstatement reached almost 70,000 signatures.

The staff member’s use of caricatures of the prophet in class sparked protests outside Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, thrusting it into the middle of a wider row over religion and free speech.

The school has now ordered an independent investigation into its curriculum after immediately suspending the teacher and apologising “unequivocally” over the materials used in RE lessons. The teacher involved is reported to fear for his life after death threats forced him into hiding.

An online fundraising page to help the teacher fight for his “job, reputation and security” secured more than £5,600 in donations within a day of its launch on Wednesday.

Creator Paul Halloran called it the “official fundraiser,” and said he was a family friend who had been asked to set it up.

But Halloran’s involvement in past local community tensions may risk further politicising divides over the issue.

Standing as a candidate in the 2019 local elections, Halloran faced claims from opponents across the political spectrum that he was stirring up ethnic divisions.

Halloran came third in the Barley West ward for the Heavy Woollen District independent party, whose only other local candidate Aleks Lukic was a former UKIP candidate.

Lukics led a controversial campaign to stop non-stunned halal meat being served in schools, with Halloran demanding the council reveal which schools did so.

Kirklees’ Labour council leader Shabir Pandor told the local Yorkshire Live news site their motives were “extreme and dangerous” accusing the pair of trying to “sow division” by politicising the issue.

Conservative leader David Hall agreed all meat should be pre-stunned to avoid animal cruelty, but condemned “those who would try to stir up community tensions” over the issue.

Halloran has also criticised the term “Islamophobia,” saying all racism should be called out. “I don’t see a lot in the Muslim community commenting on grooming gangs and terrorism…. Let’s not invent a word that will stop us debating those things,” he reportedly said, according to the Press local newspaper. He denied accusations of racism.

But Halloran told Schools Week he “wholeheartedly” rejected ‘far-right’ labels, calling them “nonsense” promoted by his political opponents to discredit him. He said he was a respected local man who belonged to no political party, and had friends of “all cultures and religions.”

But he said he remained concerned “the word ‘Islamophobic’ is used at time to stifle reasoned and respectful debate.”

Footage of protests outside Batley Grammar’s gates quickly went viral, catapulting the area into the headlines only a few years after the murder of local Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist.

Demonstrators’ anger over depictions of Muhammad, reportedly caricatures from French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the school’s apology for “inappropriate” RE materials quickly sparked a backlash against the backlash.

Many appealed for calm but the row sparked not only fierce rows over blasphemy, schooling, free speech and multiculturalism but also reported death threats. Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi warned debate had been “hijacked by extremists on both sides.”

The DfE swiftly called the protests and threats “completely unacceptable,” and defended the inclusion of controversial curriculum materials. The teacher involved is reported to have been teaching about blasphemy.

National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans told Schools Week school leaders “shouldn’t allow blasphemy taboos enforced through intimidation to dictate their teaching.”

The school switched to remote learning amid the protests. The independent investigation will review the “context in which the materials [which caused offence] were used, and to make recommendations in relation to the Religious Studies curriculum so that the appropriate lessons can be learned and action taken, where necessary”.

An independent investigation panel will be appointed over the next fortnight, with the probe set to begin on April 12 and report “towards the end of May.”

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“Farce”, education union funds Muslim charity that publicised Batley teacher’s name

FROM 'The Foxhole' website

1 April 2021

A teacher’s union has given £3,000 to a controversial Muslim charity linked to the Batley RS teacher’s ongoing suspension, the Telegraph reveals.

Batley Grammar School hit the headlines last week after angry members of the local Muslim community amassed outside the school’s premises calling for the teacher’s dismissal after he had shown his class images of the Prophet Muhammad. Caving in to pressure, the teacher was suspended and the school issued a grovelling apology.

Purpose of Life caused astonishment on the back of the events in revealing the teacher’s name. He and his family then went into hiding, fearing jihadist reprisals. The charity’s leader, Mohammad Sajad Hussain was invited onto Talk Radio and asked whether he did not think he had a responsibility to avoid inflaming the situation, having accused the teacher of “terrorism” and “insulting Islam”.

Asked five times by host, Julia Hartley-Brewer whether he thought showing images of the Prophet was worse than beheadings, Hussain only said no at the fifth and final time of asking.

Earlier this week, the father of the teacher said his son’s life was in danger. “Eventually they will get my son and he knows this. His whole world has been turned upside down. He’s devastated and crushed,” he told the Daily Mail.

The distraught father also said the school had thrown “him under a bus”. Purpose of Life continues to call for his sacking.

Now it has been discovered the union representing Batley grammar gave a generous donation to the charity, which then posted a video on social media thanking the now-disgraced union.

Reacting to the contribution made by its Kirklees branch, the National Education Union admitted the West Yorkshire charity should “never have published” the teacher’s name. The NEU spokesperson pointed out that Purpose of Life had “now withdrawn the name and apologised”, adding: “We would ask all media and all other organisations to refrain from naming names. We believe this to be a major breach of privacy with serious repercussions for our member.”

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission said: “We are aware of this matter. We have contacted the trustees of Purpose of Life for further information and their response to our regulatory concerns – this will inform our next steps. We cannot comment further at this time.”

Dr Paul Stott of freedom and democracy think tank, the Henry Jackson Society was much more forthright: “There is now a real question mark about the ability of the NEU to represent its members at Batley Grammar School. That the Kirklees branch of the NEU has funded an organisation that calls for the sacking of a schoolteacher for doing his job is lamentable.

“The NEU now needs to review the organisations it funds and works with to avoid a repetition of this farce.”

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What A Farce by Les May

A RECENT article in The Telegraph claimed that the Kirklees branch of the National Education Union (NEU) gave £3,000 to Purpose of Life, a charity based in West Yorkshire, which later published online the name of the teacher at the centre of the row at Batley Grammar School.

As well as accusing the teacher of 'terrorism' and 'insulting Islam', the group's chief executive, Mohammad Sajad Hussain, said that the charity would not work with the school again until the Religous Studies teacher is 'permanently removed'.

The Kirklees branch is, of course, the one ‘supporting’ the teacher through the disciplinary process initiated by the school. Quite why this NEU branch thought that this donation was an appropriate use of its members’ union fees is unclear.

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Petition Backing Batley Teacher Hits 50,000

THE petition in support of a suspended teacher who showed students a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed has passed more than 50,000 signatures.

The Batley Grammar School teacher had apologised after showing the cartoon, widely reported as taken from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, during a religious studies lesson earlier this week.

He was suspended on Thursday pending an investigation.

The school, in Batley, near Bradford West Yorkshire is facing calls to reinstate the teacher after a petition in support of him reached more than 50,000 signatures in two days, hitting the figure just after 2.00am on Sunday.

Protesters gathered outside the school gates on Thursday and Friday, claiming the school has not taken the issue seriously.

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YORKSHIRE LIVE REPORTS: THOUSANDS SIGN PETITION SUPPORTING TEACHER

Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for a Batley school teacher to be reinstated after he allegedly showed derogatory caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed.

The unnamed teacher, who is now under police protection, has been suspended from his role with Batley Grammar School issuing an apology to parents who have been protesting outside the school gates.

Ricky Gervais has waded in on the row by condemning the protesters and there are calls for the teacher to be reinstated after a pupil started a petition.

It has been signed by thousands of people and is gathering momentum despite [other] protesters calling for the teacher to be sacked.

Other reports:

The organisers behind the online petition claim to be students at the West Yorkshire school.

They said the teacher "was trying to educate students about racism and blasphemy" and was "not racist and did not support the Islamophobic cartoons in any manner".

It added: "This has got out of hand and due to this, students have missed out on lessons because of 'peaceful' protestors" .

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Greetings on Lancashire Day!

An occasional update from Lancashire Loominary

No. 2 November 27th 2020

Greetings on Lancashire Day!

This is an update about ideas, publications and events at Lancashire Loominary. It’s about publishing fiction and non-fiction on the history and culture of Lancashire (by which I mean all of it) and its people. It’s not about ‘the great and the good’ but so-called ‘ordinary’ working class people who did extraordinary things. I do this roughly every 4-6 weeks. Let me know if you don’t want to receive it.

The original ‘Lankishire Loominary’ was published by James T. Staton in Bolton in the 1850s and 1860s. The name changed on a fairly regular basis; at one point it was ‘The Bowtun Loominary, Tum Fowt Telegraph Un Lankishire Lookin’ Glass’. But I like the alliteration of Lancashire Loominary and its textile connections. The reason you’re getting this is because you’ve either bought, helped or promoted previous examples of my work and I thought you might be interested in future titles.

Lancashire Re-united: A Lancashire Day thought-piece

Lancashire and Yorkshire both have strong identities and despite historic rivalries, we have more in common, as Jo Cox would have said, than what divides us. Yet while our Yorkshire neighbours are building up momentum for a ‘One Yorkshire’ region, Lancashire is lagging behind. On Lancashire Day 2020, this paper argues for a re-united Lancashire, with its own democratically-elected assembly, based broadly on its historic boundaries but looking to the future for a dynamic and inclusive county-region that could be at the forefront of a green industrial revolution. It isn’t about creating top-down structures but having an enabling body that can help things happen: in business, arts, education and other fields. As well as a new county-region body to replace the mish-mash of unelected regional bodies and mayors with little accountability, a re-united Lancashire also needs strong local government (that is genuinely local) working co-operatively with the communities it serves and a vibrant economy that is locally based where profits go back into the community.

Back in 1895, Bolton writer and visionary Allen Clarke said:

“I would like to see Lancashire a cluster of towns and villages, each fixed solid on its own agricultural and industrial base, doing its own spinning and weaving; with its theatre, gymnasium, schools, libraries, baths and all things necessary for body and soul. Supposing the energy, time and talent that have been given to manufacture and manufacturing inventions had been given to agriculture and agricultural inventions, would not there have been as wonderful results in food production as there have been in cotton goods production?” (Effects of the Factory System, 1895)

Utopian? Perhaps – we need our utopian visions!. But there’s an element of realism there too. He recognised that capitalism had unleashed enormously powerful productive forces, but not necessarily with the best results. What Clarke was saying over a century ago is being said by many green activists and thinkers today and was what Gandhi preached in his own time and what ‘small is beautiful’ thinkers like Leopold Kohr, Franz Schumacher and John Papworth argued.

Humanity has the resources and skills to create a better world, for everyone; the consequences of not trying are worsening climate change and all that follows from it. The old cliché remains true: think globally, act locally – and regionally.

Clarke looked forward to a Lancashire that was a greener, more self-sufficient place – within a co-operative rather than a capitalist system. Now, as we struggle to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, is the time to think differently about the world we live in. This paper is about what Lancashire could look like in the next twenty years – by which I mean the ‘historic’ Lancashire, including Greater Manchester and much of Merseyside. But this is not about looking backward – it’s about creating a progressive and inclusive vision for a re-united Lancashire ‘county-region’ within a prosperous North and a Federal Britain. A Lancashire Co-operative Commonwealth.

The state of the county

The Lancashire of Allen Clarke’s day has changed in so many ways. In the towns, gone are the mills and mill chimneys with their attendant pollution and poor working conditions inside the factory walls. But we have also lost some of the civic pride and buoyancy of the great Lancashire boroughs including Clarke’s beloved Bolton.

‘Lancashire’ itself has been split and divided in what was a travesty of democracy. No wonder there is a very worrying degree of despondency and cynicism within these towns that ‘nothing can be done’ and we are powerless. It becomes easy to blame scapegoats, be they immigrants, asylum seekers, politicians or whoever.

Lancashire has yet to find a new role that can build on its past achievements, without just being a dull collection of retail parks, charity shops and sprawling suburbia, nor indeed a heritage theme park. We have many successful businesses and a thriving academic sector with great universities, some world-class, in many towns and cities; there is the potential for that to spin-off into new industries and services that are world-leaders.

Manchester has emerged as a dynamic regional centre, though many of the once-thriving towns surrounding it are in a parlous state. This has got to change and consigning towns like Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale and Bury to the role of commuter suburbs is not acceptable. Instead of the centralised ‘city-region’ we need a more decentralised and collaborative ‘county-region’ with several centres and smaller hubs connected by good rail links.

There is a disconnect between urban and rural, with tourist ‘honeypots’ around Lancashire and areas like the Ribble Valley and Trough of Bowland besieged by traffic from towns and cities and homes for local people made unaffordable by urban dwellers buying up second homes – a process accelerated by Covid-19.

The county that was stolen

Allen Clarke’s Lancashire has been shrunk by an undemocratic diktat in the 1970s. Nobody asked the people of Bolton, Rochdale, Oldham, Wigan and other towns if they wanted to be part of ‘Greater Manchester’. We have an elected mayor but without the democratic oversight of an elected council – which at least the original Greater Manchester Council had, before it was abolished by Mrs Thatcher in 1986. Something else we weren’t asked about. Now, in 2020, some politicians are contemplating further municipal vandalism with the destruction of the remaining ‘Lancashire’ county council and three ‘super’ councils replacing it and the existing districts. Talk about making a bad job even worse. In Cumbria, there is talk of creating one single unitary authority; this would mean the death of ‘local’ government.

Allen Clarke was a strong believer in municipal reform and backed The Municipal Reform League, formed in Lancashire in the early 1900s. There’s a need for something like that but on a bigger scale, addressing the huge democratic deficit in the English regions, particularly the North, as well as the loss of power by local government. We need a ‘Campaign for Northern Democracy’ that can involve Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Cumbria and the North-East as friendly allies and partners.

Samuel Compston of Rossendale, a radical Liberal of the old school, spoke of the virtue of ‘county clanship, in no narrow sense’. He was on to something and his words were carefully chosen. Regional or county pride does not pre-suppose antipathy to other regions and nations, and it needs to include everyone within the region. But it requires a democratic voice, not just one person elected every few years as ‘mayor’, nor a committee of local authority leaders whose prime loyalty is to their own council ward.

Yorkshire has been quicker off the mark and the Campaign for a Yorkshire Parliament has won wide cross-party support; the Yorkshire Party has made several local gains. The Yorkshire-based ‘Same Skies Collective’ has developed some fresh new ways of thinking about regionalism. The Yorkshire Society is succeeded in reinvigorating a strong, inclusive Yorkshire identity - a very good model for us to follow in Lancashire.

Here, there’s a ‘Friends of Real Lancashire’ and we have a Lancashire Society which currently has a low profile. Lancashire needs to play its part in the regionalist revival with a much higher profile and cross-party support. A reformed Lancashire that includes Greater Manchester and Merseyside makes sense as an economic unit but also chimes with people’s identities – in a way that artificial ‘city regions’ never will.

‘Greater Manchester’ typifies the problem of ‘city-regions’. It has reduced the once proudly-independent county boroughs to the status of satellites - commuter suburbs of Manchester (or ‘Manctopia’ as it was described in an excellent TV programme recently). Nearly 50 years on from the creation of ‘Greater Manchester’ our ‘city region’ still has precious little legitimacy and if there was a referendum tomorrow on being part of Lancashire or ‘Greater Manchester’ I have little doubt about the result.

A democratic new Lancashire

Regional democracy must be the next big jump for our political system with county assemblies, elected proportionately, taking real powers out of Westminster and Whitehall, backed up by strong well-resourced local government which has the right scale (not too big!). In England, we haven’t grasped the distinction between the national, regional and local, with cack-handed attempts to combine the regional and local (witness current attempts to create a unitary authority for all of Cumbria and three huge ‘local’ authorities covering all Lancashire). The latter are neither sufficiently ‘strategic’ to be effective regional bodies, and anything but ‘local’. Cumbria itself is big enough to be a county-region but still needs effective local government beneath it.

We need to get power out of the centre – Westminster/Whitehall – and give county-regions such as Lancashire real powers (see below) complemented by local government which really is ‘local’ and relates to historic, ‘felt’ identities which make economic and political sense.

Parameters and powers

A re-constituted Lancashire county-region should include much of what once constituted Lancashire with the additions of parts of historic Cheshire to the south (Stockport, Tameside and Trafford in Greater Manchester). In some places, e.g. Warrington, Widnes and Runcorn, local referenda on joining the appropriate county-region could be held. The historic ‘Lancashire north of the Sands’ really makes more sense within a Cumbria county-region that works closely with its Lancashire sister. This provides a county-region of significant size able to wield economic clout without being too large (which a region of ‘The North’ would be, both in population and geographical scale). Crucially, it would reflect people’s identities.

A major failure of the attempts to create regional assemblies during the Blair Government was their obvious lack of powers, prompting the successful attempts by the advocates of the centralised status quo to label them as expensive ‘white elephants’. While on one hand it makes sense for a new county-region to evolve gradually in terms of the powers and responsibilities it has, it must be able to demonstrate a clear reason to exist from the start. That means taking over responsibility for many of the areas which Wales and Scotland already have. It should include tax-raising powers.

The county-region should be empowered to support economic development across its area, investing in emerging industries, research and marketing. The ‘Lancashire Enterprises’ of the 1980s, stimulated and overseen by Lancashire County Council, would be a good model to start with. Part of its role should be to encourage new social enterprises and encourage greater employee and community involvement in large enterprises.

For transport, a ‘Transport for Lancashire’ should be created to take over the powers of existing transport authorities, as well as the ineffective Transport for the North. There should be close collaboration between sister bodies in Yorkshire, Cumbria, the North-east, and the Midlands, with formation of joint bodies to develop inter-regional links.

Another regular canard against regional government is that it creates ‘more politicians’ - ’jobs for the boys’, another effective line of attack against the idea of a North-East Assembly in 2004. It depends how you look at that. Regional devolution must include reducing the number of MPs at Westminster, as their functions transfer to the county-region. The same goes for the civil servants. Some powers that are currently devolved, but with little democratic scrutiny (transport, health, etc.) could simply come under the democratically-elected county-region, with members elected by a proportional voting system.

Localising local government

One of the most disastrous decisions of local government reform in the 70s was the destruction of small, usually highly efficient, local councils. Medium-sized towns, such as Darwen, Heywood, Farnworth, Radcliffe and others often ran their own services, built good quality housing and underpinned a very strong sense of civic pride. They were ruthlessly destroyed in the spurious cause that ‘big is better’ and the knee-jerk approach of far too many bureaucrats to centralise as much as possible. Can anyone honestly say that these medium-sized towns have benefitted from the changes imposed on them in the 70s?

Within a Lancashire ‘county-region’ local government should ultimately be based on smaller but empowered and well-resourced units that reflect people’s identities – the Darwens, Athertons, Radcliffes as well as larger towns such as Oldham, Burnley, Blackburn and Blackpool. However, in the short term use should be made of existing powers to create local councils (‘town’ or parish councils) for small and medium-sized towns that don’t have their own voice, based on the ‘Flatpack Democracy’ model developed by independent town councillors in Frome, Somerset.

These smaller but more powerful local councils should co-operate with their parent borough council and neighbouring communities on issues of mutual concern within a Lancashire county-region – a ‘co-operative commonwealth’ as argued below.

Having vibrant town as well as city centres must be a major element of the county-region. This means having a vision for town centres which offer something that the mega-stores don’t offer: a sense of conviviality and sociability. The arts have a key role to play – small galleries, larger public facilities including theatres and annual festivals (Bolton’s Film Festival is a good example) can help revive town centres and give them a new role.

Some Lancashire towns have been successful in developing niche manufacturing which offer highly skilled, well-paid jobs – but there’s a need for much more, working in partnership with the higher education sector. The ‘Preston Model’ should be rolled out to other similar-sized towns and cities to encourage much more local procurement and business support. It all needs sensitive encouragement which should come from re-structured and empowered local councils working within a collaborative framework provided by the county-region’s Lancashire Enterprises, as part of ‘The Lancashire Co-operative Commonwealth’.

A new green industrial revolution for Lancashire

Allen Clarke’s prophecy in Effects of the Factory System in (1895) that the cotton industry was doomed has finally come to be. Most of the mills that once dotted the south Lancashire landscape have been demolished. A few have survived but many are in poor condition, with only the prospect of demolition ahead of them unless something is done. The University of Bolton has had the sense to re-use some old mill buildings as part of its campus.

Yet most of the surviving Lancashire mills, perhaps with the exception of Manchester’s Ancoats, don’t have the wonderful mix of creative industries, office space and living accommodation that has been achieved with some of the mills in Yorkshire. At Saltaire, Salt’s Mill is perhaps the finest example, though rivalled by the Dean Clough Mills in Halifax. More should be done to protect our Lancashire mills and find good uses for them. Why should Yorkshire have all the fun?

Allen Clarke would have loved the idea of putting the mill buildings to better use - as places to live, but also as office and art space, recreational centres and performance areas. How about mill roof gardens? There’d be no shortage of space, with room to grow fruit and veg. Time for the ‘Incredible Edible Mill’!

We also need to build new, inspirational buildings that can take their place alongside the fine architecture bequeathed us by past generations. We need a vision, at least as radical as that of the Bolton landscape architect T.H. Mawson, of what our towns and cities should look like in the next 20 years, not what developers think is ‘good enough’ for us and makes the quickest return for them. We need some new Lord Leverhulmes (for all his faults!), women and men of vision, able to work collaboratively and creatively. Lancashire could be at the forefront, once again, of an industrial revolution – but this time a green revolution which benefits everyone, not just a handful of entrepreneurs.

Sharing the same skies: the countryside for everyone

Alongside a vibrant urban society, economy and culture, we need to make the best of our countryside, the ‘green lungs’ that make Lancashire so special. At its best, it can compete with the Lakes and the Peak District in terms of scenic beauty and is relatively well served with vibrant shops and smaller towns. It’s a huge asset in attracting talent into the region as a place to live and work.

Yet public transport access to the countryside is nothing like as good as it ought to be. Some of the most attractive areas have little or no bus services, or they don’t operate on Sundays – just when people need them. Places like Rivington, Pendle and Holcombe – let alone the Ribble Valley and Pendle - can be clogged with cars and motor bikes at weekends. At the same time, many stations that gave walkers access to the countryside, have closed.

Never mind HS2, let’s rebuild a world-class local transport network. For a fraction of the cost of that high-speed white elephant, we could have a network of modern, zero-emission trams and buses serving town and country, feeding in to a core rail network. If we look at the examples of Germany, Switzerland and Austria their popular rural areas typically have either frequent train services or rural trams connecting from the larger urban centres.

One of the few bright spots during the coronavirus outbreak has been the remarkable growth in cycling. Clarke and his friends Johnston and Wild would be delighted. Quiet roads, good weather and time on your hands was the ideal combination. Cycle shops have enjoyed a boon. I hope this renewed interest in cycling will survive, particularly if the Government puts its money where its mouth is and provides funding to expand cycle facilities in both town and country. That will need a strong regional body to implement cycle infrastructure working with local authorities and communities – a clear role for Transport for Lancashire.

People will still use their car to get out into the countryside and that needs to be managed and provided for. Car parks can be ugly, but so can cars parked alongside verges. The more alternatives there are available, the less likely we are to assume that the only way to enjoy the countryside is by that form of transport which does most to disfigure it.

Why not copy the example of some of the national parks in the United States, which prohibit car access to the most sensitive areas? If you get there by car, leave it in a ‘parking lot’ and either walk, get on a local bus or hire a bike. It could work in some of our national parks including the Lakes and popular visitor locations such as Rivington and the Pendle Forest. The exciting plans for a ‘South Pennines’ regional park could include sensitive measures to restrict visitors’ car access and promote use of public transport, cycling and walking.

Allen Clarke wanted to see a new ‘agricultural revolution’ in Lancashire, and that’s still relevant. Much of Lancashire, particularly in the north of the county, has a highly productive agricultural sector and we need to guard against precious agricultural land being lost to development. We need to do much more to feed our own people and not be dependent on imported foods. The ‘incredible edible’ model, of small-scale food production within towns was invented here in Lancashire and needs to be rolled out in every town and village.

Beyond a boundary: a Red Rose Co-operative Commonwealth?

The future of England should be about county-regions co-operating with empowered, but geographically smaller, local councils. There should be strong encouragement to co-operate on issues when it makes sense, and to share resources and specialist staff. That co-operation should extend further, across the North. Why not a ‘Northern Federation’ of county-regions – Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, the North-East and Cumbria, collaborating on issues of joint concern, such as strategic transport links and academic co-operation?

Good, democratic governance must be about addressing inequality, jobs, the environment, health, education and having a thriving and diverse cultural sector. Allen Clarke’s vision in 1895, of locally-based and socially-owned units of production make sense in a modern digital age, co-operating as equals with partners across the globe.

His idea of a ‘co-operative commonwealth’ could certainly work at a Lancashire level; after all, it’s where co-operation began. Allen Clarke, with and his radical friends Solomon Partington, the co-operator and feminist Sarah Reddish and Samuel Compston looking over his shoulder, would have said “what are you waiting for?”

And we can’t wait. The coronavirus pandemic has focused people’s minds on the dysfunctional way we have lived our lives. An even bigger threat is climate change which requires re-thinking every aspect of how we live, travel, work and play. A democratic revolution is needed to create appropriate governance that can address those issues.

That revolution needs to go beyond Lancashire and the North. We need to build a Federal Britain which is no longer dominated by London: a federation of equals. Now is the time to create that Allen Clarke’s vision of a ‘Lancashire Co-operative Commonwealth’ that can, in the words of Clarke’s heroine, Rose Hilton – get agate with the job of “washing the smoky dust off the petals of the red rose” and create a county-region that is fit for the 21st century. A Lancashire re-united.

Lancashire United: What we stand for

· The promotion of a strong, inclusive Lancashire identity that is welcoming to everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or age

· The creation of a new Lancashire county-region which includes Greater Manchester and Merseyside

· The formation of a democratically-elected Lancashire Assembly, using a fair voting system

· The devolution of powers over transport, health, education, economic development, culture and tourism to the county-region, with democratic oversight

· The encouragement of informal Lancashire-wide networks in the areas of higher education and research, culture and the arts, sport and other areas

· The encouragement of democratic forms of social ownership - ‘a co-operative commonwealth’

· The empowerment of local government and town/parish councils

· Close and collaborative working with our neighbours in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Cheshire and Derbyshire and the formation of a Northern Confederation

Lancashire Day, November 27th 2020

See facebook group #Lancashire United twitter @lancsunited and www.lancashireloominary.co.uk

Blacked Up Faces And Browned Up Eggs

by Les May

I think that the linking of a ‘blacked up’ face character amongst the Britannia Coconut dancers with the local mining industry is a neat bit of ‘post facto rationalisation’.  A more likely explanation can be found in the fact that the dance is performed at Easter.   In parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire Pace Egg plays were performed in the streets at Easter and still are in some areas.   The term was also applied to eggs hard boiled along with onion skins which make the shells brown.  This tradition with eggs certainly goes back to the medieval period which is recapitulated in the plays themselves

These involve a set of characters which may include St George, Hector, Bold Slasher, The ‘Moorish’ Prince, The Doctor, The Fool, and Tosspot who collects the money thrown at the end.  The OTT action of the play consists of ritualised combat between the first four characters from which, naturally, St George emerges the victor.  Unlike in real life the Doctor miraculously brings the dead combatants back to life, sometimes with a bit of magic involving a few drops of alkali and a colourless solution of Phenolphthalein.

Blackening the face, which may be just that, daubs of black, crudely applied, are used to identify the character of the ‘Moorish’ Prince. In these more affluent times he may be seen dressed like a present day Arab or someone who looks like an escapee from the Arabian Nights.

On Easter morning do you think the White Leghorn hens ever complain that their eggs had been ‘browned up’ and made to look as if they came from Rhode Island Red hens?

https://folklore-society.com/book/the-lancashire-pace-egg-play/

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Brenda Christie: Stuart Christie's eulogy to his wife

Good morning everyone and thank you all for coming on this sad occasion to say goodbye to Bren, my wife, life partner, friend and comrade through fifty-one years of life’s vicissitudes, caprices and blessings — the beloved mother of Branwen — and Nanna to granddaughters Merri and Mo.

Brenda was an intensely private person who— although engaging, sociable and witty — disliked being the focus of attention, but I’ve no doubt she would have been pleased to see everyone here, sharing this day with us.

A baby-boomer, born in Shoreditch in London in April 1949, Bren’s formative years were spent in Gosport in Hampshire where her lovely dad, Bert, was a Chief Petty Officer, a ‘Sparks’ in the Royal Navy.

She hoped to take up a career in journalism, but despite her sharp intelligence, enquiring intellect, love of literature and creative writing skills, the breakup of her parents’ marriage and her tense relationship with her mother Eliza forced her to leave home at 15 and move to London where she became a copy typist, working in a variety of temporary jobs, including at the Treasury.

In 1967, her adventurous spirit took her to Milan where she worked for a time as companion to a glamorous American model, a job that introduced her to the dolce vita of Milan and Portofino, but it was a lifestyle that failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.

With news of the events of May 1968 in Paris and the radical political, musical and cultural turbulence that was taking place in Britain, largely provoked by the U.S. war in Vietnam, the feisty-spirited 19-year-old Brenda was drawn back to London to be part of the radical social and cultural revolution then taking place, which is where we got together on Bastille Day, 14 July 1968, shortly after my 22nd birthday.

We were together from then until the morning of her passing, just a month after she turned 70.

Those fifty-odd years of our lives together saw many adventures, good and not so good — laughter and tears — as happens in all relationships.

But it’s the treasured, shared and cheery memories that are the abiding ones.

On our first date in 1968 I took her to Jimmy’s Greek Restaurant, a carpeted sewer in Soho’s Frith Street which to me was excitingly cosmopolitan in character, but was also cheap with plentiful Mediterranean-style food. Brenda, however, was distinctly unimpressed, particularly when she spotted the column of cockroaches marching along the wainscoting by our heads.

We made our excuses and left for the more salubrious Amalfi in Old Compton Street. From there we went on to the theatre; Unity Theatre in Somers Town to see Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs for which I had wangled complimentary tickets.

I certainly knew how to treat a girl in those days.

After the performance we went back to my flat in Crouch End in North London where I further tried to impress Brenda with my skill in tossing a Spanish omelette, but my hand to eye coordination was skewed that night and it ended up splattered on the floor.

Brenda, who was precariously balanced on a three-legged chair at the time, laughed so much she leaned back, lost her balance and ended up on her back on the floor with the remains of the omelette, legs akimbo, unladylike, flashing her knickers.

Despite those early misadventures, and fortunately for me, Brenda shared my surreal sense of humour, and so began a tumultuous, lifelong, genuinely loving relationship.

Brenda was introduced originally to the Marxist-led International Socialists through her best friend Valerie Packham, and the pair were deeply involved in the staff and student occupation of the Hornsey College of Art in Crouch End, which took place from May to July 1968.

Later, during the final years of the fascist dictatorship in Spain, she became increasingly committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working closely with the clandestine anarchist First of May Group, which brought her under the radar of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and the Security Service, MI5. That, of course, ran alongside her role as a co-founder of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press and her involvement with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.

In the summer of 1971 I was framed and arrested on conspiracy and possession charges which led to me spending eighteen months on remand in Brixton Prison, which is when Brenda came into her own.

While holding down a job as a temporary copy typist, not only did she visit me most days throughout those eighteen months, she brought me cooked meals all the way from Shoreditch to Brixton on public transport.

She also played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and coordinate my ultimately successful defence — that the only incriminating evidence against me had been planted by former Flying Squad detectives, with their superiors’ knowledge! — that and working late into the night typing up the barristers’ notes during the eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal history.

Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior police officers involved in the case. One of them, Commander Ernest Bond, brazenly admitted to her — in the presence of a Chief Superintendent — that they knew I’d been ‘fitted up’, but they could live with my possible acquittal. As far as they were concerned they’d succeeded in keeping me out of circulation for eighteen months.

It’s at times such as those these that we come to really know people in ways of which others remain completely ignorant. Brenda, to me, exemplified the Sufi and humanist ideal of ‘faithful in loving friendship, kindness, compassion and solidarity’.

A few months after my acquittal, in May 1974, following the kidnapping in Paris by anti-fascists of a Francoist banker, a Special Branch officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of London. Whether or not this was friendly advice or an implicit threat we decided not to put to the test. As Falstaff says in Shakespeare’s King Henry the Fourth, ‘The better part of valour is discretion’, and so we began our life Odyssey.

I may not always have been her Odysseus, but she was certainly always my Penelope.

Our first house was an nineteenth century mill house in Honley, Last of the Summer Wine country in West Yorkshire, in fact its exterior featured in a few episodes of that long-running series.

As well as typesetting our books and journals, Brenda and a friend opened a competitively priced teashop called Touchwood, which became a popular eatery for local mill workers and long-distance lorry drivers on the Trans-Pennine A6024 between Huddersfield and Manchester. Their home-made pies and pasties were to die for. On Touchwood’s last day, when we were preparing to leave Yorkshire for Sanday in Orkney, she and her partner Deanna gave all their regular customers free lunches. Many were in tears when they learned the teashop was closing down.

Our next home was the penultimate of the Northern Isles, Sanday in Orkney, where we lived for seven years with Bren’s beloved dad, Bert. It was idyllic for a time, especially made glorious by the birth of our daughter, Branwen, albeit in fairly dramatic circumstances.

Our wonderful lady doctor had been struck down by cancer and she had been replaced by a series of locums straight out of the animated cartoon Scooby Doo. When the one arrived who was to deliver Branwen he had clearly been drinking, as had the taxi driver of the Commer van that doubled as the island ambulance. To aggravate the situation, the only bottle of oxygen on the island had been used up that morning trying to revive a suicide who had jumped off the end of the pier, having filled his pockets with stones.

I lay on the bed beside Brenda dripping chloroform onto a tea towel covering a flour sieve, both of us breathing the fumes intended to ease the pain of the birth contractions, which somehow the doctor’s ineptness had caused to go out of synch.

In the end we had to call for the local inter-island aeroplane to airlift her to hospital on the Orkney mainland. Even that was problematic as a heavy haar, a sea mist, had enveloped the islands so completely that the pilot had to fly in dangerously low, just above sea level. Even the lifeboat couldn’t make it.

That and a few other run-ins with incompetent locums, some of whom had already been struck off the Medical Register two or three times, proved to be the writing on the wall, especially given our now elderly Bert’s deteriorating medical condition.

From Sanday we moved south again, to Cambridge where Brenda found a job as an editorial assistant with Cambridge University Press, working with the leading historian Albert Hourani and the noted Arabist Trevor Mostyn on a number of prestigious CUP titles such as the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa. Both men insisted Brenda was credited by name for her work on the encyclopedia, threatening to remove their names as authors and editors if the class-driven Press Syndics refused to comply, which they had done initially. To credit a lowly editorial assistant by name in such a distinguished publication was unheard of, and I doubt if it has happened since.

It was in Cambridge too that Brenda discovered what proved to be her true métier as a teacher, initially teaching Business Studies to 16- to 19-year-olds at Cambridge College of Further Education where her best friend Valerie was Senior Lecturer in charge of Secretarial Studies. Although to be honest she did think it was a thankless task trying to teach teenagers things they didn’t particularly care about — and to be somewhere they didn’t want to be.

However, after six years in Cambridge, Bert, Brenda’s delightful dad, who’d lived with us since our Yorkshire days, passed away. It was time again to move on, this time to Hastings where we settled for twenty years, largely to ensure that Branwen, our daughter, could put down roots and enjoy some stability with regard to her education and friends.

Among her talents Branwen had a predilection for drama. But it turned out that the principal of the local after-school drama studio she attended was not only a drama queen, but a complete chancer to boot, one whose knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare and his time and plays was embarrassingly superficial. Think Donald Trump meets Danny La Rue and you’ll get some idea of the kind of person I’m talking about.

The bottom line was that Brenda ended up teaching Branwen herself, and was so successful that she swept the board at the local Music and Drama Festival, as well as other festivals in East Sussex, Kent and South London, putting to shame the competing local drama schools. Other mothers approached her to teach their children, which led to Brenda setting up her own Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio. This lasted for almost 10 years and won the hearts and minds of her pupils, whom she enthused with her love of Shakespeare — to say nothing of winning countless drama festivals across the South East.

Our final move was to Clacton. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it coincided with a decline in Brenda’s health. A heavy smoker for more than 50 years, she had increasing breathing and mobility difficulties, but these were eased by the entry into her life of her two darling granddaughters, Merri — born in 2014 — and Mo, in 2017.

Their dynamic and irresistibly exuberant personalities boosted her spirits and recharged her morale enormously.

The end came much sooner than any of us expected.

Hardly a month had passed between her biopsy and diagnosis of small-cell cancer, the first chemo session, and her death.

It was sudden and unexpected — it came in the hour of the wolf, the hour between night and dawn.

What Branwen and I draw some small comfort from is the fact that it wasn’t a long and painful process. She didn’t suffer, she died at home, loved and cared for, not in a cheerless hospital ward or strange hospice room, and I was beside her, able to comfort her at the end. It was her time to go.

This morning we say goodbye to Brenda’s body, but not to her spirit or to the love we had for her and she for us. She has joined what some African societies call the ‘sasha’, the recently departed, whose time on earth overlaps with people still alive. They do not die, they live on in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, and bring them to life in stories and anecdote. Only when the last person to know an ancestor dies does that ancestor leave the ‘sasha’ for the ‘zamani’; the generalised ancestors who are never forgotten, but are revered in memory.

Brenda was a feisty and spirited woman who found it difficult to pull her punches in her dealings with others. She didn’t suffer fools gladly — or even badly, including me on occasions. But despite our sporadic harsh but soon forgotten and forgiven outbursts of frustration, words can never express my own and Branwen’s profound gratitude to Brenda for bringing purpose, happiness and a sense of fulfilment to our lives — not least for her constant part in the general effort to alleviate the burden of the darker times we’ve shared.

Goodbye, dear.

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Brenda Christie died at home in June after a short battle with cancer. At the KSL we have always tried to commemorate the less famous comrades who made up the anarchist movement. Intensely private, she appeared only as ‘Marigold’ (the typesetter) in the Cienfuegos Press titles she helped publish. Later, the academic authors ensured she was thanked by name when she worked as an editorial assistant at Cambridge University Press.

Brenda worked with the First of May Group against Franco’s dictatorship. She also thought of the name for and played a central role in the Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group. Stuart Christie in his eulogy says Brenda ‘played a crucial and pivotal role in helping to organise and coordinate my ultimately successful defence… working late into the night typing up the barristers’ notes during the eight-month Old Bailey trial, one of the longest in British legal history. Her character and integrity won her the grudging respect of the senior police officers involved in the case.’ John Barker, one of those convicted, later thanked her for her work with the defence group saying that she had saved him several years of prison time.

Anarchists can have complex lives: Brenda loved Shakespeare and ran a drama school. In the eulogy, Stuart tells how she turned her back on the ‘dolce vita’ of sixties Milan because it ‘failed to satisfy her sense of moral integrity.’ Instead, she lived a life full and committed. Our thoughts go out to Stuart, Branwen, Merri and Mo and all who knew and worked with her.

[You can read Stuart’s Eulogy at https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/9kd6dm]

Image: Stuart and Brenda Christie, Paris, 1974: photo by Antonio Téllez (who also cooked the delicious rabbit á la Basque). With thanks to Stuart Christie. https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/djhc94

 KSL

Brenda Christie, who has died of cancer aged 70, was my wife, friend and comrade for more than 50 years. An intensely private person, though engaging, sociable and witty, she was a typist, editor, teacher and political activist; we met in London in 1968 on Bastille Day.

Brenda was born in Shoreditch, east London, daughter of Eliza (nee Evans) and Bert Earl, and grew up in Gosport, Hampshire, where her father was a chief petty officer in the navy. With a love of literature and a sharp intelligence, she had hoped to make a career in journalism, but the breakup of her parents’ marriage led her to leave home at 15 and move to London, where she became a copy typist.

In 1967 her adventurous spirit took her to Milan, where she worked as a companion to an American model, but the political and cultural turbulence of the time drew her back to London. Brenda was introduced to the International Socialists (which became the Socialist Workers party) through her best friend, Valerie Packham, and they were involved in the occupation of Hornsey College of Art in 1968.

She was also committed to the anti-Francoist cause, working with the anarchist First of May Group, which brought her to the attention of the Metropolitan police’s special branch and the intelligence services, as did her role as a co-founder, with me, of the anarchist publishing house Cienfuegos Press, and her association with the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag magazine.

When I was arrested and falsely charged with being involved in the Angry Brigade conspiracy in 1971, Brenda visited me almost daily in Brixton prison for 18 months, bringing home-cooked meals on public transport, and helped my legal team in my successful defence and acquittal.

In 1974, following the kidnapping in Paris of a Francoist banker by anti-fascists, a special branch officer visited our flat in Wimbledon and advised us to move out of London. We went first to Honley, in Yorkshire, where Brenda and a friend opened a teashop, Touchwood, which became popular with local millworkers and lorry drivers.

Our next home was Sanday in Orkney, where our daughter, Branwen, was born and where we continued our work on Cienfuegos Press. We then moved to Cambridge, and Brenda worked for Cambridge University Press on a number of titles with Albert Hourani and Trevor Mostyn including the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa.

In Cambridge she discovered her true metier in education, initially teaching business studies at Cambridge college of further education. After a move to Hastings, East Sussex, where we settled for 20 years, Brenda’s teaching extended to giving drama lessons to Branwen – who later became an actor – and setting up the Rude Mechanicals Drama Studio.

Our final move to Clacton, Essex, coincided with a decline in her health, the pain of which was eased by the arrival of our granddaughters, Merri and Mo, who survive her, along with me and Branwen.

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Manchester Anarchist Bookfair Review 2019

 by Christopher Draper

AFTER years of uncomradely bans and exclusions that led to the organisers themselves being banished from this favoured venue it is good to see the Bookfair back at Manchester’s Pumphouse Museum.  Saturday December 7th’s 2019’s fair was efficiently organised with a good range of books, associated literature as well as music, tee-shirts, badges etc on offer.  Admission was free and with a café on site a good time was had by all, or nearly all (more of that later).


Six hour-long talks were advertised:  “Anarchism and Education”; “An Introduction to IWW”;  “What is the Anarchist Party?”; “Marie Louise Berneri’s - Journey Through Utopia”;  “The Government of No One” and “Chav Solidarity” respectively.


Having practiced anarchist education within and without the state system for 50 years I was especially interested in the first talk.  The speaker, Dr. Nick Stevenson, a sociology lecturer at Nottingham University, promised to discuss “more humanistic alternatives” but confined most of his speech to elucidating the ideas of Ivan Illich.  He seemed a nice bloke but this was woefully inadequate as even a basic introduction to “Anarchism and Education”.  Nick seemed blissfully unaware of the numerous practical anarchist educational initiatives that have taken place in Britain since Louis Michel founded her “International School” in London in 1891.  Instead of ivory-towered philosophising about Illich we would have been much better occupied analysing the rise and fall of the dozens of living and breathing free schools that flourished all over Britain in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, never mind the continuing libertarian education on offer at Summerhill.  When I met Nick afterwards he spoke movingly of how his own children had suffered at the hands of the state system and it struck me that this would have provided a better starting point for discussion of real life anarchist alternatives, past, present and future.


My fears of abstract philosophising only increased after attending Dr. Matthew S Adams, Loughborough University lecturer’s talk on Utopias and then Dr. Ruth Kinna’s (another Loughborough lecturer) talk about her book, “The Government of No One”.  I wasn’t reassured when I googled Mr Adams and discovered he’s just published a “Handbook of Anarchism” (Palgrave-MacMillan 2019) that costs £199.99!


Unfortunately the “International Workers of the World” couldn’t even manage to organise themselves so their talk never happened and consequently for the second hour the valuable discussion space remained empty and unused.  I took the opportunity to walk around the hall and chat to stallholders. Despite my lack of affection for Marxism I found the “International Brigade” stallholder most comradely and appreciated our discussion about the decline of politicised working class culture and the collapse of the Clarion movement.   I similarly enjoyed comradely conversations at the Hunt Sabs, PM Press, and West Yorkshire Communist Anarchist stalls and was particularly impressed by the latter’s newsletter that wittily describes Hebden Bridge as, “A nice little drug-town with an unwelcome tourist problem.” 


I’d only half completed my circuit of stallholders by 12.30 so missed “The Anarchist Party’s” talk but as I later learned they advocate voting Labour it’s just as well I didn’t attend.  Unfortunately I had to leave before the last talk to catch a train back to Wales so can’t comment on the “Chavs” although that might well have proved the most useful event of the day (perhaps someone could enlighten us?).

Overall the Bookfair was a great achievement by the organisers. In today’s political climate it’s easier to sit back and do nothing, they dared to bring anarchism back into a venue that is precious but fraught with problems (more of that in a forthcoming article).  They had to steer a difficult course between providing lively debate but avoiding the destructive antagonisms that have so blighted recent anarchist bookfairs.  Unfortunately I learned afterwards that even this event wasn’t free from censorship.  When a group of women from “Make More Noise” attempted to distribute leaflets on gender politics they were asked to leave on the basis that only approved stallholders could distribute literature (there’s more of this on Twitter).  Apparently there was no consequent violence or blacklisting but neither was this an entirely satisfactory conclusion.  Couldn’t the leaflets have been left on a stallholders table or perhaps a table provided for non-stallholders to leave “non-authorised” leaflets?

The organisers must be congratulated but anarchism requires more than sycophancy and the “Freedom” website regrettably treated the “Make More Noise” women and their Twitter supporters with contempt.  My main concern is that the predominance of academic philosophising in the discussion space (3 out of the 5 talks delivered). In the 1960’s Feminism was a revolutionary, libertarian movement (I was there when Germaine Greer spoke at the Warwick University occupation in 1970!) but it spawned “Women’s Studies”, provided safe academic careers, was increasingly commodified and now “Women’s Hour” compiles an annual list “Women’s Powerlist”!  Is anarchism going the same way, with ever more academic chiefs and fewer activist Indians? We mustn’t let professors define our politics or encourage the emergence of an academic “Priest-Class”.  These ivory-towered experts share their musings in the journal “Philosophical Studies” (available at the Bookfair), but how many working class activists are going to read it, let alone write for it, at £14 an issue?   I’m not anti-intellectual but Kropotkin, Russell and Chomsky were also activists and theory must surely be constantly refreshed and informed by struggle to be useful. Anarchist theory and anarchist activism cannot flourish if conducted by separate groups with the former leading the latter – we are not Marxists.


The problem is wider than the Bookfair and I don’t doubt that the academics and the organisers are all nice people but that doesn’t preclude constructive criticism.  I would suggest two modifications for next years Manchester Bookfair.  Firstly no more than one philosophical talk with five more practical workshops led by everyday, down-to-earth anarchists and secondly an open-to-all “Free Speech” stall including material that may well shock and offend, perhaps supported by a “Free Speech” workshop?

For Peace, Love & Anarchy……………………Christopher Draper, Llandudno

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Review: The Northern Light Falls on Us

 'NORTHERNESS is an elusive thing to define' so says the playwrite Simon Stephens in the programme to his play 'Light Falls' at the Manchester Royal Exchange.  He says this as the current
Artistic Director at the Royal Exchange is about to step down to go down the London and become Director of the prestigious drama school LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art).  

Ms. Sarah Frankcom caused a bit of a stir in October 2013, when she said that she was ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ on the issue of female casting by choosing Maxine Peake to play Hamlet, and 'There is now a generation of women who are not going to put up with it anymore'.

She was reacting to research conducted by The Guardian in collaboration with Elizabeth Freestone, Artistic Director of Pentabus Theatre, Ludlow.  It seems that in contrast to the situation on stage, figures from Ipsos Mori revealed that on average 68% of theatre audiences are women.  But that when it comes to producing the works of Shakespeare there is an inherent gender imbalance due to the original male only casts, with 155 female characters compared to 826 male characters across the Bard’s plays.

Her experiment using Maxine as Hamlet worked a treat but her more recent production of a female dominated version of Macbeth bewilderingly confusion as did other who came with me and I saw it twice.

Maxine Peake is from Westhoughton, Bolton, and she has been pressed to drop her northern accent for some roles.   

One comment responded to Ms. Frankcom's feminist 'Hamlet' thus:
'That is ridiculous man!  How arrogant of Sarah Frankcom to feel qualified to re-write the work of a genius. Perhaps she should re-pen Beethoven's 9th while she's at it.  It is such a rare treat and luxury to see a Shakespeare play, and I'm sick and tired of the likes of Frankcom trying to give herself a name at the expense of what is a truly genius piece of literature.  Perhaps she'd like to paint the Mona Lisa as a man too.  What a load of self indulgent pseudo-feminist crap. Just give us the art as it was intended.  It really is that simple.  If you don't like it, write your own bloody play!'

But I think the play's writer Simon Stephens is a man.   When he asked people in his research for this play if they considered themselves northern, he said they all did.  When asked how they defined 'northerness', they seemed to hestitate and then suggest it was their capacity to deal with the rain or cold and deal with it with humour:  'We don't like umbrellas, up here.  We just put our hoods up.'

Mr. Stephens, who now lives in London, He claims:  'I think something has happened with kindness in this country.  It seems that suspicion and mockery are the default position in this county.  Kindness has, in a way that has taken me completely by suprise, become a politically default position.' 

 The current play shifts around the North from the high streets of Doncaster and Blackpool, and the farms of Ulverston and the shut-down shops and pubs of Warrington and Durham to Cheshire Plains and the foothills of the Lake Districts and the Yorkshire Dales.  Warrington and Durham he writes:  'shops and bars heaving under the weight of half a decade of austerity.'


Bill Bryson commenting in 'The Road to Little Dribbling' wrote about a Council's lack of funds to afford it to maintain a shrub planter and made a curious comparison with Durham Cathedral:  'Now I'm no expert on the matter, but I am pretty sure that we are a lot richer today than we were in the eleventh century, and yet back then they could find the resources to build something as splendid and eternal as Durham Cathedral an today we can't afford to keep six shrubs in a planter.'

Today we are better at tearing things down than in maintaining things. As when during the time of the last Labour government he had a mad scheme to set up the Pathfinder Initiative to tear down 400,000 homes, mostly Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, in the north of England - see Bryson.

Bill Bryson can see this decline acutely because he can view it in relief and observe the changes after coming in from the States after being abroad.  Stephen Simon can come back to the North from London and spot 'the seen but unnoticed' features of what's going on in the North. 

The play struggles with the hyper-aspects of everyday life: a middle aged woman has a stroke and dies reaching for a bottle of vodka in a supermarket; a married man attempts to accomplish a three-some; a insecure student tries to please hie older boyfriend; a single mum tussles with the father of her baby.  The roundhouse stage struggles to fit-in these competing elements, and it just about manages to encompass the performances.

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HYMN to the NORTH

by Jarvis Cocker

Our Father who art down in the pub

Our Mother doing the washing up

Well that was then, an this is now

So you better listen up

Factories lia empty

Manuafacting emptiness

Life still needs to be filled none the less

So go and find something to love

But just promise me this one thing, yes

Please stay in sight of the mainland

I always know you've got to go

I don't want you to go

So before you go, there's just one thing you ought to know, yeah

there's just one thing you ought to know

there's just one thing you ought to know

there's just one thing

just one thing

You can fill your life with love

You can fill your life with hope

You can fill you life with food and drink or whatever floats your boat

I'll be be singing you this song 

There's a million things in store for you just beyond the horizon

But please stay in sight of the mainland

So stay in sight of the mainland

You're wiser than I'll ever be

You're beautiful smart, so funny

You fill my heart, you fill my dreams 

And my only hope is you succeed

my only hope is you succeed

 my only hope is you succeed

you're my only hope

you're my only hope 

 you're my only hope

So please 

Please
Please
Please
Please

Trust and believe

In you and me

Northern lights will guide you home

Northern lives just like you're own

Northern rain turning into a flood 

But Don't forget your northern blood

Do never forget your northern blood

And please stay in sight of the mainland

Yeah please stay in sight of the mainland

Pease stay in touch with me

In this contactless society

Anywhere that you may be

The northern star leads back to me
Yeah the northern star leads back to me

 Yeah the northern star leads back to me

 Yeah the northern star leads back to me

You're my northern star

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