Black Lives Matter Movement: A New Inquisition?

 a Spaniard questions new craze
by  Carlos Figueroa [Madrid]

Diego Mateo López Zapata in his cell 
before his trial by the Inquisition Court of Cuenca

IT IS VERY interesting to hear in the post below about this dance in Lancashire, related to Moors in UK!!!  Of course [in Spain] we have many traditions related to this 7 centuries, Santiago Matamoros, the parties in the East Coast called Moros y Cristianos...  My opinion is that this fight is related to the Black Lives Matter Movement, anti-slavery demonstrations and this sort of thing.  I know they threw Colton statue in Bristol... I don't like these new forms of "Inquisicion".

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

Will Po-faced Politics Trump Local Custom?

Britannia Coconut Dancers

by Brian Bamford

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

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

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

In an e-mail Derek Pattison asks:

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

Chris Draper replies:

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

Row over use of face paint for Britannia Coconut Dancers routines

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Another Outing For Mr Nobody

by Les May

LISTENING to the news reports of the response by the different agencies one might have expected to have taken action earlier to shut down the Leicester ‘sweat shops’ I had a strong sense of deja vu; I’ve heard it all before.  I saw it in my own town a few years ago when a ‘marked register’, a precaution against voter fraud, went missing, possibly stolen, from a polling station.  There should have been a police investigation; there wasn’t.  A candidate who should have been informed that this had happened and wasn’t, tried to pursue the matter and found nobody would take responsibility.  He described it as the ‘sloping shoulders syndrome’. I saw it again when a Rochdale Labour councillor, Faisal Rana, who had voted twice in the election failed to declare his interests within the specified time.   Council officers wriggled and squirmed to avoid taking any action.   Once again nobody would take responsibility. It reached scandal proportions with regard to the Grenfell Tower fire.   It was Mr Nobody who was responsible yet again.

In Leicester it not even true to say the existence of the sweat shops and what was happening in the decrepit buildings that housed them was ‘an open secret’; it wasn’t even a secret!  A journalist had written an article for the Financial Times drawing attention to them.  In January 2020 Tory MP Andrew Bridgen had raised serious concerns over the conditions in garment factories.  Nobody took notice.

The agencies which might have been involved, HMRC to check no one was fiddling the furlough scheme, the Health and Safety Executive that social distancing by workers was being enforces, the Fire Service that the decrepit buildings were not a fire risk, the Police to check that no one was being forced to work in unsafe conditions against their will, do to some extent have the excuse that that they were no asked to intervene by the body that has ultimate responsibility for what goes on in Leicester, the local council. It seems Mr Nobody was responsible once again.

What is perhaps most disturbing about this is that responsibility for keeping the rate of transmission of the SarsCov2 virus which causes Covid19 disease is being placed in the hands of local councils.  Will Mr Nobody be responsible if they don’t do the job properly?  Figures released on Friday show that Rochdale where I live has 149 cases which is an infection rate of 68 per 100,000 of the population. (These figures are based on data for the fortnight up to 12 July)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-53448533

If you actually look at the advice being given by RMBC to bring down the rate of infection, limit visitors in your home to two, wear a face mask in public and keep two metres apart from at all times they are not really much different from the vague advice coming from Boris Johnson et al.  Where is the guidance about work?  About travel?   About eating out?  But should I really expect better from a council which feels it is acceptable that a councillor who admitted voting twice in the same election should be appointed to a committee which deals with planning applications?

http://democracy.rochdale.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=6271

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

Selfishness or Racism?

by Les May

I’M just back from a stroll with my wife in Rochdale’s Springfield Park.  As well as a golf course and running track there’s a length of a synthetic material which forms an all weather wicket for impromptu games of cricket.  At one end of this we noticed a man and a woman using it as an outdoor gym complete with equipment for weight training.

Whilst we were strolling a group of two dozen young men who I don’t think would object to being called Asian, though I prefer to think of them as fellow Rochdalians gradually arrived.  Carrying bats and balls they were clearly intent on a game of cricket.

Now one might reasonably have expected that the duo would have moved off the surface intended as a cricket wicket and so let the game proceed.  But no, selfishly they stayed put and the young men had to content themselves with a bit of bowling practice with a wicket at the other end.

I’ve called this selfishness, others who observed it might choose to call it racism. Selfishness privileges one’s self over others irrespective of their skin colour; racism privileges one’s self over others because they have a different skin colour. Which of these motivated this pair to behave as they did I don’t know and nor does anyone else. To me these motivations seem awfully alike and equally reprehensible. Or maybe that is just my ‘white privilege’ talking.

************************** 

The dark factories in Britain’s garment trade

Leicester's Shameful Industries & Covid-19

ON the 17th,May 2018 Sarah O'Connor in the Financial Times [FT] asked: 'How is it possible to make cheap clothes in a country where the minimum wage for over-25s is £7.83 an hour?' 

She suggested:   'Online retailers’ nimbleness and lower overheads allow them to pay more for products while still giving consumers a good price. In addition, there are manufacturers that use technology to make clothes more efficiently' and she added 'factory owners in Leicester say some take a different route, one more reminiscent of the 19th century than the 21st.  They call these places “dark factories”.'  

At that time it seemed part of May 17 2018’s garment industry in Leicester had become detached from UK employment law, 'a country within a country', where '£5 an hour is considered the top wage', even though that is illegal.  And one man said he had worked in places with blocked fire escapes, old machines and no holiday or sick pay.

Now a week ago Sarah O'Connor in the same FT wrote:
'Covid-19 has found its way into the neglected cracks in our economies. In the US, Europe and Asia, poor working conditions in care homes, meat plants and factories have helped to spread the virus.  This week [3rd, July 2020], a campaign group blamed clothing sweatshops in the English city of Leicester for contributing to a local surge in cases.  The story of Leicester’s garment district is worth knowing, because it reveals something important about how the British economy evolved in the decade between the financial crisis and this pandemic.  It also demonstrates what it will take for the country to “build back better”, as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to do this week.'

Sarah O'Connor describes how in 2018, she investigated Leicester’s clothing industry which she concludes was 'a bizarre microeconomy where £4 to £4.50 an hour was the going rate for sewing machinists in many factories (£3 for packers).'  Based on tiny sweatshops that were crammed into crumbling old buildings and legally compliant factories using expensive machines were being outcompeted by illegally underpaid humans.

When she exposed this industry two years ago she likened it to be more like the  19th Century than the 21st Century.

It seems that large scale buyers of Leicester’s clothes are based online as 'fast fashion' retailers, which have done well in the pandemic owing to the proximity and speed of their UK suppliers.   And Boohoo, which sources about 40 per cent of its clothing in the UK, much of it in Leicester, prospered in lockdown by switching nimbly to producing leisurewear for the homebound, while rivals were left with shipping containers from Asia full of summer party dresses.

It seems that the big boy on the block Boohoo’s co-founder Mahmud Kamani has become a billionaire and is set for a £50m bonus if Boohoo’s share price continues to rise.  And the campaign group Labour Behind the Label has alleged that the some of company’s suppliers contributed to the spread of coronavirus; meanwhile Boohoo says it adhered to all government guidance and that its supply chain adheres to all labour laws, though it does not publish a list of its suppliers.

Sarah O'Connor reports that:
'Leicester’s sweatshops, which comprise part but not all of the city’s garment sector, were an open secret even before my investigation began. In fact, a senior Whitehall official first told me about them.  A local official in Leicester warned me in 2018 that, if I published my story, I would cause mass unemployment for people with no other options. In fact, nothing changed.  After publication, I was invited to testify at a parliamentary select committee hearing into the costs of online fast fashion.  The government rejected every one of the committee’s recommendations.'


Ms. O'Connor writes:  'As unemployment rises in the months ahead, it will be vital to focus on jobs.  But to prioritise quantity while turning a blind eye to quality would be to repeat past mistakes.' 

Tellingly she points to the crucial coming dilemma:  'As well as the feared harm to public health, Leicester’s economy will suffer from a prolonged lockdown and fall further behind more prosperous parts of the UK.  So much for “levelling up”.  In truth, there was always an economic cost to allowing labour exploitation to flourish.  The garment factories are a microcosm of Britain’s productivity problem.  Job creation boomed after the financial crisis and ministers did not worry initially about their quality.  They pushed up the minimum wage but left it badly under-enforced, while cutting back health and safety inspections to free up “entrepreneurialism”.'

This is all too reminiscent of other industries which have suffered like the British building trade and outsourcing.

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

WORST 20 VIRUS OUTBREAKS IN ENGLAND

A digital billboard in Bradford city centre warns the public about keeping safe.

The government has drawn up a list of 20 councils facing the worst coronavirus outbreaks in England, with Bradford, Sheffield and Kirklees identified as areas needing “enhanced support”, according to a classified document leaked to the Observer and the Guardian.

As evidence mounts that the relaxation of lockdown rules is leading to a resurgence of Covid-19 in some of England’s most deprived and ethnically mixed areas, officials have ordered the army to deploy extra mobile testing units, which will be sent into a series of hotspots around the country from this weekend.

Public Health England (PHE), the country’s lead infection control agency, 

briefed local government health chiefs last week that ministers were considering publishing a ranking of the 10 councils most affected by new outbreaks, which could be released within days. Councils fear the data will be used to enforce more local lockdowns of the kind imposed in Leicester, where all but essential shops must stay shut, schoolchildren have been sent home, and pubs and restaurants remain closed.

The top 10 ranking is likely to be based on a document circulated to local health chiefs on Thursday, headed “official sensitive”. The chart, compiled by PHE and reproduced here, ranks the 20 councils with the highest proportion of positive cases. Leicester remains at its head, with 5.7% of individuals who underwent a test found to have the virus. Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, was not far behind, with a 5% rate. Bradford, and Blackburn with Darwen in Lancashire, were the next highest.

Titled “local authority areas of interest”, the table is based on testing between 21 June and 4 July. It identifies six areas of “concern”. More serious cases are labelled as needing “enhanced support”, with three councils in this category. One – Leicester – is listed as requiring “intervention”.

The document states “these areas are currently under investigation by the local public health protection teams”. “Testing access is being increased in areas including Bradford”, it says, and the areas listed are “associated with workplace outbreaks which have contributed to the increase in infection rates”.

Last month, 164 workers at a meat factory in Kirklees tested positive, and at the beginning of July, a bed factory in Batley, which is administered by Kirklees Council, was closed after eight workers were found to have the virus.The communities most affected have several factors in common: poverty, poor health and a high proportion of non-white residents.

The top 10 is likely to change daily, although some areas will remain severely affected for weeks, health directors believe.

 

 

“Those on the list are going to be characterised by higher deprivation, higher black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities and denser housing,” said a public health director briefed on the plans.

“Some are going to be in the list for the whole period of the pandemic. The drivers are structural and demographic, so the pattern of spread will reflect the inequalities that already existed. Some of the most strapped-for-cash councils are going to be dealing with some of the worst outbreaks.”

Areas with large south Asian populations, particularly where several generations may share a home and live in crowded conditions, are among those emerging as particularly at risk.

Hand sanitiser at Kober meat processing plant in Cleckheaton, confirmed as the location of a localised coronavirus outbreak.

Bradford has the highest proportion of people of Pakistani origin in England.

The council has today deployed testing units, staffed by the armed forces, to its Bowling and Keighley districts. Residents will be able to be tested without an appointment. Similar units will be deployed in Blackburn and Sheffield.

“Bradford has a higher infection rate than most but it’s coming down due to action we’ve taken,” said council leader Susan Hinchcliffe.  “We welcome the dialogue with government.  We’re already doing more testing than any other authority in the region, but want to do more.”

Bradford has asked for its own mobile testing units, more environmental health officers, support to pay full wages to low-paid workers having to self-isolate, and funding to develop its own local test-and-trace system.

Officials have not yet outlined what metrics will be used to impose further lockdowns, but it is understood a system based on the German model is under discussion.  This would involve a threshold of 50 weekly positive tests per 100,000 of the population in any given council.  Once that is breached, special measures could be triggered.

Data made public on Thursday shows Leicester is currently on 116 new cases per 100,000 of population per week, down from 140 two weeks ago.

Rochdale is in second place, with nearly 33 cases, down from over 50 three weeks ago.  Kirklees is also suffering high rates, as are Bradford, Blackburn with Darwen, Rotherham and Bedford.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced the UK’s first local lockdown on 29 June as Leicester reported 944 new cases in a fortnight.  Non-essential shops and schools were shut, and pubs and restaurants were unable to reopen. 

Legislation to enforce the restrictions was pushed through parliament.

Desperate to avoid Leicester’s fate, councils are lobbying for a “graded response”, the local public health director said, with a rolling back of some elements of lockdown, such as larger gatherings, rather than closure of whole sectors. “What we want to avoid is the secretary of state making clumsy, unhelpful interventions, so we are getting ahead of the curve, understanding what our problem is and acting to address it.  But we are hampered by slow reporting of data and absence of data,” they added.

Councils have only just begun to receive a breakdown of new cases by postcode, and this is arriving weekly.  Health chiefs say they need the information daily if they are to spot outbreaks in time to stop them spreading.

The plans to publish a top 10 were discussed on a regional call with Public Health England, two public health directors confirmed.  “They seem to be intent on putting it into the public domain,” said one of those on the call.  “We have expressed some concerns over how they do it, as the data does need to be interpreted. Nonetheless, I welcome transparency.”

The classified list of 20 at-risk councils uses six metrics including number of cases per 100,000 of population per week and per day, percentage of individuals testing positive as a proportion of all tests, and “exceedances”.  This is where councils are issued with a red light because they consistently have more positive cases than forecast by a government algorithm. A slightly lower number of exceedances leads to an amber light.

The chart also shows the number of community outbreaks per council over the last week. Outbreaks are classed as two or more positive tests in a single setting, such as a workplace, school or prison.

The Department of Health and Social Care said it did not have a set trigger, but would use a range of data to decide where and how to act, stating:  “We have been transparent about our response to coronavirus and are always looking to improve the data we publish, including the way we update testing statistics.

“The list of the 10 local authorities with the highest weekly incidence of coronavirus is already publicly available in PHE’s weekly surveillance report.

“All councils in England now have the ability to access testing data, right down to an individual and postcode level.  If councils feel they require more assistance with data, of course, PHE is able to help them.”

Kirklees and Sheffield councils were approached for comment.

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

Dave Douglass: Why I'm No Longer a 'Wobbly'! *

 Farewell British Isles Industrial Workers of the World
by Dave Douglass

Follonsby Miners Lodge Banner

FOR almost fifty years I have been a member of the IWW since it reformed in Britain in the late 70’s.  At that time it did what it said on the tin, it was a revolutionary union based on the principles on which it was founded in 1905 in Chicago, the principle of One Industry One Union, with all workers in one industry in the same union regardless of craft or skill or grade. United through their industries to One Big Union of all workers.  It sought not just a fair days wage but abolition of wage slavery, it fought for the next slice of bread and demanded the bakery.  Unions like the NUM and NUR at that time were based upon the principle after the early Industrial Unionists and Syndicalists in 1908/ 1909 and programmes like The Miners Next Step, and Industrial Union Britain had a profound influence on the trade union and labour movement.  We (The IWW through the 70’s 80’s and 90’s) continued to work within the mass unions as cells and duel members, we of course worked within communities on community issues too.  During the decades I was associated with the IWW I worked a lifetime in the mines and during that time South Yorkshire and North East IWW branches.  We organised large conferences and rallies within the heart of working-class communities and in mass mobilisations of the class and militant sections of it.  North Eastern IWW hosted a conference on Clean Coal technology and Climate change and commissioned a pamphlet in support of the coal communities and industry in defence of the miners union on the basis of clean coal technology.

The IWW internationally had had a significant impact on the pre-WW1 war and post WW1 war period, particularly within the Irish Socialist Republican Movement and coalfields Miners Federation of GB.

George Harvey first national organiser of the IWW in Britain, creator of the Follonsby (Red)Banner. Lodge Secretary Follonsby Wardley Lodge.

It is the inspiration of the miners ‘red banners’ and northern IWW members were influential in recreating the red miners Follonsby banner and forming the Follonsby Miners Lodge Association.  It carries the portrait of Harvey first British organiser of the IWW Connolly first national organiser of the IWW and founder member, Arthur Cook syndicalist president of the Miners Federation during the 26 lock out and General Strike, and V I Lenin whose slogan All Power to the Soviets sounded like the same aims of the IWW and the international Industrial Unions.

It has toured the country and been used as a central plank for lectures on our revolutionary history and culture, as well as publications on the banner and founder members of Industrial Unionism in Britain.  We had been regular guests at the James Connell commemoration in Kills County Meath, a Wobbly and author of The Red Flag, our banners and his influence inspired a radical red RMT union banner.  In major commemorations of 1912, 1926, and annually the Durham Miners Gala where we always had a marquee and bookstall and organised major rallies and discussions about revolutionary class politics.  From time to time we organised workers into the union and represented them at work and tribunals.  I had the honour last year of having the Follonsby Banner as the backdrop to a lecture on the struggles of the IWW and the Wobblies in Irish revolutionary history and the British mines, at the Socialist Republican commemoration of the Hunger Strikers.

To cut a decades long story short, over the last ten years and more I have been more and more distanced and disillusioned with the team calling itself the British IWW , to start with it has become hugely more centralised than it has ever been in its creation.  The decentralised democratic function of the branches is now controlled and centralised into a national leadership.  Sad to say the ‘union’ has become dominated by the south of England and within that a largely middle class London based membership who have carried their liberal left agenda’s straight from that milieu into the policy of the union.  You could be listening to the young liberal leftist Corbynista’s, Climate Extinction or now the IWW.  The social outlook of this milieu has grated for some time.  I was amazed for example as a person who fought for my class for ten years from 83 to 93 against pit closures and the slaughter of the coal industry and miners union and community, to hear anti coal anti mining agenda’s rolled out in the name of the union.  It was simply assumed this being the attitude among the southern middle class it was generally agreed, it wasn’t, not by any of us in the rust belts.  But the final straw for me is the wholesale adoption of Identity Politics, the sectarian politics of sex and gender with enforced PC positions again just assumed to be common sense and currency.  The agenda of class struggle and the sovereignty of the working class as a whole the bedrock upon which all other forms of oppression stem and around which we unite as a common class is the absolute bedrock of the IWW or has been up to now.

IWW picket line Gateshead 2014

Today I get sent this:-

Gemma (East Scotland area organiser) and Maddi (Clydeside Branch co-communications officer) are inviting you to the IWW's first online welcome session for women & non-binary members: Wednesday 15th July, at 7pm on Zoom (details below).

Please note: This message is being sent to all IWW members so that everyone can help spread the word. The welcome session on the 15th is specifically for women (trans-inclusive) and non-binary members. If you are a cis-gender man (you were assigned male at birth, and are still male now) then please stay tuned for news of future welcome sessions, or reply to this email if you'd like to speak to someone from your local branch or in your industry.

And today I resign, it’s a long way from Fellow Worker to cis-gender man and designating me not on my class and class orientation but whether I have a problem with the gender I was born with and actually assuming that that is some common feature of humanity.

The IWW for a long time, even when we were doing great things was always a very poor tribute band to the original, today it is no longer a class struggle organisation and is completely shot through with Middle class PC Identity liberal leftist politics.  A Sad and sorry end to a once great organisation, but they can't take away its fine past and heroic contribution. 

*  Origin of Wobbly Theory #1 - "Eye Wobble Wobble"

Also known as the "Chinese Restaurant Owner Theory", this is the most often cited and embellished theory.  There exists plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this theory as having a grain of truth to it.  Although it is equally likely to be little more than a cleverly crafted tall tale or yarn. We quote from Three Original Sources:
(1) The earliest known reference to the term:

In Vancouver, in 1911, we had a number of Chinese members, and one restaurant keeper would trust any member for means. He could not pronounce the letter "w" (due to the "l" sounds in the pronunciation of the letter), but called it "wobble" and would ask, "you Eye Wobble Wobble?" and when the [red] card was shown credit was unlimited. Thereafter the laughing term amongst us was "I Wobbly Wobbly".

--Mortimer Downing, IWW Member. Quoted in Jack Scott, "How the Wobblies Got their Name," in his Plunderbund and Proletariat (Vancouver, BC.: North Star Books, 1975), p. 153. Also quoted in Jerry Lembcke and William M. Tattam, One Union in Wood, A Political History of the International Woodworkers of America (New York, NY.: International Publishers and Madeira Park, BC.: Harbour Publishing, © 1984), pp. 188-89 n31.
(2) The following account is from the Official IWW History:

It was at this time (1912 during a "thousand mile picket line" railway strike in British Columbia) that the term "Wobbly" as nick-name for IWW came into use. Previously they had been called many things from International Wonder Workers to I Won't Works. The origin of the expression "Wobbly" is uncertain. Legend assigns it to the lingual difficulties of a Chinese restaurant keeper with whom arrangements had been made during this strike to feed members passing through his town. When he tried to ask "Are you I.W.W.?" it is said to have come out: "All loo eye wobble wobble?" The same situation, but in Vancouver is given as the 1911 origin of the term by Mortimer Downing in a letter quoted in Nation, Sept. 5, 1923..."

--From The IWW: Its First 100 Years by Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken, 2006, IWW: Cincinnati, page 60..
3) This account is further elaborated in the following quote:

The word "Wobbly", a nickname for IWW members, humorously illustrates the union's efforts to combat racism. A Chinese restaurant keeper in Vancouver in 1911 supported the union and would extend credit to members. Unable to pronounce the letter "w", he would ask if a man was in the "I Wobble Wobble". Local members jokingly referred to themselves as part of the "I Wobbly Wobbly," and by the time of the Wheatland strike of 1913, "Wobbly" had become a permanent moniker for workers who carried the red card. Mortimer Downing, a Wobbly who first explained the etymology, noted that the nickname "hints of a fine, practical internationalism, a human brotherhood based on a community of interests and of understanding."

--Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows, The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver, BC.: New Star Books, 1990), page 35.

Weighing the Evidence

Conceivably, Downing's account could be the honest truth. According to Dan Cornford (in Workers and Dissent in the Redwood Empire, ©1987, Temple University Press), The IWW was the first labor union in North America to refuse to discriminate against Chinese and Chinese Americans. (Many earlier left-wing organizations, including the Greenback Labor Party and the Knights of Labor discriminated vehemently against Chinese and Japanese Americans. Former members of these organizations (such as George Speed) later joined the IWW and jettisoned their racism). Such interracial solidarity most certainly did not go unnoticed in the Chinese American community, and they would likely have responded favorably to the IWW.
However, all the evidence of the "Chinese Restaurateur Theory" apparently stems from Downing's letter. There is no known independent source that verifies Downing's story. His account may just as easily be a romanticized embellishment of the truth, or it could be pure fiction, and there is no credible proof that it isn't. Downing's narrative also suggests deeply ingrained stereotypical views of Chinese and Chinese-American speech patterns, even by 1911 standards.
Quoting Mark Leier again:

In a letter to the author, dated 31 January 1989, Craig M. Carver, managing editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English states that the Chinese restaurateur version is not given "much credence ... because the story is simply unverifiable." Those with a scientific bent must conclude that the etymology is unknown; romantics may choose to stick with Downing.

--Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows, The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver, BC.: New Star Books, 1990), p 35.

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

‘Cancel culture’ Condemned by Noam Chomsky &

Salman Rushdie et al. in Harper’s Magazine

“HARRY POTTER” writer J.K Rowling, “Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood and “Midnight’s Children” writer Salman Rushdie are amongst 150 public figures to have signed a letter condemning the practice of public shaming, or ‘cancel culture’ as it is known popularly.

‘Cancel culture’ is a term used to describe individuals who have shared an unpopular opinion or have past behavior that’s deemed offensive, who are ‘canceled’ on social media. Rowling is one such example, due to her views on the trans community.

Atwood received considerable backlash in late 2016 after supporting an open letter calling on Canada’s University of British Columbia to provide its reasons for suspending and firing novelist and instructor Steven Galloway after sexual assault allegations emerged.  Meanwhile, Rushdie’s 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” has also drawn criticism over the years for its depiction of Islamic beliefs.

Other signatories of the letter include authors Martin Amis and Jeffrey Eugenides, public intellectuals Malcolm Gladwell and Noam Chomsky, jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, psychologist Steven Pinker, feminist Gloria Steinem, chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov and CNN and Washington Post journalist Fareed Zakaria.

The letter, published Tuesday in Harper’s Magazine, states:  “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.  While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”

“Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal,” the letter argues.  “We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.”
“We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us,” the letter concludes.

The letter has provoked a deluge of online responses.  Author and transgender activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, recanted her position within hours.  “I did not know who else had signed that letter,” Boylan tweeted. “I thought I was endorsing a well-meaning, if vague, message against Internet shaming.   I did know Chomsky, Steinem and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company.  The consequences are mine to bear.  I am so sorry.”
 

Similarly, historian Kerri K. Greenidge, an original signatory, was removed from the list after she tweeted that she does “not endorse” the Harpers letter, and had contacted the publication about a retraction.

Surgeon and scientist David Gorski tweeted: “I read the letter. It’s the same old whiny BS about ‘cancel culture’ from privileged people with large audiences complaining about facing criticism and consequences for their speech.  I am unimpressed.”

Meanwhile, John Boyne, author of “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,” tweeted:  “I agree with this letter completely.  Self-appointed witch-finders hounding people for perceived moral slip-ups while trashing reputations, destroying careers, shouting down women & pursuing cancel culture is the opposite of free speech & reasoned debate.”

PUBLISHED TODAY IN VARIETY MAGAZINE

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

Why 'Black Lives Matter' Will Fail!

by Les May

THE proximate factor in the murder of George Floyd is that the USA has militarised police forces; the notion of ‘policing by consent’ is absent. Trump does not want any international legal oversight of the actions of the the US military with regard to possible ‘war crimes’; should we be surprised that strong legal oversight of US police officers is resisted?

As of 30 June 2020 a total of 506 civilians were shot in the US, 105 of whom were black. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004.  For comparison the rate of shootings per million of the population was: black 31, hispanic, 23, white 13, other 4.  These figures speak for themselves.   By comparison the average number of fatal police shootings per year in England and Wales in the 15 year period 2004/5 to 2018/9 was less than 3 in a population of about 60,000,000, that is about 0.05 per million.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/319246/police-fatal-shootings-england-wales/

Faced with a fatality rate from police shooting which is 200 to 600 times higher than in the UK one might have thought that saving lives, black, brown and white, by demilitarising US police forces, would be central to any widespread response to the murder of George Floyd. Seemingly it isn’t.

Instead of attempting to attain measurable objectives like improving police training and making officers accountable every time they use a firearm, the emphasis is on ‘racism’, something for which there is no objective measure and having all the explanatory power of asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’ It’s a popular badge to display because it allows the wearer to get a warm glow of satisfaction from ‘calling out’ racists. If by chance the murder of George Floyd causes anyone to remember their humanity and dare to say they think all lives matter, you can call that racist too!

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/07/13/why-saying-all-lives-matter-opposite-black-lives-matter/87025190/

And if you have any time left over from combating racism you can always spend it ‘dismantling cisgender privilege and uplifting Black trans folk’ or ‘disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure’ or you could ‘dismantle patriarchal practice’ or even ‘foster a queer‐affirming network’. You will find the quotes by scrolling down the page at:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

But if all this is too much for you then why not buy the tee-shirt for a mere $25* and get back to denouncing someone on Twitter?

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

Things are not much better in the UK. Check out the website at https://www.blacklivesmatter.uk/ and you will find the disclaimer, ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’

In the UK the response to the murder of George Floyd has been to facilitate the rise of groups of ‘activists’ who think that symbolic gestures like tearing down statues actually achieves something which will improve the lives of real people, and the energising of self promoting academics.

The media are for now superficially supportive, but this is all too reminiscent of the #MeToo movement. Dr David Starkey has unwittingly managed to contribute a couple of ways of keeping BLM in the news, but eventually the media will move on to another story.  Unfortunately it won’t be the one about inequality in the UK and the US. Getting a few black faces in the boardroom won’t solve that.

*$25 would pay for one sixth of an operation to correct cleft palate, or all of an operation to correct ingrowing eyelashes plus 40 doses of antibiotic to treat an eye infection of children and adults in Africa.

https://smiletrain.org.uk/sightsavers uksmile train

https://www.sightsavers.org/

AUTHOR'S FOOTNOTE:

In the article I mentioned a disclaimer which read ‘We are not affiliated with either Black Lives Matter USA or the political arm of the Black Lives Matter (Activist Coalition) UK who are purported to be affiliated with BLM USA.’

If you check out the website https://uk.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund which appears to be the group referred to in the disclaimer, you will find passages like ‘a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people’ and ‘we lift up the experiences of the most marginalised in our communities, including but not limited to working class queer, trans, undocumented, disabled, Muslim, sex workers, women/non-binary, HIV+ people.’

You’ll also find the group have been given £1.2 million by 35,000 donors. At the risk of being tedious I will mention that this sum would change the lives of almost 7500 black children in Africa who were born with a cleft palate and face a lifetime of ridicule and social isolation, or pay for nearly 75,000 ingrowing eye lash operations or nearly seven and a half million doses of a drug to cure trachoma and prevent this many black people going blind.

Clearly all those donors have different priorities to mine.

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

Who is now 'The Left' and what about the workers?

beware long angry rant

by Dave Douglass
  
David Douglass worked as a coalminer in the coalfields of Durham and South Yorkshire, and was NUM Branch Delegate for Hatfield Colliery from 1979.  He appears in the documentary The Miner's Campaign Tapes to discuss the role of the popular media in the strike of 1984–85. In 1994–95 he was Branch Secretary at Hatfield Main, but after the pit was privatised the NUM no longer had any recognition there.  Dave was also until the 12th, August 2019 a Friend of Freedom Press, the anarchist publisher.   
*************************

SINCE Thatcher and Major decimated Britain's industrial base there has been a seismic change in 'left' perceptions, and who exactly speaks for 'the left'.  Consistently the working class itself, self-consciously advancing its own interests not only embraced the politics of social change, anti-capitalism, and socialism, it determined for itself the how and what of strategy, tactics and general social outlooks.  The middle class 'left' the liberals the paper sellers in general stood in awe at the mighty columns of organised labour and respected 'the workers' as people who knew what was best for the class but knew who the class was and how it thought.  All other struggles and oppressions and individual hardships suffered by this or that specific, sexism or racism as symptoms of capitalism not necessarily overthrown by the end of capitalism were nonetheless subsumed into the overall class struggle, that being the struggle of the working class itself.

Some tectonic plates however have shifted, and we find now on issue after issue 'the left' is not by enlarge represented by horny handed sons and daughters of labour, nor yet the mass of intellectual or technical white-collar workers.  Almost at every stage 'the left' now confronts the opinions and politics of the working class , by 'the working class'  I am not talking figuratively here, I mean literally the folk who labour by hand and by brain , the working class communities, though mostly these are now post-industrial centers of unemployment and social deprivation.  These are the heartland of the working-class traditions with conscious class struggle halls of fame.  The left now isn’t us, not these people, the left is now the army of middle-class liberal leftists who deem to speak on our behalf and know what’s best for us. In order to do this they have of course to confront our own attitudes and outlooks and conclusions, so consistently over the last twenty years 'the left' has defacto become 'anti the working class' at least how we express our opinions and outlooks and conclusions.  

Any collection of normal working-class folk expressing opposition to what currently passes as left politics, is likely to be designated 'far right' or any of the numerous 'isms' which separate us out from the shining paths of liberal agendas.   Often the aspiration of the 'left' is synonymous with that of the state itself, on issues such as remain or leave the EU, or racism, transism, censorship, safe spaces etc.  So often the 'left' has become the cheerleader of the state singing off the same hymn sheet and forgetting the most fundamental principle of class warfare, to keep an independent identity from the state and its interests. The bleating of the 'left' over social distancing, scooting folk out of the parks or beaches, crying for harsher and longer curfews and abandoning any notion of civil liberties and social freedoms.

The Trade Union movement now that the big militant industrial unions like the miners and shipyard and heavy engineering proletariat have gone and construction workers and car and others have paled into insignificance, it is the white collar and professional unions which dominate.  Not that the nature of the work union members do, or even our opinions matter too much.  The unions and the TUC are now dominated by middle class liberal agenda's, re-education classes, PC speak schools, and making policy fit the liberal middle class left agenda is now the dominant 'culture' of the TUC. it is doubtful how far workers are actually allowed to express their opinions on subject like Brexit with unions like UNITE and GMB swinging in behind leave agenda's despite their rank and file's opinions (RMT and ASLEF were exceptions).  The passing of anti-radical feminist policies denying the existence of women as a biological sex, even in the Women’s Commission of the TUC is a case in PC point.  You could cite almost any major issue over the last twenty years and the so-called left will have drawn the opposite conclusion to the bulk of the actual working class and particularly the traditional working class, postindustrial communities and regions.  Brexit comes to mind, but then also the degree of hysteria and anti-industrialization in response to climate change is another, the remain position of the PLP and NEC and host of bright young mainly southern middle class liberals in the Labour Party itself, Identity politics and the trans impositions, and oddly the lock down and attitudes to withdraw of civil liberties and rights . There is now a miss match between those who see themselves as the left leaders of the working class and the working class itself.  The attitude of the current left tends be one of 'fuck em' if they won’t do as we tell them, they are all Tory, racist, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, fascists anyway.  They appear to find the working class and engaging with our politics at large, entirely superfluous. In one way, it was this contempt for the opinions of the working class communities which led to the surprising victory of the Tories, the belief that Brexit- committed communities in the rust belts who were the heartlands of Labour support would never vote Tory and could therefore be ignored.  Actually I was one who swore they would never vote Tory too I knew they were never going to vote for Labour on a remain anti-industry program, but the degree of their anger transcended for the space of time it took to put the cross on their deep hatred of the Tories over generations of struggles.  The left is now expert at painting the working class into corners charging us with racism, and empire loyalism monarchism and patriotism and other such absurdities.

The statue toppling hysteria sweeping the nation, no I understand not many are being knocked over by groups of Simon pure iconoclasts, but the fear that they will and the fear of being regarded as reactionary, or racist has panicked City Councils into the pre-emptively felling them themselves. Let’s be clear I have no attachment to any of the victim statues thus far and I doubt that I will shed any tears for any on the secret hit list. What rattles us is that someone else has come along and imposed these judgements upon us, that without public discussion and debate a group of unelected vigilantes can decide what is 'appropriate' for us to continue to view.  

Cities are being scoured.for offending masonry and brass and any obscure imperialist lackey can now pay the price. This is an attempt to sanitize history it is an attempt to make the nasty history go away and remove memory of it, when clearly we should be doing the opposite. They were erected within a social and political context and thankfully that context has now changed , the statue though is a reminder of social attitudes and politics of the past , as long as there is adequate information boards alongside there is no reason why they need to be removed.  The statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square is a case in point, was Nelson a distinctive character of history who served the state and the cause of his country as he would have seen it at the time?  Obviously, nobody today including the ruling class would aspire to empire building and defense and colonialism which they did at the time, almost anyone with a brain cell knows this is a historical monument in a historical context.  Actually it is quite interesting from a social history point of view, walk round the base plinth and look at the images of the seafarers in the height of the battle, look at the racial composition of the crew and the ages of the lads running through bombardments with gun powder for the guns, there is a clear presence of black seamen and boys, volunteers earning their freedom from slavery serving 'their' country.  Statues and plaques are interesting platforms for discussing history and understanding it.  Following the logic of the liberal iconoclast would surely see the pyramids fall and the colosseum?   There are already moves afoot to move the statue of the emperor Constantine from York, it appears the guardians have suddenly found out Roman Society was based on slavery, there noo !   I think most of us knew that, it really doesn’t make us want to run through the country uprooting all the many Roman monuments and remains for fear we upset.  Well who exactly?

Churchill and the miners existed in mutual hatred and class warfare, as miners children right through the post war period and before we were raised on stories not so much of Goldilocks and three bears, but Churchill and Tonypandy, and 26, and his hatred toward us.  Was he due his distinctive Mohican grass haircut and spray-paint during the class war protest of a few years ago?  Of course, he was.  Was he a distinguished member of the British ruling class and a memorable character from history, of course he was.  A statue of him in the coalfields would be blown to kingdom come, but outside parliament is fine by me, of course when we the miners pass it, our tale our history in regard to him is somewhat different than the ones told by the tour guides (incidentally see:  'The Day Britain Said No' a more clear sighted history of Churchill) and dauntless any demonstration by the working class or radical movements will find expressions of class war on the statue and plinth, no problem here.

Can I warn against allowing a simple 'hit list' of statues and monuments and plaques as this will always favour those opposed to and rarely those who defend, not least because the defenders won’t know whether or not they need to do any defending or whether someone is attacking something they think is valuable. Can I also warn against taking at face value accusations against particular historic figures, these may well come down to poor research or a particular political or cultural or class interpretation.  Scratching around for something to link Tyneside and the river and the region with the Slave Trade in order that we too might be suitably contrite and consumed with self-guilt, on the day of the first, BLM demonstration in Newcastle,  Look North focused on Blackett Street.  Repeating a poorly researched piece in I think the Journal, talking about Newcastle and the slave trade, the author firstly couldn’t even spell Fredrick Douglass's name right ! But then went on to talk about Blackett having made his fortune in an offshoot of the slave trade by importing Rum.  A totally misguided image was thus conjured up enough that now the name Blackett Street is now on some hit lists. Let’s be clear Blackett was a Liverpudlian , Liverpool being certainly a center of the slave trade though also strongly working class opponent of it. Blackett had started as a young merchant apprentice to his Cousin who did make his fortune in slaves, but he himself didn’t. The fortune and business and wealth of the river, city and region was coal not slaves. Of course, at this time boy miners from six years old worked in the mines, bonded to the coal owners and not allowed to run away or be employed elsewhere on pain of imprisonment the blacklist and starvation. This is the wrong sort of slavery of course, since these children who happened to be sometimes white, if they found time between the 18 hour shifts to get bathed and eat and sleep.  Doubtless some middle-class liberal PC wit will tell us they had 'white privilege' although I’ve never discovered just what that was.  It’s almost certainly true Blackett would have received cases or barrels of rum from his cousin, all rum consumed worldwide was based on the slave trade , as was tea, and cotton and much else, but this wasn’t how fortunes were made on the Tyne or Newcastle which were NOT part of the slave trade other than living in a country and state which overall was.  We had no specific connection and the penitents ought to stop scraping the bottom of (rum) barrels to find one.

The problem with a witch hunt is once you start looking, the world is full of witches.  All Judeo-Christian traditions including Islam have condoned slavery.  Neither Mohamad or Jesus condemned it or banned it or spoke or instructed against it, the bible euphemistically refers to master’s 'servants' rather than the slaves they actually were.  Paul went further and instructed the slaves not to disobey their masters and work hard for them.  This means all religious statues, churches, temples in that tradition Islam, Judaism, and Christianity could be charged with complicity and excusing slavery worldwide and therefore should be removed and shut down.

Modern morality imposes strict age limitations on sexual relationships, courtship and marriage, all sorts of outrage and repudiation is heaped upon those who breach the law or the consensus, but history had no restrictions especially on kings and queens.  If the trend is to take modern values and mores back into ancient history regardless of context and understanding of past society, the censorship of past artifacts could be unlimited.  How many kings and queens have been under 16 or were not even teenagers when they married,?  How many preteens and even on occasion babies, were married?  The whole of European history as it is represented could be shut down.

So, buildings, paintings and statues and books and even the history of such times could be banned and removed from view or knowledge.  The young comrades of the Chinese Red Guard during the so called 'cultural revolution' in their enthusiasm for change, destroyed swathes of ancient Chinese heritage believing it was keeping China in the past. it wasn’t of course, as the miner’s slogan says 'the past we inherit the future we build'.

 We have to acknowledge that Britain was a long time Imperialist and colonialist state, it invaded other countries, it imposed empires it suppressed other cultures and peoples, throughout that long period of the 'empire of which the sun never set' statutes and heroes of the time were built and commemorated. If the attempt is to be allowed to remove all markers to these people and any attempt to see them in historic context then essentially any appreciation of history will be impossible. All statues of Victoria and all other imperial monarchs, generals, wars , must be removed, Lord Collinwood springs to mind, certainly no Mr Nice Guy to his crews. Baden Powell the founder of the scout movement, unsurprisingly an imperialist empire loyalist, was not put up for that reason, but for founding the international scouting movement.  Shock horror they now discover he condemned homosexuality, but society condemned homosexuality, it was highly illegal and poor souls rotten in jails, were beaten and murdered for the offence, that was the injustice of the period in which he lived. Also as man trying to found an organization of little boys would hardly be a public advocate of same sex relationships would he ?, pedophilia being synonymous with homosexuality in those days.

A controversial figure in history, not particular Mr Nice Guy might well still be important corner stones of history and events and worthy of marking. I would expect that if Adolf Hitler had been born on Pilgrim Street Newcastle a plaque at least would mark this fact, that would simply be a historic marker and not some celebration or badge of honour.

The miners have particular reason to remember our slavery and oppression and see in the character of Lord Londonderry in Durham City Centre a monument worthy of removal, but how would that serve our history?  That statue allows us to tell that story, and to demonstrate that the same history can have at least two versions and two sets of facts.  I use it often given on the stump lectures.

 ******************************

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