A Not So Rotten Borough? by Les May

WHILST I think the claim that the ‘No Wrong Door’ approach, quoted by someone speaking for Rochdale Council in the original report by Nick Statham, as being ‘highly effective’, might be ready for some reappraisal after the report by Ofsted which resulted in yet another entry for the town in Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column, I am not unsympathetic to the problems that any town will face in trying to care for recalcitrant teenagers.

It should be noted that no one at this home, or any other, has the power to detain these children against their will. When the ‘grooming scandal’ came to light there were claims that at least one parent had been unable to control his daughter’s movements and had felt it necessary to approach Social Services for assistance. It is by no means impossible that had the parent exercised the control he thought necessary to protect his daughter, Social Services would have been expected to intervene to protect her from deprivation of her liberty by her father.

As a society we demand two sometimes incompatible things; that young people up to the age of 18 be treated as ‘children’, which by definition implies that they be given special protection, and that young people always be treated as independent agents able to make rational choices. As the case highlighted demonstrates a tension exists between what we expect and what we will allow.

Until we as a society find a satisfactory way of resolving this tension we will continue to read of many more cases like this.

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Rochdale's Return to 'ROTTEN BOROUGHS'!

by BRIAN BAMFORD

DESPITE recent efforts to sanitise the news from Rochdale, this week saw the return of the town to the ROTTEN BOROUGHS' columns of PRIVATE EYE with the revelation of a local council-run home, which Ofsted has not named owing to 'safeguarding reasons', at which the inspectors found that there had been little or no control over the residents despite the fact that according to The Eye 'it only provides care and accomodation for six young people at most'.

The Eye reports: 'Following their visit, inspectors reported one girl known to be at risk of child sexual exploitation had shown staff "significicant amounts of money" she had collected while absent from the home....Two children who had gone missing for five days phoned the home and asked to be collected. A staff member told them there was no transport available. As Ofsted reported: "the children remained missing and at risk of harm until the following day".'

Last March, Ofsted classified the home as as "good", but reassessed it in January "following police involvement". The Eye concludes: 'The home has now been barred from taking in any more children until it can prove they will be safe.'

The Eye bemoans the general war cry of the Rochdale Council which when confronted with this kind of child neglect and abuse, which has a local history dating back to Cyril Smith and the grooming of young girls, arguing: 'Haven't we heard it all before?'

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Blacklisted Electrician Francie Graham dies

THE Blacklist Support Group are sad to hear the news that Francie Graham has passed away. A blacklisted electrician, socialist, rank and file union activist, political campaigner at Westminster and Holyrood and someone who liked a beer with comrades.

Francie was a stalwart of the union movement, who fought the bosses but also campaigned against corruption in EETPU and the JIB, getting the issue raised in the House of Commons through Dundee MP, John McAllion. When the EETPU were expelled from the TUC for their collusion with Rupert Murdoch during the Wapping dispute, Francie, like many other sparks joined the EPIU. His union activism meant that he was repeatedly victimized by the employers and was forced to work away from his Dundee home for many years to find work.

When the Consulting Association was exposed, Francie was found to be on the building industry blacklist and became the first blacklisted worker to give evidence to the Scottish Affairs elect committee investigation into blacklisting at Westminster. Francie was one of the most public faces of the Blacklist Support Group and the Construction Rank & File, appearing alongside his close friend Steuart Merchant in the media and raising the issue at Holyrood and Dundee council. He was still out picketing and protesting when others would have hung up their boots, active in the Frank Morris blacklisting dispute at Crossrail, BESNA and INEOS at Grangemouth.

Anyone who knew Francie probably enjoyed a pint in the pub after meetings or protests, where he continued the debates and added to our informal education. Raise a glass to a man of principle and one of our own.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/calls-for-building-firms-to-be-probed-over-1550224 https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13078739.companies-operated-a-blacklist-of-union-activists-they-took-peoples-livelihoods-away-they-should-be-jailed/ https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/2013/04/17/dundee-electrians-anger-over-blacklist/ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/137469/workers-ask-bam-construction-to-apologise

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'Undoing Darwin' by Dick Frost

I HAVE written “Ten thousand years of Tyranny” to examine beliefs about evolution which are leading humanity to disaster. My aim was to show why the future of humanity depends on anarchism; this meant confronting Darwin's theory of evolution and that led me to speculate on the origins of civilisation and sin, the myth of scarcity, social power and much more.

My arguments depend on a claim that the world is rich in resources due to the energy arriving every day from the sun, which is far greater than all earth's creatures need, plus the fact that all species adapt to live together in their chosen environments. Scarcity is a myth; affluence is normal.

Because resources are not scarce life is not constant struggle; it is rather constrained and/or ritual conflict as individuals play out their evolved patterns of behaviour according to their species nature within the limits which eco-systems and the world as a whole impose on them.

Individuals do not live at the extreme. Each seeks to survive and reproduce as much as it can but through systemic interactions they evolve viable compromises at levels below their capacity: each gets the best it can. Behaviour, including conflict, is finely ritualised, exemplified by the swallows which fly to South Africa every year and return to the barn in which they were born.

Eco-systems are self-regulating wholes which produce balance and stability out of the complex interactions of their components. Systems stability ensures reliable behaviour and controlled populations: nothing could evolve or survive if everything around were in a state of flux.

Nature is not red in tooth and claw. Individuals evolve to live within the opportunities and limits of their environments according to their species nature; they adapt to and are adapted by what they need. They take what they must have: if they are sheep , then grass; if lions, then gazelles. None kills for fun; they kill for food or to defend themselves, a territory or their group. Hunting is often brutal and the prey, cuddly. Some ways of life look dreadful to human beings in soft-hearted mode but it is evolved behaviour; it's never personal.

The dense interactivity of individual behaviour in eco-systems inhibits change. It often seems to me that the eco-system is the key determinant of both stability and change: communalism,rather than the individualism of the selfish gene, shapes evolution.

Evolution is driven by random genetic mutation and environmental pressure to which individuals respond. Genetic variation is constant but mostly harmful and quickly rejected. Viable variations lie dormant until environmental change makes them useful; then they are “naturally selected”. Most evolutionary change outside crises is gradual and minor but can make a huge difference over the millennia; in any case each step has to be minimally disruptive in order to be acceptable to an eco-system. A dramatic event such as a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, an asteroid hit, climatic disruption etc. will destroy eco-systems and many species; then niches open for major selection and speciation.

Free from the (imagined) risks arising from (imagined) scarcity, life is a confusion of individuals each capable of variation. Variations which survive and prosper are not “fittest”: they are fit enough. They seldom struggle but survive because they fit a changed environment and universal affluence ensures them the energy they need.

Affluence makes possible the amazing variety of life and explains the profusion of behaviour and characteristics which are far from “fit” and do not help a a species to survive: the panda's diet is clearly a problem; as are the extravagant plumage of birds of paradise, the obsessive fighting of males for a mate; the bower bird's gardening, the wren's excessive nest building, the puffer fish's sand sculpture.

Affluence is the dominant factor in evolution; in h sapiens culture is also important. H sapiens is a culturally variable social species with the freedom to modify its way of life. It developed cultures by evolution and in response to the different environments into which groups moved, confronting new climates, food resources,natural conditions, hostile animals etc.

Like all social animals it evolved behaviours essential to the integrity of groups - the social virtues. All social animals are peaceful and egalitarian within their groups. Living in affluence, they do not need economic hierarchy. H sapiens was “the first affluent society” according to anthropologist Marshall Sahlins because everything it needed was freely available in its environments – but that is the same with all social animals – probably all life.

Individuals were benign and “good” in the sense of behaving in ways which sustained the group, family or clan. The forms culture took satisfied the social virtues: conformity, tolerance of hierarchy, mutual aid and hostility to “the other”. H sapiens did not know sin.

This “state of nature” and freedom in affluence lasted for more than a million years (including h erectus)and ended in the Neolithic revolution (after c11,000BCE} when chiefs or some form of elite power destroyed community cohesion and imposed oppressive exploitation on, eventually, the whole world.

Elite power arose from some conjunction of wealth, population pressure,climate change, resource depletion, war, mental instability and chance and the sad fact that the social virtues function as well in oppressive as in free societies. We are genetically programmed to conform to the mores of the group we are born into. Elite power is a mutation which throws off the normal limits of the species and uses the strength and ability of millions to ludicrous ends.

The outcome is the tyranny of civilisation, all its wonders built on ten thousand years of blood, sweat, toil and the tears of the masses. All civilised societies are controlled by elite power; all property,abuse,exploitation and war are manifestations of power. Sin is inevitable.

The book tries to show that anarchism is the genetic social organisation of h sapiens and makes the case for a return to small,voluntary, egalitarian groups enjoying the affluence of the commons.

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Unite members have won the first battle in their war against deskilling electricians.

BLACKLIST SUPPORT GROUP:

When was the last time you heard of employers’ proposals for a training course leading to UK wide direct action led by the workers themselves?

Big contractors at Hinckley Point nuclear power station want safety critical electrical work to be carried out without the need for a qualified electrician. Sparks have got other ideas.

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UNION NEWS:

The UNITE union stepped in after it was discovered two training standards had been introduced at Hinkley Point by the Engineering Construction Training Board (ECITB) that would undermine the role of the electrician, without the union’s input or agreement.

Rank-and-file members occupied the offices of EDF Energy, and threatened to blockade the Somerset nuclear power station site. As a result of the protests, EDF has announced it has put the plans on hold.

A statement from Unite’s Electrical and Mechanical Combine said: “We welcome the news from Hinkley Point that all training courses will cease until our dispute has been resolved. We also appreciate the statement of support from our general secretary, Len McCluskey. This does not mean that this dispute is almost over, far from it.

“Our focus now turns to NG Bailey and Balfour Beatty Kilpatrick. We will be targeting these companies on a weekly basis at their offices, their sites, their supply chain and their governance, both here in the UK and overseas.

“We demand that a statement is sent out from Baileys and Balfours with a clear and unambiguous proclamation that they will withdraw from the training standards CPSO1 and CCSO1 at Hinkley Point, and that they will cease their immediate attacks on the skillset of electricians and other trades immediately and forever.

“For over 30 years we have had to endure the deskilling agenda of major electrical contractors. Each time we have responded and each time these companies have been forced into retreat. But they keep coming back.

“We will not tolerate these attacks any longer. If this statement is not unequivocal, then Balfours et al will become legitimate targets for further indiscriminate actions. We will not go away.”

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Sky News: Russia hit with sanctions over attempted murder & jailing of Alexei Navalny

Ian Collier, news reporter 1 hour ago

THE United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions targeting a number of senior Russian officials and businesses over the attempted murder and jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The 27-nation bloc and the US imposed bans on travel and froze the assets of a number of members of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. They are:

• Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation

• Igor Krasnov, the prosecutor general

• Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard

• Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Prison Service

• Aleksandr Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)

• Andrei Yarin, chief of the Presidential Policy Directorate

• Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Executive Office

• Aleksey Krivoruchko, deputy minister of defense

• Pavel Popov, deputy minister of defense

An EU statement said the four were listed "over their roles in the arbitrary arrest, prosecution and sentencing of Mr Navalny, as well as the repression of peaceful protests in connection with his unlawful treatment".

US secretary of the treasury Janet Yellen, said: "The Kremlin's use of chemical weapons to silence a political opponent and intimidate others demonstrates its flagrant disregard for international norms.

"We join the EU in condemning Alexei Navalny's poisoning as well as his arrest and imprisonment by the Russian government."

Meanwhile, the US announced 14 businesses, most of which it said were involved in production of biological and chemical agents, have also been targeted.

Senior members of president did not immediately identify the Russian officials named in them.

One official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the sanctions would be the first of several steps by Joe Biden's administration to "respond to a number of destabilising actions".

Mr Biden has pledged to confront Mr Putin for alleged attacks on Russian opposition figures and hacking abroad, including of US government agencies and US businesses.

Mr Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator, was arrested in Moscow in January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

In February, a court sentenced the 44-year-old to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany.

The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Mr Navalny has rejected as fabricated.

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Worries over Rochdale’s Riverside shopping centre

CONCERNS raised over Rochdale’s flagship Riverside shopping centre - the council will have to pay rent on empty units for the next 34 years.

The town centre retail and leisure destination - home to big names such as M&S, Next and River Island - opened in the summer, but has been badly hit by the pandemic.

Concerns have been raised over Rochdale’s flagship Riverside shopping centre after it emerged the council is liable for the rent and business rates on empty units.

The town centre retail and leisure destination - home to big names such as M&S, Next and River Island - opened in the summer, but has been badly hit by the pandemic.

The launch of its Reel Cinema has been twice delayed, while clothes shops and food outlets have been seriously affected by Covid restrictions.

Rochdale council is the ‘head tenant’ of the £80m scheme, and has an option to buy the centre for £1 at the end of the 35-year lease.

It pays an annual rent to investor M&G Ltd, offset by the rent it receives from tenants.

But where units are left empty, the authority has to pick up the bill. It must also cover business rates.

Developer Genr8 has guaranteed the estimated rental income for the first three years of the scheme - £2.3m in in 2020/21 - while the government is providing councils with business rates top-up grants.

According to information seen by The Local Democracy Reporting Service, over the next 10 years, the council will set aside annual funds to ‘prudently mitigate against’ the pandemic’s impact on the retail sector.

Council leader Allen Brett told this week’s budget-setting meeting the authority would be ‘providing £750,000 in recurrent funding’ to support the Riverside scheme.

This measure was raised later in the meeting by Lib Dem group leader Andy Kelly. “We are already saving three-quarters of a million pounds in case things go wrong,” he said.

“In light of the pandemic in light of the fact high street shopping is not looking good, I have got to say we are going to be using more and more of our financial savings - if not our reserves - just to keep the payments up on our shopping centre.”

Coun Kelly also complained he had been refused further details on the grounds of ‘commercial sensitivity'.

Speaking after the meeting, he expanded on his concerns.

He told the LDRS: “It is a gamble. To invest that much time and money of the council in a commercial venture for 35 years and be told that we are already saving for the next 10 years rent is really worrying.”

Outside of Covid restrictions bosses estimate that Riverside would generate an extra £1.3m a year in business rates for the council.

Coun John Blundell, cabinet member for ‘a thriving economy’, says he is confident the centre will ‘bounce back’ after the pandemic.

He added: “Fundamentally Covid 19 has revealed a big crack in the retail market at a time when Rochdale was consolidating its retail and leisure offer.

“The Riverside scheme isn’t entirely retail, it’s also food and drink, but because of the Covid pandemic nobody in their right mind is opening food outlets because people can’t visit them.

“It’s put the scheme in a very difficult place during Covid, however, nobody is to blame for that because who could have foreseen the pandemic?”

Coun Bludnell said the £750,000 being put aside by the council was to cover for a worst case scenario and - in ‘normal times’ - business rates would compensate for any loss of rental income.

“If you look at it in the round it should not cost the taxpayer in the long term. It should be cost-neutral and we get an asset at the end.

“There will be peaks and troughs. Obviously, at this moment in time it’s a trough. Sometimes we will lose a bit, sometimes we will gain a bit.”

He also believes the pandemic hitting now may prove less damaging than if it had arrived some years down the line.

“If it was going to happen at least it was at the start of it opening - so when we reset we are resetting from the right place.

“If we were two years on and had filled it with retailers that went bust, that would be a problem."

Coun Blundell believes the post-pandemic landscape will see more people working from home and spending more time their local rather than city centres.

“The Riverside scheme is perfect for that,” he added.

The regeneration chief also makes the point that Riverside is not just a retail development - but home to a number of food and drink outlets as well as a cinema and a mini-golf attraction.

The shift towards hospitality and leisure could well be ‘accelerated’ by the pandemic, he says, but the ‘exact complexion’ of the scheme will only become clear in time."

However, the high street and traditional retail was in trouble well before the pandemic arrived last year - hastened by the shift to online shopping.

Massive names such as Top Shop, House of Fraser and Debenhams have all gone to the wall , while several councils have run into trouble buying up shopping centres.

But Coun Blundell says that Riverside is not purely about retail - citing the likes of Heavenly Desserts, Nando's and Bean - and remains the town's 'flagship' destination.

"Even though people are moving online, there is still going to be space for people who want to go and buy something," he said.

"Yes, retail is declining in most of the country, but there is still going to be space for people to go an buy things.

“What we are saying as a council is that, in Rochdale, that is going to be the Riverside scheme."

He continued: “The only body in Rochdale that is going to take that risk on the town centre is the council. The reason the council has done it is because we believe the offer in the round is a strong one.

“Food and drink is still going to be a part of the town centre and anyone who has visited has said what a fantastic scheme it is.”

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DEADLINE on complicity in Council Corruption

Rochdale Chief Exec. on Two Jobs & Milking Owd Folk!

Praise be to GOD for Corruption!

For men are Human

And Judges are Bribable

And With Corruption!

Even the Innocent may get off.

by BERTOLT BRECHT in the Three-penny Opera.

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LETTER FROM MARK BIRKETT:

To: Brian Bamford

Date: 1st March 2021

Re: Rochdale Council Vote / Huge Hike to Care Home Fees Whilst Ignoring Whopping £50k Pay Rise for Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow

Dear Brian,

You heard it here first; two days from now, on March 3rd 2021, all 60 x Rochdale councillors will be 'considering' hiking care home fees to Rochdale's elderly by 5% in order to 'save' £80,000 / year on the council budget.

Unfortunately, what they won't be considering is reviewing the second full-time job the Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow has at the NHS. This NHS job pays Continue Mr Rumbelow no less than £50,000 / year on top of the £140,000 / year he was already earning as Chief Executive, taking his salary just a fraction under £200,000 / year ... half as much again as the Prime Minister.

The money is eye-wateringly insulting enough, but the key issue here is that no-one can do two full-time jobs simultaneously. And there isn't a workplace on earth that would pay someone two full-time salaries for two part-time jobs. Yet on July 18th 2018, that's exactly what Rochdale's councillors voted to happen.

That's why - on 19th January - I wrote to each of them to suggest that they put forward / support a motion to review this indefensible situation. But not one of them has agreed to do so. Most haven't even acknowledged my letter. Our councillors don't seem to mind enabling Mr Rumbelow to trouser an extra £50,000 / year for this NHS role but it's the elderly in Rochdale that are now likely to end up paying for it. The moral horror of this 'proposal' should be obvious to everyone.

Neither the NHS and RMBC are benefiting here. And certainly not the average Rochdale taxpayer, many of whom have lost jobs and businesses (not to mention loved ones) over the last year. The only beneficiary is Mr Rumbelow. That's why there should be an immediate judicial review of this untenable and intolerable situation, with Mr Rumbelow's pay packet reduced by whatever proportion of his working day now being handed over to the NHS.

Sadly, Mr Rumbelow has turned the entire machinery of Rochdale Council into ignoring my complaints, including allowing the Borough Solicitor Asif Ibrahim to advise all RMBC councillors "not to respond" to my communications about this which, in addition to being a disgraceful interference with everyone's right to democratic representation, breaks their own RMBC Member Code of Conduct on multiple points (inc. their legal obligations re: 'scrutiny', 'accountability', 'transparency'). And he refuses to answer any further letters from me about this.

The perenially useless Rochdale Online won't cover this pay abuse. Neither will the truly pointless Rochdale Observer. Both 'media outlets' are thus a total disgrace to the town. Exactly the same can be said about Tony Lloyd MP. Another politician who refuses to respond to constituent concerns. He knows about all this and has done nothing to stop it.

The local elections are in May. So, don't forget what happened here folks. Don't waste your vote. Rochdale Council and the entire 'body politic' here is rotten to the core with cronyism, nepotism and sheer incompetence. It needs to be stopped. We urgently need caring, principled, decent and intelligent people running the Council and our town ... right now, we have nothing of the sort.

If you are horrified by this proposed care-home fee hike, or horrified by the greed of RMBC Chief Executive Steve Rumbelow who is taking home so much of your hard-earned money for an impossible-to-do second job (and who has the gall to refuse answering ANY questions about it), or horrified by the sheer incompetence of Rochdale's councillors who voted for all this to happen ...

then ... PLEASE SHARE THIS POST WHEREVER AND HOWEVER YOU CAN

Best wishes,

Mark Birkett

Taxpayer, Kingsway Ward

Rochdale

NORTHERN ANARCHIST on Death Row Part 2

by CHRISTOPHER DRAPER

CONDEMNED to death, in November 1897 anarchist Samuel Fielden of Todmorden sat alone in a Chicago prison cell awaiting execution on the 11th of the month. On 2 November the United States Supreme Court ruled there were no federal issues involved and it would not intervene. Only an act of clemency by State Governor Robert Oglesby might stay the executioner’s hand.

LIBERTY or DEATH?

THE political prosecution of Fielden and his comrades disabused radicals around the world of any lingering belief in the United States as the embodiment of liberty. The socialist historian Edward Thompson judged this state-sponsored prosecution the decisive factor in turning Britain’s Socialist League (SL) in an anarchist direction. William Morris (founder of the SL) excoriated the USA as “a society corrupt to the core and at this moment suppressing freedom with just the same reckless brutality and blind ignorance as the Czar of all the Russias.”

OGLESBY DECIDES

AT 9am on the eve of execution one of Fielden’s comrades cheated the hangman, ignited an explosive cartridge in his mouth and blew himself to pieces. Eight hours later Governor Oglesby intervened, commuting Fielden’s death sentence to life imprisonment but four of Sam’s five condemned comrades would still be hanged the following morning.

On Saturday 12 November Fielden was taken from Cooke County Jail to serve his sentence at Joliet, 30 miles south-west of the city of Chicago. At Joliet, Sam could leave his cell, exercise in the open air and resume his old work, labouring in the prison’s stone yard. Visits from family continued although little Alice no longer searched Sam’s cell as she initially did at Cooke County, looking for the candies her father, in happier days, hid around the house for her to triumphantly discover.

In 1890 a recently released prisoner, Thomas Broderick, claimed Sam was being singled out for harsh treatment, “Fielden, the English anarchist, shows the most marked fortitude and faces his dreary fate with wonderful patience and resignation. This has called down upon him the hatred of his guards. I have frequently seen the unfortunate man treated with great cruelty. Once I saw him chained to the wall for several hours and during that time all sorts of epithets were directed towards him by one of the guards and he was abused as though he had been the worst convict in the prison instead of one of the best.”

UNFOGOTTEN

“HAYMARKET MARTYRs” commemorations were organised around the world every eleventh of November and campaigning continued everywhere to secure the release of the remaining prisoners. After enduring seven years long years in jail hopes were raised in January 1893 with the inauguration of a new liberal State Governor, John Peter Altgeld who agreed to review the original prosecution. Confidence in Chicago’s police and judiciary had been severely eroded in the intervening years by a series of shocking discoveries. In January 1889, it was revealed that Inspector Bonfield, who’d led the police assault on the Haymarket meeting, “had for some time been receiving payments from saloon-keepers, prostitutes and thieves and had been trafficking in stolen goods”. Personal items stolen from one of the dead anarchists were subsequently found at the home of Detective Jacob Loewenstein.

On 25 June 1893 a magnificent “Haymarket Martyrs” monument was unveiled at Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery, where years before Sam, the teamster, had regularly delivered decorative stonework. On 26 June Governor Altgeld formally ended Sam’s imprisonment with a report that rubbished the entire prosecution process that had in 1886 condemned him and his comrades to death. Altgeld emphasised this was no merciful pardon but a public declaration that Sam and his fellow Haymarket anarchists were falsely convicted and entirely innocent.

RELEASE

AT 4.20pm on 26 June 1893 Samuel Fielden, wearing a striped uniform distinguished only by his prison number, “8526”, was summoned to the office of Joliet’s Chief Warder. A special messenger, “Mr Dreyer”, handed Sam an engrossed document authorising his release. “Fielden took his pardon and folding it up carefully placed it under the brown and white striped jacket, worn black with long service, and without saying a word he reached out and grasped Mr Dreyer by the hand and then turning shook the warden’s hand fervidly.” The warden advised Sam, “If you call on Stewart Leland he will fit you out with the best suit of clothes that can be purchased outside of the World’s Fair City…Governor Altgeld has pardoned you and I can congratulate you and feel glad for I believe it is only your just dues.”

HOMECOMING

ARMED only with a rail permit and some pocket money, Sam, smoking a big cigar, left Joliet by the 6.15pm train for Chicago. He reached home, 117 West Polk Street, at 8.45pm where he was received by a large crowd. “His wife had been at the windows of their apartment on the second floor every few minutes on the lookout for him. Their little children, Alice who is 8 years of age and Harry who is nearly 7 were on the steps of the house ready to welcome their father while beside them were many of their father’s old associates…The meeting between the long separated husband and wife was tender though not demonstrative. They embraced each other for a moment and kissed each other for a moment and kissed each other tenderly. The wife murmured a welcome but the husband remained silent. He evidently desired to be stoical and did not want to give any indication of deeper feelings than a quiet sort of pleasure in returning home.”

POSTMAN BEN

THAT summer the Fieldens met old acquaintance, Benjamin Butterworth, the Walsden postman who’d come to Chicago to see the World’s Fair. In fact Butterworth made two visits, arriving first on Sunday 20 August, he returned the following Tuesday. “Glad that he had been permitted to shake hands with an old school fellow so far away from Todmorden, he heartily congratulated Mr Fielden on regaining his liberty after seven long years in Joliet.” For his part, Sam presented Benjamin with two “Haymarket” books, a sympathetic account compiled by lawyer Matthew Trumbull who’d been a Chartist in his youth in England, the other volume was Governor Altgeld’s justification for quashing Sam’s prosecution.

WORK

FIELDEN resumed his stone-hauling business, occasionally supplemented by driving a beer wagon. When he hadn’t returned to rabble rousing, after a year or so he was briefly pursued by reporters keen to depict a disillusioned anarchist but Sam wouldn’t oblige. “I will not change my mind on economic and social questions but I have not spoken at a public meeting for a long time and do not expect to.” When pressed on the matter Samuel revealed himself to be older and wiser. In the heady days of 1886 Chicago’s anarchists had convinced themselves they stood on the rim of a revolutionary cauldron; one more fiery speech and the workforce would erupt, overwhelm the plutocracy and wrest control. In reality the anarchists’ driving class consciousness ran far ahead of the everyday concerns of their fellow labourers. The anarchists provoked the tiger without the means to strike it dead. Now, on Sam’s release “He thinks the people too patient to effect any great reform in his lifetime”. He hadn’t abandoned his former aims or values but had emerged from prison with a more mature, considered anarchist philosophy which involved reconnecting with his family, nature and the land. He informed reporters he’d saved a bit of money and was looking for a farm.

SHOESTRING RANCH

IN April 1895 the Fieldens bought a small ranch situated high up in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, fifty miles south-west of Denver and a thousand miles away from the mean streets of Chicago. City newspapers lost interest in Sam although his arrival in the Rockies was warmly received by local reporters, with this particular October 1895 account republished in Todmorden:

“Up towards the western extremity of the beautiful La Veta valley where the ground begins to rise to form the might range of which La Veta pass is a gateway lies a lonely ranch…It stretches along the winding, tumbling, sparkling stream called Indian Creek… and in the vernacular of the western is called a 'shoestring ranch'. Great, graceful trees border the creek and lofty hills rise clothed in the richest verdure on either side. Westwards the huge mountains themselves tower above it. It is a romantic spot, looking secluded and peaceful enough to satisfy the most weary soul imaginable. It is the home of a man whose name has probably been spoken in every civilised country in the world and whose existence cannot but hold some interest for every working man the class whose cause he zealously advocated and risked his life for.

“He looks the typical ranchman already with his sunburned face, flowing beard, unclipped hair, wide hat and dusty farmer’s suit. He seems perfectly at home holding the halters of his horses and expiating on the good points of the meek brown cow which he had just purchased…He feels the wrongs of the people as deeply as ever but as a public figure his part has been acted…Only those who seek him with sympathetic hearts and congenial minds will hear his thoughts expressed. He keeps in touch with the radical world by reading the papers and pamphlets printed by the workers…His bright children whom he takes to their country school nearly three miles away; his faithful wife…his picturesque home, his domestic animals, the state of his crops and the prevailing market prices will now occupy all his energies.”

FRIENDS & NEIGHBOURS

FAR from the madding crowd the Fieldens were widely respected throughout this scattered, self-sufficient but close knit community. When Mr Butler, a neighbour, dropped by in June 1897 he expressed admiration for Sam’s agricultural achievements; his recently completed system for irrigating crop fields, his select herd of eighteen cattle, plus a few hogs and when Butler departed he was accompanied by several choice pigs he’d purchased to stock his own ranch.

In 1898 a few Colorado friends, led by the radical Rev. Myron W Reed, who chaired the event, organised a Denver “Haymarket Commemoration”. At this now rare public expression of his sustained solidarity, Sam “seemed imbued with much of his old-time spirit and fire… his body swayed with emotion, he gesticulated freely and his voice rang with indignation against the robbers and oppressors of the poor.” The event drew an unexpectedly hostile response from the Salida Mail, which doubted the validity of the Governor’s pardon; “Samuel Fielden, one of the anarchists who escaped the noose and was given a life sentence was present. It will be recalled that the arch sympathiser with anarchy, Governor Altgeld pardoned this man…sentenced for the awful murder at Haymarket square.”

William Holmes, a fellow Englishman and fellow anarchist, who visited the Fieldens’ the same year, reflected the other side of the Governor’s action, “(Sam) is happily in possession of good health and spirits and looks back upon his long years of imprisonment as upon a frightful dream…his soul is filled with eternal gratitude for his brave deliverer – John P Altgeld”.

Another old anarchist buddy, William J Lloyd dropped by in 1903 and as they talked, Lloyd observed that despite his rocky isolation Sam was “up to date on all passing questions”. One evening after dinner, reminiscing as they rode together along Indian Creek, Sam confided, “there was no conspiracy and none of the leaders knew of the bomb thrower or his intentions and so little did they anticipate violence that they brought their wives and little children to the meeting.”

LIFE ALONG INDIAN CREEK

IN 1905 when “little Alice” turned twenty-one she was struck down by typhoid but after eight weeks at death’s door made a full recovery. The four Fieldens lived, worked and prospered together and in 1909 added Benton Vories’ ranch to their holding, after paying him $4,200 so he could take up an appointment as the local District Water Commissioner. Sadly Sam’s wife Sarah didn’t have much opportunity to enjoy their newly acquired land as she passed away two years later. As Sam’s labouring life began to take its toll, Harry made more of the major decisions on the farm, assisted by his invalid father.

In January 1915, the local paper reported that the area’s farmers had collectively shipped 16 carloads of cattle from La Veta for sale at Denver, and was impressed by prices achieved by Harry Fielden’s 66 calves. Investing for the future, in 1916 the Huefano County News reported that “the Fielden ranch has been improved with the erection of a 20 by 100 foot barn.” As the years slipped by along Indian Creek, Sam’s children remained on the ranch, unmarried, until Harry died 2nd July 1972 followed by Alice on 11th March 1975. Samuel Fielden had passed away half a century earlier on 7th February 1922, just a couple of weeks short of his 75th birthday. All four Fieldens lie together in the simple, small, enclosed La Veta cemetery.

(Part one of this story along with many other fascinating episodes of radical history are archived and easily accessible on this NV website – CD 2021)

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NORTHERN ANARCHIST on Death Row Part 1

by CHRISTOPHER DRAPERr

ON 20 August 1887 a Chicago jury condemned a Todmorden man to be hanged for a bomb-throwing incident that killed eight policemen and injured sixty more. As the turning point in Chicago’s bloody class war this sensational case was reported around the world. Back home in England, when Samuel Fielden’s invalid father was informed of his son’s death sentence he became another victim and expired within the week. Details of the bombing and trial were comprehensively recorded at the time but Samuel Fielden’s lifestory has never before been fully told.

A Northern Childhood

Samuel Fielden was born on 25 February 1847 in Walsden, on the Lancashire side of Todmorden. There’ve always been Fieldens in Todmorden and Samuel’s father, Abraham (1816-1886) worked as an overlooker at the town’s enormous Fielden Mill, though Sam’s family occupied a much lower social level than millowner, John Fielden MP (1784-1849) whose statue graces the town’s Vale Park. Sam’s mother, Alice bore Abraham seven children although only four survived into adulthood. She’d endured an impoverished childhood selling polishing sand door-to-door. Abraham first met her as she hawked her wares around the houses in the bitterest of winters, trudging through snow in bare feet.

Sam learnt nothing of anarchism or socialism in his youth but acquired an overwhelming ethical sense from the non-conformist religion and politics of his parents. Tragically, Sam’s mother died in 1858 when he was just eleven. He inherited a basic understanding of politics from Abraham who campaigned on many social issues of the day, Chartism, the ten-hour day, the co-operative movement and much more besides. When Sam was six or seven, he learned to read by attending a local dame school for six months.

Work

Aged eight, Sam started work at Fielden’s Mill. His first job was to race along the machines removing empty bobbins, taking care to keep fingers safe from the moving parts. After a couple of years he was promoted to the heavier task of taking full spools to the weavers. At this stage Sam was a statutory “half-timer”, required to attend the factory school for half of his time at the mill. He became a “full-timer” at the tender age of thirteen when he transferred to working in the factory’s warehouse. After a couple of years he learned to weave and laboured at that until he was twenty one when he’d resolved to seek his fortune in America.

Awakening

Several incidents in Sam’s youth came to shape the character that was so forcefully emerged in later life. In 1860, at the conclusion of Sam’s factory schooling, Mr Harrison, his teacher was accused by a local Methodist of brainwashing his pupils with Unitarian heresy. When Harrison sued for libel Sam was required to give witness at a Liverpool Court hearing. He was overjoyed at the prospect. Not only did he get to spend a week away from home but visited the new Menai Bridge and at Liverpool docks Sam was thrilled by the tall ships bound for America. His imagination was stimulated by the “dime novels” he brought back from Liverpool and with the outbreak of Civil War in 1861, everyone in Todmorden’s thoughts turned to events in America as supplies of mill cotton from the Southern States slowed to a trickle. Initially Fielden’s mill supplemented the raw material with inferior Surat cotton from India but this so clogged the machines that production ground to a halt. Until hostilities ceased in 1865 milling resumed only intermittently and in the interim Sam carried tiles for workmen laying drainage for the ground on which the millowner’s magnificent new Dobroyd Castle would soon arise.

Sam learned of the cultivators of that Southern cotton when escaped slave Henry Box Brown visited Todmorden in 1861 and told of how, with the assistance of abolitionists, he’d gained his freedom concealed in a crate posted away from the plantation as a parcel. Sam’s inherent disrespect for elitism was reinforced when William, his older brother, who worked as a gardener for the Fieldens, was dismissed for showing insufficient deference. Sam’s oratorical skills which came to be recognised as his political strong suit were nurtured in the chapels of Todmorden’s Methodist circuit where from 1865 until 1868 he was admired as a fervent “exhorter” well on his way to becoming a full-blown religious minister but it was not to be.

Wanderlust

Drawn by tales of the “Wild West” Sam longed to leave home but obeyed his father’s wish to remain until he was twenty-one. He’d also given his word to marry Sarah Gill, a weaver at the factory. When Sarah promised to wait for him until he was established in America, he booked his passage and in July 1868 sailed from Liverpool. His first job on landing in New York was at Prentice’s Brooklyn hat factory, but he didn’t like the work or the wages and left after only two days. Moving north to Providence, he returned to his old trade of millwork before in March 1869 starting out West. He reached Chicago in August, by way of a bit of sightseeing at Niagara Falls. Coincidentally, the very first building he entered on reaching the city belonged to John Still and his brother who ran a plumbers business and originated from Todmorden where Sam had known some of their relatives. Less happily, it was outside this building that seventeen years later the bombing occurred that led to Sam’s death sentence.

That autumn of 1869 Fielden worked on John Wentworth’s farm and the following spring laboured at dredging the Illinois & Michigan canal. His religious fervour continued to diminish as his political awareness grew. As a deck passenger on a Mississippi steamboat, in spring 1870, he embarked on a working tour of the southern states that enlightened him on the falsity of “abolition”. The “liberated” blacks continued to be dispossessed and exploited by a myriad of sophisticated social and economic measures.

Chicago Again

On returning to Chicago in May 1871 Sam laboured around the region on a variety of navvying tasks until, after a year or so, he settled into heavy haulage work serving the city’s stone yards. Belying his big, rough, burly appearance Sam never neglected his intellectual development, spending every free hour at lectures or reading in Chicago’s public library. He returned to Todmorden in the autumn of 1879 for the first and only time. After embracing his aged father who was no longer the vigorous patriarch of memory, Sam visited the overgrown grave of his mother. He also fulfilled the pledge of two decades before and married Sarah, his childhood sweetheart. The pair sailed from Liverpool on the Germanic, arriving in New York harbour on 26 January 1880 eager to start their new life together in the “Land of the Free”.

Teamwork and Anarchy

Having saved his wages over the years, on his return to Chicago Sam bought his own team of heavy horses and worked for himself in the thriving stone haulage business. After starting a teamsters union Sam was duly elected Vice President. In the autumn of 1880 he helped reorganise Chicago’s Liberal League which existed to ensure the total separation of church and state. Over time he successively served as the organisation’s secretary, vice president and conference delegate and this involvement served to enhance his growing intellectual development, confidence and political awareness.

By 1883 his involvement with the Chicago labor movement brought him to socialism which evolved into anarchism. The following year he joined the International Working People’s Association with divisions organised on the basis of language; Fielden joined the English-language “American Group”. Confronted by a corrupt oligarchy of employers and politicians intent on smashing organised labor, Chicago IWPA was defiantly militant. Sam Fielden subsequently recalled, “I wish to say (we) were all anarchists at that time.”

Chicago’s May Days

On 3 May 1886 an “army” of Pinkerton thugs and city police opened fire on striking workers at Chicago’s McCormick Reaper Works, killing two and injuring many more. In response, Chicago IWPA organised a mass protest for the next day at 7.30pm, 4 May at “Haymarket”. There were to be three speakers with Samuel Fielden to close the event. The meeting was peaceful but as Sam was ending his speech two hundred armed police officers led by Inspector Bonfield rushed from an adjacent building, panicking the crowd. Fielden was ordered to cease immediately and assist in dispersing his audience. As Sam remonstrated a bomb arced through the air and exploded amidst the police, who responded by shooting indiscriminately, injuring officers and workers alike. Fielden was shot in the knee and when records were compiled there were eight dead policemen, another sixty seriously injured and probably similar casualties amongst the workers though, understandably, few of these injuries were reported to the authorities.

Judicial Murder

Fielden managed to limp home and the next morning, police, without warrants, searched the house, found nothing but arrested him anyway. At the police station Sam was sworn at by Lieutenant Shea and ordered to remove his bandage and expose his leg wound. Police Chief Ebersold pointing at Sam’s forehead said, “it ought to have gone in here!”

The authorities never claimed that any named individual made, threw or had prior knowledge of the bomb. No relevant evidence tying any suspect to the bomb was ever presented in court yet Sam, along with seven other anarchists, was charged with murder. Evidence wasn’t required, for the judge, prosecutor and jury were hand-picked and the verdict a foregone conclusion.

Verdict

The verdict was delivered shortly after 10am August 20 1896. Mr Osborn, the foreman intoned, “We, the jury, find Samuel Fielden (and comrades)… guilty of murder in manner and form as charged in the indictment and fix the penalty at death.” Samuel Fielden responded from the dock: “Today as the beautiful autumn sun kisses with balmy breeze the cheek of every free man I stand here never to bathe my head in its rays again. I have loved my fellow man as I have loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty and injustice. The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend but as I have said before if it will do any good I freely give myself up. I trust the time will come when there will be a better understanding, more intelligence; and above the mountains of iniquity, wrong and corruption, I hope the sun of righteousness and truth and justice will come to bathe in its balmy light an emancipated world.”

“Murderers’ Row”

Fielden was imprisoned in Cook County Jail in a stone cell measuring 6ft by 8ft, reached by a flight of iron steps. In front of the cell ran a narrow footway. Sam occupied “Cell 31” in this section known as “Murderers’ Row”. Awaiting execution he was visited by his wife Sarah and their two children, Alice and Sam junior. He’d never seen his son before as the boy was born on 1 November 1886, six months after Fielden was imprisoned and, ironically, four days after the unveiling of a giant statue in New York harbour; “Liberty Enlightening the Word”!

Despite continuing world-wide protests and a further 1½ years of legal wrangling, it was confirmed that Samuel Fielden would be hanged at 12 noon, 11 November 1887, but this isn’t quite the end of the story….

(The concluding part of this story will be posted on NV in 3 weeks. Search our archive for more of CD’s articles of Northern Radical History)

Men, Women, Covid and Risk 'Take 2' by Les May

THE expert group advising the Government on Stage 2 of the vaccination programme which will is now being extended to people under the age of 50 have chosen to continue with the present procedure of offering injections to people based upon age. This is by far the simplest procedure as information about a patient’s age is included in the medical record held by their doctor.

It also takes account of the fact that even with these relatively younger individuals, age remains the major risk factor. What was however striking about the graphic presented during the briefing was that it showed the significantly heightened level of risk to men in the 45 to 49 age group compared with women of the same age. Men have about twice the risk of women.

I previously pointed to this higher level of risk for men compared with women in my NV piece of January 27th ‘Men, Women, Covid and Risk’, though the disparity has attracted little or no attention in the broadcast or print media. This is in sharp contrast to the uncritical attention given by news outlets to the higher level of risk which may be suffered by some ethnic groups.

Significantly the speaker highlighted the need to encourage men under 50 to come forward for vaccination, as well as people from non-white backgrounds. Attention is often focused upon the reasons why some individuals from non-white backgrounds exhibit some reluctance to receive the vaccine. Often this is couched in terms of lack of trust or past experiences.

It would be difficult to claim that the public face of the NHS prioritises men’s health issues. Much attention is paid to promoting screening for breast and cervical cancers. Is there similar promotion of health issues affecting men?

Such services are available, screening for colo-rectal cancers and thin aortas are two examples, but there seems little effort to promote them.

Will the print and broadcast media take a stance which encourages men to come forward? Will any perceived reluctance of men to take up the offer of vaccination be couched in terms of lack of trust or past experiences with the Health Service? I’m not holding my breath!

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The Great Post Office Strike of 1971

by DAVE CHAPPLE

The 15th February 1971 was United Kingdom Decimalisation Day: no longer were there 12 pennies to a shilling, half-crowns, or 240 pennies to the pound. That day, 50 years ago, was also just over half-way through the greatest strike this country had seen since the General Strike of 1926: the 44-day national strike of 200,000 Post Office workers.

Telegraphists, telephonists, Post Office counter clerks, cleaners, postmen (170,000 of them!) and PHGs (Postmen Higher Grade), members of the Union of Post Office Workers, struck for their claim of 15%, or £3 a week for lower-paid grades such as cleaners. They picketed, they lobbied, they marched, but after six and a half weeks they went back to work defeated: why was that? This article attempts to find an answer.

In October 1969 the Post Office Corporation was created, carved out of an iconic part of the British Civil Service. Profits and budgets were increasingly emphasised at the expense of public service obligations, while Civil Service collective bargaining was side lined. When Ted Heath’s Tory Government was elected in 1970, many right-wing Tory MPs like Christopher Chataway, the new Posts Minister, openly argued for the part-privatisation of the vastly profitable telecommunications part of the Post Office.

On November 24th 1970, just after the UPW submitted its claim for 15%, the Tories sacked Lord Hall, the Labour Government-appointed Post Office Chairman. Result: spontaneous UPW walkouts in many large sorting offices! Bill Ryland, his replacement, was a Post Office career man with a mission to ‘modernise.’ That meant maximising telecoms profits, mechanising sorting offices, and replacing straight wage rises with productivity schemes.

Inflation was rampant, and the UPW claim for 15% would mean, at least, a real rather than an apparent pay rise. The Post Office offered 7%, then raised it to 8%. The UPW Executive Council, with Tom Jackson as General Secretary, saw this as an insult, and, under UPW Rules, without a ballot, called an all-out national strike from Wednesday January 20th!

Militant day telephonists at the Bristol UPW Rally in the Colston Hall, January 1971. Pic Bristol Evening Post From the Shetland Islands to Penzance, from Anglesey to Yarmouth, Post Office workers struck. The UPW produced a poster to accompany the claim: “Albert Edmondson, postman, works a 43 hour, six-day week, for this he takes home less than £16; Jenny Merritt, a telephonist, works a 41-hour, six-day week. For this she takes home £10.15s. Ian Moyes, a counter clerk, works a 42-hour six-day week and takes home £14 10s, even with five hours overtime.”

On Sunday 24th January, 20,000 UPW members took their first strike march down the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” used by the anti-Vietnam war protesters, and rallied in Hyde Park. Rallies were held every Thursday thereafter. For most of the six weeks, these were loud, confident working-class celebrations of struggle, and Tom Jackson, left-wing Labour with handle-bar moustache, was, to start with, a popular leader. Strike rallies took place in all of the UK’s cities, some, as in Bristol, led by militant young telephonists.

During the intermittent talks held during the strike, Ryland, an ambitious hard-liner who may even have acted without day to day orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr, upped the pay offer to 9%, but only if the UPW agreed to a massive increase in part-time labour into the postman grade, which was a “closed shop”, ie. 100% trade union, and nearly 100% male. The UPW refused this ‘offer’, and the strike carried on, a war of attrition that affected every city, town and village in the country.

From the Shetland Islands to Penzance, from Anglesey to Yarmouth, Post Office workers struck. The UPW produced a poster to accompany the claim: “Albert Edmondson, postman, works a 43 hour, six-day week, for this he takes home less than £16; Jenny Merritt, a telephonist, works a 41-hour, six-day week. For this she takes home £10.15s. Ian Moyes, a counter clerk, works a 42-hour six-day week and takes home £14 10s, even with five hours overtime.”

On Sunday 24th January, 20,000 UPW members took their first strike march down the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” used by the anti-Vietnam war protesters, and rallied in Hyde Park. Rallies were held every Thursday thereafter. For most of the six weeks, these were loud, confident working-class celebrations of struggle, and Tom Jackson, left-wing Labour with handle-bar moustache, was, to start with, a popular leader. Strike rallies took place in all of the UK’s cities, some, as in Bristol, led by militant young telephonists.

From the Shetland Islands to Penzance, from Anglesey to Yarmouth, Post Office workers struck. The UPW produced a poster to accompany the claim: “Albert Edmondson, postman, works a 43 hour, six-day week, for this he takes home less than £16; Jenny Merritt, a telephonist, works a 41-hour, six-day week. For this she takes home £10.15s. Ian Moyes, a counter clerk, works a 42-hour six-day week and takes home £14 10s, even with five hours overtime.”

On Sunday 24th January, 20,000 UPW members took their first strike march down the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” used by the anti-Vietnam war protesters, and rallied in Hyde Park. Rallies were held every Thursday thereafter. For most of the six weeks, these were loud, confident working-class celebrations of struggle, and Tom Jackson, left-wing Labour with handle-bar moustache, was, to start with, a popular leader. Strike rallies took place in all of the UK’s cities, some, as in Bristol, led by militant young telephonists.

During the intermittent talks held during the strike, Ryland, an ambitious hard-liner who may even have acted without day to day orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr, upped the pay offer to 9%, but only if the UPW agreed to a massive increase in part-time labour into the postman grade, which was a “closed shop”, ie. 100% trade union, and nearly 100% male. The UPW refused this ‘offer’, and the strike carried on, a war of attrition that affected every city, town and village in the country.

The last Bristol strike rally at Queen’s Square was snowbound: speaking is deputy branch secretary Monty Banks. Strikers carried a black coffin, borrowed from the Cardiff Outdoor UPW Branch, on which was painted: “Here lies the body of Postman Sid: he could not exist on fourteen quid!”

If the postmen, PHGs and telegraphists were solidly behind the UPW, the strike did have its weaknesses. Some Post Office Crown Offices were open, and, at the start, staffed by UPW striking volunteers on pension and social security days, until strikers refused to work alongside scabs. Telephonists were the weak link: only a minority of night full-time male telephonists were in any union, and many were in the non-TUC National Guild of Telephonists; many female day telephonists were UPW, but others were non-union. Not surprisingly, it was outside the main city telephone exchanges that angry mass picketing took place. Police were often called out, as scabs alleged harassment, and pickets complained of liquids being poured on them from the exchange’s upper floors. Many telephonists came away in tears from claiming their last pre-strike wage, £8, paid in arrears, when managers withheld a five-pound note and told them: “You will get this only if you stay in work now!”

The telephonists grade apart, the strike was solid from beginning to end: there was no drift back to work at all. This applied to rural areas as well as cities. In Ilfracombe, North Devon, Mike Creek, for decades now the Ilfracombe TUC Secretary, recalls that only one PHG UPW member scabbed, out of a branch of 53. Mike says this PHG was given a hard time for years afterwards.

In Bridgwater, Somerset, postman Eric Payne remembers shouting out “The wages of sin are death!”, to a solitary scab who gave a religious excuse for crossing the picket line. The only scab in the Bridgwater Crown Post Office Counter was a Tory Borough Councillor, Trevor Donaldson. The Middlezoy village postman Leggatt scabbed, delivering letters from one part of this Sedgemoor village to another, but then, as Bridgwater striking postmen pointed out angrily, he had his own market garden business!

The UPW only had £330,000 in its strike fund on January 16th, which did not go far, with 200,000 strikers! Public support was impressive: one survey claimed 47% sympathy, which was unprecedented for a trade union dispute. A postman’s wife in Totton, Southampton had her strike collection of £15 confiscated by the police!

It was generally agreed that the union had the better of the strike publicity: why then, did Tom Jackson and the UPW Executive Council call off the strike, suddenly and without any warning to the members, after six weeks, with nothing but a state-sponsored Inquiry to compensate for the abandonment of its 15% claim?

The ‘official’ UPW reason given was a simple one: the union had run out of money and was close to bankruptcy. Of course, the hardship fund was running out, but this explanation cannot, surely, be accepted by historians now, without investigating alternative strategies that had been, and were available to WIN the dispute.

What were they? First and perhaps foremost, the UPW could have asked the other Post Office unions to show real solidarity and strike with them till they won. The UPW could even have called out its own “Ship to Shore” radio operators, such as its members at Portishead Radio Station in Somerset: only a few hundred UPW members nationally, yet crucial to the whole operation of the UK merchant fleet; the UPW could also have appealed to ASTMS members (‘Left-winger’ Clive Jenkins union) who staffed the Telex Service to strike in sympathy. POMSA, the Post Office Management Staff Association, had many members who wanted to walk out with their UPW colleagues, but they were never asked. George Massey, the Communist POMSA Secretary for Bristol, remembered secretly collecting money for the UPW strike fund from about 20% of his supervisor members at the Small Street Head Post Office.

Most important, of all these sister Post Office unions, the UPW should have appealed to the powerful skilled Post Office Engineering Union, whose telephone engineers, despite automatic STD/Subscriber Trunk Dialling, could have put major pressure on industry and commerce. Despite a one-day POEU strike in solidarity with the UPW towards the end of February, this was too little and far too late. If their General Secretary, a member of the House of Lords, might have been less than keen, what about the POEU Branches and members?

Second, the TUC, and especially the key TUC unions, including those ‘left-wing’ led such as ASTMS, the AEU and the TGWU, need not have failed the UPW. When they failed the UPW, failing with either substantial hardship donations or supportive strike action, they should have been challenged and publicly shamed. After all, even from a ‘reformist’ parliamentary-socialist outlook, it was surely in the interests of their own members to ensure the UPW was not defeated!

The National Union of Railwaymen, 600,000 strong, had a pay claim lodged at the same time as the UPW. Even if they had struck for their own aims, Robert Carr and Ted Heath would have been forced to settle both NUR and UPW claims to the full. Yet right-wing NUR General Secretary Sidney Greene was incapable, or unwilling, to see this opportunity to strike alongside the UPW, probably defeat the Tory Government, and advance his own members standard of living.

The Tory Industrial Relations Bill, sponsored by Home Office Minister Robert Carr, was being opposed by the TUC, somewhat inconsistently at first, but one TUC-sponsored London Rally during the UPW strike, on 23rd February, had called over 100,000 trades unionists out. At that Hyde Park Rally, Tom Jackson was the most popular speaker, while the forked tongue of TUC General Secretary Vic Feather ‘gave his full support.’ When Feather failed to deliver on this TUC promise, and others, Tom Jackson kept silent, and when the strike collapsed, allowed his members’ anger to be concentrated upon himself.

The trade union movement in the UK in 1970 was, in numbers of members, number of shop stewards, number of closed shop agreements and numbers of disputes, extremely strong. Strong enough to force the TUC to call a one-day general strike against the Industrial Relations Bill: so why not a general strike to support the UPW? Such a strike would not even have been illegal, as it would have been by 1984! The TUC General Council also promised workplace collections that came to nothing. While some unions gave substantial donations, others made double-edged loans to the UPW: the NUR loaned £100,000; the TGWU, the AEU and the Furniture Trade Union £50,000 each. Yet, it was just these loans, or the UPW’s inability to re-pay, which, after four or five weeks, caused the UPW’s bankers to threaten the confiscation of the union’s Clapham HQ.

Trains and lorries carried vast numbers of parcels throughout the strike, which, despite donations to the UPW, the NUR and TGWU did little or nothing to prevent. Local Government and Civil Service union members were allowed by their leaders to deliver mail between their departments.

All in all, if the strategic thinking of the UPW leadership was non-existent, and its tactics both timid and over-confident, it was the TUC and the trade union movement that deserves most of the blame, they clearly deserted the UPW in 1971, its unique time of great need. With creditors pressing, the UPW Executive lost its confidence, as suddenly as the strike had been called. Feelers were put out; the Post Office, sensing UPW surrender, ‘chivalrously’ agreed a binding Court of Inquiry into the dispute, and so, on March 3rd 1971, the UPW Executive, led by Jackson, put the union’s bureaucracy and bricks and mortar before its membership, and decided by 27 votes to 4 to call an immediate Branch Ballot for a return to work.

These meetings were held within 5 days, amid some accusations of undue haste: for example, Mount Pleasant meetings were always held on Sundays, yet many members awoke on that Sunday to find their branch meeting had already been called on the Saturday! Moreover, if a Branch of 2,000 members had voted to call the strike off by 1,100 votes to 900, under UPW Rules, all 2,000 votes were cast for ending the strike. The final vote, translated into actual membership figures, was 190,614 to 10,427.

During the intermittent talks held during the strike, Ryland, an ambitious hard-liner who may even have acted without day to day orders from Tory Home Secretary Robert Carr, upped the pay offer to 9%, but only if the UPW agreed to a massive increase in part-time labour into the postman grade, which was a “closed shop”, ie. 100% trade union, and nearly 100% male. The UPW refused this ‘offer’, and the strike carried on, a war of attrition that affected every city, town and village in the country.

The last Bristol strike rally at Queen’s Square was snowbound: speaking is deputy branch secretary Monty Banks. Strikers carried a black coffin, borrowed from the Cardiff Outdoor UPW Branch, on which was painted: “Here lies the body of Postman Sid: he could not exist on fourteen quid!”

If the postmen, PHGs and telegraphists were solidly behind the UPW, the strike did have its weaknesses. Some Post Office Crown Offices were open, and, at the start, staffed by UPW striking volunteers on pension and social security days, until strikers refused to work alongside scabs. Telephonists were the weak link: only a minority of night full-time male telephonists were in any union, and many were in the non-TUC National Guild of Telephonists; many female day telephonists were UPW, but others were non-union.

Not surprisingly, it was outside the main city telephone exchanges that angry mass picketing took place. Police were often called out, as scabs alleged harassment, and pickets complained of liquids being poured on them from the exchange’s upper floors. Many telephonists came away in tears from claiming their last pre-strike wage, £8, paid in arrears, when managers withheld a five-pound note and told them: “You will get this only if you stay in work now!”

The telephonists grade apart, the strike was solid from beginning to end: there was no drift back to work at all. This applied to rural areas as well as cities. In Ilfracombe, North Devon, Mike Creek, for decades now the Ilfracombe TUC Secretary, recalls that only one PHG UPW member scabbed, out of a branch of 53. Mike says this PHG was given a hard time for years afterwards.

In Bridgwater, Somerset, postman Eric Payne remembers shouting out “The wages of sin are death!”, to a solitary scab who gave a religious excuse for crossing the picket line. The only scab in the Bridgwater Crown Post Office Counter was a Tory Borough Councillor, Trevor Donaldson. The Middlezoy village postman Leggatt scabbed, delivering letters from one part of this Sedgemoor village to another, but then, as Bridgwater striking postmen pointed out angrily, he had his own market garden business!

The UPW only had £330,000 in its strike fund on January 16th, which did not go far, with 200,000 strikers! Public support was impressive: one survey claimed 47% sympathy, which was unprecedented for a trade union dispute. A postman’s wife in Totton, Southampton had her strike collection of £15 confiscated by the police!

It was generally agreed that the union had the better of the strike publicity: why then, did Tom Jackson and the UPW Executive Council call off the strike, suddenly and without any warning to the members, after six weeks, with nothing but a state-sponsored Inquiry to compensate for the abandonment of its 15% claim?

The ‘official’ UPW reason given was a simple one: the union had run out of money and was close to bankruptcy. Of course, the hardship fund was running out, but this explanation cannot, surely, be accepted by historians now, without investigating alternative strategies that had been, and were available to WIN the dispute.

What were they? First and perhaps foremost, the UPW could have asked the other Post Office unions to show real solidarity and strike with them till they won. The UPW could even have called out its own “Ship to Shore” radio operators, such as its members at Portishead Radio Station in Somerset: only a few hundred UPW members nationally, yet crucial to the whole operation of the UK merchant fleet; the UPW could also have appealed to ASTMS members (‘Left-winger’ Clive Jenkins union) who staffed the Telex Service to strike in sympathy. POMSA, the Post Office Management Staff Association, had many members who wanted to walk out with their UPW colleagues, but they were never asked. George Massey, the Communist POMSA Secretary for Bristol, remembered secretly collecting money for the UPW strike fund from about 20% of his supervisor members at the Small Street Head Post Office.

Most important, of all these sister Post Office unions, the UPW should have appealed to the powerful skilled Post Office Engineering Union, whose telephone engineers, despite automatic STD/Subscriber Trunk Dialling, could have put major pressure on industry and commerce. Despite a one-day POEU strike in solidarity with the UPW towards the end of February, this was too little and far too late. If their General Secretary, a member of the House of Lords, might have been less than keen, what about the POEU Branches and members? Second, the TUC, and especially the key TUC unions, including those ‘left-wing’ led such as ASTMS, the AEU and the TGWU, need not have failed the UPW. When they failed the UPW, failing with either substantial hardship donations or supportive strike action, they should have been challenged and publicly shamed. After all, even from a ‘reformist’ parliamentary-socialist outlook, it was surely in the interests of their own members to ensure the UPW was not defeated!

The National Union of Railwaymen, 600,000 strong, had a pay claim lodged at the same time as the UPW. Even if they had struck for their own aims, Robert Carr and Ted Heath would have been forced to settle both NUR and UPW claims to the full. Yet right-wing NUR General Secretary Sidney Greene was incapable, or unwilling, to see this opportunity to strike alongside the UPW, probably defeat the Tory Government, and advance his own members standard of living.

The Tory Industrial Relations Bill, sponsored by Home Office Minister Robert Carr, was being opposed by the TUC, somewhat inconsistently at first, but one TUC-sponsored London Rally during the UPW strike, on 23rd February, had called over 100,000 trades unionists out. At that Hyde Park Rally, Tom Jackson was the most popular speaker, while the forked tongue of TUC General Secretary Vic Feather ‘gave his full support.’ When Feather failed to deliver on this TUC promise, and others, Tom Jackson kept silent, and when the strike collapsed, allowed his members’ anger to be concentrated upon himself.

The trade union movement in the UK in 1970 was, in numbers of members, number of shop stewards, number of closed shop agreements and numbers of disputes, extremely strong. Strong enough to force the TUC to call a one-day general strike against the Industrial Relations Bill: so why not a general strike to support the UPW? Such a strike would not even have been illegal, as it would have been by 1984! The TUC General Council also promised workplace collections that came to nothing. While some unions gave substantial donations, others made double-edged loans to the UPW: the NUR loaned £100,000; the TGWU, the AEU and the Furniture Trade Union £50,000 each. Yet, it was just these loans, or the UPW’s inability to re-pay, which, after four or five weeks, caused the UPW’s bankers to threaten the confiscation of the union’s Clapham HQ.

Trains and lorries carried vast numbers of parcels throughout the strike, which, despite donations to the UPW, the NUR and TGWU did little or nothing to prevent. Local Government and Civil Service union members were allowed by their leaders to deliver mail between their departments.

All in all, if the strategic thinking of the UPW leadership was non-existent, and its tactics both timid and over-confident, it was the TUC and the trade union movement that deserves most of the blame, they clearly deserted the UPW in 1971, its unique time of great need. With creditors pressing, the UPW Executive lost its confidence, as suddenly as the strike had been called. Feelers were put out; the Post Office, sensing UPW surrender, ‘chivalrously’ agreed a binding Court of Inquiry into the dispute, and so, on March 3rd 1971, the UPW Executive, led by Jackson, put the union’s bureaucracy and bricks and mortar before its membership, and decided by 27 votes to 4 to call an immediate Branch Ballot for a return to work.

These meetings were held within 5 days, amid some accusations of undue haste: for example, Mount Pleasant meetings were always held on Sundays, yet many members awoke on that Sunday to find their branch meeting had already been called on the Saturday! Moreover, if a Branch of 2,000 members had voted to call the strike off by 1,100 votes to 900, under UPW Rules, all 2,000 votes were cast for ending the strike. The final vote, translated into actual membership figures, was 190,614 to 10,427.

A Comment On the Sukuta Project by Les May

THE most striking thing about the recent piece by John Walker on the Sukuta Project which intends to renovate the Gambia’s largest primary school is the relatively small amount of money, £60,000, which will be needed to accomplish a project which will benefit 2,000 children immediately and go on benefiting similar sized cohorts for many years to come.

In July 2020, I wrote an article for NV with the title ‘Why Black Lives Matter Will Fail’. Something I wrote at the end of that piece seems pertinent here.

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.

£1.2 million would fund 20 similar projects in Africa meaning that 40,000 black children would benefit immediately and would be followed by the same number of children benefiting long into the future.

As someone recently wrote to me, ‘organisations like BLM are more concerned about displaying sentiments rather than addressing issues.’

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This Cotton-Built Town by Trevor Hoyle

[after Betjeman. A long way after]

It once were great, this cotton-built town

A grand night out for half-a-crown,

Go out now you get knocked down

Or summat worse

We had cobbles and ginnels and gaslit streets,

A clip round th’ear from bobbies on beats.

No muggers or druggies, no benefits cheats,

Our nation’s curse.

Gradely folk they were back then

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

Lancashire’s best – la crème de la crème,

Gone and forgot.

Walk down Drake Street now and weep

For Ivesons, Fashion Corner, the Carlton creep,

The legacy of civic pride sold cheap.

Who gives a jot?

It’s council top brass in the main

Who’ve least to lose and most to gain.

(1st class seats on the gravy train!)

Just hear their cries:

Sack the workers but keep the bosses!

That’s the way to cut the losses!

And round our necks like albatrosses

Hang the PFIs.

And where do all our taxes go?

You must be joking – don’t you know?

On bods with clipboards on go slow,

On Manchester Road –

Where roundabouts once did the job

The planners have incensed the mob,

Who write in fury to the Ob:

“Stop this load

Of nonsense, quick, it’s puerile,

Are they trying to compete in style

With illuminations on’t Golden Mile

And make things worse?”

Come, gentle Kong, and dump on Dale

Bury it deep so it can’t inhale.

Beyond a joke, beyond the pale,

Armpit of the universe.

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Preying On The Private Renter by Les May

THE Government is rightly proud that almost 17 million people have received the first dose of a vaccine which it is hoped will make them safe from Covid 19. It has nothing to be proud of in the fact that almost half that number of people, 8 million, are living in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable housing, according to a recent report by the National Housing Federation. This figure is revealed in a report published today with the title ‘Coming Home: Tackling the housing crisis together’.

The new report describes as 'a national scandal' the fact that eight million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable, or unsuitable homes, and says that this is 'neither accidental nor inevitable… The present situation is unjust, and the burden of bad housing is falling unjustly on the poor'.

Among the list of recommendations:

- a 20-year political programme to improve the quality and affordability of the nation’s housing stock, agreed by all parties and thus immune to changing political fortunes;

- a redefinition of 'affordability' that relates to income rather than property prices;

- a short-term reform of the benefits system to meet the shortfall between housing support and the true cost of housing;

- a review of tenancy agreements, redressing the present imbalance, introducing an explicit duty of care of landlords for their tenants, and removing Section 21 (”no fault”) evictions;

- an improvement in the stock of temporary housing;

- new mechanisms for improving the existing housing stock, 11 per cent of which is defined as sub-standard, and making it more sustainable;

There is also a draft charter for new housing, which suggests it should be:

Sustainable: adapt and reuse existing building stock where possible; water, waste and energy designed to minimise impact on the environment: plant one tree per house.

Safe: landowner to maintain an interest and participate in the project; design criteria to be built into partnership agreements to ensure compliance.

Stable: encouragement to people to put down roots through community site-management schemes; reference to the wider community.

Sociable: mixed-use dwellings in walkable neighbourhoods; design to ensure that affordable houses are indistinguishable from private-tenure houses, and 'pepper-potted' throughout the site.

Satisfying: use design to create distinctiveness and encourage a sense of belonging; ensure that the development fits into the natural landscape.

Polly Neate the chief executive of the charity Shelter responded to the report by saying: 'It is brilliant to see the Church of England showing leadership and taking action to tackle our growing housing emergency. Looking at how church land can be best used to fight homelessness is extremely welcome.

'Homelessness isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of decades of political failure to build social homes. This is the reason over a quarter of a million people in England are homeless and trapped in temporary accommodation during the pandemic — half of them children.

'The Church is right that homes have to be affordable to local people and tied to local incomes. This is what social housing does, which is why we want to see the Church, the Government, and other landowners play their part in building a new generation of social homes.'

There may be a shortage of affordable housing but there has never been a shortage of worthy reports about the problem. It will be interesting to see if after all the fanfare it is allowed to fade into the background.

We can pray it does not or we can vote for the politicians who will recognise the fundamental economic forces that work against affordability and do something about it. Sixty per cent of the nation’s wealth is reckoned to be held in property, leading to its being regarded as a financial asset rather than a universal necessity. Are we willing to change that?

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Protests & funeral follow shootings in Myanmar

“Stop the genocide. Stop using lethal weapons," said protester Min Htet Naing.

Feb. 21, 2021, 10:46 AM GMT

By The Associated Press

YANGON, Myanmar — Protesters gathered again Sunday all over Myanmar, a day after security forces shot dead two people at a demonstration in the country’s second biggest city. A funeral was also held for a young woman killed earlier by police.

Mya Thwet Thwet Khine was the first confirmed death among the many thousands who have taken to the streets to protest the Feb. 1 coup that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The woman was shot on Feb. 9, two days before her 20th birthday, at a protest in the capital Nayptitaw, and died Friday

.

About 1,000 people in cars and bikes gathered Sunday morning at the hospital where her body was held amid tight security, with even the victim’s grandparents who had traveled from Yangon, five hours away, denied entry. When her body was released, a long motorized procession began a drive to the cemetery.

In Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, about 1,000 demonstrators honored the woman under an elevated roadway.

“I want to say through the media to the dictator and his associates, we are peaceful demonstrators,” said protester Min Htet Naing. “Stop the genocide. Stop using lethal weapons.”

Another large protest took place in Mandalay, where police shot dead two people on Saturday near a dockyard as security forces were trying to force workers to load a boat. The workers, like railway workers and truckers and many civil servants, have been taking part in a civil disobedience campaign against the junta.

Shooting broke out after neighborhood residents rushed to the Yadanabon dock to try to assist the workers in their resistance. One of the victims, described as a teenage boy, was shot in the head and died immediately, while another was shot in the chest and died en route to a hospital.

Several other serious injuries were also reported. Witness accounts and photos of bullet casings indicated that the security forces used live ammunition, in addition to rubber bullets, water cannons and slingshots.

The new deaths drew quick and strong reaction from the international community.

“The shooting of peaceful protesters in is beyond the pale,” said British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on Twitter. “We will consider further action, with our international partners, against those crushing democracy & choking dissent.”

Britain last week froze assets of and imposed travel bans on three top Myanmar generals, adding to already existing targeted sanctions.

Singapore, which together with Myanmar is part of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, issued a statement condemning the use of lethal force as “inexcusable.”

Urging “utmost restraint” on the part of security forces, it warned that “if the situation continues to escalate, there will be serious adverse consequences for Myanmar and the region.”

Another shooting death took place Saturday night in Yangon in unclear circumstances. According to several accounts on social media, including a live broadcast that showed the body, the victim was a man who was acting as a volunteer guard for a neighborhood watch group. Such groups were established because of fears that authorities were using criminals released from prison to spread panic and fear by setting fires and committing violent acts.

The junta took power after detaining Suu Kyi and preventing Parliament from convening, saying elections last November were tainted by voting irregularities. The election outcome, in which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won by a landslide, was affirmed by an election commission that has since been replaced by the military. The junta says it will hold new elections in a year’s time.

The coup was a major setback to Myanmar’s transition to democracy after 50 years of army rule that began with a 1962 coup. Suu Kyi came to power after her party won a 2015 election, but the generals retained substantial power under the constitution, which was adopted under a military regime.

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Deja Vu? by Andrew Wastling

HOMES are as we all know far more than concrete and brickwork. Our decision makers need to get things right. Some readers may recall that for all of its issues Ashfield Valley did at least provide easy access accommodation for a generation of Rochdale's youth. Ashfield Valley it's often airbrushed out of local social housing history and despite winning a housing award in the 1967 'Summer of Love', it quickly declined and by the 1980s was a double edged sword which on one hand was a notorious haven for drug users, glue sniffers whilst on the other a vibrant safe haven for a small army of squatters , artists and writers as well as being home to a large number of families, OAP's and single people'. 'Ashy Valley' comprised just over 1,000 flats and it's eventual demolition it can be argued artificially increased rents in the private sector locally by reducing housing unit supply , along with Margaret Thatcher's who passed two pieces of major housing legislation in 1980 & 1989.

The 1980 Housing Act extended the right to buy to tenants with generous discounts following decades more than a million council homes were sold at an estimated cost in today's money of more than £60bn. The majority of sold-off homes were not replaced, leaving social housing as a residual tenure. Since 1990, a further 500,000 Council Houses have been sold off. The 2021 local housing crisis has been manufactured by generations of town planners and politicians from all political parties not arrived at by sheer chance.

Writing in the guardian in 2017, Faiza Shaheen, (Director of CLASS Centre for Labour and Social Studies) argued convincingly that thirty years of bad policy have encouraged house hoarding, avarice and the massive accumulation of wealth – to the detriment of the rest of society , pointing out that:

'The richest 1% of adults, some 488,000 people, own 14% of the nation's assets ,– worth about £11tn. At the other end of the financial scale, 15% (7.3 million people) either own no assets at all, or are in debt. And things are potentially about to get a lot worse – house prices are forecast to rise by 50% over the next eight years, according to the National Association of Estate Agents and the Association of Residential Letting Agents.'

Locally we are in danger of repeating the exact same failed solutions to the same problems on local social housing only on a much larger scale.

Despite some of the swearing mandatory viewing of the Tony Wilson narrated documentary Hard-core Valley - Ashfield Valley Flats' (1) might be advisable for those RBH / RMBC making the decisions on College Bank & Lower Falinge. Not least for the nostalgia trip some of us might have seen familiar faces admiring the spiked hair , the dreadlocks ,& colourful punk fashions & music of the time. Readers of Northern Voices will be aware that Cult 1975 novel Rule of the Night, by Rochdale author Trevor Hoyle, is largely based on the estate. (please see Greater Manchester's forgotten Punk Estate : Greater Manchester's forgotten punk estate - Manchester Evening News).

Tragically one of the well known punk squatters , Jon Rimmer, who was a familiar sight once a fortnight carrying a huge bag of spuds over his shoulder bought with his Giro from Ron Chalker 'The Potatoe Mans' warehouse on Mellor Street, walking through town barefoot accompanied by his placid natured alsatian Rebel, was his was murdered in 2019 (Rochdale News | News Headlines | Funeral fundraiser launched for Jon Rimmer - Rochdale Online) whilst the various disparate tribes making up the valley were dispersed locally to Sheffield, Hebden Bridge, Totnes and Brighton and some as far afield as to the anarchist squat in Christiania in the heart of Copenhagen. It was the end of an era for many. The start of a long journey of self-discovery for others.

In Wilson's documentary there is an unfortunate incident of camera photobombing by an unwelcome local politician ( Cyril Smith ) who was renowned for avoiding the estate & its residents like the pneumonic plague when cameras were not present and it came to doing his job as town MP. The documentary is a snap-shot in time from Rochdale's housing archive. To see this vile politician brazenly stand beside the flats and shamelessly say he's been an MP for eighteen years tells it's own story when we are mindful that his brother Norman held a Rochdale Council housing portfolio at the time.

As does some rudimentary investigation of which local establishment politicians who oversaw this social housing scandal who are still unbelievably active in local council politics well past their sell by date?

As with Ashfield Valley asbestos is reportedly present in College Bank. Lower Falinge has taken over the unenviable & undeserved mantle of a 'failed estate' from Ashy Valley - despite having wonderful community initiatives and brilliant residents who struggle to maintain a vibrant community despite being consistently failed by Rochdale Borough Housing and local politicians of all parties over the decades.

Our mainstream media frequently uses social stereotyping images of Lower Falinge when they wish to indulge their penchant for poverty safaris to illustrate numerous & serial articles on 'welfare dependency' & 'broken Britain'. Ashfield Valley was a planning & delivery disaster that could & should have been averted. It was an abject failure & scandal, a 'masterclass' in how not to run social housing. The demolition of Great Howarth by Rochdale Borough Housing and the current state of and proposals for College Bank and Lower Falinge - as well as other Rochdale Borough Housing managed properties - shows that absolutely nothing has been learned by our decision makers who seem intent on making the exact same mistakes, using failed 'solutions' to mediate what appear to be institutionally engrained repeated failures with getting to grips with social housing in Rochdale over half a century.

Proving there's nothing really new under the sun .We can see that Rochdale already has considerable form when it comes to home regeneration, redevelopment, failure & eventual demolition due to years of mismanagement of housing stock by criminal & inept local politicians.

Am I alone in getting a sickening sense of Déjà vu about RBH kamikaze plans to demolish College Bank flats?

What's the betting Rochdale's local propertied class once again trouser private rents hand over fist in the aftermath of this exercise in turbo drived gentrification?

Historical Archive:

Tony Wilson's 1990's documentary : Harcore Valley from Granada and Simon Armitages ' Xanadu from 1992 both give powerful insights into a community about to be demolished and can be seen on YouTube.

In Hardcore Valley : Tony Wilson focuses on the marginalsied voices from the Estate both old and new in Granada TV documentary made during the demolition of the infamous Ashfield Valley estate, Rochdale. early 1990s The piece now stands as a fascinating piece of social history into an era in the history of Social Housing which has been airbrushed almost completely from history by local Town Planners intent on seeing history repeats itself

In Xanadu : Simon Armitage focuses on housing problems on the notorious Ashfield Valley Estate in Rochdale, Lancashire. To the background sound of the estate being demolished, Armitage discovers that life is continuing there in gentle and surprising ways. The only remaining caretaker is a survivor of the 1956 uprising in Budapest, while a neighbour rescues local stranded cats. One couple are not looking forward to moving from their immaculate flat, and another resident is cultivating a forest in his home.

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