Sylvia Pankhurst.

 

Sylvia Pankhurst

In my opinion, Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, was the best one of the Pankhurst family because she was a staunch socialist, anti-imperialist and anti-fascist, throughout her life. Sylvia was imprisoned far more times and spent more time on hunger strike, than any other member of her family. Her elder sister, Christabel Pankhurst, spent a long time living in exile in Paris from where she ran the WSPU. It was from the safety of Paris, that Christabel instructed Sylvia to burn down Nottingham Castle, which she didn't carry out.

Sylvia Pankhurst wrote and published an article about her mother entitled "From Radical to Reactionary." In her younger days Mrs Pankhurst had been a member of the ILP, had opposed the Boer War, and had been in favour of common law marriage or free union. When WWI broke out Mrs Pankhurst and Christabel became jingoistic and all WSPU suffragette activity was suspended. Suffragettes gave out white feathers to men not in uniform. Sylvia Pankhurst opposed WWI because she saw it as an imperialist war and a fight over colonies, but she supported the war against fascism and Ethiopia's resistance to Mussolini. Mrs Pankhurst became a Conservative and stood as a Tory candidate. Adella Pankhurst, the youngest sister, had been banished to Australia by her mother many years before. Mr Pankhurst also had two sons, Frank and Harry, who both died young.

I think both Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, treated Sylvia badly over the years. Sylvia never had a paid position in the WSPU and never wanted one. Sylvia's face never appeared on WSPU merchandise. Mrs Pankhurst and Christabel became autocrats within the WSPU and they ostracised Sylvia, because she lived with the Italian anarchist Silvio Corio and had an illegitimate child with him called Richard. They also despised her socialist opinions. Yet Mrs Pankhurst never said anything about Sylvia's relationship with Keir Hardie, who was married with children.

The Pankhurst family are associated with Manchester but they spent more time living in the London and the South of England. Mrs Pankhurst moved to Vancouver Island where she lectured on venereal disease (VD) and also spent some time living in the Bahamas and the South of France, where she ran a tea shop, before returning to England where she died.

Christabel never married and became a Seventh Day Adventist and emigrated to America. She died of a heart attack in her home in Santa Monica in California, in February 1958, aged 77.  

Adella Pankhurst never returned from Australia and Sylvia emigrated to Ethiopia where she lived, worked and died of a coronary thrombosis in 1960. Her son and daughter-in-law lived with her. In Britain there were no state honours or streets named after Sylvia Pankhurst. There is a statue of Mrs Pankhurst in Manchester and one was erected beside Westminster Palace in 1936. Christabel Pankhurst was given the OBE. Sylvia Pankhurst is revered in Ethiopia but not in Britain. In Addis Ababa, a street was named after Sylvia in her honour. 

The obnoxious Godfrey Bloom.

 

The former UKIP MEP, Godfrey Bloom, seems to have been squeezed out of every organisation that he's belonged to because he's got foot and mouth, especially when he's in his cups.

UKIP withdrew the whip from him when he hit the journalist Michael Crick in the street with a conference brochure. He was even removed as the Honorary President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute because they found his comments abhorrent. He's referred to women as sluts and said that women were better at finding mustard in the pantry than driving a car. At an Oxford Union debate, he asked a disabled student speaking against a motion on immigration control, if he was Richard III. He describes himself as an "economist" but it doesn't appear that he's an academic economist or that he's even been to a university. He also describes himself as having been to Sandhurst, but this appears to have been on a two-week course with the T.A.

A free market crackpot like Bloom, can't really be in favour of immigration control or closed borders, because he has to be in favour of the free movement of labour. But he gets round this by saying that Britain is too small a country, and it has a welfare state, which he doesn't support. He seems to be in favour of laissez-faire free market capitalism, but if that was ever introduced, it would be the mother of all economic chaos.

The free market is a myth. Capitalism is full of deliberately constructed order governed by rules and regulations and political decisions. The Austrian school of Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, fails or refuses to accept this. Unlike Bloom, the economist Friedrich von Hayek, who was a founder of the Austrian school, did argue in favour of a state education system and some measure of welfare state provision, and you will find this in his book 'The Road to Serfdom'.

Adam Smith was critical of unregulated markets which he thought could result in a dire predicament and he was deeply concerned about inequality and poverty that might remain in an otherwise successful market economy and he defended free education and poverty relief. In his book ‘The Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations’ (1776), he refers to three women who were found dead from starvation in 1763 in an empty house in Stonecutter Street, London. Adam Smith did think that individuals pursued their own economic self- interest, which had an unintended beneficial outcome for the rest of us, but he didn't think that self-interest was the only human characteristic or motivation. He would have recognised that a society comprised of an aggregate of self-interested egoists, is no society at all. Sympathy is a central concept of Smith's ethics. He seemed to be more interested in promoting the great good of society and not just the interests of a wealthy few.

Margaret Thatcher and the Sharpeville Six.

 

When I was a student at Ruskin College Oxford during 1984-86, I lived in Old Headington for a year in a building named in honour of the black activist, Steve Biko. One of the people who lived in Biko, was a woman called Joyce Mokhesi.

I didn't find out until many years later, that Joyce was the sister of Francis Don Mokhesi, who was one of 'The Sharpeville Six'. They were all ANC supporters who were convicted under the legal doctrine of 'common purpose' for the murder in 1984 of the black deputy Mayor of Soweto. The six were sentenced to death by hanging in December 1985.

Joyce Mokhesi, who was from Sharpeville, met Margaret Thatcher to try and persuade her to use her influence to get the death sentences commuted. According to Charles Moore, (Margaret Thatcher - Volume 3), Thatcher agreed to see Joyce Mokhesi who proclaimed her "belief...shared by all Western leaders to whom I have spoken - that Mrs Thatcher is the single international statesman to whom President Botha is most likely to listen."Margaret Thatcher considered the ANC a terrorist organisation and opposed economic sanctions against South Africa, but Charles Moore, insists that she never called Nelson Mandela a terrorist. He also asserts that she "privately urged Regan and Kohl to support her plea for clemency."

Following Margaret Thatcher's intervention, the death sentences were delayed for further judicial consideration and then P W. Botha, commuted the sentences of the Sharpeville Six, to long prison terms. Francis Don Mokhesi was released from prison in September 1992.

I don't ever remember the case of the Sharpeville Six ever being mentioned during my two years at Ruskin. The only thing that I do recall is my old friend Mick Kelly, who also lived in Biko, telling me that Joyce Mokhesi was related to somebody who was involved in some controversial issue in South Africa but it was all very vague.

Joyce Mokhesi kept very much to herself and didn't really mix with the other residents who lived in Biko. I am not sure why that was but I was told that she had said to somebody that my two friends Mick Kelly and Richard Phelps - who were built like rugby players - reminded her of her South African Boer jailers. That perhaps explains why there was a failure to communicate.

Sunak says "Flat is the new up" for British businesses.

 

Rishi Sunak

The country has gone to the dogs and it's largely the fault of politicians and their policies.

I remember the beautiful Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester and was a young lad in the 1960s. The area is now known as 'Crackadilly' because of the drug dealers who inhabit the place. A kind of ghastly Victorian underclass, hangs around Manchester city centre. Last December, two homeless men, froze to death on streets of Manchester.

Margaret Thatcher hated the "permissive" 1960s and blamed much of Britain's social-ills on it. But when I was growing up in the 1960s, I don't remember seeing beggars in the street, rough sleepers, food banks or pawn shops. Most people were in work, had access to housing and employment, free health care, legal aid and full education maintenance grants.

The rot set in when the Thatcher became the Conservative Prime Minister in 1979. Unemployment trebled between 1979 to 1983 to 3 million, and there was massive de-industrialisation. Parts of the north of England have never really recovered from it.

Margaret Thatcher's pro-rich policies and union busting, paved the way for the gig economy, zero-hour contracts and precarious employment. A lot of people who live and work in Greater Manchester, are now employed in mundane activities and are heavily reliant on the public sector, for jobs.

Many highly qualified university graduates are finding it difficult to obtain work or even entry level jobs. It was knocked into English middle-class school kids that if they worked hard at school and got good qualifications, and a good University degree, they could get a good job and find their place in the Sun. That's no longer the case and many are joining the ranks of the precariat and are saddled with student debt. Even though British politicians talk about the number of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET's), AI and automation are likely to lead to more job losses and Britain's politicians don't seem prepared for it.

I saw Rishi Sunak recently being interviewed and he said that when he talks to CEOs about their plans for 'headcount' in their companies, he said that what he hears a lot of, is "flat is the new up." Sunak explained that companies think they can continue to grow their businesses without having to significantly increase employment. He added, "they're starting to see how they can deploy AI."

Think Tank calls on Labour to scrap the triple lock.

 

Labour pledged to maintain the triple lock that annually uprates the state retirement pension, for the duration of this Parliament. It's now being urged by a think tank called the 'Resolution Foundation' to scrap the triple lock.

The Resolution Foundation, was previously headed by Torsten Bell, who is now Labour's pensions minister. Although the UK weekly state retirement pension (the New State Pension), is less than the weekly National Minimum Wage, critics say that it's unsustainable and unaffordable. The Old State Pension is even less generous. The British have one of the least generous state retirement pensions in Europe and work longer before retirement. Many workers don't live long enough to qualify for a state retirement pension.

The UK government saved billions of pounds when they increased the state retirement age for women from 60 to 67. They have also saved billions of pounds by increasing the men's state retirement age from 65 to 67. The triple lock mechanism was introduced by the coalition Con-Dem government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg in 2010.

Any attempt to make Britain's state pensioners poorer, is likely to be reflected in votes at the polling stations. The means-testing of the winter fuel allowance resulted in 10 million pensioners losing the allowance. The policy was reversed when Labour started to lose council seats and votes to Reform UK.

Was Henry Nowak a victim of two tier policing?

 

Some Sikhs who live in Southampton have said that they are afraid to go out since the stabbing of Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa. Statistically, white people who live in Britain aren't at risk from Sikhs living in Britain, they are more at risk from their own kind. They are at more risk of dying when they're crossing the road.

What evidence is there for two tier policing? Most of it seems to be based on conjecture or the bias of politicians and hack journalists, who have their own political agenda to pursue. The data suggests that black people are still disproportionately more likely to be stopped by the police when going about their business than white people. In Southampton, black people are five times likely to be stopped by the police.

What happened to Henry Nowak was dreadful and the police made a complete cock up of it. They initially believed Digwa but not Henry Nowak, who told them that he'd been stabbed and that he couldn't breathe. One police officer can be heard saying, "I don't think so mate." But If the police were carrying out two tier policing in Southampton, why is Vickrum Digwa, now serving a 20-year jail sentence?

Out of his depth. Rob Kenyon of Reform UK.

 

Rob Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate for Makerfield, was clearly out of his depth when he appeared on Question Time. He didn't seem to be that much interested in politics or have much of an idea. I think he was right about how immigration whether legal or illegal does have an impact on public services and resources.

The fundamental problem that UK faces in relation to housing is one of supply and demand. The population of the UK has risen by around 9 million in the last 20 years, largely as a result of immigration, and housing supply has not kept up. Housing is more expensive today than at any time in the last 18 years.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), deems property affordable if it cost less than 5x average earnings. In 2025 only 7% of local authorities in England and Wales - 23 out of 318 - met this criterion. This has fallen from 9% in 2015 and 11% in 2005. Obtaining a mortgage has become harder as a result of restrictions on lending put in place after the financial crises. First time buyers now need to provide a 5% deposit.

Home ownership rates for the under 35s have halved in the last 30 years. Outside of London property prices have kept on rising. The Right to Buy Scheme took a lot of rented social housing out of the system.

I think it's misleading to blame the UK housing crisis entirely on immigrants. If there wasn't an issue with immigration, I'm not convinced that this would solve the housing crises. I know that forty years ago in the area where I live, it wasn't easy to get rented council housing and there was no problem with boat people or illegal immigrants.

If you discount immigration, the population of the UK is actually falling because the indigenous population are having fewer babies. This can cause demographic problems in the sense that there's a smaller working age population paying income tax to support a non-working age elderly population. Therefore, a certain amount of immigration becomes necessary to get the extra workers and to fill the skills shortages.

Is a university education still of value?

 

Both Peter Hitchens and his brother Christopher Hitchens were middle-class boarding school boys who were never likely to be seen dead wearing a pair of overalls. Both of them were former Trotskyists who talked a lot about the proletariat while secretly despising them.

Peter Hitchens has made a living as a journalist writing angry jeremiads that lament the state of society and its moral decay. Peter Hitchens is an English middle-class snob who thinks the only people who should go to university are people like himself and his brother. I much preferred Christopher Hitchens who intellectually stands head and shoulders above his brother.

In 1958, less than 2% of the population of Britain went to university, whereas today, it is around 39%.  Personally, I don't care for this utilitarian view of education that sees education as only having value if it leads to a job. I think that education as value as entity in itself. The type of people who read novels like Middlemarch by George Eliot, don't generally become delinquents or become members of Tommy Robinson's pitchfork mob. It stands to reason that a university degree will have less value when you have more people having university degrees, but that's no reason why you shouldn't study for a degree.

Today, many university students are using AI to write and research their essays and hardly read at all. I gather that many university students write using text language and that university tutors will accept an essay written using AI, provided the student acknowledges this. They’re the cut and paste generation. The British universities are just churning out semi-educated nincompoops and clever conmen.

Orwell and flawed characters.

 

Eric & Eileen Blair

We need George Orwell more today than ever. Orwell should be compulsory reading for all British school children. What would Orwell have made of Britain's surveillance state of CCTV, facial recognition technology, and mobile phones that track and profile you? For surveillance, Starmer's Britain is beginning to resemble something out of the Minority Report. 

What would George Orwell have made of a UK Labour Prime Minister, who wants us all to collude in a fiction, that 99.9% of women don't have a penis? What would Orwell have made of the 10,000 people arrested each year by the thought police in Britain, for comments they have made on social media? 

In his essay, 'Politics and the English Language' (1946), Orwell noted that political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." 

I read his novel 'Down and Out in Paris and London' (1933) many years ago and it's a cracking little book. Had it not been for a woman called Mabel Fierz, who had literary connections, it's probable that book would have never have seen the light of day. The novel was rejected a number of times by publisher's and on one occasion, Orwell flung the manuscript at Mabel Fierz saying to her, "Burn it and keep the clips." It was eventually published by Leonard Moore who became his agent for life. 

Neither Orwell or his biographers ever paid much attention to the women in his life and this a theme that is taken up by the feminist writer Anna Funder, in her book 'Wifedom' about Orwell's wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy. Orwell was brought up by women and helped by women, but he rarely ever acknowledged this in print. He was eight years old before he ever really knew his father, Richard Blair. 

When Orwell spent 18-months in Paris, he often visited his mother's elder sister, Aunt Nellie, who helped him financially and connected him with agents and publishers. Aunt Nelly knew important writers like Chesterton, Barbusse, Nesbitt and H.G. Wells, but she isn't mentioned in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. Likewise, there's no mention of his wife Eileen in his book 'Homage to Catalonia' even though she was with him in Spain.

Anna Funder says in her book, "How is a women made to disappear"? She says that these links are not made by Orwell because it's impossible to attribute to women the environment of ideas and politics that made him. She says that the biographers are helped by Orwell erasing or obscuring the women in his life. Yet, his publisher, Frederic Warburg said of Orwell that "He was as secretive about his private life as any man I ever knew." Having read 'Wifedom', I thought that Anna Funder had set out to do a hatchet job on George Orwell. When she was doing research for her book, she travelled to Barcelona with Orwell's adopted son, Richard Blair, and his friend Quentin Kopp, the son of Orwell's commander in Spain, Georges Kopp. Quentin Kopp has said that Funder told her young daughter that she thought that Orwell was an "arsehole."

It seems to have become fashionable these days for feminist writers to destroy the reputations of male writers. They have done it with Charles Dickens and Arthur Koestler. 

Funder appears to be obsessed with Orwell's sex life and can't quite make her mind up whether he's a repressed homosexual or a priapic serial seducer of women. He might be both, but the American Charles Orr, who knew Eileen in Spain, said she "Just could not stop talking about Eric, her hero husband, whom she obviously loved and admired." Eileen did refer to her husband's "remarkable political simplicity." Orr thought that Orwell needed a socially extrovert wife as a window to the world. "Eileen helped this inarticulate man to communicate with others.” Charles Orr came to respect Orwell and described Eileen as beautiful, outgoing and gregarious. 

Eileen's friend Lydia Vitalevna Jiburtovich, considered Eileen to be "sophisticated, fastidious, highly intelligent and intellectual.” She thought that Eileen was a very good listener. "She doesn't suffer fools and doesn't spare anyone. Can give you a tongue lashing." Funder says that Orwell tried to force himself on Lydia at Wallington Cottage while Eileen was in London. 

Eileen Blair used to say "I don't care if I live or die." She died on 29 March 1945, in the operating theatre while undergoing an operation, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She was just 39 years of age. Later, George Orwell succumbed to TB.

George Orwell dealt with question of how good artistic work can come from flawed people. He thought Salvador Dali a "dirty little scoundrel" but also a great artist. He thought Dickens's mistreatment of his wife shouldn't affect how we read his work. We could say the same thing about Orwell, Caravaggio, Cellini, or Oscar Wilde. All four were flawed characters, like the rest of us.   

Somerset Maughan & the 'Homintern'.

 

W. Somerset Maugham

Christopher Hitchens said that W. Somerset Maughan, "turned out third-rate prose by the yard, or the furlong." 

He was brought up in France. Both his parents died when he was young and he was brought up by relatives who sent him to monastic boarding schools where according to Hitchens, he was bullied, beaten and buggered. This left him with a speech impediment and a staunch commitment to homosexuality. 

Somerset Maughan qualified as a doctor, delivering babies in the socially deprived areas of Lambeth. He did marry a woman called Syrie Welcome partly as a cover and had a daughter with her. The Villa Mauresque where he lived was known as the 'Homintern'. Hitchens says the villa was a magnet for spongers and toadies and social climbers of all sorts. 

Two guest who came to stay at the Villa Mauresque, were Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. Hitchens says they were slightly aghast when staff at the villa, unpacked and laid out all their belongings, including lubricant and the powder for warding off crab lice. Apparently, Maughan was always finding his bookshelves and wine cellar and bric-a-brac, had been subjected to shameless pilfering. 

The Burnham Conundrum.

 

Andy Burnham

By: Andrew Wallace

If government and politics are a necessary evil then it is also said to be the art of the possible, reflecting the messy real-world intrusions and limitations of human autonomy. Politicians must invariably broker against a bewildering array of mutually irreconcilable demands and attempt to balance ideological partisanship with realism whether through constructive ambiguity or other means of temporarily placating the perpetual instability at the heart of governance.

Andy Burnham arguably resides within this realm of constructive ambiguity, a relatively unsullied Labour politician who by dint of his popular mayoral sabbatical from Westminster enjoys a unique net positive approval rating (Nurse 2026). Burnham appears to have refreshed his political persona at different stages in his career, from an enthusiastic Blairite to an affable soft leftist presence and corrective to the inept and centre-right leaning Starmer government. Naturally there is suspicion that Burnham’s pivot to the left could prove to be a disingenuous ruse similar to Starmer’s ten pledges. Burnham is already giving cause for concern on immigration, the EU, electoral reform and public ownership (Jones 2026). Politicians are accustomed to giving themselves sufficient wiggle room in their policy statements, linguistic sleight of hand allows them to backtrack accordingly in the service of realpolitik.

Allowing for the fact that Burnham may be a good faith actor, just what is going on between camp Burnham and Josh Simons, the previous director of Labour Together and ally of Morgan McSweeney who deployed dirty tricks against his critics? Why would Simons stand down as an MP to enable a possible transition to a new soft left Prime Minister? Some commentators are suggesting that Simons is on a redemption arc in atoning for previous misdemeanours. Others suggest a conspiracy may be afoot and that Burnham is walking into a trap in a gig that is far from certain that he will win. Simons resigned as a Cabinet office minister back in February this year when he felt his position had become untenable due to the emerging scandal of the dirty tricks campaign against journalists investigating financial irregularities as Simons’s thinktank Labour Together (Dyer and Sabbagh 2026).

Perhaps having felt a once promising ministerial career was no longer tenable it seems an opportunistic Simons decided to cut his loses, especially given the defenestration of Peter Mandelson (September 2025) and McSweeney (February 2026). Could it be that Simons is hedging his bets having realised that Starmer is on borrowed time? Whilst Burnham is far from assured of victory in the June 18th by-election, Simons probably enjoys something of a win-win situation whatever the outcome. Either Burnham fails which seriously weakens Labour’s soft left or he wins and provides a compensatory lifeboat for a key operator of the Labour right.

Dyer H and Sabbagh, D (2026) ‘Labour minister falsely linked journalists to ‘pro-Kremlin’ network in emails to GCHQ’

Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/20/labour-minister-falsely-linked-journalists-to-pro-kremlin-network-in-emails-to-gchq

(Accessed 30 May 2026)

 Elgot, J and Stacey, K (2026) ‘Burnham to back Shabana Mahmood’s immigration changes, allies say’

Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/20/burnham-to-back-shabana-mahmoods-immigration-changes-allies-say

(Accessed 30 May 2026)

 Jones, O (2026) ‘After the painful ruse of Starmerism, the left should be cautious about Andy Burnham’ 19 May 2026

Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/19/painful-starmerism-left-cautious-andy-burnham-greens-labour

(Accessed 30 May 2026)

 Nurse, A (2026) ‘Andy Burnham: what has made the king of the north so popular?’ 19 May 2026

Available at: https://theconversation.com/andy-burnham-what-has-made-the-king-of-the-north-so-popular-283231

(Accessed 30 May 2026)

 https://www.clpd.org.uk/resource/keir-starmer-10-pledges/

(Accessed 30 May 2026)​Burnham Conundrum.docx