The UnLondon festival at Stoke Newington old church yesterday was a rip-roaring success. Great, cosy, historic venue, with very well attended talks and readings in the afternoon - including the inspiring Bernard Kops, and Ken Worpole talking about Stoke Newington's own Alexander Baron, author of The Lowlife (and yes, 'London Fictions' was there too).
And in the evening the guys who had organised the free event took to the stage. They are The Unfortunates, named after a B.S. Johnson novel, the one where the pages are sheets in a box and, apart from the first and last, can be read in any order. They play well, really well, sort of skiffle-meets-punk (I may have got that wrong, but that's how it struck me). And there they are above doing their encore, not their own number but Robyn Hitchcock's Trams of Old London - a song I didn't know, but a great choice, and yes those are the lyrics of the chorus on the blackboard. And here they are in full: Trams of old London, Taking my baby into the past in it. Trams of old London blow my mind. Ludgate, Fenchurch, Highgate Hill; Rolling slowly up there still, uh-huh. Waterloo and Clerkenwell, Out to Aldgate East as well, uh-huh. On a clear night you can see Where the rails used to be. Oh, it seems like ancient myth They once ran to Hammersmith. Trams of old London, Taking my baby into the past in it. Trams of old London blow my mind. Through Electric Avenue, Brixton, down in southwest too, uh-huh. Teddington and Kennington, Twickenham and Paddington, uh-huh. In the blitz they never closed Though they blew up half the roads. Oh, it hurts me just to see 'em Going dead in a museum. Ah... Trams of old London, Taking my baby into the past in it. Trams of old London blow my mind. Trams of old London, Taking my baby into the past in it. Trams of old London blow my mind.
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To Warwick yesterday, for a degree ceremony which was half-Hogwarts half-Gormenghast, and entirely fun - for me at least. Organ, choir, brass, flummery, and a greater array of coloured capes and hoods than you'll see anywhere outside a film set. So I am now not only a Doctor of Philosophy in History, but I have a certificate, and a few photos of me looking like Thomas Cromwell, to prove it. My wife, father and brother were all there, along with my nephew, who is a first-year undergraduate at Warwick. And in further cause for family celebration, my eldest celebrated her 18th birthday yesterday (well, yesterday was the birthday she continues to celebrate tonight ... and tomorrow ... and Saturday). But no permission has yet been given for a photo to be posted. Watch this space! I was distinctly tickled when my publisher (yes that's you, Ross) sent me a link some months back and urged me to sign up for author payments under the Public Lending Right. I didn't expect life changing sums to fly in to my account - but something, anything, would be a nice acknowledgement.
This week, I got my first online statement from the PLR and clicked the link with a warm glow of anticipation. Confidentiality requires that I keep my own counsel about the exact sum mentioned. But I was, I admit, a little chastened by the note in bold letters: "Under the PLR legislation earnings totalling less than £1 do not qualify for payment. We therefore regret that no payment is due." To Loftus Road with my 'honorary Yorkshireman' son (wearing his prized Huddersfield shirt) yesterday to cheer on Town. What a great little stadium - and a really good game. Town were impressive, moving the ball quickly and confidently, though without the killer touch in front of goal.
And the result? Well, QPR scored (a great goal) at the start of the second half but Huddersfield fought back hard and equalised through their new signing, the Bermudan Nahki Wells (already lionised by the fans: 'Nahki Wells, Nahki Wells, Nahki, Nahki, Nahki Wells'). What joy! But QPR scored the winner in the last few minutes. Ah well! To be honest, Town aren't a Premiership compatible team just yet - but they could well get there in a year or two. They have three prize assets - a good manager, a good chairman, and bloody brilliant supporters. Great to be with 2,000 Town fans - what a noise! Completely out sang the home crowd, and baiting them with magic lines such as 'you don't even sing when you're winning' (true!) and 'have you paid your taxes, Harry?' (good question). Among the real winners on the Town supporters' song sheet: 'I am a Yorkshireman', to the tune of the Sex Pistols 'I am an anarchist' (yes, there were plenty of Yorkshirewomen present, but that's art), with the unlikely killer line: 'I want to be ... Huddersfield'. Then there was 'Hey Jude', la-la-la la-la-la-la la-la-la-la Hudders'. And the wonderfully dated and hugely optimistic: 'So Town play up, and bring the cup, back to Huddersfield' (no, this wasn't a cup tie, but that's art). And then a couple of pieces of true Yorkshire grit (plenty of that in Huddersfield) - so every time a QPR player hit the deck we heard, to the tune of 'Guantanamera', 'soft southern bastard, you're just a soft southern bastard'. And from time-to-time, the even more eloquent: 'London is a shithole, I want to go home!' Bliss! The Burston Strike School in Norfolk is one of the most remarkable episodes in English radicalism. The school - a small single-storey building on the village green - celebrates its centenary this year, and there are centenary events starting in April. And as you can see, there's a Kentish Town connection.
The Strike School is sometimes described as the longest strike in British history. It was set up when squire and parson sacked the radical couple, Tom and Annie Higdon, who taught at the village's church school. The Higdons set up an alternative school, initially in a marquee on the green, attended by 66 of their 72 former pupils. It kept on going for quarter-of-a-century. The school building was constructed through support and donations from across the labour and radical movement - and that's reflected in the inscriptions on its bricks. From the Kentish Town rail workers (back in the day when hundreds worked on the Kentish Town rail depots) to Leo Tolstoy. The old school is now a well kept small museum - and deserves support, so spread the word. I remember seeing the Kentish Town inscription when I visited Burston some years back - Megan Dobney, of the Southern & Eastern Region TUC, has very kindly sent me the photos that grace this page. Of the other inscriptions, ILP = Independent Labour Party, NCF = No Conscription Fellowship, ASE = Amalgamated Society of Engineers, SWMF = South Wales Miners' Federation, LRC = (I think) Labour Representation Committee ... oh, and JP = Justice of the Peace. Hiding in plain view ... or maybe I just haven't been very observant. Anyway, I've found another HOPE. (If you don't know what I'm on about, then click here for the full HOPE chronicles, now updated with this latest find).
So the above HOPE - photographed on a grey and grimy January afternoon - is just fifty yards from two others. It overlooks DarCars just off Highgate Road - not the most accomplished version, with its rather awkward slender verticals and broad horizontal strokes, but very clearly part of the opus. And again alongside rail lines, just to the side of a bridge. I'm still on the look-out for the full HOPE story - if you know, do share. A Christmas purchase from the excellent second-hand bookshop in Helmsley, perhaps North Yorkshire's nicest market town - this is a really clean copy of the 1944 Beveridge report. The report he issued two years earlier, on social insurance, is better known. This one, as you can see on full employment, was also influential in determining the shape and scope of post-war social and economic policy. As we enter 2014, seventy years after this report was published, one aspect of it caught my attention - the quote on the title page: "Misery generates hate". In his preface, Beveridge explains how he came across those words: The text on my title page I owe to my wife. It comes from the account given by Charlotte Bronte, in the second chapter of Shirley, of the hand-loom weavers who one hundred and twenty-five years ago were being driven into unemployment and miserable revolt by the introduction of knitting frames. "Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained the machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned the buildings." This text is my main text. The greatest evil of unemployment is not physical but moral, not the want it may bring but the hatred and fear which it breeds. So the greatest evil of war is not physical but spiritual, not the ruin of cities and killing of bodies, but the perversion of all that is best in man's spirit, to serve purposes of destruction, hate, cruelty, deceit and revenge. There is another passage in Shirley, describing in Chapter 8 a conversation between a workman and an employer, which illustrates another leading theme of what is written here. "Invention may be all right," says the workman. "but I know it isn't right for poor folks to starve. Them that governs mun find a way to help us. ... Ye'll say that's hard to do - so much louder mun we shout , then, for so much slacker will t'Parliament men be to set on a tough job." "Worry the Parliament-men as much as you please,", replies the employer, "but to worry the mill-owners is absurd." To look to individual employers for maintenance of demand and full employment is absurd. These things are not within the power of employers. They must therefore be undertaken by the State, under the supervision and pressure of democracy, applied through the Parliament men. Beveridge himself became part of the number of what he, and Bronte, called the Parliament men - for a few months a Liberal MP, and then a member of the House of Lords eventually becoming the Liberal leader in the upper house. His preface of seventy years ago, and indeed the humanity of his two hugely influential wartime reports, deserve remembering as we again struggle with achieving full employment and a semblance of social justice. |
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