It's amazing what you can come across in a Muswell Hill curio shop. Immortalised in pottery are two of the presenters of Radio 4's Today programme. The items are dated 2005 and the figure on the right is clearly John Humphrys who presented the programme from 1987 to 2019. But the other guy? Not so easy to identify. Anyone like to offer a guess? Some clues - he's well known and still broadcasting, indeed I heard him on Radio 4 just the other day. The first to get the name right - it's stamped on the bottom so I know who it is supposed to be - will get their name in lights on this blog. *** UPDATE: TIM HOLMES, SIMON CROW, ABBAS NASIR AND IAIN PURDON WERE ALL EXCEPTIONALLY QUICK OFF THE MARK IN IDENTIFYING THE MYSTERY EGG HEAD AS JAMES NAUGHTIE *** And what are these pottery pieces? Well, Today is a breakfast programme - and what do Radio 4 listening Brits have for breakfast ...
1 Comment
I hope this isn't a sin - buying a book for the bookplate. But how could I resist! Charles Bradlaugh was a commanding Victorian radical: atheist, republican, radical, reformer, oratur, propagandist, Parliamentarian, advocate of birth control, supporter of Irish and Indian nationalism and founder of the National Secular Society. Quite a guy! I've blogged about Bradlaugh before and about the bronze bust I have of him - here it is: By the way, the book (duly listed on page 60 of the inventory of Bradlaugh's library) is a life of one of the most remarkable of Scottish reformers. Thomas Muir was convicted of sedition and sentenced to transportation. In Australia, he escaped and made his way via California, Mexico and Cuba to Europe - but he died in 1799 while in France. He was 33 on his death. He is one of those commemorated on the Political Martyrs' Monument in the burial ground on Edinburgh's Calton Hill. The copy I came across online is a bit battered, but at least it is in the orginal binding and the pages - and bookplate - are clean. Intriguingly, quite a few of the pages have handwritten notes in the margins - often corrections of the text.
Could this be the somewhat obsessive Charles Bradlaugh, pencil in hand, tut-tutting as he comes across the author's inexactitudes? You know the song 'Morning Dew'? Well a Canadian singer-songwriter, Bonnie Dobson, wrote it sixty years ago. And last night I heard her perform it. Bonnie Dobson is now 82 - but you would never guess it. Her voice is in excellent shape and so is her guitar playing. It was a good evening at MOTH, a cosy, friendly venue in Hackney. Here's her rendition from a decade ago - when she was joined by Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant: 'Morning Dew' is a song about nuclear apocalypse, and there have been many, many cover versions. My favourite - it has to be the rendition by the Grateful Dead: Bonnie Dobson came across as really genuine and warm. She and her husband were sitting close by watching the support acts - not that I realised it was her at first - and she gave me her brandy and ice ... the drink had been bought for her but on reflection she didn't want it. Cheers, Bonnie!
From the stage, she talked about being on the New York folk circuit in the early Sixties, hanging out with the likes of Bob Dylan, and being tipped for future greatness alongside Joan Baez. After several decades away from the limelight, Bonnie Dobson started touring again a few years back - so glad that she's still walking out in the morning dew. This is, it seems, the first appearance of what we now know as La Marseillaise on the streets of London. It probably dates from 1792, the year that the song was composed and first sung, or not long after. The Marseillaise was written by Rouget de Lisle at a time when revolutionary France was facing attack from the Prussian and Austrian armies. The song's initial name translates as 'War Song from the Army of the Rhine'. It took its more familar name in the early summer of 1792 when the song was sung by volunteer fighters from Marseilles. In 1795, the National Convention made this stirring song France's national anthem. It still is - though there have been times in the intervening years when it has fallen out of favour. This handsome sheet music was printed in London with the song described as 'Marche des Marseillois or French Te Deum, Ordered by the National Convention to be Used by the Army to Excite them to Battle & as Sung at All the Theatres in Paris'. The words were printed in the original French. This is a lovely early copy of one of the most internationally acclaimed of progressive anthems, and in stellar condition. 'Marchons, marchons ...' Can't hum the Marseillaise? Here's a rendition from 1907 Leyli Rashidirauf is an Iranian artist who has spent the past few months in Northern Ireland. She's been painting a forty-metre mural alongside the Peace Wall that runs through Belfast. It's an exceptional piece of public art - bold in conception and in execution. The mural depicts women: their faces, their limbs, their bodies. Some are local to the city; others have moved to Belfast, 'The city's walls are often adorned with military and masculine imagery', the artist told me. 'But this mural aims to claim a space that represents women'. 'We Are Here', the title of this artwork, is all the more remarkable because of its location. The huge mural is in a close to inaccessible fenced off area on the Shankill (that is Loyalist) side of the Peace Wall. When Leyli Rashidirauf breaks off from painting to talk to passers by, she has to walk seventy yards or so and even then is conversing through a formidable metal security fence. Yet the peace walls are one of Belfast's biggest draws. They are on the tourist bus routes, and feature in the taxi tours round the political street art - that's how we came across Leyli and her mural. The Troubles continue to define Belfast, for outsiders above all. And this public art close to the Peace Wall is probably more noticed and talked about than if it was in pole position in the city centre. 'It was interesting for me to see that this wall serves as a tourist attraction, even though it still separates people's lives in the city. It reinforces a sense of isolation and division yet generates income and interest in this part of the city', Rashidirauf comments. 'This wall continues to play its unfortunate role of separation and othering.' The mural is monochrome and painted in acrylic. It's on a wall that runs parallel to the peace wall, which is an altogether more formidable and unwelcoming barrier. The project was undertaken under the auspices of ArtEZ University in the Netherlands, where Leyli Rashidirauf has been a Master's student. 'Our studio was located in the Shankill area of Belfast and most of the communities that were introduced to us were in this area', she explains. 'I decided to approach a community organisation called Alternatives. They showed me five or six different sites and eventually I chose this long wall facing the Peace Wall.' 'A plaque provides a brief explanation about the women I painted who shared with me their stories and experiences of gender, the body, space and belonging.' 'While working on this mural, as a woman painter of colour, I engaged in numerous conversations with local residents and visitors. My public presence as an artist raised questions and sparked conversations about political and social issues.' 'I believe the most significant aspect of the mural is the act of occupying a space through the images of women, their bodies and their gaze.' Thanks to Leyli Rashidirauf for breaking off from painting and coming over to talk to us and for responding to my questions by email. And thanks to my friend Brian Kelly for the marvellous photographs.
These are two stunning finials by the ceramicist Gilbert Bayes which have found sanctuary in a small but lovely new museum in Somers Town. Bayes designed these finials to be placed on top of poles in drying yards. The aim was to add an aesthetic pleasure to social housing in and around Somers Town. He also designed wonderful ceramic lunettes - still on display around the Sidney Street Estate in Somers Town - featuring scenes from fairy tales. Scandalously, all the original 1930s Bayes finials have been taken from their posts and most are missing presumed stolen. In two or three spots, replacements have been put up - but lacking the sheen and quality of the original. The two ceramic works above - one representing a tailor and the other a draper - were bought at auction in the United States on behalf of the People's Museum in Somers Town simply to enable the restitution of apparently looted art to the community for which it was created. The Camden New Journal told the story back in February - Hats off to Stephen and Diana for bringing these wonderful Bayes works of art back home! They are among the moving forces of the People's Museum on Phoenix Road in Somers Town, small and cosy and altogether sparkling. The museum also has one of Bayes's sailing ship finials - And still wrapped up and recently arrived from the cellar of the housing association which failed to protect so many of the Bayes originals is a wonderful ceramic carpenter's bag of tools - for St Joseph, who was of course a carpenter. Among the photographs on display is one which shows some of Bayes's finials - in this case a few of four-and-twenty blackbirds - in position in a Somers Town drying area back in the day And there are wonderful mementoes of the strong radical tradition in the area - it housed the Communist-aligned Unity Theatre from 1936 for almost forty years and earlier was the home of the anarchist Freedom Press. Today was my first visit to this museum - I'll certainly be going again. Do ye likewise! They have regular talks and are devising a heritage walk around Somers Town, so lots to look forward to..
This handbill marking the hanging at Lancaster in 1812 of eight alleged Luddites, seeking to resist the introduction of new machinery into textile mills, is a rare survival. More than 200 years old and still in one piece. I bought it from a bookshop in Salisbury (not noted as a ccntre of Luddism!) thirty-five years ago. I am delighted that this handbill - not simply a similar broadside, but this very item - features in Nick Mansfield's and Martin Wright's excellent new book, Made by Labour: a material and visual history of British labour, c1780-1924. It's a brilliant book and produced to very high standards - do check it out! The handbill has a crude representation of a hanged person dangling from the gibbet - the sort of visual image which could probably be recycled on 'execution' handbills, peddled on the streets at the time of a hanging. And in case you are curious, this is what Made by Labour says about this deeply evocative piece of ephemera.
This is Hornby Street in East Belfast - the place where my mother's father, Tommy Graham, grew up. And the street which his family was 'burnt out' from about a century ago. You can see in the distance one of the cranes of the Harland and Wolff ship repair yard. Harland and Wolff was once the biggest shipyard in the world. It's where the Titanic was built - and where, a few years later, my grandfather was apprenticed. This is the only family possession that links the Grahams to Hornby Street - just about the last remnant of the Northern Ireland connection. As you can see, it's tatty and the stamp has been soaked off. It's written by 'T. Graham' - not my grandfather but his father - to his 'Dear Wife' (her name was Maggie) and addressed to 39 Hornby Street off the Newtonards Road. According to family folklore, Tommy senior was a merchant seaman - I still have a couple of his brass seafaring canisters, designed (I think) to measure specific gravity. This postcard was sent from the SS Pakeha, then docked at a port in New Zealand. The mariner hopes that 'Tomy is being a good Boy'. There's no date - but it's probably from about 1910 or a couple of years either side. This is an undated photograph found online of the Steam Ship Pakeha docked at Port Chalmers near Dunedin in New Zealand. The 8,115 ton ship was built, appropriately, by Harland and Wolff in Belfast. It was acquired for war duties during the First World War, reverted to a merchant role and was sold for breaking up in 1950. So, what else can I find out about my family's Belfast pedigree? Well, here's my grandfather's birth certificate from September 1902. This seems to be before the family moved to Hornby Street - though Connisbrook Avenue is not far away. Thomas senior is listed as a boiler maker, the craft to which my grandfather was apprenticed. As so often in artisan trades, the son followed in the father's footsteps. Thomas senior seems to have moved from a tough job in the shipyards to a life I imagine was every bit as arduous at sea. My grandfather's birth was reported by his mother - and as you can she didn't sign but made a mark, suggesting that she was illiterate. At the time of the 1911 census, Maggie Graham was listed as the head of household, presumably because her husband was at sea. Nine-year-old Tommy - the oldest of what was then five children - was the only member of the household who could read and write. What is really surprsing is that all of the household are listed as Roman Catholics. Hornby Street was, and remains, in a fiercely Protestant working class area. The story I remember being told is that this was a mixed marriage - Tommy senior was a Protestant and his wife a Catholic. Her mother was a McKeown and had a sweet shop. All the boys of the marriage were brought up as Protestant; all the girls - I remember one of them, Jeannie - were Catholics. But as far as the census enumerator was concerned, all the children were listed as of the same religion as the head of household. We can put some faces to these names - here's Maggie, my great-grandmother (after whom my mother, Margaret, may well have been named) with her mother, Mrs McKeown. It was taken in 1932, probably in Glasgow. They look as if they lived stressful lives. How come in Glasgow? Ok - well, mixed marriages weren't all that uncommon in Belfast at that time it seems, but mixed households were sometimes targetted at moments of communal tension. In the early 1920s, at the time of the creation of the Irish Free State and deep civil unrest, the Graham family was 'burnt out' of Hornby Street - forced to flee. I don't know whether Tommy senior was at home at the time or at sea. The family moved to Glasgow, which had strong links to Northern Ireland and where there was also a large shipbuilding and maritime sector. What I heard from my mother was that her father, Tommy junior, stayed behind in Belfast to finish his apprenticeship before moving to join the rest of the family in Glasgow and getting work as a boilermaker in Govan. When I first visited Hornby Street in search of my grandfather, more than thirty years ago, I came across a couple of old-time residents of the street who remembered the riots of the early Twenties which caused my forbears to leave. I broadcast their accounts at the time on the BBC World Service. In Glasgow, my grandfather did well for himself. He married - Elizabeth 'Betty' Brunton was a Scottish Protestant - and brought the family up in Copland Place in Ibrox, close to the Rangers football ground. So in very much a Protestant part of town. Here's Tommy and Betty on their wedding day, 16th July 1928. He was 26; she was 24. My mother was born in Glasgow in the following year. In the late 1930s, the family moved to West Yorkshire. Then in the mid-1950s - by which time my parents had met and married - my grandfather emigrated to South Africa. He died there in 1965. We never met. My mother never set foot in Northern Ireland. And Hornby Street today? The old terraced housing has been demolished since I last visited more than thirty years ago, but it has been replaced by good modern terraced houses. The flags and emblems indicate that the people of Hornby Street are determiedly British, pro-Unionist, and admirers of the great Protestant hero King Billy, William the Third, who defeated the Catholic army of King James at the Battle of the Boyne back in 1690. At the end of Hornby Street, at the junction with Newtonards Road, the Great Eastern is a traditional local bar - preparing for the 'Sash Bash'. And just a few feet away from Hornby Street is political street art which seeks to demonstrate the area's continuing support for the Loyalist cause. Northern Ireland is (largely) at peace - but it remains deeply divided, and in the working class areas of Belfast which bore the brunt of the 'Troubles', old loyalties still linger.
I wonder what Tommies senior and junior - or Maggie who had to make a sudden dash with her family to Scotland - would make of it all? A lovely piece of political memorabilia - a Labour Party membership card from 1945, the year the first majority Labour government was returned to power. 1945 was huge! In the general election of July that year - just two months after the allied victory in Europe and a few weeks before Japan surrendered - Labour took almost 48% of the vote and won 393 seats (out of 630). Only once before (in 1929) had Labour taken more than 200 seats in the Commons. Labour's 1945 share of the vote was only superseded, and then marginally, in 1951 (when the Conservatives won but with fewer votes) and in 1966. In the Blair years, Labour won more seats than in 1945 but with a smaller share of the vote. Clement Attlee's government was arguably the most radical that Britain has ever seen, introducing the National Health Service, nationalising the coal mines, establishing British Railways and taking the biggest single step in the dismantling of Empire by granting independence to India. It's difficult to judge Mrs Plumb's attitude to all this. According to her 1945 membership card, she seems only to have paid one quarterly membership sub of 1s 6d, that's 7.5 pence.
I don't know why there were separate membership cards for women. Perhaps they had a lower subscription rate? The design featuring a woman wearing a Labour sash was common to men's and women's cards and had been in use from at least the late 1930s. Labour had about half-a-million individual card-carrying members in 1945 - not counting members of affiliated trades unions and societies. This is the black dwarf - who gave his name to not one but two of the finest radical papers we've ever seen. In the first incarnation, the Black Dwarf was the name of Thomas Wooler's satirical and political weekly which started publication in January 1817. I have recently chanced across - what a piece of good fortune! - a bound volume of the first year's issues. Here's the frontispiece of that volume - complete with satyr, judge's wigs. scrolls which appear to be Acts of Parliament ... and a Phrygian cap, so closely associated with the French Revolution, apparently placed on top of a crown. We get the message! The black dwarf was knocking around as a name at the time Wooler started his weekly. The serialisation of Walter Scott's novel The Black Dwarf began towards the close of 1816. 'Satire's my weapon', ran the epigram which headed each issue, a quote from the poet and essayist Alexander Pope. Wooler's Black Dwarf mixed satire, rough humour and arguments for Reform - and it made quite an impact. Within months, Wooler was on trial for seditious libel. He was cleared after persuading the jury that while he had published the articles complained of he hadn't written them. The Black Dwarf's circulation is said to have peaked at 12,000 - an astonishing number, which suggests a much larger readership. And the figure of the black dwarf became a well-known radical motif of the Regency period. The main target of this mischievous print is the Prince Regent, shown as all head and trousers, with - of course - a glass in his hand. And there in the bottom right-hand corner is - One of the regular features of the weekly was a scurrilous letter, an impish account of goings-on in court and politics addressed to the 'Yellow Bonze in Japan' - bonze meaning a Buddhist religious figure. This is a subversion of that old standard of papers and perioidicals, the letter from abroad. The first of these letters appeared in an early issue of the weekly - This cartoon by George Cruikshank in July 1819 features both the black dwarf and, on the wall, the yellow bonze - both the paper and the make-believe recipient of Wooler's scorching satire had clearly made their mark Wooler closed the Black Dwarf in 1824 on a despondent note: 'In ceasing his political labours, the Black Dwarf has to regret one mistake, and that a serious one. He commenced writing under the idea that there was a PUBLIC in Britain, and that public devotedly attached to the cause of parliamentary reform. This, it is but candid to admit, was an error.' Wooler was wrong. Within a decade the Great Reform Act was passed, ushering in a century of step-by-step political reform and widening of the franchise. And by the end of the 1830s, Chartism was in full flow, by far the most ambitious and well-supported movement for radical political and social change of the century. In the spring of that tumultuous year 1968, the Black Dwarf sprang back into life. The literary agent Clive Goodwin was the main motive force in the creation of the paper - and Tariq Ali is the activist most closely associated with it. In his memoir Street Fighting Years, Ali recounted how one of the founding group. the poet Christopher Logue, 'volunteered to go to the British Museum and search relentlessly until he had found a long-forgotten radical paper of the previous century whose name we could recover'. Logue was perhaps guided by the admiring references to Wooler and the Black Dwarf in the work of another key New Left thinker and activist, E.P. Thompson, whose enormously influential The Making of the English Working Class was published in 1963. Wooler's uncompromising style of political argument suited the new project. And rather wonderfully, the new Black Dwarf carried on from where the old one left off. The issue above - the most renowned of the front covers of the reborn Black Dwarf - declared: 'Est 1817. Vol 13 Number 1'. A nice touch! All copies of the new Black Dwarf are available online here. The prospectus of the new paper acknowledged very openly its debt to Tom Wooler's Black Dwarf, making a virtue of its radical antecedents A number of New Left titles looked to old radical papers for their names - not surprising given the preponderance of historians in the British New Left.
John Saville borrowed from G.J. Holyoake's The Reasoner for the title of his CP dissident newsletter (a collaboration with E.P. Thompson) which sparked off the New Left. Raph Samuel and colleagues riffed on the very successful CP-linked Left Review of the 1930s when they established Universities and Left Review, itself a precursor of New Left Review. Looking back to look forward! |
Andrew Whitehead's blogWelcome - read - comment - throw stones - pick up threads - and tell me how to do this better! Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|