Blair Peach - justice never done

Blair Peach was a young, peaceful New Zealand teacher who was murdered by the Metropolitan Police during an anti-fascist demonstration in 1979. An élite paramilitary unit, the Special Patrol Group piled out of their van, killed him with an illegal weapon, then lied about their presence. Despite a long investigation, including raids on their lockers and homes, none of the officers was prosecuted, despite 14 eye-witnesses and an internal police report - released today - which identifies the six officers, though the names are censored in today's release. They still aren't going to be charged with any of the offences committed while killing Peach and covering it up subsequently.

They haven't gone away: the SPG became the Territorial Support Group, a member of which killed Ian Tomlinson.

Peach's killer may be one of these five SPG officers, or another one I can't find a name for (with the illegal weapons found in their possession). Murray is now a lecturer in 'corporate social responsibility' at Sheffield University, ironically.

- PC "Chalkie" White: crowbar, small metal cosh (which he attempted to hide during the search), whip handle, whip, brass handle.
- PC Woodcock: US type truncheon, two knives.

- Inspector Hopkins: very large wooden truncheon.
- PC Greville Bint: Nazi regalia and memorabilia, a lead weighted cosh, bayonets    and swords.
- Inspector Alan Murray - resigned from the force in protest against the investigation.

This is an alternative list of names, printed at the time. I don't know which version is correct and the new report won't help. Freestone, Scottow, Richardson and Lake are names new to me, but White and Murray appear on both. I doubt Murray did it - he was a senior officer - but he was clearly an apologist for the tactics and attitudes of the SPG and bears the moral responsibility. 

Why Am I A Socialist?

"I won't get out of bed for less than $10k" per day

                                                                  gets people in and out of bed for £10k per year

Heavenly Harmonies

Something soothing today - from the melodic side of Vaughan Williams. Namely, his The Lark Ascending, Violin Concerto and Serenade to Music. None of them are my favourites - I prefer his more angsty stuff and for string virtuosity, I favour Flos Campi, but they're all wonderful.

I have a difficult relationship with The Lark Ascending. It's transcendently beautiful, but I struggled for years to play it, and never succeeded. More widely, it's been stolen by Classic FM and allied types as 'easy', 'smooth' and ultimately English, none of which are true (VW was a lefty troublemaker to some extent). Strip away the crap and you have an astonishing piece of work: the halcyon days of an idyllic country before World War One ended the Edwardian paradise. The Violin Concerto has a bit more grunt to it - there's misery and passion in there all right.

Methodism in my madness

A few more of my Bethesda Chapel pictures (rest here). Stoke was a hotbed of Methodism - the term covered various groups which gradually split from the Church of England (and each other) in search of a plainer and more egalitarian form of Christianity. From them, in industrial cities like Stoke, stemmed trades unionism and 'respectable' working-class culture.

More lights

Old Roneo machine

Wrecked Roneo

Flowers in the window

Upper level

Brass hinge

Under the grey…

In praise of decay

I visited Stoke-on-Trent's Bethesda Chapel this weekend. It's known as the Cathedral of Methodism - a huge, plain, beautiful building which has been left to rot for decades. The mob were allowed in this weekend for the last time before restoration begins.

I'm seeing it as a metaphor for the Labour Party, which was famously founded 'more on Methodism than on Marx' (unfortunately). It's a spare, elegant edifice based on sound principles - primarily equality and co-operation - which has been abandoned for flashier, short-term obsessions.

My photo-essay is here. Click on these samples for bigger images.

internal door detail

Whatever the Methodist equivalent of a sacristy is.

Light fitting

Almost intact window

light fittings

Main body, ground floor

Organ pipes

The Chapel is being restored to public (and thankfully secular) use by the Historic Chapels Trust and other bodies - send them some money now. 

P-P-P-P-Pick up a Penguin!

I'v just received six books from the Penguin Great Ideas series - 80 (so far) short books of essays by prominent intellectuals. I already owned Marcus Aurelius's Meditations in this edition, and I've added Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Orwell's Books v. Cigarettes, Why I Write and Decline of the English Murder, William Morris's Useful Work v. Useless Toil, and Michel Foucault's The Spectacle of the Scaffold.

To be honest, I've got most of these texts in one form or another, and most are available for free on the web (follow the links above). I bought them because these slim volumes are masterpieces of book design. Each one evokes the spirit and sense of the text: the Foucault features repetitive circles representing the atomised individual under the microscope of social institutions.

Why I Write features a spare, plain cover with an austere typeface reflecting Orwell's suspicion of rhetoric.

The Morris merges art and craft in line with his philosophy that anything which is useful is necessarily beautiful (he clearly never worked in the lower reaches of higher education).

The Decline of the English Murder is a deeply embossed tabloid newspaper, complete with adverts,

Books v. Cigarettes has an abstract design which reminds me of ashtrays and Venn diagrams, from the 1950s/1960s designs:

while Benjamin's essay, which is about what happens to our definitions of art when artworks can be reproduced to infinity, features the spine of the book repeated over and over again, which I think is very witty.

Penguins were invented in 1935 by Allen Lane (influenced by various other imprints) to make high quality books available for about the price of a packet of cigarettes. Design and typography were hugely important to the company, for themselves and as a way of distinguishing the texts from other cheap books. You can still buy the originals for pennies everywhere: green for detective novels, blue for biography, orange for fiction and so on. Even if you can't read, they do furnish a room!

Bye bye England…

I've been mightily impressed by Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalist Party during this electoral cycle, and they're clearly working well together.

So I have a cunning plan. Instead of aiming for complete independence for Scotland and Wales, they should campaign for English independence, then form a federal Republic without England (Northern Ireland can finally join the Republic of Ireland). Result: paradise. And the two nations together would trump England when it came to  deciding who got the United Nations Security Council seat. Then we'd see a much more mature world order.

There's no down side - other than for England, which would be stuck with a Tory majority for ever…

What else would I do?

Thanks to 'anonymous' for posting the link to this as a comment.

Events, dear boy, events

After Stoke City's rather one-sided encounter with Chelsea yesterday, I'm minded to paraphrase Emperor Hirohito's announcement of Japan's surrender in 1945: 'the situation has developed not necessarily to Stoke's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest'.

A couple of goals were debatable, but this was the worst performance by Stoke since our 8-1 Liverpool defeat all those years ago.

On this day…

Shakespeare was allegedly born today, and died on this date. So did several other of my favourite authors: Michael Moore the rabblerouser, Paul McAuley, the speculative fiction writer (it's what we academics call science fiction to defend ourselves against accusations of geekiness), talented paedophile Vladimir Nabokov. 


Joining Shakespeare in their graves on this date were Cervantes, Jules Verne and Wordsworth. 


Here's Sonnet 71 by Shakespeare.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot

If thinking on me then should make you woe.

O, if, I say, you look upon this verse

When I perhaps compounded am with clay,

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.

But let your love even with my life decay,

Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

G'day, voters

Though actually he took US citizenship long ago.

Gordon the Big Engine and Henry the Green Engine

Prompted by a mention on the radio yesterday, I dig out my old Rev. W. Awdry railway books, and discover that Gordon the Big Engine is competitive, surly, a dependable workhorse who hates to be beaten, and often the butt of jokes by flashier engines. He always gets through in the end, and is always at the heart of rescue operations.

Gordon's important position as the engine who usually pulls the Express has made him proud, pompous and arrogant, with good reason, too; he is the strongest engine on Sodor after all.Because of his rank in the social order of the North Western Railway, Gordon expects to get the important jobs and either sulks when he doesn't, or gets jealous of those who do. Sometimes, Gordon acts as a bully… Sometimes Gordon shows a kinder side and gives the younger engines advice, usually after he has had some mishap as a result of his foolhardiness. Some of his advice isn't exactly honest, though, as James and Sir Handel have discovered.

Amongst his rivals is Henry the Green Engine. Henry is vain, spiteful, patronising and snobbish, and winds Gordon up something rotten. He was owned by Sir Topham Hatt. He's painted green but burns coal, very inefficiently. Completely coincidentally, he looks like David Cameron.

Here's a moral tale about poor Gordon:

Election depression?

Did you watch the latest leaders' debate last night? It was supposedly on foreign policy, but quickly degenerated into generalised sniping and wheeling out pre-prepared lines. Boring and unenlightening. Though no doubt all the commentators and newspapers will declare their preferred candidate as the winner.

The British National Party are launching their manifesto in my beloved Stoke today, the utter bastards. They've picked St. George's Day because, despite their name, they're white English supremacists.

Enough of this - it's getting too tedious for words. Let's have some music. Today's choice is a real treat - one of my guilty pleasures. Yes, it's The Bangles' Different Light and Everything. What can I say? Pop sass and catchy hooks with a dash of 60s folk rock and classic girl group in places, though the synthesisers have dated badly. As have the clothes and hair.

Donor Cards: let's be selective

From those good eggs at Class War:

Meanwhile, have some fun with the Daily Mail Nick Clegg Headline Generator!

The Daily Mail: Concentration camps Good, Proportional Representation Bad

This is the front cover of today's Daily Mail, alongside the other rightwing newspapers, all of which have independently decided to gang up on harmless centrist Nick Clegg:

The actual article Clegg wrote, 8 years ago, suggests that it's time we stopped behaving as though German = Nazi.

As the Mail seems to appreciate the lessons of history, let's remind ourselves of the Daily Mail's attitude towards Nazism in the late 1930s (full article here).

Acclaim for Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists kicked off on 8th January 1934 with the unequivocal headline; ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ Some Mail staff even wore black shirts to work. Lord Rothermere, the paper’s owner, wrote of the BUF in the 15th January 1934 issue that they were ‘a well-organised party of the Right ready to take over responsibility for social affairs with the same directness of purpose and energy of method as Hitler and Mussolini displayed’.

In November 1926, Italy’s fascist supremo dropped a hand-written line to G. Ward Price, the paper’s Chief Correspondent, congratulating him on his appointment as a director: ‘my dear Price, I am glad you have become a director of the Daily Mail, and I am sure that your very popular and widely circulated newspaper will continue to be a sincere friend of fascist Italy. With best wishes and greetings, Mussolini.  

Through the 30s, the Mail was ‘the only major British daily to take a consistently pro-Nazi line’: it ‘stuck out like a sore thumb’ (Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-39). Rothermere penned a July 1933 leader, ‘youth triumphant’, praising the Nazi regime for its ‘accomplishments, both spiritual and material’. True, he admitted, there had been ‘minor misdeeds of individual Nazis’ but these would certainly be ‘submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing on Germany’. So complimentary was the article, the Nazis used it for propaganda.

Rothermere eventually struck up a friendship with Hitler – or ‘My dear Fuhrer’ as he invariably began his regular correspondences – and visited him numerous times. Rothermere and Ware Price were among only three or four foreigners invited to Hitler’s first ever dinner party at his official Berlin residence.

In 1937, Ward Price – who ‘was believed to Rothermere’s mouthpiece not only by the public but by Ward Price himself’ (Taylor) – published a chatty memoir about his great mates Hitler and Mussolini entitled ‘I Know These Dictators’. Last revised and reprinted in August 1938 – when fascism’s dark intents were obvious to even the most ardent reactionary – the book called Mussolini ‘a successful man of the world who is expert at his job and enjoys doing it’ and spoke warmly of Hitler’s ‘human, pleasant personality.’ The chapter ‘The Human Side of Hitler’ (not a phrase you hear very often) revealed that, alongside his affection for kiddies and doggies, the great dictator was also partial to the odd chocolate éclair: Naughty but nice’, as the Fuhrer used to say.

Price urged readers of ‘I Know These Dictators’ to keep an ‘open mind’ on fascism. Of Hitler’s initial wave of repression on gaining power, he wrote: ‘The Germans were made to feel the firm hand of their new master. Being Germans, they liked it.’

The concentration camps – about which ‘gross and reckless accusations (have been) made’ – were just full of dirty Reds. The Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler took on his party rivals – by killing them all – was a sensible bit of forward planning avoiding the need for lots of silly arguments later on. Overall, ‘in every respect of the German nation’s life the constructive influence of the Nazi regime (was) seen’. The only people who suffered were a few troublesome ‘minorities’. 

Lord Rothermere last visited Hitler in May 1938. While other papers condemned the regime’s brutality and oppression, the Mail still claimed Germany was ‘in the forefront of nations’ and that Hitler was ‘stronger than ever and more popular with his countrymen’. On 1 October 1938, after the signing of the Munich treaty in which Britain and France appeased Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia’s disputed Sudetenland region, Rothermere sent a telegram to Hitler: ‘MY DEAR FUHRER EVERYONE IN ENGLAND IS PROFOUNDLY MOVED BY THE BLOODLESS SOLUTION OF THE CZECHOSLOVAKIAN PROBLEM STOP PEOPLE NOT SO MUCH CONCERNED WITH TERRITORIAL READJUSTMENT AS WITH THE DREAD OF ANOTHER WAR WITH ITS ACCOMPANYING BLOODBATH STOP FREDERICK THE GREAT A GREAT POPULAR FIGURE IN ENGLAND MAY NOT ADOLF THE GREAT BECOME AN EQUALLY POPULAR FIGURE STOP I SALUTE YOUR EXCELLENCY’S STAR WHICH RISES HIGHER AND HIGHER.

Good writing dies at the hands of search engine optimisation

This is a very entertaining and thought-provoking rant about the corporate takeover of music on the internet. His major points: blogging and music magazines are in the business of speed and hits, leading to more and more inconsequential pieces, written worse and worse, and leading to homogenisation. There's no 'stumble culture' any more - finding an odd band by accident. Instead, coverage is predicated on exclusivity, getting there first and statistical analysis: more clicks leads to more advert revenue.

Contains a lot of swearing. He's angry. It's a fascinating examination of the quality/quantity dilemma.

sorry: I've deleted it because it's set to play automatically and it was driving me mad. See it here, especially if you're a media student. 

Downfall's downfall

Like me, you're probably quite bored with the rash of Downfall parodies on Youtube. They started quite amusingly, but soon became tired and unoriginal.

The film makers have started to pursue Youtube to get them taken down, on copyright grounds. Unsurprisingly, this has provoked a reaction amongst the geeks leading to, you've guessed it, a Downfall parody.

This one's actually worth watching - it's witty and informed.


Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.

Seal clubbable

This is how to entrap a seal before carting it off for a banquet:

Lucky London. Arrr

One of the delights of British politics is the fringe parties: anyone with £500 can stand for Parliament (and you get it back if you poll 5%). It's been abused by commercial interests, and some of them are attention seekers, or just crazed, but they can offer a commentary on mainstream politics.

So if you live in the Cities of London and Westminster constituency, you can vote for Mad Cap'n Tom, the Pirate candidate. Amongst other thing, he sees British youths' handiness with a knife as an asset:

All British schoolchildren t'be trained in swordsmanship an' gunnery.

Half of 'em be knowin' how t'use a knife already, this not be a stretch.

Once got five gold runs on Blockbusters.

Despite all appearances, is not a student. 

I didn't come here to talk about my policies!

Refreshingly, some political parties don't spend their money on consultants, image advice, PR men and media spinning. Here's Lord Pearson, leader of UKIP, the golf club equivalent of the fascist BNP. It's worth watching all 4 minutes.



Perhaps he should have invested in some media training after all…