Kmflett's Blog

A reminder from Farage to the left: pressure from outside Parliament works

Nigel Farage is having his eighth attempt at winning a Commons seat. An important piece by Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian reminds that the success of Faragist politics has rested largely on political pressure bought on Parliament from without.

He notes:

Over the course of his career, Farage has shown time and again that you need not win Westminster elections to change Westminster politics. As a politician, Farage is no Boris Johnson; yet, as a mode of politics, the power of Faragism is vast.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/06/dont-underestimate-faragism-this-election-hes-a-virus-infecting-uk-politics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

History offers some pointers.

In nineteenth century Britain there was no independent working class political representation in Parliament, although individual MPs who represented workers interests such as the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor were occasionally elected even on the very limited franchise then used.

Rather there were two bourgeois parties, the Tories and the Whigs (from 1859 the Liberals). However significant political change did occur. The suffrage was extended to include rather more working men in 1867 and 1883. Trade Unionism was given a legal status and the right to strike guaranteed in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

These changes which went through Parliament were achieved by what is known as pressure from without.

The term has an interesting history. It was the title of a 1974 volume edited by the feminist and socialist historian Patricia Hollis. She went on to become Junior Minister in the Blair Governments. The book clearly represented an historical intervention into what was an earlier period of working class upsurge against a right-wing Tory Government with policies similar to the present one.

Reviewing the book Dorothy Thompson was critical, arguing that its chapters failed to address the range of activities that made up pressure from without.

The Anti-Corn Law League, run by Manchester industrialists, was perhaps the prototype for modern campaigns. Well organised with membership cards, regular publicity and lobbying of Parliament it succeeded in getting the Corn Laws scrapped. That reduced the price of bread. This allowed its core support of business owners to reduce wages, something working class members of the League, of which there were numbers, no doubt reflected on.

A rather different form of pressure from without, aimed at the very types who ran the Anti Corn Law League was what some historians have called ‘collective bargaining by riot’. Here organised crowds, or mobs as the media still call them, gathered to pressure those who sold essentials like bread and beer to do so at affordable prices.  Actual riots were rare.  The pressure of the crowd was usually sufficient.

A combination of the efficient organisation and lobbying of the ACCL and the mobilisation of the protest crowd suggests pressure from without can still work today.

Farage knows this, Starmer refuses it, the left needs to re-learn it

Historians renew solidarity to Goldsmiths as educational vandalism continues

The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, has offered renewed solidarity to the UCU branch at Goldsmiths College.

Goldsmiths has seen a series of redundancy exercises in recent years which staff in the UCU and students have contested.

The latest proposed cuts which currently put 133 people at risk of redundancy focus once again in the areas of arts and humanities. While Goldsmiths claim they are committed to these areas the continuing cuts suggest otherwise. They appear to echo the current Government’s view that degrees in the humanities do not lead to high earnings potential.

That is contentious in itself but it also throws out of the window any idea of a liberal education and learning and research as part of the general good of society.

A previous plan in 2022 was for a business University where the tune was called not by educational priorities but by banks including Lloyds and NatWest who drew up a business plan for Goldsmiths. What is taught was to be determined by what was profitable not for any intrinsic educational value.

LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, what is being attempted again at Goldsmiths is a prototype of Tory plans for the future of higher education. Any idea of a liberal education valued in itself is out. In future value will be judged on a profit and loss basis. We offer solidarity to Goldsmiths UCU in continuing to resist this. That they succeed is vital.

the last hirsute Prime Minister Lord Salisbury (Tory) left Office in 1902

Beard Liberation Front

6^th June

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Liberation Front won’t stand in Election but will endorse hirsute candidates

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it has decided not to stand candidates in the July 4^th General Election. It says the surprise timing has made it difficult to agree suitable constituencies where a hirsute intervention might make a difference.

However it will endorse a range of hirsute candidates cross a range of parties and independents.

These will include former Beard of the Year Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North and the Tory candidate for Clacton Giles Watling.

A full list of endorsed candidates will be available nearer the Election.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, its clearly a very clean shaven election, with a clean shaven man in a suit set to be PM again after July 4^th. That underlines how important the work of the Beard Liberation Front is in promoting Beard Power in British politics

Marketed as ‘NOT The Dimbleby Lecture’ following BBC management’s political spiking of that invitation, Thompson’s Beyond the Cold War (1981) elaborated his vision of a non-aligned pan-European peace movement. ‘I think, once again, of 1944 and of the crest of the Resistance. There must be that kind of spirit abroad in Europe once more. But this time it must arise, not in the wake of war and repression, but before these take place. Five minutes afterwards, and it will be too late.’ 

The son of a D-Day Dodger

It is hardly time to forget all about the second world war. My late father, Graham Flett, fought at Monte Cassino in 1944 and saw some of his comrades die there. That made him of course a D Day Dodger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Day_Dodgers

A lifelong socialist, he would invariably wear a poppy on Remembrance Sunday. He wasn’t interested in Tory flag-waving. His concern, as when he was to be found on Anti-Nazi League protests in his later years, was to make sure that the industrial scale of murder represented by the Holocaust was both never forgotten and never repeated.

Its clear that is a battle that still needs to be fought eighty years on

Narendra Modi has been re-elected as Indian PM this week although with a reduced majority. His BJP party can be characterised as far right to fascist, although India itself is not a fascist State. It is in fact one of the world’s biggest and fastest growing economies, albeit a country with huge disparities of wealth.

In a global market economy trade with India is not just unavoidable but important. However that is different to the welcome that both the Tories and Labour gave to Modi’s re-election.

Its a reminder that when it comes to the West and perhaps in particular the UK and US it is not the unpleasantness of the politician that dictates sentiment but whether they represent something that is found to be useful.

A reminder too of the line from the Clash’s White Man in Hammersmith Palais:

If Adolf Hitler flew in tonight they send the limousine anyway

Modi is not Hitler btw, the line remains a to the point comment on who the West does business with if it fits.

The New Statesman has published another list of what it sees as the 50 most influential figures on the left. In recent times its probably fair to see the NS as a magazine of the centre rather than the left but of course that broadly fits Starmer’s perspective.

Starmer has dropped from first to second place with his hirsute enforcer Morgan McSweeney top of the NS pops. Another enforcer Sue Gray is third and Angela Rayner is fourth.

It might be gathered that this is mostly about Parliamentary politics. Some who feature are not really on the left such as the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is good on refugees and is not loved by the right which really just means he could be worse.

Of the mass movement outside of Parliament around Palestine there is little reflection. Jeremy Corbyn remains on the list as does Owen Jones who writes in the Guardian and on-line on the issue. George Galloway is certainly an anti-imperialist (at least for some of the globe) but as the NS notes he is a ‘social conservative’. Galloway may run the Workers Party but I’m not sure he’d say he was on the left as historically understood.

Of the organisers of numerous, often huge, Gaza marches, protests and camps there is nothing which is surely where the left is at in 2024 if its anywhere.

I’m writing a piece for Culture Matters about beer and the election. Its focus is on politics not beer although you can find plenty about beer on the blog.

Farage launched his election campaign for Clacton on Tuesday. Attention was focused on his interface with a banana milkshake. That happened as he was leaving the Moon and Starfish the local Wetherspoons.

Most things about Farage are fake. He is an ex=public school boy and stockbroker not a man of the people. Likewise while he is sometimes pictured drinking a pint of beer (see above) he is in fact a drinker of fine wines. Its an image thing as much as Harold Wilson smoked a pipe in public for strategic reasons but enjoyed cigars in private.

The really interesting thing about the picture is the row of photographers taking Farage’s picture. They are on the serving side of the bar. Try doing that in your local… The conclusion that can be drawn is that Wetherspoons were happy enough to host the Farage launch. Farage has used Spoons for his GBNews efforts in the past and Tim Martin is a well known Brexiteer. Well known in fact to be Sir Tim these days

From eggs to milkshakes a great British tradition of protest from the London crowd of the 1790s to Clacton in 2024

A long tradition in political protest

Nigel Farage has engaged with a banana milkshake after leaving Wetherspoons in Clacton. As Farage is a great defender of British traditions he will no doubt recognise this as one. Eggs and milkshakes create a cleaning bill and perhaps damage pride but they do not cause injury.

Politicians condemning the milkshaking were in the main the usual authoritarian suspects and like many such actions historically its unclear who exactly was behind. Perhaps it was an anti-Faragist campaigners, perhaps it was a Farage stunt. No matter these things are part of the democratic election tradition when politicians have to actually meet the crowd and sometimes the mob too.

In 2023 a person who pleaded not guilty to throwing an egg at King Charles in York (it missed) was found guilty of threatening behaviour with the judge describing the egg throwing as ‘unlawful violence’. It’s a reminder that judges cannot be counted to uphold historic democratic methods of registering a protest, albeit the reasons for the protest on this occasion were not particularly progressive. Again that is also a feature of history

E.P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class records that when a perjurer was placed in the pillory in the 1790s the London crowd pelted him with eggs. Yet when a political radical suffered the same fate a few days later the crowd brought him glasses of wine to drink, which Farage would certainly have preferred.

In more recent times egg throwing has been officially recognised as a legitimate protest. An anti-fascist arrested for throwing a(traditional rotten) egg at a National Front march in Wood Green in 1977, known as the ‘Battle of Wood Green’, was acquitted as the judge noted that it was indeed a traditional form of political protest.

John Prescott, who also egged on the campaign trail, didn’t agree (he whacked the egg thrower) but ultimately a point is made and no harm is done beyond making the person egged look silly and a dry cleaning bill.

Of course in the era of more authoritarian Governments egg throwers are invariably arrested. That doesn’t alter the reality that be it eggs or milkshakes such protests are part of an historic British democratic tradition