The Barnsby Blog

BRAVE AND IMPORTANT PEOPLE

I try to keep in regular touch with my disabled friends. This month there are four in particular I want to write about. The first is George Frith, a brilliant historian at Oxford who wrote anti-racist theses at every level to Ph.D. but was then struck down with a terrible spinal disease which leaves him totally disabled. Yet he has no self pity and is cheerful and courageous, and, of course anti-Blair. We hope to be able to circulate some of his writings which were not only advanced for his day, but remain advanced.

The second is Greg Silvester. To me Greg is the most important athlete in Wolverhampton. Born with Down’s Syndrome he refuses to call it an affliction. He helped to carry the Olympic torch for the last Games and voluntarily coaches both disabled and other athletes. Recently he has extended his activities to swimming and now holds several records. I hope Greg will comment for the GB Working Class Library on the 2012 Games.

The third is Geraint Jones. He was a Communist while a student at Wolverhampton Grammar School. He was then struck down with schizophrenia. He has since passed exams higher than that of any other schizophrenic and lives an active and independent life, although bitter at the lack of interest or support of his old school.

The fourth is Mushtak Shafi an intelligent and humorously ironic Muslim. He suffers from Tourettes syndrome and also Compulsion, not to mention the problem of being a brown skinned Muslim in a racist city. All of the above are a privilege to know.

MY POSITION ON THE BOMBERS

I am not, nor have I ever been a supporter of terrorism, defined as indiscriminate killing of men, women and children. But I will not condemn those whose helplessness against the overwhelming military power of Bush and Blair leads them to feel they have no alternative but to become so-called terrorists. Such behaviour can be both patriotic and effective. This, recent opinion polls show, is also the view of the majority of people in Britain today and until the war in Iraq is ended and our troops brought home even more British people will hold this view, even if we fall foul of the new laws being enacted by Blair which curtail our liberties.

THE WALSALL ANARCHIST BOMB PLOT

The nearest connection I have ever had with terrorism was on the fiftieth anniversary of the Walsall Anarchist Bomb Plot of 1892 (See my book Socialism in Birmingham and the Black Country 1850 to 1939 page 52-55). This occurred during the revival of Socialism after the Great Depression of 1875 to the 1890s. Of the three important Socialist organisations that appeared at that time, the Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist League and the Fabian Society, it was William Morris’s Socialist League which struck deepest roots in Walsall. This rapidly became Anarchist at a time when international anarchy was accused of loosing bombs in Britain and certainly did in France.

The local man involved was Joseph Deakin who happened to be a railwayman and thus had a `privilege ticket’ which enabled him to travel to London frequently and contact Anarchists there. In 1891 a Frederick Charles came to Walsall to seek work. He was followed by August Coulon, suspected of being a government employed agent-provocateur, and a Victor Cailes. They found work in an iron foundry and Coulon said that they would be able to make bombs. They went ahead and produced iron casings. In December 1891 another Anarchist, John Battola, came to Walsall to enquire what progress was being made. He was followed by the Chief Constable of Walsall and Inspector Melville a CID officer from London. In January 1892 Deakin went to London with a parcel. He was arrested, but the parcel contained not the bomb that was expected, but chloroform. The next day Charles and Cailes were arrested, followed by Deakin. After assertions of ill-treatment in jail, Deakin confessed to making a bomb, but said it was meant for use not in Britain but in Russia.

In March 1892 they were charged before a frightened jury and a biased judge of conspiracy to cause an explosion. Charles, Cailes and Battola were sentenced to ten years penal servitude and Deakin to five years. The savagery of the sentences and the fact that Coulon, who activated the making of the bomb, was a police spy, resulted that over the ten years the Labour movement protested continuously.

Comparisons with what happened in the 1890s and what is happening today are too obvious to miss and perhaps the subsequent events may also have lessons. Modern suspicions of the Plot were aroused when the Home Office refused to release the papers under the 50 year rule and they were not made available until 1986. The very sharp curator of Walsall’s new and famous art gallery was keen to hold an exhibition and as the first person to record the Plot, I was drawn into the preparations. I found myself in the unusual position of not only being able to visit Kew to visit the national archives, but with money to spend on the duplicating of documents which now repose in Walsall’s archives and in my own collection. My general conclusions were to confirm that there had been a government plot, but there was little reason to delay the release of the documents after the 50 year limit.

THE LADY WHO SPIED FOR THE SOVIET UNION

The death of Melita Norwood has brought fresh information and controversy regarding the ethics of spying. After the Attorney-General, (the local man Ross Cranston, MP for Dudley North), had decided for a variety of reasons including her advanced years, that Melita should not be prosecuted, she settled down in Wombourn near Wolverhampton, but someone decided that her address should not be publicised as she would be victimised by the National Front, who were, and whose successors continue to be, electorally active in the area. Whatever the wisdom of this decision it means that we know nothing of the opinions of Melita in her later years and this has led to hostile speculation of journalists. Melita was known to Charley Hall our latest contact who has moved from Newcastle to Birmingham. Charley says that he knew her, but had more contact with her husband who was an open Communist Party member when they were thrown together in the south of England in the 1960s.
Her justification for spying was presumably that we were not at war with the Soviet Union, although the Cold War of USA and British hostility was likely to lead to an attack on that much weakened country.

This raises the question of who else might have spied for the Soviet Union. I personally would not have spied, holding to the strict Communist doctrine that only by its own efforts could a country become socialist. This attitude included hostility to the taking of Soviet money to subsidise the Party. So that when it was revealed by Reuben Falber that the CPGB had been taking `Soviet gold’ both I and Don Brayford, the CP organiser who made great sacrifices by living on an inadequate Party wage which often never arrived and of whom my abiding memory is of Don on his motorbike in the bitter weather of the New Year out every night re-registering reluctant Party members, protested strongly.

Other Party members have admitted to have been willing to spy for the Soviet Union, but having never been asked to do so!

The question of the patriotism of an Englishman has been raised recently by a Wolverhampton Labour councillor who questioned the propriety of ending local functions with the jingoistic words put to Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory (played also of course, at the end of the Proms). He withdrew his proposal when it was said that ex-service organisations objected to it not being played. Well, here is one veteran of World War 2 who did not want it played. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that patriotism was the last resort of a scoundrel. I have never been impressed by the fact that I happened to be born in England. To me British people are much the same as other people, there are good, bad and indifferent among us. The first to fly the union jack have been the far right and if we are foolish enough to approve such jingoism then the German new right are entitled to revive Hitler’s nazi anthems, and, of course; the flying of the Stars and Stripes has turned the minds of the majority of US citizens and led to the monstrous crimes of Bush and his neo-cons.

BLAIRITES TARGET WOLVERHAMPTON

Recent targets for our website www.gbpeopleslibrary co.uk have been Roger Lawrence, who seems to preside over a City Council only one of whose councillors is anti-Blair. Similar charges of insufficient understanding of anti-racist matters has been made against the present Mayor, Councillor Phil Bateman, who is also responsible for race relations within Transport West Midlands. Then there is the conduct of the maverick black chief executive Derrick Anderson who not only supported the closure of Bilston Community College, but seems to support the war in Iraq. Finally the betrayal of Dennis Turner becoming a baronet and his handing of his seat to the Blair aide McFadden means that there will be an almighty fight for the soul of the Labour Party in Wolverhampton over the coming period.

I hope you will excuse the intervention of a white Englishman into the terrible dilemma you face as Muslims of learning that a very, very small minority of your young people are prepared to blow themselves up and others with them. But we live in a multicultural society so that the experience of different members of that society may be relevant to your situation.

Some of you are telling your young men that they have not understood the peaceful teachings of the Koran and been misled. But I have a copy of the Koran, which I have read, and also a copy of the Bible, which I have read less thoroughly, because I am always being put off by the chronology of who begat whom, or the gory details of who slew whom and I have come to the conclusion, held by many others, that it is not the literal accounts of these ancient texts which are important, but the differing interpretations, peaceful or warlike, that people put upon them.

One thing is certain, Britain is a deeply racist society. You serve neither your community nor your young people if you fail to raise the question of Bush and Blair’s responsibility for the rise of terrorism. Over 50% of British people continue to oppose the war in Iraq and believe that Bush and Blair are responsible for the rise of terrorism. End the war, bring the troops home and this will be the greatest contribution to ending terrorism.

Last week a two minute silence was widely observed in memory of some fifty British people killed by terrorists. But more than fifty Muslims are killed each week in the wars of Bush and Blair. Unless the slaughter ends there will be more young men who are foolish, misguided or brave enough to support their fellow Muslims abroad.

DR. GEORGE BARNSBY
Working Class Library &
Free Communist Bookshop

BLOG - 10 JULY 2005

Jazz has always been one of my great loves and helped mould my anti-racism. In the 1930s the great black musicians like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Chick Webb dominated the jazz scene and were assisted by white anti-racist bandleaders such as Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw who employed black musicians and protected them, as far as possible from the all pervading US racism of separate accommodation and `no blacks here’ mentality. The traditional jazz has been replaced by modern jazz, rock, and now soul, each dominated by black musicians. But such is the profligacy of black African culture that they are able to discard jazz and leave it virtually to us old white people.

Peter Appleyard is a veteran white musician playing vibes and considered among the top five in the world, spending eight years with the Benny Goodman sextet in the 1970s and following the death of Lionel Hampton last year he did a world tour with Hampton’s band in memory of this greatest vibes player. I took the opportunity given to me by my sons to attend the Harp in Albrighton and listen to Peter.

I asked him whether he had played with a great hero of mine, George Shearing, the blind London pianist. Peter said that indeed he had played with George many times and gave an up-to-date bulletin on his health. He has recently suffered a fall and although this has not affected his ability to play, it would make it difficult for him to return to his native country. Peter Appleyard asked me what connections I had with this blind, hugely talented man from London. I explained that in the 1930s I used to accompany a piano playing friend of mine to Battersea Grammar School where Shearing, already famous, but not yet a world celebrity, taught piano.

This meeting at the Harp coincided with the celebrations of VJ day where much ink has been spilled (but not much else) in lauding the generation which saved us from Hitler. I played some very small role in this matter in that I was a member of the furthest east Rhythm Club in the world at Imphal which meticulously recorded its activities and ceremonially recorded its demise when the main Japanese military offensive was launched which was intended to conquer. To the surprise of the Japanese, as well as us, we did not retreat, but endured a three month’s siege, surrounded by the Japanese, supplied by an airlift, which was the largest of it kind in the world at that time. The forgotten 14th Army, did not stop until it was in Rangoon.
When we all came home I was dumbfounded one day to have a visit from Harry Johnson one of the leading lights of the Rhythm Club who lived in Birmingham. He had picked up a book by a George Barnsby and figured that there could not be too many people of that name and walked from Birmingham to enquire whether I was the ex-Rhythm Club member. From that time we attempted to interest the jazz community in reproducing the programmes that we had run on the Indian border targeting Digby Fairweather who was then running a popular jazz radio programme. Unfortunately our plans came to nothing and we let the matter drop - for about fifty years!

Come the recent VJ day commemorations proposals I rang Harry Johnson after many years to see if he was still alive and interested in jazz. He was, and told me that the records of the furthest east Rhythm Club in the world had been deposited in a Jazz Archive established at Loughton in Essex and who was the leading figure? No one less than our good friend Digby Fairweather. Letters to the archivist elicited great interest in our request, but said that it could not sponsor performances. We asked him to contact Digby for us, but this has not been achieved so that we wrote to Jazz Newspapers asking them if they could locate Digby for us. So far this has also failed, so we must face the prospect that we cannot arrange for musicians to replicate our gramophone sessions of 1943-4 on the sixty second anniversary of our endeavours and our records will remain in the archives in the hope that perhaps in the future a scholar will write a thesis on our endeavours or even that musicians in the future will perform our programmes which present musicians cannot do.

Further personal jazz matters have arisen with the decision that Musician of the Year awards had been made and recognition of jazz pioneers recorded. Two of these oldies in particular caught my eye. The first was Don Rendell the pioneer saxophonist of modern jazz who is a member of our family. Don is a strict Jehovah’s Witness who has voluntarily affected his career by not being willing to play music on a Sunday and adheres to other practices of the Witnesses which most of us consider unreasonable. The result is that his family, recognise his unique talents by attending local events where Don is playing but disassociating themselves from his religious beliefs.

The second veteran is Cleo Laine, who with her partner John Dankworth have graced both jazz and anti-racism in a long and convoluted story which I shall now unfold. It partly concerns Derrick Anderson, the maverick black Chief Executive who was, to the eternal credit of Wolverhampton, the first black chief executive in Britain and, as far as I am concerned, it goes back to the millennial year of 2000 when I was secretary of an organisation known as Diversity 2000 which came within an ace of mobilising the whole town, both black and white to march , hand in hand, on the day of the Wolverhampton Carnival, and be the first area in Britain not only to reject racism, but to affirm our belief that diversity and equality of all races was the only way forward for the human race. Unfortunately the march had to be cancelled at the last minute because a black organisation thought we were trying to take over their programme, so we had to call off our march and join their much more limited one.

During the negotiations for Diversity 2000 I had minor differences with Derrick Anderson, who correctly said that I did not know what I was talking about when I said that I was organising a carnival and that he had been an organiser of the fabulous Notting Hill Carnival. From this point our differences widened, for I also was a Londoner and concerned that the originator of Notting Hill was Claudia Jones the black woman who had been forced to England, a country she had never known, by the agents of the McCarthy terror then raging in the USA. Claudia was subsequently critical of the British Communist Party as not having the same understanding of racism as the US movement, and this was chronicled by Marika Sherwood when Claudia died early, in her book Claudia Jones, a Life in Exile. I agree largely with Marika and the matter is of continuing controversy among the members of the Socialist History Society, the successors to the History Group of the CPB of which I am a critical member.

My disagreements with Derrick Anderson continued. I call him a maverick because he continues to support the closure of Bilston Community College long after the charges made concerning it of fraud, inefficiency and huge debts had been blown away. Examining the records of the Notting Hill Carnival I noticed that there was an Anderson among its directors, so I asked if this Anderson was a relation to him. He did not give me a direct answer, but said that he had never heard of Claudia Jones. While pursuing my interest in Claudia I had other differences with Derrick over race relations in Wolverhampton. The most important was what I call his Race Relations by Stealth. This is an unknown and apparently randomly selected group of organisations and schools which meet to discuss the race situation in Wolverhampton periodically, but instead of publishing their results these are deliberately kept secret. Organisations which might wish to join, such as the Inter-faith Group and Friends of Bilston Community College, do not belong to it and there will always be the whiff of corruption against a group which conducts race relations in secret.

Further complaints against Derrick can be made. He has recently been appointed a Special Representative of Tony Blair and in view of the fact that many people believe Bush and his ever-faithful friend Blair are themselves the terrorists illegally invading Afghanistan, Iraq etc; that every Labour councillor in Wolverhampton except one supports the continuing slaughter in Iraq; that Wolverhampton has been made a New Labour stronghold against all its traditions by importing the Blair aide McFadden to the SE Wolverhampton seat and that Dennis Turner has betrayed his Labour past by becoming a baron, and in view of the fact that native born Muslims now support their Muslim compatriots elsewhere by taking terrorist actions, all this means that there will be direct political conflict against New Labour politics in Wolverhampton.

8 July 2005

Paul Mackney
Gen.Sec. NATFHE
27 Brittania St. London WC 1 X 9JP

Dear Paul,

I fear that your improprieties in supporting the closure of Bilston Community College and denying access to myself and FRIENDS OF BCC of the union journal The Lecturer, are coming home to roost, especially as the industrial action returns to the car industry in the West Midlands.

Our recent discovery that educational unions, including NATFHE, are not orientated to Race Relations has put Sam Allen, who has been both president of NATFHE for the past year and is also the leading light of the NATFHE Black Members Group in the invidious position of either supporting yourself as the general secretary of the union, or following the interests of black members and criticising the lack of support for black members in the general policy of NATFHE.

But that is only the beginning of criticisms. With the closure of the Longbridge plant of Rover, NATFHE has become involved in spending large amounts of money in retraining redundant workers, but has failed to raise the fundamental question of the revival of British industrial power. This involves finding alternatives to the market forces which have destroyed our industrial power, and following France, Spain etc. which retain vibrant automobile industries and much else in the face of competition from the cheap labour of developing countries.

To broach such matters raises questions of Socialism instead of the capitalism which Blair embraces. As well as being the war criminal who, with Bush, invaded Iraq, his education policy of academies will give control of education to big business; the NHS will become subordinate to the private sector; and the dreams of ending poverty, despite the necessary fillip given by Geldof and others, will be shown to be a contradiction in terms while the eight capitalist powers of the G8 pretend to take upon themselves the task of ending poverty, but not at the expense of ending their own privileges.

Such reflections bring us back to Bilston Community College. Michael Edwardes was specially commissioned to remove militants from British Leyland and Derek Robinson was demonised as Red Robbo for opposing the constant closures of factories by Edwardes. When Robinson was eventually sacked, he was taken on at Bilston Community College to become the most celebrated teacher of Industrial Relations in the world. Reviled by reactionaries he was instantly recognised by left-wingers as the most famous trade unionist of his time. Robinson, as the elected leader of the joint shop stewards of the car industry and Tony Benn the Labour Minister of Trade in the Harold Wilson Labour government were chiefly responsible for attempting to implement the Ryder Report which would have given the government control of the car industry in 1975. Both Robinson and Benn are healthy and able to continue this struggle today which will be led by the revitalised trade unions of the present which includes the union of NATFHE and the AUT. But this will only be successful when the present lack of attention to the color-line (as the celebrated WEB du Bois called it) of all teaching unions is recognised and rectified.

Dr.G.Barnsby

BLOG - 7 JULY 2005

THE TERRORISTS HAVE STRUCK

London has been attacked and we are told that these evil people of Al Quaeda must be destroyed. Yet there is a certain relief that it was not worse and many people understand that it is retaliation as a consequence of Blair’s unswerving support for Bush’s war in Iraq. I first wrote about Al Quaeda a few days after the war in Iraq began. I said that since there are only a limited number of people prepared to blow themselves up in order to enter paradise, or to occupy Palestine because they think they are God’s chosen people it would depend on how Al Quaeda developed that would be important. It looks as though its power is now limited, although there is little ability among British people to understand that one man’s terrorist is another man’s patriot. There is even less understanding that Bush and Blair’s `war on terror,’ is a smokescreen for the reality that Bush and Blair are the terrorists and the ending of the war in Iraq is the precondition for the ending of terrorism in Britain.

In fact Al Quaeda thinking scuppered the war in Iraq because the intention of the US neo-cons was to wage rolling, continuous war on all the nations of the so-called `axis of evil’ invading particularly Iran and North Korea. These are now pipe dreams for they cannot now control Afghanistan and Iraq let alone take on further aggression.

`Fighting terrorism’ will also be used by Blair to impose his capitalist agenda of identity cards and further restrictions of civil liberties. It must be understood that all history is class history. When Blair removed Clause 4 from the Labour Party constitution he no doubt believed, like the closure of Bilston Community College by Blunkett and Blair (the first multicultural College in Britain), that they had heard the last of these matters, but Clause 4 is a Socialist Manifesto as imperishable as Marx’s Communist Manifesto (` to secure for all workers by hand and brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange…’) With regard to Bilston Community College it is now clear that improper and illegal methods ( especially the threats to prosecute myself as Spokesperson) were taken to close the College and the present position is that the attempts of the Learning & Skills Council and the college auditors to reach an agreed solution without informing Parliament what that agreement, is being contested, among others, by MPs, the Times Educational Supplement, and the powerful regional paper in Wolverhampton, the Express & Star.

Of course, the situation in Iraq is extremely complex. Most of those who support the US sponsored government are those who were disadvantaged under Saddam Hussein, including the Shias who form four fifths of the population but who have been dominated by Sunnis ever since 1932, also the Kurds. But there is widespread desire for peace and a democratic Iraqi government which is surprisingly supported by the Iraqi Communist Party and the powerful trade unions of Iraq. But the most important advance is the growing opposition in the USA to the war in Iraq and the realisation that this war is their latest Vietnam.

Then there is the meeting of the G8. Despite the herculean and well intentioned efforts of Bob Geldof to Help Make Poverty History it is inconceivable that the eight most important capitalist nations in the world will allow a solution which will diminish its own authority. Their power is already threatened by the new radicalism in South America of which we are not allowed to hear very much, but the likes of Hugo Chavez who refuses to follow the dictates of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to bankrupt their farmers by allowing subsidised western commodities to enter Venezuela; who insists that the country retains its oil and openly flies the flag of Socialism with its support for Fidel Castro. Even more important in the long run is the militancy of the indigenous populations of America raising the original crime of US imperialism in stealing their lands from them. And so the rope tightens around the necks of Bush and his ever faithful friend, Blair.

I will end with a local example of the interconnection of the foregoing events. I was the first to expose of the saintly figure of Wulfruna as the Mrs.Thatcher of her time taking gifts of the whole of Wolverhampton which she was not entitled to receive from the king and nobility who had no right to give it. This is the class history of England in a nutshell which historians avoid at their peril.

DR. GEORGE BARNSBY.