The Barnsby Blog

To: labourleadersoffice(at)wolverhampton.gov.uk; karen.cross(at)wolverhampton.gov.uk; derrick.anderson(at)wolverhampton.gov.uk

Some people are not talking to me and it includes the three persons named.

Roger Lawrence I asked to circulate my Nov-Dec 2005 BLOG to all Labour Councillors. Karen Cross I asked to circularise all those organisations involved in the setting up of a new Race Equality Agency in Wolverhampton. Derrick Anderson I asked to circulate the BLOG to all City employees concerned in their work with Race Relations. Roger talks to me on most matters. Karen has apparently decided to ignore me. Derrick has at least circulated all public organisations in the city to enquire to what extent their work includes Race Relations matters. But how many replied and what is being done about it I have no idea.
I have asked for the BLOG to be circularised because I am too old and too infirm to attend the meetings that make decisions on Race Relations and unless this is done all the old and infirm are excluded from influencing decisions which affect their lives and that is discrimination which the City authorities and others are legally bound to avoid.

Just as important is that failure to circularise the BLOG is political discrimination. Many object to the COMMUNISM in the title. But the BLOG is the only journal regularly produced in the city dealing with the history of Wolverhampton working people as well as the history of its Race Relations.

Consider some of the issues national and local dealt with. First is my defence of comprehensive education after failing my 11 plus in 1930. This leads on to the closure of Bilston Community College the first multicultural college in Britain. Then there is the criticism of Trevor Phillips, chair of the CRE for finding the war in Iraq ‘outside his remit’. Fortunately Trevor (who I much admire apart from his present lapse) and the CRE will be with us until 2009 by which time much will have changed. Living Socialism deals with the local matter of the disgraceful proposal to flog the Eye Infirmary for £2 million, my personal experiences of two cataract operations and the poor record of New Cross Hospital with regard to MRSA and other infections. Fortunately, the Eye Infirmary will also be with us until 2009 and by then common sense should have prevailed.

Lest we Forget deals with the sincere efforts to commemorate the First World War and the sacrifices made by us dwindling band of Second World War survivors. These raise serious questions of patriotism in Wolverhampton especially as the Mayor linked the just war of 1939-46 with the unjust war in Iraq. The issue goes much deeper. There can be no complete history of Wolverhampton until the history of the anti-semitic Poles of the Anders army, and the Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians who settled in Wolverhampton after the war and lived a normal life working at Goodyears and other factories in Wolverhampton. Yet among these were some of the vilest war criminals and concentration camp guards to escape justice. Hundreds of such people may have settled in Wolverhampton. Our record is particularly bad, only one of these creatures being prosecuted. There is now no point in finding and prosecuting such criminals who are now all in their eighties. What we need is something like the Truth and Reconciliation Committees set up in South Africa where people confess to their crimes in return for exoneration. There may be a number of such war criminals in Wolverhampton who do not want to take their atrocities to the grave.

My BLOG deals with these matters and many more. Present circulation has reached 100 which I can afford through the Free Communist Bookshop. But my time and money would be better spent if organisations in the City supported me.