The Barnsby Blog

THIS IS AN OFFERING TO THE BROAD LEFT OF WOLVERHAMPTON AND BEYOND.
DEDICATED TO THE PRINCPLE THAT TONY BLAIR, WAR CRIMINAL, SERIAL KILLER BARBARIAN AND TRAITOR SHOULD BE ARRESTED AT ONCE AND SHARE AN EXERCISE YARD WITH SADDAM HUSSAIN

Hey there, Tony Blair
You kill Iraqi children and you Don’t Care

EDWARD UPWARD

We featured the 102 year old Edward Upward as our special guest in our last BLOG. This contemporary of Isherwood, (after whom he named his son Christopher), and Auden is one of the famed literary names of the 1930s . Let us recap on the connection of Edward Upward with Wolverhampton. His son, Christopher was a lecturer at W’ton Polytechnic in the years 1965-70. His wife, Janet was a leading activist in Wolverhampton founding Consumer Groups livening up the Wulfrun Centre by producing lists of prices of foods on blackboards for housewives to compare with what they were paying. But the activity she was most proud of, she tells me, was a Peace and Freedom in Vietnam campaign which held large public meetings in Wolverhampton and sent food and medical supplies to Vietnam.

So that’s enough of credentials. Let’s get on to present activities. Edward is now in a home near his daughter in Yorkshire. When he moved from the Isle of Wight in 2004 his library had to be disposed of. This he has done to a posh bookseller, Maggs Bros of 50, Berkeley Square, London W1J 5BA who have produced a splendid catalogue No.1386. Major purchases have already been made by the Huntingdon Library in California, the home of the Isherwood collection (Isherwood was Upward’s best friend they having been at school and university together). Corpus Christi, Edward’s Cambridge College, have bought Upward’s own collection of his published works. Upward’s diaries are already lodged with the British Library. Edward has been honoured this year with the Benson medal of the Royal Society of Literature for a Lifetime’s Literary Achievement.

This sale has raised the question of whether the affluent in the labour movement should be alerted and perhaps purchase some of the items to prevent them being sold abroad. So interested parties such as Kevin Morgan and depositories such as Manchester University where the CPBG archives are held will be sending for catalogues and we shall see what happens. A final note is that quantities of Edwards’s documents remain with his daughter-in-law, Janet, and Edward is not dead yet!

THE TORY LEADERSHIP

We have been sending emails to David Cameron since the leadership race began warning him that the only way he could succeed was to oppose the war in Iraq. He now appears to have done just that by calling himself a Liberal Conservative and accepting the Lib Dem programme of opposition to the war . An email has been sent congratulating him and admitting that he now has a real chance of winning the next general election since Blair’s inbuilt Americanism makes him impervious to understanding that he is the war criminal, not those he accuses of terrorism.

The recent Dunfermline bye-election, however, suggests that neither Blair nor the Tories have much of a future to look forward to. Because general elections have in the past shown a different pattern from protest bye-elections does not mean that this will always be so. Despite an 18,000 plus majority for Tony Blair, at the rate present support is haemorrhaging he might not be re-elected. As for Gordon Brown with a similar majority unless he very quickly disassociates himself from Blair’s illegal war in Iraq, he could suffer the same fate.

I have now had a message from David Cameron saying that he will reply to my latest email to him, even though it might take some time for this to happen. Gordon Brown should take a leaf out of his book and communicate with me personally.

FREE SPEECH

Violence arising from cartoons and plays recently lays a new emphasise on free speech. Trying to approach it from a Marxist point of view it is clear that there can be no absolute free speech. The clearest example of when free speech might be curbed is the question of war. But only for a just war of self defence, not an illegal war such as Blair now wages in Iraq. An example is Cuba, occupied by American imperialist forces since the end of Spanish occupation in 1898. To expect it to allow freedom to those Cubans who wish to destroy it is not an option. In Britain we can draw a line that freedom should be allowed to all those who respect freedom for others. This would seem to exclude the BNP and other fascist organisations locally and nationally.

THE DUTY OF JOURNALISTS TO PURSUE THE TRUTH

The problem of free speech for journalists has arisen for this BLOG by the fact that four of the most competent and respected newscasters of our time, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Jon Snow and Kirsty Wark have all interviewed Tony Blair or other New Labour functionaries and all have failed to raise the question of the illegal war in Iraq. Moreover they have also failed to answer these charges thus joining those undemocratic elements who for many years have avoided criticism by ignoring it. At the fourth attempt we have now contacted about a dozen peace organisation in the USA to enlist their support in the common struggle for journalistic integrity. This has been raised recently by the action of the late Ed.Murrow the doyen of US journalists in challenging McCarthy the initiator of the witch hunt against Communists and thus protecting not only the freedom of Communists but the freedom of all Americans.

THE LONDON CAGE

In the racist world of Tony Blair where we are all liable to be arrested for calling him a racist, the London Cage reminds us of the atrocities sanctioned by the highest military sources and committed by British servicemen. Once the just war to end fascism ended in 1946, unjust wars inevitably ensued beginning with ships from Burma taking French and Dutch imperialists back to ‘their own’ colonies which had by then been liberated by their own peoples. This I personally witnessed. British troops were then committing atrocities which were virtually indistinguishable from those of the Nazis. Those committed by British soldiers in Malaya are well known, an example of British troops holding aloft the severed heads of Malayan partisans were printed in our BLOG of August 2005. But there were other examples of torture of Kikuyus in Kenya and creation of networks of concentration camps to contain them. By this time British imperial notions that coloured people were inferior to white people was once again firmly established, so that the subsequent atrocities committed in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Africa by now firmly led by the USA went almost unremarked. It was the USA that committed the greatest atrocity of all by unleashing the A-bomb without either consulting other nations or considering alternative methods of demonstrating its killing powers.

The London Cage is an early example of a British torture centre established in the heart of the fashionable world of Kensington Palace Gardens . The intention was that to the Cage would come Nazi war criminals to be interrogated. Unfortunately the Cage also held numbers of innocent people, including Russian and Jewish people who were the victims not the perpetrators of such crimes.

The London Cage was a torture centre located at Numbers 6, 7 and 8 Kensington Palace Gardens. Ian Cobain, a reporter of the Guardian newspaper, who reported the matter in two issue of the paper 12 November and December 17 2005 wrote as follows:

The camp commander was Lt.-Col Alexander Scotland who had served in the German army in the early years of the twentieth century. The Cage was run by MI19 the section of the War Office responsible for prising information out of German war prisoners, latterly those convicted of crimes against British servicemen. One such war criminal stated that, unable to make the required confession he was stripped, given only a pair of pyjama trousers, deprived of sleep for four days and nights, starved and kicked. In all 3,573 men passed through the Cage. It had space for 60 prisoners at a time with five interrogation rooms. A court in Hamburg where one of these war criminals was eventually tried heard that many defendents at the Cage had been starved and systematically beaten, confined in the cold water shower and threatened with electrical devices.

As the Cage wound down an interrogation camp was opened at Rotenburg, near Bremen where even worse atrocities were committed. A major in the royal artillery reported ‘one of the most disgusting sights of my life.’ Curled up on a bed in hospital was a cadaverous shadow of a human being. ‘The man literally had no flesh on him, his state of emaciation was incredible.’ A few beds away was another emaciated man who had lost four toes from frostbite. Yet another had died of malnourishment within 24 hours of being admitted. Nor were these the only interrogation centres. The Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Services ran torture centres throughout the world. We hope we will be able to follow up this disgraceful matter in subsequent BLOGS.

GOINGS ON ON THE WEB AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE EXPRESS AND STAR

When the Express and Star decided it would have nothing to do with George Barnsby or the Friends of Bilston Community College it was a grievous blow to us until we were able to get ourselves on the Web and its concomitant Email. We then challenged the paper saying that we would soon have as many hits on on our website as they sold newspapers. I don’t think we have yet got that far but the web has certainly changed our fortunes. Many people now use our site. A couple of examples. Marika Sherwood that incorruptible originator of the Black and Asian Studies Association contacted me wanting information on Naranjan Singh Noor’s poetry and a number of people who had known and admired him have added to our understanding of this outstanding Indian poet who also was one of those who created Bilston Community College and turned it into the first multicultural college in Britain. Second example, a number of London Afro-Caribbeans who played a leading part in the organisation of the early Notting Hill carnival migrated to the West Midlands at about the same time as I and Derrick Anderson, the first black chief executive in Britain, came to Wolverhampton. They then played important roles in developing Wolverhampton Race Equality Council.

Relations with the Express and Star were often fraught until the paper recognised that the decision to invade Iraq had been taken earlier than the actual invasion of 2003 because there was only a certain number of months in which such an invasion could be carried out, but long before that a mountain of military supplies would need to be assembled. So the war had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or anything else; the neocons controlling US policy were committed to a rolling conquest of all the countries of the so-called Axis of Evil. Nor was there any need for Tony Blair to plead a special relationship with the US and thus involve Britain, because the neo-cons Simple Simon strategy was that since the US was more powerful than every other nation put together it would not brook the delay and uncertainty of consulting the United Nations but would invade, bring the blessing of US democracy to unwilling people who would, in the fullness of time come to thank the US for what they had done.

The editor of the Express and Star was one of the first to understand what was happening and asked if anyone was foolish enough to believe that the millions of tons of arms and equipment taken up the hill would then be taken down again to hoots of derision from other nations? No, the arms would be used. And thus it was. But the Express and Star then made the mistake that many others were to make at the time and swing the resources of the paper behind support for a war already in progress and to support our ‘gallant soldiers’. Fortunately, unlike others who supported the war, the Express and Star very quickly learned that it was an illegal and unwinnable war and ever since the paper has been unflinchingly anti-war.

The plans of the neo-cons were upset at the outset by the Al Quida inspired, but not Al Quida controlled resistance to the war which has placed both Bush and Blair in the impossible position they are in today where the more people they slaughter the more resistance grows.

The Express and Star has now reverted to its democratic traditions (it was started by the great US steel maker and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie) and is printing my letters, which is important because this daily paper is an indispensable source of local news for which there is no substitute.

THE WALSALL ANARCHIST BOMB PLOT AND THE GORGEOUS GARMAN GIRLS

It may be recalled that matters were left as follows. Police agents provocateur had been employed by William Melville of Scotland Yard to entrap Walsall anarchists who had been joined by Italian and French anarchists seeking work in Walsall, to make a shell case. It was admitted that the intention was to house a bomb but it was intended to be used not in Britain, but in Russia. The savage sentences of 15 years and 10 years imprisonment meant that the so-called plot was taken up by the British labour movement believing that police spies were frequently infiltrated into the Labour movement. The connection between spies being used in the 1890s and again today is obvious. This left only the location of the iron casing which was housed in a local police museum, but disappeared to be discovered. Joe Davis our ‘Bobby with a Hobby’ of tractors and fair organs is investigating where the bomb case is now.

The scandalous Garman girls were the daughters of the Wednesbury medical officer of health. They were not directly connected with the Bomb Plot but would have been aware of its implications through their brother Douglas Garman who was the education officer of the Communist Party in London who I knew. Kathleen , one of the Garman sisters was for many years the mistress of the American sculptor Jacob Epstein, married him when his wife died and inherited his fabulous art collection which she donated to the art gallery in Walsall. Kathleen lived for some years at 272 Kings Road, Chelsea and I have described in my autobiography how on Sundays I visited a ballroom dancing school whose architecture ‘was a mixture of classical and never before seen architecture’ and I wondered whether this was the address where Kathleen lived. My two sons volunteered to settle this matter by walking the whole length of Kings Road and reporting to me. They found that No 272 no longer existed and was now a block of offices. But they said their time had not been wasted as they now better understood how Kings Road could have been the centre of swinging London in the 1960s!

WORKING CLASS HISTORY

The George Barnsby Working Class Library was modelled on the Working Class Movement Library set up by Eddie and Ruth Frow in Manchester. It was, and remains, my hope that a chain of such libraries would be set up, incorruptible, but not without differences of emphasis, because they depended on funds raised mainly from the working class movement and not government, private or business sources.

Now the original WCML is having problems because Salford Council can no longer afford to finance it on the same scale and the library has now asserted its independence and will raise most of its finances from the labour movement. There is little danger of working class studies disappearing since a number of specialist sources have since arisen which include Warwick University specialist unit for working class studies, Chartist Studies at Staffordshire University, and the Communist Party archive at Manchester University, to name only a few. The problem with my Working Class Library is that its continuance was originally assured by the books and papers passing to Bilston Community College and this may still occur since the closure of the college has been fiercely contested as illegal. Meanwhile my papers have been welcomed by successive archivists in Wolverhampton as being one of the few Communist archives in the country, and successive heart attacks, strokes and other intimations of mortality have now led me to deposit most of my papers there, so that sources for the study of working class history of the Black Country is assured.

Meanwhile research has been urged by the Socialist History Society. This is the society nearest to my heart. It is the direct successor of the CPGB History Group of which I was a founder member in 1946 and, as the saying goes, like my membership of the CP, I didn’t leave it, it left me. The SHS has invited discussions on socialist related issues from a Marxist standpoint. I have responded to this by sending my recent Black Country studies to them, emphasising the importance of local studies in offsetting the insularity of much history. This seems to have been exemplified by my watching with one of my sons the TV programme on ‘Children of Communists’ and his exclamation, ‘Why was I not consulted, I am also the son of a Communist!’

MORE HISTORY. WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE?

It is not only celebrities who are searching for their ancestors. My elder son Robert has researched the Barnsbys and the families with which it is connected. His findings on the Barnsbys can be summarised thus. The first Barnsby traced was a George Barnsby accused of receiving stolen goods. He appeared either before the famous magistrate, the blind social reformer Sir John Fielding, or his equally famous half-brother and novelist Henry Fielding at the also famous Old Bailey in London in 1773. Two men accused of stealing the goods were found guilty, but whether Barnsby was found guilty of receiving them we are not told.

The great tragedy of the family was in 1914 when two brothers of my mother were killed within days of each other in October 1914 within two months of enlisting when they could have scarcely have completed their training.

My father was born in a Workhouse. He enlisted in the army before the Great War because of poverty and unemployment and had almost completed his eight years with the colours and five years on the reserve when he was called- up, served through the four years of the war, was demobbed in 1919 only to die in 1922 from the effects of being gassed. My mother brought two children up, named after her two brothers George and Sidney, and was a mainstay of a family where the violence of the father led the sons to leave home as soon as possible and my mother to suffer for supporting her brothers.

Because of the childlessness of my brother and my two sons this branch of the Barnsbys will come to an end. I would hope that it could be said, apart from the odd black sheep, that it was a credit to the British working class from whom all its members came.

A.S.MAKARENKO – THE ROAD TO LIFE, AN EPIC OF EDUCATION

The betrayal by Tony Blair of the principles of Comprehensive Education brings to mind the great epic of comprehensive education which only a few decades ago was known to every educationist in Britain and was required reading in progressive Teacher Training Colleges.
I am reminded of the Road to Life by Lindsay Hutchinson, a rather remarkable bookseller in Birmingham.

His bookshop BOOKBANE at 93 Nineveh Rd. Handsworth only partly pays for itself and the remainder is funded by his artisan activities of being an electrician working mainly in the Bull Ring. Lindsay is a sectarian specialising in the works of Enva Hoxha the Albanian Stalinist. Indeed, he is now the sole agent for the sale of Hoxha books in the world and is likely to become sole agent for volumes 2 and 3, of Karl Marx’ Capital not to mention the three books of Vol 4 called Theories of Surplus Value.This is not the end of Lindsay’s activities. He is also one of the leaders of the Soho Neighbourhood Forum and produces their newsletter which excoriates those who wish to sell public land to privateers, city councillors involved in RSB activities or selling school playgrounds for private housing etc. He also is involved in youth clubs and has recently written on the recent Hansdworth Riots pointing out that there were four riots. In other words, he is as opposed to bureacratic bunglings as was Makarenko.

Anton Semyonovich Marenko was born in 1888 in the Ukraine, the son of a railwayman. The family was united by ties of deep affection. Anton learnt to read at the age of five. At 12 he was taken to the local secondary school. The school was dominated by shopkeepers and upper rank working class employees. Such schools were not meant for the likes of us, his father told him, but you just show them. He did. In 1914 he attended the Poltava Pedagogical Institute to qualify as a secondary school teacher and graduated with a gold medal. In September 1917 he was appointed head of a secondary school. The Bolshevik Revolution occurred in 1917 and by then Makarenko had already started the education changes with the Gorky Commune which was to make him world renowned.

Marenko’s theories were tested in the years of the first revolution of 1905 which had been preceeded by the emancipation of the serfs. This had thrown millions of people adrift as peasants left the land for employment in the cities. The 1914 war, revolution, and then the wars of intervention against the Soviet Union led to further millions of refugees and orphaned children who had to be cared for and educated.

Makarenko’s great innovations were the Labour Colony which children joined voluntarily and became the substitue for a family they had never known and an education system rooted in the principle that children’s characters are formed by their circumstances, a principle practised with such outstanding success by Robert Owen at New Lanark. In the years 1920 to 1928 Makarenko developed his ideas in the Gorky Colony named after the great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky. He rejected theories of ‘free education’ and intelligence tests or anything else which suggested that development was pre-ordained. Not only did he reject reports on children to be admitted to the colony, but he refused to read them maintaining that his only interest in a child was its future, not its past. The Labour Colony became the answer to Reformatory schools for juvenile delinquents. Makarenko insisted that he had not invented a system but had adapted Marxist-Leninist principles to education and delinquency. Makarenko’s methods were adopted throughout the Soviet Union whose education became the most advanced in the world. Variants of the Makarenko system were used in all other socialist countries. For us in Britain it became the basis of the policy of the Education Advisory Committee to the EC of the CPGB. Max Morris is its oldest living exponent.

BOOKS

The issue of the purchase of books of regional interest and also key texts of national importance remains a difficult one. The emergence of Google etc can be illustrated by the last item where inputting A.S.Mak arenkno produces a truly comprehensive statement of his principles. Most of my current output now goes straight on to the web, and it is to be hoped that all of it will eventually. But at present, only my autobiography and writings on race relations are available on site. My pamphlet on the General Strike will be the next for the web. The question has already been raised locally and next year is the 80th anniversary of this most important landmark in the history of the labour movement. My writings on Race Relations are not priced and it will be better to distribute them without charge through the Free Communist Bookshop as I then have no need to treat with the Inland Revenue which at any time might prove a problem.

A most important event is the annual Bibliography of British Labour Publications in the Labour History Review. This year I have abstracted books, articles and theses on the West Midlands and passed a list of them to Kal Dale, the multicultural librarian of Wolverhampton who through the Special Needs Department will be able to let me see each item . But is this the best way of ensuring that relevant Labour Studies material is available in Wolverhampton? Perhaps the University library might undertake this task.

Notification of material through the Web is increasingly important. Nasir Khan first contacted us with regard to the death of Mr.Noor with whom he was a fellow student at the Teachers’ College in Wolverhampton in 1968-9. Mr.Khan now lives in Norway but his doctoral thesis on the ‘Development of the Concept and Theory of Alienation in Marx’s Writings’ that was published in 1995 and his latest book ‘Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms ; A Historical Survey’ are obviously important.

With regard to books the net is also important. It brought Peter Childs of Dudley to my door with the gift of a classic of railway trade unionism ‘Engines and Men’ by J.R.Raynes published in 1921. He had been pointed in my direction by Peter Carter, the legendary, building trades unionist, whose activities included loading his car boot with copies of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and selling them to building workers, as well being the leader of the Builders’ Strike in the late 1970s.

The most important of recent books has been Messages to the World, The statements of Osama Bin Laden ed. By Bruce Lawrence, published by Verso. How many entrails will Tony Blair demand from Verso for daring to allow us the elementary right to read for ourselves the words of perhaps the greatest statesman in the world today. The declaration of Jihad (Holy War) in 1996 was directed at both Saudi Arabia (‘the cornerstone of the Islamic world’) and the USA which had occupied or controlled most of the Islamic world. The same theme continues through the western invasion off Afghanistan in 2001-2, and the war in Iraq 2003-4. The tone is absolutely uncompromising, an eye for an eye, support for nuclear weapons for Pakistan, the anti-Semitism of hostility to the Jews in Palestine. The case that Ben Laden is a terrorist would be unanswerable were it not for the fact that Bush is a greater terrorist. Ben Laden does not take responsibility for 9/11. His constant appeal is to the UMMAA, the Islamic Global Community which self-activates itself and thus accounts for the immense power of the movement today.

The other extraordinary books I have read could not be more different. They are the Flashman series. Expelled from Rugby School as a drunken bully, notorious womaniser, and coward, he finds himself in Afghanistan at the time of the massacre of a British army during the first Afghan war of 1842 as it retreated from Kabul to India. The books could not be more entertaining or salacious, but to discover that most of these writings by George MacDonald Fraser are historically accurate is a massive plus.
Julian Farrance of the National Army Museum recommends the fiction of Flashman as superior to the writings of historians, a bit hard on us historians, but he has a point.

The last book I offer counteracts the voluntary myopia of Blair and his chums. It has everything that the Blairites have repudiated. It is Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s book , A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

Our international contacts continue to grow. Nasir Khan tells me that one of his close friends was Dada Amier Haider Khan (1902-1988) pioneer figure in the struggle for Indian independence and a founder member of the CPI. His memoirs Chains to Lose: Life and Struggles of a Revolutionary was published in 1989.

Two Canadians Elizabeth Caskey and Clay Perry are old established comrades. He from the Lumberjacks Union protectors of Canada’s indigenous, primitive communist population. They send comments on their recent federal elections. ‘The Conservatives won, but it’s a minority government. The New Democratic Party increased their seats by 10 to 29 which isn’t quite enough to hold the balance of power. The good news is that the left and centre-left (the Liberals retained 103 seats) will be able to prevent the Conservatives from initiating a right wing social agenda. So that if the bad guys had to win this is the best possible outcome.’

Another unique contribution comes from a German friend who wishes to remain anonymous and concerns life in pre-war Hitler Germany. He writes, ‘After Hitler seized power all other parties, clubs etc. were forbidden. To satisfy the youth and to distract them from oppositional views the following organisations were founded. Jungvolk for boys 10 to 14; BDM (Bund Deutcher Maedchen) for girls from 10 to 18 and Hitler Jugend for boys 14 to 18. This seemed to be attractive because kids of this age like meeting in groups and having fun. So my mother allowed me to enter the Jungfolk when I was ten. One day a big rally was organised by a leading member of the HJ. We had to march through a big forest and finally form a long line at the edge of the wood. The leader stood at the end of the line to make sure all of us were standing in a correct straight line. But I had to stand a little in front because behind me was the root of a big tree. Such unacceptable behaviour caused the leader to become angry. He came running at me and gave me such a heavy box on my face that my head turned round. My head was aching and I saw only stars. I fell to the ground , but he went away without helping me. One of my school friends helped me get up and said, ‘Come Rudi, let’s desert.’ So we hid in the wood and went home. This caused me to leave the Jungvolk. Nobody asked me or my mother. I was glad not to have been punished.’ My friend goes on to say that he will write more about his experiences in pre-war Hitler Germany. We very much look forward to what he writes.

BACK TO WOLVERHAMPTON

Much requires attention in Wolverhampton. We have contacted all Secondary Schools in the city requesting that with their fancy names and possibilities to select their pupils they are not discriminating against blacks and the poor. At present there is a deafening silence and I can sympathise with Heads who have enough on their plates without being badgered by me. But problems of truancy, and possibility of permanent exclusion of pupils need to be investigated.

Further matters to be raised include our apparent lack of concern for our Muslim fellow citizens. I suggest that one way of combating Islamophobia would be to revive the project of the millennium year 2000 when it was proposed that black and white march together to express our belief in a multicultural society. This year the Wolverhampton Show is in July 2006 and this would be appropriate for such a united demonstration.

Another belief is that there can never be a complete history of Wolverhampton until it includes the history of the tens of thousands of Poles, Ukrainians and other East European immigrants who came to Wolverhampton after the war. Unfortunately among them were about 200 of the vilest of war criminals. Not one of these was investigated and tried. This is a permanent blot on our good name. My proposal is that rather than prosecute men who are now in their 80s and 90s we institute a Peace and Reconciliation Commission similar to that set up in South Africa so that those who do not want to take their dread secrets to the grave can confess. This has led to support in the city and suggestions that the Bishop of Wolverhampton might lead it. We have now written to Lord Jenner responsible for these matter in Parliament, to see if there might be support for such a national Commission.

Finally there is news of Bilston Community College, the first multicultural in Britain closed in 1999 by the Further Education Funding Council prompted by New Labour bigots, Blunkett, and Blair. Request for information under the Freedom of Information Act have not yet been received, but a public statement will be made shortly condemning the closure of the College and the racism of the Learning and Skills Council.

A FINAL POLITICAL STATEMENT

The present political situation could not be more serious. Blair dominates every corner of our lives. He is a man of straw, bereft of all Socialist principles and a traitor to our Labour movement. Britain’s future lies with the progressive world of South America. In Cuba while the US plans yet another invasion, the Cuban medical revolution sends 2,260 personnel to Pakistan, with which it has no diplomatic relations, and is the largest international mission working in Pakistan today. Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, spent the day following his election visiting Castro and was offered free eye operations for 50,000 Bolivians as well as scholarships for 5,000 Bolivians to study medicine. More than 50% of Cuban doctors are female. This humanitarian aspect of the revolution supplements the politics of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and other progressive governments now defying the policies of US hegemony.

It defies belief that those who support Blair should not be aware of the background of their follies. The ideas of the American Century that the US stronger than all other powers put together should wage rolling war against all those of the so-called Axis of Evil, and that these countries would eventually come to understand that what the Neo-Cons did was for their own good. That the war against Iraq in 2003 not only had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, but had been deliberately planned by Bush and the US military to coincide with the only months when military attack was feasible. That conquest of Iraq was prevented by the bravery of its citizens in al Q’uida type resistance, but not Osama bin Ladan arranged bravery. That far from repenting of its crimes, the US now plans yet another series of rolling continuous wars this time against ‘global Islamist extremism’ which is the product of US imperialist aggressions and would almost entirely cease with the withdrawal of American troops. Blairite support for such iniquities risks both the destruction of our country and the loss of civil liberties fought for by the working class of Britain over many centuries. Blair must be arrested for the war criminal, serial killer and traitor that he is.

SPREADING THE BLOG

About 100 copies of the BLOG regularly appear. It costs about 75p to produce a copy plus a second class stamp to send it. It would be well within the resources of the Free Communist Bookshop (a euphemism for the spare income of GB after living expenses from his teachers’ pension are deducted) to produce several hundreds. Production is not the problem, distribution is. Now that it appears on the net an increasing number of people can read it or download it. It appears in the Labour Councillors’ room in the Civic Centre and that is all we require. If we can persuade Karen Cross and those associated with the New Race Agency in Wolverhampton that they have a duty to distribute the BLOG to all their members we can begin to think of a distribution of 300 and rapid advances thereafter.

BLOGGER
THIS RECORDS ALL THE POLITICAL, SOCIAL
AND EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES CURRENTLY
ENGAGED IN BY GEORGE BARNSBY, AGED 87
LIFETIME ANTI-RACIST AND ANTI-FASCIST

SPRING 2006
141 Henwood Rd.
Wolverhampton,
West Midlands WV6 8PJ
Email: barnsby@blueyonder.co.uk
Web: www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk

Stan Newens, Eddie Dare

Herewith my Open Letter to Trevor Phillips which deals with current anti-racist ideas and the importance of Bilston Community College. Also my advice to aspiring candidates to the leadership of the Conservative Party, which they won’t heed but is a possible scenario for the transition from Capitalism to Communism!
Best wishes

Stan Newens

I write on a number of issues. First your 1997 introduction to Pathfinders. It really is a remarkable publication with pictorial representation of practically every progressive connected with the Co-operative movement (plus some in the trade union movement). It should certainly be better known and I will mention it in my next BLOG.

I have had recent correspondence with Sir Jack Hayward on the possibility of his transferring his ownership of Wolves to ownership by its fans. It was Ken Purchase another Co-op MP , however who enlightened me as to how much the co-operative movement had done on this matter with Tony Bank’s pamphlet on New Mutualism and the Co-op’s Mutuo Back Home. Hayward is rather a special sort of millionaire who I’m hoping to interest in the resurgence of British industry as well as Wolves. He is a fanatical British patriot. We shall see what emerges.

Lastly, I am still very much involved with the question of Claudia Jones, her achievements (I see that there is now to be an annual Claudia Jones lecture) and her alleged criticism of the British Party.
Whilst writing this letter, something remarkable has occurred. I have had a phone call from Trevor Carter. He defends almost everything Claudia did and says that although there were differences of opinion Claudia remained a member of the CPGB. After a long talk in which he gave me invaluable information I mentioned that I was sympathetic to some of the criticisms of the party made by Marika Sherwood and Trevor rather abruptly ended the conversation, despite the fact that it was Marika who gave me Trevor’s address and phone number and Marika is, of course, the mainspring of the Black & Asian Studies Association etc. It seems that I must go back to Marika’s book on Claudia and see what she says. Sorry to end my letter like this, but I must try to make my peace with

23 Oct 05

Eddie Dare
Socialist History Society
21 Ibbetson Path
Loughton,
Essex IG10 2AS

Dear Ed,

I write in reply to your offer in the miniscule SHS Newsletter Jan 06 in which you invite readers to discuss socialist related issues from a Marxist standpoint.

I begin with the marvellous Xmas present of our sister society The Working Class Movement Library of a DVD Past, Present and Future of the WCML www.wcml.org.uk. I have been an admirer of Eddie and Ruth Frow from when I was demobbed in 1946 and except for the period when the CPGB was split with Eurocommunism in the 1980s and the Morning Star passed under the control of those who eventually formed the CPB this friendship has continued. Pursuing this slightly polemical note, it might be said that the CPB learned rather later than the CPGB that something had to be done, but whether either faction did the right thing is still something that only the future will reveal. My point is, however, that there has been no permanent breach among those of us attempting to be Marxists, so that I am as friendly today with John Foster as I was in the days when he wrote Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974) and I wrote The Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie in the Black Country two years earlier. As a CP History Group pamphlet.

The WCML faces problems as its funding by Salford Council is reduced and it reverts to an independent , mainly working class movement funded operation. My GB Working Class Library and was founded in the 1990s and I hoped, and still hope, that libraries similar to the WCML would be formed in most town and cities. Unfortunately, this not so far happened. My independence from outside funding has meant that it can operate politically as anti-Blair and anti-Bush and it has also spawned the Free Communist Bookshop which produces free such items as The Great Indian Famine 1943-44 which the Socialist History Society distributed, and free copies of condensed radical histories of Black Country Towns such as Radical Wolverhampton, Radical Walsall, Radical Dudley etc.

Current historical matters dealt with by Library have included the so-called Walsall Anarchist Bomb Plot. This occurred in the 1890s when French, and Italian Anarchists came to Walsall seeking work and an iron casting (which ended up in a local police museum and which we are now trying to trace with the help of our local friendly bobby, Joe Davies) was produced and a local anarchist confessed was a bomb casting but was meant to be exploded not in Britain, but in Russia. A subsequent trial led to the vicious sentences of 10 years for the foreign anarchists and 5 years for the local ones. However, the sentence was always contested by the labour movement who believed that the London police had set-up an informer to authorise the bomb making. The matter therefore had modern connections of the use of police spies by the Blair government in the Labour movement. Two current developments have been discovering the actual date when Auguste Coulon was enrolled on the police books and the amounts paid to him over many years from Andrew Cook’s book M – MI5’s First Spymaster which is a biography of William Melville who became the most important copper in Britain after his first ‘success’ with the bomb plot in Walsall.

The second important matter concerning Walsall has been the lives of the Garman family, the remarkable children of the Medical Officer of Health for Wednesbury told by Cressida Connolly (daughter of Cyril Connolly) in her very fine book The Rare and the Beautiful. The daughters led scandalous lives involving the radical, political and artistic circles of Europe between the two World Wars. Kathleen was the mistress of Jacob Epstein the American sculptor and she eventually became his wife. When he died she became heir to one of the most valuable art collections in the world including works by Picasso, Constable, Modigliani, van Gogh etc. for which a special and controversial multimillion Art Gallery in Walsall was built. It was my impression that artistic circles in London opposed the settlement of such a valuable collection in a provincial town, and although I have no proof of this my impression is so strong that I am prepared to hold this opinion. One of the Garman sons, Douglas, who I knew, became a Communist and Education Secretary of the Party. After the war he left the Party to became engaged in the political controversies of the 1950s.

A second matter is more trivial and personal . I describe in my Subversive – One Third of the Autobiography of a Communist how in the 1930s I became a sort of secretary to one of the rising stars of the ballroom dancing world, Cliff Hall, in return for his giving me free dance lessons. Also how Winnie Barraclough, who lived upstairs in our house in Battersea also dance fan used to come into our bedroom on a Sunday morning with a cup of tea for me and we would walk (the buses not running on Sundays) to King’s Road, Chelsea to a dance studio to which I had a key , dance on an empty floor for two hours and then walk the three miles or so home. Ah, the energy of youth, I sighed! Cliff Hall worked at two studios in the King’s Road, one Farr’s School of Dancing on the left hand side and another on the right hand side approached from the Sloan Square end. This second dance studio lay back from an arch and the whole complex I described as architecure never before seen with a dash of classical. I revisited the building in the 1950s. The story now becomes entwined with the Garman sisters, for Kathleen lived at number 272 King’s Road. I therefore wondered whether this ornate building was 272. This matter was left until last year when my elder son Robert, who is a Chelea fan, and his brother William undertook to solve the mystery for me by walking the length of King’s Road. They reported that 272 no longer exists its place taken by an office complex, so that is that. But their journey was not wasted, both of them stating that they now understood better the key role that King’s Road played in the events of the swinging sixties.

Further matters have been explored resulting from my decision to become a BLOGGER, made possible by my two IT expert web masters. Two of the most important have been the continuing efforts to reopen Bilston Community College, the first multicultural and open access College in Britain with its 30% ethnic minority staff which was closed by David Blunkett (‘I never apologise for mistakes’) and Tony Blair but which refuses to lie down. Here the current situations is that the racist Learning and Skills Council aiding and abetting the Further Education Funding Council decision to sue the auditors of the College to recover their alleged losses as a result of sanctioning ‘illegal’ programmes of work. The auditors and the LSC came to a cosy agreement out of court which they had no intention of sharing with the general public until intervention by MPs demanded its disclosure. Here the matter rests.

The other important development of the BLOG has been my efforts to have it distributed by the local authority on the double grounds that if this is not done it is discrimination against old and infirm people who cannot attend meetings where vital decisions are taken, and also that my BLOG is the only regular publication in the City dealing with race relations and equal opportunities. I can this week report a success with the leader of the Labour Council posting my publications on the notice board of the Labour Councillors room. More than that I do not ask for.

Locally also has been an analysis of mine showing that in Wolverhampton, as in the rest of the country, Black people begin at Stage 1 to be equal with Whites, but their position deteriorates at successive Stages to GCSEs and A Levels. Also that Secondary Schools despite their fancy titles of Academies, Specialist Schools for Arts, Sport etc. fail to show that they admit the local poor and ethnic minorities to their schools.

Of other matters local and national dealt with in the BLOG I make mention of only two, referring interested readers to the web site www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk

The first is my relations with the powerful local paper the Express and Star. One of the reasons I stayed in Wolverhampton was the fact that this newspaper would print letters by Communists, which the London papers never would. The other reason was that I learned that the pupils that I taught sat beneath the 10 yard seam of coal, the thickest in Britain, which gave the Black Country its name and so I became a local historian. I also became a regular contribution to the letters column of the local paper. This was far from being only democracy for the paper, as what I wrote was replied to by teeth gnashing reactionaries telling me to go back to Russia and thus sold many copies of the paper. Events proceeded thus until the paper suddenly operated a boycott on the mention of George Barnsby or Friends of Bilston College. Once we were on the internet I pointed out to them that this policy was not only against the traditions of the paper, but was futile because I would eventually get more hits on our website than they could sell papers. A few weeks ago, they printed a letter by me and I hope the boycott is at an end. The main point is that the paper has consistently followed a principled anti-Bush and anti-Blair line so that our differences at the moment are minimal. We shall see what happens.

The other matter of significance is my relations with Sir Jack Hayward, the fiercest of British patriots, who has payrolled Wolverhampton Wanderers for many years and a campaign to ensure that sports teams are owned by the local community as co-operatives which I am convinced Hayward would support even if an offer of £56 million was offered to take the club off his hands by British or foreign multinational corporations concerned only with money. The present continuing campaign of Manchester United supporters to save their club from the imperialism of the Glasers whose ultimate controller will be Bush is a shining example of what can be done.

The one fly in the ointment for the George Barnsby Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop is what will happen to it when I die. Most of its archives are with the local library and so are safe. The books were intended to go to the Bilston Community College and this now again appears a solution as the reopening of the College looms. But in the meantime the nature of books has changed as they are offered on the internet and only the most precious would be required in paper.

An example has arisen of the books and papers of Edward Upward, a supporter of the Morning Star and the BLOG, who is now 102 years old and whose books and papers his daughter-in-law, Janet, informs me have been acquired by the booksellers Maggs of Berkeley Square, London W1. Edward was a contemporary of Isherwood, Auden and Spender and he has recently been honoured by the Royal Society of Literature with the AC Benson medal for services to literature. Maggs have produced a splendid catalogue and all in the Labour movement should be alerted to the importance of this remarkable sale.

The ultimate question regarding the GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop is what will happen to it when I die. At present this question is in the hands of trustees over whom my family of wife Esme and two sons will exercise a veto on any proposals for its future, but the future of working class studies in Wolverhampton seems to be secure.

Wolverhampton is a not unimportant city having risen by its own efforts from the depths of being considered the racial capital of Britain in the times of Enoch Powell, one of the town’s MPs 1950 to 1974, to an important University city and anti-war centre from 2003.

I end this letter with the usual lament that so much has been left unsaid, but raise a matter of overriding importance to the labour movement which has occurred this very day. It is Newsletter No 44 of the Black and Asian Studies Association which is a special issue devoted to Claudia Jones the Black American Communist woman who was exiled to London, a place she had never known, and whose abiding achievement in Britain was the Notting Hill Carnival. My good friend, Marika Sherwood wrote the definitive Life of Claudia Jones in which she raised Claudia’s criticism of the lack of understanding of the race issue in the CPGB compared with that of the US Communist Party, a weakness which I regard has persisted to the present. Here is a sumptuous collection by the many friends of Claudia throughout the world which I look forward to reading and drawing conclusions from.

In comradeship,

George Barnsby
20 Jan 2006.

Copies to WCML, London Socialist Historians Group, The Voice., Express & Star, Marika Sherwood.

Herewith my contribution. The reference to the miniscule newsletter is that I think we should take full advantage of the second class stamp which allows at least five foolscap pages of print. The enclosed letter is a sort of dry run for the next BLOG which should be out in about four weeks time. I still haven’t heard from Digby Fairweather, which is a pity.

Keep up the good work and remember me to the comrades.

Here are four of the most powerful and respected political commentators of our times. All have interviewed David Cameron the leader of the Tories.

All have failed to raise with him the question of the war in Iraq. The result is that Cameron has not had to open his mouth and nobody knows what his attitude is to the war in Iraq. Such neglect of the duty of journalists to follow the truth wherever this leads has led to this unprecedented breach of the public’s right to know.

Why have Marr, Jon Snow, Paxman and Kirsty got themeselves in this position?
Is it cowardice and fear of losing their jobs? One would not like to think that.

Perhaps even more serious is the failure of them all to reply to the charges made against them. Am I too small a fry to be replied to? Let us remind ourselves that British democracy begins in the seventeenth
century with the proposition that the smallest he is equal to the greatest he in the land.

I exercise my right to be heard at a time when the police and the state might imprison me for this protest, such is the state of civil liberties under Tony Blair.

To Marr and Co. I say, REPLY REPLY REPLY