The Barnsby Blog

You will know of the Barnsby Blog. I have been on your tail ever since you were nominated for the leadership of the Tories. You were the  Tory Toff given the opportunity to dwell with the immortals be repudiating the war in Iraq. You began promisingly, discussing the probability at the next election of a hung parliament where you would share with the Lib Dems power, with you as Prime Minister. This would mean repudiating the war in Iraq since the Lib Dems never did support the war.

Then you did an about turn, openly supported the war, on the grounds that if we left Iraq that country would slide into anarchy.

But all sensible people now admit that we must withdraw from Iraq and let the unfortunate Iraqis make what they can of the destruction wrought by George W.Bush and his sidekick Blair. When I say all of us, I include the the military commanders in the field and the majority  of Tories in the country, including that nice young ethnic minority lass who appeared on Any Questions last week introduced as the chair of the Conservative Party who vehemenently stated that she had never supported the war in Iraq. She now joins  previous Tory leaders, including Hague and Michael Howard who recognise that the war is lost and we must withdraw. Once we withdraw there will be large sums of money available to carry out your reforms. Yet you continue to support the war. Silly Billy.

How else will you be able to satisfy the demands for tax cuts from the hardline old Tories, such as the Thatcherites and those demanding tax cuts for business?

But these are only the beginning of your problems. The people of the USA when they voted Democratic control of the US government reduced overnight George W.Bush from the most despotic person on earth to a powerless nonentity, left only with his delusions that ‘one more push’ in Iraq would restore his and the puppet government of Jalal Talabani to power. When Bush lost power, Blair who held his coat tails suffered the same fate. That other Silly Billy, Des Browne, the Blairite Minister for Defence, may think that he can dictate the terms of withdrawal from Iraq but he also is deluded. All he can do is withdraw troops, stop spending the taxpayers money on war and revert to the function of his title, defend Britain, which will not cost very much as Britain is in no danger, now that the war criminals and Trident nuclear advocates have been removed.

But even worse for you will follow. If Bush is powerless it follows that those he persecuted have inherited his power. The worst sufferers under Bush were Muslims. The most important Muslim in the world is Osama bin Laden. Terrorist he may be, but not in the same  league as Bush and Blair. He must inevitably take his place in the counsels of the world, whether one likes him or hates him.

Such is a scenario for the future  and it has no place for anyone supporting wars. Peace is on the  agenda. Come on David, join with us in the real world.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop

It is with considerable regret that I advise the full City Council meeting on 20 December not to instal Dennis Turner as the 22nd Freeman of Wolverhampton.

I have known Dennis for more than 50 years and for most of that period we have been good friends and it might seem churlish of me to deny Dennis this honour, but it is his conduct over the years of the present century that make him, in my opinion, unfit to be awarded this honour.

I write as a historian of the working class movement in Bilston. When Dennis retired from Parliament I produced a booklet entitled A Tribute to Dennis Turner on his Retirement from Parliament. This praised his conduct both as local councillor and MP, noting that he continued to live in his former modest accommodation, praised the part that he had played in trying to prevent the closure of the last steelworks in Bilston, the fact that he had been chair of governors of Bilston Community College (BCC) at the time when the closure of the steelworks and Margaret Thatcher’s policies had resulted in Bilston having one of the highest rates of unemployment in Britain and the open access BCC was the only source for retraining of those without previous educational qualifications.

But it was Dennis’s guarding of the industrial past of Bilston and the Black Country to which I drew particular attention.Bradley (in Bilston) was the place where John Wilkinson set up one of the first furnaces in the world to use coke to smelt iron and he was the pioneer of the development of the Black Country. Dennis Turner ensured that this almost sacred site was marked and maintained. Dennis also upheld other achievements of the working class movement in Bilston. These include support for Robert Owen’s socialists in the 1830s, and the key role that Chartists in Bilston played in 1842, when if every Chartist district had been as strong as Bilston’s the government would had been forced to give the vote to all working men with profound results on the subequent history  of Britain. Bilston continued to be a radical town up to and including the   1sr World War and its aftermath and produced another outstanding leader in Ben Bilboe, who unfortunately died before he could develop his full potential.

Up to about 2 000 Dennis was a left-wing, Socialist MP, like his fellow Wolverhampton MP, Ken Purchase. But from this time he slid into the New Labour right-wing position
of which I make my complaint of him today. The first was his reneging of his role as chair of governors of Bilston Community College. Then followed his role of resigning from Parliament and allowing a  New Labour stooge of Tony Blair, Pat McFadden who knew nothing of the traditions of Bilston to take his place. His worst offence was to accept a peerage with its privileges and perks which no self-respecting left-wing  MP would do. This may have made him a figure fit to be a Freeman of the City of Wolverhampton by sycophants and those who have reflected insufficiently,  but to most of his constituents and the wider labour movement Lord Bilston makes him a figure of fun.

Dennis’s last offence is that he has become a Blairite supporting the criminal and racist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere where only this month the people of the USA have stripped Bush of his powers to wage wars and have reduced Blair to the same position.

These latter crimes make Dennis Turner quite unfit to be a Freeman of our City. He has many achievements to his name and perhaps he can later admit that his present  decisions have been  mistaken. But for the moment let it be acknowledged  that this is no time to instal Dennis Turner as a Freeman of  the City of Wolverhampton.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop.

Ken Livingstone has dropped a spanner in the works of the CRE Conference on Moday which was to have  been a large gathering of the great and the good to discuss with the government, thirty years of the Race Equality Act and the way forward.

Mind you, since Tony Blair’s New Labour government supported George W.Bush’s illegal, racist and unwinnable war in Iraq it had crossed the mind of many of us that it was only by denouncing the government that race relations could be improved.

Livingstone states that Sir Trevor Phillips, chair of the CRE is not a fit person to be in charge of race relations in Britain. I am on Ken Livingstone’s side in principle, but have some sympathy with Phillips who perhaps made a bad start by accepting from HM imperial government the Order of the British Empire, an organisation which had thankfully disappeared in the 1950s and replaced by a slightly better organisation called the British Commonwealth of Nations, when real anti-racists were actively opposing such ‘honours’.

Trevor Phillips has made other errors apart from the question of whether communities are becomng more or less separate and whether this is desirable or not, on which I have questioned him. His greatest error was to state when he was appointed chair of the CRE that the question of the war in Iraq was ‘not within my remit’. This has had the unhappy consequence that we do not know Trevor’s views on the Iraq War, whether he supports it or not; whether he is opposed or not to the new all purpose Equality organisation, to which most anti-racists are vehementely opposed as meaning that Race Relations will inevitably be at the bottom of the queue; and whether he will accept the chairmanship of this new organisation which he is expected to be offered by the New Labourites who clearly consider him to be one of them.

I will end this dismal catalogue of failures by quoting two local matters.
The closure of Bilston Community College, the first multicultural college in Britain with its 30% of ethnic minority staff equalled neither before or since, and it being a haven of antiracism when elsewhere racism was the rule. This was neglect by negligence. The second example was directly the responsibility of Trevor. This was the closure of Wolverhampton Race Equality Council. This was the longest established REC continuously controlled by the two main ethnic groups in the city, Indians and Afro-Caribbeans. It is true it had fallen on bad times, but most people, including the  City council, wanted it reformed not closed and recent unfortunate experiences with a new Anti-Racist Council confirm that Trevor made a mistake in closing down our WREC.

Returning to the Conference. I have criticised it on the grounds that by refusing to accept papers to be read at the conference by elderly and disabled people like myself it is guilty of discrimination against the elderly, which is illegal. However, all the above issues are comparatively trivial compare with the unprecedented circumstances of today.

When the US people gave control of their country to the Democrats, they transformed the position of George Bush from the most powerful person on earth to a nonentity. To be sure Bush will continue to strut the world stage with his delusions that ‘just one more push’  will conquer Iraq and he will be restored to his former position. But this is to ignore reality. There is no alternative to leaving Iraq and allowing the Iraqis the unenviable task of making what they can of the carnage and destruction wreaked by Bush.
But if Bush is now a nonentity it follows that Blair also is a nonentity stripped of  any power.

This changed position means that honest people can sleep safely in their beds at night free for the first time since the US dropped the atomic bomb on Horoshima of any real danger of nuclear holocaust. This totally new situation covers every aspect of our lives. Take sport for instance, The question of who owns our local football clubs was a life and death matter when US capitalists gained control of English clubs. It still is, but the danger that Manchester United (and now West Ham) should be controlled  by capitalist forces which themselves would have no alternative but to obey the dictats of Bush have now come to an end, so that its importance is rather less.

However, the real consequences of the dethroning of Bush and Blair is not yet widely accepted. If some people have lost power it follows that those who suffered under them have gained power. The most important leader in the world today would seem to be Osama Bin Laden. Particularly blind to such logic are the news media whose power now extends to being almost entirely responsible for the news we watch or listen to and thus the formation of public opinion. This  irresponsibility is exemplified by the fact that I have had to make over 20 unsuccessful attempts to seek a reply from Paxman, Marr, Jon Snow and Kirsty Wark to charges that they butressed the power of Blair by not challenging him on his war in Iraq.

Many more people will feel doubtful about negotiating with Osama Bin Laden.
To those I would say read his ‘Messages to the World’  (for the publishing of which Verso might well have been prosecuted by a venemous Blair, if he still possessed any power, for giving support to terrorists.)  And understand Bin Laden says that every nation have been terrorists in their day. At the present time my only ally in supporting Al Queda would appear to be the Archbishop of Canterbury who has sagely said that ‘terrorists can have serious moral goals’.

Religious people will have a large say in negotiating the future, and none more important than those of the Christian faith and Islam, which is reckoned to number a tenth of the world’s population. However, there is one population that numbers even more than Islam. This is those of no faith at all, Secularists, many who think that Religion creates more problems than it solves. So, over the deliberations of the faithful, will hover a spectre - the spectre of Karl Marx and the only alternative to global monopoly capital which is Socialism. However, the conditions now exist for Peaceful Co-existence of  all parties and this is the only civilised way of solving difficulties.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop

I wish to pay my tribute to the people of the USA who, by giving control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate have changed the course of history. The day before the elections Bush was the most powerful person on earth able to destroy (but not control) the world. The day after the election Bush has become a simpering simpleton buoyed only by the delusion that just one more push in Iraq will restore his and his puppet government’s control of that country. And what applies to Bush applies equally to Blair in Britain; neither possess one iota of power, although they believe they have.

Because history matters it is vital to review the forces that will shape this new world not from my viewpoint as an atheist, but from the nearest to objectivity that I can muster.

This reality is that the most powerful forces are religious ones. Not the fundamentalist religious and even lunatic forces of the Christian variety which have suffered a  heavy blow from the defeat of the Bush,  but rational Church forces, which include in England, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the black Archbishop of York.

By far the most important of these religious leaders is Osama Bin Laden for whom the Death Squads seeking his discovery and murder must now be called off. Bin Laden is the acknowledged leader of the most numerous religion in the world, thought by some to comprise 10% of the world’s population. It is unthinkable that the problems of the world could be solved with his being consulted.

My last debt of honour is to the Iraqi people. When Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 far from there being no game plan the intentions of the Neo-Cons were clearly set out in their Project for the New American Century. It was to invade and destroy Iraq within a few weeks, then reconstruct it with large contracts to US construction firms, and move on to the next victim of the so-called axis of evil. All paid for by the control of Iraqi oil.

It was the heroism of the Iraqis that scotched that plan from the beginning by resisting the USA invasion so that Bush, however many times he declared the war won, was never able to move on to the next victim of the continuous, rolling offensives which would make him Master of the World.

And so we emerge into what I call Month 1 of the Post-Bush World. Free from the crushing burden of nuclear destruction for the first time since 1944, even though, paradoxically the number of nuclear powers are today larger. These however do not seek to dominate the world,  but are amenable to discussions such as  CND has advocated of destroying all the bombs in existence. Another world wide problem is that of Global Warming which is, of course, very serious, but which is not beyond the wit of modern man to solve. Finally I refer to the race issue characterised by our good comrade WEB du Bois (another great American) as the ‘color-line’ being the most important issue. The construction of a multicultural and multiracial world remains the greatest problem of all.

In my 87th year I am happy to live with most of the people of this New Age World, and perhaps a little proud of the tiny part that I have been able to play in bringing it about.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Commmunist Bookshop

As Bush and Blair perform their breathtaking hypocrisy of negotiating with Iran and N.Korea, Bush had better call off his Death Squads in his vain search for Bin Laden and begin to treat with the one man who holds the key to Peace and Freedom  in the world.

A terrorist Bin Laden certainly is, but not in the same class as Bush and Blair. Responsible for 9/11 he was not, compatriots being quite able to organise such a unique act without his help.

Bin Laden holds the key to a new Muslim civilisation as an alternative to the immoral and collapsing global capitalist society.
It is based firstly on Muslim refusal to accept usury in its future society;
global monopoly capitalism can therefore have no role to play.   Second,
that Muslim society is based on the UMMA which holds that every Muslim person is the keeper of the soul of every other Muslim person. These are the principles of a new Muslim contribution to world society absent since their supremacy in the Middle Ages.

As in the Middle Ages, the Islamic empire faces other  alternatives to its possible hegemony. These come today from  secular and non-faith alternatives to global capitalism. However all these beliefs have in common  the premise that Bush and Blair must end  their illegal and racist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere or face the certainty that they will be ejected by the people of those countries.

The key question today therefore is that OSAMA BIN LADEN is the most influential person on the planet and his monumental standing must be utilised if Peace and Freedom are to be restored to the world.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Peoples Library and Free Communist Bookshop.

It is a good idea to start a review of education in Wolverhampton with what is good in our schools and particularly the Teachers of the Year Awards in which Wolverhampton teachers and schools figured prominently, although it is difficult to find their names in the official report.

Then there is the unique (I think) Community Through Learning schools project centred around Whitmore Reans where schools such as Graiseley Primary, ‘Fun Fridays’ in Telford and schools in Walsall defeat the Men in Suits to produce multicultural education and high standards of performance free from the restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Education and Skills.
This scheme was inaugurated at a conference held at Wolverhampton Science Park on 26 April 2005 at which the main speaker was the redoubtable Professor Tim Brighouse. The main theme was the self-empowerment of the community, particularly the bottom 20% of the community which includes large numbers of ethnic minority people. This project now supports a community newspaper and a newly appointed Youth Officer and is in hot pursuit of the WHIMEs (the powerful minorities of the White Incumbent Male Elites.

Other awards to schools come almost daily, the latest being Innovation Centre Status for George Salter High School in West Bromwich, which no doubt will find the £22,000 grant very aceptable as will the other 6 schools which competed for the Black Country Creative Partnership scheme, three of which are in Wolverhampton and who all receive grants, amount not stated. Whether this is the best way of funding schools, however, remains debateable.

Then there is the question of whether Year 11 in schools is best spent in learning to pass tests rather than increasing knowledge. Here, Wolverhampton Grammar School has grasped the nettle by saying that it is a waste of time and is prepared to provide any pupil in Wolverhampton that comes to it with a learning syllabus. This includes taking the most ‘backward’ pupils such as a lad with a syndrome which makes it impossible for him to be controlled at other schools. Good for Bernard Trafford, the pioneering head of WGS who is prepared to protect his pupils from the political idiocies of Bush and Blair which are liable to plunge children (and all of us) into nuclear oblivion. These views are supported by the public schools teacher organisation, the Headmasters’ Conference, of which Trafford will be the chair for a year from next month.

Next comes the questions of the exam results for this year. Do not be deceived by pictures of pupils at the Girls’ High School celebrating more GCSE’s or ‘A’ levels than ever before. The fact is that there is still no official list of examination results in Wolverhamton for 2006, all these results are provisional and await the confirmation of the schools themselves.

The material concerning the 323 pupils in Wolverhampton who sat for the GCSE exam in Wolverhampton in 2006 are dealt with largely by ethnicity in the material held by the W’ton Education Dept and passed on to me. The number of pupils in schools in that year aged 16 totalled 927, so only one third of pupils sat for these exams, not a very good proportion. Using crossword terminology they are dealt with downwards in 15 ethnic groups and across in
17 categories of performance most of them only intelligilble to the possessor of a PhD which I have. This analysis by ethnic groups alone proves fatal because only one of the ethnic groups contain numbers sufficient to give a statistically significant result. This is British with 128 exam entries out of 523 pupils in that year. The second group nearest to significance is the Indian group with 59 entries out of a possible 255 entries which again is nothing to cheer about. The third is the Caribbean group with 10 entries in a possible group of only 39 pupils, a surprisingly small group. However since these are the main three ethnic categories in Wolverhampton and in fact the Ministry use these three ethnic groups in a rather different context later, we will start be examining the GCSE results
2006 of these three groups. Their performance is:

5 or moreGCSEs at Grades A to C incl English and
Maths Pupils with No Passes Average Score per
Pupil
British All 33.9% (girls 41.7% boys 25.6%)
6.7% 320.2
Indian All 48.8% (girls 53.4% boys 44.2% )
1.1% 400.5
Caribbean All 25.6% (girls 33.7% boys 16.5%)
3.0% 345.7

These performances can be summarised as follows: Indians are the star performers with better GCSE results and less pupils with no passes.
Caribbeans perform worst at exams, but surprisingly better than the British at pupils with no passes and average score per pupil. Let it once again be stressed however that the results are provisional. But the performance of Caribbean pupils is not too disappointing and at each stage girls are performing better than boys. However results for individual schools I have not found and indeed, they are embargoed until officially released probably in December 2006.

So if school performances are not available for 2006 we must go back to schools’ performances in 2005. League tables are available for all schools, but we must confine ourselves to Secondary schools: 1 W’ton Girls High, 2 W’ton Grammar, 3 The Royal, 4 Tettenhall College, 5 St.Peters, 6 Wednesfield
High, 7 Highfields, 8 Moseley Park, 9 Pendeford High, 10 Smestow, 11
Northicote, 12 Coppice, 13 St.Edmunds, 14 Heath Park, 15 Deansfield, 16 Colton Hills, 17 W’ton College, 18 Kings CofE, 19 Deansfield, 20 Our Lady & St.Chads, 21 Moreton, 22 Parkfield.
My comments on these results were and are: That we have one of the top dozen or so schools in Britain in the Girls High, funded mainly by the local authority, but it takes its pick from all Wolverhampton children. The other three top schools are all independent and take what money can buy; all other secondary schools have given themselves fancy Academy status which is an invitation not to take its children from its cachment but to select them across the whole city. Also the position of schools correlate tolerably well with the affluence of their parents, so that the lower rated schools do badly partly because they have to take the children of poor parents including ethnic minority children. This might be remedied if money were pumped into these schools to ‘turn them round’, but we know that the policy of this government is the perverse one of rewarding schools who do not need it and closing the schools which most need the money.

Questions which should be asked of all schools are: What are your selection procedures; what is the ethnic profile of pupils and staff; how many pupils receive free school dinners; what was your budget in the last financial year; who provides the financial resources of the school; to what extent does your syllabus reflect the requirements of our multicultural society.
And to answer these questions we request that each school appoint a trade union representative, a history teacher responsible for multicultural history and a representative for ensuring that racist behaviour is not tolerated.

The performance of Wolverhampton schools at A Levels are proving difficult to trace. Reports of the Department of Education and Skills on its website do not show the results of Wolverhampton schools. Another source is that of the Learning and Skills Council which controls pupils age 18 in schools.
This source does not provide a list of W’ton schools results either. My other alternative is to ask each school for their results. This I am loathe to do firstly because it adds to the load of headteachers, and secondly they are not obliged to reply to me. So we can only assume that they are unlikely to be much better of worse that GCSE results.

The fact of dual control of schools/colleges after Year 11 is cumbersome and inefficient. Also the Learning and Skills Council collaborated in the policies of its predecessor, the Further Education Funding Council which initiated the closure of Bilston Community College (BCC), which David Blunkett as Education Secretary approved together with Tony Blair.

Bilston Community College was the first multicultural college in Britain with its 30% ethnic minority staff, never equalled before or since and provided an anti-racist environment for ethnic minority people when elsewhere in Wolverhampton racism reigned. For this, and other reasons, the Friends of Bilston Community College accused the Learning and Skills Council of racism, a charge to which they have so far made no reply.

The present position with regard to the closure of BCC is that no charge has ever been brought against anyone at that College. Instead the LSC charged the auditors of the college with passing programmes of work which had not been authorised. The auditors in question, one of the largest legal firms in Britain of Deloitte and Touche, agreed to pay up a nominal sum but came to a cosy agreement with each other which they intended to keep secret until it was forced into the open by members of the National Audit Office and the powerful local newspaper, the Express & Star. Resort has subsequently been made under the Secrecy of Information Act which has confirmed that there was no reason to close BCC, but the usefulness of the procedure has been negated, as in the USA equivalent act, by requiring that the complainants pay for the information and this involves involves paying legal fees which could be unlimited as the case goes through the process of appeal.

What was pioneered by Bilston Community College has since become all the rage under the name of Community Education and WCC flaunts its International Studies, Courses to meet individual needs, and programmes from basic skills to high level courses in community locations across the city.

The writ of the Learning and Skills Council also passes across Wolverhampton University (WU). Here a number of their personnel, including the previous Vice-Chancellor, John Brookes, aided the actual physical process of closing BCC as did some of those in the newly set up City of Wolverhampton College
(CWC.) This brings us to some history of CWC. There were once two Colleges of FE in Wolverhampton. One was Bilston led by the innovative Keith Wymer pioneering outreach education for all and especially ethnic minorities. The other was Wulfrun College snooty by being situated in the posh part of the city and firm believers that the only further education it dispensed would go to those who had the necessary academic qualifications. In due course, Bilston was closed and Jane Williams became the principal of a newly created single college for Wolverhamton and partner in what is proving to be the illegal closure of BCC. So if BCC was improperly closed this can only mean that CWC was improperly opened by the by the Department of Education and Skills. A key turning point came when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, decided that elite education such as CWC dispensed was wrong and education should be available to all. This led to the necessity of Jane Williams and her cohorts having to perform an undignified ‘about turn’ and recreate the practices of Bilston Community College which they had been cheerfully and recklessly destroying. This must have played no small part in the appalling academic record of CWC being 17th out of 22 schools in the League Table of GCSE results in 2005.

We therefore come back to Wolverhampton University as the ultimate player in Education in Wolverhampton. When it was shown that W’ton University had the largest proportion of ethnic majority students in the country it had the potential to be the most important University in Britain. It could throw off the cap and gown, elitist practices of Oxbridge and attract the most advanced ethnic minority pupils and staff of Britain and indeed the world.
This advantage was thrown away because the Vice-Principal of W’ton University had other ideas. These were to ape the old universities. This had a certain logic, because at the time, the government was discussing the closing of ‘failing’ universities and it would be conservative institutions not radical ones that would survive. The University has certainly survived, but such was Brooke’s hatred of Bilston Community College that he rashly threatened me, the Spokesman and Whistleblower of the Friends of Bilston Community College with legal action unless I stopped supporting BCC.

John Brookes has since left Wolverhampton for a more lucrative post as VC elsewhere. But the follies and conservatism of the University management has recently re-surfaced with the activities of what I have called the ‘three bad apples’ at WU. One is Sir Geoffrey Hampton at present the Dean of the School of Education at WU.
A little more history is required at this point. Hampton has had a somewhat chequered career. He first became prominent as one of Tony Blair’s super-heads. He turned round the first school to be put into ‘measures’ , Northicote School in W’ton. His success was disputed by other teachers in the city who said that they could have done what he did if they had been given the money that he had. Nevertheless, Hampton was created Sir Geoffrey on the direct intervention of Tony Blair and his career blossomed to his present eminent position. But Hampton blotted his copybook last year by insisting that Jane Williams, the former principal of W’ton City College be given an honorary doctorate of the University. Now Jane Williams left WCC under the cloud of charges of racism by her staff. But she was taken under the protection of the Ministry of Education, no less, and the charges against her have never been heard. The proposal to ‘honour’ Jane Williams had necessarily to be put to the governors of the University including the Clerk to the Governors who had colluded with John Brookes in closing Bilston Community College. The governors also included Caroline Gipps, the new Vice-Chancellor who might or might not have been aware of the shenanigans of Brookes and the Clerk, but as a person untainted with such goings-on she might be expected to hold the ring between the parties. Instead she aligned herself with Brookes and Co. in a message, not from her but from the Clerk in question, A.W.Lees, stating that they knew my views on BCC and they would not answer any other messages from me. But it is rather late in the day not to reply to correspondence I send them because this is the day of instant communication of websites and emails which can be sent round the world, and this is the audience to which the governors of Wolverhampton University must now answer for their mistakes and irregularities.

We cannot end this review of Wolverhampton education without mentioning Life Long Learning. The most important example of this in W’ton is the highly successful University of the Third Age (U3A). This confronts two essential principles. The first is that its courses should be recreational, whereas the Government insists that courses will only be paid for if the lead to a qualification. The second is the issue of whether in these days workers can sustain a College independently from their own contributions without resource to government money. This issue has a long history in the working class movement going back to when the Workers’ Education Association was formed in 1903. The Wolverhampton U3A not only gives an emphatic Yes to the question of whether it can survive from its members’ fees alone, but almost uniquely among U3A branches, Wolverhampton also produces many of its own lecturers from its membership.

Having surveyed the whole field of Education in Wolverhampton, it is time to draw some conclusions. There is much to approve of in all institutions concerned with education, but there are also matters which require to be corrected immediately if multiculturalism is to flourish in the city.
Whether Blacks will find it necessary to take direct action (ie.to riot) to make their views known to the Men in Suits or not is the great unkown. Some of the evidence given above suggests that this need not be the case. But it remains the great imponderable. This, together with the ‘evilisation’ of the Muslim Community, of which in Wolverhampton we have, perhaps fortunately, only comparatively few. This brings us to the issue of non-indoctrination education.

Not only are the majority of our primary schools church controlled, but the list of similarly controlled Secondary school has been raised to four by an audacious coup of the Church of England authorities by wresting control of Regis School from secular to religious authorities. This is important because parents of children in Regis Ward of Wolverhampton have now no non-indoctrinating secondary school to which they can send their children.
Nor are other parents, who might even have moved house to be in the cachment area of a favoured school immune from such depredations. Even more sinister pseudo-religious forces are laying claim to control not only our schools but our very thought processes. Such are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and others on the more lunatic fringe like the Church of Scientology and the Moonies which are able legally to pump unlimited sums into schools without having to reveal what they are doing. In Wolverhampton we have at least two primary schools which appear to have bought success in this fashion. We have asked these schools where their money has come from, but we have, of course, not received a reply.

Education has been under seige in recent years having to resist the political policies of New Labour and Tony Blair centred on the war in Iraq.
Some of these political issues have been solved this week by the resounding defeat of George W.Bush in the USA mid-term elections. This should lessen tensions in Wolverhampton and help make us proud of the city we live in.

The stakes therefore are high. Nothing less than raising Wolverhampton from its previous disreputable positition of Capital of Racist Britain in the years of Enoch Powell to the Capital of Cultural and Educational Leadership of Britain in 2007.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop

Dear Francis

It is certainly a monster package delivered by Brian Pearce on the Crisis of British Stalinism.

First I was interested in Revolutionary History, because that is likely to be where any challenge to my claim that my forces newspaper in 1942 was the first since Cromwell’s New Model Army times. Then I was interested in its Vol 9 No.3 and what date it was. I learned from Google that it was 1963. Was that a significant year? It was the year of the assassination of John Kennnedy certainly, but was there anything much else of significance in that year? I don’t know that there was.

The next question was who was John McIlroy? Again Google is most enlightening  listing scholarly writers on Revolution, some unknown to me on my very own
doorstep of Wolverhampton University. I list these in alphabetic order as  John Benson, John Callaghan, Martin Durham, Mike Haynes, Shirin Housee (of Race Studies fame), George Kassimeris, (contributor to History Today last month on the 50th Anniversary of the Uprising in Hungary), Eric Taylor (contributor to the Dictionary of Labour Studies),  and on the technical side my webmaster Martin George. What other militants might be lurking unknown to me at Wolverhampton University who might be recruited to the campaign to remove Bush and Blair the two greatest war criminals, the latter not to go at a time of his own choosing, but in the words of our MP, Ken Purchase, given just ten minutes to clear his desk.

Unfortunately none of those named above seem have the desire to create political institutions such as  Socialist Societies or even Peace Societies, so that W’ton University is bereft of political action. Even the students within the Student Union, admirable in so many respects as the one with most ethnic minority students, appear bent on pursuing the short term, illusory project of making their own fortunes through Business Studies courses instead of campaigning for equal treatment for black students.

The immediate intent of the Barnsby BLOG is to ponder why there is no immediate international United Front to put the skids under BandB  NOW, and to play some small part in creating such a Front.  Take, for instance the position in many other Universities. In London with the leadership of the London School of Economics and Birkbeck College almost all intellectuals seem to be opposed to the war in Iraq. This applies also to all New universities and also old Universities of Oxbridge. Why cannot someone create the necessary United Front from all this material?

Parliament is in the pocket of Blair, so if it cannot do any better than it did last week when Blair walked free; and if David Cameron continues to support the unwinnable war  in Iraq and faces the derision of possibly becoming Prime Minister and having to bring the troops home if they haven’t already been chucked out,  then we ought to be able to use our power in local government  and pass resolutions  not only opposing the war but withholding funds for its prosecution as George Lansbury did in the 1920s and find people willing to go to prison for it. This I am urging in Wolverhampton, and if London, Manchester, and Birmingham Corporations did the same thing the war could not be sustained.

Then there is the power of the revitalised trade union movment led by the TUC willing and able to use its powers of persuasion and strike action to shape the anti-war future of Britain. Add to this a Stop the War Coalition; Our World Our Say;  new parties such as Respect, old parties such as Lib Dems who never supported the war; far sighted right wing people such as Max Hastings, Simon Jenkins, Henry Porter, Boris Johnson and even the Commander-in-Chief of the army who, together with the majority of Britain’s population oppose the war in Iraq.  Finally add the Socialist forces in the South America of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Evo Mores and every other country of that sub-continent and we can see the forces which will not only end the war, but overthrow Global Capitalism and replace it with Socialism.

I have drifted a long way from considering the writings of Brian Pearce and other Anarchists, but  the death last week of Peter Fryer changes matters. He was the Daily Worker correspondent who sensationally opposed the 1956 Russian invasion of Hungary and who survived among the anarchists to write the definitive history of black people  entitled ‘Staying Power, The History of Black People in Britain’ as well as a mountain of  writing on the history of racism throughout the world and further writing on such diverse topics as African musical heritage in Africa and South America, Mrs Grundy, Studies in English Prudery, the Birth Controllers etc. In addition he wrote extensively on music and was a jazz pianist of considerable repute.

Peter Fryer was perhaps the most influential writer of the Communist/Anarchist/ Trotskyist/Marxist/Working Class tradition in Britain. It seems appropriate that I draw this  epistle to a close, and see what reaction there is (if any) from activists and non activists, black people and white people, men and women,  on the death of this remarkable man whose revealing but all too short obituary by his friend and fellow anarchist, Terry Brotherstone, appeared in the Guardian of 3 November 2006.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop

Dear David

For the History Project currently being organised by you and others I would like to submit a project on Hungary.

I was approached in 2005 by Gyula Virag of Hungary, a non-aligned teacher who had discovered from the recently released Hungarian archives the details of all participants in the 1949 World Youth Festival at Budapest. He then contacted them all asking questions as to their attitudes at the time to Hungarian affairs in general and crucially  the Russian invasion of 1956. I replied by stating that in 1949 we had been overwhelmed by the public support for the Festival and government, so that 1956 came as a deep shock and although I did not support the invasion of the Russians, I thought that the Uprising must have been a right-wing, fascist coup.

Since then Gyula and I have corresponded until the present time when Hungarian farmers and workers are complaining that because of membership of the EU with its neo-con Common Agricultutural Policy, the country has been sold to foreigners and the Hungarian people are worse off than they have ever been, and certainly since the salad days of Communism under Janos Kardar when the Hungarians became, together with the German Democratic Republic, the freest and most prosperous of the Communist nations.

In view of the openly right-wing and pro-fascist nature of the 2006 Uprising, I have asked Gyula where he stands on that event, and I have not yet received an unequivocal reply to my question.

Meanwhile we are having an open debate among all Communists who lived in Wolverhampton in 1956 and are still alive and can be traced on the opposing views of Communists at that time, some, like me believing it was a fascist coup, although not supporting the Russian invasion, and the reverse view that the R\ussians had no choice, but to invade Hungary if the imperialist powers British, French and Israeli then involved in their attempt to conquer Egypt were to be thwarted.

I have also in the past week or so contacted Gyulua Hegyi, the Socialist MEP of Hungary and I enclose herewith both my reply to Gyula Hegyi and Gyula Virag’s reply to me on 2006.

Finally there is a Hungarian association in Wolverhampton commemorating 1956 who I have tried to contact without success and the only source of contact is the Express and Star who ran their notification of the programme in the first place. The history of the post-1945 influx of immigrants, particularly of Poles, and Ukrainians, and after 1956, Hungarians is essential if a proper history of Wolverhampton is to be written.And this is why I ask this Project to be considered as a vital on-going part, together with the history of black and Indian immigration currently being very splendidly handled by BE-ME,  of an inclusive history of Wolverhampton.

GEORGE BARNSBY

Dear Karen,

I address you as the chief city representative on the new Race Relations Unit in Wolverhampton.

I request a reply to two of my letters one of which was sent in on 10 March 2006 and the other some months earlier.

The first asked for information on the records of Wolverhampton Race Equality Council with which I was associated from its inception in 1965 and was the oldest REC in Britain controlled by its two main ethnic minority groups of Indians and Afro-Cabs from its formation until it was unfortunately and wrongly in the view of most in the city who knew its history, closed by Trevor Phillips of the Commission for Racial Equality.

The second letter raised important issues of elderly and disabled people being able to participate in the work of the new Race Unit in Wolverhampton by receiving essential documents and making written submissions to to its proceedings. Without this, disabled and elderly persons such as myself are discriminated against, and such discrimination is illegal. I therefore asked that some one from the new Race Equality Partnership Wolverhampton visit my home to discuss with me this and other matters.

In fact I have grave criticisms to make of REPW  based largely on the fact that it will not raise the question of the illegal and racist war in Iraq. The same question is germane to Trevor Phillip’s remark that the war in Iraq is ‘outside his remit’ and so we do not know to this day his attitude to the war, whether he supports or opposes it. So we cannot apprise his capability of playing an important role in the new, single purpose Equality Unit set to replace the present Commission for Racial Equality to which so many of us are totally opposed.

Such ambivalences weaken the whole movement for Racial Equality, including otherwise excellent initiatives by the CRE such as their new magazine Catalyst and the most important Race Convention 2006 in November where anti-racists will clash with government supporters of the war in Iraq at a time when George W.Bush is liable to lose forthcoming Congressional Elections and is actively preparing to meet his Vietnam and pull US troops out of Iraq. Here in Britain Tony Blair hangs on by his finger nails and a Wolverhampton MP, Ken Purchase, suggests that he be given ten minutes to clear his desk.

In these days when Afro-Cabs are liable to riot as a result of their grievances not being attended to,  it is to be hoped that Wolverhampton’s New Race Unit will join the new world of Hugo Chavez and Evo Mores and the world majority of people opposed to the Iraq and other wars instead of refusing to discuss these matters with one of the oldest and most experienced anti-racist and anti-fascist activists in the City.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop

Thank you very much for reminding us in your article in the Guardian 25 Oct 06 of the reactionary and fascist elements participating in these two revolts.

I first went to Hungary in 1949 to the World Youth Festival. The overwhelming support for the Festival not only among participants but the vast crowds that greeted us everywhere was astonishing. We drove to Budapest in a second hand lorry that was all but clapped out when we got there and Budapest bus workers virtually renewed every              part so that we  could get back home. We visited farms and factories. In the latter shop stewards were so proud of their achievements under Communism that they begged us to come back in a few years to see what further progress they had made. Of course, I was well aware of the past history of Hungary, Horthy the last of the fascist dictators to desert Hitler; of Mindsenty  then in jail, justifiably so in my view, because of the role of the Catholic Church in supporting Hitler during the war and delivering up of Hungarians and every other nationality to the Hitler death camps. I was also aware of the Communist leader Rakosi  imprisoned from 1925 to 1940 in pre-war Hungarian jails  who had spent the war years in Moscow.

So that when the Uprising occurred in 1956 a few months after the Khrushkov  ‘Secret’ Speech denouncing Stalin,  I was totally convinced that this was a fascist led  Uprising. I was, however, equally convinced that the Russians should not have invaded Hungary. I was particularly upset at the arrest and subsequent killing of Imre Nargy when he had been promised his safety even though he was, in my eyes a Communist renegade. I did not consider leaving the British Communist Party at that time as the Thompsons, John Saville and very many other Communists did including a number in my own Wolverhampton Branch, believing that the rogues and  psychopaths, and other practioners of Communism were the problem, not the principles of Marx and Engels.

When the dust of Hungary and Suez died down I was a frequent visitor to Communist Eastern Europe, several times to the GDR and once to Hungary which, under Janos Kardar had freed itself  from Stalinism and become with the GDR the most enlightened of the  East European countries during that brief Indian Summer of the 1970s and early 80s. The Soviets were still prospering  with the successors to handsome Yuri Gagarin first man in space in 1961, the toast of London on his visit and the pride of every Communist heart. These were the days when the possibility of  Socialism over taking Capitalism seemed  a reality. One came away from the GDR and Hungary  feeling that here was freedom and Socialism (no unemployment, zero inflation, a true welfare state, no racism),  as one came back to the capitalism of Thatcherism, miners’ strikes,  and loss of civil liberties.

Unfortunately it was all to end much too soon. Ironically I was at a Party school in Budapest  when the gravest blow was delivered. Here I learned that the national income of the Japanese had exceeded that of the Soviet Union and I knew then, at least for some years, that developing countries would not take the Socialist road, but would become capitalist roaders. From then it was downhill all the way, the inanities of the Soviet-Chinese split, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the invasion of Afghanistan and the destruction of Socialism by lies, cheats and violence, all so vividly described by Gyula Virag.

Much was to happen before once again in the twenty first century we can contemplate the replacement of capitalism. This included the fall of the Berlin Wall, the USA as sole superpower and neo-con tyrant, the re-emergence of Socialism in South America led by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Evo Mores, and of course the defining event so far of the 21st century the illegal, racist and unwinnable wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine which herald the disappearance of Bush and Blair. All this I have experienced in my 87 years.

But let me pause at 2005. I was surprised to hear from a non-political Hungarian scholar, Gyula Virag, who had discovered in the recently opened archives, the details of all who had attended the 1949 World Youth Festival. He wrote to all of them enclosing a questionaire the most pertinent question of which was to ask what our attitudes to Hungary were at the time. I replied as above. That I was opposed to the Russian invasion but thought the Uprising was fascist inspired. Gyula replied with much information on Ferenc Gyurcsany and the workers’ who died on the barricades in 1956. But I have pressed Gyula to say where he stands on the Uprising of 2006.

All of my correspondence with Gyula is to be found on my web site www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk. The question today is that both farmers and workers are complaining that  freedom is denied them within the European Union. That the so-called ‘free trade’ of the Common Agricultural Policy has reduced the standard of living of both peasants and workers to the lowest that it has ever been, and that, of course, means lower than in the times of Janos Kardar.

I have thrown Gyula’s questions back to him and asked which side he is now on, the side of progressive humanity which repudiates the war in Iraq or supporters of Bush and Blair as their slide to an inescapable oblivion proceeds.

Today I have received a reply from Gyula. It is again full of important facts concerning Hungarian history, but he doesn’t think much of you, Gyula Hedgyi, and he fails, I regret to say, to answer unambiguously, the question of where he stands on the 2006 Hungarian Uprising.

So, Mr.Hegyi, there are my long experiences of  Socialism in  Hungary and the world. No doubt we have your support in this struggle.

GEORGE BARNSBY
GB Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop,