The Barnsby Blog

YANKY DOODLE DEINY?
My Gunflash came today, the fanzine of Arsenal FC, the oldest in the
land at No.517 and I was proud to see that they were shocked at David Dein’s
departure from Arsenal and the editor says it seems that Dein was in favour
of a US takeover of the club and subsequent belief that Arsene Wenger will
follow suit and leave Arsenal. Yet it was Dein who brought Le Boss to
Arsenal. But when it came to choosing a new home Dein was in favour of
sharing Wembley with that lot down the Lane (Arsenal’s deadly rivals at
Tottenham in White Hart Lane) whereas Le Boss was insistent that we build
our new home in our own backyard and Dein was apparently the most
influential member of the Arsenal board in making it happen.
However, Le Boss has made his views that he would rather Arsenal
remained in English hands very publicly known. If Dein was in favour of the
takeover, I’m sure Le Boss would have opposed him rather than buckle under.
After all the boss is his own man. Everybody keeps going on about how much
money will be available for transfers, but I cannot honestly see that if you
gave Arsene £100m to buy players that he would necessarilly want to spend
it.
Another Gooner, Simon Swingler, muses on Cashley Holes first visit back
to Arsenal in the wake of his unceremonious exit to Chelski. I must have
been very naive to believe that Ash was one of our own and would never do
the dirty on us.

TALK, TALK, TALK
Here it is 7-30pm and I’m only just starting my BLOG. I feel like
having a day off and claiming that I’m entitled to it and losing the proud
record that on 122 occasions I have never failed my public to post a Blog.
We shall see how we get on.
The day began with a long talk with Lance Dunkley about Enoch Powell’s
Rivers of Blood speech. You will remember that I got into trouble with Peter
Rhodes the Express and Star man and inadvertently called him a racist. Peter
now claims that Collene Moore exists and knew of an alleged letter of better
off and better educated Indians and Irish of Brighton Place, Wolverhampton
who wrote to Enoch Powell asking him to use his influence to see that no
mass influx of West Indians should take place because ‘it would lower the
tone’ of the neighbourhood. Lance Dunkley and I claim that this is rubbish,
that Collene Moore never lived in Brighton Place and that any such
allegation hides the fact that Powell used Druscilla Cotterell as the woman
who saw Brighton Place transformed from a street of all white people to one
of a street in which she was the only white person. Peter Rhodes believes
that not only does Collene Moore exist, but he is in contact with her, and
indeed that she will write to me saying she doesn’t understand why I refuse
to believe her story. But today, talking to Lance he again denies that she
exists and that Powell used her name without her permission as the woman in
his Rivers of Blood speech which, of course, was the most notorious example
of racism in Britain causing immense damage to immigrants in Britain.
Lance and I also took the opportunity to discuss Ricky Stennett’s book
Buckra Massa Pickney. I have stated that this book will rank with Marika
Sherwood’s ‘After Abolition, Britain and the Slave Trade since 1807′ and
James Walvin’s ‘The Trader, the Owner, The Slave as three of the major texts
explaining the continuance of slavery after 1807 and the hypocrisy of people
like the Quakers who never let profit get in the way of their anti-slavery
opinions.
Ricky’s book has two themes which are of historical importance to me.
The first is that he experienced at first hand the savagery and brutality of
slavery on an extremely productive Jamaican estate, as against the The
Owner, Thomas Thistlewood of Walvin’s’ book whose one great service to
abolition was that he wrote down every act of barbarity that was perpetrated
against slaves.
The second theme of Ricky is the hypocrisy of blacks in what he calls
the race relations industry throughout Britain, but particularly in
Wolverhampton and the West Midlands where every effort was made to drive
Ricky out of his job by blacks who had reneged on race relations in favour
of earning large salaries for themselves. Both Lance and I believe that this
is true. So Ricky’s book is the first full-scale expose of what I call
pretend anti-racism among black people. But the problem is how to use
Ricky’s book to further his cause. It is a matter for black people alone and
those of us who are not black must fight racism within our own communities.
This involves the new Race Equality unit in Wolverhampton where Adnan
Chaudry the new chief officer shows little evidence of wanting to discuss
the type of organisation he is running whether it is to be open and
democratic or a New Labour set-up such as the new all-purposes organisation
which has appointed Sir Trevor Phillips as its head to the disgust of most
race relations activists who understand that under the new set-up Race
Relations will be neglected.
In between all this talk I sent Angela Hossack the W’ton Head of Health
and Social Care Mental Health services a copy of my Friday Blog hoping that
she has contacted my friends Mushtak Shafi to find innovative ways of
attempting to alleviate incurable diseases. In the post was a copy of the
Black and Asian Studies Association Newsletter, which I shall revue and
should be in every school library in Britain.

It is now midnight. I have given myself the luxury of watching Match of
the Day, but will tear myself away from the World Cricket final because I
have not recorded all the Talk of the Day and it ties up with Lance Dunkley
and Ricky Stennett and Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood. My daily exercise
stint began about 4-30pm and takes me down the Road to Joe Davies, the
ex-copper and then back to the other end of Henwood Rd. where Geoff
Sidbotham and various other friends live. Usual time taken - about 1 hour.
I invariably take them a copy of the latest Blog around which we usually
argue in the friendliest possible way.
Today’s BLOG was a single page with an advert on the back for the
Trades Council’s May Day social at the Pegasus pub, Cannock Rd. Here my Joe
Davies coterie were both interested in the fact that the Trades Council held
a May Day celebration and also in the venue. The star attraction at the
social will be Attila the Stockbroker who is a big hit in the rock world and
a Communist to boot. One of their songs goes: Just look at us, we’re the
scourge of the land/We’re Colonel Gadaffi’s favourite bands/We all eat
babies and we’re commies too/So don’t mess with us, ‘cos we’re foreign and
we smell/ We’re the Libyan Students from Hell.
From this point the argument turned to Red Robbo, who ruined the car
industry according to popular belief and the view of my friends, who were
impervious to the argument that Derek Robinson was a patriot attempting,
admittedly through strike action, to save the British motor industry, that
the S.African who was brought here to sack Robbo in fact presided over the
demise of the industry and was himself sacked, whereas Derek will always be
a legend and since he is still reasonably fit would my friends come to the
Trades Council Social if Robbo came. No, said my friends they’d rather relax
after a long week’s work, Robbo was history. Not so I argued, the saving of
our industrial base was a very modern thing and they must be patriotic
enough to listen to a man like Robbo. No, they said our industrial base has
been destroyed and cannot be restored. A view I cannot share and fight
against the pessimism which ignores that yet another of our football teams,
Southampton, falls to US predators this week and that European Commission as
well as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund preach a phony ‘free
trade’ which rewards the wealthy and condemns the poor to starvation and the
take-over of their countries by foreigners.
Well, such an argument took up about two hours, and then it was time
for me to take a rest, then have a meal which took us up to 10pm when I
returned to today’s Blog. In fact when I rang Derek Robinson he said he
would like to come to the social, but he could not drive a car at night and
the local train service from Birmingham to Stechford stops long before the
end of the social. I still believe, however, that Derek Robinson
representing workers and Tony Benn the minister who nationalised the car
industry, but then had the rug pulled from under him by Harold Wilson,
should lead a patriotic campaign to save and reconstruct our basic
industries.
Still I have things left unsaid, but at 1-30am it is time for me to
retire for the night.

THE SHAME OF IT!
A BNP candidate in Tettenhall Wightwick. I have several times printed
abstracts from that leading organ against racism, International Searchlight
Magazine with its detailed accounts of the growth of the BNP and the
successful attempts to made to mobilises support. I had quoted Searchlight’s
warning of Sandwell and Dudley as two of the most vulnerable areas in
Britain with special mobilisation led by Billy Bragg the pop star. But the
fact that the BNP was standing a candidate in the middle class area of
Wolverhampton was an emotional shock that I must discuss in detail. Who am I
to vote for? The BNP candidate is a Philip Bland of 43 Rudge Av. W’ton There
must be the widest possible campaign to isolate and defeat him. The Labour
candidate is Malcolm Freeman of 61 Bridgnorth Rd. not very far from where I
live. I have therefore asked, , the leader of the Labour controlled City
Council of Wolverhampton, Roger Lawrence (himself not a lover of the war in
Iraq) to ask Malcolm Freeman to visit me, bring with him a copy of his
election address and let me know his views on Iraq, because under no
circumstances will I vote for any candidate who supports Blair’s war in
Iraq.
I could vote for Roger Gray the Liberal Democrat whose party opposed
the Iraq war from the beginning, but I would like to hear from him that he
is against the war. Finally I could vote for Wendy Thompson the Tory
candidate, who with a number of other local Tories have opposed the war.
Other anti-war parties standing candidates include Respect, Stop the
War Coalition, Labour Left and Voice of the Unions. I would certainly vote
for John McDonnell as the next leader of the Labour Party. But none of these
factions are standing candidates in my ward.
The alternative is for me to abstain from voting. This would do
maximum damage to New Labour. But powerful voices argue that the socialism
of the future lies with a Labour Party purged of Blairism and returned to
the socialism of Keir Hardie.
This depends how one views the transition to Socialism. As a Marxist I
join those who say that Social Democracy has always betrayed socialism. From
the betrayal of 1914 when all Socialist parties were bound by decisions of
the Socialist International to oppose war as rival capitalist groups seeking
to re-divide the world, but within a few days of the outbreak of war they
were supporting ‘their’ capitalists and sanctioning the mass slaughter of
working men that ensued; then there was the betrayal of 1946 when Attlee and
Bevin deserted the alliance with the Russians that had won the war and
joined the US in initiating the Cold War when for 50 years the world lived
in the MAD world of peace through Mutually Assured Destruction; since 2003
MAD has been exchanged for the non-existent WMD and the horror of the wars
in Iraq and elsewhere.
So social democracy is unlikely to lead us into socialism. Marx and
Engels, always the spectre haunting capitalism, suggested that political
parties would be consigned to the dustbin of history and the transition to
Communism would be by groups of self-regulating citizens. This would leave a
place for Tory participation in changing society of which some of our
Wolverhampton tories are a good example and nationally such figures as Simon
Jenkins, Henry Porter, Geoffrey Wheatcroft and Max Hastings.

JOAN BAEZ
Billy Bragg is not the only celebrity in town during May. Joan Baez
will be at Wolverhampton Civic Hall. Joan is the great folk singer of the
1960s and 70s who sang her way against the war in Vietnam Joan is a real
celebrity and her appearance in Wolverhampton is akin to the visit of Paul
Robeson way back in the 1970s. Phone W’ton Civic Hall for details of the day
she is appearing and also for tickets.

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THE LUCK OF THE IRISH.
As the highly unlikely scenario of the Unionist lion (Ian Paisley)
lying down with the Republican lamb (Gerry Adams) refereed by Peter Hain who
was once an anti-apartheid leader who has now become a supporter of the war
in Iraq and wends its way through our national life, local Irish political
activity seems to have diminished. Not even St.Patrick’s Day last month
seems to have stirred too many local bones. But two activities this week
have stirred me. The first was the gift of a dozen May Day cards from
Friends of the Northampton Connolly Association. I have never in the past
sent May Day cards, but I am going to send them to good disabled
Wolverhampton friends such as the man who might have played for England at
football or cricket or both; the man who has Downes disease, refuses to
consider it a disability, has carried the Olympic flag for Britain and
should be known as the most influential sportsman in Wolverhampton but is
known by very few; the lad at Wolverhampton Grammar School who was a
Communist and broke all examination results, but was then struck down by one
of these degenerative diseases and was not very happy at his treatment by
the school. Perhaps I shall be able to reveal their names on May Day.
The other Irish matter is the Four Provinces Bookshop, the only Irish
bookshop in England which has been closed for some time while it has been
refurbished, but has now been reopened for part of the week. It is owned by
the Connolly Association and desperately needs finance and volunteers to
ensure its continuance. Please send cheques addressed to the Connolly
Association at 244 Grays Inn Rd. London WC1X 8JP

THE INDIGNATION OF JON SNOW.
Jon Snow is most indignant that Patricia Hewitt will not appear on
Channel 4 News to answer charges that he has made against her. His
indignation would be better served if he was not guilty of a worse offence
of not replying 38 times to the charges of this BLOG that he betrayed his
profession by refusing to challenge Blair on his illegal war in Iraq. His
fellow conspirators are Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark and Martha
Kearney. They will each receive my 39th charge before the night is out.

AN APOLOGY TO PETER RHODES ON ENOCH POWELL’S RIVERS OF BLOOD SPEECH
Writing of the statement of Colleen Moore that certain better educated
West Indians and Irish people resident in Brighton Place had written to
Powell asking his help in preventing further immigration of ‘undesirable
types of W.Indians’ into the area, I characterised this as unproven and
being grist to the mill of present day people who are opposed to Blair’s war
in Iraq, and certainly not racists but think there was some substance in
Powell’s claim that there would be rivers of blood if illegal immigrants
were not rounded up and sent back to their countries of origin instead of
being enabled to live here on housing and other social security benefits. It
will be seen that this is a greatly complicated situation where everyone
must watch their words. Unfortunately I used words which Peter Rhodes found
deeply offensive and I must apologise for them. The words were, ‘Thus ends a
story which had a certain attraction for those who have some sympathy with
Enoch Powell, including Peter Rhodes, the chief reporter of the Express and
Star’. Peter is rightly incensed at this statement pointing out that the
Express & Star from 1968 consistently opposed Powell’s ‘River of Blood’
speech, that his only interview with Powell was distinctly unaffectionate,
that his work on race issues has been recognised with a journalism award by
the Commission for Racial Equality and he resents being portrayed in my blog
as some sort of Powell fan. Fair enough that is what I am apologising for.
What I meant to say, however, is that Peter supports the Colleene Moore
story and he continues to do so by saying that he has talked today with
Collene Moore who is as bemused as he is at my bizarre response to this
story.
So these differences remain. I believe that since Collene More never
lived in Brighton Place she could never have been a party to a letter to
Powell which suggested that Powell should assist in preventing a further
influx of ‘undesirable’ immigrants. If she believes such an approach was
made to Powell, then it is up to her either to produce the said letter or to
produce some evidence that such a letter was sent.

THE NEW RACE EQUALITY UNIT IN WOLVERHAMPTON (REPW).
We have had no reply to our email of 17 April to Adnan Chaudry the
chief officer of the new W’ton Race Equality Unit, so we have sent him a
reminder. It will be recalled that we wanted an address for Sir Trevor
Phillips now chief of the new generalised Equality unit who seems to have
gone to ground and we still have no address for him. We want to ask him (1)
whether he is opposed to the war in Iraq or whether he supports it, and how
he answers the charges of many race relations officers that he is no fit
person to be in charge of race relations. (2) We want to know whether the
new unit will be democratic and open to all who are interested in race
relations or whether it will be a Blairite, New Labour organisation
favouring a limited number of selected organisations from whom those deemed
subversive will be excluded. This latter point also arises in the case of
the W’ton REPW whose present lack of activities make us fear the worst.

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PATRIOTISM AND ST.GEORGE’S DAY.
Last night I dealt with Patriotism in a light hearted way quoting
Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera HMS Pinafore and their hero’s contention
that he was an Hinglishman.
I also said that I had made that statement in 2000 and that I stood by it
today.
Today I deal with the more serious accusation that Patriotism is the
Last Resort of Scoundrels. At first I attributed this to Winston Churchill,
but I can find no reference to this. Instead Google tells me that it is from
the Collected writings of one H.L.Mencken (1926) via Ambrose Bierce’s
Collected Writings (1946) via James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, (Friday April
7 1775).
Following such circularity I was hoping that Johnson’s original
statement originated from some long forgotten 18th century scandal which we
all could revel in, but alas, no such thing and it was an expression that
Johnson pulled out of the air. What a pity! Although perhaps the erudite
ones of the Samuel Johnson Society of Lichfield can tease something out for
us.

BREAKING THE CHAINS
Connecting Histories the organisation Birmingham and Warwick
Universities, B’ham City Council and organisations both black and white,
including yours truly belong to has an ambitious programme of celebrations
of the 200th Anniversary off the ending of the slave trade in Britain. As
part of the project there will be a re-enactment of the march through
Birmingham on 1 August 1838 when Joseph Sturge led a group of school
children through the town to Heneage St. to lay the foundation stone for the
Emancipation School. Each of the Sunday School scholars was presented a
memorial of all those who joined in celebrating the Freedom of the Negroes.
Olaudah Equiano the former slave who gained emancipation and became a
celebrity visited Birmingham more than once and in Autumn this year there
will be a large exhibition of his visit in 1790 to promote his then recently
published autobiography which throws light on the people he met, many of
whom subscribed to his book, and also information about other black
abolitionists in Birmingham.

SEEING OFF BUSH AND BLAIR.
The latest madcap schemes of Bush to invade Iran; to build a three mile
wall between Sunni and Shia communities in Baghdad; and his attempts to
control all three functions of government, legislature, executive and
judiciary which will pave the way to dictatorship and fascism in the USA
must be strenuously resisted internationally particularly by the US
Democratic Party which possesses the power to thwart Bush on all these
issues.
With regard to Bush’s bed mate, Blair, we are in danger of allowing
the May municipal elections and Blair’s stated intention to resign after
these elections to deflect us from the point that the accession of either
Brown or the Tory, Cameron, would make not the slightest difference to our
foreign policy, since all of them support the war in Iraq. We need to
support therefore such new parties as Respect and Stop the War coalition to
achieve these objectives.

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ST. GEORGES DAY
On this day I think I can do no better than quote a letter I sent the
the Express and Star in May 2000. Whether they printed it or not I can’t
remember. Perhaps not for it was one of the times when I was out of favour
with the paper.
I said that an assorted bunch of racists, nationalists and fascists
were trying bonce Wolverhampton Countil to fly the flag of St. George’s over
the Civic Centre. Do not do it, I urged. St.George’s Cross is a dodgy
proposition. A non-existent knight slaying a mythical dragon? Our Welsh
neighbours are not so foolish as to fall for such nonsense.
As for pride in England, why should I be proud of an obstetrical
accident that dropped me in the territory called England. Or is it the
people of England I am supposed to be proud of. But English people come much
the same as other people, some are good, some of them medium and some so bad
I wouldn’t want to share a barge pole with let alone a flag pole.
With regard to showing pride in these matters Pride is one of the
deadly sins, and it goes before a fall.
But it is necessary to define our Englishness now that Scotland seeks
an independent existence. And who better to do it than W.G.Gilbert the
great English satirist, scourge of all pomposity, hypocrites and humbugs.
It will be recalled that in the great comic opera HMS Pinafore
Gilbert’s patriotic words with Sullivan’s equally patriotic music gave their
hero a choice in the matter of nationality:
He might have been a Roosian, a Frenchmen or a
Proosian, or perhaps Hi-ta-l-ian

However you will further recall that after mature reflection:

In spite of all temptations to belong to other
nations
He remained an Hinglishman
He rem-aaaaaaain-ed an Hinglishman

If this is good enough for Gilbert it is good enough for me. I remain a
Hinglishman. I signed my letter ‘Yours patriotically, Corporal GEORGE
BARNSBY Ex-serviceman 1939-46′. I have no reason to change today the point
of view I expressed in 2000.

ARSENE WENGER AND DAVID DEIN
I continue my theme of patriotism with Arsene Wenger’s loss of his
great friend and confidente. I continue to hope that Dein will be restored
to the Arsenal fold and that he only flirted with the idea of selling out to
the American Kroenke.
Today in the Guardian, Amy Lawrence, avid Arsenal supporter, resident
where she can almost look on the Emirate’s Stadium and pioneer woman
football commentator in what is still a man’s world. She still hopes with me
that Dein can be restored, but there is now the troublesome question of what
sort of administrator might be found to replace him. I think we might look
for guidance at that terrible Saturday in Arsenal’s history when Herbert
Chapman died and all of us - supporters, ground staff (of which I was one)
and players learned only just before the match from the newspaper placards
and the subsequent match seemed to last not ninety minutes, but an eternity.
The story was told by Phil Soar and Martin Tyler in their official
History of Arsenal 1886-1998. The death of Herbert Chapman was so sudden and
unexpected that there was not time to find a successor, yet a seamless
solution was found. George Allison who was the best known name in football
commentating had been Managing Director of Arsenal for several months. The
day to day running of the club was in the hands of Joe Shaw who had become
team manager, John Peters secretary, and Tom Whittaker Arsenal’s world
renowned trainer. So the club continued until 1939 with its former elan and
football success when war broke out and players and fans alike were
conscripted into the army. What continuing successes might the club have
achieved but for the war?
And what team in the world has a brighter future today than Arsenal if
it continues in the hands of patriots, and not those who would sell the club
to foreigners for their own selfish ends anad hoped for financial gain?

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——=_NextPart_000_0006_01C785E6.D784B7C0–

LIFE AND ITS SURPRISES.
Two days ago it was the Massacre in Virginia about which we found a
view that few others had thought of. Namely the dual character of US
development from its beginnings i.e its massacre of its aboriginal
population followed at once by its doctrine of Manifest Destiny and
continuing to the present day with the Projection for the New American
Century which failed at its first hurdle when the bravery of the Iraqi
people stopped it in its tracks be refusing to make a reality what Bush and
Blair so often proclaimed a victory. Thus we come to our present problems.
Today is Patriot’s day as I reiterate my faith in Arsene Wenger and
super patriot Sir Jack Hayward of Burma glider piloting action not only to
rescue Arsenal and Wolves from being swallowed up by US imperialists but
also playing a major part in renewing our basic engineering, car making and
other industries from the two fold threat of sell-out to Yankee imperialism
and the supposed inevitable fall to cheap labour from China, India, and the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Common Market.

Tomorrow will be St.Georges Day whose principal beneficiary will be the
British National Party and we must find a way between the Scylla of
disassociating ourselves from those who would take us back to the Holocaust
and the death chambers and the Charybidis of finding a Britishness distinct
from New Labour which continues to support notions of white superiority.

RICKY STENNETT’S BOOK .
The marvels of technology have enabled me today to transfer my last
night’s Blog to Ricky and others mentioned e.g. Marika Sherwood, James
Walvin, Frank Reeves and Ricky. Finding time to write a Blog while leaving
time both to watch some tele. do some reading and also, as today, to
participate in a family birthday meal has not been easy, but it has now been
done 116 times.. Ricky’s book which, as I explained last night, describes
with the accuracy of James Walvin’s the slave trader, the atrocities of
slavery which he, as a half caste endured and the worse treatment of those
who were totally black at the rich and productive Free Mountain Plantation.
But he was eventually sent to Kingston to learn how to administer estates,
this being his future determined without consultation and against which he
eventually rebelled. He then describes his life in the totally racist
British colony of Jamaica, in which he finds recreations of jazz, dancing
and courting not dissimilar to my experiences in a more democratic, but
almost totally racist and anti-Semitic London where I was growing up in the
1930s two years older than Ricky.
Ricky came to Britain in 1947 ten years before the Windrush generation
was encouraged to come to Britain by the government and not least Enoch
Powell himself ,its men to work on our buses and in the filthy iron casting
industries and the women as nurses in our hospitals.
Ricky describes racism in post-1945 Britain in the same detail as he
did his previous experiences in Jamaica. How much more there is to come
before he talks about his Race Relations activities I do not know, but will
put what I learn on tomorrow’s BLOG.

THE PLAY - WHAT I HEARD ABOUT IRAQ.
This is a constantly updated drama. Martin Lynch our anti-war man tells
me that there are three showings in the West Midlands.
10 May at Wolverhampton Arena Theatre; 24 May at the MAC Birmingham; and 30
May at Library Theatre Bloxwich, Walsall. Get there if you can.

RICKY STENNETT.
Yesterday I recommended Ricky’s book. Today I have started to read it
and what a treasure it is. It opens with an unforgettable description of his
birth place, Jamaica. It goes on to explain his terrible plight. Born a half
caste he was beaten and reviled if he dared to try to consort with white
Jamaicans and beaten and reviled if he dared approach the black servile
people.
I must confess that this is the first case I remember of a
Caribbean/White case. Previously from my service in Asia during the second
world war, I encounter the problem of Indian and Asian half-castes, now
known by the euphemistic title of ‘mixed-race’ who suffered the same
treatment as Ricky but never a Caribbean one. It no doubt accounts for
Ricky’s unfortunate encounters so often with the black Race Relations
activists from his early years to the present, and it is part of the merit
of his book that it exposes these problems to people like me for the first
time. And what a triumph of the human spirit that Ricky did not degenerate
into a criminal and revenge seeking murderer, but became one of the most
important pioneering anti-racist activist of his generation. I think I will
be reporting Ricky’s important book much as I reported James Walvin’s recent
book The Trader, the Owner the Slave; one night the Trader John Newton of
Amazing Grace fame turned reluctant Abolitionist, the next night, The
Owner, Thomas Thistlewood whose only service to society was that he recorded
in a dairy for posterity the vileness of slavery, and thirdly the slave
Olaudah Equiano. For example, my question for tomorrow is why is Ricky’s
book entitled Buckra Massa Pickney? Other questions will follow as I read
the book, because I am sure that Ricky’s book will claim a place among what
will become the three classics of the 1907 centenary of the 1807 ending of
slavery, the other two being Walvin’s book discussed above and Marika
Sherwood’s ‘AfterAbolition’.

RACE EQUALITY WEST MIDLANDS.
Organically connected with the above item is the plight of REWM which
has no confirmed grants for the financial year 2007-8 and does not know
whether it will be able to continue to provide its services after the end of
this month (April 2007).
REWM provides an annual Race Equality Digest and Race Equality
Practitioner Series. Its latest publication is its Race Equality Digest 21
Feb 2007 on Ethnic Residential Segregation, a study of 25 local authority
areas. Its conclusions are that the widely held assumption that Asian-Muslim
populations are the most residentially segregated, roughly one quarter of
the sampled areas were less-segregated from the white population than other
ethnic-minority groups. Also that between the two census periods of 1991 and
2001 the level of residential segregation between white and ethnic minority
populations fell in 60% of the sampled local authorities. REWM is renowned
for such original research which pulls no punches and is not afraid to deal
with the political realities of the war in Iraq. There will be New Labour
circles not sorry to see the back of REWM. It will depend on the support of
progressive and radical organisations if it is to survive.

SUNDRY IMPORTANT MATTERS.
I received from Ricky Stennett today his long awaited autobiography.
It is entitled Buckra Massa Pickney by Enrico A Stennett and is available
from Amazon.co.uk and priced at £21-98. Ricky was born in Jamaica and came
to Britain in 1947 at age 19 where within a few months he became a member of
the League for Coloured People and also the Coloured Workers’ Assn of GB and
Northern Ireland. In 1950 with his British wife Margaret he founded the
Cosmopolitan Social Society along with his Jewish friend Stanley Freeman.
This society became defunct in 1952 when, together with African leaders he
founded the African League. I worked with Ricky in the Wolverhampton Race
Equality Council from the 1960s and I was also a participant in the
Anti-Racist Movement in London from 1946 when I was demobbed from the army
after serving 4 years in Burma and India. I look forward immensely to
reading his book and discussing it with him.
David Cameron’s ‘fixing’ of his Party Political Broadcast by never
having anyone he consulted mentioning the war in Iraq was so akin to the
dishonesty of Paxman and co. that I decided to send my 37th notice to
Paxman, Marr, Snow, Wark and Kearney and also my comments in the BLOG to
David Cameron. We shall see if this brings an honest reply from them.
Another concern of mine today has been the waste of throwing away the
Mixtards 30 Innolet dispenser of Insulin within a few days when, if it could
be renewed so much money could be saved. I enquired the cost of these
dispensers and found that for a box of 5 the cost was £20-40. This is
equivalent to insulin for me of just about five weeks. One can be as
wasteful as one likes with ones own money, but as a Socialist I do not waste
public money. I discovered, not only that there was agreement that it would
be a fairly simple engineering job to make these dispensers renewable and
permanent , but that there is considerable support to prevent such waste in
the NHS. I have been collecting these empty plastic cartons for some
months now and will shower a medical engineer working in the Wolverhampton
Royal Hospital Trust, if that is necessary to draw his (or her) attention to
this criminal waste of money..
A welcome visit this morning from Arco Sen a long standing friend. He
is part-author of the highly innovative project of Defeating the Men in
Suits where schools improve their performance by children participating in
activities with the local community rather than orthodox teaching methods
laid down by bureaucrats. The scheme covers schools in a number of
authorities in the Black Country and is now in its third year. Arco also
understands the criminality of closing Bilston Community College, which we
are due to air again soon. The purpose of his visit was to provide me with
evidence of the exclusion of black children from schools which is part of
the material that the racist DfES and the men in suits at the highest level
of civil servants refuse to provide us with. Arco found, however, that he
had left the material at home, so the plans to expose these miscreants is
delayed for another day.

FURTHER PATRIOTIC DEVELOPMENTS AT ARSENAL.
Further speculation on the possibility of David Dein supporting Kroenke
in his takeover bid for Arsenal and even the possibility of Arsene Wenger
leaving the club continue to circulate. We repeat the view that the
determination of the Board that Arsenal should remain British has not only
shown that pessimism with regard to the foreign takeover of our football
clubs is unwarranted, but that patriots such as Arsenal’s Merchant Banking
aristocracy and Sir John Hayward’s fierce patriotism at Wolves can help not
only to keep our football teams British but also revive and redevelop our
lost basic industries such as engineering and automobiles. We continue to
believe that at Arsenal both Dein and Arsene Wenger will patch up their
differences because both are Arsenal men to the core and there is no better
place to be in the football world than at the Emirates Stadium which both of
them worked for.

IMPEACHING BLAIR.
On Wednesday we quoted Raymond Fisher’s letter in the Guardian asking
what had happened to the plans to impeach Blair for his illegal invasion of
Iraq. the refusal of Blair to hold an independent enquiry into the war
demanded by the parents of dead soldiers in Iraq and Blair’s implication in
war crimes arising from the war.
Further developments come today with a letter in the same paper by Phil
Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers in Birmingham who were involved in all
three of these enquiries. Shiner states that impeachment fell because not
enough Labour MPs who supported the war understood that the leaked Downing
St. memos of March 7 2003 showed that the attorney general had deliberately
misled the Commons. On the second issue of the judicial appeal it at present
awaits a Lords’ decision to grant leave to appeal. With regard to war crimes
appeals were made to the International Criminal Court prosecutor who
accepted that war crimes had been committed, but since they were not on the
same scale as, say Uganda he would not undertake an investigation. All
these decisions are being contested by Public Interest Lawyers.