The Barnsby Blog

THE PACE HOTTENS.
The pace of what I knew would be a hectic week hottened as I took my
daily perambulation along Henwood Road down to Joe Davies’ house at 191 and
back to the end of our cul-de-sac, stopping at Geoff Sidbotham’s and his
delightful partner Phyllis who provides me with lovely but forbidden to a
diabetic fruit (or rather sweeties), the humble humbug which I am very
partial to even though they stick on my upper denture and render me
speechless until they eventually melt.

JOSEF STAWINIGA.
I was on my way to Joe’s contemplating how I would put into today’s
BLOG something about Joe the tramp who lived for 30 years as a tramp in a
tent on Wolverhampton ring road and how that shows what special people we
are in Wolverhampton and that this enhances our claim to be the City of
Culture, Sport, Education and Business in Britain. But I was quite taken
aback by the reaction of Joe and his mate Robert Bate who were quite
vitriolic against Fred the Tramp, but also gave me more evidence of what a
special breed of people we are in Wolverhampton against such upstarts as
Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and so on. Joe’s case against the tramp
was that he should have been arrested 30 years ago as a vagrant and this
would have saved us untold thousands of pounds. That in his days in the
Wolverhampton Police the vagrancy laws were strictly enforced, that he would
have been arrested by a policemen like Joe, taken to a ’spike’, cleaned up
for the night, given a bed for the night, made to perform some menial task
and then sent on his merry way with a stern warning not to offend again. I
was most interested in the word ’spike’ which I hadn’t heard of since my
London days, but Joe was by then in full spate with tales of the
Wolverhampton ’spike’ which makes Joe one of the most interesting
characters in Wolverhampton whose life experiences should be taken down by
school pupils looking for dissertations for their GCSE or students studying
for their degrees.
Apparently the Wolverhampton ’spike’ was a reception centre for people
sleeping rough and was situated at the round-about of the main entrance to
New Cross Hospital which was at the time the new Wolverhampton Workhouse. It
had been moved from the town centre on the well known Poor Law principle
that if the work house were at the outer limits of the town fewer people
would be able to use it. So Joe continued with his tirade against present
day asylum seekers and illegal immigrants where our opinions tend to part
company.
Robert Bate, one of our most illustrious steam engine builders and
displayers disapproved of Fred the Tramp on much the same grounds as Joe,
but then went on to tell me two remarkable unknown tales of protest in
Wolverhampton. This week-end Robert will take part with two other
enthusiasts in the London to Brighton Veterans Car Run in a 1904 Panard le
Vasseur. This has been run every year since 1896 and it celebrates the end
of the law passed in that year to limit the speed of the new-fangled motor
car to 4 miles an hour and the obligation that cars should be preceded by a
person with a red flag. The speed limit was then raised to 14mph. According
to Richard this is the longest ever protest campaign that has ever taken
place.
Nor is that the only protest Robert has taken part in. The speed limit
was imposed on steam rollers, which as they rolled asphalt on local road
repairs were originally exempt from the speed limit. Robert took part in
the protest which took the form of steam rollers being taken to MPs
surgeries (one of which was to a surgery of Ken Purchase MP at Bushbury) and
to town halls that eventually forced the government to rescind the ruling.

REOPENING BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE.
Yesterday the BLOG told the tale of the racists and bigots who closed
the first multicultural college in Britain. That no one at the College has
ever been charged with an offence and that the Ombudsman has taken up the
case which is likely to force the Education Dept. to reveal some of the
documents which will show that the College was improperly closed. Also that
the present position is unsustainable when Mark Thompson the
director-general of the BBC and his counterpart at ITV fails to discipline
their employees Paxman, Marr, Wark, Kierney and Jon Snow for failing to
challenge Tony Blair on his illegal and unwinnable war in Iraq and that on
more than 50 occasions these powerful manipulators of public opinion have
failed to reply to my charges. However the BBC complaints authorities have
now sent me three letters from three different people who now acknowledge
that my complaints must be answered and the present position, as I have
said, is untenable and must be attended to.
I have connected these matters with the growth of fascism in Britain
not only from the British National Party but from immigrant groups from
Eastern Europe which, according to Lindsay Hutchinson, has left one of the
most historic buildings in Oldbury, the abandoned Chance Glass Factory,
covered with pre-2nd World War Polish fascist insignia This is also the
charge against the Polish tramp in Wolverhampton discussed above, that he
was an SS Colonel among the large number of war criminals who were admitted
to Britain after the war when they should have been tried with Goering, Hess
and the others for their crimes against humanity..

LINDSAY HUTCHINSON.
Lindsay is one of the most remarkable talents in Birmingham. He has run
the only progressive bookshop in Birmingham since the Communist bookshop
there closed many years ago.The shop is called Bookbane and is at 93 Nineveh
Rd. Handsworth. Lindsay is a devoted Stalinist with a large picture of
Stalin in the shop. He maintains the shop by the expediency of opening it
for several days a week and then working as a skilled electrician in the
Bull Ring. Lindsay has survived the shop windows being broken, being called
a crank, being arrested and imprisoned in Birmingham and perpetual war
between him and what he calls the fascist Labour council which has
terminated in thousands of leaflets being printed by the Trades Council
calling on members of his trade union (which he still insists is the ETU) to
expel him which they refused to do. Now he reports with a certain
satisfaction the undemocratic action of the Trades Council in refusing to
let him have a copy of this letter.
Lindsay has also been a leader of one of the most successful boys’ clubs
in Birmingham which has waged ceaseless war against the attempts of the city
authorities to close it as subversive. All the Bulletins which the club
published have now been brought together and will be sold in the shop.
But Lindsay, like all of us, is growing old, he is 68, and he no longer
feels able to sustain the battle in its present form. This brings me back to
BLOG 288 which suggested that all the thousands of students, administrators,
staff and others who benefited from Bilston Community College should now be
brought together and allowed to campaign for the reopening of the College.
This has brought me to find more satisfactory sources of publicity than
commentisfree@guardian.co.uk and haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk have proved to be. So
I am turning to Myspace which has more than 200 million viewers who converse
with each other, exchange experiences etc.
In the meantime we must depend on the BLOG which raised the question of
how to maintain the GB Working Class Library and Free Communist bookshop
after my demise. I am hopeful that my books will go to a reopened Bilston
College and I am happy to have my papers go to the Wolverhampton Archives in
whose future I have every confidence.
But Lindsay is not in this happy situation. He believes that if his
papers went to the Birmingham Archives they would soon be sold off and
quotes the example of Handsworth Public Library which is brightly coloured
and has perpetual piped music which he likens to a municipal knocking shop
His solution, with which I am in agreement, is to take his stock of
books back to his native Wales where his mother 94 years old and reasonably
well still lives. Here he might find a different way of selling his books,
perhaps by post or even through the computer which he at present abhors. Or
we might find progressive bookshops on the Web through which we might both
sell our books. But in Wales he has found that there will be scope for his
bookbinding at which he has long been a specialist to keep him in his old
age. As for me, I’ll hold on at present to the those items in my library
which Lindsay covets because he says they are priceless and irreplaceable,
such as my books of Charles H.Kerr, the first US socialist publishers from
1896 of Marxist books and my collection of documents and periodicals of the
three Internationals.

BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE.
Today has seen a coming together of BCC veterans. Keith Wymer and I
have got together to discuss the present state of the protest movement
against the closure of the College, or to put it more positively the
movement to re-open it.
You will remember that Friends of BCC had made an application under
the Disclosure of Information Act. This decided that there was no case for
the closure of the college, but we were denied access to the papers unless
we paid some exorbitant sum. Now it seems that the Ombudsman has taken on
the case and is likely to tell the Department for Education that they must
release the appropriate papers. If that happens we are confident they will
show that there was no justification for the closure of the College.
Another prong of our attack has been to show the criminality of
closing the College and we produced a booklet of that name. The very large
and progressive Bilston College was taken over by the very small and
reactionary Wulfrun College although the pretence was that it was a merger.
When the Learning and Skills Council took over from the Further Education
Funding Council it became a party to the illegal closure of the College. A
racist W’ton City Conservative Councillor at that time John Mellor insisted
that there should be an enquiry of the college by the West Midlands Police
Fraud Squad. After nearly two years the Fraud Squad reported that nothing
the College did was of an illegal nature. At this time, no member of the BCC
staff or administration had been charged with any offence and that remains
the position to this day. So the LaSC then decided to charge the College
auditors with having sanctioned educational programmes which were illegal.
The auditors in question were one of the largest firms in the country,
Deloitte and Touche. They came to a cosy agreement that they would plead
guilty to the charges if the agreement was kept secret. This was challenged
by MPs and the local newspaper, the Express and Star and also the
regulatory bodies in Parliament, but these change so often that no charges
have been brought against the Learning and Skills Council.
So we charged the Learning and Skills Council with Racism in 2006 and we
have received no reply. But this is a situation which cannot continue
indefinitely. Public bodies have an obligation to reply to anyone who
communicates with them. If they refuse then they remove the only process
which makes us a democratic society. This is the process we have been
testing with the BBC and its director-general Mark Thompson with the case of
the leading broadcasters Paxman, Marr Wark and Kierney who have now on more
than 50 occasions refused to answer our charges that they failed when
interviewing Tony Blair to mention the war in Iraq and thus made themselves
accessories to that illegal and unwinnable war. We have now had three
letters from the BBC all written by different people, but the trouble that
Mark Thompson is in reflects the recognition that the BBC is obliged to
answer correspondents. As with the Ombudsman and Bilston Community College
the democratic process must be observed if we are not to become a
dictatorship.
It is with this new degree of confidence that we gather together all
those who worked and innovated at the country’s first multicultural college.
It will be nine years in September that the College was closed. The
reopening of it would not be difficult. A few changes in the governing body
to give the Bilston campus an independence which will allow it to recapture
the spirit of the past.
These are the things we shall be discussing in the coming weeks and
months.

A BUSY WEEK AHEAD.
It began today with a very satisfactory visit of Parvinder Chana from
the new Race Equality Partnership Wolverhampton and will end on Saturday by
my attending, I hope, the initiation of Percy Stallard into Wolverhampton
Hall of Sporting fame. What lies between I’ll let you know as it happens,
but I’ll start with today.

RACE EQUALITY PARTNERSHIP WOLVERHAMPTON.
Parvider’s visit was so successful because she was able to enrol the GB
Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop into group membership.
Also accepting that unless old and disabled people like myself are given
access to documents, agenda of meeting, minutes from meetings etc they are
being discriminated against. Parv also convinced me that she is ‘one of us’
in putting race relations above all other considerations in the spirit of
WEB du Bois who wrote that the ‘color line’ was the greatest problem of the
nineteenth century and continues to be the greatest problem of the 21st.
century. Also Parv was born inWolverhampton, educated at Regis School and
so dreams the dream of Wolverhampton being the leading city of Britain in
Culture, Sport, Education and Business.
She was rather surprised to learn about the Battle of Tettenhall and
hordes of Saxon troops bearing down on fleeing Vikings who boarded their
long boats on the Smestow Brook with their ill-gotten gains and from thence
to the river Severn they made their way back to Scandinavia. She asked me if
I believed it and I said that it was a better scenario that that of
Waynesfield where certain influential people including Councillor Phil
Bateman not only believe the battles was fought there, but have recruited
the BBC Time Watch team to investigate the battle of 1015AD which was of
national importance in delaying the conquest of England until 1066. Further,
that Phil has been in touch with our new chief executive, who doubtless
little knew what greatness was being thrust on him when he came to
Wolverhampton and he is being asked to help organise investigations both at
Tettenhall and Waynesfield to prove once and for all where the battle was
fought. True to her Wolverhampton nature Par at once responded that black
children could also be mobilised to take part in this event. As I said, I
think Par and I are kindred spirits and I look forward to working with her
in the future.

ORGANISE! THE WAY FORWARD.
Then I have received a reply to my request that the article published
by British Pensioners, edition 66 Autumn 2007 be emailed to me so that I
could distribute it more widely. This article, in my view, showed the
perspicacity of the elderly in castigating Gordon Brown. I’m still not sure
how I can fully utilise this document, but I make again my quotes from the
document.
Privatisation is still high on the Government’s agenda. A new prime
minister who has played a major role as chancellor of the exchequer
administering and carrying through so much of the privatisation directives
of his New Labour government surely cannot be trusted to stop this
anti-social, anti-people madness.
The main source of their wrath is directed at John Hutton the New Labour
Secretary of State who, at a CBI dinner told that audience that they were
the wealth creators, the entrepreneurs, the innovators. I am determined to
be the voice of business across Whitehall . The Prime Minister has given me
a mandate to be your partner, your voice, your champion right across
government and I intend to discharge this mandate to the full. As the
British Pensioner article goes on to say, if that is not enough to convince
the loyal and blinkered waverers of New Labour that neither the interests of
the workers in general nor the interest of pensioners in particular are
being served by this government, nothing will.
But let me not go on. Read the article for yourselves by downloading it
on g.ttouli@warwick.ac.uk

FIDEL CASTRO AGAIN.
Guardian Two today carries a remarkable feature called My Childhood by
Fidel Castro. There would be nothing remarkable in this feature were it not
written by a man said to have Parkinson’s disease and certainly the victim
of so serious a stomach complaint that he was obliged to turn over his
constitutional duties to his brother. Yet he has now written an
autobiography My Life which although ghosted for him contains such authentic
Castroism that there can be no doubt that he wrote the book himself.
Absolutely remarkable. The feature tells that though he was the son of a
wealthy Cuban landlord he was brought up in rural Cuba where his friends
went barefoot and were largely illiterate.
His father had come to Cuba in his early twenties to fight in the
second war of independence that started in 1895. But Fidel was sent to rural
Cuba to live and be educated where fewer than 20% were literate, whose
children went bare-foot and often went hungry. Fidel’s mother, Lina never
went to school and both she and Fidel taught themselves to read and write.
Fidel tells of his schoolboy pranks and the first ‘revolution’ he led when a
teacher’s zinc roof was bombarded by catapults. Fidel tells his stories
well, but what further revolutions might he not lead if he can write this
remarkable book at age at the age of 81?

ON THE PRESS - BY PETER WILBY.
Wilby writes an interesting article on the future of the press in
Britain based on the story of Roger Alton’s resignation from the Observer
newspaper last week and alleged rivalries between the sister papers the
Guardian and the Observer based on the Guardian’s alleged opposition to the
war in Iraq and a suggested neo-con take over of the Observer.
Hostility between daily and Sunday papers in the same stable are
nothing new and Wilby himself has been accused of being a spineless lackey
of Rusbridger or as another victim of his jealous rages. Rusbridger is the
editor of the Guardian and I know him as the man who refused to allow
supporters of the first multicultural college in Britain, Bilston Community
College, which was closd by racists and bigots, the opportunity to put
their case in Guardian Education and refuses to this day to print anything
written by me. Wilby tells of Sunday paper journalists being accused of
being amateurs and only working two days a week. The customary rivalry
between the two groups is now increased by the fact that both are now rivals
for shrinking resources. Last month the Sunday Telegraph said good-bye to
its latest editor, Patience Wheatcroft who had lasted only eighteen months,
but it is inevitable that Sunday editors will have to face more control by
daily editors as pressures grow to share resources. But newspapers are also
faced with the problem of 24-hour web operations. This has been handled
brilliantly by the Guardian. Whether it is profitable or not is another
matter. Sunday papers are already dependent on their daily big brothers and
are probably doomed. Whether daily papers can survive is a moot question.
Applying these thoughts to our local regional papers we are fortunate
in Wolverhampton to have the only daily paper whose management, editor and
many of their journalists oppose the war in Iraq. This is the Express and
Star. There are two other freebies, one controlled by the same company as
the Express & Star which tends to take a neutral view on Iraq and another
whose management take a neutral attitude to the war, but one of their most
influential columnists is probably opposed to the war, but feels unable to
openly oppose it.
But the ultimate dilemma cannot be ignored. Both the Conservative
leader David Cameron supports the war in Iraq as does Gordon Brown, the
prime minister, but neither will reply to me concerning the refusal of
Paxman, Marr, Wark and Kierney to challenge Blair on the war. Their refusal
to reply to my charges is not a situation that can be maintained without
violating the very principles of democracy which the British people fought
to establish from the seventeenth century and without which we become a
dictatorship. That Mark Thompson the director-general of the BBC must act
to discipline these employees of his. We have now had three letters from the
BBC all dodging the main questions of why he fails to discipline his
employees. I can imagine Peter Rhodes, chief reporter of the Express and
Star, challenging Gordon Brown, should he come to Wolverhampton, on why he
continues to support the illegal and unwinnable war in Iraq or even asking
the straight question of why has George Barnsby’s charges against Paxman and
Co not been answered, which, knowing Peter, he is quite capable of asking.
This shows that regional newspapers have different problems from
national ones, but are fighting to both remain in existence and also retain
the principled stand which is supported by the majority of people in Britain
and the world of opposition to this illegal and unwinnabel war in Iraq.

THE RIFT IN RESPECT IS VERY SERIOUS.
The fact is that George Galloway’s rift with members is very serious.
Galloway is their only MP, he is their only figure of national, and indeed
international standing and Respect is important as one of the organisations
hoping to build a united front against New Labour. Galloway has said that
the Socialist Workers’ Party is undermining the organisation. The SWP has
responded with a powerful plea against a witch hunt quoting the fact that
only 7 out of 16 members of the of the national officers group are SWP
members and of the 50 members of the General Council only a minority of
members are SWPers.
I have so far refused to take sides in this dispute asking our local
member Martin Lynch for his opinion and also a newly appointed regional
officer whose appointment was clearly a step forward in organising Respect
locally. A provisional view of mine would be that Respect has so far been
organised on a limited basis of personal support for Galloway and Muslim
support in the East End of London. There are other groups aspiring to build
a national base. One of these is the Stop the War Coalition which seems to
be more broadly based in the trade unions. Then there is Labour Briefing
incorporating Voice of the Unions whose main allegiance is to the Labour
Party and the original Labour Representation Committee which brought the
Labour Party into existence. The LRC is holding a national conference on
Saturday 17th November at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq. London from 10am to
4-30pm. Speakers include Tony Benn, Katy Clark Jeremy Corbyn and John
McDonnell all MPs, trade union leaders Mark Serwotka (PCS) and Matt Wrack of
the Fire Brigades Union, also Kate Hudson of CND.
In the ordinary course of events one would hope to see both Respect and
Stop the War uniting. But of course times are not normal nor have they ever
been. There are important individuals, none more important than journalists
and newscasters who I am still trying to bring to book for their failure to
question Blair on the war in Iraq and who thus became accessories to that war. I
refer to Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark, Martha Kierney and Jon
Snow who have now failed to reply to me on 50 occasions and are currently
the
subject of a third letter from the BBC in which Mark Thompson, the
director-general of the BBC and Lord Grade of ITV refuse to take
responsibility for their employees and discipline them for failing to reply
to my letters. This is now a constitutional matter, since their failure to
reply to me means that an important democratic safeguard is removed and this
is part of a process now quickening under Gordon Brown to remove the
liberties for which working class people in Britain struggled for centuries
to achieve. Other journalists on newspapers such as Polly Toynbee also wield
vast influence and it may be that mass movements of the past have been
rendered obsolete by two modern inventions. the television and the computer
.. This is a subject we shall pursue in the next few days.

ARSENAL.
In the meantime we mention Arsenal, not only because I have been a
supporter for 70 years but because this club is almost alone (excepting
Wolves on a rather smaller footballing scale) in refusing to be sold off to
foreigners and also of questioning the idea that to survive in modern
football one must have a foreign owner willing to spend billions of £s.
Arsenal face a testing fortnight. Tonight they faced Liverpool away at
Anfield. The fact that they drew means they cling precariously to the top
spot in the Premiership. They face an ever greater test next Saturday when
they face Manchester United at Old Trafford. Whoops, that’s not right. The match is at the the Emirates, I am told; all the better.It is clear that they have
built under Arsene Wenger a remarkable team and they carry on their young
shoulders the hopes of all who want not only our football teams to remain
British but also our basic industries which this government seems unwilling
to do by not protecting us from countries with cheap labour nor protecting
us against the neo-Con policies of the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the Common Market.

MAKING WOLVERHAMPTON THE EUROPEAN CENTRE OF CULTURE, SPORT, EDUCATION, AND
BUSINESS.
We are used to other cities laying claim to this title and almost every
week there is a listing of cities in order of something or other. This time
it has been Wolverhampton bottom of the league for boozing. This has to be
inverted and many of us will be surprised that we are the least drunken
urban area in Britain, but we won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Those of
us proud of a city which has been the centre of the Black Country since the
Industrial Revolution began in the eighteenth century, those of us who know
of the skills of our working people today which are in danger of being lost
for ever, and those of us who won’t settle for Britain becoming a banana
republic and us having to leave the land of our birth and emigrate. Let us
instead join together in making Wolverhampton the finest city in
Britain which this BLOG is dedicated to.

FIDEL CASTRO LIVES LONG ENOUGH TO WRITE HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
Dear old Fidel who has survived as many attempts by the USA to
assassinate him as I have made to nail Paxman, Marr, Wark, Kierney and Jon
Snow for failing to challenge Blair on the war in Iraq, survives hale and
heart it seems.
Saturday’s Guardian carries a feature today headed , ‘Conversations
with
Castro” and tells how aged 81 the world’s longest serving leader is turning
his thoughts to his legacy and his succession. In an exclusive interview
with Ignacio Ramonet he talks about vanity and cruelty, and reveals his
salary and plans for retirement.
First question. Those who criticise the revolution blame you entirely,
they talk about Castro’s Cuba. Answer: These people tend to personalise, as
though the people did not exist. The millions of people who have struggled
to defend the revolution; the hundreds of thousands of doctors and
professional people, those who farm, produce, study these people don’t
exist. All that exists is an evil guy named Castro. The number of times I
have to sign autographs you cannot imagine. When I meet Americans who come
here and talk to me…sometimes there are 50 people at a meeting, they give
me a bouquet of flowers or something and the number of books, cards and
thing
I have to sign, the number of pictures I have to let them take and so many
flashbulbs that you can hardly see. So I guess I’m some kind of strange,
unreal figure…. Interruption, next question ‘A Star?’
Reply: But I’m very self critical. When I say too much or something
comes out of my mouth which might sound a little vain, I’m hard on myself.
Really hard. You have to keep a watch on yourself. Throughout the years all
that influence and power I think I am less conceited, less pretentious,
less self-satisfied. It’s a struggle against your instincts. I believe that
its education, or sincere and tenacious self-education that turns a small
animal into a man.
Next question: How do you think history will judge you. Answer: That’s
something not worth worrying about. Napoleon talked about la gloire, Well
in lots of countries today the name Napoleon is known for its cognac
rather than the exploits of the real man. So why worry?
Third question: Have you ever though of retiring? Answer: We know that
time passes and human energies fade. But I’m going to tell you what I told
our
campaneros in 2003 when they elected me president of the council of state.I
told them, Now I see that my fate was not to come into the world and rest
at the end of my life. And I promised to be with them, if they wished as
long as necessary so long as I know myself to be useful. Not a minute less,
not a second more. Every year I devote more attention to the
revolution…because one has more experience, one has meditated and thought
more . Plato said in The Republic that the ideal age for occupying ruling
positions is after 55. In my view what in Plato’s day would be 55 would
today be around 80.
Question 4: How is your health? Answer: Well I’m fine…above all full
of energy, I have great enthusiasm for things. I feel quite, quite well,
both physically and mentally. I’m sure the habit of exercise has contributed
to that. Exercise helps not only the muscles, but also the mind.
Next question: In 2005 the CIA announced that you had Parkinson’s
disease. What comment do you have about that. Answer: It must be a
confession of what they have been unable to do for so long - assassinate me.
If I were a vain man I might even be filled with pride by the fact that
these morons now say they’ll have to wait until I die. Every day they invent
new stories about me. Castro’s got this, Castro’s got that. Well it doesn’t
matter if I get Parkinson’s. Pope Paul II had Parkinson’s and he
travelled all over the world for I don’t know how many years.
Question 6: If for some reason you should die, your brother Raul would
be your undisputed successor? Answer: If something happened to me
tomorrow, the National Assembly would meet and elect him - there’s not the
slightest doubt. But he’s catching up to me in years, so its also a
generational problem. We’ve been fortunate that we who made the revolution
have brought up three generations. There has always been close ties with
young people and students. I have a great deal of hope, because I see
clearly that these people I call the fourth generation are going to have
three or four times the knowledge that we in the first generation had.
Question 7 You’re a man who’s admired but others accuse you of being a
cruel dictator. Answer: I don’t understand why I’m called a dictator. What
is a dictator? It is someone who makes arbitrary decisions, who acts above
institutions, who is under no restraint but his own desires and whims. In
that case Pope Paul II who always opposed war could be considered a dictator
and President Bush considered the most democratic of leaders. That’s the way
European leaders treat Bush without realising that Bush can make terrible
decisions without consulting the Senate, the House of Representatives or
even his own cabinet. Not even the Roman emperors had the powers of the
President of the United States. I don’t take unilateral decisions. This
isn’t even a presidential government. We have a Council of State and my
functions as leader exist within a collective. I have authority and
influence for historical reasons, but I don’t give orders or rule by decree.
Question 8: What about the charge of cruelty. Answer: I really think
that a man who has devoted his entire life in fighting cruelty and
oppression of every kind, to serving others, to preaching and practising
solidarity, I think all of that is totally incompatible with cruelty. How
can people say that even one man was tortured in Cuba. Here no one has been
imprisoned for being a dissident or because they see thing differently from
the way the revolution does. Our Courts sentence people to prison on the
basis of laws, and they judge counter-revolutionary acts . People who put
themselves at the service of a foreign power against their own nation have
always been seen as most serious.
What about your wealth? I have a few pesos because after you’ve paid
the amounts set in place since the first year of the revolution for each
service, which are pretty reasonable, you may have some left over. I’m paid
the same salary I always was and out of that I have to pay party dues, so
much per cent for housing. I lack for nothing materially speaking. But I
don’t need much. My salary at the exchange rate of 25 pesos per dollar is 30
dollars a month, but I’ve been put on the list of the world’s richest people
twice now. I don’t know why they do it, its ridiculous. I don’t have a cent
of my own. And I’ll have the glory of dying without a penny of convertible
currency. I’ve been offered millions to write memoirs and books, but I’ve
never done it.
This is only part of the Conversation with Castro. But I’m hastening to
buy his My Life by Fidel Castro with Ignacio Ramonet published by Allen Lane
on November 1st at £25.
Meanwhile I return to the splendid Cuba Si published by the Cuba
Solidarity Campaign which deals with the everyday happenings in Cuba. The
fact that its national product will rise by 10% in 2007, the fact that it
is training doctors throughout the world including the USA; its special
education campaign which has eradicated non-literacy in Cuba and is going on
to do the same in other Latin America countries .Also the reality of the of
the blockade of Cuba by the USA and the continued illegal imprisonment of
the Miami Five. The embargo, which the United Nations agreed by 183 to 4
last year should be ended was in fact increased by the USA this year and
Perez Roque, Cuban Foreign Minister has said ‘The sanctions are not a
bilateral issue but an economic war on an international scale’.

TRISTRAM HUNT AND THE PUTNEY DEBATES.
I have recently had an email from Tristram replying to my request for
his support for two pet projects of mine - the Battle of Tettenhall 1015AD
and annual commemoration of the Christmas 1914 truce when Germans and
British troops fraternised and play the well-known football match in
No-Man’s-Land. Tristrams reply has shown interest in the Battle of
Tettenhall, but is more doubtful about the Chrismas truce. I disagree with
him. The significance of the Christmas truce is that for the first time
since Cromwell’s day working men deprived militarists and politicians of
their supposedly God given right to send ‘their’ workers in uniform to fight
and kill their working class brothers in Germany when both were bound by
agreements with the 2nd International to oppose the war if it broke out.
Also the truce had long-term repercussions as the militarists and
politicians on both sides had extreme difficulty in persuading their men to
fight. And, indeed it has resonance today with the possibility of British
troops in Iraq refusing to fight an illegal and unwinnable war.
But Tristram is now involved in another democratic project which goes
to the very heart of our rights and liberties. Laast year Guardian reders
were asked to nominate the neglected event in Britain that best deserves a
permanent monument. The event chosen was the Putney Debates of 1647 and its
place in history will be discussed tonight at the very same church where the
debates took place. In 1647 the Civil War against the Charles 1st was all
but over. Yet rank and file soldiers feared that parliament and some of the
generals (the Grandees) were waiting to make peace with Charles 1st who
believed in the divine right of kings. The most famous declaration of the
debate came from the Leveller, Colonel Rainsborough who argued that, ‘I
think the poorest he that is in England hatha life to live as the greatest
he and therefore every man who lives under a government ought first, by his
own consent put himself under that government; and I do think the poorest
man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that
he hath not had a voice to put himself under’. There in a nutshell is not
only the first principle of democracy but also that distrust of politicians
seen today and raises Communist principles of the more radical Diggers who
dug up estates and worked for a Socialist Britain as long ago as the
seventeenth century.

THE ANTI-ACADEMIES ALLIANCE
Here is the latest group to challenge educational Academies with, very
properly, a statement and photo of Ken Purchase the Wolverhampton MP who has
made himself a leader in Parliament challenging the assumptions on which the
claimed success of these schools rests. Ken opposes the acceptance of two
academies in Wolverhampton as long as they accept local children which both
W’ton City Council and the local National Union of Teachers accept. But this
is a con as the essence of Academies is that they are accountable to nobody,
can take extra money from whom they like and so are not bound to keep any
promise they have made and will certainly ditch W’ton children at the first
convenient moment.
Ken Purchase chaired the June Committee of Enquiry which brought
together 40 campaigning groups of parents, governors, teachers, support
staff and educational trade unions. Lord Harris, another unelected supporter
of Academies, writes, I havae a very good relationship with Andrew (Lord
Adonis). He rings me up and says, ‘Do you want this school’? and I ask what
it’s like and if it sounds the short of place we are interested in I say yes
..
What a way to run an education system!

A THIRD LETTER FROM THE BBC.
Three letters from three different people. A least the BBC takes their
complaints procedures seriously. This third letter extols the BBC in
questioning Tony Blair on the war in Iraq and its ‘robust’ determination to
give a fair and impartial coverage of the war. More usefully it reminds me
of
its centralised complaints process of contacting BBC artists directly.
So how does it come about that Mark Thompson BBC director general
fails to discipline his employees Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark,
and Martha Kierney who have now for the 50th? time refused to reply to me on
their refusal to question Blair if they did tackle Blair? It would be a
simple reply telling me that I was mistaken So my complaint against Mark
Thompson still stands. Why did he not discipline his employees on their
refusal to contact me?

WOLVERHAMPTON’S SPORTING HALL OF FAME.
Frank Spittle rang me today to remind me that at a time when the unique
W’ton Hall of Fame was about to have one of its greatest triumphs by
admitting Percy Stallard, radical and rebel who revolutionised road racing
in Britain and made Wolverhampton the centre of road cycling (and so it
remains) that Wolverhampton City Council should take it into its silly head
to close down this institution. Nobody is better qualified to criticise the
Council than Frank. He was a member of the voluntary body set up to advise
the W’ton Council on sporting matters in the town, was chair of it, and
remained a member until this day but with a more desultory attendance as age
and bureaucratic control took over. Frank himself was a renowned cyclist
and sportsman as well as being the first ever Wolves FC mascot at a very
early age as recently disclosed in the Express and Star. Also his brother
John is a member of the Hall of Fame.
So Frank contacted W’ton City Council to ask why they had voted
unanimously during the week to abolish the Hall of Fame. He received a reply
from Councillor John Reynolds, the Cabinet spokesman for sport which is
almost incomprehensible and is in bureaucrat-speech rather than plain
English and so Frank has asked me to put the matter on my BLOG tonight,
which I have done.
But what a pity it is to spoil Percy Stallard’s big occasion at the Hall
of Fame and I hope we can reach a happier conclusion before the great day on
Saturday 3rd. November.

I AM CLOSING THE BLOG AT THIS POINT WITH MUCH UNFINISHED BUSINESS BECAUSE I
AM STILL HAVING PROBLEMS WITH MY COMPUTER

BACK TO NORMAL.
Thanks to Martin George, our webmaster, thing are back to normal and
I have taken the opportunity to review some of the contents of my incoming
emails and website items.
For the first time since it went on the web I listened to my interview
with Clara, my Mother. Technically this is a wonderful production, an hour’s
listening with a background of a whirling kaleidoscope of colour.
Then I turned to the section on ‘Local Communist History’. Hear I
re-read the history put together by Charlie Johnson of comrades in Rowley
Regis of himself , George Johnson (who fought at the battle of Kohima in
Burma), of Carlo Piccirelli (who came from a background of Italian wartime
Partisan activity) and Jim Westwood who was our first Communist councillor
in Rowley Regis the area renowned for Mary McArthur and the famous Workers’
Institute which has been taken down brick by brick and is being re-erected
at the Black Country Living Museum.
But I looked in vain for the series of cameos of Wolverhampton
Communists which we put together at the Memorial meeting to Marion George
recently, nor the activities of Communists during World War Two including
the sterling work of the factory branch at the aircraft factory at Boulton
Paul increasing war time production. Nor could I find items such as the
history of Communism in Wolverhampton from its beginnings in 1919 to its
disbandment in the 1970s? when it became Democratic Left which I wrote for
Ad News. I also wrote on W’ton SW branch of the Party, the NE Branch and the
other factory branch at Meadows and on the comrade who was broken hearted at
the suicide of Phyllis Foy and retreated to Peterborough, or the one
Communist councillor we ever had in Wolverhampton who disgraced himself and
us by embezzling funds, or the work of the Communist Party in the 1930s,
recently revealed by John Ogden of the Express ad Star with his ‘old
adverts’ series which advertised a W’ton Communist Party meeting in 1939
opposing the Munichites and demanding a united front with the Soviet Union
to prevent World War 2 to which our own Max Bennett, then aged about 5 was
taken by his father, Norman Bennett, a skilled engineer who suffered
victimisation for being a Communist and opened the cafe in Wolverhampton
Market and is run still by the third generation of Bennetts, two of them
still around. Then there is the splendid series of portraits of Communists
collected by the Transport and General Workers’ Union, Graham Stevenson,
among whom there are Black Country communists.
I’m hoping that Martin George will be able to work yet another almost
miraculous feat and collect all these items together.
All the above gives point to an email I have received from Steve
Bennett who grew up in the household of Don Bennett. Don and his brother
known as Dusty, were influential Communists in Walsall. Both were born in a
workhouse and when they left went to the USA where they joined the WOBBLIES
the Workers of the World organisation. When the so-called Civil War broke
out in Spain (so-called because if the legitimate Republican government of
Spain had been allowed to buy arms the Franco uprising would quickly have
been brought to an end; but they were not allowed to do so by a spurious
Non-Intervention Act of Neville Chamberlain and his Appeasers which denied
arms from Britain and the western world, so that the sole supplier was the
Soviet Union with the inevitable cries of Soviet domination.
Don Bennett came home from Spain, but Dusty was killed and his memory
is preserved in the records of the International Brigade which Cyril Smith
of Walsall has for many years attempted to interest the people of Walsall
and the town council of their two important citizens. Also Don Brayford, the
Midlands CP organiser who devoted his life to the party for a party wage
that was always inadequate and often non-existent. It was this which made
him so angry at the thought that the CPGB was taking money from the Russians
and both he and I protested strongly about at the time.
Steve Bennett goes on to say that while he was a child in the 1960s and
70s. the political issues and schisms both within and without the CP were
very real to him at the time, and there must be others who grew up as
children of Communists and experienced a life very different from their
non-communist friends. He then makes the suggestion that may be some one,
some day will get round to chronicling the experience of the sons and
daughters of party members. He adds that particularly as a group to see how
our views and ideas have developed from the perspective of their own
adulthood.
I emailed back that I think this is a splendid and realisable project,
that it had already been done nationally with the book, ‘Children of the
Revolution - Communist Childhood in Cold War Britain’, by Phil Cohen. But to
pilot such a project for the Black Country we would need a local
organisation and at the moment there is only one such organisation and it is
the George Barnsby Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop. But
what would happen if I were to drop dead tomorrow? And this brings us back
to whether the Library can survive my death. Its short term future is
probably secure as all my papers go to the Wolverhampton Archives, but we
have not yet built an organisation to carry on after me. But I commend Steve
Bennett’s project and will continue to press the sons and daughters of Black
Country communists to put pen to paper.

PHIL SHINER AND THE ATROCITIES OF BRITISH TROOPS.
Phil made very serious charges against British troops in Iraq in an
article in the Guardian this week. I immediately contacted him and asked him
to email me a copy of his article so that I could distribute it on my BLOG.
In the meantime I have had no reply from Mark Thompson, the BBC director
general on his failure to discipline his employees Paxman, Marr, Wark and
Kierney for failing to raise for now the 50th time their failure to
challenge Blair when interviewing him on the war in Iraq. They thus made it
easier for Blair to join Bush and thus became accessories to the conflict
themselves. Also that refusal to carry out obligations to record and reply
to all correspondence to which they are committed removes the one safeguard
of our democratic system. I have therefore contacted Phil asking him to give
me a legal opinion in Mark Thompson’s rejection of my complaint on the
specious grounds that since my complaints did not refer to a specific BBC
programme they must be rejected.

SIR TRVOR PHILLIPS AND THE WAR IN IRAQ.
Another one who refuses to reply to me despite his constitutional
obligation to do so is the new chair of the new equality organisation for
Equality and Human Rights. We have requested that he explain his present
attitude to the war in Iraq, believing that no one supporting that war is
fit to head any organisation devoted to racial equality.

THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES.
Yesterday my comupter crashed for good. There was nothing I could do
about it. I have been in trouble with it for about a week, although for the
past two nights I have been able to type out the daily BLOG to be put on the
web later. But yesterday I struggled to type the BLOG and it was nearly 3 am
when when I was ready to send it, but when I sent it it refused to go. Even
worse it had great chunks of it deleted on the screen and I feared the
worst. It was a BLOG that I was particularly pleased with entitled DEFEAT
SNATCHED OUT OF THE JAWS OF VICTORY and was an answer toRugby fans who have
admonished me for not getting patriotically het up at the World Cup final. I
have Rugby and explained why.
It went on to deal with other sports where Britain has ultimately been
defeated after the highest of expectations Our soccer team knocked out of
the world cup, Our tennis players withour representation at Wimbledon after
the preliminary rounds. Even our splendid women footballers beaten by
Germany in their world cup final, and perhaps the unkindest cut of all
Ronnie O’Sullivan beated by an Asian lad from Hong Kong.
Yet two black English sportsmen who should have a world impact, firstly
Lewis Hamilton who so nearly became world champion of the motor racing world
at his first attempt and whose skill, temperament, and intelligence will
make him a sporting icon to rival Muhomed Ali and Theo Walcott, still little
more that 16 who tonight dominated the greatest victory ever 7-0 in the
European Cup.
Which brings me to Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager who stands for
British clubs remaining British and whose youth development schemes have
produced yet another fabulous team which eschews the belief that is handing
so many teams to foreign billionaires, namely the belief that to remain in
the top 4 of football access to unlimited funds is necessary.
No wonder Wenger is in such demand. Foreign countries want him as their
manager. But not only football clubs. How about Wenger for Prime Minister?
Certianly one of his first acts would be to bring our troops home from Iraq.
It is now fifteen minutes after midnight and it had been my intention to
discuss a number of important emails in my inbox. But these can wait until
tommorow. I am not going to ’send’ today’s Blog but ask my webmaster, Martin
George if I can send it tommorow. In the meantime, I’m off to bed.

DEFEAT SNATCHED OUT OF THE JAWS OF VICTORY.
I have been railed by some of my best friends for not mentioning
Rugby more on this BLOG. But I was educated at Battersea Central School
where our game was soccer and we played on cinder pitches in the Park Here
you had to pick yourself up after every challenge by an opponent ignoring
every scratch and bruise and make your way back to school. It was a man’s
game even though we were only boys. Rugby was a game played by cissies at
the adjoining Grammar School and also by thuggish adults who we rightly
identified with the
ruling class who decided our destiny.
It is with similar thoughts that I have followed, sometimes with
enthusiasm, the fate of our sporting idols over the past couple of weeks. On
Saturday we were knocked out of the Rugby world cup. It was, of course
almost a miracle that we reached the semi-finals but not even Jonny
Wilkinson could repeat his exploits and those supporters who say that we are
all the stronger for the defeat and will come back stronger in the future,
are indulging in a bit of wishful thinking.
On Thursday in Moscow it was our English football team that was beaten
and England was out of the world cup for the first time since 1964 is it?
Here the knives were out for Steve McClaren the English manager, and here
again not even our hero could save us. Wayne Rooney his hair seemingly
thinning at such an early age with so much expectation on his shoulders was
both hero and villain, scoring the first goal, but conceding the penalty
which put Russia back in the game.
Then yesterday came a great individual disappointment as Lewis
Hamilton,
the young, black lad who, with his father, has stormed his way into the
previously exclusive sport of motor racing. If a BBC feature film on
Saturday night is true, Lewis has been coached for his destiny from the age
of five which is even a more remarkable feat of blacks storming of
capitalism’s ramparts. Moreover, Lewis is a fearless, highly intelligent and
eloquent you man, not ashamed of saying that besides his father the two men
he most admires are Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Here is indeed a
British sporting icon who will be around for the next decade and prove as
important a multicultural champion of black people as Mohamed Ali.
To return to sport , this season has seen the departure of that
worthy nearly man of tennis, Tim He-man and he has not yet been replaced
by
that potential world champion, Andrew Murray, whose wrists are giving him
trouble. It is to be hoped that he does not disappoint us because here is
another lad who can speak up for himself. Perhaps the
unkindest cut of all was Ronnie O’Sullivan’s defeat by Marco Fu, the Asian
snooker player from his native Hong Kong.
Even our splendid women footballers who play such attractive
football, and score lots of goals failed in the end against Germany. Around
them there was a male conspiracy
of silence not to reveal the teams they played for, many of whom were
Arsenal players.
And talking of Arsenal they
still top the Premiership with their inimitable brand of youth development
which might have to be sustained with the loss of Fabrigas. No wonder
Arsene
Wenger the champion of teams remaining British is in such great demand
ranging from suggestions that he manage England, or other national teams, to
the not entirely irresponsible view that he take over as Prime Minister from
the accident prone Gordon Brown. At least we would have the war in Iraq
ended and our troops brought home.
And I think this is the general lesson of today’s foray into sport.
Britain is still the greatest footballing nation in the world. End the war
and there will be lots more money for the government to invest in sport

THOSE WHO BREACH TRUST AND WHO FAIL TO REPLY.
It was on 16 October that I emailed Sir Trevor Phillips new chief
executive of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights requesting
that he explain his attitude to the war in Iraq. Despite being bound to
acknowledge all correspondence and reply to it, I have so far received no
reply.
A similar state of affairs exists at the BBC where I have received no
acknowledgement from Mark Thompson of my complaint that he failed to
discipline his employees Paxman, Barr, Wark and Kierney that they failed to
question Blair on the war in Iraq thus facilitating his support for Bush.
Also the refusal of these named commentators to reply to these charges on
about 42 occasions. These breaches by the most powerful newscasters of the
day to reply thwarts the democratic process and I shall pursue them to the
ends of the earth if necessary to get an answer. In the case of Jeremy
Paxman I have apologised for being wrong about this because he did at least
once challenge Blair. So why doesn’t he acknowledge my apology and leave it
at that?