The Barnsby Blog

CASTIGATION WITH GOOD INTENT.
I ended last yesterday’s Blog by criticising some of the Wolverhampton institutions that have no intention of replying to me however often I write to them. This is obviously bad manners, undemocratic and ultimately unsustainable if our democratic principles are to survive . To put it rather grandly if I am deprived of democracy then everyone is.
I started with criticising Wolverhampton Inter-faith Group whose silence has been deafening when they should be supporting our Muslim compatriots facing Islamophobia from every side. I went on to slate the Wolverhampton Partnership a group I believe to be crucial to the development of Wolverhampton as a city first in Britain for Culture, Sport and Business. They haven’t even had the decency to let me know what they think their role is in the City let alone talk about the crucial role I consider they should play.
Tonight I turn to other non-repliers, some of them more in sorrow than in anger. Take first a lady I much admire, Rachael Heyhoe Flint. I have asked her to address two questions. First who controls Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club? Is it the local authority who seem to own both the pitch and the buildings and lease it to the club at a peppercorn rent of £1 a year, or the Liverpudlian property developer, Steve Morgan who paid £30million to buy the club. One would have thought that this recent development arising from a plan to extend Molineux would have agitated many minds, but it seems it is being kept secret. The other matter involving Rachael is of even more recent origin. She will have read the letter in the Express & Star last night by Michael Harper who says that for him it was the blackest day since the retirement of Steve Bull. This is the closure of the Wolves Academy which had achieved the status of the top half dozen Football Academies in the country all down to the work of Chris Evans and his colleagues. This stresses the absolutely unrivalled prestige of Wolverhampton in the field of sport which includes Wolves, Percy Stallard the cycling revolutionary, Frank Spittle who pioneered Rifle Shooting and might have brought an Olympic Games event to Aldersley Stadium and Len Crane motor cycling and sidecar pioneer and recently honoured at Westminster for restoring and continuing to work one of the only steam powered water drawing engine at the Bratch, Wombourne. These are our sporting and engineering pioneers making Wolverhampton the most important city in Britain.
Another institution I criticise reluctantly is the new Race Equality Unit in Wolverhampton, Race Equality Partnership Wolverhampton (REPW). This replaces the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council which was precipitately closed by Sir Trevor Phillips. But Wolverhampton has been without a race relations unit for nearly five years and the present young incumbents probably have neither the muscle nor the experience to answer the two main questions posed of it which are is to be a democratic organisation controlled by its members or a New Labour organisation of undemocratic appointed leaders. And the second question is whether this organisation should be controlled by Sir Trevor Phillips who initially considered that the Iraq war did not come ‘within his remit’ and who continues not to reply to our question of whether he supports the illegal, racist and unwinnable wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
The third person we criticise reluctantly is our new Chief Executive, Richard Carr. He inherits a city with one of the most important national historical questions of whether the Battle of Tettenhall in 915AD was fought in Tettenhall or Wednesfield and also one of the most energetic councillors, Phil Bateman, who is as determined as I am that the matter be put to the ultimate test of historical and archaeological investigation in which local schools and teachers would play a key role. Unfortunately schools and colleges seem reluctant to be drawn into this ‘live history’ project or to publish for the world to see what history they do teach and whether it is ‘fit for purpose’ in our present multicultural world.
The other question we asked Mr.Carr was ‘Who owns Wolverhampton?’ as masses of competing so-called Regeneration bodies were put into place, seemingly leaving him with very little part to play. These questions were put to the latest regenerator a Mr.Catchpole who we asked how he was going about his task. We also asked Mr.Carr how it came about that he seems to have lost so many of the powers that belonged to his predecessors. These questions were put on the 3rd of October, but no word has been received from Mr.Catchpole, Richard Carr or Roger Lawrence the leader of the Wolverhampton City Council. Mr Carr does not improve the situation by being out of his office for most of the week, and not even available on a mobile phone, perhaps as befits one who has little to do.

THE NATIONAL ISSUES
Meanwhile Gordon Brown meets fresh indignities as he is now accused of being a McBean. Locally the position has deteriorated as not only teachers, but all other municipal workers are given papers either declaring them redundant or reducing their salaries. I will say, what I said, yesterday, that I shall deal with these issues tomorrow. I hope to do so, but meanwhile my blood sugar level has been very low today and I fear a ‘hypo’ which could land me back in hospital. So at this unprecedently early hour of I send this BLOG with the warning Public Services Awards have taken place in which Wolverhampton schools have won nothing. The same applies to successes for schools in teaching numeracy, nothing for Wolverhampton. No one will save us but ourselves in the race for making Wolverhampton the leading city of Culture, Education, Sport and Business. Put aside sloth, inertia, indifference and above all promote democratic practices in the city, for our lives could virtually depend on it.

CASTIGATION WITH GOOD INTENT.
I ended last yesterday’s Blog by criticising some of the Wolverhampton
institutions that have no intention of replying to me however often I write
to them. This is obviously bad manners, undemocratic and ultimately
unsustainable if our democratic principles are to survive . To put it rather
grandly if I am deprived of democracy then everyone is.
I started with criticising Wolverhampton Inter-faith Group whose
silence has been deafening when they should be supporting our Muslim
compatriots facing Islamophobia from every side. I went on to slate the
Wolverhampton Partnership a group I believe to be crucial to the development
of Wolverhampton as a city first in Britain for Culture, Sport and Business.
They haven’t even had the decency to let me know what they think their role
is in the City let alone talk about the crucial role I consider they should
play.
Tonight I turn to other non-repliers, some of them more in sorrow than
in anger. Take first a lady I much admire, Rachael Heyhoe Flint. I have
asked her to address two questions. First who controls Wolverhampton
Wanderers Football Club? Is it the local authority who seem to own both the
pitch and the buildings and lease it to the club at a peppercorn rent of £1
a year, or the Liverpudlian property developer, Steve Morgan who paid
£30million to buy the club. One would have thought that this recent
development arising from a plan to extend Molineux would have agitated many
minds, but it seems it is being kept secret. The other matter involving
Rachael is of even more recent origin. She will have read the letter in the
Express & Star last night by Michael Harper who says that for him it was the
blackest day since the retirement of Steve Bull. This is the closure of the
Wolves Academy which had achieved the status of the top half dozen Football
Academies in the country all down to the work of Chris Evans and his
colleagues. This stresses the absolutely unrivalled prestige of
Wolverhampton in the field of sport which includes Wolves, Percy Stallard
the cycling revolutionary, Frank Spittle who pioneered Rifle Shooting and
might have brought an Olympic Games event to Aldersley Stadium and Len Crane
motor cycling and sidecar pioneer and recently honoured at Westminster for
restoring and continuing to work one of the only steam powered water drawing
engine at the Bratch, Wombourne. These are our sporting and engineering
pioneers making Wolverhampton the most important city in Britain.
Another institution I criticise reluctantly is the new Race Equality
Unit in Wolverhampton, Race Equality Partnership Wolverhampton (REPW). This
replaces the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council which was precipitately
closed by Sir Trevor Phillips. But Wolverhampton has been without a race
relations unit for nearly five years and the present young incumbents
probably have neither the muscle nor the experience to answer the two main
questions posed of it which are is to be a democratic organisation
controlled by its members or a New Labour organisation of undemocratic
appointed leaders. And the second question is whether this organisation
should be controlled by Sir Trevor Phillips who initially considered that
the Iraq war did not come ‘within his remit’ and who continues not to reply
to our question of whether he supports the illegal, racist and unwinnable
wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
The third person we criticise reluctantly is our new Chief Executive,
Richard Carr. He inherits a city with one of the most important national
historical questions of whether the Battle of Tettenhall in 915AD was fought
in Tettenhall or Wednesfield and also one of the most energetic councillors,
Phil Bateman, who is as determined as I am that the matter be put to the
ultimate test of historical and archaeological investigation in which local
schools and teachers would play a key role. Unfortunately schools and
colleges seem reluctant to be drawn into this ‘live history’ project or to
publish for the world to see what history they do teach and whether it is
‘fit for purpose’ in our present multicultural world.
The other question we asked Mr.Carr was ‘Who owns Wolverhampton?’ as
masses of competing so-called Regeneration bodies were put into place,
seemingly leaving him with very little part to play. These questions were
put to the latest regenerator a Mr.Catchpole who we asked how he was going
about his task. We also asked Mr.Carr how it came about that he seems to
have lost so many of the powers that belonged to his predecessors. These
questions were put on the 3rd of October, but no word has been received from
Mr.Catchpole, Richard Carr or Roger Lawrence the leader of the Wolverhampton
City Council. Mr Carr does not improve the situation by being out of his
office for most of the week, and not even available on a mobile phone,
perhaps as befits one who has little to do.

THE NATIONAL ISSUES
Meanwhile Gordon Brown meets fresh indignities as he is now accused of
being a McBean. Locally the position has deteriorated as not only teachers,
but all other municipal workers are given papers either declaring them
redundant or reducing their salaries. I will say, what I said, yesterday,
that I shall deal with these issues tomorrow. I hope to do so, but meanwhile
my blood sugar level has been very low today and I fear a ‘hypo’ which could
land me back in hospital. So at this unprecedently early hour of I send
this BLOG with the warning Public Services Awards have taken place in which
Wolverhampton schools have won nothing. The same applies to successes for
schools in teaching numeracy, nothing for Wolverhampton. No one will save us
but ourselves in the race for making Wolverhampton the leading city of
Culture, Education, Sport and Business. Put aside sloth, inertia,
indifference and above all promote democratic practices in the city, for our
lives could virtually depend on it.

REGISTER YOUR VOTE TODAY ON WWW.THEPEOPLES50MILLION.ORG.UK
Thus the injunction of the Express and Star today. This is for the
fantastic underground world of the caves beneath Dudley. We are in
competition with three other projects for £50 million from the National
Lottery Fund. I’ve had a go myself this afternoon but without any luck, but
then I’m not very competent on a computer. I’ll have another go tomorrow,
but if I’m still out of luck I shall have to wait until the telephone voting
which is confined to the single day of Nov 7.

ARSENE WENGER
This man continues to perplex and even enrage his admirers. He is, of
course, the leading and perhaps the only important manager who believes that
English teams should be owned by local and English clubs. He took these
ideas further forward this week by suggesting that England’s new manager
should be English. On Wednesday he took managing to an almost surrealistic
stage by leaving almost the whole of the wonderful team that he has built at
home for the European League game against Servilla last night and failed.
But he didn’t seem particularly concerned because he was reaching for the
rainbow of a second team as good as the first in the days of modern football
when his team will play 19 games in December. So Cesc Fabregas and others of
this remarkable team were rested while Wenger pursued his target of an
alternative ’spine’.
Other teams pursue similar aims, but not always supported in their
endeavours, by supportive club owners. Thus Jose Mourino fell foul of the
Russian oligarch.
at Chelsea. Rafael Benitez is currently eating humble pie to his American
owners for doing what Arsene Wenger is managing to do at very little cost,
namely asking for even larger funds to build an alternative ’spine’ for
Liverpool.
Football is changing at an almost terrifying rate all over the world
which accounts for the fact that Servilla near the bottom of the Spanish
League beat Arsenal at the top of the Premiership and unbeaten until then.
But I will back the patriotism and idealism of Arsene Wenger against
the foreign owners who need instant results to feed their dividends .

THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE.
I’ve had an email from a fairly recent friend Bob Piper, a councillor
somewhere or other in Sandwell, I think. He asked me if there was a list of
IBers, particularly for the Midlands. My investigations began with Tony
Atienza of the Socialist History Society who has been engaged in collecting
material on those who fought in Spain, not in a civil war, which would have
ended very quickly if the democratically elected Republican government had
been able to purchase military supplies. But Neville Chamberlain and the
Appeasers arranged a ‘Non-Intervention’ deal, so that the government was
obliged to purchase arms from the Russians with all its dark hints at
‘Communist control’.
Actually the archive of the International Brigade are held by the Marx
Memorial Library at Clerkenwell in London. But Tony also put me in touch
with Marlene Sideway secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust.
She can be contacted on 020 85556674. We have asked her if she can produce a
complete list of Biers.
The two best known Biers to me are the Bennett brothers Don and Dusty.
They were brought up in a Walsall Workhouse, made a beeline to the USA as
soon as they were discharged, meet up with the famous WOBBLIES and then went
to Spain where Dusty was killed but Don survived. Caring for their memory is
Cyril Smith a Walsall Communist who receives the International Brigade
newsletter regularly.
Also there was a splendid colour supplement, either of the Guardian or
Observer, interviewing every IB still alive, who are now either in their
late eighties or nineties, their spokesman being Jack Jones, famed militant
ex-leader of the Transport and General Workers Union. This supplement I must
re-find in my library. It is a classic.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED AFTER THE OXFORD UNION MEETING THIS WEEK OF FASCISTS
AND THEIR OPPONENTS.
On Tuesday Holocaust denier David Irvine and Nick Griffin leader of the
BNP were making their way to the meeting at the Oxford Union where they had
been allowed to take part in a debate on free speech. The same day
protestors including Martin Clunky president of the Oxford University
student union said that the event had cast a cloud over the university for
weeks and the implications were that these people were giving a credibility
and legitimacy to their views which would have ramifications for other areas
where the BNP had influence. We pointed out that the Black Country was one
of those areas where a BNP councillor had not attended meetings for six
months, had been chucked off the council and a bye-election was taking place
shortly where at the last election the BNP had failed to return a third
councillor in Tipton by only 20 votes. Other sources of opposition were also
being organised including George Galloway and his supporters at 7pm when the
debate was due to take place. Since then - no reports of what happened at
the meeting; whether it took place or whether it was called off. Whether the
two groups tolerated each other in allowing free speech or what. From that
time to this there has been no report that I know of in local or national
press or on radio or television. This seems to me to be a very serious
breech of free speech and all I can think of doing is emailing Martin Lynch
of the Respect coalition.to see what he knows of the event.

GORDON BROWN SINKS FURTHER IN THE MIRE.
It almost defies belief that Gordon Brown is still prime minister of
this country following the sleaze accusations which increase by the hour.
The Tories however are little better with their history of corruption and
their continued support for the war in Iraq and failure to reply to those,
like me, who demand a reply to correspondence addressed to them.
Meanwhile locally there seems to be a malaise of those not willing to
assert themselves, for instance the Wolverhampton Inter-faith Group and the
Wolverhampton Partnership, a local strategic partnership bringing together
all organisations in the city to improve the lot of all its citizens. That
and the increasing crisis arising from cuts in expenditure bringing
unemployment and cuts in wages we will deal with tomorrow.

VERNON SCANNELL - THE LOST BOOK THAT HAS NOW BEEN FOUND.
The army deserter cum poet whose activities were so closely linked with
the life of Simon Jenkins and the book which was thought to have been lost
has now turned up. This book was also connected with the life of Harry
Johnson, co-founder of the Furthest East Rhythm Club in the world at Imphal
on the Burma/Indian border whose eighteen months existence in a combat area
was a unique cultural event of the 2nd World War and whose proceedings were
documented by Harry Johnson and his bosom friend Ken Allsop. The club’s life
was interrupted by the Japanese offensive intended to conquer India and
beyond, but whose plans ended with disaster as 4 Corps were ordered to hold
fast and were supplied by what was then the largest airlift yet undertaken
as we all endured the three month Siege of Imphal.
When we came home we attempted to get jazz units to replicate the
sessions that we had held. So far without success, although present
indications are that we ought to have some success.
The book in question called Arguments of Kings has now been discovered
from my ample but unclassified library. It comes with the unexpected bonus
of an inscription on the first page which reads, ‘To Harry, recommended
reading by Ralph BA, 1992′. Underneath is a label of Harry’s giving his
address as 7 Hillcrest Rd. Great Barr Birmingham B43 6LT where he still
lives. Ralph was an old friend who had taught Russian at what was until
recently known as the University of Central England in Birmingham and was
very militant in defence of the late Soviet Union as, to a lesser degree was
Harry Johnson who had presented me with Scannell’s book with the invocation
that I could keep it for as long as I liked and he would come and take it
back when I had read it..
The point is that Scannell’s account of whites torturing whites at the
Military Barracks in Egypt is one of the most horrifying but authentic
accounts ever written which neither Harry Johnson nor I have ever forgotten.
I do not think that Arguments of Kings even appears in the extensive
bibliography of Scannell’s works in Google, but it can now go onto the list
of books which must be read everybody who is against war and wants to avoid
a new holocaust that will destroy the human race.

MORE ON ANTI-FASCISM.
Tonight holocaust denier historian David Irvine and Nick Griffin
leader of the BNP were making their way to Oxford where they had been
granted permission to take part in a debate on free speech. They met with
much opposition. Martin McClusky president of the Oxford University student
union said the event had cast a shadow over the university for weeks. It is
not just an Oxford issue, he continued, it will have ramifications for other
places where the BNP is active giving credibility and legitimacy to their
views. Other sources of opposition was also being organised including George
Galloway and supporters at 7pm when the debate was due to begin. The fact
that I can find no reference to this demonstration at almost midnight,
suggests that the media are playing down the event and the demonstration.
In my view the limits of free speech are reached when parties refuse to
grant free speech to their opponents. This is clearly the case with the BNP
and the ramifications in the Black Country are evident. A circular from the
Black Country branch of Unite against Fascism puts the local position. One
of the two BNP councillors in Sandwell has failed to attend any council
meeting for six months. So he has been thrown off the council. A
bye-election will therefore take place on Thursday 6 December. Last year the
BNP failed to get a third councillor elected in Princes End ward by just 20
votes. There is a leafleting session in the ward at 11am Sunday 2 December
with a special leaflet appropriate to the ward. It meets at Tipton Sports
Academy car park at Wednesbury Oak Rd. For further information call Tony on
0750 607 8712.

ARSENE WENGER AND PATRIOTISM.
In BLOG No.309 of last Sunday 25 Nov I talked of the patriotism of
Arsenal in resisting foreign control and similar resistance by Wolves on a
smaller scale.
I then stated that I was a member of the rapidly depleting body of
supporters who had witnessed both the wonderful side built by Herbert
Chapman in the 1930s and the great sides built by Arsene Wenger. If asked to
state which was the greater I would have to answer that both sides were
equally great, but I would give the crown to the Chapman team because they
were better tempered.
Arsenal tonight have lost the first match of the season against Seville,
but Wenger has taken up the question of the new England manager. He states
that the two most successful teams in Britain, Manchester United and
Arsenal, were both built on the principle that it takes time to build a good
club and it is no accident that both teams have managers who have served
their clubs for ten years and have had the support of their directors during
that time.
But Arsene has gone further this week making the point that football
cannot be divorced from politics and the arrival of businessmen who treat
their clubs like business investments demanding instant success. National
team performances measure pride and value against other nations. And here
comes the crunch. In the past such issues were settled by war. Now they can
be measured by football.

WAS GORDON BROWN EVER HUMAN?
Brown’s emphatic declaration yesterday that nuclear weapons must be
continued casts doubt on whether there was ever a human face behind what is
becoming a grotesque visage. Compare this with the efforts of Shami
Chakrabati of Liberty and the CND campaign led by Kate Hudson for the only
alternative which could prevent another Cold War and the agonies of a world
always on the brink of war prevented only by MAD, Mutually Assured
Destruction. This solution entails nothing less than the total destruction
of all nuclear weapons in the world including America’s and Britain’s. An
idle dream? Not necessarily so when one considers the reaction of those who
first created the bomb, Pugwash, who called for the destruction of nuclear
bomb stocks when they realised to what terrible and unintended use their
invention was being put. Total abolition is the only way humanity can
survive and it is this aim which all sane people must devote every nerve
and sinew.

JON SNOW - THE POT WHO CALLS THE KETTLE BLACK.
To see Jon Snow denouncing vigorously Gordon Brown, Jack Straw,
unelected chair and secretary of the Labour Party, and others on the
iniquity and illegality of allowing billionaires to contribute to Labour
Party funds would have been an invigorating sight were it not for the fact
that Snow himself commits the same iniquities and illegalities for failing
to reply for the 55th? time to my charges that he did not challenge Blair
on the war in Iraq when the war began and so became an accessory to that
illegal and racist conflict. Snow’s unwillingness to reply to me removes the
only safeguard that differentiates us from dictatorships. His, and his BBC
fellow conspirators, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark and Martha
Kierney embarrass their employers, Mark Thompson and Lord Grade, who have
not
so far disciplined their employees when they have promised to do so. Lastly,
that the conduct of all of them is unsustainable since one and all are
committed by their organisations to reply every one who writes to them. A
vital part of the struggle for democracy in Britain rests on their
shoulders.

VOTE BLACK COUNTRY FOR £50 MILLION.
Marie Palmer the ubiquitous and welcome publicist from the Lighthouse,
Wolverhampton ask me to pass on information of a lottery where we have a 1
in 4 chance of opening up the unique Dudley geological features underground.
Four projects are in competition for this lottery money. Votes can be
recorded on line at www.thepeoples50million.org.uk
On December 6th there is an ITV programme at 11pm. On December 7th
telephone numbers are announced and voting begins at 9am. On December 10
voting ends at 12 noon.
Tonight’s Express and Star adds to our information. The front page is
given over to inviting us to VOTE BLACK COUNTRY and revealing that we are
now joint favourites at 5-6 with a national cycling project, an Eden
project has now been displaced in the voting and the fourth contestant is an
improvement of the famous Sherwood Forest.
Celebrity wildlife expert, David Bellamy, launches the Black Country
bid at Walsall Football Club tonight. If the Black Country bid is successful
it will mean that the giant underground caverns beneath Dudley will be
opened up to the public, a net work of canals in Wolverhampton will be
improved and illuminated and a ‘green bridge’ linking Walsall and West
Bromwich will be created. Walkers covering the Black Country Route, James
and Oliver Phelps of Harry Potter fame are pictured ‘flying the flag’, and
John Smith who formed the Dudley Caving Club is delighted at how things are
going.
It is hoped that many other organisations will also organise events and
everyone record their votes for this prestigious event.

MARIKA SHERWOOD
Marika is one of the most influential Race Relations activists in
Britain. A founder member of the Black and Asian Studies Association formed
in 1991 she is the author of the book ‘After Abolition - Britain and the
Slave Trade since 1807′. She recently gave the inaugural Marika Sherwood
Lecture on 22 Nov. This traces the attempts made to interest the government
in researching on black people in Britain without much success. This was
followed by more fruitful work with the Museums Association. Attempting to
influence education matters they met the QCA and the Dept.of Education,
‘under their ever changing names’ including a meeting with one Secretary of
State which were ‘almost a total waste of time’.
She says that their meetings with OFSTED have not resulted in the
acceptance of our suggestion of compulsory training in the history of black
people for all their inspectors and much of their inspection is contracted
out so that they have no influence on the training of inspectors. And, of
course, the Government says that it has no influence on what is taught at
teacher training establishments.
Fortunately the Black and Asian Studies Association Newsletter has
almost reached its 50th edition. This was edited by Marika until recently
and she continues to write for it. Its website at
www.blackandasianstudies.org.uk is an unrivalled source of reading and
references and correspondence. Queries and offers of help should be
addressed to the new editor Shelley Goffe-Caldeira at
shelley.goffe@tiscali.co.uk
Lastly, the complete text of Marika’s Inaugural Lecture should be
downloaded, not least for the up-to-date figures such as The Charity
Commission reporting that only 0.2% of it staff were from ethnic minorities.
It can be downloaded from marika@oare.fsnet.co.uk

EDUCATION - THE DREAM DISAPPEARS.
Just as the mugs in the education industry in Wolverhampton are reeling
from the shock that there is no £30million crock of gold with or without
Lord Adonis’ two Educational Academies and instead our schools face
cut-backs, and the sacking of teachers as each Head will be asked to
contribute to a £5 million deficit. Now there comes news that rising numbers
of foreign students are putting some schools near breaking point as they do
not have the resources to cope. This is the view of the National Association
of Headmasters whose general secretary , Mick Brookes, will this week give
evidence to a Parliamentary inquiry investigating the impact of immigration
on British society.
Let’s take some of these points with reference to Wolverhampton. Note
that the Heads will be responsible for managing the cuts. In the old days
questions would have been put to the local authority, whose education
committee would discuss the matter and it would be brought back to a final
democratic vote of the whole council. The idea of Headteachers determining
such matters goes back to Margaret Thatcher’s days when she decreed that
further education should be changed from a service to a commodity and that
FE should be removed from the public purse by the firms who provided the
students; that Colleges should be treated as businesses with the Headmaster
as managing director who would be free to determine his own salary, which
would be in line with that of other captains of industry, and other salaries
throughout the College without regard to existing pay scales negotiated by
the teacher trade unions. Also that Colleges which ‘failed’ would either be
closed or be taken over by other Colleges. The scheme created mayhem in FE
with principal’s salaries reaching the sky and the colleges’ workforce
having temporary contracts and liable to be dismissed at a moment’s notice.
Fortunately Thatcher was removed before she destroyed FE altogether.
But
one can see that the government now seems to be running all education as
Thatcher ran FE without any Act of Parliament being passed.
In addition, democracy has long left the voting system. Matters are
determined by ‘Cabinets’ None but the ruling party is allowed to vote on
anything and the Leader determines indeed whether there is a vote or not.
This was demonstrated in Wolverhampton last April at what used to be the
most important meeting of the year when committees were voted on for the
year. This year it was decreed by the leader of the council Roger Lawrence,
that there was nothing to discuss so no meeting was held. Thus disappeared
democracy in local government. On a national scale democracy had been
abolished by Tony Blair and so Britain is now virtually a dictatorship and
Gordon Brown proposes to continue the system. Hail Hitler! And I’m serious.
Brown must be dismissed without delay.
And we haven’t yet begun to discuss Race Relations. I’ll try to be
brief. For 35 years the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council existed,
controlled continuously by its two main ethnic minorities,
African-Caribbean’s and Indians. It was the oldest such organisation in
Britain. It then made some bad decisions and Sir Trevor Phillips, then chief
of the Commission for Racial Equality, but now chief of the new national
body Commission for Equality and Human Rights, closed the WREC down. This
was not agreed with by many people including the W’ton City Council, who
reckoned it was much easier to close an organisation down than to create
another. So it ring-fenced certain finances to support a new organisation.
After several years that new organisation has been set up. It is called
Race Equality Partnership Wolverhampton. But by a series of incidents which
proved the point that it is easier to destroy than create, this new body is
still not operating as it should and for four years there has been no Race
Equality organisation in Wolverhampton. In the meantime, there is much doubt
among ethnic minority people as to the structure and control of the new
organisation in W’ton which appears New Labour rather than democratic and
also much concern that Sir Trevor Phillips is a proper person to control
race
relations after he considered that the war in Iraq was ‘not within his
remit’ and his refusal to clarify his position now on that illegal, racist,
and unwinnable war.
The state of race relations in Wolverhampton is not clear, because the
Government refuses to release the information necessary to make a clear
judgement. But there is much to be pessimistic about, particularly in
education, where schools giving themselves fancy name such as Sporting, or
Business or Drama Academies and recruiting from the whole city and beyond
its boundaries instead of serving its own catchment area now face the fact
that Gordon Brown has no money to carry out grandiloquent plans to inject
£30m pounds into Wolverhampton schools, and in fact face a financial
cut-back
in which children from ‘failing’ schools will suffer most and these areas
include those with the greatest proportions of ethnic-minority pupils. Lord
Adonis and those urging educational Academies have been caught with their
pants down as a slump of 1930s proportions looms and unless Gordon Brown and
his New Labour cronies are dismissed we are likely to end with mass
unemployment.

ARSENAL AND WOLVES AND PATRIOTISM AGAIN
Arsenal have had another successful week-end. They now stand top of the
premiership with a match in hand. My interest in Arsenal is not only that I
have been 75 years an Arsenal supporter and 55 years a Wolves fan, but that
Arsenal lead the way in opposing the ownership of football clubs by foreign
tycoons and Wolves under the fierce patriot Sir Jack Hayward has opposed the
sale of Wolves to foreign owners. This patriotism not only concerns football
ownership but affects attitudes to our national industries and demands that
our national resources be kept in British hands as they have in Germany,
France and even tiny Sweden
by resisting policies by the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and
the Common Market which are designed to force policies onto smaller
countries which virtually removes their independence. Such are the larger
implications of the world of sport.
But I am now a member of a rapidly depleting body of supporters who
have seen both the wonderful Arsenal side managed by Herbert Chapman in the
1930s and the teams created by Arsene Wenger which, at their best, play the
best football in the world.
I am sometimes asked which of these teams were the better. In the past
I have said that they were equally magnificent, but the 1930s team get my
vote because they were better tempered. Unfortunately I would have to make
the same answer today. Arsenal won yesterday in great style, but the action
of the captain William Gallas and other members of the team getting
themselves embroiled in a scuffle with Wigan team members was neither
necessary, nor does it reflect well on a team which seeks the accolade of
being the best in the world.
I retire for the night, however, a contented man.

I ALMOST FEEL SORRY FOR THEM.
In Wolverhampton the dream is over. The idea that the City should have
£30 million as long as we accepted Adonis’ two Academies which would then
cater for Wolverhampton has been blown out of the sky. Headteachers now in
Wolverhampton will have to find £5 million instead of the largesse promised.
The fault lies with that prince of illusionists Gordon Brown who has been
skint since long before he became prime minister and whose act has been as I
said last night to pay Peter by robbing Paul, but even that is not now
possible as Brown now faces an economic crisis of 1930s dimensions.
It has been partly the gullibility of headteachers who for many years
since the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council was closed have been allowed
to give themselves fancy titles such as Sports, Business and other Academies
whose main purpose was to recruit pupils from the whole city and even far
beyond instead of recruiting from their own catchment areas. They thus take
not only their due funding from the city education authorities, but extra
funding from private sponsors who are not required to disclose either the
amounts they contribute or their reasons for doing so. The worst example has
been what was once the pride of Wolverhampton the Regis School, but has now
been taken over by ecclesiastic authorities and thus deprives Wolverhampton
Wighwick parents of a secular school to send their children, but also takes
extra money by allowing Mobile Telephone masts to be erected on their roof,
thus endangering the health of their pupils as well as pretending that
parents had agreed to this when in fact there was, and remains, a formidable
campaign to remove them.
And so the brunt of the problem is shifted to the leader of the ruling
Labour group, and Councillor Christine Irvine who is in charge of education
but hasn’t even got a title of chair of education, but cabinet member for
learning. The best she can say is that she is sure they can come up with a
solution ensuring that the children will not suffer. But I’m afraid you
can’t Councillor Irvine and what about teachers and staff who face reduced
salaries and the sack.
Wolverhampton has produced two headteachers of outstanding talent. One
was the head of Highfields School who turned it into one of the most
advanced state schools in Britain. Unfortunately he was infatuated with the
Ghurkhas in a regiment of which he had served as an officer and after the
war sponsored the first school for Ghurkha children in their homeland. But
the money he used was filched from the school’s fund and he served a prison
term. Highfields school has recently celebrated 50 or so years of its
existence and I asked the headmaster if anyone was liable to point out the
achievements of this man. But there seems to have been no feeling for
forgiveness or achievement, and so now he is long retired and Anthony Bowyer
will fade away like all us old soldiers, unless those, like me, who taught
under him do something ensure that his achievements as well as his misdeeds
are remembered.
The other truly innovative talent in Wolverhampton was Keith Wymer,
principal of the first multicultural college in Britain, closed by racists
and bigots, but is rising phoenix like from the dead and will shortly be
reopened we feel sure. Wymer had 30% of ethnic minority staff at the
College, the highest in the country, when others had few and were hotbeds of
racism while Bilston Community College was a safe haven where black
students and their parents could organise family affairs such as birthdays,
weddings etc.knowing that they would be safe from racism.
When a previous chief education officer in Wolverhampton resigned,
Wolverhampton Race Equality Council recommended that Keith Wymer should be
his replacement. But it was not to be. He was replaced by Roy Lockwood a man
I knew and admired but without the drive and authority of Keith Wymer which
would have put Wolverhampton into the very forefront of education with
contacts throughout the world.
What can be done today? Well, the first thing is to remove those
racist and bigots from the positions they have occupied for so long. These
start with the civil servants who control each subsequent development. We
know that government departments have miniscule ethnic minority staff and
they affect structures down the line. So that the Education Department under
whatever fancy name it goes under these days is racist and was ultimately
responsible for the closure of Bilston Community College. The Learning and
Skills Council set up as the successor to the Further Education Funding
Council was racist in refusing to review the actions of its predecessor and
continued to support the closure of the College.
The present position is that Friends of Bilston College have appealed
to the Freedom of Information authority which is at present investigating
the propriety of closing the College and will ensure that documents in the
possession of the DfES should be released. It was a criminal act to close
BCC, but its real significance was that it prevented the whole Further
Education system following progressive lines and leaves us with the present
position that New Labourites have diverted from its original purpose the
further education system whether administered by Socialists or other parties
which cannot be solved without removing Gordon Brown and his dwindling
number of New Labourites.

STOP THE WAR COALITION.
Meanwhile the fight against the war in Iraq gains support from people of
every political hue.The Stop the War newsletter No.1027 of November this
year highlights three important events.
1.THE WORLD AGAINST WAR CONFERENCE SATURDAY 1 DECEMBER
2. IRAN DAY OF ACTION NOVEMBER 24
3.RHYTHMS OF PEACE CONCERT 30 NOV
Latest speakers for the Conference at the Westminster Central Hall include
leading members of the Iranian Group Mothers against War, the editor of the
Hezbollah newspaper in Lebanon and a speaker from the Pakistan Institute of
Labour Education and Research. Other speakers include a former UN delegate
in Iraq, president of the Basra Oil Workers Union, the new German Left
Party, an Egyptian MP, Tony Benn and Lindsay Jerman from the Stop the War
Campaign, George Galloway, an exBritish Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Sami
Ramadani from United for Peace, the Communist Party of the Lebanon and
Venezuela’s UNT union confederation.
The Conference comes at a time when George Bush has asked the Congress
to add another 196 billion dollars as a supplement to the 450 billion he has
already got for war expenditure in 2008 for his so-called Global War on
Terror. It includes plans for a new bunker-busting bomb which could be
geared towards bombing underground targets in Iran. And Britain’s prime
minister Gordon Brown has now repeatedly stated his support for endless
global war based on what Brown calls ‘our shared values and destiny’.
For details of the Conference phone 020 7278 6694 or email
office@stopwar.org.uk or consult the wwebsite www.stopwar.org.uk Also use
these facilities to book accommodation or offer accommodation.

RHYTHMS OF PEACE CONCERT.
This takes place on the Friday night before the Conference and tickets
are going fast. Use the same facilities as for the Conference to book a
place. Actors supporting the concert include Julie Christie, David Soul,
Janet Suzman, Charles Watt and many others.

MEETING WITH PRISON OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION BRIAN CANTON.
Brian speaks at a meeting open to all trade unionists in Shropshire
..Brother Canton also sits on the TUC General Council and the council of
civil services union. He is an outspoken critic of Brown and New Labour. His
union recently went on strike and thousands of prison officers defied a High
Court injunction to go back to work.he was said to be a dinosaur for leading
an ‘illegal’ strike. But he is an outspoken critic of New Labour and
campaigns for the full restoration of trade union rights. he once said of
Margaret Thatcher that on her grave would be put ‘under this sod lies
another,’ and this will be appropriate for Bush, Blair and Brown.

PUBLIC MEETING AND LOBBY OF PARLIAMENT - JUSTICE FOR PALESTINIANS.
Both take place on Wednesday 28 November. The Lobby is in Committee Room 10
in the House of Commons and the meeting in the evening. Both will be
addresses by distinguished figures such as Lord David Steele, the Muslim
Council of Britain, and various MPs and trade union officials. The events
have been organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. Details: Tele
020 7700 7192. email: info@palestinecampaign.org

VERNON SCANNELL A SECRET UNCOVERED.
It is a marvellous moment when one learns of a person, little known to
the generality of people, but which strikes an immediate chord of something
long forgotten. Such were my thoughts when I read in today’s Guardian an
article by Simon Jenkins concerning Vernon Scannell, boxer, army deserter,
and largely unrecognised poet through whom Jenkins learned to love verse.
The reference for me jumped from the page as it had for Jenkins as he
unfolds much of his autobiography, absolutely new to me.
He tells how their paths crossed when he was ten and desperate. The
headmaster of the prep. school into which he had been decanted from the
local primary school must have been desperate to employ Scannell who had no
degree or qualification, and had been imprisoned for desertion. After the
war he deserted again, changed his name, worked in a doll factory and as a
fairground boxer. He was then sent to a mental hospital after telling the
judge that he was a poet who hated the folly of war and ‘feared the final
extinction of humanity’. A kindly psychiatrist discharged him. The school in
question lay in the heart of Kent and was called Hazlewood which clearly had
some wildness in its veins. It had employed both Christopher Fry and Michael
Tippett. Boys would roam the adjacent woods during breaks and were often
lost. The headmaster, an eccentric man called Parry had reputedly insisted
during the Battle of Britain that sports days continue in respect for the
pilots overhead, despite parents running for shelter under a rain of
shrapnel. Scannell had just two messages to convey to the rebellious
Jenkins. One was the supremacy of boxing and the other poetry. But Scannell
was a patient and sincere teacher whose first act was to ask the headmaster,
who knew nothing of his past as a professional boxer, to erect a boxing
ring. Then he (Jenkins) realised that it was only in a boxing ring that he
(Scannell) was able to lay aside the miseries of a poor upbringing and war
scarred life and for a moment be utterly himself. Only in the ring did a man
literally stand or fall by his wits. For a poet whose work was shot through
with the fear and futility of violence boxing was a strange addiction, but
then we did not know that he was a poet.All he communicated was a vague and
distant preoccupation with much to hide and little to give, even if that
little was infinitely precious.
Jenkins continues that it was through Scannell that he came to love the
rituals and rhythms of boxing as against the mindless and muddied
brutalities of rugby. Nothing at school was ever its equal. He went on
boxing until he was 18 by when the Health and Safety mafiosi were moving
into schools to ban it. Heaven knows if he learned anything from the sport,
but he believed he did and sees no harm and much virtue in schoolboy
boxing’s return to favour.
Returning to Scannell he says in the classroom he was a man
transformed. He did not teach English which presumably he was paid to do,
but simply read poetry from start to finish. We had to learn nothing by
heart but he insisted that we ‘recognise by heart’ what he was reading.
Keats, Wordsworth and Tennyson, Hardy, ‘cascaded from the walls’. He read
the war poets, Owen, Brooke, Sassoon with a savagery that must have tested
his headmaster’s patriotism (if he ever knew). Scannell was
under-recognised as a poet, though he was eventually awarded a civil list
pension. It cannot have helped that he listed his Who’s Who his hobbies
which included ‘loathing Tories and New Labour’. Jenkins did not see
Scannell in later life, though he sent him inscribed copies of his works.
One of his last poems had him listening to Strausss’s Tod und Verklarum and
writing
And yet more faintly, now and then is
heard
Closer underneath my hand
Dry whisperings of a turning page
As I peruse with awful delectation
The Oxford Book of Death.
Jenkins concludes, ‘So remember all you drinking drifting,
despairing, self-demeaning school masters. Hidden at the back of your class,
pretending to be sullen and resistant is a boy in whose imagination lurks,
unknown, a spark waiting to be blown into a flame. Scannell was even better
than a good poet. He could teach’.

What can I add to all this and why was I so excited about it?. Well it
is a story of two toothless old codgers, Harry Johnnson and me, the only
survivors of what was once a 150 strong Rhythm Club, the furthest east Jazz
Club in the world at Imphal on the Burma/India border. Its activities were
rudely interrupted by a Japanese offensive intended to conquer India and
beyond. But to the surprise of the Japanese (and us) instead of retreating
into India we were ordered to stand firm and were supplied by air in what
was then the longest airlift known and were subject to the three month
siege of Imphal. When we came home Harry Johnson and his life long friend,
Ken Allsop, of the RAF, who had been the originators of the club since only
they could transport the records and gramophone, brought home the complete
records of the club which were written in a detailed and humorous way.
One day, Harry Johnson, who had picked up a book by George Barnsby at
his local library, reasoned that there could not be too many George
Barnsby’s about so he walked from Birmingham to Wolverhampton and presented
himself on my doorstep whereon we had a joyous reunion and set about the
task, which we are still engaged in of getting our Rhythm Club programmes
replicated by modern jazz combos or disc jockeys. In this we have so far
failed, although the records are deposited in the National Jazz Archives at
Loughton in Essex and we keep finding new people who were in Burma, the
latest being Sir Jack Hayward, patriot, philanthropist, born and brought up
in Wolverhampton, always a Wolves fan and until recently owner of the club
which he recently sold to an Englishman to ensure that the club remains in
British hands and is not sold to foreigners.
And so at last I come to the point. On one of his visits Harry brought
me a book. It was by Vernon Scannell and he remarked to me that I could keep
the book as long as I wanted and he would then come and take it back with
him. The point of the book was the torture of white men by white men in
Egypt at a reception camp. This was described by Scannell so vividly that it
turned my blood cold. We have always tortured natives, the Mau Mau in Kenya
and Iraqis during the present war being only two cases in point. But whites
torturing whites? Well yes, we did it to conscientious objectors. But it is
still not so common
So all I have to do now is to let Simon Jenkins know of the book. But
unfortunately the book has become temporarily lost in my library and neither
Harry nor I can remember the title of the book. However, there are modern
links. Ralph Ponting, a friend of Harry Johnson writes to say that he has
moved from collecting record labels to collecting memorial inscriptions. He
was angered at the thought of Ralph Newman (a mutual friend) being killed
when the war was nearly over. ‘Fighting for Kind and Country, my arse. In
those days it was getting slaughtered for the landowners and capitalists. As
like as not Ralph would have been demobilised to years of unemployment and
degrading means tests’
. Ralph is buried in a civilian, family grave with his father and mother
and the inscription reads, ‘In loving memory of Ralph Newman, Wilts.Regiment
who died from wounds received while fighting for his King and Country in
France, May 21st 1918 Aged 20′.
So that is the story to date. I shall see that Harry Johnson gets a copy
and, of course, Simon Jenkins. My job is to look for Scannell’s book and
express thanks to Simon Jenkins for raising such an important and
interesting matter.

THE CAPTAINCY OF ENGLAND.
The only possible candidate for this position on his record is Sam
Allardyce. His only rival, the Aston Villa manager, Martin O’Neill. I have
only one complaint against O’Neill. He is not English but Scottish. I have
sometimes argued that for Britain to perform to its true potential a joint
British team of from the United Kingdom should be played, although the
present performance of a tiny country such as Croatia with a Croatian coach
who beat England into a cocked hat the other night shows what can be done;
although they are unlikely to pick up the cup against the massed forces of
Germany or France.
However, Sam Allardyce, who is at present acting coyly by saying he is
not interested in the job, is best qualified for the job. And what could be
a greater honour for an Englishman than coaching an English team to world
cup victory?
Sam has at present some problems. He leads a team which rather
ingloriously have on their shirts Northern Rock. In addition, Sam and his
son Craig have both been accused of ‘bung-taking’ although neither have been
charged and both deny it. But will the FA have the courage to appoint
another Englishman after the fiasco of McClaren?
I hope they do for various reasons. Sam Allardyce is not only English
but was born in Dudley. Would it not be wonderful if we had Sam winning the
cup in 2012 and another Wolverhampton notable, the governor of the Bank of
England, Mervyn King, Wolverhampton born life-long Wolves fan, steer Britain
clear of an economic crisis. That would enthuse Rachael Heyhoe Flint,
supreme sportswoman in her own right and Sir Jack Hayward, Wolverhampton
born patriot for whom she acts as secretary and aid our case for
Wolverhampton brought from the depths of being considered the racist capital
of Britain in the days of Enoch Powell to the Cultural, Educational,
Sporting and Business centre of Britain in 2007?

FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY - ARREST BROWN.
The crisis for Gordon Brown grows by the day. While he offers large
sums first to education in Wolverhampton and today to our troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan the fact is that Brown is skint and can only offer large sums to
Peter if he takes them off Paul.
Today another nail was added to his coffin as no less than 5 real life
lords in the House of that name criticised him for being in Iraq or for not
supplying properly the troops who risk their lives, or after being wounded
the medical treatment they receive.
There’s is only one way of dealing with Brown, he must be arrested and
locked up, and may he take with him the horde of New Labourites who bolster
the little that is left of his power.

ENGLAND UP THE CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE.
It rained, it poured it flooded and with it went England’s hopes of
qualifying for the 2008 European Cup. Much of it was predicable. One does
not wear boots as flimsy as a slipper when negotiating flood waters. That
the match took place at all was a minor miracle. Two thing this BLOG has
consistently advocated. That football boots should have toe protection in
modern lightweight steel or plastic, both to avoid broken toes which almost
never occurred in the days of Alex James and Billie Wright because their
toes were protected by an outer covering of leather and beneath that a layer
of steel. Secondly that players should not have to demonstrate their skills
on a rain drenched pitch but on a dry one and that can only be achieved by
having a retractable roof. This might have saved our bacon last night, but
the fact that the new circular Wembley Stadium cost so much more that
estimated at £757 million and ran so long after its allotted time perhaps
accounts for the fact that it has a fixed roof, and only the Welsh Millenial
Stadium has a removable roof, not even Arsenal’s new Emirates Stadium has a
retractable roof and that was built to time and within the accepted budget.
So I hope Arsene Wenger will see what is liable to happen and for the
benefit of his players and the spectacle his players provide to the public
that the roof should be the next item of capital expenditure.
Of course, it might be said that the pitch is the same for both sides
and the Croatians seemed almost to revel in it. But England is the home of
football and the game is more successful here than anywhere else in the
world. We should be setting an example to the world, rather than providing
the wretched spectacle of last night.

REMOVE THE WULFRUNA STATUE FROM OUR CITY CENTRE.
Wolverhampton and the Black Country are places where much real history
has taken place.We do not need ‘false’ history. The most important event in
our history is the Battle of Tettenhall in 1015 the site of which is
disputed either Tettenhall in my back garden or Wednesfield in Councillor
Phil Bateman’s back garden and both of us have been determined that the
location can only be decided by historical and archaeological investigation
and he in particular has wanted the assistance of Robinson of the BBC Time
Watch programme to help us. Schools and Colleges in the area would need to
bear the brunt of the investigations, but there seems no great desire to
join the project. Nor is this the only key event in our national history to
have occurred near Wolverhampton. At adjacent Wrottesley there is a
Neolithic site which might have Iron Age remains. This would be unique and
is at present the
subject of investigation by the Wolverhampton Archaeological Society and
there is a Wolverhampton archaeologist employed by the City council to look
after this.
But the failure of schools and Colleges in the area to show much
interest in such ‘living history’ as it might be called these days raises
the question of what sort of history is being taught in our schools and is
it ‘fit for purpose’ in a multicultural society.
There is a series of questions that needs to be asked about our schools
and local authority which would once have been asked by the Wolverhampton
Race Equality Council, but this was closed by Sir Trevor Phillips at the
time chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and now director of the
all-purposes Commission for Equality and Human Rights who many people
believe is not a fit and proper person to represent ethnic minority people
because of his attitude to the war in Iraq which he considered ‘was not
within his remit’ . He continues to refuse to answer our enquiries on this
subject.
The main questions we need to know from schools include the following :
From where are your pupils drawn; what was your budget in the last financial
year and from what sources did you receive it; what is the ethnic
composition of both your pupils and your staff. And to ensure that no racism
exists in your school or in the playground, have you appointed trained staff
to deal with these matters. Wolverhampton schools have not replied to these
questions and thus we are in the dark concerning the state of race relations
and must therefore assume that racial violence might be necessary for
ethnic minority parents to assert their proper rights to equality.
Against that background I return to the question of history in schools
and my demand that the statue of Wulfruna be removed from St.Peter’s Square
in the city centre. I am asking all historical sources with whom I am in
contact to support this demand. This includes the new Race Equality unit in
Wolverhampton, the controlling New Labour city council and the Education
Committee of the city council.
I am also appealing to all other race relations and history bodies that
I am associated with. One is the Birmingham based organisation Connecting
Histories whose representative is Izzy Mohammed. Another is my good friend
Lance Dunkley who not only led the African-Carribean societies in the fight
against Enoch Powell in the 1960s, but also supports Nigel Hastilow the
ex-Conservative prospective candidate for Stourbridge and Halesowen who has
incurred wrath by quoting Enoch Powell on control of Immigration while not
being a racist but a multiculturalist. I would also expect support from
Labour MPs and councillors as well as Conservative MPs and Councillors and
party workers with whom I have been associated with both in the distant past
and more recently.
I would make a special case for Lindsay Hutchinson who has maintained a
Stalinist bookshop presence at Bookbane 93 Nineveh Rd. Handsworth with books
by Enver Hoxha the Albanian Marxist prime minister and a portrait of Stalin
in his shop. He manages this on a part-time basis of opening three days a
week and working as an electrician in the Birmingham Bull Ring for the rest
of the week. This he has done since the Communist Key Books closed in the
late 90s. He has also run a successful Youth Club which has been a thorn in
the flesh of Birmingham Council who have always wanted to close it. But
Lindsay is no longer able to carry on his one man fight against the
bourgeoisie and New Labour and intends to retire to Wales where he will
carry
on his struggle in different circumstances.
I must say that this man who has faced victimisation, imprisonment, his
shop windows broken, but has never betrayed his principles is a very special
person and a man after my own heart.
I come back to the local education Committee and the schools. Will you
release to me (and the general public) your history syllabuses so that we
can know better what our children are being taught?

THE MECHANISM OF DUMPING WULFRUNA.
It is not to be thought that I would want to bring the statue down as
the neo-fascists in Eastern Europe are bringing down statues of Ceicescu,
Stalin
or those of Red Army soldiers who liberated their countries. No, we have too
much respect for the culture of the object. There she stands in the City
centre, arms stretched welcoming all. A work of art from the late Sir
Charles Wheeler
I would have her tenderly removed and consigned to a special area not of
fire and brimstone but one eternally inhabited by those who commit fraud on
the general public. Here she would happily consort with such figures as
Horatio Bottomley said to be the greatest swindler of the 20th century, John
Profumo and Christine Keeler whose love affair Profumo, then secretary of
state for war denied in Parliament and created an international scandal,
John Stonehouse the MP who embezzled much cash and then faked his own death.
Or even Robert Maxwell the penniless émigré who built a newspaper empire and
died, it seems, by jumping from his own ship.
With that we shall leave Wulfruna for the night. No doubt to return to
her as indignant supporters tell me how wrong they think I am.

DO THE DECENT THING, OLD CHAP.
We sent an email last night to the Rapscalion Jeremy Paxman and his
partners in crime, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark, Martha Kierney and Jon Snow at
ITV and the bosses they are implicating by not disciplining their employees,
namely Mark Thompson head of BBC and Lord Grade ditto of ITV.
Paxman and the others have for the 56th? time failed to reply to my
accusations that in failing to question Blair on the war in Iraq they became
accessories to that illegal and unwinnable war. Further, by not replying to
me they remove the last democratic process that distinguishes us from a
dictatorship. This is particularly strange in the case of Paxman, who in
fact did tackle Bliar (I’ll leave that misprint) and I had to abjectly
apologise to him.
Tiring of making serious complaints I have decided that a bit of humour
or irony might stir his old bones better. So we’ve asked him and his
collaborators TO DO THE DECENT THING. I wonder of it will work.

MY SPACE.
This is a happy band of 200 million friends who we want to share our
problems with, notably our opposition to the war in Iraq and our belief that
only by putting the two greatest terrorists in the world, George.W.Bush and
his coat tail’s holder once Blair but now Gordon Brown, under lock and key
will terrorism be ended.
Also we want to share our local concerns such as the closure by
racists and bigots of the first multicultural college in Britain, Bilston
Community College and our current efforts to have it reopened.
It seems rather like contacting friends in outer space, but I hope
that now we have an email address and a code number we will be able to chat
with MY SPACE members.

WOLVERHAMPTON AND THE OLYMPICS.
I have had a letter from my good friend Frank Spittle the life long
supporter of the old Black Country sport of Small Bore Rifle Shooting which
is now, alas, almost extinct. Also a friend of Percy Stallard the champion
cyclist who we have recently managed, after many years of indifference, or
worse, to have admitted to the unique Wolverhampton Sporting Hall of Fame
which the local authority is now trying to close down, many of us think.
His letter comes at a time when the ownership of Wolverhampton
Wanderers football club is in dispute, but the local authority agrees with
plans to extend the ground and if that were done the question of Molineux
being a venue for the soccer world cup would arise. Frank writes of another
occasion when Wolverhampton might have been a venue for Olympic Games.
The Aldersley Range was the only one in the midlands which could have
been brought up to Olympic standards at that time. The range was chosen by
the visiting Russian shooting delegates. The only nomination of an Olympic
sports venue ever obtained for Wolverhampton. There are still rifle clubs
and shooters in Britain, although no small bore.22 cal clubs remain in
Wolverhampton where there used to be 27 mostly factory clubs.
‘After my continuous campaign at all levels since 1995 for the grant of
lottery fund money obtained for range refurbishment, to be used for that
purpose at Aldersley the Council are now having to use the money for this
facility. Alas too late for the Wolverhampton riflemen who built it and paid
for it in May 1974 on land leased from the council. Never was a group of
sportsmen who had done so much for Wolverhampton in war and peace treated so
badly by Councillors and Council Officers, who are also responsible for the
demise of the Aldersley Stadium as a former famous production centre for
International Cyclists Athletes and Riflemen who carried the name of
Wolverhampton across the world.’
Frank then introduces a personal point for me to put right in my BLOG
that John, his son (himself a noted athlete - GB) died in a disastrous fire
in Abetha, in Spain when seven people lost their lives.
He then goes on to my mention of the great Percy Stallard reminding him
of his late father, John Spittle, managing director of the Bauer Casing
Company of Wolverhampton giving great support to Percy for his fight for
Road Racing in Britain. His dad was the first president of the Wolverhampton
Racing Cycling Club and was the ’starter’ of the first race from the West
Park..Circuit of the Wrekin. His silver trophy is still in use by the
Wolverhampton Racing Club after all those years.
It is not only himself, as I kindly said in my BLOG who was
disillusioned, but his close family too. Mom and Dad sons John and Antony
all have carried the Great Britain Shooting Team badge on their blazers,
even my daughter now a Canadian citizen shot for Staffordshire. Frank ends,
‘That is a family sporting effort that will take some beating’. Indeed, it
will.

LEN CRANE.
But all has not yet been said. Len Crane has been a solo-motor cycle
racer from the 1960s who turned to side-car racing and was renowned for
producing his own vehicles. In the mid 1960s he won three European and
British championships. His greatest engineering triumph was to restore and
keep running the only steam pumping station in Britain at the Bratch,
Wombourne.
This very renowned but little known Wolverhampton sportsman and
engineer has been in the news this month. He has been to the Houses of
Parliament where he received a gold award at an international gathering of
leading engineers in an environmental category for his work in restoring the
Bratch Pumping Station. And as far as I know this was not reported in the
Express & Star locally nor in the national press. How much more local
talent is there to be discovered, particularly under Carl Chinn’s
suggestion of Icons and by the Black Country’s unrivalled collection of
propagators of its history which includes the daily Express and Star, the
weekly Black Country Bugle, the quarterly Blackcountryman and Wulfruna
newsletter of the Wolverhampton History and Heritage Society despite their
refusal to recognise that the BlackcountryMAN is a sexist title and the
latter’s title is unworthy of a serious historical society which continues
to take the name of that nastiest of women whose statue I am dedicated to
having removed from the town centre even though it was sculptured by a very
famous Black Country sculptor called Wheeler.
Certainly the sport and engineering talent is well worthy of
proclaiming Wolverhampton the centre and capital of sport and industry
against those upstarts of Manchester, Edinburgh and Brighton who insolently
claim this title. But this is not all.

THE OTHER HALF OF HUMANITY - WOMEN IN BUSINESS AND ELSEWHERE.
We have for some years had a Black Country Chamber and Business link set
up by like-minded women professionals called ‘Inspirational Women’. It has
become one of the country’s most successful networks for women in business
with over 1,100 members from all parts of the country. One of their most
successful functions has been Annual Dinners and Business Awards which have
consistently awarded Black business women and been extended to both African
Caribbean awards and Black Country Asian Business Association Dinners and
Annual Awards.
This good work has been extended to an ‘Opening Doors’ project which on
National Women’s Enterprise day brought a conference at the Patshull Park
Hotel, Pattingham giving women a chance to join together, to discuss at a
social and business events how to move their businesses forward. One of the
most inspirational talks was that of the famous woman cricketer Rachael
Heyhoe Flint. ‘Self belief, confidence and resilience was the recipe of this
Wolverhampton Wanderers director.
All this encourages us in the belief that Wolverhampton is a special
city risen from the depths of being regarded as the racist capital of
Britain in the days of Enoch Powell to the Cultural, Educational, Sporting
and Business Centre of Britain. Only a misplaced modesty and lack of
initiative prevents us claiming this title and to this we will address
ourselves tomorrow.