The Barnsby Blog

A FAMILY AFFAIR.
The commemoration rather than the celebration of my 89th birthday on January 29th has brought the family together and resulted in some surprising confessions of members. For instance Robert,my elder son, and his partner Carol gave different reactions to their work situation. Robert said that his position as an executive in a large fencing firm is causing him increasing stress as his hours lengthen, his position becomes increasingly insecure, and his workload increases. Cal, on the other hand, works as an assistant in the only supermarket in Darlaston, finds that three other supermarkets have recently located in the area but her supermarket continues as busy as ever and she loves her job and her position of being almost indispensable to her employers as additional labour is almost impossible to find.
William, my second son, has different problems, but ones which also cause him stress and his partner Maggie also has problems.Billy’s main problem is that as a self-employed scaffolder, work is drying up, but any alternative employment (which I would like him to take because scaffolding is increasingly hazardous with advancing years) would scarcely provide him with a living wage, and he has late in his life taken responsibility for a new grown up family all of whom have problems of its own for such expensive items as weddings that he is only too ready to subsidise, but is a drain on his income.
The only other member of my family is my brother Sidney  who came out of the army in 1946 with much the same resources as me such as a demobilisation suit and about £100 army annuity. He spent that on a car and a correspondence course in accountancy which has seen him spend a lifetime working as chief accountant in the film industry, spending his life among glamorous film stars, earned himself a pretty penny, remained single all his life, is now suffering from the ailments of the 80 plus year olds, losing his friends as they die off and he and I become increasingly attached to each other by telephone as we are the only two left who can discourse and compare experiences of the 1920 and 1930s.
Me? I spent my gratuity on seeing whether I had any brains and paid to take pre- University exams and then studied at my favourite university, the London School of Economics where I became the first working class secretary of the Communist Society and eventually a lowly paid teacher, without enough money to both smoke and drink, so that I chose the former. Am I envious of Sid, or wish I had done the same? I don’t think so.
So let’s start with the life experiences of Rob and Bill. Neither showed any wish to follow their parents. Esme who was the daughter of butchers, did various jobs after we came to Wolverhampton in 1954, including teaching at Ettingshall Primary School which she was allowed to do without teacher training because she had a degree and ferried both our children through infant and primary schooling, before she became the manager of Key Books, the only progressive bookshop in Birmingham, until it in turn closed as the Communist Party liquidated itself and became Democratic Left.
Both our sons left school as soon as they could, both took courses at the Construction Industry College in East Anglia, both turned their noses up at being employees of capitalist building firms and both became self employed.  All went well until a couple of very severe winters when they were both laid off and then came a slump which nearly bankrupted both of them. Robert seems to have learned the lesson that its not much fun working out doors in winter and so took employment with a fencing firm which offered office work as well as an occasional visit to a site to measure it up for fencing where he remains to this day, but Billy, who by then was employing several men stuck it out, but gradually they had to part company as work became scarce and Bill’s own livelihood , as described above, is now at risk.
Robert and Cal are now in a position to make radical changes.  Without any children, a villa in Greece almost paid for, and the mortgage on their house almost paid, they could up sticks and live permanently in Greece.  Or they could live part of their lives here, where Robert would like to study, but not work based subjects but studies once promised by Life Long Learning of cultural subjects for which the government is now unwilling or unable to pay. But Robert could finance such early retirement and regain his soul.  Billy cannot afford such luxury and Maggie, his partner is a mobile nurse giving medical treatment and advice from her van, but increasingly has to work from home for days on end but could not revert to ordinary nursing without a substantial loss of income.
What has been my attitude to the family’s dilemmas?  Well, I never worried unduly about either sons leaving school early, believing that they would eventually feel the need to be better educated, and I would be in a financial position to assist their Further Education. I was influenced by my own experience. Life is for enjoying when you are young (or at any age come to that) and my life was enjoyable in the 1920s and 30s. It contrasted with the girl next door who won a scholarship to a Grammar School and spent all her time each night doing home work, so that she had no life of her own to enjoy.
So I can sing on my 89th birthday  with my family around us we can sing a slightly changed version of the old Cockney song My Old Dutch and say ‘We’ve been Together now for 70 years and it Don’t Seem a Day too Much’.

OUR MAN IN DAVOS
My economics mentor, William Keegan of the Observer, has been at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, this week. He writes as follows:
As one who marvels that Blair is not doing time in the Tower of London for his conduct over Iraq, I have been giving him a wide berth. This is not difficult because there is no shortage here of the rich and the super rich in whose company the co-founder of New Labour feels at home. Yes, the international debt-set are here in force even though they have been more interested in the financial markets and what is regarded as panic by the US Federal Reserve in slashing interest rates.
It is fascinating to witness the mood of Davos Man who a year ago was laughably optimist about the general prospects for the world economy and that ably steered by the all-powerful Federal Reserve the show would continue to go on. Today these illusions have been displaced by the reality of US recession and since the world is so critically connected, the question arises that if the crisis assumes the proportions of the 1930s will we be able to de-couple ourselves from the US economy or shall we suffer even worse hardships. That is the economic dilemma that besets us, just as the political problem is how we shall extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan. The rest of this BLOG is devoted to the practical efforts being made to solve this problem.

MICHAEL MOORE AND SICKO.
His good news is that Sicko has been nominated for this year’s Academy Awards as Best Documentary of the year. In 2003 when he won the Academy Award with Bowling for Columbine it was the 5th day of the war in Iraq and he said we live in fictitious times with a fictitious president and this was met with cheers and boos. Well its five years later and we are still at war. The difference is that the Academy has changed and no less than three of the five nominations this year are Iraq War Films. But will there be an Oscar show this year? The Writers’ Guild, of which Moore is a member is on strike, and if it is not settled almost no actor or writer or anyone else will cross the picket line. It is to be hoped that the union-busting knuckleheads who created this strike come to their senses. In the meantime Michael says thanks for nominating Sicko and may it hasten the day when every American can go to the doctor or hospital and never be asked, ‘what’s in your wallet?’. Â Join the Michael Moore fan club by dialling, maillist@michaelmoore.com

STOP THE WAR COALITION.
Newsletter 1031 tells why we are still marching. During Bush’s recent visit to the Middle East he contended that levels of violence are significantly reduced. Try telling that to the inhabitants of the southern outskirts of Baghdad whose homes were flattened on Jan 10 when US bombers unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives in the biggest air attack since 2003 killing or injuring dozens of civilians, many of them women, children and elderly. Or the thousands of Iraqis who were the victims of US bombing raids which quadrupled in 2007 from 2006 rising from 4 attacks a week to 4 attacks a day. Its the same story from Afghanistan where the number of air strikes doubled in 2007 to a staggering 3,527, an average
of almost 10 a day.
15 February is the date of the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq and as part of the World Demonstration against the war a London demo called by Stop the War, CND and the British Muslim Initiative will assemble at noon in Trafalgar Square and march to Parliament. For details see http://www.stopwar.org.uk
Incorporated into the larger demo of 15 Feb will be another to End the Siege of Gaza Now. This tiny strip of land 25 miles long and 6 miles wide is on the brink of becoming the first territory to be deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution according to a UN Report. Food imports cover only 41% of demand. Over 40 Gazans have died as a result of being denied medical aid. Israel is cutting fuel and electricity supplies affecting essential health and water facilities. The recent dismantling of the border wall with Egypt has brought little respite as the Israeli army continues its attacks on the Palestinian people of Gaza demolishing homes and factories and carrying out arrests. All of this without a word of protest from George Bush or Gordon Brown who provide the essential war material that makes this possible.

THE GREATEST HOLOCAUST OF ALL TIME.
The death of Suharto, the Indonesian dictator brings to an end the bloodied life of the greatest mass murderer of all times, and I choose the obituary of John Pilger who did more than anyone else to chronicle and oppose his murderous regime to have the last word.
After the Second World War and the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt the problem for world imperialism led by the US and Britain was to contain and eventually destroy world Communism. The 1965 take-over of Suharto with US and British support led to up to 1 million deaths of Indonesian Communists as the US embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with the names of a ‘zap-list’ of Indonesian Communists and crossed off their names as they were killed or captured. Meanwhile the British government was secretly involved in this slaughter as British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so that they could take part in this holocaust. A deal was struck under which Suharto would give up his country and the richest hoard of natural resources in the world to imperialist powers. In November 1967Â at a conference sponsored by Time-Life Corporation in Geneva and led by David Rockefeller, Suharto handed his country over to the corporate giants of the imperialist world, the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, Siemans, US Steel and many others. The Freeport Company got a mountain of metal in West Papua, Alcoa got the biggest slice of Indonesia’s bauxite, America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations. Nor was this the end of Suharto’s crimes for he continued throughout his life to serve he imperialist masters by whom he was so well-paid that he became an imperialist power in his own right.
The worst subsequent crime was exposed by John Pilger in his film Death of a Nation which described how in 1989 Gareth Evans, then Australia’s foreign secretary and Ali Alatas, the principal mouthpiece of Suharto signed a treaty to illegally occupy east Timor and search the seabed for Australian and international oil and gas companies to gain the prize of ‘zillions of dollars’ But the resistance of the East Timoreans led to yet another holocaust in which at least 200,000 were killed. Pilger filmed the evidence clandestinely, ‘Black crosses etched the sky, crosses on peaks of hills, crosses in tiers on the hillsides littering the earth and crowding the eye as far as could be seen. At least a third of the population died in this holocaust and atrocity. History will neither forgive nor forget this tyrant Suharto who died this week.

REVENGE IS SWEET FOR NIGEL HASTILOW.
Demise of the hypocrite Peter Hain is a joy to behold. No one is more entitled  than Nigel Hastilow, the Express and Star columnist,  to gloat at the fall of his arch enemy. For Hain was one of those who cost Hastilow a possible Parliamentary political career as a prospective Conservative candidate in a Black Country constituency in the next general election.  And so he right royally lambasts Hain. His days stretch ahead devoid of urgent meetings, secret briefings  and vital discussions on great affairs of state. Hain wakes up to a new world where he has nothing to look forward to except the boys in blue knocking on his door and a police investigation.
Last November Peter Hain had called Hastilow’s resignation as a Tory candidate because he had warned that large scale immigration would change the face of the country. Hain’s failure to declare £103,000 of donations to his campaign to become deputy leader of the Labour Party was the last straw (no pun intended) in a career which had unjustly accused Hastilow of racism because he had had quoted Powell and which enables Hastilow to quote Powell, again non-racistly in thinking in the spare time that Hain will abundantly have in the future, ‘That all political lives, unless they are cut off in mid-stream end in failure because that is the nature of politics and human affairs’. Hain deserves to go down in history as the hypocrite he is.
To put the boot in further we quote Peter Rhodes his fellow Express & Star columnist as saying that anyone who is asked to give their racial origin should opt for ‘mixed race’, in this Romano-Anglo-Saxon-Viking-Caribbean-Asian stew that we call British.

GEORGE FAIRBURN.
One of the greatest joys of an activist is to receive a communication from a complete stranger which covers a whole range of things in which I am interested Such an experience was mine this week with a email from George Fairburn. He tells me that he has recently purchased a copy of my impressive work on Housing. (It could be no other than my History of Housing in Wolverhampton 1750 to 19750)  and confesses that he had no idea that there was a local man who was so informed about the area. He confesses to have googled my name and was delighted to find an author writing of the 70s still with us today.
While reading my BLOGS he discovered that I was a good friend of his former headmaster, Bernard Trafford and he could recall when he was a pupil at Wolverhampton Grammar School that he was  but a music teacher at WGS but how skilled he was on all instruments, especially the piano and trumpet (I was not aware that Bernard was also a virtuoso on the trumpet)
Having said that, he turns to the things that he wants to talk about.  Firstly that his family for many generations were proud stallholders in Wolverhampton Market. The two families were Darley and Thomas. As achild he came to hear a story of Wolverhampton council wanting to move the markets from Exchange Street to the present position. He was led to believe that the land was chartered land, but somehow they got around this fact because they fancied the idea of building their Civic there. (Interjection - Ah! happy days of being the first modern Communist to speak on the Market Patch.) That the stall holders resented the movement and it marked the beginning of the end for market trading in Wolverhampton. After reading of my unceasing approach to get to the bottom of things he thought I would be the best person to approach for an unbiased view. (Another interjection, so does Mr.Rai, long term porter at the Civic Centre  who wants the city to support a Citizens’ Day and sent cheques to the council to put his money where his mouth is, which they have shamefacedly returned to him year after year.)
He completely endorses my view that by the time of Enoch Powell and his speeches Wolverhampton was already well on its way to being as good an example as you could find of different cultures getting on well together. He can well recall that the city had more of a beating heart than it has now.
So his first question to me is whether there is any truth in the rumour that the Council acted unilaterally in what was probably a decision by the first of Wolverhampton’s many regeneration authorities? (Yet another interjection.  Now here’s a question for Roger Lawrence, the leader of the Labour Council to answer, especially if the City council own the land on which the Wolves pitch and the land on which Miolineux stands, there is precious little else for Steve Morgan, the ex-Liverpool property tycoon  to own when he paid £30million for Wolves.)
His second query is to whether I could point him in the direction of any records that exist about the particular terrace houses of 27 to 31 Tettenhall Rd. He owned and renovated No.27 in which his sister now lives.  He cannot figure out whether they were part of the infill described in my book. They have their own cast iron sign outside ‘oaklands crescent’s and are only two storeys high. He knows my expertise will not stretch to such minute detail but if I could point him in the direction of good sources of research he would be most grateful. (Last intervention - this seems to be a job for out chief executive’s department, Richard Cross, who refuses to answer my letters, especially as Fairburn adds two after thoughts. Is it true that when excavation work was being carried out in the 1960s that a tunnel was found close to St.Peter’s church which headed towards the Central Library on Snow Hill? And concerning the site of the Battle of Tetttenhall a former family friend  Bernard Brodie owned land adjacent to Wergs Rd.  where a retirement village is currently being built, he was firmly of the belief that this was the site of it. He allowed George to use a metal detector in 1992, but he turned up nothing older than 18th century horse shoes and keys etc. So are we to count George Fairburn as the first participator in the campaign to determine whether the Battle Of Tettenhall 1015AD was fought either at Tettenhall or Wednesfield, or another place or perhaps nowhere which Councillor Phil Bateman is energetically pursuing as well as getting the chief executive Richard Cross involved as well as  Tony Robinson of the BBC Timewatch team who at the end of his series last year recruited a number of amateur volunteers in Wolverhampton who would participate in any further archaeological activity. This would involve also Wolverhampton schools and their teachers, but for some reason there has been no rush of schools to volunteer and difficulty in even getting them to publish their history syllabuses which would allow the public to judge as to their ‘fitness for purpose’ in the modern multicultural society that we are creating.)
So, my new friend, George Fairburn, you have touched on so many of the projects I have been engaged in all my working life of 70 years and I hope we can collaborate over the remaining years which may be left to me.

FEMINISM
Why are so few prosecutions for rape successful? This has been the cry of feminists over the decades. Germaine Greer sums the matter up in the different context of the John Hogan case, the man who threw his son from a fourth floor balcony. A Greek court has found him ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’  and that he be kept for a short period in a hospital until he is no longer a danger to himself and others. So who is responsible for the loss of Natasha Hogan’s child. The short answer Greer finds is her. John Hogan believes that the child is now in paradise. Two of Hogan’s brothers committed suicide we are told and he himself  has been treated for panic attacks. Other irrelevances were that Natasha had asked for a divorce.  The tabloid press has weighed in with information that when Hogan killed his son (and injured his daughter) his wife was emotionally involved with another man and may even have had sex with him. As Hogan did not know of this relationship at the time it has no relevance to the case except to insinuate that Natasha was responsible for her own undoing. Greer continues that the person on trial in Greece was not John Hogan, but his wife Natasha. She had not only to endure re-living the traumatic events of the deaths but to witness her then husband handled with kid gloves, stroked and reassured and finally taken away for further cosseting. No wonder, concludes Greer, that on the steps of the court house Natasha could only weep as though her heart would break.

WHAT BLACK AMERICANS THINK OF BARACK OBAMA.
Today’s Guardian 2 carries a long article of interviews with black people in all walks of life seeking their views on Barak. I was surprised to find how many of them had negative reactions such as His principles do not lie with mine; I can’t warm to Obama, he’s too slick; He’s Clinton in Black Face.
I was particularly interested in two interviews. One was with Bonnie Greer, domiciled in England and a regular member of Newsnight Revue on BBC 2. She says that in 2008 America is still deeply racist. There is still a deeply held belief  that black people are not quite fully fledged and functioning human beings. And there are black people who will vote for anyone, as long as that person is black. Forget about the African-Caribbean millionaires and billionaires.  In a country that believes in the Dream many Americans are dreaming that the young black man with the powerful voice and blinding charisma will somehow take them out of the morass of American history and drive fascism out of the White House and restore democracy.  She goes on, the truth is that I can’t warm to Obama. Perhaps I’m too working class. There’s just two much money, too much bull shit involved in both camps. Both of them will owe too many people. And the people they owe will not be the poor, the ex-soldiers struggling back home, the disenfranchised, people who have to rent rooms because their houses have gone. If Obama plays the race card he is doomed, if the Clintons ignore race she is doomed.  Me, I’ll vote for whoever the Democrats throw up at their convention.  American presidential politics has long past stopped being real.
For a Marxist view of the situation I turned to Angela Davis. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in the midst of Jim Crow laws. During her childhood she experienced the humiliations of segregation. She first encountered Herbert Marcuse and progressive policies during the Cuban Missile Crisis and she lived in Europe until the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama church bombing organised by the Ku Klux Klan which deeply affected her as she personally knew the four black people involved. She ran for vice-president on the Communist ticket in 1980 and 1984. Angela is also a music celebrity, both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones having released songs about her. This is her testimony on Obama:
He is being consumed as the embodiment of colour-blindness. It’s the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race into account.  That’s what makes him conceivable as a presidential candidate. He has become the model of diversity in this period, and what is interesting about his campaign is that it has not sought to invoke engagements with race other than those that have already existed. The Republican administrations is the most diverse in history, but when the inclusion of black people into the machinery of oppression is designed to make that machine work more efficiently, then it does not represent progress at all. We have more black people in more visible and powerful positions. But then we have far more black people who have been pushed down to the bottom of the ladder.  When people call for diversity and link it to justice and equality, that’s fine.  But there’s a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change.

RACE RELATIONS IN WOLVERHAMPTON.
Two things have occurred which alters the picture of Race Relations.  The first is that the suspect Commission for Equality and Human Rights under the suspect Sir Trevor Phillips has started a West Midlands branch in Birmingham with the usual rhetoric of stakeholders, equality openness, diversity, best practice etc. when we know that in practice it has been a cover for New Labour machinations to keep concealed the information necessary to decide whether race relations in Wolverhampton are improving or on the boil to new riots.
But the other thing is that the silence of the new Race Equality Partnership Wolverhampton (REPW) has been occasioned by the appointment of a new chief executive, and the good news is that he is a an ethnic minority person, so I have asked if he will come and visit me so that I can get to know of him and the policy of his unit. More will follow.

THE POLICE DEMO
The picture of thousands of police engaging in an ‘illegal’ demonstrations, including very many from the West Midlands has warmed the cockles of my heart. Until, I was informed by  my favourite hawk-eyed Guardian columnist, whose name I shall not reveal, because he may not wish it. That the police chose to place at the head of their procession,a contestant for the mayoralty of London a person whose party is very properly banned by many police associations, and also the Association of Chief Police Officers namely the BOP. So why was Richard Barnbrook the BNP candidate for London allowed to take a prominent position at the front of the procession? A bad gaff or a recurrence of past racism, of the police? We hope it is the former.

THE UNSPEAKABLES.
We still wait in vain for those who will not speak to me to return to their constitutional duty to reply to correspondence addressed to them and appeal particularly to the chief executive of Wolverhampton, Richard Cross, to reveal who runs Wolverhampton, what part the city will play in improving race relations  and what is he doing to see that Wolverhampton claims its place in 2009 as the City of Culture, Education, Sport and Business.

THE VAGARIES OF THE COMPUTER.
I spent much of today directing yesterday’s BLOG to people I  want particularly to see it. But why did the computer reject such names as  Arsene Wenger and the Gooners and others I email regularly and even more eccentrically  the email of my new found friend, George Fairburn, who wrote his own email address. However, most of these things have hopefully been put right  and I can set out on the large volume of business generated by the Express  and Star over the past two days, instead of having a couple of days rest,  as I would have liked.

CHURCH CONVERSION ON MOBILE PHONE MASTS.
The Kings School Tettenhall is not one of my favourite  institutions. For instance, when Regis Comprehensive School fell on hard times  Lichfield Diocese was quick to take it over which meant that parents who did not  want their kids indoctrinated with religious dogma were denied a local  school to send their children. My own two sons prospered at Regis, but now I am  only marginally concerned with the old school. Then one of the teachers, the  head, I think, got up to sexual tricks he shouldn’t have done and then  to cap it all both the Diocese and the School allowed a Mobile Phone Mast  to be set up as early as 1992, pretended that it was with the approval of  parents and staff, despite the existence of a massive campaign against it. The  masts gave it extra funds which disadvantaged City schools without such  income. And it enrolled  its pupils from right across the city instead of its  proper catchment area of the Regis part of Tettenhall. A thoroughly  disgraceful state of affairs for an organisation supposed to be serving their god  and not Mammon.
However we can now rejoice that they have experienced a  conversion which compares with that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus and both  the Diocese and the School now want the mast removed although Orange is insisting that the school honour its agreement which runs until 2016.  We agree with both the School and the group which has campaigned so consistently against the mast, Parents Against Masts (PAM) and also the  parents who have removed their children from the Kings and nearby  Woodthorne Primary school as endangering their children’s health. The church is  now doing the right thing, but in penitence it would be better if they  removed themselves entirely and handed the school back to the local authority  and those parents who want a Secular education for their children.

LOSS OF OUR LOCAL MPs.
A serious charge against Ken Purchase which I never thought he  would have to face was brought by Steve Hall of Ashbourne Road in a letter to  the Express and Star on Wednesday. He says that he is a local man with  first hand knowledge of all things local. He asks for someone to explain to  him why Dennis Turner, a local man with many years experience relinquished  his role in favour of an outsider who was parachuted into a safe seat. He  refers to Pat McFadden, the New Labourite who has subsequently been made  Minister of State for another Ministry of Funny Names, in this case Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, whatever that happens to be. Or  perhaps he has been promoted in the reshuffle today as yet another dodgy New  Labour character Peter Hains bites the dust. McFadden is in every sense a  foreigner where Scots should not be able to vote on English matters in the House  of Commons.
Steve Hall continues: And why now is Ken Purchase, another local  MP with longstanding local knowledge, considering giving up his seat for Harriet Harman’s husband, another complete outsider parachuted in to supposedly look after our local problems. Lord Ken is presumably the  next stage. This is a serious charge which I must ask Ken to answer even  though I know he has always supported progressive policies, such as an original opponent of the war in Iraq in 2003, and a thorn in the flesh of this government in Parliament, notably opposing Educational Academies which  Lord Adonis has been so keen to foist on us in exchange for non-existing  wealth in improving Wolverhampton’s schools. I hope its not true, Ken.

MORE ON FUNERALS.
In discussing Funerals yesterday, I omitted to discuss the present  position. This is that I am quite prepared to leave this matter in the  hands of the British Humanist Association, which increasing is becoming the spokesperson for us atheists who have in the past been denied official recognition and have had to be content with being  represented by progressive liberal christians. At my funeral christians will be  welcome, as long as they sit in the audience a don’t interfere with the  proceedings. Also that I want only a cardboard coffin, and have recently spurned the  advice of a personal  Co-op financial adviser to pre-pay for my funeral  and thus make a profit for my family. No, I have quite enough money to pay  for my own funeral after which I shall want my ashes dispersed, not even on  the Arsenal or Wolves football pitches but under a tree in my own garden.

THOSE WHO DO NOT ANSWER MY CORRESPONDENCE.
Once again I watch newscasters such as Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark, Martha Kierney and Jon Snow as they show great indignation  at the failure of such rapscallions as Gordon Brown himself, Peter Hains,  Geoff Hoon  and Lord Adonis fail to give a straight answers to their  questions whilst ignoring their greater culpability in ganging up together to  deny, for the almost 55th time my constitutional right to receive a reply to charges that I have made against them, viz. that by not challenging   Blair on the war in Iraq they allowed him to join Bush in the illegal, racist  and unwinnable war in Iraq. That by such refusal they made themselves a  party to those wars, and removed the only democratic measure that differentiates  us from the vilest of dictatorships. Are they going to continue to flout  their legal obligation to reply to correspondence addressed to them or can  we, collectively, bring them to book?

NASIR KHAN.
Nasir Khan our expert on Pakistan who runs a magnificent daily  BLOG on nasir.khan@c2i.net also has a website http//nasir-khan.blogspot.com  It  can also be reached by simply typing in Nasir Khan. Nasir has become a good comrade of mine since I discovered his very authoritative book,  Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms. This work of nearly 500 pp is now on the internet and can be downloaded. Khan’s second important work is, ‘The  Theory of Alienation in the Writings of Marx’, which also is now on the  internet. Nasir has also promised to co-operate in any project to connect  indigenous people in New Zealand, Canada, Alaska etc. with Evo Mores in Bolivia in  a transition to socialism and Communism without passing through the exploitative stages of Feudalism and Capitalism of what Marx seems to  have called the Asiatic Mode of production as a possible explanation for the seemingly unchanging state of India.
The importance of this topic has been revealed by the US  elections and something that Peter Rhodes in what I believe is a world scoop says in  jest but which has a very large significance (see my BLOG 357 Mon.21 Jan). Rhodes says that while the election of either a woman or a black man would be of considerable importance, even more important  would the election of an indigenous ‘Red Indian’, who could run on a slogan of , ‘Fighting Terrorism since 1492′ .
But I was quite unaware of what made Nasir tick until I read his Acknowledgements to his ‘Alienation’ which included many distinguished Scandinavian Marxists and finally,  ‘I would like to mention Sardar  Kamal Khan from Pooch who had spent many years of is life in the prisons of  the Maharajah of Kashmir for opposing feudal oppression and organising the movement for freedom of Kashmir.He was released from prison after the emergence of the independent states of India and Pakistan at the end of colonial rule in 1947. However when he raised his voice for the basic  human rights of the people and the immediate need for the welfare of the  refugees who had arrived in Pakistan, the new rulers, the Pakistani and Kashmiri civil-military power elites chose to silence his voice. He was thrown  in prison from 1950 onwards for many years without any trial or due  process of law . This fearless legendary peasant revolutionary , his ideals and  example have always been the main source of inspiration in my life. HE WAS MY FATHER’.

SIR TREVOR PHILLIPS AND HIS INABILITY TO REPRESENT ETHNIC MINORITY
PEOPLE.
In my campaign to telephone those who will not reply to me, I set  about phoning the chief executing of the Commission for Equality and Human  Rights who has persistently failed to reply to my charges that by supporting  the war in Iraq he shows himself incapable of representing ethnic  minorities or even a majority group (women). I phoned his office, he wasn’t there but  I was promised that he would phone back. I wonder if he will.
But I discovered developments of which I was totally unaware. The  main one was that a Birmingham branch of CfEHR is already established and operating. I have no knowledge of this and will have  to consult   Trevor Phillips, also Race Equality West Midlands and Race Equality  Partnership Wolverhampton.

FUNERALS.
It started with a conversation between  Joe Davies and me. They  say Old Soldiers Never Die, they only Fade Away. But Joe  has been to many Old Soldiers’ Funerals and is expected to go to more as so many of existing ex-servicemen are over ninety. Joe takes their regimental banners which  are lowered in memory of them. I then asked Joe who would arrange his  funeral and he said that it was cut and dried. It would be arranged by the  Parachute Regiment Association and he was surprised to learn that mine would not  be arranged by the Burma Star Association which now arranges such matters  now that the regimental organisations of those who fought in Burma have all  but vanished as members die. Perhaps that will happen, but it is not as  easy as that. I first thought of death twenty or thirty years ago when the  question of Communists’ funerals was fairly clear cut. You  chose a friend who  knew you well to make a funeral oration, your coffin was draped with the Red  Flag and probably not the Union Jack which represented the empire on which  the sun never set and the blood never ceased to flow. My loyalty was to the working class of the world, not to British imperialists. Thus I have  the trimmings for the job, an orator in the person of Tony McNally, the  last secretary of the Communist Party until it turned itself into the  Democratic Left, and the expectation of being cremated and my ashes scattered at a favoured spot, perhaps Arsenal Football pitch at Highbury and the rest oblivion. But the world has changed out of all recognitions since those halcyon days.
My writings on these matters date back to the years that I was  studying for my Ph.D at Birmingham University and first met Carl Chinn whose  father had been a pawnbroker and he was studying to write a thesis on this  subject. In chapter 18 of what was to become my book, ‘Socialism in Birmingham  and the Black Country 1850-1939′,  I wrote of the first ex-service movement  to be caught up in the revolutionary years after the Russian Revolution to  be controlled by rank and file servicemen called the National Federation  of Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers (known as the Federation) and  the  National Union of Ex-Service Men or NUX.  Both took part in the negotiations to  form the British Communist Party from 1918 and one of the most important  members of NUX was John Beckett who followed NUX policies of being the ‘ex-servicemen’s branch of the general labour movement’ with the task  of explaining that wars were caused by the machinations of the  Capitalitistic and Militaristic master class’  in the words of A.E.Mander the general-secretary of NUX. Francis Beckett, the son of John became a  militant and wrote about his father and we became quite friendly as we were both researching the  same matter. The ruling class eventually wrenched control back by forming  the British Legion and establishing a United Services Fund of Canteen money  which eventually reached £10million and to which NUX was excluded. So Earl Haig, the architect of the slaughter of the war became president and the Prince of Wales  patron.
The story of John Beckett must be followed to its ultimate  melancholy end. The slump that followed the war destroyed the militancy after the  war and after the betrayal of Ramsay McDonald of the first minority Labour government elected in 1929 by becoming prime minister of a National Government in 1931 which  was a Tory one in all but name, two of the figures who led a substantial left-wing Labour revolt were Oswald Mosley and John Beckett. But both  broke away from the Labour Party to form the New Party but quickly became the  British Union of Fascists. This supported the appeasement policy of Hitler and Mussolini, the so-called Spanish Civil war and finally the Second World war which should never  have occurred if there had not been the Non-Intervention policy which denied  the Spanish Republican government arms from anyone but the Russians and  brought charges of Russian intervention.
So this brings us back to the present which differs from the past  in several respects. First the collapse of the post cold-war world of Communism. This is connected to the fact that Marx has been recognised  as the most influential Economist of all time and brings us on to Nasir  Khan and the new world of Socialism being built in Venezuela and Bolivia.  Then there is the fact that a recent world-wide trend has been to recognise  the deeds of the men and women that saved us from fascism in the Second  World War and leads Joe Davies to say to me, ‘Weren’t you proud of your  Communist heroes of those days, to which the emphatic answer must be yes. But different Communists give different answers. For instance, Jack Price,  local Communist who fought with the most famous of all British regiments, the Grenadier Guards from which after the war he bought himself out, still  says that he will have no truck with any militarist or capitalist  organisation because he remains a Communist.
Lastly there comes a time when the high and mighty have ceased to  be and ex-service organisations are now increasing controlled by rank and  file activists. This has been particularly true of finding recognition for  those who fought with the Forgotten Fourteenth Army in Burma and particularly  the most savage of battles that occurred at Kohima which has finally  achieved its aim, the Kohima memorial at the Lich Gates next to St.Peter’s Church  which states, ‘Tell those who come after you that we gave our Todays for your Tomorrow’s. This was a campaign I was immensely proud to have played a  small part in promoting.
So I now associate myself with the militarists, the majority of  whom oppose the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Also with the  police who have filled London streets today in ‘illegal’ demonstrations about  police pay and conditions which have not been seen since the first police  strike of 1919 which, again, I had the privilege of recording. Indeed, in the  present struggle to create a multicultural society in Britain both nationally  and locally I feel that my participation in a united front to end all wars  is in the best tradition of united action which has invariably been the  policy of Communist parties throughout the world.

A WORKING CLASS LIBRARY FOR THE MIDLANDS.
A visit from Ivor Pearce from Birmingham has again raised the  question of what will happen to my Working Class Library and Free Communist  Bookshop when I pass on and tentative proposals for a West Midlands Working  Class Library to supplement mine, the only such Library so far to have been  formed on the model of Eddie and Ruth Frow’s Working Class Movement Library.  It was my intention to leave my books and artefacts to Bilston Community  College and that  might well be possible as the closure of that College by racists and bigots is proved to be illegal. But looking even further  ahead it is possible that the archives centre in Wolverhampton where some of  my papers are currently deposited and where all of them will eventually go  and also Birmingham Central Library where Communist and progressive  material such as the Charles Parker archive are housed could be a possible  source.
But best of all might be the creation of a special department at Wolverhampton University such as exists at Warwick University for  Working Class Studies or Bradford University for Peace Studies. This will not  be possible until the University is purged of the ‘three bad apples’ that actively participated in the closure of Bilston Community College or  until the present Vice-Principal is persuaded to forego her advocacy of  Educational Academies. But with campuses in Dudley, Walsall and Telford where the  first great breakthrough of the industrial revolution came at Ironbridge, Wolverhampton University has all the potential to become one of the  hubs of a Midlands Working Class Library. And this might be the forerunner of  yet other Working Class Libraries in East Anglia, Bristol, Wales or  Scotland. But this is the tentative imaginings of what could be and we would ask all progressive people and institutions to discuss the above  proposal and make suggestions..

ARSENE WENGER COMES A CROPPER.
Arsenal were severely thrashed by Tottenham last night and it did disturb my night’s sleep a little. But it only shows that he can be as  pig headed as anyone else in pursuing his dream of his youthful third team winning the Carling Cup.
But Arsenal remain unique in supporting the view that football  clubs should be owned by their local communities and not by foreign  privateers concerned only with private profit.  These teams face the disaster of a full-scale economic crash of 1930s magnitude which might mean that  ‘their’ teams will face bankruptcy and go out of existence if the money they have  borrowed to buy clubs at extortionate rates of interest fails. This appears to  be increasingly likely at Liverpool where US joint owners are at  loggerheads and even the mighty Manchester United could go under if the interest on  the money the Glazers’ borrowed is subject to further rises in interest  rates now being threatened by our man in Threadneedle St. the Governor of the  Bank of England our Wolverhampton Grammar School  educated man, Mervyn King.
Arsenal by prudent financial management have virtually no debts  and will not suffer the fate of the those up to their necks in it. But to  keep ahead of the Top Four we are recommending that the Emirates Stadium  install a folding roof so that in these days of increasing floods their  football is not played on a water-logged pitch; that football boots are built with  a modern light steel toe cap so that broken metatarsals are as rare as  they were in the days of Billy Wright or Alex James. In these, and other  ways I am sure that the next ten years will be as fruitful as the last ten  years to send Arsenal supporters to bed happy.

REMINDING THOSE WHO WILL NOT SPEAK TO ME.
I shall now take to phoning those who will not reply to me. Today  it was the turn of Richard Carr, the chief executive of W’ton. He was not  in his office, but his secretary promised that she would tell I had phoned. We shall see if he replies to my query that there are now  at least three regeneration bodies competing to  improve our City and will  he let me know Who Runs Wolverhampton.

HELPING A NEIGHBOUR.
Margaret Davies had been all round the town on her motor scooter  trying to get a hearing aid extension and could not find a single shop selling  such aids. She was particularly annoyed by the fact that BT had closed its  shop in the town centre and she didn’t know what to do. So I volunteered to  track down such a shop on GOOGLE. But you never know what you are letting  yourself in for with GOOGLE. The first sheet told of a shock wave flash of how patrons using a hearing aid with a ‘T’ switch can call at the  Wolverhampton Civic Hall box office for a hearing aid! Also CHOICE, just before a  stop called the Royal in Wolverhampton was a shop selling sweets, papers and drinks and presumably hearing aids, but I have not checked that one  out. Then there was a Practical Guide for Disabled People of BT shops and some  one qualified to sell you a hearing aid. On to sexual matters. A troubled  Diva is not exactly thrilled with BT Vision right now. The nearest she got  to a separate sexual identity was when an official coach from Wolverhampton pulled up. The penultimate item was one of UK Telephone History where  the first BT shop opened on the Internet was apparently a connection to Kingsbridge, Wolverhampton. Well, blow me down, I knew that the first  set of traffic lights in Britain were said to beset up in Wolverhampton, but  here’s another honour to bolster our case for European City of Culture,  Education, Sport and Business 2009.
But the most bizarre example of my search for a hearing aid was a  House of Commons debate on 15 November 2006 on what must have been the  opening of Parliament to which Ken Purchase (and Rob Marris) contributed  celebrating the 90th. Anniversary of the founding of the Co-operative Party, the  fourth largest party in the House which sponsors Ken Purchase, but whose contribution quickly moved on to other topics such as foreign affairs , the war in  Iraq, home affairs, transport, work and pensions.
So I’m afraid, Margaret, we are no nearer finding you a local shop  to buy a hearing aid, although we’ve been all around the Wrekin looking  for you. You will have to be content with purchasing one from the W’ton  City Council audio services, even though there is a long waiting list.

PETER RHODES AND THE EXPRESS AND STAR.
You can’t keep a good man down and Peter suggests in his column  tonight that an even better alterative for the presidency of the USA would not  be either the first woman president or the first black president, but the  first indigenous president from one of the ‘Indian’ reservations with the  slogan, ‘Fighting Terrorism since 1492′. Until now they’ve always been on the  losing side.

WOLVERHAMPTON WORKING CLASS HISTORY.
I’ve promised myself and my BLOG readers that I shall give myself  the luxury of studying local history and not worry if that means foregoing  a nightly BLOG. One of the interesting features will be to download  GOOGLE and that will lead to the same sort of diversions as I have illustrated  with Margaret and her hearing aid. However, I’ll make a start.
Pete Jackson emails me saying that he contacted me last year about  a ‘People’s History of the West Midlands’ in Birmingham. This went very  well, but he asks my advice on sources for reports of protest against Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in Birmingham in April 1968. He knows  that there were strikes in London supporting Powell, but he has no sources  of such activity in the West Midlands and does he know where he might find  information.
I was able to tell him that there was a very full survey of such activity in Frank Reeves’ book , ‘Race and Borough Politics’ which is a  survey of 40 years of Race Relations in Wolverhampton from 1945 to  1984. In particular there is Chapter V entitled, ‘Our Enoch: Powellism in Wolverhampton’  I would make a plea here for every public library and  every school, college and university to make sure that they have a copy of  this book as Powell and Powellism will continue to be of perennially  importance as it is today  It was published by Avebury of Aldershot.
The anti-Powell campaign in Wolverhampton was led by Lance Dunkley  and the West Indians, Dr.Noor for the Indians, and the Communist Party in default of the Labour Party frightened of losing votes except for a courageous, small left-wing minority. It is likely that the only  complete picture of that resistance to Powellism is to be found in my writings  and in my BLOG, which I shall have difficulty pulling together, But in view of  the primacy of Race Relations of all political and social questions I shall  have to get down to sooner rather than later.

THEY’RE BEGINNING TO CRACK.
Yesterday I asked which of the Labour leaders, chief executives,  MPs, Cabinet Ministers, chief executives of CEand Human Rights, and  Newscasters who don’t reply to me will be the first to fulfil their statutory obligations to acknowledge, record and reply to correspondence  addressed to them.
I haven’t had long to wait. It is OFCOM, the so-called watchdog  of the of the Communications industry who sent me a letter I received today.  It is a weasel reply however, They tell me that while they ask that  broadcasters should have a complaints process in place, they have no jurisdiction  over how such processes operate or over the quality of any eventual  response. This is a matter for the broadcasters themselves. They then have the  cheek to give me the addresses of the BBC and ITV complaints procedure. But  of course I started off with them and because I received no reply it was  then that I contacted OFCOM. If they have no control over those who do not  reply to letters then someone ought to, and if its not the job of OFCOM whose  job is it? And if not OFCOM’S job what are their functions? I’ve written  back putting those questions to them. Whether I shall get a reply and whether it will be satisfactory one I do not know. We shall have to  wait and see.
I wonder who will be the next to reply to me. Will it be Sir  Trevor Phillips who has failed many times to answer charges that his failure  to denounce the war in Iraq makes him unfit to represent ethnic minority people. Or will it be Wolverhampton’s chief executive Richard Carr, who refuses to give me answers to the questions of who governs  Wolverhampton when almost every day, it seems, another set of regenerators feel  themselves to be proud to be redesigning Wolverhampton. Or will it be someone  ‘from the Ministry’ who can answer the question of how our ethnic minority people  are faring educationally, and particularly our Black boys.

NICK ROBINSON.
The Observer today has a full page profile of Nick Robinson the  chief BBC reporter who has the privilege of travelling with the Prime  Minister on land, sea or air. Nick has had a hectic week. He has trouble keeping  abreast of all the news of the week, as do all of us,  but I have recommended  the experts I trust to keep me up-to-date. Three of them are Michael Moore  for the US election on maillist@michaelmoore.com  Nasir Khan, author of a remarkable book ‘Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms’ and also a daily Blog on nasir.khan@c2i.net for expertise on Pakistan and all  Islamic nations from Afghanistan to the  Middle East. Thirdly there is Robert  H. Taylor expert on Myanmar (Burma to most people) and currently working throughout SE Asia on treatment and education on Aids. Surely one of  the most difficult jobs in the world. He can be found on r_h_taylor@btopenworld.com

RACISM IN FOOTBALL AND ELSEWHERE
Another full page article in the Guardian today interviews Lee  Bowyer, now of West Ham who wants people to give him a chance. Bowyer’s record includes the night of 12 January 2000 when he was among a group of  people some of whom assaulted a British Asian student Sarfraz Najeib. Along  with his team mate, Jonathan Woodgate they were both charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent and affray. After two trials spanning almost two years Bowyer was cleared of both counts while Woodgate was convicted of affray and sentenced to community service. Bowyer’s plea  to be given a chance would sound more plausible if he discussed these  implications of Racism and better still if he showed interest in the Kick it Out  scheme in football.
Nearer to home Racism in the West Midlands is far from exorcised.  I was for many years the representative on the Wolverhampton University Equal  Opportunities Committee as a delegate from the local Race Equality  Council. When the WREC was closed by Sir Trevor Phillips (foolishly as many  people would say as it is easier to reform an existing body than create  another, and this has been the problem in Wolverhampton) I was deprived of my position. However I have always taken an interest in the University  Equal Ops Comm. and this week have asked Berrie Dicker, the chair of EO  whether the present Vice-Principal is in favour of Educational Academies in Wolverhampton which most educational bodies and teaching trade unions  feel are institutions outside democratic control and Racist in that ethnic minorities are neglected. Here is material for much discussion if  Lord  Adonis and the New Labour advocates locally are prepared to put their  case.

TOMORROW.
Much on the working class history of Wolverhampton and the West Midlands.

GOSSIP
No BLOG yesterday, just a quiet night watching the snooker on the  tele and getting just a little over due reading done.  And why shouldn’t I  with my long list of  Council leaders, chief executives, MPs, Cabinet  ministers, national chair’s of Race Equality units, and other people who won’t  talk to me (See BLOG 353 Wed 16 Jan). I can well wait until one of them does  their statutory duty and replies to me.
Also my discovery of the pamphlet  The Destruction of Bilston Community College (BCC), the first multicultural college in Britain and the phone  call received by Keith Wymer the former principal of that college that the Freedom of Information people are still investigating the legality of closing the college, I can well wait for things to happen. And they  are.
Lord Bilston, once chair of governors of BCC until he reneged and became a New Labourite resigning his seat to bequeath it to another Blairite, McFadden, a total stranger to the Black Country and its traditions and  then accepted the ridiculous title of Lord Bilston, together with its ample emoluments. He was in the news today as being made an honorary member  of the Showmen’s Guild, which entitles him to free rides for life on any fair organ! Not that his Lordship has anything to do with fair organs, his greatest achievement in the House of Commons, being keeper of the  honourable members’  beer. But this recent award came because of his opposition to   the government proposed ending of the age long practice of giving goldfish as prizes in plastic bags and with a dollop of water. This at  a time when the question of whether fish have feelings and shouldn’t be hooked. I don’t know where I stand on this vital question and whether  there happens to be a Society for the Protection of Goldfish that I should belong to.

MORE GOSSIP.
Other things mentioned in John Hipwood’s Westminster Diary in the Express and Star on Friday is of Rosie Winterton, minister of transport  who hails from Doncaster, telling MPs that she is making so many visits to  the West Midlands that she is thinking of becoming an honorary citizen of  our county. Wolverhampton MP Pat McFadden, was ‘on the buses’ in Birmingham yesterday when he, the Minister for  Funny names, in this case Minister  for Business and Enterprise, was opening a new route, the 552. This is the amount of the minimum wage (£5.52) and McFadden was there  on a  publicity stunt to warn all employers who were paying less than the minimum that  they should pay up.
But today comes a Wolverhampton development that might not be a gimmick, even though it is approved by Gordon Brown. Yet another  unknown minister, this time Liam Byrne, Minister for the West Midlands, if ever you’ve heard of such a thing, was in Wolverhampton to take advantage of  the booming Indian economy, to promote a scheme of trade education and  sporting links between Wolverhampton and the  Punjab officially launched in the Commons back in July.  Four local schools have already set up links  with six schools in the Punjab via the internet, exploring the problems of  global warming. Wolverhampton Wanderers have signed a friendship contract with  JCT Mills who finished second in the Indian National Football League,  premier division last year with a view to exchanging coaching ideas and  marketing techniques. A senior squad from Molineux is due to fly out to Phagwara  where the team is based.
Byrne claims that Wolverhampton  is not only showing the rest of  the region an example, but also the rest of Britain with the West Midlands having 15.9% of the total Indian population in Britain.
Sounds quite like the old days when Bilston Community College was  the first to have links not only with India, but with Moscow and the USA.
What might give second thoughts for such a worthy cause is the  fact that Mr.Byrne will be flying out to India on Feb 4, together with  W.Mids MEP Neena Gill along with local MPs McFaden, Ken Purchase and Bob Marris.  Their mission? To seek improvements in the visa service,  and ways of  boosting trade between India and the West Midlands. Have a nice time, lads, but  I can see many asking that the trip should be paid for out of their out of  their own ample salaries and expenses and not at the expense of the tax  payers.

INCOMING CORRESPONDENCE.
The latest Newsletter of the London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter gives news of recent events and announcement of future ones.  One of  the former was an event held jointly with the Raphael Samuel  History Centre where Marcus Rediker spoke on his new book The Slave Ship,  Rediker emphasising that while a great deal was known about the slave trade  little was known of the ships that carried them. LSHGN carries many other  notices including The Failure of a Dream, the Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II;  Centenary of Equal Pay legislation  with a 1998 NUPE leaflet, ‘Will she ever Get it? as pertinent as Sir Trevor Phillips recent article in the Guardian pushing a Commission of  Equality and Human Rights conference on the same issue and the recent renewed  agitation on why there are so few rape convictions.
Then there is The Flying Pickets the 1972 Builders’ Strike out in  April of this year published by no less than the Des Warren Trust telling of  a totalling new way of conducting strikes and how under Thatcher the Shrewsbury 24 were put on trial and given savage sentences under laws  that New Labour now operate with great venom. Then there is Seventy Years of  the Black Jacobins a conference to mark the 70th anniversary of CLR James’  book at the Institute of Historical Research at Senate House Malet Street  London on Sat.2 Feb;  the Thomas Paine Society Memorial Lecture by Malcolm  Chase on Sat March 1 in the library of Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq. London; Marxism  and the Interpretation of Culture again at Senate House during the spring  term. There is much else, but Keith Flett editor of the LSHGN considers the function of the Newsletter as passing as much information as possible  to as many people as possible and that is also the function of this BLOG. So  go to www.LondonSocialistHistorians.org for all the news of the day.
Other incoming correspondence has been from the British Humanist Association warning of the National Offender Management Service  consultation ‘Believing we Can’, aimed to reduce adult and youth offending. This has  a very heavy  bias toward faith based organisations, discriminates  against secular organisations, provides services exempt from equality  legislation, and the Human Rights Act of 1998. For further info. contact Naomi  Phillips on naomi@humanism.org.uk
Then there is the weekly run down of the  contents of the New Statesman which is always interesting and this week  there was a notice by Pete Jackson who says that there is plenty of  material on the national reaction to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech of  April 1968 but little about the reaction in the West Midlands. Can anyone  help? My first reaction is that the book by Frank Reeves then vice-principal of Bilston Community College, ‘Race and Borough Politics’ is the one  single most important source because it is a day to day account of what  happened in the West Midlands in the forty years between Black people coming to  Britain in 1945 to the end of 1984. It also has a specific chapter, Our Enoch: Powellism in Wolverhampton. Another source is the action of the  triumvirate of activists Lance Dunkley leading West Indians, Mr.Noor leading  Indians and me the Communist as the leading figures in contesting Powell and which,  now that my computer has a back log of my material going back to before  Powell’s speech, there should be material there on www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk.

THE RICHEST MEN IN THE MIDLANDS.
Top of the list is telephone tycoon John Caudwell worth an  estimated £1.65billion. In second place is Lord Paul of Marylebone, long-time Chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton. He is a long-term  non-talker to me and the GB Working Class Library, especially as we challenged the  role of the ‘three bad apples’ the Vice-Chancellor, his Clerk and Jane  Williams who became principal of Wulfrun and later accepted on Honorary Degree who  were especially responsible for the closure of Bilston Community College,  the first multicultural college in Britain. Paul is now said to be worth £1.5billion.  In fifth place comes a new entrant, the US owner of Aston Villa football club, Randy Lerner, who Carl Chinn and his father are battling to ensure that supporters have a seat on the Board so that the owners have the best interests of the club at heart. Sir Jack Hayward, the former owner of  Wolves who sold the club to Steve Morgan, an English property owner  is 28th. on this list. His Bermuda property based empire is said to be  worth £160million. Sir Jack has spent his money wisely  on a wide assortment of patriotic projects.

THE ANTI ACADEMIES ALLIANCE.
As Lord Adonis again tries to sneak in his two Educational  Academies in exchange for mythical millions for Wolverhampton education, we should  return to the inaugural conference of the Anti Academies Alliance held in June 2007 chaired by Ken Purchase MP for Wolverhampton NE. Points made  against Academies were: That academies show no improvement for the most  disadvanged children; Academies have an impoverished curriculum; Academies are  outside the law, neither their fiances nor their financiers need to be  revealed; Academies are outside National Pay and Conditions framework, they can  pay what they like and sack whom they please. Comments by educationists  include Steve Sinnott Gen.Sec. NUT -The government is encouraging issues such  as Creationism to take over in our schools, thus depriving parents of a  secular education for their children. Andy Ballard VP of ATL - We know one  school where before it became an Academy 95% of pupils walked to school. Now  50% arrive by car. Sheppey Parent Action Group representative - If the  Academy goes ahead Sheppey will have one Secondary school for 2,600 pupils and approx. 1,000 of these would be SEN children.
The one true revolution in education since the war has been the introduction of Comprehensive Schools which are the most democratic, socially cohesive, and educationally fulfilling. We must defeat the New Labour traitors who constantly produce ill-thought out schemes and  count a day lost that has not nibbled away at yet more of our basic liberties.

JAZZ
A scheme to have Bernard Trafford and his W’ton Grammar School  Jazz outfit at a farewell ‘rave’ at the Harp, Albrighton and bringing  everyone who can play an instrument from Jew’s harp to Joe Davies’ famous fair  organ ‘Wulfruna’  has gone awry because the Harp is already booked for that  day and John and Marie Howells who run the Harp are in no position to  undertake the necessary extra work to make it a success.
Nor am I in a position to go to the Trumpet, Bilston (the only  venue in Britain where you can see jazz every night) to see Bernard Trafford  play there together with the incomparable pianist Bill Bickerton, as all my ‘minders’ necessary to take me anywhere are otherwise engaged. A great  pity as it might be the only chance I had to hear Bernard. So at least I  hope he will be able to provide me with a tape, or better still a video of him performing before he takes up his appointment in September to the  headship of the Royal Newcastle Grammar School and becomes involved in that  City’s unfortunate year of Culture rather than Wolverhampton’s bid to be the  City of Culture, Education, Sport and Business in 2009. We wish him and his family every success.