The Barnsby Blog

I’M STILL WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO JOIN ME IN DENOUNCING THE ROYAL FAMILY AS
WAR MONGERS.
Still no one has joined me in denouncing the Royals. But I think I have
discovered that I didn’t actually send a notice to them, they being too posh
to have an email address. So I can’t complain if they haven’t replied to me.
So an ordinary letter will be sent post haste to Clarence House London
where the Prince of Wales , together with his two sons live, no doubt as
snug as a bug in a
rug.
My criticism of Charles and Harry as war mongers was based on the fact
that not only did they welcome Harry back from Afghanistan which is quite
proper, but they also endorsed his own view that he was proud of what he had
done and hoped to return to the fighting.
I absolved Queenie from this criticism remarking that she was too wily
a bird talk politics in public
even though other heads of state have publicly joined their citizens in
condemning the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The value of the
BLOG to my mind is that it allows every
citizen a voice and that includes the royal family. Prince Charles has shown
that he is not prepared to be a silent and supports and finances projects
many of which are
admirable. We have learned much about royalty over recent months. The
princes have spoken out regarding their mother and even that old war horse,
Prince Phillip, who durst be let off a chain for fear of a public gaffe has
been found to be a kindly old soul who said nice things about Dianne.
The BLOG brings freedom of expression for all citizens, wise and
foolish,
young and old, and children who are old enough to speak their mind. There
seems to be no reason why the royal family should not join the human race
and say what they think even if Harry is daft enough in my view to want to
rejoin the army and either he or his brother donned Nazi uniform and said
Heil Hitler. The present state of Britain is disastrous with civil liberties
curtailed for every body. The BLOG gives us a chance, perhaps the last
chance, of living in a democratic society where all are equal. Let’s grab it
while we
can, for it is quite certain that the ruling class will try to take it away
from us.

ENOCH POWELL - THE VILEST OF MEN.
The fortieth anniversary of the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech has come and
gone as has the BBC programme commemorating it. We, as well as our regional
paper, the Express and Star agree that it was actually a River of Lies, but
we differ with regard to our interpretation of the event. The BBC report
concentrated on the part the Express and Star played in exposing Powell,
but failed to mention the most important ethnic minority witness to the
events, Lance Dunkley. Since it was the ethnic minority people who suffered
discrimination, racist attacks and even death, as the Stephen Lawrence case
showed , this is inexcusable.
Lance, Surgit Singh Kalsa and I met yesterday and promised a full
report. This will take some time and this is to be taken as an interim
report until then. Lance lived in the same street that Powell had his
Wolverhampton office and residence. Lance was a bus driver whose regular
conductress was Eunice Parry who lived nearby. They agree that the lady
Powell quotes as being the one who began as living in an all-white street
but ending with her as the only white person elaborated with lies about
excrement through her letter box and picaninies knocking on her door asking
to use her telephone were figments of Powell’s fevered imagination and his
refused to reveal her name was not to protect her from discrimination, but
because she didn’t exist.
The only possible lady was Druscilla Cotterell in Brighton Place. But
her existence was revealed by the Daily Mail at the time of the speech in
1968 and is fully documented in my 19 page BLOG of 7 Feb 2007 to Esther
White the BBC reporter who passed on to me the information that the Daily
Mail was again republishing their findings on the eve of the proposed
broadcast. The speech
reverberates today as the debate over immigration and integration continues
to dominate the political agenda. Our interim report is buttressed by the
following features. Lance and his bus conductress friend Eunice Parry are to
be reunited. That Eunice knew Colleen Moore a Scottish lady who was alleged
to live in Brighton Place (although the 1971 Census fails to reveal such a
person) and as she was not known to Lance we considered her an unreliable
witness or, even non-existent. But Eunice now says that they went to school
in Wolverhampton together so we will get Colleen’s address from Peter Rhodes
who
believed that Colleen had written to Enoch Powell urging that no further
black immigration be allowed because it ‘lowered the tone of the
neighbourhood’ So we shall hope to get the truth of that tale.
But the main ethnic minority person involved in the affair is Lance
Dunkley and the whole episode must be re-written from the point of view of
the Black and Asian peoples who suffered most from Powell’s lies..Our final
report will be published in due course.

THE HISTORIANS’ LETTER TO THE BBC TRUST.
News of fresh cuts in BBC services gives point to a letter published
in the Guardian on October 2 2007 It is a letter to the trustees of the BBC.
It reads;
We the undersigned note with concern the rumours that BBC2’s Timewatch may
be one of the respected documentary strands that is axed in the current
review of programming forced by the revenue shortfall from last January’s
new licence settlement.
Timewatch is the BBC’s flagship history series, and has for over 25
years produced the type of high quality,original and thought provoking
history programmes that are all too rare in today’s television schedules.
We would ask the trustees to consider the dire implications for history
on TV if the Timewatch strand is lost. We believe it would lead to fewer
serious history programme and more history-lite reality shows. In the long
term it might even signal the beginning of the end for history on-screen, to
the detriment of the public and its sources of information on the British
past.
It is signed by about 35 distinguished historians. This concerns the
programme of Tony Robinson who we are busy chasing to participate in and
referee the important Battle of Tettenhall AD 910 which some people think
was fought at Wednesfield and on which Councillor Phil Bateman has already
contacted Robinson . Only this week we discussed primary school teachers
and pupils being mobilised for such field work and perhaps excavations. Such
investigations are of national importance and would bolster our case for
Wolverhampton being considered the City of Culture, Education, Sport and
Business in 2009.

WHY CAN’T THE ROYAL FAMILY BE CALLED WAR MONGERS?
This will be my continuous theme until they reply to me. The BLOG is
now the only guarantee that ordinary people’s views can be put, and although
the present government will eventually try to stifle it it is there to be
used. Who will join me in saying the royals are warmongers?

THE NEW RACE EQUALITY PARTNERSHIP WOLVERHAMPTON (REPW).
Today the corruption of the local council has been challenged by Lance
Dunkley of the Wolverhampton BEME Association, Surjit Singh Kalsa,
secretary of the Indian Workers’ Association (GB) and myself, founder member
of Wolverhampton Race Equality Council in 1965, recipient of its award for
outstanding life service to Race Relations, and originator of the George
Barnsby Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop.
Our joint statement says that Councils and Councillors originated as
servants of the society they serve, but now the reverse is true and the
Servants now help themselves to public funds, and as we have learned this
week Richard Carr now takes out of the public coffers more than ?120,000 per
annum.
REPW is a private invention of the New Labour elite and its failure to
explain itself has led us to frame the following questions: When was it
formed and by whom? Does it admit all those interested in race relations or
are such organisations as ours to be permanently excluded ? Has it a
written Constitution which is obligatory to public service organisations?
When did it hold its inaugural meeting, how many people attended and how was
it advertised? What is its personnel, how were they appointed and by whom?
How much public money has been expended on these activities and where has
that money come from? When is the next AGM due and who will be invited to
attend?
If these questions cannot be answered satisfactorily this is not only
corruption on a large scale but grand larceny and those who commit it risk
ending up in gaol where their leaders Bush, Blair and Brown should already
be.

KEN PURCHASE
Ken has decided to retire from parliament and will not participate in
the next general elections. Word has gone around, however, that he is going
to do a Dennis Turner on us and bequeath his safe seat to a ‘foreigner’ and
this be the husband of Harriett Harman, at present no less than Deputy Prime
Minister. So we are asking whether the election is to be rigged or played
out on the Labour Book, which is apparently the procedure by which all
Labour parliamentary elections are governed and which is intended, of
course, to prevent corruption. Since Ken has refused to answer these
question and also that his negative position on the disclosure of MPs
expenses is also one with implications for corruption we have no alternative
but to challenge him. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone’s next visit to Ken
to be in a place recently occupied by his Parliamentary colleagues Lord
Archer or next to Conrad Black.

LEFT CHALLENGE ON NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS REFORM.
Still on the corruption theme of Gordon Brown and New Labour, on April
1 at the NUS Conference the New Labour controlled union will be faced with a
resolution on a governance review which will in the name of ‘modernisation’
and ‘democracy’ deliver the Union entirely into the hands of the New
Labourites and take it back to the 1950s. Then it was little more than a
network of right-wing students associated with the CIA. Now the leadership
wants to ditch all principles up to the 2100 ‘review’ i.e. cuts in the 2100
Higher Education Funding Bill. However, the experiences of increased costs
of higher education, inadequacy of grants and vast debts on graduating is
re-creating student militancy and there is hope that these proposals can be
defeated.

THE FANTASY MONEY DISAPPEARS.
So the dream of ?300 millions to ‘regenerate’ Wolverhampton’s Summer Row
shopping centre has been proved to be a pipe dream. One of the regeneration
outfits without any money is suing another of the same ilk, because of the
fact which should have been clear from the beginning that if one scheme is
to be successful it will be at the expense of poaching from the other so
that fashion giants such as Debenhams, Marks and Spencer Next etc will find
their profits reduced. So that the silly billies and those who believed
that shopping malls and expensive housing could be multiplied ad infinitum
are left with egg on their faces. Councillor Peter Bilson deputy leader of
Wolverhampton Council has been put up this time to argue that things can be
put right but London and Cambridge Properties and Multi Development UK
previously unknown names to most of us are engaged in a life and death
struggle to preserve their firms and their profits.
But what will be the thoughts of the directors of the other multifarious
regeneration bodies equally dependent as they are on a government which
is penniless and powerless. Where tonight is Mr.Stephen Catchpole of English
Partnerships who had been appointed to a fanfare of trumpets and said he was
proud to be in the position of leading the regeneration of such a large city as
Wolverhampton and his chairman, Mr.Graham McKenzie, who told us what a good bloke Catchpole was. And this was only two months ago!
I don’t like saying ‘I told you so’ , but a full critique of the
ludicrous regeneration schemes is to be found in my BLOG 6 Jan 2008 which
asked the question Who Owns Wolverhampton and was addressed to Richard Cross
our new chief executive. It appears that Mr.Cross has not only been lax in
not answering my question, but also incompetent in allowing an absurd
situation to develop

CORRUPTION.
I am still after at least a week the only person who has dared to call
the Royal Family war mongers because both the Prince of Wales and William
not only welcomed Harry on his return from Afghanistan , but
approved both the war he was fighting and Harry’s hope to return there. The
fact that I was the first and only person to criticise them is due to the
most democratic and instantaneous form of communication yet invented, namely
the BLOG. But the fact others who share my point are dependent on an
employer or organisation limits their freedom of speech. This is a form of
corruption.
Take another example. Richard Carr, the newly appointed Chief Executive
of Wolverhampton is determined not to reply to my request to know Who Runs
Wolverhampton? This is a decision he has taken after knowing that he has
legal responsibility as a public servant to reply to all correspondence
addressed to him. This subverts the democratic process and Carr has
deliberately decided to flout it. Wolverhampton has been controlled by at
least half a dozen ‘regeneration’ organisations all of them promising untold
?millions which they don’t possess. This question I put to Richard Carr
(see my BLOG 258 Sep 23 07) asking him what there was left for him to do
and how he could he be so forgetful as to lose all these powers that he
should be exercising. He failed to produce an answer. I rang his office
repeatedly to be told by his harassed secretary that he would ring me back.
But of course he never did. Moreover his office was always closed. What
other chief executive’s office in Britain is closed all day and every day?
Where was Mr.Carr. Presumably have nothing to do he was away perhaps playing
a bit of golf?
But today we discover that he is in fact the man in charge and on a
salary of ?120,000 a year. This is corruption on a large scale. And a friend
of mine Keith Taylor has a scoop for us informing me that when the Tax
Payers Alliance put together their list of council officials of council
officials they reported that Wolverhampton City Council was one of the few
bodies that entirely refused to answer a Freedom of Information request on 1
Jan 2008. Where do you go from here Mr.Carr? Perhaps you would be good
enough to let me know.

MORE CORRUPTION
Nor is Mr.Carr alone The head of the Commission for Equality and
Human Rights, formerly the Commission for Racial Equality, Sir Trevor
Phillips also refuses to answer charges that he is an unsuitable person to
be in charge of people’s rights because he supports the war in Iraq.
Then there are the media presenters with unprecedented influence these
days such as Jeremy Paxman Andrew Marr, Kirsty Wark, Martha Kierney and Jon
Snow who failed to challenge Tony Blair when they interviewed him on the war
in Iraq. They have now refused to reply to me on at least 50 occasions and
their respective employers BBC and ITV have tolerated this conduct and
refused to discipline their employees. This is corruption on a mass scale
which needs to be addressed.
But I do not despair that they will see the error of their ways and
join in the campaign to make Wolverhampton the City of the Year 2009 in
Culture, Education, Sport and Business.

NASIR KHAN.
I turn once again to friends who use and appreciate my BLOG. Nasir Khan
is one of the greatest authorities on Islamic matters. His book ,
‘Perceptions of Islam in the Christendoms’, shows how relations between
Christian and Muslim countries was shaped by an anti-Islamic tradition from
the eight century to the present. Nasir, who is domiciled in Norway wrote
another book ‘Theory of Alienation in the Writings of Marx, which indirectly
questions Marx’ view on the Asiatic Mode of Production and its
responsibility
for Asia not changing over many centuries.
Nasir also does a BLOG which is the most authoritative on the murder of
Benazir Bhutto pointing out that her burial before an autopsy was
performed when she was in a hospital surrounded by doctors was a deliberate
attempt to cover up the real significance of her death. Nasir’s BLOG is not
to be missed. Simply type in NASIR KHAN.

COMING TOMORROW
Is Ken Purchase holding his safe Labour seat for the husband of
Harriett Harman contrary to the provisions of the Labour Book governing
Parliamentary elections?
Is the National Union of Students showing the way to represent the view
of ALL it students instead of the New Labour dupes who have controlled it
for a generation?

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT.
From yesterday when Bob Hazlehurst put my printer right it has been all
systems go. He calls me a Luddite, a machine breaker which I admit, but why
should he expect me to be a computer expert as well as a Communist activist
when I have friends such as him. I may have to call on his help before the
night is through for I tried to make the print smaller for last night’s
BLOG, but now I can’t enlarge it. But Bob is a busy man trying, like me, to
deal with Wolverhampton council officials who don’t want to talk to him. So
he has a petition with several hundred signatures obtained by slogging from
door to door which he will take to the City council house about road blocks
in his neighbourhood and a petition to remove them. Like me, he has no time
for the New Labourites running the council who don’t want to talk to him.

SPREADING THE NEWS.
Since so many of those at the local authority continue to act illegally
and not reply to my correspondence it is necessary to widen the circle of
dissidents. The Human Rights Watch is the first we have turned to. They
protect the human rights of children, women and men in 70 countries against
those who advocate war, the renewal of Trident, the use of cluster bombs
and other barbarities.
Then there is The Nation , the USA publication founded in 1865 on
principles to which it still adheres:
‘The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect or body. It will, on
the contrary, make an earnest effort
to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really
critical
spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence exaggeration, and
misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is
marred’.
This will take us to the heart of the US anti-war movement of which
people like Michael Moore, and Gore Vidal, have had so much influence and
who are now being joined by the political, military and social majority in
the US opposed to the war.

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF AMERICAN CITIZENS.
Within the family we have a relative who migrated to the US some years
ago and is as completely non-political as anyone can be. But the visit was
an eye opener to me. For instance Americans not only have no free health
service against which people like Michael Moore have battled so valiantly,
but they don’t have paid holidays either. The result is that the majority of
US tourists are old age pensioners who can stay as long as they like or
typically hustling younger people who have to pack all their sight seeing
into a few days, because they have not the money to stay longer or might
risk losing their job if they linger longer.
My son’s wife Cal has a brother Stephen who migrated to US some years
ago. He and his American wife Lori live at Baton Rouge in Louisiana. He has
only 5 days paid holiday a year and lost at least one of those days in
sightseeing, when the weather was so bad. At Baton Rouge the problem is one
of floods. It is two years since the last ones but in that time the damage
done previously has not been put right because workers capable of repairing
the damage have either migrated to the city or migrated to other parts of
the USA, so that this year’s floods have come before the previous damage has
been repaired. And to blame is the US government which has not kept its
promises to repair flood damage. This does not affect Stephen directly as
he has sufficient capital to pay for his own repairs, but it is a blight on
the district and it is the poor, very largely poor blacks who suffer
homelessness and poverty. So much so that it has led Stephen to say that
the US government was wrong to invade Iraq.

SIR DAVID FROST AND AL JAZEERA.
David Frost is one of the most influential people in TV. He fronted
That was the Week that Was the pioneering satirical programme of the 1960s
and has been a celebrity ever since having been the only person to have
interviewed all six British Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson to Tony Blair
and the seven US presidents from Richard Nixon to George W.Bush. He is
married to a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk and has a very sizeable
fortune.
It was with incredulity that the public learned that he had signed to
do a weekly programme with Al Jazeera English, the British branch of the
progressive Arab based TV conglomerate competing with Sky and American news
syndicates. He present a week programme called Frost over the World. Frost
said at the time that there would be no interference from the owners over
what he produced and that seems to have been the case.
Frost has recently said that he would like to interview Fidel Castro
before he passes on and also Osama bin Laden but with the latter he would
have problems since he would be duty bound to denounce him as a terrorist. I
hope this dilemma will soon be removed as the real terrorists Bush, Blair
and Brown are put under lock and key. Then ObM would emerge from his
impregnable mountain retreat to take his place with other terrorists who
have been negotiated with as a key figure of such importance that it is
inconceivable that the modern peaceful multicultural world of the future can
be built without his contribution.

RETURNING TO HISTORY.
Ignoring for the time being that I am the only person in the world who
has had the guts or initiative to call the Royal Princes war mongers, I’d
like to return to my roots and talk history. Particularly as I have recently
had a reply from my good friend Owen Ashton of the School for Chartist
Studies at Staffordshire University asking him what his status is now that
he has retired. Owens’s reply told me that he had retired at age 60, but had
been made a Professor Emeritus and was still very much concerned with the
Dorothy Thompson collection of Chartist books at the University and was as
keen to keep in touch with me as I am to keep in touch with him.
I began my career as a historian with Chartism. Studies of Chartism
in the Black Country were rudimentary until I, having a family connection
with London was able during vacations to visit the Public Records Office and
discovered not only that the main Chartist paper, the Northern Star, had a
weekly column of News from the Provinces which dealt with all the activity
of all the branches in the Black Country. That Bilston branch was one of
the strongest in Britain in the period 1840/42, but also that the Dudley
branch was important in the period after 1848 when it was popularly believed
that after the failure of Chartism in that revolutionary year the movement
disintegrated. More important than that I learned that there were working
class newspaper in existence before Chartism dating back to the period of
repression following the Napoleonic Wars and forward from Chartism to modern
times. So whereas my two friends Ken Purchase and Dennis Turner made
progress from Councillors to MPs in the most important party of the working
class in Britain, the Labour Party, I a member of the largest party of
Labour in the world, the Communist Party, progressed to become the historian
of the labour movement first in the Black Country and then of Birmingham
since their
activities were sometimes entwined.
An irony is that I considered myself rather like an archaeologist
shovelling earth as I moved from one discovery to another so that I never
had the time or patience to follow through in detail the academic detail
demanded, quite rightly, by John Saville and Joyce Bellamy while they were
editors of the Dictionary of Labour Biography so that the main Black Country
contributor was Eric Taylor and other Wolverhampton lecturers and John
Rowley, leading councillor in W’ton.
But with a new editor, David Howell, policy has
been changed so that my collection of about 50 Black Country Chartists is
due to be published in the next volume of the DLB which will give me great
satisfaction.
In the meantime my current contribution to Black Country labour
history is to be found in my BLOG which has now reached 350 editions and is
my answer to those who ask me when I am going to write the other two thirds
of my autobiography. My answer is that it is all in the BLOG and coming up
to the age of 90 it is all I can do to keep up with current developments so
that if my life is worth recording it will have to be done by scholars when
I am dead and if it is not worth writing I shall not then be in a position
to care, which is also my current view.

NEWCOMEN’S STEAM ENGINE
Well I never! We have yet another historian to welcome at
Wolverhampton University. He is Suhail Rana who believes that he can turn
history upside down with a theory that the first Newcomen engine was not
sited at the Coneygree coal works in Tipton, but at a site about a mile from
Wolverhampton city centre. If he is right he will join a band of world
class lecturers who already teach here. Mr.Rana is a teacher of computer
studies at the Dudley campus. But his work has divided historians including
John Allen the doyen of Newcomen studies who calls Rana’s research ‘pure
fiction’ and he has been invited by the Newcomen Society to write a
counter-balancing article.
But the fact that Rana’s article has been published by the Newcomen
Society itself is evidence that his findings are being taken seriously so
now we must wait and see.

ACADEMIC STAFF AT W’TON UNIVERSITY AND THE CITY OF CULTURE, EDUCATION, SPORT
AND BUSINESS.
The world class lecturers we already have at Wolverhampton contribute
mainly to the history journal of the Socialist History
Society and Labour History Review.
They include the following; Dr.George Kassimeris, senior research
fellow in Conflict and Terrorism; Shirin Housee senior lecturer in
Sociology who once taught at Bilston Community College (BCC) as well as
Wulfrun College and is now on the Equal Opportunities Committee which is
chaired by Berrie Dicker, also once a lecturer at BCC; Emeritus Professor
John Benson is a prolific writer on Black Country labour studies; John
Callaghan politics lecturer and authoritative writer on such Communists as
R.Palme Dutt and the later history of the Communist Party of Great Britain;
Martin Durham senior lecturer in politics who specialises in taking apart
the politics of the Neo-Cons and right-wing religious groups as he once
dissected the policies of the BNP and fascist groups in Britain; finally
there is Dr.Barbara Gwinnett Dean of the Department of the School of
Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences who lives in the same street as me
and I once crossed swords with as she preferred to defend the reputation of
the of the University against criticism by me. But that was years ago, she
has been the longest serving Dean in the University (since 2003) and I think
we can say that old wounds have healed.
My continuing criticism is that these splendid academic people tend to
make little or no contribution to the aim of raising the city where they
teach to the status of the Cultural capital of Britain, raised from its once
assumed title of capital of Racism in the days of Enoch Powell. The
particular contribution of the University is that it became the most
important in Britain when it clocked 48% of ethnic minority students and
could have set out on a radical path attracting the very best staff and
students in the world. Instead it was cursed with a conservative leadership
which preferred to ape the cap and gown culture of Oxbridge instead of
making it an example that all the ‘new’ universities could follow. It is not
too late to achieve that end, but as my BLOG last night stressed there are
still reactionary bad apples about in the administration which must be
combated and the University take a leading role in the national struggle
against the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and else where which threatens all of
us with nuclear annihilation and cuts in our social services, not least in
education.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THEIR WARS.
No BLOG for four days, but information has been pouring in, particularly
from what I call the Fantasy Men such as George W.Bush, Tony Blair and
Gordon Brown. They seem to work on the principle that the less power they
possess the more nonsense they talk. So Bush talks of how the war in Iraq
was worthwhile and is being won, while his powerless Foreign Secretary,
Cheney talks of changes that will have to be made, although, courtesy of
Michael Moore I learn that he spent Wednesday the fifth anniversary of the
war not mourning the dead he had killed, but fishing off the Sultan of
Oman’s yacht and not caring a f— for the Iraqis he had killed. Tony Blair
meanwhile, surely a fox left in charge of the chickens, thinks he can end
child poverty through the EU. And Gordon Brown, penniless and powerless,
works
on the principle that the more desperate his position becomes the more
nonsense he talks.

THE FANTASY IS CAUGHT BY WOLVERHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL.
Councillor Milkinder Jaspal , Wolverhampton City Council cabinet member
for people organisation and performance announces a ?100 million plus deal
with private sector firm Axon Solutions to transform the authority, ‘with a
new IT system being put into place to cut the size of the workforce and
reduce staffing needs’ as the Express and Star puts it. What then of the
other half dozen or so ‘regeneration’ outfits which already exist to do this
job of which the chief executive of the city, Richard Carr and the fall guy
Roger Lawrence, the Labour leader of the city council who refuse to reply to
me when I ask Who Runs Wolverhampton.
In an adjoining column of the same issue of the paper, Councillor
Bilson, deputy leader of the Council tells us that the Audit Commission gave
a two-star rating to Wolverhampton Homes, another virtual private enterprise
outfit that runs the 22,500 Council homes in the city, unlocked ?288
millions of funding but still there was a deficit of ?2million. Up to 80
jobs are expected to go in the next year and a 6% rise in council house
rents will help further as will a decision to ‘delete” ?400,000 of empty
posts. 6% rise in rents? when wages are due to rise only 2% how will the
Tenants’ Associations take that? Add the private firm that runs the rubbish
disposal units plus the economic situation heralding yet further cuts and it
will be seen that anyone who sees good times ahead is living in a fool’s
paradise. No wonder they will not reply to me.

SOMEONE BEGINS TO TALK TO ME.
We have had an important breakthrough on talking. I emailed Caroline
Gipps the Vice-Chancellor of W’ton University asking their view of
Educational Academies and received a prompt and detailed reply which I have
sent to the Anti Academies Alliance for a detailed reply. I would not have
mentioned Ms Gipps name had it not been for further developments concerning
Bilston Community College (BCC). After all Ms Gipps was not in Wolverhampton
at the time and need not have been involved in the BCC question except that
the University supported the award of an Honorary Degree to the woman Jane
Williams who was principal of Wulfrun College which was actively engaged in
the closure of BCC by the Further Education Funding Council of pretending
that the little conservative flea of Wulfrun College with less that 5% of
ethnic minority staff and further education only for those who already had
educational qualifications compared with BCC’s unprecedented 30% ethnic
minority staff and free access to all who wanted FE was merged with be
elephant of BCC then at its peak of 50,000 students. It was not a merger, it
was a takeover. This woman became principal of the enlarged College, and
then left rather abruptly to be taken under the wing of the FEFC. When this
occurred Jane Williams had several charges of racist behaviour against her
which the DfE ensured were never heard.
This was exacerbated by the foolishness of the Dean of the School of
Education at W’ton University, Sir Geoffrey Hampton, putting forward the
name of Jane Williams for an Honorary Degree. This had to be approved by the
governing body of W’ton University and thus Ms.Gipps became involved.
Of Sir Geoffrey Hampton there is much to be said. He was the man said
to have transformed Northicote School, the first school ever to be ‘put in
measures’. Other teachers in Wolverhampton were not impressed. They thought
that Northicote was not as bad as claimed in the first place nor as good as
Hampton claimed when he quite suddenly left. In any case, if they had been
given the money
that Hampton was given they could have transformed their schools, they said
Also that
his knighthood was the direct result of the intervention of the Prime
Minister, Tony Blair.
As I said, I would not have used Ms Gipps name had it not been for
further evidence that has since emerged. The company that affiirmed (i.e.
approved) BCCs programmes of work was Deloitte and Touche, just about the
biggest firm of lawyers in Britain. When the Further Education Funding
Council could find no illegalities to charge any member of BCC staff, they
then charged D and T with illegalities. They then came to a cosy arrangement
whereby Deloite and Touch? pleaded guilty to these charges on condition that
the deal was kept secret. This was objected to by many organisations at the
time included our regional newspaper the Express and Star. Since then
nothing has been done. But from today the Friends of Bilston Community
College will apply under the Freedom of Information Act to reveal what that
agreement was. This together with the appeal to the UK Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards is part of our double edged campaign of
widespread corruption in Britain and Wolverhampton, but also our efforts to
establish Wolverhampton as the City of Culture, Education, Sport and
Business after raising itself from the alleged capital of Racism in the days
of Enoch Powell.

SAVING BRITAIN FROM NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION.
As our civil liberties are eroded day by day by Gordon Brown and what
is left of his New Labour adherents we face actual physical destruction and
a return to the days of the Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
unless we act now.
I have always said that those in Britain who think we need nuclear
power in an island floating on coal and surrounded by water need their heads
examined. CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) is now in its fiftieth
year and its present chair is Kate Hudson. Kate once told me, when I
informed her that I served in Burma that her father was also in Burma, at
Kohima, scene of some of the fiercest fighting anywhere during World War II.
I asked her if her father was still alive especially as after many years of
agitating the Wolverhampton Burma Star Association had managed to get a
monument at Lich Gates, next to St.Peter’s Church , Wolverhampton, with the
Kohima epitaph on it. Kate told me that her father, Tom Hudson, had died
ten
years ago, but would have been pleased with the memorial, he wore his medals
with pride and saw no contradiction to being anti-war. Kate the gave the
full version of the Kohima epitaph:
When you go home / Tell them of us and say / For your tomorrow / We
gave our today.
Our Wolverhampton Burma Star Association will see that Tom Hudson’s name is
included with all the other men and women who served at Kohima.

ARSENAL, CHELSEA, MANCHESTER UNITED AND LIVERPOOL.
Yesterday my No.1 son Robert took me to his house to watch Chelsea play
Arsenal. Of course, he had the last laugh and it looks as if Arsenal have
blown it this season as far as the Premiership was involved. But Arsenal
remain probably the only team in the Premiership that will make a profit
this year and one of the few which are English and intend to remain so and
thus resist the cult that to be successful one needs to be owned by a
foreigner. Both patriotism and the present world financial situation suggest
that it is not only Arsenal supporters who hope that Arsene Wenger has
chosen the correct path.

THE TWO PRINCIPLES.
I’m under no obligation, either moral or otherwise to publish a daily
BLOG and yet if one doesn’t appear staunch BLOG lovers may infer that I am
giving up the fight against Bush, Blair and Brown which is certainly not the
case, and in any case so much evidence accumulates every day of the folly of
these three that that the corny statement springs to mind that those the
gods wish to destroy they first turn mad. I think that happened to Enoch
Powell whose famous Rivers of Blood speech was 40 years old this week,
although which particular day the opponents of Powell do not seem to be
sure.
For my part, two principles underlay all that I write, namely that the
BLOG is the fastest and most democratic means of communication yet invented
and secondly that all public servants have a legal obligation to reply to
correspondence addressed to them and this includes not only those in
Wolverhampton who won’t explain to me who runs the City, but also Gordon
Brown, the unselected Prime Minister, the five Lords of the Fourth Estate,
Paxman, Marr, Wark, Kearney and Jon Snow who will find it
increasingly difficult to eat humble pie, the longer they fail to rebut the
charge that they assisted Tony Blair to join the illegal war in Iraq by not
challenging him on the subject.
In the meantime one of the crying needs is to have adequate local
statistics which the Government fails to supply. So, for instance some
statistics suggest that unemployment is going down, whereas the
Wolverhampton figures show that it is going up. This is the sort of problem
which should be tackled by our local authority and newly formed Race
Equality Partnership Wolverhampton, but they either lack the means or the
will to tackle the problem. My good friend Marika Sherwood, one of the most
experienced of Race Relations activists, reports a similar problem, the
local authority refusing to reveal how many ethnic minority teachers there
are in the area. My good wife, Esme, returned home consumed with anger about
the latest examples of bad-will by stealth when she discovered that the last
post from our main subpost office had been reduced from 6pm. to 5pm without
any warning. Now it seems that the said post office will be in line to be closed and that
by the SE Wolverhampton MP Pat McFadden a Scotsman. The Westminster
correspondent of the Express and Star, John Hipwood, who have little love for
New Labour has promptly christened him Postman Pat because as a minister in
the improbably named Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory
Reform he has been handed the task of justifying the post office closures.
Meanwhile, on another matter Dennis Skinner veteran Labour firebrand
raised the question in Parliament of more than 100 Tory MPs having second
jobs and the leader of the house Harriet Harman said he had made an
important point and it would be debated. It is feared that Ken Purchase NE
Wolverhampton MP who resigns his safe seat at the end of this Parliament
will do a similar betrayal to Dennis Turner and hand his safe seat over to
Harriet Harman’s husband, something which would be a Parliamentary scandal,
but which Ken has so far not confirmed or denied.
In the meantime, the House of Commons Standards and Privileges
Committee, the same body that we have reported corruption to in
Wolverhampton and beyond, is recommending that all MPs declare all payments
made to family members. That will put the cat among the pigeons and so with
a short BLOG I retire for the night.

THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE IN 1914.
An interesting character comes to light. His name is John V.Denson. Not
only is he an authority on the Christmas Truce of under the title of The
Crime called World War I, but is also an attorney living in Alabama. Other
works by him include The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories,
Mr.Denson is a man I shall certainly try to contact. My interest stems from
my friendship with Rudi Achtelstetter my opposite number in World War II
both of us anti-fascist.
Our mutual interest in the Christmas Truce has been reopened by Cyril
Smith of Walsall, informing us that his father and uncle were involved in
this Christmas Truce and that the whole question now needs to be reopened.
See my BLOG of Tuesday 18 March for full evidence of this. And we now
discover that the two most important writers on the Truce are both American
professors- John Denson and Stanley Weintraub!
But today was a family day when my nephew Glenn Collins and his mother
Margaret Collins came from London for the day and since they are both
Arsenal supporters we expected to be involved in discussion about Arsene
Wenger whose greatest achievement has been to revolutionise British football
and FIFA football so that now every club in Britain employs foreign
footballers and particularly black players so that standards have
enormously improved and the British premiership, is the oldest and best
League in
the world.
This we certainly did discuss particularly the shame of the fact that
the opening ceremony of Arsenal’s new Emirates Stadium was televised when
almost every living Arsenal player attended the ceremony but it was not
recorded for posterity. Or was it? Is there some football reporter sitting
on one of the most important scoops in football history - the opening
ceremony of Arsenal’s new football. ground.
Other things we discussed were what has happened to the bust of Herbert
Chapman, the architect of Arsenal’s greatness of the 1930s. As far as we
know it is in the Highbury classical facade now preserved together with the
pitch in the flats which are now providing so much of the income to pay for
the new stadium. Surely the bust should be transferred to the new stadium?
This discussion enabled me to reminisce on the death of Herbert Chapman
which was one of the worst days of my life. His death was quite unexpected
and neither the players nor the staff (I was at that time a member of the
ground staff) nor the crowd assembling for the Saturday match had an inkling
of the disaster and we were all informed by a newspaper placard carried by
men outside the ground. The match duly took place (against Sheffield
Wednesday, I think) and it seemed to last for many hours, and the outcome,
for both sides was quite an irreverancy. A sad, sad day.
On a brighter note we discussed some of the many books I have on
Arsenal including one called, ‘On This Day’. From this we learned that on
the 20th March 1926 winger Jock Rutherford (even I didn’t know him) became
the oldest player to appear for Arsenal at 41 years 159 days. In 1968 on the
same date England international striker Paul Merson was born in Harlesden,
London. He netted 99 goals in 422 games for the Gunners before accepting a
move to Middlesborough. He didn’t accept the move he was displaced by one of
Arsene Wenger’s less successful foreign players. I loved Paul and his crop
of golden hair waving in the breeze and I continued to love him after he
first played for Walsall and then became manager before he succumbed to his
mania for gambling. Where is he now? This led on to thoughts of Tony Adams
fellow gambler and boozer, inarticulate but certainly the greatest centre
half Arsenal ever had before Herbie Roberts in the 1930s who revolutionised
football for Herbert Chapman by being the first ’stopper’ centre half ever.
But Tony recovered from his demons, educated himself and set up set up a
world famous clinic for football boozers. Was this still open? Yes I think
the answer is. And, of course, he is now assistant manager for Portsmouth,
deputises for Harry Redknapp the Portsmouth manager in discussing matches
with the press and yearns to be a manager himself which I would love to see.
Finally we were still talking when the news came that Fabio Capello the
foreign
manager of England I hate both because he is not English and he is also a
member
of Berlusconi’s Italian Mafia had named little Theo Walcott the black
English player who Wenger thinks so much of but has not so far lived up to
his immense potential. Whether he survives to the last 20 of the squad will
depend on his current form, particularly against Manchester United who have
now displaced Arsenal at the top of the Premiership.

ANOTHER INTERESTING FAMILY COLLECTION?
Margaret’s neice is married to Stephen Hart a Professor of Hispanic Studies. But I was not prepared for what I discovered from Google. Of his many achievements I will only quote the
following. He has directed and produced one docudrama based on Cesar
Vallejo’s life recently screened at Maison de l’ Amerique Latine,
co-directed a short documentary on Cuban inventiveness. He teaches Latin
American film and literature in the Department of Spanish American Studies
and the Film Studies Programme at UCL. This man I must contact. So much for
a quiet day with the family!

THE STORY OF THE WORLD WAR 1 CHRISTMAS TRUCE.
Cyril Smith a Walsall Communist Party of Britain comrade who phoned me
yesterday to say that his father and uncle both participated in this truce
has set in train an investigation. It begins with my statement of special
friendship with Rudi Achtelstetter. We fought on opposite sides in World War
II but both of us were anti-fascists and our political activity continues to
this day. For a full statement see my BLOG of Tuesday 11 March.
Investigation via Google shows that beside the fraternisation on
Christmas Day, German and British officers also supported the truce and
received two barrels of beer from the Saxon troops. This suggests that the
Truce was widespread as reported by John V.Denson in ‘Solders against the
War’ . Bruce Bairnsfather (any relation to the great cartoonist, ‘If you
know
of a better ‘Ole go to It’?) reported taking part in the truce. Some British
soldiers
were taken well behind the German lines and bombarded with chocolates and
other sweet meats. Truces were often initiated by Germans because some of
them had lived in Britain before the war, spoke some English and responded
to the call of ‘Waiter!’
The best guide to the truce to me was Richard Holmes the
most important historian of the 1st World War with his book, ‘Tommy’ which I
had read with great appreciation and been in touch with him and
congratulated him on his first book, ‘The Bitter End’ which was about the
fall of Singapore in 1941-42 written with a co-author Anthony Kemp and being
about SE Asia was an area I knew having served in Burma and India for four
years during the war.
But the greatest surprise of all was to learn that their was a
comprehensive account of the event entitled, ‘Silent Night, the Story of the
World War Truce’, by Stanley Weintraub published in 2001 by The Free Press.
An even greater surprise was that he was a retired US professor.
I thought there would have been more about the truce in my own book
Socialism in Birmingham and the Black Country 1850-1939, but looking through
it today it deals more with the post-war situation when a post-war
revolutionary ex-service movement was set up under the influence of the two
main events of the time - the mass slaughter of the war and the Russian
Revolution. This led to the setting up of NUX the National Union of
Ex-Servicemen controlled by the rank and file which faced a bitter struggle
with the establishment which was waged by the millions of pounds of the
Canteen Fund money and was eventually won by the establishment who set up
the British Legion controlled by the military with the Sovereign as its
patron and this endures today. The historian of this struggle is Francis
Beckett whose father was one of the leaders of NUX, but also followed
Oswald Mosley after the betrayal of the first Labour government in 1931 when
Ramsay MacDonald led a National Government which was Tory in everything but
its name and his father John Beckett became the second in command to Sir
Oswald Mosley. Start with his book The Enemy Within (a title which was
foisted upon him) the full title of which is The Rise and Fall of the
British Communist Party (1995) and which the back cover says, The True Story
of Britain’s Communists, their Hopes and the People who Betrayed them.
With regard to Richard Holmes book ‘Tommy’, my impression was that he
had the most comprehensive account of how the mutineers were dealt with by
the military authorities but as it was a bit pricey had not bought a copy.
But a friend down the road, Geoff Sidbotham had had a copy on his hall table
for months, intending to let his son have it but never getting round to.
This I was pleased to swoop on today to find the final solution. But I did
not find it and I think Richard himself will agree that there is still much
scope for further research into the those who participated in the mutinies
and the class consequences. Weintraub mentions that when French soldiers
refused to return to the trenches at Aisne in 1917 3,427 courts martial were
necessary with 554 death sentences and 53 executed by firing squad to get
the war restarted on that front. Repression won the day against the
Christmas Truce, but it was the lack of soldiers’ organisations from below
that stifled the potential for turning the truce into a movement to stop the
war. So where shall we put Cyril Smith’s evidence about his father and
uncle. Perhaps it might go to the Imperial War Museum where much material
was deposited by Charlie Hall of Birmingham, but if he is still alive now of
Newcastle, but wherever it goes there seems there is much more research to
do.

TWEEDLE DEE AND TWEEDLE DUM.
For Communists there has always been the dilemma of going it alone or
going along with the Labour Party. The right wing we always have with us. It
began before the 1st World War with Ramsay MacDonald and Snowden. MacDonald
had the status of a saint in many peoples eyes, but he betrayed the movement
in 1931. Then there was Attlee and Morrison, but Attlee joined the American
imperialists when they broke up the coalition that had won the war of USA-
USSR-Britain and we entered the age of the Cold War. Bevin and Bevan the
latter known as the originator of the National Health Service who later
pleaded ‘that he be not sent naked’ to the UN and as foreign secretary
became a supporter of the Bomb and MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
Then we were confronted by New Labour whose leader, Tony Blair made it
quite clear where he stood when the first thing he did was to remove Clause
4, the bedrock of Socialism and continued Thatcherite policies. Today the
policies of Blair and Gordon Brown have raised Tory Party support above that
of Labour, but New Labourites now want to write the same stale policies for
the next election which could be several years away.
In the Guardian today two MPs set out their blueprint for a fourth term.
On is Jon Trickett an MP I must confess I have never heard of. The other is
old war horse Charles Clarke, a man of the past if ever there was. Trickett
manages to get through his piece without ever mentioning the war in Iraq.
Clarke mentions the war but that is all. So both give the same old slogans
without once mentioning Socialism. Truly there is nothing to chose between
them. They are Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

MORE EVIDENCE OF CORRUPTION IN WOLVERHAMPTON.
All the evidence suggests that the new anti-racist Race Equality
Partnership Wolverhampton is false, and dangerous. Further efforts to
contact it failed today as they have failed in the past by its
representative when phoned being unavailable and promising to phone back but
never doing so. The appointments made so far are unacceptable to both the
main ethnic minority organisations. It is certainly not a democratic
organisation, but an appointed one by nobody knows who and would be reported
to the Commission for Equality and Human Rights were it not for the fact
that it also is corrupt, its main officer, Sir Trevor Phillips, not having
the confidence of ethnic minority groups because of his support for the war
in Iraq and failing to respond to these charges.
Then there is the leader of the city council Roger Lawrence and the
chief executive, Richard Carr who obviously have no intention of explaining
to me Who Runs Wolverhampton probably because they do not know themselves
with half a dozen ‘regeneration’ bodies claiming that they have untold
millions to transform our City when in fact they are dependent on Gordon
Brown and his bankrupt government for cash whereas the true position is that
Brown has no money and cuts in expenditure are the order of the day in every
department including our schools.
We have some sympathy with Roger Lawrence who carries the can and also
Richard Carr who is new to Wolverhampton but their refusal to reply to me
means that they are part of a conspiracy of silence which continues
nationally up to Gordon Brown and ‘his’ civil servants and makes the
corruption nation wide.

MORE ON ENOCH POWELL
Enoch Powell was one of the most evil men who ever lived. He made
racism respectable from his background of military and intellectual
attainments. This month on the 40th anniversary of the speech there have
been two reports - the first a national one from the BBC and the other local
from the Express and Star. Both of them help to unravel the duplicity
of the story of the woman, Mrs. Cotterill, who was supposed to have started
off in an all-white street and ended up as the only white person in the
street decorated as it was with tales of grinning piccannies and excrement
through letter boxes. These and other researches have exposed Powell to be a
blatant liar and nothing can take away from the part played by Peter Rhodes
in exposing this myth.
But neither Peter Rhodes nor any other investigator has told of the
resistance to Powell of the ethnic minority people. The most important
figures were Lance Dunkley, secretary of the main African-Caribbean
organisation and Naranjan Singh Noor, famed Punjabi poet and national
secretary at that time of the Indian Workers’ Association, resident in
Wolverhampton. Lance disputes some of the basic conclusions of Rhodes, but
at least Rhodes is an honest man who replies to correspondence and his
latest statement ask why Lance has not contacted the Express and Star in the
eighteen months since the story broke. I have replied on behalf of Lance
that it was the job of the newsmen to contact Lance, not the other way round
and that he holds no great opinion of the Express and Star. But Lance will
speak for himself in a report we will make of what we regard to be the truth
about Powell and this report will be signed by Lance Dunkley, the Indian
representatives of the existing IWA in Wolverhampton and myself.

A THANK YOU FROM STOP THE WAR COALITION.
Still there has been no report even in the progressive press of the
anti-Iraq War demonstrations so it is good to have a report from those who
organised the demo. They report that more than 100 coaches brought people
from throughout the country. Trafalgar Square was almost full and with
people joining en route it is estimated that 40,000 people attended. This
was rather more than anticipated. The sight of the front of the march
crossing Lambeth Bridge while the middle was still on Westminster Bridge was
inspiring. Hundreds of demonstrators carried flowers and other items to lay
at the Nelson Mandela statue to remember all those who have died in the last
six years as a result of the ‘war on terror’.
Scottish Stop the War Coalition also had a very successful demo. with
5,000 attending.
The report also lists future events - A Minute’s Silence on Thursday 20
March at 12 noon by local StheW Groups to mark the fifth anniversary of the
war in Iraq and the 1 million people who have died as a result of invasion
and occupation. The minute silence to be observed in workplace, schools,
Colleges and wherever else peace activity is possible. There will be a
protest outside Downing Street the same day from 11-30 to 12-30 and a
delegation will deliver a letter to Gordon Brown calling for the troops to
be brought home and an enquiry into how we got involved in the war.
Please spread the news.

ILLUMINATIONS AND A CONCERT FOR PEACE.
As part of StW fund raising a tremendous cast of performers will be
donating their services free at the latest of our very successful concerts
at St.James’s Church, Piccadilly on Thursday 24 April at 7pm. From the mass
of celebrities agreeing to appear I chose names known to me - Nigel
Kennedy, Adrian Mitchell, Martin Bell and Lindsay German Stop the War
convener. Tickets are ?15 and ?12 concessions.. Book online or from the
office on 020 7278 6694.

A REMARKABLE TALE.
Cyril Smith, Walsall peace activist and Communist rang me concerning my
item on my German soldier friend Rudi Achtelstetter for who I feel the
greatest affection because he and I fought on opposite sides in the 2nd
World War but were both antifascists opposed to Hitler. I mentioned the
Christmas 1914 fraternisation of German and British troops and the famous
football match in No-Mans-Land which I have advocated being celebrated each
Christmas as the example of men resisting the power of politicians and
military to send ‘their’ men to fight their brothers .
Cyril tells me that his father and uncle Cyril and Isaiah Smith
participated in this fraternisation. But they were both artillerymen and
this event was necessarily confined to infantrymen. True said Cyril, but
artillerymen had to enter the trenches to rewire connections as artillery
batteries changed and this could take up to two weeks. It was at such a time
that the Christmas demonstration took place. Cyril (our Cyril) remembers his
father talking not only of fraternisation, but being taken behind the
German lines and drinking and singing. That is his remarkable story which
adds to what is already known.