The Barnsby Blog

CLIMATE CHANGE, SPORT AND COVERED STADIUMS.
     What a funny day it has been. Here in Wolverhampton the sun has shone
brightly all day and I have been able to go for my daily walk after having
missed it for a couple of days. But in neighbouring Birmingham the third
test at Edgbaston has been virtually rained off for the day. What it has
been like in my native London I do not know, probably as variable as between
the Black Country and Birmingham. But my point has been made. To bring
sport into the twenty-first century all sports stadiums need retractable
roofs to enable sport to take place 24 hours a day twelve months of the year,
This is the issue I’ve been discussing with my friends of the Arsenal
Supporters Trust of which I am a life member, but , strange as it seems, a
club which has led the world in modernising world football has no intention
of putting a roof on their new Emirates stadium as their last letter to me
from Glyn Taylor CEO of the Trust indicates. He says that he knows for a
fact that Arsenal do not have any intention at all of putting a roof on the
Emirates Stadium. Only one game has fallen foul of the weather at the
Emirates since it opened and that was more to do with travel outside the
stadium than the stadium itself and I was even told by the club that the
pitch would have been fit for play given the undersoil heating and the way
it is looked after.
But this fails to take into account that Peter Friar, Arsenal’s
managing director, is committed to giving me an estimate for putting a roof over the
Emirates stadium and this followed a report that their rivals Chelsea were
considering moving their ground to the derelict Battersea Power Station site
and on that site would build a new stadium with a roof.
     The very latest justification for a roof is today’s happenings at
Edgbaston where torrential rain limited play to two hours, whereas if the
stadium had been covered there would have been a full day’s play and many
more than the 20,000 or so cricket enthusiasts who braved the soaking
they received would have watched England versus Australia.

THE SO-CALLED INDEPENDENT ENQUIRY INTO THE WAR IN IRAQ.
     The fears of RESPECT featured in our BLOG last night have been
confirmed today. Blair will be called before the enquiry, but since his
bosom friend Lord Mandelson is now in charge of British policies while
Gordon Brown is on holiday its rather like having a mass murderer present as
the judge in the case of his own crimes. And Mandelsohn is already making
excuses for the war which was illegal, racist and unwinnable. Protesters
including Shami Chakrabarty are incensed at the decision to withhold
documents from the public ‘if they have statements contrary to the interests
of the state’ It is clear that the public is to be cheated again, unless
public opinion can force the truth out of the war criminals and accomplices
of torture and Nuclear Destruction which Blair, Brown, Mandelsohn,
Darling and Miliband particularly represent, but which the whole government
is guilty of perpetrating.

DECISION DAY FOR ASSISTED SUICIDE LAW.
A ground breaking change in the law has become inevitable with the
UK’s highest court delivering judgement on the case of Debbie Purdy whose
long legal fight has put her at the centre of the controversy. Purdy, who
has multiple sclerosis, claims that uncertainty as to whether her husband -
the Cuban violinist Omar Puente - would be prosecuted for assisting her
husband’s suicide abroad breaches her human rights. The law lords have
agreed with her today and they have demanded a clarification of the law.
All this is of interest to the National Secular Society which guards the
rights of atheists, agnostics and all other non-believers. The NSS supports
Assisted Suicide and also provides Secular funerals and has lately become
noted for trying to gain equality with believers in every sphere of activity
in Britain. So this week there is Camp Quest in Somerset billed as the first
summer camp for young atheists. It has been dubbed by its opponents as Camp
Faithless. The idea is to give children of atheist parents the same
facilities as God people. In the mornings instead of praying and singing
hymns they participate in philosophical questions pertaining to atheism and
in the afternoon take part in the same sports as children in more orthodox
camps.
     The first Camp Quest took place in 1996 in the USA supported by a
modest grant from the Richard Dawkins Foundation and these camps are bound
to spread since we free thinkers are the largest proportion of people in the
world and it is time that we had equality with the minority of Believers.

ONE THOUSAND DEAD BRITISH SOLDIERS.
British soldiers killed in battle are flown back to the Somerset town
of Wooton Bassett. Preparations are now in progress to recognise the one
thousandth such death, no doubt this week The first will be those who have
honoured every such death and citizens will line the streets in homage to
their bravery and we do that. But it must be recognised that they gave their
lives in vain for they never should have been in those countries and the
sooner our troops are withdrawn from other people’s countries the sooner the
deaths will cease.
Meanwhile in Walsall in the far away Black Country ordinary people
turned out in their thousands to honour Corporal Jonathan Horne who was
killed in Helmand Province of Afghanistan where he was killed as he battled
to save comrades killed in earlier blasts. Officers of his unit paid
tribute to his bravery and many tears were no doubt shed. I also will shed
tears but not for the same reason. Mine will be for the useless killing of
brave men who never should have been sent to other people’s countries and
I’ve
no doubt that many other servicemen in those far away places will feel the
same way and support the man who has refused to return to Afghanistan whose
name I have forgotten and even Google will not tell me, but which I shall
know tomorrow and will pay proper tribute to his bravery then

                           END IMPERIALIST WARS NOW

STOP THE WARS.
From: “Martin Lynch”
STOP THE WAR COALITION NEWSLETTER NO. 1107 28 July 2009
     Email office@stopwar.org.uk Tel: 020 7801 2768 Web:
http://www.stopwar.org.uk ;witter: http://twitter.com/STWuk
The latest opinion poll in The Independent carried the headline, “Voters
turn against war in Afghanistan”. Despite the pro war propaganda campaign it reported that 52% of the British Public want the troops home now. (See http://bit.ly/2QXiDj)
This was confirmed by anti-war activists petitioning up and down the country last weekend. All reported a fantasticresponse. The report from Worcester was typical: “We collected
more signatures and gave out more leaflets than at probably any point in the four years we have been doing street stalls”
(See groups campaign report: http://bit.ly/WlzDW)
The government has declared ‘mission accomplished’ but even it had to admit they have only ‘cleared’ an area the size of the Isle of Wight of 500 Taliban, deploying 9000 troops to do so,
at a cost of 22 soldiers killed and hundreds more wounded. And what effect has the fighting had on the Afghan people? At a packed Stop the War meeting in London last week, Afghan MP
Malalai Joya explained how the occupation was a disaster for
the Afghan people and is driving the country backwards. “We always reject occupation and foreign domination,” she said, calling for solidarity from the anti-war movement.
“I know there are millions of British people who want to see
an end to this conflict as soon as possible. Together we can
raise our voice for peace and justice.” (See http://bit.ly/2×33Fz)
Stop the War is encouraging its supporters across the country to get in
touch with their local anti-war group and help the
campaign in your area. If you would like to get involved,
contact the national Stop the War office for details of a
local group in your area: Email office@stopwar.org.uk or call
020 7801 2768

2) NAMING THE DEAD CEREMONIES WHEN THE 200TH SOLDIER DIES
    Currently the lives of 191 British soldiers have been wasted
in this terrible, pointless, war. Local anti-war groups will
be holding Naming the Dead ceremonies in every area the
weekend after the 200th soldier is killed.

3) SERVING SOLDIER REFUSES TO RETURN TO WAR
At the Stop the War rally featuring Malalai Joya in London
last week, Lance Corporal Joe Glenton became the first serving
British soldier to speak out publicly against the Afghan war.
Joe faces court martial and a possible two-year prison term
after going on the run rather than return to Afghanistan.
Joe says he gradually became aware that justifications for
occupying Afghanistan were ringing hollow. “The Afghan people
were attacking us, even though our politicians said we were
going in to help them. It came as a real shock”
“That’s when I became aware that there was something seriously
wrong with the war,” he says.
Joe will attend a court martial hearing next Monday We are
asking all our supporters to send messages of complaint, for
forwarding to the Ministry of Defence, to joeisinnocent@hotmail.co.uk
Watch Joe’s speech at the Stop the War meeting here: http://bit.ly/1vyX7b

4. STOP THE WAR ON TWITTER
Twitter is currently a fashionable obsession in the mainstream
media, but don’t let that put you off joining what is
developing into a very useful means of communication for
campaigns like Stop the War.
You can join Stop the War on Twitter here: It’s free
http://twitter.com/STWuk
Here’s a simple guide to using Twitter for complete beginners:
http://bit.ly/6r4g8

BRITAIN’S OWN GUANTANAMO
     David Vine in an article in the Guardian today writes, ‘Ministers must
end their cover-ups over Diego Garcia’s role as a centre of CIA rendition
and torture. The case has now been taken up by Reprieve (a human rights
organisation) of Saad Iqbal Madni who they say was transited through the UK
controlled Indian Ocean island as part of the CIA’s secret rendition programme.
Madni, whom Reprieve say was tortured in Egypt, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo after his stop-over in Diego Gracia has been released in
Pakistan. According to Clive Stafford Smith, of Reprieve, ‘ He is
effectively crippled by his torture.
     For more than six years following the declaration of the war in terror
in the US in 2001 British and US officials adamantly rejected the existence
of a rendition facility or secret CIA prison on the island, the site of a
major British-American military base on the island since the 1970s and long
off-limit to visitors, reporters and investigators. Dismissing reports about
detainees on the atoll as totally without foundation, Britain’s then Foreign
Secretary, Jack Straw, asserted, ‘United States authorities have repeatedly
assured us that no detainees have at any time passed in transit through
Garcia Deigo or its territorial waters or have disembarked there.
However allegations kept accumulating. In 2003, Time Magazine cited
an intelligence official as saying that a senior al Qaida official, Riduan
Ismaddin was being interrogated on the base. Later that year, the UKs Bar
Human Rights Committee wrote to Straw concerned that the island or ships in
and around its waters were being used to hold terrorist suspects. In 2004
and 2006 Barry McCaffrey, a retired US army colonel named Diego Garcia as a
detention facility and the Council of Europe named the atoll as a secret
prison.
     Finally in February 2008 the official line cracked and David Miliband
announced to Parliament that contrary to explicit earlier reports that Diego
Garcia had not been used for rendition flights recent US investigations have
now revealed that on two occasions, both in 2002 this had in fact occurred.
The USA expressed regret at what it called ‘an administrative error’. CIA
officials indicated that they were as confident as they could be that that
no other detainees had been held on the island and continued to deny the
existence of a CIA prison.
     Sadly, these deceptions have been familiar for centuries the
evacuation of the entire population of the island of Chagoseans where from
1968 to 1973 UK and US officials conspired to expel the entire local
population, to hide that expulsion from the world and callously prevent the
people from returning.
     With so much unknown the Brown and Obama administrations must open the
islands, the prison ships to parliamentary and congressional investigation,
as well as to organisations such as the United Nations, the Red Cross and
Non-Government Organisations throughout the world.

BROWN WAR CRIMINAL AND NUCLEAR MANIAC.
Already Brown and his Cabinet are war criminals for continuing the
murder of Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians and our own troops as well as his
determination to risk the destruction of the planet and all of us in it.
Experience at the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War
demonstrated that all who knew of crimes against humanity whether
nationally or locally were war criminals and our present position is an
analogous one. The controllers of the BBC and ITV, Press organisations such
as OFCOM and Ombudsmen who fail in their duty to discipline their employees
such as Paxman, Marr, Wark Kearney and Jon Snow who didn’t challenge Blair
when interviewing him and thus helped him to wage an illegal, racist and
unwinnable war in Iraq have become accessories to the war, as have local
authorities such as Wolverhampton council whose members refuse to reply to
correspondence addressed to them and who thus destroy the democracy we are
supposed to enjoy. Our democratic institutions are at risk as well as our
lives and I want to mention two in particular in Wolverhampton. The chief
executive of Wolverhampton, Richard Carr, who in his three years in the city
has never once replied to my requests that he explain who runs and controls
the City and Neville Patten the Conservative leader of the council who
refuses to do what is obligatory to a public servant and to reply to
correspondence.
A complete change of ideas and attitudes are imperative including:

THE SACKING OF BROWN AND DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME MINISTER

VISIT OF IAN PEDDIE.
     Ian is a very tall man. I told him the tale that Rob Marris my MP once
told me of him (Marris) being a disadvantaged person because he is too tall.
Be that as it may, Ian is off to foreign climes again and he came to
say Goodbye to me. Ian is a local boy made good. He went to Wolverhampton
schools and a British university and became a historian specialising in the
history of American activists who opposed the McCarthy Witchhunts in the
1950s. This was most interesting to me and he soon found a job in Australia
where he worked happily for a time until he was refused medical treatment
and sacked, both of which were illegal and he returned to Wolverhampton.
Since then as a man with three degrees including MA and PhD he has
written hundreds of job applications for British Universities and had only
one unsuccessful interview. It is clear, he said, that no University in
Britain wants to take on a Ph.D.
     So he has applied for jobs abroad and landed a plum one at The
University of West Florida in California. where he will teach on American radical history.
On hearing of this we immediately talked of one of the greatest books
in the world, The Souls of Black Folk by WEB du Bois who is one of the
greatest black scholars, the first black to gain a Ph.D in a white US
university, the originator of the black resistance to discrimination as the
shaper of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
and for his masterpiece Souls which has gone through no less than one
hundred and nineteen editions since is was first published on 1903. The
definitive edition of his book was published by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
another outstanding scholar of African-American history head of the du Bois
     Centre at Harvard University Gates has been in the news recently when finding he could not open hisfront door he went to the back and broke a window to get in. He was promptly
arrested for entering his own house, held in jail for four hours and
handcuffed and finger printed. His reaction was to tell the press that one
million black people are currently in jail in the USA and for four hours he
was one of them.
     Both Ian and I are great admirers of both du Bois and Gates. But I
took the opportunity to talk not only about those two great patriots, but
also a third one, the immortal Paul Robeson. And then I told Ian that I
hoped he would help me contact a long lost friend, Norman Plotkin. I met
Norman during World War Two when I was in hospital in what is now Bangla
Desh, but was at that time the centre of terrorism against the British
government. Norman suffered from double discrimination by being both Jewish
and a Communist. After the war we kept in touch as he took advantage of the
lavish educational facilities for ex-servicemen after the war and he did
research in France. When Esme and I were attending the Berlin Youth Festival
in Berlin in 1951 our party was prevented from entering the country by
American troops with fixed bayonets. We eventually got to the Festival with
the assistance of Austrian progressives, but as something of a compensation
we spent a week in Paris and stayed at the house of Norman Plotkin who himself
was away. When we got home, Esme and I were married!
     Norman took part in the other great crime of the Americans, when a
concert starring Paul Robeson was broken up by racist thugs, and progressive
people from all over the world supported a repeat of the event to show that
not all Americans were racist.
     After that in 1956 at the time of the Khrushchev revelations of
Stalin, Norman left the US Communist Party and our relations with him were
fractured. I do not blame Norman at all for leaving the USACP at the time
and I would very much like to be put in touch with him if he is still alive
or hear of his subsequent life if he has passed on.

THE BRITISH INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
     This is an organisation that I must confess I had not heard of until
recently. The Institute claims to be the largest provider of human rights
training to a wide range of organisations at national, regional and local
levels to tackle social exclusion,, disadvantage and inequality. Their
training courses focus on human rights principles and standards in a
practical way and how to use the Human Rights language to recognise and
challenge human rights abuses. It needed Google to give me the bare details
of the organisation whose address is King’s College London 7th floor,
Melbourne House 46 Aldwych London WC2B 4LL.  It then took recourse to 118888
to get a phone number of 020 782 5454 and finally a phone call to them which
was answered by a bright and cheerful woman who told me that their email
address is info@bihr.org.uk This organisation can now be found on this BLOG
and I look forward to finding much more about this interesting organisation.

NATIONAL PROTEST AT BNP RED, WHITE AND BLUE FASCIST FESTIVAL.
A notice from Wolverhampton Bilston and District TUC gives notice of a
national protest against the BNP’s Red, White and Blue fascist festival due
on Saturday 15th August at Codnor Market Place, Codnor, Derbyshire. This
protest is called by the Midlands TUC and supported by Amber Valley CARF,
Derby CARF, Notts Stop the War Campaign and Unite against Fascism.
Anti-fascists across the country are organising coaches from as far away as
Scotland and we expect this to be a large demonstration. There will be a
rally from 11am and a march at 12 noon. This is the first major opportunity
we have had since the BNP gained two seats in the European Parliament to put
a positive, labour movement policy to the politics of hate. We need to
persuade those who voted for the BNP that they were wrong and knock some of
the confidence out of BNP members and their supporters. For further
information visit www.nobnpfestival.wordpress.com or contact Nick Kellerher
at wolvestuc@blueyonder.co.uk Come yourselves, organise a coach from your
locality, work place, school,college, university, church, temple or mosque

                       SAY NO TO FASCISM IN THE MIDLANDS.

DIANE ABBOTT FOR PRIME MINISTER.
     I cannot understand why the Peace and Multicultural Movement continues
to deal with admittedly important but peripheral matters and ignores the key
issue of the removal of Gordon Brown and his replacement by some one with a
record of opposing the war in Iraq.
     Nor can I understand why his replacement should not be Diane Abbott,
blackand female who would transform Britain’s world position to something
approaching what it was in 1942-45 when the alliance of the Soviet Union, US
and Britain crushed world fascism.
     Diane Abbott is the obvious choice at a time when for the first time in
US history a black man, Barak Obama is president of the USA, but has found
himself tangled up with Neo-Cons and will need the support of all anti-war
people in the world if he is to fulfil the need that he created for radical
change in America.
      Diane has a record of peace and feminist activity which is unrivalled.
Beginning in 1987 she made history by becoming the first black MP to enter
Parliament. Her record as a distinguished broadcaster and commentator is
known to all.  And she considers her greatest achievement has been to
combine a career with that of a single mum and bring up a (not a daughter)
but a son!
     The above is a copy of a message I intended to send to those people I
consider will lead the way in building the new united front which will take
us into the new modern world of Peace and Multiculturalism. But my computer
is playing tricks with me again, the text disappears and I have a long
search to find it.
     So tonight I am going the set out my priorities. Top of the list is
Robert Griffiths, secretary general of the Communist Party of Britain.
Second is Searchlight Magazine founded in the late 1940s as fascism reared
its ugly head again by Communists and remains the spearhead of anti racism
and anti-fascism in Britain. I shall include CND which although not
originated by organised Communists has always had Communists associated with
it and today is led by Kate Hudson, a member of the CPB.
     Other institutions I managed to contact included my friend Nasir Khan
the Kashmiri Communist whose father led the resistance there, but who moved
from Poonch in Kashmir to Norway where he had better opportunities to
develop his writings and his magnificent daily Blog. It was also intended to
encompass Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Evo Mores and all the other South
American countries finding their own way to Socialism based on Bolivarian
principles which now covers every country in S.America, and of course China
and India where Communists control territories in at least three large areas
and of course in Europe where Communists still operate in Greece and Crete
     By and large the non-Communist world does not openly align
themselves, but now with COPAM find an institution with which they may well
come to associate with this new Communist World.

BRITAIN’S ATOMIC BOMB TESTS IN THE 1950S.
My association with three other white patients in New Cross Hospital
led to my knowing Bill Brown who was a sailor in the 1950s and has had good
health ever since until his recently contracted cancer which surgeons are
suggesting is inoperable on and he is now in limbo although he attributes
his illness to having viewed the tests.
     We have discovered that the British government has accepted that
sufferers can appeal for compensation on grounds there could be connections
between the two and we have discovered that the victims have an association
named the British Nuclear Tests Veteran Association and whose secretary is
Keff Liddiart of 13 Wetlands Lane, Portishead Bristol BS20 6RA and whose email address is secretary@bntva.com This address we will contact tomorrow and see where that leads.

THE PROBLEMS OF SIR TREVOR PHILLIPS.
Further accusations of peculation on Phillips’s part and his threat to
defect to the Tories have both backfired. But action against both Phillips
and David Cameron have focussed on secondary features of their offences
instead of their major offences. These are in the case of Phillips that by
claiming that the war in Iraq was ‘not within his remit’ and his subsequent
refusal to say whether or not he supports the war in Iraq means that he is
not a fit person to represent black and Asian people.
With regard to David Cameron he supports the war in Iraq and thus
becomes, like Gordon Brown, an accessory to that war which is illegal,
racist and unwinnable:

   END THE WARS - FOR PEACE AND MULTICULTURALISM.

E-BORDERS, THE NEW FRONTIER OF OPPRESSION.
Here is a message I have received from Our World Our Say. Did you know
that the Government is going to treat you as a terrorist and criminal
Suspect from this summer? 53 highly intrusive questions you will have to
answer every time you go abroad including, the contact numbers of every
place you are staying at. The addresses of every place you are staying at. Your
vehicle number. The number of the credit card you used to pay for your trip.
Details of other people in your party.. Many other intrusive questions.
These will be handed to the Police, the Inland Revenue, MI5 and UK Border
Control. If the information doesn’t add up then you could face all sorts of
problems. It is a Snooper’s Charter of previously unknown dimensions.
OWOS suggest that you sign the petition either on line or by post and
protest to Alan Johnson MP at Parliament. Also send a donation to OWOS at
Freepost RRGR-KHHE-TYXY, Brighton BN1 1US Then tell all your friends and
contacts.

ANOTHER GREAT DAY OF JAZZ AT THE HARP.
We haven’t been to Jazz Club 90 for a couple of months, but friends old
and new awaited us. The first man I met was John Wood, chief executive of
Worcestershire County Cricket Club and we at once fell into talking of our
experiences in the past .Me with Graeme Hick, to my mind the greatest
potential cricketer since Don Bradman, but he unfortunately did not make it
in international cricket although he scored more centuries than any other
English player. I loved to watch him and remember the time he scored two
hundred runs in an innings, and, cut in John, I was there when he broke the
record of centuries scored in England. A man from Rhodesia originally who
came to England, I idolised him. Then there was Ian Botham, a Somerset man
who left his native county and came to Worcestershire because his greatest
friend, a black cricketer whose name I can’t remember, was not given a new
contract i.e. he was sacked when still at the height of his fame. John gave
his permission for me to put him on my BLOG and I look forward to fruitful
contact.
Then there was my old friend Gordon Fryer and his smiling and cheerful
wife. Gordon was a noted clarinet player but injured his hand which injury
persists and they are both regular visitors at the Harp. Gordon is also a
historian of Wednesfield where he lives Today Gordon was keen to show me a
very rare photograph which he had downloaded on his computer of early
nineteenth century buildings in Tettenhall Road near to Newbridge complete
with a previous unknown (probably corn) mill and houses long demolished
before any of us were born. Gordon is another remarkable man.
And then there was John and Marie Howells the brains behind continuing
jazz at the Harp who arrange the programmes every Sunday and Tuesday and who
reserve seats for me and my son who takes me. John also runs the Harp Jazz
90 Website and both are central to the history of Jazz at the Harp. John and
Marie were at my ninetieth birthday party and I have taken to taking a
bottle of whisky donated by friends who came to the party and John begins
his spiel by saying that a certain young man who is in the audience
today…blah, blah, blah brings a bottle of whisky to raffle. It is always
raffled separately from the normal raffle which is for wine. I was very
chuffed to be told today that my whisky had contributed ?47 to the upkeep of
Jazz at the Harp. I shall continue to bring a bottle of whisky even when
the ones presented to me by friends who attended my party run out, which is
now the case
     But John and Marie did me a further favour when they told me that there
was a man in the audience who had largely been responsible for there ever
being jazz at the Harp and I was introduced to Allan Austin who overwhelmed
me with tales of how he attempted to get jazz set up in pub after pub in the
same street until he was at last successful at the Harp. He persevered in
Albrighton because he has always lived at 2 Cosford Park Albrighton, which
is next door to Max Bennett one of my greatest friends. What I want from
Allan is a history of jazz at the Harp and Allan says its already there in
notices and leaflets which he has promised to put together to produce a
book.
    What is true of the Harp is true of the Trumpet in Bilston, which in
spite of the credit crunch is still the only venue in Britain which puts on
traditional jazz every day of the week 52 weeks in the year. But for that we
have Dave Holmes himself a jazz drummer who lives in Bilston who now assists
at the Trumpet, so it ought to be possible for us to get a complete history
of Jazz at both venues and I would hope that it would be by historians like
Ned Williams of the Workers’ Education Association, or experts who
contribute to history such as Carl Chinn, or those of our Own History and
Heritage Society, or school pupils entering a thesis for A level exams etc.
etc.
     As Billy my son who took me to the jazz reminisced on the way home,
black people and young people do not play trad. jazz. There were no blacks
at the Harp either in the very splendid Old Comrades band who played today
nor in the audience, and even with modern jazz this is also being left to
elderly whites. Allan Austin had added that even in New Orleans where jazz
originated, he found it difficult to find trad jazz and I added that black
people are so naturally talented musically that they can afford to discard
the old and create new forms of music, which are not always as good as the
old. Matters for future discussion, indeed!

THE SCOTT ISH RADICAL LIBRARY.
An email today informed me of the newly set up Scottish Radical Library
and invited me to support it and popularise it which I am only too pleased
to do. For a small donation I can become a Friend of the Library and receive
Newsletters and an Annual Report, again something I am only too glad to
accept.. The Library will be an excellent new centre of history and research
and I have already put it on my daily BLOG.

WADE MATTHEWS.
As if all the above was not sufficient to bring my cup of happiness
o’er flowing I had another very interesting appeal from Wade Matthews who
told me he is writing a book on the CPGB Historians’ Group and did I know of
additional archives he could consult. I was happy to inform him that all I
have written on the subject, and I ended up being the longest serving member
of the Group, could be down loaded from my BLOG and only if that fails need
he contact me. Indeed:

                   A DAY OF JAZZ AND HISTORY TO BE SAVOURED

MODERNISING FOOTBALL.
Watchers of this BLOG will know that the two teams of my life are
Arsenal which I have supported since the AGE of about ten and Wolves which I
have supported since we came to Wolverhampton in 1954. Also that these two
teams have hitherto led the struggle to keep football British and attached
to the local community. But no longer, I feel.
I have become a life member of Arsenal Supporters’ Trust and receive
regular correspondence from Glyn Taylor, but I am fearful that Arsenal is
going the way of all the other clubs in the Premiership and that is to be
owned by foreign potentates who, at this time of economic Slump are liable
to lose their billions as fast as they made them and find themselves
bankrupt and the football teams they own go into receivership and disappear.
This is the prospect facing Manchester United who are owned by the
Glazers who only lent the club his money so that the amount owed in interest is
greater than the annual income of the club.  Or Chelsea owned by the Russian
oligarch who made his fortune by robbing the Russian people and
constantly faces the possibility that they will want in back.  Or Manchester
City the most outrageous case of being owned by oil rich Arabs, or
Liverpool owned by two warring Americans. And now Arsenal privatised by an
American and a Russian who between them own 28% of shares which never should
have been issued and if they continue to buy shares will find themselves
with the thirty per cent of shares which will make them the owners of
Arsenal instead of the local north London community.
     The great bone of contention between me and the Trust is the question
of climate change so severe that matches begun in bright sunshine end
in torrential rain which soaks players and officials to the skin so that the
quality of play deteriorates at the best and at the worst, which will be
increasingly be the case in future, matches will have to be abandoned.
Peter Friar, chief executive of Arsenal, has promised to let me have an estimate for covering Arsenal’s stadium with a roof, but this has not materialised but has been emphasised
by Chelsea considering building a new ground on the site of the derelict
Battersea Power Station and having a retractable roof, as the new Wembley
stadium apparently will not have, although the retractable roof in the
Wimbledon tennis stadium points to the necessity for all sports to have
stadiums which can be used 24 hours a day for twelve months in every year.
A further difference between the Trust and me has been my desire to be
taken to Arsenal with my son as ‘minder’ watch a match, shake hands with
Arsene Wenger and travel back to Wolverhampton via Carpenders Park where I
would like to visit my brother as aged and disabled as myself, perhaps for
the last time. This also hangs fire but I hope it can be arranged in August
or September of this year.

THE WORLD AS SEEN BY OTHERS.
The best guide to the outside world is without doubt the Morning Star
and particularly on a Saturday. This week’s issue contains a trenchant article by
John Pilger on the sins of the press caught up on the coils of
Neo-capitalism, but also even the so called ‘liberal’ press including the
Guardian and the Independent becoming  willing tools of capitalism. But will
someone please find an email address for John Pilger so that the united
struggle against reaction can be joined by COPAM the largest electronically
called organisation in the world consisting entirely of those organisations
and individuals who are opposed to the war in Iraq and the only one at
present able to destroy the power of Rupert Murdoch.
      A most important questionat the moment is Barak Obama’s
intention to close Guantanamo death camp, but the fact that his vice
president supports the wars in Iraq and elsewhere means that he needs people
power to meet the demand he has created for radical change.
     Other news available from the MS shows majorities in Britain, US,
Germany and Canada want their governments to withdraw the forces from
Afghanistan.
     Then there is Brazil’s Lulu who chides Obama with not being in control
of the situation in the USA.  Lulu has also announced that he will lodge a complaint at the
United Nations of shipment of 1000 tons of hazardous waste from Britain
being dumped in Brazil.
     The possibility that the US might invade Iran have been increased as a
series of failed tests of a joint US-Israeli anti-missile system has cast
doubt on Washington’s offer of an ‘umbrella’ to defend its Gulf allies
against nuclear attack.

HOME NEWS
     Is dominated by the hypocrisy of Gordon Brown and his ‘Defence’
Secretary David Miliband both praising the patriotism of British troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan who are increasingly being killed while insisting that
more troops be sent there and while he (Brown) holidays he leaves our
country in the hands of that yesterday’s traitor Lord Mandelson.
     Never was there a greater need for COPAM and we ask all those who care
for Britain’s future to:

                                 RALLY ROUND COPAM

KEITH WYMER.
I received today from Peta Wymer, Keith’s wife, an obituary of Keith
written by John Godfrey, who I had not before heard of, but who taught at
Bilston Community College (BCC) in a subject and for a period I have still
to ascertain from him. The obituary wrote of Keith becoming principal of BCC
and transforming it into probably the largest college in the country with
over 50,000 students. Wymer was a visionary and his projects were not only
recognised in the UK but were replicated abroad in countries in Africa, the
Caribbean and the US. He was instrumental in setting up the British College
of Banking and Finance in Moscow which still thrives to this day.
     Controversy was never far away as he vigorously challenged prejudices and
fought racism and lack of equal opportunities and the vested interests of
the well-off. Appointed as an adviser to the first chief executive of the
then Further Education Funding Council, later on he fell out of favour when
he was accused of expanding the student population ‘too fast’.

     John Kyte, former chair of Wolverhampton’s Education Committee and first chair of BCC
added that twenty nine years ago he meet Keith Wymer and discovered from him
a much more sophisticated, coherent and developed theory of tertiary
education for all. In 1984 this seemed to come about with the opening of
Bilston Community College in Wolverhampton. Nobody then realised the
campaign of lies, deceit and destabilisation the College and its supporters
would eventually have to endure. In 1999 the college was closed, but
pretence was necessary that it was not closed but ‘merged’ with the much
smaller Wulfrun College.
    Allegations of financial irregularities were made to the W.Midlands
Police Fraud Squad, by John Mellor an ex-police officer and inveterate
opponent of BCC who was also a supporter of Enoch Powel. After many months
of delay the police declared that they could find no financial
irregularities at the College, but the damage had been done. False rumours
and malicious gossip meant that the College continued closed and this was
supported by the successors to the FEFC the Learning and Skills Council.
Wymer was shattered, the lives of him and his staff were gone and Keith
suffered a breakdown from which he only slowly recovered.The closure of
Bilston Community College by racists and bigots is one of the most serious
education scandals of the twentieth century which still has to be addressed.

BRINGING RUSBRIDGER TO BOOK.
     The first thing I did with John Godfrey’s obituary of Wymer, was to
send a copy to Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian newspaper.
Rusbridger was one of the bigots and racists who helped close Bilston
Community College. He boycotted both me and the Friends of Bilston Community
College by supporting the editor of his supplement Guardian Two, thus
depriving us of the second largest source of educational information, the
greatest being the Times Education Supplement, and thus Rusbridger became
one of the bigots and racists who helped close BCC.
    The copy I sent him demands that he publicly apologises for the
malignity he has displayed all these years against me and Bilston Community
College.
The second thing I have done is to let John Kyte know of the lecturer
at BCC who is now head of a department in Wolverhampton City College, whose
name is Earl Laird. And the third thing is that I have put all this on
tonight’s BLOG>

EMINENT BLACK SCHOLAR IN USA ARRESTED FOR ENTERING HIS OWN FLAT.
     Henry Louis Gates Jnr arguably the most respected scholar of
African-American history was arrested, handcuffed, fingerprinted and locked
in a cell for four hours for entering his own home. Gates told the
Washington Post one million black people are in jail in the US and yesterday
I was one of them. Prolific writer and TV presenter Gates is also director
of the WEB du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at
Harvard University.
     WEB du Bois is the greatest black scholar and activist there has been,
Originator of the Civil Rights Movement, the first black man to enter a
white university in the USA, the first black man to earn a PhD from Harvard
University and writer of the most important book of the national black
liberation struggle, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois is less acknowledged
because he was a Communist and when the Black Liberation Movement
re-appeared in the USA in the 1970s black activists were not too keen to
have their movement identified with Communists and this neglect has
continued until this day so that when The Voice, the mouthpiece of
African-Caribbean’s and the Diaspora in Britain published a list of the
twenty most important figures of black liberation du Bois’s name did not
appear.
     Yet the Souls of Black Folk has been through no less than one hundred
and three editions since it was first published in 1903 and will continue to
be an inspiration to all of us, black and white who fight for human
equality,

GORDON BROWN AND RICHARD CARR.
     The large and the small. Both Gordon Brown and Richard Carr remain
unarrested. The former to threaten the world with extinction through his
Nuclear Madness. The latter to continue to flout the law which states that
public servants must reply to correspondence addressed to them. This
rapscallion thinks he is going to move on to South Bedforshire and become
their chief executive, but we have now informed both his new employers and
their trade unions of the corruption he created in Wolverhampton which he
will continue to spread in Mid Beds.

      FIGHT AGAINST THE CORRUPTION OF BROWN AND LESSER BREEDS.

OBJECTIVES UNCHANGED - GUILTY ONES UNRESPONSIVE.
The main objective remains to get Gordon Brown under lock and key
before he destroys himself, all of us and the planet. Yet today as
Parliament ends he still struts the stage, free as air, able to continue responsibity
for the deaths every day of Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians and other people
throughout the world, not forgetting British servicemen being killed in
ever increasing numbers in countries where they have no right to be and will
continue to be killed on an ever increasing scale until we are driven from
these countries as the US troops were driven from Vietnam.
Yet yesterday a packed Parliament meeting for the last time this
session with a majority of MPs opposed to these wars allowed Brown to get
away with outlining plans to continue the same disastrous policies which has
brought the Labour Party to the verge of extinction.
Why didn’t any of those MPs opposed to the war move a motion for the
dismissal of Brown and his replacement by some one opposed to the war? In
all my 90 years I do not remember a day when Parliament so spinelessly failed
the people of England.  Not even the occasion when Neville Chamberlain came
back from his visit to Germany waving a piece of paper which he said would
guarantee peace in our time, but was violated by Hitler within months and
Chamberlain was forced to declare war on Hitler.
     Comparisons with Appeasement are not too far fetched to describe the
conduct of even left wing MPs such as Ken Purchase our Wolverhampton MP and
Diane Abbott (the black and female MP who should replace Brown in my view)
and George Galloway the most innovative MP of them all,  all of whom have been opposed to
the war in Iraq from its beginning in 2003. were guilty of neglect of the
chance to align themselves with the majority of people who want the wars
ended.
     But it was not only the MPs who proved spineless yesterday but the
servile British press including the so-called ‘liberal’ press of the
Guardian and the Independent who in theory oppose the war in Iraq but refuse
to lead a campaign and even the Morning Star today could not find space to
condemn the craven conduct of those who lead our nation which only benefits
the BOP and leaves millions of British people of the opinion that Britain
is finished, the only thing to do is emigrate and the last one out turn off
the lights!

OTHER BETRAYALS.
What happens on a national scale is reflected in the local scene and
the disaster of Educational Academies has struck Wolverhampton. A
government initiated plan called Building Schools for the Future has the
bright idea of pulling every secondary school in Wolverhampton down and
rebuilding Education Academies in their place. But Academies will be run by
private individuals and organisations and will have no responsibility to the
local authority. This is in contrast to the existing system of local
Comprehensive Schools which the teaching profession continues to support.
     South Wolverhampton and Bilston is due to close on August 31 and
became an Academy the next day and presumably the Academy itself will be
built around the pupils of the old school since construction is not
scheduled to start until May 2011. Plenty of time to oppose this crack
brained scheme and reorganise the schools on the familiar Comprehensive
school model
     The problem is that those who have taken upon themselves to push this
scheme are Roy Lockwood, the W’ton Director of Education and Tim Westwood an
employee of the City council who has been designated head of BSF and these
two people claim that they have the support of Wolverhampton College, the
City Council and W’ton University, although there is no proof that the
implication of such far reaching changes have been submitted to the Council,
the teaching profession, or the people of Wolverhampton.
     Alistair Darling is the Minister pushing BSF and Academies and he
is having similar problems across the country trying to hand our schools
over to private enterprise. So savibg our schools becomes part of the wider question of saving our other social seeervices which New Labour want to destroy.

    So saving our schools
becomes part of the wider question of saving our other social services which
New Labour want to destroy.

SACK BROWN - SAVE THE PLANET

NOUGHT FOR ARITHMETIC.
My sharp eyed Webmaster and fellow Communist, Martin George, tells me that my last few
BLOGS have got the wrong date and sequence number. For example last night’s
title was GEORGE BARNSBY BLOG NO 860 17TH JULY 2009 whereas it should have
been GEORGE BARNSBY BLOG NO.865 TUESDAY 21ST JULY 2009, So tonight’s BLOG
title should be GEORGE BARNSBY BLOG NO.866 WEDNESDAY 22ND JULY 2009.
As you will see from the I have taken Martin’s advice and used his
title. My excuse? Absolutely none. I have never been able to add two plus
two without makiing the total five an you are dealing with a very old man
of 90 he must be excused occasional lapses.

MY VISIT TO ST.COLUMBA CANCELLED.
It was Dee who suggested it. Short for Davina I think, a very nice
name. She lives in Henwood Road and has a very large, but quite harmless
Hound of the Baskervilles which she exercises (or rather the dog exercises
her) along Henwood Rd. where we often meet up at Joe Davies’s house at 119.
The church runs a social club for the elderly. They pick them up at
their homes, take them to the centre where they are entertained in a
variety of ways, given a very nice meal and then they are taken home. A very
nice day out. Dee asked me if I would like to go sometime, and having
nothing much better to do I said Yes. It would involve my being vetted and after
two or three weeks my wife Esme received a phone call to say that I was not
eligible.I was not deprived enough, although I could pay ?20 for a visit, or
go to a private institution at a price not discussed and all this my wife
failed to impart to me and it wasn’t until I ran into Dee some days later
that she learned of the development and both of us were a bit indignant
about what had happened and we were going to complain.
     On reflection, however, I have decided to accept it as fair. On the
question of social isolation both Joe Davies and I have agreed that
there  should be a register of the whereabouts of all people over 80 in
Wolverhampton and contact regularly kept to prevent cases one reads of in
the papers where people isolated and living on their own are found dead long
after they have died. Many people go into homes either public or private
and receive splendid care, but there are also cases where elderly people are
ill treated in homes and although homes both private and public have to be
registered and this acts as a disincentive against ill treatment I still
think my idea of a register with a ‘minder’ to visit them regularly is the
only way of preventing such tragedies. I am fortunate to have my own house
with a wife and two loving sons living within a short distance, but the
horror stories of elderly people having to sell their houses to pay for
their upkeep in a home continue, and we have an example in our street where
Laurence Patton is being treated for cancer and has the offer of a place in the James
Beattie home, which is highly regarded, but cannot take it until he has an
offer to buy his house, a prospect which gets remoter by the day.

LACK OF STATISTICS FOR WOLVERHAMPTON
Statistics on general matters continue to be produced by the
government, but their intent is to confuse rather than enlighten so an email
has been sent today to the leader of the Council who is the Conservative
Neville Patten, as follows: Confusion still reigns over Wolverhampton
projects being refused funding and in particular their effects on the Black
and Muslim population in the city. The collection of specifically
Wolverhampton figures used to be the task of Wolverhampton Race Equality
Council (WREC) of which I was head of the Statistical Unit.
With the foolish closure of the WREC by Sir Trevor Phillips no
equivalent race body exists in Wolverhampton. Please let me know at once
what plans the City council has and whether they include co-operation with
those of us remaining, from the WREC including Lance Dunkley, Earlston
Warner and myself. (signed)   GEORGE BARNSBY.

ANOTHER OLD FRIEND SIGNS IN.
I am used to having contact with pupils I taught at Etheridge Secondary
Modern Boys’ School. in Bilston through Dave Holmes a jazz drummer with an
international reputation who brought together something like a dozen
ex-pupils, some of whom were jazz artists of distinction themselves from a
period of quite exceptional talent from those deemed educational ‘failures’
in not passing their 11plus exams and going to a grammar school. This was
on the occasion of Dave’s marriage to Mary his long term partner and it was
a mutual pleasure for all of us to meet after all these years. Most of them
were about Dave’s age 60, one had retired and one, unfortunately, had died.
But it was a great reunion.
     These were the lads who had remained in England, but they have been
joined recently by a number of ex-pupils who emigrated abroad and contacted
me quite accidentally through my BLOG by tapping in ‘Etheridge School’ . These
people tell of their experiences at Etheridge and the effect I had on them
by my teaching and there are at least three whose experiences are in the
pipe line to tell on the BLOG, but who will undoubtedly know other fellow
scholars plus others who will independently find Etheridge by surfing on the
Web. So my teaching years at Etheridge are pretty will recorded and I hope
soon will be put together as a partial history of the school.
     Much less is known of my teaching at Dudley Technical College where I
had two spells, interrupted by the irregular heart beat which forced me to
retire at the age of 63. The one man from Dudley I have kept in touch with
is Bob Jones who has been engaged in local amateur football both as a
referee and administrator and whose close contact with Wolverhampton
Wanderers helped Frank Spittle and Graham Hughes the keeper of the Wolves
trophy room and the historian of the club to arrange my first visit to the
club and later responsible for persuading Rachael-Heyoe Flint to let me have
a framed certificate signed by both her and Sir Jack Hayward wishing me a
Happy Ninetieth Birthday which we were celebrating with a party at the Jack
Hayward Suite of Wolverhampton Wanderers football ground on 29 January last.
     With such limited but influential contacts in Wolverhampton it was with
considerable surprise but great pleasure that I received an email from Doug
Matthews. Doug wrote; Do you remember me from the Dudley branch of the
Communist Party in the 1970s who encouraged me to take a HNC in Business
Studies at Dudley Tech and even taught me on that course too. Since then I
have studied widely and at the age now of 61 I’ve just completed a Diploma in
Employment Law. I’m still working.  My substantive post is as a senior social
worker with Walsall Council, but I’ve been seconded for the past two and a
half years to full-time working with my union T&G-UNITE.  I’ve never got my
head round this because it seconds me to a job where I am constantly in
contention with my employers. Its bloody stressful this union work but nevertheless fulfilling. I
look at is as the application of Marxism that I learned all those years ago
and which still is my major inspiration. I’ve included the Peoples Library
in the Favourites section of my computer and I’ll now read it regularly .
Its good to know you’re still at it, but I would have expected no less from
you.
     Doug goes on to say that he would very much like to meet me and pick my
brains about the internet’s potential to replace markets or to be an
alternative to Adam Smith’s Hidden Hand in equating supply and demand. In
other words how new technology could re-empower the concept of Socialism.
Yes, these are the problems for Socialism in the modern world and I
shall not only have the greatest pleasure in meeting Doug after all these
year but also consider that Doug is pressing some of the right buttons which
will rejuvenate Socialism in the modern world.

                        SOCIALISM THE HOPE OF THE WORLD.

SAVING THE WORLD FROM DISASTER
We (I use the royal we on occasions when I feel most of my supporters
will back me) have spent much of the day trying to persuade Gordon Brown and
David Cameron that if only they would stop supporting the war in Iraq, such
vast savings would accrue that the present Economic slump would disappear
and there would never again need to be economies and cuts.
Unfortunately neither agree and so they continue to be compliant as
Torturers and Mass Murderers in both Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with
wars that are illegal, racist and unwinnable. That they continue to ignore
my requests to answer my charges compounds their guilt because they then
become guilty of corruption by failing in their constitutional duty to keep
informed their constituents who make requests for information.
Such neglect of duty by the highest in the land encourages lesser
beings to follow suit, so that today we have reminded David Dimbleby of his
duty to answer charges that his programme Any Questions is ‘fixed’ and the
BBC which refuses to discipline its employees Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr,
Kirsty Wark and Martha Kearney of charges that before the war in Iraq broke
out in 2003 they refused to challenge Blair on his attitude to the war.
Others who flout the law in similar ways have also been warned, but the case
that has now fallen apart under its own contradictions is that of Sir
Trevor Phillips the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.
This must be mentioned because his main crime is not fiddling the accounts
of the CEHR but that when chair of the previous Race Unit he considered the
war in Iraq was, ‘not within his remit’ and has ever since refused to reply
to the question of whether or not he supports the war in Iraq.
As a final local case we have in Wolverhampton a City chief executive,
Richard Carr who has never in all the years that he has been in
Wolverhampton replied to the question of who runs and who controls
Wolverhampton despite the myriad of so-called regeneration bodies mostly
dependent on Government finance when Gordon Brown hasn’t got a penny to his
name and hence all ends in disaster.
This rapscallion has now found himself a new job at enhanced pay in a
new authority Central Bedfordshire who obviously fell for the tale Carr told
of his ’successes’ in Wolverhampton. We were approached by an organisation
that specialises in finding the email addresses of those who seek such
information under the Freedom of Information Act and we have passed it on to
Central Beds so that they know what sort of charlatan they have engaged.
The appointment of Carr was a scandal on a national scale and he has
been a corrupt person from the beginning.

MAX BENNETT AND TONY BENN.
Max Bennett is one of the most exuberant Communists in Wolverhampton.
Like all of us he is getting no younger but about two months ago was taken
by his daughter, Dawn, herself very progressive and leader of the industrial
organisation Inspirational Women, to a new theatre in Shrewsbury which he
enthuses on as being the size of Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre and Civic
Centre put together. Here he was able to meet Tony Benn who played to a
packed house of this new theatre and was selling and signing large numbers
of copies of his books.
Tony not only remembered Max in his activist Communist days but also me
and he sent apologies for not having being able to come to my ninetieth
birthday party, which I am very pleased to accept.
Max discussed with Tony what has so far been a mystery, the first visit
of Paul Robeson to Wolverhampton in 1951. This matter has recently been
raised by Ned Williams, secretary of W’ton Workers Education Association in
an article in the current issue of the Blackcountryman which is a detailed
account of Robeson’s second visit in the 1950s which Esme, my wife and I
attended. Here we met and talked with Paul and it was one of the great days
of our lives.
But Max’s visit to the Civic Hall together with his father Norman, a
pioneer Communist who owned the cafe in the old Wolverhampton market,
because as an engineer he was blacklisted, which passed to Max after his
death sheds completely new light on the first Robeson meeting. The meeting
was organised by Harry Bagley a very left-wing Wolverhampton Labour
councillor who lived at Kelmscott (his house named after one of William
Morris) and he became Entertainment Councillor and it was Harry who invited
Robeson to Wolverhampton and entertained him. All this Max discussed with
Tony Benn. But Max then spoke of the days when Tony Benn was Lord Stansfield
? gave up his title and became a Minister in Harold Wilson’s government
pledged to nationalise the car industry but was very like warm in the
subject so that when Wilson lost an election to Margaret Thatcher, a
foreigner, a South African, Michael Edwards was brought in to sack Derek
Robinson (’Red Robbo’) and eventually succeeded. Derek was pilloried as the
man who ruined the car industry by making demands for huge wage increases,
but in fact he was the convenor of the Joint Shop Stewards covering almost
every car plant in the country.and were determined not just that the car
industry survive, but that it should flourish in British hands. History has
been the judge of this. Edwards destroyed the industry not Red Robb and his
reward was to be sacked by Thatcher and disappear down the plughole of
history. Both Derek Robinson and Tony Benn are fit and well enough to
support our modern trade unionists, particularly UNITE (one section of which
used to be the Transport and General Worker Union which organised the
majority of unskilled car workers in those days). as they try to re-build a
car industry under British control.

MORE ABOUT WALSALL
In the 1990s when Peter Jenkinson the first curator of the New Walsall
Museum with its fabulous collection of treasures arising from Kathleen
Garman’sl love affairs and eventual marriage to the world famous sculptor
Jacob Epstein, a committee was set up to organise an exhibition on the 100th
anniversary of the so-called Walsall Anarchist Bomb Plot of 1893. I was on
this committee by virtue of the fact that I had written the only
comprehensive account of the Plot in my book Socialism in Birmingham and the
Black Country 1850-1939. The only other member of the committee I can
remember was Barrie Roberts who was a rotund and cheerful character who was
a legal clerk to Ivan Geffen,a progressive Walsall solicitor who had played
a part in helping the Birmingham Six prove their innocence. Barrie had been
an art student, civil servant, music shop manager, folk singer, free lance
journalist, printer, computer programmer and much else. but in the late
1990s he developed into a first rate novelist, whose most important series
of books were take-offs of Sherlock Holmes. I hold in my hand his book
Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac. It has a written inscription to Ivan
Geffen which says, ‘Ivan, If you read this book very slowly it’ll last you
for the next fifty years! Happy Jubilee, Barrie Roberts 2-3-96′. I shall
have to ask Ivan what the jubilee was that he referred to because Ivan and
his wife Mary are very much alive and active living in beautiful Malvern.
Ivan once gave me a list of Barrie’s books but I have lost it. He also wrote
an excellent obituary of Barrie who died comparatively young in the
Guardian. I want to read and possess other books of Barrie’s who is a
citizen of whom Walsall can be proud. .

SALUTE TO BARRIE ROBERTS - REST IN PEACE