The Barnsby Blog

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ESME.
Esme is my wife, my minder and my love.I wanted to write more but in her
modesty she refuses to let me.She’s right. The world belongs to the modest.

SUPPORT FOR FRANK SPITTLE IN TONIGHT’S EXPRESS AND STAR.
Frank Spittle is Wolverhampton’s most knowledgeable sports expert. He
founded the unique Wolverhampton Sports Advisory Council. He is an expert
on rifle shooting and he shot for both town and country in the Second World
War and came back to create the famous rifle range at Aldersley Stadium
which was second in importance only to Bisley and was the only stadium in
Britain to be of Olympic Games standard. Unfortunately the athletes lost
control of the WSAC and control passed to the bureaucrats and councillors
who thought they knew better than the sports people and gave away the
?400,000 government grant allocated for the rifle range and running track
at Aldersley which was also at Olympic standard in cycling and athletics and
frittered the money away until our facilities in Wolverhampton are not even
fit for Olympic practise, let alone Olympic Games
Mr.Mike Leason of Gordon Av. Wolverhampton recounts the above events
and says the decline in Wolverhampton’s sporting image is not the fault of
our sports men and women but that of self seeking individuals. Leason
follows Frank Spittle’s proposal to remedy this state of affairs and ends
his letter by urging that local councillors investigate why our once famous,
envied advisory council has been reduced to a one-man band and urges that
local councillors investigate the demise at one.
I rang Frank tonight to ask him if knew this Mick Leason, but said he
didn’t, but these are the sort of letters being published in our local
paper these days and there are other letters just as perspicatous as Mick
Leason’s.

WOLVERHAMPTON LETTER WRITERS TALK ABOUT THE SLUMP.
For instance Mike Griggs of Taunton Av W’ton who writes that the green
shoots of recovery are only weeds when the government is borrowing at a rate
of 14% of GDP. The shortfall between what Britain earns and what it spends
is currently 25% and rising.and no country is going to finance such
profligacy for ever. So we are in for a long spell of belt tightening
Or Stuart Stockley of Ennerdale Rd. Tettenhall who discusses MPs and
their expenses and criticises Patrick McCormack’s suggestion MPs should be
paid ?120,000 a year plus expenses. But Brenda Alonso of Lawnside Green,
Bilston puts the matter in a nutshell when she says. ‘If the country can be
run on a weekly basis by one or other Minister, either elected or not while
our unelected Prime Minister is on holiday why do we have 650 MPs on
salaries of ?64766 a year plus expenses.
We Wolverhampton people are sharp as a brush and the Poxon Potion
recommended by our butcher of Henwood Rd. that the best solution to the
crisis is to give every person in Britain ?1,000,000 each, a solution that
becomes more plausible by the week as suggestions are floated that we should
abolish banks altogether,

THE WONDERS OF THE COMPUTER.
Although computers are to most non-expert people like me are a source of
trouble and appear to have minds of their own there is the compensation of
almost magic things appearing out of the blue.
This has applied to something that appeared from Word Press. Who Word
Press are and how they got to contact me I do not know, but there are 9
pages of material about all sorts of things which I shall inform you about.
It begins with a statement by an unknown person saying, ‘Let the Bandwagon
of Socialism continue to Roll’. Then there is an email I recognise from my
Indian neighbour down the road which says, among other things, ‘A truly
historic moment to see Obam win the US 2008 election. Watching the queues
and queues of Americans voting sent a clear message to the world that apathy
is dead, democracy is alive and down with Bush…’
Turning to page two Maureen Grantham says she was told recently about
Ivor Pearce’s book, ‘ Laurie Smith and Alice Bolton’ and the only reference
I’ve found to the book is on your BLOG. Since I once met Laurie and Alice I
would like to get a copy of the book and wonder whether you can help me get
a copy. Now I haven’t got a copy of Ivor Pearce’s book who is a great
friend of mine but does not believe in Computers, so I shall have to contact
Maureen and apologise for my neglect.
Then a request from another friend of mine, David Morgan, asking if I
could publicise a lecture of Professor Thomas M Corn joint author of a new
biography , John Milton, Life, Work and Thought published by Oxford
University Press in October 2008. This was organised by the Socialist
History Society to which I belong, so I did possibly review it, although I
can’t remember.
On page three a Mr.Sturmovic who says he is writing a piece on the
website Redwatch in an American magazine and asks this to be publicities.
Again, missed opportunities.
An email from Brian Meacham was interesting because it concerned itself
with a number of issues. First a David Wykes who was in the Wolves team that
first won the FA cup back in the 1880s. He also knows David Holmes and had
the privilege of playing alongside Dave in the great Tommy Burton’s band.
Also he knows Graham Hughes the keeper of tithe Wolves trophies and
historian of the club and I know both of them.
Next a piece by Dave Holmes, the first part discussing the teachers at
Etheridge Secondary Modern Boys’ School who included me, and then went
into a most interesting and important history of modern jazz in his day
which ought to be published.
The other five pages contain equally fascinating material, but my time
is up and I’ll have to return to these matters tomorrow.

IF JAZZ BE THE SWEET MUSIC OF
LOVE - PLAY ON.

.

TODAY IT IS NEWS - TOMORROW IT WILL BE HISTORY
Never have I found this to be truer than today when I have spent time
trying to reduce the papers scattered all around me into some semblance of
order - an almost impossible task.
The first file I picked up was headed Historical writings not GB. The
first paper was headed The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser 1839
t0 1914. Who is Flashman? He was the greatest coward in the world, but
accidentally became a hero and when he died in 1914 (just in time to avoid
another war) he had served in Afghanistan with 11 Hussars, 17th Lancers.
Been chief of staff to HM James Brooke Rajah of Sarawak. 1844 military
adviser to HM Queen Ramavalona of Madagascar.1844-5 . Sutlej Campaign .
1845-6 Ferozeshah, Sobranon envoy extraordinary to Maharani Jeendan, Court
of Lahore. Political adviser to Herr (alter chancellor prince Von Bismarck
of Schleswig-Holstein. 1847-8 Crimea Staff (Alma, Sevastopol, Balaclava).
Artillery advisor to Artilik Ghazi. Sya Daria campaign. Prisoner of war
1845. Sepoy Mutiny 1857-8. dip.envoy to HRH the Maharani of Jhansi..
It is many years since I read Flashman, wondering how much of it was
true, but it was all fantasy. However what a wonderful romp through the
absurdities of the British Empire and those who collaborated with it and
unless the world is destroyed by Brown and his neo-imperialists it is hoped
that peoples of all nations will acquaint themselves with Flashman.

THE POMEROYS.
Continuing my journey through history the most poignant moment has
been to re-read a letter sent me in July 2008 by my good comrade Rosemary
Logan. I first contacted Rosemary at a meeting of the Socialist History
Society. She was then partner of Douglas Hyde once editor of the Daily
Worker who renounced Communism and wrote his book I Believed. But Douglas
later found that he could not do without the Party and returned to it. I
have kept in touch with Rosemary and her letter is an important political
document. Celia Mariano Pomeroy died this week aged 94. Celia and her
husband William served 10 years in a Philippine prison and pardoned in 1961
but Celia was at first not allowed a passport, leading to William, by then
in England, to lead a campaign for Celia to be able to join him.
Celia was a high school teacher and Civil Service Examiner who became
interested in Communism and joined the Philippine Communist Party two months
before the Japanese invasion. One of the earliest resistance groups was
formed on a farm owned by Celia’s family but was later betrayed to the
Japanese and Celia’s brother captured and tortured. But resistance continued
successfully and in 1944 she was appointed education secretary of the
Party’s Central Luzon bureau and elected to the PKP central committee.
Meanwhile, William Pomeroy a US Communist who had first come to the
Philippines as a soldier returned in 1947 and he met Celia who had been
assigned to him as an interpreter.while he researched a book on the HUK
movement which eventually appeared and he and Celia were married in 1948
when they both joined the HUK movement. . They were captured by government
forces in 1952 and saw little of each other during their 10 year
incarceration. Their presidential pardon came with a bitter rider - that
Celia would not be allowed to enter the USA while John was immediately
deported from the Philippines. So they decided to make their home in
England. Celia became an active member of the National Assembly of Women and
Bill played a leading role in rebuilding international links and travelled
extensively in the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries which bestowed
a number of honours on them. Two years ago they moved to a nursing home
where Bill died in January of this year.
It is at this point that Rosemary Logan appears and I’ll let her speak
in her own words in an obituary which was written by Ken Fuller in the
Morning Star which the Guardian completely ignored filling two pages with
the death of Bobby Kennedy
‘It is well over a year since Bill and Celia Pomeroy left their
treasured Twickenham home of 40 years and were moved far away from friends
and neighbours in Sunbury Cross. Bill is now almost totally blind and very
deaf and Celia has for her own survival been retreating more and more into
herself. It is all so sad. They deserve so much better. They have no family
and I’m determined they should not be abandoned trying to visit them two or
three times each week. It is quite a long, slow journey by trains and buses
but I am always so glad to be with them. How I wish I could give Bill back
his sight…life is almost intolerable for him Lutta Continua with love
Rosemary’ .
Yes indeed the struggle does continue but Rosemary now in her eighties
and with problems of her own can be proud that she did her duty and we
should all be proud of Rosemary

THOSE WHO DO NOT DO THEIR DUTY.
These include those Wolverhampton Labour, Tory and Lib-Dems who refuse
to get together, and form an all anti-Iraq City Council in Wolverhampton.
And MPs nationally who refuse to sack Brown and form an anti Iraq government
with a black female for Prime Minister for which we now have two candidates
, Diane Abbott or Kal Dale of Wolverhampton.

WOLVERHAMPTON - CITY OF HISTORY, CULTURE, EDUCATION, SPORT, MUSIC AND
BUSINESS.

RECALL PARLIAMENT- SACK BROWN -ELECT DIANNE ABBOTT.
Today I have been atoning for my mistakes and trying to put thins
right. For instance, an appeal to Dianne Abbott to talk to me and say
whether she will stand for prime minister or not. Also my badly thought out
plan to canvass every MP in parliament with the message to sack Brown has
been deminished to canvassing only MPs whose name begin with B instead of
all of them and of these only MPs I know of or MPs of influence. This I
have attended to today.And the names of Wolverhampton Communists to which I
referred to yesterday, but could not remember their names I have begun to
put right. But the massive event of the day has been the visit of my friend
Kal Dale.

KAL DALE.
Kal and I go back many years. She used to be Ethic Minority Special
Needs librarian in Wolverhampton, but she gave it up and found a similar job
in Bristol. I was able to introduce Kal to contacts from Wolverhampton and
Kal was pleased to meet them as she had no contacts. The contacts were John
and Elizabeth Hazlehurst both born and bred in Wolverhampton and John who
was a draughtsman moved to Bristol where he became a lecturer at the
University, while his wife, Elizabeth was a great student of Sean O’Casey
and a book about him by her is due to be published shortly.
Another contact was Sir Jack Hayward known to me as a Glider Pilot in
Burma and hon.pres. of Burma Star Association of which I am a member. Sir
Jack was also until recently the owner of Wolverhampton Wanderers and the
financer of the magnificent new Wolves Stadium. Sir Jack is a super patriot
who would not have anything that was not British on his premises and even
when he sold the club he insisted on the buyer being British and retained a
veto on the board to ensure that it never falls into foreign hands . There
were just two clubs devoted to British and local control and these two teams
were Arsenal and Wolves. It so happens that I have been an Arsenal fan for
80 years and a Wolves fan ever since we came to Wolverhampton in 1954.
Kal visited me this afternoon witha newly published book on Bristol in
1807 written by the chief librarian of Bristol, Anthony Beeson, and is
mpressions of the City at the time of Abolition (of Slavery) and dedicated
to me, which was very nice and presumably with thanks for providing a
librarian as efficient as Kal.
So there is the background to Kal’s visit. We talked about Wolverhampton
and Kal confessed that she thought of herself as an English person, as
English as I am, as she put it, without the slightest interest in her Indian
ancestors even though she knew that she came from martial Sikh stock.
But more than that, born and bred in Wolverhampton she would love to
come back to Wolverhampton preferably as a librarian at W’ton University,
but she believed it was not what you know but who you know and she had been
helped by Karen Lees, the chief librarian of the Central Library in
Wolverhampton and she had no such ‘mentor’ to help her to the Wolverhampton
job.
Well that might be true, But between us I am sure we know enough
influential Indians in Wolverhampton who would be willing to recommend her
and I have no doubt that Karen Lees would too. And I think of Dawn Bennett’s
Inspirational Women who would be helpful. So there is no reason to think
that we shouldn’t have Kal back with us in her native town, Wolverhampton.
But Kal has higher ambitions than that. She aspires to greater things
and at age 40 has the energy to fulfil it. I then realised that Kal was the
woman and black who could replace Diane Abbott if Diane continues to lead
the contented life she now has instead of accepting the role of Prime
Minister. Yes, here is another alternative, Kal for Prime Minister. And if
you don’t like that it is up to you to find another candidate who is black
and female.

MY VISIT TO THE OPTICIAN.
As announced last night I had a date with David Bate my friend and
optician to have my annual digital eye test for diabetics. David’s mother
is Beryl Moody, widow of Larry, one of Wolverhampton’s most distinguished
Communists.
David did not come to my 90th birthday party bringing his mother with
him and he is at a loss to explain why. Both would have loved to come, but
it seems that by some accident it did not happen.
I then asked if David had a copy of the life of his father who was
active as a Communist in both London and Wolverhampton. He said he had and
would email details to me. In fact, Larry’s life is on my BLOG somewhere
and it is one of my intentions announced on yesterday’s BLOG to discover how
much Wolverhampton Communist Party history I have on my BLOG.
I then asked David whether he was political or active in a trade union,
but he said that while he enjoyed reading my BLOGS and agreed with most that
I wrote he was not politically inclined. He believed that British politics
was a mess which is not going to be improved whoever wins the next general
election. This is not a view I share, but it is widely held and doesn’t
help our efforts to make Wolverhampton:

CITY OF CULTURE, EDUCATION, TECHNOLOGY, SPORT AND BUSINESS 2010

RECALL PARLIAMENT - SACK BROWN - APPOINT DIANE ABBOTT.
Arise from your vanities and follies of holidaying or relaxing from the
ardour’s of another Parliamentary season behind you at beach or home and
attend to the realities of this moment
Gordon Brown is a supporter and accomplice of the Torturers and Nuclear
Maniacs which would lead to the disappearance of this planet and all of us
on it. He must be stopped NOW.
Parliament must be recalled immediately. Your new Speaker, John Bercow
would willingly do that and you must find someone to emulate the radical
MPs of Cromwell’s day who refused to allow James I to close Parliament and a
return to the arbitrary rule of the Crown.
This time it is Gordon Brown oblivious to the fact that he has the
highest unpopularity rating of any other MP since opinion polling began, is
the culprit who threatens not only to destroy our Parliamentary system, but
to render our social services, notably health and education to privateers
whose sole concern is with profits not people’s welfare.
Brown also remains oblivious to the fact that if he stopped funding the
war in Iraq such vast amounts of money would be released that the economic
crisis would cease with enough left over to fund our social services
properly.
Blair, Brown and his New Labour cabinet have also so discredited
parliament that millions of decent people now believe that all MPs are
tarred with the same brush and concerned only with themselves. This is
certainly wrong and strengthens only the fascist BNP who would return us to
the pre-war situation of one party rule.
The liberty we possess today was not given us by a benevolent ruling
class, but was wrung out of them by working peoples’
struggles.
We are now called upon to repay the sacrifices of our forefathers and
put Brown under lock and key.

The above is a message I intend to send to every MP in the UK.
Unfortunately the list consists of 15 pages.So I’ve made a start
alphabetically and I’ve just done letter A. Since some of them are not
accepted by my computer despite being identical as surname followed by
initial @parliament.uk. So if I am to fulfil my promise I’ve got a long haul
ahead as A only has about 20 names, whereas B has about three times that
number. I think I shall have to compromise and pick out from each letter
names that I recognise as ministers or of influence. Shame, it was a good
idea.

ARSENAL AND CELTIC. AND COMMUNISM
This week is a busy one. On Monday a nurse called to check on my
diabetes. Tuesday I was to have seen my doctor, Mark Wilson a good friend of
mine. The team he supports is Aston Villa owned by an America and not off to
the best of starts this season. He receives my BLOG every day and I invited
him to make some of his caustic remarks concerning doctors who were turning
patients with swineflu away from their surgeries, but he has not yet
responded. But it seems Dr.Wilson is going part-time and will soon retire
completely , so I shall lose the doctor who has been friend and medical
adviser for 20 years or so.
It was therefore with surprise and pleasure that I met a young Islamic
lady who hopes to become Dr.Wilson’s successor and I would be more than
pleased to have this Islamic girl (name unknown at present) as my new GP
particularly as she appeared to have political views not very far from mine
when I mentioned Islamaphobia to her and she said it was rife in the world.
Today (wednesday) was toenail cutting day and I was very pleased to see
a chiropodist because three of my nails were curling under and eating into
the flesh of the toes. This has now been remedied and my toes are now
almost pain free..
Tomorrow (Thursday) I am due to be taken to my optician for the
annual test to my eyes. David Bate is another good friend of mine since he
is the son of Larry Moody who was a prominent Communist trade union official
in London before coming to Wolverhampton to look after his mother. David is
another one who looks after me and care of the feet and eyes is particularly
important to a diabetic.
Esme tells me I have no appointments for Friday so I hope to spend it
checking up on the history of Communists in Wolverhampton which includes not
onyx Larry Moody, but also Martin George’s tribute to his father Ray George
at his recent funeral who was not only secretary of NE Wolverhampton branch
of the Communist Party for many years, but also in his profession rose from
office boy to chief accountant at Ever Ready Batteries.
Then there are those who have served their country such as the Communist
who worked at Frank Spittle father’s factory after the first world war who
had won one of the highest military awards and never told anyone about it.
His name escapes me at the moment and it is too late to ring Frank. There
was also an early Wolverhampton Communist who was imprisoned for wearing his
military uniform at unemployed or peace demonstrations. And Ken Evans who
was blown up during fighting in Italy during the Second Word War and who
suffered permanent pain without complaint from a withered arm and shoulder
injury. And there are other distinguished Communists in Wolverhampton still
to be mentioned and it looks as if I am preparing tomorrow or the next
night’s BLOG
If you find my heading confusing it is because I have not had time to
mention either Arsenal or Celtic’s history but:

HISTORY IS MADE BY WORKING
PEOPLE.

900 TODAY.

    What an event! The largest BLOG in the world devoted to the locking up of Gordon Brown, Torturer and Nuclear Maniac before he destroys us.     Initiator of COPAM the largest electronically convened organisation committed to Peace and Multiculturalism. This is a landmark equivalent to my personal one of my 90th. birthday. I ask all my friends to join with me in celebration.

ANOTHER BIG BARNSBY BLUNDER.

     In writing of the possibility of there being a Tory victory at the next general election I suggested that Kenneth Clarke who has opposed the war in Iraq since 2003 is the only Tory leader who could lead his party to victory  with an anti-war policy.

    Unfortunately I made a major blunder by writing Charles Clarke instead of Kenneth. I have corrected that mistake, but that doesn’t mean that I favour the Tories to win, but that in the case of Diane Abbot not accepting the Prime Minister’s job the Tories would win hands down and a Tory government led by Kenneth Clarke would be a far better solution than a fourth victory by Gordon Brown and Blair and all the other Torturers and Nuclear Manaics of New Labour.

WINNING THE NEXT ELECTION.

     Other friends also think I am losing my class analysis by even mentioing the question of supporting the Tories. My good friend  Mushtaq Shafi with Tourette’s Syndrome who hates everyone in the world except me and rings me regularly has the worst of all worlds. He was born in Britain, considers himself an Englishman but sees no future for our democratic electoral systmenquoting Ken Livingstone who said that if elections determined anything they would be abolished. He calls himself a Socialist, even though his father, who had the same medical condition and who I welcomed as the only  Muslim on the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council in those far off days before 2000 when it operated as the longest running REC in the country run and controlled by the two most important ethnic groups (Afro-Carib and Indian) in the City until it ran into certain minor difficulties and was foolishly closed by Sir Trevor Phillips who did not understand that it was easier to close down a race equality body than it was to build a new one and this has proved to be the case as new bodies have been set up in Wolverhampton only to be closed again and we have now been four years with no equality body.     Mushtaq was also a member of WREC and his capitalist father has left him well enough off but he refuses to regard himself as a capitalist and continues a Socialist who thinks I am betraying my class by even contemplating voting Tory.

    Other people such as Robert Griffiths, general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain which I so much respect on other aspects of building a  national front to fight capitalism such as its Saturday Website listing which is the most important united front listing and for several years has carried the George Barnsby Working Class Library and Free Communist Bookshop now incorporating COPAM and also the site of Friends of Bilston Community College, the first Multicultural College in Britan  with almost 30% of staff and students from ethnic minorities. Figures never equalled before or since, but was closed by racists and bigots and this remains the case today.

     Most of these agencies believed that capitalism could be controlled and that every crisis has a beginning and an end as thought by Keynes in the thirties and forties. But I prefer the dialectical formulations of Marx and Engels and also perhaps Gramsci the architect of Euro-Communism and the  dialectical concept of opposing class forces growing inevitably until an explosion occurs and a new form of Society, Socialisms emerges. But Marx recognised that there could be another result which would be the mutual ruin of the contending classes. And this I reckon is the situation the world has reached where Brown the Nuclear Maniac has the chance of destroying the world and seems  intent on doing just that which makes it essential that Brown be arrested immediately as a war criminal.

    Further,  that Engels in particular developed the theme that to change society would need the efforts of all classes of people ncluding capitalists and that in creating Communism it would be administered by  self-acting groups of people and politics would be relegated to the ‘dustbin of history’.

         This  also seems to me to be the point we have reached in Britain with workers excercisinginfluence not only in politics,  but in trade unions and in leisure, culture,  life long education and sports activities.  Children also self organising themselves and Women already working with men in so many different ways will exercise their special interests in Women’s Guilds and other organisations which powerful now would be even more important under Socialism until all class issues disappear in Communism. Here is an agenda to work with in the next couple of hundred years and no doubt will be modified as the advance of knowledge thunders on in this computerised world.

     But beware that reactionaries have always existed such as the economist Hayek and before him Malthus and others who deny that society is driven by class conflict and whose present views are that value is subjective and then made economics inaccessible to us ordinary folk by mathematicalising it.  And if they feel any fear of the capitalist class losing their control, they will do what they are already practising tonight, which is to say that the world and those of us in it are not real people but figments of our own imagination. To defeat such obscurantism we shall have to read most carefully:

              THE   WORKS  OF  MARX   AND ENGELS

A WONDERFUL DAY.
Not only did England retain the Ashes yesterday by 193 runs but they did
it with style and panache. Their captain Andrew Strauss being named man of
the match after ‘Freddie’ Flintoff took the decisive wicket by running out
the Australian captain Ponting with a ‘miracle’ hit at the stumps.. This
started the rot and Harmison took the last three wickets. Andrew Flintoff is
the nearest we have to the great all-rounder Ian Botham, but instead of
joining the match celebrations Flintoff was bound for hospital after
previously announcing that this was his last match due to chronic damage to
his feet and shoulders which have forced his retirement. It is to be hoped
that the surgeons can rehabilitate Freddie and that he remains the backbone
of the team for many years to come.
It was also a happy day for many of the black sportsman I am
particularly interested in. Lewis Hamilton who I was the first to note that
he was the first Formula One black driver and who I tipped to be the best
driver ever, which he almost did last year winning the F1 championship by a
whisker and has had much trouble with his cars and engineers this year but
managed pole position yesterday and ended in second place in Spain
yesterday. There is still time for him to catch up and win the championship
this year, but even if he did win this year it would still leave him short
of the greatest ever racing car driver for which he would have to be
champion for three years running. However he is doing very well and is a
credit to his origins.
My second forecast was that little Theo Walcott of Arsenal then 16 would
become a regular English football international. He has already become an
English international, but seems to have bitten off more than he can chew
and defied his great mentor Arsene Wenger by appearing not only in the full
England team, but also the under-19 team and as a result he now has a long
term injury which will deprive both himself and Arsene of his presence.
Fortunately Wenger seems to be able to produce young teams like a rabbit out
of a hat and with the further loss of Fabragas Arsenal are currently stand
in third place having played one match less than Chelsea and Tottenham
Hotspur their greatest rivals.
But my greatest gamble has been with the tip of Paul Ince for the
English football manager in the place of the foreigner Fabio Capello, he of
little English, although he seems to be improving.
Ince as a player was one of the first black man to play for Manchester
United. He then became the first black captain of England and also captain
of Wolverhampton Wanders. He became a manager at a non-league club
Macclesfield and then moved on to MK Dons. In two seasons he steered them
from the equivalent of the fourth division to the third when the call came
for a Premier League job at Blackburn, but after a poor start he was sacked
and disappeared from view until he rejoined MK Dons and complete what no man
has ever done and take a club from a non-league position to the premiership.
Ince says modestly that at Blackburn the team had been taken to its ultimate
position and needed to be renewed, but there was not the money to do that.
Others say, however, that the sacking of Ince was racist, that he had only
been given a few months to prove his worth and could have kept the club
going even though he had only between 8 and 12 million pounds to rebuild the
club.
But Ince has now been taken back to MK Dons and stand sixth in what is
called League One with a good chance to win promotion this season into the
Championship (known previously as the Second Division) and after that, what?
Promotion to the Premiership and a place with the greatest teams in Britain?
Who could then deny him the managership of England? But there’s not much
merit in admitting that he should be manager when he has completed all the
stages. The merit is, like Wenger’s to back his own judgement and this is
what I’ve done with my trio of black high achievers.

REACTIONS FROM STAN NEWENS VISIT YESTERDAY.
We departed yesterday with two matters unresolved. One was the name of
the historian who lived in East Anglia and whose daughter I ‘jilted’ when I
was posted abroad and at who at the home of Harold Quinton who subsequently
became Mayor of Braintree groups of soldiers were refreshed from the meagre
rations the Quinton family received as I brought them to the Quinton
household to discuss the state of the war and particularly the heroic Red
Army which retreated stubbornly until the winter came in 1941 and were in
fact tearing the guts out of the German armies. Harold Quinton also supplied
me with the Daily Worker when I was sent abroad and was like the father I
never had to me while I was in England until May 1942.
The man whose name we could not recall yesterday was Francis King who
has lived in East Anglia most of his life and has been on the Committee of
the Socialist History Society which includes the district of Braintree.
Harold Quinton’s biography is in Graham Stevenson’s several hundred
biographies of Communists, YCLers and other Radicals and I asked Francis a
couple of years back whether he could trace Harold’s daughter, whether she
had forgiven me for jilting her and whether she would be willing to see
whether her father’s memory is celebrated properly as more information
becomes available about his life..
The second matter unresolved was the question of Brian Pollitt’s (the
son of Harry) The Development of Socialist Economic Thought, selected Essays
by Maurice Dobb which Stan did not know of but with Stan’s revelations that
he had been with Brian Pollitt recently and further revelations that Stan
had been with Fidel Castro led on to my belief that the problem in this
computerised world was to contact them electronically and then agree how a
united approach will enable us to:

OVERCOME CAPITALISM AND BUILD
SOCIALISM.

WELCOMING STAN NEWENS.

I had a great surprise today. A call from Stan asking if he could call on me within an hour or so. Stan visits me regularly but it has usually been at the end of a series of visits to John Saville and other contributors to the Dictionary of Labour Biography and a visit to relatives in the midlands before coming on to me and then returning to Essex where he has lived for many years, a sort of Grand Tour of Britain which he undertook regularly. But, alas John Saville and others are dead so that he is paying me the great honour of coming specially to Wolverhampton and then returning home.

I at once said Yes and Stan with his wife and son turned up on my doorstep at about 1-30pm.

Stan is a great friend of mine going back the the 1950s. I have greatly admired Stan as a Labour man from his top to his toenails having been successively Labour MP for Harlow in Essex and MEP for part of  Essex and prolific historian of the working class movement.

Our paths first crossed when Stan served a stint in the mines near Stoke on Trent and got to know the Labour League of Youth twins Ray and Alan Garner, both now deceased.  When I learned of Stan’s connections with Wolverhampton I dubbed him an Honorary Black Countryman.

Stan was one of the first people to recognise the significance of my books on Black Country history but he also recognised that I had transformed the methodology of writing working class history by the fortunate chance that I had a family in London with whom I could stay during the long vacations and discovered that the Chartist newspaper of Feargus O’Connor the Northern Star, not only published weekly accounts of Chartist activity, but there were papers going back to the formation of the working class movement in Britain and thus also the first working class movement  in the world and each had its own newspaper and this discovery  revolutionised the writing of working class history.

Today Stan left some of his latest historical writings with me which included an article on the Genesis of Harlow New Town and then an extraordinary picture of Stan with Fidel Castro in about 1994 and this set the tone for the conversation for the rest of the afternoon. Because I believe it is necessary to put the Torturer and Nuclear Maniac, Gordon Brown under arrest at once, before he blows the world to smithreens and  and all of us in. Stan, however, although agreeing with all the same villianies of New Labour adheres to the neo-imperialist view that we cannot leave Iraq and Afghanistan immediately but must set some sort of time table for a quick withdrawal of our troops. I disagree and on this issue there was stalemate.

Stan then turned to the question of whether I am doing any more historical writing and I said I was but it was through the medium of my daily BLOG which must now be a leading one in the world approaching 900 issues and incorporating COPAM the largest organisation in the world, electronically convened of people opposed to the war in Iraq and it is not the case that we have insufficient persons and organisations opposed to war, but that we are not mobilising these forces on a world wide scale as we should and Stan should ask his friend Fidel to support our struggle to remove Gordon Brown and support our candidate to replace Brown who is Diane Abbott black and female and the  only one likely to restore Britain’s prestige now that  Barak Obama has got himself entangled with Neo-Imperialist forces and only able to keep his pledge of radical change with the support of the working people of America, but of the whole world.

STRATEGY FOR SOCIALISM.

This was our next topic of conversation. I told Stan of the unique position in Wolverhampton when as a result of the May 2008 local election result Wolverhampton is able to form a Council of Tories opposed to the war in Iraq, Labour councillors opposed to the war and the five Lib-Dems who hold the balance of power who never suppported the war. But evading  this call to local fame both thd parties spend their time squabbling over who can cut most from our social services when they know that if Gordon Brown would repuduaite these wars and not finance them, the crisis would disappear and Brown would be able to see his party returned at the next general election and become a hero instead of the Monster he is at present widely regarded as.

The same is true of national strategy. Kenneth Clarke, the Tory, opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning in 2003 and opposes it still. Britain’s Tories could emulate Wolverhampton by sacking their present leader, David Cameron,  who supports the war in Iraq and electing Kenneth Clarke as leader. Thus they could form a shadow ministry opposed to the wars and would sweep in at the next general election with a massive majority.  Will Charles Clarke seek the national honour of both self and party in carrying out the will of the majority of people in Britain?  We shall see.

         KENNETH  CLARKE  AS  PRIME  MINISTER  OF  BRITAIN?

A DOUBLE WHAMMY AGAINST GEORGE BARNSBY?

   Today I have to apologise to Councillor Surgan Singh Duhra for stating that he had become Mayor without ever having been a Wolverhampton Councillor.

     I was astounded on reading a biography of the Mayor issued by the Wolverhampton City Council the following. He was born and educated in India. After graduating he trained to be a teacher and taught in Secondary schools until he moved to Leicester in England where he worked at British Leyland until the factory was closed in 1982.  He then started his own business which he ran until his retirement in 1996.

    Surjan became a councillor for St.Peter’s ward in 1978 and has served on a number of Committees and was Mayor in 1991/2.

    Let’s deal first with some  inconsistencies. We are not given a date at which he came to Wolverhampton or the nature of the business he conducted.  Also the fact that I had never heard of the man until I was introduced to him at the VJ ceremonies last Saturday whereas I know all the other six ethnic minority councillors, some of them quite well.  So it was to these councillors I addressed my email suggesting that it was most peculiar that Surjit took precedence over others who had not been mayor once, let alone twice.

     Then there is the question that the  Mayor speaks very little English and is most difficult to converse with. Its bad enough to have a foreign football club coach for England, but he at least seems to be addressing the problem whereas the new Wolverhampton mayor seems to have escaped the New Labour government’s insistence that every immigrant to Britain should have an adequate knowledge of English before they are admitted.

     I have no animosity towards Surjan, but how is it possible for him to have escaped  my eagle eyes of a political animalall these years, what committees has he served ? and what contact as he had with local papers, particularly the Express and Star?  Surely I can be excused a full apology until some of these questions have been answered.

CHARITY SUES GOVERNMENT FOR DETAILS OF AFGHANISTAN RENDITION.

    A human rights group (Reprieve) began legal action against the British government today in a case involving two alleged victims of torture.

    The men, whose identities are uncertain were arrested by British forces in Iraq in 2004 and transferred to Bagramair base, a US detention facility where they are still being held. US authorities have reportedly said that the men have ties with Lashka-e-Taibaan organisation with links to al-Qaida and that they are being treated humanely.

    Lawyers for Reprieve said that the men had not been charged with any offence and a periodic review of their status has been characterised by a US federal judge as falling, ‘well short of what the supreme court found inadequate at Guantanamo’.  Reprieve is suing the Ministry of Defence in an effort to have disclosed the identity of the men. It has tentatively identified the two prisoners as Salah el Din and Saifullah both from Pakistan. There are concerns about the men’s welfare and Din is alleged to have suffered severe mental problems as a result of mistreatment in custody.

    Unfortunately the information is insufficient to identify the men properly and track down their families in order to secure authorisation to bring litigation on their behalf,  said the Reprieve  man  and we are now suing the government to force them to reveal the necessary information.

    In a letter to the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, the law firm acting on behalf of Reprieve said there can be no doubt that the two individuals handed to the US by the UK and subsequently transported to Afghanistan may have suffered illegal ill-treatment of some sort and potentially very serious torture and they may still be suffering such treatment.

    The MoD has still to respond in detail to the accusations.  In February John Hutton at that time defence secretary told Parliament that his department had unintentionally given inaccurate information about the men to the Commons.  These individuals are in the custody of the US government. We have no reason to think that Reprieve’s unsubstaniated allegations about their welfare are accurate. The US has assured us that the detainees are held in a humane, safe and secure environment which  meets international standards for the care and custody of detained persons. A likely tale considering the history of US torture of individuals at Guantanamo and elsehwere. There is the case of BinyamMohamed. Mohamed, a British citizen who was brutally tortured after being flown by the CIA to Morocco with MI5 complicity and then held in Gauntanamo Bay for four years. He is suing the government to obtain information relating to his torture.

    Reprieve is pressing the US for answers on seven paragraphs of the High Court judgement on that case which is apparently a summary of the Court proceedings against Mahomed. In the High Court on July 29 Lord Justice Thomas declared that the alleged threat by the US reflected, ‘the exercise of naked political power’.

    A letter from from representative of David Miliband to the High Court Judges last month confirms that his concerns were initially set out in a Public Interest Immunity request and the letter adds that two conversations took place between him and Hillary Clinton between March and May 2009 stating that serious damage to national security could be done from the damage of the disclosures of the seven paragraphs. The Reprieve  lawyer said that since the  UK is bound by the Convention against Torture to reveal evidence of Torture and that it is a criminal offence under Section 52 of the Criminal Courts Act to cover up evidence of torture, is it really your position and that of the Obama administration that that you will put innocent British lives at risk by suppressing the information necessary to prove their innocence. Reprieve ends by saying that it hopes the British and US governments will have enough sense to withdraw this threat to ordinary English people.

MATTERS LEFT UNRESOLVED.

   One matter is Suhail Rana’s new paper on the siting of the first Newcomen engine at Willenhall instead of Dudley which has now been published by the Newcomen Society and threatens to split the society that publishes it as John Allen, the foremost authority on Newcomen calls Suhail’s work ‘pure fiction’.

     However many of us consider that Suhal’s is a brilliant piece of research and are prepared to join the band of people organising for the 300th anniversary of the Newcomen engine in 2012  which will be an event of international significance and, if Suhail is right, the most important event in Wolverhampton’s history.

    One of those prepared to back Suhail is Jefny Ascroft who turned up at my house this morning in her running gear apologising for the fact that she had not visited me for four months and for almost that time had failed to read my BLOG which all well informed people in Wolverhampton are advised to do.

   Jefny is a researcher on the same scale as Suhail on a different subject . She teaches junior school pupils dance and history having discovered a slave scholar in Wolverhampton as important as the great Olaudah Equiano, slave who liberated himself and became a wealthy and accepted person in a white world. Jefny’s research is at about the same stage as Suhhail’s who if she is correct and the name of her man eludes me at the present time, she will have a black man of comparable status.

    Jefny is also interested in the Battle of Tettenhall and is ready to lead primary school children in the search to see whether the battle was fought in Tettenhall where we in Henwood Rd see the Mercians sweeping down from Henwood Heights the Viking invaders who made for their ships on the Smestow and from their to the Severn and eventually back to Scandanvia with their ill gotten gains. This contrasts with Wednesfield folk led by ex-councillor Phil Bateman of Wednesfield who has his team of investigators in Wednesfield willing to investigate and dig if necessary to find human or battle weapons that would prove at last where the battle was fought.

   Jefny is also an opponent of Gordon Brown and his torturers and nuclear maniacs who threatens to blow up the world and from Brown to our local rapscalion Richard Carr who are content to watch Brown and his cabinet to be on the loose when they should be under lock and key as:

         WAR  CRIMINALS  GUILTY  OF CRIMES  AGAINST  HUMANITY.

NO EXCLUSION OF FOREIGN WORKERS.

Brendan Barber, gen.sec. of the TUC warned the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to resist the temptation to ‘pull up the drawbridge’ on foreign workers after MPs had urged him to to tighten restrictions on migrant workers from outside the EU. The government’s migration advisory committee said that Johnson must ensure that migrant workers from outside the EU are not ‘underecutting’ British workers.

Brendan Barber, however, said that everybody must be careful not to bolster myths about immigration and foster racism. Also that foreign workers conttribute ‘hugely’ to our national prosperity and workers are prepared to take industrial action to protect their ethnic-minority fellow trade unionists as demonstrated by the successful strikes of the  London Tube Workers and action by Firefighters today. Indeed the necessity of such action was emphasised by a letter in the Morning Star by representatives of the Latin American Workers’ Association.

GEORGE LOHMANN - HERO OF THE 1896 PAY DISPUTE

The Morning Star keeps coming up with material which is both topical and historic.  At a time when the English cricket team seem on the point of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by losing three cheap wickets today it is apposite to return to another Ashes series of over 100 years ago and look at the class origins of cricket in the days of WG.Grace.

The question of money is paramount where rampant commercialism threatens to destroy the game. In 1896 a strike was threatened a week before the Oval test match, again an Ashes decider with the series standing at one each.

Five professionals wrote to the Surrey Committee who were responsible for picking England teams when the game was played at the Oval demanding an increase in their match fees.

At the heart of their grievance was the preferential treatment to such amateurs as Dr.WG Grace a medical doctor was an amateur and supposedly did not receive payment for playing cricket. This was clearly untrue. A testimonial match organised by the Daily Telegraph netted Grace nearly £10,000, a sum roughly equivalent in todays money as about £250,000.

Professional cricketers were paid £10 per test to play and although the series had been a great success yet winter wages had been reduced from thirty shillings a week to twenty shillings.

Whatfurther enraged the cricket authorities was that the players had chosen a date most favourable to their cause and least favourable to the authorities, namely the first day of the final test.  The outraged Surrey authorities were determined not to be ‘blackmailed’ by the Players and sacked three of the players, Tom Richardson, Tom Haywood and Bobby Abel, although they were forced to climb down just before the match started and reinstate the Players. In a joint letter to the authorities they announced that the Australians are making large sums from these matches and it seemed only reasonable that we should benefit in a small way. But after further consideration we desire to withdraw our refusal to play. Thus the match went ahead. England won and thus took the Ashes.

However Billy Gunn and George Lohman both stood by their trade union principles and refused to play.  Surrey subsequently sacked Lohman although he had an England batting average of 34 and bowling average of just over ten.

Lohman acted as our present day trade unionists are and it was later revealed that Lohman was a Socialist and not only a reader of the Clarion newspaper, but the writer of a column for the paper. Here is a omrade we should all want to know more about and I hope this notice in my BLOG of the story of George Lohmann by  John Gemmell brings further information.

MICHAEL MOORE’S ‘CAPITALISM - A LOVE STORY’.

Here’s the latest newsletter from Michael greatest and bravest of American filmmakers supporters of social services, particularly a health service, and opponent of Bush and Obama’s wars.

Here is the comment of Andrew Mann from America. ’ Thank you Michael for being the only true, politically radical film maker left! Only Oliver Stone is out there fighting the good fight with you as well. We need a new generation of young filmmakers such as Gillo Pontecorvo and Costa Gavras. Meanwhile in the middle of a mass crisis Obama goes to play golf with Tiger Woods, these people are like French aristocrats before the French Revolution

THE WOLVERHAMPTON NEWCOMEN ENGINE.

SuhailRana is both the researcher of the Newcomen Engine and also a member of the History and Heritage Committee of Wolverhampton.

He emails to inform me that his paper on the Wolverhampton Newcomen has finally been published and an attachment gives the paper in full. His next aim is to establish a Wolverhampton Newcomen Engine group which can meet and discuss current and new evidence towards organising the 300th Anniversary celebrations of the Engine in 2012 to mark one of the most importsnt events in world and Wolverhampton history. Would I be interested. Well of course I would be greatly interested and I’ve told Suhail that my first act is to put his his statement on the BLOG which is what I am doing now and we’ll see what happens. Congratulations to Suhail on this remarkable piece of research which establishes that the first Newcomen engine was assembled in Wolverhampton and not in Birmingham.

WOLVERHAMPTON  CITY OF INVENTION  AS  WELL  AS         CULTURE,  EDUCATIONS,  SPORT  AND BUSINESS

SIX BOMBS, 95 DEAD - CARNAGE AND DESPAIR RETURN TO IRAQ.

My paper is the Morning Star, but I’m not averse to poaching headlines from the capitalist press if they are more dramatic. Those above are from today’s Guardian. They convey the fears of the puppet government of Iraq led by Nouri al-Maliki on the eve of elections which they are certain to lose if conducted fairly. Flashpoints include not only the Taliban, the real rulers of Iraq at the moment and whether or not to negotiate with them, but also a resurgent Sunni backlash but also Sadr city in the heart of Baghdad where the Kurds continue their age-long fight for independence from Iraq. Add to this the fear of Al Quaida and the great Osama Bin Laden and one can see that there is no future for democracy in Iraq until US and Britain withdraw all of their troops at once and leave the Iraqi’s to solve their own problems.

But this is not to the liking of the Torturers and Nuclear Maniacs of New Labour where Gordon Brown and his New Labour cabinet still strut the stage of life not understanding that they are liable to be arrested at once as War Criminals guilty of Crimes against Humanity and suffer the same  fate as the Nazi war criminals of 1946.

REMINDER DAY.

My most important task today has been to remind Diane Abbott that she should become the next Prime Minister of Britain. The appointment of a black female would restore Britain’s prestige in the world as well compensating for Obama’sfailure the meet the needs of people for radical change and has found himself enmeshed in Neo-imperialist toils.

Other reminders have gone to Arsene Wenger of Arsenal who has failed to get me in invitation for me and my ‘minder’ son, William to take a 90 year old life-time supporter to the Emirates stadium, to watch a match and shake the hand of Arsene Wenger and allow us to return home via Carpenders Park, Herts. where I should love to meet my brother Sidney, equally aged and decrepit  probably for the last time.

THE MYSTERY OF THE WOLVERHAMPTON MAYOR.

Now here’s a funny thing. The new mayor of Wolverhampton is Surjait Singh Duhra, a very martial Sikh figure whose English is not very good. At the VJ day ceremony last Saturday which I was able to attend thanks to me good friend Frank Spittle I managed to ask the Mayor whether he would sign a letter from 20 US mayors to oppose the war in Iraq and he replied, Of course.

But the mystery is how Mr Duhra became Mayor, because he is not and has never been a Wolverhampton councillor.  And why was he chosen before the seven or more other ethnic minority councillors which includes a particular female friend of mine Sandra Smiles who has certainly never been mayor. S I’ve sent an email to all ethnic minority councillors and the three leaders of the parties, Conservative, Labour and Lib-Dem asking them what is going on and whether in fact it is legalor not. I have signed my email as from Citizen George Barnsby and I hope to receive replies from all of them.

PIE IN THE SKY NONSENSE.

One of the most diabolical schemes that New Labour have ever dreamed up is something called Building Schools for the Future. It is a hoax on two grounds. That the Government does not possess  the billions necessary to finance the project and all shades of educational opinion is opposed to such lunacy. It involves pulling down perfectly satisfactory buildings and replacing them with Educational Academies. lt also entails removing schools from the control of the localities with their traditional support of Comprehensive schools and  turning  them over to  private pirates who wil have no other interest in schools thsn to make vast profits.

Unfortunately our Director for Children an Young People which has deliberately replaced an Education Committee is Roy Lockwood who has fallen hook, line and sinker for this fraudulent project now presents it as the policy of the Council, although there is no evidence that councillors have ever voted for such a scheme.

Fortunately the time scale of the project is such that there is time for sanity to prevail and the whole thing to be chucked out. But recent reports in the Express and Star suggest that the scheme is to start at the end of the summer term and at least two schools will be demolished. The Express and Star of Tuesday July 21 states that principals for the two Academies have aleready been appointed and Pendeford and Northicote are due to close on August 31st 2010 and reopen the following day as an Academy operating from the two sites. All students would move to a brand new building on the Pendeford site at Marsh Lane with construction set to start in February 2012.

Such are the undemocratic arrangements to be foisted on us and just to make sure that any protest will be ineffective, we are told that Wolverhampton College, the University and the City Council have all signed up for this totally undemocratic scheme.

Fortunately the Wolverhampton teaching trade unions, the NASUWT, The NUT, the UCU and others are totally opposed to these diabolical schemes and once the new term starts in September we can expect some action.

CHASE  THE  DICTATORS  FROM  THE  EDUCATIONAL SCENE