Diversity Dissension

Commenter Tendryakov, who I think I've seen here, deconstructs Sarah Sands' gushing hymn to multicultural Britain.

Sands : "Queenie understands the drabness of Britain without immigration ... the real point of diversity, on television and in life, is not that is correct but that it is vibrant."

Ms Sands is a posh girl from Tunbridge Wells who lasted eight months as editor of the Sunday Telegraph, failing in her mission to make it 'like an Ipod'.

Tendryakov :

Have you got the message everybody? Before the 1960's, when mass immigration began, life was barely worth living in this country. Who knows? Yes, some woman from London who was born in 1961. I've heard it from several other people as well, Dominic Sandbrook, "social historian" frequently wheeled out on the TV, born in the 1970's. You see folks, up to then, the people of Britain languished in their misery for a couple of millenia, longing for the day when their lives would be enriched enough to make life tolerable. Up to the sixties, most people were engaged in stopping each other from committing suicide due to the unendurable grey reality of existence. There was no sunshine, no colour, no flowers, no fruit, nobody smiled. It was dreadful. Yes, in 1950's Britain, if you haven't already been told a million times, every window of every neighbourhood of every town and city in Britain had a notice saying "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs", in different variations.

Behind the doors of every corner shop there was a grubby abortionist, and on every street there were bunches of thugs beating up gay people, yes, all the time, 24 hours a day. Hell it was, to live through those times. I was born in 1947. I know. I had to endure a childhood in the 1950's. But hark, I understand from statistics that upwards of 2 million Londoners have abandoned the scintillating diverse wonderfulness of London in the past decade, and have gone to live not in Bradford or Birmingham, but, oh, yikes, places like Herefordshire, Dorset, Lincolnshire, where diversity is horrifically low. Oh, calamity. Oh, those ungrateful creatures! Quick,enrich their lives with diversity, somehow, anyhow. They can't be happy for long without it! Quick!

Add his small testament to my attempts to record those bearing witness to life before the Fall.

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."


Despite the efforts of Sandbrook, Sands and many others, this control is a difficut task for our rulers. There are simply too many people alive who can remember Britain in the 1940s, 1950s or even the 1960s (remember that the culture of the 1960s only spread in the 70s - and went mainstream even later, around the time Habitat stores opened everywhere. For an accurate picture of 1966 England look at the World Cup Final crowd - 95% in ties - ties ! and many also sporting hats). My son looked at the 1964 Panorama report on the Kop and asked 'where are all the black people ?' (he didn't ask where the women were - also conspicuous by their absence).


But these generations - the wartime generations - are dying and will soon be gone. Mortality is even now on the horizon of the post-war grammar school boys, the people - of whom I'm one - who destroyed the culture to which they were the heirs.

So it's important to record the lives and opinions of these generations, partly for their own sake, but partly to refute the arguments of those who believe (or have motivation to claim to believe) that the present is always better than the past.

UPDATE - the Curmudgeon :

"... now the dark ages are over, and the present age is yielding ever more to a bright future whereunder the benighting mist of the dullest and most hideous race on earth will finally lift to reveal a sunlit land..."

The Way We Were ...

I noted a while back the memoirs of Frances Roper, (nee Hubbard), an upper-middle class Englishwoman of good Christian family, describing the first twenty-odd years of her life in Ealing, the Forest of Dean, and her aunt's orphanage in South London.

More comprehensive, and illuminating a totally different society, is Gwilym Rhys Williams - The Story of My Life. Lord knows what it's doing on a Canadian blog - did someone emigrate ? Ah yes - Ruth Hartnup, Aberystwyth to Vancouver. Nice family pictures here.

This memoir incorporates descriptions of a boy’s memories of life in the colliery villages of Cymmer and Gwaun Cae Gurwen before the First World War; a remote Carmarthenshire farming community (Panteg) between 1914 and 1935; life as a Grammar School pupil in Carmarthen and a student at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth 1925-29; a life-long teaching career at Llandeilo Grammar School (he probably taught some of my mother's relatives - LT); life and travels as a member of the Army’s Education Corps during the Second World War; and a description of a social life in Llandeilo centred around Capel Newydd; ending with a post-retirement period in Rhuddlan.

Here's some Original Sin from the early years in the 'Waun' :

These days there is a great deal of talk and press-reports about the increasing vandalism and lack of social conscience among children. It seems to me that there was little social conscience among the children of my childhood, even though, as I have mentioned before, parents had the Victorian attitude towards the up-bringing of their children. Children, indeed, may have been well-behaved at home, but once out of the sphere of its influence, moral standards were influenced by gang behaviour...

One example of vandalism in our childhood was the game of counting who had smashed the greatest number of what we called bottles on top of telegraph and electricity poles. One does not see bottles today. They were ceramic bottle-like fittings on the cross-bar of the poles, around which the wires conducting electricity were wound.

Another example of violence was the gang warfare between the boys of the Waun and the boys of Garnant. On many Saturday mornings, the Waun boys, equipped with rubbish-bin lids as shields and having a stock-pile of stones, stationed themselves on top of a viaduct facing another bridge, where the Garnant boys had congregated, similarly equipped. We then threw stones at each other. Sometimes the Garnant boys wilted and we were able to chase them as far as the bottom of the ‘cwm’. Once we had a serious problem on our hands. One of our boys had a facial injury, with a copious flow of blood, the result of being hit by a half-brick. The problem was how to carry him back to his home. I remember our trying to tie together some kind of stretcher, but I can’t remember whether we had any success.

I can also give more examples of behaviour which showed a lack of moral conscience These examples may give you, the reader, the impression that I am even now a man of doubtful moral and social conscience. No, I’m fairly convinced that children can go through this phase in childhood, and yet become responsible and morally sound citizens.

Looking back, I sometimes think that I should have been ashamed of certain irresponsible and inconsiderate tricks that we played. There was a sweets shop on the main road, not far from Gron Road. It was owned by the Hicks family, the son of which family, by the name of Haydn, I became very friendly with during my College days. There was a long passage leading from the shop to the kitchen. We were able to see through the glass door of the shop whether anyone was in the shop. If there was no-one there we assumed that the person on duty would be in the kitchen. We would then open the door a quietly a possible – there was no bell announcing an entry. There in front of us was a long row of glass-lidded boxes of sweets. So, before knocking for attention, we would lift the lids of several boxes and stuff our pockets with sweets. Then we knocked and when Dorothy – usually it was she who appeared – came to the shop we would ask for a pennyworth of sweets. A despicable act indeed! But did we have a conscience about it? Hardly, because it was repeated several times. It was no worse a crime than stealing apples from gardens!

There was another despicable piece of behaviour which was repeated several times. In a nearby street there lived on her own a woman, who was considered rather ’simple’ or ‘not quite sixteen ounces’. We used to play tricks on her, such as leaning a can full of water against her front door, and after knocking running round the corner to see what happened when the door was opened. Usually, the can of water tipped inside, accompanied by a loud scream. At other times we tied a black thread to the knocker, and pulled it from around a corner. As soon as she appeared and then closed the door, the knocker was pulled again – this being repeated several times.

He's right. Children have little social conscience and are much now as they were ninety years back - or a hundred and ninety, if it comes to that. And note the almost automatic compulsion to torment the weak (as in the memoirs of Frances Roper and Laurie Lee), or take advantage of the unworldly, not to mention the appeal of gang warfare (as in George Borrow). The difference between those days and our day is not in the way children are, but in the way adults respond to their behaviour.


How many more of these wonderful memoirs are out on the Web ? Please drop any you know of in the comments.

"But where is it now?"

Sarah harks back to the days when 'people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn't have much money, but we were contented and happy.

'People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!'

Sarah Robinson, who joined the Royal Navy when she was 18, says the Britain she once knew no longer exists.

The feelings of Sarah and others from this most selfless generation about the modern world have been recorded by a Tyneside writer, 33-year-old Nicholas Pringle.

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment.

Read the whole thing.

Nick, if you want to improve that website, (where you can buy the book) drop me a mail.

'If my fallen comrades could return to this country today, they would wonder who the victors were'

'They were the people we fought for - our folk and our country. For today's society I would not have done it.'

The Way We Were - "Education And The Working Class"

From the book "Education And The Working Class", by Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden - an inquiry into the then-issue (late 50s / early 60s) of the clever working class child going to grammar school. The fact that they'd get a good education, and that previously "middle-class" careers would be opened up to them, was a given. No, the question was - how would this affect their working-class identity ? People worried about that sort of thing in those days. Luxury !

I'm not knocking the authors - both working class grammar school kids themselves, their essential decency and sincerity is obvious. And it's a rattling good read.

But what would strike the modern reader is the different world they - and the working class - inhabited. Written just before the cultural revolution, it's a reminder of what has been lost.

Here's some of an early chapter on the town where they did their research (which is available online here). To anyone who knows Huddersfield as it is now - let's just say it's changed :

Huddersfield is a rich city. It claims to have more Rolls-Royces per head than any other - place on earth. Its unemployment problem is slight, and prosperity has flowed here in easy tides since the 1930s. It enjoys a protective variety of industries, being neither an engineering centre, nor a woollen city, nor a cotton town, nor a brewing capital. It is all these at once, and much more besides. Such distribution of work and wealth guards it from the lesser trade cycles that trouble neighbouring cities. It has its poor, its aged, its crippled, its sick, its unlucky; but these are not easily seen, and their presence, if not forgotten, is obscured by the general buoyancy.

The city has a population of 130,000. In 1800 it was just touching 7,000 - for Huddersfield is one of the new cities of England, the cities bred out of the industrial revolution. Its population spiral follows Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham. By 1820 that 7,000 had nearly doubled into 13,000; by 1840 it had almost doubled again to 25,000. By 1890 it had leapt to over 90,000. The railway had arrived; and after the great new railway station came the city's major public buildings - the new parish church, the post office of 1875, the town hall of 1879. The local historians trace all this back to the medieval hamlet, or the Roman station. They point to Brigantine settlements on the surrounding hillsides, or Saxon ruins along one of the far valleys. They drag up shields and coats of arms, and all the rich drapery of the medieval past. But Huddersfield as a society has no such history. The Romans and the Normans merely travelled over the same stretch of earth, and handed nothing down. Huddersfield begins with the industrial revolution.

It sucked in the population of the surrounding countryside, and with them something of their culture. But the `culture' of Huddersfield is the submerged culture of the industrial working class. It is now settled and stylized into a pattern of living, but it was bred in the long working hours of the mills, the rapid spread of overcrowded streets, the tangles of the master-man relationship, the personal cycle of poverty (childhood/marriage/ age) crossing the national waves of work or hunger. Such a style of living, and fashioned by such conditions, radiates today from the close centres of family life into that whole web of ties -kinship, friendship, the shared childhood or working life, the formal groupings of club, band, choir, union, chapel - all the many strands of 'neighbourhood' that reach out to attain 'community' (my emboldening - LT). The expectations, dues, refusals, irritations, rights and assurances that family and neighbourhood arouse and inherit play all through this report. For the working-class culture of Huddersfield (an area with over 70 working men's clubs) is by no means the same as the national middle-class culture, some of whose facets are reflected back by the wireless, the press, the very books in the public library. We are not concerned to choose or judge between the two cultures, merely to remark the difference. For it is a question of difference, and this report finds itself continually dipping into discussion or conflict where well-meaning people on both sides are fighting out battles between 'us' and 'them'.

Huddersfield has its prosperous middle class. Or, rather, it has two middle classes. The first is national, metropolitan in interest, mobile, privately educated. Such are the senior civil servants, doctors, executives, who stay a while and pass through the city; or who belong as natives here, but 'belong' elsewhere too. And then there is that other middle class, very local and rooted, of the self-made businessmen, works officials, schoolmasters clinging to their home town. Such a class is part of 'them' but in some situations can merge for a while with 'us'. This native, rather than national, middle class has been there from earliest days; drawing its money from the work of the men, but nonetheless close to them. There is a report by a hand-loom commissioner of 1839 that `. . . the men of Huddersfield were constantly in their mills and taking their meals at the same hours as their workpeople, but the clothiers of Gloucester were indulging in the habits and mixing with the gentle blood of the land'. It is just this native middle class we present here...

We will not here describe the details of the city's streets and homes; such as matter will emerge as the survey gathers way. But the city's confidence in terms of work, of money, of pleasure, can be caught in a rapid glance. It is the confidence of the new industrial town after twenty years without recession.

"A Nation Of Immigrants"

Edwardian London. The diversity just pours off the screen.


Telegraph :

The film was shot in 1904 as a 'travelogue' for Australians curious about life in what was "one of the most exciting cities anywhere", according to Professor Ian Christie. He discovered the 12 minute reel while trawling through archives in Canberra. Prof Christie said: "It's a rather clever mixture of what we would expect to see - such as the Embankment, Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square - but it also has these wonderful close ups of individuals. "There's an old lady sleeping rough on a bench, children encouraging a dog to swim in the Thames, children paddling in one of the ponds in St James's Park."

But some things never change.

"There's a wonderful shot of roadworks on the Strand," he said. "The catalogue says, 'Street up as usual'. Road works were obviously a common feature of London in 1904 too." Other scenes show roads packed with horse-drawn traffic, the city "absolutely teeming with people", fish traders at Billingsgate Market and shoe-shiners in the West End. The footage, shot of 35mm film, also shows subtle insights into life such as the way people walked, he added. The academic, professor of film and media history at Birkbeck College in London, said the film, called Living London, was shot by pioneering Anglo-American film-maker Charles Urban.

How well dressed everyone is, and how much care they take over their appearance - in an age with no washing machines. The hats, ties, gloves. Respectability high, crime and bastardy low - although there were plenty of negative points - especially for the poor. Robert Roberts' "The Classic Slum" and (my favourite) "A Ragged Schooling" are brilliant portraits of Salford working class life in this period and also a great read. I read them 30 year back and I see they're back in print. If anyone's read any London equivalents I'd love to know about them.

I love that train going backwards over the bridge.

The Way We Were ...

From Paul Stott's blog. Polly Toynbee please take note of Commandment 7.

Used in Socialist Sunday Schools around 1900, and committed to memory by the children.

1. Love your school companions, who will be your co-workers in life.

2. Love learning, which is the food of the mind, be as grateful to your teachers as to your parents.

3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds, and kindly actions.

4. Honour good men and women, be courteous to all; and bow down to none.

5. Do not hate or speak evil of anyone; do not be revengeful, but stand up for your rights and resist oppression.

6. Do not be cowardly. Be a friend to the weak, and love justice.

7. Remember that all good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers.

8. Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason, and never deceive yourself or others.

9. Do not think that they who love their own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism.

10. Look forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one community, and live together as equals in peace and righteousness.

Taken (a/c/t Paul) from "The Bolton Socialist Club & Party 1886-2005 - Celebrating 100 Years at Wood Street" by Lancashire social historian Denis Pye.

Racist !

Those old British Imperialists sure went in for gross racial stereotyping - here's a gung-ho militarist describing the Siege of Lucknow, 1857 :


The natural strength of the Residency at once explains how it was possible for the English to hold out in it against far superior numbers; but this very fact at once shows also what class of fighters the Oudians are. In fact, men who, partly drilled under European officers and provided plentifully with artillery, have never yet been able to overcome a single miserable inclosure defended by Europeans – such men are, militarily speaking, no better than savages, and a victory over them cannot add much to the glory of any army, however great the odds may be in favor of the natives.

Another fact which classes the Oudians with the most contemptible opponents to be met with, is the manner in which Havelock forced his way through the very thickest portion of the town, in spite of barricades, loopholed houses, and the like. His loss, indeed, was great; but compare such an engagement with even the worst-fought street-battle of 1848! Not one man of his weak column could have made good his way had there been any real fighting ...

When Sir Colin Campbell arrived he had about 2,000 European and 1,000 Sikh infantry; 350 European and 600 Sikh cavalry; 18 horse-artillery guns, 4 siege guns, and 300 sailors with their heavy shipguns; in all, 5,000 men, among which were 3,000 Europeans. This force was about as strong in numbers as a very fair average of most Anglo-Indian armies that have accomplished great exploits; indeed, the field-force with which Sir C. Napier conquered Sinde was scarcely half as large, and often less.

On the other hand, its large admixture of the European element and the circumstance that all its native portion consisted of the best fighting nation of India, the Sikhs, give it a character of intrinsic strength and cohesion far superior to the generality of Anglo-Indian armies. Its opponents, as we have seen, were contemptible, for the most part rough militia instead of trained soldiers. True, the Oudians pass for the most warlike race of Lower Hindostan, but this is the case merely in comparison with the cowardly Bengalees, whose morale is utterly broken down by the most relaxing climate of the world and by centuries of oppression. The way in which they submitted to the “filibustering” annexation of their country to the Company’s dominions, and the whole of their behavior during the insurrection, certainly places them below the level of the Sepoys, as far as courage and intelligence are concerned.

We are, indeed, informed that quantity made up for quality. Some letter-writers say there were as many as 100,000 in the town. They were, no doubt, superior to the British in the proportion of four or six to one, perhaps more; but with such enemies that makes little difference. A position can only be defended by a certain number, and if these are determined to run away it matters little whether four or five times that number of similar heroes are within half a mile. There is no doubt that many instances of individual bravery have been seen, even among these Oudians. Some among them may have fought like lions; but of what avail were these in a place which they were too weak to defend after the mere rabble among the garrison had run away? There appears to have never been among them any attempt at bringing the whole under a single command; their local chiefs had no authority except over their own men, and would not submit to anybody else ...

Campbell should be praised for the judgment with which he took the easier route and with which he used his heavy artillery to reduce the intrenched positions before he launched his columns. But the British fought with all the advantages of skilled soldiers obeying one chief over half savages commanded by nobody; and, as we see, they fully availed themselves of these advantages ... when in three days’ consecutive fighting, under circumstances and in positions which are known to cost more lives than any other to conquer, the loss is only one in eight or nine, it is out of the question to call it hard fighting. To take an example from British history alone, what is all this Indian fighting put together against the single defense of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte at Waterloo?

Who's this blood-soaked warrior, with his talk of warlike races, the cowardly Bengalis, the half-savages of Oudh, and his general air of "call that a battle ?"

Friedrich Engels, that's who. And he was writing from London ! Armchair warrior or what ?

"Scotch - broad Scotch !"

...my father, as he sat at table, looked steadfastly on my brother and myself, and then addressed my mother: - 'During my journey down hither, I have lost no opportunity of making inquiries about these people, the Scotch, amongst whom we now are, and since I have been here I have observed them attentively. From what I have heard and seen, I should say that upon the whole they are a very decent set of people; they seem acute and intelligent, and I am told that their system of education is so excellent that every person is learned - more or less acquainted with Greek and Latin. There is one thing, however, connected with them, which is a great drawback - the horrid jargon which they speak. However learned they may be in Greek and Latin, their English is execrable; and yet I'm told it is not so bad as it was. I was in company, the other day, with an Englishman who has resided here many years. We were talking about the country and the people. "I should like both very well," said I, "were it not for the language. I wish sincerely our Parliament, which is passing so many foolish acts every year, would pass one to force these Scotch to speak English." "I wish so, too," said he. "The language is a disgrace to the British Government; but, if you had heard it twenty years ago, captain! - if you had heard it as it was spoken when I first came to Edinburgh!"'

'Only custom,' said my mother. 'I daresay the language is now what it was then.'

'I don't know,' said my father; 'though I daresay you are right; it could never have been worse than it is at present. But now to the point. Were it not for the language, which, if the boys were to pick it up, might ruin their prospects in life, - were it not for that, I should very much like to send them to a school there is in this place, which everybody talks about - the High School I think they call it. 'Tis said to be the best school in the whole island; but the idea of one's children speaking Scotch - broad Scotch! I must think the matter over' ...


... I did not spend my time unpleasantly at this school, though, first of all, I had to pass through an ordeal.

'Scotland is a better country than England,' said an ugly, blear- eyed lad, about a head and shoulders taller than myself, the leader of a gang of varlets who surrounded me in the playground, on the first day, as soon as the morning lesson was over. 'Scotland is a far better country than England, in every respect.'

'Is it?' said I. 'Then you ought to be very thankful for not having been born in England.'

'That's just what I am, ye loon; and every morning, when I say my prayers, I thank God for not being an Englishman. The Scotch are a much better and braver people than the English.'

'It may be so,' said I, 'for what I know - indeed, till I came here, I never heard a word either about the Scotch or their country.'

'Are ye making fun of us, ye English puppy?' said the blear-eyed lad; 'take that!' and I was presently beaten black and blue. And thus did I first become aware of the difference of races and their antipathy to each other.

'Bow to the storm, and it shall pass over you.' I held my peace, and silently submitted to the superiority of the Scotch - IN NUMBERS.

From George Borrow's autobiographical Lavengro.

Siege of Lucknow 2007

Once again, 150 years after the previous unpleasantness, a gallant band of Brits again defend themselves against violent racists.

A group of British veterans are barricaded inside an Indian hotel this evening after they were attacked by a violent group of Indian nationalists during a trip to pay homage to British soldiers killed during the 1857 Indian Mutiny. Indian authorities have told Britons in India to stay away from the historic site due to protests.

Dozens of retired British soldiers and civilians were holed up in a hotel behind a police cordon today in Lucknow. They had had planned to visit the site of a siege that was a key event of what is known in India as the First War of Independence and in Britain as the Sepoy Mutiny. During the siege, hundreds of British soldiers and their families defended the Residency of Lucknow against thousands of Indian soldiers - or sepoys - rebelling against the colonial occupiers. Hundreds died in the fighting.

Small but vocal protests have been led by local members of India's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party. Some protesters pelted the visitors' bus with rubbish and a bottle filled with dirty water when they arrived in the city on yesterday. "A thick security net around them saved the situation from taking any ugly turn," said district magistrate Chandra Bhanu. "Though we have no objection to their visit as ordinary tourists, we cannot take any chances and expose them to any kind of risk under the prevailing volatile circumstances" he said.

May they show the same courage and unity as their forebears, and may their country succour them as it did then.






The 1857 mutiny was commemorated a month or two back in India with much ceremony as a "shining example of national unity". As the BBC put it :

"It is known in India as the first war of India's independence, while in the UK it is usually called a mutiny. So we'll call it an uprising."

Now you can't really blame the Indian government for playing the national unity card for all it's worth. After all, theirs is what the BBCs Jim Muir would call an ethnic and confessional patchwork, with all the potential for lack of unity that implies. Not only that, but before the Raj there was no nation of India, although the Mughal Empire had at one stage encompassed almost the whole subcontinent. You get your national myths where you find them and as you need them - and India, always struggling to keep a vastly diverse nation intact (and succeeding remarkably well) - needs a national narrative more than most.

In Britain however we can take a more clear eyed view of the Mutiny, which was an uprising not solely against the forces of the British Empire, the soldiers and administrators, but a vast racist pogrom against all Europeans, the 'Feringhees' or 'gora log', without distinction of age, sex or employment, although Indian Christians were also killed. While for obvious reasons it was necessary to strike down British military resistance where found, the wholesale slaughter of unarmed men, women and children took place wherever the mutineers had gained control, although there are many instances of Indians saving lives at the risk of their own. The testimonies of massacre from Meerut, Delhi, Lucknow, Cawnpore are many and vivid.

"Gough came in. He is a pensioner. He was in the 19th Regiment and directly after landing in England after the Crimea War volunteered to go to India at the time of the Indian Mutiny. He landed in Calcutta and his regiment marched through Cawnpore 48 hours after the Massacre. He said the scene was horrible, so horrible, shocking and disgusting that it could not be explained or described. Women's breasts had been chopped and sliced off and were still lying about with their other parts. Women had been cut to pieces and mutilated in a vile and shocking manner. The most devilish and beastly ingenuity had been at work in mutilating the persons and violating and dishonouring the parts of the poor creatures. A child's head had been cut off and was lying on the ground with the lips placed by a devilish jest as if sucking the breast of a woman which had also been chopped off. Numbers of the poor women had jumped down the great well with their children to avoid the horrors which were being perpetrated on the bodies of women all over the place.

The soldiers were furious, almost ungovernable, as they marched through Cawnpore and saw those shameful sights."
Francis Kilvert's Diary, Wednesday, 22nd January 1873


"Captain Orr, before allowing the sepoys to accompany them, as well as himself and his family, first made them swear on the head of a Brahmin jemadar, or native officer, the most sacred oath a Hindoo can take, that they would not touch a hair of their heads. They had scarcely set out a short distance, however, when the sepoys obliged the ladies and children to leave their carriages and to walk. The gentlemen, fourteen in number, were murdered one by one, near Mithowly, and the whole of the ladies and children, certain of their coming fate, assembling together in one body, were shot down while kneeling and singing a hymn."
- A personal narrative of the siege of Lucknow By L E Ruutz Rees (1858)

"They knew that stabbing was inefficient, that hacking at their victim's necks would be the quickest way of accomplishing their mission. If the ladies protected their necks with their arms, then their arms would simply be severed as well; the effect was the same, they would bleed to death. Slashing right and left at all who were standing, chopping downward at the fallen with their heavy blades, the five proceeded methodically, spreading a pool of blood ... The few defiant boys were cut down quickly, as was every child who tried to make a run for it through the phalanx of swordsmen. Mothers kept pulling their children close to them and pushing them back into the corners of the building, and in the sweltering heat and the crush of bodies, children suffocated to death under their dying mothers' skirts."
Andrew Ward - Our Bones Are Scattered - Cawnpore Massacres and the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

Mrs Captain McDonald, Mrs Captain Chambers, Mrs Dawson and two children, Mrs Courtenay and two children, Mr. V. Tregear, Pensioners McKinley and Blanco, Corporals Mortimer (Rifles), Edwards and Fitzpatrick and wives, Mr Newland (Photographer), Overseers Segeants Law and two children, McPhee, Binglee, Grant, Brooks and wives, Gunners Donohoe, Connolly, Benson and Cairns (Horse Artillery), Riding Master Langdale's child
- some of the dead from the first day at Meerut - Robert Dunlop - Service and Adventure with the Meerut Volunteer Horse (1858)

You can also see why this kind of stuff gets passed by in India. No nation likes to be reminded of its bad deeds, England excepted, but in India stuff about massacring innocents strikes a bit too close to home. The slaughter of defenceless people isn't exactly something that stopped in 1857. While 1947 set a standard that (God willing) is unlikely to be surpassed in the immediate future, the events of 1984 and 2002 remind us that it hasn't gone away. And those are only the ones we hear about. I was surprised when googling 'Meerut Massacre' to find that it's the '87 rather than the '57 massacre at the top. That's 1987.

Of course Delhi could never have been recaptured and the Mutiny suppressed without the soldiers from the Punjab and elsewhere who remained loyal. The force which retook Delhi contained Punjabis of all faiths, Baluchis, Gurkhas, Pashtuns - something else that the Indian Government and nationalist historians would rather forget. And while the rebel defenders of Delhi were killed to a man, the reactions of the British forces, memories of the dead innocents fresh in their minds, to their orders stand in stark contrast to the shameful barbarities of the rebels.

"By the light of a lantern the orders for the assault were then read to the men. They were to the following purport: any man who might be wounded was to be left where he fell; no one was to step from the ranks to help him, as there were no men to spare ... no prisoners were to be made, as we had no one to guard them, and care was to be taken that no women or children were injured. To this the men answered at once, by 'No fear, Sir'. The officers now pledged their honours on their swords to abide by these orders and the men then promised to follow their example."

The Smugglers of Rhossili

A surging sea and a starless night,
And a vessel homeward bound in sight,
And a raging western gale that blew
Good luck to the Rhossili smuggling crew;
For always up on the farthest height
A pile was laid for the beacon light,
The false red light which seemed to say,
‘Twas safe to harbour in Rhossili bay,
Where the treacherous waters roll and flow
And tell no tale of the rocks below.

The wind is high and the tide is in,
And a merchant ship is a prize to win,
And a cargo washed on our shingly shore
Will bring us riches a six months more;
So who will go to the farthest height
To kindle the false red beacon light?
And a laugh went up from that motley group
Of women and men – a lawless troop
With clamorous tongues and gleaming eyes,
And greedy hands for the coming prize.

But one of them mutely stood and heard,
And never a thrill in her breast was stirred,
She had nothing to hope and nothing to win.
From the smugglers lawless life of sin;
They had picked her out of the sea one night
When a vessel was wrecked by the false red light
And for months and years they kept her there
To do their bidding and take no share;
So they bade her now with one acclaim;
“Go up and kindle the lying flame.”

She went at the word of that lawless band;
She plucked from the hearth a burning brand.
She left the cavern and crossed the creek,
And challenged the night wind rough and bleak.
She scaled the rocks and she climbed the hill,
To kindle the flame at her masters will,
To lure a ship to its certain doom
And a score of lives to a certain tomb!

She felt no pity, no shame, nor dread
Nor trembled to think of the life she led
And the ships went by and the ships came in.
And what did she know, poor child, of the sin?
She was one of the Rhossili smuggling crew,
And the thing they ordered she needs must do
A surging sea and a starless night,
But she carried the brand to the farthest height,
A headland of turf where the pile was laid;
When all of a sudden her hand was stayed
By a voice - a whisper – she knew not what,
That said in her heart, “Nay; do it not.”

Oh, can we tell you the doubt arose
The thing she would do was sin?
If an angel stood at her side, who knows
To whisper the thought within?
It was little she knew of love and truth
And nothing of Christian creeds;
And what had she ever heard of forsooth
To hinder from evil deeds?
The law was against them, she had been taught
And the law could make one swing,
But cunning people need not be caught
And that was the only thing

But once in her life, it chanced she strolled
To a chapel, and paused to hear,
And lingered a while, entranced, controlled,
In wonder and doubt and fear;
For the preacher discoursed of right and wrong
And the deeds which are base or true,
Till she shuddered to think she dare belong
To the Rhossili smuggling crew
And here on this wild and windy night,
With the brand to kindle the false red light;
She paused and trembled, for now she knew
‘Twas a deed of sin she had come to do

Oh, pity her there on the high hillside,
So little to help her, so little to guide,
So feeble a light to make things clear,
So little to have and so much to fear;
For if she returned to the Rhossili men,
And the ship rode safe on the sea, what then?
Her life was nought to that smuggling crew
If the thing they ordered she failed to do

“I dare not kindle the false red light!”
She cried aloud to the starless night;
“But what is this fear that bids me stand,
That makes me shudder and hold my hand
From a deed of death I have dared before?
Nay, where is the evil in one time more?
The vessel will never take heed, maybe,
It will stand on its course to the open sea,
And then if it should, is it matter of mine?
I only am here to deliver a sign.
It is not for me that they launch the boats
And steal in the dark when the wreckage floats;
It is not for me that they drag the net
For deeper treasures there may be yet;
It is not for me that the corpses lie
On the shingle and sand when the rocks are dry.
The gold and silver, the kegs of wine,
The bales of goods, they are theirs not mine!
If to kindle the false red light be a sin,
God knows I have nothing to keep or win.”

“No matter of mine? But how will it be
When the shattered vessel has sunk in the sea,
And over the water and up the creek
There cometh a desolate, drowning shriek?
No matter of mine? But will it be use
To sooth myself with a false excuse,
When the gaze of the dead men meet my own
And I dread lest the gaping lips should moan.
As I touch the lips and the clammy hair
Of the corpses stretched on the shore down there?
And, oh! The horror to hear in dreams
The widow’s wails and the mother’s screams!”

“The night is dark and I cannot see,
Has the vessel passed to the open sea?
Oh, sailors watching! You curse the night,
You cry aloud for a ray of light –
‘A ray of light and our ship would live’
Nay, better none than the light I give.
You’re best in the dark if only you knew:
And, sailors, I’ve given my life for you!
Tomorrow at dark I shall find my grave
Unwept, in the Rhossili smugglers cave.
For they warned me once, but they won’t again,
They keep their word, the Rhossili men.

Well, let them do it! ’Tis better so
Than the corpses stretched on the shore, I know:
‘Tis better I die, if so it be
Than twenty sink in the hungry sea.
And something rings in my head this night
Which says, though I cannot remember quite,
How he who to save his life has sought
Shall reckon his trouble in vain;
But he who has counted his life for nought
Shall find it for ever again.

“A strange new saying! I know not how
It cometh so clear to my memory now.
And I cannot tell what the meaning be,
Yet feel in my heart it was meant for me.
A message that saith to my soul ‘be strong,
The false red light is a deadly wrong’
And the vessel shall weather the storm as it may
But it shall not sink in Rhossili bay.
She gave one sweep of her arm on high,
And the brand flashed out in the midnight sky
Like a falling star or a fleeting spark,
Then dropped as a dead thing in the dark

The sun went up over Rhossili bay
And the wind blew soft
In the sails aloft
Of a ship that was riding safe and free!

The sun went down over Rhossili bay –
And a dying shriek
Was heard in the creek
As a life was thrown to the hungry sea.





Photograph of the Helvetia by Geoffrey Kitt.










This poem, a family favourite, was printed in the South Wales Evening Post some time in the 1950s, and my uncle, who loved the wild end of Gower, copied it by hand, cyclostyled the sheets and had them professionally bound. No idea of its provenance, but it's got Victorian morality tale stamped all over it. It came back to me when I climbed Worms Head last week.

I keep hearing that rap lyrics do not influence bad behaviour, but simply reflect something that's there already. I also hear that behaviour isn't really getting worse, because some Greek guy complained about the young a few thousand years back, so that proves it.

If writing reflects society, might there not be a real difference between the world of "Come Into The Garden Maud" and Nate Dogg's "I need a bitch", or between Oliver Twist, where "with all the cruelties and injustices visited upon the young orphan, all the horrors of the workhouse and Victorian poverty, neither the author, nor any authority figure in the book, suggests that stealing is anything other than a great evil which should be punished severely" and a world where a privileged scion of the upper classes argues that those who run stores are greater criminals than those who steal from them ?

The Way We Were

I linked the other day to James Norman Hall's memoir of life as an American volunteer in Kitchener's army.

Here's a civilian memoir - Josephine Vernon (nee Batchelor) - a Coventry Kid.

Off to a wedding - see you Sunday.

"Progression Has Ceased"

"Eddieareader" in the comments to this Martin Kettle boilerplate. Don't agree with it all, but I get his general point.

Labour has lost its way now for over a generation, certainly since the 1960s. It has become a party to promote the interests of homosexuals, the public sector unions (from where it now derives its funding) and ethnic minorities - giving its metropolitan elite a cosy feeling of being liberal whilst not actually having to live with the consequences.

I come from a mining family. Both my grandfathers were miners, one had his back broken down the pit. My family were virtual slaves a century after the official ones were freed. The 1926 General Strike ran through our (rented) house like a wide river. My mother had a brother born the second week of the strike with no food (literally) in the house. The (old) Labour Party provided food parcels so that they didn't starve. My dad lost his big toe nail after diving for coal from sunken barges and catching his foot in one. I was the first in my family (like Neil Kinnock) to go to university. My mother always voted Labour until Mrs Thatcher.

I was a died in the wool Labour on entering university (always proud that I share a birthday with Thomas Paine and nearly with the execution of Charles II). Seeking out the Socialist Society I soon found it full of the sons and daughters of the middle-class, in 1970 not many working class kids made university especially those from comprehensives! I soon found that my accent set me apart. It was obvious to me as a 19 year old that these socialists, and I guess a good many went on to be something in the movement, had nothing to offer me accept a diferent face to the same exploitation I could expect from the Tories. That changed my life.

Labour got lost in debating societies rather than failitating the ambitions of working-class people. That is why Margaret Thatcher was so effective. Labour simply had no answer to what Margaret Thatcher offered and still don't.
Mrs Thatcher got a great deal wrong (education, the EU) due to her prejudices but she knew people want to improve their lot.

Tony Blair managed Labour well to pursue his own fantasy. It was just a pity that he had the intellectually deficient Brown alongside. Brown has wrecked pension schemes, raised taxes on the low-paid (increasingly after this week's Budget) and wasted the money on an ineptly managed public-sector. Blair could have insisted on reform first and spending (Brown has even spun spending as investment) second. Brown is so dim that he doesn't even understand what drives effective management. His only trick is to pull in Harvard professors to advise on productivity and have a photo opportunity.
The NHS needs to be dismantled and replaced with an insurance-based system as in France.

Their reaction to out-Tory the Tories means wasting billions on Trident, a slavish attitude towards the City, a willingness to tax low-earners but not high-earners and schools that can teach anything as long as an exam is passed.

Whereas the Tories are very mindful of their base (privilege) Labour has ignored the white working class it came from. Stephen Byers, whose constituents have homes (the major source of inherited wealth) worth on average just over £100,000, being interested in the abolition of inheritance tax is one example. The way Labour dismantled the immigration controls on spouses from the sub-continent and has refused to outlaw arranged marriages is another.

When I was planning for university at the end of the sixties it seemed a natural progression that I was doing better and would do better still than my parents. As my son prepares to do the same during the noughties (how apt) I cannot see him doing the same. Progression has ceased.

Victorian Virtues

Gertrude Himmelfarb at the AEI. The stats should be in everyone's head by now, but no harm in hammering those golden nails one more time.

Why have values become a subject of such intense discussion? And why do the Victorian values--or virtues--loom so large today?

The answer to both questions lies, in part, in statistics. Thomas Carlyle once rebuked his countrymen with being obsessed with "figures of arithmetic"--about wages and prices, the cost of food and the standard of living. The more important issue, he insisted, was the "condition" and "disposition" of the people: their beliefs and feelings, their sense of right and wrong, the attitudes and habits that would dispose them either to a "wholesome composure, frugality, and prosperity," or to an "acrid unrest, recklessness, gin-drinking, and gradual ruin."

In fact, the Victorians had "figures of arithmetic" about these matters as well--about crime, drunkenness, pauperism, vagrancy, illiteracy, illegitimacy; "moral statistics," they called them. It is instructive--and disquieting--to compare their moral statistics with ours.

In Victorian England, the illegitimacy ratio--the proportion of illegitimate births to total births--fell from 7 percent in 1845 to less than 4 percent by the end of the century. In East London, the poorest section of the city, it was less than that: 4.5 percent in midcentury and 3 percent by the end of the century. Apart from a temporary increase during both world wars, the ratio continued to hover around 5 percent until well into the middle of the twentieth century. In 1960 it began to rise, to 12 percent by 1980, and to 32 percent by the end of 1992--a two-and-a-half times increase in the last decade alone and a sixfold rise in three decades.

She looks at crime, too.

The low crime rate persisted until the mid 1920s, when it started to rise and continued to do so through the war years, levelling off or declining slightly in the early 1950s. A dramatic rise started in the mid fifties, increasing more than fivefold by 1981 and almost doubling in the following decade. By 1991 the rate was ten times that of 1955 and forty times that of 1901. (In 1955, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer remarked upon the extraordinary degree of civility exhibited in England, where "football crowds are as orderly as church meetings." Within a few years, those games had become notorious as the scene of mayhem and riots.)

The Wicked Uncle

One tends to forget that the cultural left's long march through the institutions began with the Home Office and the Prison Service as far back as the 50s and 60s. Education and social services fell later (corporal punishment in schools was only outlawed in 1982 by a nominally Conservative government, led by a former Education Minister who abolished more grammars than Crosland ever did), medicine later still.

Written in the late 60s, Tony Parker's "The Frying Pan" is a series of interviews with staff and prisoners at Britain's only 'therapeutic' prison, Grendon Underwood. Parker was another middle class grammar school boy fascinated by the rough end of life, but a fine writer.

The portrait of Grendon takes in all sorts and conditions of prisoners and do-gooders. The chapter 'The Wicked Uncle' features the one person at Grendon who's prepared to say the whole thing is a waste of time and effort, and is wonderfully illuminating on the changing Prison Service culture. Here are a few chunks. At the time of these interviews £20 a week or £1,000 a year would have been an average wage.

"I am what is known as a discipline officer, sir, as distinct from hospital officer. That is a man of the same rank as myself but he's been on a three-months' training course at Wormwood Scrubs or another prison hospital, in which he learned how to give-out medicines and empty bed-pans. That qualifies him for an extra twenty-two shillings a week on his salary, but not my mind for all the airs and graces as well which most of them assume.

The reason that half the staff here are hospital officers is they applied for training as such after they arrived at Grendon, knowing it was the correct procedure to match in with the image of the place. Band-waggoning if you want my candid opinion, sir. They know this is the shape of things to come in the penal system, and if they want to stay here and earn promotion they must go along with the official attitude as well as having the right coloured eyes.

The prisoners'll tell you this is the easiest nick in the country, and so it is - and not only for the prisoners, sir. There's a good seventy percent of the officers here who've got nothing to do all day except stand around. You look out of the window of that little room of yours any day of the week - and you'll see a hospital officer in charge of a gardens party. If that isn't a farce, sir, then I don't know what is. 'Over-staffed' wouldn't even begin to describe it, sir. There's ninety-seven officers for a hundred and fifty prisoners, which to my mind is a crying scandal, considering the shortage of staff in every other prison you'd care to name.

Whenever we get the wire there's someone coming down from Head Office on an inspection, we're all told to find ourselves things to do which make it look as though we're busy. I've known officers been instructed to keep themselves out of sight on such occasions, when there's literally nothing that can be found for them to do at all. I've been told it myself; so what have I done, I've gone over to the canteen at eleven o'clock in the morning to drink tea, and found thirty other officers there all detailed to do exactly the same. When I was in Brixton or Pentonville there was many a day when you didn't even have time for a piss from morning till night, sir, and that's a fact."

"... all this about Jones swearing at me because he'd had a letter which had upset him from his daughter. I'm not interested in that: if a prisoner swears at an officer, it's an offence against good order and discipline - or at least it is in any proper prison as I understand it. The man should be put on report and punished for it. But not here, oh no: I have to stand there and let myself be called 'a lousy fucking bastard' to my face, by some slag I wouldn't even let sleep in my tool-shed at the bottom of the garden. And what do I have to do ? Stand there and pat him on the head, that's all.

I haven't put anyone on report f6r over a year now, I've learned my lesson: it's no use. They can swear their heads off all day for all I care. You'll notice they only swear at the screws though: let the Governor or the Deputy Governor come down on the Wing, and it's 'Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir' all the time. If they can't swear at them, then why can they swear at us ? But my God, if an officer swears at a prisoner, then there's hell to pay all right.

There's a few of them, I think 'Just you wait me lad, I'll get you one day, and when you're least expecting it too. I'll catch you with the edge of that cell-door of yours sometime when you're in the right position.' Of course I shall be very apologetic about it afterwards: 'Oh, I am sorry Johnny, real clumsy that was; are you all right, shall I take you down to the hospital for a sticking-plaster on your nose ? Here have a fag lad, will I go and make you a cup of tea while you sit down and recover ?'

It makes me sick, the hypocrisy of this place. These men in here, officially everyone's supposed to talk about them as 'inmates' or 'patients'. To me sir, they're not patients, they're criminals. They're convicted felons who've committed an offence, been given a fair trial according to the laws of the country, and been sent to prison quite rightly as a punishment. I agree with all that business about them being sent as a punishment and not for punishment: I don’t believe they should be mishandled or knocked-about or ill-treated while they're inside, not unless they're the ones who start any trouble themselves.

But I do think they should be treated firmly, and while they’re here they should do exactly as they’re told. They know they haven't got the same rights as ordinary citizens outside; their liberty's restricted, they can't indulge in business, or vote, or any of those things. And that's quite right: they've offended against society, and the Judge in his wisdom has sent them to prison for it. One of the penalties of prison is that you're not a free agent any longer: that's exactly why-we have prisons.

To give them the idea when they get here that they're important, their only trouble is they're misunderstood, they need sympathy: well to me, quite frankly that just seems ridiculous. They get more attention paid to them here, more mollycoddling, more listening-to than they’ve ever had in their whole lives outside. It makes them feel, it can't help it, that they're not really bad people at all; it's everyone else outside who's wrong, not them.

Thirty-four pounds a week I understand it costs to keep a man here: thirty-four pounds a week, of your money and mine, poured straight down the drain to look after some layabout who's never done an honest day's work in his life. There's men in here doing five years for £20,000 robberies--which if my arithmetic's correct is four thousand pounds a year. I'll tell you, for four thousand quid a year I'd do five years myself in Dartmoor and think it was worth it. But five years in a place like this, good God sir, it's a rest-cure and a bonus on top as well. It's nothing more or less than a pantomime. Well, there's got to he a few Wicked Uncles in fairyland hasn't there ? I certainly don't mind being one of them.

But don't think I'm the only odd-man out here because I'm not. Ask them up in the Administration Block if they'll tell you how many officers have applied for transfers to leave here in the last few years. It's the thick-end of ninety since I came, and that's well over two- thirds of the uniform staff. So it can't he one big happy family, can it ? Of course staff don't give the real reason why they want a transfer, that'd be very unwise; they'd no more put it down in writing or tell anyone anymore than I do myself with my own applications. We all know Grendon's the prison of the future; loving and understanding and getting to know the prisoners is now official policy, not only of the Home Office but of the Prison Officers' Association as well. If you say you don't approve of it, down it'll go in your record; and when you come up for consideration for promotion, you'll find you've been unaccountably passed by.

So what you say is 'My wife's unhappy living out here in the country, she prefers the town life,' or 'All our relatives are up in the north, we'd like to move somewhere in that direction.' When you're really stuck for an excuse, a very good one indeed, which can gain you a bit of credit too, is 'I'd like to move on from here and put into practice some of the valuable things I've learned. The more these ideas are spread around through other prisons the better.'

Sometimes those up at the top'll scratch their heads, they'll say to themselves 'Why the hell are so many people going, what's the matter with everyone ?' They go around asking other members of the staff. Well, you've heard about a code among thieves sir, I suppose; but there's an equally strong one among prison officers. They know perfectly well what the real reason is for a man putting-in for a transfer; but when the big-wigs ask them, they come out good and pat with the answers: 'I understand his wife doesn't like it here, sir'; 'He's a good man, sir, he wants to broaden his own experience.' There's not one of them brave enough to tell the truth - or stupid enough for that matter - to come out with it straight from the shoulder, especially as they know it'd spoil the man's future career ...

Only what really a gets my goat sir is this: the only two kinds of people who don't do a full-time job are the doctors because they speak in posh accents and think they're above the hoi-polloi like us - though any other doctor, so far as I'm aware, if he works in a hospital is on call any hour of the day or night to attend to patients who need him, and if he's in general practice doesn't think twice about running an evening-surgery for people who can't see him during the day. And believe it or not, sir, who's the other class who don't demean themselves with working here during normal hours ? The bleeding prisoners !

My Generation, Baby

"I am a modern man - the Beatles, colour TV - that's the generation I come from" - Tony Blair, 1997.


One of the things I'm interested in is documenting how it all went pear-shaped, what life was like before the Fall, the cultural drivers behind the destruction, the personalities involved, and some of the original documents.

This post will be a little disjointed, as it covers some big themes, each worthy of one or more essays - which I have neither the time nor ability to write.

There are several elements involved in this documentation. One important one is to bear witness. A key liberal myth, the "Myth of the Myth of the Golden Age" holds that crime wasn't REALLY lower in the past, streets weren't REALLY safer."He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."

At present this is a difficut task for our liberal elite. There are simply too many people alive who can remember Britain in the 1950s or even the 1960s (remember that the culture of the 1960s only spread in the 70s - and went mainstream even later, around the time Habitat stores opened everywhere. For an accurate picture of 1966 England look at the World Cup Final crowd - 95% in ties - ties ! and many also sporting hats).

But these generations - the wartime generations - are dying and will soon be gone. Mortality is even now on the horizon of the post-war grammar school boys, the people - of whom I'm one - who destroyed the culture to which they were the heirs.

So it's important to record the lives and opinions of these generations, partly for their own sake, but partly to refute the arguments of those who believe that the present is always better than the past.

Three documents - two on the cultural drivers of destruction, one on Edwardian Britain.

First the Independent on the 50th anniversary of the play "Look Back In Anger", as reviewed by the late Keneth Tynan in 1956.

"All the qualities are there, qualities one had despaired of ever seeing on stage - the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of 'official' attitudes, the surrealist sense of humour ... the casual promiscuity, the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for and, underlying all these, the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned ... The Porters of our time deplore the tyranny of 'good taste' and refuse to accept 'emotional' as a term of abuse; they are classless, and they are also leaderless."

I'm not quite sure what happened to to the underlying theme, but all the rest were representative enough - a small manifesto for the counterculture.

Another document - I must admit to never having heard of the Preston poet Alan Dent - and having read some of his stuff I wish he'd never heard of Dylan Thomas. But his "Memoria Technica" is important in that if you wanted to know what the Sixties were a revolt against, you'd only have to read this. All the themes are there. Namely :

Capitalism - indeed, paid employment of any kind - is dull and morally reprehensible. Success in this world is a token of moral worthlessness.

Here
society’s handshake was a pay-packet and slavery

for he was famous in his realm
in Leyland and Chorley
from Accrington to Darwen
in Lancaster and Blackpool and as far as Oldham
he had conquered with his charm
the blue-eyed father and slick commercial traveller
filled the emptiness of his life by selling
as vain men fill the emptiness in their lives by selling
selling themselves a dream of themselves


Church is a dull thing that the straight parents make us do.

freedom from the narrowness of a niggard isle
from sexless Wesleyism
and God drowned in the Ribble
dirty with Protestant profit
and freedom was in no choice but to choose

On dull Sunday evenings at six
tight-suited smart and calm
on the back-row wicker seats
in a plain poor dour building
in a rich pretentious zone

I want to get drunk and have sex with girls.

I took my pre-sex preaching
then pubwards quiet querying and queer
went on my usual crusading quimquest


Respectability sucks.

my dream was freedom from the boss and the bureaucrat
my dream was the death of deference

In its own way it's also a manifesto for change - and a manifesto triumphantly implemented - as the figures for church attendance and a walk down any High Street on a Friday night will bear out. Though not quite fully implemented - all over Preston small boys, neatly dressed, will even today trot off to their religious classes once a week, with greater or lesser enthusiasm. But they'll be clad in white, not Sunday best - and their classes are on Fridays. I can still remember the cheerful kids pouring out of the madrassa in Woodhead Road when I lived in Bradford.

What a contrast with a Victorian working man - the Blackburn poet William Billington. What was that about the working class being uninterested in education ?

A dacent chap ull do his best,
An' eawt o' wod he's earnin
Ged th' owdest son a trade, an' th' rest
O' th' lads a bit o' learnin;
Bud iv he's eawt o' wark; wey then,
Unschollard, unbefriended,
His childer grow up into men—
Aw wod this war wur ended!

("this war" being the American Civil War, which closed half the mills in Lancashire)





The third document I stumbled upon while trying to find some lyrics for an old 78 in my posession. The Hubbard family archives contain the unedited memoirs of Frances Roper (nee Hubbard), an upper-middle class Englishwoman of good Christian family, describing the first twenty-odd years of her life in Ealing, the Forest of Dean, and her aunt's orphanage in South London. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

Four salient points - the safety and order of the Edwardian world, the all-pervading influence of Christianity, the still rigid class structure, and (as anyone reading childhood memoirs of the era will recognise) the enormous contrast betwen the tighty regulated and rigidly enforced relationship between adult and child, where any adult's word was law in every sphere, and the freedom/liberty/license of children's relationships with each other. In George Borrow's memoirs he desribes gang warfare and running battles between schoolboys (with however, none of the knife-work you'd get in, say, London today) in the Edinburgh streets. Reading the passage where the village boys torment Frances' Downs syndrome brother, I was reminded of Laurie Lee's gang of Cotswold adolescents plotting to waylay and rape the village idiot - a mentally deficient girl.

(The cultural level of the respectable working class in late Victorian times was remarkable. When our decorators arrive the radio is the first thing to go on. Can't work without it. Once ...

"When we had the local painters and decorators in the house the most beautiful part-singing would re-echo throughout the place all day, as they, the maids, the daily woman and the scullery maid all joined in, each one taking his or her part in perfect harmony." )