Stroud, the budget and rough music’s local traditions

 

Rough Music:
Beating pots and pans,
Making a public din (rather
than a private dinner),
Ringing bells, rattling
bones, blowing horns,
With domestic utensils
utilised in public,
Expressing a note of
disapprobation
Through a cacophony of
disharmony –
It’s PANDEMONIUM.
A symbolic representation
of social discord,
Marking a transgression
of agreed social norms,
The wrong-doer often
shown in effigy,
With a pantomimic
declamation of their crimes,
Sometimes riding the
skimmington,
As in The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Or the 1825 Stroudwater
Weavers’ Riots,
And nineteenth century
Rodborough –
A tradition revived with
the reviling
Of George Osborne and his
July budget,
A budget that will be
responsible
For far more domestic
disharmony,
And transgression of
agreed social norms,
Than could ever be marked
By all the Rough Music
Ever played in ‘Merrie
Englande’.

A Radical Deconstruction of Stroud’s Historical Heritage Information Boards: Part Two

A Radical Deconstruction of Stroud’s Historical Heritage Information Boards: Part Two
See http://radicalstroud.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/strouds-theatres-of-memories.html for the introduction to this series
Part Two: What do these boards portray? A synopsis

1. We’ll start with the information board near Merrywalks car park:
‘Enjoy the welcoming atmosphere of this unique town and its countryside setting. Once famous for its woollen industry, the creative spirit has not been lost.’ ‘Bank Gardens is the perfect place to unwind.’ ‘The town has exciting festivals and events each year as well as a variety of street entertainment.’ ‘Six miles of the beautiful Cotswold Canals. A great place to walk, relax and explore.’
2. The Subscription Rooms: ‘Built in 1833 by public subscription.’
3. Withey’s Yard? ‘Specialist shops and cafes.’
4. Farmers’ Market? ‘The popular showcase for local produce and crafts.’
5. THE OLD GEORGE? ‘Was for many years the principal Hostelry in the Town – a most important place in days of yore! Here the Magistrates & the various societies of the day held their meetings, here balls, assemblies & public and private convivial gatherings, brought together troops of pleasant people, and here many a ‘bon vivant’ caroused and many a weary traveller rested.’ Paul Hawkins Fisher Esq – NOTES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF STROUD – 1871
6. The Shambles? ‘Here is Stroud’s market, traditionally a place of plenty. But in 1766 it was the focus for bread riots by hungry Stroud cloth workers who couldn’t afford the price of a loaf. These rioters were severely put down by the Sheriff of Gloucestershire and his ‘javelin’ men – and the ringleaders hanged … ‘ We then move on to the narrative of ‘Alexander Ball … luckily for posterity … he went on to become one of Nelson’s bravest and most talented naval officers, Sir JA Ball, who captured Malta and defended it against a French siege – achievements celebrated by Coleridge …’Architectural details follow (including a reference to the Arts and Crafts movement), with facts about ownership of land and so on, until we get to a few court records, including ‘1570 Joyce Meredyn did penance at the Friday market for being an unmarried mother’. There is blue plaque in the Shambles, too: John Canton FRS 1718 – 1772 Physicist ATTENDED THE SCHOOL FORMERLY HELD IN THIS BUILDING
7. St Lawrence’s Church: ‘Welcome to the Stroud History Trail. By following the 12 numbered boards, you will visit important landmarks and discover fascinating facts that help make Stroud unique.’ This board recounts the tale of what is believed to be the last duellist to die of wounds in Britain, together with some religious history.
8. Rowcroft and Russell Street: We are told that Laurie Lee ‘was not suited to office work’ here; we are told about ‘a wealthy merchant’, ‘chartered accountants’, ‘fashionable houses for the growing middle classes’ and Rowcroft’s ‘banking tradition’. We are told of Stroud’s MP Lord John Russell, who became Home Secretary and Prime Minister. There is no mention of his inveterate opposition, both locally and nationally, to the democratic movement of Chartism (more of that later). The virtues of Tory paternalist MP, George Holloway, are extolled: ‘who vastly improved the lives of ordinary cloth workers ‘. ‘Traditionally, employees in the clothing trade would work up to 20 hours a day for little pay.’ There is no mention of Holloway’s furious opposition to the collectivism of the co-operative movement (more of that later).
9. The Cross: ‘In days gone by, The Cross was the scene of many a celebration. Guy Fawkes’ night … rolling of tar barrels … Here a bull was once baited, and drunks laid by the heels in the stocks.’ What else? A fortune-teller was put in the pillory; a chandler melted fat for candles. But no mention of Colonel Wolfe billeted nearby during 18th century riots (more of that later), but the wool trade is ‘commemorated in the form of the ram sculpture’.
10. Middle High Street: ‘Many a carriage would have pulled up here over the years, for this is where The George Inn, Stroud’s main coaching inn, once stood … The present Swann Inn was partly built in the stables.’ Picturesque details follow about ballooning (1785) and stalls for the pig market: ‘Once, when the town crier rang his bell to make an announcement, pigs … leapt out of their stall and galloped off home, much to the astonishment of onlookers.’
11. Kendrick Street: It’s hard to imagine that this street was an orchard in the mid-19th century where the founder of Methodism John Wesley once preached to a large open-air congregation … John Miles, a 19th century watchmaker … had a clock with the figure of a little black boy who would sound a bell on the hour with a club … Kendrick Street opened in 1872 … Much of the money needed to build it was provided by Stroud MP and businessman George Holloway, the driving force behind the development. He owned all the east side – the finish and proportions of these shops reflect the high point of prosperity of Victorian Stroud and of Holloway himself.’
‘And think you her husband will vote for the man who calls it fair
To pay her four shillings a dozen for shirts
And for breeches two pence the pair?
No! No! No!’
‘In fact Holloway was known for his excellent employee conditions.’
12. Lansdowne: ‘The 1871 census showed that comfortably-off tradesmen and middle class families were living in the few newly-built houses in Lansdowne … a shortcut by workers from the expanding suburbs in nearby Uplands to the new town centre factories making ready-made clothes’. ‘Opposite the library is the handsome former school of Science and Art, with its busts of eminent Victorians’. ‘The library contains one of Stroud’s most historic relics: the Town Time clock’. ‘Thank you for following the Stroud History Trail. You can learn more about the town’s past by visiting the Museum in the Park in Stratford Park. To discover how interesting and vibrant Stroud is today, do take time to explore … ‘
13. The Station: ‘In the mid-19th Century the quiet and still air of the Stroud Valleys was rent by a blast of steam and a shrill engine whistle; the Great Western Railway had arrived.’ References to the Imperial Hotel follow, and also the Hill Paul building: ‘when it was threatened with demolition by a development company in 2000, local protestors lay in the way of bulldozers in a successful campaign to save it’. ‘The tree is an American beech which has apparently survived from the garden that was there before the arrival of the railway.’
14. The Brunel Goods Shed: ‘is probably the only local Stone Goods Shed to survive from Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s designs … In 1966 the Goods Depot at the Goods Shed was closed by British Rail, making ten men redundant. Steel formed early 20th century extensions and the signal box … were demolished in 1976. Fred Webb was the last signalman … the Brunel Goods Shed opened as a vibrant arts and events centre in 2011.’
15. The statue of George Holloway: ‘He was the founder of the mid-Gloucester working men’s Conservative Association Benefit Society and represented this division in Parliament from 1886 to 1892. For nearly forty years he took a leading part in every political and social movement for the welfare of Stroud. This statue was erected by the members of the above society and other admirers MDCCCXCIV’

Now let’s write an alternative heritage trail and, EP Thompson-like, rescue the lives of lower class women and men from ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’.

Against Austerity March Stream of People’s Consciousness

‘My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common’

It was a carnival, street theatre with a serious message,
And a commitment to action that won’t wither with the winter:
A quarter of a million people rallying and marching
(But like all good revolutions, waiting for everyone to arrive),
Lefty Women, the Suburbs, Guardianistas, Trades Unionists,
Civil Servants, Veterans for Peace, Labour Party branches,
Marxists, Leninists, Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, Medics,
‘Let Dolphins Govern’,
Socialists, Peace Activists, Anarchists, Communists,
Bemused and confused tourists,
The Green Party, Hunt Saboteurs, Class War, Hare Krishna,
Free Palestine, Samba Bands, Whistles, Megaphones,
Tolpuddle Martyrs, nineteenth century trade union banners,
Katie with a self-referential placard:
“Katie says WTF is going on?”
A constant chant:
‘They say cutbacks, We say fight-backs’,
A young woman with a megaphone on the kerbside:
‘Sign up now and support Jeremy Corbyn’ – and we did;
Other placards calling for a 24hour general strike,
Or ‘Organise, Strike, Resist’, right up to ‘Resist, Rebel, Revolt’;
Solidarity between friends, families, strangers,
Reclaiming the streets of Threadneedle,
Wandering over the sunken River Fleet,
Reclaiming Whitehall and Westminster,
Marching past the statue of the Duke of Wellington,
Recalling that more troops were used against the Luddites,
In the north of England in 1812,
Than against the French,
In the Peninsular War of the same year –
This was politics as spectacle and joyous fun,
A dance of resistance reclaiming the streets,
Reclaiming history, reclaiming the present,
Reclaiming the future,
Reminding the country,
That only 25% of the electorate voted Tory:
This is an elective dictatorship –
But when you march past a long line of police,
All bolt upright with all hands clasped in front of genitals,
Glimpsing a statement from John Ball,
From the Peasants’ Revolt, from 1381,
Just as we march over the hidden, medieval River Fleet:
‘My good friends, things cannot go on well in England, nor ever will until everything shall be in common’ –
Then you know your true heritage:
The People’s Assembly,
Passport to Pimlico.

Stroud’s Theatres of Memories

When looking at how Stroud’s history information boards portray the history of Stroud, we could do worse than relocate Bill Schwarz’s observation from Camden to Stroud (foreword to Raphael Samuel’s Theatres of Memory): ‘… the past has almost caught up with the present’. I say this because Stroud’s past been partly press-ganged on these boards to serve the needs of the present: tourists and visitors, spend your money, please.

But only partly press-ganged. The past still exists as a heritage tale on these boards and these boards help us individually make sense of what happened in our town. Bill Schwarz again: ‘The starting point of Theatres of Memory … is that history is not the prerogative of the historian … As readers of Theatres of Memory will know … Samuel is less preoccupied with the procedures of mainstream or professional history … he is engaged by the ‘unofficial knowledges’ that give form to the popular articulations of the past and present’.

So what ‘heritage ’do we find on these information boards? And might we re-write it?

Samuel wrote how ‘heritage’ can become ‘an expressive totality, a seamless web … systemic, projecting a unified set of meanings which are impervious to challenge – what Umberto Eco calls ‘hyper-reality … a ‘closed story’, i.e. a fixed narrative which allows of neither subtext nor counter-readings.’ So, he contended, be suspicious of professional historians: they so often ‘suppress the authorial ‘I’ so that the evidence appears to itself’; but, ‘History is an allegorical as well as … a mimetic art … Like allegorists, historians are adept at discovering a hidden or half-hidden order. We find occult meanings in apparently simple truths … the historian’s ‘reading’ of the evidence could be seen as an essay in make believe … an exercise in the story-teller’s arts …’

So, let’s examine the official heritage of Stroud, via textual selections from the official heritage information boards:

Allegorical? Mimetic? Mythic?

Whose allegory, mimesis and myth?

What did it say in Nineteen Eighty Four?
‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

Subsequent posts will deconstruct Stroud’s heritage boards; after that, the next series of posts will offer an alternative view of Stroud’s ‘heritage’.

Situationism and Stroud

I’ve just finished reading The Beach Beneath the Street, The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International by Mackenzie Wark; here’s a few ideas from the Situationists that will act as a bridge to some subsequent posts about a conceptual re-writing of the historical heritage boards of our town.

Detournement, as in to detour, to hijack,
to lead astray, to appropriate’ …

‘A powerful cultural weapon …
the first step towards a literary communism.’

‘Capital produces a culture in its own image,
a culture of the work as private property …
Detournement sifts through the material remnants
of past and present culture for materials
whose untimeliness
can be utilized against bourgeois culture …’

Lefebre:
‘Today, what is the aim of utopian investigation?
The conquest of everyday life,
The recreation of the everyday …’
‘Two types of time meet and mingle in the everyday.
One is linear time, the time of credit and investment.
The other is a cyclical time, of wages paid and bills due.
Linear temporality is ruling class time;
Cyclical temporality is working class time.’

Hence, derivee, psychogeography, potlatch,
Literary, intellectual, political and material potlatch,
And in practical terms:
A collective rewriting of the official heritage of Stroud …

And so: derivee, psychogeography, potlatch,
Collective walking, recording, inventing and writing,
Reworking Merlin Coverley’s urban outlook,
By wandering through both town and five valleys:

“…the predominant characteristics
of pyschogeographical ideas – urban wandering,
the imaginative reworking of the city,
the otherworldly sense of spirit of place,
the unexpected insights and juxtapositions
created by aimless drifting,
the new ways of experiencing familiar surroundings…”

In and around a mill town in the Cotswolds …
Watch this potlatch space.

,

The Clarion Club

THE CLARION CLUB
Oh! Who rides by day and night, round about
Tinkling his bicycle bell?
Hark how he nears us with laudate shout.
Hurrah! Hurah! ‘Tis the Clarion Scout!
List to the story he tells.

What tho’ the weather be cold as an icicle,
Bravely he clings to his Clarion bicycle
Scattering leaflets, sticking up labels,
Filling a breach at old hostelry tables.
Such is the being I’ll sing you about.
Three hearty cheers for the Clarion Scout!

(Chorus):
Hurrah for the Clarion Scout!
Hail him with a strenuous shout!
As bold as Lysander
To push propaganda.
Hurrah for the Clarion Scout.

Down to the haunts of parson and squire,
Putting opponents to rout;
Bestriding his steed with pneumatic tyre,
Through village and hamlet, thro’ mud and thro’ mire,
Rideth the Clarion Scout.

Nailing down lies and disposing of fables,
Improving the landscape by sticking up labels:
What does he care for the wind and the weather?
Be he alone or a hundred together,
He’s always eager to join in a bout.
Then give three cheers for the Clarion Scout!

What do these labels mysteriously teach?
What is the message they bring?
Something that comes within everyone’s reach:
A gospel of Brotherhood – that’s what they preach.
In praise of that gospel I sing.
They say that all produce belongs to the toiler;
To sweep from old England each idler and spoiler,
Abolish the sweater and rack-renting knave;
The land for the people – the just and the brave,
These lessons with vigour he’s spreading about
Is humanity’s saviour, the Clarion Scout.

Ebenezer Scrooge and Uncle Sam

Our rulers have always found poverty a head-ache:
The timeless search for the nice distinction
Between the deserving and the undeserving poor,
The worldly-wise demand –
Their unvarying, relentless meanness
Supported by protestant virtues such as thrift,
And Diary of a Nobody self-help:
‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’;
‘Stand on your own two feet’;
‘Charity begins at home’;
‘You have to be cruel to be kind’,
And so on and so on and so on,
Right back to early life nursery rhymes
(‘Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark!
The beggars are coming to town,
One in rags, one in tags,
And one in a velvet gown.’):
This is the convenient ideology
That has kept us in our place since Tudor times –
The whipping and branding of vagabonds,
Beggars, tramps, in Shakespeare’s England,
Sending them back to the parish of their birth,
‘Kicked to and fro like footballs in the wind’;
The benevolence of Thomas Malthus:
If population increases geometrically,
And food production arithmetically,
Why! Starvation, malnutrition, famine
And early death for the lower orders
Should resolve that imbalanced equation.
God bless the Reverend Malthus!
(You are an ingrate, Oliver Twist.)
The 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act,
Banning outdoor relief, dividing families
Into workhouse wings, where ‘less eligibility’
Made conditions inside the workhouse
Worse than the worst paid job outside;
And now? Once more, we see the old, old story:
The criminalization of the poor,
The apotheosis of charity;
‘Prosecutions for begging rise 70%’,
Said the headline in the Guardian,
Whilst a letter told a Black Friday tale:
‘Shoppers … were buttonholed by assertive volunteers
and urged to give donations to the local food bank.
Lists thrust … requested tins and packets’
In a rewrite of A Christmas Carol;
At this time of the year, when tradition dominates discourse,
Together with its other side of the coin –
Modernity and Americanization,
It’s no bad thing to remember the traditions of the Left:
‘Parity not Charity’,
Is a reasonable discourse,
Whenever one is charitable,
In this hugger-chugger world in which we live,
Where Ebenezer Scrooge walks arm in arm with Uncle Sam.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the GWR and anonymous Navvies

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the GWR and anonymous Navvies
I am grateful to Peter Griffin and his piece in Stroud Local History Society’s Millennium booklet, “Charles Richardson Helps To Bring The Railway To Stroud”, for giving me the ideas for this piece. Richardson was a resident engineer for the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway in the early days of the GWR and Peter was given access to his journal.
Richardson first visited Stroud in the spring of 1835, with Brunel; he spent his first night in the Royal George Hotel in King Street. Peter comments that “The evening appears to have been rather lively” – as Richardson’s journal records “… a great row in the house, one man tore the coat off the back of another” – but, nevertheless, Richardson had to get up early the next day to sally forth and commence his duties.
He enjoyed the journey: “…Went in Mr B’s carriage up the valley of Stroud – beautiful scenery all along”; he then went to carry out some levelling and surveying near the mouth of the canal tunnel at Sapperton, but “lost our way by going along wrong road, but came into the line shortly after, and continued levelling along road through wood till we met a man who showed us the benchmark – we walked a little further and met Mr Brunel and rest of party – walked a long way alongside of Canal till we came to Mr B’s chaise.”
His journal also reveals something about the workforce: on the 20th February, 1837, as a consequence of “Disagreement among the men [near Gloucester]. Turned off all Baker’s gang except two …” Then on the 2nd of March, “… Rode to Glos’ter. Paid off nine men and sent Baker, their ganger, to Sapperton …” Then on the 18th March, “… Walked with Brereton to Sapperton. Paid men. Had some trouble with Hurst and other of the men. Short of cash.”

A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be
Everyone knows the name:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
And everyone knows that photograph:
The top hat, the waistcoat,
The cigar and the chain-link,
The busy, preoccupied,
Self-assured pride
Of the Victorian engineer,
The man of his moment,
Proud of his steamships,
And proud of his Great Western Railway –
The dignified certainty of genius,
Knowing that his 120 mile long line
Would run all the long level way
From Paddington to Bristol,
With a mean gradient of just 1 in 1,380,
Just as his drawing board had intended.

But where are the men who built it,
And where are the women,
Who followed the permanent way?
Where are the Fox Talbot portraits
Of the men whose picks and shovels,
Slide rule discipline,
And one hundred deaths,
Carried the line right through Box Tunnel,
So that the sun shone clean right through,
On Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s birthday?
Where is the tribute to their collective anonymity?

A working class hero is something to be.

Navvies and Legerdemain
Two thousand miles of bucket-lift airshafts,
A million men in diseased shanty towns,
Or lost on the tramp in the town or the country,
With no union-pub to rest a wet head,
No Blacksmith’s Arms or Plough in the county,
A damp clay embankment instead for a bed;
Or cutting or gradient, a bridge or a wagon,
A station or brick works, a clay pit or trench,
Or making the running up Sonning Cutting,
A forty foot climb with barrow and earth,
Two miles of running and landslide bone crushing,
With pick and with shovel, gunpowder and shot.
Tunnelling through the mud and the water,
Conned by contractor and ganger and truck,
Calumnied by the press and the pulpit,
We travel today on their muscle and sweat,
And train names today tell of white collar fame,
But who can remember a navvy’s true name?
Their fustian skill and anonymous strength
Built all our lines on their steam power length,
But it’s hard to discover a navvy’s true name,
In railway history’s ledger’s domain.