Author: Stuart Butler

1916-1926: from the Somme to the General Strike

The British Army at the start of the Great War
Was essentially ‘Wellingtonian’:
A predominantly country-set set of officers,
A predominantly rural army of men,
Battalions and companies of men and officers,
With a reverence for tradition and locality,
Be it the BEF or the Territorials:
‘I daresay it is snobbish to say so, but the fact remains that men will follow a gentleman much more readily than they will an officer whose social position is not so well assured.’
Kitchener’s recruits changed that, of course,
And then with conscription, by the end of the war,
5 million industrial workers had joined the army –
‘More than 10% of the … workforce joined up in the first two months of war’;
Two and a half million men had volunteered by 1916
And a further 2 million men indicated
That they would willingly countenance conscription;
This patriotism still meant some cultural problems, however:
Trade unionism, for example;
But, in the main, military discipline did its job:
From saluting right through to executions …
Although when trouble did break out, as at Etaples,
Then the old class antagonisms came to the surface –
As with General Haig:
‘Men of this stamp are not content with remaining quiet,
they come from a class which like to air real or fancied grievances…’;
But class prejudice was of little consequence
When placed alongside racial prejudice –
When colonial support workers went on strike in France,
Summary public shootings were the response.

So, after this contextualization,
I, do make Oath, that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to His Majesty King George the Fifth, His Heirs, and Successors, and that I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend His Majesty, His Heirs, and Successors, in Person, Crown and Dignity, against all enemies, and will observe and obey all orders of His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, and of the Generals and Officers set over me.
So help me God.

So now on to the Somme:

‘Pals’ Battalions, on the whistle, lads. Steady pace in straight lines.
Into the remembrance of statistics’:
‘How many officers and men went over the top on July 1st 1916?’
‘150,000, sir.’
‘What weight did the men carry?”
’66 lbs: rifle, grenades, ammo, rations, cape, helmet, gas masks (two), goggles, sandbags (empty, four), field dressing, pick/shovel, water bottle, mess tin, sir.’
‘And our casualties?’
’19,000 dead and 38,000 wounded. Highest figures ever in a single day, sir.’
‘Good man. Correct again. And was that it?’
‘No, sir: another five months of bloody attrition, sir, and another 420,000 casualties. ’
‘How long was the front?”
‘Eighteen miles, sir; but listen to this account of the 1st of July from Captain Gerald Brenan, M.C., sir. It gives a flavour of the battle.’
‘The battle opened a little after sunrise on 1 July 1916, with a bombardment that shook the air with its roar and sent up the earth on the German trenches in gigantic fountains. It seemed as though no human being could live through that. Then our men climbed by short ladders onto the parapet and began to move forward shoulder to shoulder, one behind the other, across the rough ground. They moved slowly because each of them carried a weight of 66 pounds. Then the German barrage fell on our trenches and their machine-guns began to rattle furiously. Clouds of blue and grey smoke from the bursting shells, mixing with a light ground mist, hid the general view, but in the gaps I could see little ant-like figures, some of them keeping on in a broken line, others falling, crawling, lying still. Each of them carried on his backs a tin triangle to assist in their identification by our artillery, and the early morning sun shone on these triangles and made them glitter. But as the hours passed I could not see that any of them had reached the German front line and later I knew why: our bombardment had not penetrated the deep dugouts the Germans had excavated in the chalk and their machine-gunners had come out and were mowing our men down …
The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, the heat of that scorching summer day grew and grew, but though I was never able to get any coherent picture, the failure of our assault on Serre gradually became obvious. Those three or four hundred yards of rough ground that lay in front of our front lines were thickly sprinkled with silver triangles, only a few of which still moved, while the German parapet was bare and still the pounding of our front trenches went on …
After fifty-six hours spent in shell-holes, sleeping among and even pillowed by dead comrades, without water, without food, having to defend themselves the whole time, a few of the more determined had managed to creep or fight their way back through the German lines to tell their tale.’
‘ Now here’s the last two stanzas from a poem by Second-Lieutenant Robert Ernest Vernede, 3rd Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, sir: it’s a poem about three selfless and quietly heroic sergeants who were killed, sir.’
‘Those sergeants I lost at Delville
On a night that was cruel and black,
They gave their lives for England’s sake,
They never will come back.

What of the hundreds in whose hearts
Thoughts no less splendid burn? …
I wonder what England will do for them
If ever they return?’

‘A few more statistics please, my good man. Death by our own hands – by the war’s end, how many of our men were executed by firing squad?’
‘346, I think, sir.’
‘Do you have any reports in my valise that we could share?’
‘Course, sir. Certainly sir. Here we are; three cases of privates.’
“The man has a very bad character both in civil life and in the army. He is probably useless as a soldier. For the above reasons I feel it my duty to recommend that the sentence be carried out. I am quite aware that the general worthlessness of the man is inclined to influence above decision, but I have given due weight to this point and see no reason to allow it to alter my opinion. I do not think it affects my judgment.”
“This man was not a man who gave much trouble neither was he in any way a man whom one would pick out as a good man. He is considered by his Platoon Commander to be of poor intellect, and I consider that he is a typical slum product of a low level intelligence…”
“The …Battalion … contains a proportion of rough characters and lately there has been a certain amount of insubordination especially when orders are issued for heavy work in the trenches. I am reluctantly compelled to state that I think an example is necessary in the interests of discipline of the Brigade.”
‘Is that enough, sir?’
‘Anything on NCO’s?’
‘Course, sir. Here we are again, happy as can be, all good friends and jolly good company.’
“As an NCO he is a failure, being too familiar with his subordinates, and surly and morose to his superiors … Chief cause of complaint is that NCOs will not assert themselves as they come from the same class of men as those in the ranks and think too much of their position after the war when they will all be in the workshops again.”
‘Were most men executed for funk? Cowardice?’
‘No, sir. Desertion. Here’s the views of two different generals, sir.’
“‘I consider the extreme penalty should be inflicted because: (a) the man has already deserted once on active service (b) he has no intention of fighting for his country (c) is quite worthless, as a soldier or in any other capacity and is better removed from the world.”
“He was no rotter deserving to die like that. He was merely fragile. He had volunteered to fight for his country … at the dictates of his own young heart. He failed. And for that failure he was condemned to die …”
‘What did the young man say?’
‘He said, sir, “What will my mother say?”’
‘You’re going on a walk today, aren’t you?”
‘Yes sir, Bristol, sir; we’re meeting at Temple Meads and then walking around St Philips and the Dings; we’re remembering the days of the Triple Industrial Alliance before the war. And remembering Alfred Jefferies who lived in St Philips and was executed for desertion on November 1st 1916: firing squad at dawn, sir. His brother Arthur was killed in 1916 too, at the Somme, sir. A bad year for the family, sir.’
‘Cheer me up, old chap, for God’s sake. Sing me a song or something.’
‘Course sir, certainly sir.’
“If you want to find the old battalion,
I know where they are, I know where they are, I know where they are
If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are,
They’re hanging on the old barbed wire,
I’ve seen ’em, I’ve seen ’em, hanging on the old barbed wire.
I’ve seen ’em, I’ve seen ’em, hanging on the old barbed wire.”

‘Before I finish, sir, one last thought. I’ve often reminisced about the old days sir, and one thing’s stuck in my mind but it’s rarely mentioned, sir. You know how people talk about the sacrifices and heroism at the Somme and so on, sir. But I’ve often thought what if those men had lived? Then we wouldn’t have lost the General Strike ten years later, sir. Just a thought sir – but worth thinking about.’

‘I’d like to finish, now, sir, if I may, with the last two stanzas of Siegfried Sassoon’s poem Aftermath, from March 1919. Thank you, sir, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you.’

“Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz –
The nights you watched and wired and dug sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench –
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?”

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack –
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized you and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads – those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?”

‘Just think, sir, those boys might have won the General Strike, sir. And I wouldn’t be calling you sir, sir. Would I?’

The Anniversary of the NHS: Parity not Charity

Tucked between the Trinity Rooms and the Hospital we celebrated the NHS’s 65th birthday this week in the Pocket Park.
Built and given to the people in the 1880s, the Trinity Rooms acted as a ward in the First World War for troops, many, almost certainly, wounded on the Somme. The stone over the entrance of the hospital follows with the year 1919.
In the Pocket Park we reflected on the debts we all owe the NHS. James read words of the founding figure, Aneurin Bevan, whose friend, disciple, successor as MP for Ebbw Vale and biographer was a young Michael Foot.
Also reported this week is news of Foot’s statue in Plymouth, his home city, defaced and daubed with swastikas. He was born overlooking Argyll Park, the original ground of Plymouth Argyll, and he was a lifelong supporter on the terraces where Plymothians were always proud of him.

James Pentney

I was born at home in 1951
(Three years after the NHS came into being),
In a prefab, local authority council housing
Provided for WW2 servicemen and women:
It was the spirit of 1945,
The word ‘National’ was everywhere and on everything:
There was to be no return to laissez-faire,
There was to be no return to the 30’s and the Depression,
No return to the lottery of the market,
It was a thank you to the working class
For all the privations of six years of total war;

My birth wasn’t easy:
Dad rode out on his bike
To collect some gas apparatus
To aid my mother in her pain
And aid my passage into this world.

I dunno –
For all I know,
I might have died and mum might have died
Without the NHS and that gas apparatus:
I wouldn’t be able to remember those visits
To the NHS clinic for the free powdered milk and orange juice,
Or the visits to my bedside of refugee,
And survivor of fascism, Dr. Liechenstein;
And God knows what life would have been like for dad
And my sister and brother, without mum;

Granny and Grampy Butler came to visit me straightway,
For I was born on their wedding anniversary,
August 22nd;
Gramp was lucky – even though he was made unemployed
After WW1 and the family had to live in a Nissan hut,
He escaped wounding and trauma after four years at the front –
But in these early July days
Just after the centenary of the Battle of the Somme,
Let’s remember what support the wounded,
Traumatised and gassed veterans could obtain before 1948:
Patchy charity, the British Red Cross, the British Legion,
Poppy Day, nurses selling flags on the streets, cuts in the dole:

A true commemoration of the sacrifice of those soldiers at the Somme,
Would be the flourishing of a National Health Service in the 21st century:
No back to the future,
No flag days,
No war,
No charity,
But parity.

Farage may have gone but Faragism is still strong

Farage may have gone but Faragism still exists

We associate Fascism with late nineteenth century ideology,
And twentieth century practice in Europe and South America:
The cult of the leader; control of the media; control of the economy;
The cult of war; of racism; of the survival of the fittest; of the military;
Of masculinity; of femininity; of the corporate state; of the nation state –
And a sort of grainy, generalised One Nation, One People, One Leader sort of thing,
Be it Falangist, Poujadist, Peronist, Allende, Greece, Brazil, Panama,
Hitler, Mussolini, Portugal, et al,
And so on and so on and so on and on and on and on.

Another characteristic of the fascist state is the use of plebiscites and referendums,
State control of the media makes it easy to control the minds of the populace
(Hitler used three),
And didn’t Goebbels say that if you’re going to tell a lie, then tell a big one,
And if you tell it often enough then the people will end up believing it.
When the Daily Mail and Daily Express tried to control Stanley Baldwin
(Just before Hitler destroyed Weimar democracy),
He commented in his characteristically masculine pipe smoking way:
‘What the proprietorship of these newspapers is aiming at is power, but power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’
And now we have had Farage’s Breaking Point poster,
And Arron Banks, multimillionaire UKIP funder, saying,
‘Facts don’t work’, and that’s it. The Remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.’
What else?
A Leave.eu Facebook video, visited over a million and a half times,
‘Are you concerned about the amount of crime committed in the UK by foreign nationals?
Isn’t it time to take back control?’
(With mood music suggested by a hypnotist, btw.)
What else?
The 500% increase in hate crimes,
‘The genie let out of the bottle’,
Farage’s comments since the referendum,
About the ordinary decent people fighting a successful war
Against the banks and multinationals
(What’s his ‘job’ again?),
Then his rant at the European Parliament
(He is becoming increasingly bellicose and histrionic, is he not?
Those hand movements, when interviewed,
A subliminal gestural reminder of the Third Reich)),
While Le Pen simpered in admiration:
‘Look how beautiful history is.’

I thought of John Heartfield’s late-Weimar agit-prop,
Showing big business originally pulling Hitler’s strings –
And how we might now have a 21st century variant on the old model of fascism:
One where a liberal-democratic free press all pull the same strings,
All at the same time, all in the same right wing direction,
At the behest of the proprietorship:
A 21st century mass media fascism –
And just as Herbert Marcuse wrote of ‘One Dimensional Man’,
Where liberal-capitalist society gives the illusion of freedom,
So as to maintain and manipulate overall control –
The late 20th century example being ‘Penguin Marxism’,
So we have social media hefts today …

In the twentieth century, fascism used referendums to legitimise decisions:
Fascism was the cause of the referendums;
But what if fascism can now be the consequence of a referendum?
What if Farangism – like Hitler – takes control of the strings?
When negotiations for access to the single market end the street dream,
The street dream of ‘controlling our borders’,
When ‘Stop Immigration, Start Repatriation’
Doesn’t happen,
When anger erupts on the streets …

It won’t be ‘The first time as tragedy,
The second time, as farce’,
It will be a catastrophe –
Farage might have resigned as leader of UKIP,
Farage might have seemed to have gone,
But Faragism is still strong:

A poll shows 16% of Brexiteers supporting repatriation.

Whistle for the Somme, Rodborough Churchyard, 1.7.16

Whistle for the Somme, Rodborough Churchyard, 1.7.16

Sunlight flashed across the churchyard yew trees
As the whistle blew at half past seven,
Children scattered poppies in the rain soaked grass
(Who can forget the innocence of Mrs Yolland’s reception classes,
Twenty years ago and more at Rodborough School:
‘I can run through a field of poppies’?),
Wreaths were laid at the graves of two Somme victims of this parish:
A commonwealth war grave for William Stevens of Rubble Hole, Little London,
And a home-fashioned iron cross for Charles Burroughs,
Of Court Bank, Butterow.

Traffic hummed in the streets – or was it horses’ hooves?
A skylark soared and sang on Rodborough Common,
The same song as on the Somme a hundred years before,
Clouds scudded along Ivor Gurney’s Severn,
Fifty people made their solemn way homewards, to school, or to work.

We passed Rodborough’s Whistle for the Somme notice board,
Or was it the MR James’ ghost story –
Oh, Whistle and I’ll come to You, my Lad …
I left for work on my bike, drifting through overheard conversations:
‘What have I got to worry about, compared with that?’
Then in the shop, getting my newspaper, a mum chastising her child:
‘Oh you are grumpy today. It’s not the end of the world.’
I got to work and filled in an official form with the bald date:
1.7.16
And heard my gramp singing to me from
‘Somewhere in France’,
His old music hall Christmas routine:
‘Where do flies go in the wintertime?
Do they go to gay Paree?
When they’ve finished buzzing round our beef and ham,
When they’ve finished jazzing round our raspberry jam,
Do they clear like swallows every year
To a distant foreign clime?
Tell me, tell me, where do flies go in the wintertime?’

Oh, Whistle and I’ll come to You, my Lad …

Memory Lanes: Brexit, Chartists, Chindits and Skylarks

The Stonehouse Brick Company’s Edwardian insignia
Are easy to miss as you walk past Spillman’s Pitch,
Where the cobbler sat tapping away, born in the Crimean War,
But still remembered by Irene, just a few years ago,
And where Old Tom, the delivery horse, trudged over the cobblestones,
Munching his way through front garden carrots,
Watching the deliveries of coal and milk and spuds and beer and bread,
And, the fishmonger, basket on head,
Listening to the housewives’ weekly question,
“What have you got for me today?”
While in the evening, tired out mill hands
Would take their beer jugs down to Vesey’s Offie,
Half way down steep Spillmans Pitch,
Getting some choc drops for the children,
Or those long liquorice bootlaces.

Rob and I talked of our teaching careers,
Nearly seventy years’ worth between us,
And that seventy years took us along the Nailsworth branch line,
To see the rusting mighty iron capstans,
One, now toppled, but one still firm and strong,
Once used for winching trucks down the gas works siding,
To a coal tippler (concrete remains there still),
Where a hydraulic ram tipped the trucks’ coal
Down a chute to a narrow gauge hopper,
And thence over two bridges and the Frome,
To its destination at Stroud Gasworks –
Spillmans in the 1920s must have been more
LS Lowry than rus in urbe:
Steam whistle hooters,
Gas hissing in mantles,
Rain streaking the windowpanes,
Flat caps bobbing in unison,
Stout boots clattering on the cobbles,
Bread and marg in your pocket,
A small army on the march,
Wife at the washing:
Spillman’s Pitch,
Another Monday morning;

We walked on through water time,
Streams and millraces and water wheels,
To reach Woodchester and Water Lane:
This canopied holloway takes you to the prehistory of Selsley Common
(And memory lane),
One of a number of ancient tracks
That would have interlinked the Five Valley burial mounds and barrows
On the hilltops and valley sides,
A Neolithic tracery, connecting sites at Randwick, Woodchester, Nympsfield, Minchinhampton, Avening, Horsley, the Stanleys, Uley –
Leading to the vision (and occasional roar) of the tidal, mystical Severn,
The sweeping light of sunset cloudscapes,
The silhouettes of the distant mountains;

I talked of my father’s Chindit war –
The Channel 4 programme the night before:
‘Every man who returned was a casualty’,
And how after dad’s funeral,
When walking with Trish on the common,
A skylark soared and sang high in the February sky,
And how I pledged that skylarks and memories of dad
Would be forever conjoined –
Just as I finished this monologue,
We reached the top of the barrow,
Where a skylark stood, staring at us from the ground,
While two others soared singing to the heavens;
I’m not a pagan, but it makes you wonder …

But we did not have long to muse on this:
Our stunned stupefaction was immediately jolted
By the arrival of different ghosts –
Thousands of working men, women and children,
Marching up to the hustings up on the common,
Bands playing, music flowing, banners streaming:
‘LIBERTY’, ‘EQUAL RIGHTS AND EQUAL LAWS’,
‘FOR A NATION TO BE FREE IT IS SUFFICIENT THAT SHE WILLS IT’ …
One Chartist told me how her newspaper,
The Northern Star was eagerly read and shared,
By the working classes,
With discussion groups in the home and pubs,
And how it would herald a new age of democracy –

I showed her the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and the Sun,
We told her about the referendum and the power and lies of the press,
And how referendums had historically been a tool of populist dictatorships,
Hitler used three, for example,
We gazed at the banner fluttering in the gathering breeze:
‘FOR A NATION TO BE FREE IT IS SUFFICIENT THAT SHE WILLS IT’.

When we turned back round to talk,
The crowds, the hustings, the banners, the bands,
The skylarks had all disappeared,
All that remained was the banner:
‘FOR A NATION TO BE FREE IT IS SUFFICIENT THAT SHE WILLS IT’,
And beneath its shade,

The headlines of the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and the Sun.

We walked into the sunlight,
I showed Rob another headline:
‘As Farage looked on, Le Pen said;
“Look how beautiful beautiful history is …”‘

Rodborough Gardens Sculpture Trail: A Day in a post-Brexit Life

Rodborough Sculpture Garden Trail

It was strange returning to the Old Endowed School,
Where just three days before we had voted
In the referendum;
Members of the Rodborough branch
Of the People’s Republic of Stroud
Gathered in Church Place,
Sharing their sense of vote-shock,
Over soup, tea and cake,
Beneath the red, white and blue bunting;
Trench cake too, for the forthcoming
Churchyard Somme centenary;

But life goes on –

‘How many kinds of sweet flowers grow
in an English country garden?
I’ll tell you now of some that I know and those I miss,
you’ll surely pardon.’

Seven gardens were open to the public,
With sixteen artists exhibiting;
Families walking past
A quaint hand painted wooden sign:
‘GARDENS AND SCULPTURE TRAIL’,
With an arrow pointing left,
The necessary word, ‘TICKETS’,
Only just squeezing into its allocated space;
A greenhouse from the 1920s,
With bakelite attachments
For modernist electricity;
No. 2 Church Place;
Clinton House, Church Place;
Highcroft, Church Place;
Derrigar, Walkley Hill;
Steepways, Walkley Hill;
Glebe House, Walkley Hill;
Champagne at Rodborough Court from Omnitrack,
The sponsors of the occasion,
With displays and pictures artfully showing the gardens
In their Victorian and Edwardian heyday,

Before Arthur Lancelot Apperly, son of Sir Alfred and Lady Apperly of Rodborough Court, marched off to war, to be killed in action in 1916.
We returned to the Old Endowed School,
Once a chantry house,
Where masses were sung for the souls of the dead,
Seven hundred years ago –
It’s hard now to glimpse the shadows of sheep herds,
Or watch the wool on Cotswold packhorse routes,
En route to river, sea and then Flanders;
It’s hard to hear Rodborough’s coins jingling
In treasure chests sent south to Southampton,
For Rodborough’s feudal lord, the Abbey of Caen
(The chantry by now a secular store for
Mammon and the best Rodborough wool) –
France and England entwined,
Yet rent apart with the 100 Years’ War.

Two centuries later, the Tudor Reformation closed down
The chantries, abbeys and monasteries,
And the chantry building would become a parish workhouse;
Then a charitable school, then a state school,
Then a welcome village hall in the Great War,
Then a social club and place to pay your rates
In those Radio Times
Great Depression times
Between the wars –

And today, a place where people meet
(A quintessentially – seemingly – English occasion),
Trying to ignore the aftermath of the referendum,
A rus in urbe sequestered parish.

But the bright dawn didn’t last:
It always rains on Sundays:
Gurney’s Somme and the Severn are still conjoined.

(Artists exhibiting: Lucy Birtles, Ann-Magreth Bohl, Danny Evans, Julie Fowler, Kim Francis, Paul Grellier, Helen Lomberg, Hannah Mathison, Amanda Moriarty, Jim Pentney, Marion Mitchell, Dave King, Darren Rumley, Rebecca Simmons, Ian Rank-Broadley and Josef Kaspar)
(Jim included work on Gurney)

Money raised for:
Stroud Women’s Refuge;
Stroud Valleys Project;
The Old Endowed School.

A Peculiarly English Form of Fascism?

I think we are witnessing a peculiarly English/British form of Fascism –
We have the civilised classical Johnsonian face,
The Govian exhortation to ignore the ‘experts’,
The atavistic appeal to emotion,
Farage and his decent, ordinary people
Fighting without bullets against the multinationals,
For a bright new dawn where tomorrow belongs to him,
Together with: ‘F*** Off, Europe, We’re voting out’,
From some England football fans at the Euros;
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail seems back in the 1930s,
When it supported Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts;
Once more, it feels as though the toffs
Are mobilising and diverting the masses,
With carefully fostered nationalism
And carefully calibrated xenophobia;
We have seen how dragon’s teeth have been sown
For over a generation by Conservatives, New Labour,
Liberal Democrats and a relentlessly right wing press:
Now the vilification of ‘socialism’ brings its harvest of hatred:
If the working class has been informed that it mustn’t vote socialist,
Then it votes nationalist and Brexit:

So much for the Third Way.

What next?

Gloucestershire and the Peasants’ Revolt

Walking between Climperwell and Caudle Green,
You walk through prehistory
As well as the spring-source of the River Frome;
And then at Grid reference SO 928117,
Latitude 51.80389980, Longitude -2.10581700
(400m metres south-west of Groveridge House,
Near Brimpsfield),
You pass an old Roman site,
On top of which stood a deserted medieval village,
Through which drivers now speed on their oblivious way;
But to the east of the road lies most of the settlement,
Earthworks about half a metre in height.

Excavations have found stone walls and rubble;
Field walking found 12th-13th century medieval pottery
(As well as Roman materials);
A holloway ran parallel to today’s road
(Containing tofts – building and croft platforms),
Other trackways, field patterns, lynchets,
And enclosures can be descried
With earthworks to the east indicating a sheepcote.

The field evidence is obvious,
But the documentary evidence is more of toponymy:
The fields are first named Manless Town as late as 1622;
The area has also been named Haywick; Munley Towne;
Old Mondley; Longlorn Town and Keywich –
No taxation records have been found.

A century later we have this survey’s definition:
‘A patch of Plumb Hey within the ruins of Old Mondley formerly a Market Town and a Roman Station was Sacked
and Burnt in the Wars of King John’;

Samuel Rudder called it a hamlet in 1779 –
‘If a place can be called so with no house in it’;
He wrote of ‘Haywick’ as the original name,
With a weekly market
‘Until all men were killed in the reign of Edward the Third,
And all the women and children departed,
Since when it became known as Manless Town’;

Another survey toward the end of the 18th century
(A ‘Survey of Lands in Brimpsfield’)
Speaks of ‘Longlorn Town, which was destroyed in the reign of King John, then and still traces of Foundations to be seen and it has since that time been called Manless Town’;

More prosaically, but just as tellingly, we can wonder
Whether the overlaying sheepcote on the eastern side
Might not indicate the turfing out of the peasantry,
And a manorial switch from arable to pastoral farming:
Sheep and the lucrative medieval wool trade.

But if we wander up here in a winter dusk,
Perhaps we might hear the voices of the peasantry,
And follow in their footsteps,
To what was once a hamlet of houses, gardens, yards,
And ditches, with ridge and furrowed open fields,
And quarries, enclosures, streets, paddocks,
And footpaths to Brimpsfield Church,
And Sir John Giffard’s Brimpsfield Castle –
A testament to King Edward the Second’s order that
‘Not one stone should henceforth stand upon the other’,
After Sir John dared to rebel.

Did the locals care?

Pasture and turbary,
Estovers and piscary;
Pannage and housebote,
Shack and ploughbote.

     ‘It is the custom in England … for the nobility to have great power over the common people, who are serfs. This means that they are bound by law and custom to plough the field of their masters, harvest the corn, gather it into barns, and thrash and winnow the grain; they must also mow and carry home the hay, cut and collect wood, and perform all manner of tasks of this kind.’

     ‘Let the reeve be all the time with the serfs in the lord’s fields … because serfs neglect their work and it is necessary to guard against their fraud … the reeve must oversee all work … if the serfs do not work well, let them be punished.’

     ‘What sayest thou, ploughman?
How do you do your work?’

     ‘Oh, my lord, I work very hard; I go out at dawn, driving the cattle to the field and I yoke them to the plow. Nor is the weather so bad in winter that I dare to stay at home for fear of my lord: but when the oxen are yoked, and the ploughshare and coulter attached to the plough, I must plough one whole field a day, or more.’

     ‘Have you any assistant?’

     ‘I have a boy to drive the oxen with a goad, and he too is hoarse with cold and shouting.’

     ‘What more do you in a day?’

     ‘Certainly, I do more. I must fill the manger of the oxen with hay, and water them and carry out the dung.’

     ‘Indeed. That is a great labour.’

     ‘Even so. It is a great labour, for I am not free.’

     I’d like to think the village became deserted because everyone got so fed up that they marched off to join the Peasants’ Revolt …

     ‘The rebels petitioned the king that all preserves of water, parks, and woods should be made common to all: so that throughout the kingdom the poor as well as the rich should be free to take game in water, fish ponds, woods and forests as well as to hunt hares in the fields – and to do these and many other things without impediment.’

“The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.”

     ‘You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you , and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity . However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. Choose now which you want to follow.’

Let’s imagine that this deserted medieval village near Brimpsfield was home to a community of Lollards (the word possibly comes from an old Dutch word meaning “to mutter”). Lollards rejected papal authority and various beliefs about the sacraments, transubstantiation, confession and the elevation of saints. They also placed an emphasis upon preaching rather than liturgy; they objected to the wealth and what they saw as the greed of the Church. The Lollards emphasised the importance of individual interpretation of scripture rather than priestly ceremony: this had radical freethinking implications.
Archbishop Courtenay of Canterbury (who succeeded Archbishop Sudbury, murdered in the Peasants’ Revolt) decided to extirpate this movement by banishing followers of John Wycliffe or forcing them to recant. The movement was linked in the eyes of many to the Peasants’ Revolt: hence its persecution.
It was strongest in the west of England and the heresy continued here, as it were, underground. Professor Christopher Hill saw a direct link between the Lollards and William Tyndale over a century later. He argued that the cloth trade with its links with London and the continent helped foster the spread of heterodox opinions. Gloucestershire was unusual, he said, for its Lollard survival; it was a key county in the continuity of belief stretching from the Middle Ages to the Tudor Reformation. The Wycliffite innovation of translating parts of the Bible into the vernacular would reach its destiny through this county.
Wouldn’t it be nice to imagine a link between this Gloucestershire radicalism of the fourteenth century and the Diggers of Slimbridge in the seventeenth century?
There’s no point in fetishising documentary evidence: imagine and re-create with guerilla memorialisation.

Post-script

Truth is stranger than …
First time as tragedy, second time …

The day after posting the above, it was stated that the reason why the heir to the throne did not attend his mother’s birthday celebrations in London was because he was attending a village fete at …. Brimpsfield.

The Unknown Army: Mutinies In The British Army In World War One

By Gloden Dallas and Douglas Gill

The authors make the introductory point that the early 20th century British army was still almost Wellingtonian, despite some reforms: ‘I daresay it is snobbish to say so, but the fact remains that men will follow a gentleman much more readily than they will an officer whose social position is not so well assured.’ Furthermore, the majority of the army came from rural areas; the urban working class was in an extreme minority; the battalion was the basic unit of the army and drilling was seen as important as preparation for war .The battalion had something of a family atmosphere: 800 or so men, organised into companies, with a local attachment and a reverence for tradition.

Kitchener’s recruits meant the end, of course, of this BEF and Territorial Army tradition. By the end of the war, 5 million industrial workers had joined the army – ‘Nor were they unwillingly dragged in. More than 10% of the industrial workforce joined up in the first two months of war…’ Two and a half million men had volunteered by 1916 and a further 2 million men indicated that they would willingly countenance conscription.

This patriotism still meant some cultural problems, however: trade unionism, for example. But, in the main, military discipline did its job: from saluting right through to executions. But when trouble did break out, as at Etaples, then the old class antagonisms came to the surface – as with General Haig: ‘Men of this stamp are not content with remaining quiet, they come from a class which like to air real or fancied grievances…’ But class prejudice was of little consequence when placed alongside racial prejudice – when colonial support workers went on strike in France, summary public shootings were the response.

The top brass military and domestic fears of 1917 and early 1918 were son forgotten when the late summer and autumn 1918 Allied advance occurred, but the armistice only led to demands for speedy demobilization – and the strikes and mutinies of 1919. And that leads to the question of whether there is any substance to the claim that revolution could have been a possibility in 1919, rather than 1918. The essential question underpinning this is whether the army strikes and mutinies could be defined as political, or merely, as it were, ‘economic’ in the sense that they involved disputes over hours, wages and a quicker return to civvy street: conditions of service rather than capitalism.

So where did these actions take place and what impact did they have:

Calais (‘we had a real hard-core of trade unionists and Socialists’), Dunkirk (‘practically all downed tools’) and Boulogne were affected; the disruption of supplies from these areas to the entire British army brought concessions from top brass and the strikes soon ended. Even though the left was to say the least, in a minority in these affairs, this did not stop General Sir Julian Byng from asserting that the strike ‘had its origins in Bolshevism.’

Then there was also action at Le Havre (riots, destruction and looting), Etaples (vandalism and insubordination) and then in January 1919, in Folkestone, 10,000 soldiers marched through the town to voice their resentment. A Soldiers’ Union was formed and a compromise was reached about demobilisation.

January 1919 saw further direct action with servicemen marching on Whitehall; Bristol and Maidstone saw unrest too: ‘I well remember the regiment going on strike and marching through the streets of Maidstone protesting about the very poor rations we were receiving.’ Shoreham in Sussex saw a mutiny over demobilisation too and when a general officer spoke in ‘his Oxford accent … “I have been sent here from the War Office to talk to you men,” that was as far as he got when some old warrior in the audience got up and shouted in his cockney accent, “Don’t you believe it cock it’s us that are going to talk to you,” which they then proceeded to do.’

There was action in the Middle East over ‘food and leave and…discipline; and…demobilization.’ A meeting in Kanatara gives a flavour of the time: ‘As the chairman rose to address the crowd, one soldier in the audience…suggested we should start by singing the National Anthem, to which suggestion the chairman gave his assent. The Crowd at once began to sing that well know soldiers’ song Take me back to dear old blighty. This at once put the meeting off to a very good start.’

And when demobilization took place, what was it like? Here is another flavour of the time:

‘Well, we arrived at Marseilles…the Stationmaster said he hadn’t any trains for us, so there was a whole row of cattle trucks…we brushed the manure out with our army caps and got in and stayed there till they found an engine. We were 2 or 3 days going across France… At last we reached Boulogne… The cross-channel Boat Maid of Orleans was in dock…so we all got on…after it seemed hours trying to get us off the Boat they decided to sail… We reached Dover at last. We all got on a train what was going to Charing-Cross, more trouble… At last they decided as there was so many of us they would have to take us to London…a colonel asked us to forget what had happened. I ask you…’

Sixth Sense Supernatural Psychogeography in Kefalonia

It all started quite normally tbh:
No hint of an MR James ghost story at all,
Just straight forward hiking and walking
(Though admittedly Edenic)
Through layers of time,
Following the route signs
And ticking the sights off the list:
Mesolithic coastal meandering;
Ancient Greek woodland temple:
Woodland cave where Pan was worshipped;
Roman cemetery with bas-reliefs
Depicting Persephone’s abduction to Hades
(Where we stretched out in open tombs,
Coins in our mouths to pay the ferryman),
Then a Byzantine Christian basilica;
Venetian footpaths and a ruined lighthouse;
A Guns of Navarone-like gun emplacement,
Where a giant Krupp battery commanded the Ionian Sea –
But this route required a passage through a deserted village:
A street succession of gaping windows and doors,
Doorways that once were portals between different worlds,
Entries to domesticity and security and a refuge
From the travails of the heat of the day,
But long open to nature’s calling,
With roofless houses,
Full of lustrous arum lilies, and countless trees
Soaring to a cloudless cypress sky;
And as I reflected on such liminalia, and took pictures
(Finding a shard of pottery as Trish picked a lemon),
I sensed a shadow and movement to my right –
And when I talked to Trish about my sensing of a ghost
Just there in front of the doorstep we had just passed,
The keys in my rucksack started jingling and jangling.

Now I am a rationalist and I am sure there are sound reasons
Contained within the laws of physics and the rules of the universe,
As to why those keys started their movement and their jangle –
But all I know is that it only happened just there,
Just that once, and on no other occasion on our walking holiday,
Even though the keys were placed in exactly the same place
In the rucksack, as a sort of half-baked empirical test.

All I know is that those keys started automatically jangling,
Coinciding with our doorstep conversation about how
Time had changed the meaning of these doorways.
Btw,

I hasten to add that we had no madeleine biscuits in the bag,
But I can’t stop thinking about it all.
Why did they jangle?