Category: Write Up

Rough Musick

ROUGH MUSICK
When we bang our pots and pans in the street,
When we clap our hands in harmony,
It’s not just an expression of sympathy,
Nor some sort of collective empathy,
It’s also the revival of ROUGH MUSICK.

ROUGH MUSICK:
A community PANDAEMONIUM
To indicate disapproval of rulers,
The wrong-doer often shown in effigy,
Sometimes riding the SKIMMINGTON,
As in The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Or the 1825 Stroud weavers’ riots,
As the world is turned upside down.

THE SKIMMINGTON
Perhaps we’ll see Dominic Cummings
In effigy, and Boris Johnson,
Placed backwards on a donkey in Chalford,
Or wheelbarrow or bike in Stroud,
As we all chant:
‘TEST
TEST
TEST
PPE
KEEP KEY WORKERS
VIRUS-FREE.’

ROUGH MUSICK
When we bang our pots and pans in the street,
When we clap our hands in harmony,
It’s not just an expression of sympathy,
Nor some sort of collective empathy,
It’s also the revival of ROUGH MUSICK.

ROUGH MUSICK:
A community PANDAEMONIUM
To indicate disapproval of rulers,
The wrong-doer often shown in effigy,
Sometimes riding the SKIMMINGTON,
As in The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Or the 1825 Stroud weavers’ riots,
As the world is turned upside down.

THE SKIMMINGTON
Perhaps we’ll see Dominic Cummings
In effigy, and Boris Johnson,
Placed backwards on a donkey in Chalford,
Or wheelbarrow or bike in Stroud,
As we all chant:
‘TEST
TEST
TEST
PPE
KEEP KEY WORKERS
VIRUS-FREE.’

Terminalia Beating the Bounds of Rodborough

It was a pleasure and a privilege to have the company of Alison Fure of the Walking Artists’ Network join us on Sunday. Here’s a link to her insightful wordsmith weaving:

https://alisonfure.blogspot.com/2020/02/beating-bounds-at-rodborough.html

Bio

Alison Fure has spent 22 years working as an ecologist informing land managers of the wildlife interest on their holdings; she enjoys taking the public on wonderful walks from wildlife, wassails and more recently, Soundwalks. Please join her on John Clare’s walk from Epping to Northborough in July 2020. She writes nature blogs and chap books including Kingston’s Apple Story. https://sampsonlow.co/2017/05/26/kingstons-apple-story-alison-fure/

It was a pleasure and a privilege to have the company of Alison Fure of the Walking Artists’ Network join us on Sunday. Here’s a link to her insightful wordsmith weaving:

https://alisonfure.blogspot.com/2020/02/beating-bounds-at-rodborough.html

Bio

Alison Fure has spent 22 years working as an ecologist informing land managers of the wildlife interest on their holdings; she enjoys taking the public on wonderful walks from wildlife, wassails and more recently, Soundwalks. Please join her on John Clare’s walk from Epping to Northborough in July 2020. She writes nature blogs and chap books including Kingston’s Apple Story. https://sampsonlow.co/2017/05/26/kingstons-apple-story-alison-fure/

Here’s Alison’s website about the regeneration of her local estate, in Kingston on Thames, designed to let people know about the natural environment

https://www.walk-with-jane.com/birds-and-bats

It was fascinating to listen to Alison on the way she is transposing John Clare’s poems on enclosure into a modern context, such as ‘social apartheid’ in play areas and so on, on new estates, and all the horrendous privatisation of public space zeitgeist. We’re looking forward to walking with Alison either on her actual John Clare walk or as an echo down here in Gloucestershire.

TOADSMOOR WALK

Friday 17th January 2020
Radical Stroud Walk

The Descent of the the Toadsmoor Valley:
From Bisley Church to Brimscombe Port
(and thence via the canal towpath to Stroud)

Approximately 4 miles. Mostly footpaths. Some styles and steep descents. Certain to be very muddy in places. Allow four hours. Bring food for your lunchtime repast. Optional stop for refreshments toward the end of the walk at Stroud Brewery

Directions to the start
Take the 8B bus from Stroud Merriwalks (stand k) at 10:10. Alight outside The Stirrup Cup, Bisley at 10:44 (scheduled arrival time). The walk will begin from this point at 10:50.

Brief guide to the context
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. On our walks we typically encounter many serendipitous points of interest and discussion.
Bisley is very rich in history, tradition and legend. There are ancient barrows, and significant Roman and Saxon remains in the area. Many of the houses date from the 16th and 17 centuries. Made rich by the wool trade, Bisley suffered economic decline in the 1800s and in 1837, 68 parishioners were given support by the vicar of All Saints to emigrate to new lives in Australia. We will visit the church to discuss this historical event. We will also consider the story of The Bisley Boy (suggesting that Elizabeth 1st was not Elizabeth 1st but was a replaced by a man); the burial of John Davies “ye black” in 1603; the tradition of dressing the impressive wells of Bisley; how Bisley lost its commons and “who stole the donkey’s dinner”.

We will then descend the steep, narrow and seemingly remote Toadsmoor valley via footpaths. Maps reveal that the tree cover of once coppiced woodland in the upper valley has hardly changed in the last 200 years. However, the remains of several mills (of various types) are evident below the fishponds in the lower valley, revealing the industrial legacy of the area.

We will cross the main road at the mouth of the valley and walk past the site of many stick, umbrella and tool handle manufacturing works that occupied the valley floor from the 1850s until the 1920s. In nearby Chalford, one such “stick works”, Dangerford & Co, employed more than 1000 people during the late 1800s.

Finally, we will head west along the canal towpath, past Stroud Brewery and back to Stroud.

Texts used on the walk or written during and after the walk now follow

Friday 17th January 2020
Radical Stroud Walk

The Descent of the the Toadsmoor Valley:
From Bisley Church to Brimscombe Port
(and thence via the canal towpath to Stroud)

Approximately 4 miles. Mostly footpaths. Some styles and steep descents. Certain to be very muddy in places. Allow four hours. Bring food for your lunchtime repast. Optional stop for refreshments toward the end of the walk at Stroud Brewery

Directions to the start
Take the 8B bus from Stroud Merriwalks (stand k) at 10:10. Alight outside The Stirrup Cup, Bisley at 10:44 (scheduled arrival time). The walk will begin from this point at 10:50.

Brief guide to the context
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. On our walks we typically encounter many serendipitous points of interest and discussion.
Bisley is very rich in history, tradition and legend. There are ancient barrows, and significant Roman and Saxon remains in the area. Many of the houses date from the 16th and 17 centuries. Made rich by the wool trade, Bisley suffered economic decline in the 1800s and in 1837, 68 parishioners were given support by the vicar of All Saints to emigrate to new lives in Australia. We will visit the church to discuss this historical event. We will also consider the story of The Bisley Boy (suggesting that Elizabeth 1st was not Elizabeth 1st but was a replaced by a man); the burial of John Davies “ye black” in 1603; the tradition of dressing the impressive wells of Bisley; how Bisley lost its commons and “who stole the donkey’s dinner”.

We will then descend the steep, narrow and seemingly remote Toadsmoor valley via footpaths. Maps reveal that the tree cover of once coppiced woodland in the upper valley has hardly changed in the last 200 years. However, the remains of several mills (of various types) are evident below the fishponds in the lower valley, revealing the industrial legacy of the area.

We will cross the main road at the mouth of the valley and walk past the site of many stick, umbrella and tool handle manufacturing works that occupied the valley floor from the 1850s until the 1920s. In nearby Chalford, one such “stick works”, Dangerford & Co, employed more than 1000 people during the late 1800s.

Finally, we will head west along the canal towpath, past Stroud Brewery and back to Stroud.

Texts used on the walk or written during and after the walk now follow

Thanks to Robin Treefellow for the following poem written after our walk.

Bisley Water Laughing Toadsmore

From Bisley’s rushing springhead
under the church: splashing, gurgling and giddy.
The water disgorged out the Victorian facade praising
the Creator in pedantic script.
Like a dam in a Welsh valley
the conceit of men to try tame the waters’ flow!
The Bisley spring regimented into its own moulded spout,
as if the reverend who had it built were
trying to educate water into behaving itself.
But in 2020 the water laughs
long away down Toadsmore,
swirling in transgressive script
through the sunk valleys,
brimful out Bismore Bridge.
Beech trees ascend,
while streams descend,
Toadsmore goes walking.
A silvery cask,
the valley is liquid.

There now follows some text on the Bisley emigration and that is followed by some thoughts on ‘Ye Black’ buried at Bisley in 1603.

Foreword
My emigrant’s passage started in Bisley
Along a snowdropped Sunday footpath to the church;
The service had just ended –
I sauntered in through the open door,
And there to my surprise, in a glass case,
Lay a nineteenth century list of parish accounts,
With an italicised card:
‘cost to the Parish of Bisley of ‘emigrating’ 68 persons from the parish’,
Together with a bible open to the fronts-piece:
‘The Bible which was presented by the Reverend Thomas Keble who was the Vicar of Bisley when they and 66 others emigrated to Sydney, Australia in August 1837 [The Bible has been rebound].
Two other information cards lay partially hidden beneath the bible, I could pick out a few words, however:
‘hoped they might have a more prosperous life. They were equipped with clothes, transport and food to Bristol and Thomas Keble also presented each family with a Bible and a Prayer Book.’

Prologue the First: Mr Ricardo

EMIGRATION
CONSIDERED AS A MEANS OF RELIEF
IN THE PRESENT DISTRESSED
CONDITION OF THE POOR
IN THIS
NEIGHBOURHOOD
BY DAVID RICARDO, ESQ.
STROUD:
PRINTED BY J.P. BRISLEY
1838.
Price One Penny each, or Five Shillings per Hundred.
EMIGRATION

The distress of the Poor at all times forms a strong claim upon our sympathy and compassion – and though in some cases it may be brought on by their own idleness and improvidence, and therefore require the application of strong measures to check its growth … like a parent who chastises his child … But in the present condition of the Poor in this Neighbourhood … we have to encounter all the difficulties of a failing trade, and our inability to substitute any other means of independent labour … their patience and resignation is urging on their more influential neighbours to make efforts to assist them.
The question is, – what is the best means of affording them effectual relief? …In the first instance, a Subscription was proposed, and the Rev. Thos. Keble, with that spirit of kindness and benevolence which characterize all his proceedings … raised a considerable sum among his own immediate friends; but it is quite clear that a sum of money thus raised could never be sufficiently large to meet the emergency of the case – and besides, it would only meet half the evil, for the question is, not to provide the poor with bread by the hand of Private Charity, but to devise some means by which they may earn it for themselves.

This proved to be the case – the Funds raised were found to be inadequate … shortly after, the first attempt was made to introduce a more sound and effectual system of Relief. A ship was sent to Bristol, and a portion of the unemployed Labourers were invited to go to another country … but from an indisposition to engage in anything new, and from a general misapprehension … this attempt did not meet with all the success it deserved; still, some families availed themselves of the offer, and the accounts they have sent home of their prosperous condition in New South Wales have tended to dispel the natural prejudices which all must feel against a country of which they know nothing. All parties agree to the relief occasioned by the departure of the few that went – and if at any future time Emigration should be conducted on a larger scale, we must still look back to this first Attempt, as the step from which all our further efforts have sprung.
About this time, Her Majesty at the suggestion of the House of Commons sent down a Commissioner to enquire into the distressed state of the Neighbourhood, and to see if any means could be devised to alleviate it. The Commissioner came down, and gave the fullest and most patient attention to the subject: he enquired of all classes … and the result was … with our failing Trade … the only means likely to give us real relief, was Emigration …
application was again made to Government to facilitate Emigration … but the engagements already formed prevented them from giving us a ship this year – however,–they showed their good will by requesting Mr. Marshall, the private Agent of the Colonial Government to come down, who has offered a passage to 205 persons; they hold out to us the hope of further and more effectual assistance next year, and there is every reason to hope, that Emigration may be carried on to a larger extent.
The following is a brief account of the nature of the assistance offered by Government …The expense of the Passage of a man and his wife to Sydney … is £35, but this sum is not raised by a Tax on us, but is supplied by the Funds, which the Colonial Government has raised by the Sale of Lands in Australia. It is of importance to bear this in mind … the Colonial Government very reasonably claims the right to itself of refusing to convey persons who would not be serviceable to them – the Government tells us, “all that you have to do for your Emigrants is to provide them with proper clothes and to put them on board the Ship …”
The quantity of Clothing required for each Passenger is, besides a Bible and if possible a Prayer Book, 12 shirts or shifts, 2 flannel petticoats (for females,) 12 pair of dark stockings, 3 towels, and such other articles of dress as are essential to cleanliness, health, and comfort; also a knife and fork, table and tea-spoons, peter or tin plate, tin pots, comb, soap, &c.
These articles are very expensive … it will often happen that a man may sell all his household goods, and yet not be able to raise a fund sufficient to provide them: if no fund were raised to assist … the poor man must linger on here … while the outlay of 30s. would convey him to a land of plenty …
The means of providing the Funds … are by a Rate upon the Parish. By a recent law, Parishes are allowed to borrow any Sum not exceeding half the Rates of the Parish for the purpose of Emigration, and to repay it in five years … this Neighbourhood is but one vast Family, and if we were to take away a portion of the more active and put them in a situation to fend for themselves, the bread that supported them is still left behind, and will be divided among those who remain … in the shape of an increase of Wages …
No! These are not the evils of Emigration … Expense … Clothing …Landlord … Tenant. A thousand other little interested considerations cross our thoughts and influence our minds, while we overlook the real and great objection to sending our Emigrants abroad – the sending them to a place where there is no Church Establishment regularly formed, and where they will often be placed in situations such, that they will not have the opportunity of having the blessed truths of the Gospel brought home to them. – But the eye of the Lord is in every place … if in the conscientious discharge of the duties committed to us, we should provide some of our neighbours with the means of going to New South Wales, I feel convinced that He will follow them there; – we shall in the mean time be looking upon that Country as the Land of our relations and friends … it must be our unceasing endeavour to send to them all the advantages of Religious Worship we enjoy at home.

Gatcombe, 15th Nov. 1838.
HINTS

For the consideration of Persons desirous to Emigrate

  • Large Families of young Children will in no case be taken at the expense of the Colonies. Young married people with families just coming on are the most eligible.
  • Each Applicant should be provided with Testimonials of his Character signed by the Clergyman of his Parish, or the Minister of that religious persuasion to which he belongs, and the respectable persons who may know him. Character is of great use.
  • Each Applicant should be provided with proper Certificates of his Health and the Health of his Family.
  • No woman would be received on board, who is so far advanced in a state of pregnancy, as to render it probable that she might be confined before the termination of the voyage.
  • None would be received on board, unless they have been previously vaccinated or had the Small Pox. Persons having families would do well to look to this, and get their Children vaccinated at once.
  • Linen made up of Calico of inferior quality may be had at the Market House School, Minchinhampton. Shirts, price 1s 3d. Shifts, 11d. and other Articles in the same proportion.

There is still room for a few young married persons of good character and not having large families of young children, by the ship Roxburgh Castle, on 28th December next. The fullest information on all subjects connected with Emigration may be obtained by applying at Gatcombe, on Monday and Tuesday in any week, between the hours of nine and ten.

J. P. Brisley Stroudwater Printing Office.

How does ‘Ye Black’ buried at Bisley in 1603 fit into all this?
That terse parish record entry:
‘John Davies, ye Black, buried 22November 1603 Bisley’,
Can blow your mind when you pass the village,
Cycling to Oakridge and Sapperton,
On the trail of the Mason-Dixon line,
Africa, and America,
And the sugar plantations
In the West Indies;
It’s high up, Bisley,
The wind blows cold, the rain sweeps in,
The snow can settle,
And ‘vapours rolling down a valley
Make a lonely scene more lonesome’;
So how do we rescue you, John Davies,
‘From the enormous condescension of posterity’?
How do we recreate your life to give voice to you?
These questions might be rhetorical,
They might be existential and ontological –
What was your real name?
Why John Davies?
How did you end up in Bisley?
Where were you born?
How long was your life in Bisley?
Did the weather quickly kill you?
Had you no immunity against the common cold, flu and so on?
Could you speak English?
Did the locals point at you, laugh and mock?
Were you a slave?
A servant?
A fashion accessory?
Were you baptised into the Christian faith?
Were you buried in consecrated ground?
Did you cry yourself to sleep?
How did your mind cope with this exile?
And with this stolen identity and stolen self?
Did you die of melancholy?
Was death a blessed release?
How can we memorialise you?
‘John Davies, ye Black, buried 22November 1603 Bisley’,

The Great Money Trick

The Great Money Trick
(Performed with Matches)
Hello and welcome to my company,
I’m going to be serious, I hope you will allow me;
I’m here to explain how you get your money:
This is serious, it won’t be funny –
A lesson about profit and how you get your wages,
I’ll make it easy, in sequential stages.
Now, imagine you’re a fagger, I mean a smoker –
Just now and then, not an absolute choker –
But you need to light your fag, and that’s a fact,
Now imagine that you use a safety match.
This lucifer will light our way to wisdom,
By exemplifying capitalism:

Each match will be a symbol, nay, an allegory,
To represent political economy;

Imagine I own the factories, shops, land, and banks,
I am the capitalist in these gathered ranks,
There are no tricks, no magical catches,
I own the means of production:
These four matches;

The Great Money Trick
(Performed with Matches)

Hello and welcome to my company,
I’m going to be serious, I hope you will allow me;
I’m here to explain how you get your money:
This is serious, it won’t be funny –
A lesson about profit and how you get your wages,
I’ll make it easy, in sequential stages.
Now, imagine you’re a fagger, I mean a smoker –
Just now and then, not an absolute choker –
But you need to light your fag, and that’s a fact,
Now imagine that you use a safety match.
This lucifer will light our way to wisdom,
By exemplifying capitalism:

Each match will be a symbol, nay, an allegory,
To represent political economy;

Imagine I own the factories, shops, land, and banks,
I am the capitalist in these gathered ranks,
There are no tricks, no magical catches,
I own the means of production:
These four matches;

You workers are free, not slaves in cages,
But to live, you must labour for your wages:
And earn one match, that’s it, complete,

 

And now you spend it the next week,
On those indispensable necessities for life,
Which gives me, the capitalist, without strife,
Another match to add to the pre-existent four,
We’ve got richer, you stay poor,
We’ve gone up from four to five,

 

You spent your wage on staying alive,
You’re all confined to your penurious corner,
While the rich get richer, the poor are poorer;
But that, of course, is not the end of it,
The capitalist takes and makes another match as profit,
The matches now go up from four to six,
While you, the workers, are left, of course, with nix.

You don’t need to be a genius to see
The implications of infinity.

And that, my friends, is how the system works,
And I’m not declaring that we’re all burkes,
But at the very least let’s make the rich pay much more tax,
And at the very least let’s all accept these awkward facts:
Why should the poor support the poor with homespun charity?
The rich should pay the tax that leads to parity,
A progressive tax that redistributes our wealth,
That guarantees some security and health.

.Now isn’t that preferable to being hapless?
It’s a scheme that’s absolutely matchless.
It’s a systemic Scrooge-like process of redemption,
It is in fact an immaculate conception.
A scheme I hope you’ll countenance and savour,
And at the very least remember to vote Labour.

Join Labour’s Digital Spread

Join the Digital Army
Speak and Write the Truth

I grew up in a working-class Tory household,
A Daily Express household,
So, I know the mindset:
Deference and false consciousness:
‘Gawd bless ya, Mr Scrooge’;
A generation after A Christmas Carol,
The Conservative Prime Minister,
Benjamin Disraeli
(So-called ‘One-Nation Tory’)
Described working class Tories as
‘Angels in marble’:
They had to be fashioned, sculpted, made, displayed,
In an alliance between the aristocracy and the working class,
With a modicum of social reform,
A hectoring printing press,
And an aggressive nationalism,
To provide the glue.
Sound familiar?

Join the Digital Army
Speak and Write the Truth

I grew up in a working-class Tory household,
A Daily Express household,
So, I know the mindset:
Deference and false consciousness:
‘Gawd bless ya, Mr Scrooge’;
A generation after A Christmas Carol,
The Conservative Prime Minister,
Benjamin Disraeli
(So-called ‘One-Nation Tory’)
Described working class Tories as
‘Angels in marble’:
They had to be fashioned, sculpted, made, displayed,
In an alliance between the aristocracy and the working class,
With a modicum of social reform,
A hectoring printing press,
And an aggressive nationalism,
To provide the glue.
Sound familiar?

So it was no surprise
When the urban working class was close to the vote in 1867,
That the Tory Home Secretary declared:
‘We must educate our masters’.
The result was the 1870 Education Act.

And it’s perhaps no coincidence
That the enfranchisement of agricultural labourers
In 1885, was followed by the growth
Of a Tory press: The Daily Mail;
Sensational stories in ‘penny dreadfuls’
Flooded the market:
‘angels in marble’ indeed;
The education of the working class.

It was not until 1912 that a newspaper
Sympathetic to the Labour cause was launched:
The Daily Herald.
In this age of a right-wing press,
And in Tariq Ali’s phrase:
An ‘extreme centre’, an ‘extreme centre’
That moves relentlessly to the right,
In an age where the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph,
The Sun, the Daily Express set the BBC’s agenda,
It’s easy to become dispirited.
But remember!
The almost revolutionary Northern Star,
The Chartist working class newspaper,
Outsold everything else in the 1840s,
It left the Times and co standing;
It spoke the truth for the working class.
It spoke the truth of the working class.
The same can happen today
In a different age and in a different medium.
Remember the Northern Star.
Remember the Daily Herald.
Join the Labour Digital Army:
Speak and write the truth.
‘We must liberate ourselves from our masters’
Join the Digital Army.

Liberal Democratic Fascism

When the Daily Express and the Daily Mail tried to control
The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, back in the thirties,
He commented in his masculine way:
‘What the proprietorship of these newspapers is aiming at is power,
But power without responsibility,
The prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’
In the 2016 referendum,
We had Arron Banks:
‘Facts don’t work, and that’s it …
It just doesn’t work.
You have to connect with the people emotionally.
It’s the Trump success.’
And the General Elections of 2017 and 2019?
The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express,
With their slew of headlines,
Make it difficult not to think of John Heartfield,
And his Weimar agit-prop:
Big business pulling Hitler’s puppet strings;
Big business lavishing its money on Boris Johnson,
The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express
Splashing their similar views all over their front pages;
The BBC doctoring Johnson’s footage and appearances.
A prime minister who holds parliament in contempt.
A leader who speaks of ‘the will of the people’.
A leader who has held the people in contempt.
A leader who has been economical with the truth.
A leader who will redraw constituency boundaries,
Who will lead, in effect, a one-party state,
In an alliance of ‘Elite and Mob’,
A re-run of William Pitt’s repressive policies,
And sponsored attacks on democrats in the 1790s.

I think this means that we now have a new category
Of political system for the text book:
A liberal-democratic 21 st century variant of Fascism:
Liberal-Democratic Fascism:
Not an oxymoron or a union of opposites,
But a subtle totalitarianism,
Authoritarianism in a suit.

When the Daily Express and the Daily Mail tried to control
The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, back in the thirties,
He commented in his masculine way:
‘What the proprietorship of these newspapers is aiming at is power,
But power without responsibility,
The prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’
In the 2016 referendum,
We had Arron Banks:
‘Facts don’t work, and that’s it …
It just doesn’t work.
You have to connect with the people emotionally.
It’s the Trump success.’
And the General Elections of 2017 and 2019?
The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express,
With their slew of headlines,
Make it difficult not to think of John Heartfield,
And his Weimar agit-prop:
Big business pulling Hitler’s puppet strings;
Big business lavishing its money on Boris Johnson,
The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express
Splashing their similar views all over their front pages;
The BBC doctoring Johnson’s footage and appearances.
A prime minister who holds parliament in contempt.
A leader who speaks of ‘the will of the people’.
A leader who has held the people in contempt.
A leader who has been economical with the truth.
A leader who will redraw constituency boundaries,
Who will lead, in effect, a one-party state,
In an alliance of ‘Elite and Mob’,
A re-run of William Pitt’s repressive policies,
And sponsored attacks on democrats in the 1790s.

I think this means that we now have a new category
Of political system for the text book:
A liberal-democratic 21 st century variant of Fascism:
Liberal-Democratic Fascism:
Not an oxymoron or a union of opposites,
But a subtle totalitarianism,
Authoritarianism in a suit.

Nearly two centuries ago,
Five thousand Chartist supporters met on Selsley Common,
Affirming their support for working class political power,
Through the Six Points,
Five of which have become law:
Secret Ballot (1872); Equal Constituencies (1885); Universal Franchise (1928);
Abolition of Property Qualification to stand as an MP (1858);
Payment of MPs (1911);
Annual Parliaments;
It was thought that this would usher in democracy,
But the transgressions of our so-called free press
(Remember the Zinoviev Letter forgery in the Daily Mail at the 1924 election?
The Daly Mail has got a long history and a lot of previous),
Mean that those points have been nullified:
The ballot is no longer secret – voters’ heads are full of lies
(Or ‘cultural hegemony’ as Gramsci put it,
Or ‘false consciousness’, as Marx put it);
A future constituency redrawing will favour the Conservatives
In their bid to establish a one-party state;
Many people have forgotten the struggles of men and women:
Imprisonment, hunger strikes, death, transportation,
Or they’ve not been taught about it, or listened,
And abstain on principle,
Or forget to vote …
MPs are unrepresentative of the population …

The Chartists could not imagine a world where money talks so persuasively:
They thought votes for all would mean equality of power,
Where one vote is worth the same as another,
And where the voter was free from coercion, intimidation and control:
But what we have today is not democracy,
It is a liberal-democratic variant of fascism,
A stepping-stone towards a one-party state,
Where Brexit doesn’t mean Brexit,
But Totalitarianism;
But the new wave of young activists in the Labour Party
Are the new Chartists:
The Chartists of the twenty first century,
People who remind us that we can control history,
We can fight back against the lies of the press,
We can prevent a liberal-democratic fascism,
We can establish socialism,
We can fight back,
‘For the many, not the few”,
Carrying the mantle of Shelley’ rage against Peterloo:
‘Ye are many – they are few!’

Tactical Voting and Conscience

Green Principles, Pragmatism and stopping the Tories in Stroud

There are those who say that when they cast their vote,
They have to vote according to their conscience,
To their ‘principles’,
Rather than pragmatically or tactically,
Rejecting any ideas of ‘a progressive alliance’
(A mirror, perhaps, to the KPD’s rejection
Of a Popular Front
In the Weimar Republic in 1932 –
And we all know where that ended up).

But what is ‘conscience’?

‘The voice in your head’ that separates right from wrong?
The internal ethical guide to universal morality …
Or is ‘conscience’ no more than a ‘pre-disposition’?
But expressed with what Mark Fisher has termed,
‘A lofty Olympian sense of detachment’
In the helter-skelter discourse on social media –
But as though ethics and morality,
Rather than the replication of one’s personality,
Or one’s presentation of self,
Or one’s doxa (one’s orthodoxy), as Pierre Bourdieu put it
Were the determinants of socially mediated opinion –
‘To thine own self be true’,
Is often cited as the justification:
People conveniently forgetting that Shakespeare
Was not enunciating a universal truth,
But rather reflecting Renaissance humanism,
In a pre-Enlightenment prefiguring of individualism,
Ina pre-capitalist rejection of collectivism,
A philosophy that reaches its apogee
In a 21 st century cult of the celebration of celebrity,
And narcissistic performance of self.

Green Principles, Pragmatism and stopping the Tories in Stroud

There are those who say that when they cast their vote,
They have to vote according to their conscience,
To their ‘principles’,
Rather than pragmatically or tactically,
Rejecting any ideas of ‘a progressive alliance’
(A mirror, perhaps, to the KPD’s rejection
Of a Popular Front
In the Weimar Republic in 1932 –
And we all know where that ended up).

But what is ‘conscience’?

‘The voice in your head’ that separates right from wrong?
The internal ethical guide to universal morality …
Or is ‘conscience’ no more than a ‘pre-disposition’?
But expressed with what Mark Fisher has termed,
‘A lofty Olympian sense of detachment’
In the helter-skelter discourse on social media –
But as though ethics and morality,
Rather than the replication of one’s personality,
Or one’s presentation of self,
Or one’s doxa (one’s orthodoxy), as Pierre Bourdieu put it
Were the determinants of socially mediated opinion –
‘To thine own self be true’,
Is often cited as the justification:
People conveniently forgetting that Shakespeare
Was not enunciating a universal truth,
But rather reflecting Renaissance humanism,
In a pre-Enlightenment prefiguring of individualism,
Ina pre-capitalist rejection of collectivism,
A philosophy that reaches its apogee
In a 21 st century cult of the celebration of celebrity,
And narcissistic performance of self.

And what if, as Dan Fox puts it,
In Pretentiousness and why it Matters,
‘Thine own self’ is not true?
Is not ‘authentic’?
For
‘All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women are merely players’ …
But we’ve got to stop the Tories in Stroud.
And at Westminster.
This is not some fictive play.
This is real:
A redrawing of constituency boundaries;
A one-party state, in effect.
Forget proportional representation.
Forget the climate.
But if we stop them now in Stroud and at Westminster,
Then there is hope for the future.
Unite to Stop the Tories in Stroud and at Westminster.

Jolly Well Vote Labour

Jolly Well Vote Labour: A New Christmas Carol

Oh for a new Charles Dickens classic:
Jolly Well Vote Labour –
No more of that Bob Cratchit toasting Scrooge:
“Mr. Scrooge!… I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!” –
In the most complete and perfect depiction
Of false consciousness imaginable.

No more personal journeys of redemption
For malign capitalists such as Scrooge;
No more beneficent Victorian philanthropy
From well-heeled jolly old men
Such as the Cheeryble brothers and Mr Pickwick,
With their unexplained wealth bestowed on the deserving,
So that everyone lived happily ever after;

Instead, the likes of Sam Weller and Barkis and Pumblechook,
And Joe Gargery and David Copperfield
And Old Fezziwig, Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby,
Wemmick, Little Nell, Nancy, Little Dorrit,
Fagin, Quilp, Pip, Wackford Sqeers, Sowerby,
The Artful, Bill Sikes, Mr Bumble et al
Declare: ‘Enough of this onomatopoeic caricaturisation!’

And in act of collective expropriation,
They snatch the quill from Dickens’ Broadstairs hand,
While Mrs Cratchit loudly declares:
“The Founder of the Feast indeed!.”
And under her determined leadership,
Dickens’ characters write a new Dickens classic:
Bob Cratchit refuses Scrooge’s offer of
A few extra shillings and a few extra coals,
He forms, instead, a union of all the clerks
And pettifogging pen pushers,
And, like Herman Melville’s Bartleby,
Bartleby the Scrivener,
When requested to perform a duty by their boss,
They reply: ‘I would prefer not to’;

Jolly Well Vote Labour: A New Christmas Carol

Oh for a new Charles Dickens classic:
Jolly Well Vote Labour –
No more of that Bob Cratchit toasting Scrooge:
“Mr. Scrooge!… I’ll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!” –
In the most complete and perfect depiction
Of false consciousness imaginable.

No more personal journeys of redemption
For malign capitalists such as Scrooge;
No more beneficent Victorian philanthropy
From well-heeled jolly old men
Such as the Cheeryble brothers and Mr Pickwick,
With their unexplained wealth bestowed on the deserving,
So that everyone lived happily ever after;

Instead, the likes of Sam Weller and Barkis and Pumblechook,
And Joe Gargery and David Copperfield
And Old Fezziwig, Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby,
Wemmick, Little Nell, Nancy, Little Dorrit,
Fagin, Quilp, Pip, Wackford Sqeers, Sowerby,
The Artful, Bill Sikes, Mr Bumble et al
Declare: ‘Enough of this onomatopoeic caricaturisation!’

And in act of collective expropriation,
They snatch the quill from Dickens’ Broadstairs hand,
While Mrs Cratchit loudly declares:
“The Founder of the Feast indeed!.”
And under her determined leadership,
Dickens’ characters write a new Dickens classic:
Bob Cratchit refuses Scrooge’s offer of
A few extra shillings and a few extra coals,
He forms, instead, a union of all the clerks
And pettifogging pen pushers,
And, like Herman Melville’s Bartleby,
Bartleby the Scrivener,
When requested to perform a duty by their boss,
They reply: ‘I would prefer not to’;

But Dickens’ characters do not stop there,
Oh, no!
They rewrite the history books and introduce
Universal suffrage in 1843;
They rewrite A Christmas Carol –
Just Bloody Vote Labour,
A tale where Parity replaces Charity,
And expropriators are expropriated.
A story of collective, communal cooperation;
A tale where Lord John Russell and his Whigs,
And Robert Peel and his Conservatives,
Are replaced by Labour.

There’s a new edition just out,
Where even Scrooge declares
‘Jolly Well Vote Labour,
And get the Tories out.’

That’s how bad they are.

Even Scrooge thinks they’re mean spirited.

So …

Jolly Well Vote Labour.
Keep the Tories out.

Stroud’s Political Spectrum

Stroud’s Spectrum

The colours of Stroud’s spectrum are

not what they seem:

Vote Red: Get Green.

And this you know is true:
Vote Green: Get Blue.

It’s not some fictive story:
Vote Green: Get Tory.

So keep it real and serene:
Vote Red: Get Green.

Stroud’s Spectrum

The colours of Stroud’s spectrum are

not what they seem:

Vote Red: Get Green.

And this you know is true:
Vote Green: Get Blue.

It’s not some fictive story:
Vote Green: Get Tory.

So keep it real and serene:
Vote Red: Get Green.

Peterloo-Wiltshire Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt Walk

Peterloo Memorial Walk 2019
About thirty of us braved Manchester weather on August 16th on a performative walk around Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt’s birthplace in Wiltshire. Pictures here tell the picture of the day.
We carried out a dialogue between 2019 and 1819 as we processed: the poem below from Robin Treefellow gives a flavour of how memorialization of Peterloo can reach out to the new Extinction Rebellion generation.

Chalk and Treason

To the chalk
we must go walk.
On the chalk where vipers bugloss brightens
we must go to rebel, debate, and reinvent
This green island
owned by a small land owning minority.

So depart that moribund Houses of Parliament
mired in out-dated oppositional bun throwing.

To the high dreamy chalk we must go like the bees to nectar
discovering what Britain dreams:
dreams like a giant with ammonites in its beard.
When we have lost our way,
when the ways are all privatised,
when society is manacled to linear profit centred greed:
to the chalk we must go walk.
In walking by the yellow of toadflax and melliot
there is waking,
with waking we can change.
This green island where feudalism has gone on too long,
equality,
the earth common to all,
we must learn from the biotic knit of ground sward
and abandon the tenure under our hidden landlords.
For Britain dreams!
The land will be free of chemicals,
to breath and flourish.
So shall our life return
Rude and willed,
modernisation discarded by the road where mugwort grows.
O Albion calls us all
to remember!
freedom, green of leaf and brown of root.
freedom, bright as flowers by the way.

Peterloo Memorial Walk 2019
About thirty of us braved Manchester weather on August 16th on a performative walk around Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt’s birthplace in Wiltshire. Pictures here tell the picture of the day.
We carried out a dialogue between 2019 and 1819 as we processed: the poem below from Robin Treefellow gives a flavour of how memorialization of Peterloo can reach out to the new Extinction Rebellion generation.

Chalk and Treason

To the chalk
we must go walk.
On the chalk where vipers bugloss brightens
we must go to rebel, debate, and reinvent
This green island
owned by a small land owning minority.

So depart that moribund Houses of Parliament
mired in out-dated oppositional bun throwing.

To the high dreamy chalk we must go like the bees to nectar
discovering what Britain dreams:
dreams like a giant with ammonites in its beard.
When we have lost our way,
when the ways are all privatised,
when society is manacled to linear profit centred greed:
to the chalk we must go walk.
In walking by the yellow of toadflax and melliot
there is waking,
with waking we can change.
This green island where feudalism has gone on too long,
equality,
the earth common to all,
we must learn from the biotic knit of ground sward
and abandon the tenure under our hidden landlords.
For Britain dreams!
The land will be free of chemicals,
to breath and flourish.
So shall our life return
Rude and willed,
modernisation discarded by the road where mugwort grows.
O Albion calls us all
to remember!
freedom, green of leaf and brown of root.
freedom, bright as flowers by the way.

The text below is about how we put this walk together, with a recce in the spring of 2019. It contains a guide to the walk and aims to stimulate discussion about Hunt might be memorialized in Wiltshire. There is a post-script with a list of flowers and grasses seen on our second recce in early July.

How Henry Hunt is not memorialized in Wiltshire
And how Captain Swing almost is

Henry Hunt’s onetime associate,
Rural Rides’ William Cobbett,
Came down this way in late August 1826:

‘The shepherd showed me the way … and a most beautiful sight it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers, steeples, meadows, orchards, and very fine timber trees, scattered all over the valley … downs, very lofty and steep in some places, and sloping miles back in others … From the edge of the downs begin capital arable fields generally of very great dimensions … After the corn-fields come meadows on each side, down to the brook or river … I sat upon my horse and looked over Milton and Easton and Pewsey for half an hour, though I had not breakfasted…’

We travelled by the cherry red
Swindon-Salisbury double-decker,
To alight at Enford to view the church
At 10.45 at the end of February 2019:
‘Above the arch is the COAT OF ARMS of King William 1V dating from 1831. Royal coats of arms were much in vogue in this period to display the parish’s loyalty and to add colour to the church …’
But obvs no mention of Captain Swing
Or the threat of revolution at this time …

But we went left to the crossroads.
For the lane towards Littlecot
And East Chisenbury and the Red Lion,
Thatched cottages and inns,
Flint and red brick and whitewash,
Just as in Cobbett’s and the Orator’s day;

A left hand turn on a footpath followed,
And so to the crossing of the main (turnpike) road,
Where we turned left along the verge to a stile on the right,
Where a footpath sign on a gate showed us our way up the hill;
We walked where Hunt no doubt took his horse,
A parliament of rooks democratically nesting
Below us on our left hand side,

Lichen splashing the track-way hawthorn,
The big sky landscape bare branched etched,
A solitary signpost standing to show our path
Across the lonely windswept downs,
Now resounding with ordnance,
Beyond the red flags down to Salisbury Plain:
An echo of the musket fire from the days of Swing,

Skylarks ascending to sing the spring,
While finches arced their way across the ploughed fields,

Barns with the ghosts of their threshing machines,
Boot-prints once down there in the oozing mud,
Cries of ‘Bread or Blood’ still there in the air,
The ashes of burnt hayricks and letters,
Once scattered across the nearby valley farms and fields,

The sun now gleaming on the puddled track-ways,
And on the white horse hillside to the south;
While, beyond, lay Hampshire and misty Dorset,
Where Captain Swing once rode on his white horse.

We wandered on to skirt a high Iron Age enclosure,
And so descend along a curving lane,
Past the birthplace of Henry Hunt on our right,
Widdington Farm:
‘I was born on the 6th November 1773, in Wiltshire, at Widdington Farm, not within a mile of any other habitation, near Upavon. Widdington Farm lies about a mile from the turnpike road … a lone farm, in a valley upon the downs.’
But no mention of the Orator today,
Instead:
‘WIDDINGTON SHOOT
WILTSHIRE
CLAY SHOOTING GROUND
OUR NEXT COMPETTION IS …’;

And this is how Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt,
And Wiltshire’s radical history is memorialized,
Mute and invisible in the Vale of the Avon,
Unless you use your imagination –
But, wait, in St Timothy’s Church in Upavon,
There is a brief but welcome reference to Captain Swing
On the information board:
‘In the beginning of the nineteenth century agricultural workers in general, and those of Wiltshire in particular, had been reduced to abject misery, and The Vale was a focal point of the agricultural unrest known as the Swing Riots of 1830.’
‘Abject misery’ is daring and arresting …
But the next sentence and paragraph
Guides the reader’s understanding thus:
‘By far the most important development was the Vale’s emergence as a transportation corridor … the Kennet & Avon Canal …’

‘By far the most important development …’
The subliminal suggestion …
Old fashioned Swing …
The modernity/progress transportation trope …
The modernity of ‘corridor’ …
The world of ‘abject misery’ has been left behind …
Mute and invisible,
Like Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt.

We hope to address this mute invisibility
On the 16th of August 2019,
The bi-centenary of Peterloo,
With a Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt performative walk:
Meet at the church in Enford at 10.45:
The walk will end at Upavon after about three hours,
A bit up and down and one bit by the main road;
Park at Enford and get the bus back from Upavon,
Or get the bus from Swindon to Enford and back from Upavon.

Post-script:

Wild flowers seen on July 11th on this walk:
Agrimony

Bird’s Foot Trefoil Black Medick
Bladder Campion Bramble
Broomrape
Buttercup
Burdock
Bush Vetch

Chicory
Clematis
Cleavers
Common Centaury Common Knapweed Common Toadflax Creeping Thistle
Cut Leafed Cranesbill Daisy
Dandelion
Dock
Dog Rose
Dogwood
Dove’s-Foot Cranesbill Elder Flower
Evening Primrose

Fairy Flax
Field Bindweed
Field Scabious

Goats Beard
Great Mullein
Great Willowherb Greater Knapweed Ground Ivy

Hedge Bedstraw Hedge Woundwort Hemp Agrimony
Herb Robert
Hoary Plantain Hogweed
Hop Trefoil

Ivy Leafed Speedwell

Lady’s Bedstraw

Marjoram
Meadow Cranesbill Meadowsweet Meadow Vetchling

Melilot
Milkwort
Mousear
Mousear Hawkweed Mugwort

Musk Mallow

Nipplewort

Oxeye Daisy

Pignut Pineapple Weed Poppy

Purple Toadflax Pyramidal Orchid

Quaking Grass

Ragwort

Red Bartsia
Red Clover
Rest Harrow
Red Valerian Ribwort Plantain Rock Rose
Rosebay Willowherb Rough Hawkbit

St. Johns Wort Salad Burnet Sanfoin
Selfheal Shepherds Purse Silverweed Small Scabious Sorrel Sow Thistle
Spear Thistle Speedwell
Spindle Tree

Teasel
Tufted Vetch

Vipers Bugloss

Watercress
Water Forget-Me-Not Weld

White Bryony White Campion Wild Carrot White Clover White Deadnettle Wild Basil
Wild Mignonette Wild Parsnip Wild Thyme Wood Avens

Yarrow
Yellow Rattle Yellow Vetchling

Re memorialization, readers might also want to look at the link below:
https://radicalstroud.co.uk/a-wiltshire-town-and-peterloo/