Counter-Heritage

Stroudwater 1825 and Gloucester 2025

Stroudwater 1825 and Gloucester 2025 The spring and summer two hundred years ago Saw a sustained strike by the Stroudwater weavers To protect their standard of living In the face of wage cuts and price rises. Two hundred years later, in Gloucester, Phlebotomists have been on strike For over two hundred days: The longest strike in the history of the NHS. Skilled workers but the lowest-paid in the NHS, Women asking for fair pay for their care and service, And with every day that passes in this campaign, Prices in the shops keep on rising. You can show your support for them today By emailing or writing to your MP; Making space and time to visit the picket line Up the road and railway line at Gloucester Hospital, Or digging deep in your pocket if you can To contribute to their strike fund. So let us remember the Stroudwater weavers With a show of solidarity with the Gloucester phlebotomists: This is an act of appropriate commemoration That will stir the waters of the mill ponds, And send a message of unity through space and time: Stroudwater and Gloucester conjoined: Victory to the Phlebotomists of Gloucester!   Fair pay for...

The Poetry of Chartism

The Poetry of Chartism; Aesthetics, Politics, History   Mike Sanders C.U.P. 2009 ‘Between 1838 and 1852, the leading Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star, published over 1,000 poems written by more than 350 poets – as the readership of the Northern Star numbered...

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Overton’s Window Again

Overton’s Window Trade Unions and Chartism and Trade Unions and a People’s Assembly   The concept of Overton’s Window Connotes some sort of casement on fashion: A window of acceptability And unquestioned validity: A sort of Zeitgeist vista on the Zeitgeist. And...

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A People’s History Chapter 7

A MISCELLANY OF HISTORY A TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES A TEXTUAL SAMPLER Chapter Seven The 1825 Riots   These are my memories of what I saw and did, together with others in the Stroudwater Valleys in 1825. I know I am supposed to show remorse but I...

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