25 people attended and there was some very good discussions. The speeches were very well received and all except Lindsey's are available if anyone wants them. Email me at metcalfmc@outlook.com
Monday, 5 May 2025
CALDERDALE MAY DAY PUBLIC MEETING - WOMEN AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRACY
25 people attended and there was some very good discussions. The speeches were very well received and all except Lindsey's are available if anyone wants them. Email me at metcalfmc@outlook.com
Workers' Memorial Day - Halifax 2025
11 people attended this important event.
You can listen to my speech and which is based on the earlier film at https;//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLyeMYnpVjo
at:-
https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/wmd-speech-2025.mp3
THE LAND QUESTION: May 6th talk on who owns England, how they got it and who decides how it can be use...................
TALK TO THE REPUBLICAN LABOUR EDUCATIONAL FORUM AT 7PM ON TUESDAY 6th May
Books and films to watch before and after
Books
Who Owns Britain?
Who Owns the World?
The Rural War – book review
Bittersweet Brexit – the future of food, farming, land and labour
THE RICH AT PLAY – foxhunting, land ownership and the Countryside Alliance
Events
Wigan Diggers Festival
FILMS
Watch Mass Trespass film about Kinder Scout Trespass
JUST GROW TO EAT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3YgaP9Xev0
Wednesday, 30 April 2025
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
MORE THAN HOT AIR - Are surface temperatures being overlooked in the battle to tackle global warming?
MORE THAN HOT AIR
Are surface temperatures being overlooked in the battle to tackle global warming?
Charlie Clutterbuck thinks so.
Coal, oil and gas, the exploitation of which took mankind out of the Dark Ages, took millions of years to mature. But unless we create some way of swiftly controlling their poisonous side effect’s they might just finish us off instantaneously. Which is why Unite is contributing towards the campaign for Net Zero emissions by backing plans to increase carbon, capture and storage (CCS) , in which Britain led the world until Thatcher took her axe to tests at Grimethorpe Colliery just prior to the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.
But might the rural sector be able to help out in tackling global warming? Unite’s own soil scientist Charlie Clutterbuck, who as Landworker readers will know constantly explores possible solutions to what are regarded as intractable problems, believes so.
“The most reliable global warming data since 1880
comes from NASA. In the next 100 years this reveals there were as many cold
years as warm. Global temperature rose 0.3C,” explains Charlie.
“Yet from 1980 - 2020 it warmed 1.6C. That is the
equivalent of 13x faster than the previous century. Every decade since the
1980s has been warmer than the previous one.
“The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) compares the warming effect of the main
human-produced greenhouse gases to conditions in 1990. In 2022, the AGGI
was 1.49, a 49% increase in 32 years when over the same period temperatures
rose extra-ordinarily.”
Seeking
explanations, Charlie is convinced of the need “to examine surface heat exchange where the sun’s rays hit the
earth.” This complex equation (based on 2 aspects - albedo capacity and
conductivity) happens before any GHG involvement.
Statistics reveal that solar radiation received from
the sun totals 342 watts per cubic metre with 339 watts going back out. The remaining 3 watts - 1% of the total - is
energy. Its absorption by the earth warms it up. Altering that could be key.
Albedo is a key parameter widely used in
land surface energy balance
studies, mid-to-long-term weather prediction, and global climate change
investigation.
“Open ocean water has a moderate albedo of around 0.06, so absorbing a lot of
sunlight, thus contributing to ocean warming, The sea though has high capacity
to absorb heat without temperature increasing, and then conductivity to move it around. Again, we see it heating lots faster
since 1980. Much more than GHGs alone could cause,” states Charlie who
first appeared in Landworker magazine over 50 years ago and who played a key
role in the setting up of the Hazards Campaign and Magazine that has saved the
lives of many thousands.
On land the albedo is much more variable depending on
the surface. Snow has high albedo (reflectivity) but when it melts the brown
earth has low albedo, thus absorbing more heat. Forest and grassland are cooler
than ploughed soil because of a mixture of albedo and capacity. It means that
on hot days it’s pleasurable to lie on the grass but not on the soil,
Currently, ‘global’ temperatures measure just air
temperatures and although water transfers 90% of our heat we do not even
measure its effects. Land too is not measured and so there exists few worldwide
comparisons of variation of warmth over different land practices.
“If we could alter that it could make a massive analytical
difference,” states Charlie. “Because I feel it can help establish that soil
surface temperature rises have played a major role in the rapid global heat increase.”
At Davos in 2023, delegates at the World Economic
Forum were saying ‘soil is the solution’ because of its carbon content.
“But this shows how ‘reductionist’ carbon counting is.
The soil is a living entity not lumps of carbon. Soil holds moisture that keeps
the planet cool, thus pasture is better than arable land,” argues Charlie who
is convinced that the soil in our cities that is now concreted and tarmacked
over had previously have held temperatures down by holding on to water. “Increasing numbers and the size of cities
must have had an impact on global warming.”
Meanwhile, the ‘green revolution’ expanded
dramatically in Asia & Africa after 1980 to produce grain and vegetables in
monocultures. “That warms up land considerably more than grazed grassland.
Previous civilisations – for example, Greek, Roman & Mayan - have been eroded due to similar agricultural
practices.”
Trees are even cooler than grazed grassland and so “the
continuing chopping down of many forests increases surface temperatures by
releasing moisture.”
Baking hot
Furthermore, an area half the size of Europe is
degraded annually from ‘dryland ‘to desert.
“The impact of desertification on global warming must
be enormous, with no trees, grass, clouds, water holding, life support and
surface temperatures bouncing around. Re-growing the trees, grass and improved
soil would help cool the planet and improve rural economies.”
In turn this should reduce emigration by millions of desperate
people seeking to survive an ever-heating world.
Soilution?
“Some of the £1.5 trillion being earmarked towards
‘net zero’, where GHG emissions are, at around £40 a ton of carbon, balanced by
increasing carbon absorption somewhere else, should be invested in paying
attention to the earths’ surface temperatures.”
Rural road to ruin
Nationally, Charlie also fears that net zero plans encourage
less food production and damages rural employment opportunities.
Monday, 31 March 2025
The Times online article on John Goodall publicises my biography on him due out in March 2026
Taken
from ‘The Times’ online on 28 March 2025
He
captained England, penned a football manual and found time to tame wild
animals. Discover the untold story of John Goodall, a true pioneer of the game
It
took three off-duty Royal Hussars on commandeered cab horses to control the
crowd when Aston Villa and Preston North End first locked horns in the FA Cup
in 1888.
The
attendance had swelled to 25,000 at Villa’s Perry Barr ground and the chaos
disrupted play three times as fans spilt on to the pitch.
With
Villa a goal to the good, the Preston captain, Nick Ross, requested that the
game be made a friendly owing to the circumstances. Of course, this was not
agreed to by the home side and so the tie continued.
Preston
went on to win that match 3-1, but could proceed to the next round only when
the referee had insisted the match remained competitive, despite contrasting
recollections by two umpires and the Villa captain.
Villa
sources may dispute this Prestonian account but the tie is so infamous that the
story is still told 137 years later, with the local author Michael Barrett
dedicating five pages to it in his comic book The Rise of the
Invincibles.
That
story is the perfect reminder of how Sunday’s FA Cup tie at Deepdale — the
oldest Football League founder stadium still in use — is one of the most
historic competitive fixtures in the English game.
Villa
descended on Deepdale to visit Preston for the first time in the league later
that year. A tightly contested 1-1 draw was described by The Sunday Times as a
“struggle” that “proved in every way worthy of the high reputation enjoyed by
the two clubs”, at a time when the football column was split into “rugby” and
“association”.
John
Goodall — a player lauded as one of the first true geniuses of English football
— scored for Preston in both fixtures.
“Goodall
was perhaps the final part of the jigsaw,” Barrett says. “He knitted that
forward line together and he fitted into the scientific approach that North End
had.”
Preston’s
“Invincibles” team of 1888-89 strolled to the first Football League title
without losing a game, lifting the FA Cup in the process by not conceding a
goal. Their intricate, calculated style of football, using short passes, was
rarely seen in England at the time.
As
the first Golden Boot winner in England, Goodall was famed for not only his
goalscoring prowess but also his footballing intelligence, and the illustrious
career he forged from it became synonymous with the embryonic stages of the
Football League.
On
the opposing side in their league fixture was his brother Archie, who had moved
to Villa from Preston a few months earlier in the first transfer to be approved
by the Football League. It is believed to have cost £100.
the
pair were both stalwarts of separate national sides. With John born in London
and Archie in Belfast because of their father’s job in the military, they
represented England and Ireland respectively, with John captaining his country
on two occasions. But having been raised in Kilmarnock — where he began his
career — John spoke with a Scottish accent, prompting the historian Mark
Metcalf to title his forthcoming book England’s Scotch Professor.
It
is a nickname that captures the intelligence and leadership on the field that
made him such a versatile player, with Metcalf saying “he played in every
position including in goal”.
When
Preston defeated Hyde 26-0 in 1887, in what remains the biggest FA Cup victory,
Goodall netted only once because his capabilities were trusted at centre half
that day.
“He
was an all-round sportsman. A good cricketer, a really good curler, a good
shooter and a very good bowls player,” Metcalf says. “He had a natural
understanding of the shapes and formations of the games he played in.”
Goodall’s
20 goals in the famed 1888-89 season “came in every shape and form — including
slamming the goalkeeper over the line away to Notts County”.
His
footballing IQ was exhibited when he penned his 1898 book, Association
Football — a quasi-instruction manual on how to play the game, told by
a man who seemed to understand the sport better than his colleagues.
Despite
his legacy as an Invincible, it was Derby County, and later Watford, that
Goodall would call home. He became the latter’s first manager while still
playing and guided them to promotion to the top division of the Southern League
in his first season in 1904, scoring 20 goals in the process.
His
reputation as a gentleman footballer — nicknamed “Honest John” or “Johnny All
Good” — suggested he was destined to have success in management, inspiring and
mentoring the next crop of greats even while he was still playing. The Derby
legend Steve Bloomer, whose total of 314 top-flight goals, scored between 1892
and 1914, is second only to Jimmy Greaves’s 357, credited his success to
Goodall’s guidance on several occasions.
“Bloomer
was taken under Goodall’s wing and the relationship just blossomed. Bloomer
could see in Goodall a pioneer of the game at the time,” says Kalwinder Singh
Dhindsa, a Derby fan who has dedicated so much time to preserving the history
of the club that he is regarded by John and Archie’s descendants as an
“honorary Goodall”.
“Even
when Brian Clough came in [as manager] in 1967, there were various photos from
the old days of Goodall and others. And he kind of binned all the photos, I
think, because he wanted a new generation of players, which did come.
“But
it’s off the back of these legends that our football club was formed. Had the
Goodalls not come to Derby County Football Club, our club may well have gone
out of existence.”
Bloomer
— known as the “Destroying Angel” — became Derby’s most prolific player with
his 332 goals for the club, likely never to be beaten. In his first spell there
he shared a field with John in not only football, but baseball as well.
John
Goodall lived out his life in Hertfordshire after a short spell managing RC
Roubaix in France. He had been married to Sarah Rawcliffe since his time at
Preston and they had eight children.
His
retirement years — which began at the age of 45 — were reserved for his love of
wildlife and filling his time with some unlikely jobs.
“There
may have been a couple of foxes over the time that he tamed and he would
literally walk them around the town in Watford on a leash,” says Brian Goodall,
John’s great-great-grandson, who grew up hearing stories of his ancestor’s
eccentricity as well as his sporting successes.
“It
just lets you know that there was more to this guy than football. Clearly he
was a right character,” he adds.
As
the owner of a bird shop in Hertfordshire, John was pictured in the local paper
as the show manager for the Watford and District Cage Bird Society’s annual
show. He also spent time as a cricket groundsman for West Herts Sports Club.
John
died aged 76 and was buried at Vicarage Road cemetery in 1942, with Watford
paying to mark his grave with an extravagant headstone featuring the club’s
badge in 2018. His legacy spans the UK, with John regarded as a footballing god
at the teams where he spent time. However, many are still unaware of how much
English football owes to the Football League’s first genius.
'A Perfect Day' as plaque to first black international footballer is unveiled in Halifax by Viv Anderson
'A Perfect Day'
The unveiling of a blue plaque to one its former pupils, Andrew
Watson, the first black international footballer, by Viv Anderson, MBE, England’s
first such player, proved a historic occasion for Crossley Heath School on
Wednesday 19 March. On a beautiful sunny day, the drawing back of the plaque’s
curtain, which brought to an end two days of events, was cheered by a large
crowd that included another former pupil and, although a different ball shape,
sports star in Brian Moore.
The plaque can be viewed by visitors to Skircoat Moor, the
heart of Halifax for centuries on which Watson would have had opportunities to
engage in games and make friends. Born in Guiana in 1856, his arrival in West
Yorkshire and subsequent appearances for Scotland in the 1880s is one of
football’s most unique tales as his mother, Anna Rose, was a black woman born
into slavery who was freed, along with her mother Minkle, as a young girl.
Watson’s father, Peter Miller Watson, a wealthy white
Scottish solicitor was highly influential in Demerara where the economy was
based on sugar grown on cane plantations worked by enslaved labour.
Watson, a cousin to Prime Minister William Gladstone, was extremely
fortunate in that, thanks to his father, he was one of the very few illegitimate,
mixed-race children to enjoy an excellent education that saw him become a Queen
Elizabeth Free Grammar School pupil in Heath, Halifax in 1866. A time when
football was emerging to challenge the dominance of rugby.
He became a King’s College pupil in London in 1871 and enrolled
four years later at the University of Glasgow, home to Queen’s Park, the first
side to prioritise the passing game and the best in the world. Meanwhile, English
football with its more individual approach was still struggling to catch up On
his debut in 1881 Watson captained Scotland as they thrashed England 6-1.
Watson followed this up with two more victories against England. At club level
he won the Scottish FA Cup on three occasions.
He later moved south, playing for the famous amateur side
Corinthians where he encouraged players to combine together. He then
represented Bootle, then Merseyside’s number 1, where he became the first black
man to become a football administrator, investor and match official.
Little wonder that alongside Pele he is rightly regarded as
the most influential black footballer of all time.
All these exploits and the background to them were outlined
to a range of pupils within the school on the 18th and 19th
March by football historians Llew Walker, author of A Straggling Life –
Andrew Watson, Bill Hern, author of Football’s Black Pioneers, Richard
McBrearty, curator of the Scottish Football Museum and whose work has probably
done more than anyone to bring Watson ‘back to life.’ Last, but not least, Mark
Metcalf, who lives less than a mile from the school and came up with the idea of
a plaque and who with the backing of headteacher Dean Jones and the school as
whole put it into practice. All four also spoke at a well-attended pie and pie fund
raising supper on the Tuesday night in the school main hall.
On the Wednesday lunch time, Viv Anderson, twice a European
Cup winner with Nottingham Forest who became England’s first black player when
he represented England against Czechoslovakia in 1978 and went on to play 29
times more, was warmly received when he spoke to 500+ pupils within the sports
hall. Since when a further 116 black and ethnic minority players have followed
him including just last week Myles Lewis-Skelly, a full back like Anderson.
Then after signing autographs, he was joined outside at the
pupils’ entrance gate on Skircoat Moor by Mr. Jones, Brian Moore and the four
historians along with the following additional speakers: - Halifax Town manager
Sam Millington, local councillor Colin Hutchinson and Virginia Lloyd, Deputy
Lieutenant of West Yorkshire
After revealing the plaque to the world Anderson, who
admitted he had never heard of Watson until six months earlier, commented that “Watson
must have been very strong willed as back in the 1800s then it must have been
difficult for him but he got through it and I am full of admiration for him.” Anderson
also praised his international colleagues Cyril Regis and Lawrie Cunningham who
he just beat to become England’s first black player.
Dean Jones commented that: “pupils have been able to connect with him as we are a really diverse school, so to be able to champion your own heritage then we can relate to that. Pupils also love sport and to have a sporting icon associated with their school also makes us all really proud. “
A theme that was continued by a school student Ibrahim “we
learnt today about Andrew Watson and Viv Anderson and it is a big inspiration
about how they dealt with racism during their matches.”
Whilst Grace told the press that “I am a big advocate for
women’s football and it has always been a dream to make a change in football
and Viv and Andrew both did that and will inspire me each day to work on
women’s football.”
The event drew considerable media coverage including a 3-minute
evening feature on BBC Look North and articles in The Daily Mail and Sunday
Mirror.
Mark Metcalf, who became a big admirer of Anderson when he
witnessed him face down racists at the Newcastle v Forest game in 1977, said
“it had been a perfect day.”
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