Monday, 11 June 2018
Thursday, 7 June 2018
Spiksley's match v Aston Villa in FA Cup in 1894
This was published in the Sheffield Wednesday programme in February 2018.
“Spiksley’s match”
124 years ago today Wednesday faced Villa in the FA Cup and the atmosphere amongst the 22,100 Olive Grove crowd was tremendous.
Henry ‘Toddles’ Woolhouse opened the scoring. However, by 73 minutes Villa led through two Bob Chatt goals
With under 120 seconds remaining Fred Spiksley collected the ball. The Wednesday fans crossed their fingers and looked on transfixed. When the winger left Cowan and Groves for dead a great roar went up.
As Bill Dunning, Villa’s massive ’keeper, advanced Spiksley sent the ball perfectly round him and into the back of the net. 2-2 and ecstasy among the relieved home fans.
On 115 minutes Spiksley did it again, beating all his markers before finding the unmarked Woolhouse who, with every Wednesday fan’s heart beating strongly, drove home the winner.
The Villa game thus became known for decades afterwards as ‘Spiksley’s match’. An excited crowd remained long after the final whistle so unexpected was Wednesday’s success.
If you can contribute to turning Fred Spiksley’s remarkable story into a film see:- https://www.birthoffootball.com
Class Work
CLASS WORK - Peter Rowley
An important book that helps with the development of a potential economic programme to revive former industrial heartlands.
Peter Rowley has joined the increasing list of Unite members who have had published (*) a thought provoking book. It is one that many people in former stable industrial heartlands will strongly identify with.
Peter Rowley’s extensive knowledge of the East Marsh in Grimsby stretches back to the late 60s when he undertook his teaching placement at the former Harold Secondary school before later becoming a teacher there.
East Marsh residents were heavily dependent on the local fishing industry for work, either working directly within the industry or in manufacturing or service establishments reliant on the trade.
Whilst wages were, even compared to nearby Hull, never the best the plentiful number of jobs — you could leave school on the Friday and be working on the Monday - meant the local community prided itself on being hard working, self sufficient and generously supportive of one another and in particular any of those who, for whatever reason, fell on hard times. Community spirit was strong and, yes, no one locked their doors. It helped that there was also a network of public sector organisations and welfare benefits for anyone requiring assistance.
As the fishing industry — for many reasons — began to experience what has proven to be a permanent decline the mechanisms by which people supported one another began to fragment. Unsurprisingly, some people failed to make sense of their changed circumstances and began to despair about the future. Today, East Marsh has a strong drugs problem that the police seem reluctant to tackle with any serious intent.
Rowley reveals how local community leaders and their organisations have provided a practical focal point for extensive social activities that help retain local pride and provide practical support to one another. Particularly excellent has been vicar John Ellis and the project he helped set up in the early 70s, the Shalom Youth Centre, which, along with Your Place Community Church, will get all the profits from the sale of CLASS WORK, which costs just £7.95.
Alongside this micro analysis of economic decline and its human consequences, Peter offers a perceptive understanding of why things have become so difficult. He goes right back to the Heath Government of the early 70s. He shows that less than 30 years after the end of WWII the Tories, who by this time were no longer fearing the possibility that the working class might seek more revolutionary objectives, were determined to attack the social contract that ensured decent public services for all such as the NHS, good schooling and a secure welfare system.
By taking up the ideas of the Chicago school of economics, Margaret Thatcher - in conjunction with Ronald Reagan in the USA - then radically took forward the neoliberal project. At its core this comes down to letting the rich become ever richer whilst contending, with no evidence at any level, that everyone else will benefit from the ‘trickle down’ effect whereby money from the rich makes it way down to the bottom of the heap.
It is nonsense but the current Government remains firmly attached to such an idea. This means they have pushed the idea that being unemployed, even if you are sick and/or disabled, is an individual’s fault rather than the fault of an economic system that has failed to provide sufficient jobs.
More than 40 years later, Peter Rowley has interviewed many of the former pupils he worked with. Their stories are uplifting and they’ve got real grit. It’s clear that Rowley likes these people and he allows their working class voices to come through on the pages. This is much better than what appears as modern journalism in many papers when the working class are only occasionally featured on the pages.
The words of those interviewed contain some embryonic ideas for how best to economically regenerate the East Marsh and Grimsby in general. Rowley obviously wants to see these ideas further developed. As such he has interviewed in his book a number of people, such as Tony McLernon, who have run training programmes aimed at improving the unemployed — and particularly young people’s — skills and self confidence.
Peter has on occasions included in Class Work some of his own business and economic thoughts. I think he might have improved a very good book by offering a few more, especially as after a twenty year career in secondary and further education he set up his own company, Peter Rowley Limited.
This company specialised in manufacturing performance improvement, Lean manufacturing techniques and education and factory turn-rounds. Employing forty staff nationwide they became the UK Centre of Excellence for Lean Manufacturing with top multi-sector clients.
Providing a fresh economic approach is vital if people and places like Grimsby are going to do better.
Peter is thus highly supportive of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s plans to move away from neoliberalism if, after the next election, Labour becomes the next government. A People’s Quantitive Easing Programme would see money invested in infrastructure, job creation and high tech industries. Alongside this the Welfare State, the NHS and Education would be restored and supported. Some privatised industries will be taken back under state control.
Peter is a Labour Party member who is keen to help change ‘the course of history by a permanent transition in the balance of power in favour of the many not the few. To transform a system currently rigged against working people.’ Good for him and the more people who read this book the better as it will help in achieving such objectives. Tony is happy to speak at trade union branches and meetings about this book. I think his appearance would make for some necessary discussions. Unite will be hosting a public meeting in Sheffield in early 2018 on this book.
To Buy Class Work at £7.99 go to https://www.amazon.co.uk/Class-Work-Peter-Rowley/dp/1973293986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511363649&sr=1-1&keywords=class+work+peter+rowley
- Books written by Unite members since 2016.
BATTLE OF GRANGEMOUTH at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/bookofthemonth/may-2017/
Until the Curtain Falls: No Pasaran at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/bookofthemonth/june-2017/
From a Bended Knee to a New Republic at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/bookofthemonth/december-2016/
A Most Uncivil War at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/bookofthemonth/november-2016/
The Life and Times of a Baby Boomer at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/bookofthemonth/february-2016/
BAD NEWS: The Wapping Dispute at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/bookofthemonth/january-2016/
A history of the Farmworker in England from 1850 to the Present Day
A history of the Farmworker in England from 1850 to the Present Day
Nicola Verdon
This is the most comprehensive account so far written of the history of agricultural workers since the 1850s, when farmworkers, at the height of the industrial revolution, were still numerically the biggest group of workers in England. Today, with under 100,000 in total, farmworkers account for under 1% of the employment totals. Many of their roles though remain essential.
Dr Nicola Verdon is a history lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. Her previous book, published in 2002, was on Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England. This showed the vital role women, often overlooked, played in the many developments in farming through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Her findings have been used to contribute to radio and TV programmes. Sadly, the book was only made available to an academic audience.
Verdon hopes — and is pushing to make — her second book more widely available via ebook and paperback. She would welcome opportunities to address trade union and labour movement gatherings about its contents. Unite branches can contact Nicola to discuss how to organise a visit by her to their meetings. It should prove a fascinating event as she certainly knows her subject.
An economic explanation of the forces shaping the countryside is combined by Verdon in Working the Land with the history of rural labour markets, employment pattens, the farm workforce and rural households and daily family life.
The author grew up in the countryside and has dedicated the book to her grandfather whose employment trajectory is typical of many agricultural workers. Born in a small Derbyshire village he was part of a large family and he left school soon after becoming a teenager to become a farmworker on a number of farms over the following years. He then went to live on a Nottinghamshire farm before quitting the sector to become a lorry driver and earn considerably more than in his previous jobs.
Verdon’s grandfather was one of a number of former agricultural workers interviewed. Getting today’s farmworkers to speak openly about their experiences is difficult. “They are reluctant to talk. Farmers are also wary if someone wants to speak to their employees, who in engaging with a researcher would reveal they are thinking about pay and conditions. Farmworkers worry this would lead to a loss in employment and so, like in previous generations, it is better to remain silent.” Verdon has found it especially difficult to make contact with migrant workers, the most exploited section of farmworkers today.
In order to overcome some of the silence, Verdon has also for two decades plus ploughed through official and Parliamentary papers and has sought, I believe successfully, to capture the thoughts of farmworkers, male and female, about their work.
There are a number of things in the book that would shock many members of the public that surveys show know very little about how much of their food is produced on a farm.
The first is the high skill levels of many farmworkers since 1850 onwards. Whether it is working with horses or a sheep dog, ploughing a field to driving — and often fixing — heavy vehicles and harvesters it is apparent that many tasks require a real talent and ingenuity. That includes making an objective assessment of whether weather conditions might rule out particular tasks at certain times.
“Many people think that farmworkers have and are badly paid because they are not skilled, but that is simply not so,” said Verdon.
The relatively high numbers of female farmworkers is also revealed in Verdon’s book. “There is a misconception that agriculture is only masculine. I wanted a front cover that included men and women as the latter need to be fully recognised,” said Verdon who also explained that it was a popular myth that the Women’s Land Army had been significant in improving farming outputs during WWI. “Really it was those that always worked on farms, combined with an input from local men and women, that helped ensure our survival at the time.“
What WWI - and later WWII - did do was bring about a general recognition that the products being produced by farmers and their employees was essential for life. There was a genuine optimism that things would change for the better after the 1917 Corn Production Act introduced the first minimum wage for agricultural workers. The retiring Tory Government knocked it out of existence but once the first ever Labour Government re-introduced it in 1922 it was here to stay until the more modern Tories, combined with their Lib Dem friends, scrapped it in England at the start of this decade.
Guaranteeing better wages and conditions helped farmworkers with their drive to produce quality food but the numbers doing so continued to fall. The Labour Government after WWII maintained guaranteed prices for farming products. Generous grants for farm equipment — especially tractors — led to a continuing fall in employment totals.
Some farmworkers left the industry reluctantly but others welcomed the opportunity to take up jobs with better pay and less hours needed to earn it. Verdon admits that she did not want the book to become — as it could have — very depressing. “Many of those who left, either voluntarily or forcibly, the land have done well.”
What is undoubtedly depressing is that farmworkers still need to be better organised and represented. “The ending of the AWB in England under the basis that farmworkers are covered under minimum wage legislation was viewed by many of the farmworkers I interviewed, even those paid more than the AWB rates, with disquiet. They understand that the legislation provided a framework for all round better conditions and they worry that there will be, like after legislation was scrapped after WWI, wage deflation amongst groups of highly skilled farmworkers. They are right to be concerned,” said Verdon.
At this point it would be great to report that farmers - and politicians who they work closely with - really care about those farmworkers, of all nationalities, who play such a vital role in helping feed all of us. Verdon was the guest speaker recently at The Farmers Club in Whitehall. Tory MPs were present. Verdon found that there was a real interest in farming policy but hardly any concern about workers except for the need to ensure a plentiful supply of cheap migrant workers in the future. Nothing changes.
Interviewing Verdon then it is clear that she shares a passion for the history of landworkers and how this might aid their current struggles. “I look forward to being contacted by readers to discuss me speaking at their trade union branch meetings. I am also pushing the publishers to bring down the cost of my work so that is available in paperback,” said Nicola.
To contact Nicola send an email to n.verdon@shu.ac.uk or ring 07402 867472
Nicola Verdon
This is the most comprehensive account so far written of the history of agricultural workers since the 1850s, when farmworkers, at the height of the industrial revolution, were still numerically the biggest group of workers in England. Today, with under 100,000 in total, farmworkers account for under 1% of the employment totals. Many of their roles though remain essential.
Dr Nicola Verdon is a history lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. Her previous book, published in 2002, was on Rural Women Workers in Nineteenth-Century England. This showed the vital role women, often overlooked, played in the many developments in farming through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Her findings have been used to contribute to radio and TV programmes. Sadly, the book was only made available to an academic audience.
Verdon hopes — and is pushing to make — her second book more widely available via ebook and paperback. She would welcome opportunities to address trade union and labour movement gatherings about its contents. Unite branches can contact Nicola to discuss how to organise a visit by her to their meetings. It should prove a fascinating event as she certainly knows her subject.
An economic explanation of the forces shaping the countryside is combined by Verdon in Working the Land with the history of rural labour markets, employment pattens, the farm workforce and rural households and daily family life.
The author grew up in the countryside and has dedicated the book to her grandfather whose employment trajectory is typical of many agricultural workers. Born in a small Derbyshire village he was part of a large family and he left school soon after becoming a teenager to become a farmworker on a number of farms over the following years. He then went to live on a Nottinghamshire farm before quitting the sector to become a lorry driver and earn considerably more than in his previous jobs.
Verdon’s grandfather was one of a number of former agricultural workers interviewed. Getting today’s farmworkers to speak openly about their experiences is difficult. “They are reluctant to talk. Farmers are also wary if someone wants to speak to their employees, who in engaging with a researcher would reveal they are thinking about pay and conditions. Farmworkers worry this would lead to a loss in employment and so, like in previous generations, it is better to remain silent.” Verdon has found it especially difficult to make contact with migrant workers, the most exploited section of farmworkers today.
In order to overcome some of the silence, Verdon has also for two decades plus ploughed through official and Parliamentary papers and has sought, I believe successfully, to capture the thoughts of farmworkers, male and female, about their work.
There are a number of things in the book that would shock many members of the public that surveys show know very little about how much of their food is produced on a farm.
The first is the high skill levels of many farmworkers since 1850 onwards. Whether it is working with horses or a sheep dog, ploughing a field to driving — and often fixing — heavy vehicles and harvesters it is apparent that many tasks require a real talent and ingenuity. That includes making an objective assessment of whether weather conditions might rule out particular tasks at certain times.
“Many people think that farmworkers have and are badly paid because they are not skilled, but that is simply not so,” said Verdon.
The relatively high numbers of female farmworkers is also revealed in Verdon’s book. “There is a misconception that agriculture is only masculine. I wanted a front cover that included men and women as the latter need to be fully recognised,” said Verdon who also explained that it was a popular myth that the Women’s Land Army had been significant in improving farming outputs during WWI. “Really it was those that always worked on farms, combined with an input from local men and women, that helped ensure our survival at the time.“
What WWI - and later WWII - did do was bring about a general recognition that the products being produced by farmers and their employees was essential for life. There was a genuine optimism that things would change for the better after the 1917 Corn Production Act introduced the first minimum wage for agricultural workers. The retiring Tory Government knocked it out of existence but once the first ever Labour Government re-introduced it in 1922 it was here to stay until the more modern Tories, combined with their Lib Dem friends, scrapped it in England at the start of this decade.
Guaranteeing better wages and conditions helped farmworkers with their drive to produce quality food but the numbers doing so continued to fall. The Labour Government after WWII maintained guaranteed prices for farming products. Generous grants for farm equipment — especially tractors — led to a continuing fall in employment totals.
Some farmworkers left the industry reluctantly but others welcomed the opportunity to take up jobs with better pay and less hours needed to earn it. Verdon admits that she did not want the book to become — as it could have — very depressing. “Many of those who left, either voluntarily or forcibly, the land have done well.”
What is undoubtedly depressing is that farmworkers still need to be better organised and represented. “The ending of the AWB in England under the basis that farmworkers are covered under minimum wage legislation was viewed by many of the farmworkers I interviewed, even those paid more than the AWB rates, with disquiet. They understand that the legislation provided a framework for all round better conditions and they worry that there will be, like after legislation was scrapped after WWI, wage deflation amongst groups of highly skilled farmworkers. They are right to be concerned,” said Verdon.
At this point it would be great to report that farmers - and politicians who they work closely with - really care about those farmworkers, of all nationalities, who play such a vital role in helping feed all of us. Verdon was the guest speaker recently at The Farmers Club in Whitehall. Tory MPs were present. Verdon found that there was a real interest in farming policy but hardly any concern about workers except for the need to ensure a plentiful supply of cheap migrant workers in the future. Nothing changes.
Interviewing Verdon then it is clear that she shares a passion for the history of landworkers and how this might aid their current struggles. “I look forward to being contacted by readers to discuss me speaking at their trade union branch meetings. I am also pushing the publishers to bring down the cost of my work so that is available in paperback,” said Nicola.
To contact Nicola send an email to n.verdon@shu.ac.uk or ring 07402 867472
THE HELL OF TREBLINKA - Vasily Grossman
THE HELL OF TREBLINKA - Vasily Grossman
Fascism does not start with extermination or death camps but the ideological core of its dictatorial beliefs in racial supremacy - combined with a totalitarian one-party government system that allows no dissent - will, if not defeated, inevitably lead to the creation of such horrendous institutions.
It was the discovery of Nazi concentration camps towards the end of WWII that revealed the true horror of the Holocaust, the genocide by which Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered in excess of six million European Jews and hundreds of thousands of its political opponents, disabled people, lesbians and gay men as well others such as Romany people who it viewed as inferior or a threat.
The Treblinka, built in occupied Poland, was one of many extermination camps. An estimated 700,000 plus Jewish people were, between July 1942 and October 1943, slaughtered there in its
gas chambers as part of what the Nazi regime referred to as the Final Solution.
The decision to abruptly bring to an end a highly efficient operation in which thousands were killed daily was the result of continuing victories on the Eastern Front by the Soviet Union Red Army, which, with the loss of 11 million soldiers, had from 1941 onwards born the brunt of the Nazi war machine.
Faced with the possibility of the whole world getting to know what they had been doing, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the paramilitary organisation the SS, arrived at the camp in early 1943. Like Hitler, Himmler was a fervent anti-Semite and he stood for sometime admiring the outcome of his instructions by looking down on the corpses of thousands of innocent people that were on open display in giant pits. Before he left he made it clear that from now on all those that were killed - plus those who had already gone, all slaughtered within hours of their arrival - should be burnt. He wanted rid of all the evidence.
Huge furnaces were constructed to create giant grill pits where the heat was often so intense that those who threw the dead bodies into the flames were themselves overcome by the fumes and fell to their deaths. Some preferred to commit suicide rather than be consumed by their guilt in the whole horrendous exercise.
But how do we know this? It is because despite the Germans successfully blowing up Treblinka, but only after they were unable to successfully suppress and prevent the escape of at least some of the condemned prisoners in August 1943, the Red Army entered the well hidden camp.
Accompanying the fighters was journalist Vasily Grossman. He systematically researched what had happened there through his own observations, reading documents that had survived and by speaking and arranging interviews with survivors, local people and those involved, in all sorts of ways, in the processes that resulted in the mass murder of so many people.
It is difficult to come to terms with the brutality that is described in this short book of 60 pages. What is also difficult to comprehend is the subtle methods that were devised by the fascist regime to hoodwink people such that the large majority only comprehended that they were being led to their deaths in the final few minutes of their lives.
That was not though always the case and the book contains descriptions of some heroic acts of co-ordinated resistance amongst prisoners who had survived being killed on arrival at Treblinka because they had special skills to minister to the Germans’ everyday needs.
There are also numerous small individual acts of humanity portrayed such as dying mothers trying to give some small relief in the last few moments of their own lives to their children as they lay next to one another gasping for breath in the gas chambers where the death process took from ten to twenty-five minutes. Sadly, we will never know many of the names of those who fought so bravely. But the eventual defeat of fascism in 1945 was as much a victory for them as those that survived.
This is not an easy book, but EVERY HUMAN BEING SHOULD READ THIS BOOK.
Death to fascism.
WHAT IS FASCISM?
Under fascism all forms of democracy including autonomous workers organisations are annihilated.
A state control system is then created at preventing fascism ever being overthrown. Individual identity is crushed insofar as the individual simply exists to serve the interests of the state.
Fascism began as a movement at the start of the twentieth century in response to rapid social upheaval, the slaughter of millions in World War One and the 1917 Russian revolution.
Fascism glorifies the nation and/or race as transcending all other loyalties. Myths of national or racial rebirth are emphasised following periods of decline or destruction. Fascism thus aims to destroy ‘outside’ or ‘alien’ forces that threaten the nation and/or race.
Fascism thus generally promotes racial and male supremacy doctrines and ethnic persecution and it also has a history of genocide and imperialist expansion.
As fascism seeks to gain power its political approach is twofold. It is populist, seeking to activate the 'whole people' against perceived enemies, such as Jewish people, or oppressors. It is also elitist, whereby ‘the peoples will’ is embodied in a select group, or more generally in one supreme leader and from whom authority proceeds downward. As such fascism is not only about superiority between races but within races.
Fascism is hostile to socialism, liberalism and conservatism, whilst adopting concepts from all three.
Fascism rejects class struggle and workers internationalism on the grounds that they threaten national or racial unity. Fascism does though frequently exploit genuine grievances against capitalists and landowners by developing radical sounding conspiracy theories and ethnic scapegoating.
Although fascism may use Parliamentary methods to try and gain power it rejects political pluralism and representative government. Fascism can clash with conservatives, who are attached to tradition based institutions, and yet fascism generally romanticises the past in order to promote or provide inspiration for national rebirth.
Fascism’s relationship with established elites can be complex. In general, fascism defends and promotes capitalism but it can also seek to exploit differences within the ruling class as it seeks to subsume capitalism under the umbrella of the nation state. Cooperation, competition and interaction between fascism and other right wing groups has produced hybrid movements and regimes.
Examples of fascist regimes from the past are Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and Italy under Benito Mussolini. Both men destroyed the trade union movement as they moved to take complete control of society. In Britain, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, the National Front, British National Party and English Defence League have sought to develop support for fascism.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)