Northern Forest: can’t see the wood or the trees

 

 

Northern Forest: can’t see the wood or the trees

Tree planting slows while HS2 decimates woods

As published in the penultimate issue of the Big Issue North, 01 May - 7th May 2023 

Despite the planting of five million new trees between 2018 and the start of the planting season this year environmental campaigners remain doubtful about the long term success of the Northern Forest (NF) under which there are plans for 50 million new trees by 2043.

In 2017 only 1,000 hectares of trees were planted – the lowest for years. Plans to extend the HS2

high-speed rail link to Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds were also set to decimate 97 ancient woodlands across our region.

Environment secretary Michael Gove responded by announcing the Northern Forest, stretching from Hull to Liverpool. Tree cover around cities would be expected to grow from eight to 17 per cent.

The 25-year project was expected to cost £500 million, of which the government, despite strong criticism, promised to provide just £5.7 million, with the rest to be raised by charity. In 2021 and with just three million trees planted the government stepped in with a further £15 million funding from the £640 million Nature for Climate fund to allow another million trees to be planted last year.

Bringing to life the new woodlands are the Woodland Trust and the Community Forests in the North of England – the Mersey Forest, Manchester City of Trees, the White Rose Forest and Humber Forest.

Joint efforts

Nick Selwood is the Northern Forest project manager for the Woodland Trust. His role is to manage teams “to ensure we deliver a lot of quality tree planting for communities right across the North”.

This requires engaging with partners including local authorities and landowners including the National Trust, water companies such as Yorkshire Water and United Utilities, and farmers.

“We encourage joint efforts to plant trees and create access opportunities to them for the public. Even before we started planting this year there were already five million new trees planted.”

According to Selwood most of the new trees, especially outside urban areas, are native species such as oak, birch and rowan.

“This is because they are better for local wildlife and they’re attractive, so people want to walk through the woods and enjoy a day out with the family or cycle,” he said.

Landowners

Because native trees are more slow growing than conifers, they capture less carbon and contribute less to tackling climate change. Does Selwood expect the government to put pressure on Northern Forest partners to change direction in the future, or that there will be bias exerted towards landowners who plant conifers in densely packed forests?

“There is a need for conifers to be grown commercially but we are not under pressure to change our approach,” he said.

Where landowners do get involved, they can receive up to £13,000 per hectare to support their

woodland creation scheme, plus up to £2,800 per hectare for woodlands that restore nature and species under the England Woodland Creation Offer.

Roly Smith, an environmental campaigner and writer from the Peak District, is sceptical that the Northern Forest will do better than the National Forest in the Midlands, which still has only just over half of its planned 13,500 hectares planted since being announced in 1995.

“With the National Forest they intended joining up patchy woodlands,” he said. “It hasn’t happened. Five million new trees planted further North looks impressive but it still remains way down on the planned 50 million over 25 years. And despite the cutback in HS2 there are still numerous ancient woodlands set to be chopped down.

Alleviate flooding

“I also don’t see any serious ambitions having been announced to plant more trees in the upland moors, which could alleviate flooding lower down the river systems such as places like Hebden Bridge or York. Apart from the obvious wildlife and carbon offsetting benefits, this would also restore many landscapes which have been overgrazed or ‘sheep wrecked’, as George Monbiot puts it, by too many sheep for too many years.”

Charlie Clutterbuck, a Lancashire soil scientist who was a special adviser to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Select Committee in 2008-10, is also unconvinced by the Northern Forest plans.

“Pulling teeth”

“There are many schemes to plant trees and they are to be welcomed,” said Clutterbuck “But it is one thing to plant trees and another to look after them. Just recently a blunder by the National Highways saw over 600,000 trees die along the A14 in Cambridgeshire. I am secretary to our local woodland friends group, and getting money out of the council to maintain them is like pulling teeth.

“Many trees are also planted badly on soils not appropriate for them. To paraphrase a well-known saying, planting a tree is not just for Christmas, but its lifetime.”

When asked if it was confident that plans to create a 50 million strong tree forest across the North by 2041 will be successful, Defra admitted the government department was unsure, saying:

“Defra funds a small portion of the Northern Forest (1,259 ha) as part of the Nature for Climate Fund Programme. As a result, it is difficult to comment on the wider target of 50 million trees by 2043.”

Harry Kane wanting to be a goalkeeper is from Roy Massey's autobiography

 

The story of Harry Kane wanting to become a goalkeeper that appeared in many papers over the weekend of 15th/16th April was from Roy Massey's autobiography which I assisted in writing. 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/harry-kane-love-arsenal-tottenham-29717502

Roy Massey – a lifelong football man and coach to the stars

IN 1998 the biggest change yet in the history of the development of young footballers transformed Roy Massey’s life. Inspired by Howard Wilkinson, one of Massey’s opponents as a player, the FA agreed to facilitate the creation of an academy system that would allow clubs to attract and train children from eight years old upwards.

Chosen to oversee this radical initiative at Highbury, club legend and head of youth development Liam Brady was quick to choose Massey as his assistant academy manager.

In these pages we learn how the structure was designed from scratch and plans laid, and later refined, to discover and help develop a rich vein of young talent capable of making it to the first team at one of the world’s greatest clubs.

In a highly competitive field, Massey explains why certain young players such as Jack Wilshere, Bukayo Saka and Alex Iwobi made it at Arsenal and why he, wrongly as it transpired on occasions, allowed others to leave. There are also heartbreaking stories of youngsters who had their lives as players snatched from them by career-ending injuries.

Roy Massey’s own story is that of a dedicated and lifelong football man whose 50 years in the professional game spanned the full gamut of the sport’s dramatic and evolutionary change.

Here is a man, unlucky with injuries throughout his whole career as a player, but always respected enough for his knowledge and experience to ensure that he was never short of an important role in the game he would always love.

Massey scored goals for his hometown club Rotherham United, followed by spells at Leyton Orient and Colchester United, before another serious injury brought his playing career to an early end at an age at which most players are nearing their peak.

He then combined working as a PE teacher and managing in non-league football with behind-the-scenes work to discover and nurture young talent at Colchester.

Massey, who was brought up on tales of great games by his grandfather Jimmy, an FA Cup winner with Sheffield Wednesday in 1896, recalls what it was like playing in the lower leagues just after the end of the maximum wage and in a decade when England won the World Cup. He explains why he turned down the opportunity to sign a professional contract with, among others, Arsenal and Aston Villa, in the early 1960s. He also recalls the inspiration he felt when Colchester manager Dick Graham asked him to revive the Essex club’s youth system and how his eye for talent, organisation, training methods and motivational skills aided the development of many youngsters into successful players.

Little wonder then, in the wake of the launch of the Premier League in 1992, that Norwich City asked Massey to join them as they moved to revolutionise their own youth programme.

His success at Carrow Road didn’t go unnoticed and when Liam Brady asked Massey to join him at Arsenal it was the start of a flourishing 16-year partnership. Even after leaving the Gunners in 2014, Massey remained in football well into his 70s, with spells scouting for three Premier League clubs.

Throughout the book, Massey’s love for football is never far from the surface, as from an early age it was always, like most of us, what he dreamed he would do for a living.

 

 

 

 

Foreword by Liam Brady

I TOOK over as head of youth development at Arsenal in 1996. When Howard Wilkinson became the FA’s technical director, overseeing coaching at all levels of the game, he began to dramatically change youth and schoolboy football through the academy system.

Clubs could now seek to sign children from the age of eight upwards. I needed a department at Arsenal dedicated to the younger schoolboys. Roy had come to my attention quite a lot with the work he was doing for Norwich City. He had set up a centre in London for Norwich and he was getting a lot of good young players for Norwich who Arsenal, Spurs or West Ham should have been recruiting.

I thought he would be a good asset to the academy in recruiting the younger element and I made a great choice as he was absolutely brilliant in running and coaching and managing the eight-to-12-year-old groups in the academy. Roy created great relationships with the boys.

Roy created a team of scouts – including some who had been with Norwich – and coaches. Roy was also very strong with parents and they got on well with him. Roy would take children on tours and the parents would love it. There was a great atmosphere around the academy and that was because of Roy.

His success was tremendous. We won the FA Youth Cup three times in those 16 years with many of the boys who Roy had recruited at nine, ten and 11 years of age. Quite a lot went on to play for the first team and/or be sold for a lot of money. Roy’s work really paid dividends for the academy.

SPY COPS VICTIM SPEAKS AT INQUIRY

 

 Another Big Issue North article, 27th March to 2nd April 2023 

I am due to appear as a witness at the UCPI late next year. I am available to speak at trade union and labour movement meetings about this as long as my expenses are covered. 

SPY COPS VICTIM SPEAKS AT INQUIRY

Celia Stubbs believes police spied on her to “conceal the true circumstances” of

Blair Peach’s death

She was spied on after partner killed by police

Following her appearance at the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Celia Stubbs, whose partner Blair Peach was killed by police, is convinced the police officers who spied on her did so “to help collude and conspire to conceal the true circumstances of Blair’s death and to enable the police to escape accountability for it”.

Meanwhile, Manchester University law lecturer Graham Smith, who has supported Stubbs throughout, believes there is a case for a charge of perversion of the course of justice against some senior police officers who knew the police had killed Peach but failed to prevent Stubbs being spied on.

The inquiry, led by Sir John Mitting, is scrutinising the conduct of 139 undercover officers in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) who spied on more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and 2010, possibly longer. The inquiry opened in 2020 and to date has taken evidence from the period 1968 to 1982.

Fatal blow

Senior Scotland Yard officers supervised the SDS and their actions will be examined shortly.

According to David Barr KC, the inquiry’s most senior barrister:

“Senior police officers visited the SDS, were aware of its existence and, in broad terms, how it operated.” Yet none appear to “have considered whether the level of intrusion occasioned by SDS long term deployments was justified”.

In April 1979, Peach, Stubbs and friends went to Southall to protest against a National Front general election rally.

Some 3,000 Metropolitan Police officers were charged with maintaining the peace. But when they began removing 3,000 sit-down protestors, the atmosphere became ugly and missiles were thrown.

Among the police were members of the Special Patrol Group, which had gained notoriety following the Red Lion Square disorders in 1974 when student Kevin Gately was killed by a blow to the head by an unidentified assailant.

Peach was leaving Southall when, according to 14 eye-witnesses, an SPG officer struck him on the head.

He died the following day. The Metropolitan Police’s complaints bureau investigated, taking statements from SPG members, some of whose lockers contained unauthorised weapons.

Meanwhile, the police had started to spy on Stubbs. Over the decades eight officers filed reports on her.

She knows the name of only one, Mark Jenner, who did so from 1995 till around 1999.

SDS was established in 1968 with the approval of the Wilson government. Its work was to gather intelligence to prevent public disorder, and to assist the security service in defending the UK from espionage and sabotage.

SDS reported on Stubbs attending numerous meetings, including ones where Peach was not even mentioned, protests and social gatherings. Stubbs helped form Inquest, which provides expertise on state-related deaths. At none of the reported events on Stubbs was there social disorder.

“The reason for spying was to collude and conspire to conceal the true circumstances of Blair’s death and to help the police evade accountability,” said Stubbs. “It had nothing to do with public disorder.

“The inquiry has shown that the police saw accountability and justice as threatening but justice campaigns exist to uncover the truth and injustice.

The police complaints bureau report was finally released in 2010.

“It stated what we always believed – the fatal blow was struck by a Unit 1 SPG officer. It is likely it was the first officer from the van,” said Stubbs. “Deliberate untruths told by officers were laid bare. They were a major factor why nobody was prosecuted for Blair’s death.”

Smith said it was “particularly disturbing” that Stubbs was targeted when senior Metropolitan Police officers would have known that Peach was killed by a police officer, and she was spied upon for

lawfully trying to call officers to account. “By allowing this unlawful interference with her right to know what happened to her partner, the evidence disclosed to the Undercover Police Inquiry points to the existence of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by Met officers,” he said.

Stubbs found her inquiry appearances “traumatic.” She wants a police apology and Mitting, who lacks powers to grant one, appears sympathetic. According to Stubbs’ solicitor Simon Creighton of Bhatt Murphy: “She has shown great perseverance and thus revealed that undercover policing against justice campaigns was not about public disorder but about defending the police’s interests.”

MARK METCALF

Roy Massey: A Life in football is out on April 17th

 

Roy Massey was brought up on great tales of football as his grandfather, Jimmy, was a great 

goalkeeper with Sheffield Wednesday and was a member of the 1896 FA Cup winning team.

Roy is available for talks in the London and Colchester area. 

THINGS FALL APART BUT THE CENTRES CAN HOLD: Community centres find alternative funding sources which could herald renaissance

 

THINGS FALL APART BUT THE CENTRES CAN HOLD

 

Community centres find alternative funding sources

Co-ops and crowdfunding could herald renaissance

 

 Big Issue North 6/03/2023 

During the industrial revolution community centres became places for burgeoning urban communities to connect and socialise. Two centuries on they remain important spaces for advice, physical, creative and social events and classes.

But cuts in funding from central and local government mean community centres face a constant battle to find alternative funding. When successful it can give their management committees more freedom to respond positively to the needs of their communities.

One of the most successful and biggest community centres in our region is the Karmand Community Centre, Bradford, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. It began in response to massive job losses in the foundry and textile sectors among workers from South Asian communities. Funding came from the local council.

Hive of activity

“People didn’t know how to claim benefits and needed training for new skills to get them back into jobs. We started with welfare advice, which we still provide, plus basic training courses in food and hygiene safety and IT,” said centre manager Rashid Ahmed.

“People asked for a place to meet and talk to each other. We responded. Youngsters said they had nowhere to meet. We built a sports hall and set up a youth room.”

Funds were raised to build a day care centre to combat isolation among the elderly and today it is a hive of activity run by Rehana Quareshi.

“Older people come here to relax and forget everything,” she said. “I have up to 20 ladies attend. We do activities such as yoga classes and sewing. We wrap services around so people can get a flu or Covid booster jab.”

“I was suffering from depression so I started coming here,” said Charanjit Kaur from Thornbury. “I talk to everybody. Now, thank god, I’m feeling better. Everybody is friendly, I’ve made many more friends.”

National lottery funding has allowed Bradford College to run a large number of courses from Karmand and it houses a purpose-built nursery for up to 120 children.

In response to the loss of local recreational fields when a new school was built, the director of Bradford City Council said it might be willing to release land earmarked for housing for outdoor sports facilities. It took 15 years to get the local authority to make good on its proposal but Karmand now has a floodlit six-a-side football pitch and a cricket pitch, maintained by Nasa Hussain.

“I’ve lived in this community all my life,” he said. “Whatever I do here is not for financial gain. It’s a labour of love and I’m proud of people coming here to say that the facilities and pitches are brilliant.”

Like many community centres, Karmand responded to the cost-of-living crisis and rising energy prices

the recent half term it gave 150 children a daily hot meal and it is also at the heart of regional support for Ukrainian refugees.

“Initially we were totally reliant on local authority funding,” said Rashid. “It dictated what services we provided… but some of these were rejected by local people, so we found alternative funding sources for projects that were wanted. Local people, who form our management committee, decide how we operate.”

Many folded

Doug Nicholls, general secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), is impressed by the Karmand, which is awaiting news of a £10.3 million bid to the government for a new health and wellbeing centre. He began as a local authority community worker in 1982 at a centre in one of the most deprived areas of Coventry.

“The building was leased by the local authority and most funding came from the government,” Nicholls said. “But the community association managed to have an independence of its own as there were national networks supporting one another – a bit like the trade union movement.”

In the 1980s and 1990s local authority cuts led to “a huge demolition of the youth services, many based in youth and community centres that were on prime sites and sold off for substantial sums. Some of these community assets were transferred into a poorly organised private sector,” Nicholls said.

From 2008, local authorities have received 37 per cent less in real terms in central government grants and this has led to further funding cutbacks for community centres. Although there are no accurate figures it is apparent that many have folded.

Tim McSharry, who sits on the Access Committee for Leeds, a volunteer run body established in 1995, said: “In the last decade we have seen a massive reduction in publicly accessible community facilities that disabled and or elderly people can access in Leeds.

“It means many live isolated and lonely at home. Previously they were collected by a council-run mini-bus and could visit a community centre lunch club where the food was good and they met with friends.”

Faced with the loss of their centres community activists have banded together to seek the assets to be transferred to trusts they have established.

City of Lincoln councillors have just agreed that its ownership of the St Giles Community Centre will be transferred, pending funding from the national Youth Investment Fund to Lincolnshire YMCA, which will pay a peppercorn rent for a 25-year tenancy.

Todmorden Community College was transferred to a community benefit society by Calderdale Council in 2021. The transfer came after five years of campaigning, and fundraising by the community to save the building from being bulldozed.

In 2022, Calderdale Council closed Queen’s Road Neighbourhood Centre due to a lack of funds to correct major safety issues. It is now looking for a full community asset transfer of the premises. There is no guarantee this will be successful and meanwhile services such as a youth club no longer exist in a ward of great poverty.

Return to independent roots

But Nicholls feels there are good reasons to be positive about the future for community centres.

“There was despair when many community centres closed from 2010 to 2015. But in the last 18-24 months the GFTU, because of our shared values, has been trying to rebuild links with community organisations and we have found there is a renaissance taking place.

“Partly this is motivated by desperate circumstances – the need to open buildings to provide places of warmth, recreation and to educate people on social rights. It is being done with less infrastructure and public money. It means new forms of ownership in co-operatives and using crowdfunding, with workers digging deep into their own pockets to provide vibrant community facilities.”

Nicholls points out that this is how community centres began. Mechanics institutes emerged from the 1820s and were possibly the first of what we might today term community centres.

Later, churches understood people had more leisure time and, partly to provide an alternative to the public house, built halls. In 1919 the National Council of Social Service (NCVO today) was established to bring voluntary bodies together to work closely with government and many village halls were built, especially in declining rural communities.

Social centres were then built on post-war estates such as Quarry Hill in Leeds and in 1955 the Ministry of Education began a national grant scheme for building more halls. From the 1970s, community centres became increasingly reliant on local authorities for support.

Returning to their independent roots is a strength, Nicholls believes.

“People can exercise their own sense of worth and dignity and can fight for themselves without being in anyone’s pockets and, without having to obey the dictates of the funders, they can do what needs doing locally.”

BRADFORD 12’S WIN FOR SELF-DEFENCE PRINCIPLE

 

 

BRADFORD 12’S WIN FOR SELF-DEFENCE PRINCIPLE

Courtroom battle set to be depicted in documentary

Group made petrol bombs in case of racist incursion

 It was a period of great racial tension. Yet when Bradford youths sought to defend their community from a potential racist incursion, 12 found themselves arrested, locked up and facing life imprisonment.

Their courtroom success established the right to organise self-defence. Over 40 years on a documentary about the experiences of the Bradford 12 is set for release later this year.

Blocked

In the 1950s and 1960s Britain persuaded thousands of South Asians to come and work in the mills and factories of the North, with more than 20,000 Pakistanis, many from Mirpur, making their homes in Bradford by 1970. The children of these migrants had witnessed their parents struggle to make ends meet and hoped to do better, only to be blocked by racism in education and at work.

As Britain’s economy declined in the 1970s and unemployment rose this led to increased racist street violence, including the deaths of Gurdip Singh Chagger in Southall and Altab Ali in East London. Sixty-year-old Mohan Dev Gautam was dragged from her Leamington Spa home and murdered.

The Asian Youth Movement (AYM) was established to defend communities against racist attacks. It adopted ideas from the American Black Power movement and anti-colonial struggles, including principles of self-defence.

“This was the era of Paki-bashing, when drunken white youths would leave pubs and actually go and hunt us down,” said Tariq Mehmood, one of the Bradford 12, who during his school years recalls being surrounded in the playground by white children chanting racist nursery rhymes.

“In 1981 we believed fascists were coming to Bradford. There was no way we intended letting National Front fascist skinheads march through where we lived.

“We had previously mounted organised defence of our communities. People were being

murdered nationally. Parveen Khan and her three children died in East London from petrol poured through their letter box.

“When confronted with a situation where the police are unwilling or incapable or even in cahoots with the attackers you have no option. You have a right to live. If that means organising and defending yourself against the perceived attack then it is your human and civil right, perhaps even your duty, to do something.”

Members of the United Black Youth League, a AYM splinter group, manufactured petrol bombs but did not use them as the racists failed to show. Despite this, 12 UBYL members were charged with “conspiracy to cause explosions and endanger lives”. If found guilty the 12 faced being jailed for life.

“In our situation, do you have a right to organise self-defence? We said yes and the police said no. The jury concurred with us. It was the first time that a group that had organised armed self-defence was accepted in British law and it’s a principle that still stands,” said Mehmood, who then worked at Ackroyd’s textile mill and today teaches at the American University in Beirut.

He believes all 12 would have gone to prison if not for the thousands of people and organisations nationally and internationally supporting them.

“It was not just an issue of colour – this was an issue of racism and class,” he said. “We were very conscious that the allies we had included many within the trade union and labour movement – people like Pat Wall from the Bradford Trades Council who spoke about it at public meetings, as did many people from amongst many communities.”

Unity

Another supporter was Mohammad Taj, who had earlier been denied membership of the textile dyers union because of his colour but went on to become TUC president in 2013-14. He worked at the bus garage and organised a campaign collection.

Mehmood is a member of Migrant Media, a collective of film makers whose work includes Injustice (2001), Ultraviolence (2020) and Exposed (2022), about racism endured by NHS workers.

Migrant Media film director Ken Fero, who is working on the Bradford 12 documentary, said: “We wanted to go into depth about the political situation. You’ve got Thatcherism, uprisings across the

country, the National Front running riot across cities, plus the relevance today about unity, including preventing religious divisions that are being promoted by fascist groups imported from India.

“The United Black Youth League may have been black-led but anyone could join it so members included progressive whites plus Asians and Afro-Caribbean – not like today where it is all individual politics.”

The story of the Bradford 12 is part of a history of racists attacks and anti-racist struggle during that time. In 1979 Blair Peach was killed by a Metropolitan Police officer when he was hit over the head in Southall at a rally against the National Front. It took place during a general election campaign when Margaret Thatcher expressed sympathy with those who felt their culture was being “swamped” by waves of immigration.

In March 1981 a fire at a birthday party for an African-Caribbean youth in New Cross, London led to 13 deaths. It was believed the house had been firebombed. The Queen and Thatcher failed to send their condolences.

Twenty-five people, including some of the 12, have been interviewed for the documentary, to be released later this year.

Migrant Media is asking anyone with any visual records of this shared history to get in touch at bradford12film@gmail.com or via Instagram at @migrantmedia.

People can also join a two-day open workshop in July when participants will learn how to use silhouette animation techniques to make images representing 40 years ago, some of which will be used in the feature-length documentary.

Victoria Derbyshire and Ellen Strange

 

It is thanks to Unite and particularly former NW chair Martin McMulkin that since 2015 there has been an annual walk to the oldest site in the world to commemorate a domestic violence victim. Ellen Strange was murdered by her husband high up on Holcombe Moor in January 1761.

On the first Sunday of each July, campaigners make the 4-mile round trip to the Ellen Strange cairn where painted stones are left and the names of all domestic violence victims – in excess of 100 – in the previous 12 months are read out. It is an emotional occasion.

Unite held make funds available to publish a booklet on Ellen Strange, for basic organising costs and for Mark Metcalf and Adam Marseille to produce a 17-minute documentary Ellen Strange – the Light That Still Burns.

Because of these efforts many people now know about Ellen Strange. The efforts of all concerned meant that when Channel 5 made a programme in which Victoria Derbyshire visited locations around her hometown of Bury that she had when growing up no knowledge of they made the trip up to the Ellen Strange cairn with Martin McMulkin. Derbyshire, who witnessed domestic violence as she grew up, is clearly impacted heavily by the visit.

You can watch the action at:- No Place Like Home:- https://www.memorabletv.com/episodes/no-place-like-home-victoria-derbyshire-channel-5-2023-01-11/