A reminder of how unconcerned the Government was about the COVID crisis in care homes

 

Amidst the carnage of COVID was a total failure of the Government to get to grips with what was happening in care homes where thousands did unnecessarily. I was fortunate in June 2020 to help break this story before any other media outlet thanks to Kevin Gopal at the Big Issue North and Sharon Reed down in Weymouth. ITV was due to break the story nationally but, unfortunately, they had too many staff off with COVID to make the trip down from London to the South Coast.

Here is the story.

 

TEST CRISIS AT CARE HOME

An experienced care home manager has attacked the government for what she believes is a systematic, ongoing failure to develop a coronavirus testing system for care home staff and residents.  

Sharon Reed (pictured) of Weymouth’s Danmor Lodge private care home also feels Matt Hancock and Helen Whately, health and social care ministers, do not understand how care homes operate and have failed to defend those working in them.

https://www.bigissuenorth.com/news/2020/06/test-crisis-at-care-home/

 

https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/care-homes-big-issue-north-magazine-2-june-2020.mp3

We are women, we are strong, we are fighting for our lives - Women Against Pit Closures

 

 

Women Against Pit Closures

We are women, we are strong, we are fighting for our lives

Side by side, with our men, who work the nation’s mines.

United by the struggle, united by the past,

So it’s here we go, here we go for the women of the working class.

The independent organising of welfare facilities – including social housing – had always been a big part of mining communities throughout Britain. ‘Societies’ created a community base of support for the sick and needy, generating a collective spirit that had stood the test of time. If the miners in 1984 were to stay out for any length of time then they were going to need everyone in their local communities to get involved.

In the lead-up to the strike there had been discussions in many mining communities about setting up communal kitchens, attached to which would be food-parcel centres. The aim was to prevent people being forced back to work by poverty. Women’s support groups quickly sprang up to turn the ideas into reality.

The women involved, many of whom had never previously addressed a meeting in their life but who were by no means apolitical, were to find themselves plunged into the most exciting times of their lives as they spoke at many meetings and rallies, raised funds, provided welfare rights advice, took part in picketing and challenged the full force of the State, including the police. Some also took part despite resistance at home from their partners who were not used to seeing women as equals who took a public role in political affairs.

Without the women’s efforts there is no doubt the strike would not have lasted anywhere near as long. Amongst the women involved were a number who were on strike themselves from their jobs working in administrative roles in big NCB regional offices, the pit canteens and cleaning offices. (Sadly there appear to be no reliable figures on the actual numbers of women strikers.)

In east Durham the women in the SEAM campaign swiftly organised kitchens in the Easington area. Very quickly there were established over 50 miners’ support groups in the county and this helped ensure that Durham remained totally solid for the first five months of the strike.

Having started out by attempting to use women, and miners’ wives in particular, as victims of an irresponsible strike the media were unable to ignore the highly politicised voice of women in mining communities. In the first few days of the strike the papers were full of stories in which women in Nottinghamshire were urging their husbands not to strike. In Barnsley, five women met and wrote to the Barnsley Chronicle to counter the suggestion that women weren’t in favour of the strike. Seeing the letter it wasn’t long before other women were stimulated into getting involved.

Over the next few weeks the group helped with supplementary benefit claims for wives and children of striking miners. Welfare Rights workers provided the women with advice. In the following months the 50 women in Barnsley Women Against Pit Closures (BWAPC) organised 16 different kitchens, each providing 300 meals. The women also had to find the money to pay for the meals as, by and large, all women’s support groups were responsible for finding their own funds.

In Carmarthenshire, Cynhedire WAPC raised £1,000–£1,500 a week to pay for their kitchen whilst in Faudhouse in West Lothian women collected in their village every day. In Kent the Women’s Committee regularly received food from the Daily Mirror printers and at Christmas turkeys arrived from Smithfield Market.

At their weekly meeting on 22 April 1984 BWAPC agreed to hold an All Women’s rally on 12 May 1984. Three women – Lorraine Bowler from Barnsley, Annette Hoyroyd of Nottingham (whose birthday it was) and Maureen Douglass of Doncaster – were invited to speak, along with Jack Taylor and Arthur Scargill. Both men encouraged the women to lead the march and maintained a position, surrounded by children, a couple of rows behind.

Everyone involved hoped for at least 2,000 to turn up on the big day. At least five times as many came from all parts of the country and they were cheered all the way by people lining the street as they marched.

At the rally in Barnsley Civic Hall Lorraine Bowler said: “ This fight does not just belong to the men, it belongs to us all. It has been good over the weeks to compare how some men have reacted to women’s involvement in the beginning and how they react now. It has been a gradual acceptance for most. The reception we receive from the men on picket lines and demonstrations is tremendous … Being active, as we are, takes away most of the uncertainty that is involved in a strike … We cannot allow this Government to decimate our industry and our communities. Is that what we want for our kids?

“In this country, we aren’t separated as a class. We are separated as men and women … I have seen change coming for years and the last few weeks has seen it as its best. If this Government thinks its fight is only with the miners, they are sadly mistaken. They are now fighting men, women and families.”

As a result of the day’s events links were forged that established a national women’s group – Women against Pit Closures – in all but name. Possibly the first ever national working class women’s organisation, this was formally constituted on 22 July 1984 when miners’ wives (around 75% of those present) and women supporters representing every British coalfield met at Northern College, Barnsley for their inaugural delegate conference.

This was called to co-ordinate a National Women’s Demonstration in London with the purpose of highlighting women’s support for the miners in their fight for jobs and against pit closures as well as to inform the public of the effects the pit closure programme would have on mining communities. It was intended to present the DHSS with a bill for £45,000,000, the sum that had been deducted from striking miners’ social security entitlements over the first 20 weeks of the strike.

There was also to be a 100,000-signature petition presented to the Queen appealing to her to speak on behalf of the miners’ defence of their jobs and communities. 15,000 women from all coalfields descended on the capital on 11 August, proving that the women behind the strike were determined to continue the struggle.

The Little Blue Bus

Every time we see a little blue bus

It sends shivers right through us

You see these are full of police

They keep saying they’re only here to keep the peace

But the only thing we get from them is

Are abuse and lies and intimidation

They arrest our men whenever they like

Even when they’re in bed in the middle of the night

They threaten women and children with arrest

Of course this is something that we detest

They don’t care, they don’t respect us

They just drive around in their little blue bus.

Lynn Dennett, Church Warsop WAG

The Party

Oh what a lovely NOISE,

Hundreds of shouting girls and boys

Tables of goodies laid out with care

Ten minutes flat, laid again bare,

Boys now wearing, jelly daubed trousers

Girls, the last in spattered blouses.

Oh what a lovely NOISE,

Children’s laughter joy of joys,

Rivers of ice-cream running down legs,

Bursting balloons like gunpowder kegs,

Christmas crackers, streamers, one enormous din,

 

Disco dancing, party games, prizes to win

Oh what a lovely NOISE,

Santa’s arrived with sacks full of toys,

Sweating faces shining with glee,

Scramble in turn onto his knee,

Whispering secrets recoiling in shock,

Have they been naughty, most certainly not

Oh what a lovely NOISE,

As without ceremony or poise,

Wrapping papers discarded, flung to the floor,

Everyone happy, who could ask more,

Time to go home, the noise starts to cease,

Oh what a lovely, lovely, PEACE.

Madeline Butterfield

‘‘Our organisation got better as the strike went on. More women are becoming politically active and want to carry on the women’s movement after the strike. Our women in the various groups have visited Germany, Denmark, Austria, France, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Spain, Norway, America and Canada. Contacts have been made with union organisations, socialist groups, miners’ families and communities and ordinary people. A great flow of clothes; food, toys and chocolate cake came at Xmas, with vast sums of money. Many lasting friendships were made. People from these countries have visited the mining communities.’’ South Wales Women’s Support Group, which covered 100 women’s support groups across the 27 pits in South Wales.

“We loved it; everyone was like a community, everyone helped each other. We were all skint, all in debt, but we were together. If it hadn’t been for the strike I’d never have gone to America, never had met all those people.” Liz French of Kent Women’s Committee.

A figment of his imagination: People's History of the Anti-Nazi League by Geoff Brown - part 2

 In the previous blog post at https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/9213221449000331725/662162860916076563

I made reference to the booklet on the ANL that was published by the Colin Roach Centre, where I was the elected co-ordinator at the time, in 1995.  

I noted that in the People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League by Geoff Brown that according to the publisher's synopsis

This definitive history of the Anti Nazi League draws on extensive interviews with leading figures and local activists, along with contemporary coverage in the national, local and music press (from the 1970s) 

The conclusion

Anti-racism is a force as never before. The Black Lives Matter movement that exploded after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, 25 May 2020, in Minneapolis, saw between 7,500 to 10,000 protests in the US, protests that were much more multiracial and much more likely to penetrate into suburban and into rural areas than had previously been the case. ……on Saturday 6 June, 15000 marched in Manchester……

Can we mobilise such forces to defeat today’s far right and fascist threat? In the fight against the politics of despair, the history of the ANL is a source of hope. Since the destruction of the NF, every attempt by fascists to launch electoral or street-based fascist initiatives has been defeated with the ANL’s successor organisations, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Stand Up to Racism, (SUTR) playing a leading role. A tradition has been established rejecting any alliance on the state in favour of mass collective action……….

In the 1990s Anti-Fascist Action published the Fighting Talk magazine and the following is an article from the magazine. 

A FIGMENT OF HIS IMAGINATION: People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League by Geoff Brown

 

A FIGMENT OF HIS IMAGINATION

 

People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League

Geoff Brown

According to the publisher's synopsis

1977. Labour in government. Unemployment growing and despair spreading. The National Front on the march and rising fast at the polls. Racist attacks on Black and Asian communities increasing. Then came the Anti Nazi League. A vibrant mass movement challenging the NF and racism on the streets, in workplaces, in colleges and schools. The ANL broke the back of the NF. This definitive history of the Anti Nazi League draws on extensive interviews with leading figures and local activists, along with contemporary coverage in the national, local and music press.

The conclusion

Anti-racism is a force as never before. The Black Lives Matter movement that exploded after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, 25 May 2020, in Minneapolis, saw between 7,500 to 10,000 protests in the US, protests that were much more multiracial and much more likely to penetrate into suburban and into rural areas than had previously been the case. ……on Saturday 6 June, 15000 marched in Manchester…….. a week later, the home secretary, Priti Patel, told parliament that 210,000 had protested in demonstrations in Britain in 160 towns and cities over the previous weekend.

Can we mobilise such forces to defeat today’s far right and fascist threat? In the fight against the politics of despair, the history of the ANL is a source of hope. Since the destruction of the NF, every attempt by fascists to launch electoral or street-based fascist initiatives has been defeated with the ANL’s successor organisations, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Stand Up to Racism, (SUTR) playing a leading role. A tradition has been established rejecting any alliance on the state in favour of mass collective action……….

 

Clearly the reality is that anti-racism is not ‘a force as never before,’ and those on the Stand Up To Racism march on 13 September 2025 were (very, very) fortunate that the state in the form of the metropolitan police did not abandon protecting it in central London when the 5,000 participating were dwarfed by the 100,000+ on tommy Robinson’s event. Fact is, of course, the UAF and SUTR have, even on much smaller events, for decades hidden behind police lines when the going has got tough. The stewarding is a joke and the SUTR organisation is an anti-democratic shame that, thanks to cash from trade union bureaucracies, today gives paid organisers jobs to members of the SWP rather than SUTR members electing – or deselecting – experienced persons or young people with a talent for action for such roles.

In the mid-1990s I was the elected co-ordinator at a self-funded members run centre in hackney called the Colin Roach Centre. Colin had been killed in Stoke Newington police station in 1983. The centre provided a wide range of free advice and, in addition to running our own campaigns that included opposing police brutality and for workers’ rights, supported local people self-organise campaigns on housing and against deportations. Unsurprisingly, it attracted state attention and an undercover police officer was charged with finding out more.

The centre issued a magazine and was able to publish a series of booklets that sold in good numbers. The funds generated helped pay for running costs and towards my wages.

Amongst our membership were a number of experienced anti-fascists that included myself. In 1995 I wrote the second part of a £1 pamphlet titled Anti Nazi League – a critical examination 1977-81/2 and 1992-5. Part 1 was written by Jim Kelly, who, unlike myself, was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ANL.

30 years on the work is still relevant. In part 1, Jim charts how the launch of the ANL signalled a move to the right by the SWP leadership desperate to work with pop stars and labour politicians. Meanwhile, anti-fascist militants were developing their own national links. In September 1978, the SWP refused to oppose a National Front (NF) march to Brick Lane as that would have interfered with a carnival on the same afternoon. Branches who had opposed the NF on the day were shut down.

Then there followed a heavy defeat for the NF at the 1979 general election to Margaret Thatcher, who had stolen their rhetoric. The NF abandoned its strategy of electoral responsibility and turned even more violent. However, when SWP comrades, virtually all of whom were working class and involved in rank-and-file groups in their industries, fought back they were abandoned and expelled. The party was over and the ANL was closed down.

As such despite the successes that Brown is able to identify in his book, the anti-fascist politics of the 70s cannot provide the answers for today. A new working-class agenda is needed.

Part 2 starts by recalling the 5,000 strong Anti Fascist Action (AFA) march in Bethnal Green on 10 November 1991. Around 1,000 of the attendees were members of the SWP. Fascism had been growing steadily across Europe in the previous decade. This included across east London where the growth of the British National Party was being opposed physically and politically by AFA.

So, without even discussing it at their national conference that was held the same weekend in November it was suddenly announced by the SWP leadership that members were now expected to rebuild the ANL. As many of the AFA leadership included those who had been expelled from the SWP following the 1979 election there was never going to be an approach to work together. Instead the ANL  began with a squabble, over which MPs would back them, with another new, this time black-led organisation, the Anti-Racist Alliance. 

In September 1992, the Blood and Honour music network announced its intention of hosting a major gig that was expected to attract around 1,500 fascists and racists. AFA mobilised at Waterloo to occupy the meeting point for those attending the gig. In the events that followed, the fascists’ plans were severely dented. Only around 300 made it to the music which was played amidst a raging battle over who was to blame for the fiasco.

SWP/ANL members – who earlier in the day had held a 1,000 strong rally – totalled around 100 at Waterloo and yet when they produced a programme for their subsequent massive 200,000 ANL strong carnival they listed Waterloo as one of their successes.

The SWP/ANL then provided canvassing support for the discredited Labour Party candidate on the Isle of Dogs during a local council by election. Council workers then walked out when the British National Party (BNP) candidate was elected but were persuaded by their national and local leadership to return to work whilst the ANL ‘Council Workers against the Nazi’s’ grouping stood silently by.

In 1994, the ANL, and others, then miss organised a demonstration in Welling in which they failed to confront the fascists, who were holed up in a nearby pub surrounded by the police who were protecting them from AFA. 

Meanwhile, the growth in Combat 18, which proved to be led by fascists linked to the security services, was simply ignored by the ANL which, under instruction from the SWP leadership, now abandoned the anti-fascist struggle for trade union ones.

The booklet can be downloaded at:-

https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/anl.pdf

DEFEAT SNATCHED FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY - OCTOBER 25TH 1980 AND NACODS

 

Taken from IMAGES OF THE PAST – THE MINERS’ STRIKE BY MARTIN JENKINSON, MARK HARVEY & MARK METCALF – published in 2014 and republished in 2024

“IF YOU BUY ONE BOOK ON THE MINERS’ STRIKE BUY THIS ONE” – DAILY MIRROR

 

Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory                                  

It was in October 1984 that the real possibility of an NUM victory arose when MacGregor’s arrogance resulted in a dispute with the pit deputies’ union, NACODS. Early in the strike it had been agreed that NACODS members would not cross picket lines at strike-bound collieries. When the NCB chairman ordered them to do so a ballot to strike won an 83% vote for action.

Strike action was planned to start on 25 October 1984. If it went ahead working pits would be closed down as by law work could only be carried out at a colliery in the presence of a pit deputy.

Stopping production would have created a major problem for the CEGB and the government, who must have been terrified at the fear that the miners’ might deal a third blow – in 12 years – to a Tory administration. Another defeat may well have caused the British ruling class to question whether their support for a party used to power was worth continuing in the future. It would certainly have led to deep recriminations within the Tory Party, an organisation well used to quickly getting rid of its leaders. Thatcher, herself, was to find this out in November 1990.

Speaking in 1993 Thatcher was candid when she said: “We were in danger of losing everything because of a silly mistake. We had to make it quite clear that if that was not cured immediately, then the actual  management of the Coal Board could indeed have brought down the government. The future of the government at that moment was in their hands and they had to remedy their terrible mistake.”

With Whitehall’s top officials having outlined to her how British industry could be forced on a three-day week, an anxious Thatcher ordered a chastened MacGregor to be “as conciliatory as possible on the points of substance,” (Downing Street Years) including the withdrawal of his circular regards crossing picket lines at strike-bound collieries.

After extensive discussions NACODS was persuaded to abandon their fight to “achieve some form of arbitration in cases of disagreement over closures” (Downing Street Years) and accepted a mildly souped up pit closure review procedure just 24 hours before strike action was due to start.

According to Scargill: “the fact that NACODS leaders ignored pleas from the NUM and TUC not to call off their strike … poses the question – whose hand did the moving, and why? Over the years, I have repeatedly said that we didn’t “come close” to total victory in October 1984 – we had it, and at the very point of victory we were betrayed. Only the NACODS leaders know why.”

In the decade that followed, the new agreement failed to save a single mine and thousands of NACODS members lost their jobs as a result of failing to fight pit closures. Following the agreement, Jack Taylor had warned them that would be the case when he said: “Nothing has changed as far as the board’s pit closure programme is concerned … only a victory by the miners will halt that closure programme, save Cortonwood, Bulcliffe Wood and the three other named pits and stop further closures on economic grounds.”

NACODS example shows that the adoption of more moderate tactics by the NUM would not have saved the Tories from butchering the mining industry. Steelworkers adoption of similar tactics in the early 80s had failed to prevent the decimation of their industry. After the miners’ strike ended areas that tried to work closely with the Coal Board suffered, like others, a series of rapid closures.

 

 

 

The Miners’ Strike

In addition to being the most bitter industrial dispute the miners’ strike of 1984/5 was the longest national strike in British history.

For almost a year over 100,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers, their families and supporters, in hundreds of communities, battled to prevent the decimation of the coal industry on which their livelihoods and communities depended.

Margaret Thatcher’s government aimed to smash the most militant section of the British working class. She wanted to usher in a new era of greater management control at work and pave the way for a radical refashioning of society in favour of neo-liberal objectives that three decades on have crippled the world economy.

Victory for her government meant draconian restrictions on picketing and the development of a militarised national police force which made widespread arrests as part of its criminalisation policy. The attack on the miners also involved the use of the courts and anti-trade union laws, restrictions on welfare benefits, the secret financing by right-wing industrialists of working miners and the involvement of the security services.

This attack was supported by a compliant mass media but resisted by the collective courage of miners and mining communities in which the role of Women against Pit Closures in combating the ensuing poverty and starvation was heroic. Inspired by the struggle for jobs and communities, support groups across Britain and the world helped create a situation where the miners came close to winning their historic struggle.

At the heart of the conflict was the Yorkshire region, where even at the end in March 1985, 83 per cent of 56,000 miners were still out on strike. The official Yorkshire National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) area photographer in 1984-85 was the late Martin Jenkinson and this book of his photographs – some never previously seen – serves as a unique social commentary on the dispute that changed the face of Britain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New book by Bill Hern on Sunderland AFC in 60s, 70s and 80s

If you wish to be a subscriber you need to do so by 22nd October. 

 

JUST GROW TO EAT - the food of the future documentary

 

There are major issues that will determine where we get our food from in the future.

JUST GROW TO EAT is a 30-minute journey across north west England explaining developments in Britain’s countryside such that - with the supermarkets ruling – food imports continue growing at the expense of the environment, people’s health and weight, real green jobs and rural communities.

Watch it now at:- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu3HJtbXvd8 

Soil scientist and board member at the Incredible Farm in Todmorden, Charlie Clutterbuck outlines how food can be grown locally. Then by combining this with £3bn subsidies –around what Britain once received back from the EU – to harder up people to buy healthy food this will boost local economies, thus creating more jobs on the land.

Produced by Charlie Clutterbuck, Dave Hackney and Mark Metcalf this film aims to encourage debate about food and farming and could be used by communities or online.

 

Here are some of the main points from the film for you to discuss and decide what demands to make within your own sphere of influence.

1. Cut down on Ultra-Processed Foods:.
   How can you tell what you’re eating is ultra-processed, and how can you reduce their use. Lobby governments to include in any future plans to reduce obesity.
2. Get more access to land for communities to grow more local food. Allotments are under more threat-with more building. Are there ways to protect them and promote growing  areas within building developments?
3. Open up debate about who owns the land and how we can have more say in what is grown there. E.g. is the use of 3 million acres of land in the UK for grouse shooting really a sustainable use of resources?
4. Promote the ‘old EU subsidy’ money such that it can be used to subsidise healthier eating.
   There is about £3Billion of previous EU funds that, similar to the US SNAP system, could be used to help poorer people buy locally produced better food.
5. Introduce ‘Seed’ funding (perhaps ex EU monies above) to stimulate new ‘Green’ economies, linking town and country, thus creating  ‘real’ green jobs growing more food.
6. Make sure you add ‘food and farming’ to any debates about greening the economy. Most industrial strategies talk about energy, cars, steel, batteries, emissions, and targets - but rarely a mention of the greatest carbon-capture and storage units - plants.