Mike Martin: David Cameron suspended collective responsibility for the EU referendum - and the Tories haven't been responsible since

Introduced as "one of the most interesting new politicians in Britain", Mike Martin is the guest on the latest edition of Nick Cohen's podcast The Lowdown.

They talk of the international situation, the need to increase the size of the British Army and the strange death of the Conservative Party.

As Mike observes, David Cameron suspended cabinet collective responsibility for the 2016 EU referendum, and the Tories never regained a sense of responsibility after it. 

They spent a decade fighting a civil war rather than governing the country. Hence  many of the problems we now face, including the underfunded condition of Britain's Armed Forces.

Cohen suggests that the media missed the biggest story of the 2024 general election - the gains the Liberal Democrats made in what used to be the heart of Tory England.

Mike Martin's Tunbridge Wells seat is perhaps the most startling example of this, and he says it's easy to imagine the Tories finishing third there in May's local elections, behind the Lib Dems and Reform.

Family's Roger Chapman reviews the sounds of September 1969

There's a great exhibition on at the Leicester Adult Education Centre in Wellington Street at the moment. The Art School Dance Goes on Forever looks at the achievements of alumni of Leicester Art School in the 1960s. 

Those alumni include Tony Kaye, a founding member of Yes; the members of the band Family; and the actor Charles Dance. Many more made their names in fields related to art.

The exhibition closes on 17 March. It's open Monday - Thursday, 8.30am - 8.30pm, Friday 8.30am - 4.30pm and closed on Saturday and Sunday.

I had intended to include a video about the exhibition here, but can't find one I can embed. So instead here's Family's lead singer Roger Chapman reviewing the week's new releases back in 1969.

It's a reminder that the idea the Beatles were above criticism is a modern heresy.

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Josh Self has some good news - Reform UK’s civil war will be a protracted farce: "[Rupert] Lowe’s substantial online presence will ensure every aspect of this row is played out in public. That means recurrent poor headlines for Reform - as an array of significant political milestones await."

"As of 1900, about 18 per cent, or nearly one in five, American children died before their fifth birthday. The most common causes were infectious diseases - pneumonia, diphtheria, dysentery, measles, and other illnesses ran rampant through households, and children were especially at risk." Anna North reminds us of what life was like before vaccines.

"The four-part docudrama follows a group of mothers in Corby as they fight for justice after 19 of their children were born with birth defects caused by exposure to toxic waste – the result of the botched regeneration of the town’s former steelworks site." Lee Barron, the town's Labour MP, reviews Toxic Town.

Victoria Guida argues that crypto may be its own worse enemy: "Factions within the industry are battling with each other for strategic, commercial and ideological reasons."

"The film’s title is aptly overdetermined. Reclusive rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) is obviously one kind of performer. But performer, in British slang, also refers to mobsters like Chas (James Fox). In the film, the worlds that these two men inhabit collide and entwine in fascinating fashion." Bud Wilkins reviews of a new Blu-Ray release of Performance.

Lizza Aiken praises the sequels to Jane Austen's novels that Joan Aiken wrote.

Ed Davey urges Starmer to visit Canada to show support for Mark Carney in his stand against Trump

From the Guardian live politics blog this morning:

Last night Mark Carney, the formconer governor of the Bank of England, was elected leader of the Liberal party in Canada, which means he will become prime minister. Canadian election results don’t often take centre stage in UK politics, but Carney was elected promising fierce opposition to President Trump’s talk of annexing Canada and in London Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is urging Starmer to fly to Ottawa this week “to stand in solidarity with the country’s new prime minister in response to Trump’s threats against Canada”. 

In a statement Davey said:

It’s vital for both British and Canadian security that we stand strong together. With global instability rising, it’s never been more important to show a united front with our Commonwealth friends – and to stand together against Trump senselessly turning the screws on his allies, whether that’s Canada, the UK or Europe.

Responding to the trade war along the North American border, our prime minister must stand in solidarity against Trump’s bullying and visit Ottawa in a joint show of strength. Starmer must be clear that Trump’s threats against Commonwealth nations’ sovereignty are unacceptable.

The Guardian continues:

Davey won’t be expecting Starmer to take his advice. But he has touched a nerve. Starmer angered Canadians during his press conference with Trump in the White House last month by refusing to answer a question about Trump’s stance on Canada, claiming the journalist who asked about it was “trying to find “a divide between us that does not exist”. 

And, with King Charles attending a Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey this afternoon, there will be close interest in whether he says anything that might be seen as a comment about Trump’s plan to seize the country where he is head of state.

Lord Bonkers tells me that when Queen Victoria was once urged to visit Canada, she replied: "We are not a moose."

A Canterbury Tale passes the Bechdel test

Good news about A Canterbury Tale, which now seems firmly established as my favourite film. It passes the Bechdel test.

The Bechdel test?

This has become an accepted measure of the representation of women in a film. It asks whether the work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man.

A great many celebrated films fail this test, but A Canterbury Tale passes. It does so because of the scene above.

Sheila Sim, a Land Girl, goes to work for a woman farmer played by this blog's heroine Freda Jackson. Their wide-ranging conversation mentions a man at one point, but it's about many things.

A walk across the fields to the new Braybrooke Beer Co. taproom

A few years ago the Braybrooke Beer Co. set up a brewery at a farm outside the Northamptonshire village of that name to produce lager. The company was formed with the London market in mind, but you can buy their beers at the Beerhouse in Market Harborough and no doubt it has other outlets beyond the capital.

They have just opened a taproom at the brewery, and there is a surfaced path leading to it from the Brampton Valley Way - the old Market Harborough to Northampton railway. On Friday, I set out to walk that path.

I was surprised there was no signpost at the turn off from the Brampton Valley Way, and I wasn't convinced at first that I was going the right way. But if you leave the Way by a few muddy steps and set off diagonally across a field - see the photo above - you're doing fine.

Cross the bridge, and you will find a surfaced path - suitable for wheels as well as boots - and a pleasant landscape.

When you cross the River Jordan, on its way to flood Little Bowden and then join the Welland by Market Harborough railway station, then you are almost there.

And at the business end of the path, there is a sign.

There are also signs along the way for horses, which are very intelligent in this part of Northamptonshire and value politeness.

Finally, though I didn't manage to photograph the start of the new path or the taproom itself, I did capture this disturbing image.

My theory is that these are the ghosts of Iron Age warriors, disturbed by an archaeological dig that all the locals advised against.

"Naked boys as pit-ponies": Conditions in the Somerset coalfield

Back to the Somerset coalfield and a story that caught my eye in the splendidly populist and scandal-seeking John Bull magazine.

Well, it would. The headline was:

Naked boys as pit-ponies!

Unusually for the British Newspaper Archive, the scan of the story below is difficult to read in places, so let's go over to the House of Commons on 29 June 1926, where Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough East, has raised the same story:

My purpose in rising, although I realise that there are many on these benches much more qualified than I am to speak about the conditions of the miners' work, is to crave the indulgence of the Chair in order to reply to an attack made by the hon. Member for Frome (Mr. G. Peto) upon an article which I wrote in a Labour paper known as "Lansbury's Labour Weekly." ...

I wrote in that article of men working in Somersetshire mines dragging tubs of coal along narrow roads, which were too narrow for horses or pit ponies to work in, and that these tubs were attached to the men by means of ropes passed round their waists and fastened through their legs by means of a chain which is hitched on to the tub. 

I also wrote that these men were naked. The point I was insisting upon was not the actual nakedness of the men, or otherwise, but the fact that in many cases, I do not say in all, the rope was rubbing the naked flesh of the men. 

Since that article appeared, I have received a very large number of letters, both from men who are working under these conditions and from men who deny that these conditions exist. For the information of the House, I have brought with me one of these ropes. I am sorry to intrude into the polite environs of this House a thing of this kind. [The hon. Member produced a rope with chain and attachment.] 

This is what is worn by the men. This is the rope that goes round the man's waist; this is the chain that passes between his legs, and this is the crook that is hitched on to the tub. This was worn, not 60 years ago, as stated by certain coal-owners, but on 30th April of this year by a miner.

And later she says:

A hundred years ago women were working like that and people said that should not he, and it was prohibited by law. The degradation of the human body is the same whether it is a man or a woman. It appeals to peoples' hearts more if it is a woman than if it is a man, but the mothers who have to wash the bodies of their boys when they come home from the pits are as hot and indignant about it as if it was their daughters. 

When you consider that people are working under these conditions surely, in God's name, seven hours is enough. You are adding on another hour in order that more profits may be made, because it will not mean more wages. We know only too well that whatever the wages are, the rates are cut and cut until the minimum only is paid, and I feel that if these conditions are to go on in the name of profit, at least seven hours is enough.

Ellen Wilkinson's final comment reminds us that the bill she was speaking on aimed to increase the hours miners worked while reducing their pay. The General Strike had been called earlier in the year on just this issue. 

The miners held out until November of 1926, but were eventually forced back to work on these inferior terms by hunger and poverty.

Dhafer Youssef: Birds Canticum

This is a track from Birds Requiem, a 2013 album by the Tunisian composer, singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef.

This is how the album is described on his website:

Without forgetting the artistic identity that he forged through his experience and permanent search for sonorities, Dhafer Youssef carries on transcending genres. His quest leads him to clarinetist Hüsnü Şenlendirici and Kanun player, Aytaç Dogan. Dhafer Youssef’s voice accompanies Hüsnü Senlendirici‘s clarinet and Aytaç Dogan’s Kanun. Nils Petter Molvaer’s trumpet reinforces the atmospheric mood. Eivind Aarset’s guitar, Kristjan randalu’s Piano, Phil Donkin’s double bass and Chander Sardjoe ‘s drums create a jazzy atmosphere.

“Birds requiem” is the name of Dhafer Youssef’s new album, released on October 2013. This last opus is a very personal album that has been prepared at a turning point of the artist’s life, and at that moment, a return to the origins occurred-his but also the origins of music. 

The album, structured around the Birds Requiem suite, (“Birds Canticum”, “Fuga Hirundinum”, “Archaic Feathers” and “Whirling Birds Ceremony”), is constructed as music for an imaginative movie.

And if this sounds like the sort of thing you hear late at night on Radio 3, that's almost certainly where I came across it.

Who Steve Winwood played with as a young teenager

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I've heard stories about Steve Winwood, as a young teenager, had played with the some of the American blues greats when they visited the UK.

Now I've found some detailed information in an interview with him from 1982 - it's on his own website.

In the first extract here he talks about his involvement in those years with Jamaican musicians in Birmingham

As for Chris [Blackwell], I met him in 1964 at Digbeth Civic Hall in Birmingham, which has always been a big center for Jamaicans in England; they used to hold their dances there, and naturally Chris was in on the ground floor in terms of Jamaican ska and rocksteady. Business-wise, he and Island were the ground floor.

Anyhow, I'd been playing at Digbeth since I was 14 with the Muff Woody Jazz Band, my brother's group. And that was where I met Spencer Davis, too. But my own Jamaican connection goes back to Digbeth Hall in 1961, when I jammed there with Rico, the trombonist who had worked with the Skatalites and all the other great early Jamaican acts. 

I was just 13 but I used to go there and play with Owen Grey, Tony Washington, and Wilfred 'Jackie' Edwards. Jackie, you'll recall, wrote the Spencer Davis Group's first number 1 hit in England, Keep on Running, and a followup, Somebody Help Me. I wrote When I Come Home with him for the group.

And the second, on American musicians starts with the interviewer:

There must have been some unheralded live backup work in the early days, when the Spencer Davis Group and the early Yardbirds were doing gigs at haunts like the legendary Crawdaddy in Richmond, Surrey.

Sure! I did backups for Sonny Boy Williamson - as everybody did - but also for T-Bone Walker, Charlie Foxx, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim. John Hammond, too. 

I met John on a train, while going down from Birmingham to London; this would have been about 1963 and I was 15. He told me he had a gig in Birmingham the next week at the College of Advanced Technology and I showed up and played piano behind him. 

Those kinds of spontaneous musical meetings were special back then, and definitely helped shape my growth.

The oldest iron canal aqueduct in the world is in Shropshire

We join the LeiceExplore crew again and they're still in Shropshire.

First they find remnants of the town's canal basin near the railway station - I'll confess I had no idea they were there or even where the basin had been.

Then it's off to Longdon-upon-Tern to see the oldest iron aqueduct in the world. It was built by Thomas Telford and it's still in place over the Tern. 

The canal is long closed and the aqueduct is drained, but you can walk along its trough with the blessing of officialdom.

Subscribe to this excellent YouTube channel now!

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Phil Brickell, Labour MP for Bolton West, argues that the rules on foreign donations to political parties must be tightened to help restore voters' confidence in politics.

"Perhaps we should think about the social workhouse, which is productive of stigma, fear, and forcing unwell people into work. This isn't primarily to make money out of the disabled and the ill, but to reinforce the discipline wage labour depends on. Clamping down on benefits is Labour's way of telling their bourgeois backers that the management of class relations is safe with them" A Very Public Sociologist on why Labour won't leave the disabled and long-term sick alone.

"A generation of kids who grew up online, spent lockdown in their bedrooms, and all too often started their first jobs dialling remotely into Zoom meetings, now seems to be actively trying to teach itself to socialise the analogue way." Gaby Hinsliff says gen Z is logging off.

William Ralston visits the Rainham volcano - a waste dump is constantly on fire in East London: "By January 1999, dozens of tipper lorries were hurtling through Rainham every day, on their way to Arnolds Field. Unlike the lorries that would regularly collect gravel from local pits and transport it to construction sites, these ones were not emblazoned with a company name. Their trailers had high metal sides so you couldn’t see what was inside."

"I do remember O’Toole coming up to me. He’s taller than me, and I’m quite tall. And he goes [grabs by the shoulders], “Get into your light, son.” And he picked me up and plonked me where the light was because I wasn’t in the [right spot]. A lot has been said about Peter O’Toole, but he was a fabulous guy." Timothy Dalton reminisces to Vanity Fair.

Andy Marshall has been photographing the churches of Romney Marsh.

Bid to slice Melton Mowbray pork pie zone refused

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this very Leicestershire story.

Conservative Home's strange view of the party's "Lib Dem problem"

When I saw that Conservative Home has a post today about sorting the Conservatives' Liberal Democrat problem, I was curious and a little worried. 

Have the Tories finally noticed that they lost dozens of seats to us at the general election last year? Quite a few of them were sort where they used to weigh their vote rather than count it.

I needn't have worried.

The article is written by a former Tory activist and parliamentary candidate who has joined Reform, and it's about what his old party would have to do before his new one would even consider forming a pact with them.

Its author Dan Barker writes:

I have a question for all those Conservatives who are calling for a pact with Reform UK: If you are serious about ‘uniting the right’, then what may I ask are you going to do about your Liberal Democrat problem?

When I say Liberal Democrats, what I mean is the faction that call themselves ‘One Nation Tories’ (Thatcher’s ‘Wet Liberals’) who are aligned politically with the Liberal Democrats somewhere left of centre and possibly left even of the current Starmer Cabinet. They are arguably the single faction within the Conservatives most responsible for the party’s historic decline and ineptitude.  

They are the dominant faction in the party and have chosen or heavily influenced the selection of many of the recent leaders and prime ministers.  They proudly describe themselves as ‘radically liberal’ – whatever that means – it doesn’t sound conservative in the slightest.  

Perhaps it is this very same ‘radical liberalism’ that is to blame for Net Zero, mass immigration on steroids, the bloated state, historically high taxes, the wokery and the war on freedom of speech that has prospered and flourished under the last 14 years of successive Conservative governments?

The Conservative Party's strength used to be that it had no time for the left's politics of purges, recognising that its ideology was a broad and rather nebulous one. Now its being driven by just that cast of mind.

Momentum's answer to any critic of Jeremy Corbyn was to tell them to "Fuck off and join the Tories". Now the self-appointed True Conservatives - who are often members of a different party - tell anyone who questions their views to "Fuck off and join the Liberal Democrats".

Michael Foot sings the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

I never did find a video of Jim Callaghan singing 'There was I Waiting at the Church' to a bemused TUC Conference in 1978. (He was mocking the press, who had turned up expecting him to call a general election.)

But here is his successor as Labour leader, Michael Foot, singing a song from the Twenties that appeared on the B-side of the Bonzos' first single 'My Brother Makes the Noises for the Talkies'.

h/t Alwyn Turner

Two Labour members thrown out for backing a tactical Lib Dem vote in Lewes

In what Mark Perryman on Labour Hub calls "a sorry tale of hypocrisy and snitching", two members of Labour's constituency party in Lewes have been expelled for advocating a tactical vote for the Liberal Democrats there in last year's general election. 

The Lewes seat, which was held by Norman Baker between 1997 and 2015, was recaptured from the Tories last year by James MacCleary.

Perryman calls it hypocrisy because:

Labour publicly identified Lewes as a ‘non battleground’ seat .... The candidate and his team were instructed to minimise campaigning; instead they were sent to seats where Labour could win. Which party precisely did they think this would benefit?

And the snitching?

The 2024 tactical voting campaign in Lewes was organised by the local Lewes Compass Group. Compass nationally, despite, its very public support for tactical voting, is not a Labour Party-proscribed organisation. 

It is cross-party, yet at its core are a whole host of Labour members, including councillors. At least three Cabinet members I can think of have spoken on Compass platforms.

The local campaign went beyond what is permitted under Labour rules. I have never displayed a poster advocating a vote for any party other than Labour ....

But not everyone is as tuned in to navigating the Labour rule book as me.  Our ‘snitch’ didn’t  have the good sense to give a friendly piece of advice to his or her fellow members that they were breaking Party rules. Instead they were busy compiling their evidence to secure expulsions.

Nobody has ever owned up to this cowardly behaviour, so in our local Labour Party we have a snitch entirely unwilling to justify their actions politically. 

Labour List also has the story - apparently Clause I.5.B.vi of the Labour Party Rule Book is the one you have to watch out for.

I voted Labour in Harborough, Oadby and Wigston last year. That was partly from a slim hope that they might defeat our very online and increasingly radicalised Conservative MP.

But it was more from a feeling that it was hypocritical of me to be so keen that Labour voters should back the Liberal Democrats in places like Lewes if I wasn't prepared to reciprocate myself.

ECB apologises for Pope Francis Ashes post joke

BBC Sport wins our Headline of the Day Award with this unexpected Catholicism and cricket mashup - the ECB is the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Steam power and an incline in the Somerset coalfield, 1971

At the turn of the 20th century, there were 79 collieries at work in the Somerset Coalfield. The last two closed in 1973, when the nearby Portishead power station was converted from coal to burning oil.

And you do get the impression from this film of one of the two, Kildersdon Colliery near Radstock, that the end is nigh. The technology is Victorian: a steam locomotive and a self-acting incline - the weight of a filled coal wagon descending the incline was used to pull an empty back to the top.

You can read more about the operation of the incline in an article from the Industrial Railway Record.

The LRB podcast takes us deeper into Paul Marshall

Peter Geoghegan talks about the mysterious Paul Marshall, who began working for Charles Kennedy in his SDP backbencher days and is now a right-wing media mogul, on the latest London Review of Books podcast.

This follows the LRB article on Marshall that I blogged about the other day.

Here Geoghegan discusses why it is that Marshall is prepared to lose so much money funding media organisations from the cerebral Unherd to the nakedly populist GB News.

He is also impressively well informed about old debates within the Liberal Democrats. Could it be that he's been exploring the archive of back numbers on the Liberator website.

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"We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s." Garry Kasparov on the Putinisation of America.

Noah Berlatsky and Ilana Gershon argue that undemocratic workplaces sowed the seeds of Trumpism: "Many American workplaces are hierarchical. Decision-making is opaque. Mechanisms of accountability are either nonexistent or weak and deceptive. Yet, at the same time, many workers are enthusiastically told how democratic their workplaces are, much to their frustration. Workplace culture in the US teaches employees that arbitrary rule is normal and that democracy is a deception and a lie."

John Elsom reminds us that, before Volodymr Zelenskyy became president of Ukraine, he played the president of Ukraine in a television comedy: "Vasyl is played by the comic actor, Volodymr Zelenskyy, with a gift for deadpan humour. As president, he cycles to work every morning to avoid the official car, but shyly takes off his cycle clip before entering the government building. He is instructed on how to behave by an apparatchik ... in the pay of the global oligarchs. Vasyl is taught how to take photo-calls, answer press conferences, wear suits and greet ambassadors."

"I have been a doctor for more than 30 years and a neurologist for 25 of those. I have recently grown particularly worried about the large number of young people referred to me with four or five pre-existing diagnoses of chronic conditions, only some of which can be cured." Suzanne O'Sullivan questions the trend of detecting health issues in milder and earlier forms, and the assumption that is always the right thing to do.

Peter Conrad believes Dickens is a greater writer than Shakespeare.

"Hall needs to know more about what Sharpey and the other chaps were up to. In the lecture theatre we see a student played by Edward Fox, before getting in to the original footage of the French scientist played by Roger Delgado who did pioneering experiments on isolation and sensory deprivation." Discontinued Notes watches Basil Dearden's 1963 film The Mind Benders.

Black Box Recorder: The English Motorway System

The other day, looking for posts from this blog that might be useful to someone writing a book, I discovered that I had posted the track The English Motorway System by Black Box Recorder twice within five months a couple of years ago.

Do you know what? I don't care. And because I like it, here it is again and it's not even Sunday.

Black Box Recorder? Consisting of Sarah Nixey, Luke Haines (of The Auteurs), and John Moore (formerly of The Jesus and Mary Chain), Black Box Recorder were an indie band who flourished around the turn of the century.

The English Motorway System is a track from their 2000 album The Facts of Life. 

Lib Dems win £100m in concessions for allowing Labour's budget for Wales to pass

Jane Dodds, the only Lib Dem member of Senedd, allowed Labour's budget for Wales to pass today by abstaining on the vote. As a result it was passed by 29 votes to 28.

Deeside.com reports the concessions that the Welsh Lib Dems won in return for allowing the budget to pass:

The deal with Ms Dodds, the Lib Dems' only Senedd member, included a promise to ban greyhound racing in Wales and allocate £15m for a pilot of £1 bus fares for under-22s.

The MP-turned-Senedd member secured £30m for childcare, £30m for social care, £10m for playgrounds and leisure centres, £10m for rural investment and £5m to address pollution.

Ministers also committed £8m to a "funding floor" to reduce variation across Wales’ 22 councils, with each set to receive a minimum increase of 3.8 per cent.

Jane Dodds told Senedd:

"If we don’t pass this budget, we risk losing billions for the people of Wales and I cannot in good conscience let that happen."

But, explaining her decision to abstain, she said: 

"I cannot fully support a budget that falls short of delivering the investment and radical change Wales needs."

Meeting told there's a risk Ludlow's town walls will collapse again

A length of Ludlow's medieval town walls collapsed 12 years ago and has never been repaired because the town council and the Diocese of Herefordshire cannot agree who is liable.

Now comes news that a meeting in the town has been told there is a risk of further collapse:

At the weekend the Ludlow Town Walls Trust told the meeting the wall extending from the collapsed section was "in a tenuous condition of stability". ...

The section still at risk, the meeting of about 80 people heard, was the part extending eastwards from the collapse to the rear of the Compasses Inn. 

According to that BBC News report, the parochial church council, which is part of the Diocese of Hereford, has said it plans to initiate legal proceedings for a judicial review and file a complaint of maladministration against Ludlow Town Council with the Local Government Ombudsman.

And BBC News has covered further developments today:

Ludlow Town Council said the ownership and responsibility for the walls were "complicated and contentious matters", but there was a clear path for progress.

It said it would take a full and active part, external in the work, on a no liability basis, and urged all other interested parties to discuss next steps.

The town council has named "water pressure in the subsoil, apparent degradation of the wall mortar and inadequate thickness of the masonry" among the causes of the collapse, which suggests it may attempt to sue some medieval cowboy builders.

The secrets of Hawksmoor's St Anne's, Limehouse - the Cathedral of the East End

No psychogeographic rambling with John Rogers this month: rather, a visit to a single church to hear about the plans for its restoration.

But then St Anne's, Limehouse - the Cathedral of the East End - is one of the  Nicholas Hawksmoor churches that inspired the London writings of Iain Sinclair and the Peter Ackroyd. The latter's Hawksmoor remains a terrifying novel.

I once went to a comedy performance in the crypt of another Hawksmoor church - St George's, Bloomsbury. Sitting there, I couldn't help being aware of the tremendous weight of stone above our heads, but Hawksmoor obviously knew what he was doing as I'm here to tell the tale.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Lech Wałęsa likens White House treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a Soviet-era interrogation

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The former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa has written to Donald Trump, condemning the US president’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine.

His letter, reports Notes from Poland, was co-signed by 38 other former political prisoners of Poland’s communist regime:

"We watched your conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine with horror and distaste," wrote the group, referring to Trump’s meeting with Zelensky in the White House on Friday, at which the pair were expected to sign an agreement but which instead turned into an angry confrontation.

"We were also horrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service [SB, the communist secret police] and from courtrooms in communist courts," they added.

"Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards and we had none," wrote the signatories. "They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us."

Wałęsa is something of a controversial figure - he has made illiberal statements on refugees and gay parliamentarians - but, unlike Donald Trump, he knows the cost of political courage.

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Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Dmitrii Kovegin discuss where the anti-Putin resistance in Russia goes from here: "Putin killed Navalny. There is no other way to look at it. Putin along with Russian intelligence kills anyone who opposes him and the regime and who is influential. Anna Politkovskaya, Nemtsov etc. I believe Navalny went back to Russia knowing he would be imprisoned and likely die because he was courageous and believed in his purpose."

J. Mckenzie Alexander asks if Popper's 'Open Society' can survive the information age: "In the book I question if, in looking for likes or retweets, we’re actually chasing the sugar rush rather than the truly nutritious, substantive meal. My concern is that, in a number of senses, people are using these proxies as a way to satisfy very real and justified human needs - but these proxies just aren’t adequate to doing the job right,"

Georgia is descending into a pro-Putin Mafia state, reports Will Neal.

Felicity McWilliams explores the disproportionate impact of a small group of West Berkshire Commoners on the US-USSR nuclear arms race in the 1980s.

"What we have, then, is an omniscient narrator. Except, in a twist that seems to make no sense, where he does pop up to make a comment in his own person, it’s often to admit uncertainty, or to explain that what he’s saying is close to speculation." Daniel Soar on Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamzov.

"The collective angst of the motherless von Trapp children is vaguely written and blandly performed. The film urgently needs the stakes-raising intrusion of the Nazis in its second half; the breath-held tension of its climactic escape sequence may be drafted in from another movie altogether, but necessarily so." Guy Lodge celebrates the flawed but enduring film The Sound of Music.

GUEST POST Defections of local councillors have doubled in 2025

Augustus Carp sees early signs that the shifting of tectonic plates in national and international politics may be reflected in local government too.

All the experts tell us that the political order is changing in ways previously thought to be inconceivable. Alliances are shifting, established relationships are faltering and old friends are becoming foes. But that’s not just the case in international relations – the world of local government seems to be undergoing a heightened wave of upheavals as well.  

The rate of political defections in British local government has accelerated significantly in 2025. By way of comparison, there were 52 defections in the first two months of 2024 – resulting in a net decrease of 19, 20 and 1 councillors for the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats respectively, counterbalanced by an increase of 1 for the Greens with the remainder going to the Independents.

In 2025 the numbers have doubled, with 101 councillors identified as having changed their political allegiances so far. The net impact is that the Conservatives are down 38, Labour down 54, the Liberal Democrats down 8 and the Greens down 1. Reform UK has gained 21, with the other gains going to various manifestations of Independent.  

One feature this year is a significant number of mass defections, most notably in Broxtowe, where 18 ex-Labour councillors set up the Broxtowe Independent Group, which now controls the council (although they should not, of course, be confused with the 5 other Independents on the council). Add in two more from the same patch on Nottinghamshire County Council and it’s clear that the People’s Party are in a bit of a pickle there.

Several purges have also reduced Labour’s numbers in Tameside (10) and Stockport (2) as a consequence of the ShiverMeTimbers WhatsApp Group fiasco, which also saw two MPs suspended. Remember, if you can’t say it in a leaflet you probably shouldn’t put it on social media….

Compare and contrast with the four former Conservatives on Mid Suffolk Council (and a few more elsewhere) who have resigned in protest at their erstwhile party nationally and locally supporting the Labour government's unheralded plans to impose wholesale changes in local government administration. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have lost five councillors in Buckinghamshire, all in Aylesbury.

One councillor has gone directly from Labour to the Conservatives, but Reform are clearly on the up. As well as welcoming 21 councillors from the Independents, four Conservatives have switched directly to Reform, together with two from Labour. Details are sketchy, but there are reports of a former councillor having joined Reform from the SNP, and of an independent councillor joining the Liberal Democrats "having flirted with Reform".

It will be interesting to see whether the international scene (Trump, Ukraine, Nato etc,) will have as much of an impact on council defections in 2025 as the Middle East did in 2024.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

RFK Jr was played by River Phoenix in a 1985 TV mini-series about his father

It's great fun on our Trivia Desk, but you have to work weekends.

Yesterday the team brought you news of the family relationship between Chelsea star Cole Palmer and a member of the Seventies British black soul band Sweet Sensation.

Today they're all over a link between Donald Trump's cabinet and one of the great might-have-beens of Hollywood.

In 1985 a three-part mini-series was made for US television under the title Robert Kennedy and his Times. There were family scenes, so you'll be wondering who played the third of Robert and Ethel Kennedy's count 'em) 11 children, Robert Jnr. 

He's Donald Trump's health secretary, who appears to be doing his best to kill off as many of his fellow countrymen as possible.

The answer is that it was River Phoenix, the emerging Hollywood star, and older brother of Joaquin Phoenix, who lost his life to an accidental drug overdose at the age of 23 in 1993. That's our Trivial Fact of the Day.

h/t to Strange Englands and Uncanny TV Signals.

Return to Malcolm Saville's The Neglected Mountain

In 2012 Miranda's Island listed the ingredients of the classic children's adventure story:

I mean the kind of rural holiday location where children get to sleep in barns, camp out on islands and cycle, walk or even hitch-hike long miles through country lanes, relieved by picnics packed up by friendly adults who know when to back off and when to interfere. 

Optional but highly desirable elements are caves, horses, dogs (actually, I’m not sure the dog is optional, I think it’s essential) and the frisson of danger provided by a treasure hunt or an odd character lurking around, clearly up to something fishy.

And then came to the right conclusion:

The Famous Five come to mind, and still have their following. But I think a strong contender for that place in the collective juvenile consciousness would be the Lone Pine novels by Malcolm Saville. The Lone Pine Club is a group of around eight children, the bonds between them forged on exactly the kind of holidays described above. 

Similar to the Arthur Ransome novels, the precise line-up of characters varies according to location, but the heart of their adventures might truly be said to be the remote Shropshire countryside between Shrewsbury in the north and Ludlow in the south, and specifically the country around the mountains of the Long Mynd and the Stiperstones.

"The Neglected Mountain" is what Jenny calls the Stiperstones in the story to give the book its title.

Miranda of Miranda's Island had reread the book before writing her post:

My husband claimed it was "throbbing with UST [unresolved sexual tension]"  and certainly Saville doesn’t ignore the - ahem - emotional development of fifteen and sixteen year olds. 

There are two boy/girl pairings - David, very much the leader of the group, and Petronella (known as Peter), an independent local girl who loves to ride her pony around the country lanes when she’s not away "at boarding school in Shrewsbury", a statement that neatly conveys the all-important 1950s identifier of social class.

Jenny, from a village post office/general store and Tom, who works on a farm, make up the second couple. It is implicit, though never openly stated, that Jenny has something of a crush on David, but he’s out of her league, and she pairs off comfortably with Tom.

Peter's school fees are paid by her Uncle Micah, though how he has derived such wealth from farming the unpromising country around the Stiperstones is never made clear, but I shall look for signs of Jenny's crush on David next time I read one of the early Lone Pine stories.

Miranda goes on:

Why do these adventures continue to be appealing? I think it’s because the issues that tend to worry adults now – premature sexualisation, social diversity and the degree of freedom it is appropriate to offer older children – are addressed quite differently. That is not to say they are ignored. Far from it. Here is Saville on the subject of gypsies:

The gypsies and Mr Cantor respected each other. The detective knew how honest and trustworthy they were. Gypsies are often accused of many things unjustly, but in their wanderings they pick up a lot of information: and when Miranda handed the detective a cup of tea she knew at once that there were questions he wanted to ask them.

Laid on with a trowel perhaps, but you would never, I think, find such a passage in an Enid Blyton adventure.

The Miranda's Island post makes equally interesting observations on adventures and the development of character, and on children and the adult world.

It ends by praising the Girls Gone By reprints of the Lone Pine stories. These paperbacks are now becoming collectable in their own right, by they do have the full text of the original hardbacks. The Armada paperbacks that many young readers relied upon in the Sixties and Seventies were quite heavily edited - and not well edited, in Saville's own judgement.

Saville hardbacks with their dust wrappers fetch silly prices, and I don't suppose it's as easy to find battered hardbacks without them at reasonable prices as it was when I acquired most of my collection of his work. So a second-hand Girls Gone By edition may be your best bet if you want to read the books as Saville wrote them.

Finally, I hope Miranda is still with us and well. The last post on her blog was written in 2022 when she was obviously seriously ill. I am reminded of my post on disappearances from the net.

Cliff Richard and the Drifters: High Class Baby

This new generation of Beatles fans is entitled to its enthusiasms, but it does seem to lack a sense of history. Any music that came before the Fab Four was laughable, and any groups who were around at the same time as the Beatles were trying to copy them.

So here's a rockabilly Cliff Richard from 1958 to prove there was life before Love Me Do, even if Cliff is rocking more than anyone else on this record.

The Drifters was the original name for the Shadows, who were Cliff's backing band and then became one of the most successful ever British acts in their own right.

None of the famous Shadows are playing on High Class Baby, but the guitarist is an interesting figure. Not only did Ian Samwell write this song, he also wrote Move It for Cliff and the Drifters.

That is the track of which John Lennon said:

"I think the first English record that was anywhere near anything was Move It by Cliff Richard, and before that there'd been nothing."

It also appeared on Led Zeppelin: The Music that Rocked Us - a compilation put together by the band in 2010.

Samwell later became more of a producer and manager, but he did co-write Whatcha Gonna Do About It, the single that launched the Small Faces.

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Vince Cable gives it both barrels: "Our secular and liberal values; our diverse society; our democratically elected government. All are antithetical to the Trump clan. We need to understand that the sentimental nonsense about the special relationship is over. We are under attack."

 "Trump’s potential kompromat combines with his cultural-political alignment with kleptocracy and dictatorship that makes him a Russian agent of influence. This was played out in ghastly detail in the 28 February meeting in the White House. In considering our response to America’s abandonment of the West, we need to be realistic about its leadership." Arthur Snell says it's time to take a serious look at the evidence of Trump's relationship with Russia.

Mark Pack reviews Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund.

Kate Bradbury sets out what we can do to help bumblebees: "If you don’t have a greenhouse, do you have space for a pot of winter heather? Can you use your conservatory, porch or other covered space to grow crocuses? Can you dedicate a space in which bumblebees might make a nest?"

"When asked by the Bench chairman if they had anything to say, the taller woman said they did not approve of this court, as there was no woman there to try them. They were remanded for a week while efforts were made to identify them." Jill Evans on a 'Suffragette outrage; at Cheltenham in 1913.

"I was astonished: here was drama, humour, satire and wit in abundance, here too I learnt social history and observed sharp psychological insights." Chris Lovegrove won't have Jane Austen's novels called mimsy, tedious and woke.

Cole Palmer's great uncle was a member of Sweet Sensation

This just in from our Trivia Desk...

The black British soul group Sweet Sensation topped the singles chart in 1974 with Sad Sweet Dreamer. One of its member, St Clair Palmer, is the great uncle of Chelsea and England's Cole Palmer.

That's certainly our Trivial Fact of the Day. As far as I can make out, St Clair is second from the right in the front row in the video above.

Later. This story was widely reported this week, but the  Daily Mail had it last year and also revealed that St Clair Palmer later became an actor and appeared in one episode each of Coronation Street and Brookside.

Route of old railway used in the restoration of the Hereford and Gloucester Canal

The blurb on the Court Above the Cut YouTube channel - like, subscribe and tell your friends - explains what's going on here:

Digging a new line of canal at Malswick near Newent. This exciting project from the Herefordshire & Gloucestershire canal is on land next to the old line and Gloucester & Ledbury railway. Join us as we explore the area and look into what's happened, is happening and what will happen in the future. 

The line ran from the River Severn in Over through Newent, Ledbury and on to Hereford taking in three tunnels including the Oxenhall Tunnel. See where the lift bridge is going as well as the new lock to divert the canal restoration onto another new route and back onto the railway which replaced the line.

With its ruined tunnels and aqueducts, you might the think the Hereford and Gloucester is lost beyond reclamation, but there's lots of work being done on it. There's an element of poetic justice to using the alignment of the railway that was built along and across the canal after its closure.

For another example making use of a railway alignment see my post A disused railway in Derbyshire is being turned into a canal.

Paul Marshall: From SDP researcher to right-wing media mogul

The new London Review of Books has a substantial article by Peter Geoghegan on SDP researcher turned right-wing media mogul Paul Marshall.

It takes us through his career, from researcher to Charles Kennedy in Kennedy's days as an SDP Alliance MP, via his own candidacy in the 1987 general election to his take over of the party's ailing think-tank Centre for Reform. He relaunched this as CentreForum, with a far more right-wing agenda.

Then it's on to The Orange Book, which Geoghegan, unlike many of its critics and adherents, appears to have read:

Many Lib Dems still remember Marshall primarily for The Orange Book, the controversial collection he edited in 2004 with David Laws, then a rising star on the Lib Dem right. The Orange Book is less incendiary than its reputation might suggest. 

Although the book was billed as a response to ‘nanny-state liberalism’, most of the essays are standard social democratic fare: Vince Cable making the case for financial reforms, bromides from Nick Clegg about the need for transparency in the European Union. 

Other chapters, however, suggest an effort to move the party to the right. [David] Laws proposed replacing the NHS with a French-style social insurance system. Another MP, Mark Oaten, contributed an essay about cutting crime titled ‘Tough Liberalism’. (He later admitted that it had been written by a researcher.) 

It was David Laws' chapter, which he reportedly included without informing the other authors, that led to a row at the Liberal Democrat conference and to the whole publication being seen as an attack on Charles Kennedy's leadership.

As to an attack on nanny-state liberalism, The Orange Book contained the purest expression of that creed I've ever read. It was largely a cuttings job (and cuttings from the Daily Mail, if I recall rightly) by the normally sound Steve Webb and a researcher.

Those cuttings were full of horror stories about the effects of bad parenting. I suppose the idea was that if the lower orders could be persuaded to raise their children properly, then there would be less need for public spending and it would be possible to cut taxes for the middle classes.

It was all a long time ago, but you can read my Liberator review of The Orange Book on this blog.

Then it's on to Brexit. Geoghegan says of Marshall:

In the aftermath of the referendum he attacked the Bank of England for being anti-Brexit, donated £500,000 to the Tories under Boris Johnson and funded the Alternative Arrangements Commission on the Irish border question. The AAC looked like an official government body but was in fact run by a private think tank. It was dominated by right-wing Tory MPs such as Steve Baker and Suella Braverman who opposed the 'backstop' that would have kept Northern Ireland in the single market.

Money well spent? It doesn't sound like it

After he was done with Brexit, Marshall founded the Unherd website. It's tone is the sort of world-weary Toryism you once found in the Spectator and for which I have a weakness myself. And it's a clever name, though many of its contributors have long been heard elsewhere and few of their opinions lack a herd that already follows them.

None of this tone was to be found in his next media venture GB News.

Geoghegan dwells on Marshall's financial career, his membership of the influential and fashionable congregation of Holy Trinity Brompton and, in education, his funding of his own multi-academy trust.

But I am left wondering, for all his money, how much political nous Marshall has if he thought the SDP and then the Liberal Democrats could be wrenched away from their instinctive support for pan-European institutions.

Boris Spassky died yesterday at the age of 88

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Boris Spassky, former world chess champion, died yesterday. His match against Bobby Fischer in 1972 put the game on the front pages of the world's newspapers.

He was brave and fluent player, who made you feel that you could play attacking chess like that too. He was equally at home playing king's pawn and queen's pawn openings as White - a novelty in those days, but now something expected of every grandmaster. I'm reminded of the way W.G. Grace revolutionised batting in cricket by being able to play off the front and back foot.

There's a good obituary in chess.com, which gives full details of his career and some examples of his brilliant play.

In one of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, I quoted David Edmonds and John Eidinow's Bobby Fischer Goes to War:

In the summer of 1946, Spassky passed his days watching the players in a chess pavilion "with a black knight on top" on an island in Leningrad's river Neva. "Long queen moves fascinated me," he recalls. "I fell in love with the white queen. I dreamed about caressing her in my pocket, but I did not dare to steal her. Chess is pure for me." 

Spassky had learnt how the pieces move by watching older children play when he was sent to an orphanage during the Siege of Leningrad. When he was back home, his first trainer used to feed him as well as teach chess. He remembered those summer days in the chess pavilion:

He had thirteen kopeks for his fare and a glass of water with syrup to see him through until the last streetcar carried him home. His feet were bare. "Soldiers' boots were my worst enemy."

As I added in that column, chess can be a great escape.

Mike Amesbury MP has his prison sentence suspended

On Monday Mike Amesbury, the Labour MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was imprisoned for 10 weeks after assaulting a man in the street. Today his appeal was heard and the court decided to suspend his sent

Were the rapid hearing of his appeal or the suspension of his sentence the result of special treatment for an MP? Alan Robertshaw, barrister at law, considers those questions in this video and concludes that the answers are a) no and b) not really.

As ever, Alan provides a gentle education in the law and how courts operate.

A recall petition can still be launched against Amesbury and, of course, he can still resign before that happens and retain a little dignity.

Green children, lethal crinolines and the bandicoot bandwagon

The current Fortean Times has an article by John Clark on the famous case of the Green Children of Woolpit. It begins:

They were green. There were other strange things about the two children, a boy and a girl, found by harvesters in the fields of the Suffolk village of Woolpit on a summer's day in the 12th century. But it was their green skin that people first noticed. There was much more to the story, but that's how it began.

He suggests that the children were Jewish and were either fleeing persecution elsewhere in East Anglia or had been separated from a group of travellers from abroad. This would explain several puzzling aspects of the case, including the children's green colouring.

This issue also revisits the subject of death by fire in women wearing crinolines, finding an example from as recently as 1938. The unfortunate woman was Phyllis Newcombe, who was engulfed in flames at a dance at Chelmsford. Her case is often seized upon as an example of spontaneous human combustion by believers in the phenomenon.

But I was most taken by the Great Bandicoot Panic of 1996. This was a initially a marketing stunt designed to get these small Australian marsupials into public consciousness before the launch of a new Playstation game called Crash Bandicoot.

Bandicoots, the campaign said, were invading Britain and were a serious pest to farmers and gardeners. And, sure enough, members of the public soon report sighting the beasts. The fact that what are called "bandicoots" are in reality several different species meant that anything from a mouse to a badger could be mistaken for the new menace.

So bandicoots were seen in the East and West Midlands, while the South Wales Daily Post reported three separate sightings in two days. And:

During a rumination on the existence of the Rutland Tiger - a local Alien Big Cat - the Rutland Times appeared to accept the presence of the "Australian bandicoot" as a fact.

Then the game was launched, the Christmas silly season passed and, all at once, the bandicoots disappeared.

Incidentally, the Rutland Tiger may well have been left over from the sudden and botched closure of the safari park at Bonkers Hall. This followed an unfortunate incident involving a coachload of nuns. 

These were not, I must emphasise, the Sisters from Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes, who are more than a match for any tiger.

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"Buying stuff we didn’t know we wanted, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t know has become a cultural obsession, made worse by the fact that prices are going up and incomes are flat lining." Neal Lawson says Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves must abandon their Trumpian obsession with economic growth.

Alexandra Hall Hall finds signs of Trumpist culture wars and a woeful lack of realism in Kemi Badenoch's set-piece speech on foreign policy. "Does she really believe that other countries around the world won’t see through the double standards if we turn a blind eye to abuses when they are committed by 'our allies', such as Israel, whilst simultaneously arguing we all need to take a tougher stance towards Russia?"

"'Trump' is a quintessentially Dickensian name, its crude monosyllable suggesting not only trumpeting or boasting but trumping in the sense of winning, as well as trumping something up in the sense of inventing falsehoods." Terry Eagleton sees Donald Trump as a Dickensian rogue.

Carrie-Anne Brownian has no time for a popular myth about the Victorians: "Until fairly recently, I believed, as many people do, that the Victorians constantly posed corpses as though they were alive, and used lots of fancy tricks to achieve this. ... If someone in a Victorian photo has a creepy look, odds are, it’s a postmortem photo! Except that’s a total myth, perpetuated by people who uncritically believe everything they hear or read."

Ray Newman reads I Saw Two Englands by H.V. Morton, and finds a portrait of the English pub at the outbreak of the second world war.

"The 1960s saw several landmarks in Leicester’s popular music scene. Having paid his dues in local pubs and clubs in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gerry Dorsey finally hit the big time as Engelbert Humperdinck and became a global star." Colin Hyde reviews Leicester’s music scene, from dance bands to hip hop.

Malcolm Saville visits Shrewsbury in 1963

Malcolm Saville was a Sussex man, but his most popular books were those set in the Shropshire hills.

This advertisement from the Wellington Journal (12 January 1963) shows him making an appearance at a Shrewsbury bookshop to sign books before giving a talk at the town library.

Saville had long worked in publishing - I believe he was even Enid Blyton's publicist at one time - and did not give up that day job when his career as a children's writer took off.

Running British universities as if they were businesses

Our universities used to be among the few British institutions that the rest of the world really did envy. But from 2010 the Coalition was determined they should be run more like businesses.

In recent weeks the collapse of this policy has been demonstrated by the wave of redundancies engulfing British universities. Looking for mainstream media coverage where I would expect to find it, it's hard even to locate the education coverage at all on the BBC or Guardian sites these days, but the story has been well covered on social media.

And the pithiest comment on it is to be found there too:

When I worked in UK academia I recall hearing of a Japanese man who was baffled at how Britain had decided to run its universities like firms. “Why? Your universities are excellent and your firms are terrible.”

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— Ross Carroll (@rosscarroll.bsky.social) 25 February 2025 at 22:24

This anecdote neatly encapsulates a lengthier observation by Stefan Colini in the London Review of Books in 2013:

Future historians, pondering changes in British society from the 1980s onwards, will struggle to account for the following curious fact. 

Although British business enterprises have an extremely mixed record (frequently posting gigantic losses, mostly failing to match overseas competitors, scarcely benefiting the weaker groups in society), and although such arm’s length public institutions as museums and galleries, the BBC and the universities have by and large a very good record (universally acknowledged creativity, streets ahead of most of their international peers, positive forces for human development and social cohesion), nonetheless over the past three decades politicians have repeatedly attempted to force the second set of institutions to change so that they more closely resemble the first.

 Some of those historians may even wonder why at the time there was so little concerted protest at this deeply implausible programme. But they will at least record that, alongside its many other achievements, the coalition government took the decisive steps in helping to turn some first-rate universities into third-rate companies. If you still think the time for criticism is over, perhaps you’d better think again.

And because this is Britain, these new business-like universities turned out to feature indifferent senior managers on grossly inflated salaries.