The Brightlingsea branch in 1963

I think this is the sort of thing I used to post. Click on the image above to watch footage of the Wivenhoe to Brightlingsea branch in Essex.

The film, which includes an intermittent commentary, was shot in 1963, the year before the line closed.

Sorry for the silence on Liberal England

Sorry for the uncharacteristic lack of posts here, but real life has overtaken Liberal England.

My mother, who is 89 and once introduced herself as "the Dowager Lady Bonkers" when canvassed by Graham Tope, has been experiencing a series of health problems since the start of the month. She came home from hospital at 8pm on 23 December and I have spent most of my time over at her house since then.

I shall try to keep this blog alive, but you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram should you wish.

Let's end on a happy memory. When she seemed quite herself, and it was only six weeks ago, I played her this video of Aksel Rykvvin.

He is now 17 and winning prizes as a baritone, but it's not so long since he was the most celebrated treble, or boy soprano, in the world.

Here's to happier days.

Merry Christmas to all our readers

Highland Journey (1957)

In this British Transport Films production we follow a coach tour from Edinburgh to the Highlands.

As a site devoted to these films explains, the route taken meets the Highlands at Killin, and then goes over Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe to Ben Nevis, the entrance to the Great Glen. Here we meet the West Highland railway line, and follow it on its journey through the Bonnie Prince Charlie country to Mallaig. 

Returning to the Great Glen we rejoin the coach route out through the Glen Foyne and Glen Shiel to the Kyle of Lochalsh, and take the ferry over to Skye.

The boys from the NYPD choir

On Saturday BBC4 showed The Story of Fairytale of New York, in the course of it we learnt that there is no NYPD choir.

This impressed me enough to tweet about it. But James Tarry, who used to drink with Daniel Farson and must thus be accounted an expert on such matters, put me right.

It is slang term for Saturday-night drunks singing in their police cells, which makes perfect sense in the context of the song.

The photo here shows the Leicester home of Arthur Colahan, who wrote Galway Bay. Note the blue plaque.

Six of the Best 986

"Seething in private is not enough when lives, jobs and sanity are at stake. MPs must reflect over the coming days on the tumultuous events of 2020, which began with Johnson saying this would be “a fantastic year for Britain” and ends with the sort of headlines about a mutant virus cancelling Christmas that might be found in a science-fiction film." Ian Birrell says it's the duty of Conservative MPs to depose Boris Johnson.

Paul Sorene looks back to the Grunwick dispute of 1976: "Prime minister James Callaghan set up a cabinet committee under Lord Justice Scarman to resolve the dispute. This was music to the ears of TUC general secretary Len Murray, who responded: 'No employer has ever defied a court of enquiry.' Jayaben Desai, unsurprisingly, saw things differently. 'He will defy the court of enquiry', she said."

This first attempt to bore a tunnel under the River Severn ended in disaster and attempted murder, reports Janet Hughes.

William Boyd reviews a new biography of Graham Greene: "He enjoyed entering literary competitions, often parodying his own work. In 1949 he entered a contest held by the New Statesman – where the demand was to write the notional opening of a Graham Greene novel – and didn’t win outright: he shared the six-guinea prize with five others."

The Liverpool Echo has behind-the-scenes shots of the making of the Ealing comedy The Magnet, which starred a very young James Fox.

"Sometimes, a storm or other natural disaster could change the fortunes of coastal towns overnight. New Romney in Kent is one of these places.  Once a thriving and important port, a terrible storm in 1287 cut off the town’s lifeline." Flickering Lamps visits the town today.

Bombsites in The Yellow Balloon (1953)

I have written before about how in 1947's Ealing comedy Hue and Cry celebrated

a damaged London belongs to errand boys and the film celebrates their independence and resourcefulness.

but British films soon came to take a different view of bombsites.

So I was interested to come across this post about one of those films, The Yellow Balloon from 1953, on Best British Films:

The Yellow Balloon can be viewed on a number of levels: as postwar realist drama illustrating the harshness and poverty of London seven or eight years after victory; as a gripping thriller; as commentary upon the dog-eat-dog world simmering beneath the layers of conventionality and people ‘doing the right thing’.

It is probably most helpful to examine The Yellow Balloon from each of these perspectives.  References are made throughout the film to the lack of any action on the part of the authorities to the ongoing devastation of uncleared and unguarded bombsites.

This is a world where victory against the Germans has come at a great price, and rationing was still in force until the following year.  The continuing repayment of war loans to the Americans left little spare cash for renovations, let alone reconstruction.  The "you never had it so good" world of Harold Macmillan was still several years down the road.

I have put the sentence that most interests me in bold and I had better give these bombsite posts their own label so I can find them if I want to write the definitive work on the subject.

Death of a teenybopper at the White City

Embed from Getty Images

Years ago, one of my favourite trivia questions was to ask which stadium used in the 1966 World Cup no longer exited.

The answer was the White City stadium in West London, used because Wembley was needed for a greyhound racing that evening. The game held there saw Uruguay beat France 2-1.

Since then, however, both Ayresome Park and Roker Park, which between them hosted an entire group, have been demolished too. So the question no longer works.

In checking this, however, I have come across a sad occurrence I had quite forgotten.

The White City Stadium was built to be the home of the 1908 London Olympics. From 1927 until it closed in 1984 (it was demolished the following year), it was chiefly used for greyhound racing, though Queen's Park Rangers did have a couple of short spells playing there.

Other uses included pop concerts, and it was at one of these that a tragedy happened.

On 26 May 1974 David Cassidy, at 24 still a teenybopper sensation, played the White City. A crush at the front of the stage injured some 800 people and 30 were taken to hospital. One of them, 14-year-old Bernadette Whelan, died there four days later.

Dave Thompson on Goldmine relates the evening's events with verve:

Cassidy left the stage and the PA kicked into whatever lightweight pop was to hand in a futile attempt to calm the crowd. And now the tape becomes surreal. 

Against a backdrop of "The Wombling Song," the debut hit by a bunch of litter-collecting rodents, crushed and battered fans were calling, begging, screaming for help. One of the St John’s men later compared the scene to the Blitz.

The Seventies were a strange, strange decade and much nearer the second world war than they are to us today.

Do we have teenyboppers any more? I get the impression that young girls are more likely to attend concerts with their families now, and when they do they go to see young women who speak to their aspirations rather than young men or teenage boys who make them think of sex. I guess that is progress.

Leicester St Margaret's bus station closes on New Years' Eve for redevelopment

Leicester's St Margaret’s bus station in Leicester will close at 7pm on 31 December to allow work to being on its £13.5m redevelopment.

A press release from Leicester City Council says the "striking" new bus station building will be glazed from floor to ceiling and feature a curved aluminium roof that appears to float above the main concourse:

Bus passengers will benefit from a completely redesigned and improved internal layout with a new café, better seating and real time digital passenger information. There will also be increased capacity for national and regional bus services, with the number of bays increased from 18 to 24.

A series of energy efficiency and renewable energy measures will help make the new bus station a carbon neutral building. It is believed that this would be the first bus station to be built to net zero carbon standards in the UK.

Electric bus charging points will be installed, and the new building will feature secure storage for up to 150 bikes.

The new bus station is part of a regeneration project for this quarter of the city, which will feature better pedestrian to both St Margaret's and Haymarket bus stations.

Incidentally, back in the early 1970s, buses from Market Harborough terminated at a long-vanished terminus in Northampton Square. You can see it in the photograph below.

A virtual tour of the Swindon railway village

I spent a few days holiday in Swindon back in 2009 so I could visit the Richard Jefferies Museum at his birthplace at Coate. 

That visit had to be carefully planned to include the one Sunday that month when the museum was open to the public. Since then, however, it has experienced a renaissance,

While I was in Swindon the place grew on me - both the old town on the hill and the new town, built in the 19th century largely to serve the Great Western Railway's works, down below.

The railway village in the new town was in a poor state, with some of its most important buildings boarded up.

This video suggests the establishment of a heritage action zone to cover it has led to some promising developments.

Peter Gabriel: Games Without Frontiers

This was on Gabriel's third solo album, which was released in 1980 under the title Peter Gabriel. It made number 4 in the UK singles chart.

'Games without frontiers' is a literal translation of the French phrase 'Jeux sans frontières'. That was the title of the inter-European version of the game show It's a Knockout, and Jeux Sans Srontières was just about my favourite viewing as a small boy in the 1960s.

So the song seems to be abuot trivial games, but also namechecks what sound like world leaders to suggest a deeper political meaning.

As American Songwriter comments:

"Games Without Frontiers" represented a breakthrough of sorts for Gabriel, as it helped him segue from cult artist to chart threat. It happened quicker in the UK, where the song went Top 10, while, in the US, it made a dent in rock radio but didn’t hit the top 40.

A drone flight over the lead mines at Snailbeach

This video was made by Philip. J. Jones for the Shropshire Mines Trust.

Six of the Best 985

"After 40 years in politics I am convinced that Universal Basic Income is the only real solution to poverty. Politicians, who oppose UBI whilst hiding behind a lack of willingness to find a way to fund it, are actually saying we will not be doing anything useful about poverty and are leaving those who can’t survive via our mean spirited benefits system for charities, volunteers and churches to look after." Tony Robertson believes the level of poverty in Britain should shame us all.

Philippa Borrowman argues that local authorities have a vital role to play in combating climate change but most be properly resourced.

"The lockdown has brought about a seismic shift in the way we think about space in the city. It became obvious that a lot of our urban environment is not green or accessible enough and we have seen the negative effects on our health and wellbeing, particularly in more deprived areas of our cities." Cristina Monteiro says Covid-19 should inspire us to rewild our cities.

James Hawes finds the roots of the divide between the North and South of England reach deep into history.

"It was an insular existence. I had no contact with anybody outside the Family; my whole world was inhabited by people I had always known. I was homeschooled and never saw a doctor." Guinevere Turner on growing up in a cult.

David Evans-Powell takes a look at the 1972 anthology series Dead of Night and its particular delight in terrorising the middle-class.

The new Blue Pullman races through Market Harborough

The High Speed Train - HST - is still to me the essence of modernity on the railways. It is reaching the end of its career, even on the neglected Midland main line.

To mark this retirement, one set has been repainted in the livery of the Blue Pullman, an innovative service that flourished in the 1960s.

You can see the Blue Pullman racing through Market Harborough in the video above.

GUEST POST The Brexit hustle

A hustle, a medieval conflict... Stuart Whomsley offers new ways of understanding the powers behind Brexit.

Brexit was always a hustle: it was always about a powerful rich elite in the UK wanting to take back control from the community of European countries in order to better exploit the ordinary person.  And in order to do so they conned many ordinary people to vote for it.

You could think of it in medieval terms. The leaders are a subgroup of the rich and powerful who wanted to claim the throne with the support of foreign powers. The foot soldiers are varied but they have an army that contains a lot of the lower educated disenfranchised ordinary folk who feel a new king will treat them better.

Hence the fuss over fish and fishing rights which is only about 0.1 per cent of the economy and employing only 24,000 people. Fishing is symbolic of us being an island nation, of the Royal Navy and fishermen ruling the waves. This whole thing has been about ruthless chaos capitalists manipulating a section of the population at a deep emotional, identity and attachment level to get what they wanted.

We were nestled into a lovely position on the chessboard of the world, better than we deserved after the dark side of the Empire. This special place was the linchpin between Europe and The USA, able to influence both; sixth biggest economy in the world, a major player, not anymore.

Germany carried the guilt of being on the bad side in the war, French the shame for falling so easily. Britain held its head high. Not any more. Now we are the fools, sold out by treasonous disaster capitalists like Rees-Mogg and the narcissist Johnson for their personal gain.

And will people wake up or react to this? Unlikely, we seem to be a passive lethargic nation who sit on our sofa and accept anything. Not the same people who protested and put fear into Thatcher and her government, but a nation of child-like emotional pygmies glued to our devices playing computer games and watching Ant and Dec.

You can follow Stuart Whomsley on Twitter.

Tory MP sacked as PPS after memo leaked to Guido Fawkes

Andrew Lewer, the Conservative MP for Northampton South, has been sacked as parliamentary private secretary to policing minster Kit Malthouse after a leaked memo appeared on the Guido Fawkes website.

The memo was a warning to Tories in junior government roles not to leak memos.

But how was he caught?

The Northampton Chronicle explains:

What the recipients did not know, reportedly, is that each copy of the memo from Chief Whip Mark Spencer MP was worded differently.

Then, when a copy of the memo was appeared on political gossip website Guido Fawkes, this reportedly led the Government to work out that particular version of the letter.

As a result, Andrew Lewer or a member of his staff has been accused of leaking the memo and has been fired from his role as a PPS at the Home Office.

New Lib Dem and Green vision for Nottingham's Broadmarsh

For 50 years or more, visitors to Nottingham have been funnelled through a bus station and a shopping centre if they wish to get from the railway station to the city centre.

The planned redevelopment of the city's Broadmarsh gives a chance to change all that, particularly now the site's developer Intu has gone into administration.

To respond to this opportunity, Nottingham's Greens and Liberal Democrats have worked with a local architect to produce a new vision for the site.

The parties say:

With many groups coming forward asking for the old Broadmarsh to be turned into a park, Nottingham Liberal Democrats and Nottingham Green Party have combined to work up an inspiring vision for the area, with considerable green space combined with facilities for local independent businesses and creative activity, which are two of our city’s strengths. 

The plans include:

A complete demolition of the West side of the Broadmarsh building and the replacement of this and the central walkway into the city with a park

Use of the shell of the old East side of the Broadmarsh to create a building which is a mix of leisure and small/start-up business units with a green roof and vertical planting.

The creation of an eco-building for co-working in the day and as a creative arts hub in the evening.

These plans are currently an aspiration – feasibility studies would need to be done before the detail could be designed.  Alexis Lane, a graduate of NTU’s School Of Architecture, has drawn a plan of the shared vision. At the centre of the plan is a ‘green gateway’ for people coming into the city to shop or work or relax, and will contribute towards the council’s plan for Nottingham to be carbon-neutral by 2028.

They say the plan has been welcomed by the national leaders of both parties and quote Ed Davey as saying:

"As someone who grew up in Nottingham, I’m delighted to see this exciting proposal for such a key site in the city. I hope the City Council listen and seize this opportunity."

Imagine being derailed with Jacob Rees-Mogg

Photo from Network Rail

Jacob Rees-Mogg's public personality is as carefully constructed as that of any film star.

So lazy satirists who think they can hurt him by making jokes about him being old fashioned are missing the point. The overegged quaintness is a way of disguising Rees-Mogg's real nature as a thoroughly 21st-century financier.

Another important aspect of that constructed personality is its sheer disagreeability to anyone of a remotely liberal sensibility. "You may dislike me," it seems to say, "but there's nothing you can do about me."

In part Rees-Mogg is playing the public school buck he never was. Because it appears he was seen as a joke by the other boys during his Eton years.

And Matthew Sweet has said that when he heard Rees-Mogg speaking at the Oxford Union he thought he was someone doing a comic turn to send up the politicos. Well, it was an act.

Of course, you can go too far. In November 2019 he said that the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire had died because they failed to show "common sense" by following the authories' instructions to stay put and wait to be rescued.

Following an outcry, Rees-Mogg apologised and was then hidden from the voters in the general election campaign.

But that didn't prevent his being reappointed leader of the Commons after the Conservative victory, so the episode cost him nothing.

My own very limited experience of being involved in an emergency taught me that the last thing, the very last thing, you want in such circumstances is someone lounging about and telling you, in an affected upper-class drawl, to ignore the instructions you are given.

I remember, after the train had come to a halt, that we all sat there wondering what happened next. Soon flashing blue lights appeared on a distant road and we knew that someone had taken charge.

As we climbed down from the train, the police and fire brigade were exaggeratedly insistent that we took our time and took care. They did not want some falling, breaking a leg and making the incident more serious.

My conclusion is that an emergency, whether a minor derailment or a global pandemic, is not an opportunity to display your superiority or you individuality. It is a time to do as you're told.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I welcome guest posts on Liberal England.

This list of the 10 most recent is pretty concentrated on the Liberal Democrats, but I am happy to publish posts on subjects far beyond the Lib Dems and politics.

If you would like to write a guest post for this blog, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea.

• Why am I a Liberal Democrat - Simon Beard
• How the Revoke policy harmed Lib Dem chances - Michael Mullaney
• Unionism is making the Scottish Lib Dems irrelevant - Mark Stephens
• With Valour and Distinction: The 2nd Battalion Leicestershire Regiment in the First World War - Nigel Atter
• Belloc, Chesterton and the Distributist League - David Boyle
• Liberal Democrats for the Heart of England - Michael Mullaney
• Time for the Lib Dems to learn from social democracy - George Kendall
• What one Lib Dem councillor has done under lockdown - Sebastian Field
• A lifetime among the Liberals - Paddy Briggs
• Around Tolworth in the footsteps of Richard Jefferies - Lucy Furlong

The Glamorganshire Canal in 1945

Completed in 1794, the Glamorganshire Canal ran for 25 miles from Merthyr Tydfil to the sea at Cardiff Docks.

At first it did well, but the railways inevitably took the coal traffic from it. Closure began in 1898 and was effectively complete by 1942.

If you click on the still above you will be taken to a film on the British Film Institute site that shows members of the Cardiff Amateur Cine Society and their children exploring the canal in 1945. At that date it was a picturesque ruin.

Much of the route was lost under a new Cardiff to Merthyr road in the 1970s, but parts of the canal can still be walked today.