London's Lost Railways: Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon

Geoff Marshall follows the path of the abandoned line from Merton Park to Tooting through Merton Abbey station, which was originally known as Tooting Junction.

Cyril Smith vs rock and roll

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Britain was a little wary of rock ‘n’ roll in January 1957. The previous autumn had seen the film Rock Around the Clock spark riots across the land, and next month the stars of that movie, Bill Haley and His Comets were to land in Southampton, bringing real-life rock to Britain. The consequences were uncertain.

In the lull before the anticipated storm, the spotlight turned on various dancehalls that were running lunchtime rock ’n’ roll events. These were simple affairs: admission cost threepence, tea and soft drinks were available, records were played, and people danced. A good time was had by all.

But, as this old post by Alwyn Turner on Lion & Unicorn tells us, not everyone was happy with these lunchtime events.

Among the critics was a 26-year-old -Labour councillor from Rochdale called Cyril Smith. He was chairman of the governors of two technical schools - one for boys, one for  girls - a "stone’s throw" from the town's Carlton Ballroom:

"Rock 'n’' roll is hitting youth club work," he said. "At the Lea Hall Youth Club we have had to recruit a completely new netball team. The first team are rocking 'n' rolling on Saturday afternoons. Youth club attendances have dwindled alarmingly.’

Smith’s main concern, though, was the age of the dancers at the Carlton:

The management assured me that only those of sixteen would be on the dance floor, but that was not so, for I recognised many as schoolchildren under sixteen. The girls had changed quickly into dresses from school uniform to deceive the management. And on the balcony, to where the under-sixteens were directed, there were twenty-five couples, many as young as eleven, rocking 'n' rolling.

His conclusion was that this had to be stopped. "I propose to recommend that the premises should be placed out of bounds to schoolchildren during school hours," he told the press, and he was as good as his word. The following month, the Carlton’s licence came up before the Rochdale Licensing Justices, and Smith was there to make his objections.

Smith was successful. Alwyn Turner records that the Carlton's music licence was amended to stop the lunchtime dances, permitting it to open only between 2 pm and 11 pm (or 11.30 pm on the weekend).

Turner wrote his post in 2019, when Smith's career as an abuser of boys and young men was in the headlines. 

He tells us that Smith

retained his interest in youth activities, however, and by the beginning of the 1970s – now returned to the Liberal Party, whence he had come – he was chair of the council’s Education Committee, its Youth Committee and its Youth Employment Committee, while also serving on the committees of the Rochdale Youth Opera and the Youth Theatre Workshop. 

Where he had been a governor of two schools, he was now on the board of twenty-nine. And then there was the Cambridge House hostel that he had helped found and that was the site of much of his abuse.

When Cyril Smith died in 2010 I blogged that I had heard him

address a public meeting in Sutton Coldfield in 1982 and he was a terrific speaker. His style of oratory, which no doubt came from Nonconformist preaching, now seems a world away from today's culture of soundbites and glottal stops.

What I remember more today is that he began his speech by saying that he had attended the ninth World Scout Jamboree in Sutton Park in 1957.

This won him murmurs of approval and pleasure from around the hall, but it makes me cringe today,

GUEST POST Why the Progressive Alliance is irrelevant in Batley and Spen

Matthew Pennell says those arguing for a Progressive Alliance in the Batley and Spen by-election don't understand the seat.

I’m a massive track and field freak and I learnt an important life lesson from an Athletics Weekly editorial a while back - it talked about having a ‘no short cuts’ approach to the sport. 

This wasn’t, as you’d expect, about not taking performance enhancing drugs, but weight loss. It’s known that getting on the Slimfast can boost your performance in the short term but what you gain in speed you lose in strength so you’re far more likely to get ill/injured in the long term. Adopt a ‘no short cuts’ approach to life in general and you won’t go far wrong. 

For this reason I smell a rat in the recent calls for a Progressive Alliance in politics as it seems like a classic short cut approach.

You may have already noticed calls for a Progressive Alliance in Batley and Spen, they’re utter drivel and I’ll explain why. Batley and Spen isn’t a classic red wall seat, it’s toggled between Labour and Conservative throughout the years and has never been a particularly safe Labour seat since Mike Wood gained it in 1997. It’s competitive, Labour know it’s competitive, how much does Labour want to win?

What’s the pathway to Labour victory in Batley and Spen? 

This seat has developed a micro-climate which Labour will have to negotiate in order to reach the winning post. Unlike Hartlepoolm there’s no overwhelming Brexit sentiment in Batley and Spen, the Brexit party polled far lower in 2019 and Reform UK isn’t standing this time. There was a major third party, however, last time out - the Heavy Woollen District Independents (HWDI), who polled a whopping 6432 votes. 

This is a rare example of localist politics breaking through at a general election. This smacks of disaffection with the political establishment, but it’s not an overt right-wing Eurosceptic statement - HWDI aren’t standing this time. 

Due to problems with their candidate the Greens aren’t standing this time either, If you aggregate Brexit, HWDI and Green votes from 2019 that amounts to 8800 - this voter cohort will be crucial in determining the result on July 1.

Another ingredient in the micro-climate is the latest chapter in the George Galloway’s Massive Ego show. He’s standing under the Workers Party banner, with what looks like a straightforward Blue

Labour platform, and has already been very active in the constituency. Early polling suggest the Workers Party pulling in 6 per cent of the vote, enough to be a spoiler for Labour.

For those wanting Labour to win, there are four key outcomes:

• Labour retains its vote from 2019
• Labour manages to persuade some Conservatives to switch back to them having left Labour due to Brexit and Corbyn
• Labour wins over 50 per cent of Heavy Woollen District Independents votes 
• Labour neutralises the threat of the Workers Party

If Labour is successful in doing the above it will win the seat, and quite frankly the voting behaviour of Lib Dems and Greens, who would be shoehorned into a Progressive Alliance, won’t matter. 

The notion of a Progressive Alliance simply isn’t relevant to Batley and Spen, and most of those who do don’t live there, aren’t campaigning there and clearly don’t know its recent electoral past and present.

Matthew Pennell blogs at returnoftheliberal and you can follow him on Twitter.

Adam Faith: I Survived

No, it's not a great record, but it's an interesting one.

In 1974 I was all over Radio One, Radio Luxembourg and the charts, which means I have a lot of half-remembered songs at the back of my mind.

This is one of them and I recently discovered what it is.

Adam Faith was one of the pioneers of British rock, but his ballads suddenly sounded old-fashioned when groups took over the scene.

By 1974 he was better known as an actor than a singer, and a very good actor he was. Talking Pictures channel recently repeated Budgie, his finest hour on television.

I Survived was not a hit in the UK, but here it is on Top of the Tops.

Faith's last top 20 single was ten years in the past by then. In 1974 that was a lifetime to me: today it seems the blink of an eye.

The Joy of Six 1014

"Thatcher ... would often pepper her speeches with talk of Hayek, Popper or Friedman. And that wasn’t mere showboating: such men formed her worldview. It is not at all clear that Johnson has any equivalents (at least not since Juvenal) or even that he and his colleagues are interested in acquiring any." Rutland's own Chris Dillow exposes the intellectual decline of the right.

Nick Cohen warns of the curbs on free speech contained in the government's draft online harms bill.

"He is part of an establishment that operates on the blithe assumption that all skills are transferable, that an aptitude for political schmoozing magically confers any number of lesser competences on its owner - and that the Right Sort of Chap is the right person for the job, even if they’ve proved otherwise, time and again." Sam Leith explains the rise and rise of George Osborne.

Helen Stace on the tragic state of the River Wye and the impact on our wildlife.

"Local resident Gillian Vesey recalled how, as a young barmaid at the Olde Hob Inn, she stood up for African American soldiers against attempts by white Americans to impose discriminatory practices in the pub, insisting that the American white soldiers wait their turn rather than expecting to be served before their black colleagues." Alan Rice says that Black troops were welcome in Britain during the second world war but Jim Crow wasn’t.

Lin Benley looks at the history of 10cc.

Police called after woman rants at Euro 2020 beer tent she wrongly thought was covid testing site

Our congratulations go to the Liverpool Echo.

Secret Islington walking tour: Canonbury

John Rogers takes us on another London walk, This one

takes into a magical realm just off the hustle and bustle of Upper Street Islington as we take a walking tour around the streets of Canonbury. Ed Glinert described Canonbury as ‘The best preserved and most picturesque suburb in inner London’ (The London Compendium). 

In The London Nobody Knows, Geoffrey Fletcher wrote that to walk from Upper Street to Canonbury Square is to ‘move into an entirely different world’.

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

Later. A fellow Malcolm Saville enthusiast tells me that Canonbury Square was the model for Brownlow Square, where the Morton family lived.

The Joy of Six 1013

Adrian Sanders offers some wise words of caution on a 'progressive alliance': "The problem with pre-election pacts, rather than informal arrangements such as the pre 1997 one between Labour and ourselves where we stand but don’t work in different seats, is that you cannot be sure where, or even if, a voter’s likely second choices will be used the way the pact hoped. There is a danger that in some seats such a narrowing of voter choice will entrench the support of the candidate whom it was hoped would be unseated."

What should a Liberal approach to building a more sustainable economy in a sharply contested world order look like? asks William Wallace.

Rural voters are increasingly comfortable returning non-Conservative councillors, argues Matthew Pennell, He usefully identifies four types of rural constituencies.

Jay Bea reads  Anna Cale's new biography The Real Diana Dors.

Mina Tavakoli reviews The Sparks Brothers - a documentary on Ron and Russell Mael and their band Sparks.

"Flat Holm is full of the beauty of nature. It's home to seabird colonies and retains its wilderness, remoteness and isolation. But alongside the lighthouse and wildlife sits an abandoned and dilapidated former cholera hospital where sick and infectious patients were sent to live and die." Thomas Deacon takes us to an island in the Bristol Channel.

Corby woman steals cactus before attacking man with it in town centre

For this vignette of life in the county, the Northamptonshire Telegraph wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Talk of cacti reminds me of Lord Bonkers' entry on Nick Clegg's teenage delinquency.

Prelude: After the Gold Rush

Prelude were a folk group, formed in Gateshead in 1970 and active until recently.

This 1974 a capella version of a Neil Young song was their finest hour. It charted around the world, reaching number 21 in the US and number 22 in the UK.

What is it about? Wikipedia offers a choice of answers:

Dolly Parton (who was in the process of recording a cover of the song along with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt) has said, "When we were doing the Trio album, I asked Linda and Emmy what (the song) meant, and they didn't know. 

So we called Neil Young, and he didn't know. We asked him, flat out, what it meant, and he said, 'Hell, I don't know. I just wrote it. It just depends on what I was taking at the time. I guess every verse has something different I'd taken.'"

However, in his 2012 biography Young reportedly gave a different explanation of the song's origin and meaning, describing the inspiration provided by a screenplay of the same name (never produced), which apocalyptically described the last days of California in a catastrophic flood. The screenplay and song's title referred to what happened in California, a place that took shape due to the Gold Rush. 

Young eventually concluded that “After The Gold Rush is an environmental song... I recognize in it now this thread that goes through a lotta my songs that’s this time-travel thing... When I look out the window, the first thing that comes to my mind is the way this place looked a hundred years ago.”

Ed Davey's blue wall was couriered from Grantham

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I like this detail at the end of an interesting Guardian article on the likely impact of the Liberal Democrat triumph in Chesham and Amersham:

It amused Lib Dem staffers that the boxes that made up their blue wall prop had been delivered by courier from Grantham, birthplace of another true-blue export, Margaret Thatcher..

Building Coventry Cathedral

Historic England introduces this video on YouTube:

Using photographs from Historic England’s Archive, KS2 students learnt more about their local heritage. The students carried out oral history interviews with people who constructed Coventry Cathedral and together they visited the building.

Lib Dems storm to victory in Chesham and Amersham

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It wasn't even close! Congratulations to Sarah Green on a stunning victory:

(Chesham & Amersham) result:

LDEM: 56.7% (+30.4)
CON: 35.5% (-19.9)
GRN: 3.9% (-1.6)
LAB: 1.6% (-11.2)
REFUK: 1.1% (+1.1)
BP: 0.5% (+0.5)
FA: 0.4% (+0.4)
REU: 0.3% (+0.3)

Liberal Democrat GAIN from Conservative.

— Britain Elects (@BritainElects) June 18, 2021

Sarah polled 21,517 votes to the Conservative candidate's 13,489 - a majority of 8028 and a swing of 25 per cent.

This result reminds us that, for all the talk of a progressive alliance, the most satisfying way of winning Tory seats is by converting former Tory voters.

It also reminds us that, if the voters are determined to get rid of the Tories, they will organise themselves without outside help.

Georgie Fame reminisces about his Flamingo Club days

Choosing Yeh Yeh as Sunday's music video, I came across this discussion between Georgie Fame and Jamie Cullen.

Fame tells how he escaped the world of Larry Parnes, who gave him his stage name (his real name is Clive Powell), for the most authentic jazz scene London had to offer.

It's interesting to heat that Bad Penny Blues influenced him too.

The Joy of Six 1012

"Lib Dems in cities (and remember, a lot of politically active centre-left folk live in cities) see municipal Labour as unimaginative, entitled, tribal, machine-based and sometimes corrupt. Labour people see local Lib Dems as unprincipled, incoherent opportunists and dirty campaigners." Lewis Baston looks at the prospects for inter-party cooperation against the Conservatives.

"Few political parties around the world have endorsed UBI as the Liberal Democrats have, and in releasing this discussion paper with specific policies, they have taken that endorsement to an unprecedented level of seriousness." UBI Center praises our policy paper on universal basic income.

William Francis makes the Liberal case for the mass ownership of property.

Andy Kroll says the Forever Trump movement has captured the Republican Party.

"As far as facilitating inclusion and diversity is concerned, it is better to support employees in dealing with past behaviours than it is to 'name and shame' them in the national press. The ECB could have done more to protect their players and show that it is serious about challenging prejudice, but it has shown itself unable to do either." Andrew Page on the Ollie Robinson affair.

Samuel E Pheby-McGarvey examines the tensions between modernity and folk horror communities in Children of the Stones.

MP bullied Commons staff because he is very tall

Daniel Kawczynski, the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, today made an apology on the floor of the Commons for bullying parliamentary committee staff.

As the Shropshire Star explains:

The Tory MP made the statement for acting in a "threatening and intimidating manner" towards the complainants after he was unable to join a committee hearing due to technical problems.

A disciplinary report said the Shrewsbury and Atcham MP consumed a "significant amount of alcohol" on the day and phoned the manager of the committee staff while under the influence, behaviour that was "grossly unprofessional".

The incident occurred in April 2020, as Parliament was adapting to new remote working during the coronavirus lockdown.

I was struck by his argument against being forced to make a public apology:

Mr Kawczynski failed in an appeal against the recommended sanction that he should apologise in the House, claiming that he was under great pressure at the time due to Brexit and flooding in his constituency.

The appeal suggested the 6ft 9in MP was "very conspicuous" due to his height, making him a target for "extremely vicious" attacks from members of the public.

Anyway, you can watch the apology below.

Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames: Yeh Yeh

I can remember being aware of Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames as a small boy in the 1960s - I think there was something about the fame/flame combination in their name that intrigued me.

Almost 50 years later I saw Georgie Fame play at Market Harborough Leisure Centre with Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings.

The Blue Flames were originally Billy Fury's backing band. When he sacked them, Fame took over as singer and they enjoyed great success.

Yeh Yeh topped the UK singles chart in 1964 and may well be the record that first introduced me to them.

Craft gin is illegal

Writing about food and politics in Britain, Pen Vogler:

The governments of the day experimented vainly with taxation, until alighting on legislation that outlawed small-batch distillation. (The current craft gin craze is thanks to Sipsmith who took on HMRC and persuaded it to deviate from its strict adherence to this 1751 Gin Act.)

Of course, the really great thing about craft gin is that it makes a bottle of ordinary gin seem so cheap.

Lib Dems would gain five seats with new constituency boundaries

A rare piece of good news for the Liberal Democrats is to be found in a New Statesman article by Ben Walker.

He says that we are set to gain from the new constituency boundaries proposed by the Electoral Commission.

By his calculations, if the 2019 election had been fought on these boundaries the Lib Dems would have gained Sheffield Hallam from Labour and Esher and Walton, Finchley and Muswell Hill, South Cambridgeshire and Wimbledon from the Conservatives.

Other commentators have suggested that Tim Farron will have trouble finding a winnable seat in Cumbria, and there will be more subtle losses and gains across the country,

But it is worth noting Ben Walker's conclusion that "these boundary changes aren’t dramatically helpful for the Conservatives, nor disastrous for Labour".

The loneliness of Roding Valley

Jago Hazzard explains why the Central Line's Roding Valley is the quietest station on the London Underground. You can support his videos via his Patreon page.

Oh and Geoff Marshall has been to Roding Valley too.