The Joy of Six 1124

"It was an absolute stain on our country that we once kept children locked up in immigration removal centres, such as Dungavel in Scotland. To make the mistake once was bad enough. To return to the policy would be unconscionable." Alistair Carmichael says detaining child migrants is a stain on our country will not deter small boats.

"The review’s findings suggest that, although Washington has since 2014 imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, the Justice Department under the Obama and Trump administrations did not prioritize prosecutions related to that war - filing relatively few cases until after Putin escalated it in 2022." Nahal Toosi examines how the US let Russia off the hook after its annexation of Crimea.

Samira Ahmed on the uncovering of the tape of the Beatles concert at Stowe School: "He brought along an extract that we played through the stage PA system turned up as loud as possible to match the experience he’d had back in 1963. It was emotional for all us, including two young A level music students who came along to listen. It was like time travel."

Pen Hemingway lays bare the brutal history of British prison hulks.

"The film met with both critical acclaim and considerable controversy upon its original release. But thinking about Life of Brian as a parody of biblical epics is both the best way to appreciate it and serves, paradoxically, to illuminate the aspects of the Christian faith that even Monty Python could not puncture." Jack Butler offers a Christian reading of Python.

Mike Klein looks at the chess career of Emory Tate, father of the obnoxious Andrew. who was a trailblazing African-American player.

Former MP is Lib Dem candidate in Leicester's mayoral election

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Parmjit Singh Gill, who won the Leicester South by-election for the Liberal Democrats in 2004, is our candidate in next month's mayoral election in Leicester.

He overturned a Labour majority of 13,243 to win the 2004 contest, but lost the seat back to them at the following year's general election.

Parmjit's Labour opponent in Leicester South both times was Sir Peter Soulsby, who is seeking a fourth term as mayor next month.

Meanwhile, all Conservative candidates in the city, including the party's mayoral candidate, are standing as Local Conservatives. Presumably this is an attempt to distance themselves from the government.

And the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is putting up a mayoral candidate and fighting nine city council wards. 

Among its candidates is the Humberstone and Hamilton councillor Ruma Ali. She told the Leicester Mercury that she resigned from the Labour Party because 19 councillors, including her, were deselected by its national executive committee five weeks before these elections without any reason being given.

The last days of Nijinsky

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Deep in the British Newspaper Archive, I came across a sad story in the Derby Evening Telegraph (Friday 16 March 1945):

World Dancer Executed

Vaslav Nijinsky, once one of the world's greatest dancers, was executed by the Nazis in Budapest before the Russians captured the city, a Stockholm newspaper reported today.

For years Nijinsky had been confined in a mental home in the Hungarian capital. The newspaper said the Germans put to death all insane persons in Budapest to conserve food supplies during the Russian siege.

So sad was it that I wondered the story is not better known. When I turned to Wikipedia I found there's a reason for that. It's not true.

Nijinsky had indeed been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919, and for years afterwards was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums.

But he survived the siege of Budapest, and after the end of the war he and his wife Romola moved to Vienna. There:

he encountered a group of Russian soldiers in an encampment, playing traditional folk tunes on a balalaika and other instruments. Inspired by the music and hearing a language from his youth, he started dancing, astounding the men with his skills. 

Drinking and laughing with them helped him start to speak again. He had maintained long periods of almost absolute silence during his years of illness.

Nijinsky ended his days in the genteel surroundings of Virginia Water in Surrey. He died in 1950, and his obituary in The Stage described his last days:

He was reserved, charming, and very kind. Though part of the time he lived in a world of his own, sometimes he was able to take an interest in current affairs. He enjoyed visits to a play or the ballet, and loved seeing friends. 

He talked of his days in St. Petersburg and occasionally discussed dancing. When asked how he was able "to stay in the air" he answered, smilingly. "It was easy". But when reminded that other dancers are unable to do this he replied, "I mean it was easy for me." 

He had exquisite manners, and even in his darkened life it was possible to see something of the rarity of spirit that helped to make him a supremely great artist. He became a legend in his lifetime and has long been placed with the greatest in art. But to his friends he was loved for his sweetness and enchanting personality.

Nijinsky was originally buried in London, but in 1953 he was reinterred in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.

Steve Winwood's grandson to be a page at the Coronation

When Mary-Clare, one of Steve Winwood's daughters, got engaged to top Tory fixer Ben Elliot, I suggested this meant that my musical hero had joined the Royal Family. That was because Elliot is the nephew of Camilla Parker Bowles

Now comes news that Queen Camilla, as she is to be known after all, will have four pages at the Coronation: three of her grandsons and a great nephew, Arthur Elliot. He is Steve Winwood's grandson.

It's a long way from the Clarence Hotel Ballroom, South Wigston, to Westminster Abbey. But don't worry: he's still got the blues.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I welcome guest posts on Liberal England. So if you'd like to write for this blog, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea. 

As you will see from the list below, I'm happy to publish posts on subjects far beyond the Liberal Democrats and British politics.

I'm also happy to entertain a wide variety of views, but I'd hate you to spend your time writing something I really wouldn't want to publish. So please get in touch first.

These are the last then guest posts I have published:

• Can trade unions make a big comeback? - Stuart Whomsley
• The essays and reviews of Angela Carter - Cathy Kirby
• Monty Python’s Life of Brian: Were Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood very naughty boys? - David Grace
• A newspaper for and by Leicester people - Reece Stafferton
• Wealthy Rishi Sunak should give it all away - Eduardo Reyes
• Did the Russians kill President Kennedy? - Jack White
• The Secret Diary of Charles Dickens aged 13¾ - Lee Jackson
• LadBaby number one for Christmas again: what does it say about Britain? - Stuart Whomsley
• 100 signs that Conservative morale is low - Augustus Carp
• How Blackpool won the Second World War - Ruth Bright

Local elections: Tories field fewer candidates, Lib Dems field more

From the Guardian:

Official data shows that the Lib Dems have increased their proportion of candidates to the equivalent of 60% of seats being fought in England and Wales on 4 May, up seven percentage points on 2019, when the same set of elections were last held.

By contrast the Tories, who have always prided themselves on running full slates of candidates wherever possible, are down 3% to 93%, their lowest level since 2007. Labour’s proportion of candidates per seat has remained the same, at 77%.

The improvement in the figure for the Lib Dems is impressive when you remember that in 2019 we were in good spirits and campaigning under the slogan Bollocks to Brexit.

And let's hear it for those inevitable unnamed 'Lib Dem officials':

Lib Dem officials say that in many councils across the country where the Tories should be strong, from Stockport in the north-west to Lewes in East Sussex, the Tory party is not fielding full slates of candidates.

The Joy of Six 1123

Ben Ansell dissects the nonsense that is the supposed new elite: "Absolutely core to the intellectual and political manifestations of ‘populism’ is the idea that the 'people' are not being listened to. That someone else is calling the shots. An unrepresentative elite. Whether that elite is in the political system itself, or as with the 'new woke elite', largely outside of the political system but somehow responsible for policies and politics, varies across populist arguments. But in common there is an elision of differences among the people and an exaggeration of differences between the people and whichever precise elite is being castigated."

The wait for an ambulance in Shropshire is shocking and people are dying as a result, says Ludlow's Andy Boddington.

"The ultimate blame for the mess lies in an incoherent government policy rooted in ignorance, misunderstanding and stupidity. Classical music in Britain is genuinely 'world-beating, yet it is being vandalised by know-nothings with a confection of crackpot ideologies." Jessica Duchen on the BBC's classical music cuts.

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore asks why children aren’t protected from parents who monetise their lives online: "Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have heralded an era of gauche personal branding where success is measured in followers and ‘Likes’, exposure trumps privacy, and fame translates into cash. In an influencer’s life, everything is for sale - including the kids."

John Stern says 1963 gave us gave us sex, the Beatles... and one-day cricket.

"In late 1969 photographer Mick Rock visited Syd Barrett at his flat in Wetherby Mansions, Earls Court to take pictures for the cover of Syd’s first solo album The Madcap Laughs.  Those images are among the most powerful rock photos of the era and many ended up in the hugely collectible (and now very expensive) book Psychedelic Renegades." Stuart Penney delves deep into the world of Syd Barrett,

Steve Winwood: Now the Green Blade Riseth

This tune is a medieval French carol, Noël Nouvelet, which is a staple of the King's College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It's also known in English, and somehow less impressive, as Sing We Now of Christmas.

But the words here, with their echoes of John Barleycorn, come from the 20th century hymn book. They were written by John Macleod Campbell Crum and published in 1928.

As it's a hymn, the parallels between the coming of spring and the Resurrection are made explicit. Others in this period found consolation in a wider sense that the lost of the Western Front would somehow be reborn in nature.

This is from John Masefield's 1917 account of the Somme Offensive, The Old Front Line:

All wars end; even this war will some day end, and the ruins will be rebuilt and the field full of death will grow food, and all this frontier of trouble will be forgotten. When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. 

One summer with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can make, and then these places, from which the driving back of the enemy began, will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps. … 

In a few years’ time, when this war is a romance in memory, the soldier looking for his battlefield will find his marks gone. Centre Way, Peel Trench, Munster Alley, and these other paths to glory will be deep under the corn, and gleaners will sing at Dead Mule Corner.

Poems from the Unconscious by Phil O'Neill

Phil O'Neill explains the genesis of his collection of poems in an interview with the Times of Tunbridge Wells:

"My paternal grandparents were imprisoned for child neglect in 1923. Their ten children ended up in different places, some on the streets.

"My dad was put in an approved school and his two brothers, Dennis and Terry, were put in a foster home on a farm in Shropshire.

"Their foster parents abused my uncles and eventually Dennis was brutally beaten and starved to death aged just 12 in 1945."

I first came across the story of Dennis O'Neill in a book by Bob Holman that came into the office for review. It praised the work of Phil's father, Tom O'Neill, as a residential social worker and mentioned Dennis's death.

The Shropshire connection made me want to know more, so I started to research it. In those days that meant looking up microfiche copies of The Times in the university library, and these showed that it really was, as Phil O'Neill says in his interview, "the story that took the war off the front pages".

Phil says of his collection, Poems from the Unconscious:

"The original poems relating to my depression were written while I was in a mental health crisis. The rawness of the experience is echoed in the naïve, unstructured streams of internal monologue. I left them unedited in the book.

"The later poems were an attempt to write 'good' poetry about trauma, recovery and healing rather than attempting catharsis."

Those earlier poems were written in the 1990s, and he completed and edited the collection recently, while taking an MA in Creative Writing at the University at Kent.

Thinking of his own mental health problems, Phil told the newspaper:

"I came across the idea of transgenerational trauma and felt this explained the mental health issues my family faced as well as our behaviours.

"It’s believed that trauma can pass down the generations and can affect people who haven’t been directly involved in the events leading to the initial trauma.

 "It has been documented in the descendants of slaves, war survivors, refugees, survivors of interpersonal abuse, and many other groups. It’s also particularly prevalent in victims of child abuse.

"The idea is that not only can someone experience trauma, they can then pass the symptoms and behaviours of trauma on to their children, who then might further pass these along the family line. A ripple effect, if you like."

Phil says he hopes that Poems From the Unconscious will help others with their mental health. He will donate the profits from his book to Mental Health Resource, a charity supporting wellbeing in Tunbridge Wells:

"I hope from reading my book, it will help those with depressive illness and an appreciation of art for art’s sake and the power of poetry in healing."

Poems from the Unconscious: Reflections on Trauma, Recovery and Healing by Phil O'Neill (illustrated by Agatha O'Neill) is on Amazon UK and can be ordered from bookshops.

The best introduction to the story of Dennis O'Neill is the radio documentary made about his brother Terry, who was also at that farm in Shropshire and survived the ordeal. Beware: it is a terrible story of abuse.

It's title, The Mousetrap and Me, comes from the fact that it was this case that gave Agatha Christie the inspiration for her record-breaking play.

And there is plenty on the Dennis O'Neill label on this blog, including my discovery that the case led to another successful West End play, No Room at the Inn.

Ian Bairnson of Pilot played the guitar solo on Wuthering Heights

Ian Bairnson, who played with Pilot and The Alan Parsons Project, has died. Kate Bush News links to his wife's Facebook page, so this is no Chris Farlowe rumour.

Bairnson's death is reported there because it turns out that he played the very Seventies guitar solo with which Wuthering Heights plays out. This makes him the posthumous recipient of our Trivial Fact of the Day Award.

I played my mother music on my phone in her last days, and she surprised me a couple of times by asking for this song.

"Twelve miles from the nearest lemon"

The clergyman and wit Sidney Smith once said a living of his in Yorkshire had been so remote that he was "twelve miles from the nearest lemon".

I know how he felt. There were no lemons in Sainsbury's, Market Harborough, this afternoon.

Well, it is Brexit Britain. But what are we supposed to use instead? Malt vinegar? The syrup from a tin of fruit cocktail? Sorrel foraged from the fields?

More and more, it feels the Tories are not fighting a culture war so much as a war on culture.

From Foxton to Smeeton Westerby via Debdale Wharf

If you are one of the dwindling band of survivors of the 1985 Liberal Party Assembly at the Caird Hall in Dundee, then this is where your programme was mailed from. It used to be the post office for the Leicestershire village of Foxton, and that was where the assembly was organised from - in two semi-converted narrow boats, naturally.

This afternoon I went for a short walk along the canal from Foxton to Debdale Wharf and then along a glorified farm track to Smeeton Westerby. Incidentally, the King's Head at Smeeton is in new hands, well stocked with Langton Brewery beers and deserves your support.

Here are some photos from the walk.

Simon Hobson to fight Torridge and West Devon for the Lib Dems

Torridge and West Devon Liberal Democrats have chosen Simon Hobson to fight the seat at the next general election.

The North Devon Gazette says:

Simon is an environmentalist from a farming background and has worked internationally in Africa and both North and South America.

Prior to gaining his degree in mining engineering from Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, Simon was the constituency organiser for the Liberal Democrat held constituency of Winchester.

He has also been a professional cyclist.

Torridge and West Devon became a Lib Dem seat in 1995 when Emma Nicholson, for some unaccountable reason, decided she was one of us and crossed the floor.

It was then held for the party by John Burnett in 1997 and 2001. In 2005, when John did not defend the seat, it was won back for the Conservatives by the barrister and ham actor Geoffrey Cox.

Meet the four Piccadilly Lines

"This one’s tricky. You may need to concentrate," says Jago Hazzard about this video. It takes us through the four different schemes that combined to bring us the Piccadilly Line.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page.

Harborough Lib Dems will field a full slate of candidates in next month's local elections

There are 34 members of Harborough District Council, spread across 25 wards, and the Liberal Democrats are fielding a full slate of 34 candidates in next month's elections. 

This is a remarkable achievement, and one we have never become particularly close to before, even in the days when we ran the council with a minority administration.

The number of candidates standing for each party is as follows:

• 34 - Liberal Democrats
• 31 - Conservatives
• 30 - Greens
• 25 - Labour
• 2 - Independent
• 1 - Reform UK

The current political balance of the council is: Conservatives 22, Liberal Democrats 11, Labour 1.

Sending an Easter message in the Shropshire Hills

'Prominent' crosses installed on Shropshire hill to send powerful Easter message

So says the headline in the Shropshire Star over this story:

Three gigantic Christian crosses are sending a powerful Easter message from the top of a Shropshire landmark. 

For the second year running St Margaret's Church, in Ratlinghope, has organised to get the 15ft and 10ft crosses planted as a beacon on top of Ratchup Hill.

They are visible for many miles around and will be the focus of Easter services at the church.

Mike Barnbrook, speaking on behalf of the church team, said: "They are very visible and can be seen from quite a distance and are a very prominent part of the landscape.

"The reason for it is because it is Easter, when Jesus was crucified on the cross. We want people to remember the real reason for Easter." 

I love the churchyard at Ratlinghope, but I sometimes wonder how deep the roots of Christianity reach here.

As D.H. Lawrence said, The Stiperstones are:

one of those places where the spirit of aboriginal England still lingers, the old savage England, whose last blood still flows in a few Englishmen, Welshmen, Cornishmen.

In fact, I always used to be a little relieved if the locals didn't sacrifice me to their pagan gods in the course of the weekend.

Which is why I think the photo above, which I took at Ratlinghope, gives a better idea of worship in this part of the county.

Walking the London of Emanuel Swedenborg with Iain Sinclair

Our latest walk with John Rogers finds him accompanied by the daddy of psychogeography, Iain Sinclair, and Stephen McNeilly of the Swedenborg Society.

Together they follow the footsteps of 18th-century Swedish scientist, philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.

The blurb on YouTube says:

Our walk starts in Warner Street Clerkenwell where Swedenborg had his most famous vision in a Chop House. We then walk on along the course of the River Fleet to Bakers Yard / Cold Bath Square where Swedenborg died in 1772. 

From here we walk along Saffron Hill and Hatton Garden to Fetter Lane, the site of the Moravian Chapel that Swedenborg attended.

Our Swedenborg walk takes us along Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill to Paternoster Square linking together a series of locations associated with Swedenborg's publishing and writing career.  

We then head out to East London, passing along Leman Street, Cable Street, past Wiltons Music Hall to Swedenborg Gardens where Swedenborg was buried in the Swedish Church.

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

Lib Dems say sewage is coming up on the doorstep

It's the issue that's sweeping the country, says the Guardian:

Josh Babarinde, a Lib Dem councillor in Eastbourne who is also the candidate for the Conservative-held parliamentary seat, a key target for the party, says sewage is raised spontaneously as often as the NHS during local door knocking. "It is one of the most common issues that comes up on the doorstep. Beaches are the lifeblood of this town."

Over to Ed Davey:

"It’s much bigger than potholes. Potholes are a very serious issue, and they do move votes, but for sewage, the reason why it’s so dramatic is it brings the pollution of our natural environment and the damage that it’s doing to our rivers and our seas, and wildlife and plants and animals, to human health."

And an unnamed Liberal Democrat official says:

"When we started talking about sewage two years ago, the other parties though it was a bit weird. But now they all want to talk about it."

My photo shows the giant poo that Water Aid brought to the New York Millennium Development Goals Summit in 2010. In those days we saw sanitation as an issue for other, poorer countries.

If sewage does come up on the doorstep, don't forget to point for the camera.

The Joy of Six 1122

 Alexandra Hall Hall finds the Iraq war and Brexit share a thread of hubris: "It’s taken Americans 20 years to fully come to terms with the consequences of Iraq. I hope it does not take that long for Britain to truly realise the consequences of Brexit."

The Hunger Games bidding system, which saw councils competing against one another for Levelling Up cash, led to councils across the country paying millions to consultants. That's the finding a Daily Mirror investigation.

Are we building more prisons because of a projected rise in the prison population, or building prisons and then making sure they are filled? Faith Spear asks an important question.

Rachel Hammersley went to a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Christopher Hill's study of radical politics during the English Civil War and Commonwealth: "As one obituary of him noted, ... works like The World Turned Upside Down spoke not just to academics, but also to ordinary people. Moreover ... Hill also reached out in many different ways to a wider public through his involvement with organisations such as the Workers' Educational Association, the Open University, and the BBC."

Forgotten Television Drama posts a chronology of Dickens adaptations on British television between 1948 and 2023. A remarkable number survive and have been issued on DVD.

"RNAS Longside was active from 1916 to 1920. 1500 personnel were based at the station and the site boasted a swimming pool, a theatre, shops, a church and gas works. All of those buildings are long gone, but some things remain." Ailish Sinclair looks for the remains of a Royal Naval Air Station in Lenabo Woods, Aberdeenshire.

Charles, It Was Really Something: Horrible Histories does Dickens as Morrisey

The day people stop adapting Dickens to say something about present-day society will be the day that Dickens dies.

Meanwhile, here's Horrible Histories.