GUEST POST Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections?

Lib Dem HQ has decided to stop making an effort in unpromising Westminster by-elections. Regular guest poster Augustus Carp argues that they've got it wrong.

Today I want us to think about a rather unusual chap called Ian Stuart – he was the "area manager" or whatever it was called of the Liberal Party in the Home Counties in the 1980s. On our rare meetings I found him to be a rather genial cove, although I gather he was not always popular with the party hierarchy. Anyway, it was his lot to be the Liberal Party candidate in the long-forgotten Uxbridge by election of 1972.

Long forgotten because, on the very same day (7 December) the Liberal Party won a Famous Victory in Sutton and Cheam. Graham Tope triumphed, Liberal hearts were gladdened, and progress suddenly seemed a little bit more inevitable. 

Ian Stuart told me that the only instructions he received from party HQ regarding his campaign were given to him by Jeremy Thorpe himself: 

"Go to Uxbridge and make a nuisance of yourself. You are going to fight a futile campaign, but in a good cause. You are a diversionary tactic from the main battle in Sutton & Cheam. If you don’t come back with at least two writs issued against you, then you haven’t been doing your job!"

I don’t think any writs were issued, but Ian certainly did his job. As he was the Convenor of Shop Stewards at Heathrow Airport at the time he was fully acquainted with the intricacies of the largest employer in the area, and was indeed able to stir up mischief. He certainly generated enough press releases, silly stunts and outrageous quotes to distract from Sutton and Cheam and keep Conservative and Labour activists away from the target seat. And he went down to a heroic defeat.

Bit here’s the thing – at least he tried. He knew what was needed of him – to fight as good a good campaign as he possibly could, with no money, half a dozen members, and no prospect of any external help. 

Now compare that with the situation today. The Liberal Democrats are infinitely richer in terms of money, activists, experience, MPs and councillors – but the national party seems to have given up on the idea of fighting elections, even as diversionary tactics. 

Why has the national party made so little effort recently, in Rochdale, Gorton, Makerfield, South Aberdeen? No doubt we could name others as well. I have no doubt that the candidates and local parties were doing their best, but where was the support for those campaigns? There wasn’t even an email asking for money. 

My local party is amazing. There’s perhaps only a dozen or so of them, but they are always coaxing me to deliver a few more leaflets, come out canvassing, give them some idea for Focuses etc. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I am happy to help them – so much so that I probably don’t even qualify as an armchair member anymore. They deserve all the support I can give them. 

But why do I continue to pay my subscriptions to the national party (index-linked since the merger!) when I see so little bang for my buck? Why doesn’t the national party seem to want to put up a fight any more? I wouldn’t want to join a football club that wasn’t particularly interested in playing (or winning) football matches. As a member of a political party, I want to see it – and help it - fight elections. 

I heard the explanation given that the party doesn’t want to spend £50,000 just to save a £500 deposit. That might make economic sense, but it doesn’t make political sense anymore. Getting 2 per cent in a parliamentary by election is actively harming us. It makes us look irrelevant, even to voters in places where we are successful. 

The current political environment needs us to spend the £50,000 just to make sure that we retain some sort of credibility – not just in the relevant constituency, but nationally as well. We might at least try to come third, assuming that the first two places are out of reach – that might get us an honourable mention in news broadcasts. 

If that’s too much to ask, at least we might try to save our deposit. We cannot choose where by elections will fall, so we just have to make the best of a bad job. At least when they do happen, we should fight the good fight, and do the best we can.

Ian Stuart's other great observation to me was that every member of the Liberal Party, with the obvious exception of the two of us, was too bloody clever by half – always overanalysing problems and reinventing the wheel, rather than just getting on with the basics. Perhaps that’s the problem we have in the Liberal Democrats at the moment.

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

Petula Clark remembers making Trouble at Townsend

One of Petula Clark's early films in her child star days was Trouble at Townsend, which was based on a short story by this blog's hero Malcolm Saville.

In her memoirs Is That You, Petula? she briefly remembers making the film:

Rather less glamorously, around the same time I made an educational film for children called Trouble at Townsend. It was about a city boy and girl going to the countryside and having adventures. The little boy in the film with me put on weight and got too plump for his costume. We filmed some of it on a farm, and I got chased and butted by a goat.

Many years ago, I wrote a press release for the Malcolm Saville and as a result...

Bored longstanding reader: ...Petula Clark rang you. We all know the story.

More missing scientists: The GEC-Marconi deaths of the Eighties

The "disappearing scientists" panic sweeping the US has led to a rediscovery of a spoof television programme along similar lines that was broadcast in Britain in June 1977. It had originally been scheduled for 1 April.

And it has reminded me that there was similar concern here, 10 years after that broadcast, about a spate of deaths among GEC-Marconi scientists.

There are some not very good podcasts about it, but the video above is a contemporary news report of one shocking death that refers to several others. It's from Thames Television and dates from 1987, so the conspiracy theory had made the mainstream by then.

And here's a report from the Sunday Express (12 February 1989):

Bizarre case of 25 dead scientists 

Defence Secretary George Younger has denied there was anything sinister about the bizarre deaths of 25 British scientists over the past seven years. 

New evidence and fresh allegations of murder are revealed in a television programme, The Marconi Curse to be shown in Australia today. 

The programme, Sixty Minutes, says nine of the defence scientists to die mysteriously were connected with the electronics firm, Marconi. Relatives were assured that their bizarre deaths were either accidental or suicide. 

But Sixty Minutes asks: "Could they have been murdered?"

In his first public comment on the deaths Mr Younger told the programme: "If you've got thousands of people working on a project, quite a number of them are likely to die. I don't see anything sinister in that."

You can see what I think is the programme on YouTube. Be warned: there's a lot about suicide.

As is generally the way with such news stories, it just faded away after a time with no proof of the conspiracy or definitive refutation of it found. Remember those mystery drones that were assailing the US a couple of years ago?

I like the theory that there is a quantum amount of weirdness in the world, whether it's strange phenomena or bizarre coincidences. Study any topic closely enough and you will become aware of it. The closer you study the crowds in Daley Plaza when JFK was assassinated, for instance, the stranger they seem.

But this GEC-Marconi deathsepisode has shown me an unexpected bonus of growing older. Your memory improves – you remember a lot of things most other people don't.

Cameron Thomas was arrested on suspicion of controlling and coercive behaviour and assault

Further information about the arrest of the Liberal Democrat MP Cameron Thomas have emerged today.

BBC News quotes a statement from Gloucestershire Police:

"On Wednesday, a man in his 40s from Tewkesbury was arrested on suspicion of controlling and coercive behaviour and assault.

"The man was interviewed by officers before later being released on police bail."

That report also quotes a spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats:

"Cameron Thomas MP has had the party whip suspended pending the outcome of a police investigation.

"Allegations of this nature are extremely serious, and it is important that the police are able to investigate properly.

"We are unable to comment further while the police investigation is ongoing."

Thomas has been the MP for Tewkesbury since the 2024 general election.

The Joy of Six 1535

"When news of the arrests of the three Ukrainians broke, a rumour soon began to spread online that the alleged perpetrators were, in fact, Ukrainian male sex workers employed by Starmer and that the arson attack was revenge for unpaid bills. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most influential online figures involved in spreading this 'Rent Boys' conspiracy theory was Stephen Lennon." Joe Mulhall and Nick Lowles argue that Tommy Robinson is Putin's useful idiot.

Theo Rodwell fears the Liberal Democrats are being held hostage by Conservatives who have lent them their votes.

"The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, announced that 'one thousand New Yorkers won our lottery for affordable tickets to the World Cup ... the beautiful game belongs to everyone.' Having to run an affordable lottery suggests that maybe it doesn't." Natasha Chahal on FIFA and Trump's world cup.

Emma Peplow looks back to the Christchurch by-election of 1993.

Richard Williams reads a new biography of Brian Epstein: "A man who loved the theatre and classical music, he understood their adventurous creative instincts. When they made that first film, it was directed by the innovative Dick Lester rather than a Wardour Street hack. When the sleeve art of their second album was being prepared, he guided them towards Robert Freeman, whose photos of John Coltrane he had admired and who listened to the group when they showed him Astrid Kirchherr's black and white chiaroscuro Hamburg photographs as a potential template."

"Every day, in New York alone, millions pass by her. On Columbia University’s campus, at the Frick Collection, in Central Park, near City Hall, and at the Brooklyn entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. ... Yet the woman behind the face lived a life marked by exploitation, disappointment, and profound tragedy. Her death in 1996, at the age of 104, attracted almost no attention at all, as if history forgot all that she had been and given. The statues remain, but she was buried in an unmarked grave in northern New York state." Josie Cox tells the sad story of Audrey Munson, America's first supermodel.

Oakham Town Council has "lost control of everything" according to "worst ever" report

Oakham Nub News wins our Headline of the Day Award for a worrying story from Rutland.

Ever fair-minded, the judges point out that though

the document exposes pervasive administrative backlogs, repeated statutory failures, severe asset mismanagement, and critical operational risks.

everything else about the body is tickety-boo. 

In which my great great grandmother's brother stuffs a ptarmigan

I've written before about my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell - about how his dog Sir William Wallace and how the last Tsar of Russia gave him a pair of binoculars.

An item in a Dundee Courier (8 May 1973) column by "Craigie" about a laburnum tree in a Carnoustie front garden soon turns to him:

Back in those Victorian times Queen Victoria herself an eye for quaint and picturesque effects of this sort.

When visiting Loch Muick (near Balmoral) she often had a word on the subject with Sandy Campbell, her stalker at Glasallt Shiel. 

Sandy had the road along the loch planted with rowan trees to form dainty arches. And here and there he planted seedlings together and intertwined their pliant stems giving the same unusual appearance as the Carnoustie laburnum.

Stalker Campbell also kept an interesting "museum" in the coach house at Glasallt Shiel. He was an amateur taxidermist, and stuffed a whole collection of animals and birds like wild cats, grouse and ptarmigan, along with foxes' masks and brushes.

There was also an impressive array of antlers, and horns of sheep and wild goats.

He also collected bits of quartz and rock crystal found in the hills round about, as well as a sample of the 6-foot-long heather that grew in some of the mountain ravines.

Liberal Democrat MP suspended from party after arrest

From the Guardian website this evening:

A Liberal Democrat MP has had the whip suspended pending the outcome of a police investigation, a party spokesperson said.

Cameron Thomas was arrested by Gloucestershire police on Wednesday night, it is understood. His office has been contacted for comment.

A Lib Dem spokesperson said the party was unable to comment further while an “investigation is ongoing”.

Thomas’s party membership is also understood to have been suspended.

The former RAF officer has served as MP for Tewkesbury since the 2024 general election.

This is credited to the Press Association and appears to be all the information that is publicly available at present.

Later. The Guardian has added to its story, but none of the new material appears relevant to his arrest.

Joseph Wright of Derby: From the Shadows exhibition comes home

After six months at the National Gallery in London, the art exhibition Wright of Derby: From the Shadows has come home. 

It's now being shown at Derby Museum and Art Gallery and will run there until 1 November.

Its billing on the Derby Museums website says:

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows is the first major exhibition dedicated to the British artist's 'candlelight' paintings. Join us as we celebrate and look again at his most admired works.

Illuminated faces gather around a variety of objects, from classical sculptures and scientific instruments to bones, bladders and animals. Through his unflinching scenes of people watching, Wright of Derby proposes moral questions about acts of looking. The strong light and deep shadows create drama, reminding us of great painters from earlier centuries like Caravaggio.

Challenging the traditionally held view of Wright of Derby as a figurehead of the Enlightenment, this exhibition contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of the artist, portraying him not merely as a 'painter of light'. More than virtuoso scenes of dramatic light and shade, Wright of Derby used the night-time to explore deeper and more sombre themes, including death, melancholy, morality, scepticism and the sublime.

With over twenty works, including paintings, mezzotints, works on paper and objects, the exhibition explores both Wright of Derby’s artistic practice and the historic context of scientific and artistic development in which they were made.

Watch, along with the people he paints, as his scenes of spectacle and wonder unfold.

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows can be seen without charge at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and you can also enjoy the large collection of his paintings that is always on show there.

The Major Oak is dead and Phil Harding has discovered another ancient site near Stonehenge

Forget Sycamore Gap: this is real tragedy. The Major Oak in Sherwood Forest is dead.

The Guardian reports:

The Major oak, one of Europe’s oldest, largest and most celebrated ancient trees, has died.

The huge tree, which has grown in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, England, for at least 1,000 years, failed to produce any leaves this year, after becoming stressed by a series of hot, dry summers.

Thousands of visitors admire the oak each year, with its great age, enormous 11-metre girth and 28-metre canopy inspiring a forest of folklore. Although the oak would not have been hollow in Robin Hood’s day, it was said to have provided a sanctuary for the outlaw and his gang when fleeing the tyrannical Sheriff of Nottingham.

Of course it did.

The paper's report blames the tree's demise on climate change and "well-intentioned historical interventions":

Experts believe that the props that continued to support the tree’s mighty limbs also placed it under strain. Left alone, ancient oaks shed their limbs and “grow down”, retreating into their trunk and thereby requiring less water and nutrients as they age.

There's more on Sherwood Forest and the Major Oak in my post about an old travelogue.

Now the good news. A team of archaeologists led by the mighty Phil Harding has discovered an ancient site close to and even older than Stonehenge.

Harding told the Salisbury Journal:

"In a few days’ time, Stonehenge will be filled with people celebrating midsummer solstice.

"But what few will realise is that 5,000 years ago on a nearby hillside overlooking modern day Bulford, people were doing the exact same thing – revering and celebrating the sunrise on midsummer’s day.

"This discovery is probably one of the greatest finds of my career and what makes it so important is just how early it is.

"Up till now, our knowledge of this ancient feat of astronomy was based on Stonehenge and other monuments of a similar period, but what we’ve discovered at Bulford is 500 years earlier than the famous stones we know so well.

"It makes me incredibly proud to be an archaeologist."

Following the course of the River Leen through Nottingham

Our History Underfoot – like and subscribe, my children, like and subscribe – follows the course of the River Leen through Nottingham. Just as in John Rogers' London river walks, we are taken to parts of the city we wouldn't normally see.

Except that I have been to some of these places. To prove it, here are my photographs of the railway bridge – I was surprised at how low it was, but didn't guess the reason – and the start of the Tinker's Leen beside the Nottingham Canal.

Joe Jackson: It's Different for Girls

Recorded live in 1979 for BBC2's Rock Goes to College.

The Joy of Six 1534

Keir Starmer should set a timetable for his departure from Number 10 and give his successor the opportunity to prepare for becoming prime minister, argue Hannah White and Alex Thomas.

"Digital spaces should be safe for people of all ages. But I don’t believe bans are the answer. Technology companies need to be held to account and required to block harmful content and build safety into their designs." Lisa M. Given on what Britain can learn from Australia's attempt to ban under-16s from social media.

Ben Mayfield has seen a new film on the countryside access debate in England and Wales: "Our Land is a title with two meanings – private land ownership for the landowners v the campaign for shared rights in land. The film explores different attitudes to ownership as well as the physical borders between landowners and, in the words of access campaigner and contributor Guy Shrubsole, 'the peasants'."

John Drury names six mistaken ideas in crowd psychology that refuse to die: de-individuation, groupthink, mass panic, contagion, the hooligan, mob mentality.

"Almost by chance, they ran across the uncanny, disorienting and inexhaustibly strange works that would help define the culture of the century, and fought against stiff odds to make them common coinage in every Anglophone domain." Boyd Tonkin pays tribute to Edwin and Willa Muir, whose translations made the work of Franz Kafka available to the English-speaking world.

David Hewitt looks back to Oxfam Walk '69 and Wembley Stadium's first concert: "Four-fifths of those who started the walk managed to complete it, and their total mileage was said to be equivalent to three trips to the Moon and back. The first of them arrived at Wembley at 3pm, where they were met by yet more celebrities. Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, told them they were 'the nation’s conscience' and 'one of the finest armies that has taken the field for many years'."

No Carry Ons: Kenneth Williams's other films

This is fun. A compilation of 11 short clips of Kenneth Williams in films that aren't Carry Ons.

Williams, as he frequently pointed out on Round the Horne when he wasn't being properly serviced, was classically trained. When he was young he was highly regarded as an actor, and Maggie Smith acknowledged him as an influence on her own work.

Three Lions but no St George's flags

I went for a walk across the town after lunch today and saw this Three Lions flag. What I didn't see was any St George's flags.

Twenty years ago, I was in Shropshire during the 2006 World Cup and I can remember St George's flags in the upstairs windows of houses in some very leafy streets in Shrewbury. I expect the children of the house demanded them for their bedroom windows. This year in Market Harborough, there's nothing.

It looks as though the far right has put us off our national flag by making it a symbol their thuggish politics. They couldn't be more unpatriotic if they tried.

Al Carns portrays Labour politics as a form of ancestor worship

Embed from Getty Images

Writing about Blue Labour in Liberator at the start of year, I suggested that:

Maurice Glasman’s target voter is a white working-class man in a manual job in the North of England in 1957.

That makes him a modernist when set against Al Carns, judging by the defence minister's resignation statement in the Commons today.

Here's how Carns began:

As honourable members know, I came into politics for one reason. That was to enact change.

But to be able to work out where you’re going, we must realise where we have come from. The Labour party I joined is one that was chiselled out of the mines of the north-east. It was hammered out of the shipyards of Govan, Liverpool and Belfast. And it was forged in the factories of the industrial revolution.

Calloused hands, sore backs, people who did a hard day’s graft and asked for one thing in return – a government that has their back.

That’s the tradition I serve in this house, and it’s a tradition that shaped that decision I took last week.

Commercial shipbuilding had largely disappeared from Britain before Carns was born in 1980 – what remains is almost all in the defence sector. Brian Potter has mapped its demise:

Despite taking virtually any order that it could get, even at loss-making prices, the UK’s shipbuilding industry continued its inexorable decline. Between 1975 and 1985, the UK’s shipbuilding output declined by nearly 90 per cent, and its share of the world market fell from 3.6 per cent to less than 1 per cent. 

British Shipbuilders began re-privatization in 1983 with the passage of the British Shipbuilders Act, and over the next several years most of those newly privatised yards would close. In 2024, the UK produced just 0.01 per cent of the commercial ship tonnage built worldwide that year. In 2022 and 2023, the percentage was 0.

Potter's whole article is worth reading. It provides evidence for the view that many of Britain's economic problems stem from the fact that our managers aren't very good.

Returning to Carns's speech, coal mining in the North East of England reached its peak in 1923, with the last deep mine in the region closing in 2005. And the Industrial Revolution is generally reckoned to have begun in the middle of the 18th century.

If these are really Carns's politics, then they have nothing to do with Labour's voters and members or with the British working class today. That class, forced to exist on temporary work and zero-hours contracts, are the very people who would be hurt by his enthusiasm for yet more welfare cuts.

So when Carns went on to talk about modernising defence, you feared he was going to demand that eight Dreadnoughts be built or call for an improved flintlock for the infantry. 

In fact he had sensible things about the need to grasp how warfare is changing, which means we can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he didn't believe the first part of his statement either. 

But he's not the only Labour politician who, when asked to explain it, makes their attachment to the party sound like a form of ancestor worship.

1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus

Jago Hazzard looks back to a short-lived transport experiment that took place in London in the summer of 1963. From 1 July to 31 October, a hovercraft service operated on the Thames in London between Festival Pier at Waterloo and Tower Bridge.

The experiment was not a success and the Hoverbus's manufacturers, Denny, went out of business the following year.

But Jago is right: hovercraft were once seen as the future. Later in the Sixties, I can recall, you often got mini-hovercraft rides at more ambitious fetes.

But then, as Jonathan Meades once pointed out, the future happened briefly in 1969.

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

Violent Bonham Carter features on Fake or Fortune?

The notorious gender-fluid London gang boss of the Sixties gets a mention in a post from last year on the Herstmonceux Castle website.

BBC’s Fake or Fortune here at the Castle

On Monday, 21st July, viewers were treated to a fascinating episode of Fake or Fortune, much of which was filmed here at Herstmonceux Castle.

We thought Dylan and Claire acquitted themselves brilliantly on camera in the garden and amongst the archives.

The episode provided insights into a painting, seemingly by Winston Churchill, of his wife Clementine, as they were staying at Hertsmonceux Castle together with his mother and Violent Bonham Carter, as guests of Claude Lowther, in the summer of 1916. 

I mentioned this to Lord Bonkers. He said that if Violent says a painting is kosher, it's prudent to agree with him.

The Joy of Six 1533

James Ball argues that Labour's social media ban for teenagers is an admission of total and utter failure to govern online spaces: "The UK government has lots of powers to govern the internet that it simply isn’t using. Hosting images of child abuse is a strict liability offence, one that Elon Musk’s X platform blatantly breached with its Grok chatbot. The government gave itself extensive powers to regulate social platforms under the Online Safety Act, which it has never even made an attempt to enforce."

"This week contained two stories, which dominated the headlines. One took place on the streets of Belfast, the other in the hallways of Whitehall. One concerned race riots and the other a defence funding plan. But they were in fact the same story. They both concerned security – one at home, the other abroad. And they were both the result of a prime minister who refuses to lead." Ian Dunt says Keir Starmer's inertia threatens national security.

Anja Krstic and Ivona Hideg find that men's careers benefit when they take parental leave but women’s do not.

"Ten years on from the referendum, the tired stereotype of the 'Northern Brexit voter' is one we should retire." J.P. Spencer has the figures that explode a widespread myth.

"Undoubtedly the most important members of the audience were a group of families from formerly occupied territories affected by the abductions: mothers with teenagers they had recovered from Crimea or elsewhere; families who were still trying to get their children back." Charlotte Higgins and Mariana Matveichuk on the Kyiv premiere of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers.

Kenneth George Godwin finds innocence and corruption in the films of Alexander Mackendrick: "The clearest expression of Mackendrick’s worldview is perhaps apparent in the three films he made which centred on children: Mandy (1952), Sammy Going South (1963), and A High Wind In Jamaica (1965). Unsentimental, unafraid of the darkness kids face in a harsh world, unafraid to see the potential for darkness in the kids themselves … these are three of the most adult films about children ever made."

No, Leave didn't win the Brexit referendum because of Northern working class voters

There are so many myths, and so much snobbery, surrounding the result of the 2016 referendum that I've a good mind to post this every week.

Lord Bonkers: "Something less terrible than the truth"

G.K. Chesterton was a brilliant literary critic and there's an observation of his on Dickens that I've quoted more than once in print:

It seems almost as if these grisly figures, Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Clennam, Miss Havisham, and Miss Flite, Nemo and Sally Brass, were keeping something back from the author as well as from the reader. When the book closes we do not know their real secret. They soothed the optimistic Dickens with something less terrible than the truth.

I have an uneasy feeling that Lord Bonkers sometimes soothes me with something less terrible than the truth.

Aidan O'Rourke: Mangersta Beach

I loved the Outer Hebrides and this music – Mangersta Beach is on the west coast of Lewis – captures the feel of a landscape that somehow feels half Scottish and half Irish. 

So it's no surprise to find Aidan O'Rourke saying in an interview:

My dad plays banjo - he had immersed himself in the Glasgow folk scene of the late 1960s, which was a hotbed of political fervour as well as music. When he left Glasgow and moved to Oban, he brought with him that interest in Irish and Scottish music, and a lot of the political affiliation within it. There were references from Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, as well as Irish republicanism, the Easter Rising, groups like the Dubliners, Planxty - all of which was politically charged. 

 

My mum is from Donegal. My dad is Scottish but his paternal grandfather was Irish, from Tyrone. I could feel that my bones were Irish. The Irish political situation was pretty full-on at that time. We would travel to see my family in Donegal and travel through the north of Ireland and experience all that tension. It was tangible, there was a war zone just across the water. 

Mangersta Beach is a track from his 2006 album Sirius.

The Joy of Six 1532

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Sammy Gecsoyler talks to some who have been unemployed for a year or more about how they are coping.

Kitty Melrose interviews Nova Reid about the creeping spread of book censorship in the UK. Reid says: "Non-fiction books about racism written to help readers learn about the topic and explore approaches to reducing racial injustice are labelled 'racist' as the reason for their removal. By closing discussion of racial injustice, one perpetuates the systemic harms of racism. If injustice for one group is dismissed and ignored, it gives license for other social iniquities to be continued too."

"Years of criminal justice reform have left the state, several counties and towns, as well as the profit-driven private prison industry hungry to fill empty bed spaces or to explore new sources of revenue. Incarcerating and exploiting immigrants for ICE has proven to be an opportunistic and lucrative alternative." Greg Constantine takes us to the Oklahoma communities gutted by ICE.

Larue Leglise and James Scott Vandeventer look at the barriers facing community energy projects in the Outer Hebrides, including ageing turbines and an application process that favours large-scale projects.

Mathew Lyons reviews Nonesuch by Francis Spufford: "Childhood stories and myths suffuse the book: Nonesuch is steeped in Edwardiana, and not always charmingly so. Spufford's world takes the overlap between Nazism and the occult seriously, and the antecedents of both lay in the esotericism of the late-19th and early-20th century. The Edwardian imagination wasn’t all treasure-packed attics, cosy burrows and curious rabbit holes."

"Of all the medieval women I have researched and written about, Aethelflaed is by far my favorite." Susan Abernethy is an Aethelflaed, Lady of Mercia, stan.

Sighcology: The Snake Pit, Out of True and Nellie Bly

It's time to post another of the Sighcology columns I write for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. It used to be called Changes, which must have saved a lot of typing.

You can watch Out of True for free on the British Film Institute Site, and The Snake Pit is not hard to find online.

The Snake Pit, Out of True and Nellie Bly

Olivia de Havilland is sitting on a bench in the sun. We hear a man asking her questions, de Havilland’s thoughts and then her replies. The camera pans a little, but we still don’t see the man. Suddenly a young woman is in shot, talking to her. Then we hear the voice of an older woman calling them both in.

They’re in an institution, but what kind? Seeing some open balconies with bars on the upper storeys, de Havilland decides it’s a zoo. Once inside, she fears it’s a prison. “How did I get here?” A kindly man tells her not to be afraid. She is reassured and explains she is a novelist, in the prison for one day and now it’s time for her to go home. The man asks what her name is and she finds she does not know. She’s in a mental hospital.

This is the opening of the 1948 Hollywood film The Snake Pit, which tells the story of de Havilland’s recovery thanks to the gentle psychotherapy of Dr Kik – her problems turn out to originate in early childhood trauma. How much of his reputation did Freud owe to Hollywood? His work suggested stories whose endings were as surprising and as neat as that of any detective story.

Dr Kik, it seems worth recording, was played by the British Jewish actor Leo Genn. Before the war he combined a stage and screen career with work as a barrister. His last forensic employment was investigating and prosecuting the war crimes committed at Belsen.

The ward from which patients can go home is Ward 1, but de Havilland falls foul of a nurse jealous of the attention the doctor pays her and finds herself dispatched to the most distant back ward of all, the snake pit of the title. There she is forced into a cold bath and then into a straitjacket. 

******

De Havilland is rescued by her kindly psychiatrist and eventually taken home by a model American husband, but this was not the first time such scenes had been laid before the American public. In 1887, Nellie Bly, an ambitious young freelancer, doorstepped the editor of the New York World.

He turned her ideas down, challenging her to investigate instead the notorious New York mental asylum Blackwell’s Island. Bly accepted, feigning mental illness convincingly enough to fool the doctors and have herself admitted. What she saw there was revealed in a series of articles for the World and then collected in a book, Ten Days in a Mad-House.

The articles created a sensation – this is from a paraphrase in a rival newspaper:

Weak, shivering women were plunged into baths of ice cold water, one after another in the same water until the fluid was so thick that it had to be changed. … The bath over, the helpless ones were thrust into their garments wet and so they shivered through the long night. Nurses swore at the patients and beat them. Complaint to the physicians had no other effect than to increase the beatings in number and ferocity until the poor creatures promise to tell the physicians no more.

Bly spoke to as many women as she could and found many were immigrants who didn't understand English and had been sent there in error. Others were just poor and thought they were going to a poorhouse, not an insane asylum. 

Nurses, she reported, administered "so much morphine and chloral that the patients are made crazy," and “attendants seem to find amusement and pleasure in exciting the violent patients to do their worst". The asylum was also hopelessly overcrowded: 400 inmates had to sleep on the floor each night, and 300 had to stand while they ate.

Bly’s investigation brought about reforms at the asylum and then its closure seven years later.

******

For a few years after the war, the British censors were more relaxed than their American counterparts, yet The Snake Pit was shown over here in butchered form. Out went the straitjackets and scenes of what was decreed inappropriate humour – there had been a campaign to ban the film altogether.

In 1951 a British response to The Snake Pit appeared, made by the Crown Film Unit and sponsored by the Ministry of Health as a training aid and to raise public awareness. Out of True told the story of a woman who attempted suicide after a nervous breakdown and of her recovery in a mental hospital.

This is no Freudian detective puzzle: it’s clear from the outset that the woman’s problems are an overcrowded flat and the pressures of running the household. She is played by Jane Hylton, a graduate of the Rank charm school and a little too genteel to convince in the role. Her husband, puzzled but sympathetic, is better and his mother, who is living with them, is no caricature. She senses that her presence is one of her daughter-in-law’s difficulties and takes herself off to live with another relative.

The tone is hopeful, though it’s admitted that not every patient gets better and goes home, and the stigma of being a mental patient is acknowledged. I suppose we should not be surprised that Hylton is given ECT on entry to the hospital without warning, anaesthetic or any mention of consent. Her husband does question the treatment, saying it has affected her memory, but he’s told this is normal and she will soon recover.

Out of True can be watched on the British Film Institute website without charge.

******

Nellie Bly stopped acting when she arrived at the asylum, but the staff assumed her normal behaviours were symptoms of insanity anyway. And if she had told them the truth, that she was there to research an article,  wouldn’t she have sounded just like Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit? The newspaper gave her 10 days as a patient before it informed the authorities of the deceit.

Rosenhan would have understood.

District council backs a parish council for Market Harborough

An extraordinary meeting of Harborough District Council has voted unanimously in favour of a parish council for Market Harborough, reports BBC News.

This vote, which took place on Monday, followed a public poll in which 86 per cent of those who voted supported the establishment of a new council. I was one of them.

The BBC report makes great play of the fact that only 24 per cent of those eligible cast a vote, but I wonder if this is such a bad figure for such a poll.

Given the possibility that Market Harborough will be governed from Glenfield in future – it would be Nottingham if Labour had its way – the existence of a forum where the town to debate and decide what it needs is vital.

Bobby Charlton and Arnie Sidebottom at Stamford Bridge

Embed from Getty Images

Bobby Charlton played his last game for Manchester United at Stamford Bridge on 2 April 1973. Thanks to a rather flukey goal from Peter Osgood, Chelsea won 1-0.

You can see brief highlights and Charlton's exit in the video below, but first take a look at the photo above. Who is the United player looking on as Charlton plays the ball?

It's Arnie Sidebottom, who was to play one cricket test for England 12 years later. His son Ryan played many more.

Arnie Sidebottom, a centre back, played 16 games for United before joining Huddersfield Town and then Halifax Town.

Brechtian television: Leo McKern in Galileo (1964)

"Has anyone ever produced Brechtian television?" I asked when writing about The Exorcism.

To an extent, they have. Because here are the first eight minutes of a 1964 television production of Brecht's play Galileo, and it begins with a shot of the cast arriving with a microphone boom and its operator purposely in shot.

This production was shown on BBC1 on Wednesday 29 April 1964 and the translation of the play is by Charles Laughton.

It's a shame that only this short section of this production is to be found online, because Leo McKern's performance looks very promising.

The boy is Fergus McClelland, who had starred in Alexander Mackendrick's film Sammy Going South the year before.

New chair of North Northamptonshire Council stands down over social media posts

Another triumph for Reform UK's vetting of its candidates. NN Journal reports:

The Reform UK chairman of North Northamptonshire Council has today stood down in response to an NN Journal investigation into his social media activity.

Cllr Maurice Eglin, who was appointed as chairman last month, has resigned this morning ahead of our investigation being published, saying he had in the past been guilty of being a "keyboard warrior". He has also apologised for his posts and said the language he used was "wrong".

We had uncovered a series of offensive tweets which include Islamphobia, support for far right groups and anti-trans views. The tweets predate his election as a councillor last May and are from an account that he shut down shortly before being elected.

The Joy of Six 1531

A network of Russian far-right extremists steeped in neo-Nazi antisemitism – created under the umbrella of a sanctioned oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, and now openly promoted by Tommy Robinson – has been driving White Lives Matter propaganda over the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"In a decisive summer for government, you can view the 'doubling' agenda as microcosm of the wider story. Some big decisions have been made and some vital groundwork put in place. Ministers now need to build on this with bolder, faster action if the impact is to be visible by the next election." James Wright on the government's commitment to doubling the size of the co-operative and mutual sector.

Alex Marshall is keeping an eye on the new Green administration in Waltham Forest.

Eli Davies questions a culinary shibboleth: "The idea that we should sit down for three meals at roughly the same time every day has become such an essential part of how we organise our lives – even when we’re failing to do it – that we forget it isn’t the natural order of things. Instead, it is a regime that was created not to serve the needs of our bodies or to give us pleasure, however much we may have managed to adapt it for these purposes – but to fit in with a day of labour."

"The police are on the trail throughout. Led by a grimly invigilating inspector they seem an odd bunch, varying from the para-military – pistols and rifles firmly clasped – to the quaintly Victorian, with constables wrapped in immense belted gaberdines and sporting cloche style helmets. A reminder, if any were needed, that Northern Ireland was a decidedly different part of the UK." Simon Matthews celebrates Carol Reed's 1947 film Odd Man Out.

Chris Dyson explores the streets and alleyways of Hull's historic Old Town.

Child mannequin found on train with can of cider

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day award with the tale from the West Somerset Railway.

The judges have declined to sign petitions calling for the banning of cider and trains.