Alwyn Turner on the political radicalism of L. du Garde Peach

I'm enjoying Alwyn Turner's new book A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars, and not just because my name turns up in the acknowledgements at the back. As Andrew Marr says in his New Statesman review, 

Turner builds his account on newspapers and popular magazines. This produces a bottom-up, sharp and often surprising read. 

And Turner's research is commendably thorough. Here he is on L. du Garde Peach, sharing far more than I knew about the author of most of Ladybird Books' Adventures from History series:

If the stage and screen were tightly censored The same was not quite true of the BBC, which had a greater tolerance for political work, so long as it was progressive without being revolutionary. The dramatist L. du Garde Peach, described by the papers as "broadcasting's most versatile playwright" was a committed writer – a failed Liberal parliamentary candidate, and a supporter of the League of Nations and the Peace Pledge Union – and some of his BBC work dealt with difficult subjects: the economic exploitation of Africa in Ingredient X (1929), rural poverty in Bread (1932), the Elizabethan roots of the slave trade in John Hawkins, Slaver (1933), local politics in Our Town (1935).

In Patriotism Ltd (1937), a satirical one-act drama, Peach depicted an arms company deliberately provoking conflict between the invented nations of Andania and Segoviaa And selling weapons to both. It was a story, he said, of "two countries brought to the brink of war by a mixture of buffoonery, self-interest and opportunism which you will find nowhere else in the world except in most of the Chancelleries of Europe. Advance notices said it had a "simple directness that is continually amusing", and talked of the way it exposed "bland cynicism on the part of the firm and its customers".

Three days before its scheduled broadcast, however, the government leaned on the BBC, and the piece was withdrawn, on the grounds that "it might be mistaken for a comment on current national affairs". Which, of course, it was. "No direct veto has been exercised by the Postmaster General," it was reported, but the BBC was given to understand that such a broadcast would be looked upon in an unfavourable light." Peach, who was not personally told about the ban, was furious: "I regard the action as just another instance of BBC timidity."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Otto.

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"We may think that the dangers we face today are unprecedented (and in some ways perhaps they are) but history has a way of circling back on itself. When Jo warned that 'Europe still needs Britain, and Britain, Europe' and called for a moment of 'political initiative' to build partnerships, it feels as timely and as necessary now as it did then." Marking 75 years since Jo Grimond was first elected as MP for Orkney and Shetland, Alistair Carmichael finds inspiration in a famous speech by the former Liberal leader.

Rachel Hewitt argues that telling boys and men that they're disadvantaged only hinders them further - and, anyway, it's not true: "If we really want to help boys and men be happier, then perhaps, as a society, we could forge a different and more positive outlook on masculinity, in which we focus less on how men are purportedly hard done by and emasculated compared to the last century, and more on the genuinely fulfilling opportunities that are open to them in this brave new world."

Liam Geraghty on a report that finds new housing estates are forcing their residents to rely on cars.

Only a quarter of students at the University of Edinburgh are Scottish, with the result, says Melissa Knight, that they have found themselves the unwanted target of discrimination from English snobs who often look down on, and mock them due to their accents or working-class backgrounds.

Alwyn Turner reminds us of an earlier politician who had ambitions to take over a party led by Nigel Farage." As far as the media were concerned, Kilroy-Silk was 'UKIP’s star turn', its leader-in-waiting. But he didn’t wish to wait. The man who’d once called on socialists to act with ‘a tint of arrogance’ was now sixty-two and impatient. At the party conference in October 2004, he set out his stall in a typically assured performance."

"Gormenghast is an edifice of stasis: ultra-conservatism and unchangingness is in a sense the whole point of the castle, and its society. Yet it is a place where there is the most amazing grotesque diversity and variety. When Titus leaves it and enters modernity he encounters many things, but a kind of flatness, a sameiness enters the telling." After many years, Adam Roberts reads the Gormenghast trilogy again.

Michael Foot sings the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

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

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

h/t Alwyn Turner

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"Regulation is one of those words used by politicians that is nearly always bad in the abstract and good in the specific. They rail against bureaucracy, red tape and pettifogging rules that get in the way of innovation and efficiency. But the moment something bad happens, they immediately accept that more regulation is the only way to avoid a recurrence." Sam Freedman explains why governments struggle to turn anti-regulation rhetoric into an agenda for the real world.

Peter Jukes says Russia'a information warfare primed the world for Trump and Musk: "There has been a decade-long war against ‘one person, one vote’, and the concept of a transparent media to inform our citizenry. If we are ever to protect our democracies from this synergy of autocracy and tech, we will have to unravel these alliances of money and information and their traffic of hatred and falsehood."

Ginny Smith on the battle to retain village life in Sussex: "There are many examples ... of villages where people have come together to fight the 'hollowing out' of their community. They have clubbed together to buy the local pub or village shop, they have fought the threatened closure of their school, raised funds to build a village hall and created community orchards and wild spaces."

"'What I tell you now doesn’t go past this room,' the colonel said. 'You’re going to London on Saturday on the boat-train, and you’ll be playing at Churchill’s funeral.' 'But he’s not dead,' protested King, and the colonel replied: 'He will be by Sunday.'" Alwyn Turner recalls the trumpeters who played at Churchill's funeral.

It was only possible to begin production of The Mirror and the Light - the third part of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy - when the producer, writer, director and  leading actor gave up a significant proportion of their fees, Ellise Shafer reports on the economics of quality television.

Sven Mikulec watches the Coen brothers' first film, Blood Simple (1984).

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"Kemi maintained her attack on the machine. Everything was their fault. The previous Conservative government was entirely blameless. Especially her. In her own mind she was the saviour of the post office operatives. Though judging by the laughs from the back of the room, they don’t see it in quite the same way." John Crace says Kemi Badenoch was seen at her brittle, narcissistic worst while giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry today.

Alwyn Turner tells a story that has dropped out of remembrance of the first world war: "On 19 July 1919 - declared by the government to be Peace Day - parades were staged all over the country to mark the signing of the Versailles Treaty, and at many of those parades there were demonstrations and protests. A banner in Glasgow sarcastically announced: '400,000 unemployed ex-servicemen. A grateful country will never forget you'."

Patrick Howse asks if Labour will restore the BBC to the national broadcaster we need it to be or believe it can benefit from a subservient corporation afraid to hold power to account.

"Many of the jokes, besides being hilarious, are jaw-dropping in their audacity. And there is sex, too: masses of it, sometimes erotic, sometimes shocking, but always - like the rest of the book – profoundly truthful. Fundamentally is certainly a wild ride, but besides being one of the most entertaining novels I’ve read in a long while, it will also leave you deeply moved and (incidentally) much better informed than you were before about one of the key political crises of our time." Jonathan Coe chooses five favourite recent political novels.

Hannah Long believes that Night of the Hunter is a Christmas film. Hear her: "This promise - that evil is powerful, but ultimately ridiculous and defeatable - carries us into the final hope of the last scene, set at Christmastime. It says, in the least sentimental way possible, that it’s possible to move beyond abuse."

"‘The Whiting’ is an absent-minded vicar so passionate about entomology that he forgets everything in pursuit of an elusive Wood White or a Purple Emperor. Then there’s old Smokoe Joe, a gruff charcoal-burner with a gargantuan nose who lives in the Chase; and the boys’ nemesis, the ponderous local bobby, Sergeant Bunting." Helena Drysdale celebrates Brendon Chase by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford).

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"The Houses of Parliament are sinking into the Thames. Many dozens of offices were condemned upon their vacation by outgoing MPs. There are electrical and water hazards only a few metres underfoot, and the whole thing will cost billions to fix – not least because MPs are insistent they stay in the building while it happens." Steffan Aquarone says the physical state of the Palace of Westminster is a metaphor for the organisational changes that are needed there.

Richard Kemp promised to put the cause of carer leavers at the heart of his work as Lord Mayor of Liverpool. He writes about an event held yesterday that will help him honour this pledge.

"Dr Newman debunked the popular idea of 'Blue Zones' as regions of exceptional longevity and healthy lifestyles. Many, if not most of the centenarians in the ‘Blue Zone’ have turned out to be alive in the government records but deceased in reality." The press people at University College London on work by Saul Justin Newman that revealed fundamental flaws in research on extreme old age.

Pam Fisher has researched Loughborough's first workhouse.

Amy Boucher is intrigued by Shropshire's female ghosts: "Some of our female spirits have strong historical basis, one only has to peel back the layers to uncover a real woman. Other tales are harder to track down historically, but instead can come to symbolise the suffering and experiences of a collective womanhood. Some of their experiences may even be familiar to you, though your stories are separated by the centuries."

"Perhaps 'cooked' is too euphemistic a term. To be quite accurate, they had held the sausages over a smoking fire till completely blackened, and then consumed the charred remains with the utmost relish." Alwyn Turner offers an anthology of sausages in literature." 

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Pragna Patel argues that the establishment of Britain's first Sikh court threatens women's rights: "The use of religious laws to regulate minority women’s lives is not only discriminatory, it is immensely harmful in a context where domestic abuse and related femicides of South Asian and other minority women remain persistently high."

"People didn’t really care about the immorality. Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown discovered this when news of his adulterous affair was published under the headline "Paddy Pantsdown" ("dreadful, but brilliant," he acknowledged), and he enjoyed an opinion-poll bounce." Alwyn Turner looks back to the Nineties - "Britain's golden age of sleaze" - which seem strangely innocent today.

David Ward says it's time to regulate NHS Trust managers, because they act as "judge, jury and executioner" when whistleblowers raise patient safety issues.

"It suited almost everyone after Mussolini’s fall from power in 1943 to blame him personally for the disasters of the war, and to argue that most Italians had always been anti-fascist. The ‘bad Germans’ had forced the ‘good Italians’ into the war. They had been responsible for the massacres of civilians, not the Italians. They had persecuted and killed Jews, while the Italians had tried to save them." John Foot questions the 'bad Germans/good Italians' narrative that grew up around Italy's involvement in the second world war.

"After clearing the rubbish away, Natalie started with a few potted plants before turning her attention to the rest of the ginnel. With the help of another neighbour, Emily, they were able to secure a £1500 Neighbourhood Investment Fund from Manchester City Council. Most of the money went towards getting hanging baskets and hiring a joiner to make the planters. Natalie tells me that the ginnel had helped sell a house last year, over in the next street. An estate agent took a photograph and included it with the property." Dani Cole explores the beautiful, ingenious ginnels of Levenshulme.

Bob Fischer and Vic Pratt review the latest DVD collection of Children's Film Foundation treasures: "I watched Circus Friends, from 1956, and I knew I’d seen the young girl lead somewhere before, but I just couldn’t place her. It was only when the end credits rolled that I realised it was Carol White, from Poor Cow!"

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"The rule of law is being eroded because parliament is weak. The Executive is able to ride roughshod over political processes because legislators obediently follow the party-line. This majority needs to be diluted by replacing the First-Past-The-Post voting system with proportional representation, which holds out the possibility of creating an effective opposition in parliament. A written constitution must rebalance the powers of the government with those of the people and the judiciary." Prem Sikka argues that the rule of law has been captured by class interests and proposes a very Liberal Democrat solution.

Katharine Swindells reports on the legal loophole that leaves thousands of children in hostels, but not recorded in official data, because their accommodation is owned by local authorities.

"This gradually diminishing division between adults and children permeating deeply into western society, creating problems that we flail within, finding it difficult to diagnose what exactly is wrong, and how we might try to fix it." Pam Jarvis calls for an end to kidulthood.

Alwyn Turner on the Edwardian mystery of the hooded MP and the Eastbourne murder: "Horatio Bottomley ... didn’t identify the MP in question, only saying that he was a 'wealthy and degenerate representative of an important English constituency'."

Nicholas Wroe talks to the organisers of a new William Blake exhibition: "Yes, he was a great English artist just as he was a great English poet, but despite the fact that during his lifetime he barely left London and never left England, he was also subject to wider European intellectual and creative currents."

"Down by the railway tracks, hemmed in by streets of little houses, is this caravan encampment. Some of the dwellers in the old vans claim to be of pure Romany stock. Their ancestors came, so they say, year after year in the long ago when all around was Surrey countryside." A London Inheritance goes in search of the six Battersea locations covered in a 1951 book on Curious London.

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Victoire Ingabire Umahoza, leader of the opposition in Rwanda, explains why UK government's rhetoric is misleading and Rwanda is far from safe: "Human rights organisations have regularly reported that ordinary Rwandan citizens do not enjoy inalienable human rights. Those who dare to or are perceived to express opinions that challenge the Rwandan government’s narrative suffer reprisal."

William Wallace is our guide to the factions into which the Conservative Party is rapidly dissolving.

"The new ruralism is nebulous but tangible. Mildly countercultural, it has been buoyed by the New Nature Writing but is more than a literary phenomenon. It has slowly gathered adherents since the millennium, fuelling a flight from the city to the country, bringing an activist spirit to rural towns and villages. These developments were intensified by t he importance to health and happiness of access to green space during the Covid-19 lockdowns." Matthew Kelly reflects on Jeremy Burchardt’s Lifescapes: The Experience of Landscape in Britain, 1870-1960.

William Fear looks at the attitude to truth that George Orwell and Albert Camus shared.

"Victoria did manage to have her own secret lavatory built within a hidden door off the Sovereign’s Robing Room in the Lords, rumoured to be the first flushing toilet in London." Chloe Challender reveals the meagre provision of  women's lavatories at Westminster during the 19th century.

"The brief cockney revival at the turn of the 1960s was an interesting moment in British pop," says Alwyn Turner.

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Alwyn Turner argues that the roots of the Daleks are to be found in the second world war: "That night 165 people were killed, hundreds of houses were destroyed and Llandaff Cathedral was so badly damaged that it was closed for the next 15 months. A couple of hundred yards from the cathedral, ten-year-old Terry Nation was alone in an Anderson shelter. ... He spent that night and many others sheltering from the Luftwaffe’s bombs on his own, reading adventure stories and listening to incongruously cheerful programmes on the radio."

"The Conservatives now have a choice, they’ve even invented a new buzzword ‘headroom’, to describe the leeway they have. They could reject that Faragist populism wholesale and address the problems that confront people every day – food inflation, high rents/mortgages, bus and train cuts, crumbling public buildings – but they actively choose not to." Matthew Pennell says Rishi Sunak has brought with him  bad working practices from the corporate world and transferred them into the public affairs realm.

Municipal Dreams on the London County Council's open-air schools for delicate children.

Rose Staveley-Wadham looks at how the press covered the story during the Loch Ness Monster boom of the 1930s.

"Exploring the Midlands slowly and meticulously on foot also leads to other schemas materialising for dividing up the region. The jokey local name 'Banburyshire' for the uplands, partly in the Cotswolds, in the far south of Warwickshire, south western Northamptonshire and northern Oxfordshire, turns out to have a lot of grounding in topographical fact." Josh Allen introduces his no-cars-required walking guide to the English Midlands.

"Lewis works with analogies all the time – and the older you are of course, the more transparent the analogy.  In some ways, reading Narnia books as an adult makes you actually nostalgic for an age when you saw 'through a glass darkly'." Conrad Brunstrom reread C.S. Lewis's Narnia books during Covid lockdown.

Mr Big: Romeo

Here's a number 5 hit from 1977 that I can't recall hearing since. Listening to it today, I suspect Mr Big had themselves been listening to Jon Anderson.

It was Mr Big's only top 30 single and was probably helped when the BBC announced a temporary ban on it becausse of  complaints from Mary Whitehouse.

The band's leader, who calls himself Dicken (as is his right in a free country), explained in an interview:

But why was Romeo banned by BBC? What was wrong with it?

Mary Whitehouse was involved with it; it was banned because of the explicit lyrics. "'Step back inside me, Romeo,' she said" and "Fall on me, make me grow": they said it implied innuendo. Sex! 

I didn’t write it with that in mind! I just thought it was a love song about the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. So BBC banned it for a while.

As well as reminding us what Whitehouse was like, the interview reveals that Mr Big toured with Queen. But it has to be admitted there's a "It's a shit business" vibe to it.

I've been thinking about Mr Big after coming across an episode of Softly Softly: Task Force that features a fictional band called Slim Slavey and the Slavers.

Slim Slavey is Paul Nicholas, who was soon to become a solo pop star for real having started out as a member of David Sutch's band, and The Slavers are Mr Big.

You can see them in the clip below and the band gets a mention in Alwyn Turner's invaluable list of fictional bands in British television crime dramas: Rockin’ the detectives.

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"We have obtained an excoriating letter sent to the BBC chairman, Richard Sharp, by the co-directors of the BBC Singers. The letter mentions aggressive acts and inaccurate statements by senior BBC officials, all of whom are named within. It appears that only one member of the BBC executive ever heard the BBC Singers perform before a decision was taken to abolish the ensemble." Norman Lebrecht uncovers fear and loathing at the BBC.

Advocacy groups and human rights organisations have written to Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and to Stephen Watson, its chief constable, to ask them to investigate discriminatory police practices in the wake of the conviction of ten young Black men who have become known as the Manchester Ten, reports the Open Rights Group.

Zach Boren on the government's decision to ignore the counsel of its nature advisers to be more ambitious in its targets for nature recovery.

"Her alternative proposition is that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that 5th- and 6th-century Britain evolved through a process of adaptation and innovation from a late Roman base, not as a result of imported cultural practices imposed by Germanic elites on a subject people." Chris Catling reviews Susan Oosthuizen’s new book The Emergence of the English, which questions what we think we know about England after the Romans.

Alwyn Turner offers an episode-by-episode guide to Endeavour: "Written by Russell Lewis, it’s been an entertaining and witty show, with a great soundtrack and some jokey cultural references. It’s also provided a potted history of Britain between 1965 and 1972, when society wasn’t as decent and liberal as we are now."

Jim Perrin takes us to Llanfihangel Cefnllys in Powys - a remote church in a long-lost borough.

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,

When Ken Livingstone advertised Red Leicester

In 1989 Ken Livingstone made this television commercial for the National Dairy Council - thanks to Alwyn Turner for tweeting it.

He has given me an excuse to say nice things about both Livingstone and Red Leicester.

When Ken Livingstone was suspended by the Labour Party in 2017 because he wouldn't stop talking about Hitler I blogged:

I am sad for Ken because I remember him as leader of the Greater London Council.

It's not that I thought his policies were great, but the way he conducted himself was a model for any aspiring politician.

Though this was the era in which the Sun labelled him "the most odious man in Britain", he remained unfailingly calm in interviews and was witty too.

He was a star. When he resigned his seat and fought a by-election as part of the campaign against the abolition of the GLC, I helped the Liberal candidate Steve Harris.

One Saturday the great and good of Richmond Liberals turned up to help. Their children asked if they could go on Ken's bus.

And then there's Red Leicester.

If you know it only from the plastic-wrapped supermarket version then you have missed a treat.

A proper farmhouse Leicester has a sweet, earthy flavour and a wonderful, almost creamy, texture.

The Chants: A Man Without a Face

On Friday evening BBC4 broadcast a documentary on The Real Thing, the black Liverpool soul and funk band who enjoyed chart success in the 1970s.

But Eddie Amoo, whose younger brother was the band's leader, was around in the Merseybeat years - his first band, The Chants, was briefly managed by Brian Epstein.

Amoo wrote the remarkable A Man Without a Face, which was a protest song about racism and released as a single in 1968.

He once told Alwyn Turner:

Man Without a Face ... was a good record for its time. And very heavy, as well. That was one of my songs, and it was the forerunner to a lot of the stuff that I started to write with the Real Thing – sort of a message thing. But it was written in, what, 1964-65? So it was way, way ahead of its time. When I think back, I’m amazed we got it released. That was probably the Chants’ best single.

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"We aren’t puritans. We aren’t miserable. We aren’t automatons. We are liberals. So why oh why is the party resorting to wringing its collective hands about 'unhealthy' Eat Out to Help Out discounts?" Judging by the reaction on Twitter, Max Wilkinson speaks for many party members.

Peter Franklin calls on the chancellor to repair the public finances after Covid-19 by introducing a form of land value taxation: "If Rishi Sunak introduces it, we’d be facing a truly remarkable moment in British politics: the first step toward a seemingly impossible political philosophy - Tory Georgism."

"A holistic approach is needed to get more people on their bikes, one that makes cycling desirable, accessible and fun. To truly make it safe, cycling in the capital needs to take priority over driving." Caz Nicklin says that if the prime minister wants to get us all on our bikes, he needs to look at what’s been stopping us for so long.

John Boughton looks at the history of council housing in Oxford, which includes a wall built to separate a private estate from the council houses next door.

Alwyn Turner looks at the strange fame of the Italian heavyweight boxer Primo Carnera.

"To get a sense of what it is like, think of an artists’ community in a near-desert of shingle, consisting of houses built from driftwood and old train carriages, all on a storm-battered headland in Kent, with a globally unique ecosystem, a tiny steam railway, and of course those two gigantic nuclear plants dominating the view to the south." Niall Gooch takes us to Dungeness.

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Simon Beard explains the importance of compassion in the public health response to the current pandemic: "The impact of Covid-19 on people’s mental health will depend greatly on how we respond to it. That is why a group of psychologists and I have put together a briefing note through the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists arguing how we could combine health, education and social policy interventions to form a a compassion based approach to recovery and resilience."

"The difficulty in sustaining the assertion that Corbyn might have won, if 'Blairite' officials had not sabotaged the campaign, is that in 2019 Corbyn controlled every part of the party machine, and led Labour to an ignominious defeat." Nick Cohen explains the Corbynites' need to believe their man was betrayed.

"Safeguarding cannot be effective in a Church where the interests and loyalties of clubs and networks predominate over values of justice and truth. The shepherds cannot protect the sheep while occupied by feasting." Janet Fife examines the sexual politics of the Church of England.

For a child, being carefree is intrinsic to a well-lived life argues Luara Ferracioli.

I loved Terry Nation's Seventies TV series Survivors and it seems newly relevant today. Alwyn Turner looks at the political debates that were central to it.

Dorian Lynskey on the apocalyptic appeal of W.B. Yeats's The Second Coming.

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In the latest edition of his Never Mind the Bar Charts podcast, Mark Pack talks to Duncan Brack about the lessons we can learn from the last time a Conservative government was defeated at a general election.

Elisa Thomas explains how hostile government are using web-based conspiracy theories to spread disinformation cheaply and easily.

As Pam Jarvis points out, Tory ministers excuse their own teenage and later wrongdoing as youthful indiscretion yet refuse to increase the age of criminal responsibility from 10.

David Bather Woods suggests Schopenhauer can teach us to live through these dark times.

"Class is a bigger issue in Clouds of Witness than in later Sayers novels, perhaps because of its time: it was published just three months before the General Strike, and tensions were already high. Lord Peter Wimsey himself, normally considered a man of courtesy, is here criticized for his aristocratic condescension." Alwyn Turner has been reading Dorothy L. Sayers.

David Marshall remembers The Fenman, the train that ran from Liverpool Street to Hunstanton.

Archy Kirkwood and the Average White Band

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Alwyn Turner's masterly survey of the UK singles charts of my early teenage years for Lion & Unicorn has reached March 1975.

One of the top ten in the week he chooses was Pick Up the Pieces by the Average White Band. Alwsyn rightly describes them as "Britain’s best-ever funk band".

When I chose Pick Up the Pieces as one of my Sunday music videos I repeated some lines from Norman Baker's Against the Grain where he remembered an unsuccessful gig by his band The Reform Club:

As well as members of the band, we had roped in Archy Kirkwood, the Lib Dem MP for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, on guitar, and Chris Berry, our Eastbourne candidate, on keyboards. 

Archy was a competent rhythm guitarist and had been in a Scottish band in the 1960s, half of which went on to be the Average White Band, though not Archy's half.

This morning I sent the link to this post to Alwyn, and of course he knows more than I do.

It turns out Archy was a member of a band called The Kingpins and only one of its members, Onnie McIntyre, later joined the Average White Band.

Googling The Kingpins does not get you far, but it does lead you to the site of another band member, Lex Gibson, and reveals that this history got scrambled so there was once a rumour that Archy had been in the Average White Band himself.

My own first involvement with Archy Kirkwood was at my first Liberal Assembly at Bournemouth in 1984.

This was the era of big debates on nuclear weapons and we radicals wanted people with clout on the platform so they would be seen voting against David Steel's support for cruise missiles.

So I got there early and took a seat on the platform, only to give it up to Archy just before the debate began.

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"Modern medicine is increasingly called upon to address a spiritual, perhaps even economic and political, malaise." Sophie McBain looks at how loneliness became an epidemic.

Too many of our town centres have become hollowed-out, windswept deserts, argues Nicholas Boys Smith, but if we make them fit for people they will return

Lenore Skenazy on the worst and best Let Grow parenting moments of 2019: "Hard-boiled lawyers made sure no kids could participate in the University of California-Berkeley's campus Easter egg hunt without parents first signing a waiver acknowledging the potential risk of 'catastrophic injuries including paralysis and death'."

Johannes E. Riutta reviews books about the British government's extraordinary war on badgers.

"This is the best Christmas single of the 1970s, and that’s an objective fact," says Alwyn Turner of Wombling Merry Christmas as he concludes his month-by-month survey of the charts in 1974. Read how the Wombles brand was damaged that winter by a plethora of inferior stage shows.

Richard Williams pays tribute to Martin Peters.