Michael Meadowcroft (1942-2026)

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Sad news on Liberal Democrat Voice this morning: Michael Meadowcroft has died at the age of 84.

His victory in Leeds West in 1983 – the first Liberal gain from Labour at a general election in decades – was one of the few high points of what was, in the context of the Alliance's hopes and ambitions, a deeply disappointing election night.

By then Michael already had a reputation as the Liberal Party's thinker – I remember the frisson when he turned up on the final day of a Union of Liberal Students conference in Leeds in 1979. His pamphlets for Liberator gave you some hope that there was still a coherent Liberal philosophy that was distinct from centrism or social democracy.

Michael was unable to hold Leeds West in 1987 and the West Leeds Dispatch summarises his later career:

Following his defeat he turned to journalism and was a columnist in The Times and The Yorkshire Post. In later years he wrote obituaries of political figures for both The Guardian and Yorkshire Post.

From 1990 he was a consultant to new and emerging democracies and for 26 years led or was a member of 50 missions to 35 different countries

His attempt to run a continuing Liberal Party after the foundation of the Liberal Democrats soon foundered, and he later joined the merged party. It's a mark of his forbearance that he never once objected to my purloining his name to give to Lord Bonkers' gardener.

Alan Bennett on Northern culture and his creative process

Three years ago Alan Bennett visited the BFI Southbank to discuss the influence of his northern roots in a conversation that formed part of the BFI's Northern Voices season.

The blurb on YouTube says:

Few writers have successfully mined Northern culture and specific northern speech patterns as Alan Bennett. Growing up in Leeds, he listened in on the chatter of his relatives, absorbing the patter of domestic conversation, which would emerge across a glittering and much-loved range of plays, particularly those written for television. Here, Bennett explores the way Northern culture is so integral to his creative process.

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Martin Parr looks at successful and unsuccessful attempts to depose a prime minister: "Labour, significantly, has never toppled a prime minister. It’s not in the culture of so cooperativist a party: there’s no equivalent of the 1922 Committee. And whenever it might have happened, the challenger blinked: Herbert Morrison with Attlee; Roy Jenkins with Wilson; David Miliband with Brown; Wes Streeting may have just joined the roster of the rueful."

Sumaiya Motara on the brutal contest for low-paid work: "It’s like The Hunger Games, but you’re all trying to get a job in a shop where you’re going to be folding clothes all day, for just over minimum wage."

"The case took a dramatic turn in November when Erin’s teenage son ... ran away from his father’s home and hired his own solicitor. After a period in foster care and a series of urgent hearings, he was later reunited with his mother for their first Christmas together in six years." Hannah Summers reports on a hearing that highlights the issue of unregulated psychologists appearing in court as expert witnesses.

Some major news organisations are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. They are doing so largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using it as a back door for large-scale scraping. Mark Graham argues that these concerns, though understandable, are unfounded.

"Whilst Landlord continues to power its way across the country ... it has to be hoped that the company doesn't forget its roots and the locality that sustained it for much of its existence." Real Ale, Real Music visits Keighley, home of the brewer Timothy Taylor.

Robert Hugill praises the new Opera North production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes.

Dixon Unity School in Leeds adjusts uniform policy to allow students to wear coats outdoors during cold snap

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The Yorkshire Evening Post (or "Eenie Po!" as the newspaper sellers used to shout in York) wins our Headline of the Day Award.

One of the crustier judges was heard to remark:

"You mark my words, Colonel, this is a very slippery slope. Allow the children to wear coats in winter, and before you know it you're abolishing the school leopard."

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"The idea of progression in prison is seductive but unachievable. Too many prisons are struggling to get men out of their cells for even an hour a day, there is little or no opportunity for education or work, the food is stodgy and there’s too little of it, contact with family is intermittent, and violence prevalent. How such a prison could possibly encourage people to go to non-existent work to earn early release is just pie in the sky." Frances Crook finds that David Gauke’s sentencing review tackles prison overcrowding but fails to challenge the system’s core flaws or offer a true path forward.

Lewis Baston says the Liberal Democrat by-election win in Sutton on Thursday underlines the trouble  that London’s Tories are in.

"The region that was the birthplace of rail has fallen behind Europe and the world when it comes to high quality rail network that meets the needs of the current age." Rob Naybour argues that it’s high time the cities and towns of the North of England were better connected.

Christopher Kaczor on the importance of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntryre, who died last week: "MacIntyre emphasised that the study of ethics cannot be separated from history, for it is an understanding of historically situated practices within communities that is needed to make sense of moral judgments. 'We should, as far as it is possible, allow the history of philosophy to break down our present day conceptions, so that our too narrow views of what can and cannot be thought, said, and done are discarded in the face of the record of what has been thought, said, and done,' he wrote in A Short History of Ethics."

Sean Wilentz takes us back to the winter of 1965/6 and the making of Bob Dylan's album Blonde on Blonde.

"From the opening it has precision, style and wit, as well as a dash and sparkle that is all its own, and it doesn’t matter if future readers know nothing about his relatively fleeting fame, because this book’s not about a famous person – it’s about someone who wants to be famous." Lissa Evans recommends Emlyn Williams’ autobiography George.

What lies beneath Sheffield Station? Welcome to The Megatron

Martin Zero says on YouTube:

Join me for an exploration of the Victorian tunnels and culverts that run underneath Sheffield Station. These tunnels were built to divert watercourses in the area, so they could build the station on top. Also known as The Megatron. 

The Porter Brook, one of the rivers that flows beneath the station, has given its name to Porterbrook Leasing, one of the Rosco's - rolling stock companies - created when the railways were privatised.

Leeds Station was also built on arches above a river, but the Dark Arches there are easier to explore on foot.

Alan Bennett once delivered chops to T.S. Eliot's mother-in-law

The video of a recent British Film Institute event with Alan Bennett has appeared on YouTube.

So far I've watched just the first few minutes, but it was enough to give me my Trivial Fact of the Day. Play the clip above to hear it.

GUEST POST The Bielsa dream is over

Stuart Whomsley mourns the sacking of Leeds United's manager and what it means for the club's future

Leeds is a smaller place today. The big metropolitan sprawl of the city will be shrinking in on itself; the dark brooding moors looking down upon it in contempt; the dark satanic mills, more satanic than ever. The armour in the Royal Armouries will be tarnished. Leeds faced a test, and Leeds failed that test. Marcelo Bielsa is gone. 

Leeds should have shown more respect for Bielsa and what he did for them. Not only did he get Leeds up, but he brought joy in the way his teams play. Leeds should have shown more loyalty; not blind loyalty, but loyalty with an evidence base. 

Evidence base, part one: just look at the March fixtures that Leeds will face; they include Aston Villa and Norwich at home, and Leicester away. On 10 March Garth Bamford and Kalvin Philips return from injury, and just look at the form of Norwich, Watford, Everton and Brentford. Leeds were likely to stay up. 

Evidence base, part two: if you look through the Leeds results of the season so far, only the losses to Everton and Newcastle were bad results in terms of points. If you lose 10-0 or 1-0 against Liverpool and Man City it is the same in points. The very best sides would always hammer a Bielsa Leeds, particularly one with key players injured. Those were not the games that mattered. 

So heart and head should have said stay with Bielsa. But he is gone and Leeds are no longer special. They are sort of a Southampton, a Crystal Palace.

Being brought up as a Nottingham Forest supporter it may seem odd that I was showing an interest in another club, and in Leeds of all clubs. Leeds, The Damned United. But it was always a Marcelo Bielsa, not a Leeds thing. Now I return to my natural state of hating Leeds. Dirty Leeds. I hope they go down.

However, as someone whose introduction to football was Brian Clough it is perhaps not hard to see the appeal of Bielsa to me: both men who as a football manager had a vision for the game which went beyond results. Both football managers who had an ethos for life that went beyond the game. Both men are legendary for their many, usually unseen, charitable acts. Both men who could make you smile, could make you laugh. 

I once found my wife in bed laughing hysterically. It turned out that she was reading some of the things that Bielsa had done and said in the past: how after a loss he had asked another coach if at such times he did not think of suicide, how he challenged some angry fans outside his home with what looked like a hand grenade, his retreat to a monastery.

So the painting of Marcelo Bielsa is still above the mantlepiece and the statue of Bielsa is still on it. I guess we too shall show some adjustment and they will move elsewhere in the house. 

Last Saturday I was bouncing up and down in the Trent End at Nottingham Forest as the new Nottingham Forest manager, Steve Cooper, gave us his now famous fist pump after a win. Yes, thank goodness for Steve Cooper.

You can follow Stuart Whomsley on Twitter.

Department for Transport halts work on East Midlands leg of HS2

The Birmingham Post reports:

Work on the eastern leg of the High Speed Two rail line has stopped, the project's chief executive has admitted. Officials are busy preparing plans to extend the HS2 line north west to Manchester, but they have been told by the Department for Transport to halt work on the planned section between Birmingham and the East Midlands, and onwards to Leeds.

HS2 Chief Executive Mark Thurston said: "We wait to be guided by the Department on what we do with the eastern link."

It has been rumoured for some time that the East Midlands leg of HS2 is under review. And, as someone who has always found this project hard to love, I am not heartbroken at this news.

I know the arguments about HS2 increasing the capacity for regional services, it's just that they appear not to hold true here in the East Midlands.

As Jones the Planner blogged back in April 2013:

The HS2 business case claims that 80% of passengers from Nottingham will transfer from MML to HS2, and to help this heroic punt come true, hidden in with the small print, you find the assumption that direct trains from the new Nottingham Hub to St Pancras will be cut by half. Well, that will do a lot for city centre competitiveness, I don’t think. 

So actually Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield get a worse train service to their city centres, where most people want to be, than they do now - but great if you want to drive to a Parkway station. Leicester, a city of some half a million people will no longer have a mainline service as such. 

It is bizarre if not surprising that a project which started with the aim of boosting provincial cities should end up promoting plans which will hugely undermine city centres and urban economies and positively promote exurban motorway sprawl.

For this reason I would rather see money spent on the electrification of the Midland main line all the way to Sheffield and on local improvements, such as the proposed 'diveunder' at Nuneaton to allow a direct from Nottingham and Leicester to Coventry.

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All too often, says Aliya Rao, jobseekers are told that unemployment is their own fault.

"We don’t allow companies to make a profit out of children by running schools, so why do we allow it in the 24-hour care of vulnerable children? One justification would be if allowing modest profit-making resulted in better quality and more reasonably priced care than the state could provide. Yet there is evidence that privately run care is of poorer quality and more expensive." Sonia Sodha shows that children’s homes have become centres of profit-making and abuse.

Peter Mitchell has seen through the campaign against the National Trust: "The treatment the National Trust has received for daring to understand its mission as to help us understand history, rather than supply us with fantasy, is a warning to all historians. This, ultimately, is what the trust’s critics are incensed by: that its properties are endowed with real historical meaning rather than comforting myth."

Tim Crook tells the story of Rudolph Dunbar, the pioneering musician, campaigning black journalist and war correspondent.

"As a kid to whom the world had always been kind, I had no doubt he would do it. I couldn’t wait for it to happen. Now, I marvel at the unlikeliness of it all: of life bending itself into the shape of happy-ever-after fiction – and how rarely that happens." Jon Hotten was there when Geoff Boycott scored his 100th century in the 1977 Ashes test at Headingley.

Johnny Restall offers a personal selection of portrayals of Lucifer and his minions in British horror cinema.

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Francesca Borri visits the Hyde Park neighbourhood in Leeds, and finds a community abandoned by government and ravaged by deprivation as much as Covid-19.

A Canadian research project gave homeless people $7,500 each. Bridgette Watson finds the results were "beautifully surprising",

"It’s possible that the first MP from what we might consider an ethnic minority background today was elected as early as 1767. James Townshend, Whig MP for West Looe in Cornwall, had a British grandfather who worked for the Royal African Company, a mercantile trading company that also traded enslaved people. His grandmother, a prominent businesswoman who also owned enslaved people, was of African and Dutch descent." Rebecca Lees discovers the first MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Colin Horgan on a study of 'little men' in 1930s Germany that shows how people allow tyranny to spread.

Michael Seely looks back on Alan Plater’s Beiderbecke trilogy.

As a treat for Halloween, David Castleton selects the London Underground's seven most haunted stations. Expect "tales of 'black nuns' with a fondness for harassing banking establishments, screams that still echo from World-War-II air-raids, crypts converted into ticket offices, prehistoric elephants with axes in their heads and attempts to explain why the Underground has acquired such a reputation for being a haven of spooks."

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Michael Meadowcroft points us to a short document on the principles of liberal democracy that he once helped Leeds Lib Dems draw up.

Natalie Bloomer is right to emphasise how the government's response to Covid-19 is putting the working class at much greater risk.

"All can now see that social care and our system of social support is worth much higher esteem; but how or whether we translate a new mood into a new system is uncertain." Alex Khaldi on social care after Covid-19.

Patrick Barkham explains how forest schooling is helping children from every background: "I assumed that most refugees have come to the UK from cities, but Wild Things has worked with many migrant children who grew up in rural areas. Meanwhile British-born city children belong to a country called Indoors."

"The guards are accustomed to such disturbances. But every so often a patrol encounters a noise, a flash of movement, or simply a sudden lurch in the pit of the stomach, that stops even hardened veterans in their tracks." Killian Fox meets the ghosts of the British Museum.

Richard Mabey introduces Richard Jefferies' Wildlife in a Southern County,

John Betjeman goes north: Leeds in 1968

In 1968, John Betjeman was asked by the BBC to make a television programme about Leeds.

The resultant film was never broadcast

A Deltic at Hammerton on the York to Harrogate line, 1981

I can date these photographs precisely: I took them on Saturday 16 May 1981.

That was the day of the Rugby League Premiership Final at Headingley between Hull and Hull Kingston Rovers.

Special trains were run from Hull to Headingley via York and the Harrogate line, and one at least was hauled by a Deltic.

This would have been its return working, and the photograph was taken at one of the little stations between Harrogate and York as the driver collected the single-line token to allow him to proceed.

With the help of Google Street View, I have identified it as Hammerton.

Hull Kingston Rovers won 11-7, incidentally.

Derby County vs Leeds United, 1 November 1975

Football in the 1970s. Maverick geniuses, muddy pitches and violence on and off the field.

Here you have Charlie George and Duncan McKenzie, though the lush grass at the Baseball Ground belies the reputation the stadium had.

And there is a fist fight between Francis Lee and Norman Hunter than turns into a free for all.

The confusion over the sendings off, incidentally, shows why red and yellow cards were introduced.

Yorkshire burglar 'on mad one' stole vacuum from dead man’s house then tried posting it through girlfriend’s letterbox

You'll say it's just another day in Leeds, but it wins the Yorkshire Post our coveted Headline of the Day Award.

Alastair Cook and Nick Clegg

There are three types of captain: those with tactical nous, those with great man-management skills, & those who lead from the front.
— Samuel Honywill (@SDHoneymonster) June 23, 2014

This tweet was discussed on the Geek & Wilde podcast on the evening of the fourth day of the Headingley test. They argue that the great captains have all three qualities and that quite good ones can survive on only one. Coming to the conclusion that Alastair Cook at present offers none of these three qualities, they call on him to resign.

I have been interested in the parallels between cricket captaincy and political leadership ever since I reviewed Mike Brearley's The Art of Cricket Captaincy at the time of the election for the election of the first Liberal Democrat leader in 1988.

Drawing parallels between politicians and cricket captains in that review - David Steel was Colin Cowdrey, Paddy Ashdown was Brian Close and I forget who Alan Beith was - helped me develop the idea of Lord Bonkers a couple of years later.

But what I am worrying about this evening are the parallels between Nick Clegg and Alastair Cook.

Manchester's lost canal and tunnel

If you find this interesting you may want to visit the Dark Arches under Leeds station.

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"Coedffranc Community Council recently took advice from One Voice Wales as to whether it is possible for one of its members to publicly disagree with its decisions. Councillors were reportedly shocked that the answer was in the affirmative." Peter Black on community and town councils in Wales and their problems understanding transparency and accountability.

Frank Furedi contributes an essay on education to Spiked: "We have a paradoxical situation, where politicians seem to take the teaching of subject-based knowledge more seriously than educators do."

"The widespread acceptance of ADHD as a mental illness/chemical imbalance has no scientific underpinning, but rather is based on marketing and promotion. The ADHD 'diagnosis' is particularly destructive, in that it targets children, and serves as the justification for 'treating' these children with dangerous drugs." Dr Philip Hickey on his Behaviorism and Mental Health blog.

Geoff Andrews writes on Paolo Di Canio and the new respectability of Italian Fascism.

"In the 1920s, two projects, one government-run, the other privately-designed and built, battled to build an airship that could link the Empire. The rivals, codenamed R101 and R100, were nicknamed the Socialist and the Capitalist. The Capitalist team involved the engineer Nevil Shute, better known today for his novels, and Barnes Wallis, the genius behind the bouncing bomb. Cruelly, the fate of the Socialist R101 damned both projects." Marc Sidwell discusses collectivism, the free market and airships.

Caroline's Miscellany presents some of Leeds' architectural curiosities.

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Keynesian Liberal thinks he knows what Leeds needs - and it is not HS2.

Professor Louis Appleby, the National Director of Mental Health and Criminal Justice, has written a guest post for the excellent MentalHealthCop blog: "any police officers I have met are clear that dealing with mental illness is a natural part of their modern role.  Others believe the opposite, that it gets in the way of “real” policing.  But that cannot be right.  Mental illness is common, as is substance misuse and personality disorder.  Society is finally facing up to how common mental ill-health is.  People whose work is with the public – teachers, housing staff, prison officers, politicians – need to see mental illness as within their remit.  Anything else is discrimination."

Robert Reich explains how Obama is unravelling the Reagan Republicanism: "Republican libertarians have never got along with social conservatives, who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Shrink-the-government fanatics in the GOP have never seen eye-to-eye with deficit hawks, who don’t mind raising taxes as long as the extra revenues help reduce the size of the deficit. The GOP’s big business and Wall Street wing has never been comfortable with the nativists and racists in the Party who want to exclude immigrants and prevent minorities from getting ahead. And right-wing populists have never got along with big business and Wall Street, which love government as long as it gives them subsidies, tax benefits, and bailouts."

Did the Chernobyl disaster cause the downfall of the Soviet Union? Mark Joseph Stern investigates on Slate.

M.J. Wayland writes on the Horseman's Word - a secret society once said to operate among farmers and ploughmen in Aberdeenshire, Banff, Elgin "and certain parts of Angus".

Winston Churchill's lack of interest in cricket is dissected by Go Litel Blog, Go... (aka the blogger across the road).