Our universities aren't just managerialist: they're authoritarian

Britain's universities aren't just getting rid of the arts and humanities: they're getting rid of collegiate governance too.

Here's Krzysztof Nawratek, senior lecturer in humanities and architecture at the University of Sheffield, writing in Times Higher Education:

I started my university career in Poland in 1988, a year before communism collapsed. I joined an underground anti-communist student association, went on strike and saw my hierarchical, conservative university slowly crumble.

However, even within the oppressive communist regime, Polish universities held on to one core belief: the university belonged to its academic community. Rectors and deans were elected. Senates and faculty councils had real authority. Leadership was temporary and accountable to those it served. The university did not belong to its managers; in fact, it’s hard to say if there was any real management at all.

When I moved to the UK in 2008, I expected universities not just to be more autonomous but more democratic. Instead, I found institutions that were independent from the state but whose autonomy lay with their executive teams and governing bodies, not with the university as a whole.

British universities are clearly part of the late capitalist system,¹ and critics typically point to their neoliberal agenda and managerialism. But I think that description no longer fits. British universities are becoming not so much managerialist as authoritarian. 

This might sound harsh but I am not talking about dictatorship. The atmosphere of fear and expected obedience reminds me of my time as a student in Poland but the reason I use the word authoritarian is more banal: leadership is immune to any actionable feedback from below. Consultation still exists but nothing anyone says can change the decision or remove those who made it.

This trend away from democratic decision-making towards managerialism and ultimately authoritarianism can be seen across British society, not just in universities, but in local councils, professional bodies and even sport.

At the heart of it lies the belief that democracy, discussion and consultation are inefficient, but that belief is mistaken.

As it's Karl Popper's birthday, let me quote again his greatest British populariser, Bryan Magee:

Before Popper it was believed by almost everyone that democracy was bound to be inefficient and slow, even if to be preferred in spite of that because of the advantages of freedom and the other moral benefits; and the most efficient government in theory would be some form of enlightened dictatorship. 

Popper showed that this is not so; and he provides us with an altogether new and deeper understanding of how it comes about that most of the materially successful societies in the world are liberal democracies. 

It is not – as, again, had been believed by most people before – because their prosperity has enabled them to afford that costly luxury called democracy; it is because democracy has played a crucial role in raising them out of a situation in which most of their members were poor, which had been the case in almost all of them when democracy began.

That comes from Magee's intellectual biography Confessions of a Philosopher.

Notes

1. I am suspicious of the expression 'late capitalism': it suggests a claim to knowledge of the future, or at least a confidence in how it will turn out, to which the writer is not entitled. I fear that what will come after late capitalism is even later capitalism.

East Midlands Railway cancels 20 fast services a day because of problems with its new trains

East Midlands Railways has admitted that its problems with its new trains have not all been caused by the recent hot weather.

BBC News reports:

A number of Intercity services, which run to and from London St Pancras, will be cancelled from Monday, while other services will have fewer carriages.

Will Rogers, managing director of EMR, said the performance of the Class 810 fleet had "fallen below the levels we and our customers expect" and that the timetable change was "necessary".

The Intercity services run between London and destinations including Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby and Sheffield.

EMR did not say how long the timetable changes would be in place for, but said in a statement they would remain in place while "EMR works with the manufacturer, Hitachi Rail, to resolve disruption for customers as soon as possible".

And the Guardian adds more detail:

EMR is cancelling about 20 fast trains a day between London, Sheffield and Nottingham, while others will also be short-formed and are likely to be crowded. Its new class 810 fleet, previously labelled Auroras when their launch was heralded less than a year ago, have suffered from what EMR has called “performance and reliability issues”.

The operator also criticised Hitachi’s maintenance of the existing fleet that the Auroras were due to replace, the class 222 trains, which it said had “significantly impacted upon EMR’s ability to run a consistent intercity service”.

Interestingly, BBC News ran a story only yesterday under the headline:

East Midlands Railway cancellations – is it really just the hot weather?

In it, my best friend from school, now secretary of the East Midlands branch of the passenger advocacy group Railfuture, said:

"a bit more transparency" around a recovery plan and the issues the operator was facing would be helpful for passengers.

We are not without influence.

The 810 trains are bi-modal – they're able to take power from overhead wires but also have their own diesel engines. They were ordered on Chris Grayling's watch after the Conservative government cancelled its plans to electrify the whole of the St Pancras main line. The wires run out at Wigston, a few miles south of Leicester.

But it's not all bad news. We're getting new taller ticket barriers at Market Harborough station to stop people without tickets boarding the trains that aren't running.

The lost streets of Park Hill, Sheffield

Any regular user of Sheffield station will be familiar with the Park Hill flats on the hillside above it. Until they were built between 1957 and 1961, this was an area of terraced houses, shops, pubs, a cinema and at least one church.

In this video Tour Obscure climbs the hill to see what remains of this old landscape. The really good news is that there are two more videos in this series.

Exploring the rivers that flow beneath Sheffield station

Martin Zero and two companions follow the Porter Brook and then the River Sheaf beneath Sheffield, and beneath the city's railway station in particular. It's all as fascinating and mildly sinister as you would expect.

The final stretch to the River Don had been "daylighted". It doesn't look much now, but it will be made to look more natural and form the focus of a new park.

There are lots more videos like this on the Martin Zero YouTube channel – like and subscribe.

Nationwide from 1970: A haunted Sheffield nightclub

If you want a portrait of Britain in the Seventies, you can't beat Nationwide. This was a news magazine programme shown every weekday evening after the six o'clock news. It began with news from your region and then went national to tackle both serious and lighter subjects.

The regional presenters featured in the national segment too, and people of my generation will still recall nanes like Mike Neville in Newcastle, Bruce Parker in Southampton and Ian Masters in Norwich. And I think they were all men – very Seventies.

Nationwide covered the three-day week, the drought, the Silver Jubilee and so on through the decade. It also covered the rise of both consumerism and environmentalism.

And the programme had a fondness for supernatural stories like this one, which also gives you a picture of Sheffield people in 1970.

In 1982 David Dimbleby took over from Michael Barratt as the programme's main host, and his pomposity killed it off. But naybe something as Seventies as Nationwide was always going to struggle in the new decade.

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Dominic Bryan, who has researched the politics of flags in Northern Ireland for decades, sets out what England needs to understand: "We’ve heard predictable claims that the flags are just a display of pride in a British or English identity. This is an easy claim to make as it clearly is, in part, to do with nationalistic pride. The point is that they are being hung in particular places, by particular groups of people and in a particular way that clearly links them to the ongoing debates and hostility to migration."

"Not only have reports of McSweeney’s political genius become as rare as hen’s teeth, but many Labour MPs are coming to the realisation that any recovery for this Government is now wholly dependent on his removal from Number 10." Adam Bienkov on Morgan McSweeney's reverse Midas touch.

Natalie Bennett makes the case for a national play strategy for England: "The sell-off of playing fields and closure of swimming pools is well-documented, but less noticed is the way in which informal play spaces and child-friendly public spaces are often overlooked or treated as expendable; many communities just don’t have accessible, safe places for play." 

"In 1995, after a local school had been destroyed in an arson attack, the MP Roy Hattersley (a former chair of Sheffield’s Housing Committee in the sixties) dubbed the Manor Estate 'the worst estate in Britain' – quite a comedown for an estate which had once been one of Sheffield’s showpieces. The truth, as ever, was more complex but the reality of decline on the now troubled estate was undeniable." Some fascinating social history from Municipal Dreams.

"Sid isn’t simply passable in these films from the 40s – he’s already very, very good. Critic Barry Norman summed up what made him so convincing. 'He never appeared to be acting,’ he noted. ‘And to act without appearing to be acting is an enormous skill.'" Hammer reminds us that Sid James was a tremendous actor long before the Carry On films claimed him.

Bobby Seal remembers Ron Chesterman, an original member of The Strawbs who later became county archivist for Cheshire.

Sheffield to Penistone via Deepcar in 1983

This is just what it was like when I was a lad.

Until 1983, trains from Sheffield to Huddersfield ran under the wires of the Woodhead route as far as Penistone. I remember it as an attractive line, with sweeping curves and views of the River Don far below.

This film shows it all, including the way the train reversed soon after leaving Sheffield Midland station and then ran through the derelict Sheffield Victoria. Indeed, much of that part of the city looks to have been derelict then.

You can see the sidings at Deepcar and Stocksbridge in their very derelict state today in an earlier video on this site.

Tagged on at the end of this video is some sad footage of the line as the overhead electrification was scrapped.

I did the trip fro Sheffield to Penistone in 1978, when there was still a constant stream of electric trains using the Woodhead Route to take Yorkshire coal to power stations in the North West.

And I remember going with a friend before that trip to look for the Woodhead line somewhere near Nunnery Junction. We found it, and an Irish railway worker on the other side of the fence insisted on explaining Pythagoras' theorem to us by chalking a triangle on a concrete post.

He called the hypotenuse "the hypertension", but otherwise he had it exactly right.

Electrification of the Midland Mainline is paused yet again

Yesterday the news was full of stories about government investment in the railways: today we heard a familiar story in this part of the world. As BBC News reports:

East Midlands council leaders have said they are dismayed at the government's decision to indefinitely pause the northwards electrification of the Midland Mainline.

The London to Sheffield railway line has been upgraded to take electric trains as far as South Wigston in Leicestershire, but the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed on Tuesday the further extension of the project was on hold.

The story goes on to quote the Grand Poobah of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby:

"Each pause damages confidence, makes delivery more expensive and pushes back the benefits for passengers, freight and the environment."

and Elaine Clark, chief executive of the rail industry body Rail Forum:

"Stopping Midland Mainline electrification makes no sense.

"It is a shovel-ready project that could deliver tangible benefits this parliament.

"It's a bad decision for the UK taxpayer and it's a bad decision for users of the Midland Mainline, with several of our larger cities now condemned to using diesel traction for the foreseeable future."

And for a rail project that would bring great benefits to the East Midlands but is probably even further away than full electrification of the Midland Mainline, see the proposal for a dive-under at Nuneaton, allowing a direct service from Nottingham and Leicester to Coventry again.

Duke of Rutland is urged to sell 'trashed' grouse moor to the people of Sheffield

The campaign group Reclaim Our Moors wants the Duke of Rutland to to sell Moscar Moor near Sheffield for £1 because they think it is in such poor condition, reports the Sheffield Star:

Members say they walked across part of the 6,000-acre estate, between Stanage Edge and the A57, and found "almost no insect life, few birds and no grouse".

They claim it has been "trashed" by the duke, "who sets it on fire - sending smoke into people’s homes, worsening flood risk downstream and releasing carbon that adds to the climate crisis."

They also state it has been “scoured of wildlife by gamekeepers who kill anything that could affect gamebird numbers.”

The report goes on to say that in October 2023 deliberate fires on the moor blanketed Sheffield in smoke and caused a city-wide pollution incident. Heather is burnt to encourage the growth of green shoots that grouse can feed on.

It also says Moscar has received an average annual subsidy of £175,400 since 2012 under a Natural England stewardship scheme.

The Duke declined an invitation to comment.

Lord Bonkers is, of course, chuckling at this story. I get the impression he finds grouse shooting rather ungentlemanly:

"Shoot at a Rutland partridge and it will take cover and fire back. Now that's what I call sport!"

Anyway, there is more about Reclaim Our Moors online.

Searching for what was once Dinting Railway Centre

Dinting is a station on the Glossop line from Manchester Piccadilly and was also on the Great Central's Woodhead route from Manchester to Sheffield¹ before that closed in 1981. Between 1968 and 1990 a nearby locomotive shed was home to the Dinting Railway Centre, where you could often find famous locomotives like Blue Peter and the Flying Scotsman visiting.

The LeiceExplore YouTube channel has rebranded as What Once Was, but offers the same high-quality nosehs around industrial and historic sites. Subscribe and like away.

Here the two Steves discover the site of the railway centre and Dinting viaduct, before exploring the station, part of which has been disused since the closure of the line to Sheffield.

Notes

1. The Woodhead route is the longest lost railway that I travelled on, ahead of March to Spalding and Market Harborough to Northampton.

New Statesman: Lib Dems cheered and baffled by Kemi Badenoch

Embed from Getty Images

The Liberal Democrats have two strategic objectives in this parliament. 

One is to be a better opposition than the Conservatives by focusing on issues of substance, like social care reform, rather than ones of style or personality.

The second is to embed our new MPs as local champions, so that even voters profoundly disillusioned with Westminster will welcome their achievements in their communities.

That's according to George Eaton writing on the New Statesman website.

He goes on to say:

From an electoral perspective, the Lib Dems’ aim is to "finish the job” in the Blue Wall. Of their 30 notional target seats, all but four are held by the Tories. That Kemi Badenoch has displayed little interest in defending – or reclaiming – such territory has cheered (and baffled) the Lib Dems.

But Davey’s team also believe they have opportunities against Labour. “We want a Liberal voice back in the cities,” an aide told me. Early targets include Nick Clegg’s former seat of Sheffield Hallam (Labour majority: 8,189) and Simon Hughes’s former seat of Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Labour majority: 7,787).

Elsewhere in the article, I was surprised to read that it was Paddy Ashdown who pioneered "pavement politics".

This approach, under the grander name "community politics" was developed in the previous decade by the Association of Liberal Councillors and graduates of the Young Liberals' radical era.

At that time Paddy was still... Well, if I told you what he was doing in those days, I'd have to shoot you.

Woodhead railway tunnels to Hadfield today

I first saw the Woodhead route - the lost railway from Sheffield to Manchester - in the summer of 1978. In those days Sheffield to Huddersfield trains used it to reach Penistone, running through the derelict Sheffield Victoria station on the way and also taking sweeping curves about the valley of the Don.

At Penistone you could watch a constant stream of goods trains taking coal from the South Yorkshire coalfield to a power station at Widnes or returning empty.

The class 76 locomotives were unique to this line and you could tell they had been designed in the 1930s, before the war put a temporary stop to electrification.

And I did manage to ride on the whole route shortly before it closed. In the winter of 1980/1 the Hope Valley line, the alternative way to Manchester that all Sheffield trains now use, closed for engineering works on Sundays and passenger services were diverted via Woodhead. I can still remember coasting past the reservoirs you see in the video on the way down to Manchester.

This is an excellent video from Trekking Exploration, showing the remains of the line between Woodhead and Hadfield today as well as some archive footage and photos of its last days.

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.

Exploring what remains of Sheffield Victoria

I don't remember Sheffield Victoria being open, but I do remember when Sheffield to Huddersfield trains ran via Penistone and passed through the closed station.

Paul from Wobbly Runner Exploring is your guide to what remains of it today.

Sheffield Victoria was a mainline station opened in 1851 by the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, which later became the Great Central Railway. The station closed in 1970, when passenger services over the Woodhead route to Manchester ceased.

For the first time in 37 years a new parliament will meet without a member of the cast of The Railway Children

Whatever happens in the general election, the new parliament will be the first without a member of the cast of The Railway Children for 37 years.

For an explanation, listen carefully to Bernard Cribbins in the film's most famous scene.

I hope I cut that short in time. I didn't? I'm sorry. Please help yourself to a tissue.

What I hope you heard was Bernard Cribbins saying "Right away, Mr Cryer" as he dispatched the train.

Mr Cryer was Bob Cryer, a moving force behind the preservation of the Keighley and Worth Valley line. He was also instrumental in convincing the people behind The Railway Children that it was the perfect place for them to film.

When the man who had played the guard through most of the filming ran out of holiday and had to return to his day job, Bob Cryer stepped in. So that's why he's in the scene above.

In February 1974, Bob Cryer was elected as the Labour MP for Keighley. If you are surprised to hear of a Labour left-winger being involved in the railway preservation movement, a guest post on the blog by Joseph Boughey on the uncertain politics of railway preservation may interest you.

Bob Cryer held the seat in two general elections before losing to the Conservatives in 1983. He then served as MEP for Sheffield between 1984 and 1989, before returning to the Commons as MP for Bradford South in 1987.

He held his new seat in 1992, but died in a road traffic accident in 1994 to widespread dismay. You can read an obituary by Tam Dalyell from the Independent.

His widow Ann Cryer was returned for Bob's old seat of Keighley in Labour's 1997 landslide, and held it until she retired in 2010. 

And Ann had also been an extra in The Railway Children too.

But there was a Cryer in parliament after the 2010 election: Ann and Bob's son John had been elected as Labour MP for Leyton and Wanstead, a seat he has held ever since.

He was also an extra - a young one - in The Railway Children. That's him and his sister Jane in the photo.

Today John Cryer announced that he will not be standing at the general election. So for the first time since 1987 - that's 37 years - a new parliament will meet without a member of the cast of The Railway Children.

Forget abandoned railways: this is an abandoned Sheffield road

Another outing with Trekking Exploration - find out how to support this channel.

Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire preserved lengths of the Great Central Railway to be reunited this weekend

Exciting news from the Great Central Railway:

Join us for this spectacular weekend as we reunify the Great Central Railway and the Great Central Railway Nottingham for a celebration of the 125th opening of the GCR London Extension. 

Our Rail Replacement Bus Service will reunify the two halves of our railway with a service between Quorn and Woodhouse Station and Ruddington Station to allow you to explore all of our attractions with one inclusive ticket that is valid for entry to all sites and includes train travel and the reunification bus service. Kids go for a Quid (aged 3-15 inclusive)

The weekend in question is 16-17 March, when the 125th anniversary of the Great Central will be celebrated.

The Great Central Railway was the last main line to be built, sending trains from Marylebone out to through Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield to Manchester.

Great Central Railway and Great Central Railway Nottingham are separated by a missing bridge and length of embankment at Loughborough. The video above gives you the latest news on the project to reunify the two lines.

Incidentally, the Great Central Railway Nottingham was originally constructed by the contractors Logan & Hemingway. That's Logan as in this blog's hero J.W. Logan, Liberal MP for Harborough 1891-1904 and 1910-1916.

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"There’s not even the tiniest attempt to explain how globalists and socialists and Islamists can all be running Britain. The only coherence is the idea that whoever is running things, and whoever is responsible, it isn’t the Conservative Brexiters. And this idea is impervious to the observation that Conservative Brexiters have been running the country for years, since its proponents insist that those in charge were not 'true' Conservatives and Brexit was not ‘real’ Brexit." Chris Grey explains why nothing will ever be the Brexiters' fault.

Caitlin Doherty says attacks on social media are discouraging women from standing for parliament: "[Labour MP Julie] Elliott said that it is hard to prepare somebody for the onslaught they may face on social media when they step forward for election. 'You can explain until you’re blue in the face, but until you’ve encountered it and the really personal aggression, I don’t know how you prepare people to cope with that.'"

"The language (and the idea) of the mob paints a false picture of crowds, of crowd violence and of violence in society more generally. The gathering of people in protest does not indicate the imminent outbreak of violence and excess. It cannot, in and of itself, be taken as evidence of intimidation. It is not a threat to our democracy." Stephen Reicher argues that politicians' fear of 'mob violence' is misplaced.

Ben Zimmer examines the antisemitic roots of the term 'globalist'.

"Britpop was a reaction to grunge. What was the reaction to Britpop? Well, if Britpop was associated with easy, fun music then let’s make it as dark as possible. Everyone wanted to react against everything else going on around them." Jane Savidge talks about Pulp and their album This is Hardcore.

Martin Dawes on the strange story of a man who devoted his life to tending a memorial to the crew of a World War II US bomber that crashed in a Sheffield park. Only he didn't.

The blasphemous story of XTC and Dear God

This is a good video on XTC, the tensions within the band and the genesis and extraordinary success of their song Dear God.

I love the story (at 13:50) that British Steel countered the song Making Plans for Nigel by rounding up Sheffield steelworkers called Nigel so they could tell the press how great their jobs were.

But another of the stories is not right - this one is at 15.45. Andy Partridge was not prescribed Valium as a boy because of hyperactivity. 

As he once told the Guardian:

He had been attempting to get off the Valium he had been prescribed aged 12 after his mother was temporarily placed in a mental hospital. 

"It was the 60s," he says, summing up the attitude of the time: "'Poor kid’s upset, his mum’s loopy, why not stick him on Valium?' I became addicted."

Anyway, enjoy the video.

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"Animal factories are amongst the worst atrocities ever perpetrated by humanity. Animal factories are inherently cruel and create massive suffering for billions of animals, destroy the environment and even undermine our health." Jane Goodall and Koen Margodt make the case for adopting a plant-based diet.

Iain Sharpe (Mr Dorothy Thornhill) reflects on how elected politicians can hold experts to account in the light of the Post Office Horizon scandal: "Among the reasons for my dear wife's longevity as Elected Mayor of Watford was a willingness to keep asking questions until she got an answer she understood and a sixth sense for when someone's story wasn't stacking up, the latter skill perhaps deriving from her previous career as a schoolteacher." 

"Giving control to Network Rail would lead to the railway being run to suit its needs, rather than those of the passengers. Trying to get Network Rail to change its spots is unrealistic. The railways must be run in a customer-focused way, and that must be at the heart of any structure the Labour Party devises." Christian Wolmar gives his ideas about how a Labour government should reform the railways.

Oliver Wainwright celebrates the survival of the brutalist Park Hill estate in Sheffield: "The current state of the place – still completely derelict at one end, spruced up at the other – reads as a surreal diagram of how attitudes to postwar architecture have shifted over the years, and how an estate can be scrubbed up for sale in different ways".

Kyle Chaka explains why every coffee shop looks the same - it's the tyranny of the algorithm.

"In 1968 Schulz noticed the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and read a letter from Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman. She had a question for Schulz: would he include a black child in the Peanuts gang?" Flashbak explains how Charlie Brown acquired a black friend.