Working
Class History
The following information will, I have no doubt, be of interest
to students of Black Country working class history. Much of this
has been supplied/suggested by George Barnsby, who runs the GB
Peoples Library and Free Communist Bookshop. George has a website,
also containing information that will be of use to students.
Email from George to Tristram Hunt in response to an article
to be found here.
Dear Tristram,
Yesterday I sent you a collection of my free booklets Radical
Wolverhampton, Radical Birmingham, Radical Dudley, Radical
Walsall and Radical Bilston in response to your campaign for
the celebration of Labour History. My purpose was to stress
the importance of Birmingham and the Black Country as areas
not sufficiently celebrated in Labour History annals.
The purpose of this email is to show some of the sources of
local history, including Labour history, active in Birmingham
and the Black Country.
Probably the most important is Carl
Chinn who writes a a weekly column for the Express and
Star, does a weekly 4 hour slot on West Midlands radio each
Sunday, makes himself available as the opening star of almost
any historical event and was and is an opponent of the closure
of the Rover car plant at Longbridge. This is an incredible
workload to undertake.
Yet it is no more than the workload undertaken by the Editor
of the Black
Country Bugle, Robert Taylor. If anyone needs recommending
for the honours list it is Robert and his predecessor as editor.
The Bugle, calling itself the Voice of the Black Country,
is a unique publication. It used to be a monthly, then fortnightly,
but now it is a weekly publication from which pours forth
every 7 days the seemingly unending flow of memoirs, reminiscences,
letters etc. of the ordinary people of the Black Country.
And as if a weekly were not sufficient there is the quarterly
publication "The Blackcountryman" now in its 39th
year under a series of editors, one of the most important
sources of labour history in the Black Country, particularly
for the lives of those craftsmen before and after the Industrial
Revolution who, deprived of education, made the Black Country
one of the key centres of the Industrial Revolution. Now,
of course, although we are educated our industry has disappeared
under New Labour who rule us.
The next source to be mentioned is Ned Williams, prolific
historian of the Black Country, now a free lance full-time
historian, but also a historian of the Walsall Co-operative
movement in its most radical phase from 1829 of association
with Robert Owens Utopian Socialist period when Co-ops were
producer Co-ops with the aim of peacefully superseding capitalism.
Then there is Stan Newens ex-Essex Labour MP and MEP, but
an honorary Black Countryman from being a Bevin
Boy in the Cannock mines during World War II who associated
with the Garner twins in the Labour youth organisation of
the time. Both Alan and Ray became Wolverhampton Labour councillors
after the war. One of Stan's many contributions to Labour
history has been his collection of radicals between 1850 and
about 1900 with a picture/photograph of every one of them.
Unique.
Then, we must mention the Black
Country Living Museum which has avoided the fate of other
museums and flourishes open seven days a week this summer
and with its Mary MacArthur Institute taken down brick by
brick and rebuilt at the Museum it deals worthily with its
political and trade union past.
Talking of those working themselves to death I would mention
the Express and
Star which not only hosts Carl Chinn, but whose reporters
efficiently research history and the paper serves the majority
of its readers by opposing the war in Iraq. The reporter I
refer to is Peter Rhodes, the only journalist I know who writes
a witty, satirical and anti-war column for six days a week.
I have had my ups and downs with both the paper and Peter
Rhodes, but we are now on the best of terms and only he and
I appreciate the fact that the founder of the paper was the
Scottish/USA steel monopolist and philanthropist, Andrew
Carnegie, whose philosophy was that every penny of what
he earned should be returned to those it was earned from.
If Peter Rhodes were ever appointed to the editorship of the
Express and Star I think he might well adopt the Carnegie
approach to wealth. I would also mention their Sports Correspondents
who dealt with the World Cup and the particular torments of
Wolverhampton
Wanderers deserted by their previous manager and waiting
for another backer as Sir Jack Hayward, entrepreneur and patriot
extraordinary refuses to continue in that role.
Then there are the current developments, both progressive
and otherwise. The Wolverhampton
Windrush Project, story of first generation West Indians
in Wolverhampton and Britain, particularly suitable for showings
at schools. The Wolverhampton Special Needs Unit under the
redoubtable Kal Dale, the Jenny Lee Professional Teachers'
Association led by Sedhev Bismal with its important library,
which I criticised when last I had occasion to visit it, as
pandering to the prevailing 'conservatism' of the British
public. Then there are the trade unions recently re-united
and still a formidable force at 9m members; Anti-war and with
contacts with the New World of Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentine
etc. Add to this THE
VOICE, most influential of the Afro-Caribbean weekly newspapers
anti-war and with a mission to protect the Afro-Caribbean
community.
I could go on, but will end with the working class history
organisations of Socialist
History Society, the newly independent Working
Class Movement Library, various organs of Communist History
in Britain, and the very latest History Society of the Communist
Party of Britain advertised on the highly influential Saturday
Listings of the Morning
Star Progressive Web Sites of Graham
Stevenson, historian and Transport & General Workers'
Union official with more than 100 biographies of leading working
class figures.
Unfortunately there are also reactionary tendencies, particularly
in education, which prevent 3rd generation ethnic minority
children from naturally embracing the multicultural world
in which most of them live. One is the lack of a role model
for ethnic minority children in schools. Another is the phenomenon
remarked on by Trevor Phillips chair of the Commission
for Racial Equality of his famous statement Sleepwalking
to Segregation. Then there is the totally unacceptable
position of local schools calling themselves schools or colleges
of Special distinction such as Sport, Music, Arts etc. which
can thereby dodge the rules of accepting children from their
catchment area and accept donations from private sources,
some of them from very seedy religious sources, which they
need not disclose. Lastly there are those such as the Lords
of the Fourth Estate such as Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Jon
Snow of Channel 4 and Kirsty Walk who think that in these
days of BLOGs and people power that they can ignore critics
by not replying to them. They are mistaken.
So, Tristram, I have outlined the resources we have in the
West Midlands to celebrate our Labour history. The next thing
will be to use all these resources to further your grand project.
Please keep in touch with us.
GEORGE BARNSBY |
The links above have been added by me to assist those who would
like to read more. You could do worse than to ask George for copies
of his books, listed above. I have made some slight alterations
to George's text, I call this editor's privilege. George does
have political views that I may not agree with, I prefer to stay
outside of party politics.
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