More about May in June and after in Liverpool and elsewhere

Date: FRIDAY, 8^TH JUNE 2018 (9am-6pm)

 VENUE: BAR CASA, 29 HOPE STREET, LIVERPOOL, L1 9BQ

 

F*ck May ’68, Fight Now: Exploring the Uses of the Radical Past from 1968 to Today

All Power to the Imagination! A workshop about the protests of 1968 and the movements that followed in its wake, with people who were there then, people who came after, and people who are doing it now! Come along. It's FREE!!!

Check out the programme: http://womensrightshistory.org/fck-may68-workshop-programme/ 

and to register:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fck-may-68-fight-now-exploring-the-uses-of-the-past-from-1968-to-today-tickets-46111294122

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And some reminders from earlier listings:

1968-2018: A Celebration of 50 years of Resistance, Campaigning 

and Alternatives for A Better World 

- despite 50 years of police opposition, spying and repression. Full details here.

Saturday 7th July, 1-3pm   Roll Call / Commemoration / Celebration: Grosvenor Sq, London W1

Sunday 8th July, 10-4pm    Conference / Exhibition: Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq, London WC1

1st to 8th July   Week of local events and activities around the UK - please organise!

Flyer available for download/copying/distribution.  

  Contact for planning: 50yrsevents@gmail.com

(More details on earlier notice)

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Remembering the 1968 Revolts - Nottingham

(People's Histreh)

Join us for a film screening, an exhibition of original sources and a panel session of people sharing their memories of struggles fought here in Nottingham during that iconic year, which saw deeply-rooted conflicts erupt into open revolts all around the globe. 

Sunday, 3rd June 2018
From Midday at Broadway Cinema, Nottingham.

Midday-2pm film screening of “if....” (ticketed)

2-3pm browse our exhibition (free)

3-5pm panel session (free)

Please note that spaces for the panel session are limited (first come, first served).

From Midday to 2pm there will be a screening of “if….”, followed by an hour (2-3pm) to browse our exhibition of fantastic source materials (pamphlets, newssheets, posters, unpublished correspondence, etc.) documenting the 1968 Revolts in Paris, Berlin, Prague (etc.), and of course events here in Nottingham. At 3pm we will get together for a panel session with people sharing some of their memories of the struggles fought in Nottingham in 1968 (spoilers: the struggle for equal pay and anti-racist work were already high on the agenda five decades ago!). 

The film screening is ticketed. You will be able to purchase tickets from Broadway Cinema at their usual rates from early May. We have a very limited number of discounted tickets available. If you would like us to reserve you one of these tickets, please do get in touch (please note, if you do not get a response email confirming your reservation before Sunday 6th May, you are not on the list and will have to purchase a ticket from the Broadway Box Office). The exhibition and the panel session are of course free of charge.

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Students vs. CRS (riot police) in Latin quarter

Mass meeting of workers at Renault-Billancourt

Workers and Students en masse:

Defining images of May 1968 from Solidarity vol.5, no.4, October 1968,between. pp. 14 & 15 in (review) article "France: the theoretical immplication", by M.B. (Maurice Brinton). 
See also the celebrated Solidarity pamphlet:



Things happening this month [Feb.2015], and a bit after

Things happening this month, and a bit after

Reminders, updates, new notices relating to radical history…

From LSHG:

A final reminder about the London Socialist Historians "Attlee" event on Saturday 28th February.

Registration is from 11.30am in the Wolfson Room (basement of the Institute of Historical Research and a dedicated conference space).

Speakers should be underway from a little after midday, followed by discussion until no later than 4pm.

At that point we'll adjourn for a coffee in the basement of Dillons books just up the road, which has ample space and comfortable seats

Speakers are:

Keith Flett – ‘A History of 1945: Beyond Ken Loach’

Ian Birchall – ‘Exits from Empire: British and French choices in 1945′

Francis Beckett, Biographer – ‘Clement Attlee’

John Newsinger – ‘Labour, the Welfare State and Korea’

Mike Sheridan – ‘The Labour Independent Group’

======================

The Working Class Movement Library, Salford      http://www.wcml.org.uk/events

14th Feb 2015      LGBT History Month talk - 'Unity is Strength – Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and their lasting links of comradeship with mining communities’ . Speakers: Mike Jackson, co-founder with Mark Ashton of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), and David (Dai) Donovan, South Wales NUM.

7th Mar 2015       (Eve of International Women's Day) Tansy Hoskins talks about her book Stitched Up - The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion.

11th Mar 2015     From Bilbao to Manchester: the Basque child refugees of 1937 - Charles Jepson

19th Mar 2015     Exhibition ‘probing behind the myths of war and its "glories"’: The Great War: myths and realities explores topics such as Salford's response to the outbreak of war, the strength of the anti-war movement locally and nationally, what happened to the campaign which had gathered momentum by 1914 to get the vote for women - and the realities of trench warfare. Open Wednesdays to Fridays 1-5p.m.

25th Mar 2015     ''Red Nelson": the English working class and the making of C.L.R. James - Christian Hogsbjerg

8th Apr 2015        The People: the Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010 - Selina Todd

22nd Apr 2015     Notoriously militant: the story of a union branch at Ford Dagenham - Sheila Cohen

 

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What’s Happening in Black British History? II 

Thursday, 19th February,

Leggate Hall, University of Liverpool.

The workshop agenda is available to download here, as is an extended version including abstracts for each talk here.
<< Like the WHBBH1 event hosted in London in October 2014, presentations at WHBBH2 will cover a wide range of topics - from Sport to Culture, WW1 soldiers to West End sound systems - so there’s sure to be something for everyone.>>
You can book online here - EarlyBird tickets are priced from £5 - 

http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/blog/roll-up-roll-up-tickets-for-whbbh2-in-liverpool-are-now-on-sale

Network for Peace

There will be a meeting on 19 February in London at 1.30. Friends House in Euston.

We will have a short NfP business meeting followed by a discussion on where we are with WW1 Campaigning.

We also hope to have a guest speaker, an academic who will report on her research (just waiting for a confirmation).

No need to confirm your place, or send your apologies. But if you cannot come and have something interesting to report please send something to me in good time for me to distribute before the meeting if at all possible. 

Here’s a link to the event on the NfP website: 

http://www.networkforpeace.org.uk/calendar/claire/2015/feb/network-peace-agm-ww1-planning-meeting

London Socialist Historians Seminars Spring Term 2015

Monday February 2^nd      Matthew  Burnett-Stewart,  Arming both sides. The Armaments industry in World War One.

Monday February 16^th    Deborah Lavin, Charles Bradlaugh and the First International

Saturday February 28^th  70 years since the 1945 Attlee Government: Francis Beckett, Ian Birchall, John Newsinger and others From 11.30am - [LSHG Conference]. 

Monday March 16^th Launch of A History of Riots (CSP) Keith Flett and others

All LSHG seminars take place in Room 102 at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, WC1 and start at 5.30 p.m. with the exception of February 28th.

On Saturday 28th February at 1pm, the Wakefield Socialist History Group will be holding an event HOUSING AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1.

With speakers:
*Cllr Hilary Mitchell
*Karen Fletcher (Secretary, Barnsley Against the Bedroom Tax)
*Alan Stewart (Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group)
*Kevin Feintuck (rank and file housing worker in Sheffield)
The chair is Kitty Rees.
Admission is free and there will be a free light buffet.

Queer Season at Sutton House

Starting in LGBT History Month, Sutton House is hosting its first Queer Season, a series of exhibitions and events celebrating the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer communities.

126 
5th February to 29th March,
Weds to Sun 12pm to 5pm

Building on February 2014's exhibition 'Master-Mistress', the first LGBT History Month event to be held in a National Trust property we think, '126' is a crowd-sourced audiovisual experience featuring all 126 of Shakespeare's Fair Youth sonnets as read by members of the LGBTQ community. Each sonnet is self-recorded and is accompanied by video portraits of the contributors.

Admission: Adult £3.50, Child £1, Family £6.90, National Trust Members FREE. 

The Amy Grimehouse and National Trust’s Sutton House present:

The Craft Valentine's Massacre 
14 February 7pm to late

 Join The Amy Grimehouse for their special presentation of that 90s classic, The Craft. Explore Sutton House and participate in some anti-Valentine's spells, Hex-Your-Ex, the Nancy Booth, The Craft Craft Room with binding and poison pen Valentine's cards and more. All before the pre-screening show with the Bitches of Eastwick. The screening will make way for the 'Invoking the Spirit of Manon Ball' with Connie Francis on the jukebox and more til late. "Now is the time. This is the hour. Ours is the magic. Ours is the power."  

Nick Fox and National Trust’s Sutton House Present:

Bad Seed 
5th February to 29th March,
Weds to Sun 12pm to 5pm

 This will include the first comprehensive survey of work by South African-born artist Nick Fox. Arranged over seven rooms, the exhibition brings together artworks created over the last ten years, principally painting but also films, installations, cyanotype prints and intricately laboured object d’art from his celebrated Nightsong and Phantasieblume series. Fox has also chosen Sutton House to launch a new artistic project called Seedbank, which invites members of the public to select seeds linked to a veiled dictionary of floral meanings to give as long term and living tokens of love and loves loss. Bad Seed will be shown simultaneously with Fox’s International touring exhibition Nightsong, at Angus-Hughes Gallery (7th February – 7 March 2015), which is also located in Hackney.

Admission: Adult £3.50, Child £1, Family £6.90, National Trust Members FREE.

++++++++++++++

SACK BOB LAMBERT!
Former Police Spy, Serial Liar & Exploiter of Women

After a couple of successful pickets outside London Metropolitan University, help us to increase the pressure! Join us to demand the removal of Bob Lambert from his position as a lecturer on policing and criminology from London Met university.

When: Friday February 27th – 12.00 – 2.00pm
Where: Outside LMU Tower, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB
Bring placards, banners, sound systems, anything to make noise…

Former police spy, Special Branch manipulator, abuser of women, agent provocateur, Bob Lambert is now lecturing at London Met on policing and criminology.

This is a man who has:

• Built a police career on lying, spying on political groups and community campaigns;
• Stolen the name of a dead child to build a false identity;
• acted as an agent provocateur, actively encouraging people to commit crimes so they could be arrested;
• has been named in parliament as having planted a firebomb in a store in 1987;
• started several sexual relationships & fathered a child just to make his cover more convincing, (a child he abandoned with no contact for 24 years); while all the time having a ‘real’ family back home;
• encouraged other police spies working under his supervision to follow his dubious example – including sleeping with some of their targets;
• sent undercover police to spy on the families of racist murder victims and people who have died in custody;
• helped to arrange meetings between police spies and senior officers looking for ways to smear the family of Stephen Lawrence;
• passed on undercover reports on trade unionists campaigning for better working conditions on building sites, which was used to blacklist workers;

 …and much more…

For a brief account of Bob Lambert’s dubious record, check our website:
https://islingtonagainstpolicespies.wordpress.com/about-bob-lambert/

If we have any kind of standards at all that we expect of teachers, lecturers, people in a position on responsibility and influence, Bob Lambert fails to meet up to them.

He has a long history of lying, exploiting women and manipulating others for his own ends. Is this really someone London Met thinks is appropriate to be teaching at a supposedly ‘progressive’ university?

The exposures of the activities of undercover police spying on campaigning groups, grieving families and political activists over recent years has led to many enquiries and investigations; women exploited by these officers are also suing the Metropolitan Police as the institution ultimately responsible. But the individual police spies themselves need to also be held to account. Lambert has pathetically ‘apologised’ for some bits of his past; because he was (belatedly) caught out. He needs to properly face the consequences of his a_ctions.

This campaign is being organised by Islington Against Police Spies, a group of local residents and activists. We are committed to putting pressure on the University and raising awareness of Lambert’s past, until he is forced to leave London Met. We know this CAN be done – but it’s not necessarily going to be easy. Hopefully this campaign will get stronger until it’s irresistible. BUT WE NEED HELP – we call on anyone who thinks Bob Lambert should not be working in a supposedly progressive university to support our campaign.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Come down and join the picket on January 30th. The bigger and noisier
our protest, the more notice London Met will have to take of us.

Protest to the following in the London Met hierarchy, and demand that
they sack Bob Lambert:

 * John Raftery
, Vice-Chancellor; email: j.raftery@londonmet.ac.uk


Tel: 020 7133 2001




 * Peter McCaffery
, Deputy Vice-Chancellor; email:
P.McCaffery@londonmet.ac.uk. Tel: 020 7133 2401
 * Jonathan Woodhead, Executive Officer; email:
j.woodhead@londonmet.ac.uk
. Tel: 020 7133 2042



 * Paul Bowler
, Deputy Chief Executive; email: P.Bowler@londonmet.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7133 2031
 * Peter Garrod
, University Secretary and Clerk to the Board; email:
p.garrod@londonmet.ac.uk
. Tel: 020 7133 2004


You can also email Bob Lambert directly and let him know what you think
of his activities: r.lambert@londonmet.ac.uk
 Tel: 020 7133 4692/2911


Spread the Word - tell others about this campaign, raise the issue in
your networks, communities, union, etc - the more people know about Bob,
the more pressure we all put on the university, the more likely it is
that he will have to go.

You can download, print and spread our leaflet from the link below:
https://islingtonagainstpolicespies.wordpress.com/resources/


For more info on undercover police spies see:
http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com

http://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/

Red Sayles: Alexei, the teenage maoist

Alexei Sayle, Stalin Ate My Homework. London, Sceptre, 2010. 304pp.

“ I knew Sayle's family CP background – it's been mentioned by him many times. But Maoism? Blimey.”

As suggested by the comment quoted above, this enticingly-titled memoir of a childhood and adolescence in an atmosphere of left-wing political commitment contains a number of surprises. No doubt its author’s fame as an actor, comedian and author will attract readers not normally much concerned with what makes Reds tick. Conversely, those of us with an ingrained resistance to celebrity culture, not to mention suspicion of the Party, may be dubious about its value to radical history. It turns out to be well worth reading from several points of view.

Alexei Sayle describes in detail what having openly active Communist parents meant in practice, at the height of the Cold War, in working class Liverpool. The city itself gets a lot of attention, from the now vanished community environment where he grew up n the 1950s-60s through industrial decline to the urban devastation wrought by the planners. His father Joe was a railwayman, however, active as a shop steward in the NUR, with free rail travel for himself and his family, so that they could and did seek wider horizons. This meant not only regular attendance at the union’s AGM, but a series of holidays in Eastern Europe: Hungary in 1961 and 1963; Czechoslovakia 1959, 1960, 1962; Bulgaria 1966. Despite the family being on most of those occasions (with a few blips) treated as honoured guests in a privileged delegation, the young Alexei eventually became aware of a ‘nascent sense of unease about the Communist experiment’.

At the same time he remained at odds with the conventional values peddled by his schoolteachers and resisted pressures to conform, finding his own career path, as it turned out, in the direction of comedy early on. Politically, the chapter ‘I Was a Teenage Maoist’ is about his brief sojourn in the by-ways of Merseyside Marxist-Leninism, an episode of what he calls ‘split-brain thinking’, when he simultaneously ‘both totally believed it and totally didn’t believe it’. Tales of demonstrations, paper-selling, meetings and attempts to convert the masses will strike a chord with many who did not share his precise affiliation.

Along the way he touches on a number of points of 20th-century, from the Police Strike of 1919 and the 1926 General Strike via Hungary, Suez and the Cuban Missile Crisis to Czechoslovakia 1968. Brought up to take the party line as read with reference to the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution, he was accustomed to hearing George Orwell denounced and found the reading of ‘Animal Farm’ something of a revelation. He nevertheless arrived at his own understanding of Marxist (class-struggle) historical theory, also as a result of reading, in this case Marx himself, which was bad news for his teachers.

Not all about Sayle – his concern for issues affecting ordinary people’s lives is evident – it’s not a-laugh-a-line, and punches are not pulled when, for example, repressive regimes or bureaucratic obtuseness are up for discussion. He doesn’t let himself off too lightly either. All the same, it is quite funny in a lot of places – and is a good read throughout.