International Women’s Day – and Why You Should Visit the Polling Booth on Election Day

8 March has been celebrated as International Women’s Day since 1907. This was 21 years before all adult Women got the vote in Britain, 41 years before Women were allowed into the House of Lords and 63 years before the Equal Pay Act was designed to close the gender pay gap.

So, what is life like for Women in 2015? Well, there is still an issue with gender and pay with Women lagging behind men, despite the 1970 Act. More pressing issues have been brought on by 5 years of austerity where women have found their rights eroded. 65% of public sector workers are women and 74% of the £14.9 billion of welfare savings have come from Women’s pockets.[1] Because of the nature of the work Women do, in industries such as care and education, they are much more likely than men to be put onto zero hours contracts, to have their hours slashed or lose their jobs entirely as budget cuts continue. In this election year there are more attacks on our working lives from political parties, such as the Tory policy to further erode workers’ rights through changing strike vote thresholds, and the dangerous UKIP policy to take away maternity leave. However, when it comes to the vote, Women have the gender advantage. Men and Women vote differently, not just in Britain but throughout the world, and Women tend to vote the same way. Current thinking suggests this is due to Women taking family issues and childcare as a top priority when considering who to vote for, whereas men have other priorities. Because of this political parties desire the votes of Women.

It is hard to believe that it is less than 100 years since Women got the vote. The Suffragettes fought hard for this right. They suffered pain and misery and sometimes death through campaigning, and they did this so Women could have a say in the democratic process. So, even if you do nothing else to celebrate International Women’s Day in 2015, please honour your Suffragette Sisters and check if you are registered to vote. If you are not, then you have until 20 April to register. But of course, once you get that ballot paper in your hands what you do with it is entirely up too you (vote tactically, vote with your heart, spoil your ballot paper) but if you’re not registered, then you don’t get a choice.

International Women’s Day http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

PCS on International Women’s Day http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/department_for_work_and_pensions_group/equality_matters/the-origins-of-international-womens-day.cfm

Register to vote https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

TUC Voter Registration Drive https://www.tuc.org.uk/social-issues/tuc-and-unions-supporting-national-voter-registration-drive-2015

[1] http://www.unison.org.uk/about/our-organisation/member-groups/women/key-issues/women-and-public-spending-cuts/the-facts/

Peterborough Tea Stall War Stories…

Exciting new history research project launched in Peterborough this week. Volunteers required…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-30850932?SThisFB

Fenland Traditions – Whittlesea Straw Bear

As January lumbers in creating a rather dull and grey anti-climax to the Christmas and New Year festivities, a small Fenland town offers a reason to be cheerful. That reason is, the Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival. This is a tradition that goes back for centuries and nobody knows exactly when it started. It possibly originated as part of the European Wild Man tradition, part of pre-Christian Mythology where, according to Charles Freger, a man would put on a costume representing an animal during a community festival. The animal, a bear, stag or a goat for example, represented a sacrifice for the death of winter and the coming of spring. These Wild Man festivals were held between November and the start of spring.

According to an 1880s newspaper, the Whittlesea Straw Bear was made from the best straw collected over the year and would be bound around the arms, legs and body of a plough boy and also bound around a wooden frame above his head to cover this too. The bear would then be led around the town on a chain by other agricultural workers dancing outside people’s houses for gifts of beer, money or food. It was an important tradition which took place on Plough Monday and was probably a good way for the local agricultural workers to earn some extra income during a season of low employment. However, it was banned in Whittlesey, in the first decade of the 1900s by a Policeman who decided the practice was a form of ‘cadging’.

The Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival was revived in the early 1980s taking place on the nearest weekend to Plough Monday. It still features the bear led around the town, this time on a rope, where it dances in the local pubs and in the Market Square. It is accompanied by a smaller bear and occasionally a bear from Germany where similar traditions are carried out. Local breweries brew special Straw Beer, for sale in the local pubs. Morris dancers also perform at the festival. Love it or hate it, the dancers fill the streets of the small town and the pub yards with the sound of jingling bells, and colourful costumes and are very much part of the festival. The dancing includes Molly Dancing, a local East Anglian form of Morris originally only danced in the mid-winter season and performed by people disguised by fancy dress or face paint for money, food or drink. It was around in the 1880s but banned by police due to the tradition of the fights that took place between dance troops in Cambridge Market Square. Molly Dancing was revived in the 1970s, and are much more peaceful today! 

I like the stories behind the dances and the costumes. One of my favourites is the local women’s Morris dance side, Ely and Littleport Riot. They were named after the bread riots that took place in 1816, and their costumes include black skirts representing the dark Fen soil and red handkerchiefs which represent the bloody revolt.

The Saturday festivities end with the bear dancing in the Market Square to his own especially composed tune. On Sunday the bear is burned, in a tradition mirroring the symbolic sacrifices of the Wild Man festivals. It occurs to me that if anybody unacquainted with the tradition passed through Whittlesey during the Straw Bear Festival weekend, they might think they have stepped into a scene from the film The Wicker Man. But for me, it’s a great day out, full of tradition, history, stories and a great way of celebrating the start of a New Year.

Ref: 36th Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival 2015 Programme

HAL (part 2)

This week, thanks to an ancestry website offering free access to WWI documents I have finally been able to plug a gap in family history research. On 4 August 2014, I published a short post about my Great Grandfather HAL. The story was purely personal based on items that had been kept and passed down from my Grandmother and offered little insight into his military experience other than that of his death which we could be confirmed through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. However, with the documents posted online I have managed to answer a few of the questions I had about HAL’s short military career. For example, I now know that he ‘attested’ to short service on 3 December 1915, as part of the Derby Scheme. This scheme, also known as the Group Scheme was introduced in the spring of 1915 through the National Registration Act and required all men aged between 15 and 65 to register with the military giving their employment details. Of the 5 million men registered by mid-September of that year, 1.6 million were in in ‘starred’ employment which were protected, high or scarce skilled jobs. Presumably HAL fell into that category with his job as an Inspector of Nuisances. Under the Derby Scheme, men were put into categories according to marital status and grouped by age ready to be called up in that way. They could agree to go into service immediately or defer their posting. HAL must have chosen the latter as the attestation form was not completed until September 1917 when he was enlisted into the 2nd London Sanitary Company section of the RAMC. This confirms that HAL managed to stay out of the war for some time.

I have in my possession some postcards from HAL addressed to him at the Red Cross Military Hospital at Richmond. I always assumed that he was receiving some training there from the medical corps. This might well have been the case, however, his medical records show that he had an infection which actually put him into hospital as a patient for 68 days from mid-October to late December 1917. The infection he had, can be cleared up easily now using antibiotics but back then there must have been little to cure this infection. However, he was discharged from hospital in December. He did not leave British shores until 1 March, 1918, when he embarked for Havre, and the OCB Infantry Base Depot from Southampton. These depots were where men received their training for the front, and waited to be sent to their base. In HAL’s case, this came within a few days as he was sent to Italy, possibly by train, on 5 March. On 30 of March he joined the 84th Sanitary Section, a division of the Field Ambulance, whose role was to make sure things such as water, cooking facilities and billets were clean enough for soldiers to use. They also ran the de-lousing stations.

HAL’s medical records note that he died from bronchial pneumonia following influenza. Presumably this was as a result of the Spanish Flu which swept through the battlefields of Europe at the time. 32,000 troops perished in the years 1918 and 1919 and Italy was badly affected. HAL’s belongings were sent back to his Wife in England and records of these possessions were also included in the new records on the ancestry website. These were: letters, photos, a notebook, 2 religious medallions, a cigarette case, two wallets, a key, a crucifix, a ring and four coins. We often wondered if he took a notebook with him and what happened to it, if he did. As a talented artist, it was surely an item he just had to take with him- is it possible that it was the notebook mentioned in my previous blog, which I now have in my possession?

The last useful documentation in this recently discovered collection, include information on the War Widows Pension that my Great Grandmother received for her and two children. From the end of April 1919, Ada was granted a pension of 25/5d per week. And that is the end of the story. More questions answered about another casualty of a pointless war. More children growing up without a Father, a wife without a Husband, Grandchildren without a Grandfather and Parents without a son. Lest we forget.

A few of my favourite Peterborough Radical History stories…

Peterborough’s location makes it a complex place. Situated on the edge of the Fens and the arable Midlands lowlands, Cathedral aside, Peterborough was not a very large or remarkable place until the railways came to town at the end of the 1840s. During the last half of the nineteenth century, it laid claim to having the busiest Corn Exchange in the country, acting as a transport hub and market place for the surrounding agricultural areas.

A lot of Peterborough’s archive records are based in Northampton. Having been part of that county and formally placed in the East Midlands until the early twentieth century, records were deposited there. This makes Peterborough City, and the wider area of the Soke (or Liberty) of Peterborough, difficult to research. The rest, and most recent records are available from the Local Archives Centre based at Central Library in Peterborough. Their collection is slowly improving. The upshot is however, that the history of the city still holds a lot of potential for research projects.

In the short time I have been involved in local history research, here are a few of my favourite Peterborough radical history stories.

1. Peterborough had a mini Peasants Revolt in 1381. It started off as a riot in Cathedral Square but ended up as a massacre of the protesters in the Beckett’s Chapel, which was deconsecrated shortly afterwards. A Starbucks now stands on the site – make of that what you will.
2. In the 1640s there took place the destruction of leases and rent books held at Peterborough Cathedral by disgruntled labourers who had been drafted in to fight in the English Civil Wars. One historian described this as being only one of five events that happened during the Civil Wars that was in any way comparable to the French Revolution. The French Rev in question though was presumably the ‘Frondes’ which took place in the same century.
3. A few days of farm machine smashing took place in Yaxley, Sawtry, Alwalton, Warrington, etc. during the agricultural Swing Riots in the 1830s. Except on Sunday, when the rioters wanted to rest, according to a book on the riots by Hobsbawm.
4. There were also election night riots, which Peterborough people were famous for. When they weren’t smashing up the wooden Hastings in Cathedral Square after the announcement of the result, they were setting wooden cabs and barrels on fire and pushing them up the steps and into the doorway of the Angel Hotel on Bridge Street – Peterborough’s Tory HQ. This type of activity last took place in 1906, according to Tebbs.
5. Peterborough Trade Unions played a large part in the 1926 General Strike. At least 10% of the population of the city downed tools to take part in the 9 days of strike action that took place in early May in solidarity with miners whose negotiations had broken down with the Government and mine owners.

Condemning the slaughter of the ‘Great War’

Adventures in revolutionary Paris

Paris is one of my favourite cities. For me it is a place to feel liberated, to taste revolution in the air and to find a new story around every corner. Here are six of my favourite things about Paris.

1. The Bastille

The site of the French Revolution era Bastille is no longer home to the infamous prison but a large green column topped with a gilded statue placed in the middle of a busy roundabout. The column is inscribed with the names of street fighters killed in later insurrections of 1830 and 1848 and buried underneath the column.

2. Discovering interesting new people from the past

Last time I visited Paris I stumbled upon this – the Salon belonging to Ninon de Lenclos. I noticed it because it is commemorated with a plaque on the front of a building in a quiet backstreet, close to the Bastille and on the way to Victor Hugo’s house (the latter being placed on the colonnaded Square the Place de Vosges).  Ninon was a scandalous Libertine living in the 1600s. She shunned the traditions of religion, marriage and respectability and opened up her home as a place to discuss literary arts. This was frequented by men to begin with but later included women. A courtesan, whose lovers allegedly included Voltaire and Cardinal Richelieu, and an author, she reportedly opened an academy ‘where she taught the art of love to the sons of the aristocracy.’ Ninon also made enemies such as Ann of Austria who imprisoned her for a short time. Ninon lived until the age of 85 and is attributed to have said, ‘a woman who has loved but one man, will never know love.’[i]

3. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite

Every public building of a certain age in Paris proudly displays the inscription of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (liberty, equality and fraternity). It is included on the front of buildings such as Town Halls and schools. Although it was a slogan used in the French Revolution, it was later adopted by the Mayor of the Paris Commune, who added ‘ou la mort’ to the end when painting it across the walls of the Paris Commune. It was later used as an official motto of the Third Republic in the late nineteenth century and still adorns buildings from this time.

4. Place de la Concord

The Place de la Concorde is part of another busy roundabout at the top of the Champs Elysee and was the location of the Guillotine put to use by the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution. This was the place where Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI were executed. However, all that stands there today is a 3,300 year old Egyptian Obelisk and two monumental fountains.

5. Paris Catacombs

The Paris Catacombs are close to the Cemetery of Montparnasse, and are not a place for the feint hearted. I have visited this site before and never had to queue but on the last time I visited, I had to queue for an hour and half to get in. Well worth the wait though. The Catacombs are part of a deep limestone quarry system that runs under the streets of Paris. What lies inside is truly creepy. In the late 1700s when the cemeteries of Paris were all full, somebody came up with a plan to move all the remaining bones from the cemeteries to the old abandoned limestone quarry. As a result of this, in the Catacombs, lie the bones of around six million people. The bones are neatly stacked, some arranged in patterns such as a heart shape of skulls, in a labyrinth of small dimly lit adjoining caverns. They are arranged according to cemetery and the year they were moved there. This is the stuff that nightmares are made of but also incredibly fascinating.

6. Montmatre

Montmatre is a very bohemian area and one of my favourite locations in Paris. Despite being busy with tourists, it is the area around Sacre-Coeur that draws me. Before the Basilica was built, this was the place of the Paris Communards, who in 1871, following the French defeat in the Franco Prussian War, declared an alternative Government in the form of the Paris Commune. The Government fought back and for a week in late May that year there were battles between the two sides in the Paris streets. The last stand of the Communards took place at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, a place probably better known for the grave of Jim Morrison of the band, The Doors. However, in 1871 the remaining Communards were rounded up in the Cemetery and shot against what is now a memorial wall. The park below Sacre-Coeur is named after a particular heroine of mine from this time, Louise Michel. One of the Paris Commune, she was also a school teacher and a medical worker who fought on the barricades. There are also schools named after her. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039ctgh this is the link to a great Radio 4 documentary about Louise Michel.

These are my six top tips for Paris. Everybody has their own Paris, but this is mine. To find yours, my advice would be to take to the streets and soak up the atmosphere, feel liberated and never forget the eternal revolutionary cry of:

Liberte!

Egalite!

Fraternite!

[i] http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/ninon-de-lenclos-mademoiselle-libertine.html

Wortley Hall – the people’s stately home

On Friday night I stayed at Wortley Hall near Sheffield. Set in the village of Wortley in the Yorkshire countryside, this former stately home was once owned by a family that made its money out of the slave trade. Now it is a stately home for the people, owned by groups and individuals in the Trade Union movement. It is used as a hotel, conference hall and wedding venue. The public rooms of the building are named after campaigning bodies like the FBU dining room and the National Assembly of Women residents lounge. These rooms are decorated with socialist and Trade Union paraphernalia including a bust of Lenin and vases from the Czech Republic, while the corridors are filled with posters from the movement. The ballroom has an elaborate stained glass ceiling and large chandelier and peacocks carved across the top of the wooden door frames. There are rooms with wooden panels containing secret cupboards. The courtyard next to the bar even has a memorial to the International Brigades who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, in the way of a large olive tree and plaque. The hotel wings are also suitably named, such as the George Lansbury Wing, and the rooms large and clean and nice to stay in. The grounds are extensive, and partly wooded, which a large walled garden and fantastic views over the rolling hills of Yorkshire. 

The most amazing thing about it is that it is was left dilapidated in the middle of the twentieth century and some enterprising volunteers from the Trade Union movement built it all up from scratch, and re-decorated it. People bought shares, Trade Unions sponsored rooms and eventually it became a place suitable for people within the movement to use, to get away from the everyday grind. It is an amazing testament to community spirit. It has a friendly and very special atmosphere.

I have been there twice in the last three years to attend the annual Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Lecture. The lecture this year was about militant art and Suffragettes presented by the curators of the recent Sylvia Pankhurst art display at the (old) Tate Gallery in London. The lecture demonstrated the very clever way in which women received an education in the world of art while working on their own pieces to use in demonstration. It showed the imagination that some of the Suffragettes had when it came to entwining art with their cause and the sacrifices they made – Sylvia for example gave up art school in Manchester for a life of politics, however, she was able to use what she had learnt to further her socialist causes. The curators also said there was still a lot to learn.

While I was there I the son of the man who started got the volunteers together. He is 91 years old and was showing a video he taken twenty five years ago of people gathering in the building and having parties. The decoration is different now, more classic. The wallpaper in the bar looked very 70s in the video. But what an amazing place it is now and a real testament to community spirit.

Tribute to HAL 1886-1918

 

The photos are of one of my paternal Great Grandfathers – let’s call him by his nick-name, Hal. Hal went off to fight in the the First World War. Well, I say fight, he was in a Sanitary Section of the RAMC so would have been unarmed. The Sanitary Sections jobs was to make sure water was safe to drink, billets were clean, etc. From what I can figure out, Hal was posted into Red Cross Hospitals in England for most of the war and was not posted abroad until 1917. When he went, he was called out to Italy, a front that is overlooked most of the time. And there he died, less than a month before the end of the war on my Grandmothers fourth birthday. Hal was 32 years old when he died. He was an excellent artist, and had a career in Local Government as an ‘Inspector of Nuisances’ to come back to. He had a wife and two young daughters who were waiting for him to return. He had everything to live for. He died from pneumonia in October 1918.  

The Importance of the Radical Action in the History of World War One

As an historian of radical (grassroots) matters who specialises in working class, Trade Union and protest history, I am conflicted by the centenary celebrations of the First World War. My specialism means I should not be interested in the curriculum version of it – Empire, Kings, and victories and loses, or who was to blame. I should certainly not take any notice of the establishment way of forcing us to remember it. But I can’t help but be a little curious – the commemoration itself is a small piece of history after all. In the city where I live, like many other towns and cities in Britain, there are commemorations taking place on August 4, the day Britain declared war on Germany. In my location these commemorations consist of: a civic ceremony which takes place during mid-morning when most people are at work; an invitation only event for veterans and their families; a classic car display in the city square; and a recording of the declaration of war played at 11pm in the city square. I will probably attend the latter because curiosity will get the better of me, but I will be wearing the controversial white poppy which I have recently purchased from the Peace Pledge Union, which commemorates all who died – including Contentious Objectors (COs) and those who were shot as deserters. There are all part of the radical history or the First World War.

It is important to remember these people alongside those who died fighting in the trenches of Flanders fields, or in the snowy mountains of the Italian Alps, the malaria ridden swamps of Thessaloniki, and the pine forests of the Gallipoli Peninsular. Many deserters were sent to prison or shot abroad while many home-based Contentious Objectors and war resisters had voting rights denied, were subject to employment discrimination, were imprisoned, sent to fight anyway, conscripted into non-combatant roles or given death sentences. Ten COs were reported to have died in prison and seventy-three as a direct result of prison or military treatment. Some refused to be drafted due to religious or political reasons, others family commitments and some just did not believe in the war. By 1918 there was a lot of discontent within the armed forces. People signed up to fight in 1914 with some enthusiasm, for adventure, for King and Country patriotism, because they were told it was the right thing to do by their family and friends. The Suffragettes were behind it, the TUC agreed to a no strike pact with the Government, and the Labour Party even agreed it was the right thing to do once Belgium was invaded. However, four years later, perceptions of the war were different, people were war weary and more importantly, the number of strikes, mutinies and discontent within the army were increasing. They were angry about sub-standard uniforms and ammunition, harsh treatment by Officers, bad food, and the endurance appalling environments surrounded by death and destruction among other things.

Radical historians argue that this was the real reason why the armistice was signed. There was no victory for either side, the armstice being little more than a truce. It came about because people simply refused to be cannon fodder for the rich and powerful any more. For example, as early as September and December 1917, demonstrations and strike in Etaples and Boulogne resulted in the Egyptian and Chinese forces refusing to work. They tried to break out of camp following appalling treatment from the British Expeditionary Forces and many were shot and wounded. In 1918, 676 troops were court-martialled and sentenced to death for sedition and mutiny. These acts of rebellion spread to the British Mainland: a three day strike by machine-gunners at Pirbright in Sussex; and brutal and degrading treatment of Soldiers by Officers led to a mass walk out by soldiers based at Shoreham. The result of this unrest was that the de-mobbing process was increased to 1,000 soldiers a week. In France, a month after the armistice was signed, Royal Artillery troops in Le Harve rioted and burnt down their barracks; there was also unrest among troops in Calais in December the same year. By January 1919 over 20,000 troops in the French city, including female members of the Queen Mary Auxillary Army unit joined the mutiny. This unrest spread across the channel to Folkstone, Dover, Southwick, Fleixstowe, Aldershot, Southampton, Blackpool and Chatham as well as other places. Smaller protests, strikes and demos also took place by soldiers at this time.

These rebels were working class men who were influenced by their roots, by their Trade Union backgrounds. They simply wanted a fair deal and better treatment now that the war was over. But this is a secret history. And in his blog article for Left Foot forward, Peter Tatchell argues that, ‘…it’s not a story that the official WW1 commemoration wants to highlight. It might give people the wrong ideas.’ The idea that it was radical action through acts of rebellion from the working classes not politicians and war heroes which bought an end to the futile war, that was World War One. This is an important, and little known, part of Britain’s Radical history.

References:
Will Ellworth Jones (2008), ‘We will not Fight’

Peter Tatchell (2014), ‘WWI: The Hidden Story of Soldiers’ Mutinies, Strikes and Riots’ http://www.leftfootforward.org/2014/08