The Taff Vale Railway Strike

Between 1893-98 coal mining strikes in South Wales brought suffering to railway workers and miners with the suspension of the guaranteed sixty hour week and lay offs. The Taff Vale railway workers moved a quarter of the eighteen million tons of coal dug out by South Wales miners. The Boer war increased the demand for South Wales coal and the miners won pay increases but rail workers did not even though the cost of living increased. Grievances running high  about wages and conditions, but also about a specific charge of victimisation against a signalman by the name of John Ewinfton,  General Manager of the Taff Vale Railway's  refusal to meet with their representatives the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (thw workers union),certainly did not help, so at  midnight of August 19th 1900  1,327 workers of the Taff Railway Company went on  strike. Richard Bell, ASRS general secretary, travelled to Cardiff to organise the picketing against scab labour. In the course of the struggle, tracks were greased, trucks uncoupled and locomotive engines put out of action.The picketing that took place is said to be the best organised in any railway strike in Britain with no coal trains running on the first day.At the height of the strike, a mass demonstration of around 12,000 took place at Cathays Park in Cardiff, organised by the Cardiff Trades Council, in support of the railway workers. The company drummed up strike breakers, known as blacklegs or scabs, through the National Free Labour Association and ordered strikers and their families to vacate rented company cottages.Finally furious employers plotted with the strikebreaking National Free Labour Association and the Employers Parliamentary Council to smash the strike with an injunction, which was duly granted. Although the strike was settled by mediation after only eleven days, the employers carried their legal case for compensation to the Lords and successfully sued for damages against the union to the tune of £23,000, with additional costs of £27,000 – a formidable sum at the time.

It also proved to be a landmark decision, as it shattered the belief that unions could not be held responsible for damages as a result of the actions of their members, this prosecution followed a decade of attacks on trade union rights and the verdict practically eliminated the strike as a weapon of organised labor. The newly formed unions for the unskilled workers had suffered loss of membership due to unemployment. Employers recruited the unemployed, including criminal gangs to break strikes, and a whole series of court decisions deprived the unions of the right to a closed shop and to refuse to deal with non-union firms.The Tory press launched a tirade against the unions, calling them 'our national mafia' and called upon the state to protect the public from 'working class tyranny'.
The Taff Vale case had an immediate impact it would help foster the growth of the recently formed  formed Labour Representation Committee. It was essential for the unions that legislation be put through Parliament to reverse this judgement and guarantee unions immunity during an industrial dispute. The lack of trade union support for the LRC changed. In 1900 it had less than half the trade union movement affiliated. Key unions like the Miners Federation saw the implications of Taff Vale for themselves and switched to Labour from supporting the Liberals. Within two years the affiliated membership of the LRC had doubled from 455,450 to 861,200.
The Taff Vale judgement helped make minds up in favour of a Labour Party in parliament which by now had been formed, however at the 1906 general election three corner contests were avoided through agreements between the LRC and Liberal Party. It was a Liberal landslide including 29 LRC MPs. These 29 MPs were though able to exercise enough pressure upon the Liberal Government to pass the Trades Disputes Act of 1906. Legalizing peaceful picketing and restoring union immunity against actions for damages caused by strikes.The behaviour of one employer had been sufficient to cement the links between the trade unions and the Labour Party. The ruling class now had to face a labour movement which was going from strength to strength and able to exercise influence in Parliament as well as on the industrial front. The years of the Liberal Government saw increasing industrial militancy with disputes in all the major industries such as mining, the docks and the railways. A triple alliance was forged between the unions of the three main industries. Amalgamation Committees were set up and the number of trade unionists increased. The Labor Party though in parliament seemed to be irrelevent to union militants who turned to direct action and were being pulled towards revolutionary ideas such as syndicalism and workers control . The Taff Vale Railway Strike must  be remembered as a landmark in the history of industrial relations in Britain, that should not to be forgotten today as Tory anti-trade union legislation continues to set back trade union rights back over one hundred years.

Captain Beefheart- Flower Pot

'Take this magic flower from my flowerpot
Tell your little girl it can help you a lot
Wear it in your hair
Wear it on your heart
With the magic power of this flower
We shall never be apart
We shall never be apart
Jungle free city hot
Can’t fool me or my flowerpot
Magic petals magic stem magic mountains and magic men.'

- These are the original unused lyrics by Herb Bermann for the unreleased track Flower Pot, recorded as an instrumental only at the end of 1967.

http://www.beefheart.com/i-was-a-scribe-for-captain-beefhe…/

http://www.beefheart.com/herb-bermann-speaks-part-2/

Respect to Scottish Football fans as they show solidarity for the Palestinian people.

Fans at a football match between Glasgow Celtic and Israeli side Hapoel Beer Sheva turned whole sections of the stadium into a sea of Palestinian flags in an amazing show of unity, strength and solidarity on Wednesday night protesting against the Israeli occupation on night, ignoring an official ban on political demonstrations, despite Scottish police urging fans to not bring Palestinian flags, threatening them with arrest. However many Celtic fans have long identified with left-wing causes, among them the Palestinian struggle. The flag of Palestine is seen flying at games the club plays, and the match with Hapoel Be'er Sheva will be no exception.When hundreds of Palestinians were on hunger strike in Israeli jails in 2012, the group unfurled a banner reading "Dignity is more precious than food.".Also  through extensive fundraising work the supporters have helped bring Palestinian youth to the UK to take part in football tournaments and cultural tours.Numerous members have also visited the occupied West Bank.
Celtic could now  face penalties from UEFA, Europe’s football governing body, for allowing the protests to go ahead, but some fans said they were prepared to pay any fine themselves to show their opposition to Israel's participation in the competition.This has got Celtic into hot water with the football authorities previously. The club was fined 16,000 pounds ($20,750) by the Union of European Football Associations ( UEFA) after fans flew Palestine flags during a game against the Icelandic side KR Reykjavik. The game took place at the same time as the Israeli army's "Protective Edge Operation in Gaza", which left more than 2,200 Palestinians and at least 73 Israelis dead.
More than 800 people joined a Facebook group titled “Fly the flag for Palestine, for Celtic, for Justice.The group’s creators called on Celtic fans to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, saying that people should express their “democratic rights to display our opposition to Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and countless massacres of the Palestinian people”.The Facebook group also said that UEFA should not support Israel and its policies. “When someone is representing Israeli state institutions it is sadly never merely a game; football, UEFA, and Celtic FC are being used to whitewash Israel’s true nature and give this rogue state an air of normality and acceptance it should not and cannot enjoy until its impunity ends and it is answerable to international law and faces sanctions for the countless UN resolutions it had breached,” it read.The Palestinian flag is more than a national symbol; it has taken on the mantle of a symbol of defiance in the face of colonial oppression and apartheid, it should not be a crime to wave it.
Celtic won the match 5-2 and now appear likely to qualify for the lucrative group stages of the UEFA Champions League, in which Europe's top clubs compete for the game's most sought after trophy.Much respect to the Celtic fans, thanks from the bottom of my heart for showing humanity at its best.Sending a clear message to the Palestinians that their struggle is not forgotten. Free Palestine..

Butterfly Collector

(some free verse
for jane the flutterfurb)


I'm a collector of many things
music and books, friends who bring kindness
butterflies that roam among the flowers and grass
who often call fluttering down gently
whispering softly above my head
dancing and teaching me ways to be free
allowing my mind to drift past sadness
filling my heart with joy and gladness
under the sky and influence of love
reminding me of other things to cherish 
that continue to enrapture and capture the heart.
.

James Keir Hardie (15/8/1856 - 26/9/15) Happy Birthday, Republican and Socialist

Born today 1856 in New House, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, in dire poverty in a single room cottage, this illegitimate son of a servant, Mary Keir, was to become a giant in the socialist movement, rising from coalminer to become the first Labour Party Leader, and to become one of the greatest evangelists for the ideas of socialism.
He would derive from his mum, many of his good qualities. She was a woman of marked individuality and strength of character, nothing could daunt her, or dampen her convictions. At the age of ten, he went to work in a local mine, where through self-education he would learn the lessons of solidarity and comradeship. This would help him as he used his voice to speak of a world where woman and man were born equal. Denouncing the rich, the politicians and the establishment, all exploiters, and would see him calling for the destruction of the capitalist system. He was one of the greatest agitators of his day. ( who reminds me of another bearded teetotaller, and advocate of passion currently spreading his message, one Jeremy Corbyn, who earlier this year spoke at the annual Keir Hardie Lecure put on by the Cynon Valley Labour Party in Aberdare.)
He  was to help found the Independent Labour Party in 1893, and was one of the first two Labour M.P's elected to the UK Parliament. He was to mark himself out as a radical both by his dress- he wore a tweed suit and cloth cap, whilst most other members of Parliament wore more formal dress- and the subjects that he advocated - the nationalisation of the coalmines, for the unemployed, womens rights, republicanism and free education. Stuff that still echoes strongly today.
His first constituency was in West Ham, London (1892) and later Merthyr Tydfil here in Wales.
In 1894 251 miners were killed after an explosion at a mine in Pontypridd and after his request for a message of condolence to be sent to the families of the berieved was refused by parliament and a message of congratulation to Buckingham Palace on the birth of the future Edward VIII agreed, Hardie delivered a vitriolic attack on the monarchy, which resulted in him losing his seat at the next election in 1895.
During this period Hardie travelled across the world to learn from other labour movements, and visited the South Wales coalfields on numerous occasions, especially during the 1898 strike. As a result he was invited to stand in the Merthyr Tydfil constituency and won the seat on 10 October 1898. With only two Members of Parliament, it was not easy for the Independent Labour Party in Westminster, but success came in the January 1906 elections as a result of an entente with the Liberals. The Independent Labour Party won 29 seats and Keir Hardie kept his seat in Merthyr Tydfil.
.Hardie spent the next five years laying the foundations of the future Labour Party and returned to parliament in 1900 as an MP for the Labour Representation Party, which in 1906 changed its name to the Labour Party, with Hardie becoming its first leader.For the rest of his life he was to devote himself to the causes that he believed in, publicly defending calls for general strikes, syndicalism and militancy. He was also one of the first to call for equality between the races in South Africa, and  because he was a lifelong committed pacifist and humanist, this led him to  believe that the interests of the working classes were inseperable from peace, and when the First Wold War broke out in 1914, he was  to oppose it, and was to address anti-war demonstrations  up and down  the country and to support conscientious objectors.
For  years he tirelessly addressed meeting after meeting, nearly every day and night, travelling long distances to be known for his powerful oratory, often negating meals and continuing to spread ideas with comrades long into the night. Never to forget his working class roots, these people who he completely understood, he realised their plight, never deserting them, with his untarnished devotion and faith in their cause.
Sadly his dreams of peace were not to be, and after a series of strokes he died in Glasgow on 21st September, 1915 at the tragically young age of 59.He is buried in Cunnock, Ayrshire.
Today I remember him,because he stood in  many respects unprecedented as a working class leader in our country. He was  the first man  from the midst of the working class who completely understood them, completely sympathised with them, completely realised their plight, and completely championed them. After entering Parliament he  never deserted them, never turned his back on a single principle, and retained his unbroken affection and respect for the working class, his untarnished loyalty to them, his championship of them, his enduring faith in their cause.We owe an awful lot to his example and the legacy which he left.

On the future Edward V111

' From his childhood onward this boy will be surrounded by sychophants and flatterers by the score - and will be taught to believe himself as a superior creation. A line will be drawn between him and the people whom he is to be called upon some day to reign over. In due course, following the precedent which has already been set, he will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumours of a morgantic alliance will follow - and the end of it all will be that the country will be called upon to pay the bill.'

- House of Commons speech (1894)

New age.?

The heat is on, we are all effected
as the days speed hungrily on by,
aggression increases, fear grows in all
connecting the proverbial dots
can feel very tragic and make us feel small,
unravelling a trajectory of violence
that is rooted in foreign intervention, 
instead of peace, spreads contamination
with frustrated, alienated, misguided men,
sowing seeds of hate and destruction.
As the days begin to weigh us down
time now to seek out the gaze of love,
the most powerful drug known to man,
build a brighter future, a new age of clarity
to help us escape this world of insanity,
before the count of zero we all explode
with a soaring, kicking, pain implode,
remember hope is always there to seize
all you really have to do is to believe.

Labour Party wins appeal against voting rules thus treating its members with contempt.

Despite 130,000 members being told in black and white that they were eligible to vote in upcoming leadership elections upon registration, they have now been officially cast aside by their own party in an attempt to skew a result that is already a foregone conclusion.The biggest kick in the teeth, however, is that the permission to do so was granted by a former key lawyer of Tony Blair’s Labour government one Sir Philip Sales QC.This is shocking but in a way not surprising as the right wing of the labour party represent the establishment.It is abundantly clear now just how committed the establishment and the state are to trying to remove Jeremy Corbyn and to bring control of the Labour Party back towards those who represent their interests. Still angry though and lots of other people will be too.By pursuing this case to the Appeal Court the Labour right-wing have shown how ruthless they are prepared to be to defend the interests of their establishment backers, scared of an empowered membership that is not prepared anymore to put up with an elitist political system. The rule-or-ruin approach in this battle gives a glimpse of the type of undemocratic regime that would continue to operate in the Labour Party if Owen Smith were to win. If this is how they treat their own members, with contempt, God knows how they would treat the rest of us. It all seems a bloody mess,as shadow chancellor John McDonnell said in reaction on BBC 5 news "I think this is a grubby manoeuvre and people who have been involved in it should be ashamed of themselves," democracy eh,  ha ha ******* ha.
I must say I nearly rejoined the Labour Party too, was a member once before it drifted away from its socialist heart, but was encouraged by the new direction it seemed to be taking, ordinary people energised by Jeremy Corbyn's authentic radical agenda. But sadly right wing elements within the party like the Blairites and those that align themselves to Progress continue to treat people with contempt, in this case after using stolen money to fund their appeal, robbing the poor to halt democracy and exclude the poorest and most disadvantaged people in society from having a vote - a shame and stain on Labour. It is no surprise that the 50,000 people who got rejected to vote after paying £25 were all Jeremy Corbyn supporters. This is where any notion of democracy ends and an elitist oligarchy in the Labour Party begins. What these disenfranchisers is doing serves the Tories more than it does Labour. I hope that all the new members who joined and have been excluded from voting and are currently feeling dissapointment carry on taking on the establishment, keep making a stand against austerity, keep fighting for a better society and  confronting some of the most powerful aspects of British society and keep on embracing a progressive straight talking form of politics,whether they stay inside the Labour Party or not that represents the 99%. Power to the people. 

Google says Palestine was never on Google Maps after claims it had been 'airbrushed' away.

There was outrage online recently after Google appeared to delete Palestine from its Maps service after a glitch caused the West Bank and Gaza to briefly disappear,but the internet giant was forced  to explain that the country "has never been" on the service. 
Palestine, although recognised as a country by the United Nations, has never been on Google Maps. Instead of being demarcated with a solid line that denotes a country border, Google instead defines the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with a dashed border - the mark it uses to outline disputed territories.
Google was forced to explain that it doesn't define Palestine as a country separate from Israel on Maps after a petition signed by 250,000 people described the company's "airbrushing" of Palestine as "deeply offensive" and called for the internet giant to put Palestine on its map.
If you search for Palestine on Google maps, you might be surprised to find that it is not marked on the widely-used mapping tool, Palestine has not been removed because it was never there in the first place. Due to its ongoing conflict with Israel, Palestine was not shown on Google Maps five months ago, when the petition – which has only picked up serious momentum recently – was created.
Despite their misplaced anger, tens of thousands of people have flocked to sign the petition to add Palestine to Google Maps. The petition states that, in failing to recognise Palestine, ‘Google is making itself complicit in the Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine’ But if you search “Palestine” in Google Maps today, you’ll get the same result you would have gotten five months ago, when a guy named Zak Martin began the petition on the subject: The map view defaults to a demarcated, but unlabeled, region stretching from Hebron in the south to Jenin in the north, and from Jerusalem to the Jordanian border. if you click on any of the cities in this region, Google does label them as Palestinian, and the Wikipedia-sourced Knowledge Box that pops up describes Palestine as a “de jure sovereign state.” That language has been in effect since 2013, when Google — following the lead of the United Nations —  changed its designation to “Palestine” from “Palestinian territories.”

 Still, even if the current outrage is misplaced — and people are outraged, check out #palestineishere — it does raise some interesting questions about the power of mapping technologies like Google’s. In their attempts to dispassionately document the physical world online, tech companies often end up shaping our understanding of it, too.

The Palestinian Journalists Forum (PJF), in a statement released on Friday in the Middle East Monitor, condemned Google’s decision to remove Palestine from its maps, saying it “is part of the Israeli scheme to establish its name as a legitimate state for generations to come and abolish Palestine once and for all.”
The group says the removal of Palestine’s name from the Google Maps was a blatant attempt to undermine Palestinian statehood forever and claims the move is just another attempt to distort history and geography.
“The move is also designed to falsify history, geography as well as the Palestinian people’s right to their homeland, and a failed attempt to tamper with the memory of Palestinians and Arabs as well as the world,” the statement added.
In addition, the group demanded that Google reverse the name changes made on July 25, noting that the move was “contrary to all international norms and conventions.”
In 1947, after millions of Jewish people were killed and displaced by the Nazis during the Holocaust, the United Nations' member states overwhelmingly voted to create a Jewish state in what was then Palestine. Palestinians resisted the move, but by December 1947, the first clearing' operations were conducted against Palestinian villages by Jewish forces. A bloody and deeply contentious fight over the land between Jews and Arabs has ensued to this day.
While Palestine has been recognised by the UN as its own state since 2012, it is now largely regarded as territories occupied by Israel.Most of the areas claimed by the State of Palestine have been occupied by Israel since 1967 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. Its independence was declared on November 15, 1988, by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Algiers as a government-in-exile.As of September 2015, 136 (70.5%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations and two non-member states have recognized the State of Palestine. Many of the countries that do not recognize a State of Palestine nevertheless recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.The omission of Palestine remains a grievous insult to the people of Palestine and undermines the efforts of the millions of people who are involved in the campaign to secure Palestinian independence and freedom from Israeli occupation and oppression.

This is an important issue, as Google Maps are now regarded as definitive by people around the world, including journalists, students and others carrying out research into the Israel-Palestine situation.While the fact that Google never defined Palestine on Google Maps certainly doesn’t make the situation any better, it is interesting to see how quickly social media can mobilise people towards a cause – even when they aren’t presented with exactly all the facts.Whether intentionally or otherwise, Google is still making itself complicit in the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The internet's indignation is not delegitimized by the misperception that this is a recent change, given the source of it comes from Palestine's exclusion. For these reasons Google Maps decision to never include Palestine in the first place should continually be questioned since as one of the world's top go-to GPS navigations, it holds accountability as to how the world interprets states, nations, and our overall worldview. Google can try to can remove Palestine from the maps but it will never remove it from our hearts.

Further to this post being written I now have much more accurate information  from Zac Martin dated  31/5/19  which you can access here it is well worth reading. Apologies for the inaccuracies contained in above post,

 https://www.facebook.com/notes/google-put-palestine-on-your-map/googles-response/2348385032103825/

Kenneth Patchen (13/12/11 -8/1/72) - The Artists Duty

 So it is the duty of the artist to discourage all traces of shame
To extend all boundaries
To fog them in right over the plate
To kill only what is ridiculous
To establish problem
To ignore solutions
To listen to no one
To omit nothing
To contradict everything
To generate the free brain
To bear no cross
To take part in no crucifixion
To tinkle a warning when mankind strays
To explode upon all parties
To wound deeper than the soldier
To heal this poor obstinate monkey once and for all

To verify the irrational
To exaggerate all things
To inhibit everyone
To lubricate each proportion
To experience only experience

To set a flame in the high air
To exclaim at the commonplace alone
To cause the unseen eyes to open

To admire only the absurd
To be concerned with every profession save his own
To raise a fortuitous stink on the boulevards of truth and beauty
To desire an electrifiable intercourse with a female alligator
To lift the flesh above the suffering
To forgive the beautiful its disconsolate deceit

To flash his vengeful badge at every abyss

To HAPPEN

It is the artist’s duty to be alive
To drag people into glittering occupations

To blush perpetually in gaping innocence
To drift happily through the ruined race-intelligence
To burrow beneath the subconscious
To defend the unreal at the cost of his reason
To obey each outrageous inpulse
To commit his company to all enchantments.

(Reprinted from one of my favourite books:-
The Journal of Albion Moonlight - Kenneth Patchen
New Directions Press, 1961.

No more Hiroshimas, No more Nagasakis: Ban nuclear weapons!

On August 6, 1945 the US dropped an atomic bomb ("Little Boy") on Hiroshima in Japan. Three days later a second atomic bomb ("Fat Man") was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. These were the only times nuclear weapons have been used in war. Combined it resulted  in the deaths of over 400,000 people. This is exactly what these horrific weapons are designed to do-indiscriminately kill vast amounts of people.
There are more than 15,000 nuclear weapons in the worlds arsenal now, ready to destroy the world. In the coming months, governments will decide if negotiations of a treaty banning nuclear weapons should start or not. I hope that the majority of the states in the world are ready to support a resolution at the UN General Assembly to start negotiations of a new treaty banning nuclear weapons. The holdouts for supporting the ban treaty are the nuclear weapons states, as well as those countries that are part of the U.S. nuclear alliance around the world including NATO states, and in the Pacific, Australia, South Korea, and Japan.We should keep pressuring our Governments to urge them that nuclear weapons should not be used against any nation under any circumstances.The following video has been produced by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Let us remember. Let us learn. Let us make sure this never happens again.It should be unthinkable today that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should ever be repeated.

Memorial events are planned across the UK for Hiroshima Day. See tinyurl.com/HiroshimaDay