The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 - Mike Richardson

THE BRISTOL STRIKE WAVE OF 1889-1890 – 

MIKE RICHARDSON

I wonder why it is that local history is never taught in schools? Or at least it wasn't in my day and I've always wished that it had because quite simply – it's empowering. I grew up on a council estate in Bristol called Southmead and the only thing we were ever taught about our local area was to be ashamed of it and to keep quiet about the fact that we live there. On job applications, for example, on leaving school it was always better to put Westbury-on-Trym as your address rather than Southmead to avoid prejudicing yourself; Westbury-on-Trym being the middle class neighbouring area.

It wasn't until I began reading up on what little recorded history there was on Southmead that I discovered the name derived from what the area used to be known as in the past – South Meadow. I liked that. It had a sunny, fresh feel about it as opposed to the 'poor' and 'violent' connotations that the name Southmead was now associated with. I didn't want to feel ashamed of where I came from and I objected to being forced into feeling ashamed. I wanted to be proud and not have to show it only by fighting with gangs from other estates, which is what a lot of my peer group did. Discovering that Southmead was once known as South Meadow was a tiny, first step towards that pride.

There's a history to Southmead that I suspect has now largely been lost to the sands of time. A history not ever recorded in books but passed on through word of mouth and council estate folk tales. With the passing away of generations these tales and these memories dim and eventually pass away too. Even in my lifetime there is a history to Southmead that I know will also one day be forgotten. Events that though not on the same scale are no less significant than other historical national events.

The great fires of Southmead, the riots, the culture, the heroin wars, the characters – Joyce, the Queen of the Mead – the Southmead Boot Boys, the Pen Park hole, Concorde and its relationship to Southmead, the central Bristol slum clearance and the reconvening to Southmead, and so on and so forth. Even such things as the coach trips to Weston-super-Mare that were really just glorified mass shoplifting sprees, on one such outing the day trippers even returning with a whole juke box they'd stolen from a pub.

This obviously isn't the kind of stuff that would be taught in schools if only for the fact that teachers wouldn't even know about any of these things. It is, however, the stuff that makes us and helps to bring us to where we are now, much more so than the so-called great events and characters we are taught about in school due to it being deemed 'real' history.

Which brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and the pamphlets they publish recording history from below as opposed to the history of great wars, kings, queens and noblemen as recorded in the history books. And so to The Bristol Strike Wave Of 1889-1890 (Parts 1 and 2) by Mike Richardson, wherein the author charts the events in Bristol during those two years.

The subtitle of Part 1 is 'Days Of Hope' and reflects the optimism as engendered by various workforces throughout Bristol as they unionised and took strike action over working conditions, working hours and pay. What Richardson highlights about these strikes, however, is the involvement of women workers and in particular the role that two middle class women from the Clifton area of Bristol played in them.

Among the number of strikes during this period was one conducted by 1700 mainly women workers of the Great Western Cotton Mill in the Barton Hill area of the city in 1889. Do people even remember there was once a cotton mill in Barton Hill let alone that all the workers there went on a strike that caused fall-out throughout the whole of the city? As an example of that fall-out, Richardson quotes from a letter published in two of the local newspapers at that time from the headmaster of Clifton College that is brazen in its defense of elitism, entitlement and class privilege:

'You employees must leave the judgement of all such matters in the hands of the directors, and when, with full knowledge, with large experience, such men tell you that it is of necessity a choice between the present rate of wages or none you must accept their word.

Believe me, it is safer to trust the word of responsible and honourable men of the stamp of your directors than it is to any one else who is busying himself, or herself, in this matter. And you know it is so. You cannot really believe all that is put before you in speeches , even though you may applaud it at the time. You must know that the directors are trusted for the money which has been entrusted to them, and they have no right to defraud the shareholders of their just claims for interest.

These are foolish people (the strike leaders) with warm hearts and weak heads who tell you that if you only hold out you will win. You have been misled, as all Bristol knows, not wilfully but in ignorance.'

By all accounts the working conditions of the cotton workers were atrocious and the pay abysmal, their demands for improvement being absolutely fair and justified. Ranged against them, however, was not only the directors of the cotton mill but also the Bristol Establishment and Bristol Church leaders all of whom were telling the women workers that there was no chance of change and that their suffering must remain. In response, the striking workers were insisting they would rather go to the workhouse, or to prison, or starve than go back under the same conditions. Moreover, the idea that the shareholders must get a continuous dividend and that this was sacrosanct was also beginning to be challenged. The strikers were now rising against that idea, or as Richardson puts it, the strike was beginning to go beyond protest against immediate conditions and shifting towards a rejection of the profit system.

The cotton workers strike ended not in a pay rise but in vast improvements in working conditions and so as the women returned to work it was seen as a victory for them and a defeat for the Establishment. One of the outcomes of the strike was also the introduction of the need for arbitration, an idea that whilst viewed by some as another advance in workers' struggles was viewed by others as a retreat from effective militant unionism.

Part 2 of the pamphlets, subtitled 'Days Of Doubt' records a series of other strikes that took place the following year in 1890, and the way in which they were approached and dealt with by workers, union committees and bosses alike. Richardson charts a downturn in militancy and the entrance of more moderate voices speaking on behalf of the working class as bosses adapted and learnt from the lessons of the previous year in how to deal with discontented workforces.

The two middle class women from Clifton whom Richardson highlighted in Part 1, who were so active during the cotton workers strike become burnt out and lose their faith in the workers attaining emancipation. Interestingly, having moved from their well-to-do homes and lifestyles in Clifton to the slums of the St Phillips area of Bristol, they eventually up-sticks and move away from Bristol entirely, emigrating to America, in fact. A choice that the workers who they had spent the last year agitating for and representing would never have been able to even dream of.

There are all kinds of lessons to be gleaned from these two pamphlets – as there are from all the pamphlets published by the Bristol Radical History Group – regarding struggle, revolution, social change and ideology. There are also, of course, the lessons in how history is recorded as in from below and above, and subsequently the interpretation of that history. Why is it indeed that very few Bristolians know about the cotton workers of Barton Hill yet everything about Isambard Kingdom Brunel – who wasn't even a Bristolian? These pamphlets are a step towards addressing all these things and are worthy of attention.

John Serpico

Under Exmouth Skies (part 51)

UNDER EXMOUTH SKIES (Part 51)

"Raise the sky, we got to fly. Over the land over the sea. Fate unwinds and if we die souls arise. God, do not seize me please. Till victory." - Patti Smith

Doctor Who And The Genesis Of The Daleks - Terrance Dicks

DOCTOR WHO 

AND THE GENESIS OF THE DALEKS –

TERRANCE DICKS

Terrance Dicks – Dr Who screenplay writer and author of a plethora of books based upon the BBC television series – passed away recently and in amongst the many accolades that were paid to him one in particular stood out. It was from author Jenny Colgan who said Dicks had 'helped more children (especially boys) develop a lifelong love of reading than almost anyone else who's ever lived'. Whether that's strictly true or not doesn't really matter because at the end of the day even if it's only half true it's a wonderful tribute to him.

That same week, by chance I saw a copy of a Dr Who book being sold for 10p in a box outside of a second-hand shop. It's a sign, I thought! Like the feather floating on the breeze at the end of Forrest Gump. As did most people I imagine, I used to watch Dr Who as a child – my personal favourite being the Jon Pertwee version – but I was never a huge fan and I've never read a Dr Who book in my life. Now, it would appear, was the time to start.

Doctor Who And The Genesis Of The Daleks involves the Tom Baker version of the Doctor being sent back in time by the Time Lords to the planet Skaro to intervene in the birth of the Daleks and thus prevent them from becoming the dominant creatures in the Universe. And that's all you need to know about it, really. The point of interest about the story is its clear allusions to Nazism, with the supreme leader/scientist Davros representing Hitler, the Daleks being his stormtroopers, and his vision of a Dalek-dominated Universe a kind of thousand year Reich.

Then just as the Doctor's in a position to blow the proto-Daleks up and destroy them forever he has an existential moral crisis: 'Suppose somebody who knew the future told you a certain child would grow up to be an evil dictator,' the Doctor asks 'could you then destroy that child?'

There's an obvious knack to writing these kind of books and Terrance Dicks had it. Every second page there is a life-threatening situation that the Doctor and his companions must thwart. It's a bit like being continuously in the final moments of an episode of Batman from the 1960s television series where you have to tune in next week to see what happens, 'same Bat time, same Bat channel', except you just have to turn to the next page.

I've no idea what the modern day equivalent of these Terrance Dicks Dr Who books might be nowadays, if indeed there even is one? But if it's true that through his writing Terrance Dicks instigated a life long love of reading in children then his writing and a book such as this one is invaluable. But if, as I fear, there is no-one of his like that has replaced him then not only is it a sad thing for children but it's a sad thing for us all.

John Serpico

The Primal Screamer - Nick Blinko

THE PRIMAL SCREAMER – NICK BLINKO

Anyone with even a passing interest or regard for seminal Anarcho Punk legends Rudimentary Peni is almost duty bound to want to read this book, written as it is by Nick Blinko, the lead vocalist, lead guitarist and lead artist behind that same band. Written in the form of diary entries from the point of view of a psychiatrist by the name of Dr Dweller, The Primal Screamer tells the story of his encounter with Nathaniel Snoxell who has been brought to him by his parents following a suicide attempt.

In a bid to get to the bottom of the reason for Nathaniel's death wish, Dr Dweller puts him through a course of primal scream therapy during which the world of Nathaniel Snoxell slowly but surely opens up to him. The world revealed is strange, demented, macabre, gothic and bizarre, echoed in the pictures that Nathaniel draws of frightful, disfigured creatures with no control over their existences, leading nakedly horrific sub-lives.

It's an interesting premise, you might think? A clever idea? Particularly as it's coming from the vocalist of such a highly regarded band as Rudimentary Peni. Indeed, rather than being written as a straight narrative it's a wholly unexpected angle to be coming from. The big question, however, is does it actually work? The answer – unfortunately – is 'No, not really'...

One of the reasons why it doesn't work may well be down to Primal Screamer being Nick Blinko's first book where he's just being too ambitious and trying to be a little too clever for his own good. It's an interesting book, let that not be denied, but it's the weaving of fact and fiction (along with the inconsistently drawn character of Dr Dweller) that let's it down when it should be – and was probably intended to be – it's strength.

Much of Nathaniel Snoxell's life as described by Dr Dweller is obviously fiction or even horror fantasy. For example, the stone door hidden beneath the stairwell-cupboard in his family's home that leads to a cellar that no-one else knows about but him, wherein sits a television that hasn't been switched off in thirty years even though there's no cable coming from it. Or the attic of the house that contains vicious hooks from which hang skeletons of human children.

Alongside this, Dr Dweller also describes and records in his diary a running commentary of Nathaniel's new band that he's formed which is never specifically named but is obviously Rudimentary Peni. He notes how Nathaniel has started to frequent an 'Anarchy Centre' 'in Wapping of all places' and has made contact with 'some anarchist group which has a large distribution network of its own, records, financing the Anarchy Centre, pamphlets, etc'. Though never named, this is Crass, of course.

This obviously means that Nathaniel Snoxell is Nick Blinko – but not quite. Nathaniel is a character based upon Nick Blinko - and there's the big difference. The Primal Screamer, therefore, is a work of fiction based upon real life events that without doubt is an interesting premise as a means to tell the story of Nick Blinko and Rudimentary Peni – if that indeed was its aim? But this is where the book falls down. It's neither quite one or the other.

Anyone with any knowledge of Rudimentary Peni will immediately recognise all the sign posts, the characters, and the sequence of events. The timeline of the release of Nathaniel's band's records - from the first two EPs to the album on the anarchist label - matches perfectly with Rudimentary Peni's history. Even the little things such as them not really liking playing live is a reflection of how Peni were.

Other things, however, are a distortion. The bassist of Nathaniel's band whom Nathaniel calls 'Freak' is described as having a hare lip, cleft palate and other malformations. In the end he even dies of cancer and anarchists try to dig his body up. The drummer is referred to as 'Imbecile' and is described as liking to spend his time consuming alcohol and meat pies down the pub. It's a bit like the cartoon version of the Sex Pistols in The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle film where Sid Vicious is called 'The Gimmick', Steve Jones is called 'The Crook', and Johnny Rotten is called 'The Collaborator'.

And then there's such things as Nathaniel's description of 'the corpse of punk' as having no life in it whatsoever, it being this decayed grandeur of a fallen subculture which has so attracted him. He despises, however, the audience at the Anarchy Centre, describing them as being degenerate. Is this Nick Blinko's thoughts or the fictitious thoughts of Nathaniel Snoxell?

Distorting it further is the fact that it's all spoken through the voice of Dr Dweller via his diary, it being a very inconsistent voice at that and one that often doesn't ring true in the slightest. As just one example, would an eminent doctor on being told that in America the music as played by Nathaniel's band is known as 'hardcore', really say 'Sounds rather rude to me'?

Come the end of the book, Nathaniel is depicted as having regressed to a sub-human bestial state, last seen fleeing from a butcher's shop with a dead piglet under his arm whilst biting the head off an unplucked game bird. Has anyone actually seen Nick Blinko lately, I wonder?

Dr Dweller in the meantime has disappeared from his cell in a Tibetan Monastery in Scotland to which he's retired, leaving behind stacks of manuscripts and diaries some of which have been published in book form going under the title The Primal Screamer...

If Nick Blinko's intention was to forge reality and dream, truth and fiction, into one seamless dream state then it's an ambitious and laudable idea. Whether he succeeded in doing this with The Primal Screamer is debatable, the judgement probably being influenced by how much the reader knows about Rudimentary Peni. Perhaps the book would work better if approached with virgin eyes and no prior knowledge of Nick Blinko and his musical past?

None of this should diminish, however, the legacy of Rudimentary Peni who were and still stand as an absolutely unique, seminal and important band in the annals of punk rock history. Their music being so sublimely twisted so as to be rendered into something almost unprecedented. Accompanied and somewhat enhanced of course by Nick Blinko's art work that to this day stands alone and apart from all other artists working within the same and often misunderstood 'outsider art' scene.

John Serpico

Cranked Up Really High - Stewart Home

CRANKED UP REALLY HIGH –
STEWART HOME

The advantage in re-reading Stewart Home's Cranked Up Really High almost 25 years after it first being published is that all the songs that he writes about are now available on YouTube. Whereas before, when Home wrote for example about a song entitled King Of Punk by former yippie David Peel and declared it to be one of the greatest New York punk songs of the seventies, you just had to take his word for it – or take his words with a pinch of salt. Now, however, at a click you can give it a listen and decide for yourself whether Home is correct, and on this occasion I'm happy to report that he's right and it is indeed a very good song.

He does, however, sometimes get it wrong especially when he's talking about things other than specific songs. In his postscript, for example, he declares that Cranked Up Really High is the best theoretical account of the punk rock phenomenon to date and the only work on punk rock that is worth reading. Well, it's not a bad book at all but then so too is Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus which makes for a bit of a problem because Home seems to have written his book essentially as a riposte to Marcus, particularly regarding Marcus's linking of punk and the Sex Pistols with Situationism.

Rather than linking the Pistols to the Situationists or even to the Velvet Underground, Home makes instead a very good case of linking them more to the 1970s London hippy Underground/Notting Hill scene clustered around such bands as the Deviants, the Pink Fairies, the Edgar Broughton Band, and Hawkwind. Viv Albertine of The Slits made the same connection in her memoir Clothes Music Boys when she described the Sex Pistols on her first encounter with them as being 'loud and raucous but not bad musicians. I'd seen bands that had this anarchic quality before: the Pink Fairies, the Pretty Things, the Edgar Broughton Band...'

Before he joined the Pistols wasn't Johnny Rotten once an old Hawkwind fan himself? Didn't Lemmy even once try and teach Sid Vicious how to play bass? And then there were the record labels. Stiff Records famously released New Rose by The Damned but at the same time they also released Between The Lines by the Pink Faries. Chiswick Records released singles by punk bands such as Radio Stars and Radiators From Space but they also released the débuts from Motorhead and the 101'ers. So yes, Home’s argument is a convincing one.

Cranked Up Really High is essentially a discourse on genres within the punk rock realm with Home plotting a path between various forms of the medium. From the Fugs and the MC5 in America to the Notting Hill scene in London, to the Pistols and '77 punk to American punk to British Oi! To white power rock of the Skrewdriver kind to Riot Grrrl to Vegan Reich. A lot of it is waffle, of course, and comes across at times as being merely a way for Home to wax lyrical about some of his favourite records. Not that this is a bad thing, however, because the strength of the book lies in the way that bands not normally discussed or even ever mentioned are written about: John The Postman, the Depressions, early Adam And The Antz, Crisis, Condemned 84, Close Shave, and even somewhat controversially, Skrewdriver, to name but a few.

Along the way many valid points are made such as when Home says that punk began as music and punks themselves began as music fans and performers, which is kind of obvious but something that's often overlooked. There's a few clangers in there as well though the amusing thing is that it's unclear if they're intentional or not. For example, at one point he writes 'some readers may feel that I come across as suspiciously anti-Bergsonian, holding to the position that time is not real, that all events are merely the unfolding of a reality already existent in the world'. He's making a joke here, right?

At other times straight out of the blue he lurches into Richard Allen territory which comes at odds with the general tenor of the book, for example when he mentions a fight at a Crisis gig and writes 'the chick booted the bastard in the bollocks, severely crippling the cunt'. Is this Home in his 'demolish serious culture' mode with him intentionally trying to sabotage the 'seriousness' of his discourse, or is it just the auto mode that he falls into as soon as he begins writing about violence? Who knows?

For all this, Cranked Up Really High is a good book though I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the only work on punk rock that is worth reading. That honour, in my opinion, still belongs to England's Dreaming by Jon Savage though of course the crown is still open for the stealing...

John Serpico

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea - Yukio Mishima

THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA -

YUKIO MISHIMA

It was all going well up until the part where the children kill a cat and cut its insides open with a pair of scissors. I thought this was meant to be – according to the blurb from the Sunday Telegraph on the back cover – 'a work of exquisite balance and beauty' not a James Herbert novel. I'd earlier forgiven the description of the naked sailor as maybe a Japanese art thing rather than something that should go into Private Eye when it read 'ripping up through the thick hair below the belly, the lustrous temple tower soared triumphantly erect'. Eat your heart out Barbara Cartland. But I persevered...

I must admit, I'm always a bit wary of Japanese literature because I never really trust the translation. If you take the translation at face value then it can work really well and produce some magical if not sometimes twisted language as is the case I always thought with Haruki Murakami or even with song lyrics where the Japanese singer sings in English as translated by themselves – Japanese hardcore punk rock is brilliant for this.

Good novels, however, often tend to have a subtext and a whole other world swirling around under the actual words and if the translation is wrong then that other world is distorted and clouded. At one point, for example, Mishima writes 'with streamers waving and strains of 'Auld Lang Syne' and I immediately wondered is that how he wrote it or the way it's been translated? Is there a Japanese equivalent of 'Auld Lang Syne'?

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima is about meaning but what that meaning might be is open to translation. It's many stories within one with each of these stories themselves being multi-layered. To go by the title of the book, the main story is in regard to the sailor although he is just one of the characters and not necessarily the main one, there also being the mother and the son.

It is also about the sea, about glory, about children, pride, destiny, love, life, death and allegory. The film it was made into in 1976 starring Sarah Miles and Kris Kristofferson is weirdly good but at the same time strangely awful. After finishing reading it, the book lingers in the mind because of it being such a conundrum. Is there a relationship here between Yukio Mishima and Ayn Rand, I wonder? Is The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea Yukio Mishima's suicide note written thirteen years before he famously committed hara kiri?

I think it might be.

John Serpico

Riot. Strike. Riot - Joshua Clover

RIOT. STRIKE. RIOT – JOSHUA CLOVER

A riot is not an end unto itself but a means to an end, and what that end might be is the question that needs to be considered. Whether this has always been the case is something for historians to answer but certainly it is how things are today. According to Joshua Clover in his book Riot. Strike. Riot in the past the strike was the method by which workers would have their demands met, and this is very true. The world, however, has changed and nowadays what a strike can achieve has been reduced due to the way economics has been re-arranged. That's not to say the strike is absolutely ineffective or redundant as a tool of action, it's just that the demands a strike can call for have been contained and bracketed.

Clover's book is a complicated dissertation using the language of academia to posit ideas on how we might move toward what is essentially a revolutionary horizon. On reading it, if you don't have the will or that compulsion to move toward that horizon then you're probably going to fall after the first chapter because it's pretty hard going. At times it seems even a little strange to apply such intellectualism to a subject such as riots but then – why not? Are we meant to be intimidated by intellectualism? Are we meant to be intimidated by a riot and see it only as something to be condemned?

Whilst cutting a picaresque swathe through the jungle of words there are some really good points to be found, not only all of Clover's alone but many he has drawn from other sources to embolden his own. Regarding the police, for example, he quotes Guy Debord: 'What is a policeman? He is the commodity's active servant, the man fully subsumed by the commodity, by whose efforts a given product of human labour remains a commodity with the magical property of being paid for. Looting instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes its ultimate logic: the army, the police and the other specialised forces possessed of the State's monopoly on armed violence.'

The conclusion being that the police now stand in the place of the economy, the violence of the commodity made flesh.

Expounding upon this, the strike is applicable to the production phase of capital and the riot is applicable to the consuming and purchasing phase. Looting is still a form of purchasing except the payment is zero. During any so-called 'food riot' of old, the seizing of food by the mob was market regulation, much as exporting food in the midst of dearth is market regulation. Rather than the price being set by those who would profit and rather the market holding sovereignty, it is instead the mob who set the price and who command sovereignty, this same reversal being exemplified during the Gordon Riots of 1780 where the breached wall of Newgate Prison was signed 'His Majesty, King Mob'.

Given that the market was meant to provide full employment and a kind of equality for all, it should by now be abundantly clear that it does no such thing. The ranks of the excluded are swelling and the State can no longer purchase the social peace. It is all stick and no carrots, as Clover puts it. For the lumpenproletariat to strike is not an option and nor has it ever been which is why it is from them that any insurrection will find its urban spearhead.

Being surplus to requirement all that can be done is to hold the lumpenproletariat in check as effectively and as cheaply as possible so as not to impede upon the functioning of the market, the tool for this being the constant threat and constant use of State violence. It's no accident that the prison population is dominated by the workless poor.

'The riot,' writes Clover 'is the other of incarceration. That is to say, it is a consequence of and response to inexorable and intensifying regimes of exclusion, superfluidity, lack of access to goods and State surveillance and violence, along with the State's inability to apportion resources toward the social peace.'

Whilst public services are withered away under the guise of austerity measures or those that might generate a profit sold off and privatised, the services and institutions that money is always found for is the police and prisons. Again, it's no accident.

Of examples of the revolutionary horizon to be moved toward, Clover cites the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example along with the more recent Occupy movement though he's actually very critical of Occupy and pulls it up on some of its (many) failings. Ultimately, there is no blueprint of how to get to where we need to go and even no blueprint of where exactly that is. One thing for sure, however, is that the way things are now and the way things are going is not sustainable and simply cannot continue. Unless, that is, we want to turn the world (or even just the UK?) into a vast sub-North Korean super-state in which self interest is the guiding star, where laissez faire capitalism has free reign and profit is the be all and end all. Where nature and the environment is incidental and just something else to be exploited, where we are ruled over for the benefit of an elite 1% and the other 99% can go hang, or go beg, or go starve, or as writer Whittaker Chambers once put it: 'To a gas chamber – go!'.

The self-serving elite along with all those who benefit from the crumbs from their table must be brought to heel, and this task must fall to those who have no or very little investment in the way things are. The dispossessed. The lumpenproletariat. The excluded. The mob. Call them what you like but the important thing is not to fear them and not to fear a riot unless of course you are part of that 1% or a lickspittle of theirs. Then yes, be afraid because the end game is here. We are in it. Riots are inevitable and the mob is coming. His Majesty, King Mob is coming.

John Serpico