Things to Remember

This is not a shopping list: it is a thread I want to create so that people can say something about events in the past which they see as important. I am starting today because this weekend is the anniversary of the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in 1932. That is one of the important events for my family: part of that alternative history I have discussed in other contexts

If you do not know about this event the wiki article is helpful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_trespass_of_Kinder_Scout


As ever, songs are an important vehicle for keeping that kind of history alive and once again this as well served by the late Ewan McColl

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YENYMwuCG2Y

My father used to sing this when he was drunk: he didn't have a good voice but he did have anger and a personal commitment to the right to roam. My family is littered with those largely self educated working class men, who owed a lot to the communists. In the first half of the last century they provided free education classes, and they also provided the only opportunities and encouragement for young men and women to get out of ovecrowded, dirty cities at weekends and take to the hills. Bothies, and camps, and folk who knew the mountains: many climbers learned to love that, on those stalinist weekends full of youth and health and nature and politics. The alternative was the church, I suppose: but that would not have done for my family. The communists had an agenda, just as the church did: but they provided real worth and opportunity to go along with ideology. They freed those young men and women for some part of their week: and for many it remained a life long joy.

Scotland has no law of trespass but that did not mean we were wholly free to roam: there is not a lot you can do to assert your rights when a gamekeeper has a gun and a bad attitude: but we were luckier than the english, and we did not need to fight so hard for a right only finally granted in 2000.

I know the tales I was told are rose tinted: but you did not need much money to go: some way of getting there and some food,was all. They walked or cycled or hitched and they were all " a free man on Sunday". And I will tell you a story of those men and women, for this is a thread for it.

I am not a climber nor even a hill walker: but I have friends who are. When I was at school I went to Glencoe with a climbing club, just because I had the chance. Most of the members were blokes: they worked all week in various jobs and they left the city on Friday after work and travelled to Glencoe where there is a bothy they use. By train or car, or any way they could get there. They carried all they needed (mostly improvised climbing gear and booze, and a singularly unhealthy diet). They arrived quite late and Friday was for crack and drinking and the easy mutual insult that friends enjoy. The bothy is a one room stone hut with a sleeping platform and a stove. It was late autumn, this particular weekend: and it was not raining! I was not part of the group: but I spectated and it was better than a play (well, I had never been to a play, so I did not know that then: but I know now). I remember watching from my sleeping bag on the platform while they planned their everest expedition, which involved extravagant plans for getting 3 month's worth of "squerries"* to the Himalayas, and up the mountain. Funny and self deprecating and with no hint of bitterness for those who could really aspire to such a trip and had the money to equip it: a dream tamed by humour and wholly beyond reach. And full of bravado and boasting

On Saturday they went climbing. A long day on the hill then back to the bothy for "squerries" and tea and bread and beans and stuff. And drink.

After dark (not late at that time of year) some people arrived: the mountain rescue guys. A climber had come off and was stuck on the hill: not clear what his condition was but he was reasonably well equipped and his pal had brought word. Within minutes the whole scene had changed. From banter and boasting there was sudden and serious action. There was no more bravado. People said if they could go or not and they did so in sober earnest: "I have had too much to drink": "I have done the Buchail and the ridge and I am too tired to be of use": "I had a short day and I am fit". Those who could go were quickly identified and those who could not lent gear or knowledge of the terrain and suggestions about how best to tackle this: then they were gone.

It ended well. They found him and they got him off and they came back and made very little of what they had done: back to football or tales of home made skis and slapstick accounts of daft things they had done when they were getting started. And booze and bed. And short climbs the next day for some: or just walks. Then home in whatever way they could get there.

Every year in Scotland there are folk who get stuck on the hill. And the mountain rescue trust the climbers to help, and to know their limitations. They all get angry about folk who go up without good enough gear: but they go and get them anyway.

And the big landlords who live in Essex think they own this land. They try to keep these men and women from the hill.


Kinder Scout was a small protest in the scheme of things: but it had a lasting impact. When I lose heart and start to think nothing you do makes any difference, I sing the Manchester Rambler and remember my dad and his pals and camping trips to wilderness places he knew well, when I was a child. And I remember that night as well. It taught me what it is to be an adult and I am still trying

* Also known as Lorne Sausage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_sausage

It borders on disgusting: but it is cheap

It is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica this year.

In 1937 Franco asked Hitler and Mussolini to intervene in the Spanish civil war. Hitler wanted to train his armies and so it was that Guernica became the first example of total destruction of a city through bombardment from the air. The bombing was carried out by a squadron of the Luftwaffe and, I believe, some Italian troops were also involved.

There is a lot of dispute about the number of casualties and there is still propaganda about the significance of Guernica to this day. It is likely that we would have forgotten the episode but Guernica benefits from the fact that artists have used it as a theme: it is a testament to the importance of art in shaping our history, as I also argued above. In this case the best known work is by Pablo Picasso, though it hardly stand alone

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC-mJwx_cJI


There is also this short piece which I think was written by Joan Baez: it moves me

In Guernica

In Guernica the dead children were layed out in order on the sidewalk
In their white starched dresses
In their pitiful white dresses
On their foreheads and breasts the little round holes where death came in as thunder while they were playing their important summer games
Do not weep for them, Madre
They are gone forever, the little ones
Straight to heaven to the saints
And God will fill the bullet holes with candy

Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the publication of the Beveridge report, which formed the basis for the welfare state. Given that this conception of the good society has been largely dismantled by a different narrative, founded on different conceptions of what we should aim for (or a claim that this is unsustainable, even if accepted) it is important to remember what was a truly awesome achievement: one we should value and defend.

Beveridge was clear in his aims: he wished to tackle 5 great evils he considered had no place in a civilised country. Those evils were identified in language which strikes us as somewhat old fashioned and quaint. He called them Squalor, Ignorance, Want, Disease, and Idleness. One is reminded of the personification of abstractions which was such a feature of certain types of writing in earlier times, perhaps most famously seen in "A Pilgrim's Progress"

But those terms translated into very practical policy prescriptions. Squalor was to be tackled by the provision of good quality housing for all; Ignorance by universal education; Want by a benefits safety net; Disease by universal health care; and Idleness by a full employment policy. Thus can abstraction point the way to solutions. A clear characterisation of what one is trying to achieve, unmuddied at its core by the inevitable complications of detail, is great politics. It allows a simple benchmark against which to measure what we do. It has taken many years to undermine those understandings and a great deal of weaselling to persuade people that black is white and that policies which result in the opposite outcomes are somehow in line with those values.

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln in the United States. I confess that this is news to me. I had not appreciated how this happened or what it meant, being more aware of the ratification of the US wide abolition of slavery in 1865 through an amendment to the constitution. Americans will know more about this, but it seems that on this day in 1863 Abraham Lincoln made the freeing of slaves an explicit war objective. The proclamation did not apply to slave states which were not in rebellion against the union, nor to most areas which were already controlled by the union army, and which were not so because of suppression of the rebellion. Nevertheless it ultimately freed 3 million people, and I presume it laid the ground for the outlawing of slavery throughout the US.

As an outsider it seems to me that the history of slavery in the US is influential even today. Some of the attitudes and social mores which follow naturally from that history are imported wholesale to my own country, and I do not think that works very well: but there is no doubt that abolition of slavery and rendering it wholly unacceptable in principle across the world is an important development, despite its persistence in practice.

Edited by FionaK - 2/1/2013, 12:16

On January 22nd 1973 the American Supreme Court made its ruling on the case Roe v Wade. This was a landmark case on the issue of abortion, and its strengths and weaknesses are still immensely relevant. Abortions rights are under attack, as ever, and one thread in that attack goes back to Roe v Wade because the court affirmed the right of the state to regulate abortion after the foetus became "viable".

Roe v Wade was an important step forward for women seeking abortion because it decided that in the first trimester of pregnancy the state had no role at all. What is often forgotten is that this was not on the basis of a woman's right to choose: it was based on the doctor's right to freely practice medicine. It also specifically rejected a "right to life" argument.

In practical terms Roe v Wade changed the situation for women in america wrt abortion: but in terms of principle it did not uphold the right of a woman to control over her body, and it is from that failure (if you see it as a failure, as I do) that many of our current problems with abortion law arise.

Roe v Wade was an American ruling but it was influential far more widely in informing the debate on the question of abortion:and it remains so.

It is Yoko Ono's 80th birthday today: just thought I would mention that

Today is the day George Orwell was born. It is also the day that the Metropolitan police heid bummer admits that there should be an inquiry into the activities of undercover police officers over their attempts to smear the family and friends of Stephen Lawrence; and it is a day when the US is still hunting for Mr Snowden, so that they can try him as a spy, for telling us they were spying on us. Where is the Orwell de nos jours?