My old union, the TSSA

Jayne and I went down to Dorset for the day today to see the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival.  I checked the weather forecast on the BBC yesterday and it gave variations of ‘white cloud’, ‘grey cloud’ and ‘black cloud’ throughout the day, with maximum temperatures of about 18C.

What we actually got was bright sunshine, mostly totally clear skies and lots of sore red skin.To be honest, it was not as good as last year.  Jayne admitted it was not really her cup of tea, because she doesn’t really do crowds and the place was very crowded.  The festival gets busier each year but I think there were only half as many catering stalls as in 2009 so the queues were extraordinary.

The journey left a lot to be desired too.  The coach we went in had really small and uncomfortable seats (5 in each row instead of the normal 4) and the driver didn’t seem to know the way.  We went the really long way – M23/M25/M3 instead of cutting across on the A24.  On the way back he got lost, despite having sat nav.

I have mixed feelings about seeing so many people there.   It is good to be reminded that there are so many trade unionists out there.  Sometimes it is too easy to feel in a small minority, but really there are so many people in the labour movement (and they all seemed to be in the queue for the burger van).  The slightly depressing thing for me is the reminder of how fragmented the labour movement is: the Labour party, the unions, Hope Not Hate, Class Warfare, the Communist party, CND, the SWP are all fundamentally against the Tories but for all the talk of uniting it just doesn’t happen.

I guess it did happen in 1997, and a lot of people felt let down by New Labour, though they now seem to be realising how much worse things could be – and are.

As usual there were some excellent t-shirts on view.  A few of my favourites were:

• The simple red shirt with the slogan “I still hate Thatcher”
• The Barking and Dagenham election t-shirts that said “Hope 51 BNP 0″
• The t-shirts done in the style of the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks album that said ‘Never mind the bosses join the union’
• The RMT t-shirts with a picture of a snake’s head and the slogan ‘Strikes when provoked’
• The shirts with a large picture of Thatcher. At the top they say “Hurry up and die” and underneath they say “I want to party”
• The Hope Not Hate shirts which just have a large star and the words “anti fascist”

Having said that, I did catch one chap of a similar age to me pointing out my 2004 vintage Spizzenergi t-shirt to his daughter.  I think Spizz fans are bit like owners of vintage Morris Minors, flashing their headlights when they encounter another enthusiast.

We missed a lot of the entertainment, but did see the Bad Shepherds, who the sister has been raving about, having missed them when they came to Crawley last month.  We both enjoyed them, and their folk versions of punk and new wave songs.  I don’t mind folk, but know so little about it that not much of it is familiar to me.  So this was ideal – it is like folk but you already know the words!  Which is a bit ironic if you think about it.

The agricultural workers union - with Horsham CLP's chair holding up the banner

The Bad Shepherds onstage

Jerry Hicks drumming up support for his bid to be leader of my union, Unite. I doubt I will vote for him, but he is certainly running an energetic campaign.

Union banners in the parade

A few days have passed since visiting Tolpuddle so if I write about it now it is not fresh in my mind and I may have forgotten some details, but at least that stops me wittering on about total ephemera.

So anyway, here are some thoughts about the event, about the Labour movement in general and why Tony Benn reminds me of Laurel and Hardy.  All that and photos too!First of all, I have to confess that I knew very little about the festival and really did not know what to expect.  I remember the Tolpuddle Martyrs being mentioned at school, along with Jethro Tull’s seed drill, crop rotation, and so on, but the significance was glossed over.  My colleague Ray was in a similar position, so neither of us knew the order of events, which is why we missed the start of the parade.

Local boys - Brighton & Hove RMT

The most striking thing about the festival is the atmosphere.  It sounds corny, but there really is a great feeling of brotherhood there.  It could be the friendliest event I have been too on such a large scale.

When the coach dropped us off, we went into the main festival grounds, which is basically the front garden of the museum and the field next door.   There were marquees and food stalls all around, beer tents, a stage and at the fringes a campsite.  It could have been a very well-attended village fete or a Mela, except for the fact that the stalls were mostly stocking left-wing literature, badges and t-shirts or trade union promotional material, and the banners hung around the edges.

At every turn there was somebody trying to sell you Socialist Worker or another niche newspaper, or wanting you to sign a petition.  What a day it must be for them…  every other week they will be in a town centre or high street passed by an endless stream of shoppers trying to avoid eye contact. but for one day they fit in.

I am used to this sort of thing from various marches and rallies, but usually they exist in protest against something.  The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival is purely a celebration or commemoration so the atmosphere is very different.  The closest thing to it I have experienced before is when the London Gay Pride march used to end up at a park for a free concert.

A dandy highwayman?

Ray and I went for a walk into the village seeing the sites, such as they are – the methodist chapel and the martyrs’ cottage.  Seeing an entire marching band having a beer outside the village pub I did wonder if that meant we had missed the parade.  And then we came across a bit of a crowd at the church.

One of the fixed points of the day is the laying of a wreath at the grave of the one Tolpuddle martyr who came back to the village (John Hammet?) and just by chance we saw that, albeit from a distance.   I was on cloud nine because it meant I could swap lenses and use the 70-300mm telephoto to get some shots of Tony Benn.

After that we went back to the main area to scavenge for some food.  Ray’s wife had persuaded him to take a packed lunch.  I got myself a big bacon baguette.  At this point we were wondering how to pass the next few hours, when we noticed a lot of activity because the parade was starting.

The parade is where all the various groups – unions, political parties, campaigns, pressure groups and so on, march through the village behind their various banners.  We managed to overtake most of the parade and get down to the village for a good vantage point to watch it all.  I couldn’t believe how many people were there and wondered where they all came from.  There were several bands: a couple of traditional brass bands, a pipe band from the Northern Ireland prison service union, a Latin American style drum band and the Musicians Union band.

Billy Bragg AKA the Bard of Barking

I found it all rather affecting, feeling especially good whenever I saw the banners from a branch of my own union or a local branch of another union , say from Brighton.  Also there were a few people we knew marching past – Derek from my own union branch with his Socialist Labour Party colleagues and Carol & David from Horsham Labour Party with the agricultural workers.

I got carried away and took dozens of nearly identical photos.

As the final groups passed, the first ones were coming back, and we headed back to the museum grounds, which were packed.  We indulged in some doughnuts and browsed the various stalls, finding our way to the main arean in time to catch the end of a speech by Brendan Barber.   Various other speeches followed, including John Denham, an American, a Cuban and Tony Benn.

Benn was brilliant of course, to the extent that the standing ovation went on so long he had to come back for an encore.   He said a lot of things that he said the other week in Worthing, and that he has probably been saying at Tolpuddle and everywhere else for years or decades, but I think that is what everyone wants: they want the greatest hits rather than something new.

Tony Benn addressing the crowd

Now for the Laurel & Hardy reference.   Sometimes Stan says something without thinking that Ollie thinks is a good idea.  He then says “that sounds like a good idea. Just say it again for me” and then Stan can’t remember what he says and makes a hash of it.  It is one of the great set pieces in a Laurel & Hardy film.

When I hear Tony Benn speak it all makes sense, it is inspiring, and each point follows logically from the last.  That is while I am listening.  If you ask me five minutes later what was so good about it I would be just like Stan Laurel trying to repeat it – so I won’t try to now.

What I do remember from it was a great feeling of the continuity from the original Tolpuddle Martyrs, the fight for rights to organise, then to be allowed to vote, then for universal sufferage, right through to the post-war setting up of the welfare state.

At some point though, I got to wondering about the dis-connect between all the words and reality.

So many of the banners had slogans about being united, solidarity, and working together.  Lots of stuff like “united we can never be defeated”.   I’m sure that is true – so why are we not united?   There were thousands of people there, representing many thousands more, all with a common desire for a just society, with fair treatment for normal workers.  The trouble is that at the end of the day they all went off to the Labour Party, the Socialist Labour Party, the Communist Party, the Green Party, or to various single-issue pressure groups.

When the Labour Party started, when the LRC set it up to get representation from normal people, via the unions, there was a focal point – a single party for all to rally round.  It no longer has such universal appeal, and so it was a bit depressing to think that everyone there wanted is less likely to happen because, outside of such events, there is a distinct lack of the unity proclaimed in all the slogans.  I do wonder whether a future Tory victory will actually be a good thing for the Labour Movement, regardless of whether it is good for the party.

A hat in the crowd

Despite that, I did feel uplifted by the whole day.   Yes there were a few crusty hippies and raving lefty stereotypes there, but generally what was most striking was the huge number of normal people there, all actively supportive of broadly left-wing issues.  Living in Torytown, and standing as a candidate in neighbouring UltraToryTown you sometimes feel isolated and unusual, so a day like this really perks you up, reminding you that there are thousands out there with similar beliefs.

It was also a reminder of the Labour Party’s roots and core ideology – and by implication a reminder that there is not really a Tory equivalent because, despite what I said there is a unity of purpose even if not of organisation.  Most lefties are after broadly the same thing: a more just and fair society.  A gathering of 10,000 Tories would be a collection of 10,000 motivations and priorities.

I think everybody should go at least once to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the spectacle.

A face from the crowd at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival 2009

Today I went on a day trip to Dorset for the last day of the Tollpuddle Martyrs Festival.  It is a long way to go for a day (nearly three hours each way on the coach) but plenty of people came from even further away and it was a good day out even if it did require getting up before 8:00am on a Sunday.I had never been before and didn’t know quite what to expect so it was all quite overwhelming.  No doubt I will write more tomorrow, and inflict some of my photos on this blog – I took over 200 and have been going through them before uploading about 40 to Flickr.  I even got some good use out of that 70-300mm telephoto lense.  Sorting through all those photos took a bit of time tonight, so I’ll leave my thoughts on the event until tomorrow.

Horsham Labour Party was well represented, with the Chair, Secretary, Campaign Organiser and PPC all there – a shame we didn’t have a banner to march with.  Crawley CLP has a banner, but since (as far as I know) I was the only person there from Crawley CLP it would have been a bit difficult to carry.

It was my first time, but I don’t think it will be my last.  It is a great spectacle and the whole place is suffused with an almost tanglible spirit of brotherhood.  I can thoroughly recommend it: go for the photo opportunities but stay for the speeches by Tony Benn and Brendan Barber.

It has been a mixed year really.

Music

As far as music is concerned, I have been quite disappointed. Last year and the year before I found a lot of new music to excite me, but this year there has been a relative shortage of new exciting acts, or new exciting material from established acts. Its very much a cliche now, but I do like the Arctic Monkeys, and a few other bands who caught my attention this year are the Gossip, the Holloways, Wolfmother and Black Angels.

I probably bought fewer new albums this year than I have for a long time, but the ones which stood out for me where The Captain & The Kid by Elton John, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Actually that last one had a lot of filler. If they had taken the best tracks from the double CD it would have made a normal album to rival Blood Sugar Sex Magik. I also have to admit that Robbie Williams’ Rudebox has been growing on me, and that the tracks I have heard from the new Muse album convince me that if I get given it for Christmas I will be very happy indeed.

Some of the new music I discovered (Black Angels and the Gossip) was via Internet downloads – legal of course – but looking through the eMusic archives I found all sorts of goodies which were new to me even if they are actually not very new – like Badger, Peaches, Eagles of Death Metal, Chicks on Speed, Easy Star All-Stars, and Gotan Project. It really was a case of grabbing hold of the long tail.

I don’t think I have been to any concerts this year, apart from the Croydon World Party. Must make an effort to get out more next year.

Books

This year I read very few new books, and most of them were new books by writers I always read, like Robert Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre (excellent new books from both of them). I did finally finish Will Self’s Book of Dave which I was really into by the end of it.

The only novel I read by an author new to me was The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox. It won an award for best first novel, but given the circumstances of its creation I think it may be an only novel. The author was knocking the idea around for 30 years and only found the impetus to complete it after a cancer attack.

Mostly I was re-reading some old favourites and catching up on older books I should have read ages ago (like Flann O’Brienn’s Hard Life) and a lot of what I read was non-fiction. I had a bit of a binge on off-kilter statistical/social theory books like Blink, The Tipping Point, The Wisdom of Crowds and Freakonomics, any of which I would recommend, and Faster, which I wouldn’t.

Film

I don’t think I visited a cinema all year, but with the ever-shortening interval between theatrical release and DVD release I saw quite a few of the year’s films at home.

The ones I enjoyed most were V for Vendetta and Hostel. The most ridiculous film of the year was the obvious one – The Da Vinci Code. Even though I was expecting it, the line about “Quick! We must get to a library!” cracked me up. Snakes on a Plane seemed to disappear without a trace ater all the hype, but I have not seen it yet so I can’t really say if that was justified or not.

TV

After being underwhelmed or left behind by music, cinema, and literature, I was more excited than usual about the television this year. I still tended to leave it on a music or comedy re-run channel as background except for specific programmes but there were rather more of them for me this year.

There was the continuing story of Lost first of all. I still don’t understand it but it is compelling as it always threatens to all become clear and then just gets weirder. The revitalised Doctor Who survived the introduction of a new actor as the Doctor and just got better and better, and the Torchwood spin-off is also extremely watchable.

Other highlights for me were the Planet Earth and Coast documentaries, Tim Marlow’s arts show on Five and the bizarre but gripping Life on Mars.

Sport

By which I really mean football, I find it hard to get into other sports. The biggest event, biggest disappointment and smallest surprise had to be the World Cup in Germany. But despite England’s extremely poor performance it was a brilliant tournament with a sad and dramatic ending as Zidane left the pitch a few minutes before the end.

Other highlights were Arsenal’s progress in the Champions League, West Ham’s Cup run and that amazing FA Cup final. Even though we were robbed it was one of the best ever cup final matches. Unfortunately this season’s performances mean that West Ham is also a low point of the year – but with new owners it might all turn out OK in the end.

Deaths

It was sad to see the backs of Tony Banks, Linda Smith, Syd Barrett, Vince Welnick, Robert Altman and Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman. The biggest shock death of the year had to be Steve Irwin, providing Australia with its own ‘Lady Di moment’. The demise of Slobodan Milosevic and Pinochet is scant compensation for all that lot.

Events

For me there was only one contender for best experience of the year, and that is the Sultan’s Elephant. I did not follow it around the streets of London for days and only saw it once in Trafalgar Square, but just that one sighting was enough to leave me totally awestruck. It was just one of those things you don’t know you need to see until you have seen it. I’m sure the US mid-terms will have more impact in the greater scheme of things, but there will always be more elections – ow many times am I going to see a 40-foot mechanical time-travelling elephant?

More locally the fall of Crawley Council to Tory control on the drawing of lots was the most momentous event, although when they lost their majority as a result of a defection to the Lib Dems it was almost as big a deal.

Two events which everyone agrees were highlights of the year, I have not yet experienced in the flesh despite seeing a lot about them in magazines, newspapers and TV programmes – the Holbein and Velazquez exhibitions in London. If I don’t get round to seeing them before they end in January I will be kicking myself.

Personal

A few nerdy things stand out for me – moving from Blogger to WordPress and getting my own domain, for example, or finally discovering podcasts for myself.

Employment has been full of ups and downs. Jayne’s employers closed down so she is now temping while looking for a new job. I got a great job offer, but red tape has postponed the start date so I am currently in a sort of limbo while I wait to transfer.

On the family front, Frankie left home which seems to have done him a lot of good and has done wonders for relations between him and Jayne. The biggest news of the year is still about Jayne’s older daughter who found herself pregnant this year so next year I will find myself a sort of grandfather with some sort of qualification (step- or -in-law, or something like that). How did that happen?

Jayne finally persuaded me to go on a camping holiday. In fact we went to Dorset twice. It was not as bad as I feared – but don’t tell her that!

Oh yes – and my cat died..

2007

The new year should bring new jobs for both of us, a grandchild (shudder), exams for Charlie, a new PM for the country and another set of hard-fought nail-biting elections for Crawley. It will also bring a lot of stuff which can’t be predicted and thats what I’m really looking forward to: the surprises.

I wonder what the warning was…

After a much-needed Dorset cream tea at Studlands to help us recover from the damp of Kimmeridge Bay, we were going to go into Corfe Castle village to see the model village and let Charlie climb a few huge hills which he had his eye on since the last visit.

That was the idea anyway, but when I asked him if he wanted to show Chrystal the clifftop walk we took before they both decided they would rather do that instead, so we went into Swanage and dropped the pair of them off as close to the lookout point as we could and went off to Durlston Head to meet them there.

Its not a really long distance, but still it was a bit worrying waiting for them at the other end, not knowing how long they would take – expecting them to take a detour down the zig-zag path on the way – but it was important to them to do it on their own and feel a bit of independence.

While waiting, we had a look around the parkland and visitors centre and then a tea and biscuits in the Lookout Cafe while enjoying the view. When the sprogs turned up and had a drink themselves, we wandered down to the dolphin watching point but did not see any dolphins.

While everyone else climbed the path back to the car park I did a bit of bollard-hunting.

I know it sounds like a bit of a sad hobby, but I had read about how a lot of bollards from London ended up in Swanage when John Mowlem was involved in building works there. A notice at the Durlston Head visitors centre explained further that the ships taking purbeck stone up to London for building used to load up with old bollards, cannons, streetlamps and the like for ballast on the return journey. Wherever possible these were re-used rather than wasted and Swanage had a bit of a reputation as London-by-the-sea because of all the London cast-offs around the place, including a clock tower from the old London Bridge and a facade from an old London guild house used for the front of the town hall.

Many of the bollards still have the name of the London borough where they used to be, and I thought they would be fun to see. Most of the ones I found had ‘City of London’ on them but there were a few ‘St Martins’ and a couple of ‘Goodmans Fields Pavements’.

Before too long, even I was bored of bollards, and went to catch up with the others. Chrystal had decided that she wanted to walk back to Swanage. Charlie didn’t fancy it though. I offered to walk back with her and she said I would just hold her back – cheeky mare!

Despite some misgivings we agreed to let her walk back on her own and went down to Swanage to wait for her. As soon as we got there it started pouring and we worried a bit but then she turned up, having taken only 15 or 20 minutes for the whole journey.

She says that she wants to join the infantry when she is old enough, and going by what we have seen, I don’t think she will have any problems with the route marches. Even the map-reading will be no problem – she tells us that she knows how to work out the grid magnetic angle for doing map and compass work. We don’t even know what it means except that its something to do with magnetic North, true North and map North.

So that was it. We all had a good time. I might dislike camping, but I love the area and the chance to take loads of photos of scenery, tanks, castles and steam trains , the kids like nothing more than climbing rocks, exploring caves and scaring the life out of us, and Jayne loves living under canvas, eating in the open air and seeing the children happy.

When we got up properly it was still more than a little damp and after breakfast we headed off to Kimmeridge Bay, only about 6 miles away.

Being more optimistic than us the kids put their swimmers in the car just in case, but when we reached Kimmeridge it was still overcast.

Kimmeridge Bay is an amazing place, which I still remember vividly from a school geography field trip. The cliffs are made of shale in fine layers which crumble at the touch. Fingers of rock extend into the bay which enabled Charlie and Chrystal to walk out about 100 metres into the sea.

While they were doing that I wandered along the bottom of the cliffs, keeping an eye out for fossils which are supposed to be plentiful there. As I walked it started to drizzle and I was able to get some shelter from the cliffs. Then the rain started coming from seawards and there was no shelter at all. I then noticed that tiny pieces of shale were tumbling from the cliffs and thought that maybe loitering near the overhang was not such a good idea.

As the rain persisted, all the more sensible people headed for their cars, leaving me totally alone in the bay, battered by the wind and rain, watching erosion taking place before my very eyes.

It was remarkable to see that. Erosion is always explained as such a long, slow process, with the seas taking hundreds of years to wear down that its a surprise to see it in real time. With such erosion being caused by a light drizzle and medium wind I do wonder how many centimetres of cliff are lost in a year.

Access to Kimmeridge Bay is via a private road with a toll – £3 for a car. On the back of the ticket are some warnings/instructions. One of them is that it is OK to remove large fossils from the beach, but hammers are not to be used. Seeing the cliffs literally crumbling on their own I could see why such a rule makes sense.

I did not find any large fossils to take away, but I did find a few small ones – actually fragments of fossil but still recognisable as fossil ammonites (I think). The Natural History Museum is not going to be asking for my little bits of rock any time soon, but I am still awestruck by them. Just the thought that this animal was swimming around anywhere up to 200 million years ago and then lay in the rocks all that time until I found it.

According to Stephen Jay Gould the area around Kimmeridge is one of the best places in the world to see evidence to support the theory of punctuated evolution, if I remember rightly. I can’t say that my brief amateur attempt at fossil hunting did anything of the sort, but I am still ridiculously pleased with my meagre little fragments.

Anyway, the original plan on Tuesday was for the kids to go swimming at Lulworth Cove afterwards, but the weather was a little miserable for that.

The revised plan was that Jayne would drop us off at Lulworth Cove and then go off to the car park at Durdle Door for some peace and quiet, to read her book and have a nap.

In the meantime, Charlie had a cave to explore. Last time he couldn’t do it properly as it was dark in there. This time he was determined to go back with a torch.

But first of all there were some dangerous rocks to climb, as usual. I am so glad Jayne was not there to see this particular expedition. I know it looks risky, but I’m sure I climbed the same rocks myself 30 years ago, so its only fair they got to have a go. It was all part of our plan to try and wear the pair of them out.

The other part of the plan to get Charlie and Chrystal to wear themselves out was to let them walk the coastal path from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door.

This is the bottom of the path. The official path actually goes just to the right and is a lot steeper and less stable but I thought the new path looked steep enough.

Charlie took the old path and Chrystal and I took the easier one, but even so by the time we were only halfway up I found myself deeply regretting almost 30 years of smoking. I had to keep stopping to take photos but lets be honest – I would have been stopping all the time anyway.

Despite the hyperventilation and fears of a coronary it was worth the effort as the views were as stunning as any we had seen before. You really do have to get up above the cove to appreciate the shape and formation of it and the only way to do that is to walk.

From the top you can really see why the whole area is a World Heritage Site and an AONB.

This is the view from the top, and what a view.

I do think that the house just to the left of Chrystal’s head must be an amazing place to live.

From this point, we went up the hill a bit to where the old path is to wait for Charlie. We figured that since he took the longer route we would have to wait for him and were waiting quite a while.

Finally he appeared from the other direction. He had beaten us by a long way and had already been down to see Durdle Door! Happy that I had a full complement of children I gave Jayne a call to find out where she was parked and we went down to meet her.

I think our plan backfired abit though – I was a lot more worn out than either of the kids were, but I did get to see the jurassic coastline from this angle…