Saturday 25 April 2015

My very own local election poster


For some reason Broxtowe Constituency Labour Party has not printed posters for the ward candidates. Posters for Nick Palmer assault the eye wherever you go in and around Beeston. I don't know about the rest of the constituency, but I hope his posters are everywhere.

In contrast, I have yet to see a single Labour Party window bill showing the names of the ward candidates — which has amazed me. So I went to the newly opened office on City Road to track down a poster for Beeston North ward. The person organising things in the ward is being run off her feet, so I thought I was making a simple enough request, but it seems not. I was curtly told I could have a poster for Nick Palmer or a 'vote Labour' poster and reminded this was a general election.

My response was to make the point that it was also a borough council election and that it was as important to me as the general election. Another person then said he had never seen ward posters and this was his second election as a ward candidate. I responded by saying my experience in other places was very different.

I did actually catch sight of a 'Vote Labour' poster onto which someone had typed in large print Lynda Lally and added Pat in thick black ink. I only just saw it, hidden almost from view on a pinboard. Knowing Lynda and Pat, I suspect they could well dare to be different, but it is in front windows on streets where the ward posters need to be — not half-hidden on a pinboard in a Labour Party office!

I said there and then I would go home and make my own poster for the Labour candidates in Beeston North ward and I am proud to say it is now in our front window beside a Nick Palmer poster —


Cloud reflections in the window aside, you can see my poster in Wollaton Crescent, unique to Beeston (and all of Broxtowe in the absence of some enterprising agent or candidate in another part of the borough).

What really saddens me is this downgrading of the borough elections when for the past five years it has been local Labour Party workers and councillors doing the donkey and trying as best they could to limit the damage being done to Broxtowe by the Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government.

I suspect even with a Labour led government after the general election, Broxtowe's Labour councillors will still have to fight hard. I will believe any transfer of powers back to local government when it happens. In my book local councils trump Westminster any day and the quality of our lives, both now and historically, owes far more to the work of councillors than MPs.

Perhaps the Labour Party will, belatedly, organise the printing and distribution of local ward posters. Shame on them if they do not, for it will tell me and a good many other voters where their priorities lie and it won't be in Broxtowe for all they say.

Labour's foot soldiers are far too polite. Perhaps had local parties and councillors stood up for themselves some time ago the Party would not now be run by a caucus of professional politicians who have little experience of life in the trenches. The Conservatives and Liberals are much the same, hence the widespread view among voters that the main political parties are 'all the same'. 

Of course there are a few good Labour politicians out there and it is to Nick Palmer's immense credit that many local voters believe he will be his own person and among the few Greens voters I know, there is a belief that their having a candidate has helped ensure we will be getting an MP for Broxtowe and not one who will unquestioningly do the bidding of the Labour leadership. My support is based on this belief and my link to Nick Palmer's blog carries his promise to represent Broxtowe first.

There is still time for Labour to reinstate its Broxtowe Borough Council election campaign to being of equal importance to the general election campaign. As of yet I have not seen a Labour Party manifesto for Broxtowe. If it exists, where has it been published?






At the Essence of Beeston it's not what you see

Between now and the 15th May I would recommend that you find twenty minutes or so to visit the 1st floor gallery space in Beeston Library and view 'The Essence of Beeston' art and photographic exhibition organised by Beeston & District Civic Society.

I hope the photographs capture a taste of what is on offer.




In total there are some 25 or 26 entries on display. Each framed image is numbered, together with a list detailing the entry's title and the artist/photographer. There are also slips of paper and a small ballot box  so that you can vote for your favourite image (yes, I know, you cannot escape voting even in the Beeston Library Gallery). 

A word of caution though, if voting for entries 6 or 9, make sure you underscore the number, so the Civic Society can correctly allocate your vote. I wonder if I will be only bozo, leaving those counting the votes with a puzzle as to how they should allocate my vote. 6 or 9? Well, that would be telling, but I do offer a clue as to my choice in one of the pictures above.

I think it not unreasonable to say that most of the entries are pedestrian and few of the images jumped out of their frames to grab my attention, but this does not mean that what is on offer does not provide plenty to think about and I applaud every entrant for making the effort.

I understand the Civic Society have organised similar exhibitions in the past, so I hope they do the same again next year and place all this year's entries in a online gallery so that a wider audience can view every entry. It would also act as a marker of sorts for next year's entrants. Experience tells me that by doing something regularly you actually help to improve both the quality of the images on display and the number of visitors.

I am a great fan of the Nottingham Society of Artists on Friar Lane. I am sure the key to their success is a continual programme open to public view.

I really enjoyed the twenty minutes I spent looking at the entries on display and what I didn't see was a great many entries which captured 'the essence' of contemporary Beeston. Perhaps next year's competition, assuming there will be one, should ask entrants to focus of the 'essence' of Beeston in 2016 (this is yet another clue as to how I cast my vote).

I love history, especially local history, which I believe in all its manifestations can inspire and inform, for what most of us do is live in a local world (in our case Beeston and area around). This is what I was hoping to see when I visited 'The Essence of Beeston: Past or Present'.

So please make the time to see this good exhibition for yourself, then perhaps contacting the Civic Society with your own views on what you saw and how next year's exhibition might be made more challenging for both potential entrants and the viewing public.


Beeston Library is on Foster Avenue, 4-5 minutes walk from Beeston Bus Station. Opening hours as follows:

Monday & Wednesday: 9am - 7.30pm.
Tuesday & Friday: 9am - 7pm.
Thursday: 9am - 1pm.
Saturday: 9am - 4pm.


Tuesday 21 April 2015

Women candidates deficit in Broxtowe Borough Council elections

Let me say straight away had I the time, this would be a post comparing Broxtowe's lack of female candidates with what is happening across the six Greater Nottingham conurbation local authorities (Ashfield, Broxtowe, Erewash, Gedling, Nottingham and Rushcliffe).

When I compiled the table for last week's blog showing total candidates in Broxtowe Borough wards by political parties, I could see straight away that there was a paucity of female candidates and that, perhaps naively, I had expected at least half the Labour Party candidates to be women.

I had assumed that in any ward with more than two councillors, at least one of the Labour candidates would be female. The table below shows what I found when I listed females candidates by ward and political party:


The figures speak for themselves. By any measure, it is a pretty poor show. The Labour Party in Nottingham City has had a 50% selection rule for some time and I understand that Broxtowe Constituency Labour Party (CLP) has a similar rule, so why not the female candidates there should be? There are even all-women shortlists at times — something I only support for single member wards or parliamentary constituencies as a, albeit, less than satisfactory way of addressing a problem caused by a male dominated political system. In any ward with more than two candidates I happily support a least 50% rule.

My own experience and conversations I have had lead me to believe that the whole process is still dominated by male attitudes, which take little or no account of family life. The timing of meetings, a lack of childcare facilities or financial allowances to pay for childcare. If women know this, then they do not put their names forward for selection panels or listing as possible candidates.

I was unusual as a councillor insomuch as I was 26 (in 1971) when I became a councillor and 40 (in 1985) when I stopped. I was made 'redundant' twice whilst a councillor. The fact that I got payoffs did not detract from the fact that my political activities as a councillor were why I lost the jobs. It went with the territory and I knew the risk.

Today, it is not so easy to find a new job if you are a unemployed councillor. Accommodating employers are few and far between, despite legislation intended to protect councillors from discrimination at work. For two years whilst I chaired East Midlands Airport I was a full-time councillor with a weekly income from allowances of just under £90 a week. My experience made me a champion of full-time councillors paid a wage, but women with families need more and councils (and Parliament) should be organised around their needs — it is as simple as that. Today's allowances are better than they were, but still not enough.

I admit to being an admirer of Dave Nellist*, the former Labour and Coventry MP, who has always said that MPs should be paid the national average wage and I agree. I would also pay the same wage to councillors, who can work as hard as any MP and have the added challenge of being in the front line every day, living in the the communities they serve, and not isolated in the 'Palace' of Westminster, detached from reality.

No political party in Broxtowe comes close to having equal numbers of male and female candidates. Let's hope that by the time the next Broxtowe Borough Council elections take place in 2019, women will be better supported and more of them will seek selection and election.

* I got to know Dave Nellist at APEX and, later, GMB trade union summer schools. A kind and considerate person.




Sunday 12 April 2015

Broxtowe Borough Council elections: what not putting up candidates tells us

I have compiled the table below from information you can find on the Broxtowe Borough Council elections webpage, where there is a notice for each ward listing all the candidates properly nominated (all of them).


This year there will be a Broxtowe* Parliamentary election on the same day (*Ashfield if you live in the north of Broxtowe), so the ability of political parties to field candidates in the ward elections  tells us about their chances of electing our next MP.

Straight away it becomes clear that the Liberals, Greens, UKIP and the other candidate are, at best, spoilers. If they had any real commitment to the communities which make up Broxtowe, they would be fielding Borough Council election candidates in every ward. Even the Conservatives have no candidates in one ward (Eastwood St. Mary) and are one candidate short in Kimberley. Only the Labour Party has a full slate of candidates.

At the end of the day local elections are little better in the minds of many Westminster MPs (and national party HQs) than dress rehersals for the main event - a General Election. If you doubt my assertion, how do you justify or explain the erosion of local power and democracy in the years since 1974? It is no accident that constituency parties organise and oversee branches and not the other way round.

Because I am a liberation socialist I am also a localist and fall into the camp that every election should be contested with a full slate of candidates and that local power matters. The failure in Broxtowe of the Liberals, Greens and UKIP to field candidates in a good few wards tell you that they are organisationally weak, either unable to find candidates or find just twelve people in the ward who will support the nomination of a candidate in the ward. What other explanation can there be which is not even more damning (and one I have already referred to)?

When local and Parliamentary elections occur on the same day, local council results often favour the party which wins the local constituency Parliamentary election - which should mean the Labour Party in Broxtowe. I hope so.

It is also very short-sighted of a party not to field candidates in every ward. They will be unable to measure their support accurately or to use what scant resources they have in terms of money and volunteers to best advantage.

The outcome of both the local and Parliamentary elections in Broxtow could be determined by what ballot paper a voter chooses to mark first. It is going to be that kind of election. Very different to any other I have known in my fifty years as a voter.

I want Nick Palmer to win and for Labour to have a clear majority on the Borough Council.

We shall have to wait until the early hours of 8 May to see if it happens.









Tuesday 7 April 2015

'Our Democracy' from 1958 and 'citizenship' 2015 style

At the end of this essay of sorts I have copied copied pages from Our Democracy by Rowland W Purton, which was first published in 1958. In his Preface the author says the book (was) 'written primarily for the final year of the Secondary Modern School'. He goes on to say that 'while the text is suitable for the "A" and "B" streams, the diagrams are of great value in teaching "C", "D" and "E" children'.

I was one of those children and this book contributed to my realisation of what side I was on, for there were 'sides', even at 14. There were other influences, but school played a part, so when politicians and the media talk about 'citizenship' education today they should remember that this is not something new.

Last week Susan and I put up our first bookshelves and un-boxed a few books. Among them was Our Democracy and recent talk of teaching 'citizenship' in our schools had made think of the book, so seeing it again was quite timely.

It was over this book that I had my first political arguments at school and I remember, still, how the class divided. Little did I realise that I was within months of becoming a trade unionist and a member of the (Labour Party) Young Socialists. Looking back I should not have been surprised.

My distrust and dislike of authority began whilst still at junior school, where my left-handedness led to physical punishment from a teacher. I was glad to go to Alperton Secondary Modern, the same school my maternal grandfather, my mother and my uncles went to. By then it was for 11-plus failures, not that I knew that at the time, for the exam passed me by and I cannot remember a thing about it.

As schools went it wasn't bad. I left not knowing what a GCE or a university was, but I could read, write, add up and had a good sense of history. My grandfather saw a job he thought I would like in the London Evening News as a trainee animal technician at the Royal Brompton Hospital in South Kensington (which I got) and that was me settled for the next three years. I was paid £2 12s 6d at the end of my first week and within seconds of receiving my pay packet, a laboratory technician called Wally was standing beside me demanding 6d if I wanted to keep my job. Needless to say I paid up and what he said opened up a whole new world for me: 'You're in the AScW now and there's a meeting on Monday'.

I worked with people who fought in the First World War and the Second World War and people a couple of years older than me who had just completed their National Service. Every day at breaks and over lunch workmates argued about something, Chelsea (the football team) mainly, but politics too. I got to know and respect all manner of men and women and fell in love more than once.

I wrote letters to the Wembley News in my capacity as Secretary of Wembley South Young Socialists and I was even offered a job by the paper's editor if I gave up my political activities. Needless to say I didn't, and it is the only thing I wonder about sometimes, but the path I took led me to Susan and that, that is enough to tell me I made the right decision.

I tell you all this because here I am in Beeston within weeks of my 71st birthday and it all feels so natural. Our Democracy helped to make me the person I am and I just hope that citizenship teaching 2015 style encourages children to question authority in the same way as I did.

The dirty word when I was a child was 'communism' and today it is 'Islamists'. Communists in 1958 were seen as 'extremists', yet in my experience most were individuals I respected.

I look at the citizenship test those seeking to become a British subject have to pass and think 'rubbish'. I would not pass such a test. England failed the democracy test in 1958 and it does still in 2015 and always will in my book until we no longer have a unelected head of state and a House of (unelected) Lords. I came to that conclusion aged 14 after being given a copy at school of Our Democracy.

Reading through the book again it has stood the test of time well and its author, Rowland W Purton, has my thanks for helping to make me the person I am.

Every time I see a newspaper headline or hear a broadcaster talking about Islamic 'terrorists', I think back to the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans in Northern Ireland and the wars of liberation across Africa and Asia and their being part of an ongoing war against imperialism, once colonial, now blatantly capitalist. Our country and society is part of a global economic culture which has helped to create the 'terrorism' our politicians and media decry. I understand this and I believe many others do too, even though many stay silent.

Our government and media mock Iran and the idea of a caliphate across Syria and Iraq whilst ignoring the fact that our country has a state church and faith, with a unelected monarch at its head, and elected MPs who have to take an oath of allegiance to that monarch if they wish to occupy their seats in Parliament. I could not be an MP because the only oath I could take is to serve the people of my country to the best of my ability.

As a fourteen year old in 1958 I could not square being taught that I lived in a democracy with the fact that we occupied other countries and denied the people who lived in them the same rights. The legacy of empire brings with it responsibilities we cannot escape, nor should we wish to.

I much prefer the mixed society of 2015 to the more insular, superior, world of 1958. I can see the changes from the perspective of a native and I can also see how confusing our national quirks must seem to many. Young men and women are encouraged to join our armed forces to fight for 'Queen and country' and their sacrifices are celebrated in state faith cathedrals in services led by archbishops and attended by royalty, yet those young people who see justice in similar causes in other parts of the world are branded 'terrorists' and their own faith leaders are vilified.

Our young kill with sophisticated weaponry and drones directed from bunkers somewhere in Britain or from the cockpits of heavily armed jet fighters, whilst those we fight execute their victims in person. I do not understand the difference. I am equally horrified by both.

Ordinary people around the globe are victims and I would argue with all who turn to violence that the thing our masters fear the most is civil disobedience. War and brutality is what the ruling classes do best. My opposition to violence as a solution owes itself as much to Rowland Purton and Our Democracy as anything else. To quote from his chapter forty-five, 'Your Duty':

'Let is remind ourselves what democracy is. Remember firstly, that it is the rule of the people themselves; that the people are directly responsible in some measure for those things which happen in Parliament and in your local authority; and that by the way in which you decide to vote, you may be able, with others, to alter the result of the election'.

Those who cannot vote to change their worlds deserve our support and understanding. When we go to vote on 7 May we should ask ourselves 'What are we voting for?' and to accept that if the old order continues it is because we have failed to persuade enough others to join us in voting for radical change and that over the coming years we need to work harder than ever.

Just look at some of the pages I have copied from a book published in 1958 and ask yourself 'What has changed?'. A good few things, but far from enough!


We should take this building and turn it inside out.


In 1958 voters understood why this was important. My maternal grandmother was born in 1894 and was not able to vote until she was 28 in 1922.


In 1958, candidates did not have a (party political) description or logo against their name on a ballot paper. 


The Chartist Movement set out its aims in 1838 and did not mention women. As the page points out, it was not until 1928 that all women had the same voting rights as men.


The Tories and Liberals going into government together in 2010 was a return to the old order of things, when there was no opposition as such. Nothing new here then.


In 1958, socialism and communism were seen as being similar. There was no mention of social democracy or libertarian socialism. Now even the Labour Party has become fearful of being called 'socialist'. Socialism should be seen as a practical faith, for that is what it is to me, firmly rooted in life and not eternity.


1958 could be 2015, except we now have unelected 'life' peers as well as hereditary peers and it is still the monarch's government - not our government.


Now Acts of Parliament usually include a clause allowing ministers to change laws without any reference back to Parliament. Since 1958 we have gone backwards.



In 1958 there were more levels of local government and all had more powers than their 2015 counterparts. Another example of how we have gone backwards and how we, as voters, have allowed this to happen!


This was how citizenship was seen in 1958. At 14 I was beginning to question 'God', although I continued going to church until I was twenty-one. It was a fellow 14 year old called Geoff at the Church of God in Wembley who sowed the doubt with his question to our Sunday School teacher Les Hardy (a librarian from Ealing who I still remember with warmth and affection). The question was 'Is God vain?'.

I also remember seeing this page at the time and asking about our 'duty' to our fellow workers (my Uncle Dave in Harlow was Secretary of the Plumbers Trade Union in the town and staying with him and my Auntie Nannie I saw lots of men come to their house with problems, so I knew from an early age that trade unions were important to workers).

I am sure this page has changed since 1958, but I am not sure how I would draw it in 2015'.

Our Democracy is a book full of such illustrations, with over 200 pages of accompanying text across forty-five chapters. I wonder if anyone planning citizenship lessons in 2015 has ever looked at this book? If they have, I suspect it will have been dismissed as being dangerous.