Tag: Britain

The Oddball Candidates, or, The Tragedy of Lord Buckethead

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For a long, long time, there have been candidates for political office that seem to be involved simply to mock the whole process. Some, like Chris Grayling, accidentally find their way into high office. Others, however, are doing it deliberately – be it to mock the excesses of a bloated political system, torment a rival, or simply to get their fifteen minutes of fame. From punks to muppets, it would not be democracy without the oddballs. And the most famous of all (right now, at least) is Lord Buckethead.

Alcohol for All!

Ever since there have been mass-participation elections there have been those who have stood apart from the rest. To take candidacy to its extremes is, in itself, a brash and outrageous expression of the very freedom to run for office – that punk ethic of “I can do it, so I will.” This was the drive behind the myriad of fermented parties that brewed up following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was the Polish Beer-Lovers Party, a similarly titled affair in Belarus, and the Friends of Beer Party in the Czech Republic. Although most were a blend of libertarianish-license lovers and satires on the explosion of new parties after the wall came down, the Polish incarnation also aimed to promote English beer culture as a means to reduce vodka-fuelled alcoholism.

The ‘90s also saw the return of an older Austro-Hungarian frivolous tradition that was just as boozy but not so light on the creativity. Yes, there was the all-too-brief return of the brainchild of Czech anarchist and great wielder of farce Jaroslav Hašek – The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law. The group first sprouted in the 1900s, and ran in the Vinohardy District during the 1911 Austro-Hungarian elections beneath the shining light of “Moderate Progress,” a philosophy still deeply popular with Observer writers, and summarised as follows:

“The Svatopluk Čech Bridge was not built overnight. First Svatopluk Čech had to be born, become a famous poet, die, then there had to be an urban renewal, and only then was the Svatopluk Čech Bridge built.”

With it came famously “moderate” policies seemingly designed to insult voters and the choices they usually make, from draconian pledges like the reintroduction of slavery and the return of the Inquisition, to token giveaways such as “a free pocket aquarium” for all. Hašek’s campaign was marked by bombastic, rambling speeches: here’s some snippets.

“I became at once the victim of a slander campaign…for the opposing side has said of me that I have already been gaoled twice. My honourable constituents, I declare before you that this is a vile invention and a lie. It is quite untrue that I have been gaoled twice. I have been gaoled three times!…

…You must understand that those 1.3 sextons mean 800 votes for our candidate. You see, sextons have free access to the funeral offices and consequently to the lists of dead voters. These lists, as has been shown in the past successes of the National Freethinking Party can acquire exceptional importance on polling day.”

“He’s More Popular than the Prime Minister”

With such wild promises as “the nationalisation of janitors” or, as a frivolous British party promised in 2010, “to not raise tuition fees,” it is important not to actually win the election. But it’s happened quite a few times for our deliberate oddballs, notably in Aarhus, Denmark, home of the Union of Conscientiously Work-Shy Elements. In 1994, its leader Jacob Haugaard ran on a manifesto that, although clearly ridiculous, was largely kind-hearted and a refreshing, locally-focused contrast to his rivals. Such policies ranged from promising better weather and tailwinds on cycle paths (perhaps using some supervillainous weather machine), to playing to the work-shy core with an 888 promise – 8 hours for sleep, 8 for rest, and 8 for spare time. He also proposed the excellent policies of better Christmas presents and shorter shopping queues, among others.

“If work is so healthy, why not give it to the sick?”

He won.Whoops.However, Haugaard took it in stride. After winning, he said “I don’t know anything about politics. Now I get an education in how it works – with full salary!” Deciding to now “take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth,” Haugaard went on to serve his constituency diligently. In a hung parliament, his vote mattered, and he treated that duty with great care.

What’s more, he actually delivered on some of his campaign promises. Whilst there is no evidence the weather actually improved in Denmark during the ’90s, Haugaard did provide more bread for Aarhus ducks, Nutella rations for the Danish army, and a public toilet in his local park, where he had also (in a classic oddball candidate move) splurged his state funding on a post-election party for those mad enough to support him. Although Haugaard reckoned his vote should warn the world that any old populist crumbum could gain power in the right circumstances (dodged a bullet there), I think it shows that sometimes the best representatives come from the left-field.

Will the real Maxime Bernier please shut up?

Canada’s Rhinoceros Party sought to avoid the problem of winning by promising to immediately dissolve parliament if it won parliament, as elections were “so much fun” that “we should have them all the time” (clearly the Conservative Party agrees). However, it is worth noting that the party’s motto is a promise not to keep any promises.

The Rhinoceros Party is one of the world’s oldest nonsense parties, founded in the 1960s by Quebecois Doctor Jacques Ferron, named in honour of Cacareco, the rhino elected to office in Sao Paulo, 1958, and originally led by Cornelius the First, local zoo rhino. Now in its third incarnation, the Rhinos’ pledges over the years have included annexing both the UK and the US, repealing the law of gravity, declaring war on Tintin because of his Rhino-killing ways, and privatising the Queen (makes sense to me).

This year, the Rhinos ran to sabotage far-right Quebecois leader Maxime Bernier by running against him a guy called…Maxime Bernier. “If you’re not sure,” the latter Bernier suggested, “vote for both!”Canada is rich is oddball politics, and the Rhinos are rich in company in the history of such parties. A personal favourite of mine was the Canada Extreme Wrestling Party, founded in Newfoundland in 1999. The leadership was decided via Battle Royale, as 11 wrestlers faced off in the ring for the honour of leading the party. Quentin Barboni took the spoils, but their first candidate was WWF superstar Ed “Sailor” White – the Moondog King.

Don’t Blame Me, I voted for Mr Fish Finger

Britain, like Canada, also has a well-stocked history of frivolous candidates. Our preposterous first-past-the-post system allows for a lot of “wasted votes,” wherein a voter’s power is greatly diminished in “safe” seats defined by overwhelming popularity toward one party. It is easier, in these moments, to lend your vote to silliness, perhaps to protest against this fault in representation, or else to gift it to a little bit of comedy.In this endeavour, the Official Monster Raving Loony Party has flown the flag for decades. Its origins lie in Screaming Lord Sutch (3rd Earl of Harrow)’s Teenage Party of the 1960s, that campaigned for a lower voting age. After this happened, Sutch vanished for a while, resurfacing in the 1980s as head of the Monster Raving Loonies, a joint venture between Sutch and some graduates of the “Raving Loony” Oxbridge tradition.

Their successes, such as hammering the final nail into David Owen and the SDP, and originating the idea for pet passports and late drinking licenses, are well-known. The group, having been through numerous splits and the untimely deaths of Sutch and its second leader Catmando, is still going, under the guidance of Howling Laud Hope, and an institution in British political spheres – releasing its policies rapid-fire under the Manicfesto moniker. However the Loonies’ longstanding brand, especially since the Sutch days, has been accused of being somewhat stranded and stagnant, shown in its recent development of an unexpectedly earnest nature towards Brexit and Piers Morgan.

The prime stage for lunatics and oddballs is the Prime Minister’s seat in a General Election. Alongside the ever-present Lawd Hope, you will usually find some flamboyantly dressed character (or creature) who, for £500 well spent, has the opportunity to get on TV and, as a happy consequence, make the PM and first-past-the-post look a little bit ridiculous. It was in Thatcher’s Finchley seat in 1987 that Lord Buckethead graced us with his presence.

Lord Buckethead is the villain of the awful and wonderful low-budget ’80s 3D Star Wars knock-off Gremloids. He first inhabited the body of one Mike Lee, who promised to demolish Birmingham to build an intergalactic spaceport (I’ll compromise with Solihull). Lee came back to face John Major in 1992, before putting his bucket out to pasture.Our dear leader found a new host in 2017, in Jonathan David Harvey, who set off to Maidenhead to take on Theresa May. In this election, he was in crowded company. In Maidenhead he was challenged not only by Lawd Hope but a terrifying man-sized Elmo. Elsewhere frivolous candidates included Mr Fish Finger, a personal hero of mine, on a committed quest to prove that Tim Farron was less popular than a fish finger, and Gavin Barwell, who completed his performance art piece by losing his seat after publishing a book entitled “How to win a marginal seat.”

Buckethead stood out, of course. It was a combination of the utter obscurity of the reference (yet replete in political tradition), Harvey’s clowning in the count room and an engaging manifesto that brought him to international fame.

Harvey had decided to stand after watching Gremloids one evening and discovering Lee’s candidatures in a post-movie trivia hunt. “Wouldn’t it be funny to bring him back?” He thought.

Harvey’s Buckethead had perhaps the most endearing manifesto ever promised by an Oddball. Under his “Strong, not entirely stable” leadership and a mix of progressive populism, eccentricity and megalomania, Buckethead made pledges from the nostalgic “bring back Ceefax” to the universalist aims of nationalising Adele and banishing Katie Hopkins to the Phantom Zone. Even policies he stood to gain from were slanted in a moral manner, from abolishing the House of Lords (except for Lord Buckethead) to banning arms sales to Saudi Arabia (in order to sell arms to Lord Buckethead). Best of all was an earnest pledge to regenerate the shopping centre in Maidenhead.

The Tragedy of Lord Buckethead, or, The rise of Count Binface

Harvey, now an overnight sensation, next appeared in Glastonbury with the Sleaford Mods. But unfortunately he had drawn the attention of Todd Durham, the creator of Gremloids. Since the ’80s, Durham had since founded the $1bn Hotel Transylvania franchise. He saw it fit to sue Harvey for copyright and banned him from using Lord Buckethead and his image. Now Lord Buckethead™, Durham still deploys his character in UK politics (and hijacking a buzz Harvey created), but the villain has now adopted a decided pro-EU agenda, largely seen raising funds for People’s Vote campaigns. More recently, Lord Buckethead™ has joined the Monster Raving Loonies.

Harvey, although regretful, had accepted Durham’s claim and had announced his retirement from running for office. It felt as if the tragedy of Lord Buckethead is the tragedy of UK politics today – money wins (Goodnight, Sweet Prince). But Harvey was not done yet. Last month, a mysterious new challenger appeared in the West London suburbs – one Count Binface.

Harvey, after an “unpleasant battle on Planet Copyright,” had returned “like Anthony Joshua” to triumph over Boris Johnson. Count Binface’s manifesto repeats the desire to bring back Ceefax and nationalise Adele, but also promises to ban arms sales to all repressive regimes and abolish the Lords, alongside renaming London Bridge “Phoebe Waller Bridge”. At the same time, he has expressed surprise that Lord Buckethead™ had joined the Loonies, having expected him to take over Change UK, and hopes to catch up with Elmo once again on election night.

“It’s time for surreal change.”

Even in the misery of our times, the oddball tradition is alive and well. As Dr Sophia McClennen argues, it does not drive cynicism but in fact harnesses it to fuel engagement. Alongside, in its own way, it echoes Stanley Kubrick’s insistence that “however vast the darkness, we must supply our own light” by providing a bit of humour and, in the case of Harvey’s characters, kindness from the most unlikely source. He also reminds us that Oddballs can serve a moral purpose – wrapping important messages, lost among the muck-racking and Tory lies that have dominated this campaign, in an eye-catching package.

Do not vote for this man

However, if you are in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, PLEASE do not vote for Count Binface, or Lord Buckethead™, or Elmo. Uniquely, in 2019, the PM’s seat is in play. Votes here matter more than perhaps any vote anywhere in Britain, past or present. There is a Dark Lord to be felled far more dangerous than any Gremloid, or creation bearing no actual resemblance to said Gremloid. That is Boris Johnson. There is a chance to unseat him here and blow up the Death Star.

For the love of Cacareco, do not waste this opportunity.

Peterloo’s Jailers

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They put the memorial behind bars. Behind their fences, angry little frames, on their side of the divide.

Their conference is held upon the ruins of St Peter’s Field, in a shed once called Manchester Central Station. The rails had brought further riches to the cotton town, not to be shared. The dirty great arch covered the blood of the slaughtered of Peterloo, as it was known, that great assembly of all of the districts of Manchester, to demand their voices be heard.

They were chopped down.

Did they start something? We could sure do with some of that spirit now. This is not a democracy. It has only ever been the shell of such a thing, or the scaffolding, if I dare dabble with hope. Now they are rolling back the years.

You want to vote? Show me your papers. Your papers!

They put the memorial up last month. They forgot to tell anybody. The names of the dead climb its steps until you, the living, reach its peak. It is a pulpit, designed so you feel like you are addressing the world. So that – yes! – the ghosts of Peterloo’s slain may mount you and embibe you with the belief that your voice matters as much as any soul – more so! – that may cower in that shed behind, carving up our remaining commonality, on a tattered map, in a putrid scramble. No firsts among equals atop these steps, only turns taken to be heard.

No great fanfare accompanied its unveiling. Best not to let the people know what great reservoirs of power lie beneath all of us, perhaps. More likely, it simply slipped their mind. It’s hard to stay useful when squeezed on all fronts. (They forgot, too, to put a ramp on it…it’s no pulpit for those most often ignored…)

Not that accessibility is an issue today. That which should be the axis of protest against the descendants of those who would sooner shoot a democrat than hear their words, those who would barricade themselves away with their decisions in their farce entitled “The Will of the People”, is locked away. On their side, they may look upon it with absent curiosity, those who lost their shit when it was suggested that a statue of Cecil Rhodes (considered a genocidal maniac by his peers) be taken away from public eyes. But the Peterloo platform – well, that’s access to certified personnel only.

Move along now.

The protest will swell on the streets nearby, and we will do our best to amplify our despair, but…distant. Without our pulpits, we cannot call such criminals by their crimes. Cannot say “racism” without reprimand. Cannot treat our sick without a photo opportunity. Is that a rock thrown through the window? Or a humbug? What chance have you got against a tie and a crest…

You didn’t actually think this place was for you, did you?

In a few days, the mean little fences will fall, and the goons in gilets jeunes who kept it, they will be gone too. Go on through, it’s ok. But the people you have come to address are by now far, far away. Thing is, you were never even close. The fence was just a mirage, masking a Great Wall that grows bigger by the day.

Frankly, Mr Morrissey

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“Everyone grows out of their Morrissey phase. Except Morrissey”

Sean Hughes

“If you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own, don’t plagiarise or take on loan…”

Some other fool

Frankly Mr Morrissey, these positions you hold, they grab and devour, and lead us headlong into harm.

It’s time I settle the score – I’ve come to wish you an unhappy birthday, and I would like to give you this gift, in which I re-issue, re-package, and re-evaluate your words…

Why?  

Well, there are some bad people on the rise – the Newsworld hands them stardom. They’re saving their own skins by ruining other people’s lives. They creep into my thoughts like a bad debt that I can’t pay, and in the wasteland of my head I hear the shrill cry of:  

“you still don’t belong to anywhere.”

And as evil people prosper, you, the one who claims to care, what do YOU do? You say “shelve your western plans…life is hard enough when you belong here.” There is no one but yourself to blame – guilt by implication, by association.

But nobody minds.                                                                  

The fawning give you every opportunity. They are half-ashamed of your meat-is-murder radical views but nothing else leaves a disenchanted taste in their mealy mouths. They’d sacrifice all of their principles for you, or else they’re too jaded to question stagnation.

“The songs we sing, they’re not supposed to mean a thing.”

They’d rather not get involved – they ignore all the new songs, and cling to the old. But my patience is stretched. These words you use –  they’re too close to home and they’re too near the bone.

You don’t know a thing about us, our loves and hates and passions, yet you look into our eyes, and still you think that we’re faceless, with no right to take our place in the human race. The land that we stand on is ours, as well!

My man, get your vile soul dry-cleaned

“What became of you?” they hoarsely cry, “why did you change?” But have you changed? Really? The hate hangs too freely on your lips, like a dulling wine, to be something new.

You royalties brought you luxuries, but the squalor of the mind…oh, how the boy next door turned out. “Used to be a sweet boy!” they hoarsely cry, as they are shocked and ashamed to discover…but they should have known where you’d gone because again and again you’ve explained –

“England for the English!”

Somewhere deep in the cell of your heart, (amid concrete and clay and general decay) you’ve always needed to cling to something – to the old dreams, miserable lies, to an afternoon nostalgia, to an England hemmed in like a boar between arches. Further into the fog you fell, hiding from The Bomb, Hindley, belligerent ghouls, the unholy stench of murder…

                BUT

There once lay behind the hatred a gentle tone of kindness, a fumbling politeness, and some hope! I am remembering the time when I was 16, clumsy and shy. I spent warm summer days indoors writing frightening verse (that’s nothing, you should have heard me play piano). Back at the old grey school – I can smile about it now but at the time it was terrible. I was prematurely sad, equally dour, I walked a pace behind you, (very closely, like a moth to a flame) for I thought that you knew the full extent of my distress. You asked me to get along with myself and say – “if I seem a little strange, that’s because I am.” You claimed that whilst scavenging through life’s very constant lulls, all that a tremulous heart required was a devout faith in love – a light that never goes out.

Except then you let your juvenile influences sway, you took the easy way and gave in – who did you turn to when you were backstage? To a grown man who said he’d cure your ills?

Vile frustration rendered you hateful – you can’t see the good things anymore, just the bad things. Gripped with the romance of crime, you stay with your own kind – spineless swines, cemented minds, jealous of youth – these are the last “truly British” people you’ll ever know? (please keep them). Try living in the real world, instead of a shell.

The person underneath – where did he go – did he slide by the wayside, or did he just die?

Entwined in the midst of this, I just can’t find my place in this world, and there’s nowhere to go but down. But to give up would be a bad mistake. I’m older now, and a clever swine. I had just about scraped through, but now, I’ll fight to the last breath – I’ll boot the grime of this world in the crotch, dear. Yes I KNOW it’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate, and it takes guts to be gentle and kind. Yes I KNOW Heavy words are so lightly thrown, but I’m too tired.

Now, I’m so sick and tired because anything is hard to find – for heaven’s sake – because enough is too much! The critics make me feel so ashamed because I’ve only got two hands – how can they say I go about things the wrong way, for having rejected being gentle and kind?

Show me a barrel and watch me scrape it…

Politely, at first. I’m so sick and tired of this land’s cheerless marches – fifteen miles of shit. But when they try to break my spirit – it won’t work, nor will they infiltrate my mind.

Until the earth that wants me finally has me, I will be brash, outrageous and free – at ease – fighting ignorance, dust and disease, until darkness lifts and the room is bright from a sun shining on a better world – not in the next world or another world – this world.

So now you. People said you were virtually dead but they were so wrong. Your name still conjures up deadly deeds. Your songs – more songs than I can stand – are just any excuse to write more lies.

Here you are, just another who has maddening views, you poor, freezingly cold soul, just another lock-jawed pop star thicker than pig shit, nothing to convey, too scared to show intelligence (it might smear your lovely career).

In the days when you were hopelessly poor, I just liked you more…

Old friend, your prejudice won’t keep you warm tonight. An inbuilt guilt catches up with you…at 5am – wakes you up, and you wonder why the love you long for eludes you…can you see (the) answer in your heart? Can you delve so low?

Full of fear, you cling to the old songs that once made me laugh, the songs that once made me cry, and you ask me “when you’re dancing and laughing and finally living, will you hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly?” –

Frankly? Thank you, but no. You frame of useless limbs, I don’t owe you anything. What can make good all the bad that’s been done?

I must leave you behind me tonight. Please put your tongue away, good and proper, forever.

After the Windrush

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Let’s start somewhere in the middle.

Why is it the “Windrush scandal?” We’ll get to the scandal part in a bit.

First Windrush.

                        The boat that brought the black people.

They reckon there weren’t any before then. For sure, these boats carried black people in their crowded hundreds, but they were largely deposited at the slave auctions in the New World, if dysentery, mutiny or cruelty did not lead to their weighting and drowning. The boats themselves, they returned to England full of something much more valuable. Cotton, tobacco, indigo, sugar.

That’s where the story ends, the final page in the old school textbook. Back when I was there it was mandatory to turn and study all of those pages, but its only optional now. It’s now only national lore that gives black people their place on this island. And that starts with Windrush.

But there were some black people on those early boats too. They came with the goods, some came as goods, and these people were keystones in the building of Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol – cities constructed with the capital extracted and extorted out of the muscles and bones of their friends, families, enemies and rivals. The differences didn’t matter anymore, they were now just one category, whilst the sugar came in a thousand shades of grey.

We’re still a commodity, something to be weighed, measured, and calculated.

I’m one-quarter sugar,

one-quarter tea.

The rest had its own local hardships, but they can be rubbed out.

The malaise of national erasure does the first part of the job nicely. You weren’t even here, how could you possibly be British? The longer your family has worked, shopped and bred here, the further away you are.

Shhhh! Even if you are one of the good ones.

Know about James Peters? He was the first black England international, in 1906. Rugby union of all sports. Never heard of him? He was better known as “Darkie” Peters. Unfortunately he was forced out (and eventually banned), as England sought to save face against the Springboks. Peters was forgotten everywhere outside of Barrow and Saint Helens. Gone.

Never mind them, they’re now with the ages. Their descendants are now sunk into descended from Windrush, who are descended from slaves, from far away colonies.

It’s these old Caribbeans who are being depatriated now.

And the onlookers shout –

You can’t deport them they are already citizens!

How do you mean, citizens?

What was the Caribbean to the Empire?

It was no extension of British soil. The French claimed their possessions were part of France, they still do, but ils portent des oeillieres. The British rarely held such pretensions. The islands were at best off-shore assets for absentees. For those who went west, they were sandboxes of sadism for sweetness and rum. Thomas Picton could do what he wanted to Louisa Calderon – he was British in a land held to no such standard, she had rights only when it suited the Pictons of the world.

Meanwhile…Enoch Powell needs “rescuing” from the dust of the past, so his Rivers of Blood will flow in full on the radio for the first time since it was spoken. They think it needs resurfacing to understand the present day, to understand Brexit. Such things came as a shock to those who viewed Britain as “past” all of those things – or worse, as a completely different entity nowadays, a different nation entirely.

This is the different Britain that announced itself to the world stage in the 2012 Olympics, a gleeful and moving retelling of Britain from below, a celebration of the unsung heroes in the making of the modern nation, and at the heart of it all, were the Windrush Generation. Boyle’s ceremony told an important story, and stirred the hearts of a nation about to embrace the greatest sporting festival there is, but it was a story told in a sparkling, ridiculously priced stadium, surrounded by luxury flats and mighty shopping centres, amidst a London neighbourhood wrenched by poverty. It is a story that played into the myth of modern liberal Britain, the same place where I would be told, repeatedly, that there’s a sea change in racial attitudes because a British prince has married a mixed-race American woman. AFTER Windrush.

Within the history of this myth there is no space for those with black blood between 1807 and 1948.

There is no room for the fate of Louisa Calderon, she no longer exists. Picton’s abuse subsumed her twice, first in person, and then in the redactions of history. There are no longer black soldiers in the Great War. It is too late, perhaps, to remind everyone of Walter Tull, for his feats in war already seem fantastical in the minds of too many.

Why must black Britain always leap between these historical boundaries? Why do we stop at 1807, when an Act of Parliament stopped the (legal) trafficking? What is the first name that comes into your head when you think of that moment?

Wilberforce perhaps?

We were once taught at school (when it was required learning) that the slave trade was ceased [redacted] after a crescendo of activism in British political circles. And then the lessons stopped.

Why opinion changed at that moment in time has very much more to with events in the Caribbean than in the corridors of power. Haiti’s triumph over all the armies of Europe had chilled the sugar barons to their very core, and changed the hearts of their metropolitan financiers. The will to persevere with the trade was wounded.

Meanwhile, slavery continued.

SLAVERY CONTINUED.

The trade continued, just not under the British flag. The USA already had a reproducing population of slaves (the utter misery of those words), and, in any case, British attention now looked to the sunrise, beyond which lay new lands and people to mine and pillage. France largely withdrew from the Americas, flogging the lands west of the Mississippi to Jefferson, whose faith and indulgence in the peculiar institution still flourished. The Spanish rushed in to fill the Haiti-shaped hole in the sugar market, and Cuba boomed as the human cargo clogged the market.

The British finally ended slavery in the colonies in 1837, as the issues and rebels set in motion by Haiti continued to chip away at the shackles. On the islands, as elsewhere, emancipation did not mean freedom. Slavery was ended pre-emptively on the terms of the landowners, piece by piece, grounding many to the lands that had bound them, and ensuring there was little opportunity for the pursuit of a different life.

For more than a century, the black Caribbean, although no longer a slave, could still not call as their own the island they stood on, the island that their ancestors had been removed to, their home. Except in Haiti. There, Dessalines had returned to the island its old name, to claim by right that land as a place of black freedom, earned through their avenging of the Americas (although some things, dare we romanticise too blindly, are easier said that done).

Within this history, with all of its denial, erasure and contradiction, any freedom to reside as anything close to equal has always been conditional – as a gift, or a concession – never a right. The love bestowed to the Windrush Generation by the Danny Boyles of the world was earned by the “contribution” made to post-war British life (as if nothing had been given before). The freedom from shackles was a hollowed hulk of a concession, granted only by the Empire as one half of a deal, wherein the slave-owners were paid handsomely for each slave they “lost” in the mass manumission. Freedom was a commodity, just part of a quid pro quo.

The Hostile Environment recognises this, as it strips our grandparents of their legal identity to reside as British, as it tears Britain away from any complicity or guilt toward its colonial past. The national blank spot as to the existence of black British people before 1948 legitimates the expulsion as “immigration policy”. for enacting this policy.

And it’s boosted more by the policing of cultural identity, for when you are descended from Empire, its very tricky to be accepted as British without variation. Gruesome Tebbit tests ignore how cricket was/is a beautiful vestige of self-discovery for Indians, Windians and Pakistanis, and instead places all the onus on “failure to integrate” on generations and generations of imperial descendants as if, like in the Opening Ceremony, we were always welcomed with open arms. Please, brown kids, support our (significantly South African) national side, or else we send your granddad back to Jamaica.

That’s the crux of it, the message it sends – it’s cultural blackmail. Legal identity now confirms what cultural identity has decreed, as those who know way more about it than us have explained. You’d better be #British as hell, make all your phone calls from red telephone boxes, watch every second of the royal wedding, and slather the union flag all over your Last Night of the Proms party, or we’ll make you feel even less welcome. You were born here, after all, start acting like it. It’s another reminder that citizenship is not consistent, and nor is it permanent. Those who cry “citizenship!” in defence of The Expelled cannot know what’s really going on.

There ain’t no asylum here.

I have on occasion been asked about “blending in” – whether I should use my lighter-skinned privilege to pretend I’m Spanish or a dark Celt who’s just returned from chilling in the desert for a while, or something like that.

Truth is, for the most part, the idea I have a choice in the matter is a fiction. If somebody assumes I am One of the Good Ones for whatever reason (usually my false-posh accent), then challenging that (and I always do) does little to change their feeling toward me. If somebody assumes I am [pick your prejudice] the same pattern plays out. WE fits with me because, as much as my passport, my name, my accent, and my lighter skin make my path through British life easier, I have been made to feel this way – I did not choose it. Conditioned to feel different, uncanny, misshapen, a burr on a smooth. It makes me part of the immigrant struggle even if I cannot relate to it in any way in the present, because it is part of my past.

And this is why I am not in any way surprised that, in spite of all the bluster and outrage, nobody really cares about the Windrush scandal. I am deflated, but unsurprised that it did not even cause a flutter in the government’s approval ratings. The same way that I am deflated, but unsurprised that nobody really cared about Oxfam’s sex extortion in Haiti, in the long run. The same way I am deflated, but unsurprised, that the outrage over Grenfell has petered out. The same way I am deflated, but unsurprised about the outspoken xenophobia of the age. It’s nothing new, but has recently rediscovered its wolf’s clothing.

It’s that which makes me feel trapped between those that believe in a Britain that never was, and those that believe in a Britain that will never come to pass.

Skeleton Women (2018)

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skeletors

Skeleton – that gentle pastime, wherein you throw yourself down a claustrophobic strip of ice, head first (of course), steering yourself past 80mph with intricate wiggles and taps of your feet.

At some point it became a British pastime. The ice mountain has become a modern-day medal mine, starting with Alex Coomber’s bronze at Salt Lake City in 2002, in the first ever Olympic women’s skeleton.

Coomber had started something. Shelley Rudman claimed silver four years later in Turin, before Amy Williams took the big prize, dominating the ice at Vancouver 2010. Then Lizzy Yarnold turned up, matching Williams’ achievement with gold in Sochi. Fast forward to Pyeongchang, she’s at it again, now with Laura Deas for company. Yarnold defended her title with a mighty final slide, joined on the podium by Deas who took bronze. Britain’s skeleton women are world beaters.

Not bad for a nation that is seemingly allergic to winter, where a patch of snow shuts everything down. Yet the British sliding tradition goes back way beyond Coomber, to the very origins of the sport.

It all started with a wager, in the Swiss resort town of St. Moritz. In 1864, St. Moritz was a spa town, popular with wealthy Victorians who headed to the alps to replenish themselves in summer. Then September came, and the British packed up and headed to London with their riches in tow, much to the chagrin of the hotelier Johannes Badrutt. So that year, he convinced his guests to return for winter. If you are bored, cold, or unhappy, he said, I will pay for everything. It is said that the British frolicked in glee at the newfound Alpine winter, gasping in amazement of the sunshine (of all things) and the frosted scenery. Badrutt won his bet, of course, but unleashed a can of worms upon the Swiss hills. The British came back every winter and, like the British tourists of today, decided to take over the town and unleash mayhem.

st moritz
St Moritz. Source: stmoritz.ch

The legend goes that one group of tourists got hold of a delivery sled, and got on it, sliding through the icy, precarious, and dangerously downhill narrow streets of St. Moritz, terrifying all who crossed their path. Their (slightly) more sophisticated successors decided that a lowly delivery sled would just not do – they would not travel in anything less than a carriage – and so the first bobsleds were built.

The Swiss hoteliers had to face the monster they had created – the townspeople had grown weary of the troublesome tourists and so the hoteliers built purpose-built toboggan tracks to get the British off their streets. One of these became the Cresta Run, built by Major John Bulpett in 1884/5, and soon became the spiritual home of the sport and the base of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club (SMTC). In 1885, they held their first “Grand National” race and, five years later, an “erratic” member called Mr Cornish decided to slide the Cresta head first. Skeleton was born.

Sadly, like many sports, sledding grew very exclusive very quickly, once codified. It’s always been a sport for the wealthy, but in those early days there were no rules or limits as to who could grab a sled atop an icy hill and throw themselves down it. In the 1920s, the SMTC saw it fit to ban women from their course.

“Mrs J.M. Bagueley was the last lady to ride the Cresta in a race on 13th January 1925. Ladies rode in practice after that date, but were banned from riding on 6th January 1929.”

The ban remains. The Cresta’s terms and conditions simply state “women are not permitted to ride the Cresta run.” I wonder what changed their minds. In the early 20th century, there was a global backlash against women in sports, based on some preposterous notion of physical inferiority. In the Olympics, women were not allowed to run further than 200m until 1960. In the USA, women were banned from running the marathon for fifty years. In England, a similar ban existed for women in football, deemed “too much for a woman’s physical frame.”

Women have campaigned for decades to turn things around, and in recent years the situation has improved. The marathon ban was lifted in 1972, in part thanks to Kathrine Switzer, who ran the Boston Marathon in 1967 – entering as K.V. Switzer – and finished in good time despite attempts to remove her from the course. Each Olympics sees an increased number of women participants, and gets ever closer to event parity – the last male-only event in the Winter Games remains the Nordic Combined.

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Katrine Switzer accosted at Boston, ’67. Source: Chicago Tribune

Yet the birthplace of skeleton remains closed to Shelley Rudman, Amy Williams, and Lizzy Yarnold. Perhaps the embargo endures because of the Old Boy tradition that surrounds the Cresta. Visitors, like Matt Dawson and Ian Cowie, note the mess hall atmosphere of the place and even spot a few descendants of the Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop, but largely seem untroubled by the complete absence of women. Are they afraid of a little competition? Four years ago I thought this was a shame, but now I think it pitiful. Britain’s skeleton women are unstoppable – they are the headline acts of every Winter Games. Inspired by the “marginal gains” of British cycling, with less of the institutional misogyny, the skeleton set-up in Bath is the very model of a modern sporting powerhouse – professional, competitive and smooth as ice. If the SMTC doesn’t want to share their ice with such athletes, then that is their loss.

This is a dynasty whose queens are great symbols and great advocates of women in sport. Upon winning in Sochi, Yarnold came home determined to go into “as many schools as possible” and encourage girls to take up sport, and “not [to worry] about what the media image is of the perfect woman, it’s about being you and being proud of what you are.”

They are even inspiring the men (how could they not?). Dom Parsons followed in their footsteps on Friday, taking skeleton bronze. The Times connected his success to the Cresta Run “crazy aristocrat” pioneers, but he follows in different footsteps. This tradition, crowned by Lizzy Yarnold, started in 2002 with RAF officer Alex Coomber. She who slid the course at Salt Lake City with a broken wrist, which she’d injured just ten days earlier in training, and took the bronze.

This post is an updated version of my very first blogpost, Skeleton Women: The British Habit of Sliding Head-First down Icy Slopes

2017 in History: The Cockroach and the Bee

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New Year’s Eve likes to fool you into feeling cautiously optimistic.

That optimism is, of course, relative to that which we’ve waded through to make it through those twelve months previous. So on the last day of 2016, some might have thought “maybe 2017 wouldn’t be as bad as this one.”

Whoops.

I

john redwood two

Two millennia from now, the archaeologists and archivists of the hyper-intelligent irradiated cockroach people uncover evidence of 2017, and after copious analysis, come to view it as a seminal year in the coming of their Megaloblatta-Sapiens race.

From the vantage point of their compound eyes, the debates of the day, such as how many North Koreans is it morally acceptable to incinerate, or whether it is wrong to punch a Nazi (a question which reckons a priori that it’s ok to be a Nazi), seem moot or trivial. All must be incinerated, after all, to achieve the supremacy of the mandible.

Their museums trumpet the self-destruction of the human race. Adorning the 2017 gallery walls are their heroes of our age.

The paedophile judge almost elected to a Senate that steadfastly clung to the notion that they were once something more than but the guardians of a phallic ivory hierarchy. The false cowboy’s failure allowed them to delude themselves for another, fatal year, as the floor fell from under their feet.

A cabinet commemorating the orange wigs and boot polish that decorated the year’s Halloween festivities, and yet more pretty little tricksters charming their way out of the ooze – another “change” candidate.

Ah, the Britain exhibit. Sir Nick Clegg. Knighted for services to something – lost to the ages, no doubt. Sir Ringo, the great historian of tank engines, and the days folk could afford rail. Barry Gibb got one too. I suppose in the end times, you get points just for stayin’ alive.

Loyalty is valuable, but our lives are valuable too

There is much chuckling below chitin among patrons as they look back at us steaming headlong into the ravine, distracting ourselves with royal weddings, royal babies, royal Netflix, and royal racism scandals. And how dare they blame us? But for a little escapism, what joy was left us outside of the pharmacy. And lo, the greatest distraction of all, Europe. All eyes looked to the channel trying to work out what it meant to be British, whilst all eyes looked down in Kensington, avoiding the stare of those cremated in their homes because the tower block was deemed too unsightly.

Does it look better now?

Our dear patrons may then scuttle on through to a cinematic rendition of 2017’s finest quotes, courtesy of the rape apologists and baby demagogues, now widely accessible on the vast online archive humanity’s ghost left behind. According to Prof. Blaberoid the Hisser, eminent human historian, these virtual sabre-tongues mimicked the behaviour of their all-powerful leaders, who enjoyed an unprecedented period of rubbing the vomit of their impervious corruption into the faces of those who dared challenge them.

Pol. Pot. Pol. Pot. Pol. Pot. Pol. Pot.

And the wrong words make you listen

Humanity doomed itself in this quagmire, the professor explains on the latest edition of the Gregarious FM podcast. The situation reached critical mass around these figures, who sucked in all challenges, spitting out mercury and lead into the brains of all who listened. Many ducked for cover, their already-fragile minds could not stand another hit. Others chose noble hills upon which to perish, but this was no age for martyrs, and such warriors were dragged to their doom by another barrage of fascist incomprehension (or else stabbed in the back) – they lay in graves unmark’d, with legacies stolen and diluted. With their would-be challengers now scattered and divided, it was only a matter of time before these rat-king leaders turned upon one another.

The intellectuals emerged from their fox-holes, temporarily, to look aloof upon the massacre, pondering only where all the millennial poets went.

 

II

bee.png

As for me, I started the year attending the cremation of a friend, who fell because we could not break his fall, and ended it getting robbed, so you can forgive my cynical tone.

In between, I’ve been looking for something. Strength, defiance, hope. On darker days, it can feel like hopes fade into prayers or delusions. When there’s nothing else out there, that is still a great deal. At the start of the year, bereft, I looked back at the dust-covered words of Obama’s ostracised pastor Jeremiah Wright. The audacity of hope – it sometimes requires a fantastic imagination or a leap of faith. But somehow, I’ve got to stay grounded, or else I lead myself toward further disappointment.

Elsewhere, I just tried to take a moment, and make sense of it all, looking for comparisons in the past to try and understand the ostensible chaos of the present (like with Catalonia and Kosovo), or staring at the sun long enough to gain some blind understanding (“What a time to be alive”).

I’ve got to write it down, but I’m still getting educated

More often though, I’ve been trying to find strength to stand up when feeling particularly helpless or lost, in those who have done it all before. In the old punks who rocked against racism, or John Fitch, who witnessed first-hand a horrific disaster and dedicated his life to see that such things cannot repeat themselves.

There are two things that have kept me going these last few months. The first is through seeking meaning in the death of my friend, or more accurately, meaning in his life. I’ve been holding on tightly to what made him proud of me, and what I admired in him, and trying to keep it alive daily.

I’ve got to write it down, and it won’t be forgotten

The other, I remember well, was walking to work on the 23rd May, seeing all the bees. The Manchester bees. I have always called it the Bin Wasp, because before this I usually came across the winged mascot on the street bins of Manchester streets.

I did not want to leave the house that day, because I was scared. Like everybody else, I felt vulnerable that a place I knew well, a place I walked by every week, had been the scene of such horror. And like many brown folk in England that day, I feared the looks, the reprisal, the armed police, the misplaced suspicion. All I saw that day in my adopted city were bees. Rejecting the lot. That’s the way I chose to look at it, that day. People feeling vulnerable together, finding strength together, in each other. I was reminded of something I read when teaching the Freedom Summer.

“When we sing ‘We are not afraid,’ we mean we are afraid. We sing ‘Ain’t gonna let my fear turn me round,’ because many of you might want to turn around now.”

Strength in the past, strength in the present. Sometimes it’s important not to seek too much solace in history, or fear too greatly a roach-infested future. And I think about the best moments of the year gone by – teaching my seminars, going to the test match with a good friend, bidding friends farewell as they set off for new jobs, new homes, or new adventures. Spending time with the people I love, be it in the cinema, a fancy dress party, or sat on a sofa in Manchester somewhere. Whatever else next year holds, I hope for more instants like this.

For in the event, that this fantastic voyage should turn to erosion, and we never get old, we can always hold close the very best moments in even the worst of years.

(Disclaimer. I actually think cockroaches are neat)

The Strange Death of King Coal

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Big K

The first six years of my life were in South Wales. I am from Abergavenny – it’s down in the Vale of Usk, but it’s more of a tearoom and market castle town than a “Valley” valley, most famous for its incarceration of Rudolph Hess, and a brief time in the 14th Century when Abergavenny declared itself independent from the rest of you lot.  I’m not from a mining town.

But Abergavenny lies on the very edge of the South Wales Coalfield, that stretches 90 miles west of the town, through Blaenavon, Merthyr, the Rhondda and Neath right out to Pembrokeshire. So in those few years I learned about the mines, as you do in that part of the world.

anthracite
South Wales Coalfield. Source: Flikr|thereggy

I remember the slag heaps on the hill side and the day trips to the Rhondda Heritage Park.  I also recall heading over the top of the Blorenge, the mountain that looked over my garden, to Big Pit in Blaenavon, the mine-turned-museum. The tour underground was run back then by ex-Miners, a few of whom managed to stay in the industry as tour guides, and I think a few are still there. I never did that part of the tour. I had a chance, when I was young, but I was scared of a cave-in, probably because I’d just been taught about Victorian kids (younger than me) dying in mines.

It’s silly really, but that’s how my generation, those of us who aren’t from a mining family or old colliery town, were told about the mines. They were something past – relics of the days when kids and pit-ponies and men with rickets were sent away from the daylight to work the pits. It’s what kept them alive (that, and the canaries). That’s not what mining is anymore. Coal is still being hauled out of the ground. Mechanised and safer than ever before, but still tough, until the end of today’s shift it’s still the lifeblood of those who work the last face at Kellingley Colliery.

Nowadays it’s all about the environmental factors too. Coal kills the planet, and clean coal isn’t a sufficient alternative. Coal is choking us, so apparently we’re moving onto gas until that chokes us too. They’re closing the coal-fired power stations next, and everybody important is happy about this. It makes us ever-so-slightly greener as a country. Shall we build another runway at Heathrow?

Those in charge don’t really care about the green stuff. The government has made that pretty damn clear. But in any case, British coal isn’t going to be part of this country’s future. As life beats past us, it brings with it in the backwash a whole host of nostalgic feeling; you may have noticed some of it in my first few paragraphs. People love a bit of nostalgia, and it takes on many forms. There’s the nationalistic stuff, and in the week where Benedict Anderson passed, you can find tales of how coal built a nation, or built an empire – which in Brit-nostalgia, is rose-tinted, ignoring its brutal past and economic endurance (just think about where the coal is coming from now).

“The country used to be called Great Britain, and coal is part of what put great into that name” said Chris Kitchen, General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, last week. Britain is an imagined community built of coal and steam, and these images are frequently wrapped up in ideas of “Better Days.” This blog isn’t about that. Not today, at least. Kellingley’s closure isn’t about the death of John Bull or any of that Victoriaphilian nonsense.

There’s the other nostalgia. The moving stuff, the part that makes the Financial Times squirm  because other people are feeling emotions that they cannot comprehend. The centuries of stories of how entire communities went underground, mined the heart out of the place, looking after the town, their families, and each other. Because they were miners, and that’s just what they did. Many hands lighten the load, as the Haitians say. However outdated coal may be as an idea, Kellingley marks the end of a way of life, a popular culture complete with its own folklore, music, humour and so many histories. It is always sad when a way of life dies out, and deep mining dies today, not with a strike, but a whimper.

This isn’t Brassed Off, or Pride. The end doesn’t happen with a defiant march through the streets, with heads held high.

THAT’S NOT ENOUGH.

The resilience of downtrodden communities can be an inspiring thing to watch from the outside, and the capacity for human renewal in such places is symbolic of the most impressive qualities of our society. But all the obituaries of two centuries of life in the coalfields can be a distraction from the final act of the systematic destruction of mining life in this country. Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing.

The death of deep mining threatens the existence of the NUM, once the most powerful, government-felling union in the land. Thatcher mortally wounded the miners and the NUM during the strike of 1983-1984. Incarcerating without cause, the police beat the picketers, they beat their partners and their children too. The press burned them in daily written effigies. Over the latter half of the 20th Century, mines were increasingly underfunded and the jobs ebbed away. Successive governments did not care about the future of such places. In the 1990s, the Major government set up a few generous pension schemes as it closed dozens of mines, but work never returned, and nor was it encouraged. Mining towns were given an expiry date, nothing more.

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March in Glasgow in support of the Miner’s Strike, 1983. Source: BBC News

A few places found an economy in mining heritage. A couple of ex-Miners could run the tours down Big Pit, now part of the Museum of Wales, but really it’s plugging the dam with a fingernail. Blaenavon has tried a few things to stay afloat, even attempting to mimic Hay-on-Wye as another Welsh “book town,” but to no avail. They haven’t given up yet.

Modern, mechanised mines like Kellingley, first sunk in 1960, were able to carry on for longer. Extracting over 2 million tonnes of coal a year, Kellingley is full of cutting-edge tech. The miners drop down the shaft, at over 40mph, to a depth of 800 metres below the surface, before boarding a train for a five mile ride to the coalface, which is finally reached in one final commute aboard a conveyor belt (that itself can be another two miles long).

At temperatures of nearly 40˚C, the coal is extracted from the face using the Shearer, which resembles a gigantic pizza-cutter. While that works its magic, the seam, itself over 300m long, is held open by a series of mechanised roof supports that press upwards to keep the face clear. As the Shearer surges onwards, the roof behind the supports is allowed to collapse. Each supporting post in the passages holds at least three sensors to forewarn of danger. (More info here at UK Coal website)

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A modern mine. Source: UK Coal

These days, miners wear more than just a hard-hat, but it’s still a tough, risky business down in the pit. Collapses still happen. Miners carry a device called a “self-rescuer” that provides emergency air in case of fire. Three miners, Don Cook, Ian Cameron and Gerry Gibson have died at Kellingley in the last decade. Shifts at “The Big K” are 12 hours long, of which 3 is spent just getting to-and-from the coalface.

Romanticised accounts on these aspects of mining alone do not really exist; the sentiment of the closing of the pits is attached to the death of a way of life so important to many people alive today. Those who mourn the end of mining do not want people risking their lives in cave-ins and explosions. We do wish for communities to not be left behind in the past as evaporating towns where kids with prospects throw a bag on their backs and never return, and everybody else ends up on the dole or in a Sports Direct depot as in Shirebrook.

Modern miner
Modern miner. Souce: UK Coal

It’s at that point where we shake off the intoxicating nostalgia of the pit town. The end of deep coal is an end of security. As the NUM declines to almost nothing, and as the trade union movement itself comes under increasing threat, the ex-miners in these towns find their friends are also ebbing away. The canteen in Kellingley now has a makeshift career service – there are jobs advertised for a nearby Wind Farm factory in Hull. 14 of them (at its peak, Kellingley employed 2000). There are plans to build a Waste-to-Energy facility on the site, but that comes with just 38 full-time positions.

The NUM is angry about all of this; Dave Kitchen explains that the skills of deep-mining are honed and unique, and the miners have also been damaged from years in the pit. In any case, the planned re-training and re-employment schemes offered are little more than lip-service.

“Now we have miners at various stages of that journey entering the job market. Employers will be interviewing men who know how to work hard but who aren’t as healthy as they should be because their back’s not right or they have a weak chest.

We haven’t been in this situation before because previously when a pit has closed there’s always been the option of transferring. The Kellingley miners have specialised skills but nowhere to take them because theirs is the last pit.”

Many who came to Kellingley, like Welshman Carwyn Donovan, followed the coal to Yorkshire after their old mines bit the bullet. The pension schemes provided by a £10m grant to UK Coal from the Government are a shadow of those given out in the ‘90s. One miner, laid off in August, was only told at the start of his last shift that at the end of the day, he would no longer have a job. Even the UK Coal website claims to this day that its mines closed this year would be open until 2019.

This is a disinterested assassination of a town and the final stage of a thirty-year dismantling of the lives of coal miners. This isn’t about the Paris Talks or climate change or worker safety or merely the passing of time. Britain hasn’t abandoned coal yet, just its miners. Coal from abroad comes in at £13-a-ton less than from below our feet. The buyers don’t care about the welfare of those who brought that coal to the surface either.

The price is all that matters, and the overheads of a modern mine are high. It needs to be preparing the next face as the current one is worked to maintain profit. Starved of investment, UK Coal pulled the rug quickly from Kellingley and Thoresby (in Nottinghamshire) this year to cut losses. It’s cheaper for the buyers to buy no-questions-asked coal whilst the argument is spun that deep mining was an old nag who had to be put out of its misery.

The Kellingley miners are going to march tomorrow through Knottingley, the nearest village. Organised by two local women, the march will begin “one last pit party” for the town. But then the town will go into Christmas, short of 450 jobs and full of uncertainty. “We’re all off on gap years, aren’t we?” said one miner, wryly.

Pam Ross of the GMB Union, finds a flaw in the nostalgia.

We will lose skills, traditions and culture associated with coal mining, and obviously suffer the social deprivation from communities losing their source of employment. It’s ironic that there are so many coal mining museums in the UK – obviously the general public has a lot of empathy for miners and mining, pity the UK Government did not share that empathy.”

Ross would like to have seen mining continue until at least 2025. Maybe that wasn’t possible. But through better pension schemes, training and local investment the Government could have at least ensured a better future for ex-mining towns, so that mining need not be remembered as the better past.

The last tonne of coal pulled out of Kellingley is going to go on display at the National Coal Mining Museum next year. Like in the Rhondda and Big Pit, heritage is all we have left of the mining life. Perhaps in remembering the struggle and spirit of the mining past Knottingley, Blaenavon and other ex-mining towns can continue to endure the hard times and hope for a future that is more than a story of permanent decline. That is the culture of mining that doesn’t have to die.

Deep coal mining in Britain is over.

Kellingley-Colliery_0286
Dave King, Kellingley miner (left) and Keith Poulson of the NUM, at the Kellingley Miners Memorial. Source: Daily Mirror

PS I have read somewhere that the Memorial is being moved the National Mining Museum in Wakefield and Kellingley Miners are raising money toward this aim. If anyone has more info on this/how to give please let me know.

Source of header image: Julian Hamilton/Daily Mirror