Marxist historian Christopher Hill died on Monday, aged 91. There are obituaries in today’s Times and Guardian.
Bridget Hill died in July last year, aged 80, and her Guardian obituary is very fine, too.
UPDATE: The Telegraph has an obit, too [28.2.2003], as has the Independent [1.3.2003].
Read My Lips. Fantastic stuff, via Raj.
UPDATE: If the link isn’t working, try this one, to the same file in RealAudio, or this one, to an mpeg, or, most recently, this one.
Lots of people are linking to it, and Kieran Healy’s presentation is the best of the lot, but the egregious Department of Homeland Security’s pictograms are just great.
[Incidentally, Kieran Healy is writing about all the right things at the moment, since he also has also taken to discussing the Big Red Book, aka G. E. M. de Ste Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World].
While on the subject of barking Americans barking, though, Raj points me towards this page, which has a clip of John Ashcroft singing “Let the Eagles Soar”, his own composition written some time after 9/11, although I can’t quite work out how to configure my browser to get it to play properly. All of which will remind the people who like this kind of thing — and we are legion — of the heroic career of Senator Orrin Hatch, songman.
So why don’t right-wing British politicians write songs like these? We’re missing out.
Over the past few days both Tom and Raj have sent me the link for the Iraq war game thingy, but I think I’m more entranced by Papal Bowling, from the same site.
UPDATE [22.2.2003]: I’m slipping this one in as an addendum to Wednesday’s entry, since I forgot to commemorate one of my favourite Dead Socialists: Georg Büchner.
As the Dictionary of the Turtle explains:
The German dramatist Georg Büchner (1813-1837) is remembered today chiefly on account of his excellent plays. Danton’s Death (1835) was an impressive debut; Woyzeck (1837) an absolutely astonishing tragedy, and the first with a proletarian protagonist. Yet when he died at an absurdly young age, he was mourned by his contemporaries as an expert on the anatomy of the barbel fish, on which he had completed a scientific dissertation. Drama and Fish Science were not his only talents: Büchner was also a member of the radical Society of the Rights of Man, and the author of stirring tracts. The Big Soviet Encyclopaedia (third edition, English version, v.4 p.132) draws attention to his role in propagating the slogan “Peace to the huts, war on the palaces” in Germany. He also wrote a comedy, Leonce and Lena (published 1839), but it is not funny.
In Memoriam Georg Büchner, born 17 October 1813, died 19 February 1837.
Steve writes to the Stoa to recommend this link.
Tom adds [2.18.2003]: Steve either isn’t reading NTK, or thought that the link just after the one he sent in wasn’t worthwhile: “How Auburn, Massachusetts Got WMD Capability”.
Steve replies: “Tom is totally correct, I don’t read NTK regularly (the bastards never published anything I submitted) and got the link from somewhere else…”
More photos from the march here, here, here and here [via Indymedia Italy, via Infoshop].
The march was slow and the weather was cold, but the whole thing was quite extraordinary. Well organised, too, except for the decision to allow Harold Pinter to read one of his awful poems [scroll down to the bottom].
In Memoriam Dolly the Sheep, 5 July 1996 - 14? February 2003.
As the demonstrations at the weekend promise to be vast…
SEND YOUR ESSAYS TO BLAIR!Here is an inspired action being co-ordinated by our friends at Cambridge Students Against the War:
5 minute student action:
Oppose the war? Then email your essays to Tony Blair! (and forward this email)
It came to light on Thursday that the government is relying on plagiarised post-graduate essays to bolster its case for war on Iraq. Its “dossier” entitled “Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation”, was posted on the Number 10 website and hailed by Colin Powell in his presentation to the United Nations on Wednesday. It claimed to be based on up-to-date intelligence - but turned out to have been nicked, typos and all, from 3 out-of-date sources, including an essay by a graduate student in California.
We’re obviously very excited that students’ academic endeavours are being taken so seriously, and think it’s time for students to act to ensure that war plans continue to be “intelligence led”.
So, why not send Tony Blair some of your essays?
Tony Blair posted an essay by Ibrahim al-Marashi, a student in Monterey, California, up on his web site. Maybe he’ll do the same for yours! Why not email the web master, and attach some of your best scholarly efforts. Don’t worry too much about the relevance of the subject - Tony and his skilled advisers are on hand to subtly distort your words to suit their war agenda. So, whether it’s Proust or particle analysis, Geography or History, attach a copy of your essay and send it to Number 10!
Here’s what we suggest you do:
* email your essays as attachments, to webmaster@pmo.gov.uk, as soon as possible and definitely by next Tuesday, explaining why you are sending it.
* or even better post your essays to ‘10 Downing Street, London SW1′ with a covering letter (we’ve copied one below, and it’s online here) in an envelope titled ‘Warning: Top Secret’.
* email us here telling us you’ve done it, so we can let the press know what’s happening (please don’t send us your essays though - we don’t want them!)
Excellent idea. Via the Oxford Students Stop The War list.
More on gin, thanks to Katy. This is a 1705 ad for a special kind of gin brewed up in a London ginhouse:
“One glass will restore an old man of threescore to the juvenility of thirty, make a girl of fourteen as ripe as an old maid of twentyfour, a Puritan to lust after the flesh and a married man to oblige his wife oftener in one night than without it he might do in seven”.
She adds: “Such dangerous concoctions were served up surreptitiously at so-called Puss and Mew shops after the hardline mid 18th century Gin Act. On walls down side alleys, there were painted signs of cats, and if you looked closely, there was a little slot under its tail for a coin. On inserting a coin, crying “Mew, mew!” and holding a glass underneath the cat’s mouth, the glass would be magically filled with contraband gin via a spout protruding from beneath the cat’s teeth.”
If you were wondering about how the translations of the Harry Potter books into various East Asian languages do when it comes to dealing with some of the puns, anagrams and other kinds of wordplay, you need to study this exceptionally informative page. Thanks to Andrew for passing it my way.
Still haven’t read the books. People tell me they are quite good. I saw one of the films, though.
Oh dear: I seem to be experiencing another anti-Catholic moment. (Last month’s anti-Catholic moment, you will recall, concerned the way the Church in Boston is behaving like a bunch of thugs as it tries to evade responsibility for ruining many people’s lives: this piece by Christopher Hitchens also deserves a link). This month’s takes a different tack:
OUTRAGE OF THE WEEK
Vatican Says Word ‘Gender’ Is Anti-Church Code(WOMENSENEWS)–The Vatican announced it will publish a collection of phrases and words including “reproductive rights” and “gender” that it says are code for anti-Catholic sentiments.The Vatican said these and approximately 76 other neutral-sounding terms about family and life are used to cover up deeper, anti-Church meanings, according to The Associated Press. The Vatican will publish the 1,000-page lexicon of the terms soon.
In an interview with the religious affairs monthly journal 30 Giorni (30 Days), Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said the phrase “reproductive rights” is misleading because it “is used for propaganda–not for the right to reproduction but . . . to abortion,” The Washington Times reported.
The Vatican decided to create the book after nongovernmental organizations complained about “ambiguous” words and phrases used at United Nations meetings…
It will be great fun to get a copy of this thousand-page lexicon when it comes out, which will be required and entertaining reading. But what’s sad — more than sad, in fact — is that this isn’t just the usual run of harmless religious lunacy, since these interventions on the subject of “gender” have a real impact on the development of the international legal regime.The International Criminal Court website, for example, trumpets this:
“The Rome Statute explicitly recognizes rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and sexual violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Trafficking is encompassed within the crime against humanity of enslavement. Also, for the first time, gender-based persecution is included as a crime against humanity. The codification of these crimes in the Statute is significant as prior humanitarian law has afforded trivial treatment to such grave violence.”
This sounds excellent, and indeed, it mostly is. Turn to Article 7, Paragraph 3, however, and you find the weaselly definition of “gender” being used by the Statute, negotiated by the Vatican and supported by various Islamic regimes and the United States (which isn’t proposing to cooperate with the Court after all):
It is understood that the term ‘gender’ refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society. The term ‘gender’ does not indicate any meaning different from the above.
So much for the work of a generation of gender studies. And so much for the human rights of transsexuals and other gender queers who alone seem to be exempted from international legal protections against gender-based violence. The small print bit: Credit where it’s due: the above information came to me via Raj, but is originally from Women’s Enews, which is a nonprofit independent news service covering issues of concern to women and their allies: an incubator program of the Fund for the City of New York, Women’s Enews is supported by readers and various progressive foundations. Donate now by going here.
Friend and comrade Jon Wilson sinks in his teeth and doesn’t let go, writing in today’s Guardian.
A double-header today, since we commemorate the felt absences of “Red” Ellen Wilkinson (died 6.2.1947), who, among other things, brought about the free school milk which Mrs Thatcher so famously abolished; and Hanns Eisler (died 6.2.1962), who, among other things, once upon a time set the immortal Magnitogorsk Ballad of the Komsomols to music…
Ural, ural
The town by the magnetic mountain
Here lies a lot of steel.
The Party says,
“Give us steel!”
The Komsomols answer,
“In the time planned,
We will give you steel!”
Perhaps it loses something in translation. Or perhaps not.UPDATE [6.2.2005]: Actually, I’m not sure Eisler should be today at all. I think he died in September… Whoops.
Here’s a decent-sized chunk of Bob Marshall-Andrews’s speech from yesterday’s Commons debate on the future, or otherwise, of the House of Lords:
I am a unicameralist, and would abolish the second Chamber. For the avoidance of doubt, that means removing the bishops and Law Lords from Parliament, and abolishing the office of Lord Chancellor, replacing him with a democratically elected Minister�a Secretary of State for justice, an office that was central to every Labour manifesto for 50 years until 1997, when it mysteriously disappeared. I believe in unicameralism because the House of Lords has been an alibi for our own inadequacies on many occasions. I echo what my good and hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) said the last time we debated this matter. He spoke about an occasion in the last Parliament when he organised a small but perfectly formed rebellion. I cannot remember what it was about, but I was almost certainly a part of it. He recollected that many people said that they would have supported him, save for the fact that they knew that the Lords would ultimately do their duty.
Something similar happened when we were fighting for jury trial, and there was a large rebellion. Forty Labour Members voted against the Government, and 90 abstained. However, several told me that they would certainly have voted against the Government on jury trial if they had not known full well that the House of Lords in due course would throw the measure out, which it did. I have often reflected on what would have happened if we did not have the House of Lords, and Members who would undoubtedly have fought for jury trial had voted against the Government in the Commons, knowing that it was their last chance to do so. We may easily have beaten the Government, with their vast majority. If we had done so, we would have struck enormous simultaneous blows for parliamentary democracy and the oldest of our civil liberties.
That is the answer to people who say that unicameralism is a dangerous road. The plain fact is that it will concentrate the minds of elected Members of Parliament to a far greater extent than any other superficial reform. However, we are not going to get it, so there is only one option�a fully elected House. There is no other option, and what has been offered as a challenge to this House is pure bunkum. The House of Lords will be a creature of statute, and will be bound by a statute of our making. The behaviour of its Members will undoubtedly deteriorate when they are elected, but there is no sign whatsoever that there will be an outbreak of mass delinquency. Let us vote for election, because it is a vote against the greatest curse of the British political system�the continuation of patronage in any form, whether deferred or otherwise.
I bounce back and forth about whether I think unicameralism is a good idea or not, but it certainly doesn’t get as much discussion as it deserves. I still think, in fact, that I solved the problem of the House of Lords last year, and I still haven’t worked out what’s wrong with my proposal. And, incidentally, for the list of the 245 disgraces to humanity — and to democracy, and to their constituents — who voted for a wholly-appointed second chamber, click here and study the “Ayes” at the top of the page, whom Hansard names and shames.Update: [5.2.2003]: Welcome pseudonymous stranger Mad Max has been fighting insomnia by trying to work out what’s wrong (and scroll down) with the proposal from last November — so many thanks to him, and let’s hope that sleep returns. I don’t think he’s right — because I don’t think the Elspeth Howes of the world are the kind of people to fall in line behind the Daily Mail, but it’s certainly worth a thought or four.
Maggie O’Kane, in today’s Guardian, looks back to 1990 and doubts that the American government can be trusted when it’s looking for reasons to go to war.
Being a doting Admirer, I enjoyed reading Bernard Mandeville’s remarks on gin:
Nothing is more destructive, either in regard to the Health or the Vigilance and Industry of the Poor than the infamous Liquor, the name of which, deriv’d from Juniper in the Dutch is now by frequent use and the Laconick Spirit of the Nation, from a Word of middling Length shrunk into a Monosyllable, Intoxicating Gin, that charms the unactive, the desperate and crazy of either Sex, and makes the starving Sot behold his Rags and Nakedness with stupid Indolence, or banter both in senseless Laughter, and more insipid Jests: It is a fiery Lake that sets the Blame in Flame, burns up the Entrails, and scorches every Part within; and at the same time a Lethe of Oblivion, in which the Wretch immers’d drowns his most pinching Cares, and with his Reason all anxious Reflexion on Brats that cry for Food, hard Winters Frosts, and horrid empty Home.
In hot and adust Tempers it makes Men Quarrelsome, renders ‘em Brutes and Savages, sets ‘em on to fight for nothing, and has often been the Cause of Murder. It has broke and destroy’d the strongest Constitutions, thrown ‘em into Consumptions, and been the fatal and immediate occasion of Apoplexies, Phrensies and sudden Death. But as these latter Mischiefs happen but seldom, they might be overlook’d and conniv’d at, but this cannot be said of the many Diseases that are familiar to the Liquor, and which are daily and hourly produced by it; such as Loss of Appetite, Fevers, Black and Yellow Jaundice, Convulsions, Stone and Gravel, Dropsies, and Leucophlegmacies.
Among the doting Admirers of this Liquid Poison, many of the meanest Rank, from a sincere Affection to the Commodity it self, become Dealers in it, and take delight to help others to what they love themselves, as Whores commence Bawds to make the Profits of one Trade subservient to the Pleasures of the other. But as these Starvelings commonly drink more than their Gains, they seldom by selling mend the wretchedness of Condition they labour’d under while they were only Buyers. In the Fag-end and Out-skirts of the Town, and all Places of the vilest Resort, it’s sold in some part or other of almost every House, frequently in Cellars, and sometimes in the Garret. The petty Traders in this Stygian Comfort are supply’d by others in somewhat higher Station, that keep profess’d Brandy Shops, and are a little to be envy’d as the former; and among the middling People, I know not a more miserable Shift for a Livelihood than their Calling; whoever would thrive in it must in the first place be of a watchfulo and suspicious, as well as a bold and resolute Temper, that he may not be iposed upon by Cheats and Sharpers, nor out-bully’d by the Oaths and Imprecations of Hackney-Coachmen and Foot-Soldiers; in the second, he ought to be a dabster at gross Jokes and loud Laughter, and have all the winning Ways to allure Customers and draw out their Money, and be well vers’d in the low Jests and Ralleries the Mob make use of to banter Prudence and Frugality. He must be affable and obsequious to the most despicable; always ready and officious to help a Porder down with his Load, shake Hands with a Basket-Woman, pull off his Hat to an Oyster-Wench, and be familiar with a Beggar; with Patience and good Humour he must be able to endure the filthy Actions and viler Language of nasty Drabs, and the lewdest Rake-hells, and without a Frown or the least Aversion bear with all the Stench and Squalor, Noise and Impertinence that the utmost Indigence, Laziness and Ebreity, can produce in the most shameless and abandon’d Vulgar…
The Fable of the Bees, Volume I, Remark G. He goes on, naturally, to outline the social benefits of widespread gin consumption, but these passages are less entertaining, so I’ll resist the temptation to just carry on quoting chunks of Mandeville and stop there.Oxford’s bookshops seem baffled by The Fable. (They wouldn’t be the first to be so). When I went to buy a copy of the full text last week, to supplant the Hundert excerpted edition I used to use, I found that the computer at Blackwells filed it under “Nineteenth Century Prose Fiction”. Most of it is in prose, so one out of three may not be bad.
What’s going on in the collective cyberconsciousness? Once again, the monthly round-up of Virtual Stoa Search Strings:
small lightweight megaphone
lord Rothermere fascists
hindi incest sites
sinai desert nude photo
sealions war iraq
Dobby Vladimir Putin [ad nauseam]
Keith Flett Beard Liberation Front
sandokan Italian lyric
J K Rowling’s address in Kensington
human right activist in saudi arabia mail contact address 2003
elephant sex
Up Down Across Elevators Escalators Moving Sidewalks
space shuttle jokes
a nation once again
Some of these are quite odd — possibly generating a little more frustration than usual in the archives.
Patchen writes [5.2.2003]: Isn’t it about time you bowed to the irrestible force of the market and actually posted the following link? I’m not sure how the elephant feels, but the gray-haired fellow seems to be enjoying himself.
Thinking of Bush lies draws one inexorably on to the subject of Blair’s lies — and it seems that even the security services no longer believe his most-frequently-repeated ones about a link between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al-Qaida…
You’ve probably seen this before, but it’s nicely done: Who Dies for Bush Lies?
From today’s Independent:
“When people say to me why are you risking everything in a sense, politically, on this issue I say to them in all honesty I do not want to be the Prime Minister when people point the finger back at history and say you knew perfectly well those two threats [weapons of mass destruction and terrorism] were there and you did nothing about it …
I don’t know a great deal about the Suez crisis in 1956, but I suppose I rather assume that this is the kind of worry that propelled Anthony Eden towards disaster and, ultimately, resignation.
I recently turned thirty. Throughout my twenties, I tended to ignore birthdays, to the best of my ability. But last week I had a 30th birthday party here in Oxford, and lots of friends came, and I enjoyed myself, and I didn’t get too drunk.
And the excellent presents which my excellent friends gave me, which are still making me happy, include an original (empty) jar of Plumtree’s Potted Meat — which will mean nothing to people who never became a little too obsessive about Ulysses, but something to people, like me, who did; a box of Lego bricks, which is altogether too complicated to explain here (though they are much more fiddly than I remember them from 20+ years ago); Gary Mulholland’s celebration of English pop music; and a copy of David Icke’s recent book, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster, which had to be specially imported from the USA…
I love you all: many thanks.
Update: [5.2.2003]: An excellent one to add to the pile: the CD of Chansons “Contre”, including the nineteenth-century classic by L�o Taxil, “La Marseillaise anti-cl�ricale”!
Rudolf Hilferding, socialist economist and politician: born in Vienna, 10 August 1877; died in a Nazi prison, 2 February 1941.
When space shuttles explode, we get to the point of being about to feel sad, but then we remember that far worse things happen every day, which we never get to hear about. We also get the chance to engage in a bit of comparative presidential rhetoric analysis…
| Ronald Reagan [28 January 1986]: Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But, we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight; we’ve never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we’ve forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, ‘Give me a challenge and I’ll meet it with joy.’ They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them… There’s a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, ‘He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.’ Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ’slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ |
George W. Bush [1 February 2003]: My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At 9:00 a.m. this morning, Mission Control in Houston lost contact with our Space Shuttle Columbia. A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas. The Columbia is lost; there are no survivors. On board was a crew of seven: Colonel Rick Husband; Lt. Colonel Michael Anderson; Commander Laurel Clark; Captain David Brown; Commander William McCool; Dr. Kalpana Chawla; and Ilan Ramon, a Colonel in the Israeli Air Force. These men and women assumed great risk in the service to all humanity.In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket, and the difficulties of navigating the fierce outer atmosphere of the Earth. These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more.
All Americans today are thinking, as well, of the families of these men and women who have been given this sudden shock and grief. You’re not alone. Our entire nation grieves with you. And those you loved will always have the respect and gratitude of this country. The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on. In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home. May God bless the grieving families, and may God continue to bless America. |
The Challenger explosion, of course, gave rise to lots of tasteless jokes very quickly. (You probably remember several, so I won’t repeat them here). Some of them, no doubt, will get an airing again. I’ve been struck, on the other hand, by the way in which the attack of the World Trade Center didn’t generate any tasteless jokes at all (none that I ever heard, at any rate: it generated any number of urban legends, but they’re different). So I continue to wonder whether something in the culture has changed, and that the destruction of 11 September 2001 was sufficiently large that we no longer find disasters quite as entertaining as we did not so long ago.
Nick writes [2.2.2003]: We must mix in the wrong circles. I don’t remember hearing any *good* tasteless WTC jokes, but there were plenty of them flying around shortly after the attacks. There was a bunch in “New Directions in Folklore” (online zine, now in Google’s cache), which pointed me to a thread in alt.tasteless.jokes which sprung up within an hour of the attacks. Google is your friend.
Martin writes [2.2.2003]: Very revealing to have Reagan put directly next to Bush on your weblog. One remembers Reagan as a bumbling, idiotic, slumbery man, but next to W. he reads like Voltaire.
Tessa Jowell doesn’t want the Stop the War coalition to hold its next big rally in London in Hyde Park. (It’ll be bad for the grass, apparently). How wrong she is.
Here’s Karl Marx, writing in the Neue Oder Zeitung of 28 June 1855:
We were spectators from beginning to end and do not think we are exaggerating in saying that the English Revolution began yesterday in Hyde Park. The latest news from the Crimea acted as an effective ferment upon this “unparliamentary,” “extra-parliamentary” and “anti-parliamentary” demonstration… At three o’clock approximately 50,000 people had gathered at the spot announced on the right bank of the Serpentine in Hyde Park’s immense meadows. Gradually the assembled multitude swelled to a total of at least 200,000 due to additions from the other bank. Milling groups of people could be seen shoved about from place to place. The police, who were present in force, were obviously endeavouring to deprive the organizers of the meeting of what Archimedes had asked for to move the earth, namely, a place to stand upon. Finally a rather large crowd made a firm stand and Bligh the Chartist constituted himself chairman on a small eminence in the midst of the throng. No sooner had he begun his harangue than Police Inspector Banks at the head of 40 truncheon-swinging constables explained to him that the Park was the private property of the Crown and that no meeting might be held in it. After some pourparlers in which Bligh sought to demonstrate to him that parks were public property and in which Banks rejoined he had strict orders to arrest him if he should insist on carrying out his intention, Bligh shouted amidst the bellowing of the masses surrounding him:
“Her Majesty’s police declare that Hyde Park is private property of the Crown and that Her Majesty is unwilling to let her land be used by the people for their meetings. So let’s move to Oxford Market.”
With the ironical cry: “God save the Queen!” the throng broke up to journey to Oxford Market…
There were riots there in 1866 over franchise reform, and battles with suffragettes in 1914. So it’s a terribly suitable venue for this kind of thing, and it’s ridiculous that the minister for what used to be called national heritage should even think of trying to interrupt this vital radical tradition.
Update! [5.2.2003]: Jowell backs down!
