When will women get the vote?

With it being census time it's somehow fitting to look back one hundred years to the 1911 census that was subject to a controversial boycott by the Suffragettes. Writing comments like “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper” or “No votes for women, no census” thousands of activists for women's suffrage protested the census.

My favourite story of the year is, of course, that of Emily Wilding Davison who, census night, hid herself in a House of Commons cupboard so she could legally say she resided in Parliament on the census form. Emily famously died two years later under the hooves of the King's horse.


Many struggles for women's equality have not been won but we do generally accept that women did win the vote and we don't want to go back. I don't think that's controversial is it?


So I was interested to read that in Saudi Arabia they've decided that they aren't quite prepared for women to be voting - literally. There are municipal elections due in Saudi next month and women were scheduled to be able to vote for the first time. Sadly this is not to be.


"We are not ready for the participation of women in these municipal elections," said the head of the electoral committee Abdulrahman al-Dahmash, while at the same time renewing promises that authorities would allow women to take part "in the next ballot."

He said that "Participation of women in elections took place in most advance countries gradually," which does not explain why no women will be allowed to stand or vote in these elections. There were steps along the way to, for example, equalising the age of suffrage between men and women but the first step was not cancelling the right to vote at all.

Considering Saudi troops are currently in Bahrain  keeping the democratic forces down there it seems of a piece that they should postpone any democratic reform at home too. Indeed recent decrees in the last two weeks have declared that anyone criticising senior clerics are to be 'untouchable' and must be severely punished and protests have been banned.


For most of us in this country we see votes for women as an established fact, yet in many parts of the world governments that are our business partners and friends deny the people even this basic democratic right. Of course in Saudi women can't drive let alone vote but there are nascent movements for women's equality and for democratic reform. 

Caught between the inspiration of the uprisings around the Arab world and fear of their repressive government those movements must feel themselves on the cliff edge, unsure whether to jump off and fly, or perhaps hurtle to ground.

I'll get my raincoat - a riposte

I loathe and despise blog rows where one blogger denounces another at length and it goes round in circles until everyone feels sick. However, just for once I'll use this space to disagree with Carl at Raincoat Optimism over 'sectarianism' because, hopefully, it will be a friendly disagreement. And anyway, "it's good to talk" as Bob Hoskins used to say on that advert encouraging us run our phone bills up.

Carl wrote earlier today a post that is a hybrid between a history lesson on the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and an opportunity to say that "refusal to work in the Labour Party, from the ILP back in the thirties to the Greens and the SWP now, is the scourge of left wing politics."

If he'd written about a refusal to work *with* the Labour Party I might not have bothered, cooperating with people you disagree with on specific points of agreement is healthy, but working *in* it? That's different.

But first the history. I'd like to defend the ILP from Carl's assertion that it as a "small, inadequate left wing part[y] shout[ing] in the wind, by the sidelines". I think this is far too harsh.

Firstly the ILP left the Labour Party in 1932 when it was in crisis Labour having played an utterly shameful role in government. Although a smallish organisation (with less than ten thousand members) it provided a strong left current outside of Stalinism, provided trade union militants who were not in the pockets of the large political organisations and, crucially, aided the Spanish revolution organisation aid and volunteers to fight in the POUM.

I think all of that was worth while and were a real contribution to the political moment quite distinct from Labour, who were a shower at the time. While I've no intention of defending every action of the ILP inside Labour they would have found making this contribution more difficult not less.

Which brings me on to today. For Carl we need to be inside "the Labour Party, currently in opposition to a government demanding ideological cuts over jobs and growth", but I think this ignores something pretty basic, which is that people like myself are for things as well as against them.

The current Labour position is that the deficit should not be halved in three years but in four. My economic position is that we should not be cutting public sector spending, but rather investing in the future. If I joined Labour it would be harder to argue that case for investment, not easier, so why should I spend my time campaigning for candidates who think the opposite of what I think?

There is a basic principle here - my politics are not the same as Labour's. Labour have consistently gone into General Elections saying that the market should have a greater involvement in public services, saying that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were good and, while I have collected money for strikers, they have denounced them. I don't think Labour wants me anymore than I want to join them.

There's loads of people in Labour I have a real respect for, mainly the grass roots activists, but while I love and hug and kiss left Labour MP's like John MacDonnell I could never do what he does. Going to the polls on a manifesto that I disagree with from the header on the front page to the "printed and published" on the back he doesn't agree with a word of it.

It just doesn't feel honest to me. Voters deserve candidates whose politics match their parties, at least in general.

Now, it's all very well saying people on the left are sectarian for not being members of the Labour Party but what if I don't want to support candidates in favour of war? What if I think the economy needs to be regeared towards the ecological crisis? Is it sectarian to have political disagreements. Surely it would only be sectarian to refuse to join even though I agreed with their policies? But I don't.

Members of the SWP want a workers' revolution and think Parliamentary democracy is shit. Seeing as there is a very clear dividing line between that position and the position of every Labour leader and manifesto since its inception it seems pretty sensible for them to go elsewhere for their political sustenance.

Political pluralism does seem to annoy many in Labour, which is one reason I guess they've never tried to introduce proportional representation, but I'm afraid it's a fact of life - they really are other ways of thinking than inside the Labour/Tory horse race.

None of this means small parties are better than big ones. It doesn't even mean having different politics means being 'purist'. Labour don't think a watered down version of what I think, they actually think the opposite - at least on the big things like war, privatisation and ecological devastation. It's not purism that stops me being a Labour Party member but the fact I don't agree with their policies. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

History hour: 1979 Scottish Devolution Referendum

With the up coming referendum in May on the Alternative Vote (AV) I thought now would be an appropriate time to take a look at previous referendums in the UK. One useful example might be the 1979 referendum on Scottish Devolution.

The movement for a more independent Scotland had been around for some time. Right at the start of the post-war years in 1948 there was a two million strong petition for a Scottish Parliament and although the tide washed in and out on the issue the current never quite went away.

In the October '74 General Election the Scottish National Party (SNP) who'd never won a single MP in a General Election before that year, won over 30% of the Scottish vote and 11 MPs, mainly at the expense of the Conservatives. To put that in context in 2010 the SNP won 19.9% (an increase of 2.3% on the previous time). The issue was alight again.

There was no support for Scottish independence at (Labour) cabinet level but the new SNP threat had to be scuppered somehow, so a referendum on devolution was approved, primarily as a way of heading off full scale independence.

One London Labour MP (George Cunninghame) successfully moved an amendment insisting that not only did the referendum have to pass with a simple majority at least 40% of the electorate had to vote in favour, effectively turning abstentions into no votes. A similar Parliamentary proposal was put forwards for the AV referendum last year incidentally, but it found little support.

The campaign in favour was split. SNP activists were divided between those who (understandably) saw the devolution question as a way of preventing independence and more pragmatic SNP activists who thought devolution was a step towards their goal.

Likewise, although Labour was officially in favour of the proposals they themselves had initiated high profile MPs, like Robin Cook, placed themselves firmly in the NO camp. The forces who would expect to have been in the YES lobby were horribly split among themselves culminating in two official YES campaigns (the SNP one and the one for everyone else) which enjoyed only lukewarm support at best from the hard line reformers.

Meanwhile the NO camp, with it's rather simple 'bollocks to it' message (that wasn't an official slogan mind) was united, clear in its message and, with a Labour government shuddering to a halt, a NO vote could be seen as a parting shot to the dying government from its detractors.

early polls had indicated a comfortable win for the YEs campaign but March '79 found the YES vote scrapping in by the skin of their teeth. 51.6% of those who voted, voted in favour. But George Cunninghame had his revenge because, on a 63.6% turnout, only 32.8% of the electorate had voted YEs and 30.8% had voted NO. The referendum fell on a technicality.

The referendum, having gone down to defeat, pulled the SNP down with it and later that year they went from 11 MPs to just two, so in many ways the halfway house of devolution DID put a hole in the SNP's historic rise.

Two light words of caution about drawing too strong a parallel with the AV referendum though. There are certainly parallels between the pro-independence campaigns of '79 and pro-PR people of 2011 - both are divided into 'step towards our goal' and 'attempt to head off our goal' groupings, but the fact that the devolution referendum lost does not in itself prove wrong those who said it would not lead to independence, even f you think they should have set their sights lower.

The second point is that while devolution falls short of independence it is an increase in the level of independence or autonomy of the Scottish nation while AV is not more proportional that First Past the Post (FPTP). In fact Av entrenches the concept that only those with majority support should be elected to Parliament at all - which is the opposite of the PR principle that minorities should still have a Parliamentary voice.

You can argue that demonstrating a willingness to reform, and reject FPTP, may make PR more likely (and I'd like to see that argument made rather than simply stated as a fact) you can argue that AV is preferable to FPTP - but what you cannot credibly do is argue that AV is more like PR than FPTP in the way that devolution certainly is more like independence than no devolution.

These caveats aside I think the '79 devolution referendum is instructive in a number of ways. It shows how a question posed deliberately in favour of a reform few were advocating is divisive among reformers. It shows how a divided campaign can lose ground to a united opposition and how, once a referendum is put, no matter what way the answer falls you've had your option for change for a generation.

ABC of Feminism: Women's suffrage

In the first of this short series on the ABC of Feminism Louise Whittle, who blogs at HarpyMarx, writes on women’s suffrage, trade unions and the radical suffragists.

No cause can be won between dinner and tea, and most of us who were married had to work with one hand tied behind us. (Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up).

Women do not want their political power to enable them to boast that they are on equal terms with the men. They want to use it for the same purpose as men – to get better conditions. Every woman in England is longing for her political freedom in order to make the lot of the worker pleasanter and to bring about reforms which are wanted. We do not want it as a mere plaything… (Selina Cooper, pictured, 1906 from Wigan Observer)

The history of the women’s suffrage movement during the 20th century has been overshadowed and dominated by the middle class suffragettes of the Pankhursts the select few, predominantly London-centric (even though Pankhursts started off the suffrage campaign based in Manchester).

What about working class women activists? Who were they? Many were active in Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Many were campaigning around pay issues and other matters. And many of these women were active in the textile unions. Women’s suffrage wasn’t just a middle class pre-occupation, for working class women it was hand in glove with the labour movement.
Working class women trade unionists included:

Selina Cooper: textile worker from age of 10. She stood up at Labour Party conferences arguing for women’s suffrage.

Helen Silcock: She took the demand for women’s suffrage into the male dominated TUC congresses.

Sarah Reddish: She was based in Bolton, union organiser and suffragist.

Sarah Dickenson: Based in Salford, another leading Trade Union organiser.

Ada Chew: worked as a tailoress and exposed the sweated labour in her local paper. She was also a Trade Union organiser.

Women looked to the Trade Union movement, vehicles like the Women’s Trade Union Council and Women’s Trade Union League (marching, right). Petitions were organised in places like Lancashire and Blackburn. During 1900, women organised open air meetings at local guilds, Labour churches and ILP branches. They got 15,000 signatures of women cotton workers.

During the summer of 1901 woolworkers, cotton and silk workers in Cheshire organised petitions for supporting women’s suffrage. In Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire around 311,000 women (217,000 men) worked in textiles yet they were disenfranchised and therefore voiceless.

Radical suffragists rejected the aim of the traditional women’s suffrage societies led by Millicent Fawcett (National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) - a property based vote. Their demand was simple: ‘womanhood suffrage’…

Due to the coming together of radical suffragists during the 1890s, support rapidly grew, there was factory meetings, women’s suffrage motions put through union branches and trade councils.
Women suffragists encountered friction and hostility within the labour movement regarding the vote. Expectation that women were there to fulfill a function – traditional gender role as woman in the background, as Hannah Mitchell observed:

Even my Sunday leisure was gone as a wife and mother for I soon found that a lot of Socialists talk about freedom was only talk and these socialist young men expected Sunday dinners and huge teas with home made cakes potted meats and pies, exactly like their reactionary fellows.

Unfortunately groups such as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) opposed women’s suffrage: Bourgeois fad of feminism (1884).

TUC Congress was male dominated at Congress in 1901 – suffrage motion by Helen Silcock, President of the Wigan Weavers. It was defeated. Tactics were different for 1902 Congress – Silcock seconded the motion, it was proposed by Allan Gee, Huddersfield Sec. of Wool Workers’ Union, on the national executive of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). It was defeated again.

Women’s suffrage motions (1901, 1902) were defeated at Trade Union Congress in favour of adult suffrage motions. Suffragists were accused of ‘sex prejudice’ or ‘class prejudice’…. (and to be honest, from my own political perspective, I can’t understand how fighting for basic feminist demands counter poses class. It doesn’t).

These arguments put many women in a quandary. Suffragists like Selina Cooper went to speak to a group in Tunbridge Wells and was told, not to let that class hatred and bitterness come into your heart again. The Pankhursts’ (Emmeline and Christabel) started to reject their labour movement connections and especially alienated the ILP (All belonged to the aristocracy of the Suffragettes, argued Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline: No member of the WSPU divides her attention between suffrage and other social reforms).

Undeterred, radical suffragists carried on building the women’s suffrage movement by addressing Trade Union meetings. They asked members to be balloted on women’s suffrage. Majority support – Weavers’ union in Burnley instructed committee to bring women’s suffrage before TUC and Labour candidates supported by textile unions to introduce women’s suffrage bill if elected. This started to build up support from working class women workers – suffrage group started to shoot up. The winter of 1904-1905 4,000 people attended a meeting regarding women’s suffrage at Manchester Free Trade Hall.

The popularity of our movement gives us great hope. (Esther Roper).

The LRC Conference in 1904 passed a resolution supporting women’s suffrage but the following year conference passes an ‘adult suffrage’ motion as opposed to women’s suffrage. Not the place of the LRC to place sex first; we have to put Labour first in every case… (Harry Quelch, SDF member and Trades Council delegate)

In 1907 Labour Party conference defeated a motion on women’s suffrage. Keir Hardie spoke (as ever) in favour of it. It was in 1912 when support for women’s suffrage was eventually adopted!

Friction developed between the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst) and the ILP. In the 1906 Cockermouth by-election, WSPU spoke but didn’t encourage the male voters to vote for Labour candidate. The Pankhursts moved to London from Manchester in 1906.

Radical suffragists didn’t support direct action of violence and arson rather they were horrified by it. They preferred, instead, to build alliances, organise within the mass organisations of the working class. While the WSPU was London-centric had no real base outside London. At peak they had 88 branches, 34 in London. Majority of membership middle-class, with no industrial base.

A procession in Feb 1907 known as the ‘Mud March’ as it saw 3-4,000 women battle and march through the mud. In June 1908, 2,000 working women marched in Manchester demanding the vote. The aims were ‘to protect their Labour, improve their wages and defend their industrial and TU interests’.

Women eventually won the vote in 1918 (and even then it was for women over 30). Why? Because of the shortage of male workers due to the First World War, therefore women were entering the job market doing traditional male jobs. It gave women more opportunities. The suffrage movement during the war was suspended though majority of the radical suffragists opposed the war. Even after women were granted the vote – it didn’t stop the radical suffragists from campaigning for other feminist demands such as equal pay, contraception, child care, child benefits (the parallels between the demands now and then!)

How will the fight for women’s suffrage be remembered?

The direct action of the Suffragettes, brought the campaign to the forefront of consciousness, along with the dogged and courageous struggles by Trade Union women activists campaigning for women’s suffrage in the labour movement. Direct action gave it public attention but was no substitute for mass organisation and building support. Direct action does have its place, and lets not forget the appalling vicious treatment women experienced while in prison (force feeding and later, the misogynistic, Cat and Mouse Act of 1913). Even though I question the tactics, I still admire the bravery and defiance of these women at a time when behaviour like this was considered ‘unladylike’ and the pressures on these women to conform to traditional gender roles were immense.

Sheila Rowbotham makes the point as well when she writes that the direct action and violence of the suffragettes was born out of despair. It must have been soul destroying and demoralising when the labour movement consistently failing (support was fragmented) to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for universal women’s suffrage.

Hannah Mitchell puts it in perspective when she writes: When the women began to destroy letter-boxes and set fire to churches, I could not bring myself to blame them. Those who do so, should remember the long years of peaceful propaganda, the insolence of politicians, the brutality of stewards, the indifference of the police, the prison sentences, ‘forcible feeding’ with all its horrors, The Cat and Mouse Act which repeatedly sent women back to prison, and caused many to flee from this country to some freer state.

Radical Suffragists have been written out, hidden from history of the women’s suffrage movement, no recognisable trace has been left. These anonymous and invisible women had names and political spirit, activism and courage. We remember Sylvia Pankhurst but what about Hannah Mitchell, Cissy Foley, Selina Cooper, Sarah Reddish, Sarah Dickenson and Ada Chew. It is time to remember the contribution of these committed brave working class women and to give them the lasting recognition these so deserve.

In 2011 women still have an uphill struggle for true recognition, liberation and equality.

Why the gender difference in pension ages?

I was chatting to someone the other day who asked me, mid conversation, how it was that men and women retire at different ages. As a lefty my natural instinct was to assume I knew the answer and began to start pontificating when it suddenly stuck me - horror! - I actually had no idea.

Quickly stifling my urge to make something up I confessed my ignorance and set about finding the answer.

Modern universal pensions were introduced in 1946 building on far more piecemeal work that had been done by the great reforming government of 1906 - but why the gender differential? Forgive my cynicism but it seems unlikely that women were being given a little holiday as a reward for being so put upon during their working life.

Well, actually a great many women weren't even entitled to a pension initially but the most convincing explanation I've seen so far (from Maria Iacovou with additional material from others) centers around the structure of the family.

In general when getting married, men would be older than women and this was an attempt to allow couples to retire at about the same time. How romantic? Well, who would look after hubby while he was knocking around the house if the Missus wasn't retired at the same time? Who'd supply him with cups of tea and little snacks... he certainly couldn't do it himself, that would be unthinkable!

This was only achievable if women were kept financially dependent on men and so, for example, married women weren't entitled to the same state pension rights and had to rely on their husband's. This wasn't just unequal pay for equal work, it was the national reliance on the unpaid work of women reflected in the pensions system.

Now the employment and family structure has changed we have a situation that, through historical accident, slightly advantages women. Well that can't be allowed to continue can it readers? As it stands in the UK men retire at 65 and women at 60, although women's retirement age is set to gradually rise and equalise with men's and by December 2018 both will begin to rise to 66 over two years.

So this equalising of retirement age allows women to keep working in underpaid jobs longer now their services are no longer locked into the home. This means that women, who are on average paid less than men, end their working lives with less contributions and in a potentially worse position than men when they reach retirement age.

I've found this quite a hard question to find the answer to so if you have more background information - or want to disagree with my thesis - please do leave a comment as it's not an issue I know much about. Damn, I've said it again.

Cooking the history books

We all know that Captain Cook discovered Australia, after all if he didn't how would the Aborigines have know that's where they lived? One little detail that they neglected to teach me at school though were some of the facts around his death.

I remember very clearly my teacher saying that this learned explorer was attacked and killed by vicious savages armed with spears. Nasty. Didn't they know he was famous and civilised? What I hadn't realised until this week is that Cook had basically brought his demise upon himself.

The Hawaiians had initially greeted Cook and his men as welcome guests, possibly even gods depending on who you listen to. However when one of Cook's small boats was taken for a joy paddle by locals he became so angry he decided the best course of action was to kidnap the King, as you do. This was a cheery chap named Kalanimanokahoowaha, who should not be confused with any of the other notable Kalanimanokahoowaha's littering our history books.

During the attempted kidnapping Cook took a spear in the back and expired. There's a great deal of literature about how he may have come at the wrong season or got mixed up in the local religion which meant the natives were unduly restless but it seems to me that there is a far more logical explanation.

The Hawaiians had a very different understanding of ownership resulting in the theft, but had a very European reaction to the idea that strangers can rock up out of nowhere and start kidnapping royalty. I'm not sure the seasons or their innate savagery had much to do with it.

Try kidnapping Obama because some unknown American has pinched your wallet and see what happens.

Far from being the savage and cruel buggers my school history teacher had made them out to be it seems to me it was Cook who behaved like a murderous, thieving law unto himself and he was on the receiving end of a perfectly understandable use of lethal force for his troubles.

The whole story speaks far more to the violence and obsession with material goods of European society than it does to any particularly barbarous character of the Hawaiian peoples. No wonder they had to rewrite history.

Bibracte: Memories of a past that didn't exist

It's a strange experience wondering round Bibracte, the ancient Gaulish city that served as a center for much of the south before Julius Caesar stomped his muddy sandals all over the place. For a start it's a huge site that you couldn't possibly cover in a day.

Within the city walls you not only had housing and commerce but they also grow crops and farmed animals - ensuring that under any siege the city could last out almost indefinitely. As a space it sprawls and, unlike Roman towns and cities of the day it sat on top of a set of rolling hills making it difficult to attack, particularly with siege machinery.

So different from Roman towns was it, and its ilk, that the Romans even gave them a specific word, Oppidum.

There's wonderful exhibition in Bribracte which Natalie has reviewed here and the fact you can explore to your heart's content around the part excavated mansions, walls and market places as well as its ancient stones and trees makes it a fascinating place to visit - although a car is absolutely essential.

One of the things that got me thinking about the place though was more tangential. Much of what we see of the distant past is in ruins, half covered with earth and nature, the artifacts of the past are battered, worn and made of stone or metal on the whole as wood, leather and the like have long rotted away.

This skews the way we think of these times in interesting ways. For example I certainly tend to think of Roman structures as pure white, elegantly simple when, of course, we actually know many of them were painted garish colours and/or surrounded by wooden structures or flowing material. The aesthetic look may suit the idea of a long dead past but at the time the living breathing people were having much more fun.

Likewise as I sat having a picnic in the centre of what was Bibracte I was basically sitting in a spooky and empty forest. Combined with the mist it was very easy to imagine a Celtic warrior strolling out of the dark all muscle and hair - but the forest came centuries after Bibracte's decline as a city. When in use it would have been made up of very Roman looking buildings, square stone walls and streets with thousands of people coming and going with their business.

The internal image of the past in my mind's eye is in reality a fantasy, completely unlike the reality of what would have been instantly recognisable as a relative of a modern city. It brings to mind a phrase of Victor Serge when he talked about those separated from us by time as "infinitely like us, infinitely different from us".

These are people who had decent beds, enjoyed a drink, and fell in love. Quite unbarbarian-like they shaved and understood personal grooming in a very modern sense. They also had laws, ethics and spent the majority of their time basically getting along. However, they also sold slaves without a qualm and clearly had a fetish for trepanning (drilling holes in the skull) - if you were transported back in time they'd be things you'd have to get used to.

Gaul was rich, civilised and ordered long before the Romans came, saw and conquered but our vision of the place is distorted by Caesar's history and Roman bigotry as well as the way we inevitably see the past through it's silent ruins not in living, noisy motion. In fact I suspect the ancient Gaul's would be far more familiar to us if we met them face to face than we often believe.

A lesson from history

When the Roman Republic decided that it wanted to dispatch Julius Caesar and his armies to as yet unconquered Gaul they needed to give his job a title. What do you think it might have been?

Protector of the Gauls.

That's right, and in the course of protecting the Gauls Caesar found himself having to kill around one million Gauls, a quarter of a million Germans, a few Brits and he also enslaved around one million of the barbarian peoples.

A more energetic protector of the Gauls you will not find.

In fairness to him he let them keep their oil and he didn't go on to describe himself as a 'peace envoy'.

Review: Romanitas

My interest was piqued when I saw a copy of Sophia McDougal's Romanitas in the, soon to be closed, Crofton Park library (thanks Labour Mayor!). Based on the idea of an alternative history where the Roman Empire survived into the 'modern' world Romanitas is one of those fanciful 'what if' novels that can work out so well.

McDougall's writing chipped along nicely enough to keep me reading to the end, but this was despite my better judgement. I was by turns annoyed by the book, then annoyed at my annoyance and then went back to being just plain narked at the wasted opportunity of such a great idea.

The thing is if you're going to imagine a world where we took a different fork in the road you can't introduce things that make no sense, you really shouldn't just import loads of liberal assumptions from today's world because the point is to take us into a world where Roman minds interact with modern technology and you mustn't swap between Romanisation and modern ways of speaking when it suits you, the writing was far too sloppy.

I'm all for suspending disbelief, which is why I felt occasionally churlish for not being too forgiving, but an alternate history that contains magic? I mean why? Can we, in all honesty, say that if the Roman Empire had lasted another millennium and a bit some people would have developed weird powers for no reason, or is the author saying that magic was real in Ancient Rome?

Add to this the magic was basically a lazy device to get the main characters out of fixes and defined every single significant moment of the book. As such every plot turn relies upon the author saying "And poof! they escaped in the nick of time."

I'm all for the fact that there are cars, planes and TV's despite the fact that the industrial revolution may well not have happened under the Roman system. The Romans discarded many technical innovations (like water wheels) because they had no need of them due to the amply available slaves.

Why spend time, energy and resources on labour saving devices when labour is so plentiful and cheap? In this sense Roman society was a profoundly conservative one when it came to technology but not engineering - but transporting Rome to today would make no sense if you then make time stand still so yeah - give the Praetorian Guards rifles, take your best shot.

What does irritate me however was the profoundly liberal view that many of the characters had towards slavery. Certain characters see slavery as a moral ill that can simply be unproblematically disbanded. A potential future Emperor, who hopes to abolish slavery if he ever gets the chance seems to think that slavery is some sort of bad manners and the economic centrality of slavery under Rome is not mentioned even the once.

Personally I think if someone from a powerful family had plans to abolish slavery they might have thought about how this might be done, at least in passing. The fact is that if the Romans at any particular period had decided to do away with slavery their entire economic system would have collapsed and the Empire ceased to exist - anyone who sought to challenge it's existence (almost always slaves) understood that the Empire and slavery were of a piece and inseparable.

However, as it turns out, in the book slaves don't seem to have much of an economic function anyway as the only slaves we seem to come across are runaways. So we don't even have this to help us gain a sense of place. We're certainly given no notion as to why those who oppose slavery do so, or where they get these ideas that are so out of step with mainstream Roman thinking.

Also the research seemed a little sloppy to me. We have crucifixion, the praetorian guard and a bit of poisoning but, it seems to me, that Roman society makes up more than that.

For example one character is put on trial for killing his wife - this means that the status of Paterfamilias must have gone as a husband is no longer entitled to do with his wife and kids as he pleases - no doubt reforms instituted by Sylvia Pankhurstius. Fine, but at least give us a character saying "Oh, you can't do that sort of thing these days!"

If you're in a forgiving mood Romanitas might be tolerable - but then again it might put you out of sorts altogether. I'm not sure I'll be bothering with the sequel Rome Burning, which actually makes me a little sad as, done well, it could have been glorious.

Guest Post: was Churchill a hero?

The first of my guest posts this week is from Rob Ray who is international editor of Freedom anarchist newspaper and a member of the Black Flag magazine collective.

I've always had a bit of a thing about heroes where if I see one I always wonder what's behind those green curtains in the corner of the room. What dark little secrets are being quietly forgotten about while they strut their stuff for an awe-struck Dorothy and friends?

The reason I'm confiding this is twofold, first because the master of The Daily Maybe himself stoutly defended the boys featured in Band of Brothers to me the other day before asking for this missive, and second because I've recently been looking back through my own blog and remembered that I'd been meaning to look properly at a previous bit of rummaging I'd done around the life of Winston Churchill - that irascible grandaddy of heroes.

In particular a sideswipe I'd made about his relationship to India was something I wanted to look more closely at, as it was only the basics of something much more complicated, so for this blog I decided to go back to it.

Quit India

India in the 1940s was in something of an uproar. Ghandi was a powerful man and his independence movement, backed by an influential local bourgeoisie, was gaining a great deal of ground across the subcontinent. There was huge anger over the decision of governor-general Lord Linlithgow to unilaterally declare India for the Allies and in July 1942, after failed negotiations with the British representatives, a declaration of independence backed by the threat of mass disobedience was launched.

There are conflicting reports of what happened next. To listen to Churchill's reports to parliament, it would sound like a violent rebellion with little mandate broke out featuring a tiny minority of the population which was "repressed and punished with incredibly small loss of life."

To hear other voices however, the British Raj had unleashed a wave of brutality at the very thought of independence, for which Churchill was ultimately responsible as Prime Minister. For Indian histories, the tale is one of overwhelmingly non-violent protests, strikes and processions organised mostly by students, which became violent only after days of beatings, mass arrests and sackings.

With the excuse of pacifying "violent rebels" the British and their allies rounded up and jailed over 100,000 people, with thousands facing torture and public floggings being implemented across the country against any hint of dissent, be it violent or not. Churchill himself noted that a "small loss" amounting to least 500 people killed in the wave of terror they unleashed - while non-British estimates put the death toll in the thousands.

A particularly interesting take on this debate comes from Clive Branson, a British soldier who served in India at the time. His 1942 reports on the repression and on the subsequent man-made famine which followed (I'll come to this in a moment) suggest Churchill's line that it was a small minority with no mandate being put down by a loyal majority was disingenuous to say the least:

Millions upon millions in this country live on the borderline of starvation always. Their poverty is too dreadful to describe.... Year after year of living underfed, appallingly housed (if one can use the word to describe a tent-like structure made of rags, bits of matting - floor space 4ft by 8ft and maximum height 5ft - in which a whole family shelters in monsoon, cold and heat, the smallest children without clothes at all) and gaining a livelihood by scavenging, doing a sweeper's work in the filthiest places, etc.

Such communities are to be found outside every village or town. In speaking of them, one is not speaking of the slum dwellers whose standard of living is 'higher'. Millions upon millions of poorest peasantry - ill-fed, uneducated, downtrodden - patiently accepting their hideous lives only because they cannot see any way out. This immense abuse of all human decency by our British imperialists - all this is taken by Halifax (British appeasement Foreign Minister-GB) to mean that there is 'popular support for our way of governing India.

Using the economic threat of destitution and keeping a reserve workforce of the desperate to intimidate everyone else into silence should be very familiar to us even here in Britain - it doesn't imply popular support for your cause. Yet Churchill twisted a situation which should have been the shame of parliament into a confirmation of its nobility.

Churchill's Ireland

And this method of control and humiliation through want took a far more sinister turn shortly after the rebellion. In 1943, India experienced the worst famine of modern history with between three and four million people dying, four times the number who perished in the Irish famine. But what made this unforgiveable, and turned Churchill into one of India's most despised figures, was that like the Irish famine of the 19th century, this was a deliberate, man-made event. It was described at the time as the Bengali Holocaust, and again, Clive Branson illustrates why:

The endless view of plains, crops and small stations turned almost suddenly into one long trail of starving people. Men, women, children, babies, looked up into the passing carriage in their last hope for food... When we stopped, children swarmed round the carriage windows, repeating, hopelessly, Bukshish, sahib, with the monotony of a damaged gramophone... I saw women, almost fleshless skeletons, their clothes grey with dust, not walking, but foot steadying foot, as though not knowing where they went. As we pulled towards Calcutta, little children naked, with inflated bellies stuck on stick-like legs held up empty tins towards us...

Because the British refused to ration or expropriate food for the masses, instead following an ideological commitment to free markets and taking large quantities of food away for British troops fighting the Japanese, a situation where there was just enough corn and just under enough rice turned into a nightmare, compounded by the Japanese capture of Burma admittedly, but also worsened by the deliberate stifling of British shipping in the region.

Churchill himself was directly involved in the denial of food shipments, berating the Indian population for "breeding like rabbits and being paid a million a day by us for doing nothing by us about the war." (an attitude which so disturbed Indian viceroys dependent on regional industry to supply their troops they quietly censored many of his comments). Even winstonchurchill.org, as biased a site as you're likely to find on the subject, notes:

"It is true that Churchill opposed diverting food supplies and transports from other theaters to India to cover the shortfall: this was wartime."

In fact, wartime was not the issue. Britain was still at war in April 1944 (when the famine had been officially declared over) when he wrote in a secret letter to Roosevelt asking for aid in shipping Australian grain to India saying: "I am no longer justified in not asking for your help." He wasn't indeed. Within the decade, popular fury would have ended British rule in the subcontinent.

None of this, incidentally, made it into Churchill's six-volume history of the Second World War which claimed, outrageously, that Britain had "carried Hindustan through the war on her shoulders."

But then, if you're writing the first draft of history with yourself as the hero, you can afford to leave some of your notes behind that bulging green curtain.

Review: 1066 - the battle for middle earth

I watched 1066 - the battle for middle earth last night, all about the last time England was successfully invaded from the eye view of the 'ordinary people' who took part in those events. The first episode dealt with the invasion of the north by the 'Vikingers'.

I'm generally inclined towards this sort of thing so I can't say I regret watching it, but it was rather thin. I don't think it was full of glaring historical inaccuracies (although there was a field promotion to 'housecarl' at one point which seemed unlikely) but the amount of information it contained was minimal to say the least.

We never properly saw either King Harold (Hadrada or Godwinson), which may be accurate for soldiers in a modern army but when the forces were only around 8,000 strong it seemed like a deliberate and strange artifice when the decisions that they took would have had life and death consequences on the heroes of our tale. Our boys seemed to be positively shunning their poor leaders.

Secondly, whilst there were hints of some sort of social stratification going on in the English army historically both forces were riddled with strict social relationships that would have defined every aspect of the participants lives, and what sort of war they had. I'd have liked to have seen that explored rather than summarily glossed over.

For example at one point two groups of English soldiers meet on the way north and to much excitement one has with it 'wife men that are not our wives'. Were these slaves, captives, prostitutes, good time girls, what? All we know is the women seemed generally happy to be there and were up for anything as long as you had a hunk of bread spare.

For something that was over an hour long I came away feeling quite disappointed that there was not even one aside that told me something about the events I didn't know before and I don't regard myself as an expert on the period in any way.

I can't fault the acting, narration or the budget which seemed more than adequate but the tale they told just didn't seem up to the job, particularly when it was implied that Harold marching north to meet the Viking army was a mistake that let the Normans sneak in - surely history would have condemned Harold had he let the Vikings run riot unhindered?

Review: Design for Dishonour

Earlier today I went to see the excellent Medals of Dishonour exhibition at the British Museum. Well worth taking a look if you're in the are in the area.

Essentially it is a collection of medals from down the years made in order to dishonour the object of their ire.

So, for instance, there were two medals that had been made in Holland that depicted Cromwell and Fairfax (one medal each) as a devil and a fool respectively when you turn it upside down. Apparently they were not keen on the break up of 'universal monarchy'. I guess they had to get used to it.

Usually satirical they often show that the sensibilities of those in the past were not so delicate as we sometimes imagine. The image of a finance minister defecating coins will stay with me for some I suspect although I'm sure Steve Bell would have liked it.

I got the impression that in many ways these medals, which would have been easy to distribute and required little literacy to understand, were the forerunners of newspaper cartoons. Indeed the styles were often very similar.

As a rhetorical device awarding some Minister a medal for services to the English (when that notable was French) is both funny and effective. Despite the ribald nature of many of the exhibits I can't remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much in a museum, and I quite like them as a rule.

Do go see the exhibition, it's one room full of jolly and entertaining politics from the past, plus its entirely free. Not to be sniffed at!

Review: Francis the Holy Jester

I've not been to many premiers of plays by Nobel Prize winning writers on the life and times of medieval saints. Not many at all. But then Dario Fo is no ordinary playwright and Francis of Assisi was no ordinary Saint.

Last night I took myself down to the Italian Cultural Institute to see the first public performance in English of "Francis the Holy Jester" and I have to say it was superb. Translated and performed by long time Fo collaborator, Mario Pirovano, we were treated to a classic mix of history, passion and laughter.

Pirovano's performance was energising, taking on, as he did, the parts of Francis, wolves, peasants and Popes with equal gusto. His relentless humour was infectious and the ad libs and asides well genuinely affecting.

Dario Fo's play gently paints Francis as a simple man who founded the first anti-war movement and who pioneered environmental thinking which led to his status as patron saint of animals. The play makes a convincing case and, as a confirmed cynic, I found myself unexpectedly inspired by the idea of this man who confronted authority in the cause of peace and against social injustice.

One episode sees Francis undergoing trials and tribulations trying to gain audience with the Pope in order to be "allowed" to preach the gospel in the language of the people, including the provincial languages. His hilarious encounter with Innocent III (the Warrior Pope) dressed in rags and covered with dung emphasises the authoritarian power of the church and their fear of the people.

There are dates around various parts of the country and I'd recommend seeing this very modern history lesson. When Francis tells us that "in order to get people to listen, you must talk to the animals" he says more about the power of allegory when inspiring political ideas than a hundred tomes by much respected radical academics.

Alexandra Kollontai

Not long ago I attended a lefty event where one of the speakers, an excellent socialist blogger, did not know who Alexandra Kollontai was. I was quite, quite shocked. However, other than demonstrating exactly how weird I am to be surprised by someone not knowing an obscure revolutionary it probably doesn't say very much.

But it did put me in mind of the contribution of various revolutionary women throughout history and how often this can get over looked. It certainly would be a shame if Kollontai's name was forgotten, or worse her contribution to the left was ignored.

Alexandra Kollontai was born in the late 19th century the daughter of a general and from an old aristocratic family so she certainly had a privileged upbringing. But they say travel broadens the mind and after trips abroad coming into contact with revolutionary literature and active socialists she became a committed communist, determined to overthrow the corrupt and murderous Tsarist regime.

In 1905 there was an extraordinary upheaval in Russia. Kollentai took part in that revolutionary rehearsal and was one of the leading figures in left circles from that moment, although for many years she remained an independent minded figure. During the 1917 revolution she was a central committee member of the Bolshevik Party and, after October, became the Minister for Social Welfare under conditions that were, frankly, not ideal for the task. She went on to found the women's department and would try to deal with some the specific problems that women faced in post-Tsarist Russia.

Increasingly concerned with the direction of the revolution Kollontai helped found the Workers Opposition - a critical faction of the Communist Party. As I understand it (and I'm no expert on the ins and outs of Russian policy at this time) they argued that the economy should be run directly by the workers rather than directed from above by the increasingly powerful bureaucracy. Seems fair enough to me but Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky all disagreed and the faction was forcibly disbanded.

Free love

Alexandra remained a committed socialist but was politically emasculated. During this period she wrote some beautiful fiction like Love of the worker bees set, if I remember rightly, on a collective farm. She continued to advocate free love and was denounced by the regime as a pornographer (which seems genuinely unfair considering the high quality and seriousness of her writing).

Never-the-less she became the Soviet Union's official ambassador to Norway (and later Mexico, the League of Nations then Sweden) where she continually scandalised high society not just through being an outspoken woman in such an important and high profile role, but also through her polyamorous lifestyle and a reputation for bluntness.

Her early contributions to the movement for liberation are to be admired and her attempts to push the left into a more humanistic and less centralised form should not be forgotten. The fact that such independent minded revolutionaries existed at all would be easy to forget in the broader sweep of events and so her contribution, and that of those like her, is doubly important.

However, like many of her generation, she faced a choice: accommodate the bloody hand of Stalinism or be crushed by it - and she choose the former. Of the old guard of revolutionaries from 1917 she is almost alone in living to a grand old age dying a peaceful death in 1952 having enjoyed a substantial diplomatic career in the service of Stalin's Russia.

Kollontai, who in many respects represented the very best of the revolutionary movement in Russia could not withstand the tide as the days of revolution faded into darkness. Unlike many of her contemporaries she avoided the show trials, purges and assassination through silencing her own voice and accepting the effective exile of a diplomatic career. I'd like to think that in some ways she can speak for a better world through us today.

Guest Post: The miners were Shafted

Thanks go to the most excellent Matthew Caygill, who attended a book launch remembering the miners strike, for this guest post.

I was lucky enough to go to the book launch for ‘Shafted: The Media, the Miners’ Strike & the Aftermath’ in Leeds last week and it was a marvellous occasion. People were being turned away. About 100 of us, mostly there by word-of-mouth or email, crammed into a too small and too hot room to remember the 25th anniversary of the miner’s strike. Can it really be 25 years? There was at least one contribution from someone not born at the time and Chris Kitching, who was on the picket lines at 17, is now Secretary of the NUM.

We listened to some Roy Bailey songs and heard Anne Scargill from Women Against Pit Closures talk about some of her experiences from the strike. It was a warmly human and moving event, with stories about some of the good and even funny moments in a hard year, even if the anger at the treatment that the miners got during the strike from the state and from the media was still pretty hot.

The book is fantastic – it looks good, feels good and will do you good. The event was put on by Granville Williams from the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and they deserve support as well. They have a web-site here.

There was a strong connection with the present. The woman in the famous photograph from Orgreave, showing the mounted police taking a swing at her head, was there and spoke about what is going on now. One of the contributors to the book is Pete Lazenby from the NUJ. I warmly remember Pete addressing ANL meetings in the late 1970s and his journalism in the miners strike is clearly remembered by miners and activists today. Anne Scargill said it was only his involvement that got her involved. And Pete is key to the current round of NUJ strikes against major redundancies at the Evening Post in Leeds. You can find out about this strike and much else via the NUJ Left. Pete had a blistering letter in The Guardian on Thursday, replying to the craven and stupid lies and distortions made by that paper in its editorial the previous Saturday. Check it out here.

And track ‘Shafted’ down – it really is a very good book.

How Britain tortured Obama's grandfather

With great excitement sections of the press have "revealed" that the President elect's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was tortured by the British. Whilst I'm glad to see this in the papers, seeing as Obama Jr published this himself in 1995 I'm cringing slightly at the word "revealed" here. "Revealed again" might be a bit more more appropriate.

The Guardian concedes in a rather straight faced way that "Obama, with more pressing contemporary problems on his plate, is unlikely to be fixated on extracting revenge from the UK." Well, I think they might be right on that one, but Brown better watch it just in case.

One good thing to come out of this rather old story is that the press has been publishing potted histories of the resistance movement in Kenya that led to Obama snr's arrest. It's worth remembering that during the Mau Mau phase of this resistance ('52-'60) between 11 and 30 thousand Kenyans were killed, 80,000 imprisoned and around one and half million Kenyans were "resettled"by the British (Ken Olende).

According to Dreams from my father prior to his arrest Obama's grandfather had been known locally as a great admirer of the British and had proudly served in the British Army. Arrested for a connection to the resistance that he always denied Hussein Onyango Obama was imprisoned without trial and tortured - an ordeal from which he never recovered either physically or psychologically.

According to The Times “The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” and he'd recalled how “they would sometimes squeeze his testicles with parallel metallic rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together with his head facing down”.

The alleged torture was said to have left Mr Onyango permanently scarred, and bitterly anti-British. “That was the time we realised that the British were actually not friends but, instead, enemies,” Mrs Onyango [his wife] said. “My husband had worked so diligently for them, only to be arrested and detained.”

Whilst the paper is horrified that "Mr Obama has nothing good to say of the colonial era, which he summarises as “the manipulation of colonial boundaries, the displacements, the detentions, the indignities large and small”" The Times still does not flinch when it comes to eye witnesses, which include rebels of the day, one of whom recalls of his own ordeals;

First he was pushed through a cattle dip. Then he was beaten around the back of his head until he fell unconscious. “But the worst punishment was carrying overflowing buckets from the cells,” he said, in the Kikuyu language of his tribe. “We were made to carry them on our heads. The guards would make us run so the excrement would run down our faces. It stank and made our eyes sting. We were all ill, all the time.”

In a sworn statement collected by human rights activists, he details other abuses at Manyani, which he described as “hell on earth”. The screams of other inmates turned the camp into a lunatic asylum, he said. Their days would be spent digging rocks from the ground. One of the white guards would force young inmates to carry him on their backs, as if they were horses.

If anyone were tempted to say that Abu Graib or Guantanamo were uniquely American institutions they should consider some of the barbarities British colonialism inflicted upon its subjects in order to keep Kenya British.

One British officer recalls being horrified when he first arrived when his superintendent outlined what they did in the camps. “He said, ‘I don’t know why you’re looking so queasy about this, it’s just like a good rugger scrum’.” The officer went on “The war in the forests lasted for maybe two and a half years. The more serious situation was created by the operation to sweep Nairobi clean of anyone who was black — or that’s how it seemed.” To his credit he eventually refused to continue to take part in the British offensive.

Even The Mail has a potted history which concedes that the British response in Kenya "only radicalised Kenyans who may otherwise not have felt as strongly about the violent path to independence." Which is a lesson worth learning time and again for any budding ruler of an Empire.

Obama never met his grandfather and whilst it seems he found these stories instructive and moving he's hardly emulated the politics of the Mau Mau or Fanon in his meteoric rise but his determination to close down Guantanamo, and end US sanctioned torture may well be a fitting tribute for his grandfather and those who, like him, suffered under the misrule of the British Empire.

Byron has his day

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Greece has decided to honour Lord Byron with a national day. April 19th will be a day of remembrance to "keep alive the memory of Lord Byron in tribute to a great man who deeply believed in fundamental democratic values".

Although, I suppose, he is mostly known as a poet these days Byron was a fiery figure from left field and gave his life as one of the thousands of internationals who fought for Greek liberation from the Ottoman Empire.

His support as a fighting man was pretty short lived to say the least but he invested his fortune in equipping the Greek fleet and inspired many others from around Europe to join the cause. Even after his death the fact that this rather, cough, controversial character had given his life in a revolutionary struggle helped raise the international profile of events in the region.

However, whilst the Greeks (and Italians) may hold Byron in high regard nothing could have been further from the truth in polite society nearer to home. Although today it's the well to do in society who are most likely to have Shelley or Byron on their book shelves, nineteenth century poetry having a pretty elitist reputation, the reverse was true in their day. No self respecting bourgeois would have such scurrilous works in their house. Their books would be found in the growing trade union libraries and in the homes of radicals who'd form the backbone of movements like the Chartists where their memory was kept alive.

Byron's well known for his attitude to a free love of sorts - certainly a sexuality free from the confining morality of the day - but his support for radical causes was just as well known and far more despised in his lifetime. He was a supporter of the Luddites, a radical movement that demonstrated with the utmost clarity and force what despots get if they don't allow working people basic rights. Byron used his position to speak in the House of Lords against the death penalty for Luddites and wrote "down with all kings but King Ludd" in his Song for the Luddites (which is just short enough to reproduce in full below).

It seems that the English respectable circles still have a distaste for Lord Byron and official honours to this great man are few and far between. One fitting tribute we could give Byron would be to return the Parthenon marbles, which were filched from Greece as so many other ancient artifacts have been by imperial powers. In a fury he may have written "snatch'd thy shrinking gods to northern climes abhorred!" but there was little he could do to return them.

Honouring one of the great poets of his age and restoring stolen property, that's two birds with one stone, and you know I like to maximise the number of avians killed to the minimum number of projectiles.



Song for the Luddites

As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!

When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding-sheet
O'er the despot at our feet,
And dye it deep in the gore he has pour'd.

Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew
Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!

Be nice to someone day: Oliver Cromwell

You might not think a piece on Oliver Cromell is exactly cutting edge political commentary - but in East Anglia you'd be oh so wrong. Readers of the Cambridge Evening News will have spotted that the old ironside has subjected to a curse no less from the high priest of the British Coven of White Witches, Kevin Carlyon.

What brought this on say you? Well, Cromwell's a local boy and down the road in Ely they are celebrating the 350th anniversary of his death with a bit of do.

Master of magic Kevin is displeased as Cromwell "turned a blind eye to the exploits of the self-appointed "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins, whose witchcraft trials led to the death of about 300 people between 1644 and 1646, including women from the Cambridgeshire villages of Haddenham and Sutton." Which has led him to curse the celebrations.

Charming.

A few things. Firstly, just to get this out the way, white witches are always claiming they don't curse people - this is now clearly untrue. There's no point moaning that everyone thinks you use your non-existent powers for selfish ends if you go round trying to literally rain on people's parades.

Secondly, and rather more to the point, Hopkins' title Witchfinder General was not one bestowed upon him by Parliament but by himself and his brief career (and he did make money out of it) flourished during the civil war - which was clearly a time of upheaval and agitation. 200,000 people died during a conflict (more than 3% of the population) that resulted in a fundamental change in the social structure of this country. All sorts of shit went down at this time - Hopkins was by no means the worst of it.

I'd also like to point out for the record that none of his "witchfinding" actually happened once Cromwell was in charge, so it seems a bit unfair to blame Cromwell for something that was essentially out of his control at a time when he had quite a bit on his plate. So, Kevin, I don't think the good people of Ely deserve your rather horrid little spell.

Cromwell gets a bad press as it is. He was a good guy and the moderate leader of revolutionary forces, without whom the first modern democracy would not have been founded. The revolutionary forces did not simply replace one set of religious dogmas with another that prohibited Christmas presents.

Historian Christopher Hill describes it this way "The Civil War was a class war, wherein on the side of reaction stood the landed aristocracy and its ally, the established Church, and on the other side stood the trading and industrial classes in town and countryside . . . the yeomen and progressive gentry, and . . . wider masses of the population whenever they were able by free discussion to understand what the struggle was really about ."

The victory of the Parliamentary forces signalled the end of absolutist monarchy and, despite their stern reputation, actually allowed a more progressive, and tolerant, form of religion - less dominated by social hierarchy - to flourish. This was the end of the period when citizens of England would be murdered by the state for their religious views and, for instance, saw the resettlement of many Jews in England, who'd previously been discouraged by rampant anti-semitism. It seems particularly unjust for that reason to lay at Cromwell's door the charge of religiously motivated murder.

After all you don't have to look very hard to realise that Cromwell had plenty of blood on his hands, and not just of the blue variety. Whether it was the king's supporters, the revolutionary wing of his own movement, the Irish, the Scots, indeed the blood stretches all the way to the West Indies - there's plenty of killings, much of which is totally justifiable in my view - but we certainly don't need to add these ones to weigh upon his restless soul.

If you'd like to thwart the curses and turn out to support the great man here are the details; "Saturday, September 6, will see a squadron of Civil War re-enactors perform military drills outside the historic cathedral - just a few yards from Cromwell's Ely home - from 10am-4pm, while an actor on horseback will play Cromwell himself."

History still holds its power to offend

Curious, there are a number of interesting stories abound about how distant historical figures still play some part in modern politics. Take this row in Florence over the poet Dante, a man who died around seven hundred years ago.

As I understand it Dante supported the Guelfi Bianchi who wanted to see more political autonomy (for Florence) from the Catholic Church. Dante's high profile and active support for this group found him exiled from the city with all his assets seized by his enemies.

Later, when the city changed hands he was offered the right of return if he submit to a public penance - he refused, after all what had he done? Hold political views supporting one section of the ruling elite who happened to lose their struggle. So instead he was sentenced to be burned at the stake but remained in exile and died of natural causes.

All very interesting I'm sure you'll agree but it was a while back so why bring it up now? Well, the official edicts against this vile Guelfi Bianchi still hold. Two city councillors put forward a motion to "rehabilitate" Dante and award him the Golden Florin (which I'm told is a high honour). The motion passed but there is a vocal minority who less than impressed with the scheme.

Dante's direct descendant Count Pieralvise Serego Alighieri has refused to attend the ceremony because of "petty polemics" by those who oppose the decision. He says he'll accept nothing less than unanimity on the decision that his ancestor did nothing wrong.

"My heart sank when I read certain remarks from the Communist and Green councillors who voted against the motion. One argued that the event should be used to celebrate all the political exiles all over the world as well as immigrants and the power of their ideas against dictatorial regimes.

''Another said the whole thing was just a publicity stunt, another said the Florin should also be awarded to (witch-hunting monk Girolamo) Savanarola, and another said Dante's heirs didn't deserve to be called Alighieri,''

In fact whilst you'd have thought there wouldn't be much problem in lifting a seven hundred year old conviction the motion passed by just one vote in the council chamber. It's seems that even old issues that seem to have been resolved years ago still hold the power to create real ripples.

My other example is of William of Orange, who I was surprised to hear was a renowned homosexual.

One Peter Tatchell, for it is he, is off to the North of Ireland to... well... annoy unionists frankly. Those who adore the Orange but hate a selected range of Biblical sins.

I can't help but think this may have been provoked by the way that leading members of the DUP have been getting on their high white horse about homosexuality over recent months. If they will keep poking the beehive (this is not a euphemism but rather a metaphor) they must expect to get a little stung.

Their reaction could probably be summed up best as "Most visitors to loyalist areas will have seen images of King Billy on horseback - have you ever seen one of him riding side saddle? No - so get to fuck you fenian bastard".

Tatchell's commendable and informative wheeze is actually part of Belfast's week long Pride celebrations. I think the man himself sums it up best when he says "It is particularly hypocritical for unionist politicians to play the homophobic card when their hero, William of Orange, had male lovers."

Guest Post: The alien takeover

A guest post from the excellent anarcho-archaeologist Moll of Hanging Around on the Wrong Side of the World who's fresh from writing an excellent post on racism in Bolivia. Here she discusses the interaction between popular culture, scientific disciplines and politics.

Let me start by saying that I absolutely loved the new Indiana Jones movie. I saw it with a motley bunch of archaeology friends, and we all agreed it was one of the most entertaining movies we had seen in a long time. Behind the fun, however, the archaeological community tends to get its knickers in a bit of a twist whenever a movie like this is made.

The election of Harrison Ford to the board of the Archaeological Institute of America has got the anthropologist bloggers buzzing, while the usual nay-sayers across the academic community are bitching once again about the inappropriate portrayal of the discipline and the terrible damage its going to do to the public's already misguided perception of the past. The only archaeologist who regularly and passionately comes out in defence of poor Indie and his pop-culture friends is the wonderful Cornelius Holtorf, who argues that in an era when science and scientists are generally losing their sense of authority in the public image, archaeologists should embrace the fact that they and their discipline have such consistently enthusiastic press.

The thing that is perhaps most upsetting to the archaeologists about the latest movie, though, is not that it gives an unrealistic impression of the romantic appeal and athletic ability of most ageing archaeology professors, but the alien factor. I'd read in an interview a few weeks before that Spielburg had purposely modelled the series on the pulp fiction of the era they were set in. In this context, the aliens and commies plot line makes a lot of sense, echoing as it does the comic books of the time. But while I agree with Cornelius Holtorf that Indie is not going to bring about the end of common sense as we know it (whatever that may be), the revival of an interest in the aliens and archaeology is one that is disconcerting for more important reasons than some hallowed concept of academic integrity.

Unlike my archaeologist colleagues I'm not too concerned about the inaccurate way archaeology and archaeologists are portrayed in popular culture. I'm not going to be proposing that anyone who wants to watch an episode of Time Team should be forced to read 20 years of back issues of the journal American Antiquity first (I can barely make it through one issue myself, and I'm meant to be studying this stuff). But the consistent belief that aliens are responsible for the civilisations of the past is grounded in a concept of history and of difference that I find particularly disturbing.

We are, apparently, living in a post-modern world. Gone are the old certainties of Modernity - apparently we no longer believe in either Progress, Grand Narratives or Tradition. Or do we? Modernity was meant to be all about the belief that "Civilisation" was inexorably marching on, and that all of history could be seen as a continual, unbroken line from A to B.

In such a view human society has always been in a state of progress - we started as barely sociable animals and we are always advancing towards something better. Better, of course, equalled 'like us', and all those other people that the various waves of crusading, conquering and colonising Europeans encountered were cast as relics of a soon to be gone primitive past - and therefore easily killed, enslaved and otherwise treated as less than fully human. In such a view the past is always inferior to the present, just as anything different to the European is always automatically inferior.

The only problem is, that there is plenty of evidence that plenty of places and times in the past weren't that unsophisticated after all. This is where all the talk of mysteries comes in, when people who can't believe that anyone who lived at any other point in time before them (or, god forbid, in a part of the world other than Europe) were capable of doing something as simple as putting one stone on top of another and building a pyramid. And hence we get the idea of aliens.

The only explanation for the societies of the past is that life forms even more advanced than us modern Europeans built them instead. As unlikely as it is that aliens exist, its considered more improbably that people who were some colour other than white were able to live complex, intelligent and organised lives. "Primitive people being able to think rationally and organise themselves into a society? Nonsense! If there weren't any Europeans around to teach 'em how to live properly, it must have been aliens."

The Italian social historian Alessandro Portelli writes that the things that people believe about the past are as much social facts as the actual 'facts' of what happened.

In one of his most detailed and poignant examples he seeks to understand why the slaughter of 335 prisoners by the Nazis in Rome during the war has been consistently blamed on the failure of a group of resistance fighters to come forward after killing 13 German soldiers in an ambush. Although there is abundant historical evidence that there was nothing the resistance fighters could have done to prevent the mass murder, the 'social fact' is that generations of Italians remember the events differently, and act accordingly. Subsequent political movements from the moment of the event up to the present day have been shaped by the way people 'remember' this single act.

Portelli's example demonstrates something we should always bare in mind when thinking about the past: that the 'facts' of the past become secondary to the social facts. In other words, what happens in the past is not as important as what people think happened, and how this shapes what they do and think next.

Its a small step from thinking ancient non-Europeans were not capable of complex society and rational thought, to thinking that contemporary non-Europeans aren't capable of it either. Such thinking holds as its core the idea that anything different from 'us', must be inferior. What happened in the past - whether the pyramids were built by aliens or by people - is one matter, but the far more important issue is why people believe one or the other in the present, and the impact this has on the way they think about the different capabilities of contemporary people.

So although I loved the movie, there is reason to be worry if Indie brings about another alien invasion of the past.