A Hero No Longer Forgotten

EDWARD RUSHTON (1756-1814)

IT is just a few years since I heard about Edward Rushton, Liverpool's blind poet, anti-slavery campaigner and radical revolutionary.

Born in John Street, Liverpool, in 1756, Edward Rushton was educated at Liverpool Free School to the age of 11, and then he was apprenticed to a shipping firm, sailing to the West Indies. It was thus that he saw the slave trade first-hand and also befriended a young African slave of his own age.
 
Rushton's adventures at sea were ended when a disease caught overseas caused him to go blind at the age of 19. But that was just the start of a new life, in which he did not forget what he had seen, nor fail to advance those who faced the same obstacles as himself. Rushton wrote poetry, campaigned against the press gangs and against black slavery, and supported the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.

He founded the worlds first school for the blind which, in the middle of the nineteenth century, moved to a building later occupied by the Merseyside Trade Union, Community and Unemployed Resource Centre.

I think it was while in Liverpool during the 1995-8 docks struggle that Bill Hunter told me he was writing something about Edward Rushton, a figure I'd never heard of before. Bill, whom I'd known since my youth, had been at times an engineering worker, shop steward and professional revolutionary, and was known and respected by the dockers. He was also a great strengthener to those younger Trotskyists who sent Gerry Healy packing.  In retirement, though not always in good health, Bill not only kept up his activities but broadened them, maintaining links with Latin American revolutionaries, and producng books on, among other things, his own life, the dockers' struggles and Edward Rushton.  Bill Hunter says: “I wrote this book on Edward Rushton in an attempt to rescue from obscurity, this uncompromising fighter for the common people, and to pay tribute to his indomitable spirit.”

http://www.billhunterweb.org.uk/books/forgottenhero.htm
Living History Library
Book ISBN: 0-9542077-0-X
Talking Book ISBN: 0-9542077-1-8
click on this icon to hear Rushton's 'Ode to a Robin'

Rushton's letter to Washington about the president's 'owning' of slaves
Chapter 12 - The Liverpool Seamen’s Revolt of 1775
Nerve review of the book

Bill Hunter is not the only one to have been inspired to write about Rushton, as it happens, historian Mike Royden appears to have beaten him to it, and you can read his account of Rushton's life and achievment here:
http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/mrlhp/local/rushton/rushton.htm

Actor John Graham Davis seems to have been typecast as a copper for much of his TV appearnces, though recently promoted to be a judge for Peter Barlow's trial on Coronation Street. Whether he'll get to judge the real culprit we'll have to wait and see, but meantime John, whom I met in Leeds through Workers Aid for Bosnia, takes on a different kind of role this month. It's appropriate as he was the speaking voice in the Talking Book version of Forgotten Hero. Here's a message from John on Facebook:

This month marks the bi-centenary of Liverpool's great unsung radical, Edward Rushton. I've spent two years researching and writing about this extraordinary man, and I can't believe that he has remained a virtual secret for two hundred years. Come and help us in this archeological dig, and celebrate our forgotten hero... Blinded at seventeen as a result of helping kidnapped Africans below decks on a slave ship, Rushton educated himself by having a boy read to him during a long period of poverty. Eventually accepted into the liberal abolition circles dominated by university men such as Rathbone and Roscoe, the 'ordinary sailor' Rushton became one of the most intransigent opponents of slavery, suffered hostility within the slave trading city, lost two businesses through Admiralty boycotts and widespread public hostility and escaped an assassination attempt - only to persevere in his various campaigns, and to finally see the slave trade abolished in 1805.

To celebrate Rushton's life - and hopefully to help pull him out of his shameful anonymity - Turf Love and DaDaFest are collaborating on a number of events in Liverpool throughout November and the coming months. Here's what's lined up.... Exhibitions at the Victoria Museum and the National Slavery Museum, readings in libraries sponsored by UNISON, a commemorative inter-faith service in the Anglican Cathedral (Nov 22nd) and a staged reading of the new play by James Quinn and myself, Unsung. Please book free tickets below.

 All these things are in celebration of a remarkable man: radical reformer, determined slavery abolitionist, fighter against impressment (the press gang), defender of freedom of speech, campaigner, through his verse, against violence against women, supporter of the rights of the Irish against English colonial oppression, supporter of trade unions, of Polish independence from Czarism, of American independence from colonial rule, and of French freedom from autocracy. Rushton's poetry is also justly celebrated, and a new edition, featuring his passionate anti-slavery verse, is about to be published. Join us to celebrate this remarkable and shamefully neglected figure. Event details - http://www.dadafest.co.uk/the-festival/unsung/

I will be speaking about Edward Rushton and giving readings from his work on Wednesday Nov 12 at Toxteth Library (1.30-3) and Central Library (6.30-8pm). These readings are sponsored by UNISON, and are free. It would be really good to see you at some of these events.

John Graham Davies

Imagine the Books She Might Yet Have Written

TWO items, one amusing, one sad. Let's start with the lighter side. It might be just paper talk, but Euan Blair, the son of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, reportedly fancies standing for Parliament himself, and is setting his sights on Bootle, on Merseyside, regarded as one of Labour's safest seats for the next general election.

Joe Benton, the sitting MP who has represented the constituency for 24 years, is 81, and though he has said he intends standing again in 2015, there is a move in the local party to deselect him and find a younger replacement. That sounds reasonable. But Euan Blair?

The Liverpool Echo reports there are rumours, though it also quotes an unnamed Labour source as saying: “There’s no way Labour is going to lose Bootle, but the idea of parachuting someone like Euan Blair in would be a disaster, a joke."

The joke comes as Blair senior has been boasting how proud he is of going to war on Iraq, and making a new claim to replace his old Weapons of Mass Destruction story, this time saying he saved Iraqis from a war like that in Syria.  Around Falluja, where people still suffering the effects of Blair and Bush's war have been fleeing bombardment by the Iraqi government they left, they may not be forthcoming with gratitude to Mr.Blair for saving them from anything.

I must admit I haven't followed young Euan's career until now.  It was not his fault who his Dad was, nor that he was sent to a posh school instead of the local comp. When it was reported that he'd been found lying drunk in Leicester Square, that was not as bad as his father's lying in office, though if he had not been at the posh boys' school he might have had the kind of mates who found him a cab home instead of running off leaving him there.

Anyway, years go by, and at 29, Euan has worked for merchant bankers Morgan Stanley, he is married, and he and the missus have moved into a six bedroom Georgian town house in Marylebone with a price tag of £3.6million. But as with his student days and bachelorhood, Mum Cherie the barrister and QC still helps out with housing. "The new Mrs Blair is not the Mrs Blair listed on the property deeds. Land Registry documents have revealed the six-bedroom Georgian town house in Marylebone is joint owned by Euan and his mother Cherie Blair".

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554526/Newlywed-Euan-Blairs-new-3-6million-six-bedroom-marital-home-joint-owned-Mrs-Blair-MOTHER.html

If young Mr.Blair has opinions of his own about the Iraq war or anything else he seems to have kept them to himself so far, but there may have been a clue otherwise at the wedding.

The bride's step mother, weather woman Sian Lloyd, was not invited, and she guesses it was because she was against the war. 

Cherie Blair grew up in Waterloo just up the road from Bootle, and this is being touted as Euan's connection with the constituency, though local left-wingers wonder what he knows about conditions in the constituency or what experience he has campaigning on issues like jobs or housing. To be fair, Euan Blair did a bit of political work when he was in the States. For the Republicans.

Anyway, Labour's selection procedure is under way, and we'll know whom they have chosen by May 30.

And now to the sad news. Author Sue Townsend, best known as the creator of troubled teenager and sensitive though aspiring yuppie Adrian Mole, has died aged 68, on April 10, in her home town Leicester. She had been ill for some time, and had been dictating her work to her son after suffering blindness as a result of diabetes.

Sue Townsend came from a working class background and had known poverty first hand, and though she found her metier poking fun at the Thatcher years and after in her humorous writing, she was serious in her political views. In a 2009 Guardian interview with Alex Clark, she described herself as a "passionate socialist" who had no time for New Labour. "I support the memory and the history of the party and I consider that these lot are interlopers", she told Clark.

Her views on the Welfare State, and the way it was coming under attack without having yet fulfilled its purpose, were beautifully expressed in a set of essays, drawn both from experience and keen observation, and published as Mr.Bevan's Dream. (Chatto and Windus, Counterblasts, 1989) Her ideas were considered worthy of an intellectual analysis by Jurgen Willems, which can be read on line.  His study makes thoughtful reading, though for pleasure I'd re-read Sue Townsend's little book.

Sue Townsend was also a no-nonsense republican (not the kind Euan and his Dad worked with) and  in The Queen and I  she imagines Her Majesty transferred from Buck House to a council house in Leicester. Helen, a friend in the Labour Representation Committee who unlike me had the pleasure of meeting the author recalls:

 "I saw ST during an English day I had to go on during A Levels and she related the story of her own poverty i.e. having no money left due to non-arrival of giro and how she was reduced to asking the benefits officer if he could lend her a fiver - this is also what happpens to the fictional Queen in the Queen and I. It should be essential reading for the Osbornes of this world.

Also when I was an English  teaching assistant in Germany in the nineties I did the Adrian Mole books with my sixth formers and as well as laughing (just to prove Germans do have a sense of humour!), they seemed to get the image of Thatcherite Britain Sue Townsend created and could discuss how it could be changed. R.I.P. Sue.

In one of the Adrian Mole books - it may have been Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction - her eponymous hero writes to Tony Blair asking about a refund for having cancelled a holiday in Cyprus believing what the PM said about being in range of Iraqi missiles. That was Sue Townsend's way of bringing things down to earth, and it was a way of speaking a true word in jest.
    
Here is what she said in person, and not through her fictional character:

    'In the build-up to the Iraq war I lost the ability to read due to diabetic retinopathy. Instead I became a close listener. I heard Blair distort and manipulate the English language so that, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, for him a word "means just what I choose it to mean".

    The phrase "weapons of mass destruction" was ubiquitous. You knew he was talking it up. He had been given a grain of sand by the intelligence services and didn't stop talking it up until it was a boulder, hurtling, Tom and Jerry-like, down a mountain, flattening everything in its path.

    I wept tears of shame, rage, and pity as British and American planes dropped their "strategic" bombs over Baghdad. I wondered if Blair was sitting on a sofa with his family watching shock and awe. Did they share a monster bag of Revels, and could he look his children in the eye when the transmission was over? I have never recovered from the shock of that night.

    I have been told my fixation with Blair and his involvement with the invasion of Iraq is unhealthy – "that was all back in the day", get over it, "move forward". But I can't. I am a professional cynic, or sceptic if you prefer, but deep inside I romanticised the qualities of this country and its government. We had a reputation in the world for the moderation of our political system, the fairness of our judiciary, and, whether entitled to or not, we marched up the hill and built a fortress on the moral high ground. That lies in ruins now.'

    Sue Townsend, writing in September 2010

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/04/sue-townsend-on-new-labour

 (thanks to another LRC comrade, Mike Phipps, for bringing my attention to that).

I don't suppose it is a joke to the people of Bootle, least of all the local Labour Party members, if they should really find themselves saddled with Euan Blair as their candidate or MP.

Sadder still, we no longer have the genius who invented Adrian Mole, socialist and humourist Sue Townsend, who would have been able to write about it. 

__._,_.___

From Liverpool TUC, a summing up

MERSEYSIDE UNITED as one. Evertonians make the message clear.

Liverpool Trades Union Council
Press statement
Wednesday 17 April 2013

Why we won’t mourn for Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher died on 8 April 2013 and the vast majority of ordinary people greeted her passing with undisguised joy.

The right wing media have tried to portray this response as the disrespectful behaviour of a minority. It isn’t. It is a fitting response to the death of a Tory prime minister who spent the entire 1980s wilfully attacking the poor and the working class, in Britain and abroad.

During her reign countless people lost their lives directly as a result of her policies – miners killed on the picket lines, ten Irish prisoners driven to death on hunger strike by her refusal to recognise their human rights, sailors on the Belgrano torpedoed on her order as their ship sailed away from a war zone, people driven to suicide by her selfish economic policies that increased inequality massively in Britain.

And of course in this city 96 Liverpool supporters died at a football match. She was up to her armpits in a conspiracy to blame the victims and their families for a tragedy that her hateful policing policies caused. And we have only just got an official recognition of how this cover up increased the terrible suffering that the families and survivors of this terrible event have had to endure for 24 long years.

Did Thatcher mourn for her victims? No. And we don’t mourn for her.

In Britain she destroyed industry after industry to break the power of the trade unions – in steel, in the mines, in the print and on the docks. She passed the most undemocratic and draconian anti-union laws in the west. She deregulated the banks and directly caused the regime of financial piracy that led to the recent financial crash.

Thatcher openly targeted our city – a city with strong trade union and socialist values –imposing savage cuts and then ousting a democratically elected Labour council that fought her. She launched her attacks on Liverpool after the Toxteth Rising in 1981, determined to make us pay for having fought back and determined to carry out a policy of the “managed decline” (her words) of our city.

After she had waged her neo-colonial war against Argentina in the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982 – a war designed to shore up Britain’s military prowess on the world stage and protect the interests of Britain’s bosses who could smell oil reserves in the South Atlantic and saw the islands as a potential future basis of operations – she returned to war on people she called “the enemy within”, trade unionists, workers, poor people and above all the miners. After all, the excuse that Argentina was ruled by a dictator didn’t wash given her lifelong support for the murderous General Pinochet in neighbouring Chile. This was a dictator she was happy to lavish praise on and arm to the teeth. He killed at least 30,000 Chilean trade unionists after his coup in 1973.

Thatcher spent untold millions killing Argentinians and then in 1984/85 bludgeoning British miners into submission after a year-long strike, and all for the same aim - to ensure that the country would be a land of plenty for the rich elite both at home and abroad. Mining communities were wrecked by her pit closure programme and criminalised by a police occupation of their villages when they fought back.

And having won both battles she went on, in her third term of office – to impose an unjust local tax on everyone – the poll tax. She brazenly piloted it in Scotland first in act of vengeful spite against a people who had rejected Toryism outright. This was one battle she lost as we fought back with all our might. Make no mistake, it may have been the Tory men in suits who moved against her in parliament, but they were only able to do it because we had made Britain virtually ungovernable through the great Poll Tax Rebellion.

During her time in office and even before she became prime minister Thatcher – who famously said, “there is no such thing as society” –did her best to harm all of those who stood for justice and equality. She took free milk away from schoolchildren. She sold off council houses creating a terrible shortage of affordable homes, she privatised industries and utilities so her loud mouthed mega rich friends in the City of London could make killing after killing on the stock markets. She closed down industries and then allowed a heroin epidemic to flourish in the ghost towns her policies had created.

She sponsored a wave of racism claiming Britain was being “swamped by immigrants” – and then unleashed a reign of racist terror by the police on black communities across the country, notably in places like Brixton and Toxteth. At the same time she propped up Apartheid racism in South Africa branding Nelson Mandela a terrorist to the very end. She used the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s as an excuse to attack lesbians and gay men, bringing the anti-gay law, Section 28. And in case students thought they were getting off lightly she laid the foundation stone of the long campaign to transform education from a right into a privilege for the rich by introducing student loans.

There is not one thing that Thatcher did that was good. Her life was a blot on our landscape. We are well rid of her – and we are outraged that at a time of major cuts in welfare she is being given a multi-million pound send off. What hypocrisy, what an insult to the poor of this country who are having to cope with the bedroom tax and the benefit cuts as over £10million is spent burying a person the majority of people in this country despise.

Which brings us to the main point we should all remember as she is dispatched – Thatcher may be dead but her legacy of sacrificing the livelihoods, the rights and communities of the working class on the altar of profit lives on in her descendants. Cameron and his gang of Etonian toffs are trying to finish off the job Thatcher started. It is our job to stop them and hurl Thatcher’s legacy back in their face. Which is why on the day of her funeral Liverpool Trades Union Council renews its commitment to stopping the cuts, axing the bedroom tax, saving the NHS and supporting workers’ struggles here, across the country and across the world.

Don’t mourn Thatcher, organise against Thatcher’s heirs.

By way of contrast:
 hillsborough-campaigner-anne-williams-dies-after-brave-cancer-battle-100252-33195003/#.UW-89B3AUcc.facebook

Canada in the Dock

WARNING SIGNS New badge alerts to Asbestos danger,
and (below) calcified Pleural Plaque, such as appear in
the lungs of people exposed to asbestos, and are
frequntly sign of mesothelioma to come.

ASBESTOS is one of those things we nowadays know is dangerous
(though some journalists purport to doubt it, I'd be curious to see whether they'd expose themselves to the risk to prove their point). Most of us probably assume that THEY (governments and people with responsibilty generally) are doing whatever they can to remove the danger.

On that we'd be mistaken.

At events last week for Mesothelioma Day, like the one I attended in London, we heard about people left exposed to the risk and often working without adequate protective gear, in countries like India and China. Canada was given a special mention, as a developed country whose government has taken steps against asbestos use at home but is willingly exporting the material.

On June 29, just one week before Action Mesothelioma Day (AMD) the Quebec Government announced that funding of $58 million had been provided for businessmen developing a new asbestos underground mine in the town of Asbestos, Quebec.

It so happened that organisers of the AMD event in MANCHESTER had invited Canadian Ban Asbestos Campaigner Kathleen Ruff to speak ( that is her in the centre of this clearly well-attended Manchester meeting). Kathleen explained the background to the Quebec provincial authorities' decision to hand over taxpayers' money for the asbestos scheme. Jason Addy reported that most of the delegates in Manchester were shocked by the news that the Province of Quebec was providing the bulk of the money for developing and operating the new mine. “It was interesting to see,” he said “how the initial response of surprise quickly became outrage as Kathleen explained the political machinations and financial tactics of Canadian asbestos stakeholders like Bernard Coulombe and Baljit Chadha.”

Knowing that most of Britain's asbestos fatalities had been exposed to Canadian asbestos, the people in Manchester were appalled at the thought that the lives of millions of people in developing countries would be endangered by Canadian asbestos for generations to come.

In LIVERPOOL, Laurie Kazan-Allen told the AMD meeting of the Cheshire and Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Groups that Canada had run out of asbestos. " Instead of letting this toxic industry die a natural death, government funds have been injected into a financially-suspect and morally bankrupt scheme to construct new mining facilities in Quebec.” Naming names, she showed a photograph of Baljit Chadha, the man heading up the international consortium backing the Jeffrey Mine project and said:

“Let me conclude my remarks today by sending a message to Canada's asbestos businessmen; and I mean you Baljit Chadha and your investors, all of whom prefer to remain in the shadows. Be warned and be on your guard; the people of Merseyside and Cheshire are not done with you. We are as one when we say we will not allow you to profit while others die. You may have convinced Quebec's asbestos cabal to fund your dastardly project but that was just the first battle. The war over the new Jeffrey Asbestos Mine continues. This is NOT over!”

As a Salford lad with friends among the Liverpool dockers I know the amount of trade the North West used to have with Canada; and the strength the dockers used to have to act on behalf of working people on matters of principal, let alone when facing dangerous cargoes. We might reflect on how far we have all been set back by the way that strength was undermined. Hopefully my union, and the people of Merseyside and Cheshire, will see the advantage of muscle being regained.

As it is, our ability to act even through legal channels is being attacked. Once again we can see the link between health and safety and our democratic rights. As Laurie Kazan-Allen explains:

"From the discussions in Liverpool, it was crystal clear how important the assistance provided by teams at the Merseyside Asbestos Victim Support Group and the Cheshire Asbestos Victim Support Group had been to asbestos sufferers. Unfortunately, the existence of these and other UK groups has been put in jeopardy by impending reforms under The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. With the country's asbestos epidemic in full swing, all attempts to curtail the essential work of these groups must be strenuously resisted."

Reports on AMD from:

http://ibasecretariat.org/lka-amd-2012.php

A time to remember all who served.

MEMORIAL near Tower Hill, London, to Merchant Seamen.
But after war, many who weren't 'British' were deported.

WHAT a pity for Lord Snooty and his Pals, that while he - alias David Cameron - was lecturing Chinese students on the advantages of freedom, British students were storming and trashing Tory party headquarters. The Metropolitan Police, more usually outnumbering demonstrators, anticipating battles that no one else has thought of, and kicking off with enthusiasm, this time seemed to be taken unaware, with only 225 officers to stem the tide, and took its time finding reinforcements.

Nothing to do with letting the government see what might happen with police cuts.
Senior officers would never do that. Still, with government policies causing rising unemployment, poverty, social conflict and crime, ministers should not expect they can have law and order on the cheap.

The Sun front-paged its outrage that the students' 70,000-strong peaceful demonstration over fees and cuts had been "hijacked" by extremists. As though the Sun and papers like it had ever bothered reporting a demonstration, however big, that stayed peaceful, let alone putting it on the front-page. But the angle of distinguishing between the main, presumably legitimate, demonstration and the Millbank assault, though reasonable, is unusually so from this source.

Perhaps they too sense that the huge student demo portends something bigger is looming. As does the explosion of anger at Millbank.

Meanwhile, David Cameron must have felt safer in China, where he was only criticised for insensitivity in wearing his poppy. Had nobody at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office thought to warn the prime minister that what might be an obligatory badge of respectability for politicians in Britain, affecting to remember those killed or maimed and disabled in the wars that they keep waging, might evoke other memories in Beijing.

In two Opium Wars, from 1839 to 1842 and from 1856 to 1860, superior British weaponry and warships imposed the 'benefits' of free trade and especially that in the poppy product on China, obtaining Hong Kong along with privileges for British merchants.

If that was long ago, and didn't figure in Cameron's Eton history syllabus, here's a more recent piece of history that probably hasn't been taught in schools, and was not included in the current season of official "remembrance".

As decisive as the Battle of Britain was in the outcome of World War II, so was the much longer Battle of the Atlantic, which made sure badly-needed food and fuel reached Britain, despite the preying U-boat wolf packs.

As the Nazi tanks and bombers spread across Europe, in 1939, the Chinese Merchant Seamen's Pool of approximately 20,000 was set up, headquartered in Liverpool. Many Chinese seafarers had settled here, though they faced prejudice (ironically Chinese people were often blamed for brining in opium!), and when jobs at sea were scarce, British seafarers could turn against the Chinese and other Asians. But when there's a war on, extra hands are welcome whatever their colour.

Reinforced from the Empire, hundreds of thousands of Chinese seamen and other workers were recruited, and many hundreds were killed and injured aboard British ships. Some were torpedoed by German submarines, and could find themselves swimming amid burning oil when tankers went down. A seaman called Poon Lim set the world record of 133 days for survival on a wooden raft after his ship was sunk by a U-boat in 1942. ( A similar but shorter experience had persuaded my Uncle Issie to quit sailing Canadian tankers for the relative safety, as he thought, of the army).

Despite facing the same dangers as their fellow crewmen, Chinese seafarers had fewer rights and lower pay than their British counterparts, until a campaign was waged to win a wartime danger bonus for Chinese seamen equal to that which was granted to British seamen.

After the war was over, it was another matter.

The Labour government and the shipping companies colluded to forcibly repatriate thousands of Chinese seamen. The Blue Funnel Line, which had started in the Far East trade, and long had Chinese crews, now fired them all. The police lost no time swooping on the docklands to deport the no longer wanted Chinese. Many had to leave behind wives and children. Only many years later was this topic aired publicly, and in 2005 the BBC broadcast something about it.

"He just went out to the shop, and my mum was waiting for him to come home, and he never came," Linda Davis said of her father.

"When I was a baby, he was sent back to Shanghai. I've had to grow up without a father," said Margaret Taylor. "I try to put it out of my mind because I know I'll never meet him."

The police operation was ordered by the Home Office and supervised by Special Branch. It must have been one of the fastest things the Attlee government accomplished. Within 48 hours the Chinese seafarers were on their way to China, and there was not much chance of cases being reviewed, or appeals. No problem there with Fabian gradualism.As far as records show, there were no reviews of individual cases, or appeals. And though the government was Labour, it is unlikely to have faced any opposition from Britain's Conservatives.

Families were naturally devastated, and the after effects long outlived the action.

"I'm close to tears now, just talking," Margaret Taylor said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4433003.stm

In 2007 , Anna Chen made a series of programmes about the Chinese in Britain for Radio Four, revisiting the street in Liverpool where her father was born, and also seeing the plaque by the Pier Head which now commemorates the Chinese seafarers.
http://www.annachen.co.uk/gallery_BBCchineseinbritain.html

Today the politicians are wearing their poppies, and Searchlight magazine this month announced a campaign by Hope Not Hate, with trade union support, linking the fight against fascism with commemoration of Britain's war dead. Let us remember all those who served and suffered, and remember too that the defeat of Hitler which our parents celebrated, was not yet the end of inhumanity or racism.

Blood, sweat and tears that made Liverpool

AFTER THE BOMBING. Digging for survivors, Scotland Road.

AS Liverpool prepares for its stint as European City of Culture, due in 2008, people are keen to make it a success. I was given my badge for the event last year, which shows they are looking ahead. Liverpool has a rich history of course, and plenty of culture to show, from its fine buildings to the Philharmonic and the "Fab Four", as well as providing most of the comedians I listened to on the radio as a lad, and many of the actors we see on TV.

But some people are concerned now to make sure the "Year of Culture" does not omit Merseyside's greatest asset, its working people, and their struggle against adversity, which gave rise to humour, but to great resilience and courage as well.

Most films and books dealing with the World War II blitz concentrate on London, but as Britain's biggest westward facing seaport, handling vitally needed supplies from the United States, and Canada, Liverpool was a major target for German bombing, suffering and eventually triumphing at least as much as London. During the worst week, seven nights from 1st-7th May, 1941 around 681 planes dropped 870 tonnes of high explosives and over 112,000 incendiaries on the area, killing over 1,700 people and making around 76,000 homeless.*

When I first visited Liverpool with my parents as a child, whole areas around the city centre were still blackened ruins. On a later visit I was treated to a ride on the elevated railway along the waterfront, nicknamed "the dockers umbrella". Gazeing in delight on all the ships we passed, and the cargoes being unloaded, I amused the grown-ups by recognising the flags of so many nations in port, and trying to identify funnel markings.

The bomb damage has been cleared. But so, sadly, due to shifts in trade but also to economic policies, has the thriving maritime industry of which Liverpool was so justly proud. The overhead railway, which had once carried millions of passengers, closed on December 30, 1956 because neither the city council nor the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board came up with money for its maintenance.

It was not just ships that came and went from Liverpool, of course. To its shore came those fleeing Irish famine and European tyrrany. Many went on to the Americas and Australia and other places, not always voluntarily. Like Bristol, the city was a player in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Later, along with working people from Wales and Scotland and England came the African, Somali and Chinese seafarers to settle and found communities. Like the scouse, or stew, from which they take their name, your Scousers are made up of many flavours and ingrediants.

These are the people who built Liverpool, and Merseyside, who kept its port and factories runing through the blitz and provided many of the crew on Atlantic convoys without which Britain would have been denied munitions and daily bread. After the war the government set about deporting no longer wanted Chinese seafarers just as it had done Africans before. There was also the shameful post-war episode of orphan children shipped out and abused as cheap labour to sustain the "White Australia" policy.

But intelligent working people have resisted attempts to divide them, whether by religion or "race". They know the value of solidarity. Even the Toxteth "race riots" of 1981, sparked by a clash between police and black youth fed up with discrimination and poverty, became an "integrated" riot, of young people united against the police.

During the dockers' struggle a decade ago, dockers from Merseyside travelled the world gaining solidarity and support. Had the British labour movement pulled its finger out similarly, and not been tied by leaders who helped 'New Labour' betray the dockers, they would have won. Because they didn't we have all lost.

The bitter lessons learned have not been forgotten. But nor, on the positive side, have the international links built then. At the weekend I was in Liverpool meeting members of the United Socialist Party founded by sacked dockers, and former councillors, and we discussed what could be done about the war in Lebanon, as well as more local issues.

In the afternoon we had a meeting remembering building worker Des Warren, with a very moving film about his experience in prison for fighting for workers' rights, and how it effected his health. A campaign has begun to re-open the Shrewsbury building pickets' case and have their sentences reversed. Much to the discomfort I'm sure of those union leaders who would prefer a quiet life getting along with Blair and Brown, we have our memories.

In between, there was time for a short report from ex-docker Tony Nelson who was just back from a meeting with the Maritime Workers Union of Australia. He went on to speak of an ambitious idea for an event as part of Liverpool's "Year of Culture" - an international event, with a conference at the dockers' social club, the Casa, and exhibitions, celebrating the working class, from wherever they came, who built this city and became the source of so much wealth that others enjoy. I reckon it's the kind of idea that can grow and win enthusiasm and support. Soon as I hear more I'll be posting information about this project and how to get involved.

* For more on Liverpool during the Blitz see:

http://www.diduknow.info/blitz/

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/exhibitions/blitz

http://pages.zdnet.com/hookares/winston-churchills-shoe/index.html

Remembering Des, and demanding justice

DES WARREN on march (centre), flanked on his right by fellow-accused Ricky Tomlinson, now better-known as TV star.
Hairstyles have changed (mercifully!), but other things haven't, unfortunately. Radio Four last night featured a programme on "The Return of the Lump", about exploitation of Polish workers paid "cash in hand" in the building industry.

IT will soon be thirty years since building worker Des Warren was released from prison after serving three years on "conspiracy" charges for his part in the 1972 building workers' strike. Des was one of the pickets jailed at Shrewsbury, for having gone to that town to bring out unorganised sites.

Not only did he serve the longest sentence, but his health never recovered from the effect of tranquiliser drugs administered in jail. Des died in April 2004.

There were undoubtedly people in British politics and the judiciary who hoped the conviction of 24 workers for picketing and the particularly harsh treatment of their "ringleader" would teach trades unionists a lesson. Building employers who flout laws on safety and tax among others were doubtless simply glad "the law" had been enforced.
But the lesson we have learned may not be the one they wanted taught.

There are people in the Labour Party and trade unions who would be happier if the case of the Shrewbury pickets was forgotten, lest it remind us of their inglorious role, and spur our fighting resolve for the future.

But others have stubborn memories, reinforced by the ongoing fight each day for decent pay, conditions and safety in the building trade, for the workers' right to organise, and for the freedoms denied or threatened under this government.

Workers in the north-west, some of whom were involved in the campaign to release the pickets back in the 1970s, have organised an event in Liverpool on Saturday 5 August with the twin slogans
Remember Des Warren
Justice for the Shrewsbury Pickets

A major issue confronted by building workers in the 1970s was "The Lump", whereby workers rights and conditions were undermined with fictitious self-employment. Though forms change, casualisation has spread like cancer through British industry and services. It is usually imposed, by ending proper jobs, and though the work and hours expected from you are anything but casual, observance of your rights, conditions and safety, even prompt payment of your wages, may be.

In the building trade particularly it seems "the Lump" is back, though now the victims may be Polish and other east European workers paid cash in hand, exploited by gangmasters, and cheated of their rights and benefits.

So it is only right that the Liverpool meeting, besides demanding justice for the 24 pickets convicted at Shrewsbury is adding the demand:
"End casualised labour"

It's at 3pm, Saturday 5 August 2006 at the Casa, Hope Street, Liverpool
- Commemorate Des Warren
· Justice for the 24 pickets convicted of conspiracy
· End casualised labour

Contact:: Justice4pickets@yahoo.co.uk
For further information see: www.billhunterweb.org.uk
and http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2006/04/working-class-hero-des-warren.html

Refreshments

Fudge's escape from Southport

"AT LEAST WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE" , said Fudge.

BY way of a break from states and strife, I've been reminiscing, and looking again at a literary hero who was a major influence on me. I don't know what sort of influence. All I know was that in my childhood I waited eagerly each evening for the "Manchester Evening News" to clunk though the letter-box into our lobby so that, if my parents did not get there first, I could turn to the page with the latest episode in the adventures of Fudge the Elf, and his pal Speck.

I still remember their woodland home, their adventure under water, their trek through a boulder-strewn wilderness to a city which turned out, not unlike parts of our own cities in those post-war years, to be much in ruins. Before long, me and my pal Barry were setting out on similarly intrepid expeditions.

I had not realised these chronicles would be available in book form until some years ago I came upon a copy of "Fudge and the Dragon" in a second-hand bookshop where I had been doing some work. Such was my enthusiasm over it, the manager, Andrew Burgin, who was waiting to shut the shop gave me the copy as my bonus. It sometimes pays to be a nudnik.

I've just discovered there are more of us, and a website
http://www.fudge-the-elf.com/,
dedicated to Lancashire artist Ken Reid's finest creation (he also drew the original Roger the Dodger series in the Beano). Starting to draw when he was confined to bed with a tubercolar hip as a lad, Ken Reid went to Salford Art School, then launched the Fudge strip in the Evening News in 1938. Apart from a break during his army service he continued it till 1961.

Around the time I was following Fudge and Speck some kids were absent from school for periods, not from measles, mumps or chicken pox etc (on which we traded playground boasts like servicemen comparing campaign ribbons ) but because they had "been to Delamere". This was the Jewish Fresh-Air home on the edge of Delamere forest in Cheshire, and to judge from those who returned with excited tales of what good times they had had, a great place to be.

Whether the object of this institution was to take children from grimy Hightown and Broughton and give them a breath of holiday fresh air their parents could not afford, or to give their hard-working parents a badly-needed break from the noisy kids, I'm not sure. But having enjoyed an all-too-brief Sunday afternoon trip to Delamere forest with my parents, and caught a glimpse of the school's sun-bathed verandahs, I was overjoyed when I heard it would be my turn.

Alas, the next news was that for some reason there was no room for me at Delamere, but I could go to Southport instead. Still, Southport was OK, wasn't it? It was a seaside place, and I imagined going on to the beach each day, paddling in the waves and making sandcastles.

Have you been to Southport? It's a kind of Victorian suburb of Liverpool, without the fun of that city. My Mum might talk about the posh shops on Lord Street, but sea? On a clear day you might just see it from the sea front, and someone even ran trips across the beach to the water's edge in war surplus DUKWs. From the Victorian children's institution where I stayed we were marched in two's down to the promenade one day, and then to a park, then back. That was it.

In the institution, whether sitting on a bench waiting for lunch or later in the noisy dormitory before lights out, I had one consolation. My mam had sent me the cut-out Fudge cartoon strip from the "Evening News". But as I was reading Fudge in the hall one day a strange child sitting next to me snatched it from my hand, and as I tried to snatch it back, he thrust the paper into his mouth and started chewing.

I suppose this kid was not just hungry but had some syndrome or other. Whatever was wrong with him I was not in a tolerant, understanding mood after being deprived of my essential reading, and so I hit him. He cried and yelled, and this brought the horse-faced harridan who was in chage of us striding over to berate me, quite uninterested in my protests that he had stolen my cartoon strip and eaten it, and now I might never know what happened next to Fudge and Speck.

It is hard defending cultural interests against barbarism in an unsympathetic environment. Maybe they should have given my neighbour something to read, printed on rice paper, like a special Readers Digest.

Out in the playground at the back of the institution we were lined up in ranks like soldiers one morning, to be inspected. They may even have given us a ration, one small bar of chocolate. I remember next we stood in files waiting to go back in, and some girl wanted us to join in singing a song, I think it was "Swanee". It wasn't to my taste, I did not know the words, and anyway I wasn't interested. I was interested in weighing up the alley at the side of the building, and wondering if I could get out by it to the street before anyone noticed.

What happened next is subject to uncertainty. According to my memory I did make a break via the alley to the steet and found my way through Southport. I remember seeing a fine big bucket and spade set hanging outside a shop doorway, and regretting wryly that I would not now be needing it. I found my way to the railway station, and slipped on to the platform from which the Manchester train departed.

As I was mounting the train however, a train guard stopped me and asked where I was going, and if I had a ticket. "I gave it to the man", I improvised, being a bit vague on railway procedure. "What man?" he asked. "The man on the barrier". So I ended up back in a waiting room while they fetched someone to take me back to the children's home, where I did not want to go.
It was the horse-faced dragon again, though she had to be nice to me because the railwaymen were listening. "What would you like to eat?", she asked, amid my wails and tears. "Beigels", I sobbed. She looked mystified and asked me what was that? "Beigels!" I said again. In those days that was a culturally-specific reference which was probably why I chose it, just to be awkward.

Actually this escape bit may not have happened. It might have been just a childhood dream which I remembered as though it was reality. Perhaps I was influenced by popular wartime escape films. Anyway, my Dad said when I told him some years later that he had never heard about it. What he did remember was that when he and my Mum came to see me at the weekend I wailed and begged them to take me home. (he reminded me of this when I started going to Summer camps, as though he expected a 14-year old enjoying freedom under canvas with girls in Wensleydale was going to be in a hurry for his parents to rescue him!)

I did go home with my parents that weekend, and remember waiting with them at a bus stop when a big black motor car pulled over. I think it was a chauffeur-driven Roller. An old lady in it spoke with my parents. It was my mother's rich Aunt or something in Southport, whom my Dad referred to as "the Old Dutch" or Duchess of that place (I think that side of the family made their money in shoes). Having inquired what we were doing there, she asked my mother "What did you put him in that place for? It's for the illegitimate children of servant girls". Then the Rolls drove off again.

I heard my Mum talking to my Dad about this later. Of course I did not know what "illegitimate" meant. My dad was just annoyed the "Dutchess" hadn't offered us a lift to the station in her Roller. Back home, I wan't bothered. Even school seemed preferable to Southport. I had my pals, my toys, my Mum and Dad, and tomorrow when they had finished with the "Evening News" I would be able to read Fudge the Elf at my leisure again.

(the illustration is from Fudge and the Dragon, by Ken Reid, first published in 1949, by University of London Press, and published 1981 by Savoy Books in association with the New English Library)

Knife attack on Merseyside trade unionist

A leading Merseyside trades unionist and anti-racist campaigner has been attacked at his home by a knifeman. Alex McFadden was almost blinded in the attack.
A local reporter takes up the story:

Union boss slashed in face
May 19 2006
EXCLUSIVE by Neil Hodgson, Liverpool Echo

A LEADING trade unionist was slashed in a knife attack in front of his two young daughters in their Merseyside home. Anti-racist campaigner and left wing activist Alec McFadden was almost blinded in the attack, and was cut in his head, arms and wrists as he tried to fend off the knifeman.
His daughters, aged nine and 13, watched in horror as he was slashed with a craft knife, spraying blood on the door and hall of his Wirral home.
The 59-year-old believes racists are behind the attack, as he has received death threats before.
He said: "He missed my eye by half an inch. The doctors say I am lucky."

He was attacked at 9.30pm after hearing banging on his door.
He said: "I saw a man slumped on the garden wall. I thought he was hurt and opened the door.
"He tried to force his way in and slashed me. I shouted to my kids to call the police, and I think when he heard my daughter on the phone saying, 'I want the police now,' it distracted him.

"I got the strength from somewhere and managed to force the door closed."

Earlier, he had been celebrating news his nephew, Everton player James McFadden, had made the Scotland national squad. He said: "I was so elated that I forgot to check my car mirrors and this person must have followed me."
Police were today carrying out forensic testing.

The knifeman was white, 5ft 10ins, with dark receding hair and a local accent. He wore a light coloured top.
Contact Wirral police on 0151 777 2265.
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/breakingnews
/tm_objectid=17103277&method=full&siteid=50061&headline=union-boss-slashed-in-face-name_page.html

Alex McFadden, originally from the North East, is a well-known figure among trade unionists and anti-racist activists, on Merseyside and more widely. Last year I met him at the national trades union councils' conference in Liverpool where he chaired discussions on what trades unionists can do to combat racialism and organise migrant workers. I had a chat with him again a few months ago in the Casa, Merseyside dockers' club on Hope Street.

Racists might not be the only people to make attacks like this, but they are the people who boasted their hatred for Alex McFadden, and it is not the first time he has been their target. Three years ago the notrious right-wing website Redwatch published details on the Merseyside trade unionist including his address and photograph.

21.11.2003 Liverpool
Targets of right wing extremists
Nov 19 2003 by Thomas Martin, Liverpool Echo

A Merseyside trade union leader is under police protection today (Wednesday, November 19) after being targeted by right wing extremists.

CCTV cameras have been installed by police at the home of Alec McFadden, president of the Merseyside TUC. Another union leader, Nigel Flanagan, chairman of the north west region for Unison, and children's author and primary
school teacher Alan Gibbons, have also been targeted in a website campaign by a fascist organisation.

Photos of all three have been posted onto the fascist
website which also publishes the addresses of Mr McFadden and Mr Flanagan and has described them as "freaks" and "scumbags".

All three men have reported what has happened to Merseyside police who are now investigating. The website has direct links to the extreme right wing groups Combat 18, Aryan Unity and Order of White Knights. It purports to
raise awareness within the community of marxists who threaten society by revealing personal details such as home addresses, photographs, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.
The website says: "When the time comes to revolt, we must be prepared to unleash the furies of hell." The site, which the ECHO has chosen not to name, is registered to a Simon Shepherd, a former BNP organiser from Hull who was arrested and imprisoned in 1999 for producing antisemitic material.

Mr McFadden, a single father-of-two, recently set up the
Merseyside Coalition Against Racism and Fascism. He said: "I know what these people are capable of because in 1988 my car was blown up and I received death threats - no one was ever caught for that. "Since then I have been very careful to never release my address or phone number so these people must have followed me home to
get these details. "I have contacted my children's school and asked them to be vigilant - if someone threatens me I will make sure my children are safe."

Mr McFadden has also received a disturbing email from Merseyside BNP candidate Joey Owens featuring photos of his home and his car. The e-mail purports to raise concerns over how he could afford such items, or lead such a lifestyle as a committed socialist. Today Mr Owens admitted sending the e-mail but claimed it was not hreatening in any way. He said: "Mr McFadden has been doing this towards BNP members for years. The boot is on the other for now and they do
not like it. "The reason I did this was because Mr McFadden is the one who is doing this campaign to stop the BNP in the democratic campaign for the elections next year."

Alex McFadden decided to hold an anti-racist festival last year after a Birkenhead mosque was attacked, following the London bombings. The murder of black teenager Anthony Walker was a further spur and brought a rush of offers to take part. The ‘Say No to Racism’ event was held in Princes Park, on Sunday, September 4th 2005, and Alex was interviewed by the BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2005/09/05/
anti_racism_feature.shtml.

Joe Owens, who has been a minder for BNP leader Nick Griffin and helped provide security for visiting French fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen on his trip to the North West, is a convicted criminal with a reputation as a gangster.

But oddly enough, the attack on Alex McFadden comes after former BNP Merseyside organiser Owens broke with the party and went public with accusations that London BNP organiser Tony Lecomber had tried to recruit him to an assassination scheme.

Gangster and BNP member reveals all

Apr 17 2006

By
Jessica Shaughnessy, Daily Post

THE former organiser of the right-wing British National Party on Merseyside has renounced it and says he regrets his violent past.
Joey Owens, who once acted as personal bodyguard to BNP leader Nick Griffin, will be the subject of a hard-hitting book later
this year, named The Nazi Assassin. In it he will be portrayed as an underworld gangster whose name has been linked to a number of alleged assassinations.
Last night, Owens told the Daily Post that he had left the
BNP part of his life behind him, and wanted to warn others about going down the same path.
He said: "I had just had enough of the life I was leading with
the BNP. "When I first joined the party in the eighties, it was very
different to how it is now. It was violent and dangerous, that has changed now, but the stigma still follows you around.
"I just didn't want to be part of it any more."
Owens, from Norris Green, who has a daughter who lives abroad,
says he is now wanted by other members of the underworld and is a target for assassination. He constantly wears a bulletproof vest for his protection.
He said: "I wouldn't say I am living in fear. I am used to that kind of
pressure, I have lived with it for most of my life.
"But I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone else."

Owens, who served eight months in jail for sending razor blades to members of Liverpool's Jewish community, was the BNP organiser for Merseyside and Cheshire.
He says he has relaxed some of his racist views, though he does still feel there are issues on immigration in the UK. He spoke to the Daily Post after it was revealed that his story will be told in the book, The Nazi Assassin, to be published later this year.
The book was written by Liverpool author Graham Johnson, former
investigations editor for the Sunday Mirror, with Owens's co-operation.
Owens added: "He approached me and asked me if I would help him, and I decided it would be better to make sure he got everything right.
"I also thought it might clear a few things up and warn others not to get involved in the same lifestyle."
The book details how Owens was one of the top suspects
for the slaying of TV presenter Jill Dando. It also reveals that a Merseyside Police file describes him as a £100,000-a-time gunman for the criminal gang led by cocaine baron Curtis Warren, currently in jail in Holland.
Last night, Mr Johnson said: "This book does not glorify organised crime or Joey Owens. It is a rigorous investigation into the two very different worlds he lived - the BNP and Liverpool's underworld."
But president of the Merseyside TUC and anti-fascism campaigner Alec McFadden said: "This book is supposed to blow away
any respectability the BNP has, but they didn't have any respectability in the first place.
"As far as I am concerned, Joey Owens, like a lot of the BNP,
has a criminal record and I don't regard that organisation as a genuine political party."
The BNP is putting up one candidate in each Merseyside
borough in the May local elections.
Mr McFadden continued: "It is a good thing for Merseyside that he is no longer involved and the BNP activity will be diminished.
"I am convinced Merseyside will continue its record and will
remain a fascist-free zone in May".

According to a report in the current Searchlight, Owens claimed in a statement issued in April that Lecomber, who has convictions for attempted bombing and for beating up a Jewish teacher, came to see him with talk about "direct action". Asked what he meant, Lecomber replied "targeting members of the establishment who are aiding and abetting the coloured invasion of this country". Asked what exactly he meant by targeting, he replied "killing them".

J'accuse. Gangland hitman points finger at BNP. Nick Lowles, Searchlight, May 2006.

see also:

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=159

Lecomber claims the discussion in a Pizza Hut in Liverpool was just "hypothetical", though travelling 200 miles for a "hypothetical" chat with a supposed hitman seems a bit dedicated. Owen evidently suspected a set-up. Since Owens went public, Griffin has been forced to let his lieutenant take a rest, though Searchlight claims Lecomber is still on the BNP payroll.

• While the search goes on for who attacked Alex McFadden, we may wonder why this attack, and for that matter the criminal background of leading BNP fascists, has not attracted more attention from the national media.
• Not to mention, why Merseyside police seem to have left it to a reporter to investigate Joe Owens while the alleged hitman was looking after visitors like Le Pen, and standing for the BNP in local politics.

Meantime sympathetic greetings to Bro.McFadden and his family. Here's wishing Brother Alex a full and speedy recovery, good health, and more power in continuing to battle the enemy.

(Thanks to fellow-blogging socialist Dave Osler for drawing attention to the report of the attack on Alex McFadden.
see Dave's Part)

Simon Jones - one among many

SIMON JONES campaigners joined trades unionists on Workers Memorial Day, 2000

A YOUNG man killed in his first morning at work will be the subject of a play being performed in Liverpool tonight.

Simon Jones was a student at Sussex University, reading Social Anthropology, who decided to take a year out. No harm in a social science student observing life off campus. For Simon Jones it ended up costing his own life. Not exploring some remote mountains or jungle, nor moving among some criminal gang, but accepting a job where he was sent by the dole people, just down the road from his uni.

Simon had heard something about docks work, and the evils of casualisation. He had helped organise a meeting in a Brighton pub for striking Liverpool dockers to speak. So there was some irony in finding himself pressured by the benefits office to go to Personnel Selection, a recruitment agency, who sent him to a job at Shoreham docks, working for Euromin, a Dutch-based firm.

With no previous experience or training, just five minutes "instruction" from a foreman, Simon was set to work in the hold of the Cambrook, a Polish cargo ship that had docked that morning carrying a load of cobblestones.. The firm was using a mechanical grab crane to which chains had been attached. He had to attach bags of stones to the chains hanging from the inside of the open grab.
It was the morning of April 24, 1998. Two hours after he started work, Simon Jones was dead.

Sean Curry was working near Simon. Turning to say something to the young man he saw the closed grab where Simon's head should have been, and blood oozing from its claws. Simon had been decapitated. Later Sean was ordered to hose the blood off the bags of stones so they could be used, and was sent home when he refused.

As it came out in court later, the crane driver could not see into the hold, and the banksman on the dockside was a Polish crew member who did not speak English. The grab should not have been in use. Either a different crane ought to have been used, or the grab should have been detached before the chains were attached directly to a hook. But changing the crane would have taken time, and ten weeks before James Martell, Euromin general manager, had ordered that the chains be welded on to the grab. Simon was killed because of that idea, when the lever that operated the grab got caught in the crane driver's clothing, causing the jaws to close around the young worker's head.

There were 374 work-related fatalities in this country that year. But as they heard the horrific news about Simon's death, friends and family were determined that he should not become just another statistic. They would do everything to see that whoever was responsible for this tragedy should face justice, and that Simon's case would highlight the whole issues of casualisation, workplace safety, and ruthless exploitation, particularly of young people.
As they say in their campaign slogan:

"People like Simon Jones get killed at work all the time and nothing gets done about it.
Not this time."

With few resources beyond their energy and determination, they laid out money to print posters and leaflets, trusting supporters would raise the funds.
They wrote to unions and MPs. Before April 1998, the police were not formally required to investigate workplace deaths. A new policy requiring their attendance came into force just before Simon Jones's death, but local police had not yet been trained and the investigation started six weeks late.
Investigations usually come under the government's Health and Safety executive (HSE), but only 30% of workplace death cases end in a prosecution. The HSE is chronically under-resourced and often criticised for delays and lack of transparency. Even when police decide to move, there have been few successful prosecutions for deaths at work.

The young people in the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign used bold and imaginative methods to make sure someone took notice. On September 1, 1998, on what would have been Simon's 25th birthday, protesters invaded Shoreham dock. Climbing two 80ft towers belonging to Euromin, they unfurled banners reading "Simon Jones RIP" and "Casualisation Kills". Simon's girlfriend, Emma, said: "My arms were shaking and the structure was swaying in the wind. But for the first time I felt I was doing justice to his memory."

Euromin was forced to close down for the day, sending workers home on full pay. The journalists and TV crews came. Two days later, the group occupied the Brighton office of Personnel Selection, hanging from the window a banner reading "Murderers" and handing out leaflets about the campaign.

A few weeks later, environment minister Michael Meacher admitted that the government's plan to spend an extra £4.5m on health and safety inspectors was "not enough". At the time of Simon Jones's death, there was only one HSE inspector responsible for every dock in the south of England, as well as for hospitals and local authority, police and Ministry of Defence establishments. Euromin had had only one visit from this inspector, in December 1994, after an anonymous complaint. No loading or unloading was taking place at the time.

In March 1999, George Galloway tabled a question in the House of Commons concerning the casualisation of labour, and described in detail the safety failures at Euromin that had resulted in Jones's death. A group from the campaign travelled to London to lobby MPs and demonstrate at the Department of Trade and Industry. Somehow after they occupied the DTI lobby the fire alarm went off, and the building was evacuated, so they were able to leaflet the crowd outside.
.
In April, 1999 the Crown Prosecution Service announced there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Euromin or any senior manager for manslaughter. The HSE had also completed its inquiries but could not explain why Euromin had been allowed to operate in such a dangerous manner, why it had not been properly inspected and why it was allowed to remain open.

On April 28, 1999, Workers Memorial Day, just over a year after Simon's death, campaigners gathered outside the HSE's London headquarters, while his family laid a wreath at the door. When their requests to speak to the director were refused, 30 protestors blocked Southwark bridge, next to the building, and stayed there for three hours, holding up traffic until they got their meeting.

Meanwhile, lawyer Louise Christian pressed for legal action. In 2000 two high court judges overturned the CPS's decision, ruling that it had behaved "irrationally" in insisting that there was no realistic prospect of conviction; in a strongly worded judgment, they ordered it to reconsider "with dispatch".

It was a further nine months before summonses were issued to James Martell and Euromin. On November 7, 2001, the trial of Martell and Euromin began at the Old Bailey. On November 29, Martell and Euromin were cleared of manslaughter by a majority verdict; the company was found guilty of two lesser charges of breaching health and safety regulations, and fined £50,000.

Judge David Stokes said: "I regard the excuses put forward [by Euromin] as lamentable. The fact is that this company, between February 1997 and April 1998, failed to carry out any of the most important parts of its duty. The failure to do that was absolutely deplorable in my view. If it had been done, the death of this young man might have been avoided."

No action was taken again Personnel Selection for sending inexperienced workers to a job where they had not checked conditions. Or the Department of Employment, whose staff are themselves under pressure to get people into work, any work.

With the government still dragging its feet on Corporate Manslaughter Laws promised when it came to office almost ten years ago, casualisation still widespread, official safety inspection far from expanding being reduced, and trades unionists still hamstrung by the Tory anti-union laws, the reasons for the death of Simon Jones, and hundreds like him every year, have not gone away. So neither will the campaign.

Although they may have used unorthodox tactics to make their protest known, the Simon Jones Memorial Campaigners have worked through conventional legal and political channels when they could, and have teamed up with the organised labour movement. But as one of the sacked Liverpool dockers remarked when hearing that campaigners had halted operations at Shoreham dock, 'A few years ago, it would have been workers coming out that shut that dock, not protesters going in.' When casualisation and anti-union laws have weakened trade unionism and outlawed what would have been normal solidarity action, it becomes necessary to rethink what's "normal" and maybe to behave like outlaws.

Whether for your mates who've been sacked, or for a pal who has been killed.

Simon Jones' ashes lie scattered in his favourite Brighton park, and a tree was planted in his memory. But most of all he will live on in the struggle for workplace rights and safety, and to insist workers are not just numbers, but human beings, entitled to our safety, our rights, our lives.

Meantime, in Liverpool, the Dingle Community Theatre is performing the play
SIMON JONES WAS SOMEONE! tonight May 10th at 8pm at the Casa Club, Hope Street, Liverpool Entrance is free. Tickets are available from the Casa Club or by phoning 0771 684 8894.

The play, written by Alan Bower and Tom Mclennan, is an hour long, agitprop style drama that looks at Simon’s death and the subsequent campaign to get justice for him and his family. “Simon Jones was Someone” not only looks at the personal tragedy behind casualisation and a deregulated society where profits come first - it also looks at the possible responses to such horrible crimes and the failure of trade unionism in the post-Thatcher era to challenge them.

A collection will be held after the play for the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign
http://www.simonjones.org.uk/casualisation kills.


The Simon Jones Memorial Campaign can be contacted at PO Box 2600, Brighton BN2 2DX, 01273 685913 (http://www.simonjones.org.uk/).
·

United in Liverpool, time for a party

Fellow-blogging comrade Dave Renton commented recently on the return of Robbie Fowler to Liverpool FC. http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/ I'm off to Liverpool myself this weekend, and though I'm not going to the Liverpool-Man U. match there is a connection.

On 29 September 1995, Liverpool dockers refused to cross a picket line and were dismissed by the Mersey Docks and harbour Company. For two and a half years the dockers fought for re-instatement, winning support around the world and seven seas, and from all kinds of people in Britain, notably youngsters such as those around Reclaim the Streets who respected their stand for justice.

But here in Britain the dockers' need for solidarity was up against the Tory government's docks casualisation and anti-union laws, which union leaders were reluctant to challenge. They also faced a media blackout. Dockers who travelled abroad to win support found people in other countries had heard more about their struggle than many people in England.

During the strike some tee shirt were designed to raise funds and show support, incorporating the Calvin Klein 'CK' into the word dockers. It was young Robbie Fowler who scandalised BBC commentators and FA bosses (who fined him), but won the hearts of his fellow-scousers, by scoring in a Cup Winners Cup game in 1997, then lifting his Liverpool shirt to reveal a dockers tee shirt before the TV camera. (That year, he also won a UEFA Fair Play award for proving he was a good sport by admitting he had not been fouled at Highbury after a penalty had been given). I'm no good at football, but I've got the same tee shirt.

In February 1998, having seen the back of the Tory government only to have a Labour government do nothing for them (notably not using its "golden share" in the dock company to help them win re-instatement), the dockers were forced to settle. But they have not gone away, and their struggle has not been forgotten, even if the Blair government and some union leaders wish it were.

The sacked dockers aren't the only bunch of scousers who have stuck around to embarrass supporters of this government. On March 12, 1987, despite massive support and demonstrations of upward of fifty thousand on the streets of Liverpool, five Law Lords upheld the decision of an unelected district auditor to surcharge and expel 47 elected Labour councillors from office . During their period in office the 47 left-wing councillors had tried to put their socialism into practice, and help those who put them in, by building 5,000 homes, creating thousands of jobs, and opening more nurseries than any other city. Unlike wealthy Tory Dame Shirley Porter in Westminster, they had not sold off council-owned cemeteries for peppercorns, or tried to used house sales for gerrymandering; but they refused to pass the burden of Tory policies on to working people. For this, they and their city were penalised. Faced with imprisonment, bankruptcy, and victimisation, they could not shift themselves and their money abroad out of the way, as Dame Shirley did. Nor did they get loyal help from their party. Quite the opposite.

Labour is due to celebrate its centenary this year. In the 1906 general election nearly 30 Labour MPs were elected, helped by a pact with the Liberals. Operating as a team they influenced the Liberal government to the extent that that year it passed the Trades Disputes Act (setting aside the Taff Vale judgment which had rendered unions liable for strikes by members); a Workmen's Compensation Act, and an act enabling local councils to provide free school meals for deprived children. In 1908 the Right to Work Bill was introduced, requiring employment or payment for the unemployed. It was not utopia, nor revolution, but it meant unions had entered politics to win their rights, and asserted themselves, not just for their own members but for the whole working class.

It was after the First World War and Russian Revolution that Labour adopted the famous Clause IV, part 4, to its constitution, aiming (4) To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

When I joined the Labour Party as a teenager it was still possible to believe that , despite what my dad told me about Ramsay MacDonald, and the postwar Attlee government, Labour stood for reforms and public ownership, to benefit the working class, and that it ultimately aimed at socialism and equality. There it was in black and white on your Party card, and the 1960 Labour Party conference fought off Hugh Gaitskell's attempt to get rid of the Clause, just as it pledged that Labour would rid us of nuclear weapons.

Whatever the arguments now about what Labour was, no one can pretend it is the same. Clause IV went, and no one can believe that's just a matter of words, as the Blair government takes privatisation into places even Thatcher did not reach, treats trades unionists with contempt, and wages war on restrictions safeguarding workers' rights in the EU as ruthlessly as it does on civil liberties, and on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Trade unions like the TGWU, which swung the party to the Left in 1960 have little say any more, but are expected to swing their members into line.

Since New Labour took office in 1997, many people could see the need for an alternative, but few could seriously pretend that any of the numerous left groups spawned in past decades provides it. Trades unionists shook their heads at the multiplying variety of rival paper sellers, each claiming to be the "vanguard". Young people see "politics" as irrelevant or corrupt, and either express their rebellion in unconscious and destructive ways, or if they do decide to get involved, its in the anti-war movement, solidarity campaigns, and causes like War on Want, which seemed to offer direct ways to help rather than waiting for some politician.

One attempt to overcome the weakness of the groups and meet the need for a credible alternative was the Socialist Alliance. It stood candidates (one councillor elected), got people working together who'd previously not spoken to each other, attracted disaffected Labour Party members, some union activists, rights campaigners and journalists. Its first election broadcast was impressive. But the Socialist Alliance was handicapped by the conservatism of "revolutionaries", each sect jealously guarding its own positions, putting off outsiders, and blocking anything like a joint journal that would suggest the Alliance was becoming a party. The Socialist Party (ex-Militant Tendency) had initiated the Alliance, but its supporters walked out when they saw the Socialist Workers Party(SWP) taking over, thus giving the latter a walkover.

Although SWP members were enthusiastic and hard working, their leaders saw the Alliance as just a temporary stop gap, while they pursued backstage negotiations with those they considered more important. From these dealings emerged Respect, for which the Alliance was scrapped and dumped. It was billed as "the party of the anti-war movement", but though the SWP also dominates the Stop the War Coalition (and kept Socialist Alliance speakers off its platforms!), they haven't been able to drag it behind this bandwagon. Just lately Respect looked more like a pantomine horse, with Gorgeous George Galloway cavorting at the front, and the SWP in undignified position at rear, with no influence on the direction it just has to follow.

Meanwhile in Liverpool, a couple of years ago, some of the sacked dock shop stewards began talking to some of the victimised left-wing councillors about the possibility of a political alternative to challenge New Labour. The discussion was joined by Socialist Party members and ex-members, and comrades who had opposed the liquidation of the Socialist Alliance. Mindful perhaps of what had happened to the Alliance, as well as what might make an impression on the doorsteps in Liverpool, they decided to move right ahead and form a party, without waiting till they had the perfect programme, and they called upon those joining to disband their separate parties and work together, with one paper.

The Socialist Party, once again, veered off to pursue its own "campaign for a mass workers party". With it stayed many of the Liverpool 47. Some of the groups who'd been in the Socialist Alliance also baulked at the idea of giving up their own papers, or claims to be the Party, for something based not on the "correct" theory which they alone possess, but merely on major workers' struggles. Some are now trying to rebuild the Socialist Alliance, others clinging to the backside of Respect.

But besides some of the 47 councillors, the United Socialist Party launched by the dockers has attracted some ex-Labour dissidents from the Midlands, and Socialist Alliance members including Trotskyists who worked with the dockers during their two and a half year strike, and kept up contact afterwards. It was aggreed that the occasional paper "Unite", a successor to the "Dockers Charter", become organ for the USP. (A new magazine, Socialist Studies was also started last month).

Because Britain was the first industrial country, trade unions had a head start on the political movement for socialism. Marxists like Engels recognised the vital importance of a labour party over mere sects. A century after the Labour Party began, trades unionists like Bob Crow have said we are at a similar turning point. His union, the RMT, whose London members already tested the political water standing candidates opposed to privatisation on the tube, has also opened up discussion on the need for a new party.

A future Socialist Party in Britain, replacing Labour, will most likely come from more than one source, including some socialists still in the Labour Party now. But the United Socialist Party holding its relaunch conference this weekend in Liverpool, where it is planning to stand candidates in local government elections this year, is a small but important step. That's why I'm off to be in at the start.

Come on you Reds!

More information:

TUSP, Eric McIntosh - e.mci@blueyonder.co.uk

Liverpool 47 discussion - http://phorum5.greennet.org.uk/read.php?10,319,342

Don't Ask the Rabbi!

"Private Eye" once carried a little story saying ex-Liverpool council leader Derek Hatton, of Militant Tendency fame, had managed to place a niece and/nephew in a private fee-paying school, to wit the King David school in Liverpool.
Where do they get these stories? The tales people tell sometimes tell you more about the teller than the person they are supposed to be about. I can imagine someone telling this one while stroking the side of their nose and nudge-nudge,wink-wink, "King David, you know what I mean..."

The then head of Liverpool's biggest Jewish school, Clive Lawton, wrote to the "Eye" pointing out that his school was neither private not fee-paying, but in the state sector. He said that he had been unable to find any little Hattons in the school's registers, but added that of course they would be as welcome as any other kids if their family wished to send them there.

I can't see Rabbi Chaim Simons being happy with that.

Rabbi Simons hails from Edgware,and nowadays lives in Kiryat Arba, the settlement overshadowing Hebron, established by Gush Emunim (religious Zionists) with the help of the Israeli army. From there he shares his views with us whether Baruch Goldstein massacred innocent people in their mosque, and how Arabs should be "transferred" from Palestine. But back in the 1970s Rabbi Simons was employed to impart his wisdom to pupils at Liverpool's King David, and he recounts his exploits as: .

"My Fight for Yiddishkeit:
Reminiscences of a Director of Jewish Studies at the King David High School, Liverpool, in the 1970s"
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7854/liverpool.html

To his horor, the Rabbi discovered that King David was accepting children of "mixed marriages", or whose mothers had only been converted to Judaism in Reform or Liberal synagogues, or who could not prove their Jewishness to his Orthodox satisfaction. What was worse, the King David's headmaster insisted that such children could be taught "Jewish Studies" and should not even be segregated at the back of the class, as someone proposed. (and there we were thinking the "ghetto benches" were a reprehensible feature of pre-war Poland).

Let Rabbi Simons explain:
"There were two major problems in the school’s accepting these pupils as Jews. The more serious was that other people, including pupils of the school, would think they were Jews. This could even lead to intermarriage. Only, when a few weeks before the intended marriage, they applied to the Chief Rabbi’s Office for a marriage license, would they discover that their intended partner was in fact non-Jewish. At that stage it would require great strength of character to break off the relationship. In fact, whilst I was at the school, a potential case like this arose. One boy had a girl-friend who was registered in the school as Jewish but in fact was non-Jewish. I called this boy into my study and told him that this girl was non-Jewish.
The second problem is whether it is permissible to teach non-Jews Torah. There is much Religious literature on this question. Many authorities allow the teaching of Bible to non-Jews but forbid teaching the Oral Law. However, even teaching non-Jews the Oral Law is permitted on an occasional basis and is also permitted if it could be dangerous if one did not teach them.
However, these problems should not need to arise in a Jewish School. They should only accept pupils who are Jewish according to Halachah. In a school which needs to take in non-Jewish pupils to make up the numbers required by the Local Education Authority, they should only take non-Jews who will not claim they are Jewish. With such pupils there can be no confusion".

Rabbi Simons knew his duty. He not only went over the Head to report to the rabbinical authorities, and seek backing, and to the Zionist Federation Educational Trust (ZFET; note the way a political organisation has acquired authority in schools).

The rabbi interrogated schoolchildren about their parents, and what synagogue their father attended, he examined Jewish marriage certificates (ketuvot), in one case having to ask for a document to be translated from Arabic by a Liverpool University scholar (just because Rabbi Simons lives in a settlement surrounded by Arabs doesn't mean he must learn their language - he seeks their "transfer" elsewhere, remember)

Where he had to teach a class containing those he did not consider Jews, he contrived to ignore such students, refused them Bar Mitzvah tuition, refused to assist one lad with his tefilim (worn by males when saying the morning prayer) and made sure the others in the class knew why their fellows were singled out. That was not all.

"In the top streams in each year, the pupils learned more Oral Law, and even before the Beth Din ruling, I would "arrange it" that none of these pupils could be in a top stream. Usually this could easily be done, since such pupils were generally uninterested in Jewish Studies. Occasionally they were interested in Jewish Studies but they were still not put in a top stream. On no occasion did a pupil or even his parents make a fuss about this. There was one occasion when the Headmaster asked me why one of these pupils was in the top stream for Modern Hebrew but in a lower stream for Jewish Studies. I explained that this pupil was good at languages but had no interest in Religious Knowledge!
A problem did in fact arise in putting such a pupil in a lower stream, whereas had he been Jewish would have been in the top stream. When it came to the examinations at the end of the year, he might well come top in his class. It was traditional that the top pupil would be presented with a prize at the annual speech day. I felt it would be very wrong for such a pupil to receive a prize for Jewish Studies. I therefore did some "mark manipulation." The Jewish pupil who had the highest mark would have his marks raised, whereas this non-Jewish pupil would have his mark lowered. In this way, a Jewish pupil would have the highest mark in his stream and would thus receive the prize. I felt this manipulation to be perfectly legitimate, since this non-Jewish pupil was not entitled to be in any Jewish Studies class. If he had been awarded the prize, he would have deprived a Jewish pupil from receiving it.

Such courage! Such ingenuity! Had the good rabbi been a non-Jewish teacher applying his methods to, say, Jews or other minorities he would surely have been promoted and decorated for his fight - in South Africa or Nazi Germany say. The head who opposed him would have been sacked and probably incarcerated somewhere. But though Israel may have its racialism, against Palestinians and some Jewish communities, it is far too liberal and secular for a man like Rabbi Chaim Simons. Still, while trying to turn Israeli Occupation and settlement of "Judea and Samaria" into settler domnation over Israel, as well as Palestine, such stalwarts can practice in some British schools.

People may say that nasty a piece of work as this Rabbi may be, he is just one man, and no more typical than say, the racists and antisemites who occasionally crop up teaching in our schools. We remember Ray Honeyford, the Bradford head who expressed his views on racial superiority in right-wing publications, and was eventually removed after a big campaign, in which my late comrade Reuben Goldberg, then a local Labour councillor, took part along with Asian youth.

Let me say that looking back, though I never attended a Jewish school, but went to ordinary state schools and cheder (pre-Barmitzvah claases), two of my favourite teachers were Rabbis, who so far as I was aware, taught fairly and well. I have also known two young rabbis who were good members of the Jewish Socialists' Group, though they were not Orthodox, and whether Rabbi Simons would have accepted them as Rabbis, or even Jews, I very much doubt. Both had to return to the United States, anyway. I know one of them had tried to get suitable employment in this country, and would have been a good teacher. But though we hear about a shortage of such qualified people, there were suddenly no openings when my rabbi friend applied. Could that be anything to do with his political views or the company he chose?

So was, or is, Rabbi Chaim Simons unique, or could he claim backing from those in authority in the schools? "What was the situation at other Jewish schools? I asked several of the Jewish schools in England about their policy in this matter. The JFS in London wrote in their prospectus that the school was open to anyone 'recognised as Jewish by the London Board of Jewish Religious Education.' This London Board (which administers the school together with ZFET) is part of the United Synagogue, whose religious head is the Chief Rabbi. Thus the JFS only takes in pupils Halachically Jewish. The Head of Jewish Studies there told me that they make a check on the Jewishness of each pupil that applies. The Headmaster of the Avigdor Primary School in London asks to see the Ketuvah of any parents he doesn’t know personally. In doubtful cases he asks the Rabbi of the school for his ruling. When I inquired what is meant by doubtful cases, I was told people coming from abroad".

Here's an item from the "Totally Jewish" website:

Sagal's Status Not Recognised
by Justin Cohen - Friday 8th of July 2005
The Chief Rabbi this week ruled he could not recognise the mother at the centre of the controversial JFS conversion case as Jewish.
Helen Sagal was told of the decision during a 90-minute meeting with Sir Jonathan Sacks on Tuesday, three months after she appealed to him over concerns raised by the London Beth Din over the legitimacy of her Israeli conversion, 15 years ago.

In a statement, the Chief Rabbi stated Mrs Sagal had been unable to provide evidence that when she went through the process in 1990 she "maintained even the most basic observance of Jewish law essential to the validity of a conversion." The ruling, which means Mrs Sagal’s son Guy will not be able to attend JFS this September, follows an earlier meeting between her, Sir Jonathan and members of the Beth Din last month. A spokesman for Sir Jonathan’s office said: "The focus of the Chief Rabbi and Beth Din was the lady’s state of mind, her level of acceptance and understanding of mitzvot at time of the conversion."
http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/?content_id=1064

And to bring the story up to date:
From the Hendon and Finchley Times, November 16.

Convert's daughter turned away

A Finchley schoolgirl has been refused entry to a Jewish school because the Chief Rabbi does not recognise her mother who is a senior teacher at the school as being Jewish.The girl's parents, David and Kate Lightman, of Grosvenor Road, were married in 1988 after Mrs Lightman spent two years in Israel converting to Judaism, yet the United Synagogue does not recognise her conversion as sincere.In their eyes, her 11-year-old daughter is not Jewish, and therefore cannot attend Jews' Free School (JFS) in Kenton. Mr Lightman said: "We are being persecuted for no reason. We are just a family trying to get on with our lives."The London Beth Din (LBD), the Chief Rabbi's religious court, has rejected Mrs Lightman's conversion and the family's appeals against the decision. Judaism expert Professor Geoffrey Alderman, who attended a meeting with the Lightmans and the LBD, said: "The Lightman case is extraordinary. The Chief Rabbi has intepreted the situation perversely. The Lightmans were married by an orthodox rabbi in New York and Mrs Lightman's conversion is recognised by the Chief Rabbi of Israel."JFS have said they will accept the Lightmans' daughter, but only if Mrs Lightman's conversion is recognised. Mrs Lightman holds the senior teaching position of Head of English at the school, and has in the past taught a number of religious education classes.Mr Lightman said: "They JFS have behaved in an exemplary manner. Kate has had a lot of support at work."A spokesman for the London Beth Din (LBD) said Mr and Mrs Lightman were told of the decision in 1991, but nothing more was heard from them until this year, after appeals for their daughter's admission to Jewish schools had been heard. "No relevant new facts were brought to the attention of the Beth Din, who have reiterated that they are not able to recognise Mrs Lightman's conversion," he said.

Should this be of political concern? Well, we might well want to look critically at the government's policy on "faith schools" (an issue on which some people on the Left have softened considerably as they court religious allies), and ask whether discriminatory practices and indoctrination should be tolerated in schools recognised and subsidised by the state. Not to mention the way this government is happily shifting education from local authorities to private interests that, regardless of their prejudices, can do, and teach, as they please.

As for parents who, without necessarily being all that religious, think faith schools are good for their kids, or would simply like them to learn something of their own tradition, which is fair enough, perhaps they should ask whether Jewish schools which employ the likes of Rabbi Simons and his rules are the way? According to my Bible, a woman called Ruth, a Moabite, once said "Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God" (or "my G-d" if you prefer), marrying a man call Boaz. Now according to Halacha, Jewish religious custom, descent is traced from the Mother's side. And though the Book of Ruth makes no mention of anyone checking Ruth's ketuba, or what school her son Obed went to, it goes on to say he was father to Jesse, father of David - that is who became King David, and has given his name to schools, though he might not have been accepted in the JFS.