Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Compound2632]

36 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

No

 

Only from behind, or possibly geographically. Neither were especially left-wing. 

[Ian Simpson]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

AM I right in thinking, the Tories were somewhat to the left of the Whigs?

Interesting question. I'm going to say no. If anything, people often see the Tories as slightly to the right of the Whigs, as they tended to support the interests of the aristocracy [edit: okay, Compound corrects my dodgy history in the next post] and landed gentry while the Whigs were supportive of the nouveau riche industrialists. But I wouldn't consider either party to be left wing in any modern sense of the term.

In the early days (late 17th and 18th centuries) the Tories tended to be more pro-monarchist, more tolerant in religious matters such as Catholic emancipation and more supportive of large landowners, while the Whigs tended to be more pro-Parliament, more Protestant / Puritan and more pro-merchant / early capitalist in their economic policies. [Hint: think "Cavalier" versus "Roundhead" here.  The Tory and Whig factions developed in the years following the Restoration of Charles II.]

Our modern understanding of Left and Right doesn't really fit very well into this period - for example, neither side was particularly interested in greater equality throughout society as a whole, while both were pro-liberty as long as it was reserved for people like themselves. I suppose the Tories tended to be more conservative in their wariness of social change (so more social reactionary / right wing: e.g. Burke), while the Whigs were more open to industralisation and free trade (so more pro-capitalist / right wing).  

Without wanting to trigger a fit of rage in anyone, I'd suggest the Labour Party was created because even at the end of the 19th century neither of the existing parties (Tory/Conservative and Whig/Liberal) were representing the interests of the working class effectively.  

 

Having said that, here in 1905 Norfolk we are surprisingly Liberal, based on the 1900 General Election results:

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by Ian Simpson

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Interesting question. I'm going to say no. If anything, people often see the Tories as slightly to the right of the Whigs, as they tended to support the interests of the aristocracy and landed gentry while the Whigs were supportive of the nouveau riche industrialists. But I wouldn't consider either party to be left wing in any modern sense of the term.

 

Well, yes, but in the 18th century the Whigs were by-and-large the party of the aristocracy (that had invited Dutch William and then Georgy Porgy to take the throne) whereas the Tories were the party of the gentry (with suppressed Jacobite and non-juring sympathies).

 

The Whig aristocracy made common cause with the industrialists (who were largely non-conformists and hence anathema to the staunchly Anglican Tories).

[Ian Simpson]

Fair point, I definitely over-simplified a bit! 

It was a fascinating period, and the Whigs became considerably less stroppy after the Glorious Revolution.

Well, they did dominate English politics throughout the first half of the 18th century, which probably takes some of the edge of anyone's radicalism.

[Edwardian]

53 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Interesting question. I'm going to say no. If anything, people often see the Tories as slightly to the right of the Whigs, as they tended to support the interests of the aristocracy and landed gentry while the Whigs were supportive of the nouveau riche industrialists. But I wouldn't consider either party to be left wing in any modern sense of the term.

In the early days (late 17th and 18th centuries) the Tories tended to be more pro-monarchist, more tolerant in religious matters such as Catholic emancipation and more supportive of large landowners, while the Whigs tended to be more pro-Parliament, more Protestant / Puritan and more pro-merchant / early capitalist in their economic policies. [Hint: think "Cavalier" versus "Roundhead" here.

 

 

Whigs were associated with the Glorious Revolution, which cemented their power for some time, and the Whig Aristocracy with the new money of 'the City'.   As I type, Stephen has just drawn the same association with William & Mary.

 

Spool to the last quarter of the 18th Century, and it is the Whigs who have the ''Radical'' wing, though Pitt the Younger and Burke were returned (IIRC 1784) on a reform ticket.  Today's Left Wing has been largely successful in airbrushing out of the popular consciousness the tradition within Tory/Conservatism of social and political reform.  Mind you, the current lot are more Blue Rinse than True Blue, IMHO; Cravenly Stupid wing of the party.  

 

53 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

 

  The Tory and Whig factions developed in the years following the Restoration of Charles II.]

 

To be precise, the Exclusion Crisis, the BREXIT of the 1680s. The fault line in the Establishment was between:

 

(i) those we might consider monarchical legitimists.  They tended to think that the most important thing was the preservation of the monarchy via the legitimate line of succession, even if this meant that James Duke of York, who had openly converted to Roman Catholicism, would on the death of Charles II, become a Catholic King (''Tories''); and.

 

(ii) those who thought having a Protestant monarch was more important than the legitimate Stuart succession (''Whigs''). 

 

Rather like BREXIT, this all became rather bad tempered ''Tories'', IIRC were Irish bandits, while I can't quite recall what ''Whigs'' meant, but they were pejorative names one side called the other, taken up as badges of honour.

 

In the short term the Tories won the day, as the Merry Monarch refused to allow his younger brother and heir to be excluded from the succession, but then, when James II succeeded, he displayed none of his father's political acumen in religious matters and muffed it up with various oppressive acts.  He had a right go at some ''Enemies of the People'' as we call Judges these days, plus ça change .....

 

Thus nicely Proddy 'Dutch William' as a joint monarch with Mary Stuart, representing a sop to the Stuart succession in a typically British fudge.

 

53 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Our modern understanding of Left and Right doesn't really fit very well into this period - for example, neither side was particularly interested in greater equality throughout society as a whole, while both were pro-liberty as long as it was reserved for people like themselves. I suppose the Tories tended to be more conservative in their wariness of social change (so more social reactionary / right wing: e.g. Burke), while the Whigs were more open to industralisation and free trade (so more pro-capitalist / right wing).  

 

It was still a property-based society.  Why would you give the vote to the people who didn't own it?  They hadn't property, so they hadn't a stake in society.  They might, therefore, do something really stupid and irresponsible with their vote, to the ruin of us all.  Obviously, nowadays we know better .... but, anyway, extending the franchise simply did not compute.

 

That and the fact that we didn't have a Working Class until Marx invented it; in the Eighteenth Century there was a myriad of 'ranks'; all sorts and conditions of men.  

 

 

53 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Without wanting to trigger a fit of rage in anyone, I'd suggest the Labour Party was created because even at the end of the 19th century neither of the existing parties (Tory/Conservative and Whig/Liberal) were representing the interests of the working class effectively.  

 

Yes, having failed to catch up with the fact that Karl Marx, the original and ultimate bourgeois 'Islington' Champagne Starmerite, had invented the Working Class while they weren't looking.

 

53 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Having said that, here in 1905 Norfolk we are surprisingly Liberal:

 

 

 

53 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

 

 

The 1906 election results map, presumably?  Showing just how Liberal the residents of Castle Aching were about to prove themselves.

 

Anyway, the whole business can be easily and quickly explained thus:

 

 

I tend to think that Private Willis has here, unwittingly, identified the case for proportional representation.

 

33 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

.... the Whigs became considerably less stroppy after the Glorious Revolution.

Well, they did dominate English politics throughout the first half of the 18th century, which probably takes some of the edge of anyone's radicalism.

 

Indeed! Because they're in power and making money!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by Edwardian

[Caley Jim]

4 hours ago, Edwardian said:

It will be a perpetual black mark against the Green Party.  ...........  I don't really understand their position, but I don't associate progressive parties, like the Greens, with populist nationalist parties, like the SNP, so it makes no sense to me. 

Nor to me, but I sense that they see it as a way to gain some traction with the SNP.  Their two 'co-leaders' certainly had a smug self-satisfied look on their faces when the agreement was announced.

 

Jim

[Compound2632]

James II and VII was the brother of Charles II.

 

(I did look for a nodding Homer gif but they all feature the yellow fellow.)

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

James II and VII was the brother of Charles II.

 

(I did look for a nodding Homer gif but they all feature the yellow fellow.)

 

Yes of course.  It was a long time ago.  I'll amend

[Regularity]

Tory: originally intended as an insult, from the old Irish, “tóraidhe”: outlaw, bandit. 
Some things don’t change very much…

[Ian Simpson]

53 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

The 1906 election results map, presumably?  Showing just how Liberal the residents of Castle Aching were about to prove themselves.

Actually, that was the map from the 1900 "Khaki Election.

The national map had rather more yellow after the 1906 Liberal landslide:

 

Except for Ireland, anyway!

Even Suffolk went Liberal ...

 

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

That and the fact that we didn't have a Working Class until Marx invented it

 

We didn't have a working class of the form that Marx identified until the factory system invented it.

 

Before that "the ordinary person" (= the vast majority of the population) was, by-and-large: working in agriculture in a sort of part-dissolved feudal system of ties; a petty-master or an employee in a trade; a servant (of whom there were vast numbers); or, an insecure day-labourer.  Apart from day-labouring, most other ways of earning a living involved a greater tie/relationship/obligation between people than a simple wage transaction, and that could "go either way" for the ordinary person. They might get a decent master, or not; in the case of servants in small households, which is to say the majority of servants, they could become "one of the family", or get treated like a mere chattel (think about how Pepys used his female servants).

 

Come the widespread application of factory-like conditions, and it became a simple wage transaction. All the personal stuff that cloaked the central nature of the relationship in either a warm fog or a bitterly cold one was blown away. It was the factory sytsem that "invented" the working class, not Marx. He merely analysed and codified, and, crucially, highlighted the clashes of interests that were now much more visible.

 

The classic working class never really came fully into being in primarily agricultural areas, because the older forms of relationship persisted to a lesser or greater degree: people still lived in tied cottages, some in villages entirely owned by one landlord, many knew the person who paid their wages, and most were deeply shy of biting the hand that fed them. Even now things are different as between town and country. 

 

Long before Marx was born, and increasingly during his lifetime as the factory system bought un-tied wage-labourers together in large numbers, but before his work was widely-enough read to have great influence, there were instances of organisation in their own interests by "men of no property" (and women of no property, but they don't get much credit for it).

 

Catalysts for organisation among the men of no property were often some combination of: literacy; clergy-free religious gatherings; famine; rampant disease leading to labour shortages; war bringing large bodies of men together; and/or exploitation by The Men of Property that was so punishing that even the meekest knew they were being treted unjustly.

 

I would argue that the British forms of working class consciousness and organisation owed as much or more to non-established religion as they did to Marx, and had roots down long before he arrived to feed and water the plant. How long it would have taken for something Labour-party-like to come into being in the absence of Marx is a moot point, but my gut feeling is that the conditions were ripe for it by the late C19th and that it would have arisen - just read some of the stuff written in England in the 1640s if you doubt the possibility of homegrown socialism, but informed by religious, rather than economic, analysis.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

[Andy Hayter]

I think there was a degree of over simplification in your post Nearholmer

 

 

 

Long before Marx was born, and increasingly during his lifetime as the factory system bought un-tied wage-labourers together in large numbers, ..........

 

Rather ignores those many employers who paid their employees in company tokens rather than hard cash.  Tokens could only be exchanged for goods in the company shops.  Therefore employees remained perhaps more tied than they had been when working the land, where at least they often had the chance to cultivate a few square feet of ground for their own use.  

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Down here in the large antipodean counterweight to the northern hemisphere our politics is rapidly evolving a new two party system.

 

On one side we have people in the "Queuing up to get the COVID Jab Party", while on the other we have the "Strident anti-vaxxer it's all a NWO plot to take away our basic freedom to have our breathing fatally compromised Party".

 

The amount of misinformation about miracle deworming paste cures being spouted by the latter is in direct proportion to the amount of personal research each spouter has published, i.e. "I googled this obscure doctor in Botswana who says "blah blah blah" so the injections are all a blatant attempt to "blah blah blah" by Big Government, Big Pharma and Satan to sabotage our precious bodily fluids etc. etc."

 

So far we are still in lockdown because of a surge in Delta cases in our northern suburbs because the people in these suburbs are refusing to get vaccinated. The rest of us who don't actually buy the stuff about our essential bodily fluids being irreparably damaged seem not to be getting it. So what does this tell us. Well if you believe the antivaxxers it's because we're nothing but mindless sheep. 

 

It's enough to drive one to drink, but it's a little early. So instead I'll just say "BAA BAA" 

[monkeysarefun]

59 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Down here in the large antipodean counterweight to the northern hemisphere our politics is rapidly evolving a new two party system.

 

On one side we have people in the "Queuing up to get the COVID Jab Party", while on the other we have the "Strident anti-vaxxer it's all a NWO plot to take away our basic freedom to have our breathing fatally compromised Party".

 

The amount of misinformation about miracle deworming paste cures being spouted by the latter is in direct proportion to the amount of personal research each spouter has published, i.e. "I googled this obscure doctor in Botswana who says "blah blah blah" so the injections are all a blatant attempt to "blah blah blah" by Big Government, Big Pharma and Satan to sabotage our precious bodily fluids etc. etc."

 

So far we are still in lockdown because of a surge in Delta cases in our northern suburbs because the people in these suburbs are refusing to get vaccinated. The rest of us who don't actually buy the stuff about our essential bodily fluids being irreparably damaged seem not to be getting it. So what does this tell us. Well if you believe the antivaxxers it's because we're nothing but mindless sheep. 

 

It's enough to drive one to drink, but it's a little early. So instead I'll just say "BAA BAA" 

Things ARE  pretty crook.

 

I've had 3 texts so far from Craig Kelly MP, ex furniture salesman and therefore expert on vaccines, epidemiology and climate change.

What a dick. Even includes pics of the Jan 06 US insurgency as an example of people fighting for their freedom.  I'd love to see pics if him  attached to a ventilator but he would have been secretly vaccinated despite his peddling horse worming nonsense to nature's simple folk.

Again, what a dick.

Edited September 12, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Edwardian]

6 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

sabotage our precious bodily fluids

 

Ah yes, that takes me back; Purity of Essence

 

 

It is remarkable how the Idiot Population of the US has so forgotten its one-time paranoia about Communism that it is apparently blind to the real threat posed by authoritarian regimes in Russia and China and is content to dismiss actual attempts of the former to interfere with the democratic process, because it it so obsessed with mythical Deep State conspiracies. It's nice, therefore, to be reminded of some good old American Cold War paranoia.  Makes one quite nostalgic.

 

To some extent one can understand this in the US, conspiracy theories are in their DNA; they justified their rebellion largely on conspiracy theories.  No doubt this was necessary, because the Declaration of Independence would not have read so well if they'd been honest and said ''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men dislike being taxed, even when the tax revenue is spent on their defence, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, such the right to break the law by evading customs duties, and not to be snubbed by the British officer class at parties''  

 

What they actually said was a good deal of fake news b0ll0cks along the lines of The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. [blah, blah] He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people [blah, blah]

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation [blah, blah] He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands [blah, blah] He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages [blah, blah]

 

Classic Conspiracy Theory tosh.

 

Not sure why these idiocies gain such traction elsewhere, however.  

 

 

 

 

[alastairq]

12 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Only from behind, or possibly geographically. Neither were especially left-wing. 

Nothing much has changed, then?

[alastairq]

Goodness me!

 

I turned the page to find posts so deep as to make my monitor display much smaller print!

 

A Whig was a 'horse-thief.'

A Tory was a 'papist outlaw'...

 

According to those who wish ardently to divest themselves of jolly old England?

 

Personally, I have never had a 'career' [ A tory concept? Certainly a middle-england concept?]  . I simply had 'jobs.'

Certainly I 'paid my way.'

Sometimes I deliberately didn't, so to speak.

 

I did the sort of work I personally enjoyed, rather than the sort of work that ensured profits for the greater good. 

 

I have never really been a 'property' owner, in the truest sense...all my apparent property-ownership has really just been another form of tenancy..in other words, I had mortgages, so didn't actually, [when it came down to it] own the property assigned to my care.

Actually now, even though I rent my home from a [private] landlord, I actually 'own' more property than I ever did when I belonged to the mortgage-paying brigade. 

Own, as in, bought-&-paid for.....Rather than the pseudo-ownership that has bedevilled our society for much of the past 80 years. Or more?

 

My last 'job' {IE, my bank account was regularly topped up from some unknown source]....meant I could, {aside from claiming as employment, my actual job description, } claim to be an real Civil Servant. 

In other words, received regular payment from the State [or the Crown, I could never decide which?]!

Since I thoroughly enjoyed my 'work', considering t to be such an easy way of of life, doing stuff I really enjoyed doing, and having the opportunity to actually 'play' with stuff....[I looked forward every day to 'going to work,' rather than dreading the prospect of having to bang my head against the proverbial brick wall, yet again?}...that I frequently and openly voiced the view that I considered my 'employment' to be, at last, one Great Big Tax Refund!

 

In other words, the State [Crown?] was paying back all that I had paid to it, for the previous 30 years.

For what I saw as, very little effort on my part!

 

[Oddly, those set above and around me [and under, as it happens], thought differently, and highly, of my leisurely days drawing money from the State/Crown/ pockets of the  plebbist taxpayers. Although not very much from Amazon?]

But I did indulge in one particular bout of brick-wall-bashing.....getting nowhere,  despite involving the highest levels of State....so that , in the end, I did some sums, and then told 'em all to stuff it, I was off, they could do without my ministrations....and went!  

Happily for my colleagues I left behind, the powers-that-thought-they-were, acceded to my arguments, and promptly granted  everything I had argued for....

 

 I am now in the third stage of life [ #1, Childhood,  #2,Work, #3,Pensionier} , although I have also reverted by to stage one in order to claim back what I think I might have missed?

 

In the end it doesn't really matter who is flouncing around at the top of the tree, if one's quality of life is acceptable to one?

 

I guess I'm half-a-whig at heart?

Edited September 12, 2021 by alastairq

[Nearholmer]

8 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

I think there was a degree of over simplification in your post Nearholmer

 

Best simplify the post further by taking the words ‘un-tied’ out of the sentence; that should cover it.

 

TBH, I only went on at length to prevent myself giving the one word response to Edwardian’s point that first popped into my head, because that word was quite rude.

 

Anyway, I think Edwardian was probably teasing, and I shouldn’t have taken the bait.

[Edwardian]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Anyway, I think Edwardian was probably teasing, and I shouldn’t have taken the bait.

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

This talk of Whigs and Tories reminds why I like the novels of Anthony Trollope - his land owning traditional Whigs are so sympathetically drawn.

 

I suppose that means at heart I'm a Whig. Which when you think about it is odd for an Australian, but totally appropriate because (pardon the pun) I'm as bald as a badger*. 

 

*I do know the etymology of Whig, just in case someone wants to correct me. 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2021 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[CKPR]

On 11/09/2021 at 21:03, Ian Simpson said:

he Labour Party was created because even at the end of the 19th century neither of the existing parties (Tory/Conservative and Whig/Liberal) were representing the interests of the working class effectively.  

Indeed, and it is often forgotten these days that the emerging TUC in the mid-late 19th century considered that the  working class might be better represented by the protectionist Tories  rather than the free-trade middle class Liberals and there was surprisingly little common ground between the unions and the Social Democratic Federation, etc (I'm obviously simplifying things a bit here). As a background to how this played out locally, there's some fascinating local history written by Paul Salveson, a former professional railwayman and now visiting professor at Huddersfield Univ., on the socialist and labour movements in the Calder Valley  in the late 19th century as well as lots of railway history [http://lancashireloominary.co.uk/index.html/?fbclid=IwAR3bGRd_RxfKDQXvXUg1HRXCFif4lDpFJ1MTije9gi6qfh7CYmMLoRLz6mY ]  - interestingly,  the nascent socialist movement was much more akin to the green and civic nationalist politics of today, with a  strong focus on localised self-improvement.

Edited September 12, 2021 by CKPR

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

 

In the end it doesn't really matter who is flouncing around at the top of the tree, if one's quality of life is acceptable to one?

Ah, bread and circuses.

Or in a more modern context, home delivery and reality TV.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

This talk of Whigs and Tories reminds why I like the novels of Anthony Trollope - his land owning traditional Whigs are so sympathetically drawn.

Also explains why I don’t like him!

[drmditch]

I see from Heritage Railway (No.522) that the Great Musgrave bridge infill is being considered for removal.

This was the subject of a Parliamentary Petition (mentioned here, which I duly signed.

 

Does anyone have experience of initiating such a petition?

 

I am concerned/angry/disturbed at the current Home Secretary's instructions to the Border Force seagoing patrol vessels in the English Channel with regard to vessels transporting attempted immigrants.