In order to delay an increase in fuel duty the Conservative^∗ government is planning instead to cut social security benefits. Therefore the poorest in society — the unemployed, the low paid workers, the sick, etc. — will subsidize middle class car drivers and their families whilst falling further and further into dangerous poverty.

David Cameron and his kind will kick a man while he's down and then keep on kicking.

^∗ Actually, it's a coalition government, but doesn't really feel like one.

Will their coalition 'partners', the Liberal Democrats, be able to do anything about that? http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/18/liberal-democrats-benefits-fuel-duty

Britain now is more and more like Britain in the 1980s. The tory government up to their usual bullshit. Privatisation of any last remaining thing, pressing the least well off further into poverty. Last night listening to BBC Radio 5, (Pienaar's Politics), a "venture capitalist" said that to beat the recession it needs to be easier to 'hire and fire' employees. Not even challenged. Same old, same old.

Hands Off Our Forest : A Call To Arms

The government is getting ready for a huge sell-off of our national forests to private firms. This could mean ancient woodlands are chopped down and destroyed. Walkers and endangered animals, like red squirrels and owls, would have to make way for Center Parcs-style holiday villages, golf courses, and logging companies.

We need to stop these plans. Ancient forests like the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest are national treasures — once they’re gone, they are lost forever. A huge petition will force the government to rethink. If we can prove how strongly thousands of us are against this, we can make them back down.

Help build the pressure before it’s too late. Add your name to the “save our forests” petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/save-our-forests

The Forester newspaper, in association with The Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review, is launching a petition to send a message to Government ministers wanting to sell our woodlands to private concerns: Hands Off Our Forest.

Sign the petition here: http://www.theforester.co.uk/saveourforest.cfm

References:
http://www.forest-and-wye-today.co.uk/news.cfm?id=38375
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/8082756/Ministers-plan-huge-sell-off-of-Britains-forests.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-plans-huge-selloff-of-britains-forests-2115631.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/24/forests-government-heritage-private-developers

Warren James: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_james

Malcolm Chase – The People's Farm, English Radical Agrarianism 1775-1840 Breviary Stuff Publications, ISBN 978-0-9564827-5-4

Now published by Breviary Stuff Publications is The People's Farm by Malcolm Chase. It traces the development of agrarian ideas from the 1770s through to Chartism, and explains why, in an era of industrialization and urban growth, land remained one of the major issues in popular politics. This book considers relationship between ‘land consciousness’ and early socialism; attempts to create alternative communities; and contemporary perceptions of nature and the environment. Far from being an anachronistic, utopian, and reactionary movement, agrarianism was an integral part of the working class experience and of radical politics. This book also provides the most extensive study to date of Thomas Spence, and his followers the Spenceans.

Thomas Spence was one of the leading English revolutionaries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the centre of Spence's work was his Plan, known as Spence's Plan. The Plan has a number of features, including:

• The end of aristocracy and landlords
• All land should be publicly owned by 'democratic parishes', which should be largely self-governing
• Rents of land in parishes to be shared equally amongst parishioners
• Universal suffrage (including female suffrage) at both parish level and through a system of deputies elected by parishes to a national senate
• A 'social guarantee' extended to provide income for those unable to work
• The 'rights of infants' to be free from abuse and poverty

Also back in print in a new, extended edition is the pamplet from The Thomas Spence Society, The Hive of Liberty, The Life & Work of Thomas Spence (1750-1814). Edited by Keith Armstrong, with an introduction by Professor Joan Beal and a new essay by Malcolm Chase. It is available directly from The Thomas Spence Society.

John E. Archer – 'By a Flash and a Scare', Arson, Animal Maiming, and Poaching in East Anglia 1815-1870 Breviary Stuff Publications, ISBN 978-0-9564827-1-6

‘By a Flash and a Scare’ illuminates the darker side of rural life in the nineteenth century. Flashpoints such as the Swing riots, Tolpuddle, and the New Poor Law riots have long attracted the attention of historians, but here John E. Archer focuses on the persistent war waged in the countryside during the 1800s, analysing the prevailing climate of unrest, discontent, and desperation.

In this detailed and scholarly study, based on intensive research among the local records of Norfolk and Suffolk, Dr Archer identifies and examines the three most serious crimes of protest in the countryside — arson, animal maiming and poaching. He shows how rural society in East Anglia was shaped by terror and oppression in equal measure. Social crime and covert protest were an integral part of the ordinary life of the rural poor. They did not protest infrequently, they protested all the time. Read more…

Roger Ball – Tolpuddle And Swing, The Flea And The Elephant
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #12

In 1834, six Dorset farm labourers were tried and condemned to transportation to Australia for joining an early Trade Union. Since then the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' have become an iconic part of modern British History. Three years before the events in Tolpuddle, much of rural England was rocked with a massive uprising of farm labourers known as the 'Swing Riots'. This pamphlet analyses why 'Tolpuddle' has taken its place in the popular memory and the far more significant events of 'Swing' have been distorted and forgotten. Read more…

Andrea Button – Bristol's White Slave Trade, Indentured and Enforced Labour In The 17th Century
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #13

Bristol’s role as a supplier of labour to the American and West Indian colonies in the eighteenth century is associated with the African Slave Trade however, this trade was not officially open to the Bristol merchants until 1698. The indentured white servant system, operated in Bristol during the seventeenth century, were used by merchants to meet demand for labour in Britain’s new colonies until the Bristol merchants were legally able to compete in the lucrative transatlantic trade. This pamphlet reveals the extent of this ‘white slavery’ and its links to Bristol. Read more…

No Quarter 5

Includes A Somali Pirate Story by Jordan Zinovich (with Hans Plomp), an interview with Gabriel Kuhn, author of Life Under the Jolly Roger, Reflections on the Golden Age of Piracy, Anarchist Commune at Nootka in 1911? by Larry Gambourne, A Couple More Things About New Hazelton by David Tighe, John Oswald: Atheist, Vegetarian, Revolutionary by N. N., Somali Pirates by Peter Lamborn Wilson, book reviews, and a reading list, all interspersed by some nice black and white imagery. Read more…

K.D.M. Snell – Annals of the Labouring Poor, Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900 [Cambridge University Press 1987] buy new or used at abebooks.co.uk | buy new at amazon.co.uk If you use either of these links to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission This collection of inter-connected essays is concerned with the impact of social and economic change upon the rural labouring poor and artisans in England, and combines a sensitive understanding of their social priorities with innovative quantitative analysis. It is based on an impressive range of sources, and its particular significance arises from the pioneering use made of a largely neglected archival source – settlement records – to address questions of central importance in English social and economic history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Levels of employment, wage rates, poor relief, the sexual division of labour, the social consequences of enclosure, the decline of farm service and traditional apprenticeship, and th equality of family life are amongst the issues discussed in a profound re-assessment of a perennial problem: the standard of living (in its widest sense) of the labouring poor during the period of industrialisation. The author’s conclusions challenge much of the prevailing orthodoxy, and his extensive use of literary and attitudinal material is closely integrated with the quantitative restatement of an interpretation that owes much to the older tradition of the Hammonds’ Village Labourer. Contents Preface Introduction 1. Agricultural seasonal unemployment, the standard of living, and women's work, 1690–1860 2. Social relations – the decline of service 3. Social relations – the poor law 4. Enclosure and employment – the social consequences of enclosure 5. The decline of apprenticeship 6. The apprenticeship of women 7. The family 8. Thomas Hardy, rural Dorset, and the family Appendix: yearly wages Bibliography Index

David J. V. Jones – The Last Rising, The Newport Chartist Insurrection of 1839 [University of Wales Press 1999] buy used at abebooks.co.uk If you use this link to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission On the night of 3-4 November 1839 seven thousand miners from the coalfields of south Wales set out to march on Newport. They were an organized force, armed, angry, and intent on inaugurating a brave new Chartist world. The rising proved to be the most serious clash between people and government in modern industrial Britain: in the major confrontation between Chartists and troops in Newport more than twenty miners were shot dead, and subsequently more than 250 people were arraigned in the last mass treason trial in British history. The study tells the full story of the rising, its origins and its aftermath, and analyses the profound impact of armed insurrection on the social and political climate of the period. When the people of the coalfield took up the banner of Chartism, that movement became a political crusade. The author reveals that several revolutionary schemes were considered in the valleys, and establishes links with militants in other parts of Britain. He considers the response of the government and propertied classes – from the Special Commission that condemned three of the leaders to death, to the new interest in paternalism and the political concessions that were designed to prevent its recurrence. He concludes that contemporaries were right to regard the rising as one of the most important turning points in Welsh and British social history. Contents Maps Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction 1. A unique society 2. A world of politics 3. The tide of revolution 4. The march 5. The rising 6. Punishment Conclusion Sources Notes Index

The first title from Breviary Stuff Publications is now in print. It is Buchanan Sharp's scholarly study, In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660. On its first publication, (University of California Press, 1980), Christopher Hill remarked, "I have rarely recommended a book with more confidence in its quality. It is quite first class."

It concerns two of the most common types of popular disorders in late Tudor and early Stuart England: the food riots and the anti-enclosure riots in royal forests. Particular attention is paid to the Western Rising of 1626-1632, a series of massive anti-enclosure riots which took place in Gillingham Forest on the Wiltshire-Dorset border, Braydon Forest in Wiltshire and the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. Concurrent riots in Leicester Forest, and Feckenham Forest, Worcestershire, and lesser known disorders in the Western forests which took place during the English Civil War are also investigated.

The leaders and most active participants in riot were rural artisans — skilled men working in non-agricultural employments. These artisans, particularly those in the major industries of seventeenth-century England located in the forested West, were largely wage-earners. Virtually landless cottagers, who relied on the market for food, clothworkers and other artisans frequently engaged in food riots and attempted insurrections during times of depression or harvest failure. These artisans exploited the common waste of the royal forests. Enclosure of the forests by the Crown threatened the livelihood of the workers who depended on the forests for raw material and pasturage.

The most striking demonstration of continuity is to be found in the identities of a number of the rioters and in the nature of the leadership. Twelve of the participants in the riots of 1643-45 had been fined in the Star Chamber for their part in the disorders of the 1620s; eight were artisans, one was a mercer, two were husbandmen, and one was of undetermined status. Four of them were noted as notorious offenders in the 1640s, including a fuller who acted as drummer and John Philips, tanner, who took over leadership of the riots in 1644 from Richard Butler, a poor linenweaver. It is clear from the examinations of witnesses that Butler had been the leader of the riots in 1643 until he was apprehended and brought before the Lords. His opinions, as reported by a number of witnesses, show considerable contempt for Parliament and for Elgin's agent, Thomas Brunker. At the beginnning of the disorders in 1643 he went into a shop to buy gunpowder. When told it cost 1s. 6d. per pound, "hee sayd his monie would not hold out to have soe much, but desired her to lett him have 2 pennyworth and sayd it would be enough to serve Tome Brunker and for his proclamation I care not a fart of mine arse."

Extract from Ch. 9., A Second Western Rising: Riot during the Civil War and Interregnum

Buchanan Sharp's conclusions challenge the dominant modern view that work in rural industry was merely the by-employment of members of peasant households. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation that disaffected men of standing were generally behind disorders such as the Western Rising, manipulating popular grievances for their own ends, In Contempt of All Authority concludes that in times of economic and social distress or political dislocation (such as the Civil War) the “lower orders” of Tudor and Stuart England were provoked into self-organised direct action by very basic issues of food supply, employment, and common rights. In the course of such actions they manifested an intense hatred of the gentry and the well-to-do, whom they held responsible for existing conditions.

The Breviary Stuff Publications offering is the first paperback edition, in an oversized format (191x235mm, 204pp), with a RRP of £12.00. It is available from all good bookshops, online retailers, such as Amazon, and directly from the Breviary Stuff Publications website, www.breviarystuff.org.uk.

Andrew Charlesworth, David Gilbert, Adrian Randall, Humphrey Southall, and Chris Wrigley – An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain 1750-1990 [Macmillan Press 1996] buy used at abebooks.co.uk If you use this link to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission Five established experts in the fields of industrial protest and industrial relations have set out to survey the historical geography of industrial protest from the 1750s to the present day. What is revealed, in the numerous maps and accompanying text, is a history of change struck through with more continuity than one might expect. The role of communities as the bases for mobilisation for collective action over working conditions and wages runs from the textile workers' disputes in the West Country in the 1750s to the 1984/5 miners' strike. In industrial protest and strikes, geography matters. Through the book one sees the development of trade unionism, from its regional bases to the development of national organisations. In that growth waht is apparent is the tension between the national organisation and the locality. There is new work presented here for the first time: the sailors' strike og 1768, the machine-breaking riots of 1826, the dock strikes in the immediate post-war period. The book gives a rare insight into industrial relations through the direct collective action of workers, caught up in the transformation of the world's first industrial nation Contents Preface Introduction Section A: 1750-1850 by Adrian Randall and Andrew Charlesworth Industrial protest: 1750-1850 1. Strikes and popular protest in Gloucestershire, 1756-66 2. The London sailors' strike of 1768 by Richard Sheldon 3. Protests over cotton machinery in Lancashire, 1768-79 4. Protests against machinery in the west of England wollen industry, 1776-1802 5. The Luddite Disturbances, 1811-12 5.1 Luddism in the Midlands 5.2 Luddism in Yorkshire 5.3 Lancashire Luddism 6. The disturbances of 1826 in the manufacturing districts of the north of England by David Walsh 7. The General Strike of 1842 Section B: 1850-1900 by Humphrey Southall Industrial protest: 1850-1900 8. The records of industrial protest 9. Lock-outs and national bargaining in the engineering industry, 1852 and 1897-8 10. The nine-hours movement of 1871 11. The revolt of the field, 1872-4 12. The strike at Bryant and May's match factory, East London, July 1888 by Gillian Rose 13. Organising the unskilled: the 1889 dock strike 14. The early May days: 1890, 1891 and 1892 by Chris Wrigley 15. The coal lock-out of 1893 by Chris Wrigley Section C: 1900-39 by David Gilbert Industrial protest: 1900-39 16. The geography of stikes, 1900-39 17. The General Strike of 1926 18. The miners' lock-out of 1926 19. Little Moscows and radical localities 20. The national hunger marches, 1921-36 21. The Jarrow Crusade of 1936 22. The Harworth dispute of 1936-7 Section D: 1940-90 by Chris Wrigley Industrial protest: 1940-90 23. The geography of strikes, 1940-90 by David Gilbert 24. Coal disputes, 1940-45 25. Unofficial dock strikes and the 1945-51 Labour governments by Jim Phillips 26. Strikes in the motor car manufacturing industry 27. The winter of discontent: the lorry drivers' strike, January 1979 28. The 1984-5 miners' strike