Pankhurst Water Colour Paintings

Two of Pankhurst’s paintings: In a Glasgow Cotton Mill Minding a Pair of Fine Frames, and In a Glasgow Cotton Spinning Mill Changing the Bobbin. Photograph: Sylvia Pankhurst/Tate

Four watercolours of working women by the suffragette and human rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst have been acquired by Tate using funds from the billionaire Denise Coates.

The paintings show women at work in the cotton mills of Glasgow and the potteries of Staffordshire, and are part of a series that Pankhurst made as she toured industrial working environments in 1907.

They have been acquired directly from the Pankhurst family for an undisclosed sum. Funds have come from the Denise Coates Foundation, a charity set up by the founder and chief executive of the Stoke-on-Trent-based online betting firm Bet365.


Last month Coates was revealed to be the world’s best-paid female executive, with an annual pay packet of £265m.

Fresh Hungary 'slave law' protests in Budapest

Fresh Hungary 'slave law' protests in Budapest
21 December 2018

Thousands of people have joined fresh protests in Hungary against a new so-called "slave law" that nearly doubles how much overtime employees can work.

The protesters marched to the office of President Janos Ader, angry that he signed the legislation.
Prime Minister Victor Orban says it gets rid of "silly rules" so that those who want to earn more can work more.

The new law boosts the overtime employers can demand from 250 to 400 hours a year.
Meanwhile payment for this overtime can be delayed by up to three years.

Trade unions are opposing the reform and have threatened to organise a general strike, AFP reported.
Earlier the leader of the left-wing opposition MSZP party Bertalan Toth called for the protests to continue.

"We will target those that the Fidesz regime caters to with their laws," he said.
Local councils in the city of Szeged and the northern town of Salgotarjan have passed resolutions vowing not to implement the new law.

Some of the protesters are also angry at another law authorising new courts that they say could be politically manipulated.

Mr Orban's Fidesz party has said protests are the work of foreign mercenaries paid by Hungarian-born US billionaire George Soros.

Mr Soros denies this and says the Hungarian authorities are using him as a scapegoat.

Budapest has seen repeated protests over the "slave law"
Friday's march was led by the spoof Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP) party, which was launched more than a decade ago as a joke but has since grown in importance and uses humour to deal with political issues.

"I have come to rejoice over the government's policies," 28-year-old Gergo Gocza told Reuters, holding a sign saying "A Sign".

Another protester held a placard saying: "Happy boss, gloomy Sunday".

Until now Mr Orban's policies have typically enjoyed widespread support, despite repeated condemnation from other EU nations.

In elections earlier this year, Fidesz won a two-thirds majority in parliament, making it relatively easy to enact his policies.

The government says the laws address a serious labour shortage. The country's unemployment rate, at 4.2% in 2017, is one of the lowest in the EU.

Hungary's population has been in decline for years as deaths outpace births, according to the European statistics agency.

Hungary is also experiencing a "brain drain" as well-educated people take advantage of free movement within Europe. The problem is serious enough to have prompted a 2015 programme to encourage young people to return home, offering housing and employment support.

UK Shrewsbury Pickets – Latest News

February 2018 – Campaign launches Judicial Review on behalf of the Shrewsbury pickets
The Shrewsbury 24 Campaign made an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) on behalf of the pickets on 3 April 2012. After sending several additional lengthy submissions to the CCRC over the past 5 years we have now received their Final Statement of Reasons.  We were extremely disappointed to be informed by the CCRC that they had decided not to refer the pickets’ cases to the Court of Appeal.

Our legal team, led by Danny Friedman QC, have considered the CCRC’s reasons and advised us that we have grounds to challenge the CCRC’s decision through a judicial review in the Administrative Court. The pickets and the Campaign have discussed this advice and have decided to proceed with an application for judicial review.

Our legal team, led by Danny Friedman QC, have considered the CCRC’s reasons and advised us that we have grounds to challenge the CCRC’s decision through a judicial review in the Administrative Court. The pickets and the Campaign have discussed this advice and have decided to proceed with an application for judicial review.

We are challenging the CCRC’s decision on three grounds:
Irrationality;
Failure to consider relevant facts/irrelevant factual considerations; and
Error of Law.

The pickets are not eligible for legal aid. We would urge all our affiliated national unions, trade union branches, trades councils, CLPs and individuals to consider contributing to the legal costs. Should we succeed we would expect the court to order the CCRC to pay all the legal costs, which in turn would be reimbursed to those that have donated.  Speakers from the Campaign are available to address meetings about the case.

We have campaigned for almost eleven years to achieve justice for the pickets. During that time we have unearthed large amounts of previously hidden material about the trials and the blatant interference by the state. All of this fresh evidence has been submitted to the CCRC since 2012 yet they still refuse to refer the cases to the Court of Appeal.

https://www.shrewsbury24campaign.org.uk/2018/02/campaign-launches-judicial-review-behalf-shrewsbury-pickets/

Australian School kids strike for climate

Despite a serious message, the events were a sea of colour and placards, many of which poked fun at their adult counterparts.

"I'll stop farting if you stop burning coal," one read.

A student at a Sydney event drew cheers for announcing he was "here because we are all from nature and we should all be taking care of it" before playing a clarinet solo.

The stage was set earlier in the week when out of touch Prime Minister Scott Morrison slammed the intended action, saying Australia needed "more learning in schools and less activism". Morrison is clearly incapable of learning.

But the comments only seem to have emboldened the students, as just a few of their signs show.

Julian Burnside
(@JulianBurnside)
#Scomo reckons kids should stay at school learning, rather than protesting climate change. The fact that they are protesting climate change suggests that they have learned things #Scomo hasn’t (or prefers not to)

02 Jamalo Atai

On November 4, New Caledonians will go to the polls to vote for either continued French governance, or independence.

Many Australians, who might holiday there to taste French culture in the Pacific, are unaware of the continuing struggle for sovereignty of the Kanak people (Indigenous New Caldeonians) since the catastrophe of their colonisation by France in 1853. This struggle has often been told through music.

Our research looks at the role of music in political struggles in Melanesia, particularly in West Papua and New Caledonia. Across Melanesia, music is not only evidence of ancient and living cultures, it is also a celebration of Indigenous resistance, agency and resilience.

Songs of resistance

Just now in the street I saw my children
Advancing, shouting “Freedom!”
The high school was empty, where are the youth?
In the streets the city was in protest

Written in 1985, these opening lines, from pioneer Kanak protest singer Jean-Pierre Swan’s song Liberté, refer to les évènements, “the Events”. These were a bloody civil war in New Caledonia in the 1980s that culminated in the massacre of 19 Kanaks by French commandos in 1988, and the assassination in 1989 of the great Melanesian pacifist independence campaigner, Jean-Marie Tjibaou.

Ewan MacColl – Dirty Old Town

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Growing Support for Refugees

Mance Lipscombe

Massive workers rally has shut down Melbourne's CBD

A massive workers rally has shut down Melbourne's CBD, sending public transport into chaos and blocking roads to thousands of motorists.

Change the Rules rally, a protest calling for better working conditions and a national pay rise, which began at 10.30am at Trades Hall, on the corner of Lygon and Victoria streets, is slowly moving through the city.

Thousands of protesters signed up to march in the rally, which has closed parts of Lygon, Victoria and Swanston streets.

About 150,000 protesters are signed up to march in the rally, which has closed parts of Lygon, Victoria and Swanston streets.

The protesters will walk along Russell and La Trobe Streets before making their way down Swanston Street to Flinders Street Station.

Trams are operating with limited service in the city, with most stopping at the edge of the CBD until the delays clears around 12.30pm.

The city circle tram is impacted as well as trams that operate along Bourke, Swanston, Collins and La Trobe streets.

Maggie Stone starring Thuso Lekwape and Branden Christine – Darlinghurst Theatre Company

Free Pete Seeger 1961

Free Pete Seeger


THlS picture reproduces a signed message, written by famous American people's artist, Pete Seeger folk singer and banjo virtuoso, and just received by Sydney's Western Suburbs branch of the Eureka Youth League.

Pete Seeger, for years denied a passport by the United States Government, was recently sentenced to one year in gaol for his refusal to answer witch-hunting questions before a government committee. At present he is on 20,000 dollars bail.

The EYL branch wrote at the time to advise Pete Seeger it was organising a special function in support of the movement of protest against this repression.

Last Saturday night, at the function in Balmain, about 50 young people heard tapes of Seeger's songs and an outline of his outstanding work for the cause of peace and the working class of the USA.

Signatures were collected to a letter of protest to the US President and to a letter to Pete Seeger.

'Songs of Peace and Love' 21 November 1965

Before Folk Festivals began in Australia, the folksingers did this sort of thing. 21st November 1965 in the Sydney Myer Music Bowl. 'Songs of Peace and Love' sponsored by the Vietnam day Committee. 10,000 people were there. Speakers were Dr Jim Cairns and Rev. David Pope.
Singers were Glenn Tomasetti, Tina Lawton, Mick Counihan, Brian Mooney, Peter Dickie, Mark Gregory, David Lumsden, Gary Shearston (obscured in the photo) Lynne St John and Phil Vinnicombe.

The Almanac Singers – Song For Bridges

The Rebels' Song (1936)

The Rebels' Song (1936)

Dispossessions threaten; mark the ungloved hand.
Politicians waltzing to the financial band.
Justice overridden ; scorned the trusty plough ;
South-West farmers muster ; prove your metal now.

Gather round your, leaders ; let right, not might, control,
For liberty and justice, come, every man enrol,
Vain has been our pleading, deaf the ear of power ;
Promises misleading served up by the hour.

Gather, round your leaders ! Be fed no more on lies,
Suffer not in serfdom; South-West farmers rise !
Air our, noble effort—all we have at stake;
Repossessions threaten; South-West farmers wake !

W. R. BLAKELEY.

This song from the height of the Great Depression illustrates the use of poetry and song in the face of corrupt government and financial institutions in Australia. Today's exposures by the Banking Royal Commission provides the existence of a similar culture, undermining farmers and bank customers alike. 

PM Morrison and his Muppets

Cartoon by Cathy Wilcox

Dock Boggs: Pretty Polly (1966)

The Shoals of Herring – Ewan MacColl

The Carter Family – Wildwood Flower

Roscoe Holcomb: On Top of Old Smoky (1961)

Doc & Merle – An Intimate Documentary

Pete Seeger talks about Woody Guthrie (2006)

Pete Seeger, in a conversation with Tim Robbins for Pacifica Radio, talks about "This Land Is Your Land" and traveling with Woody Guthrie (2006)

Forgotten voices of Lancashire’s poverty-stricken cotton workers

 John Tenniel cartoon from 1862 showing Britannia visiting starving mill workers during the cotton famine

The forgotten voices of Lancashire’s poverty-stricken cotton workers during the US civil war have been heard for the first time in 150 years, after researchers at the University of Exeter unearthed a treasure trove of poetry.

Up to 400,000 of the county’s cotton workers were left unemployed when the war stopped cotton from reaching England’s north-west in the 1860s and the mills were closed. Without work, they struggled to put food on the table, and experts from the University of Exeter have discovered that many of them turned to poetry to describe the impact of the cotton famine.

Written between 1861 and 1865, many of the poems are by the workers most affected by the famine. Around a quarter of the 300 poems discovered so far are written in the Lancashire dialect, with some published in local newspapers or simply sent in letters. All the poems were held in local archives and had never been studied or collected.

Simon Rennie, who is leading the project, said: “A lot of these poems are anonymous, or signed with initials; some of the writers describe themselves as ‘a boatbuilder’, ‘a millworker’, or ‘an operative’ … What we’ve found here is a significantly different view of a period of history that is already well documented – it’s that sense of history from below.

“It shows how strong working-class poetic culture was at the time – if you’re working for 12 hours, you might still have time to write a poem in the evening,” he added.

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 Settlin’ the War: a poem by Williffe Cunliam, printed in a local newspaper in 1868. Photograph: University of Exeter

The poems describe the grinding misery of poverty. In A Song of the Cotton Famine, the anonymous author asks: “Shall I again permitted be / To send my kids to schoo’, / Where they con larn to read and write, / Do sums by figures too?” In A Mother’s Wail, by John Plummer in the voice of a woman mourning her dead daughter, he writes of how: “She was starved to death, I say, / Because of the fierce and cruel strife / ’Mid our kinsmen far away.”

Rennie pointed to one poet in particular: the wool sorter Williffe Cunliam, who wrote six of the poems uncovered to date. “I think he was a very good poet – a great poet,” said Rennie. “We don’t have enough of his work to say he was a literary star, but he was fantastic; we’ve found very high-quality work.” Cunliam – whose real name was William Cunliffe - writes in both dialect and standard English, appealing for help for the poor in one poem – “Ye rich and high, / With lands and mansions fine, / Think of the poor in their cold, bare homes, / Can you let them starve and pine?” – while in others, his tone remains dry and ironic.

Only a few of the poems were written by women. “They tend to be middle-class women writing to garner support for charitable causes,” said Rennie. “There is quite a bit of representation of working-class women [in the poems], but we have yet to find a poem that is verifiably by one of them.”

The researchers expect to find hundreds more poems, as the newspapers of the day would generally have a daily poetry column. Rennie said the sheer range shows “there was a vibrant literary culture among Lancashire cotton workers”.

“These poems have an extraordinary range and emotional intensity. Some are in heavy dialect, some are comic, some have high literary ambition and others are satirical. We see repetition of the same types of characters, phrases and poetic rhythms,” he said. “They reveal a previously unheard commentary on one of the most devastating economic disasters to occur in Victorian Britain.”

Rennie and his team have created a publicly accessible database of the poems, along with 100 recordings of them being read. “We are trying simply to show they can be heard as well as read,” said Rennie’s colleague Ruth Mather. “The Lancashire dialect pieces in particular are fiendishly difficult to recite, and we are aware that pronunciation of many terms may be contentious. But we hope we are bringing alive an important part of Lancashire cultural history that has lain relatively dormant for more than 150 years.”

Lightning Hopkins – Baby Pease Don't Go

Eric Hobsbawm – Epitaph for a Villain: Roy Cohn – 1989

CHAPTER 18

This footnote to the culture of the Cold War USA was published on 28 October 1989. It was written, in New York, for the series Heroes and Villains' published in The Independent Magazine in the early and hopeful years of that paper. 

Few villains start their career as international jokes, but this happened to my choice, in his days as a young witch-hunter.

Well, it was not quite the start. Roy Cohn (1927-86) had already dodged military service, tried to bribe his professor Lionel Trilling, hounded the eminent expert on central Asia, Owen Lattimore, and helped to sentence the Rosenbergs to death as Russian spies, before he and his partner David Schine, two young men in their twenties who sounded like a bad vaudeville act, visited Europe in 1953 to investigate the Communist World Conspiracy for Senator McCarthy.

The parts of the Conspiracy that interested them were the failure of US Information Service libraries abroad to eliminate the works of Dashiell Hammett, and also the insufficient anti-communism of the BBC.

Cohn and Schine provided a wonderful excuse for demonstrating European anti-McCarthyism, not to mention cultural pastern, since his New York Jewish Roosevelt-liberal milieu abhorred intolerance and witch-hunts.

As a lawyer I don't care what the law is, tell me who the judge is he visibly preferred shady clients and mobsters, and not only found it useful but enjoyed suggesting that he could get people killed.
More to the point, because it eventually sank him, he floured not only routine obligations but the unspoken obligations of professionalism.

He bilked not only tradesmen, but the ghostwriter of his books — anyone who could, he thought, do him no harm. He betrayed his clients without hesitation. In the decades when it was child's play for a bright and connected lawyer to make millions legally in the Big Apple, he was a crook because he liked to be.

He had neither convictions nor even ambitions.

The great experiences of his life-time passed him by: the War, civil rights, Vietnam, Israel and the cause of minorities.

He was tempted neither by office nor by the pure thrill of capital accumulation which moved so many of the men with whom he consorted, one-dimensional Fausts to whom he played Mephisto the facilitator.

He owned nothing, collected nothing, looked after nothing.

What did he really want, except getting his own way in all things, avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and enjoying power behind the scenes, the ability to do favours and to carry out threats, recognized by those who counted and in the media by which he always lived?

It is too late to know.

Apart from a few unrequited personal favours to friends and lovers, and an ability to entertain, he did good to none and brought ruin to many—not only to McCarthy's victims but, by his irresponsibility, to the senator himself. He died as he had lived, jumping the queue over other Aids victims.

The best that can be said of him is that, born in any other country, he would not have become what he did. In no other country would he have received a presidential telegram in hospital ('Nancy and I are keeping you in our thoughts and prayers'). But when he died, even Reagan's White House kept shtum.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Addendum  – Roy Cohn represents Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch

In 1971, businessman Donald Trump moved to Manhattan, where he became involved in large construction projects.

In 1973 the Justice Department accused him of violating the Fair Housing Act in his operation of 39 buildings.

The government alleged that Trump's corporation quoted different rental terms and conditions and made false "no vacancy" statements to African Americans for apartments they managed in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

Representing Trump, Cohn unsucessfully filed a countersuit against the government for $100 million, asserting that the charges were irresponsible and baseless.

Cohn also counted Rupert Murdoch among his clients, pressuring President Ronald Reagan repeatedly in furtherance of Murdoch's interests. 

Cohn is credited with introducing Trump and Murdoch in the mid-1970s, marking the beginning of what was to be a deep and pivotal association between them.

Patrick Dispute 1998 – "Solidarity Forever"

A timely call from John McDonnell for ‘a new Anti-Nazi League’

British Labour MP John McDonnell's clarion call for a new wave of nationwide opposition to racism and the rising tide of far-right violence is timely.


Mainstream media and Labour’s opponents have embarked on a feeding frenzy with no sign of slackening over anti-semitism claims personalised on leader Jeremy Corbyn.

All complaints must be examined, of course, but it is clear that, for some, no reply by Corbyn will ever suffice.

While he and his party bear the brunt of this campaign, with its twin goals of forcing Labour to accept a definition of anti-semitism that would diminish criticism of Israel and undermine Corbyn to make him susceptible to replacement, the far right is having a field day.

Why did a group of fascist thugs feel confident of their ability to ransack the Bookmarks bookshop round the corner from the Trades Union Congress headquarters and to video and upload their violent escapade?

Why has Boris Johnson returned to the gutter to make offensive comments about Muslim women who wear clothing they regard as appropriate to their religious views?

Former Tory Party national co-chair Sayeeda Warsi suspects that Johnson believes his Islamophobia will be a vote-winner among the Tory faithful when he bids to replace Theresa May in due course.

While current chair Brandon Lewis has asked Johnson to apologise for his insults, the Prime Minister’s silence has been deafening.

Opposition to anti-semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism cannot be left to the Westminster village.

The Anti-Nazi League example that McDonnell cites became a mass movement when the organised labour movement threw its weight behind the group, along with cultural, religious and black and ethnic minority forces.

Working openly and honestly with different forces is the best way to isolate and minimise the noxious influence of those who wish to divide us.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Teach Your Children

The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne.

The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany’s oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying.

“It took us some time to match up the parallels – we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls,” said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. “They are very particular to libraries – you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus.”

It is not clear how many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been “quite huge – maybe 20,000”, said Schmitz. The building would have been slightly smaller than the famed library at Ephesus, which was built in 117 AD. He described the discovery as “really incredible – a spectacular find”.

“It dates from the middle of the second century and is at a minimum the earliest library in Germany, and perhaps in the north-west Roman provinces,” he said. “Perhaps there are a lot of Roman towns that have libraries, but they haven’t been excavated. If we had just found the foundations, we wouldn’t have known it was a library. It was because it had walls, with the niches, that we could tell.”

The building would have been used as a public library, Schmitz said. “It is in the middle of Cologne, in the marketplace, or forum: the public space in the city centre. It is built of very strong materials, and such buildings, because they are so huge, were public,” he said.

The walls will be preserved, with the three niches to be viewable by the public in the cellar of the Protestant church community centre, which is currently being built.

Rudolstadt Symposium – Labour Songs Across The Globe

LABOUR SONGS ACROSS THE GLOBE

The conference will take a comparative look at the culture of political songs, including its various manifestations in different regions of the world. Academics, music journalists and musicians will debate aspects such as the historical and cultural circumstances in which music becomes political, the types of music involved, the people who make it, and the contexts in which this music becomes influential, e.g. by generating group identities.

Devised by Prof. Martin Butler from Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
With Srđan Atanasovski (Serbia), Stefan Bohman (Sweden), Mark Gregory (Australia), Frank D. Gunderson (USA), Clark D. ‘Bucky’ Halker (USA, see photo), Michael Kleff (Germany), Richard MacKinnon (Canada), Hazel Marsh (UK)

Martin Butler and Michael Kleff will deliver their papers in German, the other speakers in English. Simultaneous interpretation into English and German available.
Library/Bibliothek –– Friday 6 July, 9.00am, all day

Lesbia Venner Harford – 1891-1927

Poet, songwriter, IWW member, seamstress, Lesbian Harford

The Australian Dictionary of Biography provides the following details:


Lesbia Venner Harford (1891-1927), poet, was born on 9 April 1891 at Brighton, Melbourne, daughter of Edmund Joseph Keogh, a well-to-do financial agent, and his wife Helen Beatrice, née Moore, both born in Victoria. Her mother was related to the earl of Drogheda. About 1900 the Keoghs fell on hard times and in an effort to retrieve the family fortunes Edmund went to Western Australia, where he eventually took up farming.

Lesbia was born with a congenital heart defect which restricted her activity throughout her life. Nettie Palmer remembered her at a children's party as 'a dark-eyed little girl who sat quite still, looking on'. She was educated at Clifton, the Brigidine convent at Glen Iris, and Mary's Mount, the Loreto convent at Ballarat, but she rebelled against the family's staunch Catholicism: in 1915 she conducted services for Frederick Sinclaire's Fellowship group.

In 1912 she enrolled in law at the University of Melbourne, paying her way by coaching or taking art classes in schools. She graduated LL.B. in December 1916 in the same class as (Sir) Robert Menzies. During her undergraduate years she had become embroiled in the anti-war and anti-conscription agitation, forming a close friendship with Guido Baracchi (son of Pietro Baracchi) who claimed later that 'she above all' helped him to find his way 'right into the revolutionary working class movement'.

On graduation she chose what she considered to be a life of greater social purpose and went to work in a clothing factory. Much of her poetry belongs to this phase of her life and she shows a growing solidarity with her fellow workers and an antagonism towards those whom she saw as exploiters. She became involved in union politics and like her brother Esmond (later a Melbourne medical scientist) joined the Industrial Workers of the World.

She went to Sydney where she lived with I.W.W. friends and worked, when strong enough, in a clothing factory or as a university coach. On 23 November 1920 in Sydney she married the artist Patrick John O'Flaghartie Fingal Harford, a fellow I.W.W. member and clicker in his father's boot factory: they moved to Melbourne where he worked with William Frater in Brooks Robinson & Co. Ltd and was a founder of the Post-Impressionist movement in Melbourne.

For many years Lesbia had suffered from tuberculosis. She tried to complete her legal qualifications but died in hospital on 5 July 1927. She was buried in Boroondara cemetery.

Lesbia transcribed her poems into notebooks in beautiful script; she sang many of her lyrics to tunes of her own composing. Some she showed to friends or enclosed in letters.

She was first published in the May 1921 issue of Birth, the journal of the Melbourne Literary Club, and then in its 1921 annual. She provoked much interest at the time and Percival Serle included some of her poems in An Australasian Anthology (Sydney, 1927). In her review of the anthology, Nettie Palmer singled out Lesbia's poetry for special praise, and in September and October 1927 published four of her poems in tribute to her.

Lesbia mistrusted publishers, explaining that she was 'in no hurry to be read'. In 1941 a collection edited by Nettie Palmer was published with Commonwealth Literary Fund assistance. No complete collection exists. On her death her father took custody of her notebooks and they were lost when his shack was destroyed by fire.

Strength in Battle – Edited by Hugh Anderson

See Australian Scholarly Publishing – http://www.scholarly.info/book/612/

Strength in Battle: The Memoirs of Joseph Anderson Panton Goldfields' Commissioner and Magistrate
Edited by Hugh Anderson

The Victorian gold rushes attracted punctilious worthies and sharp operators, but rarely were these characters fused as in the personality of Joseph Anderson Panton, high-minded pillar of society as well as scourge of poor miners and political foes. Panton’s previously unpublished memoirs trace vividly his strange career as itinerant dignitary, severe commissioner and magistrate, vigneron, pastoralist and painter, revealing new and surprising aspects of colonial social life.

‘Hugh Anderson’s meticulous edition of J.A. Panton’s memoirs affords a unique and unforgettable glimpse of Australia in the colonial era. Strength in Battle tells the story of Panton’s journey from Scottish lad and military student to respected young commissioner on the turbulent Bendigo goldfields, his adventures in desolate Mallee country, and a maritime journey to the remote north-west of the continent. This is an endlessly rich, frequently colourful and invariably lively tale, peopled by thrusting settlers chasing independence in a new land, Indigenous people seeking a place in an old one taken from them, and Chinese miners living in a white man’s country where few welcomed their presence. The book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about life on the Victorian goldfields, the foibles of the era’s prominent personalities such as Lola Montez and Governor Hotham, and the remarkable society that gold left in its wake.’

Frank Bongiorno FRHistS FASSA, Professor of History, Australian National University

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hugh Anderson Checklist of Publications 

Duke of the Outback The Adventures of a shearer named Tritton by John Meredith
Melbourne, Red Rooster Press, 1983, vii, 132 pages.
Contents: 13 songs by Tritton;
21 songs performed by Tritton;
12 songs told by Tritton; Envoi,
He was a friend of mine and Duke's Song by Gary Shearston
Studies in Australian Folklore No.5

THE PEOPLE STAND UP: A story of Australia and the world in the 1930s by Ralph Gibson.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1983 viii, 415 pages.
Foreword by J.D. Blake.

THE CHINESE IN VICTORIA Official Reports & Documents by Ian F.McLaren.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1985 x iii, 114 pages. Part 1.
Victorian Parliamentary Papers Relating to the Chinese, 1855-1900,
Part 2. Victorian Acts Relating to the Chinese, 1855-1900.

MARCH TO BIG GOLD MOUNTAIN by David Horsfall.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1985 viii, 183 pages.
16 Illustrations.

HEADPHONES Verses by Warwick Anderson.
Images by Polixeni Papapetrou. Melbourne, Red Rooster Press, 1986 50 pages.
Published with assistance of the Ministry for the Arts of the Victorian Government.

THE FIGHT GOES ON,
A picture ofAustralia and the world in two post-war decades by Ralph Gibson.
Melbourne, Red Rooster Press, 1987 [vi], 272 pages. Foreword by June M. Hearn.

OCCASIONS FOR COMMENT,
poems by Jean Stone.
Ascot Vale, Red Rooster Press, 1992 x, 52 pages.
Frontis Piece Jean Stone.

SOUND RECORDINGS
AUSTRALIAN COLONIAL BALLADS, VOLUME 1 Sound & Film Enterprises CRT-12-LP-012, 19--
Programme notes by Hugh Anderson
The Catalpa Singers (Maryjean Officer, Ian Logan, Hans Georg, Shirley Jacobs, Alan Pope)
Songs are--
Click go the shears
Black velvet band Old bark hut
Bold Jack Donahoe
Eumerella shore
Bound for South Australia
Wild colonial boy
Overlander Look out below!
Death of Ben Hall
With my swag on my shoulder
Botany Bay

AUSTRALIAN GOLDRUSH SONGS
Wattle Recordings, 1960
Notes by Ron Edwards
The Fossickers (Ron Edwards, Bill Dempsey, Jim Mills)
Songs are--
Green new chum
German girls
For all that
Look out below!
Cooey!
The cabbage tree hat
Shepherding
Laying Information
Coming down the flat
Bryant's Ranges O
I'm a trap
Weston and his clerk
A squatter's troubles
Coming down the flat
Where's your licence
Jolly Puddlers

GOLDFIELD SONGS by Charles thatcher.
Collected selected introduced by Hugh Anderson.
Studies in Australian Folklore No.9. Hotham Hill. Red Rooster Press.
revised edition. 83 pages. 42 songs with music.
Adds "Bryant's Ranges Otis "Scrumptious Young Gals" and "Song of the Trap", and omits
"The Ballarat Man" but ( wrongly) retains "Blatherskyte".

BLACK BULL CHAPBOOKS
THE DYING STOCKMAN a ballad with notes by Hugh Anderson & Lino Cuts by Ronald G.Edwards.
Black Bull Chapbooks No.1 Hand set in Baskerville on Tudor Antique paper by R. G.Edwards.
Bound in calfskin. 75 copies.
Ferntree Gully, Rams Skull Press, February 1954. [15 pages]

TWO SONGS OF '57 with notes by Hugh Anderson.
Lino cuts by Ronald G.Edwards. Black Bull Chapbooks No.2.
Hand set and printed on cream wove Goatskin Parchment by R. G. Edwards at the sign of the Rams
Skull Press, Lording Street, Lower Ferntree Gully, Victoria, March 1954.

MISCELLANEOUS
Periodicals Contributions to periodicals includes: Present Opinion, MUM, Farrago; Southerly, Meanjin, Overland, Bulletin (Sydney), Austrovert, Biblionews Australian Folklore, Folklife (UK), Folk Music Journal (UK); Australia-China Review, Victorian Historical Journal, Labour History, Recorder, Journal ofAustralian Colonial History.

Australian dictionary of biography entries by Hugh Anderson.

vol.1 W.J.T.Clark; J.P.Fawkner.
vol.6 C.Thatcher.
vol.7 T.R.G., and H.N.Beggs; J.M.Christie.
vol.10 D.Macdonald; J. S.Neilson.
vol.11 M.J.Pitt.
vol.12 A.V.Vennard (Bill Bowyang);
vol.14 Ted Harrington
vol.15 Simon McDonald.
vol 17. ‘Edward Ted’ Hill.

In Frankfurt – Inside Goethe House

Dylan press conference, 1986, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney

Brendon Stretch 2013 - filmstretch video production Sydney.

Thought I'd post this previously unseen recording of a Dylan press conference from 1986. I shot it in Brett Whiteley's studio and it's sat on the shelf since then. I found the old tape and thought I'd share it to celebrate the 24th May. Happy Birthday Bob Dylan and thanks for everything you've shared with us over the years. 

Norman Bethune in Spain – Mobile Blood Transfusion Unit

In July 1936, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War gave Bethune the opportunity to fight for the communist cause and against fascism. This was a conflict between the Republicans Loyalists duly elected by the Spanish population and the fascists led by Franco, and supported by Hitler, Mussolini and, many say, the Spanish Catholic Church. Bethune viewed the conflict as a matter of ‘Republican good versus Fascist evil’.

With some prominent Canadian antifascists, he helped form the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy and, in late October 1936, sailed from Quebec City to Spain. Once in Madrid, he quickly realized that the Republican forces needed a blood transfusion service and a blood bank, a concept that he had likely learned from Archibald, who had himself used blood transfusions during World War I.

When the Spanish authorities received his ideas with great enthusiasm, he left for France and England to buy equipment and learn the latest techniques in blood typing, storage and transfusions. On his return to Spain, he designed a mobile transfusion vehicle that incorporated a refrigerator, a sterilizing unit and an incubator. The unit, called Servicio Canadiense de Transfusion de Sangre Al Fiente also contained equipment and containers for drawing and giving blood transfusions on the battlefield. 

Norman Bethune Operating in China

While researching tuberculosis and its treatment, he came across the writings of the famous American thoracic surgeon, John Alexander from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and instantly put his hopes for cure on a form of collapse therapy called ‘artificially induced pneumothorax’, a technique that had first been described at the end of the 19th century by an Italian physician, Carlo Forlanini.

Initially, the physicians at the sanatorium were reluctant to perform a procedure that they considered to be risky and advocated bed rest (the preferred therapy). After much discussion, however, one of the physicians, Dr Earle Warren, agreed to induce a therapeutic pneumothorax on Bethune’s left lung. Unfortunately, Dr Warren accidentally punctured the lung, creating a tension pneumothorax, which had to be drained on an urgent basis. 

Despite this complication, Bethune made a complete recovery and, within two months, his sputum had turned negative and he was discharged from the sanatorium in December 1927. For several years thereafter, Bethune continued to have ‘pneumothorax refills’ and even had a left phrenicectomy performed by John Alexander himself. His tuberculosis apparently never recurred despite the extreme conditions of deprivation of food and rest on the battlefields of China.

Bethune always felt that if poverty could be eliminated, tuberculosis would disappear. On joining l’hôpital du Sacré-Coeur, he freely provided his services to the poor and established a free-of-charge clinic, which was held on Saturday mornings in the Montreal suburb of Verdun. 

He was way ahead of his time in using radio broadcasts for public education on tuberculosis. In a paper published in 1932 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Bethune quoted a remark made by Edward Livingston Trudeau, the sanatorium founder:

There is a rich man’s tuberculosis and a poor man’s tuberculosis. The rich man recovers and the poor man dies.

Bethune added:

We, as a people, can get rid of tuberculosis, when once we make up our minds it is worthwhile to spend enough money to do so. Better education of doctors, public education to the point of phthisiophobia, enforced periodic physical and X-ray examinations, early diagnosis, early bed-rest, early compression, isolation and protection of the young are our remedies.