Brenda Procter - A Fighter For Her Class

I was saddened to learn yesterday of the death of my old friend and comrade Brenda Procter, who for more than thirty years had been a prominent member of the Miners' Wives Group, and a series of other mining communities related activities.  She was a real working-class fighter for her class.  I first met Bren in 1981, long before the 1984 strike.  I met Bren as a result of my contact with her next door neighbour Paul Barnett, who later joined the Stoke Socialist organiser group, for a short time.

The Stoke Socialist Organiser group arose in 1979, as a result of the creation of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory.  The SCLV was the project of Workers Action, of which I had been a member since 1974.  It also drew in supporters of Socialist Charter, and won the affiliation of a number of CLP's, branches and PPC's across the country, including one Jeremy Corbyn.  There was one Socialist Charter member in Stoke, at the time, Jim Barrow, a journalist who like me had gone to University after having worked for several years beforehand.  Both of us continued to maintain close contact with the world of work, and with the trades union movement, we had spent much of our time in over the previous years.

In the early days of the Stoke Socialist Organiser group it had rapid success starting off with around 15 members.  But, apart from myself, Jim, and Neil Dawson, all the other members were students, and as Trotsky pointed out, in relation to students, they can be more trouble than they are worth, unless they are part of a large proletarian organisation that can keep them under control.  Their essentially petit-bourgeois, dilettantist approach means that they tend to flit in and out of political activity, and sure enough within about three weeks, 90% of the students flounced out of the group.

I paint this picture, not just to give an impression of the times, but also to make the contrast between this studentist politics and the working-class politics of Bren.  Over the next year, another couple of students came into the group, whilst Jim Barrow also left, as Socialist Charter nationally engaged in work on London Labour Briefing.  The only workers left in the local group were then myself and Neil Dawson.  In the meantime, the group suffered an infiltration by a member of the Sparts, which led to Martin Thomas coming up from London to carry out his expulsion.

Again indicative of this dilletantism, it was after this event that two of the student members told me that they had known that the person concerned was a Spart, because he sold copies of their paper around the Poly, sometimes to them, after Socialist organiser meetings, and after I had left.  Yet neither of these students thought it fitting to have provided this information beforehand!  Over this period, I found myself increasingly frustrated at this kind of behaviour, which left me spending endless amounts of time driving from one end of the city to another for meetings, only to find that these students, including the former Branch organiser, never turned up.  In the end, I had to ask Martin Thomas about the situation, and we agreed to expel the former Branch Organiser.

So, by 1981, the Socialist Organiser Branch was down to just two members, myself and Neil Dawson.  Yet, things were actually turning up in many ways.  It was liberating not to be wasting so much time in pointless journeys, for one thing.  But, also by 1981, the long hard work of the last seven years, in the Labour Party and local Trades Council, had begun to pay off.  Both had turned left, and in the Labour Party branches, the moribund organisations had begun to flower once more.

In 1981, I was elected as Assistant Secretary of Stoke District Labour Party and on to its Executive Committee with a vote that was twice as large as the next highest EC member.  At the time, I was also leading a number of community actions, via the Labour Party Branch, as well as being involved in trying to set up local Rank and File Mobilising Committee Groups and so on, which kept the media full of stories, and kep John Golding busy threatening to have me expelled from the party.

After the meeting, I was approached by the late John McCready, a pottery union militant, who I also subsequently supported (unsuccessfully) for the nomination for the Stoke North PPC (won by Joan Walley).  I'd first met John, back in 1974, when I sat on an ASTMS negotiating team to hammer out a Spheres of Influence Agreement with CATU, the pottery union.  John was on their EC, as was another comrade I already knew, Geoff Bagnall, who had been a member of the IMG with Jason Hill. John had numerous questions, for me, such as "Is it true you support Troops Out of Ireland?"  It was, and in fact, the Labour Committee on Ireland, was only one of a long series of such campaigns that I was involved in at the time.

John was a member of Stoke South CLP, and with him was another Stoke South member Paul Barnett, who lived in The Broadway at Meir.  From that point on, I would visit Paul and his wife Lynn and their four kids every week to talk over the latest paper, and local political events.  I was not alone, I would often run into Steve Martin or John Pickett from the Militant, who were also trying to draw Paul into their orbit.  Paul eventually joined SO, and wrote a few articles covering his area of interest in theatre, particularly reviews of the then current "Boys From The Blackstuff".  As an added bonus for me, Paul also used to service my car.

It was in this context that I first met Bren who would come round from next door.  At the time, Bren was married to Ken.  If I remember correctly, Ken was a biker, or at least 36 years on, I have an image in my mind of him wearing a leather motorbike jacket.  Ken worked at Florence Colliery in Fenton, though his parents owned the local Procter's Coach company.

So, when the 1984 Miners' Strike broke out, I was not at all surprised to see Bren taking a leading role in it, organising the local Miners Wives group, and from the start being regularly on the picket line to turn back anyone even thinking of crossing, and standing four square against the police that tried to keep the pickets down to the then maximum six.

I can't remember if Bren came with me and a number of local miners to Merseyside to collect money after I'd organised a tour there with Lol Duffy, and other comrades in the area, but on almost every occasion when something was going on, Bren was involved in it.  At the end of 1984, I took over was Secretary of the North Staffs Miners Support Committee, set up by the North Staffs Trades Council.  Every week, in that capacity, as well as my capacity as organiser of my Branch LP Miners Levy, I met with Joe Wills, up at the NUM offices in Burslem, and shortly after taking over as Secretary of the Support Committee, I organised with the NUM, a mass picket of Wolstanton Colliery, where Joe had previously worked, and where my comrade the late John Locket was a prominent figure.

One again, Bren was there, bringing a large number of Miners Wives with her, and the picket, which drew in around 300-400 people, also brought in local MP Mark Fisher, from Stoke Central.  In the following weeks, we also organised a number of such mass pickets at the Meaford power station.

Even after the defeat of the strike, working-class morale and organisation did not dissipate quickly.  In 1985, I took over as President of the North Staffs Trades Council, and for the two years I held that position, there were still attendances each month of around 80 delegates.  And, during that time, we drew in a number of speakers from disputes that were going on around the country, notably the Silentnight dispute, where all the workers had been sacked.

We organised a leafleting outside the Co-op furniture store in Hanley, in the not unreasonable belief that the Co-op might itself be amenable to such activity.  Unfortunately, it turned out that the manager of the store was more concerned with the stores sales of Silentnight beds than he was the rights of Silentnight workers.  Bren and a group of Miners Wives turned up to take part in the activity,a nd we split ourselves between the two store entrances.  Myself, and another Trades Council activist, Andy Day, who also worked in the Hanley Peace Centre, took the front doors, and Bren and the others were on the side doors.  Shortly after we had started leafleting, a police van pulled up, and a sergeant got out to tell all of us that if we did not go, by the time he returned, we would be arrested.

After a short discussion, we agreed there was no point all of us risking getting arrested, so just me and Andy remained on the front doors.  Sure enough, when the sergeant returned we got nicked for "Behaviour likely to result in a breach of the peace."  When questioned as to exactly what that behaviour was, we were told that it was handing out leaflets that someone might take offence too, and thereby respond violently!  Not surprisingly, the charges were later dropped.

Bren later entered a relationship with Phil Pender who along with his brother Chris, was a member of my Labour party Branch in Tunstall.  Both Phil and Chris for a brief period joined the Stoke North SO group, which met in the Hole In the Wall pub in the back streets of Tunstall, off America Street, and just up from the Torch.  Both Phil and Brenda, joined Scargill's SLP.

I last saw Bren, I think back in 2011, when I had gone to a meeting of the NSTC, Chaired by Jason, to oppose the new round of austerity that the Tories were inflicting.  I commented in my speech to that meeting that it reminded me in many ways of how things were back in 1974, when I first got involved in political activity.

Brenda Procter was one of those working class heroes whose mettle was forged in the fire of that time.

Orgreave

The decision of Amber Rudd not to hold a Public Inquiry into the Battle of Orgreave should come as no surprise.  It took twenty-five years just to get a decent report on Hillsborough, and the actions of the police.  But, Hillsborough was not an overtly class issue.  Orgreave was!  The Tories, even now a quarter of a century after the event have no intention of having any inquiry designed to uncover the truth of what happened on that day, because, unlike Hillsborough, where the blame can be placed upon the police, the responsibility for Orgreave rests entirely on the padded shoulders of Maggie Thatcher and her government of that time.

It was Thatcher's government that brought in the measures that prevented British workers moving freely around the country, that sanctioned widespread spying on workers and their families, that used a large scale programme of undercover cops infiltrating the labour movement, including their use as agents provocateurs, that brought in troops dressed as police, but without any numbers on their uniforms, and so on.

We should give no encouragement to the illusion that the bosses state could ever undertake an honest inquiry into the events at Orgreave, or during the strike as a whole.  If the Labour Party, the TUC and the rest of the Labour Movement wants an honest investigation into the role of the police and the rest of the state apparatus, including the role of the mass media, they should do it themselves.

We do not need a Public Inquiry into Orgreave, we need a Workers Inquiry!

Northern Soul Classics - Exus Trek - Luther Ingram Orchestra

I was intending to play this anyway, but coming across the video made it even more compelling. The energy of the music is a perfect soundtrack to the video of the Battle of Orgreave, and is a perfect example of how much the music was, is and will be so fully integrated into northern working-class culture. Don't just listen, but go look at the comments on Youtube that accompany it.



I'm also including Luther Ingram's brilliant vocal as a bonus.

Pure Evil

As a Marxist, and, therefore, a materialist, I do not believe the terms "Good" and "Evil" have any meaning. They imply the idea of a God and a Devil each as the personification of the two traits, and of human beings who stand some way on a continuum between the two. They imply that our actions are wholly a matter of "free will". In fact, human beings like any other animal, are conditioned, by our environment and experiences, as well as by our physical make-up. Just as a dog can be conditioned to be a vicious attack dog, or else a guide dog for the blind, so the conditioning that life gives to us determines how we think and act. To be consistent, we have to accept that even a Hitler is the product of the material world, even if that doesn't change how we respond to him and those like him. But, I was watching the TV last night, and the first thought that came into my mind to describe what I saw was "Pure Evil".

I was watching the last in the series of Alan Davies' "Teenage Revolution". The series has been a recounting of the comedians experience of growing up as a teenager in the 1980's. It is a not uncommon account of a young person from a middle class background who rebels against their upbringing. It is the experience of someone who from that background, and who essentially retained the same lifestyle as an entertainer, rebels as a lifestyle choice, not as a necessity. In other words dilletantism. As part, of last night's programme Davies recalls the point when he joined the Labour Party. It is a time when the working class was in a decisive battle against Capital, its State, and its political representation in the form of the Thatcher Government. From 1979, the Tories had set out to wage Class War against the working-class using the Ridley Plan as their military strategy, and the economic doctrine of Hayek, as the means to force Capital to resist Labour by reducing the Money Supply, and at the same time to undermine the economic conditions that enabled the working-class to continue with simply bargaining within the system. It was one of those moments when that “Social-democratic Consensus” I have described as being the framework by which Big Capital has operated over the last 100 years or so, broke down.

Outside such periods we have the luxury of being able to analyse our condition, to self-criticise, and to engage in similar criticism of the position of others. We can present our own views by means such as this blog, and so on. But, during conditions like the 1980's, although we have a duty to continue to argue our own views, and to point out where we believe others are wrong, the emphasis is different. In such conditions the real question is put in the way Billy Bragg put it, in his song featured in Davies previous programme - “Which side are you on?” Scargill had bad, bureaucratic Stalinist politics. Many miners themselves thought that it had been madness not to have had an overtime ban in place long before the strike to prevent the Government building up stocks ready for the confrontation they were clearly planning. Some thought a national ballot should have been held. But, once the strike began, those questions were secondary to the need to be on the side of the Miners, and all the other workers supporting them. Anyone who refused to do that because they objected to Scargill's politics, to the tactics adopted and so on, quite simply placed themselves on the other side of the class barricades, and became the enemy just as much as Thatcher and MacGregor.

The same was true of Liverpool and other Councils struggles against the Government. Militant were a pretty abysmal, sectarian organisation. On issue after issue that the left had been involved in, be it fighting fascism, CND, opposing sexism and homophobia, Ireland and many more, the Militant frequently stood aside from any broad movement, describing them as Popular Fronts, in order instead to establish their own activity with the hope of “Building The Party”. In the process they pissed off large sections of the Labour Movement. When it came to the struggle in Liverpool that meant that there was already a reservoir of opposition to them, and the tactics that were adopted, for example, the failure to link up with the Miners, were abysmal too. Yet, despite that the question was still posed in those stark terms. This was just as much a matter of life and death class struggle as the Miners Strike. It was still a question of - “Which side are you on.” In fact, just as with the Miners Strike, it should not have been a question of Liverpool or any other Council fighting the Tories. That fight should from the beginning have been a fight led, and co-ordinated by the Labour Party as the Workers Party. Instead, the reality was that the LP, understood as the vast majority of its members, were supporting those struggles. It was the leadership of the LP, along with its co-thinkers at the head of the TUC, which were refusing to provide such support, refusing to provide any kind of leadership.

It was with the knowledge of that, with the experience of living through those events not as an entertainer for whom these events were a source of material, but as a worker, as a Trade Union militant, who was standing on a Miners Picket line from day one, until the return to work, who was the Secretary of the local Trades Council Miners Support committee, and who through the LP was busy every week collecting money for local Miners and their family that part of what I saw in that programme turned my stomach and provoked that impression of “Pure evil”.

Davies showed the ranting speech of Kinnock at the 1985 LP Conference, where he attacked Liverpool City Council for their struggle against Thatcher's Class War. Throughout the Miners Strike, Kinnock had refused to give support to the Miners, let alone act in any way to mobilise political support. I remember going to a huge rally in Stoke where Scargill and Kinnock were to speak. When Kinnock entered the hall, the response from all of the Miners I was with echoed out in unison, “Mind your back Arthur!” they shouted to Scargill. They were right. Kinnock might have been standing in front of him, but the knife was ready to stab him and the Miners in the back. And, with the Miners defeated, and Thatcher rampant, Kinnock took the opportunity not to try to mobilise the Labour movement to try to avoid a similar defeat, but instead to come to Thatcher's aid once more by attacking Council's like Liverpool who were putting up the resistance that he and the Labour leadership should have been providing. He used it to destroy, for a generation, the LP's ability to act as a means of resistance to the political attacks of Capital, and to make it ready for its domination by the ideas of Thatcherism itself, in the form of Blair and Brown.

Davies says that he was so impressed by Kinnock's speech, attacking workers in struggle, and siding with Thatcher, that he sent off for a copy of it. That tells us just how much of a revolution he was engaged in! It tells us just how little he had in common with those sentiments of Billy Bragg - “Which side are you on?” Davies was clearly not on the side of the workers, not on the side of the revolution, but like Kinnock on the side of our class enemies. In that speech attacking Liverpool, Kinnock sunk to all time lows of hypocrisy. Having failed to support the Miners, and thereby aided in their defeat, he had shown the same degree of class betrayal when it came to Labour Councils. The clear message of his politics, which was echoed by the Soft Left within the LP at large, was that workers should lay down and die, not rock the boat, and thereby facilitate the return of a Labour government. The consequence of that would have to be that labour Council's – as many were already doing – would have to implement the Tory Cuts, and sack thousands of workers. But, what did Kinnock's attack focus on – the fact that Liverpool (as part of a very questionable, but understood tactic) had issued redundancy notices to its workers! Within months, Kinnock was to do exactly the same thing, but not as a tactic, by sacking loads of LP staff!

But, what wrenched my gut, was what happened as Davies watched this speech with Mr and Mrs Kinnock. On the platform behind him was the late Joan Maynard, who was shaking her head in rightful disgust at Kinnock's open betrayal of the workers in struggle. His comment, “Look at Stalin's Nanny shaking her head", was said with all the bile of someone who has been on one side of a war. Worse, was his and his wife's comment in response to the late Eric Heffer's subsequent walk-out during the speech - “Welcome to oblivion.” But, of course, Kinnock and his wife were on one side of a class war, so it is no wonder they should exhibit such grotesque bile. They were on Thatcher's side in that Class War, whereas Maynard, Heffer, Scargill and the Militant, for all their faults, were on our side. Eric Heffer who was certainly no Stalinist, had more principle, let alone socialist principle in his little finger than Mr. & Mrs Kinnock have ever had in their entire bodies.

Of course, Kinnock and the Soft Left's argument might have had some validity if the idea of “not rocking the boat” in order to get a Labour Government, would have given workers any confidence that such an eventuality would have saved them from the iniquities of Thatcherism. But, it was a Labour Government, of which Kinnock had been part, that had begun the process of Cuts in the 1970's. It was Labour under Healey that had abandoned Keynesianism in favour of Monetarism. It was a labour government that had imposed a Pay Freeze on workers that eventually led to the winter of Discontent, and Thatcher winning the election. Moreover, as a tactic it wasn't even working. After 1979, Thatcher became the most unpopular Prime Minister on record, and it appeared that even then the party might have ditched her. Although, we hear all of the stories today about Michael Foot, and his donkey jacket, the reality is that even in 1981, when he was leading mass demonstrations in cities across the country to mobilise opposition to the Tories, and the rising levels of unemployment, he and the LP were at 51% in the opinion polls. Had an election been held then a landslide Labour Victory dwarfing 1945 would have been achieved.

What had undermined that was the fact that Labour began to pull back from such activities. Worse, when Thatcher embarked on her adventure of the Falklands War, Labour backed her. After Thatcher defeated the steel workers, and moved on as part of the Ridley Plan to other groups of workers, whilst Labour failed to provide the necessary leadership, she began to look like a winner, and Labour to have no answer. When the SDP split, the writing was on the wall for Labour's immediate electoral prospects. But Kinnock and the Soft Left's cringeing approach rather than seeing Labour win increasing support, simply saw them have to concede more and more ground to the Tories, politically and ideologically.

Ironically, the clearest refutation of Kinnock's approach came with the removal of Thatcher. It was not Kinnock and the Soft Left's “Don't rock the boat” approach, which led to Thatcher's dismissal, but the very opposite. It was the eruption of that same kind of mass grass roots movement that had developed in response to the attacks on Liverpool and other Councils, and the Miners Strike, in the form of the anti-Poll Tax Movement, again ironically due in large part to the Militant and its inheritors, which undermined Thatcher and led to her being removed by the Tories. Even then, when those who stood on the right side of the Class divide, had done the heavy lifting for Kinnock and the Soft Left, they could not seal the deal. In the most cringeing piece of television footage available Kinnock sealed Labour's fate at the 1992 Election, with his repeated shout of “Well, Alright” at the Sheffield Rally, where he appeared like some kind of Southern Evangelical Preacher selling his own brand of snake oil. It made you want to cringe, because like the snake oil salesmen it was so obviously fake, but that is what Kinnock is, and always has been – fake.

He could not return to oblivion as he wished upon Eric Heffer, because in reality, at least as a socialist politician, he had never emerged out of it. Even as a bourgeois politician he was a rank failure, and, like all such failures, his main role, today, is to act as a cameo in the kind of programmes as this. In Christian burial services they say “Ashes to ashes”, but in Kinnock's case it would be more appropriate to say “Shite to shite”. Of course, in his and his wife's personal terms, none of that matters. They may not have achieved the earning potential of Tony and Cherie Blair, who inherited the devastated LP that Kinnock created, but, unlike the tens of thousands of Miners and other workers, whose lives were devastated as a result of the Class War waged against them by Thatcher and Kinnock, they were sure to be provided with a lucrative reward for the betrayal of the workers. Whereas all the SDP'ers were given Peerages from which to draw an easy and large income, Mr. and Mrs Kinnock were simply provided with lucrative jobs in Europe.

Those miners were right in their warning to “Watch Your back”. Workers should bear that warning in mind today in response to today's Kinnocks. Then, perhaps, we might be able to bring them all to account for their sins.