Book Review: The Urban Village: Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and St Mary's Bay (2008) Random House New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand: A History Lost and Found

Now Belgo Geordie was fifteen when his rubbery shoes hit Auckland and just sixteen when he went to live in Freeman's Bay. In a rickety one bedroomed flat at the top of an even ricketier three storied house close to the pub The Sussex (on College Hill) described in this book as "a mess, fights, beer thrown around".

(Left is an image from the book taken from Auckland City Archives-Freemans Bay as it was). Now for goodness sake all the houses were made of wood-to eyes fresh from England, like a stage set for a spaghetti or Saturday morning western. And even up on the third floor, there were rats, and rat sized holes gnawed through the kitchen cupboards. Cupboards that had seen better days back in the Second World War years. Not to mention the small holes made by borer (a small beetle that could reduce wooden furniture to dust). The bath, brown stained enamel was fed by a contraception (an empire era caliphont) like a metal melted tea pot that spewed more steam than water and dripped when not in use. 
At least it wasn't winter and cost the sum of NZ $15 (at that stage half my wages) but it was home, mine and safe, or so I thought. Putting Groundhogs "Split" on the single unit record player (speaker in the lid-needle able to darn socks if required). Putting my few clothes including bri-nylon moss green y-fronts, diamond patterned blue socks and dark blue jeans, chunky and rolled up at the ends. Setting out my bag of books-Bobby Seale's "Seize the Time", next to "Cider with Rosie". Settling into the sagging single bed and its crust hard, kapok mattress setting an alarm to make a 6am shift at the central post office I fell into sleep with the stale smell of cooked lamb and root vegetables, the murmurs and crashes of languages that were not my own. Maori I thought, Samoan I learned later. It was after midnight when I heard heavy steps pounding up the stairs, past the first floor, not pausing on the second but growing louder as they raced up the narrow staircase and with barely a pause my front door crashed open, splintering the entire frame. I am not sure who was the most shocked. Me or the Samoan man with a huge Afro, who stood breathing through his nose, fists clenched by his side, stinking of beer, cigarettes and angry sweat.

Now I should explain Belgo Geordie was not then the fat balding oldie he is now. He was a skinny white boy with shoulder length brown curls, with white legs like pipe cleaners. A bit like the chap in this picture but far more handsome. But then already in me short stay in New Zealand, I'd been mistaken a number of times for a girl. Which was why Belgo junior was given the job of sorting mail with the wahines and a few alcoholic men with the shakes, rather than working unloading the large mail bags from the back of the cavernous white framed Bedford trucks with big strapping Maori men-who kept asking me for a date and laughing hysterically. 

So, I thought I was in for a hiding and without knowing why. But, in the moonlight on my side of the door and a bare electric bulb providing a backdrop to his Afro, the man decided I was obviously not the one he was looking for. He turned and as quickly clattered off down the stairs. I comforted myself with a small observation-he was wearing steel toe capped boots. He satisfied his frustration with being thwarted by slamming the front door so hard the handle fell off and rattled down onto the wooden porch like a poorer cousin to a church bell. I was left to climb out of my bed, shaking like a new born colt and leaning the door up into some sort of order against the shattered frame. 
I moved out the next morning and was docked a days pay as I went looking for somewhere else to live and found it six streets away, in Ponsonby. It was suburb love at first sight and lasted me until it was no longer practical or affordable to live in the area.

Georgina Street 1971 by Mike Pritchard

So picking up this book of the photographic history of the area and plenty of images from those heady seventies days is a great reminder for someone who came to adulthood in the streets around and surrounding Ponsonby and rubbed shoulders with many of the characters captured in this book. It is almost 450 pages of photographs, stories and personalities. An urban history, a shrine to my era, an area which was run down, poor, full of amazing houses and a mix of people that made it exciting to live amongst and be part of. 

Such as the great waterside union man Jock Barnes and his communist mates-always good for a bit of crack. The fiery but big hearted and unpredictable Betty Wark and her docile almost Buddha like side kick-Fred Ellis.

Betty Wark by Gary Wark

Anyone needing a meal Betty would feed and anyone stepping out of line Betty would belt. The great parties held by the Polynesian Panthers and Nga Tamatoa where the trotskyists from Resistance Bookshop inevitably took a hiding for telling Will and co how to radicalise and organise. And Roger Fowler, People's Union stalwart, peering through his John Lennon glasses, butter wouldn't melt expression belying a blow torch political mind. He almost caused me to be arrested in the Gluepot for underage drinking (I was 17) by the police task force or Dawn Raid squad-Fowler pointing at me across the crowded pub telling them I was only 15. A diversion to let some of the Polynesian boys make their escape before they were asked to produce identification.

Image: John Miller

Filling paper rubbish sacks with fruit and veg and coming across fruits never seen before and veggies with no idea how to boil, roast or use as cricket balls. The veggie/fruit co-op hippies sharing bottles of beer with the Ponsonby Rugby Club players in the big dirt floored, tin shed off John Street-all joined by a love and passion for rugby and as long as there was no talk around religion or politics both sides rubbed along fine. The fences in their seedy cluttered shops along Ponsonby Road dealing in stolen goods and charging an students an arm and a leg for junk and then buying it back for tuppence!. Warrick Broadhead turning up wild man and bearded deported from Canada and then in full drag at the University and his colourful asexual sister Mary dressed as a boy, knowing all the lyrics to "Hunky Dory".

From Inner City News

I tell people of Belgo Geordie's arrest for obstructing the footpath outside Osborne House-(in the picture on the left) and there is a photograph in this book of the demo-we picketed it for weeks to try and keep it as a hostel for old men who had nowhere else they could afford to live-rather than flattening it and turning it into an agricultural goods warehouse.  Then on the one night/early morning we had a minimal picket the demolition team moved in and it was all on. Five of us were arrested for sitting in the driveway including Mr Fowler. But it is a Maori boy Tony Ormsby who put a brick through a truck window who did prison time at Mt Eden. We were not charged for putting sugar in petrol tanks and although  we were threatened with a beating from the arresting cop nothing eventuated. But it made the early evening news in glorious black and white. The rest of the day in the Auckland watch house with the drunks before a brief court appearance the following morning. In that time while locked up, the house was flattened to kindling and dirt. At court, watching a rotund and perspiring David Lange, with a cow lick, schoolboy hairstyle, beaming like a lighthouse representing someone else while our People's Union lawyer Barry Littlewood told the judge how sorry I was to have got myself arrested-so remorseful and slapped a hand over my mouth when I went to say "Like fuck!" Roger Fowler, as always got to make a political speech and was reminded by the judge, the judge knew his parents. I forgave Mr Littlewood a year later when he paid my then $31 fine (it was $15 but as I turned outlaw and refused to pay money to the capitalist state-the state repaid the compliment and added interest). That is I was on the run for two years until the police picked me up early one morning in an Auckland park. I was off my nut enjoying the stars but the two cops thought I was planning a burglary. Bless those more innocent times. Another year they would have looked into my eyeballs and arrested me for being under the influence. As it was they checked on their new data base and found I had an unpaid fine. Mr Littlewood rolling his eyes when I approached him for representation and sent me down to the court to pay it.I think he gave me advice along the lines of "Don't be a tit all your life!"

So this large book certainly stirred up the memories and reminded me I haven't quite lost the plot yet. Some of the stories I have relayed over the years are found amongst these pages. Some parts important to me are not there like Billy TK-incendary Maori guitarist, along with the Alternative School in Richmond Road and as for the Hostel for Maori Virgins on Shelley Beach Road, zealously guarded by an order of nuns trained to protect virginity like a sacrament. Anita Peters photographs. Or Jimmy Baxter roaming the streets, a mournful, mumbling or was it praying? Large wooden cross around his neck, a prophet in search of a drink, a smoke or a feed to keep the string tight around his over large trousers.

A Belgo Geordie original circa 1974 worth squillions! Any offers like?

In 1977, I left New Zealand and when I came back in 1981 to live in Lincoln Street (off Ponsonby Road but at the Grey Lynn end) the guts had been ripped out of a multi-cultural mainly poor suburb and gentrification started. Other than a brothel on the top of Franklin Road, and Mrs Ivan with her beehive hair do and killer fish and chip meals with six slices of white bread troweled over with yellow, full cream butter. Tea you could stand a spoon up in, served dark brown, piping hot, in large white cups and saucers with dollies and plastic table mats. There was also the post hippy food eatery Fed Up.  But a lot of the spark had gone. I missed the Polynesian flavour, the street life and the chaos of the shops but was glad to see the slum landlords also gone. Sadly they had just moved their business further out and were still preying on people's poverty and causing misery. Of course a new life was creeping around, slightly edgy. The Gluepot had just hosted the last Toy Love gig and Chris Knox was still prowling around the streets of Grey Lynn. Grey Lynn festivals were starting, Kohanga and other language nests were still operating out of Richmond Road School. And on a Sunday you could still hear Polynesian choirs in the small Tongan church in Sackville Street and performer impressario/living art work Warrick Broadhead still turned up in unexpected places in full costume performing epics in ways they were never intended - little liberal parented kids scared shitless by magnificently cruel over blown red queens and poisonous yellow dwarves. And Limbs, modern dance, still gathered blisters dancing the wooden floors of Brown Street. There were still artists (Tony Fomison in his e-lavalavas, his new tattoo and little else) and Warren Tippett throwing beautifully coloured pots and plates from his kiln at the back of his house just off Richmond Road.But I had left the New Zealand of Rob Muldoon and returned to the New Zealand to the 1981 Springbok Tour and the subsequent rise of Jim Bolger. Nothing after that was the same.

I thank the two women who put this together. It is a book of memories.

LOOKING FOR ALBO.....Will the real Anthony Albanese show his-self, your country...well some of us, need you

Classical seventies brick work

"The problem isn't that Tony Abbott's stuck in the past, it's that he wants the rest of Australia to go back there and keep him company"
Albo serves up the dish circa March 2014
There's nowt like a fellow trade unionist to bring you to yer knees with a bellow of disbelief and gut wrenching despair. "I hear if Labor roll Bill Shorten and its looking likely, then the chatter is they'll replace him with Tony Burke. "... It was well intended, the comment like, but if I could have farted...it would have been a piece of hail the size of Bronwyn Bishop's handbag. AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH! !!! Not the member for Watson for fooks sake!Is that the best they can come up with. Why? Do they ever want to win an election? Is Labor a party of the left or of left over centrists with as much leadership option, charisma and charm as a bus shelter. Do Labor want to stay stuck in the blender of no vision, no direction, no pulse. Where's Albo "I like to fight tories, it's what I Do!" in all of this I asked in a manner of balding geriatric grasping at straws. "Naw, they won't pick him, he's a team player"...Well that had me reaching for an extra large (bariatric) oxygen cylinder and me liquid adrenaline pump and twelve inch needle sharpened like an ice pick. When I came to, Tony Abbott was still prime minister and the world was just that much more a scary place..to quote American poet Gil Scott Heron "Three More Years...Three More Years OF THAT!" An' anoother three years in 2019 and finally, finally...they choose Albo! I think I'll go off and darn me socks with barbed wire.

The joker in Marrickville July 2015

Murder most foul in Canberra 1997...or a shallow, self-obsessed, disordered girl's grasp on reality and its grievous consequences

Ms Garner takes this project on in the aftermath of the collapse of her third marriage. 18 months after the event at the centre of this book. although there is a reluctance she is drawn in to a story. Murder suicide discussed at dinner parties by bright young things and then carried out. Although professing an open mind, from the opening of this book her view of protagonist Anu Singh is guilty as charged. As much based on her (the writer's intuition) as the evidence of a second, judge only trial. Then the book is justified as a means to bring the forgotten person in this story, the murdered Joe Cinque, into focus and give witness; tell his part of the story. It does not do so with any effect until the last chapters and then only in part with less attention or depth, analysis or concentration than is given to either Anu Singh or her co-charged Madhavi Rao. Yes the story of befriending his grieving, devastated parents is told. But they have more meat on their story than does Joe. It is very much Ms Garner's journey into darkness regarding the trials, courts, legal system, expert witnesses-particularly unilluminating because she has already decided she knows Anu Singh and 'her sort of woman' well. 

Only the chapter (a later discussion with the judge from both trials this book examines in depth, Justice Ken Crispin) that asks of the morality and ethics in our legal system as opposed to justice is thought provoking/engaging; providing the sense the writer is thinking outside of her preconceptions. It is ironic this discussion tagged onto the end of the process does not seem to cause the author to reflect on her thinking about the view she has formed other than to wring her hands that it is more complex an issue than just guilty as charged.

Likewise Helen Garner exposes a poor understanding of a range of mental health conditions and the expert and divisive (contradictory) expert evidence that is part of the territory of these areas. I found her marginalisation of Professor Paul Mullen breath taking. I know his work on stalkers and querulous litigants well. Professor Mullen has international standing for his work in forensic psychiatry-the respect he is held in is due to his experience and knowledge of working with people with severe personality disorders. Ms Garner appears to sniff at this, his Englishness (I thought he was a New Zealander), and to dismiss his views because they do not concur with hers. Forged from background reading and her days in court observing the accused, her friends or social group and the family of Joe Cinque and then fitting this in to what she thinks and knows. Professor Mullen's cannot, being a gun for hire, see the obvious. How could Anu Singh be anything other than a cold blooded and manipulative killer using psychiatric babble to pull the wool over our eyes! Isn't it obvious by just looking at her? Hearing how others describe her. Then by her own words and actions? No, and that was the problem in this case which Ms Garner does not attach weight-intent. After reading this book I am no clearer on Anu Singh's intent on killing Joe Cinque-Just that she did kill him and in a cruel, compassionless, lab rat kind of way.

However, like Ms Garner, on reading this book, I cannot argue against that Joe Cinque, nor his family were served well by the legal system and nor was justice. The information about Anu Singh provided by Ms Garner and in the public domain does require clarity on the level of Anu Singh's responsibility. For me the universal tragedy in this story (and Helen Garner does pose the question without broadening it's impact) is this; In a group of young, smart and ambitious students-where was their individual or collective moral compass? Why did they not stand up for Joe Cinque even during their attendance at the trial-Rather than treating both trials as if they were being exposed to an unpleasant sideshow that was getting in the way of them getting on with their lives. He was dead wasn't he? Move on! Where was the remorse? Where was their compassion? Their reflection on they got it wrong and have learned to be more morally strong people? It was the sense of the majority of these young people, 'his friends' having learned nothing that made Joe Cinque even more invisible and his very existence as a human being expendable. 

For me, Anu Singh appeared in these pages as someone with a very tenuous grip on reality. Dangerous? Undoubtably, as circumstances proved but seemingly without any effective moral guidance other than her own warped view of the world around her. She was not effectively challenged in her narcissistic beliefs either in her peer group or family. No one stood up to her or stared her down. She did not seem to possess a thread of self-reflection or anything which indicated she did know right from wrong. Is that still not the test for diminished responsibility? Was she even effectively tested on this capacity? It appears not from what is written here. Nonetheless, diminished responsibility? Perhaps-but this should not be an excuse or a defence for the actions she took but a legal system would be unlikely to expose this and did not. Morality and ethics as the judge pointed out have little part to play in court. Adversarial argument and rebuttal do. Into this paradigm this book and author fall. Guilty as charged? No, more complex than that. Undoubtably guilty in a lack of morality and responsibility and remorse and no insight that what she did was wrong to Joe Cinque but in that she was not alone. And Joe Cinque, basically a decent man with a life ahead of him, whose one fault was to love her and not see the danger coming. If Helen Garner had included in this book as fleshed out a portrait of Joe Cinque with as much depth as she did for Anu and later Rao, then it may have truly been a consolation; a suitable memorial other than the endlessly used line "And Joe Cinque is dead". We know, but why? From reading this book,that we still do not have a clearer understanding of.

Helen Garner is like Janet Malcolm ("In the Freud Archives" a hatchet deconstruction of Jeffrey Masson). Intelligent, with an engaging writing style. She inserts herself into the text so that by the end of particularly her non fiction you have an idea of her personality, beliefs and character. You either are a fan/friend or not. I am not. 

The Dingos are circling...the wombat is howling at the moon and Bill Shorten is left standing in his underwear...

Freedom of speech is dead and alive* and drifting south of Tasmania in a fishbowl...wave it goodbye

A circling dingo...copyright NLP

Just when you think there is nothing left to scrape off the bottom of the boot of life another low is reached and with such ease it would leave a deep sea diver breathless...a frigging cold winter's week in June when all decent folk are out gathering fuel or running down the grid with hotties and knitting bed socks, the Nat Libs go on their break (from what you might ask-need rehydrating from constant attacks of diarrhoea?). Having exhausted themselves with Team Australia's answer to very, very bad, in fact very evil black flagged Labor supporting terrorists inhabiting lands far, far away. And who are infiltrating the very bastions of the Australian way of life, that is second to none. Oh, unless you are aboriginal in which it may cause you die in custody in numbers far greater than though acts of homeland terrorism. But that is, of course, Besides the bloody point Belgo Geordie. Stick to the script lad or we'll sell you to The ABC. Who do you think you are? John Bloody Pilger! OK, so there were the Nat Libs** whining like bandsaws with rusty teeth and listening to it on ABC radio had me chewing me mattress thinking I was in an episode of the sixties TV series "The Prisoner"-yon Patrick McGowan in his turtleneck sweater showing how a man starved of real facts can be driven insane by the very reasonableness of arguments that are steadily stripping the skin off yer scrotum. And when your screaming yourself blind, yer not quite sure how it got to this. Or if you will ever get out of this space!

Ganders for the goose....

Of course I refer to the proposed law changes to strip dual national terrorists of beloved and well not given lightly to just anyone Autralianshipdom! "Sorry is that really large cheque made out to me, my party, my hamster.  Oh thank you, welcome to our red and often drought stricken land Mr Hedge-funding, property developing, mining robber baron from anywhere else in the world! I am sure we can rustle up some school-leavers to work for you for 25 cents an hour-as long as they pay tax, and don't expect to be given a pension-we like scammers not leaners in Oztralia...'sorry, pills wearing off-its that tangy taste of bed springs, and flock and feathers...Natural justice but only for those who can afford to buy it is our motto for these times of privatisation and restructurement.

I repeat..I genuinely understand heads must roll

Then there was the malarkey at the ABC! Well heads must roll said the minister of prime time thought and honorary Telegraph communications minister. Forget not, he also speaks for women or has that portfolio gone to Kevin Andrews who is boycotting Parliament because it is full of lefties spouting rubbish such as "There is a reason we have judges, courts and a legal system". Then if we haven't got the message-to challenge the heads should roll (such a poor metaphor for the subject Tony), then there is Mark Scott-showing a classic pair of my balls are in a mangle and you might be turning the handle but you won't shut me up reminding the great Nat Lib tribe about the true meaning of "freedom of speech and I defend the right for tossers to have their say".

I know, I know, fairs fair*** the Nat Libs won the election on the duckworth-lewis method of counting but they did need reminding-ABC is a public broadcast service, much like public servants are the servants of the public-neither are lackeys of the government and its motley crew of hand wringing hypocrites. Maybe Mr Abbot would like to set up his own media voice piece Abbott spouting Bollocks and Crap-see...ABC.

Sorry Mr Abbott, your legislation will cost heaps of tax payer dough and achieve bugger all than give you sex appeal with red neck constituents who are afraid to find a halal sticker attached to the underside of their beds. And in you attacking the ABC for letting a twerk boy spout rubbish as if it some grave national offence such as treason-after all he didn't suggest flogging Prince Philips ageing and aching, wrinkled jewels. "Keel-haul the blighter! Can't sir! He seems to enjoy it. "Call that a flogging man! Me Ma got more traction with a carpet slipper." (See New Matilda and Mr Graham's article regarding this but reader be warned he (Sir Chris New Lord Graham of Matilda) has a potty mouth aching for contact with a big bar of yellow soap). So the episode and response to it, a big nothing in the bottom of a yawning tea cup of zilch Mr Abbott...sticks and stones and all that, can't your mob not debate and expose him for the tiddler of thought the lad is? Could you not see the halal marijuana leaf on his America (the Beast of Evil) baseball cap-and looking like a boy wanting to pick a scrap with a paper clip? But oh, the political capital gained to justify pissing away money on scrapping passports and collecting meta data to turn into spitfires. Instead of putting it in hospitals, schools and housing (Millers Point forgotten?)
And as for buying a used "Freedom of Speech" from the likes of Peter Dutton. Pleeesssseeee!!!
Rather wipe me bum with Bronwyn Bishop's socks. The Nat Libs think freedom of speech is what happens when George Brandis opens his gob, alas lads and the occasional lassie! It is only dental decay from one too many enemas. Piles of the brain! Nothing to be gained from examining such emissions. And in case Tone you don't know who your natural bedfellows are The United Patriots Front camped out the front of the ABC in Melbourne today and said  "In here [the ABC] public opinion is shaped artificially. It's not democratic. It's not Australian". Then what the fuck (copyright Chris Graham: New Matilda) is it? Martian?

Not these two lads, not even with a used beanie

So being under the quacks orders not to cack me britches along comes Bill Shorten! Now Bill, may I call you that because apparently according to the gospel of the first dog on the moon**** you signed one of those making it a crime against the nation to report on the sexual abuse of children in detention. Do you not hear the very large bat wings of a future commission of enquiry coming your way. Forget Abbot's Noddy Shoddy dealings in Toytown commission into corrupt and depraved goings on within the trade union. That's a sham. This one will be the real deal with uncomfortable questions about how you can sleep at night. No, for the shame of being Labor you have signed summat that'll do unprotected kiddies real harm and under secrecy-don't want to upset Telegraph readers, or say what we mean. They are boat people, gatecrashers to the great Australian party, and well, they're not our kind of white and we don't care because in fortress Australia we can lock away a conscience and roll any head that might possess one.

Collect meta data and cancel passports...

Oh well, back to sleepy hollows, nurse is calling and she has a big jar of fig juice and a bicycle pump. Eee, it's a bugger getting old.....

* if you believe Dutton, Brandis only the Nat Libs stand between us and Antartica in defending the values of free speech-defined as my right to have everything I say agreed with and anything I don't like stripped of its citizenship and sent far, far away, banished from our good, decent and fair society.
** Mr Albanese or Albo likes to refer to them as Tories, I think they have sunk beneath that stain Mr Albanese.
*** Wayus Australianess to give a bloke a fair chop of the sav when his daks are down.
****Grauniad Australia-where all the simpering lefties get their moral fibre restrung.

Revisiting "The Irving Judgement"

The ongoing stealing of memory:

In 2000, Penguin published the transcript of the judgement (David Irving vs Penguin Books and Professor Deborah Lipstadt) by British High Court judge Justice Gray. David Irving elected trial by judge and conclusively lost his case.

I have read a number of David Irving's books but found that his presentation of historical material appeared as it did to justify the Nazi era and Hitler and co as just another set of political leaders and soldiers, unpalatable. It was also apparent he was selective with his use of historical data. His view seems to be Hitler never ordered the liquidation of all Jews*(1). It was a few fanatics trying to second guess and appease their warlord which resulted in a few such as Heydrich and Himmler in a two hour meeting planning and then setting up death camps*(2). It feeds into the revisionists world view that the Jewish Shoah has been exaggerated; both in the numbers of those murdered and the manner in which this was achieved throughout Nazi occupied Europe. It frequently minimises the numbers of Jews who died as a direct result of Nazi orders and actions. It makes claims 'many' were enemies of state dying of natural causes in prison camps for unspecified crimes against the government of the day-just like Stalinist Soviet Union. They even questioned the existence of death camps and the apparatus of execution using science and maths to argue the impossibility of conducting such wide scale killing. Irving, their poster boy, their historian, balances the scales in their minds with Dresden, the loss of civilian life in Germany immediately following the end of the Second World War. The demonisation of Hitler, the vilification of the vanquished Nazis and somewhere is always a breath of by dint of being well Jewish, that Jews bought this terrible war on themselves. Irving, has not distanced himself from this view of history; a calculated revisionism so sordid it almost defies comprehension. 

It was anticipated, this trial and findings would put a stake through the heart of using history to justify barbarity of extreme fascism. Certainly the trial and Irving's justifications, prevarications tore his reputation as a historian apart. To read a legal judgement that provided justice as well as an ethical legal verdict was both inspiring and uplifting. I think the seperation of Irvine the historian from Irvine the revisionist was accomplished with judicial clarity.

Sadly rather than put an end to the revisionism debate-it has resulted in Irving's fellow travellers and supporters becoming more subtle in pursuing their agenda. At a recent Sydney Reclaim Australia rally some of the speakers while attacking Muslims and Islam made it clear Jews were also not a welcome part of Team Australia. Something along the lines of Jewish=Zionist=Lackey of the State of Israel=Jewish rather than true blue Aussie. New Matilda an Australian independent electronic media site has just been threatened with legal action by a commentator because he was called a holocaust denier. From other postings by this character he is not so much a denier as a 'minimiser' using freedom of speech as a call to debate the Shoah using understatements and within the context of attacking zionism and particularly the existence and actions of the State of Israel.

In 2015 it seems a small and persistently vocal network and sometimes individual bloggers and media commentators still treat Irving as a martyr. Still think of him as a credible historian, and see their view of events as being the truth attacked and undermined by the evil Zionists and its puppet state Israel-not to mention world conspiracy aka modern day protocols of Zion. If it was not discussed so earnestly and seriously it would be as a theory, laughable.

What I find ugly in these arguments is that the majority of those murdered are unable to defend themselves due to being exterminated. Think: by the mere fact of being Jewish and this could be having one Jewish grandparent, you are taken from your everyday life, your identity as a citizen of a country stripped, humanity degraded and then regardless of age or sex-exterminated. What you were was not important, what you became was death. The bleakest part of our humanity is the ability to justify acts of great evil. And at the time of this disintegration of a people labelled Jewish, the State of Israel did not exist. And if it did there would still be no grounds for the isolation and systematic slaughter of a people based on ethnicity. There was and still is no justification for this. It defies comprehension as much as understanding how Germany, Germans allowed it to happen in its midst and then like a cancer let it spread throughout Europe to accelerate feeding people to oblivion in numbers so large as to become incomprehensible.

As the last people to survive this genocide die away it is for us to continue to give witness to those whose voice and lives were obliterated and lost in this terror.

*1: In the 628 pages of "Mein Kampf"written by Hitler in 1924-Jews-and Hitler's view of the Jewish problem takes up over 150 pages. It makes clear his personal and political views on Jews in tirades which are vitriolic; openly scornful and clearly identifying his hatred of Jews and that he saw them as a significant and a major threat to his ambition and world view.
*2: "The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution". Mark Roseman. (2002). The author suggest the Wannsee Protocol was, in effect, merely a typewritten digest of Mein Kampf.

North Shields: In Fading Light-or why the cod has gone and the boats bob alongside the quay

The death of fishing in North Shields; 

A modern morality tale 

I know bloody Shields is out there man

In Fading Light is a film by Amber Collective; starring Dave Hill, Sammy Johnson, Joana Ripley, Joe Caffrey, a fishing boat, the North Sea, some fish and of course, North Shields

Now Amber collective is something I have for many years admired. Film-makers/writers/ photographers who lived amongst and documented a range of communities across the north east of England and in doing so capturing poignant moments; witnessing as frequently they did, their decline.

What is there not to like about 'In Fading Light'. It is set in North Shields, my home town-six generations plus on my mother's side with more than a few fishermen, drinkers and hard 'uns.
Most of the action takes place on an anchor trawler, fishing the North Sea; home port of North Shields. At core is the relationship between daughter and estranged father (the trawler skipper). There is also the Geordie sexism at its worse and then best (dealing with a woman on the boat and coming to terms with that she more than holds her own place). It has humour and heart but bitter sweet in an all too predictable ending. And for me, it was a gift seeing such a rich and unromanticised piece of North Shields and in particular the working life of North Shields quayside.

You might have to listen carefully as the dialect is true to its community. And that is a jewel to cherish, it reminds how after 52 years of exile, I have all but lost my first tongue.

I take my hat off to the crew and cast as this is a superb film in all senses. The actors learned to sail the trawler and to fish supported by the local fishermen. The cast were thrown in deep end an all. No wussy method acting for these boys and girl (and film crew) who were sent out by the mad director to be filmed in a full throated North Sea gale/storm. More authentic like, better tinge of green to the vomit spray. There is a deadpan part to the doco on this film's DVD where the lead said they thought it odd that as they were heading out to film a sequence in the teeth of a gale, all the deep water fishing boats were heading into the quayside as fast as they could seeking shelter, while waving cheerily at those blurry idiot actors headin' off to their deaths.

Film, story and doco are all rewarding and heart breaking. Last time I was on North Shields quay (visiting from Australia in 2011)-it was almost empty of boats and real industry based on the sea at its doorstep. Now it has 'apartments' and a lifestyle industry (didn't see any nouveaux cuisine mind amongst the posh nosh shops) and there is no longer a stink of fish and guts to salt the brine. The fish and chips are not the cod of old. But as the doco on the making of this film identifies it is the story/testament to another north eastern industry and community that supported it lost. Seeing the fishermen in the doco saying there are no fish left to harvest in the North Sea was sobering. That they had the insight to see it as a consequence of greed-run while the times are good and when its gone-its gone.

The DVD is available (with others including two series of fine short films) from Amber. Images here are the copyright of Amber Collective. http://www.amber-online.com I thank them for the use. I also note they are trying to ensure their vast and important collection of material is preserved. Look at their site and what they do an if your hand reaches into your pocket. Be Generous. They hold the lifeblood of our Geordie communities in their archives.

POST BRITAIN ELECTION MAY 2015 BLUES...Reprised...

Postcard London 1980

So the polls said it was neck and neck with Millaband a bit in front mabbe! So seeing David Cameron's smug face driving 'austerity' Tory policy of take from the masses to feed the greedy for the next five years had me reaching for an outsize crate of aspirin, concentrated fig juice, tincture of opium and locking' meself in me cone of silence (The Fall on continuous play) and moaning' loudly.

Someone else on hearing the election result Auckland graffiti 2006

Joost when I thought it could not get worse I saw the election returns for UKIP across the North East-no seats but bloody Nora-what was in the wata up there? But then there were steak knives thrown in to boot! "Labour lost" the cry went up from the jackals of the middle ground, "because they (Miliband) were too socialist"-return Labour to Blairism (pale blue Tory toadying for little oiks into celebrity, spin and smoke and mirrors politics who want their pound of everything and give nothin back to the electorates they represent but debt, poverty and grinding disillusion). Miliband too socialist? Mabe it were summat hallucinogenic in tap water. Well fook me! Maybe it was we forgot our socialist roots. Look north of the border and see the people's choice in action and people like Gordon Brown should hang their heads in shame. Another five years of tory destruction and too little done by Labour to offer a true alternative on the hustings.

So to make meself feel better I re-read the 1945 Labour Party election manifesto “Let us Face the Future” . And it is still a call to the fight in my eyes. Despite globalisation it is the same division, the few (and greedy) feeding of the many, investing in poverty for return of profit.

Thanks to Tony Benn (whose last book asked people to read this manifesto and debate if there is still a place for a socialist vision to drive political change) and the archive for the whole document. These are excerpts below that resonate with me ageing socialist heart for due consideration for all those who think the time for this is locked in the past. Is it Fook! This post is dedicated to Tony Benn and Tom Uren-socialist warriors both.

...In the years that followed, the "hard-faced men" and their political friends kept control of the Government. They controlled the banks, the mines, the big industries, largely the press and the cinema. They controlled the means by which the people got their living. They controlled the ways by which most of the people learned about the world outside. This happened in all the big industrialised countries...

...Great economic blizzards swept the world in those years. The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. These men had only learned how to act in the interest of their own bureaucratically run private monopolies which may be likened to totalitarian oligarchies within our democratic State. They had and they felt no responsibility to the nation...

...But Big Business knows that this will happen only if the people vote into power the party which promises to get rid of the controls and so let the profiteers and racketeers have that freedom for which they are pleading eloquently on every Tory platform and in every Tory newspaper...

...They accuse the Labour Party of wishing to impose controls for the sake of control. That is not true, and they know it. What is true is that the anti-controllers and anti-planners desire to sweep away public controls, simply in order to give the profiteering interests and the privileged rich an entirely free hand to plunder the rest of the nation as shamelessly as they did in the nineteen-twenties.

Does freedom for the profiteer mean freedom for the ordinary man and woman, whether they be wage-earners or small business or professional men or housewives? Just think back over the depressions of the 20 years between the wars, when there were precious few public controls of any kind and the Big Interests had things all their own way. Never was so much injury done to so many by so few. Freedom is not an abstract thing. To be real it must be won, it must be worked for.

The Labour Party stands for order as against the chaos which would follow the end of all public control. We stand for order, for positive constructive progress as against the chaos of economic do-as-they-please anarchy...

The nation wants food, work and homes. It wants more than that - it wants good food in plenty, useful work for all, and comfortable, labour - saving homes that take full advantage of the resources of modern science and productive industry. It wants a high and rising standard of living, security for all against a rainy day, an educational system that will give every boy and girl a chance to develop the best that is in them...

...The Labour Party stands for freedom - for freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of the Press. The Labour Party will see to it that we keep and enlarge these freedoms, and that we enjoy again the personal civil liberties we have, of our own free will, sacrificed to win the war. The freedom of the Trade Unions, denied by the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act, 1927, must also be restored. But there are certain so-called freedoms that Labour will not tolerate: freedom to exploit other people; freedom to pay poor wages and to push up prices for selfish profit; freedom to deprive the people of the means of living full, happy, healthy lives...

...Jobs for All.

All parties pay lip service to the idea of jobs for all...

Our opponents would be ready to use State action to do the best they can to bolster up private industry whenever it plunges the nation into heavy unemployment. But if the slumps in uncontrolled private industry are too severe to be balanced by public action - as they will certainly prove to be - our opponents are not ready to draw the conclusion that the sphere of public action must be extended.

They say, "Full employment. Yes! If we can get it without interfering too much with private industry." We say, "Full employment in any case, and if we need to keep a firm public hand on industry in order to get jobs for all, very well. No more dole queues, in order to let the Czars of Big Business remain kings in their own castles. The price of so-called 'economic freedom' for the few is too high if it is bought at the cost of idleness and misery for millions."...

...a high and constant purchasing power can be maintained through good wages, social services and insurance, and taxation which bears less heavily on the lower income groups. But everybody knows that money and savings lose their value if prices rise so rents and the prices of the necessities of life will be controlled...

...planned investment in essential industries and on houses, schools, hospitals and civic centres will occupy a large field of capital expenditure. A National Investment Board will determine social priorities and promote better timing in private investment. In suitable cases we would transfer the use of efficient Government factories from war production to meet the needs of peace. The location of new factories will be suitably controlled and where necessary the Government will itself build factories. There must be no depressed areas in the New Britain...

...the Bank of England with its financial powers must be brought under public ownership, and the operations of the other banks harmonised with industrial needs...

...By these and other means full employment can be achieved. But a policy of Jobs for All must be associated with a policy of general economic expansion and efficiency as set out in the next section of this Declaration. Indeed, it is not enough to ensure that there are jobs for all. If the standard of life is to be high - as it should be - the standard of production must be high. This means that industry must be thoroughly efficient...

...The Labour Party intends to link the skill of British craftsmen and designers to the skill of British scientists in the service of our fellow men. The genius of British scientists and technicians who have produced radio-location, jet propulsion, penicillin. and the Mulberry Harbours in wartime, must be given full rein in peacetime too.

Each industry must have applied to it the test of national service. If it serves the nation, well and good; if it is inefficient and falls down on its job, the nation must see that things are put right.

These propositions seem indisputable, but for years before the war anti-Labour Governments set them aside, so that British industry over a large field fell into a state of depression, muddle and decay. Millions of working and middle class people went through the horrors of unemployment and insecurity. It is not enough to sympathise with these victims: we must develop an acute feeling of national shame - and act.

The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain - free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.

There are big industries not yet ripe for public ownership which must nevertheless be required by constructive supervision to further the nation's needs and not to prejudice national interests by restrictive anti-social monopoly or cartel agreements - caring for their own capital structures and profits at the cost of a lower standard of living for all...

Public ownership of the fuel and power industries... Public ownership of gas and electricity undertakings will lower charges, prevent competitive waste, open the way for co-ordinated research and development, and lead to the reforming of uneconomic areas of distribution. Other industries will benefit.

Public ownership of inland transport. Co-ordination of transport services by rail, road, air and canal cannot be achieved without unification. And unification without public ownership means a steady struggle with sectional interests or the enthronement of a private monopoly, which would be a menace to the rest of industry...

...Public supervision of monopolies and cartels with the aim of advancing ;industrial efficiency in the service of the nation. Anti-social restrictive practices will be prohibited...

...The shaping of suitable economic and price controls to secure that first things shall come first in the transition from war to peace and that every citizen (including the demobilised Service men and women) shall get fair play. There must be priorities in the use of raw materials, food prices must be held, homes for the people for all before luxuries for the few. We do not want a short boom followed by collapse as after the last war; we do not want a wild rise in prices and inflation, followed by a smash and widespread unemployment. It is either sound economic controls - or smash.

    
The better organisation of Government departments and the Civil Service for work in relation to these ends. The economic purpose of government must be to spur industry forward and not to choke it with red tape. 

Agriculture and The People's Food

Agriculture is not only a job for the farmers; it is also a way of feeding the people. So we need a prosperous and efficient agricultural industry ensuring a fair return for the farmer and farm worker without excessive prices to the consumer. Our agriculture should be planned to give us the food we can best produce at home, and large enough to give us as much of those foods as possible.

Our good farm lands are part of the wealth of the nation and that wealth should not be wasted. The land must be farmed, not starved. If a landlord cannot or will not provide proper facilities for his tenant farmers, the State should take over his land at a fair valuation. The people need food at prices they can afford to pay. This means that our food supplies will have to be planned. Never again should they be left at the mercy of the city financier or speculator. Instead there must be stable markets, to the great gain of both producer and consumer.

Everybody says that we must have houses. Only the Labour Party is ready to take the necessary steps - a full programme of land planning and drastic action to ensure an efficient building industry that will neither burden the community with a crippling financial load nor impose bad conditions and heavy unemployment on its workpeople. There must be no restrictive price rings to keep up prices and bleed the taxpayer, the owner-occupier and the tenant alike. Modern methods, modern materials will have to be the order of the day.

There must be a due balance between the housing programme, the building of schools and the urgent requirements of factory modernisation and construction which will enable industry to produce efficiently.

... Labour's pledge is firm and direct - it will proceed with a housing programme with the maximum practical speed until every family in this island has a good standard of accommodation. That may well mean centralising and pooling of building materials and components by the State, together with price control. If that is necessary to get the houses as it was necessary to get the guns and planes, Labour is ready.

And housing ought to be dealt with in relation to good town planning - pleasant surroundings, attractive lay-out, efficient utility services, including the necessary transport facilities...

...at the earliest possible moment, "further" or adult education, and free secondary education for all.

And, above all, let us remember that the great purpose of education is to give us individual citizens capable of thinking for themselves.

National and local authorities should co-operate to enable people to enjoy their leisure to the full, to have opportunities for healthy recreation. By the provision of concert halls, modern libraries, theatres and suitable civic centres, we desire to assure to our people full access to the great heritage of culture in this nation.

Health of the Nation and its Children

By good food and good homes, much avoidable ill-health can be prevented. In addition the best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment.

In the new National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. More research is required into the causes of disease and the ways to prevent and cure it.

Labour will work specially for the care of Britain's mothers and their children - children's allowances and school medical and feeding services, better maternity and child welfare services. A healthy family life must be fully ensured and parenthood must not be penalised if the population of Britain is to be prevented from dwindling.

Social Insurance against the Rainy Day

The Labour Party has played a leading part in the long campaign for proper social security for all - social provision against rainy days, coupled with economic policies calculated to reduce rainy days to a minimum. Labour led the fight against the mean and shabby treatment which was the lot of millions while Conservative Governments were in power over long years. A Labour Government will press on rapidly with legislation extending social insurance over the necessary wide field to all.

But great national programmes of education, health and social services are costly things. Only an efficient and prosperous nation can afford them in full measure. If, unhappily, bad times were to come, and our opponents were in power, then, running true to form, they would be likely to cut these social provisions on the plea that the nation could not meet the cost. That was the line they adopted on at least three occasions between the wars.

There is no good reason why Britain should not afford such programmes, but she will need full employment and the highest possible industrial efficiency in order to do so...

...(Aim for) A World of Progress and Peace...

...The economic well-being of each nation largely depends on world-wide prosperity. The essentials of prosperity for the world as for individual nations are high production and progressive efficiency, coupled with steady improvement in the standard of life, an increase in effective demand, and fair shares for all who by their effort contribute to the wealth of their community. We should build a new United Nations, allies in a new war on hunger, ignorance and want.

And the effective choice of the people in this Election will be between the Conservative Party, standing for the protection of the rights of private economic interest, and the Labour Party, allied with the great Trade Union and co-operative movements, standing for the wise organisation and use of the economic assets of the nation for the public good. Those are the two main parties; and here is the fundamental issue which has to be settled...

...In the interests of the nation and of the world, we earnestly urge all progressives to see to it - as they certainly can - that the next Government is not a Conservative Government but a Labour Government which will act on the principles of policy set out in the present Declaration.

See the whole manifesto from Archive of Labour Party Manifestos

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