Wanstead Winter Wonderland

Off message.  Winter walk started at Joseph Fry memorial in Forest Gate then through centre of Wanstead Flats into Wanstead Park.  Coffee and Cake at the Temple.  Then down to River Roding and along to the City of London cemetery path and back into the Flats, past Golden Fleece Pub and home. 

I loved the local kids building the biggest London Snowman and igloo ever!

Fantastic walk.

Update: I have posted pictures from walk on Facebook here

Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and Birthday of Leon Trotsky

I thought I would mark the occasion of the Storming of the Winter Place and the birth of Trotsky by posting this magnificent painting Bolshevik (1920), by Boris Kustodiev.

This day is also somewhat improbably the birthday of someone else.

It is a lovely, sunny autumnal day and since there are no barricades about I am now off for a run (jog) around Wanstead Flats and Wanstead Park.

Remember, remember the fifth of November...(and other things)

"Remember, remember the fifth of November, The gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder, treason, Should ever be forgot...".

This was the "traditional" introduction on the PA to tonight's Newham Mayor Guy Fawkes Night Firework display on Wanstead flats.  Click on College to bring up detail.

The venue was packed with local residents with lots of families - kids, parents, uncle and aunties and grandparents, all together and enjoying the occasion.  Thankfully the rain held off, it was quite warm and the sky was relatively clear.

The firework display and music was simply fantastic and a real special treat.  It was enthusiastically received by the crowd.

The explosions, bangs and bright lights did I must admit once again set me thinking about this location 70 years ago during the London Blitz.  When Wanstead flats was the site of massive anti-aircraft batteries, barrage balloon stations and search lights trying to defend East London against German bombers.  Every few minutes or so tonight you could see an aircraft fly (high) over the display.  Some of the fireworks resembled the "Ack-Ack" anti-aircraft tracer fire and the flares that would have been fired in anger from roughly the same spot during those terrible times.

Last week while waiting to attend the Civic Reception for our local Territorial Battalion, 7 Rifles, at the Old Town Hall, Stratford I had a look at the Newham special exhibition to remember the 70th Anniversary of the Blitz.  Local residents of the time were quoted as saying that the first they knew of the mass raid on 7 September 1940 was when they heard the guns in Wanstead flats open fire on the enemy.

My Scottish Grandfather served in London during the Second World War in a Edinburgh TA Royal Artillery anti-aircraft regiment.  We are not sure where he was based but the family think that it could  have been on Wanstead flats.  My father remembered as a child travelling down by train from Edinburgh with his Mum and little sister to visit my Grandfather and staying with a local London family in a terrace house overlooking a "park".  Who knows - it could even be the street or even house I live in now. Wouldn't it be great to find out?

Later during the war this part of Wanstead flats had a German prison of war camp built on it.  It has also been used ever since as a site for large fun fairs and circus.  During the 2012 Olympics the Police are proposing to temporally site a "briefing centre" at this spot. 

On the way out I bumped into Newham Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, who had during the event been wearing his chain of office and had spent most of the evening being asked by children to pose for a picture of them with him.

TIGMOO 2010: “This Great Movement Of Ours”

I’m trying to follow the TUC conference which is taking place this week in Manchester as best as you can from London. I thought the call beforehand by Sally Hunt, General Secretary of UCU for radical reform of the TUC and the wider movement was a breath of fresh air.

Yes, we should have only one union per sector. Easier said than done of course - what sector are private companies in that also run public services? But it is a complete nonsense to have two, three, four or even more recognised trade unions in the same organisation. Good employers are confused and frustrated about who to negotiate with and bad employers openly boast about being able to “divide and conquer”.

I’m not sure about having a directly "elected" TUC General Secretary by all members since essentially Congress is a coalition of independent trade unions who also hold all the TUC purse skins. Sally rather accurately compared the current process of electing a TUC leader with that of the “Pope”. If we did go down the road of direct elections I think you would find if it came to the push, that like the Pope, the TUC Secretary would not have any “divisions” or real power.

Yes, definitely to Sally’s ideas about setting targets and priorities over achieving the holy grail of increasing density and membership. Density and internal organisation (the number of trained local stewards/safety reps backed by effective national union resources) is absolutely the most important issue that should be debated at Congress. Everything else is actually secondly. Without density and organisation we can achieve nothing and resist nothing.

Personally (since I have it on unreliable evidence that I love the sound of my own voice) I wouldn’t get rid totally of the conference “motion based format” but I think we need to change the emphasis to building and organising.

This morning while listening to my Walkman while running (aka jogging very slowly) around my beloved Wanstead Flats I heard TUC Secretary, Brendan Barber, being interviewed on “Today” by a rather over dramatic, John Humphrys, who was on Daily Mail Lite mode trying to provoke Brendan to say something stupid. He didn’t fail into this trap and came over I think very well – as a modern, sensible, thoughtful and constructive trade union leader. He made it very, very clear that TIGMOO will not be bankrupting itself in a series of glorious defeats but can and will, mobilise effective and telling industrial action and political opposition to the cuts.

Some trade unionists (and the Daily Mail) will be disappointed that he did not bang the Radio 4 podium with his shoe and threaten to bury the Condems. But until we build our density and organisation we cannot threaten what we cannot deliver. What the wider Labour Movement and its allies can deliver is widespread, co-ordained and SMART opposition which will include targeted industrial action.

We are ironically facing an opportunity and not only a threat. UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis, speaks about the Raison d'être of Unions and that they are there for the bad times not just the good. Surely, now we are all facing this massive threat of cuts that there cannot be anyone in work who cannot say, hand on heart, they do not need to join a trade union? We recruit and organise or die.

(picture is of the first General Secreatry of the TUC - Mr C W Bowerman in a rather modern pose!)