Leeds West Indian Carnival
The Prince and Princess show on Sunday 17 August started the Leeds West Indian Carnival. Hundreds packed the Carnival Marquee to see the young people's colourful costumes.
The following Friday saw the Queen Show in Millennium Square. The Lord Mayor, Councillor Neil Taggart, graciously hosted a reception for the guests at the event. This has been the one of few occasions in the last 15 years he has been anywhere near the event.
Hughbon Condor's design won followed by Arthur France's costume. Hughbon has now been so successful there has been talk of giving him a couple of years off to allow others to win.
The reggae concert in Potternewton Park attracted several thousand fans who were able to listen to some good music and enjoy the food and other items for sale in a transformed park.
The visitors were able to listen to music that worked its way through complete sets. This contrasted with the legendary Lady Saw's performance at Northern Light where she ended up being sandwiched for 15 minutes between Wayne Marshall and Buju Banton. However the whole event in Leeds' newest and most sophisticated night-club went brilliantly. The live performance went out on BBC1extra and Radio One through till 2am.
Miss Mention reports on her website that Lady Saw gave a vintage performance in Birmingham. Miss Mention also managed to make the Leeds reggae Concert.
Carnival Day proper starts with J'ouve. At 6.30am two sound systems and several hundred revellers set off to wake Chapeltown up so that no one will sleep in for the carnival. Garth and Wendy Frankland with their toothbrushes joined them. The delay in setting off was due to the police cordoning off the area around the West Indian Centre due to an unfortunate shooting which had taken place a couple of hours earlier. There were no police officers on the event other than a local police liaison officer and the former Community Inspector Kevin Spencer who has become even more energetic in his retirement.
After a couple of hours sleep it was then time to join the parade proper. Despite the Mistress of Ceremonies Susan Pinder's promise at the Queen Show, this set off the traditional one hour late at 3pm. Given the dozens of floats, troops and Carnival Queens this represents pretty good organisation. Around 5000 took part in the route along Roundhay and Chapeltown Roads. Despite the greyish skies record crowds turned out along the route and inside Potternewton Park to watch the event.
Chapel Allerton Arts festival
The ever growing Alliance for Green Socialism had its first stall at this ever-expanding event. Its workers told me they did very well. There was a considerable amount of goodwill towards them and many people told them they wouldn't be voting Labour again. Visitors to the stall were also very supportive of the idea of combining concern for the environment with socialist policies.
The Liberal Democrats, mainly from Harehills and Moortown, confined their political activity to handing out balloons. Labour however issued two leaflets both of which sank to new political lows. The first was a straightforward near-reprint of the leaflet they issued last year. They make the claim that "Chapel Allerton is the 'Best Area of Leeds'". However they fail to answer the question put in last year's Alliance for Green Socialism newsletter about why two New Labour Councillors and the MP refuse to live in Chapel Allerton.
The second leaflet was much more sinister. It was dominated by a darkened hooded figure and in sensational headlines supported the use of Antisocial Behaviour orders as being central to the fight against crime. The leaflet attacked the Tories and Liberal Democrats for being soft on crime. The New Labour MP and his councillors showed exactly where they stood on crime. Crime is defined as those activities conducted by youth. There was no mention of white-collar crime or the illegal invasion of Iraq and the thousands of deaths along with massive tax hikes to pay for this US-led squalid adventure. No - crime is what working class youth do.
And of course there is no accounting for their own personal contributions to helping crime in Chapel Allerton - Councillor Taggart failed at the West Yorkshire Police Committee to develop proper local community based policing.
The three local councillors' contribution continues with their:
- Failure to support the Chapel Allerton Motor Cycle Project
- The failure to replace the youth work at the now demolished Chapeltown Community Centre
- The failure to develop the Chapel Allerton Adventure Playground
- Lack of support for the 10-2 club
- Cutting back of the junior youth clubs at Prince Phillips Centre.
No wonder the Alliance for Green Socialism is issuing a special leaflet with the headline: "Be tough on crime ... Be tough on the causes of crime - the New Labour Council"
A tale of two Barnards
One of the many interesting events at the Chapel Allerton Arts Festival was Robert Barnard's talk at Chapel Allerton Library on the Young Brontes. Robert gave an interesting and informative talk, which held his large audience. Robert Barnard is the chair of the Bronte Society and a recognised expert on the Brontes. He is also a well-known detective story writer.
One of the audience was wayward colleague Garth Frankland who reminisced over coffee and chocolate biscuits with Robert about his days on the Leeds University Brotherton Library Committee, a fellow member being a Professor of English called John Barnard who was also something of an expert on the Brontes. For a long time Garth had laboured under the misapprehension that the two Barnards were the same. To confuse matter further Robert too had been a Professor of English at the University of Tromso. However John had moved to Oxford and Robert had moved to Leeds but they had never met.
A christening
Sharon's baby Sharzan was christened at St Martin's Church. Despite delays in starting the service the Reverend Jim Siller and the Reverend Cecil Williams conducted a strong baptism service involving everyone from the very young to the older ones of us there. There was an emphasis on not simply going through the motions of the blessings but on trying them in practice. The service was lead by a reading from St James's letters.
Afterwards the family and friends went to the Lodge on Nassau Place for an amazing feast, one of whose highlights was Sharzan's Great Aunt Jeannie Sutton's wonderful goat curry with rice and peas.
The Independent Labour Party meeting
30 people attended Leeds Alliance for Green Socialism meeting at Leeds City Gallery on the lessons of the ILP for today.
Tony Jowitt, principal of Northern College and author of several books on the ILP, gave a masterly summing-up of the main characteristics of the ILP. He concluded that if the founders of the ILP were alive today, given their commitment to moral principles, they would not be in New Labour but in the anti-globalisation movement.
Bill Hunter, a member of ILP in the 1940s and veteran Trotskyist, gave an account of his experiences as a Marxist working-class militant in the ILP during the Second World War. Bill was the trade union Convenor of some engineering factories and often argued with Fenner Brockway, at that time the General Secretary of the ILP, over the politics of the organisation. This was followed by a lively and informative discussion.
Matthew Withey of the Henry Moore Institute and curator of the Leeds City Art Gallery exhibition of socialist sculpture introduced the exhibition.
A tale of two inquests
As explained in Umbrella 62, Lord Hutton has legally taken over the job of coroner for the strange death of Dr Kelly. He is a Northern Ireland judge who has worked regularly in trials without juries and was chosen on Blair's behalf by Lord Falconer as the safe pair of hands for the inquiry. Roy Hattersley predicts in his column in the Guardian that this "conservative" and "establishment" judge will come to a "balanced and judicious" conclusion. The government will be let off the hook and the judge will not tackle the reasons why the government took us to war.
And as for investigating Dr Kelly's death, Lord Hutton has no forensic training and is not an experienced coroner. His investigation and report will be a cover-up. It will make some waves and it will attack the culture in Downing Street; however Blair can say that has already changed with Campbell going. But the key questions of who killed Kelly and why Britain got bounced into the invasion will not be addressed.
Hoon and Kelly
Hoon and Kelly are very different, but they do share some important characteristics. Kelly worked for years developing biological weapons at Porton Down. His expertise in weapons of mass destruction derives from his commitment in developing them. He, like Hoon over cluster bombs, felt no personal moral responsibility for their development. Like Hoon he resented anyone who tried to bring him to account for his actions. Kelly saw his Bahai faith as something divorced from any moral decisions he personally had to take, just as Hoon turns up at Christian churches. One of the key Bahai elements of faith is support for the United Nations.
Kelly's last emails show no indication of a man about to commit suicide. In one message, he wrote: "It has been difficult. Hopefully it will all blow over by the end of the week and I can travel to Baghdad and get on with the real work." In another he talked of "dark forces" at work. The inquiry had also heard that Dr Kelly told a UK diplomat months before his apparent suicide in an Oxfordshire woodland that he would probably be found "dead in the woods" if Iraq was invaded.
Professor Hawton, Director of the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University's department of psychiatry, considered these throwaway remarks: "I think it is pure coincidence." But the eyewitness accounts of Kelly's death scene carry more weight than Professor Hawton's opinions given his lack of forensic knowledge:
- Louise Holmes, who with her border collie dog Brock was part of the search team, found Dr Kelly's body slumped against the bottom of a tree in woods on Harrowdown Hill. Ms Holmes said there had been a lot of blood on his left arm, which was bent back "in a funny position".
- David Bartlett, one of the ambulance paramedics who pronounced Dr Kelly dead, said he was surprised there was not more blood if it was an "arterial bleed".
- PC Dean Franklin said that near the body there was a lock knife with a 3-4 inch blade with blood on it. There was also an open bottle of water. A search of the area had revealed no sign of a struggle, he said.
Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed and the baby
Six years ago in Paris Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed died in Paris. They were buried in England. English law says that inquests have to be held when the bodies are returned to England. Up until now no inquest has been held.
Suddenly Michael Burgess, Coroner for Surrey, has announced he will be conducting an inquest into both deaths. However he has refused to tell the public, who pay his wages, when he will start. He has also refused to say whether he will conduct both inquests together and whether he will convene a jury for both. Burgess has to be the coroner for Dodi Al-Fayed, as Surrey was his place of abode. And by happy coincidence Burgess has just been appointed coroner to the Royal family. A recent law says that if a jury is appointed for a member of the Royal family then it has to consist of members of the Royal Household.
The establishment seems to have picked yet another suitable coroner to keep its secrets.
-- Half-Celestial Khan
