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EUROSCEPTICS ‘AUSTERITY RACIST WARMONGERS BLUES’ IS A BIG HIT!
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SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 8
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CONTENTS –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Edit & Design: Alan Rutherford Published online by www.handoverfistpress.com Cover: Alan Rutherford Photographs, words and artwork sourced from ‘found in the scrapbook of life’, no intentional copyright infringement intended, credited whenever possible, so, for treading on any toes ... apologies all round! Deadline for submitting articles to be included in the next issue, will be the 15th day of the next month, in your dreams!
Opening 03 Ireland, 1846
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Detritus 19 An Age Old Question
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Folly 35 Don’t Mark His Face
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Dublin, Easter 1916
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4 horsemen
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Letters
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Articles and all correspondence to: alanrutherford1@mac.com
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OPENING Blah-blahblah-blahblah––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Hello, Welcome to magazine number 8. Articles by way of other sources, words borrowed, and although I try to provide artwork and photographs ... some odd pieces catch my eye and are adopted to illustrate an angle. Its a visual necessity if I am to produce this ‘rag’ ... contributors are a scarce breed. Martin Taylor excels himself again, and if he isn’t constructing a book of prose, then he should! Otherwise its nuggets of the eclectic ... again!
Photograph: Alan Rutherford
Until next time, get active, stay alive ...
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IRELAND, 1846 Paul Kaill
Photograph: Alan Rutherford
We buried Patrick in the early hours of this morning, choosing that time so as not to fret the other little ones. They had seen enough of death to know that their eldest brother had finally gone; they knew the symptoms of The Illness, and knew there was but one cure. When The Sleep came on him it was the first time for a year that Patrick’s young, wizened face had shown peace. He was his father through and through: tall and silent, save for when something needed to be said; a worker; yes, a worker allright – lithe and muscled from the hoeing and lifting, his bared flesh reddened by sun and prevailing wind. My son, and his death has rent this family so deeply that it will never recover. When the realisation came that the crop would fail, our neighbours called a meeting for all those who, like them and us, were dependent on the praties for their survival. One year before we had met in similar circumstances, locked in conversation for a whole day, trying to decide where our meagre supplies should be stored, how they should be rationed, how they could be defended if raiders should try to pillage. Hard it had been, but decisions were taken. Those with ample lost little, and those with nothing gleaned just enough to survive. We did survive, cursing our bad luck that the crop had been so bad, invoking the better times that were sure to come.
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It was to that end that we set about the planting of seeds, ready for the cycle of nature to take its grip, holding all in its hands, caressing and nurturing the seed into growth. And as we saw the first tiny green leaves begin to show – we wept. Food to feed us all. Two full meals every day. Fullness and an absence of want. One with nature. Now nature had become our enemy, and the meeting of these forty souls had about it an air of inevitability and dread. A year before there had been supplies to allocate, but now nothing was left except the seed praties, and there were precious few of those. Families who had used their seed to survive the winter were dependent on those whose prudence, or good fortune, had dictated a careful storage. For that reason many were dependent on us, and we gave what we could. After the allocation was over the whole family had gathered in the yard, silent except for the crying of the little ones, they not able to understand the giving. We had to shield our eyes against the setting sun as we watched our neighbours leave, thay laden with the givings; we full-hearted at having given. As we watched them go Jonjo released us from his embrace and returned to the house, and I knew – because I knew him as well as any woman has known any man – that he was pain’d in his heart and had a mind to leave. I followed, and the children cowered in the barn for they knew that words would be said. ‘Is it the anger that makes you leave, Jonjo? Is it the hurt of Patrick’s death? Must you leave, and us needing you so?’ He never looked up. He could not – for to look me in the eye would have brought tears to his. The sack he had torn from the pile was opened and the few items of spare clothing he had were thrust inside.
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Photograph: Alan Rutherford
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‘Don’t walk away from me my darlin’. Talk to me as other husbands would. Take your anger and your pain and lay them on me, but do not leave. Please.’ I followed him out of the house, through the yard and past the barn where the babies were huddled. He took our only horse, frail and starved though it was, and walked with a purposeful stride down the art track and away. ‘You will never be forgiven, Jonjo!’ was all that I could say. But it was my heart that spoke, and the heart is seldom a guarantor of reason.
Photograph: Alan Rutherford
As I knelt and wept there the children came to comfort me, clinging so tight that, when I tried to rise their weight held me down, and their tears made me forget my own, and a strength born from shared deprivation caused me to fuss them and cajole them back to the house. Strange that, though their father’s going had torn a piece out of them, too, they wept only for my weeping, and for the grieving of a brother taken and never to be held again. ‘Help me with supper, children. Kate, put the kettle on the fire, and John – fetch sticks to make the fire burn hot. The twins can help me skin and gut the rabbit. We are very lucky to have caught this fine buck, for there are few enough of them left to catch. Quickly now – fetch a pail to catch the entrails, and fresh water for the cleaning of the skin before it is hung.‘ From tears to full purpose in the space of minutes, with nothing but despair as a guide and guardian. The fire burned bright, and the scent
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of roasting rabbit filled the house, and for a while there our troubles were forgotten, lost in the anticipation of a full belly and the absence of hunger. Our plates were licked clean, with no-one to scold for lack of decencies; decency a thing which had been forgotten when want came to call.
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One year before we had harvested what little there was to harvest, and looked to this time, this harvest time in His year 1846 as a point on which our thoughts could dwell; but in a night the parties were ruined, the stalks firm and green but the leaves scorched black, and the waking to a new dawn that day brought cries of anguish from those who were first afield. Across a whole country came recognition of the misery which was to come, and for some the knowledge of it was too great. The boughs of the forest trees bore fruit of a wretched kind: the old who saw no point in further suffering; and the young ones – whose killers took their own lives when the writhing of the others had ceased; and none of them with strength enough to watch the others suffer. Acts of kindness to which no eulogy could ever do justice. Amidst the hunger and the dying there was those whose hearts could not be touched, even by the hollow-eyed gaze of the frailest infant. For their concern lay not in the welfare of the tenant farmers and their kin, but in the profits gleaned from the sale of that which was produced, and the rent in money or kind that brought the tenant families to their knees in the paying. Some of these profiteers were old and we, the earth-bred and the hungry, wished them a swift and painful death; but some were younger, enriched by bequest, whom we hated with a passion that, for the most part, remained unspoken. While the harvest was good and
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sufficient for our needs we dared not risk the wrath of our landlords, for we had our homes and livelihoods to lose and no future without them, but deprivation had aroused anger within us and now, when rents were due, our monied masters had much to fear – and they knew this. One such had ventured, foolishly, alone, to a tenant’s home close by, and had tried to horse-whip a wife who was heavy with child, but her bairns had screamed a warning and we had responded. They found him the next morning, tied to a tree and whipped so badly that he was identified only by the heavy gold rings on his fingers and the initials embroidered on a fine silk handkerchief. Now the landlords came with helpers tall and strong, carrying gun, powder and shot to add to their powers of persuasion. None dared rebel in such company, and those found wanting were evicted at once, and their homes burned to settle the matter, and the lanes and villages throughout the land began to carry traffic of the human kind. Whole families wandered at the mercy of elements, seeking what shelter they could, with no food at all to be bought or stolen, and those with an apple or a hen’s egg traded life for these things, and young girls were taken and sullied in ditches and empty barns, and many killed in the process. It was a time of want and a time of evil, and a time when, for some, revenge was the only thing which sustained life. In the early hours of the following morning there was movement outside the house, not enough to awaken the children but enough to rouse me from a fitful sleep and cause me to reach for the shillelagh at the bedside. One person, moving quietly over the sod, first to the barn then towards the house, pausing at the door only to make himself known.
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‘If you have it in mind to brain me, wife, you should know you’ll be making yourself a widow in the process. Will you let me in, woman, or will we both be standing here all night?’ A husband returned home and, not for the first time in the course of human history, a wife ready to forgive and welcome. ‘You’ll be cursing me for leaving you, wife, and you have good cause to do so.’
Photograph: Alan Rutherford
I looked into his eyes, there in the near-darkness, and saw that the anger had gone from him, saw a man content, and I knew that someone had felt his anger and suffered for it. Then I embraced him and he’d him tight to my body and wished him to be passion’d by my kisses, so that he would mate with me as other husbands would with their wives, so that the hurt would be gone between us, and we could look to the new day for a beginning, even though our failed crop warranted nothing but despair. But the dampness of his clothing clung to mine, this not the new-morning dew that enveloped any night walker but a tacky blackness which caused me to pull away from him and look down to see my petticoats stained dark from breast to knee, and I knew then why the anger had gone from my man, and no explanation of events was needed nor sought. ‘You must leave now, Jonjo, and take what little food we have here. Hurry. Here, take this sacking to carry what you need and keep you warm on the cold nights. You must never return here, for nothing but the hangman’s noose awaits you. Go, quickly.’
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‘I must stay – to protect you and the bairns. You know what they will do?’ And full realisation of what he had done now came to him. ‘They will come in strength. Burn the house. Ravish me. Beat the children. I know that. Jon, you must go!’ And he walked into the night, my husband, father to my children, a wanted man with blood on his hands, and if I had worn his shoes that night I know I would have murdered too, and had just cause to do so.
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A mile and a half distant they could be seen – a dozen torches lighting the way for a dozen men intent on retribution, fired by the discovery of one of their kind hanging from a chandelier in the library of the Big House, his eyes put out and his hands severed, and his gullet stuffed with gold coins which were his preoccupation. I stared and stared then looked away, wanting to weep but finding myself empty of such emotion; and a nightjar churred its final September song, and I took the smooth leather belt from the waistband of my only dress, choosing that implement so as not to chafe the soft flesh of my children’s necks, and walked slowly over to where they lay. The nightjar flew from its tree roost and circled twice about the house before commencing its southing, and as it passed over a copse a half-mile distant a man, gaunt, bloodied, paused to look up before recommencing his own flight – to safety and survival.
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DETRITUS
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THOSE WHO WEAR THE BUTCHER’S APRON
edited from Charlie Gilmour article in the Independent 12 February 2016
In Britain, if you’re a mass murderer, your fate seems to depend largely on how many people you kill. Slaughter a few innocents and you’ll be counting bricks in Belmarsh for the rest of your years; spill the blood of continents and it’s Portland stone and a plaque in your honour. Campaigners in Oxford recently made headlines with their attempts to topple a statue of Cecil Rhodes. Organising member of Rhodes Must Fall (RMF), South African law student Ntokozo Qwabe, even claimed the very architecture of the city was laid out “in a racist and violent way”. But can stone and metal really engender such feelings? Well, a brisk walk through central London certainly turns up a killer on every street corner. Forget Clapton or Moss Side: Whitehall’s the real “murder mile”. Unlike in Russia, where from 1991 statues of Stalin and other undesirables were dumped unceremoniously in Fallen Monument Park, or Germany, where you’d be hard-pressed to find anything glorifying its most recent empire, Britain has yet to exorcise its imperial past. The short stretch from the Strand to Parliament Square contains more butchers than Smithfield Market. Together, they’re either directly responsible for or implicated in the deaths of as many as 30 million people.
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When I arrive on the Strand to begin this atrocity tour, the first item on the agenda – a larger-than-life statue of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris – is under armed guard. It’s nothing personal: Princess Kate is gracing the nearby RAF chapel with her presence. She blithely greets current members of the air force beneath a bronze of the man who, as commanderin-chief of Bomber Command during the Second World War, was, among other things, responsible for the incineration of at least 25,000 civilians at Dresden.
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Unlike in 1992, when the Queen Mother unveiled the thing, there are no boos from protesters – dubbed “peace idiots” by the Daily Mail – just exited squeals from tourists who can’t quite believe their luck. Nor are there any traces of the splashes of red paint that meant it had to be guarded by police day and night for several months afterwards. The history of dissent has been wiped clean, and the plaque beneath contains no reference to what many consider to be a war crime. Harris is unusual – but not for his body-count. Rather, he is one of the few statue-people whose victims were mostly white. Passing General Sir Charles Napier, conqueror of much of what is now Pakistan, and Major General Sir Henry Havelock, hammer of the First Indian War of Independence – who still hold their ground at Trafalgar Square, despite an attempt by thenmayor of London Ken Livingstone to get rid of “the two generals that no one has ever heard of” – and walking down Carlton House Terrace,
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we come to the feet of Lord Curzon. As Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, Curzon oversaw one of many famines to afflict the subcontinent during the period of British rule. As about 1.25 million people starved to death, and a further two million perished from disease, Curzon cut rations he considered “dangerously high” and attacked “indiscriminate alms-giving” that “weakened the fibre and demoralised the self-reliance of the population”. Stringent tests were introduced that deprived many of aid. In the Bombay district alone, the government boasted that it had deterred a million people from claiming. The relief camps – in which the starving were forced to engage in strenuous physical labour in exchange for help – were made as unpleasant as possible. Essentials such as blankets and fuel were regularly withheld. The Guardian’s horrified correspondent described the situation as “a grand hunt of death with scores of thousands of the refugees at the famine camps for quarry”. But today Curzon stands unchallenged, dressed in mockRoman garb, above a plaque that reads: “In Recognition of a Great Public Life.” Across the Mall, on Horse Guards Parade, Field Marshal Viscount Garnet Wolseley sits proudly astride his mount. Such a fine military leader was he that the phrase “everything’s Sir Garnet” became army-speak for “everything’s great, thanks!” Engraved in the rear of the pedestal is a list of the campaigns in which he served: Egypt 1882; South Africa 1879; Ashanti 18734; Red River 1870; China 1860-1; and, of course, the “Indian Mutiny” of 1857.
A very British trade ... • Opium from India bought tea from China, which was sent to Britain with Indian raw materials like cotton. • Imported raw materials were processed into textiles and other manufactured goods in British factories, which were then exchanged for slaves in west Africa. • African slaves were bartered for sugar and tobacco and/or sold for gold and silver in the West Indies and America.
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• The gold and silver helped fund the industrial revolution and the subsequent monopoly of manufactured goods, combined with cheap labour at home, ensured British dominance of world trade. • The sugar, produced by slave labour, was combined with the tea, obtained from opium trading, to produce what became England’s national drink. EASTER 2016
Britain’s response to what is more correctly referred to as India’s First War of Independence was truly savage. A captain at the time, Wolseley recalls having sworn an oath “of having blood for blood, not drop for drop, but barrels and barrels of the filth which flows in these niggers’ veins for every drop” of British blood that had been spilled by the rebellious sepoys [Indian soldiers].
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While most accounts suggest about 100,000 Indians were killed following the rebellion – in many cases, forced to lick blood from the floor before being hung, bayoneted in the stomach or tied over cannon and blasted to smithereens – historian Amaresh Misra has calculated that almost 10 million were in fact wiped out over the next decade. As one British official recorded after the event: “On account of the undisputed display of British power, necessary during those terrible and wretched days, millions of wretches seemed to have died.” On the other side of the parade is a hero, at last. Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum was one of the truly great men of the British Empire – so much so that his image was famously used for recruitment purposes during the First World War: “Your country needs you!” But it wasn’t just Britain’s youth that he ushered into an early grave. During the Second Boer War, in response to the guerrilla tactics of the Afrikaners, he vastly expanded the use of a new tactic: the concentration camp.
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Tens of thousands were interred in filthy, undersupplied and exposed camps. Emily Hobhouse, a campaigner who made it her mission to expose conditions, wrote that “the whole talk [in the camps] was of death – who died yesterday, who lay dying today and who would be dead tomorrow”. The reward for her efforts was an attack piece in the Daily Mail, written by that great author of Empire, Edgar Wallace (Sanders of the River, King Kong and scores more). It was headlined, simply, “Woman – The Enemy”. By the end of the war, 28,000 Boers, mostly women and children, had perished in the camps. The black victims of the policy went uncounted. Years later, when the British Ambassador to Germany expressed concerns about Nazi use of concentration camps, Hermann Goering reached for his encyclopaedia: “First used by the British in South Africa,” he announced. It’s hard to imagine a more inappropriate figure for us to place on a pedestal – yet there he stands. Down Whitehall, giving a wide berth to General Haig, the bloody-minded butcher of the Somme, we arrive at Parliament Square, where statues dot the green like giant chess pieces. To the north, there’s Lord Palmerston, declarer of the First Opium War and poster boy for “gunboat diplomacy”, whose time at the Foreign Office was described by the Liberal politician John Bright as “one long crime”; next, Jan Smuts, a South African statesman whose advocacy of racial segregation laid the ground for apartheid; and finally, Sir Winston Churchill himself.
True, Winston beat the Nazis. But a game of “Who said it: Hitler or Churchill?” is still more difficult than one might think. Who called for the “feeble-minded” to be “segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them”; suggested “mental defectives...tramps and wastrels” be sent into forced labour; and warned that the “multiplication of the unfit” constituted “a very terrible danger to the race”? I’ll give you a clue: not Hitler. Unfair? One of his own cabinet ministers, Leo Amery, accused him of having a “Hitler-like” attitude when it came to India. And remember – the war effort bled India white. During the first half of 1943, even as famine set in, 70,000 tonnes of grain were extracted for use abroad. Churchill was reportedly unmoved. “The starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less serious than [that of] sturdy Greeks,” he said. But then, he didn’t have time for most Indians. Hindus were, he later said, “a foul race” who, in any case, “breed like rabbits”. The consequences were devastating. As Pier Brendon writes in The Decline and Fall of the British Empire: “Clutching infants of skin and bone, skeletal women cried for alms... Every morning corpses, decomposing in the steamy heat and often gnawed at by rats or jackals, littered the streets.” As many as three million perished in what some refer to as the “Bengali Holocaust”. Which sure puts Cecil’s achievements into some perspective. Of course Rhodes Must Fall, but so too must Churchill, Kitchener, Wolseley, Curzon and the rest; in fact,
statues that deserve their pedestals seem to be few and far between. So, what to do? As the Oxford campaigners have been discovering, resistance to change is, well, set in stone. Lord Patten, Chancellor of the University, responded to the demands of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign by suggesting that its supporters should “think about being educated elsewhere”. Many online responses were just as bad. “Cecil Rhodes did more for Africa then you’ll ever do,” wrote one typical commenter.Then, after Rhodes Must Fall campaign won an Oxford Union debate, donors stepped in and threatened to withhold funding. And so – for the present, at least, – Rhodes Must Stand. For insensitivity, perhaps? As Dalia Gebrial, an organising member of Rhodes Must Fall campaign says: “I wasn’t quite aware of the level of cognitive dissonance that exists. People really don’t know what the realities of the British Empire were. It’s not that surprising – I studied history to A-level standard and I never once engaged with the Empire. But Rhodes is not an exception. His statue exists within a wider trend: the nationalistic distortion of history,” says Gebrial. “This notion that we shouldn’t interrogate one statue because it might compel us to think more broadly about other statues and history is absurd.” Still, Britain’s nostalgic view of Empire seems to be very much entrenched. A recent YouGov poll revealed that more than 40 per cent of people believe that British colonialism was “a good
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thing” and remains “something to be proud of”. Which might explain why – when some Royal Holloway University students recently posted a group-photo of themselves next to an on-campus statue of the “Empress of India”, with the question “How can we feel included when there’s a statue that celebrates the subordination of our people?” – they started an online storm.
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“I had some seriously nasty comments,” says Grace Almond, vice-president of the Royal Holloway Women of Colour Feminism Society. “People trying to defend Queen Victoria, saying that colonialism was the best thing to happen to India.” She finds the sheer hypocrisy of her attackers almost overwhelming. “People don’t seem to have a problem with the fact that British people were looting India and Nigeria and all sorts of other colonised countries and bringing it back over here. But, as soon as you suggest knocking down a statue of someone who is – in my opinion – one of the most evil men to ever walk the planet, people get extremely defensive.” One soft option is to simply update the monuments. In 2004, Italian artist Eleonora Aguiari famously covered the equestrian statue of another imperial figure – Lord Napier of Magdala, who sits at the gates to Kensington Gardens – entirely in red tape. “We have to discern between what’s good about our past and what is not – or no longer – good,” she says. “I believe in transformation more than destruction. It would be interesting to use
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these statues as a base for a new message, to transform them into something more in line with the new moment and society.” From a different perspective, Professor Mary Beard, the TV historian, author and Cambridge don, has consistently opposed the toppling of Rhodes. “Wanting to preserve his statue is not about saying that Rhodes was a good guy,” she claims. “ But I think people have to see...what we’re the beneficiaries of. I want to empower [students] to put two fingers up to that statue and say: ‘He was wrong.’ We’ve got to be able to look these figures from the past in the eye; otherwise we just push them underground, and that doesn’t solve the problem.” From across the quads, though, comes a dissenting voice. Actually, says Dr Priyamvada Gopal of Churchill College, Cambridge, tearing down statues is an “interesting idea”. She continues: “I would welcome any move that actually began the process of undoing imperial amnesia, a condition that afflicts large swathes of Britain, not least élite institutions.” Britain, she adds, needs to “look at itself in the mirror and finally undertake a reckoning with a history that is not beautified or sanitised”. For her, Rhodes Must Fall campaign was, and is, far more than a reductive debate about masonry. “As the campaign has demanded,” says Dr Gopal, “at a practical level, there needs to be a totally honest accounting-for of Britain’s imperial past, combined with a monumental effort to acknowledge how the legacy of that
past shapes the present – including in relation to immigration, racism and the Black and Ethnic Minority presence in British institutions such as Oxbridge – and a decolonising of the curriculum in the arts and humanities to make it not just more ‘inclusive’ but considerably less centred on white Britons.” She can take heart. While the statues might not be torn down in the foreseeable future, the structures that support them are slowly but surely being eroded away. Rhodes Must Fall campaign started in South Africa, spread to Oxford, and now, across the nation, the legacies of Britain’s colonial past are being interrogated on campuses and in society at large. Meanwhile, from new and popular cultural hubs such as the Decolonising Our Minds Society, formed by London students to “critically examine the legacy of colonialism” through debates, poetry nights and hip-hop events, to Facebook groups such as Why Is My Curriculum White?, there is a sense that a “reckoning with history”, as one activist calls it, is at hand. There’s an African proverb that Grace Almond always bears in mind: “Until the lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” And she’s a lion.
Pro-imperialist historians often brag that, at its height, the British Empire covered a quarter of the world’s land surface and contained a population of over 400 million. They neglect to tell us, however, that it was drug trafficking and the slave trade that helped put the ‘Great’ into Great Britain. Or that the famines in Ireland and India, that caused tens of millions of deaths, were the result of an unyielding market ideology - backed by official callousness. While ‘civilisation’ and ‘Christianity’ were the oftdeclared motives for empire, many of the subject peoples, over whose countries the Union Jack flew, had their own view of British rule. They called Britain’s flag ‘the butcher’s apron’ and when British politicians boasted that the Empire ‘was the place where the sun never sets’ they added ‘and the blood never dries’.
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Photograph: Alan Rutherford
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Chicken says ‘Fuck it!’ ... and crosses road
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AGE-OLD QUESTION? MARTIN TAYLOR SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 8
With our pockets stuffed with blackjacks and fruit salads we strolled nonchalantly out of the shop, to the alley at the rear of the shops where we would share our collective wealth equally amongst the gang in a huddle on the ground. “Hey you lot, I seen what you did!” It was the weird goofy girl that worked in the shop on Saturdays. Greg was supposed to be keeping her occupied, I looked up at him and he shrugged his shoulders, I conceded with an upward nod, it was a tough assignment. We were caught like rabbits in the headlights, unable to move or speak. “I want in, you better give me that Mars bar there, or I dob you in.” Somebody grabbed the Mars from the pile and handed it to her. She smirked, turned on her heal and disappeared around the corner, back to work, where she could have quite easily robbed her own Mars bar if she hadn’t her job security to worry about. Silence for a few tense moments, then hysterical laughter accompanied by exaggerated sifting of the treasure, pirate style. “Pete nearly shit himself!” “What do you mean, nearly?” Once the haul had been shared out we headed for the cake shop, impossible to rob anything here, all the cakes were behind glass, only
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the wasps and flies could get in there and inevitably never get out. However, come half four, Jean will be getting ready to close up. “Hi Jean, any stale buns?” Angelic look. “Aw, look at you little cherubs, let me see now...” She filled a brown paper bag with stale buns and wrapped a custard slice in greaseproof paper. “This is for you hun.” She winked the wink that I tolerated for free buns.
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I gave the custard slice to Mum when I got home, they were her favourite. She was sorting and stacking dented and label less tinned food into the kitchen cupboard, singing along to Desmond and Molly (or whatever it’s called)
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She worked at a cash and carry, where, once a month, she and her fellow workers could purchase the unsellable tins at a cut price. Generally you could tell what the contents were by giving the tins a shake, but occasionally what looked like a tin of beans turned out to be peaches. I think this accounted for most of Dads bizarre culinary experiments he knocked up and tested on us while he was out of work. It was all so easy then, I was a prince in my neighbourhood, a criminal mastermind, a leader of men, a wooer of women, entrepreneur and provider. Every moment was an adventure, even opening a tin can. When did it all change?
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FOLLY
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IN OR OUT THE CHOICE IS YOURS? Edited from an article by
Rafael Behr in the Guardian
... and a wee quote from Nicola Sturgeon
While accepting that the European Union is a bosses club where decisions are employer-led and commercially driven, and the concessions to a working class will be subservient to profit … there is a vast raft of legislation which is aimed at creating better working conditions for workers. It is the idea of removing some of this EU legislation – rules which hamstring some employers in their haste to the trough, and is often decried by idiots as ’safety gone mad’ – that sits so comfortably with all the racist claptrap in the ‘Brexit’ (a truly arse acronym that should certainly disqualify its supporters!) camp. IN or OUT the working class will remain exploited by a ruling class …
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From Nicola Sturgeon: ‘While it’s clear that being a member of the EU has its benefits, within any institution
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improvements can be made. If we are to influence positive change in Europe, we must remain within it – only that guarantees our role in the EU decisionmaking processes on issues that affect our everyday lives. Right now, as a member of the EU, the UK sits at the top table in Brussels, with the opportunity to shape EU policy and make a positive contribution to Europe. As Norway’s former foreign minister Espen Barth Eide has said, as a member of the European Economic Area as opposed to the EU, Norway makes a substantial contribution to the EU budget, but has no vote and no presence when crucial decisions that affect the daily lives of its citizens are made. Two weeks ago, as European leaders were forced to break off from discussing the refugee crisis in order to negotiate the taper rate at which the UK can cut benefits for working EU citizens, I can’t have been the only person wondering whether the UK’s standing in the world was really being enhanced by that process. In the weeks ahead, both sides of the debate must aspire to higher ideals.’
Art: Dave Gibbons, Watching the Watchmen
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By thrusting a pointless referendum on a country with divided opinion encouraged by myths and lies is a wonderful ruling class trick, an illusion at democracy for us no-marks: Question, do you want to be ruled by Brussels fat cats or Westminster piggies? you choose. Both sides of the argument – to stay in the European Union or leave – wander aimlessly the corridors of all political parties unable to agree, such acrimonious division is likely to leave a bad taste whatever the result. Interestingly both sides consistently argue their IN or OUT will be wonderful for business and ‘the county’s prosperity’ (whatever that is?). We know what IN looks like but other than visions of a rosy little englander shiteland there is not much telling information on what a successful OUT vote will look like for citizens of the UK … other than walls will go up, tattoos of union jacks on foreheads will become compulsory, dark people won’t be able to find accommodation and business will be great for business!
REFERENDUM? DEMOOCRACY? ASK ME SOMETHING FUCKING MEANINGFUL ... LIKE DO I WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO WASTE BILLIONS OF POUNDS ON THE REPLACEMENT FOR TRIDENT?
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Another article by Rafael Behr in the Guardian gives an interesting outlook, tweaked version reprinted below …
pensioners in other member states; cross-border policing and security collaboration; the whole edifice of legal harmonisation that allows people and In the aftermath of a British vote to leave goods to flow unimpeded from one the European Union, French wine and member state to another. No serious Greek cheese would still be available in advocate of an OUT vote denies that a the shops. Budget airlines would still fly to partial Brrrr-entry would follow. Yet none continental destinations through skies that can agree how far to go back in, nor would not have fallen down. how much to pay for the privilege.
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Campaigners for a vote to Remain warn that an OUT strategy is hazardous but there would be no overnight calamity, only shock and political frenzy. The prime minister might resign. Markets would move. There would be great disappointment too, felt as a sharp sting by pro-Europeans but also as a slow burn by sceptics. Remainers would get over their defeat while the leavers would spend years mining fresh grievances from the newly blasted quarry of their victory. The first betrayals would flow quickly as the government began negotiating its way back through tiers of European cooperation: access to the single market; protections for UK workers and
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Emulating the Norwegian or Swiss models would require compromise in terms of contribution to the EU budget, acceptance of Brusselsderived regulations and porosity of borders. Any combination of those would so dilute the severance package advertised to British voters as to constitute grievous mis-selling. The leavers assert that the UK, with its vast pool of consumers for European exports, would be in a strong negotiating position. Maybe so, but the hand would be no stronger than the one David Cameron held when striking his renegotiation deal last week. Other EU leaders were mindful of the need to accommodate some British demands.
They did not want to provoke a response that might exacerbate a simmering European crisis of confidence and cohesion. The dynamic in post-referendum exit talks would be quite different. Britain would have spurned a hard-won deal and aggravated the crisis anyway. The economic leverage that Cameron (or his successor) brought to the table would be offset by a collapse in diplomatic goodwill. The jilted council would need to ensure, through punitive exit terms, that the first state ever to leave the EU would also be the last.
This peculiar reasoning flows from a long-standing refusal to accept that “Europe”, as a political process, is something that participants run collectively for their mutual advantage, as opposed to something that 27 alien nations do to Britain, and which we put up with because we lack the gumption to do anything else.
There are solid historical, geographical and cultural reasons why the UK’s conception of European partnership is sceptical and semi-detached. Only a tiny minority of British Europhiles are animated by the project’s founding ideal: economic interdependence, leading to elision of borders as That an OUT vote might provoke a less than conciliatory response in the antidote to murderous nationalism. other European capitals is taken by For most, it is a transactional affair, hardline sceptics as proof that the whole and one in which the apparatus of enterprise is an Anglophobe plot. The political union feels too clunky for the argument appears to be that friends who commercial purpose it is meant to serve. refuse to re-open a door once it has been slammed angrily in their faces are Even the least romantic, most mercantile not true friends after all, which in turn perspective on the EU recognises that just goes to show that slamming doors is it is not some economic drop-in centre the most effective way to deal with them; where the decision to attend has no it’s the only language they understand. bearing on other members. It is founded on multilateral treaties whose genesis
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was not pain-free. Britain is not the only country with EU-related dilemmas, or where politicians must strike a balance between what they think is strategically necessary and electorally viable.Yet we expect our allies to be relaxed, indulgent even, as we divert them from other problems: an epoch-defining movement of refugees across the continent; Russian territorial aggression; aftershocks of the last financial crisis; perhaps early tremors of the next one. We hijack the agenda with our demands for special treatment in exchange for … what, exactly? The good fortune to have us still in the club. Maybe. Subject to a referendum. Our collective responsibility in that vote reaches beyond these islands. Compared to David Cameron, other EU leaders do not have as much invested in the deal that was struck last week, but they are still exposed. A British rejection of membership on revised terms would be a symbolic detonation of inter-governmental compromise as the EU’s vehicle for crisis management, and a potential trigger for nationalistic and populist contagion elsewhere.
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It would not even neutralise those forces at home. The leave campaign channels appetites that cannot be met by technical changes to the terms on which Britain exchanges goods, services and people with the rest of Europe. If the UK votes to quit the EU, it will be an expression of economic and political frustration for which Brussels has long been a convenient scapegoat, and which cannot therefore be dissipated by a ritual slaughter of treaty obligations. Any workable application of an OUT vote would end up looking like a partial reconstruction of EU membership. Then each segment of the coalition for leave would feel betrayed, one by one. The Tory libertarians would complain that not enough regulation had been scrapped; the hard left, like the Socialist Workers Party who bewilderingly advocate an OUT vote, would find corporate capitalism still rampant; Ukip nativists would see no sudden restoration of ethnic homogeneity to the streets. The disparate pot of resentments, heated and stirred through the long campaign against “Europe”, would break and its contents flow into other political vessels and causes.
That is the tragedy of this referendum. So much is at stake. A European alliance, decades in the making, could be undermined with no obvious economic or political benefits in exchange. And no option on the ballot paper can satisfy all the people
for whom the whole destructive campaign has been arranged. The leavers may get what they vote for and still never get what they want.
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DON’T MARK HIS FACE Hull Prison Riot, 1976 From Jamie Doran, 873409: I was at HMP Hull at the time of the riot. We gathered on the centre and made enquiries about the inmate who was beaten up in the Segregation Unit. We spoke to the Assistant Governor, Mr Manning who assured us that the inmate had not been beaten up. We then requested to see the No. 1 Governor, and A.G. Manning went and phoned him. He then returned and told us that the Governor could not come in, as he was at a dinner dance, but, he had sent orders for us to be returned to our cells. We then asked for a delegation of inmates to see inmate Clifford, again this was refused. We then went to A wing gate, which was opened for us by A.G. Manning, who when we were all through shouted to inmates still on D wing landing, ‘Any more of you want to come through?’ He then locked the door and gate to A wing, and had the rest of the prison locked up. From Michael Davis, 682938 An inmate shouted through the window to the block which is joined onto A wing and we all heard the answer back that it was true Clifford had been assaulted and had suffered bruises to his eyes and nose; at this time there were only three screws and A.G. Manning standing on A wing ground floor near the door to the centre. After
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a few minutes of murmuring among us a fire bucket full of water was thrown down and the screws and Manning ran out locking the gate and door, then things started getting smashed and it carried on from there. At about 9.30 I saw officers in riot gear come out of C wing onto the centre and start to chase inmates on D wing and staff caught on and beat him to the floor with sticks, kick him about the head and body and one of them jumped with both feet on his head. He was bleeding from the head and laid out before his head was jumped on. I also saw another man beaten on the head with riot sticks, kicked and left laid ot bleeding from the head. I don’t know his name but he was off my wing which is D wing. It was after this that I saw no more staff on either A, D or C wings – they had left the prison and stayed only on B wing and inside the grounds in riot gear. Jamie Doran continues ... When I was on the roof, I saw the inmate Clifford, who had two black eyes and a long scratch on his face. He then verified that he had been beaten up by four prison officers. From A wing roof I saw several inmates who had given themselves up beaten by officers with riot batons while they were handcuffed. John Oates gave himself up after climbing down a drainpipe, when he reached the ground the dog handlers set their dogs on him and beat him with riot sticks, punched and kicked him then dragged him away. Several inmates who wanted to give themselves up were told: ‘Stay where you are you bastards we are coming in to get you.’
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From R.T. Hoskins, 874880 It little matters what caused the riot at Hull prison. All kinds of excuses have been given. Brutalities have been mentioned, and ‘three just men’ have disbelieved us. Not only that, they have punished us. You have all read about the riot, you have your own views on the subject. Let me tell you what happened after the riot. Let me tell you what I saw, and what I know the papers don’t know.
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We all came down on Friday 3 September, we all expected a good hiding, we had been threatened before we came down. We were searched and all our personal property taken from us. Then we were locked up, and apart from a bowl of soup at 7 o’clock, the door remained locked. All I had in my cell was a mattress, two tatty and damp blankets and no windows. During the night screws banged on my door and told me what to expect when I was unlocked. They told me they were going to cripple me, take out my eyes, rip off my arms. They kept this up all night. Breakfast 4 September. Before my turn came to go for breakfast I heard screams, smacks and some tormenting words from the screws: ‘Kiss my shoes’, ‘Call me sir’, ‘Don’t mark his face’. This last from a Senior Officer. I watched through my door a man dragged from his cell, kicked and beaten and jam spread all over his face. Two screws saw me looking
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and screamed at me to get away from the door – one threatened to kill me. I stayed where I was. I had already made up my mind that one day I would write down what I saw happen. My turn came for breakfast. I took off my glasses and went out of my cell. I was kicked from behind. One screw stood on my stockinged feet, and when I reached the serving table I received a bloody nose and had tea thrown all over me, smacks and digs from behind and then I went back to my cell with no breakfast. Two minutes after being locked up a screw opened my door and gave me a cup of tea. I went to drink it and realised it had piss in it. I could smell it, and one taste was enough for me to know how low they had gone in their revenge. I could write pages of what I saw after the riot and during the riot. I saw a man attacked by three dogs. I had urine poured over me. I have been threatened, kicked and battered. You may find this hard to believe. One day I will prove it to you and all the outside world. I will name names and I will dig out men I am sure will back me up. I am glad you have taken an interest in how British prisons are run. As I’ve stated, I can and will write a more detailed thing about Hull prison. From: Don’t Mark His Face, The National Prisoners’ Movement (PROP), 1979.
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In the long history of colonial trampling another rebuke to Irish aspirations ...
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DUBLIN EASTER 1916
Edited from an article by Catriona Crowe, in The Irish Times The decade of centenaries in which we are now engrossed provides opportunities to interrogate and reflect on what happened here 100 years ago. On our small island on the edge of a powerful continent, and next door to a large imperial power, we embarked in 1912 on a decade of diverse thought processes, activities and interactions, often diametrically opposed to one another, which resulted in outcomes as varied as the achievement of an independent, albeit partitioned, state, the establishment of a modern, highly defensive Unionism in the northern part of the country, the birth of a modern trade union movement, mass participation in the most murderous war yet seen in the world, the achievement of the franchise for some women, the creation of a founding myth for our state, involving heroism, hopelessness, high ideals and self-sacrifice, the elimination of the political party which had enjoyed overwhelming nationalist support for three decades, the creation of a new nationalist party whose roots spread in many different directions, a vicious civil war, and, most importantly, the deaths of almost 36,000 people and injuries, often seriously disabling, to many more.
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The victims of violent conflict are often overlooked in the commemorative exercises, many of them laudable, which occur on these anniversaries. Ireland has tended to ignore victims, both of the struggle for independence and the first World War, for many years. Eunan O’Halpin’s huge project, The Dead of the Irish Revolution, will be the equivalent for the decade of Lost Lives, that sobering and immensely impressive record of death in Northern Ireland over the period of what is called “the Troubles”, created by David McKittrick and others.
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O’Halpin and his collaborators are laying out details of how many died, who they were, who killed them, how many were civilians, which parts of the country had the highest death tolls, and what kind of violence – combat, riot or assassination – was the most common. The first volume of this extremely important contribution to our understanding of the period, covering 1916-21, will be published in the near future. The release of the records of the Bureau of Military History and the Military Service Pensions files (two separate collections) in the last decade has transformed research by scholars and citizens on the nationalist struggle, and changed the picture we have of what happened from something simple and heroic to a far more complicated version of events. The 1901 and 1911 census records underpin these records as the demographic basis for the study of the decade. All of these records have been released, free to access, by the Irish State, and will be one of the most enduring legacies of the decade of centenaries. Some of the records released in recent years by The National Archives in London and the Imperial War Museum shed valuable light on Irish people involved and killed in the first World War, and on people in the
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British military forces in Ireland, of different kinds and intentions. The Imperial War Museum has constructed a huge digital resource, Lives of the First World War, which links many different archival resources to give a comprehensive picture of the histories of those who participated in the war, including some of the 250,000 Irishmen who did so. Joe Duffy, the RTÉ broadcaster, took a laudable early interest in the 40 children killed during and as a result of the 1916 Rising, and has now produced a book, Children of the Rising: The Untold Story of the Young Lives Lost During Easter 1916, which gives names, details of deaths and family backgrounds, where possible, for each of them. As he points out, we have not heard about child casualties of 1916 before; they became “collateral damage”, along with the rest of the almost 300 civilian casualties. In all violent conflicts, military leaders of all kinds often consign untold numbers of uninvolved people to violent death and injury, and their families to trauma, bereavement and impoverishment. This book performs a really important service: it humanises the most vulnerable casualties of that week in April 1916 which has formed the basis of (some) Irish ideas of how our state came into being. Dead children are an essential part of the story, as are the terrible losses suffered by their families. Duffy begins with the death of two-year-old Sean Foster, shot in crossfire while being wheeled in a pram by his mother, Katie, on Church St. His photograph reveals a beautiful blond child; we learn that his father, John Foster, had been killed on the Western Front the year before, and that Katie’s brother, Joseph O’Neill,
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was fighting with the Irish Volunteers during the Rising, and was actually on the barricades in Church Street from where it is surmised the fatal shot came. Duffy uses multiple sources to bring the stories of these children to life: census records, death certificates, statements from the Bureau of Military History, pension applications, compensation claims, newspaper reports and, valuably, testimonies from family members who came forward in response to a public request for information. This painstaking approach allows him to provide us with not just the riveting stories of the children, but the family and social environments in which they lived.
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As expected, a large number of them came from the notorious slums, and Duffy’s use of the census and other records presents a relentless account of appalling overcrowding, insanitary conditions, widespread threats to children’s health and life, and endemic poverty. Class, as always, played an important part in children’s chances of survival. There is a marvellous chapter on looting, with descriptions of children grabbing sweets, toys and clothing from shops all over the city. One account tells of “a fresh-faced youth crossing the street [Sackville Street] with an armful of boots. He is brandishing a pair of white satin shoes and shouting hysterically ‘God save Ireland’.” Fireworks were taken from Lawrence’s toy shop on Sackville Street and set off in the middle of the street. At least three children died in the midst of this risky but rewarding activity.
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The effect of the book, as each child is dealt with in chronological order, is to create an alternative history of the Rising, to make us focus, not on heroism and idealism, but on the consequences of the conflict for ordinary people. Towards the end of the book, Duffy gives us a fascinating quote from a relative of 15-year-old Seán Healy, who was a Fianna Éireann scout, shot outside his home in Phibsborough: “I remember asking my granny – Seán’s mother – if she would like me to die for Ireland. Her answer never left me as she said, ‘It’s easy to die for Ireland. What Ireland needs is people to live honestly for Ireland.’” Catriona Crowe is head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland
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WAFFLE LETTERS
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Dear Editor ... Obviously wounded, but undaunted, I say again, well again, because the letters page is a hopeless failure ... Words fail me, what is the use of words when the person you are saying them to is unable to grasp your, and their, meaning? Worryingly, we are heading down that irrational road again, the one where stupidity reigns, where basic facts and knowledge acquired over time are being replaced by entrenched banal myths, hearsay and superstition. The probability that this age-old fudge of complacency and mad spouters will be defended to the death before reason can be accepted again (if ever) is terrifying. For evidence of this I direct your (giggling now) attention to Donald Trump and his campaign to become US President. As Britain’s government is a happy satellite of US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal follower of US foreign policy, what will our government do if Trump suceeds and begins his Term of Ignorance? Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I am absolute in my scepticism about whether the Euro (pro and sceptic)-business-arses and their sycophantic political stooges whooping it up in their luxury apartments are the answer.
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SHEEP IN THE ROAD Vol. 2 Alan Rutherford 2015
SHEEP IN THE ROAD Vol. 1 Alan Rutherford 2014
IRISH GRAFFITI some murals in the North, 1986 Alan Rutherford 2014
NICETO DE LARRINAGA a voyage, 1966 Alan Rutherford 2014
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KAPUTALA The Diary of Arthur Beagle & The East Africa Campaign, 1916-1918 Alan Rutherford Updated 2nd edn: 2014
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MAGAZINE
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SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 7 February: 2016
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 6
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 5
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 4
SHEEP IN THE ROAD issue 3
January: 2016
Xmas: 2015
December: 2015
October: 2015
Sheep in the Road as a magazine has writing, photography, cartoons and odd assemblages of ideas, rants and reviews ... eminating from a socialist and thoughtful core. Contributors included: Brian Rutherford, Rudi Thoemmes, Joe Jenkins, Robert Arnott, Cam Rutherford, Steve Ashley, Lizzie Boyle, Chris Dillow, Chris Hoare, Joanna Rutherford, West Midland Hunt Saboteurs, Chris Bessant, Craig Atkinson, Martin Taylor A pleasure to produce ... thank you
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