Child labour in the Potteries

Sometimes even old cups and saucers have a slice of social history to relate. The above cup and saucer dates from round about 1840 and although unmarked is typical of wares made by the Hilditch and Hopwood pottery at Longton. It was made in part by child labour.

In Scriven's Report on Child Labour in the pottery industry in 1840, Richard Moreton – then aged 9 and working at Hilditch and Hopwood reported.

‘I am a figure maker for William Moreton [Richard’s father], I work by the piece and can make 40 dozen (480) small figures a day: I get 1d for ten dozen, that is about two shillings [10 pence] a week.’

So little Richard Moreton did not work for Hilditch and Hopwood, but for his father William who subcontracted figure making to his 9 year old son.

The 'figures' little Richard made in such vast quantities may have been something like the lilac coloured sprig mouldings on the above cup and saucer. The sprig mouldings were made from soft coloured clay rather like Plasticine. Richard would press them out of the clay using moulds, carefully remove them, then either he or someone else would stick them to the cup or saucer with liquid clay before firing.

These are not high class items of bone china; they were intended for middle class markets to be brought out the china cabinet for genteel afternoon tea parties.

Also from Scriven's report

employments of families

13) The processes being such as to admit of the employment of whole families father, mother, and some two, three, or more children - their united earnings are sometimes £3. or £4. per week: but, proverbially improvident, and adopting the adage,- "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof", they squander the proceeds of their labour in gaudy dress, or at the skittle-ground and ale-house; so that, when overtaken by illness or other casualty, and thrown for a few days out of work, they resort to their masters for a loan, or to the parish workhouse for relief.

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Tahiti: new biohazard laboratory opened

Friday, 4 March 2016: Tahiti News announces the opening of a new high-biosafety laboratory at the Malardé Institute in Pape'ete.(1)

This is to help deal with the increased risk of infectious diseases that have spread to and from the Pacific region, such as Chikungunya (2), Zika (3) - which was first discovered in Uganda in 1947 (4), dengue (5), H1N1 influenza (6).

An earlier article from FranceTV (7) explains that highly dangerous diseases need to be handled in very safe facilities, which up till now did not exist in French Polynesia. Previously samples would have had to be sent to other laboratories abroad, which cost precious time.

The new lab on Tahiti is equipped to NSB3 containment standard. This is not the highest category - level 4 is for very high risk pathogens such Ebola, Lassa, Marburg etc and "other agents with unknown risks of pathogenicity and transmission" (8).

The top biosafety rating includes germ warfare research facilities such as the UK's Porton Down, listed on Wikipedia (9). One obvious reason why the "space suit" level 4 isn't appropriate for Tahiti is the risk of destructive tropical storms like the Category 5 Cyclone Winston that crashed into Fiji last month, killing 43 people (10).

French Polynesia is 2,100 miles further east but is still not immune: in 2010 Cyclone Oli hit Tahiti with gusts up to 120 mph (11), and in 1997 Cyclone Osea wrecked 95% of the infrastructure of Maupiti, 200 miles NW of the main island (12). So we needn't worry about an Andromeda Strain-type (13) accidental plague weapon release: it's not that kind of operation.
___________________________________

(1)  http://www.tahitinews.co/inauguration-dun-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique/
(2) http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/geo/ - very widespread globally
(3) http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/ - also spreading via  mosquito in Samoa and Tonga, for example
(4) https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/03/03/zika-connection-microcephaly-guillain-barre-hard-prove/
(5) http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2016/infectious-diseases-related-to-travel/dengue - throughout S E Asia and the western Pacific
(6) http://www.gleamviz.org/2009/09/ - spread around the world by air travel in months
(7) http://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/polynesie/tahiti/installation-d-un-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique-l-institut-malarde-197064.html - dateline 9 Oct 2014, updated 25 Feb 2016
(8) http://www.labmanager.com/lab-health-and-safety/2010/12/biosafety-levels-1-2-3-4?fw1pk=2#.VtrtvX2LSt9
(9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4
(10) http://fijione.tv/43-dead-after-tc-winston/
(11) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Oli#Tahiti_2
(13) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain

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Ancient Rome and modern Liberty

A connected set of stories from Roman history shows that freedom means nothing without economic independence and civil rights.

Professor Mary Beard's “SPQR”[i] takes as its starting-point the failed Catiline Conspiracy in 63 B.C. Cicero, then one of the two Consuls, ordered the immediate execution without trial of a group of co-conspirators, and was hailed as Father of the Fatherland for saving the city from bloody revolution.

But this action helped him to his own downfall. On his last day in office, two of his rivals prevented him from giving the customary valedictory speech on the grounds that he himself had not allowed the accused Catalinarians to speak before condemning them. Some years later (58 B.C.) the Roman people voted to exile anyone who executed without trial and Cicero left Rome ahead of another vote specifically naming him.

When he came back, he found that his house had been razed to the ground and a temple to Liberty meaningfully set up in its place, blocking a rebuild:

“By building and consecrating the temple on the former house of then-exiled Cicero, Clodius ensured that the land was legally uninhabitable. Upon his return, Cicero successfully argued that the consecration was invalid and thus managed to reclaim the land and destroy the temple.”[ii]

The politics then was as murky as now: Cicero had accused Clodius of being involved in the conspiracy, even though the latter had sided with him during the crisis; and a thirty-something Julius Caesar had suggested the unusual step of imprisoning the suspected rebels instead of killing them - was this a matter of legal principle, or a ploy to keep alive secret allies? 

Cicero died in 43 B.C. at the behest of someone else he came to oppose, Mark Antony, and his head and hands were set up in the Forum as another visual political statement. 

 But when and why was “Libertas” made a goddess?

Her first temple in Rome was built long before, in 238 B.C.[iii] – not the “Iuppiter Libertas”[iv] of which the Emperor Augustus boasted[v], but instead (it is said[vi]) by Tiberius Gracchus. The “tiny”[vii] edifice stood somewhere on the Aventine Hill by the River Tiber, perhaps next to the temple of Juno Queen (and near those of Flora, Ceres and the Moon)[viii], as shown in the images below (please ignore the yellow indicator on the latter):

Temple of Juno (large); Temple of Libertas said to be nearby

Image: http://www.maquettes-historiques.net/page18aa7.html

Map, showing temples in the neighbourhood

http://www.rome.wiebekoo.nl/ROMA%20ANTICA/Muren%20van%20Rome/images/portaTrigemina02.jpg

Roman coin, said to be of "Jupiter and Libertas" - possibly not the first temple
Image: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/356699232963738814/

This building, too, had a point. Tiberius Gracchus had given Italian agricultural labourers rights to land and hence an entitlement to military service. He was hated by the rich land owners, who saw the reforms as a threat to their wealth and power and as undermining their use of slave labour on their estates. On the other hand he was understandably very popular with the plebs, and the Liberty temple nailed his colours to the mast.

He, too, was killed:

“The senate failed in an attempt to bar him from standing again, but a group of enraged senators, led by his hostile cousin Scipio Nasica, charged into an election rally of Tiberius', broke it up and, alas, clubbed him to death.”(ix)

Perhaps “enraged” is not the right word here: it sounds like a sort of mitigation on the grounds of passion. A better term should be found for the coldly organised violence of plutocrats.

Professor Beard says that Rome’s history is relevant to us today, and surely it is. A powerful elite outsourcing work to cheaper labour , depriving their fellow citizens of access to the means of production and so eating away at their personal independence; the leader of the moment using public panic to ride roughshod over the due process of law; belated calls for the former “saviour of the nation” to be held to account, but coming from political enemies who may have their own shadowy agendas; show-democracy giving way to a succession of tyrants.

“Nihil sub sole novum”: there is nothing new under the sun. 

CODA: 

There is another resemblance between Catiline and Tiberius Gracchus: both enlisted the support of peasant farmers:

"Promoting his policy of debt relief, Catiline initially also rallied many of the poor to his banner along with a large portion of Sulla’s veterans. Debt had never been greater than in 63 BC since the previous decades of war had led to an era of economic downturn across the Italian countryside. Numerous plebeian farmers lost their farms and were forced to move to the city, where they swelled the numbers of the urban poor. Sulla's veterans were in bad economic straits as well. Desiring to regain their fortunes, they were prepared to march to war under the banner of the "next" Sulla. Thus, many of the plebs eagerly flocked to Catiline and supported him in the hope of the absolution of their debts."

Debt, recession, discontent among the lower orders, populist politicians, reactionary fat-cats backed by the Establishment, calls for debt relief... Very modern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Catilinarian_conspiracy

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[i] “SPQR: A history of Ancient Rome”, Profile Books (2016)

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertas

[iii] http://www.britannica.com/topic/Libertas-Roman-religion

[iv] http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/Jupiter_Libertas.html

[v] http://www.loebclassics.com/view/augustus-res_gestae/1924/pb_LCL152.375.xml

[vi] See note [ii]

[vii] http://www.maquettes-historiques.net/P18A.html

[viii] http://www.rome.wiebekoo.nl/ROMA%20ANTICA/Muren%20van%20Rome/images/portaTrigemina02.jpg

[ix] http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/tib-gracchus.html

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Railway News

JD writes:

Have you heard of the EU's Fourth Railway Package? 

http://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/eu-ministers-agree-on-injecting-competition-into-domestic-rail-service/

If you search Google News for "EU's Fourth Railway Package" the first item on the list is from The Morning Star - 

In the 20 years since John Major privatised our industry — a privatisation, incidentally, which even Margaret Thatcher described as “a privatisation too far” — we have seen rolling stock get older, trains get more crowded and fares go through the roof. We now have the highest fares in Western Europe, because of privatisation.

But the European Commission is determined to impose this flawed model on the rest of Europe. And, if it succeeds, it will prevent us from ever bringing the railways back into public ownership.

https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4ae9-Well-vote-to-leave-to-save-Britains-rail#.VtjMGUBv63Y

It is one of the reasons why the rail union ASLEF is backing Brexit.

I know from experience that Germany, France and Spain have very good and very cheap State run rail services.The EU wants to privatise all of Europe's railways. Well, why not. It has worked so well in the UK :)

As our pragmatically minded American cousins are fond of saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" 

The EU leaders are insane, but we knew that anyway! :)


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Justice for the Chagos Islanders

Pic source: Google

Guardian newspaper, 1 Feb 2016

Daily Mirror, 27 Feb 2016

Craig Murray, 1 March 2016

Wikipedia on the dirty "green" trick to keep the ousted islanders off their homeland:

"WikiLeaks cablegate disclosure (2010)

"According to Wikileaks CableGate documents,^[26] the UK proposed in 2009 that the BIOT become a "marine reserve". The summary paragraph of the referenced diplomatic cable follows:

"HMG would like to establish a marine park or reserve providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official informed Polcouns on May 12. The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park—the world's largest—would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and U.S. should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that U.S. interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT's former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve."^[27]"

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Orwell's "Keep The Aspidistra Flying"

I've just finished it. It's very real, and you're wrung by the wretchedness of the lower-middle-class challenge to cling on to respectability by one's fingernails, and the hero's equally desperate attempt to hold to his socialist principles and manly independence. He wants, as my friend said, to be a Renaissance man, without enjoying the Renaissance man's income; and when his contradictions are broken by Life - literally, as his girlfriend has fallen pregnant - it comes as a relief: "He was thirty and he had grey in his hair, yet he had a queer feeling that he had only just grown up."

A Guardian review from 2003 says: "Orwell refused to allow either Keep the Aspidistra Flying or his first novel, the considerably weaker A Clergyman's Daughter, to be reprinted in his lifetime. His dislike of his early novels arose from his incredibly strong sense that he would always be a literary failure, which enabled him to empathise so strongly with his creations like Comstock."

That haunting self-distrust and obstinacy; was it like that for J K Rowling, fighting her dementors while writing her novel in the Elephant House tea shop?

"If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’"

- said Kipling, to whom Orwell the Empire-hater was nevertheless fair, for disillusioned though he was, Orwell always remained decent - that virtue sneered at by social superiors, the powerful and the politically subversive. Not for him the outright moral criminality of Donleavy's postwar Ginger Man.

Nor ironic, Genet-boosting existentialist, he; surely he would have resigned rather than step into the shoes of a deported Jewish professor, which is what Sartre did; and he really did shoot at Fascists, rather than fantasize about it in a philosophical-fiction tetralogy.

Orwell kept steering by his star. He remained authentic.


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Never a shortage of torturers

Tom Pride (a pseudonym) runs a satirical political blog titled "Pride's Purge", headed by this woodcut:

- which presumably indicates what he'd like to do the liars who rule us.

I was morbidly intrigued by the illustration. Was it some sixteenth century atrocity practised on a hapless South American tribesman? Was it one of those dreadful mediaeval European executions using molten lead?

No, not quite so bad as that. Image-matcher Tineye found me the whole picture:

(source: Wikimedia)

It's a waterboarding interrogation. But the eternal basics are there: the ruffian coolly willing to do dreadful things, the "potent, grave and reverend signiors" quietly instructing and recording, indicating by their weighty demeanour that this is a sad but necessary proceeding. Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

It comes from a book, Praxis rerum criminalium (1554) by the Dutch lawyer Joos de Damhouder, "which he almost entirely plagiarised from an unpublished text by Filips Wielant and from other works." Joos himself is pictured as sober-solemn:

Joos de Damhouder (Pic source)

But here's the man whose work he plagiarised - Filips Wielant, a fellow Dutchman (and fellow lawyer) born in the previous century, and whose own book was published only posthumously in 1558, four years after de Damhouder's:

Filips Vielant (Pic source)

- a petulant, sadistic face if you ask me. Look at that mouth and those eyes. Perhaps in the century that intervened, eminent personages learned the value of portraits as propaganda, for this one reveals too much.

There is no shortage of such people, or of the villains prepared to serve them. There's always some excuse for torture, and a crowd that can easily be provoked into saying you can wire him up for me, haw-haw, damn towelhead.

“And yet our personal experience and the study of history make it abundantly clear that the means whereby we try to achieve something are at least as important as the end we wish to attain. Indeed they are even more important. For the means employed inevitably determine the nature of the result achieved; whereas, however good the end aimed at may be, its goodness is powerless to counteract the effects of the bad means we use to reach it.”  - Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means" (1937).

William Blake: "A Divine Image" (pic source)

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