Snaps of Chorlton No 11, a badge and a festival in 1984 not bad for one post

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

Cheating really, not so much a snap more a picture of the badge of the event

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Tony Walker

Dangerous times and peaceful protests

“the dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.”

That was Abraham Lincoln speaking to the US Congress in 1862 on the eve of the Civil War, and it aptly sums up the response of many to the international scene during the 1980s.

This was a time when there was a growing feeling that the world was a less safe place. Relationships between the two super powers had entered a more hostile phase. This was only in part due to the election of hard line politicians in the west and the elevation of equally conservative leaders in the Soviet Union but also to events across the world where the USA and USSR were engaged in a new round of support for proxy governments.

What made it all the more dangerous was that a new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had come on stream just as the Cold War deepened and hardened.

The US cruise missile which was being deployed in Britain and West Germany took just 15 minutes to reach its targets in the USSR while American Pershing missiles and the Russian equivalent took just 4 minutes from launch to detonation over the cities of Europe.

I remember travelling across France with a young American back packer from the Mid West who remarked how he had come to see the European perspective to this arms race which from the comfort of middle America had never occurred to him.

Here in Britain the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament saw its membership increase dramatically, there were growing numbers of demonstrations across the country and the woman’s peace movement focused on Greenham Common which was one of the sites of the deployment of US missiles.

Here in Chorlton there were attempts to set up a women’s peace camp on the Rec on Beech Road and on a hot summers day in 1984 hundreds attended a peace festival in the park while the City Council declared Manchester a nuclear free zone.

There were those who derided such actions and  some who  still  scorn this popular response. They point to the demise of the Soviet Union and the other Communist Governments of Eastern Europe for a relaxation in those tensions.

But this is to ignore the genuine belief by countless millions that something had to be done.

Picture; badges from the collection of Andrew Simpson, photograph of the peace festival on the Rec from the collection of Tony Walker

Things we did ..... Liverpool .... 1980

It was the first big demonstration against the newly elected Tory Government.

The year was 1980, and on that day in late November I was there with the Moss Side CLP and its banner.

We had travelled across from Manchester in two double deck buses and were joined by 40,000 from around the country.

I have long lost all the newspaper clippings but today came across a piece by William Border published by the New York Times on November 30th which reported Michael Foot telling us  "You are here stating for the nation that we are not going to tolerate what this Government is doing to us.

We're going to carry this campaign from one end of the country to the other, to mobilize the power and strength of the people to destroy this Thatcher Government and build a real socialism,”*

Needless to say I don't remember the speech, although that may have had more to do with taking pictures.

But along with others I did carry the campaign on from Liverpool to Birmingham and on to London.

All now a long time ago.

But emboldened by Mr. Border's I shall now trawl the Guardian archive for more on the spot reporting.

Location; Liverpool

Pictures; in Liverpool with the Moss Side |CLP banner, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*40,000 March In Liverpool to Protest Unemployment; Recalls Marches of the 30's Unemployment at 8.4 Percent, William Borders New York Times, Nov. 30, 1980,https://www.nytimes.com/1980/11/30/archives/40000-march-in-liverpool-to-protest-unemployment-recalls-marches-of.html

The forgotten picture …… and a heap of stories

Today, with the passage of 45 years I have no idea where the picture was taken or exactly when.

I know it will be sometime between April 1979 and August 1982 and it featured Michael Foot at a demonstration organised by the Labour Party.

In the March of ’79 the Labour Party had been defeated in the General Election and in the following two- and a-bit years the new Conservative Government reduced public spending at a time when unemployment was beginning to rise.

The response of the labour movement was to organise a series of large public demonstrations.  The first was in Liverpool and over the course of the next few years there were more, along with marches against many of the policies of the new Tory Government.

I was at the 1980 Liverpool rally and the one in Birmingham three years later and I rather think this picture is from neither of those events.

But someone will know.

For many years the picture hung on a wall but with the passage of time was moved several times until without its frame it was put away and finally came out of the shadows last week.

I had bought the image from the Morning Star which had covered the event and a requisite of purchasing it was that I had to take out a  £ share in the newspaper.

And as so often happens round about the time I found Mr. Foot I also came across my Membership card for The People's Press Printing Society, which my Wikipedia tells me “is a readers' co-operative with the purpose of owning and publishing a left-wing, British, daily newspaper. 

The co-operative was established in 1945, with shares sold at £1. Originally the paper was titled the Daily Worker, but the publication was re-launched as the Morning Star in 1966.

On 6 January 1946, at the Albert Hall in London, Bill Jones, the leader of the London busmen's trade union, handed over the formal document of transfer to William Rust (editor of the Daily Worker). Ownership of the Daily Worker was transferred from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to the PPPS, with CPGB retaining editorial and political control of the paper until in 1951, the Daily Worker Co-operative Society was established to act as the nominal publishers of the paper.

The Daily Worker Co-operative Society became the Morning Star Co-operative Society which later became bankrupt and the sole ownership for the publication of the Morning Star fell under the People's Press Printing Society. 

The People’s Press Printing Society has a difficult financial existence, making a £41,179 loss in 2013 and a £1,137 surplus in 2014”.

So as the society is still going I guess that still makes me a member.

Leaving me just to say that I can date the photograph to between 1979 and 1982, because the address on the card was where I lived during those three years.

And while there I bought heaps of those campaign badges to support and highlight cuts in public services, factory closures and the “great” international issues of the day.

All of which I had an opinion on and would argue the case to anyone in ear shot.

And that pretty much is that.

Others will have their favourite badge and I did have difficulty choosing from my 40 which are all that have survived the four decades and more.

But they are my choice

Pictures; Michael Foot addresses a large open air meeting, circa 1979-82, courtesy of the Morning Star, and badges I wore, circa 1979 to 87, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The People's Press Printing Society, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Press_Printing_Society

A tribute to the old BBC computer

I bet there will be a lot of people with very fond memories of the old BBC computers. 

After all they were at one point the computer used in over 80% of our schools.

And you can see why. 

They were sturdy machines and I guess could be said to be the Morris Minor of the computer world. 

All of which made them perfect for hamfisted children.

I have a particular fondness for them as it was a BBC that was my introduction to the wonderful work of  the computer.

Of course using one was a world away from the present range of computers.

Even simple tasks like doing a calculation on the spreadsheet first involved typing in a command.

But for someone who had never really appreciated the power of spreadsheets and databases this was a minor problem. 

Added to which there was the magic of  seeing your thoughts tumble out across the screen, advancing in a stream of green sentences on a black background.

The purists will mutter that the old typewriter was just as good and if really pushed the pen was an even better and cheaper means of expressing yourself.

All of which is true, but for someone who had always had difficulty with spelling, the ability to erase a word, sentence or even whole paragraph  was empowering and left me completely hooked.

So, thank you BBC.

Pictures; the BBC computer, circa 2012, and 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A christening, a fishing boat, and a demonstration .................. the 1980s

Now there is nothing that connects, these three pictures, other than that I took them sometime between the late 1970s and the mid 1980s and all were lost for all that time.

They date from the time I was fascinated by smelly photography, and were taken with an old battered Pentax  camera which went with me everywhere I went.

And in its time the camera recorded family get together, demonstrations and more than a few holidays.

They were lost, because for decades they sat in the cellar, as negatives, not quite forgotten but as good as, because with out the chemicals and enlarger they would never  be seen as prints.

However that has been resolved and so here are the family christening of our Emily in Greenwich in 1981, the demonstration in Trafalgar Square in 1981, and the single fishing boat which might have been setting out or returning off the coast of Corfu in 1984.

And that is that, other than to say each are now a bit of history, which may sound pretentious but is what it is.

The christening like all such events was a big family event, with lots of different generations gathered for the celebration.

I can''t now remember if the boat was setting off in the morning or in the evening, but I rather think it will  have been late in the afternoon.

As for the demonstration it could have been one of many, but was most likely one of those connected with worsening Cold War relationships between East and West

Location; London & Corfu










Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1981-84