A personal account of the meeting “Marxism and Mental Health”, which was in the Saturday evening slot of Marxism 2015 and had been given a large venue (which was packed).
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to another post about my experiences at Marxism 2015, the five-day political festival in central London organised by the Socialist Workers Party. Previous posts can be viewed here. This post focuses on one meeting, one which I believe fully deserves to be thus privileged.
MARXISM AND MENTAL HEALTH
This meeting was important for me in many different ways, not least in that by its mere presence it meant two meetings on the subject of mental health (along with earlier one featuring Susan Rosenthal).
TREATING MENTAL HEALTH WITH DUE SERIOUSNESS
Not only was this meeting given the prominence of a Saturday evening slot, it was given one of the biggest venues to be used during the event, the Elvin Hall (and btw was packed to the rafters). To see one genuinely good slide presentation is unusual, to encounter two in one day is (for me at least) unprecedented good fortune – but it happened here.
Beth Greenhill set up and ready for action.This picture was on display before the meeting started.Beth and chair Pete Jackson ready for action.A book display (my finances do not permit more than looking!)
THE MEETING ITSELF
To give you an idea of Beth’s talk I will share those of the slides I managed to capture…
The sign off screen, and our featured image.
Beth giving her talk.
Not a separate slide – a sneaky close up by me.
There were some excellent contributions from the floor, most notable east London social worker Monica and south London mental health activist Jeremy.
Monica, opening the discussion section of the meeting.Jeremy making his contribution.
Being present at this meeting was an amazing experience, and apart from the opening and final rallies it was without doubt the best meeting I attended on any of the five days. I finish with another couple of photographs…
Beth giving her summing up speech.A stylised rendering of the Euston Arch on the Victoria line platform (the original was destroyed in the 1960s so I cannot comment on the closeness of the resemblance).
Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts on Marxism 2015, the five-day politcal festival in central London organized by the Socialist Workers Party. Previous posts in the series can be viewed here.
RODDY SLORACH ON DISABILITY
In my last post I gave an account of the first meeting I attended on Saturday, in Nunn Hall. My second meeting was in the same venue, and the title was “Has There Always Been Disabaility?”
Two books on display at the front of the room.Speaker Roddy and chair Gabby before the meeting.
After this meeting, it was time for lunch, and I attended the Norwich SWP picnic (London food prices being well beyond my reach!).
WHERE WILL WE LIVE?
After lunch, my first port of call was the Drama Studio for a meeting on housing…
Speaker and chair before the meeting.
The speaker’s main focus was on the US, which he had recently visited, and where the housing situation is worse than in this country because there is even less social housing available. The meeting was structured around a slide presentation. I have experienced a large number of such presentations but only a very few good presentations – of which this was one. I will settle for displaying those of the slides I was able to capture…
Yes – even the USA genuinely radical candidates can get elected (she did).
A lively discussion followed. Having had an English born speaker talk at length about the USA we had a contribution from the floor from an American born Londoner talking about England…
Emma, who chaired the opening rally contributing to the floor at the meeting on housing (she is the American born Londoner referred to in the body text)
HOW SHOULD SOCIALISTS VOTE IN THE EU REFERENDUM?
This meeting took place in Galleon room A in the Royal National Hotel (the suite which can be one, two or three rooms according to choice was divided into three, with rooms A and C being used for meetings and room B for entry and exit to prevent the two meetings from impinging on each other).
This was one of the most interesting meetings I attended. The debate on the EU referendum as currently framed is between two groups of right wing b**t**ds, one of whom want to stay in and the other whom want to leave for entirely nationalistic reasons. The task for socialists is to change to the terms of the debate by building a left wing campaign for a vote to leave the EU, offering no support to the racists of UKIP. A vote to stay in will leave an even bigger, even smugger smile on the face of David Cameron. A vote in favour of the EU would also be a vote in favour of what is being done to Greece and a vote in favour of desperate people being left to drown in the Mediterrenean.
To finish this post, my second of an eventual three about the Saturday, here are some more pictures…
Francesca, chair for this meeting, introduces main speaker Paul McGarrPaul McGarr during his opening speech.Speaker slips were used for this meeting, in spite of which the discussion at one point resembled a Hackney branch meeting, so many speakers from that area contributing.
An account of getting from my accommodation to the event on the Saturday morning and of the first meeting I attended that day – on the subject of Education.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to this, the fourth of a series of posts I shall be producing about Marxism 2015, the five-day political festival in Central London organised by the Socialist Workers Party. The three posts that I was able to put out during the event are available here. I hope I am able to strike a good balance between not running this series until too long after the event has finished and not overwhelming people with vast numbers of blog posts all at once.
THE JOURNEY IN
Having arrived late for the first meeting on Friday I was not going to make the same mistake twice and left the house where I was staying considerably earlier. By good fortune having walked to the end of the road on which I was staying I stepped almost straight on to a 123 bus heading in the direction of Blackhorse Road Station. On the journey I was able to snap this picture of an interesting tribute to William Morris…
At Blackhorse Road the good fortune continued as I also stepped pretty well straight on to a southbound Victoria line train (in spite of having declined to join the stampede of those who heard the sound of a train arriving and were apparently unable to control themselves). I was now so far ahead of schedule that I decided to alight at King’s Cross rather than Euston and take a longer but slightly more scenic walk. Although I could not get the whole vast edifice in one shot, I got some good pictures of that most amazing of central London buildings, St Pancras Station…
There were two more photo-worthy sights in this short space of time, a pub named in honour of the world’s first steam locomotive, Stephenson’s “Rocket” (Heron of Alexandria devised a primitive steam engine which he used to remotely open temple doors in the first century CE)…
…And this building bearing the another famous name…
THE FIRST MEETING OF THE DAY
A PERFECT CHOICE OF VENUE
I chose to attend a meeting on education, which was to take place in the Nunn Hall, a particularly appropriate venue as this wall painting makes clear…
The feature image for this post.The plaque telling us about the paintingMs Branson’s own signature
THE MEETING ITSELF
The meeting started with a statistic that is a devastating indictment of current education, as these pictures show…
Although Jacqui Freeman, giving her opening speech made the mistake of standing directly in front of the slide you can still see enough.A close up of the really important bit of the slide – a truly horrifying stat.
The ever increasing and ever narrowing focus on exams has led to some very unpleasant consequences…
200% increase in children calling childline re exam stress in 2013-14
Children as young as eight taking up smoking for stress relief
The speaker referred to the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM – given the unpleasant effects of this movement not an inappropriate acronym!)
The drive for uniformity and conformity that is so rigorously enforced in schools for children of ordinary people is signally absent from one type of school – the speaker cited Bancrofts, which is near the crumbling state school in which she teaches. Bancrofts proclaims itself “diverse and inclusive”, makes clear the although they focus on academic results these are not the be all and end all etc. Unfortunately there is one aspect where it fails on inclusivity – to attend this establishment one’s parents need to be able to afford £15,576 per annum.
Before displaying a few more pictures, I will conclude with a couple more quotes from the meeting:
The first quote is attributed to someone involved in running Ofsted and tells you all you need to know about their despicable attitude: “If morale in the staff room is low, headteachers can be assured they are doing something right.”
The other quote that I picked up on was from a would be music teacher who was being assessed and in responding to a question about how they would teach a particular thing expanded their answer to include a supplementary explanation of what they would do differently for a disabled pupil. One might think that extra credit would be given for providing such a full explanation, but the “assessor’s” response to hearing about allowances being made for a disabled person was laughter.
One final vignette, a schoolgirl who spoke from the floor talked about her school trying to funnel people towards Oxford and Cambridge, so that the school would gain kudos – she was the subject of some apparently prolonged efforts to get her to switch from Paleontology which she wanted to study to Archaeology solely because she could do the latter at one of these two universities.
Speaker Jacqui and chair Phil before the meetingThe Hogwarts like Bancrofts School – diverse and inclusive so long as you come from a rich family..Jacqui starting her talk.
Welcome to this, my third post about Marxism 2015, the five-day political festival hosted by the Socialist Workers Party at the Institute of Education in London. I hope that you will enjoy this post and be inspired to share it.
ACCOMMODATION
I was booked to stay with somebody in Walthamstow, and although their house is not close to a tube station, it would nor amlly have been easy to get there. However, the tube strike meant that we had to go by bus to Clapton and get a London Overground service to Wood Street. In the heavy traffic generated by the tube strike this took considerable time. Getting in the following morning was easier, but I failed to allow enough time (a very rare occurrence) and arrived a little late for the first meeting…
AT THE EVENT
Here is a photo of my timetable for the day in question, showing the meetings I decided to attend…
All of these meetings were magnificent, but I am going to concentrate for photos on the first two, and for most of my text on the third.
Here then are some photos from the first meeting, and fascinating stuff it was too, with a convincing demonstration of egalitarianism in early human history…
Anatolia.CatalhoyukCayonu
These reconstructions are wrong in one respect – the houses had neither windows nor doors, being approached through the roof, with most of daily life taking place on said rooftops (there being no roads).
A mother goddess from these ancient remains.A 19th century South American village on similar lines.
For the second meeting I attended that day on Mental Health, photos really can tell most of the story…
Another connection to where I grew up – Jeremy from Streatham talking about the Mental Health Charter.Jo from London tells of family memories of living near a mental hospital (When we first moved to London there was exactly such an institution within a few minutes walk of our home)
This picture adorns one wall of the Elvin Hall where the meeting took place.
Susan gives her opening talk on Mental Illness: A Disorder of Capitalism.The feature image for this post.
A GERMAN-CENTRIC TAKE ON CLASSICAL MUSIC
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this meeting I was a little disappointed that it was so dominated by German and Austrian composers, with only brief mentions of the Italians (my favourites). Before moving any further I must pay tribute to Siobhan from East London who stepped in at the twelfth hour when the person who should have been chairing the meeting could not be located, and did an excellent job…
Siobhan from East London who stepped in as chair at the twelfth hour.
Although as I have said I would have preferred more credit to be given the Italian composers, I did enjoy this meeting, and overall Sabby Sagall acquitted himself well in slightly testing circumstances…
Sabby Sagall speaking about Classical Music.
I will finish this post with a few pictures from later in the day…
Mark L Thomas addresses a packed house on “Are the Greens a Left Alternative?”Shahrar Ali, leading Green, offers constructive comment from the floor.Sarah Creagh introduces “Rosa Luxemburg and the German Revolution”A moment of whimsy -a close up shot of on of Sarah Creagh’s earrings.Blackhorse Road Station, from where a 123 bus gets to the end of the road on which I was staying, by night (definitely the best time to see it!)
Welcome to this, the second post in my series about Marxism 2015, the five day political festival currently taking place at the Institute of Education in central London. The first post can be viewed here.
LIGHTING THE RED TOUCHPAPER
The opening rally, expertly chaired by Emma Davies, was such a fantastic occasion, with so many fabulous speakers that I cannot possibly do justice to it in words, so I hope that the various photographs I use do the job for me…
Emma Davies was entrusted with the task of chairing the opening rally and did an excellent job.
On the day the London was brought to its knees by a tube strike, it was only appropriate that the first speaker should be one of the strikers. Unjum Mirza revealed a great piece of international solidarity in the form of a bilingual English/ Greek banner, and another in the form of a collection that raised over £100 for the SEK, Greek sister organsiation to the SWP who host Marxism.
Unjum Mirza with Panos Garganos in the shot.Unjum, Panas and a Unison rep diplay international solidarity, holding up the bilingual banner.
Next up were these three…
Jenny Sutton, TUSC (Trade Union and Socialist Coalition) candidate for Tottenham (polled 1,300 votes) spoke next…
I cannot remember all the rest of the speakers, but a group oc campaigners against the privatisation of the National Gallery were among them…
Panos Garganos had his own moment as a member of SEK in the spotlight…
The evening was brought to a close by event organiser Amy Leather…
Welcome to my first blog post about Marxism 2015, a five day political festival taking place in Central London. In this post I will be covering the journey down, and the very start of the event. The way the event works (at present) is that there are two sessions on the Thursday afternoon before the Opening Rally on Thursday evening (which will have a post to itself), then three full days (Fri, Sat, Sun), before two sessions on Monday morning and the final rally at 2PM on Monday.
GETTING THERE
Following the advice contained in Sutcliffe’s first law of travelling by public transport I selected the 10:56 train, which arrived at King’s Cross bang on time at 12:38, giving me oodles of time to walk to the Institute of Education (where the event is happening), deposit my larger bag in the left luggage room, eat my sandwich and locate the venue of my first meeting.
THE FIRST MEETING: GENDER AND SEXUALITY
This meeting which took place in Clarke Hall was bedevilled by technical problems but nevertheless a very fine meeting. Just some of the things covered were Istanbul Pride (over 100,000 last year, attacked by riot police this year), the votes for gay marriage in Ireland and the USA, and two high profile transgender cases, Kelly Maloney (who was formerly boxing promoter Frank Maloney) and Caitlyn Jenner (formerly 1976 Olympic gold medal decathlon winner Bruce Jenner).
It also introduced me to an acronym: TERF which stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. The example cited was Janice Raymond.
Before moving on to the second meeting, here are some photos from these early stages of the event…
Our main speaker at this meeting, Laura Miles.
MEETING 2: ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND SECULAR STAGNATION
i went to this meeting after a last minute change of heart, and regretted the decision. Although there were some points of interest, it was the one meeting I have been at so far (near the end of Saturday) that I did not particularly enjoy. However, I have some photographs…
Andrew Kliman, main speaker at the second meeting I attended.
The latest post in my series “London Station by Station”, this features some London Underground history, a musical interlude and a soupcon of politics.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the latest installment in my series “London Station by Station“. I hope that you will enjoy this post and will be encouraged to share it.
OF MUSIC AND MARX
A CURIOUS HISTORY
One stop south of Highgate is Archway, which opened in 1907 and was for some time the northern terminus of the line. One stop to the north is East Finchley, which was first served by Northern line trains in 1939, having previously been part of the LNER. Highgate, our subject, only opened in 1941 – something of an afterthought.
TO THE UNKNOWN GODDESS
This title comes from a CD case, and concerns a story that began almost 400 years ago and that touches on Highgate…
In 1619 a servant girl the household of the dramatist, librettist and poet Giulio Strozzi gave birth to an illegitimate child. The child, Barbara Strozzi, grew up in the household, becoming Giulio’s “figliuola elettiva” (elective daughter). Encouraged by Giulio she developed considerable musical talents and became known in her own lifetime as a composer and performer.
She is not so well known these days, but it was at Highgate that I first heard her music. The performance featured the same four people as the CD (Catherine Bott, Paula Chateauneuf, Timothy Roberts and Frances Kelly), which I bought that very evening.
A FAMOUS GRAVE
To be fair, quite a few well known people are buried in Highgate Cemetery, but I am confining myself to one. Karl Marx was buried there in 1883, and Marxism 2015, a five-day political event begins in London tomorrow afternoon. I will be there and I intend to put up regular blog posts and tweet about being at the event – watch this space.
TWO FINAL IMAGES
I finish this post as usual with two map pictures…
A very brief post indeed this – we have one more day to save Photography as we know it. Here is the link, given in full because I have dedicated this whole post to it:
Accounts of three petitions at different stages:
1)Provide tests for Group B Strep to prevent any more avoidable deaths of newborn babies, recently launhed via change.org
2)Mind’s petition calling for mental health services to receive a fair share of funding.
3)The successful change.org petition re Protein World’s vile “is your body beach ready?” ads
INTRODUCTION
This is going to be a very brief post, but there is some important information to share, about three petitions that are at different stages of their lives. Highly unusually for this blog there are no pictures.
PETITIONS
1: JUST TAKING OFF
The first of three petitions covered in this post comes from change.org and the title really does say all that needs to be said:
This petition, launched by Mind, calling on the government to ensure that mental health services get their fair share of funding, has been delivered to Downing Street bearing over 100,000 signatures. The full story can be read on the Mind website.
3: VICTORIOUS
When Protein World launched a series of ads targeting women with the question “is your body beach ready?”, the counter attack, in the form of a petition, was laucnhed via change.org, and 71,111 signatures later, change has been achieved. Huffington Post, so often a source of good stories, have the full story on this one.
AFTERWORD
I hope you have all enjoyed this post, and will be encouraged to share it. Another post in my special series, “London Station by Station” will be going up in the not too distant future and later this week I hope to put up some posts about Marxism 2015 which I shall be attending.
Welcome to the next post in my series “London Station by Station“. I hope that you will enjoy this post and be enocuraged to share it.
A RAPID ASCENT
The two stations in my title are neighbours on the Edgware branch of the Northern line. Hampstead is the deepest station on the entire network, 192 feet below the surface, and it is just north of this station towards Golders Green that the deepest point anywhere on the system is reached, 221 feet below the surface of Hampstead Heath. Yet Golders Green, the very next station, is at surface level, open to the air.
Part of the explanation for the juxtaposition that introduced the body of this piece is that the gap between the two stations is quite a long one – an intermediate station was excavated at platform level but never opened…
Golders Green was the original northern terminus of the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (now part of the Northern line) when it opened in 1907 and is still the site of the Northern line’s main depot.
At Blackhorse Road the good fortune continued as I also stepped pretty well straight on to a southbound Victoria line train (in spite of having declined to join the stampede of those who heard the sound of a train arriving and were apparently unable to control themselves). I was now so far ahead of schedule that I decided to alight at King’s Cross rather than Euston and take a longer but slightly more scenic walk. Although I could not get the whole vast edifice in one shot, I got some good pictures of that most amazing of central London buildings, St Pancras Station…
aspiblog 