Ask people what they know about vegetarianism and probably the first thing they’ll tell you is that it was invented by middle-class hippies in the 1960s. What many people don’t realise is that the modern vegetarian movement in Britain all started in a tiny church in the working-class, gritty, industrial town of Salford. Arwa Aburawa spoke to Derek Antrobus- a vegetarian of 40 years and a Salford City Councillor – who also charted the history of the Salford church in his book ‘A Guiltless Feast’, to find out how and why vegetarianism flourished in the working-class community of Salford.

What sparked your interest in the vegetarian movement?

As a teenager I loved the works of the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who is a great vegetarian, and I used a lot of his work as propaganda for vegetarianism. In the late 1980s, there was a food programme on vegetarianism and how it had increased over time and it just mentioned that wasn’t it amazing that all this had happened from a little church in Salford about which nothing is known. So, I am a vegetarian, it all started in Salford and nobody knows about it, I thought to myself I just have to find out more!

What was the context which allowed this church/vegetarian movement to flourish in Salford?

Well, there were a number of factors. One is that it was a period of rapid urbanisation and so people could come together in the city. There is a theory within historical geography that whereas people may be isolated and seen as rather quite odd in their own village community, in a city they can meet other people like themselves. So, the city become this powerhouse of innovation where there are many opportunities and different ways to look at life.

A second factor was industrialisation, as during this period people were no longer working on the land and no longer slaughtering their animals. Animals were being slaughtered elsewhere and then brought into the city and so it wasn’t a part of everyday life and the idea of having animals as meat became more remote for people. At that time, of course, you got the Romantic movement with people longing for the countryside and so although people were predominantly meat eaters, animals and nature became romanticised. So that may have been an obvious background to why people were choosing to be vegetarians as there was belief that it was wrong to harm nature.

A third reason was the ideological and philosophical chaos that was Manchester. As Lancashire was so far from London, the dominant ways to think never quite reached into society and so people were always experimenting with ways to practice their religion. The last reason is the coincidence of personalities which were brought into this environment and promoted vegetarianism.

What was the role of these key personalities for the success of the movement?

There were an early group of vegetarians who were grouped around the evangelicals, which was a group of people who challenged the complacency- as they saw it- of the Church of England. People like John Wesley are the best known. One of John Wesley’s friends was John Byrom, who lived in Kersal and was vegetarian throughout his life and the Clowes family who were relatives of John Byrom also shared his ideas.

The Clowes were interested in nature and challenged the established church by saying that all nature was connected in some way. John Bryom, who had a great love of nature, shared this with his close cousin who was the translator of the Swedish mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. So already in Salford society these ideas were floating around and it was because of John Clowes, who promoted the ideas of Swedenborg which focused on the wholeness of nature, that William Cowherd came to Salford.

Cowherd was born in the Lake District, trained to be a priest and shared the belief in the oneness and the wholeness of nature and that god inhabited every living thing. So, for him to kill a animal was to kill a part of god which was a sin.

Whereas people like Clowes were traditional Church of England and vegetarianism was at the margins of their beliefs, Cowherd made it central to his belief. He broke away from the Church of England, joined the Swedenborgians, but broke away from them because they weren’t strong enough, as he thought, on vegetarianism. Eventually he established his own denomination, the Bible Christians Church, by preaching a sermon in his church on King’s Street on January 28th 1809. From that moment, he commanded his congregation not to eat meat and that was the first time that there was an institution in Britain dedicated to vegetarianism.

Was Cowherd the first to bring the message of vegetarianism to the Working Classes?

Very much so. Cowherd tried to relate vegetarianism to some of the issues they were dealing with such as industrialisation and urbanisation. One way he did this was through the politics of liberation because the logical conclusion of a belief that there is a bit of god in everyone is that everyone is equal and everything is of equal value. And so, the Bible Christians argued for workers’ rights, they were some of the foremost opponents to slavery and they extended this belief of liberation to the animal world.

The only thing I have not been able to find, although there must be something, is on women’s rights. I find that really surprising, especially considering the politics of the group, because they were very much aligned with people like John Stuart Mill, who wrote tracts on feminist ideas. So that may be simply due to the paucity of the material available rather than an omission from their ideology and I think it’s just an area which needs further research.

Another way that Cowherd brought vegetarianism to the working classes was the ideology of self-improvement which was really powerful in 19th century Britain. All sorts of arguments come out in vegetarian tracts which state that if you didn’t eat meat you would save money which you could then spend on more self-improving, cultural activities. You’d be more mild-mannered and there was a real belief that eating meat made you violent – so you wouldn’t be wasting your time in drunken, violent brawls but rather you would be able to spend more time in civilised pursuits. There was also a belief that meat actually weakened you and that vegetarians were stronger and could work harder and earn more money.

What were reactions to vegetarianism in Salford?

By all accounts, Cowherd was an incredibly attractive, charismatic figure, which is reflected in the fact that his congregation adopted vegetarianism and tee-totalism. Apparently one of the men who went to his congregation on that January morning in 1809 went back to his home and threw away the dinner his wife had cooked because it had meat in it.

Apart from his congregation, there were some people who thought he was mad, he was mocked and there was a rival chapel who used to refer to his chapel as the Beefeaters Chapel just to irritate him. But despite all that, when Cowherd died in 1816, not long after he established his church, there was a lot of respect for him because of the wider work that he did.

Cowherd ran a school from the church, its dome doubled up as an observatory where he taught science, he opened up his library to the public and he ran a soup kitchen. A big issue for people at that time was being buried as it was very costly to be buried in a churchyard and he offered free burials at his church which would have really had a big impact on a working class family. Cowherd was even known locally as Dr Cowherd because he provided free medical services. So he did manage to attract a significant working class congregation at the Church and it was a home for these primitive social services which earned him respect in the wider community.

Once Cowherd passed away, Joseph Brotherton took over the church and made himself known in the district as someone who attacked those charities which were ‘feeding the trustees and ignoring the poor.’ He was also involved in local politics and was even elected the member of parliament for Salford in 1832 after the great reform act, when Salford got its first MP. William Harvey, Brotherton’s brother in-law, was the mayor of Salford and other members of the congregation were councillors and so they were well respected in the community. They were also part of the great radical movement in Manchester organised around nascent liberalism and free trade, at a time when liberalism as an ideology wasn’t well developed and so it was a mixture of working class radicalism and liberal elitism.

Can you tell us a little about the transition away from the Bible Christians to the secular Vegetarian Society which is now based in Altrincham?

Joseph Brotherton chaired a meeting on Bridge Street, where his statue now stands, to establish the Vegetarian Society in 1847. Ironically, another group involved were the Alcott House Concordium named after William Alcott, who was an American philosopher and a follower of Robert Owen the Co-operator. It was quite different to the Bible Church but if you look into the history, Alcott was converted to vegetarianism by a group of missionaries from the church in Salford who went out and established a church in Philadelphia. So although one was a socialist, secular movement and the other a religious movement, in fact the two got their ideas from the same source!

So they joined forces to promote vegetarianism and the church provided the early support and William Harvey was even elected as the president of the Society at one point so that link lasted for around 50 years. Its actually astounding how popular vegetarianism was in Manchester at the turn of the century. Where Primark now stands on Piccadilly, there was a vegetarian restaurant owned by the Vegetarian Society which had two dining halls, meeting rooms, a lecture theatre, billiards – everything you would get in a Victorian gentleman’s club- but right in the heart of Manchester and only serving vegetarian food.

Round the corner, there was another vegetarian café and also a group of vegetarian cafés run by Fredrick Smallman who had around 8 cafés dotted across Manchester at one point. Now to what point people were signed up vegetarians or they thought ‘well there’s a cheap meal’ is hard to tell but there was clearly wide support. It certainly was not as odd as when it first started and it was not seen as unusual to be vegetarian.

By the early 1900s the Bible Christian Church lost a lot of its members and few of its congregation practised vegetarianism. Whether that was to do with wealth, the falling cost of meat, the way the food economy worked, ideological changes in beliefs with liberalism and egalitarianism diverging, we can’t be sure. But the church dissipated and even the vegetarian movement went through problems with tensions between the Manchester base and the London Vegetarian Society. It seems to me that it was not until the second half of the 20th century that the society was revived with a whole new set of beliefs.

Article by Arwa Aburawa

The Working Class Movement Library is a national collection of the history of labour movement in Britain, founded in the mid-1950s by Ruth and Edmund Frow, whose personal and political partnership lasted for over 40 years and led to the creation of this unique and wonderful archive.

Eddie Frow was born in Lincolnshire in 1906, the son of tenant farmer. After leaving school he became a toolmaker in the engineering industry. In 1924 Eddie joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and in subsequent years lost many jobs because of his political and trade union activity. During the Depression he was active in the unemployed workers movement in Salford and served four months in Strangeways prison after being badly beaten up by police after leading a march to Salford Town Hall in October 1931, an event that Walter Greenwood included in his novel Love On The Dole and which also featured in the film version. He found work again on his release, became a leading member of the engineering union and was eventually elected as the full-time Secretary for the Manchester District, a position he held for just under ten years, retiring in 1971.

Ruth Frow was born in 1922 and served in the RAF during the war, going into teaching afterwards. She joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1945, whilst canvassing amongst Kent miners during the general election. In the 1950s and 1960s she was active in the peace movement, as well as the National Union of Teachers. Ruth finished her teaching career in 1980 as deputy head of a large comprehensive school in Manchester.

Ruth and Eddie first met at a Communist Party school in 1953 and soon merged their lives – and their respective book collections. They began collecting material on the history of the trade union, radical and labour movement, travelling the country in their holidays

In 1976 they recounted their experiences in article for History Workshop journal:

Our first journeys were in a 1937 Morris van. We carried a small tent into which we crawled wherever we found a grass verge or field conveniently near a town where a bookseller traded. We formed then the pattern which we have followed in the main for over twenty years. In the morning when we are fresh and full of energy we comb the shelves of the unsuspecting bookseller. In the afternoon we laze in the summer sun reading and gloating over our morning purchases. In the evening we walk and possibly move on to the next wide open bookshop. When our money is gone or the van is full, we return to Manchester.
Later developments included a larger tent and a superior car, a Skoda which made down into beds, a larger van and our present combination of a caravan and car. The large tent was fine, although not so easy to site, but in the course of time it became torn and less water-proof. Advancing years warned that the dampness associated with tents was an invitation to rheumatism, so we bought the Skoda. This dealt with the damp situation, but there was never enough room for books. There was the additional difficulty that we could not cook in the car and since it nearly always rains when one needs to cook, our mealtimes became too erratic to be consistent with health. The Morris 1000 van was in many ways ideal. Certainly it had the same problems with cooking, but we became adjusted to cold food and the storage situation was solved by placing our purchases underneath the foam beds on which we slept. As the holiday proceeded and we were fortunate in our book buying forays, we slept ever nearer and nearer the roof of the van. Eventually we were only just able to crawl in the space between the beds and the roof, and books do tend to be unstable in a pile.

The result of these journeys was that their house in Old Trafford became a treasure trove, with bookshelves in every room as well as banners, emblems, prints and much else all meticulously catalogued by Ruth and Eddie – although they could often locate a volume with bothering to look it up so well acquainted were they . They also began writing books, pamphlets, and articles and were in great demand as lecturers, as well as being active in the Society for the Study of Labour History. News of their library spread and many researchers made their way to Old Trafford, their studies fuelled by regular cups of coffee and Ruth’s home-made buns.

By 1987 the house was full to overflowing. Fortunately at this point Salford City Council offered to provide a new home for the library, together with full-time library staff, and later that year the entire collection moved to Jubilee House, (a former nurses’ home opened in 1901) which is situated on Salford Crescent opposite Salford University. In the seventeen years since the collection has continued to grow and rarely a week goes by without some new material being donated. Often a donor will arrive unannounced with a bag full of wonderful archive material that may have been in a family for several generations.

Eddie died in May 1997, just short of his 91st birthday, His obituary appeared in the Morning Star, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent and even (this would have amused him) the Daily Telegraph. Hundreds attended his funeral.

Veteran communist to her fingertips, Ruth carried on their work, visiting the library, neatly dressed and carrying her small case with everything she needed to do for the day. Visitors to the library were often amazed (and on occasions awed) to be personally taken on a tour by Ruth, who would then make tea and happily chat about history.

Ruth died suddenly in January 2008, just hours after attending a library committee. There was no funeral as Ruth had donated her body to science but hundreds attended a commemoration with songs and poetry in her hour in Peel Hall.

The library left by Ruth and Eddie is now recognized as one of the most important labour and working class history collections in the country. It begins in the 1770s and goes up to the present day. It is open to all and welcomes visitors and researchers.

Article by Michael Herbert

The Working Class Movement Library is at Jubilee House, 51 Crescent
Salford, M5 4WX
www.wcml.org.uk
email: enquiries [at] wcml.org.uk
Tel: 0161 736 3601

Reflections from Lawrence on the final group session (Lawrence will now be working on putting together the library exhibition about Salford, based on what people from the group have found evocative/useful as they’ve explored the library holdings. The exhibition will open in January):

Open discussion, as a form of evaluation. The group were invited to reflect on the series of 14 sessions as a whole, outlining their preferences, favourite themes, talks and what subjects they thought were inportant to develop.

The role of the facilitator was mentioned, people seemed pleased that it had gone well and wanted a further programme of events and talks, which is currently being organised. The group stated that continuing to develop an informal, welcoming atmosphere at the library was a key factor in encouraging them to return. Offering tea, biscuits and allowing visitors space to conduct open ended research and discussion on personally inspired subjects relating to the library archives was important.

Caroline and Lawrence were present to take notes on what people wanted to see in the future and what they had enjoyed. This will be written up as a reflective analysis, informing further work.

In the morning, Paul viewed Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of The Battle of Orgreave. Watching the film with an ex-miner (Paul) who had been  present at the actual event was a real eye opener. He mentioned that the film was a fairly sanitised version of actual events. Listening to Paul discuss his experiences brought back memories of the depth of working class  solidarity  shown to the miners by many working class communities and how our culture is passed on and revitalised through oral testimony.  During the Wednesday sessions the library has played a key role in allowing some of these  hidden voices to be heard, which is a really important issue.

It seems that during the course of my last post, I Offended someone from Salford, for that I apologise, although the post was not in any way meant to offend, quite the opposite in fact the post was supposed to convey the fact that although Salford is a fine place to live, it still needs work doing to improve it even more, Buile Hill for example.

Not only do I sincerely apologise  would like to extend a offer out, He says that I don’t talk about my area enough, well come for a visit you will see why. Also I will just for you talk about it tommorow.

I’ve been debating arguing and banging my head against hard objects for most of the day. It’s a simple argument I think that investment should be targeted at the places that need them the most, for several reason’s but let me give you the argument first . The M4 corridor is a high-tech area that has lots of modern industry and was put there well for several reasons the main being good connectivity and the massive talent pool that the Oxford and Cambridge area has, My argument is pretty simple actually when I try and condense it into a 300 word blog post. The investment shouldn’t of gone there. Why shouldn’t it have gone there? Now im sure there are some areas along the bulk of what is the Hi- Tech M4 corridor that both needed the investment and have benefited from it massively, However I sincerely believe that there were and still are areas that would be much better served by the investment that has been ploughed into the area. (Excluding the later Wales part.)

I’ll tell you why I think it,  Oxford Cambridge etc. are not bad places to live, yes there are going to be pockets of deprivation in some of the suburbs but on the whole its going to be a perfectly fine place to live, don’t forget that they have two (supposedly) of the best universities in the country. So then they don’t really need massive investment in Hi-Tech industry. Do they?

I don’t think that they necessarily do whereas they were and still are places that are screaming out for that level of investment. Lets take Salford as an example, it particularly needed investment in the 80’s when the M4 Corridors were becoming major hubs. Would it not have been better to site the companies in Salford? Would of been much better for the regeneration of the area, and thus the standards of living for the people in Salford?

The fact of the matter is it would have been cheaper for the companies, better for the People of Salford. Would of reduced the rates of unemployment, would of improved education in Salford. Yes Oxford sounds better than Salford but then that’s only because Salford needs money spending on it, Oxford is only better because somewhere down the line someone decided to spend it in Oxford.

I’m drifting every so slightly here, mainly because I keep deleting everything because I start ranting, I will say though look at Mediacity and the Impact that that’s going to have on Salford, yes its the quays and they are realitvely

Bob kindly let us listen to a taped recording of his elderly mother (recorded in the late 1980s). She recounted her life through two world wars. She recollected working in various factories including Worrals in Ordsall and the Bleaching works near Adelphi. One of the interesting things to emerge from her stories was  how she walked nearly everywhere. Apparently that is what kept her fit.

We also watched a DVD of bygone Salford. One part showed Peel Park before the construction of the University and boat races on the River Irwell.

Next week is the last public session. After that Lawrence will be working one to one with individuals to construct the forthcoming exhibition at the Library.

Liam

This isn’t the right time to be feeling so nihilistic all of a sudden, the past week as a been a hell of self-indulgence and binges on anything that has been going, six days in a row I have drank stupid amounts of drink and consumed little food compared to the things I am not brave enough to mention that has been facilitated by a outside member of our wasteful troupe of actors and writers and directors and artists within the institution that we call home – for now. We all know this is going to end in mourning, for advertisements on television warn of one in five contracting these such illnesses that cannot be cured and our affirmation into the lifestyle we have chosen does nothing but welcomes the maddening sick. A bottle of water by my side as I retell the story of the past week with guilt and a soft sad tone, no one is around now but me, the walls are a white wash stained yellow from the now dispersed smoke and outside the window the rain falls and its dark. The time is 13:46 as I write this and sun never rose to set but permanently stayed in bed for it feels how I do today.

Paranoia sweeps down except for the hours of seven in the morning until ten when I arrive for a lecture or if it has been cancelled that is when it begins. The use of the internet has made everything too easy, so instead of hard work routing through dictionaries and encyclopaedias and books on referencing the art you are making. The art I’m making is sparse, sporadic and just as self-indulgent as the debauchery. I am a selfish person. I have selfish wills and will do in fact close to anything to get what I desire at this point in time before the time counts down and the new year is upon us with great dissatisfaction to the previous year that has ended, now only existing in memory and digital images upon your Facebook page. The death student comes as a quick genocide every June. When thousands strip themselves of youth and enter a world unknowing and cruel, where time costs more than space, space is harder to find than that beautiful girl you once saw on a bus who flashed you a smile as you walked past her and had to double take because that smell of white chocolate and the glow of ethereal purity could only have been a momentary lapse, a déjà vu because she then goes onto resemble first love in its entirety – a sweet drop of sweat from the forehead during a summers morning embrace. These realizations left me without a hope for the future but more of a direct drive to find the hope to spur on the grand gesture of life outside of education – the journey into the wild cities where nights of talk with Mike about the evolution of beauty: the evolution of the peppered moth during the industrial revolution to adapt to the new changes in global discolouration to escape the advances of the great tit sums up how the in the ever changing public persona of myself must make a defining less gradual change of myself to escape the advances of becoming the deadly artist or actor or performer. The holiness of the moth being able to do this give faith in myself as a higher being (figuratively) to change to fit my surroundings in a social and political state, but isn’t this just the life of an actor anyway? I pretend to be someone else to escape my own inferiority within different circumstances of a show, taking upon a different set of idiosyncrasies to fit criteria handed down by the power above whoever that is.

This brings me onto my second point: The process I go through in order to perform is much like that of other artists I have read about but for obvious reasons not able to obtain first hand: I as a member of the human race have an hereditary emotional resonance with everything and nothing. Through my construction as twenty one year old male living in this time I can connect with things in my time and times past and imagine what a future self would do and using these as grounding to levitate myself into the shoes of a character, contorting to fit: bodily language, internal thoughts, given points in task as if I know to enter at this point and exit at this point. It is through the public task of audience to decipher my true function within the piece, where as within myself I only do as I am told and bringing the basic emotional gestures to show – like a dog doing tricks. This however does not deter from the work I create, for I create work out of a love of going through the ‘motions’ whether they be through a barrage of a task based study of theatre itself or an internalization of characters or caricatures who enter and exit with reasons and not presence.

So I conclude that life itself is a busy bustling one that must not be handled with care and too much thought because the thought itself is a saddening thing, it’s the face value tactic I approach with carefully with a hope that the next hand I shake would be full of love and the next set of daggers thrown are my own for practice. This all stems within weeks of thought upon how relationships change within the shadows for better or worse with the slightest of grievances aimed towards my relationship with performance itself. Yet writing never lets me down, I can say what ever I would desire and not feel the need to show off using concise grammar and spelling, without real respect for prose and more just the stream-of-conscious thoughts and feelings armed with spell check, coffee and an unmentionable. The words pour from my head like a tin of paint splattering onto a canvas just to drip off again due to a nonchalance way of looking at the art your creating the creating it itself is the art and the action the performance so with everything a performance or a piece of art is it then devalued? Same with relationships with people: if every one is free willed to do what they want, talk to who they would like does that then devalue an already outstanding relationship with another person if the relationship intertwines like every song you have ever listened to sound tracking your life on shuffle? My experiences are now shaved nerve endings filling my eyes with that sharp bite of pain you get reminiscent to tooth ache. Bah.

I’m so pleased the attitude to mudguards has softened. My touring bike has lightweight plastic guards permanently fitted, and my everyday flat-bar has crud catchers. Maybe I will even fit some of those new Crud Roadracers on my lightweight.

But it reminds me in my youth that muddies were just for wimps – real men got wet. Being from Manchester, rain was a constant companion. I used to ride on the track, and as a schoolboy without access to a car, the only option was to ride down to Fallowfield stadium and back on my track bike. The memory or riding home through rain-sodden streets with a skunk stripe a foot wide up both my back and front still makes me shiver.  The only item of relief was the audacious and often downright dangerous sprint for the roadsign marking the border between Manchester and Salford.

When I got home there was no leap into a hot shower (showers were still a thing of the future for ordinary homes) but first it was clean down my bike and lock my pride and joy in the coal shed for the night. Then, if there was hot water, a bath then sit down with a mug of tea to watch ‘Bonanza’ or ‘The Twighlight Zone’.

By heck, we were real men in those days!

Rough Guides Update

The second part of the Rough Guides assignment is completed, I’ve used a photo from my recent trip to Salford Quays to make a “Rough Guide to Architecture”. The subject is the Imperial War Museum: North.

(Image © Gary Danton)

Thanks

Gary

a couple of pictures below from the performance with Ad Hoc dance on Monday at the Lowry Studio for which I composed and performed the music for…

note that as ever i cant keep still and am blurred…more pictures to follow, hopefully with some blurred dancers rather than stationary ones, as well as video. Im going to get the score online soon too…

Today we settled down to watch some home movies donated by Salford people and transferred to DVD by the North West Film Archive. The first movie centred around a ‘Whit Walk’ from Broughton to Manchester City Centre sometime in the 1960s. It is amazing to think that the Whit Walks were an integral part of life up until the 60s/70s. Sadly the tradition is now very much on the wane. The recent Salford Mission exhibition at the nearby Salford Museum and Art Gallery also touched on this issue. One of the Salford residents in the group who remembered the Whit Walks descibed how the Catholics and Protestants marched on separate days. The decline of the Whit Walks may have had something to do with the programme of housing clearances and the re-organisation of the road network (for example around Regent Road). It may also have been related to the seeming decline in church attendance.

The second film was a home movie from the 60s into the 70s. It was interesting to note the change in men’s hairstyles. One scene showed children on Christmas morning opening presents. The abundance of gifts led some to comment about the relative affluence of workers in that period and the growth of consumer society (now in the credit crunch we are feeling some of the negative effects of that then nascent consumer boom).

The session today was quite personal with people bringing in their photo albums and family snaps. It was interesting to relate the private pictures and films with the official histories, maps and other resources in the library’s collection.

Liam

working on this site

Britain’s first feminists emerged out of the Owenite Co-operative movement. They demanded equal rights and argued for a new relationship between men and women. For the first time women gave public lectures on Socialism and feminism.

The members of the radical Co-operative Movement of the 1830s, inspired by the ideas and writings of Robert Owen, wanted to create a world based on mutual co-operation and not capitalist competition. They challenged not just the social and economic structure of society but also the conventional morality of the age on issues such as marriage and relationships between men and women. For the first time women not only discussed ideas of social change but also appeared as speakers and proselytisers for a new society.

Women had been active in radical politics in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Women set up Female Reform Societies in the prelude to Peterloo, holding meetings and published addresses. Susanne Saxton was secretary of the Manchester Female Reform Society, for instance. Many women were present at the Peterloo massacre, and a number even fought the soldiers. However, their political efforts were still focused on supporting their husbands and brothers, and they did not demand political and social rights for themselves. By long standing tradition women did not speak at political meetings, which were often held outdoors or in rowdy public houses. Indeed it was seen as a radical departure when at a meeting at Lydgate, Saddleworth one of the speakers, Samuel Bamford, successfully moved that women be allowed to vote on the resolutions.

In this period women had even less rights than most men. They could not vote and were often denied an education. On marriage their separate legal existence was ended, their money passed to their husband. To all intents and purposes they became the property of their husbands. They could be legally beaten. Women who did not marry and had no inherited wealth often lived a precarious existence. Those with some education usually became governesses or teachers

In 1792, inspired by the political earthquake of the French Revolution and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the Vindication of the Rights of Women. She was viciously attacked but the ideas in her book now entered the radical underworld and political discourse, including that of the Owenite co-operators.

Many of the Owenites called themselves Socialists, using the word for the first time. The women lecturers of the movement included Anna Wheeler, Emma Martin, Eliza Macauley, Margaret Chappelsmith and Frances Morrison.

Frances was born in Surrey, the illegitimate daughter of a farm labourer and was brought up by her grand-mother. Aged just 16 she ran off with James Morrison , a house-painter who was tramping the country looking for work. They lived together until she became pregnant, whereupon they got married. They had many children and lived in Birmingham where Frances ran a newspaper shop and began reading Robert Owen’s work. She later write to him “Long ‘ere I began to think, my reason warred with the absurd forms of society, but from an ill-cultivated and wrong direction given to my mind, I could never get a solid idea until the perusal of your Essays’

In 1833 James, who was active reformer and trade unionist, became editor of The Pioneer. France wrote for the paper under the pseudonym “A Bondswoman”, addressing issues such as equal pay and the marriage system.

In February 1834 the following letter appeared in The Pioneer, signed “A Bondswoman”.

“It is time the working females began to demand their long-suppressed rights. Let us in the first place, endeavour to throw off the trammels that have so long enshackled our minds, and get knowledge, when all are making their way to the temple of truth and justice. Let not woman –patient, suffering, long neglected woman – stay behind on the road to improvement. Not but I know the time will come, ere long, when men will see the necessity of educating their wives., in all matters that concern themselves, equally as all men see the necessity of their knowing who our government act as regards them. May be the time is not be tine is not distant when the superiority of educated women will be acknowledges over those who are kept in blind and stupid ignorance. …Sisters, let us submit to it no longer; let us once get to the knowledge of our wrongs, and our cause is won; once entered on the path to improvement, the flowers that are strewn on the road will invite us to travel on.”

After her husband’s death in 1835 Frances became a paid Owenite lecturer, speaking across the north. She moved to Salford in the late 1830s where there was a vigorous Owenite movement , based at the Salford Institute, and later the Hall of Science.

In July 1839 she spoke at a meeting in New George Street, Shudehill and the following report appeared in the New Moral World.

“…the place was crowded to suffocation. She commenced her lecture with astonishing firmness and composure., and seemed throughout to evince a spirit of devotedness to the cause she advocated which rose superior to the strange position which she , for ths first time, occupied. The subject of her lecture was confine principally to the feeling and principal should guide or actuate these who call-themselves Socialist. Her manner was peculiarly energetic, her arguments well-arranged , and her remarks judiciously adapted to the occasion, and characterised by remarkable simplicity and delicacy. She was listened to with respectful attention and seemed to give general satisfaction. She is first female in Manchester who had had the nerve to come forward in practical advocacy of our views, and it is hoped that her example will operate as stimulus to others to lend their exertions in promoting the great cause of socialism, whose interests are so completely identified with their own. An animated discussion followed, which was opened by Mr Johnson, lately a Baptist minister, who was replied to Mr Southall; we then had a female opponent who occupied the next ten minutes, and was then answered, apparently to the satisfaction of all, by Mr Shepherd.”

In a published lecture Frances wrote about a new form of marriage. “But in community, money will not be known, neither will the want of it be dreaded, for all that can minister to the comforts of life will be had in abundance. There will be no marrying for convenience merely (a very cold word), but real affection inspired by real and known worth on both sides.”

With the help of Robert Owen, Frances became a teacher in Hulme and seems to have given up lecturing for the Co-operative Movement. She enjoyed a long life and died in 1898.

Article by Michael Herbert

Now, this weekend was a nice and relaxed one. Friday was another theatre directing session that gives me faith in knowing i made the right choice coming to the institution that currently houses myself and the other vagrant artists… a hot pot of wannabe’s of a variant of niches.

Working with Kane’s 4:48 psychosis and Zarrilli and LeCompt assortment of techniques, I was restored to a few years ago when working with a theatre company from back home, a nostalgic feeling of ‘I-know-what-I’m-doingness’. Even if i dont like the text, I fulfilled my duty to do it all to the best of my ability reminded me of a greek tragedy that i forget the name of which was performed in my first year of college over at Barnsley, after the first show two girls in a year above told me how much presence I had when I entered the space, I was reminded of that again as i stepped to the microphone to deliver a speech of this open text. I must still have presence, presence cannot be lost? Can presence be absence even if you once possessed it?

These questions were going through my head hours later as I met friends for drinks before a performance of Villa by Untill Thursdays: Oliver Bray which in my head was not only a satirical jab at Forced Entertainment and their (In my opinion) lack of change in form over the past years, and a nice new original piece about britishness, russia, loss and presence, for most of an hour the artist took control and with stability held everyone’s attention with a playful necessity. The message wasnt complete, or coherent but it was refreshing to see something unpretentious, yet clever, witty and sure of itself.

The confidence was one that reminded me of works long dead and buried, forgotten in a sea of the NEW – the search for a viable form where you cannot hide.

http://www.youtube.com/v/coxoEhQmjzY&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0×5d1719&color2=0xcd311b” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”480″ height=”385″>

Swimming to Cambodia by Spalding Gray.

Spalding Gray had a presence that was a nice refreshing change to the other work him and the Wooster group was performing at the time. It held a beat-generational story telling aesthetics – everything was simple, everything had a function and wasnt the big-collage of entertainment that you are being taught in the post-modern-theatrical event.

–

On another note, I have been composing work up for my own event I’m hoping to showcase at the taster event EMBRYO at Studio Salford.

We performed there two years ago doing my short sketches Morning Smell & Nothingtolose featuring myself, Darren White and Gemma Salsubury and I cannot wait to get back in there.

Lately since the hiatus of performing (given a small one at that (2-3 months)) I feel should try and inform anyone whose been feeling down, uninspired and generally fatigued about making work as artists or just getting off your bottoms as actors – I know it’s hard to find inspiration during the poverty-stricken times, but wasnt the poverty and depression that created most of the art you hold special at the moment?

Also if you want to make work – make it. Its one area where running before you can crawl usually helps – fuck the baby steps – its head first territory!

SO here are a few more videos that have inspired me today, yesterday and tomorrow.

Franko B – I miss you

Aesop Rock – None Shall Pass

Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson- On Beckett

David Amram – On Kerouac’s Pull My Daisy with an excerpt of the original movie.

and finally

Buddy Wakefield with his poem Convenience Stores

Now maybe I’m just being self-indulgent and lazy there, showing everyone what i want to see…

but isnt that a point of most art?

I have my drive back, now I need my audience.

To see the full size article click here

Salford Advertiser: ”Group to Run Against Hazel” (November 5th 2009)

By Pamela Welsh

CAMPAIGNERS hoping to oust Salford MP Hazel Blears from her seat say they will put another candidate up against her.

The Hazel Must Go campaign had issued the Salford MP with an ultimatum to resign her seat before Halloween or they would field another candidate against her. But at a public meeting on Monday, November 2nd they said she had not stood down and signalled their intention to put a local candidate against her. Campaign secretary Steve North said: “We are making an announcement that we are going to be looking for a candidate to stand against Hazel Blears at the next election. “We issued her with an ultimatum that if she did not stand down by the Halloween deadline, we would put someone up against her. “She emailed the campaign on Friday to tell us that she had no intention of standing down so the campaign begins now.” The group made the call at a meeting last month, which featured journalist-turned-politician Martin Bell.

The Hazel Must Go campaign, a coalition of left-wing activists and residents, was formed in response to the row over MPs expenses this summer. Ms Blears survived a vote of confidence from her local Labour party in June. Monday’s meeting took place outside the former Adelphi Post Office which closed last year. Steve said: “We chose to have the announcement here because we feel it is indicative of Hazel’s failures. “A lot of people thought our campaign was solely about expenses but it is more about Hazel’s voting record.” She voted for a programme of post office closures in Parliament despite saying she would fight against the Adelphi closure.” He continued: “The campaign begins now. “We are looking for a candidate who wants to stand up for the people of Salford. “We’ll be out everywhere campaigning, canvassing and doorknocking.

Find out for yourself how Hazel has voted to comdemn thousands of Post Offices to closure – including several in Salford – Check out her voting record  on Post Office Closures (PublicWhip)

Back in September Martin Bell told Salford he hopes the city finds “local heroes” willing to run at the next general election. He confirmed he will stand aside and allow them to come for in a race which he predicted will see Hazel Blears “Challenged – like she has never been challenged before (Videos)”.

The old(ish) joke goes that if you google the word ‘google’, you’ll explode the internet. That might not be quite true, but the act of googling yourself has come to have a greater significance to me in recent times than it ever did when, as a student or bored first-jobber, I’d idly search for my own name or those of my friends whilst mucking about online (or in the words of Dave Gorman ‘finding everything in the whole world ever just a little bit distracting’ whilst trying to write an undergraduate essay). These days, working out what your deliberate online presence and the less conscious trails you leave across the web say about you can be crucial to your employment prospects or professional reputation.

So if you google me, I’m not sure I’m happy about the prospect of being confused with Kate Fox (above), the teenage girl from Hydesville, New York, who orchestrated the first seance in the 1840s, or in indeed Kate Fox, the sociologist of ‘Watching the English‘ fame….and that’s just the start. In actual fact, I was once mistaken for the sociology Kate Fox by an author of mine, and was hugely flattered that he’d a) think I’d actually written a book of any kind, and b) was prepared to buy it if I had. It was somewhat socially awkward as a situation though, and some small indication of the importance of being known for yourself, particularly in your professional field.

Since our initial IT workshop last week, in odd moments (and there haven’t been many of them, I have to say), I’ve been mulling over the idea of my online identity, or the brand of me, as I’ve heard it described. For me, there were two key issues raised by the session. Firstly, the idea that (all of a sudden?) MY online identity is important from the point of view of my professional (ahem) standing as a social media ‘expert’, and secondly, that really, one should’ve been using the same identity for all one’s online activity since the beginning of time.

The first point made me think about what I do online professionally, and what I do ‘privately’, and whether I can, or should make distinctions or maintain barriers / boundaries between them. Here’s a brief rundown:

Facebook – I think of this as a non-professional activity, it’s predominantly where I talk to friends and organise my non-work life. More pertinantly, perhaps, it’s also where I occasionally let off steam during my working day, mainly through the odd cryptic but grumpy status update. It should also be noted that I AM facebook-friends with some people I know through work, or have worked with as contractors / consultants. I pick and choose quite carefully though, and am somewhat mindful of this when I post. What has a greater bearing on my facebook persona is that I am friends with a number of young people I’ve worked with through volunteering, so I try to set them a decent(ish) example.

Blogging – this is something I’ve usually done FOR work (this is the first personal blog I’ve ever stuck with for more than one post). My blogger profile is actually about the first information you can find if you google me, I think, but it gives minimal personal information. The fact that I was born in the year of the horse is constantly pleasing to me, however. So, as a blogger, I’m pretty much known as the ‘voice of the Mersey Basin Campaign’. I’ve tried to keep the Campaign’s blog as casual and friendly as possible, as it’s something we began to do in order to counterbalance the extremely corporate, strategic nature of much of our comms work. Of course, I’m by no means the only person ever to have contributed to the organisation’s blog. Most of our staff have written for it at one point or another. What’s interesting about our experiences with that is that the most engaging content we’ve produced, and the easiest ’sell’ in terms of encouraging colleagues to post, was when we did a project featuring a carved wooden salmon named ‘Sammy‘, and asked staff to blog as if they were the fish. Pretty much everyone found it easier and more fun to write for the blog as Sammy than as themselves. They’re predominantly not particularly active online, but it makes me wonder, is an ‘online identity’, to some extent something we all like to hide behind in this manner? Friends I’ve known with sustained personal blogs seem to have had greatest success where they either write from behind a ‘persona’ in this manner, or with a very focused subject that generates regular content. A great example of that is my friend Neil’s NEIL COOKS GRIGSON project. I didn’t want to read it before I’d written my own reflections, but I’ll be interested to see what B, over at SocialBedia has to say about the issue of online alter egos and keeping the professional (or paid?) separate from the personal (or unpaid) where blogging’s concerned.

Social media consultancy / advice / speaking – I mean, as a field. It’s not strictly an ‘online activity’, but aside from my day job at the Mersey Basin Campaign, I have also been involved for some time with Sounddelivery, an organisation which trains people working in third and public sector comms to use social media tools. Obviously, I talk a lot about my work for MBC (in fact, I have a strong suspicion that I have a certain reputation as ‘the girl with the wooden salmon’), but I generally use my Facebook profile picture in delegate packs etc, and keep in touch with most of the people I meet in that context through……

Twitter! To me this is the really interesting and possibly useful element of my online ‘brand’. I’ve been a relatively active Twitter user since roughly the beginning of my serious involvement with Sounddelivery, and I’ve used it a lot to communicate with the people I’ve met through that work who’re doing somewhat similar things to me in the third / public sector. In this context, I tweet as myself, but I make it clear where I work, and I’d reckon about 30-40% of my posts are ‘Mersey Basin posts’ – for example, I always retweet a friend of mine’s birdspots along the Irwell (@mitherer), and publicise the progress of the new Museum of Liverpool, a waterside regeneration triumph, and an institution to which the Campaign has donated content (@the_new_museum). I find it interesting to see who tweets as themselves and who as their organisation. In general, I tend to ‘trust’ those who either write as themselves, or who have one person tweeting as an organisation. To some extent the nature of the organisation must affect that decision. One of my favourite, and surely one of the most successful and well-known ‘charity tweeters’ is @dogstrust, whom I happen to know is generally one member of staff by the name of Alex. Whenever she’s away, her colleague Jacqui lets people know that it’s her tweeting instead, which I think is good practice. I’m not sure being @merseybasin would work as well though. Dogs Trust, which rehomes dogs, is the kind of organisation and issue that lots of people feel strongly about, and can identify with. One of the problems MBC has always faced is that it’s a complicated organisation, and not necessarily one that’s straightforward to ’sell’ to the layman.

The other interesting thing about Twitter is how useful I’ve found my network of largely unrelated ’social media types’ to be in disseminating our messages. Those based in London, working on, say breast cancer or IT for the voluntary sector will often, unbidden, retweet a piece of content I’ve highlighted or news of our commendation at the Big Chip Awards, for example, because I’ve done the same sort of thing. It’s a supportive community, and I’m quite glad that that’s the main ‘professional’ online space where I’m known as me –  in the form of my Twitter name, @kate_is_busy. For those kind of reasons, I’m thinking that kate_is_busy might be the identity that I try to tie my social media activities to. You’ll notice that I’ve named this blog kateisbusy….

That brings me back to the second thing that stuck with me from the workshop – the idea that, really, I should’ve been using one username (kate_is_busy?) all along, in my journey through the web, so that my footprint would be bigger / easier to trace. It’s a nice idea, but too late now, I suppose. We’ll see how far I get with the idea of tying everything together under the kate_is_busy banner.

On a related point, it occurs to me that my unconscious trail across the web is something I can’t really control. Sure, I can ‘manipulate’ my conscious online brand, but don’t the places I’ve visited, the stuff I’ve bought, the comments I’ve made, and the videos I’ve watched on Youtube etc say way more about me that I can’t ever hope to control, but that would give anyone who looked at the complete picture as pretty accurate scrapbook of my life. They’d have a decent idea which gigs to find me at, and what might be on my iPod. They’d know where I went for my holidays, and of course, they’d probably have seen the pictures. They’d know where I’d like to go next year, whose club nights I’ve attended, who my friends are, and how I go terribly flushed when I’ve had a drink.

Do I mind this? Do I worry about it? Should I, given it’s probably way too late to control it? Does it represent a breach of my privacy, given I’m the one who, one way or another, put this information out there for some enterprising marketer, nosey ex-schoolmate, unscrupulous fraudster or even the odd social scientist writing a magnum opus for First Monday to discover or make use of? I’m not going to answer that question now. There’s much more mulling to be done, and I have the strong suspicion that I’ll spend plenty of time answering it before January……….

(This was pretty long, wasn’t it? Sorry. I’m secretly quite proud though…look, Ma, I wrote stuff…)

Lawrence asked us to talk about what we had been doing over the last few years interviewing Salford people about their lives in the past.

We at Salford LIDS (mainly Mike Scantlebury and Jane Wood) have been working for Retracing Salford since its beginnings. We had however been recording in Salford since we moved here and Community Radio started in the city. I had got the Community Radio bug a few years before in Longsight, Manchester where the first programmes in the country started.

I have become quite passionate about the amazing stories that have emerged at exhibitions around Salford of Old Streets, family photos, films and lots more. I was born in the last century! in Levenshulme, Manchester but I had never come across stories like this before. The conditions that some folks from some parts of Salford (mainly S567) experienced even in the 60s were so deprived. Diphtheria, Bugs, Midwife, were some of the titles of the excerpts we played. A lot of people in the room recognised the pictures that the stories portrayed and had indeed done some recordings of their own.

The midwife never locked her new mini in the street where she attended regularly and she remembered the names of “her mothers” and often delivered babies by candlelight without any phones in the middle of the night, and regarded her families with respect and enjoyed them as characters. We heard the lady who was willing to share all her food and soap with great good humour. Hunger was common as were bed bugs, blackjacks, mice and rats, despite constant cleaning. These people often “described everyone being in the same boat” and “everyone helping each other” and I am convinced that we have a lot to learn about how to make the most of our resources.

All the people in the room joined in and I think there was an agreement that these stories are so valuable. We are going to the sound archive next week to see how the general public can gain greater access.

In the meantime…they are being acted out by Blueberry Youth Theatre at Salford Arts Theatre on Sat 14th November at 7p.m. Ring 07770 769424 for details.
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There is a wide variety of our recordings for radio and otherwise including one on the Working Class Movement Library on http://salfordlids.wordpress.co.uk/

and there are some recordings on http://retracingsalford/video.com

Jane

Following on from my previous post on Salford Quays, I’ve just added a few of the images that I took on the day.

(all images © Gary Danton)

You can view the flickr set here and slideshow here.

thanks

Gary

From Lawrence
Today’s session involved two guest speakers, Mike Scantlebury and Jane Wood, who have recorded numerous oral histories over the past two and a half years, as part of the RE-Tracing Salford Group (they are the oral history wing of the project).
They played some really interesting (entertaining, funny, tragic, sad, novel), stories on tape(CD) for the audience. This was received with animated feedback from the Salford residents in the group, who all related to the stories, of illness, bugs, sharing things, common perceptions of the past in Salford and lots more.
Mike and Jane have made hundreds of recordings and have captured the spirit of Salford people really well.
This session was really popular and well attended, it was rooted in social history and given an animated spark. It was supplemented by reading material from the library, which residents read during and after the session.

This coming Monday…

SPOKE

NOVEMBER 9^TH, 2009

SPOKE is a new contemporary dance work created by Ad Hoc Dance, directed by Ruth Tyson-Jones. It has taken creative writing, either found, gathered and/or authored as a starting point. The spoken word is skillfully interwoven into the choreography. A specially created score has been created and will be played live, by David Birchall.

Ad Hoc Dance is The Lowry’s in-house adult contemporary community dance company

The evening’s bill will be shared  – The Lowry’s in house youth dance company, Commotions will present a new contemporary choreography. This work has been created alongside dance artist, Debbie Milner.

The Studio Theatre, The Lowry, Salford Quays

Time: 7.45pm

Price: £5

Date: November 9, 2009

Book through The Lowry Box Office on 0870 787 5783 or Lowry website