A taste of the Potteries

by Carole Barclay

A bottle-kiln from the old days

Stoke-on-Trent is not a major tourist magnet. This northern city is actually comprised of six towns brought together as one civic authority in 1910. Known as ‘The Potteries’, this was the home of the English ceramics industry that began in the 18th century and continues to this day in the six towns that make up modern Stoke.
    Thousands of workers once toiled in Stoke’s pottery and steel plants or went down the mines in the locality. But the pits and steel-works have long gone, and glory days of Wedgwood, Royal Dalton and Spode are of another day. Nowadays the largest employer is Stoke-on-Trent City Council – closely followed by the Royal Stoke University Hospital with over 7,000 staff.
    These days most people come to Stoke to use it as base to visit Alton Towers, the famed theme park and resort complex just 10 miles from the city centre, or to explore the magnificent pocket wilderness of the Peak District.
    Football fans will come to see the once mighty Stoke City play in its new stadium where the ashes of their legendary former player, Sir Stanley Matthews, lie buried beneath the centre circle of the pitch. Robbie Williams, however, the singer who was born and bred in Stoke, favours their humbler rival Port Vale. But artists, collectors and students of the Industrial Revolution that turned the six towns into ‘The Potteries’ will come to study the past and the still vibrant, although much smaller, ceramics industry in this north Staffordshire town.
    The city claims with some justification to be the “World Capital of Ceramics”, and visitors can see for themselves by going on the tours organised by the remaining pottery factories that continue the traditions of a bygone age or to visitors’ centres such as the World of Wedgwood and the Middleport Pottery.
    The first port of call, however, has to be the award-winning Gladstone Pottery Museum. Here you can see how the workers mass produced tableware in the appalling conditions that were considered acceptable by bourgeois society until outlawed by the unions in the latter part of the 20th Century.
    The first factory opened in 1787 to produce earthenware and decorate Wedgwood’s plates and dishes, but what we see today is the old coal-fired plant that was closed in 1970 and re-opened as a living museum in 1974.
    For kids of all ages there’s a maze of workshops and kilns to explore along with hands-on displays of throwing, moulding and decorating, and a gallery charting the history of lavatories from the times of the Tudors to today.
    In the engine rooms and the bottle-kilns of the old works we can look at examples of the skill and craftsmanship of generations of Stoke workers in the old plant, which goes back to the Victorian era. We can see what conditions were like for the men, women and children who slaved away at the centre of the world’s pottery industry. We get a glimpse of what it was like to work in the miserable and hazardous conditions of those days through the audio-visual displays scattered throughout the complex and see what it was like to live in the hovels for the workers that surrounded the factory. What we don’t, of course, see is how the factory owners lived in their luxurious mansions well away from the noise and the poisonous fumes that their workers had to endure throughout their lives.
    There’s the usual cafe and a museum shop that sells a wide range of gifts including ceramics, local paintings, children's novelties and local guides and history books, as well as pottery made and decorated at the museum.
    The museum in Uttoxeter road is open from Wednesday to Saturday from 10am–5pm and Sunday from 11am–4pm. The admission charge is £8.50 for adults, £5.95 for children, and £6.95 for students and senior citizens.

Pittance pay in the heart of Cambridge

by Carole Barclay

Daniel Zeichner, the local Labour MP, joined Cambridge students and supervisors demanding “fair pay”, a contract and paid training for supervisors at a rally in the heart of the university city last week. These were the people who were the “backbone of Cambridge’s education system” a student speaker said, but the way they are treated is “cruel, exploitative and unsustainable”.
    The protest by the Justice4CollegeSupervisors campaign called for an end to the “gig economy” working conditions of the undergraduate supervisors who deliver the University of Cambridge’s tutorials on pittance pay.
    The University & College Union (UCU) says around half of undergraduate supervisions are delivered by staff forced into self-employed status or zero-hours contracts. Around four in 10 do not earn a living wage.
    Zeichner told the crowd: “I’m here to show my support for your cause. It's 2022. This university, these colleges, have a lot to be proud of. Why have we still got the systems from centuries ago?
    “I’ll say to people in the university: institutions survive when they change with the times. If they don’t change, change happens anyway, happens when people apply pressure. Thank you for what you’re doing.”
    Campaigning can bring change Zeichner said, pointing to the Johnson government’s recent U-turn on a windfall tax on oil and gas companies that was first proposed by the Labour Party.
    Although the University of Cambridge has finally agreed to draft guidance asking departments and faculties to pay for all mandatory training that they require supervisors to undertake, the university's own colleges have so far refused to follow suit.
    UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: 'It is a scandal that workers who deliver the University of Cambridge's famed small-group supervisions are often on poverty pay without any job security – conditions akin to the gig economy.
    “After years of campaigning, the university has made a first step towards paid training. Its colleges now need to do so and meet our demands to pay supervisors for the full amount of time they spend preparing for classes and provide them with secure contracts.”

Still Towering over London

beefeaters' lonely vigil

By Carole Barclay

The Tower of London has dominated the London scene for almost a thousand years. It began in 1066 when William the Conqueror ordered its construction to make his mark on the capital of his new kingdom. Since then the Tower has served as a fortress, palace, prison and even a royal zoo for those who sat on the throne of England.
    This is where the two young “Princes in the Tower”, who stood in the way of their uncle Richard III, were held before they conveniently “disappeared” in 1483. Ann Boleyn, one of Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives, spent her last days awaiting execution in the Tower. Many others, including Walter Raleigh and Guy Fawkes, passed through ‘Traitors Gate’ down the ages.
    During the Second World War Germany’s Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, became the last state prisoner of the Tower when he was held here after he parachuted into Scotland to try and negotiate an armistice in May 1941 while the last man to be executed behind its grim walls was a German spy shot by firing squad in August 1941.
    Though this massive fortress may seems impregnable to the modern visitor the only time it ever fell was when sympathetic guards opened the gates to Wat Tyler’s rebel army during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. A rebel detachment led by John Starling seized the architects of the hated poll tax who were cowering behind its walls. The Lord High Treasurer Robert Hales along with the Chancellor of England Archbishop Simon Sudbury and John Legge, the king’s tax collector for Kent, were dragged out and beheaded on nearby Tower Hill.
    Though there is modest display dedicated to the Peasants Revolt in one of the bastions along the eastern ramparts walkway little or nothing is said about the turbulent times of the English Civil War.
    London was the staunchly Puritan capital of the Parliamentary forces during the Civil War which began in 1642 and ended in 1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was commonly styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.
    In 1653 Oliver Cromwell, the great commander of the New Model Army, became head of state, the Lord Protector. He established the Tower’s first permanent garrison and ordered the original crown jewels to be melted down to meet the needs of the new republic – a fact coyly mentioned in the current Crown Jewels exhibition.
    Cromwell never lived in the Tower but the fortress did provide a roof for some of his less than welcome “guests”. Most were Royalist prisoners. Others had once fought by his side.
    One was John Lilburne, a parliamentary army officer who had become a leader of the radical “Leveller” movement that campaigned for justice and equality during the conflict. “Freeborn John” denounced MPs who lived in comfort while the common soldiers fought and died in poverty. He ended up in the Tower for denouncing his former commander, the Earl of Manchester, as a traitor and a Royalist sympathiser and campaigning against the “grandee” army leaders who led the new republican government that the Levellers claimed were no better than the Cavaliers they had just ousted,
    Lilburne was accused of working with the Royalists to bring down the Commonwealth. Though a London jury acquitted him of treason charges his continuing opposition activities led to his exile soon after. Lilburn was sent back to the Tower when he returned to London without permission. He was finally freed in 1656. By that time he had abandoned his radical beliefs to become a pacifist and a Quaker and he died the following year.
    Lilburne told the Puritan preacher Hugh Peters, one of Cromwell’s inner circle, that he would rather have had seven years under the late king's rule than one under the present regime.
     Whether Lilburne had actually became a turn-coat, however, is still debatable.
But there’s no doubt about Edward Sexby, a prominent Leveller “agitator” who was arrested for plotting to kill Cromwell and distributing a pamphlet that incited the murder of the Protector.
    Sexby was an ambitious man. When the Levellers turned against the grandees he joined Cromwell’s camp and was rapidly promoted. He was elevated to the rank of Colonel and worked in France for the fledgling republic’s intelligence service. But he made many enemies along the way and by 1654 his military career had come to a halt. An increasingly bitter man, he returned to his radical past and the now underground Leveller movement.
In 1655 he fled to the Netherlands after being implicated in a new Leveller conspiracy. There he joined Royalist exiles plotting to assassinate Cromwell.
    Sexby helped produce, and may have actually written, an appalling pamphlet called Killing No Murder that called for Cromwell’s death. But he was speedily arrested after secretly returning to England in 1657. He died in the Tower the following year. The Commonwealth’s semi-official bulletin, the Mercurius Politicus, said he was ‘stark mad’.
    There’s plenty to see and this is the best time to do it. Before the coronavirus crisis the Tower of London was one of London’s most visited tourist attractions and one of the leading visitor attractions in the United Kingdom.
    Over 15,000 visitors, many from overseas, passed through its gates every day. In these troubled days London’s tourist industry has all but collapsed while the Covid-19 restrictions strictly ration the numbers allowed into the fortress at any given time. It’s around 800 on a good day. But when it rains visitors are almost outnumbered by the Beefeaters and the soldiers of the garrison. The long queues to see the Crown Jewels have vanished and you can really explore the nooks and crannies of this fascinating relic of London’s past.

The Tower of London is currently open from Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18.00. Tickets cost £25.00 (half-price for children) and visitors must book entry-slots with their tickets.

Not so royal Windsor

the castle towering over the town

By Carole Barclay

Royal Windsor on the outskirts of London conjures up sedate images of the castle on the Thames, Eton college, a popular racecourse and Legoland. But behind the veneer of bourgeois respectability lies a much more turbulent past.
    Just down the road is Runnymede, where bad King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. Charles Stuart was held in Windsor castle during the Civil War before his trial and execution in London in January 1649, and Queen Victoria narrowly escaped death in 1882 when a “madman” took a shot at her outside the royal railway station.
    The massive fortress that towers over Windsor has dominated the town since Norman days. Although the bastions and curtain walls still follow their ancient course, the castle has long been a royal palace and what we see today is essentially a Georgian and Victorian gothic fantasy.
    The castle was originally built to control a strategic section of the River Thames in William the Conqueror’s day. It was converted into a royal palace a century later and so it remains until this day – but it wasn’t always so.
    In the 17th century Windsor was a Puritan stronghold. During the civil war it was occasionally used by Oliver Cromwell as his headquarters and a gaol for Royalist prisoners. In Cromwell’s day the castle became a home for invalided members of the New Model Army and their families, but it reverted to the Crown after the Stuart restoration in 1660.
    Wandering the streets you will see relics of bygone ages. Shops that go back to Elizabethan days and a 17th century Guildhall designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The grand central station once used by royalty now just provides a shuttle service to Slough; but the massive concourse has been converted into a Victorian-themed shopping centre that preserves many original features such as the Jubilee Arch and the Royal Waiting Room. Outside one of the cafes in the complex there’s even a full-size replica of the steam engine that hauled Queen Victoria's Royal Train.
    Just over the river is Eton college, the paramount public school that has reared the offspring of the ruling class since its foundation in 1441.
    The Duke of Wellington said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton and he was probably right. Old boys include Boris Johnson and 19 other Prime Ministers, as well as a predictable bunch of military men, artists and sportsmen. It was also the alma mater of Guy Burgess, who went on to study at Cambridge in the 1930s. There some students embraced the communist ideal. Some joined the workers movement, others fought in Spain. But Guy and his friends, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby, went a step further by taking the principled decision to struggle for peace by working for Soviet intelligence.
    The “Cambridge Spies” whose defections rocked the British establishment in the 1950s and ‘60s all ended up in the Soviet Union. Guy Burgess died in Moscow in 1963 and his ashes now lie in his family's plot in West Meon in Hampshire.
    Etonians are naturally ‘conservative’ with a small ‘c’ and most of them are imbibed with the ‘One Nation’ Toryism that one would expect from a school where much of its intake comes from the landed gentry. But the school does encourage open discussion and in October 1998 NCP leader Andy Brooks was invited to address a packed meeting of Eton’s Shelley Society on the communist ideal. One or two of the boys even said they considered themselves to be “Marxists”. I wonder where they are now…

Wilde remembered at Clapham Junction

By Carole Barclay

 

Clapham Junction is the final destination for comrades coming by rail to the Party Centre. A train departs every 30 seconds and about 110 trains per hour pass through the station throughout the day. Said to be the busiest station in the world, it heaves with commuters during the rush-hour. And some will stop and stare at the dedication to Oscar Wilde on Platform 10 that recalls the humiliation suffered by the famous Victorian playwright on that very spot in November 1895.

Nowadays Oscar Wilde is remembered as the poet and playwright whose career was destroyed when he was jailed for two years for “gross indecency” under the repressive homophobic laws of the time. His plays, his wit and his outrageous vanity made him the talk of the town. But his relationship with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas sparked off the lasting animosity of Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, that led to Wilde’s downfall.

These days Wilde is a gay icon – partly because his plays, which have stood the test of time, can still draw in the crowds, but largely because he was a victim of unjust laws that sent him to jail, ruined his health and forced him out of the country after his release from prison.

Wilde’s failed libel suit against Queensberry that led to the criminal prosecution has been the subject of many books and screen adaptations. The trial was just the beginning of his final humiliation. Part of it was when he had to endure the jeers of the mob for 30 minutes whilst waiting as a prisoner on Platform 10 for a train to Reading jail.

He told Bosie: “On the November 20, 1895 I was brought down here from London. From two o’clock till half-two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at.

“I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment’s notice being given me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque.

“When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was.

“As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob. For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time.”

Laws have changed but homophobic attitudes linger on. This is why the local LGBTQ+ forum took up the campaign to put the Wilde plaque on Platform 10. David Robson, the chair, said that at a time when people are still under threat because of their sexuality, the plaque would act as a reminder that hate crime is not tolerated in the rail industry.

“As a community forum we felt we had to respond to this historical wrong," he said.

"The Rainbow Plaque is a wonderful scheme through which we can use culture to make our hidden histories (good and bad) visible.”

The Oscar Wilde plaque was unveiled in July 2019 by the Mayor of Wandsworth, Cllr Jane Cooper. The Wandsworth LGBTQ+ forum conceived of the idea of the plaque during a screening of Rupert Everett’s Wilde biopic, {The Happy Prince}, at the Out at Clapham monthly Queer film club. The campaign was also supported by Studio Voltaire, a non-profit gallery and artist studios based in Clapham.

Dorchester Pride

By Carole Barclay

During the Hanoverian era the landed gentry spent some of their vast wealth on a ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe to gape at the ruins of ancient Rome and Greece, and started a craze for antiques that continues to this day. Their souvenirs ranged from the priceless Elgin Marbles that were more or less looted from the Parthenon in Athens, to the more modest statues, busts and coins that they gathered to adorn their stately homes and gardens. Some of these collections eventually ended up in public galleries such as London’s British Museum, which was established in 1753 to house the 71,000 antiques, books and other items that Sir Hans Sloane had amassed during his life-time.

But not all was deemed fit for public gaze. Items considered obscene, such as those of a homoerotic nature, were kept in closed rooms, like the British Museum’s ‘Secretum’, hidden to all but the chosen few until well into in the 1960s.

Now some of these ‘forbidden’ works are on display in the new British Museum touring exhibition Desire, Love, Identity: exploring LGBTQ histories, which opened at the Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum in Dorchester last week.

The life of Dorset’s famous lesbian poet, Valentine Ackland, is the theme of the guide to the display that contains ancient erotica from Palestine, Greece and Rome as well as more contemporary works from Japan. along with phallic pendants from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Mementos of the Emperor Hadrian and his doomed favourite, Antinous, are there along with a colourful deck of drag queen cards by Japan's Onskar Takashi from 1997, some line drawings by David Hockney and a display of campaign badges that show how the drive for equality has changed over time.

Containing around 130 items, the exhibition has been travelling around the country following its first display at the British Museum in 2017. It looks at how same-sex love, desire and gender diversity are an integral part of the human experience, and how this has been depicted differently through society throughout various times.

Members of Dorchester’s LGBTQ community are urging everyone to come and see the exhibition, which challenges visitors to question their assumptions about the past.

Entrance to the exhibition is via the museum, which charges a standard entrance fee of £9.50 for an annual pass with discounts for students and children.

The hall, which goes back to the 18^th century, was once the county town’s courthouse and it continued to serve as Dorset’s county hall until 1955. Visitors can see the old court and the holding cells, including the room in which the Tolpuddle Martyrs were held before their trial for attempting to form a farm workers’ union in 1834.

The Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum is open daily from 10:00 to 17:00, and the LGBTQ exhibition runs until 17^th November.

• Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum