John Simkin
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Another important lesbian in the Women's Social and Political Union was Margaret Haig Thomas, who later inherited the title Lady Rhondda. She was initially married to Humphrey Mackworth but after their divorce she went to live with fellow WSPU member, Helen Archdale. They broke up after Lady Rhondda moved to the right and from 1933 she with Theodora Bosanquet, the secretary of the International Federation of University Women.
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During the Spanish Civil War Vincent Sheean reported the conflict for New York Herald Tribune. He worked with a group of journalists that included Ernest Hemingway, William Forrest, Robert Capa, and Herbert Matthews. According to Paul Preston, the author of We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War: "Herbert Matthews, Robert Capa and Willie Forrest were among the last correspondents to leave Catalonia before the Francoists reached the French frontier. Sheean, Matthews, Buckley and Hemingway had been involved in a hair-raising crossing of the Ebro in a boat which was nearly smashed against some spikes."
Sheean was highly critical of the Non-Intervention policy of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. In his book, Not Peace but the Sword (1939) he wrote about Chamberlain: "This strange, tardy awakening on the part of the Prime Minister was of no worth in the scales of history, and will do little to blind even his contemporaries to the true value of a man who has consistently put the interests of his own class and type above those of either his own nation or of humanity itself."
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I saw a documentary on BBC this week on the decline of Gary, Indiana. I was amazed by the way that this place had been destroyed by the recession.
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Philippa Garrett Fawcett, the daughter of Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Henry Fawcett, was born in London on 4th April 1868. According to her biographer, Rita McWilliams Tullberg: "Philippa Fawcett's political and intellectual inheritance was formidable. Both her parents were active in the movement for the higher education of women. Not yet two years old, she reportedly toddled among the group of senior academics and their wives meeting in her parents' drawing-room in Cambridge in 1869 to plan the scheme of lectures for women that led, in time, to the foundation of Newnham College."
Philippa attended Clapham High School. Her teachers were very impressed with her abilities as a mathematician and at fifteen it was arranged for her to receive coaching from George Barnes Atkinson of Trinity Hall College. From 1885 to 1887 she attended courses at University College, in pure and applied mathematics and mechanics, and she also studied chemistry at Bedford College before being awarded a Winkworth scholarship to study mathematics at Newnham College.
In June 1890, Philippa Fawcett became the first woman to score the highest mark of all the candidates for the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge. This news produced a great deal of excitement at Newnham, and was widely reported in the national press. The following year she sat part two of the tripos, which was considered to demand more originality and ingenuity of candidates. Once again she showed her talent by being placed, together with Geoffrey Thomas Bennett, the male senior wrangler of her year, alone in the first class. As Rita McWilliams Tullberg points out: "Bennett was made a fellow of St John's College, awarded the university prize for mathematics, and lectured for the university. Fawcett was not eligible for any such lucrative posts or prizes."
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Mary Sheepshanks was one of the leading figures who campaigned against the First World War. She later wrote: "The war brought me as near despair as I have ever been... That many of the best men in every country should forswear their culture, their humanity, their intellectual efforts... to wallow in the joys of regimentation, brainlessness, and... the primitive delights of destruction! For they did... everywhere, in every belligerent country, men were doing the same things; patriotically rushing to the defence of their homes and loved ones, taunting and imprisoning, (if they did not shoot) the small number of young men who refused to join them; and disseminating and believing the same atrocity stories against each other. It was lonely in those days. I felt that men had dropped their end of the burden of living, and left women to carry on."
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Flora Mayor is virtually a forgotten author. After the First World War she began work on her third novel, The Rector's Daughter. According to her biographer, Sybil Oldfield, the novel is about the 35 year old Mary Jocelyn: "Motherless from a child, isolated physically from her brothers, mentally from her subnormal sister, emotionally from her withdrawn and chilly father, and considered odd by all the contemporaries of her own social class." Merryn Williams has pointed out: "This is a longer and more complex novel, concentrating on the inner life of a middle-aged spinster, Mary Jocelyn, her unconsummated love for a married clergyman, and her lonely death."
The book had difficulty finding a publisher until Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf offered to take it on a commission basis for the Hogarth Press. The book was extremely popular with Britain's main literary figures. E. M. Forster wrote to Flora saying that: "Mary Jocelyn begins as ridiculous and ends as dignified: this seemed to me a very great achievement." John Masefield, the future Poet Laureate, also wrote to Flora: "It is a remarkable book and confirms you in your remarkable rank... It is a great advance in every way on your other two stories, though you know that I thought and still think both of them most unusually good in their own ways."
Gerald Gould wrote in The Saturday Review: "Miss Mayor has taken the subject-matter of all the serials in all the journals suitable for home reading of the last century, and made it live.... She has the true novelist's divine incommunicable gift: no shadows flit across her pages: she has but to mention someone, give him a phrase to say or even to write, and he puts on solidity and permanence."
Sylvia Lynd, was another reviewer who was very enthusiastic about The Rector's Daughter, in Time and Tide: "The Rector's Daughter belongs to the finest English tradition of novel writing. It is like a bitter Cranford. Miss Mayor explores depths of feeling that Mrs Gaskell's generation perhaps did not know and certainly did not admit to knowing. Mrs Mayor's genius struggles with exasperation where Mrs. Gaskell's struggled with the much milder demon of sentimentality... The Rector's daughter, Mary Jocelyn, is one of those sad figures of whom it is said that nothing has ever happened to them. Mrs Mayor reveals the meaninglessness of that phrase."
Despite the good reviews the book sold badly and it was soon out of print.
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Peter Fryer was in Budapest during the Hungarian Uprising. Fryer, who was critical of the actions of the Soviet Union, found his reports in the Daily Worker were censored. Fryer responded by having the material published in the New Statesman. As a result he was suspended from the party for "publishing in the capitalist press attacks on the Communist Party." The loyal Sam Russell was now sent to the country to report on the uprising.
Sam Russell died last week. He worked for the Daily Worker during the Spanish Civil War and remained loyal during the purges. After the Second World War he became diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Worker. In 1952 he covered show-trial of Czechoslovakian Communist Party general secretary Rudolf Slansky and 13 other party leaders. At the time he considered the evidence as genuine but according to Roger Bagley it was an experience which "left a deep scar." Despite this Russell worked for the Daily Worker and its successor, the Morning Star, until his retirement in 1984.
The Morning Star has posted an obituary on its website. He does not talk about his pro-Soviet reporting instead it points out that:
In the 1970s he became increasingly critical of the Soviet model of socialism and by the 1990s he had turned into a fervent admirer of Tony Blair seeing him as a great leader of a supposed new leap forward for social democracy.
He also supported the destructive leadership faction in the Communist Party of Great Britain which was hell-bent on attacking the Morning Star in the mid-1980s. He backed the short-lived Democratic Left project which quickly morphed into a feeble think tank....
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The Women's Social and Political Union was very much a middle-class organisation. For propaganda purposes, it was very important to recruit working-class women. Minnie Baldock was born in London in about 1864. As a girl she worked in a shirt factory. After her marriage she had two sons, Jack and Harry. She was a member of the Independent Labour Party and her husband was a local councillor in West Ham. Along with Keir Hardie, her local MP, she held a public meeting in 1903 to complain about the low pay of women in the area. She was also involved in the administration of the West Ham Unemployed Fund. In April 1905, Baldock became an ILP candidate in the election for the West Ham Board of Guardians.
Baldock joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and on 19th December 1905 she joined forces with Dora Montefiore and Annie Kenney to heckle Herbert Asquith, while he was making a speech in Queen's Hall. Baldock joined with Kenney to repeat the performance when Henry Campbell-Bannerman appeared at a Liberal Party rally at the Royal Albert Hall on 21st December. They were ejected but not arrested. The following day Baldock, Kenney and Teresa Billington-Greig, called on Campbell-Bannerman at his house at Belgrave Square. He told them that he would be dealing soon with the question of women's suffrage.
On 29th January 1906, Baldock established the Canning Town branch of the WSPU. It was an attempt to recruit working-class women to the cause. Over the next few months Baldock arranged for Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Annie Kenney, Flora Drummond, Dora Montefiore, Selina Cooper, Teresa Billington-Greig and Marie Naylor to address the members of the group.
Later that year Baldock joined Annie Kenney, Mary Gawthorpe, Nellie Martel, Helen Fraser, Adela Pankhurst and Flora Drummond as WSPU full-time organizers. Baldock now began to tour the country. According to Elizabeth Crawford, the author of The Suffragette Movement (1999), Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence "sent her a postal order for 30 shillings to cover her expenses while holding meetings in Long Eaton in Derbyshire."
Minnie Baldock was arrested during a demonstration outside the House of Commons in February 1908. She was sentenced to a month in Holloway Prison. The historian, June Purvis, has pointed out: "Her anxieties about her small son, left at home with his father, were somewhat alleviated by the knowledge that union members outside would offer help." For example, Maud Arncliffe Sennett sent a parcel of toys for her two boys.
Minnie Baldock continued to work for the WSPU until July 1911 when she became seriously ill and was operated on for cancer by Dr Louisa Aldrich-Blake at the New Hospital for Women. She not only survived but lived to 1954.
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The WSPU was supported by several wealthy women including:
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wpethick.htm
Margaret Haig Thomas (Lady Rhondda)
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Whaig.htm
Lilias Ashworth Hallett
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WhallettA.htm
Hertha Ayrton
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wayrton.htm
Janie Allan
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WallanJ.htm
Emily Blathwayt
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WblathwaytE.htm
Edith Zangwill
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WzangwillE.htm
This all came to an end when the WSPU began its arson campaign in 1912.
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Judith left this poem for me to find after her death:
Miss Me But Let Me Go
When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me,
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room.
Why cry for a soul that is free?
Miss me a little, but not too long
And not with your head bowed low,
Remember the love
that we once shared
Miss me-but let me go.
For this is a journey
that we all must take,
And each must go alone,
It's all a part of the master plan
A step on the road home.
When you are lonely and sick of heart,
Go to the friends we know.
And bury your sorrows
in doing good deeds,
Miss me-but let me go.
I have just found out the author of this poem. It is Edgar Albert Guest (August 20, 1881, Birmingham, England – August 5, 1959, Detroit, Michigan). He was a prolific American poet who was popular in the first half of the 20th century and became known as the People’s Poet. His poems were published in newspapers and "Miss me - but let me go" was circulated amongst soldiers fighting on the Western Front. It appears that they often sent the poems back to loved ones in America. As they usually left off the name of the poet, it is generally thought that we do not know who wrote it.
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Old Age By Edgar A Guest
I used to think that growing old was reckoned just in years,
But who can name the very date when weariness appears?
I find no stated time when man, obedient to a law,
Must settle in an easy chair and from the world withdraw.
Old Age is rather curious, or so it seems to me.
I know old men at forty and young men at seventy-three.
I'm done with counting life by years or temples turning gray.
No man is old who wakes with joy to greet another day.
What if the body cannot dance with youth's elastic spring?
There's many a vibrant interest to which the mind can cling.
'Tis in the spirit Age must dwell, or this would never be:
I know old men at forty and young men at seventy-three.
Some men keep all their friendships warm,
and welcome friendships new,
They have no time to sit and mourn the things they used to do.
This changing world they greet with joy and never bow to late;
On every fresh adventure they set out with hearts elate
From chilling fear and bitter dread they keep their spirits free
While some seem old at forty they stay young at seventy-three.
So much to do, so much to learn, so much in which to share!
With twinkling eyes and minds alert some brave both time and care.
And this I've learned from other men, that only they are old
Who think with something that has passed the tale of life is told.
For Age is not alone of time, or we should never see
Men old and bent at forty and men young at seventy-three.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/03/phone-hacking-scandal-andy-coulson
The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, personally listened to the intercepted voicemail messages of public figures when he edited the News of the World, a senior journalist who worked alongside him has said.
Coulson has always denied knowing about any illegal activity by the journalists who worked for him, but an unidentified former executive from the paper told Channel Four Dispatches that Coulson not only knew his reporters were using intercepted voicemail but was also personally involved.
"Sometimes, they would say: 'We've got a recording' and Andy would say: 'OK, bring it into my office and play it to me' or 'Bring me, email me a transcript of it'," the journalist said.
The claim, due to be broadcast tomorrow night, goes beyond earlier statements by Coulson's former colleagues.
Sean Hoare, a showbusiness reporter, told the New York Times Coulson had "actively encouraged" him to intercept voicemail.
Paul McMullan, who handled investigations, told the Guardian illegal activity was so widespread in the newsroom that Coulson must have known about it. Coulson has denied all the claims.
Channel Four's anonymous witness, whose words are spoken by an actor in the programme, says: "Andy was a very good editor.
"He was very conscientious and he wouldn't let stories pass unless he was sure they were correct ... so, if the evidence that a reporter had was a recorded phone message, that would be what Andy would know about.
"So you'd have to say: 'Yes, there's a recorded message.' You go and either play it to him or show him a transcript of it, in order to satisfy him that you weren't going to get sued, that it wasn't made up."
In evidence to a House of Commons select committee last year, Coulson said he could not remember any instance of voicemail being intercepted during his six years at the paper.
He resigned in January 2007 after the tabloid's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, was jailed for listening to the voicemails of three members of the royal household. "I am absolutely sure that Clive's case was a very unfortunate rogue case," he told the committee.
Channel Four's witness said: "It was fairly common – not so common that everybody was doing it. That wasn't the case at all. But the people who did know how to do it would do it regularly."
Other journalists had expected to be drawn into the police investigation, the source said, adding: "There were huge rumours swirling every day of who they were coming for next and who was going to come and cart away this person, that person and the other. And then I think the feeling in the newsroom turned to surprise that nobody else was affected."
The programme includes claims that politicians and police have been cowed by fear of Rupert Murdoch's News International, which owns the News of the World.
Adam Price, one of the MPs from the media select committee which last year investigated the phone-hacking scandal, described how he stopped voting to compel News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, to be called as a witness.
"I was told by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I knew was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, they would go for us – effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them."
The Labour MP Tom Watson said he was threatened in 2006 after he called for Tony Blair to resign at a time when News International was supporting him.
"A very senior News International journalist told me that Rebekah would never forgive me for what I did and that she would pursue me through parliament for the rest of my time as an MP," he said.
Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard who is also taking the police to court, suggested that his former colleagues' decision to cut short their original investigation may have been influenced by their links with the News of the World.
"That relationship was well worth protecting ... when you have something as big as this, where you're talking about potentially a large investigation involving illegal activity, you can see how potentially pressure could have been brought to bear," he said.
Dispatches raises an unresolved question over whether the officer who was in charge of the original investigation, the then assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, was himself a target of the News of the World.
When Channel Four asked him whether his name appeared anywhere in the evidence collected by his officers, he replied: "I have never been told whether my own telephone was hacked." Hayman now works for News International.
The programme is presented by the conservative columnist Peter Oborne, who writes for the Telegraph and is close to the Tory leadership.
Oborne says in the programme that voters supported David Cameron in order to restore a sense of decency in politics. He continues: "Instead, by hiring Andy Coulson, he has sanctioned the News of the World culture of impunity and got too close to the Rupert Murdoch power elite."
It was a very impressive TV documentary. The most chilling part was of MPs saying that they were unwilling to investigate the case because they were scared that the Murdoch press would target them with a smear campaign. This is how the deal with critics of the "Grand Project". Mike Hancock, is a Liberal Democrat MP who has complained about the policies of the Cameron coalition government. He has been the target of two smear stories from the Murdoch press recently.
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Gee John,
That is a very wet Wales.
You should have bet on the weather.
I am afraid you would have only got 20-1 on for it raining hard in Wales at this time of year.
There is another way of looking at this. Playing on a Monday means a much smaller crowd for the final day. Without the support of a large patriotic crowd, the European team is expected to be less fired-up.
What a truely remarkable finish and great matches, all around.
Congradulations to the UK/ & Three Irishmen and Europe team for winning by a point on the next to last hole of the last match.
That's what the Ryder Cup is supposed to be.
See you in Chicago in two years time.
I'm sure Andy Walker missed the proceedings because it was a school day.
BK
Going by the performances of the American golfers in the sun yesterday, I think it might well have been the rain that won it.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/03/phone-hacking-scandal-andy-coulson
The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, personally listened to the intercepted voicemail messages of public figures when he edited the News of the World, a senior journalist who worked alongside him has said.
Coulson has always denied knowing about any illegal activity by the journalists who worked for him, but an unidentified former executive from the paper told Channel Four Dispatches that Coulson not only knew his reporters were using intercepted voicemail but was also personally involved.
"Sometimes, they would say: 'We've got a recording' and Andy would say: 'OK, bring it into my office and play it to me' or 'Bring me, email me a transcript of it'," the journalist said.
The claim, due to be broadcast tomorrow night, goes beyond earlier statements by Coulson's former colleagues.
Sean Hoare, a showbusiness reporter, told the New York Times Coulson had "actively encouraged" him to intercept voicemail.
Paul McMullan, who handled investigations, told the Guardian illegal activity was so widespread in the newsroom that Coulson must have known about it. Coulson has denied all the claims.
Channel Four's anonymous witness, whose words are spoken by an actor in the programme, says: "Andy was a very good editor.
"He was very conscientious and he wouldn't let stories pass unless he was sure they were correct ... so, if the evidence that a reporter had was a recorded phone message, that would be what Andy would know about.
"So you'd have to say: 'Yes, there's a recorded message.' You go and either play it to him or show him a transcript of it, in order to satisfy him that you weren't going to get sued, that it wasn't made up."
In evidence to a House of Commons select committee last year, Coulson said he could not remember any instance of voicemail being intercepted during his six years at the paper.
He resigned in January 2007 after the tabloid's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, was jailed for listening to the voicemails of three members of the royal household. "I am absolutely sure that Clive's case was a very unfortunate rogue case," he told the committee.
Channel Four's witness said: "It was fairly common – not so common that everybody was doing it. That wasn't the case at all. But the people who did know how to do it would do it regularly."
Other journalists had expected to be drawn into the police investigation, the source said, adding: "There were huge rumours swirling every day of who they were coming for next and who was going to come and cart away this person, that person and the other. And then I think the feeling in the newsroom turned to surprise that nobody else was affected."
The programme includes claims that politicians and police have been cowed by fear of Rupert Murdoch's News International, which owns the News of the World.
Adam Price, one of the MPs from the media select committee which last year investigated the phone-hacking scandal, described how he stopped voting to compel News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, to be called as a witness.
"I was told by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I knew was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, they would go for us – effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them."
The Labour MP Tom Watson said he was threatened in 2006 after he called for Tony Blair to resign at a time when News International was supporting him.
"A very senior News International journalist told me that Rebekah would never forgive me for what I did and that she would pursue me through parliament for the rest of my time as an MP," he said.
Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard who is also taking the police to court, suggested that his former colleagues' decision to cut short their original investigation may have been influenced by their links with the News of the World.
"That relationship was well worth protecting ... when you have something as big as this, where you're talking about potentially a large investigation involving illegal activity, you can see how potentially pressure could have been brought to bear," he said.
Dispatches raises an unresolved question over whether the officer who was in charge of the original investigation, the then assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, was himself a target of the News of the World.
When Channel Four asked him whether his name appeared anywhere in the evidence collected by his officers, he replied: "I have never been told whether my own telephone was hacked." Hayman now works for News International.
The programme is presented by the conservative columnist Peter Oborne, who writes for the Telegraph and is close to the Tory leadership.
Oborne says in the programme that voters supported David Cameron in order to restore a sense of decency in politics. He continues: "Instead, by hiring Andy Coulson, he has sanctioned the News of the World culture of impunity and got too close to the Rupert Murdoch power elite."
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Good article by Russ Baker on Bob Woodward and Deep Throat here:
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Russ Baker, The Real Story Bob Woodward Wont Tell (30th September 2010)
For almost four decades, under cover of his supposedly objective reporting, Woodward has represented the viewpoints of the military and intelligence establishments. Often he has done so in the context of complex inside maneuvering of which he gives his readers little clue. He did it with the book Veil, about CIA director William Casey, in which he relied on Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a rival of Caseys, as his key source. (Inman, from Texas, was closely identified with the Bush faction of the CIA.) The book was based in part on a deathbed interview with Casey that Caseys widow and former CIA guards said never took place.
Typically, Woodward uses information he gets from his main sources to gain access to others. He then gets more secrets from them, and so on down the line. His stature - if thats the word - as a repository of this inside dope has been key to the relentless success machine that his media colleagues have perpetuated....
But might there be more to Woodward and his oeuvre than just questionable work practices? Well, lets see. Woodward granted former CIA director George H.W. Bush a pass by excluding him from accounts of Iran-Contra, which occurred while the notorious intriguer was vice president under the notoriously hands-off Ronald Reagan. (When I asked Woodward about this for my book Family of Secrets, he replied, Bush was…What was it he said at the time? I was out of the loop?) Later Woodward got exclusive access to H.W.s son. He spent more time with George W. Bush than did any other journalist, writing several largely sympathetic books about his handling of Iraq and Afghanistan before playing catch-up with prevailing sentiment and essentially reversing course.
Now, for a bit of cognitive dissonance. Woodwards signature achievement - bringing down Richard Nixon - turns out not to be what we all thought. If that comes as a surprise, you have missed a few books, including bestsellers, that put pieces of this puzzle together. (Family of Secrets has several chapters on the real Watergate story, but there are others that present detailed information, including those by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, James Rosen, Jim Hougan and others.)
Heres the deal: Bob, top secret Naval officer, gets sent to work in the Nixon White House while still on military duty. Then, with no journalistic credentials to speak of, and with a boost from White House staffers, he lands a job at the Washington Post. Not long thereafter he starts to take down Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, Woodwards military bosses are running a spy ring inside the White House that is monitoring Nixon and Kissingers secret negotiations with Americas enemies (China, Soviet Union, etc), stealing documents and funneling them back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They then give what they stole to columnist Jack Anderson and others in the press.
Thats not the iconic Woodward of legend, of course - so it takes a while for this notion to settle in the mind. But theres more - and its even more troubling. Did you know there was really no Deep Throat, that the Mark Felt story was conjured up as yet another layer of cover in what became a daisy chain of disinformation? Did you know that Richard Nixon was loathed and feared by the military brass, that they and their allies were desperate to get Nixon out and halt his rapprochement with the Communists? That a bunch of operatives with direct or indirect CIA/military connections, from E. Howard Hunt to Alexander Butterfield to John Dean - wormed their way into key White House posts, and started up the Keystone Kops operations that would be laid at Nixons office door?
Believe me, I understand. It sounds like the conspiracy theory stuff that we have been trained to dismiss. But Ive just spent five years on a heavily documented forensic dig into this missing strata of American history, and I myself have had to come to terms with the enormous gap between reality and the reality presented by the media and various establishment gatekeepers who tell us whats what.
Given this complicity, its no surprise that when it comes to Woodwards latest work, the myth-making machine is on auto pilot. The public, of course, will end up as confused and manipulated as ever. And so things will continue, same as they ever were. Endless war, no substantive reforms. Unless we wake up to our own victimhood.
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I thought that members might be interested in the work of Judee Sill:
http://www.answers.com/topic/judee-sill
Until the mid-2000s, Judee Sill might have been called a brilliant but forgotten figure of the 1970s Los Angeles folk-rock songwriting scene. That changed with the reissue of Sill's two albums on the Asylum label, revealing a highly original talent that had begun to receive widespread critical attention. As gripping as Sill's music was her turbulent biography, which included criminal sprees, drug abuse, stints in incarceration, and a string of disastrous romantic relationships. Later songwriters, ranging from folk-rocker Shawn Colvin to alternative icon Liz Phair, expressed admiration for Sill and described her influence on their own work.
Judy Lynn Sill was born in the Studio City district in the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles, California, on October 7, 1944, but she spent her early childhood in Oakland. Her father operated a tavern called Bud's Bar and ran a business on the side importing exotic animals. The bar, Sill said in a Rolling Stone interview quoted by the Washington Post, was "where I started playing piano and found out I could harmonize with myself. But even back then I knew something was wrong, that I was missing out on having a normal life. It was so seedy in the bar, you know—people were always fighting and puking, there was illegal gambling, and my parents drank a lot." A crucial event in Sill's childhood was her father's death in 1952; her mother, Oneta, then married Tom and Jerry animator Kenneth Muse and moved Sill back to Los Angeles. Sill disliked Muse from the start and played destructive tricks on him.
At 15, Sill escaped tensions at home by running away with an armed robber. "I saw a lot of terrible injustice all around me, so I fell in with a bunch of hoodlums to express myself poetically," she said in an interview quoted in London's Observer. After a string of holdups, Sill's boyfriend landed in jail and Sill was sent to the Ventura School for Girls, a reform institution. Sill reaped some benefits from her nine-month stay there, furthering her keyboard skills with organ lessons and doing well in art classes. But she flaunted the authority of school administrators by singing the country music classic "The Prisoner's Song" during a school assembly, stirring applause with the lines, "If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly."
Sill enrolled at San Fernando Junior College in 1963, taking more art and music classes. She dropped out after a cross-country driving trip with two other young women in 1964, during which she fired a gun at a group of young men in a pickup truck who were tailgating their car. Getting a job at a factory that turned out mass-produced paintings for motel rooms and the like, Sill intensified her experimentation with drugs. She used LSD and heroin, which she called respectively the white peace and the dark peace. Sill's marriage (the first of two) to keyboardist Bob Harris did not divert her from this course, for he was a fellow heroin user. Developing a $150-a-day heroin habit, Sill turned once again to crime. She was arrested on forgery charges and was left in a jail cell to undergo cold-turkey detoxification. She told interviewers that she engaged in prostitution during this period.
Beginning around 1966, however, Sill avoided drug use and announced her intention to become the greatest songwriter in the world. The Los Angeles rock group the Leaves recorded her "Dead Time Bummer Blues," and she began to attract a strong following among mostly female fans as she performed at coffee houses and small but trendsetting clubs such as Arty Fatbuckle's in Hollywood. Word of Sill's talent spread among her fellow musicians, and when several members of the folk-rock group the Turtles started a publishing company called Blimp Productions, they signed Sill to a $65-a-week songwriting contract. The Turtles recorded Sill's "Lady-O" in 1969. Among the music industry figures who began to follow Sill's career was Asylum Records head David Geffen. Sill fell in love with Geffen, who did not reciprocate, but he did sign her to Asylum. Her 1971 debut, Judee Sill, was Asylum's first official release.
Sill's music was unlike that of her Los Angeles-area contemporaries. She was basically a singer-songwriter, but her songs and the arrangements of them that appeared on her recordings (some of the arrangements were the work of Harris) involved other layers of style. There were elements of country music, including a steel guitar, which worked to Sill's commercial disadvantage, as her releases competed with those of the phenomenally popular group the Eagles in the 1970s. Her classical training showed up in her use of complex four-part harmonies and large choral sections she composed herself. And there was a strong religious element in her music. Her songs did not fit the pattern of the contemporary Christian music that was just beginning to take shape as a genre, but it had strong spiritual elements. Asked about her influences, Sill named both German classical composer J.S. Bach and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and she described her own style as country-cult-baroque.
Sill never found a satisfying romantic relationship, although during this period she pursued both Geffen and songwriter J.D. Souther. She was also rumored to have had brief flings with young women she entertained at her new home in the Los Angeles foothills. Her personal and professional relationship with Geffen deteriorated, although Geffen devoted the full resources of the Asylum label to the complex production requirements of Sill's second album, Heart Food (1973). That album, co-produced by Sill, sold poorly, although classical critic Tim Page of the Washington Post later evaluated it as "an album that, in its mixture of formal adventure and searing spiritual intensity, can rank with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and the Velvet Underground's self-titled third album."
The commercial failure of Heart Food discouraged Sill. She recorded some songs for a third album with a rumored title of Tulips from Amsterdam, eight of which resurfaced on a 2005 release called Dreams Come True that was compiled by Sill enthusiasts and issued on the Water label along with live performances and other materials. Following her split with Geffen, Sill's life went downhill. She began abusing drugs once more, and her problems worsened after an auto accident left her troubled by back pain for which doctors refused to prescribe painkillers due to her earlier arrests. The last few years of Sill's life were troubled; occasional visitors found her immersed in occult writings. Sill was found dead at her North Hollywood home on November 23, 1979; acute cocaine and codeine intoxication were given as the cause of death. By that time Sill had been almost forgotten, and many of her musician contemporaries did not learn of her death for some months. Her rediscovery in the early 2000s was partly due to the enthusiasm of musicians she influenced, including Colvin and rock songwriter Warren Zevon, and for her rich and ambitious songs; both her studio albums enjoyed successful reissues on the Rhino label, and various other Sill materials were transferred to CD.
Selected discography
Judee Sill, Asylum, 1971.
Heart Food, Asylum, 1973.
Dreams Come True, Water, 2005.
Complete Asylum Recordings, Asylum, 2006.
Abracadabra: The Asylum Years, 2006.
Judee Sill at YouTube
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Disraeli however was baptized, raised and practiced Anglican, Milliband is an avowed atheist, this would kill him in the US. Do you think he can win? Will you vote Labour again now that he is leader, you previously indicated you'd been voting Lib Dem.
I did vote for the Liberal Democrats in the last election. I voted that way to keep the Conservatives out, not to get them in. A recent survey showed that the majority of people who voted for the Liberals will never do so again. That includes me. It is early days yet but I fully expect to vote for Ed Miliband in the next election. The fact that he is Jewish, an atheist and an unmarried father (another aspect of his life that the right-wing press are focusing on) will have no impact on my voting intentions. Those who will be influenced by these factors, would be voting Conservative anyway.
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Gee John,
That is a very wet Wales.
You should have bet on the weather.
I am afraid you would have only got 20-1 on for it raining hard in Wales at this time of year.
There is another way of looking at this. Playing on a Monday means a much smaller crowd for the final day. Without the support of a large patriotic crowd, the European team is expected to be less fired-up.
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What do the Brits here think about "Red Ed" Milliband?
Does his election as party leader really indicate the party is, a least partially, returning to its roots?
What are the chances of such a young, inexperienced Jewish guy getting elected PM?
What will become of his brother will he remain Shadow Foreign Secretary?
His Jewish origins will not be a problem. Benjamin Disraeli became prime minister when anti-Jewish feeling was at its highest in Britain.
The current economic circumstances means that he will develop a set of policies that are to the left of those of Blair/Brown (not difficult to do). The newspaper barons like Murdoch will not like it but their power is in decline. Anyway, their anti-Labour propaganda will have little impact on those people suffering from the public sector cuts.
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So do you think he can win? According to Guardian a recent poll puts him slightly in front
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/30/ed-miliband-labour-icm-poll
I think it is certain. The vast majority of people in the UK are centre-left. The problem is that this electorate has been split between Labour and Liberal. As a result of the coalition and the cuts programme, the Labour Party will win the next election easily.
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Gee John,
That is a very wet Wales.
You should have bet on the weather.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/golf/rydercup/8036092/Ryder-Cup-2010-live.html
I am afraid you would have only got 20-1 on for it raining hard in Wales at this time of year.
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Disraeli however was baptized, raised and practiced Anglican, Milliband is an avowed atheist, this would kill him in the US. Do you think he can win? Will you vote Labour again now that he is leader, you previously indicated you'd been voting Lib Dem.
I did vote for the Liberal Democrats in the last election. I voted that way to keep the Conservatives out, not to get them in. A recent survey showed that the majority of people who voted for the Liberals will never do so again. That includes me. It is early days yet but I fully expect to vote for Ed Miliband in the next election. The fact that he is Jewish, an atheist and an unmarried father (another aspect of his life that the right-wing press are focusing on) will have no impact on my voting intentions. Those who will be influenced by these factors, would be voting Conservative anyway.
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In his letter to The Guardian today, Ian Flintoff repeats the myth that “Labour backed the suffragettes”. This is completely untrue. Members of the Women’s Social and Political Union were first described as “suffragettes” on 10th January 1906 by the Daily Mail and was a response to women committing acts of violence in an attempt to win the vote. The main objective of the WSPU was votes for women “on the same basis as men.” This meant winning the vote not for all women but for only the small stratum of women who could meet the property qualification. As one critic pointed out, it was "not votes for women", but “votes for ladies.”
The Labour Party at the time, rightly argued that if WSPU policy became law, it would benefit the Conservative Party. It has to be remembered that at this time only about 60% of men had the vote. The demand of Labour and trade union movements was for universal suffrage. As Harry Quelch, pointed out in a debate on the subject in 1905: “Any Women’s Enfranchisement Bill which seeks merely to abolish sex disqualification would increase the power of the propertied classes… Adult Suffrage… is the only Franchise Reform which merits any support from the Labour Members of Parliament.”
It is true that Keir Hardie did support the WSPU in its early days. This brought a great deal of criticism from the labour movement as they knew that the reason for this was his affair with Sylvia Pankhurst, one of the leaders of the WSPU. When Sylvia broke with the WSPU as a result of its arson campaign, Hardie also withdrew his support. Sylvia and Hardie went onto establish the East London Federation of Suffragettes, an organisation that combined socialism with a demand for universal suffrage.
It is no coincidence that the leaders of the WSPU, such as Emmeline and Sylvia Pankhurst became supporters of the Conservative Party once they got the vote. Other prominent members of the WSPU, such as Mary Allen, Flora Drummond, Mary Richardson and Adela Pankhurst, were active in the fascist movement in the 1930s.
Margaret Ashton
in History:Resources
Posted
Margaret Ashton is someone who has been largely ignored by historians. As her biographer, Peter D. Mohr, points out: "From 1875 Margaret Ashton worked on a voluntary basis as the manager of the Flowery Fields School in Hyde, which had been founded by her grandfather, for the children of mill workers. Her first involvement in politics came in 1888, when she helped to found the Manchester Women's Guardian Association, an organization which encouraged women to become poor-law guardians and to take a more active role in local politics."
Elizabeth Crawford, the author of The Suffragette Movement (1999) claims that "her father refused her request to be taken into the family business, although she was able to concern herself with its welfare policy." In 1895 Margaret joined the Women's Liberal Federation, and the following year became a founder member of the Women's Trade Union League. She was also a member of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies.
After the death of her father, Thomas Ashton, in 1898, Margaret became more active in politics and in 1900 she was elected to the Withington Urban District Council. Eight years later she became the first woman to the Manchester City Council. According to Peter D. Mohr: "As a councillor she devoted herself to the issues of women's health and education, and campaigned to improve the conditions of employment for women. She supported new legislation to improve the wages and conditions of factory girls, to raise the age of employment of children, and to abolish the sweated system."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WashtonM.htm