Month: February 2016

North Staffordshire Potteries Workingmen’s Clubs of the Late 1980’s & Early ’90’s

Posted on by Daniel Patrick Killeen

North Staffordshire Potteries Workingmen’s Clubs

Kidsgrove Working-mens-club

North Staffordshire Potteries: Kidsgrove Workingmen’s Club

Bill Cawley: “Peter Kay is not far out when portrays the strange acts at the Phoenix. I recall vividly the Pakistani stand up comedian who told racist jokes against himself, the asthmatic country and western act from Cleverley who stopped for breath half way through his act.” I’ll be with you in a moment “, or the overloud ear-ringing rock bands. Sometimes there were special events like a boxing tournament at the Suburban where one competitor eschewing the basic defensive stance advanced with arms flaying like a windmill to be quickly demolished by punishing jabs that opened his nose up in a crimson torrent. For the turns themselves there was recognition that there efforts were taken with proper regard. As local act Gerry Stephens writing of the time reportedSaturday was the highlight of the week and people would make an effort to look their best. The Committee officers ran them with a grip of iron and membership were as tightly controlled as any freemasons. Instant silence followed the command ” Give order please” and quiet was demanded- and got- when Bingo started. Bingo was a ritual with its language and actions especially when certain numbers were called out ” Ted’s den- Number Ten, Two fat ladies 88, Leg’s eleven” followed by wolf whistles and the clinking of glasses as pens were banging against them. Sometimes a frustrated gamester would call out to the elderly lady caller ” Shake them up, Elsie” if his numbers were not coming up.Then there were the turns.“You’d arrive outside the Club, grab your gear, and go in. The room would be completely empty. Then people start coming in; the room is packed, and it’s your job to entertain them for the night. You’ve only got your guitar, your voice and your patter, to get them going, gets them laughing.It was quite a thing to be an artist in the 70s, there was a lot of respect shown; the audience wasn’t allowed to come in or go out during a bracket”.But the knell- as it was for the working class- was already tolling for the clubs.”

Bill Cawley: “I was born in Stoke in 1955 and lived and worked in the City. I was a City Councillor from 82-7 and a County Councillor from 97-05. I’m a member of the Green party My heroes are Thomas Paine, HL Mencken, Tom Joad and Ernest Everard..,”

Talke’s, Newcastle-under-Lyme, North Staffordshire: Talke Social Club mid-1980’s & early ’90’s:

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‘Manchester? Manchester? So Much to Answer For!’

Posted on by Daniel Patrick Killeen

‘Manchester, Manchester? So Much to Answer For?’ My view of Manchester: ReBeL JuKe – Freedom of Information 2016 [..,]

Lowry-Manchester-Mill-Scene-1965

Lowry’s Manchester ‘Mill Scene.’ 1965.

Lowery’s Manchester Mill Scene: 1965 –  got so, so very, v. much to answer me, you and the rest of the modern world For! For it’s the clue to Manchester’s real-self ..,
Cloaked in Deception ..,
Claude Monet, 1873-74, Boulevard des Capucines, oil on canvaSS

Claude Monet, 1873-74, Boulevard des Capucines. Parallels to the much later Lowry’s Manchester 1965: ‘Mill Scene.’ Which I now hate!

In the 1990s, Manchester earned a reputation for gang-related crime, particularly after a spate of shootings involving young men, and reports of teenagers carrying handguns as "fashion accessories". - Oasis-maze-panoramic

Manchester earned a reputation for gang-related crime, particularly after a spate of shootings involving young men, and reports of teenagers carrying handguns as “fashion accessories”.

It’s drug crazed inhabitants and influential media and Indie music demigods have been polluting the minds of the younger generations with their evil filth for many years now.

The history of Manchester encompasses its change from a minor Lancastrian township into the pre-eminent industrial metropolis of the United Kingdom and the world. Manchester began expanding “at an astonishing rate” around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The transformation took little more than a century.

Having evolved from a Roman castrum in Celtic Britain, many centuries later Manchester was the site of one of the world’s first passenger railway station and many scientific achievements of great importance. Manchester also led the political and economic reform of 19th-century Britain as the vanguard of free trade. The mid-20th century saw a decline in Manchester’s industrial importance, prompting a depression in social and economic conditions.

Even before all that Manchester’s reputation as powerful and influential city for both good and evil largely began with the Hasidic Jews of Manchester and their adoption of the One Whom We All Would One Day Owe So Much: Sir Winston Churchill. Whom they cradled into Labour stronghold politics and ultimate power in the earlier parts of Churchill’s left-wing political career and went on from Manchester and the Hasidic Jews of Manchester’s adopted son in the early parts of the last century to become Britain’s most powerful, finest and most well respected statesman and victorious War Leaders EVER!

Sir Winston Churchill - Manchester's Hasidic Jew's adopted Son

Sir Winston Churchill – Manchester’s Hasidic Jew’s politician and statesman, the finest ever, most victorious and the most powerful British War leader EVER!

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