Family History, Funerals and Facebook

Melbourne Argus 31st October 1950

Bless her, I hear you say, Elizannie has really lost it now. Not only does she provide a scintillating [not] blog title but then she gives us a boring picture to boot. Well all I can say - to quote Miranda's 'chum'* "bear with...."

Yesterday was a sad day for my family as a beloved older cousin was laid to rest. She was 88 years old and for all but the last few days of her life had been as bright as a button, had a fantastic sense of humour, great common sense and possessed a wonderful kindness and generosity of spirit. No wonder she will be missed by so many. But in the aftermath of the funeral - which had been arranged by her, she wanted us all to have a drink and something to eat 'on her' it has to be said that it was good to catch up with some members of the family who hadn't seen each other for years. We have a large extended family and there were a few games of 'Do you know who I am, then?' Edna would have loved that, as she was also the keeper of many of the family records. And following in her footsteps there are a few of us who are trying to write the family history too and last year many of us got together with old photos and stories to try and collate the facts.

Over the past few years we have not only collected and collated the facts when we could meet up, but we have used the often abused social media to keep in touch. Facebook has been great and whereas 50 years ago we all lived close enough to keep up the family gossip face to face we now can do so easily with facebook!!

This morning, with torrential rain outside providing an ideal excuse not to clean the windows or anything silly like that, I decided to have another go at finding a few errant ancestors via the internet. And I struck lucky and that elusive 2x great grandfather who emigrated to Australia in 1873 suddenly came to life [well actually I found his obituary!] via the Australian newspaper archives. And a question which had always bothered me, had he and his second wife produced any Australian half-cousins for me and the rest of the family was finally answered.

But here is the really exciting thing and something which maybe my longstanding readers may find interesting. I may have mentioned that my political journalist father was sometime the London editor of an Australian newspaper, back in the 1950s. So, seeing the name of that newspaper pop up during my archive search, I thought, why not? Let's type in his name and see what comes up. And yes, loads of articles did. He obviously had a weekly column where he told the Aussies what was going on in Westminster, sometimes throwing in a bit of gossip as well.

I haven't kept very many of my father's newspaper articles. Well you don't do you, when every day of one's young life a newspaper plops through the letter box and one's father has at least one byline, and that often to the headline. Although it gave me a big thrill a few years ago when the shop 'Past Times' was selling a pack of various newspaper replicas from the 1960s and one of them was the old Daily Herald with my father's byline on one of the articles! And going back a few years more, one of my cousins opened one of those Reader's Digest pictorial History Books and there was a picture of my father lecturing on Pacifism in the late 1930s. However I have been printing out some of these articles found today. And some of the political comments, written in the 1950s sadly make me realise that times haven't changed that much. His comments about wages and income tax are very interesting. And maybe others will now understand my dislike and disgust with Winston Churchill. These are two articles posted on here as photographs with 'translations' below.

Forgive me if I am being a bit self-indulgent today. I am dedicating this to Edna and all my lovely, huge family xxx

Melbourne Argus 19th December 1950

Text for the photos:

Attlee will introduce more socialism

SPARKS will fly in the political spheres of Britain tomorrow. By then the world will know from the King's Speech what legislation the Labor Government intends for the next Parliamentary session. The Opposition leaders and newspapers here are kidding themselves that the Government is going to coo as gently as a dove because of its small majority in the Commons. Don't believe that tale if you've been told it. The Government's new legislation will be challenging and belligerent. It will contain two proposals at least which will rouse fierce passions.

One will be a radical sugar nationalisation project - and the other will be a bill to make permanent the economic and industrial controls made necessary as temporary measures in wartime Britain.

And there will be another bill dealing with leaseholds that will bring all the backwoodsmen on one of their rare - and angry - visits to the House of Peers.

I sniff an electoral battle in the air.

February will see the struggle at the polls, I think.

When an election does come; cost of living will be a big issue.

Though it has been kept in check here better than in most countries in the world - and certainly better than in Australia - it is surely going up.

Fear of further price increases is making Christmas shoppers buy early this year.

Prudent husbands are buying their wives a something-to-wear present weeks ahead of the usual time.

Some shops have already sold more coats than during the whole of the winter season. 

Handbags and shoes are more popular than ever, and in both cases rising costs are likely with the increased leather shortage.

Handbags are already costing between £9 and £40. 

Everybody's feeling the draught, including higher income groups.

19/6 in the £

JUDGED by the income tax standards, the British millionaire is now almost non-

existent.

Last year there were only 86 people in the United Kingdom with over £6,000 income after tax.

In 1939 there were 6,560.

Tax at the highest rate ontop-level incomes in this country is 19/6 in the £.

Stiff, yes; but it doesn't begin at 19/6; it only reaches that at the supertax stage of £2,500 a year.

Lack of income has driven an Anglican parson out of his job.

He is the Rev. Austin Lee, talkative 45-year-old vicar of St. Stephen's, Hounslow, Middlesex.

He is offering his services as a cook for luncheon and dinner parties. To those ready to take him on he will also be prepared to bring a former Cambridge undergraduate as a waiter.

Oratory takes a  tumble

IF Australians still think of Winston Spencer Churchill as The Voice of England, they ought to shed their illusions. I sat in the House of Commons last week and saw Britain's wartime Premier descend, in the course of a few sentences, from the high level of a statesman to the abusive personal slanging level of the parish pump.

It was the most astonishing,  most impudent, and most insulting Parliamentary performance I have seen.

All the more so because Churchill's taunts and gibes were neither spontaneous nor unconsidered.

They were part of a meticulously prepared script from which Churchill spoke in a critical foreign affairs debate.

Coming at the end of a speech in which he had generally supported the Government on its Korean policy and had paid tribute to Mr. Attlee's mission to Washington, Mr.Churchill's charge that unless

the Government dropppd the act to nationalise steel he would "doubt their loyalty to the people of this country" was not only irrelevant-it was a studied reflection on the integrity of the men of whom Churchill has said he could have asked for no better Ministerial allies during the war.

What is the mystery behind all this? Why did Churchill deliberately destroy the non partisan atmosphere in which the debate on foreign affairs had proceeded up to that moment?

The answer is not easy to give, for it is many-sided. But one thing I can say with certainty: The hold of Churchill on the Tory Party is not as tight as it might be and to fasten his grip he must not make too many speeches even on foreign policy, which can be interpreted as support for the government.

Another reason it that, however grave the international situation, Mr. Churchill - and Tories generally-always have one eye cocked on the next general election.

*TV comedy starring Miranda Hart. Her chum is always uttering 'bear with' when answering her mobile in the middle of a conversation with A.N.Other. How rude.

"The most humble day of my career" - life imitating art

I sat at my lap top yesterday, doing various bits of stuff, whilst listening to those giving evidence at the culture select committee in the Houses of Parliament yesterday and heard Rupert Murdoch say it was "the most humble day of my career".

I have to declare my interest here. I have never liked Rupert Murdoch's business style or ethos. He bought The Sun in 1969, five years after it had morphed from the sadly missed Labour Party Daily Herald into a new left leaning broadsheet called The Sun in 1964. Rupert Murdoch then changed it into the tabloid that everyone knows today. My father was a lobby correspondent on the old Daily Herald and transferred to the new Sun until his death in 1967. I have never bought The Sun since 1969.

Disliking an entrepreneur's business ethos and style is not the same thing as suspecting he may have been up to some dodgy stuff. And listening and watching Murdoch yesterday, I honestly do not know whether or not he knew personally 'the crimes committed in his name'. But, and again this is my own opinion, I think that the culture within his business empire was such that he and others in his 'management team' perhaps gave the impression that no-one cared how information was obtained as long as News International titles scooped others in getting a [sensational] story.

Now I said that I was doing stuff on my laptop whilst the hearing was being aired. Some of you may have read my 'Clarice' blogs and know that I have pretensions to literary criticism. In this guise, yesterday I was leading a discussion on the Internet of a 19thC novel by a now [sadly] mostly out of print and unknown author, Allen Raine, called Garthowen.

The novel, written in English, is by a Welsh woman writer and is very 'Welsh' in its expressions and glimpses of village society in West Wales in the last quarter of the 19thC - which is why I chose it and am leading the discussion. Several of my Welsh friends and family have been helping me with translations of Welsh phrases dropped into the text! And my life imitating art comment in the title of this blog occurs because one of this week's discussion points is how one character, an old man, goes to his chapel and humiliates himself by declaring all the 'sins' he has committed in a hitherto apparently blameless and respectable life.

Of course the novel is heavy with Victorian morality, showing how one's sins will always find one out and how one cannot live well with oneself until all moral debts are paid. The novel has a happy ending although I am uncomfortable with the humiliation of the character and the 'punishment' meted out to him by his Chapel brethren with true Victorian heavy-handed retribution.

So did we all watching/listening to Rupert Murdoch yesterday feel satisfaction or discomfort at seeing him apparently brought so low? That is a question I find surprisingly difficult to answer myself. The hurt inflicted on individuals like the Dowler family and families and victims of the 7/7 bombings are impossible to imagine or describe. Murdoch may not have personally authorised these acts but he did create an empire with a culture that could allow its employees to collectively think these sort of acts reasonable. One thing that yesterday must have made Murdoch and a lot of others watching realise is that power and money does not equal morality, respect and happiness.

Oh and the picture - well it is returning to the pre-News International Age when we could only get our news from Newspapers, TV & the Radio - no satellites or internet then! And of course paper boys and girls delivered newspapers morning and evening - many towns and villages now do not deliver newspapers. And of course this lad is delivering the Daily Herald, what else!

Nature [and Newspapers] Re[a]d in Tooth and Claw

The quote

Nature, red in tooth and claw

is from Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850. [Canto 56] It is generally taken to mean that 'nature' is pretty cruel, and whilst we may gaze at the 'cute lion cubs' playing on a TV documentary or in a zoo, we must also realize that they will grow up to be dangerous, predatory animals.


Tennyson wrote his epic poem to celebrate the life of - and also mourn the sudden death of - his best friend Arthur Hallam. The short phrase quoted is part of the following:

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

and questions why the God whom Churches in the 19thC taught loved 'All creatures great and small' [to quote Mrs Alexander] could also let evil things happen to them. Obviously Tennyson was questioning why his young friend [Hallam was only 22 when he died] died so suddenly. Tennyson, like many others at this time, must have wondered whether God existed in view of the sort of scientific discoveries that explorers like Darwin were making.



Of course in the 21st century many believe that the two are not incompatible, but in the 19th century they seemed so and Darwin - who at one time in his life had planned to enter the church - lost his faith due to his evolution theories. Those who had relied upon the Bible to guide them throughout their daily lives felt adrift in the light of what they felt to be a complete overturning of long held beliefs.


So where am I going with this blog? Perhaps many do not now rely on the Bible, or other religious teaching in their daily lives. Whereas in most middle class Victorian households the first thing to be read [out loud] in the morning was the Bible, and the servants were included in this 'instruction', now the early morning reading/hearing for most is the newspaper on the way to work/radio news. How often do we hear 'it must be right, it's in the ....[fill in the name of whatever national/local paper that applies!]


Suddenly in just over a week the sort of change that took place in mid - late 19thC Britain over religious beliefs is happening with the public's faith in three public institutions. Newspapers are not now to be believed it seems: although at the moment it is only the News of the World, the Sun and the Times that are included in the News International 'nastiness', the whole of Grub Street seems to be teetering on the edge of a chasm of disbelief by the public. The 'phone hacking scandal, which seems to have been bubbling away for years, has 'gone viral'.



When public figures like John Prescott said a few years ago that there was more to this than we had been told, he was accused in certain areas of the press and media of being over the top and causing trouble. Other public figures and politicians like Tom Watson MP were scorned for their warnings. The police seem, at the very least, to have been very careless in their investigations and top politicians are firstly victims of the most awful intrusions into their private lives and others may have been aware of what was going on. So who do we, the public, trust?


And there is also another area of confusion for the public. Last night on Newsnight [BBC2] the actor Hugh Grant questioned the executive editor of the Times, part of the News International Group, Roger Alton about the 'phone hacking scandal. Now here's the thing. Grant played the Prime Minster in the RomCom Love Actually and wasn't awfully good at it, imo. And he has played a lot of upperclass slightly twittish characters in his career, not to mention his adventures in Los Angeles and love life with Liz Hurley. But last night, in the interview with Roger Alton, Grant came across as statesman like, dignified and reasonable whilst the newspaper executive editor was as daft as a brush [imo] making ludicrous excuses and at times quite insulting really.


So whether or not there are more revelations to come, the damage caused to the victims already named is too much. Investigative journalism, which is impressive when it is properly done, has been damaged too by cheap sensationalism parading under the name of 'investigative'. The police have a lot of questions to answer as do some politicians.


Back to nature, red in tooth in claw. Last week in deepest Somerset I saw birds pecking at road kill [badgers and rabbits] and also saw some 'dear little bunnies' displaying signs of myxomatosis whilst others, hopefully immune, played on nearby and big birds like kestrels and sparrow hawks were out hunting 'pretty little birds'. Watching the media interviews and House of Commons enquiry into the 'phone hacking scandal seemed a bit like anthropomorphism in reverse.

And the picture. The sadly defunct Daily Herald - a REAL newspaper. Worth noting that it 'died' in 1969 only after it was bought out by News International in 1968! My father was lobby correspondent for the Herald for many years so this blog is dedicated to him and all the honest journalists everywhere!