RIP Terry Baldwin

I’ve received the sad news that former Aintree Village Parish Councillor Terry Baldwin has passed on.

I recall sharing a great community campaign with Terry as we and indeed many others, I might add, tried to save Aintree Library from closure. We lost, but Terry was a great public speaker and quite a character too. Here he is in full flow at an outdoor protest meeting about the then proposed closure of Aintree Library -

I also recall that he, like me, had a trade union activist past and it was probably one reason why we got along well. Terry was Chairman of Aintree Village Parish Council when a new GP surgery was opened. Here’s Terry at that event in 2006 -

 

Away from politics and community campaigning Terry was involved, at high level, with St. John Ambulance and I recall seeing him standing proudly in his uniform at civic events at Maghull Town Hall where St. John Ambulance volunteers practised their skills. Indeed, I think it was Terry who presented me, in my year as Mayor of Maghull, with a model of a St. John Ambulance vehicle which still sits in a display cabinet in the Council Chamber of Maghull Town Hall. It was to celebrate their acquiring a new ambulance, if I remember correctly.

Terry was presented with the Maghull Town Council Civic Award in 2004 and it was very much because of his volunteer St. John Ambulance work.

So goodbye Terry, yours was a life well lived and you were liked and respected by so many people.

 

A terrible loss - The Southport – Preston Line – A new booklet 

marking 60 yrs since the electric services to Crossens ceased.

I’ve just read an excellent booklet produced by the Class 502 Preservation Trust to mark 60 years since the loss of the 3^rd rail electrified service from Southport out to Crossens in September 1964. The following day the whole route from Southport to Preston closed; all part of the short-sighted Beeching cuts.

Front cover of booklet

 

The line is now lost to housing in so many places that reopening is impossible yet in 1963, just one year prior to closure, the booklet tells us that the line was carrying 2m passengers a year! With all the building along the line from Southport through Crossens to Preston it would clearly be viable 2024. 

Back cover of booklet

 

Even if closure was seen to be the right thing to do in 1964 the trackbed should, like with so many other lost lines, have been safeguarded for future possible reopening but UK politics has always been short-term and short-sighted.

Anyway, back to the booklet which runs to 40 plus pages. It’s full of colour photos, great captioning and is a wonderful insight into what has been lost. I really enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to railway enthusiasts, and those interested in Southport’s history.

It’s available from the Class 502 Preservation Trust priced at £8.50 and their online shop is via this link - 

  https://www.class502.org.uk/shop/

 

A missed opportunity? – The new Merseyrail Class 777 fleet

 

 

A class 777 EMU at Maghull Nth Station - My photo

I’ve been pondering in ways that only a railway enthusiast can probably ponder. My ‘light bulb’ idea is that Merseytravel (the public transport body for the Liverpool City Region, which has recently been renamed to something so long I can’t recall it) missed a trick when they ordered the whole new Class 777 EMU fleet all in the same black and yellow livery.

Yes, by all means have a few in the new livery but why not have done a handful in each of the former railway operator’s liveries on Merseyside? The Mersey Railway, LMS, BR and indeed the various liveries carried by the Class 507/508s in the post-BR days. I guess one answer is likely to be cost and the other, no one thought about it as a possibility.

Here’s a few ideas from my own photographic collection. I think all the photos were purchases from the Class 502 Preservation Trust - https://www.class502.org.uk/ - I'm unable to credit the actual photographers as I don't know them.*

 

A 502 in an LMS tribute livery

A 502 in BR Blue livery

A 502 in a later BR livery

* Please visit the 502 Trust website.Also, if you know who I should credit the 502 photos to please let me know.

 

Appeasing the far right, austerity, poor politics, inability to sell policies - Labour's present troubles

Here's is a link to an interesting YouTube video (which I suggest you look at before reading this blog piece) if, like me, you do politics and are pondering Labour's troubles after only weeks in government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKUdFLNCl4

Starmer, to me, is not good at politics a point once more or less made by his deputy who said something like he's the least political person I know, or words to that effect. Yes, the hand he's been dealt is a very difficult one but my feeling is that he's not good at defining a direction of travel or indeed selling it to voters.

His politics seem right of centre so you'd think our right-wing media would take to him yet they don't as they want the further or far right to be running the show. On that basis Labour's attempts, over many years, to appease the right seem to have failed on pretty much every level, as indeed they were always likely to.

Being a predominately a party of the working-class means Labour has always been hampered by having to be a party that covers the far right to the far left and everything in-between. An impossible task, of course, but one they've stuck with over generations. However, they came unstuck when many of their right-wing members and supporters backed Brexit and then Boris Johnson. Many of those are now supporters of Reform and they're not coming back to Labour soon or even ever. But Labour wants them back in their broad church because that's where they think these working-class right-wingers belong.

Labours problem over the past 10 years has been one of trying hard to keep or attract back the working-class right-wingers whilst ignoring their progressive voters, in effect taking them for granted. Getting only a low 30's percentage of votes in the last election (although with a ridiculously large majority of seats) is now a problem as they won because voters wanted the Tories out at all costs. The patience of those voters, many of whom will have been progressives, is wearing thin already not least because Labour has refused to address child poverty (2 child benefit cap) and has attacked state pensioners by taking away the winter fuel allowance.

The big error of judgement seems to have been not to deal with the need to increase some taxes, especially on the wealthy and hugely profitable energy companies first, before even thinking of more austerity measures. You have to bear in mind Labour has consistently opposed austerity measures since 2010 only to bring in more of their own as soon as they get the keys for No.10. Yes, OK, Gordon Brown actually brought in the first austerity measures in response to the 2007 financial crash and of course Labour pledged to make £1b more in cuts in the 2010-2015 Parliament than the disliked Coalition government actually made. But Labour gained the moral high ground by looking to be opposed to virtually all austerity measures and now that has come back to bite them as they’re making more austerity cuts!

So poor politics and adopting political stances only to do the opposite; reminds us all of Nick Clegg and Tuition Fees does it not! Team that with losing members and supporters to the far right and trying to appease the right-wing and it’s no wonder Labour is in a mess.

But I would say all that as a progressive, wouldn't I? It really is is up to the right of centre voters to embrace Labour unless they want the further right Tories back or even the madness of the far right of course.

We progressives are now left with backing the left of centre Lib Dems or further left Greens.

 

Don’t believe all you read in newspapers………..

This old saying was once worth bearing in mind but few people read newspapers these days. Of the people I know well only two still ‘get a paper’ pretty much every day.

Interestingly, they are both of an age where ‘going for the paper’ is engrained. One has a very enquiring mind and is analytical of nature, the other is very much of the working class right but who has taken to voting Labour these days having been a Thatcherite Tory back in the 1980s! I often remind him of his political past to give him a reason to try to play it down.

As an aside, I have a regular stopping place on my all but daily cycling route. I get a coffee but the shop also sells newspapers. I don’t think I can recall a person looking to be under 60 picking up a newspaper in a very long time

Of course, many a Labour supporter is of the right politically so shifting political allegiance between the Tory and Labour (not forgetting Reform) parties is no big deal but when my chum moved from Tory to Labour I started to rib him about his still buying the Express newspaper and after a while he switched to the Mirror. He delights in telling me about what he’s read in the Mirror just as he did when he read the Express. In turn I tell him not to believe all he reads in his paper and that, in my view, he’s still of the right politically; which he, of course, denies.

‘Don’t believe all you read online’

But beyond the small mature minority who still ‘go for a paper’ each day how do others get their news? TV or radio news programmes, 24 hour TV news, free or paid for on-line newspapers, Facebook, X etc. On that basis the old adage should now read ‘Don’t believe all you read online’ but of course those who need reminding of the old or new version will be the ones who do believe pretty much everything they read from their chosen media outlets.

Like with newspapers people gravitate towards the on-line media outlet which confirms their own often long-held prejudices but unlike newspapers some of the new sources of ‘news’ can often be all but completely unregulated and will be pedalling misinformation and sadly outright lies.

We live in dangerous times news wise, where some politicians with extreme axes to grind are fronting what look and seemingly are made to feel like TV news programs and where stories are invented and sent around on social media by people with appalling agendas.

Dangerous times indeed…….

 

Did Labour miss a step in its ‘pull-out’ of constituencies it couldn’t win?

Labour, on Merseyside in particular, has for the whole time I’ve been involved in politics (since 1980) been unwilling to working with progressive parties. That pig headedness has I guess been associated with the danger they have seen of making progressive parties more popular and therefore Labour more vulnerable. As has been put to me on a number of occasions - Labour’s purpose is to put the party first at all times and everything flows from that stance.

Labour is hardly a progressive party but it is a party which has done some progressive things and which has some progressives within its ranks. Fundamentally, it’s historically a tribal party emerging from the working class. Such a history explains the broad church of Labour and the fact that it has always tried to represent all shades of working class opinion including supporters and members who are a part of Labour’s tribe but are significantly right-wing in outlook. This very section of Labour’s support delivered Brexit and Johnson as PM when they broke ranks with Labour.

Oddly though, Labour (on Merseyside) has never been averse to working with the Tories, indeed they ran Merseytravel, the former transport authority for Merseyside, with Tory ‘support’ for a few years. There was also a bizarre attempt to run Sefton Council with the Tories by shutting out the largest party at the time (the Lib Dems) in what was then a balanced council. That weird experiment only lasted 2 or 3 months, although I think something similar and more significant has gone on in Stockport council in more recent times.

The problem I see is that in 2024 Labour stood on a right of centre manifesto, whilst also ‘agreeing’ to back off in some seats, particularly where the Lib Dems were the challengers to the Tories. All very sensible you might say unless you know how Labour really works. In reality they’ve done what could be in their medium to long term disinterest by allowing the left of centre Lib Dems to win a significant number of Parliamentary seats and at a time when the Lib Dem manifesto was clearly far more progressive and to the left of Labour’s. Not only that but the Greens now have a better political foothold and they tend to be attractive to the socialists Starmer’s Party is trying to rid itself of.

All this means that, depending how the cards fall in the next few years, left leaning Labour voters could leak to the Lib Dems with significant leftists/socialists leaking to the Greens. Assuming Labour thought through what it has been doing it points to Starmer’s leadership attempting to replace the Tories as a ‘One Nation-type’ alternative Conservative Party. Indeed, it may well be necessary for Labour to double down on such a move as parties which try to sell themselves as ‘middle of the road/centrist don't usually succeed in UK politics.

My questions are therefore, why did Labour all but cooperate with a progressive party and could their lack of ‘party first at all costs’ be their downfall? Or is it that they realise politics is moving rapidly and that they have to let their significantly right-wing supporters go to Reform whilst trying to appeal to the more moderate but still right of centre Conservative voters?

 

John Shrigley RIP

John Shrigley lived in Lydiate for many years except when his work took him to Tyneside for a number of years. He was an educational psychologist by trade but I only really got to know him well following his retirement and when he moved next door but one to our Southport Road house in Lydiate.

John was steeped in local history knowledge and would often be able to give interesting accounts of the northern part of Maghull and Lydiate over many years. That his wake was held in the MCA* on Green Lane, Maghull was fitting as previous generations of his family had farmed what was once agricultural land which the Green Park estate now sits upon, whilst they lived at Canal Farm also known as White House Farm, now the MCA.

John told me that he first came across me when I canvassed him for the Lib Dems some years back. He lived on the part of Southport Road north of Pilling Lane, Lydiate back then. Despite that first encounter we became good friends when he moved into what had previously been the house lived in by his aunties the Holme sisters, Mabel and Millie. Sheila and I recall Millie being at her garden gate, when she was in her late 80’s/early 90’s and her passing on fascinating memories of Lydiate in times past.

John loved his cricket and, of course, he was a Lancashire supporter. With me being a cricket fan too, although a Nottinghamshire supporter, we always had much to talk about cricket-wise. On one occasion I said he looked like the former first class umpire David Constant as John’s sun hat was just like the one Constant often wore. He spent a day at Birkdale Cricket Ground in the summer of 2023 watching Lancashire play there, whilst at the same time I was down at Trent Bridge watching Nottinghamshire. We also shared football misery during the last two Premiere League seasons; John being an Everton supporter and me Forest.

My love of anything to do with railways was partly shared by John and the photo above shows him at the Worth Valley preserved railway in Yorkshire.

John collected books and memorabilia about all sorts of things and die-cast model cars/buses too. His partner Clare refers to him as a bit of a hoarder. He was particularly interested in the former Ribble bus company and its vehicles. John generously donated two Dinky Toys to Maghull’s Frank Hornby Heritage Centre in 2023 (see photo below), of which I’m a Trustee.

Sheila and I will miss John. We became good friends with him and Clare and whilst only knowing John well for a few short years we really enjoyed spending time with him. Our thoughts are with Clare, who cared for John so wonderfully during his illness.

*Maghull Community Association