Kelvin MacKenzie doorstepped over Hillsborough
He didn’t like it up ‘im (-self):
From Alex Thompson’s Channel 4 blog:
Mr MacKenzie has not given any interviews at all since the publication of last week’s Hillsborough report.
Channel 4 News repeatedly called him requesting an interview. We called yesterday in person to relay that message to him via his family at his large house in a private development in Surrey.
This morning I arrived there. I went straight to his house without any camera or recording equipment and asked Mr Mackenzie if he would kindly put on camera the remarks in his statement last week and generally give his side of the story.
Mr Mackenzie explained he was in the middle of writing an article for The Spectator and did not wish to do a TV interview with me. He then added: “F*** off.”
So I did. But not far. Just around the corner in fact to meet our cameraman and put on a radio microphone.
We called again. And you can see what happened on the next two meetings at his house. This time, Kelvin MacKenzie had changed rapidly from the shorts and t-shirt of the earlier visit into a smart shirt and trousers.
I sensed he was going out. In fact he went in. He again said he did not wish to be interviewed and that he was ‘not going to let (Channel 4 News) set the agenda’. He slammed the door in my face.
What the camera doesn’t pick up is that, from within the house he said: “I’m not afraid” when I ask him why he’s afraid of speaking to us.
Equally, when we returned a second time, what you don’t quite hear is Kelvin Mackenzie emerging from his house to leave.
As he does so he says jauntily: “Ah Alex – you still here? And still employed?”
I confirm on the tape that I am, still, employed and the rest is all there for you. And needs no words from me.
But as a postscript, consider this from Chris Horrie and Peter Chippindale’s fascinating account of life under Kelvin Mackenzie at The Sun – “Stick It Up Your Punter: Rise and Fall of The Sun”:
“As MacKenzie’s layout was seen by more and more people, a collective shudder ran through the office but MacKenzie’s dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch.”
“The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn’t a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight. Nobody really had any comment on it, they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a classic smear.”
A smear for which Kelvin Mackenzie adamantly refused to apologise for many years. He still refuses to explain why he came to over-rule his staff and set in train a smear that hurts many to this day.
Romney’s contempt for half the people of America
Sometimes it’s very hard to argue against an Obama vote…
From Mother Jones:
During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don’t assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
The rest here
In the power of the offenders
The popular narrative of this latest outburst from Rage Boy goes “Israeli-American, no sorry, Egyptian-American makes film grossly offensive to Muslims, who then protest.”
An alternative narrative could go ” Egyptian telly host bigot gets wind of film grossly insulting to Muslims and finds opportunity to stir shit, with wonderful success.” It isn’t had to find grossly insulting material about Muslims, and everyone else, on the internet.
The film has gone viral, the protest global, even down to Sydney, Australia.
There have been various outbreaks of ill feeling between Australian Muslims and the Kevos and Barries – the Sydney gang rapes by Lebanese Australians, which the leading Australian Sheikh excused by calling women wearing scanty clothing “uncovered meat attracting cats” and the Cronulla riots .
However, the experience of full black-flagged decapitation-demanding Rage Boys rioting in the streets is new to Sydney and those Australians who are highly vocal in opposing -immigration have been given a fillip.
I’m copying a sharp piece by an Australian Muslim on the pleasures of righteous wrath:-
WHERE do I start? Perhaps with the viral image that will come to define this episode: a child who’d be three or four hoisting a sign triumphantly above his head blaring ”Behead all those who insult the Prophet” while a woman, presumably his mother, thinks this is cute enough to capture on her smartphone. Alternatively, I could begin with the observation that the trailer for the anti-Islamic film that ostensibly started this all, Innocence of Muslims, is now a blockbuster, with YouTube hits in the millions thanks largely to the protesters around the world who think nobody should see it.
No. Let’s start with the fact that so few of the protesters who descended on Sydney’s CBD this weekend seem actually to have seen the film that so gravely offends them. When asked by journalists, they bluntly admit this, one even adding that she refuses to watch something so offensive. It’s almost impressive how cyclical this stupidity is. But it’s also instructive. In fact, this is the key to making sense of something so gobsmackingly senseless. The protesters – at least the ones quoted in news reports – know nothing except how offended they are.
That, you see, is all that matters. This isn’t about a film. It’s about an excuse. We know because we’ve seen it all before, like when Pakistani protesters vandalised American fast food outlets and burnt effigies of President George W. Bush in response to the Danish cartoons.
We know because so much of the weekend’s ranting was nakedly gratuitous: ”Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell”. Pardon? Which dead? Weren’t we talking about a movie?
This is the behaviour of a drunkenly humiliated people: swinging wildly with the hope of landing a blow, any blow, somewhere, anywhere. There’s nothing strategic or calculated about this. It doesn’t matter that they are the film’s most effective publicists. It doesn’t matter that they protest using offensive slogans and signs, while protesting against people’s right to offend. It doesn’t matter that they object to insulting people on the basis of their religion, while declaring that Christians have no morals. This is baffling only until you realise these protesters are not truly protesting to make a point. The protest is the point.
It feels good. It feels powerful. This is why people yell pointlessly or punch walls when frustrated. It’s not instrumental. It doesn’t achieve anything directly. But it is catharsis. Outrage and aggression is an intoxicating prospect for the powerless.
Accordingly, it is not an option to leave an insult unanswered because that is a sign of weakness, rather than transcendence.
The irony is that it grants an extraordinary level of power to those doing the offending. It puts them constantly at the centre of your world. That’s why, when Gallup polled 35 Muslim majority countries, it found that of all the gripes the Muslim world has against the West, among the most pervasive is the West’s ”disrespect for Islam”.
And it is this disrespect that is the overarching grievance that subsumes others. Everything, global and local, can be thrown into this vortex: Swiss minaret bans, French niqab bans, military invasions, drone strikes, racist stereotyping, anti-immigrant politics, and yes, even films so ridiculously bad that, left to their own devices, they would simply lampoon themselves.
This is what gives Innocence of Muslims meaning: not its content, but its context. It’s a symbol of contempt, which is why protests against it so quickly turn into an orgy of anti-Americanism. So, ”Obama, Obama, we love Osama” they scream, mainly because it’s the most offensive rhyme they can muster. Osama, too, is a symbol; the most repugnant one in their arsenal. How better to prove you exist than to say something outrageous?
That the Obama administration immediately condemned the film in the strongest terms doesn’t register. Nor that the White House took the extraordinary (and ultimately unsuccessful) step of asking Google to pull the video. This is invisible to an audience of humiliated souls waiting desperately to be offended and conflate every grievance. Indeed, they need the offence. It gives them the chance to assert themselves so they can feel whole, righteous even. It’s a shortcut to self-worth.
The trouble is that in our digital world, there is always something to oblige. Anyone can Google their prejudices, and there is always enraging news to share with others. Entire online communities gather around the sharing of offensive material and subsequent communal venting. Soon you have a subculture: a sub-community whose very cohesion is based almost exclusively on shared grievance. Then you have an identity that has nothing to say about itself; an identity that holds an entirely impoverished position: that to be defiantly angry is to be.
Frankly, Muslims should find that prospect nothing short of catastrophic. It renders Islamic identity entirely hollow. All pride, all opposition, no substance. ”Like the Incredible Hulk,” observes Abdal Hakim Murad, a prominent British Islamic scholar, ”ineffectual until provoked.”
Sometimes you need a scandal to demonstrate an underlying disease. And that’s the good news here. The vast bulk of Saturday’s protesters were peaceful, and Muslim community organisations are lining up to condemn the outbreak of violence. But now a more serious conversation is necessary. One that’s not about how we should be speaking out to defend our prophet and ourselves. One that’s more about whether we can speak about anything else.
Now, more than ever, we must defend free speech.
Free speech is a fine principle and I’m all in favour of it … but it must be exercised responsibly. It’s not a license to gratuitously offend people. In particular, it should not be used to insult people’s sincerely-held beliefs.
How many times have you heard someone on the radio, TV, or quoted in the press, saying something like that? I’m pretty sure there’s been at least one Guardian editorial along those lines as well.
Offensive?
The more sophisticated of those using that sort of argument will usually also bring up the analogy with shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre.
Well, I say that as soon as you come across someone placing provisos of that kind on their “support” for free speech, you know that you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t really support free speech at all.
Let’s be clear: the principle of free speech is indivisible, all-or-nothing. In particular, it must apply to those you disagree with (supporting free speech for people you agree with doesn’t amount to much does it?) and – in particular – it must include the right to give offence.
We may argue that there’s “a time and place” for certain potentially contentious statements, and that tactically/diplomatically, sometimes it’s better to keep schtum: but that’s nothing to do with the principle of free speech.
We may also conclude that the expression of certain views (for instance, racism) is incompatible with membership of a labour movement organisation – or, indeed, someone’s presence in your own home. Again, that’s besides the point: you’re saying “you can’t express those views here,” not “you can’t express them at all (and will face legal consequences if you do).”
Shouting “fire” in a theatre is, of course, a health and safety issue with nothing fundamentally to do with freedom of speech at all. Just as stopping fascists from holding meetings is pre-emptive action for the protection of the labour movement and minorities, not because we find their views “offensive” (an unfortunately widely-held misconception on sections of the left).
I do accept that the distinction between giving offence and incitement to violence (which is, rightly, illegal) is not always clear-cut. But in the vast majority of situations, common sense tells us which side of the line a particular offensive article or statement falls on.
I remember, when the hysteria about the Satanic Verses first blew up, following Khomenie’s murderous fatwa, a colleague argued that we should defend Rushdie because it was a good piece of literature. I disagreed: we should defend both Rushdie and his right to publish, even if our view was that the book was rubbish. That was, as I recall, one of the few arguments I won against that particular colleague.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the Innocence of Muslims. And as they say, “hard cases make bad law.”
I could spend a long time discussing this, but thankfully Nick Cohen in yesterday’s Observer has said just about everything I wanted to, especially this:
“Innocence of Muslims is one of the hardest cases for liberals I’ve come across. But even this tawdry piece of work raises problems for the proponents of censorship. The first is a problem with language. Mount a critique of Islamist religious fanaticism, and it is only a matter of time before you find that defenders of religious reaction have hijacked liberal language. You are an “orientalist”, they say, an “Islamophobe”, “neo-colonialist” or “neocon”. (The prefix “neo-” has become a synonym for “evil”. The reader need only see a “neo-” to know that no good will follow.)
“The joke of it is that defenders of censorship represent “orientalism” at its most patronising. They see the world’s Muslims as an undifferentiated and infantile mass. The smallest provocation – a cartoon in a Jutland newspaper, a trailer for a nasty but obscure film – is enough to turn them into a raging mass of bearded men who bellow curses as they fire their Kalashnikovs. They take no account of those in Libya, Egypt and Iran who want nothing to do with clerical violence. As seriously, they do not understand that ‘offences against Islam‘ are manufactured by extremists, who must keep their supporters in a state of violent rage or see their power wane.”
I urge you to read the piece in full (here), as well as this from Comrade Coates and a recent Canadian TV interview with Rushdie, here.
The issue of religious censorship and the demand from bigots for special protection and privilege, will not go away and will not be appeased by concessions: it must be constantly fought and no quarter can be given. Perhaps even more pernicious, is the creeping self-censorship and sheer cowardice of ‘liberal’ media people like Channel 4. That’s why, even at this perhaps ‘inopportune’ moment, these brave people and their campaign (below) must be supported by all socialists, democrats and, indeed, principled liberals:
Urgent Action: Islam – The Untold Story must not be cancelled
Dear friend
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain would like to make public its support for Tom Holland’s Channel 4 documentary ‘Islam: The Untold Story’. We are indignant to learn that due to threats made on Holland, Channel 4 has cancelled a repeat screening of the historical inquiry into the origins of Islam similar to the kind of inquiry that has been applied to other religions and histories in Britain for many years.
The threats and concerted attempt to stigmatise the documentary and its producers by attacking its credibility and even legitimacy as a field of inquiry is nothing less than an attempt to impose a blasphemy taboo by stealth and coercion against programming that scrutinises Islam.
Caving in to the coercive pressure of Islamists will have catastrophic effects on free inquiry and expression where it pertains to Islam. It would not only further silence academic, historical and theological scrutiny of Islam but would also have the chilling effect of exerting added pressure on Muslims and ex-Muslims who wish to dissent from and question Islam.
CEMB spokesperson Maryam Namazie says:
“Here’s my question to Channel 4: what about the threats on our lives for being apostates, ex-Muslims, atheists, freethinkers, secularists, 21st century human beings?
“What part of our thoughts, lives, and bodies do you recommend we cancel to appease the Islamists?
“If only there was such an ‘easy’ ‘solution’ for those who are languishing under Islam’s rules.
“You may accept censorship and cowardly silence in the face of Islamist threats and intimidation but we cannot afford to do so. And we never will.”
The CEMB urges you to view the documentary (also available on Youtube and Liveleak) and write to Channel 4 and Ofcom (contact information below) calling for a repeat screening.
We look forward to your support.
NOTES:
1. If you’d like to donate to our work, please send a cheque made payable to CEMB to BM Box 1919, London WC1N 3XX, UK or give via Worldpay or Paypal.
2. If you’d like to join a new coffee morning for ex-Muslim women, please email the CEMB at exmuslimcouncil@gmail.com.
3. See Maryam Namazie’s speech at the 5th anniversary celebration of the CEMB.
4. Join the active CEMB forum.
5. Addresses for Channel 4 and Ofcom:
Lord Burns, Channel 4 Chairperson Channel 4 Television Corporation 124 Horseferry Road London SW1P 2TX
Avi Grewal, Programme Coordinator, Arts & Religion agrewal@channel4.co.uk
Mark Raphael, Emma Cooper, Lina Prestwood, Anna Miralis, Commissioning Editors, Documentaries KHall@channel4.co.uk
Ed Richards, Chief Executive of Ofcom Riverside House 2a Southwark Bridge Road London SE1 9HA ofcomnews@ofcom.org.uk
6. For further information contact:
Maryam Namazie Spokesperson Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain BM Box 1919 London WC1N 3XX telephone: +44(0)7719166731 e-mail: ex-muslimcouncil@googlemail.com website: http://www.ex-muslim.org.uk
Sabra and Shatila remembered
Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the massacres (designated as genocide by the UN General Assembly), at Sabra and Shatila. These were two mainly Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of West Beirut, set up in the aftermath olf the 1967 war, and at the time under the control of Israel following their penetration into Lebanese territory, the evacuation of PLO forces and the declaration of a supposed “ceasefire.”
Although Israeli forces did not carry out the massacres, they resulted from an alliance between Israel and the Lebanese Phalangists – a Christian semi-fascist party and militia. Israel supplied the Phalangists with money and arms. Israel’s aim was to drive the Palestinians out of Beirut by means of terror directed against civilians – women, children and the aged.
The decision to move into West Beirut was taken by Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, in violation of of the “ceasefire” and, indeed, of promises made to the US after the PLO evacuation.
Sharon and Israel’s Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan decided that Phalangist forces should storm the two camps and assigned the operation to to Eli Haqiba, a senior Lebanese security official at a meeting at which Fadi Afram, Commander of the Lebanese forces, was also present.
On Thursday 16th September, the Phalangists attacked, watched by the Israeli army, which had surrounded the camps. In the chilling words of one account*, It was “a three-day orgy of rape and slaughter”. The Israelis provided the attackers with lighting, bulldozers and maps. Palestinians who manged to escape were captured and returned to the camps by Israeli forces. By the end of the third day, bodies were everywhere: “Many of the victims had been mutilated by axes or knives; others had their heads smashed, their eyes removed, tyheir throats cut and the skin had literally been stripped from their body. Severed limbs lay strewn about the floor and others had been disembowelled.”
Shatila camp, Beirut, 20 September 1982 (Photo: UNRWA/Beirut)
The exact number of victims is not known and probably never will be, not least because the Lebanese authorities refused to co-operate with the Red Cross and would not open mass graves. The likely figure is between 3,000 and 3,500, about a quarter of whom were Lebanese and the rest Palestinian.
The Israeli public was horrified when reports began to come through and 30,000 Israelis marched in Tel Aviv, demanding the resignations of Begin and Sharon.
In 1983 the Kahan Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, established by Israel to investigate the events, found Sharon to be “unfit for public office”. He was elected Prime Minister in February 2001.
On this day we must remember and honour the victims. And we must redouble our efforts for the only just settlement of the whole Israel/Palestine tragedy: two states for two peoples.
* ‘War Crimes and Atrocities’, by Janice Anderson, Anne Williams and Vivian Head, published by Futura, 2007.
Hillsborough: a ruling class cover-up
By David Kirk (Workers Liberty)
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After 23 years of struggle the Justice for 96 Campaign have forced out the truth about the 1989 Hillsborough disaster and the deliberate cover up and smear campaign by the ruling class to shift the blame to the fans. The report of the investigation by the Hillsborough Independent Panel has not only vindicated the campaign by the victims’ families: it has made plain the cover up was much more widespread and calculated then even they realised.
This was a entirely avoidable and also entirely predictable illegal killing. From the 70s onwards fans, journalists and managers had been pointing out the dangers of tightly penning in fans on crumbling terraces. There had been plenty of previous disaster and near disasters that should have been heeded. However most football club owners were more bothered about maximising paying customers and spending the least possible money on safety or renovation. The police and the government treated fans with contempt; they were a “public order issue” to be penned in and treated as cattle.
Just before 3pm on 15 April 1989 South Yorkshire Police started forcing far too many Liverpool fans into one particular section of the Lepping’s Lane end of the Sheffield football ground. Because of the cages and barriers a crush quickly developed. Instead of responding to the fans cries for help the police treated the crush as “crowd trouble” and literally beat back fans trying to climb out.
Ambulances were kept out of the ground by the police who were still insisted it was hooliganism even as the fatalities became apparent. Only one ambulance crew defied the order and drove on to the pitch.
This latest Hillsborough investigation argues that up to 41 of the deaths may have been avoided if the police response to the crush had been prompt.
Within hours of the disaster the cover up and smear campaign began. The local leader of the Police Federation, senior police officers and a local Tory MP met to decide the official line. That line was to blame the Liverpool fans themselves.
Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper repeated these lies saying fans had urinated on the dead and dying, that ambulance workers had been attacked, the dead people had been looted. They also said fans had been drunk and violent. The lies were printed under the headline, “The Truth”. The Hillsborough Panel have proved these stories to be sick fabrications.
The campaign for justice and truth throughout has had to take on the police, the rightwing press and both Labour and Tory governments. Even though an earler inquiry and report, the Taylor Report, led to vastly improved safety in football grounds, the police made sure that the real truth did not come out. Over 100 police officers statements were changed to avoid evidence of police culpability.
The Tory press and party’s contempt for the people of Liverpool was well known. Liverpool’s trade unionists were too militant, their politics too socialist. So when the Labour government was elected in 1997 there was hope for justice. However these hopes like so many others were dashed by New Labour.
Through years of demonstrations, campaigning in the press, through the unions and through Labour Party branches the campaigners kept the issue to the fore. This still did not stop the smears and accusations of self pity coming from the right, including from Boris Johnson.
Now the apologies are coming thick and fast. The campaign will continue to demand police officers are brought to account and that the inquest be re-opened.
Hillsborough, along with the cases of Stephen Lawrence, John Charles De Menzenies and Iain Tomlinson, remind us how far the ruling class will go to cover up police brutality and incompetence. The families’ campaign also remind us how vital it is despite all the smears and obstacles to continue the struggle for truth and justice.
Justice for the 96!
‘Payback’: Radio 4 play on The Yom Kippur War
I’ve just been listening to Jonathan Myerson‘s ‘Payback’ on BBC Radio 4. It has a superb cast (including Henry Goodman as Kissinger, Peter Marinker as Nixon, Sara Kestelman as Golda Meir and Kerry Shale as Al Haig and Simcha Dinitz) and demonstrates considerable historical and psychological insight. It’s about the October 1973 ‘Yom Kippur War’ when Egypt and Syria launched an attack to recover the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and very nearly succeeded. The play concentrates on the interaction between the war and Richard Nixon’s increasingly desperate efforts to fend off an investigation into Watergate and the release of the tapes. The behind-the-scenes negotiations/shadow-boxing between Kissinger and the USSR (in the form of Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin) is also dealt with very convincingly.
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Despite the deadly serious subject matter, there’s some grim humour in Myerson’s script, mainly provided by Nixon’s brilliantly scatalogical and scurrilous use of language, especially when describing enemies and fairweather friends.
The political repercussions of the Yom Kippur War were almost as vast as those of the 1967 War and are necessary for any informed understanding of the Middle East and, indeed, the world, today.
This is radio drama at its best. If you have an hour to spare (and if you haven’t – make one!), listen and learn. Or you can download it from here (Amazon, I’m afraid). Essential listening for anyone interested in recenty history and contemporary politics – or who just enjoys superb radio drama.
Pictures of Libyan democrats and anti-Fascists
Just like not all Americans are like the people who made the weird anti-Islam movie that is sparking protests in Muslim nations, not all people in Libya are like the ones who killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens. Some of the people of Benghazi, where Stevens was killed, held a demonstration against terrorism and to show sympathy for the U.S. Libya Alhurra TV, an Internet TV channel founded at the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, posted Facebook photos of a rally there showing support for America and sympathy for Stevens. Here are some of those pictures:
Mr Teagarden amongst friends and equals
Jack Teagarden was, I think, the third jazz musician I learned to identify just by his sound on a record. As I recall, the first was Sidney Bechet, and then Bix Beiderbecke.
He died in 1964: the year that I first discovered jazz music.
I’ve always had a soft spot for “Mr Tea” (aka “Big T” and “Jackson”) and have posted here about him before. He was generally acknowledged by fellow-musicians and fans as the greatest jazz trombonist of his time (maybe, any time), but poor judgement, a chaotic personal life and the demon drink, all conspired to ensure he never achieved much in the way of commercial success, and he spent the latter years of his life paying off debts and alimony by working himself (literally) to death playing mundane nightly gigs and living in cheap hotel rooms.
He was also, incidentally, almost certainly the first white man to sing a convincing blues – on a record, anyway.
The late Richard M (“Dick”) Sudhalter described Mr Tea’s last years in his book Lost Chords:
“I found him warm but distant, ” said clarinetist Kenny Davern, who joined the [Teagarden] group in 1954. “There, but not there. Emotionally closed off. Sometimes it seemed that his idea of spending an afternoon was to come into a place where we’d be playing and tune the piano. Or make brass mouthpieces on a lathe he had in his garage. I got the idea sometimes that all that tinkering was a way of putting something between himself and the world, so he wouldn’t have to deal with it.”
In his playing, too, a schism had opened. Richard Hadlock gets right to the point, noting that Teagarden “always performed best when supported sympathetically by his musical equals.” The trombonist himself expressed similar thoughts to Down Beat‘s John Tynan in 1957: “Guess you could call me an inspiration man. Unless I’ve got good guys around me, I’m no good.”
Teagarden’s records with his own groups of the ’50’s are never less than good but seldom rise to real heights of inspiration. Yet on two LPs with Bobby Hackett, in 1955 and 1957, he shines with all the old brilliance; there is even a “St James Infirmary” which comes within hailing distance of the great Town Hall version of 1947.
But shadows were closing in. Connie Jones, who played cornet in the last edition of Teagarden’s travelling sextet, remembered meeting his new boss one Sunday afternoon at a club in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, outside Philadelphia. “He was sitting at the back of the room, at a table all by himself, drinking a cup of coffee,” said Jones. “No mistaking him. But I remember thinking that in that moment he looked to me like the loneliest man I’d ever seen.”
The late trumpeter Don Goldie, who spent four years in Teagarden’s band and had known him since childhood, “always got a feeling that a lot of happiness was locked away inside Jack, really padlocked, and never came out … Just this feeling of sadness. It was always there.”
Jack Teagarden died, alone, in his room at the Prince Conti Hotel in New Orleans on January 15, 1964. He was only fifty eight. “I sometimes think people like Jack were just go-betweens,” Bobby Hackett told a friend. “The Good Lord said, ‘Now you go and show ’em what it is,’ and he did. I think everyone familiar with Jack Teagarden knows that he was something that happens just once. It won’t happen again. Not that way.”
There’s quite a lot of film of Jackson available, including an appearance in Birth Of The Blues (1941) with Bing Crosby and Mary Martin, but little that shows him in a congenial jam-session atmosphere. So I am eternally grateful to my chum Michael Steinman of Jazz Lives, for discovering this wonderful gem from a Budweiser-sponsored US TV show in 1956. Here, Jackson sits in (from the third number onwards) with some old friends: Matty Matlock on clarinet, Abe Lincoln on trombone, Eddie Miller on tenor, Clyde Hurley, trumpet; Stanley Wrightsman, piano; George Van Eps, guitar; Phil Stephens, string bass, and Nick Fatool at the drums. For a short while, at least, Mr Tea found some happiness:
Hillsborough in two sentences
From today’s Guardian letters page:
Tory government, dodgy coppers, Murdoch press? We’ve come a long way in 23 years, haven’t we?
Phil Thorp, Bury, Lancashire
[The Hillsborough Justice Campaign (HJC) was set up to help the families of the victims and the survivors of the tragedy seek justice. Their shop is located right across from “The Albert” on Walton Breck Road and they sell various merchandise to raise funds].
Shiraz Socialist 