Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

If I could just give up sleeping…

October 29, 2006 – 10:54 am

You might have noticed that I’ve been around a bit less here lately. There are a couple of reasons for that, both related to the Green Party. First, I’ve been co-opted on to its executive committee, looking after internal communications. Since it’s internal communications you probably won’t hear much about it here, but be assured, I’m beavering away behind the scenes.

And then there’s the by-election … in Kentish Town, Camden. Our female principal speaker, Sian Berry, who missed out on a seat there in May by only 157 votes, is running hard for the December 7 election – and so am I, looking mainly after the print material. (The by-election was called when the sole Labour person, elected in May, resigned. The Lib-Dems hold the two other seats. And it is said even the Tories – having selected a very ambitious candidate – are going to have a real go at it.)

It will be a lively campaign.

Should you live in Camden or nearby areas, and be moved, say by news like today’s leaks of the Stern report to do your bit for the climate, say by delivering a few leaflets – or going a little further by joining the Green Party – please email. (natalieben AT gmail DOT com ).

As our new slogan says: One World. One Chance.

And it is a chance that is slipping away fast.

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A powerful call – help the Muslim women

October 29, 2006 – 10:36 am

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writing in The Sunday Times:

For a while now I have been asserting that the most effective way for EU governments to deal with their Muslim minorities is to empower the Muslim women living within their borders.
The best tool for that is education. Yet the education systems of some EU countries are going through a crisis of neglect, particularly with regard to immigrant children. And in the matter of faith schools we are now paying the price of mixing education with ideology.
I think religion is taking up far too much time, attention and space in our society. Blair needs to look at the segregation of boys and girls and ask himself why young girls in primary schools are veiled. Are we saying that five and six-year-olds are sexual symbols, “uncovered meat”? As a society we must understand that saving young girls from all kinds of repression is important.

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I’m sometimes asked why I’m so anti-religion…

October 28, 2006 – 9:39 pm

In Nicaragua, to WIN church backing, politicians have passed a law banning all abortions – including those in the case of ectopic pregnancies, which cannot produce a baby but will kill the woman.

Nice to see the Catholic Church’s view of the value of half of the human race laid out so clearly.

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Defiant, almost to the end – Alice Clark

October 28, 2006 – 8:03 pm

Roy Booth over on Early Modern Whale has a fascinating post about the gallows priest Henry Goodcole.

Although it was one of his subjects I found most poignant – Alice Clark, who would be burnt at the stake for killing her husband:

“Uppon Wensday morning, on which shee was executed, there assembled unto Newgate multitudes of people to see her, and some conferred with her, but little good they did on her, for shee was of a stout angry disposition.” Goodcole decides that, like Barnadine in Measure for Measure, she was, in her state of mind, “no fitting guest for the Table of the Lord Iesus”. He then plays his last card: “thereupon, I made as though I would have excluded her thence, in denying the benefit of the holy Communion, of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, inferring the benefit of the unspeakeable blesse, by the worthy receiving of it by Repentance and Faith, and the most woefull malediction to all impenitent and unworthy receivers. Whereupon, it pleased God, so to mollifie her heart, that teares from her eyes, and truth from her tongue proceeded, as may appeare by this her ensuing Confession at the very Stake”.

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Listen in to Gleebooks

October 28, 2006 – 7:03 pm

A Sydney institution that was at least as responsible for my education as any university, Gleebooks, started as a rambling, dusty secondhand shop on Glebe Point Road. (It now seems to make most of its money from the new book store, although it still has a secondhand branch. It doesn’t seem as exciting as it once did, but that’s probably because I’ve changed rather than because it has.)

And now it is usefully on the web, with streaming audio of its talks by authors. One to check back on…

Hat-tip to Personal Political.

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Diane Purkiss’s English Civil War

October 27, 2006 – 12:31 am

There’s a traditional way of telling the story of the English Civil War. On one side there’s the King, haughty and distant, on the other Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, the aristocratic general and the political mastermind. They move their men — and it is always the men who get talked about — around the map of England as though they were pieces on the chessboard, but the Commonwealth ultimately has the better strategy, and so finally knocks off the king’s head.

That isn’t the Dianne Purkiss’s Civil War. In her “people’s history”, the war is messy and confused; decisions are made not by careful calculation and planning but by emotional impulse and irrational passion. It is not as comfortable and convenient to handle as the traditional histories, but I’ve no doubt it is far more true to the reality.

One excellent aspect of the story is that the women – half or more of the population — are returned to the cities, the battlefields, in the depths of the palace intrigues, having active parts. I’ve noted elsewhere the fascinating account of the spy and nurse Elizabeth Alkin (Parliament Joan), and there’s also the woman we know only as “Mary the scout”, who was personally rewarded for her work by Fairfax after the fall of Taunton. (p.507)
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