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haqClubland by Pete Brown, a popular social history of working men's clubs in the UK, relates an episode during Eartha Kitt's week long residency at Batley Variety Club, Yorkshire, in 1969, when she visited Batley market:"Stunningly beautiful, fully made-up and wearing furs and an elaborate headscarf, she soon attracted an audience of less elaborately head-scarved housewives, and young men who had clearly left their shops and offices to gawp at her. She visited a tripe stall, because - understandably again - the American megastar whom Orson Welles once called 'the most exciting woman on earth' had never encountered tripe before. In the video, Eartha Kitt fails to completely hide her disgust at both the tripe itself, and the serving suggestion of smothering it in industrial quantities of salt and vinegar. She eats a small piece and retches just about visibly, looks as if she's about to vomit, and finally swallows. Then - unbelievably - she reaches for the salt and vinegar, hammers both, and goes in again. Somehow she recovers, says she's been singing all week, and asks her rapt audience what they like to sing themselves. A minute later, the multi-award-winning TV, movie and Broadway icon is leading the whole of Batley market in a hearty rendition of On Ilkley Moor 'Baht 'At."You can watch from 22:30 to 26:00 in this documentary about Batley:<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjGzSruor2Y" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjGzSruor2Y</a><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/clubland" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#clubland</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WorkingClassHistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#WorkingClassHistory</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/BlackHistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#BlackHistory</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#history</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Yorkshire" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Yorkshire</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/UK" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#UK</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/singing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#singing</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/tripe" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#tripe</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/EarthaKitt" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#EarthaKitt</a>

haqClubland by Pete Brown, a popular social history of working men's clubs in the UK, discusses "moral panics" about out-group people enjoying music as entertainment (and, yes, this is still a culture war trope used to divide and rule)."Now, you might think there's nothing wrong with a sing-song around the old Joanna [piano], but these were working-class Victorian men, remember, so anything they did was, by definition, bad. The Town reported in 1837: 'The epidemic of vocal music has more particularly spread its contagious and devastating influence amongst the youth of the Metropolis, the London apprentice boys. These young gentlemen generally give vent to their passion and display their vocal abilities in the spacious room appropriated to that purpose of some tavern or public house and these meetings are most aptly denominated Free and Easies: free as air they are for the advancement of drunkenness and profligacy and easy enough of access to all classes of society with little regard to appearances or character.'This despicable practice of people singing to each other in a space that welcomed anyone and had no dress code has reappeared numerous times in history.[... two more example quotations, a rave from 1989 and pub singing in 1858 ...]Each writer is describing music, and people enjoying it as a shared communal experience. None of them seems to witness anything worse than that happening, so sensationalist language is employed to do some really heavy lifting to help make singing and dancing feel like a sinister threat from outside our cultural safe space. Whether it's happening behind the closed doors of a pub you'd never dream of visiting or a disused airfield in Berkshire you'll never find, the publication brings these revellers into your home, stoking the fear that contagious, alien beings are coming for you and your children."Brown later discusses other moral panics about working class clubland, such as women leaving their homes after dark to get together and... prepare to be shocked... play bingo... oh the horror!<a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/clubland" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#clubland</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WorkingClassHistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#WorkingClassHistory</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#history</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/cooperative" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#cooperative</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/UK" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#UK</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/singing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#singing</a>

haq"Bastard's Club was founded in Charlton Marshall near Blandford, Dorset, in 1855 for farm labourers. It was named, as wags enjoyed explaining, not after its members, but for its founder, Mr Horlock Bastard [...]" - from Clubland by Pete Brown, a popular social history of working men's clubs in the UK.<a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/clubland" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#clubland</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WorkingClassHistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#WorkingClassHistory</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#history</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/cooperative" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#cooperative</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/UK" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#UK</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Dorset" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Dorset</a>

haqI'm still reading Clubland by Pete Brown, a popular social history of working men's clubs in the UK. Despite the first chapter being devoted to amusing reflexivity (you don't need to know what this means but it's a must for social historians), by page 38 he's already included about half a dozen mentions of women's suffrage and a pointed reference to chattel slavery. I especially enjoyed his dismantling of the excuse "for their time":1780s: "[Samuel Greg] was a pioneer of the factory system who liked to control people as well as capital. When he built the famous Quarry Bank Mill in Styal, Cheshire, he and his wife Hannah also built a model village for their employees. Conditions here were somewhat better than they were for the enslaved people on Greg's sugar plantations in the West Indies, and the couple were considered enlightened for their time. Sure, they forced young children to work seventy-two hours a week, but Hannah took a personal involvement in their education and well-being."In 1857 their son, Robert Hyde Greg, accidentally founded what is now the longest surviving working men's club. He intended it as a teetotal reading cafe, lol.<a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/clubland" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#clubland</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WorkingClassHistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#WorkingClassHistory</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#history</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/cooperative" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#cooperative</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/UK" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#UK</a>

haq"There is no true civilisation, no true and lasting prosperity, unless the condition of the mass of people steadily improves, not only in material comfort or in security from destitution, but in all that makes life valuable." - The 20th Annual Report of the Club and Institute Union, 1883I'm reading Clubland by Pete Brown, which is a social history of working men's clubs in the UK. As a proud member of my thriving local social club, which began as a working men's club in the 19th century, I'm finding this popular history fascinating.<a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/clubland" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#clubland</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/reading" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#reading</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/books" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#books</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/WorkingClassHistory" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#WorkingClassHistory</a> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/cooperative" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#cooperative</a>

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