#best rebel leadership london

[debbiedanon]

Decoding the Genius Behind Leadership Strategies

Discover the secrets of rebel leadership in 2023 with our analysis, 'Decoding the Genius Behind Leadership Strategies.' Learn about the smart strategies shaping rebels' actions, including insights into rebel leadership in London. To know more visit our website.

[scotianostra]

On August 18th 1746 Arthur Elphinstone, Lord Balmerino and William Boyd, 4th Earl of Kilmarnock the Jacobite nobles, were executed.

The two were found guilty of treason and sentenced to death; this was commuted to beheading, rather than the usual sentence of Hung,drawn and quartered, which had already been carried out on some Jacobites, most notably the English Jacobite Francis Towneley on 30th July that year, with eight of his comrades from the Manchester Regiment.

Before I start on this post proper I have to say we should remember that whilst the high profile executions may make the “headlines” in my posts, we should remember the ordinary soldiers that also died, both during the uprising and afterwards. Also the provisions that followed stripping the country of their way of life.

Magnus Magnusson recounts in Scotland The Story of Nation: “Of the total of 3471 Jacobite prisoners, 120 were executed: most by hanging, drawing and quartering, four by beheading because they were peers of the realm -- the privilege of rank. Of the remainder, more than six hundred died in prison; 936 were transported to the West Indies to be sold as slaves [which, at that time, meant that they would almost certainly be dead of yellow fever or the like within two years], 121 were banished ‘outside our Dominions’; and 1287 were released or exchanged” 

Of those released my guess is that a large number of these would have been co-opted into the British army.  Highlanders were among the world’s best natural soldiers and if given discipline, training and leadership would make a formidable force. Which indeed was proved true. 

Numerous clan chiefs were attainted, having their titles and lands stripped of them. More importantly the Heritable Jurisdictions Act of 1746 removed all judicial powers from the chiefs, smashing the very structure of Highland society as sheriffdoms reverted to the Crown.  The Act of Proscription of 1746 banned anyone north of the Highland line from the carrying of arms and the Dress Act section banned anyone in Scotland from wearing Highland dress, especially the kilt, on pain of six months in jail – transportation was the punishment for a second offence. Also banned by extensions of the Act were the bagpipes and the speaking of Gaelic in public. In a few short years, that Act had great effect, and the repression of the Gael was almost total. Many Highlanders opted to emigrate to America and Canada in a bid to preserve their way of life that was now under assault on all sides – lowland Scottish people, it has to be said, largely backed the brutal repression of their fellow Scots.

On to the day of the executions, much of this is first hand accounts from the history books.

Everyone who was anyone wanted to be at the execution, among the spectators was the English army officer and naturalist George Montagu, it is his description that I have pinched for an eye witness account of the gruesome events that day in 1746. Montagu was allowed close access to the prisoners from before their trial until they met their end.

“Just before they came out of the Tower, Lord Balmerino drank a bumper to King James’s health. As the clock struck ten they came forth on foot, Lord Kilmarnock all in black, his hair unpowdered in a bag, supported by Forster, the great Presbyterian, and by Mr. Home, a young clergyman, his friend. Lord Balmerino followed, alone, in a blue coat turned up with red, his rebellious regimentals, a flannel waistcoat, and his shroud beneath; their hearses following.

They were conducted to a house near the scaffold; the room forwards had benches for spectators; in the second Lord Kilmarnock was put, and in the third backwards Lord Balmerino; all three chambers hung with black. Here they parted! Balmerino embraced the other, and said,

“My lord, I wish I could suffer for both!” He had scarce left him, before he desired again to see him, and then asked him, “My Lord Kilmarnock, do you know any thing of the resolution taken in our army, the day before the battle of Culloden, to put the English prisoners to death?”

He replied, “My lord, I was not present; but since I came hither, I have had all the reason in the world to believe that there was such order taken; and I hear the Duke has the pocketbook with the order.”

Balmerino answered, “It was a lie raised to excuse their barbarity to us.” –Take notice, that the Duke’s charging this on Lord Kilmarnock (certainly on misinformation) decided this unhappy man’s fate! The most now pretended is, that it would have come to Lord Kilmarnock’s turn to have given the word for the slaughter, as lieutenant-general, with the patent for which he was immediately drawn into the rebellion, after having been staggered by his wife, her mother, his own poverty, and the defeat of Cope.

I’ll interject here this conversation pertained to the lie that the Jacobite commanders issued an order that “no quarter” was to be give ‘no quarter’ meant that no prisoners would be taken. Any men on the battlefield would have no mercy shown to them and surrender would not be accepted.”

On the eve of the Battle of Culloden the Duke of Cumberland was determined to end the Jacobite Rising and prevent the Jacobites from ever being capable of challenging the throne again. After losing to the Jacobites at every turn, up to this point, he would not let them win again. To motivate his men he informed them that Lord George Murray had ordered ‘no quarter’ to be given to the Government men on the field. This meant the men would be shown no mercy by the Jacobites . However, this claim was not true. No such order had been given. From copies of Lord Murray’s orders there was no mention of ‘no quarter’ anywhere. But, in Cumberland’s papers there was a copy in which the words ‘and to give no quarters to the electors troops on any account whatsoever’ had been inserted. Whilst Cumberland may not have been responsible for doctoring the order he certainly did not shy away from the words written and retaliated in kind.

After the battle Cumberland ordered his men to search out any surviving rebels who were to be treated as traitors, outside the conventions of international combat. Those with the French Royal Ecossais or the Irish Piquet’s would be regarded as prisoners of war but everyone else was to be considered traitors. Whilst some men in the government army refused to kill, and tried to turn a blind eye, there were some who committed terrible acts. As well as wounded soldiers, civilians, women and children were all killed in the horrible aftermath of Culloden.

Back to Montagu’s account…..

“He (Kilmarnock) remained an hour and a half in the house, and shed tears. At last he came to the scaffold, certainly much terrified, but with a resolution that prevented his behaving in the least meanly or unlike a gentleman. He took no notice of the crowd, only to desire that the baize might be lifted up from the rails, that the mob might see the spectacle.

He stood and prayed some time with Forster, who wept over him, exhorted and encouraged him. He delivered a long speech to the Sheriff, and with a noble manliness stuck to the recantation he had made at his trial; declaring he wished that all who embarked in the same cause might meet the same fate.

He then took off his bag, coat and waistcoat with great composure, and after some trouble put on a napkin-cap, and then several times tried the block; the executioner, who was in white with a white apron, out of tenderness concealing the axe behind himself. At last the Earl knelt down, with a visible unwillingness to depart, and after five minutes dropped his handkerchief, the signal, and his head was cut off at once, only hanging by a bit of skin, and was received in a scarlet cloth by four of the undertaker’s men kneeling, who wrapped it up and put it into the coffin with the body; orders having been given not to expose the heads, as used to be the custom.

The scaffold was immediately new-strewed with saw-dust, the block new-covered, the executioner new-dressed, and a new axe brought. Then came old Balmerino, treading with the air of a general. As soon as he mounted the scaffold, he read the inscription on his coffin, as he did again afterwards: he then surveyed the spectators, who were in amazing numbers, even upon masts of ships in the river; and pulling out his spectacles, read a treasonable speech, which he delivered to the Sheriff, and said, the young Pretender was so sweet a Prince that flesh and blood could not resist following him; and lying down to try the block, he said, “If I had a thousand lives, I would lay them all down here in the same cause.”

He said, if he had not taken the sacrament the day before, he would have knocked down Williamson, the lieutenant of the Tower, for his ill usage of him. He took the axe and felt it, and asked the headsman how many blows he had given Lord Kilmarnock; and gave him three guineas. Two clergymen, who attended him, coming up, he said, “No, gentlemen, I believe you have already done me all the service you can.” Then he went to the corner of the scaffold, and called very loud for the warder, to give him his periwig, which he took off, and put on a nightcap of Scotch plaid, and then pulled off his coat and waistcoat and lay down; but being told he was on the wrong side, vaulted round, and immediately gave the sign by tossing up his arm, as if he were giving the signal for battle. He received three blows, but the first certainly took away all sensation. He was not a quarter of an hour on the scaffold; Lord Kilmarnock above half a one. Balmerino certainly died with the intrepidity of a hero, but with the insensibility of one too.”

Pics show the Lords, the second is a satirical drawing of  Lord Balmerino, next is a depiction of the crowd and scaffold on the day. Finally is a plaque at Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hamlets, London where the executions took place. 

[dearjohnnyflynn]

https://thelast-magazine.com/tlm13-johnny-flynn/

JANUARY 22, 2015 ACTORCULTUREFILMMUSIC

TLM13: JOHNNY FLYNN

A resonator is a type of guitar built for a sound many generations old. It hums and shines, as if an acoustic guitar was broadcast through a tinny phone line. Rather than a wood sounding board, the heart of the guitar is a metal cone, ornately decorated, that brittles the sound and projects it even without electronic amplification. Resonators are rarer now; they’re hard to come by. But they carry a unique magic in their sound, their history, and their owners.

It was one of the first things he purchased with his record-deal money, and it has followed Flynn’s eclectic artistic path as band leader of the Sussex Wit and now as an actor, where he strums and plucks it through Song One, a film about a folk musician searching for inspiration and finding it in a woman and the New York music scene she traverses.

“I’ve learned that when a creative path dies out, another door opens, and you have to stay loose enough, present enough, and absorbent enough to figure out what path you have to walk down,” Flynn says in his soft English accent. “That sounds like a terrible cliché, but being in creative industries, for me, is a spiritual path.”

Flynn has been carving that path, guitar in tow, with a balance of wide-eyed enthusiasm and artistic curiosity. He has sought out company that emphasizes shared forms of creativity, whether onstage, on camera, or in the pubs and music nights of London’s early-Aughts folk scene.

Flynn is in London now helping produce English singer-songwriter Nick Mulvey’s album. We speak after a studio session with Flynn in a cab back to his London flat just after sunset, a small break from a schedule that has permitted him more time to his songwriting and the musical community that gave him so much of his identity. Flynn never left music, but he felt the need to slow down to give acting his full focus. “I hate having to rush a job because you need the space to say what you have to say with your fullest voice and as much confidence as possible,” Flynn says.

“Not being honest in those circumstances is my version of being sacrilegious or blasphemous. There’re lots of ways of doing something, but if you find a way that’s true, then you’re happy.

Several years ago, Flynn stopped touring in order to pursue a series of increasingly meaty acting roles, including a run at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the acclaimed, all-male Shakespearean troupe Propeller. Now Flynn’s about to have even less time, thanks to a breakout role in Song One, opposite Anne Hathaway, and the upcoming Olivier Assayas film, Clouds of Sils Maria, opposite Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloë Grace Moretz.

In some ways, it has improved his songwriting. “I’m never going to abandon music,” Flynn says. “I was dragged back out to play shows here, and it was a good thing to be reminded that this is something I love doing.” Flynn’s friends did everything they could to “drag” him out for some gigs. It helps when your friends happen to be Mumford & Sons, who actually played one of their first performances opening for Flynn. “So many bands only get to write songs about the view from their hotel window, but I get to work with language and be inspired by that,” Flynn continues. “That seems invaluable as a song- writer. I am very grateful for that.”

To hear Flynn sing is not to see him. His solid build, tousled hair, and craggy features absolutely do not set you up for the lilting way his lyrics seem to fall and float out of him. His voice can crackle or rise sweetly into a falsetto, all while singing stories of small towns, large hopes, and even larger characters.

There seems to be a minor groundswell of British folk musicians waiting for Flynn to finish with all this acting business and get back to music full-time. But Flynn embodies a new creative state of mind, one that is not bordered by form— musician, actor, painter, poet—but one that applies considerable talents to tell better stories.

The story of Song One hews close to Flynn’s own. James Forester is a folk guitarist, resonator in hand, searching for inspiration. Forester, like Flynn, is exceedingly polite, a dewy-eyed talent capable of heart-grabbing honesty both onstage and off. “In terms of lifestyle and where his head is at, a lot of that stuff came from conversations with Kate [Barker-Froyland], the director, of what it was like to be a musician out on the road,” Flynn says. “I think he’s a character that is quite close to me, so I have to find a fine line. In real life, I’ve got a wife and a kid.”

Song One’s music went through a similar process; written for—but not by—Flynn, he used the songs as a way to find his character. “That’s what being an actor is about,” Flynn says. “You’re doing a good job if you’re serving the piece. It was quite a relief in a way to not have to worry about every aspect of the music. I think I enjoy giving up that leadership role for those situations.” The collaboration between Flynn and songwriters Jenny Flynn, Johnathan Rice, and Nate Walcott resulted in an album, which they recorded on weekends between shoots. Even though the songs are not Flynn’s, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking them from him. There is a stamp Flynn places on his projects, a vibration that is all his own.

In a way, Song One best captures the hell and catharsis of creativity. “You sometimes lose your way or you end up turning out the same stuff for a while, and before you know it you end up losing your inspiration, what put you there in the first place,” Flynn says. “And then you find it.”

What put Flynn there in the first place was an old book of hand-written folk songs and The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. Born in Johannesburg, Flynn moved with his family to Hampshire, England, when he was three. He earned a music scholarship, picking up violin and trumpet, but classes felt forced and dull.

“I learned to play the guitar using an old songbook of my mum’s that she’d handwritten, and it was full of traditional folk songs, songs that she loved,” Flynn recalls. “I got really obsessed with the Bob Dylan songs because they were really exciting to me. I was studying music as a music scholar, but I was listening to all of that stuff.”

Folk music has a tendency to take care of its own, and Flynn found himself mingling with the artists who would come to define the modern folk sound in its early London years. He and some friends established a music night, called Apocalypso, with fellow folk musicians Emmy the Great and Tom Hatred. “We played with people like Laura Marling when she was starting out, and Florence from Florence and the Machine when she was around,” Flynn says. “It was an early scene to be a part of in London at that time when I was forming my musical identity. When I was growing up, we didn’t have much money, but it was about finding something to do together.”

If Flynn found a musical family in Apocalypso, it was a mirror of his own upbringing. “My dad was writing songs in the Sixties and Seventies, and my mum sang songs and had been a folk singer in the Seventies,” Flynn says. “My older brothers are actors and keen on music. Yes, I guess, I loved hanging around backstage when my dad was doing shows. That atmosphere was what really infected me and made me want to become an actor. It seemed like this magical world of storytelling that my family was privileged to be involved in. Because I went away to boarding school, and I was studying classical music, my way of rebelling was to write my own music. I just fell in with a group of friends who liked to make music and were obsessed with studying the history as well, both American and British. Those are our heroes. It kind of took me over.

It was Emmy who initially introduced Flynn to resonator guitars. She had an old metal resonator lying around and Flynn took to it. “At one point I was crashing on her sofa and I was using her guitar a lot,” Flynn says. “I used it for a lot of bedroom recordings and things, and I fell in love with it.”

That guitar, with its odd metal heart, helped Flynn find his voice, a voice he is now rediscovering in film. “I think playing characters onstage and things like that has told me that you can take on various entities and channel your own voice through the habits of a certain character, the rhythm of someone else’s voice or using someone else’s language,” Flynn says. “But you still have to have your own heart in the middle of it.”

Song One is out January 23. Clouds of Sils Maria is out April 10.

Zachary Sniderman is the associate editor of The Last Magazine.

Styling by Celestine Cooney. Hair by Lee Machin at Caren. Grooming by Jenny Coombs at Streeters. Photographer’s assistants: Iain Anderson and Alec McLeish. Stylist’s assistant: Poppie Clinch. Digital technician: Mike Harris. Production by Lucie Mamont.

By

Zachary Sniderman

Photography by

Ben Weller

[qqueenofhades]

oldshrewsburyian replied to your post: mearcatsreturns: best picture, A+ Goran, A+...

…I now want a Spy Movie with Goran Višnjić and Lucy Liu.

ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE.

CALL SIGN CHAOS

Starring Goran Višnjić and Lucy Liu

Crystal Chang (LUCY LIU) is an up-and-coming executive at one of the world’s most successful industrial conglomerates, based in Wichita, Kansas and owned by shadowy and reclusive billionaire Philip Mock (MICHAEL MCKEAN). (All similarities to successful industrial conglomerates based in Wichita and owned by evil shadowy and reclusive billionaires living or dead are completely coincidental). On a business trip to London, where the company is about to close yet another deal, she accidentally stumbles on a trove of deeply incriminating information about the company’s business practices and the campaign of terror they’ve waged against their last whistleblower, Molly Bly (REBEL WILSON). It’s as evil corporate bullshit as it gets, and it’s systematic and worldwide and implicates a lot of other billionaires (everyone look surprised). Crystal has a crisis of conscience and calls her brother, Eric (JOHN CHO) who tells her that she needs to get it out of there. But since Mock Industries now realizes that she has the information, they ain’t gonna stop at a little murder, and Crystal took exactly two years of karate as a kid… how?

Enter the sassy, hard-drinking former Soviet fighter pilot ace nicknamed “Chaos,” who goes by the clearly-fake name Ivan Ivanovich (GORAN VISNJIC). Once a darling of the Russian armed forces, now embittered and on the run himself for knowing a little too much about the attempted nerve-agent poisoning of an ex-colleague in the sleepy English cathedral town of Winchester. He inadvertently saves Crystal from an assassination attempt in her fancy London hotel room, and they bust out and only then stop to ask who the other is and what they are doing there. Crystal thinks he’s also trying to nail her, and/or take her to Moscow, but after a lot of arguing, they realize that they have information that could help each other… if she can trust Ivan. He doesn’t really seem like the most stable guy, and she can’t be sure that he’s not also a Russian double agent. But he’s large, smart-mouthed, good in a fight, and just threw three goons out a twentieth-story window. She could do worse.

However, if they’re going to report their information to anyone, they need to find Molly, who has gone into hiding in an undisclosed location and has the third piece to the puzzle, which ties together all this corporate cartoon supervillainy and Russian state meddling. (Can this movie get made without everyone on it mysteriously dying? The world may never know!) Cue extended spyjinks on their mad dash across Europe and Africa one step ahead of Mock Industries hitmen and Russian FSB goons alike. High-speed Vespa chases, jumping onto moving trains, dodging through crowded ferries, and slightly unrealistic action sequences abound. Crystal turns out to remember a lot more karate then she thought when Ivan is cornered by several baddies. We stan a battle couple and their angry, bantering flirtation, in which both of them clearly deeply regret their attraction but can’t help it. Crystal tells Ivan she has a boyfriend in America, which she sort of does. His name is Brad (MATT LANTER) and they’re kind of on a break, but never mind that. He also works for Mock Industries. Hmm. That seems important. But screw that guy, anyway.

Anyway, after much shenaniganry, Crystal and Ivan find Molly hiding out in Cape Town, South Africa, where they finally persuade her to come back with them and testify. She thinks they’ll all end up dead. She’s probably not wrong. That night, Crystal and Ivan finally give into their mutual attraction and have the requisite sex scene, which nobody in the audience minds because they’re all too busy drooling. Crystal asks Ivan what his real name is, and he claims that it actually is Ivan. She’s not entirely sure she believes him, but leaves it. Later, feeling guilty, she calls Brad and tells him that they’re coming back to America and she’s going to need help, and it’s really bad. He is understanding and promises that she can count on him to back her up with whatever’s going on.

Romantic angst hangs over us as Crystal, Ivan, and Molly fly to America, in a lot of disguises of varying and comic effectiveness. The three-way banter is Peak. When they land, Ivan and Molly make themselves scarce, while Crystal goes to meet Brad to prepare a strategy for going public. Except –

OH NO WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING. BRAD IS ACTUALLY EVIL AND HAS BEEN WORKING WITH MOCK INDUSTRIES TO SET THEM UP THIS WHOLE TIME. OH MATT LANTER, HOW COULD YOUR CHARACTER SECRETLY BE A TOTAL DOUCHEWAFFLE. AGONIES.

He’s planning to kill Crystal and has a Sad White Boy Villain Monologue. Halfway through, Molly bursts through a wall and hits him over the head, knocking him out. She says that she never trusted that guy when she worked there, and rescues Crystal, where they race out to find Ivan losing his goddamn mind on an innocent sprinkler salesman. Crystal restrains him from sprinklermancide. They’re shocked to see each other. They kiss. Awww.

Brad recovers consciousness (darn) and rushes to inform Mock Industries that they’re blown. Crystal, Ivan, and Molly can’t properly testify, so they once more have to scatter and prepare to transmit their information to journalists separately. It’s not clear whether or not they’ll ever see each other again. Crystal is picked up by her brother Eric and after a comic-poignant-romantic farewell to Ivan, they part.

Cut to: six months later. Mock Industries’ downfall and disgrace and multiple lawsuits is all over the news, so we can guess that Crystal and Molly succeeded. Brad is convicted and heading to jail along with most of its corporate leadership. We pan around to see Ivan reading about this in a Moscow apartment and looking pleased. A voice offscreen (we don’t see who) asks him in Russian if he knew anything about this. Ivan says, “Nyet.”

Was he a double agent until the last minute? Did he ever truly turn? Is this what he wanted all along? Did he actually fall for Crystal and call it off because of that?

WHO KNOWS.

THE END.                                

[speaksfel]

OSCAR ISAAC? No, that’s actually FELIX SPEAKMAN JR. from universe 2. You know, the child of FELIX SPEAKMAN SR. and MARY ROSE TORRES ? Only 34 years old, this GRYFFINDOR alumni works as a REPORTER FOR THE DAILY PROPHET. HE identifies as CIS-MAN and is a HALFBLOOD who is known to be BRASH, DOGMATIC, and CYNICAL but also ENERGETIC, ETHICAL, and METICULOUS. — &&. ( CAMI, GMT+1, SHE/HER, 20. ) 

“ this is why you should never, ever, get your hopes up. this is why you should see the glass as half empty. so when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated. “

death tw, parental death tw, alcohol tw

BEFORE

felix speakman sr. didn’t come from wealth, nor from a strictly “pure” bloodline, but he used to take pride in his status anyway. an hogwarts drop out, he had nothing to show but a few poor OWL results and a knack for trouble, something he claims he inherited from his father before him. when luck didn’t seem to come by him in the wizarding world, he set his eyes on the muggles, spending most of his fast-ending youth doing odd jobs to stay afloat and learning bits about the world he found so alien. everything changed when he, at age nineteen, met mary rose in a run down club he’d been bartending at. 

a perfectly normal girl from town. mary rose finished school and took up a job at a supermarket in the city centre, unaware that the following year her life would look completely different. she met a funny guy with a loud mouth and a tendency to pick fights, and decided to give him a shot for a few months. felix would have been just a shitty short-lived boyfriend buried deep in her memories, had she not discovered she was pregnant shortly after the breakup. 

the wizard was never meant for a structured life, a child and wife and a stable job. they were on and off throughout the pregnancy, speakman doing more harm then good with the stress he put her under and the emotional and financial instability. a week and a half after the birth, it was clear that he did not wish to raise a kid or get his act together so mary rose made it clear she’d do her damned best to do it instead. anticipating the storm that might come later, he gave her one final surprise by showing her magic ( she always repeated that story - she had to be shown, because felix speakman telling her he was a wizard was so preposterous it must certainly be one of his ploys for attention ). armed with nothing but some kernels of knowledge she shook out of the man, mary rose started the task of raising a boy just as fiery and just as destructive as his namesake, and with little understand of how to control his own magic.

mary rose didn’t want to name him felix, anything but that really. her first choice, benjamin, became his middle name as the father pleaded with her over some tradition given how he come from a “very important and ancient family of wizards”. it was all an exaggeration, she later suspected, and after enrolling at hogwarts, her son certainly confirmed to her that the speakman were not of any relevance at all. not good and not bad, purely existent. alas, named after his father and his father before him, felix speakman was brought into a very muggle world at the heart of manchester. 

magic only really paid a part when his father came to pick him up for the occasional weekend or when something broke without reason, although rambunctious as he was, magic wasn’t necessary for chaos. 

when his father appeared and dragged him along for a few days, the boy took that as an opportunity to analyse the world around him, absorbing every bit of knowledge he could and asking too many questions. sitting on a bar stool at the leaky cauldron. wandering through the corridors of a broom factory. trying to finish maths homework inside a moving knight bus. his father came and left often, and when he was present he was usually busy with the many jobs he couldn’t seem to keep, or fully unaware of what to do with a child or teen, let alone what to do with felix himself - what did he like? what was he up to? half hearted attempts at small talk made for very dull weekends if it wasn’t for felix’s inquisitive mind and his ease at starting conversations with strangers. “your boy’s got a big mouth!” they’d say as he drilled them with questions and began chatting up a storm, trying carefully to blend in to a world he was half foreign to.

going to hogwarts was like whiplash, the warm and epic castle worlds away from his barely livable life in a crummy manchester neighborhood. it was there that he found quite a lot of happiness though - hogwarts was the bit of stability he was missing in his life, something constant he could hold onto - especially his beloved house, GRYFFINDOR. it was there that he learned of the unimaginable prejudice within that magical society though, and it was there that a higher sense of justice developed in him. felix had lived through injustice, watching his mother cry at the notion that their rent was once again overdue, watching kids in his neighbourhood go to school with holed backpacks, watching more and more of his peers give into pointless futures they had been aimed at. but the philosophy that his mother was part of an epidemic, that he had tainted blood, that his muggle-born friends had somehow warranted exile or death? felix wanted to do something about it. it was appalling to him when he questioned his peers on the sources of their beliefs and no one answer with logic he deemed acceptable. 

while hogwarts as a location was one of happiness, the school came hand in hand with a formal education, something he’d rebelled against even in muggle school. felix is smart and ambitious, but not a studious person and in the middle of fourth year decided to drop out. his plan was paper thin, as he didn’t really expect to return to muggle education either, just get any job and be done with it. for a fourteen year old, there was quite a lot of bitterness in his tone when he claimed that it had worked for his father. however, teachers convinced him to stay, reminding him that he could go further than anyone in his family ever had at hogwarts, and that there was potential in him. felix tried to leave a few more times before graduation, but they always pulled him back, his head of house especially, and he is incredibly grateful for it. having people who’d accomplished something say he could do the same, and caring so damn much truly changed the course of his life, and even at the time, felix knew he owed an awful lot to them. 

after graduating with some reasonable to good NEWTs, he got an internship at the daily prophet, and soon a proper job offer. REPORTER. his defense against the dark arts professor had suggested it after reading an essay by felix and for the rest of 7th year, felix paid closer attention to the way he formulated questions in class, to every word he wrote, to the newspapers that laid on the tables during breakfast. soon after scoring the job he moved out, all the way to london - impossibly far for his mother but a wave of a wand for him. every morning he stopped by with a copy of the confusing newspaper in which pictures moved and pieces spoke of events and people she did not know, but she’d read it carefully anyway. he did it to show her that he was doing something REAL, even when his pieces didn’t make it into the print. he had something solid. he’d gotten so much further than what any of them expected. 

although he began studying at hogwarts after the death eaters had been run out of the ministry, he went to a school that was in many ways still rebuilding. the injustices that made his blood boil in first year were very much alive and had deadly consequences as he was growing up. all of his life in the wizarding world was tainted by conflict, or the threat of conflict, or the aftermath of conflict - an uncertainty that made wizards all over hold their breaths. one of his first assignments for the daily prophet was to report of a burned down shop and its missing owners, common place in the times he lived. but the on and off tragedy came with other angry souls who demanded change and were ready to take it by their own hands - shortly after leaving hogwarts, felix was recruited into the order of the phoenix. he came armed with the fresh knowledge of a reporter and a big mouth ready to ask questions until he gets answers. and, above all, a lot of fight left in him.

NOW

felix was always very sure of every word he said, even when he shouldn’t. that certainty spilled into his actions, and he always made sure that whatever he was about to do, he could back it up in the future too, and thus his moral compass became rather strict. he knows what he believes in, he knows what for him are accepted plans of action and just how much he’s willing to sacrifice, and he doesn’t allow anything to try and move the lines that delimitate him. he adheres to this conduct to this day at the order, despite how much on and off war has jaded them all, and his reluctance about crossing his lines has cost him leadership roles many times.

he had his big break in 2019 after cornering a minister assistant into confessing collusion with notoriously death-eater assigned families, confirming bits of evidence he’d dug up, and uncovering how they’d been slowly attempting to make their way into power once more. for weeks, updates on the massive story with his name on it were on the first page as one by one he unveiled cases of such corruption within the ministry. ever since then, he’s been trying to achieve that level of notoriety again. he’s the up and coming man who burned very fast and has yet to prove that wasn’t just luck, even if just to himself.

DEATH TW, PARENTAL DEATH TW

that was also the year his mother passed away. after a few weeks of being bedridden at the hospital, which came as the climax of months of health issues surrounding faulty kidneys, mary rose was celebrated in a nearly empty funeral. felix’s coping method ranges from pretending like it didn’t happen and drinking to forget that it did. 

TW OVER

ever since he was a teenager, felix had found a companion in a good drink. as he started working and living on his own, what used to be a purely social activity started happening behind closed doors as well, as a way to loosen up after work or after a hard day with the order. he grew to have favourite bars, bars with his face in drunken pictures on the walls, bars where he was no longer allowed to come in. his struggles with alcohol abuse have grown over the years and his body, no longer of a 22 year old, is barely managing to keep up. however, it’s not something he’s ready to admit to anyone for now, and that is possibly the only lie ever honest felix is able to tell with a straight face. 

his father has come and gone, in and out of his life. lately he’s been somewhat of a leech, aware of his son’s stable employment, constantly visiting just to ask for money. which felix has given, despite his best judgement - he is indeed known to give everyone far more than what he can give.

felix has no real concept of boundaries. or of the notions that others might be a bit too much for him, or a bit too demanding, or a burden. if he believes he might be needed, he won’t wait for a call, he’ll be banging at your door. no concept of giving someone any space. what’s the point of having any closeness if he can’t pour himself at your feet, let you pick apart what you need for your fixing and then help you put it together? 

the joining of realities was met with much skepticism by felix at first and a sense of urgency that belongs to those at war: they did not have time to fool around with this (he very quickly started showing up at spots that in v2 are order hq or safehouses in hopes that they are locations of interest for versions of the order in other realities and that they’ll all fuse together). a certain bitterness rolled around too, not just due to having to apartment hunt ONCE AGAIN but the thought that maybe everyone else had it easy, peaceful, and his reality was doomed to on and off conflict. however, the more he dug in and discovered about other existences, felix took hope from it too. he simply didn’t know a reality in which the wizarding world around him wasn’t at war and yet it came with such ease to many others - would he believe in the future better if he’d always pictured himself having one?

MORE

felix truly believes that he can change the world if he pushes for more ethical and honest reporting. his goal is to be the editor-in-chief of the daily prophet! but at this point he might even just try to start something new tbh

when felix started earning a proper salary, he had no clue what to do with it. he’d been brought up with so little and expected to have so little in the future as well, that even a modest salary like his was a shock and you bet he bought his mum a nice dinner and himself a good tie. 

after breaking the big exposé on the ministry, felix was offered a book deal to cash in on his notoriety, which he turned down REALLY fast with a lot of confusion. ‘what am i, oscar wilde?’

while he prides himself in having held down this job rather well, the same cannot be said for other aspects of his life. felix is of an argumentative LOUD nature, and enjoys fleeing from his problems, all ingredients that turn friendships and relationships into disasters. his drinking became a problem in some too, but he won’t mention that. 

he is incredibly persistent, to the point of EXTREME annoyance, like a dog with a bone

there’s a lot of 20 something left in felix that he’s yet to shake off. he has a lot of maturing to do.

loves powerpoint so much?? will use it for anything. even at work, he WILL force his editor to let him show a powerpoint presentation on his laptop. will use it casually too to prove a point.

has so much energy. can jump off from place to place at all times. you can feel it radiating from him. speaks absurdly fast and LOUD, is always fidgety - he’s that dude at the order HQ throwing a tennis ball at the wall and back to him. starts conversations with “catch this”. twirls his wand between his fingers. probably plays with knives while drunk, way too close to his own fingers, because why not

walks the line between charming and nuisance

texts with ALL the abbreviations and might even make some up. he has better shit to do than text long properly written texts!!

doesn’t really care about what others think of him, as he thinks very poorly of himself most of the time anyway

if he believes he’s right, he’ll be mean and cynical and brutal. felix speaks his mind and often that comes with lots of hard edges

dresses in lots of layers and long jackets, but always with a tie on because that’s his professional attire. ALWAYS has a satchell on him, filled with notepads and muggle pens ( and a little flask ). 

always looks like he needs both a haircut and a comb. maybe a beard trim too. 

big communist, no joke, fuck yeah

felix, leaning a bit too far on a chair at hq, throwing a tennis ball at the wall:  we are all doomed u guys

really wishes he could be more optimistic most days :/

replies to way too many things with “hot.” and sometimes doesn’t cathc himself before throwing it as a reply to shit like ‘yeah and then we went to check the witnesses on that broom accident, awful’

he’s a very gestural person. speaking for felix means moving around, big physical gestures, arms flailing, a proper demonstration at times

has the messiest desk in the history of messy desks, and his colleagues just have to deal with it.

some stats, which you can find HERE.

click HERE for a bad pinterest board.

some character parallels: steven crain (thohh), karen page (marvel), greg serrano (cegf), elijah bradley (marvel), jake peralta (b99), alexander hamilton (musical), mike ross (suits), luke banjole (handmaid’s tale), rose tyler (doctor who), theodora crain (thohh), wes gibbins (htgawm), jessica jones (marvel), diego hargreeves (umbrella academy), lois lane (dv), jeff winger (community), meredith grey (grey's anatomy), shane madej (buzzfeed unsolved), nick miller (new girl), mike warren (graceland), clint barton (marvel COMICS pls), terry jeffords (b99), siobhan sadler (orphan black), poe dameron (star wars).

WANTED CONNECTIONS: 

class of 2009/2010: or not! felix was very noticeable at hogwarts. he didn’t do any extracurriculars or play quidditch, got average to bad grades, tried to keep his head down and avoid trouble, but had a big mouth! once there was a single opening, he just started rolling and good luck shutting him up! vaguely gossipy even oops. so from 2003 to 2010 he was around being a nuisance, which could have been taken very nicely or not 

and they were roommates: after graduating, felix moved out to london but he was certainly too broke to live by himself. some poor people had to put up with him for a few years before he finally started living alone - his early twenties were times of real intense going out and partying; and odd hours working in the living room; and also going back home with freshly healed injuries from warring with the order. he was certainly not a tidy or quiet roommate, but he’d always offer a glass of whatever he was having

the recruiter: felix joined the order as soon as he was out of hogwarts. not only did he have skin in the game, but he’s never known the wizard world properly without war and he’d do anything to many sure he and many others felt safer. there’s something that truly disgusts him in a visceral away about pureblood violence and bigotry, has since age eleven, and he has enough fight in him to get out there, hand and fists ready. since it didn’t take much convincing and he probably sought them out himself, this is someone who vouched for him and due to that, someone he always came back to whenever he had personal issues with how things were being ran, which was OFTEN. 

family in arms: he joined the order very young, as did many, and in a way they finished growing up there. for over a decade he’s fought with these people on and off, lost a few as well - this sort of shared trauma shared experience sort of thing :(

someone kick him out: being annoying around hq and loudly argumentative at meetings definitely lead to some people being done with him, even if they all fight for the same cause. who in the order is truly over his face??

spent youth: who partied hard with him during their late teens/early 20s and now is like wtf man why are u still going this hard why are u up drinking gin stop

drinking buddies: felix is a loyal man and can often be found at the same bar, so who’s chilling there with him? could be with good intentions, just pals,,,,, or Using Him in a drunker state to get some info he’d probably not divulge sober @ de

exiting: felix is notoriously bad at holding down relationships, do who dumped him?? 

dog with a bone: once felix feels like there’s something to dig, he will keep on digging and there’s little that can stop him. dangerously annoying, he can be up on multiple people’s businesses and this whole cat and mouse dynamic is what he lives off of

you again?: there’s certain people that, due to their jobs or connections, would be very alluring sources for him so catch him being a common nuisance

main contact: someone let him break news. someone call him first.

potential enemies: based off the DE he knows or suspects in his own reality, he’s got an eye out for people from other verses. he follows ‘innocent until proven guilty’ but that doesn’t mean lack of caution and there’s just so much distrust for people whose names or surnames he recognizes. rightful or not!

investigation buddy: who is with him trying to find out who is wrong and who’s right in all these worlds combined!! a very much on the down low sort of investigation into potential DE or war criminals but also into whatever the fuck is going on and who they can place blame onto. who’s sleuthing? 

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Is that another robocall? (Fast Company) Phone numbers associated with 419 million Facebook accounts have been leaked. That has the potential to be a giant headache for close to 20% of Facebook’s 2.3 billion users.

Healthcare, living costs, and security makes US one of world’s worst places to live (Yahoo) The US ranked only 47th out of 64 countries as the best place to live in the world for the second consecutive year. That’s according to the major benchmark Expat Insider 2019 report which surveyed 20,259 expats, representing 182 nationalities and living in 187 countries or territories.

Student Debt Is Transforming the American Family (The New Yorker) From the late nineteen-eighties to the present, college tuition has increased at a rate four times that of inflation, and eight times that of household income. It has been estimated that forty-five million people in the United States hold educational debt totalling roughly $1.5 trillion--more than what Americans owe on their credit cards and auto loans combined.

Hurricane Dorian rakes Carolinas as it moves up the coast (AP) Hurricane Dorian raked the Carolina coast with howling, window-rattling winds and sideways rain Thursday, spinning off tornadoes and knocking out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it pushed northward toward the dangerously exposed Outer Banks. Leaving at least 20 people dead in its wake in the Bahamas, Dorian swept past Florida on Wednesday at a relatively safe distance, grazed Georgia overnight, and then began hugging the South Carolina-North Carolina coastline with more serious effects.

Mexican Cartel Forces Gas Stations to Refuse Army Vehicles (AP) Mexican federal prosecutors said Thursday they have received complaints that gas stations in the northern border state of Tamaulipas are refusing to fill the tanks of army and police vehicles.

A more vegetarian Argentina? (Foreign Policy) Vegetarianism is becoming increasingly popular among young people in beef-dependent Argentina--creating a growing cultural divide, the Associated Press reports. While Argentina and its neighbor Uruguay lead the world in beef consumption, a recent survey found that six in 10 Argentines are inclined to stop eating it.

Ukraine central bank sounds alarm over threats to officials after car blaze (Reuters) Ukraine’s central bank said the torching of a vehicle owned by the family of its former governor, Valeria Gontareva, was evidence of “psychological and physical pressure” being exerted on her, days after Gontareva herself was hit by a car in London. As central bank governor, Gontareva was a key driver of reforms following the 2014 Maidan street protests that brought a pro-Western leadership to power in Ukraine. She stepped down in 2017. The reforms included shutting scores of banks which the central bank said were used by their owners for shady purposes such as money-laundering.

Pakistan Vows ‘Fullest Possible Response’ to India Over Kashmir (Reuters) Pakistan will make the fullest possible response to India’s actions in disputed Kashmir and the global community would be responsible for any “catastrophic” aftermath, Imran Khan, the prime minister of the Muslim-majority nation, said on Friday.

Hong Kong Braces for Weekend Protests as German Leader Appeals for Peaceful Solution (Reuters) Hong Kong is bracing for more demonstrations this weekend, with protesters threatening to disrupt transport links to the airport, after embattled leader Carrie Lam’s withdrawal of a controversial extradition bill failed to appease some activists.

American Held in Philippines for Trying to Smuggle Baby Out of Airport (Reuters) An American woman is facing human trafficking and kidnapping charges in the Philippines, authorities said, after she was caught trying to smuggle a newborn baby out of Manila’s main airport on a flight bound for the United States.

Surging prescriptions, deaths: Australia faces opioid crisis (AP) The coroner’s sense of futility was clear, as he investigated the death of yet another Australian killed by prescription opioids. Coroners nationwide have long urged officials to address Australia’s ballooning opioid addiction, and to create a tracking system to stop people from collecting multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors. Yet even as thousands died, the coroners’ pleas were met largely with silence. “For what it is worth, I add my voice to the chorus pleading for urgency,” Western Australia coroner Barry King wrote in his report, delivered in May. Health experts worry that without urgent action, Australia is on track for an even steeper spike in deaths like those seen in America, where the epidemic has left 400,000 dead.

Taliban Attack Third Afghan Provincial Capital in a Week (AP) The Taliban attacked a third provincial capital in Afghanistan in less than a week, killing at least two civilians, an official said Friday as a U.S. envoy was back in Qatar for unexpected talks on a U.S.-Taliban deal he had described as complete just days earlier.

U.S. Treasury Warns Anyone Fueling Iran Tanker Risks Being Blacklisted (Reuters) The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday warned that anyone around the world who helps fuel Iranian vessels blacklisted by Washington runs the risk of being designated as well.

Iran Threatens Another Step Back Ahead of Friday Deadline (Foreign Policy) Iran has threatened to begin developing centrifuges to enrich uranium more quickly. The announcement came before a Friday deadline for European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal to find a way around U.S. sanctions so Iran can sell its oil. Meanwhile, as France proposed a plan to provide Iran with a $15 billion credit line, the United States refused to back down on its sanctions or offer waivers to accommodate the French plan. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called Friday’s third step away from the nuclear pact the “most important step” yet, following two previous breaches. But he also set another two-month deadline for Europe to keep pushing for a way to help boost Iran’s oil sales--leaving the option open for further diplomacy.

Cracks in Saudi-UAE Coalition Risk New War in Yemen (AP) Fighting between their allies in southern Yemen has opened a gaping wound in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ coalition against the country’s rebels. If they can’t fix it, it threatens to tear the country apart into even smaller warring pieces.

Robert Mugabe, Longtime Zimbabwe Leader, Dies at 95 (AP) Robert Mugabe, the former leader of Zimbabwe forced to resign in 2017 after a 37-year rule whose early promise was eroded by economic turmoil, disputed elections and human rights violations, has died. He was 95.

[lebontonhq-blog]

OOC INFO

Name: Penny Age: 20 Pronouns: She/Her Timezone: GMT+1

IC INFO

Name: Edward St John, brother to 1st Viscount Bolingbroke Age: 36 Pronouns: He/Him Faceclaim: Aidan Turner

At least 3 headcanons about your character:

♔ Edward was born the middle child to the Baronet of Lydiard Tregoze in Wiltshire. The lot of a second son told him he would not inherit the baronetcy and its accompanying land so would have to forge his own way in the world. For Edward, this was much more a gift than a hindrance; he had no real desire to head an estate, no matter how relatively small it might be. 

♔ With a strong desire to continue his education though he was certain he would never put it to any practical use, Edward went on to study history at Cambridge University. As he had suspected though, his degree was simply a way of chasing an interest for as soon as he graduated his father finally agreed to buy him a commission. He joined the British Army as an ensign in the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards in 1763 and was promoted to the rank of Captain four years later.

♔ At the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel his career changed course and Edward found himself landing on Long Island in a war against the rebelling Thirteen Colonies. Injured in battle in Pennsylvania in early 1778  Edward returned home to find his brother had been given the title of the Viscount Bolingbroke and ennobled in his long absence. He was naturally happy for his brother and sister-in-law but otherwise remained largely indifferent towards the development.

♔ Still recovering from his injuries and no doubt becoming more of an annoyance to those around him (who quickly became acutely aware that Edward was not prone to idleness —  in fact seemed incapable of it) in the process. It undoubtedly seemed a blessing from above when one of the seats in the parliamentary borough that the St John family most prominently exerted their influence became available after the death of a local Tory MP It was conspired that Edward’s name should be put forward so that he would have something to occupy his time with as the realisation that he would not be returning to the army anytime soon dawned. He had proved himself an intelligent, compassionate man and an eloquent speaker during his time at university and his service with the army had only honed any leadership skills he may have had to begin with. 

♔ It was deemed a perfect fit, though Edward was very much still surprised when he found himself the newest Member of Parliament for Wootton Basset as a result of the by-election. He is a Tory MP but by no means a staunch one, he himself has commented that it is near enough ‘only in name.’ Edward intends to vote as he pleases and sees fit, not as his family’s political history and opinions would require; especially as in recent years he has come to be more and more sympathetic to the Whig point of view on numerous subjects. If nothing else this development has given him plenty of opportunity to practice the art of an argument. �� Far more likely to be found at Almack’s or any other gentleman’s club he can gain entrance to rather than a theatre, much preferring the excitement of a gamble over sitting through a play, no matter how comedic. Edward can be as charming, well-mannered and gentlemanly as the very cream of the British nobility should he chose — and for the most part he exhibits those very traits though at heart he is very much a man of the country rather than the city and has a temper that flares with little to no warning and a tendency towards bluntness and sarcasm. When his presence is not required in London on parliamentary matters, he can be found trying to get home to Wiltshire, or the next best thing; roaming one of the Royal Parks to bide his time. 

♔ Sociable and occasionally flirty though he may be, Edward by no means intends to find himself a wife in London. He has had (and enjoyed) quiet dalliances with both men and women in the past but never felt the desire to marry, though he suspects this may start to change as he learns to settle down in life. 

[timeforelfnonsense]

Writer Interview

I was tagged by the wonderful and talented @lyrium-lovesong sorry this took me ages!! 

I’ll tag @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul @ladylike-foxes @pink-lyrium @cattivacomelaglio and anyone else who wants too!!

Q What is your coffee order?

Large mocha with oat milk (or soy) and raspberry or a london fog w/ oat/soy and lavender if I’m feeling tea 

Q: What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done?

I work in campus organizing so my job is pretty much get other university students excited and involved in reproductive justice and feminism. I’ve gotten to travel and plan so many awesome events with SURF (Students United for Reproductive Freedoms) . It makes me feel like I’m making a difference out there! 

Q: Who has been your biggest mentor?

As far as writing goes my AP lit and Lang teacher from high school, Ms. Clark. I had her classes for two years and she taught me that language was my play ground and really got me into reading again.

Q: What has been your most memorable writing project?

Oh this is so hard! I put a little heart into each thing I write but,if I had to pick I’d say “The Tavern: Jealousy & Privateers” was really inspired and fun.

Academically I’d say my term paper on Magneto and oppression I wrote my first year in university #magnetowasright

Q: What does your writing path look like, from the earliest days until now?

I used to write all the time as a teenager. I would write original stories and fan fiction but I’d never publish any of it! I actually had a short lived fallout blog but I never really posted anything there even though that was my intention. DA really inspired me and really made me want to create for the first time in years. I loved Ashalle in a way I hadn’t loved in OC before and I wanted to create more for her and see more of her world. 

Q: What is your favorite part about writing?

Writing helps me deal with my emotions (of which there are many) and it gave me a creative outlet in a time in my life when I had just stopped creating. 

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

I Get up and head to my university. First things first I get coffee so I can make it though the day! Depending on the day of the week and how early my classes are that day I’ll work on homework before or after class. Then I work on SURF stuff, ie event planning, meetings, talking to the current campus leader whom I taking over for next year or my leadership team. Once I’m home, I finish up any left over homework and I’ll game, write or go skating! 

Q: What does your writing process look like?

Oh boy, well... I get like creative mania so if I’m feeling good I’ll create a ton of wips then I’ll work on them on and off to clean em up before I post them a few weeks later. I’ll use prompts or music to inspire me and I just go! However, sometimes my brain just drys up and I can’t write for months. 

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve gotten?

Write it for yourself! It’s awesome when other people like your stuff but writing should be fun and and outlet. Moreover if you are passionate about what you make other people will likely like it too! 

Q: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?

Everyone is hard on their own writing! I have friends whose writing style I adore whose work got me into the fandom who send me their wips and tell me they worry about their stuff. Everyone is their own worse critic so just write what you thing is fun and interesting and other people will think so too! 

That and even though I’m super dyslexic I can still write and create things people like! 

Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to start writing?

Just start doing it! Even if you feel like it’s bad, even if you think you can’t, do it! 

Post your stuff! It’s better than you think, I promise. 

Make friends and send stuff to them! I will be that friend for you! It helps a lot to have people look over your work. 

Don’t feel like you have to though sometimes you feel good about a work and that’s awesome! 

There is no wrong way to write. Language is your playground, find what works for you and do it!  

[hufflepuffmarlenemckinnon]

Dog meets Duckling

An Excerpt from my Novel-Length Fanfic The Dog and the Duckling

Summary: Sirius is assigned to mentor Marlene Mckinnon when she joins The Order of the Phoenix. His perceptions of Hufflepuff house are drastically changed, and so is his life.

Rated Teen mostly for language and innuendo.

A/N: So most everyone who follows me will have gathered that I headcanon Marlene as Duck animagus for a lot of the fic I write. I decided to put some of the backstory of that up on Tumblr in case anyone was curious. I’ll keep these blurbs listed in chronological order on my Fic Masterlist.  

August, 1980

“I need new friends.”

Sirius mumbled empty insults under his breath. His closest friends had left him in the lurch. Sure, they had a valid reason, what with their 6 day old baby and all...He didn’t really think that they should have planned their family with more consideration for him. But he couldn’t help feel annoyed at the new duties to The Order of the Phoenix he would pick up due to James Potter’s absence for the next 8 weeks.

He felt a smile coming on as he imagined little Harry giving them at least a tiny bit of hell.

James Potter was probably changing a nappy at the very moment that Sirius attempted to keep his eyes open while reading over files on the newly enlisted witch he’s be mentoring. James’s task would be more brief but certainly had a more unpleasant odor. The little parlor room The Order of the Phoenix rented at The Leaky Caldron was perhaps a bit musty from old furniture and neglect, but that was the worst of it.

Sirius has persistent doubts that he’d be a suitable mentor. He didn’t really understand why Dumbledore chose him to take up this slack.

He went over the possible reasons in his head. Because pointless mental conjecture was one of the long list of things that Sirius Black enjoyed more than paperwork.  

I suppose I was the next best thing?

He wasn’t. He knew this. The Potters were the sort of people that took naturally to leadership. They’d been head boy and girl during their 7th year at Hogwarts and they were both more patient and more responsible than most people in their early 20s. Sirius was a far cry from that description.

Two years out of Hogwarts, the goals he’d accomplished were less, “find a wife, buy a house, have a baby” and more “try not to be a gigantic twat to anyone today”.

He was fairly pleased with his progress in being less of a twat. He hadn’t been born to be a good or a kind person because certainly none of his family possessed those qualities. He didn’t even become aware that it was an option until he was 11 years old. His youthful attempts at catching up were often abject failures in real decency. He’d been a major twat a time or 50.

He really had gotten better. He didn’t feel like a decent person deep down, but it was certainly what he was aiming to be.

Sirius didn’t really do “responsible” though. He once bought new clothes because he was so rubbish at laundering spells, rather than practicing up on the aforementioned charms. It seemed reasonable to Sirius. He rode a flying motorbike and never found himself compelled to follow the rules in favor of having a good time.

He considered the possibility that Dumbledore was using this as some sort of mission to persuade him into behaving like more of a role model. The only flaw in that theory was that it assumed Dumbledore had reasons for all the things he did. Sometimes he just did things. No one knew why. Including Albus Dumbledore himself.

But reason or no reason, Sirius was stuck with the job and very soon he’d be face to face with his new mentee; Marlene McKinnon of Hufflepuff house, age 16. It was his his job to teach her how The Order works and let her follow him around, watching and learning,for the next month until she went back to Hogwarts.

She’d be entering 7th year. Sirius figured she must’ve gotten bored and restless during the summer or that perhaps her older sisters and brothers going off to fight in wars seemed exciting to someone that young. With four siblings in the order she’d be an obvious recruit after she finished 7th year.

He spotted the line on the file in front of him that stated Marlene wouldn’t even come of age until August 31st.  Generally, The Order wasn’t wild about taking under-age witches and wizards or even of age ones who were still at Hogwarts.

There were exceptions. Sirius found a pondering what made Marlene McKinnon exceptional more interesting than her file as well.

7th years were particularly vulnerable to recruiting from the Death Eaters. Having a 7th year spying for the order and keeping tabs on who had taken the mark and who was likely to to do so was a fairly useful thing for The Order. It had been done before.

But a McKinnon would be ghastly choice for this task.

The McKinnons were a well known wizarding family. All fervent supporters of Muggle Born equality and every one of them (now that their youngest had signed on) was Order affiliated. Sirius didn’t know their exact percentage of Magical ancestry and thought that sort of tedious detail was better saved for people who were vile enough to care. His mother probably would have known.

The McKinnon parents were a black Londoner witch and an Irish wizard. Their five children had slight variations of skin tones in the middle area between their parents. But every one of them had the same hair. It was instantly recognizable, as it was large. Heaps of ringlets that seemed to grow out rather than down. It wouldn’t be hard to spot a McKinnon in a crowd from a broomstick at a distance. Not a great quality for a spy.

So when the girl showed up 20 minutes early with a smile as broad as Hagrid’s shoulders, he didn’t have to ask who she was. This was obviously Marlene McKinnon of Hufflepuff house. She had more freckles than her sister Grace, who’d been in Sirius’s year, but he contended that they looked related.

The beaming impish girl was tiny under all the golden-brown spiral curls. Sirius had encountered taller 2nd years. Her taste in muggle clothes might have made someone else look like a bit of a rebel.  Marlene, on the other hand, looked like a human sunflower who inexplicably enjoys muggle bands with a penchant for profanity.

She’s actually quite pretty.

As soon as he’d had the thought he mentally backtracked and argued with himself over how she wasn’t really beautiful. She might have been more accurately described as cute. Sweet looking. Like a kneazle kitten. She had nothing of the icy untouchable beauty that his own family was known for. Sirius thought maybe that whole concept was overrated anyhow. His deranged cousin Bellatrix may have been one of the great beauties of her generation, but nearly everyone would agree that she was terrifying.

Marlene was anything but terrifying. The only thing Sirius found disconcerting about her was that she was looking at him like Godric Gryffindor come again.

Was she under the influence of a curse? Was she confusing him with someone important? Or just… confused in general?

Sirius was entirely oblivious to the fact that Marlene McKinnon had been looking at him like that for quite a while. She’d considered herself well over it by now, even. But as soon as she walked in she realized that the crush she’d acquired when she was in her 4th year and he in his 7th, was not entirely a thing of the past. Then-14-year-old Marlene had decided that Sirius Black was perhaps the most impressive young wizard she’d ever come into contact with when she heard he’d run away from home and subsequently been disowned for rejecting his family’s blood supremacist ideologies.

She was completely smitten when she found that along with his principles and willingness to stand up for them, he also possessed strikingly handsome good looks. His high contrast coloring and steel grey eyes in combination with his aristocratic bone structure made it hard for Marlene to focus on anything else, even from across the dining hall.

Her siblings who were still at school with her at the time, Grace in 7th year and Lucan in 6th, took notice of her besotted gawking. The sibling pair, who were always closest with each other, did not hesitate to tease their baby sister mercilessly.

Marlene had ended up saying yes to the first boy who expressed an interest in her in 5th year, just to prove to them that she was over her silly crush. She made a noble effort to overlook Reginald Cattermole’s uncanny resemblance to a ferret. Poor sod. Never stood a chance. She got increasingly bored of him during 6th year and gave him the boot officially some months back. And now she was back to square one. Sirius, naturally, hadn’t even been aware of any of this while it was going on.

He thought that no one looked at him like that. Though he liked to think he was quite pleasant to look at (Marlene would concur), in general he was looked upon with suspicion. And that was amongst his allies. There were plenty of witches and wizards who looked at him with complete contempt. But until that very moment Sirius didn’t think anyone had ever looked at him like Marlene McKinnon had from the moment she walked in the front door.

He was really enjoying it.

But why? It was weird. I should stop. She should stop.

“You’re Sirius Black.”

“I am. But I’m afraid you have this whole introductions thing backwards. I already know who I am. You’re meant to tell me who you are. But I’m fairly certain you’re Marlene McKinnon? Am I right?”

“Yes. That’d be me. Errrm… I meant to have introduced myself. Not just gape at you like an idiot, then tell you your own name. And I’m early. That’s...unfortunate. Uh… I’m pretty bad at this. I’m sorry?”

“It’s alright, Marlene. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. You’re bad at… what exactly?”

“So many things, really.” She laughed.

Sirius decided that the ability to laugh at herself would come in handy if she was always this strange around people. He actually kind of admired that quality. He was of the opinion that most people took themselves too seriously. It was tedious for him to spend time around people like that. He got the immediate impression that Marlene was anything but tedious.

“Well aren’t we all? I’ve never mentored anyone before and I’m sure I’ll be very disappointing. Truly, I’m sorry that you got stuck with me. You can send complaints to the Potters.”

He thought maybe a small dose of self deprecation would put this little tightly wound ball of nerves a bit more at ease. Looking at her posture was giving him a crick in his neck.

It was also Sirius’s earnest opinion that he would be a terrible mentor. He had no idea what he was even meant to do with her. He felt it was likely that he would forget to feed her or something, like he had done with that goldfish he’d won at that muggle fair.

“Oh no; not at all.” She blurted out as if it were all one word.

As Marlene continued to speak, her words tumbled out at an impressive pace without so much as a pause for breath.

“I was thrilled when I heard you were going to mentor me. I always thought you were so brave, walking away from your family like you did. That must have taken an enormous amount of courage. But I hadn’t seen you since you left school and you are exceptionally good looking and I got distracted and forgot that I was supposed to say my name when I meet a person.”

Sirius did his best not to let his face react in any way while Marlene cycled through approximately 50 facial expressions within the span of a minute.

Sirius wondered what planet was this girl had come from. Grace McKinnon had been fairly Hufflepuffy in his recollection, but she wasn’t the personification of a broom crash when she spoke. But just like a broom crash, Marlene was impossible to look away from. Sirius was transfixed. But he preferred to think that he wasn’t quite terrible enough to have to hold back a laugh at a broom crash.

He was at a loss of anything at all to say. Lucky for him that Marlene, whose embarrassed blush might have been visible from her far off home planet, felt compelled to fill the air with more of her rapid fire words.

“Oh sweet Merlin did I really say that? I’m so so sorry. I think I should probably go. Maybe I’ll tell Dumbledore I’m not cut out for The Order. Maybe I’ll move to Spain and start a new life…”

“That really won’t be necessary. Besides it would reflect pretty poorly on me if my first mentee ran away to Spain after meeting me once. So I must object. You’ll be great with The Order. Your heart is in it. It must be. You’ve still got a year of school left but here you are.”

“I thought maybe I could help. Everyone’s so scared. You-know-who is gaining ground. I’d rather be part of something that stops him than sit idle and be scared.”

“See, you do belong here. Please don’t run away to Spain. I’m sure your brothers and sisters would miss you terribly.”

“I suppose they might. A bit. Well, maybe not Gawain. But the rest. Do you know them?”

“I was in Grace’s year. We’ve never been close but she seems like a lovely person. You look a lot like her. You all look alike. Gawain too. What’s wrong with Gawain?”

Marlene did look like all the other McKinnons. But Sirius had never given more the conventional looking Grace a second glance and if he had glanced any more at Marlene it would have constituted a full on ogling.

He reminded himself that he shouldn’t look at her like that. She was someone he’d have to see every day for a month. Then possibly work with in the future. He didn’t dip into that pool. It was needlessly messy, when he was Sirius Black and was not lacking in options.

Marlene had just called him exceptionally good looking which, while true, was not something he expected people to announce at random. So by doing that she confused his brain into considering the ways which she was attractive, or would be, if the circumstances were different. Or that was the mental gymnastics he performed to excuse his giving her the once over, anyway.

“Gawain’s terribly embarrassed by me. I’m… pretty embarrassing. So I don’t really blame him. But we aren’t particularly close.”

“I have a thing or two to teach him about what it’s really like to have embarrassing relatives. Did you know that my first cousin tells people that she’s the Dark Lord’s mistress? You’re not embarrassing. I… look forward to working with you.”

All the impulses Sirius felt towards Marlene felt wrong and contrary to the image he attempted to portray to the world. He was supposed to be blazé about people’s opinions of him. Self confident and cool. He felt anything but cool when intentionally bringing up Bella’s terrible taste in men. Could Voldemort even really be called a man at this point? He looked… not entirely human. Sirius idly wondered if he had all the working bits. But he would not go as so far as to make any inquiries into the matter.

Marlene looked so anxious. Her nervous fingers played with the ripped hem of her too-big shirt. As endearing as her nervous fidgeting was, Sirius wanted to make her feel more at ease.

But why should he care if she’s awkward? Probably that was just her. Why was he making himself uncomfortable in efforts to make her less so? He didn’t do that. He especially didn’t do that for skinny 16 year old Hufflepuffs with huge hair and school girl crushes.

But he did. And he continued to, even as he thought about how he didn’t.

“So you think she’s not his mistress but she tells people that she is? That’s. Wow. I can’t think of many things more embarrassing than that. Actually being his mistress would be less pathetic, at least.”

Her sunny smile was back. Sirius felt a small sense of victory before she averted her gaze down to her yellow-stitched boots.

“I don’t know. I mean that’s my theory. But I don’t keep a sneekoscope in he-who-must-not-be-named’s bedroom.”

“Do you think he even has a bedroom? You know I’ve never before this moment thought of him being a person who does mundane things such as sleep or shag your cousin. But he must, right? He can’t possibly devote every moment of his life to terrorizing and murdering. Do you think he does his own shopping?”

“He probably has his minions do it or else a house elf, but now I really wish he did do it himself. I like the mental image it creates. He’d need breaks from reigning terror for a few hours on Thursday afternoon, because he needs to stock up on fresh produce. Can you picture the poor shopkeeper, totally gobsmacked?”

“You make jokes about He-who-must-not-be-laughed-at too. Gawain would be so scandalized.”  

The pair were having quite a laugh at the expense of the most dangerous dark wizard alive. They were both sure that this was going to be fun. Sirius decided that he needed some fun in his life now that James and Lily were busy with their baby.  

[happymeishappylife]

The Daleks (2nd Appearance): The Dalek Invasion of Earth

And in the most dramatic fashion (though they obviously now do not work by static electricity, which I’m glad we abandoned). Now not only are the first Doctor Who enemy, they are the first to ever come back and they come back before we meet any other famous villains. But the one question that never gets fully answered in this serial, is why did they even come to Earth in the first place? Especially because as the Doctor states early on, these Daleks don’t know of Ian, Barbara, Susan, or the Doctor and come from the past. So why did they show up in 2164 and conquer Earth?

Of course we have to retcon the idea that they looked up Earth’s history as they were conquering it and learned of all their past failed attempts, but that can be overlooked since these Daleks seem hellbent on one goal. But their goal doesn’t make sense. Sure, let’s conquer the Earth in order to get to the Earth’s core, extracting the lava and completely eliminating the gravitational and magnetic forces so you can insert mechanical parts to pilot it around space...

What?!

You have spaceships? Why would you even want to pilot a planet in the first place? It’s not like it could handle space travel well. It doesn’t have any shields? If you wanted to be like Darth Vader and create a ship like a planet, sure, but the Daleks plan doesn’t make sense. Plus, why Earth? No other planet was good enough? There must have been one closer to home. But then this brings into the question of knowing their past and future and going which faction of the Daleks this strange group belongs to and how did they form this idea? I like to think Davros was just like, this is the weird children, we don’t talk to them, haha.

But then again they conquer the Earth! They did it and destroyed world leaders and free will while enslaving the people of Earth to help them with their daft plan. And all under the new leadership of the Black Dalek:

This the first time we see a designation based on color and also that some Daleks have leadership while others don’t. A concept that never leaves the show. But besides color changes, we also see wacky costume direction on this batch of Daleks. For one, their plunger hands have gotten stupidly long and even more ridiculous. And some now have fancy communication dishes on their backs, even though they still need to be at central controls to transmit them.

What does make this appearance of the Daleks interesting though is that they do interest some new ideas and themes with the Dalek lore. This is the first story where we learn they are built using a metal called Dalekcanium. And even though it is a rare alloy, the human rebellion leader Dalton manages to concoct a way to burn through it using bombs, so its not entirely full proof. Quite a change from how Missy decides to pierce their casing in the future.

The second is that while imprisoned, the Doctor manages to figure out a way to escape their cell since sometimes Daleks get locked up too on bad behavior and have to get out? It’s a little confusing and weird, but figuring out a magnetic puzzle using three dimensional graph geometry the Doctor can replicate the Daleks functions and extract the key to then opening the door.

Third, let’s discuss the Daleks “pet” aka the Slyther:

Some sort of wild mutation with limbs and floating eyes that runs around eating humans. A bizarre and never fully explained threat who we don’t even get a good look at. It does make you wonder how fully fledged out this idea was too since I can’t recall ever seeing it again.

And finally we come to probably the most interesting new Dalek invention in this story which is that in a way, they begin the origins of another familiar enemy though this isn’t really canon. And that’s because in order to enslave the human race, they realize that they must find a way to get other humans to work for them and in order to quell any rebellions these humans must be 100% obedient to the Daleks. And so the Daleks create a process to control the minds of certain humans and create the Robomen:

Devoid of emotion and individual thought, the Robomen obey orders from their Dalek masters via the strange (but familiar) headgear that they must wear and are plugged into. This as stated by others in the story sometimes is a crapshoot and many Robomen commit suicide when they do awaken or realize who and what they are. But others obey the Daleks and use whips to keep humans in line. Too bad though, that one wrong order from central control can have them rebel and destroy the Daleks, but kudos to Barbara for the brilliant idea.

And also, how did the Daleks conquer Earth if people can easily pick them up and destroy them? I mean heck, this serial has one of the best scenes ever where Barbara runs one over as she and Jenny escape London:

She definitely wins MVP this serial. In all seriousness, I know that bringing the Daleks back was a way to keep fans happy since they were such a big hit. And overall the serial takes the threat seriously even though it is ridiculous. Plus the real focus by the end was not helping Earth or the human rebels, but rather the emotional conclusion to our first companion departure, but that will be another post. Meanwhile, I will keep giggling at these silly Daleks and there ever growing lore.

[debbiedanon]

Navigating Change with Rebel Leadership in London 2023

Discover Rebel Leadership in London: Your 2023 Guide to Inclusive Leadership Coaching and Facilitation Transform your leadership style with rebel leadership principles, driving innovation and diversity. To learn more, visit our website https://www.debbiedanon.com/blog/17-questions-for-leaders-on-light-and-shadow-of-queens-legacy

[cxmelot]

Many of the legends of King Arthur have Welsh associations. The tales of the legendary king of the Britons and his defeat of the Anglo-Saxon invaders who sought to overrun Britain from the east are stepped in Welsh folklore, and doubtless draw on many pre-existing Welsh folktales.

But, centuries after Arthur was supposed to have lived and died, another Welsh leader rose in his stead, sharing his bravery in battle, his inspirational leadership and his noble purpose. As with Arthur, so with Owain ap Gruffydd.

This charismatic and legendary leader, also known as Owain Glyndwr, instigated the longest and fiercest war of independence in his bid to end the English rule in Wales. This is the story of Owain Glyndwr, the last native “Prince of Wales”.

Early Life of Owain Glyndwr

Owain Glyndwr was believed to have been born around 1354. However, his exact date of birth is not known. He was the son of Gruffydd Fychan II, hereditary prince of Powys Fadog and lord of Glyndyfrdwy. His mother was Elen ferch Tomas ap Llywelyn of Deheubarth.

He was the legal heir to two of the great princely houses of Wales, and he was brought up as a prince. After the death of his father in 1370, he continued to receive best education available to him, even studying law at the Inns of Court in London.

After he returned to Wales in around 1383, Owain Glyndwr married Margaret, the daughter of David Hanmer, an Anglo-Welsh judge. His marriage appeared to be a happy one and when he came into his maturity he inherited his lands in Glyndyfrdwy, in the Welsh Marches, and at Sycharth.

When Owain Glyndwr was just 25 years old, he became a part of the army of King Richard II on the Scottish border. Later, he also served in the French and Scottish campaigns of the English king.

The Beginning of the Rebellion

In the late 1390s, a number of disputes and disagreements with the Parliament and the English crown took place. These clashes, generally over matters such as honors and loss of lands, sowed the seeds of rebellion.

In September 1400, in his late 40s, Owain Glyndwr finally organized a rebellion against Henry IV, the usurping English king who had replaced Richard II, and claimed the “Prince of Wales” title. He and his small group of followers rebelled against the crown on the 16th of September 1400.

For daring to oppose the king of the hated English, Owain Glyndwr became a Welsh hero almost overnight. The Welsh students in particular saw in him the leader that they always wanted, leaving their studies in order to join him. The Welsh laborers also abandoned their equipment and became a part of the national uprising.

Moreover, hundreds of experienced Welsh soldiers as well as archers, fresh from campaigns in Scotland and France, also abandoned their English service in order to join the rebellion. With the support of the people, the influence of Owain Glyndwr spread very quickly across Wales.

The inciting incident for the revolt was a dispute with Lord Grey de Ruthin, and by the 19th of September, 1400, Grey’s castle was attacked, and the surrounding town burned down. Only the castle was left standing.

By the 24th of September, Owain Glyndwr moved towards the South and attacked Welshpool and Powys castle. The Tudor brothers, who were the cousins of Owain Glyndwr, also launched a guerrilla war at the same time against the English rule.

The strategy of launching guerrilla warfare proved to be very effective during the rebellion. After a series of initial confrontations between the followers of Owain and Henry IV in September and October, the revolt started to spread rapidly.

The English Strike Back

As a response to the events, King Henry IV, declared war against the Welsh rebel. Along with a large army, he marched towards North Wales, and finally, in early October, he arrived at Bangor on the north west coast.

In response, Owain Glyndwr launched a number of surprise guerrilla attacks on the English army, and after some time, the King was forced to return to London. Infuriated by his defeat, Henry introduced draconian legislation.

Under the new laws, the Welsh people were not to be allowed to acquire a public office position. Moreover, the legislation also imposed restrictions on the English and Welsh intermarrying. This led to the revolt spreading even faster.

In June 1401, Owain Glyndwr was successful in achieving his first major military victory at Mynydd Hyddgenon, near the highest point in the Cambrian Welsh mountains at Pumlumon. In response to this event, another army was launched by King Henry IV towards Strata Florida Abbey in the heart of Wales.

The monks present there were executed, and the Abbey was destroyed. However, owing to the guerrilla attacks and bad weather conditions, the English army was again forced to retreat, returning to Hereford in England.

In June of the next year, the forces of Owain Glyndwr met an army troop that was led by Sir Edmund Mortimer, who was the cousin of Henry IV, at Bryn Glas. Again Owain was victorious, Edmund Mortimer was captured, and his army was defeated.

A ransom was offered in order to release Edmund Mortimer. But Henry IV was faced with a dynastic wrinkle as Mortimer’s claim to the English crown was stronger than his, so he refused to pay. This backfired spectacularly as Edmund Mortimer negotiated an alliance with Owain instead, marrying his daughter Catherine.

From Victor to Vanquished

By the end of 1403, Owain Glyndwr had most of Wales under his control. He continued to strengthen his position through the establishment of a number of alliances with foreign powers. He wrote a letter to the Charles VI of France, known popularly as the “Penal” letter.

His petitions and the military success he had against the English gained him a lot of military and financial support, and in 1404, Owain Glyndwr had reached the peak of his power. A French force also joined hands with the Welsh army in order to attack Worcester, a key English city, from where he captured a number of important castles.

However, despite these victories the tide was turning, and the much larger English army was starting to regain control over Wales. The support of Owain was also fading.  In 1410, Owain launched a raid on the border of Shropshire. However, here he was not so lucky: three of his main supporters were captured and later executed. Owain Glyndwr himself barely escaped.

Fleeing his final battle, Owain Glyndwr was defeated but lived on. However, his final years are unknown. He vanished in 1412 and it was said that he lived his last years at Kentchurch, Herefordshire.

He is believed to have died in 1416, but that is just one story. The tales of what he had achieved against the English oppressors refused to die and he lived on as a Welsh folk hero. People even believe that just like the Welsh King Arthur, Owain Glyndwr would return someday and claim his position as the “Prince of Wales.”

By Bipin Dimri

References

Engllishmonarchs.co.uk, 2022. Owain Glyndwr. Available at: https://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/owain_glyndwr.html

Johnson, B, 2022. Owen Glendower (Owain Glyndwr). Available at: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/Owen-Glendower-Owain-Glyndwr/

Murray, A, 2022. OWAIN GLYNDŴR: THE LAST WELSH PRINCE OF WALES. Available at: https://www.history.co.uk/shows/al-murray-why-does-everyone-hate-the-english/articles/owain-glynd%25C5%25B5r-the-last-welsh-prince-of

Owain Glyndwr was the last Welsh-born Prince of Wales. His guerrilla attacks on the English army united his countrymen and for a brief moment freed them from English tyranny. Could he one day return to lead Wales again, as the legends say?

[rwise]

Levi’s is restoring its iconic power by using storytelling to put it back in the heart of pop culture all over the world

A brand that begins with a legendary story

In the midst of the California gold rush Levi Strauss had the idea that the sure money was not in panning for gold but in selling stuff to the men combing the hills and rivers in search of fortune and fame, specifically with well-made trousers in heavy canvas. One thing about those gold seekers, they didn’t have time for anything that wasn’t hunting for gold. They slept just long enough to stay alert, ate hurriedly and sorely resented any interruption to their work schedule - including having to repair a rip in their trousers. So Strauss had a simple idea: put copper rivets in the corners of the pockets, making them virtually indestructible. Miners paid top dollar for these sturdy, riveted denim trousers and the Levi Strauss brand of blue jeans was born. They didn’t just corner the market. They created it - out of whole cloth. Their trousers, overalls and lined coats became a staple of outdoor and frontier life.

One thing leads to the next...

More than 150 years later, denim now accounted for about 7% of all apparel sales and Levi-Strauss was no longer the only brand on the market but had done well to evolve with times and was a $4 billion global business, headquartered still in San Francisco, where it had all started. Typically the company had been run by lifers, but sometimes the leadership slots would be given over to outside “garmentos,” people who specialized in fashion, mass apparel and retail. The business was stagnant but the company’s board knew they had a powerful brand on their hands. So they tapped into the talent pool of the world’s historically greatest consumer brand builder and hired P&G veteran Chip Bergh to run the company. Chip insisted that the company have a clear brand strategy and a sound business plan. With his new head of brands, Jean Sey, they hired hot agency Wieden+Kennedy (who had birthed Nike) and when the crash of 2008 hit, W+K gave them “Go Forth,” a campaign that seemed more like “Occupy Wall Street” than true Levi’s. It didn’t do much for the brand and it didn’t have global appeal. What to do?

...and then comes back to the power of stories

It wasn’t until Chip meet James Curleigh that he finally grasped what the brand was all about and saw how to apply a great insight to a growth momentum strategy. Jim had reengineered the Salomon brand of skis by making the company stop thinking “ski equipment” market share and focus instead on their “share of mountain.” Salomon set its sights on mountain sports all year long: not just the downhill skiing but the cross country, the hiking, the climbing, the trekking. Salomon became a vibrant mountain sport company for which Adidas eventually paid $1 billion. Similarly, Levi’s would start thinking not share of jeans, but share of closet, which is why today, Levis Strauss & Co includes the Dockers and Denizen brands. But what were the jeans about? For they were the icon, the glue that holds the company together. Jim persuaded Chip that it was all about stories…

The story of people finding their true selves

Chip created a job for Jim, Brand President. Jim had the company look at the social and cultural history that surrounded jeans. After the miners, blue jeans were adopted by cowboys, who, as Marlboro would celebrate 75 years later, were living symbols of rugged independence. Then the bikers. Then the “rebels without a cause.” Then hippies. Then hipsters. Then start-ups. What did all of these cultural iconic lifestyles have in common? A desire to be true to themselves and a readiness to seize the day, trust their instincts, take action…to really be alive. They were all people who wanted their life to be a story, not a routine, not a calculation. In order for the brand to be ready for the next great generation of story seekers, it would have to think of itself as 150-year-old start up. It would have to live its own brand. And, slowly but surely, they began to realize that their new global brand idea would be: Live In Levi’s. They fired W+K and brought back FCB who had given them a soulful campaign years earlier, “the 501 Blues.” What would they do now with “Live in Levis”? And what kind of results could it deliver?

The purpose comes from the personality

The way Levi’s has executed the next chapter in its story is grounded in its brand personality and values. The brand purpose, finding your truest self, is deeply implicit in them. The brand personality is effortless cool. The brand values are authentic self-expression. The emotional benefit is feeling fully alive. So the key for the brand has been to trigger the telling of stories. Its reach and resonance would come from amplifying those stories around the world in all kinds of different cultures.

To trigger stories, you have to know your own

Levi’s found an amazing way to tell the story of its own authenticity and legendary past. It wouldn’t be fussy or boring. And it would trigger sales. They created a new line of clothing called “Authorized Vintage.” Levis takes vintage stock and reclaims it as theirs: inspected, cleaned, certified: lovingly prepared for a second life. This taps into the Millennial’s love of vintage clothing while at the same time taking Levi’s historical creds and turning them into a saleable product. Everybody wins.

True influencers are born storytellers

Levi’s isn’t interested in glossy Instagram “influencers” who are living advertising campaigns pretending to be your celebrity friend while adding you to the eyeballs they sell to their advertisers. Instead Levi’s, in concert with AKQA sought out people like music producer Caroline de Maigret, who have cool stories to tell, involving Levi’s most iconic mark, the 501s and who would be interested in talking about them in a global campaign called “We are 501.” (Link)

In the UK, supporting music - where new stories are being born

In the UK, Levi’s got behind music as a way of telling stories, creating culture, giving people something so powerful to believe in, so they can change their lives. They partnered up with music hero Skepta and created a youth music facility in Skepta’s hometown, Tottenham North London.

In Pakistan, Levi’s boldly backs the return of live music

There is something special and life-changing about live music. You’re there, under the spell of the musician, your life energy focuses into a beam and suddenly your craziest dreams and ambitions turn into something you’re really going to do. In that spirit, in 2017, Levi’s became a major backer for the return of the live Indie music scene in Pakistan, rebounding from Islamist harassment.

In India, Levi’s gives voice to women who want to shape their world

With 7 out of 10 women in India feeling that they don’t “measure up” to expectations concerning their appearance, and in a culture that pressures them with messages about how an Indian woman is supposed to look, Levis used its brand to become a projection of her most confident self, of, indeed, how she “shapes her world.” With social influencers that included a transgender model, a cancer survivor and a rape victim, the brand sharply contrasted itself with Indian stereotypes and, with zero paid media, obtained 10 million unique views in 2017 and a 22% sales increase in the Levis 300 “Shaping Series.” (Link)

In China, 2.6 million self-created ads in 2 weeks

Today’s 20-something style seekers in China had mostly tuned out Levi’s even though it had painstakingly built excellent mass distribution. Why not let this new generation make their own statement with the brand? Levi’s put together a platform on WeChat where they could select from different Levi’s and insert themselves into a fashion statement complete with their selection from a music library on TenCent QQ put together by Levi’s with a nod to its own values as a brand. The click-through on this was 50% higher than anything they had ever done. It generated 2.6 million co-created ads in just two weeks. It increased e-commerce sales 45% and total sales 15%.

In Malaysia, Levi’s redefines Chinese New Year

The fact is, Chinese New Year can be oppressive. Everyone feels obligated to send out a cavalcade of messages, head back home for the family reunions, get inspected by Grandma, eat traditional dishes…what if you’re young and cool and living in KL?  Levi’s stepped forward with a cultural meme of #NewYearMyWay.

Bringing it all together, “Live in Circles” hits home

That moment when you’re in a club or at a really great party and you overcome your fear and you step into the middle of the floor and you get your groove on and everybody eggs you on and suddenly you feel free and loved…that’s what Levi’s celebrated in Live In Circles. Like Smirnoff, it connected with the Millennial’s love of living in a diverse and inclusive world where everyone comes together but remains exactly who they are. Inspiring and joyful, “Circles” hit YouTube’s top ten most watched commercials in 2017 with 22 million views and counting.

It’s working

Jim Curleigh joined Levi’s in 2014. “Live in Levis” kicked off in 2015. The campaign has gone glocal for two years now. More will be revealed later. But in 2017, Levi’s had its best year in over ten years. There’s something going on in this 150-year-old start-up that looks promising indeed. With the simplest of integration, an anthem – Live in Levi’s – and a clear grasp of the power of its brand personality and values, Levi’s is executing around the world with an astonishing mix of story-telling, product innovation, activation, co-creation and culture-specific messaging that shows just how much local can go into glocal.

[berniesrevolution]

THE GUARDIAN

On 25 March 2015, six months before becoming Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn spoke in Westminster about “human rights and security in the Democratic Republic of Congo”. A long, U-shaped arrangement of chairs had been set up in the grand Commons committee room. “I am pleased that we are having this half-hour debate,” he began, in the flat, almost anti-rhetorical voice that had become a parliamentary fixture since his election 32 years earlier. Unshowily, he revealed that he had visited Congo twice, that he had “a considerable number” of Congolese immigrants in his constituency, and that he had a grasp of the country’s colonial and post-colonial history. “Sadly,” he said, “the horrors of Congo are not new.”

There was a sense, rare in Westminster, of politics being about life-or-death questions that extended across continents and centuries. But Corbyn’s entire audience consisted of a Conservative junior minister, a Democratic Unionist party MP, and four other people, two of whom chatted while he was speaking. Corbyn carried on, seemingly quite unfazed; in early 2015, as for much of his political life, promoting apparently lost causes before tiny audiences was what he did.

In the vast literature written about Labour between the 1980s and 2015 – all the fat gossipy memoirs, diaries and biographies, confident overviews by journalists and historians, and careful analyses by political scientists – there is an absence, which has seemed ever larger and more puzzling since Corbyn was overwhelmingly elected leader. He and his closest comrades for decades – John McDonnell, now shadow chancellor, and Diane Abbott, now shadow home secretary – rarely feature.

They are not in books about the 2003 Iraq war, which they all opposed. They are hardly in books about New Labour; or about the Conservative government and its austerity policies, which they opposed when their party barely did. They do not even feature much in studies of Labour’s startling success in London, where they all have constituencies and have hugely increased their majorities since the 90s.

Corbyn was elected to parliament in 1983, the same year as Tony Blair. From 1986 to 1993, Blair’s London home was in Corbyn’s constituency; and from 1993 to 1997, half a mile away. Many of the formative experiences of both politicians happened in the same small borough, Islington, long a favoured residence and subject for reporters. Yet for decades, most journalists, like most politicians, were preoccupied by the version of Labour politics pursued by Blair and his allies, which was slickly presented as the party’s only feasible strategy. Corbyn’s version – purist, sometimes crudely articulated – was assumed to be of little importance, and of minimal voter appeal.

In his decades on the margins, it was forgotten that he, Abbott and McDonnell had all been promising figures early in their careers. Corbyn had been the favoured protege of the socialist grandee Tony Benn. Between 1981 and 1985, McDonnell had been a key member of the radical and innovative Greater London Council. Abbott was the first black woman elected to parliament, in 1987. Yet by the end of that decade they all found themselves, as McDonnell put it in a 1998 documentary, “out in the wilderness”: leftwingers in a party and a country that seemed to be moving permanently rightwards.

Instead of careers, they had causes – anticapitalism, class struggle, peace activism, Irish Republicanism – towards which most other MPs were either increasingly apathetic or actively hostile. Westminster came to regard them with disdain. A former New Labour minister says that McDonnell was widely seen as “intolerant, hard, completely incorrigible”; Abbott as “very bright but fundamentally lazy”; and Corbyn as “naive” – “of no relevance” to the New Labour governments.

By 2015, the three comrades were all in their 60s. According to conventional wisdom, they had turned into a particular sort of British socialist: stubborn, unchanging, principled, passionate but often dour, uninterested in power, more influenced by the receding radical dreams of the 70s than the modern world. Supposedly more astute, ambitious figures had long written them off. In 1996, Blair discussed the state of the Labour party with the journalist Joe Murphy. “You really don’t have to worry,” said Blair, “about Jeremy Corbyn suddenly taking over.”

Since Corbyn first stood for leader, two popular interpretations of these wilderness years have emerged. 

One, favoured by the rightwing press and the Conservatives – and more quietly by some in the Labour party – is that he, Abbott and McDonnell spent these years as “loony left” fanatics and “apologists for terror”, as the Daily Mail put it in a long cautionary article the paper vainly published the day before this year’s election. This activism was a dead end, from which the three comrades escaped by fluke, thanks to the collapse of New Labour, Conservative divisions and mistakes, and foolish changes to the rules of Labour leadership contests.

The other interpretation, favoured by Corbynistas, especially older ones, is that these years of struggle were actually a long march towards the Labour left’s great breakthroughs in 2015 and 2017. “It laid the base for what’s happened since,” says Graham Bash, a leftwing activist and journalist who has been close to Corbyn since the 70s. A mainstream media fixated by parliament and dismissive of leftwing politics, this argument runs, did not notice that, on the streets outside, Corbyn and his comrades were steadily gaining credibility, converts and political networks.

The second interpretation may be too neat and coloured by hindsight – and too incurious about the illiberal characters with whom Corbyn and the others occasionally shared platforms – but it better reflects how the three comrades operated, and eventually came to power within the Labour party. On marches, at rallies, on picket lines, at occupations and at other events, however tiny or seemingly futile – at which other Labour MPs were rarely present – Corbyn and McDonnell were a familiar double act: McDonnell dapper and intense, Corbyn baggier in his dress and his sentences, both speaking with utter conviction, listening patiently to each other’s unvarying speeches, patting each other lightly on the shoulder afterwards. Abbott sometimes appeared with them. For decades the recipient of more racist and sexist abuse than probably any other MP, her public manner was more lawyerly and guarded; but she made exactly the same arguments.

Abbott and Corbyn had been lovers as young activists in the late 70s. From 1987, they represented adjacent constituencies – Corbyn held Islington North, and Abbott held Hackney North and Stoke Newington – with intertwined leftwing subcultures. They remain close friends and allies today. McDonnell joined them in parliament in 1997, as MP for Hayes and Harlington in west London. Within a few years, Corbyn was publicly describing him as “my best friend in the House of Commons”. Their voting behaviour was almost identical: during Blair’s first government – according to Philip Cowley, the authority on Commons rebellions – Corbyn defied the Labour whip 64 times, and McDonnell did 59 times, almost always on the same issues. They were the two least-obedient Labour MPs, and remained so after their party lost power in 2010. Abbott was also consistently high on the list of Labour dissidents. By 2015, they had been MPs for 78 years between them, and had held no ministerial positions.

Rarely in Britain has such a marginal, ideological group become so dominant in a party, so influential in how other parties and the country discuss fundamental issues, and so electorally powerful. The last time such a takeover happened was with the Thatcherites in the 70s. But Thatcher and her band of Tory rebels were, relatively, establishment figures: ex-ministers who had been out of power only a few years, backed by national newspapers, influential thinktanks, and parts of big business.

The ongoing argument about Corbyn and his comrades’ much lonelier, much longer and more formative wilderness years is really an argument about the validity of Corbynism’s political methods and ideas. It is also an argument about the long-term direction of British politics, ever since Thatcherism became dominant in the mid-80s.

Corbyn, Abbott and McDonnell’s activities between then and 2015 challenged deep assumptions, still widely held today: about the superiority of capitalism over socialism as a political cause, and about Labour’s need to adapt itself accordingly; about Westminster and the mainstream media being the only political arenas that matter; about political change needing to come quickly from the top, rather than slowly from the bottom; and about what constitutes a useful political career.

What important things about Corbyn, Abbott and McDonnell did most people miss between the 80s and 2015? And beyond the hostile caricatures and heroic myths, what did the three comrades actually do during these years? The period was not as monochrome and unvarying for them as their detractors often insist: it featured advances and retreats, alliances and splits, quiet compromises as well as outspoken defiance. Contrary to the caricaturists, the three comrades did not just teleport from 1980 to 2015. The period changed them. And their political lives during these hard years give us hints about how, if Theresa May’s ever-wobblier administration topples, they might approach an even harder task than surviving on the margins: running a truly leftwing British government.

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(The Burning of Jamestown by Howard Pyle - Source)

Simmering tensions in Virginia flare into open revolt as the first era of colonization in the Chesapeake comes to a disastrous end.

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Transcript and Sources:

Hello, and welcome to Early and Often: The History of Elections in America. Episode 8: Bacon's Rebellion

Last time, we talked about the social and political structure of Virginia under Governor William Berkeley in the middle of the 17th Century. At the bottom of the social ladder, white indentured servitude was being replaced by black slavery and social mobility was declining. At the top of the ladder, the old self-made elite was being replaced by a richer and more aristocratic one. As a result, the relative political openness that had characterized the previous few decades of the colony’s history began to be choked off. Berkeley hadn’t called for new elections to the House of Burgesses since 1661. And in 1670 the Assembly passed a bill once again restricting the right to vote to just those men who owned land. This was in keeping with English norms, but it was a break from tradition in Virginia.

Today, we’re going to discuss Bacon’s Rebellion, the biggest political crisis in the Chesapeake to date, and in part a culmination of some of the trends we’ve been talking about.

The decade and a half after the Restoration of the monarchy was relatively uneventful in Virginia. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War a Dutch fleet had sailed into the Chesapeake and sunk or captured a number of ships. (This was the same war in which England captured New York, so I’ll have more to say about it in the future.) In 1667 a hurricane hit the area and in the early 1670s some disease wiped out half the cattle. During the Third Anglo-Dutch War another naval assault was successfully repulsed by the Virginians. So, overall, nothing too terribly exciting by the standards of the day.

Nevertheless, the colonists weren’t particularly happy. Tobacco prices were low thanks to greater competition and taxes had been creeping up. Prospects for upward mobility were deteriorating and poorer planters were going into debt. New legislation from London restricted their trade with the Dutch. The growing elite domination I discussed last episode was becoming increasingly obvious. The wealthy controlled both the colonial and local governments, and were largely unaccountable to anyone else, especially at the local level. So it seemed that taxes were just flowing into the pockets of nefarious men who used the money for personal enrichment rather than public benefit. For instance, despite a lot of money being spent on building new forts, the colony’s defenses were shoddy at best.

Much of this simmering discontent came to be focused, fairly or not, on Governor William Berkeley, now fast approaching his 70s. After all, he had been in charge for some twenty of the last thirty years, and that’s a long time to maintain one’s popularity.

His economic policies, aimed at diversification, had failed, leaving the colony vulnerable to fluctuations in tobacco prices. And don’t forget, he hadn’t called for an election since 1661, though that doesn’t seem to have been a major grievance against him at the time. But the Governor resisted reforms. Perhaps he’d grown rigid in his old age, perhaps he felt overly secure, perhaps he simply thought that reforms were a bad idea. Increasingly sick, tired and irritable, and growing deaf, he asked for permission to retire multiple times, but London ignored his requests.

Regardless, discontent was growing in Virginia, and it as it turned out, it didn’t take much to set the colony off.

The spark of Bacon’s Rebellion was yet another breakdown in relations with the Native Americans. The Indians hadn’t been much of a concern for the settlers since the last Anglo-Powhatan War back in the 1640s, which we discussed back in Episode 5. That war had ended with yet another defeat for the Native Americans. Their lands had been further reduced and they were forced onto what was essentially a reservation. Small forts were built along the edges of English territory, and attempts to Christianize the Indians and teach them the English way of life were mostly abandoned. But despite the efforts of the government to hold to the terms of the peace, settlers kept encroaching on native lands and provoking hostilities.

Small-scale violence was common, but it was kept in check. The Virginians were constantly pressing the Governor to allow them to use force against the Indians, but Berkeley generally demurred. His main goal was to avoid anything that might lead to violence on the scale of the massacres in the 1620s and 1640s. But his caution did nothing to endear him to his countrymen.

As the English spread further up the rivers of the Chesapeake, they came into contact with tribes other than the Powhatan. In particular, the further expansion of settlements in Maryland had forced the relocation of the Susquehannock tribe further south, towards the border with Virginia. There, along with the Doeg tribe which already inhabited the Potomac, they proved to be disruptive to the settlers. In 1675 militiamen from Virginia and Maryland teamed up to force the Susquehannocks further upriver, but they failed. The Indians, who were now basically homeless, then took to raiding. They attacked and burned vulnerable, outlying plantations, killing several dozen colonists in the process.

The settlers now wanted blood, but Governor Berkeley decided to pursue a possible peace agreement before using force. But no such peace was possible. The Susquehannock had broken into smaller bands and there was no one with any authority to negotiate with. So the raiding continued, further and further towards the heart of English territory around Jamestown. And despite the strong wishes of the settlers, there was no real pushback from the government. To them, Berkeley seemed more and more weak and out of touch. They were just about ready to take matters into their own hands.

Enter Nathaniel Bacon. Nathaniel Bacon was the “spoiled child of a wealthy English squire”, in the words of one historian. He was also, incidentally, a distant relative of Francis Bacon, who had been one of the first philosophers to describe the scientific method. Nathaniel Bacon had been all set to lead a comfortable and easy life, as was fitting for someone of his status. But his wife was unexpectedly disinherited and he then became involved in some scheme to defraud someone else of their inheritance. As a result of the scandal, Bacon’s family sent him and his wife to live in Virginia. He arrived in 1674, with 1,800 pounds, a very large sum of money. He already had a relative in the colony who had risen to join the Council. The elder Bacon helped the younger one join Virginia’s elite. Very quickly the younger Bacon was himself made a member of the Council, although he rarely attended meetings.

He was hotheaded, prickly and young, only 27 when he arrived in the colony, charismatic, but clearly lacking in foresight, based on the evidence, of which there is relatively little. Certainly nothing in his life suggests that he was a thoughtful or responsible leader.

He had been in the colony two years when the trouble with the Susquehannock began. Bacon’s new plantation was up the James River, not totally on the frontier, but still vulnerable to attack. In early 1676, the overseer of Bacon’s plantation was killed by the Indians.

As I said, the men of the region wanted action, and they started assembling a militia on their own. But they lacked leadership and so they turned to Bacon, a new arrival, but already an influential man with friends in high places. And he was certainly hostile to the Indians.

Fatefully, he agreed to lead them. This was against the direct instructions of the Governor, who still wished to avoid further escalation. Bacon was swiftly declared a rebel by Berkeley, but he refused to stand down, even with an offer of total clemency. Instead, he led his men into Indian territory, to take on whichever tribes they found, nevermind whether they had been the ones responsible for all the raiding.

Berkeley finally sensed that his position, and the stability of Virginia, were in danger. He removed Bacon from his position on the Council and promised to declare war on the Indians, but under his authority. He called for new elections to the House of Burgesses, the first in 15 years. All of these moves were in part to isolate Bacon politically, and to keep the colonists satisfied enough to avoid any further insubordination.

But as it turned out Bacon’s raid was a resounding success, and his popularity in the colony was increasing rapidly. He had been stripped of his position on the Council, but he won election as a Burgess. He held off on taking his seat however, for fear of arrest. So the General Assembly soon convened without him.

This new Assembly would later be remembered for being rather populist, but that wasn’t entirely the case. Most of the members had been Burgesses before, so there hadn’t been some big, pro-Bacon upheaval. There was a lot of new legislation, but in part that was just the Assembly using the crisis to implement reforms that they had been planning on passing anyway. But there were some measures to placate the masses. Tax exemptions for the powerful were curbed and abuses of office were checked. A general amnesty was declared for Bacon’s militia as well.

And there were some moderately democratic reforms to the electoral system. A few years back the Assembly had once again passed a law restricting the vote to “ffreeholders and housekeepers”. Basically, this cut out a lot of freemen who didn’t own land. They had tried to do something similar in the 1650s, but failed in the face of popular discontent. (I discussed this two episodes ago.) Well, they’d tried it again. This time the justification was that freemen, "haveing little interest in the country doe oftner make tumults at the election to the disturbance of his majesties peace, then by their discretions in their votes provide for the conservation therof, by making choyce of persons fitly qualified for so greate a trust." The freemen, not owning land, could move around and so had no reason to invest in local government. They just caused a ruckus. Or so the Assembly said.

This act was quickly reversed in the newly elected 1676 Assembly. The right to vote was restored to all freemen. They also made provision for elections to be held for positions in the county courts, to monitor the collection of taxes, for the first time bringing a bit of representation to local government.

While the Assembly was doing its work, Bacon finally returned to Jamestown to see what his reception would be. Not good, as it turned out. Berkeley had his men fire on Bacon’s approaching ship. He got away, but was captured the next day regardless, and he was taken as a prisoner before the Governor, who proclaimed him “the greatest Rebell that ever was in Virginia”. But as was so often the case, Berkeley wasn’t looking to punish the rebel, just bring him back into line. He could sense the populist anger that Bacon was tapping into, so it was much better to get Bacon to willingly submit to the government.

Therefore, Bacon was swiftly parolled. Two days later he was before the Governor again, confessing his guilt and pleading for clemency, which Berkeley readily granted. He was restored to his position on the Council and he never actually sat with the Burgesses.

But something between the two went awry. What exactly happened is uncertain, but it seems that after his release, Bacon had been expecting a commission to lead another force against the Indians. But for whatever reason, a change of heart perhaps, Berkeley refused to give the young upstart another command. So Bacon sulked back home.

When he got out of Jamestown, he found that the people were anxious to fight under him, and angry when they learned that he hadn’t been given a commission. Apparently sensing that the tide of public opinion was very much with him, Bacon marched back to Jamestown, this time at the head of a 500 man militia, to make his demands.

He was met by a furious Berkeley. The old Governor bared his chest and dared Bacon to shoot him. He then drew his sword and challenged Bacon, 40-plus years his junior, to settle the matter man-to-man. But Bacon would not be deterred, crying “God damne my Blood. I came for a commission, and a commission I will have before I goe”. He then ordered his men to aim their guns at the statehouse and at the Burgesses who were watching in shock. That was enough to break the Governor’s resolve for the moment. He gave in and Bacon got his commission.

But while Bacon’s earlier indiscretions could easily be forgiven -- surely William Claiborne had been far more insubordinate -- this most certainly could not. Launching an unauthorized war against the Indians was one thing. Threatening to fire on government officials quite another. He had been given his command, but it was only as a ruse. As soon as possible, Governor Berkeley began raising his own force to go out and meet Bacon, who was again declared a rebel. But Berkeley had miscalculated. He wasn’t popular enough in the colony to raise a force quickly enough, and he hadn’t given Bacon enough time to get far enough away from the capital.

So when Bacon heard that the Governor was raising a force against him he turned his army back around towards Jamestown and Berkeley had no choice but to flee to the coast. There he sent word of the rebellion to England, asking for aid and again requesting to be relieved of his position.

With Jamestown and indeed most of Virginia now in his hands, Bacon tried to consolidate his position, swearing his men to an oath of loyalty and forcing some captive Councilors to call for the election of a new Assembly. Bacon had backed himself into a dangerous position through his intemperance. It was going to be very hard for him to avoid hanging for treason at this point and he was casting about for any legal justification he could find.

But in the end, it didn’t matter. Bacon marched again against the Native Americans, this time with more mixed success. He only found some women, children, and old men to kill and enslave. While he was out in the field, Berkeley sailed back to Jamestown and reoccupied it. Now facing a war on two fronts, Bacon had no choice but to once again return to the capital. In September, he retook the town with a force of a few hundred men, but rather than risk losing it again to the Governor’s forces, they simply burned the city to the ground.

But it was all for nothing. Exhausted by the struggle, Nathaniel Bacon died from dysentery the next month. Without his leadership, the rebellion swiftly and completely collapsed. The whole affair had only lasted a few months.

Governor Berkeley swiftly moved to reinforce his authority. The remaining rebels were hunted down and a full 24 were hanged. He was being far more harsh than was normal, refusing to grant clemency and putting down his enemies as fiercely as he could. Apocryphally, when King Charles heard about his conduct, he said, "That old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father."

The last rebels to be captured, incidentally, were a group of eighty slaves and twenty white servants who had banded together.

When a fleet arrived from England that January to help him subdue the colony, the thousand troops that had been sent found that they had nothing to do. The war had been won. Even relations with the Indians were calm again. But in addition to the useless soldiers, the fleet also had on board Governor Berkeley’s replacement. You’d think being relieved of duty would be a… relief, but actually he was being called back to England in disgrace, to answer for having let the rebellion get so out of hand. So Berkeley remained in Virginia for a little while longer, dragging his feet and staying in power to oversee the transition.

The commission that arrived in Virginia also carried with it instructions from the King, which significantly weakened the powers of the General Assembly. From now on, Assemblies were to be held every two years rather than annually, and its sessions were shortened from three weeks to two. The Burgesses lost the ability to set their own salaries, and the King reinforced his ability to veto the Assembly’s legislation. Plus the King confirmed that from now on, only freeholders would be allowed to vote, rather than all freemen. Clearly, Charles was looking to suppress the uniquely popular aspects of Virginian government.

A new, even more compliant, General Assembly was elected. Most of the legislation that had been passed by the previous Assembly was repealed in full. And of course, none of the electoral reforms were brought back. There would now be property requirements for voting through the rest of the colonial period. The attempt at adding elected officials to some parts of local government was repealed as well, though it had never gone into effect. Overall, Virginian self-government was being substantially curtailed.

So finally, with his business done, Berkeley sailed away for England. He would never see Virginia again. That June, he died suddenly in London, at the age of about 71. He had lived in and governed Virginia for most of the last 35 years. It was a rather pathetic end to a career that had, for the most part gone well. He had successfully negotiated a generous surrender to the Parliamentarians and successfully brought Virginia back into the royal fold. Under his rule the population of the colony had quintupled. And he had been an important figure in the colonization of North and South Carolina, which I’ll discuss in the future.

He had failed in a number of his aims though, most especially to diversify Virginia’s economy. And the social changes that began under his rule did much to undermine the representative nature of Virginia’s government, in a way that would resonate clear through to the Civil Rights movement some 300 years later. And his mishandling of Bacon’s Rebellion gave the Crown a freer hand in interfering in Virginia politics. In the end, I think that economics and cultural momentum mattered more than the man. Virginia would have become a racially divided slave society with or without him. He merely accepted the changes, he didn’t invite them.

So rest in peace, Governor Sir William Berkeley, the first of Virginia’s aristocrats.

There’s one more figure we have to bid farewell to before we wrap up the early Chesapeake: Cecil Calvert, the Second Baron Baltimore.

Lord Baltimore died on the 30th of November 1675, just seven months before Sir William Berkeley. He was 70, and he had been Lord Proprietor of Maryland for some 43 years. In all that time he had never once set foot in the colony. He had wanted to go, but the turmoil in England meant that he was forced to remain to defend his charter to the colony again and again. But he had succeeded. Maryland was still in the hands of the Calvert family. That was his legacy more than anything else: just holding on.

The proprietorship passed to his son, Charles Calvert, the Third Baron Baltimore. Charles was actually in Maryland when his father passed, and he remained in the colony for a few more years, so he was around to steer Maryland through the threat posed by Bacon’s Rebellion.

Maryland had been watching the unrest in Virginia with unease. After all, the two colonies were intimately connected, and the unrest in Virginia had begun with events in Maryland. And remember that, just as in Virginia, Maryland had restricted the right to vote to landholders in 1670. So conditions were similar enough for concern.

But in the end the disruption to Maryland was minimal. There was discontent, but it never coalesced into anything substantial. The biggest event was the Davyes-Pate uprising, in which a few dozen men met to protest a few issues, such as taxation, re-expanding the right to vote and altering the oath to the lord proprietor that they had to swear. It was a small affair, no real threat, but the two leaders were promptly hanged anyway.

The new Lord Baltimore had been in the colony as governor since 1661, and his onsite experience served him well, but in 1684 he was forced to depart the colony for business in England, and he would never return.

Neither Cecil nor Charles were able to come up with a workable political solution for Maryland. The son would prove to be just as unbending with regards to his rights as proprietor as his father. Things will fall apart once again in the colony, but we won’t be getting back to that for a good, long while. But clearly, distant, absolute rule by a Catholic overlord was just unsustainable in the long run.

On the other hand, Virginia didn’t have any of those concerns, and yet it broke out into a much larger rebellion than anything in Maryland. Bacon and his followers weren’t aiming to reshape the fundamental political settlement of Virginia. So, what was Bacon’s Rebellion about, really? There’s no real consensus among historians, but I’ll offer a few thoughts.

We can look at the various statements that Bacon himself put out, detailing the grievances of the colonists. In one document, the Declaration of the People of Virginia, five of the eight complaints are about government policy towards the Indians. Two of the complaints are about corruption and abuses of office. One is about high taxation.

In another letter, sent to England to justify his revolt, Bacon explicitly cites the fact that the rich men of the colony have conspired to seize political power for themselves. He says that “The poverty of the country is such that all the power and sway is got into the hands of the rich, who by extortious advantages, having the common people in their debt, have always curbed and oppressed them in all manner of ways.” He also references the fact that propertyless freemen are disbarred from voting as evidence of this. As a result, the government of Virginia could no longer be trusted to represent the people, thus justifying Bacon’s Rebellion as a regrettable necessity.

According to Bacon, of course. In the 1700s he would gain a reputation as a freedom fighter and an early precursor of the American Revolution. To me personally, he seems like a man simply driven by events and capitalizing on the grievances of others to suit his short term needs, but that’s ultimately just a guess on my part. And in any case, whatever Bacon’s motives were, the motives of the men who fought under him were no doubt very real.

Unlike in Maryland, the concerns in Virginia were more about specific policies: using greater force against the Indians, lowering taxes. There were concerns related to the colony’s long-term trajectory towards greater economic and social inequality, but the colonists weren’t looking for long-term solutions, just immediate redress for their grievances.

Bacon’s Rebellion wasn’t exactly a populist uprising, whatever that is, at least not fully. Nor was it especially radical. In no small part, it was simply an accident, an unintentional escalation between a hotheaded young man with too little sense, and an old man with too little flexibility. Greater leadership from either Bacon or Berkeley probably could have headed the whole thing off. There were grievances in the colony, but things were hardly intolerable. A war against the Indians, some minor government reform, and maybe some lower taxes would have been more than enough to stave off rebellion.

But the Rebellion did happen. Jamestown was a burned out ruin. Dozens were dead. English troops were in Virginia. Royal authority was being asserted at the expense of representative self-rule. To the people of the Chesapeake it must have been a frightening and uncertain time. Who could know what the future would bring? Who knew what their society would become?

So there it is. The first seven decades of English colonization in the Chesapeake. We’ve come a long way from the horrors and deprivations of those first years at Jamestown, haven’t we? I think that Bacon’s Rebellion marks a good stopping point for this part of our story, a good cliffhanger.

Next time, I’ll begin a new series of episodes on New England, starting with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620 all the way through to King Philip’s War, a massive uprising by the Indians which was happening at the same time as Bacon’s Rebellion. We’ll see how different economic conditions and a different culture led to a quite different political system up there.

But before I wrap up the Chesapeake, I’d like to close with a summary of how elections in both Maryland and Virginia have developed and why they did so. This is, after all, supposed to be the History of Elections in America, and I worry about losing sight of that in these early years, when neither the House of Burgesses nor Maryland’s lower house were tremendously important.

The first elections in Virginia in 1607, the ones I talked about all the way back in Episode 1, weren’t real elections at all, not in any modern sense. These were the elections for president of the colony from among the councilmen appointed by the Virginia Company. There was nothing even remotely democratic about them, nothing that connected them to the future history of elections in America. Those elections were simply a failed corporate scheme to give the leaders of the colony some flexibility in response to conditions on site.

But the scheme did fail, miserably. There was no way that the first years of settlement at Jamestown were going to be easy, but at least some disasters could’ve been avoided. So the system of rule by the council was swiftly discarded and replaced with one of basically martial law, lead by governors with near absolute power appointed in England. This new approach was at least relatively more successful, but it was soon outgrown.

What Virginia really needed was not political changes, but economic ones. Virginia needed to ditch its top-down model and replace it with one of independent farmers growing tobacco as a cash crop. That required enticing new settlers and so a momentous political change was made, as a byproduct of that need. In 1619 the Virginia Company granted its colony a partly elected legislature. The General Assembly was a bold move for the time, especially considering the fragile state of the colony. But it was a success, and along with other reforms, it encouraged ever more Englishmen to begin settling in the New World.

And the elections of Burgesses to the Assembly would now be a permanent fixture of Virginian life. Well, sort of. As we’ve seen, there were two big challenges to the continuity of Virginian elections. The first was the dissolution of the Virginia Company in the 1620s, and King Charles’s neglect in reauthorizing the Assembly. The second was Governor Berkeley’s decision to avoid calling elections for a decade and a half. Both of these actions disrupted the election of Burgesses for a period, but neither was enough to stop them altogether. Once the obstacle was removed, things went right back the way they were before. And the Assembly survived several other crises -- two devastating massacres, plus the back and forth instability of the English Civil War -- with even less disruption.

The same was true in Maryland. After William Claiborne overthrew the government in the 1640s, Maryland’s Assembly went right back to assembling. The various challenges to the proprietary rule of Lord Baltimore tried to use the Assembly for their own ends, rather than dissolve it. In both Maryland and Virginia the Assemblies were too useful and too well-liked by the colonists to give up.

I think that in the further development of the two legislatures you can see two main trends, which somewhat counteract each other.

The first trend is the increasing viability of self-rule. This occurred for several reasons. The first is that, over time, the Chesapeake’s population grew enough for the colonies to have a stable pool of talent to draw from. There were enough local men who were capable enough to serve as sheriffs, Burgesses, Councilors, and so on.

The second reason is the professionalization of the Assemblies and the accumulation of experience. The legislators of the Chesapeake copied practices from the House of Commons but then they developed institutional histories of their own. You can see this for yourself if you go through the acts of the Assemblies over time. A bill in the 1630s might just be a short paragraph or two. But by the time you get to the early 1700s, bills can be several pages long, with language that is far more precise and lawyerly. They were learning.

The third reason is the light hand with which England ruled its colonies. This wasn’t totally a conscious choice. Often, England was simply busy with its own affairs, and when things finally settled down they became more active in their control. But the relative independence allowed Virginia’s institutions to evolve into a stable form that matched the needs of Virginia’s society. Which, of course, meant that the system was much harder to dislodge when the English did try to take a stronger hand.

So that’s the first trend: growing self-government. The second trend is the slow restriction of the right to vote. In both Maryland and Virginia the trend from about the 1650s onward was to make voting more limited. Even as self-rule expanded, the number of those who could participate in that self-rule contracted. In fact, while the pool of voters started off high, it never actually expanded above that initial base in either colony. It only shrunk.

Even at their most open, elections in the Chesapeake weren’t very representative by modern standards, but even at their most restricted, they were pretty representative by the standards of the day. To have any sort of elected, representative body at all was atypical. But it was never the case that a majority of people could vote. Obviously women were excluded, though remember they were only like 20% of the population back then. More important were the limits on servants from voting. Servants were a majority of the colonies’ population and they were mostly excluded right from the start, and explicitly excluded soon enough. Free blacks, too, wouldn’t have been expected to vote, even in the decades before they were legally banned from doing so.

As the population grew, so did social and economic stratification. The Chesapeake started to become a society, not just a fledgling colony. It came to more closely resemble Early Modern England, not just economically, but politically. The English restrictions on the right to vote were explicitly cited as precedents in America. And because there was no ideological support for representative government as being good in and of itself, there was perhaps less pushback against these restrictions than you would get today. This very different attitude towards elections is one of the most striking discontinuities between then and now, in my opinion.

It is interesting to note, though, that representative government preceded real philosophical debates in favor of representative government by a considerable margin. It was really only during and after the English Civil War that these ideas were expounded upon by men like John Locke, who we’ll get to later. The process was much more organic than that. It was only slowly becoming the case that people were consciously thinking about government in terms of rights, toleration, and representation, ideas that they now had some practical experience in.

So that was where things stood back then. From 1676 onward, Virginia entered yet another phase of its political history, one in which the powers of the Burgesses were substantially reduced thanks to interference from the Crown. London was finally becoming less passive in the running of its empire, and was attempting to knit the colonies more firmly into a mercantilist system. That meant a greater need to interfere in the politics of Virginia and its other colonies going forward.

And the Chesapeake was no longer so isolated, no longer just a tiny enclave of scattered farms separated from other European settlements by hundreds of miles. With the colonization of the Carolinas and the conquest of the New Netherlands in the 1660s, the English finally had control of the North American coast all the way from New England down to Spanish Florida. The 13 Colonies were slowly coming together.

Next time on Early and Often, we’ll begin the story of some more of those colonies, all the way back in 1620, with 104 Pilgrims huddled together in the hold of a ship called the Mayflower.

If you like the podcast, please rate it on iTunes. You can also keep track of Early and Often on Twitter, at earlyoftenpod, or read transcripts of every episode at the blog, at earlyandoftenpodcast.wordpress.com. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

The Barbarous Years by Bernard Bailyn

The Causes of Bacon's Rebellion: Some Suggestions by Warren M. Billings

Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia by Warren M. Billings

Declaration of the People of Virginia by Nathaniel Bacon

The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century 1607-1689 by Wesley Frank Craven

Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer

Foundations of Representative Government in Maryland, 1632—1715 by David W. Jordan

American Slavery, American Freedom, by Edmund S. Morgan

The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century Volume III by Herbert L. Osgood

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1675-1676 edited by W. Noel Sainsbury

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Austerity: The issue no-one talks about is still ruining lives

By Helen Lock It's hard to pay too much attention to the Tory leadership race. Last week's vote left us with an all-male line-up of candidates of almost indistinguishable views and backgrounds. Only members of the Conservative party can vote for them anyway and it's seemed depressingly likely from the start that Boris Johnson will win, no matter how much people complain.

But while the soap opera goes on, the real problems created by this government lie unsolved. Last week a book came out that shone a light on a situation that desperately needs renewed attention and engagement. The journalist Frances Ryan, who has spent years reporting on the experiences of people with disabilities in the UK, published a searing record of all the ways that cuts have impacted on people's lives since 2011.

Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People' is a timely read that could bring anyone out of a Brexit news-induced stupor. The stories it contains are horrific. There have been different outrages. The cruelty of the bedroom tax and the fit-for-work tests hit the headlines at least, but many others have gone under the radar. Tens of thousands of disabled people in the UK are living in destitution and hard-won rights have been rolled back.

Ryan speaks to people who are disabled or have a long-term illness surviving in freezing homes. She speaks to a wheelchair-bound woman living off cereal after needing to cover care expenses, and to families of children with special educational needs who are permanently out of school due to cuts in the service.  

Earlier this year, figures from the Department of Work and Pensions showed that more than 17,000 people had died waiting for Personal Independence Payments after registering between 2013 and 2018.

In May, the UN's rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights concluded a series of reports on the UK by repeating that the country is "failing to uphold human rights". It confirmed that disabled people had been hardest hit by austerity. These policies, it concluded, "continue largely unabated, despite the tragic social consequences". At the time, the DWP denied the UN's findings, describing its report as a "barely recognisable" picture of the UK. But the evidence and personal testimony have mounted up. The report's findings are now irrefutable. So given the appalling backdrop, what do the Tory leadership hopefuls say they want to do about disability cuts? Well, the issue hasn't got much of a mention so far – certainly not with the level of urgency one might expect. The debate has focused on Brexit, the NHS' role in trade deals, and who has taken cocaine. Sunday's Channel 4 debate saw questions from a live audience which prompted some impassioned calls from the candidates for more funding for public services. It was hard to take that seriously given they have themselves been in charge of cutting that funding for the best part of a decade. Jeremy Hunt and Rory Stewart talked about better social care for the elderly, Michael Gove and Sajid Javid talked about better-funded schools. That was it. A quick mention of the austerity scar while they desperately tried to talk about other things.

The fact is all six candidates voted along with the rest of the party to usher in reductions to benefits for people with disabilities, fit-for-work tests and the bedroom tax. Stewart might be a liberal fave, but he's not much of a rebel. Meanwhile, the front runner has been typically mercurial on the issue. When Johnson was mayor of London in 2012, he wrote to a consultation expressing his concern that cuts would push disadvantaged people further into poverty. "While some reform may be necessary… the mayor is concerned that, if the focus of this reform is solely efficiency driven, government may fail to ensure that the needs of disabled people are adequately met," the letter said.

But then fast forward to parliament in 2015 and he voted to reduce benefits generally and prevent amendments that could have seen more money going to people with disabilities or cancer.

We just don't know how any of the candidates will really behave on this issue. It's partly because they never cared much about it in the past and partly because they don't care enough about it enough in the present. Under the radar, the horror stories go on. But you'd never know by watching the Tory leadership race.