The Blindboy Podcast - The Revolutionary history of the English Working classes, with Professor Carl Chinn

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Professor Carl Chinn is a British social historian whose research explores the history, communities and everyday lives of England's working class. He has become a friend and I adore the chats with him Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dangle your ankle on the meniscus of a gimlet, you star-spangled the Gavin's. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier podcast to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. I'm just back from a groaling few days of travel. It did a wonderful live podcast over in Sheffield, and I was away for the entire weekend. But now I'm back. I won't be gigging and travelling for a good few months. So I'm really looking forward to having time to research,

to have the entire seven days, to research hot takes, as opposed to when I'm gigging, that time is cut short. And I get a sleep pattern back. When you're working professionally as an entertainer, and you're on the road a lot, you get off stage at 11pm.

you're usually not home in bed until about maybe 3am and then you can't sleep until 6 or 7am because being in front of a crowd is so the adrenaline of it is absolutely huge you never get used to it and doing it a long time you never get used to going out in front of a thousand people

it's so unnatural that your body finds reserves of adrenaline and cortisol that you didn't know you had and you're just fucking wired. I've done gigs in my time where I've been physically sick, aches, pains, shivers,

fever. And when you go on stage, the symptoms disappear. There's such a rush of adrenaline that you're not sick for those 90 minutes or the two hours. Then you get off stage and you fucking crash. I'm gig in 20

years. The only time I've ever not gone on stage because of sickness I think it was last year when I got the chicken box that was the only time where I was too sick I'm just

I cannot do this and I don't want to give people the chicken box but any any performer will tell you just one gig a week is enough to entirely disrupt your capacity to sleep for DJs too

even though that's not really a job anymore because nightclubs are disappearing but I used to have buddies They'd be a DJ in a nightclub They might gig Saturday and Sunday They're home at 3am

They're not sleeping So they just become Night people Sleep all day And awake on night So I'm really looking forward to I'm not doing any serious gigs Until next October

I love doing gigs But having three months of no gigs Really what that means Is a predictable sleep schedule And everything that goes with that, the emotional regulation that goes with that. Because if you're tired, you're irritable and emotionally reactive. And I just got an email there to say that a synthesizer that I'd ordered a month ago is now in the post on the way. So that's what I'm going to be doing until October,

living in the land of flow, whether it be researching and writing this podcast or making tunes. Actually, I mentioned at the end of the last week's podcast that I was putting out a new, a new, little song on Instagram. I'd made a house track out of a potato. My potatoes have blight. Well, only one plant has blight. But what I did was, I was inspired by Puccine, the illicit Irish spirit, which is sometimes made out of potatoes. And potato blight, it's a common disease. It's common in potatoes. We associate it with the great Irish famine. But blight happens all the time. So sometimes if blight was identified early on potatoes, before the potato becomes rotten. People wouldn't eat the potato, but they would use those blighty potatoes to make poaching.

It'd get mixed in with barley or oats and then fermented. So that got me thinking, so what I did was, OK, I've got early blight potatoes. I'm not going to eat them. So why don't I hook electrodes up to them and try and make house music out of them? So that's what I did for fun for enjoyment for giggles. But anyway, I put the song in the video up on Instagram. The song's name is Weard Jarts to my funeral.

It went mad fucking viral. It got half a million views in six days, which is mad. That is six sold-out nights of Croke Park worth of people hearing a song I made out of a potato. So that's a lovely little buzz. And it inspires me as well, even though, you know, I don't like it. internal validation. I'm...

You honestly think I'm fucking... Just to think I look at a potato plant with blight... And get the idea to hook electrodes up to it and think to myself, Oh, I'm gonna make a song out of this and half a million people will listen to it. No. I'm informed purely by curiosity. Can I do that? This idea is mad.

It is utterly mad and the madness of it is really pushing me to find out if it's possible. So let's give it a go and I bet you trying, trying to do it, is going to be fun. So let's do it for that, for the fun and enjoyment of the process and the doing. So that's what I did. And then when I was happy with the results, I thought, fuck it, I'll show people. But having said that, it is, I suppose there is a bit of a kick out of doing that and then other people liking it. There is a bit of a kick out of that. What I want to I want to move on to the next thing, which is the starlings have returned to the Bardshed district in Limerick City, and I have contact microphones. They're microphones that don't, they don't record sound.

They record the vibration of sounds and sadded objects. So I want to stick those microphones to the trees when they're pregnant with starlings and see if I can pick up those vibrations. and maybe make a G-Funk song or some acid house. Might work, might not. Might be good, might be shit. That's not the point. I want to do it for the love of doing it. Process-based, enjoyment for my mental health and my emotional regulation.

I've had the best mental health I've had in the past four months than I've had since, since before the fucking pandemic, because of my analogue synthesizers. Because of the flow state I get to enter when I play with them. And that recent study, which I spoke about about five podcasts ago, the recent study about autistic people,

autistic people being uniquely attuned to flow, not just uniquely attuned, but the findings of this study were autistic people need flow. It's an actual need flow. need for us. So our mental health, emotional well-being, emotional regulation. What's emotional regulation? I used to call it emotional intelligence. Emotional regulation for me is, can I respond to my emotions instead of reacting to him? That's it. Anxiety pops up, anger,

frustration, irritation. Can I notice that and go, I notice I'm feeling irritated. Great, I've noticed it. I'm feeling it. Now I can make a choice about my behaviour. You know what? Even though I'm feeling irritated,

I'm going to really focus on my breathing in this present moment now. I'm going to breathe from in my nose, feel my belly expand, going to get a load of oxygen and I'm going to let that feeling pass. See, if I don't have that awareness, then I react to the,

the irritation. The irritation becomes how I'm feeling and then I'm grumpy. I view things, everything else through a negative irritated filter and I have an unhappy day and I'm not nice to be around. So playing at my synthesizers the past three months, that is, that is straight up proving to me. That paper that I read about autistic people and flow states and flow states being an essential part of our, how we manage our mental health, our mental hygiene. I did something last week that I was very proud of. It was something that... confirmation from my environment that I'm in a good place emotionally.

I bumped into someone who I hadn't seen in, I don't know, fucking 23 years. Like school? Literal secondary school would have been the last time I saw this person. It was one of these situations, I've mentioned them before, I don't wear a bag of my head. I don't wear a bag on my head for 99% of my life. I'm just a human being. And I met a person, and their context for me was

the lad from back in school. The lad from back, not my job, nothing like that, the lad from back in school. And when I met this person, they immediately just started, I suppose, I don't know what was bragging the right word, because that's not fair. They immediately jumped into telling me their salary, how important their job is, the house that they own and where it is, and then how much respect they have at work and how they can do whatever they like because they're so high up. I suppose you could call it bragging. Letting me know quite explicitly that they're doing really, really well.

financially, career-wise, because I haven't seen them in 20 years, they are doing really, really well. This person too, I'd call them a level one or two neurotypical person, someone who's profoundly neurotypical. What I mean by that is,

I knew when I met this person, but this is going to be difficult for me because I'm going to have to do ritualistic small talk here. When I say someone is level one or two neurotypical, For me it means Okay Oh there's the person Coming towards me

Right okay I'm gonna have to say hello I'm gonna have to speak Right okay we're gonna have to talk Often I'm going How quickly can I start talking about facts With this person Once we've said hello

How quickly can I say to them Did you know that corn flakes were invented To stop people wanking Or you're wearing a purple jumper You know the history of purple die, don't you? Comes from a snail called the Murex snail in ancient Phoenicia. And the

reason I do that is that's where I'm comfortable speaking with a person then. If I'm going to have a chat with a person and I haven't seen in ages, if I can shift some of that into I'm going to give you some really entertaining facts

and then entertain that person and they're willing to listen and they want to hear this. Then that's going to be a nice conversation for me. And then ideally they might have a few facts to throw at me. But when a person is level one or two

nautypical as I'd say I go, oh shit, okay, I can't start dropping facts with this person. If I bring up do you know about the history of cornflakes with this person? I will not get a positive reaction. It's too lateral. It's too

left of center. They won't be interested. They don't give a fuck. About the history of cornflakes. They don't care. about this shit that's not that's not their world so when I see these people I'm like right fuck shit okay time to mask up mask up now now it's small talk time okay and resist these fucking facts can't be dropping facts here you need to go into small talk rituals how are you getting on what are you doing isn't that lovely what holiday did you go on please when you tell me where you went for a holiday let it not be a place that I have an interesting fact about like

with this person when they were walking towards me I was going, I know that he likes soccer. So there's a chance that he's going to bring up the World Cup. And I'll have to engage in World Cup discourse. I know fucking nothing about soccer. I know nothing about sports. But what I did know is that the night previously, Argentina had played Cape Verde.

And I had to go, shit. Don't tell him the Cape Verde fucking fact. Because I've got the most amazing fact in the world about Cape Verde. So Argentina played Cape Verde. It was a big deal. I don't know why it was a big deal doesn't matter Cape Verde

it's this teeny tiny island off Africa fucking tiny and in 1968 right there was a shipment of synthesizers analog synthesizers mogs

and these synthesizers they were coming from Italy or Britain or somewhere from Europe and they were on a ship and they were being sent to the United States but anyway the ship

fucking sank. And containers of these synthesizers, like in 1968, synthesizers were the price of a car or a house. This container of synthesizers washed up on the beach

in Cape Verde, this tiny African island. The president of Cape Verde at the time, I believe, was socialist. So when the container landed and they saw all these synths, the president said, first off, they're ours now,

Fuck off, we're keeping them. And instead of taking the synthesizers and trying to sell them or give them to rich people or whatever or capitalize on them, the president took like 150 synthesizers and put them in every single school

in the little country. So now all the kids in the 60s, late 60s, early 70s in Cape Verde. They had these class synthesizers in their fucking classrooms. But they'd never heard electronic music. 1968, 1969.

Electronic music wasn't much at that point. They'd never heard it. But what they did have were their indigenous folk songs. So Cape Verde ended up developing this completely unique type of music, type of electronic music called Cape Verdean Cosmic Disco. That sounds like nothing else on the planet. It'd be like if a synthesizer fell off an alien spaceship

and landed in my back garden. Well, I find that fascinating. And as this fellow was walking towards me, I'm thinking, he doesn't want to hear about that. Like, I've been this way in my whole fucking life. It's only five years ago, I think it was that when I said this shit to a psychologist, they're like, that's autism, sir. Like, when I'm speaking to a person who I haven't seen in 20 years or a stranger, I ground myself mindfully. So I'm having, I'm mindfully grounded in the middle of the conversation.

and I'm engaging in what's called metacognition where I'm not just talking to the person I'm thinking about what I'm going to say what I am saying, the tone that I'm saying it in and doing all that with their words as well and that metacognition that is autistic that is what social interaction is like for an autistic person

and that's why we avoid it so much and why it takes so much out of us I use the fart metaphor to try and describe this to people who might not be able to empathise with it. Imagine you have to do a huge giant fart. Big Matt, you're in work, sitting at your desk, and you have to do a huge fucking fart just before you're about to do the fart.

Your boss walks in, they speak to you about something, and you have to pretend that you're not holding in a giant fart. And also, you're not listening to what they're saying. You're pretending to listen to what they're saying. Because really all you're thinking about, You're thinking about that giant fart And you're thinking about please go away Because I need to fart

Then they leave, you do the fart You feel a sense of relief But you say it to yourself Fuck My boss walked in Said something important to me And I don't know what they said I haven't a clue

And I can't go back and ask Because it'd be too awkward That's a bit what being autistic is like And similarly You've got other people Who you can fart around You have other people You don't have to hold farts in around them

you can fart in front of them and that's fine, they don't give you shit. They'll fart as well. They might even make a joke about it. And that is, that's your little close circle of people who you can unmask around and then also other neurodivergent people. So when I saw this fella coming towards me, it's not like, oh fuck I'm going to avoid them. Oh shit, I have to talk to that person. It's like, no, brilliant, I haven't seen them in 20 years.

I'm going to go up and say hello, but I am aware that this is going to be difficult unless they changed them massively. as a human being since I knew him 20 years ago, but they didn't. So when I said hello, their only context for me was school. So it became very apparent to me. This person wants to tell me how well that they've done since school. And then they listed out other people who we bought new, who I didn't ask about,

and proceeded to tell me about how they weren't doing well. Got fired, had to immigrate at the recession, not allowed to see their kids. So then, with the metacognition that I'm going through, thinking about what I'm going to say and thinking about what the other person is saying, I'm now formulating an assessment in my head, and the assessment is,

look, where this person is at, because I'm trying not to be judgmental, where this person is at, external markers of success are very important to this person, because they've just told me how well they are doing, and then told me about how other people are not doing well. And that has been the entirety of the conversations thus far has been about these binary oppositions.

And then they moved to me and said, what have you been up to? And then immediately brought up a novelty song that I released in 2010, which would have been very mainstream. That's an immediate red flag, you see. If someone brings that up from 2010, it means that that person is not aware that I've had a career beyond that.

And then he went for the... So what are you up to anyway? Are you working? Because it was like a Thursday, you see. Thursday at about 11 a.m. Now he's in work and his work clothes in his suit. I'm just wandering around town. And you got to remember too, if you knew me from school, you wouldn't think I was going to amount to anything.

Here's why I'm speaking about this. I stood face to face with a person who, within their value system, I did not have value. Someone who didn't think much of me. And in that moment, I felt very, very insecure. I felt shame, the sudden contraction of self. I felt worthless. And it was painful.

And I knew I felt this because what I wanted to do was to reassure this person to start listing out my achievements and say, oh well actually, I've written books. I've written books and I have a podcast and I do gigs. I felt like I needed to list out external achievements in order to let this person know

that I'm worth something and I didn't do it. Instead, I noticed the feeling of shame. I noticed that it in the moment and relished it as an opportunity to go, here you are now, you're feeling insecure. Let's feel it. Let's sit with it. We're not reacting to it.

We're gonna respond to it. What a wonderful opportunity you've been given. To experience the thing that you're afraid of. And I made the choice to not tell this person what I've been doing or what I'm up to. or anything about my life whatsoever. I responded by saying, Ah, you know yourself tipping away, which is an Irish,

neurotypical nothing answer, which means don't ask any further questions because I've nothing interesting to add. And I said chat to you later, and I felt great, it felt wonderful, to go, that person in their reality,

external success is very much, important to how they see themselves and how they see other people. If they don't think much of you, it doesn't matter a fuck. It does not matter a fuck. And I've got to be clear, this person wasn't being mean. They weren't being mean to me. They weren't having a jab. By asking me what I'm up to, by telling me how well they're doing,

they're soothing their own insecurity, that maybe they were afraid that they needed me to know that they were doing well. That's fine. If that's where a person is at, that's where a person is at. But I was just... I felt great because that showed me that my self-esteem is in a good place. That my self-esteem and my mental health

is in a solid enough place. That I don't have to reassure someone. I don't have to let someone know. Actually, do you know what? I'm worth something, I am. I've achieved things since school, I have. Bullshit. I'm worth something because I'm a human being.

He's worth something because he's a human being. We have the exact same fucking... worth and external achievements, they're just behaviours, nothing to do with worth. And the lads that were listed out that fell on hard times, they have the same worth too. And also, I was happy because what I'd done was actually quite compassionate. If someone, if you haven't met someone in 20 years and the first thing they start talking about is their achievements, then it means that that person, they're probably not. genuinely secure or genuinely happy.

It's a position of insecurity and letting someone know how well they are doing and telling me what their salary is. That's a temporary relief from their feeling a shame. So by me allowing that and holding space for it and letting them walk off, feeling good, feeling better,

that's actually a compassionate and kind thing for me to do. And I was so happy to have to have had that awareness, to have had that opportunity and to be putting in fucking work. That's... That's solid self-work there. That's like the recovering addict when they turn down that drink.

That's what that's like. I didn't give in. I didn't give in to my shame and insecurity. Because what would have happened? If I did go... Well, well, actually, no, here's a list of things I've done. since 2006. It would have just given me temporary relief,

a very temporary relief, to avoid taking ownership. Taking ownership of the feeling of shame. That's what I took ownership of my shame. This fella knows I don't have a leave insert. He knows I was expelled from school. I have a lot of shame and insecurity around that. And I have to take ownership of it.

I have to take ownership of it. Sit with it. feel it sematically and sit with it as yes I have shame yes I'm feeling shame but it's not real I've no reason to be ashamed

there's nothing shameful at all I'm a human being and I have worth shame is bullshit I should feel ashamed because 14 year old me couldn't concentrate in class because of autistic me couldn't concentrate I should feel shame

in my 40s over that That's what a highly unrealistic way to view me as a human being or any other human being. And that there is the objective reality. Sitting with the shame there. I've said it before but it's like the Buddhist monks in Tibet. They need to take ownership of the fear of dying. They need to take ownership of I am a mortal human being and one day I will die. So they meditate beside corpses.

they meditate beside dismembered corpses that are strewn around the mountains by vultures and they sit with the stench of death so that they're not avoiding the feeling of fear and of course the most artistic thing in the world

I could have done would be to stop mid-conversation and say to him I notice that you would think I've done fuck all at myself and I'm feeling shame here and this is reminding me of Buddhist monks that meditate around corpses. Do you know about that, do you? I couldn't do that.

But you're level one, level two, neurotypicals. You see him from a distance and you go, right, strap in. Strap in now for some small talk. Like, the goals of neurotypical conversation versus noradivergent conversation, I find nautypical conversations,

the main goal is about building and maintaining relationship reinforcing the social connection, gossip, establishing hierarchy. That's what that conversation was. That was a... Two dogs sniffing each other's arses. That's what that conversation was. He had a good sniff in my arse and just thought,

okay, I'm higher up than him. I know by the smell of his arse. And that's what dogs are doing there. That's why dogs have so many receptors in their nose. They're... A dog sniffing another dog's arse is like they're going through that person. That other dog's nine hours of that dog's Facebook history. That's what that interaction is.

So the interaction I had with this fellow from school, two dogs sniffing each other's arses, he came away quite happy with the smell of his own arse. I've already made that highly autistic there. That disgrace... Jesus Christ. Nor a typical conversations is it's the arse sniffing. building social rapport, gossip, all about social connections and sometimes hierarchy. Nora divergent conversation, that stuff is secondary.

And what's most important is facts, information, the sharing of information are problem solving. It's not exclusive to either group. There's plenty of fucking very definitely noratypical people that I know and I'll see them from 50 yards. and they'd see me and go brilliant. I'm going to go over to him. He's going to tell me something interesting. Every time I chat to him, he's going to tell me something mad. And then I see that person and go, excellent.

They like it when I tell them facts. And that person's neurotypical. But then other times you have your profoundly neurotypical people where that doesn't work and now it's, uh-oh, small talk. And those ones are by far the most challenging for autistic people. Those are the ones where we must mass. and those are the ones that's why I can't have a normal job

that's why I cannot have a normal job because normal jobs you're guaranteed to meet those people I had it I had it the one normal job I ever had I worked in a fucking call center in a team a team of

80% profoundly neurotypical people two other people on the team who were responsive to hearing about facts but the other 80% do not do it forget about it, they look at you weird, you think too much, they pull a face, the facts are not welcome here. So at lunchtime, I used to have to go to the car park just to be by myself for an hour. I had to be by myself, I had to, and I used to get in trouble for it. I used to get in trouble

for it in work. The team leader brought it to my attention. People are upset that you are not sitting with them for lunch and they think that you don't like them because you're going out to the car park at lunchtime. And I didn't have the words to say, I didn't have to, I couldn't explain it, because I didn't know I was autistic. I could not explain it. But really, I had to, I'd been masking like a fucking lunatic all day and I had to go to the car park to unmask. And that meant pacing up and down, listening to music and thinking about dog sniffing other dogs arses or whatever. No, CIA crack cocaine trafficking was my thing at the time, which is what got me fired. I'm not going to get into that story. You know it. That's what got me fired.

But that inability to exist with ease and comfort in highly norotypical conversations is why I could never have a normal job. It is why I failed school. School is a normal job.

That's what the fuck school is. School is a normal job. Wear a uniform, turn up on time, follow lots and lots of rules. Don't be weird. Don't fidget and don't go off topic. So school is training for a normal job

and school is a normal job and that's why I don't have a leave insert. My nervous system will not allow me to emotionally regulate and then if I'm not emotionally regulated then I'm into mental health difficulties territory I'm speaking about this

to let people know what it's like to be autistic and for the autistic and nor a divergent people listening to go oh great he's speaking about an experience that is my daily life It feels cathartic and it feels normal to know that another person is dealing with this shit too because it is fucking normal.

40% of the population are estimated to be neurodivergent in some way. So this is common crack. The bit that's abnormal is that social systems are designed around the neurotypical, the majority. I actually didn't expect that I was going to talk about that there for 30 minutes. so I obviously needed to get something off my chest that was unplanned because this week this week I have an interviewer chat

and I was going to just go straight into that and I didn't expect to be speaking for that long but I'm glad that I did before I get into the chat because I don't want to interrupt it too much I'm going to ask for a year to support the podcast via Patreon if you enjoyed the podcast

if you listen to it regularly if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment whatever has you listening, please consider funding this podcast directly because this is my job, this is how I earn a living, and I love and adore, and I'm so fucking excited

that I know for the next three months what I have to do is spend every single day in deep curiosity following threads of subjects that interest me, achieving flow state, following little fizzy connections and then the utter enjoyment of writing that

and delivering it to you as a podcast episode that's daily joy and meaning and I can do it by myself and I don't have to talk to anyone if I don't want to talk to him and I have my lovely office that I can rent out and spend time in solitude immersed in my self-directed work that I love getting up out of bed in the morning to do

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popular? Is it not? Or an advertiser ringing me up saying don't talk about that or can you talk about this because we think it'll get more views? Fuck off. My job is to be curious. That's it and my job is to fail and be wrong because with that process you get occasional brilliance with the other process listening to advertisers dictating what you do you just you just get consistent mediocrity anyway patrion.com forward slash the blindbuy podcast and try and do that if not on a desktop don't do it through the patrian app on your apple iPhone don't do it through the app on the iPhone because Apple will take 30% so do

it through your browser on your phone or the browser on your on your fucking laptop. So my guess this week is one of my favorite people in the whole fucking world. Professor Carl Chin who Carl is one of these

is definitely norotypical. A nautypical person who I just have incredible rapport with. We chat oh my God we have so much fucking crack. He is my English mancon magan. Mancon isn't well as anymore

unfortunately. Carl is my English man con magan. He's fascinating. He's a font of knowledge. The reason I would say call him noratypical, highly, highly social. Incredibly social person. Bubbling with friendliness and kindness and warmth

for every single person that walks into the room. Just a lovely, man with incredibly sound politics based around compassion and empathy and fairness. He's one of the voices that we need to be hearing more of because he can

heal communities with his words. In particular, the people of England. England is moving towards some far right shit. Nigel Farage and those pricks. The place is decimated by Thatcher, neoliberalism. Public service is all privatised.

Brexit has been a shit show. The social and economic conditions for division have been sold very effectively and Carl Chin has got the type of words that can heal those divisions. This would be my second time having Carl on the last time. It was 150 podcasts ago.

So nearly three years ago. He's a broadcaster. He's written books. He is an academic, a social historian, which is the history of ordinary people, of working class people, not necessarily the history of the elites. And in this podcast, this chat that we had in Sheffield the other day, we focus on the history of the English working class.

And the English working class I've got a huge amount to be proud of, in particular how they fought for workers' rights, contracts, unions, things that are now disappearing because of neoliberalism that need to be brought back so that we have a social net. Also, Carl launched a podcast of his own about three months ago and I want to plug the fuck out of it and please go and listen to it and subscribe to it and give Carl your support.

The podcast is called Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chin. And if you like the chat that we have, and you like listening to him, go and support his podcast. Right, so here's the chat I had with Carol. And you know what? It's a long podcast this week. And that's absolutely fine. Because it's a podcast. You don't have to listen to it all in one setting.

Listen to bits of it over, over a couple of days. Make a week out of it if you want. That's the joy of an ice long podcast. Carl, do you know anything at all about the invention of Greenwich Mean Time? Yes. Excellent.

Bring your mic up a bit there. It's had to be brought in for the railways. Go where? Because there is a different time in every major town, city and village. And they'd have a clock in the middle.

And so let's say, for example, I'm from Birmingham, say it was 11 o'clock in Birmingham. it might be 5-11 in Sheffield or 5 to 11 in Barnsley. Now you mean literally because of the sun? No, because the clocks were not synchronised. Okay, yeah.

So when they had the railways, the railway system's got to run on time. So they decided they would have Greenwich meantime. And that's grand if you're dealing with Sheffield and Birmingham bus. But the thing is, they went for the entire fucking empire. That's the problem. Well, it was like, you know,

if it's 6 o'clock, in Limerick. It's also 6 o'clock in London, but it's a very different 6 o'clock. A very different 6 o'clock. We can deal with it. Worse things happened. We can deal with that. But it was chaos in India. There were riots and nearly social collapse in India because they just stuck the Greenwich Mean time and you had two different parts of the country and it's like morning time and night time, but it's still the same. And that was nuts. They had the same thing when they changed from the old calendar to the new calendar. They lost stays.

What's that? I don't know. From the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. That you're talking, 1200s there are you? 1700s. Yeah, because there was another one before that it caused a lot of bullshit in Ireland around the 1100s of, oh, about the date of Easter. That was the Easter one.

That was when they went from the Celtic Easter to the Roman Easter. Because we have a strange, there was a strange little holiday where people were basically allowed to have sex. outside of wedlock. I think it was. I think it was because they rejected the Easter. It was like,

this is a day that God doesn't know about so you can just do with you. Seriously. And it was celebrated up into the 70s and people had sex out of wedlock and everything going, this doesn't count God doesn't know about it.

I did have to learn some things off him. I have a couple of things mangled up there. You're Birmingham. The reason I brought you on here in particular, is I, we do not learn about

the English working class over in Ireland you know and it's something we should learn about it's something I mean I'm assuming

you learn about some of it in history but we don't really do we really? No it's all about the upper class Are you fucking serious?

We don't learn about our own people Sheffield is a city rooted in working class England we're on the borders here between Mercier and Northumbria

the borders between the people district and then going down to the lower lands towards the east. You've got this city, bigger than Manchester, and you've got a city that thrust itself onto the world stage

through cotlery, the grinding of cotter, cotterbury, and steel. And if you look, now you can't see too much, it's still there, but you would have gone down to Attercliffe, Brightside, the east end of Sheffield, one of the greatest working class neighbourhoods

in the world. Something I would love to get your opinion on is so when I research anything about Ireland we are great at writing about our mythology and our history we're fucking really good at it

and when I go looking for similar stuff for anything to do with England, Wales is a bit no, Ways is pretty good actually because they have that I can't remember the name of the book you know their big fucking book of mythology you don't know the name

Mabidogian. That one. Yeah And the Scots, kind of a lot of that is Irish mythology because they had their Rieta. So something that, a feeling I have in my fucking bones, right? Sheffield Cathedral, they found there that the Sheffield Cross, and that Sheffield Cross is 8th century. It's up now in the British Museum. And if you look at the Sheffield Cross, it's not Celtic. It's not like what we have in Ireland.

It's very unique. it's a cross but all over it are motifs of vines now in Ireland I know every single fucking old church

that we had it was a pagan site first it was either a holy well or we used to do that so we would

the priests in the 5th 6th century would consecrate sites that the people were venerating already yeah I have a feeling in my belly

that that means that it was a sacred grove of the Anglo-Saxons? Yeah, it could well have been. I mean, originally this was a Celtic area. So you would have had a Celtic kingdom here. Eventually it got to cover by the Anglo-Saxons. So really South Yorkshire, well, nearly all of Yorkshire would have been Deira, based around York. Further north.

De-era, is that a Germanic type of word? Yeah, but further north, then what made up the kingdom of Northumbria was two sub-king. kingdoms, they are around York, and then further north Benissia, which was based around Bambara and by Lindisfarne, and that would have been really a kingdom, a Welsh kingdom that was taken over by King Ida of the Angos, who would probably have moved up. The Angles originally, anybody with Angosaxon heritage, were immigrants. We came here from North Germany. There's a little peninsula on the borders, just below the border of Germany, above the

border of Germany right by Denmark. There's a little peninsula called Angolan. It's the peninsula of the Angles. And the Angles came over en masse and they settled in the land of the East Angles. Some of them went north, took over Bernicia, which really stretched from Lothian, East Lothian, down to the T's. And then south of the T's was their era. So they came together eventually. You had this powerful kingdom called Northumbria that were. evangelised by Celts. So there were mainly Irish monks that had gone over to Iona

of what is now Scotland and then they came down to turn us pagans into Christians. So there's that melding of older Celtic and if you go up just a bit further up in Yorkshire to Elmitt just to the west of Leeds that was one of the last Celtic kingdoms in what became Angleland, England,

became part of Northumbria. about 616, around about that time. And they've done DNA of people in West York, so don't tell them this, please. They've probably got more Celtic blood than English blood. But that tells us that over centuries, the majority of the Celtic population were not exterminated

as it used to be thought by the Anglo-Saxons, that the kings and the warriors may have been defeated, killed or fled West. But the basic population stayed the same. and over centuries, probably less than centuries, the defeated people, who we would now call the Welsh, which is a bit rich really, because the word Welsh in Anglo-Saxon means foreigner.

And we were the foreigners that came up. But the Welsh would slowly abandon their language, because do you want to speak the language of the defeated or the language of the victor? So this is a really fascinating part of Angolan, of England. So the north-west, there was a... Big Welsh, what we might now call a Welsh, a British kingdom called Rechid, which later became Cumbria. What makes it British then? What does that mean?

So British is pre-Welch. You mean Breton? Yes, so it would be the old term for the Celtic tribes. Okay. Had been Romanised or not Romanised. So Brittany, some of the Britons, after the Anglo-Saxon invasions, fled to what was then called Armourica. and they intermally with the local Celtic population and that's why their language can be understood by the Welsh.

That's because, do you know, I went researching into this fucking, do you know what the stereotypical image of a Frenchman has the stripy jumper and the onions are on the net? That's it. That's Bretton. They were actual onion sellers who would come over. They had these pink onions that were grown in Brittany that were people loved them, they were very tasty.

They would literally put them around. around their neck. The jumper they wore was a Breton jumper. Yeah. But they would go to ways. I think maybe Cornwall, did people could understand what they were saying? Yeah, they would. And Cornish probably died out, well it did die out, certainly by the end of the 18th century, although thankfully there's a revival of the Cornish language. I, yeah, I said it there. When I was there, I said it and a few people started to shout in word, but what, again, what I found so strange was

again it's just a pride thing if I go to Ireland and I say does anyone have a bit of Irish they screamed it the shame I felt in the room you know what I mean the people who screamed the few words there was an anger in the teeth

you know what I mean and then the other people I couldn't understand that I'm like what the fuck he shamed that for but we're taught to be ashamed of our accents aren't we our dialects it's dying out I came here in about 1982 I was writing a book about the Sheffield Gang Wars it was part of a book I was writing

and he interviewed an old man called Frank Harris from Alfred Road, I think in Atticlyph. And his language was beautiful. It was all Tharsens and Thee and it was, it really was beautiful. I think older people still say it, but it dies out. What did he say? What the fuck is that?

Tell him. Is that what it means? Tell him. Dasen? Their self. Their self? Thyself. Thy self. And thee and thou's.

And it was like listening to Chaucer. Do you know I mean? Wow. And South Yorkshire's always had a very strong dialects, hasn't it? And the accent been stronger than perhaps even further north. Well, certainly, even further north in Yorkshire. We're losing our dialects. We're taught from an early age.

If you want to get on, you've got to abandon how you're speak. It's something I rebelled against as you can gather. Just the I mean it pisses me off that so much of this is determined by we say

about what London thinks, right? So the Birmingham accent is associated with being stupid. Yeah. Like Irish accent associated with being stupid. Liverpool accent I think is dishonest. Scallies.

Yeah. Very proud there. Fair plate. East End gangsters. Yeah. There's these stereotypes they've got us, haven't they? They must have a list. What is?

Because the Sheffield accent to me, like it's hard for me to hear it. It'd be like St.Eek, can you tell the difference between Limerick and Kerry or something, you know? The Brummy accent, what I love about it is it doesn't happen in the nose.

It's somewhere around the top of the chest. Then you've got your... Liverpool is up in the nose and the throat. same with Manchester and then here it's noisy and throaty but is this a nasal accent in Sheffield do you think

are? I wouldn't say it's too nasal would you? I think Birmingham's got more of a nasal one. Do you think so? Yeah I think what it is with the nasal accent

it's the smoke and the smell of industry but I don't go against that with you think look at Sheffield which is not nasally unless there would be different accents

would there have been between say the East End and the other parts of Sheffield and that couldn't well be the case but you know this is such an interesting city because sorry to interrupt us quickly there because I didn't realise about I was jenning up a little bit

before I came here because I didn't want to be looked like a mug but Mary Queen of Scots was here for 14 years Yeah it's Do not? Imprised All right sir We don't learn about that

Do you think they're fucking teachers about that And this is where the greatest game in the world football was invented. Yeah? Fuck off. No. Sheffield FC 1857.

Really? Oldest football club in the world and 1816 Hallam FC the oldest football ground in the world. Do you know what football was before it became that? Before it became a thing? Like as in, okay, in Ireland we've got hurling, right?

But we can read about harling from a thousand years ago longer. Yeah. So we know it was this thing. Was football a thing or did someone just go, let's do this today? There's still some old-fashioned, well, they say it's football. It's more like a big battle. Yeah, Harlan was like that too. You throw a ball in the middle and it really is just both sides of one town.

Different towns and it might happen over miles. Yeah, yeah. The hell it was with Harling and yeah, we had this happen. And pig splatters. Anybody in here that would play with a case ball. I was a few of my age group around here. What's that? So a case ball was made a leather.

And we would be 8, 9, 10, 11 years or old, playing on full-sized pitches, usually on a slope, in the middle of the winter, muddy. No wonder we couldn't have any skill. You'd just kick the ball and chase, wouldn't you? That's all you could do. I heard a lot of the old football players

ended up getting punched drunk. Yeah, through the... Because the ball would get soaked with rain and then... So heavy. Yeah. So heavy. Before the interview, something I want you to chat about is we were talking about the Sheffield gangs

Yeah The area that is now Parakeale I believe Yeah, so it was Sky Edge Was the tossing ring So people don't know what tossing was There was two types of coin games There was lots of coin games But one was pitching toss

So a group of lads would stand together And they would have a mark And they'd pitch their pennies or haitneys to the mark Whoever got them first, then would get them and toss them in the air. If they came down heads, you kept them. So there's no horseshoe? No horseshoe. It's money, throwing money.

But it's hateleys and pennies. What then developed was a game called tossing. And in the... I'm going to have to be very careful here. In the middle of the ring was a tosser. And he'd stand in the ring, and you'd have it in the little back streets. And he's standing the ring.

My land remembered it in Birmingham when they come out at the pub. and somebody would say like two pennies usually Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee chalk them up in the air I'm going to toss them let's say for 50 pence and there's a group of blocs and you say I'll cover that for 10 pence until the 50pence was covered

if they came down two heads then the tosser won if they came down heads and tails you had to toss again but it's very important that coins had to spin they had to spin and when I was interviewing a bloke in Glasgow

about this He said he perfected a technique where they went up heads and they went round sideways instead of spinning. And it was dark in his house. I went to interview him late one evening. I said, what happened if you got caught? He said, look, and he turned the lights on in his cheek was a massive razor blades,

cockthroat razors where he'd been caught cheating. So you've got these tossing rings. He'd have little ones outside the pub. The Norfolk Bridge, they used to have tossing rings under Norfolk Bridge. But then the big one was on Sky Edge. And it was an open land then. It was difficult for the police to get to. They would have crows, lookouts.

And the gangs took over. And the gang that took over because there was such a lot of money, straight after the First World War, there was a short boom. So you'd have business people, small-scale business people, butchers, little gaffers, people like that coming up, as well as working class men. And a guy called Mooney, a West Bar, which then was, I know it's not the same now, but then was the Irish neighbourhood.

He and his pals took over the tossing meeting and what they would do, because there were so many men, everybody wanted to see the coins coming up to see which way they would drop, and there was a lot of money at stake. They'd be betting sometimes for 30, 40, 50 pounds. So they would have what was called the belt man. He'd take his old-fashioned belt off, and as people moving forward and the men looking forward to see what was happening, they'd be whiffing them back. They'd be whipping them back. And Mooney took over with his men, but they had a man in the gang called Garvey.

Garvey was a very... In Ireland, there's a word called a Sleaveen, isn't there? Sleaving, so that means kind of sneaky, can't be trusted. Yeah, he was a sleeveine. And he got in with the Park Brigade, which was the biggest gang, Spack Street gang in Sheffield. And they took the... They took over Sky Edge from Mooney.

That led to the Sheffield Gang Wars. And it was at the same time as the racecourse wars between the Birmingham gang and the Sabinis. And Mooney called on one of the most feared and frightening Birmingham hard men called Thomas Armstrong. But they were well outnumbered. Garvin was very clever. And this went on for about three, four years. Eventually a chief constable called Silito came from Glasgow. He was supposed to be the man that put down the Glasgow. He hadn't. And he got all the praise for the gang's ending. The man who'd done it was the previous

chief guns. And what he did was the same as what the Birmingham police did in the 1890s and turn of the 20th century. They recruited very tough, tall men. Okay, to kick the heads off the gang. Absolutely. They took the fight to the streets. So there was Sergeant Robertson would go out with an Irish bloke. They were six foot tall. There was Loxley and Lund. They would go out and they'd go into the pubs where the gangs were. and they'd close the door and they'd take them on. So the Sheffield gang wars

were really vicious, they were localized and it was very much more, not, it was a civil war between one gang. And Sheffield got a really bad press, it was seen as the Chicago of England, but it was really hyped up what was happening.

What was different about it was that Garvin and his men attacked Mooney and his family. and his friends in their own house. Even in the bad fighting in London between the different gangs and in Birmingham,

that never happened and never attacked a house. That changed the rules. Yeah, it changed the rules badly. And on one occasion, Mooney was upstairs, recovering from an illness, and they broke in on,

I think it was on Boxing Day or a Christmas Eve. And his daughter, Mary, was 16, she was downstairs with a 16-month-old babby and a few months-old baby, and an old lady, Mrs Flynn who was helping the mum,

the mom had gone out, they burst in and that's right, it was Christmas scene because they said to young Mary, we've got a surprise Christmas present for your dad. She managed to shout upstairs, shouting, they're here, the here. Mooney heard, and this shows how dafts some of these gangsters were.

He hid in the wardrobe. Now where's the first place you're going to look if you go upstairs? They didn't look in the wardrobe. But that shows that, I'm not even going to say the calibre of them, and that shows how lacking in morals that they were, that they were breaking to a house while there's babies in the house, and a young woman of 16.

And it's something too, what I love about what you do is, because you'd often get asked to go on the radio speaking about the real peeky blinders, things like that, and you're always so conscious of the way that the culture will glamourise these people because it was long ago and you're reminding people actually know they're pretty evil these were not nice individuals

the real peekie blinders the scuttles of Manchester and Salford the Mooney gang the Garvin gang the Park Brigade the hooligans of London the corner boys of Liverpool the Norman Concks of Glasgow the Billy Boys were not meant to be admired

there were men that baited the police battled each other and the worst thing in my book that they did they bullied the hard working decent poor amongst whom they lived my great-grandfather

Edward Dillick was a real peaky blinder his brother John led that was one of the leaders of the Spark Brook Gang my great-grandfather was a petty thief a nasty horrible man he on one occasion was in a fight

he hit the bloke with a shovel when that never worked he picked up a meat cleaver and he cleaved the bloke's head the bloat lived, he only got three years. You could get sent down for five years for uttering false coins. What price somebody's life? And the worst thing he used to do,

which old people from our dad's street told me about, he used to come home mucky drunk. Back to back house in Birmingham, just like Sheffield, you got the entry into the yard, courtyard. And if she could hear him coming home, she'd run with my grandmother to hide next door with Granny Carey, because she got five big sons and he wouldn't beat her up there.

Or she'd go into what was called the Brewers in Birmingham, which was a shared washhouse by the shared lavatories. Many of the time, though, he got past. And she was on her own. He beat her up viciously. He threatened to kill her. And years, I was brought up saying that she divorced him. And I always thought,

how could a poor woman in 1921 divorce a bloke? And then I found the divorce papers. and she got a divorce under the poor woman's provision. And it was very moving and very emotional because their in legal language was exactly what the old people from our dad's streets who remembered what a tow rag he was. It was exactly the same what they were, that he threatened to burn the house down.

The real heroes of the back street folks and not gangsters, they were the women. It was the big sister who never had a childhood, mindy the Babi. It was your mom who worked and grafted to try and stay clean in the most difficult service. It was the grandmothers that brought you to order and had remedies and acted as unofficial midwives.

I'm not proud to be the great-grandson of the peekie blinder, but I'm very proud to be the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Brubbridge and Backstreet Wenches. God. Here, we're going to have a little interval, right? You can go for a piss and we'll be back out in 10 or 15 minutes. dogless And there we have a little natural opportunity

for an ocarina pause where you're going to hear some adverts alright so let's just play the ocarina I'll try and play it nice and low so I don't disturb any dogs that's too high that was the ocarina pause

you heard some adverts support the podcast directly patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast this is listener funded that's how I earn a living full-time job. Upcoming gigs, because I've got some time off now.

I'm not doing any serious gig in until October, October 26th, where I'm going to be doing my tour of England, Scotland and Wales. And we're going to start off there in Brighton on the 18th of October at the Brighton Dome. Then we'll move on to Cardiff there in Wales and the 20th.

Over to Coventry then, I sound like I'm, sound like I'm describing myself as a type of storm. I sound like a weather reader and my podcast is a storm. On to Coventry at the Warwick Arts Centre

on the 21st. Fucking Bristol there on the 22nd of October. Guildford G-Live. London sold out. Glasgow, as good as sold out. Gateshead.

Let's have a bit of fucking Gateshead. Gateshead I'm English accent name. It means Goatshead. And then Nottingham Bit of fucking Nottingham In the depths of October

Let's see what fun I can have Then April 27 Australia and New Zealand Alright This is almost sold out Beginning in Auckland At the Auckland Town Hall Then on to Melbourne

Palais Theatre Melbourne Nearly sold out that one Brisbane Powerhouse in Brisbane Pardth the Astor Theatre and then Sydney Opera House which I am proud to say is very nearly sold out I know it's April 27 I know it's a long way away but if you want your tickets get them now

all tickets will be available on the blind by podcast.i assuming it fucking works and tickets for the UK tour there fein.co.co.com.ukhore. Fane.com. UK forward slash the blindby podcast. I used to say look it up on Google. you can't trust Google for shit anymore follow me on Instagram

at Blind by Ball Club back to the chat with the wonderful fucking Carl Chin and in this second half we really get into working class history speaking about the charters thank you I hope you all had glorious wee-wees I fucking

geez I was starving right so I had a yogurt backstage and then I didn't have a fucking spoon so I had to take the bag off obviously that would have been terrible. And then I was... I tried to eat it with those fucking, you know, the wooden coffee stirrers.

So when they're starving, going, got to get back on stage soon. And then I just went for the hand, just went, fucking hand yogurt, like a toddler, and wash the hands and put the bag back on. Are your hands clean now? Oh, they are now, they're clean, yeah.

And nearly, nearly, because I wasn't thinking, I was panicking, saw the toilet wall. and nearly went for the tide of handle it. So that's what I was doing when you were getting adverts for Amazon or something. You've a podcast of you. Which I was telling you to do the last time.

I know. My daughter's my wife of Nagme, so it's called Our Lives, Our Stories, because I believe everybody's got a story to tell. And it's about, it's not about famous people. It's about all of us. Because everybody has made their mark upon history. and that's again something as working class people

we need to emphasise that we're as important as they are a goal of mine to give back to the people of England on account of having so many family members in the IRA and

I to use every fucking opportunity to speak about folklore mythology history I really wanted to speak about the charitists because I know fuck all about them tell us about the Charterist movement

and why it was important for Shepidom, and what was it and why? So in 1829, across the country, there was a union in Birmingham led by a man called Thomas Atwood called the Birmingham Political Union. And there was other political unions then all across the country

in the big towns and cities. And it was about bringing it together the middle class and working class to fight for the vote because the middle class were excluded for the vote. Why do you mean the vote there now? To be able to vote in an election.

That didn't, people didn't have that. No, so what you had was in some places like, where there were Freeman, like in Nottingham and Comptory, the Freeman and the borough had a vote, but in many places like there was East Dulwich, which was under the sea, and the landowner had the right to appoint an MP. Old Sarum was just a hill.

The landowner had the right to appoint an MP. Others, there were a slightly broader base of the electorate, but they were very much upper middle class and overwhelmingly Britain was dominated by the landed elite. Who are Normans? Most of them were descended from flipping Normans that took the land from us. And you had the House of Lords, obviously the Lords, but many of their younger sons became solicitors, barristers,

and tied into the landed gentry, the sirs, the baronets, they dominated Parliament. So there was this big campaign to extend the vote. And in essence, what happened was the middle class said, support us to the working class. We'll get the vote. We won't get his hauling one go, but we'll get one man, one vote, men over the age of 21, a property qualification. And when we get it, we'll help you get the vote. So what did the middle class do?

They close the door. They cause on home rule. They close, yeah. Same thing. They close the door. So middle class men, and they set the fact, what they call the franchise, the right? to vote. It was a property qualification. They wrote to

Edward Baines, the editor of the Leeds Mercury, they wrote to different editors of local newspapers. If we set the property qualification at this level, how many working class men might get the vote? If we set it at this one, would it be better? We'll have virtually none. So they set it

at the level which really excluded 99.5% of working class men. In response, in the mid to late 30s, there emerged a real anger amongst working-class people that they'd been betrayed. You mean 1830s here? 1830s.

So they gathered. There was a man called William Lovett in London. There was a number of others, and they came together, and eventually they came up with the idea of the People's Charter. Now, we're not taught about these things at school. The world's first great working-class movement was in this country. and they called them charters because they had six points of the charter. One was universal male suffrage.

They actually originally wanted to go for adult suffrage, but it was so radical go for male suffrage, they had to leave the women out and hope that they would bring the women in later. But ladies, the female chartish, and if you want to read about them, there was a wonderful book by one called Dorothy Thompson, whom I owe a lot to because she was my tutor, who gave me confidence to write about the people I belong to, the women were vital to the Chartist movement.

So there were six points of the Charter. One was paid MPs. Now we look at paid MPs today. We think, is that the right thing? Why did you need paid MPs? Because if you weren't paid, how could a working class man stand for Parliament? Equal electoral districts,

universal male suffrage, secret ballots. The only thing that we haven't got today, based on the six points of the Charter, was they wanted an election every year. So they had these six points, but the government pressed down hard against them. And there were big meetings,

and in 1839 there were riots in Birmingham, in support of the Charterts. And in Sheffield, they tried, they were looking to have a, really, start a rebellion. There'd been a rebellion in Newport in South Wales. It was put down in Sheffield before it started because they found out.

The movement continued into the, 1840s, they presented huge petitions with millions of signatures to Parliament. And probably the greatest leader of the Charterist movement was an Irishman, Fergus O'Connor, who was Protestant, despite his name O'Connor. And O'Connor, he would have been descended from the last high kings of Ireland. And in Roscomon is the oldest family in Europe, the O'Connor Don's of Roscommon Town. And the last high kings were the O'Connor's,

but to keep the land, they had to become Protestant. Yeah. So they were Protestant, but he came to England, his family were off, really interested. His brother, Francisco, Francis, went over to South America.

Oh, there's a lot. He fought with Simon Bolivar. But there's the laws, like there's, if you go to Argentina, Chile, you look at their founding fathers. A lot of them were Irish. They were the wild geese, the ones who had to fuck off. So he came to England, he set up a newspaper.

He was really angry, as were some others from a slightly better off background, well, he was from a better off background, about the new poor law. So the new poor law came in in 1834. And basically what it was, there's, in the past, from the time of Queen Elizabeth, each parish was responsible for its poor. So what they would do, they would levy a, rate on the better off. The better off didn't like this. They thought that we were all able-bodied scroungers. So they thought we've got to spend a lot of money to dissuade the able-bodied

the able-bodied poor for helping, asking for help. So they built workhouses. And a lot of our modern hospitals emerged from the infirmaries of a hated institution. And all of these workhouses, they were called Bastille's, because just like the Bastille symbolise the oppression of the French people, so too did the workhouses symbolise the impression of our people. And they had archways. And when you went in, it was called the archway of tears.

And they might as well have above the door abandoned hope. All ye who entered here because husbands were separated from wives, daughters from mothers, sons from fathers. They were stripped. They were put into a uniform. The men had to break stones or pick oak and

really thick pieces of rope from the Navy, which had got lots of tar on it. The women had to work away in laundries. And Fergus O'Connor felt that this was an abomination against the family by splitting families up. And you had a few people, particularly in Yorkshire, who were what they called Tory radicals, old-fashioned Tories, who may not have wanted the vote, but didn't believe in the family

being split up. So it's a really interesting mixture. And Fergus O'Connor brought out the poor man's, Gazette. And then he became the great leader of the Charteries. He had the Northern Star, which was his publication. And you've got to imagine a position where many people didn't read or write, but whomever could read, the people, a little group would buy the newspaper and read it. And they would read it aloud to the rest. You've got that communality of people coming together to fight for

equality and he was the leader of what was called physical force charges and split into two the ones who said well we can persuade the upper class you could never persuade them and he said we need to be a bit stronger they took that as meaning he was going to lead a revolution

he wasn't after a revolution did they have a crack at anything he wanted to threaten them he wanted them to be scared Lithuenean pictures yeah not quite as much as that but he was a he was a wonderful speaker. He was over six-foot talk. You imagine him on a big

platform and there's thousands of people and he could project his voice and the English working class idolised him. They idolised him. There was another one who was another Irishman, Bronteer O'Brien, who was powerful. There was a guy called William

Coffey who was mixed race. His mom was white. His dad was a freed slave. These were leaders of the English working class movement showing how we should all come together to fight for equality and justice. And one day we will break down that barrier, that great big door of class bias with God's grace.

So sadly the movement failed. It began to run out of steam in the late 1840s. It carried on to about 1860s. What happened to the leaders? Fergus died. They don't know what caused him, but he became seriously mentally ill. And he died.

most of the leaders, some of them were imprisoned, others were pulled in by the better off. 1867, the better off of the working class, the highly skilled gained the vote. Then later on in the mid-1880s, the agricultural workers and unskilled got the vote, but most of them didn't vote. But when you say the movement failed,

how did suffrage end up? happening then? So gradually in the 1860s they're thinking well we need to open the door a little bit to let in the better off of the working class so in 1867 there was an extension of the sockximate so what are we talking about here? Butters, shopkeepers? Yeah yeah well yes but also highly skilled workers and engineers people such as that. 1884 85 then there's another act class which supposedly gave the vote to unscilled

skilled workers, but the problem was that you still had to prove where you lived. So until 1918 and the representation of the People's Act of that year, the majority of poorer men didn't have the vote. For example, my great-grandpa...

I was very lucky, I grew up well off, but I owe a debt to all those that came before me not to betray them. And my great-grandparents were always knocking the landlord on doing a moonlight flip. You couldn't prove where you lived. 1918,

in 2018, there were great big celebrations, a hundred years since women got the vote. Our women didn't get the vote. It was middle class women who were married with property. Where we should vote, when we should celebrate is 1928, when all

women over the age of 21 got the right to vote as same as men. That's when we should celebrate. It's quite relevant to at the moment because if we think of the suffragettes physical force they were physical force

and we had Palestine action over here getting tried as terrorists and this they went to the fucking judge and it said no these are not the same as the suffragettes and it really fucking pissed a lot of people off

because it's like they're just damaging drones suffragettes what were doing throwing hatches that harters yeah well they didn't I've got that wrong there I'm sure they didn't throw hatchets and horses, but there was a horse

and a hatchet. No, Emily Davidson threw herself in front of a horse. And there was hatchets involved at some point? They burnt libraries. There was two, again like the chartes. Why would they burn a library? Because it was a symbol of authority. Because that's something else I wanted to talk to you about, right, is

a trend all over, not just Europe, America too, the Gilded Age where, and I want learn more about it. Rich people felt threatened by the French Revolution and then started building hospitals and libraries and all this shit to quell people down. What's the crack with that? What was that like here?

I don't think it was so much fear of the French revolution because the French, before the revolution helped the Americans gain independence. So the French and the Spanish went in to support. No, I mean the people with money became afraid of the working class beheading them and said, you know what, let's build some libraries. Well, the one person that really did that was a Scotsman who made a fortune in Pittsburgh in steel.

Carnegie? Carnegie. He was the one. Most of them didn't build libraries. They just wanted to own, like today, certain big tech people. They want to rule. And they just want to own infrastructure. They want to own everything. Own the books, own the education. And do you know what the really sad thing is that in 1928, it will be 100 years since the vote was extended to men and women over 21. If you look at the turnout in parliamentary elections, in working class constituencies, it's dropping to in the 50s and sometimes less.

Within a hundred jurors of us getting the vote, people are so disillusioned with our politics that people aren't even bothering to vote. I think that is so sad and appalling. It's one of, that there is one of the impacts of neoliberalism. Yeah. Right? So when you have, I'm always trying to fucking explain neoliberalism and in the simplest way possible, in the simplest way possible that I can explain it is it's a way for very wealthy people to put a toll boot between a public service and your taxes.

That's pretty much it. You pay your tax to fund healthcare or the rivers and then a billionaire comes in the middle and says, I'm going to take a load of that because I run this company. And then what happens over years and years and years, people go, what's the point in voting? Nothing happens and nothing happens because everything's been fucking siphoned off. So from the mid-19th century onwards, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, the great towns and the cities. Is this the municipality thing you were telling you? Tell me about that. So I believe passionately, we've got to get, stop fighting.

Birmingham and Manchester fight over this pathetic title of the second city. Who cares? Why don't we just come together, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Sunderland, Nottingham, Derby? We were city-states. We had our own water supplies, our own police forces, we had our own fire service. We had libraries and parks. How are you going to pay for things in a municipality if you don't make money? So by owning the gas companies, the electric companies, you were making money.

then they take them away from us, Labor nationalised them, and Thatcher privatised them, and now they're owned by big knobs who are making a fortune. Let's have our utilities back. And the thing is, it's like how do you, like,

protest isn't working anymore because protest is becoming fucking illegal. Like, it's one of the things, you know that Ben Neacap from Ireland. Yeah. Like, how I view Neacap is, what they've managed to in a culture where protest is becoming

like it's not illegal right but think of it this way if you want to go to a Palestine anti-genocide protest the police show up and they have these facial recognition things and you're being watched and you're being intimidated and people are thinking

if I'm at this fucking protest and up there is an AI camera and then that gets me and then that goes into the database so it knows my identity. What does that mean in 10 years' time? Do you get what I'm saying? If the Palestine action people are now terrorists,

how easy is it to flip that around? So a culture is created where most people go, I'm just going to not go to that protest. I'm a bit unsure. And I think what NECAP have done is when you go to a NECAP gig, you're not necessarily going there to hear their tunes. They've created a safe space

for protesting. So people who go to an e-cap gig, it's actually we're fucking protesting here, but you can't call it this, and there's no cameras here. And this is actually a gig, but really it's a protest. And that's what's had to have to happen. But there's also you're right, you're spot on, but there's also

been a shift in language. Go on? So, for example, if I was to say that I'm against what's happening in Palestine and the West Bank, I'm suddenly anti-Semitic. I'm not anti-Semitic. I'm anti-Semitic. I'm at T. Benjamin Nathenha. you and the murderers.

And you get this conflation that the word semi- applies to Arab peoples, they're Semitic. So they've made this an inflammatory term that if you're against liquid and the rulers and these horrible people who are talking about talking Smoritz and the others who are talking about exterminating by Palestinians, they've made it that. And so you can't say that.

Well, no, we're not anti-Semitic, were anti-genocide. And what I always remind people, too, and this is, like, we're talking about the findings of the International Criminal Court and the United Nations, right? So this is not a controversial opinion.

It's actually quite a mainstream opinion. It is the findings of experts who were looking at this shit and I always fucking remember that, you know? And the other thing, too, because the same shit, Germany is particularly bad. I was in Berlin. I couldn't even say it in the audience,

but there was people leaving because they were afraid that the police were going to come in. There's a group there called the Olam 5 who are arrested now, very similar to Palestine action. The Bedouin are the poorest of the poor. The Bedouin? They can't prove they own the land because they've never owned land. They're nomadic peoples and they've settled on wasteland.

They're going in. The army's going in, and taking land from the poorest of the poor. There's one of the most ancient Christian villages that's now been surrounded. this isn't an issue about religion about Muslim and Christianity. It's about what's right and what's wrong. And what's wrong is to persecute people because they're there. And to never forget as well.

I mean, you're talking about a US military outpost in the middle of the Middle East. That's what it is. And there's a quote that I fucking love, which is when that area was British mandatory Palestine, 1919, the first governor of Palestine, and he was proud of it, he said, since Punch's pilot, was the English palaces called Ronald Stores. And there's a quote from Ronald Stores in 1990, and he said straight out, we are trying to create a little loyal Jewish ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism. There you go, you know, and then the yanks just took it from the Brits.

What we need to realise, whether we're black, white, Asian, whatever, are, Background, our colour, our creed. It's about time the working class came together and stood up for each other. Instead of being separated by faith, by colour. And the interesting thing, too, if you look at when movements are really crushed, let's take, let's take 60s America, for example, right, civil rights. When you had Jay Edgar Hoover with his FBI, they had, I think called Cointel Pro, it was covert at the time now.

fully out in the open. It was a way to dismantle the hippies, the Black Panthers, all of this. When they were, I think it was Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers, I think it was him, were farming at the Rainbow Coalition, I believe it was. And what it was

was Black Panthers, Latinos, white working class farmers, getting together, that's when the FBI said, no fucking way. That was the dangerous one, because now it's like, well, we've got We've got the whites here, we've got the blacks there, we've got the Latinos there.

Shit, class solidarity. No, thanks. We cannot have that. That's the one every fucking time. Class consciousness, class solidarity. You know, that's the real dangerous one. What's a poor white kid, a poor black kid, a poor Salvation kid all got in common in England? They're all poor.

They're all poor, and we've been separated, and it's dangerous, and it's wrong, and it's evil. and something too just for this audience how many people here come from Irish people yeah fucking loads so just remember like what's the area you said the Irish area here West Bar what's

and the other one was the Crafts which is just around the corner which was known as Little Ireland like if you look at the fucking newspapers from the time rise so ye are great grandparents the way that the Irish were spoken about in Sheffield or in Birmingham by the press was the way that people from Yemen and Eretri are spoken about now

we were considered the worst of the worst I mean what really got me looking into it was the you know the gas destructor lamps of Sheffield yeah so there's Sheffield has the highest concentration of them has 19 surviving gas destructor lamps and they're fucking lamps sticking out of the ground and sewer gas would go up there and then you'd light a flame and that would burn the sewer gas.

But what got me looking into it was I noticed they were in all the middle class areas. They were all the Victorian middle class areas. So I went looking deeper and deeper going what the fuck's going on here? It wasn't, so they didn't really do much. They burned gas from the sewer but then I went looking into the fear

of what sewer gas meant we'll say circa 1840, 1850. Myasma, yeah. So the belief that there is a smell, I think that those lamps are actually like class signifiers. It's those filthy people down there

when you go past their slum because they don't have toilets, it smells like shit and they all have cholera and deterior because they're in poverty. We're going to catch that so we need to burn that gas when it gets up the hill.

And some of them did catch it and that's what led to the 1848 Public Health Act. When the fuck it, rich people started getting... They started to get scared. Go on. So my aspir was like this fog, this noxious... And it was smug from the fucking pollution as well. Pollution of the factories.

Yeah. From the fact that there were no proper toilets. It was cess pits from the fact that there was... Well, the water supplies in some of the poorest areas. When they closed down one well in Birmingham where people got the well from in 1877 in Springfield Street, it was 75% human manure to 25% pure. water. That's why bad people drank beer. It was

brewed and advertised with pure, fresh water. Wow. And when they brought the water in, in Sheffield, in Birmingham and elsewhere, in the poorest back-to-backyards, there was one outside tap for sometimes at 250, 200 people. In the better-off middle-class areas, they had a tap in every house. So because of my asthma, although they'd... got the wrong reason. They started to do the right thing by bringing in drains, refuse collection,

fresh water, but again, it was slow. In one of the poorest parts of Birmingham, and dare say it would be the same in the poorest parts of Sheffield, in 1908, which is now by the ball ring, and in my city, and I don't know if it's the same here, you would never know poor people lived in the city centre anymore. It's so gentrified. It's as if the poor have been seen.

swept from history in Ireland as well yeah it's the same in Dublin yeah clones they're just like we have Ireland's economy is doing very well and for the first time in my life I'm seeing shantytowns

yeah I never saw shanty towns growing up and now like I mean when I say shanty town it's homeless people intense but they're staying there and the fucking irony of it is there's this one field

but the size of this room full of tents and it floods and you know what they used to stop the to float

the tents election posters I know but it's just they put them underneath the tent and they're floating and that then

is it's climate change related too but the biggest problem with house building in this country we stopped building council houses with the

financialisation of housing we have to build council houses so you're not doing that no no that

When they started selling them off, okay, sell them off, but let the money gain from it. I build new councillorses. But they didn't want to build new councillorses. Well, it drops the price of rent if that happens. Yeah, and what also has happened is new labour didn't believe in council housing. If we're to overcome all these problems, we need a massive councillor's building programme. Massive. Is...

So when I try and give people a bit of hope back home... because we're the same shit, right? We're the same shit. And protesting isn't working. Protesting is becoming dangerous. I tell people to join a community action tenants union. Like in Ireland we have a thing called Katu. And it's brilliant because what it is is everyone joins it.

And then if someone's getting evicted, 60 people show up outside. And it makes it really uncomfortable for that eviction to happen. Because what the police are doing in Ireland now as well, and probably the same shit here, they're neoliberalising the process of eviction. Police show up, stand outside, and then all of a sudden this van comes up, often with no license plates,

men in Balaclavas, no one knows who the fuck they are. It's a private security company, and they brutalise the tenant and evict them while the police stand back often with their backs to what's happening, and that they have privatized the violence because the police can't do it, you know? When you have a community action tenancy union

and you've got 100 people outside with cameras and physical the bodies, that's what stops it, that's what stops it. And I'm assuming there's a community action Tenancy Union here in Sheffield, yeah? Acorn, yeah, I've heard of them cunce. Acorn. Sorry, autism.

He promised me he wouldn't use the C word today. I did that the last time too. I can't. I mean's a different thing back home. I told him off. told him off last time. My ma'er calls me that. It's a whole different.

The Yanks ruined it, man. The Yanks ruined that. In who... We use it in a nice way. The Scottish do. I think some parts of London use the word in a nice way.

And ye don't. Here, if you use the C word, is it just a bad thing? Yeah. It's not like you're a grand cunt. You're a lovely cunt. I should have kept me gobbswit, shouldn't I?

my ma would say to me she'd listen to the podcast and then I'd get a phone call on a Wednesday morning and she'd go you're some gas cunt the first thing she'd say to me like you know

I've been called a gas cunt since I was tit feeding the yanks roamed it you see because in America it's real nasty in America and it's misogynistic so with Americans they don't use that word

but whole different crack for us you know we have five minutes left. Robin Hood. Fucking go for a bit of Robin Hood for the crack.

Robin Hood? Locksy? Just outside Sheffield? It's a suburb. I thought he was Nottingham. Well, there's a big row over it, between West Yorkshire, Sheffield and Nottingham.

So what's the crack? He was from here, was he? Is he the real deal? Was he a real person? He's probably based, like all legends, on a variety of people. A couple of people, okay. And he probably,

he made well at me. He's a Tommy Shelby. Yeah, he may well have been a nasty so-and-so. But the legend grows up, which I grew up with, that he robbed the rich to help the poor. And he was anti-Norman, because King John was his enemy, wasn't it? He hated King John. So we're talking 1100s here.

So that's very much a Saxon. And what happened? Is it a harrowing of the north? Yeah, but carry on. 1068, 69, York rises up in rebellion. Williams over in Normandy. He comes back and he has. The Harrow's the North, and it was a terrible campaign of scorched earth.

Okay, so that's everybody. And in the Doomsday Book of 1086, large parts of Yorkshire, Doran, Northumberland were wasteland, because they burnt the crops, and the very little was there. Sheffield had an Anglo-Saxon lord Walthioph, and he at first got on with William, but then he rose up. but he lost his head and then it became a Norman that took over. So so much of our land was, all of our land

was taken by the Normans. Something I'd love to chat you about too is there were no surnames before the Normans. Is it true that the Normans came here looked at everybody and said, I'm inventing your surname based on what your job is?

Not quite that, but they didn't actually sit down and look at it like, but they brought hereditary surnames. So, Collier. So, well, first of all, You'd have the Fitsis. So they think like...

Of Fitts is, we've got that in Ireland. Fitch is son of. Son of. Yeah. But you'd have Fits, the tribes of Galway, the DeBurgos, they're Norman names. So King Harold was not... He was Harold Godwinson.

Yes. But his sons were Harrelson. Yes. So it changed by about... By the 13th century, the better off Anglo-Saxons were beginning to adopt surnames, hereditary surnames.

So you take them either from where you come from, you might have moved from your little village. So they call you, or it might be topographical. It might be to do with the landscape or the job that you do or what your dance now was. Where do you get your, like there's loads of names. Collier, fucking Weaver. So they were occupational names.

But are those working class people and the Normans just went, that's your family name, no, because that's, That's what you did, Patrick. The Normans wouldn't have said it just like that because we couldn't understand them because they spoke Norman French. Do you know, the first king to actually talk or send correspondence in English

Henry V. When, what are we talking there? They'd be talking about the early 1400s. The law was Latin. Oh sure, that's why Shakespeare was so radical. Shakespeare were like gangster rap. He's like, I'm going to fucking write in it. But it's like, he's like, I'm going to write in English.

And people are going to mean you're writing in front? fucking English. That's not the, we speak French here. And then they, so the Normans, they took control. By 1086, there were only two landowners in England who were Anglo-Saxon. One was in the North East, one was a man called Churchill, and he had his manners in North Warwickshire, the Forest of Arden. And he took a surname after the Norman fashion. What was Shakespeare's mother's name? Mary Arden.

Okay. Churchill, one of the last Anglo-Saxon Thanes, was the ancestor of Shakespeare's mother. Wow. Before we wrap up, what Anglo-action shit is left? As in names, words, we use, places. So there's lots of different dialect words that are survived, but they're dying out.

I can only give a few. Quite a bit like what we said earlier on, they said, and words like that would be Anglo-Saxon. When I was a kid, if you went over the wreck, the park, the recreation ground, if you come back a big kid and hit you, your mom had looked and you go

go and fight him. I can't fight him, Mom, because he's too big. Go and fight him, or I will get you something to blart about. Cry from the Anglo-Sax who over the bleeding and sheep. Shakespeare uses a word in Trouillus and Cressida

and I was sat in the Royal Shatlin company. I wasn't a big fan, but Richard loved it, so when he was a kid I took him and this play was on and I was drifting away. And there was this guy's a Thursities, who came out with a list of vile insults. And one of the insults was, your breath is as foul as anything I've ever smelt from the soft.

And I must have been the only bloke in the room that knew what the soft was, because in Birmingham's back-to-backs, it was the drain. Brewhouse for wash-house. So there's the dialect words, which would be here in South Yorkshire, the north-east, and other parts of the country.

The word I used earlier on for Backstreet Brummingham, women. I wouldn't use it to a young woman that's not from Birmingham or didn't know. But to olderbram is the term wench is the term of affection. My nan, our nan, was our wench. She was the oldest of 12. She never had a childhood. And it's from the Middle English word wenchal.

But we're taught that it's a rude word. I got pulled in by BBC. I was at a radio show on BBC WM. I was pulled in by the manager saying, you use the word wench. We'd rather you didn't. I used it to an older woman. And the next Sunday The first phone call I got was from an old brumish When I do love it when you call us olden's wenches

It makes me think of me dad I thought put that in your pipe and smoke sheets Here We are on festival time and it is Carfew First off I want to thank you The Wonderful People of Sheppield That was a beautiful evening Thank you so much

Professor Carl Chin I fucking love talking to you That was amazing Thank you Thank you so much to Carol, leads Thank you, Sheffield. Dog bless Sheffield. I hope you enjoyed that now.

I hope the sound was all right for you because I really edited the sound in that and boasted myself and Carol's voice and I pushed the audience sound down quite a bit so that one nearly didn't even sound like a live podcast. I'm very happy with that sound

because there was a very large venue. It was full of, people with quite a long reverb tale. It was the type of venue that an orchestra would be in. So there was a huge echo. So I managed to EQ out a lot of those echoes. So it just sounded like me and Carl in a room. I enjoy that.

So look, Carl's podcast, Carl Chin's podcast is called Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chin. Check it out. Like it, follow it, review it. Because it's only a couple of months old. so if you give that likes and reviews that would really help his podcast and if you give it follows Carl has also written a couple of books

I'll catch you next week with a hot take I have a number of hot takes on the pot that are brewing so don't know what I'll pick but we'll have some fun next week in the meantime rub a dog wink at a kestrel genuflect to a swan

dog bless