My name's Tom Black, I'm a developer, designer, product strategist, look at everything to determine who's happening. You can find me online, most places at BlackTM, get up Twitter, and I use Ruby for both work and fun, but I'm going to talk about creator. So before we get started also, I'm going to put notes up for this, and be code samples in the links, and so just so you don't have to keep track of all this stuff to be able to place afterwards. Today I'm going to talk about some of my experiences and thoughts about how we can re-imagine, rethink, 2D graphics and Game of Thrones. And so for me, this journey started here in New York City, particularly in the Flatiron District, I was spending a lot of time. I was new to the city, sort of taking it all in, meeting people, and this whole, around 2012, this Learn to Code movement was like at its peak, sort of to the mayor was about to learn to code. But it was exciting for me, despite all kind of the hype, and it was tough for me to learn, and I was really excited to share that experience with others, help them out, be a mentor, all the things that I kind of really had to get back in the way. And so we've got Meetups, and after school programs, Bootups, Pants, like this one, the Flatiron School, this is their first Pants, I think in this doc, so long ago. And we keep changing, I sort of noticed something. This is just sort of the pattern that everybody's doing, it's the paradigm, it's the terminal of people, it's pretty familiar to us, that's how we make software, but when you're learning, it's sort of kind of living, it's all computers can do, it's kind of this old paradigm, reminded me of like, computers of yesterday, or the ones that you've kind of grew up with. And it kind of seemed like not a lot has sort of changed, but in many ways things have changed a lot. We've got much better visuals, we can see millions of colors, pixels we can't even discern anymore, rich audio, speakers built in, we've got still the keyboard of yesterday which we'll probably have forever, but also speakers, real sound. And we can have all sorts of different input devices, connect things, so there's just a lot you can do. It's nice, but this is a maps route to real learning styles. This is how people actually, their visual auditory is that things people can see, hear, touch, that's how real learning takes place. So I was really interested in figuring out how do we take that experience of all of those sort of senses and bring that into something that teaches in Ruby and makes it more accessible. So in 2012 I made this demo, it's kind of a vision, I imagined you could go into the terminal kind of still like you'd usually do in Titans itself, but see results kind of happening on the screen. And maybe build up some skills and use more kind of constructs there and see things happen, maybe make some mini games or something and then plug in other device controllers and kind of jump around. I think this is a Ruby impaired character or something. So just a much more interactive learning environment. And so that was sort of the vision. It was built with real code and real Ruby libraries actually to just sort of help validate this idea. But like every good prototype, it's really a facade, a trick, it's there to validate an idea, but it's really nothing more. So I kind of tested it out, and did see how people would learn and just kind of get to feed that. And that was enough to kind of dig in and see if I can build something a little bit more. So I did some research to see just sort of what was out there. Was anybody else thinking about this stuff or people developing graphics and stuff broadly in the Ruby community? And it turns out they are. I actually started going back to like 2000 and so a pretty rich history. And there's a lot of ideas in here. There's things that are kind of used for this graphics, and there's two things. A lot of different approaches. There's a kind of a neat mix of this. So I kind of thought, well what would be my must have if I were to like choose one of these or mix it up or take ideas? What would that sort of look like? Well, we probably want to have a cross platform native in the web, make this stuff easy to understand internally. That's kind of nice to learn. You could do something and see how it might work and make real things. So it's not just like a lot of sandboxes that we would see. It could be good for a lot of different things, not just education, but like you could make a real game or you could kind of like, you know, throw your things there. And it would just be easy to get started. The quicker you get to having the idea to seeing it interacting with it is pretty critical. And just making it a good idea. So I thought, you know, this is kind of a hefty list, you know, starting something new, thinking about how we could take some existing ideas and match them together. There's a lot of positives to that. You get to build on many ideas, incorporate new tech and methods and so forth. Revisit these fundamentals. You can kind of say like, do these things need to exist or does this have an updated approach? You've got the freedom to experiment. For me, it was nice because I wanted to gain new skills as a sort of weird kind of, you know, I think a lot of stupid web stuff is probably how we got into Revisit. I wanted to get dealt into this new area. The downside is there's a lot to learn to do that's a big thing. But I persevered here and thought, well, where do I start? And, you know, I thought about the simple like starting with the end in mind what experience would you want in just this like, minimal case. And so I thought of this like, MVP minimal Bible product, a new sort of application. And then what would it take to really build that? I know there's like hardware at the bottom somewhere but like what goes sort of in the middle I imagine a lot of stuff. The first thing I did is just kind of broke it down and said, well, what if we just start with a window that's pretty much the most fundamental thing that you have. And if you go around and Google it, you'll find most operating systems provide some low level library that you can access to make those things. And so this is on the Mac you have all these NS classes. This is NS window and if you read it it just says a window that an app displays on the screen. So I thought, okay, that's pretty good. So if you go and do some study in trial and error you can actually build a window and this is really all you need to do that. This is written in Objective-C and this is not in this COPA class you just kind of say what you want and run it or even pilot first linking to the COPA libraries there and we'll just output it as a window and if you want to run it, this is what you get basically a window that does not but it's a good start and it works. From there there's a lot more to do so it's not just a window but you've got to put a graphics context in. You've got to think about how are you going to get inputs in versus manage it. Maybe you're going to talk to other system things display and system timers. You start to think about all the things you need to develop this experience thinking ahead and a lot goes into that. And I'm on a Mac but I want to include all operating systems you've got to do that everywhere. So that's what basically all the stuff you're going to have to go in. And pretty much it starts to become pretty overwhelming and you have to do this and you think about all the variations and all the rest it just gets to be where you might be stuck and you start feeling like this. There's no end in sight and this could be a dead end but what is it? Well it turns out that thankfully not, game developers have been thinking about these issues for a long time. A lot of these efforts started back in about 20 years ago when they were recording games to Linux. They were trying to think of the inconsistency between Windows and Linux and other operating systems making these things work everywhere was a pretty big effort in what their games were running for. So these are called media libraries and media layers because that's exactly what it does. It puts a smooth layer on top of all these different operating systems so you can root out all these inconsistencies. You just have a nice API. When I looked at those of the three major ones I found SDL to be a simple media layer to be the most well rounded for this project there's a lot out there and they're good for different things but for what we were trying to do this made sense and it supports a lot and there's over 500 cross platform functions so you can really and it just so happens that it's used by triple A titles and indie games and lights so my general rule is that it's good enough for Half-Life, it's probably good enough for everyone to work with. So this is what it looks like, this is written in in C and this is all it takes basically to build a window on every platform and now we don't have to think about any of these inconsistencies because it's sort of like jammed into that lower level and I have a talk link about game developer with the SDL so I think we're back on track and we have a path forward but despite we might be wondering like why we're talking about C so much this could be like a Ruby conference and isn't it maybe old and crusty and all the rest of it but it turns out that C is very contemporary the standard is always evolving people are building really amazing tools and infrastructure and it's it's very beautifully simple, efficient and precise language and while you might not want to build your next web application in C that you'd probably have a bad time it's perfect for programming systems and exchange and all these lower level things it's really good for and it just so happens that Ruby loves C it's primary implementation MRI but I guess we'll probably see Ruby now it is written in C Ruby and so Ruby has this nice connection with the native world it means that just because it's an interpreted language it's not sort of just labeled so then if we go back to our red square application here square.new where are we right now, what do we have kind of reviewing what we just talked about we have an operating system, we know that it provides essential access to hardware and windows and all the rest we know that we don't have to think about all operating systems like that, we can use SDL to kind of make that a cool experience and we can sort of move the hardware out of the way because we don't really have to think about it too explicitly so that's really nice but what else, what else would we might need to make this possible because we're not quite there yet one of the things we haven't talked about is this graphics how to actually make things visual well it turns out again we don't have to talk directly to hardware there's a lot of these cross-platform graphics APIs OpenGL is a common one thanks for the open graphics layer and it's for rendering 2D and 3D maybe sort of Direct 3D or Direct 2D or Metal is a little hot thing on Apple platforms these are all just APIs to talk to graphics and kind of take a hand over some of those cool things but the price is nice so from your perspective as a programmer it looks like writing your C program you'll make OpenGL calls usually it's a GL blog or something in orchestration with the operating systems and the graphics libraries on there it'll talk to the GPU and then finally that is all displayed so that's a massive oversimplification and we can dive into it and talk about the rendering pipeline this is how rendering works in modern graphics programming and it's important to talk about this we actually program these things sort of not the first thing you have to do is take actual points into one address this is a triangle this is the simplest 2D shape you can basically draw and all the vertex data is described and just floating the next thing we have to write a vertex function this is just a function and it sort of looks like a C language with a few extra things there that's where we can actually take these points and map them to a coordinate system put it anywhere we want we can even do any kind of manipulation but it's just about the coordinate system then also we're going to need a projection it's like how we see the world and so in the world that we live in we have perspective we will see train tracks fading into the disk for vanishing point but we don't actually do anything to it we want to see things in this orthographic way which means it's a world of no doubt that you can imagine everything you see in the world is being jammed right in front so this is kind of without looking and if we implement that in the graphics world we would need to write a orthographic matrix which is not too complicated it's described here, it's math and that's a means of representing 3D dimensions basically in this 2D space and it's a distance it's a distance from the camera you can see that in the cube there and also we can do things in this vertex arena like move the origin to the upper left corner it's nice to see the expand then after that we have this shape but it's still represented mathematically, we actually have to apply it and figure out what pixels do we shade it and that's called rasterization and a lot of that is sort of done for you which is nice but then we get to write a fragment function to fill in the colors, think about those intermediate values that interpolation that happens that's done by the hardware and the rest of it that we do for you but you can choose those points and then it'll kind of figure out what the rest of it looks like finally we have a nice triangle so in the last step you write this to a memory frame buffer which is what gets displayed right into the back and then it gets to swap buffers and it gets quicker to the floor then it happens like 60 times a second if you're lucky but the graphics program experience is pretty wild you feel all of these things at various times but even when you screw up pretty badly I don't actually know what this was supposed to be but it looks like a wall paper of PNGs or something I don't know what the rest of it is but it looks pretty cool maybe you could even do art somewhere like an exhibit so this is cool this approach works and now we've implemented it in OpenGL with the legacy versions the more modern approaches which I've described in the pipeline and then also for mobile embeddings is the pocket chip so basically we can we go back to our stack you see we've got the operating system SDL, we've learned about OpenGL that kind of sits there a little bit the average just kind of provides these things or they're kind of worth a concert application, code for SDL event loops other things, a lot of other things OpenGL calls, well that's a lot to kind of just be scattered around so we can package those things to make it a little nicely and that's kind of what we ended up doing is creating this little side project which makes that easier the simple layer written in C to do those things that looks nice in all the files if you kind of look at it everything's very explicit images and all of these things you can kind of look at each file and see what's sort of essential there and I'll just point out the OpenGL code that we were talking about that's a little bit there so you can kind of check it out and it's really simple so all you need to draw across platforms is something like this and really three functions so you create a window show it and that'll go in this render to draw a triangle just write what you want it to look like and it's everywhere which is pretty amazing so now we're at this point where we can add Ruby finally after we put our simple 2D layer on top of that we've got MRI or C Ruby and also M Ruby and of course familiar with M Ruby or have used it before not too much okay well you should be familiar with it because it's pretty awesome it's a small, lightweight implementation of Ruby and it's designed for better use cases and for us it's really important because we can compile Ruby down to machine code so there's a lot of ways to do that but if we take our squared out new application which is important to us and we run the MRV compiler we can actually generate this bytecode this might look crazy but it's basically this compiled Ruby for the M Ruby virtual machine and this is an example it's actually contained in a C array which is really good for us because that means we can embed it places and all you need to do to actually run that is open a context and basically run that so just pass it over it's a really simple way so that's great so we have then we'll need to write a native extension because if we're going to talk at the Ruby layer and we might think that we would be too but fortunately we don't actually so we can just do this together and this was somewhere oops but we figured it out twice so there are differences in the MRI native API and the M Ruby and so because of these differences we kind of have to account for them but in C I think this will get easier or maybe more consistent in the future but for now what we did is just map these things so like if we're in the M Ruby world we just kind of like that's what these defined things are this is C stuff but it makes it nice so you can just choose which one you want here so just call out that in the bottom you'll see defining a module that works for both and then when you call this quad dot render because we're going to need a square eventually so if you have a quad type you would run this function that we have to find somewhere else and it calls that simple 2D draw function so it works so going back to our stack here we can finally add our Ruby layer put the native extension in the gem and we can sort of celebrate because now we can actually we have everything we need in the stack to actually do the simple application what we did say earlier that we wanted to cross-platform so we're not quite done but that's okay we can persevere so what would we actually need to do that well at the very bottom left there we can all sort of explicitly for SDL because we have a browser and the browser sort of does a lot of those things javascript APIs you can get images you can open, you can do all these things it's perfectly provided by the browser and then WebGL is a version of OpenGL that is designed just for the browser there and we don't need simple 2D but we kind of need its port in javascript and we can then also cross-off both rubies here because in the Ruby community we also have Opal which is a Ruby for the Web here and we don't need the native extension but we do need an Opal extension and that's what it looks like sort of a simple part of there and if you haven't done any Opal before like I said Ruby in the browser, what does that mean well if we take our simple squared out new application we can compile this to javascript by using a simple Opal command this is the genome so you can then get access to this command tool and you run this and it's basically just saying don't give me the whole library but just focus on this and pilot to javascript and we'll get this thing which looks kind of ugly but it's real javascript and it works and it's actually something readable but we don't need to read it because it's we can pilot, push it in and instead of writing this native extension like I mentioned we have a a Opal extension which basically will include these things and what's really nice about this as opposed to the native world is that it's kind of like a a foreign function interface built in an FFI that's basically a way of talking to another language and so you just put backticks and instead of it sending to the terminal because it's really not a terminal in your own web they just go up to it and you're just writing kind of exclusive javascript so that simple 2DJS thing you can put in your drawquad right in there and you're kind of like reopening that that quad class and just kind of add it and what it will do so this is what it looks like we didn't have time to do this but there is this thing called WebAssembly on the horizon and we could deploy that I think pretty easily by using the native extensions using mRuby because we can compile it so WebAssembly is the thing which will take for now C and C++ and compile it to this new format which you can basically run in your browser so it's like running kind of like a native application in your browser but these are some of the key pieces that we'll have to add so if we look at the complete stack here we've got the operating system the SDL in the browser kind of filling the same thing the two layers that kind of make this even more simpler our Ruby stuff layer on top and then finally this 2D thing with native extension and all the rest of it so that is what the complete package looks like and it might seem a little complex separation, everything does what it's supposed to do and that's kind of what we want the right stuff in the right places and they're all kind of filling together so we haven't really talked about this Ruby 2D thing what's that all about well, this is going to be the Ruby experience for all of this this is a gem we're working on and we're kind of pitching it as interpreted native Web whatever you want to do you can build 2D applications in Ruby and so what's inside that well, it's got classes as you probably expect but here we have the real opportunity to build concepts from these low level interfaces so now we can build up these tangible things so what is one of these classes look like well the central one is the window we saw some window examples earlier this is what it would look like in Ruby this is just kind of abbreviated but you might get or set attributes in the window where you can do things events that you can call on show clothes and here's an example with a square this is actually the full implementation they're all so you can see squares are inheriting from rectangle, that size and color and it's updated coordinates so it's pretty simple and the most fun part for me and probably created is finding opportunities to design this programming experience this domain specific language for a new domain like in graphics it's kind of a little bit of a refer but there are some prior examples of folks that have really put effort in thinking of that look like one that was very inspiring to me was hyper talk is anybody familiar with hyper talk or hyper card or those things, yeah something cool hyper talk is a scripting language for hyper card this came out in 1987 and hyper card I'm going to explain it for you but it was like a stack based thing and you could kind of like early web browser stuff and you can read about it and you can teach me about it but I was looking at references and just kind of seeing like what these experiences were like there's actually hyper part of Ruby talk later today so that's I'll be going back to the warhouse but the kind of idea here was that say things that were very English like on and all of a sudden it would just happen it was a very conscious effort to think about what that intuitive expressive sort of experience would look like so taking some of that inspiration what could this look like for our Ruby world well if we're setting like a cursor to arrow for example maybe we could well we actually don't have cursor yet setting those attributes would kind of look the same and then this is the most of the example we just saw maybe that would look like this where maybe it's the sound so kind of a Ruby kind of event and then key events or other kind of events we could capture those sort of filter them out and then say okay we've got an event and then you could kind of crack it open so pretty nice so here's the simplest to the app you can really write in Ruby 2D and this will just create a 640 by 480 window just require it and show it and that's pretty darn simple I can't think of anything else to remove really and this is what our square dot new app looks like if you want this you'll get that the windows a little bit bigger than the previous examples but 640 with 480 you can set it to be whatever you want here's a test card which you might be familiar with I like test cards because you can quickly see if kind of everything's working you like to write unit tests but if you're going to do games and graphics there's not a whole lot of testing is interesting in games as well just leave it at that because you kind of have to play test things you have to see things work and things will fail in ways that you kind of didn't expect we do go ahead and catch them in kind of automated ways so we wrote a test card for a little Ruby 2D application we kind of see things working no more crazy shards and all this this gem can do a lot it can automatically detect virtually any controller even ones that you kind of hot plug in so they're wired, wireless, whatever and I'd love to take credit for figuring all of that out but really that's from STL they're all motivated to do this they want their controllers working and so there's a giant community of people talking about this controller let's make sure that it works all the mappings are correct the rest of it so we can take advantage of that and then write a really simple interface to do that so you can do something awesome here and there's maps too so even if you have a crazy controller and I always travel now it looks like it needs to which makes me look a little crazy but controllers all look different some have different joystick buttons this is an iBuffalo or a brand name this one's kind of used for iOS devices and so what we do is we map them to a common generic Xbox interface or at least that's what STL does really so that's what we do the other things we do are we can build for those native platforms if you write your groupie app app.rb or something you can say build it as a native app or for the web or for iOS or TVOS so that's what this looks like on iOS here build it and from the same command you can launch it as well so when that goes through you'll see this is not the full test card but it's something that you can modify at least if you stretch it but you can see it at least it works all of this gets put in a single C file where we have our native extension we have your application's bytecode that's been compiled down and then this Ruby2G to the GEMs bytecode in there all in a single file it's in C which means it's still not machine code which is what we want because then you can basically put it in an Xcode project get the right libraries and they're linked to the right things you can see here if you look at the frameworks we actually have another repo where we can build M-Ruby into a framework so there's only two ones that are not and we don't really have a good publishing plan there but you can basically open this open Xcode and publish it after the app store I mean I think the distance there is 2 years so as we've sort of seen here it can really help us rethink what's possible reimagine everything not just at the DSL level which is what it's really good at but even like the entire stack that was surprising to me just scratch the surface here but there's links to there's been a lot of talks at various places around game development there will be a lot of topics and so I've linked to all those and I think really we'll be getting I think we've talked about how we can really the education gaming, graphics, all these kind of tie together and so there's one more demo that I want to show that kind of combined with my development here and to do that we're going to have to put M-Ruby into space this is an N-body simulation physics or astronomy nerds out there so these are celestial bodies that are interacting in space and their gravity is kind of attracting one another and the color is actually mapped to your velocity here and here's another example where the cursor is actually a single point of gravity we're just sort of directing it in front I tried all these different variations and things so I think there's many possibilities for Ruby and I think there are a lot about that I'm excited about this Ruby on the fringe track because I think there are a lot of this is a small but growing supportive community who are messing around with graphics and games and all the rest of it so please join us, hang out, and I'll share some things and ways that you can do that and overall I think that the future is bright for us here thanks so much for having me the notes will be here and I think that's it


Hello everyone and welcome to Marxist Voice, the podcast of Socialist Appeal, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency. My name is Josh Holroyd and I'm joined tonight by Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal and the author of several books including In the Cause of Labour, History of British Trade Unionism and The Chartist Revolution, which he's kindly agreed to discuss with us tonight. So the book Chartist Revolution is coming out this Friday and it focuses on the working class movement for the People's Charter, which we're obviously going to talk about in a moment, centered around the struggle for the vote for working class people. So the first question I wanted to ask really is what made you want to write about this period in the 19th century, this period of working class history today in 2020? What's the relevance for today? Well I would say that when I began to write the book, which was a good year ago, the world economy was slowing down and there was talk of a new crisis. Of course at the present time we see the deepest crisis for 300 years. The working class today is faced with a terrible crisis and there are huge effects on living standards, unemployment and the general conditions of the working class. And similarly in the early 19th century the working class was faced with also a deep crisis in the birth pains of capitalism. As Marx explained that capitalism came into being, dripping with blood and dirt from every pore. And these conditions gave rise to a revolutionary movement at the turn of that century, 100 what nearly 200 years ago. And I think we're entering in a similar way, we're entering a deep profound crisis and revolutionary implications in that crisis in Britain and elsewhere. I think it's quite relevant to deal with this situation and draw out the lessons for the working class today. Sure, so learning about a revolutionary period in order to confront one, which I find interesting because I mean, autism isn't very widely taught anyway, even here in Britain. But even when it is taught, and even in the labour movement itself, it tends not to be presented so much in the way that you just described as a revolutionary period and a revolutionary movement. Certainly the way it's presented tends to be as a movement for the vote, as a democratic movement. I suppose you might say a civil rights movement and perhaps you might say that there's a difference with today in that workers today do have the vote. Do you think that that's a fair characterisation or is that missing the point to an extent? Well, of course, the chart this movement was based on six democratic demands of the chart, obviously. But you have to look much deeper than that and look at the context. And what strikes you really is that the histories of charism, the present time and even in the past really, either they buried charism or they distorted it really as some sort of portrayed it as some sort of liberal movement for just simply for democratic reform, which it was not. What do you have to understand? Was it that this great movement of charism arose? It was the revolutionary awakening of the British working class. That's where you have to look at it. And clearly the fight for the rights of the working class was a fight. It was a means to an end. It wasn't an end in itself. You think that the cotton workers in Lancashire or the miners in Durham, which is simply interesting in risking their lives and transportation and everything else, simply to put across a bit of paper, then you're slowly mistaken. It was always seen as a means of a better life, of the overthrow of the conditions that they faced, which were terrible conditions of capitalism in effect. And the Chartist movement was a class conscious movement fighting for the better life, fighting for a revolutionary change. And that's what inspired millions of work. It's not simply the demands of the Charter. I think a Fraubidge Chartist put it quite equately when he said the Chart is not about fighting for bread, it's about roast beef, plum pudding, plenty of beer and work in three days a week. No, it was bound up to the social conditions of the working class. That's the way it was seen by the mass of people. I think what stands out for me there and something you just said is you have a rank-and-file Chartist, the Chartist worker talking about plum pudding, but also a three-day week. And today, I think it was maybe 2019, this was announced, that the leadership of the TUC announced that their aim was for a four-day working week for British workers within the next 100 years. It seems almost like we've gone backwards compared to what you just mentioned. And by the way, just to clarify something, you mentioned transportation before. It might not be clear to everybody listening what that actually means. That doesn't mean simply getting the train from Manchester to London, does it? No, no, no, no. I mean, the ruling class used vulnerable measures against the working class, which were defenceless. They tried to set up trade unions and they were banned. They tried to set up discussion circles, to discuss reform, democracy, the implications of the French Revolution, you name it. They were banned, they were illegal. And the desperation, you know, the working class chose different means to try and afford its agenda to escape from this nightmare of capitalist crisis. And therefore, that's the reason why it had revolutionary overtones, is because of the complete impasse and the crisis that the working class faced at that time. And it didn't come from nowhere either, because talking about the movement for democracy, as I suppose as a means to end, but also repression, obviously, there's the heritage of Peterloo as well, where demonstrators calling for the vote, maybe not the six-part points of the charter, but certainly the vote for working people were murdered in the streets. Are there other strands that you can discover in kind of the early 19th century lead up to this point of the, what was it called, propagation of the people's charter in the 30s? It's just to supplement the point about the repression against the working class. Again, it was, this was the norm, you know, the brutal repression of the working class and in any attempt to raise its voice or organize independently, you know, not just jailings, transpordation. It means you be sent to the penal colonies in Tasmania for several years. Many people didn't get there, because I think about 20% died on the journey of such an arduous journey, the rationing, the terrible conditions. And of course, the threat of capital punishment, people were hanged. They'd be hanged drawn and quartered, was still on the books. And the ruling classes, it wasn't a very nice, not the British ruling class, it was a very vicious ruling class and were prepared to use any measures in order to defend their privileges and defend their class rule. Of course, charters were born out of struggles of the working class. It means there was a struggle for trade unionism and they became revolutionary trade unions. They didn't make no bones about it. They were revolutionary trade unions in the early days. They had the Luddites who broke the machines because they were through desperation, trying to prevent unemployment and the cuts in wages and they lashed out, if you like, in that way to try and to protect themselves and their families. It was a turn to democratic reforms and trying to win the vote to find a way out in that way. And of course, at Peter Lozier, the workers were cut down in cold blood. But you had different movements arising, you know, your impact of the French Revolution, it was like an impact of the Russian Revolution in the 20th century. The American War of Independence, all these things fed into the democratic, if you like, rights of the working class, what they needed to seize power, to take power with. And of course, the ideas of socialism were born in this country. The ideas of Robert Owen, who was the first British socialist, were ideas which filled the charters movement as well. First of all, Owen's great service was a condemnation of capitalism and the ills of capitalism and offering a new way forward of a cooperative form of society where there was no private ownership. He was against private ownership. And these ideas of socialist ideas and the minds, particularly the advanced workers in Britain, everything fed in the fight against the new poor law, you know, the attempts of the government to force those that were in dire need and poverty into the workhouses. It's the only way they could get any form of relief was to work in a workhouse or breaking up stones and goodness as well, making soil and oak and on the treadmills and so on of these horrendous places. And there were movements against mass movements burnt down in the Midlands, in the North, they burnt down the workhouses. These were mass movements, not like harbours and people, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people were involved in a struggle at this stage or with different things which began to coalesce in these ideas of charters. And to be honest, the struggle against the workhouse reminds me a lot of the struggle against austerity today. In many ways, the austerity cuts against the working class are trying to make kind of being out of work and having to turn to benefits or any kind of support actually a fate worse than death in some respects and you see the desperation. So in that respect, there's a great deal of relevance in this period. You have this Victorian idea of the deserving poor then the un-derving poor, that's the whole point. And the measures they took were, well, you read Oliver Trist long character Dickens and you could see in there the monstrous conditions that they're working class and the poor sections live under lived under at that time and that's what produced the revolt in the working class. That's produced the changing consciousness of the working class. And I wanted to talk a bit more about the petition itself and well the charter itself mentioned six points to the charter. And do you mention in the book that Engels said that behind these six points, kind of as purely democratic as they seem on the surface, would be sufficient to overthrow the monarchy, the house of laws, basically an entire British state. So I think it would be good to maybe spend a bit more time on these. First of all, what were the six points? So one of them was a vote for all men over 21 of sound mind and non-punishment for a crime. So in some ways actually relatively backwards to what we have now, but by the stands of the time, a revolutionary demand. So the right to vote. He had the question of a secret ballot of payment of MPs, abolition of the property qualification for MPs, electoral districts or constituencies and also annual parliaments. That's the one they never, they refused to implement. That was the most dangerous in their point of view. They could live with the others because they had a means of manipulating public opinion. That was later on. But of course they fought against these demands. Why? Because of the pressures that exerted behind them. What stood behind them? And the ruling class knew. They feared charism like they feared Bolshevism in the 20th century. Why? Because they feared revolution. Because they knew that the charter's movement wasn't a movement that was going to be placated with a few reforms here and there. It was a building up of millions of workers who were demanding a fundamental change to their working conditions into their lives. And that posed a direct threat to the ruling class. And that's what they were terrified of, quite rightly so. Because that's how the working class learned through these events and through these struggles and this experience. They came to the realization then that capitalism, that the existence of that form of society they lived under, was the problem that had to be done away with and a rational form of society created in its place. And so, yeah, you see these six demands. But all the context that you've just talked about briefly is swelling behind it. And so you see this kind of mass power of the movement. In terms of one thing that I wanted to clear up is another thing that's very famous about charism that we're talking about, if we're talking about anything to do with charism, is that it took the form of a series of petitions to parliament, roles of signature, signatures petitioning for the charter, people's charter, the six points to become the law of the land. Now, those methods in themselves don't necessarily scream revolution. And of course the parliament rejected those petitions. What, you know, in what way can you call this movement of presenting big petitions revolutionary? Of course, the idea of a petition has been there for a long time in British history as in other countries. But the charists adopted this tactic and applied it in such a way as they'd never been applied before. The other petitions were generally local petitions about this or that problem, this or that issue. Now they took up, if like, the demands of power in a sense posing political power. And this petition wouldn't be a local petition. It would be the first time we have a national petition. So it was used as a means of going into every town, every village, every hamlet involving millions of workers, if like using this as a propaganda weapon to stir up and to galvanize the working class into struggle. So the petition was very, the means, if you like, was very advanced, very revolutionary, brought into being, I would say, brought into activity, millions of workers as a result. And of course, they looked to this idea, well, here's the voice of the people, this is the voice of the masses. And yet, you saw the way in which they were treated here, but it was contempt for a rotten parliament, a rotten regime, a rotten system. That's the way they looked upon it. And therefore, this petition was very valuable in mobilizing public opinion, the opinion of the working class against the system of society itself and a focal point in which to galvanize the strength of this movement, which was quite incredible, the very heroic revolutionary movement, in my opinion. And one point you draw out in the book is it wasn't just a petition. It wasn't a passive thing, almost like you sign up to a change.org petition online, which has its purposes, but it wasn't quite like that. We're talking about mass assemblies of workers and also the election of delegates who actually assembled in what they called a convention to kind of oversee the presentation of the petition. Would you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, so look, this period was burning with class struggle, should we say. I think the Hammond said it was, when you read this period, it's like you're reading a period about civil war. That's the kind of class battles and struggle, class against class, they used the words of Ernest Jones, the charges to leader. And we have to see the struggle in this kind of context. This movement actually, the charges movement, it arose in the small meeting in London. And yet from this very tiny meeting, it was like the spark that let the flame, which caused a massive blaze, if you like. That was the whole thing. And they, yeah, they become a mass movement, they needed to mobilize the masses. And therefore they called these mass rallies, mass movements everywhere. And you're not talking about 10,000 or 50, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of workers being mobilized into these demonstrations. I know we look at the Corbyn movement in the past period and even that, I think they would put the Corbyn movement into the shade. I mean in Cursal Moore, in the Manchester, I believe this, the meeting they had was 500, half a million workers who came from the factories after work, women, children, their families, turned out, of course, there's no microphones in those days, but these are held on hillsides, the site of these hillsides. And the auditory was such as to win the masses to this revolutionary overturning society. And through these mass meetings, they elected delegates to the convention, the Chartres convention. Of course, the word convention has a very revolutionary flavor to it, you know, as with the French Revolution and the French convention. And it was purposely chosen for that point of view. And delegates were elected from these mass meetings to this assembly, this, I call it, describe it as a, like a labor parliament or a workers parliament. It was an alternative government in that fact, which debated and discussed out the tactics and strategy of how to win the charter and how to change society. So, yes, it was a mass movement involved in this central focal point of a convention, a leadership, if you like, of the working class, which debated the way forward to secure the aims of the charter itself. And these delegates had to go back to the mass meetings as well. They had this democracy that was there in the movement. And they could be changed to say, if they were out the line or they weren't, you know, expressing the viewpoints of the masses sufficiently. So it was very democratic movement, you know, in that sense. And a very advanced movement, because within these conventions, they discussed, you know, revolutionary tactics, revolutionary strategy that they never discussed before in British history. You know, the question of power for the working class was posed for the first time ever, because they are the young, this is a young virgin working class in Britain. They haven't got the conservative ideas, you know, and baggage of the past. And they were prepared to look for any means that would secure their particular objectives. Of course, the ruling class would agree or opposed to that. And they did everything that they could do to know to defend their privileges. So it was a, that's why I give it, it's revolutionary overtones and its character. And it questions things that things had never been questioned before. And these are the, this is the change in consciousness is taking place in the masses and in the leadership of the chartist movement. And how they become, well, you know, there's debate between different trans trends within charitism itself between physical forced charitism and moral forced charitism as the way forward. So it was a, yeah, a workers parliament to find the way forward. I think this is really significant because just to try and picture it, I mean, if you're saying that there were 500,000 people listening to a single speech at Kersham or that's basic, that's roughly the entire membership of the Labour Party in a single place listening to one person talking about class against class, against class war effectively electing delegates to what you've described as a workers parliament. With kind of the delegates actually being accountable to the masses as well. I mean, this sounds, this sounds like the beginnings of workers power, really, of dual power in the country, even. And do you think that there is an analogy that can be drawn with, I mean, 1917, basically in the old Russian Congress of Soviets? Yes, within charitism, it's like an embryo of different movements, you know, of the working class, and they're feeling their way forward. And of course, that's why you get different parallels and similarities within other revolutionary tendencies and movements. But I mean, to give you the scale of it, you know, there's a quote by Fergus O'Connor, who was considered the main leader of charitism. And he said he addressed about a million people in the space of a week or so in relation to the mass meetings that he had addressed, a million people, given the fact that the population as a whole was about 15 million. You can imagine the scope of charitism that went, you know, everywhere, its tentacles everywhere, it affected everyone. And that's why it became a real mass movement. Yes, the convention, well, the convention itself, it met its first time in the beginning of 1839, was certainly parallel, it got parallels with like a Soviet in so far as, is the working class tendencies are there present, debating and discussing out the key questions of the day and how they can be achieved. And it's a remark where you listen to the, if you read the debates that took place there, they're on extremely high level.  People who joined the movement were dedicated to fight for the interests of working people. They were prepared to make the greatest sacrifices ever. And they connected with the working class, that's the point about it. And the more they connected, the more militant they became, the more they spoke to the workers, the more militant the workers became, it was like a dialectical process going on here changing the chart is leaders urged the masses to be armed to get arms. This is not going to be a tea party. They said you need arms to confront the British state. And they did arm and the arms even in the mass meetings. I know that the Reverend who led Stevenson, who led the main demonstration towards Kershal Moore and spoke there. He called not just for the arming of the working class, but appealed to everybody there to fire their arms to discharge what they had. You know, what kind of arms have you got? He raised their hand, they fight a few shots. And then they said, well, is that all you got? And then more. This was stirring up the ferment in the masses. They were responding to him. He was responding to them. And all the chart challenges were leaders were doing this. They were connecting with the real movement of the working class, a militant revolutionary movement in the working class, which is quite an important point, I think you mentioned earlier about moral force and physical force. Obviously, what you're describing here is part of the physical force wing. But what I think is so important is that today in Britain, a picture of British workers, in this case, English workers, further firing arms into the sky and basically threatening the government with, you know, forceable overthrow. It's completely alien to the picture of the British and particularly English working class that's painted. And something I've encountered, you know, friends, comrades in the movement, who felt a certain like demoralisation, following the 2019 election results saying, Oh, is it, is it something about, you know, that the French have this revolutionary tradition? Why is it the English are, you know, I don't know, so passive? I think one thing that I found so inspiring about the book and about what you're explaining here is that just completely, it does away with that it exposes it as a complete fiction, because this is our history, isn't it, as British workers? And well, as workers generally, but there's British British workers, this is our history. What one thing that I wanted to ask about in particular, as you've talked about, you mentioned moral force and physical force. Could you briefly explain what the two different positions were? So presumably what united them was both wanted the people's charter to become law of the land. That's why they were in the same movement. What divided them? And what was the balance of, you know, the relationship of forces between those two camps? Well, originally, as I said, the Charter's movement started off in a very small way. And those who dominated it at that time, you could consider were moral force Charters. So they believed that they could persuade, you know, people and persuade the government through tomorrow persuasion, you know, through argument and so on and so forth. And if you like it, there were a bit of, if you want to put it that way, a bit of a reformist way, you know, that, you know, gradually, although I would say they are far great, they had more courage than the days of reformists. I think they're on a different level. But nevertheless, that's the kind of idea, the idea of persuading people to change their minds and so on and so forth and cool down the language. You don't need all this rhetoric and so on and so forth. And they hope that they could, through that, those means they could persuade the ruling class in order to introduce these particular measures. On the other hand, you had the physical force Charter which grew in number with the growth of the movement itself. As the movement grew into a mass movement of working class people in the North Wales, everywhere else, then it took on a far more revolutionary connotation and with it, the domination of the physical force Charter swing. And they had very, their language is very violent. They didn't believe in, in, of course, their, their argument was to the working class, their argument was to persuade the working class to challenge for power. You know, they would present the petition, but they didn't have much faith that the ruling class of Britain were going to grant those concessions. And therefore they said, well, if they don't grant, then what are we going to do? Are we just going to sit back and just talk about it? And they said, no, we need to challenge them even with force of arms, if need be, in order to ensure that the Charter is successful. But the, these two wings, if you like, the Charter, this physical force Charter became much, much, much more powerful as events, you know, within a couple, within a relatively short period of time, they became the dominant force of the movement. But they did unite the movement under the slogan of, you know, peaceably, if we may, forcibly, if we must. And that kind of, you could read into that whatever you wanted to, you know, and, and that's what happened. But there's clearly the more the proletarian base of the party grew, of Charterism grew, the more physical force Charterism dominated the whole scene. In other words, the revolutionary side, if you like, as opposed to Reformism, it was a revolutionary side, a proletarian side that dominated Charterism. And that's the thing that's buried completely, the histories, the so-called histories, which I don't want to mention this. And when they talk about revolution, well, it didn't happen. You know, it was, it was utopian then, and, and, and by reference, it's utopian now. That's the basic idea. Rather than understanding, there was a revolutionary movement. Why did it fail? And there are lessons to be learned in order to be successful revolution for the future. That's the way you should look at it. But over there, it's out to the question. But you mentioned, you mentioned lessons, and you mentioned that, although, by the summer of 1839, the physical force Charters were basically in charge. And this is a movement of certainly over a million people who signed this petition. And yet you don't see, the Charter doesn't become law over the land, and you don't see the successful overturn of the British state. And I suppose it's a bit of a big question as to why did all this happen. But what, with the convention specifically, the petition was, of course, rejected by Parliament, which probably came as a surprise to nobody. What, briefly, what happened next? Did they, did they try to launch an attempt to overturn the government or what? Well, at this time, they discussed what should be done. And if you like, the left wing of the movement, but for the idea that there needed to be an insurrection against the government, you couldn't, there was no way out. They weren't going to grant anything.  And so very quickly, the moral force Charter, as many from Birmingham resigned at this stage, not all of them, but a large proportion of them resigned. And the debate in the convention was about the means. A general strike was the first one. And it's idea was a, I'd been born in Britain in 1830s. It arose particularly from a man, I called Benbo, William Benbo, who for the first time raised this idea of, because it's like capitalism, it's emerged in Britain for the first time, there was a new working class, the first working class in the world. And therefore, these ideas were new, a general strike was new. And it came, it was raising a sort of peculiar way, the idea of a holy month, you know, let's, let's go on strike for a whole month, and that should be sufficient to collapse the regime. And these ideas were vividly discussed and supported. And that's the point, they were supported. The idea of a general strike in 1839 was supported by the assembly, by the convention.  Of course, they were, they were a side show because they were, it was, it's a handful of people voted for a handful, a handful of people. But in the, in the, in the actual general election itself, where there was hustings and meetings and so on, you were able to put forward your own candidates. And the chartists, they said that the charter should put forward our candidates. And everywhere they did this, they won by, by show of hands. But the thing is, then people who came, they didn't have the vote. They came and you're not talking about 10 people or 15 people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people came to these meetings. And they had, they could vote that with their hands, a show of hands. But of course, it didn't come because they didn't have the real vote. And therefore, you know, the, those who were defeated, that is the Liberals and the Tory candidates would say, we want the official vote. Now we don't, yes, we want to, and they would get the official vote. They would get elected. But the idea was they should have, they should win their votes all over the country. And they should march on London. There should be a million people in London marching on London. They, they, they compared it like the Saint-Culottes in, in, in, in the French Revolution, in order to be led by the, by an armed force of, of chartists involved in a million people marching on parliament. And if parliament didn't disperse then, they should be caught and thrown into the Thames. That was their, their, their idea. But these are the vivid ideas, but they supported a general strike. But unfortunately it didn't work out in practice, you know, they, they, there was confusion in, in, in, in the chart as leadership. And those who, you know, some people opposed it, that there, there was a lot of twin and froing and so on. And as a result, 1939, there was supposed to be a general strike, but for the 12th of August, it was called for, but this was basically called off and, and, and made into a two day strike, which, which, you know, didn't affect anything really. It didn't make any, any difference. But, and it was a bit of a letdown. And people started to draw radical conclusions. In fact, if a general strike is not going to be called, then we got to take things into our own hands. And the idea of an insurrection was born under those circumstances. Right. And of course, there was an attempted insurrection in 1839 as well in, in November approaching another anniversary of the new, famous Newport Rising. And so was this, sometimes it's difficult looking at it to see whether this was the, the kind of the thwarted beginning of a nationwide insurrection or just an expression of frustration after a defeat. Do you, do you think it's possible to choose between those things or do you think it's a combination of both? And I mean, first of all, what happened in Newport for people who aren't familiar very briefly? Well, in Newport on the 3rd of November, there was an attempt, an attempted insurrection. Well, there was an insurrection. It involved about 20, 30,000 colliers and steel workers, iron workers, who marched to take, to, to seize the town of Newport. And Newport was a very important sort of hub, if you like, for industry and trade and so on at that time. But the main aim was to secure the release of a Chartist leader of Henry Vincent, who was, who had been arrested. He was a key leader of the, of the Welsh Chartists. And he was arrested and imprisoned in Newport Prison. And therefore the plan was that, I get the, I would, the plan was to, to, to seize the town, release him, but it would be, it would be the spark for a, for a will, for a, for a national insurrection to overthrow the government. That's the, that's the essence of it. And there were plans afoot in other areas in, in, in, in Derbyshire, in, in Yorkshire, in, in order to carry through a revolutionary insurrection in these, in these particular areas too. But the plans obviously were kept secret because the, the movement was, was penetrated by all sorts of informers and spies and so on and so forth. And the government was prepared to use these kinds of methods to arrest people and imprison them. So they tried to keep it as much as possible under, under wraps, but at the same time, yes, I mean, this was the first major confrontation, armed confrontation with the British state, the biggest confrontation, I would say, on, on, on home soil of any of the British government is incredible movement. It was defeated. There was tactics that they employed. Well, I don't go the ins and outs. It's very difficult to ins and outs, given the, given the time we've got, but they tried to release certain charters who've been arrested in the, in the Westgate Hotel in the centre of Newport. But the, the troops, their troops waiting on, and they, they opened fire, fire on, on the demonstrate this on the, on the, on the charters, and they killed I think 2022, the most probably like to have died. And they should have waited really and prepared the ground more probably if you were from a tactical point of view. But they rushed us to release their, their, their comrades would have been arrested. I suppose you say that this was the basically the first time this had been tried. They had nothing to go on. They were, they were pioneers, weren't they? They were trying to overthrow the first capitalist state in history the first time ever. So I guess in hindsight, we can see the mistakes, but it must have been really impossible to penetrate that fog at the time and give them that credit. Yes. I mean, look, you could see the charters were giants. And so far as they, they were, they were the pioneers. They, they did, they had little to go on. Of course, behind them, they had the French Revolution and the American Revolution. But as far as the workers revolution was concerned, there was no, no precedent at all. And they were, they were feeling their way forward. And they took very bold steps. That's the point about it. They were, they did get quite close, I would say. And you look at the, the writings of the ruling class of the period, they were terrified that there would be a successful revolution in Britain at that time. And they, they, they, they mobilized the, the military against the workers, you know, and they mobilized the state apparatus, particularly against the workers at every point. But the workers fought back in an extremely courageous fashion. And there were, you know, the leaders, yeah, they may have, they had faults, I could say that, but good God, they had courage, they had the land, they had the guts to carry through, through the measures of this nature. It's a pity that some of the, you know, I would say there's some of the present daily beliefs that could do with a bit of the, the fire, if you like, of the, of the chartists. And clearly they, they, they meant business, but unfortunately they didn't have a completely worked out strategy or idea. They didn't know how fully how to, to, to use the potential they had in their hands to carry through to a conclusion. That was the sad point about it. But they tried, they tried and tried. Yeah. And they, they tried again, there was, we don't really have time to go into in detail, but we, you already brought up this question, the general strike. Okay, it didn't happen in 1839, but effectively a national, political general strike did take place in 1842, didn't it, that it became known as the plug plot. And I, sometimes the way people treat this when it is talked about is it was kind of just an accident really, or that it was about wages. Would you agree with that assessment, or do you, do you see this as, as a strike for the charter? Well, look, there's a very important episode in the history of charters and, you know, and what happened was that the charters were conducting a lot of propaganda in the factory areas and so on as before, particularly in Manchester, around the Manchester area. And many word charters, isn't it? It was a mass movement. But of course, the initial, if I spark for the movement was a cut of 25% in wages of the cotton workers. And that, and that, if like was the first, the first outbreak of the strike. But very quickly, when they, you know, very, very quickly, I mean, literally, as they marched out of the gates, they cheered for the charter, for Fergus Tokona, the leader of charters, of the Northern Star, the Charter's paper. It was a Charter's general strike. There's no two ways about it, but it did come from below, but it had been also fed into by the Charter's propaganda itself of the time. And of all the main speakers, I think the recorded speakers, about 45, 46 recorded speeches at the time, every single one of them, apart from two, were given by charters. And when the workers came together in these mass strike meetings, they pledged themselves to the Charter. When there was a workers trade union conference called by the, in Manchester of the trades, they debated what was the real aim of the strike. And the vast majority, the vast majority, there was a strike to bring about the Charter. Of course, they're in favour of wages, wage increases as well, but the Charter, the Charter, that was it. It's worth pointing out, isn't it, as you've already explained, that to say we're going out on strike indefinitely for the Charter doesn't simply mean we'd like to vote. This is basically a strike for workers' power, isn't it? This is a strike to change the state and basically introduce workers' democracy and workers' control over society. Well, you know, workers learn through experience. And the strike itself is an embryo revolution. In fact, you know, workers don't go to work. This is not the normal situation. And not only that, it was a strike that spread. It spread throughout the whole of Manchester, Lancashire, Lancashire, went up to Scotland, down into Wales, down into Cornwall. It was a political strike. This was an incredible event. The first general strike in the history of the working class, a political general strike. And they learned, as you would find, in the base, every single day, the workers were learning and learning and feeling their power. And they set up committees. And the committees were able to decide what work was going to be done, what wasn't going to be done. Employers that had come to the committee to ask what rights they had and what they didn't have and what they could do or what they couldn't do. This is workers' power in action. And as a matter of fact, the basis, if it had been pulled together, yes, of a workers' state. But that's the end. If everything is in embryo, the embryo is the development. What it needed is to be linked up nationally. And the chart is leaders needed to play a key role. But they didn't fully understand. They didn't call the strike. They didn't fully appreciate it. They give it support. It is true. But they didn't really fully understand what was in their hands, the potential in their hands.  People are going to be starved back for work, to work. And an opportunity which could have been there, it was there for the taking, was missed, unfortunately. Again, it's because of the naivety. I mean, Marxism wasn't around then, scientific socialism wasn't around then. They were feeling their way. They did very well, but they didn't go far enough. We have to understand that. But it showed the potential that was there and the potential movement of the British working class to carry out a revolution was certainly there in 1842. There's no two ways about that. Now, you mentioned Marxism wasn't there. And yeah, as you've already said, Chartism predates Marxism, at least to the most part. So just briefly, and this is that we're already running out of time. So just this is kind of the last kind of thought that I'd like us to explore before we sadly have to end the podcast. What is the relationship between Chartism and Marxism? Are they basically just two discrete blocks in the movement? Or is there an interconnection between the two? Well, firstly, Marxism is a science. And you could say that Marxism was a combination of the best ideas, the most brilliant ideas of the time. It came from German philosophy, British bourgeois economics, classical economics, and French socialism. Those are the three routes, if you like, of Marxism. But on top of that, you must say that Marxism is a development from the experience of the working class itself. Marx developed his ideas on the state, for instance, with an understanding of what happened in France and the French in the commune of 1871. Engels was a Chartist. Engels was here in 1843, met with the Chartist leaders. He joined the Chartist movement. He wrote a book on the conditions of the working class in England in 1844. He observed how the working class moved, how it developed, consciousness changed in the working class. And then with those things, you drew lessons from that, which is Marxism. Marxism draws out the lessons into theory and understanding, not just one episode, but from all over, but nevertheless, Chartism, at that stage, was a school for the working class. And therefore, it was a very rich experience for Marx and Engels, who gave support to the Chartist movement and hope to guide the chart, which he did through their connections with Julian Hani and Ernest Jones, which would be the leaders of the movement. They gave it a very revolutionary socialist outlook. Unfortunately, this was about 1850, where you had the decline of Chartism. That's the point in the emergence and development of British capitalism, which cut across the entire process. But nevertheless, it just showed that Marxism was able to connect with the key layers of the Chartist movement. They learned from it. After all, Julian Hani published the Communist Manifesto in his paper, The Red Republican in 1850. Many conversations and it was in solidarity with the international and so on and so forth. And therefore, there are lessons to be learned that the British workers instinctively came very close to Marxism, the labour theory of the valley, the class struggle, the nature of the state, and so on. All these things were being drawn in Britain at this particular time. It was about a call done for these ideas, a school for these ideas. And therefore, this helped, of course, Marx and Engels to refine and develop their ideas as well. There's no doubt about it. So rather than saying, Marxism is alien to Britain and foreign creed and all the rest is just not the nonsense. It actually, merely the elements were born in the British experience as a matter of fact. And therefore, you know, and what we should understand, it says that Chartism was a tremendous revolutionary movement. But what it really lacked was that, was that scientific, if like, program of Marxism to guide you through to its logical conclusion that came too late. And therefore, we could say that we stand on the shoulders of the great pioneers of the Chartist movement, no doubt about it, all their revolutionary traditions and initiatives. But Marxism gives us that extra edge in which to learn the lessons and be able to understand how to carry through and bring about the fundamental chance changes society that the Chartist wanted. In other words, socialism in Britain and socialism internationally. Thanks very much, Rob. I think that this is an appropriate and inspiring place to finish. Sadly, we have to finish anyway for lack of time. But it sounds to me like there are a lot of lessons contained in this experience of Chartism and in the book itself. And I would certainly urge I've had the opportunity to read and I certainly recommend any Labour movement activist in this country, certainly any Marxist in this country and abroad, get a copy, you can get a copy for £12 now from Wellread and give it a read, because I think there's a lot of experiences and lessons buried in that we need to, we need to unearth and reintroduce into the Labour movement. So I hope you've all enjoyed the podcast. We're going to have to leave you now. But until next time, see you later.


I recently got back from film photographying my way across the south of Spain, the Andalusia region actually, and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my entire life. I'm crying right now, just thinking about it. That's why I can't see my face. I didn't really know what to expect beforehand, but to be honest, it was hard to put the camera down when I was there. I shot like over 30 rolls of film, which if you connected end to end would probably reach to Uranus or something, the planet, not the other thing. And yeah, I totally made up that distant statistic, but I don't know, it's probably true. I've only processed and scanned like 10% of the work so far, but I can already say I've produced some of the best photos of my career there, not that that's a very high bar. Anyway, it's time to put my head down and wrap up the rest of the work, but I'm excited to share this one to you in 2024.


Johnny Dollar. Hi, Johnny. Johnny, Les Walters at World Mutual. Les, how are you? I'm ready to blow a gasket. Why? What's the matter? Troubled. $300,000 worth. It's a lot of trouble. Well, I'll pick you up at your place in, say, 20 minutes. All right, but what's it all about? Les, murder, burglary, arson, embezzlement? I'll tell you when I see you. Well, give me a hint at least. Some possible angle to mull over. All you have to mull over is what your commission may be on 300 Gs. Okay, I don't mind if I do. I'll be there. G.S. Radio Network brings you Mandel Kramer and the exciting adventures of the man with the action-tact expense account. America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator, yours truly, Johnny Dollar. Expense account submitted by Special Investigator Johnny Dollar to World Mutual Insurance Company Home Office, Hartford, Connecticut. Following is an account of expenses incurred during my investigation of the deadly crystal matter. By the time I'd shaved, showered, dressed, and poured myself a cup of coffee, Les Walters was pounding on my door. Coming, Les, coming. And a popular morning to you. Well, you have to sound so all-fired, cheerful. Oh, why not? Come on in. Join me a cup of coffee. No, no, no, no time. Not if you're going to make the next plane to New York. Oh, I am. You are. Why? I told you. $300,000. The company doesn't want to have to pay out. For what? Look, will you quit stalling? Let's go. Came back from New York? Yes, yes. Oh, rather of Bronxville. One of the suburbs. Yes, I know the town. Well, that's where Mrs. Gurney Dalrymple Weatherwell lives. And who's she? Oh, an exceptional character at Weatherwell's. What is it? 1263 Birchbrook Road. You got it? 1263 Birchbrook Road. I got it. Now, tell me, what's happened? Ah, the old old caper. Servants they offer old lady all alone with $300,000 worth of jewels. You mean she kept that kind of stuff around the house? She kept it on her. Yeah. 24 hours a day even when she went to bed. To a reminder of the old days when she didn't have a sense, she says.  Boy, she must be. Yeah, well, the only time she didn't wear it was when she took a bath. So, what happened? She took a bath. You may think you're kidding, but that's it. She left the stuff on a dressing table in her bedroom. By the time she got out of the tub, threw in a dressing gown, walked back into the bedroom, the stuff was gone. And absolutely no sign of where and how and by only. The police have any ideas? No, she won't let them near the place. Why not?  She's a character, all right.  She wouldn't even give me any details beyond what I told you.  Well, never heard. Now, here, here's a list of everything. Watch it, watch it, lad. It's close. Crazy woman driver. Quite a doll, though. It'll be a pleasure to be run down. Yeah, sure. Well, it's not me. Anyhow, let's see, here's the list.  You see it there? Wow. Twenty-three carats. I wouldn't let that out of my sight even when I took a shower. Yeah. Now, when did it happen, Lest? You shouldn't have asked. Two weeks ago today. What? Yeah. And she only just now, notifying you? Yeah. Yeah. And she won't let the police take her hand, huh? No, I told you, John. Yes, you told me Lest, but if you ask me, there's something very, very fishy about all this. One, 1045, Plain Fairton, New York, and aboard the plane in the seat right next to me. Yes, the girls who had nearly run us down on the way to the airport. She was late 20s, I'd say, very petite and cute.  They'd be familiar, too, but not exactly sociable. I told you, Mr.... What do you say your name is? Dollar, Johnny Dollar. Oh, yes. And yours? Lyndon Peters, if it makes any difference. Well, of course it does, because Lyndon...  And that's that. Now, excuse me. I'll tell you what, Lyndon. I'll have him send you a written apology, okay? It won't be necessary. Forget it. Now, if you'll excuse me. Forget that somebody as pretty as you are might have been hurt because of his... I said, excuse me. I'd like to read. If you don't mind. Ouch. Your $50 deposit on a rental car. An hour later, I pulled up in front of the old mansion at 1263 Birchbrook Road in the beautiful suburb of Bronx. And Mrs. Guernay and Darrymple Weatherwell was a character. Mr. Walter told you rightly, Mr. Dollar. Like today, it was a servant's day off. I was completely alone here. I was taking my tubs at my precious jewelry store. And no sign of anyone having broken in, Mrs. Weatherwell? None whatsoever. I see. Now, tell me, who else has a key to the house beside the servant? No one, and it was not they who did it. Well, can you be sure of that? Absolutely certain. I won't even permit you're questioning them about it. Any family then? Well, since my husband died, I've lived here entirely alone. Except for the servants. It was not they. Well, you didn't really answer my question about family. Well, come on at the door, Mr. Dollar. Yes, I know. But before you answer it... You may answer it. What? I told you no servants today, so you will answer the door. Go on, young man. Go on. All right, all right. Here, Charlie says... Lynn. Oh, here. Would you take this along with your leave? Wait a minute, Lynn. Who's Lynn? You are. At least that's the name... Well, what is it? What is it, young man? Put it... What's that package you have there? Is that for me? Yes, yes, it is. Here. Now, just a minute. I think... This is what I think it is. Oh, wait a minute. The girl out there who brought it, would you just stand aside one moment? Don't bother, Mr. Dollar. You see? That's right. All of them. I knew Charlie wouldn't say that. Oh, wait a minute. Listen to me. That girl... The only thing I'm interested in is if my jewels are back. There. See? Aren't they lovely? Yes, they're lovely. But if you'll let me by, please, so I can see what happened there. Here. While I hold it in place, the necklace for me. Go on, fix it. Okay, okay. There you are. Kale, am I going out? Thank you. Now that she's gone. I have my jewels back. The case is closed and I have no for the need of you. Goodbye. The case is closed, hmm? Yes. Wait. That's what you think. There was something fishy about this case. Now I was sure of it. I was also sure there was no point trying to get anywhere with Mrs. Weatherwell. So there wasn't much to go on, except the girl, Lynn Peters, if that really was her name. And there had been something vaguely familiar about her, but from where? I drove back to New York to 18th Precinct Police Headquarters in my old pal, Lieutenant Randy Singer. Lynn Peters. No, no, it doesn't ring a bell with me, Johnny. What have you got on it? Accessory to a jewelry, a heist up in Bronxville, I think. Well, what did the police think up there? Randy, they don't even know the stuff was taken. They don't? And now that it's all been returned. Returned, by who? This girl, this Lynn Peters. What if the stuff is back? Well, I worry about it. I want to know why it was brought back. And if it was intended to be returned, why it was stolen in the first place. So the answer is to find the girl. I wish I could help you, Johnny, but I ain't never even heard of her. So how's about forgetting her and treating me to a nice dinner on that expensive kind of yours, huh? Randy, how about a look at your mug book, hmm? Brooke, we've got a stack of them this high, Johnny. We'll take it two weeks. Just leave me to them. But you're not even sure she's from here in New York. Randy, listen to me. More than any other city in the world. This town puts a kind of stamp on its people. Not just the way they talk, though. New Yorkers do have a kind of a dialect for all their own, but there's more than that. It's the way they walk, the way they dress, the way a girl uses makeup, the way she reacts when you try to make a pass at her. Oh, no, I get it. You're a real reason for wanting to find this day. Oh, come on now. Stop. The fact remains that if somebody asked me, I'd say right off that she's a New Yorker. Let me see the mugbooks. But even if she is a local, she wouldn't be in one of them unless she's been on the plotter. And from what little you seem to know about her, and only the fact, she happened to return some stolen goods, without even a charge against her on this particular job, and with only your suspicion that she might be involved. Okay, Johnny, just follow me. Present 15 minutes later, it was 4 a.m. and I was still pouring over the mugbook. And Andy was back on duty and shelling a mug of hot coffee at me. Oh, come on, Johnny. Give up, will you? Nope. But even if you find her, you've got nothing on her. And from what you've told her... All right, all right. So I'm stepping. But until I figure out what this cock-eyed caper is all about. But don't just stand there, Andy. Give me a hand. Me? I don't even know what she looks like. All right. She looks a little like this one. Only the eyes are different. And a bit like this one. Only she's smaller. And this one here, a little only darker here. And much cuter. Cuter. Ha! Did you run a check on that name, Lynn Peters? Like a darn fool right after I locked you in here last night. Nothing, huh? Nothing. Nothing? Hey! What? Look, here she is. I knew I'd find her. I knew it, Randy. And look, look. Her name is Ruth Ballochet. I thought you said her name was Lynn Peters. Did I say it was her right name? Okay, okay. So it's Ruth Ballochet. But what? You know her? Sure. The quick dip we called her. Her first match at your pick pocket years ago. All right then. But not anymore, Johnny. So don't you make any trouble with her. Ruth's clean these days. She is, huh? Well, we'll see. And the address? Yeah. 2120 West 94. Johnny Dollar. Mm-hmm. Hi, Lynn. Or is it really Ruth? Ruth? Lynn? Aren't you making some mistake? And I don't say you don't recognize me this time. I've never seen you before in my life. Who are you and what do you want? Are you kidding? I am not. Who is it you wish to see? My cute little seatmate. I'm a plane down from Hartford yesterday. You. Me? And don't try to tell me you're not the one. The one who gave me the name of Lynn Peters. It's only it's really Ruth Ballochet. I'm sorry, mister. I never heard of either of them. Now, if you take your foot out of the door. Now, just a minute. What is this? Some kind of a racket. What if you don't think I can scream loud enough for that cop in the corner to hear me? Will you listen to me for a minute? No. The same one Mrs. Weatherwell has used. Charlie. Charles. So maybe he was the key to all this. The rest of the day I watched the place hoping he'd appear. Nothing. Nor the next day. Or the next. Then it hit me. Item three, a dollar twenty for a call to Les in Hartford. Where have you been, Johnny?  Just answer my question, Les. Mrs. Weatherwell's beneficiary? Yes. Only one. Her stepson, son of the man who died, left her widow. What's his name? And is it at the informal notice of her death? All right, Les. What's his name? Uh, Charlie. You know where I can find him. All right. Little information. You, with that ridiculous talk about a plane from Hartford. Where is he? Charlie Weatherwell. Charlie? Charlie, don't. Don't worry. But here, you keep the gun on him just in case. Sure. See, though? Told you he'd be back. Did you fix the hypo for him? Right here, baby. One shot of this and you'd be out for at least five days. Now pull up his sleeve. Sure.  No, it won't kill him. I didn't study chemistry for nothing. All righty then. Here now. Intramuscular. So the effect will be slow and will last. There. And by the time he comes out of this, you and I'll have the insurance and the ruby and be on the other side of the Atlantic. Now, let's get out of here. I don't know if the punk who did it has a gun. It's smart to play possum. The only thing that worried me was that injection in the muscle of my left arm. The minute they left, I sterilized the blade of my pocket knife with a match made a deep cross cut through the needle mark and squeezed until my fingers were sore. It must have done the trick. Although I felt giddy for a while, I didn't pass out. Item four, two bucks at a nearby saloon or a slug of brandy. Item five, $20 for some work on the arm by a doctor who stops asking questions only after I showed him my credentials. Then I drove back to Brownsville. Dr. Harmon Barley and you, sir? Johnny Dollar. Oh, yes. Yes, Dollar. I've heard of you. Come in. How is she, Doctor? She's still alive? Yes, but in spite of all we're doing for her, she is. Well, maybe you're doing wrong. Big pardon? Where is she? Upstairs. I've called in a couple of specialists for consultation. Just tell me this. Is she wearing a necklace with a ruby pendant? An almost orange-colored ruby that was stolen temporarily? Yes, she is, but why? Then come on. Get out of the country with not only the insurance, but the ruby, Charlie said. Charlie? Ruby? Yes, that means he made a substitute for the real one after he stole it from her before he got the stuff back to her via the girlfriend. Mr. Dollar, just... Which way now? Uh, uh, second door on the right. All right, come on. Put a mark on her chest. With a so-called ruby and that pendant rest, and it was the only sign. But it was enough to convince the two specialists. They immediately began treatment for one of the most subtle and fiendish poisons known to man. Then some 36 hours later, after she'd passed the crisis... Yes, Mr. Dollar, that cantankerous old patient of mine. Well, I must... Patient of ours now, Dr. Briley. I stand corrected, Dr. Radford. And that goes for Dr. Wilson, too. Anyhow, she's going to be all right. Good. How do we have a breather, Mr. Dollar? Tell us. What in the world they've alleged to believe that this sudden, almost violent deterioration of the red corpuscles in her blood was caused by potassium paradigmate? Doctor, a couple of months ago, in one of our western states, a young student made up some jewelry out of various crystals that he'd put together in a laboratory. It was written up in the press. Oh, yes, yes, I remember that. And so do I. Now, as you mentioned it, but there was quite a fear over the fact that some of the crystals that looked so like jewels were actually deadly poisoned. Yes, and that contact with human tissue for any length of time. Yes, yes. The very symptoms that Mrs. Weatherwell was baffling us with until you came. That's right. So, and I heard him say that he had the ruby. He? The one who did this? Yes, when he said he had the ruby. And that meant the real one. I figured he must have substituted one of these deadly crystals in the pendant on her necklace. And you were right. But wait, you know the name of this man? I certainly do. Tanker's old bitty's recovery was complete. I must admit, a little short of miraculous. I went back to my apartment, made a call to Les Walters. Got a few hours of badly needed sleep. Then the next morning joined Les at his office. Yes, Johnny, it took a little finagling, but the item appeared in this morning's Hartford current. Now the New York paper's got it too. Good, good, Les. So the word is odd that Mrs. Gurney Dalrymple Weatherwell has died. Tomorrow, of course, there'll be a retraction. Of course. Well, where is he, Les? I thought you said that 15 minutes after the news got out, we... Johnny, he has to have time to get here. So, I'd say that he ought to appear... Yes, Miss Mandeville? Uh, Mr. Weatherwell is here, Mr. Walters. Oh, send him in. Right on cue, do you suppose? Mr. Walters, my name is Charles Weatherwell. I'm beneficiary of my stepmother's insurance, and as I understand it, to be paid to me immediately and with a... With a... Mm-hmm. Yes, Mr. Weatherwell, meet Johnny Dalrymple. Oh, uh, we've met. Hi, Charlie. What's the matter? How do you get here? What is it? Some kind of a trick? Oh, and before I forget it, Mr. Weatherwell, there was a... Call for you a couple of minutes ago. Call? For me? Yes. Your stepmother. Want to return it? Here, you can use this phone. No. No, she's dead. Oh, you saw that erroneous news report. No. It's true, it has to be. Why, because you poisoned one? No. Of course not. You mean yes, don't you? It's a trick. It's a trick. Charlie. But you won't get away with it. Put that gun away. No.  Not today, Charlie. All right. All right. It's all okay, folks. Everything's under control. Just a little argument in here, and Mr. Dollar has settled it. Quite satisfactorily. May Ruth Valaché had made the mistake of waiting for Charlie outside in the car. No. She'll have her day in court too. Oh, and the original ruby, the real one, we found sold into the lining of Charlie's coat. Expense account total? Well, just for kicks, why don't we call it a hundred bucks? Yours truly, Johnny Dollar. Here is our star to tell you about next week's story. Next week? I want all of you to be sure and listen. You may be sorry if you miss it. I call it the case of the tip-off matter. So tune in, won't you? No, it's truly Johnny Dollar. If you drive a car, remember this. Almost anywhere in the country where you see the Sinclair sign, you can save up to four cents a gallon on gasoline by using Sinclair Dino. That's because in three out of five cars, regular price Sinclair Dino matches the performance of expensive premium gasoline, costing up to four cents more a gallon. And by Sinclair Dino Gasoline by Jack Johnstone, produced and directed by Fred Hendrickson. Johnny Dollar is played by Mandel Kramer, also featured in our cast for Carl Frank, Olive Deering, Elspeth Eric, Sam Gray, Casey Allen, Bean Carlton, and Rene Santoni. Music supervision by Ethel Huber, sound patterns by Walter Otto. Technical supervision by Larry Soler. Be sure to join us next week, same time, same station for another exciting story of yours truly Johnny Dollar.


So the idea for building the National Museum has existed for years and years, really starting in 1814 with the idea that Congress called for the service departments to maintain their flags and their precious artifacts. So developing an exhibit like this requires a lot of historic research of photographs, what type of barbed wire to use, or what type of fence posts to use. All these details need to be correct and accurate in order to give the visitor a more interactive experience. When the visitor walks through, they feel like they're walking through the battlefield. So the visitor experiences some very unique aspects of the architecture of the facility itself. On the outside, you'll see the stainless steel. That represents the strength of the Army. You see the tower with the sixth floor with an illuminated lantern representing a beacon of safety and security. As you enter the lobby, you continue to march in with the soldiers through the pylons. We have illuminated, beautiful illuminated campaign streamers above. We have a colored Army emblem, 22 feet in diameter in the center of the lobby floor. And then as you take in the lobby and you learn about the campaigns and the battles associated with those that the Army has fought in, you start to notice that there's points to different areas of the museum. So these transition points, beautiful illuminated wood and light tells you that you're going into a different part of the museum. Another unique component of the museum is the experiential learning center. Here's where educators provide different types of G-STEM activities for children and adults of all ages to engage with so you can learn how to build a bridge or look at the medical advancement that the Army has done over time. It gives more education focused way of teaching the history and heritage of the Army. But this is a home for our soldiers. This is a gathering place. This is a place for soldiers, past and present veterans to bring their families, to bring their friends, to be able to showcase where they served and what they did and be able to tell that story. To be able to be part of telling the Army's story is a tremendous honor for me. To be part of that for someone to learn about something that they didn't learn about before and recognize the role the Army has played in our history is truly amazing. We have no place that tells the comprehensive story of the American soldier. We tell it through the eyes and voices of our soldiers of all eras and we tell it from the very beginning of the early militia to current days as we open this museum that we become such a touch point, such an asset for the Army to use in our relationship with American society.