THERE ARE THOSE WHO SING

(for William Martin, 1925-2010)

There are those who sing,

poets

with the breath of thrushes;

who craft songs

from out of their deep roots,

whose verse roars

with the sea

and the sky

and the pain of the land.

In the cathedral

of their hearts,

their tunes rise up

and fill the heavens

with flocks of words.

They are few

and far between,

these fliers

of lyrics.

Above plodders

and traipsers

of verse,

they reach for real stars,

pluck at galaxies

and dreams

of word symphonies,

anthems

that soar for centuries.

William, my friend,

you were 

one of these,

a fatherer of folk hymns,

a Durham choirman,

singing quarryman,

carving out poems 

with his pick and soul.

On a piano keyboard

of a dictionary,

you composed

a music festival 

of passionate poetry. 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

  

GRONINGEN/NEWCASTLE LITERARY TWINNING CELEBRATION

Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong and folk musician Gary Miller are back in Newcastle's twin city of Groningen at the end of September and early October 2010 when they will perform in Groningen's International School, Haren Library (with a specially commissioned poem by Armstrong for Haren's 850th anniversary and a recital of the poems of Charles Dickens) and at O'Ceallaigh's Irish Bar with Groningen poets, including Ronald Ohslen and Rense Sinkgraven. Armstrong will be performing many of his Groningen poems, written after many visits to the city, with some settings by Miller.

Plans are afoot for a further visit by Groningen poets to Newcastle in 2011. 

A Groningen delegation made up of poets, publishers, journalists and cultural officers and headed by Councillor for Culture Jaap Dijkstra visited Newcastle in September 2008 and a special performance evening was held at the Ouseburn Boathouse with readings by the Groningen poets and their Newcastle counterparts incuding Keith Armstrong, Paul Summers and Ellen Phethean. 

Successful events were also held in Newcastle in October 2007 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the literary twinning between the respective cities, including a poetry and music evening at the Bridge Hotel and a reception with the City's Lord Mayor.

The new Groningen City Poet Rense Sinkgraven took part, along with fellow Groningen poet Willem Groenewegen, and Nick J. Swarth (City Poet of Tilburg) added colour to the celebrations.

The poets were joined by twinning pioneers Professor Helen Wilcox and jazz performer Allan Wilcox (on double bass and piano) and Groningen Cultural Officer Marieke Zwaving.

Keith Armstrong led the team of Newcastle performers with fellow poets Paul Summers, Poetry Jack, Catherine Graham, Ian Horn and Mick Standen. 

Armstrong has now registered some thirty visits to Groningen since he pioneeered the link in 1992 with fellow poet Julia Darling. Since then there have been readings in pubs, universities, libraries, and schools and at breakfast parties, festivals, cabaret clubs and civic centres in both cities.

For the record, here's a list of those artists who have made it happen so far:

Groningen literary/cultural visitors to Newcastle since 1992:

Rense Sinkgraven, Marieke Zwaving, Jaap Dijkstra, Tine Bethlehem, Albertina Soepboer, Tsead Bruinja, The Poets from Epibreren (Bart FM Droog, Tjitse Hofmann, Paul Jainandun Singh, Jan Klug), Sieger M. Geertsma, Ronald Ohlsen, Anneke Claus, Willem Groenewegen, Anton Scheepstra, Eric Nederkoorn, Herman Sandman, Emiel Matulewicz, Jeroen Engels, Entre'acte jazz duo (Allan Wilcox, Sina Keuning), Janny Boerma, Helen Wilcox, Henk Muda, Klaas Drenth, Emmeke Schurink-Plas, Willem Smit.

Newcastle visitors to Groningen since 1992:

Keith Armstrong, Julia Darling, The Poetry Virgins, Paul Summers, Ian Horn, Tony Whittle (photographer/musician), Ann Sessoms (Northumbrian Piper), Chris Ormston (Northumbrian Piper), Chris Hartnett (singer/songwriter), John Earl, Alan Clark (Nod), Dave Gaston, Michael Standen, Marie Little (singer), Gary Miller (singer/songwriter).

FURTHER INFORMATION: NORTHERN VOICES, TEL. 0191 2529531.

jingling geordie!

BOOKS ON TYNE, NEWCASTLE BOOK FESTIVAL




Newcastle City Library
Charles Avison Building
33 New Bridge Street West
Newcastle upon Tyne.


Saturday 6 November Room 8, Level 6 (Local Studies).






4pm The Jingling Geordie
Dr Keith Armstrong gives a lively reading of his Newcastle poems.






It’s free, but booking is advisable. Book this session in advance by phoning 0191 2774100, emailing information@newcastle.gov.uk, or just ask a member of staff at City Library.

THE SPANISH CITY (1910-2010)

A CELEBRATION OF WHITLEY BAY'S ICONIC DOME IN WORDS AND PICTURES

EDITED BY KEITH ARMSTRONG & PETER DIXON

FUNDED BY NORTH TYNESIDE COUNCIL


BOOK LAUNCH

WHITLEY BAY PLAYHOUSE, MARINE AVENUE, WHITLEY BAY FRIDAY 22ND OCTOBER 2010 6PM

POEMS AND STORIES BY KEITH ARMSTRONG, STEVE BROWN, GEOFF HOLLAND, DAVE ALTON, GORDON PHILLIPS, CATHERINE GRAHAM, RACHEL COCHRANE, ALAN C. BROWN, TREVOR LEONARD, STAN GRAHAM, SHAUN PRENDERGAST, BRIAN HALL

ADMISSION FREE

FURTHER INFORMATION: NORTHERN VOICES TEL. 0191 2529531

Gospel Truth

With no story behind this Good News


Didymos Judas, no tales


Of tall wonders that must be believed


Or else belief and faith fails,


No seed in an immaculate womb,


No Christ unearthed from within a tomb,






There is just the word. And the word is


Ahamkara: trinity


Of body, mind and soul obscuring


Glimmer of divinity


From which self-promotion turns its face,


Denying the sovereignty of grace.






Then the word is Monakos, courage


To stand apart, not follow


Well worn routes, nor find refuge in crowds.


Decline direction to go


A way unmapped, seeking novel signs


Only an adventurer divines.






And the word becomes Metanoia,


An absolute need to know,


Blindness being transformed into clear sight


When light chases the shadow


Of fear away. Don’t simply believe


What all too readily can deceive.






No empyrean above the stars,


No infernal realm beneath,


No strict words of God in testaments


Voiced by prophets through clenched teeth.


For scripture cannot make Man of ape,


Only reason, reason and agape.


 
Dave Alton

northern voices

PUBLICATIONS COMING SOON FROM NORTHERN VOICES:

GRAND TIMES: A CELEBRATION OF TYNEMOUTH'S GRAND HOTEL (FOR HERITAGE OPEN DAY 9TH SEPTEMBER - INCLUDES POETRY FROM DR KEITH ARMSTRONG'S RECENT RESIDENCY); THE HIVE OF LIBERTY: THOMAS SPENCE REPRINT (FUNDED BY THE LIPMAN MILIBAND TRUST); LIKE THE SPANISH CITY: CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF WHITLEY BAY'S ICONIC DOME (FUNDED BY NORTH TYNESIDE COUNCIL); A MINER'S LIFE: GORDON MACPHERSON OF EAST DURHAM - FOLLOWED BY THE LIFE STORIES OF HIS WIFE AND OF HIS DAUGHTER, HEATHER WOOD (STRIKE ACTIVIST); COMMON STORY: A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF JACK COMMON BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG (WITH 'BREVITY STUFF' PUBLICATIONS). WATCH THIS SPACE!

93 WOODBURN SQUARE, WHITLEY LODGE, WHITLEY BAY, TYNE& WEAR NE26 3JD TEL 0191 2529531

The objectives of Northern Voices are to:

1) Offer a platform for the views and experiences of those people living in the North East of England who are normally denied a voice. Through this, question and subvert established views of culture and the distortions which often surround them and give support to local autonomy and integrity as opposed to centralism and the anti-democractic hierarchies of government and big business, the aristocracy, mass media and ever increasing quangos.

2) Contribute to the culture of the region through a projects and events programme which celebrates its diverse communities, in particular the currently neglected working class, and the area's history and politics and dissenting tradition. Recent projects have involved a touring show in Northumbrian churches, performing poetry on the beaches, working in the community of Spittal, profiling Whitley Bay's Spanish City and the Marsden Rock in South Shields, celebrating the Newcastle writer Jack Common and the Durham links of poet Christopher Smart, performing and recording with folk, pop, classical and jazz musicans and exhibiting with visual artists and photographers. Important events have recently been staged with Amnesty International, the Tyneside Irish Cultural Society and the North East Labour History Society.

Northern Voices attempts to be original and innovative in its programme and to seriously engage with local people and issues rather than indulge in the predictable and unchallenging nature of many cultural events and projects which are often more to do with careerism and the overbearing machinations of cultural bodies which see the arts as a vehicle for commerce and business.

3) Develop links with likeminded people and institutions, locally, nationally and internationally by a commitment to collective action and to engaging in political activity in an historical context. Recently, reciprocal links have been established with Limerick and Cork, Bradford, Liverpool, Lincoln, Sheffield, Penrith, Aberdeen and Edinburgh and there are significant international links with, for example, Groningen in The Netherlands and Tuebingen in Germany, stretching back some twenty years. Further similar links are actively sought in order to avoid literary and publishing activity being presented in overtly institutionalised, centralised and isolated cultural ghettos which merely replicate prevailing establishment and ruling class orthodoxies.

Such links also question overly cosy notions of 'The North' and celebrate North East England's place in the world and particularly in Europe.

4) Offer help and advice to local people seeking to develop a voice. This can be through creative writing, songs, community research or on tape and through the media and new technology.

Membership is open to anyone who shares the objectives of Northern Voices and who wishes to engage in community arts activity in the North East of England.

Northern Voices acknowledges project support from the Community Foundation, Awards for All and North Tyneside Council.

MARSDEN ROCK

Sensational Rock,

swimming in light.

Bird-cries clinging to ancient ledges,

Kittiwakes smashing against time.

What tales you could tell.

Your face is so moody,

flickers with breezes,

crumbles in a hot afternoon.

Climbing your powdery steps,

we look down on the sea

thrashing at you. 

We join a choir of birds at your peak,

cry out to the sky

in good spirits.

Nesting for the sake of it,

our lyrics are remnants on the shore.

We keep chipping away,

do we not? 

We slip

through the pebbles,

splashing

with babies.

We leave our mark,

a grain

on the ancient landscape.

We go.

We dance like the sunlight

on your scarred body: 

tripping,

falling,

singing

away.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Fred Reed - from the Tyneside Poets' Archive

Me


Me, Aa’ll nivvor be poor
Till emptied of me dreams…
Ne thowts vibrate wi’ winged words
T’ seek warm climes like valiant bords
‘ned trill theor joyous themes.

When hairt he lost desire…
Its ricochettin leaps…
Like weathered discus styns t’ take
And mek them skip across the lake,
Me youths fresh vorve t’ keep.

Aa’ll not knaa cynic taint,
Me spirit’s flights still high,
If Aa can scan the firmament,
Ower creation feel intent
T’ cry, Aa wundor why.”

Me, Aa’ll elwis be rich,
Stray in a gowlden clime,
If Aa can tarry ‘neath the spell
Of aall adventures still t’ tell
Wi’ “Once upon a time.”

And aad Aa’ll nivvor be
Still yeornin for the Springs,
High hopes wed t’ me memories
Till Beauty’s kiss the boond orth frees
And youth’s renewal brings.

Aye, in cremation’s fire
Hap silence high on me;
Scattor me ashes, say Aa’m gyen,
But Aa’ll be heor t’ whisper when
These words are read by ye.

Fred Reed

TWO POEMS FOR THOMAS BEWICK

HENRY DAVID THOREAU CONTEMPLATES BEWICK'S NORTHUMBRIAN FISHERMAN ON THE CONCORD RIVER IN THE FALL OF 1839

An old brown-coated man

Walks wordless through the meadow,

With him his silent son,

The seaman, at his elbow.

As the yellow pinebark's

Reflection bent at the water's edge,

Or under grey willows, he lurks,

Rustling almost, like sedge.

Each calm afternoon

Still he haunts the river;

Wholly into nature grown,

He is the sun's familiar.

He has passed beyong the world of men

And whether the perch bite, or he

Labour home catchless, nothing can

Snap him out of his reverie.

I understand his sort,

His each, unspoken intent,

His fishing not a sport

But a solemn sacrament.

I, Thoreau, the pencil-maker,

Salute you from the heart,

Bewick, the wood-engraver,

Of the same mind and art.

THE BULLFINCH

When the child opened his hand 

To show me the bird his father

Had sent me to copy

For my birds, I took it from him

And buried it in the garden.

There was no need for me

To study it: the purple-black

Cap, wings and tail, grey back,

White rump and rose-pink breast.

I stil remember that cold spring

When the fruit tree buds were stripped,

Cherry, gooseberry, plum.

Before the birds could flit to cover

With their soft indrawn 'teu-teu',

I'd picked up a stone and let fly.

A bird dropped to the ground.

I picked it up still alive;

Admired its plumage, felt its feet

And the short, rounded beak's sharp edge.

Then it closed its piteous eyes.

I was the last bird I killed,

That little Matthew Martin,

The bullfinch, though many since

Sadly have been killed on my account.

I cut him with care on the wood,

My concern to imitate

Nature. My reparation

Picks him out, in black, grey, white.

Joe Quinn

From the Tyneside Poets' Archives

WESTGATE CEMETERY


('Let me be writ down as one who loved Mankind')




This Elysian field,
a small plateau above the dusty road,
harbours no peaceful haven. The monuments
vie with each other in shrill voices
over the family burial grounds, petty
dynasties unrealized, immortal memories ephemeral.


It is the mortal side here emphasised,
there is no ground richer in humus.
Arched trees form living parasols,
reminders of sunny days and Indian summers,
the grass knee high
and all the sound of day lost in the flora.


In a generation or two
when the memorials have lapsed
into ivied lethargy, this will be
a peaceful place in the afternoon.
But, for the present, we cannot
contain our contempt for this sham.


The vaults are opened,
monuments kicked down,
Molly and Ginger have left their signature
on one sturdier stone.
The dumped bedsteads and old clothes
let them know


just what we think of dead old fogies.
Every age piles up its follies,
this is one of theirs.
Time will be kind to them, that has not
patience nor period to prevent us
hallmarking their fools' gold as our own.






David Stevenson








Border Reivers




These moors were the favour they wore,
dissolved into mists that moistened
the leather harness. A feuded
sun rose over valleys and low
settlements that they descended
on to take cattle and plunder.


Their incorrigible surnames cared less
for the Laws of Court, than a life
lived hand to mouth, where the spur
served up out of a bare larder
sufficed. Flaunting the warden’s wrath
goaded them onto his gibbet.


Later they lay in the heather
without change. The pasture enclosed
on the dissolution of bones
that trickled along the cut turf,
where strange marauders made inroads
unchallenged, displacing their homes.






George Charlton





Spuggies




Uv erl the bords that flit aboot
ah like the spuggies best;
They hev nee bonnie feathors,
They build an erful nest.


They fight along the gutter’s edge,
They make love i’ the street;
Thor voice is jist a cross atween
A chirrup an’ a tweet.


They eat the seeds the gard’nor sows,
They pinch the farmor’s corn;
Th’ore chatterbox an scatterbrain
The varry day th’ore born.


Below that cheeky little face,
Ahint them beady eyes,
Ye’d sweer they wore erl Satan’s sons
I’ feathery disguise.


For them thore’s nowt ti recommend
That Ah can put i’ words;
But – please forgi’e them if you can, -
Th’ore canny little bords.






Robert Allen

for the love of sir bobby

(in memory of Bobby Robson, 1933-2009)

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will battle on

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will rise again

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will Gallowgate dream

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will rage on

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will take pride

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will roar by the Tyne

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will rejoice in Newcastle

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will chant on the walls

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will recall the good times

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will brighten our lives

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will drink in the sea

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will sparkle our eyes

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will save our soul

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will keep hold

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will dance with our kids

For the love of Sir Bobby

we will win back our town

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Shades

Equations proved splitting the atrium
Was all too possible. Consequences,
Though, were uncertain: might the sun be quenched
And this galaxy become extinguished?
Would tyranny lurk in ballot boxes,
Growing stronger on each cast vote consumed
Until powerful enough to emerge
And devour the world for its own good?
Could it be sullen trees might realise
While roots are conduits of nourishment
They’re also shackles holding them to a plot?
The blast should strip the last veil from lovers,
The brilliance being enough to dazzle
The gullible, and blind the fallible.
Such were the calculations, carefully
Weighed and balanced, before the ultimate
Order was confirmed. It was with foresight
The cardiologists responsible
For complex dead reckoning secreted
Spectacles with smoked lenses, in pockets
Authorities forget to search, so they
Might bear witness through their glasses darkly.

Dave Alton

ID?

There are engines in all cells of my being,
Precise technologies of which I am
Hardly aware. Through their efficacy
Blood pumps, breath is taken, poems written
And vital existence manufactured.
Throughout my body surge mighty rivers,
Plunging as cataracts into gorges
Prodigiously luscious by undergrowth
Rooted in earth precious with minerals,
Deep-mined and smelted before being cast
In moulds of sand transmuted to fine glass
By the heat, by the passion, by the need,
That can’t be assuaged, for comprehension.
Such be the machines driving my nature,
Each one meticulously constructed
Through some immanent creativity
Which assembled an entire universe
From all there was in an infinite mote.
I might well be forgiven by God for
Wondering about the divine presence
Of mind that can conceive such artifice.

Dave Alton

thomas spence plaque unveiled 21/6/2010

FOLK SONG FOR THOMAS SPENCE

(1750-1814)


Down by the old Quayside,
I heard a young man cry,
among the nets and ships he made his way.
As the keelboats buzzed along,
he sang a seagull’s song;
he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,
he gave up all his life
just to be free.
Up and down the cobbled Side,
struggling on through the Broad Chare,
he shouted out his wares
for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,
he was a man the likes you rarely see.
With a pamphlet in his hand,
and a poem at his command,
he haunts the Quayside still
and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,
sold socks and fishing nets,
through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.
In this theatre of life,
the crying and the strife,
they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,
he gave up all his life
just to be free.
Up and down the cobbled Side,
struggling on through the Broad Chare,
he shouted out his wares
for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,
he was a man the likes you rarely see.
With a pamphlet in his hand,
and a poem at his command,
he haunts the Quayside still
and his words sing.


KEITH ARMSTRONG







THE HIVE OF LIBERTY

(AFTER THE NAME OF THOMAS SPENCE’S BOOKSHOP AT 8 LITTLE TURNSTILE, HOLBORN)





I am a small and humble man,
my body frail and broken.
I strive to do the best I can.
I spend my life on tokens.

I traipse through Holborn all alone,
hawking crazy notions.
I am the lonely people’s friend.
I live on schemes and potions.

For, in my heart and in my mind,
ideas swarm right through me.
Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,
my words just flow ike wine,
my words just flow like wine.

I am a teeming worker bee.
My dignity is working.
My restless thoughts swell like the sea.
My fantasies I’m stoking.

There is a rebel inside me,
a sting about to strike.
I hawk my works around the street.
I put the world to rights.

For, in my heart and in my mind,
ideas swarm right through me.
Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,
my words just flow like wine,
my words just flow like wine.




KEITH ARMSTRONG







PIGS’ MEAT

“Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.” (from Edmund Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’)

We are the swinish multitude,
Who feed off the Loose Meat,
Our brains are bacon,
Our balls pork-chops,
We honk instead of speak.

We’re pigs’ meat,
Pigs' meat,
We wallow in our muck.
Our snouts deep in the stinking trough,
We don’t give a toss.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We riot in the street.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We piss on the elite.

We are the swinish multitude,
With sties that blind our eyes.
No sense of direction,
Just one big erection,
We bonk instead of think.

We’re pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We wallow in our muck.
Our snouts deep in the stinking trough,
We don’t give a toss.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We riot in the street.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We piss on the Elite.

We are the swinish multitude,
Incapable of speeches,
We drink royal blood,
We eat the rich,
We fart in Halls of Art.

We’re pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We wallow in our muck.
Our snots deep in the stinking trough,
We don’t give a toss.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We riot in the street.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We piss on the Elilte.


KEITH ARMSTRONG



(from the music-theatre piece ‘Pigs'Meat’ written for Bruvvers Theatre Company)

Earl Grey and the Starlings

Contrasts hold the moment:

between most going home and others

opening up the night of fun and hope; 

between the brightening lights and windows

and the deep, darkening blue of the evening sky; 

between fading outlines of people, indistinct in a moving crowd

and sharp lines of rooftops with cupolas of copper

and classical columns of a confident, forgotton time.

The symbols of imperial pride

are now neither understood nor affordable 

in a city given over to money 

and the carnal delights of shopping, shagging

and swilling beer.

Atop his column,

Earl Grey surveys his scene with studied indifference. 

Celebrating a century of civic peace,

put there by a grateful people in 1838     

hoping, perhaps knowing,

that the dark, satanic side of it,

at least at home, would pass away

in Progress’s inexorable march.

His proud monument 

ignores the world beyond

with slaves not yet free and Africa, India and much else

on the map painted red and 

under the imperial boot.

The world he surveys has gone

replaced by another more violent and misunderstood. 

Here, now, in this city

without the pits and ships and steam hammers

that forged the generations behind those now 

scurrying home from their offices and shops,

the new world blindly thrives, 

a cosmos of greed, debt and fragile hope.

Swarming around his head, fewer now than then,

the starlings congregate.

They swoop and dive with one mind,

carving fractal swirls

against the azure blue dark

before they settle down in huddled rows on balustrades 

and parapets high above the emptying streets.

If Grey could look down, lower his gaze

he’d see a different world

and like Kier Hardie, looking down from the moon,

in another poem I like,

not know whether to laugh or cry.

For the sounds of starlings come now also from below,

from half-naked girls

giggling, shrieking and stumbling on their heels

past swaggering blokes, half-dressed

with shaved heads and earrings 

from whom, as they pass, all the perfumes of Arabia mingle

in a promise of delights to come.

Each has his hopes and perhaps his fears 

But they are not on view;

except in the swirling patterns the old Earl can see

on the ground as well as above his head.

These creatures stay together 

in a dance that not one of them comprehends. 

Each one is free, but tightly bound in a pattern

beyond control with a purpose impossible to know,

in a world beyond caring.

Bill Williamson

THE THOMAS SPENCE TRUST

                            

 News Bulletin   June 2010                                                                           

It’s good to welcome the establishment of The Thomas Spence Trust, founded by a group of Tyneside activists intent on celebrating and promoting the life and work of that noted pioneer of people’s rights, pamphleteer and poet Thomas Spence (1750-1814), who has born on Newcastle’s Quayside in those turbulent times. 

Spence served in his father’s netmaking trade from the age of ten but went on later to be a teacher at Haydon Bridge Free Grammar School and at St. Ann’s Church in Byker under the City Corporation. In 1775, he read his famous lecture on the right to property in land to the Newcastle Philosophical Society, who voted his expulsion at their next meeting.

He claimed to have invented the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ and chalked it in the caves at Marsden Rocks in South Shields in honour of the working-class hero ‘Blaster Jack’ Bates, who lived there.

He even came to blows with famed Tyneside wood-engraver Thomas Bewick (to whom a memorial has been recently established on the streets of Newcastle) over a political issue, and was thrashed with cudgels for his trouble.

From 1792, having moved to London, he took part in radical agitations, particularly against the war with France. He was arrested several times for selling his own and other seditious books and was imprisoned for six months without trial in 1794, and sentenced to three years for his Restorer of Society to its Natural State in 1801.

Whilst politicians such as Edmund Burke saw the mass of people as the ‘Swinish Multitude’, Spence saw creative potential in everybody and broadcast his ideas in the periodical Pigs’ Meat.

He had a stall in London’s Chancery Lane, where he sold books and saloup, and later set up a small shop called The Hive of Liberty in Holborn.

He died in poverty ‘leaving nothing to his friends but an injunction to promote his Plan and the remembrance of his inflexible integrity’.

The Thomas Spence Trust organised a mini-festival to celebrate Spence in 2000 when it published a booklet on his life and work, together with related events, with the aid of Awards for All. 

Trust founder-member, poet Keith Armstrong has written a play for Bruvvers Theatre Company on the socialist pioneer which has been performed at St. Ann’s Church and other venues in the city.

Now the Trust has successfully campaigned for a plaque on the Quayside in Newcastle, where Spence was born. The plaque will be unveiled on Monday June 21st 2010, Spence's 260th birthday, with a number of talks, displays and events coinciding with it. 

Further information from: Dr Keith Armstrong, The Thomas Spence Trust, 93 Woodburn Square, Whitley Lodge, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 3JD. Tel. 0191 2529531.

THE THOMAS SPENCE MINI-FEST 2010 

EVENTS PROGRAMME

MONDAY 21ST JUNE 2010

2.30pm. Broad Garth, Quayside. The unveiling of the Thomas Spence plaque at Broad Garth, Quayside, Newcastle, by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, with a short speech by Dr Keith Armstrong, Chair of The Thomas Spence Trust, and Armstrong’s ‘Folk Song for Thomas Spence’ performed by Gary Miller, singer-songwriter of North East band ‘The Whisky Priests’.

2.45pm. Informal reception with talks, readings from Spence and poems and songs in his honour in the Red House, Sandhill, Quayside.

(Anyone not already invited to the unveiling and the reception and wishing to attend should contact Dr Keith Armstrong on 0191 2529531).

7pm Literary & Philosophical Society Library, Westgate Road, Newcastle.  The Workers’ Educational Association and The Thomas Spence Trust present short talks on Spence by Professors Joan Beal (University of Sheffield), Malcom Chase (University of Leeds) and Alastair Bonnett (University of Newcastle), with readings from Spence by Dr Keith Armstrong.

(ADMISSION FREE).

TUESDAY 22ND JUNE 12.30PM

Marsden Grotto, Coast Road, South Shields. A TOAST FOR TOM. Drinks, poems and songs in Spence’s honour at the Grotto where Spence visited ‘Blaster Jack’ and first coined the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ by chalking on a cave wall.

(ALL WELCOME).

MONDAY 28TH JUNE 2-3PM. 

MEETING ROOM 7, 6TH FLOOR , NEWCASTLE CITY LIBRARY.

THE HIVE OF LIBERTY: The Life and Work of Thomas Spence.

Talk by Dr Keith Armstrong, Chair of The Thomas Spence Trust.

THERE WILL ALSO BE A DISPLAY OF SPENCE’S WORKS ON THE 6TH FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY, RUNNING FROM MONDAY 21ST jUNE TO MONDAY 5TH JULY.

FURTHER EVENTS, LATER IN  2010, INCLUDE THE NEWCASTLE LAUNCH OF THE RE-PRINT  OF PROFESSOR MALCOLM CHASE’S ‘THE PEOPLE’S FARM’.