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Newsletter                Charity
                             July 20th                Number
     DUMFRIES
                               2021                  SC021683

This time: (1) Covid; (2) religion discussion group; (3) important note
for group leaders; (4) Third Age Trust July Newsletter; (5) George
Lansbury. Jeremy.Shearmur@anu.edu.au
(1) Covid With Clive: Clive Brown
Covid-38 Update 17 July 2021
The First Minister announced on the 13th July that the whole of Scotland
would go down to Level 0 as from the 19th July.
This means that for us in Dumfries & Galloway we can now meet socially
in groups and go on holiday, with caveats (of course). The main
changes are as follows:
1. Up to eight people from up to four households can meet indoors at
home.
2. Up to 10 people from up to four households can meet in a public
indoor space (a pub or restaurant for example).
3. Up to 15 people from up to 15 households can meet outdoors -
whether in a private garden or public place.
4. Up to 200 people can attend weddings and funerals.
5. The requirement to book two-hour slots to go to a pub or restaurant
will end, but customers will have to provide contact details, and to wear
face coverings when not seated.
6. The limit on the size of events and stadium attendances will rise to
2,000 seated outdoors, 1,000 standing and 400 indoors
7. The guidance against non-essential (holiday) travel to amber list
countries will remain, but people who have been fully vaccinated will no
longer have to quarantine on return from an amber-list country
Despite these freedoms some restrictions will remain in place, for
example you must still sanitise hands and wear a face covering when

going into any retail premises including any indoor area of a shopping
centre.
Hospitality venues will close at midnight or follow local licensing rules.
In indoor public places, the physical distance requirement will drop from
2m to 1m and apply between people from different household groups.
Additionally, while outdoor group gatherings will be limited to 15 people
from up to 15 households and no social distancing will be required
within the group, until the next announcement from Holyrood, there will
be a requirement for 1m distancing between different groups of 15.
Sports Groups, e.g., walking, tennis, kayaking etc will need to refer to
guidance produced by their relevant Scottish Sport Governing Body and
ensure they operate in line with the guidance. The Group leader must
reflect that in the risk analyses that are submitted before each group
meeting.
These rules are different from those in England, and care must be taken
if you have to travel to anywhere South of the border. Unfortunately,
the Scottish Track and Trace system does not work in England, and we
cannot use the English system as it requires you to register using an
English home address/postcode.
Full details of Level 0 can be found on the Government webpage
Stay safe! Clive. secretary.u3adumfries@gmail.com
(2) Religion Discussion group
Our group met last week, for a lively discussion of scientology (and the
consumption of tea and raspberry muffins!). While we are normally an
‘inside’ group, this was our second successful meeting that took place
outside. Our next meeting – also planned for outside – will be on
‘Spiritualism’. If anyone would like to join us, we still have space – as
can be seen from the spare seats in the garden!

If, like us, you are an ‘inside’ group planning an ‘outside’ meeting, don’t
forget that your group leader needs to get a risk assessment form to
Clive Brown in advance of the meeting. Also, if you are going to send us
a photo along with a report, do note that because of data control
regulations, you need to get permission from those in the photo for it to
be included in the Newsletter and on the Web Site.
(3) Important Note to Group Leaders
Due to the significant numbers of nonrenewals of membership for 2021
we urgently need a list of the current members in each activity group in
order to update our records. Please make sure that you update Eric
Moffat, our Membership Secretary
membership.u3adumfries@gmail.com, with a list of your current
members, ASAP
(4) Third Age Trust July Newsletter
The Third Age Trust have just sent out their July Newsletter. Here is the
link to it:https://mailchi.mp/u3a/your-u3a-national-newsletter-july
(5) ‘George Lansbury’, David Dutton, History Group
This week’s piece is prompted by a discovery I made the other day –
news to me anyway and, if of no great historical importance, interesting
nonetheless – that the veteran American (though British-born) actress
Angela Lansbury (b. 1925) is the grand-daughter of a man who led the

British Labour Party in the early 1930s. I’m not competent to say much
about Angela Lansbury, though it is impossible not to be impressed by a
career which began with an appearance in the film ‘Gaslight’ in 1944 and
has continued via Hollywood and Broadway to ‘Murder She Wrote’, still
being shown on television today. George Lansbury, however, merits a
few words.
                          Angela Lansbury

Born in 1859, Lansbury, a committed Christian, came to be regarded
with uncritical admiration by many of the rank and file of the Labour
Party, a beloved figure whom one criticised at one’s peril. There was
something of Michael Foot about him, though others might see parallels
with Jeremy Corbyn. According to the historian, AJP Taylor, he was ‘the
most lovable figure in modern politics’. But for all the affection he
enjoyed, there was also a strong feeling (as with Foot) that he could
never become Prime Minister.
                    George Lansbury 1859-1940

Like many other early pioneers of the Labour movement, Lansbury’s first
political loyalties were with Gladstonian Liberalism. He, his wife and their
young family emigrated to Australia in 1884, but he returned
disillusioned a year later and began a career in British politics. He left
the Liberals in the early 1890s to form the Bow and Bromley branch of
the Marxist Social Democratic Federation, one of the disparate groups
that eventually coalesced to form the Labour Party. In 1895 he became
the SDF’s national organiser, touring Britain as a propagandist for
socialism. Getting into parliament, however, was no easy matter and
only after four unsuccessful contests did he finally become the Labour
MP for Bow and Bromley in December 1910. In this position he
campaigned for social justice for working people and the unemployed,
women’s suffrage, world disarmament and the end of imperialism.
Disenchanted, however, by Ramsay MacDonald’s parliamentary
leadership, he resigned his seat to force a by-election over ‘votes for
women’, which he lost. He did not return to the Commons until 1922.
Out of parliament, he became editor of the newly founded ‘Daily Herald’
and in 1919 became the first Labour mayor of Poplar, one of the poorest
parts of London. For his leading role in the Poplar Rates Revolt of 1921,
he was imprisoned and, to this day, ‘Poplarism’ remains for many on the
left a symbol of the power of direct action.
                   Ramsay MacDonald 1866-1937

When Labour formed its first-ever government in 1924, there was no
place for the popular Lansbury, partly it seems because of opposition

from the King. But he entered the cabinet in the second Labour
administration of 1929 as First Commissioner of Works. This government
ended in disarray when Ramsay MacDonald, to cries of ‘betrayal’,
accepted the King’s invitation in 1931 to head an all-party National
Government in partnership with Conservatives and Liberals, to deal with
the country’s economic crisis. The resulting general election proved to be
a massive setback for Labour. While the National Government won a
total of 554 seats in parliament, Labour’s representation was reduced
from 267 to just 46 seats. Hardly any senior Labour figures survived this
rout apart from Lansbury and in November 1931 he was unanimously
selected as chairman of the parliamentary party and became party
leader less than a year later. At one level Lansbury was an effective
leader of the opposition, holding the residual party together after so
many senior figures had either ‘defected’ to the National Government or
lost their seats. ‘If George Lansbury had left us’, declared Jack Lawson, a
former Miners’ leader and junior minister, ‘I should have doubted Christ
himself.’ But some thought him too idealistic and detached from the
practical world of day-to-day politics. ‘His bleeding heart has run away
with his bloody head’ was a common complaint. Certainly, it was
Lansbury’s misfortune to be leader at a time when international affairs
and, in particular, the rise of fascism were becoming ever more
prominent. He himself recognised that it would be difficult for a
committed pacifist to lead the Labour Party into a general election
(shades, perhaps, of the problems later experienced by the unilateralist
Foot in 1983). In the event, matters were taken out of his hands. At the
1935 party conference, Ernest Bevin, leader of the huge Transport and
General Workers’ Union, launched a stinging attack: ‘It is placing the
executive and the movement in an absolutely wrong position to be
hawking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told
what you ought to do with it.’ A week later, Lansbury resigned, despite
the efforts of the majority of Labour MPs to persuade him to stay on. An
unrepentant Bevin declared: ‘Lansbury’s been dressed in saint’s clothes
for years, waiting for martyrdom. All I did was set fire to the faggots.’
Lansbury remained a backbench MP until his death in 1940.