Business and Pleasure

Sometimes an MP's job combines business with pleasure. Recently, on 2nd February, I attended the launch of the CAMRA Festival at the Winding Wheel - first on the Friday afternoon for the 'official' opening and then in the evening for pleasure.

A lot of the conversation focused on the merits of different beers and the plans for opening a new micro brewery in the heart of Chesterfield on top of the two based out at Staveley. One topic of conversation however was the Private Members, Sustainable Communities Bill, which CAMRA along with other local organisations such as Staveley Town Council had asked me to support. Nearly 200 of us stayed in London on Friday 19th January (normally spent at home working in the constituency), to ensure that the Government could not block the Bill's passage at that stage. Because of this the Bill passed its Second Reading but the Labour Minister, Phil Woolas, made it clear that the Government opposed much of the Bill. No Private Members Bill ever becomes law without some Government backing so this battle will continue later in the summer.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Pete Bunten -local novelist, playwright and author of a series of articles on literary drinkers. These appear in instalments in Chesterfield and District CAMRA magazine Innspire. and are now also available collected together in two volumes published by Pynot Publishing. All my old favourites are there - D H Lawrence, Dorothy Parker, Dylan Thomas, Shakespeare and many many more.

But for my money Pete has missed one of the best stories although Karl Marx probably doesn't count as a literary figure in that sense. Francis Wheen's biography of Marx however paints a picture of the human side of the founder of communist thinking. Marx lived in exile in London and one year the Communist International held a convention there to plot World Revolution. In the evening of course Karl Marx took them on a Victorian pub crawl which was followed by inebriated stone throwing at gas lights in the street. Pursued by a beat policeman Marx led his fellow revolutionaries ducking and diving down back alleys until they escaped.

Some things never change and drunkenness and petty vandalism happened in Victorian London as well as in our modern towns. But at least today's drunks don't plot the violent overthrow of the state and usher in a Soviet Dictatorship!