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Obituary: Jimmy Barnes
162/Granville Williams
DATELINE: 12/2/08
Readers of Free Press won't know much about Jimmy Barnes who died of an aneurysm aged 57 on December 30 2007. That is unless they were involved in politics (Jimmy was in the Communist Party), trade unions (to my knowledge he was in at least three - Amicus, GPMU and NUJ) and the magazine he produced, Trade Union Review (which cast a critical eye over the more reprehensible antics of trade union leaders), or Trade Union CND (which he devoted much of his time and energy to).
Jimmy cared passionately about books and ideas. In 2005 he acquired The Queens pub in Church, Lancashire with its wet and dry rot. It was an awesome financial challenge - which he met by working as a maintenance engineer in Accrington. Jimmy was a socialist who mixed philosophy and trades unionism with an awesome range of practical skills. He took on The Queens because he had a vision. The pub would open, profits would fund a socialist and trade union library, his staff would be trained and paid properly - and his beer would be cheap. And it all happened.
Jimmy was born in Carlisle, the son of working-class Communist party members. His education was marked by dyslexia, and his mother fiercely resisted proposals to send him to a special school.
Apprenticed as an engineer in Carlisle in 1966, he worked for London Underground, and in Sunderland for the National Coal Board. From 1977 he studied philosophy and politics at Sunderland Polytechnic, and into the mid-80s he was active in the Young Communist League and the Communist Party.
Jimmy's finances in the late 1980s, when I got to know him, were precarious. Living on benefits and erratic funding, he devoted his energies to Trade Union CND and Trade Union Review. Both projects generated hostility but Jimmy had the knack of identifying issues that ended up as Guardian news stories. In 2000 he revived the NUJ branch in Carlisle, having moved back there to be with his parents.
Amid the chaos of the birth of his pub, he still found time to set up B&D Publishing. This launched with a reprint of Friedrich Schlotterbeck's Left Book Club title The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars (1947) on German workers' resistance to the Nazis. In 2005 he asked me to write an introduction to John Milton's Areopagitica: for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. In mid-December we were discussing his plans to resume his PhD thesis on Wittgenstein and reprint another Left Book Club title, Ralph Korngold's Citizen Toussaint, which in his memory we intend to publish.
I count myself lucky to have known and worked with Jimmy. His resilience, humour, and principled, selfless commitment to politics and trade union activity were all deeply impressive.
Last modified: Friday, May 30, 2008
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Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
DOWNLOAD FREEPRESS NOW
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Download Freepress in PDF, ePub or mobi format. Issue 194 now available.
MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Papers from the Media for All Conference
MEDIA MANIFESTO
DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
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Previous stories
Miscellany
World Press Freedom Day 2008
Farewell to Geoff
Dispatches footage will be given to police
Post Office to First Amendment: Drop Dead 5
Where now for childrens TV?
Sri Lanka and the CPBF
AGM calls for new direction for the CPBF
Report of Work 2005
Give money to Greg Palast
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
The war on Palestine's orphans
Interpal accuses Panorama of lack of balance
Free Press index launched
Without Comment
How the US media destroy democracy
John Pilger
It’s Not Cricket
Without Comment
Without Comment
Digital TV and state abuse of power
Beyond TV: everything for the video activist
Without Comment
In the USA today
Spies like us....
Sir Frank Rogers: Obituary
Not so public launch
Indymedia seizure explained - in part
NUJ's new place in the Sun
Without Comment: FA hires from DCMS
Jim’s Journal
