In July 1948 a "Short Manifesto from The Surrealist Group in Birmingham" was published and signed by twelve Birmingham artists, including Maddox and Mellor but missing major figures such as Bridgewater, Morris and the Melvilles. Its call for the formation of an "active surrealist group" to reject the "patriotic myths, official pedagogy, the debris of moral rationing which constitutes much of the art, poetry and philosophy of our time" was not without irony though: English surrealism was increasingly looking like a spent force and the manifesto had a far from galvanising effect on local artists.