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It may be a futile gesture, but can we borrow Shelley’s trumpet?
Another new year approaches. Socialist activists, bloggers, Facebook addicts and habitual tweeters, contemplating the road ahead, may well feel despondent as this year draws to a close. What have we got to look forward to? A Tory government? A Labour government? A Tory-LibDem, or a Labour-LibDem, or a Tory-UKIP (or even a Labour-UKIP) coalition? More war, more racism, more privatisation, more inequality and poverty, worse health? Is there any chance we can do anything about even some of these disasters?
Don’t know. But if that’s how some of us feel, we’re not the first; we almost certainly won’t be the last. I discovered that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley felt something of the same frustration, not to say despair. He found a way through it and I thought perhaps that might – just about, with a following wind – tempt us to take some careful steps forward. In my case, though, I think I might need more than a following wind. But, then again, the wind is what Shelley is going to talk to us about. In fact, that’s who he talks to. What was he like?!
When Shelley heard, on 5 September 1819, of the Peterloo massacre, by the yeomanry, of unarmed demonstrators on the outskirts of Manchester, he was (as he put it) “asleep in Italy”. He quickly woke up. On the 6th he wrote in a letter: “… the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins.” He began to write The Masque of Anarchy, “the greatest poem of political protest ever written in English”, says his biographer Richard Holmes.[1]
It wasn’t published. The editor of the Examiner, Leigh Hunt, was afraid he would be prosecuted and spiked the poem. That fear was certainly not misplaced: in the aftermath of Peterloo, Sir Francis Burdett had sent an open letter of protest to the press and was found guilty of seditious libel. Mr Justice Best had warned the jury that if they found his writing was “an appeal to the passions of the lower orders of the people, and not having a tendency to inform those who can correct abuses, it is a libel.” Richard Holmes comments: “In other words, if [it] was addressed to the working classes, it was libellous.”[2]
In October, Shelley read what amounted to a personal attack on him in the shape of a review of his poem, The Revolt of Islam, in the Quarterly Review. There was no real criticism of Shelley’s poetry as poetry. The attack was on his ideas, “political, social, religious and sexual”[3]:
“Mr Shelley would abrogate our laws … he would abolish the rights of property … he would overthrow the constitution … he would pull down our churches, level our Establishment, and burn our bibles … marriage he cannot endure …”[4]
As for Shelley’s espousal of love as “the sole law which shall govern the moral world”, the Quarterly Review claimed not to know what kind of love he meant:
“We are loath to understand it in its lowest sense, though we believe that as to the issue this would be the correctest mode of interpreting it. But this at least is clear, that Mr Shelley does not mean it in its highest sense: he does not mean that love, which is the fulfilling of the law, and which walks after the commandments, for he would erase the Decalogue, and every other code of laws.”[5]
The article concluded by abandoning all pretence of being a review and settled for what looks like envious personal abuse. Shelley, it said, had a “proud and rebel mind”, but
“Like the Egyptian of old, the wheels of his chariot are broken, the path of mighty waters closes in upon him behind, and a still deepening ocean is before him: – for a short time are seen his impotent struggles against a resistless power, his blasphemous execrations are heard … and he calls ineffectually on others to follow him to the same ruin – finally he sinks ‘like lead’ to the bottom, and is forgotten. So it is now in part, so shortly will it be entirely with Mr Shelley.”[6]
Shelley pretended not to be affected, but rather to be “amused … with the finale”. Yet, says Holmes,
“the criticism was also working more slowly, at a deeper level of Shelley’s mind. Shelley went for walks along the banks of the Arno thinking of everything that the Quarterly attack represented, thinking of his own exile [in Italy], his ‘passion for reforming the world’, his apparent impotence to help the downtrodden people of England, the disasters of his private life and inevitably, at 27, the beginning of the end of his youth. He had noticed, with a slight shock, that he already had premature threads of grey hair. Yet everything was still to be done.”[7]
In the end, after much frustration, he wrote his next great poem, Ode to the West Wind, in which he defeated the brooding despair that threatened to overcome him. The poem, he said,
“was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno … on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours that pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.”[8]
In the poem he describes the “wild west wind” as it drives the leaves, the seeds, the buds, into the air; it is a “Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere”; it is the “Destroyer and preserver”. Then he calls on its power to halt the slowing down of his own powers and move him out of his despair:
“If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth
And by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Make of it what you can. Here comes 2015. And a happy new year to all our readers.
[1] Holmes, R. (1987), Shelley: The Pursuit, Penguin Books, London, p. 532.
[2] Ibid., p. 539.
[3] Ibid., p. 543.
[4] Cited, ibid., p. 544.
[5] Cited, ibid.
[6] Cited, ibid., pp. 544-545. As Shelley would drown in a storm off the coast of Italy in 1822, Holmes calls the water images in the review a “curious premonition”.
[7] Ibid., p. 546.
[8] Cited, ibid., p. 547.
Preliminary to jury-fixing?
Here’s one of the videos of the shooting of Antonio Martin in Berkeley yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G3q3yPrKoU&feature=youtu.be
Look at the first brilliant comment on it: “Hold on let me put on my white people goggles so I can see a gun that isn’t there.” This would apply to their first video too:
If this is all they’ve got they’re going to have to fix the jury. Perish the thought!
Mary Creagh, Russell Brand, & the privatisation of the NHS
Mary Creagh MP appeared for Labour on Question Time this week and a friend of mine thought she outshone Russell Brand.
I’m not so sure. For example, there was, inevitably, a question on the NHS and privatisation. Mary Creagh argued that Labour’s use of the private sector in the health service was not about privatisation but was used simply to tackle a number of urgent problems. One of them was the problem of “health waiting lists,” she said, “where people were waiting 18 months for cataract operations and going blind.” Others were
“hip replacements, where people were living in pain, and heart operations, where they were dying before they were getting their treatment. We used the private sector to effectively stop the consultants from having large waiting lists … We bought in – in bulk purchasing – using the NHS’s bulk purchasing power to tackle those NHS waiting lists.”
She made it sound like a sort of emergency humanitarian rescue operation. But Labour’s engagement with the private sector was always, and still is, more than that. From the start, the central policy of New Labour in the public services was the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), originally a Tory scheme denounced by Labour shadow ministers. The idea was to attract private money into the public services on the security of the government property involved. Private investors were encouraged to invest in hospitals and schools in exchange for regular annual payments by the taxpayer. Eventually the ownership of the property would revert to the company. Once in office New Labour embraced PFI.
There was a huge wave of hospital building set in train under New Labour’s PFI. Loyal Labour MPs argued that there wouldn’t have been any new hospitals without it. Yet UCL’s School of Public Policy found that University College Hospital would have cost £140m under the old scheme of public finance. Under PFI the cost soared to more than £1bn. They also found there was a 30% reduction in the number of beds compared to the hospitals they replaced and a 25-30% reduction in staff.
Now, all this is old news of course. But Labour’s support for publicly funded health, publicly funded education, publicly funded anything has purposefully declined since then. So can we trust them with the NHS? Mary Creagh’s attempt to plead that private finance was “only used for this, only used for that” won’t wash. It was, from the outset and ever since, based on ideology, neoliberal ideology. That was why they renamed the party “New” Labour. So I’m more inclined towards Russell’s view: “I think”, he said, “that profit … has no business anywhere near healthcare. I think it should be kept well away from it.”
Put differently, private investors should keep their grubby hands off our health service. Now, if a Labour politician would say that, it might be an answer to Russell’s plea elsewhere in the programme: “Give us something we can vote for.”
But it’d be safer not to hold our breaths.
On knowing “the right thing to do”
I had emailed my friend Ron Yoder in Texas praising Obama (that must have startled Ron!) for his recent move on immigration, which opens up the way for people who, until now, have been counted as “illegal”, to become citizens. Ron told me that one small Christian group in America (the Marginal Mennonites, if you want to know) has said that when Obama made his announcement “he sounded like Jesus”. Well, I don’t know – I wasn’t there in “them days”. Still, with that broad-brush description, we know what they mean.
And that was going to be the end of it. I just light-heartedly reminded Ron that there were at least two versions of Jesus in the Bible. The MMs were thinking of the “I was hungry and you fed me” Jesus. But there’s also the “Depart from me, you accursed, into everlasting fire reserved for the devil and his angels” Jesus suggested by drones and endless war. Still, I said, the boy’s done good, he’s done the right thing.
And then I remembered something: that phrase has bad associations. In the Blair/Brown days, Labour politicians developed the phrase “the right thing to do”. Every policy was justified because it was “the right thing to do”. Gordon Brown said it so often that I hear it now in my head spoken with a Scottish accent. This was the mantra, whether expressed or simply understood, for all policy. So to try to cut the Disability Living Allowance was the right thing to do (the disabled didn’t agree: they demonstrated successfully outside parliament and in Downing Street, declaring that it was the wrong thing to do). To go to war against Iraq was the right thing to do. To put asylum-seekers’ children into detention or into care as an incentive to their parents to take the family home to persecution was somehow the right thing to do. And so on. You get the idea.
But so successful was this ploy that when David Cameron succeeded Gordon Brown, he and the Conservatives stole the phrase and kept it in their kitbag. And they use it all the time. From badger culls to the Scottish referendum to NHS “efficiency savings” and privatisation (whatever the consequences), it is nearly always justified because it is the right thing to do. I’m not sure if they said it to justify their policy of letting people drown in the Mediterranean – but if they didn’t, it was “understood”.
Well, we’ve got used to that stuff. But there is a further nightmare scenario looming ahead here: I don’t know how I will cope with the (admittedly unlikely) election of a Labour government in 2015 if, once elected, it claims, every time it breaks one of its election promises (that’ll be about once every two days), “We are retaining the Tories’ austerity measures/sticking to the Tories’ spending plans/not abolishing the Tory bedroom tax – because it is (you know, everybody knows, it’s agreed between us, we can’t go back on it) the right thing to do.”
But we can’t allow these buggers to ruin – despoil – the language we use. We should reclaim the language about “the right thing” and give it the meaning it would have in a decent, just and accountable political system. So I repeat: Obama’s executive action this week on immigration was undoubtedly “the right thing to do”. But if, having done it, he doesn’t apply the principle to other policy areas – doesn’t want to be like the first Jesus any more – then let him get himself to the golf course and stay there.
A song for a generation
When I lived in Paris in the 1990s I listened to a singer, Renaud, who wrote songs about the marginalised of French society, mostly, as elsewhere, immigrant families. When, in the 2000s, I did my research on asylum seekers in the UK and France, with a chapter on Immigration & Race in France, I couldn’t help quoting one of Renaud’s songs, “Deuxième Génération”, a song about the most marginalised and deprived of the North African “second generation” (beurs) in the 1980s. He put these words into the mouth of “Slimane”, aged fifteen and living in the Paris suburb (banlieue) of La Courneuve (the translation that follows is mine):
J’ai rien à gagner, rien à perdre
Même pas la vie
J’aime que la mort dans cette vie d’merde
J’aime c’qu’est cassé
J’aime c’qu’est détruit
J’aime surtout c’qui vous fait peur
La douleur et la nuit.
[Nothing to gain, nothing to lose
Not even life
I love only death in this life of shit
I love what is broken
I love what is destroyed
I love above all everything that makes you afraid
Pain and the night.]
Renaud was criticised by some beurs, who saw the song as negative, portraying people like Slimane as victims, whereas they eventually launched a fightback, with their supporters, against their oppression, so they were not passive victims. But this song, in fact, became part of that fightback. It certainly represents the reality of many beurs, then and now. And now, as then, a fightback is necessary once more.
Here is the song performed by Renaud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91MsCgJ9KNM
And here are the words:
J’m’appelle Slimane et j’ai quinze ans
J’vis chez mes vieux à La Courneuve
J’ai mon C.A.P. d’délinquant
J’suis pas un nul j’ai fait mes preuves
Dans la bande c’est moi qu’est l’plus grand
Sur l’bras j’ai tatoué une couleuvre.
J’suis pas encore allé en taule
Paraît qu’c’est à cause de mon âge
Paraît d’ailleurs qu’c’est pas Byzance
Que t’es un peu comme dans une cage
Parc’que ici tu crois qu’c’est drôle
Tu crois qu’la rue c’est les vacances.
J’ai rien à gagner, rien à perdre
Même pas la vie
J’aime que la mort dans cette vie d’merde
J’aime c’qu’est cassé
J’aime c’qu’est détruit
J’aime surtout c’qui vous fait peur
La douleur et la nuit.
J’ai mis une annonce dans Libé
Pour m’trouver une gonzesse sympa
Qui boss’rait pour m’payer ma bouffe
Vu qu’moi, l’boulot pour que j’y touche
Y m’faudrait deux fois plus de doigts
Comme quoi, tu vois, c’est pas gagné.
C’que j’voudrais, c’est être au chôm’du
Palper du blé sans rien glander
Pi comme ça, j’s’rais à la sécu
J’pourrais grattos me faire remplacer
Toutes les ratiches que j’ai perdues
Dans des bastons qu’ont mal tourné.
J’ai rien à gagner, rien à perdre
Même pas la vie
J’aime que la mort dans cette vie d’merde
J’aime c’qu’est cassé
J’aime c’qu’est détruit
J’aime surtout tout c’qui vous fait peur
La douleur et la nuit…
J’ai même pas d’tunes pour m’payer d’l’herbe
Alors, je m’défonce avec c’que j’peux
Le trychlo, la colle à rustine
C’est vrai qu’des fois ça fout la gerbe
Mais pour le prix, c’est c’qu’on fait d’mieux
Et pi, ça nettoie les narines.
Le soir, on rôde sur les parkings
On cherche une B.M. pas trop ruinée
On l’emprunte pour une heure ou deux
On largue la caisse à la Porte Dauphine
On va aux putes, juste pour mater
Pour s’en souv’nir l’soir dans nos pieux.
J’ai rien à gagner, rien à perdre
Même pas la vie
J’aime que la mort dans cette vie d’merde
J’aime c’qu’est cassé
J’aime c’qu’est détruit
J’aime surtout tout c’qui vous fait peur
La douleur et la nuit…
Y’a un autr’ truc qui m’branche aussi
C’est la musique avec des potes
On a fait un groupe de hard rock
On répète le soir dans une cave
Sur des amplis un peu pourris
Sur du matos un peu chourave.
‘n a même trouvé un vieux débile
Qui voulait nous faire faire un disque
Ça a foiré parc’que c’minable
Voulait pas qu’on chante en kabyle
On y a mis la tête contre une brique
Que même la brique, elle a eu mal.
J’ai rien à gagner, rien à perdre
Même pas la vie
J’aime que la mort dans cette vie d’merde
J’aime c’qu’est cassé
J’aime c’qu’est détruit
J’aime surtout tout c’qui vous fait peur
La douleur et la nuit.
Des fois, j’me dis qu’à 3000 bornes
De ma cité, y’a un pays
Que j’connaîtrai sûr’ment jamais
Que p’t’être c’est mieux, p’t’être c’est tant pis
Qu’là-bas aussi, j’s’rai étranger
Qu’là-bas non plus, je s’rai personne.
Alors, pour m’sentir appartenir
A un peuple, à une patrie
J’porte autour de mon cou sur mon cuir
Le keffieh noir et blanc et gris
Je m’suis inventé des frangins
Des amis qui crèvent aussi.
J’ai rien à gagner, rien à perdre
Même pas la vie
J’aime que la mort dans cette vie d’merde
J’aime c’qu’est cassé
J’aime c’qu’est détruit
J’aime surtout tout c’qui vous fait peur
La douleur et la nuit.
A world that fits
Brilliant!
In the lands of my imagination
There exists a nation, wise,
That’s built on ethical foundations
For to see its people – all its people
Meaningfully thrive
With Integrity and Honesty,
Equality and Liberty,
Its cornerstones on which
All other bricks look and rely.
There, the atmosphere is friendly
And the population wild but kind
For they have made Society’s priority
Achieving peace of mind.
They recognise you cannot
Put a price on individuals
Who see themselves fulfilled
Through their own eyes;
That a populace that’s confident,
Is not inclined to rush
To crush each other;
Even less to jump to judge
And moralize.
For they have learned a treasure
Through the measurement of time:
They understand true freedom starts
In one’s own heart and mind.
And no one dreams to mess with it
Because their own shoes, comfy, fit;
There, everyone’s a valued peer
And so respect and trust…
View original post 71 more words
For some pounds
Excellent!
There is so little room to move
Here on the common ground:
Can’t climb up quite high enough;
Can’t slip that much further down.
A life in limbo with no window,
Ground to powder for some pounds
By banks of think tanks flanking clowns.
But surely the economy
Should fit to our Society:
To you and me;
For you and me
And not this crazy other way around…
Stony silence ended – Alan Johnson replies
Alan Johnson has now replied to my email on TTIP. I have put the letter below, but here are a couple of points:
My first reaction on reading the letter was “and if not?”
Johnson seems to share concerns “about the impact that TTIP could have on public services – particularly the NHS.” He believes “the NHS should be exempt from the agreement and that the Government should now push for this exemption.”
And if not, Alan, what will you, the two Eds, Harriet and all your mates actually do?
He seems to share concerns that TTIP wants foreign investors to have the right to sue sovereign governments before ad hoc tribunals for loss of profits resulting from public policy decisions. “I believe”, he says, “that governments should be able to legislate in the public interest and that this should be protected in any dispute resolution mechanisms.”
And if not?
Johnson also says, “It is … crucial … that the benefits of TTIP filter down to employees, small businesses and consumers …” – what’s it mean, “filter down”? It is apparently also crucial “that the deal is open and accountable …” “Open and accountable” is usually just jargon. It goes with (I’m surprised he didn’t use it) “transparent”. Once you’ve seen that word you know it’s going to be as opaque as can be. And remember, of course, that the negotiations are being held in secret, so that’s already a blow to openness, accountability and transparency. They’ve clearly started as they mean to go on, but he didn’t mention that.
But anyway – just in case I’m being too suspicious-minded – let me ask of these pious wishes too: and if not?
I think the answer is “If not – we won’t do anything.” After all he begins the letter by saying, “I support the principles behind TTIP – the free trade agreement that is currently being negotiated between the USA and the EU.” And he supports them because the EU and the USA “are, of course, the UK’s two largest markets …” It’s the market that’s crucial. That’s why the rest of the sentence isn’t worth the e-space it’s typed on, the bit about the benefits of TTIP (“removing trade barriers, boosting growth and creating jobs”). Because all promises of benefits – especially the creation of jobs – will be broken if market considerations dictate. Likewise any promise that governments will “be able to legislate in the public interest” without getting stamped on – sorry, taken to a tribunal!
He promises at the end of the letter to “continue to follow this issue closely”.
Us too, Alan.
Anyway, here’s the letter:
“Dear Mr Mouncer,
Thank you for your email and apologies that you did not receive a response to your original email, this was an oversight on my part.
Let me start by saying that I support the principles behind TTIP – the free trade agreement that is currently being negotiated between the USA and the EU. These are, of course, the UK’s two largest markets and I believe that TTIP has the potential to bring significant benefits, including removing trade barriers, boosting growth and creating jobs.
It is also crucial, though, that the benefits of TTIP filter down to employees, small businesses and consumers, that the deal is open and accountable and that it raises or at least maintains labour, consumer, environmental and safety standards.
I also share the concerns that many constituents have raised about the impact that TTIP could have on public services – particularly the NHS. I believe that the NHS and public services need to be more, not less, integrated and I am concerned at the worrying fragmentation of health services that is taking place under this Government. That is why I believe that the NHS should be exempt from the agreement and that the Government should now push for this exemption.
I know that there is also considerable concern about the proposed inclusion of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in the TTIP deal. I believe that governments should be able to legislate in the public interest and that this should be protected in any dispute resolution mechanisms. I also believe there needs to be far greater transparency in this area and that while the EU Commission has recently instigated some welcome changes on this, they can and must go further.
I hope that the Government now listen and respond to these concerns and ensure that TTIP delivers the jobs, growth and fairer deal for consumers that we all want to see.
Thank you once again for writing to me and sharing your views. I can assure you that I will continue to follow this issue closely and bear in mind the points you raise.
Yours sincerely,
Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP”
LA MÉDAILLE/THE MEDAL by Renaud Séchan
Another view of war to the one we’re getting in the commemoration/glorification events relating particularly to the First World War. It was called “the war to end all wars” but in fact led to 100 years of war. Patriotism does not allow us to say “My country was wrong”. Instead the most we can say is “My country, right or wrong.” Some years ago, the French singer Renaud expressed his own brand of anti-war feeling, and his words are worth hearing. Here he is on YouTube performing his song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYs-Xd2N3lE
and I’ve put the words below – with my own translation (apologies, but I am not a poet!):
LA MÉDAILLE
Un pigeon s’est posé‚
Sur l’épaule galonnée
Du Maréchal de France
Et il a décoré
La statue dressée
D’une gastrique offense
Maréchaux assassins
Sur vos bustes d’airain
Vos poitrines superbes
Vos médailles ne sont
Que fiente de pigeon
De la merde.
Un enfant est venu
Aux pieds de la statue
Du Maréchal de France
Une envie naturelle
L’a fait pisser contre elle
Mais en toute innocence
Maréchaux assassins
Le môme mine de rien
A joliment vengé
Les enfants et les mères
Que dans vos sales guerres
Vous avez massacres.
Un clodo s’est couché
Une nuit juste aux pieds
Du Maréchal de France
Ivre mort au matin
Il a vomi son vin
Dans une gerbe immense
Maréchaux assassins
Vous méritez rien
De mieux pour vos méfaits
Que cet hommage immonde
Pour tout le sang du monde
Par vos sabres verses.
Un couple d’amoureux
S’embrasse sous les yeux
Du Maréchal de France
Muet comme un vieux bonze
Il restera de bronze
Raide comme une lance
Maréchaux assassins
L’amour ne vous dit rien
A part bien sur celui
De la Patrie hélas
Cette idée dégueulasse
Qu’à mon tour je conchie.
THE MEDAL
A pigeon perched
On the braided shoulder
Of the Marshal of France
And he decorated
The upright statue
With a gastric offence
Marshals – assassins –
On your busts of bronze
Your superb chests
Your medals are nothing
But pigeon’s droppings
Nothing but shit.
A child came
To the feet of the statue
Of the Marshal of France
A natural need
Made him piss against it
But in all innocence
Marshals – assassins –
This unthinking child
Has nicely avenged
The children and mothers
You have massacred
In your dirty wars.
A tramp slept
One night at the feet
Of the Marshal of France
In the morning, dead drunk,
He vomited his wine
Like an enormous fountain
Marshals – assassins –
You deserve nothing better
For your misdeeds
Than this filthy homage
For all the blood of the world
Shed by your swords.
Two lovers are kissing
Under the gaze
Of the Marshal of France
The dumb old despot
Will remain set in bronze
Stiff as a lance
Marshals – assassins –
Love means nothing to you
Except, of course, patriotic love
That disgusting idea
That I, in my turn,
Cover with shit.
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