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Tony Benn
At Paul Foot’s memorial meeting at Hackney town hall in 2004, Tony Benn read the obituary of William Morris written by the editor of The Clarion the week that Morris died in 1896. Tony Benn applied it to Paul Foot. Sadly, it is now time to pay the same tribute to Tony Benn. He inspired us, supported us and gave us reason to hope that we could bring about socialist change. We haven’t done it yet but, if and when we do, it will be due, in no small way, to him. We owe him an enormous debt. Read The Clarion on Morris and remember Tony Benn:
“I cannot help thinking that it does not matter what goes into the Clarion this week, because William Morris is dead. And what socialist will care for any other news this week, beyond that one sad fact? He was our best man, and he is dead …
“It is true that much of his work still lives, and will live. But we have lost him, and, great as was his work, he himself was greater … he was better than the best. Though his words fell like sword strokes, one always felt that the warrior was stronger than the sword. For Morris was not only a genius, he was a man. Strike at him where you would, he rang true … he was our best man. We cannot spare him; we cannot replace him. In all England there lives no braver, kinder, honester, cleverer, heartier man than William Morris. He is dead, and we cannot help feeling for a while that nothing else matters.”
And here’s a couple of quotes from the man himself:
On the poll tax: “The last time they tried to impose the poll tax was 1381 – and protesters cut the chancellor’s head off and stuck it on a pole on Westminster Bridge. So Mr Major [John Major was Chancellor of the Exchequer] had better watch out, because you never know what’s going to happen!”
On a demonstration against Thatcher’s policies (and here he produces one of his famous lists – he always had a list!): “It was a great demonstration. People came from all over the region – women and men, young and old, employed and unemployed, skilled and unskilled, black and white, straight and gay – all protesting against Mrs Thatcher’s plans for the region – and that’s our hope. Frankly.”
On how the media are not all-powerful (I can’t remember which election he’s talking about here): Just before the election, the Sun newspaper got all the information they could find on me and sent it to a psychiatrist in America. When the result came back, they put it on the front page on the morning of the election: ‘BENN IS STARK STARING BONKERS, SAYS PSYCHIATRIST’. When the result of the election was announced, I found I’d increased my majority! So you see, they aren’t all-powerful, and they can’t tell us what to think.”
But they do try, and governments do try, to control us and keep us passive. This is from an interview in the last couple of years: “The way they control us is to frighten us all the time, and divide us and demoralise us. If you want to win you mustn’t be frightened, you mustn’t be divided, you mustn’t be demoralised and you mustn’t be cynical. And once people discover that, then it’s astonishing what can be achieved.”
RIP Tony Benn
Flora’s story IV
15 February 2014
“We love Flora,” said Stephen Rippon, the chair of the meeting in support of Flora attended by community groups in Hull last night, and that was the theme throughout the meeting. Speaker after speaker told of her personal qualities and commitment to the community. The meeting, held in Princes Avenue Methodist Church, took the form of a prayer meeting, and was organised by Hull Open Doors Project, which supports asylum seekers and refugees as well as other immigrant workers. At the end of the meeting, the following petition was signed by everybody:
“We, the undersigned, gathered at a meeting of community groups in Hull on 14 February 2014, ask Home Secretary Theresa May to release Flora Wanyu Yennyuy from detention at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre and to grant her indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
“Flora came to the UK in 2007 to do a Master’s Degree at the University of Hull, and she was awarded an MSc in Environmental Technology in 2010. She was granted a work visa, but when the relationship on which it was based broke down due to domestic violence against her, the work visa was cancelled. She is now in detention for a second time, awaiting deportation on 3 March.
“Flora has been consistently in employment, paid her taxes, and has not claimed state benefits. She has also become an integral part of the community in the churches she attends, as well as at the Open Doors Project and other community groups in Hull. She was also a trustee at the Mental Health Action Group charity.
“We believe that it is unjust for her to be detained and it would be unjust to deport her. She should be released from Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre and granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK so that she can continue to work and contribute to society as she has been doing in Hull since her arrival.”
I posted the petition to Theresa May today, accompanied by the following covering letter:
“Dear Mrs May,
“I am writing concerning the immigration case of Flora Wanyu Yennyuy.
“At a meeting of local community groups and friends of Flora at Princes Avenue Methodist Church last night, called to support Flora Wanyu Yennyuy and her right to stay in the UK, concern was expressed at her detention at Yarl’s Wood IRC and at the government’s stated intention to deport her on 3 March. We do not believe this decision to be just.
“During the meeting, Flora’s work and dedication to the local community in Hull was reiterated and celebrated and at the end of the meeting we all signed the enclosed petition.
“We know that you have received a number of representations on Flora’s behalf and we add this one in the hope that you will, after considering all the facts in her case, order her release from detention and grant her leave to remain in the UK …”
And now, of course, we wait.
If you haven’t already signed Flora’s online petition, please do so here:
Whose war was it anyway?
Time: 1915; place: Port Glasgow, where the Clyde shipbuilders were at the heart of the war effort. They produced battle cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers and merchant ships.
In February 1915, the Clyde workers went on strike. They saw the bosses making a packet out of the war, while they were being called to hard work and sacrifice. Profits had soared and what the Clyde workers did was an early rejection of the notion that “we’re all in it together”. Instead they called what the bosses were doing by its proper name: “profiteering”. They went on strike over a number of issues, including pay. The government arrested the strike leaders and, after three weeks, the strike collapsed.
In the second episode of Britain’s Great War (now there’s a dead giveaway of a title!), Jeremy Paxman told some of this story. And he managed to put the strike leaders down by calling them “ringleaders” (Oxford English Dictionary: “a person who initiates or leads an illicit or illegal activity”).
But he ends with an interview with two present-day trade unionists with a sense of what the history meant, Davie Torrance and Davie Cooper. Paxman raised the question of strikes being acts of “disloyalty” in time of war. Davie Cooper explained to him:
“There was a feeling there that it wasn’t our war, it was the bosses trying to carve out more capital for themselves. That was the feeling.”
“But”, protested Paxman, “vast numbers of people did volunteer.”
“Ah well,” said Cooper, “people got conned. They’re still conning people to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“The point, of course,” said Davie Torrance, “is that the people who wished to continue with the war, to a great extent, were profiteers – and racketeers in many cases. So therefore to say that we were less than patriotic, I don’t think is quite correct.”
Paxman frowned. “Do you really think that the ruling classes unnecessarily prolonged the war so that some people could make money out of it?”
I was reminded of Sassoon’s Declaration: “I believe that this war … has now become a war of aggression and conquest.” He protested “against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.” His politics may not have been the politics of the Clydeside workers, but he had just as strong a sense of being conned and used as they did.
“Yeah,” replied Torrance. “It’s a fair assumption.”
The next part of the story proved the trade unionists’ case and showed the government there were limits to what it could get away with. The landlords of Glasgow’s overcrowded Govan tenements raised their tenants’ rents while many of the men were away at the war. The women who remained fought back. In November 1915 the men of the shipyards joined them in a big and noisy demonstration outside the court where rent strikers were being tried. The government halted the case against the rent strikers and promised a Rent Restriction Act which protected tenants from exploitation. It fixed rents at pre-war levels.
Generosity on the part of the government? No, it was fear – they knew, this time, they were beaten. During a panicky phone call from Glasgow’s Sheriff to Lloyd George (the Minister for Munitions), the Sheriff said, “They’re threatening to pull down Glasgow!”
“Stop the case,” said Lloyd George.
That’s the way to do it.
Flora’s story III
The developments in Flora’s case come thick and fast, but make no sense. On 28 January the Home Office informed Flora’s legal adviser that her biometric data had to be taken and noted that her case was complicated because of human rights issues. On the face of it, this admission of human rights complications might have been a cause for hope. However, on 29 January, the Home Office wrote that her application for leave to remain had failed and that she had until 12 February to arrange her departure. This seemed to ignore, not only the previous letter, but also the fact that she was already detained at Yarl’s Wood.
Next, the 12 February deadline was also ignored, as the first attempt to deport Flora was made at Yarl’s Wood, also on 29 January. The attempt foundered because Flora had not been given the required 72 hours’ notice of deportation.
On 2 February, an officer from the security firm Serco informed Flora that a flight had been booked for her for the following day, 3 Feb. The officer asked her if she was “comfortable” about going to “administration” to talk to them about it. She replied that she again hadn’t been given the 72 hours’ notice, and refused to go. 2 hours later two male Serco officers came to her room and made the same request. She refused.
3 February came and went. Flora still has no idea what will happen next. Flora is depressed and on medication as a result of her experience of domestic violence which triggered this series of events. After speaking to her on the phone, her partner Keith says: “I am now concerned that her mental health may be affected by her detention as she sounds as though she is becoming more depressed.”
Flora should be released from detention immediately. If you have not already signed the petition (https://www.change.org/petitions/theresa-may-secretary-of-state-release-wanyu-flora-yennyuy-from-detention) please do so. It would also be helpful, considering Flora’s urgent need to get out of Yarl’s Wood, if you could also email Home Secretary Theresa May (mayt@parliament.uk) and Immigration Minister Mark Harper: (ministerforimmigration@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk)
Ambiguously sent to war?
Now where was I? Oh yes, the sexual ambiguities in Sassoon’s poem The Kiss (see previous blog). So to continue Pat Barker’s conversation between army psychologist W.H.R. Rivers and his patient, Captain Manning:
“‘And of course it’s crawling with sexual ambiguities. But then I think it’s too easy to see that as a matter of personal … I don’t know what. The fact is the army’s attitude to the bayonet is pretty bloody ambiguous. You read the training manuals and they’re all going on about importance of close combat. Fair enough, but you get the impression there’s a value in it which is independent of whether it gains the objective or not. It’s proper war. Manly war. Not all this nonsense about machine-guns and shrapnel. And it’s reflected in the training. I mean, it’s one long stream of sexual innuendo. Stick him in the gooleys. No more little Fritzes. If Sassoon had used language like that, he’d never have been published.’ Manning stopped abruptly. ‘You know I think I’ve lost the thread. No, that’s it, I was trying … I was trying to be honest and think whether I hated bayonet practice more because … because the body that the sack represents is one that I … Come on, Rivers. Nice psychological term?’
“‘Love.’
“‘I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t think so. We all hate it. I’ve no way of knowing whether I hate it more, because we don’t talk about it. It’s just a bloody awful job, and we get on and do it. I mean, you split enormous parts of yourself off, anyway.’
“‘Is that what you did?’
“‘I suppose so.’ For a moment it seemed he was about to go on, then he shook his head.
“When he was sure there’d be no more, Rivers said, ‘You know we are going to have to talk about the war, Charles.’
“‘I do talk about it.’
“Silence.
“‘I just don’t see what good it would do to churn everything up. I know what the theory is.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘My son Robert, when he was little … he used to enjoy being bathed. And then quite suddenly he turned against it. He used to go stiff and scream blue murder every time his nurse tried to put him in. And it turned out he’d been watching the water go down the plughole and he obviously thought he might go down with it. Everybody told him not to be stupid.’ Manning smiled. ‘I must say it struck me as an eminently reasonable fear.’
“Rivers smiled. ‘I won’t let you go down the plughole.’”
The divided self?
Pat Barker’s First World War trilogy continues to come up with interesting stuff for this centenary year. Like this, from The Eye in the Door. Psychologist Rivers asks a patient, Captain Manning (no, not Captain Mainwaring!), what he thinks of “the strict Freudian view of war neurosis”. This is apparently the view that the all-male environment of war, with its high emotional intensity, plus the experience of battle, arouses suppressed “homosexual and sadistic impulses” and that “in vulnerable men, this leads to breakdown.” Manning replies:
“‘Is that what you believe?’
“Rivers shook his head. ‘I want to know what you think.’
“‘I don’t know what makes other people break down. I don’t think sex had much to do with my breakdown.’ A slight smile. ‘But then I’m not a repressed homosexual.’”
Rivers presses him for an answer. Manning replies:
“‘I’m just trying to think. Do you know Sassoon’s poem The Kiss?’
“‘The one about the bayonet. Yes.’
“‘I think that’s the strongest poem he’s ever written. You know, I’ve never served with him so I don’t know this from personal experience, but I’ve talked a lot to Robert Graves and he says the extent to which Sassoon contrives to be two totally different people at the Front is absolutely amazing. You know he’s a tremendously successful and bloodthirsty platoon commander, and yet at the same time, back in billets, out comes the notebook. Another anti-war poem. And the poem uses the experience of the platoon commander, but it never uses any of his attitudes. And yet for once, in that one poem, he gets both versions of himself in.’
“‘And of course it’s crawling with sexual ambiguities …’”
Well, more of the sexual ambiguities later. But for now here’s the poem itself:
“To these I turn, in these I trust –
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.[1]
I’m not absolutely sure to what extent “he gets both versions of himself in” here. But there it is.
[1] Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, Faber & Faber, London (1983), p. 29. Sassoon explains the poem’s imagery: “A famous Scotch Major (Campbell) came and lectured on the bayonet. ‘The bayonet and the bullet are brother and sister,’ he said.”
Flora’s story II
You may remember Flora (I told her story in a previous blog: https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/floras-story/ )
Flora was recently refused the right to another appeal because she couldn’t pay the application fee of £587. She was then arrested and is now in Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre. However, her friends managed to raise the money to pay for the application and so her solicitor was able to lodge it a few days ago. Nevertheless, today (29/1/2014) the UK Border Agency attempted to deport her. The deportation failed, but I don’t yet know the reason for the failure. Whatever the details, we are relieved she is still here.
But she should not be in detention. She has done nothing wrong. She has an appeal duly lodged with the Immigration Appeals Tribunal. Will you please sign the following petition to Home Secretary Theresa May, demanding her release.
A lovely war resisted
This week begins a major assault on our senses by the BBC as it begins its World War One Centenary programmes. “It is”, writes Adrian Van Klaveren, the “controller” of the series,
“the most ambitious season we have ever mounted – running for four years across television, radio and online and across national, international and local services. There are already well over 100 specially commissioned new programmes and, in total over the next four years, we expect there to be around 2,500 hours of output related to the centenary.”
Faced with this enormous threat, I began to think of Siegfried Sassoon, the poet famous for his declaration against the war.
Siegfried Sassoon’s declaration against the First World War[1] was not a pacifist statement. He had willingly entered the war because he believed it to be “a war of defiance and liberation”. Moreover, he was decorated during the fighting, receiving the Military Cross (MC) for
“conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches. He remained for one and a half hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination, all the killed and wounded were brought in.”[2]
But he eventually declared against the war because, he said, it was “being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”. It had become “a war of aggression and conquest”, prolonged “for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust”. In this he is clearly descended from Williams in Henry V, who insisted that a war had to be a just cause if it was to be supported. An ordinary soldier in the trenches of Agincourt, Williams was unaware that he was speaking to the king himself when he warned:
“But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a place’ – some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it …”
Sassoon’s declaration also pointed forward to the next century, when a prime minister would go to war on the basis of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Said Sassoon:
“I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.”
His strong anti-war position can be seen in his amendments to the poem Anthem for Doomed Youth, by Wilfred Owen, a fellow patient in the Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917. The amendments are in Sassoon’s handwriting on Owen’s manuscript and Pat Barker reconstructs the scene between them in her novel Regeneration:
“‘What minute-bells for these who die so fast? Only the monstrous/solemn anger of our guns’
“‘I thought “passing” bells’, Owen said.
“‘Hm. Though if you lose “minute” you realize how weak “fast” is. “Only the monstrous anger …”’
“ ‘Solemn?’
“‘Only the solemn anger of our guns. Owen, for God’s sake, this is War Office propaganda.’
“‘No, it’s not.’
“‘Read that line.’
“Owen read. ‘Well, it certainly isn’t meant to be.’
“‘I suppose what you’ve got to decide is who are “these”? The British dead? Because if they’re British, then our guns is …’
“Owen shook his head. ‘All the dead.’
“‘Let’s start there.’ Sassoon crossed out ‘our’ and pencilled in ‘the’. ‘You’re sure that’s what you want? It isn’t a minor change.’
“‘No, I know. If it’s “the”, it’s got to be “monstrous”.’
“‘Agreed.’ Sassoon crossed out ‘solemn’. So:
“‘What passing-bells for these who die … so fast? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.’
“‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with the second line.’
“‘In herds’?”
“‘Better.’”
Here is the finished poem:
“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.”
(The Poems of Wilfred Owen, Chatto & Windus, London (2008), p. 76)
Yet Sassoon went back to the war. Had he changed his mind about it? W.H.R. Rivers, the hospital psychologist, seems to have told the Board considering his future that he had indeed changed his mind. The chair of the Board was Colonel Balfour Graham:
“Balfour Graham said, ‘This is the young man who believes the war is being fought for the wrong reasons, and that we should explore Germany’s offer of a negotiated peace. Do you think – ’
“‘Those were his views’, Rivers said, ‘while he was still suffering from exhaustion and the after-effects of a shoulder wound. Fortunately a brother officer intervened and he was sent here. Really no more was required than a brief period of rest and reflection. He now feels very strongly that it’s his duty to go back.’”[3]
But Sassoon told the Board he hadn’t changed his views at all:
“Major Huntley [a member of the Board] leaned forward. ‘Rivers tells us you’ve changed your mind about the war. Is that right?’
“A startled glance. ‘No, sir.’
“Balfour Graham and Huntley looked at each other.
“‘You haven’t changed your views?’ Balfour Graham asked.
“‘No, sir.’ Sassoon’s gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Rivers. ‘I believe exactly what I believed in July. Only if possible more strongly.’”[4]
So why did he go back? It looks as if he felt a strong duty of solidarity with his comrades and guilt at not fulfilling it. He was in the comfort and security of the hospital, while they were in the dirt, stench and merciless danger of the trenches This is what he seems to express in his poem Sick Leave:
“When I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,–
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
‘Why are you here with all your watches ended?
From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line.’
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
‘When are you going out to them again?
Are they not still your brothers through our blood?’”[5]
So “out to them again” he went. And he survived. Owen was killed in battle a few days before the armistice. Both struggled with ideas of war, peace, duty, solidarity. And they did what they thought was right.
As for me, I agree with Seumas Milne that the First World War was “an imperial bloodbath … not a noble cause” (see http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/08/first-world-war-imperial-bloodbath-warning-noble-cause?CMP=twt_gu ) I have opposed all our recent wars from Vietnam onwards. And I don’t look forward to the triumphalist accounts of the First World War that will mark this centenary. For the various justifications of it offered today will not only sanitise the history but will wrap themselves around the recent wars. Support one, support all, we will be told. I don’t support any of them.
Sassoon’s declaration can be read here: https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/the-first-world-war-a-soldiers-declaration/
[1] Finished with the War: a Soldier’s Declaration, quoted in Barker, P. (1992), Regeneration, Penguin Books, London, p. 3.
[2] Citation on Sassoon’s ribbon, quoted in Barker, P. (1992), Regeneration, Penguin Books, London, p. 8.
[3] Barker, P. (1992), Regeneration, Penguin Books, London, p. 245.
[4] Barker, P. (1992), Regeneration, Penguin Books, London, p. 246.
[5] Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems, Faber & Faber, London, p. 94.
Whatever the rise, it ain’t enough
The Guardian tells us that George Osborne is calling for an above-inflation increase in the minimum wage to £7 an hour. This is to take place in two stages, one in October 2014, one in October 2015. Presumably that means that if we fail to vote Conservative in 2015, we will have only ourselves to blame if we find ourselves still on low pay. Other politicians are jumping around trying to respond. Labour’s shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury says that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls thought of it first. Vince Cable claims he thought of it first. The things they all do to get votes.
Juggle, juggle, juggle. Or should I say smoke and mirrors? Of course the minimum wage should be higher – much higher than £7. But who knows what any of the parties will really do after the next election – on anything, but perhaps especially on this.
Others are being predictable: Mark Littlewood, the director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “Increasing the minimum wage is a triumph of political aspiration over economic reality”; and the CBI says that a rise to £7 would be “unaffordable”. I doubt it. For it to be suggested at all probably means it is, in their terms, “affordable”, and the bluster is just a knee-jerk reaction. Mandy Rice-Davies should be living at this hour!
Talking of aspiration, I am reminded of a friend who works in what he calls “the bowels of the capitalist system”, the World Financial Center in New York. We were sitting in the restaurant of the Metropolitan Museum 18 months ago and he explained his philosophy to me. It seems that to pay everybody a decent wage can only lead to inflation. In fact, low pay is A Good Thing: not only does it keep inflation down, it is actually good for the low paid. Because it gives them aspirations to higher things, training, education, better jobs where the pay is higher, and they might not have those aspirations otherwise. So don’t give them a living wage now – they just won’t benefit from it. It is, my friend said, in accordance with human nature. So I suppose this means that low pay is beneficial to society.
My friend in New York is a Christian, and I later remembered that Jesus said, “The poor you always have with you.” Capitalist Christians think that means you can’t do anything to finally get rid of poverty. More radical Christians think they ought to do something about poverty, and they also quote the Bible.
George and David, Ed and Ed, and Uncle Vince Cable and all, are not quoting the Bible, and we can at least be thankful for that. What they are doing, though, is making promises. None of us should be thankful for that.
By the way, the Living Wage Foundation last year proposed a living wage rate per hour of £8.55 in London and £7.45 outside London.
Will somebody talk to them please?
Here’s the Guardian article:
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