Rest in Power Muhammad Ali (17/1/42 -3/6/16) - The greatest heavyweight poetical champion of our time

The lyrical heavyweight showman Muhammad Ali who thrilled the globe with his sublime boxing style, unpredictable wit, and gentle generosity sadly died yesterday after a long brave fight with Parkinson's disease. Tragic news. He was 74. Ali, the former Cassius Clay, was not just an athlete who embodied the times in which he lived. He shaped them. His conscientious objection to the Vietnam war, and reasoned rants against a country fighting for freedom on the other side of the globe, while its own black citizens were denied basic rights of their own, energized a generation. Ali refused to serve in Vietnam,and in 1967, three years after Ali had won the heavyweight championship, he was publicly vilified for his refusal to be conscripted into the U.S. military, based on his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. Ali was eventually arrested and found guilty on draft evasion charges; he was stripped of his boxing title, and his boxing license was suspended. He was not imprisoned, but did not fight again for nearly four years while his appeal worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was eventually successful. Ali had changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, subsequently converting to Sunni Islam in 1975. By the late 1960s, Ali had become a living embodiment of the proposition that principles matter. His power no longer resided in his fists. It came from his conscience. He would become a tireless human rights ambassador and philanthropist, his devotion to charitable causes would feature prominently for the rest of his life whose impact has been felt worldwide.Being a person who championed humanity, justice and civil rights.
Ali would go on to become the first and only three-time lineal World Heavyweight Champion.
Nicknamed "The Greatest", Ali was involved in several historic boxing matches. Notable among these were three with rival Joe Frazier, which are considered among the greatest in boxing history, and one with George Foreman, where he finally regained his stripped titles seven years later. Ali was well known for his unorthodox fighting style, epitomized by his catchphrase "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee", and employing techniques such as the Ali Shuffle and the rope-a-dope. Ali brought beauty and grace to the most uncompromising of sports and through the wonderful excesses of skill and character, he became the most famous athlete in the world.
Growing up Muhammad Ali had such a huge empowering impact on me . A beautiful man. His brave stand against U.S. imperialism and the vile institutional racism that was  in the U.S that still sadly exists, but Ali. was an inspiration for millions fighting injustice and oppression across the world. No doubt the U.S. establishment will now try and bury their systematic and brutal attempt to silence him.
Muhammed Ali belongs to the oppressed. Let's not let his oppressors rewrite our history.
"What Muhammad Ali did—in a culture that worships sports and violence as well as a culture that idolizes black athletes while criminalizing black skin—was redefine what it meant to be tough and collectivize the very idea of courage. Through the Champ’s words on the streets and deeds in the ring, bravery was not only standing up to Sonny Liston. It was speaking truth to power, no matter the cost." Dave Zirin (in the nation)
But for me he was also also a poet. His passing has reminded me of the time when I was about 7 or 8 in the mid 1970's when I first  first became aware of him, I remember his passion and energy his lyrical playfulness, and even though I subsequently never got that into boxing or fighting and have always tried to avoid violent conflict whenever I can, even though my nose is bent out of shape, and other tell tale signs , tells another story,of my own inability to duck and dive, I loved the fact that Ali was able to wax lyrical spontaneity without  rhyming in the usual traditional settings, using an almost beat phraseology to release  rhymes from his heart with an unpredictable wit that made him a lyrical heavyweight too. 
The world famous boxing champion when not jesting, could be undoubtedly serious too, who  once appeared in an interview which was televised in Ireland, in which he recited a poem he wrote about the 1971 Attica prison riots.
These  riots which took place 46 years ago resulted in the death of 39 people, including some prison guards. It all started on September 9, 1971, when a black inmate was killed while trying to escape the prison. Over the following four days, up to 2,200 black prisoners rebelled against the prison guards, taking 42 of them hostage. Nelson Rockerfeller, the then governor, refused to negotiate with the prisoners demands for better treatment and conditions. Soldiers raided the prison facility on September 13, dropping teargas and then shooting randomly into the smoke for two minutes non-stop. 29 prisoners were killed on the spot. 9 prison guards were also killed on that day, some with slit throats, suggesting that the prisoners had killed their hostages in retaliation for the raid. 1 hostage died of a gunshot wound later on.
After reading the poem, Muhammad Ali related the struggle of the Afro-Americans for freedom and justice to the struggle of the Irish against British imperialism. The transcript of the poem can be read as follows :-

Freedom - Better Now
Better far— from all I see—
To die fighting to be free
What more fitting end could be?
Better surely than in some bed
Where in broken health I'm led
Lingering until I'm dead
Better than with prayers and pleas
Or in the clutch of some disease
Wasting slowly by degrees
Better than a heart attack
or some dose of drug I lack
Let me die by being black
Better far that I should go
Standing here against the foe
Is the sweeter death to know
Better than the bloody stain
on some highway where I’m lain
Torn by flying glass and pane
Better calling death to come
than to die another dumb,
muted victim in the slum
Better than of this prison rot
if there’s any choice I’ve got
Kill me here on the spot
Better for my fight to wage
Now while my blood boils with rage
Less it cool with ancient age
Better violent for us to die
Than to Uncle Tom and try
Making peace just to live a lie
Better now that I say my sooth
I’m gonna die demanding Truth
While I’m still akin to youth
Better now than later on
Now that fear of death is gone
Never mind another dawn.

Powerful stuff indeed, which leaves me to remind you of his other often light hearted rhymes that he often used in his pre-match hype, to try and  'trash talk his opponents, which  I am grateful to an acquaintance named Barac Zita whose facebook post earlier today inspired this post :-

'Float like a butterfly
Sting like a bee
The hands can't hit
what the eyes can't see'



"Everyone knew when I stepped in town,
I was the greatest fighter around.
A lot of people called me a clown,
But I am the one who called the round.
The people came to see a great fight,
But all I did was put out the light.
Never put your money against Cassius Clay,
For you will never have a lucky day."

— In 1962, when Ali was still Cassius Clay.

 "Now Clay swings with a right, what a beautiful swing.
And the punch raises the Bear clear out of the ring.
Liston is still rising, and the ref wears a frown.
For he can't start counting 'til Sonny comes down.
Now Liston disappears from view.
The crowd is getting frantic,
But our radar stations have picked him up. He's somewhere over the Atlantic.
Who would have thought when they came to the fight
That they'd witness the launching of a human satellite.
Yes, the crowd did not dream when they lay down their money
That they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny.
I am the greatest."

— Part of a poem before his upset title victory over Sonny Liston Feb. 25, 1964.

"Joe's gonna come out smokin',
But I ain't gonna be jokin'.
This might shock and amaze ya,
But I'm going to destroy Joe Frazier."

— Before losing to Joe Frazier in their first fight March 8, 1971.

 "You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned?
Wait 'til I whup George Foreman's behind.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
His hand can't hit what his eyes can't see.
Now you see me, now you don't.
George thinks he will, but I know he won't.
I done wrassled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale.
Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.
I'm so mean, I make medicine sick."

— Before regaining the title by upsetting George Foreman Oct. 30, 1974.

"I got speed and endurance.
You'd better increase your insurance."
— To Larry Holmes before his one-sided loss in a bid to become a heavyweight champion for the fourth time Oct. 2, 1980.

Then there is this one about his famous rumble in the jungle with George Foreman, Ali and Foreman may have been adversaries in the ring but became firm  friends.

Last night I had a dream - Muhammad Ali

Last night I had a dream, When I got to Africa,
I had one hell of a rumble,
I had to beat Tarzan's behind first,
For claiming to be King of the jungle,
For this fight, I've wrestled with alligators,
I've tussled wih a whale,
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I'm bad,
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalised a brick,
I'm so mean, I make medicine sick,
I'm so fast man,
I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He'll pay his debt,
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree,
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali.

I'll leave you with this rather nice one :-

He took a few cups of Love - Muhammad Ali

He took a few cups of love,
He took one tablespoon of patience,
One teaspoon of generosity,
One pint of kindness,
He took one quart of laughter,
One pinch of concern,
And then he mixed willingness with happiness,
He added lots of faith,
And he stirred it up well,
Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime,
And he served it to each and every deserving person he met.

“Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them, a desire, a dream, a vision.” - Muhammad Ali

Undoubtedly the greatest, Boxing  poet, and champion of civil rights of our time. 

Rest in Power Muhammad Ali

Cofiwch Dic Penderyn/ Remember Dic Penderyn

                                                  image attributed to Dewi Bowen 
 

On the 3rd of  June 1831 working class martyr Dic Penderyn was hanged at the age of 23. on the gallows in St. Mary's Street, outside Cardiff gaol.

In the early summer of 1831, many of the towns and villages of industrial Wales were marked by political and social unrest. Terrible working conditions in the mines and iron works were made even worse by wage cuts, and in some cases by the laying off men as demand for iron and coal fell away.In Merthyr Tydfil there were serious riots in the streets, and on  3 June 1831 a mob ransacked the building in the town where court records of debt were stored. 
From May-June 1831, the Welsh working class exploded onto the pages of history in a ferocious uprising unprecedented in British history.  Its roots lay in the deep discontent which had been evident for many years,the preceding years had seen the emergence of popular protest movements like the Barley-Meal Riots of 1801 and the South Wales strike of 1816, which paralysed the coalfields. Against a backdrop of a collapse in living conditions, with lack of proper sanitation where disease was rife and life expectancy within a working-class household was low, this led to simmering resentment.
In 1829 depression set in in the iron industry which was to last for three years. As a result Merthyr Tydfil Ironmasters made many workers redundant and cut the wages of those in work. Against a background of rising prices this caused severe hardship for many of the working people of the area and, in order to survive, many people were forced into debt

Often they were unable to pay off their debts and their creditors would then turn to the Court of Requests which had been set up in 1809 to allow the bailiffs to seize the property of debtors. As a result the Court was hated by many people who saw it as the reason for their losing their property. The low wages of the industrial workforce, poor working conditions and the implementation of the 'truck'system' by the iron masters, in which workers were not payed real money, but vouchers and tokens valid only in their masters own shops, contributed to ongoing social unrest.
Against this background the Radicals of Merthyr, as part of the National movement for political reform, organised themselves into a Political Union in 1830 to lead the local campaign for reform. In November 1830 they called for demonstrations in Merthyr to protest against the Truck System and the Corn Laws. The campaign was actually supported by some local Ironmasters. William Crawshay of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and Josiah John Guest of Dowlais Ironworks, for example, both supported the campaign. By the end of the year 1830 the campaign had broadened to embrace the Reform of Parliament, and the election of a Liberal Government in Great Britain led to a bill being brought before Parliament to reform the House of Commons. The Bill was welcomed by the Merthyr Radicals as a step in the right direction, although it did not give Merthyr a Parliamentary Constituency and only extended the right to vote to the Middle Classes rather than the workers. In April 1831, however, the Bill was defeated in a House of Commons vote, the Government resigned and a new General Election was called to fight on the issue of Parliamentary Reform.
Despite Crawshay's support for the Reforms he was forced,in March 1831, to announce cuts in the wages of his workers and redundancies. In May the wage cuts took effect and he made 84 of his workers. It was this, combined with similar situations in other ironworks, the hatred of the activities of the Court of Requests, that saw the increasing tension come to a head,
On 30 May 1831 at the Waun Common above Dowlais a mass meeting of over 2000 workers from Merthyr & Monmouthshire discussed petitioning the King for Reform, the abolition of the Court of Requests and the state of wages in the iron industry.
Then on 31 May,  baillifs from the Court of Requests attempted to seize goods from the home of Lewis Lewis, known as Lewsyn yr Heliwr/ Lewis the Hunstsman, at Penderyn, near Merthyr. Lewis refused to let the take his property and, supported by his neighbours, prevented them from entering his home. The Magistrate, J.B.Bruce, was called and he arranged a compromise between Lewis and the bailiffs which allowed the latter to remove a single trunk belonging to Lewis.
The next day a crowd led by Lewis Lewis marched to the home of a shopkeeper who was now in possession took the trunk back by force, and prepared to march to Merthyr. On the march to Merthyr the crowd went from house to house, seizing any goods which the Court of Requests had taken, and returning them to their original owners. They ransacked the house of one of the bailiffs (Thomas Williams) and took away many articles. By this time the crowd had been swollen by the addition of men from the Cyfarthfa & Hirwaun Ironworks. They marched to the area behind the Castle Inn where many of the tradespeople of the town lived and in particular the home of Thomas Lewis, a hated moneylender and forced him to sign a promise to return goods to a woman whose goods he had seized for debt.
On the same day  Thomas Llewellyn, a coal miner, attempted to hold a rally advocating reform at Hirwaun Common. However, the reformers met with a more militant group who wanted to take more radical action. The radicals killed a calf and dipped the white cloth of a reform flag in its blood.On its staff was impaled a loaf of bread, the symbol of their slogan and the needs of the marchers, Bara neu Waed (Bread or Blood) creating a symbol of common suffering and of equality of humankind. They raised the flag on a pole and it was probably the first time the red flag of revolution was flown as a symbol of workers revolt.
Over the next two days some 7,000-10,000 workers marched on Merthyr Tydfil and the town was seized by the workers. After storming Merthyr, the rebels sacked the local debtors’ court and distributed the goods that had been collected. Account books containing debtors’ details were also destroyed. Among the shouts were cries of Caws a bara (cheese and bread) and I lawr â’r Brenin (down with the king).
The Magistrate J.B. Bruce arrived at the scene and realised that this was rapidly becoming a more widespread revolt against the Court of Requests. He and some other magistrates, quickly enrolled about 70 Special Constables, mainly from the town’s tradespeople, to help keep the peace, and then advised the Military Authorities in the town of Brecon that he may need troops sent.
Bruce, along with Anthony Hill, the Ironmaster of the Plymouth Works, tried to pursuade the crowd to disperse, but to no avail. He then had the Riot Act read in both English and Welsh. This also had little effect, and the crowd then drove the magistrates away and attacked Thomas Lewis’ house.
That evening, (the 2nd of June) the crowd assembled outside the home of Joseph Coffin, President of the Court of Requests, demanded the books of the Court and other books in the house, which they then burned in the street along with his furniture.
On hearing of this attack, Bruce decided that he would have to call in the troops after all, and soon, 52 soldiers of the Royal Glamorgan Light Infantry were despatched from Cardiff to Merthyr by coach, and a detachment of the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders were sent from Brecon.
Meanwhile the crowd had marched to the various ironworks and managed to persuade the workers to join them.On their march from Brecon, the Highlanders were mocked and jeered but eventually arrived at the Castle Inn where they were met by the High Sheriff of Glamorgan, the Merthyr Magistrates and Ironmasters and the Special Constables.
The crowd outside the Inn, now some 10,000 strong, again refused to disperse when the Riot Act was read for a second time and pressed ever closer toward the Inn and the soldiers drawn up outside.
Anthony Hill then asked the crowd to select a deputation to put forward their demands. They demanded higher wages, a reduction in the cost of items they used in their work and immediate reform.
The Ironmasters however flatly refused to consider any of these demands, and the deputation returned to the crowd. The High Sheriff then informed the crowd that if they did not disperse, the soldiers would be used against them. William Crawshay and Josiah John Guest also tried to get the crowd to disperse, but they became even angrier and the front ranks of the crowd tried to surround the soldiers. Lewis Lewis was hoisted onto the shoulders of some of the crowd and called for the soldiers to be disarmed by the rioters.The front ranks of the crowd surged forward and threw clubs and rocks at them and even managed to disarm some.
Soldiers fired into the crowd gathered around the Castle Hotel and over 16 rioters were killed and a great many others wounded, later to die of their injuries. Many injustices were committed by the authorities on that day. Not one of the soldiers received a bullet wound and the crowd was largely completely unarmed.The street outside Castle Hotel  was said to have been running with blood, women were screaming and desperately looking for their husbands and sons.
The authorities were certain that this was not the end of the rioting and they moved their headquarters to a safer position at Penydarren House.That night the rioters searched for weapons ready for an attack the next day. They also sent word to the Monmouthshire ironworks in an attempt to obtain furher support.By the 4th of June, more troops including the Eastern Glamorgan Corps of Yeomanry Cavalry and the Royal Glamorgan Militia had arrived in Merthyr. A troop of the Swansea Yeomanry Cavalry (under a Major Penrice) on arrival at Hirwaun, were ambushed when they stopped to rest, being greeted in an apparently friendly manner, but were soon surrounded, their weapons seized and they were forced to retreat to Swansea, where they re-armed and joined the Fairwood Troop for the march back to Merthyr.
A similar ambush was laid at Cefn Coed y Cymmer to stop ammunition being delivered from Brecon.
The Cardiff Troop of Glamorgan Yeomanry Cavalry (under Captain Moggridge) sent out to assist in the passage of the ammunition, was forced to retreat, being fired upon by the rioters and having rocks hurled at them from the hills above. Another troop of 100 Central Glamorgan Yeomanry (under Major Rickards) was sent to assist but were unable to break through the mob.
However Moggridge and the Cardiff Troop  managed to bring the wagons safely to Merthyr by a different route but despite meeting various deputations from the rioters the ironmasters had not managed to persuade them to disperse.
On Sunday the 5th of June, delegations were sent to the Monmouthshire Iron Towns to raise further support for the riots and on on the 6th of June, a crowd of around 12,000 or more marched along the heads of the valleys from Monmouthshire to meet the Merthyr Rioters at the Waun Common.
The authorities decided that rather than wait for this mob to attack them they would take the initiative, and 110 Highlanders, 53 Royal Glamorgan Light Infantry Militia and 300 Glamorgan Yeomanry Cavalry were despatched to stop the marchers at Cefn Coed.
Josiah John Guest tried to address the crowd but to no avail, the Riot Act was read but had no effect, and then the Highlanders and Militia were ordered to level their muskets at the mob and the Yeomanry to draw their sabres. Words of command were given clearly and slowly so that the mob could hear them.With this the crowd gradually dispersed, only a hardcore remaining. Eventually they too gave way. No blood was spilled that day.
After the uprising on the evening of the 6th of June the authorities began raiding houses and arrested 18 of the rebel leaders. Lewis Lewis was found hiding in a wood near Hirwaun and a large force of soldiers escorted him in irons to Cardiff Prison to await trial.
The rising at Merthyr caused shockwaves through the British Government, and it was decided that at swift, strong action must be taken against the ringleaders of this movement. The trials began on the 13th of July at the Cardiff Assizes. 28 men and women were tried, 23 of them ironworkers (12 colliers , 2 women, 2 shoemakers and one blacksmith).
John Phelps, David Hughes, Thomas Vaughan and David Thomas were all found guilty of attacks on the houses of Thomas Williams and/or Thomas Lewis. Phelps was sentenced to transportation for 14 years, the others were sentenced to death (but with a recommendation for transportation for life instead). 
Wounding a soldier received the death penalty, but soldiers could kill with no questions asked as long as the Riot Act had been read. Lewis Lewis and Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) a local miner, were charged with attempting to murder a soldier, a Donald Black of the 93rd Highland Regiment, by stabbing him with a bayonet attached to a gun outside the Castle Inn on the 3rd June. They were both sentenced to death.
Joseph Tregelles Price, A quaker Ironmaster from Neath, took up the case of Dic Penderyn and Lewis Lewis, and presented a petition to Parliament to have them transported instead. There was no evidence that Dic played any substantial part in the rising at all unlike Lewis who was definitely involved, and in fact many people stated on oath that Penderyn was not even present when Black was attacked, and that they also knew who had actually carried out the attack,
Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary, reprieved Lewis Lewis, who was certainly one of those who were most responsible for the riots, and accused of inciting others towards revolution and he was subsequently transported to Australia for the rest of his life, but would not even consider reprieving Penderyn, and sought to make an example out of him, who was clearly seen to have been much less involved. Many  believe that the  reason, Penderyn was chosen to be hanged, was precisely because he wasn't one of the leaders, but a typical worker in the town and was simply targeted  to show all other workers what would be in store for them if they stepped out of line.
Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) was taken from his cell at Cardiff Prison at Dawn on the 13th of August 1831, to the gallows at St.Mary Street, Cardiff and was executed before a large crowd, despite the appeal of thousands of people for his life. After he was cut down, his body was transported across the Vale of Glamorgan by his fellow workers and friends and thousands grieved and lined the route as Dic's coffin was taken from Cardiff to Aberavon where he was buried in St Mary's churchyard, Port Talbot where a memorial was placed on his grave by local trade unionists in 1966.. .  

Dic Penderyn was believed to have been innocent of the crime for which he was executed, and many people over the years  submitted petitions to the Home Office for a posthumous pardon, for the man who is still seen as, and will always be revered as the first Martyr of the Welsh working class people.

He is remembered as a symbol  of the working man who died protesting against oppression and is commemorated in books and songs. A memorial was unveiled outside the library in Merthyr Tydfil by the General Secretary of the TUC in 1977.

Outside the market on St Mary Street, Cardiff near the spot where he was executed, you will find a plaque in commemoration of his execution. To the last he protested his innocence, and his final words in Welsh were an anguished cry at injustice. “O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd” “O Lord what an iniquity” he shouted, as the hangman’s noose was tightened.
In 1874, the Western Mail reported that a man named Ianto Parker confessed on his death bed that he stabbed the soldier and then fled to America fearing capture by the authorities, thus exonerating Dic Penderyn. Another man named James Abbott, who testified against Penderyn at the trial, also later admitted that he lied under oath.

In his death Dic Penderyn  in his martyrdom became a symbol of those who resist and fight oppression wherever it is found..
The Merthyr Rising of 1831 still resonates in both Welsh and British working-class history. As Marxist historian Gwyn Alf Williams  https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/09/gwyn-alf-williams-30-0925-161195.html argued, this was in no small part to Dic Penderyn himself, the Welsh working-class’s first popular martyr. The story of thousands of workers coming together to fight their bosses and rulers continued to inspire future generations, and that the events of 1831 in Merthyr were central to the emergence of a working class in south Wales:in that year its pre-history came to an end and its history began.
There is no doubt in the aftermath of the rising  it changed Welsh history with the growth of militancy among the workers of South Wales, with many workers joining trade unions to fight collectively for their rights. Resistance became more organised and militant newspapers flourished.The resistance articulated itself through the Chartist movement, which armed workers for the strike waves of the early 20th century.
It was also from this Rising that the red flag spread across the world as a symbol of the socialist and communist movement, inspiring  Jim Connell's lyrics in The Red Flag itself:

The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.

Sources; 

Gwyn Alf Williams - The Merthyr Rising, University of Wales Press

The following video tells the story of the execution of Dic Penderyn with music by Martin Joseph :- 

There's wisdom in her eyes

                       
               ( photo courtesy of Stephanie Burgess, a poem for Jane, the mighty furbster )

There's wisdom in her eyes,
Kindness in her heart,
Laughter and faithfulness,
She carries a familiar strength,
That urges sadness to depart,
Brings me peace and light.
This mighty furbster flower,
Precious loving being,
A dream within a dream,
Encourager and friend.
Dear gentle beautiful soul
Who in life has bought good fortune,
Many blessings delivered to my door,
Taught me how to remain positive,
Filled the days with grace,
Her presence makes the world,
                            a better place,
I will follow forever all her days,
The wisdom of her eyes,
Ever clear, ever sacred, ever bright.

Skanda Vale Hospice Benefit Gig

Looking forward to this Saturday, when a favourite local band of mine, psychedelic troubadours Sendelica will be playing a benefit Gig for Skanda Vale hospice. An amazing place staffed, almost entirely by the most wonderful volunteers from all around the world. They provide care and respite at their beautiful site for people with terminal illnesses. The hospice is run by volunteers with all services being completely free of charge to anyone over the age of 18 diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. It is a true jewel of my local community, a multi-faith monastery that provides, hope, comfort and dignity to people at the end of their lives. Many patients have to travel long distances to get the care they need, this hospice is ideally located, near the borders of Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire to serve a large number of local people.
Please come along on Saturday at Cardigan Pizza tipi, 7.30 pm admittance only a fiver, so please come along and support these amazing people.

 http://skandavalehospice.org

Walt Whitman (31/5/1819 - 26/3/1892) - Poets to Come

Walt Whitman is an arch-figure in any list of great 19^th century writers – original in both form and content, continually surprising in his experimentation, and continually evocative in the sensuality of his words. A master of the love for everyday life. Whitman’s  poetry with its espousal of comradeship  across class lines, and advocacy of a utopian democracy has long inspired, with its interlocking themes of shared values, expressing the divine light in every individual, an almost organic view of society. A big influence on another writer I admire Edward Carpenter. Whitman’s philosophy expressed a divine light in every individual, the value of the individual en masse, can be grabbed for our own times. An early DIY advocate who sold his Leaves of Grass door to door  and self published his own books. A man of deep  deep passion whose birthday I celebrate today. His words still continuing to enrich the earth.

" the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul…” - Walt Whitman

Here I offer this poem from his pen :-

Poets to Come

POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! Arouse--for you must justify me--you must answer.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a
casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.

The importance of another BDS victory

In another blow to the campaign to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism the Irish have joined the Dutch  government in  affirming that the  global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement represents a “legitimate” means of protest “intended to pressure Israel into ending the occupation.
BDS is a nonviolent, Palestinian-led human rights movement for freedom, justice and equality. Anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international law, BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity. It aims to end international support for Israel’s regime of apartheid and settler colonialism that began with the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians to make way for the state of Israel, in 1948.The statements dealt a serious blow to Israel’s war of repression that has led governments in the UK, France, Canada and state legislatures across the US to introduce anti-democratic legislation and taking other  measures to undermine the BDS movement. Israel has recently admitted that it is using its intelligence services to spy on BDS activists overseas.

It is being hailed  as a victory for the growing BDS movement. It is important to note that this movement is about applying pressure to Israel to change its policies, that Israel is singled out by Palestinians and their supporters because their rights are singled out by Israel for violation. It uses effective but peaceful ways to pressure Israel to end its occupation, ensuring Palestinians have the same rights that we take for granted. In a civil society we should be allowed to hold countries and companies accountable for their actions.
Some people  think that Israeli artists are boycotted and singled out because they are Israeli (they are not). The cultural boycott does not target Israelis, and allows great latitude for cultural engagement. What it targets is institutions that represent and are complicit with state policies in the same way  that international boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) efforts helped topple South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime.

which uses effective-yet-peaceful means to pressure Israel to end the occupation and ensure Palestinians have the rights we take for granted. It is civil society holding countries and companies accountable for their actions. - See more at: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/qa-antisemitism-anti-zionism-bds/#sthash.X26h3fAY.dpuf

I support this campaign  because it  tries to draw awareness of  Israels continuing  occupation, colonization, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. That  points the way forward to a united global civil society movement for freedom, justice, self-determination, and equality for all, I will continue to do so until  Israel abides by international law and basic human rights norms, I feel the BDS movement holds a legitimate political viewpoint  and I do not agree with those who attempt to demonize those who support it's aims.This campaign for Palestinian rights is an anti-racist campaign, and that any attempt to connect or conflate antisemitism with the campaign for the rights of the Palestinian people is wrong, misleading and harmful, a campaign based on the principles of peace, justice and international law.
One could argue about the efficiancy and propriety of certain tactics, and I acknowledge their are those who do not support some or all aspects of boycotts on principle, like the author JK Rowling who stated recently that she supports the cultural engagement with Israel but I stand with those don't agree with this point of view, and will try with reason to argue the importance of standing firm with the oppressed and downtrodden.

It is important that we set out the campaign for Palestinian rights is an anti-racist campaign, and that any attempt to connect or conflate antisemitism with the campaign for the rights of the Palestinian people is wrong, misleading and harmful.
Our aims set out that ours is a campaign based on the principles of peace, justice and international law.
- See more at: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/qa-antisemitism-anti-zionism-bds/#sthash.X26h3fAY.dpuf

With the Netherlands and Ireland now joining Sweden in defending the right to advocate and campaign for Palestinian rights under international law. through BDS, Israels attempts to get BDS outlawed in Europe and to bully its supporters into silence has been dealt a serious blow.
Lets hope that civil societies here in the UK continue to speak out against attacks on  Palestinian solidarity that dehumanises Palestinians, silence Palestinian narratives and repress civil and democratic rights of UK citizens.
This should all be read in relation to the case of Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti who is currently  facing politically motivated repression by Israel. Israel is refusing to renew the travel document of Barghouti, a Palestinian born in the diaspora married to a Palestinian citizen of Israel, despite having lived in Israel for 22 years with no criminal record preventing him from pursuing his campaign work internationally. He has been told that his permanent residency status is being reviewed.Thus the Israeli government’s refusal to allow him to travel is obviously intended to suppress his speech and activism. It is ironic that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the world leaders who traveled last year to Paris to participate in that city’s “free speech rally.”
The human rights groups Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Front Line Defenders have all made statements concerning Barghouti’s liberty and safety, with Amnesty and Front Line Defenders designating him a human rights defender. We should remain concerned about wider Israeli attempts to pressure nongovernmental organizations and human rights defenders through legislation and other means to hinder their important work.
In the following video Omar sets out the case for BDS :-

Here is a link to the BDS Movements website :-



https://bdsmovement.net/

Lets not forget Chelsea Manning

Today marks  six years since Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (then known as Bradley Manning) was arrested in Iraq for blowing the whistle on war crimes on suspicion of having passed classified material to WikiLeaks, including videos of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan; 250,000 United States diplomatic cables; and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs.
It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public, exposing imperialist crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world. As an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army, Manning saw U.S. war crimes and took the courageous steps necessary to blow the whistle on human rights abuses. Manning was arrested and held in solitary confinement from July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, causing an international outcry. Outrageously, Manning is serving a 35 year prison sentence. This extreme sentence is designed to act as a deterrent to other whistleblowers and journalists. Chelsea Manning is a hero and a whistleblower. We should all be very grateful for her sacrifice but sadly her moral courage is rare today.Chelsea manning has always claimed she acted in the public interest, hoping to spark a meaningful debate on the costs of war, specifically on the conduct of  the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. However she was not permitted to present this as evidence at her trial, and was only allowed  to explain her motives at the sentencing  phase. Before her conviction, she had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.
 The US army intelligence analyst, who has appealed to reduce 35-year sentence, has endured the most severe punishment ever given to a whistleblower.
 I am saddened by the persecution and incarceration of such a morally courageous person. Chelsea was born in 1987 in Oklahoma to an American father and a Welsh mother. When her parents divorced at an early age, she moved with her mother to Wales. She moved back to the US to live with her father in 2005, and got a job with a software company in Oklahoma City..She spent her schooldays down the road from me in Pembrokeshire. She went to school in Tasker Milward , Haverfordwest where she is remembered for his integrity and intelligence . His mum, aunts and uncles still live in Pembrokeshire.
Chelsea  is being held in the military brig at Fort Leavenworth. in Kansas, where she is involved in separate legal action relating to her desire to transition as a transgender woman. Transition is another courageous act in its own right in a largely deeply sexist society. Her safety is of of grave concern.Athough her lawyer expects Manning will be released on good behaviour in 7 years, this is a long time for anyone to have to wait to feel complete.To say that Chelsea Manning has a most difficult and dangerous road ahead of her during her time in prison is an understatement.
Here is a transcript of the statement made by PFC. Chelsea Manning as read by David Coombs (her attorney) at a press conference after she was sentenced to 35 years in prison. You can also watch the video of the statement here. It shows an awakening and a decision to act.
Chelsea Manning:

“The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was at this time I realized in our efforts to meet this risk posed to us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of national security and classified information in order to avoid any public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based intentions [unclear], it is usually an American soldier that is ordered to carry out some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions violated the law, and I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the United States. It was never my intention to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon, I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it means we could have country that is truly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.”

We simply can't forget this honorable individual.On Monday May 9th, Chelsea Manning was honored for her heroic actions at a London ceremony hosted by Blueprint for Free Speech, a non-profit dedicated to supporting freedom of expression for all individuals and seeking improved government transparency. Chelsea received this year’s Blueprint Enduring Impact Whistleblowing Prize along with fellow whistleblowers John Kiriakou and Dr. Raj Mattu. In times like these we need brave people like Chelsea and others to hold the government accountable for its actions at home and abroad that can give us hope in the possibility of standing up to make the world better, safer, and more just.  The fights for accountability, transparency, and justice continue. Hopefully through Chelsea’s actions and the brave actions of others we can continue to be informed, while individual acts of bravery and defiance can help open eyes and inspire people to follow their own conscience,
We still need to support Chelsea in prison , maximise her voice, and continue the call for a Presidential pardon. 
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Find more about Chelsea Mannings case here :-

 http://www.chelseamanning.org/

The magical world of Surrealist Leonora Carrington ( 6/4/17 -25/5/11)

 Have written  many times about the lives of the surrealists, one of their number the artist and writer Leonora Carrington died in Mexico on this day in 2011. She was 94, she led an eventful and productive life, from reluctant debutante in England to bohemian in 1930s Paris, from despair in a Spanish asylum to many decades of stable artistic productivity in Mexico City. Though she’s long been celebrated and honoured in Mexico, it’s only quite recently after her death that her reputation has grown on this side of the Atlantic. 

I love the work of Leonora Carrington. It is always strange, often unsettling and unfailingly magicaI, in terms of fame and renown, she’s not as well known as some of her male contemporaries, including her sometime partner Max Ernst, or Salvador Dali, but I believe she should be.
Born into an upper class, reactionary Lancashire family in 1917, she soon discovered the restrictive and mentally stifling penalties that go with the privileges of bourgeois existence. But conformity was not an option. When she was eight her Catholic parents sent her to the Holy Sepulchre convent in Chelmsford, where she refused to do any schoolwork.. Even  as a young girl, Carrington was a non-conformist.She was an individual, unwilling to conform to authoritative, unreasonable rules. Her free-spirit and candid quips resulted in expulsions from at least two schools  “anti-social tendencies and certain supernatural proclivities”. In Florence and Paris she revelled in the arts, but dodged her workload and school regime through running away. In the end, Carrington’s parents capitulated to their wilful debutante daughter when, in her teens, she announced her intention to study at Chelsea School of Art, and become a painter.Her life was to become an amazing journey of change and discovery.

Having seen the work of Max Ernst at a major surrealist exhibition in London, she met him at a dinner party. He was 46 and married for the second time but, almost immediately, they were captivated by one another and ran off together, to Cornwall and then to Paris, where he separated from his wife, and Carrington found herself at the heart of several charmed artistic circles variously including Picasso, Dalí, André Breton, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp Joan Miró and others. Although she never considered herself a card-carrying surrealist, she embraced the spirit of the movement with theatrical zeal; for example, she reputedly turned up for a party wrapped in a sheet, which she strategically discarded to reveal that she was naked beneath it. She and Ernst were reportedly known to clip the hair of their house guests as they slept, then serve it to them mixed in their breakfast omelettes.  Surrealism has/had a very uneven relationship with women, and  this has been discussed by many scholars throughout the years.'' Andre Breton and many others involved in the movement regarded women to be useful as muses but not seen as artists in their own right. Leonora Carrington was embraced as a femme-enfant by the Surrealists because of her rebelliousness against her upper-class upbringing. However, Carrington did not just rebel against her family, she found ways in which she could rebel against the Surrealists and their limited perspective of women..Surrealism gave her a visual and literary vocabulary to express herself whilst not avoiding limitation.

Then war broke out, the Germans invaded, and in time Ernst was interned by the Vichy administration.for simply being German and then  by invading Nazis because his work was considered decadent and was locked up in an internment camp.. It was the beginning of a profoundly disturbing period for Carrington. She may already have suffered a nervous breakdown, hitched a lift with friends to Spain.

Portrait of Max Ernst

Carrington, understandably, was distraught. She stopped eating, and was in dangerously poor health when she was rescued by some friends, fleeing the Nazis, who drove her to Madrid. She wrote later: “I’d suffered so much when Max was taken away to the camp, I entered a catatonic state, and I was no longer suffering in an ordinary human dimension.”
On the journey to Spain she saw bodies hanging from trucks and corpses on the roads – at least she thought she did, though her traumatised mind wondered if they might actually be delusions. The Spanish authorities certainly thought so when she reported them, and threw her into an asylum in Santander. According to her 1944 memoir, Down Below, she suffered there, subjected to barbiturate and Cardiazol treatment, until her family in England got sufficiently worried about her to send a nanny  to rescue her and take her instead to a hospital in South Africa. In the finest traditions of Surrealist weirdness, Carrington escaped from her minders while they were waiting to board the boat, jumped into a cab and headed straight for the Mexican embassy, immediately entering into a marriage of convenience with a diplomat friend she’d known in Paris. Then they went back to wait for a boat to the USA, joined by a liberated Ernst, his new partner, his ex-wife, and his new partner’s ex-husband. Carrington and Ernst didn’t get back together – he married again, and after a few months Carrington dissolved her own marriage and moved, permanently this time, to Mexico City.

Leoonora Carrington and Max Ernst 

It’s an extraordinary tale of surrealism, love and madness and more, some have claimed that Carrington’s asylum memoir was more fiction than fact. (Interestingly, Amazon classes the book as fiction.) But Anne Hoff of  the University of Alabama wrote  a paper on Down Below in in 2009, concluding that Carrington’s barbaric experience could well have been entirely factual. Clinical descriptions of other people’s treatment with  Cardiazol, a powerful convulsive drug that was a forerunner of ECT, suggest her recollections of seizures, hyper-sexualised thoughts post-treatment and being left to lie in her own faeces (incontinence was a common side-effect) are depressingly accurate. She was also given Luminol, a powerful anti-convulsive. I can imagine it would have been an horrific ordeal that would have bound to leave a mark.In her paintings and writings, she generates a heady fantasy world. It draws on elements of folklore and fairytales, Celtic and other mythologies,  a lot of this gets mixed up  in her work plus elements from  occult mystical  traditions including alchemy. There’s a lot going on, I like them a lot, deep  dreamlike spaces of infinite possibility with a magical poetical quality. Like a magical alchemist she had the ability to smuggle cryptic messages or absurd spells  into her art enabling her to transform the viewers eye. Often there are Gothic undertones, maybe recalling the Lancashire mansion where she  grew up in and longed to escape, she was a rebel who was  twice expelled from school, and was instinctively opposed to her parents’ social aspirations.

The fantasy in her work is sometimes disturbing with a violent, edge. It draws from her own disturbed  personal experience and emotional life, her own and of course many others, in a way that links her to such artists as Louise Bouergois , Paula Rego and Frida Kahlo. In line with the male surrealists’ view of the role of women, she was often assigned the subservient role of muse to Ernst, implicitly diminishing her, even though she remarked that she was far too busy getting on with things to be a muse.

A big influence on her was  Robert Graves’s The White Goddess . Drawing on a range of European mythology, especially the Welsh and Irish traditions, Graves controversially proposed the presence of a consistent, if variously named and depicted, goddess. In doing so he was revealing an alternative, potentially feminist mythological and religious predecessor to familiar, patriarchal models.The White Goddess appears again and again in her work such as Then we saw the daughter of the minotaur (1953) is not to he a relic from a lost religion but to a living (dancing) entity in the present. Add to this influence Carrington’s memories of stories told to her by her mother and her cherished Irish nanny,  Mary Kavanagh and you can begin to see what she’s getting at in her pictures, even if nothing quite prepares us for their edgy strangeness.

                                Then we saw the daughter of the Minotaur

In her painting, 'The Giantess', the guardian of the egg, 1947, and painted for her patron, Edward James, possibly Carrington's most famous work, The Giantess, is dwarfing land and sea, ''drawing out the psychic prowess of the Goddess, her regenerative life-giving properties, and her fertile creative powers. This Goddess-centred spirituality, benevolent and nurturing, emanates from the giantess: the birds flock from her robes, and between her palms she clasps a mysterious black egg, perhaps the source of new life.''
Carrington said, ''The egg is the macrocosm and the microcosm, the dividing line between the Big and the Small which makes it impossible to see the whole.  To possess a telescope without its other essential half – the microscope – seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension. The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope while the left eye peers into the microscope.''

                                    
                                                       The Giantess , 1950 

Alongside her painting and sculpture she was also a prolific writer prolific writer with many articles, novels, essays, and poems to her name. Apart from the autobiographical Down Below, her most celebrated piece was a dream fairy-tale of 1974, The Hearing Trumpet. Her books are as utterly imaginative as her visual art.In The Hearing Trumpet ( a favourite book of mine), Carrington appears under the alias Marian Leatherby, who is 92 and has a beard. She has no teeth left and has become vegetarian  an elderly woman getting irritated by her patronising family, who think her senile. But the care home that she is carted off to is unlike any establishment of its kind. Marian discovers evidence of mysterious gatherings, disappearances, and hints of the supernatural. Ultimately, all this leads to a total reordering of the terrestrial order: a world "transformed by the snow and ice.” Marian anticipates the day when “the planet is peopled with cats, werewolves, bees, and goats. We all fervently hope that this will be an improvement on humanity. "I'll leave you to discover the pure magical joy of her writing for yourself, I strongly recommend her..Her other notable books were The House of Fear (1938), The Oval Lady (1939), The Stone Door (1976), Pigeon Flies (1986) and The Seventh Horse (1988). She also wrote the plays The Debutante (1937), A Flannel Night-Shirt (1951), Penelope (1957) and The Invention of the Mass (1969).
After her move to Mexico in 1943 a new chapter began. Free of her family and her besieged relationship with Ernst (he married Peggy Guggenheim to escape Europe), she immersed herself in the art world of Mexico City. Steeped in Surrealist ideas and mysticism, she joined a close group of artists and enjoyed much creative experimentation.. Here in Mexico there was Aztec and Mayan culture, Catholicism and Spanish colonialism all mixed together in a vast, steaming cauldron of exotic images. Snakes, saints, candles, life and death, dark and light. Vast brooding volcanoes, huge pyramids, mythical dragons. The young artist from England had found her ‘milieu’. In her novels and her art, Leonora combined her favoured symbols of  folklore with Mexican motifs. El Mundo mágico de los Mayas, 1963-4, was a commission for a new museum, in an area dedicated to the state of Chiapas. She visited the region, attended healing ceremonies in order to get to know the people. Carrington was accepted as someone who spoke for Mexican history as well as engaged with its culture, history and art.  She attempted to study the preconquest outlook of the Chiapas Indians, and in her finished painting shows the way cultures were mixed in the area. The painting is a fairytale of old and new, historical and imagined. Figures walk between Catholic processions and indigenous healings. Mystical animals swirl around a landscape that seems a living creature itself, while her favourite motif, the Irish white horse, sits amidst a carnival of human activity.

                                From El Mundo de Magica Mundos

                                   Who art , though  white face 
 
The student demonstrations of 1968 revealed a further facet of Carrington's personality, her political militancy.In 1969 she continued to make her views heard in a series of public appearances. In particular she championed the newly established women's movement: in the early 1970s she was responsible for co-founding the Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico; she frequently spoke about women's "legendary powers" and the need for women to take back "the rights that belonged to them". Take this wonderful quote from her " it is impossible to understand how millions and millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themmselves ' Government'! The word I expect frightens people. It is a form of planetary hypnosis and very unhealthy" from 'The Hearing Trumpet'
The  rest of Leonora’s life remained blissfully quiet and stable. Having only married for convenience, Leonora and Leduc split. She met Hungarian photographer, Chiki Weisz and had two boys, Gabriel and Pablo. She planted a tree in her front yard, taped pictures of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana on her kitchen cabinets, drank PG tea in the afternoons and tequila at night. She continued to paint and write, building a sizeable repertoire of fantastical surrealist works depicting mythical, made-up creatures representing themes of identity and transformation. She had once again constructed her own lovely little universe where she was bound by no one, free to be and create as she wished. So finally  Leonora Carrington died on this day at the age of 94, after what was a remarkable life. Described as “the last great living surrealist” by the Mexican poet and activist, Homero Aridjis. Her legacy a mighty fine one that was later carried by other female artists, with their own sense of liberation, Frida Kahlo included, who fought for the rightful place of women in arts and in everyday life.

    

                                         Leonora Carrington - self-portrait , 1937

Waiting for Chilcot's judgement to call

The delays in the Chilcot inquiry have for a while moved into farcial terrain, the establishment clearly terrified of any further damaging revelations that will reopen discussions about the tragedy of Irag.Who knows Tony Blair could  face charges over his role in sending British soldiers to the tragedy that was Iraq. A cross-party group of MPs want him prosecuted if the Chilcot report shows he lied to get support. In the meantime I offer you this poem.

Waiting for Chilcot's judgement to call

Sixteen years and still waiting,

The rot and the lies have gone on to long,
Truth twisted and buried at every turn,
We have known for so long who was to blame,
Darkness revealed in sanctimonious smiles,
Tony Blair's conscience flashing in deceit,
Hopefully now he will pay the political price,
When all his excuses are finally discredited,
No mere apology will be enough,
He should be made to pay for his crimes,
That went against international law,
As the silence and agony are abandoned,
The dead unable to testify, finally get justice.

Ken Loach wins Cannes Palm d''Or for his latest powerful film; I, Daniel Blake, about welfare struggle.

 

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He has championed the downtrodden and poor for 50 years, but now Bath film director Ken Loach has returned to make a modern-day version of his breakthrough film Cathy Come Home – a film about the poverty and humiliation inflicted upon them by the welfare state, which left much of the Cannes Film Festival in tears and won him the coveted  Cannes Palm d'Or Prize last night  in an awards ceremony in southern France.
Cathy Come Home shocked a blissfully-unknowing British society of 1966 to the descent of a wife from a normal family home to living on the streets and having her children taken away – all because her husband is injured at work and loses his job.
And now, 50 years on, the 79 year old Bath film director has returned and created something of a remake – but this time exposing the plight of a man left to the uncaring ravages of the benefits system, which looks set to generate the same shock from audiences across Britain.
. Accepting the festival's top prize, Loach attacked the "dangerous project of austerity,".At times of despair the far right take advantage,” the  film-maker said. “And some of us who are old remember what that was like. So we must give a message  of hope, we must say another world is possible," he said."The world we live in is at a dangerous point right now. We are in the grip of a dangerous project of austerity driven by ideas that we call neo-liberalism that have brought us to near catastrophe."
The powerful film  tells the story of  fifty-nine year old British carpenter Daniel Blake's Kafkaesque  journey to get benefits in Britain for the first time in his life after suffering a heart attack and being told by doctors he can no longer work.Turning to the welfare state for assistance, he is confronted with the tragic realities of a modern society bogged down by miles of cold and unfeeling red tape.
Daniel, is just a generous hard-working individual who has simply fallen on hard times,who  embodies the very reason social safety nets are created, yet the system engineered ostensibly to give a much-needed break to such decent men seems more intent on pounding its supposed beneficiaries into submission.This might be a piece of art, but this is a familiar tale to all those trapped in the benefit system , and caught in the barbed wire of bureacracy in Tory Britain.
Because Blake is denied illness benefit and is forced to apply for assistance for unemployment.
That in turn forces him to spend hours hunting for jobs which he has to turn down because he is too sick to work.The movie's writer Paul Laverty has said the research team was stunned at how people with mental health issues and disabilities were targeted by the welfare cuts.He said people interviewed within the Department for Work and Pensions told them "they were humiliated at how they were forced to treat the public. There is nothing accidental about it."
Exasperated at every turn by the almost laughable inefficiencies of a blindingly complicated network, Daniel is bounced from one broken program to the next. Whether they be for employment insurance or a job seeker’s allowance, there are always stupefying catches; ridiculous paperwork; and government employees who appear completely incapable of empathizing with the plight of the unfortunate waiting around the corner.
The actress who plays the young single mother, Katie -- Hayley Squires -- who Daniel's character befiends, recently slammed anti-welfare "propaganda" that she said has turned working class people against each other. "Normal people are led to believe that this amount of people are on benefits and are therefore scroungers, and this amount of people are going to work to pay so that they can scrounge." "They've left us to argue among ourselves so they can keep doing what they are doing."
For the Conservatives, the ideological destruction of peoples lives has always been their clear aim. For them austerity isn't a temporary economic measure, it's a permanent moral imperative. I look forward to the day, when we say enough is enough. In the meantime well done Ken for this award and for continuing to lend the poor and downtrodden a voice,telling real honest stories of lives ruined by a cruel system that  continues to unleash savage attacks on Britain's poor.I  hope that this film and its powerful indictment of life under Tory rule and the austerity myth and all it's savage impacts is seen by many and as the star of the film , stand up comic Dave Johns  recently tweeted, like Cathy Comes home, 50 years previously  "Let's hope it shames those that should be into change.".