Deep respect to this noble gentleman, author and Labour Party activist who has been an inspiration to all who seek a fairer and better world. Currently very ill in a Canadian hospital after a fall.
Harry Leslie Smith 95 is a
great British stalwart. A survivor of the Great Depression, a Second
World War veteran, a lifelong Labour supporter and a proud Yorkshire
man, Harry's life has straddled two centuries. As a young man, he
witnessed a country in crisis with no healthcare, no relief for the
poor, and a huge economic gulf between the North and South. After the war he saw the refugee crisis at the end of the conflict with his own eyes. Driven to act, he's spent the rest of his life meeting with and advocating on behalf of refugees in Canada and around the world. As well as this he has been a tireless campaigner against poverty.
From the deprivation of 1930s Barnsley and the terror of war to the
creation of our welfare state, Harry has experienced how a great
civilisation can rise from the rubble. But at the end of his life, he
fears how easily it is being eroded. His book 'Harry’s Last Stand' is a lyrical,
searing modern invective that shows what the past can teach us, and how
the future is ours for the taking.
“Harry is not in a good way,” the 95-year-old’s son John wrote on his father’s Twitter account.
“Harry is in A & E and not in a good way,” the post read. “He
asked me to inform you in case things don’t work out. I will keep you
posted.”
Earlier this afternoon Leslie Smith told his Twitter followers that he was on his way to hospital.
“Bugger of a day, had a fall and now I am in hospital. It’s nothing,
just low blood pressure, but signing off for the next few hours.”
On Saturday, Leslie Smith appeared in video by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees speaking on the refugees he saw in Europe
at the close of the second world war.
Crying, he said: “There was a stream of hundreds of thousands of
refugees coming south. I can still still see them, absolutely pitiful,
starving.
“It doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, or what your
education was, or whatever your job was before you came here, you are
now Canadian.”
As well as travelling the world advocating for rights of refugees, Leslie Smith has also been a tireless critic of the Tories and austerity, and has campaigned relentlessly for the NHS in an attempt to keep it in public hands..
His latest book, Don’t Let My Past Become Your Future, serves as a
stark warning as to what life could be like without a publicly funded
NHS, which is free at the point of use.
We owe this great man so much. Lets continue to keep him in our thoughts and prayers, we could do with many more people like Harry
For more updates see Harry's twitter feed https://twitter.com/Harryslaststand
Joe Hill was executed by a state of Utah firing squad on November 19, 1915 at dawn framed for a murder that many believe he did not commit.An innocent man
condemned to death for his passion. Many historians have come to
recognise it as one of the worst travesties of Justice in American
history. After a trial that was riddled with biased rulings and
suppression of important defence evidence and other violations of
judicial procedure, which was characteristic of many cases involving
labour radicals.
Born Joel Emmauel Hägglund on Oct. 7, 1879, the future labor "troubadour of
discontent" grew up the fourth of six surviving children in a devoutly
religious Lutheran family in Gävle, Sweden, where his father, Olaf,
worked as a railroad conductor. Both his parents enjoyed music and often
led the family in song. As a young man, Hill composed songs about
members of his family, attended concerts at the workers' association
hall in Gävle and played piano in a local café.
In 1887, Hill's father died from an occupational injury and the
children were forced to quit school to support themselves. The
9-year-old Hill worked in a rope factory and later as a fireman on a
steam-powered crane. Stricken with skin and joint tuberculosis in 1900,
Hill moved to Stockholm in search of a cure and worked odd jobs while
receiving radiation treatment and enduring a series of disfiguring
operations on his face and neck. Two years later, Hill's mother,
Margareta Katarina Hägglund, died after also undergoing a series of
operations to cure a persistent back ailment. With her death, the six
surviving Hägglund children sold the family home and ventured out on
their own. Four of them settled elsewhere in Sweden, but the future Joe
Hill and his younger brother, Paul, emigrated to the United States
in 1902, where he changed his name to Joseph Hillstrom.
After
several years as an itinerant worker - a 'hobo' working at a wide variety of back-breaking
jobs, trying to make his way in this new country. In 1905 he joined the IWW (The
International Workers of the World) becomming a well known and successful organiser .As a writer, a man of wit and insight, he knew how to craft
songs that informed, inspired and inflamed. He followed a template for
songwriting that was used from the American Revolution to Woody Guthrie
to the Southern Civil Rights Movement, taking well-know tunes and
writing new words that made the songs leap to life in a new and changing
world. Soon his humorous and biting political songs like "The Preacher and the
Slave" were being sung on political lines across the country. His songs, appearing in the IWW's "Little Red Song Book," addressed the
experience of vitually every major IWW group, from immigrant factory
workers to homeless migratory workers to railway shopcraft workers.
In 1911, he was in Tijuana, Mexico, part of an army of several hundred
wandering hoboes and radicals who sought to overthrow the Mexican
dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, seize Baja California, emancipate the
working class and declare industrial freedom. (The invasion lasted six
months before internal dissension and a large detachment of
better-trained Mexican troops drove the last 100 rebels back across the
border.) In 1912, Hill apparently was active in a "Free Speech"
coalition of Wobblies, socialists, single taxers, suffragists in San Diego that protested a police decision to close the
downtown area to street meetings. He also put in an appearance at a
railroad construction crew strike in British Columbia, writing several
songs before returning to San Pedro, where he lent musical support to a
strike of Italian dockworkers.
The San Pedro dockworkers' strike led to Hill's first recorded
encounter with the police, who arrested him in June 1913 and held him
for 30 days on a charge of vagrancy because, he said later, he was "a
little too active to suit the chief of the burg" during the strike. On
Jan. 10, 1914, Hill knocked on the door of a Salt Lake City doctor at
11:30 p.m. asking to be treated for a gunshot wound he said was
inflicted by an angry husband who had accused Hill of insulting his
wife. Earlier that evening, in another part of town, a grocer and his
son had been killed. One of the assailants was wounded in the chest by
the younger victim before he died. Hill's injury therefore tied him to
the incident. The uncertain testimony of two eyewitnesses and the lack
of any corroboration of Hill's alibi convinced a local jury of Hill's
guilt, even though neither witness was able to identify Hill
conclusively and the gun used in the murders was never recovered.
The campaign to exonerate Hill began two months before the trial and
continued up to and even beyond his execution by firing squad on Nov.
19, 1915. His supporters included the socially prominent daughter of a
former Mormon church president, labor radicals, activists and
sympathizers including AFL President Samuel Gompers, the Swedish
minister to the United States and even President Woodrow Wilson. The
Utah Supreme Court, however, refused to overturn the verdict and the
Utah Board of Pardons refused to commute Hill's sentence. The board
declared its willingness to hear testimony from the woman's husband in a
closed session, but Hill refused to identify his alleged assailant,
insisting that to do so would harm the reputation of the lady.
From his jail cell on November 18, 1915, Joe Hill wrote his last
will, which has since
become a prized piece of poetry in the heritage of the American Labour
Movement. That same day, he sent a telegram to fellow IWW member Bill
Haywood telling him “Don’t waste time mourning – Organize!”
a line that became a slogan of the U.S. labour movement.The state wanted to silence Joe Hill, in defiance, he goaded his executioners with his last words . 'Fire -go and fire! Hill died as he lived a true rebel.
After a brief service in Salt Lake City, Hill's body was sent to
Chicago, where 30,000 mourners heard Hill's "Rebel Girl" sung for
the first time, listened to hours of speeches and then walked behind his
casket to Graceland Cemetery, where the body was cremated and the ashes
mailed to IWW locals in every state but Utah as well as to supporters
in every inhabited continent on the globe. According to one of Hill's
Wobbly-songwriter colleagues, Ralph Chaplin (who wrote the words to
"Solidarity Forever," among other songs), all the envelopes were opened
on May 1, 1916, and their contents scattered to the winds, in accordance
with Hill's last wishes, expressed in the poem that follows. Hill became, and he has remained, the best-known IWW martyr and labor folk hero, more famous now in death than in life Hill is also a revered figure in his native Sweden where he has been commemorated on postage stamps and where his childhood home is reverantly preserved as a museum, he has appeared in fiction, poetry and plays and has inspired several works of art. Most notably in linocut posters hand produced by Wobbly artist, poet and editor Carlos Cortez.
My will is easy to decide,
For there is nothing to divide.
My kin don’t need to fuss and moan -
“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”
My body? — Oh! — If I could choose,
I would to ashes it reduce,
And let the merry breezes blow
My dust to where some flowers grow.
Perhaps some fading flower then
Would come to life and bloom again.
This is my last and final will.
Good luck to all of you.
Joe Hill
Steve Earle reads Joe Hill
The poem, "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night," written by the British writer Alfred Hayes
in 1925 and set to music in 1936 by Earl Robinson, has been performed
and recorded by scores of musicians and translated into 15 languages; it
is still sung by workers throughout the world,as an inspiration dor organizing labor and other community movements.In 1958 Paul Robeson performed a version at his Carnegie Hall concert. Ideas and songs can never die.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill Last Night - Paul Robeson
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"
"I never died," says he.
"I never died," says he.
"In Salt Lake, Joe," says I to him,
Him standing by my bed,
"They framed you on a murder charge,"
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead,"
Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."
"The copper bosses killed you, Joe,
They shot you, Joe," says I.
"Takes more than guns to kill a man,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die,"
Says Joe, "I didn't die."
And standing there as big as life
And smiling with his eyes
Says Joe, "What they forgot to kill
Went on to organize,
Went on to organize."
"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."
From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill -
Where working men defend their rights
It's there you'll find Joe Hill.
It's there you'll find Joe Hill.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead",
"I never died," says he.
"I never died," says he.
Went to see Patrick Duff play last night, in the Cellar Bar, Cardigan, ably supported by fine local musician called Joe Couzens. Formerly the lead singer in the cult alternative rock band Strangelove, who I'd last seen whilst tripping of my box at Glastonbury in 1992, fond memories bought back vividly. He has since forged a career as a singer songwriter who after a turbulent history marred by addictions , without doubt, now puts his life and soul into his music.
He was here to launch his new record Leaving My Father's House, a rather disappointing turnout with only a smattering of people, but this did not dampen the gig, it kinda helped because Patrick delivered a passionate performance in what was one of the most intimate gigs I've experienced for a while. Engaging and charismatic he regaled us with many a tale, funny too with an eye for detail, commenting on how lovely the venues slate floor was.
He truly captivated with everyone listening to every sound and word. Delicate crafted songs of real depth folksy, poppy, psychedelic, spiritual and whimsical, full of heartbreak and emotion combined with graceful melodies, sprinkling each and every song with magic. I'm pretty straight but he certainly captured my heart, as he bought us an intense magical moving experience, utilising pulsing drone atmospherics, experimental sounds to heighten our senses. A beautiful singing voice, expressive, soulful and hauntingly mesmerising , timeless and of pure quality. I would consider him to be a poet. He also capably span wonderful tales of rich imagination, telling us a lovely story about spending time in a Bhuddist retreat, meditating in silence for days, and another one about a tryst he once had on Brighton beach. The audience really appreciated him, he'd sure get a warm welcome if he returned.
He finished the night with a masterly cover version of the Doors 'The End ' that he made his own,pure quality. Spoke to him after gig, utterly charming, and devoid of any pretense and ego, an inspiring bloke of immense talent.
As for his new record I'd strongly recommend it, and his back catalogue well worth checking out too, all truly memorable.
Please support your local music venues, they do so much to enliven and enrich our communities. The Cellar Bar is always worth visiting, for performances like this one,and the superb atmosphere, the guy who runs the place, Steve, quite a character too. A really friendly warm welcome is guaranteed to all who enter it's door.
Kindness can't be beaten
and the water within us sings
lets words be spoken, released on tonque
makes new spaces, for us to hang out and spin
where eyes have seen oppression
where hearts have ridden waves of pain
time travels, wants our voices to be heard
stories to be shared freely with the world
with inks running with honesty
tries to show people what we have seen.
Across the Universe the Beatles once sang currently people finding it hard to breathe
so gather round, and help these pulses flow
to turn again, to become sparks in the afterglow
a dazzle in the rain, singular defiant voices rising
songs across the land, blazing with truth
creating and destroying, tearing up old rules
feeding new ideas, needed for survival
allowing the weight of the world
to come tumbling, crushing down.
Remember, all the beauty of this earth
follow sources of diversity, all the ways of life
caught and captured on the winds to refresh
beyond the closed systems, against intolerance
truth is simple, glides carefully from one heart to another
can nourish us as we wait, for iniquities to pass
with a rich tapestry of dreams within us
searching beyond interwoven balls of worry
allowing all to keep pushing, soaring, roaring
waiting patiently for something to change.
Whispering true words, of simplicity
with individual choruses of surfacing reason
against hopelessness, despair, and fear
the lies and discourse that taint and smear
pendulums of justice infusing memories with shame
putting obstacles in the way, pointing fingers of blame
words carve a path to the futures corridor
bringing fresh hope, for all voices to explore
wading through days of stumbling confusion
the past is pinned down, reaches for conclusion.
Palestine Underground is a 25 minute documentary released by Boiler Room yesterday that documents the flourishing underground music scene in Occupied Palestinian Territory, the West Bank, one of the most conflicted regions on earth.
Undeterred by political restrictions,
building bridges through a shared sound and identity.
The film takes place primarily
in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the West Bank region, and opens with a scene of local DJ and producer Oddz sneaking over the wall from Ramallah to play Anna Loulou in Jaffa, one of Israel's few
nightclubs, which is described as a place where "everyone is welcome."
Well, except Israeli soldiers. One of the few techno DJs in Palestine, Oddz, regularly defies the
apartheid wall and checkpoints to play in Palestinian-owned venues in
Israel, risking three months imprisonment if caught.. .
From there it cuts between interviews with members of the Jazar Crew, a Palestinian DIY music and art collective that provides a safe-space dance floor for Palestinian youth.With their revolutionary parties around the
region, they have built bridges between the Palestinian underground
scenes in Haifa, Ramallah and beyond, whose first party happened to take place on the the night of Egypt's Arab Spring in 2011, and Sama', Palestine’s first techno DJ. She's credited with introducing Detroit and Berlin techno sounds to Palestine.
Palestine Underground follows a week in the life of these artists and
friends, culminating in June 2018, when Boiler Room hosted its first ever
party in Ramallah.
Live streamed to an international audience of 260+ million, the daytime
outdoor party hosted by Jazar Crew and friends showcased an underground
music scene peacefully reacting against one of the toughest political
feuds in history.
The Palestinian artists are blossoming in their creativity despite enforced constraints from the Israeli government, and although their movements are restricted and there is a midnight curfew, enforced by the Palestinian authority, the Palestinian music scene refuses to dwindle, as seen in the film's interviewees, who are brimming with musical passion and freedom of expression. By defying spatial and social restrictions imposed on these
artists, they provide hope and inspiration to their audiences.Despite the hardship of living in a war-torn nation, Palestinian youth
have found a way to create a sense of normalcy.
Living in what he calls a “stagnant” political situation, the "godfather of underground hip hop scene in Ramallah," Muqata’a
sees his music as a "disruption" to the status quo. Which is
dire—Israel has for decades pursued a policy of building
Jewish settlements in Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza. Music is therefore a "therapy for the Palestinian identity crisis," a
way of peacefully rebelling against a regime that they see as pursuing
the systematic erasure their culture.
“We resist in our music, together we are the revolution,” an interviewee says.
‘Palestine Underground’ offers a fresh and different insight
into the lives of a minority of young Palestinians and subverts the
Western media narrative surrounding Palestine. Produced by Boiler Room's Anais Bremond and directed by BBC and Channel 4 documentary filmmaker Jess Kelly, Palestine Underround " connects the dots between club culture and cinema to stretch the boundaries of what a film experience can be", recording a musical subculture that is little known in the West. There's also a succinct historical explanation early on in the film, so
anyone not well-versed in the region's complicated past won't feel lost.
Amnesty International has withdrawn its most prestigious human rights award
from Aung San Suu Kyi, following what it described as a “shameful
betrayal” of the values she once stood for.
It is the latest in a
series of accolades to be withdrawn from Aung San Suu Kyi, including the
US Holocaust Museum’s Elie Weisel award and Freedom of the City awards,
which were revoked by Edinburgh, Oxford, Glasgow and Newcastle. Canada revoked her honorary citizenship last month. Calls to revoke Suu Kyi’s 1991 Nobel Peace Prize have so far been rebuffed by the committee that oversees it.
Aung San Suu Kyi received the ambassador of conscience award in 2009,
while under house arrest, for her role in championing peace and
democracy,after spearheading the opposition movement to the feared military junta..She was described as “a symbol of hope, courage and the
undying defence of human rights” by Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s
then secretary general.
On 11 November, Amnesty's General Secretary General Kumi Naidoo wrote to inform her the organisation is revoking the award. Half way through her term in office and eight years after her release from house arrest, Naidoo expressed the organisations disappointment that she had not used her political and moral authority to safeguard human rights, justice or equality in Myanmar, citing her apparent indifference to atrocities committed by the Myanmar military and increasing intolerance to freedom of expression. Saying in the letter that her
ambassador title could no longer be justified.
“Our expectation
was that you would continue to use your moral authority to speak out
against injustice wherever you saw it, not least within Myanmar itself,”
Naidoo wrote in the letter.
Today the Myamar authorities and citizens leapt to her defence calling the move 'childish.' But institutions that once showered Suu Kyi with titles are rapidly distancing themselves from a leader they argue is doing little in the face of the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya muslim minority. Suu Kyi has also been widely accused of being apathetic or complicit in the plight.
More
than 700,000 Rohingya people remain in Bangladesh, having fled a brutal
military crackdown that began in August 2017. UN investigators said that
during the campaign, Myanmar’s military carried out killings and gang
rapes and arson with “genocidal intent”, and called for the commander-in-chief and
five generals to be prosecuted for the gravest crimes under
international law.
Yanghee Lee, the UN special investigator on
human rights in Myanmar, said she believed Aung San Suu Kyi was in
“total denial” about accusations of violence.
“Without acknowledgement of the horrific crimes against the
community, it is hard to see how the government can take steps to
protect them from future atrocities,” said Naidoo.
Amnesty
International added that Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration had stirred
up hatred against Rohingya by labelling them “terrorists”, obstructed
international investigations into abuses, and failed to repeal
repressive laws used to silence critics. ''Her government has sgielded the secrity forces from accontability, stirred up racial hatred and denied the scale of the atrocities.
In September, Aung San Suu Kyi defended the imprisonment of two Reuters journalists who were given seven-year jail terms after investigating the massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Rahkine state. The sentences were widely condemned by international governments, human rights groups and the UN as a miscarriage of justice and a symbol of the major regression of freedom of expression in Myanmar. She is yet to comment on Amnesty’s decision herself but has in the past arrogantly shrugged off questions about withdrawn awards.
I'd urge you to watch BBC Panorama's The Universal Credit Crisis , especially if you’re a Tory that’s hellbent on forcing through
Universal Credit. Some revelations will shock people outside of their normal political bubble. Hard to watch and upsetting.
A complicated system leaving the vulnerable behind, mission accomplished as far as the government is concerned. These decisions will come back and hant them and cost them more votes than
they think.
Universal Credit combines six benefits, including housing benefit, into one monthly payment.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Housing
benefit now goes directly to the claimant, but the Local Government
Association is calling for it to be paid directly to landlords – as it
was under the old system.
The programme finds people owe two and a half times more than on existing benefits. Universal Credit claimants are forced to sell their possessions
in order to survive.
Universal Credit was introduced in 2013 and continues to cause hardship,
debt and food bank use across Britain - while the Tories and DWP remain
in denial.
As the government's controversial new benefits system, universal credit,
is rolled out, Panorama is with families as they struggle with their
claims. The programme follows one council as it deals with mounting rent
arrears and tenants in crisis. The government has responded to
criticism of the new system by announcing more funding, but is it too
little too late?
I don’t think there’s any question that it is, food bank use has already gone up 13% due to problems with
universal credit. And the top reason for people using food banks has
been delays and problems with getting benefits. lets be honest nobody seems to know what's going on anymore. Claimants
across the country are finding their payments being arbitrally cut month
in, month out, with no explanation. Random debts are imposed and
retrieved with minimum information. Already as it is claimants, living
on a shoestring, this process I fear will make things far worse.The
Conservatives claim UC is designed to help help people into work by
ensuring they are better off working than the unemployed but whatever
they say the number of families who are in work but still living below
the poverty line is continuing to rise. As a result, inequality
increases too, with the poorest among us being left behind. All because
of their policies.
The programme reveals that in Flintshire in North Wales, one of the
first areas in the UK to receive the new system, the amount of rent owed
to the council by people on Universal Credit is £1,424 in average – or
six times the amount owed by those on the existing system.
The
local authority says evictions in the county are up by 55% compared to
the same time last year, and it has spent an extra £270,000 on advice
staff to cope with the increasing numbers of people needing help. The figures were based on Freedom of Information responses from around 130 councils that manage social housing.
The programme really scraped the surface on the design faults within this policy, many things are changed as an after thought because the policy wasn't properly thought through and the administration is so bad as is the training which means that those that should be helping have not got a clue about the constant changes and are misinforming claimants causing further chaos with long waits on the phone which campaigners call the 'Vivaldi Line.'
Currently too.Esther McVey and her department are trying to make charities and private contractors that work
with the DWP sign gagging orders preventing them from criticising McVey
or damaging her reputation, but Universal Credit is a disgrace especially as we are one of the richest countries in the world.It is simply a recipe for disaster that is only fit for the waste basket.The government is coming under very serious pressure because of universal credit, and I hope this programme adds to it even more.
If you missed the programme, here it is.
In fields of horror
the poppy flower now grows,
as superficial patriotic threads spread
profiteers fill their bellies on the dead,
bereft of life, cruel futility flows
cities of blood built, destruction grows,
fresh graves tended, full of nameless corpses
peaceful branches torn, children left as orphans,
salted tears soak the earth on the edge of memory
in every sense of direction, the screaming roars,
on fields of slaughter, visceral anathema shed
but the white bird of peace flies, lest we forget,
fluttering on the winds, it's seed will always blossom
showering the world with gentleness,
high above the ruins, reason grows strong
choruses sing in unity, embracing humanity,
touching, stirring beyond the futility of it all
an enduring battle of survival, to make us secure,
away from indiscriminate killing, the slaughter of war
primal forces degenerating, a new age is born,
lessons learnt, history provides the ammunition
with hope we can turn swords into plowshares.
To many people the very name of Jacob Epstein is synonymous with
controversy. He was seen as an untamed man systematically destroying all
that was traditional in art. No sculpture of the twentieth century in
England aroused so much interest, certainly none articulated such
vehement discussion and opposition to his work. His work was such that
even the most untrained were unable to see his work without a definite
reaction. Eccentricity alone could not produce such an emotion. I t is
the test of great art. Epsteins work imprints itself vividly on the
imagination. It is disturbing. It cases the artistically lazy to
readjust their values. You either like Epsteins' work, or hated it.
Neutrality was out out of the question.
Born in 1880, on the East Side of New York to Polish-Jewish parents who had escaped anti-Semitic pogroms in Poland.
When the family moved to a more respectable neighbourhood, he chose to
remain amongst the ‘Russian, Poles, Italians, Greeks, and Chinese’ who
clustered in what was then a very unfashionable part of the city.It was here that
the earliest formative influences made themselves felt on his art. He
attended the School of Students League, and did modelling in the
evening. His first work was a book dealing with Jewish types in New York.
In 1902, he moved to Paris, then the world capital of art. to study at the city's famous art schools/ Yet in 1905 a trip to the British museum in London, with its treasure trove of art from all parts of the globe, persuaded him to settle in Britain. The country became his home, and in 1911 he acquired British citizenship.
His first two years in
London remain relatively obscure, but in 1907 the architect Charles Holden
invited him to execute a major commission for the new headquarters of the
British Medical Association in The Strand (now Zimbabwe House). He was given forteen months to do eighteen colossal figures.
This was the first time his work was described as dangerous and immoral.
the BMA apparently had envisaged decorative, allegorical figures or famous names in medical history. However Holden and
Epstein were united by their enthusiasm for Walt Whitman’s poetry, and
they agreed that 18 large figures celebrating the seven ages of man should be carved for the building’s
façade, celebrating nakedness in the spirit of Whitman’s poems. Epstein
himself announced that the scheme would celebrate ‘the great primal facts
of man and woman’, and he managed to fuse the ‘medical’ side of the
commission with his own most personal preoccupations: erotic delight,
mortality, motherhood, virility and above all an uninhibited celebration
of humanity in dignified nakedness.He was ever an outsider, as one critic described him "a sculptor in revolt."
It’s hard to track down images of the originals but above is a
shot taken at the Henry Moore Institute, where the plaster casts were
exhibited.
The statue representing Maternity came in for severe criticism.One Father Bernard Vaughan, a member
of the moralistic National Vigilance Society, led the attack against the
statues, a member of the moralistic National Vigilance Society, led the
attack against the statues. ‘As a Christian citizen in a Christian
city’, he pontificated in the Evening Standard, ‘I claim the right to
say that I object most emphatically to such indecent and inartistic
statuary being thrust upon my view’. While ‘the sacred subject of
maternity has been treated a thousand time with idealistic beauty’, he
complained in another article, the Strand mother (shown here) suggests
‘merely brutal commonplace’. With tabloid self-righteousness, the
Evening Standard warned that Epstein had erected ‘a form of statuary
which no careful father would wish his daughter, or no discriminating
young man, his fiancée, to see’. Inevitably, people came flocking to see it . London, declared Epstein, ‘had become sculpture-conscious’. Most people deemed them immoral, with the fact they were nude being one of the mainprovocations.
The complaints also disliked the fact they were too sexual, but at the
same time too ugly, the depictions were humans at different stages of
life so it seemed that the image of sagging skin was too much to bear. The sculptor himself wanted to portray figures with realism, to
have them contain deep human feeling rather than just being decoration
on architecture.
He said “The Study of the human being is frightfully important.” However an equally vehement press campaign in Epstein’s defence saved the
statues from immediate demolition. Eminent artists and critics praised
his innovations, and after some deliberation, the British Medical
Association decided to stand by him and preserve them, but a combination of
two events sealed their fates.In the 1930s The Rhodesian High
Commission bought the
building and were not fans of their new home’s decoration and in 1937 a
section of the Portland Stone (worn by acid rain and London’s smog) fell
onto the street, conveniently giving a pretext to destroy the
sculptures.
They could undoubtedly have been repaired, but in the reactionary
political mood of the 1930s, Epstein’s Jewishess, and his reputation for
outlandishness, weighed against him. The art establishment may not
deliberately have persecuted him, but nonetheless, they washed their
hands of him. Now to our loss,we can only see the butchered remains.
The resulting scandal damaged his reputation, discouraged potential
employers, and threatened the very works themselves. It disrupted
Epstein’s life, forcing the persona of provocateur on a man who
preferred, as he claimed, to work in peace. Yet the volcanic eruptions
of disapproval also deposited a fertile soil for the growth of a British
school of avant-garde sculpture, sown with Epstein’s pioneering ideas,
and sheltered by his willingness to face the critics first. His
originality made sculpture newsworthy in Britain to an extent it had
never been before. The vandalism still visible on the front of Zimbabwe House serves now as
a prominent warning against artistic censorship, and a reproach against
the British for their failure to cherish Epstein’s work.
Epstein's friends campaigned for him to become a government war artist during the First World War
This idea was rejected by the authorities and in 1917 he was
conscripted and became a private in the Jewish 38th battalion of the
Royal Fusiliers. He was discharged in 1918 without leaving England,
having suffered a mental breakdown.
The Risen Christ, produced as a result of his experiences in the war
caused problems when it was exhibited in 1920. Epstein considered the
figure to be an anti-war statement and declared that he would ideally
like it to be remodelled and made hundreds of feet high as a "mighty
symbolic warning to all lands." In his autobiography Epstein wrote :"It stands and accses the world for its grossness, inhumanity, cruelness and beastliness, for the First World War...The Jew- the Galilean - condemns our wars, and warns us that Shalom, Shalom, must still be the watchword between man and man. By pointing a finger towards the stigma on his palm, he brings the viewers attention to the idea of suffering, Neither his face, nor his body, bears any emotion. The Christ depicted here could be any human being. In a metaphorical way, the "Risen" Christ here "rises" against the cruelty of war.
The Risen Christ
The
Oscar Wilde memorial at Pere La Chaise Paris, was his next difficult
task, for cemetery sculpture imposes severe restrictions. Epstein
worked in England on a 20-ton block of Horston wood stone, and
conceived a vast winged figure, a messenger swiftly moving with
vertical wings, giving the feeling of forward flight.
Jacob Epstein - The Tomb of Oscar Wilde
One might expect
the city of the can-can, a city teeming with sex
traffic, to be more open-minded than the uptight metropolis of London.
However, nothing causes the upright authorities to take quick action
than the sight of an uncovered male member. The order of the Préfet of
the Seine and the head of the École des Beaux-Arts was sent out to
fashion some kind of fig leaf and someone was given the unenviable task
of slathering the exposed genitalia with plaster, covering the
offensive sight. The act of censorship happened even before Epstein had
completed the finishing touches on the memorial. The eighteen figures of
1908 had been protected from such incursions by their height from the
street, but the Winged Sphinx was at ground level, easily reached.
Epstein had to witness at first hand the fear of full frontal male
nudity, a fear still present in society today. He said, “Imagine
my horror when arriving to the cemetery to find that the sex parts of
the figure had been swaddled in plaster! and horribly.” Worse
was to come, the tomb was covered with a tarpaulin, with a gendarme on
patrol to prevent its removal. Although Epstein attempted to complete
his work, he was not allowed to remove the cover. Without the artist’s
consent, a bronze fig leaf was fixed to the offending member and the
tarp was whisked away. The bronze butterfly covering did not last long,
stolen by “a band of artists and poets from the Latin Quarter,” and the
penis and testicles were soon revealed to the world, at which point,
the Great War began and the authorities had better things to do with
their time.
After the War, the world had changed and Epstein’s statue was now quaint
and old-fashioned and receded from art world concern. The tomb became a
place of pilgrimage and thousands of fond fans of Wilde fondled the now
exposed parts until they shone like jewels. According to urban legend,
two (English) ladies, offended by the unseemly shine, attacked the
hanging genitals of the unfortunate Sphinx and severed the penis, a
strange impulse for 1960. Existing photographs of the original sculpture
indicates that there was nothing offensive or even remotely obscene, but
this sculpture had the power to move people very powerfully. Now shorn
of its proud possession, the statue’s appeal only
increased–coincidentally or not–and over the years, thousands of
visitors began kissing its surfaces.
In 1922 Epstein
was commissioned to create the Hyde Park memorial to the naturalist
writer W.H. Hudson. The memorial was unveiled to the public in 1925;
carved in Portland Stone the relief represented Rima, a character
from Hudson's book Green Mansions who was both human and bird. Rima
highlights Epstein's thoughts on humanity, sexuality, and gender as
well as his ideas on how the concept of 'beauty' was subjective and
often restrictive.
The panel likewise was roused in a storm of contoversy, though today it's difficlt to see what people found wrong with it. At the time Rima was the subject of
hostility from those opposed to what they viewed as his 'ugly' and
'unfeminine' portrayal of the female body. His sculpture was defaced
and the Daily Mail campaigned for the removal of the sculpture.
Epstein was also subjected to antisemitic abuse and in 1935 the
Independent Fascist League defaced Rima with swastikas. Much of the
opposition to Rima as a piece of artwork went hand-in-hand with
racist formulations of Epstein as an 'alien' outsider and his artwork
as unEnglish. The storm of abuse eventually died away and the strange elusive beauty of this small panel blends perfectly in its green sanctuary.
Rima
Night and Day likewise set the critics baying. The entire work merged easily into the horizontal courses of St James' Park Station. They were not meant to be seen in isolation. Divorced from their context and viewed at a wrong angle, it was natural for them to appear distorted. Night came in for major criticism through the poplar naturalistic conception that Epstein should have portrayed it by an attractive lady with a sad face and dressed in flowing black drapery.
Epstein commented that
he always turned to Egypt for inspiration for architectural or
monumental sculpture and the influence of Egypt and other cultures is
clear in these abstract figures. Egyptologist Flinders Petrie
protested about the style of the sculptures, denouncing them as 'part
of the modern system of Jazz' and racialising them as a 'primitive
product of a race'. Petrie was only one of a number of people who
publicly protested; the classical archaeologist Percy Gardner felt the
sculptures lacked 'morality' and there was consternation about the
length of the boy's penis on Day.
Night and Day
His religious subjects, including the Madonna and Child, 1927; Riverside Church, New York, Jacob and the Angel, 1940-1; Tate, Genesis, 1929-31; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, and Adam, 1938; Harewood House, provoked particular ire as being created by a Jewish sculptor. Genesis flooded the art world with comment. The statue carved in a block of Servezza marble, portrayd the symbolic truth of the eternal primeval feminine, the mother of the race. A storm of protest rose from women who complained that their sex had been insulted. It was tantamount to saying that art should be clad in the demure habilments of a Mother Superior. To refuse Epstein the right to create Genesis in the way he did would have denied sculpture the right to exist. In elementary terms, sclpture is the form given to a thought... the sculpture's thought, not that of the moralist or the art critic.
Genesis It is amazing to recall the virulent hostility (and anti-Semitism) that
his work aroused. Even the Royal Academy participated in the mutilation
of his public commissions. Following the exhibition of his controversial
Adam (1938) the statue was sold off for next to nothing and
later displayed in a Blackpool funfair. Visitors were charged a shilling
entry to view its enlarged genitals as a form of pornographic
amusement. It is now a prime possession of the Tate Gallery. As history has shown
us, that which is ridiculed in one era is hailed in another.
Adam
The same fate befell his next major work, Jacob and the Angel (1941), his most famous
creation. Rendered in glowing alabaster, streaked with veins of pink and
brown, it depicts two muscular figures locked in a sensual embrace, it has since been rescued and is now in the relative safety of the Tate Gallery.
Jacob and the Angel
From 1912 onwards, Epstein was inundated with portrait commissions, and
portrayed distinguished subjects throughout his career including Albert
Einstein, Joseph Conrad, Winston Churchill, Ralph Vaughan Williams and
Lucian Freud.He participated in the Festival of Britain 1951 but by this time he
was being outflanked by younger contemporaries such as Henry Moore,
Eduardo Paolozzi, and Lynn Chadwick.
When Jacob Epstein completed the following sculpture in 1928, Paul Robeson was
enjoying huge success in London, both in the English production of Show
Boat and in a series of triumphant concerts. Lionized by English
society, he was experiencing an acceptance hardly imaginable by blacks
in America: "Everyone wanted to know Paul and to be seen with him," said
a fellow cast member, "especially some of our so-called society
ladies." His wife wrote to a friend that they both were feeling "as
though at last we are at the end of a long journey. Paul . . . is
tickled to death and greatly relieved."
Paul Robeson
Epstein was a pacifist and he joined with other left-wing artists and writers, including David Low, Henry Moore and Eric Gill
to form a National Congress organised by the British section of the
International Peace Campaign. He was also involved in the Artists'
International Association's efforts on behalf of the Poplar Front government during theSpanish Civil War. He was furious when the Foreign Office refused Epstein a visa when he wanted to visit Spain in 1937.
He completed further commissions
for religious figures, notably on the re-built Coventry Cathedral, but
his final secular work was the magnificent war memorial that stands in
front of TUC headquarters at Congress House in London. The work is a memorial to Trade Union victims of the two World Wars A mournful evocation of loss, a lone woman supports the limp naked
body of a dead soldier. It was carved from a 10 ton block of Roman stone and was
originally backed by green Carrara marble running up to the roof; this decayed and
has been replaced by green tiles as an economy measure. The statue was unveiled and the building opened on 27th March 1958.
Despite being married to and continuing to live with Margaret Dunlop, whome he had wed in 1906, Epstein
had a number of relationships with other women that brought him his five
children: Peggy Jean (born 1918),Theo (1924–1954), Kathleen (1926–2011), Esther (1929–1954) and Jackie (1934–2009).
Margaret generally tolerated these relationships – even to the extent
of bringing up his first and last children. In 1921, Epstein began the
longest of these relationships, with Kathleen Garman, one of the Garman sisters,
mother of his three middle children, which continued until his death.
Margaret "tolerated Epstein's infidelities, allowed his models and
lovers to live in the family home and raised Epstein's first child,
Peggy Jean, who was the daughter of Meum Lindsell, one of Epstein's
previous lovers. Evidently, Margaret's tolerance did not extend to
Epstein's relationship with Kathleen Garman, as in 1923 Margaret shot
and wounded Kathleen in the shoulder.
Jacob Epstein was knighted in 1954, but his later years were marked by personal
loss. His son died of a heart attack in 1954, and his daughter committed
suicide later the same year.
When Jacob Epstein died of a heart-attack on 19th August 1959 in Kensington, the sculptor Henry Moore wrote: " . .
. I first met Jacob Epstein in the mid-Twenties, a time when I was
unknown and he was the most famous sculptor in Britain . . . He took the
brickbats, he took the insults, he faced the howls of derision with
which artists since Rembrandt have learned to become familiar. And as
far as sculpture in this century is concerned, he took them first."
He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery. Major retrospectives of his work have been held at the Tate, 1953,
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1980, and a touring exhibition in
1987, which included Leeds City Art Galleries and the Whitechapel Art
Gallery. His work is held in major public collections around the world
including Tate, National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, MoMA, and the Pompidou Centre.
Jacob Epstein remains one
of the most significant British artists of the twentieth century;
specialising in sculpture, particularly public sculpture, his pieces
both challenged and influenced British art conventions. Despite
having a number of supporters, Epstein's work though was often criticised by
the public and the media; often this opposition was purely antisemitic and
nationalist. Despite this his life, like his art, might have been the stuff of myth, but in his
large works, shaping the endless struggle of human life, Jacob Epstein
was at his best. Any attempt to gauge the full value of Epstein's art forces us to realise how imperfect a vehicle of expression is language when it attempts to explain the significance of another art medium. This much we can say. Epstein introduced a new creative intelligence with his uncompromising, radical sculptural vision. His art is still capable of provoking.
I sum up in his own words : I rest silent in my work .... words superb in finality.
The above is from Banksys 2004 pamphlet Cut it Out in which he lashes out at public advertising, condemning bullying advertisers for making their consumers feel inadequate and small, telling us and them we don't owe them everything, and we need our right to choose for ourselves.
Though I like his ideas and his work, I do find his message kinda ironic, after all he does also thrive off the same thing that advertisers do on a daily basis. He copyrights his images, is a brand in his own right.A marketing machine, that is just doing it in a more subtle way than your average brand.
Advertising daily is simply used daily, as a tool of capitalism, to sell s things that we do not necessarily need , that simply reinforces a consumerist ideology, that for many cannot escape or afford. .Everywhere we go we are influenced by advertisements that have an
ideological message to persuades us to 'buy mass-produced commodities.
It is clear that our capitalist society is shaping our culture, and
identity, and there seems to be no aspect of our daily lives that isn't being used in the ways it seeks to influence us...
Meanwhile however campaigns use advertising to incorporate messages of resistance creating parodies that help us reavaluate beyond this bomardmentand of consmerist marketing.Working under the name ‘Brandalism’, a group of British street artists in Banksy's home city aims to subvert the consumer messages in advertising.According to the organisation’s website, the UK’s advertising industry pays out £16.1 billion each year
to display a message or advert.
This works out as around £250 per
person each year spent on sending messages or direct adverts to them.Brandalism says that advertising is not about catering to existing
needs, but creating new desires. Not only desires, but insecurity as
well, because we cannot desire without feeling like we lack something.
This desire creates new kinds of people. Rather than the advert
describing a product, we are now the product the advertiser is making.
Advertising makes people feel insecure and unfulfilled when unable to
access the products we’re told to desire. the subversion of advertising is developing into a political tool. It
would be a strange irony if one day it were to become just another type
of advertising.
