Rapper Lowkey, a North Kensington resident affected by the Grenfell disaster, brings the community together to call for justice with his latest release, Ghosts of Grenfell. Many of the local residents, key players in the community generated relief and support efforts, are featured in the accompanying video, demanding to know where are all those friends and neighbours who are still “missing”. It is probably the most powerful , emotive, apposite song you will hear all summer.
The hard-hitting track pays tribute to victims of the devastating fire in June and lashes out at the “political class, so servile to corporate power”
.It asks: “Did they die or us?” and includes the words: “People crying in the street, watching the burning of their kinfolk/Grenfell Tower now historically a symbol.
“People reaching form their windows, screaming for their lives/Pleading with their cries, trying to reason with the skies… every single person in that building was a hero.
“The street is like a graveyard, tombstone lurching over us… now it’s flowers for the dead, printing posters for the missing.”
The second half of the five-minute track becomes an appeal to “whom it may concern at the Queen’s Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea” for the whereabouts of people still missing after the devastating fire in June, with contributors holding up named images of residents who have not been found. The song finishes: “The blood is on your hands, there’ll be ashes on your grave, like a phoenix we will rise.”
Hopefully thisvideo will contribute to the wider call for justice.
Lowkey – Ghosts of Grenfell, featuring vocals of Mai Khalil and Asheber. For September 2017 tour info and tickets: https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/...
Produced by Quincy Tones and Jo Caleb. Mixed by Guy Buss.
Film – Exec Producers: Lowkey, Fahim Alam and Tariq Chow; Directed by Fahim Alam; Director of Photography: Jeffrey Celis
Please – Donate to the Grenfell Tower Appeal and support the Justice 4 Grenfell campaign
Freedom improvisations
Dense smoke, shivers down spine,
We travel on up to a blessed place
Drunk with possibilities,
Midnight we are lifted off the ground
I feel like staying all night,
Small town romances
Lead to wonderful occurrences,
Soft melodies sweep among the landscapes
Painting the world with happiness,
With satori breaths, and sweaty palms
We stretch out our mortality,
As the sun comes up
We are shapeless and crazy,
Dawns gentle caress, touches us sweetly
The returnless twist that shapes our paths,
As the morning comes on down
And boundaries are set aside,
Surrender, it is so effortless
" just like that! "
Could this be paradise?
No this is not the real word,
Adrift in a sky of random moments
All these things have a beautiful silence.
Hate-filled media stories are creating a violent culture of hostility towards migrants and refugees.
Given the rise in violent hate crime that we’ve seen in recent months, we need to stand up to the parts of the media that are helping legitimise racist and xenophobic attitudes. That means challenging the Daily Mail. Take the pledge now and stand up against the divisive media narrative in the Daily Mail. https://act.globaljustice.org.uk/pledge-boycott-daily-mail-0 Daily Mail Poem
I pour scorn on its petty margins
Its distortion of realities silhouette,
The daily shame, should be its new name
Cross out all its lies, we'd be left with empty pages,
Drinking toasts to underbellies of nastiness
It sharpens its pen on bile,
With agenda of spreading hatred
Is enough to scramble your brain,.
A bully that's scared of everything
Its dark heart distorts reality,
With script of venom and division
In truth, worth nothing at all,
Its pinning sense of intolerance
Is a message I don't want to hear,
A tabloid rag not fit for the gutter
Full of twisted opinion and bad news
Designed to leave us disheartened,
Don't know how anyone can call it a friend.
72 years ago today at 8.15 a.m , the city of Hiroshima was destroyed with an Atomic bomb. In a matter of minutes , hundreds of thousands of innocent people lost their lives in this cowardly attack.
A bright summer morning turned to dark twilight with smoke and dust rising in the mushroom cloud, dead and injured covering the ground, begging desperately for water and receiving no medical care at all. The spreading firestorm and the foul stench of burnt flesh filled the air.
Three days later the city of Nagasaki met the same fate.
Many survivors of the nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki have died in recent years with their dreams of nuclear abolition unfulfilled. Their motto was, “abolition in our lifetime”.
Across the world people will join commemorations to mark this tragic event. People have not forgotten those who died as a result of these nuclear attacks and are working together to ensure it never happens again. Candle lighting, poetry readings and picnics will be taking place across the day.
On this poignant anniversary, we must reaffirm our determination to campaign for a world without nuclear weapons.This year is even more significant, as it comes on the heels of the United Nations successful vote for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. In early July, 122 nations in the UN General Assembly passed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.This is a historic breakthrough. On 20 September, this treaty will open for signature at the UN, and all governments are invited to join it. We should not forget that the U.S, Russia and China and 6 other countries still possess over 15,000 Nuclear weapons. The vast majority are magnitudes more powerful than those dropped on Japan.
You can find out more information about the treaty and the signing and ratification process on www.nuclearban.org
Will you help us get your government to sign the treaty? You can send an email to your government here, telling them you want them to sign the treaty!
Hiroshima : An Acrostic Poem
Horror was dropped on August 6, 1945
Incinerating thousands of innocents,
Reason evaporated,after deadly poison shed
One bomb released left devastation
Senseless slaughter, the scorched sin of humanity
Haunting vapours of pitiful sorrow
Insanity blossoming with black rain
Murderous atom shattered spirits
American weapon of evil, B- 29 Enola Gay.
Percy Bysshe
Shelley, Revolutionary Romantic poet was born on this day in 1792 in Broadbridge Heath near Horsham in Sussex into an aristocratic family. His father, Timothy Shelley, was a Sussex squire and a member of Parliament.
At ten, he left home
to study at Syon House Academy and just two years later enrolled at Eton
College. Within his first year at Eton, he had already published two
novels and two volumes of poetry. Although born into the ruling class himself, Shelley was quick to relinquish his birth-right and ally himself with the ordinary people with whom he identified and whose cause he identified.
In 1810, Shelley enrolled at the University of Oxford. But after just
a few months, he was called to the office of a dean who demanded he
acknowledge his contribution to an atheist pamphlet. He denied authoring
any part of it but was expelled.
Shelley's beliefs were controversial to those who surrounded him, he was an individualist and non conformist idealist who rejected the institutions of family, church, marriage and the Christian faith and rebelled against all forms of tyranny, he espoused atheism, vegetarianism as well as political and sexual freedom.
He
eloped with a 16-year-old girl named Harriet Westbrook, but soon lost
interest and became interested in a schoolteacher named Elizabeth
Hitchener, who became the inspiration for his first important poem, Queen Mab which became known as the ‘Chartist’s Bible’
https://www.marxists.org/archive/shelley/1813/queen-mab.htm
Despite this, he remained with Harriet and they had two children
together, but he left her for another woman before the second was
born. The other woman was Mary Godwin, who he had fallen hopelessly in love with,the daughter of famed
political activist and writer William Godwin and the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft who was responsible for the work A Vindication of the Rights of Women . Mary herself was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known nowadays for her Gothic novel Frankenstein. The two fled Godwin, who disapproved of their relationship, to go to
Paris. In 1816, Shelley accompanied Mary on a trip
to Switzerland for the summer with Mary's stepsister Claire
who was dating
Lord Byron at the time. Shelley became close with the Romantic poet, and
wrote Hymn to Intellectual Beauty upon his return. Not long after, he took a trip through the French Alps with Byron and later wrote Mont Blanc. During their time in Switzerland it would be the catalyst too for Mary;s own classic novel Frankenstein, a tremendous tale in itself that I hope to return and write about at a later date,
Upon
returning to England, it was discovered that Shelley's wife, Harriet,
had committed suicide. This left Shelley free to marry Mary. However, he
lost custody of his children when the courts ruled they would be better
off with foster parents. Shelley and Mary moved to Buckinghamshire where they befriended John Keats and Leigh Hunt.
Shelley, this Romantic poet, is also called a rebel for his idea of revolution in his poetry. As The French Revolution dominated all politics in those years, unlike Wordsworth or Coleridge, Shelley never abandoned the ideals of the revolution, though he was appalled by the dictatorship of Napoleon. Shelley only experienced the revolution at second hand through, but when he looked back, all he could see was the flame of revolution still flickering in spite of the terror, war and disease. His long poem, The Revolt of Islam, http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/2779/ written at the height of his powers, is clear on one matter above all else,that the ideas of progress, which inspired the revolution, will triumph once again. Here is the preface to it :-
The preface to The Revolt of Islam: Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near schoolroom, voices that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes — The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. And then I clasped my hands and looked around — — But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground — So without shame I spake:—‘I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check.’ I then controlled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold...
Is it that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude of a loftier strain? Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers Soon pause in silence, ne’er to sound again, Though it might shake the Anarch Custom’s reign, And charm the minds of men to Truth’s own sway Holier than was Amphion’s? I would fain Reply in hope — but I am worn away, And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.
In the "Ode to The West Wind" he desires a social change and the West Wind is to his symbol of change. This poem, written in iambic pentameter, begins with three stanzas describing the wind's effects upon earth, air and ocean. The last two stanzas are Shelley speaking directly to the wind, asking for its power, to lift him like a leaf, or a cloud and make him his companion in its wanderings. He asks the wind to take his thoughts and spread them all over the world so that the youth are awoken with his ideas.
At the end of the poem he is seen very much optimistic when he say that his revolutionary ideas must bring a change and the new order will be established. The wind blows through the jungle and produces music out to the dead leaves. Shelley requests it to create music out of his heart and to inspire him to write great poetry, which may create a revolution in the hearts of men . He wants the Wind to scatter his revolutionary message in the world, just as it scatters cries and sparks from a burning fire. His thoughts may not be as fiery as they once were, but they still have the power to inspire men. He tells the Wind to take message to sleeping world, that if winter comes, spring cannot be far behind. It is at the very darkest of times, Shelley seems to suggest, that change takes place; that, in effect, things must get worse before they can possible get better. After bad days come good days. Here he says, " If winter comes , can spring be far behind?"
Ode to the West Wind
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
We also find Shelley’s revolutionary zeal in ode “To A Skylark”. According to Shelley, the bird, Skylark, that pours spontaneous melody from heaven and sours higher and higher can never be a bird. It is for the poet, a joyful spirit that begins its upward flight at sunrise and becomes invisible at evening like the stars of the sky that become invisible in day light. Moreover, it is compared with the beans of the moon whose presence is rather felt than seen. It's a heavenly bird and by singing it spreads its influence through the world.
In the opening stanza, the bind is seen as a "blithe spirit" that "pourest thy full heart/ In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." The words "Pourest thy full heart" mean that the bird pours out its heart in song and with "In profuse strains of unpremeditated art", Shelley refers to the spontaneous flow of music which comes from the Skylark. There is nothing artificial in its music, it overflows profusely from its heart. And Shelley says as a spirit of revolution it spreads it revolutionary message as the moon spreads its beam.
To a Skylark
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud.
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aerial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal
Or triumphal chaunt
Matched with thine, would be all
But an empty vaunt--
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!
Then there is The Masque of Anarchy, which he penned in the wake of the Peterloo massacre, which ends with this fiery appeal to the working class: " Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are manythey are few."
It is perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry in any movement of the oppressed all over the world. The Chartists knew it in the 19th century and so did the striking women garment workers in 1909 New York. It was chanted on demonstrations in Tiananmen Square (1989) and Tahrir Square (2011).The last lines were adapted to ‘We Are Many’ by the campaign against the Poll Tax. In February 2003 a ‘great assembly’ took place ,the huge anti-war demo in Hyde Park which echoed around the world in the first global protest. Jeremy Corbyn was one of the speakers on that occasion, and it is only fitting that he should turn to Shelley to give a voice to his campaign and at end of the election campaign on June 7, 2017, Corbyn gave a speech in Islington which ended with him quoting from it.again.
It is loved so much because, it reminds us to remember that we are not alone but part of the vast majority, and that being many we can win.But we don’t always do that. For most of our lives we feel fragmented, cut off ,we are divided from each other by ethnicity, sex, age or some other way in which the ruling class assures us that we are isolated and different from those we should be united with. When we are on a demo, when we know we are many, we see the truth of the lines and we know that we can rise like lions.
Here is a link to an earlier post on Peterloo and this great poem :- https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-peterloo-massacre-and-percy-bysshe.html
Today, Percy Bysshe Shelley is an emblem of the Romantic movement and one of the lights of English culture, his poems memorized by schoolchildren, his life honored with a memorial in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. That wasn’t always the case, however. In his own day, Shelley was widely loathed, seen as an immoral atheist and a traitor to his class for his revolutionary politics. His work was damned as well, receiving scathing reviews rooted as much in disapproval of his politics and personal life as in the verse itself. Some of his reviews give a fair indication of what the literary and political establishment thought of him at the time: "Mr Shelley ... would overthrow the constitution ... would pull down our churches and burn our bibles ... marriage he cannot endure."
The reviewers hated him because of his political opinions, just as many academics came to adore him in later years despite, or more rarely because of, his politics. During his lifetime, because of his revolutionary politics, he had the utmost difficulty in getting anything published - Queen Mab did not sell any copies at all. During all his life, this "greatest of English lyrical poets" made precisely £40 from his writing, and most of that was from a novel he wrote while still at school.
It is true that Shelley left behind him a trail of destruction, his personal relations were tainted by an unshakeable conviction that his views were always right, and many people who became close to him suffered as a result of that intimacy. And yet Shelley the poet was capable of expressing in memorable language ideas that were shocking and anarchic at the time but which have since become part of our common beliefs about the basic right of the individual to freedom and to this day his words and poetry continue to endure.
Shelley’s short life-story is wild, outrageous, shocking, revolutionary and unconventional, a
revolutionary reformer who wanted to change the old order and to find universal happiness, who lest we forget was also a great Nature lover, merging himself in the beauty of the world around him.
On July 6, 1822, his small, custom-built sailing boat (dubbed Don Juan) during a stormy voyage sank off the coast of Italy.Shelley drowned a moth short of 30 . His body was washed ashore at Viareggio, where, in the presence of Lord Byron he was burned on the beach.
Shelley’s ashes were later buried in the Protestant cemetery in Rome, and the stone bears the inscription:
"Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."
Unhappily, Shelley's remains suffered not only a sea change but a variety of other transformations before arriving at the cemetery, A number of romanticized paintings depict Shelley's cremation the young poet lies serenely atop his bier, surrounded by his friends (including Byron) and grieving widow Actually, what was left of Shelley's body was hardly in any condition to be painted. The corpse had washed up some ten days after the drowning and all exposed flesh was gone, Shelley was identified by his socks, trousers and a volume of Keat's poetry in his pocket. The body was then covered in quicklime ad temporarily buried in a shallow ,grave until permission for cremation could be acquired Mary did not attend the cremation, Byron was there for a short time but got nauseous and had to leave,
Shelley's heart that remained entire was given to Mary Shelley.and was found among her things after her dearh,So while Shelley's ashes are over in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, his heart is in England.
More than anyone after Shelley's death it was the grieving Mary Shelley who kept his everlasting legacy alive, In concluding it can be said that Shelley was a true revolutionary poet whose message bears the ideas of revolution, whose powerful words still carry a marked impression on our world.
Paul Foot Speaks! The Revolutionary Percy Shelley. Paul's remarkable 1981 talk to London's Marxism Conference.
Further Reading :- Red Shelley - Paul Foot, Bookmarks, 1984 Shelley, A life Story - Edmund Blunden, 1946 Jacqueline Mulhallen, Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary (Pluto 2015)
I have just reread the book The ragged trousered philanthropist's by Robert Tressell for the umpteenth time, it still gives me much inspiration. It has been a book, that over the years has helped shape and influence a lot of my outlook. A powerful book that to this day still has social significance, still has relevance. A story of the most important struggle in history, the struggle between the underprivileged and their oppressors.
Robert Tressell's real name was Robert Noonan, a Dubliner, who was working as a housepainter in Hastings in the early 20th century.He was also a working class militant and a member of the Social Democratic Federation.To avoid the bosses’ blacklist he took the pseudonym Tressell, from the portable table used in the trade.
His own experience of working class life and early socialist politics are brilliantly recreated in his book, in what is regarded as one of the most gripping socialist novels of the last century. It only appeared first in abridged form on April 23 1914, three years after his premature death from tuberculosis in a workhouse aged 40 in Liverpool 1911, and not in its full intended version until 1955, a book that continues to sell well, with over a million copies being sold in more than one hundred printings and at least six languages and still sells around 5,000 a year, second-hand copies are scarce because so few people want to part with the book. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists remains ever resonant today in it's accurate historical account of the lives of working people, and in its condemnation of the horrors of capitalism, poverty and the struggle of working class people, with a comprehensive explanation of how the system works, and the need for a socialist alternative. In it Robert Tressell tells the story of a group of working men who are joined one day by Frank Owen, a journeyman-prophet with a vision of a just society. Owen's spirited attacks on the greed and dishonesty of the capitalist system rouse his fellow men from their political quietism. Owen, a building worker, describes incidents and characters that any worker could relate to today. The "Philanthropists" are the workers willing to work for the "good cause" of giving their unpaid labour to the "masters" ,the bosses’ profits.Casualisation, bullying bosses, low pay, poor housing, debt, unemployment, and the regular humiliations endured by working people throughout their lives, are all graphically depicted by Robert. The overwhelming impression is of a book written by, not just a well-placed observer, but as Noonan puts it "the story of twelve months in Hell told by one of the damned".
The voice of Frank Owen the main character still comes across with such contemporary power to speak to those who have not yet realised that pessimism and despair make us collaborators in our own fate. His critique of the system still hits home and will continue to be relevant as long as the system remains in place, that sees our leaders mock us while making us poorer.
The main theme of the book is how the poor give so much to the rich (hence the title).
Owen believes that the capitalist system is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him, and he rejects reformism as the answer saying, “It's no good tinkering at it. Everything about it is wrong and there's nothing about it that's right. There's only one thing to be done with it and that is to smash it up and have a different system altogether.” In vain he tries to convince his fellow workers of the correctness of his views, and much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and other workers, which frequently lead to Owen being jeered and mocked.
An argument flares up about poverty what causes it? One man blames drink,another ‘overpopulation’ (even in those days). Another thinks education because, it puts foolish ideas in people’s heads and encourages laziness. An older man says that there’s always been rich and poor in the world, and always will be. One, a ‘chapel man’, blames original sin: ‘When it comes to poverty, what a grown man must do is conquer himself ’. Eventually, Frank Owen, can stand it no longer. "Overpopulation, drink, laziness, sin have nothing to do with it. The real cause of poverty," says Owen, is money! Of course, he is immediately challenged to prove it, and does so by means of what Tressell calls ‘the Great Money Trick’ in which he explains the basics of capitalist economics to his fellow workers. Using pieces of left-over bread, Owen demonstrates to three of his colleagues how the wage system not only fails to pay them the full value of their labour, but also charges them for the necessities of life they have already produced, so that they end up with nothing. His message is a simple one: unemployment, low wages and poverty are not the unfortunate by-products of a system based on economic competition; they are a fundamental part of it, the means through which the ruling class of landlords and monopoly capitalists disciplines the working class, without which wealth could not be created. Far from being the solution to poverty, money is the cause of it. True wealth consists of the things workers make; but what Owen calls the ‘Money System’ ensures that most of the things they make end up in the hands of those who don’t make them. Challenging his workmates’ rusted-on assumptions that the cause of poverty is foreign workers or drink or indolence or machinery or over-population, he strips back the system to its key working parts in an attempt to lay bare its underlying weirdness.
The media still tends to warn us not to get carried away by those who campaign for fairness and justice, those like Jeremy Corbyn and they try to spread the idea that such changes proposed cannot be achieved because we should distrust all those who advocate them. Like in the book there are people who still refuse to believe that changing the system would benefit us, believing that the rich and powerful still have a divine right to run the country.
Robert Tressell's book continues to be a source of inspiration for those fighting against capitalism, poverty and injustice with its continuing relevance for today, since we atill live in the same capitalist world, with hardships faced by people on low pay, bullying bosses, insecure work and zero hours contracts. Do we give in to despair, or do we carry on patiently explaining how the Great Money Trick works, and send some real socialists to represent us in parliament to make a difference for a change.Within its pages this book still carries a powerful message that commands attention .I would urge anybody who has not read it yet, to give it a go.It will restore some idealism and hopefully make you want to reach out for more of that light. Ideas that remain relevant to those prepared to put them into practice. As I've re-read it now when I am much older, I realise there is still so much worth fighting for. Nevertheless thank you Robert Tressell from the bottom of my heart.
Writing on the centenary of Tressell's death, the late Tony Benn said :-
" Robert Tressell, through the voice of Frank Owen, is addressing us with arguments that are just as relevant now as they were when he first used them a century ago. If we want to make progress we have to do it ourselves and believe it can be done. That is why this book should be studied by this generation if we are to make progress, for there is no other way. We do it ourselves or it will never be done."
Here is an extract. May his words continue to echoe on down through the years. If you haven't read it I strongly recommend that you do. It truly is still essential reading for our times.
"Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by 'over-production'; it is not caused by drink or laziness; and it is not caused by 'over population'. It is caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it is right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's their Land," "It's their Water," " It's their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing? And even while he is doing that the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of the gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you will drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice," in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble."
Oh and this
“Every man who is not helping to bring about a better state of affairs for the future is helping to perpetuate the present misery, and is therefore the enemy of his own children. There is no such thing as being neutral: we must either help or hinder.” -Robert Tressell Further Reading :- One of the Damned: The life and times of Robert Tressell - F.C. Ball Lawrence & Wishart, 1973
As people burn to death in buildings coated with pretty coated bbq fire lighters, a time of austerity with a national housing crisis , an increase in foodbanks plus cuts to many frontline services and the rate of homelessness increasing quicker than a DUP bribe,The Sovereign Grant, which funds the monarch's household, official travel, and upkeep of palaces, will increase from £76 million ($97 million) in 2017-18 to £82.2 million ($104.9 million) next April. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40412343
Not bad, eh? That's a £6 million pay rise. to the UK’s richest benefit claimant along with a whopping £370 million for a lick of paint for Buckingham Palace. If anybody I believe deserves an award, at this moment in time, it is the firefighters and nurses across our land who have received a paltry 1%.
I know what all the arguments for the extra cash are going to be already; the Palace itself maintains the Royal Family is very cost effective. But they would say that, they reap the benefits, obviously they need Orangery Doors at Windsor Castle at a cost of £1.2 million and due to mismanagement need a new ceiling in the Buckingham Palace State Dining Room costing £1.3 million. Oh and she works really hard cutting all those ribbons and bless her at 91 she’s getting on a bit, her diamond encrusted, solid gold Crown must be pretty heavy nowadays, and it must be a strain what with Philip retiring and obviously she needs a few extra handbags , and of course her beloved corgis need feeding .As for the Royals jaunts, in times of austerity, they certainly do not travel cheap.Prince William And Kate's trip to Bhutan cost £98,000. Prince Charles and Camilla's recent trip to Romania, Italy and Austria on "Cam Force One" cost £154,000.Charles also took the most expensive journey by Royal Train costing £46,000 ,that's £95.32 per flipping mile. When the Queen, Philip and Charles and Duchess went to Poundbury, Dorchester for the unveiling of a statute of the Queen Mother in October, that train trip alone came to a staggering £22,060.
But do the benefits outweigh the cost to the public purse? .82.2 million ($104.9 million) next April.
£370 million seems a little excessive to do up someone’s home up, especially when you consider that a whole tower block could’ve been coated in something not flammable for an extra two grand.The royals think Buckingham Palace is theirs to use and ours to pay for, but its time they were told to look after the buildings themselves, raise their own revenue to fund maintenance or time for them to give the palace back to the people. It would probably be far less expensive to actually knock the run down building down, it is not fit for purpose anyway , a relic of another age, Liz does not even spend much time there anyway, she's over at her other pads, windsor or balmoral. We could simply replace it and build much needed affordable social houses on the site and simply abolish the monarchy at huge savings to the whole country and the public purse. It's not even the most beautiful building to look at , just an extravagant untidy mess.
In terms of public perception. the timing of this announcement could not have been worse, thousands of people seem to think,that it is the royals themselves who should foot the bill for Her Maj’s luxury pad.A petition suggesting The Crown and its estates should pay for the renovations has been gathering momentum . I would urge you to sign it, hasn't the British monarchy sponged of us for long enough.
The Queen using her own vast wealth for the upkeep of her own home is something I would support , and would be a gesture that would create greater national unity. I just don't want the funds to come out of other pensioners or that of single -parent families struggling to pay their bills.
What would be much better is if we got rid of this antiquated system of superiority all together. Scrap the Royals and hereditary peers. Or we could put the Queen on a salary and all that money should go to the treasury and be spent on services and put back into the community. Just because you happen to be born to certain parents, at a certain time, and a certain place, simply does not make someone better than the rest of us.
(Lammas or Lughnasadh is traditionally a feast of thanksgiving for the first fruits of the corn.. The sun has shone upon the crops all season, which are now ready to harvest. The first grains are pulled and the first loaves of bread are made and shared with friends and loved ones. Rituals of Lammas are centred around seeing the fruits of our labours unfold as we wished. Our hard work has paid off and we can relax now before the preparations for next year begin. Time to chill out, break bread and share our spoils. Thoughts of transformation, death and rebirth are also part of Lugnnasadh ) A Poem for Lammas
We harvest the seed and the grain from the soil.
And transformation now surrounds us,
There is joy among the chaos, roses as well as bread
Lets share our rewards and bless the earth,
Release sparkles of thankfulness
With our smiles spread a glint of hope,
Let our spirits belong to the world
Move forward together light and bold,
As summer recedes and winter draws near
Hold on to any chance that breaks,
Bless the departed the newly arrived
Let black clouds of hate drift on by,
In the noisy confusion of life
Keep gratitude within our souls.
Welsh language poet/ pacifist Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known by his bardic pen name Hedd Wyn. (Blessed Peace).was born on the 13th of January 1917, the eldest son of 11 children of Evan and Mary Evans, of Yr Ysgwrn farm, Trawsfynydd. Meironydd.
He began writing Welsh-language poetry aged just 11, mastering the hardest form of Welsh poetry (the cynghanedd) at 12, and continued to write after leaving school to work on the farm when he was 14. By 19 he was a regular competitor in eisteddfodau and won the first of his chairs at Bala Eisteddfod in 1907. Others followed at Llanuwchllyn, Pwllheli and Pontardawe (the latter in 1915 with the First World War underway).In 1916, he won second place at the at the Aberystwyth National Eisteddfod with Ystrad Fflur, an awdl written in honour of Strata Florida, the medieval Cistercian abbey ruins in Ceredigion. He vowed to win first place the following year.
Wynn had initially sat out the war for three years as a sheep farmer, a Christian pacifist, Hedd Wyn hadn’t enlisted, but when conscription began in 1916, the Evans family were required to send one of their sons to war. To spare his younger brother, Robert, Ellis volunteered. Following a spell of training in March at Litherland in Liverpool Private Evans was despatched for active service in Flanders and found himself stationed with his regiment at the notorious Pilckem Ridge immediately prior to the opening of the Passchendale offensive (3rd Ypres).
Previously while on leave at the farm, he wrote his romantic poem, Yr Arwr (The Hero), for submission to the judges of the National Eisteddfod. The work was inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound. He didn't want to go back but the military police came for him in June. He left the poem Yr Arwr, (The Hero) on the kitchen table and re wrote it from memory en route to France. Here is a link to more on this poem from the People's Collection Wales / Casgliad Y Werin Cymru :-https://www.peoplescollection.wales/story/378223
However the reluctant soldier from the Yr Ysgwrn farm near Trawsfynydd was tragically killed on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium on July 31, 1917. He was one of 9,300 British troops who were slaughtered in the first three days of the Battle of Passchendaele.Soon after being wounded he was carried to a first-aid post and still conscious he asked the doctor "Do you think I will live?" although he had little chance of surviving. Mr Wyn died at around 11am.
Some weeks after his death on 6 September 1917 when the ceremony at Birkenhead Park,(which was only the third time it had been held outside the Principality)took place, the adjudicators announced that the winning entry had been submitted under the pseudonym Fleur de Lys. At the award ceremony the archdruid rose to summon the poet, in the traditional fashion, to come to take the chair, calling him three times to make himself known. But it then had to be revealed, to the consternation of the gathering, which included the prime minister, David Lloyd George, that Hedd Wyn had fallen while fighting with the Royal Welch Fusiliers “somewhere in France.” The empty chair was draped with a black shroud, and the festival of that year has ever since been called Eisteddfod y Gadair Ddu (The Eisteddfod of the Black) and the Archdruid spoke of ‘the festival in tears and the poet in his grave’ The shockwaves at the time were palpable. “No words can adequately describe the wave of emotion that swept over the vast audience when Wyn’s bardic chair was draped with the symbols of mourning," the Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard newspaper reported at the time.. Wyn’s absence that day was emblematic of a lost generation of men who would never return home.
The Black Chair was brought by train and then horse and cart to his parents farm, Yr Ysgwrn, on a hillside above the village of Trawsfynydd in the Prysor Valley, the whole village turned out in mourning. The stone farm cottage, which dates back to the early 16th century, quickly became a place of pilgrimage, where visitors were warmly received by the poet’s family and descendants. Yr Ysgwrn, in Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, was bought for the nation by the Snowdonia National Park Authority (SNPA) in March 2012. The Park Authority has spent nearly two years restoring Yr Ysgwrn, under the watchful eye of the poet's nephew, Gerald Williams. Now 88, the farmer has helped keep the memory of Hedd Wyn alive , and is delighted to see the end results.A new exhibition and visitors' centre has also been built, and marks the impact of the war on the community.
Over time Hedd Wynn became a powerful and lasting symbol of the many Welsh and British soldiers who were senselessly slaughtered on the killing fields of Europe. Buried initially on the battlefield (out of necessity) his body was subsequently moved to Artillery Wood cemetery, Boeinghe, near Ypres, Flanders following the armistice.
A memorable, though slightly romanticised Welsh-language film based on HeddWyn's life has also helped bring his story and verse to a wider audience and was produced in 1992, Hedd Wynn,.which I fortunate to watch last night on S4C. It is available to purchase on DVD http://www.sainwales.com/store/dvd/sain-dvd-101
Aberystwyth’s National Library of Wales hosts the original manuscript of the ode ‘Yr Arwr’,Hedd Wyn’s final draft of the poem which won him the chair at the 1917 Birkenhead Eisteddfod. The collection also includes a number of personal notes and items and notes of the bard. https://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=3790
The library is also hosting a special exhibition ‘The Fallen Poets’ until 9th September, 2017, commemorating both Hedd Wyn and Edward Thomas, who both died in battle in 1917. Celebrating their lives and their legacy, the exhibition will also look at ways in which the two have since inspired writers, poets and filmmakers.
In 1918 the decision was made that Ellis' poems should gave a wider audience, and they were published in a collection called "Cerdi'r Budail" (Shepherd's Songs). The money raised by the sale of the book paid for the statue by L.S. Merrifield which the villagers of Trawfynydd pass every day. He is portrayed not as a soldier but as the shepherd they knew. The cross which marked his grave at Boesinghe is now displayed at his former school, which was renamed "Ysgol Hedd Wyn" in his honour, and there is a memorial plaque at St George's Church at Ypres which has become a place of pilgrimage for Welsh men and women.
One of his most powerful poems that I have found translated is “Y Rhyfel” (War), which I post below. Y Rhyfell /War-Hedd Wyn (Translated by Gillian Clarke)
Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.
Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae swn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.
Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt,
Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw
Bitter to live in times like these.
While God declines beyond the seas;
Instead, man, king or peasantry,
Raises his gross authority.
When he thinks God has gone away
Man takes up his sword to slay
His brother; we can hear death's roar.
It shadows the hovels of the poor.
Like the old songs they left behind,
We hung our harps in the willows again.
Ballads of boys blow on the wind,
Their blood is mingled with the rain.
Today Hedd Wyn is regarded as one of Wale's foremost poets. The bardic chair that Wyn was never able to claim in 1917 has since been preserved at Wynn’s family home, now a museum, as a poignant reminder of those Wales lost in the war. This poet/Bardd continues to represent a lost generation that could have further enriched our literature and national life had they been spared.
I will end this post with the following poem by Hedd Wynn, translated by the poet Alan Llwyd who incidentally wrote the script for the film mentioned previously.
Y Blotyn Du
Nid oes gennym hawl ar y sêr, Na'r lleuad hiraethus chwaith, Na'r cwmwl o aur a ymylch Yng nghanol y glesni maith.
Nid oes gennym hawl ar ddim byd Ond ar yr hen ddaear wyw; A honno syn anhrefn i gyd Yng nghanol gogoniant Duw.
The Black Spot
We have no claim to the stars
Nor the sad-faced cloud that immerses
Itself in celestial light.
We only have the right to exist
On earth in its vast devastation,
And it's only man' strife that destroys
The glory of God's creation.
The Poet's Grave in France reads Hedd Wyn Chief Bardd
Today is World Day Against Trafficking.
Implemented officially by the U.N. General Assembly at the end of 2013, http://www.un.org/en/events/humantrafficking/ it was first marked on 20th July 2014.
World Day Against Trafficking in Persons strives to open up the conversation on the human rights violation that is human trafficking. Human trafficking forces men, women and children into labor or sexual exploitation. It can be found worldwide, just about every country in the world is involved, either as a place of origin, transportation or destination for victims. Especially vulnerable are migrants that have been displaced from their home country due to persecution, famine or war.
This issue of human trafficking erupted into the public conscience at the start of the twenty-first century, nevertheless, it is not a new phenomenon, in fact, it has been a global concern since the mid-nineteenth century. Human trafficking is modern day slavery, however, despite freedom from slavery being defined in numerous international conventions and legal systems of many countries, including The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime and its Protocols 2000, and Slavery Convention 1926, millions of people are still subjected to slavery in many forms today.
Across Europe organised crime groups are trafficking child refugees into prostitution, exploitation and forced labour.The International Labour Organization estimates that 21 million people are victims of forced labour globally. This estimate also includes victims of human trafficking for labour and sexual exploitation. While it is not known how many of these victims were trafficked, the estimate implies that currently, there are millions of trafficking in persons victims in the world. This modern day slavery needs to stop, now.
The UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2016 states that “Conflicts create favourable conditions for trafficking in persons, but not only by generating a mass of vulnerable people escaping violence. Armed groups engage in trafficking in the territories in which they operate, and they have recruited thousands of children for the purpose of using them as combatants in various past and current conflicts. While women and girls tend to be trafficked for marriages and sexual slavery, men and boys are typically exploited in forced labour in the mining sector, as porters, soldiers and slaves”.
Criminal gangs take advantage of the migration crisis, forcing more people into different forms of slavery. At the United Nations in New York, a Declaration on Refugees and Migrants was agreed to by all 193 UN Member States in September 2016. The New York Declaration is a political document setting forth the states’ commitments to launch a process of intergovernmental negotiations leading to the adoption of two global compacts, one for refugees and the other, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Of the nineteen commitments adopted by countries in the Declaration, three are dedicated to concrete action against the crimes of human trafficking and migrant smuggling.
You can read the UNODC Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2016 here
This is the day also on which the church remembers campaigners against slavery such as William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano. In their memory we need to continue the fight.
Trafficking in persons is one of the most reprehensible crimes against humanity. It is a violation of basic human rights, that involves the manipulation and exploitation of individuals, often leading to violence, intimidation and even death. It is targeted widely at the vulnerable sections of society, especially women and children, but also involves adult male victims.
Theresa May said she wants Britain to be at the forefront of the fight to stamp out modern day slavery and human trafficking.We can help lead this fight now by making safe and legal routes to protection for lone child refugees a reality, and help bring an end to this gross misuse of human life.
Please sign the following petition to open safe and legal routes to sanctuary for these children
