The wolves of winter are upon us
Though many are still sleeping,
Silently sensing the foreboding gloom
As truth is desecrated in a blurry haze,
Marred by government negation
Fuelling poverty and desperation,
Wake up poets, use your pens
Point your fingers of blame,
Be warriors of change and good fortune
Sweep dark currents strongly aside,
Implore your words to reach out
Be inspired by a brighter tide,
Beyond man's self-centered deeds
White nightmare sowing division,
With our beds laden with red roses
We can build a society defused of fear,
Of kindness strong, with no regret
Past the present that calibrates pain,
The sky pierced with much needed change
For the many not the few, open your eyes,
On December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged in Charles Town
Virginia (now
West Virginia) for treason for his raid on the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry six weeks
earlier, in a plot to incite slave rebellion. While Brown’s raid had failed miserably, his capture and
hanging had a much greater impact on national events. Brown’s actions
set off shockwaves across the country. In the North, many hailed him as a hero. In the South, he was viewed as a villain and a true reflection of the North’s intended war on slavery.
Tensions mounted in the days leading up to Brown’s execution. Rumors of a
massive jailbreak circulated in both the North and South. The jail and
gallows were guarded by Virginia troops, including Major Thomas
Jackson—later to be known as “Stonewall.”
As Brown was brought to the gallows, he handed off a note that read, “I,
John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land
can never be purged away but with blood.” Perhaps more than any other
event, Brown’s death hastened a cascade of events that culminated with
the first shots of the Civil War 16 months later.
John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut to Calvinist parents Ruth Mills
and Owen Brown. His father, who worked as a tanner, taught Brown that
slavery was immoral from an early age and opened their home as a safe
stop on the Underground Railroad.
Brown witnessed the barbarity of slavery when he was 12 years old and
saw a Black child beaten in the streets while he was traveling through
Michigan. That experience and his father’s repulsion for the institution of slavery had a lasting affect on
young John that would lead him to infamy in the annals of American history.
“Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in
the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and
unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another
portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and
hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and
violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our
Declaration of Independence.” — John Brown, Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States, 1858.
During
his first fifty years, Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, and taking along his
ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Unfortunately, his first
wife died, as did half of their children during infancy. Working at
various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator,
he never was finacially successful, he even filed for bankruptcy when
in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from
supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of
David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech.
He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black
youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground
Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an
organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.
John Brown’s life is indivisible from his religious beliefs. Puritan
religious devotion was intense on both sides of his family. The religion
of the Brown clan was not that modified by time, but rather the Orthodox Calvinism of Puritan times. Indeed, Brown modeled himself on the Puritan warrior, Oliver Cromwell.
Owen Brown had bequeathed to his son an intense hatred of slavery. Brown
took as his text those words of the Bible that admonished “You shall
not give up to his master a slave who has escaped…Rather he shall dwell
with you.” (Deuteronomy 23: 15-16)
Throughout his life, Brown turned to the Bible for solace and guidance.In his community, he demonstrated his anti-racist views by sharing
meals with Black people and addressing them as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” He also
vocally denounced segregated seating in church. Starting in 1834, Brown began educating Negroes, and for the next
twenty years he, and his family, worked actively within the abolitionist movement.
The abolitionist movement was a revolutionary struggle to end chattel slavery in the American republic. The Nat Turner Slave Rebellion of
1831 had influenced all that followed.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/08/nat-turner-2101800-111131-his-legacy-of.html Among the major figures in the
movement: Angelina Grimke, a daughter of Southern slaveholders who
turned against the system that she initially saw as corrupting white
slaveholders. An intellectual, William Lloyd Garrison, impelled by both
the religious and secular spirit of the time to seek a more perfect
society, became the voice and the pen of the movement. A slave,
Frederick Douglass, came to fight back against the “slave breaker”
brought in to beat him into submission. And there was Elijah Lovejoy, an
abolitionist editor in Alton, Illinois. His murder in 1837 inspired
John Brown to dedicate his life to the destruction of slavery.What set Brown apart from his contemporaries was that he’d had enough of
trying to use peaceful discourse as a means to end slavery. He opted
instead for violence.
Brown’s Calvinist upbringing had convinced him that fighting against
slavery was his primary mission in life. He believed it was a sin so
thoroughly that Frederick Douglass, who he first met in 1847, said, “John
Brown was a man who though a white gentleman, is in sympathy, a Black
man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had
been pierced with the iron of slavery.”
It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to
Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.
Brown
moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The
community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit
Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing
to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families
were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish
his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example
and to act as a "kind father to them."
Despite
his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a
figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his
sons to Kansas, a territory deeply divided over the slavery issue. There, he became the leader of antislavery guerillas and fought a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence.
Perhaps more than any other American historical figure, the militant abolitionist John Brown embodies the idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Brown’s zeal at the Pottawatomie Massacre, on the night of May 24, 1856, where Brown and his sons
murdered five men who supported slavery, although none actually owned
slaves. Brown and his sons escaped. Brown spent the next three years
collecting money from wealthy abolitionists in order to establish a
colony for runaway slaves.Their republic hoped to form a guerrilla army to fight slaveholders and
ignite uprisings, and its population would grow exponentially with the
influx of liberated and fugitive enslaved people. To accomplish this, Brown needed weapons and
decided to capture the arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
In 1794, President George Washington had selected Harpers Ferry,
Virginia, and Springfield, Massachusetts, as the sites of the new
national armories. In choosing Harpers Ferry, he noted the benefit of
great waterpower provided by both the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. In
1817, the federal government contracted with John H. Hall to manufacture
his patented rifles at Harpers Ferry. The armory and arsenal continued
producing weapons until its destruction at the outbreak of the Civil
War.
In the summer of 1859, John Brown, using the pseudonym Isaac Smith, took
up residence near Harpers Ferry at a farm in Maryland. He trained a
group of twenty-two men, including his sons Oliver, Owen, and Watson, in
military maneuvers. On the night of Sunday, October 16, Brown and all
but three of the men marched into Harpers Ferry, capturing several
watchmen. The first victim of the raid was an African-American railroad
baggage handler named Hayward Shepherd, who was shot and killed after
confronting the raiders. During the night, Brown captured several other
prisoners, including Lewis Washington, the great-grand-nephew of George
Washington.
There were two keys to the success of the raid. First, the men needed
to capture the weapons and escape before word reached Washington, D. C.
The raiders cut the telegraph lines but allowed a Baltimore and Ohio
train to pass through Harpers Ferry after detaining it for five hours.
When the train reached Baltimore the next day at noon, the conductor
contacted authorities in Washington. Second, Brown expected local slaves
to rise up against their owners and join the raid. Not only did this
fail to happen, but townspeople began shooting at the raiders.
Armory workers discovered Brown’s men in control of the building on
Monday morning, October 17. Local militia companies surrounded the
armory, cutting off Brown’s escape routes. Shortly after seven o’clock, a
Harpers Ferry townsperson, Thomas Boerly, was shot and killed near the
corner of High and Shenandoah streets. During the day, two other
citizens were killed, George W. Turner and Harpers Ferry Mayor Fontaine
Beckham. When Brown realized he had no way to escape, he selected nine
prisoners and moved them to the armory’s small fire engine house, which
later became known as John Brown’s Fort.
With their plans falling apart, the raiders panicked. William H.
Leeman tried to escape by swimming across the Potomac River, but was
shot and killed. The townspeople, many of whom had been drinking all day
on this unofficial holiday, used Leeman’s body for target practice. At
3:30 on Monday afternoon, authorities in Washington ordered Colonel
Robert E. Lee to Harpers Ferry with a force of Marines to capture Brown.
Lee’s first action was to close the town’s saloons in order to curb the
random violence. At 6:30 on the morning of Tuesday, October 18, Lee
ordered Lieutenant Israel Green and a group of men to storm the engine
house. At a signal from Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, the engine house door
was knocked down and the Marines began taking prisoners. Green seriously
wounded Brown with his sword. Brown was taken to the Jefferson County
seat of Charles Town for trial.
Of Brown’s original twenty-two men, John H. Kagi, Jeremiah G. Anderson,
William Thompson, Dauphin Thompson, Brown’s sons Oliver and Watson,
Stewart Taylor, Leeman, and free African Americans Lewis S. Leary and
Dangerfield Newby had been killed during the raid. John E. Cook and
Albert Hazlett escaped into Pennsylvania but were captured and brought
back to Charles Town. Brown, Aaron D. Stevens, Edwin Coppoc, and free
African Americans John A. Copeland and Shields Green were all captured
and imprisoned. Five raiders escaped and were never captured: Brown’s
son Owen, Charles P. Tidd, Barclay Coppoc, Francis J. Merriam, and free
African American Osborne P. Anderson. One Marine, Luke Quinn, was killed
during the storming of the engine house. Two slaves, belonging to
Brown’s prisoners Colonel Lewis Washington and John Allstadt, also lost
their lives. It is unknown whether or not they voluntarily took up arms
with Brown. One drowned while trying to escape and the other died in the
Charles Town prison following the raid. Local residents at the time
believed the two took part in the raid. To discredit Brown, residents
later claimed that these two slaves had been taken prisoner and that no
slaves actually participated in the raid.
Northern abolitionists immediately used Brown's executions as an example of
the government’s support of slavery. John Brown became their martyr, a
hero murdered for his belief that slavery should be abolished. In
reality, Brown and his men were prosecuted and executed for taking over a
government facility. But in non-slave states, his execution on December 2, 1859, was marked by the tolling of church bells and martyrdom within the abolitionist movement and as time went on, Brown’s name became a
symbol of pro-Union, anti-slavery beliefs.
"He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was
bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of
Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so
persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."
After the Civil War, a school
was established at Harpers Ferry for African Americans. The leaders of
Storer College always emphasized the courage and beliefs of John Brown
for inspiration. In 1881, African-American leader Frederick Douglass
delivered a classic speech at the school honoring Brown. Twenty-five
years later, W.E.B. DuBois and Martinsburg newspaper editor J.R.
Clifford recognized Harpers Ferry’s importance to African Americans and
chose Storer College as the site for a meeting of the Second Niagara
Movement, which later became the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Those in attendance walked at
daybreak to John Brown’s Fort. In 1892, the fort had been sent to the
Chicago World’s Fair and then brought back to a farm near Harpers Ferry.
Today, the restored fort has been rebuilt at Harpers Ferry National
Historical Park near its original location.
In his biography of Brown, Du Bois said the following about Brown’s legacy:
“Was John Brown simply an episode, or was he an eternal truth? And if
a truth, how speaks that truth today? John Brown loved his neighbor as
himself. He could not endure therefore to see his neighbor, poor,
unfortunate, or oppressed. This natural sympathy was strengthened by a
saturation in Hebrew religion which stressed the personal responsibility
of every human soul to a just God. To this religion of equality and
sympathy with misfortune, was added the strong influence of the social
doctrines of the French Revolution with its emphasis on freedom and
power in political life. And on all this was built John Brown’s own
inchoate but growing belief in a more just and a more equal distribution
of property. From this he concluded – and acted on that conclusion –
that all men are created free and equal, and that the cost of liberty is
less than the price of repression.”
John Brown's dedication to a cause, was, and is,
immortalized in the song, "John Brown’s body"
John Brown's Body- Pete Seeger
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
But his soul goes marching on
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
His soul goes marching on
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew
But his soul goes marching on
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
His soul goes marching on
This is La Mulâtresse Solitude who was born in slavery in the plantations of Guadeloupe in 1772, who went on to become a legendary figure in the anti slavery struggles of the nineteenth century.
Solitude’s mother was an African , possibly from Sierra Leone who was reportedly raped by a French sailor during a voyage on a slave ship,her name La Mulâtresse which means female Mulatto is derived from her origin. Mulatto is now a derogatory term for the first generation offspring of a Black person and a white person. This had some importance for her in the racial hierarchy of the society of the time Solitude, was a woman of legendary beauty. Each of her eyes
was of a different coloration. It is alleged that her exquisite good
looks led powerful békés to fight one another with the hope of getting
Solitude. Her mother fled the plantation where she was enslaved, leaving
Solitude with her masters. Solitude, immortalized by André Schwarz-Bart’s eponymous novel
(1972), was a brown-skinned woman of legendary beauty. Each of her eyes
was of a different coloration. It is alleged that her exquisite good
looks led powerful békés to fight one another with the hope of getting
Solitude. Her mother fled the plantation where she was enslaved, leaving
Solitude with her masters.
A revolution of enslaved plantation laborers in Saint-Domingue (now
Haiti) begun in August 1791 forced France to legally abolish slavery in
its colonies in 1794 after Napoleon
took that move in order to avoid a generalized slave revolt in all his colonies. But eight years after the abolition Bonaparte took control of the country after his
wife, Josephine, herself a native of Martinique, talked the Emperor into
reinstating slavery in the West Indies, as slaves were vital to the
plantation way of life for the rich French overseers and sent about 3,500 troops led by General Antoine Richepance to Guadeloupe to enforce this decree
On May 10, 1802, Louis Delgrès a mulatto military officer born as a free man on Martinique in 1766.
who had gained military combat experience fighting for the French
against the English in the years leading up to the Napoleonic Era, strongly opposed the reinstatement of slavery in Colonial France
by Napoleon, a man previously admired by Delgres took up arms,
and called men and women to his side to fight for the freedom they had
lost and launched a proclamation entitled : ' To the whole universe, the last cry of innocence and despair'.
Solitude now classified as a ' maroon' was one of hundreds of women who responded to the call
and fought at the side of Delgrès, inspiring many with her courage. She
was pregnant at the time and it's possible that she was driven by a
determination that her child should not be born into slavery, she was said to be a fierce and fearless warrior expertly wielding a machete against the French troops.
who “pushed herself and her belly into the heart of the battles” at
Dole, Trou-aux-chiens, Fond-Bananier, and Capesterre. After eighteen days of combat, Richepance’s side overpowered the rebels
Delgrès and his supporters, including Solitude, were forced to retreat to Fort Saint Charles which was held by the resistance. At the Battle of Matouba on 28th
May, 1802, Delgrès ignited gunpowder stores, committing suicide
along with many of his comrades, this strategic plan did though manage to kill approximately four hundred French soldiers in
the process. The occupation force killed approximately 10,000 Guadeloupeans in the process of re-taking the island from the rebels.
The heroism of Delgres was not at first
appreciated by France, but later in 1998 Delgres, along with leader of
the Haitian slave revolt, Toussaint Loverture, was admitted to the
Pantheon in Paris, the burial place of many of the greatest heroes of
France.
Solitude managed to escape but was captured soon after in the woods of Basse Terre and before a military tribunal, she and the other survivors was sentenced to death. However Solitude was temporarily pardoned until she gave birth to her child because her child was the property of a slave owner . One day after delivering her baby, on November 29, 1802, Solitude was executed,and according tp accounts , maternity's milk slowly stained her nightshirt, She was thirty years old, her last words before she was hanged would be Live free, or die: "
No one knows the whereabouts of the child, but Solitude´s story illustrates
the too often forgotten powerful role of women in the struggle against slavery. After her death Solitude almost disappeared from the annuals of history, but step by step her name is now remembered as a heroine and martyr on Guadeloupe, and in 1999, to commemorate the abolition of slavery, a sculpture in the
memory of her was inaugurated as homage and recognition of the
victims of the slave-trade and anti-slavery resistance leaders. The
statue was installed at the De la Croix roundabout intersection on the
Boulevard des Héros, in Abymes, Guadeloupe. In 2007 a statue was erected in her memory in the ile-de-France region of
Hauts-de-Seine . This statue is made of iroko, a kind of African wood and
steel. Sculpter Nicolas Alquin acknowledges that it is the first
memorial to all "enslaved people who resisted." Her name is also commemorated in songs, poems, immortalized by André Schwarz-Bart’s in his eponymous novel (1972), and a musical Solitude la Marronne. La Mulatresse. Solitude a heroine of resistance to oppression is also being considered for inclusion in
the French Pantheon.
I am horrified and saddened at the moment, by the tragic news that 31 men, women and children who, through no fault of their own, who were simply safety in the UK with hopes and dreams for the future have perished in the cold, unforgiving seas of
the Channel, one of the busiest shipping lane in the world. They had packed
themselves into a flimsy unseaworthy dinghy on the French cost on the
final leg of what they hoped would be a journey to a new life where they
could do what we all take for granted – work, make friends, have fun
and be safe from any harm.
Sparking outpourings of grief and renewed demands that both the U.K.
government and leaders across Europe end their woeful immigration
policies that force desperate individuals and families to risk ever more
dangerous and deadly journeys to attain refuge, asylum, or a better
life.
All this happened at a time when we had the Tories and the right
wing media ratcheting up racist scapegoating of refugees and migrants,
trying to whip a frenzy about scores of people crossing the Channel and
coming to Britain. We should all reflect on the fact that many of these people left their homes because of reasons outside their
control, whether that was conflict, poverty, economic injustice or
climate change. The UN’s Refugee Agency estimates that 20 people are
forced to flee their homes every second. With global inequality at unprecedented levels, modern borders have
become a form of global apartheid: segregating who can and can’t access
resources and opportunity, in Britain there is even an explicit policy aiming to create a ‘hostile
environment’ for migrants – launched by
Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary.
This Hostile Environment has since sadly killed many and destroyed the lives of thousands. Boris Johnson has said ‘appalled and deeply saddened’ but the rationale is that the more hostile and the
tougher the policy the less likely men, women and children are to risk
their lives at the hands of people traffickers Instead of taking a compassionate and realistic approach, his
government is ensuring that the Channel becomes increasingly more
dangerous and deadly. Instead of ensuring that people can get to the
U.K. safely, the government pursues ever-higher fences and illegal
'pushbacks' at sea."
No one should ever have to risk their life to find safety. But hostile
policies mean most refugees have no choice but to take dangerous
journeys to find safety in the UK.
The UK has such a proud history of welcoming refugees and asylum , of showing compassion and kindness to people fleeing danger and violence, people who just want a safe place to call home.But that history has almost been forgotten in the last few months with increasing polarising language, and the dehumanisation of people in desperate circumstances,
The government needs to accept that if there were
more safe and regular routes in the first place for people – such as a
wide-ranging resettlement programme, humanitarian visas and reformed
family reunion rules – fewer people would feel the need to make such
dangerous journeys in the first place. Both Labour and Conservative
governments have actually curtailed safe routes in recent decades
through more draconian asylum and immigration laws forcing people to
take dangerous journeys instead.
Displaced people have a right to seek safety in Britain , the government
must urgently rethink its punitive policy and find some genuine compassion.The long standing demands of campaigners to ensure safe passage and treat migrants and refugees in a fair and humane manner must now be considered as a matter of urgency.
My thoughts now with the the latest victims of the "hostile environment" people forced to turn to traffickers to escape poverty and war. This latest tragedy must allow us to to show that refugees and migrants are welcome and that the racist hostile environment must end. No one is illegal, no borders are necessary only compassion, Please sign the following petition.
As we are distracted by news of our Prime Minister Boris Johnson waffling on about Peppa Pig, the NHS in England is being dismantled. It is entirely possible that his behaviour is designed to distract from that fact. MPs today will vote for the third and final time on the Health and Care Bill before it heads to the Lords.
The Tory Government's health and care bill focuses on restructuring parts of the NHS in England to create a ‘truly integrated’ healthcare system that involves less central bureaucracy, but will see it being split into 42 parts, with private companies being able to sit on the board of each part and decide who gets funding. It will put profit at the centre of the NHS and is a threat to universal healthcare. It is bad for staff, it is bad for patients.
Successive
governments have been plotting to dismantle the National Health
Service for many years. The
Health and Social Care Act 2012 removed the obligation on the
Secretary of State for Health to provide us with healthcare, which
was central to the founding of the NHS in 1948, ‘free at the point
of delivery’. Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities
were swept away, to be replaced by Clinical Commissioning Groups,
partly run by general practitioners, but also a major point of access
for private service providers. In 2013, Public England, a new
executive agency of the Department of Health, was set up. All of
these measures paved the way for privatisation.
Over the decades, the NHS has been deliberately starved of funding, so
that when the Covid pandemic hit, it was ill prepared. Due to this and
government bungling, the UK had the highest death rate per capita in the
world. And instead of making the very most of the resources available,
the Government took advantage of the crisis to flout tendering laws and
award contracts to friends and family with no experience of sourcing PPE
and whose only interest was in maximizing profits. We have also seen in the pandemic how bringing in private firms has
wasted vast sums, and absolutely failed us as patients and as a
country,To
save money, there will be more down-skilling, such as nurses
replacing doctors, which has happened during the pandemic, causing
staff stress, lack of patient trust and greater risk of accidents.
Opponents of the bill are warning that it will pave the way for the
English NHS to be replaced by a profit-driven American-style system,
which would incentivise private health providers to cut and deny care to
increase profits. The
United States has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world
and the most expensive. Health insurance does not cover all
procedures, patients needing long-term and expensive treatments
are often refused them. If they can’t afford private treatment,
they are just left to suffer and decline.
The Johnson government’s Bill is also a Service Withdrawal Bill that will remove the statutory duty on the Health Secretary or on the new
NHS Boards to provide hospital care.Integrated
Care Boards will be able to award and extend contracts for
healthcare services, of unlimited value, without having to
advertise, including to private companies. This is what the
Department of Health has got away with during the pandemic, and
very lucrative it has been for friends and relatives of Government
ministers.
Short-term contracts to private providers will also damage established relationships between NHS staff and patients.
The Trade Union Unite has been one of the loudest and fiercest critics of the proposed bill, voicing concerns about its impact on services, accountability, funding, professional
standards, privatisation, safety, and terms and conditions.
Earlier this year Unite’s national officer for health, Jackie Williams said:“The Westminster government’s
new Health and Care Bill is a Trojan horse for more privatisation,
cronyism, austerity and a licence for politicians to run down and sell
off the NHS."
The British Medical Association has also come out in opposition, thinking the timing of the legislation is "particularly unwise. while we are still tackling Covd 19 and resulting backlog of care" and that " the Bill addresses none of the problems the NHS is currently facing"
The Health and Care Bill will put far
too much power in the hands of private companies, who will be allowed
to profit from people’s health, contrary to the principles of the NHS.
It really beggars belief that it has even gotten this far. Privatisation of the NHS should be a deep red line for every citizen, It should not have been up for debate in the first place. Reform, improve, invest, make it more efficient, yes but lets not go down the path of privatisation.
Until recently, the NHS was the envy of the world, the best value for
money. But cuts to services year on year and more and more privatisation ( even now you have to pay to have your ears syringed) has knocked it down
several places and will only get worse if this rotten disgusting Government under Boris Johnson gets it way and this Bill is passed. Sadly it might be too late, the Tory Government has already gone ahead and approved a plan to make the poorest people in the UK pay for the social care of the richest. If todays Bill is passed we face many bleak days ahead. Imagine if your sister, brother, dad, mum, auntie etc were MP;s and voted for it. Personally, I'd disown them. If you haven't already go to https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/ and urge your MP to vote against it! It's rather urgent now.
I've written about Joe Hill here many times here previously. He remains a huge inspiration, politically and artistically, for people across
the world over the last century, and I’m glad to be one of them. He was murdered on this day in 1915 by government firing squad at the Utah State Prison in Sugar House for a crime he didn’t commit.
Joel
Emmanuel Hägglund was born in Sweden in October 7th 1879. Joe aged 22 left for the United States in
1902 with his brother Paul and travelled the country extensively in search of work and the golden opportunity of the American dream, but he soon found that dream
was a nightmare for many working men and women there. Joe
joined the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in 1910, at the time workers across the country were being betrayed wholesale by
the American Federation of Labor, a so-called union that collaborated to
suppress the struggle for vital workers’ rights. While the AFL would
exclude immigrants, non-whites, women and poorer laborers, the IWW was
open to all, struggling for all together. In the early years of the 20th
Century, the IWW was crucial in winning many of the rights Americans
take for granted today, and spread across the world, too.
Hill
as a wobbly was incredibly active, whether it was organising strikes with
dockworkers in San Pedro California, helping rebels in Baja California
to overthrow the Diaz dictatorship or aiding workers with the Fraser
River strike in British Columbia. Even fighting in the Mexican revolution His activities ensured he was
blacklisted wherever he went so Joe just kept on moving around the
States.
Hill taught himself piano violin and guitar and roused workers
with songs he wrote such asCasey JonesandThe Preacher and the Slave, the Slave, The Tramp, There is Power in a Union, the Union Scab, and a hundred more. Many are still being sung
today.Hill’s songs, because they were so easy to learn, so fun to sing, and
condensed vital messages so skillfully, spread across the country, sung
by crowds of workers regularly at strikes and protests. They became
important for the movement: a way of keeping spirits high, of reminding
everybody where they stood and with whom, and of spreading the word. His last song, The Rebel Girl, celebrated his comrade and friend,
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, hero of the Bread and Roses strike and long time
chair of the Communist Party USA. It was first sung at Joe Hill’s
funeral. He was also a prolific cartoonist for his union.
Hill
made his way to Utah in 1914 and settled in Park City where he got a
job at a local silver mine. He wasn’t long in Park City when he was
arrested and framed for the murder of a local grocery store owner and
his son. Masked robbers had broken into the store and after a brief gun
battle they left the store owner and his son dead. That same night Joe
turned up to a doctors clinic with a bullet wound. The doctor grew
suspicious of Joe’s gunshot wound and informed the police who promptly
arrested him.
On the night in question Joe had been with a married woman that night, 20 year old Hilda Erickson and in a pith of jealousy was shot by her
husband, but Joe refused to disclose this in order not to disgrace them, even though it might mean his
death.
The
real culprit of the grocery store murders was an out of state career
criminal Even though the
police had strong evidence to pin point the crime on this particular
character they instead chose to frame Joe. Hill stayed in jail for well over a year..Despite the flimsy nature of the evidence, Hill was convicted and
sentenced to death, with the prosecutor urging conviction as much
on the basis of Hill’s IWW membership as any putative evidence of
his involvement in the crime. In an article for a radical socialist newspaper Hill gave his own
opinion. He wrote: “There had to be a scapegoat and the undersigned
being, as they thought, a friendless tramp, a Swede, and worst of all,
an IWW, had no right to live.”
An international amnesty movement
pressed for a new trial, including Helen Keller and president Woodrow Wilson, of all
people demanded his release. There were vigils everywhere, and often
where the people gathered they would sing Joe Hill songs.
Shortly before facing the firing squad, Joe Hill
wrote his last will and testament in the style he’d always written that now reads like a secular text:
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
On November 19th 1915 Joe Hill was taken out into the yard, blindfolded, with a paper heart
pinned to his chest. His last spoken word on this world was “Fire!”
His body was sent to Chicago, he’d previously written to Bill Haywood another
IWW leader, who himself would later be victim to another
trumped-up murder charge. Hill’s letter said “Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t
waste any time in mourning. Organise… Could you arrange to have my body
hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in
Utah.”
Up to
30,000 people attended his funeral. Joe was cremated and his ashes
divided into 600 envelopes that were sent to IWW branches across the
globe.
Since then his songs have continued to be sung, and the struggles he took part in
continued, and the victories he helped win still inspires countless numbers of people people.
His life and work continued to be an inspiration to political
songwriters from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs to Billy
Bragg and Utah Phillips. Hill has been immortalized in a wide variety of
cultural expression, including poetry by Kenneth Patchen, fiction
by Wallace Stegner, and a song by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson,
popularized by Paul Robeson, promising “where workingmen are out on strike, Joe Hill is at their side.”
The ballad of Joe Hill was written by Alfred Hayes in the summer of 1936, whilst at a left wing retreat called Camp Unity. By that September the song had been published in the Daily Worker and became a popular song with members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting Franco's fascists in Spain.
Haye’s song had been a popular one with the folk revivalists of the 1940s and 50s but it wasn’t until Joan Baez sang it at Woodstock did the song enter the mainstream. Luke Kelly sang it on The Dubliners 1970 album Revolution thus bringing it to the fore of the ballad scene in this part of the world. The song has to this day helped keep the memory of Joe Hill alive.
The Ballad of Joe Hill
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night
Alive as you and me
Says I ‘but Joe you’re ten years dead’
‘I never died’ says he ‘I never died’ says he.
‘In Salt Lake City, Joe’ says I
Him standing by my side
‘They framed you on a murder charge’
Says Joe ‘But I ain’t dead’ says Joe ‘but I ain’t dead’
‘The copper bosses shot you Joe,
They filled you full of lead’
‘Takes more than guns to kill a man’
Says Joe ’and I ain’t dead’ says Joe ’I ain’t dead’
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
Its there you’ll find Joe
Hill captured people's imagination with his aphorisms, songs and cartoons. Using popular cultural forms allowed his ideas to find broad purpose in his day and across time. What English speaker today doesn't know the phrase "pie in the sky"?
He conveyed revolutionary ideas in down -to earth language relatable to anyone who has has had too work to survive. His example tells us that revolution won't be carried forward by dry theoretical treatise alone. Wee need to expres our revolutionary desires in plain tal and with music and humor.
In 1988 it was discovered that an envelope had been seized by the
United States Postal Service in 1917 because of its “subversive
potential”. The envelope, with a photo affixed, was captioned, “Joe Hill
murdered by the capitalist class, Nov. 19, 1915”. The Chicago IWW laid
claim to the envelope, scattered some at sites of struggle, but also
followed up a suggestion by Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman: portions were
given to modern day Joe Hills, like Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked to be
eaten. Billy Bragg did indeed eat his, and still carries Michelle
Shocked’s packet wherever he plays. So Joe Hill is metaphorically here among us, as we still daily struggle on, keeping his memory alive in all our dreams and aspirations.
I will end with an old poem of mine that I hope releases my sincerity, and affection for Joe Hill, that recognises the courageousness of his actions. This rebel songwriter that many of us can't forget. His legacy still resonating widely across the world.
Still Dreaming of Joe Hill
Through the dusty ages
the earth creaks and moans,
dark shadows try to break people bones
the air is still , thick with mire,
daily each border, delivers human shame
parasites still create walls of oppression,
build bloodstained monuments that can't thwart hope
because the mighty human spirit carries resilience,
within us all, lay rivers of resistance.
Standing together we are strong
in our palms, another world glows,
with unity's strength
we set people free,
no tyrant's grip
can ever stop us,
we serve the weak and defenceless
protecting with dignity and defiance.
Today we still remember
when Joe Hill was shot down,
his enduring dream survives
gives us strength,
shoulder to shoulder
solidarity lives,
an injury to one
is an injury to all.
Alan Wilson Watts who died on this day in 1973 was a theologian and philosopher, whose work helped introduce Western audiences to popularized notions of Zen and Asian philosophy. He was a giant in the middle 20th century, but his essays and books on Zen are still relevant to the current generation.
He was born on 6 January 1915, in Chislehurst, Kent, England to Christian parents. His father, Laurence Wilson Watts, was an employee of Michelin Tyre Company while his mother, Emily Mary Watts (née Buchan), was a homemaker who also taught missionary children in China. He developed an interest in Buddhism while he was still a student at King’s School, Canterbury which was next door to Canterbury Cathedral. As the only child of his parents, Alan grew up playing alone by the brook, learning to identify wildflowers and butterflies. Another factor that had an immense influence on his upbringing was his mother’s family, which was religiously inclined.Watts also later wrote of a mystical dream he experienced while ill with a fever as a child.
Subsequently, at 14 he declared himself a Buddhist and joined the Buddhist Lodge in London, where he met many scholars and spiritual masters, who helped him to shape his ideas. He was a prolific writer and began writing at the age of fourteen. Many of his early works were published in the journal of the Lodge.
Though he was frequently at the top of his classes scholastically and was given responsibilities at school, he botched an opportunity for a scholarship to Oxford by styling a crucial examination essay in a way that was read as presumptuous and capricious.
When he left secondary school, Watts worked in a printing house and later a bank. He spent his spare time involved with the Buddhist Lodge and also under the tutelage of a “rascal guru” named Dimitrije Mitrinović. (Mitrinović was himself influenced by Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and the varied psychoanalytical schools of Freud, Jung and Adler.) Watts also read widely in philosophy, history, psychology, psychiatry and Eastern wisdom. By his own reckoning, and also by that of his biographer Monica Furlong, Watts was primarily an autodidact. His involvement with the Buddhist Lodge in London afforded Watts a considerable number of opportunities for personal growth. Through Humphreys, he contacted eminent spiritual authors (e.g. the artist, scholar, and mystic Nicholas Roerich, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, and prominent theosophists like Alice Bailey).
In 1936, aged 21, he attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London, heard D. T. Suzuki read a paper, and afterwards was able to meet this esteemed scholar of Zen Buddhism. Beyond these discussions and personal encounters, Watts absorbed, by studying the available scholarly literature, the fundamental concepts and terminology of the main philosophies of India and East Asia.
By his own assessment, Watts was imaginative, headstrong, and talkative. He was sent to boarding schools (which included both academic and religious training of the Muscular Christianity sort) from early years. Of this religious training, he remarked “Throughout my schooling my religious indoctrination was grim and maudlin…”
Watts spent several holidays in France in his teen years, accompanied by Francis Croshaw, a wealthy Epicurean with strong interests in both Buddhism and exotic little-known aspects of European culture. It was not long afterward that Watts felt forced to decide between the Anglican Christianity he had been exposed to and the Buddhism he had read about in various libraries, including Croshaw’s. He chose Buddhism, and sought membership in the London Buddhist Lodge, which had been established by Theosophists, and was now run by the barrister Christmas Humphreys. Watts became the organization’s secretary at 16 (1931). The young Watts explored several styles of meditation during these years.
Watts’s fascination with the Zen (or Ch’an) tradition—beginning during the 1930s—developed because that tradition embodied the spiritual, interwoven with the practical, as exemplified in the subtitle of his Spirit of Zen: A Way of Life, Work, and Art in the Far East. “Work”, “life”, and “art” were not demoted due to a spiritual focus. In his writing, he referred to it as “the great Ch’an (or Zen) synthesis of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism after 700 CE in China.”
In 1936, he attended the World Congress of Faiths at the University of London, where he met Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, esteemed scholar of Zen Buddhism. He had already read his works; the meeting fascinated him to a great extent. Two decades later, in The Way of Zen he disparaged The Spirit of Zen as a “popularisation of Suzuki’s earlier works, and besides being very unscholarly it is in many respects out of date and misleading.”
He moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Watts left formal Zen training in New York because the method of the teacher did not suit him. He was not ordained as a Zen monk, but he felt a need to find a vocational outlet for his philosophical inclinations. He entered Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, an Episcopal (Anglican) school in Evanston, Illinois, where he studied Christian scriptures, theology, and church history. He attempted to work out a blend of contemporary Christian worship, mystical Christianity, and Asian philosophy. Watts was awarded a master’s degree in theology in response to his thesis, which he published as a popular edition under the title Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.
In 1945, on receiving his master’s degree from the seminary, he became an Episcopal priest and joined the Northwestern University at Chicago as its chaplain. He was very popular among the students, who joined him in a spirited discussion on Christian as well as Eastern philosophy.
During his stay at Chicago, Watts wrote three books on Christian mysticism. However, he found it very hard to reconcile his Buddhist beliefs with Christian doctrines.Watts did not hide his dislike for religious outlooks that he decided were dour, guilt-ridden, or militantly proselytizing—no matter if they were found within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. Moreover, he got entangled in an extramarital relationship. So he left Chicago and in early 1951, shifted to San Francisco.
Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, “from a literary point of view — the best book I have ever written.” He also explored human consciousness, in the essay “The New Alchemy” (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).
Alan Watts was profoundly influenced by the East Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Buddhism, and by Taoist thought, which is reflected in Zen poetry and the arts of China and Japan. After leaving the Church, he never became a member of another organized religion, and although he wrote and spoke extensively about Zen Buddhism, he was criticized by American Buddhist practitioners for not sitting regularly in zazen. Alan Watts responded simply by saying, “A cat sits until it is done sitting, and then gets up, stretches, and walks away.”
Sometime now, he also started experimenting with psychedelic drugs and its effect on mystical insight. He began by taking mescaline.Later he worked with marijuana and wrote about their effects in his forthcoming books. Next in 1958, he worked with several other researchers on LSD, earned him an enthusiastic following, ranging from beatniks and bohemians to psychoanalysts, theologians, and intellectuals. He added advice on diet, dress, sex, yoga, Taoism, and the Vedanta to the core of his Zen Buddhist spiritualism. This Is It (1960) and Psychotherapy East and West (1961) were very popular in the United States, as were his syndicated radio and television programs and many campus lectures. Watts associated with such proponents of beat as Jack Kerouac, who portrayed Watts in the character of Arthur Whane in his novel The Dharma Bums (1958) and as Alex Aums in Desolation Angels. Among his large circle of friends are such luminaries as the writer/philosopher Aldous Huxley, poet Kenneth Rexroth, composer John Cage, and philosopher Joseph Campbell. Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Richard Alpert ("Ram Dass"), and Timothy Leary and lent support to their experiments in consciousness expansion. In the spirit of the liberated counterculture era he helped shape, Watts had experimented with LSD to attain spiritual insight as early as 1958, before Leary and Alpert used the new hallucinogen at Harvard. He defended LSD as a useful tool, a "sacrament" for Westerners in their search for knowledge, but he cautioned those seeking enlightenment to use the drug prudently. Nevertheless, Watts also enjoyed luxury, tobacco, alcohol, fine food, travel, and sexual affairs. When criticized because he eschewed the asceticism usually associated with Zen Buddhism, Watts called himself an "unrepentant sensualist. "
Watts LP This Is It is about the first hippy LSD jam sessions ever recorded. The record was a huge sources of of inspiration for the 60's scene. The LSD seemed to transform from a rather stiff British intellectual into a more looser free spirited beatnik, someone who could laugh wildly attend parties of abandonment , play bongos, dance wildly and produce long nonsense rhymes for himself and others amusement.
Also in 1962 he organized the Society for Comparative Philosophy, which published the Alan Watts Journal. His interest in bridging East and West and in finding some common ground between Christianity and Buddhism continued during the turmoil of the hippie and New Left years. But his deceptively lighthearted example led one critic to suggest that Watts's epitaph might be taken from the second chapter of Ecclesiastes: "I thought of beguiling my senses with wine, though my mind was concerned with wisdom. "
From early 1960s, he went to Japan several times. Also from 1962 to 1964, he had a fellowship at Harvard University and in 1968, became a scholar at San Jose State University. In fact, by the late 1960s, he had become a counterculture celebrity with many followers as well as critics.
Soon he began travelling widely to speak at universities and growth centers across the US and Europe and by early 1970s, he became the most important interpreter of Eastern thoughts in the Western world.
In regards to his ethical outlook, Watts felt that absolute morality had nothing to do with the fundamental realization of one’s deep spiritual identity. He advocated social rather than personal ethics. In his writings, Watts was increasingly concerned with ethics applied to relations between humanity and the natural environment and between governments and citizens. He wrote out of an appreciation of a racially and culturally diverse social landscape.
Watts led some tours for Westerners to the Buddhist temples of Japan. He also studied some movements from the trWatts was a prophet of the idea that we can seek our spiritual fulfilment outside of traditional religious commitments and communities. He preached the ‘wisdom of insecurity’ — not clinging to any particular religion. He was a nomad-prophet for our uprooted age. He preached the wisdom of the body, the spirituality of sex, the validity of psychedelics as a spiritual technique, the superiority of Asian wisdom to Christianity, and the possibility of escaping history by focusing on ‘the Eternal Now’aditional Chinese martial art taijiquan, with an Asian colleague, Al Chung-liang Huang.
Watts’ books frequently include discussions reflecting his keen interest in patterns that occur in nature and which are repeated in various ways and at a wide range of scales – including the patterns to be discerned in the history of civilizations.
Watts was a prophet of the idea that we can seek our spiritual fulfilment outside of traditional religious commitments and communities. He preached the ‘wisdom of insecurity’ — not clinging to any particular religion. He was a nomad-prophet for our uprooted age. He preached the wisdom of the body, the spirituality of sex, the validity of psychedelics as a spiritual technique, the superiority of Asian wisdom to Christianity, and the possibility of escaping history by focusing on ‘the Eternal Now’
But his main message, which he repeated over and over throughout his career, was that there is no separate self, that there is just IT, the Tao, the Brahman, and you are inescapably part of it, so relax and let go, rather than trying to pull yourself up by your spiritual boot-straps. Over-strenuous spiritual practice will actually just reinforce your ego. You are already perfect, already enlightened, you don’t need to do or change anything. There is no ‘you’, just IT.
Watts married three times and had seven children (five daughters and two sons). In 1936, he met Eleanor Everett at the Buddhist Lodge and got married in April 1938. Their eldest daughter Joan was born in November 1938 and the younger daughter Anne in 1942.
Towards the end of 1940s, Watts became entangled with an extramarital affair with Jean Burden; as a result Eleanor had their marriage annulled. Although he never married Jean, she remained in his thought till the end. He also kept in touch with his mother-in-law Ruth Fuller Everett.
In 1950, Watts married Dorothy DeWitt. They had five children; Tia, Mark, Richard, Lila, and Diane. The marriage ended when in early 1960s Watts met Mary Jane Yates King while on a lecture tour to New York. The divorce was granted in 1964 and Watts and King got married in the same year.
Despite his innate wisdom he failed as a husband, and drove his third wife to the bottle with his philandering — he would pick up a different college girl after most talks (‘I don’t like to sleep alone’). In fairness to him the women of his life knew what he was about, so I wont pass moral judgement.By his own admission he failed as a father to his seven children: ‘By all the standards of this society I have been a terrible father’, although some of his children still remember him fondly as a kind man, who initiated each of his children into LSD on their 18th birthday. He was vain and boastful, ‘immoderately infatuated with the sound of my own voice," although he didn’t try and hide his failings, and hey who at end of the day is perfect. Lfe is about mistakes, but i also about learning from them, Watts perhaps in his mystical ' Life as a Play ' talk learn from his mistakes or know something was wrong.
Until the middle of 1960s Watts lived with King on a houseboat docked in Sausalito until crowds of visiting disciples and admirers made that impossible. They retreated to an isolated cabin in Mill Valley, near San Francisco, called Druid Heights, located on the southwest flank of Mount Tamalpais. At the same time, he continued with his lecture trips.
But by the end of his life he was having to do several talks a week to make enough money to pay his alimony and child support. And he was drinking a bottle of vodka a day to be able to do that. He died, exhausted, at 58. Snyder remembers:
he had to keep working, and as you keep working, you know, you got to play these roles, and you also keep drinking ’cause there’s always these parties and so forth, so that doesn’t help you slow it down. So he just wore himself out. It was out of his control, that was my feeling. The dynamics of his life had gotten beyond his control, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
One of his lovers, the therapist June Singer, visited him in hospital when he was admitted with delirium tremens. Why didn’t he stop drinking, she asked. ‘That’s how I am,’ he said to her sadly. ‘I can’t change.’
Ultimately, Watts seems to have worked incredibly hard at his career, at his public profile, at the endless talks he gave on campuses, on radio and on TV. In other words, on the external self. And he worked very little on the inner man , psychotherapy bored him, while he felt too much meditation ‘is apt to turn one into a stone Buddha’.
For Zen writers like for Shakespeare, life is but a dream, and if you are not living in the present you are living a fantasy. Watt taught, above all else, that everything is transitory. Yes he died of alcoholism after having been a heavy drinker all his life, but he never expressed guilt or remorse because of his addiction, and he never missed one of his lectures or deadlines for his written works.
So his life to me could hardly be called a tragedy. It sounds incredibly interesting, and often incredibly fun. He was energetic, friendly, charismatic, full of ideas, alcoholic, egotistical, lonely and definitely not an authority on 'how to live'. Why, was he so unsuccessful at putting his own teachings into practice? Did he struggle but not succeed? I suspect he was never serious in the first place but a relatively easy-going personality who wished to be content as a popular success but obviously his inner demons required sedating through the use of alcohol.
The question that cannot be answered is why after a lifetime involved in Buddhist studying and proselytising was Watts not a genuine practitioner. I suspect there are two reasons. While I do not believe in the efficacy of the various Buddhist meditation techniques there is no doubt that they are difficult to practice and require long term committment and effort and Watts was able to live very well on his intelligence, charm and style. This required no such effort. Secondly he had, after all, met all the recognised Buddhist and other "masters", rinpoches, swamis, gurus, etc and he had probably already decided that if enlightenment existed at all there was nobody who had attained it. And the consequence of his egoistical drive to self-promote was the flowering of Asian wisdom in western culture.
On all accounts he sounds like a likeable and friendly man, without the tendency to greed, malice or domination that one sees in some spiritual teachers. And his books genuinely helped thousands of people, giving them a holistic vision that consoles them in dark times. Does it matter that he had such a messy life himself?
His body was cremated and half of the ashes were buried near his library at Druid Heights while the other half at the Green Gulch Monastery.
Watts remains one of the most respected and quotable writers on Zen Buddhism in the English-speaking world. Across a multitude of books, speeches and recorded lectures, he championed experiences and conscious living over the accumulation of things and is still referenced by many in the fields of politics, religion, philosophy and the arts.Today, new generations are finding his writings and lectures online, while faithful followers worldwide continue to be enlightened by his teachings.
Watts’ eldest daughters, Joan Watts and Anne Watts, own and manage most of the copyrights to his books. His son, Mark Watts, serves as curator of his father’s audio, video and film and has published content of some of his spoken lectures in print format. You can watch his talks on YouTube for hours, I've enjoyed them immensely.
There are thousands of books, essays, numerous You tube videos one can view and other materials that have stemmed from his work and all of them are impressed with affection, as if the people who read or heard him had somehow established a liaison with the author. Alan Watts was a fascinating enigmatic characters, not flawless in anyway, but an individual who helped establish a bridge to the beautiful world of Zen who was also responsible for sparking the passion of innumerable seekers of wisdom and spiritual delights with his ability to make Eastern spirituality understandable. Who was always adamant about making a path for oneself, saying: “the menu is not the meal”
Here's a video from one of my favourite short Watt's lectures animated by the creators of
Armistice Day/Remembrance Day, also known as Poppy Day commemorates the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of
civilians in times of war, and is specifically observed November 11, 2021, marking the time and date since World War I was ended
Because red poppies bloomed on the Western Front during World War I
they became a symbol of remembrance of the the horror of war especially to those who have experienced the suffering and grief that war brings and are often worn in the UK around
the time of Armistice Day, with sales raising funds for people who have served in the armed forces, and their dependents, through the poppy appeal of the Royal British Legion
Armistice Day was born and was designated as “a day to be dedicated to
the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated.”and became a focus of grieving families who vowed that
never again should valuable lives be wasted. In the 1920s and 1930s it
became an occasion for peace activists around the world to rally in
support of disarmament. However the annual dedication to world peace somehow mutated into the glorification
of war and hero worship of the military. Armistice Day changed from a
day for peace into a day for displays of militarism. This “rebranding” of Armistice Day has continually gnawed at me. My
unease has nothing to do with honoring veterans: indeed they should be
recognized, supported and held up for their service. But what happened
to the “peace” aspect of the original Armistice Day?
The Peace Pledge Union the oldest secular pacifist organisation in Britain. along with many pacifists support the wearing of white poppies as an alternative. They were first produced in 1933 by the Co-operative Women's Guild, a coop made up largely of women who had lost husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and friends in World War One. They were worried by the growing militarisation of Remembrance events and the detachment between the red poppy and the need to work for peace. The Guild's General Secretary, Eleanor Barton, called for renewed commitment "to that 'Never Again' spirit that was strong in 1918, but seems to grow weaker as years go on".
On the Peace Pledge Union they write: "There are three elements to the meaning of white
poppies: they represent remembrance for all victims of war, a commitment
to peace and a challenge to attempts to glamorise or celebrate war.
"White
poppies symbolise the conviction that there are better ways to resolve
conflict than through the use of violence. They embody values that
reject killing fellow human beings for whatever reason.
"Nearly
100 years after the end of the “war to end all wars” we still have a
long way to go to put an end to a social institution that even in the
last decade has contributed to the killing of millions."
White poppies represent remembrance for all victims of war (including
the vast majority of war victims who are civilians), a commitment to
peace, and a challenge to attempts to glamorize or celebrate war. Some have claimed the wearing of the white poppy is a sign of disrespect for former soldiers and armed forces personell. However
the Royal British Legion, has made no official opinion on
the wearing of white poppies stating it is a matter of choice and 'does
not have a problem' with people wearing the white poppy. Some people choose wear both red and white, so please be aware of creeping poppy fascism that to me serves no purpose at all.
Lest we forget that the trenches of the First World War were a vast area of
darkness and danger, dank and miserable conditions, often infested with
rats who ate the flesh of the dead. The stench of unwashed humanity,
all squashed together, combined with the smell of rotting flesh, and
overflowing latrines, and the lingering smell of death and battle on
accounts must have been unbearable. Over 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded
in what is considered to be among the deadliest of conflicts in human history.
With the incomprehensible loss of life of that Great War, communities
back home were in some ways silenced too. Not just by the silence of
peace but by the silence of loss: The silence of the Lost Generation,
who never returned home to talk and joke, and live and breath. They
were silenced by the grief of so many lost in communities, often because
their loved ones had signed up with their friends together, Kitchener’s
‘Pals Battalions’ from the same factory, or sports team, or village.
We should not forget either the 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers
who were shot on the orders of the military top brass, many suffering
from shell shock, and what is now known as Post Traumatic Stress.
Charged with desertion after becoming dazed and confused, young
disturbed, traumatised teenagers some of them , who had simply
volunteered for duty. https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/11/shot-at-dawn-in-first-world-war-and.html
Many other soldiers during the First World War were driven to
suicide, or left with mental exhaustion, depression and shell shock
because of this war. It has taken time, but the stigma of mental health issues
caused by conflict are very real indeed. In the end no glory in war,
only sadness.
Today I remember the millions killed, wounded, widowed, imprisoned,
orphaned,and honor military resisters, not forgetting either, those caught up in conflict across the globe in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Gaza etc nor do I forget the arms dealers currently still making profits out of war, from slaughter and mass misery , not sparing a thought to the carnage they continually help unleash while still wearing their red poppies with pride. Let us all live in the hope that a world of war will be no more.
And yes people have said that it's not possible but the sanctity of human life beyond its own unreasonable divisions is not worth abandoning.
