Prominent leftist leader, feminist, human rights defender and Member of the Palestinian parliament Khalida Jarrar and Khilam Saafin, president of the Union of Palestinian Women's Committes and prominent struggler for the liberation of Palestinian women and the Palestinian have currently been held without being charged or tried for 36 days. They both face indefinite detention without charge or trial. The ‘arrest’ of the two women should be seen in light of the Israeli policy to deprive the Palestinian people of its leadership. In Palestine and internationally, there has already been a furious response. Their administrative detention orders can be renewed indefinitely and with no prior notice. They have been held without charge or trial since 2 July. According to Addameer Association’s lawyers who represent both women, the Israel military commander issued a three-month administrative detention order against Khitam Saafin on 9 July. The decision was confirmed by a military judge on 12 July. Khalida Jarrar, who is an elected parliamentarian, was given a six-month administrative detention order on 12 July and a military judge confirmed the decision on 18 July. Although six months is the maximum period of detention for each order, they can be renewed indefinitely. Both women were arrested by Israeli soldiers during pre-dawn raids on their homes on 2 July. According to eyewitnesses, at 3:30am that day, between 40 and 50 armed Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on Khitam Saafin's home in Beitunia, a neighbourhood of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, in order to arrest her. On the same morning at around 4am, a similar Israeli military raid was carried out to arrest Khalida Jarrar in her home in Ramallah. In the raid, the soldiers also confiscated Khalida Jarrar’s phone, tablet and the hard drive of her home computer. Both women were first held in Ofer military compound near Ramallah and then transferred to HaSharon prison inside Israel in the afternoon of 2 July. The transfer of both women to HaSharon prison violates international humanitarian law; detainees from occupied territories must be detained in the occupied territory, and not in the territory of the occupying power. Israeli authorities accuse each woman of membership in an illegal organisation, claims they both deny.
As with all cases of administrative detention, the “evidence” against Khalida Jarrar and Khitam Saafin is secret, and neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to review it. This violates a central tenet of fair trial standards. Khitam Saafin, aged 54, is the president of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, an organization that works for community-based economic and social development of women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has been an outspoken activist for Palestinian women’s economic, national, and social liberation for decades who has spoken internationally and participated in many worldwide events, including the World Social Forum, linking women’s struggles internationally with the struggle of Palestinian women for national and social liberation. Khalida Jarrar, aged 54, is an elected Palestinian parliamentarian and outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and Palestinian security cooperation with the Israeli military. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Addameer Association, a human rights organization, and an appointed member of the Palestinian Higher National Committee to Follow-up with the International Criminal Court. She has been a strong advocate for the rights of Palestinian prisoners and their families. She has been subjected to decades of harassment and intimidation by the Israeli authorities, including a travel ban imposed since 1998. The ban was lifted once for a couple of days in 2010 to allow her to travel for medical testing in Jordan for a serious chronic medical issue that she continues to suffer from. Israeli authorities have repeatedly declared her a security risk, but did not charge her with any criminal offence until April 2015. On 2 April 2015, she was arrested by Israeli soldiers at her home in Ramallah, and placed under administrative detention. On 15 April 2015, at the review hearing of her administrative detention order, the military prosecution brought 12 charges against her relating to membership of the banned political party Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and incitement to kidnap Israeli soldiers. She has vehemently denied this accusation and her lawyers have claimed that it has no basis. Following an unfair trial in an Israeli military court, Khalida Jarrar was convicted of four of the charges, including incitement. She served 14 months in prison and was released in June 2016 with a five-year suspended sentence. Israel’s use of administrative detention of Palestinians is widespread and has led to mass hunger strikes by Palestinian detainees and prisoners, protesting against the conditions in which they are held and being detained without charge. Administrative detention, ostensibly introduced as an exceptional measure to detain people who pose an extreme and imminent danger to security is used by Israel as an alternative to the criminal justice system to arrest, charge and prosecute people suspected of criminal offences, or to detain people who should not have been arrested at all. Although six months is the maximum period of detention for each order, they can be renewed indefinitely and Amnesty International believes that some Palestinians held in administrative detention by Israel are prisoners of conscience, held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association. According to Israeli NGO, HaMoked—Center for the Defence of the Individual,http://www.hamoked.org/home.aspx Israel is holding 465 administrative detainees without charge or trial as of August 2017.For decades now Israel has used its cruel administrative policies to trample over the rights o Palestinian detainees. Instead o indefinitely detaining Palestinians without charge or trial, I believe Israel should end its use of administrative detention, which inflicts huge emotional suffering on detainees and their families, placing them in a permanent state of uncertainty. The arrests of Khalida and Khiltam represent an attack on the political activity and popular organization of the Palestinian people and a blatant assault on the Palestinians women's movement. Therefore, it is necessary that the people of the world support and demand their immediate release, and all the thousands of Palestinian prisoners of conscience behind Israeli jails.
The Palestinian people have the right to struggle against the occupation of their land and to use all means available under international law for their lives and their country.Israel must end illegal detentions, and all detainees must be charged and have access to a fair trial.
For a Free Palestine! Solidarity with Palestinian women and the Palestinian people! From the rivers to the sea Palestine will be free. Please write immediately in English, Hebrew or your own language calling on the Israeli authorities to:
Immediately release Khitam Saafin and Khalida Jarrar and all other administrative detainees or to promptly charge them with an internationally recognizable criminal offense and bring them to trial in conformity with international trial standards;Take immediate steps to end the practice of administrative detention. PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 19 SEPTEMBER 2017 TO: Minister of Defence Avigdor Leiberman Ministry of Defence 37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya Tel Aviv 61909, Israel Email: minister@mod.gov.il pniot@mod.gov.il Fax: +972 3 691 6940 Salutation: Dear Minister Commander of the IDF – West Bank Major-General Roni Numa GOC Central Command Military Post 02367, Battalion 877 Israel Defence Forces, Israel Fax: +972 2 530 5741, +972 2 530 5724 Salutation: Dear Major-General Roni Numa And copies to: Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan Kiryat Hamemshala PO Box 18182 Jerusalem 91181, Israel Fax: +972 2 584 7872 Email: gerdan@knesset.gov.il Salutation: Dear Minister Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. HIS EXCELLENCY MR MARK REGEV, Embassy of Israel 2 Palace Green Kensington W8 4QB, 020 7957 9500 There is also a petition one could sign here :- https://www.change.org/p/israeli-occupation-forces-free-khalida-jarrar-and-khitam-saafin-now
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
