There should be no platform
For bigoted people with fascist views,
It's time to block and remove the space
That promotes superiority of white race,
Alt right equals Nazi, it's as simple as this
Provoking Nazi salutes, spreading hate.
Yesterday Heather Heyer was murdered
In Charlottesville, USA, this occurred,
During an anti fascist demonstration
Slain by stagnated forces of negation,
Enough is enough people cry
We do not forget, we do not forgive!
Fascism does not arrive as a friend
Already using the language of persecution,
Daily threatening minorities and the vulnerable
Spreading message of repugnance and hate,
Harassing, prejudiced and spreading fear.
They will never be given a welcome here.
40 years ago the fascists were beaten
At the battle of Lewisham,
Intolerance was not accepted
Today we must face them again,
Standing together, proud and strong
We will resist, they shall not pass.
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’
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/ was 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!
In Italy, in the aftermath of Peterloo, the poet having heard of the horror, his outraged response was to compose his powerful political 91-verse poem, The Mask of Anarchy. The word anarchy then meant something quite different to how we view it today, Shelley used it to describe the chaos of tyranny, in which no one but the very few who own and control society can plan their lives for themselves.
The poem was written in the ballad tradition. Ballads in the early 19th century were verse narratives, often set to popular tunes and typically sold on the streets as a cheap disposable form of literature. They often focussed on tragedies, love affairs or scandals. By adopting this style, Shelley could be seen to be speaking with the voice of the common man.
The Mask of Anarchy recounts a nightmare in which the three Lords of the Tory Cabinet parade in an awful possession, murdering and deceiving while Britain dissolves into anarchy. He rouses the people to free themselves from their oppressors, by supplying them, among other things, with a powerful definition of freedom.
He begins his poem with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time: God, the King and Law, and he then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action. The poem mentions several members of Lord Liverpool's government by name: the Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh who appears as a mask worn by Murder, the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth., whose guise is taken by Hypocrricy, and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Eldon whose ermine gown is worn by Fraud. The crowd at this gathering is met by armed soldiers, but the protestors do not raise an arm against their assailants:
Stand ye calm and resolute, Like a forest close and mute, With folded arms and looks which are Weapons of unvanquished war,
And that slaughter to the Nation Shall steam up like inspiration, Eloquent, oracular; A volcano heard afar.
Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you- Ye are many - they are few."
That closing verse is perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry in any movement of the oppressed all over the world such is it's resonance. Encouraging people to rise up and challenge the tyranny that they are facing every day of their lives, against the undeniable injustices. faced by the many at the hands of the few. The rallying language of the poem has led to elements of it being recited by students at Tiananmen Square and by protestors in Tahir Square during the revolution in Egypt in 2011.It would inspire the campaign slogan "We are many, they are few" used by anti Poll Tax demonstrators in 1989-90, and also inspired the title of the 2014 documentary film We are Many, which focussed on the worldwide anti-war protests of 2003, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also memorably used the final stanza. Shelley’s friend and publisher, Leigh Hunt did not publish the poem until after Shelley’s death fearing that the opinions in it were too controversial and inflammatory. The Masque of Anarchy has been described as “the greatest political poem ever written in English” by people such as Richard Holmes. It inspired Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience which in turn influenced the anarchist writings of Leo Tolstoy. Percy Bysshe Shelley believed that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” He would remain a serious advocate for serious reform for the rest of his life, and would come to serve as a prophetic voice and inspiration to those, like the Chartists who created significant movements for peaceful reform, alongside generations of activists to this present day.Many years later his powerful poem is as relevant in austerity gripped Britain as when it was first written and reminds us that Poetry can serve to inspire and motivate people and change and influence ideas. It is one of the most powerful tools we have.
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. 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, 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.
In a classical, pagan ceremony complete with offerings of spice, honey, wine, and frankincense, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “earthly remains” (unrecognizable) were cremated on “a magnificent extent” of sea-shore near Viareggio, Italy in 1822.
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."
Shelley's heart that remained entire was given to Mary Shelley .and was found among her things after her death 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)
