Remember/ Cofio Penyberth

                 DJ Williams (Left) Lewis Valentine (Centre) and Saunders Lewis (Right)

On this day 8 September 1936, in what is now recognised as one of the most defining moments in modern Welsh history, 3 respected  middle aged men, pillars of their local community, a Baptist  minister, a University lecturer and school teacher took part in the symbolic burning of a RAF aerodrome at Penyberth, near Pwlhelli in Gwynedd, North Wales.
The Fire represented the final act in an unsuccessful eighteen months battle to prevent the building of an RAF bombing school on a site of particular importance in Welsh literary culture, the site of a culturally significant farmhouse affiliated with centuries of patrons of Welsh language poetry, and also a way-station for pilgrims to Bardsey Island.
The UK government settled on Llŷn as the site for its new bombing school after similar locations in Northumberland and Dorset were met with protests.Opposition to the presence of the bombing school in Penyberth was widespread at the time, with many objecting on pacifist  and environmental grounds, however, UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case against the bombing school in Wales, despite a deputation representing half a million Welsh protesters. Protest against the bombing school was summed up by Saunders Lewis when he wrote that the UK government was intent upon turning one of the 'essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom and literature' into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare. For Saunders Lewis, D.J.Williams and Lewis Valentine, the bombing school represented the oppression of the English over the Welsh and the imposition of English warmongering and violence on the peaceful Welsh countryside.
The three men after deliberately torching the buildings, then calmly presented themselves calmly at Pwllheli police station to tell the confused police officer on duty at the time, what they had done and .  to accept responsibility. for their actions. 

They were subsequently put on trial at Caernarfon on 13 October 1936. At that time (and up until the “Welsh Language Act” of 1967), a Welsh person had no right to give their testimony in Welsh in a court in Wales. Ever since the “Laws in Wales” acts of 1535-1542, English had been made the only language of legal proceedings in Wales. 

The only exception allowed to this rule was if one could prove that one’s English was inadequate. All three wished to give their testimonies in Welsh, but Lewis Valentine was the only one allowed to do so, as no evidence could be provided that he was anything like fluent enough in English.
As for the other two, Saunders Lewis had a degree in English from Liverpool University (the city where he was born and brought up); and D.J. Williams also had a degree in English from Aberystwyth (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), and had done post-graduate studies at Jesus College, Oxford! Additionally, at the time of the trial, Saunders Lewis was lecturing in English, and D.J. Williams teaching English at Fishguard Grammar School. Not surprisingly, their English was deemed to be good enough, and they were not allowed to testify in their own language.
The largely sympathetic jury however were unable to reach a decision or find them guilty and the trial was transferred to the Old Bailey in London,  this decision to move the case to London, and the judge’s scornful treatment of the case at the Old Bailey angered many in Wales, but despite this  the three men were sentenced to nine months in prison. 

They served 8 months in prison at Wormwood Scrubs. Saunders Lewis was, controversially, dismissed from his job at Swansea University before he had been found guilty of the crime. He was subsequently hired as a lecturer of English at Cardiff University.
Following their release from prison on 27 August 1937, Lewis, Williams and Valentine were greeted at Caernarfon pavilion to a hero's welcome by a crowd of around 15,000.  Such displays of support were seen across Wales, demonstrating the impact the event had on contemporaries, particularly the Welsh-speaking community.
RAF Penrhos survives today  as a single strip civilian airfield and is today the site of the annual Wakestock music festival and home to the Penrhos home for Polish  refugees, one of the last remaining WW2 displaced persons camp, but this incident  is known in the Welsh language as Llosgi'r ysgol fomio (The bombing school burning) or Tân yn Llŷn (Fire in Llŷn), and has since  attained iconic status in Welsh nationalist circles.

Today, Penyberth ranks alongside Tryweryn https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/10/cofiwch-dryweryn-remember-tryweryn.html in its significance in the fight for the Welsh language. The stance of Lewis, Valentine and Williams was an inspiration to Welsh language campaigners for decades and their continued efforts to advance Wales and the Welsh and  made them three of Wales’ most notable political activists. Dafydd Glyn Jones wrote of the fire that it was "the first time in five centuries that Wales struck back at England with a measure of violence... To the Welsh people, who had long ceased to believe that they had it in them, it was a profound shock."
Saunders Lewis went on to broadcast the famous ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ speech in 1962, https://morris.cymru/testun/saunders-lewis-fate-of-the-language.html giving rise to the formation of the Welsh Language Society which campaigns for the rights of the Welsh language to this day.

A Plaque at the site of the arson of the bombing school in Penyberth today

Drifting Blues

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All days politicians spread the blues
Like mocking crows  throwing their taunts,
Hard times are growing, what are we going to do
On every circle of futility, are we born to lose?
Do we try keep on living, as blues mess up mind
Souls in trouble, gotta stop it, try and be kind,
Down the road we go, the moon still shines brightly
But in everyday vista ,the blues arrives nightly,
All around  it's crooked grin descends
Spreading its tentacles on the wind,
Allowing fine wines to become rotten
Voices to become lonely and forgotten,
Way down here on this animal farm
It's time to escape, and try ramble on,
Find some smiles of kindness, another riff
As birds head south, in search of warm drift,
We can find spaces, to try drive  away the shit
With time, we can turn again into rainbows.

National Read a Book Day

Today marks National Read a Book Day, designated for taking a little time out, dusting of that book you've been meaning to read for ages, and diving right in. Personally I love a good book, everyday is read a book day. but sometimes life gets to distracting, especially now that I'm addicted to the bloody internet.
Research has shown though that reading can have several health and social benefits. frequent readers tend to have lower stress levels than non-readers. (though that is not flipping true in my case). Well read people though tend to be more empathetic and aware of societal ills and differences, and reading is said to be good at improving critical thinking. (Which has assisted me, a lot because I can be an argumentative so and so.)
However harsh and dark the world can be at times, books can provide insights, at the same time freeing minds to engage with contradictory consciousness, without a predetermined end, reading books can be an incredibly enriching experiences, teaching us, moving us, taking us into worlds of the unknown and adventure, they also have the capacity to enrich us, heal us and change our lives forever.
Incidentally the Japanese word tsundoku refers to the act of piling up books without reading them. Have we not all been guilty from one time or other of buying multiple books and letting them pile up without ever getting around to reading them, I do it all the time. A way you could mark National Read a Book Day, is if you have a pile of  books that you know your not going to get around to looking at, simply give them away to your friends, or take them to your local charity shop so others can  appreciate them and have a good read too.
Reading is not just about pleasure, books have the power to touch us profoundly, to open our eyes to injustices, and sometimes even act as a catalyst for social change. If you simply have not the time today,to pick up a fine book and read, keep looking at the breathing living world all around you, and for goodness' sake keep on questioning.
Here are 10 books I'd recommend you read that have helped shape my own world;-

1. The Ragged Trousered Pilanthropist  - Robert Tressell

2. Homage to Catatonia - George Orwell

3. News from Nowhere and other writings - William Morris

4. Towards Democracy - Edward Carpenter

5. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa

6. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin

7.Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

8. Mother Jones Speaks. edited by Philip Foner

9. Thus were there faces ;Selected Stories - Silvina Ocampa

10. Emma Goldman - Living my Life

After Labour accepts IHRA definition

Now that the IHRA definition is accepted, after ignoring direct appeals from Palestinan civic society to do so, caving in to pressure from the right of the party, after being amplified by smears from the right wing press, do not think for one moment the attacks now on Corbyn and Labour will stop.
The reaction of the establishment media and pro-Israel groups also shows how pointless the exercise was. "Oh he's adopted it but added a statement about free speech, which means he's really an antisemite." What a bloody merry go round, what a charade.
At the end of the day any form of racism stinks and Israel's apartheid Nation State Law is a very rotten one. Palestinian lives still matter too. The Tories and their lapdogs are not on the right side of history, the people who continue to stand against injustice are though. Sadly  a party that starts abandoning its principles, renouncing free speech, which will silence justified criticism of Israel, subsequently playing right into the hands of its enemies, that it should be attacking, is going to fail, and it is the interests of the poor and the vulnerable in our society that will be hurt the most. A party that can lead the fight for ongoing struggles for justice, freedom and equality, organising against all oppression and racism, for the many not the few, is one however that can offer again a ray of hope.

Meteors falling from the sky

Lana Del Rey's cancellation on Saturday of her performance at Israel's Meteor Festival has elicited many and varied responses with pressure now being applied on other musicians on social media to refrain from playing at the festival in Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan at the end of the week on land that is inaccessible to millions of Palestinians.
Already  up to 15 international bands  have joined her, and cancelled.their reversal marks a setback for Israel, which aims to prevent politics from infiltrating the arts.The campaign for Boycott, Divestment. Sanctions movement (BDS) urges businesses,artists and universities to sever ties with Israel. It says it is a nonviolent way to promote the Palestinian cause, signifying a meaningful contribution to the Palestinians struggle for freedom, justice and equality. There is a long history of artists  either cancelling performances in Israel or publicly joining the cultural boycott, vowing not to play music, accept awards, or attend events in the country until the colonial oppression and human rights abuses of Palestinians  in the West Bank and Gaza comes to and end and  continue to respect the Palestinians non-violent picket line.
The pressure exerted  by the BDS movement seems to be working, so a heartfelt thanks to all who have respected the boycott, their cancellation is a major blow and rejection of the Israeli governments efforts to use art and culture to whitewash and beautify its military occupation and apartheid system.
Forty years ago festival organisers, all over the world stood with South Africans struggling against apartheid, endorsing the BDS campaign against South Africa, now more than ever, we are morally obliged to stand  with the oppressed Palestinian people.

https://secure.everyaction.com/ZZpV3y6jZEy55WkfkjftmA2?ms=PACBI

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-all-the-artists-who-have-pulled-out-of-israel-s-meteor-festival-1.6436242?utm_campaign=General&utm_medium=web_push&utm_source=P

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28/6/1712 -2/7/78) - Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

The following powerful opening lines  are from the social contract, the brilliant political treatise  by Jean Jacques Rousseau, which the author and philosopher wrote in exile from his home, in Geneva , that went on to inspire the French Revolution.
In it he wrote  that man is naturally good, but becomes corrupted by the pernicious influence  of human society and institutions. He preached that mankind  could be improved  by returning to nature and living a natural life of peace with his neighbors and himself. Mankind must learn to break the chains that attach themselves to our lives. A beautiful idea that we should pay more than lip service to. We have to value the concepts of freedom, equality and community.Like Rousseau tree centuries ago, we in the 21st have to look for and identify the common good that will enable our society to revive democracy,solidarity and the art of living  together.

" MAN was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater than they. How did this transformation come about? I do not know. How can it be made legitimate? That question I believe I can answer.
If I were to consider only force and the effects of force, I should say: 'So long as a people is constrained to obey, and obeys, it does well;  but as soon as it can shake off the yoke,  and shakes it off, it does better; for since it regains its freedom by the same right as that which removed it, a people is either justified  in taking back its freedom, or there is no justifying those who took it away.' But the social order is a sacred right which serves as a basis for all other rights. And as it is not a natural right, it must be founded on covenants. The problem is to determine what those covenants are. "

Now I'm 51

I Look back and remember
when times were innocent,
life was much sweeter
in the morning the sun would rise
and in the evening would go down.

I'd have a smoke and get very high
as the moon glided through the sky,
happy days, humming with promise
the future seemed so exciting,
life was a compass, that followed no maps.

As time past, fell in love many times
rising like the wind, could do cartwheels for hours,
felt the wealth of kindness, releasing many smiles
ties bound with magical power
I danced merrily across the land.

And when injustice started to call
I would stand with my brothers and sisters,
in the summer,the spring and the autumn
on the cold edges of winter,
hoping hard times would pass.

Now 51, still on the edge of reason
but lovers and friends have gone,
that I can no longer dance with
as tides of inequity continue to grow
with social media, I release my chorus.

Still learning to live, let go and flourish
while mind and body getting tireder,
bones steadily getting  brittler
my voice at least remains strong
one thing that is for sure, this life goes  on.