The Continuing Relevance of Visionary Socialist, William Morris (24/3/1834 – 3/10/1896)

William Morris was born in 1834 on the 24th of March 1834  in Walthamstow, Essex, the third of nine children. William's father, after whom he was named, was a self-made business man, who was able to provide an upper-middle-class lifestyle for his family because of a shrewd investment in a Devonshire mine. Although William Morris Senior died when his son was just thirteen, the wealth he had accumulated provided a generous income for the artist well into his adult life. 

In 1853, Morris began his studies in Theology at Exeter College, Oxford, planning to become a priest in line with his mother's wishes. However, within less than a year, his outlook on life had changed drastically: his reading in the library shifted from religious matters to history and ecclesiastical architecture, and eventually to the art criticism of John Ruskin. Soon, he discovered his lifelong passion for writing poetry, and his fate as a creative was sealed when he met fellow student Edward Burne-Jones, a budding artist and designer with whom he would remain friends for the rest of his life.

Morris is known today for his exquisite patterned wallpapers, his famous chair design, and his rule, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

but far more than this he was  a man of tremendous energies, his accomplishments astonishing in their range and depth. He became successively a poet , embroiderer, textile designer, artist, writer and revolutionary socialist and political agitator associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts movement. Morris was swept up in a wave of artistic creativity, in the company of artists whose work focused on nature, and the romantic chivalry of the medieval past.

Like his undergraduate hero John Ruskin, Morris's political views were inseparable from his aesthetics. He believed that art should be produced and enjoyed by all; that the products of artistic labor should be offered back to the working classes.His aim was not only to create beautiful things but also a beautiful  society.

In 1883, he joined the Social Democratic Federation, the first official socialist party established in England. Like many in the movement, Morris struggled to define his vision amid the many competing views on the ideal organization of society.

He became an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Britain, active in promoting its cause through  his writing and lecturing on street corners. Throughout  his life  he continued  to identify with the revolutionary left. He was heartened  by the Labour  movements break with liberalism,  but he warned, perhaps more clearly than anyone else at the time of the dangers of reformism.

 He advocated radical revolution and change through government reform at different times in his life. With Eleanor Marx, the daughter of Karl Marx, and other prominent party members, Morris formed the breakaway Socialist League in 1884.Unfortunately it lasted only six years due to lack of organising ability. The League's paper the Commonweal and Morris's writing was a legacy, due to his poems of beauty which were appreciated by so many whether they knew of the socialist league or not. 

The brutal governmental response to the Trafalgar Square riots which occurred on Bloody Sunday in November 1887, however, shocked and saddened Morris (hundreds of workers were wounded and three were killed) and he became convinced that the forces of repression were so entrenched in Victorian society that the longed-for Revolution would not come to pass during his lifetime.

 Morris wrote 'A Death Song' for the funeral on 18 December 1887 of Alfred Linnell, a week after 'Bloody Sunday',Mr Linnell's fatality occurred after a vicious clubbing where 'the crowd was batoned by the police.'

 A Death Song - William Morris

What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.

Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;

We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning:
We come back speechless, bearing back our dead.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

They will not learn; they have no ears to hearken.
They turn their faces from the eyes of fate;
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken.
But, lo! this dead man knocking at the gate.

Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

Here lies the sign that we shall break our prison;
Amidst the storm he won a prisoner's rest;

But in the cloudy dawn the sun arisen
Brings us our day of work to win the best.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

Right up to his death on October 3, 1896 he was though still agitating and arguing  for a socialist movement that would change the world . He also embraced radical ideas  of sexual freedom and libertarianism. There is a strong libertarian temper in his writings and being a close friend of Peter Kropotkin ( eminent anarchist at the time) was well aware of the anarchist case against government and political authority.
His texts  such as Useful Work Versus Useless Toil bristle with truths still relevant today. Arguing that only a classless society could eliminate the exploitation and waste of human creativity and of the world’s resources, he exclaimed: “No-one would make plush breeches when there are no flunkeys to wear them!” 
 In 1885 he bought out his Chants for Socialism and in  his novel News from Nowhere (1890) he recorded his own idiosyncratic vision after the abolition of classes. In it he envisages a society of equality and freedom and, confirmed Morris's belief in the potential of human beings to transform society, and in the process transform themselves. It is the account of a dream in which a socialist future appears in the present. It is a future without oppression, violence and drudgery. Human beings are free to enjoy their own creativity, and to 'delight in the life of the world'. But such freedom had to be fought for:

'"Tell me one thing if you can," said I. "Did the change come peacefully?' "Peacefully?" said he, "What peace was there amongst those poor confused wretches of the nineteenth century? It was war from beginning to end: bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it..."' 

Such a vision - a rational grounded utopia , apparently so distant to us - is precisely what is needed for us today.
An interesting  passionate and varied life, he hated the age he lived, its commerce, its poverty, its industry, but most of all he hated its individualistic, selfish system of values. At the end of his life  he explained:. 

"The study of history and the love and practice of art forced me into a hatred of  the civilisation which, if things were to stop as they are  would turn history into inconsequent nonsense, and make art a collection  of the curiosities of the past."

When Morris lay dying in 1896 one of his doctors diagnosed his fatal illness as ‘simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.' and  that Morris had “died the victim of his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of socialism”.

 Morris was not a politician, but an activist and agitator who brought intellectual weight and energy to the socialist cause. According to fellow party member Bruce Glasier, socialism was "integral to his genius;  it was born and bred in his flesh and bone." He gave much to British socialism,  he wrote to awaken men's imagination, to give them visions of working for a realisation of a dream, in fact he gave them comradeship. Morris's tremendous political speeches and writings were central to the revival of the British socialist movement at the end of the 19th century. Their relevance today is striking, writing in the 1890's he warned against faith in partial reforms that depended on ' parliamentary agitation' Such reforms would he believed

 ' be sucked into the tremendous stream of commercial production, and vanish into it, after having played its part as a red herring to spoil the scent of revolution.' If they wanted real change, Morris argued, 'people must take over for the good of the community all the means of production' ie credit, railways, mines, factories shipping, land machinery.'

His artistic and poetic skill, along with the radical new ethos on art and society that he espoused, sent shockwaves through the worlds of art, architecture, design, poetry, and political thought. Morris looked forward to a genuine rebirth of art as ‘the spontaneous expression of the pleasure of life innate in the whole people’ The arts and crafts movement spread across Europe and the US. Bauhaus, de Stijl and Soviet Constructivist artists were indebted to his aesthetics, if not to the style of his designs, and their placing of the unity of the arts at the heart of design education continues to this day.The William Morris Gallery is currently putting on the first ever exhibition to explore Victorian William Morris and the modernist Bauhaus  movement. Although working half a century before the Bauhaus opened its doors in 1919, Morris's ideas about art, craft and community  had a profound influence on the seminal German designer school.  Designers and artists are still inspired by Morris’s works while his questions about the social role of art and creativity were so fundamental that they remain relevant,  and many contemporary artists still look back to Morris as an inspirational figure. Jeremy Deller and David Mabb, for example, have both commented on how Morris's work contrasts with and compliments the production methods and political ethos of much twentieth-century art..William Morris’s ideas were still very much alive in the years that followed the First World War as artists and craftspeople struggled to find themselves a viable place within the modern world. Morris’s original ‘campaign against the age’ seemed essential at a period of increasing political cynicism and materialist frivolity and waste.

And his  ideals of art for the people were a central  to the planning of the Festival of Britain of 1951 who took inspiration from Morris's socialist beliefs, and from his sense of the role of the community in artistic production, introducing these principles to a new generation of creatives. The early-twentieth-century heyday of the artistic avant-garde was also in a very real sense preceded by the utopian collectivism of Morris's ventures.

In a powerful expression of continuity between reform campaigns and people throughout history, Morris appropriated the French slogan ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' as the head design for the Democratic Federation membership card, harking back to language and imagery used by the French  revolutionaries  at the end of the eighteenth century.The global relevance of his life and work is still felt today, with the reiterated calls  for ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' revealing the enduring power of words, and the humanitarian values  echoed by Morris.
Today Morris's ideas are woven into our lives , sung upon our souls, and etched into our minds, he remains a hero to socialists, communists and even anarchists who continue to strive for a new society.Morris's efforts to conserve the natural environment and to protect our architectural heritage are being carried on by people who are members of the same groups he helped to found and supported..He saw the true source of oppression as capitalism which  had to be abolished before all the resources could be used with creative freedom :

. I do not [believe] we should aim at abolishing all machinery; I would do some things with machinery which are now done by hand, and other things by hand which are now done by machinery; in short, we would be the masters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this or that...machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us'  

Morris's contention that art and creativity are essential contributors to well-being and that beautiful surroundings are essential for a healthy, happy and productive life, still powerfully resonates today. We read Morris's writings today because we still hold out hope for a better world. After all Morris's vision for a just society where art plays a central role has not yet been seriously tried. And although we have not yet achieved Morris's post-capitalist, ecologically healthy and economically sustainable humane society with its lively arts, his battles of over one hundred years ago have become our battles today.His words still have powerful resonance in our own turbulent times.

"The study of history and the love and practice of art forced me into a hatred of  the civilisation which, if things were to stop as they are  would turn history into inconsequent nonsense, and make art a collection  of the curiosities of the past."   - William Morris
 
All for the Cause - William Morris (from Chants for Socialists)
 
Hear a word, a word in season, for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live, and some to die!

He that dies shall not die lonely, many an one hath gone before;
He that lives shall bear no burden heavier that the life they bore.

Nothing ancient is their story, e’en but yesterday they bled,
Youngest they of earth’s beloved, last of all the valiant dead.

E’en the tidings we are telling was the tale they had to tell,
E’en the hope that our hearts cherish, was the hope for which they fell.

In the grave where tyrants thrust them, lies their labour and their pain,
But undying from their sorrow springeth up the hope again.

Mourn not therefore, nor lament it, that the world outlives their life;
Voice and vision yet they give us, making strong our hands for strife.

Some had name, and fame, and honour, learn’d they were, and wise and strong
Some were nameless, poor, unlettered, weak in all but grief and wrong.

Named and nameless all live in us; one and all they lead us yet
Every pain to count for nothing, every sorrow to forget.

Hearken how they cry, “O happy, happy ye that ye were born
In the sad slow night’s departing, in the rising of the morn.

“Fair the crown the Cause hath for you, well to die or well to live
Through the battle, through the tangle, peace to gain or peace to give.”

Ah, it may be! Oft meseemeth, in the days that yet shall be,
When no slave of gold abideth ’twixt the breadth of sea to sea,

Oft, when men and maids are merry, ere the sunlight leaves the earth,
And they bless the day beloved, all too short for all their mirth,

Some shall pause awhile and ponder on the bitter days of old,
Ere the toil of strife and battle overthrew the curse of gold;

Then ’twixt lips of loved and lover solemn thoughts of us shall rise;
We who once were fools and dreamers, then shall be the brave and wise.

There amidst the world new-builded shall our earthly deeds abide,
Though our names be all forgotten, and the tale of how we died.

Life or death then, who shall heed it, what we gain or what we lose?
Fair flies life amid the struggle, and the Cause for each shall choose.

Hear a word, a word in season , for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live, and some to die!

 No Master  

Saith man to man, We've heard and known
  That we no master need
To live upon this earth, our own,
  In fair and  mainly deed,
The grief of slaves long passed away
  For us hath forged the chain,
Till now  each worker's patient day
  Builds up the House of Pain.

And we, shall we too, crouch and quall.
  Ashamed, afraid of strife,
And lest our lives untimely fail
  Embrace the Death in Life?
Nay, cry aloud, and have no fear,
  We few against the world;
Awake, arise! the hope we bear
  Against the curse is hurled.

It grows and grows - are we the same,
  The feeble hand,  the few?
Or, what are these with  eyes aflame,
  and hands to deal and do?
This is the lost  that bears the word,
  NO MASTER HIGH OR LOW-
A lightning flame, a shearing sword,
  A storm to overthrow.

 

"If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream" - From, News from Nowhere, William Morris. 

The following Socialist 10 Commandments inspired by William Morris remind us that the movement embraced a vision that was admirable, humane, and enlightened. Who could possibly object to such a vision?

Ten Commandments from the William Morris Hall Socialist Sunday School, Walthamstow , North London 

 

Socialist Sunday School

Ten Commandments

 

1. Love your schoolfellows, they will become your fellow workers and companions in life.

 

2. Love learning which is the food of the mind Be as graceful to your teachers as to your parents.

 

3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions.

 

4. Honour good people; be courteous and respect all; bow down to none.

 

5. Do not hate or offend anyone. Do not seek revenge; defend your rights and resist tyranny.

 

6. Be not cowardly; protect the feeble and love justice.

 

7. Remember that all the products of the earth are the result of labour; whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the worker.

 

8. Observe and think, in order to discover the truth. Do not believe that which is contrary to reason and do not deceive yourself or others.

 

9. Do not think that he who loves his own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war which is a remnant of barbarism.

 

10. Help to bring about the day when all nations shall live fraternally together in peace and prosperity.

 

Declaration :

 

We desire to be just and loving to all our fellow men and women, to work together as brothers and sisters to be kind to every living creature; and so help to form a New Society, with Justice as its foundation and Love its law.

 This plaque showing the Socialist 10 Commandments is from the William Morris Hall in Walthamstow, which  was opened on 13 December 1909 by artist and socialist Walter Crane. The town was a hive of working class agitation, organising and self-help and workers had clubbed together to build the hall which they named in honour of the Arts and Crafts Movement leader and socialist dynamo who was born in the town.

National Poetry Day: See It Like a Poet

National Poetry Day takes place on the first Thursday of October each year, which this year will  land on Thursday 1 October 2020. This years theme is Vision, and the strapline for the day is ' See It Like a Poet' 

See It Like a Poet

Expand  your mind's eye

As darkness falls, play with shapes

Cultivate humility, do not envy

Look beyond hatefulness and greed 

Keep writing what you feel is right

While shadows give way and life flows

With windows open, seek peace and tranquility

To ease distress, the black depression we often sink

Caused by the world's cruelties, the pains of life

As Autumn mellows the heart, releases reason

Become near in spirit to the earth

Keep on seeking, keep on looking

Among life's bustle and calamity

With a continual searching mission

Beyond chains that confine

Find the way that spells liberty.

International Translation Day 2020 : Finding the words for a world in crisis

International Translation Day is observed on September 30, every year on the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator who is an epitome and known as the patron saint of the translators. The day aims to celebrate the work of language translation professionals which facilitates dialogue, understanding, and cooperation, contributing to the development and strengthening of world peace and security, and raise the awareness of the importance of their work and express solidarity with the fellow translators worldwide.

Translators play a significant role in diplomatic engagements that not only prevent border disputes and foster peace but also help in the growth of the economy through globalization. St. Jerome was a priest from North-eastern Italy, who is known mostly for his endeavor of translating most of the Bible into Latin from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. He also translated parts of the Hebrew Gospel into Greek.

 The International Federation of Translators (FIT) organise the day ever since it was set up in 1953. The first official celebration of ITD was held in 1991. In May of 2017, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution and adopted 71/288 on the role of language professionals in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding, and development, and declared 30 September as International Translation Day.

 The theme of International Translation Day 2020 is “Finding the words for a world in crisis”. – the title seems well-chosen and doesn't need comment. Translators, terminologists, and interpreters provide crucial services both on the front line and behind the news in crisis situations, so the celebration of the day aims to contribute and provide the general public with information about the work.

The idea behind this theme was to bring focus on the use of indigenous languages whose existence is in danger to the extent of extinction. The day was primarily focussed on the role and important work of translators, interpreters, and others who are in the service of the language industry.

The modern, digitalized and technologized world is marked by the swift and dramatic changes of the ways we communicate. The exchange of information has never been faster, the world has never been smaller, but the need for professional human translators has never ceased.

On the contrary, the role of translators in the globalized world is essential. While the communication is flowing in a heartbeat, it is the task and the duty of translators to make sure it is flowing in the right direction and that the precise meaning, intent and style of the message remain intact.

The way the things work has changed and it is going to change even more, but the essence of the translation profession remains the same – to facilitate the exchange of ideas between different languages and cultures in various ways and on different levels. This is exactly what we do at all times, regardless of what it is that we translate – a poem, a novel, a movie, an instruction manual or a website.

Translation is a essential literary endeavour, a means of access into the language, thinking and stories of other cultures, histories and experience.

 This evening on International Translation Day, a digital event will be held to celebrate the success of the winners of the Translation Challenge 2020 competitions, Grug Muse and Eleoma Bodammer. 

This year's challenge was to translate a sequence of short poems by the poet Zafer Şenocak in German entitled 'Nahaufnahmen’.

A prize of £200 each is presented to the two winners and the winning translations will be published on the websites of O’r Pedwar Gwynt and Poetry Wales. The Her Gyfieithu Staff for the best translation into Welsh is also presented to Grug sponsored by Cymdeithas Cyfieithwyr Cymru.

The competition was organised by Wales Literature Exchange, Wales PEN Cymru and Literature Across Frontiers at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in collaboration with Swansea University, the Association of Welsh Translators, O’r Pedwar Gwynt, Poetry Wales and Goethe-Institut. 

11 entries received in Her Gyfieithu, and the Welsh competition's adjudicator Mererid Hopwood, Professor of Languages and Welsh Curriculum at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, says that Grug's work was the "translation that caught my imagination more than one of the others and best succeeded in creating the feeling of a 'poem'."

Professor Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones of the Wales Literature Exchange said: “We are delighted that we have been able to hold the Translation Challenge again this year despite the concerns and challenges of the pandemic. The competition is going from strength to strength and this is the twelfth / 12th year that we have held it in collaboration with a number of partners. It is a very important time for us in Wales to celebrate the links between ourselves and other countries, languages and cultures. WLE’s motto is Translating Wales, Reading the World, and this is a very suitable event for International Translation Day.”

During the event we also hear from Eluned Morgan MP, Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language; Menna Elfyn, President of PEN Cymru and Professor Emerita of Creative Writing University of Wales Trinity Saint David; Gosia Cabaj of Goethe-Institut along with representatives from our other partners. The event is sponsored by the Presiding Officer, Elin Jones MS.

The event will be held at 7pm this Wednesday evening and you can register to be part of the evening by clicking on the link below:

 

 https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dbuEqo5fS_-8-cqsQJ5jFw

 

“In the profession of translation, there is no such thing as an ideal, perfect, or correct form of translation. A translator always strives to extend his knowledge and to improve the means of expression; he always pursues the facts and words”

 

“Without translation been in existence, we would be probably living in provinces bordering on silence”

 

"If we are talking to a man in a language he understands, that will go to his head. But If we talk to him in his own language, that will go to his heart”

 

“As per UNESCO, about 40 percent of the 6700 languages spoken around the world are in danger of disappearing."

 

"Writers make national literature, while translators make universal  literature "Jose Saramago

 

"Translating from one language to another is the most delicate of intellectual exercises; compared to translation, all other puzzles, from the bridge to crosswords, seem trivial and vulgar. To take a piece of Greek and put it in English without spilling a drop; what a nice skill! " Cyril Connolly"

 

"The translator is a privileged writer who has the opportunity to rewrite masterpieces in their own language." Javier María

 

 

James Berry (28 September 1924 – 20 June 2017) - Outsider

James Berry was born  in Boston, Jamaica on 28 September, 1924 . One of six children. his parents were subsistence farmers, and he enjoyed an early life of rural rhythms and experiences. By the age of ten, however, the young writer began to feel frustrated by what his village could offer. “I began to be truly bewildered by my everyday Jamaican life,” he remarked in a Horn Book piece quoted in Authors and Artists for Young Adults. “I felt something of an alien and an outsider and truly imprisoned.” 

Indeed, rural Jamaica provided Berry with few opportunities. 

Though eager to learn about the wider world, the boy had access to few books. He had to share his single school text with all the other members of his family. But, through Bible stories and traditional folk tales, the young writer began to nurture what he described in the Horn Book as an “inner seeing,” who had “an inner life that could not be shared.ranged from the lyrical to the caustic, but almost all of them intimately caught the speech patterns of his native Jamaica. Berry helped to enrich and diversify the capacities of the English language, making conversational modes of West Indian expression, which a previous generation would have considered exotic or barely literate, normal and easily understood. In doing so he gave literary respectability to forms of language increasingly heard in the streets and playgrounds of multicultural Britain”

When he was 17, during World War II, Berry went to work in the United States. But he resented the treatment of blacks there, and returned to Jamaica after four years. After  opportunities in the West Indies had not improved, in 1948 , as past of the Windrush generation Berry decided to try his luck in London. Working and attending school at night, Berry obtained training as a telegrapher, and worked in that field for more than two decades. At the same time, he began to write short stories and stage plays. and became involved over the years with  many social and cultural organisations in North London, including being sessions organiser for the Carribean Artists Movement.

He  became a much loved poet , helping to  enrich and diversify the capacities of the English language, making conversational modes of West Indian expression, which a previous generation would have considered exotic or barely literate, normal and easily understood. In doing so he gave literary respectability to forms of language increasingly heard in the streets and playgrounds of multicultural Britain.  In 1976 he compiled the anthology Bluefoot Traveller and in 1979 his first poetry collection, Fractured Circles, was published. In 1981,  he then  won the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition, the first poet of West Indian origin to do so. He also edited the landmark anthology News for Babylon (1984), which was considered “a ground-breaking publication because its publishing house Chatto & Windus was ‘mainstream’ and distinguished for its international poetry list”.

A pioneering  writer and activist,  his powerful  poem ' Outsider’  was influenced by his own experiences of racism and urgently seeks action for equality. Each stanza questioning ‘If you see me’ is direct criticism and evoked pathos at the lack of education, acknowledgement, and action against the racism embedded in the UK. Sadly so relevant to this day. Black lives matter

 

Outsider - James Berry

  

If you see me lost on busy streets

my dazzle is sun-stain of skin,

I'm not naked with dark glasses on

saying barren ground has no oasis:

It's that cracked up by extremes

I must hold self together with extreme pride.

If you see me lost in neglected
woods, I'm no thief eyeing trees
to plunder their stability
or a moaner shouting at air:
it's that voices in me rule
firmer than my skills, and sometimes
among men my stubborn hurts
leave me like wild dogs.

If you see me lost on forbidding
wastelands, watching dry flowers
nod, or scraping a tunnel
in mountain rocks, I don't open
a trail back into time:
it's that a monotony
like the Sahara seals my enchantment.

If you see me lost on long
footpaths, I don't set traps
or map out arable acres:
it's that I must exhaust twigs
like limbs with water divining.

If you see me lost in my sparse
room, I don't ruminate
on prisoners and falsify
their jokes, and go on about
prisons having been perfected
like a common smokescreen of mind:
it's that I moved
my circle from ruins
and I search to remake it whole.

Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Born on Septermber 19. 1921 in Recife, Brazil, Paulo  Freire was a philosopher, educator and activist who developed a radical approach to transforming how we approach education. While he was born into a middle class family, Freire’s father died during the economic depression of the thirties, and as a young child, Freire came to know the crippling and dehumanizing effects of hunger which ad a radicalising and transformative effect upon him. Freire saw himself being forced by the circumstances to steal food for his family, and he ultimately dropped out of elementary school to work and help his family financially. It was through these hardships that Freire developed his unyielding sense of solidarity with the poor. From childhood on, Freire made a conscious commitment to work in order to improve the conditions of marginalized people.

He recalled in Moacir Gadotti’s book, Reading Paulo Freire, “I didn’t understand anything because of my hunger. I wasn’t dumb. It wasn’t lack of interest. My social condition didn’t allow me to have an education. Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class and knowledge”  Because Freire lived among poor rural families and laborers, he gained a deep understanding of their lives and of the effects of socio-economics on education.

Freire became a grammar teacher while still in high school. Even then his intuition pushed him toward a dialogic education in which he strived to understand students’ expectations. While on the Faculty of Law in Recife, Freire met his wife, Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, an elementary school teacher and an important force in his life. They married in 1944 when Freire was 23 and eventually had five children, three of whom became educators  Gadotti asserts that it was Elza who influenced Freire to intensely pursue his studies, and helped him to elaborate his groundbreaking educational methods.

Between 1947 and 1962 he developed effective dialogical methodologies for educating adult illiterates; Freire developed his thinking during a long career teaching Portuguese in secondary schools and literacy campaigns. Later he was appointed as the director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. 

It was here that he started working with illiterate poor people. His results were so impressive that he was invited to become director of the national literacy programme. He set out to establish 20,000 cultural learning circles throughout Brazil, for which he planned to import 35,000 slide projectors from Poland. However he was  forced  to flee his native Brazil following a military coup in 1964.

Freire drew upon Catholic liberation-theology and Marxist ideas to forge a concept of popular literacy education for personal and social liberation. So formidable was his work that the Harvard Educational Review published a recapitulation of his formative essays in 1999.

Freire wrote  his seminal book Pedagogy of the Oppressed while in exile in Chile  while working with the democratically elected Allende government which fell to a CIA-manufactured coup. He spent the next 15 years in what he called exile, working at Harvard  University and for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, organizing and writing books for social justice and he remains a touchstone figure for social justice and equality activists in the global North and South. after a military coup in April 1964, Freire after being imprisoned  as a traitor had to flee from Brazil.  He returned to Brazil in 1979, joined the Workers’ Party and became Sao Paolo’s Secretary for Education in 1988.

Over a lifetime of work with revolutionary organizers and educators,  Paulo Freire created an approach to emancipatory education and a lens through which to understand systems of oppression in order to transform them. He flipped mainstream pedagogy on its head by insisting that true knowledge and expertise already exist within people.Pedagogy of the Oppressed. which was originally published in 1968 (in Portuguese, in 1970 first English translation) but has been reprinted and translated numerous times and has become a source of inspiration for people throughout the world. 

It is a profound statement of faith in humanity and a challenge for us all to consider our place, our responsibilities and our actions on the humanisation-dehumanisation spectrum. His philosophy, compassion and commitment inspire real (but searingly realistic) hope for the oppressed in all societies. Freire's work has taken on much urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.

Paulo Freire was highly critical of traditional formal models of education which he argued made people dependant in much the same way as a commercial bank does. Students are treated as if they were empty bank accounts in which the teacher can make deposits. Under this `banking concept` of education, "knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing". 

This results in a dichotomy between teacher and students: the teacher talks and the students listen. As a consequence, both are dehumanized. Freire’s analysis of traditional education is similar to the critique developed by Ivan Illich in his book Deschooling Society (1971).

Freire asserted that education can never be neutral. Either it is an instrument for liberating people or it is used to dominate and disempower them. To avoid being a tool of oppression, education needs to involve a new relationship between teacher and students as well as with society. The difference is not to be found in the curriculum contents or the enthusiasm of the teacher, but in the pedagogical approach.

He found that people were more motivated to learn how to read and write if the experience gave them insight into the power networks to which they are subjected. Freire urged teachers to identify and use key political words, which he labelled as `generative themes` because they generated discussion. 

A key concept in Freire`s approach is conscientization, meaning the ways in which individuals and communities develop a critical understanding of their social reality through reflection and action.

This involves examining and acting on the root causes of oppression as experienced in the here and now. This goes beyond simply acquiring the technical skills of reading and writing. It is a cornerstone to ending the culture of silence, in which oppression is not mentioned and thereby maintained. Existentialism was another significant influence on Freire’s philosophy. Freire believed that human beings are free to choose and thus responsible for their choices.

While on one hand, Freire did very much take into account the historical context created by the legacy of slavery in Brazil, he never believed the historical conditions determined the future for him, his students, or Brazilian society. On the contrary, Freire espoused the existential belief that humans need not be determined by the past. When Freire taught literacy classes, he not only taught his students how to read and write. Freire shared conscientização and, with this, the awareness that his students were free to choose the life they created for themselves.

In what he referred to as the `archaeology of consciousness`, Freire identified three different levels of political awareness: magical consciousness, naïve consciousness and critical consciousness. It was the role of the educator to foster a process of dialogue and liberation that would enable citizens to reach critical consciousness.

Whilst the unpacking of the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed is at the core of his work; his related concepts of dialogical (or problem-posing) and anti-dialogical (or banking education) are also crucial. His warnings regarding oppressive traits such as cultural invasion, false generosity and manipulation explain,  the cultural disconnect and distrust that typifies many student-teacher relationships.

Whereas Freire saw both humanization and dehumanization as real choices for mankind, he saw only the former as man’s true vocation. Thus, he saw the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed (in all contexts) as dialectical contradictions that must be resolved if liberation (for both) is to occur. The “lovelessness which lies at the heart of the oppressors’ violence” can only be defeated by acts of love from the oppressed. 

However he warns that the values of the oppressor can instead become housed in the oppressed, which may, in turn, lead them to aspire to become oppressors themselves. In the oppressor, the oppressed see the very model of manhood, to which they should aspire. Thus they view themselves in purely individualistic terms, fail to see their position as part of a group and have a “fear of freedom”. For Freire, the resultant false consciousness meant that the “great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: (is) to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well”. 

One way in which the oppressor-oppressed relationship is maintained is through the use of prescription. This is where one ‘man’s choices or opinions are forced upon another, thus depriving him of a voice and forcing him to accept the oppressors worldview. This can lead to self-deprecation where the oppressed feel that they do not have opinions of value and have low feelings of self-worth. The oppressed feel unable to act against the oppressor but all too frequently practice horizontal violence instead against their neighbours.. In time, the oppressed may come to evict the negative self-concepts that they house within them. 

 Freire was recognized worldwide for his profound impact on educational thought and practice. He received numerous awards including honorary doctorates, the King Balduin Prize for International Development, the Prize for Outstanding Christian Educators in 1985 with Elza, and the UNESCO 1986 Prize for Education for Peace . In 1986, Freire’s wife, Elza died. He remarried to Ana Maria Araújo Freire, who continues with her own radical educational work. On May 2, 1997, Paulo Freire died of heart failure at the age of 75.

Friers influence is still hotly debated in Brazil.  Having been posthumously made a Patron of Education in 2012, an ally of far-right president Bolsonaro, tried (and failed) to have the title stripped from Freire in 2018 (Lima, 2019).  Pedagogy of the Oppressed was banned in apartheid South Africa, parts of Latin America and, in 2010 in Tucson, Arizona by right-wing policymakers who prohibited texts that ‘promote the overthrow of the US government’ (Rodriquez, 2018).  ‘Pedagogy’ was one of the texts used on an ethno-studies programme taught to Native Americans and Chicanos, and the books ‘were seized  from classrooms right in front of students’, who learned first-hand about oppression (Bernstein, 2012).  

Friere's methods, which used critical dialogue and consciousness-raising are not only applicable in his country of origin (Brazil) but  are widely used by a whole generation of social and development workers working in deprived neighbourhoods across poor and rich countries alike, and  continues to wield enormous influence on research and educational practice across the world as a tool for social change.

 More important than all of the recognitions Freire received and the scholars he influenced, Freire’s life was his most significant legacy. His life’s example continues to inspire. He created the conditions by which thousands of people, the children and grandchildren of former slaves, could learn to read and write, learn about their agency and freedom, and learn to love.

Here is a link to a pdf annivesary od Frier's acclaimed book :-

https://libcom.org/library/pedagogy-oppressed 

Poor old Boris Johnson

My heart truly bleeds Boris Johnson who has "misery etched upon his face" and is reportedly worried about money according to embarrassing reports recently.

 Close allies of the Prime Minister have described an unhappy Number 10 as Mr Johnson attempts to deal with endless crises - claims dismissed by Downing Street.

 They also claim  Johnson 56, and fiance Carrie Symonds, 32, are "worried about money" and fear they will not be able to afford a nanny.

 Prior to taking the top job, his combined wages as an MP, his £275,000 per year Daily Telegraph column and lucrative speaking engagements, he was earning more than £350,000 a year.

The Prime Minister's wages amount to around £150,000 per year, far above the average UK salary but seemingly not enough to keep the pair happy.

A source told the Times newspaper "Boris like other prime ministers, is very very badly served. He doesn't have a housekeeper, he has a simple cleaner, and they're worried about being able to affoed a nanny. "He's stuck in the flat and Downing Street is not a nice  place to live. It's not like the Elysee or the White House where you can get away from it all because they're so big. Even if he or Carrie want to go into the rose garden they have to go through the office."

Another "friend" said "He's always worried about money, he has a genuine need to provide for his family, all of them, and I think that does worry him,"Johnson is thought to be concerned about supporting  four of his six children through university, while also affording childcare costs for his youngest son, Wilfred, born on 29 April this year." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/overburdened-underpaid-and-misery-on-his-face-boris-johnson-gets-the-blues-r9jl63m2q

Whether he has really been grumbling or not, it doesn't hurt to point out how ridiculous and over privileged and out of touch from  society he actually is, he is just a shameless arrogant pampered egomaniac. Boris Johnson is not skint just a brazen hypocrite, who has been spoilt throughout his entire life, all he and the Tories only really care about  are themselves and their rich friends and backers. I care as much for him as he does for the majority of the hard working people of this country, which is nothing. 

He sold a £3.75m home in September  last year which would have seen him making £700,000 in profit. He still owns one property with his ex wife and he and Carrie own a £1.3m house outight and has a net worth of £3,1m.  As our country faces the possibility of another lockdown due to his incompetence, lets not forget this is a  prime minister who has spent more time on holiday than any of his recent forerunners, possibly than all of them put together, if you average it out for a single year, setting of for his many jaunts at times of national crisis.

I have no sympathy or appreciation for him, after all  still gets lots of benefits thrust upon him, by his friends in big business, unlike the low paid, unemployed, state pensioners, single parents, disabled, unpaid carers or asylum seekers who have to face undue hardships every day of their lives. And lots of others can't afford to pay a nanny either, and after ten years of Tory austerity can't afford  to put food on the table, and as winter approaches let alone put the heating on.

Victor Lidio Jara ( 28/09/32 - 16/09/32) - A Martyr Remembered

What follows is a tribute to Chilean Political Singer and activist Victor Jara murdered by brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet's troops on  this day 16th September 1973. This followed the military coup on 9/11/73  which overthrew the democratically elected government led by Salvador Allende.

For the next 20 years, Pinochet suspended democratic rule in Chile, presisding over an oppressive, sadistic military junta that completely reversed Allende's  socialist economic programs, banning unions and privatizing state programmes such as social security, hunting down all manner of dissidents and imprisoning tens of thousands. 

 Víctor Jara was born to a peasant family. His mother taught him to sing, but by age 15 he was orphaned and on his own. After a brief sojourn in seminary and a stint in the army, he turned to a career in music and theater. He became a director, putting on plays ranging in style from the classical to the experimental. Eventually, his love for music drew him away from the theater, and by 1973,  was one of Chile’s big music stars. A cross between Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, he was unashamedly left-wing; writing popular protest songs about social inequality and the plight of the working man. He was an integral part of the  Nueva Canción movement (New Song) movement, a movement of Latin American musicians who blended Spanish and indigenous folk music to create a genuine music of the people. 

With the folk boom in full swing in the United States, markets around the world were being flooded with commercialized versions of "protest music." Nueva Canción was a conscious alternative, folk in the truest sense. Among people increasingly angry about their country's rising poverty and subjugation to US interests, Nueva Canción found home. Jara himself summed it up the best: "US imperialism understands very well the magic of communication through music and persists in filling our young people with all sorts of commercial tripe. . . . The term 'protest song' is no longer valid because it is ambiguous and has been misused. I prefer the term 'revolutionary song'." 

So when the right-wing Pinochet regime seized power in a bloody coup, they made sure Jara, 40 at the time, was one of the first to be detained.  Transported to the Chile Stadium, Jara found himself in a vision of Hell. One of 60 torture centers that sprang up around Santiago in the days following the coup, the Chile Stadium was notorious for its cruelty. Detainees were forced to sit in the bleachers without food or sleep, watching as people were randomly pulled out and executed on the pitch. Occasionally, guards would turn their machine guns on the crowd and unleash a random spray of bullets, sending bodies tumbling down onto the playing field. 

A lifelong rebel,  Jara responded to his incarceration by composing new songs and singing them to his fellow prisoners to keep their spirits up. Unsurprisingly, he soon came to the attention of the camp commander, who made a seemingly magnanimous gesture: Placing a guitar on a table in the middle of the stadium, he invited Jara to come down and play to the crowd. Naively, Jara agreed. 

What happened next would be etched on the minds of those who saw it forever. The moment he sat at the table, Jara was pinned in place by the nearby guards. The commander then cut off his fingers and mutilated his hands to mush. Some witness claim he used an axe, others the butt of his rifle. The outcome was the same. With Jara’s hands a bloody pulp, the commander screamed at him: “Now sing, you motherf—er, now sing!”

In response, Jara pushed himself to his feet. With infinite calm, he reportedly walked to the nearest set of bleachers and said, “All right, comrades, let’s do the senor commandante the favor.” Then he began to sing. 

He sung unsteadily, with a wavering voice, the anthem of the UP—the political party whose members lay in piles at the bottom of the bleachers. As his voice began to steady, an incredible thing happened. Across the stadium, prisoners who’d had no food or sleep, prisoners who’d been tortured or threatened with death, all rose to their feet and began to sing with him. For a fleeting moment, the guards could only watch in amazement as their charges joined in with Victor Jara for his final song. A volley was fired and Jara fell dead. Then another was aimed into the bleachers at those who’d accompanied him in song and bodies tumbled down the inclines.”

Allende was last seen on the 15th of September when he was left abandoned by a roadside , only for his body to be discovered a day later. When his wife Joan went to identify his dumped body, it was riddled with 44 bullets.  Over 3,000 other political prisoners would suffer a similar fate, during Pinochet's murderous, CIA - supported tenure, Chileans suspected of being dissidents would be similarly rounded up and "disappeared" never to bee seen or heard from again. 

Such was Victor Jara's power though  his voice will never die. It resonates through the ages, a beacon, that we should not forget, standing strongly against oppression. In his lifetime, the Chilean folksinger Victor Jara became the voice of Chile's dispossessed. He became a symbol for their aspirations of equality and a figure of hope to progressive movements worldwide.

 He has also been remembered not only in Latin America's folk tradition,  but by artists the world over. The Clash, U2, and even 80s popsters Simple Minds who have paid tribute to Jara in their songs.  

And faced with the emnity of the world, and the unending resistance of the Chilean people, Pinochet's distatorship withered away in the late 1980's and with democracy  restored to Chile, Victor Jara, could finally be properly remembered by his compatriots, which  saw  the stadium in which he was murdered being renamed after him  and on 3rd December, 2009, Jara,  at last given a full funeral in Santiago.  

Chile’s junta might have silenced Jara’s voice, but not his music or legacy. He has been remembered not only in Latin America's folk tradition,  but by artists the world over who have paid tribute to Jara in their songs. Only recently James Dean Bradfield, the former leader of the band Manic Street Preachers, dedicated his new album, Even in Exile, to the life of Victor Jara. “If you just focus on his (Victor Jara) death, you ignore the journey, you ignore the ambition, you ignore the songs, and you kind of ignore Chile”, said the Welsh artist in a long and informative interview with BBC Culture. Bradfield discovered the Chilean artist through the music of The Clash and the movie The Missing, but when actually listening to Jara´s songs, he was struck by the way he delivered a political message. Here in Wales there has also been a festival (El Sueno Existe) of music and dance every two years in memory of Jara.  Whose incarceration, mutilation, and brutal murder has come to symbolize the tragic cruelty of the Pinochet regime. 

 His wistful, Manifesto, the last song he wrote, released posthumously, feels like an eerie premonition of his death:

The song is considered his testament, the manifesto of what it means to be a revolutionary artist.

 As tyrants fall away, history remembers the heroes and the martyrs. The military burned many of Jara’s master recordings, but Jara’s wife Joan Jara took some recordings out of the country.

American folksinger Phil Ochs, who had met Jara in Chile, was devastated by the killing.  He helped organize a memorial fundraiser called “An Evening With Salvador Allende” in New York in 1974. The same year, a Soviet astronomer named an asteroid after Jara.

Others paid tribute to Victor Jara, including Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie  who wrote and recorded a tribute to the singer-activist with the song, “Victor Jara,” from the 1976 album Amigo.  Guthrie wrote the music and Adrian Mitchell provided the lyrics with each verse focusing on Jara’s hands that officials would break:-

Victor Jara of Chile
Lived like a shooting star
He fought for the people of Chile
With his songs and his guitar

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

Victor Jara was a peasant
Worked from a few years old
He set upon his father's plough
And watched the earth unfold

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

When the neighbours had a wedding
Or one of their children died
His mother sang all night for them
With Victor by her side

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

He grew to be fighter
Against the people's wrongs
He listened to their grief and joy
And turned them into songs

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

He sang about the copper miners
And those who work the land
He sang about the factory workers
And they knew he was their man

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

He campaigned for Allende
working night and day
He sang take hold of your brother's hand
The future begins today

And his hands were gentle
is hands were strong

The bloody generals seized  Chile
hey arrested Victor  then
They caged him in a stadium
With five thousand frightened men

 And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

Victor stood in the stadium
His voice was brave and strong
He sang for his fellow prisoners
Til the guards cut short his song

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

They broke the bones in both his hands
They beat his lovely head
They tore him with electric shocks
After two days of torture they shot him dead

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

And now the Generals rule Chile
And the British have their thanks
For they rule with Hawkers Hunters
And they rule with Chieftain tanks

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

Victor Jara of Chile
Loved like a shooting star
He fought for thee people of Chile
With his songs and his guitar

And his hands were gentle
His hands were strong

Reprinted from:-
The Apeman Cometh - Adrian Mitchell
Jonathan Cape, 1975

 This ballad was later set to music  by Arlo Guthrie, which you can hear here :-

What was so dangerous about Jara was that his songs were such a integral part of a struggle of millions who were fighting to win their basic human dignity -- the very same people over whom Pinochet ruled with an iron fist until his deposition in 1990. Scottish folk musician  Dick Gaughan said it very frankly: those who say that "music and politics should not be mixed . . . [should] tell that to the CIA and their thugs who murdered Jara because his repertoire didn't suit their interests."

The great band the Clash  mentioned earlier referenced Jara in their song Washington Bullets from their 1980 album Sandinista!

Along with those killed by Pinochet's military rule which finally came to an end  in 1990,  and the thousands murdered,  28,000 people had been tortured. The details of Jara's torture and death were finally revealed by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission created by the new government of Patricio Aylwin. But it was not until July 2018 that eight former military officers were sentenced for killing  Jara,  to just 15 years each. 

 Pinochet  would  be cremated for fear of his grave becoming vandalized. With his remains, the notion of Pinochet as anything other than a ruthless tyrant were scattered to the wind, his  legacy that of a brutal dictator; Jara's,  though is that of  a people's troubadour. Pinochet ground thousands into poverty; Jara sought to lift them up. Pinochet's legacy  reminds us of just how vicious the force of reaction can be.  Victor Jara though is remembered  as an artist, martyr and hero  whose music has and will continue to inspire us to fight against it.  

Though Víctor Jara died a brutal death under a brutal regime, his songs are not all about the horror he witnessed. They are also about the hope and courage of people who stand up to those who use violence to sustain injustice. He said, Song is like the water that washes the stones, the wind which cleans us, like the fire that joins us together and lives within us to make us better people.  

Long after his death his cultural influence still resonates. Here is Jara’s last poem, Estadio Chile/ Chile Stadium which was  smuggled out in the shoe of a friend.

Chile Stadium

In this small part of the city.
Five thousand.
How many of us are there in all
In the cities and in all the country?
Here we are, ten thousand hands
Who plant the seeds and keep the factories running. So much humanity,
hungry, cold, panicked, in pain,
Under moral duress, terrified out of their minds!
Six of ours lost themselves
In the space of the stars.
One man dead, one man beaten worse than I ever thought
It was possible to beat a human being.
The other four wanted to free themselves of all their fear.
One jumped into the void.
Another beat his head against the wall.
But all had the fixed look of death in their eyes.
What fear is provoked by the face of fascism!
They carry out their plans with the utmost precision, not giving a damn about anything.
For them, blood is a medal.
My God, is this the world You created?
Is this the product of your seven days of wonder and labour?
In these four walls, there is nothing but a number that does not move forward.
That gradually, will grow to want death.
But my conscience suddenly awakens me
And I see this tide without a pulse
And I see the pulse of the machines
And the soldiers showing their matronly faces, full of tenderness.
And Mexico, Cuba, and the world.
Let them cry out this ignominy!
We are ten thousand fewer hands that do not produce.
How many of us are ther throughout our homeland?
The blood of our comrade the President pulses with more strength than bombs and machine guns.
And so, too, will our fist again beat.
Song, how hard it is sing you when I have to sing in fear.
Fear like that in which I live, and from which I am dying, fear.
Of seeing myself amidst so much, and so many endless moments
In which silence and outcry are the tragets of this song.
What have never seen before, what I have felt and what I feel now
Will make the moment break out...

Christy Moore with Declan Sinnott - Victor Jara

I think I am passionate because I am full of hope.
—Víctor Jara