Beunaventarra Durruti laid to rest (14/7/1889 - 20/11/1936)

 

With forty years of  fighting, of exile, of jailings, of living underground, of strikes, and of insurrection, Beunaventura Durutti, the  legendary Spanish revolutionary and Anarchist lived many lives. Uncompromising, intransigent revolutionary, he travelled a long road from rebellious young worker to the man who refused all bureacratic positions, honours, awards, and who at death was mourned by millions of women and men. Durutti believed and lived his belief that revolution and freedom were inseperable. 

He was born the son of a railway worker on July 14^th 1896 in Leon, a city in central Spain. Aged 14 he leaves school to become a trainee mechanic in the railway yard. Like his father, he joins the socialist UGT union. He takes an active part in the strike of August 1917 when the government overturned an agreement between the union and the employers. This soon became a general strike throughout the area. The government brought in the army and within three days the strikers had been crushed. The troops behaved with extreme brutality, killing 70 and wounding 500 workers. 2,000 strikers were jailed. 

Durruti managed to escape to France, where he came into contact with exiled anarchists, whose influence led to him joining the anarchist CNT union upon his return in January 1919. He joins the fight against dictatorial employers in the Asturian mines and is arrested for the first time in March 1919; he escapes and over the next decade and a half he throws himself into activity for the CNT and for the anarchist movement. 

These years see him involved in several strikes and being forced into exile. Unwittingly the Spanish government ‘exported’ rebellion, as Durruti and his close friend Francisco Ascaso happily joined the struggle for freedom wherever they ended up, in both Europe and Latin America. 

The Spanish monarchy fell in 1931 and Durruti moved to Barcelona; accompanied by his French companion Emilienne, pregnant with their daughter Colette. He joined the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), a specifically anarchist organization, and together with other militants they form the ‘Nosotros’ group. These were members within the CNT of a radical tendency that harboured no illusions with respect to the recently proclaimed Republic, maintaining that the moment was ripe for continued progress towards a social revolution. 

With the electoral victory by the liberal/reformist Popular Front in February 1936, Left and Right were on a collision course, initiated very rapidly by Franco’s military rebellion on July 19^th 1936. The CNT and the FAI confronted the army with courage, organization and mass mobilizations. 

They triumphed in much of Spain despite the fascist superiority in weapons and resources. The anarchist contribution was decisive in resisting the fascists throughout the country and in Catalonia defeated the rebels singlehandedly, Durruti being one of the boldest fighters in this battle.

 Jose Buenaventura Durruti, always fought for the poor and downtrodden, and against the State, whether of the social democratic, fascist or marxist varieties When Spanish fascists attempted to overthrow  the  Republican government on July 19th 1936, Durruti and other comrades helped put down the uprising in Barclenoa. He became a member of  the Anti fascist Militia Committee and led the "Durruti" Column an almost  mythical  group of CNT militants to the  Zaragoza front. The Durruti column was able to liberate  much of Aragon. He  was an inspiration to many as a partisan of the Spanish people with an internationalist vision, who for him personally revolutionary thought and action went hand in hand. 

In 1936, after the liberation of Aragon from Franco's forces, Durruti was interviewed by Pierre van Paasen of the Toronto Star. In this interview he gives his views on Fascism, government and social revolution despite the fact that his remarks have only been reported in English - and were never actually written down by him in his native Spanish, well worth reading and can be found here https://libcom.org/history/buenaventura-durruti-interview-pierre-van-paasen 

 On 14th November Durutti arrived in Madrid at the height of the  civil war from Aragon,by air with 5,000 men( numbers vary according to different accounts). The column had to go by train as all the railway tracks had been bombed. He went  to the frontline on the 16th.

Tragically Durruti on the 19th November  1936, he was shot dead  by a sniper, receiving a bullet to his chest, as he rallied his militia  to continue their resistance after days of fighting without respite. he died the following day, at the age of 40.  His death was a tragedy for all free thinkers, in the fight against fascist tyranny. His death was also a turning point in the Spanish Revolution and one of the events that lead to the defeat of the revolution. 

When his body was returned to Barcelona  over 500,000  people took to the streets on this day November 22 1936  to follow his funeral procession, the  biggest funeral in Spanish history, a tribute to the place he played in peoples hearts, his coffin draped with the familiar diagonal red and black flag. A hero to the Spanish working class ,and today  Durruti remains a lasting icon of anarchism, both in Spain and around the world, a man who.was determined to leave this world a better place than when he entered it. With the rise again of the far right, no better  time than to remember this inspirational man who died fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War.

Rare footage of Beunaventura Durutti's funeral.

This book is his definite biography :

https://libcom.org/library/durruti-spanish-revolution

 Further reading:-

Daniel Guerin - No Gods, no masters; 2006

Durruti - The people Armed - Abel Paz

   "  We  have always  loved in slums and holes in the wall. We will  know how to accommodate ourselves for  time. For you must not forget we can also build. It is we who built the palaces and cities here in Spain and America and everywhere. We the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the  least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is  not the slightest  doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing every minute."-  Beunaventarra Durruti

Spain, Aragon , 1936

sleep furiously

 

I have been rediscovering an award winning documentary from 2007  called Sleep Furiously a quietly  melancholic film set in a small hill- farming community in Trefeurig, mid Wales, Ceredigion, 10 miles from Aberystwyth.

A place where director Gideon Koppel's parents, both refugees  who escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930's  found a home. It's a landscape that's changing rapidly as small scale agriculture, which characterised the area, is disappearing  and the last generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out.

The title of the film is a reference to social critic and activist Noam Chomsky’s sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”.This phrase was given as an example of a grammatically correct, but meaningless, linguistic construction. Chomsky’s intention was that people would recognise that the language we use cannot be glibly  reduced to tidy formulas. Ironically, it has been proven that the phrase he chose to illustrate his point can actually make perfect sense given the right context.

Koppel manages to bring meaning and poetry to the line. With a score composed by revered electronic musician  Richard D James aka the Aphex Twin. Koppell has written that music was a vital component from the outset. It should be noted that Richard James  admired the film but wasn't too enamored about the way his music was edited.  The abrupt cuts to Avril 14th, a track that is used as a repeated refrain throughout, are made because Koppel didn't want the music to be used as conventional soundtrack but needed it to denote “an accentuation of the emotional dynamics of drama”. He justifies the crude editing of the music by saying that  “throughout the film we are asking the audience to listen to the silence”. The lilting strains of Aphex Twins music works wonders on the soundtrack, as does the abrupt consistently surprising diting, which efforlessly transports the viewer from place to place, life to life.

The filmmaker spent nearly nine months back in his homestead where he was bought up observing the rituals and traditions of the inhabitants with his Super 16mm camera, although this is far from being a conventional documentary study: there’s no voice-over, there are very few ‘characters’, and the connections between the vignettes of everyday existence are rarely spelt out, the film simply asks audiences to observe and draw their own conclusions from the images of ordinary lives and the natural landscape.   .

The two most significant human figures turn out to be Koppel’s widowed mother Pip, and the kindly mobile librarian John Jones. A tiny, physically resilient individual, the animal loving Pip seems completely unaffected by the presence of the camera, whilst the monthly visit of John’s bright yellow van is a reminder of how important books can be in establishing a sense of community. Koppel frequently drops in on unnamed people who are absorbed by their work, whether it’s teaching, baking, sheep shearing, milking, repairing vehicles, ploughing, haymaking, or cabinet-making, ways of life that are slowly being crushed by the wheels of progress. And he juxtaposes these images of human toil with shots of the magnificent surrounding countryside, captured in different seasons, lights and weather conditions, showing the sheer beauty of my country.

Following the progress of a mobile library gives a framework to the film, this van is literally a vehicle of stories that takes us on a profound and poetic journey into a world of endings and beginnings, a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.If the film can be said to have a message or purpose it is to remind us how the notion of  ‘community’ should be viewed as something that affects people’s daily lives rather than as a political concept. One issue that unites the community of Trefeurig is the threat to the future of the village’s primary school and we see a meeting where the locals criticise the council’s short-sighted decision to close the school.

Change is inevitable but does not always bring improvements, something neatly encapsulated in a witty poem about replacing a wooden signpost with a metal one. The new one is sturdier yet proves unreliable whenever there’s a strong wind. Wood may rot but a least the indicators remain in the correct position.

The spectre of modernity is always present and means that you can’t watch this film without the sad reflection that the inevitable march of progress will sweep away the old traditions and values depicted.

Sleep Furiously preserves for posterity moments and memories that will fade in time. The lines that appear on-screen near the end of the film remind us of the limitations of language when it comes to articulating what this means in human terms : “It is only when I sense the end of things that I find the courage to speak. The courage, but not the words.”

Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke , Koppel speaks, affectionately and lyrically, through his images, allowing us to see a disappearing word anew. The film never rests on teeness or sarcasm and as a result produces something altogether deeper, moodier, more compassionate and joyful. I would strongly recommend buying the DVD of this beautiful, moving patchwork quilt of a film that  has been so lovingly stitched .The DVD also includes a one hour pilot film called ‘A Sketchbook for The Library Van’ where, in a series of straight to camera monologues, the people talk about their lives. As in the main feature, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. A rich  artistic exploration of the dwindling flame of rural life, a profound moving  journey into a world of endings and beginnings. A film that has been described as " lyrical film making at its best". Avoid amazon it can be found in more ethical places.

By taking things deeper than face value and looking for alternative interpretations we can understand the world better around us. Not everyone views the world from the same lens, and something that may have no meaning to us, such as the sentence "colorless  green ideas sleep furiously." could have significance to someone who is able to look through a different lens. It is for me, what makes this wold we inhabit ever so richer. While winter reigns and the earth reposes allow colourless green ideas to sleep furiously.

sleep furiously film trailer

Happy birthday Aneurin Bevan (15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960)

Aneurin Bevan , was born on the 15 November 1897 at 32 Charles Street, Tredegar into  a woking  class family.. It was one of a long row of four- roomed miners' cottages. He was the sixth of ten children born to Phoebe and David Bevan a coal miner of whom  only eight survived infancy and only six to adulthood.

More commonly known as Nye, he was a Welsh Labour party politician who served as Minister of Health from 1945 to 1951. He began  his own working life down the mines working with his father. as a collier's helper at the age of 13.

 Although a strong boy he found the work exhausting: "Down below are the sudden perils - runaway trains hurtling down the lines; frightened ponies kicking and mauling in the dark, explosions, fire, drowning. And if he escapes? There is a tiredness which leads to stupor, which forms a dull persistent background to your consciousness. This is the tiredness of the miner, particularly of the boy of fourteen or fifteen who falls asleep over his meals and wakes up hours later to find that his evening has gone and there is nothing before him but bed and another day's wrestling with inert matter."

Bevan developed a love of reading. He joined the Tredegar Workmen's Institute Library where he read the works of H.G Wells, Jack London, James Connolly https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2017/05/james-connolly-working-class-hero.html  and Eugene V. Debs https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2020/10/eugene-v-debs-5-11-1855-2010-26-working.html. He was also a keen attender at Plebs League  classes given fortnightly at Blackwood by Sydney Jones.

Bevan also joined the Tredegar branch of the South Wales Miners; Federation soon became a union activist and by the time he was nineteen he was chairman of his Miners' Lodge. Bevan became a well-known local orator and was seen by his employers, the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, as a revolutionary. The manager of the colliery found an excuse to get him sacked. However, with the support of the Miners' Federation, the case was judged as one of victimization and the company was forced to re-employ him.

Bevan was also deeply influenced by the teachings of Noah Ablett, the leader of South Wales syndicalism. Ablett was an evangelist of aggressive Marxism who  produced a pamphlet,The Miners' Next Step (1912). Ablett called for a new type of unionism: "A united industrial organisation, which, recognising the war of interest between workers and employers, is constructed on fighting lines, allowing for a rapid and simultaneous stoppage of wheels throughout the mining industry."  Bevan also began attending the Tredegar branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Like most members of the ILP, Bevan was an opponent of Britain's involvement in the First World War. In 1917 he was called up under the government's Conscription Act.  He refused to join the British Army and claimed he would choose his own enemy and his own battlefield and would not let the Government do it for him. He was eventually rejected on health grounds as he suffered from nystagmus. Over the next two years Bevan was active in anti-war campaigns across Wales.

After his mining trade union  sponsored him to study politics, history and economics in London, in 1919 Bevan  discovered Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, solidifying his left-wing political outlook. He would soon become politically active and became a lifelong champion of social justice, the rights of working people and democratic socialism. Reciting long passages by William Morris gradually began to conquer a stammer that he had  had since he was a child.

Bevan remained in the college  until 1921, Not one of the most diligent students he found it difficult to follow an organised routine, including getting up for breakfast. Yet after overcoming his stammer, he went on to become one of the greatest orators of the 20th century, defending the rights of working people and the cause of socialism.

When Bevan returned home in 1921 the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company refused to re-employ him. For the next three years he was without work. During this time Bevan worked as an unpaid adviser to people living in Tredegar. Bevan considered emigrating to Australia but in 1924 he found work at Bedwellty Colliery. But after ten months the owners decided to close the colliery down and Bevan had to endure another year of unemployment. In February 1925, Bevan's father died of pneumoconiosis in his arms.

In 1926 he was appointed a union official just as the General Strike came into force.The strike brought Bevan to the fore as a leader of the South Wales miners, and he orchestrated the distribution of strike pay in Tredegar during the six months lock-out the miners endured after the industrial action. He gave his full support to  A.J Cook general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2020/11/ajcook-militant-miner-and-trade-union.html

He became a councillor on Monmouth County Council in 1928, then a member of parliament for Ebbw Vale in 1929. His maiden speech was an attack on Winston Churchill, who he saw as the main enemy of the miners.
Bevan married a fellow left-wing Labour MP, Jennie Lee, in 1934 and together they campaigned to support the Socialists in the Spanish Civil War against France as well as setting up the Committee for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism. In 1936 a group of prominent left-wingers including Bevan set up a weekly Socialist newspaper, The Tribune, followed by trips around Spain during the Civil War. He famously declared ' Fascism is not itself a new order of society. It is the future  refusing to be  born."

His activism and agitation led to his brief expulsion from Labour in 1939, but he agreed to toe the party line and was readmitted.Despite opposing Churchill in mining matters, Bevan argued that he should replace Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. But once Winston Churchill was in power, Bevan criticised the wartime reductions in civil liberties

A colourful public personality and a brilliant spontaneous debater, he had great personal charm but was sometimes so rude to opponents that Churchill once called him a “merchant of discourtesy”. However Bevan always stood up for the underdog, and was a voice for the unemployed in the period between the two world wars when joblessness was a major domestic political issue. He was convinced that poverty was not the fault of individuals but that of the government’s inefficient and unfair distribution of the country’s resources. He remembered how people he knew were treated without dignity when they fell upon hard times, and his anger would often boil over.  

In 1945,the general election saw Labour returned comprehensively to government. Bevan  saw this post-war victory as a chance to implement radical social reform, and on 5 July 1948, while he was minister for health the National Health Service was created,  his most famous accomplishment that saw the provision of  medical care being introduced,  free at the point of need to everyone, regardless of wealth." .In 1945 Nye said ":We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, and now we are the builders,"

The initial idea came from the Socialist Medical Association, the president of which, Dr Somerville  Hastings,successfully proposed a resolution during the Labour Party Conference suggesting it should commit itself to establish a State Health Service. While is was a first feature of the Labour platform at the time, the proposal captured cross-party support in 1942. Then the Beveridge report of 1943 set the seeds and blueprints  for the creation  of the NHS  and the welfare state. Henry Willink, Conservative MP and Health Minister in 1944 circulated the A National Health Service white paper in Parliament. Aneurin Bevan ultimately took on the campaign to establish the NHS in 1945 and proposed the final concept in 1947. 

In his speech in Manchester on the night before the NHS was established, he made his infamous remark about the Tories being “lower than vermin”. In the next sentence he referred back to the governments of the inter-war years: “They condemned millions of people to semi-starvation.”  

He thought that it should be the clear responsibility of government to provide comprehensive healthcare; consistent high-quality healthcare across the country would be best delivered by nationalisation of the hospitals.

Bevan's 1949 Housing Act removed the restrictions of public housing to the ' working classes' so that council housing was available to all. For a short time, council  housing was a genuine alternative to private renting or ownership, and was built in large quantities. More council houses were built in Wales between 1945 and 1951 than have been built since 1975. 

Bevan’s contribution to the quality of council housing is less well recognised.  He insisted on good design, increased space standards and the provision of an upstairs and downstairs w.c. – all revolutionary at a time when two-thirds of houses in the Rhondda valleys did not have an indoor toilet.  It is no accident that post-war council housing remains some of the most well-built and popular even 60 years on.

 Bevan became Minister of Labour in January 1951 but resigned when Clement Attlee’s Government proposed the introduction of prescription charges for dental and vision care and decided to transfer funds from the National Insurance Fund to pay for rearmament. 

A well-read man, literary references were a feature of his speeches as a politician. Speaking out against NHS charges when he resigned from the Labour government, he referenced Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, declaring, “The health service will be like Lavinia – all the limbs cut off and eventually her tongue cut out too.” 

 In the years that followed, he was often the centre of controversy within the Labour Party and involuntarily gave his name to the party’s radical wing, ‘the Bevanites’. Nye's autobiography, In Place of Fear  came out in 1952. He would lead the left wing of the Labour Party from the back benches until he ran for the leadership of the party in 1955. He was defeated by Hugh Gaitskell, but was appointed Shadow Colonial Secretary and later Shadow Foreign Secretary. 

In 1959 he was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, but  he was a very ill man suffering from terminal cancer. He held the post for a year until his death on July 6, 1960, at the age of 62 having made his reputation as father of the NHS.

Since 1960 he has been all but canonised, raised above criticism as the soul and conscience of the old Labour Party, and a source of emotional inspiration and legitimising quotations, while successive Labour leaders from Harold Wilson to Neil Kinnock have fallen over themselves to assert their claim to his mantle. 

Yes he courted  controversy during his political life with his acerbic comments about his political opponents and his views  on nuclear disarmament and devolution, which he opposed, and I wonder what  he would thing of the gathering momentum  for independence here in Wales. Oh and in his private life was known for his enjoyment of the good life. Despite some faults Nye Bevan hated the  Tories with a passion, and helped make the biggest improvements to the quality of life for the average British person on living memory, so I respect him for this. There can be no greater achievement than  better health and better housing for ordinary people. Bevanite remains a meaningful term, still today invoking a Labour  vision of a better and more equal society. Such a shame that it's current leader Keir Starmer seems to have forgotten and abandoned these principles. Who did he think Nye was talking about  when he said " The right wing of the Labour Party would rather see it fall into perpetual decline than abide by its democratic decisions ?" 

On the Tories famously said the following ,in a speech he made on July 4, 1948, " So far as I am concerned they are lower  than vermin." he went on. "They condemned millions of people to semi-starvation, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying, do not listen to the seduction of Lord Woolton.They have not changed, or if they have are slightly worse.,"

Nye didn't come to that conclusion because he was a mean spirited Welshman, he'd grown up in a world shaped by the Tories from cradle to grave. To him a tale of  neglect and abandonment and he knew exactly who was to blame.

I am reminded  that my quality of life owe more to a dead man than a whole Tory Government ever could. Everyone who has ever benefitted from NHS treatment should be grateful to this true working class hero and continue to heed his warning about "the art of Tory politics." Over seventy years on the NHS remains one of the most treasured services in the country.  

Because of Nye we can be proud that people in Britain do not live in fear of medical bills they cannot afford. We can congratulate those many thousands of health professionals who have given brilliant service to the sick and pushed so wide the boundaries of medical care. We can celebrate longer life and healthier living. So thank you Nye Bevan, happy birthday, to this man of deep  passion and principle.Now is the time to carry his great legacy forward. We should continue to defend the NHS with all our might..As Nye said " It will last as long as there are folk  with the faith to fight for it"

What I most admire about Bevan was his bravery, political and moral. Like every human being, not everything he did was right, not every position was popular, but what he did have was absolute conviction. We need more Nye Bevans on the green benches of Westminster. Sadly, that prospect is further away than ever.

 "If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution!" - Aneurin Bevan 

Nye Bevan speaks about the National Health Service 

Durability

It''s been a bloody tough year 

But like comets we can soar,

With the smile of love

On our many diverse faces,

As winter's cloak arrives

Try to forget about frustration.

As condolence trends worldwide

People say goodbye over and over,

There are still moments to grasp

To give the past a kick into touch,

Surging ever forward, beyond suffering

Collectively walking on from devastation.

Abandon thoughts of senseless guilt

Carry on moving, through life's heady paths,

Keep on conning, unwitting the devil

Eyes ablaze, following future unwritten,

Beyond the rising stench of fascism

The many obstacles of negativism.

There are still many safe spaces

Where voices can release fastidious dream;

As the gleaming sun sets in the mornings

Beyond the vortex, energy does not die, 

Across the fields, and the valleys and the oceans

With tenaciousness, reassess affinity with aspiration.

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ogoni activists executed for nonviolent resistance to destruction of Indigenous lands.

 

 

On 10 Nov 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ogoni indigenous author and activist, was executed by hanging by the military government of Sani Abacha in Nigeriahanged by the Nigerian state for daring to resist Royal Dutch Shell, alongside eight other Ogoni activists Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine. They had organised nonviolent resistance to destruction of Indigenous lands. Their deaths sparked an international outcry that lingers to this day.

Shell had been waging a lethal ecological war in Ogoni land since 1958 when it first discovered oil reserves in the area. The oil exploitation has been concentrated in the coastal plains terraces to the north of the Niger delta, which is home to the Ogoni people. 

More than 900 million barrels of oil of estimated value 30 billion US dollars have been mined from the area since the discovery of the oil reserves. 96 oil wells connected five oilfields which were mostly operated by Shell and where gas has been flared twenty-four hours a day for more than thirty-five years. Between 1976 and 1991, over two million barrels of oil polluted Ogoniland in 2,976 separate oil spills. 

In 1990 the Ogoni began to powerfully resist the destructive intervention of the oil industry and the Nigerian dictatorship in their home, where despite of the stupendous oil and gas wealth of their land, they were confronted with environmental degradation, political marginalization, economic strangulations particularly marked by an unemployment rate of over 70 percent, slavery, and possible extinction. What became known to as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), with Ken Saro Wiwa as its leader, they issued the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR) in which they demanded ; the right to self-determination as a distinct people in the Nigerian Federation;

adequate representation as of right in all Nigerian national institutions;

 the right to use a fair proportion of the economic resources of their land for their development and  the right to control their environment.

 This was followed by the largest peaceful protest against a single corporation in to this date, in which 300,000 Ogoni people marched against Shell’s ecological war in January 1993. 

The protest was followed by an extremely violent crack down on the movement by the Nigerian government and Shell whereby over 1,000 Ogoni people were murdered and 30,000 people displaced.

Ken Saro Wiwa was born in 1941 as the eldest son in an Ogoni family. After leaving university he pursued an academic career and became the most outspoken environmental activist in the Niger Delta decrying the devastation of the land, air and water at the hands of rich corporations and complicit governmental authorities.

He was a writer, artist, journalist, and television producer and became the President of the Association of Nigerian Authors  for three years until 1991, when he decided to devote himself entirely to the nonviolent struggles of his fellow Ogoni people.

He chose to fight using nonviolent resistance techniques such as poetry, prose and peaceful protest. Saro-Wiwa was able to mobilize the people of the Niger Delta to push for adequate representation and the preservation of their homeland, which was continuing to be destroyed by oil exploitation.

In 1994, Saro-Wiwa was given the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize”, along with three other environmental activists. The following year he was given the Goldman Environmental Foundation of California prize.  It didn’t take long before the Nigerian government felt their economic interest in oil exploitation was being threatened by the growing movement of Saro-Wiwa and his followers.

In May 1994, a meeting took place which broke out in violent confrontation, and four of the elders were killed. Even though Saro-Wiwa had been barred from attending the meeting, he and 8 other Ogoni leaders were held responsible and arrested. A trial took place, though independent and international witnesses claim the various circumstances surrounding the proceedings strayed from the laws outlined in the Nigerian Constitution and international human rights law. Accused of murder and without legal counsel nor right to appeal, Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 Ogoni leaders, were hanged on November 10th, 1995.

In the years that  have passed since then  despite continueous protests, no justice has been served to the Ogoni people and neocolonial violence persists! While oil production has ceased, pipelines operated by Shell still traverse the land, creeks and waterways. Leakages – caused by corroded pipelines as well as bandits – mean that the area is still plagued by oil spills to this date. The Nigerian Government officially launched a clean-up programme in Ogoniland  however, communities are still waiting for emergency measures to be taken and clean-up to begin. 

While Shell admitted that its oil operations have polluted large areas of the Niger Delta it resists charges of complicity in human rights abuses. However, confidential memos, faxes, witness statements and other documents released in 2009, clearly showed the company regularly paid the military to stop the peaceful protest movement MOSOP against the pollution, even helping to plan raids on villages suspected of opposing the company.

To this day, despite facts that tie Shell to their murders and to the continuing abuse of the Ogoni people, Shell still denies culpability and continues to drill for oil in Nigeria.Moreover, Shell continues to undermine democracy and feed into corruption in the country by engaging in rigged trade deals that served business’ interests rather than the welfare of the people. "Shell must not get away with this," said Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria."We will continue to fight until every last trace of oil is removed from Ogoniland."

Ken Saro-Wiwa once said: "I am more dangerous dead" — a quote that remains true all  these years after his death. Activists in Nigeria  continue to  expose economic inequality and  at the same time, both challenge not only commitments to corporate responsibility, but also the fundamentals of corporate purpose.This day will ever be remembered now and always as a day, the innocent blood of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his fellow activists were shed.

"Dance your anger and your joys,
Dance the military guns to silence,
Dance oppression and injustice to death,
Dance my people,
For we have seen tomorrow
And there is an Ogoni star in the sky."

— Ken Saro Wiwa - Hung for opposing Shell

Coronavirus: Insights from Albert Camus' 'The Plague'

 

 

 Much has been written about my hero French- Algerian existentialist philosopher Albert Camus ,   https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/05/albert-camus-71113-4160-smoking.html admirer of revolutionary syndicalism, anarchists, conscientious objectors, and all manner of rebels. Standing against totalitarianism in the form of Stalinism and fascism, and was never afraid to speak his truth.
Born in extreme poverty, on the 7th of November 1913 in French occupied Algeria, to an illiterate mother who was partially deaf, who lost his father in the horror that was  World War 1, and despite tremendous disadvantages by the age of 44 he was collecting the Nobel Prize for literature.

His acclaimed novel, La Peste, translated as The Plague in English, published in 1947  is currently flying off the bookshelves  amidst  the current coronavirus pandemic, a novel that  evokes so  vividly and on such an epic scale the story we are currently living every day. 

The book  often seen  as an allegory for the French resistance movement, a tale of valiant though impossible struggle. against the dark forces of fascism, but beyond this connection , Camus tale written in sparse, haunting prose –goes beyond this and  takes us through a catastrophic outbreak of a contagious disease in the lightly fictionalised town of Oran on the Algerian coast, as seen through the eyes of the novel’s hero,  Doctor Rieux.

While Bernard Rieux is The Plague’s central protagonist, and later revealed to be its narrator too, Camus’ beliefs are most explicitly delivered through the character of Jean Tarrou. A former communist revolutionary from France who is whiling away his disillusionment in Oran when the quarantine is announced, Tarrou aids Rieux by organizing volunteer sanitation workers to fight the disease’s spread. The novel advances through the two characters’ perspectives, via Rieux’s recollections and Tarrou’s diary entries, sections of which read as if they are a continuation of Camus’ philosophical work on absurdism—the desire to find meaning in a meaningless world: 

" How contrive not to waste one’s time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one’s days on an uneasy chair in a dentist’s waiting-room; by remaining on one’s balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language one doesn’t know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth."

Tarrou also directly addresses the plague as a metaphor for something much larger and longer-standing than the epidemic. One evening, sitting on a terrace overlooking the city to the sea, Tarrou tells Rieux:

"I had plague already, long before I came to this town and encountered it here. Which is tantamount to saying I’m like everybody else. Only there are some people who don’t know it, or feel at ease in that condition." 

Tarrou goes on to clarify that he isn’t referring to the bubonic plague, but to the condoing of murder—which amounts to the same thing: death. He saw this “plague” in his father, who was a prosecutor arguing for executing criminals, just as he saw it in some of his communist comrades with an authoritarian bend, who claimed to be fighting for a better world, but also committed cold-blooded murder. From this disillusionment comes Tarrou’s only certainty:

:"All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.” And so Tarrou chose to throw his lot in with the people of Oran, a strange city where he knew no one, helping them fight off a disease that ultimately claims his life."

As the novel opens, an air of eerie normality reigns. ‘Oran is an ordinary town,’ writes Camus, ‘nothing more than a French Prefecture on the coast of Algeria.’ The inhabitants lead busy money-centered and denatured lives; they barely notice that they are alive.But with the first series of deaths displaying the same curious symptoms, town officials squabble about whether or not the deaths qualify as an “epidemic” and how seriously they should take it. They nervously note how poorly prepared they are with the necessary equipment to treat large numbers of stricken people. Officials advise locals to “practice extreme cleanliness” while privately worrying about how many hospital beds are available. The number of deaths rise,  Oran officials decide it is time to close the town. Businesses are shuttered. Daily deaths are counted. Protective masks are sought. Fake antidotes are advertised. Panic and fear is spread “This here damned disease,” one character says, “even them who haven’t got it can’t think of anything else.” Most of all is the waiting.

In order to write the book, Camus immersed himself in the history of plagues. He read books on the Black Death that killed 50 million people in Europe in the 14th century; the Italian plague of 1629 that killed 280,000 people across the plains of Lombardy and the Veneto, the great plague of London of 1665 as well as plagues that ravaged cities on China’s eastern seaboard during the 18th and 19th centuries. In March 1942, Camus told the writer André Malraux that he wanted to understand what plague meant for humanity: ‘Said like that it might sound strange,’ he added, ‘but this subject seems so natural to me.’

Camus wrotes: ‘Pestilence is so common, there have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. When war breaks out people say: ‘It won’t last, it’s too stupid.’ And war is certainly utterly senseless, but that doesn’t prevent it from starting again and bloody again, like a pestilence that sadly has no ending . an absurdity that to this day some deny, in a continued irrational way. 

Camus argued that there is in most of us a moral plaque  as equally debilitating  as the physical variety, The plague is our moral indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others,including the suffering  of others, including the suffering that we may not directly endorse, but which occurs under our implied consent to the current social contract, Describing very well a society  where the policies of our leaders leaves people dying in the Mediterranean sea, as they failed in their search for a better life. the plague is our moral indifference.

Camus saw no dichotomy between the emptiness that lies at the center of immorality  of politics and in the tragedy of morality, but in end offered solace as both we and the people of Oran  collectively mourn the many deaths  and keep a wary eye to the future. What he still offers is a meaningful path forwards out of the paths of darkness, emphasising his faith in humanity and our willingness to face these burdens together. 

The theme of love is also omnipresent and Camus explores it most profoundly through the character of Rambert. A young Parisian journalist trapped in Oran, Rambert initially attempts to escape from the plague-ridden town. Invoking deep love for his wife back in Paris, Rambert tries to justify his decision to Rieux and Tarrou. Rambert insists that his desire to escape isn’t borne out of a lack of courage; previously he’d risked his life fighting in the Spanish Civil War. But what the war taught him is that courage and conviction cannot be abstract idea. Dying for an idea, he claims, is heroism, and it is heroism in which he no longer believes. For Rambert, life is about “living and dying for what one loves,” and his concrete love for his wife, he insists is what really matters.

The doctor Rieux counters that “man” — whether in fighting war or fighting disease — isn’t merely an abstract idea and that his own actions aren’t about heroism, but common decency and doing one’s job. But in any case, Rieux reassures Rambert that his decision to leave is “absolutely right and proper”. Rambert insists he’s putting love first and that it’s easier for Rieux and Tarrou to stay and fight the plague because they have nothing to lose. Assuming that both of them are alone, Rambert claims it’s easier “to be on the side of angels”. But when his efforts to flee are delayed and he’s forced to witness the suffering brought on by the pestilence, Rambert is forced to re-think his position. His views are further challenged when Rambert discovers that Rieux is married and that his wife is in quarantine with plague. Upon learning of Rieux’s wife, Rambert gives up his efforts to escape and courageously volunteers to help the fight. In short, Rieux becomes empathetic. And empathy is really a form of love for humanity. So in the end it’s not a question of putting love first, ahead of some other cause, but about embracing a broader and deeper form of love that encompasses yet transcends Rieux’s love for his wife.

The theme of justice also runs throughout the novel. The plague is indiscriminate. Rambert seems to be rewarded for his courage and is eventually reunited with his wife. Yet at the same time, an innocent child dies. Tarrou, despite great courage, also succumbs to the plague, as does Rieux’s wife. Grand, a man who wastes his life revising the first line of his novel, miraculously recovers. These examples highlight the absurdity of existence and the fact that we cannot rely on the benevolence of some external force to ensure just outcomes. For justice to be served, we must take matters into our own hands. Thanks to the brave actions of a small group of people, the plague is eventually defeated. And at the end of the novel Cottard, an opportunist that had profited from shady dealings during the outbreak, feels the wrath of justice at the hands of a mob of frustrated townspeople.

" On this earth there are pestilences and there are victims " Tarrou surmised , " and it's up to us so far as possble, not to join forces with the pestilences" And like Rieux we must realise the importance of courage, which represents the difference between being swallowed  up by the plaque or prevailing over it. Keep safe, don't give up hope, much love.Thank you Albert Camus

 

 Coronavirus: Insights from Albert Camus' 'The Plague'

 

 

 

Remember, remember, the fifth of November Gunpowder treason and plot

 

 

It's that time of year again - when  Britons commemorate the failure of the November 1605 Gunpowder Plot by a gang of Roman Catholic activists led by Warwickshire-born Robert Catesby.

In the 1600's Catholics had to practice their religion in secret. There were even fines for people who didn't attend the Protestant church on Sunday or on holy days.When Protestant King James I acceded to the throne, English Catholics had hoped that the persecution they had felt for over 45 years under Queen Elizabeth I would finally end, and they would be granted the freedom to practice their religion. When this didn't transpire, a group of conspirators resolved to assassinate the King and his ministers by blowing up the Palace of Westminster during the state opening of Parliament.

 Guido Fawkes was born Guy Fawkes on the 13th April 1570 in York. It is recorded that Fawkes lost his father at the age of eight; his mother then remarried a Catholic man, with Fawkes later converting to Catholicism in a country increasingly abhorrent of his new faith. For about 10 years, Fawkes fought abroad for the Catholic cause in Europe in the Eighty Years’War and it is here that Fawkes adopted the Italian name Guido for the remainder of his life
Fawkes returned to England with fellow English Catholic Thomas Wintour, who introduced him to Robert Catesby. There were 13 conspirators all together, Guy Fawkes, Thomas Bates, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Christopher and John Wright, Francis Tresham, Everard Digby, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, Hugh Owen, John Grant with Robert Catesby being the true ringleader.

Guy (Guido) Fawkes) from York, and his fellow conspirators, having rented out a house close to the Houses of Parliament, managed to smuggle 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar of the House of Lords - enough to completely destroy the building.

However, the scheme began to unravel when an anonymous letter was sent to William Parker, the 4th Baron Monteagle, warning him to avoid the House of Lords. The letter (which could well have been sent by Lord Monteagle's brother-in-law Francis Tresham), was made public and this led to a search of Westminster Palace in the early hours of November 5.

Explosive expert Fawkes, who had been left in the cellars to set off the fuse, was caught when a group of guards discovered him at the last moment.This is also why he became the most well known out of all the plotters.

Lord Monteagle for his treachery was rewarded with £500 plus £200 worth of lands for his service in protecting the crown.

Defiant when captured, Fawkes remained resolute and unrepentant for his actions. He endured three days of torture in the Towers of London, from the 6th to the 9th, until he fully revealed the names of his co-conspirators and their plan – by this time around half of his colleagues managed to evade capture. Fawkes, along with the other conspirators, were sentenced to be hung on the 31st January 1606 and quartered thereafter for high treason.This was the traditional death for traitors in 17th- century England.  

As he awaited his punishment on the gallows, Fawkes leapt off the platform to avoid having his testicles cut off, his stomach opened and his guts spilled out before his eyes.

Mercifully for him, he died from a broken neck but his body was subsequently quartered, and his remains were sent to "the four corners of the kingdom" as a warning to others.

The other men received the full measure of their sentences as a warning to other potential rebels.
Fawkes at the time said his only regret was that the plot was foiled. When he was asked why he was found with so much gunpowder he said “to blow you Scotch beggars back to your native mountains.”
 Despite attempting to kill the new king of England, James I apparently praised Fawkes for being dedicated to his cause and for having a ' Roman resolution.'

His capture has since been illustrated in countless schoolbooks, novels, popular works of history, and movies: a tall, bearded figure in boots, dark cloak, and dark, wide-brimmed hat. It is his figure that is still burned in effigy on bonfires around England every year on November 5.  A  much  maligned individual , but due to a deep undertow of popular discontentment has since become a symbol of resistance. Possibly down to Alan Moore and his brilliant comic creation in V for Vendettas, the main character ‘V’ wears the ‘Guy Fawkes mask’ to hide his identity and instead promotes the idea of anarchy and freedom. The film concludes with him –successfully- blowing up Parliament. Across the world protestors started  wearing the stylised masks of Fawkes, some wore his mask as a symbol of their contempt for authority and government, reclaiming Guido as a symbol of hope and resistance.serving both a symbolic purpose as the spirit of rebellion, and a practical one in helping to hide the faces and identities of protesters from police. In this context, Guy Fawkes is a hero who fought, and won, against overwhelming odds..

Following the failed plot, Parliament declared November 5th a national day of thanksgiving, and the first celebration of it took place in 1606. .Largely secular , the annual celebrations became a focus of anti-Catholic feeling. The original effigy burnt was that of the Pope.

King James I also sought to control non-conforming English Catholics in England. In May 1606, Parliament passed 'The Popish Recusants Act' which required any citizen to take an oath of allegiance denying the Pope's authority over the king.

Observance of the 5th November Act, passed within months of the plot, made church attendance compulsory on that day and by the late 17th Century, the day had gained a reputation for riotousness and disorder and anti-Catholicism. William of Orange's birthday (November 4th) was also conveniently close.

The actions of Guy Fawkes are immortalised in the nursery rhyme 'Remember, remember'. Although several different versions exist, the first five lines remain to same in all.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November Gunpowder treason and plot

We see no reason

Why Gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot ….

Guy Fawkes, guy, t'was his intent

To blow up king and parliament.

Three score barrels were laid below

To prove old England's overthrow. 

By god's mercy he was catch'd

With a darkened lantern and burning match.

So, holler boys, holler boys,

Let the bells ring. 

Holler boys, holler boys,

God save the king.

And what shall we do with him?

Burn him! 

The Houses of Parliament are still searched by the Yeomen of the Guard before the state opening. The idea is to ensure no modern-day Guy Fawkes is hiding in the cellars with a bomb, although it is more ceremonial than serious. And they do it with lanterns. 

Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in the UK, and in a number of countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, with fireworks, bonfires and parades. Straw dummies representing Fawkes are tossed on the bonfire, nowadays as old traditions make way for new, more contemporary political figures are increasingly used.

The word ‘bonfire’incidentally  is said to derive from 'bone-fire', from a time when the corpses of witches, heretics and other nonconformists were burned on a pyre instead of being buried in consecrated ground.

Their is a well known phrase ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ The  act can be perceived as mindless violence or just necessity, depending on the attitude of those perceiving it. The changing perceptions of Guy Fawkes proves this. I am in no way condoning the way that some people choose to resort to extreme violence in order to make their point, but I do think we should be aware of the complex and subjective nature of the term ‘terrorist’, and should use it accordingly.
In the end Fawkes and his friends paid the ultimate price, and  although unhappy with the state of Catholicism in Europe, Fawkes would have happily seen a return of an autocratic Catholic monarch to Britain. Hero or Villain; it really depends on your interpretation of their legacy and your level of dissatisfaction with the world we live in today, to many a freedom fighter who in his time  stood up for the people of England, and against the oppression of the government, who still resonates deeply with the world we live in today. In the meantime carry on resisting, and if you must play with fire, please be careful out there, and don't get caught.