Friday 11 November 2022

Passion Fruit




The moonlight died
On a warm summer's eve
As darkness unfolds
Flooding the terrain.

Lovers walk
A dim enchanted path
Feeling each other
In blind rapture.

Sweet sounds of the night
As ears become eyes
Listening intently
To natures music.

Midnight wishes
And dreams of desire
Collide with the elements
In a universal consciousness.

In the black velvet forest
Passions awaken
Unceasing in syntonic bliss
Surrendering to times healing kiss.

Wednesday 9 November 2022

9th November 1938 : The Night of Broken Glass

 

On October 28, 1938, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship, many of whom had been living in Germany for decades, were arrested and interned in "relocation camps." When 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, then a student in Paris, distraught on receiving the news of his family's expulsion, he went to the German embassy and shot Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath, a member of the Nazi party. who died two days later. When arrested by the French police, Grynszpan, hoping his actions would alert the world to the plight of the Jews in Europe, said, "Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on earth."
The assassination provided Adolf Hitler with the excuse he needed to launch a pogrom against German Jews. It would become known as Kristallnacht, "the night of broken glass."referring to the broken glass produced by the smashing of shop windows .The following day Hitlers propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated the violence across Germany..Goebbels wrote in his diary: "As was to be expected, the entire nation is in uproar. This is one dead man who is costing the Jews dear. Our darling Jews will think twice in future before simply gunning down German diplomats."  
German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi leader  Hitler  became chancellor of Germany. However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. Kristallnacht,  marked the beginning of  violent evil  oppression.
On the night of November 9, 1938, rampaging mobs spurred on by Nazi officials attacked Jews and Jewish communities of Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoskovakia in the street, in their homes, and at their places of work and worship. Nazi paramilitary troops, the Sturmabteilung (SA) allowed the destruction and arrested as many Jews as the jails could hold. Broken glass littered the streets in front of burning synagogues.Firefighters were ordered not to intervene.
Over the coming weeks hundreds of  Jews were dead, more than 900 synagogues were burned, nearly 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed, and schools were vandalized and 30,000 Jewish people were arrested. with many taken to Nazi .death camps such as Dachau or Buchenwald..Even the deceased did not escape the pogrom. Many Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. 



Three days later, on November 12, the top Nazi leadership met to enact a wide-ranging set of anti-Semitic laws that segregated Jews into ghettos, placed a curfew on their activities, banned their ownership of guns, suspended their driver's licenses, and confiscated their radios. In addition, the Nazis fined German Jews one billion marks for vom Rath's assassination and for "broken windows." At the end of the meeting, Hermann Göring announced, "I have received a letter written on the Führer's orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another."
The Nazis’ hatred was well known, but by 1938 they had not come up with the Final Solution — the systematic attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe. There is well-documented evidence that the Nazis tested the waters with the progressive implementation of increased anti-Semitic propaganda and hate.
In April 1933, the Nazis organised a boycott pf Jewish owned businesses. Jews were excluded from civil service jobs, and in October of that year, non-Aryans were  banned from working in Journalism.
This was codified in the racist 1935 Nuremburg Laws, and actions behind them like Kristallnacht. They watched the world’s tepid response and concluded that they could deal with the Jews as they wished.
There were muted protests and news reports of the violence. Yet the world was largely silent to the plight of German Jews and did little to help.
On November 15th, President Roosevelt said. "The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States.... I  myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a 20th-century civilization."
But when asked  if he would recommend relaxing the country;s strict immigration laws to allow more Jewish refugees into the United States ne replied." That is not in contemplation, we have the quota system."
This passivity emboldened the Nazis to continue their plotting against European Jewry, seeing how easy it was to persecute Jews with no substantive outcry. Kristallnacht became a turning point in German policy, setting into motion the Nazis' systematic extermination of Jews, the Romani people, Communists,, Christians, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and other Nazi enemies:all targeted for destruction and decimation, based on the fascists twisted 'Aryan' concept of a master race that led to what  became known as the Holocaust.
We must never forget these shameful moments in history, that were such a slap on the face of humanity and must accept the fact that history can be repeated.Human beings are capable of doing such wicked things, so that is why we should continue to confront the dangers of intolerance, hate, racism, anti-semitism, prejudice and fascism, and defeat the ideas that continue to create so much pain .
We must never forget the journeys of all persecuted. support those that face hostility today, and when we say never again, we must mean never again. Lets not fail to notice there are disturbing parallels between events that occurred during the holocaust and events that are happening today.
The Holocaust did not start with camps, ghettos and deportations. it started with words of hate.
Governed by a government with an increasing disturbingly authoritarian mindset. Lets not allow divisive language, prejudice. bigotry and hostility be allowed  to roam unchallenged. 
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, despite his ardent nationalism. Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the following  quotation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

 
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
 
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
 
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

So continue to remember, defend, speak out  and remain vigilant against anti-semitism smd, fascism; .
 
 The Night of Broken Glass ; Kristallnacht, 1938




Monday 7 November 2022

Beyond Perimeters of Evil


Some with outrage
Talk about invasion
Contemptuous bastards
Void of compassion or reason
Do not raise voices in sorrow
When innocent people die
They are my reasons why I cry
Believe in a world of no borders
Embrace the gift of other cultures
Where all given warm welcome
With congenial conditions
No hostility only respect and grace
It's time for walls of division to fall
Different parameters of reality
Time to dispel all the pain
Close the centre for cruelty at Manston
Inhumane, immoral and unjustified
Where treatment is beyond contempt
Keep on fighting uncruel darkness
The dog whistling racist xenophobia
Challenge hateful rhetoric demonising
Those seeking safety, belonging and home
Celebrate the benefits they bring to us
Lets talk about diversity, equity and inclusion
No person born in this world is illegal
Escaping war and poverty is no crime
Give your love allow faces to smile
Allow hope to blossom, no more desolation.

Saturday 5 November 2022

Eugene Victor Debs ( 5/ 11/1855 - 20/10 /26 ) The American Socialist Who Once Campaigned for President From Prison

 


Outspoken  Socialist firebrand, political activist  and labour organiser Eugene Victor Debs  was born on November 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Marguerite Bettrich and Jean Daniel Debs, two immigrants from Alsace, France. They came to the U.S. in 1849 and worked in the grocery business.
At the age of14. Eugene dropped out of High school and took a job as a paint scraper at Vandalia Railroad, where he earned just $.50 a day. He soon moved up to become a railroad fireman, shoveling piles of coal into the locomotive’s firebox for more than $1 each night . This was at a time when workers toiled for 16 hours a day, six days a week. 
In the waning years of the 20th century Debs emerged as a working class leader, a hero of the railroad workers of the U.S and Canada. After working for the railroad, Debs went on to  lead the Fireman's union, and assist in the organising of other rail unions and ultimately organise the nations first industrial union - the American Railway Union ( ART).
By the turn of the 20th century, Debs became the leader of the Socialist party, and from there went on to assist in the founding of the Industrial Workers  of the World  (IWW) aka the Wobblies, helping to pioneer a fighting union politics that organized all workers, regardless of skill, craft, or occupation, with Debs becoming the beloved figurehead of American radicalism. Debs story is the story of labor battles in industrialising America, of a working class politics grown directly of the Midwestern heartland, and of a distinct American vision of Socialism.
 The wobbly motto is ' An injury to all  is an injury to all.' They were noted for their use of poetry and song to promote their radical ideas, publicise strikes and other protests and generally present the case that still  holds up today, that there can be no solution to industrial warfare, no end to injustice and want, until the profit system itself is abolished.In striving to unite labor as a class in one big union. The IWW also seeks to build the structure of a new and better social order within the shell of the old system which fails to provide for the needs of all.Combined with a commitment to workers solidarity which they have a rich history off, along with their militant tactics. 
 The wobblies  are still going strong , still organising, still resisting.In these divided times,of economic despair,  they continue to be a strong radical voice that stands defiantly, on behalf of the people, following an old tradition of solidarity that does not seperate along lines of nationality, race or gender, speaking too to the unemployed, the sick, and  the marginalised  spreading messages of hope among the carnage that is  currently being unveiled.
In 1875 Debs was elected secretary of the Terre Haute lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. His intelligence and commitment, coupled with his conservative outlook (he argued against participation in the nationwide railroad strikes of 1877), attracted the attention of the brotherhood’s leaders. By 1881, he was national secretary of the brotherhood, increasingly its spokesman on labor issues, and its most tireless organizer. Simultaneously, Debs entered politics as a Democratic candidate for city clerk in 1879 when only 23. First elected over Republican and Greenback-Labor party candidates, Debs was overwhelmingly reelected in 1881. Four years later, he was elected to the Indiana State Assembly with broad support from the wards of Terre Haute’s workers and businessmen.  Debs organized the American Railway Union, which waged a strike against the Pullman Company of Chicago in 1894
During the 1880s Debs’s ideas began to change. At first a firm proponent of organization of workers by their separate crafts, he resisted the industrial organization implicit in the efforts of the Knights of Labor and ordered his members to report to work during the Knights’ 1885 strike against the southwestern railroads. But his year-long involvement (1888-1889) in the strike against the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad altered these views. He now thought craft organization divisive, a hindrance to working people’s efforts to secure fair wages and working conditions. And concentrated corporate power, he argued, had a debilitating effect on the political rights and economic opportunity of the majority of Americans. By 1893 he had resigned his position as secretary of the brotherhood and begun organizing an industrial union of railroad workers, the American Railway Union (aru).
The  1894 strike against the Pullman Company of Chicago marked a second turning point in Debs’s thinking. Pullman Palace Car Company, was  the largest railway car company in the United States at the time, George Pullman the owner had a business plan that was, if nothing else, creative. He built a company town around his factory in Illinois, named it after himself and made it a requirement that the workers live there (and pay rent to their employer, guess who?). Some historians have said of the town of Pullman (now a suburb of Chicago), that it was "a version of the Indian reservation system.
 The ARU, even before its first convention, was besieged with reports from Pullman as to the unfairnesses of the company towards its employees including a unilateral; 25% cut in wages in 1893, while all of the world reeled from a great economic depression. This, in spite of a discreet increase in the annual dividend payment Pullman sent to his stockholders. 


The workers at Pullman contacted the ARU and Debs paid the town a visit. With Debs in command, the ARU agreed with the suggestion made by Pullman workers, and called for a boycott of all trains in America pulling Pullman cars. It was a risky move but the ARU fell behind its new members from Pullman. Train traffic in and out of Chicago collapsed almost immediately. The press, owned by smaller tycoons, came out in Pullman's side calling Debs a "dictator" and "King Debs". The New York Times called Debs "an enemy of the human race". The cover of the popular magazine, Harper's Weekly had an image of Debs sitting on an idle Chicago railway yard, wearing a crown. 
Railroad owners hired security firms to break the strike and violence broke out. US President Grover Cleveland sent in the federal militia, railway cars were set on fire and inevitably, gun fire broke out. The courts helped out in issuing an injunction on this basis:
 
"… (that) the interstate transportation of persons and property, as well as the carriage of the mails, is forcibly obstructed, and that a combination and conspiracy exists to subject the control of such transportation to the will of the conspirators."
 
This led to Debs being arrested with other boycott leaders on July 17, 1894, and jailed. This broke the union as Debs later described:
 
"Once we were taken from the scene of action, and restrained from sending telegrams or issuing orders or answering questions, then the minions of the corporations would be put to work..
"Our headquarters were temporarily demoralized and abandoned, and we could not answer any messages. The men went back to work, and the ranks were broken, and the strike was broken up, … not by the army, and not by any other power, but simply and solely by the action of the United States courts in restraining us from discharging our duties as officers and representatives of our employees."
 
Clarence Darrow signed up as Debs' lawyer and argued the case before the Supreme Court of the United States in March of 1895, to release Debs and his union brethren from their prison cells. The decision went against the union, with Justice David Josiah Brewer writing:
 
"A most earnest and eloquent appeal was made to us in eulogy of the heroic spirit of those who threw up their employment, and gave up their means of earning a livelihood, not in defence of their own rights, but in sympathy for and to assist others whom they believed to be wronged. We yield to none in our admiration of any act of heroism or self-sacrifice, but we may be permitted to add that it is a lesson which cannot be learned too soon or too thoroughly that under this government of and by the people the means of redress of all wrongs are through the courts and at the ballot-box, and that no wrong, real or fancied, carries with it legal warrant to invite as a means of redress the cooperation of a mob, with its accompanying acts of violence."
 
The unified power of railroad management working intimately with federal authorities  ultimately broke the strike but  Debs emerged from this experience as an avowed and committed socialist and dedicated himself to the start-up of a number of institutions now prominent in the American politics and international labor law such as Social Democracy of America, the Social Democratic Party of the United States, the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Debs questioned the ultimate ability of trade unions to combat successfully capital’s economic power and, after the 1896 elections, looked upon socialism as the answer to working people’s problems.
Between 1900 and 1920 Debs was the Socialist party’s standard-bearer in five presidential elections. In 1912, in a four-way race with Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, he received 6 percent of the vote-,highest total ever.
Between campaigns, Debs was a tireless, charismatic and passionate  speaker who sometimes called on the vocabulary of Christianity and much of the oratorical style of evangelism—even though he was generally disdainful of organized religion.
Debs often was uncomfortable with his position  as a  leader, despite the Socialist's great love for him and his oratorical skills. Debs  personal values  and lifelong philosophy can be summed up by the following quotes from him  : 
 
"I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
 
" I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world."
 
" In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor  and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to decieve and overawe the People. "
 
"Years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth... While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
 
As an  organizer he traveled the nation defending workers in their strikes and industrial disputes. Although many workers enthusiastically applauded Debs’s vision, sadly relatively few actually  endorsed his political program.
On June 16,1918 Debs made his famous anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. 
 
 ". I   am for that war with heart and soul, and that is thee world-wide war of the social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades." 

For this speech he was arrested and convicted in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio under the war-time espionage law. He was his own attorney and his appeal to the jury and his statement to the court before sentencing, are regarded as two of the great classic statements ever made in a court of law. He was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison.also disenfranchised for life meaning he could never again vote again in America. At his sentencing he told the court:
 
"Your honor, I ask no mercy, I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never more fully comprehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of time they will come into their own."
 
His conviction was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States who, again, ruled against him and upheld both the conviction and sentence.
 Debs began serving his sentence in Moundsville, W. Va. State prison and was transferred to Atlanta, Ga. Federal prison two months later. His humility and friendliness and his assistance to all won him the respect and admiration of the most hardened convicts.
Over time, calls went out that Debs be pardoned  bringing this remark this from President Woodrow Wilson:
 
"This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration."
 
Debs conducted his last campaign for president as prisoner 9653 in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and received nearly a million votes, though he had been stripped of his citizenship. In his five campaigns as the Socialist Party candidate for president of the United States, Debs excoriated the economic exploitation of workers, including the then rampant abuses of child labor, with rare oratorical skill. He advocated for unions in all major industries and promoted a vision of socialism as grassroots economic democracy. In a deeply racist, patriarchal society, he was also staunchly anti-racist and pro-women’s rights.
Refusing to ask for or accept special treatment, he was confined to his cell for fourteen hours a day and was allotted twenty minutes a day in the prison yard. He wore a rough denim uniform. He ate food barely fit to eat. He grew  gaunt and weak. He  became an American folk hero, a principled advocate of free speech, and even as he grew sicker Convict No. 9653 refused to ask for a pardon.
While he was accustomed to campaigning by train and speaking in front of thousands, in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Debs was allowed  to give one political statement every week, which was then handed over to news wires. Supporters did the campaigning for him on the ground, making posters featuring the slogan “From Atlanta Prison to the White House, 1920” and campaign buttons that showed Debs in a prison jumpsuit with the words “For President: Convict No. 9653” splashed across them. It wasn't so much a campaign as it was a protest against what many thought was Debs's unconstitutional imprisonment.
On Christmas Day 1921 he was released without a pardon but with a commuted sentence. He was 66. 
But with the war over, President Harding pardoned Debs and invited him to the White House. “I have heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now very glad to meet you personally,”Harding said  upon meeting him. Indeed, Debs had left prison almost as a mythic figure to his followers—50,000 of whom lined up to watch his train pull in upon his return to Terra Haute.
Though the meeting with Harding was as close as he ever got to the White House, Debs proved he didn't need to win an election to make his voice heard.
Sadly Debs never recovered from his time in prison  and lived most of of what remained of his life  in a sanatorium.  He died on October 20, 1926, at the age of 70 in Elmhurst.
 Throughout his lifetime Debs was the nation’s most widely known and eloquent exponent of a socialist alternative to American capitalism. Unlike many other American and European socialist leaders, Debs sought to avoid complex and often divisive ideological debates over the pace and purity of a theoretical socialist revolution and sought instead to connect the idea of socialized control over the industrial economy to indigenous American traditions of political democracy, utopian individualism, and radical reform.
He is remembered as an opponent to big corporations and World War One. American socialists, communists, and anarchists honor his compassion for the labor movement and motivation to have the average workingman build socialism without large state involvement. He motivated the left in America and continues to this day. In the legacy of Eugene Debs there is much more than a speech here, a prison term there, and nor did he push the plow of labor rights by himself. But on countless occasions he said what had to be said, urged on his nervous union leaderships to do what was right in spite of the overwhelming force and might of the wealthy in America of his generation. In this, he always put himself on front lines and paid the prices that were collateral to his duties as a social justice crusader: jail, fines, ridicule in the press, but also the heavy personal cost of not just those personal injuries but also of being necessarily loud and alone at the front of a still unawares and very suspicious population as slowly, the American citizen became aware of the importance of unions and of worker rights.
Ten years after his death  later his beloved wife, Kate, was buried beside him. Debs was cremated and his ashes were interred in Highland Lawn cemetery, Terre Haute, with only a simple marker. Today, his home in Terre Haute, Indiana has the designation of a National Historic Landmark, and a website http://debsfoundation.org/   dedicated to him Debs citizenship was finally restored in 1976, fifty years after his death and in 1990, the U.S. Department of Labor named Debs a member of its Labor Hall of Honor.
As a socialist, Debs denounced as irrational and unjust a capitalist system that created extravagant wealth for a few at the top, while millions of ordinary working people struggled to get by. Most important, he thought it was possible to build a new, cooperative society, to transcend the irrationality, waste, and greed of the capitalist economic system, and to end wage slavery and all forms of social oppression. He called this socialism. 
 The life and legacy of Eugene V. Debs stands as a rich and vibrant testament to one man’s dedication to a liberated future. Indeed, Debs was an individual for whom solidarity with his fellow humans was in his blood. who used his  voice in defense of the common man, his legacy can  best summed up in his own words.:
 
 "Yes, I am my brother's keeper," he wrote. "I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

As a principled left-wing socialist, Debs was cut from a different cloth than most mainstream politicians, then and now. How many career politicians today would be willing to go to prison for their views and ideals. In short Debs is a socialist icon that we so need  in our present times.




Wednesday 2 November 2022

105 years since one of history’s most unjust declarations :The Balfour Declaration

 

 Lord Arthur Balfour
 
On this day, 105 years ago, one of history's most unjust declarations was made, When on November 2, 1917 the British government issued the  Balfour Declaration, which laid the foundation for the establishment of a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population. The ramifications would be seen up until the present day and is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in modern history.
 It was named after Lord Arthur James Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary during the Word War 1, who on an order by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister at that time, David Lloyd George,sent an official letter  to Baron Walter Rothschild (the 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Zionist community, who accepted it on behalf of Great Britain and Ireland.
The document was quite short, consisting of only 67 words in three paragraphs. However, the impact was enormous: the declaration was the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has not ended.The immortal words of the letter said the following:

" His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by jews in any other country."

The Original Letter of the Balfour Declaration
 
 

With the Balfour Declaration, London was seeking Jewish support for its war efforts, and the Zionist push for a homeland for Jews was an emerging political force. In 1917, Jews constituted 10% of the population, the rest were  Arabs. Yet Britain recognised the national rights of a tiny minority and denied it to the majority This was a classic colonial document which totally disregarded the rights and aspirations of the indigenous population. In the words of Jewish writer Arthur Koestler: “One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”And in the words of the late Palestinian academic Edward Said, the declaration was “made by a European power … about a non-European territory … in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory. 
 The indigenous Palestinian population’s political and national rights were ignored in the Balfour Declaration, not to mention their ethnic and national identity. Instead, Great Britain promised not to “prejudice the[ir] civil and religious rights,” and referred to Palestinians as “non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The percentage of Jews living in Palestine in 1917 did not exceed 7%, yet the British attempted to rewrite history in order to justify their colonial policy.
It was a shock to the Arab world, which had not been consulted and had received promises of independence of its own in the post-war break up of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians have always condemned the declaration, which they refer to as the "Balfour promise" saying Britain was giving away land it did not own.
The Balfour Declaration constituted a  dangerous historical precedent and a blatant breach of all international laws and norms, and this  act of the British Empire to “give” the land of another people  for colonial settlement created the conditions for countless atrocities against the Palestinian people. Balfour, in a 1919 confidential memo, wrote: 
 “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”  
The discriminatory language used by Sir Arthur Balfour and seen in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate reveal the prejudiced rational behind British foreign policy in Palestine. A month after the Balfour Declaration on 2 December 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. In 1923, the British Mandate for Palestine came into effect, and included the entire text of the Balfour Declaration. Through the Mandate, Britain would go on to rule Palestine for three decades.
The Mandate for Palestine constituted the entire legal framework for how Britain should operate during its occupation of Palestine. Despite this, the Mandate made no mention of the Palestinians by name, nor did it specify the right of Palestinians to nationhood. Instead, it was during its rule in Palestine that Britain sought to lay the foundations for the creation of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’
By the end of the 1920s, it became clear that this ambition would have violent repercussions.Between 1936 and 1939, thousands of Palestinians were killed and imprisoned as they revolted in protest against British policy.
The British response took a heavy toll on the livelihoods of Palestinian villagers, who were subjected to punitive measures that included the confiscation of livestock, the destruction of properties, detention and collective fines. During this time, British forces’ are said to have carried out beatings, extrajudicial killings and torture as they attempted to quell the uprising. To this day, there are still the ‘Tegart Forts’ in Palestine built and named by Sir Charles Tegart who had been stationed in India to punish those fighting against the British Raj and then later stationed in Palestine to control any Arab dissent.
For Palestinians, Britain’s three decades of occupation in Palestine was a turning point in the country’s history, laying the foundations for what would become decades of occupation, displacement and insecurity.
When the UK eventually decided to withdraw from Mandatory Palestine in 1947, it left decisions regarding the future of Palestine to the United Nations. In May 1948 the Israeli state was established.  This time is known by Palestinians as the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’, during which 750,000 and 900,000 Palestinian men, women and children were driven out of their homeland by Jewish militias, and an estimated 500 villages and towns were depopulated and demolished.
To this day, there are more than 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Jordan as a result of the Nakba in 1948 and the displacement that followed the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1967.
Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have now been under occupation for over 50 years, devastating the lives of millions of Palestinians.
The catastrophe of the Arab Palestinian people in 1948 continues today at the hands of Israel, using the same old policies and laws established by the British such as land confiscation laws, home demolitions, ‘administrative’ detention, deportations, violent repression, and the continuation of the expulsion of about 7.9 million Palestinians who are denied their basic national and human rights, especially their right to return and live normally in their homeland. Today, the State of Israel, backed by the military and diplomatic might of the United States, continues this century-long pattern of denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination. In violation of international law, Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees their right of return to the homes from which they or their ancestors were forcibly displaced by Israel during the Nakba in 1948; denies Palestinian citizens of Israel their equal rights; and imposes upon Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip a brutal military occupation and suffocating siege.  This catastrophe of the Palestinian people could not continue without the support of Israel by the United States and Britain.
 In the June 1967 war, Israel completed the conquest of Palestine by occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. By signing the Oslo Accord with Israel in 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organisation gave up its claim to 78% of Palestine. In return they hoped to achieve an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a capital city in East Jerusalem. It was not to be.
 On May 7, The Guardian newspaper regretted its support in 1917 for the Balfour Declaration, describing it as its “worst errors of judgment”.
The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated, and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour Declaration,” the British daily wrote, adding that the then editor, CP Scott, was “blinded” to Palestinian rights due to his support of Zionism.
The Palestinian people still experience this declaration's catastrophic consequences to this day, which bear witness to such a historic injustice due to the persecution, repression, killing, arrests and demolition of homes and properties. that perpetuated one of the longest-running settler-colonial occupations on a land that was and remains exclusively Palestinian.
So far this year, 120 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces. Hundreds more have been subjected to arbitrary arrests, racist practices, forced displacement, and house demolitions.
Desperation is mounting, especially among young Palestinian refugees and asylum seekers across the Middle East and in other parts of the world. They are confronted with poverty, unemployment, and a general lack of prospect. Some are risking their lives in search of a more dignified life.
In Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, over 80 percent live below the poverty line.
In addition, the Palestinian people still face difficulties in moving between the cities of Palestine due to the severe measures taken by the occupation police at the checkpoints.
On this dark day in Palestinian history, I salute the continuing steadfastness of the Palestinian people in their long-denied quest for justice, liberation, and their eventual self-determination, and recommits itself to work towards that noble end, in the face of continued Israeli violations ,resisting  the occupation schemes  insisting on the Palestinian Right of Return home and establishing their sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. 
Until  measures are made by Israel to improve the standard of living, and bring economic prosperity to the Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Bringing some chord of social justice, and recognition of the Palestinians identity, and stolen land given back to them,and an end to their continuing use of apartheid practices., their will be no peace. That is Balfours tragic legacy.
The UK is fully accountable to the atrocities and dehumanizing of Palestinians. But even till this day, the UK has not shown any remorse for the historical sin it had made.
However the British Consulate in Jerusalem on Tuesday refused to receive Palestinians who presented a letter of protest to coincide with the 105th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
Activists from the Palestinian National League of Independents and the International Institution for Following Up Palestinian Rights staged a protest outside the consulate, which is in the Sheikh Jarrah area of East Jerusalem where Israel has tried to evict Palestinians from their homes in order to turn them over to settlers recently..
But the consulate closed its doors to the activists, forcing them to leave the letter, which was signed by dozens of Palestinian activists, politicians, and religious leaders at its gates. The letter called on Britain to apologise for the Balfour Declaration.
In a statement, the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the UK called the Balfour Declaration "the height of imperial arrogance and disregard for the collective political rights of millions of Palestinians, making the people of Palestine disenfranchised and stateless in their own homeland ""When will the UK apologise and make amends?" the statement asked, calling on the UK to recognise the State of Palestine and its sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, support the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and  halt the trade in Israeli settlements.
Britain bears a moral and historical responsibility over the displacement and dispossession of millions of Palestinians and should therefore make every possible effort to remedy the wounds inflicted upon the Palestinians as a result of the pledge.by apologizing to the Palestinian people, and recognizing the Palestinian state on the June 4, lines with East Jerusalem as its capital in support of achieving a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in accordance with the vision of a two-state solution to ensure that future generations of Palestinians can live in dignity. Britain also has a duty to acknowledge the basic political and human rights of the Palestinian people, which have been denied for more than a century.
At the same time, the UK government should not adopt the position of former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who planned to move the UK embassy to Jerusalem.
The international community should also speak up for the rights of the Palestinians to establish an independent Palestinian State on the 1967 borders and the rights of millions of refugees to return to their homeland. The Israeli occupation should be brought to an end and Israel should be held accountable for its war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Monday 31 October 2022

Democracy Prevails over Fascism in Brazil, as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is elected President.



Leftist leader former metal worker Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva  has claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro who has yet to accept defeat. It is the culmination of a most remarkable political comeback for a man who was languishing behind bars just three years ago in a prison cell, Lula as he is popularly known tweeted one word following his win: "Democracy.".This is a  huge blow and rebuke against fascistic politics and a huge victory for decency and sanity. 
Jubilant crowds thronged the streets of cities including São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Sunday evening. Drivers honked horns and people cheered and chanted slogans including the popular campaign jingle "Lula lá""Lula's there"—and "Tá na hora de Jair ir embora"—"Time for Jair to leave."
Da Silva, the 77-year-old co-founder of the left-wing Workers' Party (PT), became the first challenger to defeat an incumbent president since the restoration of democracy in 1985. His campaign overcame a rampant social media driven disinformation campaign, political violence including the assassination on Friday of a PT congressional candidate, and what observers called massive Election Day voter suppression by federal police to win a third term for the man Brazilians endearingly call Lula.
The Lula victory has been confirmed with the Supreme Electoral Court. With 98.86 % of the votes counted Lula has 50.83 % and Bolsonaro has 49.17%..With more than 3 million votes than Bolsonaro. Brazil has ousted Bolsonaro after just one term and elected Lula to replace him, in a stinging rebuke to the far-right movement. Lula an icon of the Latin American left,will assume his third term in office on January 1st promising to stop deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, after four years of surging destruction under Bolsonaro.program  strengthening environmental institutions weakened by Bolsonaro’s presidency, providing “green” farm loans and meeting Brazil’s Paris Agreement goals.
Lula’s record with regards to nature and the environment is impressive. During his presidency, the deforestation rate in the Amazon was cut down by almost two thirds; from 21,650 km2 in 2002 to 7,000 in 2010.
However, fixing Bolsonaro’s destructive policies towards the Amazon rainforest won’t be an easy task for Lula. France’s Le Monde described Bolsonaro’s environmental legacy “to be nothing short of catastrophic”. The newspaper added “he has turned a country that was once a leader in the fight against climate change into an international pariah”. Right now, it is estimated that 15 to 17 percent of the Amazon rainforest has already been cut down. Brazil has increased its greenhouse gas emissions by 10% due to the fires in the country. Lula's Amazon-friendly policies are of real  need not just for the rainforest, but for the world as well.
The Amazon rainforest is the largest in the world, covering an area of 6,000,000 km2, 60% of which is in Brazil. It represents over half of the planet's rainforests and comprises the largest and most biodiverse tropical tract in the world. It’s home to one-tenth of all living plant and animal species. Therefore, the Amazon rainforest is the world's biggest terrestrial carbon dioxide sink and plays a significant role in mitigating global warming. Forests are vital in the fight against the climate crisis. Losing these vital ecosystems means more carbon in the atmosphere and fewer resources to capture what is being emitted.
In his victory speech, Lula touched on gender and racial equality and the urgent need to deal with a hunger crisis affecting 33.1 million Brazilians
"Brazil is my cause, the people are my cause and fighting poverty is the reason why I will live until the end of my life," da Silva said. 
"As far as it depends on us, there will be no lack of love," he vowed. "We will take great care of Brazil and the Brazilian people. We will live in a new time. Of peace, of love, and of hope. A time when the Brazilian people will once again have the right to dream. And the opportunities to realize what you dream."
The defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil is incredibly good news for the environment and the social rights of the working class in Brazil and its Black and Indigenous communities .Bolsonaro  is a true fascist's fascist, who openly longed for the days of the military dictatorship, of which his father took an active part. Bolsonaro's tenure was marked by accelerated environmental destruction, especially of the Amazon rainforest, gross mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which killed more people in Brazil than in any other country save the United States;disdain and disregard for the rights of Indigenous peoples; rampant bigotry and incessant flirtation with authoritarianism.targeting LGBTQ people,
the press and his critics. .
This is a monumental victory in the global fight against fascism in Brazil. Progress and democracy has defeated hate and authoritarianism in on of the biggest democracies in the world. There is quite simply nothing better than a fascist getting their arse handed to them by the people.  Congratulations to the people in Brazil who have driven one of the worst men alive out of office. Delighted at the thought of so many terrible people being gutted. 
Da Silva is beloved by millions of Brazilians for his lifelong advocacy for the poor, workers, minorities, and rural and Indigenous people. As president, he lifted millions of Brazilians from poverty through sweeping social programs including Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) and Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance), while presiding over Brazil's rise into the top tier of world economies.
However, da Silva's focus on social uplift at the expense of the oligarchy earned him powerful enemies at home, and his solidarity with leftist Latin American leaders and opposition to U.S. imperialism made him a target of many in Washington and on Wall Street.
In 2017, da Silva was controversially convicted of corruption and money laundering in connection with the sweeping "Car Wash" scandal and spent 580 days behind bars before being freed when the Brazilian supreme court found his incarceration unlawful. Last year, the high court annulled several criminal convictions against da Silva,restoring his political rights and setting the stage for his 2022 run. 
Lulas; win is also a win for the Amazon and the planet itself—and thus very good news for the multiracial working class of the whole world.
Let's hope the victory strengthens democracy and Latin American integration and  lead the Brazilian people along the path of peace, progress and social justice. 

Thursday 27 October 2022

Happy Birthday to Welsh Literary genius Dylan Marlais Thomas ( 27/10/14 -9/11/53 )

 

 
Welsh playwright, poet and writer Dylan Marlais Thomas was born today on October 27th, 1914, in the Uplands suburb of Swansea, to David John (‘DJ’) Thomas, Senior English master at Swansea Grammar School, and his wife Florence Hannah Thomas (née Williams) a seamstress, the second of two children and younger brother to Nancy Marles Thomas, nine years his senior.
Dylan’s middle name, Marlais ( pronounced ‘Mar-lice’) was chosen in honour of his great-uncle, the Unitarian Minister and poet William Thomas, better know by his pseudonym or ‘bardic name’ Gwilym Marles. A combination of the words ‘mawr’ meaning big and either ‘clais’ or ‘glas’ meaning ditch, stream or blue, the name is distinctly Welsh in origin. While the name Dylan is also a strong Welsh name pronounced “Dullan”, interestingly, Dylan himself preferred to use the English pronunciation “Dillan” and during radio broadcasts was often know to correct announcers using the Welsh pronunciation.
Indeed, whilst Thomas is arguably the most well known Welsh poet of all time, paradoxically his literary work is written entirely in English. DJ and Florence were both fluent Welsh speakers (and DJ even provided extracurricular Welsh lessons from their home) but following the tradition of the time, Nancy and Dylan were not brought up to be bilingual.It was this decline of the Welsh Language during the nineteenth century that subsequently gave rise to the ‘Anglo-Welsh literature’ or as many English speaking Welsh men and women preferred, ‘Welsh writing in English’.
There was an even greater upsurge in Welsh literature written in the English language during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the UK, heavy industry was one of the worst hit areas, and the experiences of those dependent on the Welsh coalfields inspired a plethora of writing from the many writers belonging to this Anglo-Welsh school, who were routed deeply in the working class families of South Wales and wished to share their experiences with the world outside Wales. In contrast though, Thomas hailed from a fairly middle-class background and had grown up with more rural experiences. He often holidayed in Carmarthenshire, and his home in Uplands was, and still is, one of the more affluent areas of the city.
A  blazing literary talent, who by the age of eight or nine  was writing his own poetry, even before he entered the Grammar School in 1925. A quiet and introspective student, he was a frequent contributor to the school's magazine.Many of Dylan’s poems drew from his childhood experiences of the rural Welsh countryside and he began writing of them in his notebooks at the age of 15 whilst attending Swansea Grammar School. Indeed his first and second collections of poems, entitled ’18 poems’ and ’25 poems’ respectively, drew heavily from these notebooks.
Leaving  school at sixteen he worked on the staff of the South Wales Daily Post (later the South Wales Evening Post), sometimes writing scathing reviews and critiques of local plays, concerts and writers which needed be edited to keep from offending the subjects under scrutiny. During this very productive writing period of Dylan's life, he also became known locally for the offbeat jokes, stories and obscene limericks he told in the pubs at night. He would read poems he was working on aloud to friends and relatives, not wanting them to read the work he'd done, but instead to hear it. Along with writing, Thomas was also involved with local theater, both writing and acting. A good half of his 90 collected poems were written or half-written in his bedroom at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea before he was 20.
Following a short-lived position as a junior reporter at the South Wales Daily Post at the age of 16, Dylan left the newspaper to concentrate on his poetry, working as a freelance journalist when the need arose. Having joined the Swansea Little Theatre Company, of which his sister Nancy was also a member, Dylan began to frequent the pubs and café scene in Swansea with his artistic contemporaries. As a group they became known as the The Kardomah Gang, in honour of one of their favourite local haunt, the Kardomah Café. The café was originally located in Swansea’s Castle Street, coincidentally on the site of the former Congregational Chapel where Dylan’s parents were married in 1903.
In a January 1933 essay in the South Wales Evening Post entitled "Genius and Madness Akin in the World of Art" Thomas discussed the idea that one gifted with genius often walked a line where it was "difficult to differentiate, with any sureness, between insanity and eccentricity." He asserted that "the borderline of insanity is more difficult to trace than the majority of people, comparatively safe within the barriers of their own common-sensibility, can realise."
Dylan's first national publication was in a small literary review in the spring of 1933. Later that year his poems were published in the more prestigious Adelphi and the London newspaper The Sunday Referee.After moving to London in 1934 in pursuit of better opportunities, Dylan's writing career began to flourish. His poems, essays, articles and reviews were being published in London and Swansea magazines and newspapers. With dedication and devotion to the craft of writing his hard work paid of when his first book,18 poems was released on the 18th of December 1934 when he was only 20. A second book Twenty-five poems appeared in Autumn of 1936.He would go on to become one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.
It was in this year that Dylan would  meet one Caitlin Macnamara, and it is said that within hours of their first meeting Dylan, drunkenly insisted that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and that he was going to marry her, to which she offered no objections. The slightly older Caitlin,who was a physically strong, trained dancer with a fiery and unpredictable temper found the impoverished poet vulnerable and sweet, if a bit needy. They spent the next five days and nights together, going from pub to pub and hardly eating at all. Later that summer when he and Caitlin met again in Wales, Dylan had a run-in with Augustus John, a painter and friend of her parents with whom Caitlin had been having an affair. Caitlin and Dylan eventually started living together near the end of 1936.  and was to marry her in 1937. A turbulent marriage, that weathered many a storm.
In 1941 , Thomas and Caitlin moved to Plas Gelli at Talsarn in what was then known as Cardiganshire, now known as Ceredigion, keeping a studio flat in London whilst spending some of the time working on wartime propaganda films. The couple left their son Llewellyn with Caitlin's mother, where he stayed until 1949. Their second child a daughter named Aeronwy (Aeron) Bryn Thomas was born in March 1942. During his time in London Thomas would take part in more than a hundred radio programmes.Dylan and Caitlin  moved to New Quay in September,eager to escape both the war and London, moving to a little bungalow by the name of ' Majoda' before moving to South Leigh in Oxfordshire. Their final home would be the Boathouse in Laugharne, Carmarthebshire where they lived from 1949 to 1953.
The couple’s tumultuous relationship is well documented, not least in Caitlin’s own memoirs of their married life, entitled ‘Leftover Life to Kill’ and ‘Double Drink Story‘ (published posthumously), which describe the couple’s fiery partnership, exacerbated by mutual infidelities and a fondness for alcohol. Dylan himself referred to their union as “raw, red bleeding meat”. However, the couple remained together until Dylan’s death in 1953. And whilst Caitlin eventually remarried and relocated to Italy, following her own death in 1994 she was buried with Dylan in Laugharne.
Much of Dylan’s popularity both at home and abroad stemmed from his descriptive lyrical prose and his ability to depict a Wales few Welsh people in the industrial age ever got to see. Nevertheless, he portrayed an image of ‘Welshness’ that was held dear to the hearts of many Welsh men and women. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Dylan’s poetry did not focus on the bleak images of the industrial depression. Where he does refer to industrial terminology, such as in the poem’ All All And All’, he combines it with the beauty of nature.
 
All All And All
 
All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.

How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.
 
 II

Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.

Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,
Fear not the screws that turn the voice,
And the face to the driven lover.

III

All all and all the dry worlds couple,
Ghost with her ghost, contagious man
With the womb of his shapeless people.
All that shapes from the caul and suckle,
Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,
Square in these worlds the mortal circle.

Flower, flower the people's fusion,
O light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh's vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.
 
Though Thomas was known to denounce Welsh nationalism (especially of the politicised variety), elements of Wales and its literary heritage do seep into his work, and it could be argued that if anything then, Thomas’ work is emblematic of the way in which Welsh identity itself is multifarious, and difficult to define and authenticate.
Through the character Rev Eli Jenkins in one of his best-known works, the ‘play for voicesUnder Milk Wood (which was later made famous by another equally iconic Welshman, Richard Burton) Dylan taps into that collective ‘Welshness’ to which many are so fiercely loyal: 
I know there are Towns lovelier than ours, And fairer hills and loftier far…But let me choose and oh! I should Love all my life and longer To stroll among our trees and stray In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down, And hear the Dewi sing all day, And never, never leave the town.
 In this celebrated work, which follows the lives of those who occupy the fictional Welsh village of Llareggub, Thomas explores the mundane through his playful language and poetic script. At one particular moment, Thomas the rascal surfaces to describe the anguish of the solipsist Reverend Eli Jenkins over the death of his Father - a one-legged, alcoholic farmer: 'Poor Dad,' grieves the Reverend Eli, 'to die of drink and agriculture.' On the following page, the profound Thomas makes an appearance, as Reverent Eli recites some of his poetry:

'We are not wholly bad or good,

Who live our lives under Milk Wood,

And thou, I know, wilt be the first,

To see our best side, not our worst.'

The ever-charming Under Milk Wood has the wonderful capacity to present the mundane in a paradoxically poignant yet light-hearted manner. This work allows the reader to laugh on one page and marvel in admiration on the next. Perhaps something similar could have been said about Thomas himself.
Dylan Thomas is not usually thought about as a particular political writer. For those who know his life and his work, clearly Dylan was left wing, and had various Communist and Marxist friends.Thomas was influenced, especially from 1933 onwards, by an older Marxist friend Bert Trick.Thomas himself was probably too unconventional and too free-spirited to conform to any particular party line.
Politics was not at the forefront of his aesthetic style though, unlike some other writers and artists of the 1930s, but nevertheless, Dylan was clearly someone affected by the politics of his age. He wrote about the great issues of his day, such as unemployment, war and the danger of atomic weapons. and was also a life-long socialist and an internationalist, in his 1934 collection New Verse he states “I take my stand with any revolutionary body that asserts it to be the right of all men to share, equally and impartially, every production of man ... from the sources of production at man’s disposal
The backdrop to Thomas’ tragically short life are some of the most pivotal events of the last century, including the Great Depression, the rise of fascism,WW2 and the coming of the cold war. There are clear references to these developments in a number of his poems and letters. As an exceptionally sensitive and reflective individual, Thomas could not fail to assimilate these momentous developments into his writings. The dominant image of his poetry as primarily bucolic, nostalgic and apolitical belies the undercurrent of radicalism and hatred of oppression that runs through a great deal of his output.   
All the evidence points to Thomas’s holding revolutionary convictions both before he moved from Wales to London in 1934 and throughout his life. Before the Second World War, Dylan was certainly a man who liked to be known as challenging fascists on his patch, in Swansea. Writing in the Swansea Guardian, he was critical of a local counciller Mainwaring Hughes, who aligned himself with the British Union of Fascists. When the BUF mounted a 3,000 strong demonstration in Swansea in 1934, Dylan felt the need to be involved to oppose such extremism. A letter he wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson in July 1934 explained how he had recently written ‘a seditious article attacking the shirted gentleman’ – i.e. Oswald Mosely. Here, he even claimed to have been involved at a fracas when opposing fascists, resulting in him being thrown down some stairs. It seems the latter was something of an embellishment , but nonetheless such letters highlight his anti-fascist identity.
From discussing the annihilation of the ruling classes with his communist friend Bert Trick, through his work for the Ministry of Information in World War Two advocating and explaining the future welfare state; and from his lectures, free of charge to the USA’s Communist Party in his last days, Dylan always did what he thought was his bit to further the cause.
In 1944, Thomas also wanted the Communist Party cultural journal Our Time to publish Ceremony after a Fire Raid, ‘pressing’ the poem “upon Arnold Rattenbury because, he said, he wanted to advertise that he remained "a socialist” 
 
Ceremony After a Fire Road 
 
 I

Myselves
The grievers
Grieve
Among the street burned to tireless death
A child of a few hours
With its kneading mouth
Charred on the black breast of the grave
The mother dug, and its arms full of fires.

Begin
With singing
Sing
Darkness kindled back into beginning
When the caught tongue nodded blind,
A star was broken
Into the centuries of the child
Myselves grieve now, and miracles cannot atone.

Forgive
Us forgive
Us your death that myselves the believers
May hold it in a great flood
Till the blood shall spurt,
And the dust shall sing like a bird
As the grains blow, as your death grows, through our heart.

Crying
Your dying
Cry,
Child beyond cockcrow, by the fire-dwarfed
Street we chant the flying sea
In the body bereft.
Love is the last light spoken. Oh
Seed of sons in the loin of the black husk left.

II

I know not whether
Adam or Eve, the adorned holy bullock
Or the white ewe lamb
Or the chosen virgin
Laid in her snow
On the altar of London,
Was the first to die
In the cinder of the little skull,
O bride and bride groom
O Adam and Eve together
Lying in the lull
Under the sad breast of the head stone
White as the skeleton
Of the garden of Eden.

I know the legend
Of Adam and Eve is never for a second
Silent in my service
Over the dead infants
Over the one
Child who was priest and servants,
Word, singers, and tongue
In the cinder of the little skull,
Who was the serpent's
Night fall and the fruit like a sun,
Man and woman undone,
Beginning crumbled back to darkness
Bare as nurseries
Of the garden of wilderness.

III

Into the organpipes and steeples
Of the luminous cathedrals,
Into the weathercocks' molten mouths
Rippling in twelve-winded circles,
Into the dead clock burning the hour
Over the urn of sabbaths
Over the whirling ditch of daybreak
Over the sun's hovel and the slum of fire
And the golden pavements laid in requiems,
Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames,
Into the wine burning like brandy,
The masses of the sea
The masses of the sea under
The masses of the infant-bearing sea
Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever
Glory glory glory
The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.
 
Thomas contributed not only to Our Time but to its successor Communist Party periodicals Arena and Circus. On his 1952 visit to America, he also agreed to do a poetry reading for the Socialist Party of the USA without expecting his usual fee. And, as we have seen, Thomas called himself a communist and relished opportunities for political discussion in the final days in New York city. And, as his prose writings and film scripts reveal, he understood poverty and class consciousness and could describe them as experienced in Wales and the world. Dylan developed more anti-fascist writing during the Second World War, as he worked as a writer of propaganda films. In this body of work too – which was of greater significance and impact, but once more was not his most literary writing – he could use humour to skewer a fascist leader. His funniest of these films was undoubtedly These Are the Men, which featured footage of Hitler and other leading Nazis delivering histrionic speeches, although re-dubbed with an English language voice over. The film-scripts reveal a socialist understanding of the cost to humanity of a failed economic system. Wales – Green Mountain, Black Mountain was too political for the British Council to show overseas. One memorable passage answers the early critics who said that Thomas ignored the social reality of Depression-era Wales:

Remember the procession of the old-young men
From dole queue to corner and back again,
From the pinched, packed streets to the peak of slag
In the bite of the winters with shovel and bag,
With a drooping fag and a turned up collar,
Stamping for the cold at the ill lit corner
Dragging through the squalor with their hearts like lead
Staring at the hunger and the shut pit-head
Nothing in their pockets, nothing home to eat,
Lagging from the slag heap to the pinched, packed street.
Remember the procession of the old-young men.
It shall never happen again.
 
His socialism can be seen in the two screenplays he wrote after the Second World War. He based The Doctor and The Devils on the true story of the body-snatchers Burke and Hare, using it to show there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. And in Rebecca’s Daughters he told the story of the Welsh toll gate riots of 1843, making the point that “governments only bring in reforms when they are afraid of a revolution”. Sadly, both scripts remained unperformed during his lifetime.
Even as late as the 1950's Thomas was still "very much on the Left."  In 1949 he attended an international writers' Peace Congress in Prague.  Then in 1952, when he was on tour in America, he did a poetry reading for the Socialist Party of the USA.  He declined to accept his usual fee and did it instead free of charge.
Sadly a lot of this is not as widely known as it should be. partly due to Dylan himself. He would often like to boast about his drinking and said: “An alcoholic is someone you don’t like, who drinks as much as you do.” Thomas’ health rapidly began to deteriorate as a result of his drinking; he was warned by his doctor to give up alcohol but he carried on regardless.In January 1950 Dylan engaged on a reading tour in America which was a great success. However on a further  tour in 1953, he collapsed in the Chelsea Hotel after a long drinking bout at the White Horse Tavern the result of a binge in which, as he allegedly boasted, he drank "18 straight whiskies; I think it's a record" .this has since become the stuff  of legends, but since then it has been said that he probably actually died from a blood sugar inbalance having not eaten properly for several days prior to his death, and the Doctor who treated him with both cortisone and half a grain of morphine sulphate, an abnormally high dose, and dangerous given his breathing complications,probably did not help him any further. He subsequently  died in a coma , a few days later on November 9th, at St Vincents Hospital in New York City at the age of 39. A tragic premature end nevertheless to this great Welsh poet and writer. And despite the myths that have emerged about his prodigous appetite for drinking it was certainly not alcoholism that finished him off, as his liver showed no signs of cirrhosis. The post mortem actually said that the primary cause of Thomas's death was pneumonia, with pressure on the brain and a fatty liver given as a contributing factor.Yes he had a love of alcohol, but first and foremost he was a poet the likes of which is seldom seen, and to define a man by his vices is to ignore his virtues.We should not let his reputation as a heavy drinker overshadow his great literacy legacy.
One of the most entrancing features Thomas possessed was his voice, a seductive instrument which he used to enrich his performances that still endures to this day, he remain a poet unlike any other. Dylan Thomas took the very local and very specific and made it universal. Across all of the forms that Dylan Thomas mastered, the literary landscape was made all the richer by his creative exploration of subjects that he returned to throughout his career: memory, childhood and place. He wrote about the ways in which we belong to each other and to the place that we call ‘home’.
 Dylan Thomas's expressive, highly imaginative re-creation of forms and language intimately portrays his inner self and his time, earning him renown as one of the "great individualists of modern art."A few years before his death, Dylan Thomas gave the following account of himself: ‘One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women.’ Although Thomas put his Welshness first, his relationship with Wales was as enigmatic, and as problematic, as his relationships with women. This together with Thomas’s English upbringing has made defining, and accounting for, what it is that can be called Welsh in his work very difficult.
He is buried in Laugharne, and has a memorial plaque in Poets corner in Westminster Abbey I have long been a great admirer of his life and work and his unfailing commitment to his craft, that continues to inspire.
Many have tried to imitate him. Some have got closer than others, but in my experience, Dylan’s rare talent is hard to master.His work lay not only in perfect apposite creation but also in its frugal use. He rarely ‘goes over the top’. His work is the epitome of balance, while being cleverly inventive – but only when necessary. For where Dylan Thomas felt he could improve the English language, he did so, and our beautiful language is the richer for it.
A certain  Mr Robert Allen Zimmerman would arrive in New York eight years after Dylan Thomas's death, telling everyone that his name was Bob Dylan (later admitting it was his way of honoring the late poet).This influence extended beyond Dylan’s stage name though, going so far as to shape his lyrical style and even the types of songs he chose to write. That is another story I guess, but illustrates how Dylan Thomas had on many that rode on his waves later, and the poets who have followed in his footsteps who still owe a debt to his mighty mercurial talent.
While there are times when the often embellished tales of Dylan’s tempestuous relationship with both Caitlin and alcohol have threatened to overshadow the achievements of his literary work, today it is an indisputable fact that Dylan has gone into history as one of Wales’ most celebrated sons.Through writing so uniquely inventive that it alters the reader's perception of language, Thomas left us with works that are as fresh and relevant to today's world as they were at their debut.
His rich legacy lives on in his poems and plays, which are still much loved and appreciated around the world, not just in Wales. For a poet from a small Welsh town to become one of the best known writers in the world in the 1950s was no mean feat, and so today, on what would have been Dylan Thomas’ birthday, I raise a glass in honour to one of Wales’ greatest literary heroes, Mr Dylan Thomas. Happy Birthday. Cheers.
Every year the Dylan Thomas society of Great Britain lays a wreath at Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey on the anniversary of his death.

Poem in October
 
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
   And the mussel pooled and the heron
           Priested shore
       The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
       Myself to set foot
           That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

   My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
   Above the farms and the white horses
           And I rose
       In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
       Over the border
           And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

   A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
   Blackbirds and the sun of October
           Summery
       On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
       To the rain wringing
           Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

   Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
   With its horns through mist and the castle
           Brown as owls
       But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
       There could I marvel
           My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

   It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
   Streamed again a wonder of summer
           With apples
       Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
       Through the parables
           Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels

   And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
   These were the woods the river and sea
           Where a boy
       In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
       And the mystery
           Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.

   And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
   Joy of the long dead child sang burning
           In the sun.
       It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
       O may my heart's truth
           Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

 1945

Do not go gentle into that good night


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Poem on his birthday

  In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
  Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
  And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
  He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
  Herons spire and spear.

  Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
  Doing what they are told,
Curlews aloud in the congered waves
  Work at their ways to death,
And the rhymer in the long tongued room,
  Who tolls his birthday bell,
Toesl towards the ambush of his wounds;
  Herons, stepple stemmed, bless.

  In the thistledown fall,
He sings towards anguish; finches fly
  In the claw tracks of hawks
On a seizing sky; small fishes glide
  Through wynds and shells of drowned
Ship towns to pastures of otters. He
  In his slant, racking house
And the hewn coils of his trade perceives
  Herons walk in their shroud,

  The livelong river's robe
Of minnows wreathing around their prayer;
  And far at sea he knows,
Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end
  Under a serpent cloud,
Dolphins dyive in their turnturtle dust,
  The rippled seals streak down
To kill and their own tide daubing blood
  Slides good in the sleek mouth.

  In a cavernous, swung
Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells.
  Thirty-five bells sing struck
On skull and scar where his lovews lie wrecked,
  Steered by the falling stars.
And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage
  Terror will rage apart
Before chains break to a hammer flame
  And love unbolts the dark

  And freely he goes lost
In the unknown, famous light of great
  And fabulous, dear God.
Dark is a way and light is a place,
  Heaven that never was
Nor will be ever is always true,
  And, in that brambled void,
Plenty as blackberries in the woods
  The dead grow for His joy.

  There he might wander bare
With the spirits of the horseshoe bay
  Or the stars' seashore dead,
Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales
  And wishbones of wild geese,
With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost,
  And every soul His priest,
Gulled and chanter in Young Heaven's fold
  Be at cloud quaking peace,

  But dark is a long way.
He, on the earth of the night, alone
  With all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow
  The bones out of the hills,
And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last
  Rage shattered waters kick
Masts and fishes to the still quick starts,
  Faithlessly unto Him

  Who is the light of old
And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild
  As horses in the foam:
Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined
  And druid herons' vows
The voyage to ruin I must run,
  Dawn ships clouted aground,
Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue,
  Count my blessings aloud:

  Four elements and five
Senses, and man a spirit in love
  Thangling through this spun slime
To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come
  And the lost, moonshine domes,
And the sea that hides his secret selves
  Deep in its black, base bones,
Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh,
  And this last blessing most,

  That the closer I move
To death, one man through his sundered hulks,
  The louder the sun blooms
And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;
  And every wave of the way
And gale I tackle, the whole world then,
  With more triumphant faith
That ever was since the world was said,
  Spins its morning of praise,

  I hear the bouncing hills
Grow larked and greener at berry brown
  Fall and the dew larks sing
Taller this thunderclap spring, and how
  More spanned with angles ride
The mansouled fiery islands! Oh,
  Holier then their eyes,
And my shining men no more alone
  As I sail out to die
 
Especially When The October Wind 
 
 Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.
 
The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flowet

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
 
 And Death Shall Have No Dominion
 
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashore;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

Selected Bibliography
Poetry

Poems (1971)
Collected Poems (1952)
In Country Sleep, And Other Poems (1952)
Deaths and Entrances (1946)
New Poems (1943)
The Map of Love (1939)
The World I Breath (1939)
Twenty-Five Poems (1936)
18 Poems (The Fortune press, 1934)

Prose

Early Prose Writings (1971)
Collected Prose (1969)
The Beach of Falesá (1964)
Letters to Vernon Watkins (1957)
Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories (1955)
A Prospect of the Sea (1955)
A Child’s Christmas in Wales (1954)
Quite Early One Morning (1954)
The Doctor and the Devils (1953)
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940)
Notebooks (1934)

Drama
Under Milk Wood (1954)