Just as the first wave of Corbyn hysteria has settled down in the British press, the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi has - extraordinarily - stepped into domestic British politics to lambast those who voted in Corbyn as Labour leader in an all too obvious attempt to boost his own fight with the Italian Trade Union movement as he attempts to move Italy firmly into the current neo-liberal orthodoxy of austerity and privatisation. Just think how many times a British PM could have stepped in to condemn the Italian electorate for voting in Berlusconi. What next? All those voting for Corbyn to be denied entry to the USA on grounds of harbouring unAmerican ideas?
The refugee crisis, however, continues to shame the European Union as it reveals itself to be utterly incapable of rising to the humanitarian disaster growing outside and within its borders. The full refugee death toll is not really known, since there has been no desire to fully understand what is happening on the part of the EU, but the total deaths since 2013 is, as a minimum, in excess of 6000 men, women and children (UNHCR figures). Some 600,000 people have so far undertaken the unimaginably terrifying journey to find a safer place to live and there is little sign of this stopping. 1.2 million are predicted by the end of the year. This mass movement of people has simply overwhelmed the European Union's capacity to act in any kind of coordinated or remotely effective manner. The colossal failure of government or effective organisation by the EU in this continuing disaster is only outdone by the British government's own woeful efforts to respond to the still developing situation as it desperately seeks to avoid doing anything that might actually involve accepting a meaningful number of living, breathing, frightened and desperate fellow human beings.
It's worth remembering the Cameron government's responses to the developing catastrophe so far. Initially - leave it to the Italians and Greeks to sort out. It serves them right for being in the nicest part of the Mediterranean rather than the bleak Atlantic where we are. Greece may be bankrupt and Italy in dire economic straits, but we'll leave it to them to shoulder the entire responsibility. Oh dear, the Italians and Greeks are saving the wretches from drowning. This will only encourage them to come. We should not be rescuing people from the water, it's an open invitation. Ah,this policy doesn't seem to be going very well at home. Look, we'll send a boat, to show willing, but it can stay out of the way for the most part. Not good to get involved. Hmmm, people seem strangely moved by the image of a small child's body washed up on the shore. Maybe we need to do something pro-active. Okay we'll take 4000 a year for five years. That's, let me see, 0.03% of the population - should do it. I know Germany has agreed to take 800,000 now (1.00% of their population), but we're really showing kindness. I'm sure they don't really want to cross water again. The proper thing to do is to keep them in camps in Lebanon and Jordan so that they don't have to make that awful journey. It's true that this denies them any hope of a better life, but, hey, I've been camping myself. It's not so bad.
The government might consider what consigning hundreds of thousands of people to refugee camps in the Middle East actually means: after all, there is a huge amount of experience to draw upon. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 led to the forced dispersal of some 8-900,000 Palestinians (the most authoritative account of this can be found in the Israeli historian IIlan Pappe's book 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine') to camps in Lebanon and Jordan and to the West Bank, Syria and Gaza (now itself a vast camp with its 1.2 million citizens imprisoned by Israeli forces). In 1967, after the Arab / Israeli war, another 300,000 were displaced to Jordan. Many are still in these camps sixty-five years later - In 2010 UNRWA recorded 1,400,000 Palestinians living in these camps. Lebanon is a tiny country (about the size of Cornwall) with weak infrastructure having been devastated by civil war itself and then dominated by Syrian forces when Assad was still in power and desperately short of funding. It has already received 1,760,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war - about 20% of its population. (Remember, - we are agreeing 20,000 over five years). Jordan has taken around 700,000 - about 13% of its population. Over 7 million Syrians have been displaced by the violence and around 4 million are, effectively, refugees. If all 4 million were to come, it would amount to 0.8% of the EU population. And Cameron's brilliant response is to consign desperate people to the wretched life they will endure in refugee camps in perpetuity. Leave it to the weakest to deal with and forget all about both our humanitarian and political responsibilities.Our colonial history in this part of the world, from the mandate in Palestine, to Suez and British 'interventions' in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have all played a part in the current disaster. Our huge arms sales to despotic regimes, some now involved in the Syrian conflict and thus armed partly by us, means we are deeply implicated in what is happening. But we will walk away with a small financial contribution to those actually trying to grapple with a conflict not of their making, to salve whatever part of a UK government conscience remains.
Back in the late 50's at my primary school, the profound effects of post-war migration to Britain had made no impact at all. Although around 2.3 million non-UK immigrants came to Britain between 1945 and 1960, the majority of these were Irish and European. Commonwealth citizens, who, for the most part had a legal right to residence, initially mainly from the West Indies and the Asian sub-continent, did not exceed the million mark until the late 60's. Britain desperately needed these migrants to fulfil the labour needs of post-war reconstruction and the expanding economy. Not for nothing could Prime Minister Harold MacMillan crow "You've never had it so good" to the British people as he was re-elected with an increased majority in 1959. In my school, on the fringes of greater London, there was not a black face to be seen. My best friends, Bruce, and two Colins, did what kids of a certain class and age used to do. We built camps in the woods and lit fires for no real reason other than fires were fun; we made unroadworthy bikes from scrap parts found at local dumps and we cycled into Bromley on these to try to shoplift sweets from the enticingly open counters at Woolworths. Bruce was the expert here. He wore brightly coloured knitted jumpers that the female shop assistants would always admire, and while he engaged them in conversation about his mother's knitting techniques, he would snaffle Mars bars from right under their noses.
The bikes were terrifying affairs with no brakes and fixed wheels, thus the only way to stop them was to try to peddle backwards - difficult at any speed. My brother found this to his cost as we descended Chislehurst hill and, back-pedalling as best he could to slow down, his chain caught on the pedal stopping the bike instantly and sending him flying over the handlebars into a brick wall. Blood poured from his head and he expressed a rather self-regarding concern that he might die. This panicked me into trying to gain assistance from houses on the road, but all were empty of occupants.I tried waving at passing traffic for help, but all I got were cheerful waves back. Eventually I found a garage, and the owner, taking a look at my brother's condition, kindly drove us both to the local A&E where he was stitched up. This also meant that my grandfather was phoned to come and collect us in his pre-war van, much to his obvious annoyance. It was in hospital on another occasion when I encountered my first black person. A doctor, of course. I had been butchered by the local school dentist, who removed four teeth at one go. When I was still pouring blood at midnight from the open wound of my gums, an ambulance had to be called to take me to hospital where, now, I was stitched up. The doctor, from the West Indies, was scathing about the levels of dentistry in this country and I have a vivid memory of looking up at his strikingly handsome face as he stitched up my gum and watching the knot he tied in the thread gradually slide down the silky line emanating from my mouth and disappearing into it.
The main activity that Bruce, Colin, Colin and I would indulge in was playing football at the nearby 'rec'. I will freely admit that I was always hopeless at the game and was usually placed in goal. At school, in games sessions, I was always among the last to be picked for a team, but, then as now, all us boys wanted to play and to be good. I went along to the after-school sessions, hoping I might get a call to join the school team. Never a chance. In my defence, I would call as chief witness, my football boots. All the other kids had the neat, new, soft leather boots, black with plastic soles and plastic studs. They looked slick and seemed to make you a great player simply by putting them on. My mother could not, of course, afford such things. My boots were retrieved - I can't believe bought - from a jumble sale. They were simply enormous, at least three sizes too large. My friends could lace their boots together and transport them to school around their necks. Had I tried this with mine, my neck would have been thrust downwards forcing my face to the ground. If I'd swung round there would have been the very real danger of actually knocking someone out. They were probably manufactured some time in the 1930's from something like elephant hide. They were certainly a dull greyish colour. Where my friends boots came to a slick pointed end, my boots ended with a separately welded enormous leather shell, rather similar in style to the air raid shelters that could still be found in back gardens. They were completely unyielding. No part of them would flex. I might as well have been playing in hand-carved wooden clogs. Slick, they weren't. Hob-nailed boots they were. Indeed, the studs, made of wood - yes wood - were nailed into the soles, but were now so old and worn down that all the nails came through into my feet, leaving me crippled after each game. These boots alone destroyed my otherwise undoubtedly great career as a professional footballer.
My four years in Junior school were perhaps the best years of my school days, though I never grew to actually like any part of it. But it was endurable. I would often gaze out of the classroom window to the green playing field and the freedom beyond the wire fencing and wish I was anywhere but where I was - struggling with sums and escaping into the world of my own imagination. These years were lightened by the fact of having, of the four teachers I had, two who were kind and enlightened. Mr Stephens encouraged me in English and seemed to see that if I had any talent at all it was for writing stories and he let me do this as often as possible. Mr Shepherd ( yes, amazingly, of the four teachers I had in the junior years, three were male ) was also kind, with a quiet and gentle manner. He never lost his temper and also praised my reading and writing skills. I should add that praise was not considered good for children at this time, so it was a rare quality. He used to get the same bus as my sister and myself on occasion and he would walk with us to our grandparents house which was in the same direction as his house. He took a genuine interest in our childish world, spoke to us as equals and I remember his kindness to this day. These two teachers were in marked contrast to the headteacher who was a pompous and autocratic figure. I remember him storming into our classroom once, angry that some of us boys had been doing something against the rules in the playground - I can't remember exactly what, but undoubtedly some trivial infringement. At that time a murder had been in the news concerning some youths -the feared 'teddy boys', the defining youth cult of the period - who had got in a fight and had punched and kicked another to death on a towpath along a canal. The crime was reported as 'The Towpath Murder.' Our headteacher worked himself up into a fury at whatever indiscretions we had been perpetrating and finished his belicose rant by waving his forefinger at us all and shouting "You'll all end up towpath murderers if you carry on like this!" With that, he stormed out. Even at the age of ten, this seemed a little over the top and I noticed that our teacher, Mr Hoddy, was gazing at the closing door open-mouthed. The silence afterwards seemed interminable.
to be continued.......
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
Wednesday, 16 September 2015
Once more the press is awash with Corbyn hysteria. Almost every media outlet is full of ringing declarations of pompous outrage that the new Leader of the Opposition - a long-time republican, like many people in our society, and, I would guess, almost certainly an atheist -could not bring himself to sing "God save our gracious queen, God save our noble queen etc, etc". As an internationalist, Corbyn would probably find the whole idea of an anthem celebrating the uniqueness of the English problematic. It would have been an obvious hypocrisy for him to have sung merrily along, though actually there is nothing merry about our national dirge, and, of course, he would have been lambasted for this had he done so. This is a problem that all those of us who have the same opinions face on many occasions, but we are not in the media spotlight in the way that Mr. Corbyn is, and there is an argument that he might have been wiser to play by the rules and avoid the childish outcry that now consumes the corporate media. But, as I have said, that too would have provoked similar spurious outrage, and to stick to one's principles, in the long run, is the more courageous option.
One of the problems here is the nature of our national anthem. We only ever sing the first verse which has nothing to say about the specific qualities of Britain as a nation, identifies nothing that all can agree upon as something to celebrate, but is simply a eulogy to the monarchy, an institution that divides as much as unites. If you are not a monarchist, then how can you possibly sing it ? Best to remain silent, with dignity, as Corbyn did. To be anti-monarchist is not the same as being unpatriotic. One of the ways in which patriotism can be shown is in the demand for a more fair, equal and just society.
A later verse in our anthem proclaims:
"Not in this land alone,
But be God's mercies known,
From shore to shore!
Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world ov'er
This is never sung, but there may be something here that is less troubling to the democratic republican mind as long as the 'family' referred to is not a euphemism for empire.
Compare our anthem to the Welsh 'Land of my Fathers', which, unusually, largely celebrates the beauty of the Welsh landscape and Welsh culture expressed through the language. More conventionally, there is the Scottish 'Flower of Scotland', celebrating a decisive moment in Scottish history - victory over the English. And, of course, The Marseillaise, the French anthem, a stirring tune from the Revolutionary period, but full of images of violence and bloodshed and, originally, a rallying cry for war against the Austrians. The problem with all anthems is that they demand an abandonment of thought, questioning and nuance in the bullying requirement to capitulate to an emotive and unproblematic patriotism. If you are reluctant to do this, you will be abused, condemned and even threatened, a response more associated with fascism than a tolerant democracy.
Back in the late 1950's, there was also a problem with our national dirge. Although we still lived in what can only be described as poverty, if my mother ever had enough money to do so, she would take us to the cinema in Bromley on a Friday evening. These were rare treats that I still remember as the highlights of my childhood. I loved the cinema and have continued to do so throughout my life. In those days you often had to queue for some time to get in, and this only added to the excitement. The art-deco interiors of cinemas were luxurious gateways to exotic and fantastic alternative worlds. My mother, fortunately for me, liked westerns, and I have retained a life-long love of this genre, probably starting with being taken to see 'Shane' with Alan Ladd and the chilling Jack Palance as the black gloved killer. She also liked Marilyn Monroe ( it's often forgotten that she was as much liked by women as men, though for different reasons) and seeing 'Some Like it Hot' is a childhood moment I've never forgotten. To get completely lost in the world depicted on the screen, to escape entirely from mundane reality, was a feeling only otherwise encountered in reading, but the exciting merging of the individual and collective experience of cinema, made it unique. There is one film that stays in my mind more than any other, and remains on my list of favourite films still.
The pleasure of film for me then was that it took you to worlds quite apart from your own reality, but some time in my junior school years - either 1959 or 60 - we went to see 'The 400 Blows'. This is a French film (Les Quatre Cents Coups), shot in black and white on a very low budget by Francois Truffaut, and, of course, with sub-titles. My first foreign language film. I had never seen anything like it. This wasn't escape from my world. It was more of an encounter with it. Though shot in Paris, it featured boys I could recognise. Boys who skipped school, got in trouble, had difficult home lives and, finally, were sent to detention centres (borstal as we knew it). And a stunning image of doomed freedom at the end that always stayed in my mind. It had never occurred to me that film could be truthful in this way. The sub-titles didn't matter in the slightest. I was mesmerised from start to finish. Still love this film.
But back to anthems. People my age will remember that cinemas always finished their last show of the day with a recording of the National Dirge. If you didn't get out in time, you were supposed to stand still right through to the end. To get out before that awful drum roll signalled its beginning was the main aim of most people in the cinema, but, as they were usually packed, it was difficult and you were likely to get stuck mid-row unable to get past those similarly caught, but not liking to show disrespect. Well, this film was so powerful, I was unable to move a as the credits rolled. I was still stunned by what I'd been watching. As we finally got up to leave, the spirit-deadening drum roll began. Most people stopped still where they stood, as did I. My mother, of course, being fiercely anti-monarchist, took absolutely no notice of the niceties expected and dragged us forcibly past the observant customers respectfully standing still. There were frequent comments as we shoved our way through, but my mother pressed on regardless muttering "absolute bloody nonsense" as she went. Corbyn would have approved, I think.
One of the problems here is the nature of our national anthem. We only ever sing the first verse which has nothing to say about the specific qualities of Britain as a nation, identifies nothing that all can agree upon as something to celebrate, but is simply a eulogy to the monarchy, an institution that divides as much as unites. If you are not a monarchist, then how can you possibly sing it ? Best to remain silent, with dignity, as Corbyn did. To be anti-monarchist is not the same as being unpatriotic. One of the ways in which patriotism can be shown is in the demand for a more fair, equal and just society.
A later verse in our anthem proclaims:
"Not in this land alone,
But be God's mercies known,
From shore to shore!
Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world ov'er
This is never sung, but there may be something here that is less troubling to the democratic republican mind as long as the 'family' referred to is not a euphemism for empire.
Compare our anthem to the Welsh 'Land of my Fathers', which, unusually, largely celebrates the beauty of the Welsh landscape and Welsh culture expressed through the language. More conventionally, there is the Scottish 'Flower of Scotland', celebrating a decisive moment in Scottish history - victory over the English. And, of course, The Marseillaise, the French anthem, a stirring tune from the Revolutionary period, but full of images of violence and bloodshed and, originally, a rallying cry for war against the Austrians. The problem with all anthems is that they demand an abandonment of thought, questioning and nuance in the bullying requirement to capitulate to an emotive and unproblematic patriotism. If you are reluctant to do this, you will be abused, condemned and even threatened, a response more associated with fascism than a tolerant democracy.
Back in the late 1950's, there was also a problem with our national dirge. Although we still lived in what can only be described as poverty, if my mother ever had enough money to do so, she would take us to the cinema in Bromley on a Friday evening. These were rare treats that I still remember as the highlights of my childhood. I loved the cinema and have continued to do so throughout my life. In those days you often had to queue for some time to get in, and this only added to the excitement. The art-deco interiors of cinemas were luxurious gateways to exotic and fantastic alternative worlds. My mother, fortunately for me, liked westerns, and I have retained a life-long love of this genre, probably starting with being taken to see 'Shane' with Alan Ladd and the chilling Jack Palance as the black gloved killer. She also liked Marilyn Monroe ( it's often forgotten that she was as much liked by women as men, though for different reasons) and seeing 'Some Like it Hot' is a childhood moment I've never forgotten. To get completely lost in the world depicted on the screen, to escape entirely from mundane reality, was a feeling only otherwise encountered in reading, but the exciting merging of the individual and collective experience of cinema, made it unique. There is one film that stays in my mind more than any other, and remains on my list of favourite films still.
The pleasure of film for me then was that it took you to worlds quite apart from your own reality, but some time in my junior school years - either 1959 or 60 - we went to see 'The 400 Blows'. This is a French film (Les Quatre Cents Coups), shot in black and white on a very low budget by Francois Truffaut, and, of course, with sub-titles. My first foreign language film. I had never seen anything like it. This wasn't escape from my world. It was more of an encounter with it. Though shot in Paris, it featured boys I could recognise. Boys who skipped school, got in trouble, had difficult home lives and, finally, were sent to detention centres (borstal as we knew it). And a stunning image of doomed freedom at the end that always stayed in my mind. It had never occurred to me that film could be truthful in this way. The sub-titles didn't matter in the slightest. I was mesmerised from start to finish. Still love this film.
But back to anthems. People my age will remember that cinemas always finished their last show of the day with a recording of the National Dirge. If you didn't get out in time, you were supposed to stand still right through to the end. To get out before that awful drum roll signalled its beginning was the main aim of most people in the cinema, but, as they were usually packed, it was difficult and you were likely to get stuck mid-row unable to get past those similarly caught, but not liking to show disrespect. Well, this film was so powerful, I was unable to move a as the credits rolled. I was still stunned by what I'd been watching. As we finally got up to leave, the spirit-deadening drum roll began. Most people stopped still where they stood, as did I. My mother, of course, being fiercely anti-monarchist, took absolutely no notice of the niceties expected and dragged us forcibly past the observant customers respectfully standing still. There were frequent comments as we shoved our way through, but my mother pressed on regardless muttering "absolute bloody nonsense" as she went. Corbyn would have approved, I think.
Monday, 14 September 2015
So, despite the best efforts of the corporate media to discredit and undermine him, Jeremy
Corbyn has indeed been overwhelmingly elected to the leadership of the Labour Party, winning convincingly in all sections of the electoral process. Within 24 hours, almost 16000 new people had joined the Labour Party. Predictably this quite extraordinary victory, won against what appeared to be insurmountable odds, has been greeted in the press and TV with the wearyingly familiar alarm and derision. The Sunday Times headline is not untypical: 'Corbyn sparks Labour Civil War'. Note how agency in this sentence falls entirely on Jeremy Corbyn. He is the one who has caused this 'civil war', presumably by having the temerity to win a democratic election fairly and beyond any reasonable dispute. Those who have decided to irresponsibly walk away and abandon their office because they didn't get their way have no part to play in this alleged turmoil.
In much reporting, the passive voice is used. "It has emerged that" is one of my favourites, used on a daily basis in radio and TV news reporting, as though important events slowly crawl out from behind skirting boards and cupboards to be cunningly spotted by alert journalists, rather then occurring as a result of any causal process to do with human agency that might be reported and analysed. Agency is usually confined to implied or overt attacks on those who in some way threaten the dominant economic order that guarantees the continued profits that the corporate media depend upon. So Mr. Corbyn can be emphatically blamed for upsetting the status quo. After all, he will clearly be no friend of the Murdoch press. I certainly don't remember the Sunday Times headline, at any time in 2008, that was as clear on blame as its Corbyn one: "Unregulated, Irresponsible and Grasping Banking Industry Causes Global Economic Collapse", or it's byline, 'Working People to Repay Banking Losses Through Years of Cuts to Wages and Benefits - Wealthy to Remain Untouched!' I just must have missed this kind of response.
Unexpectedly, one of the most interesting pieces on Corbyn's victory appeared in The Sunday Telegraph by Dr. Martin Wright (not, of course, a Telegraph reporter) who compares Corbyn to the 1930's Labour leader, George Lansbury, and, among a number of interesting parallels, makes this point:
" He (Lansbury) connected with Labour’s core supporters and mobilised them in a way that meant the Labour Party survived when it may have perished. He reconnected a wounded, demoralised and betrayed party with its core values and beliefs..........................Perhaps the real lesson that a bit of historical perspective can teach us about Corbyn’s remarkable coup doesn’t concern his electability, or alleged lack of it. After all, those that warn that he is unelectable haven’t done too well at winning elections themselves in recent years. No, history tells us that the Labour Party is experiencing a period when it needs to be revitalised, democratised and brought back into contact with its all-too-forgotten core beliefs."
Whether Labour under Corbyn will win elections we will have to wait and see. At least all those hundreds of thousands of people who have had nothing to vote for since the complete neo-liberal take-over of our political system can now participate in our - albeit grossly inadequate - democratic procedures.
A divided Labour Party could also be found back in the latter half of the 1950's when Hugh Gaitskell was party leader. Gaitskell had introduced prescription charges into the new National Health Service when chancellor in 1950, an act that split the party in two, and was a vociferous supporter of Britain's development of a nuclear bomb, the so-called 'independent nuclear deterrent.' He was opposed by those led by Aneurin Bevan on the left. The division of the party into its left and right wings is as old as the party itself.
As I have said before, my mother was an enthusiastic supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and this issue was to dominate and divide Labour Party politics for years to come. The role of the state in taking responsibility for running all the major public utilities and its overwhelming success in providing decent, low cost housing for the post-war generation was not, at this time, considered particularly controversial, and certainly not the divisive issue it is now. Nuclear weapons certainly were. After the terrifying power of these weapons had been demonstrated on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and now the division of Europe into two antagonistic factions , NATO, supported by the nuclear armed USA and the Warsaw Pact countries, overseen by the now nuclear armed Soviet Union in the 1950's, the threat of nuclear extinction seemed only too real. As CND grew in strength and became a major political force, the annual Aldermaston marches from the atomic weapons research centre in Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London became a significant part of the political landscape - and an interesting diversion for me at the age of eight through to about twelve as my mother took us with her on some of these massive demonstrations.
I remember walking at least two days of one march - I'm not at all sure which one it would be - and feeling both excitement and a little perplexity as to why I was doing this. Clearly, my mother had little option, if she were to show her support for the cause, other than to take us with her. I seem to remember my brother being there, but not my sister, so maybe she was spared the wearying trudge of around fifteen miles a day. We slept overnight in a large tent structure erected in the grounds of a school somewhere en route, and I fell asleep to the inevitable sounds of folk musicians working through their Ewan McColl repertoire (I would later possess several of his records, one excitingly entitled 'British Industrial Folk Songs' from which several lyrics are permanently and irritatingly imprinted in my memory. I have a real fear that they may be the last things I recall as I shuffle off this mortal coil.) Because my mother was related to E.P.Thompson, I walked with him - I knew him just as my uncle Edward who we stayed with in Halifax a couple of times, and often met at my grandmother's house - and who bathed me when I was a toddler without realising I was still wearing my socks - funny the things that stay in the memory. When we got into London, the road was thronged with crowds of watchers and I couldn't see a thing. One of Edward's friends swung me up onto his shoulders so that I could see the huge size of the demonstration - a breathtaking display that I would never forget. I was actually sitting on the shoulders of a young Stuart Hall, later to found the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and to be one of the most perceptive writers on the Thatcher years, among many other things.
Rubbing shoulders - literally - with leading figures of the left meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, of course. I was still a child. But by now I had moved from infant to junior school. This simply meant moving into the much newer building built on the same site as the old infant school, but it was much bigger and overseen by an intimidating and pompous head teacher who intruded into much of the day to day running of the school. I made a group of friends here who remained friends - on and off - for my four years of primary school and most of whom lived on the same estate as me.
One who didn't was a boy called Gary who arrived at the school in my third year of primary school. For a while he, and for reasons I never understood, tagged onto me at every playtime. Gary, I like to imagine, went on to become, firstly, a very successful purveyor of used cars, and later probably made a great deal of money selling dud endowment mortgages to the financially innocent in the 70's and 80's before retiring early to Marbella. He had a gift for persuasive fantasy that would grace any prospective writer of fiction. Gary seemed much older than the rest of us. He would walk up to me in the playground, put his arm around my shoulder and, with a look of real concern, enquire as to how I was doing that day. He had dark, well cut hair, was always well dressed and spoke with the slightest of American accents. This, he told me, was because he was born in 'the States' (not just America) and had come over here as an infant. Complete bullshit, as I later discovered. He had a Gatsby-like ability to make you feel that you were of the utmost importance to him all the time he talked to you, and that he understood your every mood and problem. When he asked me about my family, and I revealed that my father had died, he rested his arm on my shoulder and looked thoughtfully into the middle distance for some considerable time. Finally he said, "I know how you feel, Tim. I lost a brother, and we were really close. Yeah, I don't ever talk about it, but he was killed in the war. Shot down over Germany. Got the medal at home. Don't say anything to anyone else, but I do know what you've been through." No other kid talked like this, like a scene from a film - or movie as Gary would undoubtedly say - and I was impressed with the mix of emotional restraint, but clearly deeply held feeling, and the heroic death so admirably concealed. He patted me on the back, sighed, and walked away.
It was only a long time later that I realised that for his brother to have been killed in, let's say 1944, he must have been born around 1924, some 26 years before Gary and I were born.
On another occasion, Gary once more came up behind me and eased his comforting arm around me. After the usual concerned questions about my emotional state, and the thoughtful and considerate responses, he once more looked silently into the distance, obviously pondering some intractable problem beyond my - or perhaps human - comprehension and idly muttered some sentences in a foreign language, which I recognised to be German, since my mother was teaching herself the language from a DIY language book, at home. "What did you say ?" I asked, "were you speaking German?". "Was I?" he replied. "Oh, sorry about that. I do that sometimes without realising. It's just a bit I picked up when I was over there. You know, you have to get by when you're travelling." Again, I was deeply impressed. Travelling around Germany, speaking the language. Was there no end to Gary's talent - and indeed, his mystery? The words he'd uttered, though had a slightly familiar ring to them that I couldn't quite place. Again, it took me some time to realise:
Corbyn has indeed been overwhelmingly elected to the leadership of the Labour Party, winning convincingly in all sections of the electoral process. Within 24 hours, almost 16000 new people had joined the Labour Party. Predictably this quite extraordinary victory, won against what appeared to be insurmountable odds, has been greeted in the press and TV with the wearyingly familiar alarm and derision. The Sunday Times headline is not untypical: 'Corbyn sparks Labour Civil War'. Note how agency in this sentence falls entirely on Jeremy Corbyn. He is the one who has caused this 'civil war', presumably by having the temerity to win a democratic election fairly and beyond any reasonable dispute. Those who have decided to irresponsibly walk away and abandon their office because they didn't get their way have no part to play in this alleged turmoil.
In much reporting, the passive voice is used. "It has emerged that" is one of my favourites, used on a daily basis in radio and TV news reporting, as though important events slowly crawl out from behind skirting boards and cupboards to be cunningly spotted by alert journalists, rather then occurring as a result of any causal process to do with human agency that might be reported and analysed. Agency is usually confined to implied or overt attacks on those who in some way threaten the dominant economic order that guarantees the continued profits that the corporate media depend upon. So Mr. Corbyn can be emphatically blamed for upsetting the status quo. After all, he will clearly be no friend of the Murdoch press. I certainly don't remember the Sunday Times headline, at any time in 2008, that was as clear on blame as its Corbyn one: "Unregulated, Irresponsible and Grasping Banking Industry Causes Global Economic Collapse", or it's byline, 'Working People to Repay Banking Losses Through Years of Cuts to Wages and Benefits - Wealthy to Remain Untouched!' I just must have missed this kind of response.
Unexpectedly, one of the most interesting pieces on Corbyn's victory appeared in The Sunday Telegraph by Dr. Martin Wright (not, of course, a Telegraph reporter) who compares Corbyn to the 1930's Labour leader, George Lansbury, and, among a number of interesting parallels, makes this point:
" He (Lansbury) connected with Labour’s core supporters and mobilised them in a way that meant the Labour Party survived when it may have perished. He reconnected a wounded, demoralised and betrayed party with its core values and beliefs..........................Perhaps the real lesson that a bit of historical perspective can teach us about Corbyn’s remarkable coup doesn’t concern his electability, or alleged lack of it. After all, those that warn that he is unelectable haven’t done too well at winning elections themselves in recent years. No, history tells us that the Labour Party is experiencing a period when it needs to be revitalised, democratised and brought back into contact with its all-too-forgotten core beliefs."
Whether Labour under Corbyn will win elections we will have to wait and see. At least all those hundreds of thousands of people who have had nothing to vote for since the complete neo-liberal take-over of our political system can now participate in our - albeit grossly inadequate - democratic procedures.
A divided Labour Party could also be found back in the latter half of the 1950's when Hugh Gaitskell was party leader. Gaitskell had introduced prescription charges into the new National Health Service when chancellor in 1950, an act that split the party in two, and was a vociferous supporter of Britain's development of a nuclear bomb, the so-called 'independent nuclear deterrent.' He was opposed by those led by Aneurin Bevan on the left. The division of the party into its left and right wings is as old as the party itself.
As I have said before, my mother was an enthusiastic supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and this issue was to dominate and divide Labour Party politics for years to come. The role of the state in taking responsibility for running all the major public utilities and its overwhelming success in providing decent, low cost housing for the post-war generation was not, at this time, considered particularly controversial, and certainly not the divisive issue it is now. Nuclear weapons certainly were. After the terrifying power of these weapons had been demonstrated on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and now the division of Europe into two antagonistic factions , NATO, supported by the nuclear armed USA and the Warsaw Pact countries, overseen by the now nuclear armed Soviet Union in the 1950's, the threat of nuclear extinction seemed only too real. As CND grew in strength and became a major political force, the annual Aldermaston marches from the atomic weapons research centre in Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London became a significant part of the political landscape - and an interesting diversion for me at the age of eight through to about twelve as my mother took us with her on some of these massive demonstrations.
I remember walking at least two days of one march - I'm not at all sure which one it would be - and feeling both excitement and a little perplexity as to why I was doing this. Clearly, my mother had little option, if she were to show her support for the cause, other than to take us with her. I seem to remember my brother being there, but not my sister, so maybe she was spared the wearying trudge of around fifteen miles a day. We slept overnight in a large tent structure erected in the grounds of a school somewhere en route, and I fell asleep to the inevitable sounds of folk musicians working through their Ewan McColl repertoire (I would later possess several of his records, one excitingly entitled 'British Industrial Folk Songs' from which several lyrics are permanently and irritatingly imprinted in my memory. I have a real fear that they may be the last things I recall as I shuffle off this mortal coil.) Because my mother was related to E.P.Thompson, I walked with him - I knew him just as my uncle Edward who we stayed with in Halifax a couple of times, and often met at my grandmother's house - and who bathed me when I was a toddler without realising I was still wearing my socks - funny the things that stay in the memory. When we got into London, the road was thronged with crowds of watchers and I couldn't see a thing. One of Edward's friends swung me up onto his shoulders so that I could see the huge size of the demonstration - a breathtaking display that I would never forget. I was actually sitting on the shoulders of a young Stuart Hall, later to found the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and to be one of the most perceptive writers on the Thatcher years, among many other things.
Rubbing shoulders - literally - with leading figures of the left meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, of course. I was still a child. But by now I had moved from infant to junior school. This simply meant moving into the much newer building built on the same site as the old infant school, but it was much bigger and overseen by an intimidating and pompous head teacher who intruded into much of the day to day running of the school. I made a group of friends here who remained friends - on and off - for my four years of primary school and most of whom lived on the same estate as me.
One who didn't was a boy called Gary who arrived at the school in my third year of primary school. For a while he, and for reasons I never understood, tagged onto me at every playtime. Gary, I like to imagine, went on to become, firstly, a very successful purveyor of used cars, and later probably made a great deal of money selling dud endowment mortgages to the financially innocent in the 70's and 80's before retiring early to Marbella. He had a gift for persuasive fantasy that would grace any prospective writer of fiction. Gary seemed much older than the rest of us. He would walk up to me in the playground, put his arm around my shoulder and, with a look of real concern, enquire as to how I was doing that day. He had dark, well cut hair, was always well dressed and spoke with the slightest of American accents. This, he told me, was because he was born in 'the States' (not just America) and had come over here as an infant. Complete bullshit, as I later discovered. He had a Gatsby-like ability to make you feel that you were of the utmost importance to him all the time he talked to you, and that he understood your every mood and problem. When he asked me about my family, and I revealed that my father had died, he rested his arm on my shoulder and looked thoughtfully into the middle distance for some considerable time. Finally he said, "I know how you feel, Tim. I lost a brother, and we were really close. Yeah, I don't ever talk about it, but he was killed in the war. Shot down over Germany. Got the medal at home. Don't say anything to anyone else, but I do know what you've been through." No other kid talked like this, like a scene from a film - or movie as Gary would undoubtedly say - and I was impressed with the mix of emotional restraint, but clearly deeply held feeling, and the heroic death so admirably concealed. He patted me on the back, sighed, and walked away.
It was only a long time later that I realised that for his brother to have been killed in, let's say 1944, he must have been born around 1924, some 26 years before Gary and I were born.
On another occasion, Gary once more came up behind me and eased his comforting arm around me. After the usual concerned questions about my emotional state, and the thoughtful and considerate responses, he once more looked silently into the distance, obviously pondering some intractable problem beyond my - or perhaps human - comprehension and idly muttered some sentences in a foreign language, which I recognised to be German, since my mother was teaching herself the language from a DIY language book, at home. "What did you say ?" I asked, "were you speaking German?". "Was I?" he replied. "Oh, sorry about that. I do that sometimes without realising. It's just a bit I picked up when I was over there. You know, you have to get by when you're travelling." Again, I was deeply impressed. Travelling around Germany, speaking the language. Was there no end to Gary's talent - and indeed, his mystery? The words he'd uttered, though had a slightly familiar ring to them that I couldn't quite place. Again, it took me some time to realise:
Muss i denn, muss i denn
Zum stadtele hinaus
Stadtele hinaus
Und du, mein schat, bleibst hier?
Zum stadtele hinaus
Stadtele hinaus
Und du, mein schat, bleibst hier?
Muss i denn, muss i denn
Zum stadtele hinaus
Stadtele hinaus
Und du,
The words from the Elvis Presley song, 'Wooden Heart', released after Presley's discharge from the army having been stationed in Germany in 1960.
Zum stadtele hinaus
Stadtele hinaus
Und du,
The words from the Elvis Presley song, 'Wooden Heart', released after Presley's discharge from the army having been stationed in Germany in 1960.
Wednesday, 9 September 2015
I awoke today to learn that, not only had Wayne Rooney become England's top goal-scorer, but that our own dear Queen had apparently lived long enough to become the longest reigning monarch in our history. I listened to the sonorous tones of various BBC pundits on the Today programme assuring us of the overwhelming significance of this occasion (not Rooney, the Queen) and noted their commitment to impartiality as they interviewed three worthies all of whom were staunch monarchists. The very idea that there might - just - be some people out there not entirely persuaded that this was an occasion of such overwhelming significance, that in fact there is a sizeable Republican minority within the nation, did not, of course, merit any consideration at all. Now, I have no opinion whatsoever on the character of her majesty - I'm quite prepared to believe that she is indeed a virtuous and hard-working woman. But her virtues or otherwise are entirely beside the point. What is required is some analysis of how this institution affects the culture in which we live. The BBC frequently assured me that the queen is a potent symbol of the nation and Royalty is above politics. (Her close relatives enthusiasm for Nazi Germany in the 1930's were not mentioned here). Not only this, but she is a unifying symbol, bringing us all together, dissolving the divisions of class, ethnicity, gender, political and ideological affiliation and reminding us that all this really doesn't matter as long as the stabilising principle of unelected and unrepresentative power remains intact.
If the monarchy acts as a potent national symbol, then it behoves those offering serious commentary to provide some sort of analysis of what, precisely, is being symbolised. A great deal is being made simply of longevity. Well, plenty of leaders have been around for some time, some of them quite unpleasant - Robert Mugabe, for example. Admittedly not quite the length of our own dear queen, but he was at least once properly elected. If you are never subject to any democratic process, then simply staying alive doesn't really count for much.
The monarch stands at the head of an elaborate, medieval structure of hereditary power. Flowing from the monarch come the Byzantine gradations of aristocratic titles and direct power - the 92 hereditary peers still sitting in the unelected chamber of the House of Lords, for example. The life peers are also appointed by the queen, although this is a formality, though we know not if she has rejected any. All of us are, technically, not citizens having some rights and responsibilities in our society, but subjects, owing unquestioning allegiance to unaccountable and inherited power rather than anyone with a democratic mandate. In terms of symbolism what we have here is a symbol of profoundly anti-democratic control based purely on birthright. It also symbolises a destructive culture of deference that distorts our whole society. The structures of hereditary wealth and power inculcate a deeply ingrained sense of social or class division that encourages all of us to 'know our place' and to accept birthright as a legitimate process of acquired wealth and influence. Far from being a symbol of unity, the monarchy is actually a symbol of ancient and deep social division, but so deeply ingrained is this cultural process - powerfully facilitated by the media - that we barely register it. Unless, of course, you engage in a more critical approach to social analysis than institutions such as the BBC will permit. And while the chief royal sycophant, Nicholas Witchell continues to fawn in front of royal power on behalf of the BBC - and older readers will remember Witchell crossing NUJ picket lines to heroically undermine his colleagues by continuing to read the news during the 1989 strike, we will all perhaps consider what the word 'unity' may mean in BBC management circles.
I'm going to break with the -roughly - chronological approach I'm taking to the account of my childhood to revisit one of the few, perhaps the only, pre-isolation hospital memories I have. I mentioned in my last post that my grandfather on my father's side had owned a radio and television retail shop in the pre and post-war years (television was first broadcast by the BBC in 1936, and had to shut down with the outbreak of war). Broadcasting from Alexandra Palace, the TV signal could only be picked up in the Greater London area, so my grandfather's shop was ideally placed to tap into this new market. (he once claimed to me that he had invented television, but "that chap Baird stole my designs". Fantasies of this kind were not uncommon with him.) Anyway, this meant that my grandparents had a television, even in the 1950's, on which I remember watching 'Andy Pandy', 'Muffin the Mule', 'Bill and Ben' etc. I also remember - I would have been three years old - the Coronation when our dear queen was officially elevated to her current position in a ceremony entirely dominated by the ancient aristocracy, the military and, of course, the Church of England. All those famously democratic institutions. I watched, of course, on a tiny black and white screen embedded in a large wooden case and I would have had absolutely no idea what was going on. What I do remember, though, is that some people in the room were waving flags at the screen, flags on long canes that waved hypnotically before the tiny screen. In later years, I scrutinised this memory quite closely, and I came to realise that, from the colour of the flags, what were being waved were the red and yellow hammer and sickle flags of the communist revolution, provided almost certainly by my grandfather for the occasion. Even in the heart of bourgeois Bromley, unity was not entirely evident.
to be continued.........
If the monarchy acts as a potent national symbol, then it behoves those offering serious commentary to provide some sort of analysis of what, precisely, is being symbolised. A great deal is being made simply of longevity. Well, plenty of leaders have been around for some time, some of them quite unpleasant - Robert Mugabe, for example. Admittedly not quite the length of our own dear queen, but he was at least once properly elected. If you are never subject to any democratic process, then simply staying alive doesn't really count for much.
The monarch stands at the head of an elaborate, medieval structure of hereditary power. Flowing from the monarch come the Byzantine gradations of aristocratic titles and direct power - the 92 hereditary peers still sitting in the unelected chamber of the House of Lords, for example. The life peers are also appointed by the queen, although this is a formality, though we know not if she has rejected any. All of us are, technically, not citizens having some rights and responsibilities in our society, but subjects, owing unquestioning allegiance to unaccountable and inherited power rather than anyone with a democratic mandate. In terms of symbolism what we have here is a symbol of profoundly anti-democratic control based purely on birthright. It also symbolises a destructive culture of deference that distorts our whole society. The structures of hereditary wealth and power inculcate a deeply ingrained sense of social or class division that encourages all of us to 'know our place' and to accept birthright as a legitimate process of acquired wealth and influence. Far from being a symbol of unity, the monarchy is actually a symbol of ancient and deep social division, but so deeply ingrained is this cultural process - powerfully facilitated by the media - that we barely register it. Unless, of course, you engage in a more critical approach to social analysis than institutions such as the BBC will permit. And while the chief royal sycophant, Nicholas Witchell continues to fawn in front of royal power on behalf of the BBC - and older readers will remember Witchell crossing NUJ picket lines to heroically undermine his colleagues by continuing to read the news during the 1989 strike, we will all perhaps consider what the word 'unity' may mean in BBC management circles.
I'm going to break with the -roughly - chronological approach I'm taking to the account of my childhood to revisit one of the few, perhaps the only, pre-isolation hospital memories I have. I mentioned in my last post that my grandfather on my father's side had owned a radio and television retail shop in the pre and post-war years (television was first broadcast by the BBC in 1936, and had to shut down with the outbreak of war). Broadcasting from Alexandra Palace, the TV signal could only be picked up in the Greater London area, so my grandfather's shop was ideally placed to tap into this new market. (he once claimed to me that he had invented television, but "that chap Baird stole my designs". Fantasies of this kind were not uncommon with him.) Anyway, this meant that my grandparents had a television, even in the 1950's, on which I remember watching 'Andy Pandy', 'Muffin the Mule', 'Bill and Ben' etc. I also remember - I would have been three years old - the Coronation when our dear queen was officially elevated to her current position in a ceremony entirely dominated by the ancient aristocracy, the military and, of course, the Church of England. All those famously democratic institutions. I watched, of course, on a tiny black and white screen embedded in a large wooden case and I would have had absolutely no idea what was going on. What I do remember, though, is that some people in the room were waving flags at the screen, flags on long canes that waved hypnotically before the tiny screen. In later years, I scrutinised this memory quite closely, and I came to realise that, from the colour of the flags, what were being waved were the red and yellow hammer and sickle flags of the communist revolution, provided almost certainly by my grandfather for the occasion. Even in the heart of bourgeois Bromley, unity was not entirely evident.
to be continued.........
Tuesday, 8 September 2015
I'm not sure who, if anyone, is reading this, but if there is anyone out there, many apologies for the absence of any updates on this blog for three weeks or so. It's difficult to continue from camp-sites in France, but now I'm returned I see that the media has, if anything, increased its concerted campaign to undermine in any possible way a Corbyn success in the Labour Party leadership campaign. The Times ran an article of such apocalyptic lunacy that any sane reader would simply cry with laughter. "Just as the Vikings and the Mayans brought about their own extinction by destroying the environment on which their cultures depended, so the Labour party is threatening its survival by....blah blah blah." Panorama tonight is running a 'special' on Corbyn which is little more than a carefully orchestrated piece of propaganda, sifting his long-standing commitment to Palestinian rights and opposition to the Iraq war as sinister signs of his real intentions of undermining democracy itself and plunging us all into the nightmare of a society where an ostensibly socialist party might actually initiate a socialist programme. Note particularly how every statement of Corbyn's is immediately undermined by the comments of the presenter. Any notion of impartial reporting simply does not exist in this shoddy little piece of propaganda. The BBC has reached a nadir of partisan 'reportage' with this, and I for one, as a long-standing supporter of public service broadcasting, can no longer defend the BBC's political coverage at a time when it needs public support more than ever. It now has a shameful recent history of reportage on both domestic and foreign policy, where representatives of right-wing think tanks are routinely presented as independent experts, and in foreign affairs, its reporting of the Israel- Palestine conflict, at the heart of so many of the problems of the region, are not just partial and inaccurate but are now little more than Israeli press-releases. It has become a disgrace to its once honourable history.
I said in my last update that my mother had connections to some key figures in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that was the thorn in the flesh of the Labour Party in the 1950's and early 60's - rather as the Corbyn campaign is now. This was as a result of the rather strange configuration of my immediate family and accounts for my sense of always having existed at a nexus of different class configurations. My mother's family were solidly 'respectable' working-class. My grand-parents on her side had five children, all living in a small rented semi. My mother was the only one to go to Grammar School, but they all ended up having successful careers in a variety of occupations (social mobility was more possible in the 50's and 60's than now). Her academic school gave her access to the young intellectuals of the area, many of whom, in the years after the second world war, gravitated to the Communist Party still enjoying the kudos of its success as the most effective of the anti-fascist movements both during and after the war. They were also committed to the principles of equality and fairness for all and the old Soviet Union still appeared to offer the hope of a classless society.
Through this involvement, my mother met my father, who came from a bourgeois family living in a prosperous part of the town. Having said that, his father, my grandfather on my father's side was one of a large family of working-class East Enders, who managed to make a good living from being in early on the developments in radio and television broadcasting in Greater London in the 1930's. He ran a radio and then TV shop which clearly did very well in these early years of this technology. He later set up a factory manufacturing garden ornaments among other things and made enough money to buy a large, three storey Edwardian house in a very salubrious part of the town. I'll come back to his extraordinary character later. As well as being a communist entrepreneur - just one of many of his multiple contradictions - he had a rather good singing voice, and, as a young man, took an evening course at the Royal College of Music where he met my grandmother who came from a more genteel middle-class family and was a full-time piano student - and a very fine pianist.
Their eldest daughter, Dorothy, went to the local Grammar School that my mother attended, and my father was one of Dorothy's brothers. Dorothy went up to Cambridge where she - eventually - met and married her long-term husband, and my uncle by marriage, the historian and political activist, E.P.Thompson. He, of course, was to become a well known political figure over the next thirty years, and one of Britain's leading intellectuals of the left. My auntie Dorothy became a well respected historian in her own right, specialising in the history of the Chartist movement.Thus, as a scruffy little boy, I continually alternated between the daily hostilities and occasional brutalities of my South London council estate, and regular forays into a middle-class world of classical music, a pontificating grandfather convinced of his own correctness on everything, and a continuous background of political discussion and activity in which my mother tried to be as involved as possible whilst trying to keep us all together with no money whatsoever.
My life at my new school continued much as that of any working-class kid of the 1950's did. I continued to discover the unexpected and random outbreaks of violence that were a part of daily life now. Once, a boy in the playground took a dislike to me for some reason I never understood and started shoving me over towards the wall of the school. I was bigger than him, but he proved to be surprisingly strong and very resilient. He got me against the wall, then adjusted my alignment so that my head was immediately in front of a projecting brick window sill and proceeded to shake me backwards and forwards so that my head was continually cracking against the sharp sill. I still remember his face - thick bottle glasses and a ridiculous school cap stuck on his head (nobody wore caps to an infant school, but he did) - and he simply observed the effects of this battering with a kind of detached interest, showing no other emotion at all. I felt that I would soon pass out, or perhaps die, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was now in a world that I felt utterly unable to deal with. Before my worst fears were realised, he lost interest and simply walked away. I had a huge lump on the back of my head for days afterwards. More importantly, I was beginning to learn that aggression was now a part of my life and, for my own survival, I had better start to develop it.
All the teachers at the school appeared to be very ancient women whose universal dress code was dark clothing from top to toe and hair scraped back into a bun at the back and held in place with a hair net. They all wore hair nets. Clearly standard issue for female teachers past a certain age. They were all scary, but one was simply terrifying. Taller than the others and with a red-lined face that seemed to suggest a penchant for cannibalism as she eyed us coldly whenever she appeared in the corridor. Fortunately, I was never in her class, but one day I was walking alone down the corridor to get to the outside toilets when I heard the sound of fast pounding feet behind me. Running in a corridor was, of course, a punishable offence. A small boy whom I didn't know overtook me just as we reached a corner and he charged round at full pelt right into the midriff of this terrifying dragon of a woman. He hit her so hard that he bounced back off her straight to the ground, hitting his head hard on the tiles. She looked down at him saying nothing, then reached down and yanked him to his feet. She brought her red, child-devouring face right down to his and hissed, "first, what have you got to say to me?" I knew his time had come. Only seconds to live. He looked up at her and said "Ge' ou' the bloody way". I couldn't believe what I had just heard. The world stopped spinning on its axis. Monster-woman lifted the kid up off his feet and thrust him under her arm and marched off with him down the corridor. Obviously to her lair where, I knew, blood and dismemberment would follow.
to be continued.......
I said in my last update that my mother had connections to some key figures in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that was the thorn in the flesh of the Labour Party in the 1950's and early 60's - rather as the Corbyn campaign is now. This was as a result of the rather strange configuration of my immediate family and accounts for my sense of always having existed at a nexus of different class configurations. My mother's family were solidly 'respectable' working-class. My grand-parents on her side had five children, all living in a small rented semi. My mother was the only one to go to Grammar School, but they all ended up having successful careers in a variety of occupations (social mobility was more possible in the 50's and 60's than now). Her academic school gave her access to the young intellectuals of the area, many of whom, in the years after the second world war, gravitated to the Communist Party still enjoying the kudos of its success as the most effective of the anti-fascist movements both during and after the war. They were also committed to the principles of equality and fairness for all and the old Soviet Union still appeared to offer the hope of a classless society.
Through this involvement, my mother met my father, who came from a bourgeois family living in a prosperous part of the town. Having said that, his father, my grandfather on my father's side was one of a large family of working-class East Enders, who managed to make a good living from being in early on the developments in radio and television broadcasting in Greater London in the 1930's. He ran a radio and then TV shop which clearly did very well in these early years of this technology. He later set up a factory manufacturing garden ornaments among other things and made enough money to buy a large, three storey Edwardian house in a very salubrious part of the town. I'll come back to his extraordinary character later. As well as being a communist entrepreneur - just one of many of his multiple contradictions - he had a rather good singing voice, and, as a young man, took an evening course at the Royal College of Music where he met my grandmother who came from a more genteel middle-class family and was a full-time piano student - and a very fine pianist.
Their eldest daughter, Dorothy, went to the local Grammar School that my mother attended, and my father was one of Dorothy's brothers. Dorothy went up to Cambridge where she - eventually - met and married her long-term husband, and my uncle by marriage, the historian and political activist, E.P.Thompson. He, of course, was to become a well known political figure over the next thirty years, and one of Britain's leading intellectuals of the left. My auntie Dorothy became a well respected historian in her own right, specialising in the history of the Chartist movement.Thus, as a scruffy little boy, I continually alternated between the daily hostilities and occasional brutalities of my South London council estate, and regular forays into a middle-class world of classical music, a pontificating grandfather convinced of his own correctness on everything, and a continuous background of political discussion and activity in which my mother tried to be as involved as possible whilst trying to keep us all together with no money whatsoever.
My life at my new school continued much as that of any working-class kid of the 1950's did. I continued to discover the unexpected and random outbreaks of violence that were a part of daily life now. Once, a boy in the playground took a dislike to me for some reason I never understood and started shoving me over towards the wall of the school. I was bigger than him, but he proved to be surprisingly strong and very resilient. He got me against the wall, then adjusted my alignment so that my head was immediately in front of a projecting brick window sill and proceeded to shake me backwards and forwards so that my head was continually cracking against the sharp sill. I still remember his face - thick bottle glasses and a ridiculous school cap stuck on his head (nobody wore caps to an infant school, but he did) - and he simply observed the effects of this battering with a kind of detached interest, showing no other emotion at all. I felt that I would soon pass out, or perhaps die, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was now in a world that I felt utterly unable to deal with. Before my worst fears were realised, he lost interest and simply walked away. I had a huge lump on the back of my head for days afterwards. More importantly, I was beginning to learn that aggression was now a part of my life and, for my own survival, I had better start to develop it.
All the teachers at the school appeared to be very ancient women whose universal dress code was dark clothing from top to toe and hair scraped back into a bun at the back and held in place with a hair net. They all wore hair nets. Clearly standard issue for female teachers past a certain age. They were all scary, but one was simply terrifying. Taller than the others and with a red-lined face that seemed to suggest a penchant for cannibalism as she eyed us coldly whenever she appeared in the corridor. Fortunately, I was never in her class, but one day I was walking alone down the corridor to get to the outside toilets when I heard the sound of fast pounding feet behind me. Running in a corridor was, of course, a punishable offence. A small boy whom I didn't know overtook me just as we reached a corner and he charged round at full pelt right into the midriff of this terrifying dragon of a woman. He hit her so hard that he bounced back off her straight to the ground, hitting his head hard on the tiles. She looked down at him saying nothing, then reached down and yanked him to his feet. She brought her red, child-devouring face right down to his and hissed, "first, what have you got to say to me?" I knew his time had come. Only seconds to live. He looked up at her and said "Ge' ou' the bloody way". I couldn't believe what I had just heard. The world stopped spinning on its axis. Monster-woman lifted the kid up off his feet and thrust him under her arm and marched off with him down the corridor. Obviously to her lair where, I knew, blood and dismemberment would follow.
to be continued.......
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)