Halloween

halloween is a shortening,if not a corruption of all hallows eve,the day or rather night of the dead.it is my view that no-one needs to be a follower of a religion or spiritual path for this to have some significance.it is said that this is the time of year when the divide between this very “concrete”,material and often banal world is at one of its narrowest or thinnest points.there may be some psychological truth to that even if it is not as expressed,or not scientific nor rational.i observe that soem at least of the most militant atheists still carry around in their consciousness or psychologies,elements of superstitions or earlier ways of looking at the world.i remain a heretical believer in a spritiual path,and would acknowledge some of this for myself.that said i don’t read or believe in astrology,but have seen miltant rationalists,atheists,secularists do exactly that.how many of us in marking deaths of people important to us or their anniversaries write RIP,without believing in what that literally means.it can of course have alternative meanings.then i observe how even in a secularised cosumer dominated culture many people mark the departure of others.there are for example the remains of flowers and cards and tokens at the place on kilburn high road where a young black woman was shot dead duing the summer  just gone.we all have a culture,we give things,people and events meanings,we tell each other stories….

my own spiritual path contains a lot of paradoxes.whilst it has less of a fixation on the dead than some other more orthodox forms of christianity,it does acknowledge the psychological importance of”passing”,and indeed had a spiritual form in the past,the consolamentum,which we might claim was highjacked by the orthodox for their own purposes and which included some increased exercise of  control over other humans thought.

but some kind of marking of passing originated in the early christian churches variously known as the “day of the dead”,or as “all saints”and”all souls”.those were the days when the churches would have been unlikely to have established a social hierarchy,not in their own governance but in their outlook on the world.all saints was a time of prayer,remembrance and protection of believers,and all souls was for all human kind,where effectively the only difference was that an individual was a believer or not and that no particular value went with either status-it was simply that one person might be a believer and another not.it was only later,possibly under the development of and overt catholicism that it became about saints and sinners,where the meaning of saint shifted from simple believer to special,holy person and humanity,but especially the non believers labelled as pagans,heathens or sinners-not even just refusers of god,or the right god,but cast out into the outer darkness of sin,evil wrong doing,wickedness.that in itself has a particlar western association-it is the western,catholic and indeed protestant churches which have very overdeveloped notions of original sin,laid at the feet or rather the womb of women,from which mary,mother of god,at least for the catholic tradition is to blame for everything and forms a strong part of the divison of women into the virgin/whore dichotomy,and for me is a powerful,negative element in the psychology of mysognyny.

i admit that whilst i am neither clever,nor special and would not necessarilly have expressed it when young i was clearly a heretic from being quite young as i rejected the”original sin”explanation as simply not right,and not an explanation from when i was quite young.i would have lined up with Pelagius,and early english monk who rejected said”original sin”.

i guess i went down hill all  the way after that,but that is another story,except to say i remain a heretical believer today.i still reject”original sin”,and indeed much else,though sometimes for different reasons to when i was a child or youth,and i would hope with greater understanding.

i still feel ambivalent about”halloween”,and often have a”bah!humbug!”response to what might be seen as another trivialised,americanised,consumerised”even”stripped of anything except superficial meanings.this year i decided on a different approach.i have bought bags of wrapped sweets to give away and have asked the children not to scare themselves with spooks and ghosts but to think about the children who will not be able to go”trick or treating”tonight because they don’t have someone to care for them or about them,or who are homeless or too poor,or oppressed or exploited here or elsewhere in the world.i do not want or mean to be self righteous but it does seem to me as both a revolutionary socialist and as agnostic christian that we do have to share the message in the real world-to care for and about each other.i hope perhaps an adult will go away,not remembering me but a few words intended with my effort at kindness or that a child might remember that funny old bloke who asked them to think of someone else.and of course they go away with some sweets…

we are after all social beings.there is not enough love or kindness in the world,unless we try to make it so.even if prayer counts for nothing,then in some respects good intentions must.unless someone has a better idea,that,at this moment is the best i can do.

d1/311013

Fragments-Lost

i am lost

but i do not look for myself

i look for you

d2/03092013

Fragments-Lost

i’m lost

but i don’t look for me

i look for you

d1/02092013

Activists Journal-August bank Holiday Weekend

The main feature of the week before the bank holiday at the end of the week,is the weekend.

I think i’ve reached that stage in life where in some ways it easier to remember what i was doing 40 years ago than yesterday.

so lets start there:40 years ago on August Bank Holiday was Windsor Free Festival 1973,I was very much there.i was definitely a part of it,and i both remember it in some detail and remain affected by it 40 years later,not just with the force and centrality of the memory but because of the events,that have given me important experiences to live by and learn from and apply.I detail that account elsewhere.

My recollection of the weather in 1973 is that it was perfect late summer,bank holiday weather.2013 was not quite the same

Friday was awful weather-with a touch of wind and rain.Saturday,i set off to meet my friend and comrade Joe to distribute leaflets on the South Kilburn Estate,with 3 large and intimidating blocks to visit.We finished about 10 floors of one of them,which was about 60 apartments.On visiting the two others we discover that both,of about 80 apartments each possibly are empty apart from 2 tenants remaining in each.We decide not to go looking for them-the odds are stacked very firmly against us,but it does set us wondering where have all these people been”decanted”to-there is no completed development going on in this borough which means they will have been”deported”to hastings or Luton or Birmingham or anywhere…

So we leave the estate and walk back to Kilburn Square where we visit our favourite cafe before we get rained off in a few minutes trying to give out leaflets in the square,which is  a location known to locals but not identified on any map.As they say,it is best hidden in plain sight.We don’t mind getting wet,but the leaflet’s won’t survive.We may have gone on trying but no-one wants to stop in this rain anyway.So home we head.

A couple of blocks away my progress is halted by a police cordon which blocks the path of everything,and its not until later that i find out why,although perhaps i should have recognised a situation i have been in before.So a big detour,and eventually i get home pretty exhausted.I wrote a brief report on our campaign page on facebook-and its only later that the police blockade was at the murder scene of a young black woman murdered in error as a result of not even mistaken identity.i rage when i hear police describe her as in the  wrong place at the wrong time.No!That is not the case:she was going about her own business.Her murderers and no-one else are in the wrong-wrong about everything.

On Sunday i set off to a little village in Buckinghamshire,following on the heels of my partner who went to visit another location first,which included a visit to a community library.the local authority had planned to shut the library down completely but somehow were persuaded otherwise,and have made the building available,i believe,rent free,to be run by volunteers.This is not as good as a local authority fully funded library but in a Tory borough,its much better than in another Tory borough where the Community Library exists as the front line of defence against a local authority determined to take the austerity axe to everything,and better still than in our own borough which is run by a Labour Council who have completely axed 7 out of 12 libraries and can’t even open the new civic centre on the day promised,or fill it with books,nor even find this new”listening attitude”to the community…

On Monday we visit the local village fete which had for a number of years become a regular feature of my and indeed our family life.An all too brief conversation with an old friend of mine in the local pub over lunch.A quick stroll round the stall,and i come away with a pile of interesting and very cheap books from the bookstall before taking a break for coffee and cake and an interesting conversation or two.Tuesday its back to London,and an important evening meeting about the Counihan-Sanchez Family Housing Campaign,but more of that later.

d1/02092013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Activists Journal-The Silly Season

August is supposed to be high summer,late summer.The media name for it used to be the silly season,when in the”old days”even  they admitted they would make it up if they could not scrape the  barrel for some kind of story at every level in the media.Now the media manage and make it up the time,that label seems itself to be sillier than  it ever was.Activity on the left,in the movement rarely makes it into the media even when we fight to change that,although amongst ourselves August was as chock full as ever of multiple activities virtually every day.When all is said and done my health/disability o longer enables me to run on endlessly,let alone run on empty,so much of August i stayed at home..not to do nothing but to attend to the things in life that often get set aside in favour of more interesting campaigning activity,and indeed to do the work-the networking,writing,organising that must support the more public activity.Nevertheless,i still end up writing this about 10 days to a week behind……and there is now,still,more to catch up on here.

d1/02092013

The Repair Kit

Earlier in the  year i was sorting through some of my clothes.As i did so i wondered about my clothes repair kit,which i had obviously mislaid.It may have made the propsect of teurning to repair some of my own clothes more likely.

It was only a few days ago,i located it somewhere else entirely.In one sense its too late because i had found another way to do the repairs.Yet finding the repair kit provoked the return of all kinds of memories.

One is simply about my own past and upbringing.I think i was born during a period of quite sharp transition in social etiquette and expectation.Whilst i was of course aware of notion of gender based division of labour in my family and the wider community,amongst my closest family it seemed in some ways an easy, trouble free transition.There seemed to be few lines of division written in stone at home.I picked up bits and pieces of “domestic”skills both at home and at school.My mum intoduced me to bits of”sewing”as indeed,did primary and junior school.Eventually i learned some rudimentary ability to do some repairs.The hippie counter-culture could in some respects be just as sexist adn rigid as the wider society,but part of the bright colours culture included learning to patch my own clothes,so that torn jeans might inlude patches of velvet or Tom and Jerry pictures.I remeber meeting one man who one morning decided to turn his curtains into trousers and di just that.i  think i managed once or twice to sew inserts into jeans so that they became flared or bell bottoms.Then years later,when i was living in a collective(shared)household-we did not call ourselves a commune as that seemed far too profound-a then close friend gave me this neat little bag with the needles,pins,cotton and a few other things as my repair kit.Meticulously,carefully and lovingly made and given-it has i admit become important for both its use value and sentimental value.

The gift must go back at least 30 year.It is still in pristine condition.I have lost touch with the giver.When she left our household,she indicated little wilingness to remain in contact with each other,due i think to profound changes in her ideas and outlook.It must be over 20 years since i last saw her,in passing.I regret not being able to catch her eye,let alone catch up with her.As memory flood backs what was manageable regret turns into something more difficult,if only for a few moments,although i know that feeling will repeat each time i catch  amemory with her in it,and may never be resolved or closed.Not that it stops me getting on with life,although if i focus even for a moment on those thoughts,there will be an empty silence around me,if not only inside my own head.

By the time i had found this kit,i had in fact had at least 15 pairs of jeans and trousers repaired professionally,and actually in some cases that is both better and would have been impossible for me with my limited meagre skills.This is not a matter of excuses-i would have been able only to do it by hand and my needles and hands would not have been strong enough to go through multiple levels of denim material.Besides which my health problems which affect my blood circulation mean that i have less sensation and dexterity in my fingers amongst other places.The details of the actual repairs in this case are another story for another time.

Indeed,it reminds me that there are not just memories and stories about my local community here,but also stories about politics and communal living and the culture i inhabit.Those anecdotes are for another time

d1/02092013

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bad Day

I won’t roar with rage,despair or frustration

it is after all,only when you awaken that you see the prison bars

on the road to gnosis

 

d2/15082013

Some Thoughts on Workers Democracy-Another Work In Progress

If i don’t write this in fragments,almost”live”as i have the thoughts occur to me,then perhaps nothing will get written by me,hence this,which piece might change or develop over time or which i simply might add the next part to at the appropriate time.

I was thinking about it again today.Observing and indeed participating at some level or another as ideas and democracy work themselves out in various parts of the left,day by day,today i took part in a discussion about how a certain debate is impacting on one part of the left.Its interesting that at some level,people are not even agreeing over what is being contested but the  thats not unusual and nor is differing over what is at stake,along with questions about the integrity of participants.Although none of this is surprising,some of it remains disappointing,even if it appears to be in the nature of the beast.

It strikes me increasingly that whilst we on the left-on a good day you might call it the workers movement,in the broadest sense,are good at obfuscating our ideas in over-complexity and left-ese jargon,as well as dealing with what are genuinely complex ideas and recognising that the world is complicated,there are other times it seems to me that we go into reverse gear.Despite adhering to some notion that theory and practice are linked in praxis and in reality,we nevertheless seek to divide it.From a crass division of activity from ideas(politics),to the incremental sleight of hand that divides organisations into leadership and members,mediated by cadres and which all too easily get reduced to the clever,all seeing leadership,dominating demeaning and leading by the nose the led,which is only clear when we see through it,and the perhaps we shrug the dross off until the next time,for i fear this replicates the ways class society/capitalism works and we are doomed to repeat it until we reach the tipping point where we begin to break it-where it is both the system and the habit.

 

I think quite rightly,at its best the left and its thinkers revel in the complexity,diversity and richness of the world,but again we sometimes seem to imply the opposite.Sometimes when we choose priorities,we don’t just order a number of issues but we privelege one entirely over several,and end up sometimes lurching from one to another,failing to spin more than one plate at a time,to mix metaphors. We do this with people,with members with our comrades too,where sometimes interest in or recruitment of one particular group,perhaps with good reason results in the neglect or even the exclusion of others.Then there is the heady and problematic mix of say centralism with democracy,not only in tension and perhaps dialectical relationship but where then tension and dialectics are abandoned,and the idea is thrown back at us that democracy is a distraction from the activism,the grand notion of intervention and at the end of the day the centralism.

 

In addition.my own political/activist life and my professional experience both tell me that

we end up approaching problems as if we have to know the answers in advance,when actually what we might need is method,principles,experience and some clues.That actually we really can make it up as we go along,and that clues and questions give us the tools to assess and modify and adapt,and that actually the questions and the mistakes are as important as the outcomes and the successes.It is i guess about means and ends.

In the here and now,i believe it is likely that people are marginally more intelligent than say 100 years ago,but that we have always been so,and in a modern society we can work things out for ourselves.Sharing our  skills and experience matched with democracy also gives us some clues.It may well be slower,we may well make mistakes,and it may not be perfect but in my view it can hardly fail to be better than this.Look around you!We made this-we just did not make it either in our own image,let alone in our interest.No wonder there is no god-and sometimes,in moments of doubt no hope.Yet in an uncertain world I am certain we can change it!

 

An Activists Journal-A Week in Activism….

I managed somehow,despite a diary,to conflate last week and this so that going away for a few days rather caught me by surprise.So it’s been a long time before i got to visit my sister in Nottingham where she moved to many months ago.This  took me away from my usual activism.

It set me thinking about when i last visited,and i guess it must all be over a decade ago.I came here to visit a particular shop,associated with a hobby.I sometimes passed through on my way returning home from an annual retreat,all of which gave me a very limited view of the city.And before that,it must have been decades since i visited on a regular basis,so its like visiting a place for the first time again,and i recognised little.

So my first walk around the city centre was to find some neccessities and get something to eat.We were approached by a young man needing money to buy food,and both workless and homeless.When i asked him if he was getting any help,he described that he did not get help and that every agency and community he visited,despite perhaps local”associations”simply turned him away.I gave him some money and some advice how how and where to get help,though i know it is all getting tougher and bleaker.It may not be London,but misery is still here,although surprising it looks like there is still working  class/council housing.That said i know looks can be deceptive.It also seems like the city still has a pretty impressive bus service-which gets my brother in law to work,whatever his shift time,but again i’m very aware that being avisitor is very different to living  somewhere….

For the next few days then i did tourist things,though it was more than a bit disheartening to find that there were times when i simply did not have the energy or stamina to keep up.That forces me to renegotiate with myself how i am going to cope,get on with things and make the best of it.

One of the best”payoffs”was that i managed to do more reading than in a long time and got to read through to my third book during the week.So whilst i did not exactly take a step back to reflect any more,or any more deeply-at least i might have extended my knowledge a little more,and to strengthen my”dissident marxism”.

Returning Friday,saturday returned me to business as usual…

d1/05082013 

 

 

 

 

 

An Activist’s Journal-Catching Up

On Tuesday night i attended the local TUSC(Trades Unionist and Socialist Coalition)meeting to publicly launch our campaign to identify,find,encourage local people/activists to stand in the next local elections in London in May 2014.

The meeting brought together a significant number of people together.Not only is it healthy that i neither knew nor recognised some of them,but it seems to have brought several “circles”and networks into closer contact with each other,including activists from each of  the constituent parts of TUSC and beyond.

As well as a senior officer of the RMT/Rail Marine Transport union,there were somewhat unusually in my experience  shop stewards and activists on the panel,and plenty of opportunity for discussion,in which i think nearly everyone took part.I am sure i will return to write more about this particular meeting and certainly the campaign as it opens up and develops,bt in the meantime i will restrict myself to some limited points.

 

Firstly that Izzie Sanchez,a leader of the Counihan-Sanchez Housing Campaign both spoke,as always movingly about her own direct experience facing the consequences of Austerity policies,which includes the key role of the local Labour Council administration in implementing them. I also intend to stand,and spoke of my concerns for the class to which i belong and rage at local and central government as they attack us more brutally than at any time since the 1930s,and the inevitable casual inhumanity of these attacks.Steve Hedley,of RMT,gave a particularly powerful contribution in both his description of the situation we are in and the need to fightback but also again reminded us of the realities of the Labour Party,whose claims most of us believe are not and rarely if ever have been made real in our communities,and that even where this may have been the case,the current state of Labour affairs is that they are a pale shadow of their former selves and have not shifted to the left at all.This unfortunately leaves many well intentioned labour Party members/activists and their organisations providing left,reformist cover and excuses for the Labour Party.

 

i for one may well remain campaigning alongside some of these people in local campaigns where we can fight for similar objectives but i do not share their strategy or agenda and will not share a unity on any terms or of”the grave”.

Active,though i very much try to be and to remain,i have slowed down since my early,medical retirement-frankly otherwise i would not have obtained that retirement.It does not help that i am also of that generation for whom recent technological developments like mobile phones and indeed mobile computers do not”come naturally”,like they seem to for younger people,so i am neither so fluent nor so fast.It does not help when apparently”connectivity”is affected by the climate/weather-so heavy and constant rain or high temperatures can apparently have such an impact although i’m not actually sure i accept this.If it is true,it makes thee technologies as quirky and imperfect as any other.The intense heat and bright light certainly affected me.

On  Wednesday i attended London SWAN/Social Work Action Network meeting which included a moving presentation by a young woman talking about her own experience at the  hands of social services/social care and the lost of her 3 children to adoption and fostering,which opened a wider discussion of this experience for too many women/mothers for a variety of reasons for well over most of the last century and beyond in both directions in time.There was a second major discussion around the future of Social Work Education, ad the related reviews which seem to reflect an increasing determination by the regime to restrict access to working class students,and impose an increasingly elitist and managerialist system which will exclude an understanding of the underlying,”sociological”causes of problems,and rip any remaining humanitarian heart out of our practice and profession.SWAN as always will seek to resist,to build alliances with others and not simply to be defensive but to actively promote our humanitarian,socialist,feminist values.

Cheekily, I sought and obtained an invitation for myself and my friend and comrade Sandra to speak at the next meeting as prospective TUSC candidates.

Earlier that afternoon,as i have written already on Facebook,i came across an incident in the street which i felt unable to ignore.I went out to do some local chores,and had the uncomfortable experience of passing a neighbour in his garden,and a black family group observing the arrest of a young black man.As i passed i felt uncomfortable at what i was watching but did not know what to do.I decided to back track and talk to the observers.It might have been a legitimate arrest but it looked to all of us as if it was primarilly motivated by racism>piecing the incident together,the police had overtaken the young mans car and at leats forced him to stop>they may have crashed his car-as the drivers door looked dented to me.They then took him from the vehicle placed him face down on the tarmack,both restraining and handcuffing him behind his back.Alone,and with 6-7 officers in at leats 4 cars,he was never in aposition to resist.It seems he is know to the famiy i talked with and had been a student with one of the “children”at the local senior svhool until a couple of years ago.he is known as a decent young man,as indeed most black people are,as i believe we should assume.

It seems that the”filth”were aware of our presence>the black family had made sharp observations of the arrest,including the “illegal”way in which the man arrested was placed,the possible compromising of evidence as not all the officers used gloves and some gloves seemed torn or damaged,and not least that they left the car with its windows open and illegally parked,all of which is likely to blow back on the young man in due course.It seems to me that the police”enjoy”their show of power,knowing or at leats thinking there is little we can do,although i and the other observers will try to do what we can.

When not hiding from the heat,i spend much of the rest of the notionally”working week”at home doing the background work that supports any activists activity in public and on the streets.That too is when,even when working at my best,i feel i never meet my own self-expectations of how much there is to be done.

The question is not only”What is to be done?”,but by who and when-and indeed,how fast?

d1/28072013 

 

 

 

 

 

did