Tag Archives: politics

From Across The Water

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I’ve not been writing much, so I’ve not been posting much. I’ve got other things on my mind right now.

The last few weeks has demonstrated that the rise of fascism is all too easy, in the UK as elsewhere. Unfortunately for us, the FPTP election system makes it very possible that Reform will lead the British government by the end of the decade. As the Tories seem to want to join with Reform, and Labour is determined to pander to them, there isn’t enough opposition going on.

I’m out of the country right now so there is a limit to what I can do, but I do want to say:

YOU have to be the opposition.

During the Brexit referendum, almost everybody on my Facebook friends list was keen to Remain, but so few actually did anything about it. Sometimes I felt like the only activist in my constituency, going out, having the difficult conversations, but it wasn’t enough.

To win this fight we are all going to have to be activists, starting NOW. Every conversation you have one to one with a colleague, a neighbour, a family member, is going to be important. You are going to have to arm yourself with facts on e.g. why immigrants are not the problem, why Reform politicians are not fit to be elected, why there is something better for everyone in progressive values. You will have to really listen to what’s bothering people and why the fuck they think Reform might be the answer. You are also going to have to listen to some very distasteful views without shouting and patiently make the opposite case. Every day, over and over, for the next few years.

If you say you can’t do this because you don’t have time, because you are an introvert, because it’s too much like hard work to get your head around the arguments, because somebody else has got this – fascism will win, and we will all lose. We’ve all seen what’s happened in America.

What else can you do?

Write to your MP, to 10 Downing Street, to your local councillors, your local paper, the BBC, the mainstream media. Especially in the places where Reform is strong (I’m looking at YOU, Durham friends). Go to the public meetings, ask the hard questions, go mob handed to constituency surgeries, make them wish they had never stood for office. Get in their faces, get up in their grilles, challenge them on everything they’ve done and everything they haven’t done. Immigration, trans rights, Palestine, how local services are being run, how national politics is being run, the environment, climate change, the economy. Choose a hot topic and write every week, give them no excuse, show them no mercy. Badger the bastards every day, whichever party they represent. Show them we are watching their every move. If you get no reply, it doesn’t matter, that’s not the point. Bombard them with your good, cogent arguments. It will begin to sink in.

Get yourself educated. Look at FullFact, join Hope Not Hate and More in Common, look at the arguments set out in some of the better Pro-EU groups on Facebook.

Get some young people registered to vote. Tell them why voting matters. Get people the relevant photo ID if necessary. Get writing, get blogging, get communicating. Make a to do list for this week, this month, next month. We are at war. Social media is necessary but not sufficient. Do something else as well.

One thing I’ve found – marching achieves nothing. Talking matters. During the Brexit referendum campaign a few one to one conversations I had changed a few minds. I wish everyone had been doing it. You are going to have to do it now.

What if there is no Tranquility?

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We are in those leftover days – between Christmas and New Year. A time for taking stock, reducing it, putting it in a tupperware box and storing it in the freezer – or at least that is what I generally do with the turkey bones.

I finished work on 18th December after a very busy few months in the office. I was so tired I would get suddenly lightheaded on the way round Sainsbury’s and wonder if there was something wrong with my health. Looking back on the year it is no wonder I got tired.

This was the year I got active in politics. We began by slithering along the icy January pavements, canvassing door-to-door for Labour at the General Election. I carried on running The Stare’s Nest for a few months after the election, but at the local branch AGM I took the job of Secretary to the Teesdale branch of the party, and I realised I’d got too busy to keep the editing work going; besides it seemed like the quality of poems submitted was diminishing and I suspected the project had run its course. And then a “casual vacancy” came up on Barnard Castle Town Council and I stood, and was elected, on December 10th, as a town council member. If I do that job properly it will take up even more of my time.

In August, I organised a poetry workshop day at the Bowes Museum. Fifteen poets wrote in response to the Yves St Laurent couture exhibition. I think I was the only poet who wrote nothing.

Add to that a house to clean, a garden to manage, an all the concomitant Stuff To Do – we’ve had a lot of decorating done over the last few months – and something had to give. Of course, it has been the writing. I’ve produced very few poems in the last few months, and have done no work on the Great Novel. I was worried that I couldn’t write any more.  But, happily for my creativity, though sadly for my Christmas preparations, I treated myself to a weekend in Grange Over Sands at Kim Moore’s lovely “Poetry Carousel” workshop, and a few poems did pop into my head, proving that with bit of downtime and a relaxing atmosphere, I can get back into the swing of it.

Sixteen days off work over Christmas and we have hosted two drinks parties and three sets of house guests, with all the cleaning, shopping and cooking that involves. Today (Day 11 of my “holiday”) I finished a giant basket-load of ironing and started washing the next overflowing laundry binful of clothes.

This can’t go on! I am going to have to make time to write or I will go mad. Wordsworth famously said that: ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility’.

Somehow, we have to make the time for that recollection, a time to empty our minds of chores and worries. I’m not sure how I am going to manage it yet, but I have to create my own tranquility.