Musings on the politics of youth work, community work and society at large – dedicated to the memory of Steve Waterhouse, Malcolm Ball and Sue Atkins, great youth workers, comrades and human beings
So much going on but wasn’t that always the case? Yet now it is so exaggerated. So much that we know apparently but what do we know in truth? So much that appears new but has been said a thousand times before. In all of this much of a muchness and manic madness I struggle to find a voice worth voicing. No matter, I have little in the way of an audience. I’m conscious that others with a significant following say lots, which I find challenging. That’s how it ought to be. I’ll continue being inevitably discomforted. I’ll be circumspect..
With this in mind I am going to put to bed the self-flagellation, which accompanies failing to put my thoughts on paper; which keeps me awake at night as I compose crafted articles of poetic power, all to be forgotten in the morn.
Doing this means dieting. It means an end to the daily gorge of all things considered worthy of my attention, by whom I am never that sure. It means giving up on even some writers I admire. It’s all too much. My brain hurts or as my son would say, ‘it’s doin’ my head in’.
Even as I mutter this escape clause, I find myself drafting an irritated and frustrated response to the generalised characterisation of ordinary folk, who voted Reform in the UK, as stupid, racist, xenophobic bigots. I am incensed by the arrogant moral superiority of the professional and technocratic managerial class, which insists we adopt its values as we succumb to its influence. I am depressed by the absence of any sense of contradiction and uncertainty in judging both individual and political motivation. Yet, unravelling what I mean makes little sense without some context, some history of where I’ve come from and where I’m up to. Why do I believe what I do now? It may well be garbage, to quote an American President, but it’s been a long time shovelling it all into the bin.
Hence I am going to return seriously to the task of writing an autobiography, which will trace and interrogate my personal, social, professional and political journey from 1958 to the present day, closing on 70 years by 2028. I suspect it may well suggest I have been part of the very problem, which threatens to consume us. I hope the verdict might not be so scathing.
More than a year ago I all but completed the first chapter, ‘The Apolitical Years -1958-1968’. It needs revisiting, revising and refreshing but it’s a decent start. If anything comes of the venture I will publish the reminiscences decade by decade.
As for a title, I am wondering about an old phrase, my mother, faced with a hapless child, used to tell me off, ‘ Tony, yer don’t know yer left from yer right’. Politically, make of that what you will!
Meanwhile I’m continuing to sing, which is a source of joy and a little pride. It is now 65 years since I left the church choir when my voice broke. And it’s about six years since I began singing again in earnest. Two weeks ago I gave a concert in aid of our village museum and, to my delight, my daughter, Megan was in the audience. She’s somewhat biased but thought I did well. It was my usual eclectic mix of parlour and folk songs, spirituals, standards and show tunes, not forgetting a couple of Greek classics. This time, however, I was privileged to be accompanied on the piano for some of the repertoire by Linda Manousaki, mother of the inspirational jazz violinist, Maria Manousaki. Linda and I hope to continue this relationship, provided she can put up with me. My dear friend, Ken Carpenter, who has generously recorded some of my outings, was ill during the concert. Hence there may be no record of our fledgling partnership.
I began my humble offering with the opening from this beautiful piece by Henry Purcell, hoping that our music-making might beguile. Later in the concert I changed key as music should also disturb and sang the moving ‘No Man’s Land’.
And, I’ll be performing again this coming Sunday, May 17th at an event celebrating International Museum Day.
My spirits are lifted too by the coming Vlatos Jazz Festival organised through Martin Vlatos and curated by Maria Manousaki.
STOP PRESS
WHAT RICHES TO BEHOLD!
To bring this farewell to a close I’ll do one more post identifying the writers I will continue to follow. Then I’ll get my head down.
As I try to keep my promise of sharing links to folk I find stimulating and provocative, I am taken aback by the number of posts I’d like to make. For example. I want to respond to my dear friend, Siyavash’s commentary on the crisis in Iran and I’d like to draw your attention to a challenging series of pieces on Autism.
As of today here is an article by Paul Kingsnorth, who describes himself as a writer, Orthodox Christian, reactionary radical, aspiring beekeeper. I came across him about seven years ago and found him eloquent and questioning. Back in 2021 I was at one in our refusal to accept the authoritarian, manufactured COVID narrative. I shared his rage against the Machine. I agreed that resistance needed a spiritual dimension. In the end I remain at odds with what feels like his increasing certainty that the way forward is to embrace the Christian God. He explains his conversion in a rich and compelling biographical account, The Cross and Machine. Whilst I remain a subscriber to his blog, I visit it erratically – a sign perhaps of my atheistic prejudice.
It is a powerful engagement with the threat to ‘being human’ posed by Artificial Intelligence. It should be read in full but here are a couple of extracts.
Maybe the book was the only technology I ever really fell in love with. It is a technology, of course; so are words. Language – languages, since we have so many of them, though fewer than we once did – are one of the key markers of our humanity. We speak, we tell stories, we write the stories down and thus we are able to share them with people we will never meet and who will never meet us, but who will know us in some way by our words. Humans are storytelling animals if we are anything at all. All of our religions begin with stories, and all of our nations and cultures. Our personal biographies are stories we construct. We tell stories by naming everything else that lives. We tell stories about progress and decline, good and evil, kings and peasants, fairies and ghosts, detectives and serial killers. We sing stories to music, and record them and play them back again and again. We fight over stories, and we send our sons out to die for them.
Stories will keep being told, of course. It’s just that their authors might no longer be human.
If AI doesn’t kill us, it will certainly render us incapable of understanding what reality is. Having outsourced our physical labour to machines (and poor people in poor countries, who we never have to meet or think about), we are now outsourcing our intellectual labour to them too.
If the machines can do our research and write our stories, and build our houses and think ‘smarter’ thoughts than we can and all the rest of it – what is our role? What is the point of humanity at all? For the subset of us who write and tell stories, another question emerges too: can we even find the space, away from the buzzing of the Machine, to incubate the stories we want to tell? Stories descend when you make the right space for them within you. Writers are vessels. How can we possibly tell real, human, stories if our heads are full of digital noise? Will the ‘writers’ of the future even know what stories are, away from the enabling, imprisoning Panopticon of the digital world?
Thinking about story-telling is likely to evoke a wry smile from Marilyn Taylor. Over the years she has sighed in frustration at my failure to embrace and reciprocate her deep love for fiction in all its diversity. Again it is to my detriment. Yet, in my own way, I would claim to tell stories.
The majority of my sporadic contributions over the years to journals of one kind or another draw explicitly upon my personal experience. Indeed I have been criticised for this tendency, frowned upon in some academic circles. This opening to a piece that appeared in Youth & Policy catches the flavour of my biographical approach.
‘The Decline of the Local Authority Youth Service in England: Reflections of an actor in its demise.‘
‘These assertive and tentative reflections cover the period from the genuine promise of a radical 1968 to the artificial optimism of a populist, authoritarian 2019. Across four decades I sold my labour to three different Local Authority Education [LEA] departments. Most recently, retired from the fray, I’ve sought to observe and comment upon the shifting landscape of contemporary youth work. For better or worse, however flawed and forgetful my memory, I’ve been party to the ups and downs of Local Authority [LA] Youth Services in England. In this spirit I will begin the story with two snapshots from my chequered career.
In the first I am to be found in the main hall of a rambling Wigan youth centre. A hirsute, profusely sweating part-time youth worker, I organise on two evenings a week a diversity of activities from weight training to basketball predominantly with young men, offset by a token last half hour of mixed volleyball. At first glance I appear to be the Positive Activities worker of New Labour’s late 1990’s dreams. Contrarily, I am seeing myself more and more as an informal educator, stimulated by the flux of my interaction with young people. I am intrigued by the infinite, if uncertain possibilities of association and conversation, the potential of relating without either imposed authority or a prescribed script.
More than a quarter of a century later I am to be found, besuited as befits a Chief Youth & Community Officer, in the Wigan Enterprise Centre surrounded by colleagues from the Planning Department. We are putting together a bid for time-limited funding aimed at ‘disadvantaged’ young people. The rules of the competition demand that we promise to deliver on a number of targets – percentage reductions in anti-social behaviour, drug use and teenage pregnancies. I try to argue that the introduction of these outcomes will distort the Youth Service’s relationship with young people. My misgivings are expressed to no avail. I leave, heavy of heart, having in the name of jobs rather than young people’s needs, been incorporated into a sham. A colleague attempts to persuade me I have been pragmatically principled. I am reduced to uttering dismissive expletives.
More broadly, if we are perusing the mass of sociological and political analysis served up to us, the authors, it would appear, see themselves as standing outside of the very social relations they are contemplating, the narratives of which they are so fond. There is no elevated vantage point from which the intellectual, the commentator speculates as if he or she is above it all. We are all, for better or worse, part of the story. Or perchance, we will let AI have the last word.
To the credit of the In Defence of Youth Work [IDYW] campaign, of which I was a coordinator for over a decade from 2009, it looked to story-telling as the way to illuminate the nature of a youth work process, which was uncertain, authentic and human. It did so in the face of authoritarian and behavioural prescriptions of what it ought to achieve. IDYW produced a book, This is Youth Work containing ten stories of practice, which was translated into Russian and Finnish. In addition we ran story-telling workshops across Europe, even reaching out to Japan
At the end of Writers against AI Paul argues,
“I have decided, as a writer, not to consciously engage with AI in any way in the course of my work, and I want to give other writers – and readers – who share these views a chance to demonstrate it, and band together in refusal of the machines and in celebration of raw human creativity and the power of stories. This essay, then, is the launch of a campaign of refusal and resistance. I have no funding and no plan, and I don’t intend to run anything – but I don’t need to. Like the Internet itself, resistance to AI is decentralised. Each of us is a campaign hub. Saying no to AI and yes to human stories can happen anywhere. It costs nothing. You can start right here, right now, if you haven’t started already.
In the war against stories, I am taking a side. If you take the same side, then we’re in it together. Let’s gang up. There’s strength in numbers.”
A Manifesto
I’m calling this the Writers Against AI campaign. It is built on a simple three-point manifesto. To support the campaign, a writer must make three pledges:
I will not use AI in my work as a writer.
I will not support writers who use AI in their work.
I will support writers, illustrators, editors and others in related fields whose work is entirely human-made.
The first of these points draws a line for our own creative work. We say, as storytellers: we will remain human. With the second, we refuse to lend our voices or our money to anyone who uses this technology to replace human creativity. Finally, we commit to doing something positive: supporting, financially and morally, other creators who are drawing the line too, and refusing to be dehumanised.
If you are a writer who agrees with these pledges and who wants to sign up to this campaign – well, that agreement is all it takes. You’re in, and there’s a very simple way to show it. Colorado craftsman Justin Clark has created a set of logos that can be downloaded and used by any writer who wants to adhere to these three points and resist the use of AI in writing and publishing. Justin is not a writer – or, indeed, a graphic designer – but he responded to my call for logos back in September, and I think his creations are striking and powerful. It’s not just writers this thing threatens, of course. All craftspeople are under attack. But we have an advantage: we have both hands and hearts.
You can find Justin’s campaign logos on this page. They are free to use and anti-copyright for any writer who supports the aims of this campaign. Put them on your website or blog, or print them in your books if you like. You don’t have to ask permission: you just have to commit to the three pledges, and use your words to support them.
‘But what about readers?’
But, I hear you cry, I am a reader, not a writer, and I hate AI too! What can I do? Never fear, because you are also catered for. Justin has also produced reader-themed versions of the campaign logos:
They can be found, and downloaded, in the same place. Print them out and stick them in your books, or on your website, or on the self-driving car windscreens of any AI developers who live in your neighbourhood.
What happens next? The answer is: you do. I have said my piece here, with this essay and manifesto, and Justin has done his work with these striking images. This is the firing of a starting gun. How far the race is run is now up to you. If you want to join the campaign, all you need to do it take this little manifesto and these images far and wide. Use them in your own work. Write about them. Badger others. Above all, continue to write stories with only your hand, your heart and your human brain.
Together, we can all take a stand. If we don’t, our children and grandchildren will not be visiting public libraries to seek out battered old paperbacks containing human-produced magic. They will be listening to AIs reading them AI-created stories through their neuralink brain chips.
Nothing is off limits now – unless we place limits around it. At the very least, we can all plant a seed. Isn’t that how we learned to love stories in the first place?
I’ve touched on this possibility more than a few times. I’ve suggested that I might do a regular post, which draws attention to opinion, arguments and analysis that I find stimulating. Hopefully I will preface the link with an explanation of why I think it’s worth the time of day. This might be brief or extended, more likely the former.
Rest easy, I refuse to point you to the torrent of relieved attention to the minutiae of the lives of Epstein and his company, pursued by both the mainstream and alternative media. These individuals are no bad apples. They personify the continued evil existence of a corrupt and criminal ruling class, whose vision of the future bodes ill for the rest of us. Evil is not a word that comes easy to my lips but how else to describe its intention.
And so, as it happens, I’m linking firstly to an article that dropped on my desk this very morning. It is not directly about the present spectacle. It is the fourth in a series, in which Hugh McCarthy, the former Director of the Northern Ireland Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, explores the effects of COVID lockdowns on children and education. it seeks to:
Present the evidence of what has been done to our children — a compendium to remind people of the damage inflicted on a generation and for which no one has been held accountable.
Reject lockdowns as a valid public health strategy.
Reflect on the experiences, words, and feelings of the children and those trying to educate and care for them, and
Part 1 and Part 2 focused on the justification for lockdowns and examines the evidence and the data available at the time regarding the damage to children caused by the lockdowns and resulting school closures and sets it against what actually happened.
Part 3 set out the feelings and experiences of the children and their parents.
In continuing to be deeply concerned about the manufactured COVID crisis, I know I am getting on people’s nerves. Indeed good friends have intimated that living on Crete meant that I was insulated from the COVID reality. I’m not sure. We couldn’t leave our homes without carrying notice of our intentions, which were narrowly prescribed. We couldn’t socialise publicly without proof of vaccination. The evidence-free imposition of masking and arbitrary distancing was a fait accompli….and so on. Having, to my shame, been vaccinated, I refused in solidarity with my principled non-vax friends to go where they couldn’t. And the death toll and incidence of serious illness, however painful, reflected the threat globally to those at risk. It was not extraordinary. It was not an existential threat to humanity at large.
The purpose of this article is to give voice to those who are trying to educate and care for children. To understand their feelings and experiences, I conducted primary and secondary research. The main method was by means of a questionnaire, after which there were follow-up interviews by telephone and messaging. I also wanted to assess whether experiences differed according to the type of school, the seniority of the teacher and the role played by the person in children’s education and well-being.
I contacted parents with children in primary school, in secondary school, at university, and with special needs. I contacted a range of educators, including teachers in nursery schools, primary schools, and selective and non-selective post-primary schools, classroom support teachers, university lecturers, and psychologists. I also contacted a range of teachers with varying degrees of experience, including headteachers.
Part 5 of this series, co-authored by McCarthy and Professor Diane Rasmussen, UK Column’s Commissioning Editor for Written Content, will present experiences of teaching and learning in the higher education sector during the Covid lockdown era. It will also explore the pedagogy of remote/online learning (does it exist?) and question whether it worked.
Secondly, here’s a link to one of my favourite American writers and commentators, WD James at Philosopher’s Holler.
To give you a glimpse of his eclectic exploration, at one point WD explores the relationship between Marxism and Catholic Social Teaching. If I had the wherewithall I’d like to respond with all manner of questions and criticisms but at heart his argument gives me hope for the necessary dialogue, which transcends the seemingly obligatory divide between the Left and Right.
I’m indebted as well to WD James for introducing me to the music of Appalachia and Kentucky. Here find the hauntingly pure voice of Jean Ritchie, a legendary figure, who gives me the courage to sing ‘a capella’.
AsTime Goes By – a song to be added to my repertoire. Time slips by so quickly too. I’m conscious of losing touch with friends and comrades. Not only physically, inevitable though it is, given my presence on Crete but also via all the other means of communication [for better or worse] available to us. I’m conscious of finding it evermore difficult to write anything worthwhile or indeed to write in the absence of a culture of give and take, in a vacuum wherein speculative thoughts are treated as one’s final indelible word; within which forgiveness is forbidden.
However I am reading voraciously – as usual, to my detriment and to the disbelief of Marilyn, not fiction but article after limitless article of all manner of ideological persuasion. It might well be suggested that this promiscuity is at the heart of my political impotence, my failure to articulate much about anything. I don’t think so. It’s hardly insightful but we live in an increasingly explicit authoritarian world, where the compulsion to censor any expression of opposition to the imposition of varied forms of ideological certitude is rampant. Perchance I exaggerate. Yet, in my lifetime. I do not feel I have experienced such a level of intolerance to dissent or disagreement. And this hostility to heresy infects both the Left and Right with honorable exceptions on both sides of this increasingly redundant binary.
There are contemporary issues I ought to address, simply to share and check out my thinking, whatever its insights, whatever its flaws. I feel anxious, not such a parlous state, given the unbearable fear running through the lives of the people of Palestine, Iran and many places beyond. And, to be contrary, I would be granted permission by the Left to voice my solidarity in this regard, especially as my own political history of support, for example, for the Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO] goes back to the 1970s. Yet, on other matters, I am advised to be silent. To voice any concern about transgender ideology or the climate change agenda is evidently beyond the pale. To do so is to ask for trouble, to risk excommunication from the ranks of the political righteous. In this instance my past political activism in support of the Gay and Lesbian Movement or my scathing critique of the capitalist imperative, ‘perpetual production, ceaseless consumption’ is irrelevant, not worth a sideways glance.
I am likely to be found guilty by association. After all, isn’t the Trump regime hostile to trans women and men, not to mention enthusiastic about fossil fuels? Case closed, contradictions seemingly not allowed as evidence. Utterances are never placed in context, grounded in the circumstances of their uttering. Biographies, histories are not a source of memories to be both treasured and measured, respected and scrutinised for their past, present and future significance or otherwise. They are to be interrogated for unpardonable sins as defined by today’s Thought Police.
Musing about all of this messy reality is accompanied by a feeling of oft-times hopelessness, which never quite admits defeat. I will continue, even if I fail to say anything useful myself, to point people to commentators I find stimulating from across the ideological spectrum. More than ever I endeavour to read and hear what is actually being said rather than assume to know what is being said on the basis of knee-jerk prejudice, bias and stereotype. I start from the content, not the source. I favour not just freedom of speech but what the Athenians called parrhesia, frank and fearless speech. Foucault revived the concept in his later work – https://foucault.info/parrhesia/
To begin with, what is the general meaning of the word ” parrhesia”? Etymologically, “parrhesiazesthai” means ” to say everything –from ” pan” πάυ and ” rhema” [δήμα] (that which is said). The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind : he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word ” parrhesia” then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician’s own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people’s mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.
Whether any of this comes to pass, hardly matters, and depends on 2026 being less turbulent personally than this past year. For the first time in my life I’ve been dogged by a variety of health problems, culminating in being rushed into hospital for fear of a stroke. Thankfully a series of scans and tests revealed no visible problems, apart from hinting that I am possessed by a hidden, troubled mind! Given my age, continuing problems with my sight and what Les Dawson with a knowing glance downwards to the prostate would dub a ‘man’s problem’ are hardly unique.
It’s tempting to seek refuge in my beautiful surroundings, walking and cycling as best I can. Sadly I am no longer accompanied on my rambles by dearest, sweetest Glyka, our 17 year old dog and loving companion , who died before Christmas. I was distraught as was Marilyn. Over the years Glyka taught me to appreciate herself, her fellow creatures and indeed Nature itself. She taught me to take my time and take in my surroundings; to acknowledge the cats, which she never chased, the dogs, towards whom she was a bit stand-offish, to chat to the sheep and goats, who sometimes replied imploringly, to be quiet so as to catch the birdsong and to gaze across the olive groves to the splendour of the towering White Mountains. As for herself she watched and listened, ever by my side, but never barked. We were free spirits or so we believed.
My dearest companion, Glyka
From my contact since the beginning of the COVID melodrama with dissidents of all colours I have been struck by how many are of a religious persuasion. Those to whom I’ve warmed have not been of an evangelical bent. However the conversations have often taken a spiritual turn. Over the years I’ve been quietly frustrated by what I see as religion’s appropriation of spirituality as its own. I’ve tried to be true to a spirit of human creativity, of cooperation, of justice and love. These past years closer to Nature, guided by Glyka, Leo, our aristocratic rescue horse, by the playful bin cats I feed, by Stelios’s adventurous goats, amazed by the way our brick-strewn barren garden has blossomed, I have sensed another level of spiritual awareness. Nevertheless I remain an atheist. I feel no need for a deity to give purpose to my existence. I remain a revolutionary humanist, a steadfast universalist, who has come to cherish the Earth in all its glory.
I do not know what I would do without music to soothe my spirits. Last week I sang ‘a capella’ in our village hall. I began with Dowland’s desire, ‘Music, music for a while, shall all your cares beguile’- somewhat truncated and hardly as beautiful as the wonderful Alfred Deller.
My generous neighbour, Ken Carpenter filmed some of the concert I gave to a small audience in our village hall. If I have the courage I will post a link to these videos soon. Listening and encouraging my effort, even entranced [!] were my very dearest friends, Maria and Linda Manousaki. Maria is an inspiration, not only as violin virtuoso but also as the driving force behind the diverse groupings of musicians she brings together here on Crete – for example, two very different string quartets, the Melos Ensemble play arrangements from the classical and jazz repertoires, whilst Tetracho improvise upon the indigenous Cretan tradition . In the next few weeks Linda at the piano and I will be rehearsing songs from American musicals. She will engage with my musical myopia, symbolised by the worried, ‘what key are we in?’ Who knows I might even sing accompanied sometime in the future!? We will see.
Privileged to be singing with Maria and the Swinging Strings
This piece is silent on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on our lives. It does not speak directly to the killings on the streets of Gaza, Teheran and Minneapolis. The silence is not by chance. I will break it but doing so is haunted by the knowledge that increasingly words, sounds and images tease, alarm as to their authenticity. It has always been necessary to be critical of what we read, hear and see. Today it is an unceasing and tiring obligation. And through the fog enveloping the truth I am inspired by the sight of ordinary people acting courageously in unison, striving against the odds to be agents of their own destinies. I refuse the concerted attempts across the ideological divide to deny them their autonomy, to cast them as mere pawns in the clutches of the oligarchs, the intelligence agencies, the corporations, the technocrats, the media, right or left-wing agitators or whomever.
Solidarity from an armchair radical, who needs to get on his bike.
Love & struggle,
Tony
On reading afresh this New Year’s ramble I’m afraid to say it’s more of the same navel-gazing as previous years – the same doubts and the same themes. Somewhat wearying, I fear. At the same time it indicates that the social and political situation isn’t getting better. Indeed it’s getting worse.
In an interview on Bad Faith, Gabor Mate suggests he has never experienced such darkness.
I started to put this hardly controversial post together yesterday morning and it’s already been overtaken by numerous pieces despairing at Labour’s proscription of Palestine Action. A direct action group seeking to raise awareness of the obscene genocide in Gaza, of the war crimes of a terrorist State is without any due process defined as a terrorist organisation. Even the Guardian is forced to descend from the fence in an article, ‘It’s a complete assault on free speech’: how Palestine Action was targeted for proscription as terrorists’
The article notes, if the group is proscribed next week, as is expected, being a member of or inviting support for Palestine Action will carry a maximum penalty of 14 years. Wearing clothing or publishing a logo that arouses reasonable suspicion that someone supports Palestine Action will carry a sentence of up to six months.
In a week’s time we wait to applaud the Guardian’s recovery of its liberal tradition, whereby the paper explicitly backs the right of Palestine Action [PA] to exist and resist.
The arrogant and ignorant authoritarianism at the heart of today’s Labour Party is exemplified by the Home Secretary’s condemnation of PA’s militant tactics. In 2018 she spoke in the House of Commons, expressing her admiration for the suffragette movement, and celebrated its herstory by wearing a rosette in the suffragette colours of purple, white and green.
It seems to have slipped her mind that the suffragettes were not shy when it came to attacking the patriarchal state that denied them even a voice. Thus, at 6.10am on the 19 February 1913, a bomb exploded at the summer house that was being built for Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, at Walton-on-the-Hill, causing damage estimated at £500 (modern equivalent nearly £55,000 in today’s money).On the evening of the incident Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), claimed responsibility for the bomb at a meeting at Cory Hall, Cardiff, where she admits that they have “blown up the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s house”. Pankhurst was willing to be arrested for the incident saying “I have advised, I have incited, I have conspired”; and that if she is arrested for the incident she shall prove that the “punishment unjustly imposed upon women who have no voice in making the laws cannot be carried out”. We presume the Home Secretary might well retrospectively need to proscribe the WSPU as a terrorist organisation.
On the 5th September 1981, the Welsh group “Women for Life on Earth” arrived on Greenham Common, Berkshire, England. They marched from Cardiff with the intention of challenging, by debate, the decision to site 96 Cruise nuclear missiles there. On arrival they delivered a letter to the Base Commander which among other things stated ‘We fear for the future of all our children and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all life’.
When their request for a debate was ignored they set up a Peace Camp just outside the fence surrounding RAF Greenham Common Airbase. They took the authorities by surprise and set the tone for a most audacious and lengthy protest that lasted 19 years. Within 6 months the camp became known as the Women’s Peace Camp and gained recognition both nationally and internationally by drawing attention to the base with well publicised imaginative gatherings.This unique initiative threw a spotlight on ‘Cruise’ making it a national and international political issue throughout the 80s and early 90s.
The presence of women living outside an operational nuclear base 24 hours a day, brought a new perspective to the peace movement – giving it leadership and a continuous focus. At a time when the USA and the USSR were competing for nuclear superiority in Europe, the Women’s Peace Camp on Greenham Common was seen as an edifying influence. The commitment to non-violence and non-alignment gave the protest an authority that was difficult to dismiss – journalists from almost every corner of the globe found their way to the camp and reported on the happenings and events taking place there.
Living conditions were primitive. Living outside in all kinds of weather especially in the winter and rainy seasons was testing. Without electricity, telephone, running water etc, frequent evictions and vigilante attacks, life was difficult. In spite of the conditions women, from many parts of the UK and abroad, came to spend time at the camp to be part of the resistance to nuclear weapons. It was a case of giving up comfort for commitment.
The protest, committed to disrupting the exercises of the USAF, was highly effective. Nuclear convoys leaving the base to practice nuclear war, were blockaded, tracked to their practice area and disrupted.Taking non-violent direct action meant that women were arrested, taken to court and sent to prison.
The conduct and integrity of the protest mounted by the Women’s Peace Camp was instrumental in the decision to remove the Cruise Missiles from Greenham Common. Under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the missiles were flown back to the USA along with the USAF personnel in 91/92. The Treaty signed by the USA and the USSR in 1987, is in accord with the stated position held by women, in defence of their actions on arrest, when it states :
“Conscious that nuclear weapons would have devastating consequences for all mankind”
A number of initiatives were made by women in Court testing the legality of nuclear weapons. Also, challenges to the conduct and stewardship of the Ministry of Defence as landlords of Greenham Common. In 1992 Lord Taylor, Lord Chief Justice, delivering the Richard Dimbleby Lecture for the BBC, referring to the Bylaws case ( won by Greenham women in the House of Lords in 1990) said ‘…it would be difficult to suggest a group whose cause and lifestyle were less likely to excite the sympathies and approval of five elderly judges. Yet it was five Law Lords who allowed the Appeal and held that the Minister had exceeded his powers in framing the byelaws so as to prevent access to common land’.
The Camp was brought to a close in 2000 to make way for the Commemorative and Historic Site on the land that housed the original Women’s Peace Camp at Yellow Gate Greenham Common between the years 1981 – 2000.
Sarah Hipperson
This remarkable book tells how the women of the Yellow Gate peace camp at Greenham Common took on the law – and in some instances won.
They challenged the laws under which they were arrested and as Judge Hague said said in the County Court “…they are no strangers to litigation, both criminal and civil. In the courts they have sometimes had a considerable measure of success, and indeed they are immortalised in the Law Reports in connection with two of their successes in the higher courts.”
This book offers inspiration and encouragement to all who take part in non-violent direct action or want to challenge the powers of the state or large institutions. In its detailed descriptions of each case, it suggests how this can be done successfully.
The last chapter tells the story of the Commemorative and Historic Site, a garden of peace where once the women of Yellow Gate camp lived and confronted the Cruise Missiles – and the powers of the state.
To buy a copy of this book, send a cheque for £9.98 (+ £1.00 p & p) payable to ‘Greenham Publications’ to 15 Sydney Road, London E11 2JW or order one from your bookseller (ISBN 0-9550122-0-1)
The biggest expansion of the UK’s nuclear deterrent in a generation will put the nation on the “nuclear frontline” and mobilise a new generation of anti-nuclear weapons protesters, campaign groups have warned.
Anti-nuclear and anti-arms campaign groups are planning mass protests against nuclear weapons – of a kind not seen since the days of the Greenham Common peace camp in the 80s – in response to government plans to significantly expand its nuclear deterrent by buying a squadron of American fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) protested on Saturday, June 28th at RAF Marham in Norfolk, which is used by the US air force.
Campaign groups said the decision to buy 12 F-35A jets, which are capable of carrying conventional arms, and also the US B61-12 gravity bomb, a variant of which has more than three times the explosive power of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima, had been taken without parliamentary debate and undermined democracy.
Returning to Iran, Siya Vash, reports that within the convulsions inside the country suppression of dissent deepens.
The paranoid and humiliated Revolutionary Guards in Iran have been sending the following text messages to people’s mobile numbers:
Warning Following or joining pages affiliated with the Zionist regime constitutes a criminal act and is subject to legal prosecution. Therefore, given the recorded activity of this number on virtual pages of the Zionist regime, you are hereby warned to immediately remove supportive comments and likes, and exit these pages without delay. Failure to do so will result in legal action in accordance with Article 8 of the Law on Confronting Hostile Actions of the Zionist Regime. Deputy for Social Affairs and Crime Prevention, Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran Honourable People of Iran
In recent days, your exemplary cooperation and solidarity with your servants in the IRGC Intelligence Organisation—through public reporting—has not only altered the enemy’s calculations but has also led to their defeat on the battlefield. Therefore, we kindly ask you to continue this valuable approach and report any suspicious activity by contacting 110, 113, or 114, or through available channels on domestic messaging platforms. IRGC Intelligence Organisation
In a philosophical atmosphere, all of the above would be open to criticism, agreement and disagreement. However the creeping authoritarianism I have sought to address since the ascent of neoliberalism in the 1980’s, its fetish of individualism and its hatred of autonomous collectivity has gathered pace across the decades, not least during the manufactured COVID pandemic. Central to the shift into an era of technocratic capitalism is the Expert, who takes different forms and cannot be questioned. To do so is to be beyond the pale. This demand for conformity and obedience is profoundly anti-democratic. And its prophets and disciples come from both the traditional Left and Right. If I get my act together I will try to put flesh on these bare bones.
To my surprise and indeed delight, I’ve been reacquainted with the writings of C. S. Lewis. Thanks are due to a series of articles by my favourite Appalachian philosopher, W. D. James. Previously my last encounter with Lewis had been back in around 1960. At the time I was in the last throes of my once passionate relationship with the Church and Christianity. I found myself reading Lewis’s ‘Mere Christianity’, perhaps an unfortunate title, if I was to be returned to the fold. He failed to prevent my Fall from grace and I embraced an irreconcilable atheism or radical humanism.
I remain so inclined but in recent years disturbed deeply by the growing post and anti-humanist outlook of a technocratic elite, who desire to be Gods, I converse with a plurality of dissenting voices, many religious in timbre. With a bit of luck and effort I hope to explore some of my response to the following pieces on Lewis’s philosophy. particularly the notion of Tao and Natural Law to be found therein.
I recommend highly your engagement with the following links.
The powerful, the ruling class of any historical period has spread fear as an essential element in the maintenance of its social and political control. Hence I’m stretching a point to suggest that we are living through an unprecedented era of Anxiety. And yet, even today, I’ve been warned to beware a possible proliferation of epidemic-catalysing viruses, all given the COVID script being existential threats, and instructed to fill the larder with supplies sufficient to last 72 hours in case of war.
We imagine the world as unsafe, and then we dream the world as unsafe, and then feel in our bodies that the world is unsafe. And this is an inverted order of things, the opposite of how our bodies come to knowledge. Rhyd Wildermuth
Sometime, perhaps never, I will seek to explore the contemporary phenomenon of algorithmic- created anxiety. For now, in the past few weeks I’ve sought to escape being suffocated inside the virtual by way of being scared of reality, namely giving another solo concert in my Cretan village. The nerves did indeed jangle. If you are kind enough to watch the two videos below you might well discern my tension. In terms of the songs themselves, it’s most obvious in my rushing through the Schubert composition, ‘Der Leiermann’, losing on the way much of its ambiguous mystery. Next time…….
A couple of people have asked for details of the latest programme. If I wasn’t so nervous about singing in the correct key I would relax and say more about the songs at the concert itself.
1. 0 Waly, Waly
Somerset folk song
2. Somewhere a Voice’s Calling and Smilin’ Through
American Parlour-Songs recorded in 1914 and 1919 by John McCormack, the famous Irish lyric tenor and sung by me as a boy soprano in 1957!!
3. Unbelievable, The Nearness of You and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
American classics and often jazz standards – Livingstone, Carmichael and Rodgers
4, Hands, Eyes, Heart and Tired – Vaughan Williams and Now Sleeps the Petal – Quilter.
English Art Song
5. I am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger
North American folk song and spiritual
6. Ti eínai aftó pou to léne agápi from the Boy on a Dolphin, If I Loved You from Carousel and Summertime from Porgy and Bess
Songs from film and musicals – Morakis, Rodgers and Gershwin
Interval.
7. Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai – Schumann, Das Wandern and Der Leiermann – Schubert
German Lieder
8. Danny Boy
Irish folk song
9. My Funny Valentine, When I Fall in Love and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
Classic Love songs – Rodgers, Young and MacColl
10. Whither do I wander – Vaughan Williams, Sea Fever – Ireland and Come Again – Dowland
English and Elizabethan song
11. One Little Quarrel and Guilty
Tribute to Al Bowly and 1930s dance bands
12. Πάμε μια βόλτα στο φεγγάρι or Let’s take a walk to the moon
Greek classic – Hadjidakis
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Our villagekafeneio, H Elpida, the cafe of Hope
There seems little doubt, in my mind, that preparing for and giving this little concert, despite the blemishes, kept me out of what Anthony Rella calls the ‘psychic pollution’ infecting our relation to the internet and social media. OK, I admit, the warbling kept me away only for some of the time. Certainly I would suggest that prioritising time away from the screen in all its forms is a necessary form of resistance to the Machine. Lately I’ve gone back to printing off copies of stuff I’d like to read and taking them to peruse in the village kafeneio. A precious bonus is that Georgos brews a fine cappuccino and I get to pass the time of day with our village’s motley characters.
I must close by thanking Ken Carpenter for filming and editing the videos – all out of the goodness of his heart.
It’s not snow but a bitterly cold Yorkshire setting, January 1971. I’m hanging on to the heels of the great Mick Holmes, now sadly deceased.
As has been my fetish since around 1968 I trained on New Years Day. Although I don’t think the aspiring athlete of well over half a century ago would recognise my shuffling attempt to race walk as worthy of the epithet, ‘training’. On the other hand, 2024, a year of relative sickness, has sapped me of my long-standing confidence in an ability to fend off the years. It wasn’t snowing in our Cretan village but Marilyn’s lovely watercolour of a route I used to run back in the day brought back frozen memories of the joy of movement. As it was my slow progress allowed me to take in the beauty and tranquillity of my pine-filled surroundings, enabling my affectionate conversation in both English and Greek with dogs, cats, sheep and goats along the way. I swear they look forward to me coming! Back home in virtual reality, slumped at the computer, I pondered a New Year’s message to my less than adoring public.
It’s been a lean year for posts on this website. Meanwhile the world continues to be in collective, apparently crazed convulsion. Genocide is normalised. There is not just talk of crisis but of polycrisis. I find myself claiming to be confused. There is so much going on I can’t see the roof for the tiles. This tame assertion contains grains of truth but is no more than a limp excuse. For I do possess an overview of what’s happening in the world and, to an extent, I outlined this perspective, however flawed, a year ago. Indeed, when I go back to the three or four pieces I published back then, there is little I would change and much I would add – see the link below.
In claiming that I have some kind of overall insight into the present course of history (and in the light of observations I have made, in particular, about the COVID melodrama) I open myself to the curt dismissal that I am a simpleton, a conspiracy theorist. The knee-jerk charge, whether explicit or implicit, allows its prosecutors, drawn initially from the professional milieu or the ‘knowledge industry’, to pass judgement without recourse to dialogue. This facile reasoning does trickle down, courtesy of a largely grovelling mass media, into day-to-day discourse. Only so far, though. There is also a widespread reaction, which questions the patronising certainty of today’s priests – experts, politicians, journalists, technocrats, professionals, academics, influencers, Ursula van Leyden, Uncle Tony Fauci and all – who demand, despite their often demonstrable deceit, that society submits to their unswerving hierarchical faith and trusts the[ir] Science.
Inevitably this refusal or, at least, reluctance to comply takes many different forms, which in themselves, are strewn with contradiction. However the necessity of grappling with the intertwining, oft conflicting tendencies within those who demur, is spurned by those who know better. The generalisations, the stereotypes flood and drown debate. Who are we talking about here? Who are the refuseniks, the populists, that dubious and derided category of humanity standing in the way of progress ? Amongst them in the States are Clinton’s deplorables, Biden’s garbage, Obama’s sewage. Whilst in the UK and Europe we find racist, xenophobic, working class Brexiteers, far right nationalists of differing hues. All of whose wayward opinions are being given succour, so the narrative goes, by an eclectic and politically diffuse array of authoritarians and anti-authoritarians, peopling the airwaves of the alternative media with its daily dissenting diet of live coverage and lengthy podcasts, the latter the very opposite of superficial sound-bites. My oldest grandson, Ben swears by the strength of the podcast in challenging him to think critically, outside of the status quo. Of course, in my naivete, I’m overlooking that this motley crew of Far Right sympathisers, especially its lumpen elements, is in thrall to strong leaders, symbolised by Trump, a fascist by all ‘progressive’ accounts and has no legitimate agenda of its own. This arrogant trivialisation of grass-roots unrest is symbolised by the demise of the Democratic Party in the USA, which even the loyalist Bernie Sanders admits has abandoned the working class.
On a personal level I am disturbed by the way in which my public outlook and practice has been infected by the dominant narrative and I’m long out of the orthodox bubble. Sure, my nerves are not at all what they were. Age and illness have taken their toll. Just a fortnight ago, a concerned neurologist sent me for an MRI scan to determine further, if possible, the reason for my debilitating tremors and disorientation. As best can be seen, Parkinson’s is not on the horizon but the doctor spoke of ‘accelerated ageing’. Like it or not, this notion does fit with how I’m feeling! This self-centredness aside, I do find myself shaking externally and internally when overhearing in the taverna the predictable pronouncements on the state of the world proffered so confidently by well-off English-speaking tourists and migrants. Nowadays it matters little whether these prejudices are garnered from the Daily Mail or the Guardian. They are uttered shamelessly, unhesitatingly. To my shame I keep my gob shut.
How to understand this level of anxiety around standing up for what I believe? And what is it I believe and why does it feel so problematic to give voice to my opinion? After all since the mid-70s haven’t I often been a disagreeable voice within personal, professional and political situations? Perhaps I exaggerate but I often felt disaffected colleagues looked to me to be their spokesperson. What were the balance of forces into which I was intervening? Let me answer my question somewhat crudely. Certainly within the professional and academic world it was a matter of challenging the liberal order with a demand that the relations of exploitation and oppression be addressed. What of now? In my head and my heart I wish to express still an anti-capitalist, humanist and universalist opposition to the desires of those upstairs, the powerful. I strive to stay true to the memory of my dear friend and comrade, Sue Atkins. Yet I feel down if not out. She would not have approved of my dismay.
I’m at odds with a so-called progressive politics, which in Malcolm Ball’s turn of phrase wishes ‘to change the word and not the world’. Of course words as well as sticks and stones are hurtful. Indeed, in the part-time youth worker training I organised and facilitated in the late 1970s, we engaged directly with the impact of racist, sexist and homophobic language upon ourselves and young people. Although, on reflection, our missionary zeal foreshadowed some of today’s unforgiving insistence on prescribed verbal adherence.
I’ll stop here as I’m opening a receptacle of wriggling rats such as global governance and the nation-state, censorship and surveillance, the climate crisis, identity politics, Zionism, the material and the spiritual, all of which and more needs serious unravelling, It remains to be seen whether I do so. For what it’s worth I’ll try to post links to stimulating writing from across the spectrum. I promised this last year and failed. I’m going to begin revisiting stuff I’ve written in the past, which still seems relevant. I suspect I carry a chip on my shoulder about how much of it has ever been read! Finally I have embarked on a pretentious project, an autobiography. The rough draft of a first decade from 1958 to 1968, from passing the eleven plus to leaving teacher training college awaits revision, At the very least it is helping me to understand better how I’ve come to be who I am today. If, nothing else, it ought to keep me out of mischief.
As a break from my usual ramblings on the state of the world but not at all at odds with its philosophy, enjoy this brief extract of the quartet, ‘ΤΕΤΡΑΗΧΟ”, playing in the picturesque village of Pollirinia on Crete back in July 2023. I’ve been privileged to hear them breaking boundaries with this unusual combination of instruments and styles. My dear friend, Maria, an outstanding jazz violinist brought together two great figures from the Cretan violin tradition in Michalis and Markos, together with the outstanding lute player, Kiriakos to explore and improvise without any guarantees of whether it would work. The outcome was a joyous, anarchic celebration of intimate music-making founded on listening, always listening to one another. You should have heard their exuberant version of a Brahms Hungarian Dance! It exuded a love of humanity, a mutual affection, which more than ever we need to defend. I’m still trying to ascertain who won the children’s running race taking place in the background! Kids!
It is many years since I read any Edgar Morin and then only in second-hand summaries. It may be my ignorance but he has never seemed as fashionable as the likes of Foucault or Derrida. He describes himself as in fact an anthropologist, in the old sense of the term, exploring the interconnection of all knowledge about man. He notes, ‘This has led me to a transdisciplinary approach’. Born Edgar Nahoum; 8 July 1921 he continues to ponder, 102 years young. I tripped over this stimulating piece published in La Monde only a few weeks ago, courtesy of MoneyCircus, a dissident blogger I follow.
Thanks to lavoz.com.ar
‘The Progress of Knowledge Has Led to a Regression of Thought’
Midnight in the century
When Victor Serge published the novel with this title in 1939, the year of the German-Soviet pact and the dismemberment of Poland, it was indeed midnight and an irrevocable night was about to thicken and extend for five years.
Isn’t it midnight now in our century? Two wars are ongoing. The war in Ukraine has already mobilized economic and military aid from a part of the world, with radicalization and a risk of widening the conflict. Russia has not managed to annex Ukraine, but it maintains its presence in the previously separatist Russophone regions. The blockade has partially weakened it, but it has also stimulated its scientific and technical development, especially in the military field. This war has already had considerable consequences: the variously advanced autonomization of the South with respect to the West and the tightening of a Russia-China bloc.
A new warfront has ignited in the Middle East following the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, followed by Israel’s deadly bombing of Gaza. These massacres, accompanied by persecutions in the West Bank and annexationist declarations, have reawakened the dormant Palestinian issue. They have shown both the urgency, the necessity, and the impossibility of a decolonization of what remains of Arab Palestine and the creation of a Palestinian state.
As no pressure is, or will be, exerted on Israel to arrive at a two-state solution, only an aggravation, even an expansion of this terrible conflict can be predicted. It’s a tragic lesson of history: the descendants of a people persecuted for centuries by the Christian, then racist, West, can become both persecutors and the advanced bastion of the West in the Arab world.
Thought has become blind
These wars worsen the conjunction of crises that strike nations, fueled by the virulent antagonism between three empires: the United States, Russia, and China. The crises feed on each other in a sort of polycrisis—ecological, economic, political, social, civilizational—and it is escalating.
Ecological degradation affects human societies through urban and rural pollution, with the latter exacerbated by industrial agriculture. The hegemony of uncontrolled profit (a major cause of the ecological crisis) increases inequalities within each nation and across the entire planet. The qualities of our civilization have deteriorated and its deficiencies have increased, notably in the spread of selfishness and the disappearance of traditional solidarities.
Democracy is in crisis on every continent: it is increasingly being replaced by authoritarian regimes, which, by having the means of computerized control over populations and individuals, tend to form societies of submission that could be called neo-totalitarian. Globalization has created no solidarity and the united Nations are increasingly disunited.
This paradoxical situation fits into a global paradox inherent to humanity. Prodigious technological and scientific progress in all areas is the cause of the worst regressions of our century. It enabled the scientific organization of the Auschwitz extermination camp; it made possible the design and manufacture of the most destructive weapons, including the first atomic bomb; it makes wars increasingly deadly; driven by the thirst for profit, it has created the planetary ecological crisis.
Though difficult to conceive, we must realize that the progress of knowledge, through themultiplication and mutual separation of disciplines, has caused a regression of thought, which in fact has become blind. Linked to a dominance of calculation in an increasingly technocratic world, the progress of knowledge is unable to conceive the complexity of reality, especially human realities. This leads to a return of dogmatisms and fanaticisms, as well as a crisis of morality with the unleashing of hatreds and idolatries.
The absence of hope
We are heading towards probable catastrophes. Is this catastrophism? This word exorcises evil and gives an illusory serenity. The polycrisis we are experiencing across the planet is an anthropological crisis: it is the crisis of humanity failing to become Humanity.
There was a time – not so long ago – when a change of course could be envisioned. It seems now that it is too late. Certainly, the improbable and especially the unforeseen can happen. We do not know if the global situation is only desperate [désespérante] or truly hopeless [désespérée]. This means that we must, with or without hope, with or without despair, move on to Resistance. The word irresistibly evokes the resistance of the years of the German occupation (1940-1945), whose very modest beginnings were made difficult by the absence of a foreseeable hope after the defeat of 1940.
The absence of foreseeable hope is similar in our own times, but the conditions are different. We are not currently under an enemy military occupation: we are dominated by formidable political and economic powers and threatened by the establishment of a society of submission. We are doomed to suffer the struggle between two imperialist giants and the possible warlike eruption of the third. We are being dragged into a race towards disaster.
Fellowship, life, and love
The first and fundamental resistance is that of the spirit. It requires resisting the intimidation of every lie asserted as truth, the contagion of every collective intoxication. It requires never yielding to the delirium of the collective responsibility of a people or an ethnicity. It demands resisting hatred and contempt. It prescribes the concern to understand the complexity of problems and phenomena rather than yielding to a partial or unilateral vision. It requires research, verification of information, and acceptance of uncertainties.
Resistance would also involve the safeguarding or creation of oases of (agroecological) communities with relative autonomy and networks of social and economic solidarity. It would also suppose the coordination of associations devoted to solidarity and the refusal of hatreds. Resistance would prepare younger generations to think and act for the forces of union of fellowship, life, and love that we can conceive under the name of Eros, and against the forces of dislocation, disintegration, conflict, and death that we can conceive under the names of Polemos and Thanatos [war and death].
It is the union, within our beings, of the powers of Eros and those of the awakened and responsible spirit that will nourish our resistance to subjugations, ignominies, and lies. The tunnels are not endless, the probable is not the certain, and the unexpected is always possible.
CHATTING CRITICALLY 