The election lost, we wander round the ruins and embers, still shell-shocked. And with Labour’s Miliband having resigned so swiftly, the contest for his successor gives no cause whatsoever for comfort or for hope. Who are these people jostling now to replace him ? What brought them to this position ? Has anyone yet had time really to think things through, to talk hard and deep and widely, to emerge with any real integrity or justification ?

I want to give due credit to Jon Cruddas, the Labour thinker of note whose thought was not much listened to by the Miliband circle.  Yet he is still there, still thinking, still arguing. He admired the Bishops’ letter of a few months ago. He responded creatively. It is worth paying real attention to both them and him.

And Cruddas is surely right in saying how serious and significant Labour’s election defeat has been (see: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/16/labour-great-crisis-ever) To say Labour lost merely because it moved away from Blairite compromises with the “Haves” and with what is falsely and cravenly termed as our  “aspiration” to emulate excess, is insufficient and self-serving on the part of the proponents of this line ; further  – as Seamus Milne persuasively argues in Wednesday’s Guardian – it is merely surrendering to propaganda from our plutocrat creature press rather than being true to conviction and also to the British public at large, a majority of whom favoured Miliband’s careful cluster of slightly egalitarian proposals. See: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/20/blairite-revival-leadership-contest-labour-breakup

For the nation’s sake, we must think and talk in much larger and more fundamental terms than this sorry Labour shuffle backwards and rightwards to where anti-social hooligans operate. What is in question is whether or not there can be such a thing as truth, honesty, fairness and community in our modern way of living.

John Harris’s analysis of the problem is also searching, and equally dismissive of a Blairite re-run. See http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/15/labour-history-leadership If Labour is to take power again it needs to become a real social movement, as it used but long ago ceased to be. Long ago, under Blair and maybe before that, it became just another distrusted party making false promises from Westminster. But how to become a movement now, and in what form ? And Cruddas (with the Bishops) is asking questions even more searching than that. He is trying to re-think what makes community now, what makes a civilised society now, how can we rise to this flood of change we have released and are living – how can we make something recognisably human out of it ?

For it is not just Labour which lost the election on May 7th 2015. This nation did. Our children did. All our futures did.

And the balance of forces which 37% of us elected back into power rests on a set of hollow and discredited mantras that belong in the nineteenth century rather than in the twenty first, surrounded and defended by a ring of wagons made up of a corrupt press and of individuals in possession of outrageous and anti-social wealth, desperate to retain it at whatever the universal cost.  These forces are not the answer to our nation’s needs. They are merely the creatures of our vacuum, spawned by it. They belong nowhere else but in our dangerous vacuum.

We have to go back to first principles. Labour is now in a good position to do so, on behalf of the rest of the nation, if it is willing to face the reality of our malaise, if it is willing truly to serve this nation’s needs.

One theme I keep pushing is language itself. How can we learn/re-learn to speak cleanly to one another in ways that support community and trust and democracy ? Politicians seem no longer to know how to, or even to see why they should, our re-elected Prime Minister least of all. Juvenile lies and slogans, delivered as if from clockwork toys. Neither does most of the press use language actually to speak to fellow human beings. Press and politicians, both, are barely bothering with real language as they drag each other further and further down. Essentially they just snarl and howl, or else purr winningly, using a camouflage of words to do so. That alone cripples our democracy and any hope of renewal.

I propose a law that restores the ancient punishment of the stocks. That punishment should be reserved for politicians (and journalists and others who are given the authority of a public platform) who use language deceitfully (a loose definition, I grant you). The stocks should be set up at the centre of Parliament Square. Any politician who is caught being deceitful should be sentenced immediately by the Speaker, the more senior the politician the more severe the penalty. Prime Ministerial deceit would warrant a week in the stocks, followed by five years of full-time Community Service, as penance. It might make him socially useful at last. It might teach him why it is important to tell the truth.

For the Lie was another winner at this last election, as well as Fear, as well as Greed and Envy, and there is a sense in which all of us assented to that victory.

I do not see any hope or future in this rump of a devastated Labour party, now seeking to rehash failed and exhausted Blairite collusions with the Lie. The only solution I can see, the only hope, is for there now to be a profound rethinking and reworking of what it means to be progressive, what it means to put value on community and on responsibility to others, what it means not to lie to self or others. That thinking must involve all parties of the “left” as presently constituted and understood. And it must destroy all those parties of the “left” as presently constituted and understood. And it must lead to an entirely new entity and alliance shaped from the essence of all of them, a new party and grouping large and sure enough to roll the Tories back into the humble shape to which they truly belong, like Tiddalik the frog who was made at last to laugh, so that others might drink from stream and pool, and so he shrank back into his true froggy and insignificant size, and crept away into the reeds and hid his face in shame.

(For the legend of Tiddalik the frog see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiddalik )

She’s 95
and in a side room

with tubes up her nostrils
and eyes without iris.

Death can be pain-free these days –
shrieking no longer on the menu.

Only she pants
like a woman in labour

snatching at the air
as the waves consume her.

The door
stands open.

She hears the nurses chat
and their hot feet patter

up and down the corridor.
Higher and higher the waves.

Alone, aside,
she’s a gasping cadaver

a few sucked breaths
from completion.

Rogan Wolf
Autumn 2009

If you look at the map of political power in the UK now – with red for Labour seats won, blue for Tory, Yellow for SNP – you see some very clear divisions and deployments :

Almost all of Scotland : SNP

Much of the North of England, the Midlands and Wales (though much less than before) : Labour

Almost everywhere through the south of England : Conservative

The exception in this last and largest region is a blob of red in and around London. There are also little spots of red where other English cities are – Bristol, Southampton and – surprisingly – Exeter.

So what significance does all this have, if any ? It shows very starkly :

1/ The north/south and also the “Celtic/Saxon” divide between Left and Right ;
2/ In England, another divide, this one between countryside and city. The countryside represents an old and displaced economy based on agriculture ; and nowadays it is where the wealthy live, with their horses and Range Rovers and computers.

With several familiar leaders and other prominent figures either being unseated or falling on their swords within hours of the election result, this is certainly a great and extraordinary triumph for Cameron and his divisive energy, his skilled and irresponsible manipulation of divides, his smooth aggression, his plausible but consistently deceitful language, his politics of fear and propaganda, his allies in a press owned by tycoons who hate regulation as much as he does. But his class and his philosophy simply do not provide the answers and vision this country and our civilisation need for a viable future. They offer just a canopy of nastiness and disconnection in which too many of our fellow-citizens have taken cover. Long-term, this election result suggests a profound disaster for our nation, not just for its poor. If Cameron sees himself as being part of the UK, then – at some level, not of course apparent to him – it is a profound disaster even for him, as well.

Another conclusion to draw from the map is how tiny are the patches on it which have a different colour from the three just mentioned. One constituency for the Greens ; one for UKIP ; a vastly decreased number of Lib Dem constituencies ; three for Plaid Cymru. Is this multi-party politics, supposedly taking over from the two party monoliths ? Surely not.

The SNP will be a much more vital Opposition in Westminster than Labour will, for months to come at the very least. (For all our sakes, might not the two parties look for ways to join forces ?). But the main picture in the House of Commons now is surely very different from the multi-party alliances so recently being planned for ; for the foreseeable future, there will be effectively one-party rule in England, the party of Me and Mine largely unchallenged, powered by horse and Range Rover.

Even in these times, one takes some sort of weird comfort from words which others find that seem to say something true, even about the almost unbearably painful. Here are two such comments, presumably written in exhaustion after an awful night for the writers, as for so many of the rest of us. Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones on that tweeted kiss : “I find it exhausting to hate Cameron,” says Jones. So do I. The next five years will be exhausting for very many people. And here’s Martin Kettle, also from the Guardian, drawing strands together that describe succinctly the enormity of what has just happened, so dramatically fast : “Many were poised on Wednesday, as the polls narrowed, to conclude that Miliband would deserve huge personal credit for sticking to what seemed potentially to be a modestly successful Labour strategy through the campaign. Now, on Friday, those enthusiasts must confront the question of responsibility for what [in a few hours] has turned into a failed strategy, about which far too many on the left were far too sanguine and self-deceiving for far too long. They got their party back [the party that fails]. And look what has happened. Now what?”

Over the last few weeks I have been sharing the Parrot’s cage with him.

On finishing my version of John Skelton’s poem “Speak, Parrot” (see post below), I felt galvanised by it, amazed both to have come up with it (riding on Skelton’s shoulders, admittedly), and also at its topicality. It spoke for me and also – I thought – for the position which all of us are in at this election time, weighing up the sort of society we want to live in, the sort of people we want to be, and having some power to influence these things, this May, this week.

But since then, the venture seems to have gone rather flat in various ways. People I’ve shown it to, several of whom know me well and are friends, some also counsellors and therapists, have seemed actually almost disapproving of it.

I believe they thought that the anger that runs through the blood vessels of the poem would stop people listening to it properly. Really effective satire, they suggested, does not put anger to the fore, for anger usually just shuts people down, pushes them away. It’s wit and penetration that does the damage to the satire’s “object.” I needed more distance, my friends implied.

But also maybe they blanched a bit at what they saw and felt was in me, as if – through my anger – I had lost some balance or poise or centredness or true judgement, as if something outside me had taken me over.

Sobering and salutory feed-back. But still I believed enough in the poem, or was driven, to make real efforts over the next few days to send it out to anyone it might speak to, or be useful for, including politicians. Which door-bells to press, which addresses to click on ? Might not this strange poem about Parrot have some small part in helping to strengthen people’s resistance to, and rejection of, the whole present orchestration and evangelising of “Me n’ Mine,” this venomous constellation which has brought together Mammon and Hard Sell and incessant Spin and unscrupulous Lie, and done such vast harm to our Society’s bindings and to our children’s prospects ?

Might my darling Parrot in a cage even end up making the difference at this knife-edge teetering election, so finely poised, with so much resting on the result ? The election has immense implications for all of us, not just the most vulnerable. The Coalition Government’s treatment of the vulnerable and the stranger disgraces and threatens the integrity and humanity of us all.

So let a poem get up onto the hustings for a change ; let real words be uttered there, instead of the weary insult of yet more puerile slogans. Now’s the time and these words might even have some sort of influence on people, the minstrel’s words before battle.

But there was I, on the tips of all my toes, tensed up, desperate to find a platform for my words, a hall for my lyre to play in – and again nothing much happened. The wheels kept spinning, faster and faster. Twitter sang on, stream upon stream of it.  Facebook comments piled in and then dropped out of sight almost immediately, everyone having their say and never really listening to anyone else. The Parrot fell flat again.

Was it my anger that was doing the damage ? Not so lucky.  Of course it was just everyone’s lack of time. The original Skelton poem is very long indeed. My initial version was much reduced. The audio version had been reduced even more. But still it lasts 15 minutes and still people do not have that sort of time. (What sort of time do they have ? one might ask)

So I compromised yet further with a world which seems seriously in danger of squeezing its own life out of time. I minced my Parrot into a succession of momentary sound-bites on my new Face book page. Each morsel of words has its own picture of prison bars, taken in the lonely tower that honours William Tyndale, perhaps the greatest ever writer of English prose.

But what’s the point of the Parrot having liberty to speak, if no one has time to hear him ? After all that screwing up of his courage ? Silly old bird.

But now there is little more I can do and I have come to terms with the strong probability that the Parrot won’t be winning the election for Ed, after all, (though he may win a precious favour or two, in time).

And after all that fuss, I am left with some major question-marks about anger.

For I too, in the middle of it all,  have worried for months about my fury and contempt for Cameron and his government, and fear of what he would get up to if given another chance. Is all that troubles me and makes me fear for our future, down to an individual, or individuals, or a particular government, so that life and hope would be restored to bright colours if only these failed pretenders were to be displaced ? Of course not. I know well that much of what appals me has far deeper roots and more complex elements, than these particular personalities, or policies, awful though they are. Awful though they are, they are just drops in the wave of which all of us are part.

And everyone seems so merely angry on all sides. All those dreadful comment streams in the press, beneath feature after feature. So am I just jumping into the anger pool ? Splash splash, all in it together ? Am I really just splashing about in a general anger pool, part of our common disarray and consternation and urge to lash out ?

I took my anger and the parrot to a vicar round the corner, representative of a faith whose membership does often display a very ambivalent attitude towards anger. In Christian terms, standing up for what is right is often associated with holy “meekness,” that bewildering business of “turning the other cheek.” So I waited for the vicar’s response with some concern.

To my relief and to some degree my astonishment, he welcomed the poem and found merit in it. His response reduced me to tears. Truth needs a voice and that voice is sometimes bound to be angry. He referred to the traders in the Temple. Go ahead, he said. Give voice. Parrot agreed. So did Skelton. There is a place for anger. It can belong. In fact, sometimes it must.

But still I think there are questions left hanging. Surely this force comes from a whole range of places, some entirely personal to me and fit for the analyst’s couch.

But also something else, even more difficult, in some ways. One of my friends suggested it. He had been quite strongly critical of the Parrot poem’s tone and surrender to anger. But then he took me by surprise by suddenly wondering aloud whether this wasn’t a concentration in one person of an anger that is general but essentially not articulated, whose real source cannot be recognised or made plain or brought to the surface or into circulation, maybe deprived of words by our general bewilderment, made all the greater by the spinning and the lying and the human urge to retreat from discomfort. “The best lack all conviction…etc” And, in a reaction that might almost be called chemical, I just rage in the crowd as it carries on cheering the naked head rude-boy, as if he were wearing robes of state. I am carrying and voicing not just my true seeing but the crowd’s as well, which it cannot acknowledge, to which it cannot be reconciled.

I do think my friend might just be right, or at least partly right. And what he is describing may be what pushes quite a lot of poetry into the world. The energetically unspoken can drive you crazy. So you speak the unspoken in the first place for your own sanity’s sake, seeking form for it. In the beginning was the Word.

Silly old bird, the Popinjay Royale.

Here is my reading of a poem about a truth-telling parrot in a cage. It is based on a sixteenth century poem called “Speak, Parrot” by John Skelton. I think the parrot has much to say to us Britons now, in 2015, in the weeks following the Tory win here.   The reading is accompanied by photographs taken in and around the Tyndale Monument, a tower on the edge of the Cotswolds, overlooking the Bristol Channel. From the top, you can see for miles. But you are surrounded by bars, just like the parrot.

It seems a good setting for the poem. For Skelton’s parrot is a bird of paradise behind bars. In turn, the parrot is our heart and soul, the truth, caged. But paradoxically, the poet may also need a cage for protection from the repercussions of his truth-telling. So the monument works as both cage and sanctuary for the “popinjay royale.”   But there are other reasons why the Tyndale Monument is suitable. It honours William Tyndale, the first man to translate the Christian New Testament into English. Until then, the bible could only be read in Latin, with the result that the poor and uneducated could not read it for themselves. Tyndale risked and lost his life through doing this work. The authorities caught up with him and burnt him at the stake.

Nicholas Tyndale

William Tyndale is burned at the stake in Belgium in 1536, from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, published in 1563.

All this took place in the reign of Henry VIIIth. Skelton, Tyndale’s contemporary, had died less than ten years earlier – of natural causes. But he too had been a risk-taker. For, amongst much else, his poem “Speak, Parrot” incorporates a sustained verbal onslaught on Cardinal Wolsey who, for some years, held unprecedented power in England. As Skelton saw it, that power, and Wolsey’s abuse of it, constituted a threat to good order in the state and in nature. But incurring the displeasure of such a powerful man was dangerous, of course. Claiming the liberty to publish his word, Skelton – like Tyndale – put his life at risk.

My version of Skelton’s poem is in three parts. The first is largely just a translation of Skelton’s words into contemporary English. I have made deep cuts in his text and also replaced some of his topical references with my own. For there is a Wolsey in every generation. Accordingly, that name is replaced in my version by something more general – “the Felon Lord.” In every generation, the Felon Lord abuses power and threatens the governance of state and nature.

In the second part, covering Skelton’s middle sections, I go more my own way, but still echo some of Skelton’s resonant phrases, and keep as close as I can to the spirit and direction of his argument.

In the third part, the nervous Parrot in his cage is finally persuaded to ”speak out, true and plain” and that Felon Lord of our own time emerges from out of the Skeltonic mists and ryme royale phalanxes, and is presented to us, true and plain. Or fairly plain. Who is this Lord of Murdor, ruling a world through Hacking, bought Orcs and Dust ? Who is this Davie.orc, giving the people the lies they like, so as to keep them in Murdor’s power ?

The poem contains quite a few references to the UK hacking scandals mostly involving Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. And it touches on details associated with those scandals, such as Rebekah Brooks’ wedding in Oxfordshire, that borrowed police horse on which Cameron rode with her in Oxfordshire fields, and Andy Coulson, Brook’s ex-lover over ten years, and Cameron’s friend and close advisor, who went to jail. I would like to give due acknowledgement to Nick Davies, Guardian journalist, for his work in bringing dark things to light.

Here are three excerpts from the poem, as examples :

Like Parrot, the Truth is caged. Outside in the street
Felony’s slaves and creatures sing their song.
Up and down upon untaxed horses they strut
Kicking the poor aside as they canter along.
Much money, we know, is spent for wrong
Purposes, for poor to stay poor, and Lord on top.
And caged is Truth, and Love, and Youth, and Hope…

This England
this Bling Land

this Bling and Buy Land
this Hack and Spy Land

This Try a Lie Land
this Me and My Land…

“’Mumsy, Mumsy, it’s all Gordon’s fault, not mine’ –
That’s a good one – Georgie thought so too.
And look, they bought it ! Making people toe your line
Means feeding them the lies they like. Like sleek glue
My lies have cleaved my friends to me….”