“In perpetrating a revolution,
there are two requirements: someone or something to revolt against and someone
to actually show up and do the revolting. Dress is usually casual and both
parties may be flexible about time and place, but if either faction fails to
attend, the whole enterprise is likely to come off badly”
-Woody Allen, A Brief Yet Helpful
Guide To Civil Disobedience (Without Feathers), 1972
Bow down, scum. ©
Trevor R Pyne 2011
As I perform my tea and toast ceremony
(very zen) my mind is drawn to the state of the world today. I can hear the groans already – “oh no, Trev,
not more stuff complaining about things”.
To which I reply: tough. If you
don’t like it then go and write your own blog.
This is for me to vent my spleen, and I like my spleen well vented, I
can tell you. To keep things brief: the
world today has far too many people in abject poverty and squalor, not to miss
out the victims of war and modern slavery.
To make an emphatic point here, I am not talking about wage slavery,
although that’s pernicious and life-draining enough, I’m talking about conning
workers from poor countries into a rich one , then stealing their passport (I
was going to say confiscating, but
that dignifies it far too much), paying them barely or not at all so that they
cannot get back to their homes and (unfortunately, with a huge ‘of course’
here) threatening them, and subjecting them to, violence. It goes on in the UK, probably in other parts
of Europe, too, and on a huge scale in the Middle East.
We also have a world of so much
stuff and money, too. I was partaking in
a modest pub crawl with my fiancée and one of my many cousins the other day (I
have a huge family). Being both very lucky, and yet, not as lucky
as some, it was but the work of half an hour or so to get to the City of
London, that well-known financial district and home of pubs that shut at the
weekend. We started near LiverpoolStreet, moved to near the Tower of London and wound up in the relatively-new
Saint Katherine Docks. I was both
delighted and appalled. Delighted,
because a former grimy, industrial district was now scrubbed clean and had
become, with its marina and twee chandlers, restaurants and glossy pubs, a rich
person’s playground. Appalled, because a
former grim – I’m sure you can join up the dots. What would I have replaced it with? A shudderingly bleak, thrice-grey estate of
tower blocks, whose blueprints I would actually have purchased from the former
Soviet Union to make sure that they were really, truly from the time of Josef
Stalin. Ha! Or possibly (hold onto your hats here) something
not totally dissimilar to the, admittedly, pleasing low-rise flats already
here, but built by… (lowers voice so as not to shock) The Council! I am fully aware that it is not de rigeur to expect one’s local municipal
authority to be responsible for the crafting of one’s dwellings, but that’s how
old-fashioned and out of touch I am. Basildon,
in Essex, might not strike most folk as an example of architecture in harmony
with its surroundings, but, from 1979 onwards the estate at Noak Bridge, to the
north-west of Basildon propre was
built. The houses were designed in a
post-modern vernacular; not only styled after older houses without slavishly
imitating them but also creating meandering roads and cul-de-sacs that
positively encourage a sense of community and belonging. In effect, the best of both worlds and, for
reasons to this day that I cannot fathom, almost completely unknown and
untrumpeted. I would bring in architects
whose work is similar to Maurice Naunton and George Garrard, the enlightened men
whose work Noak Bridge is, to create my socialist Utopia on the banks of the
Thames.
However (as I am wont to say),
this is right off course and no mistake.
Revolution. Yes. Well, a short time ago, perhaps even last
year, I would have pooh-poohed such a thought.
An uprising, in this day and age?
What with state-of-the-art government surveillance and computerised
everything? You can even be tracked by
your mobile phone, so any ringleaders can be found post-haste, rounded up and
thrown in the clink, thus leaving the revolutionary vanguard without a guard
for its van, so to speak. Plus the fact
that the rabble cannot be roused, as its constituent members far prefer X-Factor or football to the real world –
and, in some ways, who can blame them?
Government, for virtually all of its inception in any country, has been
about serving the interests of a self-appointed élite and (big surprise, this)
not about serving the needs of the majority of the hapless citizens trapped
within its boundaries. Stuff like “The Pharaoh
wants to be buried in a what? How
big? Right, boys, get the whips”. Even when the revolutions have started out
socialist, some rotter comes along and creates a gigantic dictatorship. And, unfortunately, not a dictatorship of the
people (do you see a pattern here?) but of himself (for the life of me I cannot
think of a female tyrant that usurped the uprising of a nation)? These are just some of the reasons that I felt
that a revolution would never come about.
The Internationale, sung and interpreted by Billy Bragg
But hark – what’s this on the
horizon? Crikey, if I didn’t know any
better, it appears to be the sound of some grass roots – and they seem to be
organising! What’s more, they’ve knocked
this pesky “thanks for the revolt, people, you can go back home – I’m in charge
now” issue on the head by having minimal organising and no leaders! Step forward the “We Are The 99%” movement,
previously known as the Arab Spring, the British Summer (always stormy, that
one) and demonstrations in Greece, Italy, Spain and so on. In one sense, the powers-that-be (but, very,
very hopefully that-won’t-be-much-longer) were right. Educating the masses and then letting them
communicate with each other is a no-no if you want to stay holding onto your
cash cow. Especially when those who have
just been educated realise that they have no shiny pot of gold and a company
BMW at the end of their hard work and ridiculously huge student debt.
Obviously, it’s early days. I hope fervently, however, that the seeds
have been sown. It’s one thing to have
some bunch of robber barons at the top of a pile that, at least, has a
reasonable amount of affluence. One can
overlook the fact that some have a huge portion of the pie if the sliver you
have still represents some comfort and an acceptable standard of living. It’s quite another for the political wing ofthe City to pass around more champagne and roast cherub to their mates, then
tells the rest of us that there will be a mouldy crust for the rest of us to
share (all of these food references – I’m getting hungry, now) because times
are hard but hey “we’re all in this together”.
So I raise a glass to the future,
whilst hoping and praying that, this time, we get it right. Does clenched-fist salute and exits to the
strains of “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.
