Thursday 8 October 2015

The Wheel


Ancient bones from empty moons
Beams of light in silent rooms
Hollow logs and children’s tunes
Floors swept bare with broken brooms

I live in forests of delight
Far from the factories of the night
Far from the seeping wounds of spite
From claws that tear and teeth that bite

And all the journeys I have made
And those who left and those who stayed
And curling flame and glinting blade
And money lost and debts unpaid

And fighting in the burning streets
And blood that stains the tangled sheets
And girls who lie and men who cheat
And live in love and dank deceit

And when the wheel turns round again
And spells the letters of my name
The broken hearts remain the same
And nothing’s lost and nothing gained

And walking through the windy streets
I draw the patterns of defeat
Although I know within me beats
A heart that cannot stay complete

And when the money’s nearly gone
And all is lost and all is won
You stay and fight or turn and run
From all you’ve done or left undone

And though we wade through blood and foam
And winds of chaos drive us home
We stand before, in wounded strife

The shining apple tree of life.

Sunday 13 September 2015

TEAR DOWN THE WALLS



I was a child in Wales
Adrift in the aftershocks
Of WW2.
My parents had seen Swansea ablaze
I was told of Auschwitz & Treblinka
So that I carried the knowledge with me
So that NO-ONE
NO-ONE
Would ever have to go through
Those horrors again.

But back in those days
In my child’s mind
There was one thing I never understood.
Why did the Jews and the gypsies,
The gays and the communists
Not run away
And come here to Wales
And live with us?

I asked my mother
I asked my uncle and my granddad.
They smiled
And shrugged
And changed the subject.

I was, after all,
Only a child.
Too young to know of passports
Or of borders and border agencies
Or of national boundaries 
Or of the whole banal evil
Of bureaucracies that can send people
Back to death, starvation and torture
At the flick of a pen.

I had heard of the Berlin Wall
Concrete and barbed wire
There to stop people getting a better life.
And everyone
From the government down
Said what a horror it was
And how communism was evil
A system that could only keep its people in
With walls
And minefields
And how freedom
Is the birthright
Of all humans.


70 years pass
And the walls have gone up
All over Europe
And men, women and children
Are dying again
In their hundreds
Washed up like rubbish
On beaches
Suffocating inside containers
Tear gassed and batoned
By the armies of governments
That are building new walls
Not to keep their people in
But to keep out those
Who are fleeing the wars
Death and starvation
Those same governments
Visited on them.

So do not expect me
To accept your values
You bastards
You hypocrites
You who dare to lecture us
On violence and morality
As you allow tiny infants
To drown
Or boil to death in the backs of lorries
Or are electrocuted to death on railway tracks
Or drop dead
From hunger, exhaustion and heatstroke.

Do not presume
You bastards
To talk to us of morality.

Your conferences are a rogues’ gallery of bloodstained murderers
And we will tear down your walls
With our bare hands and nails if necessary.

These people are our brothers
Our sisters
Our mothers
Our fathers

They are us
And we are them.

Together we will tear down your walls
Tear them down to the ground
Just as we will tear down your palaces and mansions
And your detention centres
And your processing centres
And your concentration canps
And your jails

And if tearing down your whole damn system is what it takes
Then we can do that too.

Solidarity with all refugees.
Touch my brother or sister
And you touch me.
Strike one of us
And you strike all of us.

No more borders
TEAR DOWN THE WALLS




Sunday 9 August 2015



Morriston Infirmary Blues


…& flesh moulds itself
from shape to shapelessness,
the plastic elements of animal speech,
help and helplessness, 
as looming figures bring messages
of hope & despair,
among curtains & filing cabinets
snaking tubes & machines of desire

when will mother come? tonight?
when, on this ladder of crisis & recovery?
when will mother come?

We exist now among dials & screens
controlled by gods, animals & angels
jelly, sun, lunchtime & evening.
is there money to buy a portion of turkey
to extend the tablets I am on
or instead to do nothing
with no ounce of energy left?
Did we give it to the dog to chew
In midnight angioplastic reveries?
Or is there time yet to listen to tinkling teaspoons of laughter?

My husband’s middle name is Johnson
And he had two bars there
Holding the bottom ones in
I had to go back in and get the solid gold sections replaced

as an auxiliary nurse
with soft southern Irish accent
walks in with machines & laundrybasket
we didn’t have this trouble yesterday
and Sharapova is out
the screamer has gone
blackhaired student
asks Ron how he is
he, blind to zimmerframes & bedpans,
has a head full of sergeant-majors
& their messes
and the time one of them, knowing he was a teetotaller,
poured a pint of beer over his head
and he got up & hit him so hard
he fell backwards over the table
“You do that to me again & I’ll kill you”
he said
& now he sits, his lined, blind face
covered with his long, wrinkled fingers
waiting for his daughters
& his beautiful granddaughters
waiting for the man in black
who he knows has his number
waiting for the deal to go down
waiting for the cards to fall
waiting waiting waiting
for the various multiple indignities
inflicted upon our poor
                   and shapeless flesh
in this oxygenated cornershop
                        of unconsciousness
tucked away
within the great grey scar
running from the end of the world
to the navel of the baby of God




Thursday 5 February 2015

TAKING IT TO A NEW LEVEL?

The election of Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) in Greece, expected though it was, has sent shock waves through those states now imposing austerity upon their populations. With the newly-formed Podemos party bursting onto the scene in Spain too, resistance to austerity is beginning to take tangible political form in parts of Europe. It is important, however, to remember two things.

Firstly, it was mass struggle and resistance that created the conditions for the emergence of these parties - street protests, occupations and general strikes in Greece, and the indignados and their occupation of the squares in Spain. Consequently, nothing would be worse for the Greek masses than to believe that as Syriza is 'their party", strikes and street protests should be put on hold. Syriza came to government on the back of these struggles and it will be the movement against austerity that will drive Syriza forward, simultaneously showing the forces of the right that the party retains mass support. It will be up to those smaller parties - like Antarsya - and trade unions to the left of Syriza to give a lead to the most militant.

Second, the battle against austerity has to be simultaneously a fight against racism and anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant scapegoating. In countries where the left has not taken up this work, or even worse, made concessions to Islamophobia, as in France, the far right Front National makes gains. Anti-Muslim, anti-immigration movement PEGIDA in Germany and the still threatening Golden Dawn in Greece, plus fascist demonstrations in the Ukraine, show that the far right remains a clear and present danger. If the fascists and racist anti-immigrant parties like UKIP in Britain succeed in persuading workers that foreigners, immigrants and Muslims are to blame for their suffering, rather than the bankers, the bosses and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the same game of divide and rule will demobilise workers and blunt their ability to resist.

This necessity to combine these struggles makes Syriza's coalition with the Independent Greeks, ANEL, all the more problematic. ANEL is a nationalistic, xenophobic, anti-German party. It is on the right on all the social questions, from immigration to LGBT rights. It has been compared to UKIP, although there are important differences. It was formed out of a split from the Tory New Democracy on an anti-memorandum basis - opposition to the Memorandum of Understanding, the contract which binds Greece and other countries into the bailout packages and cuts in public spending enforced by the Troika - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF. Crucially for Syriza is ANEL's opposition to the Memorandum and to the austerity packages. Other parties like To Potami and Pasok would weaken the anti-memorandum position, and the Greek Communist Party the KKE has adopted a crazily sectarian position of refusing to negotiate with Syriza. So by a coalition with ANEL, Syriza secures an anti-austerity, anti-memorandum position, even if ANEL is led by bigots, homophobes and anti-Semites.

True, Syriza could have formed a minority government, but, as Kevin Ovenden points out in his report on the election, that would have meant being clear that the strategy was to use all points of strength of the left, both inside and outside parliament, to fight the right, the oligarchs and the Troika. It would have been perfectly possible constitutionally & politically to operate as a minority government on a bill-by-bill basis, challenging the minor parties to vote against the government and thereby putting them under enormous pressure. In fact, with ANEL in the coalition, Syriza will probably have to do just that anyway, if it wishes to propose decent measures on migrants, racism, police brutality, LGBT rights etc

To understand Syriza's lining up with ANEL, we have to look at the Eurocommunist politics of Syriza's leadership. The precursor of Syriza, Synapismos, emerged in the late 80s as a coalition, with the two Greek communist parties, the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and Greek Left, the successor to the eurocommunist Communist Party of Greece (interior), as its largest constituents. As the USSR disintegrated, the KKE suffered splits and purges and left the coalition. After that, in 1991, the other parties in the coalition and the renewing part of KKE decided to convert the alliance into a political party, which had varying degrees of success. In the legislative elections of 2004, Synapismos and the smaller parties formed the Syriza alliance.

In a wider context, Eurocommunism symbolised the retreat of communist parties from revolutionary politics, and away from ideas of international revolution. This included a greater emphasis on the notion of 'socialism in one country' and ideas of a cross-class 'national interest'. Some Greek activists have argued that Syriza would, even if it had a majority, have sought a coalition with ANEL, since the leadership has a long term project to win over the anti-austerity right in an attempt to unite the 'nation'. This is a move away from class politics, away from the identification of the battle against austerity with working class struggle. Real class divisions are dissolved in the idea that governments rule in some mythical 'national interest', rather than being the organising committees of the ruling class. At some point, as Syriza attempts to represent the interests of workers and the poor, these contradictions will become apparent. The real problem about having a coalition with ANEL is that, as has been said, the struggle against racist scapegoating is an integral part of the movement against austerity. Syriza may well find itself in conflict with its erstwhile partners in government sooner rather than later. 

None of this, however, is meant to detract from Syriza's massive achievement. For the first time possibly ever, a coalition of the hard left has been elected in Europe, after mass struggles brought down the existing government. This is a great step forward in the battle against austerity, although far from marking the end of anything, it marks the beginning in Europe of a new phase of struggle on a higher level. Capitalism's usual method of dealing with left reformist governments is to attempt to co-opt them, &, if that fails, to economically mug them by investment strikes, capital flight & in this case the IMF sucking all the money out of the economy. To which the answer has to be: I thought they'd done that already. As a last resort, there is always the military option, regarding which the Greek state has form. Tsipras was born three days after the bringing down of the Greek military junta that had lasted from 1967 - 1974.

Socialists discovered after the Russian Revolution of 1917 that you cannot have socialism just in one country, and it's the same here. Without the spreading of the struggle against austerity to other European countries, and the emergence of mass movements that can propel other radical socialist governments into power (or should I say 'office'), the tasks facing a Syriza government will be made all the harder. As has been mentioned, the phenomenal growth of Podemos in Spain is hugely encouraging, and the 'hollowing out' of the major political parties across Europe opens up opportunities for smaller parties. This can benefit the left, as we see in Spain, Greece, Ireland and elsewhere, or the right, as the FN in France, or UKIP in Britain. Even here in Britain we can see the possibility of the emergence of an anti-austerity alliance between the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the Greens. What is urgently required here is a credible socialist formation which can contest elections in opposition to austerity and also to capitalism. The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition is a small movement in the right direction, but is still 'a work in progress' which needs to draw in wider forces within its ranks.


We cannot just be passive cheerleaders for Syriza. It is our responsibility to the Greek comrades to struggle to bring down our own despicable austerity-mongering governments and ensure no space is given to scapegoat immigrants, Muslims, the disabled and the poor. If the left and the anti-austerity movement across Europe can raise its game and mobilise its forces effectively, we can take the struggle onto a whole new level, and in doing so defend the electoral gains already being made in Greece and possibly soon in Spain and Ireland.