Stevie Smith, Selected Poems (book review)

Stevie Smith, Selected Poems

It’s easy to see how Sylvia Plath became a “desperate Smith addict”: her poems skip to the beat of light-verse, propelled along by slightly off-beat rhythms and traditional rhyming patterns - but with dark hearts.

This makes her poems instantly likeable, whilst also, deeply affective [I Am; The Forlorn Sea]. Some are a bit absurd, or take sinister twists and awkward turns – they jar [Mrs Simpkins; The River God; Thoughts about the Person from Porlock].

Many of them are direct, speak frankly about ugly things, shadowy feelings; death-things [Death Came to Me; I Hate This Girl]; whilst others are much quieter, strike a more elegiac note [Come On, Come Back; I Rode with My Darling; Out of Time]. And they have edge; a social and political conscience that pipes up, bites down [Deathbed of a Financier; The English; The Leader].

In his preface to her Selected Poems, James MacGibbon described Smith as a sociable personality, a woman with "multitudes of friends" who could "converse unflaggingly".

And yet, a lot of her poems bear the pulse of the outsider’s heartbeat [Deeply Morbid; Every Lovely Limb’s A Desolation; Look!; The Hostage]. They speak of the essential solitude the individual heartmindsoul resides in; tell of how behind the eyes, each of us is, inherently, inevitably, alone.

But despite this, there are also Smith poems that throb with hope, compassion, a lust for life [Away, Melancholy; In the Park; Do Not!].

I have a soft spot for artists who vacillate between, negotiate, these sorts of quintessential life tensions, who say: don’t be afraid to smash up against the black rocks – but then pull yourself back out to sea, look up, embrace the moonshine. 

Stevie Smith was one of those artists.

~

The Actress

by Stevie Smith

I can’t say I enjoyed it, but the pay was good.

Oh how I weep and toil in this world of wood!

Longing in the city for the pursuit of beautiful scenery,

I earn my bread upon the stage, amid painted greenery.

I have a poet’s mind, but a poor exterior,

What goes on inside me is superior.

By Michelle Wright

(Summer 2012)

Britannia does not rule (poem)

Britannia does not rule

Fifty per cent off! Closing down! Everything must go!

says the sign in the shop window

bordered with Union Jack bunting

flags curling at the edges

flimsy

falling.

By Michelle Wright
(Summer 2012)

Poverty is lit up, ugly, in the city, in summer (creative non-fiction)

Poverty is lit up, ugly, in the city, in summer

Poverty is lit up, ugly, in this city, in summer. The sun presses it down, imprints it, illuminates it. So then you see it: hanging around on doorsteps in heaps of collapsed limbs attached to defeated bodies wearing aimless, expressionless faces; and swaying, and staggering, unsteady on its feet, intoxicated, in the park at 8:30 in the morning; the beer bottles piling up outside the door of the characterless concrete office block on the corner, the one you obediently turn up to every day, to join the floor upon floor of people, heads down, droning their days, their months, their years, their lives away…

The workers here, they kid themselves (you kid yourself), they are doing something with their lives, they have to (you have to), in order to get by, to mentally, get by. But it’s all a cover-up, it’s all a lie. For the reality is, the life is being snuffed out of them (out of you); reduced to carrying out nonsensical tasks; but what else is there to do in order to get by, practically, what else is there to do to survive?

The sun’s penetrating glare provokes the boiling over of those frustrations, resentments, prejudices and anxieties, sadnesses and madnesses, that had been simmering underneath, quietly to themselves, behind closed doors (inside of you). They now hang in the air, seething, in this city, in summer.

(That strip of black is wrapping around your skull again; something is pulled down, cutting you off from yourself, as you limp along, lethargic, heavy but empty, all itchy, anxious, and wrongwronguglywrong (Stopit!Stopthinkingthinkingthinkingdammit!Stopit!!).)

A police helicopter hovers over ‘that’ part of town. Its low repetitive rumble of doom, disquieting, clouding the blue sky sunny day. It’s not even 9am yet. As the day draws out, drags on, the heat increases, and with it, the ugliness, the impoverishment, the horribleness, intensifies. Nerves are prickled and tempers flare: a young man yells at his partner, who is rushing ahead of him along one of the main shopping streets with a pushchair, before turning his ire towards the driver of the bus he’s just stepped out in front of, forcing a sharp slamming of the brakes. And at the bus stop further along, a kid reduces his mother to tears, his impetuous temper too much for her, but even then, he doesn’t relent, but keeps shouting at her, and she ends up calling someone on her mobile for help. And the stench! Of this city, in summer. Piled up rubbish, pools of vomit. And pigeons, loads of them, loving it.

(Oh, if only the sun would stop screaming so much, put itself away, and turn the volume down on all this sweating, heaving, exhausting, horribleness; all this horribleness, and madness and ugliness; but it’s been kept down for too long, and now it wants to come out, so here it is, spilling out onto the streets, being scratched onto your skin, and is burning, burning, burning.)

School teachers are out on strike. And the town is swarming with people, young and old; shopping. ‘The people’ are not lighting fires of indignation here; the only thing that burns is boredom, frustration, people shifting for something to do (you heard there was a rally taking place somewhere, but…). ‘The people’ here haven’t gathered to raise their voices at the powers-that-be that do nothing to alleviate their poverty, but at each other: parents are yelling at their kids, and a group of teenagers are arguing with a couple of security guards round by the youth court.

And because it’s sunny, and there’s nothing else to do, this being a poor city, a poor city in England, a poor city in England in the summer, people get pissed; and sway, and stagger, unsteady on their feet, intoxicated, in the park at 1:30 in the afternoon. And beer bottles are dropped outside the door of the characterless concrete office block on the corner, the one you obediently go back to, to re-join the floor upon floor of people, heads down, droning their days… away… kidding… themselves… No mention is made of the strike, apart from the odd, “Is so-and-so not in today?” “No, she’s at home with the kids.” Revolution is something other people, in other countries do, that-thing-on-the-telly. There is no connection between the everydayness of the poverty, the boredom, the frustration, and the hostility; the void, ‘the people’ of this city are steeped in; and sexy, badass, put-it-on-a-poster, ‘revolution’.

A complete breakdown shutdown is the only thing that could do it, could end it; the horribleness, the madness, the ugliness, of it all; the poverty, lit up, ugly, in this city, in summer. But it’s too hot, there’s too little time (you’re tired). It takes all they have (all you have) to just get by, so they/you shut up and put up instead.

Hope for a revolution dies. There is too much sun in our eyes.

By Michelle Wright
Summer 2011

The England riots - 2011 (essay)

The England riots - 2011

Another day is done. The moon is out and shining.
But behind you, the TV is burning.

 ~

England is burning. Frightening, but not surprising. After all, didn’t we say this would happen? Didn’t we warn that this would happen? The kids will have enough eventually, we insisted. The cuts are going too deep, and they will fight back, it’s only a matter of time. It’ll happen all over again! Remember the ‘80s? we said.

We said that this would happen.

Or did we? Is this what we really meant? Is this what we had in mind? Is this what we foresaw?

People’s homes smoked-out, smouldering skeletons; streets shells of their former selves; local shops looted and livelihoods lost; young men run over and shot.

No, this isn’t what we meant, we couldn’t have imagined…

What has happened? To make things feel much more wrong? Something’s changed, things have changed, I don’t know what to think, to be honest; but something has changed.

 ~ 

By 4pm, rumours of a riot about to kick off in the city centre are circulating in the office. Buses have come to a standstill. Cars are on fire. Shops are putting their shutters down early. Even Boots, it must be bad.

Walking down one of the main shopping streets, you think: it could happen here, this street looks similar to that one in Croydon before it got smashed up last night; they could get something to mask their faces with from the costume shop opposite Poundstretcher, they do Halloween stuff.

There’s not tension in the air as such, more an agitation, the sense that we are about to lose control. Each siren that sounds that day signals something more sinister. The workmen drilling the road suddenly make a deep thud, setting off a nearby car alarm, followed by more sirens, there’s been a road accident, so a traffic diversion, and by the time you’ve reached Asda? Defiant beats blasting out from a young man’s headphones.  It’s like everything’s been tuned to a different pitch. My head feels a bit weird. And we’re all wondering: will it be our city next?

(Do we want it to be our city next? No, we don’t want the violence. But perhaps just to catch some of the illicit thrill that bounces off of it all? To have something wake us up, disrupt routine, instigate change?

But the emotion it came out of was something frightening, the unhealthy, feverish, illicit excitement of wartime […] a longing for licence, for freedom, for the jungle, for formlessnesss. […] Nothing is more powerful than this nihilism, an angry readiness to throw everything overboard, a willingness, a longing to become part of dissolution.

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook)

By 10pm, I hear police helicopters hovering overhead.

~

Don’t attempt to politicise what has happened, they say. There are no deeper social or economic explanations for this, they say.

But there’s no need to try and politicise it, for it already is political. Everything is political. Same for social and economic context. Everything happens within a social and economic context. You can’t escape it.

And you do have to ask: ‘why’?  Why is this happening? Who is doing it, and why? And why now? Yeah, I know hearty, arty analyses aren’t on trend these days, but we do have to ask, ‘why?’ We do have to go beyond, ‘they’re just a bunch of mindless yobbos, lock ‘em up and throw away the key’. And in doing so, that doesn’t mean we condone the violence, want to hug the hoodies. We’re not seeking to justify the violence; but the reasons for it, the underlying causes:

Poverty, perhaps? Police racism; cuts to EMA; a consumerist, social-mediated culture that breeds selfish individualism; bad parenting, failings of the education system? The effect of growing up on estates, in cities, that have a history of this sort of thing - violence, antagonism, hostility towards authority, where things never seem to get any better, and there’s not much left to lose?  In Birmingham, they say it’s inter-racial tensions; for London, police racism lies at the root of it; for Leicester, Salford, Wolverhampton, it’s maybe none of the above, all of the above, and more. It defies simple explanation, an ultimate all-encompassing conclusion.

But it is sad, this sickness, it is sad (and remember, you can ask: ‘why?’, seek to understand, and still condemn); kids having slipped through the cracks now trying to crack everything up. Many have asked:  ‘where were their bloody parents?’ Well, maybe the kids would like to know too. ‘Chuck ‘em in prison’, the kids with nothing to lose - and why not? They’ll get fed, and perhaps the chance to train up in a trade; more than they get now.

Though it wasn’t just young unemployed lads, children, looting and robbing and setting things on fire. Respectable middle-class newspapers have been wringing their headlines in shock at the young middle-class girls – ballerinas! uni graduates! Olympic ambassadors! - who have been charged for theft and criminal damage. ‘How could this happen’, they cry? As if we can get our heads round the male underclass going out on the rampage . But nice, respectable, middle-class girls? What on earth could possibly make a nice, respectable, middle-class girl suddenly flip?

(Remember, you can ask: ‘why?’, seek to understand, and still condemn).

~

Turns out there was a riot in the city last night.  The women in the office are on it: ‘It’s just mindless.’ ‘It’s awful’. ‘Have you got a Metro?’ ‘They should be made to pay, why should we?’ ‘No-one was talking on the bus this morning, everyone was reading the newspaper’. ‘Why are they doing it?’

Walking down the same street as yesterday, Poundstretcher’s been smashed; windows are boarded-up (though hang on, hasn’t that one been boarded up for a while now?); shattered panes of glass; sloppily scrawled anarchy signs on the outside walls of the train station, and police on patrol, as another day dims, and we wonder whether it’ll happen again. It’s 5pm, but nothing more untoward as yet.

A couple of community support officers stop by a fast food restaurant to check in on an elderly man, dishevelled, head in his hands, slumped over a table by the window which looks out onto the smashed-up street.

 ~

(Remember, you can ask: ‘why?’, seek to understand, and still condemn).

But then a part of me doesn’t want to attempt to analyse this situation, fix it into a theoretical framework, contextualise it, X, Y and Z it. Quoting Marx, going off on one from some intellectual pedestal, referencing history, economic factors, and social indicators, can be useful, important, in helping us to understand all of this (whilst also maybe making ourselves feel better, and somewhat superior, in the process).

But with that, there’s the danger of becoming too detached from the human tragedy of it all. Of it leaving you cold. To theorise moments such as these almost feels like an exploitation of the situation, a commodification of it. You can stuff your book on ‘Deconstruction and Feminism’, it’s about time we started building things back up again. What can theory say to those families who had to escape from their flats in fear as the fires started to rage last Saturday night? What can it say to those shop owners who’ve just witnessed their lifetime’s hard work go up in flames? How does theory xyz relate to the tears and the terror of it all? What can it do?

Some things happen which you cannot comprehend, cannot think much about beyond, ‘this is sad, inexcusably bad’, and you just need to feel it, and not think too much about it, ‘cause thinking doesn’t seem be able to get you anywhere, anymore. It can’t always bring back what’s been lost.

(No, this isn’t what we meant, we couldn’t have imagined…)

~

Along a different street this time, one of Waterstones’ windows has been smashed, the one that displays the Costa Coffee sign. But wait a minute, (walking along, there seems to be less people in town today), why are you feeling sorry for a corporate chain that’s had one of its windows smashed? I thought you were down with that sort of thing! You felt pretty righteous on seeing those chain stores smashed up along Piccadilly in March. After all, those corporations can afford to fix a single window.

But why does it all now seem so wrong? ‘Fires’ and ‘riots’, ‘riot girls’, have taken on a different tone, they leave a different taste in the mouth, conjure new meanings in the mind.

Yes Mr Cameron, it is sickening, (nice to see you by the way, four days after the first fire was lit, and you’re attacking the police for not doing enough, quickly enough? Nice holiday?). Yes, it is sickening, seeing a young injured man, bleeding onto the pavement, being robbed; reading that Age Concern buses and independent music warehouses have been torched, and hearing the callous laughter of young rioters as they delight in ruining someone’s livelihood.

And yet, in response to the kids who may just have had about enough of the cutbacks, this week it was Cameron’s turn to say ‘Fightback!’ (Yeah, let’s get on it, MAN!).

Something else co-opted, twisted; things have changed, and I don’t know what to think, to be honest.

~

Could the cycle repeat itself, before too long? (2008 – stock market crash; 2010 – the cuts; 2011 – the riots. And again; 2011 – stock market crash…) Those bloated men in suits working Wall Street are looking panicky again.

Oh, but none of it’s connected, they say. None of it’s connected.

And they’re right, it’s not connected - in any simple, coherent way. We don’t automatically go from the arrogant assumptions of the American president, to banking collapse, through to announcements of government spending cuts, resulting in people on inner-city estates finally feeling the pinch too much, so they end up punching back. No, it’s not as clear-cut as that. But the connection, the thread linking it all, albeit in a knotted, messy kind of way, is there. Though it never gets teased out, because they say none of it’s connected. And so those in power responsible for a lot of the mess get away with it; ‘cause if the global economy does collapse again, it won’t be Murdoch’s mates in government and on Wall Street who’ll pay, and take the blame. We’ll end up having a go at the teachers who dare strike for one day to protect their pensions.

And because those in power never get called out, we shouldn’t be surprised if all this does happen again: the crash, the cuts, the riots. (But this isn’t what we meant…) With a Prime Minister who insists what we’ve seen on the streets this week has nothing to do with poverty, and a Chancellor of the Exchequer who refuses to budge on his economic policy… no, we shouldn’t be surprised. ‘Cause with such stubborn intention to put ideology before reality, reality will only end up biting harder.

In the office, colleagues are cutting jobs, of the low-paid/part-time/admin variety, resulting in a fair number of women with children becoming unemployed. And I’ve had e-mails from kids who were unsuccessful at getting a place on the council’s apprenticeship scheme this year, begging for a second chance, ‘cause without this, they just.don’t.know.what.they.are.going.to.do.

Oh, but none of it’s connected, they say. None of it’s connected.

On the streets of this city, you can smell the stench of poverty, it lingers, it's always there.

Oh, but that has nothing to do with what happened in town Tuesday night, they say.

On Newsnight, a debate on the riots saw the older white participants shout down the two young black participants.

Oh, but that is in no way indicative of what lies behind what’s been happening on the streets this week, they say.

And on the news, reports of what sparked the first riot, the shooting of a young black man by police, and how he didn’t shoot first, are buried at the bottom of the bulletins.

Oh, but that doesn’t hint at what else may lie behind what’s been happening on the streets this week, they say.

(Remember, you can ask ‘why?’, seek to understand, and still condemn).

And whilst we're on the subject of the media, well, Murdoch and co., and their pals in Parliament and the police, have also shown themselves to be callous, cruel and completely amoral. Oh, it’s all been spilling out this summer! The whole system’s corrupt, no wonder we’re f*****!

Oh, but none of it’s connected, they say. None of it’s connected.

~

We board up the windows, sweep away the glass, the question that’s now being asked is: ‘What can we do to improve London’s image in time for the Olympics?’ Priorities, people! We must quickly paper over the cracks, no time for those hearty, arty analyses. Shut up and get on with things. Keep calm and carry on. We’re good at that, us Brits. Bits of gift shop tat are adorned with the slogan, we sell it right back to ourselves.

But then, who can blame us? For just wanting to carry on. Isn’t that what we all do, as individuals, every day, anyway? Put our faces on and pretend everything’s okay, even though it’s not (it’s really not)?  To stop and attempt to probe further, to ask: ‘why?’, 'what's really going wrong here?' can seem frightening, too overwhelming. It might mean we have to change.

~

It’s all so hard to comprehend. You try and get your head around it: ‘the worst scenes of violence the police have ever seen’; living through history; (another trip to the photocopier, you try to get your head around it), ‘it looked like a war zone’.

We’d heard about this sort of thing happening in the ‘80s, when our parents were the age we are now. (But no, we couldn’t have imagined…) We’re familiar with those tales of urban unrest, we’ve sung about Ghost Towns and White Riots, insisted those songs still spoke to us, still meant something today.  But now that it’s actually happened, to us, in our time, now; well, things have played out slightly differently, and those songs don’t quite up sum up 2011.

(No, we couldn't have imagined... What has happened? Something’s changed, things have changed, I don’t know what to think, to be honest.)

And then you go back to that one big question:  what can you do?  We grasp at the small glimmers of hope shining through, those things which make England good: local communities coming together to clean up the wreckage, multi-faith peace rallies gathering in city centres, to spread a more positive message.

And yet, there’s the sense that something much bigger needs to shift, it’s not enough. But you don’t know what. It’s all too massive, too much. And even if you think you come close to an explanation, there’s really no-one listening (is there?), those powers-that-be, they don’t want to know, for, ‘it’s got nothing to do with poverty, society’, they say. It all comes back to the individual.

The individual must take responsibility.

And yet the individual seems ultimately, insignificant. Unable to make any real difference.

This gloom, this surrender to the dark waters which lap us about, is a modern invention. Perhaps […] we do not believe enough. Our fathers at any rate had something to demolish. So have we for the matter of that, thought Jacob, crumpling the Daily Mail in his hand. He would go into Parliament and make fine speeches – but what use are fine speeches and Parliament, once you surrender an inch to the black waters?

Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room

~

Another week is done. No moon tonight. Too cloudy.
Behind you, the fires on the TV have burnt out.

But outside, sirens still sound.

By Michelle Wright

Summer 2011

March for the Alternative - 26 March 2011 (essay)

March for the Alternative - 26 March 2011

On 26 March 2011, nine coaches laid on by my local trade union branch left for London for the TUC’s March for the Alternative. Nine coaches? I thought. From Leicester? Now I knew this demo was going to be big. Leicester is hardly a hotbed of political activism; it’s not a Manchester or a Bristol. But the large turnout for this protest proves how far-reaching and potentially devastating the ConDem government’s spending cuts are going to be. As people piled onto the coaches early that cold, cloudy Saturday morning, they may have been bleary-eyed, but their convictions for marching were clear: the political has got too personal, the cuts are threatening too many jobs, communities and livelihoods.

~

When my sister and I arrive in London the atmosphere is unexpectedly calm; the crowds on the tube no greater than usual for a Saturday morning. But as we leave Temple station, we’re immediately bombarded with people leafleting and petitioning in the name of a number of lefty causes. This is more like it. A steward instructs us to “move to the left” (literally, not politically, but that would still work). Streams of people have already taken over the streets of the capital, with various feeder marches underway. We step in with one of them as it approaches the assembly point, eventually hitching up with the hundreds of other people lining the stretch of the Embankment.

I wanted to take part in the March for the Alternative for a few reasons, the main one being this: Everyday working people and their families should not have to bear the brunt of a financial crisis we didn’t cause.  Something is seriously awry when the vital services provided by libraries, the NHS, children’s centres, and domestic violence refuges are being cut back and closed down whilst the top bods at the banks which caused the collapse of the economy continue to receive obscene bonuses and their reckless capitalism goes unchecked.  An alternative to sorting out our country’s finances is needed and it is possible.

A huge diversity of people, arriving from all across the country, was gathering along the Embankment, also keen to demonstrate their anger. An anger spreading broadly, around a multitude of issues:

Trade union branches sticking up for their local public services. Postal workers saying ‘no’ to the privatisation of the Royal Mail. Back-room NHS staff facing job cuts declaring, ‘our work saves lives too’. Mothers with children fighting for the future of their local children’s centres. Placards displaying anti-Tory ideology. Calls for a General Strike by the Socialist Workers Party. Concerns for climate change. ‘Cut war not welfare’. The spirit of the recent uprisings in the Middle East intermingling with our own desire for change: ‘Solidarity with the Egyptians’; ‘Turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square’. ‘Hands off Libya’. Workers and students stand united. Lefty politicos well-versed in this sort of thing mixing with many more who are protesting for the first time. Teenagers with punk rock piercings and dyed-hair. Disabled people defending their access to welfare. Queers against the cuts, kids against the cuts. Bob Marley and Che Guevara printed on T-shirts. ‘Drop beats not bombs’ emblazoned on badges. Men and women; young and old; white, black, Asian, and Latin American.

We’re all here. United in our determination to call out a government that shows no commitment and no care towards those principles of equality, justice and fairness which ensure people’s right to emancipation and happiness. We’re all here because we want to change that.

~

A band of drummers accompanied by dancers get us in the mood for marching, their determined and infectious beat setting heads nodding and feet tapping. A couple of young mums start dancing and laughing, getting their kids in pushchairs to join in.

And then we’re off: slowly, but lively.

A girl no older than eight starts shouting into a loudspeaker: “Whose streets?” she cries, to which we reply: “Our streets!” She continues to stir us up: “Whose universities?’” “Our universities!” “Whose museums?”  “Our museums!” Then some righteous male voices take the lead: “They say cutback!” and we follow: “We say fight back”. “Cut, cut, cut back!” “Fight, fight, fight back!”  The atmosphere becomes more electric as we head towards the bridge. The intensity of our whistling, whooping, jeering and shouting increases, the drumming continues, coalescing to create a colourful cacophony of sound underneath the bridge. Our spirits lift as the noise gets louder.  Noise which communicates our discontent, but also propels our energy. Noise which recalls our ire, but also spurs on our optimism, our unity, our solidarity, brief but potent. An exciting few moments.

Big Ben then appears up ahead. We take in that postcard scene we’re all familiar with. It starts raining. Soggy sandwiches come out. I heart London. Rows upon rows of people are now marching, waving colourful banners and placards which scream a bunch of different, creative, inspired slogans. Some have been stitched onto massive embroidered pieces whilst others have been scrawled onto scrappy pieces of cardboard. ‘Defend Sheffield’s Libraries’ is the most endearing one; written on an A3 sheet of paper in coloured felt tip pen, it hints at the limited resources many libraries are being left to run on, but shows they’ll forge on nonetheless. Kids may be getting kettled in Oxford Street about now as they occupy Fortnum and Mason's but those Sheffield library assistants are spreading some of that kickass DIY punk rock spirit down this end of town too.

~

The rain clears and the magnitude and significance of what we’re doing starts to sink in. Speculation mounts as to how many people are here today: 100,000? 400,000? More like 500,000.

Me and my sister step out of the section we’re in to get a bit further ahead as we approach the Houses of Parliament. The crowd here is a little younger, with more students, and a brass band is blowing out some buoyant notes. A couple of women are chanting and dancing around a set of traffic lights.

This is a carnival but also an Uprising. An Uprising against a bunch of Oxbridge-educated career politicians, backed up by their mates in big business and Murdoch-owned media, who lead lives increasingly remote from those of the people they’re meant to represent. They’re not interested in preserving public services because they’ve never had to rely on them. Power, money, prestige – that’s all that matters to them.

The atmosphere is celebratory, imbued with a joyous freedom. We’re sending a riposte to the stiffness and propriety of Parliament. This is the essence of protest but also of life itself: breaking out of the boxes and questioning the pre-determined values others impose on us; engaging with something bigger than ourselves to feel more Alive within ourselves.

~

The crowd spreads out as we continue along Whitehall. We’ve taken over London, democracy in action, in the heart of the capital city. A tinny stereo blasts out some John Lennon. The red and yellow flags of the Communist Party appear, billowing brightly in the breeze, and spreading a wave of optimism amongst the marchers.

Red and yellow then give way to purple and green as we join in with the women’s bloc at Trafalgar Square. Suffrage sentiment.  The energy and chanting becomes more melodic: “Sister can you hear me? Women have the power!” The banners have more bite: ‘Rich men’s axe always falls on women’s backs’.

Men need to be named as the instigators and continuing perpetuators of this economic and social crisis. George Osborne laced his budget speech earlier in the week with macho imperialist tropes: “A Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers”; “putting fuel into the tank of Britain’s economy.” And planes fly phallic over Libya.

On Piccadilly, ‘Save our Arts’ has been spelt out on pieces of individually-lettered card and hung along a lamppost. Another placard pleads: ‘Don’t break our arts’. This city we’re marching through today is steeped in a rich and brilliant his-and her- story of literature, philosophy and culture. Etched on its buildings, making up its museums, lining the shelves of its libraries. And yet the ConDem government doesn’t seem to care for the future cultural life of this country, cutting the budgets of arts organisations and education. I want an alternative to this, too.  

Remnants of the ‘anarchist’ action that took place along here just a short while before are visible. Smashed glass and pink paint are splayed on the pavement outside The Ritz. Graffiti’s been daubed on a few buildings. Starbucks has been smashed. A flag warns:  ‘London’s burning’. A tinge of volatile anger still hangs in the air.

The capitalist behemoths should come under attack. For spreading superficiality and breeding apathy. So should their CEO's. For evading their taxes.  For feeding off their greed, just like the bankers, whilst the customers their corporations rip off, encourage into debt and attempt to placate, struggle to make ends meet.

We pass the Hard Rock café: ‘still rockin’? Then finally, three and a half hours after setting out, we arrive through the gates of Hyde Park, finishing off with a final bout of chanting. A bunch of younger protesters looking set to stage an overnight occupation surround a banner they’ve draped across a statue which demands: ‘Listen to the people’s rage’. A tree has been decorated with pieces of laminated paper which display some cryptic messages: ‘is your reality my reality?’

The rally rounds off with a call to arms to continue the fight once we get back home. I’m drunk on revolutionary spirit, the cold gusty air whipping through the park invigorates and clarifies, and another boost comes when the lively protest beats of some ska music strikes up in the background.

Then the daylight starts to dim. The huge crowd begins to disperse and my sister and I make our way home. Abandoned placards pile up at the edges of the park whilst others have been propped up outside the banks along Grosvenor Place. Police helicopters circle ominously over Oxford Street.

~

By the time we get back on the coach, it has gone dark. We leave London via the route we marched. Just a few hours before these streets were packed with people, loud and colourful; now they’re cleared empty, and dark. Plenty of police are still gathered in Westminster though with bonfires beginning to burn in Trafalgar Square.  But I simmer down. The headiness of the day gives way to quieter contemplation; the possibility of effecting change felt whilst united in solidarity with hundreds of other people now goes back to the individual to figure out. We drive past the famous sights of London all lit up, history, haunting. Where does today’s march sit amongst all this? Were we heard? What difference did we make? What difference can we make?

~

In the wake of the march there’s been some debate in the lefty blogosphere about the relative efficacy of the main march and the more disruptive direct action that took place on Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Trafalgar Square. I believe resistance should necessarily take many forms. There’s value in peaceful protest and more antagonistic actions. One of them shouldn’t be deemed better than the other. Therefore, I can only agree with this when it argues that this is an insult to those of us who didn’t start burning bonfires in Trafalgar Square but instead stuck to marching from A to B.

Politicians aren’t the only ones who often show their disconnection from the realities of people’s lives – us lefties can be guilty of it too. We can sometimes forget who our revolutionary fervour is supposed to support, who should lie at the heart of our theories, and who cannot be left out if we want our activism to achieve anything - that being everyday working people and their families. From what I saw on You Tube of the actions that took place on Oxford Street and Trafalgar Square, they all seemed to culminate in a confused chaotic atmosphere with a load of mainly young middle-class men exchanging fisticuffs with the police.  What’s so radical about that? Are we suggesting that in order for her participation in the day to have meant anything a single mum with her two-year old in tow should have got involved with that instead of heading to Hyde Park?

The main march didn’t involve “shuffling in an orderly queue from one march point to the other”, but was a lively and vocal display of resistance; respectful, optimistic, inclusive, safe, and fun… a microcosm of what a revolution should be. To dismiss this is to dismiss not only the nature of the march, but the people who marched; the people who piled back onto their coaches that Saturday evening with jobs to go to on Monday morning, as nurses, arts outreach officers and playscheme workers, the work they do being just as radical and affecting, and probably more so, than firework-throwing and window-smashing.

It's these people's jobs the ConDem government want to cut. So this is where the resistance needs to be focused. This is who the resistance needs to include.

By Michelle Wright
Spring 2011