Showing posts with label
21 Poems: 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbyn.
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Showing posts with label
21 Poems: 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbyn.
Show all posts
I yesterday received a letter, see below, from Ms Katherine Buckingham, Head of Disputes and Discipline at UK Labour Party Head Office in London informing me that I am now subject to a "an administrative suspension from holding office or representing the Labour Party."
I am an overseas member of the British Labour Party; as most people know I live in Galway on the West coast of Ireland. I was born in London in 1967 and so am entitled to membership as a member of Labour International. I am a full member of the party, having joined last July.
I hold no office in and have never claimed to represent the British Labour Party. Most people would not even be aware that I am a member of it. However, I did help organise and edit the online publication '21 Poems, 21 Reasons To Choose Jeremy Corbyn' as part of last summer's leadership election campaign, which included poems by a number of prominent UK & Irish poets.
My understanding is that the "comments made on social media" referred to in Ms Buckingham's letter are the sharing, see below, of three of my satirical poems lampooning Jeremy Corbyn's opponents in the Labour Party.
The first poem is a satire about pro-war former Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn MP, which was first published in The Morning Star newspaper last December.
The second poem is a satirical re-write of the Bruce Springsteen song 'The Ghost of Tom Joad', dedicated to right wing Labour MP for Mansfield, John Mann, who is most famous for chasing Ken Livingstone up some stairs in front of the media while shouting about Mein Kampf. 'The Ghost of Miniscule John Mann' was published last summer on Ireland's leading alternative literature website The Bogman's Cannon.
The third poem was also published in The Morning Star newspaper last summer, and it ridicules Jeremy Corbyn's detractors, quite reasonably comparing them to a variety of discredited characters in British history.
This is a clear attempt to interfere with my right to free speech, and indeed artistic freedom. Clearly those who long for the good old days when the British Labour Party could be summed up by the pictures below, don't like being laughed at.
There is, of course, no prospect at all that I'm going to stop laughing at the politically ridiculous.
Some people tend to be endlessly surprised at the re-appearance of The Inquisition, for that is what this is.
However, I am always expecting them.
Those of you who are so minded can register your opposition to this smaller, and altogether less stylish, latter day inquisition by contacted Labour Party General Secretary Ian McNicol here
Social media shares of this blog post would also be appreciated.
In the meantime, my most recent satire on Jeremy Corbyn's critics was published on the UK based Socialist Unity site on Monday. It's called 'A Regressive Centrist Speaks Electability' and is dedicated to former feminist intellectual and Murdoch hackette Caitlin Moran, pictured below.
UPDATE for most recent development on this see here.
Loathe it, as a few careerist literary nerds here and there certainly do, or love it, as I - and many others - do, there isn't much denying that the advent of the alternative literary site The Bogman's Cannon has been the event of the year in Irish literary circles.
The Bogman is unusual, not to mention revolutionary, in the way that it combines literarature and political criticism in an always lively manner. Many literary magazines like to claim that they are not afraid to offend the Establishment. Mostly, when such claims are made, it's either a lie, or at best an exaggeration. For your average state funded lit-mag there is always a line one will not be allowed to cross. For example, no state funded Irish literary magazine will ever run an article detailing what an atrocious Minister for The Arts Heather Humphreys has been, though everyone knows it's the truth.
Of course Heather will be gone soon, and there'll be another Minister to lick up to, for those with willing tongues. What separates The Bogman's Cannon from such slurpers is that not only is it prepared to offend establishments of all varieties, it actively sets out to offend those who need offending. It has also been a real stimulus for much needed debate. And it is not at all totalitarian; you don't have to agree with everything that's said in every article, poem, story, or video.
The aforementioned careerist nerdlets hate The Bogman, and their hatred is similar to that felt by the Blairites in the British Labour Party for Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. They expected to easily inherit the Earth, but it's not turned out as straightforwardly as they imagined; history and politics appear to taking one of those violent turns. Like 1848, 1871, 1917, 1936, or 1968. And all such inheritances are open to challenge. Irish poetry now certainly has a left wing, and it of course has a right wing, though as in the British Labour Party, that right wing pretends to be something other than what it actually is. Such 'moderation' has always been with us. Though, thanks in part to the stimulus provided by The Bogman's Cannon, the 'moderate' critics of too much political poetry, and too much irreverence, are increasingly not the prevailing trend in Irish poetry.
2015 was a huge year. If someone had told me last January 1st that I would again be a member of the British Labour Party, and a supporter of the leader, I would have suggested that they see a psychiatrist urgently. Indeed, I would probably have phoned the psychiatrist of their behalf. Yet on Saturday, September 12th Jeremy Corbyn was elected Leader of the British Labour Party by an overwhelming majority, and I voted from him, having re-joined the party as an overseas member. Twenty four years previously, to the day, on September 12th 1991, I was expelled from the British Labour Party because of my (then) membership of Militant and involvement in the anti-poll tax campaign. As part of the campaign to support to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid I put together, with the support of Portsmouth Labour Party member Darrell Kavanagh, 21 Poems: 21 Reasons For Choosing Jeremy Corbyn, an initiative The Bogman enthusiastically backed.
The revolution may not exactly be at hand, but things are not as they have been for the past quarter of a century or more. The 'moderates', or to call them by their proper name, the Right are now on the defensive both politically and culturally.
My main contribution to the cultural aspect of this revolt has been as The Bogman's Cannon's Satirist-in-Residence. I published about twenty poems on the site during 2015.
I am really looking forward to 2016 during which, as well as continuing to satirise those that need it for The Bogman, I will also be going to Dublin to do some canvassing for my friend Clare Daly in the Dublin Fingal constituency, as well as doing my bit to block Irish Water contractors entering the Corrib Park estate, one of the largest in Galway City, the only entrance to which is, as luck would have it, right outside our front door. Last August, along with four local women, I stood on the road in front of one of their vans at seven o'clock in the morning and, together, we held the line until more residents joined us and the contractors gave up. 2016 will no doubt see more such excitement.
I already have a few new poems ready to go for The Bogman's Cannon, with which I am proud to be associated. Dave Lordan, the main driving force behind the site, deserves huge credit for what he's brought about. May it continue to inspire us, and to upset those who deserve to be upset.
The U.K. based online magazine Berfrois, who themselves published an E-book of 20 Poems for Corbyn asked me to write for them an essay on why I put together 21 Poems: 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbyn.
“A long-time friend and, for his sins, former member of
the Yorkshire Regional Executive of the Labour Party came to visit for a few
days in early May. He arrived the evening of Wednesday, May 6th,
having voted by postal ballot for his local Labour candidate in the UK General
Election which of course took place the following day. Our plan was that we
would, at the appointed hour – together with my immensely tolerant wife Susan
and our altogether less tolerant cat – gather around David Dimbleby, eat and
drink to excess, and watch the predicted hung parliament unfold…” read on.
Berfrois's Poems for Corbyn includes poems by Erin
Belieu, Ian Birchall, Becky Cherriman, Natalie
Chin, Josephine Corcoran, Alec Finlay, Iain
Galbraith, Helen Ivory, Andy Jackson, Erik Kennedy, Marion
McCready, Nicholas Murray, Pascale Petit, Tom Pickard, Ian
Pindar, Michael Rosen, Michael Schmidt, Ernest Schonfield, Nick
Telfer and Rory Waterman.
21 Poems: 21 Reasons for Choosing Jeremy Corbyn includes poems by
Penelope Shuttle, Merryn Williams, Mike Jenkins, Neil
Fulwood, Jo Waterworth, Jacqueline Smith, Colin Dardis, Angela T. Carr, Dave
Lordan, Ruth Aylett, Jack Grady, Mark Cassidy, Maurice Devitt, Charles Bane,
Jr., Nick Rush, Helen Harrison, John Throne, and Pete Mullineaux.
poems by Penelope Shuttle, Merryn Williams,
Jacqueline Smith, Owen Gallagher,
Neil
Fulwood, Mark Cassidy,
Pete Mullineaux, Helen Harrison,
John Throne, Angela
Carr,
Charles Bane Jr., Mike Jenkins,
Jo Waterworth, Colin Dardis,
Dave Lordan, Ruth Aylett,
Jack Grady, Maurice Devitt,
Nick Rush...
You can read the poems here.
