Sheep magazine archive 1: issues 3-9

HAND OVER FIST PRESS 

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

The Magazine: volume 1 

Issues 3 to 9


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

The Magazine: volume 1 

Issues 3 to 9 

October 2015 - April 2016

This Volume’s 

CONTENTS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Edit & Design: 

Alan Rutherford 

Published online by 

www.handoverfistpress.com 

Photographs, words and 

artwork sourced from ‘found 

in the scrapbook of life’, no 

intentional copyright 

infringement intended, 

credited whenever possible, 

so, for treading on any toes 

... apologies all round! 

Sheep ... 

from no. 3 

(October 2015) 

to no. 9 

(April 2016) 

1 

Articles to: 

alanrutherford1@mac.com 

October 2015 – April 2016

2 

Without contributors this project has 

failed to live up to its original ideal! 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : The Magazine, issues 3 to 9

ANOTHER 

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Blah-blahblah-blahde-blah- 

Hello, 

Welcome to a 20 months worth of Sheep, 

from magazine number 3 to 24, in 3 

volumes. This is volume 1 and contains 

issues 3 to 9 and covers a time period from 

October 2015 to April 2016. 

All articles and artwork contained in 

these flashes were supplied, or found in 

newspapers lining the bottom of the canary 

cage, and all were gratefully received 

and developed with love, enthusiasm and 

sympathy here at Hand Over Fist Press. 

3 

Nobody got paid. Perhaps that is the 

problem? Anyway, ‘Sheep in the Road’ will 

now appear sporadically! 

Without contributors this project is 

failing to live up to its original ideal! 

a luta continua! 

October 2015 – April 2016

20 months’ worth of the magazine (in 3 volumes), started in October 2015 

and continued until May 2017 – playful layouts, socialist politics, many 

borrowed (most times credited) pieces of interest, social commentary – coupled 

with some wonderful original pieces by contributors, twitchy and inventive 

artwork ... and probably not enough craziness to really reflect the editor’s 

surrealist pillow. 

Here is volume 1, issues 3 to 9, covering a period from 

October 2015 to April 2016, what a mad time! 

Alan Rutherford, editor.


SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

The Magazine volume 1 

Issues 3 to 9

3 

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

OCTOBER 2015

The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Design & Edit: 




Cover photograph: 

Corbyn by stopthewar.org 

Deadline for submitting articles 

to be included in December (issue 2), 

is 15 November 2015 

Articles and all correspondence to: 


Opposite: Online Ethics DVD cover 

artwork: Alan Rutherford 

Opening 03 

Looted? 04 

Review: The Cattle Truck 07 

Remark: Graffiti Street Art 11 

Feature: A Whispered Why? 15 

by Joe Jenkins 

Literally: Sheep in the Road 22 

by Wooly Jumper & Rudi Thoemmes 

Cartoon: Jez for PM 26 

Opinion: Intellectual Candifloss 29 

Writing: Chaos Theory 33 

by Brian Rutherford 

Opinion: Sheep in the Road 47 

Opinion: Poverty of Ideas 51 

Islamic Carpet 54 

Waffle: Falling Over in Public 57 

Extract: World War in Africa 61 

Waffle: Letters 71 

Ranting: & Raging 73 

1 

OCTOBER 2015

2 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 3

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Blah-blahblah-blahblah- 

Hello, this magazine is unlikely to be up-tothe-minute-current 

on happenings on this 

crazy planet we share, this magazine will carry 

comment and opinion, words and pictures. 

This is Sheep in the Road number 3, but is 

the first issue as a magazine broadcasting the 

thoughts of others (and not just me ranting, 

rambling and waffling ... as in books 1 and 2). 

Whilst delving in my archives I discovered that 

exactly 20 years ago I had an idea to produce 

a magazine ... weird, and that I went as far 

as printing up around 10 or so of a 24 page 

square format publication ... which floundered 

and failed on the distribution aspect. 

The purpose of this magazine is deliberately a 

bit vague, but if anything, Sheep in the Road 

is aimed at defeating, or at least attacking, 

the dominent ruling class idealogy of ‘nothing 

can change’, ‘its human nature that we are 

all greedy’, and ‘capitalism is fine, what 

else is there?’ ... in this effort we are indeed 

privileged to be able to host thoughtful and 

thought-provoking pieces by Joe Jenkins, Brian 

Rutherford and Rudi Thoemmes. 

3 

Please use any means at your disposal to 

announce and circulate this magazine to as 

wide an audience as possible, thank you. 

Alan 

OCTOBER 2015

LOOTED? 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Relief panel of warrior king 

(Oba) and four companions. 

Taken from the palace of 

Benin, in West Africa. 

4 

16th/17th century, 

cast bronze, 

19 inches high. 

... now displayed in the 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 

New York 

FFS! 


6 


REVIEW 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE 

CATTLE 

TRUCK 

by George Semprun 

Book reviewed 

by Lee Humber 

in Socialist Review 

October 1993 

Reprinted from 

Manifesto, October 1995 

On 9 November 1938, 30,000 German Jews 

were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to 

concentration camps. One thousand were 

murdered in this operation. Synagogues, home 

and businesses were destroyed. It was the start 

of the Nazis ‘Final Solution’ which was to see 

six million Jewish people murdered by Hitler’s 

thugs in the course of the Second World War. 

With the racism of anti-semitism at the core of 

their ideology the Nazis scapegoated Jews for 

all society’s ills. They made them the target for 

the anger and despair of millions who had lost 

their jobs and their homes in the great slump 

of the 1930’s, much as today’s Nazis across 

Europe attempt to build political influence in 

the recession racked 1990’s. 

7 

OCTOBER 2015

8 

Hitler’s Nazis built concentration camps and 

special extermination camps like Treblinka, 

Sobibor and Belzec, whose sole purpose was 

to commit murder on a mass scale. Of the 

estimated two million who entered these camps, 

barely a hundred survived. These are the facts 

that Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French National 

Front calls mere ‘details of history’, the events 

that the racist historian David Irving denies ever 

happened. 

Gays, lesbians, Gypsies, trade unionists, 

socialists and Communists were forced into the 

camps along with the Jews. The author, Jorge 

Semprun, was a Communist sent to Buchenwald 

camp while still in his teens, and his book is the 

memories he has of his life in the Resistance, his 

journey to the camp and his release. 

Semprun was a Rotspanier, a ‘Spanish Red’ 

who had fought against the Nationalists in the 

Spanish Civil War before fleeing to France to 

join the Resistance. 

Crammed, standing up along with 119 others 

in a freezing and airless cattle truck, he spent 

five days and nights en route to the slave 

camp as the war drew to a close. In pain from 

previous beatings, surrounded by the suffering 

of his fellow prisoners and with the memories 

of the hardships and deaths of his comrades 

haunting him, Semprun could be forgiven for 

writing a bittert story of despair. But that is not 

the case. Instead, even the most brutal and 

desperate stories he recounts have an element 

of resistance and hope. 

The most shocking of his memories concerns 

a truckload of Polish Jews which arrived at 

Buchenwald while he was there. The men were 

stacked into the freight train almost 200 to a 

car, travelling for days without food and water 

in the coldest winter of the war. On arrival 

all in the carriage had frozen to death except 

for 15 children, kept warm by the others in 

the centre of a bundle of bodies. When the 

children were emptied from the car the Nazis 

let their dogs loose on them. Soon only two 

fleeing children were left and as Semprun 

recounts: 

‘The little one began to fall behind, the SS 

were howling behind them and then the dogs 

began to howl too, the smell of blood was 

driving them mad, and then the bigger of the 

two children slowed his pace to take the hand 

of the smaller ... together they covered a few 

more yards ... till the blows of the clubs felled 

them and, together they dropped, their faces to 

the ground, their hads clasped for all eternity.’ 

It is this feeling of comradeship and fraternity 

and the deep belief in the necessity of 

resistance that marks every aspect of the book. 

Semprun’s socialist ideals have never left him, 

even after the experience of the camps and the 

ups and downs of struggle in the years since 

the war. He still retains his belief in human 

beings and their ability to change the world for 

the better. 


Throughout he is very careful to draw a 

distinction between the racist Nazi ideology 

and the different sorts of people who carry it 

out. For the SS he has nothing but utter hatred. 

But for the other German soldiers he shows a 

different understanding. After conversations 

with a prison guard from Hamburg, often out 

of work till the Nazis came along and started 

up the industrial machine of re-militarization 

again, Semprun says: 

‘We’re on opposite sides of the bars, and 

never have I understood more clearly why 

I was fighting. We had to make this man’s 

being habitable, or rather the being of all 

men like him, because for him it was no doubt 

already too late. We had to make the being 

of this man’s sons habitable ... it was no more 

complicated than that ... For its quite simply a 

question of instituting a class-less society.’ 

Over the 50 years since Semprun experienced 

the terrors of Nazism, this conclusion remains 

the most important fact of human life. It lies at 

the heart of the fight against the Nazis today 

and makes Semprun’s book an important one 

for all to read.

10 


REMARK 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

GRAFFITI 

STREET 

ART 


from ‘Irish Graffiti, 

murals in the north 

1986’ 

Photograph: Alan Rutherford 

Belfast, 1987 

Seldom considered respectable or ‘art’, graffiti 

cannot be ignored. Immediate, rebelious, 

public, confrontational, honest, malicious, 

political, vulgar, informative, territorial and 

in your face broadcasting of opinions, ideas 

... and usually anonymous. This has been 

a constant expression for the talented and 

talentless since human stirrings, welcome or 

unwelcome depending on your viewpoint. 

Graffiti comes from the same loadstone as 

‘high art’, but because of its egalitarian and 

anti-establishment nature it subverts ‘high art’ 

and ‘the artist’ modes of recognised celebrity 

and value by undermining and one-finguring 

‘high art’s elitist and posturing nepotism. 

Strong, bold images of emotion hammer 

home their message ... and can also be read 

as eductional and revolutionary. All street 

art/graffiti can be seen as territory marking, 

OCTOBER 2015 

11

12 

especially in Northern Ireland where they are 

also confrontational, aspirational and defining. 

They are all demonstrably democratic in that 

they can be defaced, ammended or removed by 

their viewing public ... 

Taking advantage of street art/graffiti’s 

accsessibility to all and the fact that it is not 

controlled by the government, the political 

murals of Northern Ireland continue a 

longstanding tradition of political graffiti. For, 

even though they appear, and may seem to be 

accepted, on home territories, the very fact that 

they do appear at all oversteps the boundaries 

of public codes of behaviour ... they still 

challenge what is acceptable. 

Even though there seems to be a concensus that 

peace has arrived in the troubled communities 

of Northern Ireland, its veneer is as thin as the 

fact these territorial markers, these political 

statements, these magnificently diverse graffiti 

are still adorning unionist/protestant and 

nationalist/catholic neighbourhoods. 

Under capitalism aberrations and anomolies 

will always appear to attack the free and 

democratic voice of graffiti: the notoriety 

of Banksy resulting in a desperate ‘art 

establishment’ wanting to own him, and put 

a commercial value on his free, political and 

ironic statements ... Resist those faceless arses, 

mon brave! 

Art which has no part 

in life will be filed away in 

the archaeological museum 

of antiquity. 

Down with Art, 

the shining patches on 

the talentless life of a 

wealthy man. 


the precious gem in the 

dirty dark life of a 

poor man. 


the means to escape 

from the life which is not 

worth living! 

Alexander Rodchenko 

Russian Constructivist 

SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 3 


Belfast, 1987

OCTOBER 2015 

13

1914-1918 

World War 

One 

Allied propaganda 

reinforcing myths

FEATURE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

A 

whispered 

WHY? 

Joe Jenkins 

Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency 

There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; 

Some could, some could not, shake off misery: 

The Sinister Spirit sneered: ‘It had to be!’ 

And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, ‘Why’? 

Thomas Hardy, 

written on Armistice Day, 

1918 

2014 – 2018 marks four years when we 

remember a war that caused a degree of 

suffering all too clear in the statistical record; 16 

million people dead and 20 million wounded. 

On our iPad 4s, our iPhones and our TV screens 

we will see young faces from 100 years ago, 

brimming with expansive optimism – before the 

horror, the brutality and the cynicism. In Hardy’s 

poem, written on Armistice Day 1918, the 

poet’s question: ‘Why?” is a whispered ‘Why?’ – 

a Why?” that remains painfully unanswered, still 

today. Yet it is a Why?” people, young and old, will 

nevertheless be asking over the next four years. It 

is a “Why?” we have a duty to answer, as best we 

can. 

The First World War was the first modern 

industrialised war. It consumed millions of citizenconscript 

soldiers in four years of apocalyptic 

destruction. Its legacy of mass death, mechanized 

slaughter, propaganda, and disillusionment swept 

away long-standing romanticized images of 

warfare. War was no longer something painted 

on the tops of biscuit tins, but a visceral reality, in 

millions of homes, torn apart by grief. 

But this is narrative, and narrative is not 

explanation. While commentators have no 

problem explaining the Second World War as a 

victory over fascism, the First World War appears 

to be different. Already, battles have raged: Boris 

Johnson demanding the head of Tristram Hunt; 

Sir Tony Robinson, Private Baldrick in Blackadder, 

calling Michael Gove the Education Secretary, 

“irresponsible”, for his comments on the war. 

15 

OCTOBER 2015

16 

But this ideological war about the war is not 

a new phenomenon. In the 1990’s after the 

80 th Anniversary commemorations were over, 

historians observed: “It was as though we 

wished to understand the war more than ever 

before without having the means to do so”. So, 

twenty years on, it seems we’re still struggling 

to understand what the First World War was 

all about. Yes, there is general agreement 

about the consequences of the war, but 

the causes remain contentious, as commentators 

cite an eclectic set of causes: ‘accident and slide’, 

‘Serbian ‘state sponsored terrorism’, ‘tangled 

alliances’, ‘indolent politicians’, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s 

empire building, and even AJP Taylor’s ‘railway 

timetables’ analysis. 

In announcing the UK government’s £55 million 

plan to mark the centenary, David Cameron said: 

“Our duty is clear. To honour those who served. 

And to ensure that the lessons learnt live with us 

for ever”. But what are these lessons? To whom, 

and where do we look? And what of Orwell’s 

warning that those who control the present control 

the past? Writing in the Daily Mail, Michael 

Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, said 

any lessons to be learnt have been overlaid by 

‘myths’, ‘misinformation’ and ‘misrepresentations’, 

reflecting: “an unhappy compulsion to 

denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and 

courage”. Gove accused British dramas such 

as “Oh! What a lovely war”, and “Blackadder”, for 

teaching school children, ‘left-wing myths 

about the war’. For Gove, the war was a ‘just 

war’, fought by those who “were not dupes, 

but conscious believers in King and Country, 

committed to defending the Western liberal order 

against the ruthless social Darwinism of the 

German elites”. 

Boris Johnson, responding to Gove’s article, 

concurs, citing: “German expansionism and 

aggression”; while eminent historians from our 

most illustrious university departments, propagate 

the narratives of a Kaiser intent on global war, and 

a Britain going to war “for good reasons…. the 

outcome must be seen as a victory”. 

However, Cameron’s First World War Committee, 

which oversees events for the 2014-2018 

commemoration is less explicit. They state they 

want: “less focus on big explanations”, and 

more on revising “the myths”; such 

as ‘the ‘myths’ that soldiers did not believe in what 

they were fighting for, or the ‘myth’ that the war 

was prosecuted by incompetent and conscienceless 

generals {“lions led by donkeys”}. 

This ‘demythologising’ was made manifest, 

when the Royal Mint revealed its special 

£2 “commemorative” coin: a coin not 

commemorating the dead or maimed, but 

rather, Field Marshal Horatio Kitchener KG, 

KP, GCB, OM. Kitchener of: “Your country 

needs you” fame”; Kitchener, who commanded 

British artillery and maxim machine guns at the 

Omdurman Massacre in Sudan, in 1898, killing 

10,000 Dervishes who were only armed with 

spears and a few rifles. Even Churchill thought 

Kitchener too brutal in his killing. 


German boys 

Photograph in public domain

Meanwhile, the BBC has confirmed this 

revisionist trend, and, in its “largest programming 

ever”, enlisted two high profile revisionist 

historians in Sir Max Hastings and Niall Ferguson 

to make keynote documentaries about the war. 

The first item on the BBC’s dedicated World War 

One online page follows the script faithfully. Titled 

‘World War One: A Misrepresented War?’ its 

introduction reads: “Does the traditional tale of 

‘stupid generals, pointless attacks and universal 

death’ give a fair picture of the war?” Dramas 

include: Teenage Tommies; The Machine Gun And 

Skye’s Band Of Brothers, Our World War, with POV 

helmet camera footage, surveillance imaging and 

night vision, and Radio 4’s biggest-ever drama 

commission, and Home Front a 1914-1918 

version of East-Enders. 

Of course, as historians and script writers 

demythologize the minutiae of imperial ambition 

and indulge in counterfactual speculation there 

will be plenty of narrative. But, as the media 

furore suggests the predominant narrative is 

one of ‘necessary sacrifice’ with the Somme and 

Passchendaele represented as titanic struggles 

between democracy and autocracy, between good 

and evil. 

On our multiple devices and TV screens Professors 

of statistics tell us that if the British dead alone 

were to rise up and march 24 hours a day, past a 

given spot, four abreast, it would take them more 

than two and a half days. Professors of Psychology 

narrate a war that turned “golden schoolboys” 

into “figures of dreadful terror shaking, mouthing 

like madmen,” but regarded as “sheer cowards” 

by Generals. Medical historians talk of the 

fate of 250,000 British amputees, or reference 

Louis-Ferdinand Céline who called the war “the 

vaccinated apocalypse”: with ten million military 

personnel dead we’d become better than disease 

at killing our fellow man’. Military historians 

narrate, how by 1917, shelling in France could 

be heard in London 140 miles away; and how 

even today nearly half a million pounds of war 

detritus and soldiers’ bones are unearthed each 

year on the Western Front. Social historians 

tell of how patriotic mothers were recruited by 

governments to publicly shame un-enlisted young 

men into joining up. Media historians explain 

how war-loyal British editors were rewarded with 

knighthoods and peerages, wryly noting the war 

couldn’t have lasted more than a month without 

the press. Professors of economics tell us that the 

direct financial war-cost was £125 billion; the 

equivalent of God knows how many trillions today. 

But narrative is not explanation. For all 

the thousands of hours of broadcasting, 

narrative does not answer Hardy’s whispered 

“Why?” Narrative is straightforward, explanation 

is difficult. “Why?” is difficult. But, we must not 

be distracted by narrative alone. Cameron’s 

Commission want us to avoid the “big 

explanations”. But, if any war needs ‘big 

explanations’, it is the First World War. This was 

a total war that spawned evils that plagued the 

20 th century: fascism, communism, racism, antisemitism, 

dictatorship, extreme violence, mass 

propaganda, censorship, mass murder, WMD, 

genocide, the rise of corporate power. This was an 

industrial war that crashed through the limits of 

19 

Stretcher bearers, Passchendaele, August 1917 

artwork: Alan Rutherford (from photograph: wikipedia) 

OCTOBER 2015

20 

what was thought morally permissible in warfare. 

It was a war that seasoned rulers for future wars, 

Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam, cluster 

bombs in Afghanistan, depleted uranium and 

chemical agents in Iraq, white phosphorous in the 

Gaza strip..... 

The First World War was a national trauma – an 

international trauma – and one that has left has 

its imprint on the popular imagination to an extent 

almost unparalleled in modern history. Yes Mr 

Cameron undoubtedly there are lessons to be 

learnt, but we will not learn them by narrative 

alone or by dismissing the “big explanations” you 

are so keen to avoid. 

The mythologies and the misinformation of the 

last 100 years will continue to be propagated and, 

after four years of “programming” we may even 

be forgiven for believing that this was a ‘just’ war 

fought to preserve liberty; cognitive dissonance 

rendering us too uncomfortable to bear the truth. 

And what is the truth? We won’t get it from 

representatives of the military-industrial 

complex or media corporations. But, there are 

other voices out there: voices you won’t hear 

on the BBC, voices that might even answer a 

whispered “Why?” 

“Today, tens of thousands of war memorials in 

villages, towns and cities across the world bear 

witness to the great lie, the betrayal, that they died 

for “the greater glory of God” and “that we might 

be free”. It is a lie that binds them to a myth. They 

are remembered in empty roll calls, erected to 

conceal the war’s true purpose. What they deserve 

is the truth, and we must not fail them in that 

duty”. 

(Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor, Hidden 

History: The Secret Origins of the First World War, 

Mainstream Publishing) 

“During the war, 21,000 new millionaires 

and billionaires were created in America 

alone, to say nothing of the massive 

secret profits made by their European 

counterparts. Meanwhile, in their millions, 

boys with normal viewpoints, fine boys, 

boys the pick of their generation, were 

forced to leave their firesides, their 

families, their fields, their friends and their 

factories, to ‘about face’ and think nothing 

of maiming and killing, as if they were the 

order of the day”. 

(General Smedley Butler, War is a Racket) 

article copyright © Joe Jenkins 

Rockerfellers ‘war ... what it is good for!’ 

Source photograph in public domain 

Montage: Alan Rtutherford 


ARMAMENTS 

MANUFACTURERS 

MAKE A KILLING! 

WAR ...WHAT IT IS 

GOOD FOR!

LITERALLY 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

SHEEP 

in the road 

22 

Words: Wooly Jumper 

Photographs: Rudi Thoemmes 

So here’s to sheep in the road! I meet these 

sheep regularly on the back of the Matson 

estate on the edge of Gloucester. Through the 

generations these sheep have learnt and shared 

their route from their local field, across common 

land and into the heart of Matson by the main 

shops. 

They know the best grazing spots and as 

established neighbours of old have no concern 

about popping into lots of gardens to nibble 

your hedge or munch on your marigolds! Every 

garden gate is pushed open as the marauding 

Matson sheep eat their fill. They are 


Photograph: Rudi Thoemmes

a substantially undiscovered part of the local 

community by ‘outsiders’ although the Daily 

Mail website did once claim in an article that 

the sheep had been introduced by the local 

council as a cheap way of undertaking grounds 

maintenance! If only some council officials were 

that imaginative I thought when I saw that. 

24 

The sheep collectively manage themselves as 

they wander around the area by day and then 

head back to their home field at dusk each 

day without any humans to boss them around. 

Most wonderful of all, the gang of sheep have 

a complete disregard for local vehicles and in 

fact provide a unique form of traffic calming 

for Upton Lane, a road with a 60 miles per 

hour speed limit. Our sheep are fearless and 

immovable! They wander down the middle of 

the road and no matter what the speed limit is 

Matson’s mobile mutton makes everybody slow 

down to sheep pace! 

Our favourite sheep in the road are seen as 

pests by officials but actually they help maintain 

our green spaces, manage our traffic and 

connect hundreds of locals who love them to 

nature everyday. Now that feels like a win win 

for humans and sheep. 

So what do we want? More Sheep! 

When do we want them? Now!! 

No doubt the authorities will remain mutton Jeff 

to our demands but at least they’re not facing 

the chop yet! 

Photograph: Rudi Thoemmes 


Jez 

for 

Prez 

Say no 

to a 

monarchy 


26 Alan Rutherford 


OCTOBER 2015 

27

Directors at Free Range Book Design & Production Ltd 

artwork: Alan Rutherford

OPINION 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Intellectual 

Candifloss 

or, footnotes (and abbreviations) 

– the farts (and belches) on a page 


from ‘Sheep in the Road, 

volume 1’ 

While a very small number of footnotes are useful 

in unobtrusively directing a reader to the source of 

a quote, generally they are the reclusive domain 

of the intellectual, or those looking for intellectual 

status, trying to prove a point by referencing 

another, as if by mentioning another source 

for their information adds some sort of weighty 

authority or gives credence to their flatulent point. 

A fart on a page indeed! Are we then to believe 

that the source of an unexplained point is correct 

just because it was published elsewhere? This is 

nonsense, a literary nepotism based on what? 

This kind of posturing, this elitist ‘ibid.’ nonsense 

masquerading as researched writing, attempting 

to bolster the importance of a text littered with 

superscripted numbers and give it an air of intellect 

where it is absent, is just in reality lazy writing. 

29 

OCTOBER 2015

30 

As one who typeset books that are riddled with 

footnote intrusions I can see the indolent advantage 

for an intellectual writer whose time is so important 

that he/she needs to enhance, strangle or smother 

a throw-away mention of something trivial or 

otherwise by referring to some giant tome which 

attempts to explain the universe and is only 

available in some specialist library. Then there are 

those boorish readers who won’t consider any text 

which is not punctuated with this pygmy fly-away 

text as intellectual, will decry it as unsubstantiated 

and will not accept points however well they are 

made. For fuck sake, do we readers need to be 

sent on a wild goose chase to verify some smug 

author’s pandering to their own ego only to find 

the source unavailable or merely a figment of the 

author’s imagination in that it does not explain or 

compliment his/her point. 

If an author wants or needs to make a point which 

is made elsewhere by another then this needs to 

made in the text and, if needs be, explained in the 

text. Of course, if points are fully explained and 

credit for them given to another, this may make the 

author’s assertions look feeble and will definitely 

give the impression that the work is not entirely, or 

even vaguely in some cases, their own. It might 

even be said by some that a book riddled with 

footnotes is at best an ambiguous bibliography with 

the veneer of a guiding idea, rather uncharitable, 

but a view with some merit surely? 

There will be those, certainly, who can find a 

reason for the industry and profusion of footnotes 

in that they allow a text to be read as the argument 

intended by the author without distraction or 

tangental flights of fancy, and that the ‘notes’ which 

congregate about the foot of a page are just there 

as helpful indicators of reference … more like 

‘tosh and camouflage!’ to cover the cracks, in my 

opinion. 

Afterthought 

Joining that club of exclusive and deliberately 

obscurest writing techniques are abbreviations. 

Another feeble mind-fuck tool of the ‘busy/lazy’ 

intellectual. A nasty belch staining the page, where, 

unless you are attuned to them, they leave the 

reader second guessing the flavour-by-whiff … 

or maintaining a jiggery-pokery library in their 

head full of trite-useless alphabeti-spaghetti. These 

manufactured and localised acronyms are then, 

incredibly, given credence and weight by audiences 

of similarly challenged people, who accept them 

as actual words containing nuggets of ‘wisdom’ as 

they tumble out from platforms, or spread their selfimportance 

on a page, during the inane utterances 

or dank scribblings of these ‘intellectual charlatans’. 

If you have a valid point, ‘SPELL IT OUT!’, you lazy 

fucker. 


Books are weapons! 

Hit a tory with a 

hardback ...

WRITING 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

CHAOS 

THEORY 

.1 

Brian Rutherford Compton looked over the fence at the mud 

filled field and sighed. The Dovecot stood at the 

top of a small rise silhouetted against a bank 

of dark clouds threatening to break and wash 

away all the evidence. The body lay at an angle 

halfway down the grassy slope where it had slid 

sometime during the night. The rain had filled 

the spaces between the fibres of wool and cheap 

cotton on the boys clothes and tumbled him 

slowly from the step where he had been placed. 

People dump bodies, thought Compton, but 

this one had been intended to say something. 

Whatever message it was trying to convey was 

eluding him. At the bottom of the hill there were 

tyre tracks. Faint at the gate where Compton was 

standing but gouged up in a violent curl where 

a vehicle had made an abrupt turn. There were 

footprints all around the tracks. Fresh ones. More 

than one set. Compton followed the tracks and 

felt the mud pulling at his shoes. One hour ago 

33 

OCTOBER 2015

34 

he had been tucked up nicely in his bed , the rain 

drumming against his bedroom window. Such 

is the life of a detective in a city where the locals 

could wax poetic on the many different kinds of 

rain. This rain could only be described as steady. 

It poured down in all directions with the same 

monotony as the flatline on a heart monitor. 

“See if you can get a cast of one of these 

footprints … You might also get a partial from 

that fence, despite the rain”. 

The forensic officer looked up from the churned 

track. “Already on it boss”. 

Compton couldn’t remember his name. 

“Angus, sir”. 

“Sorry?”. 

“The names Angus McAgnus. I’m new to the 

squad. Transferred down from Dundee.” 

“Jesus!” Said Compton … ”commiserations … I 

take it there’s a reason for having a name more 

ridiculous than mine?” 

“Angus son of Angus … Its a family thing …” 

“How did that go over in the city of jute, jam and 

jacked up casuals?” 

Angus smiled. “Let’s just say, sir, that I learned 

how to run very fast”. 

“Well Angus son of Angus what’s the score with 

the lad on the hill?” He gestured towards the 

body. 

“He’s been stabbed. Something long and very 

sharp went straight through his heart. At a guess, 

I’d say it was a sword. No cuts on his hands 

suggests he didn’t see it coming and it must have 

killed him outright. The heart simply stopped 

beating, brain death within seconds”. 

“Any ID on him?” 

“I’ve not checked him. That’s a job for the 

detectives.” 

“Yes”, said Compton, sighing. ”Yes, I guess it is 

…” 

He looked away from the dovecot at Glasgow 

spread out before him. He could see smoke 

pouring out of a distant chimney, tower blocks 

that looked like rotten teeth and somewhere 

lost in the grey horizon the faint outline of wind 

turbines cutting the air. Immediately below him 

was Milltown. 

Angus said “… he wasn’t killed here. That much 

is obvious. No blood. Whoever it was killed him 

elsewhere and dumped him here.” 

Compton didn’t say anything. He turned his back 

on the city and began to walk slowly towards the 

small hill where the dead boys remains lay at 

an angle. The rain ran down and over the dead 

eyes. It had filled his half open mouth and was 

spilling out over his neck and onto his shirt but, 

whoever he was, he was past caring. 


36 

.2 

We wait here as long as it takes. Got it. Fucks 

sake. Don’t make me regret recommending you. 

I stuck my neck out there and I don’t want you 

to ever forget it. How you behave reflects on me 

right? Your job is to sit with the car and keep the 

engine running. Why? … Why what? Why can’t 

we just go back to Bills? Let me give you a clue. 

If we go back without the wee fucker then Bill will 

ask questions of his own. I’d be happy to let you 

take the lead there. You can explain to him while 

he has his foot on your neck. No? Then we wait. 

Every month. There’s one every month now. 

I blame the fucking internet. Its turned every 

wannabe into a dealer but it gives me a fucking 

headache thinking about it. Its all about supply 

and demand. If these wee fuckers flood the 

market in Milltown with gear from all over then 

we get competition. Everyone drops their prices 

to compete with each other and that’s bad for 

you and me. That’s why we have to introduce 

a third element into the system. A traditional 

element that has help carve out the men from 

the boys since time immemorial. Fear. Fear and 

intimidation. Thats why you and I are sat here 

in this car outside the house of the latest stupid 

fucker trying to muscle in on our market. Every 

quarter he sells is money out of Bills pocket and 

out of yours and mine … Its always the same … 

first they get a bit and the next their friends are 

whistling up at their window at 2 in the morning. 

Most of them don’t have the stamina for it but, 

for the ones that do, there’s two choices. Join the 

club or get fucked. 

Get the bundle out of the back will you … no 

don’t do that face. At least don’t do that face in 

front of Bill. He’ll see that and kick seven shades 

out of you. You do what you’re asked and then 

you’ll get the rewards. This one is special. Bills’ 

asked me to make an example of this one to 

send a message. A message to the others. We 

don’t give this one any choices. Fair? Sit there are 

shut the fuck up. Keep the engine running here 

he comes now … 


38 

.3 

“Get up”. A foot pushed him through the duvet. 

His feet felt cold sticking out from the end of the 

duvet. Christ, why was it always freezing in this 

house. 

“Cmon, you’ve got school in 20 minutes. You 

better get a move on.” It was his dad. “I don’t 

want to go. What’s the point?” 

He felt a pull on the duvet and slid off the bed 

onto the floor. He could see the morning light 

seeping in from under the cover, his fathers boots 

were paint spattered. There was a small nail 

embedded in the thick rubber sole on one side. 

“Fuck off dad”. 

The cover was whipped off him and he spun 

around, yanked by the force. A hand pulled his 

hair. Hard. 

“Don’t talk back to me you wee shite, I’m not 

nearly as soft as your daft mother.” 

Brad looked into his fathers face. Some unnamed 

emotion crossed behind his eyes and was gone. 

Then his father let go and looked away out the 

window rubbing his hand along the back of his 

head. 

“Here, I washed your shirt”. 

Brad took it and sat on the bed. He lifted the shirt 

to his face and could smell last nights dinner. The 

kitchen had a drier. ‘The Pulley’ his mum had 

called it. Clothes would hang on the pulley to dry 

while outside the rain poured down on the blue 

slate roofs of the people of Milltown. The rain 

seeped into every crack and crevice, filling the air 

with the tart dampness that constituted a Scottish 

winter. Inside, their clothes would hang and dry 

slowly. Absorbing the chipfat and frozen pizza 

smell that permeated the house downstairs, his 

staple diet since his mother passed away. Outside, 

a dirty white van pulled up. He could see the top 

half slide into view along the top of the hedge. A 

horn beeped. 

“If I come home and find you’ve bunked off again 

I’ll tan your hide”. 

He half flinched expecting the slap that usually 

followed this threat but his dad just turned and 

walked away. His big boots ringing out on the 

bare floor of the hall. 

What a fucking pain in the arse it was to get up 

every day and go to that shitty school. He hated 

it and everyone there apart from his mates. Brad 

sat down on bed again and clutched his head. 

He could feel the blood pumping through his 

brain with every heart beat and every beat was 


painful. Jesus , why did I drink that stuff? Lorenzos 

brother had bought it and pocketed the change. 

Brad had been trying to work up some liquid 

courage. Trying to to get off with Sally McFarland 

at the swings but she’d been with her mates and 

he just made a fool of himself as usual. Showing 

off, as they had walked along the road back to 

the estate. He’d keyed a few cars and smashed 

some guys window. The guy had come running 

out and was almost crying as he shouted at them. 

Something about a baby. Fuck him and his stupid 

baby. That’s what Brad had shouted back and 

they had all laughed. He didn’t remember much 

about getting home apart from that. 

He got up slowly from the bed and dressed in 

yesterdays clothes. The clean shirt had fallen onto 

the floorboards and had a dusty stripe across the 

back. Brad didn’t care. Since his mum died he’d 

gotten used to wearing dirty clothes. He had a 

piss and looked in the mirror. There were dark 

rings around his eyes and his skin looked sallow. 

Spots had broken out in his chin but he was more 

interested in the fluff around his upper lip. There 

was the beginnings of a moustache there. Brad 

felt strangely thrilled at this sign of impending 

adulthood. He couldn’t wait to be part of that 

world and, especially, leaving school behind him. 

Closing the front door he walked down the path. 

The sky was a grey blanket that stretched in all 

directions above him. Somewhere above him the 

sun was a ghostly white disk that made his eyes 

water when he tried to look at it. As he stepped 

out of the gate his foot kicked something. It rolled 

under the hedge and he caught a glimpse of 

cellophane. He reached under and picked it up. 

It was about the size of his fist. Brad stared. He 

couldn’t quite believe it. He looked around but 

the street was empty. Somewhere unseen a dog 

began to bark. Stuffing the package into his bag 

he ran along the pavement in the direction of the 

school. 

The morning dragged along like a month of 

sundays. Brad moved slowly from class to class in 

the slow crush of the school corridors. Finally when 

the bell rang for break time he ran out of the class 

and down to the woods near the main gate. Spud 

and Lorenzo were already there lounging with 

their backs against the big oak. 

“Check this out” he said and produced the 

package from his bag and hid it under his jacket. 

The two leaned in. 

“What is it”. 

“Its the biggest chunk of blow I have ever seen”. 

The smell hit them as soon as he unwrapped the 

cellophane. 

“Whoa … what the fuck …” Spud shouted. 

“Shhh …” said Brad waving his hands down. “Try 

not to attract to much attention dummy.” 

They all leaned in. The smell of hash drifted up 

and over them. It was so strong Brad could almost 

taste it at the back of his throat. The ball was black 

and had a slight sheen over the surface. 

“That’s the oil in it”, said Lorenzo. “That smells 

and looks like primo gear. Where the fuck did you 

get it?” 

39 

OCTOBER 2015

40 


Brad thought for a moment.” I’ve got some 

contacts ... I got it on credit”. 

“Credit” said Spud. “What d’ye mean?” 

“To sell dummy …” Said Lozenzo. “He’s going to 

deal it … Nice one Brad.” 

“Yeah, well I thought I’d do bit of selling. Do my 

mates a good turn and bring in a bit of cash.” 

His friends looked at him with awe and 

admiration. It felt good. 

He said “I’ll sell you a quarter after school”. 

The boys were silent for a moment then Lorenzo 

said “Can I get a bit now?” There was a hint of 

desperation in his voice. “I’m trying to get in my 

Dad’s good books.” 

“Your Dad likes a smoke” Said Brad, “Fuck off , 

he must be 60, and he’s bald.” 

“Yeah, well he’s actually my step-dad. I fucking 

hate him. He drives one of those Porches ... you 

know … the ones that look like a Bulldog about 

to take a crap. Mum married him last year and 

we’ve been living at his since. He’s got plenty of 

money but the place is still a dump.” 

“What’s he do?” 

“Not sure, I think he’s a bit dodgy, he’s always 

knocking about with that Bill Rodgers. Two of 

them..dodgy as fuck. Coming and going at all 

hours of the night but Mum seems to be happy.. 

most of the time. He’s always skinning up in front 

of me. Doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal. If I 

can get him a bit of this good stuff he might chill 

out a bit more … he’s started knocking lumps out 

of me when mums not around”. 

Brad looked at Spud, then said “Yeah ... what 

the fuck … you’re good for it I suppose. If it gets 

your old man off you’re back then you can have 

some”. 

He pinched a bit off. It tore off easily. 

“Wow, look how soft it is.” Said Spud, “This isn’t 

like the stuff we normally get. Y’know the usual 

crap … the sheep droppings that smell like a 

Turkish shithouse.” 

Brad laughed and tore a strip of cellophane off 

and wrapped it around and around the nub of 

hash. He passed it over to Lorenzo. “15 squid, 

okay?”. 

“Sure , I’ll get it to you tomorrow no probs”. In 

the distance the bell rang in three short blasts. 

“You better plank that somewhere” said Spud. “If 

they catch you with a chunk that size you’ll be in 

the shit big time. 

“OK, you guys go ahead … I’ll see you in the line 

in 2 minutes”. 

“Not trust us or something?” said Lorenzo. 

“No I fucking don’t.” said Brad smiling , “If either 

of you got a hold of a piece this size you wouldn’t 

do the smart thing and sell the bastard, you’d 

smoke it until your eyes fell out and your brains 

dribbled out your ears.” He laughed and put 

the hash in his bag. “I’m gonnae take the risk 

41 

OCTOBER 2015

42 

just to save you two dobbers from yourselves.” 

He pushed the branches of the bush to the side 

and stepped out of the den they had burrowed 

out beside the school gates. “Cmon then lets get 

back before Mrs Price spots us sneeking in at the 

back of the line”. 

They made it just as the last of the line were 

feeding in through the glass front of the school. 

Mr Gladstone, was waiting at the door of the 

class tapping his ruler impatiently on his black 

teachers gown. “Come on now laddies, the 

wonders of music await within and you are all 

late and you, he said to Brad grabbing his hood, 

are the latest of the lot”. Brad stopped dead in 

the door. 

“Mr McGlaughin , I have a special seat for 

latecomers just here ...” he said, pointing to a 

stool beside his desk … 

Brad cursed under his breath. “What was that Mr 

McGlaughin … did I hear you say something?” 

“But I wasn’t the only one who was late”. 

Gladstone looked over the class , his hand still 

clutching the back of Brads hoodie. He was a 

tall Highlander with a head like a fat radish. 

What little hair he had left was a wispy tuft that 

flopped one way and then the other much like a 

sail swings back and forth following the wind. “I 

see a class of children whose minds are eager to 

learn. So eager, Mr McGlaughlin, that they are in 

class, in their seats on time each week. And each 

week, Mr McGlaughlin, you drag youself in just 

at the very point when I am about to send out a 

search party for you. Some would say that this is 

a talent but it is not one that you are likely to be 

able to use in the years following your time at this 

school. Some would say, Mr McGlaughlin, that 

you do not like my class and that is why you are 

consistently late to arrive. Mmm ... is that it? Do 

you think that you already know everything there 

is and all that matters about music?” 

Brad was smart enough to say nothing. He tried 

to step back so that the hood of his top wasn’t 

pulling tight around his neck but everytime he 

moved, Gladstone would adjust the angle of his 

grip. “Sit , Mr McGlaughlin, sit beside me and 

grace me with your presence. Each week, from 

now on, if you are last to arrive you can sit in 

this stool where I will direct questions to you and 

you alone. You can share your enclyclopedic 

knowledge of musical theory with your classmates 

…” He let go of Brads hood and Brad stumbled 

forward. He sat on the stool which was a foot 

smaller that the rest of the school desks and 

looked up into the faces of the front row. Brad 

usually sat at the back of the class. He barely 

recognised the front row who all wore blazers, 

even the girls. They all looked impossibly tall 

and healthy. His eyeline was level with the desks 

and had a uninterrupted view of the girls legs. 

Brad wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this. In 

turn the fresh-faced pupils in the front row eyed 

him with amusement and fear. Like watching a 

dancing bear. 

The lesson began and Brad, hunched down in his 

seat, watched the shaft of winter sun cut across 

the class from the narrow windows that ran along 

the classrooms length above him. Chalk dust 

drifted slowly in the warm air thrown up from 


the cast iron radiators that ticked constantly as 

they warmed and cooled with the vagaries of the 

school boiler. He was beginning to feel sleepy. 

His headache had abaited and now he just felt 

impossibly tired. There was a knock at the door 

and Mrs Price walked in. “Mr Gladstone, do 

you have a Brad McGlaughin in this class?“. 

Mrs Price was a woman of indeterminate age to 

Brad. She looked young but wore horn-rimmed 

glasses. He equated these to the black and white 

movies his mother had once watched with him. 

Rock and roll. Teddy boys and teachers with lips 

set in straight, disapproving lines. He shifted his 

bag from it position, in plain sight of Gladstone 

and Price, to his side. 

“Why, yes Mrs Price. As you can see he is sitting 

with me and considering the consequences of 

tardiness … Brad, stand up.” 

There was no way, no fucking way that anyone 

knew about the rock of hash in his bag. Doubt 

began to creep around the corner of his selfbelief. 

He knew that as soon as they looked in his 

bag he was fucked. He looked over at Spud who 

was staring, wide-eyed at Brad. He shook his 

head almost imperceptibly to say ‘No wisny me’. 

Brad stood and try to kick his bag under the desk 

but he misjudged it. Brads school bag, much like 

his compatriots, was not full of the parapanelia 

of school. A single scraggly jotter kept company 

with an eraser dotted with pencil stabs. The hash 

had introduced a new counterweight to its sad 

and lonely contents. His kick sent the ball rolling 

along the roomy avenue at the bottom of the bag 

and the momentum of it rolling up against the 

side of the bag made it slide under the desk and 

beyond. It bumped politely against Mrs Prices’ 

shoes like a lost child looking for attention. 

She stared down at the bag and said, “Yes, I 

do, Mr Gladstone, there has been a very serious 

allegation made and I need to speak to Brad 

to clear this up. She stooped and picked up the 

bag. 

“This morning we received an anonymous tip-off 

that someone was dealing drugs in this school.” 

She reached into the unzipped mouth of the 

bag. There was complete silence. Somewhere 

in the distance another pupil was practising the 

violin. The music moved up and down the scale 

hesitantly, stopping now and then to scrape on 

the same note over and over. Brad could see her 

hand move around and close on something. She 

pulled out the black ball of Hash. The sellophane 

had split at the sides and flakes of pencil 

sharpenings and sweet wrappers stuck out at all 

angles. It looked innocent enough but it gave 

off an unmistakable aroma of dead flowers that 

registered so high in the olafactory scale it had 

transformed into a tone, like a dog whistle that 

they could all suddenly hear. 

Brad sat down on the comically low stool and 

looked longingly at the open door. Mr Gladstone 

was the first to break the silence. “It seems Mr 

McGlaughlin, that we have gotten to the reason 

for your lateness.” 

43 

OCTOBER 2015

.4 

Brad McGlaughlin. And I knew his Da from the 

fives we played every week. I waited and he 

picked it up just as I had planned. I would have 

liked to have done worse than grass him up. I 

would have liked to have rubbed his face in that 

glass and made him pay but I’m too canny for 

that. I was the canny one Dad said. Always knew 

I’d do better for myself. Made the call and waited 

for the cops to arrive at the school. Then I went 

home. 

I went home to my wife and my baby. 

44 

The glass. It was the glass in his cradle. There 

was even glass on his face. Thank Christ he 

wasn’t cut. He was okay but I couldn’t get past 

it. I could hear him screaming in fright. It was 

freezing outside and the cold crept in over the 

windowsill and around his cot. The double 

glazing had exploded when the seal broke and 

there was glass everywhere. I tried to calm down 

afterwards but you know what I’m like, once I get 

riled … I hate getting angry. 

I went out at 4 in the morning. Didn’t say 

anything to Julie. I went back for one last time 

and picked up the stuff. It was almost too long. 

I’d been away for too long and they almost 

turned me away at the door till I showed him 

the cash. Almost didn’t get away. I had to stay 

for hours talking about the good old days. I will 

never go back. They think I’m on the South side. 

Didn’t mention Milltown at all. 

I sat outside his house for another two. Waited 

for the curtains to move and the dad to leave. 

I recognised him you see. From the youth club. 

Copyright © Brian Rutherford 

http://www.bletherskite.com 


OPINION 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

SHEEP 

in the road 



volume 1’ 

Been stood at a doorway all my life, watching, 

posing, flexing, but never entering. Instead I’m 

reaching up the doorframe, until at 65, I get a grip 

of the lintel – there to hang until I drop. Its a life ... 

‘Are you living to work, or working to live?’ a 

question for those of us fortunate enough to live in 

an affluent part of the world ... and have a job. 

Pressures to conform, cooperate and carry on make 

this a hard maxim to answer correctly and then 

abide by. Not really sure but in re-reading events 

so far, of a happy life, I conclude that working 

class lives are dictated by interacting and reacting 

to events with the merest hint of inner direction. 

This seems to sum up my experience, and looking 

around it seems to appear so for others too. In 

the midst of all the shuffling this way or that at the 

whim of chance, coincidence and conspiracy there 

is the rare headstrong idiot amongst us who bucks 

the trend, and then ... occassionally, even I make a 

decision which seems to be mine, free from outside 

influences, for reasons only I can know – but don’t 

analyse this too carefully as, on the whole, we 

proletarians are all floaters ‘living to work’. 

47 

OCTOBER 2015

So, as social beings inhabiting this crust of a speck 

of intergalactic dust, being bounced, bundled and 

broken together in the chaos of our own limitations 

we are still ordered in our murmurating flight by 

a hegemony of our own restricted imagination ... 

flying on the ground is definitely wrong! 

You may say this is all very well, but within our 

small timeline on this planet why aren’t we in a 

revolutionary situation now? One harsh answer 

was suggested in 1935 by Upton Sinclair when 

he said, ‘“It is difficult to get a man to understand 

something, when his salary depends on his not 

understanding it.” 

48 

Another less complimentary but more generous 

conclusion: we are like sheep in the road being 

pushed, shoved and cajoled to pastures new, 

shearing sheds and the abattoir by ankle-nipping 

dogs and know-all shepherds ... the ever more 

urgent point is, how to change that! 

Work to live, don’t live to work! 

photograph: Alan Rutherford 


Low wages 

make 

50 

FAT cats 

very 

RICH! 


OPINION 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

POVERTY 

OF IDEAS 

The choice between a low paid job and living 

on state benefits is a hair’s breadth. For those 

unskilled or entering the job market for the first 

time, taking a minimum wage job may satisfy 

your employer who gets your ‘cheap’ labour 

but, depending on your circumstances, you may 

still be able to claim some benefit from the state 

to give you a living wage. This would mean the 

tax paying public are subsidising your employer 

and allowing him to profit from your distress. 

This sort of money laundering has been going 

on for years with low wages ... and also with 

landlord’s charging excessive rents to people 

on benefits ... in almost all cases the state quite 

rightly pays but it is the landlord and employer 

who benefit directly. The mafia couldn’t have 

found a better arrangement! 

51 

Some factual tosh to consider: 

The new National Minimum Wage rates will 

come into effect on 1 October 2015. The 

hourly rate of the National Minimum Wage will 

increase to £6.70 (a rise of 20p) for adults aged 

21 years and older. This is a rise of 3% and 

represents the largest real-terms increase in the 

National Minimum Wage since 2008. 

OCTOBER 2015

52 

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is 

responsible for monitoring the National 

Minimum Wage regulations and employers 

that fail to use the correct rates will have to 

reimburse their employees and may face 

penalty charges. 

The rate for apprentices under the age of 19 

or in the first year of their apprenticeship will 

increase by 20% to £3.30. The rates for 18- 

20 year olds will increase to £5.30 (a rise of 

17p) and the rate for workers above the school 

leaving age but under 18 will increase to £3.87 

(a rise of 8p). 

The independent Low Pay Commission was 

established following the National Minimum 

Wage Act 1998 to advise the Government on 

the National Minimum Wage. Incredibly it is 

made up of representatives of industry. Most of 

the rates mirror the recommendations made 

by the Low Pay Commission although the 

increase for apprentices is higher than what was 

suggested. 

The new National Living Wage will come into 

effect from April 2016 and will initially be 

set at £7.20 per hour for the over 25’s. This 

represents a rise of 50p above the new National 

Minimum Wage. 

OK enough of the 

official speak, here for 

your information, and 

possible outrage, is 

how a financial advisor 

sees it ... 

‘Chancellor George 

Osborne was not a 

popular man amongst 

many of my clients with 

the proposals outlined 

in his summer budget, 

the first all-Conservative 

offereing for nearly 20 

years. Now George isn’t the most popular man 

anyway, so what was it about his announcements 

this July that created so much dismay? 

Its fair to say that his additional 7.5% tax on 

dividends drawn by small business entrepreneurs 

as from next April has hit at the very heart (and 

pockets) of owner-managed businesses. And his 

statement that interest on buy-to-let mortgages will 

be gradually restricted to standard rate tax relief 

went down particularly badly with those people 

holding property portfolios, many of whom see that 

as their pension provision. 

No, it was neither of those anti-small business 

measures. It was one that will affect businesses 

large and small – the idea of replacing the current 

‘minimum wage’ with a ‘living wage’. It matters not 

the size of your business, the minimum hourly rate 

that you pay your staff is set to rise steadily over the 

next few years from £7.20 an hour to £9.35 for the 

over 25s, a rise of around 30%. 


Bigger businesses will simply increase their sales 

prices to compensate and no doubt add a little 

bit more for themselves. Retailer Next has already 

forcast price increases of 6% per annum in the runup 

to 2020 and other household name retailers will 

undoubtedly follow suit. 

But what chance does the small business, 

already burdened with the additional employee 

costs associated with pensions auto-enrolment, 

have of simply passing on this cost to its customers? 

None at all, so expect to see an increase in small 

business failures over the next few years. 

Whilst I support the principle of ensuring that 

the lower-paid receive a fair wage for a fair day’s 

work, we need to be a little careful of the potential 

consequences. What good is it going to be to them 

if it forces the hand that feeds them to shut down 

and £7.20 an hour suddenly becomes zero? 

The reductions in the rate of Corporation Tax 

and the increase in Employment Allowance, which 

Mr Osborne says will help to defray these costs, are 

nothing more than tokens. Come on George, what 

do you take us for?’ 

A study published by the Resolution Foundation, 

timed to coincide with the 20p an hour increase 

in the minimum wage, found that the decision 

by George Osborne to lift the statutory pay floor 

through a national living wage would result in a 

sharp increase in the numbers of people having 

their wages set by the state. 

The Resolution Foundation said only one in 50 

employees were being paid the minimum wage 

after it was set at a cautiously low level by Tony 

Blair’s government in 1999. 

In the years since, the number of workers earning 

the minimum wage has risen to one in 20, but is 

now set to increase to one in nine by 2020, or 3.2 

million people. 

A poverty of ideas indeed. 

53 

OCTOBER 2015

ISLAMIC CARPET 

A rich tradition of symbolic 

geometric patterns, the range 

of compositions and colours is 

enormous – owners of rugs are 

often able to trace the origins of 

their carpets back to a particular 

tribe, area or town. 

54 

Symbolizing balanced 

proportions, the design of 

shapes and their position is 

usually the same on both sides 

of the central axis and the 

repetition of the patterns is used 

to show unity in multiplicity. 

There are often several borders 

in the design and their number 

is significant: three, five, seven, 

and nine are sacred numbers. 

The three borders shown here 

symbolize earth, sky, water, 

holiness, productivity and fertility. 


Stars are an important 

inclusion: the number of 

points of a star determines its 

meaning, for instance, an eightpointed 

star symbolizes the line 

of life from birth to death. The 

religious element is provided 

by a dot in the centre of the 

carpet (dot is hidden deep in 

the spine in the carpet shown) 

to symbolize one god and the 

role of Mecca as the centre of 

Islam towards which all Muslims 

face to pray. 

55 

Colours play an important 

part, each has a different 

meaning. For example, yellow 

symbolizes an abundant and 

wealthy life while blue shows 

an unattainable depth and 

mythical infinity of sky and sea. 

Green represents spring and 

paradise. 

OCTOBER 2015

WAFFLE 

–––———————––––––––––––– 

Falling 

Over 



volume 1’ 

Falling over in public, really! 

Falling over in public continues to keep my feet on 

the ground, so to speak, stopping me from ever 

taking myself seriously. Generally these falls take 

place in the metaphysical episodes that frequent us 

all, an assumed position defended, or argued for, 

way past its correctness … the ‘egg on the face’ 

syndrome where our cognitive ceilings are tested 

and found wanting. Then there is the physical falter 

– embarrassing, slapstick, farce … 

A recent tumble made me realise I have not 

physically fallen over that much in my life, and when 

I have I seem to instinctively roll with it, the only injury 

being to any pride I have managed to accrue! I think 

I’m right in concluding falling over in public is a 

necessary humbler, revealer ... and its a shame that 

some people don’t experience it more often. 

While working at Smiths in the 1970s I had a 

couple of falls from the bike, one, in narrow 

alleyway where I was too lazy to get off and push, 

had me over the handlebars and helplessly 

57 

OCTOBER 2015

58 

sprawling, bike on top of me, unable to get up for 

what seemed a really long time, all in front of an 

astounded young girl who was walking up the 

other way. Another time heavy virgin snow on 

early morning roads had me wrongly guessing 

where pavement curbs were … the thud of the 

front wheel and my flight from the saddle would 

have been excruciatingly funny to any curtain 

twitchers … I would have laughed too. Early 

1980’s, when a political animal, I remember 

meetings going on and on so that we had to run 

for the last bus home. Running and falling, not 

seeming to notice the hard road, just tucking in 

my right shoulder and rolling … making it all 

look so contrived – it wasn’t, but we had a bus 

to catch. 

Carrying some books down the narrow twisting 

staircase at Thoemmes Press my footing failed 

noisily, a signal to those in the production 

department below that something worth 

gawping at was happening, and as I slithered 

to the bottom jolt, my concern to save the books 

and look cool relaxed my sphincter just enough 

to trumpet my arrival which did not disappoint, 

the fart being more embarrassing than the fall 

… ‘much deeped joy of a full moon fundermold 

dangly in the heavenly bode’ as Stanley might 

have said. 

Not so long ago with friends, instead of going 

around I thought I could climb a low wall and 

jump down the other side. There is a problem 

when your mind has refused to grow up, you 

feel 18 but your body is 60-odd … I landed 

with the realisation that my legs, my knees, just 

would not take the weight, of yes, I forgot that 

bit … also a bit overweight, damn! Over I went, 

subconsciously rolling and up again as if I had 

meant to be that melodramatically agile … and 

then, sheesh, if only I had the quick mind to 

claim the acrobatic manoeuvre that my friends 

tried vainly to congratulate me on, but no, I had 

ashamidly admitted my goof before I saw their 

faces of fading admiration. Maybe next time … 

Just the other day, after having shuffled a good 

way around the Meadow Hall shopping centre 

and negotiating our way back to the car I fell 

again, schizzen! Coming out of some covered 

stairs upon a road crossing, blinded by the 

beckoning green light I missed the last 2 steps 

down to the pavement. Holding an empty coffee 

cup in one hand I cartwheeled into the road, my 

eyes following my right shoe leaving my foot to 

make that elegant slow-motion arc, unable to 

stop myself, fortunately rolling with the fall again 

but still ending up on my back, my eyes caught 

Ann’s shock as I lay in the road, the lights 

changed with cars waiting to go, others waiting 

now to cross the road looked on, stupified. 

Collecting my shoe from the middle of the road, 

my elbow hurt but somehow not my pride as I 

joined Ann back on the pavement. ‘Oh shit!’, 

another opportunity missed I thought, damn! 

Such a wonderful leveller as falling over in 

public deserves the credit for keeping us/me 

sane and true … the next time I fall over in 

public (and maybe, if you are there to witness 

it you will see) … I promise to take a low and 

flourish embellished bow! 


An upside-down world, required viewing 

photograph: Alan Rutherford

60 


EXTRACT 

–——––––––––———––––––––––––– 

WORLD 

WAR IN 

AFRICA 


KAPUTALA 

The Diary of 

Arthur Beagle 

& The East Africa 

Campaign 

1916-1918 

The following is an edited extract taken from 

KAPUTALA, published on the web and freely 

accessed at www.handoverfistpress.com. 

In the dying, glowing embers of the British Empire 

it would seem the greatest virtue of a soldier in 

1914 was blind obedience; sadly human life 

was subordinate to God and King, and their 

accompanying jingoism. The ‘Empire’ was 

portrayed as a symbol of all that was most worthy 

of a man’s sacrifice. The very notion of ‘Empire’ 

was still a magnificent facade of power that 

hypnotized both its subjects and its enemies – the 

map of the world was red from end to end even 

though much of that Empire had no idea how it 

came to be ruled by arrogant white men in baggy 

shorts, a being a part of it, it was said, ‘distilled a 

kind of glory in the very beer of the average man’. 

61 

OCTOBER 2015

62 

Ostensibly, Britain went to war in 1914 because 

of the German invasion of Belgium. The 1839 

Treaty of London which promised Britain’s support 

to defend Belgium’s neutrality was used to further 

and maintain Britain’s imperialist interests abroad. 

It had little or nothing to do with the defence of 

“western civilization”, “liberal values” or democracy. 

Only about 40% of the male electorate in Britain 

had voting rights – far fewer than in Germany. 

Women’s suffrage campaigners were still fighting 

for their rights and going to jail for their principles, 

and notions of racial equality were almost nonexistant. 

German control of the Channel ports were 

perceived as a threat to trade and Britain’s imperial 

interests. 

The war that started in 1914 was initiated by the 

ruling classes of the powers involved to defend and/ 

or extend their various empires. It was an imperialist 

war. In the years running up to 1914 original capitalist 

states such as Britain, USA and France were joined 

by others – Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia – in their 

hunt for gold and slaves, oil and opium, colonies and 

cheap labour, markets and strategic advantage. The 

competition between them gave us the First World 

War. The same development of industry which led 

to these imperialist rivalries ensured this war was the 

most bloody which had ever been fought. Weapons 

of mass destruction, unimaginable before the 

development of industry, were now in the hands of 

jostling gangsters and thieves – poised to kill millions. 

Tanks and machine guns, gas and aircraft made this 

the first war in which the majority of dead were the 

victims of other soldiers, not of disease. 

And if capitalist industry caused the war it also had 

to keep the war going. Directed labour, censorship, 

conscription and the bombing of towns made this the 

first total war, a war fought at home as well as on the 

battlefield. 

And so in 1914, because of this imperialist/ 

capitalist rivalry; that facade of Empire, loyalty 

to the Crown, was about to be tested – 450 

million people of every race and tribe, by a single 

declaration of the King, were at war with Germany. 

A popular history has banners and patrotic 

fervour bursting forth in a spirit of willing sacrifice 

impossible to comprehend or even describe 

today. This mood of total commitment to war was 

encouraged by leading figures of the day and 

the popular press and any dissent was crushed 

under the weight of this orchestrated and pervasive 

propoganda. White feathers were handed out in 

the streets to men who had not joined up and antiwar 

sentiment, of which there was more than is 

commonly accepted, was vigouressly suppressed. 

In the days that followed that declaration, white 

men in far-flung colonies of Britain and Germany, 

which had coexisted, sometimes as intimate 

neighbours, eyed each other with newly found 

suspicion, threw a few punches and then prepared 

to annihilate each other and anything else that got 

in their way. 

photograph: Arthur Beagle 

artwork: Alan Rutherford 


OCTOBER 2015 

63

64 

On the African continent, South African forces were 

enlisted to capture German South West Africa and 

destroy the powerful wireless transmitters there. But 

before joining the war on the British side, South 

Africa’s Premier Botha, and General Smuts, both 

former Boer War generals, had to put down an 

open rebellion in South Africa by units of their 

armed forces and some influential veterans of the 

Boer War who were totally opposed to anything 

‘British’. With the atrocities of South Africa’s 

Boer War still fresh in the minds of the Afrikaans 

speaking population (Boers) some opted, quite 

understandably, to support Germany. Despite the 

level of animosity the mutiny was quickly dealt with 

and Premier Botha (once Commander-in-Chief 

of the Boer Army) returned to the field as General 

leading the South African and British forces, 

supported by Smuts, in a campaign which forced 

the surrender of the German forces in South-West 

Africa (now Namibia) in July 1915. 

In East Africa, at the start of World War 1, the British 

controlled Zanzibar, Uganda, and what were to 

become Malawi, Zambia and Kenya; German 

East Africa (comprising present-day Rwanda, 

Burundi and Tanzania) was effectively surrounded. 

Governor Heinrich Schnee of German East Africa 

ordered that no hostile action was to be taken and 

to the north, Governor Sir Henry Conway Belfield 

of British East Africa stated that he and “this colony 

had no interest in the present war.” The colonial 

governors who had often met in pre-war years, to 

discuss these and other matters of mutual benefit, 

agreed they wished to stick to the Congo Act of 

1885, which called for overseas possessions to 

remain neutral in the event of a European war. 

In order to preserve the authority of the white 

colonial administrators and the concept of 

the inviolability of white people in general in 

Africa, only a few black soldiers were trained or 

maintained. It was thought dangerous to train 

black African troops (Askaris) to fight against 

white troops, even in the case where both sides 

were predominantly composed of black Africans 

commanded by white European officers ... so 

both colonies maintained only small forces to 

deal with local uprisings and border raids. 

In East Africa, the Congo Act was first broken 

by the belligerent British when, on 5 August 

1914, troops from Uganda attacked German 

river outposts near Lake Victoria, and then, on 

8 August, a direct naval attack by Royal Navy 

warships HMS Astraea and Pegasus as they 

bombarded Dar es Salaam from several miles 

offshore. In response to this violation, Lieutenant 

Colonel (later to become General) Paul Emil von 

Lettow-Vorbeck, the commander of the German 

forces in East Africa, bypassed his superior, 

Governor Schnee, and began to organize his 

troops for battle. 

At the time, the German Schutztruppe in East 

Africa consisted of 260 Germans of all ranks 

and 2,472 Askari, and was approximately 

numerically equal with the two battalions of the 

King’s African Rifles (KAR) based in the British 

East African colonies. But with the introduction, in 

1916, of South African, Indian, British and other 

colonial troops the outcome in East Africa should 

have been swift, but from the outset the British 

contingent were thwarted by the inspirational 


leadership and military genius of General Paul 

von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German Commanderin-Chief, 

and the quality of his local Askaris 

(European trained Black African troops). 

It would appear, in hindsight, that Lettow- 

Vorbeck’s philosophy was simple – by using 

hit-and-run tactics he would tie down huge 

numbers of British troops in East Africa and so 

prevent them from joining the fighting in Europe. 

But as warfare is an unpredictable affair even 

Lettow-Vorbeck had to admit in his accounts, 

My reminiscences of East Africa and My Life, 

that luck and chance played a large part in 

his campaign. Prussian officers, contrary to 

the popular stereotype of rigid disciplinarians, 

were often quite the opposite, in fact some 

were extremely flexible and adaptable to their 

surroundings, and Lettow-Vorbeck was a very 

effective example. 

For many, warfare in Africa was proving to 

be an unsettling experience, and worse was 

still to come. Although on the whole it was 

characterized by a relic of nineteenth century 

military etiquette, a ridiculous ‘gentleman’ code 

which never extended itself to the lower ranks. 

So that in Byron Farwell’s book, The Great War 

in Africa, after the Battle of Tanga the officers 

of the German victors and British vanquished 

met under a white flag with a bottle of brandy 

to compare opinions of the battle and discuss 

the care of the wounded. Both sides exchanged 

autographed photos, shared an excellent supper, 

and parted like gentlemen. 

The British and Germans employed Black African 

labour as ‘support personnel’ for battles in 

East Africa. In these overtly racist times ‘support 

personnel’ was a euphemism for exploitation; 

black people were treated like animals. Since 

campaigns here were fought in remote territory, 

military supplies were carried for long distances 

on the heads of hundreds of Black African 

porters to armies in the field. From an entire 

ship, dismantled, carried from the coast to 

Lake Tanganiyka, and there reassembled – to 

dismantled trucks, everything had to be carried. 

The deaths of many Black African carriers 

or porters, as well as fighting men, resulted 

from overwork and exposure to new disease 

environments, in fact deaths were so numerous, 

and recruitment to replace them so severe 

that a revolt occurred in Nyasaland in protest. 

Conditions for Black Africans were desperate, they 

were the fodder, to be used up and discarded. 

Black South Africans were rightly wary and 

cautious of being involved in another ‘white 

man’s war’ with the Boer War still a fresh 

memory, but they were coerced to enlist by 

officials desperate for Black African labour. So, 

for example, in the Mahlabatini and Harding 

districts of Natal the magistrates threatened to 

arrest and fine headmen who failed to produce 

a certain quota of recruits. Indeed, some 

recruiting agents became so desperate that, to 

the annoyance of the military authorities in East 

Africa, even children aged fifteen and sixteen 

and physically infirm Black Africans were signed 

up. Black Africans constituted almost one-third 

of the total number of South Africans (161,000 

65 

OCTOBER 2015

men) involved in the South West and East African 

campaigns. In terms of manpower it certainly 

was a significant contribution – one which 

received no recognition at the time and has 

subsequently remained largely ignored in South 

African history. 

66 

Diseases like malaria and blackwater fever were 

rife, and disease made no distinction between 

Allied or German troops, or between black and 

white. All the troops in East Africa suffered from 

malaria, but blacks and whites did not suffer 

equally. Lieutenant-Colonel Watkins, director 

of the labour bureau for all military labour in 

East Africa stated at the end of the war, ‘Where 

a Medical Officer had to deal with white and 

with black patients in times of stress, the latter 

suffered. In a word, the condition of the patient 

was apt to be a consideration subordinate to his 

colour...’ 

What was achieved militarily by 1916, when 

South Africa’s General Smuts took over, had 

been at severe cost and it was estimated that 

when columns marched out of Kahe, 28,000 

oxen had died on the three month trek to 

Morogoro. Vast herds had been commandeered 

to keep pace with needs, and what was yet to 

come would defy imagination in its disregard 

for animal life – and this was a contributory 

cause for the famine that was the legacy of this 

war amongst the local people during and after 

it. Everywhere these armies rampaged in East 

Africa, they took and devoured anything edible 

and left the countryside barren – the survival of 

local people was secondary to the war effort. 


During World War 1 animals were still the main 

means of transport and they were expendable, 

their only medication were injections of arsenic 

for tsetse fly and a bullet in the brain. In another 

three month period Smuts’ army lost 11,000 

oxen, 10,000 horses, 10,000 mules and 2,500 

asses through overwork, disease and want of 

grain – and this waste continued, for here in 

East Africa the Black African carriers were also 

considered expendable. 

After most of German East Africa had been 

captured Smuts left for the War Office in London, 

considered a hero and remarking that the war 

in East Africa was over. It was not ... as Lettow- 

Vorbeck contined to harry the British in guerrila 

skirmishes as they trailed him around the 

‘captured’ colony, into Portugese East Africa and 

Rhodesia. 

67 

Smuts’ replacement, General Hoskins, in some 

desperation, was able to guarantee the numbers 

of carriers, the forgotten and unsung (reluctant) 

heroes of this campaign, with the introduction of 

draconian compulsory service acts now coming 

into force in Africa. This new legislation enabled 

the virtual enslavement of tens of thousands of 

Black African carriers, taken from their families 

to face disease, overwork, and most likely, death 

– all for a cause little understood, or had any 

sympathy for. 

OCTOBER 2015

68 

Nowhere in Smuts’ report to their Lordships 

in London, or subsequent reports from the 

field is any mention made of the contribution 

made by the carriers, often nameless, mainly 

coerced, Black Africans. The British source 

was inexhaustible from neighbouring colonial 

territories, but the Germans were limited to 

those they could pick up along the way. They 

were accused of kidnapping and manacling 

carriers, abandoning and even shooting those 

too ill to continue. Of those serving the British 

forces, a staggering 45,000 carriers died of 

disease and neglect, 376 were killed and 

1,645 were wounded. And of those serving 

the Germans, between 6,000 and 7,000 

men, women and children (carriers were often 

accompanied by their families) died from 

wounds or sickness. 

Not only in East Africa was there this terrible 

waste of life amongst the carriers, who were 

regarded, like the horses and mules, totally 

expendable, but many returning to Durban in 

the last stages of dysentery and fever died at 

sea, where not only their bodies, but also their 

identity discs, were thrown overboard – as if 

they never existed! Their families were left to 

wonder their fate. Little was ever recorded of 

these men, but in the book, They Fought for 

King and Kaiser, Private Frank Reid of the 9th, a 

maxim gunner, recalls carriers who carried and 

serviced his gun: 

‘They were called bom-bom boys, they carried 

the gun, ammunition, spare-parts box, the 

tripod and the water-can for cooling the barrel. 

There were about a dozen to each gun and 

a few more to carry their groundsheets and 

blankets. They carried their loads on their heads 

on a circular pad of twisted grass. Their necks 

were strong, but they could not get the loads on 

to their heads without help.’ 

Reid’s Native Machine-gun Porters (their official 

title) were named Gertie, Piano, Wall Eye and 

Magoo. Others were nameless. According to 

Reid, in an ambush that wiped out most of his 

gun team ‘their black and battered bodies were 

found in the grass near the spot.’ 

From Anne Samson, in her proposed book, World 

War One in Africa: The forgotten conflict of the 

Empires, on the financial cost of the East Africa 

campaign and the subsequent ‘carve-up’, we have, 

‘Of the British Empire forces, approximately 75% of 

the men died from disease and malnutrition. The 

campaign cost Britain £72 million or four times 

the 1914 military budget. The cost to South Africa 

(including South West) was £39 million. Britain 

achieved what it desired, except for Ruanda and 

Urundi, India failed to obtain colonial territory and 

South Africa failed to expand. Belgium gained 

more than it wanted and only Portugal was satisfied 

with the Kionga Triangle.’ 

Anne goes on, ‘As a final assessment, Lord 

Kitchener was right. There had been no need to 

fight the East Africa campaign. Why exactly he 

was against the campaign in East Africa is for 

another day, as is the reason why South Africa 

has not done much to remember the loss of so 

many young lives on the African continent. Had 


it not been for that one year, 1916, when Jan 

Smuts and Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck faced each 

other, the East African campaign would probably 

still be as unknown as the West African and 

Palestinian campaigns of the same war.’ 

The aftermath of the war in Africa was more 

than just a matter of the jubilant victors and 

the honourably vanquished. The East African 

campaign left the country ravaged. More than 

100,000 troops and tribespeople died as a 

result of the conflict, either during the fighting 

or from the subsequent famine. In Dodoma, for 

instance, reckless appropriation of the villages’ 

grain supplies and cattle by both the Germans 

and British eventually led to the death of 30,000 

Black Africans. Two words were coined by the 

stricken people during those years: mutunya and 

kaputala. Mutunya, meaning scramble, refers to 

the frenzy of the starving crowd whenever a supply 

train passed through. Kaputala refers to the shorts 

worn by the British troops. It was these soldiers, 

according to the local Gogo tribespeople, who 

were responsible for their plight. 

69 

The East Africa Campaign does at times, read 

like fiction – with warships doing battle inland, 

hundreds of miles away from the sea, zeppelins 

attempting to fly the 3,600 miles from Germany 

to East Africa with supplies, an exploited and 

horribly abused native (sic) population ... and a 

colourful mixture of brilliant soldiers, big-game 

hunters, frontiersmen, killer bees and tsetse 

flies all battling, for king or kaiser (and quite 

inexplicably), for possession of a vast tract of 

one of the most inhospitable parts of Africa. 

OCTOBER 2015

This wonderful piece of artwork found in a 

scrapbook of newspaper clippings, the artist is 

unknown, apologies for its uncredited use ... if 

the artist wishes, we can credit her/him ... or, 

gulp, remove it. 

70 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 

Dear Editor ... 

Blah-de-blah-de-blah ... 

71 

OCTOBER 2015

72 


RANTING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

& RAGING 

Well just a bit .... 

the clever rant 

I was promised 

didn’t turn up, 

so ... 

Trident missiles, what are they good for? Jeremy 

Corbyn has said that if he were prime minister he 

would not use them, I don’t think anyone would, 

so why are they being renewed with what seems 

like an open-ended cheque. Britain assists Saudi 

Arabia to get onto the United Nations Human 

Rights Council when Saudi Arabia is one of the 

worst countries for denying its citizens human 

rights. British arms dealers sell arms, weapons 

and torture equipment to countries like Saudi 

Arabia and Israel ... and just about any old tinpot 

dictator if the price is right, no wonder there are 

refugees wandering the planet. Germany shows 

up the whole EU with its take on refugees, Britain 

acts like a shifty, mean old uncle ... 

Right wingers in the Labour Party thwart newly 

elected leader, so much for democracy! 

73 

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment 

Partnership, which claims to boost trade by 

removing non-tariff bariers ... you know the ones 

that protect workers’ rights, health and safety 

and the environment, is in fact a deal aimed 

to make it easier for global companies to sue 

governments for interfering with their profits. 

OCTOBER 2015

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 5

4 

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

DECEMBER 2015 

ON 

THE 

WALL

Alan Rutherford 1984

The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 





Cover photograph: a fly 


to be included in February issue, 

No 5 is 15 January 2015 



Opening 03 

NHS Privatisation 05 

Robert Arnott 

Blair’s Chilcot Moment 11 

The Country can’t afford ... 13 

Chris Dillow 

Thats why (we don’t comply with your war cry) 19 

Steve Ashley 

Trident and its replacement 20 

[Diane Abbott] 

Don Quixote 24 

The Brodgan Boy 30 

Brian Rutherford 

The Blurts of Line ... 32 

with Lizzie Boyle 

What are you doing here? 39 

[Jean Mohr] 

Bristol: Urban 41 

Chris Hoare & Rudi Thoemmes 

Lone Wanderer 53 

Cam Rutherford 

Agitators needed now 58 

Ships with Everything! 60 

Lesson by Brian Rutherford 

The Countryside 63 

Joanna Rutherford 

Electrif Lycanthrope 73 

Keith A Gordon 

Ranting and Raging Mad 79 

Letters 81 

1 

DECEMBER 2015

Alan Rutherford

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 

The December issue of Sheep in the Road as 

a magazine contains opinions, thoughts and 

ideas that aim for ‘sense’ as they cogitate on 

the page, here in the better part of this planet ... 

The UK, a civilised society in decline, where 

the prime minister’s gaff is the home to visiting 

despots looking for arms and equipment to 

keep their respective populations in obeyance 

... leaders from Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt 

and India have recently been given the royal 

approval despite their regimes featuring 

prominently in a bad light in Amnesty 

International’s reports. All the while, the UK’s 

government proposes devilish cuts to the 

welfare of its poorer citizens as it shuns the 

plight of desperate refugees worldwide ... just 

what kind of monsters have we uncovered with 

the Tory election victory earlier this year? 

Paris: 13 November 2015 

‘The truths of religion are never so well 

understood as by those who have lost the 

power of reason’ 

Voltaire 

3 

Until next time, get active, stay alive ... 

DECEMBER 2015

4 


Don’t 

let this 

man make 

the NHS 

another 

CASUALTY 


EXPOSÉ 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

NATIONAL 

HEALTH SERVICE 

PRIVATIZATION 

EXPOSED: 

government 

putting profits 

before patients 

Robert Arnott 

The response by the British Medical Association 

(BMA) on behalf of junior doctors to Health 

Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s attempt to cut their 

wages and conditions of service has given a 

focus for the anger of yet another group of NHS 

staff who are joining others who have seen 

the value of their pay slashed by years of pay 

freezes and below-inflation increases as well 

as the value of what they do. The underlying 

problem behind this and the growing crisis 

in the hospitals and front-line services, is the 

five-year freeze in NHS spending, resulting in 

two-thirds of NHS Trusts facing massive deficits. 

The NHS as a whole is facing in the year 2016– 

2017, a total deficit of over £2 billion. 

5 

DECEMBER 2015

The collective principle asserts 

that no society can legitimately 

call itself civilised if a sick 

person is denied medical aid 

because of lack of means. 

Illness is neither an indulgence 

for which people have to pay, 

nor an offence for which they 

should be penalised, but a 

misfortune. the cost of which 

should be shared by the 

community. 

Nye Bevan

However, the biggest threat to the NHS is 

privatisation; part of Tory Party dogma. 

Already the NHS has been made even more 

fragmented and inefficient by efforts of Clinical 

Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to contract 

out services, as encouraged by the toxic 

Health and Social Care Act 2012. In parts 

of NHS England, for example, services in the 

geographical area of one trust have been 

contracted out to another, which has chosen not 

to provide it directly, but to bring in a third, even 

more remote NHS Trust to do the work; sheer 

madness. 

Up and down the country we have seen contests 

by Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to 

carry through the daftest contracting exercise, 

from one trust trying to undermine the only 

acute hospital trust in a county by contracting 

out most of its elective services, to another, 

which was determined to privatise elective 

musculoskeletal services, despite BUPA refusing 

to take the contract for fear it would bankrupt 

two local Accident and Emergency services, or 

the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) 

exposed by Pulse magazine, taken up by some 

national newspapers, as offering cash bonuses 

of up to £11,000 to GPs to refer fewer patients to 

hospital, raising huge concerns about the effect 

on doctor-patient trust and their commitment to 

the fundamental principles of the NHS. 

However the worst example is the private 

healthcare provider Circle’s failure to meet any 

of its targets or make anything but losses at 

Hinchingbrooke Hospital before finally pulling 

out just two years into a ten year contract. This is 

a reminder that despite the privatising frenzy of 

some Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), 

that it is not so easy for private operators to 

guarantee any profits from the NHS. Another 

big name, Serco, has withdrawn from bidding 

for healthcare contracts after a series of highprofile 

failures and mounting losses. Virgin is 

losing money on most of its NHS contracts. 

One would have hoped that this experience 

would have stopped the onward march of 

privatisation. However, private firms have won 

£3.54 billion of £9.62 billion worth of contracts 

awarded within NHS England last year; almost 

40 per cent. It’s useful to remember that these 

big figures are the total payable for the whole 

contract over five or more years, and not by 

any means the profit firms can make from each 

deal. Now the cash squeeze is forcing down the 

amounts of money on the table and therefore 

how much the private sector can scoop in 

profits. That is, of course the good news, but not 

before the damage has been done. 

That is why all private bids but Interserve 

pulled out from the controversial contracts for 

cancer services in Staffordshire; the deal was 

so underfunded that the local NHS Trust also 

pulled out of the proposed £600 million fiveyear 

contract, saying they could not guarantee 

to provide services on this funding, leaving 

the prospect of no local services for cancer 

patients in Staffordshire. In Cambridgeshire too, 

the private sector realised the apparent £700 

million five year contract for older people’s 

7 

DECEMBER 2015

8 

services was nowhere near as generous as it 

seemed, and the contract went to a consortium 

of local NHS trusts. 

One hope for the private sector has been the 

fact that despite the ruinously expensive cost 

of disastrous Private Finance Initiative schemes 

in various parts of the country, Government 

Ministers are still pressing Trusts to sign up for 

a new scheme, in which a larger share of the 

upfront funding comes from the public sector, 

while the private sector still makes good, 

guaranteed profits on the rest. 

The real boom sector for private operators 

has been in the new bureaucracy of the NHS, 

with high-priced management consultants 

crawling all over NHS trusts, steering Clinical 

Commissioning Group (CCG) decision-making 

through commissioning support units and 

developing fancy graphics and neat PR (Public 

Relations) spin for Clinical Commissioning 

Group (CCG) reconfiguration projects. Capita, 

who’s past service failures has emerged on 

the scene, grabbing a £1 billion contract to 

supply support services to GPs. McKinsey and 

Company alone has been picking up tens of 

millions from dozens of projects like Shaping 

a Healthier Future, the plan to axe Accident 

and Emergency Units and whole hospitals 

and perhaps their most cynical act was to 

organise a secret meeting exposed by the Daily 

Mirror where the demise of the NHS and its 

replacement by private health insurance has 

been plotted. They were desperate to stop 

details of the meeting being made public, but 

thanks to the Care Quality Commission, the 

plot has been revealed. What is even more 

alarming is that Lord Prior, now a minister in 

the Department of Health, was present and on 

being found out has had to retract his support 

for the venture. They will, of course, be stopped 

by the collective act of the people of this country. 

This is all a far cry from the NHS as set up by 

Aneurin Bevan with its basic organisational 

structure, minimal overhead costs and exclusive 

public-sector provision of services ensuring that 

every penny of NHS spending was delivering 

patient care, not profits to capitalism. To rescue 

the NHS from fragmentation and the grasping 

private sector, we need an end to the cash 

freeze and the internal market that has triggered 

this madness. There is an immediate need to 

repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and 

the whole apparatus of the internal market, and 

to reinstate the NHS as it was before Thatcher, 

Blair and Cameron. But there is common cause 

to be made with all that share a commitment to 

repeal the Act, to bring privatised services back 

in house and stopping the cuts and closures 

which are reducing NHS trusts to little more than 

an emergencies-only safety net. 

Everyone now realises that much more funding 

is needed to rescue primary care from the 

disastrous neglect and relieve the intolerable 

pressures on GPs. More funding is also needed 

to restore NHS pay levels, improve staffing 

levels and quality of care and meet the needs 

of a growing population with growing numbers 

of older people and demographic changes 


in population and disease patterns. With the 

Trades Union Congress (TUC), a Labour Party 

led by Jeremy Corbyn, NHS trades unions, 

patient organisations and others joined 

together, we can win. The Government’s 

majority is just twelve. If we can now hope 

to mobilise a campaign effort targeting key 

cuts and privatisation, we can shake the 

Government and build a movement that can 

seriously fight to defend and restore our NHS 

that works for patients not big business. It may 

be that the champion of the NHS in the future is 

the House of Lords. 

Professor Robert Arnott is a researcher in 

Healthcare Policy at Green Templeton College, 

Oxford and Secretary of the Oxford Branch of 

Left Unity. 

Pamphlet from 1948

hmm... tony still 

has those skeletons 

in his closet 

Jez 

for 

Prez 

Say no 

to a 

monarchy 

10 



THAT 

CHILCOT 

MOMENT 

11 

DECEMBER 2015

Alan Rutherford

REMARK 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE 

COUNTRY 

CAN’T 

AFFORD 

13 

by Chris Dillow 

Edited 

from the blog 

Stumbling 

and mumbling 

7 October 2015 

There’s one thing George Osborne said in his 

Conference speech this week which looks odd. 

It’s this: 

We simply can’t subsidise incomes 

with ever-higher welfare and tax 

credit bills the country can’t afford. 

However, recipients of tax credits are part of 

the country too. The Institute for Fiscal Studies 

estimates that the 8.4 million of these will 

on average lose £750 per year because of 

Osborne’s cuts. For a lot of the country, it is 

not tax credits which are unaffordable, but the 

cuts in them. 

DECEMBER 2015

14 

What’s going on here? Part of the answer is 

that Osborne is perpetuating an error which 

the Tories – and indeed journalists – have 

been committing for years: he is equating the 

government’s finances with the nation’s. Mr 

Cameron did just this when he justified the cuts 

to tax credits by speaking of a “need to get on 

top of our national finance.” 

Of course, any fool can see that this is wrong: 

the country and the government are not the 

same thing. For a large part of the country, tax 

credits improve their finances. 

There’s a related error – what I’ve called the 

cost bias. The cost of tax credits is NOT the 

£29.5bn which the government spends on 

them. This is a transfer. Instead, the costs are 

the deadweight costs associated with them: 

for example, the cost of administering a 

complex system (which is one reason why I 

prefer a basic income), or the disincentive 

effects they create – for example, the higher 

taxes levied on other people to pay tax 

credits. The big purpose of tax credits is to 

raise in-work income and so incentivize work. 

Whether tax credits are therefore a cost at all 

is thus questionable. 

I fear, though, that what we’re seeing here 

isn’t just a neutral intellectual error. In defining 

the country and the nation to exclude the 

low paid, the Tories can create the illusion 

that the interests of the worst-off are not part 

of the national interest. This is an old trick 

of the ruling class. Here’s C.B. Macpherson 

describing 17th century attitudes: 

The Puritan doctrine of the poor, treating 

poverty as a mark of moral shortcoming, 

added moral obloquy to the political 

disregard in which the poor had always 

been held ... Objects of solicitude or 

pity or scorn and sometimes of fear, 

the poor were not full members of 

a moral community ... But while the 

poor were, in this view, less than full 

members, they were certainly subject to 

the jurisdictions of the political community. 

They were in but not of civil society. 

The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism 

Jeremy Hunt’s claim that tax credit recipients 

lack self-respect and dignity echoes this. 

In this way, Osborne’s rhetoric serves to create 

an illusion that the interests of the poor are 

antagonistic to the “national interest” ... 


Jez 

for 

Prez 

hmmm ... this 

chancellor is 

GIDDY? 

Say no 

to a 

monarchy 


15 

DECEMBER 2015

16 

a hint at dickensian times to come ...? 


17 

I am really looking forward 

to that ‘after-dinner mint’ 

moment ... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJZPzQESq_0 

DECEMBER 2015

That’s Why (we don’t comply with 

your war cry) 

There are no poppies for the children 

Or for their mothers left to cry 

They’re only for the ones who kill them 

When the bombs and bullets fly 

There are no cenotaphs for old men 

Who were simply standing by 

Their story’s never told 

When the bands go marching by 

That’s why we don’t comply 

With your war cries 

Like you really couldn’t care 

And left a million people dead 

On the lies of Bush and Blair 



You raise the call to arms 

You place them all in harm’s way 

Ready to invade another nation 

And if the brave ones you train 

Are traumatised and maimed 

They’ll be forced to fight again 

For compensation 


If a soldier is a hero 

What do we call the child 

With a life blown apart 

And a memory defiled? 

What do we call the mother 

Once considerate and mild 

Deranged out on the street 

Vengeance running wild 



We remember all the dead 

From the last World War 

In defence of a true just cause 

But no one ever said 

We will for evermore 

Consent to every war 

There was a demo for Iraq 

Two million people came 

We said if you attacked 

It would not be in our name 

But you went in all the same 

We keep two minutes silence 

We remember all the dead 

But we can’t forget the violence 

And the words never said 

About the murder of civilians 

And all the casualties of war 

And all the poppies in their billions 

That should be falling to the floor 

And that’s why 

That’s why 

We don’t comply 


Bring them home 

Bring them home 

Bring them all back home 

Words and Music 

Steve Ashley © 2014 

Album: This Little Game (2015) 

http://stopwar.org.uk/music3/steve-ashleythat-s-why 

DECEMBER 2015 

19

20 

COMMENT 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

TRIDENT 

AND ITS 

REPLACE 

MENT 

by Diane Abbott 

Edited 

from the Guardian 

1 October 2015 


This week Jeremy Corbyn restated his well-known 

position on nuclear weapons. Asked if he would ever 

use the nuclear button, he replied: “No. I am opposed 

to the use of nuclear weapons.” Nobody should have 

been surprised. He has held this position all of his 

adult life. What would have been absurd would be for 

him to say anything else. 

So Corbyn will have been as taken aback as anyone 

else by the kerfuffle this caused in some quarters of 

his shadow cabinet. His statement was described as 

unhelpful, although no one explained who it was 

unhelpful to. Arms dealers, perhaps? 

The truth is that the complainers say more about 

political attitudes during the New Labour era than 

about defence policy. On the specific issue of Trident, 

three senior military officers, Field Marshal Lord 

Bramall, General Lord Ramsbotham and General Sir 

Hugh Beach, summed up the case against it in a letter 

to the Times in 2009.

22 

Among other things they pointed out: “The force 

cannot be seen as independent of the United 

States in any meaningful sense. It relies on 

the United States for the provision and regular 

servicing of the D5 missiles. While this country 

has, in theory, freedom of action over giving 

the order to fire, it is unthinkable that, because 

of the catastrophic consequences for guilty and 

innocent alike, these weapons would ever be 

launched, or seriously threatened, without the 

backing and support of the United States.” This 

shows how utterly pointless the “finger on the 

button” question is. 

And the generals went on: “Nuclear weapons 

have shown themselves to be completely 

useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale 

of violence we currently, or are likely, to face, 

particularly international terrorism; and the 

more you analyse them the more unusable 

they appear … Our independent deterrent has 

become virtually irrelevant except in the context 

of domestic politics.” 

The uselessness of Trident has been long 

understood. So clinging to it as a Labour party 

commitment is all about presentation and 

nothing to do with serious defence policy. Yet 

renewing Trident will cost £100billion. 

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has 

admonished us all that we have to live within 

our means. So why spend billions on a cold war 

weapons system that is effectively useless? 

There are more general questions, too, raised 

by the response to Corbyn setting out his 

views on Trident. The first is: have colleagues 

really learned the lessons from the leadership 

campaign? One of those lessons is, surely, that 

people are tired of obfuscation and spin. They 

want politicians who believe in something and 

who set out those beliefs honestly. 

But there is also an issue about what constitutes 

leadership. Critics of Corbyn on Trident seem to 

think that leadership consists of a willingness to 

press a button and incinerate millions of people, 

or even to send thousands of British troops 

to risk their lives in wars of dubious legality. I 

suspect the public is weary of this kind of socalled 

leadership. Instead, Corbyn is trying 

to offer leadership on issues such as putting 

human rights at the top of our foreign policy 

agenda, even if it involves challenging allies like 

Saudi Arabia. 

In the world we face in 2015, that kind of 

leadership is both more relevant and much 

harder. 

Trident = suicide 

Artwork: KW Kaluta 


24 

REVIEW 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

The Ingenious 

Gentleman 

Don Quixote 

of La Mancha 

Miguel de Cervantes 

Saavedra 

... Its theme 

discussed in 

Wikipedia 

The novel’s structure is in episodic form. It is written 

in the picaresco style of the late 16th century, and 

features reference other picaresque novels including 

Lazarillo de Tormes and The Golden Ass. The full 

title is indicative of the tale’s object, as ingenioso 

(Spanish) means “quick with inventiveness”,[7] 

marking the transition of modern literature from 

dramatic to thematic unity. The novel takes place 

over a long period of time, including many 

adventures united by common themes of the nature 

of reality, reading, and dialogue in general. 

Although burlesque on the surface, the novel, 

especially in its second half, has served as an 

important thematic source not only in literature but 

also in much of art and music, inspiring works by 

Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. The contrasts 

between the tall, thin, fancy-struck and idealistic 

Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a 

motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and 

Don Quixote’s imaginings are the butt of outrageous 

and cruel practical jokes in the novel. 


26 

Even faithful and simple Sancho is forced to deceive 

him at certain points. The novel is considered a 

satire of orthodoxy, veracity and even nationalism. 

In exploring the individualism of his characters, 

Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary 

conventions of the chivalric romance literature 

that he spoofed, which consists of straightforward 

retelling of a series of acts that redound to the 

knightly virtues of the hero. The character of Don 

Quixote became so well known in its time that 

the word quixotic was quickly adopted by many 

languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and 

Don Quixote’s steed, Rocinante, are emblems 

of Western literary culture. The phrase “tilting at 

windmills” to describe an act of attacking imaginary 

enemies, derives from an iconic scene in the book. 

It stands in a unique position between medieval 

chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former 

consist of disconnected stories featuring the same 

characters and settings with little exploration of the 

inner life of even the main character. The latter are 

usually focused on the psychological evolution of 

their characters. In Part I, Quixote imposes himself 

on his environment. By Part II, people know about 

him through “having read his adventures”, and so, 

he needs to do less to maintain his image. By his 

deathbed, he has regained his sanity, and is once 

more “Alonso Quixano the Good”. 

When first published, Don Quixote was usually 

interpreted as a comic novel. After the French 

Revolution it was popular for its central ethic that 

individuals can be right while society is quite wrong 

and seen as disenchanting. In the 19th century it 

was seen as a social commentary, but no one could 

easily tell “whose side Cervantes was on”. Many 

critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which 

Don Quixote’s idealism and nobility are viewed by 

the post-chivalric world as insane, and are defeated 

and rendered useless by common reality. By the 20th 

century the novel had come to occupy a canonical 

space as one of the foundations of modern literature. 

from Wikipedia 

Don Quixote on my book shelf 


FOR THE LOVE 

OF BOOKS ...

I WALK 

THE LINE

POETRY 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE 

BRODGAR 

BOY 

30 

“Archaeologists found this tiny clay figurine while 

working on a spectacular Neolithic settlement 

complex between two stone circles on the Ness 

of Brodgar in Orkney. While archaeologists have 

speculated that the Orkney Venus may have 

served a ritual purpose, representing a goddess 

or ancestor, Nick Card of the Orkney Research 

Centre for Archaeology (ORCA), who is directing 

excavations at the Ness of Brodgar, suggested 

that this latest find might represent something 

more personal – perhaps a casual piece of art, or 

even a lost toy.” 

The Orkney News, 2011 


After your sharp, regular ribs, 

The soft curve of your breast was a puzzled surprise. 

I smelled the spent cattle on your skin and your hips, 

Pressed against mine in the silence. 

Then, during winter, you made me a boy, 

There on the stones of the killing room floor. 

Who was small and as quiet as the little stone toy, 

I dropped in the mud by the door. 

31 

Brian Rutherford 

http://www.bletherskite.com 

DECEMBER 2015

32 

REVIEW 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE BLURTS 

OF LINE 

THAT MESS 

YOUR HEAD 


with Lizzie Boyle 

Comics and Graphic Novels 

I have always been attracted to ‘comics’ and 

comicstrips. As a boy I sat for many an hour 

with my brother and friends engrossed in 

a communal appreciation of all manner of 

graphic japery ... Walt Disney, Dell Comics, 

DC Comics, Marvel Comics ... This often led to 

heated discussions on a comics merits, which 

was our way to weedle out the shit and ensure 

we only bothered with good stuff. 

Considered by some as trash, and the 

delinquent stuff to interfere with your reading 

abilities, accused of creating a short-term 

concentration syndrome in otherwise healthy 

enquiring minds, I think by careful selection and 

pruning we managed to avoid this (?). Even so, 

although there may be a case for this argument 

with some poor examples of the genre, I believe 


Stop putting us 

in these fucking 

comics, you jerk! 


BEWARE 

DUFFERS 

DON’T LIKE 

COMICS!

34 

the good ones, with their dynamic odd angle, 

new perspective view of subjects and situations 

within frames of reference ... added another 

element, other meanings, another point of view 

... and possibly as much imaginative stimulus a 

‘text only’ book can achieve. 

Over the years, as my interest in graphics has 

grown, I discovered that the ‘odd angle, new 

perspective’ was also what made the work of 

Russian Constructivists of the 1920s interesting 

to me. Designers like Alexander Rodchenko, 

in his photographs, used this heightened 

dynamism to develop new, fresh views by 

photographing subjects and locations from 

odd, unexpected angles, to create an attractive 

tension ... I love this. 

I am grateful to Lizzie Boyle of Disconnected 

Press who replied to my email with some 

interesting insights into the comic-world: 

The “odd angle, new perspective” thought is 

actually very useful when thinking about comics. 

Often, visually, normality is presented head-on 

or in over-the-shoulder movie-dialogue type 

angles. We generally exist at head height / 

shoulder height in TV and film, when there’s a 

conversation going on. Something like the TV 

series of Fargo mess with this, giving you tracking 

shots, low shots, things to mess with you a little, 

all with the purpose of rooting you in the bizarre 

isolation of the Minnesota landscape. Kubrick 

was also great at this, particularly with his use of 

the slightly disturbing, straight on, symmetrical 

shot: see https://vimeo.com/48425421. 

In comics, odd angles should subvert the image 

and the story. If everything seems everyday and 

mundane, but the angle is odd, the creators are 

trying to inform you of something, to keep you 

on your guard, to make you notice (however 

subtly) that something is not quite as it seems. 

Tilted horizons, camera shots from very low 

or very high, half faces, and tricks like panels 

without borders can all be very effective. The 

key is that the oddness needs to contribute to 

the story. Too many comics jump around – high 

angle, low angle, close up, medium shot – for 

no real reason other than to make the page look 

more dynamic. Creators need to ask themselves: 

which way are we moving on this page? Are we 

getting closer to revealing a hidden truth in the 

story and therefore getting physically closer to the 

characters? Are we losing trust in the character 

and perhaps pulling away, feeling a distance 

between us and them? Is the camera holding 

steady, teasing us, making us hold our breath for 

something that’s going to happen as we turn the 

page? 

In an ideal world, every comic would be 

produced with this level of care and attention to 

detail (I’ll confess: some of ours have been and 

some haven’t. Deadlines are deadlines!). I think 

at the very least there needs to be mindfulness 

of choice of angles so that things contribute to 

the story more rather than just jumping around. 

In film and television, we’re happy to linger on 

a shot, to let the tension build up by changing 

absolutely nothing. Perhaps a little more patience 

in comic story telling would help... 


Also at: 

www.disconnectedpress.co.uk 

you can order the excellent 

Sentinent Zombie Space 

Pigs by Conor and Lizzie Boyle. 

Right: the cover of ‘CROSS: 

a political satire anthology’ 

published by Disconnected 

Press, it came out before the last 

election ... a time to get CROSS! 

Cover design: Pye Parr

Very good satire on UKIP’s ankle-biting 

englishman, Nigel Farage, as he puffs up to 

imagined migrant threat in great little 

englander send-up, Agent of the Crown, 

taken from CROSS. 

script: Richard Clements 

art: Nick Dyer 

lettering: Jim Campbell

REVIEWED 

From Another Way of Telling 

by John Berger and Jean Mohr 

WHAT ARE YOU 

DOING THERE? 

A Sunday afternoon in autumn. The large market 

square of the market town of B—. It was sunny, 

but it wasn’t a sun that warmed, it simply shone 

with its violent light on people and things. Some 

were directly in this light, some were in shadow. 

There were no half-measures about this light. 

The peasants from the neighbouring countryside 

paid little attention to the quality of light, they had 

come to the fair to buy or sell cattle. 

As for me this violent sunlight posed certain 

technical problems. I would have preferred a 

cloudy sky, even mist. Making my way between 

the cattle, the peasants and the cattle dealers, I 

was looking for some angle of approach. Warming-up 

– in both senses of the word. I wasn’t 

playing any games, I don’t like that, I wasn’t pretending 

not to take photographs. In any case its 

not easy to trick a Savoyard peasant. And I prefer 

to be frank about what I’m doing, whenever its 

possible. 

Near a line of calves some men were talking. 

Dryly. They had seen me but were pretending to 

ignore me. Suddenly one of them spoke out, not 

really aggressively, but rather more to amuse his 

colleagues. 

‘So what are you doing there?’ 

‘I’m taking some pictures of you and your 

cattle.’ 

‘You’re taking some pictures of my cows! Would 

you believe it? He’s helping himself to my cows 

without having to pay a sou for them!’ 

I laughed along with the others. And I went on 

taking my photos. That is to say, taking in my 

own way what was before my eyes and what 

interested me, without paying and without asking 

permission. 

Jean Mohr 

39 

DECEMBER 2015

BRISTOL 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

URBAN 

Photographs 

Portraits: Chris Hoare 

Location: Rudi Thoemmes 

Alan asked me to contribute a few of what 

he called “your urban photographs.” I am 

not a photographer but enjoy taking snaps of 

my ever-changing neighbourhood, it gets me 

out of the house. I do however know a few 

photographers and one of them is Chris Hoare 

who has been taking portraits for the last two 

years or so around East Street, Bristol. 

41 

I suppose we both come under the 

documentary umbrella whatever that means 

these days. In the case of the East St it is to 

do with a rapidly changing and disappearing 

social landscape. Gentrification is part of the 

story but it is not the only one, it never is. 

Rudi Thoemmes 

November 2015 

DECEMBER 2015

43 

• The Portraits 

Chris Hoare is a young and experienced 

photographer based in Bristol, UK. He has a 

passion for telling stories with his images and 

capturing cultures beneath the mainstream. 

This is evident through his first solo publication 

Dreamers, a three year photo story that comes 

together to give an insight in to Bristol’s 

underground Hip-Hop scene. Outside of telling 

stories with his images Chris has a diverse 

palette of photographic skills and is available 

for commission. 

• The Cityscapes 

Following ventures in antiquarian books and 

publishing, German-born Bristolian Rudi 

Thoemmes established RRB Photobooks to share 

his passion for interesting rare and out of print 

photobooks. 

www.rrbphotobooks.com 

A keen photographer of develping Bristol. 

www.chris-hoare.com 

DECEMBER 2015

DECEMBER 2015 

45

DECEMBER 2015 

47

48 


DECEMBER 2015 

49

50 


SERIALSCRIPT 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LONE 

WANDERER 

Writer/Film 

Cam Rutherford 

BLACK SCREEN 

TITLE CARD – 

Ten years after the nukes fell from the sky. 

EXT. DESERT – DAY 

Somewhere on the outskirts of future Los 

Angeles. Nothing in the distance but orange 

mountains and dead trees, the landscape 

distorted by furious heat-waves. No sign of 

life; Barren. 

LONE WANDERER (V.O.) 

The drought started the second American Civil 

war, and when the water-situation turned even 

more sour the new-age World War began, 

the drought spreading globally meant every 

country was fighting for water. Soon enough 

the fighting turned to all-out suicide warfare for 

all parties included. Nuclear War had begun 

behind every civilian’s back. Near the beginning 

of the end the struggle of the Everyman 

changed from finding water to finding shelter. I 

can’t remember how, but I survived the nukes. 

The sound of a dying motorbike engine in the 

distance. 

53 

DECEMBER 2015

The LONE WANDERER (30s) handsome-butrugged, 

short beard, medium length hair and a 

ripped cowboy jacket with a holstered revolver. 

Riding a rusted rumbling CS550. It begins to 

slow down a noticeable amount; black smoke 

pouring out of the engine. The Lone Wanderer 

looks at the gas dial - Empty. 

CUT TO: 

EXT. DESERT – NIGHT 

The sky has darkened. The large black space 

occupied with vibrant purple and red clouds 

creating a lush toxic-waste painting. The Lone 

Wanderer is now pushing his bike, fatigued 

and exhausted, he has travelled this way for 

a long time now. He notices a rusted sign 

standing near a rusted skeletal structure of an 

abandoned car. The sign says NORTH. 

He looks disappointed; 


God damnit. Everyone knows North is no man’s 

land ... the toxic-levels mutated everything. But I 

need the gas. 

He continues walking. 


Later on, the wind whistling loudly rustling the 

dead trees back and forth. He stops, standing 

in admiration and curiosity. Standing lone in 

barren terrain; a half-collapsed 1940’s style 

Diner/Gas station. Strangely the vibrant neon 

sign lights are still working, and are illuminating 

the exterior of the structure against the night’s 

darkness, DANS GAS N DINER 

EXT. DANS GAS N DINER – NIGHT 

As the Lone Wanderer walks closer he becomes 

illuminated in vibrant neon green and red. He 

looks back and scans the area before kicking 

out his bike stand and resting it. He walks 

towards the decayed structure. 

INT. DANS GAS N DINER – NIGHT 

The Lone Wanderer walks through the red-door, 

with an OPEN sign hanging on it. The interior’s 

power doesn’t work, mainly due to half of the 

main rooms ceiling has collapsed, fallen onto 

itself. 

The interior is dark, segments of it being lit-up 

by a somehow-still-working glowing jukebox, 

that’s playing an occasionally muffled I WALKED 

WITH A ZOMBIE by Roky Erickson. An emptiedout 

cash register lies on the desk, next to an old 

smashed “QUICK GRAB” vending machine. 

He hears a crack of glass in one of the other 

rooms, he spins around and draws his revolver - 

A YELLOW-JACK; a mutated being with cracked 

yellow skin and glowing blood-shot eyes, jumps 

out and sprints towards him. 

The Lone Wander shoots his revolver, the bullet 

penetrating the Yellow-jack’s forehead and 

leaving his parietal bone, bright-yellow blood 

squirts onto the jukebox. 


Goddamn Yellow-jacks. Mutated scum. 

55 

DECEMBER 2015

56 

The gunshot was loud against the silent night. 

The Lone Wanderer is cautious, and worriedly 

walks to the big front windows. Nothing in the 

dark distance. The hanging television set up in 

the corner of the room switches on suddenly, 

causing him to jump. 

CUT TO: TELEVISION SET 

An old advert from before the nuclear war. 

A SALESMAN (30s) with a suit and fedora hat 

stands in front of a tin-trailer. 

SALESMAN 

Hi there, if you’re watching this then you are in 

for a hell of a deal! This here is a Radi-Van; a 

state-ofthe-art trailer that is one-hundred 

percent resistant to them god-awful nukes. You 

a family man? You a hardworker? 

Well, make sure you live to see the morning sun 

with a Radi- Van! 

The TV flickers into static. 

The Lone Wanderer begins scavenging, turning 

every room inside out, filling his ripped rucksack 

with old tools and potentially useful scrap. He 

finds an old Radi-Van leaflet half burnt. 


After more rummaging he kicks the back-door 

open. The back of the shop illuminated by a 

miraculously stillworking gas pump. The Lone 

Wanderer fetches his bike. 

CUT TO: 


He’s filled up his bike to the max; and even 

found a couple gas canisters that he rigged up 

onto his bike for the journey ahead. He reloads 

his revolver, and holsters it. 


He arrives back at the rusted North warning sign. 


I wanted to go South, I used to have a life there 

before the nukes. It would’ve given me closure... 

But I know there’s nothing for me there 

anymore. 

The sky’s lush backdrop splattered in toxic 

vibrancy begins to change, forming into a 

bright green. Thundering rumbles roaring in 

the distance. Lightning strikes as flashes of 

highvoltage electricity streak through the sky. 

The Lone Wanderer climbs off his bike, and lifts 

the seat up. He takes out a dark-green military 

looking box, and opens it. He pulls out a light 

metal suit, that attaches separately limb to limb. 

He proceeds by putting on a metal gas-mask. 


North seems like the place to be. I could die 

up there... Then again you spend enough time 

wandering this barren land and your pretty 

much dead already. 


He closes the seat. And jumps back onto 

the bike. He violently kickstarts it, revving it 

powerfully, and driving off into the distance, up 

North; towards the toxic-storm. 

TO BE CONTINUED ... 

The Frontier (2015) 

Post-Apocalyptic Short film by 

Cameron Rutherford, Blaze Rowe, Jason Givens 

and Thomas March can be viewed at: 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwsvAcOWhG0

Something you don’t read everyday ... 

58 

The present system cannot be patched up – it 

has to be completely transformed. The structures 

of the parliament, army, police and judiciary 

cannot be taken over and used by the working 

people. Elections can be used to agitate for real 

improvements in people’s lives and to expose 

the system we live under, but only the mass 

action of workers themselves can change the 

system. 

Workers create all the wealth under capitalism. 

A new society can only be constructed when 

they collectively seize control of that wealth and 

plan its production and distribution according to 

need. 

We live in a world economy dominated by huge 

corporations. Only by fighting together across 

national boundaries can we challenge the rich 

and powerful who dominate the globe. The 

struggle for socialism can only be successful if it 

is a worldwide struggle. 

This was demonstrated by the experience of 

Russia where an isolated socialist revolution was 

crushed by the power of the world market – a 

market it could only contend with by becoming 

state capitalist. In Eastern Europe and China 

similar states were later established. 

We oppose everything which turns workers from 

one country against those from another. We 

oppose all immigration controls and campaign 

for solidarity with workers in other countries. 

We support the right of black people and other 

oppressed groups to organise their own defence 

and we support all genuine national liberation 

movements. We campaign for real social, 

political and economic equality for woman and 

for an end to all forms of discrimination against 

lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender 

people. 

Those who rule our society are powerful 

because they are organised – they control the 

wealth, media, courts and the military. They 

use their power to limit and contain opposition. 

To combat that power, working people have 

to be organised as well. The Socialist Workers 

Party aims to bring together activists from the 

movement and working class. A revolutionary 

party is necessary to strengthen the movement, 

organise people within it and aid them in 

developing the ideas and strategies that can 

overthrow capitalism entirely. 

We are committed to fight for peace, equality, 

justice and socialism. 

The Socialist Workers Party 

www.swp.org.uk 


AGITATORS 

NEEDED NOW! 

Alan Rutherford

The maritime world may be losing its 

glamour, with ever-larger tankers and 

bulk carriers it is becoming an industrial 

process, a technical boredom of 

navigating minimal risk. 

60 

But it wasn’t so long ago that ships of 

every flag that set to sea faced unknown 

adventures, tramped across oceans 

and seas carrying cargoes of just about 

anything you can imagine, haphazardly 

steaming the planet to deliver these 

goods, familiar and exotic ... anyway 

thankfully, even today, despite the 

building of ever larger computerised 

leviathans, there are still little ships with 

everything in their holds. 

SHIPS 

WITH 

EVERY 

THING! 


Lesson 

What is it child, that pulls the eye and draws the body down? 

The sea, sir, and its milky mind that stretches out to draw and drown. 

What is it child that slides and shifts the sun to jar the eye? 

The sea, sir, speaks in glass and green two words, stumble, die. 

Brian Rutherford

NATURE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE 

COUNTRY 

SIDE 

Photographs 

Joanna Rutherford 

Mention the countryside and you will find yourself 

deluged with all kinds of different responses. 

It is an area of the UK under attack, encroached 

upon by samey-same housing, scandalously 

adopted by the god-awful Countryside Alliance, 

still the playground of wealthy ... and where a 

profit can be made its beauty and uniqueness is 

expendable. 

From blood-grubby hoity-toity and still active 

fox hunts, grouse shoots, hare coursing ... to a 

badger cull of dubious value, this is one version 

of countryside. 

Joanna, enthusiastic country/nature person, 

presents photographs that show despite all that is 

done to it, the countryside is still out there ... go 

visit! 

63 

DECEMBER 2015

64 


66 


DECEMBER 2015 

67

68 


DECEMBER 2015 

69

70 


DECEMBER 2015 

71

72 


REVIEWED 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

ELECTRIF 

LYCANTHROPE 

Little Feat 

Bootleg from1974 

re-released 2014 

Review ripped from 

Keith A Gordon 

& Excitable Press 

Little Feat never achieved the sort of commercial 

success expected of its overwhelming critical 

acclaim. Formed in 1969 by Mothers of 

Invention alumni Lowell George (guitar, vocals) 

and Roy Estrada (bass) with George’s friend 

Richie Hayward on drums and pianist Bill Payne, 

Little Feat released a half-dozen studio albums 

and a live set during their ten-year run. In spite 

of developing a brilliant mix of rock ‘n’ roll, 

blues, boogie, R&B, country, and funk music 

that today would be considered ‘Americana’, 

the band built a loyal, albeit small following 

with their raucous live performances, but they 

enjoyed little commercial success. No single 

Little Feat album charted until 1974’s Feats, 

Don’t Fail Me Now (peaking at #36) and 

Waiting For Columbus, their double live 1978 

LP, proved to be the band’s only true hit (rising 

to number18 on the charts). 

73 

DECEMBER 2015

74 

Electrif Lycanthrope was the first Little Feat 

bootleg LP that I ever saw, and I quickly snatched 

up a copy at a Detroit record show around 

1980. The original vinyl version, released 

by The Amazing Kornyfone Record Label 

sometime in the late 1970s, featured nine 

songs taken from a live September 1974 radio 

broadcast on WLIR-FM in New York City, with 

the band performing at The Ultrasonic Studios 

in Hampstead NY, a common venue for these 

live-to-radio performances. Electrif Lycanthrope 

wasn’t Kornyfone’s first Little Feat bootleg – they 

released a number of other Little Feat titles, 

including Beak Positive (a fine 1975 show) and 

Aurora Backseat (documenting a 1973 show) 

– but it’s widely considered by the Feat faithful 

to be the best of the band’s handful of bootleg 

albums. 

Aside from its original vinyl release by TAKRL, 

Electrif Lycanthrope was available for a short time 

during the 1990s as a dodgy ‘European import.’ 

This new CD reissue of the album includes three 

additional ‘bonus tracks’ for a total of a dozen 

red-hot performances, and while I can’t speak as 

to the legality of this particular release, it seems 

to be part of a series of live recordings trickling 

out of either WLIR-FM and/or The Ultrasonic 

Studios (check out the great recent Bonnie Raitt 

and Lowell George release, Ultrasonic Studios 

1972). Regardless of its origin, or how long 

it may or may not be available to buy, Electrif 

Lycanthrope offers a simply mesmerizing 

performance by the band in a casual, laid-back 

environment that allowed them to stretch out and 

display their tremendous musical chemistry. 

Electrif Lycanthrope features material from 

1973’s Dixie Chicken and the following year’s 

Feats, Don’t Fail Me Now. Kicking off with 

the band’s classic ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor,’ the 

rhythm section of bassist Kenny Gradney and 

drummer Richie Hayward establish a fat groove 

from the beginning, frontman Lowell George’s 

thick Southern drawl belying his California 

birthplace. George’s fretwork here is stunning, 

full of texture and great tone. ‘Two Trains’ is 

slightly more up-tempo, with Bill Payne’s funky 

keyboards leading the charge, a loping rhythm 

dancing behind George’s soulful vocals. While 

George’s instrument is busy in the background, 

threading a subtle but wiry lead between the 

rhythms, Payne takes centre stage with his 

imaginative and charming keyboard runs. 

A cover of the great Allen Toussaint’s ‘On Your 

Way Down,’ from Dixie Chicken, is provided 

an additional minute here for the band to 

shows off its instrumental chops, beginning 

with Payne’s church revival piano intro and the 

syncopated rhythms provided by Hayward’s 

steady, hypnotizing drumbeats. George’s 

reverent vocals here display a different facet 

to the man’s talents, his equally nuanced 

fretwork providing an additional dimension 

to the classic song as the band chimes in with 

backing vocals. George’s breathtaking solo 

three minutes in underlines the subtlety of the 

band’s performance. A fan favourite, ‘Spanish 

Moon’ showcases both the band’s harmony 

vocals behind George’s spry performance, 

but also his sultry guitarplay and a strong 

rhythmic backdrop provided by the band’s often 


overlooked other guitarist, Paul Barrere. Payne’s 

keyboards are dominant here, offering a fine 

counterpoint to George’s guitar. 

‘Fat Man In The Bathtub’ is another longtime 

crowd pleaser, and here it offers a look into 

the band’s evolving New Orleans blues and 

R&B influences at the time. With a cacophonic 

instrumental backdrop that incorporates 

plenty o’ Crescent City funk, the performance 

provides plenty of foot-shufflin’ moments 

amidst its seemingly free-form jam. The 

popularity provided George’s ‘Willin’’ may 

have become a bit of an albatross around 

the singer/songwriter’s neck, but this gentle, 

affecting reading – based around George’s 

weary voice and acoustic guitar, and Payne’s 

subtle piano – proves the strength of his lyrics 

and performance. Of the three additional 

tracks included on this CD reissue of Electrif 

Lycanthrope, the band’s signature ‘Dixie 

Chicken’ fares the best, the song’s ramshackle 

arrangement providing plenty of space for 

Payne’s nimble piano-play and George’s rowdy 

notes. 

If you’re a hardcore Little Feat fan, you may 

already own Electrif Lycanthrope in one of 

several formats, but if you don’t, you really 

should grab up a copy of this CD while you can. 

If you’re a newcomer to the band, or simply 

‘Feat curious,’ this live recording provides an 

excellent introduction to one of rock ‘n’ roll’s 

best – yet criminally unsung – outfits. The 

recording captures the band at the pinnacle of 

its chemistry, cranking out songs from what are 

arguably two of their three best studio albums 

in front of a token audience, but playing like 

they’re headlining an arena. 

The sound quality here is amazing considering 

the relatively primitive recording technology of 

the era, although it does get a little muddier 

on the last three songs, which may have been 

taken from a second-generation tape. Many 

fans prefer Electrif Lycanthrope to the authorized 

live set Waiting For Columbus, which is widely 

considered one of the best live rock albums of 

all time. Why argue over semantics? Get ‘em 

both and revel in the joy that was one of the 

era’s most dynamic and electrifying live bands! 

Copyright Keith A Gordon & Excitable Press 

75 

DECEMBER 2015

Alan Rutherford

78 


RANTING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

& RAGING 

MAD 

More of the same ... 

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has warned Islamic 

terrorists would blow up iconic Irish landmarks 

Newgrange and the Rock of Cashel if allowed to 

spread their reign of terror through Europe. 

Mr Kenny made the comments when addressing 

the escalating migration crisis in Europe, which 

has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees flee 

war zones controlled by tyrannical Islamic militants 

in the Middle East. 

‘Look at what’s happened in Syria with the growth 

of ISIS. Purely from a historical point of view, they 

want to blow up Newgrange and the Rock of 

Cashel, and they want children shooting others in 

the head. This is horrendous,’ he said. 

The so-called Islamic State has destroyed 

numerous cultural heritage sites as part of its war 

of terror in Iraq and Syria. 

79 

Ben Carson stands by belief that pyramids 

were built by biblical figure Joseph 

Republican presidential candidate Dr Ben Carson, 

a retired neurosurgeon, tells reporters on Thursday 

that a belief in the Bible is not ‘silly at all’ in 

response to a question about his statements on 

the origin of the Egyptian pyramids. In a speech 

made in 1998 Carson explained his theory that 

the structures were built by the biblical Joseph to 

store grain and not, as is now generally accepted, 

meant as burial tombs for pharaohs 

DECEMBER 2015

80 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Blah-de-blah-de-blah ... 

81 

DECEMBER 2015

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 5

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

XMAS 2015 

5 

A 

POVERTY 

OF IDEAS

‘tis the season 

to be jolly 


The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Opening 03 

The Visit of George V 05 

James Connolly 





Cover artwork: a cup of tea up north 


to be included in the next issue, 

will be the 15th day of the 

next month 



Go hug a tree! 11 

Get on the Train 12 

Assad must go! 14 

Tale of Greed 21 

For Fox Sake! 25 

West Midland Hunt Saboteurs 

We can do it! 37 

When reason dies 39 

Burford Church 41 

Barcelona 46 

Rust 61 

Letters 64 

1 

XMAS 2015

SAY 

NO TO 

TORY 

CUTS!

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 

Welcome to magazine number 5, a xmas 

cogitation. Several people have promised 

stuff to fill your head with serious worries 

and trivial flights of fancy pertaining to life 

on Earth ... but have not delivered. 

Because of the afinity this publication has 

with Leveller and Digger philosophies I 

approached ‘Friends of Burford Church’ 

with a request to use their pamphlet on the 

3 Levellers shot at Burford Church in 1649. 

They were executed as an example to the 

others who had mutinied due to grievances 

with Cromwell, one being not wanting 

to serve in Ireland. Anyway, the ‘Friends’ 

turned me down ... 

A poverty of ideas indeed! 

West Midland Hunt Saboteurs have supplied 

a good article. 

Best wishes for this festive time. 


3 

XMAS 2015

4 


MENTION 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE VISIT OF 

KING GEORGE V 

by James Connolly 

1910 

5 

Fellow-Workers, 

As you are aware from reading the daily and weekly newspapers, we 

are about to be blessed with a visit from King George V. 

Knowing from previous experience of Royal Visits, as well as from 

the Coronation orgies of the past few weeks, that the occasion will 

be utilised to make propaganda on behalf of royalty and aristocracy 

against the oncoming forces of democracy and National freedom, 

we desire to place before you some few reasons why you should 

XMAS 2015

unanimously refuse to countenance this visit, or to recognise it by 

your presence at its attendant processions or demonstrations. We 

appeal to you as workers, speaking to workers, whether your work 

be that of the brain or of the hand – manual or mental toil – it is of 

you and your children we are thinking; it is your cause we wish to 

safeguard and foster. 

6 

The future of the working class requires that all political and social 

positions should be open to all men and women; that all privileges of 

birth or wealth be abolished, and that every man or woman born into 

this land should have an equal opportunity to attain to the proudest 

position in the land. The Socialist demands that the only birthright 

necessary to qualify for public office should be the birthright of our 

common humanity. 

Believing as we do that there is nothing on earth more sacred than 

humanity, we deny all allegiance to this institution of royalty, and 

hence we can only regard the visit of the King as adding fresh fuel 

to the fire of hatred with which we regard the plundering institutions 

of which he is the representative. Let the capitalist and landlord 

class flock to exalt him; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the 

idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance 

that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of 

political inequality, knowing well that a people mentally poisoned 

by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of selfreliant 

democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom. 

The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to 

social kings – capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, 

the ships and the docks. Thus coronation and king’s visits are by our 


astute neversleeping masters made into huge Imperialist propagandist 

campaigns in favour of political and social schemes against democracy. 

But if our masters and rulers are sleepless in their schemes against us, 

so we, rebels against their rule, must never sleep in our appeal to our 

fellows to maintain as publicly our belief in the dignity of our class – in 

the ultimate sovereignty of those who labour. 

What is monarchy? From whence does it derive its sanction? What has 

been its gift to humanity? Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed 

by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest 

and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from 

the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and 

its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the 

pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities. 

7 

Every class in society save royalty, and especially British royalty, has 

through some of its members contributed something to the elevation 

of the race. But neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in 

exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, 

nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British 

royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement 

of mankind. But that royal family has opposed every forward move, 

fought every reform, persecuted every patriot, and intrigued against 

every good cause. Slandering every friend of the people, it has 

befriended every oppressor. Eulogised today by misguided clerics, it 

has been notorious in history for the revolting nature of its crimes. 

Murder, treachery, adultery, incest, theft, perjury – every crime known 

to man has been committed by some one or other of the race of 

monarchs from whom King George is proud to trace his descent. 

XMAS 2015

‘His blood 

Has crept through scoundrels since the flood.’ 

We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes 

the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, 

by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the 

responsibility for their crimes. 

8 

Fellow-workers, stand by the dignity of your class. All these parading 

royalties, all this insolent aristocracy, all these grovelling, dirt-eating 

capitalist traitors, all these are but signs of disease in any social 

state – diseases which a royal visit brings to a head and spews in 

all its nastiness before our horrified eyes. But as the recognition 

of the disease is the first stage towards its cure, so that we may 

rid our social state of its political and social diseases, we must 

recognise the elements of corruption. Hence, in bringing them all 

together and exposing their unity, even a royal visit may help us to 

understand and understanding, help us to know how to destroy the 

royal, aristocratic and capitalistic classes who live upon our labour. 

Their workshops, their lands, their mills, their factories, their ships, 

their railways must be voted into our hands who alone use them, 

public ownership must take the place of capitalist ownership, social 

democracy replace political and social inequality, the sovereignty of 

labour must supersede and destroy the sovereignty of birth and the 

monarchy of capitalism. 


Ours be the task to enlighten the ignorant among our class, to dissipate 

and destroy the political and social superstitions of the enslaved 

masses and to hasten the coming day when, in the words of Joseph 

Brenan, the fearless patriot of ’48, all the world will maintain 

‘The Right Divine of Labour 

To be first of earthly things; 

That the Thinker and the Worker 

Are Manhood’s only Kings.’ 

Transcribed by 

The James Connolly Society 

in 1997 

9 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/xx/visitkng.htm 

James Connolly, 1868–1916 

A revolutionary socialist, a republican, a trade union leader aligned 

to syndicalism and the Industrial Workers of the World, and a political 

theorist. 

As one of the leaders of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916 he was severely 

wounded and his execution by firing squad was carried out with him 

tied to a chair. 

XMAS 2015

IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE WEATHER 

GO HUG A TREE!

12 

GET ON 

THE TRAIN 

From the standpoint of a 

higher economic form of 

society, private ownership of 

the globe by single individuals 

will appear as quite absurd 

as private ownership of one 

man by another. Even a whole 

society, a nation, or even 

all simultaneously existing 

societies taken together, are 

not the owners of the globe. 

They are only its possessors, 

its usufructuries, and, like 

boni patres familias (Good 

Heads of Household), 

they must hand it down to 

succeeding generations in an 

improved condition. 

CAPITAL Karl Marx 

NATIONALISM IS A CUL-DE-SAC! 


CONSENT? 

14 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

‘ASSAD 

MUST 

GO! 

so must 

all tyrants 


...say 

what? 

15 

‘I said, Assad must go!’ 

XMAS 2015

16 

The question that 

should have been 

posed during the vote 

on further bombing 

in the middle east by 

Britain is, not whether 

it would be good to do 

something like bombing 

but, whether something 

good can be done? 


XMAS 2015 

17

18 


19 

ALL TOGETHER NOW! 

XMAS 2015

20 


CAUTIONARY 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

TALE OF 

GREED 

An exerpt from 

The Guardian 

23 December 2013 

of an original story 

by George Monbiot 

‘... So here’s the story. Two men 

established a small stake in the mines, 

in a remote valley some distance from 

the nearest airstrip. They cut down the 

trees and began to excavate. They found 

the digging and hosing and sifting 

of the gravel exceedingly hard and, 

though they had discovered very little, 

they decided to hire two other men to 

do it for them. They agreed to split any 

findings equally with the workers. 

The two hired men dug for four months 

without success: with high pressure 

hoses they scoured great pits into which 

the trees collapsed; they turned the 

clear waters of the forest stream they 

21 

XMAS 2015

excavated red with clay and tailings; 

they winnowed the gravel through 

meshed boxes; they dissolved the 

residues in mercury and burned it off; 

but they produced almost nothing. Then 

they hit one of the richest deposits ever 

discovered in Roraima: in one day they 

extracted 4kg. 

If you find a lot of gold in the garimpos 

you keep quiet – very quiet. A single 

shout of triumph can amount to suicide. 

You gather it up, hide it in your bag and 

explain to anyone who asks on your way 

out that months of work have brought 

you nothing but disease and misery. But 

first it must be divided. 

22 

GOLD 

The two men who owned the stake 

began to comprehend, for the first time, 

the implications of the deal they had 

done. “We risked our lives to establish 

this stake. We spent every cent we had 

– and plenty we didn’t – travelling here, 

buying the equipment and the diesel, 

hacking out a clearing in the forest, 

hiring these men. And now we have to 

split the gold equally with people who 

are no more than manual labourers, 

who would normally be paid a few 

dollars a day.” They told the two workers 

that they wanted a special meal that 

night, and sent them to the nearest 

airstrip to buy the ingredients. 

As the two workers walked they began 

to ruminate. “We’ve nearly killed 

ourselves in that pit. We’ve been up 

before dawn every day and have worked 

until dusk. We’ve had malaria, foot rot, 

screw worm, sunstroke, while those two 

bastards have done nothing but lie in 

their hammocks shouting instructions. 

Now we’re expected to give them an 

equal share of the gold that we and we 

alone found.” When they reached the 

store, they bought cachaça, rice, beans, 

a packet of seasoning and a box of 

rat poison. They mixed the poison into 

the seasoning and set off back to the 

camp. Before they reached it, they were 

ambushed by the two owners and shot. 

The owners then picked up the bags 

and went back to the camp to celebrate 

over the first hot dinner they had had in 

weeks.’ 


From Ben Traven’s The Treasure of Sierra Madre, 

made into a film starring Humphrey Bogart ... 

Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is 

gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce? 

Flophouse Bum: I don’t know. Because it’s scarce. 

Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin’ for 

gold. After six months, one of them’s lucky: one 

out of a thousand. His find represents not only 

his own labour, but that of nine hundred and 

ninety-nine others to boot. That’s six thousand 

months, five hundred years, scramblin’ over a 

mountain, goin’ hungry and thirsty. An ounce of 

gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the 

human labour that went into the findin’ and the 

gettin’ of it. 

Flophouse Bum: I never thought of it just like that. 

Howard: Well, there’s no other explanation, mister. 

Gold itself ain’t good for nothing except making 

jewelry with and gold teeth. 

23 

XMAS 2015

A DEAD FOX HUNTED BY 

THE HOUNDS OF THE 

GROTESQUE 

24 


BLOODLUST 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

FOR FOX 

SAKE! 

An article from 

West Midlands 

Hunt Saboteurs 

Are you interested in writing an 

article for inclusion in a left leaning 

online magazine called ‘Sheep in 

the Road’? Deadline for issue 5 is 15 

December. See previous issues at www. 

handoverfistpress.com 

Yes we are, we could write an article 

giving our views on why bloodsports 

are allowed to continue, how the 

state supports the bloodlusts of the 

establishment and how the police 

reinforce it. 

Yes please, let me know if you can make 

the deadline and if you will also be 

supplying artwork (logo, photographs)? 

Yep we should make the deadline. 

is there a word limit? We can supply 

photographs and a logo, thanks. 

No word limit, look forward to it ... 

25 

XMAS 2015

26 

A perspective from a West Midland 

Hunt Saboteur on fox hunting, 

policing and the state. 

When I was a teenager I remember 

coming across an Animal Rights stall 

and picking up a leaflet on fox hunting. 

I always remembered thinking that the 

idea of killing an animal for anything was 

immoral but to think people organised 

on a weekly basis to go out with a pack 

of hounds to chase and disembowel a 

sentient being for ‘sport’ was just barbaric. 

How can we ever call ourselves a civilised 

society when we still allow bloodsports? 

The fact that we have a hunting act set 

in criminal law shows that the majority of 

people do think bloodsports are abhorrent 

and have no place in modern society so 

a benchmark has been set by the hunting 

act it just needs strengthening to stop these 

numerous accidents from occurring. 

The first hunt I went to was with the 

Oxfordshire hunt monitors to the Bicester 

hunt. I remember thinking how aggressive 

the atmosphere was and how many people 

on horses with hounds all to terrorise a 

sentient wild animal. The first time I heard 

hounds in cry sent a shiver down my back. 

I knew from the first time I went out that 

this was something that I wanted: to try 

and help stop-fox hunting. 

I went out with the hunt monitors for a 

while who, although they do a fantastic 

job gathering evidence for prosecutions, 

wasn’t enough. I wanted to go directly 

into the field to try and help the hunted 

fox from being ripped apart. 

With this in mind, I got in touch with the 

Hunt Saboteurs Association to see how 

I could get involved. I was put in touch 

with folks from Birmingham and have 

never looked back. 

From working full time in my local 

community I began to see how the 

world can be so different if you 

challenge something that the state 

wishes to protect. Obviously I had 

heard of police corruption, read about 

it and watched T.V programmes on it, 

but I never thought I would witness it 

myself first hand. You don’t when you 

live a life that the state is happy with – 

contributing to taxes, working full time, 

buying commercialised goods everything 

really that a capitalist and functionalist 


27 

The 

unspeakable 

in pursuit of 

the uneatable 

Oscar Wilde 

XMAS 2015

28 

political system likes people to do – to 

keep their idea of society functioning 

how they think it should. 

Fox hunting is not only cruel but its 

cruelty is endorsed and supported by the 

state. Hunts claim that anti hunt views 

can stem from a class war perspective, 

but in my opinion this is not true as 

sadly all walks of life support and go 

hunting. What is apparent though is 

that people of influence such as police 

officers, magistrates, judges and 

politicians support and go hunting. Our 

current government is pro-bloodsports 

and this filters down through the right 

wing media and our policing structures. 

Anyone who uses direct action to stop 

what they believe is morally wrong, and 

questions laws, is vilified and the police 

will try to stop these direct actions as 

they are a threat to the status quo, just 

like how the suffragettes were treated. 

One hunt I attended in Oxfordshire, we 

hadn’t even got out of the van when 

police surrounded it and demanded 

we all got out. We rightly asked under 

what section they were stopping us, 

they didn’t answer but kept shouting 

for us to get out of the van. They then 

started smashing the windows of van 

and detained me for a search whilst also 

ordering two other male comrades to 

kneel on the floor with their arms behind 

their heads. They accused us of having 

offensive weapons (our homemade 

whips) funny how the hunt’s big hard 

heavy whips are fine but ones made 

from skipping rope and soft small 

wooden handle are dangerous (hounds 

respond to the noise of a whip crack 

and can be held up from chasing a fox 

using this method). They also accused 

me of having acid in a bottle. When 

I said that it would be hard for me to 

have acid in a plastic bottle they still 

convinced themselves that it was a toxic 

substance, not an essential oil mixed 

with water (which it was and is used to 

mask the scent of hunted foxes), so the 

three of us were arrested for carrying 

offensive weapons. Held long enough 

in police cells so the hunt could carry on 

their killing spree uninterrupted. 

Again whilst sabbing in Derbyshire hunt 

saboteurs were arrested using the trade 

union act that we were interfering with 

a lawful activity. This time helicopters, 


dog units and lots of police cars were 

deployed. The van was seized and we 

were all arrested, spending around 23 

hours in custody. 

Another time hunt saboteurs were 

standing at the meet of the South 

Shropshire Hunt (Otis Ferry’s Hunt) when 

a very macho police unit arrived and were 

obstructive from the start. This resulted in 

a rough arrest on me, involving 3 male 

officers on a woman, taking me to the 

ground and subsequently arrested me. 

While I was detained in the police car I 

could hear the officers saying that they 

wanted the footage we had taken of 

their actions and arrest (no doubt to go 

accidentally missing). I shouted through 

the windows of the car to another sab 

informing her what they were trying to do. 

Whilst I was detained at the police station 

and asleep two male officers came into 

my cell and dragged me from my bed 

by my hands and demanded to recheck 

my fingerprints saying they thought I 

wasn’t who I said I was. I was charged 

and later the charges were dropped and 

I successfully sued West Mercia Police 

for damages, including wrongful arrest 

assault and unlawful imprisonment. 

Two weeks after this incident hunt 

saboteurs were set upon whilst sabbing 

the South Shropshire Hunt. As ‘sabs’ 

were walking in a field around 15-20 

big men in masks jumped out of a bush 

and began attacking us. I was knocked 

out and when I came around I could 

not see for a short period. I sustained a 

fracture and a broken nose. I still have 

a click in my jaw to this day. Men were 

also waiting for us on the road and a 

tractor turned up with big spikes trying 

to overturn the sab van. Hunt saboteurs 

were being punched and kicked on the 

road and when we finally managed to 

get to our vehicle a hunt supporter tried 

to drag one of us out of the vehicle. They 

began smashing the sliding van door on 

his legs, but somehow we managed to 

get him into the van. Once we arrived 

at the hospital the police seemed more 

concerned about the fact we had driven 

with headlights smashed out (by the 

hunt) than what had happened to us. 

During my triage at the hospital a 

male security officer was in attendance 

which at the time I thought was strange 

but I wasn’t obviously feeling myself 

to challenge why this was happening. 

29 

XMAS 2015

30 


Once I started to feel better I asked 

my solicitor to find out why a security 

guard was present during my triage. The 

reason given was because the police 

had told the hospital that they thought I 

could be potentially dangerous. 

I was also able to identify my attacker to 

the police who asked him in for interview 

... he was never arrested. Nothing ever 

came of it. 

Another example of how the police 

protect fox hunting happened a few 

years ago with the Quorn hunt. The 

police claimed that they were using a 

section 60 and section 60 aa power to 

be able to detain sabs. (Section 60 is 

part of the Criminal Justice and Public 

Order Act 1994 which allows a police 

officer to stop and search a person 

without suspicion) They demanded the 

right to search sabs. I refused believing 

this was an unlawful stop and search. 

I was arrested and charged with 

obstructing a police officer. I was given 

ridiculous bail conditions including that 

I couldn’t go to any organised fox hunt 

in the UK (funny that as there shouldn’t 

be any organised fox hunts since it’s 

supposed to be illegal). I also couldn’t 

enter Leicestershire at all. Bearing in 

mind I was charged with ‘obstructing a 

police officer’ these bail conditions did 

not reflect the charge ... so yet again the 

police mis-use their powers to protect the 

blood junkies. 

This also happened during the first 

badger cull in Gloucestershire, where 

I was arrested for apparently waving 

a torch in the field and therefore 

breaking a high court injunction. My 

bail conditions imposed then were that I 

could not enter Gloucestershire. All this 

for apparently waving a torch in a field. 

What I witnessed that night was shocking, 

around 50-60 police officers surrounded 

a badger sett trying to stop protestors 

from stopping the badger cull. The police 

always claim that they are impartial 

at protests ... utter bollocks! On this 

occasion the police accused me of trying 

to set fire to the police van whilst in 

handcuffs in a single cell compartment. 

How could that even be physically 

possible? However it was enough for the 

police officer to ask the desk sergeant 

for me to be strip-searched at the police 

31 

XMAS 2015

32 

station. Fortunately the desk sergeant 

didn’t permit it. 

Going back to the section 60 ‘stop and 

search’ in court, the authorising inspector 

said, while being questioned on the stand, 

that he believed disruption of the hunt 

was going to take place. Thats not what 

a section 60 is supposed to be used for 

... section 60 was intended for football 

hooligans where a real threat of violence 

using weapons is likely to happen. 

Because of a mis-use of section 60 ‘stop 

and search’ my charge was dropped as 

potentially disrupting a hunt would not 

warrant a section 60. 

These are just a few examples of how the 

state via the police protect blood sports 

that I have personally been a part of. 

I have been arrested numerous times 

nothing has ever came from them in terms 

of prosecutions, its just a way of the police 

getting hunt saboteurs out the way so 

hunts can have a care free killing spree. 

More recently some of us have been 

documenting the Atherstone Hunt. What 

we have found happening on a weekly 

basis came as no surprise to us, that is, 

a hunt flouting the law and hunting foxes 

everytime they go out. We have witnessed 

foxes running for their lives, hunt 

saboteurs have been assaulted numerous 

times trying to help foxes escape the hunt. 

As well as seeing foxes hunted we also 

witness every week hounds out of control 

and loose on main roads. We have 

documented blocked badger setts in areas 

where the hunt go and artificial earths 

(homes created by hunts to encourage 

foxes to live in them and also used to hold 

foxes on the day of a hunt so they can be 

bolted from them to chase). 

We consistently film this hunt as they stick 

two fingers up to everyone. As a member 

of the public you would think the police 

would act upon this evidence we provide 

of blatant law breaking. Leicestershire 

Police were given footage showing two 

identifiable terrier-men blocking an active 

badger sett, putting a terrier down a 

hole and using a tracker to monitor its 

movements. Even though police were 

supplied with names for both men they 

only charged one man and the case 

collapsed because the police failed to act 

in time with a court directive. 


Warwickshire Police were given footage 

showing racist language towards a hunt 

saboteur. Yep you guessed it, the police 

again failed to charge in time and two 

men faced no charges and the remaining 

third man was found not guilty in court 

even though he used racist language. 

Whilst the witnesses were on the stand 

they weren’t even asked about what 

happened on the day but were asked 

who was the leader of the group, what 

personal relationships people in the 

group were in and demanded to know 

peoples’ addresses. 

Lecestershire police were also present 

when the Atherstone huntsman and a 

hound ran the wrong way up a duel 

carriageway, when sabs went to formally 

log this incident the officer present denied 

that he had seen the hound running the 

wrong way up the duel carriageway. 

Leicestershire police also issued two 

‘police information notices’ (PINs also 

known as ‘harassment notices’) to two 

hunt saboteurs based on no proven 

evidence even though the hunt film us 

all the time. Hunt saboteurs contested 

this using an online campaign and help 

from their local supportive MP. The hunt 

saboteurs also put a formal complaint 

in into the police. After a hard fought 

campaign Leicester police retracted the 

‘police information notices’ (PINs) and 

issued a formal apology saying the PINs 

should never have been issued and 

had been mis-used. Then surprisingly 

and beggaring belief, one of the same 

hunt saboteurs issued with the original 

‘police information notice’ (PIN) has been 

issued again with another PIN. This is an 

obvious case of ‘official’ harrassment of 

a hunt saboteur, who is contesting this 

waste of police time, and has the support 

of her local MP. 

The Leicestershire police are now sending 

out intelligence gathering officers to the 

Atherstone Hunt meets but, despite our 

filmed evidence, they are focusing their 

attentions on us rather than the hunt. 

So does the state protect fox 

hunters, what do you think? 

We will continue to document the 

Atherstone Hunt and I am sure we will 

see the state try and clamp its fist on 

us. We believe that a small group of 

33 

XMAS 2015

dedicated people can change the world. 

... lets face it, its the only thing that ever 

has. 

To watch West Midland Hunt Saboteur 

videos and find out more about what 

we do and to get weekly updates of 

what has been happening please 

follow the following: https://www. 

facebook.com/West-Midlands-Hunt- 

Saboteurs-243223759156039/ 

34 

West Midlands Hunt Saboteurs 

Still Hunting the Hunters. 


XMAS 2015 

35

36 

During World War 2 the language of 

gesture was used extensively in propaganda 

posters. An interesting example is J. Howard 

Miller’s poster featuring Geraldine Hoff, 

a seventeen-year-old metal presser in a 

Michigan factory (sometimes confused with 

Norman Rockwell’s iconic Rosie the Riveter). 

Under the headline ‘We Can Do It!’ Hoff 

was portrayed rolling up her sleeve to play 

her part in the war effort by taking the kind 

of manual job traditionally performed by 

men. 

Rediscovered in the 1970s the poster, with 

its gesture of female strength, was given a 

new lease of life by advocates of women’s 

equality in the workplace. 


XMAS 2015 

37

38 


Prejudice and 

faith have 

something in 

common: they 

both flourish 

when reason 

dies 

39 

XMAS 2015

40 


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41

42 


UNDERGROUND

XMAS 2015 

43

44 

abaft aft amidships anchor 

astern ballast barnicle bilge 

boatswain bollard bosun 

bow bowline bridge bulwark 

capstan captain chart deck 

dry-dock ensign escutcheon 

forecastle gangway gunwale 

halyard hatch hawser helm 

hold hull keel lanyard 

poopdeck port rudder 

quarterdeck screw sidelight 

slipway starboard stern 

stevedore tiller watch wharf 

wheelhouse 


Artwork: Edward Wadsworth 1919

XMAS 2015 

45

46 

BARCELONA 

2005 


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47

48 


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49

50 


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52 


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53

54 


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56 


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58 


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60 


RUST 

61 

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63 

TOO 

XMAS 2015

64 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


As you have no letters to publish I thought I 

would take this opportunity to comment on the 

the experience of putting together three online 

issues of ‘Sheep in the Road’. 

Without the fine articles, written pieces and 

photographs supplied to be included this would 

be a sad and feeble venture ... and, as we 

are not talking about money changing hands 

for any element of ‘Sheep in the Road’, its a 

wonderful gesture, thank you! 

65 

The almost non-existant feedback ranges from 

the banal, but well meant, ‘Yes its good’ to 

a friend’s dismissive ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I 

haven’t got time for that now, I’m really busy ...’ 

with a couple of helpful suggestions in between. 

And apart from a drink in a pub with two 

prospective contributors (where only one came 

up with something, which was excellent by the 

way) ... not much contact ... probably how I like 

it anyway. 

More contributions please. 

Alan 

XMAS 2015

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 5

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

JANUARY 2016 

6

Well, I stand 

up next to a 

mountain 

And I chop 

it down with 

the edge of 

my hand

The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Opening 03 

Café Royal Books 05 

Craig Atkinson 

Asylum 13 

The Situationists 14 

New Clarion Press 17 

Chris Bessant 

Jimi Hendrix 





Ambigram 23 

Contempt of Conscience 25 

Joe Jenkins 

New Man 43 

1 

Cover artwork: Alan Rutherford 

I Remember ... 45 

Martin Taylor 




next month 

Cheltenham Socialists 53 

British Foreign Policy 55 

Fibonacci: Golden Ratio 57 

Catastrophy: 50 Years Ago 59 



Whither the Weather? 65 

Underground 66 

West Africa: Word Symbol Song 68 

Letters 77 

JANUARY 2016

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 

Welcome to magazine number 6. 

Featuring the different stories and fortunes 

of two ‘one-man-band’ publishers; their 

histories and dreams quite rightly being 

made known – I salute you! 

Joe Jenkins’ account of the valiant struggle 

for a peace tax is the story of the Peace 

Tax 7 ... you could ask why the peace 

movement did not make this their struggle? 

The ‘rollercoaster’ coming of age tale 

starting on page 45 is surely a taster for 

Martin Taylor’s forthcoming book? 

Eclectic spots of tosh jostle for your attention 

and culminate in a frightening 50 year 

anniversary, where your editor literally 

floated through a major nuclear incident. 

More on that voyage at http://www.yumpu. 

com/en/document/view/26758873/nicetode-larrinaga 


3 

JANUARY 2016

MENTION 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Monday, 15 December 2014 

Craig Atkinson of Café Royal Books 

We are delighted to re-present this blog from Craig, founder and sole 

employee at Café Royal Books, looking back on ten years in publishing, 

and sharing his insights on the subjects of small-scale publishing, time 

management, and the nature of photographers and the photograph 

itself. Originally written for rrbphotobooks.blogspot.co.uk in 2014. 

5 

Café Royal Books is ten years old. As happens in a decade, a lot has 

changed; some planned changes, some happenchance. The reason I 

started Café Royal Books was to enable me to disseminate affordably 

my own work, quickly, internationally, and to many places at the same 

time. I had spent the previous decade painting large abstracts which were 

prohibitive due to their size and weight, so decided to return to drawing 

for its simplicity and speed. ‘The book’ worked as exhibition spaces, and 

‘the multiple’ as a ‘rapid fire’. The content of the books was unfocussed 

and production fairly DIY, but considered. The excitement was in the 

making and in using the book as a container. 

JANUARY 2016

Somehow, online mainly, word spread and I ended up collaborating with 

other artists, illustrators and some photographers, publishing their work 

as small editions of around 50 copies. Around 2006 my practice began 

to shift from pen to lens based, partly because I could work faster and 

more simply without as much ‘interference’ as happened with a pen / 

pencil; also because I started to value more the recording of information, 

possibly for the future. We had our first child around the same time which 

probably had an impact on my way of thinking. Of course, as my own 

practice and interests changed, so did what I wanted to publish. It wasn’t 

until around 2010–11 that I started to become more focussed and direct 

about what I was to publish, and about what I wanted to make in terms 

of my work outside of Café Royal. 

There has always been a bit of a clash, time-wise mostly, between the 

things I do. I’m a full time lecturer on three separate degree courses. I 

make work, exhibit etc my photographs – generally focussing on Brutalist 

estates and the urban environment. I have two children, 3 and 6. Café 

Royal has become a full time business, still run out of a small room, and 

only me ... It’s hard work but really enjoyable and it’s a privilege to work 

with so many artists and photographers. 

7 

What I do now is publish a book each week. I can’t possibly publish all 

the work I’d like to, so have to remain pretty focussed in terms of subject. 

The subject tends to be work that documents an aspect of change; social, 

architectural, geographical ... I don’t know what drives people (or me) to 

take photographs of things. It’s a strange compulsion, but somehow there 

is a need. ‘Now’ is happening – people know ‘now’, so the photographs, 

to my mind at least, become something else when the ‘now’ has passed 

JANUARY 2016

and is no longer accessible first hand. They gain historical value or 

importance perhaps. 

8 

My experience of working with photographers is that generally they 

work for ‘the now’ for various reasons. One is financial. We all need 

money and work and so are focussed on ‘the now’. Others, who have 

perhaps had their commercial career, may have other interests: books, 

travel for example. In most cases there are vast archives of work that are 

untouched, mainly because the photographer has no reason to touch 

them. Feedback from many collaborators has been that Café Royal 

Books has offered the photographer opportunity to revisit their much 

forgotten archives. This has sometimes led to a rethink of current work 

and to other opportunities for sales and exhibitions of older work. None 

of this is intentional, it’s not why I started Café Royal, but knowing that 

this occurs means a lot and has become an aim of what I do. 

My books are inexpensive, both to produce and to buy, in comparison for 

example to a coffee table hard back. They are limited run, generally of 

200 copies. The conflicts with my desire of getting this forgotten archive 

work seen by many. However, many galleries and museums now collect 

my books. They are in a lot of ‘special collections’, photobook collections, 

artist book collections, exhibitions and so on. This makes them publicly 

accessible, looked after, ‘locked in’. So essentially anyone can gain 

access to them without owning them. This has become a strong element 

of what I do. 


To have the work collected by galleries is important, if for no other reason 

than to fill the gaps in UK gallery photographic archives, which are fairly 

slim. Of course there are other reasons. To know MoMA, Tate, V&A and 

other major international galleries want the books enough to collect 

them means a lot. To have many shops stocking them and to have so 

many customers from the website is priceless. To meet Peter Mitchell, Ken 

Grant, Martin Parr, Daido Moriyama and discuss books, their work, their 

past work is amazing. I think publishing has allowed me to do a lot that 

perhaps otherwise I wouldn’t have done. 

10 

I once lost all of my own books, collected over 30 years – about 800 

books, in a flood. I now have a strange relationship with books – I make 

lots of them but am still fearful of buying too many. Publishing allows me to 

make the books I’d like to collect; albeit a strange way of going about it! 

The future. I’d like to start a PhD but need to fine-tune the question. It 

might relate to some of the above. I want to continue to publish small 

affordable well produced books / zines showing moments of change. I 

see Café Royal Books as a kind of meeting point. I don’t just publish the 

work of well known photographers but I do only publish work that I like 

and often subjects or times that I couldn’t get access to myself. As long as 

it’s enjoyable I’ll continue. There’s a lot of important work that needs to 

be seen! In many ways I see what I do as a long term project, cataloging 

the not too distant past. 

Recently I’ve started a new project, ‘Notes’, which will hopefully become a 

reference tool and work as contextual support for the books I publish. 


www.caferoyalbooks.com 

crbnotes.wordpress.com

A refugee, according to the Geneva Convention on Refugees is a person who is 

outside their country of citizenship because they have well-founded grounds for 

fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of 

a particular social group or political opinion, and is unable to obtain sanctuary 

from their home country or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail themselves 

of the protection of that country; or in the case of not having a nationality and 

being outside their country of former habitual residence as a result of such 

event, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to their country of 

former habitual residence. Such a person may also be called an ‘asylum seeker’, 

however all such people deserve the compassion of others more fortunate and 

should be made welcome! 

12 


HEAVEN HELP THOSE 

seeking 

in the 

ASYLUM 

of european civilisation

14 

The Situationists were the inspiration of the 

slogans that appeared in the streets of Paris during 

the student riots of May 1968, such as ‘Never 

work’ and ‘Under the paving stones, the beach’. 

A worldwide avant-garde collective initiated 

in the 1950s, the Situationists were concerned 

with poverty, daily life and the way the everyday 

world was mediated by images. They focused 

their analysis of capitalism on the alienation of 

daily life produced by cinema, television, radio, 

consumerism and advertising. They strongly 

believed that the cultural machines of capitalism 

produced problematic relationships between 

people that were alienating and deafening. They 

early on advocated what they termed ‘détourné’, a 

reorganisation of advertisements to say something 

else – to turn the culture of power against itself. 

In essence the Situationists advocated a form 

of cultural trespassing, a transgression that has 

everything to do with the desires of graffiti itself. 

NATO THOMPSON 


JANUARY 2016 

15

NEW CLARION PRESS 

Chris Bessant 

New Clarion Press was born in 1990 with the ambition of making a 

difference through publishing; it closed in 2012 with its aim (only) partially 

achieved. Initially a workers’ cooperative of two people, Chris Bessant and 

Fiona Sewell, it became a one-man band a few years in – albeit one that 

played some good tunes. 

It was appropriate for a Cheltenham-based publisher that the first book 

off the press was A Conflict of Loyalties, an account of the ultimately 

successful resistance of workers at GCHQ in Cheltenham to the removal 

of their right to belong to a trade union. It was ironically titled, using 

Geoffrey Howe’s phrase, which was the Thatcher government’s pretext for 

depriving the GCHQ workers of a fundamental human right. 

17 

The press thereafter developed an eclectic list of publications, covering 

challenging social issues from AIDS and drugs to the politics of the 

human genome and pornography. The common thread was to challenge 

acceptance of the status quo. Its most successful publication of this kind 

was Domestic Violence: Action for Change, which went through three 

editions, each a testament to the progress made by campaigners in the 

field as the legal and policing environment changed to give survivors of 

domestic abuse fairer treatment. The obscenity of the death penalty was 

JANUARY 2016

highlighted in two publications of correspondence and writing by prisoners 

on Death Row in the United States, where three thousand prisoners 

currently face execution. 

18 

Recognising that politics is only separated from history to the detriment of 

both, the press developed a close relationship with the London Socialist 

Historians Group, publishing several titles concerned with labour history 

and Marxism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It reached back to 

the Peasants’ Revolt of the fourteenth century, and came right up to date 

with an underrated work titled Anti-Capitalist Britain, which considered 

the burgeoning protests against capitalism at Genoa and elsewhere, and 

deserved a wider audience than it found. One aspect of this movement 

was the Green perspective, which found expression in a separate book, 

Market, Schmarket, written by the Green MEP for the South West, Molly 

Scott Cato. 

Ultimately, New Clarion Press beat a retreat in the face of the decline of 

independent bookshops and the squeeze on its very slender margins from 

corporations like Amazon and from its own distributors in the UK and the 

USA. Financially hamstrung and never reaching the ‘critical mass’ needed 

to be commercially successful, it nevertheless remained always critical, 

achieving some notable successes in its own terms and sounding a clarion 

call to those in the movement who were able to hear. 


JANUARY 2016 

19

20 

Anti-Capitalist Britain is a collection of accessible and 

informative essays on the emerging anti-capitalist movement in 

the UK.Through accounts of recent anti-capitalist protests and 

organizations, often by those involved, the book considers the 

current state of radical politics in the UK. Its underlying theme is 

the emerging relationship between Marxist and other radical 

organizations and the disparate anti-globalization, anti-capitalist 

and direct action groups fronting campaigns against institutions 

such as the World Trade Organization and the G8.The study 

argues that there has been a shift towards anarchism on the 

British left and elsewhere.While it has a primarily domestic focus, 

the book also considers British anti-capitalism in an international 

context. It therefore includes contributions from authors whose 

focus is beyond the domestic and who participate in wider 

campaigns. 

New Clarion Press 


ISBN 1-873797-44-3 

ANTI-CAPITALIST BRITAIN 

EDITED BY JOHN CARTER 

AND DAVE MORLAND 

ANT 

JOH 

DA

I-CAPITALIST 

BRITAIN 

EDITED BY 

N CARTER AND 

VE MORLAND 

Anti-Capitalist Britain is an account of the 

state of left and radical politics in the UK, delivered 

through a study of recent anti-capitalist protests 

and movements.The book is a collaborative project 

involving writers from various universities in the 

UK and recent participants in anti-capitalist actions. 

The introduction examines the origins of the current 

protest movement and its re-emergence from the 

‘Victory of the West’ and the free market. Caroline 

Lucas and Colin Hines then critique the dominant 

neoliberal version of globalization from a green and 

localist perspective.This analysis is complemented by 

the work of Molly Scott Cato, who explores positive 

and sustainable alternatives to capitalism and the free 

market.Amir Saeed also takes the new geopolitics as 

his starting point, examining the difficulties created 

for Asian Britons after 9/11 and the subsequent 

‘War on Terror’. 

Other contributors consider the different forms 

of protest and activism in current anti-capitalist and 

green politics. John Carter and Dave Morland’s 

overview of the UK anti-capitalist scene detects an 

emerging shift towards a more libertarian mode of 

struggle. One source of this is set out in Derek 

Wall’s account of the Russian theorist Mikhail 

Bakhtin, whose theories loom large in the ongoing 

Carnival against Capitalism. Jon Purkis focuses on 

the role of anticonsumerist campaigns, finding 

echoes of radical movements from the English Civil 

War period. Paul Taylor examines the creative ways 

in which electronic ‘hacktivists’ have undermined 

corporations and the powerful. How all this 

diversity and seeming fragmentation produces a 

functioning ‘movement’ is the concern of Alex Plows, 

who explores the way in which groupings, 

communities and individuals have supported each 

other through fluid activist networks.The book 

concludes with a vibrant account of the Anti-G8 

mobilization in Genoa, written by one of the 

participants.

AMBIGRAM 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

WORD PLAY 

An ambigram is a typographical 

composition that may be read as one 

or more words not only in the form as 

presented, but also from a different 

orientation – upside down, right side 

up or back to front – or as a totally 

different word or words. John Langdon, 

an American typographer, ambigram 

expert and author of Wordplay, says an 

ambigram is a decipherable puzzle, but 

it is also the basis for certain kinds of 

intricate logos. 

Earth Air Fire Water (2007) 

John Langdon 

The earliest known ambigram 

was designed in 1893 by the children’s 

book illustrator Peter Newell (The Hole Book), 

who published various books of invertable 

images, whereby the picture turns into a 

different image entirely when turned upside 

down. The last page in his book Topsy & 

Turvys contains the phrase THE END, 

which, when inverted, reads 

PUZZLE. 

Langdon’s ambigrams tend to be 

more complex. His use of gothic, black 

letter and swash lettering adds both to the 

elegance and to the vexing nature of his 

compositions, but once they are turned 

around, the viewer’s cognitive 

realisation triggers a unique 

sense of accomplishment. 

Steven Heller & Veronique Vienne 

23 

JANUARY 2016

24 


CONTEMPT 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

OF CONSCIENCE 

Joe Jenkins 

‘Let them march all they want as long 

as they continue to pay their taxes’ 

US Secretary of State Alexander Haig 1982 

25 

In 2003 this truism still applied … and still 

applies today. As I write this, five years after 

the end of British combat operations in Iraq, 

the chaos and killing continues. It has been 

13 years since Britain invaded Iraq and today 

it is difficult to find apologists who supported 

the invasion in 2003. However, in contrast 

to those who supported the war it is no 

exaggeration to say that millions of British 

citizens held vigils, went on marches, lobbied 

MP’s, signed petitions, and performed street 

theatre and music to protest against the war. 

But the government went ahead and executed 

their war, in our name, and with our taxes. 

JANUARY 2016

26 


In the days leading up to the war, dressed 

as a Welsh Weapons Inspector, I protested 

at Fairford, Gloucestershire, a sleepy 

Cotswold village invaded by para-military 

forces, B-52 bombers, Alsatian dogs, 

armed military police, police with hand 

held cameras: the policing of this USAF 

base costing £8 million, in a war that was 

to cost the British taxpayer £10 billion. 

As part of the British state’s ‘defence’ {sic} of 

the American B-52 bombers, I was stopped 

and searched under section 44 of the 

Terrorism Act 2000. But to no avail. Hours 

later on 20 March these monstrous planes 

known as BUFFS – big ugly fat fuckers – took 

off to drop their payloads from 30,000 feet, 

to shock and awe the citizens of Iraq, just as 

they’d done 30 years earlier in Vietnam. 

According to the Pentagon in 2003 the 

aim of ‘shock and awe’ was to ‘produce a 

simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear 

weapons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 

not taking days or weeks but minutes … 

to shatter Iraq physically, emotionally and 

psychologically’. 

They succeeded and I, along with millions 

of others, had failed. Alexander Haig’s 

words haunted me. I decided, as a matter 

of conscience, to withhold the proportion of 

my taxes {10%} going to fund this illegal 

and unnecessary war, and asked the Inland 

Revenue to redirect these monies instead 

to peaceful purposes such as International 

Development. I explained to the Inland Revenue 

that I’d faithfully paid my taxes in full for thirty 

years and my decision to withhold taxes was 

‘not taken lightly’, but, ‘no interpretation of 

the law can allow deliberate state sponsored 

killing or maiming of innocent people’. 

In law, nothing entitles a person to pay to kill 

another. However it is currently impossible for 

any taxpaying UK citizen to live by this principle 

without coming into conflict with the state, as 

I discovered over the next two years with court 

appearances, fines and bailiffs. 

By refusing to pay I found myself in illustrious 

company, including Henry David Thoreau, Joan 

Baez, Noam Chomsky and Gloucestershire’s 

own war tax resisters Arthur Windsor and 

Roger Franklin; two men sent to Gloucester 

Prison during the 1980’s for refusing to pay 

for nuclear weapons. Like Thoreau before 

them Windsor and Franklin maintained that in 

matters of deliberate killing personal conscience 

reigns supreme and no state can over-rule the 

individual conscience and force its citizens to pay 

to kill. By ignoring the unique personal urgency 

of the issue of the deliberate taking of human 

life - which is already conceded in the right to 

conscientious objection to military service: a right 

established exactly one hundred years ago at 

the height of the First World War in 1916 – these 

resisters held the courts to be in ‘contempt of 

conscience’. 

27 

JANUARY 2016

Since the end of World War Two the ability of 

the British state to wage war has depended 

less on abundant reserves of conscripts 

and soldiers and more on technologically 

complex and expensive weapons systems. The 

conscription of financial resources has replaced 

the conscription of human beings. With the 

astronomical costs of military preparedness 

taxpayers have become participants – 

taxpayers have become financial conscripts. 

‘It is as if we are disconnected from 

the world outside: a world of rampant, 

rapacious power and great crimes 

committed in our name by our government 

and its foreign master. Iraq is the “test 

case”, says the Bush regime, which every 

day sails closer to Mussolini’s definition 

of fascism: the merger of a militarist state 

with corporate power. Iraq is a test case 

for western liberals, too. As the suffering 

mounts in that stricken country, with Red 

Cross doctors describing incredible levels 

of civilian casualties, the choice of the next 

conquest, Syria or Iran, is debated on the 

BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue...and 

the unthinkable becomes normalized’. 

John Pilger 

In 2004, with the help of CONSCIENCE: 

THE PEACE TAX CAMPAIGN I met six other 

taxpaying citizens who were currently also 

withholding their taxes and we formed the 

Peace Tax Seven campaign. The group 

consisted of a retired teacher, an accountant, 

a doctor, a toymaker, a storyteller, a single 

mother and my self. Our aim was to obtain 

a Judicial Review for a change in the law 

so that conscientious objectors could have 

the military portion of our taxes redirected 

to peace building and conflict resolution 

initiatives. Our lawyers, led by Phil Shiner 

of Public Interest Lawyers, maintained that 

since the Human Rights Act and the right to 

freedom of conscience had been enshrined 

in British law, we had the right to translate a 

compelling conscientious objection directly 

into tax policy on this specific issue. 

Our stand took its toll on the seven of us 

and alongside individual legal proceedings, 

bailiffs, fines, possible imprisonment and 

bankruptcy we had to fundraise £50,000 to 

take this case all the way to the High Court 

for a Judicial Review. But, such was public 

outrage about the invasion of Iraq that we 

raised the money and in July 2005 – days 

after 7/7 – we appeared at the High Court in 

London.

Although the Judge found our arguments 

‘forceful’ he turned down our request for 

a Judicial Review of British tax policy. At an 

Appeal Court hearing in 2006 it became 

clear that the Judges acknowledged the 

validity of our arguments, particularly when 

three Lord Justices, while refusing permission 

for a Judicial Review, cast doubt on previous 

rulings that had previously prevented cases 

like ours moving forward. The judges 

recommended that having exhausted the 

British legal process we could take the case 

to the European Court of Human Rights. 

Papers were duly lodged with the European 

Court at Strasbourg but after a wait of three 

years the Court, cited a similar ruling twenty 

years earlier and ruled against us. 

Building a culture of peace is a difficult, 

complicated and uncertain process, 

yet it is reasonable to suggest that tax 

arrangements are one part of the political 

and civic culture which must be developed 

in peaceful directions. There is in no doubt 

that in the modern world conscientious 

objectors can fulfil all of their responsibilities 

to the community including the responsibility 

of paying for its safety and security without 

giving a penny to state sponsored killing. 

Experts in civilian and military fields stress 

the importance to national security of conflict 

prevention, civilian peace work and global 

justice in its wider sense; and those who 

insist on the right to refuse to pay to kill are 

standing up for the rights and the well-being 

of all victims of war and violence in our own 

community and across the world. 

‘If a thousand men were not to pay their 

tax-bills this year that would not be a 

violent and bloody measure, as it would 

be to pay them, and enable the State to 

commit violence and shed innocent blood’ 

Henry David Thoreau, ‘On the Duty of Civil 

Disobedience’ 

29 

JANUARY 2016

30 


JANUARY 2016 

31

Ali Ismail Abbas, 2003 

32 


Ali Ismail Abbas, born 1991, is an 

Iraqi man who drew a lot of media 

attention after being severely 

injured in a night-time aerial missile 

attack near Baghdad in 2003. The 

attack, known as ‘shock and Awe’, 

was part of the 2003 Iraq war 

commisioned by the USA, Britain 

and their allies, based of very dodgy 

information concerning weapons of 

mass destruction supposedly held by 

Saddam Hussein in Iraq (later found 

not have existed). 

During the attack, two American 

missiles landed on Ali’s family home, 

killing his parents (his mother was 

pregnant at the time), his brother 

and 13 other members of his family. 

Both Ali’s arms had to be amputated 

and third-degree burns covered 

at least 35 percent of his body. He 

was 12 years old at the time. His 

plight and terrible personal loss, all 

common fare when countries go to 

war, shocked a ‘guilty’ response and 

he underwent treatment in Kuwait, 

and later in London, where he was 

fitted with robotic prosthetic arms, 

paid for by the Kuwaiti government. 

Countries like the USA and Canada 

offered him citizenship but in 2010 

he received a British passport after 

attending Hall School, Wimbledon. 

JANUARY 2016 

33

elow: Robin Brookes, right: Brenda Boughton [members of the peace tax 7] 

34 


JANUARY 2016 

35

36 


elow: Roy Prockter, left: Birgit Völlm [members of the peace tax 7] 

37 

JANUARY 2016

38 


elow: Simon Heywood, left: Sian Cwper [members of the peace tax 7] 

39 

JANUARY 2016

Being filmed ... and right, Joe Jenkins [member of Peace Tax 7] 

40 


JANUARY 2016 

41

42 


NEWMAN 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

IN THE VICTORY 

OVER THE SUN 

El Lissitzky 

1923 

John Milner writes: 

‘El Lissitky’s New Man recalls Leonardo da 

Vinci’s Universal Man, the recurring image 

passed down from classical times, of a 

figure constructed within the square and the 

circle, representing mankind’s relation to 

geometry, the intellect, and his place in the 

universe. El Lissitzky’s New Man has legs 

and arms that are based on logarithmic 

curves, and he explodes with energy, as a 

confident sign for a new world.’ 

El Lissitzky wrote that: ‘In front of you is 

a fragment of a work that originated in 

Moscow in 1920–21. Here, as in all my 

works, my aim is not to reform something 

that already exists but to bring something 

else into existence. Nobody pays any 

attention to the magnificent spectacle of 

our streets, for each is in the play himself. 

Every bit of energy is employed for a 

specific purpose. The whole is amorphous. 

All energies must be organised into a unity, 

crystallized, and put on show. In this way a 

work is produced. It may be called a work 

of art. We are constructing a stage on a 

square, which is open and accessible. That 

is the machinery of the show. This stage 

offers the bodies in play all the possibilities 

of movement. Therefore its individual parts 

must be capable of being shifted, revolved, 

extended, and so on. It must be possible to 

change over from one elevation to another 

quickly. Everything is rib construction so that 

bodies circulating in the play will not be 

masked. The bodies themselves are each 

designed as occasion and volition demand.’ 

43 

JANUARY 2016

44 


BRIGHT LIGHTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

I REMEMBER 

An exerpt from 

Martin Taylor’s 

forthcoming book? 

I remember ... I remember a childhood 

holiday in Bude, The caravan park, my 

brother and me playing frisbee outside 

the van as night begins to fall, we are 

passing time, the time between day and 

night, waiting for Mum and Dad. They are 

sprucing themselves up as best they could in 

the cramped environs of the caravan. Bats 

were emerging into the beckoning darkness, 

chasing the frisbee as it passed between us. 

Dad stumbled out of the van, Old Spice, 

lighting a cigarette as he negotiated the two 

metal steps down into the muddy puddle at 

their foot. 

‘Bollocks!’ 

He looks down at his freshly polished shoes, 

takes a good pull on his fag and while 

reaching into the van door and pulling out 

a half drunk pint of bitter he shouts, ‘come 

on Rene, we wanna get a good seat!’ 

‘Coming!’ Mum replied, her voice slightly 

muffled by the cloud of hairspray she was 

spraying aimlessly around her general 

vicinity. 

45 

JANUARY 2016

46 

She emerged, pulling a tissue from her 

amazing handbag that contains everything 

anyone would ever need in a semiemergency, 

from packets of sugar to sewing 

needle and thread; she wiped Dads’ shoe, 

locked the door of the caravan then took his 

face in her hands and kissed him, we were, 

all three stunned; a bat swooped and we 

ran laughing down the path in anticipation 

of the somewhat predictable but always 

uncertain possibilities of the summer night 

ahead of us. We were heading for the club. 

As we arrived, like moths to a flame, so 

too did half the residents of the park. 

A battle to reserve tables by deploying 

children, handbags and coats ensued, but 

the real fight was with the men vying for a 

space at the bar. Once served they would 

parade through the tables bearing trays of 

drinks and snacks for their grateful brood 

hunkered down at their chosen vantage 

point. The evening began with bingo. 

Mum would buy 8 books, she would deal 

with 6 of them and my brother and me 

would have one each. In fact she would 

be watching all 8 books and prompting us 

to mark off numbers we had missed right 

under our noses, I still don’t know how she 

did it. 

Dad would spend this time mingling at 

the bar or the toilet, smoking fags and 

laughing. He was preparing himself for his 

part of the evening, after the bingo and 

after the drug induced performance by the 

camp reps and after the happy birthday 

song to the welsh granny in the wheelchair, 

who ‘has been visiting the holiday park 

annually for the past 40 years and never 

got bored with it, hip hip hooray!’ 

He returned to the table to enquire if 

anyone else might like a drink after the 

third game of bingo. Still no winners from 

our side of the room. Mum had another 

half of shandy before she slips into whisky 

and lemonade post-bingo mode. Dave 

and me would have a bottled Coke with a 

straw that refused to stay in the bottle and 

became a great source of entertainment 

and distraction during bingo. 

Dad stubbed his cigarette lazily in the 

ashtray, now occupied by three crisp packets 

carefully rolled and tied into knots. ( I used 

to love salt and vinegar but they’re just 

not the same anymore are they?) he was 

weighing up the possible competition, two 

more pints and the ego will be in line with 

the voice, theres a lot of Welsh here and 

competition could be tough. 


Dave was studying the patterns on the beer 

stained gaudy carpeted flooring and I was 

trying to decipher the hidden message 

along the edge of the bingo book.(do they 

still do that, have like words of wisdom or 

amazing facts printed on bingo books, or 

did I just imagine that?) something definitely 

distracted me because Mum had to take 

over my book proper by taking it and lining 

it up under her own, such intense relief. 

My mind drifted and I found myself staring 

unwittingly at a podgy girl with unruly red 

hair, what is that smell? It must have been 

minutes past before I realised I was staring 

at her and had become the laughing stock 

of her red cheeked red headed table of 

cackling siblings, dragging her into a 

humiliation she was probably accustomed 

to with three older brothers but made me 

want to disappear from sight. That smell 

again ... the ashtray was on fire, the crisp 

packet producing a toxic black smoke rising 

vertically to the ceiling ... Mum, like a bingo 

ninja, in a blur empties half her shandy into 

the ashtray quenching the fire, marks off 

three numbers and throws me a wink and a 

smile. She really is amazing ... I feel dizzy, 

drifting again

I woke naked and sweating, my heart 

pounding, breathe ... in a dim candlelit 

room, Rebel Yell blasting from a thrown 

together stereo system forming part of a 

pile of belongings occupying a corner of the 

room; bags of clothes, shoes, handbags, 

makeup, all the necessities. I fell off the 

bed, a naked form gasps beside me, I need 

a bathroom, a door approached me and 

burst open, I instinctively reached up for the 

light-switch and dragged my hand down 

the wall, I felt the water under my feet the 

moment the room lit, Looking up at the 

unshaded lightbulb, it was half full of water 

that was coming from somewhere above 

and forming a large bulge in the ceiling, 

I grabbed a toothbrush off the side of the 

sink, stood up on the toilet and plunged 

the toothbrush through the bulging ceiling 

releasing the water into the toilet bowl ... 

the noise was deafening as I spun around 

still groggy, disorientated I fell flat on my 

back on the wet bathroom floor, my head 

hit with a nauseating thump all the blood 

rushed to my brain and rang pulsating in 

my ears and eyes, the bare lightbulb burned 

down on my face ... 

‘C’mon its a nice day for a white wedding, 

its a nice day to start again!’ 

A drop of electrified water fell toward my 

face and hit my dry tongue, zoom out 

again.

‘I never did tell you about Marcus, he ...’ 

‘You told me enough about him,’ I 

interrupted ‘thats finished now,’ 

I took her hands in mine, something jolted 

in me, ‘I have so much to tell you!’ 

She looked up into my face almost 

pleading, ’What, what do you have to tell 

me?’ 

I was lost, why had I said this? 

‘I, Well I don’t know now, lets just walk, 

OK?’ 

We ambled through the grounds of a 

great house, hand in hand we were one, a 

complete creature that had been wandering 

the Earth in two halves, together the world 

became a place of constant beauty and 

wonder, everything – bug or bird or flower 

or rock – sang out its song and shone its 

own particular light around us as we glided 

through the rainbow. We stopped and 

rested under a Great Redwood, a slight 

breeze sent a few strands of her hair across 

her face, the sunlight catching them in a 

captivating shimmering dance like when 

young spiders all take to the breeze on an 

Autumn day. My eyes locked with her chalky 

blue pools, they pulled me in, my mind 

drifted to that fateful day she appeared. 

It was a sunny late August day, I sat on a 

fold up chair, reading a good novel, the 

slightest of breezes lifted the corner of the 

page, I looked up and she was there in 

front of me. She had her back to me and 

was looking intently at my pictures that were 

haphazardly arranged on the medieval 

wall, along with several other artists work, 

we were the fringe element of the annual 

arts festival and proud of not being part 

of the cheese and wine bullshit of the 

established art scene. 

I stood, laid my book down on the chair 

and ambled up beside her. Somehow, our 

fingers touched and I felt a rush of warm 

electricity run through me and felt more 

alive than ever before. I gasped, ‘Did you 

feel that?’ I asked. 

She turned her eyes towards me and smiled 

‘Yes, yes I did’ 

She looked back to the paintings and said 

’I’m only here until Christmas, then I must 

go home.’ 

I just smiled, wallowing in the electrical bliss 

that seemed to cocoon the two of us. 

I had heard it but never questioned it. I had 

never met this person in my life and am 

normally a little awkward around strangers 

but we were completely tuned in instantly, 

I had been waiting for her without even 

knowing. 

49 

JANUARY 2016

50 

Muffled noises, head throbbing, drifting 

again. Bang! bang! bang! 

‘Open the door!’ 

Bang! Bang! Bang! 

‘Wake up, wake up!’ 

I felt myself being hoisted up, the water 

pulling back but losing the battle, I gulped 

the hot moist air and slumped sputtering 

over the edge of the bath. The taps were 

running and the water cascading around 

my ears and onto the linoleum. 

The door crashed open and my Father burst 

in, lifted my head, stared into my eyes with 

a horrified stare. I blinked and sputtered 

‘I’m OK’ and we shared a weak smile. 

‘Too many late nights son’ he winked as he 

turned off the taps. 

‘I’ll put the kettle on, you better get some 

towels’ 

He turned to leave and met Mum in the 

doorway brandishing a mop and bucket. 

I clambered out of the bath, grabbing a 

towel to cover my bits as I stood. 

‘You’re a Taylor alright’ boasted Dad. 

I wiped the steam from the mirror over the 

sink with my hand and peered into it, I did 

not have time to be sure if it was me staring 

back before the mirror misted over again, 

then a question hit me; who had pulled me 

out of the water? 

I sat at the kitchen table, groggy and 

confused, Mum poured me a cup of tea 

then returned to the cooker to tend to the 

scrambled eggs she was preparing, the 

toast was in the rack already, I took a piece 

and buttered it to the edge, took a bite, it 

was noisy in my hollow head, a slurp of tea, 

heaven. Some theoretical scientist was trying 

to explain in layman’s terms that there are 

in fact at least eleven dimensions but we 

generally only experience life in three of 

them, or four if you count time. 

‘There’s only three dimensions I’m 

interested in!’ It was Pete appearing through 

the back door, 

‘... 36, 24, 36. Just in time for breakfast, 

morning Mrs. Taylor, your’e looking 

beautiful, oh sorry didn’t see you there 

Mr. T, ha ha!’ 

He sat at the table and tucked into some 

toast. ‘What happened to you last night?’ 

He asked, grinning at me. 


The Branch Secretary 

52 

Cheltenham SWP 

c/o St James Hotel 

Cheltenham 

Gloucestershire 

Britain 


unknown at 

this address

CHELTENHAM 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

SOCIALISTS 

The Cheltenham Branch of Socialist 

Workers Party existed from 1978 to 

1982, after which it amalgamated with 

the Gloucester Branch. Over this 3-4 

year period, reasonably well attended 

weekly public meetings were held, 

initially at the Russell Arms pub, then 

at the Horse & Groom community 

space, and finally, at St James Hotel. 

53 

Membership of the branch peaked at 

15, but had a constant core of 7 or 8 

dedicated comrades. Socialist Worker, 

the party’s weekly paper was sold 

on Boots Corner every saturday from 

1978 to 1986. 

A luta continua! 

JANUARY 2016

BRITISH 

54 

FOREIGN 

POLICY 


55 

‘BECAUSE ITS THE 

RIGHT THING TO DO’ 

JANUARY 2016 

DAVID CAMERON

FIBONACCI 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

GOLDEN RATIO 

The Fibonacci numbers are Nature’s 

numbering system. They appear 

everywhere in Nature, from the leaf 

arrangement in plants, to the pattern 

of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a 

pinecone, or the scales of a pineapple. 

The Golden ratio is a special number 

found by dividing a line into two parts 

so that the longer part divided by the 

smaller part is also equal to the whole 

length divided by the longer part. It is 

often symbolized using F (phi), after the 

21st letter of the Greek alphabet. 

57 

In geometry, a golden spiral is a 

logarithmic spiral whose growth factor 

is F, the golden ratio. That is, a golden 

spiral gets wider (or further from its 

origin) by a factor of F for every quarter 

turn it makes. 

JANUARY 2016

58 


CATASTROPHY 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

50 YEARS AGO 

From Wikipedia, 

and Ted Bruning 

Many people are surprised to learn how 

many air crashes or similar accidents 

involving nuclear bombs there were in 

the early years of the atomic era. The US 

Airforce and the US Navy between them 

suffered an amazing 27 between 1950 

and 1968, in which 70 aircrew were killed. 

In almost all cases the detonators of the 

bombs being carried blew up, although 

the bombs themselves didn’t. Well, you’d 

probably already know if any had ... or 

maybe not! 

‘Amongst other ships innocently sailing 

through from the Atlantic Ocean into 

the Mediterranean Sea in 1966, the MS 

Niceto de Larrinaga negotiated its way past 

Gibraltar and the southern coast of Spain 

in the second week of February. Unknown 

to me and others on board we were sailing 

through a developing nuclear incident ... 

considered by Time magazine (belatedly in 

March 2009) as one of the world’s ‘worst 

nuclear disasters’.’ Alan Rutherford. 

The 1966 Palomares B-52 crash, or 

Palomares incident, occurred on 17 January 

1966, when a B-52G bomber of the United 

States Air Force’s Strategic Air Command 

collided with a KC-135 tanker during midair 

refuelling at 31,000 feet (9,450m) 

over the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast 

of Spain. The KC-135 was completely 

destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing 

all four crew members. The B-52G broke 

apart, killing three of the seven crew 

members aboard. 

59 

JANUARY 2016

60 

The B-52G began its mission from Seymour 

Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, 

carrying four Type B28RI hydrogen bombs 

on a Cold War airborne alert mission 

named Operation Chrome Dome. The 

flight plan took the aircraft east across the 

Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea 

towards the European borders of the Soviet 

Union before returning home. The lengthy 

flight required two mid-air refuelings over 

Spain. 

At about 10:30am on 17 January 1966, 

while flying at 31,000 feet, the bomber 

commenced its second aerial refuelling 

with a KC-135 out of Morón Air Base in 

southern Spain. The B-52 pilot, Major Larry 

G. Messinger, later recalled, ‘We came 

in behind the tanker, and we were a little 

bit fast, and we started to overrun him a 

little bit. There is a procedure they have 

in refueling where if the boom operator 

feels that you’re getting too close and it’s 

a dangerous situation, he will call, “Break 

away, break away, break away.” There was 

no call for a break away, so we didn’t see 

anything dangerous about the situation. But 

all of a sudden, all hell seemed to break 

loose.’ 

The planes collided, with the nozzle of 

the refueling boom striking the top of the 

B-52 fuselage, breaking a longeron and 

snapping off the left wing, which resulted 

in an explosion that was witnessed by a 

second B-52 about a mile away. All four 

men on the KC-135 and three of the seven 

men on the bomber were killed. 

Of the four Mk28-type hydrogen bombs 

the B-52G carried, three were found 

on land near the small fishing village of 

Palomares in the municipality of Cuevas 

del Almanzora, Almería, Spain. And, of the 

three bombs located on land – within 24 

hours of the accident – the conventional 

explosives in two had exploded on impact 

without setting off a nuclear explosion (akin 

to a dirty bomb explosion). This ignited 

the pyrophoric plutonium, producing a 

cloud that was dispersed by a 30-knot 

(56km/h; 35mph) wind. A total of 2.6 

square kilometres was contaminated 

with radioactive material. This included 

residential areas, farmland (especially 

tomato farms) and woods. The third bomb 

was found relatively intact in a riverbed. The 

fourth weapon could not be found despite 

an intensive search of the area – the only 

part that was recovered was the parachute 

tail plate, leading searchers to postulate 

that the weapon’s parachute had deployed, 

and that the wind had carried it out to sea. 


The fourth bomb’s recovery would have been 

considered a farce if it weren’t such a life 

threatening tragedy: a Spanish fisherman, 

Francisco Ortis, saw where the missing bomb 

had splashed down and guided a recovery 

fleet of 26 US Navy warships to the spot. The 

bomb had rolled into a deep underwater 

trench and took 3 months to locate and 

recover: there was a rather heart-stopping 

moment when a robot submersible managed 

to tangle itself in the bomb’s parachute 

lines; on both occasions it was human divers 

who sorted out the mess. Ortiz, meanwhile, 

claimed salvage rights to the bomb and was 

awarded a very substantial but undisclosed 

out-of-court settlement. 

To defuse alarm of contamination, on 8 

March the Spanish minister for information 

and tourism Manuel Fraga Iribarne and the 

United States ambassador Angier Biddle Duke 

swam on nearby beaches in front of press. 

First the ambassador and some companions 

swam at Mojácar – a resort 15km (9 miles) 

away – and then Duke and Fraga swam at 

the Quitapellejos beach in Palomares. 

61 

JANUARY 2016

62 

Despite the cost and number of personnel 

involved in the cleanup – 6,000 250-litre 

barrels of radioactive material was shipped 

to Savannah River Plant in South Carolina 

for burial – forty years later there remained 

traces of the contamination. Snails have been 

observed with unusual levels of radioactivity. 

Additional tracts of land have also been 

appropriated for testing and further cleanup. 

The US Government subsequently paid 

out $120m in compensation to 500 local 

residents who suffered radiation sickness; 

no-one knows how many Spaniards died 

as a result but local people working on 

the clean-up operation were not issued 

with the protective gear worn by the US 

personnel engaged on the same task. 


63 

After Palomares the USAF seems to have learnt a 

lesson either about air safety or about reporting 

of nuclear incidents involving its aircraft, because 

only one such has been recorded since ... on 21 

January 1968 a B52 crashed immediately after 

take-off in appalling weather in Greenland. The 

detonators of all four bombs exploded, setting 

fire to the plane’s 35,000 gallons of fuel and 

generating such intense heat that one of the 

warheads actually melted! 

So, since 1968, what should we make of the fact 

that there has been nothing reported on nuclear 

incidents by the US armed forces ...? 

JANUARY 2016

WHITHER 

––––––––––––––– 

THE WEATHER? 

Religious bigots, climate-change deniers and venture capitalist 

arseholes have long used an assumed god-given ‘authority’ to 

recklessly and ruthlessly push through their agendas – in their 

attempt to both dominate and plunder our planet for their own 

short-term gain. A special planet, I would argue, that rather 

requires the so-called intelligent species to act as guardians of 

the earth’s precious sliver of atmosphere. An atmosphere so 

fragile that our robust pollution of it must surely be the height of 

incredible stupidity – this 18km envelope of life supporting gases 

supports the only life that we know of in an infinite universe. 

Precariously clinging to the crust of this spinning molten ball an 

ape with half a brain might have developed the chaos we now 

find ourselves in – on the brink of catastrophe. The point then, 

is to engage the brain’s other half, cooperate in the planet’s 

maintenance and, in the words of someone or other, truly make 

this a ‘heaven on earth’. 

65 

JANUARY 2016

NU R R N 

66 

U DE G OU D 


67 

Russian 1906 

SATIRICAL magazines 

Left, Admiral Dubasov 

Takes a Bath. 

STRELY number 9, cover. 

Right, SIGNALY 

number 4, cover 

JANUARY 2016

68 

REVIEW 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

WEST AFRICA 

WORD SYMBOL SONG 

EXHIBITION 

AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY 

UNTIL 16 FEBRUARY 

Dave Katz 

www.afropop.org 

There’s something of a bittersweet irony in 

the fact that the excellent exhibition West 

Africa: Word, Symbol, Song is housed here, 

because it showcases artistic aspects of 

rebellion and anticolonialism as enacted in 

this culturally rich part of the world, but it is 

all displayed at an institution that is within 

the heart of the colonial establishment 

itself. Yet, that is all the more reason to 

come and explore what is on offer here, 

and the curators have obviously given a lot 

of thought to what they would include and 

how best to display it. The range of material 

is staggering, taking in 2000 years of 

history, spread over what now constitutes 17 

different countries, with a total population of 

340 million people, where over a thousand 

different languages are spoken. Kudos are 

certainly due to Marion Wallace, curator 

of African collections at the library, and 

her team for successfully creating a space 

that does justice to the complex multitude 

of voices, visions and histories represented 

here. One could easily spend an entire 

afternoon exploring the exhibition, so when 

planning your visit, make sure to allow 

adequate time. 


JANUARY 2016 

69

70 

The entrance to the exhibition is through 

the library’s gift shop, which already makes 

it feel as though you are undergoing a 

back-to-front process of transformation to 

reach another space, a secret passage to 

another realm. Once inside the first section, 

‘Building States,’ you are confronted with 

a video loop of Sidike Diabate and his 

ensemble performing the Manding Sunjata 

epic; its timeless quality reminds that this 

region had prominent empires that stretch 

back at least 2500 years. A bit further 

along, we’re given a chart that breaks 

down the wheres and whens of the imperial 

equation, with the Ife and Benin kingdoms 

rubbing shoulders with the Wolof, Asante 

and Oyo empires, and the Sokoto caliphate 

established at the tail end of the slave trade. 

There are troubling reminders of the trade 

itself too, in the form of slave trader Jean 

Barbot’s 1678 text, Journal of A Voyage 

to Guinea, but we’re also treated to some 

incredible artifacts, such as a 120-year-old 

sheet-brass box from Ghana, which clearly 

shows the figure of Anansi on it, as well 

as some protective amulets of the Quadri 

Sufi order. There are also some massive 

atumpan drums from Ghana, used to 

deliver the king’s messages to the people, 

which anthropologist Robert Sutherland 

Rattray recorded one Kofi Jatto playing on a 

field trip in 1921. 


Griot Soussou, a griot (musician and 

storyteller) with his kora. Photograph by 

Edmond Fortier, a French photographer 

who spent nearly 30 years working in 

West Africa

Moving into a section labeled ‘Spirit,’ 

there is diverse representation of the spirit 

world and matters of faith, including an 

Ifa divination board from the 1850s, 

a film clip of a Gelede masquerade, 

and a noteworthy masquerade book by 

ethnologist Leo Frobenius, as well as Peggy 

Harper’s evocative photographs taken in 

the ’60s and ’70s. An extensive section on 

Islam shows its presence in Mali in the 13th 

century, with a Nigerian Koran of the 18th 

century also on display, and photographs 

of koranic boards emphasizing the 

faith’s regional importance. This is nicely 

contrasted by a section on Christianity, 

which is present in the region from the 

15th century, but does not take hold until 

the 19th century, and another surprise 

comes when we learn that missionaries 

from Jamaica traveled to the region to 

proselytize, translating the Bible into local 

languages. Thus, we have the first Yoruba 

Bible from 1850, and from 1811, a Bible in 

Arabic from what is now Senegal. 

71 

A qu’ran written by Ayuba Suleiman Diallo featuring his portrait, 1734. 

JANUARY 2016

72 

In the ‘Crossings’ section, the strange tale 

of Catherine Mulgrave Zimmermann also 

reminds of indelible links between this 

part of the world and the Caribbean: she 

was born in 1820 in what is now Angola, 

enslaved and sent to Jamaica (where she 

was raised a Christian in the home of the 

governor of the West Indies), but made her 

way to Ghana in 1842 as an emancipated 

woman, where she married Johannes 

Zimmermann, a missionary from Basel. 

There is also Ottobah Cugoano, taken from 

what is now Ghana in 1770 as a 13-yearold 

slave to toil in Grenada and thence to 

England, where he obtained his freedom 

and became active in the abolitionist 

movement. We learn of Ignatius Sancho, the 

first black Briton to vote in a British election, 

and Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (A.K.A. Job 

ben Solomon), a nobleman from Bundu 

in modern Senegal, who was shipped to 

Maryland after being enslaved by Mandingo 

traders, but who eventually gained his 

freedom, writing a Koran from memory and 

later having his memoirs published. 

Musical items allow us to better appreciate 

the many African elements that influenced 

cultures across the Atlantic in this section. 

The African origin of the banjo, in the form 

of the akonting lute of the Jola people, 

serves as a precursor to blues music and 

bluegrass, and we can hear parallels of Ali 

Farka Toure and John Lee Hooker’s work on 

audio clips. 

But part of the point of ‘Crossings’ is that 

the traffic was not only one-way, so we 

have a Jamaican gumbe drum, which was 

introduced to Sierra Leone in 1800 by 

repatriated Jamaican Maroons, becoming 

firmly entrenched in local musical culture, 

and Bob Marley’s work is contrasted by 

that of Alpha Blondy, the Ivorian performer 

clearly influenced by Marley and his peers. 

We are introduced to candomble and 

yemenja as cultural and spiritual practices 

that survived the Middle Passage, and a 

section on Carnival culture emphasizes that 

African-Caribbean cultural elements have 

gone on to make a huge impact in Britain. 

Since the overall focus is on West Africa, 

such elements could easily have been 

overlooked, and thankfully the inclusion of 

one of Ray Mahabir’s costumes, along with 

film and audio clips, reminds of Carnival’s 

vibrant and dazzling appeal. 


Moving up to the ‘Speaking Out’ section, 

which looks at dissent in the late colonial 

era, there are iconic books by figures 

involved in African freedom struggles, 

such as Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Sedar 

Senghor, Sekou Toure and Amilcar Cabral, 

as well as a prison letter from Ken Saro- 

Wiwa. There is a stunning 1968 painting 

by the Nigerian artist, Prince Twins Seven 

Seven, and some lovely Bembeya Jazz 

and Syliphone LPs from Guinea. Then we 

reach the Fela room, a fitting tribute to the 

maverick Afrobeat pioneer who put his 

life on the line by perpetually challenging 

Nigeria’s corrupt political leaders, with eight 

of his albums prominently displayed, along 

with a castigating letter he wrote to military 

dictator Ibrahim Babangida in 1989. Oddly, 

the film clip displayed is from the recent 

Finding Fela, a behind-the-scenes look at 

the Fela musical; there are more pertinent 

film sources to draw from out there, so I’m 

not sure where Finding Fela features, but no 

doubt there was a practical reason behind 

the choice of footage. There is also a 1954 

pamphlet on woman’s rights, written by 

Fela’s mother, Funmilayo; nearby, clips 

of Rokia Traore performing ‘Manian’ and 

Oumou Sangare singing ‘Dugu Kamalenga’ 

remind that African female artists continue 

to strive for gender equality in the region. 

The section labeled ‘Symbol’ has some of 

the most fascinating material of the entire 

exhibition. We are shown the 2000-year-old 

Tuareg Tifinagh alphabet, some cowrie-shell 

letters from 1888, the Vai alphabet from the 

same period, and the Bamum or Shumom 

secret script from colonial Cameroon of 

the 1930s. We learn that the figure of a 

crocodile can have many meanings, with 

the example of a two-headed crocodile 

from Ghana denoting either conflict or 

collaboration. We are reminded of ways 

in which drums can talk, and that whistles 

and horns may also convey messages, and 

along with examples of millet-pounding 

songs, we see some hilarious-looking 

Nigerian and Ghanaian pamphlet texts, 

such as Life Turns Man Up and Down. A 

section of beautiful Ghanaian cloths also 

hold hidden meanings, with an eye-studded 

design apparently denoting the proverb, 

‘Your eyes can see what your mouth cannot 

say,’ meaning that not every topic is fit for 

discussion in public. There is cloth depicting 

the Ghana Guinea Worm Eradication 

Programme of 1989, and some lovely Aso 

Oke wedding cloth, as well as another that 

symbolically states, ‘Ask questions before 

you marry.’ 

73 

JANUARY 2016

74 

Then we head into the pertinent ‘Story Now’ 

section, looking at the post-independence 

period. Here we find Senegal’s Leopold 

Sedar Senghor collaborating with Marc 

Chagall in 1973 (following Chagall’s 1971 

Dakar exhibition), and the Atoka photoplay 

magazine, produced in Nigeria in the 

1970s. There is a fantastic aluminium relief 

by Asiru Olatunde from 1968, showing 

the legend of the Igbo raid on Moremi, 

and there is footage of Chinua Achebe 

speaking at the ICA in 1986, as well as his 

letter to Jamaican novelist Andrew Salkey, 

and a commemorative cloth of Achebe’s 

literary landmark, Things Fall Apart. Other 

prominent post-colonial authors included in 

this section are Ama Ata Aidoo, Ousmane 

Sembene and Wole Soyinka, while the role 

of the Mbari Mbayo Club and its magazine, 

Black Orpheus, in stimulating the Nigerian 

literature of the pre- and post-independence 

periods is also featured. 

Past a circular hut that forms a kind of 

communal reading space, there’s a final 

section on the present and future of the 

region too, with some shocking Nollywood 

posters for films like My Virginity, My 

Pride, and clips of contemporary authors 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Sefi Atta and 

Lanrewaju Adepoju reading their work. 


When you find yourself back in the book 

shop, the most obvious thing to do is obtain a 

copy of the companion photo book produced 

for the exhibition, edited by Gus Casely- 

Hayford, Janet Topp Fargion and Marion 

Wallace. The book teases out the themes 

explored in the exhibition, providing much 

cultural and historical context behind what is 

on display. Though always kept accessible for 

the general reader, the book provides a lot 

of further food for thought, and I particularly 

enjoyed Insa Nolte’s chapter on religion; 

the chapter on the trans-Atlantic crossings 

of word and music by Fargion, Wallace and 

Lucy Duran; and Casely-Hayford’s opening 

chapter on West Africa in precolonial times. 

West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song, succeeds 

partly because it is so full of surprises. It 

offers different ways of thinking about the 

region’s history, evolution and popular 

culture, yet leaves room for the audience to 

draw their own conclusions. Exhibitions on 

Africa are typically somewhat uncommon 

and ones of such wide scope far less so; 

related events, such as the Felabration 

Afrobeat night staged to coincide with the 

exhibit’s extended opening hours, also 

makes clear that the viewpoint is not an 

elitist one. The exhibit, at the British Library, 

London, until 16 February 2016, is a mustsee 

for anyone who has the opportunity to 

experience it. 

Fela Kuti album cover, Sorrow Tears and Blood

JANUARY 2016 

75

76 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Words fail me, what is the use of words when 

the person you are saying them to is unable to 

grasp your, and their, meaning? 

Worryingly, we are heading down that irrational 

road again, the one where stupidity reigns, 

where basic facts and knowledge acquired over 

time are being replaced by entrenched banal 

myths, hearsay and superstition. The probability 

that this age-old fudge of complacency and 

mad spouters will be defended to the death 

before reason can be accepted again (if ever) 

is terrifying. For evidence of this I direct your 

(giggling now) attention to Donald Trump 

and his campaign to become US President. 

As Britain’s government is a happy satellite of 

US mischief in the world ... and a blindly loyal 

follower of US foreign policy, what will our 

government do if Trump suceeds and begins his 

Term of Ignorance? 

77 


JANUARY 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

SE EN 

FEBRUARY 2016 7 

REDS 

UNDER 

BEDS


The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 





Cover artwork: Alan Rutherford 

Photographs and artwork sourced 

from found, no intentional 

copyright infringement intended, 

so, for treading on any toes ... 

apologies all round! 




next month, in your dreams! 



Opening 03 

Untitled Poem 1 04 

On Satire 06 

America’s Pimple 09 

Colonies of Empire 20 

Endi Poskovic 22 

Carbon Copy 25 

Gin Lane 31 

Spain 1936 32 

Untitled: William Kentridge 35 

The Circulus 29 

Anarchists 41 

Underground 42 

A Boyle On All Your Bums 45 

Brit Expats Sent Home 46 

Untitled Poem 2 48 

Just another short Story 51 

Letters 61 

1 

FEBRUARY 2016

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 


A piece about us all being carbon atoms 

comes from a re-reading of the final 

chapter in Primo Levi’s excellent ‘The 

Periodic Table’ ... but does not actually 

mention it? Coca-Cola suffers with other 

companies willing to work with and 

champion the devil, its a ‘just so you know’ 

piece to remind you of ‘Holocaust Day’ on 

the 27 January. 

Martin Taylor helpfully slips in 2 untitled 

poems, and I have had fun nursing a sick 

mac through the process ... half-inching 

images from my scrapbook, giving credit if 

known ... too much coffee, twitchy! 


3 

FEBRUARY 2016

4 

New romantic 

New Labour 

New World Order 

Brand new flavour 

Drink your Coke 

Eat your fries 

Ask no questions 

Tell no lies 

Go to work 

To buy more stuff 

Pay your taxes 

Drink your Duff 

Believe in God 

Walk with Jesus 

Be good because 

You know he sees us 

Wave your flag 

Honour your dead 

Remember what your 

Teacher said 

We are right 


They are wrong 

Lets join together 

With a song 

Learn your history 

As we tell it 

Give us a “like” 

And help us sell it 

Strip the earth 

Pollute the air 

You’ll be dead soon 

Why should you care 

If you doubt this 

World we live in 

I suggest you 

Never give in 

Eat your greens 

Drive your Prius 

Hope the Martians 

Come to free us 

• 

Martin Taylor 

5 

FEBRUARY 2016

6 


7 

Nobody is doing what Joe Sacco is doing; 

the writer-artist has visited some of the world’s 

worst war zones and not merely written movingly 

about them but carefully drawn them, as well. 

The effect is transporting – Sacco drags readers 

into war-torn Bosnia and gives them both a 

sense of place and a sense of urgency, and like 

the best journalists, he’s got an eye for the rich, 

contradictory, infuriating people who can make 

you care about something you ought to care 

about. 

He is best known for his comics journalism, in 

particular in the books Palestine (1996) and 

Footnotes in Gaza (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian 

relations; and Safe Area Goražde (2000) and 

The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War. 

In addition to his 1996 American Book Award, 

2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, and 2001 

Eisner Award, Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza 

was nominated for the 2009 Los Angeles Times 

Book Prize Graphic Novel award, was awarded 

the 2010 Ridenhour Book Prize and the 2012 

Oregon Book Award ... and awarded the 2014 

Oregon Book Award Finalist for Journalism. 

FEBRUARY 2016

REVEALED 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

AMERICA’S 

PIMPLE 

information correlated from 

Mark Thomas on Coca Cola 

www.diggerhistory.info 

www.killercoke.org 

www.11points.com 

An early taste-bud thrill for me as a child 

was my first bottle of Coke, I think it 

was bought for a thirsty-me in a store in 

Durban, South Africa around xmas time, 

the iconic bottle hoisted out wet from its 

large red freezer box and opened at the 

bottle-opener that was a fixture on the 

side of Coca-Cola freezer cabinets. The 

whole experience was wonderful, that 

smokey vapour fizzing from the bottle as 

the cap flew off and landed in its small 

box below the opener, the foaming inside 

threatening to waste, so quickly then, the 

first few glugs which burnt the throat so 

pleasurably, followed by the belch which 

came from deep ... its only failing was 

that there never seemed enough in the 

bottle and that it did not quench my thirst. 

9 

FEBRUARY 2016

10 

Later in life, in my trampship travels visiting 

faraway places, there was always comforting 

Coca-Cola refreshing those childhood 

belches and still leaving me thirsty. 

A campaign by comedian/activist Mark 

Thomas in 2004 to highlight Coca- 

Cola’s poor human rights record in South 

America where trade union activists at 

Coke bottling plants were victimised, some 

losing their lives mysteriously ... made 

me reconsider my attachment to Coke ... 

and feel the loss of a childhood friend. 

That Coca-Cola is a successful monster 

company of capitalism is not in doubt, but 

that it takes its monster image seriously is 

another thing, sinuating its phoney brand 

of american consumerism worldwide. 

Coca-Cola, according to www.killercoke. 

org, is: complicit in the murders of 

trade union leaders in Columbia and 

Guatemala; guilty of cheating workers 

and the government of Mexico out 

of hundreds of millions of dollars; is 

involved in trade union busting schemes 

throughout the world; has a history of 

racial discrimination in the US; is involved 

in depleting and polluting water resources 

in Asia, Africa, Latin America and 

wherever there is a Coke bottling plant; 

aggressively marketing harmful beverages 

to the world’s children; benefiting from 

hazardous child labour in El Salvador; 

guilty of tax evasion ... 

To find that during World War Two Coca- 

Cola played for both teams is no surprise, 

for while it was obviously the drink of 

choice for American forces ... to find it 

equally popular with the Nazis should be 

surprising, but for some reason is not. 

In his campaign to expose Coca-Cola, 

Mark Thomas asked artists to supply 

spoof Coke/Nazi posters to be displayed 

at exhibitions he organised to highlight 

Coca-Cola‘s murky past (see opposite) 

Coca-Cola (GmbH) were the German 

bottlers for Coke under the leadership of 

the CEO Max Keith (pronounced Kite). 

Coke sponsored the 1936 Nazi Olympics 

where Hitler showcased his Aryan vision to 

the world, while hiding the ‘Don’t shop at 

Jewish shops’ posters. 

Coca-Cola GmbH sought to be associated 

with the Nazis, it became a bit of a joke 

that if Hitler or a high ranking Nazi was 

on the front cover of a magazine Coke 

would advertise on the back. Coke 

advertised on billboards that were by 

the Berlin stadiums, so people attending 

Goebbel’s rallies had to walk past them. 


exhibited artwork: Alan Rutherford 

We’d like to 

teach das weld 

to sing in 

perfect 

harmony

12 

Coke financially supported the Nazis by 

placing advertising with Nazi newspapers 

and, in one instance, Coke published 

denials to accusations from rival bottlers that 

they were a Jewish company. . 

After the Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland 

Coke advertised in the Nazi Army paper with 

a picture of a hand holding a bottle of coke 

over a map of the world, the slogan was ‘Yes 

we have got an international reputation.’ 

Coke opened up a bottling plant in the 

Sudetenland shortly after the invasion. 

From Mark Prendergrast’s book, For God, 

Country and Coca-Cola we have, ‘Later 

in the war, Keith used Chinese labour and 

‘people who would come from anywhere 

in Europe – the war brought them from 

everywhere.’ For Keith to say blandly that 

‘the war brought them’ implies that they 

were willing refugees, which is somewhat 

misleading. In fact, the wartime railroads 

not only carried Jews, Gypsies and others 

to concentration camps, but some 9 million 

Fremdarbeiter, or forced foreign labour, who 

accounted for a fifth of the German labour 

force by 1944. Coke nearly certainly used 

forced labour. Note: Coca-Cola in the US 

have paid into a fund for the compensation 

of people who were forced to work for the 

Nazis. 

As Max Keith’s supplies of Coke dwindled 

in 1941 he gave his last batches to Nazi 

soldiers. And after the US entered the war 

in 1941, when he couldn’t get Coca-Cola 

syrup from America to make Coke, he 

invented ‘Fanta’ out of the ingredients he 

had available to him. Fanta was made 

specifically for the Nazi market and the 

Third Reich. This new soda was often made 

from the leftovers of other food industries: 

whey (a cheese by-product) and apple 

fibre from cider presses found their way 

into the drink. The choice of fruits used 

in the formulation depended on what 

was available at the time. In its earliest 

incarnations, the drink was sweetened with 

saccharin, but by 1941 its concocters were 

permitted to use 3.5 percent beet sugar, and 

in 1943 alone Coca-Cola GmbH sold 3 

million cases of Fanta in the Nazi empire. 

Mark Prendergrast writes, ‘In March of 

1938, as Hitler’s troops stormed across the 

Austrian border in the Anschluss, Max Keith 

convened the ninth annual concessionaire 

convention, with 1,500 people in 

attendance. Behind the main table, a huge 

banner proclaimed in German, “Coca- 

Cola is the world-famous trademark for 

the unique product of Coca-Cola GmbH” 

Directly below, three gigantic swastikas 

stood out, black on red. At the main table, 


Max Keith sat surrounded by his deputies, 

another swastika draped in front of him 

... The meeting closed with a ceremonial 

pledge to Coca-Cola and a ringing threefold 

“Seig Heil” to Hitler.’ 

At another convention Mark Prendergrast 

notes ‘Then Keith ordered a mass Sieg- 

Heil for Hitler’s recent fiftieth birthday, to 

commemorate our deepest admiration and 

gratitude for our Fuhrer who has led our 

nation into a brilliant higher sphere.’ 

At the Reich ‘Schaffendes Volk’ (Working 

People) Exhibition celebrating the German 

worker under Hitler, Prendergrast describes 

‘A functioning bottling plant, with a 

miniature train carting Kinder beneath, 

bottled Coca-Cola at the very centre of the 

fair, adjacent to the Propaganda Office. 

Touring the Dusseldorf fair, Hermann 

Goering paused for a Coke, and an alert 

Company photographer snapped a picture. 

Though no such picture documented the 

Fuhrer’s tastes, Hitler reputedly enjoyed 

Coca-Cola too, sipping the Atlanta drink 

as he watched Gone With The Wind in his 

private theatre.’ 

Coke sales in Nazi Germany 1934 – 

243,000 cases. 1936 – 1 million cases. 

1939 – almost 4 and a half million cases. 

After the War Coca-Cola ruthlessly 

consolidated its position as one of the most 

iconic brands of both the 20th and 21st 

centuries. Promoting itself as the drink of 

freedom, choice and US patriotism, the 

company’s feel-good factor is recognised 

worldwide and reflected in its enormous 

profits. In its betrayal of its professed 

ideals, Coke was just the tip of an iceberg, 

for whilst people were being encouraged 

to fight and die waging a noble and just 

war against the fascist Nazis, big business 

just went on with big business ... By their 

enthusiastic and treasonous support of this 

grotesque tyrany they helped give it birth 

and then prolonged the suffering and agony 

of the Nazis victims ... 

Now, just so you know, from Sam 

Greenspan at www.11points.com, see the 

following roll-call of shame. During World 

War Two, Kodak’s German branch 

used slave labourers from concentration 

camps. Several of their other European 

branches did heavy business with the Nazi 

government. And Wilhelm Keppler, one 

of Hitler’s top economic advisers, had 

deep ties in Kodak. When Nazism began, 

Keppler advised Kodak and several 

other U.S. companies that they’d benefit 

by firing all of their Jewish employees. 

(Source: The Nation) 

13 

FEBRUARY 2016

14 

In the 1930s, Hugo Boss started 

making Nazi uniforms. The reason: 

Hugo Boss himself had joined the Nazi 

party, and got a contract to make the 

Hitler Youth, storm trooper and SS 

uniforms. That was a huge boon for 

Hugo Boss ... he got the contract just 

eight years after founding his company 

... and that infusion of business helped 

take the company to another level. The 

Nazi uniform manufacturing went so 

well that Hugo Boss ended up needing 

to bring in slave labourers in Poland 

and France to help out at the factory. 

In 1997, Hugo’s son, Siegfried Boss, 

told an Austrian news magazine, ‘Of 

course my father belonged to the Nazi 

party. But who didn’t belong back then?’ 

(Source: New York Times) 

Ferdinand Porsche, the man behind 

Volkswagen and Porsche, met with 

Hitler in 1934, to discuss the creation 

of a ‘people’s car.’ (That’s the English 

translation of Volkswagen.) Hitler 

told Porsche to make the car with a 

streamlined shape, ‘like a beetle.’ And 

that’s the genesis of the Volkswagen 

Beetle... it wasn’t just designed for 

the Nazis, Hitler NAMED it. During 

World War Two, it’s believed that as 

many as four out of every five workers 

at Volkswagen’s plants were slave 

labourers. Ferdinand Porsche even had 

a direct connection to Heinrich Himmler, 

one of the leaders of the SS, to directly 

request slaves from Auschwitz. (Source: 

The Straight Dope) 

Bayer. During the Holocaust, a 

German company called IG Farben 

manufactured the Zyklon B gas used 

in the Nazi gas chambers. They also 

funded and helped with Josef Mengele’s 

‘experiments’ on concentration camp 

prisoners. IG Farben is the company 

that turned the single largest profit from 

work with the Nazis. After the War, the 

company was broken up. Bayer was one 

of its divisions, and went on to become 

its own company. Oh ... and aspirin was 

founded by a Bayer employee, Arthur 

Eichengrun. But Eichengrun was Jewish, 

and Bayer didn’t want to admit that 

a Jewish guy created the one product 

that keeps their company in business. 

So, to this day, Bayer officially gives 

credit to Felix Hoffman, a nice Aryan 

man, for inventing aspirin. (Source: 

Alliance for Human Research Protection, 

Pharmaceutical Achievers) 


Siemens took slave labourers during the 

Holocaust and had them help construct 

the gas chambers that would kill them 

and their families. Siemens also has the 

single biggest post-Holocaust moment of 

insensitivity of any of the companies on 

this list. In 2001, they tried to trademark 

the word ‘Zyklon’ (which means ‘cyclone’ 

in German) to become the name a new 

line of products ... including a line of gas 

ovens. Zyklon is the name of the poison 

gas used in Nazi gas chambers during 

the Holocaust. A week later, after several 

watchdog groups appropriately freaked 

out, Siemens withdrew the application. 

They said they never drew the connection 

between the Zyklon B gas used during the 

Holocaust and their proposed Zyklon line 

of products. (Source: BBC) 

Henry Ford is a pretty legendary anti- 

Semite, so this makes sense. He was 

Hitler’s most famous foreign backer. On 

his 75th birthday, in 1938, Ford received 

a Nazi medal, designed for ‘distinguished 

foreigners.’ He profiteered off both sides 

of the War – he was producing vehicles for 

the Nazis AND for the Allies. 

Standard Oil (shareholders included 

Rockerfellers and IG Farben) The Luftwaffe 

needed tetraethyl lead gas in order to 

get their planes off the ground. Standard 

Oil was one of only three companies 

that could manufacture that type of fuel. 

From Ethyl, a Standard subsidiary, 15 

million dollars worth of Tetraethyl lead 

was sold to the Nazis in 1939. Without 

this, the German air force could never 

have got their planes off the ground. 

When Standard Oil was dissolved as a 

monopoly, it led to ExxonMobil, Chevron 

and BP, all of which are still around today. 

(Source: MIT’s Thistle) 

A lot of banks sided with the Nazis during 

World War Two. Chase is the most 

prominent. They froze European Jewish 

customers’ accounts and were extremely 

cooperative in providing banking service 

to Germany. (Source: New York Times) 

IBM custom-build machines for the Nazis 

that they could use to track everything... 

from oil supplies to train schedules into 

death camps to Jewish bank accounts to 

individual Holocaust victims themselves. 

In September of 1939, when Germany 

invaded Poland, the ‘New York Times’ 

reported that three million Jews were 

going to be ‘immediately removed’ 

from Poland and were likely going to 

be ‘exterminat[ed].’ IBM’s reaction? An 

internal memo saying that, due to that 

15 

FEBRUARY 2016

16 

‘situation’, they really needed to step up 

production on high-speed alphabetizing 

equipment. (Source: CNet) 

Random House publishing. Random 

House’s parent company, Bertelsmann 

A.G., worked for the Nazis ... they 

published Hitler propaganda, and a book 

called ‘Sterilization and Euthanasia: A 

Contribution to Applied Christian Ethics’. 

Bertelsmann still owns and operates 

several companies. I picked Random 

House because they drew controversy in 

1997 when they decided to expand the 

definition of Nazi in Webster’s Dictionary. 

Eleven years ago, they added the 

colloquial, softened definition of ‘a person 

who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to 

control a specified activity, practice, etc.’ 

(Think ‘Soup Nazi’.) The Anti-Defamation 

League called that expanded definition 

offensive... especially when added by 

a company with Nazi ties... they said 

it, quote, ‘trivializes and denies the 

murderous intent and actions of the Nazi 

regime... it also cheapens the language by 

allowing people to reach for a quick word 

fix... [and] lends a helping hand to those 

whose aim is to prove that the Nazis were 

really not such terrible people.’ (Source: 

New York Observer, ADL) 

And I leave you with this summation 

by Alfred Sloan, president of General 

Motors, the US-based multinational, on 

the out break of the Second World War. 

‘We are too big to be incovenienced by 

these pitiful international squabbles.’ 

Throughout the war Sloan remained on 

the board of General Motors’ German 

subsidiary, maintaining financial links 

through JP Morgan to the Opel branch 

of General Motors which was a major 

truck manufacturer for the German army 

during World War Two. 

27 January 1945: The Red Army 

liberated the Nazi’s biggest 

concentration camp at Auschwitz in 

Southern Poland. 

27 JANUARY 


Photograph: Auschwitz, May 1944, 

photograph taken by a fucking nazi 

17 

– INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBERANCE DAY 

FEBRUARY 2016

20 

EXPLOITED 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

COLONIES OF 

EMPIRE 

From the 16th century onwards, a number 

of European powers competed with each 

other to establish colonies in distant parts 

of the world – largely in order to control 

the profitable trade in raw materials and to 

provide new markets for their manufactured 

goods – exploitation. By the 19th century, 

inspired by a mixture of religion and rank 

racism, colonialists had developed an 

‘imperial’ ethos, with the high moral purpose 

of bringing what they saw as the advantages 

of Western civilisation to their ‘primitive’ 

colonial subjects. Barely disguised under 

this veneer, however, ‘grubby’ commercial 

interests played a crucial role – exploitation. 

Any plan to keep matters as they were 

backfired when exposure to Western values 

of democracy and equality led the educated 

elites in the colonised countries to question 

the right of the imperial powers to ‘lord 

it’ over them. – giving rise to nationalist 

movements and a slow and sometimes 

violent process of decolonization in the 

second half of the 20th century. 

Many now agree that political imperialism 

as an aid to exploitation, has merely been 

replaced by economic imperialism ... and 

that the exploited still languish in penury. 


$ 

£ 

21 

¥ 

€ 

FEBRUARY 2016

Endi Poskovic 

... the juxtapositioning of phrases, 

rational and absurd, with abstract 

images evoking ideas suggested by 

memory ... 

22 

‘Poskovic’s relief-printing method 

involves the use of around four 

individual blocks. The first three are 

inked with a blend of colours, overlaid 

to make the vivid and vibrant sunset 

and skyline-like imagery typical of 

his work. One final end block, which 

contains the main graphic and text, 

will be printed in black on top to 

complete the image.’ 

Caspar Williamson. 


FEBRUARY 2016 

23

long-dead stars. 

where the other building blocks of the universe come from they 

have formulated an answer ... they were assembled in the hearts of 

existed, hydrogen and helium. There was no oxygen or carbon and 

therefore no possibility of life anywhere in the cosmos. To explain 

Those that delve into things like this say, that when the universe 

began, almost 14 billion years ago, only two of the basic elements 

make salt, and so on. 

Everything else is also made up of combinations of elements, such 

as hydrogen and oxygen bind to form water, sodium and chlorine 

Others, like phosphorous, potassium, sulphur, sodium and 

chlorine, occur in very small quantities but are essential for life. 

different ways. Most of our body is built out of just five of them – 

oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium. 

Every human being on the planet is made out of around 60 

chemical elements, basic building blocks assembled in millions of 

R E I N C A R N A T I O N H U H ? 

CARBON COPY 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

24 


CARBON COPY 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

R E I N C A R N A T I O N H U H ? 

Every human being on the planet is made out of around 60 

chemical elements, basic building blocks assembled in millions of 

different ways. Most of our body is built out of just five of them – 

oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and calcium. 

Others, like phosphorous, potassium, sulphur, sodium and 

chlorine, occur in very small quantities but are essential for life. 

Everything else is also made up of combinations of elements, such 

as hydrogen and oxygen bind to form water, sodium and chlorine 

make salt, and so on. 

25 

Those that delve into things like this say, that when the universe 

began, almost 14 billion years ago, only two of the basic elements 

existed, hydrogen and helium. There was no oxygen or carbon and 

therefore no possibility of life anywhere in the cosmos. To explain 

where the other building blocks of the universe come from they 

have formulated an answer ... they were assembled in the hearts of 

long-dead stars. 

FEBRUARY 2016

26 

Most of the stars in the sky, including 

our sun, shine by turning hydrogen 

into helium, the process releases vast 

amounts of energy ... for instance, 

the sun converts 600 million tonnes of 

hydrogen into helium every second. That 

is a million times more energy than the 

United States uses in a year. Of course, 

this process can’t go on forever because, 

even though the sun is so vast that you 

could fit a million Earths inside, 600 

million tonnes is a lot of hydrogen and 

eventually, the sun will run out of fuel 

and begin to collapse under its own 

immense gravity. 

Some perspective needed here to 

reassure ... our sun has enough 

hydrogen in its core to shine for at 

least another 5,000 million years, but 

eventually, like everything, our sun 

will die. And as any dying star begins 

to collapse, its core will heat up to 

unimaginable temperatures ... the 

temperature at the heart of our sun is 

currently around 15 million degrees 

Celsius, but when it eventually begins 

to collapse its temperature will rise to 

more than 100 million degrees. When 

this happens, the helium in its core will 

begin to fuse together to form beryllium, 

oxygen and carbon. It is this process of 

a dying star that is the origin of all the 

carbon and oxygen in the universe. 

And theres more ... really massive stars 

in the universe continue, as they die, 

sticking oxygen and carbon together to 

make all the chemical elements up to 

iron. 

Brian Cox says, ‘We know this because 

we can see it happening in the sky 

today. Next time the sky is clear, have 

a look for the constellation of Orion. If 

you look carefully, you’ll see that the star 

at the top left-hand corner glows a pale 

red colour. This star is called Betelgeuse 

(often pronounced “beetle-juice”), and 

it is frantically building heavier elements 

in a last desperate battle against gravity. 

In the process, it has swollen into a true 

giant. If you put Betelgeuse in the same 

position as the Sun in our solar system, 

it would completely engulf all the planets 

out to Jupiter. Eventually, even stars as 

enormous as Betelgeuse must run out of 

their nuclear fuel and then gravity will 

take over once more, forcing the star 

to collapse catastrophically. For these 

most massive of stars, the final collapse 

gives rise to one of the rarest and most 

spectacular sights in the universe – a 

supernova explosion.’ 


Professor Cox gives an example of a 

supernova, ‘A thousand years ago, 

a great civilization existed in Chaco 

Canyon, New Mexico. The Chacoans 

were avid stargazers and built vast 700- 

room mansions aligned with the sun, 

moon and stars. On the night of July 4, 

1054AD, the Chacoan astronomers saw 

for themselves what happens when a 

star like Betelgeuse finally loses its fight 

against gravity. A new star appeared 

in the clear, dark skies of New Mexico, 

shining as brightly as the moon for 

several weeks before gradually fading 

from view. We now know they had 

witnessed a supernova explosion that 

happened 6,000 light years from Earth 

– relatively close by cosmic standards. In 

a single instant, the dying star emitted 

more energy than our sun will emit 

in its entire lifetime, casting shadows 

on the distant Earth. The Chacoans 

documented the explosion in a painting 

that still exists on an overhanging ledge 

in the canyon. It depicts the crescent 

moon, a handprint pointing to the 

place in the sky where the supernova 

happened, and a brightly glowing new 

star beside the moon. We know so 

much about this explosion because we 

can still see its remains today. In the 

place in the sky where the star once 

shone, there is now a brightly coloured 

cloud of interstellar gas known as the 

Crab Nebula. This cloud is filled with 

the chemical elements that the star 

produced in its lifetime, including the 

carbon, oxygen and iron vital for life.’ 

Not sure if you remember something 

from a previous issue of ‘Sheep in the 

Road’ where a question of why gold is 

considered so valuable arose ... hmmm, 

well Cox goes on about that too ... 

‘The assembly of the heavier elements 

in the cores of stars stops with iron, 

element No.26. Stars cannot in the 

normal course of their lives build 

anything heavier than iron because this 

process does not release energy and 

does not help the star in its fight against 

gravity. So, if you are wearing a gold 

wedding ring or gold jewellery, look at 

it now. Gold is heavier than iron, so it is 

not made in the hearts of stars.’ 

So where did gold come from? Cox says 

that gold is made in the last seconds in 

the lives of the most massive stars in the 

universe, the supernova explosions. 

‘Gold is so rare because the conditions 

needed to make it are rare. On average, 

in a galaxy of a 100,000 million 

27 

FEBRUARY 2016

28 

stars, there will only be one supernova 

explosion per century, and the explosion 

itself is only hot enough to make gold 

for about a minute. In our topsy-turvey 

world rare equals valuable. Throughout 

the whole of human history, we have 

only discovered enough gold on Earth to 

fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools 

(gulp). 

OK, now back to the story of the origin 

of the chemical building blocks of 

human beings ... our ingredients were 

cooked in the hearts of ancient suns, 

thrown out into the universe at their 

deaths and eventually brought back 

together by the relentless pull of gravity 

over billions of years to form our solar 

system. The elements we constitute 

were forged at the moment of these 

magnificent stellar deaths, new life born 

from the ashes of old. We are part of a 

vast cycle of cosmic death and rebirth, 

and when we die, the elements that 

make up our bodies will be returned to 

the universe to begin the cycle again. 

What a wonderful thing to be part of 

this universe, and what a story. What a 

majestic story ... of carbon recycling ... 

HIGHWAYMAN 

I was a highwayman 

Along the coach roads I did ride 

With sword and pistol by my side 

Many a young maid lost her baubles 

to my trade 

Many a soldier shed his lifeblood 

on my blade 

The bastards hung me in the spring 

of twenty-five 

But I am still alive 

I was a sailor 

I was born upon the tide 

And with the sea I did abide 

I sailed a schooner round 

the Horn to Mexico 

I went aloft and furled the mainsail 

in a blow 

And when the yards broke off 

they said that I got killed 

But I am living still 


I was a dam builder 

Across the river deep and wide 

Where steel and water did collide 

A place called Boulder 

on the wild Colorado 

I slipped and fell 

into the wet concrete below 

They buried me in that great tomb 

that knows no sound 

But I am still around 

I’ll always be around, and around 

and around and around and around ... 

I’ll fly a starship 

Across the Universe divide 

And when I reach the other side 

I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can 

Perhaps I may become 

a highwayman again 

Or I may simply be a single drop of rain 

But I will remain 

And I’ll be back again, and again and 

again and again and again ... 

Words: Jimmy Webb 

Ready to explode ... 

dying star Betelgeuse 

29 

FEBRUARY 2016

30 


GIN LANE 

William Hogarth 

1751 

One of Hogarth’s best-known engravings, the setting is laid in a slum 

street of St Giles in Westminster. the central figure, a drunken woman 

with syphilitic sores on her legs, drops her baby in order to take a pinch 

of snuff as she sits on the steps leading to the gin cellar with its flagon 

emblem ‘Gin Royal’ and the characteristic inscription, ‘Drunk for a 

Penny, Dead drunk for Twopence, Clean Straw for nothing.’ At the foot of 

the steps sits a dying (or dead) gin-and-ballad-seller. Under the pawnbroker’s 

sign, Gripe, the owner, is taking a carpenter’s saw and coat as 

a pledge for gin money, while a housewife waits to pawn her household 

utensils. In the background a naked woman is being buried and on the 

barber’s shop (indicated by the pole) the barber has hanged himself, 

perhaps because there is no need for his services in Gin Lane. The gin 

merchants on the right, Kilman’s Distiller, are, however, doing roaring 

business. All these details, powerfully juxtaposed, combine to make up 

one of the most savage of all Hogarth’s prints 

31 

FEBRUARY 2016

32 

REVIEW 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

SPAIN 

1936 

George Orwell 

HOMAGE TO CATALONIA 

writing in June 1937 

The anarchists were still in virtual control 

of Catalonia and the revolution was still in 

full swing. To anyone who had been there 

since the beginning it probably seemed 

even in December or January that the 

revolutionary period was ending; but when 

one came straight from England the aspect 

of Barcelona was something startling and 

overwhelming. 

It was the first time I had ever been in a 

town where the working class was in the 

saddle. Practically every building of any size 

had been seized by the workers and was 

draped with red flags or with the red and 

black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was 

scrawled with the hammer and sickle and 

with the intials of the revolutionary parties; 

almost every church had been gutted and its 

images burnt. Churches here and there were 

being systematically demolished by gangs of 

workmen. 

Every shop and cafe had an inscription 

saying it had been collectivised; even the 

bootblacks had been collectivised and their 

boxes painted red and black. Waiters and 

shop-walkers looked you in the face and 

treated you as an equal. 


Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my 

first experience was receiving a lecture from 

a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. 

There were no private motor-cars, they had 

all been commandeered, and all the trams 

and taxis and much of the other transport 

were painted red and black. 

The revolutionary posters were everywhere, 

flaming from the walls in clean reds 

and blues that made the few remaining 

advertisements look like daubs of mud. 

Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of 

the town where crowds of people streamed 

constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were 

bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far 

into the night. 

33 

And it was the aspect of the crowds that 

was the queerest thing of all. In outward 

appearance it was a town in which the 

wealthy classes had practically ceased to 

exist. Except for a small number of women 

and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ 

people at all. Practically everyone wore 

rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls, 

or some variant of the militia uniform. 

All this was queer and moving. There was 

much in it that I did not understand, in some 

ways I did not even like it, but I recognised 

it immediately as a state of affairs worth 

fighting for. 

FEBRUARY 2016

34 


UNTITLED (Chairs) from Zeno Writing II, 2002 by William Kentridge 

By South African, William Kentridge, 

this print comes from a suite based on 

the novel, ‘Confessions of Zeno’ (!923) 

by Italo Svevo, the imagery overlaid with 

looping abstract calligraphy, like a visual 

stream of consciousness. The novel centres 

on a middle-class businessman in Trieste 

shortly before the First World War, as he 

recalls the moments of indecision and 

irresolution that have shaped his life, 

and coloured his familial relationships. 

Written as if from the psychiatrist’s couch, 

it conveys the hero’s weakness and guilt, 

and the limitations of his self-knowledge. 

It is this idea of guilt, and of impotence 

despite self-knowledge, that Kentridge has 

explored repeatedly as he confronts the 

implications for individuals and societies, 

of their responses to political events. 

Kentridge writes, ‘When I first read Svevo’s 

book some 20 years ago, one of the 

things that drew me to it was the evocation 

of Trieste as a rather desperate provincial 

city at the edge of an empire– away from 

the centre, the real world. This felt very 

similar to Johannesburg in the 1970s. In 

the years following this has persisted. And 

caused me to return to the book.’ 

35 

FEBRUARY 2016

36 


37 

Oh shit! 

Forgot to 

remove the ... 

FEBRUARY 2016

SHITARTICLE 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE CIRCULUS 

OR NATURAL CIRCLE 

In exile in Jersey, Pierre Leroux, 

author of the first ecological utopia, 

mixed sand and cinders with his shit 

and grew haricot beans. 

‘Don’t you find gentlemen, I am 

a singular alchemist? Ordinary 

alchemists look for gold and I’ve 

found shit.’ 

‘Human excrement is the most fertile 

there is.’ 

Leroux argued its use would 

quadruple agricultural production. 

There would be enough of it to 

fertilise the land necessary for 

growing cereals to feed the whole of 

the human race. 

In China, since the revolution, 

traditional shit-collecting has been 

mechanised and night-soil is still used 

for fertilising the fields. 

39 

FEBRUARY 2016

40 


Anarchists suggest that humans 

are by nature both benign and 

cooperative, they are only corrupted 

by government, which both exploits 

and oppresses them. Anarchists 

are anti-capitalist, maintaining that 

industrial capitalism warps and 

disempowers human beings and 

prevents them from realizing their true 

potential. Although perceived as on 

the ‘left’ anarchists reject conventional 

marxism’s endorsement of state control 

as a necessary stage on the route to true 

communism. 

41 

French philosopher and socialist, 

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1809–65, the 

first person to call himself an anarchist 

declared, ‘Property is theft’ ... 

and so it is! 

FEBRUARY 2016

42 


UNDERGROUND

UNDERGROUND 

43 

FEBRUARY 2016

44 

the bastard 

is onto us 

chief ... 


‘Of course, the representation of Labour in 

corporate media is going to be everything 

Cameron could hope for because he, 

Murdoch and pretty much everybody they 

know works for the same boss: FINANCIAL 

AND CORPORATE INTERESTS. Cameron 

is middle management and Murdoch is 

more senior, something high up in their PR 

department. Another problem for Corbyn 

is the intrinsic conservatism of the concision 

demanded by news shows: it’s difficult to 

explain why an ingrained assumption is 

wrong in a soundbite, and it’s to his credit 

that he can’t seem to be bothered trying. 

Then there’s the overwhelming lack of 

context in our news coverage. How many 

stories about the US’s recent deal with Iran 

mention that the US overthrew the Iranian 

government in a 1953 CIA-backed coup? 

There’s bias there – no doubt if Russia had 

sponsored a coup in Iran it would have 

made it into the coverage – but there’s 

another reason this happens. Removing 

context makes it much easier to engage 

readers with emotions such as surprise, 

or outrage. Our news media instinctively 

removes context, because “look at this 

inexplicable shit that just happened” sells 

more papers than the more depressing 

“look at this inevitable shit that will no doubt 

keep happening”.’ 

A BOYLE ON 

ALL YOUR 

BUMS! 

‘Faced with this level of inherent bias, the 

rhetoric of anti-austerity is failing in a few 

ways. The first is that it tries to construct 

a persuasive moral argument against a 

case for austerity that hasn’t been framed 

morally. It has been very effectively framed 

as a necessary evil. In any case, I’ve always 

found the idea of “speaking truth to power” 

faintly ridiculous. Powerful people are 

generally quite well aware of what they are 

doing and – should you ever make it past 

their security – will respond to your truthspeaking 

with a look that says: “you don’t 

know the half of it”. The thing you can rely 

on about self-interested people is that they 

won’t really be interested in you. They don’t 

care, and you’re not going to find the right 

form of words that suddenly makes them 

care.’ 

Frankie Boyle 

45 

FEBRUARY 2016

46 


95 percent 

of Brit Expats 

Sent Back to 

UK for Failing 

Language Test 

Joe Mellor 

thelondoneconomic.com 

The biggest movement of migrants since 

the Second World War began today, as 

countries across the world demanded UK 

expats had to speak the language of their 

chosen country, or they had to leave … and 

most failed. 

Foreign officials have said the test wasn’t 

even that rigorous. You only had to know 

how to say “Two Beers” “Please” “No” “Yes” 

and “Do you have real brown sauce?” but 

almost one hundred per cent flunked it. 

A Foreign Office Spokesman said: “We 

don’t know how to cope with the influx, 

even some Brits in Australia failed the test, 

as they didn’t add “mate” to the end of the 

brown sauce question.” 

Steve Tate, 35, who was packing up his 

belongings in Alicante said: “I was just 

about to learn the Spanish for ‘two beers” 

but I just couldn’t find the time, I’ve only 

been here eight years. I did integrate 

though, I went to the Black Lion pub, with 

Stevie, Gaz and Larry everyday. I remember 

that day we ate squid, it was rank though, 

never again.” 

Shelia Predegast, 45, who lives in Albufeira, 

was seething after being told she had to 

leave, telling customs officials, “I didn’t want 

to learn Spanish anyway.” 

47 

FEBRUARY 2016

The moon and I, 

We’re low tonight, 

Not blue, 

but golden glow. 

Alone, together, 

we search the sky 

For a pinhole of hope in the 

deepest darkest black. 

48 

The cold air gives away my breath, 

Then takes my breath away, 

A clue? 

My companion, The moon, 

though battered and scarred 

will once more rise and 

Face the Light of the Sun 

Give me a reason to sleep tonight, 

Give me a reason to rise. 

• • • 

Martin Taylor 


FEBRUARY 2016 

49

50 


JUST ANOTHER SHORT STORY 

Photographs: David Goldblatt (tweaked) 

The kitchen was a hive of activity, Lucy moved from cooker to 

worktop, occasionally to the sink and often exercising a knowing 

expertise at the flip-top bin. Here, in her domain, she was queen, 

and she knew it, she had learnt the hard way – years of patronising 

guff – but now, she was showing off. Margo Van Niekerk watched 

her from the open kitchen door, still giving unnecessary advice and 

welling down a feeling of envy. Lucy acknowledged the superfluous 

advice with a carefully rehearsed tight-lipped smile, playing the 

kitchen like a TV chef, while cleverly deferring – showing she 

knew her place in the scheme of things – keeping Margo sweet 

and maintaining that smidgeon of dignity that kept her sane. The 

dinner prepared, it was served to the usual crowd of friends the 

Van Niekerks had invited. Lucy helped with the serving and Mrs Van 

Niekerk, without a flicker, ingraciously and with throwaway modesty, 

took credit for, what looked like, a wonderful meal. 

51 

As the after-dinner banter rose to shrieks Lucy dug her hands into 

the soapy water and thought of Jerome, how she missed him now. 

She remembered with tenderness the three nights last month they 

FEBRUARY 2016

52 

had been together in her kaya, a room at the bottom of the Van 

Niekerk’s garden. Mr Van Niekerk had said it was alright for ‘John’ 

to stay but had reminded her that it was against the law and they 

should be careful. Mr Van was a great guy, she thought, but she 

couldn’t understand why he kept calling Jerome ‘John’, or why 

Jerome suddenly volunteered to cut all the lawns, front and back. 

As she scoured the final pan, she pondered on this but came to no 

satisfactory conclusion, or, for that matter, why Jerome had left so 

abruptly… or why he hadn’t written since, now that was a worrying 

thought. She left the house for her room catching ‘… you’ll have 

to come over to us sometime, OK?’ and knowing it wasn’t for her 

ears. Her once narrow bunk, in the neon glare of her whitewashed 

room, became a vast ocean of tears in the gloom of the Transvaal 

night, now too big for her alone …oh Jerome. 

Priscilla was woken by the cockerel’s cry that cold grey morning, 

the sun had not yet appeared from over the distant dark hills. The 

plain was deserted, with only the odd hut breaking the flatness 

with its grouping of goats, cattle, a tree standing proud in the 

early morning mist. She rose quickly, her breath clouding the air, 

she covered her nakedness with her best dress, today she would 

see Umfons again. She paused in her dressing to remember; nine 

months ago she and the boys had been taken from their home in 

the city in an open truck and left on this plain; Umfons had cried as 

they tied their belongings together with red and white string, they’d 

all cried, but the officials, even though moved by the emotion, had 


FEBRUARY 2016 

53

their orders to hide behind and whole families were uprooted – to 

be scattered in their homelands. Umfons had stayed. The date on 

the Dunlop calendar on the wall, today’s date, was heavily ringed. 

Her smile shone as she noticed the sun already above the horizon, 

wobbling in the heat haze like the egg yolk she’d just broken in the 

frying pan. She started singing and woke the boys. 

54 

Umfons was already on the train, his awkward posture in the 

crowded carriage dictated by the expensive, but ill-fitting new suit, 

so obviously admired by his fellow passengers that they made extra 

room for him, so’s he wouldn’t create new creases. He was going 

home, he’d told them, although he’d lived all his life in the city and 

this was his first trip to the Transkei. Good natured banter broke out 

in the carriage as the sun warmed the sleep from the occupants’ 

eyes, the distantly familiar clicking of his mother’s Xhosa, now 

all around him, brought back childhood memories – the slick 

smoothness of the Zulu he had lived with for so long now seemed 

ugly by comparison. Friendly suggestions on what to do when he 

and Priscilla were alone together again were sheepishly laughed 

off by an embarrassed Umfons, he enjoyed the attention but now 

he wished he could become just another anonymous passenger 

again. Someone started singing and he was happy and relieved 

to join in. He stared at the unchanging, flat, barren plain as they 

pursued their straight course, occassionally small boys would 

appear from nowhere to wave and shout as the train trundled by. 

His thoughts dwelled on the way things were; as a black man he 


was quite well paid at the Dunlop factory and had managed to save 

some money whilst staying in the hostel, even, after sending half 

his wages to Priscilla. Now he had two weeks’ leave and a suitcase 

full of presents, he was going home; they told him it was his home 

although he’d never been there. How can this be, he thought? 

Some of the men at the hostel had ideas about this state of affairs, 

but even he, Umfons, could see their struggle, however just, was 

almost impossible, yet when they spoke on Friday nights after the 

stick fights he found he could not fault their thinking. He cursed 

them for invading his homecoming thoughts. 

The railway station was crowded with women and children and 

everyone was craning their necks, looking out along the tracks to 

the distant horizon, a small boy who had climbed the telegraph 

pole was dangerously close to losing his grip as he sang out, 

pointing to the distant smudge of smoke with his free arm. The 

station heaved with agitated anticipation, the train was coming! The 

women’s singing rose from the quiet murmur it had been for the 

last hour to a chorus of pure joy, tears left tracks in the fine dust on 

Priscilla’s cheeks. Umfons, and the others who were fortunate to be 

near a window, hung their heads out, risking their sight as small 

bits of coal from the locomotive peppered their faces. Umfons, 

screwed up face, searched the track ahead for a first sight of his 

destination. The station came into view, heads bobbed in and out of 

the carriage windows as those unfortunate enough to occupy seats 

in the core of the carriages were allowed a look. There were hurried 

55 

FEBRUARY 2016

56 


farewells to friends of convenience, smiles all round as the train 

jerked into the station, the women’s far off singing had now become 

a reality of wonderment. 

Priscilla, with little Steve and Nelson on either arm, scanned each 

carriage as it went by, Umfons saw her first, their eyes met and it 

was just like that day they’d first met, all those years ago, at her 

uncle’s wedding. As he stepped from the carriage, the awkwardness 

of the suit was gone, his smile broke his face and tears so long held 

back criss-crossed the folds of his grinning face, wetting both Steve 

and Nelson as they broke free from their mother’s grasp, burrowing 

their crinkly heads into his neck as he stooped to lift them. Priscilla 

looked on, unsure of herself all of a sudden, nine months was a 

long time, Umfons saw the hesitation and grasped her to him, the 

four clinging to each other on the emptying platform, oblivious to 

everyone and everything, two weeks would soon pass… 

57 

Dinertime and half-eaten sandwiches were being pushed through 

the chickenwire fencing; Jerome’s attempts to catch the bits before 

they fell to the floor were less than successful and soon his caged 

space beneath the Science Labs was littered with crumbled bread. 

The boys’ school was for the English-speaking elite; they used 

convicts to work on their sportsfields. Jerome poked about in the 

bread for the odd piece of meat, his eyes hooded, but defiant, as 

he flicked looks back at the well-fed, healthy, happy schoolboys 

who crowded around his cage – their curiosity not yet tempered 

FEBRUARY 2016

58 

by the racial spite of their elders. Joshua, Jerome’s warder, who 

was over six feet tall, impressively dressed in neatly pressed khaki 

and carrying an assegai, which he had promised Jerome he would 

never use, stood proudly on guard, his confident happy-with-mylot 

smile countered by Jerome’s seemingly blank and acquiescing 

facade. Behind the face, overwhelmed by the reality of his situation, 

Jerome seethed and then simmered, his emotions in turmoil as he 

battled to control his rage, his systems of survival near to collapse 

and his only salvation being a relentless plotting of revenge, that 

bastard, Mr Van, still fresh in his thoughts, had said he had had no 

option but to report Jerome for his breach of the Pass Laws – and 

this, after Mr Van had encouraged him to stay, and after he had 

sweated blood cutting the lawns with a rusty old lawnmower! It 

seemed to him, his only crime had been to refuse to wash Mr Van’s 

car, Lucy, oh Lucy… 

Written in 1982 with the vulgar and soul destroying absurdities 

of Apartheid in mind, with its vile enslavement of black peoples, 

draconian pass laws and upheavals of whole communities in the 

name of racial segregation. This is dedicated to all the Umfons, 

Pricillas, Lucys and Jeromes – some of whom I am honoured, but 

equally, in those circumstances, regret to have known – and sadly, 

initially, to have been a passive observer of their plight. 

From ‘Writing some Wrongs’, Alan Rutherford 

Published by Hand Over fist Press, 2007 


FEBRUARY 2016 

59

60 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


I say again, well, because the letters page is a 

hopeless failure, I say again ... Words fail me, 

what is the use of words when the person you 

are saying them to is unable to grasp your, and 

their, meaning? 

















61 

Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I am 

absolute in my scepticism about whether the 

Davos-business-arses and their sycophantic 

political stooges whooping it up in the Swiss 

mountains are the answer. 


FEBRUARY 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

8 

EUROSCEPTICS 

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

EASTER 2016 

‘AUSTERITY RACIST 

WARMONGERS 

BLUES’ IS 

A BIG HIT!


The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 





Cover: Alan Rutherford 

Photographs, words and artwork sourced 

from ‘found in the scrapbook of life’, 

no intentional copyright infringement 

intended, credited whenever possible, 









Opening 03 

Ireland, 1846 05 

Detritus 19 

An Age Old Question 29 

Folly 35 

Don’t Mark His Face 45 

Dublin, Easter 1916 53 

4 horsemen 60 

Letters 63 

1 

EASTER 2016

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 


Articles by way of other sources, words 

borrowed, and although I try to provide 

artwork and photographs ... some odd 

pieces catch my eye and are adopted to 

illustrate an angle. Its a visual necessity if I 

am to produce this ‘rag’ ... contributors are 

a scarce breed. 

Martin Taylor excels himself again, and if he 

isn’t constructing a book of prose, then he 

should! 

Otherwise its nuggets of the eclectic ... 

again! 


3 


EASTER 2016

4 


IRELAND, 1846 

Paul Kaill 

We buried Patrick in the early hours of this morning, choosing that time 

so as not to fret the other little ones. They had seen enough of death to 

know that their eldest brother had finally gone; they knew the symptoms 

of The Illness, and knew there was but one cure. When The Sleep came 

on him it was the first time for a year that Patrick’s young, wizened face 

had shown peace. He was his father through and through: tall and silent, 

save for when something needed to be said; a worker; yes, a worker 

allright – lithe and muscled from the hoeing and lifting, his bared flesh 

reddened by sun and prevailing wind. My son, and his death has rent this 

family so deeply that it will never recover. 

5 


When the realisation came that the crop would fail, our neighbours 

called a meeting for all those who, like them and us, were dependent 

on the praties for their survival. One year before we had met in similar 

circumstances, locked in conversation for a whole day, trying to decide 

where our meagre supplies should be stored, how they should be 

rationed, how they could be defended if raiders should try to pillage. 

Hard it had been, but decisions were taken. Those with ample lost little, 

and those with nothing gleaned just enough to survive. We did survive, 

cursing our bad luck that the crop had been so bad, invoking the better 

times that were sure to come. 

EASTER 2016

It was to that end that we set about the planting of seeds, ready for the cycle 

of nature to take its grip, holding all in its hands, caressing and nurturing 

the seed into growth. And as we saw the first tiny green leaves begin to show 

– we wept. Food to feed us all. Two full meals every day. Fullness and an 

absence of want. One with nature. Now nature had become our enemy, and 

the meeting of these forty souls had about it an air of inevitability and dread. 

A year before there had been supplies to allocate, but now nothing was left 

except the seed praties, and there were precious few of those. Families who 

had used their seed to survive the winter were dependent on those whose 

prudence, or good fortune, had dictated a careful storage. For that reason 

many were dependent on us, and we gave what we could. 

6 

After the allocation was over the whole family had gathered in the yard, 

silent except for the crying of the little ones, they not able to understand the 

giving. We had to shield our eyes against the setting sun as we watched 

our neighbours leave, thay laden with the givings; we full-hearted at having 

given. As we watched them go Jonjo released us from his embrace and 

returned to the house, and I knew – because I knew him as well as any 

woman has known any man – that he was pain’d in his heart and had a 

mind to leave. I followed, and the children cowered in the barn for they knew 

that words would be said. 

‘Is it the anger that makes you leave, Jonjo? Is it the hurt of Patrick’s death? 

Must you leave, and us needing you so?’ 

He never looked up. He could not – for to look me in the eye would have 

brought tears to his. The sack he had torn from the pile was opened and the 

few items of spare clothing he had were thrust inside. 


Photograph: Alan Rutherford

EASTER 2016 

7

8 


‘Don’t walk away from me my darlin’. Talk to me as other husbands 

would. Take your anger and your pain and lay them on me, but do not 

leave. Please.’ 

I followed him out of the house, through the yard and past the barn 

where the babies were huddled. He took our only horse, frail and starved 

though it was, and walked with a purposeful stride down the art track and 

away. 

‘You will never be forgiven, Jonjo!’ was all that I could say. But it was my 

heart that spoke, and the heart is seldom a guarantor of reason. 

As I knelt and wept there the children came to comfort me, clinging so 

tight that, when I tried to rise their weight held me down, and their tears 

made me forget my own, and a strength born from shared deprivation 

caused me to fuss them and cajole them back to the house. Strange that, 

though their father’s going had torn a piece out of them, too, they wept 

only for my weeping, and for the grieving of a brother taken and never to 

be held again. 

9 


‘Help me with supper, children. Kate, put the kettle on the fire, and John – 

fetch sticks to make the fire burn hot. The twins can help me skin and gut 

the rabbit. We are very lucky to have caught this fine buck, for there are 

few enough of them left to catch. Quickly now – fetch a pail to catch the 

entrails, and fresh water for the cleaning of the skin before it is hung.‘ 

From tears to full purpose in the space of minutes, with nothing but 

despair as a guide and guardian. The fire burned bright, and the scent 

EASTER 2016

of roasting rabbit filled the house, and for a while there our troubles 

were forgotten, lost in the anticipation of a full belly and the absence of 

hunger. Our plates were licked clean, with no-one to scold for lack of 

decencies; decency a thing which had been forgotten when want came to 

call. 

10 

One year before we had harvested what little there was to harvest, and 

looked to this time, this harvest time in His year 1846 as a point on which 

our thoughts could dwell; but in a night the parties were ruined, the stalks 

firm and green but the leaves scorched black, and the waking to a new 

dawn that day brought cries of anguish from those who were first afield. 

Across a whole country came recognition of the misery which was to 

come, and for some the knowledge of it was too great. The boughs of 

the forest trees bore fruit of a wretched kind: the old who saw no point 

in further suffering; and the young ones – whose killers took their own 

lives when the writhing of the others had ceased; and none of them with 

strength enough to watch the others suffer. Acts of kindness to which no 

eulogy could ever do justice. 

Amidst the hunger and the dying there was those whose hearts could 

not be touched, even by the hollow-eyed gaze of the frailest infant. For 

their concern lay not in the welfare of the tenant farmers and their kin, 

but in the profits gleaned from the sale of that which was produced, and 

the rent in money or kind that brought the tenant families to their knees 

in the paying. Some of these profiteers were old and we, the earth-bred 

and the hungry, wished them a swift and painful death; but some were 

younger, enriched by bequest, whom we hated with a passion that, for 

the most part, remained unspoken. While the harvest was good and 


sufficient for our needs we dared not risk the wrath of our landlords, for 

we had our homes and livelihoods to lose and no future without them, 

but deprivation had aroused anger within us and now, when rents were 

due, our monied masters had much to fear – and they knew this. One 

such had ventured, foolishly, alone, to a tenant’s home close by, and had 

tried to horse-whip a wife who was heavy with child, but her bairns had 

screamed a warning and we had responded. They found him the next 

morning, tied to a tree and whipped so badly that he was identified only 

by the heavy gold rings on his fingers and the initials embroidered on a 

fine silk handkerchief. 

Now the landlords came with helpers tall and strong, carrying gun, 

powder and shot to add to their powers of persuasion. None dared 

rebel in such company, and those found wanting were evicted at once, 

and their homes burned to settle the matter, and the lanes and villages 

throughout the land began to carry traffic of the human kind. Whole 

families wandered at the mercy of elements, seeking what shelter they 

could, with no food at all to be bought or stolen, and those with an apple 

or a hen’s egg traded life for these things, and young girls were taken 

and sullied in ditches and empty barns, and many killed in the process. 

It was a time of want and a time of evil, and a time when, for some, 

revenge was the only thing which sustained life. 

11 

In the early hours of the following morning there was movement outside 

the house, not enough to awaken the children but enough to rouse 

me from a fitful sleep and cause me to reach for the shillelagh at the 

bedside. One person, moving quietly over the sod, first to the barn then 

towards the house, pausing at the door only to make himself known. 

EASTER 2016

12 


‘If you have it in mind to brain me, wife, you should know you’ll be 

making yourself a widow in the process. Will you let me in, woman, or 

will we both be standing here all night?’ 

A husband returned home and, not for the first time in the course of 

human history, a wife ready to forgive and welcome. 

‘You’ll be cursing me for leaving you, wife, and you have good cause to 

do so.’ 

I looked into his eyes, there in the near-darkness, and saw that the anger 

had gone from him, saw a man content, and I knew that someone had 

felt his anger and suffered for it. Then I embraced him and he’d him 

tight to my body and wished him to be passion’d by my kisses, so that he 

would mate with me as other husbands would with their wives, so that the 

hurt would be gone between us, and we could look to the new day for a 

beginning, even though our failed crop warranted nothing but despair. 

But the dampness of his clothing clung to mine, this not the new-morning 

dew that enveloped any night walker but a tacky blackness which caused 

me to pull away from him and look down to see my petticoats stained 

dark from breast to knee, and I knew then why the anger had gone from 

my man, and no explanation of events was needed nor sought. 

13 


‘You must leave now, Jonjo, and take what little food we have here. 

Hurry. Here, take this sacking to carry what you need and keep you 

warm on the cold nights. You must never return here, for nothing but the 

hangman’s noose awaits you. Go, quickly.’ 

EASTER 2016

‘I must stay – to protect you and the bairns. You know what they will do?’ 

And full realisation of what he had done now came to him. 

‘They will come in strength. Burn the house. Ravish me. Beat the children. 

I know that. Jon, you must go!’ 

And he walked into the night, my husband, father to my children, a 

wanted man with blood on his hands, and if I had worn his shoes that 

night I know I would have murdered too, and had just cause to do so. 

14 

A mile and a half distant they could be seen – a dozen torches lighting 

the way for a dozen men intent on retribution, fired by the discovery 

of one of their kind hanging from a chandelier in the library of the Big 

House, his eyes put out and his hands severed, and his gullet stuffed with 

gold coins which were his preoccupation. I stared and stared then looked 

away, wanting to weep but finding myself empty of such emotion; and a 

nightjar churred its final September song, and I took the smooth leather 

belt from the waistband of my only dress, choosing that implement so as 

not to chafe the soft flesh of my children’s necks, and walked slowly over 

to where they lay. 

The nightjar flew from its tree roost and circled twice about the house 

before commencing its southing, and as it passed over a copse a 

half-mile distant a man, gaunt, bloodied, paused to look up before 

recommencing his own flight – to safety and survival. 


EASTER 2016 

15

18 


DETRITUS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THOSE WHO 

WEAR THE 

BUTCHER’S 

APRON 

edited from 

Charlie Gilmour 

article in the Independent 

12 February 2016 

In Britain, if you’re a mass murderer, your fate 

seems to depend largely on how many people 

you kill. Slaughter a few innocents and you’ll 

be counting bricks in Belmarsh for the rest of 

your years; spill the blood of continents and it’s 

Portland stone and a plaque in your honour. 

Campaigners in Oxford recently made 

headlines with their attempts to topple a 

statue of Cecil Rhodes. Organising member 

of Rhodes Must Fall (RMF), South African law 

student Ntokozo Qwabe, even claimed the very 

architecture of the city was laid out “in a racist 

and violent way”. But can stone and metal 

really engender such feelings? Well, a brisk 

walk through central London certainly turns up 

a killer on every street corner. Forget Clapton or 

Moss Side: Whitehall’s the real “murder mile”. 

Unlike in Russia, where from 1991 statues of 

Stalin and other undesirables were dumped 

unceremoniously in Fallen Monument Park, 

or Germany, where you’d be hard-pressed to 

find anything glorifying its most recent empire, 

Britain has yet to exorcise its imperial past. 

The short stretch from the Strand to Parliament 

Square contains more butchers than Smithfield 

Market. Together, they’re either directly 

responsible for or implicated in the deaths of as 

many as 30 million people. 

19 

EASTER 2016

20 

When I arrive on the Strand to begin this 

atrocity tour, the first item on the agenda – a 

larger-than-life statue of Sir Arthur “Bomber” 

Harris – is under armed guard. It’s nothing 

personal: Princess Kate is gracing the nearby 

RAF chapel with her presence. She blithely 

greets current members of the air force beneath 

a bronze of the man who, as commanderin-chief 

of Bomber Command during the 

Second World War, was, among other things, 

responsible for the incineration of at least 

25,000 civilians at Dresden. 

Unlike in 1992, when the Queen Mother 

unveiled the thing, there are no boos from 

protesters – dubbed “peace idiots” by the Daily 

Mail – just exited squeals from tourists who can’t 

quite believe their luck. Nor are there any traces 

of the splashes of red paint that meant it had to 

be guarded by police day and night for several 

months afterwards. The history of dissent has 

been wiped clean, and the plaque beneath 

contains no reference to what many consider to 

be a war crime. 

Harris is unusual – but not for his body-count. 

Rather, he is one of the few statue-people whose 

victims were mostly white. Passing General Sir 

Charles Napier, conqueror of much of what 

is now Pakistan, and Major General Sir Henry 

Havelock, hammer of the First Indian War of 

Independence – who still hold their ground at 

Trafalgar Square, despite an attempt by thenmayor 

of London Ken Livingstone to get rid of 

“the two generals that no one has ever heard 

of” – and walking down Carlton House Terrace, 

we come to the feet of Lord Curzon. 

As Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, Curzon 

oversaw one of many famines to afflict the 

subcontinent during the period of British rule. 

As about 1.25 million people starved to death, 

and a further two million perished from disease, 

Curzon cut rations he considered “dangerously 

high” and attacked “indiscriminate alms-giving” 

that “weakened the fibre and demoralised the 

self-reliance of the population”. Stringent tests 

were introduced that deprived many of aid. 

In the Bombay district alone, the government 

boasted that it had deterred a million people 

from claiming. The relief camps – in which the 

starving were forced to engage in strenuous 

physical labour in exchange for help – were 

made as unpleasant as possible. Essentials such 

as blankets and fuel were regularly withheld. 

The Guardian’s horrified correspondent 

described the situation as “a grand hunt of 

death with scores of thousands of the refugees 

at the famine camps for quarry”. But today 

Curzon stands unchallenged, dressed in mock- 

Roman garb, above a plaque that reads: “In 

Recognition of a Great Public Life.” 

Across the Mall, on Horse Guards Parade, Field 

Marshal Viscount Garnet Wolseley sits proudly 

astride his mount. Such a fine military leader 

was he that the phrase “everything’s Sir Garnet” 

became army-speak for “everything’s great, 

thanks!” Engraved in the rear of the pedestal 

is a list of the campaigns in which he served: 

Egypt 1882; South Africa 1879; Ashanti 1873- 

4; Red River 1870; China 1860-1; and, of 

course, the “Indian Mutiny” of 1857. 


A very British trade ... 

• Opium from India bought 

tea from China, which was 

sent to Britain with Indian raw 

materials like cotton. 

• Imported raw materials were 

processed into textiles and 

other manufactured goods in 

British factories, which were 

then exchanged for slaves in 

west Africa. 

• African slaves were bartered 

for sugar and tobacco and/or 

sold for gold and silver in the 

West Indies and America. 

21 

• The gold and silver helped 

fund the industrial revolution 

and the subsequent monopoly 

of manufactured goods, 

combined with cheap labour 

at home, ensured British 

dominance of world trade. 

• The sugar, produced by 

slave labour, was combined 

with the tea, obtained from 

opium trading, to produce what 

became England’s national 

drink. 

EASTER 2016

22 

Britain’s response to what is more correctly 

referred to as India’s First War of Independence 

was truly savage. A captain at the time, 

Wolseley recalls having sworn an oath “of 

having blood for blood, not drop for drop, but 

barrels and barrels of the filth which flows in 

these niggers’ veins for every drop” of British 

blood that had been spilled by the rebellious 

sepoys [Indian soldiers]. 

While most accounts suggest about 100,000 

Indians were killed following the rebellion – in 

many cases, forced to lick blood from the floor 

before being hung, bayoneted in the stomach 

or tied over cannon and blasted to smithereens 

– historian Amaresh Misra has calculated that 

almost 10 million were in fact wiped out over 

the next decade. As one British official recorded 

after the event: “On account of the undisputed 

display of British power, necessary during those 

terrible and wretched days, millions of wretches 

seemed to have died.” 

On the other side of the parade is a hero, at 

last. Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum 

was one of the truly great men of the British 

Empire – so much so that his image was 

famously used for recruitment purposes during 

the First World War: “Your country needs you!” 

But it wasn’t just Britain’s youth that he ushered 

into an early grave. During the Second Boer 

War, in response to the guerrilla tactics of the 

Afrikaners, he vastly expanded the use of a new 

tactic: the concentration camp. 

Tens of thousands were interred in filthy, undersupplied 

and exposed camps. Emily Hobhouse, 

a campaigner who made it her mission to 

expose conditions, wrote that “the whole talk [in 

the camps] was of death – who died yesterday, 

who lay dying today and who would be dead 

tomorrow”. The reward for her efforts was an 

attack piece in the Daily Mail, written by that 

great author of Empire, Edgar Wallace (Sanders 

of the River, King Kong and scores more). It was 

headlined, simply, “Woman – The Enemy”. 

By the end of the war, 28,000 Boers, mostly 

women and children, had perished in the 

camps. The black victims of the policy 

went uncounted. Years later, when the 

British Ambassador to Germany expressed 

concerns about Nazi use of concentration 

camps, Hermann Goering reached for his 

encyclopaedia: “First used by the British in South 

Africa,” he announced. It’s hard to imagine a 

more inappropriate figure for us to place on a 

pedestal – yet there he stands. 

Down Whitehall, giving a wide berth to General 

Haig, the bloody-minded butcher of the Somme, 

we arrive at Parliament Square, where statues 

dot the green like giant chess pieces. To the 

north, there’s Lord Palmerston, declarer of the 

First Opium War and poster boy for “gunboat 

diplomacy”, whose time at the Foreign Office 

was described by the Liberal politician John 

Bright as “one long crime”; next, Jan Smuts, 

a South African statesman whose advocacy of 

racial segregation laid the ground for apartheid; 

and finally, Sir Winston Churchill himself. 


True, Winston beat the Nazis. But a game of 

“Who said it: Hitler or Churchill?” is still more 

difficult than one might think. Who called for 

the “feeble-minded” to be “segregated under 

proper conditions so that their curse died with 

them”; suggested “mental defectives...tramps 

and wastrels” be sent into forced labour; and 

warned that the “multiplication of the unfit” 

constituted “a very terrible danger to the race”? 

I’ll give you a clue: not Hitler. 

Unfair? One of his own cabinet ministers, Leo 

Amery, accused him of having a “Hitler-like” 

attitude when it came to India. And remember 

– the war effort bled India white. During the first 

half of 1943, even as famine set in, 70,000 

tonnes of grain were extracted for use abroad. 

Churchill was reportedly unmoved. “The 

starvation of anyway underfed Bengalis is less 

serious than [that of] sturdy Greeks,” he said. 

But then, he didn’t have time for most Indians. 

Hindus were, he later said, “a foul race” who, in 

any case, “breed like rabbits”. 

The consequences were devastating. As Pier 

Brendon writes in The Decline and Fall of 

the British Empire: “Clutching infants of skin 

and bone, skeletal women cried for alms... 

Every morning corpses, decomposing in the 

steamy heat and often gnawed at by rats or 

jackals, littered the streets.” As many as three 

million perished in what some refer to as the 

“Bengali Holocaust”. Which sure puts Cecil’s 

achievements into some perspective. Of course 

Rhodes Must Fall, but so too must Churchill, 

Kitchener, Wolseley, Curzon and the rest; in fact, 

statues that deserve their pedestals seem to be 

few and far between. So, what to do? 

As the Oxford campaigners have been 

discovering, resistance to change is, well, set in 

stone. Lord Patten, Chancellor of the University, 

responded to the demands of the Rhodes Must 

Fall campaign by suggesting that its supporters 

should “think about being educated elsewhere”. 

Many online responses were just as bad. “Cecil 

Rhodes did more for Africa then you’ll ever do,” 

wrote one typical commenter.Then, after Rhodes 

Must Fall campaign won an Oxford Union 

debate, donors stepped in and threatened to 

withhold funding. And so – for the present, at 

least, – Rhodes Must Stand. 

For insensitivity, perhaps? As Dalia Gebrial, 

an organising member of Rhodes Must Fall 

campaign says: “I wasn’t quite aware of the 

level of cognitive dissonance that exists. People 

really don’t know what the realities of the British 

Empire were. It’s not that surprising – I studied 

history to A-level standard and I never once 

engaged with the Empire. But Rhodes is not 

an exception. His statue exists within a wider 

trend: the nationalistic distortion of history,” 

says Gebrial. “This notion that we shouldn’t 

interrogate one statue because it might compel 

us to think more broadly about other statues 

and history is absurd.” 

Still, Britain’s nostalgic view of Empire seems to 

be very much entrenched. A recent YouGov poll 

revealed that more than 40 per cent of people 

believe that British colonialism was “a good 

23 

EASTER 2016

24 

thing” and remains “something to be proud 

of”. Which might explain why – when some 

Royal Holloway University students recently 

posted a group-photo of themselves next to an 

on-campus statue of the “Empress of India”, 

with the question “How can we feel included 

when there’s a statue that celebrates the 

subordination of our people?” – they started an 

online storm. 

“I had some seriously nasty comments,” says 

Grace Almond, vice-president of the Royal 

Holloway Women of Colour Feminism Society. 

“People trying to defend Queen Victoria, saying 

that colonialism was the best thing to happen 

to India.” She finds the sheer hypocrisy of her 

attackers almost overwhelming. “People don’t 

seem to have a problem with the fact that British 

people were looting India and Nigeria and all 

sorts of other colonised countries and bringing 

it back over here. But, as soon as you suggest 

knocking down a statue of someone who is 

– in my opinion – one of the most evil men 

to ever walk the planet, people get extremely 

defensive.” 

One soft option is to simply update the 

monuments. In 2004, Italian artist Eleonora 

Aguiari famously covered the equestrian statue 

of another imperial figure – Lord Napier of 

Magdala, who sits at the gates to Kensington 

Gardens – entirely in red tape. “We have to 

discern between what’s good about our past 

and what is not – or no longer – good,” she 

says. “I believe in transformation more than 

destruction. It would be interesting to use 

these statues as a base for a new message, to 

transform them into something more in line with 

the new moment and society.” 

From a different perspective, Professor Mary 

Beard, the TV historian, author and Cambridge 

don, has consistently opposed the toppling of 

Rhodes. “Wanting to preserve his statue is not 

about saying that Rhodes was a good guy,” she 

claims. “ But I think people have to see...what 

we’re the beneficiaries of. I want to empower 

[students] to put two fingers up to that statue 

and say: ‘He was wrong.’ We’ve got to be able 

to look these figures from the past in the eye; 

otherwise we just push them underground, and 

that doesn’t solve the problem.” 

From across the quads, though, comes a 

dissenting voice. Actually, says Dr Priyamvada 

Gopal of Churchill College, Cambridge, tearing 

down statues is an “interesting idea”. She 

continues: “I would welcome any move that 

actually began the process of undoing imperial 

amnesia, a condition that afflicts large swathes 

of Britain, not least élite institutions.” Britain, she 

adds, needs to “look at itself in the mirror and 

finally undertake a reckoning with a history that 

is not beautified or sanitised”. 

For her, Rhodes Must Fall campaign was, and 

is, far more than a reductive debate about 

masonry. “As the campaign has demanded,” 

says Dr Gopal, “at a practical level, there needs 

to be a totally honest accounting-for of Britain’s 

imperial past, combined with a monumental 

effort to acknowledge how the legacy of that 


past shapes the present – including in relation 

to immigration, racism and the Black and 

Ethnic Minority presence in British institutions 

such as Oxbridge – and a decolonising of the 

curriculum in the arts and humanities to make 

it not just more ‘inclusive’ but considerably less 

centred on white Britons.” 

She can take heart. While the statues might 

not be torn down in the foreseeable future, the 

structures that support them are slowly but surely 

being eroded away. Rhodes Must Fall campaign 

started in South Africa, spread to Oxford, 

and now, across the nation, the legacies of 

Britain’s colonial past are being interrogated on 

campuses and in society at large. Meanwhile, 

from new and popular cultural hubs such as 

the Decolonising Our Minds Society, formed 

by London students to “critically examine the 

legacy of colonialism” through debates, poetry 

nights and hip-hop events, to Facebook groups 

such as Why Is My Curriculum White?, there is 

a sense that a “reckoning with history”, as one 

activist calls it, is at hand. 

There’s an African proverb that Grace Almond 

always bears in mind: “Until the lions have their 

own historians, tales of the hunt will always 

glorify the hunter.” And she’s a lion. 

Pro-imperialist historians 

often brag that, at its height, 

the British Empire covered a 

quarter of the world’s land 

surface and contained a 

population of over 400 million. 

They neglect to tell us, however, 

that it was drug trafficking and 

the slave trade that helped put 

the ‘Great’ into Great Britain. 

Or that the famines in Ireland 

and India, that caused tens of 

millions of deaths, were the 

result of an unyielding market 

ideology - backed by official 

callousness. 

While ‘civilisation’ and 

‘Christianity’ were the oftdeclared 

motives for empire, 

many of the subject peoples, 

over whose countries the Union 

Jack flew, had their own view of 

British rule. They called Britain’s 

flag ‘the butcher’s apron’ and 

when British politicians boasted 

that the Empire ‘was the place 

where the sun never sets’ they 

added ‘and the blood never 

dries’. 

25 

EASTER 2016

26 


Chicken says ‘Fuck it!’ 

... and crosses road 


EASTER 2016 

27

28 

AGE-OLD QUESTION? 

MARTIN TAYLOR 


With our pockets stuffed with blackjacks and fruit salads we 

strolled nonchalantly out of the shop, to the alley at the rear of the 

shops where we would share our collective wealth equally amongst the 

gang in a huddle on the ground. 

“Hey you lot, I seen what you did!” 

It was the weird goofy girl that worked in the shop on Saturdays. 

Greg was supposed to be keeping her occupied, I looked up at him and 

he shrugged his shoulders, I conceded with an upward nod, it was a 

tough assignment. 

We were caught like rabbits in the headlights, unable to move or speak. 

“I want in, you better give me that Mars bar there, or I dob you in.” 

29 

Somebody grabbed the Mars from the pile and handed it to her. She 

smirked, turned on her heal and disappeared around the corner, back 

to work, where she could have quite easily robbed her own Mars bar if 

she hadn’t her job security to worry about. 

Silence for a few tense moments, then hysterical laughter accompanied 

by exaggerated sifting of the treasure, pirate style. 

“Pete nearly shit himself!” 

“What do you mean, nearly?” 

Once the haul had been shared out we headed for the cake shop, 

impossible to rob anything here, all the cakes were behind glass, only 

EASTER 2016

the wasps and flies could get in there and inevitably never get out. 

However, come half four, Jean will be getting ready to close up. 

“Hi Jean, any stale buns?” Angelic look. 

“Aw, look at you little cherubs, let me see now...” 

She filled a brown paper bag with stale buns and wrapped a custard 

slice in greaseproof paper. 

“This is for you hun.” She winked the wink that I tolerated for free buns. 

30 

I gave the custard slice to Mum when I got home, they were her 

favourite. 

She was sorting and stacking dented and label less tinned food into the 

kitchen cupboard, singing along to Desmond and Molly (or whatever 

it’s called) 


She worked at a cash and carry, where, once a month, she and 

her fellow workers could purchase the unsellable tins at a cut price. 

Generally you could tell what the contents were by giving the tins a 

shake, but occasionally what looked like a tin of beans turned out to 

be peaches. I think this accounted for most of Dads bizarre culinary 

experiments he knocked up and tested on us while he was out of work. 

It was all so easy then, I was a prince in my neighbourhood, a criminal 

mastermind, a leader of men, a wooer of women, entrepreneur and 

provider. Every moment was an adventure, even opening a tin can. 

When did it all change? 

31 

EASTER 2016

32 


EASTER 2016 

33

FOLLY 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

IN OR OUT 

THE CHOICE 

IS YOURS? 

Edited from an article by 

Rafael Behr 

in the Guardian 

... and a wee quote 

from Nicola Sturgeon 

While accepting that the European 

Union is a bosses club where decisions 

are employer-led and commercially 

driven, and the concessions to a working 

class will be subservient to profit … 

there is a vast raft of legislation which 

is aimed at creating better working 

conditions for workers. It is the idea of 

removing some of this EU legislation – 

rules which hamstring some employers 

in their haste to the trough, and is often 

decried by idiots as ’safety gone mad’ 

– that sits so comfortably with all the 

racist claptrap in the ‘Brexit’ (a truly arse 

acronym that should certainly disqualify 

its supporters!) camp. IN or OUT the 

working class will remain exploited by a 

ruling class … 

35 

EASTER 2016

36 

By thrusting a pointless referendum 

on a country with divided opinion 

encouraged by myths and lies is a 

wonderful ruling class trick, an illusion at 

democracy for us no-marks: Question, 

do you want to be ruled by Brussels 

fat cats or Westminster piggies? you 

choose. Both sides of the argument – 

to stay in the European Union or leave 

– wander aimlessly the corridors of all 

political parties unable to agree, such 

acrimonious division is likely to leave a 

bad taste whatever the result. Interestingly 

both sides consistently argue their IN 

or OUT will be wonderful for business 

and ‘the county’s prosperity’ (whatever 

that is?). We know what IN looks like 

but other than visions of a rosy little 

englander shiteland there is not much 

telling information on what a successful 

OUT vote will look like for citizens of the 

UK … other than walls will go up, tattoos 

of union jacks on foreheads will become 

compulsory, dark people won’t be able to 

find accommodation and business will be 

great for business! 

From Nicola Sturgeon: ‘While it’s 

clear that being a member of the EU 

has its benefits, within any institution 

improvements can be made. If we are 

to influence positive change in Europe, 

we must remain within it – only that 

guarantees our role in the EU decisionmaking 

processes on issues that affect 

our everyday lives. Right now, as a 

member of the EU, the UK sits at the top 

table in Brussels, with the opportunity 

to shape EU policy and make a positive 

contribution to Europe. As Norway’s 

former foreign minister Espen Barth Eide 

has said, as a member of the European 

Economic Area as opposed to the EU, 

Norway makes a substantial contribution 

to the EU budget, but has no vote and 

no presence when crucial decisions that 

affect the daily lives of its citizens are 

made. 

Two weeks ago, as European leaders 

were forced to break off from discussing 

the refugee crisis in order to negotiate 

the taper rate at which the UK can cut 

benefits for working EU citizens, I can’t 

have been the only person wondering 

whether the UK’s standing in the world 

was really being enhanced by that 

process. In the weeks ahead, both sides 

of the debate must aspire to higher 

ideals.’ 

Art: Dave Gibbons, Watching the Watchmen 


REFERENDUM? 

DEMOOCRACY? ASK ME 

SOMETHING FUCKING 

MEANINGFUL ... LIKE DO I 

WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO 

WASTE BILLIONS OF POUNDS 

ON THE REPLACEMENT FOR 

TRIDENT? 

37 

EASTER 2016

38 

Another article by Rafael Behr in the 

Guardian gives an interesting outlook, 

tweaked version reprinted below … 

In the aftermath of a British vote to leave 

the European Union, French wine and 

Greek cheese would still be available in 

the shops. Budget airlines would still fly to 

continental destinations through skies that 

would not have fallen down. 

Campaigners for a vote to Remain warn 

that an OUT strategy is hazardous but 

there would be no overnight calamity, 

only shock and political frenzy. The 

prime minister might resign. Markets 

would move. There would be great 

disappointment too, felt as a sharp sting 

by pro-Europeans but also as a slow 

burn by sceptics. Remainers would get 

over their defeat while the leavers would 

spend years mining fresh grievances 

from the newly blasted quarry of their 

victory. 

The first betrayals would flow quickly 

as the government began negotiating 

its way back through tiers of European 

cooperation: access to the single 

market; protections for UK workers and 

pensioners in other member states; 

cross-border policing and security 

collaboration; the whole edifice of legal 

harmonisation that allows people and 

goods to flow unimpeded from one 

member state to another. No serious 

advocate of an OUT vote denies that a 

partial Brrrr-entry would follow. Yet none 

can agree how far to go back in, nor 

how much to pay for the privilege. 

Emulating the Norwegian or Swiss 

models would require compromise 

in terms of contribution to the EU 

budget, acceptance of Brusselsderived 

regulations and porosity of 

borders. Any combination of those 

would so dilute the severance package 

advertised to British voters as to 

constitute grievous mis-selling. 

The leavers assert that the UK, with its 

vast pool of consumers for European 

exports, would be in a strong negotiating 

position. Maybe so, but the hand 

would be no stronger than the one 

David Cameron held when striking his 

renegotiation deal last week. Other EU 

leaders were mindful of the need to 

accommodate some British demands. 


They did not want to provoke a response 

that might exacerbate a simmering 

European crisis of confidence and 

cohesion. 

The dynamic in post-referendum exit 

talks would be quite different. Britain 

would have spurned a hard-won deal 

and aggravated the crisis anyway. The 

economic leverage that Cameron (or his 

successor) brought to the table would 

be offset by a collapse in diplomatic 

goodwill. The jilted council would need 

to ensure, through punitive exit terms, 

that the first state ever to leave the 

EU would also be the last. 

That an OUT vote might provoke 

a less than conciliatory response in 

other European capitals is taken by 

hardline sceptics as proof that the whole 

enterprise is an Anglophobe plot. The 

argument appears to be that friends who 

refuse to re-open a door once it has 

been slammed angrily in their faces are 

not true friends after all, which in turn 

just goes to show that slamming doors is 

the most effective way to deal with them; 

it’s the only language they understand. 

This peculiar reasoning flows from a 

long-standing refusal to accept that 

“Europe”, as a political process, 

is something that participants run 

collectively for their mutual advantage, 

as opposed to something that 27 

alien nations do to Britain, and which 

we put up with because we lack the 

gumption to do anything else. 

There are solid historical, geographical 

and cultural reasons why the UK’s 

conception of European partnership is 

sceptical and semi-detached. Only a 

tiny minority of British Europhiles are 

animated by the project’s founding 

ideal: economic interdependence, 

leading to elision of borders as 

the antidote to murderous nationalism. 

For most, it is a transactional affair, 

and one in which the apparatus of 

political union feels too clunky for the 

commercial purpose it is meant to serve. 

Even the least romantic, most mercantile 

perspective on the EU recognises that 

it is not some economic drop-in centre 

where the decision to attend has no 

bearing on other members. It is founded 

on multilateral treaties whose genesis 

39 

EASTER 2016

40 

was not pain-free. Britain is not the only 

country with EU-related dilemmas, or 

where politicians must strike a balance 

between what they think is strategically 

necessary and electorally viable.Yet we 

expect our allies to be relaxed, indulgent 

even, as we divert them from other 

problems: an epoch-defining movement 

of refugees across the continent; Russian 

territorial aggression; aftershocks of 

the last financial crisis; perhaps early 

tremors of the next one. We hijack the 

agenda with our demands for special 

treatment in exchange for … what, 

exactly? The good fortune to have us 

still in the club. Maybe. Subject to a 

referendum. 

Our collective responsibility in that 

vote reaches beyond these islands. 

Compared to David Cameron, other 

EU leaders do not have as much 

invested in the deal that was struck last 

week, but they are still exposed. A British 

rejection of membership on revised 

terms would be a symbolic detonation of 

inter-governmental compromise as the 

EU’s vehicle for crisis management, and 

a potential trigger for nationalistic and 

populist contagion elsewhere. 

It would not even neutralise those 

forces at home. The leave campaign 

channels appetites that cannot be met 

by technical changes to the terms on 

which Britain exchanges goods, services 

and people with the rest of Europe. If 

the UK votes to quit the EU, it will be an 

expression of economic and political 

frustration for which Brussels has long 

been a convenient scapegoat, and which 

cannot therefore be dissipated by a ritual 

slaughter of treaty obligations. 

Any workable application of an OUT 

vote would end up looking like a partial 

reconstruction of EU membership. Then 

each segment of the coalition for leave 

would feel betrayed, one by one. The 

Tory libertarians would complain that not 

enough regulation had been scrapped; 

the hard left, like the Socialist Workers 

Party who bewilderingly advocate an OUT 

vote, would find corporate capitalism 

still rampant; Ukip nativists would see no 

sudden restoration of ethnic homogeneity 

to the streets. The disparate pot of 

resentments, heated and stirred through 

the long campaign against “Europe”, 

would break and its contents flow into 

other political vessels and causes. 


That is the tragedy of this referendum. 

So much is at stake. A European 

alliance, decades in the making, 

could be undermined with no obvious 

economic or political benefits in 

exchange. And no option on the 

ballot paper can satisfy all the people 

for whom the whole destructive 

campaign has been arranged. The 

leavers may get what they vote for and 

still never get what they want. 

41 

EASTER 2016

42 


EASTER 2016 

43

44 


DON’T MARK HIS FACE 

Hull Prison Riot, 1976 

From Jamie Doran, 873409: 

I was at HMP Hull at the time of the riot. We gathered on the centre 

and made enquiries about the inmate who was beaten up in the 

Segregation Unit. We spoke to the Assistant Governor, Mr Manning 

who assured us that the inmate had not been beaten up. We then 

requested to see the No. 1 Governor, and A.G. Manning went and 

phoned him. He then returned and told us that the Governor could 

not come in, as he was at a dinner dance, but, he had sent orders 

for us to be returned to our cells. We then asked for a delegation of 

inmates to see inmate Clifford, again this was refused. We then went 

to A wing gate, which was opened for us by A.G. Manning, who 

when we were all through shouted to inmates still on D wing landing, 

‘Any more of you want to come through?’ He then locked the door 

and gate to A wing, and had the rest of the prison locked up. 

45 

From Michael Davis, 682938 

An inmate shouted through the window to the block which is joined 

onto A wing and we all heard the answer back that it was true 

Clifford had been assaulted and had suffered bruises to his eyes and 

nose; at this time there were only three screws and A.G. Manning 

standing on A wing ground floor near the door to the centre. After 

EASTER 2016

46 

a few minutes of murmuring among us a fire bucket full of water 

was thrown down and the screws and Manning ran out locking the 

gate and door, then things started getting smashed and it carried 

on from there. At about 9.30 I saw officers in riot gear come out of 

C wing onto the centre and start to chase inmates on D wing and 

staff caught on and beat him to the floor with sticks, kick him about 

the head and body and one of them jumped with both feet on his 

head. He was bleeding from the head and laid out before his head 

was jumped on. I also saw another man beaten on the head with riot 

sticks, kicked and left laid ot bleeding from the head. I don’t know his 

name but he was off my wing which is D wing. It was after this that I 

saw no more staff on either A, D or C wings – they had left the prison 

and stayed only on B wing and inside the grounds in riot gear. 

Jamie Doran continues ... 

When I was on the roof, I saw the inmate Clifford, who had two 

black eyes and a long scratch on his face. He then verified that he 

had been beaten up by four prison officers. From A wing roof I saw 

several inmates who had given themselves up beaten by officers with 

riot batons while they were handcuffed. John Oates gave himself 

up after climbing down a drainpipe, when he reached the ground 

the dog handlers set their dogs on him and beat him with riot sticks, 

punched and kicked him then dragged him away. Several inmates 

who wanted to give themselves up were told: ‘Stay where you are you 

bastards we are coming in to get you.’ 


EASTER 2016 

47

From R.T. Hoskins, 874880 

It little matters what caused the riot at Hull prison. All kinds of excuses 

have been given. Brutalities have been mentioned, and ‘three just 

men’ have disbelieved us. Not only that, they have punished us. 

You have all read about the riot, you have your own views on the 

subject. Let me tell you what happened after the riot. Let me tell you 

what I saw, and what I know the papers don’t know. 

48 

We all came down on Friday 3 September, we all expected a good 

hiding, we had been threatened before we came down. We were 

searched and all our personal property taken from us. Then we were 

locked up, and apart from a bowl of soup at 7 o’clock, the door 

remained locked. All I had in my cell was a mattress, two tatty and 

damp blankets and no windows. During the night screws banged on 

my door and told me what to expect when I was unlocked. They told 

me they were going to cripple me, take out my eyes, rip off my arms. 

They kept this up all night. 

Breakfast 4 September. Before my turn came to go for breakfast I 

heard screams, smacks and some tormenting words from the screws: 

‘Kiss my shoes’, ‘Call me sir’, ‘Don’t mark his face’. This last from a 

Senior Officer. 

I watched through my door a man dragged from his cell, kicked and 

beaten and jam spread all over his face. Two screws saw me looking 


and screamed at me to get away from the door – one threatened to 

kill me. I stayed where I was. I had already made up my mind that 

one day I would write down what I saw happen. 

My turn came for breakfast. I took off my glasses and went out of my 

cell. I was kicked from behind. One screw stood on my stockinged 

feet, and when I reached the serving table I received a bloody nose 

and had tea thrown all over me, smacks and digs from behind and 

then I went back to my cell with no breakfast. 

Two minutes after being locked up a screw opened my door and gave 

me a cup of tea. I went to drink it and realised it had piss in it. I could 

smell it, and one taste was enough for me to know how low they had 

gone in their revenge. I could write pages of what I saw after the riot 

and during the riot. I saw a man attacked by three dogs. I had urine 

poured over me. I have been threatened, kicked and battered. 

49 

You may find this hard to believe. One day I will prove it to you and 

all the outside world. I will name names and I will dig out men I am 

sure will back me up. 

I am glad you have taken an interest in how British prisons are run. 

As I’ve stated, I can and will write a more detailed thing about Hull 

prison. 

From: Don’t Mark His Face, The National Prisoners’ Movement 

(PROP), 1979. 

EASTER 2016

50 


EASTER 2016 

51

52 

In the long history of colonial trampling 

another rebuke to Irish aspirations ... 


DUBLIN 

EASTER 1916 

Edited from an article by Catriona Crowe, in The Irish Times 

The decade of centenaries in which we are now engrossed provides 

opportunities to interrogate and reflect on what happened here 100 

years ago. On our small island on the edge of a powerful continent, 

and next door to a large imperial power, we embarked in 1912 on a 

decade of diverse thought processes, activities and interactions, often 

diametrically opposed to one another, which resulted in outcomes as 

varied as the achievement of an independent, albeit partitioned, state, 

the establishment of a modern, highly defensive Unionism in the northern 

part of the country, the birth of a modern trade union movement, mass 

participation in the most murderous war yet seen in the world, the 

achievement of the franchise for some women, the creation of a founding 

myth for our state, involving heroism, hopelessness, high ideals and 

self-sacrifice, the elimination of the political party which had enjoyed 

overwhelming nationalist support for three decades, the creation of a 

new nationalist party whose roots spread in many different directions, 

a vicious civil war, and, most importantly, the deaths of almost 36,000 

people and injuries, often seriously disabling, to many more. 

53 

EASTER 2016

The victims of violent conflict are often overlooked in the commemorative 

exercises, many of them laudable, which occur on these anniversaries. 

Ireland has tended to ignore victims, both of the struggle for 

independence and the first World War, for many years. Eunan O’Halpin’s 

huge project, The Dead of the Irish Revolution, will be the equivalent 

for the decade of Lost Lives, that sobering and immensely impressive 

record of death in Northern Ireland over the period of what is called “the 

Troubles”, created by David McKittrick and others. 

54 

O’Halpin and his collaborators are laying out details of how many died, 

who they were, who killed them, how many were civilians, which parts 

of the country had the highest death tolls, and what kind of violence – 

combat, riot or assassination – was the most common. The first volume 

of this extremely important contribution to our understanding of the 

period, covering 1916-21, will be published in the near future. The 

release of the records of the Bureau of Military History and the Military 

Service Pensions files (two separate collections) in the last decade has 

transformed research by scholars and citizens on the nationalist struggle, 

and changed the picture we have of what happened from something 

simple and heroic to a far more complicated version of events. The 1901 

and 1911 census records underpin these records as the demographic 

basis for the study of the decade. All of these records have been released, 

free to access, by the Irish State, and will be one of the most enduring 

legacies of the decade of centenaries. 

Some of the records released in recent years by The National Archives 

in London and the Imperial War Museum shed valuable light on Irish 

people involved and killed in the first World War, and on people in the 


British military forces in Ireland, of different kinds and intentions. The 

Imperial War Museum has constructed a huge digital resource, Lives of 

the First World War, which links many different archival resources to give 

a comprehensive picture of the histories of those who participated in the 

war, including some of the 250,000 Irishmen who did so. 

Joe Duffy, the RTÉ broadcaster, took a laudable early interest in the 40 

children killed during and as a result of the 1916 Rising, and has now 

produced a book, Children of the Rising: The Untold Story of the Young 

Lives Lost During Easter 1916, which gives names, details of deaths and 

family backgrounds, where possible, for each of them. 

As he points out, we have not heard about child casualties of 1916 

before; they became “collateral damage”, along with the rest of the 

almost 300 civilian casualties. In all violent conflicts, military leaders 

of all kinds often consign untold numbers of uninvolved people to 

violent death and injury, and their families to trauma, bereavement and 

impoverishment. 

55 

This book performs a really important service: it humanises the most 

vulnerable casualties of that week in April 1916 which has formed the 

basis of (some) Irish ideas of how our state came into being. Dead 

children are an essential part of the story, as are the terrible losses 

suffered by their families. Duffy begins with the death of two-year-old 

Sean Foster, shot in crossfire while being wheeled in a pram by his 

mother, Katie, on Church St. His photograph reveals a beautiful blond 

child; we learn that his father, John Foster, had been killed on the 

Western Front the year before, and that Katie’s brother, Joseph O’Neill, 

EASTER 2016

was fighting with the Irish Volunteers during the Rising, and was actually 

on the barricades in Church Street from where it is surmised the fatal shot 

came. 

Duffy uses multiple sources to bring the stories of these children to life: 

census records, death certificates, statements from the Bureau of Military 

History, pension applications, compensation claims, newspaper reports 

and, valuably, testimonies from family members who came forward in 

response to a public request for information. This painstaking approach 

allows him to provide us with not just the riveting stories of the children, 

but the family and social environments in which they lived. 

56 

As expected, a large number of them came from the notorious slums, 

and Duffy’s use of the census and other records presents a relentless 

account of appalling overcrowding, insanitary conditions, widespread 

threats to children’s health and life, and endemic poverty. Class, as 

always, played an important part in children’s chances of survival. There 

is a marvellous chapter on looting, with descriptions of children grabbing 

sweets, toys and clothing from shops all over the city. One account tells 

of “a fresh-faced youth crossing the street [Sackville Street] with an armful 

of boots. He is brandishing a pair of white satin shoes and shouting 

hysterically ‘God save Ireland’.” 

Fireworks were taken from Lawrence’s toy shop on Sackville Street and 

set off in the middle of the street. At least three children died in the midst 

of this risky but rewarding activity. 


The effect of the book, as each child is dealt with in chronological 

order, is to create an alternative history of the Rising, to make us focus, 

not on heroism and idealism, but on the consequences of the conflict 

for ordinary people. Towards the end of the book, Duffy gives us a 

fascinating quote from a relative of 15-year-old Seán Healy, who was 

a Fianna Éireann scout, shot outside his home in Phibsborough: “I 

remember asking my granny – Seán’s mother – if she would like me to 

die for Ireland. Her answer never left me as she said, ‘It’s easy to die for 

Ireland. What Ireland needs is people to live honestly for Ireland.’” 

Catriona Crowe is head of special projects at the National Archives of 

Ireland 

57 

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58 


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59

60 


61 

161 

EASTER 2016

62 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Obviously wounded, but undaunted, I say 

again, well again, because the letters page is 

a hopeless failure ... Words fail me, what is the 

use of words when the person you are saying 

them to is unable to grasp your, and their, 

meaning? 

















63 

Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I am 

absolute in my scepticism about whether the 

Euro (pro and sceptic)-business-arses and their 

sycophantic political stooges whooping it up in 

their luxury apartments are the answer. 

EASTER 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

9 

SHEEP 

IN THE ROAD 

APRIL 2016 

STILL 

LEVELLING!

Editor looks 

for word to 

describe this 

issue’s 

contents ... 


The 

CONTENTS 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

Opening 03 





Cover: Alan Rutherford 

Photographs, words and artwork sourced 

from ‘found in the scrapbook of life’, 

no intentional copyright infringement 

intended, credited whenever possible, 









The Cage 04 

Diggers 07 

Royal Cafe 10 

Nils Burwitz 12 

Constructivism 16 

Hope trumped? 18 

Borders Folly 21 

Nothing is Normal 33 

Crossroads 41 

Lower High Street 45 

Duffer 61 

Irish Women 65 

Letters 69 

1 

APRIL FOOL 2016

OPENING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 


Hello, 


Articles and artwork by way of other 

sources, words borrowed ... some odd 

pieces catch my eye and are adopted to 

illustrate an angle. Its a visual necessity if I 

am to produce this ‘rag’ ... contributors are 

a fucking scarce breed. 

Otherwise its nuggets of the eclectic ... 

flourish again! 

3 


Artwork: print by Letterproeftuin, Rotterdam 

APRIL FOOL 2016

... at its core, the cylinder too is poised 

between rotations ... 

transfixed upon its waste, within the 

monotony of its wall ... 

THE CAGE: Mart

... only one object 

still commands attention ... 

... rooted firmly 

in the centre of the plain ... 

in Vaughn-James

Photograph: Alan Rutherford

The year 1649 was a time of great social unrest 

in England. The Parliamentarians had won the 

First English Civil War but failed to negotiate a 

constitutional settlement with the defeated King 

Charles I. When members of Parliament and the 

Grandees in the New Model Army were faced with 

Charles’ perceived duplicity, they tried and executed 

him. 

7 

DIGGERS 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

THE TRUE 

LEVELLERS 

Wikipedia 

Government through the King’s Privy Council was 

replaced with a new body called the Council of State, 

which due to fundamental disagreements within a 

weakened Parliament was dominated by the Army. 

Many people became active in politics, suggesting 

alternative forms of government to replace the old 

order. Royalists wished to place King Charles II on 

the throne; men like Oliver Cromwell wished to 

govern with a plutocratic Parliament voted in by an 

electorate based on property, similar to that which 

was enfranchised before the civil war; agitators 

called Levellers, influenced by the writings of John 

Lilburne, wanted parliamentary government based 

on an electorate of every male head of a household; 

Fifth Monarchy Men advocated a theocracy; and the 

Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley, advocated a more 

radical solution. 

APRIL FOOL 2016

8 

In 1649 Gerrard Winstanley and 14 others published 

a pamphlet in which they called themselves the “True 

Levellers” to distinguish their ideas from those of the 

Levellers. Once they put their idea into practice and 

started to cultivate common land, both opponents and 

supporters began to call them “Diggers”. The Diggers’ 

beliefs were informed by Winstanley’s writings which 

envisioned an ecological interrelationship between 

humans and nature, acknowledging the inherent 

connections between people and their surroundings. 

Winstanley declared that “true freedom lies where a 

man receives his nourishment and preservation, and 

that is in the use of the earth”. 

An undercurrent of political thought which has run 

through English society for many generations and 

resurfaced from time to time (for example, in the 

Peasants’ Revolt in 1381) was present in some of the 

political factions of the 17th century, including those 

who formed the Diggers. It involved the common belief 

that England had become subjugated by the “Norman 

Yoke”. This legend offered an explanation that at one 

time a golden Era had existed in England before the 

Norman Conquest in 1066. From the Conquest on, 

the Diggers argued, the “common people of England” 

had been robbed of their birthrights and exploited by a 

foreign ruling-class. 

Action is the Life of All 

and if thou Dost not Act, 

Thou dost NOTHING 

Gerrard Winstanley 

St George’s Hill, Weybridge, Surrey 

The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 

reporting that several individuals had begun to plant 

vegetables in common land on St George’s Hill, 

Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey at a time when food 

prices reached an all-time high. Sanders reported that 

they had invited “all to come in and help them, and 

promise them meat, drink, and clothes.” They intended to 

pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to 

come and work with them. They claimed that their number 

would be several thousand within ten days. “It is feared 

they have some design in hand.” In the same month, 

the Diggers issued their most famous pamphlet and 

manifesto, called “The True Levellers Standard Advanced”. 

At the behest of the local landowners, the commander 

of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, duly arrived 

with his troops and interviewed Winstanley and another 

prominent member of the Diggers, William Everard. 

Everard suspected that the Diggers were in serious trouble 

and soon left the group. Fairfax, meanwhile, having 

concluded that Diggers were doing no harm, advised the 

local landowners to use the courts. 

Winstanley remained and continued to write about the 

treatment they received. The harassment from the Lord of 

the Manor, Francis Drake (not the famous Francis Drake, 

who had died more than 50 years before), was both 

deliberate and systematic: he organised gangs in an attack 

on the Diggers, including numerous beatings and an 

arson attack on one of the communal houses. Following a 

court case, in which the Diggers were forbidden to speak 

in their own defence, they were found guilty of being 

Ranters, a radical sect associated with liberal sexuality 

(though in fact Winstanley had reprimanded Ranter 

Laurence Clarkson for his sexual practices). Having lost 

the court case, if they had not left the land, then the army 

could have been used to enforce the law and evict them; 

so they abandoned Saint George’s Hill in August 1649, 

much to the relief of the local freeholders. 


Little Heath near Cobham 

Some of the evicted Diggers moved a short distance 

to Little Heath in Surrey. 11 acres (4.5 ha) were 

cultivated, six houses built, winter crops harvested, and 

several pamphlets published. After initially expressing 

some sympathy for them, the local lord of the manor 

of Cobham, Parson John Platt, became their chief 

enemy. He used his power to stop local people helping 

them and he organised attacks on the Diggers and 

their property. By April 1650, Platt and other local 

landowners succeeded in driving the Diggers from 

Little Heath. 

Wellingborough, Northamptonshire 

There was another community of Diggers close to 

Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. In 1650, the 

community published a declaration which started: 

A Declaration of the Grounds and Reasons why we the 

Poor Inhabitants of the Town of Wellingborrow, in the 

County of Northampton, have begun and give consent 

to dig up, manure and sow Corn upon the Common, 

and waste ground, called Bareshanke belonging to 

the Inhabitants of Wellinborrow, by those that have 

Subscribed and hundreds more that give Consent.... 

This colony was probably founded as a result of 

contact with the Surrey Diggers. In late March 1650, 

four emissaries from the Surrey colony were arrested 

in Buckinghamshire bearing a letter signed by the 

Surrey Diggers including Gerrard Winstanley and 

Robert Coster inciting people to start Digger colonies 

and to provide money for the Surrey Diggers. 

According to the newspaper A Perfect Diurnall the 

emissaries had travelled a circuit through the counties 

of Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, 

Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Huntingdonshire and 

Northamptonshire before being apprehended. 

On April 15, 1650, the Council of State ordered Mr 

Pentlow, a justice of the peace for Northamptonshire 

to proceed against ‘the Levellers in those parts’ and to 

have them tried at the next Quarter Session. The Iver 

Diggers recorded that, nine of the Wellingborough 

Diggers were arrested and imprisoned in Northampton 

jail and although no charges could be proved against 

them the justice refused to release them. 

Captain William Thompson, the leader of the failed 

“Banbury mutiny,” was killed in a skirmish close to the 

community by soldiers loyal to Oliver Cromwell in May 

1649. 

Iver, Buckinghamshire 

Another colony of Diggers connected to the Surrey 

and Wellingborough colony was set up in Iver, 

Buckinghamshire about 14 miles (23 km) from 

the Surrey Diggers colony at St George’s Hill (see 

Keith Thomas, ‘Another Digger Broadside’ Past 

and Present No.42, (1969) pp. 57–68). The Iver 

Diggers “Declaration of the grounds and Reasons, 

why we the poor Inhabitants of the Parrish of Iver 

in Buckinghamshire ... ” revealed that there were 

further Digger colonies in Barnet in Hertfordshire, 

Enfield in Middlesex, Dunstable in Bedfordshire, 

Bosworth in Gloucestershire and a further colony in 

Nottinghamshire. It also revealed that after the failure 

of the Surrey colony, the Diggers had left their children 

to be cared for by parish funds.

Royal is a new 

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Books ten years 

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Lao Tzu Two - 

Ian Pollock 

£5

11 

Café Royal Books 

shop & archive 

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craig@caferoyalbooks.com 

Weekly limited edition 

photographic publications 

focussing broadly on aspects of 

change, usually within the UK.

Nils Burwitz 

Namibia: Heads or Tails?, 1979 

A number of his prints are graphic 

responses to apartheid in South 

Africa,; the inhumanity of bureaucratic 

language and the inherent 

discrimination embedded in the 

terminology is as chilling as any more 

graphic abuse of human rights. 

12 

‘Heads or Tails?’ draws its power from 

replicating and recontextualizing the 

signs that policed the racial divisions 

in society in every respect, in life and 

death, labour and leisure. This is 

perhaps his most famous image – 

made in fact after he had left South 

Africa for Mallorca. A double-sided 

print, it reproduces both sides of a 

sign: one side warns the spectator that 

he/she is about to enter a prohibited 

area (the Diamond Zone in Namibia); 

the other is blank; both are riddled 

with bullet holes. Burwitz simulated the 

peeling layers of enamel surrounding 

the bullet holes in the original sign 

by repeated applications of thickened 

inks forced through the silk screens. 


Nils Burwitz 

Namibia: Heads or Tails?, 1979 

A number of his prints are graphic 

responses to apartheid in South 

Africa,; the inhumanity of bureaucratic 

language and the inherent 

discrimination embedded in the 

terminology is as chilling as any more 

graphic abuse of human rights. 

‘Heads or Tails?’ draws its power from 

replicating and recontextualizing the 

signs that policed the racial divisions 

in society in every respect, in life and 

death, labour and leisure. This is 

perhaps his most famous image – 

made in fact after he had left South 

Africa for Mallorca. A double-sided 

print, it reproduces both sides of a 

sign: one side warns the spectator that 

he/she is about to enter a prohibited 

area (the Diamond Zone in Namibia); 

the other is blank; both are riddled 

with bullet holes. Burwitz simulated the 

peeling layers of enamel surrounding 

the bullet holes in the original sign 

by repeated applications of thickened 

inks forced through the silk screens. 

‘Hey man, it looks like black skin ...’

CONSTRUCT-IVISM 

El Lissitzky was one of the most inspired 

proponents of this ideologically driven 

Russian movement, which became known as 

Constructivism. His famous red, black and sepia 

poster, featuring the hand of an architect holding 

a compass, epitomised the basic principles of this 

early Modernist aesthetic. Onto this simple and 

bold layout, Lissitzky superimposed typographical 

and pictorial elements at 90- and 45-degree 

angles. He triangulated the heavy lines of 

type, the fingers of the hand and the arms of 

the compass the same way an architect would 

have triangulated girders, timbers and beams 

to strengthen a tall structure. The use of capital 

letters, sans serif type and industrial-looking 

colours reinforced the impression of stability that 

this composition strove to achieve. 

Perfected in Russia by Lissitzky and also Alexander 

Rodchenko in the 1920s, triangulated layouts 

went on to capture the imagination of designers 

worldwide. Imbued with revolutionary thoughts 

and new ideas about art, artists and their place 

in society; hatched in a country embroiled in a 

Socialist revolution – countless artists adopted 

and further developed the Constructivist style. First 

in the Netherlands, where Theo van Doesburg 

and Piet Zwart borrowed some of its tropes to 

spearhead the De Stijl movement; and later, in 

the 1930s, in Germany, where the likes of László 

Moholy-Nagy and Jan Tschichold combined 

diagonals and angles with Bauhaus typography to 

create their own distinctive signature look. 

Edited from an article by 

Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne

Artwork: El Lissitzky 

17

Artwork: Shepard Fairey

IS THE LONG 

GONE HOPE 

IN THE USA 

FINALLY 

TRUMPED? 

OK ... 

who trumped?

UTTER 

FOLLY 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

BORDERS: 

THE SCARS 

OF HISTORY 

Jack Shenker 

from The Guardian, under heading ... 

Welcome to the land that no country wants 

BIR TAWIL is the last truly unclaimed land on earth: 

a tiny sliver of Africa ruled by no state, inhabited by no 

permanent residents and governed by no laws. To get 

there, you have two choices. 

The first is to fly to the Sudanese capital Khartoum, 

charter a jeep, and follow the Shendi road hundreds of 

miles up to Abu Hamed, a settlement that dates back 

to the ancient kingdom of Kush. Today it serves as the 

region’s final permanent human outpost before the 

vast Nubian desert, twice the size of mainland Britain 

and almost completely barren, begins unfolding to the 

north. 

There are some artisanal gold miners in the desert, 

conjuring specks of hope out of the ground, a few 

armed gangs, which often prey upon the prospectors, 

and a small number of military units who carry out 

patrols in the area and attempt, with limited success, 

to keep the peace. You need to drive past all of them, 

out to the point where the occasional scattered shrub 

or palm tree has long since disappeared and given 

way to a seemingly endless, flat horizon of sand and 

rock – out to the point where there are no longer any 

landmarks by which to measure the passing of your 

journey. 

21 

APRIL FOOL 2016

22 

Out here, dry winds often blow in from the Arabian 

peninsula, whipping up sheets of dust that plunge 

visibility down to near-zero. After a day like this, then a 

night, and then another day, you will finally cross into 

Bir Tawil, an 800-square-mile cartographical oddity 

nestled within the border that separates Egypt and 

Sudan. Both nations have renounced any claim to it, 

and no other government has any jurisdiction over it. 

The second option is to approach from Egypt, setting 

off from the country’s southernmost city of Aswan, 

down through the arid expanse that lies between 

Lake Nasser to the west and the Red Sea to the east. 

Much of it has been declared a restricted zone by the 

Egyptian army, and no one can get near the border 

without first obtaining their permission. 

In June 2014, a 38-year-old farmer from Virginia 

named Jeremiah Heaton did exactly that. After 

obtaining the necessary paperwork from the Egyptian 

military authorities, he started out on a treacherous 

14-hour expedition through remote canyons and 

jagged mountains, eventually wending his way into the 

no man’s land of Bir Tawil and triumphantly planting a 

flag. 

Heaton’s six-year-old daughter, Emily, had once asked 

her father if she could ever be a real princess; after 

discovering the existence of Bir Tawil on the internet, 

his birthday present to her that year was to trek there 

and turn her wish into a reality. “So be it proclaimed,” 

Heaton wrote on his Facebook page, “that Bir Tawil 

shall be forever known as the Kingdom of North 

Sudan. The Kingdom is established as a sovereign 

monarchy with myself as the head of state; with Emily 

becoming an actual princess.” 

Heaton’s social media posts were picked up by a 

local paper in Virginia, the Bristol Herald-Courier, 

and quickly became the stuff of feel-good clickbait 

around the world. CNN, Time, Newsweek and 

hundreds of other global media outlets pounced on 

the story. Heaton responded by launching a global 

crowdfunding appeal aimed at securing $250,000 in 

an effort at getting his new “state” up and running. 

Heaton knew his actions would provoke awe, mirth 

and confusion, and that many would question his 

sanity. But what he was not prepared for was an 

angry backlash by observers who regarded him not 

as a devoted father or a heroic pioneer but rather as 

a 21st-century imperialist. After all, the portrayal of 

land as “unclaimed” or “undeveloped” was central 

to centuries of ruthless conquest. “The same callous, 

dehumanising logic that has been used to legitimise 

European colonialism not just in Africa but in the 

Americas, Australia, and elsewhere is on full display 

here,” noted one commentator. “Are white people still 

allowed to do this kind of stuff?” asked another. 

“Any new idea that’s this big and bold always meets 

with some sort of ridicule, or is questioned in terms 

of its legitimacy,” Heaton told me last year over 

the telephone. In his version of the story, Heaton’s 

“conquest” of Bir Tawil was not about colonialism, 

but rather familial love and ambitious dreams: apart 

from making Emily royalty, he hopes to turn his newly 

founded nation – which lies within one of the most 

inhospitable regions on the planet and contains no 

fixed population, no coastline, no surface water and 

no arable soil – into a cutting-edge agriculture and 

technology research hub that will ultimately benefit all 

humanity. 

After all, Heaton reasoned, no country wanted this 

forgotten corner of the world, and no individual before 

him had ever laid claim to it. What harm was to be 

caused by some well‐intentioned, starry-eyed eccentric 

completing such a challenge, and why should it not be 

him? 

There were two problems with Heaton’s argument. 

First, territories and borders can be delicate and 


volatile things, and tampering with them is rarely 

without unforeseen consequences. As Heaton learned 

from the public response to his self-declared kingdom, 

there is no neutral or harmless way to “claim” a 

state, no matter how far away from anywhere else it 

appears to be. Second, Heaton was not the first wellintentioned, 

starry-eyed eccentric to travel all the way 

to Bir Tawil and plant a flag. Someone else got there 

first, and that someone was me. 

Like all great adventure stories, this one began with 

lukewarm beer and the internet. It was the summer of 

2010, and the days in Cairo – where I was living and 

working as a journalist – were long and hot. My friend 

Omar’s balcony provided a shaded refuge filled with 

wicker chairs and reliably stable wireless broadband. It 

was up there, midway through a muggy evening’s web 

pottering, that we first encountered Bir Tawil. 

Omar was an Egyptian-British filmmaker armed with a 

battery of finely tuned Werner Herzog impressions and 

a crisp black beard that I was secretly quite jealous 

of. The pair of us knew nothing beyond a single fact, 

gleaned from a blog devoted to arcane maps: barely 

500 miles away from where we sat, there apparently 

existed a patch of land over which no country on earth 

asserted any sovereignty. Within five minutes I had 

booked the flights. Omar opened two more beers. 

Places beyond the scope of everyday authority have 

always fired the imagination. They appear to offer 

us an escape – when all you can see of somewhere 

is its outlines, it is easy to start fantasising about the 

void within. “No man’s lands are our El Dorados,” 

says Noam Leshem, a Durham University geographer 

who recently travelled 6,000 miles through a series of 

so-called “dead spaces”, from the former frontlines 

of the Balkans war to the UN buffer zone in Cyprus, 

along with his colleague Alasdair Pinkerton of Royal 

Holloway. The pair intended to conclude their journey 

at Bir Tawil, but never made it. “There is something 

alluring about a place beyond the control of the state,” 

Leshem adds, “and also something highly deceptive.” 

In reality, nowhere is unplugged from the complex 

political and historical dynamics of the world around it, 

and – as Omar and I were to discover – no visitors can 

hope to short-circuit them. 

Six months later, in January 2011, we touched down at 

Khartoum International airport with a pair of sleeping 

bags, five energy bars, and an embarrassingly small 

stock of knowledge about our final destination. To an 

extent, the ignorance was deliberate. For one thing, we 

planned to shoot a film about our travels, and Omar 

had persuaded me the secret to good film-making was 

to begin work utterly unprepared. Omar – according to 

Omar – was a cinematic auteur; the kind of maverick 

who could breeze into a desolate wasteland with no 

vehicle, no route, and no contacts and produce an 

award-winning documentary from the mayhem. One 

does not lumber an auteur, he explained, with printed 

itineraries, booked accommodation or emergency 

phone numbers. Mindful of my own aspirations to 

auteurism, this reasoning struck me as convincing. 

There was something else, too, that made us refrain 

from proper planning. As the date of our departure 

for Sudan drew closer, Omar and I had taken to 

discussing our “plans” for Bir Tawil in increasingly 

grandiose terms. Deep down, I think, we both 

knew that the notion of “claiming” the territory and 

harnessing it for some grand ideological cause was 

preposterous. But what if it wasn’t? What if our own 

little tabula rasa could be the start of something 

bigger, transforming a forgotten relic of colonial mapmaking 

into a progressive force that would defeat 

contemporary injustices across the world? 

The mechanics of how this might actually work 

remained a little hazy. Yet just occasionally, at more 

contemplative junctures, it did occur to us that in the 

process of planting a flag in Bir Tawil as part of some

24 

ill-defined critique of arbitrary borders and imperial 

violence, there was a risk we could appear – to the 

untrained eye – very similar to the imperialists who 

had perpetrated such violence in the first place. It was 

a resemblance we were keen to avoid. Undertaking 

this journey in a state of deep ignorance, we told 

ourselves, would help mitigate pomposity. Without 

any basic knowledge, we would be forced to travel as 

humble innocents, relying solely on guidance from the 

communities we passed through. 

As the two of us cleared customs, we broke into 

smiles and congratulated each other. The auteurs had 

landed, and what is more they had Important Things 

To Say about borders and states and sovereignty and 

empires. We set off in search of some local currency, 

and warmed to our theme. By the time we found an 

ATM, we were referring to Bir Tawil as so much more 

than a conceptual exposition. Under our benevolent 

stewardship, we assured each other, it could surely 

become some sort of launchpad for radical new ideas, 

a haven for subversives all over the planet. 

It was at that point that the auteurs realised their bank 

cards did not work in Sudan, and that there were no 

international money transfer services they could use to 

wire themselves some cash. 

This setback represented the first consequence of our 

failure to do any preparatory research. The nagging 

sense that our maverick approach to reaching Bir Tawil 

may not have been the wisest way forward gained 

momentum with consequence number two, which was 

that to solve the money problem we had to persuade 

a friend of a friend of a friend of an Egyptian business 

acquaintance to do an illicit currency trade for us 

on the outskirts of Khartoum. Consequence number 

three – namely that, given our lack of knowledge 

about where we could and could not legally film in 

the capital, after a few days we inadvertently attracted 

the attention of an undercover state security agent 

while carrying around $2,000 worth of used Sudanese 

banknotes in an old rucksack, and were arrested – 

transformed suspicion into certainty. 

On the date Omar and I were incarcerated, millions 

of citizens in South Sudan were heading to the polls 

to decide between continued unity with the north 

or secession and a new, independent state of their 

own. We sat silently in a nondescript office block 

just off Gama’a Avenue – the city’s main diplomatic 

thoroughfare – while a group of men in black suits 

and dark sunglasses scrolled through files on Omar’s 

video camera. Armed soldiers, unsmiling, stood guard 

at the door. Through the room’s single window, open 

but barred, the sound of nearby traffic could be heard. 

The images on the screen depicted me and Omar 

gadding about town on the days following our arrival; 

me and Omar unfurling huge rolls of yellowing paper 

at the government’s survey department; me and 

Omar scrawling indecipherable patterns on sheets of 

paper in an effort to design the new Bir Tawili flag; 

me and Omar squabbling over fabric colours at the 

Omdurman market where we had gone to stitch 

together the aforementioned flag. With each new 

picture, a man who appeared to be the senior officer 

raised his eyes to meet ours, shook his head, and 

sighed. 

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I pointed out to 

Omar how apposite it was that at the very moment 

in which votes were being cast in the south, possibly 

redrawing the region’s borders for ever, we had been 

placed under lock and key in a military intelligence 

unit almost a thousand miles to the north for 

attempting to do the same. Omar, concerned about 

the fate of both his camera and the contents of the 

rucksack, declined to respond. I predicted that in the 

not too distant future, when we had made it to Bir 

Tawil, we would look back on this moment and laugh. 

Omar glared. 


In the end, our captivity lasted under an hour. The 

senior officer concluded, perceptively, that, whatever we 

were attempting to do, we were far too incompetent to 

do it properly, or to cause too much trouble along the 

way. Upon our release, we set about obtaining a jeep 

that could take us to Bir Tawil. Every reputable travel 

agent we approached turned us down point-blank, 

citing the prevalence of bandit attacks in the desert. 

Thankfully, we were able to locate a disreputable travel 

agent, a large man with a taste for loud polo shirts who 

went by the name of Obai. Obai was actually not a 

travel agent at all, but rather a big-game hunter with 

a lucrative sideline in ambiguously licensed pick-up 

trucks. In exchange for most of our used banknotes, he 

offered to provide us with a jeep, a satellite phone, two 

tanks of water, and his nephew Gedo, who happened 

to be looking for work as a driver. In the absence of any 

alternative offers, we gratefully accepted. 

Unlike Obai, who was a font of swashbuckling 

anecdotes and improbable tales of derring-do, Gedo 

turned out to be a more taciturn soul. He was a civil 

engineer who had previously done construction work 

on the colossal Merowe dam in northern Sudan, 

Africa’s largest hydropower project. On the day of 

our departure, he turned up wearing a baseball cap 

with “Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics” emblazoned 

across the front, and carrying a loaded gun. As we 

waved goodbye to Obai and began weaving our way 

through the capital’s rush hour traffic, Omar and I set 

about explaining to Gedo the intricacies of our plan 

to transform Bir Tawil into an “open-source state” 

that would disrupt existing patterns of global power 

and privilege – no mean feat, given that we didn’t 

understand any of the intricacies ourselves. Gedo 

responded to this as he responded to everything: with a 

sage nod and a deliberate stroke of his stubble. 

“I’m here to protect you,” he told us solemnly, as we 

swung north on to the highway and left Khartoum 

behind us. “Also, I’ve never been on a holiday before, 

and this one sounds fun.” 

Bir Tawil’s unusual status – wedged between the 

borders of two countries and yet claimed by neither – 

is a byproduct of colonial machinations in north-east 

Africa, during an era of British control over Egypt and 

Egyptian influence on Sudan. 

In 1899, government representatives from London 

and Cairo – the latter nominally independent, but 

in reality the servants of a British protectorate – put 

pen to paper on an agreement which established the 

shared dominion of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The treaty 

specified that, following 18 years of intense fighting 

between Egyptian and British forces on the one side 

and Mahdist rebels in Sudan on the other, Sudan 

would now become a British colony in all but name. Its 

northern border with Egypt was to run along the 22nd 

parallel, cutting a straight line through the Nubian 

desert right out to the ocean. 

Three years later, however, another document 

was drawn up by the British. This one noted that a 

mountain named Bartazuga, just south of the 22nd 

parallel, was home to the nomadic Ababda tribe, 

which was considered to have stronger links with Egypt 

than Sudan. The document stipulated that henceforth 

this area should be administered by Egypt. Meanwhile, 

a much-larger triangle of land north of the 22nd 

parallel, named Hala’ib, abutting the Red Sea, was 

assigned to other tribes from the Beja people – who 

are largely based in Sudan – for grazing, and thus now 

came under Sudan’s jurisdiction. And that was that, for 

the next few decades at least. World wars came and 

went, regimes rose and fell, and those imaginary lines 

in the sand gathered dust in bureaucratic archives, of 

little concern to anyone on the ground. 

Disputes only started in earnest when Sudan finally 

achieved independence in 1956. The new postcolonial 

government in Khartoum immediately declared that 

its national borders matched the tweaked boundaries 

stipulated in the second proclamation, making the 

25 

APRIL FOOL 2016

26 

Hala’ib triangle Sudanese. Egypt demurred, insisting 

that the latter document was concerned only with 

areas of temporary administrative jurisdiction and that 

sovereignty had been established in the earlier treaty. 

Under this logic, the real border stayed straight and 

the Hala’ib triangle remained Egyptian. 

By the early 1990s, when a Canadian oil firm 

signalled its intention to begin exploration in Hala’ib 

and the prospect of substantial mineral wealth 

being found in the region gained momentum, the 

disagreement was no longer academic. Egypt sent 

military forces to “reclaim” Hala’ib from Sudan, and 

despite fierce protests from Khartoum – which still 

considers Hala’ib to be Sudanese and even tried to 

organise voting there during the 2010 Sudanese 

general election – it has remained under Cairo’s 

control ever since. 

Our world is littered with contested borders. The 

geographers Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen 

refer to the dashed lines on atlases as the scars 

of history. Compared with other divisions between 

countries that seem so solid and timeless when scored 

on a map, these squiggles – enclaves, misshapen 

lumps and odd protrusions – are a reminder of how 

messy and malleable the process of drawing up 

borders has always been. 

What makes this particular border conflict unique, 

though, is not the tussle over the Hala’ib triangle 

itself, but rather the impact it has had on the smaller 

patch of land just south of the 22nd parallel around 

Bartazuga mountain, the area known as Bir Tawil. 

Egypt and Sudan’s rival claims on Hala’ib both rest on 

documents that appear to assign responsibility for Bir 

Tawil to the other country. As a result, neither wants 

to assert any sovereignty over Bir Tawil, for to do so 

would be to renounce their rights to the larger and 

more lucrative territory. On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil 

is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese maps, 

it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is 

widely believed to have the legal status of terra nullius 

– “nobody’s land” – and there is nothing else quite like 

it on the planet. 

Omar and I were not, it must be acknowledged, the 

first to discover this anomaly. If the internet is to be 

believed, Bir Tawil has in fact been “claimed” many 

times over by keyboard emperors whose virtual 

principalities and warring microstates exist only 

online. The Kingdom of the State of Bir Tawil’ boasts 

a national anthem by the late British jazz musician 

Acker Bilk. The Emirate of Bir Tawil traces its claim over 

the territory to, among other sources, the Qur’an, the 

British monarchy, the 1933 Montevideo Convention 

and the 1856 US Guano Islands Act. There is a 

Grand Dukedom of Bir Tawil, an Empire of Bir Tawil, a 

United Arab Republic of Bir Tawil and a United Lunar 

Emirate of Bir Tawil. The last of these has a homepage 

featuring a citizen application form, several self-help 

mantras, and stock photos of people doing yoga in a 

park. 

From our rarefied vantage point at the back of Obai’s 

Toyota Hilux, it was easy to look down with disdain 

upon these cyber-squatting chancers. None of them 

had ever actually set foot in Bir Tawil, rendering 

their claims to sovereignty worthless. Few had truly 

grappled with Bir Tawil’s complex backstory, or of 

the bloodshed it was built upon (tens of thousands of 

Sudanese fighters and civilians died as a result of the 

Egyptian and British military assaults that ended in the 

establishment of Sudan’s northern borders and thus, 

ultimately, the creation of Bir Tawil). Granted, Omar 

and I knew little of the backstory either, but at least we 

had actually got to Sudan and were making, by our 

own estimation, a decent fist of finding out. We ate our 

energy bars, listened attentively to tales of Gedo’s love 

life, and scanned the road for clues. The first arrived 

nearly 200 miles north-east of Khartoum, about a third 

of the way up towards Bir Tawil, when we came across 


a city of iron and fire oozing kerosene into the desert. 

This was Atbara: home of Sudan’s railway system, and 

the engine room of its modern-day creation story. 

Until very recently, the long history of Sudan has 

not been one of a single country or people: many 

different tribes, religions and political factions 

have competed for power and resources, across 

territories and borders that bear no relation to those 

marking out the state’s limits today. A lack of rigid, 

“recognisable” boundaries was used to help justify 

Europe’s violent scramble to occupy and annex land 

throughout Africa in the 19th century. Often, the first 

step taken by western colonisers was to map and 

border the territory they were seizing. Charting of 

land was usually a prelude to military invasion and 

resource extraction; during the British conquest of 

Sudan, Atbara was crucial to both. 

Sudan’s contemporary railway system began life as a 

battering ram for the British to attack Khartoum. Trains 

carried not only weapons and troops but everyday 

provisions too, specified by Winston Churchill as 

“the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, 

soda water, and cigarettes which enable the Briton to 

conquer the world without discomfort”. Atbara was the 

site where key rail lines intersected, and its importance 

grew rapidly after London’s grip on Sudan had been 

formalised in the 1899 Anglo-Egyptian treaty. 

“Everything that mattered, from cotton to gum, came 

through here, as did all the rolling stock needed 

to move and export it,” Mohamed Ederes, a local 

railway storekeeper, told us. He walked us through 

his warehouse, down corridors stacked high with box 

after box of metal train parts and past giant leatherbound 

catalogues stuffed with handwritten notes. 

“From here,” he declared proudly, “you reached the 

world.” 

Atbara’s colonial origins are still etched into its 

modern-day layout. One half of the town, originally 

the preserve of expatriates, is low-rise and leafy; on 

the other side of the tracks, where native workers were 

made to live, accommodation is denser and taller. But 

just as Atbara was a vehicle for colonialism, so too 

was it the place in which a distinct sense of Sudanese 

nationhood began to develop. 

As Sudan’s economy grew in the early 20th century, 

so did the railway industry, bringing thousands of 

migrant workers from disparate social and ethnic 

groups to the city. By the second world war, Atbara 

was famous not only for its carriage depots and 

loading sidings, but also for the nationalist literature 

and labour militancy of those who worked within 

them. Poets as well as workers’ leaders emerged 

out of the nascent trade union movement in the late 

1940s, which held devastating strikes and helped 

shake the foundations of British rule. The same train 

lines that had once borne Churchill’s sausages and 

soda water were now deployed to deliver workers’ 

solidarity packages all over the country, during 

industrial action that ultimately brought the colonial 

economy to a halt. Within a decade, Sudan secured 

independence. 

The next morning, as we drove on, Gedo grew quieter 

and the signs of human habitation became sparser. 

At Karima, a small town 150 miles further north, 

we came across a fleet of abandoned Nile steamers 

stranded on the river bank; below stairs there were 

metal plaques bearing the name of shipwrights 

from Portsmouth, Southampton and Glasgow, each 

company’s handiwork now succumbing slowly to the 

elements. We clambered through cobwebbed cabins 

and across rotting sun decks, and then decided to 

scale the nearby Jebel Barkal – Holy Mountain in 

Arabic – where eagles tracked us warily from the sky. 

Omar maintained a running commentary on our 

progress, delivered as a flawless Herzog parody, and 

it proved so painful for all in earshot that the eagles 

began to dive-bomb us. We set off running, taking 

refuge among the mountain’s scattered ruins.

28 

Photograph: Omar Robert Hamilton 

Jebel Barkal was once believed to be the home of 

Amun, king of gods and god of wind. Fragments of 

Amun’s temple are still visible at the base of the cliffs. 

Over the past few millennia, Jebel Barkal has been 

the outermost limit of Egypt’s Pharaonic kingdoms, the 

centre of an autonomous Nubian region, and a vassal 

province of an empire headquartered thousands of 

miles away in Constantinople. In the modern era of 

defined borders and seemingly stable nation states, Bir 

Tawil seems an impossible anomaly. But standing over 

the jagged crevices of Jebel Barkal, looking out across 

a region that had been passed between so many 

different rulers, and formed part of so many different 

arrangements of power over land, our endpoint 

started to feel more familiar. 

The following evening we camped at Abu Hamed, on 

the very edge of the desert. Beyond the ramshackle 

cafeterias that have sprung up to serve the artisanal 

gold-mining community – sending shisha smoke 

and the noise of Egyptian soap operas spiralling up 

into the night – Omar and I saw the outlines of large 

agricultural reclamation projects, silhouetted in the 

distance against a starry sky. Since 2008, when global 

food prices spiked, there has been a boom in what 

critics call “land-grabbing”: international investors 

and sovereign wealth funds snapping up leases on 

massive tracts of African territory in order to intensify 

the production of crops for export, and bringing such 

territory under the control of European, Asian and 

Gulf nations in the process. Arable land was the first 


to be targeted, but increasingly desert areas are also 

being fenced off and sold. Near Abu Hamed, Saudi 

Arabian companies have been “greening” the sand 

– blanketing it in soil and water in an effort to make 

it fertile – with worrying consequences for both the 

environment and local communities, some of whom 

have long asserted customary rights over the area. 

It was not so long ago that the prophets of 

globalisation proclaimed the impending decline of 

the nation-state and the rise of a borderless world 

– one modelled on the frictionless transactions of 

international finance, which pay no heed to state 

boundaries. 

A resurgent populist nationalism – and the refugee 

crisis that has stoked its flames – has exposed such 

claims as premature, and investors depend more than 

ever on national governments to open up new terrains 

for speculation and accumulation, and to discipline 

citizens who dare to stand in the way. But there is no 

doubt that we now live in a world where the power 

of capital has profoundly disrupted old ideas about 

political authority inside national boundaries. All over 

the planet, the institutions that impact our lives most 

directly – banks, buses, hospitals, schools, farms – can 

now be sold off to the highest bidder and governed 

by the whims of a transnational financial elite. Where 

national borders once enclosed populations capable 

of practising collective sovereignty over their own 

resources, in the 21st century they look more and 

more like containers for an inventory of private assets, 

each waiting to be spliced, diced and traded around 

the world. 

It was at Abu Hamed, while lying awake at night in 

a sleeping bag, nestled into a shallow depression in 

the sand, that I realised the closer we were getting to 

our destination, the more I understood what was so 

beguiling about it. Now that Bir Tawil was in sight, it 

had started to appear less like an aberration and more 

like a question: is there anything natural about how 

borders and power function in the world today? 

In the end, there was no fanfare. On a hazy Tuesday 

afternoon, 40 hours since we left the road at Abu 

Hamed, 13 days since we touched down in Khartoum, 

and six months since the dotted lines of Bir Tawil first 

appeared before our eyes, Omar gave a shout from 

the back of the jeep. I checked our GPS coordinates 

on the satellite phone, and cross-referenced them with 

the map. Gedo, on being informed that we were now 

in Bir Tawil and outside of any country’s dominion, 

promptly took out his gun and fired off a volley of 

shots. We traipsed up a small hillock and wedged 

our somewhat forlorn flag into the rocks – a yellow 

desert fox, set against a black circle and bordered 

by triangles of green and red – then sat and gazed 

out at the horizon, tracing the rise and fall of distant 

mountains and following the curves of sunken valleys 

as they criss-crossed each other like veins through the 

sand. The sky and the ground both looked massive, 

and unending, and the warm stones around us 

crumbled in our hands. After a couple of hours, Gedo 

said that it was getting late, so we climbed back into 

the jeep and began the long journey home. 

Well before our journey had ever begun, we had 

hoped – albeit not particularly fervently – that we 

could do something with it, something that mattered; 

that by striking out for a place this nebulous we could 

find a shortcut to social justice, two days’ drive from 

the nearest tap or telephone. In 800 square miles of 

desert, we thought that we could exploit the outlines of 

the bordered world in order to subvert it. 

Jeremiah Heaton, beyond the “kingdom for a 

princess” schmaltz and the forthcoming Disney 

adaptation (he has sold film rights to his story for 

an undisclosed fee) seems – albeit from an almost 

diametrically opposite philosophical outlook – to be 

convinced of something similar. For him, the fantasy

30 

is a libertarian one, offering freedom not from the 

iniquities of capitalism but from the government 

interference that inhibits it. Just as we did, he wants 

to take advantage of a quirk in the system to defy it. 

When I spoke to Heaton, he told me with genuine 

enthusiasm that his country (not yet recognised by 

any other state or international body) would offer 

the world’s great innovators a place to develop their 

products unencumbered by taxes and regulation, 

a place where private enterprise faces no socially 

prescribed borders of its own. Big companies, he 

assured me, were scrambling to join his vision. 

“You would be surprised at the outreach that has 

occurred from the corporate level to me directly,” 

Heaton insisted during our conversation. “It’s not been 

an issue of me having to go out and sell myself on this 

idea. A lot of these large corporations, they see market 

opportunities in what I’m doing.” He painted a picture 

of Bir Tawil one day playing host to daring scientific 

research, ground-breaking food-production facilities 

and alternative banking systems that work for the 

benefit of customers rather than CEOs. I asked him if 

he understood why some people found his plans, and 

the assumptions they rested on, highly dubious. 

“There’s that saying: if you were king for a day, what 

would you do differently?” he replied. “Think about 

that question yourself and apply it to your own country. 

That’s what I’m doing, but on a much bigger scale. 

This is not colonialism; I’m an individual, not a country, 

I haven’t taken land that belongs to any other country, 

and I’m not extracting resources other than sunshine 

and sand. I am just one human being, trying to 

improve the condition of other human beings. I have 

the purest intentions in the world to make this planet a 

better place, and to try and criticise that just because 

I’m a white person sitting on land in the middle of the 

Nubian desert …” He trailed off, and was silent for a 

moment. “Well,” he concluded, “it’s really juvenile.” 

But if, by some miracle, Heaton ever did gain global 

recognition as the legitimate leader of an independent 

Bir Tawili state, would his pitch to corporations – 

base yourself here to avoid paying taxes and escape 

the manacles of democratic oversight – actually do 

anything to “improve the condition of other human 

beings”? Part of the allure of unclaimed spaces is 

their radical potential to offer a blank canvas – but as 

Omar and I belatedly realised, nothing, and nowhere, 

starts from scratch. Any utopia founded on the basis of 

a concept – terra nullius – that has wreaked immense 

historical destruction, is built on rotten foundations. 

In truth, no place is a “dead zone”, stopped in time 

and ripe for private capture – least of all Bir Tawil, 

which translates as “long well” in Arabic and was 

clearly the site of considerable human activity in the 

past. Although it lacks any permanent dwellings today, 

this section of desert is still used by members of the 

Ababda and Bisharin tribes who carry goods, graze 

crops and make camp within the sands. (Not the least 

of our failures was that we did not manage to speak to 

any of the peoples who had passed through Bir Tawil 

before we arrived.) Their ties to the area may be based 

on traditional rather than written claims – but Bir Tawil 

is not any more a “no man’s land” than the territory 

once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius 

was repeatedly invoked in the early 20th century by 

both chartered companies and the British government 

that supported them to justify the appropriation of 

territory from indigenous people. “I cannot admit 

that wandering tribes have a right to keep other and 

superior races out of large tracts,” exclaimed the British 

commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, at the time, “merely 

because they have acquired the habit of straggling 

over far more land than they can utilise.” 

Bir Tawil is no terra nullius. But “no man’s lands” 

– or at least ambiguous spaces, where boundaries 

take odd turns and sovereignty gets scrambled – are 

real and exist among us every day. Some endure at 

airports, and inside immigration detention centres, and 


in the pockets of economic deprivation where states 

have abandoned any responsibility for their citizens. 

Other no man’s lands are carried around by refugees 

who are yet to be granted asylum, regardless of where 

they may be – having fled failed states or countries 

which would deny them the rights of citizenship, they 

occupy a world of legal confusion at best, and outright 

exclusion at worst. 

Perhaps that is why, as we switched off the camera 

and left Bir Tawil behind us, Omar and I felt a little let 

down. Or perhaps we shared a sense of anticlimax 

because we were faintly aware of something rumbling 

back home in Cairo, where millions of people were 

about to launch an epic fight against political and 

economic exclusion – not by withdrawing to a no 

man’s land but by confronting state authority headon, 

in the streets. A week after our return to Egypt, the 

country erupted in revolution. 

Borders are fluid things; they help define our 

identities, and yet so often we use our identities to 

push up against borders and redraw them. For now 

the boundaries that divide nation states remain, but 

their purpose is changing and the relationship they 

have to our own lives, and our own rights, is growing 

increasingly unstable. If Bir Tawil – the preeminent 

ambiguous space – is anything to those who live far 

from it, it is perhaps a reminder that no particular 

configuration of power and governance is immutable. 

As we drove silently, and semi-contentedly, back past 

the gold-foragers, and the ramshackle cafeteria, and 

the heavy machinery of the Saudi farm installations – 

Gedo at the wheel, Omar asleep and me staring out 

at nothing– I grasped what I had failed to grasp on 

that lazy night of beer drinking on Omar’s balcony. 

The last truly “unclaimed” land on earth is really an 

injunction: not for us to seek out the mythical territory 

where we can hide from the things that anger us, 

but to channel that anger instead towards reclaiming 

territory we already call our own. 

NO BORDERS!

CUT 

THE RED TAPE 

open your mind 

& open the 

borders!

33 

by Edmund at nevercomedowncomix.wordpress.com 

APRIL FOOL 2016

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39 

The images and the comic as a whole were from observations in Presevo between 7-23 October 2015 

Loads of help is still needed with this crisis all over Europe 

To volunteer visit www.refugeemap.com 

Edmund 

nevercomedowncomix.wordpress.com 

APRIL FOOL 2016

Linocut: The Music Lesson by Tunde Odunlade

INTERVIEW 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

DOWN TO 

THE CROSS- 

ROADS 

Film: 

The United States 

of Hoodoo 

taken from Sensitive Skin 

Part of a discussion on the film ‘The United States of 

Hoodoo’, between Ghazi Barakat and Darius James, 

who is in the film … 

G. When I was living in New York, I was always 

thinking, this is not America. Let’s move down south 

and look for the real America where the blues and 

rock & roll come from. But the fact that they’re 

backwards gives it some wholesomeness – no change 

is reassuring, its not torn by modern technology. When 

Robert Johnson comes up in the movie, he seems to be 

very much alive in people’s heads, although there is 

barely anyone still alive who knew him. 

D. There was one person who apparently knew Robert 

Johnson, but he unfortunately didn’t make it to the 

blues fest in Greenwoods Park. 

G. But you found out how he actually died? 

D. I was expecting to go to the actual crossroads where 

Robert Johnson made his so-called deal with the devil. 

That didn’t happen. What did happen was that I found 

myself on the highway where Emmett Till was picked 

up and murdered. 

G. Who’s Emmett Till? 

41

42 

D. Emmett Till was a black teenager from Chicago 

who was visiting relatives in Mississippi. He went into a 

shop and he whistled at a white girl. She was offended 

and complained, and some people in town got pissed 

and lynched him [he was horrifically beaten-up, shot 

and dumped in the river]. He was, like 14 years old. 

It’s the first incident where white people involved in a 

lynching were actually prosecuted. They were taken 

to trial. I mean, they got off. That was sort of an early 

trauma for me. 

G. So you didn’t expect it, because you thought you 

were far away from all this? 

D. Yeah. One would think that the country had 

evolved, and then you realise it gets more and more 

retarded every day. 

G. Well, that’s idiocracy. so, did you learn how Robert 

Johnson died? 

D. We were there during the Robert Johnson centenary 

which seemed pretty ridiculous, because the centennial 

and this exhibition were in a cotton museum, and 

Robert Johnson apparently spent his entire life 

avoiding the cotton fields. So you have all these weird 

white people celebrating Robert Johnson. the same 

people who would have shot him if they caught him 

outside of the cotton field. There were all these weird 

contradictions, like how far they had gotten. I got 

into some stupid discussion about who owns Robert 

Johnson. I kept wanting to make these nasty comments 

about the rolling Stones, which I’m glad I didn’t, as a 

result of reading Keith Richards’s autobiography. What 

he says is true: that the Stones were probably singlehandedly 

responsible for reintroducing the blues back 

to America. 

G. So what’s the story of his demise? 

D. I discovered, as a result of all the activities around 

the centennial, that the story that Robert Johnson told 

about himself, as far as selling his soul to the devil, 

was like early heavy-metal PR. 

G. He was a blasphemer. 

D. It wasn’t that he was a blasphemer. His audience 

were sharecroppersand cotton-field workers. They 

were basically superstitious Christians. 

G. But he did sing, “If I had possession over 

Judgement Day, Lord, that little woman I’m loving 

wouldn’t have no right to pray.” Let’s say he was 

against organised religion. 

D. Okay, that’s fair, but I’m just saying that his 

rebellion against black Christian conservatism, which 

seemed to be prominent in his family – that’s the thing 

I wasn’t expecting! His great-great-grandson was there 

speaking at this church, which is also the graveyard 

where Robert Johnson is buried. He comes to speak, 

at the last minute – it was supposed to be a day to 

celebrate the life of Robert Johnson because it’s his 

birthday, which also happened to fall on Mother’s 

Day. So what we get is this fat, greasy preacher who 

comes out and tells us that he is Robert Johnson’s 

great-grandson, and he proceeds to spew the most 

repellent homophobic right-wing garbage I’ve ever 

heard in my life. What I found particularly offensive 

was when he went into the whole Robert Johnson thing 

of selling his soul to the devil. (mimics Richard Pryor) 

“How can my black uncle, grandfather or whatever the 

fuck he was, sell his soul to the devil? His soul does 

not belong to him, it belongs to god! How can you 

trade with the devil something that belongs to God?” 

That was particularly repellent, to see how the church 

of the poor had been taken over by corrupt right-wing 

Christian fundamentalists. 

G. So, did Robert Johnson get poisoned? 


D. You know, these are great stories, great myths that 

add to the legend. I was sitting with a bunch of Robert 

Johnson scholars at a blues bar early in the morning. 

One of the things that seemed to be repeating itself 

was that Robert Johnson died as a result of drinking 

poisoned moonshine. The entire batch that had come 

into the honky-tonk for that weekend was bad, and 

the reason he died is because the audience he was 

playing to – again, sharecroppers, people who work 

in the cotton fields – had to get up and go to work on 

Monday. He started on Saturday, played his gig, they 

went home, they were sick on Sunday, but apparently 

were well enough to go to work on Monday. Robert 

Johnson, who didn’t spend a lot of time picking cotton 

in the cotton field, stayed at the honky-tonk and 

continued to drink this bad moonshine, got sick, and 

died. 

G. At one point in the film, there is a discussion about 

how much Afro-Americans are willing to identify 

with their cultural and religious African roots. On a 

recent trip to Burkina Faso, I noticed that Africans 

are still mainly animistic, and that Wahhabite Muslim 

and Christian Baptist missionaries have a hard time 

persuading people to convert to monotheism. They 

usually resort to materialistic means, since poverty 

is the major issue on that continent. Many Afro- 

Americans, on the other hand, have embraced 

monotheism, be it through organisations like the 

Nation of Islam or traditional Christianity. Can you 

elaborate a bit on this? 

D. In New York, and in other urban centres, you’ll 

find African Americans – or black Americans, which 

I prefer – who will identify with genuine animistic, 

Afro-esoterics, but those numbers are smaller than the 

great, unwashed majority, who are largely concerned 

with the details of survival, not necessarily breaking 

taboos. There was a large majority of blacks in 

California who were opposed to gay marriage, which 

revealed this really mean right-wing reactionary streak 

in the black church now, which wasn’t always true – 

Martin Luther King came from liberation theology. 

G. A key moment in the movie is when you talk about 

how the Africans and the Native Americans were 

able to assimilate one another, since there were so 

many cultural similarities between the two. This fusion 

happened in places like New Orleans, and an island 

like Haiti, and in South America, where slaves and 

natives were outcasts and in large numbers. Vodoun 

has survived and actually evolved into a gumbo of 

cultural misfits. This is most obvious in the carnival 

parades of all these places, but then, in the film there 

is a voodoo ceremony where most people involved are 

white women. 

D. Well, Sally’s temple has always occupied a rather 

controversial place because of that. There are vodoun 

cults in the United States who recognise voodoo as a 

way of getting back to roots and see Sally as polluting 

the religion, that is not something that belongs to her, 

which, clearly – it’s God we’re talking about here. God 

belongs to everybody, the devine belongs to everybody. 

The invisible is invisible for a reason. 

G. So her cult is progressive and some are regressive, 

although most non-African voodoo cults evolved or 

became mutations as a political necessity. 

D. It becomes an identity, but the whole point of 

voodoo is to lose your identity in the face of the devine. 

G. Besides the spiritual aspect, is there a political 

aspect to voodoo? 

D. Absolutely. The reason why voodoo has a bad 

reputation is because a bunch of black people kicked 

some white people off an island, you know, threw off 

the shackles of slavery, and they’re still pissed. 

43 

APRIL FOOL 2016

WANDERING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

CHELTENHAM 

LOWER HIGH 

STREET 2016 

45 

Photographs: 

Alan Rutherford, March 2016 

APRIL FOOL 2016

This building once housed Cheltenham’s Dole Office: I remember 

visiting to ‘sign on’ on a number of occasions in the 1960s. It was also 

from where I was sent out to take up jobs like; labourer at Cheltenham 

Caravans, Leckhampton; press operator at Cotswold Babycarriages, off 

Bath Road; porter at Cavendish House, the Promenade; assembly line 

at Dowty Mining, Ashchurch; stockroom keeper at County Clothes, the 

Promenade ... none lasted very long, needless to say, I had a rather thick 

file in that office.

BLUSTERING 

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

DUFFER 

BLUSTERS 

John Crace 

from The Guardian, 

under heading ... 

‘All very interesting, Boris. 

Except none of it is really true, is it?’ 

Johnson gives ‘evidence’ 

to the Treasury select committee 

(For ‘evidence’ read any shit you like) 

“This is going on longer than a European fisheries 

meeting,” grumbled Boris Johnson as the Treasury 

select committee drifted well into its third hour. 

“That’s because you keep making lengthy 

interruptions,” the committee chairman, Andrew 

Tyrie, observed. 

This only provoked yet another crowd-pleasing 

interruption. Boris just couldn’t help himself. His 

grasp of detail is minimal, his attention span shorter 

than the average five-year-old’s and when boredom 

sets in his default setting is to carry on talking until 

he gets round to saying something that amuses him. 

All of which may explain why he is a charismatic, 

populist politician but is less than an ideal when a 

little gravitas is required. To treat a select committee 

as the fall guy in your own personal TV gameshow is 

the ultimate in lese-majesty; especially when you are 

auditioning for David Cameron’s job. 

“I talk to loads of bankers,” Boris had said at the 

start of the hearing, “and I can tell you their support 

for the EU is a great deal more shallow than 

commonly believed.” 

“What you’re hearing in anecdotal meetings seems 

at odds with the evidence I’m hearing,” Tyrie replied. 

“Can we go back to the speech you made in 

Dartford on 11 March? Have you checked the 

methodology of the statistics you quoted?” 

No chance. Boris can barely remember what he 

said the day before, let alone some numbers he 

may have trotted out a couple of weeks ago. Besides 

61 

APRIL FOOL 2016

what he really wanted to talk about was European 

bureaucracy gone mad. Legislation that prevented 

children under the age of eight from blowing up 

balloons; directives that meant councils were unable 

to recycle teabags; one-size-fits-all Euro coffins (how 

were we meant to squeeze our fatties into them?); 

French lorry manufacturers deliberately setting out to 

murder cyclists. 

On and on he went despite several pleas from Tyrie 

begging him to stop. Eventually Boris paused for 

breath and Tyrie managed to make himself heard. 

“This is all very interesting, Boris,” he said. “Except 

none of it is really true, is it?” Boris looked put out. 

So what if it wasn’t exactly true? It got a few laughs 

so it ought to have been true even it it wasn’t. “If I 

may say so you’re guilty of exaggerating to the point 

of misrepresentation.” 

Boris looked mildly hurt by this. “Well,” he went on, 

“I’ve got this new piece of research hot off the press, 

published today by the House of Commons library 

saying that 59% of British legislation is imposed by 

the EU.” 

“Actually that was published in 2014,” Tyrie pointed 

out, “and the figures were between 15% and 59%, 

depending on whether individual decisions were put 

into the calculations.” 

Time for some top banter. “Well I’ve just found this 

piece written by one Andrew Tyrie in 1991 which 

says the single market can only be complete with 

a single currency,” said Boris, “What do you say to 

that?” 

“Oh dear,” replied Tyrie a touch acidly. “That merely 

proves my point. If you had read the entire article 

you would have realised I was saying the exact 

opposite.” 

Labour’s Helen Goodman and Wes Streeting tried to 

pin Boris down on whether he thought Britain should 

be negotiating a Swiss or Canadian trade deal with 

the EU post-Brexit. “One day you say one thing, the 

next day you say another,” they said. “You seem to 

change your mind a lot.” 

“Not at all,” fought back Boris. “I’m entirely 

consistent.” As in entirely consistent in his 

inconsistency. “What I want is a British trade 

deal. It will be a complete doddle. EU countries 

will be falling over themselves to do a deal with 

themselves.” 

“You’re the only person who seems to think that.” 

“Everyone else is far too defeatist. As I’ve always 

said. Britain will be massively better off outside 

the EU,” said the man who had apparently been 

anguishing which camp to join over a game of 

tennis the day before he joined the leave campaign. 

Enter an even angrier than usual John Mann, who 

had woken that morning furious to find he had been 

listed only as “core negative” on the leaked Corbyn 

list of Labour MPs. Why not a hostile? He was hostile 

enough to his own reflection, let alone others in his 

party. 

“This so-called EU animal byproducts tea bag 

directive,” he snarled. “Can you remember which 

country asked the EU to issue it?” Could pigs fly? 

“Well let me tell you that it was Britain after the foot 

and mouth epidemic.” 

“Then I’m sure the French have never obeyed it,” 

Boris ad-libbed, desperately searching for one last 

laugh. None came. Boris was beaten, if unbowed.

Please 

consign this fluff 

to the rubbish bin

Photograph: Delia McDevitt

INEQUALITY 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

WOMEN 

OF IRELAND 

FECKED BY 

CHURCH 

Olivia O’Leary 

from The Guardian, 

under the heading ... 

Why, 

100 years after the Easter Rising 

are Irish women still fighting? 

Gender equality was the radical 

promise of the 1916 rebellion. 

The reality was very different. 

It was never just England. It was always Pagan 

England. When I was a small child at school 

in Ireland, that was the difference between us. 

England was pagan, and Ireland was holy. And 

Holy Ireland had no place for liberated women. 

So what happened to the promise of equality in 

the Proclamation of the Irish Republic read out on 

Easter Monday 1916 by the poet and rebel leader 

Patrick Pearse, and addressed to “Irishmen and 

Irishwomen”? The proclamation declared an end 

to British rule but it also guaranteed religious and 

civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities 

for all citizens. It made a commitment to universal 

suffrage, extraordinary for the time, and two years 

before women in Britain won the vote. 

So how did the document’s message become 

stifled by a conservative culture obsessed with 

female chastity and purity, and so terrified 

of glimpsing the outlines of a woman’s body 

that in the 1950s we were still condemned to 

conceal ourselves in voluminous cardigans? 

How did that dream of a radical, free Ireland 

give way in the succeeding years to Holy Ireland, 

where generations of women felt they had to hide 

themselves away? 

Historians now tell us that there was a tussle 

to have women included so pointedly in the 

proclamation. It was a struggle won by James 

Connolly – socialist, trade union leader and head 

of the Irish Citizen Army – and by Constance 

Markievicz, the prominent feminist and socialist. 

But even two years later in the general election 

of 1918, when Sinn Féin swept the boards, 

it was clear that socialists and feminists had 

been pushed aside. Most of the dreamers 

65 

APRIL FOOL 2016

and visionaries had been shot in 1916, and a 

more pragmatic and conservative leadership 

concentrated totally on the nationalist goal 

of separation from the UK. The Irish Labour 

movement decided to stand aside in 1918 so 

as not to split the nationalist vote, and the only 

woman elected was Markievicz. 

However, the real change that occurred between 

1916 and 1918 was that the Roman Catholic 

church had finally come on board to back 

the rebel cause. The church didn’t like radical 

movements, and individual senior church men 

actually condemned the 1916 Easter Rising. But 

anger at the execution of the rising’s leaders 

swung public opinion firmly behind the rebels, 

and the Catholic church, ever pragmatic, quietly 

changed its stance. 

The church was by far the largest and most 

powerful institution in the new Irish state that 

would emerge six years after the rebellion, and 

was determined to shape it. The first Free State 

government tried in its first constitution to reflect a 

pluralist state, but in Eamon de Valera’s 1937 

constitution the church was given a special 

position, and its social teachings were 

enshrined. 

Contraception and divorce were expressly banned 

– and women were told to stay at home. 

Article 41 of the constitution declared that the 

state shall “endeavour to ensure that mothers 

shall not be obliged by economic necessity to 

engage in labour to the neglect of their duties 

in the home”. This was used not to give state 

support to women who stayed at home, but to 

discriminate against women who went out to 

work. Women public servants – doctors, nurses, 

teachers, television producers – had to resign 

because of their positions on marriage. They 

might be re-employed in a temporary capacity but 

at a reduced salary. There were always lower rates 

of pay for women in the public and the private 

sector. 

This continued right up into the 70s, and a maledominated 

establishment – including the trade 

union movement – went along with it. I remember 

arguing about women’s right to equal pay 

with a prominent Irish union leader. “When men 

with families get a decent wage,” he said, “I’ll 

start to worry about equal pay for women.” 

Women always had to wait. Even when the then 

EEC insisted on equal pay in 1975, a government 

that included the Irish Labour party put off 

implementing it. It was only when the civil rights 

lawyer Mary Robinson, who would much later be 

elected Ireland’s president, told us all to write to 

the European commission – and we did – that the 

government was shamed into implementing equal 

pay. 

So as long as Ireland was isolated and 

inward-looking, women did badly. As soon 

as membership of the European Union 

opened Ireland up to a wider world, the lot of 

women improved. But what if Ireland had never 

achieved independence, had remained part of the 

British empire, had not become the confessional 

state it became after independence – would life 

have been better for Irish women?

All I know is that Pagan England certainly spelled 

freedom for my two O’Leary aunts. They were 

nurses who joined Queen Alexandra’s Imperial 

Nursing Service during the second world war. One 

served in field hospitals in France after the D-day 

landings; the other survived when the boat taking 

her to serve in India was torpedoed. 

They both went on to settle in England and lead 

lives that might well have been forbidden to them 

as Catholics in Ireland. One married an Anglican 

and converted to Anglicanism; the other married 

a divorcee. Their families in Ireland may have 

been shocked, but the aunts were able to lead the 

lives they wanted to. 

England was where pregnant unmarried Irish 

girls could go and have their babies and not be 

judged; where women who had been enslaved 

in the Magdalene Laundries could start new 

lives and not be judged; where Irish women can 

have abortions today and not be judged. Pagan 

England has often offered Irish women a more 

Christian welcome than they would ever have got 

at home. 

This weekend marks the high point of the 

1916 centenary commemorations in Dublin, 

but I’m deeply ambivalent about the Easter 

Rising. I admire the bravery of people like my 

own grandfather who was involved in both 

that rebellion and the war of independence. I 

also have to ask if 1916 created a precedent 

for armed republican violence in Northern 

Ireland during the troubles. 

So looking down at that audience of brilliant 

Irish women, I preferred to be inspired by the 

living, rather than the dead. We have a female 

chief justice, a female attorney general, a female 

director of public prosecutions, a female head of 

the Garda Síochána (police), a female minister 

for justice, a female deputy prime minister, and 

a whole new crop of members of parliament 

to swell women’s numbers in the Dail. They all 

represent battles hard won. But there are more to 

be tackled, including a woman’s right to abortion. 

The fight for Irish freedom goes on. 

So did living in an independent Ireland make me 

as a woman less free? No. What it did mean was 

that we had a lot of battles to fight in order to feel 

like full citizens of the Irish republic. And I was 

reminded of this a few weeks ago, at a special 

event in Dublin to commemorate – for perhaps 

the first time – the Irish women who took part in 

the Easter Rising, and to honour the involvement 

of Irish women in the life of the state ever since.

68 


WAFFLE 

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 

LETTERS 


Further damaged but still awake, I say again, 

well again, because the letters page is so much 

a hopeless failure ... Words fail me, what is the 

use of words when the person you are saying 

them to is unable to grasp your, and their, 

meaning? 

















69 

Whilst I remain optimistic about the future I 

am absolute in my scepticism about whether 

the Euro (pro and sceptic)-business-arses and 

their sycophantic political stooges, or the US 

presidential circus and their flunkies will come 

up with anything remotely of benefit to anyone 

other than a rampantly corrupt ruling class 

intent on fucking us all. 

APRIL FOOL 2016

HAND OVER 

FIST PRESS 

2 0 1 6

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