August 2014
Writings by the Say It Right Writers Circle themed around REBELLION FICTION: Letter, Found in the Recycling (12th January 2012) – Phil Chokeword FICTION: Losing Power – Alan Marshall FICTION: The Ca’Canny – Ozark Bule POETRY: In Your Own Words – Ali H
NON- FICTION: Operation Gardenplot – Ben Smith
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Letter, Found in the Recycling (12th January 2012) By Phil Chokeword It breaks my heart to not be able to have this conversation with you in person, baby, but I just can’t. Lord knows I’ve tried. It’s just not easy to find the words – even writing it down is hard. This is my third attempt at this letter tonight. It’s 4am and I’ve been up trying to gather my thoughts whilst you sleep off another midweek drunk on the living room sofa. I don’t even know what it was tonight that set you off. Was it a bad day drunk to take your mind off it all or a good day drunk to celebrate? Do you even know? Anyhow, by the time you read this I’ll be gone. My phone is on the kitchen table, so don’t bother calling me. I know you’ll try to call my mum and my friends. If you don’t do it sober you’ll do it drunk. But I’m asking you not to. We’re done, baby, and I’m gone. Anything that was ours is yours and if you don’t want it, sell it and keep the change. I’ve been trying to think of the best way to put this and what it comes down to is this. When I met you, when I fell head over heels for you, I saw something in you that’s not there anymore. You were ambitious but not in the way you are now – you were ambitious because you wanted something more from life than what most people did. Back then it wasn’t because you wanted an extra zero on your bank balance. It seems so adolescent but all those nights we spent screwing on the floor then talking about what we wanted – those ideas were why I loved you. You were so fucking smart. This all sounds like a bad Mills and Boon novel, but I guess that clichés come from somewhere, from some sort of lived experience, right? I had a feeling that you were going to pick me up and show me something different. Instead we ended up like our parents but with more tattoos and better coffee. I read somewhere that the rebel wants to just change his own life, whilst the revolutionary wants to change everything - to make things better for everyone. I don’t even know in retrospect if you were rebellious, never mind revolutionary, despite all those big words. It’s hard to look back at you without feeling cynical, but I guess at the time, I think you thought you meant what you were saying. I wonder what Richard would say if he could see you now? What I’ve learned from you is that it’s easy be young. It doesn’t feel it but it is. You can fight off people’s expectations of you because you have time to spare. As you get older though, student loans turn in to office jobs. People disappear, people break. Everyone starts to expect certain things of you – of us. The biological clock starts ticking. The list of wedding invites seems endless. It’s funny how in your late 20’s, you feel so much pressure to confirm. It’s like your mid-teens all over again. I’m not surprised you caved in. But... The reason I’m gone is that I think maybe you were confirming all along. Isn’t it funny how easy it is to slip from student radical into young professional? After all, for all your posturing, one of us still got that job in the city, baby – one of us is face down on the sofa with a half eaten Big Mac and semen stains on their suede loafers. I think it was always going to end like this if we’re honest. I want you to know it was fun, sometimes. I gave you my twenties and I don’t regret that. I won’t give you my thirties though. They belong to someone else. Sweet dreams, baby. Love you as you used to be, x
Losing Power By Alan Marshall Monday 7th March. The news reports started a couple of days ago now - riots in Salford, Leeds, Dudley and Brixton. Some kid got gunned down by the police for carrying a concealed weapon, but it turned out it was a water-pistol rather than a gun. Since then things have escalated and the army have been called in. The first shootings were on the news this morning, limp bodies being dragged across the street by protestors in V for Vendetta masks. There was a lot of blood; I think something big might be happening at last. It’s about fucking time!
Wednesday 9th. The TV is just grey static this morning. Last night they said the riots had spread to just about every city in Britain, and there was footage of Parliament with smoke pluming from it like a bonfire. I don’t know what to do - looks like this might actually be it, the one I’ve been listening to all those punk bands sing about since I was fifteen, whole gangs of anarchists masked up and fighting back just like we imagined it, but I don’t know where to go. I took a walk to the squat across town that used to put gigs on, but there was an army Landrover outside and the door looked like it had been bust open. There were armed police and sirens all across town - and the buses weren’t running. Shit, I’m missing it!
Thursday 10th. Mobile phone – dead, internet – down. I’ve seen a few army trucks but no one else on the street this morning. The radio just keeps repeating the same news flash - stay indoors and keep curtains closed. That left me itching to get out and see what’s going on. At lunchtime I risked going to the 24 hour garage but my debit card wouldn’t work in the machine and the store was locked up. Looking through the shutters I could see they had no bread or milk anyway – no petrol either for that matter. On the way back I saw someone getting dragged out of their flat by riot police, a hippy type but it didn’t look like a drug raid. They seemed to be taking out bags of books, and her kids were carried off by two guys in helmets and stab vests. When I got home I went through my zines and records, prised up the floor boards in the spare room and hid the most political stuff in the floor space. I’m kind of waiting for a knock on the door now. I wish I knew where to go to fight back. Best stay put.
Friday. I got woken up by cracks of gun-fire last night, and this morning there’s smoke hanging on the horizon over town. The weirdest thing is that the sirens have stopped. It’s a really oppressive silence – no cars, no planes, I can hear dogs barking in the distance. I spent most of the day listening to the records I have left out, and watching the street through a gap in the curtains. About five, a pick-up truck came by; three guys in the back were wearing balaclavas and carrying shot-guns. I watched them through the crack as they came round the back and bust the lock off the garage. They stole the petrol I keep for the mower and a few tools. I was lucky; they shot out the door of the next flat and loaded a flat screen TV into the truck. I should check on Mrs Kelly when I know they’ve gone.
Friday – late. Everything is quiet. I’m hungry. I don’t know what’s going on and the radio is just static now too. I got a crowbar from the toolbox and went to check on Mrs Kelly. She wasn’t there but there was blood on the carpet. I borrowed a loaf of bread. Is this what happens when there’s a revolution, the calm, the uncertainty? I wish I could do something.
Saturday. The fridge isn’t working. I thought it was broken until later on when it got dark, but the lights won’t work either, and the streetlights are out. I can’t see anyone through the curtains but I can see the fires growing closer reflected against the clouds. The pick-up has been back today but I crouched on the kitchen floor until I was sure they’d gone. A black army truck passed by earlier too, and I swear I could see bodies piled in the back. I wish someone would come and help me.
Late. Someone’s at the door.
The Ca’Canny By Ozark Bule “Rebellion” has been interpreted in many, often incompatible ways… it is compatible with revolution, but indicates smaller scale interruptions of oppressive practices’ –
all quotes from Benjamin Franks, Rebel Alliances. ‘The work-to-rule subverts managerial authority through immanent critique… such a method leaves authority baffled and appears far beyond the industrial setting’ It started with pins. Each notice should be stuck up with four pins. One in each corner. It wasn’t my line manager, but maybe my line-managers-line-manager, or my supervisor-whose-line-manager-was-also-my-line-manager who gave us the missive. His role was to quietly demoralise each section of the department, and evidently the visitor notice board was the only thing not up to standard. But when we spent a slow day walking across the site, making sure each notice had the required amount of pins and sticking up signs reading: ‘PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT ALL NOTICES ARE STUCK UP WITH FOUR PINS. NOTICES SHOULD NOT BE STUCK UP WITH LESS THAN FOUR PINS IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’. Well, we were told – in a less jovial manner – to spend another slow afternoon taking those signs down. ‘The oppressed agents themselves are better located than a revolutionary leadership to recognise how a loose screw, or a mis-hit computer key, can cause maximum inconvenience for their employers’ One customer was unsatisfied with a routine e-mail sent by the department. Hundreds of similar e-mails were received every week but after this complaint our line manger decided that there was no way we should have been responding to such a request ourselves, why wasn’t she consulted first? In the future, we were told, any similar correspondence should be sent to her first. Over our Doctor Who discussion break that afternoon we considered the issue and decided that any of the hundreds of e-mails we got could count as similar correspondence, we had no idea which customer may or may not be unsatisfied with our response. So, for two glorious days in May we forwarded every single e-mail to our line manager, until we were quietly told that we could probably deal with similar correspondence by ourselves. ‘The Go-Slow and Working Without Enthusiasm are so frequent that it is almost forgotten that they do constitute forms of industrial resistance. Apparent tardiness in responding to the ringing telephone and the obviously uninterested delivery of sales pitch on answering’ At about half ten Jo took the orders. A couple of black coffees, one with sugar/one without. A few ‘just teas’ – which meant cow’s milk/no sugar, and an assortment of fruit tea concoctions that could have been invented by Roald Dahl. Then one day a middle-manager straight from a Dilbert strip told Jo that making tea for everyone was time consuming and unproductive and she shouldn’t offer again. The next day some sloped off throughout the morning to make their own drinks, others could not be tempted from their desks and went without. I continued with my regular routine: coffee, tea, tea, coffee, tea, peppermint, tea. Over the course of the next few days, unplanned and unannounced, one or two of us would make their drink at quarter to eleven. Then three or four of us would go to the kitchen at the same time – without being particularly swift about it.
By the end of the week most of the department were making their individual drinks at the same time. And competitions emerged – who could drink the strongest cup of filter coffee, or who could most elaborately decorate their drink with cinnamon sprinkles. ‘Such sabotage is more likely to occur if workers can count on mutual solidarity. The reassurance of knowing that a protective excuse will be proffered or sly signal given should managers become inquisitive provides a basis for greater incidents of autonomous activity’ One Thursday management received advanced notice that our Unison representative was floor walking the department to discuss any work place issues. Taking against this idea, our manager decided to organise a spur-of-the-moment meeting to exactly coincide - and overlap - with our representatives’ arrival. Coincidently or not (this was in the run up to Unison’s Work Your Proper Hours Day) the meeting was used as a good time to advise us that due to an increasing workload it wouldn’t always be feasible to take lunch. A suitable alternative offered was to eat a sandwich at our desk while we worked. Unconvinced with management’s suggestion, we decided to organise a picnic.
In Your Own Words By Ali H Poetry is in your blood; the vinyl floor is sticky with it, An alphabet of pills stuffed into your stomach: Aspirin, Bedranol, Citalopram. I stumble clumsily over words, Pick my way between blood-clotted sentences entangled in clumps of matted hair - Your beautiful hair Shaved off and scattered at my feet. Your body is writhing, Arched, electric with it, Eyes rolling back to read verses etched on the bathroom ceiling, Before falling back to slump beneath the sink. Twenty-four hours later I visit on a ward full of Ophelias, Bedsides strewn with flowers, Muttering mad rhymes. You lie tiny and bald and shaking, Covered in letters: Pupils huge, gaping O's and gashes stitched in row after row of scribbled t's on your tiny arms. A whole new vocabulary too: Resuscitation, Dialysis, Psychiatrist. Your mother is drawn and stiff, Feigning capability, We exchange awkward news then listen as you whisper syllables, Sore and purple like bruises: 'Fuck you, I didn't want to stay.' Later I walk down the long scented corridors, Stupid, soothed with anaesthetic, Trailing my words behind me like a blanket.
Operation Gardenplot By Ben Smith I didn't want to write something fictional for this topic. I could have done that and in my mind I had more than one idea looking at the topic from differing viewpoints and putting forward a number of ideas nestled within the fiction. However I really wanted to be explicit. I wanted to outline my vision of rebellion in the 21st century. This isn't a call to arms, I'm not practising what I preach yet. As with any act of rebellion it is fruitless and difficult to carry out on your own and I need support and help in taking some of these ideas forward. In addition I don't have all the answers, I want people to run with this. Criticise it. Tell me why it won't work and challenge me to show people that it would. I know there are people who are already miles ahead of me on some of this and I find them incredibly inspiring. Personally I think the general concept of organised rebellion is redundant and not worth pursuing any more. We're not all about to rise up, pick up our pitchforks and storm the castle. For a start we don't have pitchforks. Political and social change will not come from a ballot box nor from an armed revolution and struggle. We have slipped too far into apathy and ignorance and we let ourselves be placated with distractions everyday. We are happy with our lot, we don't mind that we have to work for 40 hours a week to buy the means to subsist and in doing so have put control of our lives into the hands of others. It means we don't have to worry and it is an easy life. Except for some people it doesn't lead to happiness because we're not wired to work this way. Our genetics haven't quite caught up with our technological advancement. So we placate ourselves with manufactured adventure and survival to feed that need in our soul. To borrow from the hippies maybe some of us need to 'drop out' and try something new. I've mentioned the idea of using resources more directly before but perhaps this is our simplest path to rebellion. One reason for the fall of the Roman empire was the depopulation of urban areas with people moving back to a more subsistence lifestyle. It's time we started that shift in modern times. It's also a win/win situation. Our resources are finite and shrinking. Therefore the movement to a more direct system of resource use enables those who do this to have a better chance of surviving any systematic crash that may be around the corner. Or alternatively a large scale shift by a large proportion of the population to a more direct resource usage will mean our finite resources last longer and such a crash doesn't happen. Either way we shift to a post industrial agrarian society. This is the point I start feeling slightly mental and like I've totally lost it but the more I talk to other people and read about people who are already putting these ideas into practice the more I feel like this might be the path for me if not the human species. However the concept is problematic. Nothing in life is easy. I have a vision of small units, 2-4 person households utilising land to grow their own food independently. Using simple methods of water collection, purification and storage. Resorting to simple methods to provide heat and possibly energy. However this requires land. Which I don't have nor do I have the ability to buy it. General consensus is that for growing food and pasture for animals you need roughly 1 acre of land per person. So for a 4 person household you need 4 acres. This is roughly a 130 metre by 130 metre plot plus some space for housing/storage. Lets say 200 metres by 200 metres, hard to visualise when you live in a terrace house but go out into the middle of a field and work out how many 200 x 200 plots you could fit there. Remind me again why we're all paying to travel to work so we can come home and go to the supermarket to buy food? Ah yes, the problem. In order to take a step outside of the system you have to buy your own portion of the system to do it in. When I've worked out how to do that without shackling myself further to the system (i.e. getting a loan) I'll let you know. Maybe we do need those pitchforks after all. We could take our 200 x 200 plot by force however personally I really don't think that the firm basis to a sustainable future.
Footnote: For the sake of openness and clarity it should be noted that my attempt to grow food in the last year has been an unmitigated failure due to some pretty simple mistakes. However my rebellion will not be an overnight act and I'm pretty sure is going to require years of learning, mistakes and hard work. Death or glory? *Baader Brains – 'Be seeing you at camp Delta'