I may have
mentioned this before, but my first conscious political act was on the night of
the General Election on 28th February 1974, when me and Paul “Sten”
Stonehouse stood outside the Polling Station at Felling Community Centre
chanting “Heath is a cunt,” which I’d still suggest was a slice of prescient
analysis for a pair of 9 year olds. Just over 5 years later, on Saturday 28th
April 1979, the weekend before Thatcher won her first election, I became an
active Socialist when I went on my first Tyneside May Day March. In those days,
the turnout on a route that wound from Neville Street behind the station to a
mass rally in Exhibition Park rivalled the number of participants for the
Durham Big Meeting. The whole experience was inspirational. I’d love to say
that was the day I fell in love with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and
other companion parties in the World Socialist Movement, but it wasn’t. That
genius move didn’t occur until I arrived at university in September 1983.
However, I
met other kids around my age who earnestly hoped for non-violent social change.
Consequently, I found myself in the presence of the tribunes of a putative
revolutionary scion called the National Union of School Students; a front
organisation for the youth wing of the Socialist Workers Party. Needless to say
I joined and enjoyed a summer and autumn of youthful class struggle, made even
sweeter by our entire branch’s defection from the SWP to Revolution Youth, the
International Marxist Group’s Under 5s. I’m still in touch with Avram, Patricia
and Peter who I met that day; semi-regularly we have catch ups that include
visits to museums, art galleries or the theatre. I still feel nostalgic for the weekly wise
words contained within the covers Socialist
Challenge. The cogent support for women’s rights, gay equality and the
nationalist population in the Six Counties was so far removed from the crass,
oily workerism of the likes of the boiler-suited boors on the tools with Militant.
I’m proud to
be a Socialist and I’m more than proud my son is one also. I think his first
conscious political act was to take a couple of days off school to demonstrate
outside the Civic Centre about the first set of cuts that accompanied the introduction
of state endorsed penury, in about 2010 or 2011, when he was a similar age to
me at the end of the 70s. Needless to say, these days he’s a member of the
Labour Party; almost everyone I’m related to is, even me. Probably that’s why I
was so happy to see all those mass walk outs in schools across the country on
Friday 15th February, with a whole swathe of teenagers expressing
their concern at the future of their planet by the supreme act of defiance
enshrined in a withdrawal of their labours. Mind, the world has changed
irrevocably; most adults seem to think that what starts with a half day of to
wave some flags in solidarity with David Attenborough ends with the bairns in a
tent in Raqqa like Samima Begum, bearing a Kalashnikov in one hand and a suckling
infant in the other.
When
news about Samima’s circumstances and desire to return broke, the response to
it was fairly predictable; sombre, posturing rhetoric from politicians hellbent
on sweeping all talk of the impending Brexit Nuclear Winter from our screens
and tidal waves of incoherent, rambling bloodlust from the haram gammon
authoritarian populists. Some want her hung in the street, while others call
for her to be beheaded. It’s a sad state of affairs when the vicious, evil Tory
government we are yoked under is to the left of a significant strand of public
opinion.
We’ll return
to the question of Samima’s citizenship and the role of Uncle Tom Javid later,
but first I’d like to consider the case of James Gralton; the only Irishman to
be barred from the Free State after Partition. Born in 1886, Gralton was a
native of Effrinagh, six miles east of Carrick-on-Shannon in the county of
Lovely Leitrim. Reared on a small farm
of about twenty-five acres of bad land, Jimmy migrated to the United States in 1909,
but returned to Ireland to fight in the Civil War on the Republican side,
though he left once more for furr
Amerikay after the Treaty Forces prevailed. However, the flowing waters of
the dark, mutinous Shannon had him in their thrall and, like a good lad; he
came home once more in 1932 to look after his aged mother. Additionally, he had
a couple of part-time jobs that reflected his interests; joining the
Revolutionary Workers' Group, a predecessor of the Communist Party of Ireland,
as well as running a dance hall in Effrinagh where he organised free events and
expounded his political views between numbers. These were clericofascist times
in Connacht and violent protests against these ideologically pure dances were
led by Catholic priests, which culminated in a shooting incident. Following
this, on 9th February 1933, Jimmy was arrested, and later deported
to the United States of America, on the basis that he was an alien, despite his
Irish citizenship. Seemingly, the legality of such actions was not considered
relevant when the state decided vengeful repression was the order of the day.
Meanwhile,
in the present day, social media drips venom in the form of endless demands for
the execution of Shamima Begum; a 19 year old mother and widow. To summarise,
in 2015 Shamima left her home in east London with two fellow pupils from Bethnal Green Academy, both
of whom subsequently died in western airstrikes. Their journey to Syria via
Istanbul was funded by the sale of stolen family jewellery and inspired by
ideological brainwashing by a Glaswegian woman, Aqsa Mahmood, who recruited
them to what has been described as a
jihadi, girl-power subculture. At the time of their departure, the girls
were 15. When I attended the May Day March in 1979, I was 14 and three
quarters. The British Armed Forces accept recruits who are 16. The average age
of Argentinian conscripts who died in the 1982 Malvinas conflict was 17.
Bairns; all of them. Bairns who because of circumstance, belief or accident,
end up being trained to fire weapons, learning how to kill. It’s wrong,
fundamentally wrong. All of it. At least I have always been an advocate of
passive resistance, rather than bloodlust. Unlike those who took up arms, for a
cause or worse, a government, I have nothing to apologise for. Shamima Begum
made a mistake, but she’s no worse than thousands of other young people
attracted to military life by the intoxicating sound of musket, fife and drum.
And I forgive them all, because they were children.
Forgiveness,
as I understand it, is a fundamental part of Christianity; indeed, absolution
is a universal feature of the historic churches of Christendom. Putting the parable
of the lost sheep and the principle of turning the other cheek to one side, I
accept it is fairly unlikely at the minute that Shamima will apologise, with
both honest contrition and full understanding, for her acts. Look at it from
her point of view; she has developed a belief that Bush and Blair’s illegal war
against Islam was part of a strategy that can only be seen as the New Crusades.
While the principle reason for the Iraq War was oil, the messianic, fundamental
Christianity of Bush and Blair was an obvious influence on their actions. As a
child, Shamima would have seen footage of endless air strikes on innocent
Muslims. This must have had an effect; combine that with her current location
and the fact the West made her a widow before she was old enough to drive and
you can understand her reluctance to condemn the cause for which she has
fought. Certainly, I’m not saying I
agree with her, but I understand where she’s coming from.
Sajid
Javid’s grandstanding act of stripping Shamima of British citizenship, making
her effectively stateless, is not only pompous showmanship; it is also both
illegal and futile. Quite properly, the European Court of Human Rights will
overturn this pitiful piece of nationalistic propaganda. The Government needs
to quietly retreat from this farcical position and undo the stupid response to
a febrile atmosphere. Let’s get Shamima home and work with her to find out more
about ISIL and her adherence to them. She can, and will, be deradicalised and
able to take her place as a useful member of society. Frankly, her experiences
with Daesh are probably more valuable than a teenage life spent glugging cider
and smoking tabs at Howdon Metro Station.
Jimmy
Gralton died in Brooklyn in December 1945, nursed through his final illness by his
long-time companion Bessie Cronogue from Drumsna, also in Leitrim. It took over
70 years for Jimmy to receive absolution. After a posthumous campaign to clear
his name, Michael D Higgins announced at the unveiling of memorial to Jimmy on
3rd September 2016, at
Effrinagh on the site where the hall once stood, that the only deportation of
an Irishman from Ireland was "wrong and indefensible". The stone
edifice tells the story of Gralton’s life as a labour campaigner and was
partially funded by the trade union movement.
A cinematic memorial to Jimmy is Ken Loach’s 2014 film Jimmy’s Hall. Let’s hope it doesn’t take
70 years for Samima Begum to be exonerated, pardoned and accepted for standing
up for her beliefs and convictionsecause she knew no better.
Nice one Ian...Bill hicks Christian monologue comes to mind...
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