Graffiti on the Falls, Belfast
This week I downloaded my first ever Judy Garland song : 'The Wizard of Oz' makes sense for the first time! Though I would've preferred to have backed Robert Wyatt's version of Elvis Costello's anti-Falklands War song 'Shipbuilding', to get to number 1 this week.
'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' will be played for 5 seconds on Radio 1, despite its chart position. The more you suppress, the more you make people angry. On the internet, dissent is widespread and vociferous.
I texted my friend the Bartzman with the news and he replied - ' Maggots 1 Maggie 0' .
A few polite and deferential writers appeared on Facebook asking for respect.
How could they understand?
Here was the enemy, gone forever.
Over £10 million will be spent on her military/state funeral, money better spent on building up the many communities she devastated, which have never recovered.
A person , more than any other, who carried out malicious and widespread attacks on so many sections of society.
An enemy I had opposed and protested against for every one of her repugnant policies.
Against her deliberate creation of unemployment which destroyed not just the Valleys where I live, but many other working-class areas and had been one of the main causes of riots in the black areas of Britain, together with the SUS laws, used to stop and search black people.
I'd protested against the way she sold off industries owned by the people, without consulting them and sought to decimate the Trade Union movement by taking on the most militant force, the NUM.
I'd protested against the war she began in the Falklands : so many pointless deaths of both British and Argentinians. Land rightfully claimed by Argentina, but colonised by the Empire, as with so many other places in the world, especially Ireland.
I'd protested against the appalling way which she treated those republican political prisoners in Long Kesh (the Maze prison). What respect did she show for one of them, Bobby Sands MP, in his brave struggle for a political status they had once possessed ? She called him a 'common criminal' in the House of Commons, when he died after a hunger strike.
And against those cruise missiles planted on British soil at Greenham Common, making this country a base for US global strategy and a threat to world peace.
She has been proved so wrong on many counts.
In n. Ireland, where Sinn Fein became one of the prime peace-makers.
In the Valleys and other former heavy industrial communities, where coal has often been replaced by opencast mining, just as 'dirty' and opposed by most people for its pollution and environmental ravages.
Oh yes, and whatever happened to that Nelson Mandela, she once dubbed a 'terrorist'?
She's been proved radically wrong about privatisation, the banks and the property boom she instigated.
All these have caused the huge economic problems we now wrestle with, that no political parties can solve, simply because (in their adherence to the free market) they remain influenced by Thatcherism.
Above all, as part of Cymru Goch, I protested against her iniquitous poll tax, which charged the same amount of local tax for everyone, rich and poor, irrespective of income or the value of their property.
It was this anti-poll tax campaign and its use of civil disobedience (non-payment) which, more than anything else, led to her downfall.
It was an example of what can be achieved when enough people
get together and decide to challenge an unjust law, many out of sheer necessity of course.
Yet again, the mainstream political parties failed to take a lead. In fact, Labour Councils acted as puppets of the Tory Government, sending the bailiffs in and imprisoning refuseniks.
I do agree with my friend and comrade Marc Jones when he says - 'I will dance on the grave of Thatcherism'.
Thatcherism is very much alive, as Cameron attacks the poor, low paid and disabled in particular; as public service workers are made redundant and face massive wage and pension cuts ; as education and the NHS (in England, at least) are privatised.
Mandela could forgive his enemies simply because the battle against apartheid had been won.
Despite the death of one enemy, her loathsome legacy lives on.
THE ONE TIME I SAW HER
( with thanks to Jean Perry)
We had this posh Head in the Comp.,
never had a clue about the kids ;
drunk dads throwing school shoes over walls.
Wanted to do something for the Specials
and I, who could always get them drawing,
was sent with them to London.
Furthest some of them ever been
was the Gower or exotic Coney Beach ;
eyes getting wider with every mile.
When we got there, Hyde Park,
whatever was happening had been and gone,
some military band or procession.
There was nothing special laid on
and we queued ages, van after van,
for pop and crisps and toilets flooding.
Some of them were crying - 'I wanna go home!'
I wanna go back to Blaenymaes!'
Home comforts, wall to wall swearing.
It was then I clearly heard them,
foot-thumps like beating of truncheons
on shields, hob-nailed boots of policemen.
A phalanx crossing quickly near us,
in their midst Mrs Thatch, the Iron Lady,
Milk Snatcher, where we lived the Wicked Witch.
Stepping rapidly like escaping a bomb scare,
a military operation till she stumbled
and fell over a coke can; the kids laughing.
Now she has fallen so much further
and not all those staffs and helmets
can offer her any protection.
'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' will be played for 5 seconds on Radio 1, despite its chart position. The more you suppress, the more you make people angry. On the internet, dissent is widespread and vociferous.
I texted my friend the Bartzman with the news and he replied - ' Maggots 1 Maggie 0' .
A few polite and deferential writers appeared on Facebook asking for respect.
How could they understand?
Here was the enemy, gone forever.
Over £10 million will be spent on her military/state funeral, money better spent on building up the many communities she devastated, which have never recovered.
A person , more than any other, who carried out malicious and widespread attacks on so many sections of society.
An enemy I had opposed and protested against for every one of her repugnant policies.
Against her deliberate creation of unemployment which destroyed not just the Valleys where I live, but many other working-class areas and had been one of the main causes of riots in the black areas of Britain, together with the SUS laws, used to stop and search black people.
I'd protested against the way she sold off industries owned by the people, without consulting them and sought to decimate the Trade Union movement by taking on the most militant force, the NUM.
I'd protested against the war she began in the Falklands : so many pointless deaths of both British and Argentinians. Land rightfully claimed by Argentina, but colonised by the Empire, as with so many other places in the world, especially Ireland.
I'd protested against the appalling way which she treated those republican political prisoners in Long Kesh (the Maze prison). What respect did she show for one of them, Bobby Sands MP, in his brave struggle for a political status they had once possessed ? She called him a 'common criminal' in the House of Commons, when he died after a hunger strike.
And against those cruise missiles planted on British soil at Greenham Common, making this country a base for US global strategy and a threat to world peace.
She has been proved so wrong on many counts.
In n. Ireland, where Sinn Fein became one of the prime peace-makers.
In the Valleys and other former heavy industrial communities, where coal has often been replaced by opencast mining, just as 'dirty' and opposed by most people for its pollution and environmental ravages.
Oh yes, and whatever happened to that Nelson Mandela, she once dubbed a 'terrorist'?
She's been proved radically wrong about privatisation, the banks and the property boom she instigated.
All these have caused the huge economic problems we now wrestle with, that no political parties can solve, simply because (in their adherence to the free market) they remain influenced by Thatcherism.
Above all, as part of Cymru Goch, I protested against her iniquitous poll tax, which charged the same amount of local tax for everyone, rich and poor, irrespective of income or the value of their property.
It was this anti-poll tax campaign and its use of civil disobedience (non-payment) which, more than anything else, led to her downfall.
It was an example of what can be achieved when enough people
get together and decide to challenge an unjust law, many out of sheer necessity of course.
Yet again, the mainstream political parties failed to take a lead. In fact, Labour Councils acted as puppets of the Tory Government, sending the bailiffs in and imprisoning refuseniks.
I do agree with my friend and comrade Marc Jones when he says - 'I will dance on the grave of Thatcherism'.
Thatcherism is very much alive, as Cameron attacks the poor, low paid and disabled in particular; as public service workers are made redundant and face massive wage and pension cuts ; as education and the NHS (in England, at least) are privatised.
Mandela could forgive his enemies simply because the battle against apartheid had been won.
Despite the death of one enemy, her loathsome legacy lives on.
THE ONE TIME I SAW HER
( with thanks to Jean Perry)
We had this posh Head in the Comp.,
never had a clue about the kids ;
drunk dads throwing school shoes over walls.
Wanted to do something for the Specials
and I, who could always get them drawing,
was sent with them to London.
Furthest some of them ever been
was the Gower or exotic Coney Beach ;
eyes getting wider with every mile.
When we got there, Hyde Park,
whatever was happening had been and gone,
some military band or procession.
There was nothing special laid on
and we queued ages, van after van,
for pop and crisps and toilets flooding.
Some of them were crying - 'I wanna go home!'
I wanna go back to Blaenymaes!'
Home comforts, wall to wall swearing.
It was then I clearly heard them,
foot-thumps like beating of truncheons
on shields, hob-nailed boots of policemen.
A phalanx crossing quickly near us,
in their midst Mrs Thatch, the Iron Lady,
Milk Snatcher, where we lived the Wicked Witch.
Stepping rapidly like escaping a bomb scare,
a military operation till she stumbled
and fell over a coke can; the kids laughing.
Now she has fallen so much further
and not all those staffs and helmets
can offer her any protection.
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