Why elections might be different post-COVID

As usual for an election year, the media pundits are out in full force, predicting the outcome of this election.

I've truthfully decided that pundits tend not to know what they're talking about, and with good reason. In 2015, they predicted a Labour majority - we got a Tory majority. In 2016, they predicted that Remain would win the EU referendum - we got Brexit. In 2017, they predicted a super-majority for Theresa May - we got a hung parliament. And they all seemed very unsure what would happen in 2019!

This to me says that it's very difficult, no matter how much understanding you have about political trends, to predict an election outcome. I don't know what's going to happen at this year's election. I could hazard a guess, but I'm not going to because it would most likely turn out to be wrong. The one thing I can accurately predict is that I'll spend most of the general election campaign in a state of heightened anxiety - let's hope my lovely therapist can help with that. Generally, I'm content with the fact that I don't know.

But more importantly, I think that this year will be even harder to predict the outcome of than elections normally are. The reason for this is due to COVID, and the lockdown events we experienced in 2020. At the time of lockdown, I had only recently entered a new relationship; my relationship was largely on the rocks, and truthfully I think we'd have split up if we hadn't gone into lockdown together. But going into lockdown together largely made us grow closer again, and we certainly did a lot of really productive things, such as my partner finishing his first novel. We're still together, and stronger than ever!

I myself had a particularly positive experience with COVID. I recognise that I'm very fortunate in that, and that many other people had a far harder time than I did. However, I think it's important to note that all of us, whether we had a nice time in 2020 or whether we didn't, fundamentally changed as people during that time. And I think in most cases, there's an argument that we changed for the better.

Here are the three things that I think are most different about the average person since COVID to how they were before:

1. They are more creative

Creativity is humanity's greatest strength. It's the one thing that makes us unique as a species - I've never seen any evidence that other species have learned to make up stories, play music, paint pictures or any of the other forms of creativity that exists within human culture (although please send me any studies if there are any!)

It's commonly complained that the arts is the domain of the rich, and as someone who works in the arts myself I can confirm that there's a lot of truth in that - the rich and famous dominate, and ordinary people struggle to get a look in. But I like to look at it the opposite way as well. Doesn't it say something about the human condition that so many people, if they do happen to have a lot of wealth and not have to worry about getting by, find themselves naturally turning to art?

Lockdown was a time when so many people realised skills that they never knew before that they possessed. Whether it's baking, sewing, learning how to play a musical instrument, writing stories (which is what happened to my partner), it was a rare moment where we had a bit of time for ourselves, to find things that we enjoyed to get us through each day. And many of us have managed to keep that up.

I think this is a positive because it means that we can demand a better quality of life. Going back to menial jobs after lockdown was far more of a chore than it had been before, because we'd had more time to think about what we'd rather have been doing instead. I think that knowing that, and having realised our creativity in a way that we previously might not have done, is a very beneficial thing for humanity.

2. They are kinder

So many people had an utterly horrible time during lockdown, either because they were disabled, lonely, mentally ill or just otherwise unable to look after themselves. And naturally, our leaders did the bare minimum they could get away with.

I need to make clear, so as not to look like I"m excusing it, that the attitude of our politicians during this time period was absolutely scandalous. But sometimes it's in dark times that we really see the light, and I was so heartened to see how much care and compassion for one another lockdown brought out, whether it was doing the shopping for an elderly neighbour, or giving a phone call to check in with someone who was stuck living with an abusive partner, to even taking someone into your home (the latter happened to me - my partner's parents were kind enough to allow me to stay with them for the entire lockdown period, even though they didn't know me that well at that point. I'll never forget that.)

I really hope that this kindness has stuck since lockdown. The biggest barrier to kindness is personal stress and anxiety, so naturally with the increasing numbers of problems within society there have been some instances where that compassion has diminished... but I also see so many people standing up for those less fortunate in ways that a few years ago I just didn't. I personally am seeing this most strongly in the ongoing campaign for the rights of vulnerable adults in Monmouthshire and Abergavenny, which I'm involved with and which I have written about on previous blogs.

3. They are more angry

Last week, I went to see a poet perform. During the performance, the poet said that the enduring memory of the last few years that has really stuck with him is Queen Elizabeth II, sitting alone at her husband's funeral, knowing that her Government had been partying the night before. I'm not normally very interested in the Royal Family, particularly when there are so many people who are suffering a lot more than them - but the poet did make the interesting point that this is the ultimate reflection of the amount of contempt that politicians have for people. If they can treat our monarch with that little respect, what on earth does that say about their feelings for regular folk? I thought this was very well-expressed.

At the start of lockdown, I remember there was a real spirit of 'taking one for the team'. It's in some of the worst times that communities do pull together. I'm always inspired by stories of life during World War II for those who were not actively fighting, the people who continued to keep their communities alive when so many had had to leave their normal jobs and go to war - indeed, I'm the grandson of a Land Girl, and my grandmother's commitment to the Women's Land Army is one of the things that most inspires me to continue to try to make a difference in this troubling world.

But then Dominic Cummings drove to Barnard Castle, and the glue snapped. It was absolutely inconceivable to people, including myself, that the rich and powerful just weren't taking this seriously, especially when politicians started falling over themselves to defend him. People had had to miss their loved ones' funerals, keep their children out of education, put themselves to extraordinary levels of inconvenience in the interests of us all being together, and then it was demonstrated beyond all doubt that those with the most power had been laughing at them for doing that.

This created an almost universal sense of anger with politicians that I don't think has ever been forgotten about. And it's something that I don't think has disappeared. There was a time when politicians were given the benefit of the doubt, and that has just gone.

--

As I said at the start, I don't want to speculate about what impact these changes to our values in life will have on the upcoming election. Ideally, I would love them to manifest themselves in things like support for independent local candidates like Andrew Feinstein at the expense of career politicians like Keir Starmer. I don't believe that either the Labour or Conservative Parties deserve to win this election, and I think we're in quite an interesting position to really make quite a radical change to politics. Or maybe the opposite will happen - maybe the collective anger will result in fewer people even bothering to turn out to vote, on the idea that 'What's even the point? They're all the same anyway.' I wouldn't like that to happen, but it could happen. There's also the fact that it's also an election year in the USA - I haven't written about that at all because I don't have enough of a detailed understanding of the American political system or COVID's effect on US culture generally (although of course, they already have had one election since lockdown and we haven't. Still interesting though.)

One thing is for sure though. This is the first UK General Election post-lockdown, and that will have an effect. We may not be able to say what that effect will be, but I do believe there will be one that in the future we'll be able to look back on and attribute it to our experiences in lockdown. I also think this simple fact has been completely forgotten about by virtually all media sources, whatever their political persuasion. And it's for that reason that I'd caution everyone to be extremely sceptical of any election predictions, no matter who it's by. Election results are hard enough to call at the best of times, but when there's been a huge event since the last one that has fundamentally changed us as human beings, it's pretty near impossible. Anything could happen - and that's something I find frightening, but also inspiring and exciting.

My Facebook My Twitter

(By the way, I have a Substack now, but I haven't quite worked out how to use it! Watch this space.)

A response from David TC Davies regarding Gaza, and my response back

 This email from my MP, David TC Davies, was in response to my email to him on 6th February.

Dear Mr Millman,

Thank you for contacting me about the UK’s decision to pause future funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA.)

The Government wants to see an end to the fighting in Gaza as soon as possible and is calling for an immediate pause to get aid in and hostages out, then progress towards a sustainable, permanent ceasefire, without a return to destruction, fighting and loss of life.

I agree with the UK Government that South Africa’s case at the ICJ is not helping to achieve the goal of a sustainable ceasefire. Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas in line with international humanitarian law (IHL) as the UK Government has made clear from the outset. I share the Government’s view that Israel’s actions in Gaza cannot be described as genocide, and believed South Africa’s decision to bring the case was wrong and provocative.

Of course, I respect the role and independence of the ICJ. I welcome the court’s call for the immediate release of hostages and the need to get more aid into Gaza.

On UNRWA, I am appalled by allegations that any agency staff were involved in the 7 October attack against Israel, a heinous act of terrorism. I support the UK's decision to pause any future funding of UNRWA whilst these concerning allegations are reviewed. The United States, Germany, Australia, Italy, Canada, Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands have all temporarily paused funding too.

I want to make clear that the UK remains committed to getting humanitarian aid to the people in Gaza who desperately need it. The Government is getting on with aid delivery, funding multiple implementing partners including other UN agencies and international and UK NGOs. This support is helping people in Gaza get food, water, shelter and medicines.

The commitment to trebling aid to Gaza still stands and the UK is providing £60 million in humanitarian assistance to support partners including the British Red Cross, UNICEF, the UN World Food Programme and Egyptian Red Crescent Society to respond to critical food, fuel, water, health, shelter and security needs in Gaza.

Indeed, the UK will continue to support the United Nations World Food Programme to deliver a new humanitarian land corridor from Jordan into Gaza. 750 tonnes of life-saving food aid arrived in the first delivery and 315 tonnes in the second delivery.

Finally, the Government regularly reviews Israel’s capability and commitment to IHL and acts in accordance with that advice, for example when considering export licences.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

Regards,

David TC Davies

-----

My response back:

Dear David,

Thank you for your reply. I am extremely saddened by your view, although given the track record of the party you represent it is not exactly a surprise to me.

I'm going to start with your point about UNRWA. There is as far as I can make out, no evidence whatsoever to support Israel's claim about agency staff being involved with the October 7th attacks. Especially given that this allegation was made the day after the ICJ's ruling, I think the suggestion that this was merely a piece of propaganda to distract the world is very plausible. But even if I'm wrong on this, and Israel's word turns out to be true, these allegations are against twelve members of staff. Twelve. Out of 30,000 staff members in total. To put those figures into perspective, the NHS employs around 1.7 million people. When last year Lucy Letby was charged with the murders of seven babies on the maternity ward in which she worked, would your proposed solution have been to withhold funding from the entirety of the NHS?

This is not a hyperbolic comparison. I learned today that three months ago, there were 36 hospitals in Gaza. Today there are none. Every single hospital in the region has been bombed by Israel. In January 2024, CNN reported that about one in 100 civilians in Gaza have been killed since October 7th. This was in January, so now we're almost at the end of February, it is almost certainly substantially more than that. These are war crimes, and cutting off aid from the organisation charged with providing it is fundamentally immoral.

Now let's move onto whether it's a genocide. The ICJ's ruling is that this is 'plausible'. Personally I'd have liked a more concrete conclusion, but I appreciate that within the legal world it's important that every officially recorded statement is explicit and provable. But I do have something to say regarding that. The Nakba occurred in 1948, and the living situation for Palestinians in the region has been becoming increasingly restrictive since 1967. Hamas was formed in 1987, and has only been held office since 2007. Israel, and much of the Western media, would claim that this is about stamping out Hamas - but this is not the truth. If it were the truth, it would make no sense, as this situation has existed for far longer than Hamas has.

Hamas exists as a result of the living standards that the Israeli state is enforcing on the people of Palestine. I read a statistic that around 85% of Hamas' soldiers are orphans, having lost their parents to this war. It's natural that people are drawn to more extremist views the more miserable their own lives are, which is the reason for the rise of Hamas - but I don't really want to talk about Hamas. I don't think Hamas is especially important. It's all a smokescreen. If Israel was interested purely in stamping out Hamas, it wouldn't be targeting civilians in the way that it is. A good analogy I came across was that if a gunman was in a school and all the children and teachers were being held hostage, at what point would it become acceptable to bomb the school in order to neutralise the gunman? I don't think any reasonable human being would think that an acceptable thing to do, and surely you don't either. But this is the logic that Israel uses, and the reason for this is that the Israeli state believes itself to have the right to determine who is allowed to live and who is not. So sure, call it a more cuddly word than 'genocide' if you like. But things are not going to get any better by calling it something else.

As I said at the beginning, your response is not really a surprise given the party you represent. I have found the Conservative Party to have been a substantial threat to the values I hold and the hopes and dreams I have for life since they came to Government when I was 16. However, I also think it's really important to hold each individual politician accountable for their own views and their own actions, and I really hoped that irrespective of your political persuasion you would prove yourself to be one of the exceptions (thankfully, we seem to be seeing increasing numbers of exceptions at the moment - it's a shame you don't seem to be one of them). I've only just moved here, and given that it's an election year I'm putting a lot of thought into who I should vote for. But I cannot in good conscience lend you any support with the positions you've expressed to me in your email. I feel that it defends the indefensible, and frankly I find your complacency frightening.

Yours,

George Harold Millman

My Facebook My Twitter

Why standing against a toxic Labour MP will not let the Tories in

 Last weekend, it was announced that Andrew Feinstein will stand against Keir Starmer in his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras. Feinstein is a Jewish anti-apartheid activist, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who is currently based in London but is originally from South Africa and served in Nelson Mandela's Government in the 1990s. Although he is an independent candidate, his candidacy is being supported and funded by the socialist campaign group OCISA (Organise Corbyn Inspired Socialist Alliance), which I've been involved with over the last year. The group has inspired many other independents to stand against certain high-profile MPs.

I'm personally really excited to see Andrew Feinstein standing. Firstly, I think it's really appropriate that it's a Jewish candidate, given Keir Starmer's frequent misuse of the Jewish community to present himself (falsely) as an anti-racist, and I also think it's really appropriate that it's someone from South Africa, given South Africa's amazing role in leading the way in standing up to the genocidal behaviour of the Israeli state. I'm not normally in favour of identity politics, I find that it usually results in people with extremely harmful views coming across as being more forward-thinking and progressive than they actually are, but all principles have exceptions and this is one of them. But more importantly, I've been really excited to learn about Andrew Feinstein's history, his work with Nelson Mandela, his efforts to keep an awareness of the history of colonialism into politics, his calls to regulate the world's arms trade, and more besides. I'm really quite interested to see how this is going to go.

But, one thing I've come across on Twitter is quite a lot of people saying 'this will just split the left-wing vote and get the Tories in'. This is something we hear quite a lot in relation to any candidate besides Labour or Conservative, and like many oft-repeated political statements, it has an edge of truth to it but completely ignores any contextual circumstances, to the point of becoming completely inaccurate. And it's made me realise that we're so lacking in political education in the UK that many people do not fully appreciate how the system works. So here are some important things you need to remember:

1) Andrew Feinstein standing against Keir Starmer will not make any difference to which party is in Government in the next Parliament. The only way it will make a difference on the national scale is if Feinstein defeats Starmer, and Labour gets a majority nationwide. If this happens, Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the party, will become Prime Minister by default (assuming that she keeps her seat in Ashton-under-Lyne). How long she stays in that position will depend on whether she's able to command a majority in the House of Commons. But either way, it won't make a difference to which actual party is in charge. That is a matter determined by the number of seats won nationwide, which is irrelevant to the outcome in one particular person's seat, even if that person is the leader.

2) Barring unprecedented acts of God, the MP for Holborn and St Pancras after the next general election will be either Keir Starmer or Andrew Feinstein. There is no other alternative. The Conservative Party has never held that seat since it was established in 1983, and in the most recent general election only had 15.6% of the vote, compared to Labour's 64.5% (more on that in point 4). The assumption that voting for a candidate other than Labour or Conservative is a waste completely disregards the context of any one particular seat, which is something that has to be considered in one's voting choice because that's the only bit of politics we're actually allowed to vote for.

3) This should be obvious from what I said in point1, but I'll reiterate it: Andrew Feinstein is not trying to become UK Prime Minister. This will not happen even if he wins the seat. What he is trying to do is unseat Keir Starmer, and the reason he is trying to unseat Keir Starmer is that under his leadership the Labour Party has become increasingly confused, at war with itself and with its own members, anti-socialist, and, with recent events in Gaza, apologists for genocide.

4) One criticism I've heard is that with such a high majority (64.5%), Keir Starmer is seen as unlikely to lose his seat. Personally I have no idea of the likelihood at all - I don't live in the constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, and I'm not aware of even having visited there. That's a matter for the residents, which I am not. However, what I can say is that the concept of a Labour safe seat means safe from the Tories. It doesn't necessarily mean it's safe from a concerted campaign from the left. And besides, even if Starmer manages to hold onto it, Andrew Feinstein's candidacy by itself can change the conversation a bit. It will be far harder for Starmer to claim to be staunchly opposed to anti-Semitism, for example, when a highly experienced Jewish candidate in his own constituency is expressing the opposite position.

5) Another criticism I've heard is that even if this campaign does succeed, it won't solve the problems in the Labour Party - they'll just pick another toxic leader and carry on. This one I'll acknowledge is true. I don't think anyone on the campaign to get Andrew in will pause to celebrate too hard, even if it does work. This is merely the first challenge in what is going to be a long and drawn-out mission to return a bit of democracy to British politics and create more of a natural home for socialists in this country. I think it's important to remember this even if the campaign against Starmer is unsuccessful - if it doesn't work out, we'll think it a shame, but we won't waste time mourning. We'll regroup and work out what to do next.

My Facebook My Twitter

An open letter to David TC Davies, regarding Parliamentary debate on humanitarian aid in Gaza

I wrote this email to Conservative David TC Davies, who has recently become my local MP. Given the party he represents and his previous record I am somewhat sceptical about his likelihood of impressing me on this - but maybe he'll surprise me, stranger things have happened!

 Dear David TC Davies MP,

My name is George Harold Millman. I'm an actor, scriptwriter and political activist.

Firstly, I'd like to say hello to you. I've only recently moved into your constituency and I'm delighted to make your acquaintance - we haven't met, but I believe you know my partner Owen, who is a prominent disability rights campaigner in the Abergavenny area. I have no doubt I'll be writing to you often about various political matters that I'm concerned about (just to keep things transparent, I also generally publish letters to my MP and their responses on my blog, The Rebel Without A Clause).

This first letter I'm writing to you is in relation to the debate that the Labour MP Apsana Begum has secured for this coming Thursday, 8th February, concerning humanitarian aid and children in Gaza. I wanted to ask if you're planning to attend? I sincerely hope that you are.

This year marks ten years that I've been actively involved in the campaign for the freedom of Palestinians. It's a matter that is very close to my heart, and I've been dismayed to see how the situation seems to have become actively worse since 2014, which is when I first realised the extent of it. I am additionally horrified by how much Western powers have turned a blind eye to the scale of the situation for Palestinians since October, and how this has manifested itself in ways such as withholding funding for UNWRA, the UN agency charged with making life a bit more bearable for civilians in the region.

I'll be truthful in that I haven't been at all impressed with your party's actions in relation to this subject - however, I know from experience that my opinions of a party as a whole are not necessarily the same as my opinions of individual MPs (I have been just as disappointed by Labour on this as I have with the Conservatives, and yet this naturally doesn't extend to Apsana Begum, who seems to be really going above and beyond to help). I really hope that I'll be able to see the same from you.

Best wishes,

George Harold Millman

My Facebook My Twitter

An open letter to Angela Rayner MP, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, regarding the Palestine genocide (yes, genocide)

 Dear Angela Rayner MP,

My name is George Harold Millman. I'm an actor, scriptwriter and political activist.

I am writing to you concerning the current situation in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in Palestine, and particularly in relation to two matters. Firstly, I was very disturbed by a recent video, filmed on 25 January, in which you were confronted by a number of protesters during a speech in your constituency. The protesters were ejected by security whilst you looked on and said 'thank you' repeatedly.

I'm always upset to see people treated in this way when trying to express dissatisfaction with their elected representatives, even if that dissatisfaction is being expressed in a confrontational way - I think that the public would generally be more satisfied with their politicians if they felt that said politicians were listening to them and respectful of them. However, there was one particular protester for whom I was particularly shocked and disturbed by your reaction. His name is Dalloul al-Neder, and recently his family in Palestine were killed in the ongoing Israeli campaign against the Palestinian people.

Dalloul was trying to show pictures of his family members who had been killed. You had the opportunity to demonstrate the Labour Party as a party of the people, and yourself as a politician of great empathy and compassion. But you did not do this. You stood there, emotionless and silent, and watched him being removed from the venue. I want to ask, in as polite a way as I can, how you were capable of showing this little feeling when faced with a fellow human being in pain? You are a mother and a grandmother; I'd like you to think about how you would feel if you had been killed, and one of your grieving relatives was treated like this when trying to talk about you. Even if as a senior Labour politician you weren't able to help him in that precise moment, you could have asked him to stay and talk to you afterwards so that you could listen to him talk and represent his feelings back to the heart of the Labour Party - or at the very least, asked security not to be so rough with him. Why did you not do that?

In your reaction to Dalloul, you demonstrated to me that you are not who I thought you were. When Jeremy Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party, you were always my favourite member of the Shadow Cabinet. I thought you were a phenomenal Shadow Education Secretary at that time, and I even remember confessing to friends around that point that I respected you more even more than I respected Jeremy. When Keir Starmer took over as leader in 2020, I quickly came to realise that I couldn't support a lot of his actions as leader - but I took some solace in the fact that we still had you as Deputy Leader. As a working-class woman who left school with no qualifications, was a teenage mum and had a lot of experience working with the trade unions, I had no doubt that you'd be a wonderfully warm and tough Deputy Leader, keeping the party in shape and reminding those in the top positions that ultimately you're a party of the many, not the few. I have truly never been as ashamed of having faith in any politician - I think the only other time since I've been politically active was with Nick Clegg over university tuition fees in 2010, but I actually think the callousness of your reaction to Dalloul al-Neder is greater than anything I saw from Clegg. In Clegg, I just see a very poor strategist who perhaps didn't fully understand the harm that he was doing. In your case, I know that you do understand. Following this confrontation, it was revealed on social that you have actually met Dalloul in the past; in 2019, you visited his shop, posed for a picture with him and told him that you believed in the unequivocal freedom of Palestinians. Did you ever truly believe that, or did you just say in in 2019 because that was Labour's position at the time?

Talking of Labour's position at the time, I want to ask more generally what Labour's position over this genocide is (and I use the word genocide consciously, as I believe that what we're seeing is a genocide). On a recent talk show, you were asked if the Labour Party believes that what we're seeing is a genocide. You responded that you don't know, but that the ICJ made a good case for that fact. I would have preferred you to say publicly that it is a genocide; however, I do respect your diplomatic answer in this case, especially as we have an international court case to work alongside. I am at least glad that you acknowledged that it could be. However, your Labour colleague Kate Osamor, the MP for Edmonton, was recently suspended from the party after she included Gaza in a list of genocides in a letter for Holocaust Memorial Day (alongside Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia). If, as you inferred on that talk show, what we're seeing is perhaps a genocide and that we need to remain open to the possibility it might be, does this not mean that Labour MPs should be free to say that they believe it is if they so wish? Are Labour MPs free to say this? If not, why not, if this position is in line with the ICJ's findings?

Labour's position on what is happening in the Gaza Strip is something that I have found it very distressing to watch, as have many others that I've spoken to. Especially given that this is an election year, I think this is something that Labour should think about very carefully. Having said that, I think Labour should take policy positions more because they're morally right than because they're vote winners - but in any case, I don't believe that Labour's current position is a vote winner. The only way I could ever consider voting Labour at the next election would be if my own local candidate was prepared to publicly condemn Israel for what they're currently doing - I do not know at the time of writing if that is the case.

Best wishes,

George Harold Millman

I wrote this to Angela Rayner MP, the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and current Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, at the time of publication. I will update this blog with any reply I receive.

The importance of having your own community

 This is a blog that just a couple of years ago, it wouldn't have occurred to me to write. In fact, until recently I would have thought that a lot of what I'm going to say completely contradicted my beliefs about human society. I still hold the same beliefs I did before, which is why I need to make something very plain before we start.

I lived with more than thirty different people, many of them foreign nationals, at various different times before I was twenty. My secondary school was in a very urban area, with an enormous amount of diversity between the ethnicities and cultures of the pupils (to the extent that in some of my classes, I was in a minority as a white person). I found this an amazingly positive experience, although it did give me the impression that racism was more a thing of the past than it actually was, and that was quite a bitter pill to swallow later. I don't believe in the exclusion of anyone from our social groups based on personal characteristics. I would like the entire world to have an open borders policy, where anyone can if they wish leave the place they are living and go to live anywhere else without much hassle. I was appalled by the amount of racism we saw in the mid- to late-2010s, and deeply offended when then Prime Minister Theresa May said 'If you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere'. I've been disturbed by the Government's Rwanda policy, and furious that the Labour Party has not taken a firm line against the constant rhetoric that there are people who 'deserve' to be here and people who don't. The position that we all share this planet, and that no one has any more right to a particular part of it than anyone else does, is probably the most core of all my beliefs. Please keep this in mind as I write about communities; the argument I'm going to make is an important one, but I think is often misused by people who actually want to stir up conflict. This is not what I'm doing.

Although it's important to always bear in mind that we're all ultimately citizens of the world with equal rights, it has occurred to me over the last year or so that being part of your own group, which reflects your feelings and your ideals, is important as well. I'd never quite realised this before - in the past I've always been a fairly individualist person - but there are two things in particular that have caused me to think more about these things: moving from one of England's biggest cities to a small town in the Welsh countryside, and my work with OCISA.

OCISA is a campaign group that I've been engaging with frequently over the past year. The name stands for Organise Corbyn Inspired Socialist Alliance (you can take a look at their website here). It's more than a single issue campaign, but they were founded to focus on one key aim - to unseat Keir Starmer at the next election. I won't go into detail here about exactly what my issues are with the current Leader of the Labour Party (I've written about that in other blogs, such as this one and also this one) but the subject of this blog is not so much why it's being done, but how it's being done. The majority of the work being done by OCISA is taking place in the London constituency of Holborn St Pancras, which is Keir Starmer's Parliamentary seat, and the idea is to select an independent candidate that represents the feelings of the local community better than Starmer. Not living in that constituency, I have no idea how this is going or what the locals' feelings are towards their local MP - but I've heard from hearsay that there's been a fair bit of interest, so maybe it could happen. Who knows?

The point that interests me is that this is pretty much the first time that I can remember where a major political figure was discussed at all in relation to the values held by the constituents they represent. Given that electing one's local MP is the entirety of our constitutional democracy, you'd think that this would be the most important factor in discussing these people, but strangely it very rarely seems to be so. And thinking about this made me think about constituencies more generally. Until a couple of months ago, I lived in Bristol West, which is perhaps the most radically left-wing constituency in the country (it's where the Colston statue came down, and the Tories don't even bother to campaign properly there as they know they have no chance). And yet, the incumbent Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire is nowhere near as left-wing, was heavily involved in the 'chicken coup' against Jeremy Corbyn in 2016, and is now part of Keir Starmer's Shadow Cabinet. You can find a lot of my indignant emails to Thangam in the backlog of my blog - truthfully, I really regret voting Labour in 2019, in spite of the fact that I hoped they would win nationwide, because it resulted in an MP that absolutely does not share my values, or even the reasons I supported her own party at the time.

I've heard quite a lot of people, many of whom share my political views, saying that the constituency system is outdated, and that we should directly elect the Prime Minister in the same way that US citizens directly elect the President. Although I partially agree and would like to see a more democratic means of selecting a Prime Minister, I'm not sure the solution is to abolish constituencies entirely. When I lived in Bristol West I felt that there really was a strong community spirit that I felt a part of - these were people who shared my feelings, my values, my fears and my desires, and were willing to listen to me when we differed (and I them). It was the establishment that didn't respect these things. I actually think that the problem is that constituencies have been undermined, and I think the key to that is in our party setup. Whichever party your MP happens to belong to, the feelings in your own community are unlikely to be the main criteria for their decisions on how to vote, who to meet with or what speeches to make - this is more likely to be determined by their party, which likely will not have very much association with the community in which you live. Even worse, a lot of parties put forward the people they want to be elected into the party's 'safe seats' where they're highly likely to get enough votes - they may not have even been there before, let alone understand the community's values. What, then, is the point of creating a constituency and electing someone to represent that, if they aren't really going to do so?

With all the talk about trying to elect an independent in Holborn St Pancras, I've started thinking about other constituencies. In 2019 I found it really hard to decide who to vote for, because I wanted to support Labour and Jeremy Corbyn but I also really didn't want to re-elect Thangam Debbonaire - in the end I did vote Labour, but in hindsight I think it was the wrong decision. I haven't lived in my new place long enough to have decided yet who to vote for or even to be quite sure who's standing, but if there is an independent candidate I may well consider voting for them (only if I like their views, of course). In fact, I think it would be good if every constituency elected an independent candidate. An entire House of Commons filled with independents dedicated to their own constituencies would, in my view, be far better for representing the overall mood of the UK. This is an idea that a lot of people immediately dismiss, citing that it would lack stability, be harder to create a Government of continuity, and so on. Perhaps it would. But in the end, isn't that the whole idea behind the Parliamentary set-up in the first place? If it's not for the values of individual constituencies to be reflected independently of one another, what actually is the point of any of it? We may as well have an entirely new system if we're not going to do what I'm suggesting.

All this comes back to the fact that individual communities of people (not just within the boundaries of Parliamentary constituencies) have very distinctive personalities. I think it's important that these are nurtured, and that the people within them talk to one another and establish what they hold dear. How does this square with my strongly-held beliefs that we are global citizens that shouldn't segregate ourselves? Well, just because a community link exists between people, that doesn't mean that they're closing themselves off to newcomers. I've experienced this myself in my recent move. I've been absolutely blown away by how welcome my partner and I have been made to feel in this Welsh town we've moved to. Although we've only been here a few months, we already have loads of new friends (still keeping in touch with the old ones, of course) and we're really getting a feel for the vibe of this new community. My partner has set up a charity to campaign for the rights of the most vulnerable (particularly those with learning difficulties and mental health problems); we've already had many people telling us how much this project fits into the town, and how grateful people are for it.

Finally, I think that communities have been under attack, and it's not hard to see why. For the whole of my lifetime, and probably a lot longer, there's a strong emphasis from the capitalist class on making people individual and competitive. I don't believe that this is how human beings are designed to be. Moreover, I think that the nature of community, the concept of ordinary people being there for one another and supporting one another, is a threat to establishment rule. We can only fight that by allowing our communities to grow stronger. If anything, I feel that the 'citizens of nowhere' rhetoric of right-wing politicians is entirely designed to suggest that feeling safe and secure in your community is equivalent to being afraid of new people coming in and ruining it. The opposite is true.  Communities exist, but they're fluid; people come, people go, and newcomers bring their own ideas which contribute. I think that every community benefits from people coming in from outside and deciding to call it their home.

My Facebook My Twitter

The power of grassroots poetry

 The poet Benjamin Zephaniah has died from a brain tumour, diagnosed only eight weeks before his death. He was 65.

As always when a well-known person dies unexpectedly, I was quite taken aback by this news. I don't as a rule glorify celebrities (as I've documented in this blog, I think celebrity culture is extremely toxic) and I will not be glorifying Benjamin Zephaniah either - I did not know him, I don't know what he was like as a human being, and I don't think it's my place as a complete stranger to weigh in on the grief experienced by those who he was close to.

However, I don't think it's celebrity glorification to say that I have the utmost respect for Benjamin Zephaniah's work, and I think we could all learn a bit from what he contributed to this world. He struggled at school due to dyslexia, which eventually led to him being expelled at the age of 13, unable to read or write, which makes it all the more awesome that he eventually became known for being one of the world's most inspirational writers (my partner is a YA novelist and also struggled a lot with reading and writing whilst at school, so that story has a bit of a personal connection with me).

It seems to be around that time that he started writing poetry. I personally love poetry and I think poetry is something that is taught in a really harmful way in schools actually. It's quite rare to meet a young person nowadays, particularly a young person from a working-class background, who says that they love poetry, and this is because of the way it's taught. Poetry is generally written to be performed; it's not meant to be photocopied out and read silently, with every metaphor analysed for all it's worth. Worse than that, I feel as though poetry has come to be seen as a particularly highbrow outlet, a pursuit of the upper-middle class, something that is not designed for the masses in the same way as films, television or music. I don't believe this is true or fair, and in fact I believe that poetry is one of the most grassroots forms of media out there, something that really has the potential to make a difference.

As always, the British establishment approached Benjamin with an 'If you can't beat them, join them' mentality - or possibly the other way around: 'If you can't beat them, invite them to join you and neutralise them that way'. This is a technique that has been used on many outsiders who have managed to achieve support from the sidelines. They will crush you if they can, but sometimes, if you have great support from your own local community as Benjamin Zephaniah did, this won't work. If it doesn't work, their next trick is to go in the opposite direction - to promote the person like hell, make them an absolute national treasure, and by doing so tempt them with promises of milk and honey. I believe this has worked on many, many people; I wouldn't like to speculate on who, but I think there are quite a lot of establishment figures who perhaps in their early days may have had something interesting to say. But their message has become diluted. They've been invited to the big parties, been able to shake hands with important people, and have forgotten where they from and who it is they're doing this for.

But it didn't work on Benjamin Zephaniah. In 2003 (the same year as the invasion of Iraq), then Prime Minister Tony Blair recommended him for an OBE, which Benjamin publicly rejected with these words, which I think we could all learn something from:

'I get angry when I hear that word "empire"; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised. It is because of this concept of empire that my British education led me to believe that the history of black people started with slavery and that we were born slaves, and should therefore be grateful that we were given freedom by our caring white masters. It is because of this idea of empire that black people like myself don't even know our true names or our true historical culture. I am not one of those who are obsessed with their roots, and I'm certainly not suffering from a crisis of identity; my obsession is about the future and the political rights of all people.' (He wrote a full article about it here, if you'd like to read his opinions on this matter in more detail.)

There are so many things I respect about this, but the one that really sticks out to me is the fact that he was offered this OBE 'in strict confidence'. Clearly, someone who rejects an offer like this isn't meant to talk about it. But realistically, why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't we express publicly our dissatisfaction with the British honours system, and more importantly the outrage one may feel at said honours system trying to embrace one despite the fact that one objects to everything it represents? I feel that in speaking out, Benjamin highlighted some things that people weren't aware of, and brought this to public consciousness. I remember a few years ago, when the poet Carol Ann Duffy's Laureateship was coming to an end, my family was speculating on who would replace her, and my father said, 'It's bound to be Benjamin Zephaniah, isn't it?' I responded, 'He'd never accept it.' And this is something I just knew. I wouldn't say that I've ever been the biggest fan of Benjamin or his work (not because I dislike it, just because I've never got around to reading very much of it with everything else I want to read - although I definitely intend to remedy that in the future) but still, in spite of not knowing a great deal about him at that point, I knew enough to know that he would never agree to be Poet Laureate. I just knew, because it's common knowledge, and Benjamin made it common knowledge just by speaking out.

Benjamin Zephaniah cared about all the same things that I do. He was a vegan from the age of 13, and in favour of the promotion of disappearing British languages such as Welsh and Cornish. He was a supporter of people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, the working class, the dispossessed, the oppressed, the underrepresented... and, right now particularly importantly, he was a supporter of Palestinians.

I haven't updated my blog quite so much recently, and one reason for this is that Palestine is all I want to talk about, and I find I don't actually have the words. The last few months have seen the most horrific attack on any oppressed people that has occurred in my lifetime. The reports on what has been happening have caused me quite significant levels of distress, to a point that I haven't really got to before. It fills me with great fear to see what human beings are capable of - not just on an individual level, but on a systemic level. There's a big part of me that wants to turn it off and pretend it's not happening - but I don't think I can ethically do that. Being able to look away is a privilege, and were I to do that it wouldn't really help, because I'd know that it's still happening and that I can't stop it. At least if I continue to observe, I may be able to help, in some small way - be that by writing, or arguing with someone about it. I did have one conversation with someone the other day, not even a particular Israel supporter, who said, 'How could Hamas be that stupid?' And I responded that they weren't stupid. All of this was intended. I believe that for Hamas, Palestinians are collateral damage in the aim of humiliating Israel; but for Likud, Palestinians are not collateral damage. They are the target. What we are seeing in the Gaza Strip is nothing short of genocide, and our politicians are refusing to acknowledge that.

But the most horrific thing about all of this is that I feel guilty for even feeling distressed. I feel like my own feelings are pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things, bearing in mind the experiences of the thousands of people in Palestine. Those who are lucky enough to still be alive, if 'lucky' is the right word, will live with this trauma for the rest of their lives, and I find that I can't even express my own feelings without feeling that I'm making it about me, rather than about them. Essentially, the only word to describe my feelings about this is 'overwhelmed'. I just really hope the international community is waking up and is able to see all of this for what it is.

But perhaps this is the ultimate power of grassroots poetry - the ability it has to say something that you were struggling to quite find the words for. For this reason I'm going to conclude this blog with one of Benjamin's poems that really made me feel something - one that at this time of year feels extremely important and poignant.

Christmas has been shot

Christmas has been shot away this year,
There are too many choppers chopping up the sky
Too many bullets in the air for good tidings,
There will be no Christ and no mass
And darkness has fallen upon the land.
No one shall make a joyful noise unto the Lord
Or serve the Lord with gladness,
No one shall come before his presence with singing,
And Palestinian Christians who want to declare
The name of the Lord in Jerusalem
Or glorify the boy in Bethlehem
Have been told to piss off to Jordan,
Syria or Iraq.

All the saints have been told
To wait for the resumption of peace talks
And the angels of the Lord have been told
To wait until the Americans are ready
Because Zion means something else now,
And yes it was written that the truth shall flow
From the mouths of babe and suckling,
But babes and sucklings beware
The soldiers have orders to kill,
And the spirit of King Herod is alive.
They’re not doing Christmas this year,
It has been shot away
‘And anyway
Christ is no messiah,’ said the soldier
‘This is our Promised Land.’

What we see over Bethlehem this year
Is a spineless, skeleton of a Christmas,
A Christmas that has been occupied, strangled
And driven to tears, crying tear gas and burning,
It’s a Christmas that has no songs or sermons
Except the song of the bomber;
As loud as dying
As quiet as death.
Welcome to the birthplace of his holiness
Welcome to the humiliation of the natives,
Here even flowers are shot down
If they fly the local flag,
You will not hear the bells of Christmas
And you will not hear the women sing.
‘And let me tell you something else,’ said the soldier
‘No virgin gave birth here – we wouldn’t allow it.’

Sorry gentiles
It looks like it’s gonna be a cold Christmas,
Ain’t no spirit of the Lord moving over the manger
Just a nuclear power
Flying in from Tel Aviv via Washington DC.
The power of the almighty has come for sure
To suck Christmas dry
And to blow Christmas away.
There will be no mercy
And no rejoicing
And no worshipping any little Black Palestinian boy,
And no crosses
And no three wise women or men
And no Arab shepherds,
Because Christmas has been done in
Christmas is coughing and choking
Christmas has been hit by bullets from the west,
So if you want to do Christmas this year
Take a bible,
Sit indoors,
And do your own thing,
Just don’t do it in Bethlehem.

My Facebook My Twitter