Red Pepper » Jan Goodey

Alan Morrison: A polemical poet

admin — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:00:09 +0000

Alan Morrison comes from a tradition of political poetry stretching from Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Mask of Anarchy) and W H Auden (Spain), through to Tony Harrison (V), and Adrian Mitchell (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam/Iraq). He’s a serious-minded poet, quick and scholarly with a generous sense of humour. With his contribution to Emergency Verse – Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State (Caparison 2011) you see where his political allegiances lie. He doesn’t just talk a good game, though, he gets stuck in, and during 2008 to 2011 was poet-in-residence at Brighton’s Mill View psychiatric hospital.
There he pieced together Captive Dragons, his latest collection. It features picaresque observations about the patients/characters he encountered as well as an underlying polemical thrust, critiquing successive government policies on mental illness and the quality and relevance of treatment received. All of this is encompassed within a fantastic lattice of language, redolent of seaside living:
‘Lime-milkshake sea that recrudesces on a cluttered beach
Chuntering with pebbles and needles’
‘Under scientific spells, jinxes of shrinks, trick-cyclists,
Certificated sorcerers, alchemists of medications;
Tantric dragons transparently jacketed — scapegoats,
Possibly; drowned shouters of a seawater society
Tanning its back to panicked gasps; tortuous sculptures
Of corporate ectoplasms’
The juxtaposition of demotic and classical in this epic verse — ‘felt-tipped’, ‘bum fluffed’ alongside ‘Hylases snared by Naiads’ — takes the sting out of some of the more abstruse erudition, which can test the reader. And the Cantos I-XXXV (from which the above lines are taken), sinewy and demanding, come with extensive notes that are of themselves richly rewarding. These are followed by The Shadow Thorns, a series of 19 more personalised poems; reveries on his time working with the patients. ‘Lil of the twitches’ is one:
‘How ironic to be termed mentally ill
When it’s heightened sanity prompts the spill
Of her tired haemoglobin — a simple
Cut like the brush of a stinging nettle
On milky wrist, then berry-juice trickle
And slow ebb to a ruby bath; yet she
Fails at every attempt to release
Enough of the blood, or is punctually
Disturbed by housemates needing to empty
Their bladders in the night — she really needs
A less rusty lock on the lavatory . . . ’
This genuine affinity with people teetering on the edge, and the political commitment that is concomitant to righting wrongs, supporting holistic care and believing in people rather than dimming the lights with a ‘chemical cosh’, flows from his own personal history. ‘I can at least say that I was converted to socialism,’ he tells me. ‘Growing up in relative poverty between 11 to 16 in the late Eighties left an indelible impression on me, rinsed me of any childish allegiances such as patriotism, instilled in me an intense distrust of capitalism and political Conservatism, particularly as distilled in Thatcherism, and basically woke me up to what mattered in life: a roof over the head, sustenance, somewhere warm and dry to sleep, and the inalienable right of every human being to have the same.’
In capitalist industrial society we see instead the ‘expediency factor’, towards mental illness as much else. Many breakdowns are due to uncompromising work stress and yet governments seem to think that people can be swiftly reassessed through rigged criteria by profiteer companies such as Atos and thus be found ‘fit to work’. Conveniently, all this chimes with the time frames of economic demands, not those of the person’s condition, which can be chronic and prone to relapse.
Morrison says: ‘It’s as if patients are treated like faulty work units, put through revolving doors of psychiatric hospitals, pumped up with drugs and charged up like batteries. ECT [electro-convulsive ‘therapy’] is still used sometimes in order to get them ‘fit for work’ again. It’s dehumanising and the least likely means to help them recover.’
He describes himself as a democratic socialist, even conceivably a ‘Christian socialist’: a non-practising Catholic but a believer that Christianity and socialism are essentially the same thing. Emergency Verse had 112 poets including Michael Horovitz, and many donated small sums towards publication, most notably Michael Rosen, who paid for half the final print cost. Feted in the left-wing press, it was inevitably attacked in establishment quarters, and inexplicably overlooked by some more progressive magazines. It was the first verse response to the austerity agenda, and was named Emergency Verse as a direct riposte to George Osborne’s ‘emergency’ budget of 2010. Its sequel, Robin Hood Book: verse versus austerity, will include poems from such luminaries as Heathcote Williams, and has as its patron PCS union leader Mark Serwotka.
It was a different labour leader altogether, Keir Hardie, who brought Morrison to earlier political attention. His most political book, Keir Hardie Street (Smokestack Books 2010), is a hagiographical tribute to the life of Labour’s first leader. Critics referred to it as ‘an intervention’: an attempt to reignite the broken narrative of the British socialist tradition through a literary medium. Much of it is written in a sort of cockney pastiche (influenced strongly by both John Davidson’s ‘Thirty Bob a Week’ and T S Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’). So you get:
‘The city pricks up higgledy-piggledy against Calvary skyline:
A pencil-rub of pea-souped rooftops bruising on the paper arm
Of the street urchin pale, pearly horizon –
Soon brushed away by the charlady sun.’
And:
‘The Diggers pitched a Golden Age at St George’s Hill
Ploughed Cobham clod with egalitarian till;
Robert Owen’s workshop co-ops hammered out a hew
To chop off Class’s branches; the Chartist martyrs
Trampled by plumed hooves at Peterloo;
The red-hearted Romantics, courting Napoleonics’
The prolific nature of Morrison’s writing has much to do with an obsessive personality. Epic poems can go through more than 100 redrafts. ‘Inescapably, my obsessional side plays a big part in my productivity and intensity of application to poetry,’ he says. ‘In terms of the subject of this particular book, I sum the work up, distinctly un-commercially, as a poetical exploration of psychoses and schizophrenia from a neurotic perspective.’ A hard sell if ever there was one.
R D Laing, whose controversial ‘anti-psychiatry’ dialectics have gone out of mainstream fashion, influenced the book. Morrison shares Laing’s central tenet that ‘mental illness’ is often a rational response to an irrational society. Neurological conditions aside (as those are often determined biologically), there’s a case to argue that mental illness is as much a socio-political pathology as a personal or chemical one, that society plays a huge part in shaping our psychologies and arguably those perceived as in need of therapy to help them cope better are in a sense being patched up by the same society that has damaged them in the first place. Thomas Szasz’s Myth of Mental Illness is a case in point.
‘There is a paradox of responsibility here,’ says Morrison, ‘and I don’t think society has yet faced up to this. Hence the metaphor of dragons: a myth created to make something actually very human sound grotesque and frightening. It also taps into the old phrase on maps, “here be dragons”, to denote uncharted areas. I use this as the key metaphor to symbolise the right-hand side of the brain, which is still relatively uncharted. It is that side of the brain from which both psychiatric pathology and creativity issue.’
He believes, like Laing, that creative expression is often one of the most beneficial routes towards mental healing since it allows people to objectify their thoughts and feelings through self-expression. ‘Poems often come almost instinctively to those suffering psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia,’ he continues, ‘where the line between the literal and the symbolic seem blurred, and there is an almost primal capacity at metaphor, the chief ingredient of poetry. I’ve seen many in-patients come more to terms with themselves and heal over through writing poetry.’
Like Laing again, he is suspicious of the ‘medicative hegemony’ in modern psychiatry, which he claims often seems as incentivised by pharmaceutical profiteering as by actual benefits to patients and their conditions. Morrison, a poet and socialist to the core.
Captive Dragons/The Shadow Thorns is published by Waterloo Press

Flower power

admin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:27:52 +0000

The beauty of this book lies in its simplicity, colours and the practical import of its message. Seedbombs originated in 1970s’ New York. The term was originally ‘seed grenade’ and comprised wildflower seeds, water and fertiliser all wrapped in a condom. They were lobbed over fences into vacant lots, making drab neighbourhoods colourful.

Colour is something that author, Josie Jeffery, 33, doesn’t lack. Brought up on a bus, she spent her childhood home-educated with mum and dad rescuing tree saplings from the sides of roads, potting them up and storing them in the belly box before finding new homes en route.
She says: ‘I learned loads, and now I find there are many cracks, potholes, pits and wastelands in our urban surroundings that could benefit from the subtlety of a wildflower seedbomb, an incognito individual or collective energy of guerrilla gardeners.’
The book itself has six sections: the history (from North American First Nation tribes to ancient Japan and subsequent reintroduction by the revered author of One‑Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka); contemporary seedbombs; guerrilla gardening; a plant directory; seeds; and seedbomb recipes.
These days, you’ll be pleased to hear, condoms have given way to a sticky mix of clay, water, seeds and compost the size of ping-pong ball. According to Jeffery, who runs workshops at schools, community gardens and festivals, the seedbomb will either keep its form and the seeds germinate and sprout from the ball, or if it rains a lot, dissolve and scatter seeds until they germinate either on the earth’s surface or through getting trampled.
Fukuoka, a pioneer of sustainable agriculture, was a big believer in the ‘natural farming’ capacity of seedbombs to create food crop fields, meadowland and even replant areas beset by drought.
Whether you want to launch one as a political statement (as happened recently at a mass seedbombing in Brighton where hundreds were thrown over fencing at an evicted guerrilla garden) or simply to try something that little bit horticulturally different, this book is an essential manual and a delightful pearl of wisdom.

UK campaigners join Amazon battle

admin — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:15:00 +0000

Survival got involved after Brother Joao Carlos Martinez from Spain, Father Cesar Avellaneda from Colombia and Father Ronildo Franca from Brazil, missionaries on the Raposa Serra do Sol indigenous reserve, were released on 12 January following three days in captivity.

All three had been campaigning for the removal of 7,000 settlers – rice cultivators, farmers and cattle ranchers – working in collusion with local politicians. They were taken hostage when a mob of 200 non-Indian settlers invaded their mission and ransacked a hospital and school catering for the Indian population.

Fiona Watson, Survival campaigns coordinator, said: “The Catholic Church is perceived by the local politicians and rice cultivators as being very active when it comes to the rights of indigenous peoples and they want to stop this.

-Indigenous groups are seen as obstacles to progress – the only areas left with forest cover are those belonging to them.”

And although Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva is pro-indigenous, she is fighting against a rising tide of big business; US food giant Cargill is currently involved in clear-cutting forest for the rapidly growing expansion of the GM soya crop.

Survival is also disappointed with Brazilian president Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. “At the beginning of his presidency a year ago he talked of indigenous land rights but in terms of delivery nothing has been done,” said Watson.

The pan-indigenous people’s organisation COAIB, who Lula is due to meet early this year, burnt Lula’s manifesto last November.

A spokesman for the Indigenous Council of Roraima said: “Ratification of Raposa Serra do Sol is the barometer measuring the attitude of the Lula government. If it acts now, Indians throughout Brazil will take this as a sign of the government’s commitment to upholding their rights.”

In December Brazil’s minister of justice announced that Lula would ratify the area as a reserve. Although the 3.95 million acres territory has been mapped and demarcated, it still needs that presidential signature promised since 1998.

www.survival-international.org

Israeli soldiers shoot to kill human rights observers

admin — Tue, 22 Apr 2003 22:26:01 +0000

Human rights observers volunteering in the occupied territories are claiming the Israeli Defence Force has initiated a policy of deliberately targeting them and other foreign peace activists, following the latest shooting of Tom Hurndall in the Gaza Strip.

Chris Osmond, an International Solidarity Movement volunteer, told Red Pepper, ‘It looks like Israeli troops have been informed that it is ok to murder international human rights observers if they have to. We need a huge public outcry to encourage them to reverse this policy’. The ISM are lobbying the Foreign Office to start an investigation into the shooting of Tom Hurndall. They are asking people to phone the Foreign Office on 0207 7008 1500.

Grassroots International Protection For The Palestinian People (GIPP) coordinator, Bahiya Amra, has said, ‘This latest shooting is one more regrettable incident to be viewed in the same light as all the other recent cases of foreign activists being killed or maimed: a message to those from overseas who choose to live, work and visit the occupied Palestinian Territories, telling them that like Palestinians you are not safe, and will be targeted.’

Since November 2002 when British UN worker Ian Hook was shot dead by soldiers in Jenin, and GIPP/ISM activist Caoimhe Butterly was shot in the leg, there have been three more serious incidents resulting in deaths or near fatal injury.

On March 16, American Rachel Corrie was run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she and other ISM activists were trying to prevent house demolitions in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

On April 5, 24 year old Bryan Avery, also from the USA, was shot in the face by soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier during another unprovoked attack.

Then on April 10, Israeli forces yesterday shot Tom Hurndall, a 21 year old Londoner and member of GIPP/International Solidarity Movement, once again working in Rafah, Gaza Strip. He remains in a serious condition in Bir Sheva hospital, southern Israel.

He and other activists were planning to erect a protest tent in a local neighbourhood, when Israeli snipers started shooting. Tom, in the process of leaving the area, saw a small child stranded and courageously went to bring him out of the range of fire. He was doing the same thing for two small girls when he was shot in the back of the head.

His mother Jocelyn told Palestinian reporters, ‘Tom was wearing a bright orange fluorescent jacket. Apparently the watchtower housing the soldier who shot him wasn’t too far away from him either. We are worried that he may have been deliberately targeted, otherwise it seems inexplicable.’ Father, Anthony Hurndall added, ‘It’s getting to the stage where innocent Westerners are being killed and we have to take note. Those involved have to be called to account. I expect answers and not a cover-up.’

Fada Barhom, mother of seven-year-old Salame, the boy Tom saved, said, ‘This young British man saved my son. He is a hero, he is a martyr and we want to thank the people like him who are coming to Palestine to try to protect us. My heart aches for his mother.’

According to fellow activist Lora Gordon, Tom had originally gone to Baghdad to take photographs for his degree and spent two weeks there doing human shield work. He had wanted to work as a human shield in Iraqi hospitals, but Iraqi officials refused, so he went to Jordan to do refugee work before coming to work with the ISM in the Gaza Strip. ‘All we can do is pray for the miracle it will take to bring him back,’ she said.

Meanwhile officially, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) refuses to comment, although some extraordinary rumours have surfaced in the Israeli press: one Jerusalem Post article quoting an IDF commander as saying Hurndall was a member of an Egyptian terrorist group that uses internationals as fighters, and that he was attacking the soldiers when they shot him in self-defence.

Guns, threats and exploitation behind the banana trade

admin — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:05:00 +0000

If British trade union leaders think they get a rough ride fighting government backed privatisation and elitism in public services, you’d be hard pressed to disagree — however their government/media hounding pales into insignificance when you take into account union-bashing, south American style.

Guillermo Touma, Ecuadorian Banana Workers trade union leader, has had death threats, his wife has received death threats on his behalf, and he’s seen striking colleagues shot and beaten up to within an inch of their lives.

Touma works on the Los Alamos plantation in Guayas Province where workers have formed the first new Ecuadorian trade unions in years, affiliated to umbrella organisation, FENACLE (Federation of Small Farmers and Indigenous Community Organisations of Ecuador) of which Touma is president.

The Los Alamos plantation is owned by the Noboa Corporation the fourth biggest banana company in the world. It accounts for about 11% of world trade, and it is headed by Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest man. Noboa is also through to the second round of presidential elections scheduled for Nov 24 2002. In Noboa’s own words “I don’t like unions. I will fight unions.”

And it was these words which were put into action against Touma and fellow striking workers on May 16 this year. Around 400 armed thugs turned up and turned peaceful protest into bloody carnage. Thirty-three-year-old Mauro Romero was shot in the leg at close range and was left to bleed for several hours. His colleagues were threatened with the same fate if they dared move him. Eventually, he made it to hospital where his leg was amputated. Bernabe Menedez was shot three times in the stomach, while Alex Mata was shot and still has a bullet in his head.

The workers were striking over long hours (some work 12 hours a day, six days a week), low pay and non payment of benefits, poor accommodation including blocked toilets, sexual harassment of female workers by plantation foremen and exposure to chemicals.

Ecuador is the world’s biggest exporter of bananas, but fewer than 1% workers of the 300,000 plus banana workers are organised into trade unions. As a result, the country has some of the worst conditions in Latin America’s banana industry. Low-wage, no-benefit and non-unionised banana work drives down conditions, as companies find the “cheapest” bananas they can to remain “competitive”.

In Britain, as guest of Banana Link, a UK group working towards sustainable trade and production bananas, Touma is highlighting the daily reality experienced by banana workers in Ecuador and that violent attack on May 16. He is married with three children, and he is hoping to make working conditions safer for when his 18 month-old-son comes of age. He spent 18 years working on banana plantations until he decided to move into Ecuador’s free trade union movement. Thanks to his tireless activism in different workers’ organisations, he became FENACLE leader in 1984.

JG: Why are you here?

GT: We’re here to denounce the living conditions and the conditions of repression of all Ecuadorian banana workers

JG: What is FENACLE?

GT: FENACLE is a broad organisation There are banana workers, small farmers and indigenous peoples and it’s a national federation of community organisations and unions. I came in when the organisation was ten years old in ’84. In the Seventies when it was founded, there were a lot more unions. Because of the crisis going in on in the banana sector, those unions disappeared. So, it was a FENACLE strategy to organise small farmers and landless rural and indigenous peoples.

JG: How much can a banana worker expect to earn?

GT: The minimum national wage is £128 dollars a month, but many workers don’t reach that because they’re sub contracted or contracted on a daily basis and get three or four dollars a day. Exploitation wages are worse where there’s no unions.

JG: Can you describe what happened on May 16?

GT: There were two attacks. One at 2am when the hired hit men arrived about 300 of them. They attacked the workers who were engaged on a peaceful strike. At that first attack, I was in my house. They called me up at about five in the morning, and we started to mobilise our people. We went straight to the plantation to support our striking colleagues. Then, when we were still there at about 6.15 in the evening, there was another attack, and I was involved in that. There were about 12 people wounded in that attack by gunfire, one very seriously. There were only six policemen present at this stage, and they didn’t do anything. One of the police was injured by the hired hitmen the company had brought in. After all this had clamed down, the police arrived at about 7.30. They arrested 16 of the hitmen. The hitmen were released later due to Noboa’s political influence. It was like the Wild West — a lot of shooting went on. We maintained the strike inside the plantation. But the attack caused workers to get out of the plantation. So we had to keep the strike on the outside. But because the strike’s been going on eight months, not all of the strikers could hold out financially — they had no food, no money.

JG: What is happening now?

GT: We’re pressing justice for those banana workers and for others, the campaign hasn’t stopped, far from it.We’re just negotiating for those striking workers to be reintegrated into the company. Original strikers from February have been given tiny compensation and we’re trying to increase that. So basically we’re about to go back to work and start the struggle again from inside.

JG: Have there been other notable campaigns you’ve been involved with?

GT: Another campaign which got a lot of international support was one with indigenous peoples. They felt marginalised. In the Nineties, we had a series of marches and occupations of the centre of Quito (and at the local level as well), and we were able to get a law passed through parliament which was in favour of indigenous people’s rights. Now they have the right to hold political posts. GT: One example was May 16. I was the last person to leave the plantation, and I got a death threat that day. My wife has received death threats on my behalf by telephone, threatening my family. We haven’t managed to find out who it was. Obviously, they are trying to get me to abandon the struggle. They haven’t put me off. We shall continue.

JG: How has dollarisation effected the economy?

GT: Well, we still have dollarisation. In September 2000, it came in. We lost our national monetary identity. It’s very difficult imagining going back to the sucre [the former Ecuadorian currency]. The economy is kept from collapse from remittances from Ecuadorians in Europe and the US. Remittances are our second biggest source of income, and they’re allowing the dollarised society to survive. More than 1.5m Ecuadorians live abroad out of our populatin of 12.8 million.

JG: What’s the feeling on the street about the forthcoming elections?

GT: It’s a small country with an enormous number of political parties. We feel there is a lack of political training, culture and maturity amongst our people. About 80% of Ecuadorians are classified as poor. The Government is managing the poor. Because they don’t have any political education, they end up voting in the rich. In the case of the current elections, two candidates went through to the first round: Lucio Guiterrez and Albert Noboa. People realise that Noboa spent $1.6m on getting through the first round. Guiterrez spent less than $200,000. There are always 100 or 200 people protecting Noboa if he’s around — the same guys as the hitmen from May 16. People don’t put any faith in him. We played our part: we put out this educational leaflet. It explains the situation of Los Alamos workers and the role of Noboa in all of that. We’ve used out regular radio slots in the country to inform people. We’d obviously like to get on the television, but we can’t afford to. A lot of TV stations have simply closed their doors to anyone who’s going to be critical of him. We’ve prepared our own videos and shown them to local communities to give our side of the story about who Albert Noboa is. People have responded to that, and the guy is losing votes left, right and centre.

JG: So what about Guiterrez?

GT: As the poor of Ecuador, we’re voting for Guiterrez. We believe he should create a government in favour of the poor. There are a number of social changes that we’re looking for. Fighting corruption is one of our most serious diseases. He talks about major healthcare programmes and education. And in the small farmers movement, we’ve put forward proposals for agrarian reform. For example, we want reduced rates for agricultural credit for the small farmers. At the moment, it’s 18%. We’re asking for 6%. We’re also expecting to reform the labour code. The labour laws we’ve got have been made by the employers, and they’re not favourable to the workers. We know we’re not going to see a radical change overnight. But we believe that he will sow the seeds for some of these major social changes.

JG: Do you have any political ambitions?

GT: No our work is more social. I was asked to stand as an MP. I didn’t accept, because I consider it a more important job for me to carry on defending workers rights.

JG: What are your thoughts on the anti-globalisation movement?

GT: To us, it seems very important and plays a very important role. Globalisation is having very dramatic consequences in the poorer countries of the world. Problems with the impact of privatisation, we’re in the midst of debate about the Free Trade Areas of Americas in 2005, which from our point of view means more poverty, more emigration. We very much support the movement against globalisation as it currently manifests itself.

Liz Parker from Banana Link adds:

“We took a delegation of TU workers in April to Los Alamos as part of a seven banana workers unions in five countries project. Part of that to raise awareness among Brit TU members about what is going on because bananas are a really good symbol of lots of injustices in the world trade: WTO issues, environment issues, workers rights, small farmers. A lot of those issues affect British workers as well.

It’s about recognising the need for international solidarity. These workers formed their union to struggle for their most very basic rights. At a time when consumers are becoming more concerned about the way their goods are produced, we need to challenge producers to be competitive on more than price alone and offer bananas produced in a more socially and environmentally sustainable way.”

And finally, Jackie Simpkins, the Trade Unions officer from War on Want was also involved in Touma’s visit:

“War on Want has had funding from the Department of International Development for a programme called Global Workplace. Part of the programme are global workers forums. We take grassroots trade union activists from the UK to visit our partners, or partners of sympathetic sister organisations abroad, preferably in the same industries, so that they can see first hand the struggles there. To Ecuador, we took people from the retail sector from the GMB, USDAW, the T&G. They represent workers in Sainsbury’s and Tesco etc. Bananas are the single biggest selling item in a supermarket. They went to see the other end of the supply chain, the problems with the companies there but also the benefits they have from joining a union.

We’re having Guillermo speaking at a union training day that we’re having in Glasgow, where he’ll reach out to yet more union activists. It’s important that these visits aren’t just a one-off. People need to take what they’ve seen and heard and turn that into action. The big crime is that profits are made disproportionately at this end of the production chain.

We’ll be bringing over people from further different projects: Columbia and Palestine, in the next few months.