LONDON LETTER APRIL 2015
The spring burst onto the streets of London so suddenly that
it caught me off balance, that and the glorious weather we have been having. The
sun shines brightly on Portobello Road and environs and there is a whiff of
dangerous optimism in the air. I watch out for bear traps.
The sun shines too on the politicians and their posters. For
we are of course in the midst of an election campaign. And what a dismal
dishonest affair it’s been thus far. The only bright spot has been the fact
that Ed Miliband has confounded his critics and performed well both in the TV
debate and the hustings. For sheer bile both Dacre’s Daily Mail and the Murdoch
press has surpassed itself, managing to be both cruder and more vitriolic
against Miliband than it even was against Neil Kinnock, -some achievement. Of
course the wounds of Leveson remain fresh. Moreover Ed has threatened to take
the fight to the Murdoch empire should he be elected.
For his part David
Cameron looks like a smaller and more mean spirited man every day, his refusal
to engage in a TV debate with Ed Miliband has, I believe, exposed a weak and
cowardly spirit.
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Both main parties however have been happy to run campaigns
that display contempt for the electorate. With Labour concealing the full
extent of the consequences of continuing to swallow the illusion that the way
to solve the countries problems is yet more austerity. Though when it comes to
contempt for the electorate they cannot possibly match the Conservatives, who
refuse to say where a staggering £12bn worth of ‘welfare’ cuts will fall, that
is, which vulnerable group will be hit. It will fall most heavily of course on
the voiceless and least electorally costly; on the poor and marginalised, particularly
as Nick Cohen points out in the Observer the mentally
ill. Having worked with those on the margins of society, the alcohol and
drug dependent, the homeless, ex-offenders and the mentally ill, I can testify
how politically ‘unsexy’ these people are. There are no votes to be had there.
So I neither buy nor sell the puerile Russell Brand mantra that
voting is pointless, that ‘they are all
the same.’ Its pseudo leftist gibberish like this that keeps poor people
poor and disadvantages the young in this election, who are also likely to be
the hardest hit. Pensioners vote in numbers, -and very rightly too, - but the
young much less so. So the crude and juvenile anti-politics of Brand matches
the cynical and calculating anti-democratic politics of the likes of Lynton
Crosby.
All that said I who have been a passionate politico most of
my adult life,- I have canvassed, taken polling numbers, helped people to the
polls and even, for one heady day in 1983, stood in temporarily for the
election agent, - cannot bring myself to fully engage in a process that gets
more devalued with each passing election.
If however you want to witness real dishonesty and the politics of
the gutter then you need to go to Bradford, where the Islamist fellow traveler
and demagogue, George Galloway is seeking to be re-elected. Regular readers of
this blog will know that I have taken a particular interest in the career of
this exceedingly unpleasant little
man. Now he attacks his Labour opponent and women’s rights campaigner, Naz Shah, seeking to
discredit her by attacking the validity of her claim to have been the victim of
a forced marriage since, ‘Shah’s mother
was present the marriage cannot
have been forced.’ No gutter too
low, it seems, that Galloway is unwilling to paddle in it.
Looking at the pictures of this smug, self-assured purveyor
of poison, - Mr Galloway earns a healthy income from both the Iranian and Russian
propaganda TV channels, - I am reminded of Eliot’s lines from The Waste Land:-
‘One of the
low on whom assurance sits
As a silk
hat on a Bradford Millionaire.’
Today is Christopher Hitchens’s birthday and of
course The Hitch famously took on Mr Galloway in New York. I can think of no
better way to celebrate than watching Christopher give Galloway a good verbal
pounding. You can watch it here.
Well the whole of this letter has thus far has been
a somewhat bitter and dark affair. This is very much at variance with the
experiences I have been writing about of late, since I have been summoning up ‘remembrance
of things past.’ I am writing a series of memoirs which I hope soon to thread
together. Though one sad thing about reflecting back on my career in London is
how many organisations that I worked for have changed beyond comprehension, to
the degree that their former selves no longer exist. Single Homeless Project of
course long since abandoning the collective ethos is now a bog standard
hierarchy. Thurston House, the all-male rehab, in which I managed the treatment
team now is women only and the ethos fundamentally changed. Whilst most
dramatic of all has been the disappearance of The Drug and Alcohol Foundation,
with whom I had a relationship stretching back over a period of ten years, including
a five year stint as Clinical Services Manager, is now absorbed by the Core Trust and re-branded
as The Seventy4 Foundation.
Of course these changes might all be for the good,
though there some aspects about which I have my doubts. Still the world moves
on. However it strikes me now that the historical memory of the ethos and what
took place in these organisations is now scattered and will soon be lost
altogether. Single Homeless Project, in a move redolent of the Soviet Union, has
erased all mention of SHP ever having been a collective from its history.
I have also been spending less time on Twitter,
since I seem to find myself becoming cruder and more aggressive the longer I
spend tweeting. Perhaps that accounts for the harsh tone of this letter, I have
become worried that I am growing soft. No chance.
Still the sun is shining on London Town and I will
shortly be going out to make the most of it.
AT April 2015
