Bois de la Cambre

First posted on Facebook and Twitter on Thurs 24 Mar 2019, 16:00

 

Written on the day of the European Council meeting that would grant the first delay to Brexit.

On my way to Bois de la Cambre at the edge of Brussels, I passed through a city buzzing with democratic life.

The European Parliament was heaving, heads of government were converging on Schuman Square, and pan-European party gatherings were humming with energy across the city.

The squares and parks in between bustled with student climate marchers, small but lively demonstrations, and a lot of people (and dogs) out enjoying the sun. 2019 is a big year for the European Union. On days like this, you can feel it in the warm spring air.

The twisted picture of Brussels and the EU force-fed to us by the British political establishment is entirely and sickeningly false. After decades of social conditioning, it is a difficult realisation to grasp. European democracy has a long and rocky way to go – but witnessing what has emerged from a war-torn continent is nothing short of a miracle.

This city is the beating heart of that miracle. Here is the Union we deserve. Not the arrogant imperialistic carcass slowly rotting across the Channel.

Time for a walk in the woods.

#ScotlandInEurope #AlbaSanRoinnEòrpa

I Learn Slowly

Image credit: Dad, during our summer 2017 Cairngorms trek.

 

I learn slowly,

I make mistakes,

I pledge to change for all our sakes.

But when I fall in those same traps

Again, a chord in my mind snaps,

Unleashing rage from youthful heart

So that the dark cruel thinking starts

To light up little lilting sparks

That flare and course in flaming arcs

From flashing eyes to curling toes,

From shaking hands to upturned nose,

And then I wonder if I lie

As my excuses fill the sky:

I’m just trying to justify!

But really I just want to sigh

And admit as we start to cry

That I’m just fragile bone and flesh

So when old and new follies mesh

I shouldn’t be so damned surprised.

My pile of pledges, mountain-sized,

Swells on and on, while lessons learned,

Are in its shade, their leaves upturned:

They quiver and lay down their roots

To thrive under my raging boots

So that even while blazing thoughts

Streak through the air these learnèd knots

Of branching and determined plants

Begin their patient, sunlit dance

And as I sink into a trance

And realise I have a chance

To embrace every ragged flaw,

Tender, I begin to claw

Into the damp and fertile earth

And witness there the gentle birth

Of budding seeds and thoughtful hopes,

Bound by long roots as strong as ropes,

A network of enlightened dreams,

All stretching in organic streams

That will in time begin to bloom

Until there isn’t any room

Inside my mind except for fruit

From that green field, vibrant and mute,

Yet stronger than infernal rage

At same mistakes on every page.

See, over time I’ll come to tell

That learning is a living hell,

While thinking with a tired thrill:

“I learn slowly

But learn I will.”

Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin

“We’ll need writers who can remember freedom.” (Photo credit:  Benjamin Reed/WriterPictures via theNerdPatrol)

I learned about death on the island of Roke.

Not about its existence of course: the smallest child learns quickly that all things end. No, on that vividly-imagined island I started to learn its nature. I learned about death’s abruptness; its darkness; and above all about its sublime and harmonious necessity. My young and curious self was coaxed to the island by gentle and lyrical words. I left Roke a couple of chapters later in a state of delighted shock.

I am writing of Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea: a revolutionary and spiritual epiphany disguised as a children’s novel. From the moment that Le Guin’s gifted but arrogant young protagonist, the wizard-in-training Ged, allows his pride to drive him to summon the dead in order to impress and frighten his peers, it becomes obvious that something special is about to happen in the pages – indeed the world – unfolding before the reader’s eyes. The spell inevitably goes wrong. A dead woman’s spirit flickers briefly and agonisingly from her slumber, and instead a terrifying Shadow erupts from Ged’s body, tearing a great wound in his face. The other boys scream in horror, a wizard is killed trying to fend off the Shadow, and Ged himself collapses into a coma. The Shadow escapes from Roke in order to evolve. Ged, recovering but traumatised, hides from this malign creature at first – but in time he recognises that he cannot do so forever. He pledges to pursue his Shadow across the waters and islands of Earthsea, and correct the evil that he has unleashed. But as he does so, a disturbing realisation slowly emerges: that the Shadow is taking on the form of Ged himself. It is gradually acquiring and violating the protagonist’s very self – his body, his power, his name. The Shadow is consuming him.

And here the most radical lesson for my younger self struck home. Le Guin in her skill and wisdom had created a villain that was utterly terrifying in its familiarity. This antagonist was no dark lord, no invading army, no unknowable external force. It was a reflection of the protagonist himself and, by extension, of the reader. A product of human folly: of temper, and vanity, and lack of forethought. If we had been in Ged’s weathered boots, any one of us could have lost our temper and, in that moment of weakness, unleashed such agonising darkness. The Shadow is a reminder of death, a harbinger of evil mistakes to come; and it resides in all of us, just waiting to burst out.

My younger self was stunned by this, and impressed beyond words. But there was more to come. At the end of the saga, out at the furthest reaches of the wide sea, Ged’s final confrontation with the Shadow results not in one fighting the other, but in one naming the other – identifying the other, embracing the other – to become a frighteningly beautiful whole. My young mind twisted inside out. In learning about death and darkness, I was taught about life and light.

In some ways I regret that I did not return to the world of Earthsea until many years later, but in other ways I do not. Older and allegedly wiser, I was better able to recognise the intricate and radical nuances in the thinking of Le Guin. Each addition to the Earthsea Cycle struck a deeply-resounding chord. The Tombs of Atuan, seen by many as a more feminist reimagining of A Wizard of Earthsea, underlined the stifling expectations pressed on young woman as they navigate through life towards their own understanding of the balance between light and dark. It is told through the eyes of the young priestess Tenar as disruptive intrigue in her conservative all-female temple leads to a painful questioning of her faith and her world. In The Farthest Shore, the inexplicable ebbs and flows of history are addressed as the reader witnesses the world of Earthsea falling into a slow but steady decline: magic is seeping from the land, minds are dulling, and societies are falling into apathy and aimlessness in an upsettingly familiar manner. And yet our protagonists see a glimmer of hope and cling to it as they tour the disillusioned isles, and strive through the silence to reach the music of the future. In Tehanu, published in 1990 (eighteen years after The Farthest Shore), the island-hopping scale of the previous adventures is sacrificed to focus on an agonisingly personal tale on the pursuit of happiness and comfort, in a profoundly unhappy and uncomfortable world. The villain is no supernatural force, but a rapist, who haunts the dreams of the main characters and plagues their waking thoughts.

The radical vision and bravery of Le Guin’s writing builds a vibrant tapestry behind her otherwise clear and gentle prose. Her dedication to the art of fantasy in the face of sceptical “realists” is a guiding light for those of us who seek to preserve the flame of childhood imagination and use it to better illuminate the cruel and beautiful realm of adulthood. Her work transports us to other worlds: yet there is a political and social edge to her otherworldly themes that infuses her tales with an acute understanding of worldly injustices. The prominence of non-white and non-male characters in her stories is not a naïve utopianism but an honest assessment of how the world is, or can be when traditional narratives are challenged. Perhaps the critical political philosophy of Le Guin’s oeuvre is best represented not in her fantasy, but in her science fiction. In The Left Hand of Darkness, the reader is thrust onto the planet Winter, where gender does not exist except when the reproductive cycle of the ‘ambisexual’ population swings around. The potential of this gender-fluid setting is utterly immense, especially considering that it was published in 1969, yet Le Guin with admirable restraint keeps the book punchy enough to raise challenging questions about the place of sex and gender in social development without delving into excessive speculation. The fact that Winter is, as its name suggests, gripped by a harsh weather cycle that makes organised war and authoritarian nation-building highly impractical renders The Left of Hand of Darkness’s central issue unanswerable: Do traditional gender roles explain the persistence of war and authoritarianism? The book’s illusiveness is wonderfully frustrating.

The Word for World is Forest is less ambiguous. The 1972 novella is a fiery critique of American and European foreign policy in the era of the Vietnam War, in which the peaceful society of Athshe becomes irreversibly corrupted by mass violence for the first time in order to survive the industrial colonising efforts of the humans from Earth. Long before James Cameron’s Avatar sent nature-loving CGI aliens flinging themselves across the world’s cinema screens with shallow abandon, Ursula K. Le Guin was using The Word for World is Forest to fiercely dissect the culture of rampant neoimperialism.

It is tempting to delve in to more of the myriad themes that colour Le Guin’s universe. The power of names, identities, language, silence, violence, and nature flows through her thoughts. But ultimately, I must return to that one philosophy that struck my younger self on the mythical island of Roke: that balance is present, and vital, everywhere. That Shadows cannot exist without light.

“Only in silence the word,

Only in dark the light,

Only in dying life:

Bright the hawk’s flight

On the empty sky.”

(‘The Creation of Éa’ in A Wizard of Earthsea)

The influence of philosophical Taoism and of the upbringing provided by Le Guin’s anthropologist parents shines in her appreciation of harmony and cultural diversity. Her worlds seamlessly blend teachings from Native American religion, Northern European mythology, and beyond. Her approach was broad-minded but fiercely visionary. Even into old age, the quiet ferocity of her wit and intellect was apparent in her writing: there was a cheeky flash behind her eyes as she blasted profiteer mass retailers and praised her fellow artists and creatives while accepting the ‘Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters’ in 2014 at the age of 84.

“Hard times are coming,” she carefully mused before her enchanted audience, “when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.”

When I heard that Ursula K. Le Guin had passed away, I was gripped by the sadness of a lost companion, even though I had never come close to seeing her in the flesh. Her writing has spoken to me so profoundly, the connection between my mind and the book in my hand felt something akin to friendship. The news of her death stung as though that connection had been abruptly severed.

But as the fact settled in my mind, the lessons I learned alongside Ged on that fantasy island of Roke came back to me. I hope it is not too intrusive to believe that Le Guin, so eloquent in her appreciation of life, was graceful in her approach to death. The conclusion to her 2014 acceptance speech rings with even greater significance now that Ursula K. Le Guin has passed away, seemingly at a time when the world is most in need of her:

“I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. It’s name is freedom.”

As this beautiful reward is threatened in Europe, America, and far beyond, and as Le Guin’s harmonious vision seemingly fades further from realisation, it falls to us, the “realists of a larger reality” to look the Shadow in the eye. We must, with childish shock and wonder, seek to observe its true and frightening nature.

–

“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. And very often in our art, the art of words.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

(1929 – 2018)

 

The Spanish state has attacked European democracy: and we just let it happen

First published by The New Federalist (04/11/2017): https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/the-spanish-state-has-attacked-european-democracy-and-we-just-let-it

Violence on the streets of Barcelona, 1st Oct 2017 (Image credit: Robert Bonet)

Catalonia in the eyes of a concerned Scot (Bruges, November 2017)

Trouble on the horizon

Sympathy for one independence movement does not, and should not, mean a natural affinity to another. As such, I have worked hard to ensure that my own attachment to the Scottish independence movement does not overly inform my opinion of the Catalan movement.

To blindly follow another cause regardless of its ideology, history, and tactics is a dangerous form of thoughtless nationalism which does not sit well with the open, progressive, civic movement to which I and many other free-thinking pro-independence Scots subscribe. Not only would it be intellectually troubling to instantly support the Catalan cause without thorough research, it would be arrogant and disrespectful of the unique history and culture underlying both the would-be states.

With this in mind, I met the news of the unauthorized Catalan independence referendum with some caution and an attempt at neutrality. I weighed the pros and cons of the situation, and found myself troubled at the prospect of what lay ahead. If Catalonia unilaterally declared independence after its plebiscite, I thought, it would find itself a pariah, an outcast in a contemporary Europe devoid of inspiring or radical leadership and therefore averse to the idea of a controversial new state joining its community. I’m certainly not against the creation of an independent, pro-European Republic of Catalonia, I concluded: but not like this.

These were my thoughts as Catalans went to the polls on the 1st October 2017. Ultimately, I was uncertain where my sympathies lay and concluded that it was a matter for Catalonia and Spain to decide for themselves. There was a sense of history – and a sense of trouble on the horizon.

And then the violence began.

Forever condemned

The Spanish state, in its desperation, authorized a sickening crack-down on a democratic vote, and I was certainly not alone in my horror at the scenes coming from the streets of Barcelona. Elderly ladies with blood running down their cheeks. Polling stations raided and ransacked, their staff bludgeoned out of the way. Voters dragged by the hair and thrown screaming down a flight of stairs. Catalan firefighters attempting to defend voters from Spanish security forces. A Catalan police officer, his loyalties torn, weeping into the arms of his colleague.

The Spanish authorities could have responded to the Catalan referendum with dignity and grace. They could have let the vote happen and, while insisting upon its unauthorised and illegitimate results, engaged in dialogue with the Catalan government. At the very least they could have just denied the validity of the results, secure in the knowledge that the law seemed to be on their side.

Instead, in a display of utter contempt for the democratic process, they sent in the troops. And, in a Trump-esque act of bizarre delusion, they then denied the brutality of their actions, and pushed on with their antagonistic campaign. The dramatic sequence of events which followed continued in this confrontational and childish trend, and now Catalans live in a strange and ominous political limbo, their president (or ex-president and “rebel”, according to Madrid) Carles Puigdemont seeking support and security in Brussels.

The caution or neutrality displayed by many of us at the idea of an independent Catalonia should, at this point, be overshadowed by a shared fury and sense of betrayal at the Spanish state, and the Rajoy government, for bringing anti-democratic violence to the heart of Western Europe. We have witnessed here an old, proud country casting off any façade of dignity, and descending into brute force to defend its suddenly mediaeval-looking form. Spain’s political credibility, and the credibility of Europe as a whole, has crumbled.

The Catalan situation is just one more symptom of an EU plagued with confusion and insecurity, one which should concern and trouble us all. In the words of former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, the EU as a whole “shall be forever condemned, that they walked by on the other side of the road when something in Western Europe happened that was totally and completely unacceptable.”

It is our responsibility as democratic Europeans to condemn, in turn, the thoughtless barbarism of the Spanish state under Mariano Rajoy.

In Amsterdam Mists

You now go one way, I go another,

Oceans call to you, Bruges calls to me.

Thinking of you, adventurer-brother,

While penning my essays no doubt I’ll be,

Dreaming of waves as you voyage further,

Still further abroad for wonders to see.

 

Resting on islands distant and fair

I hope you’ll remember the mountains and snow,

Musing and laughing there with not a care

For all the dark worries awaiting below,

While our wolf-howls ripple into the air

And echo forever wherever we go.

 

In Amsterdam mists we say our farewell,

Invoking Edinburgh, Rondane, Rome,

And wondering how to truthfully tell

You no matter where you sail and roam

I’ll never forget all that befell:

Forward, dear friend – Afoot, you’ll find home.

 

How Scottish Gaelic can Europeanise Britain

First published by The New Federalist (22/10/2017): https://www.thenewfederalist.eu/how-scottish-gaelic-can-europeanise-britain

Hiking on the Isle of Skye, home of the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

Seen but not heard

Scottish Gaelic is seen but not heard. From north to south, east to west, Scottish Government policy since the turn of the century has seen the gradual conversion of many road and train station signs to accommodate the ancient language of the Highlands. Thus, from Shetland (historically Norse-speaking) to Glasgow (historically Scots-speaking), it is not uncommon to find oneself confronted with a sign declaring Fàilte! above a romantic and baffling Gaelic-isation of the town in question. Edinburgh becomes Dùn Èideann; Inverness becomes Inbhir Nis. Scotland’s signs are proudly bilingual.

Its people, however, are not.

Despite the prevalence of written Gaelic in modern-day Scotland, the lyrical, sing-song sound of spoken Gaelic is strikingly rare outside the Western Isles, folk festivals, BBC Alba (since 2008), and the occasional scene from Outlander. Indeed, while viewed with some romanticism by many Scots, it is also viewed with a considerable amount of scorn.

This can be seen in the debate surrounding the bilingual road signs. Rather than being considered as a celebration of a vibrant culture and linguistic education, the policy was widely attacked as a nationalist tactic and (falsely) an enormous waste of money. Ultimately, the promotion of Gaelic is seen as a close-minded political trick, not a far-sighted cultural shift.

Linguistic Paranoia

This angry response to the promotion of multilingualism may be considered a bizarre attitude by many of our fellow Europeans, especially those raised in regions where three or four languages are casually juggled as a part of everyday life. Yet in Scotland, and especially in the UK as a whole outside the melting pot of London, the speaking of modern languages other than English is held to be an exotic and, I would argue, even a suspicious act.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that the UK is gripped with a linguistic paranoia. This phenomenon, which renders Continental languages threatening and Celtic languages a nationalist relic, is the outcome of the deeply embedded legacy of imperialism in British culture. The old attitude that “Britannia rules the waves”, bringing progress and civilisation to her subjects, has been engraved in the British psyche by a staunchly anglophone media, a strictly conservative political sphere, and an educative system which reinforces the “island mentality” under which this linguistic paranoia revels. The Empire is gone – the attitude is not. Wallowing in its own slow decline, Britain’s political culture is arrogant, antiquated, and profoundly insecure.

Celtic Decline and Tentative Revival

The social construction of the British identity required the destruction of competing identities, and it is in this context that the Celtic languages of the British Isles were historically squashed. The Welsh language was systematically decimated after the Wars of Independence which culminated in the fifteenth century, as was the Cornish language. After the deeply unpopular Treaty of Union between England and Scotland in 1707, and the subsequent Jacobite Rebellions which commenced in the Highland glens, the Gaelic clans had their rebellious culture and language fiercely repressed. And the colonisation of Ireland witnessed a similar, and arguably more violent, suppression of the Irish tongue as nascent British imperialism flexed its muscles in the first of many new dominions.

The explicitly violent suppression of Celtic culture gradually eased off. But by the time the popular novelist Walter Scott was romanticising Scotland’s Gaelic past in the early nineteenth century, setting the precedent for all future attitudes towards Britain’s Celtic heritage as a quaint curiosity, the damage had been done. The Highlands had been gutted, its people cleared to make space for sheep farms, and its language cornered into a tired and quiet periphery. The heart of the Welsh, Cornish, and Irish linguistic communities had been similarly silenced.

With the decline and fall of the British Empire, the independence of the Republic of Ireland, and the modernisation of the United Kingdom, the situation has continued to evolve. Welsh has survived and fought on, especially in the north, with about 720,000 current speakers (about 20% of the population). Cornish is spoken proficiently by about 2,000 people. And Scots Gaelic has seen a constant yet slowly plateauing decline at about 60,000 speakers (1.7% of the Scottish population), many of whom live in the Western Isles and would not consider themselves fluent. Yet, as previously mentioned, while the British establishment does not actively discourage the learning of these languages, the quasi-imperialist political culture it upholds certainly does not encourage it.

In the Republic of Ireland, and on the Isle of Man, some hope exists for Celtic languages which have been established as core component of the states to which they belong. Indeed, Ireland and its 1.8 million Irish speakers have successfully started the resurrection (or at least recognition) of Celtic languages on the European stage, with Irish now one of the 24 fully-recognised official languages of the European Union. Yet the pressure they emit towards the British system is negligible: whatever their European influence, Irish and Manx are foreign languages now, and as such are treated with the same distain as French, Swedish, or Maltese. For the status quo to be broken on the island of Great Britain, the paranoid hegemony of the English language must be challenged from the inside.

Multilingualism as a fundamental European trait

It is often asked why any efforts should be put into maintaining these now-peripheral Celtic languages in the twenty-first century UK. Brits are socially conditioned from birth, after all, to assume that English is the most predominant and useful international language, certainly in the Western world, and that the UK should be proud as its birthplace and stronghold. This attitude is enormously telling, and an indicator of one of the psychological factors that feeds Britain’s collective island mentality: It is the cold, functional usefulness of languages, and the strength of the nation that ‘owns’ it, that is allegedly the most important aspect of international communication.

The merits and quirks of different languages are largely dismissed in the campaign to promote and defend the dominance of English. To learn another language is to adopt a new perspective, to adapt your mind to an exciting new way of thinking. It is thrilling. It is challenging. And, in traditional British society, it is frightening.

This attitude is out of step with broader European thinking, and the proud multiculturalism which partly defines European identity. With British political culture desperately clinging to the idea of English as the only language that is worth learning, the UK will continue to feel a detachment from the wider European community, which sees English as a unifying bridge between diverse linguistic cultures, not as a superior and exclusive language gifted to the world by the British Empire.

The faster the UK recognises that multilingualism is not a threat but a boon, the sooner we can begin to counter the fear, misunderstanding, and xenophobia that fuelled the vote for Brexit. When Polish or Hungarian can be heard on the streets of Hull, Swansea, or Aberdeen and recognised as a fellow European language which enriches our shared culture, not as the mark of an ‘outsider’, then Britain’s linguistic paranoia will finally have softened. And if European languages begin to be viewed with more admiration and comradely spirit, then non-European languages too will be met with less suspicion and imperialistic arrogance. By embracing German, Romanian, and Croatian, British society would in turn be opening its mind to the influence of Mandarin, Hindi, and Arabic.

European Gaelic

But how can this linguistic, cultural, and political awakening in Fortress Britannia be sparked? This is where we return our gaze to the untapped potential of the Celtic languages, and in particular Scottish Gaelic.

Gaelic has a number of significant but scattered proponents, tentatively marshalled by the Scottish National Party (SNP) government in Edinburgh. The Bòrd na Gàidhlig (Gaelic Language Board) and the Comunn na Gàidhlig (Gaelic Language Society), as well as the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye (The Sabhal Mòr Ostaig) and the aforementioned media service BBC Alba offer some cultural and institutional backing to the Gaelic movement, all legally underpinned by the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act / Achd na Gàidhlig (Alba) passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2005. And then there is the case of the bilingual road signs. But these initiatives, while certainly beginning the process of normalising Gaelic and raising plenty of interest, have not been able to spark a multilingual revolution and shatter the linguistic paranoia of our troubled island.

A fundamental change in the way Gaelic is viewed must be cultivated. For many, the learning of Gaelic is an indicator of fierce nationalism, and is inherently tied to a particularly radical branch of the Scottish independence movement. Regardless of Scotland’s constitutional future inside or outside the political framework of the UK, however, it will remain geographically, and to a large extent culturally, British. As a result, its potential as the catalyst for a more multilingual, and therefore more Europeanised, Great Britain remains, whatever political events are on the horizon.

If the resurrection of Scottish Gaelic can be done in a dramatic, intellectual, and inclusive enough manner, it could capture the cultural imagination of the British Isles and Europe as a whole. To do so, it can no longer remain ‘seen but not heard’: it must be proudly sung from every available pulpit.

Thus, an increase in Gaelic-speaking in the Scottish Parliament, as well as in the UK and European parliaments (while the chance remains), will be a crucial step. Gaelic must also become more widespread on TV, radio, and the internet: popularised, modernised, and normalised rather than treated as a curiosity on BBC Alba alone. Affordable, colourful lessons in Gaelic should be made more available and appealing across the nation. And above all, one fact must be repeated, emphasised, and shouted to the heavens: Gaelic is a European language! Tha a ’Ghàidhlig na cànan Eòrpach!

If Gaelic can stop being regarded as a dying separatist tool, and as a modern, dynamic force in Europe’s cultural fabric, then there is hope for Scotland and the island it shares.

Then, and only then, will we see the beginnings of an exciting new chapter in the European Project: an egalitarian and broad-minded social awakening at the heart of Europe’s most powerful and problematic island. Our continent, forever struggling to be “united in diversity”, will have become a bit more united, and a bit more diverse.

Scottish Gaelic as a European movement will be seen, heard, and celebrated all around the world.

 

I Once Tended A Garden

 

I once tended a garden,

A joy for all to see,

Where strangers, friends, and family were all so close to me.

 

In sun it was a rainbow,

In rain it was the sun,

The blooms gleamed white in moonlight when day was finally done.

 

I planted sweet red roses,

Sunflowers grew so tall,

And green leaves whispered shyly as they fluttered over all.

 

But one night in late summer,

The air a biting nip,

Some vandals stormed the garden and began to stamp and rip.

 

Replanting in the morning,

I met concern with mirth,

For gardens are by nature prone to healing and rebirth.

 

The vandals returned nightly,

And churned up all the soil.

I pondered while fence-building why such beauty some despoil.

 

They chopped through the new fences,

They roared while stomping round,

The police when called found nothing but near-lifeless muddy ground.

 

Cameras were placed slyly,

The mob just tore them down,

In daylight people gathered from all over the shocked town.

 

In sunshine neighbours offered

To lend a helping hand,

In moonlight though the vandals tore across the shattered land.

 

In despair I decided

My garden I must save,

And rake in hand I stood my ground, awaiting the fierce wave.

 

I saw the tide gathering,

A great wild stormy thing,

A host of howling hoodlums, vile cruel shanties they did sing.

 

But as they charged the fences,

A thought entered my head,

That no one without reason seeks to make a garden dead.

 

Struck down I was with dawning,

The mob around me roiled,

I looked up at the place where once for beauty I had toiled.

 

These vandals have no garden,

No flowers do they tend,

No peaceful path through birch trees do they wander at day’s end.

 

Loud voices then did tell them,

Injustice keeps them down,

And the gardener down the street may as well just wear a crown.

 

So burn the foul red roses,

Drag down the leering tree,

Only once there is no beauty can the world at last be free.

 

At last I came to understand,

That with the mob comes power,

And raising high my rake I turned and struck down my own flower.

 

I once tended a garden,

A blight for all to see,

But now it is all ashes and no vandals bother me.

 

 

The EU Referendum: Fighting through the fog

The exam-season procrastination of a history and politics student: That’s right, I made an EU flag with cut-out stars. Judge all you want!

 

An insidious force is re-emerging in Europe, and creeping into the politics and social dialogue of every European nation. The UK’s referendum on European Union membership is just one arena of this dark and deepening struggle – And may prove to be one of the most important.

In theory, referenda should be celebrated as an effective means of engaging in direct democracy. However, this referendum has become warped by the troubling tensions rippling just beneath the surface of the European community, and the UK has become a microcosm of the wider malaise which keeps our continent divided. We have seen progressive far-sightedness shunned in favour of short-term selfishness, thoughtful compassion crushed as a result of xenophobic paranoia, and inclusive national discussion drowned out by narrow-minded party politics. We have seen ill-informed economics and wall-building immigration policy take precedence over matters of social justice, welfare, science, learning, and culture. We have seen Jo Cox, an active and optimistic MP murdered in the street for her political views. In February, when the 23^rd June vote was announced, there was little hope that this debate would be the epitome of high-quality social engagement. But the toxic political fog that billows reeking across Britain and Northern Ireland has dismayed even the most pessimistic observers.

Hopes quickly dwindled among those of us that thought the 2014 Scottish independence referendum would act as an example of high-minded dialogue and as a warning against the dangers of negative campaigning. It was with a sense of tired resignation that first minister Nicola Sturgeon commented upon Remain campaign scaremongering: “We only have to look at the Scottish independence referendum to know that kind of fear-based campaigning starts to insult people’s intelligence and can start to have a negative effect.”

Veteran Channel 4 broadcaster Jon Snow wrote bluntly in the Radio Times at the start of June: “In my reporting life I cannot remember a worse-tempered or more abusive, more boring UK campaign than that which is under way right now. Some of us were perhaps fool enough to think that the referendum we witnessed in Scotland in 2014 would provide a template for dealing with a second one on membership of the European Union. But the reporting interest this time round has been focused on abuse and intemperate challenging of facts by both sides. That is in itself dauntingly boring.”

The EU referendum, then, has descended from an opportunity for intellectually stimulating national congress, to a foggy battlefield between the scattered and divided advocates of European engagement and the repugnant but coherent figureheads of a resurgent isolationism, with hordes of understandably confused ‘undecideds’ caught in the crossfire.

What really isn’t clear in the midst of this claustrophobic debate is the wider significance of this referendum, and the previously mentioned ‘insidious force’ which is muddying the waters. Some clear-minded individuals have spotted out this ill-defined phenomenon and its symptoms.

Greek economist and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has called out unaccountable top-level shadow politics and a lack of compassion in pan-continent austerity economics as engines for European disintegration and the return of the far-right. His recent book And The Weak Suffer What They Must?  bemoans the direction European integration has taken. In it, he insists upon a rapid democratisation of pan-European institutions as the only way to prevent dictatorships like the 1967-74 military junta in Greece, or even the hateful regime of the Nazis in the 1930s, re-emerging from the ruins of a self-destructing EU.

Progressive French economist Thomas Piketty has repeatedly raised another condemnation of misguided neoliberal technocratic doctrine, pointing out the dire social consequences of uncompromising austerity and extreme inequality. Between Varoufakis and Piketty, if our current direction continues, and with the tragedy of the Syrian civil war burning away on the horizon, the only options appear to be an economically and socially rigid ‘Fortress Europe’, or the disintegration of the European project altogether, along with the destruction of the inclusive and forward-thinking social values that, although currently obscured, still lie as the bedrock of EU values.

The European Commission itself, while remaining committed to the post-2009 Eurozone crisis austerity model, has become increasingly concerned by the political lurch to the Eurosceptic right. They have seen this at a parliamentary level in almost every Member State, especially in the likes of France (Front National), Germany (AfD), Slovakia (Kotleba – Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko), and Austria (FPÖ), and at a government level in Hungary, under Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, as well as Poland, where prime minister Beata Szydło’s Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) government has set off major alarm bells in the office of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Long-simmering economic turmoil from within, a refugee crisis from without, and a perceptible fear of terrorist attacks from all angles, has brought back the ‘insidious force’ we are seeing today. This phenomenon has driven Europe to catastrophe before, and appears to be doing so again today.

While the existence of a dark and worrying undercurrent in the British referendum debate is widely acknowledged, there has been little joining of the dots in the mainstream debate as to the wider deterioration of European society into divisive paranoia. In a typically British manner, hard times have pushed the UK towards island-mentality isolationism, instead of continental solidarity. With the fear of today’s European crises clouding our vision, the UK is now at risk of ripping itself into irrelevance in a futile bid to escape.

Perhaps the most striking feature at the heart of this ‘insidious force’ is the fear and narrow-mindedness which drives it, and here lies both its strength and its weakness. On a continent as ancient and bloodstained as Europe, perhaps a hesitant negativity is understandable. Indeed, for a project as ambitious and inherently positive as the European Union to emerge from the ruins of the Second World War is a miracle in itself, and we should cherish the fleeting idealistic optimism which built such flawed but fully-functioning institutions in the first place. A convincing Remain vote in the UK’s referendum is an opportunity to rekindle the spirit of unity that birthed the EU, and which, with the return of inclusive and progressive political will, can continue to positively shape it. At the very least, a Remain result will keep us at the top European table – one fiery Member State in the midst of a tumultuously multicultural and hesitantly bound alliance – when the next crisis strikes.

The insidious force at the heart of European politics is here to stay, for now at least. Yet tomorrow, the 23^rd June 2016, is a chance for UK citizens to stamp out some of its creeping tendrils, and to reconnect with a Union in dire need of unity.

Rage or Suffering

 

Do I inflate the rage, or ease the suffering?

The placard is gripped limply between my hands. I cannot lift it yet. I don’t know if it will help. I don’t know what to do.

To my left, the rally is mustering, hundreds of angry voices and blazing banners swirling before the angular concrete façade of the parliament building. The minister will head out of those doors any minute now to face the furious eruption of activists. I was to be one of them.

To my right, across the shallow, calm mirror of the pond, sits my friend. They pay no heed to the political grumblings across the water. Their purple-shadowed eyes stare sleeplessly into the glistening mirror, which they splash and ripple with their absent-mindedly swinging feet. Their hands grip and dig into the grass and soil of the lawn. Their suffering is a pale mist, dwarfed and rendered a murky irrelevance by the angry inferno across the shallow water from them.

A chanting troupe of fellow furious students march past, many-coloured flags and block-capital placards obscuring my view in a dissatisfied rainbow for a long heartbeat. A loudspeaker screams discordantly in my ear. A solid sign smacks my shoulder and I stumble. Looking up, I see that the crowd to my left has started to roil and boil. Fists shake, eyes flash. The flags of Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the European Union flutter high above, shyly shuffling around their lofty flagpoles as if in fear of drawing the mob’s attention. I have lost sight of those I arrived with. They have been consumed by the revolutionary mass, incorporated into the vast and terrifying and magnificent beast of progressive and fiery change. I should walk over there, voice and placard and temper raised high. I should sacrifice myself to that history-making maelstrom, and play my part. A spark flares bright and passionate in my gut. I have to march left.

But my eyes are drawn back across the water. My friend is staring at the sky now, at the thunderous clouds casting the world in a shadow-stretching chrome tint. Their young face is ageing before my very eyes, as a lifetime’s worth of painful thoughts tremble through their mind. There is a defiance there as strong and as vulnerable as the blazing spirit of the crowd, but it is a solitary boulder to the wildfire of the mob. Even rock and fire cannot weather all storms. Infernos sputter and descend into smoky cinder. Boulders erode and are scarred. I must help my friend. Their thoughts dwell not on revolution, but on survival. Their battlefield is not high-political, but deep-personal. It is a shadow war they fight. And they need an ally against the shade.

Rain crashes down, an abrupt and thunderous whoosh. Wind strikes abruptly, slamming across the parliament grounds. The flags on their flagpoles whip proudly to attention as the crowd below is drenched, entangled by their own snaking banners. And the doors of the parliament building hiss sleekly open. To my left, cameras burst into light, the spotlights of news teams slicing ruthlessly through the sudden tempest. It is time. The crowd is struggling to muster and coordinate. They need every voice they can to overpower the storm and drown out the minister’s toxic lies.

But to my right, my friend is retreating into their hood. Hauling themselves to their feet. They are turning, to lurch away into the rain. They will be gone soon. I must catch them now, or their lonely battle will grow lonelier still.

And I cannot move. The minister is there, although I cannot see them above the left-wards chaos. My friend is leaving, and I cannot call loud enough to stop them.

I cannot move.

Do I inflate the rage, or ease the suffering? I twist towards the pond, and demand an answer of my reflection. But the storm is too strong, and the water is in uproar. I cannot see anything. I fall to my knees, try to flatten the surface with my palms. I cry out for an answer. Gale and hail slash across the land. I shiver and shout. Rage or suffering!? Rage or suffering!?

Finally, I see myself staring back from the flickering mirror. Rage or suffering? I ask, one last time. But by the time I find my answer, I look up and see that the storm has rumbled on. The mob and my friend have been swept away. I have my answer. But I am alone.

Norwegian Journal (Summer 2015)

I was initially hesitant to share the journal I kept while hiking in Norway last summer (2015), as it was written hastily for nobody other than myself, and contained information and photos that were really nobody’s business but our own. However, with a wee bit of tweaking and dusting-up, I have produced a version which (perhaps to my travel companions’ dismay), I am happy to immortalise in readily-available PDF form.

May it serve as an entertaining warning for those who stride into the north armed with little other than a couple of pairs of hiking socks and romantic Scandinavian visions. And may it also act as a window into a land that it truly welcoming and unforgettable – for those hardy enough to march into its heart.

Norway Journal