Don't start me talking I could talk all night My mind goes sleepwalking While I'm putting the world to right
Called careers information Have you got yourself an occupation?
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
There was a checkpoint Charlie He didn't crack a smile But it's no laughing party When you've been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger One more widow, one less white nigger
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
Hong Kong is up for grabs London is full of Arabs We could be in Palestine Overrun by a Chinese line With the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne
But there's no danger It's a professional career
Though it could be arranged With just a word in Mr. Churchill's ear
If you're out of luck or out of work We could send you to Johannesburg (Oliver’s Army: Elvis Costello 1979)
November the darkest month
It’s the time of year that fills me with an enormous sadness, from Bonfire night right until the end of November I can never shake off the melancholy of November, I never really enjoy bonfire night, I don’t like the thought of celebrating public torture. However November has other meanings to my family and me in mid November 1999 my mum died through injuries she sustained from a car accident she had on the M1 she was coming home from a trade union meeting in Leicester back to Nottingham. Ever since this month has been a time of deep reflection.
My mum was a socialist and a trade unionist; she was a critical member of the Labour Party and fiercely working class. She taught me everything that I know about – everything, living with this woman was never easy, she was opinionated, angry and always right (sounds familiar), but at her core she was the best of the working class, strong, selfless, loved her family, loved her community, and loved working class people.
Every November my thoughts are full of her: just as her thoughts in November were full of her Dad, my Granddad John Reed. I spent the first 5 years of my life living with my Grandma and Granddad; they were the happiest times for me. When they died only a few months apart it devastated my family. In truth we probably never got over it.
The Red Poppy
My Granddad had been a soldier in the Sherwood Foresters during the second World War, and every November my mum would buy and wear a Red Poppy, she was a socialist and she knew full well what War was about and she taught her daughters that War is a theatre created by the rich - and we working class people are sacrificed on whatever whim the ruling class fancy, I remember her telling me about the First World War and she told me how young working class men were sent cruelly in front of machine guns on both sides- I remember her saying “the osses would have been wirth more” she had learned this from her own Dad. My mum was an internationalist, and had no time for British or English Nationalism, for flags, or false narratives about the glorious war dead. And still every year she wore a red Poppy. When I asked her as a rebellious teenager why she wore the red poppy and not a white one, she was very clear ‘blood is red’ and it is our blood that is spilled and we should never forget that. She chided me that my Granddad had spilled his red blood all over the beach of Dunkirk, and this we should never forget.
I am tired, and angry about the constant debate about wearing a red Poppy, I am tired and angry that my Granddad’s contribution is sneered at by those that could not walk a day in his shoes - my mum’s shoes - my shoes or my son’s shoes. Those that have no concept or idea of what it feels like to look out into your future and see nothing but the void of uncertainty, poverty, or even worse the certainty that you work to live in poverty. Let be honest - working class men join the army, working class men have always joined the army - to escape from that void.
The Little Miner
My Granddad as a child and a teenager was a brilliant gymnast, and all he wanted to be was a gymnast, he was small but strong - well that was hard luck for him, because he was from the heart of the Nottinghamshire coalfield and it was the 1930s - he was going down the pit. He had a choice, some might realise he had Hobson’s choice, he didn’t want to go down the pit, he didn’t want to get his lungs filled with coal dust so he couldn’t breathe, he joined the British Army and he was sent to India. A young extremely small and skinny lad from the Nottinghamshire coalfields ended up in India in the 1930s, fighting for an Empire that he knew nothing about, and that he would never benefit from. In 1939 his regiment was sent to France, and he ended up on the beach in Dunkirk in 1940, he was rescued but injured, he had shrapnel in his shoulder and was sent out of the Army, only to go back to Nottinghamshire and go down the pit for the war effort, which is where he stayed until his death. He died before he retired with the thing he feared most, pit dust on his lungs. I remember he slept downstairs because in the end he couldn’t make it up stairs he was 58. He never got the pension he was promised in 1945.
Melancholia
November has always been a melancholy month for me, my mum used to take me the local War memorial to see the the names of the war dead from the 1914-1918
‘The Great War’ she would say as she told me about the great horrors - the young men that never came home, the men that came home and was never the same, and the young men from communities- council estates like mine all over the country that were still making those choices between the void of the pit, the factory, the warehouse and the draw of the British Army.
While those who are self-righteous and write and wax lyrical with their clever arguments about imperialist Wars, and the red Poppy they are ignorant and arrogant to the brutality and violence {symbolic and actual} of what it is to be working class.
Paul Gilroy an academic that once wrote a brilliant book ‘There Aint No Black in The Union Jack’ in the 1980s followed up this work about race and class in Britain, with the concept of Post- Colonial Melancholia – the supposed feelings of white British people longing for a time of Empire and glory, the academics could not be further from the truth when it comes to the working class. Working class people never had the glory of the Empire: the Empire spilled their red blood, as it did those in India, The Caribbean, and in Africa. There are not two sides to Empire the white British on one side and the subjugated on the other.
My granddad was not an evil Imperialist he was a working class boy looking out into that void, my mum was a socialist and wore that red poppy for the red blood of the working class. November for me is their month, and I will never forget them. And I will remember them any way I want to. With or without a red poppy.
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