Empire – Observations and Misunderstandings

Well it appears with winter on the horizon the world is settling for a miserable one. If we thought enduring lockdown while Britain basked in what was likely the warmest April and May on record was hard just wait until we hit January and the recently lifted Christmas restrictions are firmly smashed back into place. Thankfully I’m not in the UK now, in Greece you wouldn’t even imagine there was a virus, not where I am anyway. They’re handling it the most Greek way possible and just getting on with things. Saying that despite my ridiculously ignorant attempt at national stereotypes when they did have a lockdown it was a hard one apparently. It allowed them to open up for the summer and despite a few flair ups wherever the Brits like to holiday, the country has remained reasonably virus free. Last weekend in Thessaloniki the guy working in the hostel told me Thessaloniki had about five cases a day and Athens had two hundred. I think I may have mentioned that at the time but looking at the rest of the rates around Europe, well into the thousands, that is quite remarkable.

In that knowledge leaving this country, which I’m likely to do, seems a little silly. It’s like seeing prison and deciding you would like to go spend some time there. I never fully experienced lockdown the last time because I was working delivering bread and being clapped every Thursday like a hero. This time I would be going full power and disappearing for a couple of months. At least I may find the time to read those books I had for so long complained I was too busy for. Sounds quite exciting. I might study something too. There is so much to study. Look at me getting all excited about something everyone else is dreading. In truth I am too I’m just not sure what I’ll be experiencing enough to dread it.

I can’t wait to read the literature that people put out in a few years about this time. There will likely by films or television series in 2021. Perhaps the aftermath will be more of an interesting topic. Stories set during lockdown would likely focus on the psychological elements of the experience, but events after would likely be either on human versions of flowers opening up in Spring or will be about system change as Brexit flounders, the economy crashes and people overthrow the government and create peoples assemblies.

Either that or I’ll just be gloating about how I finally put in that application for Irish citizenship. Twelve to eighteen months and then probably another one or two for me to get off my arse and apply for the passport. That’ll be it. I give up on the Scots for being the only country in history suffering from Stockholm Syndrome bad enough to reject independence and the Brits for being a typical version of a people incapable of accepting their glorious history of domination and empire is now nothing but an illusion. If it were ever anything else. Fuck it the Irish seem like they’re having fun, I’ll go see what they have to say for themselves. Apparently too Covid rates below the border in the Republic are a fraction of those in the British controlled North. Well that’s telling. Handling it well are you Boris. I hope history is harsh on you.

There was a time when men were men said the romantics ignoring the fact that these were tough men through circumstance and necessity. The period of time that stretches from the beginning of the First World War to the end of the Second is one that has filled the imaginations of even the most derelict of minds. For my generation and those slightly older this is a period that we can look on and imagine our grandparents struggling to survive in. It is this connection that allows for an appreciation that others in later years will perhaps not have and it was with these thoughts that I pictured my own grandfather when watching and listening to the story of Johnny Longstaff by Teeside folk band The Young’uns at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.

Johnny Longstaff was born in Stockton-On-Tees. He lived in a time when work really was scarce and a day without food common enough to be normal. He joined the marches to London 1934 as a fifteen year old demanding the opportunity to work and decided to stay.

While in London he found himself joining various union movements and was present at the infamous Battle of Cable Street in which the original anti-fascist movement stood up against and beat Oswald Moseley’s fascist Black Shirts.

With this he heard of and met others heading out to Spain to fight Franco and his fascists. He was only seventeen and risked arrest because of the governments non-interventionist policy but signed up and headed out to Spain regardless.

While out there he fought for the International Brigade. Civil Wars are by their nature brutal conflicts and the Spanish Civil War was certainly this. He buried friends who were killed next to him, spent days without food or water, endured the hottest and coldest of conditions and generally struggled through the horrors of war culminating in his presence at the infamous and horrific battle for Hill 481.

He survived the war and was sent back with the rest of the International Brigade at the end of 1938. He signed up to fight Hitler in 1939 but this was denied on the grounds that he had broken the law by fighting in the Spanish War. In 1940 though he tried again and this time was allowed in. He survived the war and went on to live a rather normal life in the civil service before dying in 2000 at the age of eighty-one.

The performance was incredibly inspiring and I left with an intense fire burning inside. I have attempted in this blog and recently in general, to try understanding the other side of the argument. It can help us understand our own position on issues as well as equip us with the tools to fight. The same must go to fascists and racists but it’s hard to understand their opinion when so deplorable. This show certain left me with the feeling that I don’t need to understand their perspective, their hate just needs destroyed. We live in a time that has seemingly forgotten the horrors of that time, of the rise of fascism and the very real threat it posed to the world. The Spanish Civil War was a fascinating fight between the fascist right and the socialist, anarchist and communist left that the Second World War could never be. While the Second war may have been one of ideologies, it was still one of Empires unlike Spain which really was a battle of ideas. These were men of a different time. It was hard and it was that that toughened them up. It is easy to romanticise the period but it does make you realise how soft we are in modern times. We mustn’t forget the past. We mustn’t forget those who fought the hatred of an ideology because while times may have changed, the more we forget the more likely we are to have to fight that ideology all over again.

Tag: Empire

A Covid Ramble

The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff