The song of John Ball

I’ve been listening to Chris Wood’s version on his Trespassers CD of the song ‘John Ball’, written in 1981 by Sydney Carter (who also wrote ‘The Lord of the Dance’) to mark the 600th anniversary of the Peasants’ Revolt in England. Ball was a radical Lollard priest who had been expelled from the priesthood and jailed for asking questions about equality in the eyes of God, and he gave the sermon to the peasant army as it was camped on Blackheath, overlooking the City of London.

His sermon started with these words:

“When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

This sentiment would have chilled the beneficiaries of England’s hierarchical and feudal society. After the revolt had been put down – its leader, Wat Tyler, tricked into negotiations – Ball was arrested and hanged, drawn and quartered as a traitor.

But the phrase, and the radical idea embedded within it, has echoed down the centuries, to the Diggers, to Tom Paine, to the Chartists, to William Morris, even, it seems, to the Occupy Movement. We still remember him, more than 600 years on, and have long forgotten those who had him killed.

The picture at the top shows John Ball addressing the rebel Peasants on Blackheath. It is published by Wikimedia Commons and is used here with thanks.

Going Dutch

I went on the ‘Go Dutch’ Big Ride demonstration organised by the London Cycling Campaign a couple of weeks ago, which, despite the rain, was billed as the largest cycling demonstration ever to take place in London. The ride went from Park Lane to the Victoria Embankment, all on roads specially closed for the duration, taking in Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square and Whitehall as it went.
The theme – you might have guessed this by now – was that if conditions for London’s cyclists were a bit more like those in the Netherlands, more people would cycle and the government and the Mayor might hit their cycling targets.
So I was amused to read a few days later, in Bella Bathurst’s eclectic but entertaining Bicycle Book that when Holland plays Germany Dutch football fans chant at the German supporters ‘Give us back our bicycles’. Beating the Germans is something of a special occasion for the Dutch, especially at football, as Simon Kuper relates in his book Football Against The Enemy.
And sure enough, this chant dates from the war years, by Bathhurst’s account. In 1942, during the German occupation, the Nazi authorities confiscated Dutch bicycles both to stop the Resistance from using them to get around, and because they were running out of transport.
“No other German enactment has called up such bitterness in all ranks of society”, wrote a German officer. “The Dutchman, who is practically born on a bicycle, views the seizing of that bicycle as practically the worst thing that can happen to him.”
Of course, the London Cycling Campaign is right. Dutch-style cycle facilities in London would improve the city’s cycling numbers. But culturally, we have a little way to go just yet.

The picture at the top is from the ibikelondon blog, and is used with thanks. There are also images of the day at Ben Brown’s photostream on flickr.

Another country

I’ve had the miners’ strike more on my mind since I went to see the Jeremy Deller exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a couple of weeks ago, because the exhibition includes his famous reenactment of The Battle of Orgreave, when police cavalry charged protesting strikers.

So when The Guardian published some poems from Jubilee Lines, edited by Carol Ann Duffy (she has commissioned a new poem for each of the 60 years of the Queen’s reign) I turned first to the mid-80s. Sean O’Brien, whom I’ve written about here before, a child of the north, had claimed 1985 with a tough and unforgiving poem called ‘Another Country’:

Whenever someone sagely says it’s time to draw a line,
We may infer that they’ve extracted all the silver from the mine.

O’Brien’s poem starts with a epigraph from Auden, ‘Get there if you can’, the title of a 1930 poem. Here’s an extract:

Power-stations locked, deserted, since they drew the boiler fires
Pylons falling or subsiding, trailing dead high-tension wires;
Head-gears gaunt on grass-grown pit-banks, seams abandoned years ago;
Drop a stone and listen for its splash in flooded dark below…

Auden was born in York and brought up in Birmingham, but was fascinated by underground workings and mining machinery. This early poem – not included by him in his Collected Poems – was written on a visit to the north-east of England, where O’Brien now lives and works. It is one of several from the period that dealt with the decaying or lost landscapes of the early industrial revolution.

There are obvious echoes here of the industrial landscape that Britain has lost since Thatcher’s campaign de-industrialise the country (I use the word ‘campaign’ with care here) of which the calculated destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers was such an exemplary part. And echoes too, in O’Brien’s title, of the famous opening line of L.P. Hartley’s novel of loss, and of class antagonism. London, now, is the other country, as it milks the rest of Britain of resources.

But no matter what you do, history doesn’t vanish. (I had this argument once with an uncomprehending career coach who told me I could put the history I was embedded in to one side and simply ‘move on’ in the modern, deracinated, non-place manner. I was uncomprehending too). And this is how Sean O’Brien ends his poem:

Where all year long the battle raged, there’s “landscape” and a plaque,
But though you bury stuff forever, it keeps on coming back:

Here then lie the casualties of one more English Civil War,
That someone, sometime – you, perhaps – will have to answer for.

No matter how hard you try to tramp it down, the dirt insists on coming up through the roots.

The image at the top is a screenshot of Mike Figgis’ film of Deller’s reconstruction of The Battle of Orgreave, from the Bureaux blog, and is used with thanks.

Miles and Robert

Listening to Miles Davis’ record Miles Ahead the other day, I realised with a bit of a start that Robert Wyatt had lifted the opening phrase of ‘The Maids of Cadiz’ for his song ‘Alliance’, on his 1980s record Old Rottenhat. (The Maids of Cadiz is embedded at the top of the post; Alliance can be heard here.)

They’re very different records, of course: Wyatt made Old Rottenhat in the early ’80s in anger about the Thatcherite government and its works, among other things, before moving to Spain for a period of time, although it’s not an angry sounding record. (Actually, it’s pretty much him and a synthesiser, which makes for a very distinctive sound). ‘Alliance’ is a song to the politicians who had left the Labour Party to set up the more centrist Social Democratic Party:

There is a kind of compromise you are master of
Your endless gentle nudging left us polarised
You’re proud of being middle class (meaning upper class)
You say you’re self sufficient (but you don’t dig your own coal)
I think that what you’re frightened of more than anything
is knowing you need workers more than they need you
“A herd of independent minds” Chomsky got it right
Joggling into battle waving old school ties

Of course, he was wrong about ‘knowing you need workers, more than they need you’ – globalisation put paid to that – but that’s a story for another day and probably a different blog.

What struck me here was that musicians and their publishers have ended up in court over far less, but that Wyatt was in a long tradition – going back at least to Bach and Shakespeare – of borrowing something old to start something new. And also that if Miles knew, he’d just smile – or perhaps throw in a quote from ‘Alliance’ the next time he played ‘The Maids of Cadiz’.

Exciting the imagination

I don’t like the Royal Academy – it’s snooty, uptight, over-sponsored yet still expensive – but despite this I went this week to see their exhibition, Building the Revolution, about the art and buildings of the Russian revolutionary era, and in particular to see the scaled-down version of Tatlin’s Tower in the (sponsored) courtyard. The Tower, famously, was only an idea, and never built, but it was intended to be both a monument to the revolution and also a working building, the home of the Third International, the organisation to promote communism internationally. As a blog at RIBA notes, it would have

had four rotating elements inside (all rotating at different speeds) to house an information centre, meeting rooms, offices and a radio transmitter which all would have served as the headquarters of the Third International.

The scale version built for the Royal Academy is 10 metres high, a 1:40 scale model of a Tower that Tatlin imagined would be 400 metres high, taller than the Eiffel Tower, spanning the river Neva in St. Petersburg, as a picture at the RA conveyed. (The image here is from a 1999 CGI reconstruction by the Japanese artist Takehiko Nagakura.) In a Russia wracked by war and then civil war the chances of securing enough steel to build it were less than zero. The mechanics were complex too; the engineers who made a reconstruction for the Hayward in 1971 had to work them out from first principles, since there are few records of the original design. Indeed, had it been built, it’s likely that the mechanics of the building would have failed – the Russian constructivists quite often found that their ideas outstripped the limits of what was then technically possible.

In Tatlin’s lifetime, his Tower was realised only as a 15 foot high scale model, which was shown in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The picture of this model, and the one above, come from John Coulthart’s { feuilleton } blog. Even so, it fired the enthusiasm of his contemporaries: Viktor Shklovsky, the critic, reported on seeing Tatlin’s model, ‘The monument is made of iron, glass and revolution.’

Indeed, the design was inherently political. As Catherine Merridale writes:

The marvels of technology were one theme, but movement was another … as well as reflecting the dynamism of the dawning age, the building could double as a slow-moving calendar and clock, perhaps even as a means of measuring stars and space. In its restlessness and transparency, the building embodied the democratic challenge to authoritarian power that Tatlin so welcomed.

Tatlin’s unbuilt Monument has fascinated artists, critics, and maybe utopians ever since he designed it: I’m writing about it here more than 90 years after he conceived it, which I wouldn’t be had it actually been built. I was at an exhibition in Estonia earlier this year at which the artist Petko Dourmana had constructed an augmented reality piece in which the Tower was projected onto the cityscape of Tallinn. In some ways, such a virtual representation seems a fittingly democratic way to see Tatlin’s Monument. The purpose of the unbuilt building, after all, is to excite the imagination.

The picture at the top of this post was taken by Andrew Curry. It is published here under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.

Lenin in the garden

While in Tallinn recently, during our trip to the Baltic states, we took a short bike tour with the excellent City Bikes, a two-hour circuit that took in some of the sights beyond the city centre. As we went along a cycle path through a wood our guide pulled over, had us put the bikes down, and pushed through a screen of trees to a fence behind.

It turned out that this was the grounds of the Estonian History Museum, and a couple of salvaged statues of Lenin had been parked there while the curators decided what to do with them. Obviously the subject of all of the Communist-era statuary is a controversial one, even now, all across the former Eastern bloc.

In Lithuania an entrepreneur has opened up a theme park based around scores of Soviet-era statues; initially amid much criticism, it’s now a commercial success. Sadly, because it’s in Grutas, in the south of Lithuania, we didn’t get to visit it.

The photograph is by Andrew Curry, and is published here under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.

Civil rights on the Hill

I’ve been re-watching Hill Street Blues, which is running nightly on Channel 4 in the small hours in a version tailored for the hard of hearing, maybe meeting some broadcasting quotas as it goes.

It was , of course, a path-breaking show which reinvented the television police drama in the 1980s, by foregrounding the whole of the police station, not just a couple of individuals, interweaving multiple storylines and using handheld cameras to create a verite feel. Actually, arguably, it reinvented television drama while it was at it. Aesthetically, even 30 years on, the series feels remarkably fresh.

Looking back at the 1980s from the 2010s, it’s also possible to suggest that the series captured the notion that the American inner-city had become a battle-ground – and that it implied (but never spelt out) Gill Scott-Heron’s argument that in the backlash from the victories of the civil rights movement a combination of drugs and politics meant these battlegrounds were managed through policing rather than politics. Some of the sharpest moments in the show were when Chief Daniels clashed with Capt. Furillo over the political consequences of his policing.

And it also caught, brilliantly, in its (probably) Chicago setting the racial politics of post-civil rights America. We caught a re-run of Lucky Ducks the other night, about half way through the series, where Renko is about to marry Daryl-Ann, whose family is clearly from the South. There’s a fabulous piece of writing in the pre-wedding dinner, where Renko’s Hill Street colleagues – including his (black) partner Bobby Hill, his best man – have turned out to meet Darryl-Ann’s mother and father. It’s like the entire civil rights movement being played out over the toasts. After some speeches from Hill Street colleagues, Daryl Ann’s father gets to his feet (starts 40’30 in), and after a few other ill-judged remarks:

FATHER: ‘… I’ve had the chance to get to know Bobby Hill and he seems like a real nice boy. Best wishes to everybody.

BOBBY HILL: Well now, I want to thank Mr Maconachie and say it’s a good thing he likes me since I’m sure that he’s quite familiar with the old tradition that if anything happens to the groom before the wedding then the best man’s supposed to step in.

FATHER: Well, I don’t know what tradition that is, but anybody who runs out on my little girl and I’m perfectly prepared to take care of her, and him, myself.

RENKO: I don’t know what anybody’s talking about, because you couldn’t get me away from this beautiful girl with a tow-truck.

BOBBY HILL: Oh, that’s not what anybody’s talking about, Andy. [PAUSE]

SGT NEIL WASHINGTON: So, uh, you folks have a nice trip up? [PAUSE] Take the inter-state?

Hill’s character is one of the nicest in the show, but the word ‘boy’ – addressed by white person to black – was incendiary even in the 1980s. You have to watch the scene, because the acting and the direction make the whole story (looks could kill), but the way the conflict is so visibly there, without anyone saying as much, or raising their voices, is a fabulous piece of writing.

All the President’s Men

For those of us of a certain age, especially those of us who once worked as journalists, All The President’s Men is an archetypal story: reporters, by good reporting, uncover wrongdoing piece by piece – and the trail goes all the way from a bungled break-in at the Watergate building to the heart of the White House. And watching it again with my family a few weeks ago sent me back to William Goldman’s own account of writing the screenplay. The biggest challenge was that by the time the film was made, everyone knew the ending (spoiler alert: the President did it).

So immediately there was a challenge in telling the story, which is why Goldman hit on the idea of ending at a low point, when Woodward and Bernstein had made a mistake which had let the White House back into the game. Of course, this creates the moment for one of the great Hollywood speeches, as Jason Robards, playing Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, stands out on the lawn in his dressing gown late at night and tells the two reporters:

BEN BRADLEE: You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up… 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I’m going to get mad.

Goldman invented the phrase ‘Follow the money‘, Deep Throat’s advice to Woodward (and if ever there was a truth…), and there is some fine screenwriting elsewhere. “Turn your exposition into argument” runs the advice to tyro screenwriters, and the early scene when Bernstein takes Woodward’s copy and rewrites it tells us lots about their experience, about their relationship, and something about newswriting as well. The film also reminds us – you have to read a little between the lines – that the story would probably never have been broken if it had been left to the political reporters.

Goldman has the screenwriting credit, and won an Oscar for it, but he didn’t have a happy experience working on it. In his memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade he recalls going to a meeting with Redford, who was executive producer as well as c0-star. Bernstein and Nora Ephron (then Bernstein’s girlfriend) put their alternative version of the script on the table.

One scene in the film survives from that script – where Bernstein (Hoffman) tricks the receptionist at the Dade County Sheriff’s Office into leaving her desk so he can slip past in her absence. It’s an amusing scene when it plays in the movie. There was just one problem with it, as Goldman notes:

it didn’t happen – they made it up. It was a phony Hollywood moment. God knows I’ve written enough of them,  – but I never would have dreamed of using it in a movie about the fall of the President of the United States.

The still is from ET Online, and is used with thanks.

The bat in the castle

I’m going to Prague soon, so I’ve been doing some research. One thing I stumbled on was an entertaining review of Václav Havel‘s memoir of his time as President of the fledgling republic. Two quick extracts, one reflective, one largely metaphorical. The first is about the different between politics and drama, no matter how dramatic politics sometimes is:

As a playwright, he understood the theatrical nature of politics. All politicians must have “an elementary dramatic instinct”, he writes. But a major theme in this book is how often this desire for structure and order is thwarted by events, dear boy, events. Whereas drama gives meaning and structure to existence, “Politics is more of a strange, never-ending process with no clear turning points and no unambiguous and immediately recognisable outcomes.”

He found the Presidential Castle full of concealed wires and microphones when he arrived. But one theme cropped up again and again in his memos:

One repeated request appears to symbolise the continued presence of the former regime: “In the closet where the vacuum cleaner is kept, there also lives a bat. How to get rid of it?”

The bat and the vacuum cleaner. You could make it up, but it seems he didn’t have to.

Rock el Casbah

We were having a discussion about a song to mark the January 25th uprising in Egypt. Rachid Taha’s Arabic cover of The Clash song was my choice.

He’s Algerian, and rather than write a couple of hundred words of cultural commentary I’m going to let one of the comments posted on the video sum it up for me:

Rocking the Casbah from _within_ the Casbah. And in Arabic, too! No wonder the Clash loves him. He’s bringing their song to the people for whom it was written.