If Wilfred Owen had a blog...

If Wilfred Owen had a blog...

....would the First World War have dragged on for four years? Truth is the enemy of those who  wage war. Britain would not have lost 150 lives in Bush's war in Iraq if Parliament had known the truth.

The blogs and e-mails from British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are scything a path of light through the foliage of propaganda. Basra and Helmand are now missions impossible. It is almost certain that every soldier who perishes in both campaigns dies in vain in the same cause of futility and stupidity as the mass slaughter of Wilfred Owen's war.

This past week,  four British soldiers were killed in Basra and six in Helmand. We can ask Owen's question again,

"Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth....

But the British public knew nothing of Owen's poetry until after the war. Only four of his poems were ever published before his death at the age of 25. The propaganda machine was still pumping out the myth of a glorious heroic struggle against a brutal nation. The truth of Owen and the other war poets was silenced.

The Minister of Defence have now introduced sweeping new guidelines to restrict serving military personnel from speaking, faxing, e-mailing, texting or blogging about the hellish truth of Basra and Helmand. There is mounting angry reaction from soldiers' websites. If this is an attempt of censoring the truth it will fail. Communications now are immediate, vivid with authenticity that cannot be challenged.

A new book on Wilfred Owen's work, Mapping Golgotha has just been published  by gregynogpress.co.uk. (01686 650625). The message from 90 years ago is powerful and moving and precisely reveals the truth of our times.

Drugging the old

Not one of the interviewers on today's dodgy report by Age Concern asked who funded it? Yet that is the only worthwhile question.

It sounds like a new try at medicalising society. Getting old is not good. It makes people sad. Nothing can change that. But drug companies want to offer the snake oil of anti-depressants. They give a brief boost but can also increase depression, the suicide rate and be addictive.

Some doctors, Age Concern complained, thought depression was part of the ageing process. Good for the doctors. Some Pharmas insist that we take their expensive pills if we do not have a euphoric smile on our faces from cradle to grave? It's good business for them. But bad medicine for millions.

When will someone ask whether Pharma money paid for this report?

Carrara and Gramsci

Today, I returned from an 8 day family holiday - the first for many years. Thanks to Fern and Jayne for continuing this blog on a daily basis  with some favourite bits from my books. 

One day of my stay in Italy was spent in  a visit  to Cararra the city that was a seething hotbed of  Italian   socialist and anarcho-syndicalist movements. The Duomo is built  entirely out of marble that has been quarried the mountains that cradle the city, leaving gigantic white scars that dominate the skyline. One of the city's main monument is dedicated to the workers who perished tearing the marble out of the hills.

The main town piazza is named after Antonio Gramsci. He was the  socialist leaders arrested because of his opposition  to Mussolini. He was sent to a camp for political prisoners at the age of  35.

During the trial, Mussolini said about Gramsci: "We have to prevent that this mind continue thinking."

He spent almost his entire life in prison. Although his ideas play little part in modern politics, his sacrifice and those of followers remains an inspiration. The working people of the city of  Cararra suffered dreadfully at the hands of Mussolini's fascists and the occupation by the German army.

A stroll around the richly marbled streets show that radical movements are still thriving. A left-wing rally will be held shortly close to the monumental  tributes to those died in an idealistic cause.

Comments

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks again. That really brings it home. I had a family holiday last week the first for years. I went to Carrara when the rest of my famly went to Florence. It was a great visit.

[John]

Yes, Gramsci was a key thinker.

Look again at Gwyn A. Williams' writings, eg the volume of essays "The Welsh in their History", and you'll see the debt to Gramsci

Carrara marble -- the finest choice for the sculptor, was used for the monumental Welsh Heroic Sculptures scheme at Cardiff City Hall; the gift of D. A. Thomas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Alfred_Thomas , Lord Rhondda of Llanwern, MP for Merthyr Tydfil 1888 - 1910 (aka Czar of the Coalfield - you'll look in vain in his wikipedia bio for a ref to the connection between Cambrian Coal Combine + Tonypandy Riots, but see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonypandy_Riot)

One could say that the Welsh Heroic Sculptures scheme was an exercise in cultural hegemony and articulation of the national-popular culture ... to make a Gramsci connection ;)

[Paul Flynn]

That is absolutely fascinating and very informative to me. The place is beautiful and Gramsci is still honoured in Carrara both in marble and the lively radical movements that are still very active. thanks for references. I look forward to looking them up.

Many thanks.

[John]

Paul, you wrote:

"He spent almost his entire life in prison. Although his ideas play little part in modern politics, his sacrifice and those of followers remains an inspiration."

Gramsci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci was, on the contrary, a key influence on the post-'68 European "New Left":

"Gramsci is seen by many as one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, in particular as a key thinker in the development of Western Marxism". [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci ]

His "Prison Notebooks" - yes he continued thinking in prison! - had a seminal impact, in their revision of the Marxist theory of ideology and power (and development of the concept of cultural hegemony, in departure from the Second International "base-superstructure" approach to ideaology).

Three interesting examples closer to home:

* One may say that cultural critic and writer Raymond Williams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Williams
was influenced by Gramsci (eg. see his chapter on Hegemony in Marxism and Literature, 1977)

* Historian Gwyn Williams published the first English language essay on Gramsci, entitled "The idea of egemonia" published in The Journal of the History of Ideas in 1960 (if memory serves me correct)

* The group Scritti Politti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scritti_Politti named themselves after Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, and the group's Green Gartside hails from Newport (and there was a link with the art college).

Gramsci's theory of hegemony and the national-popular culture was used to get a handle on the Thatcherist regime's radical populist strategy.

Gramsci has tended to become de-politicized by a generation of theory-laden academics, some of who have been oblivious to the fact that he was leader of the Italian Communist Party.

[Paul Flynn]

Thank you very much Mr Angliss. I did not know that.

This week's slaughter has been especially distressing coming at the time when the MOD is trying to suppress news from Iraq and Afghanistan.

[John Angliss]

Wilfred Owen and the like did "blog", albeit with the technology available. They sent their poems in to the national newspapers by the score. Censorship stifled that criticism, and now we see our government branching into internet censorship in the same way.