Verse

Government

The Government—I heard about the Government and I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at it when I saw it. Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to the calaboose. It was the Government in action. I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw this was the Government, doing things. I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of work- ingmen who were trying to get other workingmen to stay away from a shop where there was a...

Challenging the nationalist narrative

From its declaration of war in 1914, Britain’s ruling class appealed to patriotism to boost its support and its military recruitment. By 1916 both were flagging. On the pages of socialist newspaper The Herald, poets used verse to question both nationalism and the war’s aims. When the government asked men to fight for King and Country, was it shielding its true motives? Harcourt Williams prefaced his poem “England Fights” (published in The Herald on 16 December 1916) with a quote from Shakespeare’s Richard III: “To reap the harvest of Perpetual Peace By this one bloody trial of sharp war!”...

The last speech of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco

This is the famous last speech of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the class-war prisoner who, alongside Nicola Sacco, both of them anarchists, died in the electric chair in August 1927, framed by the US authorities. This speech, despite its broken English, is so beautiful and moving that it falls naturally into verse form. No-one has ever expressed more splendidly and with such stirring, simple language the aspirations and hopes of all those who fight for a better world. Once read, these words form part of every socialist’s heritage. This typographical arrangement of Vanzetti’s speech first appeared in...

Verses from the First World War: Conscientious Objectors

Once the Military Service Act come into force in 1916, men aged 18-41 had to apply to a Military Tribunal if they believed that they had a reason not to be drafted. The majority had health, work or family reasons, but 2% were Conscientious Objectors (COs): men who objected to military service because they objected to war. Around 16,000 men were recorded as conscientious objectors: some were ordered to do “work of national importance” (e.g. farming), some were given non-combatant duties, but 6,000 were forced into the army. Many then refused orders and were imprisoned, as were those who refused...

Verses from the First World War: conscription

One hundred years ago this week, conscription came into force in Britain. The Military Service Act placed men between 18 and 41 years of age into the army reserve unless they were married (this exemption was removed later in 1916), widowed with children, serving in the Royal Navy, a minister of religion, or working in a “reserved occupation”. The initial rush of volunteers had dried up by this time, and while poverty continued to make signing up as a soldier an attractive option for some men, recruits were being killed at a faster rate than they could be replaced. These three poems were...

Verses from the First World War: poets against profiteering

As the First World War progressed, working-class people became more aware, and resentful, of those profiteering from their suffering. While men were wounded and died in the trenches, and men, women and children at home suffered appalling poverty, capitalists saw the war as an opportunity to make money. Poets addressed this with anger, mockery and wit. The three poems here were all published by anti-war labour movement newspaper The Herald a century ago in 1916. Writing from ‘Somewhere in France’, Private A.W. Dawson introduced his poem by quoting a corporal of the Royal West Kents: “Ah! My boy...

Ranting, Rhyming, Revolting

At the launch of Janine’s new book she reassured those worried about it not containing enough hating of Tories that their concerns were unfounded. And I want to reassure readers that the polemical potency of the poetry is not poorly presented. Janine’s on-stage delivery is what first made her poetry for me. A lot of her poems use repetition, or rhyming structures that make them fun to listen to, often building up to a joke at the end. Poems like ‘Being normal’, ‘Beach body’ and ‘Once upon a Tory time’ stand in a tradition of poking fun at authority and social norms. They’re popular with...

A failure, and a crime

Janine Booth continues describing the history of what took place at Gallipoli. Part one can be found in Solidarity 388. Guy Dawnay, one of Hamilton’s staff officers, went to London to tell the truth about what was happening. On 14 October, Britain’s Dardanelles committee sacked Hamilton, replacing him with Sir Charles Monro. By this time, the Allies were evacuating 600 men per day due to sickness and injury. Monro studied the situation, and recommended abandoning the campaign and evacuating Gallipoli by the end of October. But Churchill denounced Monro with the words ‘He came, he saw, he...

Savage, bloody and pointless

The First World War was into its second year when Britain attacked the Dardenelles strait, a narrow passage of sea in the eastern Mediterranean overlooked by the Gallipoli peninsula. The area, part of modern-day Turkey, was then part of the Ottoman empire, which after 600 years was falling apart, known as the “sick man of Europe”. The rising power of Germany and the existing empires of Britain, Tsarist Russia and Austria-Hungary wanted to grab what they could from the Ottoman rubble. Their rivalries and manoeuvring intensified. A secret deal in 1908 agreed that Russia could have Constantinople...

Heroes and Hordes

If Nicholas Winton were saving the children today His Transport of Kindness would camp out in fear at Calais Compassion is easier cast back through history's mist Abhorrence for migrants but Oscars for Schindler's List No humans may cross here, this tunnel is only for freight Hurrah for the Blackshirts and see off the swarms at the gate They've kind words for history, now for the iron-clad fist Coldness for Calais and Oscars for Schindler's List The lords of the fortress will draw bloody lines in the sand Armed guard at the border instead of the helping hand They'll trample the memory of...

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