At least with Pete Seeger you could enjoy the music - Jeremy Corbyn and the politics of protest

There's a bit in Pete Seeger's version of 'We Shall Overcome' where, talking ahead of the next verse, Seeger talks about learning lessons from 'the young people':

"The most important verse is the one they wrote down in Montgomery, Alabama. And the young people taught everybody else a lesson to all us older people who had learned to take it easy, lead their lives and get along - leave things as they were - the young people taught us all a lesson, we are not afraid."

Watching Labour leadership contender, Jeremy Corbyn undergoing a gentle, chatty Sunday morning interrogation from Andrew Marr, I was struck by the manner in which Corbyn returned again and again to 'young people'. Not just in talking about student fees, welfare or employment but as a central aspect of his campaign. Observations like this:

‘The entryism I see is lots of young people who have hitherto not been very excited by politics coming in for the first time and saying ‘yeah, we can have a discussion, we can talk about our debts and our housing problems.’

Now I don't have the age profile (or indeed any demographics at all) of the new members and supporters piling into the Labour Party so as to vote in the forthcoming leadership election. And I suspect that Corbyn doesn't have a great deal more information. Nevertheless it is central to his politics that young people are the drivers of change - the heart of the 'social movement' he refers to repeatedly.

Pete Seeger and that whole American folk and protest revival of the 1950s and 1960s may seem a little naff to many today but Corbyn's politics uses the same slightly folksy rhetoric, the same disconnected slogans intended to cheer the audience and draw on the instinct we all have for compassion. So, faced with a serious question about national debt or economic growth, Corbyn summons up a series of statements - about tax dodging companies, high rates of tax and an 'overemphasis on orthodox economics' - that touch on the subject but don't actually address the question. This is followed by a glib conclusion - something like '..but tax isn't the real issue here, the big question is what sort of society we want'. You can almost hear Pete Seeger and Joan Baez tuning up ready to launch into 'We Shall Overcome' or 'Joe Hill'.

And this is the problem with such folksy socialism - it has a genuine appeal to many of us. I get an emotional jolt from Woody Guthrie singing 'Vigilante Man' or 'Tom Joad' and, though others may not share my enthusiasm for American folk music, many will point to song, story or images that echo that shout of pain and cry for justice. We really do care and politics like Corbyn's build on the exploitation of that compassion - coupled with a sort of poverty pornography an endless emphasis on failure that's essential to the making of political myth.

The problem - it's striking that Corbyn only ever talks of industry never business, public investment not private capital - is that we know that the solutions being offered don't work. Most importantly they work least well for the very people who Corbyn and others like him claim to care most about - the poor, sick and excluded. The economic catastrophe that follows from nationalisation, regulation, high taxation and rent or price controls - and it does without question - damages the poorest, weakest and sickest most quickly and most extensively.

Corbyn's appeal to 'young people' is an appeal to the most naive amongst the caring, to those who are most likely to join his mission to create that 'social movement'. The constant reference to student fees reminds us of that audience - these are overwhelmingly the children of the middle classes not the poor. There is a delicious irony that the taxes of an eighteen-year-old shelf stacker will, in Corbyn's world, go in part to pay for the education of a new generation of lawyers, social workers and bankers who will earn a load more in their lifetime than that shelf stacker.

There's a place - a need even - for Corbyn's politics. Protests and campaigns for justice are good and right. But the solution offered isn't one that will work - far better for that protest to stay in those songs and stories where, as these things do, it will act as a constant reminder that we should consider poverty, exclusion and the abuse of power at all times.

Turning the politics of student protest into a programme for government will result in disaster. And, by focusing on young people to the exclusion of everyone else, Corbyn seems oblivious to the real fact that most voters aren't young, aren't on welfare, aren't unemployed and aren't poor. They're just regular sorts - what Americans call the 'middle class' - going about their lives, doing the best for their children, making ends meet most of the time and squeezing as much pleasure and enjoyment from life as they can. It is these people that Corbyn wants to crush, it is their culture he wishes to destroy, it is their society he wants to change.

As a Conservative a little bit of me wants to see Jeremy Corbyn elected as Labour leader. But because I know a lot of Labour people - and like a fair few of them - I think electing a man who thinks the politics of Bolivarian socialism are a good thing would be an act of arrant stupidity, a triumph for unthinking ignorance and bigotry disguised as a caring agenda. Protest is great and it's a central part of what the left does but making it the entire purpose of the Labour Party - what Corbyn means when he says he wants a 'social movement' - sets up that party for permanent opposition rather than as a credible alternative government.

I know Labour Party members have a lousy choice but choosing the candidate who sees the party as a protest movement is just plain stupid. Jeremy Corbyn comes across as Pete Seeger without the banjo - well-meaning, caring, committed to change and - in political terms - utterly, utterly wrong. The difference is that, as least with Pete Seeger you could enjoy the music.

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Michael Dugher is right - arts funding is elitist

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Barnsley MP, Michael Dugher has focused our attention on the plight of the Grimethrope Colliery Band - one of the superstars of the brass band world:

Labour MP Michael Dugher said it was “snobbery” that the British Federation of Brass Bands, which supports bands such as Grimethorpe, got just £23,000 last year while the Royal Opera House in London got more than £26million and the English National Ballet was handed more than £6million.

Dugher is right - traditional English arts are a poor relation next to elite international arts. Even when we look at arts funding in the north, we see that it is still skewed towards those same dominating areas: classical music, opera, ballet and theatre.

The problem is that these traditions - and if Dugher thinks brass bands are hard done by take a peek at Morris dancing - are disliked by the arts establishment. In their song 'Roots', Show of Hands make this point:

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well, I've got a vision of urban sprawl
There's pubs where no-one ever sings at all

Folk music and other arts traditions are disdained by the arts elite. Funding goes to grand and exclusive establishments that make no mark on most of the population. Bands are to be tucked away out of sight brought out only when we want some sort of Northern 'authenticity' - in Bradford we built a new City Centre park. And, in a City that's home to two of the world's best brass bands, we didn't include a bandstand.

While millionaire actors and opera singers strut the subsidised stages of London, the traditional arts of England - choirs, brass bands, dance troupe, folk music - live a hand-to-mouth existence. Arts funding is overwhelmingly spent in London and directed to the preferences and interests of an arts elite rather than the mass of the population.

Michael Dugher is right - arts funding is elitist.

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So folk music is conservative after all!

“Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government.  Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity.  It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.”

But we are so much wiser now than Thomas was. The champion of liberty paved the way, we're told, for the progressive view of government. Indeed, the very men who promote the idea of governmental good see Thomas as their man - a man of the left.

So when a grungy folkie pops up speaking, in his own way, the language of Thomas Paine, the left are shocked - not quite to silence unfortunately:

Browsing on a music messageboard earlier today, I came across a thread devoted to Frank Turner, which linked to an interview he gave last year. Turns out his libertarianism and belief in the power of the people to resist oppression aren't of the leftist sort. They're of the rightist sort.

How dare this man be in such a trendy profession as folk music and not be left wing! How dare he say such things as:

"What I think we should do instead is concentrate on ways of minimising the impact on ordinary people's lives and allow them to get on with their lives and not be bothered by the state. Then you've suddenly got a range of things to talk about that are achievable. Like everything from not having ID cards and trying to dismantle the surveillance system we've put together in this country on the one hand, trying to remove government from peoples lives, social services. Letting people be freer, health and safety, whatever it might be."

Perhaps Frank lacks Thomas Paine's eloquence but he's saying the same thing. Government isn't a good thing but, at best a necessary evil, something to be tolerated at the fringes of our lives not the centre of everything.

Regardless the whole episode cheered me - a particular fan of folk music despite its reputation for leftiness. And in the comments to that Guardian piece I found a still more curious comment about folk music:

I've said this in other threads before but there is something horrifying, fascist and awful about this neo-folk music that is like the worst of Nazi return-to-origins propaganda. The Mumfords and the horrifying affectation of a pastoral netherworld with their neo-folk clothing. Even if the musicians themselves were lefties, the music has such a strong conservative streak that it cancels out any progressive views. In a way it's easier to pick on this one musician but conservatism in music is a bigger subject than his tweeter views. 

I must admit to a little grin at this observation as a right winger who likes folk music. And who recognises that, in the end, the idea of land, soil and the national culture are (unlike national socialism but that's a different story) distinctly conservative in feel and sentiment. Kipling would have loved the sentiment, if not the sound of grungy folk music:

His dead are in the churchyard—thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer,
And if flagrantly a poacher—'tain't for me to interfere.

"Hob, what about that River-bit ?" I turn to him again,
With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
"Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but"—and here he takes command.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.

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Thanks Barney...

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No-one - not even Finbar Fury - played the banjo like this fella. He'll be missed but his music will live on!

Thanks Barney....

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An Echo of Old Magic and Old Song

A good firm path - dry, with a good surface. Firm, secure fencing. Someone cares for this place - or cares enough to separate me from the woods. Perhaps the steepness of the slope and the looseness of the surface motivates that someone - he or she would rather those passing through didn't slide, tumble and crash into the river below. Or maybe there are beasts in the wood.

I hope there are beasts - or at least the memory of beasts. The wolves, bears and boars who once owned these woods - and the magic folk too. The trolls, the gnomes - and is that flash of white a glimpse of the unicorn. It can't be a wind blown supermarket carrier bag, can it!

On a wild night you must stay even more firmly on this path. Or else suffer the fate of Tam Lin - perhaps without a true love to save you from that mad ride into the gates of Hell.

gloomy was the night
and eerie was the way.
this lady in her green mantle
to miles cross she did go.

with the holy water in her hand
she cast the compass round.
at twelve o'clock the fairy court
came riding o'er the mound.

first came by the black steed
and then came by the brown.
then tam lin on the milk-white steed
with a gold star in his crown.

she's pulled him down into her arms
and let the bridle fall.
the queen of fairies she cried out
young Tam Lin is away.

The darkness is always close by - the legends are part of our heritage. The magic of these places - however safe they're made - is the deep magic of England. Step off the path and into the woods and listen carefully - you may hear the song of our ancestors. A song of woods, of trees and of the security that light and a clear view bring. It is a fine song.

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What do we mean by 'good'?

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I have spent a moderately pleasurable day updating music, cataloguing CDs and generally playing at being a librarian. I even wore the uniform!

While doing this the matter of standards and art arose. In reality it sprung from an on-line interchange with Dave Briggs in response to a blog post I wrote about books. The interchange related to genre fiction and whether the constraints of the form limit the capacity for greatness. Thus it is less likely for a list of greats to include writing from a given genre.

To explore this, I felt it would be interesting to consider music - an area where the same snobberies and prejudices sit but where I am more comfortable with what might be termed "elite" music. However, reviewing my collection of music reveals a bewildering variety - everything from unashamed pop-rock from Bread, through more highbrow prog rock stuff (Caravan anyone?), reggae and ska, folk music - including the incomparable Incredible String Band, jazz and plenty of that elite music.

If I were forced to choose what I consider the very best - and I expect not to be so forced - it would be a tricky toss up between Bach and Led Zeppelin. Yet, in the comparison with the literary world, Led Zeppelin is 'genre' music constrained by the limitations of the rock form whereas Bach's world is limitless. But this ain't so - any more than is the case with literature.

We create categories of art, literature, music and so forth merely for our convenience - genre works like brand in this respect by providing a shortcut to decision-making. I like science fiction so that's where I head. However, such categories do not separate good from bad, the elite from hoi polloi.

Orchestral music ranges from pretty shallow and derivative work (I fear much of Vaughan-Williams falls into this definition) to the immense, shuddering majesty of Mahler or Beethoven. But where does 'good' stop and something else begin? At what point does opera become operetta and hence musical theatre? We could argue till domesday about these subtle distinctions - about whether dystopic fiction such as '1984' or 'Brave New World' is science fiction, as to how we define Neal Stephenson's magnificent 'Baroque Cycle' - is it magical realism, or historical fiction or (as Stephenson chooses) science fiction.

All of which just leaves me still more confused - I do know what I consider good which I guess is what matters! Even when others choose to think otherwise - for sure it ain't not being a genre that makes for good or bad!
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Copyright, free riders and the New England turnpikes

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The problem really isn’t that copyright is a bad thing. As a right it’s not really much different from assorted easements, permissions and other non-physical property rights (I don’t own the drive to my house but I own a right to use it to access my house). So I defend it and the associated right for those who own the copyright to expect the law to be on their side.

The problem is the free rider. Or more importantly the inevitable avoidance of payment (and remember this isn’t a moral argument). As such the challenge for owners of digitised information is how to protect the value of their asset. At present the approach is to seek (or rather to persuade those who administer laws) to seek more and greater powers to identify and control those who are taking a free ride.

This is a short-sighted approach that is ultimately doomed to failure. I’m by no means an expert on the working of the Internet but it seems to me that those who wish to take a free ride are going to carry on doing so. Each endeavour to close the loop – to check the metaphorical ticket – will be defeated by technological creativity. And the ever more draconian measures demanded by the owners will be resisted because of the collateral impact on legitimate activity (or the legal manifestation of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum).

However, we should not dismiss a model simply because of free rider problems – there’s a strong argument for allowing the present system to continue and for alternative models of production, protection and payment to evolve. To understand this I recommend reading this piece by Daniel Klein on the New England turnpike companies where the author describes how – despite a huge double problem of free riding – investors still stumped up to buy stock in these companies. Although these investors became stockholders in a business it was a business that they knew would lose money. In effect their purchase of stock was a private payment to secure the supply of a public good.

It strikes me that ‘investors’ in music, film and software are aware of the free rider problem but recognise that without some willingness to purchase something that free rider problem will mean no music, film or software. Thus we accept the need to purchase. Those businesses that provide simple, easy access to the product in response to these payments are like the turnpike companies in that the purchasers of this access enjoy a smoother journey avoiding the need to travel round the tollgate on a rough, dangerous track.

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The stress, pain and anger of a crowded world - thoughts about the future from the past

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“The incidence of muckers continues to maintain its high: one in Outer Brooklyn yesterday accounted for 21 victims before the fuzzie-wuzzies fused him, and another is still at large in Evsanston, Ill. Across the sea in London a woman mucker took out four including her own three-month baby before a mind-present standerby clobbered. Reports also from Rangoon, Lima and Auckland notch up the day’s total to 69.”

So goes part of the first ‘Happening World’ in John Brunner’s wonderful, new wave SF novel, ‘Stand on Zanzibar’. And it’s odd that the events in Cumbria took my mind straight to this matter-of-fact piece of fictional reportage. The banal manner in which Brunner introduces the ‘mucker’ to the reader is really quite frightening – we’re talking precisely about the sort of event that still today causes us such shock.

In part, Brunner was trying to describe how dehumanising mass population becomes – crowdedness breeds more stress, more risk, more chance of someone running amok. And from this event, a feature of the crowded world, comes the idea of the ‘mucker’, a person – young, old, male, female, white, black, yellow – who snaps and runs riot. Brunner does not explain or analyse, he just presents the ‘fact’ dispassionately. We don’t get to explore the details of the individual cases – we just get the event in stripped down form: “…accounted for 21 victims…”

Stand on Zanzibar is intended as a warning that with numbers come more of these (and other) events – partly a simple response to there being more people and partly a greater incidence descending from the impact of those numbers on our psyches. I’m not sure I agree with Brunner’s analysis but his presentation of the dehumanising effect of crowds is both depressing and revelatory.

Crazed incidents of murder have been a feature of human society for a long while – anyone who meander the by-ways of folk music will be struck by just how many songs there are about murder. So when we look at the events of yesterday – shocked, stunned, perhaps angry – we need to ask two questions: firstly, is this just another tragic, horrible murderous rampage or something else – something preventable; and secondly, does the event speak of a human condition stretching back through history – thankfully a rare condition?

For what its worth – and I’ve made no study of these matters – I feel the answer lies somewhere between. Blaming the gun is a fruitless diversion but trying to appreciate – and maybe on occasion notice – how the stresses, the agonies of everyday life can unhinge someone might prove a more purposeful response. Supporting scientific enquiry (and I don’t mean the ‘crackeresque’, pseudo-psychiatry beloved of the media) into the motives, reason and proximate causes of the rampages – these ‘muckers’ – might prove of some value. Although, I guess the chances of preventing some future incident in some other unfortunate place are pretty slim – if not non-existent.

Right now, the best we can do is to give a thought to others suffering – to pray if that’s your thing. And to hope that those damaged by the event can gather themselves and come to terms with what has happened. And, at some point, get on with the ordinary lives that cause such stress, pain and anger.



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