But oh dear, I didn’t really want to be woken up. No sweet nothings. No rich harmonies. Only discordant clangs and thumps. So let’s go down to the bawdy house. Perhaps getting drunk and indulgent will ease the soul’s pain, the anguish of humiliation, the realisation that we’ve been shafted yet again. How does it work? The ideological thrust of the political class has little to do with their proclaimed manifestos. Is it merely the unexpected demands of power or are they lying from the moment they glimpse the possibilities of power. All those hours practising their tricks. Marching to their own agenda whilst pretending to march to ‘we’re all in this together.’ Like hell we are.
What has happened? Well, I had the rug I was standing on pulled out from under my feet. And of course I was left rather winded and lying on my back. I shall explain: I read an article in the current LRB (22 September 2011) by James Meek concerning what is becoming clear, the privatisation of the NHS. He traces back the ongoing changes to economist and Pentagon whizz kid Alain Enthoven. His ideal was something he called ‘managed competition’ and in 1985 he wrote a paper for the Nuffield Trust suggesting it could work for the NHS. Picked up with greed and frenzy by the soon to be gone Thatcher crew, like a baton it was passed on to Blair and his eager eyed acolytes. And here we are the whole programme is now in the hands of Broken Britain Tories.
The whole article is definitely worth reading to highlight the way in which ideas come to power. A seed is planted in fortuitously fertile ground. So many ideas fall on stony ground (thank you Jesus for the parable) and the question that came to my mind is: was the fertile ground hatred of the ‘socialism’ of the NHS? Was this another example of the battle between socialism and capitalism? The choice for us is, or was, between the propaganda of the Party and hapless consumers of the advertising industry.
Sitting unhappily on the floor, rubbing my head that banged on a chair leg I am forced to try to think about understanding and judgement. I was part of an anti-judgemental generation, sick of the moralising authority of the old guard. But we cannot do without judgement. It feels like if I simply take up the work of understanding I need never stick my head above the parapet. All I do is work quietly away in the consulting room. One day we will be over this sickness and be fully alive and able to pick up the reins. Not good enough. And that means engaging in this work of judgement: what is right and what is wrong? What are my values?
It was also rather alarming to see the trailers on Channel 4 advertising a Despatches programme examining what our old friend Tony Blair has been up to: making huge amounts of dosh whilst being some sort of ambassador in the Middle East.
What is the actual resistance that we can engage in? The training to behave ourselves is forever being rubbed in our faces – and then we mumble our apologies for being such a frightful nuisance.
Poetry, perhaps, is one form of resistance:
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.