In the past week I have had so many opportunities to attend discussions on racism, sexism, masculinities, early socialism and the Chavez revolution.
Today I went to the radical Book Fair to listen to Sheila Rowbotham talk on her latest book which is about Edward Carpenter, a campaigner on diverse issues including vegetarianism and women’s rights. Principally he is known for his work on adult education and to gay historians.
http://www.word-power.co.uk/viewEventList.php?category_id=1
He was often regarded as a British Walt Whitman, but his fame did not last, possibly because of his avoidance of joining in party politics and a socialist distancing of his sexuality. For example in the 1880’s he helped form a secret society to teach sex education, and he promoted along with Bob Muirhead, a contemporary socialist, ideas of a citizen’s income which today is only mentioned by the Green’s.
What I personally found curious is the occurrence of the concept which, in my Artists Way group we termed synchronicity. Sheila Rowbotham described Carpenter’s links with socialism, anarchy, Advanced Women, even anarcho-syndicalists.* The synchronicity took the form of the attendance at the talk following my reading of John Buchan’s Castle Gay in which there is a delicious description of a by-election in south west Scotland where the heroes attend the Communist rally and hear about the Anarchist's movement in Europe, (although Buchan seems to refer to Anarchists in the previous book in that series too) as well as the Bolsheviks.
In the normal course of my life, I rarely hear people talking about such far leftist groupings, so it is easy to forget that for substantial parts of the global population there is total rejection of the capitalist western belief systems.
The synchronicity persisted with my reflections on the current by-election in Glenrothes and how that was a place of radicalism as the voters in days past, returned communist representatives. I can only imagine the whirling in their graves of the old activists on hearing what has happened to those who once claimed affiliation with an internationalist sister/brotherhood.
But referring back to Castle Gay, the hero engages in conversation with an ardent voter who is looking forward to there being some heads broken between the various political factions, as this was the way that some Scotsmen did their politics at that time. (I am not sure when the story is set, but it is soon after the end of WW1, so women’s enfranchisement may not yet have been secured).
For my own views, I’d rather not have it come to head breaking next week at the poll. Maybe the Scots have calmed down in the last 90 years, or, unfortunately much more likely, have lost that edge which marked our national traits of radical political analysis and allegiances, to say nothing of our underlying sense of fairness and inclusive internationalist nationalism.
Oh yeah, and I began today by picking up the car I ordered last week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/22/women-highereducation-sheila-rowbotham-feminism
http://www.johnbuchansociety.co.uk/
*This was a learning point for me as previously I had only come across this term in the scene in Monty Python’s Holy Grail when King Arthur approaches the peasants who turn on him with blandishments about democracy claiming to be an anarchist syndicalist grouping. I had to investigate this, and found the website listed below. I will make time soon to look at this further.http://www.syndicalist.org/
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/mphg/mphg.htm#Scene%204
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