A plan for socially distanced spoken word events in 2021.

I have recently submitted an application for funding from the UK national lottery, to pay for a three-stage spoken word event, based in Wakefield, England, and delivered via the internet. I should get a decision in early February. It is a condition of the funding that the event has to take place before the end of March.

I intend to issue further applications to Wakefield Council, and Arts Council England (ACE). My objectives are:

• to make the best use of the internet technology that The Black Horse Poets and Wakefield Word have begun to use for their meetings, and thereby attract people who, for whatever reason, would be unable to attend meetings in Wakefield;
• to raise the profile of The Black Horse Poets and Wakefield Word, by attracting event leaders who are established writers and performers;
• to generate enough momentum, in spite of Covid restrictions, to organise a spoken word festival, based in Wakefield, later in 2021.

If the application to the National Lottery Local Connections fund is unsuccessful, I will still continue with the other applications. By the time I get to applying to Arts Council England, I need to have funding from another source already secured, because ACE only funds a maximum of 90 per cent of the budget of an event.

During this pandemic, the internet is a lifeline which enables not just one-to-one communication, but cultural events as well, to continue, as long as the participants have broadband, and know how to use the requisite software.

After the vaccination programme has enabled a return to some kind of normality (which I think will take longer than most people expect) I want my writing groups and other cultural organisations to use the internet for transmitting events as well as, not instead of, face-to-face meetings.

This doesn’t just affect how performers and audience interact. It affects how we charge for events, how we market them. It poses a vitally important question, which I attempted to deal with in my recent funding application, about how we enable participation by people who do not currently have broadband in their home.

The ruling class is taking the piss

I never intended this to be a political blog, but the current ruling class is the shittest it has been since the 17^th century, and so I have to say something.

I am an old-fashioned socialist, of a kind one seldom meets, nowadays.  I am an adherent of the socialism of Clement Attlee.  I believe in the National Health Service.  I believe in properly-funded social workers.  I believe in progress.  I believe in public libraries, and schools.  I believe that Blair was right when he built SureStart centres.  For every prison we build, we should build at least five SureStart centres.  If we build enough SureStart centres, we shouldn’t need to build more prisons. 

When Thatcher was elected, I was 11 years old.  I knew something bad had happened. 

Both my parents had post-graduate degrees.  Both of them voted Labour.  Both of them voted Remain in the 1975 referendum.  Neither of them was a committed socialist. 

They both thought of themselves as in touch with markets, and politics.  My late mother lead the legal team that created AstraZeneca, and Vodafone.  She would have been appalled at the way that Vodafone has avoided paying tax. 

My father would have been appalled at the debasement of the job market.  He had a teacher’s pension, which was linked to the retail price index.  The year he retired was the year that the IMF had to intervene in the UK economy, because inflation had reached 26 per cent.  His pension went up by 26 per cent.  By the time he died, his teacher’s pension was about two-and-a-half times what he had been earning when he retired. 

From about 1983 onwards, I told them that the ruling class was going to take everybody for a ride, including them.  They told me that I was wrong.  In the event, I was wrong, because they both died.  They also told me that smashing the state would be bad for vulnerable people. 

We were both half right. 

I now believe that the revolution, if it is going to happen, has to be founded upon compassion, and ethical practice.  If that doesn’t sound revolutionary, I don’t care.  My revolution is one in which the needs of children, vulnerable adults, older people, and people who are living with disabilities are put first. 

And I was right about the debasement of the job market.  What Thatcher inflicted on the miners in 1984-85 has been inflicted upon many other sectors.  There are no more index-linked pensions. 

As a socialist, I am also an internationalist.  Capitalists play one country off against another, and we need to build a movement that can counter-act that.  That movement must include Palestine. 

We must never classify people on the basis of the colour of their skin.  We are not many peoples.  We are one people.