Venceremos

I like a good rant. There’s nothing that gives me more satisfaction than venting off about something that annoys me. I could go on at length about every injustice, insult or injury visited on my fellow man by the powers that be, but after a while, steam ceases to come out of my ears. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world, or at least the few square miles of the world in which I exist. However, if I were to get angry every time this (Westminster) Government went into reverse Robin Hood mode, I’d be in grave danger of suffering a stroke or a cardiac arrest. Each attack on working people or the less fortunate in society by an elite group of multi-millionaires should be highlighted by the SNP as another reason why the Scottish people should vote for Independence, and they should promise that this new independent nation should adopt a simple moral code based on the principles of social justice.

Personally, I don’t get along with people. My relations with individuals always end on a sour note, but this is no reason to wish to see every citizen of this country deprived of opportunity, hope or dignity. Imagine a post-industrial town, decimated in the days of Thatcher; a community brought to its knees by poverty and despair and now facing a third consecutive generation of unemployment. Imagine a rural or island community trying to cope with very few jobs, poor transport links, ever-increasing fuel costs and an exodus of its young people. Can someone tell me how low the salaries of public sector workers have to go in these areas before this Government is satisfied? How much joblessness, how much crime, how many suicides before their bloodlust is satiated?

What is the solution, and what will be the resolution? Is it time for civil unrest, for revolution? Would I be the last one standing at the barricades? Would I take up arms and fight to save this society, which, in truth, has done me no favours? I’d like to think I wouldn’t have to. I’d like to think that brave, principled men would rush to fill the ranks before it became my time to be conscripted. I'm the political equivalent of an armchair football manager; I prefer to fight from my keyboard, usually anonymously. I’m a coward; I don’t like the sight of my own blood, never mind that of anyone else, but I’ve been thinking.

I’m sure that statistics will show that most men who have died in battle were from the lower classes. If you’re a General, you’re not likely to be suffering from trench foot and dodging stray ordnance; you’d be in a chateau, miles from the front, sipping sherry and having your handlebar moustache waxed by your batman, whilst the sons of miners and farmers lie in a thousand pieces in a bloody, muddy field. Who cares? There’s more where they came from, isn’t that right? Cannon fodder, plucked from a deep pool of the worthless and the underprivileged. I’ve been thinking; that’s where I come in.

I see it now: The outskirts of the Capital; smouldering shells of buildings, utilities cut off, food stocks running low, ammunition almost spent; a rag-tag assembly of the tired and tousled, huddled together for warmth, writing last letters to lovers or friends, as I, forever the outsider, sit, legs outstretched, surveying the scene from the periphery, writing a history that may never be read. But more than expected were up for the fight, and, eventually, good triumphed over evil. Many lives were lost, all given so that others might have a future. Digging around in the rubble, someone found my notebook and, inside, a letter, the one where I told someone the whole truth. There was nothing to identify either the writer or the intended recipient, so it was put on display in a museum, accredited to ‘an anonymous hero of the revolution’. I think I’d like that, but I'd be happier if I got to stay at home whilst others took up arms and rid these islands of every one of the Tory scum and their LibDem whores.

On St. Patrick’s Day, it’s appropriate to remember the words (possibly mistakenly) attributed to the Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’. If good men do something, evil won’t triumph, and we will win.