‘Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs-wants-insists-must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You’ve scrabbed at it long enough, God knows. 

The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn’t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad.’

(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939))

This year – over 70 years after the publication of The Grapes of Wrath -, ‘the mathematics’, or what ‘the Bank – or the Company – needs-wants-insists-must have’ has been high on the agendas of governments, businesses and institutions. Huge sums of money have been invested in keeping banks afloat, and much of the cost is being borne by people who can least afford it.

Meanwhile, a UN report published last week describes a quarter of the planet’s land as ‘highly degraded’ and flagged up loss of soil quality as the area for greatest concern. A number of food production systems across the globe, the report says, ‘face the risk of progressive breakdown of their productive capacity under a combination of excessive demographic pressure and unsustainable agriculture use and practices’. The issue of soil erosion and degradation is not new: estimates suggest that around 6 million hectares of land are lost to soil erosion every year – whether this appears in the headlines or not.

In the American Dustbowl of the 1930s, soil erosion and its consequences became visible – the dust storms were hard to ignore, and along with the displacement of people they caused, they found popular expression not only in Steinbeck’s best-seller and its filmed version, but also in Woody Guthrie’s Dustbowl Ballads. Today, for many of us, the loss and degradation of soil does not – yet – feature strongly on our agendas or lists of concerns.

What I would like to suggest here, though, is that soil is much more worthy of our investments, of our concern and care, than banks. Interestingly, this seems to be a conclusion that increasing numbers of people in Greece are coming to as well, as the search for responses to the economic, social and political crisis is stimulating rising migration from cities to rural areas. Others are reaching a similar conclusion in response to looming energy and ecological crisis (the Soil Association, for example, has been raising awareness of the need for a transition in farming, including the need for many more people to become involved in agriculture). In urban situations, too – notable examples include Detroit and Havana, and, much closer to home, Todmorden – people have been regenerating soil, in attempts to respond to crisis, increase food sovereignty, and promote both social justice and the sustainability of food growing.

Other, perhaps less obvious, drivers behind recent interest in soil – and/or in the gardens that it makes possible – include increasing recognition of the political and therapeutic and dimensions of gardening. Particularly interesting expressions of the latter are ‘defiant gardens’ – human efforts to create gardens in extreme and hostile conditions. Examples include gardening in the trenches in World War 1 and in Jewish ghettos during World War 2, and the efforts of people held at Guantamo Bay to create a garden with plastic spoons, mop handles, and seeds saved from their food. The potential of ecologically sensitive gardening and farming practices, and of the understandings that develop with them, to contribute to peace- and resilience-building also comes across in the work of inspiring organisations, such as the Permaculture Institute of El Salvador  and the IDEP Foundation in Indonesia. The sense that attention to soil is a valid and important concern for anyone interested in peace (studies) also comes across in peace thinker Satish Kumar’s recent calls for a ‘new trinity’ of ‘Soil, Soul & Society’.

Not least, an understanding of soil encourages humility. As Wendell Berry – poet, essayist, novelist and farmer – has put it,

‘We cannot speak of topsoil, indeed we cannot know what it is without acknowledging at the outset that we cannot make it. We can care for it (or not), we can even, as we say, ‘build’ it, but we can do so only by assenting to, preserving, and perhaps collaborating in its own processes. … We cannot make topsoil, and we cannot make any substitute for it; we cannot do what it does. … It is making life out of death.’

(Wendell Berry, ‘Two Economies’ (1988))

The kind of humility that might come from a relationship with soil seems an important antidote to the logic of short-term profit, to the certainties implied in ‘the mathematics’, and to the pursuit of dominating power. That, too, seems worth cultivating and investing in.

Berry has defined sustainable agriculture as an agriculture that ‘does not deplete soils or people’. As Berry also suggests, the same definition probably also applies to sustainable culture more broadly. (Agri)culture driven by the demands of banks risks depleting both, undermining people’s dignity and health alongside the degradation of the very basis of life. We cannot, then, afford to ignore banks, companies, and the structural conditions that support their power, but nor can we afford to neglect investing in the patient, practical work that contributes to conserving and building soil – regardless of the headlines.

The demonstration was, in reality, quite modest. About 50,000 people came to London, and there were smaller demonstrations in other cities. The talks at Copenhagen were viewed by many as a disappointment, essentially pushing back the process for securing binding agreements to reduce carbon emissions. This delaying tactic appears to characterise the current climate negotiations in Durban, while we also learn this week of an unprecedented increase in carbon emissions. Delay perhaps also describes what most of us are doing in response to this issue – getting on with life as usual, focusing on present concerns, and waiting for the effects of climate change to be really apparent before really doing anything. There are, of course, people working hard to promote Transition Towns, or joining the latest round of protests (Occupy), but for the majority, the present seems to have the strongest grip on our imaginations.

This is most evident in the current scramble to save the financial system and restore the world to a path of Growth, whatever the costs. It is also evident, somewhat paradoxically, in the industrial action over public sector pensions in the UK last week. While at first glance this looks like people worrying about the future (as people were two years ago during The Wave), the influence of the present is in fact quite clear. Present expectations of financial security, material comfort and retirement lifestyle – and the fear that these may not be met – play an important role in motivating people to take action.

Lest I sound too critical (or hypocritical), let me come clean: I took part in the industrial action last week too, partly out of solidarity and because there are issues of principle at stake in this dispute. But I did so with a feeling of ambivalence. I find it hard to think of the future in terms of an unbroken continuity from the present, a continuity implied in the demands of public sector workers and the unions. I don’t believe the means by which a comfortable pension might be achieved – continued economic growth, involving investment in industries that are often environmentally and ethically questionable – are either viable or simply desirable (thus I am also not sympathetic to the government’s line). Indeed, my strongest sense is that if we (and here I mean We) want to have future hopes of comfort and security, then the best thing we could do is begin constructing a different kind of economy and society, by addressing the systemic and cultural causes of ecological damage and climate change, and by addressing the causes of global inequality and instability. For otherwise, if the emerging evidence about various future trends (water and food security, peak resources, conflict, and other risks) is broadly reliable, the world in 2035 (the year I might retire, if I am lucky enough to reach retirement) will be far more unstable, dangerous, and insecure than it is now, whether or not we have money to retire on.

I imagine a good number of the 50,000 people who took part in The Wave were public sector workers – teachers, nurses, and the like. I imagine that many of these people also took part in industrial action last week. I wonder how many felt ambivalent or conflicted, as I did, about their participation. Did they feel or see any contradictions? Perhaps we can take these contradictions (and they are common enough) as a fruitful starting point for conversations about what we expect from the future, and about whether our expectations are realistic or indeed justifiable. They might enable us to explore the unavoidable tension between present demands and future priorities. But let us be clear – we urgently need this conversation because whatever we do, we are making futures for ourselves right now, and not necessarily ones we would choose if we thought enough about it.

‘What in the World is Happening? A Peace Studies Forum

An opportunity to reflect on some key events in 2011.

Monday December 12th, 6.30pm. University of Bradford.

Speakers: Prof. Paul Rogers, Prof Jenny Pearce, Dr Graeme Chesters.

With input from students.

The forum is free, but places must be booked in advance. Please contact M.Hallik1(at)bradford.ac.uk

POPPIES POPPIES EVERYWHERE

By Donna Pankhurst

Recently I was asked by some international students what the poppy that I was wearing represented. As I struggled to explain, their first interpretation was that it was part of our ‘heroes day’ celebration; something recognisable over much of the globe. This is exactly the element of Remembrance that I did NOT want to align myself with and my discomfort sat with me as I paid more attention to the coverage of remembrance activities than I usually do.

There was a time in Peace Studies when it was commonplace to reject the wearing of the Royal British Legion symbol of the red poppy http://www.poppy.org.uk/make-a-difference in favour of a white, peace poppy raising money for other charities, which did not ally themselves with the official acts of remembrance which many of us considered to be nationalistic, and jingoistic http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html

For the last few years I have not even seen a white poppy, and this year there seemed to be a wider range of poppy paraphernalia than in the past http://www.poppyshop.org.uk/, being displayed on people, vehicles, buildings etc. For the first time England’s football team requested the right to wear an embroidered red poppy on their shirts, and FIFA’s initial refusal was reported as a controversy http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15637074, and protested by the EDL http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Poppy-row-English-Defence-League-protesters-climb-onto-roof-of-FIFA-in-protest-article828782.html

There also seemed to be a much broader engagement with the public silence at 1100am on 11^th November. Mass participation was reported which seemed to have intense emotional potency, and it seemed to me that many more institutions (including our own) orchestrated participation in this public act of remembrance.

So what are people doing when they wear the poppy, or participate in the silence or the ceremonies?

The origin of the poppy symbol of course comes from the ‘peacebuilding’ phase of the First World War, in the mood of ‘never again’, the key ambition of the League of Nations. But the history of poppy wearing and selling, and of the 2 minute silence are  more complex than I’d realised and, as with many public ceremonies, the meanings are contested. For some it has been about remembering the dead, and this was an important part of the origins, in remembering the first world war victims, in the spirit of hoping that the ending of that war would herald an era of world peace. This developed over time to include support for living combatants and ex-combatants of the British Armed Forces. The RBL itself embraces both http://www.poppy.org.uk/remembrance, and the highly populist and largely secular Silence on 11.11.11 in Trafalgar square talked of both http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/sits/.

This year was the first where there were no survivors of the first world war present at the British official ceremonies and yet it seems to have become more ‘politically acceptable’ to embrace the poppy, and to respect the silence, even by some Irish politicians who have traditionally resisted these acts of remembrance. One might say that  today we remember the war dead more actively than any previous post war generation, and arguably more than at any time since the First World War itself. Why is this? Perhaps:

• it’s become too uncomfortable to take a resistant stance when there are young compatriots being killed and injured? There is certainly a shift in  how we respond to returning service-people, although we are still not a celebratory as in the USA
• we are more comfortable with our patriotic symbols? The ever-present England flag is perhaps an interesting parallel, where many more people, even from BME groups, are happy to sport the flag which for some is still associated with racist political groups.
• the first and second world wars are now so long over, and in populist terms so unequivocally just, that it is less ambiguous for us to ‘remember them’?
• A deliberate attempt to make the remembrance activities more inclusive by Thatcher and then Blair has worked (see below) and that we DO feel more included – and free to shape our own meanings of the poppy and the silence.

At the same time resistance against the wearing and selling of poppies continued this year:

1. Muslims Against Crusades successfully burned poppies in 2010, but were banned from demonstrating in 2011 by the Home Secretary after declaring their intentions to name their protest ‘Hell for Heroes’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055365/Poppy-burning-Muslims-plan-new-hell-heroes-demonstration-November-11.html. The BNP took the opportunity to show support for the government’s position http://www.demotix.com/news/920061/bnp-hold-protect-poppy-protest-kensington-london

1. Protests in Bradford this year reported in the local press echoed the London Muslim threats, but actually targeted young Asian women cadets and others who were selling poppies.

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/9363347.Disgust_at_poppy_sellers_abused_in_street/

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/news_opinion/featuresourview/9363449.Twisted_take_on_meaning_of_appeal/

1. A number of prominent figures were taken to task for not wearing a poppy who then in turn defended their position, most notably Jon Snow. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326063/Jon-Snow-poppy-fascism-row-C4-News-host-refuses-surrender.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/nov/05/michael-white-poppy-white-feather

1. Celtic fans also protested against the poppy http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/veterans-anger-as-celtic-fans-stage-half-time-protest-against-poppies-1.1066550

Red Poppy Wearing

http://www.poppyshop.org.uk/

The use of the poppy was an American invention and is very widely used for remembrance in Canada

In fact the poppy was an American invention in 1920 later taken up by other Allied countries and the British Empire and then Commonwealth. The symbol was taken from the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ , written by a Canadian physician and Lt Col, John McCrae, on witnessing the death of a friend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields which itself has become a text often used in remembrance ceremonies (especially in USA and Canada). The symbolism of the poppy represents the dead, rather than blood, as the flowers grew in abundance in the ground churned up by warfare and field cemeteries. The symbol has persisted amidst controversy both about the author’s intentions and what exactly the remembrance acts are about. The first verse calls on us to remember the dead, but the third asks future generations to pursue the enemies of the dead and not ‘break faith’ with them. Written in 1915 this has been interpreted as being a rejection of the attempts to negotiate Armistice.

Originally selling the poppies was Intended to raise money for French orphans then veterans. From the 1930s in the UK the money is for serving members of British armed forces.

Only after 1945 was the poppy also associated with crosses, with the double-meaning of marking a grave and the traditional Christian symbol.

White Poppy Wearing

http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html

The white poppy was invented by the Women’s Co-operative Guild in 1933, as women were very concerned about the potential for future war http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/poopy_hist1.html.

Wearing the white poppy was a controversial act in itself as some interpreted it as a sign of disrespect to veterans of WW1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/remembrance/how/poppy.shtml  and some people lost their jobs over wearing the symbol in the 1930s.

Two Minute Silence

The original public silence was to mark Armistice Day 11 November 1914 as the official end of World War 1, and to echo the silence reported by veterans as the noise of battle ended.

King George V institutionalised the 2 minute silence in 1919

Most families in the UK had lost loved ones in this war, and many of the victims’ bodies were not identified or buried in marked graves, so the silence was personally important to many people, and the symbolism of the tomb of the unknown soldier, buried in Westminster Abbey only in 1920, was highly potent.

By the 1930s for many the silence was resonant of the need for peace as much as about remembrance of the dead. War poets and accounts of the horror of war appeared in greater numbers in the 1930s. Many more joined peace movements and the white peace poppy was adopted by the Peace Pledge Union

By 1939 the support for peace became associated for many with appeasement with Germany and remembrance became shameful. The silence was cancelled 1939.

Royal Military Parades

From the first Armistice Day ceremony both the army and the royal family played a key role. For many the strong militaristic presence was uncomfortable.

The Peace Pledge Union took up the challenge and was joined by thousands. They objected to the military uniforms and firing of guns at the ceremony, as well as the presence of royalty, which seemed to celebrate war, rather than regret it. They also wanted to remember civilians, rather than just military personnel, and victims from both sides of the war, but were unsuccessful in changing the official policy.

The parade was cancelled in 1939 and did not continue through World War 2, for the same reasons that the silence was abandoned.

The ceremony was reinstated with royal presence in 1945 and has continued ever since.

Margaret Thatcher recognised the political significance of the day, remembering of the traffic stopping for the silence in her childhood. The Falklands war in 1982 gave her the opportunity to give the parades a renewed impetus which some found inappropriate.  Archbishop Runcie preached that we should remember both sides of wars but the BBC continued to support a nationalist presentation of the parades, with commentaries reinforcing this aspect.

Tony Blair also considered remembrance an important political occasion. He sought to limit the displays of patriotism and to shape the ceremonies to be more inclusive – including evacuees, and relatives of the WW1 veterans who had been shot at dawn for desertion. This widening of participation in the parades allowed the marching to continue even as WW! veterans became to old to participate, and there was a revival of the significance of the ceremonies. In 2005 the words of veteran Harry Patch inspired the pop group Radiohead to write a song about the life of teenage soldiers in the trenches at passchendaele http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/05/radiohead-harry-patch-in-memory

But also from the mid-1990s, the names of soldiers killed in Iraq were read aloud, and Blair had accurately judged that there was a public feeling for honouring the dead even though there was ambivalence about the war in Iraq, a tradition which has continued, with the deaths of servicemen and women being marked no matter where they died.

Church of England roles

Only after WW2 was ‘armistice day’ entered into the Anglican calendar as Remembrance Sunday (marked on the nearest Sunday to 11 November). This served the church well at a time when attendance was beginning to fall.

Post WW2 representatives from other religions asked for all religions to participate, particularly as many veterans from WW2 were drawn from other parts of the world and indeed religions. The unknown tomb does not have any religious significance as such and is thought to be a potential pan-religious symbol, including by some Muslims, http://paulsarmstrong.com/2010/11/13/remembrance-day-british-muslims/ but this aspect of the ceremony has remained dominated by the Anglican church..

Is power only about domination over others? This is the conventional understanding of power: to make someone do something against their interests. It is not always exercised directly. There are subtle, indirect and hidden ways such power is used. They encourage people to think they have no power; many conclude that power is a bad thing. There is another kind of power. The power to act together, to cooperate, enable others, to share. However, this kind of power is often dismissed as ineffective, ‘soft’, unrealistic …‘peacy’, in fact!  Having just completed a scoping study for the Arts and Humanities Research Council on Power in Community, read a lot of books on power and talked to lots of grass roots community activists in the north of England, I have concluded that this other kind of power really exists. It is not what some would just ‘like’ power to be. There are many who prefer to exercise power in this way. They stay on the margins because they don’t want the other kind of power and often despise those who use it. Some of these were tough inner city Asian lads, others were strong women of African Caribbean and Somali heritage, others were better off families from Bradford’s very ‘white’ ‘urban villages’, campaigning  against smelly vans dropping animal waste on the road outside their homes. Others were older men and women on our traditionally ‘white’ estates unable to imagine any moment when they had power, except when they were in trade unions. 

Just imagine for a minute, if non dominating power was the ‘normal’ kind of power. In other words, it was expected that power was a good thing and that we used it to work with others to solve problems. Just imagine, that the other kind of power, dominating power, was the exception. It would be seen as authoritarian, exclusionary, often descending into pure force and even violence. In short, part of the world’s problems not its solutions. Imagine again, that our sense of self worth was measured not by how much others jump to our command, but how much we contribute to solving the world’s problems.

Looking back over the year, I realised how much has been about power and its exercise and meanings. There is the power of money. The bankers who lubricate the economy with their dare devil risk taking. This is a reckless power over the lives of millions, exercised mostly by young men of the city empowered by the personal rewards and fast track life style they gain from playing with our money on the global markets. There is the power of despots and army generals. I have known this kind of power close-up  from working in Latin America when it was under military dictatorship. This year this power has been exposed across the Arab world. Such an overwhelming power to immiserate the lives of millions. There is the power of communication. Here in the UK, News International had the power to hack into peoples private conversations in order to sell newspapers and keep millions of people focussed on the personal trauma of celebrities and crime victims.

Millions of people….What kind of power you ask, makes millions accept the dominating power of others? And more importantly, what kind of power makes people question abuse and act collectively to address complex problems in ways which enhance the lives of everyone? That other kind of power does exist our ‘Power Talks’ confirmed. However, people who use it find it hard to impact on the world. The Occupy Movement have found one route. But many, many millions more might share some of that Movement’s goals, but feel unable to act. So I have a question. What makes non dominating power effective without reproducing dominating power? That for all you Peace Scholars out there is my research question. Over to you……

Peacyworld

26/11/2011

A friend once asked what would happen if there were a revolution and we weren’t invited? A moral dilemma for maturing activists no doubt, those of us who are perhaps passing the crest of the hill and maybe letting others take the strain of the continuous collective action, campaigning and late nights! But, this is a very important question – how do we stay in touch, pass on experience, weave our own actions and activism in to the fabric of social change and what do we mean by activism anyway? In an era of revolutions without a winter palace and a revolutionary multitude that transcends states, rather than a ‘people’ that gives sovereignty to them, how can we connect, how can we ‘resist, refuse and occupy’? ( More on the ‘people’ and the ‘multitude’ )

These questions have a pedigree in contemporary anticapitalist activism, going back to the much celebrated’ Give Up Activism’ article in ‘Reflections on June 18th’ – a day in 1999 when thousands of anticapitalists occupied the City of London, overcoming the ‘ring of steel’ to participate in a carnivalesque ransacking of the International Financial Futures and Options Exchange. A day that echoed around the world as similar protests took place in 43 countries. Of course, this is hardly mentioned in recent media commentary, after all who knew there were anticapitalists after Marx and the 60s and before George Soros and Adair Turner decided to tune in and drop out?

The argument contained in ‘Give Up Activism’, is that the ‘activist’ separates themselves through their ‘activism’, reaffirms the idea of the specialist and acts in ways that are not conducive to building a movement that can stretch beyond a ghetto of the young, mobile and self-appointed. It is, as all these things are, more complex and subtle than that, but then it’s probably best to read it directly.

‘Occupy’ raises these questions once again, whilst being very much a part of this movement and moment. And to be clear, not all occupiers are anticapitalist, much in the same way as not all capitalists are self-maximising egotists, though plenty are. However, those in the streets, squares and parks are indeed activists, and they are occupying spaces in close proximity to key nodes of the financial system. The problem being that in opposing capitalism there’s no winter palace to storm, no one definitive space to occupy, so we must, as the movement already tells us – ‘occupy the world’ – our world.

This is both a rhetorical call for more protests and logical outcome of musing on how to resist capitalism – that diffuse combination of elite control over key social and economic resources, their production, distribution and exchange. As we occupy our world we confront, refuse and resist capitalism in innumerable ways. After all capitalist social relations are not something most of us actually enjoy participating in. Few people find genuine fulfillment in working to create profit for others, whilst many find deep satisfaction in unpaid hobbies, organizing community events or local sports clubs, taking a day off to stay in bed with their partner or blaming the snow for their desire to play in a park with their children.

Of course economists often lament such activities and our snow days and no-shows are coupled with headlines concerning the damage we have done to the economy, with little or no mention of the damage done to people by serving this ‘engine of growth’. All of us perform a type of beautiful warfare against ‘the economy’ in these ways, and it is no accident that ‘economy’ can otherwise mean ‘frugality’ or ‘thrift’. These terms offer a truer reflection of the forced reduction of happiness we are required to undertake in the service of ‘growth’ – that impossible dream conspired against by a finite planet. In this sense, perhaps the call to ‘refuse, resist and occupy’ is one which we might participate in, and well beyond the tented cities outside the stock markets, banks and finance houses. So yes we can all be part of the occupy movement, activists and otherwise, because we can re-occupy our lives – finding space for sociality, refusing the commodification of everyday life and beginning to construct an economy that serves the multitude, rather than enslaving the people.

Graeme Chesters is a Senior Research Fellow in Peace Studies and co-author of ‘We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism’:
http://www.weareeverywhere.org

John Harris in The Guardian, asking if 2011 will go down in history as a year that changed the world: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/15/global-protests-2011-change-the-world

He mentions this piece, by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, which discusses 2011 as the year of ‘global indignation’: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/36339ee2-cf40-11e0-b6d4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1dnJQxbpm