XI

In 1933, Bob Reid, Fred Copeman, and Fred Abbot led

A Deputation to the Central Public Assistance Committee

Of the London County Council, armed with a petition

Of 120,030 signatures against the degrading methods

Of the Means Test; and when they noticed some councillors

Appearing to be “half asleep”, the petitioners jumped

Into the chamber to wake them up by the scruffs of

Their swan-collared necks, leading to the deputants’ arrests…

In the dock, Reid ‘gave a spirited defence’: “If I am guilty

Of anything it is of having ... put forward the protest

Of thousands of unemployed against the maladministration

Of the Public Assistance Committee, that is driving

The unemployed down into the vortex of poverty and

Degradation” (his comrade in alms, Copeman, had been

A chief protagonist in the Invergordon Mutiny of ’31,

When the crews of fifteen Royal Navy ships downed rules and

Disobeyed orders, until proposed pay cuts were withdrawn)…

XII

So was it in the Thirties, so is it again in the Twenty-Teens –

2013 is now teleologically twinned with 1933, not only in

The Morning Star’s shadowing of its former days as the Daily

Worker by publishing ‘80 Years Ago Today…’ every day,

But in everything that’s happening in our daily environments

And the attitudes cultivating; the piling human empties stacking

Up on the streets, if only more of us could see, squint through

The mists of obfuscation, of eau de austérité, of cheap-and-

Tearful O so nostalgic Devon Violet haze –Culture is drifting

Back, reflexively, to safe havens of effervescent certainties

Powdered by pre-welfare perfumeries; we’re drifting back

In time on stagflating winds wafting back clairfragrances

Of cheap perfumes and thrifty fumigants; back, far back,

To Violet days…where, once more, the poor are regulated

In their behaviours by politicians happy to regulate alms and

Wages but rarely if ever those so-called “wealth creators”,

Speculators and profiteers, nor the hyperflating rents

Of private landlords, since most ministers number among

That grab-happy breed –O yes, the poor are prodded about

Like cattle electrified into compliance by cathodes

Of Nudge Units, Behavioural Therapy, or boosters of ECT…