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The Scent That Captures That "1930s Moment"!
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LXXXII
Under the shadow of War, Heaven’s artillery thundered by
The shrubs that blossomed from the shrapnel of numberless
Fathers’ mud-splattered martyrdoms, shuddered their thoughts
Like sudden gusts thrusting through willowing bulrushes,
And put splinters in their milk-weaned nerves –so Stephen
Spender enunciated in chilled tone: ‘What can I do that
Matters?’ Trope-strapped troops of a stormy peace, the inter-
War generation, more than any other before them reared
On guilt and an insatiable itch to prove themselves in some
Other type of war, being, as Edmund Blunden noted, and
Samuel Hynes interpolated, ‘bracketed by wars’ –but yet
The Tight Young Things were also strait-jacketed in
Conflicting pacifisms, hence their mantles of anxieties,
Both anticipating and dreading oncoming conflict,
A new Dark Age of aggressive energies their frayed nerves
Presaged, that snagged on the baggage of their thoughts
And triggered a generation’s edginess; but there was
A vicarious war to be fought on their doorstep, a rhetorical
Cri de Coeur on behalf of the poor, for the nation was still
Savagely divided between haves and have-nots, a state
Of ‘guerilla’ class war, farcical if it wasn’t so industrially
Fatal for its hopelessly under-equipped proletarian side –
Perennial shadow-conscripts pitted on an ancient battlefield
Of material brinkmanship, rigged-out in flat caps and ragged
Trousers for the long fight that has been so long no one can
Recount its declaration, nor the reasons it was declared –
Quite unlike the bullet-and-bomb rubricised crusade in Spain
Undertaken by volunteering Quixotes in berets, bandoliers
And corduroys, but against the same enemy: for what else
Is Capitalism but Fascism in camouflage, which fires on all
Fiscal cylinders using bills and debts and usurious credit
For ammunition (or sometimes water canon and rubber bullets
If its unarmed victims get a little restive)…? Adam Smith’s
“Invisible hand” is simply the white-gloved appendage
Of legderdemain that presages the pugilistic grasp
Of the full-blown Falange –the daily battle to survive that wove
The tattered backcloth of their lives, while their malnourished
Bodies were beset by turbercles and rickets, limbs’ dying
Pickets, ripe pickings for fiscal snipers of parliamentary
Hopefuls safely camouflaged against spotless green benches…
LXXXIII
It’s a Battlefield, as Graham Greene depicted the class-riven
Thirties (in his “first overtly political novel”), its’ silver-
Spooned politics and atrophic class tensions, the divide-
And-rule drinking games of port-passing public-school
Politicians played out as national policies to stir up
Resentments as cigarettes stir up phlegm, get the workers
To resent the unemployed as “scroungers” once again,
Profligate dogs weaned “on the Lloyd George” –
In spite and particularly because of mass unemployment
In the face of overproduction and under-consumption–
And strikers as the enemy within, choicest peasouper
Politics of employers’ spin, just so much tabloid-ladled,
Long-spooned broth: throw the common folk into fog-bound
Isolation then put each to the peashooter of persecution –
Just as Raglan, Pennefather and Cathcart had once thrown
Their pauperised troopers (although more through strategic
Incompetence than malicious intention) into the thick
Of gun-fog and confusion at Inkerman –now a new Crimea
Was being re-enacted domestically, waged by wage boards
Against the besieged ranks of labour, but armies were
Separated in mists of administrative obfuscation and
Ministerial pettifogging, no green runner beans visible
After the gallop and headlong plunge of the Regulation-
Lite Brigade into the usurious Valley of Wonga…
Into the valley of debt
Strode the unfunded –
Capitalists to the left of them
Capitalists to the right of them
Capitalists in front of them
Capitalists behind them
