Jack Monroe writes about how her experience of poverty has affected her mental health and her personality. She is not the person she was, not the woman she could have been, because of the stress and trauma of poverty. This is something I have witnessed first-hand. I grew up around a man shaped by the harsh realities of poverty in the 30s and 40s in Kilmarnock. My grandfather ‘never missed a day of work.’ Rain, hail, or shine, hungover, sick, and – latterly – dying he got up and went to the garage where he worked fixing car engines.
What Just Happened in Ireland?
For the first time in modern Irish history, the Irish electorate has been free to devote all its attention to Ireland and the many problems we have here – and many of those are hangovers from British rule or products of the post-colonial mess England left in its passing. Our efforts to pacify Britain and convince it we’re more than animals – our inferiority complex – have created a quasi-collaborationist middle, professional, and political class which has failed Ireland, which has failed the 1916 Republic and its promise of ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland.’
Our Day Has Come
Irish people, beat down by austerity, sick of the homelessness and the housing crisis, have turned to Sinn Féin in numbers; the only party for a united Ireland – a Republic for all the children of Ireland. As the counting trundled on, one win after another put to bed forever the idea that Ireland cannot awaken from the nightmare of its history, a story imposed on us for centuries by British soldiers, their occupation, laws, and atrocities. At long last our day has come, and the wave – the ‘surge’ – of emotion that rushed through the Republican movement was equalled only by...
Doomed to Failure
Every one of the commitments made today by our new Prime Minister outside Number 10 cannot be delivered. At best, over the next few weeks and month, we will be fed a diet of platitudes, slogans, and outright lies. But, as the saying goes, Johnson is all fur coat and no knickers. In a previous essay I believe I hit the nail on the head when I described Johnson as the Anton Drexler of British politics. He is the placeholder leader who will make the monster to come more palatable.
Prioritise Scotland
By closing our parliament Britain will be committing a crime against our democracy and our sovereignty. At that moment its claim to us and its claim to our civil obedience ends. Every law intended to safeguard the British state and dominate Scotland ceases to have effect. At the closure of the Scottish parliament we have every moral and legal right to defend our country and to assert our Claim of Right. No matter how hard it tries, Britain will never defeat us so long as we stay united and work together, bearing every blow it deals us with perfect resolve and unwavering determination...
What Working-Class?
Now when I listen to Leonard and Sweeney and Co. prattling on about the working-class it means nothing. Their insincerity and lack of authenticity no longer upset me. Council housing area vermin (CHAVs) like me stopped caring about their hypocrisy years ago. Most of us gave up on politics altogether, thinking no doubt that David Cameron was at least honest about his loathing of us as a class without aspiration. As we awoke during the 2014 independence referendum campaign, after a long sleep, we saw up close how Labour campaigned against us.
Scotland: The Case for Agitation
Agitation is the self-affirmation of our political will in such a way that it forces those who impose the contradiction to show themselves fully. There is no shortage of examples, but let us focus on one: The Faslane nuclear-submarine base. Our event is of course the union which compels us to be the dumping ground of these diabolical weapons of mass destruction and murder. The contradiction is that this is foisted upon us – a people who are a peaceful people and a people who have time and again said in no uncertain terms that we do not want this nightmare in our country.
Radical Independence?
Effective social and political campaigns, then, must be, by necessity, single-issue campaigns – or as near to single-issue campaigns as they can practicably be. This does not mean, as someone once suggested, that other important political causes are to be “sent to the back of the bus.” No one is saying other issues – like gender equality and the campaign to save the bees – are not important. Naturally, they are important – some crucially so. But the fact remains, that a campaign fighting every campaign is limited by finances, resources, and manpower (or people-power).
Random Public Journal 