More Living With Paradox

When Brent Council shut down 7 out of 12 libraries,i think they subsequently panicked when despite the superficiality of a new attitude to the community,the actual behaviour of the Labour leadership,in my opinion simply demonstrated that they were only capable of lying and obfuscation.Eventually,they put up a lot of wooden panels around the library in Preston(Park).

But it was a 2 edged sword.It provided campaigners with a "wall of shame"where our community indicated the many  reasons why we wanted a library here,amongst  all the closed libraries(we WANT them ALLre-opened).It was cathartic,a way to articulate pain,loss and rage.......

This idea also came up in a slightly different form during the process of organising the recent SWAN/social work action network-that we should find a way to acknowledge loss through cuts and austerity on the one hand and loss of comrades,in the context of recording our struggles and small but significant victories,including locally the Counihan-Sanchez family being re-instated to benefits and the campaign asserting successfully our right to demonstrate.We set up the walls at conference although i don't know how or if it worked as my attention was largely focussed on other things.I still believe in it as  a technique anyway....

Today,some of us,probably all activists in the community across Brent or elsewhere,have been incensed by that same"bunch of clowns"starting a book of condolence for a certain unbearable ex-prime minister.I will say no more,except this:

I was so incensed that i suggested that perhaps we start a book of condolence for our loss of libraries,benefits,housing,services.....having had a couple of people say its a good idea-it seems to that either on the internet or in the real world,we probably SHOULD find a way to acknowledge and record oru losses.It would be cathartic to do so and actually i don't think we have to accept it.The secret might be to work out a way to act on it for real.

Meantime,the family,friends,associates of that unbearable prime minister can get on with what they need to do,but do they really need to involve the rest of us,or for us to pick up the bill.I know that at too many levels the answer is yes because in a class society the dominant ideas must be the ideas of the dominant class and they can't bear or allow us to think or believe anything else.If we do the threaten to pre-arrest us,which itself is an interesting idea(no it is'nt).As far as i'm concerned i want to forget her and her entire class completely;all i and indeed,we need to know is how and why they oppress and destroy our class-simply so that  we can bring that kind of system to an end.Then we can finally put them,ideologically on the rubbish  pile of history,and frankly write them out of history completely.After all it is no worse than what they have done to the billions that make up our  class for several hundred years.This is not vindictive thinking,it is simply historical fact!