FORUM: Illtyd Harrington - ‘As I Please’

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Published: 23 December, 2010

It’s time to kick against the pricks

I NEVER completely understood where the expression “to makes somebody turn in their grave” came from. It would be a difficult operation in a coffin and very alarming.

This was a phrase used in a letter to me from a friend and distinguished Liberal Tom Axworthy.  

I knew him from his days in Oxford and he became right-hand man to Pierre Trudeau during his premiership of Canada in the 1970s and 1980s. Tom’s brother Lloyd, indeed, became the foreign minister of Canada. 

Anyway Tom wrote to me recently: “What on earth is happening to the Liberal Party in Britain? Lloyd George must be turning in his grave. After all, Lloyd George laid the basis of the English welfare state. But his withering scorn and dismissive rhetoric would have flattened these Liberals who have unworthily succeeded him.”

Eric Pickles, the gross churlish Secretary of State and his handmaiden Grant Shapps, the unspeakable Minister of Housing, are laying about them in acts of civil vandalism which would earn them a sentence for criminal damage in a court. With their intensive use of the wreckers’ destruction ball, they have ushered many of those in acute need towards a Christmas presided over by King Herod.

Where on earth is the logic in providing less money and burdening additional duties on local government. 

Look at any local TV news programme and it will be a catalogue of closures of facilities for the severely handicapped, the mentally sick, the old and cold people, closed library doors, barricaded sports facilities. 

The quiet and undemanding leader of local Liberal councillors has asked Clegg to restrain Pickles, but he and Cable are just as enthusiastic. And with no mention of the trauma that is coming in 2011.

Clegg acts out his role as the sleepwalker, where Cable, a man apparently fond of dressing up, has coveted the role of Houdini – a very difficult position to achieve in a Parliament full of Houdinis.

They don’t seem to have noticed that the Rowntree Foundation, a very independent body, have already identified a million extra people who have fallen through the poverty net.

And yet, something is happening beneath the surface. Not even the TUC could put 30,000 people on the streets.

This was the unexpected and, for them, unpleasant blip on the political radar. The students were on the march. The monstrous insensitivity of the police only fuelled the dedication of those who feel cheated and offended. This was organised anger – and who gave the police the legal authority to stop public assembly – even corralling passers-by?

But there is ample precedent for alternative action. The Hunger marchers of the 1930s were highly disciplined and marched into the Savoy and Ritz hotels with the right amount to buy a cup of tea.

I among others go purple in the face about the activities of Topshop owner Sir Philip Green. But it was much more constructive to occupy his shops. Green and his ilk – once you’ve scraped the surface – are against equality and, I suspect, freedom of information, and many of our basic human rights.

As the Bible says, “it is time to kick against the pricks”.

CND marchers, we now know through Cabinet papers, did affect policy. Two million march against Blair did not produce any immediate results. But when he was going through his Neronic period, the world was closing in on him.

Greenham Common women staged an extraordinarily courageous battle against Cruise missiles.

The enemies of truth are terrified of the new methods of instant communication. It’s quite a contrast to my childhood when my father sent me into the streets to announce a meeting of the local Communist Party.

For the politically infantile, I would remind them of Jack the Giant Killer or that wonderful story of David overcoming Goliath.

We don’t need to emulate Michael Foot during the Second World War when, amid the fear of invasion, he volunteered to be an assassin. I only need to conjure up a Welsh witch who could steal Vince’s dancing pumps. 

After all, what has that hollow man got left?