May Day, International Workers' Day, 2012

May Day is International Workers' Day!! Let's celebrate it!!

A poem by William  Morris to encourage us!

by William Morris

9. MAY DAY, 1894

Clad is the year in all her best,
The land is sweet and sheen;
Now Spring with Summer at her breast,
Goes down the meadows green. 

Here are we met to welcome in
The young abounding year,
To praise what she would have us win
Ere winter draweth near. 

For surely all is not in vain,
This gallant show she brings;
But seal of hope and sign of gain,
Beareth this Spring of springs. 

No longer now the seasons wear
Dull, without any tale
Of how the chain the toilers bear
Is growing thin and frail. 

But hope of plenty and goodwill
Flies forth from land to land,
Nor any now the voice can still
That crieth on the hand. 

A little while shall Spring come back
And find the Ancient Home
Yet marred by foolish waste and lack,
And most enthralled by some. 

A little while, and then at last
Shall the greetings of the year
Be blent with wonder of the past
And all the griefs that were. 

A little while, and they that meet
The living year to praise,
Shall be to them as music sweet
That grief of bye-gone days. 

So be we merry to our best,
Now the land is sweet and sheen,
And Spring with Summer at her breast
Goes down the meadows green. 

Wagner, THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, Coliseum, 28 April 2012

Richard Wagner, THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.

English National Opera, London Coliseum, 28 April 2012

Cast:
Daland, a Norwegian Sailor                      CLIVE BAYLEY

Senta, his daughter                                    ORLA BOYLAN

Erik, in love with Senta                              STUART SKELTON

Mary, works supervisor                             SUSANNA TUDOR-THOMAS

The Steersman                                         ROBERT MURRAY

The Dutchman                                         JAMES CRESSWELL

The child Senta                                       AOIFE CHECKLAND


Chorus and orchestra of English National Opera

Conductor                                                                             EDWARD GARDNER
Director                                                                                 JONATHAN KENT


The performance opened with a very thrilling account of the overture, conveying a vivid sense of the storm battering the ships on the sea (except the Dutchman's, of course!) and waves crashing on the shore...moving on to the poignancy of Senta's motif. The ENO under Edward Gardner (this is his first time conducting Wagner) gave of their best.


When the curtain rises,  about a third of the way through the overture, we see the child Senta in her bedroom - typical little girl's bedroom, decorated in pink!! (I would imagine the designer, Paul Brown, has daughters....) She tries on her father's sea-boots...then when he comes to say goodnight to her before going to sea, he gives her a portrait of the Dutchman.

I liked this way of depicting the 'back-story' of the drama, but wasn't sure at first  whether it was appropriate to depict the entire first Scene (it was performed without an interval) as the child Senta's dream.  As the image illustrates, the violence of the storm was depicted almost realistically on the stage, while the child sits up in bed brooding over the image of the Dutchman. It all takes place in her dream, then - the Dutchman is a projection of her needs, just  .as she is a projection of his.




Clive Bayley as Daland perhaps slightly overdid the characterisation of the bluff, hearty sailor, but this worked well in contrast with the figure of the Dutchman - James Cresswell as a Byronic hero with brooding, saturnine good looks!

Because this is Senta's dream, the Dutchman first appears curled up on her bed, and then rises to deliver his monologue.

 Creswell's voice is well-suited to the role of the mysterious outsider - perhaps he looks more like a 'romantic' hero than one might expect of the Flying Dutchman, but it fits with the overall concept, and he sounded beautifully lyrical in the scene with Daland.....who is often criticised for being willing to 'sell his daughter for money', but one could turn this on its head and argue that he wants to make an advantageous match for her, as any prudent father would (like Giorgio Germont, for instance!!) 
Wagner gives Daland an abrupt, jerky melody (Wie? Hoert' ich recht? Meine Tochter sein Weib?), while the Dutchman's lament for his fate (Ach, ohne Weib, ohne Kind bin ich...) soars lyrically over this.

At the end of the scene, the child finally disappears and the adult Senta (Orla Boylan) replaces her on the bed. She gets up and gets dressed, then she goes to join the other girls in the factory, where they are making ships in bottles. Why not? The Spinning Chorus is only a device to set the scene and prepare for Senta's Ballad. I loved the idea of Mary (Susanna Tudor-Thomas) as a brassy works supervisor! Senta doesn't get on with the other girls, they mock her obsession with the picture of the mysterious stranger, and even while she sings the ballad they are making faces behind her back or just ignoring her. She sings it with fierce commitment, I think Wagner needs the soprano sound to be piercing here, and then more mellow in the scene with the Dutchman.

Meanwhile, Stuart Skelton succeeded admirably in the thankless task of trying to make Erik interesting. In this production he's a security guard, referred to disparagingly by the girls as an 'office boy'.

He sings with heartfelt sincerity and beautiful phrasing -  but who is going to listen to the office boy she's known all her life when she can dream about a mysterious stranger, who has suffered and whom she can perhaps save!!

And then - her dream comes true! She hardly notices her father, she and the Dutchman are mesmerised, staring at each other - and Daland finally notices and takes himself off. The scene between them is the heart of the matter, of course.....each sees in the other the fulfilment they have been dreaming of. The emphasis has been on the Dutchman as a figment of Senta's imagination - but, as I indicated above, it could equally well be that she is a projection of his needs. What they are expressing is  his need for redemption and her need to redeem him.

When Daland returns, he does a little dance of triumph while bright, cheerful, jolly (er, trivial?!) music breaks in on the brooding solemnity of the duet - they have been in another, 'inner' world and now they are - or at least Senta is - brought back to everyday life again. (I don't suppose the Dutchman has much recollection of what everyday life is!) A wedding ceremony takes place and then the scene changes to a drunken party...during which the sailors (most of them in fancy dress) bully Senta and almost come to the point of raping her. The girls do nothing to help her. (The Dutchman has disappeared by this time).

Why would they do this? Why would they bully their captain's daughter, as they seem to have quite a good relationship with him? It doesn't make much sense dramatically in the light of what has gone before - but when the Dutchman's crew start their spine-chilling song (we never see them, just hear the ghostly chorus), Daland's sailors run away and Senta is left alone on the stage, doing an ecstatic dance - so it seems as though she regards her marriage to the mysterious stranger as HER redemption as well.


The staging of the ending was rather disappointing - the Dutchman disappears through a trapdoor and Senta  breaks a bottle and stabs herself with a shard of glass and - that's it!  But the music contradicts this and tells us that both Senta and the Dutchman have achieved the redemption they sought.

National Gardening Week, 16-22 April 2012

I am doing my bit for National Gardening Week !!


Yesterday I planted Spinach and Sweetcorn.


Today - the rain has stopped and the sun has come out just in time for me to plant the fuchsias before lunch!


Really delighted to say that the Apple Blossom is coming out on the trees......

And the blackberry blossom too!

Soil Association : Save the honeybee : Household pesticides

Read this article by the Soil Association about household pesticides that are dangerous to bees.

Soil Association : Save the honeybee : Household pesticides

The garden today

Nearly all my daffs have flowered now, and most of the hyacinths.

What makes me happiest is that my mini-fruit trees - apple, apricot - have started to put out the tiniest little blossoms...just wonderful when I go out in the morning and see them!

(Apple blossom)

(Apricot Blossom)

Now I am busy planting veg and herbs....planted some garlic chives and rocket yesterday, onions, radishes and nasturtiums today. (Nasturtiums sort of count as veg, since you can eat them in salads....very delicious, peppery taste!

I love my garden so much!!

Feed the World without destroying the Planet

Feed the world without destroying the planet

A seminar on food sovereignty

  

November 12, 11- 5.30

University of London Union,

Malet Street, London WC1

Organised by Socialist Resistance

and  Green Left

Speakers include Maria Neri Pampilo of CONZARRD, Graciela Romero of War on Want Rehad Desai, South African climate change activist, Derek Wall of Green Left, Pierre Rousset of Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste and Terry Conway of the Socialist Resistance editorial Board




Agenda

11- 1.30 Introductory plenary

1.30-2.30 Lunch

2.30-4.00 Workshops

1. Women and Food Sovereignty
2. Agribusiness and the supermarkets
3. Land rights not Land grabs
4. Food Sovereignty and Climate change

4.15-5.30 Closing Plenary

with Maria Neri Pampilo

Maria has worked for CONZARRD since the mid 1990’s.

CONZARRD is a grouping of popular and non-governmental organisations working on agrarian reform and rural development in Mindanao, in the Philippines. For CONZARRD organic farming is not a luxury – but essential to the survival of the famers.Organic rice for example is more resilient against both disease and flooding as well as cheaper. Organic fertiliser, produced locally enriches the soil rather than depleting it in the way chemical fertiliser does.

Other principal speakers include: Graciela Romero War on Want International Programme Director and author of their Report on Food Sovereignty
 
Rehad Desai: South African climate change activist and documentary film maker, visiting Britain to build support for the climate justice protests in Durban to coincide with the COP 17 summit in December

Derek Wall, Green Left – former principal speaker of the Green Party, author of the No Nonsense Guide to Green politics

Pierre Rousset : Noveau Parti Anticapalist (NPA), France, and Europe-Asia social forums – Editor of www.europesolidaire.com, has written extensively on Asia particularly the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan

Terry Conway: Socialist Resistance Editorial Board

Food sovereignty not `food security’ is answer to world hunger

One and a half billion people are at risk from rising food prices. This is the dramatic conclusion of the report by UN food agencies; The state of food insecurity in the World today. The report talks of a triple crisis of food, climate change and depleted natural resources, which could affect 1.5 billion people across 10 countries. It says: “having 600 million people suffering from hunger on a daily basis is never acceptable”

But the way the UN agencies focus on the concept of “food security” is fundamentally flawed. They promote private investment and increased agricultural productivity – both of which are part of the problem. They have contributed to the development of widespread hunger, rising food prices and small producers being forced off the land by increasing power of agribusiness and the supermarkets.

Socialist Resistance and Green Left say that the answer is food sovereignty; that is the right of the people who produce food to determine their own agricultural policies, free from interference from either multinationals or from international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. The promotion of neo-liberal deregulation by these institutions has been one of the key factors leading to today’s food crisis.

We say no to the power of the supermarkets. Food producers are at the mercy of the supermarkets who dictate what is grown and what price they will pay. Tesco makes two thirds of its sales and profits in Britain. In the second quarter of this financial year like for like sales in British stores fell by 0.7% while profits increased by 12% in the first half of the year!

These are not issues that the left in Britain often addresses – we hope you will join us to hear Maria and other speakers discuss why they are vital to us all

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I want to register for the Feed the world without destroying the planet seminar

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Send £7 or £4 unwaged to PO Box 62732, London SW2 9CQ or by paypal.com to pay resistance@sent.com

Battle of Cable Street, 75th Anniversary

There is a whole series of events taking place to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street in the East End of London, when Jewish and local people got together to prevent Oswald Moseley's Fascists from marching through a predominantly Jewish area. Many organisations are joined together to commemorate the heroic actions of the opponents of the Fascists.
I have added a list of some of the events that are taking place during this period.

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2 October, 11.30am-1pm



Cable Street 75 March and Rally www.cablestreet75.org.uk


Assemble: 11.30am Aldgate East (junction of Braham Street and Leman Street)


Rally: 1.00pm St George-in-the-East Gardens (off Cable Street)

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2 October, 12 noon – 10 pm



Cable Street Group. Produced by Alternative Arts http://www.battleofcablestreet.org.uk/

A programme of events and exhibitions to celebrate and commemorate the Battle of Cable Street.


Wilton’s Music Hall 1 Graces Alley E1 8JB, Aldgate and Aldgate East tube, Shadwell station


Admission Free


12 noon – 6pm Stalls along Graces Alley by campaigning groups, local organisations and supporters with street theatre and music by La Columna, The Lost Marbles, The Fairly Fresh Fish Co, Klezmania and The Cockney Awkestra.


12 noon – 10pm Protest & Survive Exhibition with photography documenting the Battle, posters from the Spanish Civil War, images recording the past 25 years of protest against racial discrimination by Phil Maxwell and portraits of the diverse communities of the East End today by documentary photographers Kalin Coromina, Ned Dyke-Coomes, Zane Mellupe, Lydia Polzer, Ben Speck and Neil White.


1pm Grand Union Youth Orchestra of East London


Specially commissioned concert by 30 diverse talented young under the leadership of Tony Haynes, director of the Grand Union Orchestra.


3pm Book launch and Reception
Five Leaves is publishing five books to celebrate the anniversary. There will be readings and signings followed by a panel discussion. All the books will be on sale directly from the publisher:
The Battle of Cable Street by Cable Street Group;
October Day by Frank Griffin;
Street of Tall People by Alan Gibbons;
Battle for the East End by David Rosenberg;
 Everything Happens in Cable Street by Roger Mills.


4pm rebels in the 1930s – working class writers Panel discussion with:
Andy Croft author of Red Letter Days,
Ken Worpole author of Dockers and Detectives,
Mary Joannou author of Ladies, Please Don’t Smash These Windows: Women’s Writing, Feminism and Social Change 1918-1938.
Chaired by Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves Publishing.


5pm Song & Dance With Sandra Kerr, Leon Rosselson and Udichi Shilpi Gosthi.


7pm Sunday Night at Wilton’s Music Hall ‘They Shall Not Pass’. Star spangled evening with poets, singers, choirs, comics and bands including Billy Bragg, Shappi Khorsandi, Mike Rosen, Ninia Benjamin, Raised Voices and The Men They Couldn’t Hang (acoustic).



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