Shades

Equations proved splitting the atrium
Was all too possible. Consequences,
Though, were uncertain: might the sun be quenched
And this galaxy become extinguished?
Would tyranny lurk in ballot boxes,
Growing stronger on each cast vote consumed
Until powerful enough to emerge
And devour the world for its own good?
Could it be sullen trees might realise
While roots are conduits of nourishment
They’re also shackles holding them to a plot?
The blast should strip the last veil from lovers,
The brilliance being enough to dazzle
The gullible, and blind the fallible.
Such were the calculations, carefully
Weighed and balanced, before the ultimate
Order was confirmed. It was with foresight
The cardiologists responsible
For complex dead reckoning secreted
Spectacles with smoked lenses, in pockets
Authorities forget to search, so they
Might bear witness through their glasses darkly.

Dave Alton

ID?

There are engines in all cells of my being,
Precise technologies of which I am
Hardly aware. Through their efficacy
Blood pumps, breath is taken, poems written
And vital existence manufactured.
Throughout my body surge mighty rivers,
Plunging as cataracts into gorges
Prodigiously luscious by undergrowth
Rooted in earth precious with minerals,
Deep-mined and smelted before being cast
In moulds of sand transmuted to fine glass
By the heat, by the passion, by the need,
That can’t be assuaged, for comprehension.
Such be the machines driving my nature,
Each one meticulously constructed
Through some immanent creativity
Which assembled an entire universe
From all there was in an infinite mote.
I might well be forgiven by God for
Wondering about the divine presence
Of mind that can conceive such artifice.

Dave Alton

thomas spence plaque unveiled 21/6/2010

FOLK SONG FOR THOMAS SPENCE

(1750-1814)


Down by the old Quayside,
I heard a young man cry,
among the nets and ships he made his way.
As the keelboats buzzed along,
he sang a seagull’s song;
he cried out for the Rights of you and me.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,
he gave up all his life
just to be free.
Up and down the cobbled Side,
struggling on through the Broad Chare,
he shouted out his wares
for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,
he was a man the likes you rarely see.
With a pamphlet in his hand,
and a poem at his command,
he haunts the Quayside still
and his words sing.

His folks they both were Scots,
sold socks and fishing nets,
through the Fog on the Tyne they plied their trade.
In this theatre of life,
the crying and the strife,
they tried to be decent and be strong.

Oh lads, that man was Thomas Spence,
he gave up all his life
just to be free.
Up and down the cobbled Side,
struggling on through the Broad Chare,
he shouted out his wares
for you and me.

Oh lads, you should have seen him gan,
he was a man the likes you rarely see.
With a pamphlet in his hand,
and a poem at his command,
he haunts the Quayside still
and his words sing.


KEITH ARMSTRONG







THE HIVE OF LIBERTY

(AFTER THE NAME OF THOMAS SPENCE’S BOOKSHOP AT 8 LITTLE TURNSTILE, HOLBORN)





I am a small and humble man,
my body frail and broken.
I strive to do the best I can.
I spend my life on tokens.

I traipse through Holborn all alone,
hawking crazy notions.
I am the lonely people’s friend.
I live on schemes and potions.

For, in my heart and in my mind,
ideas swarm right through me.
Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,
my words just flow ike wine,
my words just flow like wine.

I am a teeming worker bee.
My dignity is working.
My restless thoughts swell like the sea.
My fantasies I’m stoking.

There is a rebel inside me,
a sting about to strike.
I hawk my works around the street.
I put the world to rights.

For, in my heart and in my mind,
ideas swarm right through me.
Yes, in this Hive of Liberty,
my words just flow like wine,
my words just flow like wine.




KEITH ARMSTRONG







PIGS’ MEAT

“Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.” (from Edmund Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’)

We are the swinish multitude,
Who feed off the Loose Meat,
Our brains are bacon,
Our balls pork-chops,
We honk instead of speak.

We’re pigs’ meat,
Pigs' meat,
We wallow in our muck.
Our snouts deep in the stinking trough,
We don’t give a toss.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We riot in the street.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We piss on the elite.

We are the swinish multitude,
With sties that blind our eyes.
No sense of direction,
Just one big erection,
We bonk instead of think.

We’re pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We wallow in our muck.
Our snouts deep in the stinking trough,
We don’t give a toss.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We riot in the street.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We piss on the Elite.

We are the swinish multitude,
Incapable of speeches,
We drink royal blood,
We eat the rich,
We fart in Halls of Art.

We’re pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We wallow in our muck.
Our snots deep in the stinking trough,
We don’t give a toss.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We riot in the street.
Pigs’ meat,
Pigs’ meat,
We piss on the Elilte.


KEITH ARMSTRONG



(from the music-theatre piece ‘Pigs'Meat’ written for Bruvvers Theatre Company)

Earl Grey and the Starlings

Contrasts hold the moment:

between most going home and others

opening up the night of fun and hope; 

between the brightening lights and windows

and the deep, darkening blue of the evening sky; 

between fading outlines of people, indistinct in a moving crowd

and sharp lines of rooftops with cupolas of copper

and classical columns of a confident, forgotton time.

The symbols of imperial pride

are now neither understood nor affordable 

in a city given over to money 

and the carnal delights of shopping, shagging

and swilling beer.

Atop his column,

Earl Grey surveys his scene with studied indifference. 

Celebrating a century of civic peace,

put there by a grateful people in 1838     

hoping, perhaps knowing,

that the dark, satanic side of it,

at least at home, would pass away

in Progress’s inexorable march.

His proud monument 

ignores the world beyond

with slaves not yet free and Africa, India and much else

on the map painted red and 

under the imperial boot.

The world he surveys has gone

replaced by another more violent and misunderstood. 

Here, now, in this city

without the pits and ships and steam hammers

that forged the generations behind those now 

scurrying home from their offices and shops,

the new world blindly thrives, 

a cosmos of greed, debt and fragile hope.

Swarming around his head, fewer now than then,

the starlings congregate.

They swoop and dive with one mind,

carving fractal swirls

against the azure blue dark

before they settle down in huddled rows on balustrades 

and parapets high above the emptying streets.

If Grey could look down, lower his gaze

he’d see a different world

and like Kier Hardie, looking down from the moon,

in another poem I like,

not know whether to laugh or cry.

For the sounds of starlings come now also from below,

from half-naked girls

giggling, shrieking and stumbling on their heels

past swaggering blokes, half-dressed

with shaved heads and earrings 

from whom, as they pass, all the perfumes of Arabia mingle

in a promise of delights to come.

Each has his hopes and perhaps his fears 

But they are not on view;

except in the swirling patterns the old Earl can see

on the ground as well as above his head.

These creatures stay together 

in a dance that not one of them comprehends. 

Each one is free, but tightly bound in a pattern

beyond control with a purpose impossible to know,

in a world beyond caring.

Bill Williamson

THE THOMAS SPENCE TRUST

                            

 News Bulletin   June 2010                                                                           

It’s good to welcome the establishment of The Thomas Spence Trust, founded by a group of Tyneside activists intent on celebrating and promoting the life and work of that noted pioneer of people’s rights, pamphleteer and poet Thomas Spence (1750-1814), who has born on Newcastle’s Quayside in those turbulent times. 

Spence served in his father’s netmaking trade from the age of ten but went on later to be a teacher at Haydon Bridge Free Grammar School and at St. Ann’s Church in Byker under the City Corporation. In 1775, he read his famous lecture on the right to property in land to the Newcastle Philosophical Society, who voted his expulsion at their next meeting.

He claimed to have invented the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ and chalked it in the caves at Marsden Rocks in South Shields in honour of the working-class hero ‘Blaster Jack’ Bates, who lived there.

He even came to blows with famed Tyneside wood-engraver Thomas Bewick (to whom a memorial has been recently established on the streets of Newcastle) over a political issue, and was thrashed with cudgels for his trouble.

From 1792, having moved to London, he took part in radical agitations, particularly against the war with France. He was arrested several times for selling his own and other seditious books and was imprisoned for six months without trial in 1794, and sentenced to three years for his Restorer of Society to its Natural State in 1801.

Whilst politicians such as Edmund Burke saw the mass of people as the ‘Swinish Multitude’, Spence saw creative potential in everybody and broadcast his ideas in the periodical Pigs’ Meat.

He had a stall in London’s Chancery Lane, where he sold books and saloup, and later set up a small shop called The Hive of Liberty in Holborn.

He died in poverty ‘leaving nothing to his friends but an injunction to promote his Plan and the remembrance of his inflexible integrity’.

The Thomas Spence Trust organised a mini-festival to celebrate Spence in 2000 when it published a booklet on his life and work, together with related events, with the aid of Awards for All. 

Trust founder-member, poet Keith Armstrong has written a play for Bruvvers Theatre Company on the socialist pioneer which has been performed at St. Ann’s Church and other venues in the city.

Now the Trust has successfully campaigned for a plaque on the Quayside in Newcastle, where Spence was born. The plaque will be unveiled on Monday June 21st 2010, Spence's 260th birthday, with a number of talks, displays and events coinciding with it. 

Further information from: Dr Keith Armstrong, The Thomas Spence Trust, 93 Woodburn Square, Whitley Lodge, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE26 3JD. Tel. 0191 2529531.

THE THOMAS SPENCE MINI-FEST 2010 

EVENTS PROGRAMME

MONDAY 21ST JUNE 2010

2.30pm. Broad Garth, Quayside. The unveiling of the Thomas Spence plaque at Broad Garth, Quayside, Newcastle, by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, with a short speech by Dr Keith Armstrong, Chair of The Thomas Spence Trust, and Armstrong’s ‘Folk Song for Thomas Spence’ performed by Gary Miller, singer-songwriter of North East band ‘The Whisky Priests’.

2.45pm. Informal reception with talks, readings from Spence and poems and songs in his honour in the Red House, Sandhill, Quayside.

(Anyone not already invited to the unveiling and the reception and wishing to attend should contact Dr Keith Armstrong on 0191 2529531).

7pm Literary & Philosophical Society Library, Westgate Road, Newcastle.  The Workers’ Educational Association and The Thomas Spence Trust present short talks on Spence by Professors Joan Beal (University of Sheffield), Malcom Chase (University of Leeds) and Alastair Bonnett (University of Newcastle), with readings from Spence by Dr Keith Armstrong.

(ADMISSION FREE).

TUESDAY 22ND JUNE 12.30PM

Marsden Grotto, Coast Road, South Shields. A TOAST FOR TOM. Drinks, poems and songs in Spence’s honour at the Grotto where Spence visited ‘Blaster Jack’ and first coined the phrase ‘The Rights of Man’ by chalking on a cave wall.

(ALL WELCOME).

MONDAY 28TH JUNE 2-3PM. 

MEETING ROOM 7, 6TH FLOOR , NEWCASTLE CITY LIBRARY.

THE HIVE OF LIBERTY: The Life and Work of Thomas Spence.

Talk by Dr Keith Armstrong, Chair of The Thomas Spence Trust.

THERE WILL ALSO BE A DISPLAY OF SPENCE’S WORKS ON THE 6TH FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY, RUNNING FROM MONDAY 21ST jUNE TO MONDAY 5TH JULY.

FURTHER EVENTS, LATER IN  2010, INCLUDE THE NEWCASTLE LAUNCH OF THE RE-PRINT  OF PROFESSOR MALCOLM CHASE’S ‘THE PEOPLE’S FARM’.