A Few More Words on William Hone and justice. . .

My most recent ebay book acquisition is the The Trials of William Hone. This book is an account of the three trials to which Mr. Hone was subjected for the publication on his part of several books which were deemed dangerously subversive against the government and crown. The book is very interesting and a full PDF version can be viewed or downloaded at Google Books. My particular copy is a thin quarto volume bound in one quarter leather. It is fairly poor condition and the front board is dethatching at the hinge making it difficult to read without breaking the binding. But there is something magical about reading a book published in 1817. The book even contains an advertisement for a subscription that was raised for Mr. Hone to cover the costs of his legal problems.

The book is interesting and worth reading on a rainy day while watching the funeral of Ted Kennedy. Mr. Hone did not mount an elaborate defense. Instead of defending his most radical political views or attacking the injustice of the prevailing system of power, Hone simply said that his works were parodies, works of art like the prints of Gillray. Fair enough. Hone lived in a time when even the simplest freedoms, like the freedom of expression had to be constantly struggled for. When even simple threats of the government or crown creates a threat of prosecution, it is hard to imagine how one struggles against the dire poverty of child-laborers or the basic rights of workers to a safe workplace and a decent living wage.

But the conservative forces that attacked Mr. Hone are the same with which we grapple with today. And one does not need a wild imagination to understand that the conservatives today would love to turn the clock back to a time when workers had few rights, when social and economic inequity were legally as well as systemically ensured, and when average people were unable to struggle and speak out against basic injustice. 

Today Ted Kennedy's funeral takes place. Despite his immense wealth and power Kennedy always struggled for the rights of workers and was a voice for those who had no voice. He did this in a country where real left-wing politics is not even possible. I don't know if Ted Kennedy knew of William Hone but I am sure he would have considered himself to be part of the same tradition. 

The Process of Democracy. . . .

Many people, including some so-called experts, talk of democracy as a political ‘system;’ something that we either have or don’t have. I have thought for a long time that democracy needs to be thought of as a process, a working toward. In other words, democracy should be thought of as a verb rather than a noun. This is important because there are many who are, in a rather Western-centric way, smugly satisfied that we live in a finished democracy. And people who think this way are perfectly satisfied when elections occur, elections (keep in mind) that are already made severely problematic by the influence of money, and a party wins the most seats even with only say thirty-five percent of the votes cast, then this party has some kind of inalienable right to dictate the entire legislative agenda of the nation. They imagine that this is democracy, end of story. But this cannot be. If democracy is a process, a working toward ever greater degrees of fairness, justice, and a society’s self realization, then this can hardly be the end of the story. We must work ever vigilantly for our political institutions to express the will of the people. But just as important as this, the ‘will of the people’ must be ever more expressed and expressible. And by expressible I mean that we must work ever harder to lessen the degree to which power determines what can be expressed. If those with a great deal of money and power are able to narrow the field of expressible possibilities then we are working away from our ideals rather than toward them. And in recent years not only has the field of political discourse narrowed  (largely in the interests of those with a corporate agenda), but even in the very institution of legislative power a mockery has been made of the idea of democratic expression. At every corner of the country our present government has made every attempt to shut down discourse, to narrow its field, and to rob it of its meaning. From closing down the Supreme Court challenges program, to the erasure of almost all adult literacy programs; from a handbook for Committee chairs instructing them on how to shut down committee discussion, to the proroguing of parliament and convincing the nation that the expression of the majority could be a coup, the Harper Government continues to reverse the process of democracy and to move away from the very ideals that democracy aims toward. Just like the concept of justice, democracy is a difficult and abstract concept, but the right-wing’s consistent effort to move away from both is becoming more and more clear. 

Al-Megrahi, compassion and international justice. . .

I understand that many people are upset and offended by the recent release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds. As anyone who has followed the event knows, there is troubling evidence that the dying man is not in fact the perpetrator of the terrible crime of which he has been convicted. But this in itself would not be justification of his release until a court was willing to order a new trial. However, even if Mr. al-Megrahi was not dying, such a reexamination seems unlikely given the powerful political implications of the case. As I understand it however, the protocol for release on compassionate grounds is fairly straightforward and, given the circumstances, the court in Scotland felt that this was the correct legal call.  

Given the vitriolic attacks on al-Megrahi  and the almost universal condemnation of his release, it seems to me that a lot of people are wholly unaware of the actual meaning of the word ‘compassion.’ To act in a compassionate manner is, almost by definition, not easy. It is easy to have sympathy with your son or daughter when he or she falls and skins a knee. Compassion is easy when a loved one is stricken down by a debilitating disease or someone losses their home as a result of terrible flooding. But real compassion, like genuine forgiveness, is seldom an easy matter; if it were it would have little meaning. Surely the most vital lesson of Christianity is that those whom we perceive to have committed acts of evil are not themselves evil but have merely lost the true guidance of goodness that we all require to act in a ethical manner.  And if we are to truly bring goodness into the world then we must demonstrate to others the very conduct of goodness that we strive to promote. It is only through the cultivation of our compassion can we ever hope to do this. Gandhi said that you must ‘be the change that you want to see in the world.’ And given the terrible record of brutality that Western nations have practiced on many people in the world for many generations there is a remarkable irony and hypocrisy in our indignation at the release of one man. If true international justice prevailed many of our own leaders would be serving time in international prisons for various misdeeds. Western nations routinely laud the beauties of democracy while practicing the most atrocious militaristic follies. Christianity preaches compassion while perpetrating inquisitorial brutality. Here is a perfect opportunity for us to practice the real compassion that we have so long preached.

If Mr.  al-Megrahi did not commit the crime of which he was convicted then his release is not an act of compassion but an act of justice. If he did do such a terrible thing then we must hope that his release teaches him and, more importantly, ourselves that there is another path in life, a path of righteousness that expels the darkness from our souls. 

Justice and Empathy

Earlier on in life you had already begun to grapple with some basic problems that seemed so imponderable. Among these problems are questions like ‘why is it that the people who obtain power are the very ones who should never have it? And, ‘why is it so difficult to find justice in the world.’ But then these problems seem to roll themselves into a ball and you realized that behind all these questions lurks a bigger, over-arching one. ‘Why is it that so many people are hell-bent on the destruction of the human soul?’ And so you begin to scour the lines of great philosophers and poets in the hope of finding some plausible story that explains this basic problem. It is a frustrating problem. At some time you realize that there are simply some people who actually seek the destruction of most of the other people around them. Some of these people pursue this goal openly through murder or a career in the military. But most of these people hide their destructive impulses behind a veil of legitimacy and power. These people practice their destruction by seeking positions of power wherein they can push people down and undermine their basic humanity. Some become Prime Ministers and others are found in more humble positions, but all of them abuse their power and oppress those around them. Unfortunately some of these sad souls even pretend to be left-wing, they become ‘progressive’ politicians or union activists, and then proceed to practice in their professional and personal lives the very opposite of what they claim to believe.

No, it is not necessarily politics that distinguish these people, it is something much more fundamental. I believe that what is behind this basic destructive behavior is the absence of empathy. These folks are simply incapable of comprehending, at a basic gut level, the real effects that their actions have on others. And because they are, at heart, empty human beings who cannot connect to their fellow humans, they get some kind of basic thrill from undermining others. And to hide their emptiness and the wonton destruction that they continually commit on others, they hide behind the claim that they are really actively pursuing good. It is particularly frustrating when you meet one of these people in a left-wing organization which is supposed to be established for the cause of social justice. I have met union activists, for example, that are supposed to be employed full-time in the pursuit of justice who continually undermine the autonomy, self-respect, happiness, professional competence, and well-being of those over which they are able to wield power. I think that these people have often convinced themselves that they are actually ‘good’ people, but the rest of us know better.

I believe that this lack of empathy is at the root of all the other seemingly complicated problems of social injustice. The problem is that it is not at all clear to me that human beings can overcome this problem and when you meet these people there seems to be absolutely nothing you can do, it is like trying to convince a schizophrenic that they are not seeing things. You need empathy to understand empathy and thus you can explain nothing to such people. Even if this problem is rooted in some basic mental disorder (like some form of Alexithymia), we will probably never be able to do anything about it because those in positions of power would be most likely to be suffering from it so they would prevent us from addressing the issue. So it goes.

 

Thomas Hood, Mrs. Biddell, and the Song of the Shirt

Thomas Hood was an English poet and humorist of the 19th century whose work is largely forgotten today. Hood edited several journals and periodicals and his work appeared in many of the early issues of Punch magazine which began in 1841. Hood’s work is interesting and amusing, though some of the humour is now lost because times have changed so significantly from when Hood was writing. Perhaps Hood’s most memorable achievement is a poem that appeared anonomously in the Christmas edition of Punch in 1843 called The Song of the Shirt. It was written in honour of a Lambeth widow named Biddell, a seamstress living in wretched conditions. In what was common practice Biddell sewed pants and shirts in her home using materials given to her by her employer for which she was forced to give a £2 deposit. It seems that in a desperate attempt to feed her starving infants, poor Mrs. Biddell pawned the clothing she had made thus accruing a debt she could not pay. Mrs. Biddell, whose first name remains a mystery, was sent to a workhouse and her ultimate fate is unknown, but her story became a symbol for those who actively opposed the wretched conditions of England’s working poor who spent seven days a week labouring under inhuman conditions, barely managing to survive and with no prospect for relief. The Song of the shirt quickly became a phenomenon, centering people’s attention not only on the Briddell case but on the conditions of workers in general. And though Hood was not a genuine political radical, his work, like that of Dickens, contributed to the general awareness of the condition of the working class which fed the popularity of trade unionism and the push for stricter labour laws.

Here are a few lines from The Song of the Shirt.

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread –
Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang ‘The Song of the Shirt!’

Work – work – work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread – and rags.
That shattered roof – and this naked floor –
A table – a broken chair –
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank

Let’s remember poor Mrs. Biddell, whose struggle is ours. And remember Thomas Hood, poet and friend of humankind.