by Nick Gerrard
When I was a younger man, myself and a group of friends lived in South Birmingham.
We shared old run down Victorian houses, rented out as bedsits.
They were cheap, which is just as well, as we had no paid work as such.
The factories had all been closed down, but we got by on a weekly cheque.
We didn’t seem to need much.
And fags, food and booze were shared, whenever someone had them.
We weren’t lazy.
We were in fact, busy as hell.
We did courses, and helped out at the Unemployed centre.
Some of us campaigning, others swapping skills, and learning new ones.
We played in bands, we designed posters, we raised money, we protested; we occupied job centre roves, we rioted.
We bought cheap food from the Asian shops and ate out at Balti houses.
We drank and sang rebel songs in the Irish pubs.
And smoked with the Rastas in illegal gambling houses.
We were very political: We lived in Political times.
We campaigned for jobs and against job cuts.
We worked with unionised workers and also helped unemployed people get what was theirs.
And we stopped those snooper squads snooping in our areas.
We went on demonstrations against missiles, Irish massacres, fascists; against slave labour schemes.
We bought dope and dealed a little speed, here and there.
We robbed, we drank, and laughed in the sun with the working girls;
sat on the huge window sills listening to dub base, in the forecourts of those faded majestic
buildings.
Life was kinda sweet then x.
Things started to hotten up.
People got pushed more and more to desperation, and more and more into action of one sort or another.
The government forced their economic strategies on an already gasping working class.
Then the big one.
The Great Strike.
She came for war.
She wanted to wipe out our best troops. Then we would all be easier targets.
Suddenly, we were busy, doing what people do in wars.
We collected money from the Asian shop owners, food outside the cheapest supermarkets and the posh ones.
We got more from people with less.
We were picketing and battling and demonstrating.
And sat in Miner’s social clubs discussing armed revolution with hardened men.
They listened to us and forgot our weird hair, our skin colour, our sexual preference, our lack of work.
They had thought us, the enemy within.
Now suddenly they were the new, enemy within.
So they listened.
And so did we.
We listened to trade unionists who talked like our Grandfathers had.
We listened to new ideas, new politics.
We met people from Universities who explained stuff.
We knew things were wrong, we knew what was not right, we knew how to hate.
We had learned that.
Now these people told us why things were the way they were,
And maybe how we could,
make things right.
During this time I met a man called Norman.
He had been a leader. A shop steward of the Engineers.
He had led out men to block the inland port of Saltley Gate.
In support of the Miners some years before,
in another battle.
The Engineers had won a historic victory.
The guys on the floor had organised themselves despite their boneless leaders.
They had newspapers; they had their organisations within the organisation.
They then had to battle those spineless paid leaders as well.
Now, years later, Norman was jobless.
Sold down the swanny, by those suited men.
Blacklisted by the bosses and let down by left wing groups.
He was a gentle man.
But his fight had not been tampered with.
He had no work, a disabled wife and kids to care for.
He was thoughtful and simple, and intelligent.
He had learnt from doing, but he also read what needed to be read.
We met often; on demos, in political meetings, in back street pubs.
I liked his views and enthusiasm; his humour and his hospitality.
We went round his modest council house, where we shared crisps and beers,
and always watched Reds.
But what struck me most about this man was his ability to carry on.
His belief in his beliefs.
When pushed to the bottom of the ruck, this man was still there; on his back, still trying to land a couple of good ones.
I looked up to this man.
And then something happened.
I saw something I had never seen in all the Lefties, all the talkers and activists.
All the angry youth and strikers even.
After the death of the Miners.
Other struggles carried on, as they do.
We had been picketing for weeks. The middle of the night, in the draining cold.
We were picketing the newspaper distribution depots.
The printers of the news in London had been sacked.
They and others were trying to stop the delivery of the news.
There was solidarity all over the country.
There had been bitter battles.
There had been deaths.
We met each night in the tower blocks that looked out over the night lights of a hazy Brum.
We drank coffee, wrapped scarves where we could; put plastic bags in our boots.
And then we walked, mostly silently, smoking, through the deserted ugly crisp streets.
We knew the paper handlers well.
And after our usual appeals, arguments, shouting matches, we shared tea and cigs and chatted.
They were sympathetic, but once again some snake had instructed them not to support the Union men.
We sympathised, reluctantly.
Our main purpose was to stop the black leg Lorry drivers,
bringing that news from London.
They should not have been bringing it.
They had crossed those lines in London.
And now were doing the same here.
We were seeking solidarity.
One particular night, we were doing our usual merry dance of push and shove with the police.
I saw out of the corner of my eye, Norman walk calmly past the crowd.
He approached the stopped truck.
He stepped up to that truck and opened the door.
We all stopped, and watched and listened.
Norman opened that door and leaned in towards the man, trying to hide behind his wheel.
He pointed a finger at that man; he looked at that man, and with his whole
being, his full anger, his whole history…
Cried
‘you’ve betrayed your class brother.’
The words came from somewhere deep inside.
The very core of his existence.
His whole body tensed and shook.
It was like something primeval.
It wasn’t loud,
he didn’t need to shout.
But it thundered out.
Like a shout from an ancestors grave.
This was the pleading scream of a slave.
The man started to protest but Norman didn’t argue.
He just looked at that man, listened and said again.
‘You’ve betrayed your class brother.’
That man looked for a way out.
For words to defend himself.
But he knew.
He knew and felt this call of the wild.
We could see it had stirred something deep inside him.
Others surrounded this man’s truck and hurled insults,
‘Scab.’
They argued with him, pleaded with him.
Now this man was able to argue, and answer back.
But, we who were arguing with this man stopped.
Norman’s words came out again.
And the man stopped.
The angry youth stopped.
The academic stopped.
The activist stopped.
The warehouse worker stopped.
The police stopped.
I stopped.
And this man started to cry.
And we turned our backs and walked away.
And I watched Norman take this man, and embrace him.
And they spoke no words.
And in each other’s arms, Norman patted his back and quietly, into his ear he said
‘I know…I know.’
I had never seen that before.
Never seen anyone express what is just written about.
What is just shouted about.
Or argued about or discussed.
Never seen anyone express their political views,
not just as a theory, but as an actual living part of themselves.
An essential part of their very existence.
And that man turned his truck around
And without a cheer or a whisper.
He took that news back to London.