When wilt thou save the people?
Oh, God of mercy! when?
Not kings and lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
These are the first lines of The People’s Anthem, written in 1847 by the English poet Ebenezer Elliott (1781-1849) (Figures 173.1 & 173.2). Elliott was a daydreaming rebel, and, unconstrained by convention, way ahead of his time. As well as demanding universal suffrage more than 70 years before it was enacted, he wrote passionately about the social and economic injustices of the (protectionist) Corn Laws. Elliott, nicknamed The Corn Law Rhymer, extolled the merits of free markets and trade, which he correctly believed would remove illegitimate power from a cabal of wealthy landowners and increase prosperity and opportunity for ordinary workers.
Figure 173.1: The poems of Ebenezer Elliott have never been more relevant.
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Figure 173.2: Statue of Ebenezer Elliott in Weston Park, Sheffield
Copyright © 2016 Peter Hughes
* * * * *
This morning, I disembarked from the London Tube at a minor station, on the Northern Line, called Mornington Crescent. On the escalator up to ground level, I observed the passengers in front of me. It has recently been mentioned in the press that, since the ‘pandemic’ scare stories were first broadcast by corporate media, at the beginning of last year, there has been a significant increase in escalator accidents caused by an irrational reluctance of some travellers to touch the handrail for fear of ‘catching the virus’. Hand firmly on rail, I watched my fellow humans with a mixture of sadness and disbelief.
The station lies at the southern end of Camden High Street. I first visited this part of London more than three decades ago and wrote in my 1988 journal that it was ‘a charming dump, full of real folks doing unreal things’. I crossed the road to a pedestrianized island — which was not there in the 1980s — on which stands an imposing statue. There were a few pigeons perched on the figure’s head and shoulders.
The statue is of a Liberal politician called Richard Cobden (1804-65) (Figures 173.3 & 173.4). Cobden co-founded the Anti-Corn Law League in 1838. He considered the Corn Laws, which conserved landowners’ riches by imposing State tariffs on imported wheat, to be obscene in a supposedly civilized society.
Figure 173.3: The tireless work of Richard Cobden ensured that the Corn Laws were eventually repealed.
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Figure 173.4: Statue of Richard Cobden in Camden Town, London
Copyright © 2021 Paul Spradbery
As I walked past the Cobden Statue and along the High Street, I thought of Ebenezer Elliott, who had also campaigned against crippling State intervention, albeit in an artistic rather than a practical way. Both of these exemplary men would, I reckon, have had more than enough intelligence to see through today’s contrived economic mess. Since the ‘pandemic’ was declared, middle classes have been hollowed out, small independent businesses crippled and their market share mopped up by avaricious multinationals. This has been the biggest transfer of wealth in history, and only gullible fools would believe it to be coincidental. Camden High Street lays this truth bare. Cobden and Elliott would have been appalled by the incestuous relationship between de facto monopolistic corporations and the State, which, incidentally, was the exact definition of fascism given by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945).
The natural superiority of free markets over State-corporate protectionism is long established. Humanity prospers only when buyers of goods and services have a level-playing field, where the value of a product is decided by buyers themselves without the field being tilted or obstructed by authority. This fundamental precept is the reason why the (protectionist) European Union (EU) is on the verge of an unholy, USSR-style collapse. Even with its artificial constructs, its share of world trade is constantly haemorrhaging towards more efficient economies and less rigid trading blocs.
It is, therefore, no wonder that teat-sucking politicians and corporate bigwigs did all they could to overturn the Brexit mandate. By so doing, they proved that they cared nothing for the democratic will of ordinary people. The EU has long been a corporate paradise, vacuuming vast annual quantities of public tax revenue into a giant political vortex, thereby feeding its centralized power structure where corporations can withstand overreaching bureaucracy but small enterprises cannot.
After lunch at Poppies — surely the best fish and chip restaurant in London — I reached Camden Lock. Here, Regent’s Canal passes beneath the High Street with the aid of twin locks at either side. I noticed a great vantage point where I had first stood all those years ago. It is an iron footbridge which spans the canal at an oblique angle (Figure 173.5). On the south side is the Ice Wharf pub, now part of the Wetherspoon group. On the other lies the wonderfully haphazard Camden Market, which is chock-full of odd-shaped shops, stalls and bars on two levels, with ramps and staircases randomly located. Abandon sense of direction all ye who enter here.
Figure 173.5: The iron bridge at Camden Lock
Copyright © 2021 Paul Spradbery
The market seemed quite busy. I talked to a few people: an elegant Russian woman who owns a gift shop (Figure 173.6) and is anxious about both its and her future; a homeless man who had camped outside the Mexican Café Chula; an old lady dressed in a canvas ‘tree’ costume to promote her wares in a (largely empty) shop nearby; and a couple of drunken ‘zombie punks’, with grotesque facial tattoos and piercings, and who charge a pound or two for selfies with them. I obliged, naturally, and paid well.
Figure 173.6: In a shop window at Camden Market, a battery-operated pulley moves the piano man and his big hands. Its symbolism did not escape me.
Copyright © 2021 Paul Spradbery
All this activity was, I mused, the storm before the calm. We in the science community have known for almost a year that the government has planned to enforce another full lockdown this autumn. The soon-to-be-proclaimed reluctance to do so will be nauseatingly insincere. The ultimate aim could now hardly be more conspicuous: unless the entire population submits to dangerous medical experimentation, lockdown will be imposed again and again until the collective spirit of the people is broken. In other words, to paraphrase the Auschwitzian motto: impfung macht frei (vaccination makes you free) (Figure 173.7). It is coercion ... blackmail ... call it what you will. Without public acquiescence, however, these disgusting, antiscientific, antisocial, impoverishing measures would be precluded for good. It is to be hoped that, this time, the nation’s millions will realize that it is they, not a handful of corrupted liars in government, who hold the power.
Figure 173.7: Conditional freedom is not freedom at all.
Copyright unknown. Fair use asserted.
I wandered along the canal towpath on the north side of the water. On another footbridge was a scattering of small pop-up tents with poorly-shod feet protruding through unzipped ‘doors’. When I reached Oval Road, I climbed the steps to street level and headed towards Camden Town Tube station, midway along the High Street. On Arlington Road, running parallel to the High Street, stands the imposing Arlington House, originally a hostel for up to 1,200 single men, which opened in 1905. Funded by Lord Rowton (1838-1903) (Figure 173.8), a British philanthropist, Arlington was one of six large ‘Rowton Houses’, whose residents once included a genuinely down-and-out George Orwell (1903-50) who chronicled his experiences in the 1933 book Down And Out In Paris And London, my favourite Orwell work. Although now providing accommodation for only 150 vulnerable residents, it is reputed to be the largest homeless hostel in Europe.
Figure 173.8: Montagu William Lowry-Corry, 1st Baron Rowton
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Back in the summer of 1984, the iconic pop band Madness, whose seven members are all from Camden, released a poignant song entitled One Better Day (Figure 173.9). It describes a romantic encounter between a homeless man from Arlington House and a ‘bag lady’ who is ejected from Mornington Crescent Tube station. The promotional video shows lead singer Suggs, a.k.a. Graham McPherson (1961-), sitting on the pavement outside Arlington, then lying down in the middle of Camden High Street, and the entire band gazing across Camden Lock from the iron footbridge.
Figure 173.9: Both the song and its social commentary are haunting and timeless.
Copyright © 1984 UnionSquareMusic
I arrived at the Tube station in the middle of the afternoon and thought about Camden and its history on my way home. Messrs Elliott, Cobden, Rowton, Orwell and McPherson all understood that centralization of power always leads to abject poverty, homelessness, violence, mental illness and suicides — all of which, by the way, have surged as a consequence of State-imposed ‘pandemic’ restrictions.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Copyright © 2021 Paul Spradbery
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