SAT 4 NOV
Sshhhhhh
So echoes a relay of sound as ‘Stories and Supper’(https://www.storiesandsupper.co.uk/) warm up for the singing we are doing today. We are in an upstairs room at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow where Stories and Supper are one of a few groups that are newly installed as ‘community in residence.’ This floor above the exhibits brings back memories of hosting our early interviews for Bank Job (www.bankjob.pictures) recruiting people to become money printers. Today we take the tiny lift laden with camera equipment, microphone and a karaoke version of the labour movement anthem ‘Bread and Roses.’
Bread and Roses is a song inspired by a 1911 speech by one of the first women to organise in the US Labour movement - young Polish Jewish lesbian immigrant Rose Schneiderman, in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire disaster which killed 146 mainly young women workers. She states ‘the worker must have bread but she must have roses too’ - a slogan (also referenced by Helen Todd) that was taken up by the textile workers strikes of Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 united under the leadership of Industrial Workers of the World and which inspired a poem by John Oppenheim attributed to the ‘Women of the West.’ The poem was later set to music and the Mimi Farina tune (1974) is what we sing today and the version I first heard in the 2014 film ‘Pride’ based on the true story of ‘Lesbians and Gays support the Miners’ in the strikes of the 1980s –coalition and comradery in unlikely places.
"What the woman who labours wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art." This is the demand of the song as a cry for justice and dignity – not only a call for basic sustenance through equal rights, decent wages and working conditions for all but to education, art, culture and leisure. Time in the sun. Time to create and nurture beauty and meaning. This is core to everything we do in Optimistic - part of a manifesto that understands culture and creativity not as additional extras but integral to a meaningful, political life. This is also a founding principle of Stories and Supper run by Helen Taylor and a dedicated team – a ‘quiet politics of welcome’ in which “we must create more spaces of encounter, conversation and solidarity in which people can share and listen to stories with refugees. And through these quiet acts of welcome and solidarity with refugees we must continue to resist and challenge the overriding narratives about them” (Olivia Sheringham).
When asked what Stories and Supper is about participant Veronica replies -just that - stories and supper - space to be sociable, to share, to eat together, to be together. Space to listen and be heard. Her recipes and poems are printed alongside others in Stories and Supper publications “More Than a Recipe Book’ and ‘In the Morning Birds were Singing.” In a section called ‘Letters of Advice’ her missive to then home secretary Priti Patel stands out – “… in as much as you cannot choose your parents and you cannot choose your place of birth, on this note I want you to be humane to others, by granting people that have already passed through hell and severe trauma in their lives before making it in the UK, their Leave to Remain so they too can live normal lives like others. Thank you for your understanding in this regard, Veronica.”
The room is full of people who were forced to leave their homes. Fleeing brutal conflict and oppression from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Kurdistan, arriving in this country as a final refuge only to be stripped of the right to bread and roses, justice and dignity. Denied papers, living in limbo, unable to participate fully in society. Today’s session is joyful. Two of the group are celebrating their Leave to Remain. Someone points out that we have bread and roses (rose wine) laid out on the table. There is dancing. A massive weight has been lifted.
Poet Jude adds her 70th Birthday cake to the banquet. She knows the story of Rose Schneiderman and emphasises the long tradition of Jewish radicals working for social justice. Another regular who was at Greenham common, marched with CND and demonstrated against Sellafield Nuclear Plant says it has always been her favourite song of any from the labour movement as it speaks beyond comradeship and dogma – to a life of purpose and meaning. This resonates as we face idealogue definitions, constrictions and prejudices against art and culture as political change agents beyond propaganda or representation. We see more emphasis on bread than roses and more on dogma than joy. It is why I loved discovering Orwell’s Roses via Rebecca Solnit in a book of the same name. beginning “In the spring of 1936 a writer planted roses.”
“They were roses, and they were saboteurs of my own long acceptance of a conventional version of Orwell and invitations to dig deeper. They were questions about who he was and who we were and where pleasure and beauty and hours with no quantifiable practical result fit into the life of someone, perhaps of anyone, who also cared about justice and truth and human rights and how to change the world.”
It seems apt to be doing this in William Morris Gallery, the site of William Morris’s home (1848-1856) and the world’s largest collection of his work. Quite apart from his commitment to social justice and the ideas of meaning and labour, utility and beauty explored in works like ‘Useful Work v Useless Toil’ his work is full of roses. Despite appearances these roses were not components of an art solely of decoration but part of a living theory of the intertwined art and politics of the everyday. The home made banner we carry with us contains some of these woven ramblings - they joined many more roses at recent ‘Stop Rosebank’ marches where the rose has become an emblem of the protests against ‘Rosebank’ (proposed gas and oil fields) - climate and societal vandalism given the name of a cottage idyll.
To plant, to make, to write is always an act of commitment, of hope in the dark (referencing Rebecca Solnit’s book of the same name). In the face of so much despair and inaction it is always a radical act.
After this day of singing and filming I check news feeds and there is talk of flowers and blossoming in a clip being shared of ‘Have I Got News for You’ with Feargal Sharkey saying: “It’s the 25th Anniversary of the good Friday agreement. For 25 years the people of Northern Ireland have been able to prosper and grow and blossom. They’ve discovered that this thing peace is a very delicate beautiful little flower that needs nurturing and caressing and supporting. I dearly wish that the people of Gaza and Palestine and Israel get to discover what 25 years of peace, prosperity and diplomacy and democracy looks like.”
Today though there is just news of more obscene destruction. Of life desecrated. As fireworks crack and rumble outside and the dogs pant and shake in fear I see that a University has been reduced to rubble. Places of knowledge now added to hospitals, people fleeing, journalists, ambulances, bakeries and churches as ‘legitimate’ targets. Bread and Roses is about the right to life - to justice and dignity. There is no right and no justification in the world for this destruction. It is morally inexcusable and calling out a genocide happening in real time should not be and is not controversial.
