Poems and speeches

I spoke last night at a demonstration outside the Ministry of Defence organised by Stop the War Coalition to protest about the arrest of Corporal Joe Glenton for speaking out against the war several weeks ago at the anti-war rally in London. Peter Tatchell was also there and we were the only political party represented.

We were photographed wearing gags, to mark the fact that Joe Glenton had been silenced. We heard later that students from Essex University were protesting outside his prison in Colchester. I read the statement from Caroline Lucas which I posted on Wednesday and also an anti-war poem. I described this as being particularly apt, as the day before had been Armistice Day and we were within feet of the cenotaph. The war poets of World War I, who are now regarded as heroes and literary giants. were threatened with being pronounced 'insane' or being shot in their day for speaking out agains the madness of the war - just as Joe Glenton is being punished now. It was also appropriate to be outside the MOD on the day that the press broke the news about large bonuses for senior civil servants there, when squaddies in Afghanistan are lucky to earn a low wage. The poem I read is below. It is as true today as when it was written early in the last century.

The Two Sides of War

All wars are planned by older men

In council rooms apart

Who call for greater armament

and map the battle chart

But out along the shattered field

Where golden dreams turn gray

How very young the faces were

Where all the dead men lay

Portly and solemn in their pride

The elders cast their vote

For this, or that or something else

Which sounds the martial note

But where their sighless eyes stare out

Beyond life's vanished toys

I've noticed nearly all the dead

Are hardly more than boys

Grantland Rice

The poet served in World War I and knew something of which he wrote, unlike the government ministers and senior civil servants to despatch young men to their deaths without a second thought.