Last Post in the Hardy Country

John Hiscox RIP

‘Arr, two teats bain’t enough for ‘e, ‘e gotter ‘ave twelve!’ Recalling John’s warm voice saying that takes me straight back to Somerset; he was the married dairy-man talking about another neighbour, a younger man who worked every hour God gave him with his pigs, after he had done a dairy round in the morning, and to John’s disgust never went out at night. Not that John, and Hilary his wife, didn’t work very hard, rearing five children on the sixty acres owned by a limestone quarry of which he had inherited the tenancy.

A day at the sea-side was all the holiday they got, like the one when we all went down to Weymouth on the train from Frome; Hilary was wearing hot-pants and John bought a top hat bearing the message ‘Down With Hot Pants’. I often used to wander up the lane past his farm browsing our herd of goats on the long acre; later he said to me ‘When I were in a good mood, I would say to myself Why that’s the life! When I were in a bad mood, I would say There goes that darned lazy hippy again!’  He was always up for fun and they were happy days, but there was another dark side to him as well.

I think I got to understand him better one evening when I was helping him with the hay. As the last trailer-load pulled away, he said ‘Come over and have a look at this then!’  You had to go to the very edge of the field to see down into the vast quarry, like a sudden vision of Mordor. ‘A girt cancer eating up the land!’ was John’s comment. It was taking about an acre a year, though admittedly the landlord did find some more land a bit further away to make up for it.

The story that we heard, as the years after we left went by, got darker. Maybe someone will make a novel of it one day, a kind of post-script to the work of Thomas Hardy. Learned commentators of a sociological disposition might chunter on about the final demise of the old Wessex and its family farms. It does seem as if something besides John has passed away.

These days it is fashionable to speak of this person's story and that person's story, of my truth and your truth; yet there remains the hope of some final distillation, in which whatever real goodness, truth and beauty there is in every story will be reconciled, combined and crowned with immortality. If this be so, John's love of his family and of the land will be in there!

Quiet, Desperation and Bliss.

This is a photo of our James, after landing fish in Baltimore in brutal weather a few days ago. His crew these days frequently consists mainly of Egyptians. He says that when it is foggy, one of them will come up to the wheel-house first thing in the morning, to look at the compass so that they can say their prayers facing east. Is this a clue to what gives them the inner resilience to be good fisherman, so far from home and in such an alien climate? Or is it a case of sheer desperation? I do not think the desperation by itself would suffice! I am reminded of the Donegal men with whom I started to fish, who would trace a Sign of the Cross on the water with their boat as they put to sea, and shoot their nets ‘in God’s name’.

Now I am retired, and back in my island home with Fiona; it is very quiet here, the weather is lousy, we have neither radio nor tv nor any electronic racket in the house. We do have the internet and keep ourselves reasonably well informed about this troubled world. There is not much to cheer one up there. It is even more depressing than what has become of the Irish fishing industry. Yet in spite of it all, we find ourselves often in a state that can only be described as blissful!

I generally end each internet session by some little reference to something encouraging. One can always fall back on what the Pope is saying; I am amazed and enthralled by his knack of pointing up the astonishing experience of God’s merciful love, which seems to be erupting in so many hearts even as the turmoil of the world worsens. The rich may be being ‘sent empty away’, to use Our Lady’s words, but just what is it that can fill ‘the poor with good things’?

Surely it is that spring of living water within, that astonishing inner sense of bliss; an extraordinary gift. It is the treasure beyond price, a little seed within us, the one thing needful that unites all people of good will; the experience of God’s love, the assurance that despite all the appearances to the contrary, our lives are not in vain, but will enjoy some scarcely imaginable consummation beyond death. The Gift lights up this world too, making us appreciate what a wonderful place it is, still full of amazing possibilities!

At the same time, it makes us more sensitive to the appalling results of greed, pride, lust and stupidity; and not to put too fine a point on it, it really is odd how much of these appalling results these days centre on just one commodity; oil. Take the fields of doom which particularly get to me; the Sea, the Climate and the Orient.  Leaving climate change aside, by a completely different evidence chain, excessive co2 largely ends up threatening the oceans with acidification, as if over-fishing (powered by oil) and plastic waste (produced from same) were not threatening their once teeming life badly enough.

As for the Orient, pouring all that oil money into the hands of those desert tribes has been catastrophic, compounded by the fact that developed nations recoup some of it by selling them modern weapons. The news that the British sold over a billion pounds’ worth of bombs to those Saudi Wahhabis last year is profoundly disturbing. Just supposing that instead of bombing  and selling bombs, the world agreed to shut down the oil and the arms trades with the Middle East, and concentrate all possible resources on developing the alternatives, would not the prospects for our grandchildren be radically transformed overnight? And why should it not happen?

Erza Mary, the latest grandchild.

Well one way to nourish that little seed of bliss, I have found, is to make sure one gets to nurture it with plenty of silence. This of course is by no means easy, especially in this oil-fired world, but that is one of the main reasons why we have organised our lives the way we have, between our house on Sherkin Island and that old sailing boat; and I just wish family and friends would avail of them more!

Anyone can get in touch to see how they might do so. In particular, coming up, I hope to get the shell of the new sun-room here up in March, then later on to cruise eastwards from the Guadiana in May and June; and then back to Ireland, if the summer is reasonable, to hopefully finish the sun-room and reorder the kitchen, with access out into the sun-room, in July and August. Then it will be time to sail back south again. For anyone who would just like a chance to be quiet, especially if they are gardeners, it would be a great opportunity; we would love to have someone living in the house and tending the garden while we are away in May and June. Any of our old wwoofers hearing me?

Confession of a Catholic Socialist

For a while it looked as though we might leave it to those nice benevolent market forces, and in particular the then soaring price of oil, to push us all into doing what needs to be done to avert the likely scenario of catastrophic global warming. It turns out not to be so. It never was a likely story, for capitalists require us to consume ever more of their products. How can the Gordian knot that ties capitalism with environmental disaster be untied?

Certainly not by some international version of state control; its record is even worse than that of liberal democracies. I have generally lived by the assumption that the best we can do is to hope and work for a spiritual transformation of the world, but I have also been mindful of Marx’s gybe about ‘the opium of the people’. Certainly, there are very many worse drugs than religion about, but it does seem fair comment that an elitist withdrawal into ‘a state of enlightenment’ is a danger for the spiritually minded, though there have been plenty followers of Jesus who have not shied away from his example of bloodied engagement with political reality. As a matter of fact, political power, with no sound spiritual  basis nor robust framework to counter-balance it, has to be one of the most dangerous drugs of all.

A warning sign is when sloganeering and party politics take the place of any real dialogue, so it is encouraging when, on the contrary, a political leader really does seem to focus primarily on issues of justice and truth. The British Labour Party seems to have come up with such a leader, while taking the unusual step of getting in touch with its founding principles. Having spent the last few weeks in England, I profess to be impressed. Here are a few issues on which I agree with him:

• Trident. Obviously the use of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the principles of a ‘just war’, and the argument that they can act as a deterrent while never having to be used seems even less convincing than ever these days . The money could be spent to improve security more effectively in other ways. The example of giving them up would help to strengthen international efforts to rid the world of that particular menace, with a policy of zero tolerance for their deployment.

• Trade unionism. Aside from the fact that if a man cannot withdraw his labour then he is a slave, strong unions are essential for putting manners on the Plutocracy. A degree of public ownership of industry and essential services, though not necessarily by the State, also helps to do so, as do efforts to foster worker participation in the management and ownership of their companies. There is a need to foster the idea of work as both a form of self-expression and of service to others rather than a matter of merely making money, whether for the capitalists or for oneself.

• Austerity. Any organism, from a fish to a nation, does in the long run have to balance its budget: its intakes with its expenditures; but this is no reason to run a country like a grocery shop. In fact the present situation of so much hardship and dependence on credit, contrasted with monstrous amounts of cash slopping around with the plutocrats, points up very serious imbalances. If the policy of austerity ever had any validity, it won’t stand up any more. Let’s just say that if there is belt-tightening to be done, it is no use confining it to the weaker members of society, even if only because at least they spend it rather than gamble with it in casino-style stock markets!
• Europe. Whole-hearted participation in the European project is the only way to achieve any real political traction with regard to issues like climate-change, security, tax evasion and generally holding international capital to account.

I might add that when the plutocrats’ newspapers are so intent on rubbishing Mr Corbyn, I for one am inclined to be interested in him. One does have to recognise that he certainly faces an uphill battle to get elected, but let’s hope that the great British electorate might finally get around to seeing that we all need a change of tack. It is sad to see the widespread political unease wasted on nationalism and the likes of UKIP and  in France the National Front, but things seem more positive to me in Spain and Portugal, for all the untidiness there.

I’m back in Ireland now, where the Labour Party are a crowd of bourgeois socialists obsessed with their Liberal Agenda, as if abortion and euthanasia and the rest of it ever did any good for struggling humanity! Hopefully they’ll get a right kicking in the upcoming election, for getting into bed with Fine Gael, the nearest thing in Ireland to the Tory Party. I note that poor people are not inclined to support that Liberal Agenda, especially when they are not demoralised and understand how it subverts their struggle. I count it just within the realms of possibility that Fianna Fail will eventually rediscover its principles!

The sorry old antagonism of Catholicism and Socialism, in the tradition of the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, is really an historical accident whose time has passed. Actually if anyone cares to study Catholic social teaching, which has been steadily developing since Rerum Novarum in 1891, with Sustainability now added to make three Ss with Solidarity and Subsidiarity, I think they will find about the best formulation of a sound socialism that there is; I hope it represents a way of responding to the world whose time has come.

Meanwhile, it will soon be time for me to be thinking of seafaring again! I’m currently cowering from the wind and rain back in Sherkin, but thinking of a spin eastwards as far as Crete in May and June, so let me know in good time if you are interested in participating….