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A Revolutionary Made Good |
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A Revolutionary Made Good
In the late 1960s the British Labour Party was in turmoil. The Old Left (as they came to be known) were being challenged by a new generation of activist students, bent on ending support for the Vietnam War and infused with the enthusiasm of the emerging stuudent movement and voice. Sometime in, I think, 1967, a debate was arranged between the two sides in the historic Westminster Hall adjacent to Westminster Abbey. The two major antagonists in the debate were Michael Foot - onetime Leader of the Labour Party and Tariq Ali, representing the New Left. It was a memorable encounter. Both had previously been President of the Oxford Union Debating Society. The debate was televised, and, watching the protagonists carefully, I could not but notice how Foot - seemingly muted and unemphatic responded much less theatrically and was much more conscious of the content of his speech (than to the image of his presentation) to the presence of the cameras than his opposite number.
I watched the debate with friends, and immediately after, penned this poem to Tariq Ali.
A REVOLUTIONARY MADE GOOD
Hello there, Tariq
Old Boy.
You gave less
than your share of rhetoric
last night.
Could it be
by chance
your wit
had lost its meat
in the glimmer
of the console eye
which robs you
of your peasant prompt.
Could it be,
Old fellow,
that now you're there (famous some say)
your charm stands bare
for all to see
stillborn
for some mass midwifery,
eliminated by the cathode sieve
and left to spin
into the realm
of silent infinitude
with but a clapboarrd sign
to mark its course?
I watched you on a platform once. You'd gasp
and jeer
and laugh
and clown
with real Revolutionary fervour,
and only a very little glance
at the audience first.
But friend tariq
that little look!
That little look
was just a bit too long
for any but
the doting erye to miss.
The merest blink, and yet
I saw it!
And I knew
just where your game was at.
And in your eye
I saw the fear
that someone else
had seen it too.
That's why
Old chap,
it was
a little look,
a little look,
Old man
Postscript
Looking back now, with the hindsight of 40 years experience I have to admit that I( was a bit harsh. Both before and since then, Tariq Ali had proved his political courage and integrity. It was I, if anyone, whose arrogance was evident in my writing. Ali has since been in the forefront of many radical causes and has many times placed his intellectual and political reputation on the line.
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