![](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/pengy1966%20stuff\/min007.jpg\")
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Photo: Min<\/p>\n
I have been asked to write something about the Mob for a re-release of \u201cLet the Tribe Increase\u201d. I have written a couple of versions, but then got stuck. I was going to say that there is something \u2018quintessentially English\u2019 about the Mob, that they somehow managed to fuse their rural roots (Somerset\/ Wiltshire) with an urban (London) edge.<\/p>\n
I was thinking 17th century Diggers and Levellers,\u00a0 19th\u00a0 century Chartists, urban Luddites and rural\u00a0 Captain Swing rioters, William Blake and the Sex Pistols, , E.P. Thompson\u2019s \u2018Making of the English Working Class\u2019, a bit of George Orwell (1984, Road to Wigan Pier), mods, rockers, hippies, punks, travellers and ravers, road protestors and the Plane Stupid crew\u2026The 1981 riots, the 1990 Poll Tax riots\u2026<\/p>\n
When I lived in England (1977- 1996) I could have said all that because when I did the complex reality of this mish-mash of radicalness was much stronger than any residual sense of Scottishness. And anyway the bit of Scotland I come from is semi-detached from the mainstream, similar to the way that Cornwall is to the mainstream of England.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t helped that there has just been a minor\/ major earthquake up here – when the Scottish National Party overturned a 16 000 Labour majority to win Glasgow East. The SNP game plan is to wait until 2010 to hold an independence referendum.\u00a0 This would be after next UK general election which\u00a0 is\u00a0 predicted to be a Conservative win. The theory being that fears of a return to situation\u00a0 which\u00a0 followed 1979 Maggie Thatcher victory would lead to a big Scots \u2018Yes\u2019 to independence and the break up of the UK\u2026<\/p>\n
I have spent far too much time reading the runes (= comments sections of online newspaper reports plus political blog sites) and now I am confused. It seems there are quite a few \u2018English nationalists\u2019 about who are very keen to get rid of the whinging jocks. Some overlap with advocates of a separate English parliament. And it also looks like the Labour Party is in meltdown. Things fall apart, as Yeats said<\/p>\n
THE SECOND COMING
\nTurning and turning in the widening gyre
\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;
\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst
\nAre full of passionate intensity.
\nSurely some revelation is at hand;
\nSurely the Second Coming is at hand.
\nThe Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
\nWhen a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
\nTroubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
\nA shape with lion body and the head of a man,
\nA gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
\nIs moving its slow thighs, while all about it
\nWind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
\nThe darkness drops again but now I know
\nThat twenty centuries of stony sleep
\nWere vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
\nAnd what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
\nSlouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<\/p>\n
Is it possible to still speak of a future beyond \u2018no future\u2019, of that sense of possibility which the Mob evoked – as the illusion of the UK\u2019s economic success built on ever rising house prices and cheap oil starts to fade ? Twenty five years on and what has really changed?<\/p>\n
\u201c We are not afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth . There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history.\u00a0 We who ploughed the fields and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.” —-Buenaventura Durruti (Spanish anarchist 1896- 1936)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Photo: Min I have been asked to write something about the Mob for a re-release of \u201cLet the Tribe Increase\u201d. I have written a couple of versions, but then got stuck. I was going to say that there is something \u2018quintessentially English\u2019 about the Mob, that they somehow managed to fuse their rural roots (Somerset\/ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-al"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}