Four quartets

I've decided that to post everyday is likely to result in posting for its own sake rather than contributing to the quality of content and if that sounds like an excuse then it probably is. Also I haven't done anything to promote the book, the raison d'etre for this blog, I haven't been near a computer for the weekend as we were visiting T. and R. our dear friends in Liverpool. Arrived there on the 6th July, the 50th anniversary of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's first meeting.
It felt good to be in that place, The home town of the Beatles on the anniversary of the first meeting of a partnership that would go on to transform popular music and articulate the feelings of love and revolution shared by people who were growing up and forming their world view and value-base then and in many of the years that followed. Lennon and McCartney along with the other two of the "Fab Four", arguably the most famous quartet of the 20th century, contributed immeasurably to the soundtrack of my life and that of my contemporaries and continue to do so but more importantly the simple notion that "All you need is love" still resonates with a clarity and simplicity that remains infectious. Admittedly, as cynics will quickly point out, there are other things we need, the nuts and bolts, the bread and water of life for example, but also and perhaps as importantly, I would add, hope and forgiveness.
In the car on the way to Liverpool C. had expressed an, extremely unlikely until recently, desire to hang a photograph of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness on our bathroom wall at home. Already on the wall are; John Lennon, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, Malcolm X, The Parliamentary Labour Party of 1906, Durham Miners Gala, Nelson Mandella, Che Guevara, Haight Ashbury junction and Dr. Martin Luther King,( that should give you a flavour). There is such hope and possibility in that image of Paisley and McGuinness, two former enemies, sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing together that I agree it deserves to be there and have already downloaded it. All you need is love, hope, forgiveness and compromise but that doesn't scan does it? I will hang the photo in our little shrine to those whose lives or deeds, sacrifices or compromises have influenced and inspired us by each making the world "a little better" in their own way.
The following day I woke to news reports covering the anniversary of events one Thursday morning two years before, when four British suicide bombers blew themselves up taking their lives and the lives of 52 other people on three London Underground trains and one London Bus. Their actions also resulting in injuries to 700 other innocent travellers and trauma and bereavement to a huge number of families and friends. The juxtaposition of these two anniversaries strikes me deeply, particularly remembering that these acts of terror coincided with a moment of real hope, a moment of real opportunity, the Gleneagles G8 Summit of 2005. The Saturday before that we had been with T. in Edinburgh along with what felt like the majority of the population of the North of England and Scotland expressing our solidarity with the starving world by marching to "Make Poverty History". The Live8 concert beamed to us from London with McCartney opening it had set the tone, music could change the world, the air and the airwaves had bristled with hope and possibility as we sweltered in the intense July heat amid union banners, placards and messages of sanity in an insane world. The mood was such that we all believed that our act of witness and brotherhood on the streets of Edinburgh and that of millions of others in streets across the globe would be the change we wanted in this world. That the eight world leaders, the two quartets meeting at Gleneagles would listen to our humble, reasonable requests to end starvation in a world of plenty and place love, equality and humanity as first priority at the centre of the world's agenda.
Unfortunaltely the actions of another quartet, the July 7th quartet, changed the agenda and pushed an end to poverty and hunger in this world off pole position. It gave the leaders of the world's most powerful nations, the opportunity to talk more of the threat of terrorism than the injustice of poverty, to talk more of the need to tighten security than the scandal of starvation in the modern world, allowed them to concentrate on fear rather than compassion in days, months and years that followed. Two years before on a much colder day in February 2003 I had travelled with my family and about a million others to another Scottish city, Glasgow to protest against the Iraq war. The mood on that occassion wasn't one of hope more of indignation, frustration, defiance and disappointment. We knew in our hearts that the war would go ahead, as it did and sadly still does, but we needed to be on the street to show that it was not in our name.
There are many who believe that the War on Iraq was responsible for the July 7th bombings. I suspect there's a link. I do know that something made those 4 young men so angry with this world that they were willing to blow themselves up alongside hundreds of other innocent people to articulate that anger. Another thing I do know is that none of the bombers looked like they knew hunger but since they took those terrible actions in excess of 16 million innocent children have died of hunger or a hunger related disease. Since I started to compose this post, three days ago, over 72,000 people in this world have died of hunger or a hunger related disease and if you are a "normal" reader in the time it takes to read this post over 280 people will have starved to death.
Yesterday while I was out walking and thinking about this I spotted a teenager walking towards me, on his Tshirt the slogan"Make music not missiles"which reminded me of a statistic I read that " for the cost of one missile a school full of hungry children could eat lunch for five years." The overarching slogan of that Saturday back in July 2005 was "Bread not bombs" that maybe sounds simplistic but it works for me and would work for the whole world if everybody accepted that "All you need is love" love and a lot of hope, forgiveness and compromise.