This prose piece was read at a recent Write Out Loud evening, where poetry is the norm but short prose not unheard of. The piece received such a great reception, we thought it worth sharing it more widely and inviting the writing of poems based on its themes. Why not blog them and add links to the comments to this? 

Plus ça change 

Do you remember the men on trolleys? They were quite common at one time, especially around the middle third of the twentieth century. Some can be seen in Lowry`s works (pictured).

There was a compelling reason for this form of transport: a lack of legs. And the lack of legs was usually due to World War One or, after a  mere twenty-or-so years, World War Two.

Technical sophistication was not a feature of these trolleys – a few planks, a bit of carpet, and some roller skate or small pram wheels restored a form of mobility for these men.

Before and during the Great Wars our odd little island off Western Europe was known for many things: having a high opinion of itself and a low one of foreigners, possessing the remnants of a colonial Empire, being a repository of light and heavy industries and, after 1945, having the chance of a fresh start, a chance to get on in the world.

At this time I used to hang around in the branch library [there were plenty then] and read John Buchan, Dornford Yates, Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as Richmal Crompton.  For a lad of nine or ten they were a “rattling good yarn” but after a couple of years I`d become aware of the sub-text; what Alan Bennett called “snobbery with violence”;  all the heroes were rich, powerful, arrogant and able-bodied; Rolls-Royces not trollies.   

Tarzan was an aristocrat in a loincloth and all  foreigners were shifty. Often whilst I was  sitting reading there would be the quiet passage of four tiny wheels across the polished parquet floor.

The nineteen-thirties and Depression had brought some pump-priming  public works; roads, reservoirs and corporation housing estates; the forties and fifties added to this with a regeneration of industry, a major education act, public utilities, the National Health Service, and consumer goods spreading down the social strata.

Perhaps Britain was at last about to grow up and the deferential attitudes of Richard Hannay`s  batmen be swept away for ever. Then again perhaps not, for deference is still there among a large proportion of the populace and, where it has been replaced, it is often by oafishness rather than assertiveness, just as self-interest seems to have over-run ideas of community.

My earlier years come back to me when I hear “he`s off his trolley” or some poseur brays about his wine “having legs” or a “fine nose”.  I suppose his wine, like him, is fortunate to have “legs” or “nose” because thousands of the world`s people are lacking such body parts courtesy of Britain, among others.

We may not have a car industry, a coal  or ship-building industry or even a computer industry but by God we`ve got an armaments industry. If you want to maim, kill or torture someone then we will sell you the necessary, courtesy of the moral bankrupts in industry, politics and the Ministry of Defence.   [Remember when it was the Ministry of War?]

We may have millions on low wages or the dole, but we also have obscenely rich politicians and businessmen profiting from kick-backs and tax avoidance in their murky worlds.

We have savage cuts in research in universities and medical schools, yet other research is funded specifically to produce chemicals and electronics for use in weapons. When foreign regimes plead poverty and can`t pay for their purchases then we, the taxpayer, pick up the bill via schemes such as Export Credit Guarantees.

So “abroad”, where foreigners live, it is estimated that over two thousand people per month are killed or put  “on a trolley” by devices which we are proud to sell.

“Here”, where we live, if you`ve no job, no money or prospects; if your healthcare is being privatized, your educational standards more difficult to  attain and the social framework being beaten back into Two Nations, then it would seem the age of the trolley is back with a vengeance.

Mark Mewerds (Read at a recent Write Out Loud evening)