The Angry Exile: Twenty Eight Minutes Later.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday 31 October 2009

Twenty Eight Minutes Later.

Oh fuck. Shotguns and chainsaws ready, everybody. According to Will Heaven in The Telegraph the zombie apocalypse is finally here. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's starting in Westminster so the infected dead can stumble around moaning 'BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIINNNNSSS' as much as they like - they won't find enough in Parliament to make much more than a round of sandwiches.

In seriousness the zombie march has been organised by Vote for a Change and is a fun way of protesting against unaccountable MPs and an electoral system that's too easily twisted by the main parties to their advantage. Parliament of the living dead, they call it.

Willie Sullivan, a spokesman for the campaign, reckons that in the Houses of Parliament, “Instead of men and women with independent minds and souls, we see mindless ghouls shambling through the voting lobbies. We see elections in hundreds of safe seats throughout the land, where even a corpse could win a job for life”. He says the protesters want “a parliament where voters’ voices are heard, all votes count and MPs are truly accountable – a parliament that’s quite simply better equipped to do its job in representing us, the voters”. In other words, his campaign wants to abandon the first past the post electoral system.

Where Will Heaven is less than impressed is with Vote for a Change's choice of proportional representation as a replacement, although briefly looking at their site it doesn't seem to me like they're die hard PR advocates. Instead they seem to suggest a referendum on whether the system should change by a certain date (they suggest 2014) with the replacement system to be debated and determined after the referendum if they get the Yes vote they hope for. Makes sense, and increases the chance of a Yes vote I'd have thought. If the question is just whether to replace First Past The Post with PR then those who oppose both but are more anti PR will vote No even though they'd vote Yes on a simpler question of whether there should be a change at all. Aussie friends here who are broadly republican have told me that they voted No in Australia's referendum on the issue of becoming a republic and ditching Mrs Queen as head of state because they were even more opposed to the alternatives on offer - but they'd have said Yes if it had been a simple 'Do you want to be a republic in X years?' type question (some feel that the referendum was designed that way on purpose).

Vote for a Change are avoiding that trap and want to ask simply this: should the electoral system in the UK change? With all the troughing and people starting to wake up to the problem of safe seats - the 21st Century's rotten boroughs - they can probably expect some support. Enough to persuade the Browns and Camerons and those lined up behind them? Ah, well, no, probably not. Turkeys won't vote for Christmas, at least not until the alternative looks worse for them.

UPDATE: I noticed the FAQ on the Vote for a Change site recognised that corruption, safe seats and party cronyism still occur in countries with PR and other voting systems. Tell me about it - I landed in territory pretty much owned by the Australian Labor Party, and that's despite the system of Preferential Voting used to elect the House of Representatives ( ≈ House of Commons) and a cross between that and PR to elect the Senate ( ≈ House of Lords). The thing is I'm not sure that changing the voting system itself will alter that much, but what might is this. As pointed out by Daniel Hannan and Douglas Carswell in The Plan, open primaries more or less destroy the notion of safe seats since to keep it the incumbent must keep on the side of his/her constituents at least as much as the party - more so if recalls are brought in too. Even with the FPTP voting system unchanged sucking up to the Whips and party hierarchy will do you no good if an unhappy electorate can deselect you despite party support, or even force you to face re-election early. If Vote for a Change want to do something about the mindless lobby fodder in Parliament they could do worse than get behind that idea.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...: "I noticed the FAQ on the Vote for a Change site recognised that corruption, safe seats and party cronyism still occur in countries with PR and other voting systems."

I doubt very much whether it's even possible to build a system that is totally impregnable, human ingenuity being what it is...

The best we can hope for is a system with robust enough puishment for those that get caught.; 1 November 2009 at 00:54
Angry Exile said...: As I said in the post, I rather like the Hannan/Carswell suggestion of open primaries to reduce the party players getting in and recalls to enable constituents to force by-elections if the incumbent MP becomes or turns out to be corrupt or useless later on. I think that's probably more important than changing First Past The Post, though something like transferable votes or optional preference voting would improve things further. And since the House of Lords is largely full of political placemen and appointees I'd say it's time to think about ditching it altogether and changing it to something like a Senate, possibly with straight PR as the electoral system.; 2 November 2009 at 19:34