The Angry Exile: The election

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

Friday 7 May 2010

The election - first thoughts.

Three seats declared, all in the north east (how come they always seem to be among the first up there?) and all for Labour. And from the vote share and turnout all will have MPs with the support of about a quarter of the electorate. That's no surprise of course. All pretty normal with the UK electoral system and there'll be more than a few Tory and LibDem seats that will be in the same situation.

But a thought struck me - what if the sort of localism proposed by Hannan and Carswell in The Plan took hold, and maybe went even further. What if people were voting not just for the political flavour of their representative in Westminster but what manifesto they wanted to apply in their area? What if the 59,571 people who voted for other parties, to say nothing of the ≈95,000 who didn't vote, did not have to abide by the result chosen by the 58,247 people who voted Labour because where the LibDems or Tories won those areas were run according to their manifestos? What if you weren't just voting for the MP but the policies that would apply where you live for the next few years? To a large extent it would mean an end to national politics since the governing party would not get a say over the whole country except on truly national issues such as defence and foreign affairs, but would have to accept that those areas that had rejected them were going to be run a different way. Of course this is kind of what's supposed to happen with local councils anyway but since the government controls the purse strings and since some of the services are national - the term 'local NHS' has always seemed oxymoronic - there's not as much local variation as there could be.

The downside is obvious. It would be very difficult for a government to balance income and expenditure since it wouldn't know how many areas would be paying tax and consuming services at the rates it had in mind and how many would be at the rates suggested by the opposition parties. The solution is equally obvious - one national tax to pay for the truly national services, such as defence, and everything else determined locally. It would be a more libertarian system but not necessarily one that favours libertarianism if most people wanted to live under one or other set of Labial Conservocrat rules. What it would mean is that those who want to live free of unnecessary government intrusion can pick the most libertarian place in the country - which could be just one small town or a single rural seat - and move there. What could be more libertarian than to allow the Lib/Lab/Con voters, and those who don't object to their policies strongly enough to vote against them, to have half their wealth taken for the privilege of living according to those preferences if the reverse applied and libertarian types could all clear off somewhere that most suited them?

Naturally this isn't going to happen without a libertarian party first winning either an election or a revolution, either of which would be very difficult (and the second likely to get innocent people hurt or killed, which is not exactly libertarian). The trouble is that while it's libertarian to let people go off and be, say, socialists if having most of their money taken in return for shithouse services and being bossed around, it's not in the nature of the Labial Conservocrats to allow people to go off and be libertarians. Sadly that doesn't look like changing any time soon, and certainly not as a result of the UK general election.