MANSFIELD’S YEAR OF DECISION …(Or is it indecision?)

They’re all limbering up now. The councillors, the politicians. There’s an election in the offing and the search is on for some real campaigning cause celebres.

Of course, those of us in Sherwood Ward living on West Hill remain in no doubt what one of those causes should be. Stop yawning at the back there – the derelict Mansfield General Hospital site may be a bore to anyone on Berry Hill, but it’s a continuing pain in the collective backside here. 16 years, and where are we? Nowhere.

In September 2009 Mr. Mumtaz Hussain Adam, proud owner of the Hulk of The Hill, learned that Mansfield District Council would be serving him with a 215 Order under the Local Government Act. This would stipulate that the site, which remains an ugly mess and an eyesore, should, among other requirements, be tidied up, fences secured, vegetation cut back, rubbish removed and windows/doors boarded up. Of course, the residents were delighted. At last, he wasn’t getting his own way. And, of course, let us not forget his repeated claims that he would have the site sufficiently ‘developed’ by Christmas for the first of his planned luxury apartments to be occupied.

No one was surprised when almost nothing happened. Yes; there was one spurt of activity in October when a few windows were covered, and a few more have been tackled since, but the ‘development’ is as far away as it was ten years ago, and the site remains as one of Mansfield’s ugliest civic disgraces.

In a recent response to a letter from a West Hill resident, Mansfield Council’s Chief Executive, Ruth Marlow, repeated the mantra that the Council had no intention (or the financial ability) to wrest the site from Mr. Adam’s grasp via a Compulsory Purchase Order. The 215 Order remains far from being fulfilled, with Adam launching an appeal to Magistrates in January for an extension to the order. Naturally, he got what he wanted. He always does.

The chances for selling this 4 ½ acre prime brownfield site to developers have all been and gone, and with the current depressed state of the market and the total lack of concern shown towards this by local government, the future looks bleak for all those poor people who have to face this blight through their front windows. The Mayor, Tony Egginton, has had countless meetings with this man, and all to no avail. Our MP, Alan Meale, suggests that a CPO is possible. His opponent in the forthcoming election, the Independent Forum’s Andre Camilleri, has made some promising noises over this as a possible centrepiece for his Parliamentary bid, but if Alan Meale, the Mayor, the Council and over decade of campaigning by the residents, including TV, radio, petitions and demonstrations, can have no effect, and the way in which the owner seems to be able to confidently stretch a 28 day official order to any length which seems to suit him, all we, as residents can ask is this:

IS THERE SOMETHING WE AREN’T BEING TOLD? Is there some larger plan for this area which has already been decided behind closed doors?

One thing we do know, and that is that sometime in 2010, officialdom has to face up to this problem and finally tackle it head-on. Procrastination is the thief of time. Yet to those who live beyond the sight of this rotting carbuncle, time doesn’t matter.

Worse still, as far as local government is concerned, neither do we – the voters.

So, when they come around with their election literature, if it doesn’t include a promise to sort out the hospital site, then thrust it back into their hands, no matter what party they are. This mess will go national this year unless it is dealt with. It will become the proverbial hot potato, and a political football. So let’s make sure we know which politician has the right boots to kick it into touch.

I received this e-mail message today. It certainly brought some memories back.

The Working Class Movement Library marks the 25 anniversary of the Miners Strike 1984-1985

The Working Class Movement Library will be holding a meeting to mark the 25th anniversary of the Miners Strike 1984-1985. On Saturday 21 November at 2.30pm speakers Granville Williams, editor of Shafted; the Media, the Miners’ Strike and the Aftermath (2009) and Paul Kelly (Ex-Agecroft Miner) will look back at the personal, political and economic effects of the strike.

What a different country Britain was back then. As workers we actually had the temerity to think that, because we were the majority, we could influence the social and political structure for the better. But things happened during 84-5 which would make us realise how powerful capital really is, and to what unprincipled lengths it would go to strengthen itself further.

With Margaret Thatcher’s undying admiration for torturers and despots such as Chile’s General Pinochet, had the Miners looked like achieving a victory, I have no doubt that Britain could have tipped over into the kind of fascist bloodbath we witnessed in Santiago in the 70s. As well as the bully-boy brute force of thousands of sinister, so-called ‘policemen’, what marked the Miner’s Strike was the huge use of dirty tricks – something the British establishment are skilled at. All that education at Eton and Harrow never goes to waste.

For some of that period I was working in London and hitch-hiking home to Grimsby every Friday afternoon. One sunny August Friday I was dropped off by a helpful driver at the services just outside Grantham on the M1. In need of a coffee and the toilet, with still several legs of my hitch home to go, I wandered through the car park as three coaches were parking. From these poured about 150 men in military fatigues. A kind of Army day out? The TA en route to a training weekend?

I waited until they’d all gone into the restaurant and as I walked past one of the coaches I was amazed to see what else they contained. Hanging on racks between the aisles were police uniforms. I discovered later that there had been another huge confrontation between the ‘police’ and the NUM that morning in South Yorkshire. What always puzzled me was the sheer number of ‘police’ available for confrontations during the dispute. Thousands of men, ostensibly from every force in the country. Yet seeing those soldiers confirmed what had until then been a kind of urban myth or legend – Thatcher was using the armed forces of the realm to subdue the working population.

   Towards the end of the strike I was playing with an acoustic band, formed especially as a kind of agit-prop outfit to support the Miners’ cause. The Expanding Wallets, as we were called, travelled extensively throughout Yorkshire and the North East playing at rallies and in Miners’ Welfare Clubs. One night we were due to play at Hatfield Welfare near Doncaster. As we came onto a roundabout on the M18 to turn off for Doncaster, the road was barred by a line of police in riot gear. As it was dark, they looked suitably sinister and threatening. There were five of us in a Ford Sierra, with a double bass strapped to the roof rack and guitars and a snare drum in the boot. One of the storm troopers approached and tapped on my driver’s window with a huge truncheon.

I rolled the window down. He looked up at the double bass then peered into the car with a flashlight.

His language made us realise that this was no Dixon of Dock Green.

    “Where the f*** do you lot think you’re f***ing going?”

I told him Doncaster. We were a band and we had a gig.

    “Not in Doncaster, you don’t! Get this crate off the effin’ road and back to where you came from!” I attempted to remonstrate with him.

    “The car’s taxed, insured, we haven’t been drinking, we’re on the Queen’s highway and we’re not breaking any laws. What’s the problem?” Bad mistake. He poked me in the chest with the black stick and we could see, despite most of his face being obscured by the helmet, the laser-like hatred in his eyes.

    “You’re going no-where but back up the road – or you’ll have trouble! Got that?”

We were allowed to drive round the roundabout, past the blocked off slip road to Doncaster, and back in the direction of Grimsby. We paused eventually on the hard shoulder and consulted the AA Ordnance Survey road map. I found some tricky B roads off the next junction, and by cutting across some farm tracks and through a few farm gates, 45 minutes later we managed to get to Hatfield. The gig was a huge success, but there would be other incidents, and one of the band definitely had his phone tapped as he was a member of Militant.

    The Miners’ Strike has left a sour taste in the air and polluted the social infrastructure for ever. Although I have much admiration for Arthur Scargill, I have reservations over his Stalinist background, yet it was appalling when so-called investigative journalist Roger Cook and the Daily Mirror tried a major hatchet job on Scargill, packed with accusations which were mainly spurious, un-founded propaganda. The sequestration of the NUM’s funds and the resulting tightening of the screws on anti-union legislation are shameful episodes. One would have thought that the Labour Party would have sought, on eventually coming to power, to overturn the draconian legacy left by Thatcher, yet ‘New’ Labour was no longer anything to do with the working class and the ideas of socialism had been ditched. The political landscape so carefully prepared and manicured by the Tories between 1979-97 was ideal for the new generation of Blairite ‘suits’. 
    

    So who are the working class now? They’re still here, still struggling, but held back in the chains forged by Whitehall in the Miners’ Strike. What did the children of the last great struggle get? The system gave the population mobile phones, DVDs, X-Boxes, Adidas trainers and baseball caps, dumbed us all down with pixar movies and the X-Factor, and have made us into the infantile, malleable mass Maggie so desired. The difference is that with Thatcher, what you saw was what you got – she did what she proclaimed she would. In her own way, she was a revolutionary. At least even that is a cut above the insincerity, the abandoning of principles and the continuing knee-jerk arrogance of New Labour. Now we must brace ourselves, because after the next election, we’re in for an even rougher ride.

M Y    G E N E R A T I O N

Although the world never seems to be in any condition other than teetering on the brink of disaster, once we reach a certain age we can take stock of life and despite the recurring statements of gloom, celebrate.

No generation can celebrate more, I believe, than mine. Why? Well, although now past the mid-sixties age barrier, with far more years behind us than remain ahead, it is those decades we have been through which inspire such positivity.

To begin with, I was born on April 1^st 1943. The war against Hitler was at its height and Hull had been bombed flat by the Lutfwaffe. Yet as a mewling baby I was far too small to ever worry about bombs. I was fed, clothed, cared for and loved. And the great thing was – I never had to bear arms – that sad duty fell to our parents’ generation.

Once the war came to an end, something wonderful happened in Britain. The post war Labour landslide was the catalyst for all kinds of social progress; the National Health Service, the nationalisation of the railways and the mines, to name but three. Although rationing went on into the 1950s, the Atlee administration were perhaps the only British government in the 20^th century which had politicians who genuinely wanted to change their world in a positive way, in an attempt to lift everyone up. (Yes, Margaret Thatcher changed the world, but not as an act of social compassion, but one of destructive revenge, corporate greed and bitter spite…)

By the 1950s we, the war babies, suddenly had a new designation. Unlike the adolescents of the 20s and 30s, who, in sartorial terms alone, resembled little more than miniature cloth-capped or turbaned versions of their fathers and mothers, we were able to adopt style. A new word had been applied to us – teenagers. Suddenly, some anonymous social marketing genius had realised that kids between 13 and 19 had a different attitude and a different energy to the younger school kids or the more staid, 20+ group. From within the teenage ranks came all kinds of fashion innovation. We wanted to be slightly outrageous. Teddy boys, drainpipe trousers, crepe soled shoes, bootlace ties, sideburns and Brylcreemed hairstyles which looked like a heavily polished duck’s backside. But then, to top it all, around the mid 50s the USA gave us rock’n’roll, and being young meant even more than it had before. It meant James Dean, rebelliousness, Levi and Wrangler jeans. We had Little Richard, Elvis, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly. And as we grew out of our teens, something even bigger and better took over.

Gone was the austerity of the post-war years. The 1960s seemed to offer a dream, (dippy as it now seems, in retrospect) that we could alter the world simply by love. Long hair, beards, sandals, endless summers, we had the blues, the psychedelic bands, we even tried drugs. It was an age of experiment and discovery.

Yes, it went a little pear shaped in the 1970s. Disco looked like killing our culture off, but if your heart was still young and still open, then by the mid 70s we had a new wave of teenage attitude – punk had arrived. Of course, hot on its heels, in 79, the Thatcher government tried to turn us all into mini-capitalists, but her venomous hatred of the working class created yet another form of counter-culture. Music became more colourful and artists became more spectacular, the glamour of bands like ABC and Heaven 17 mixing glorious love songs with anti-tory politics. 

    The Miner’s strike was undoubtedly the final defeat of the British working class, but it did politicise people, and made them realise just what governments were capable of and how far they would go to over-ride democracy. Of course, my generation celebrated loudly in May 1997 when, after 18 years of corrupt misery, the Tories were forced into a humiliating defeat by the victorious New Labour. But it was a short-lived euphoria. What a different breed of politician exists at the sunset of my life, compared with the dawn in the 40s. Then we had giants like Churchill and Atlee, great reformers like Aneurin Bevan, a cabinet whose socialist credentials would cause today’s labour party to vomit. Led by a duplicitous, 2-faced pro-Washington Thatcherite lackey, Blair, a man for whom the title ‘War Criminal’ hopefully lies in wait, New Labour have now destroyed every last vestige of socialist hope. Perhaps, as New Labour-supported capitalism doesn’t give a fig for the environment, it doesn’t matter, because global warming is going to finish everyone off in the next 50 years anyway, so why campaign for a better world?

But, my generation, we’ve got our pensions – and we’ve paid dearly for them – and when the seas start flooding across the once-green English countryside, we’ll all be dead. All our memories, everything we did, everything we hoped for, will be under water.

But, smug though it sounds…. what a good few decades we had.

If you stumble across this blog at random, chances are you don't live in Mansfield, and you'll be wondering why there's so many pages devoted here to one particular subject - the four and a half acre derelict Mansfield General Hospital Site. Well, scroll down a little and read 'A Civic Disgrace' and all will be explained. The hospital site conundrum offers a perfect example of the way capitalism - our system of 'living' - works. 

    As the old Biblical adage has it (I quote loosely - I'm not getting the good book down from the shelf to look it up) To those that have, more shall be given'. Thus we, the dumb proletariat (how long is it since you heard that word in a political context...ooh, sooo 'unfashionable'..) have given billion upon billion to profligate bankers, who  as I write, are divvying this windfall up among themselves for record bonuses. They have devised a very neat, Satanically perverse system - Reward for Failure. The more mess you create, the more you're rewarded. Whilst the Royal Mail workers are striking, not for more money, but (a) for better working conditions and (b) to try and stop the conspiratorial Lucifer Mandelson's grubby little privatisation plans, Adam Crozier, CEO of Royal Mail earns £1Million salary plus £2million in bonuses and Royal Mail contributes 48.2% of his earnings to his pension. 
    
    Looking down the scale of outrage, in the above context, perhaps our fight to demolish an old hospital has no connection. Yet the man who owns this crumbling, disgusting pile of weeds and rubble feeds on the same greed as the bankers and plc executives. Owners of massive commercial properties straddle them like obscene, giant spiders, watching the FTSE index as they wait for the right price and the right time. And it matters not what effect their 'property' has on the hapless saps who live with it on their doorstep. The owner of our miserable pile of woe could have made millions on his meagre investment of 15 years ago, yet there has never been quite enough of those millions to satisfy him. Unlike us, the residents, the ordinary occupants of the 60+ households which face Mansfield's blighted heart, he is regarded by the safely distant civic bourgeoisie (there you go - another old 'leftie' word - look it up), those so-called public servants in control of planning, as someone to whom we must, at all costs, 'be fair'. In short, what he wants or needs from the system of local government to continue to sit on his web of rotting 'investment' - he gets.
 Capital is untouchable. Posession remains 9/10s of the Law. There's something rotten here. So, for your entertainment, here's our latest missive to the local press.  

THE GENERAL HOSPITAL SITE: SMOKE & MIRRORS      Letter to Mansfield CHAD October 22nd

Undoubtedly, most of your readers, including us, are keen followers of the Chad’s ‘Sort It’ campaign, none the less we feel it incumbent on us to reveal the reality behind the current sleight of hand going on over the derelict General Hospital site. The smoke and mirrors routine going on between officialdom and the site owner, Mr. Adam, beggars belief.

Based on the Chad’s announcement that if Adam had not completed the work required to tidy up the site by the 22^nd October, then some kind of action would ensue, I was somewhat mystified after briefly meeting the Mayor, Tony Egginton, who mentioned another date – some time towards the end of December. The West Hill Residents, seeking some much-needed clarity on this, wrote on October 10^th to Phil Cook at MDC’s Planning, Community Safety and Regulatory Services, asking a series of questions. Had the 215 order been served? If not, when? What were the timescales, and what were the consequences for Adam should he fail to comply. By the day everyone expected the work on the site to be completed, October 22^nd, we had received no acknowledgment of our letter. It was yet again the intervention on our behalf by Andre Camilleri which triggered a response, not from Phil Cook, but by telephone from the Council’s Mike Avery. This is what he tells us:

The 215 order was served on October 20th. From that day, Adam has 28 days in which to complete the work. If he does not complete the work (presumably by November 17^th) he then has a further 28 days before the Council will take action. And here’s the salt in the wound: as Mr. Avery says,

“We must be fair to Mr. Adam”.

He did not commence work until the morning of October 21^st. Since then a few windows have been boarded up. But, why worry… he’s been allowed plenty of time left to do the rest. And, let’s not forget, Mr. Adam has claimed that the first residents will be occupying his opulent up-market apartments by Christmas. We wonder which boarded window they’ll be living behind? All this begs a further question. If it takes this much time to tidy and secure the site, how long will it take to get the first ‘luxury’ apartment ready? Mansfield’s high flyers and millionaires must be eagerly waiting, cheque books in hand, queuing up to move in.

So, this sorry saga continues. Behind us, a 15 year trail of false hope and stalled ‘beginnings’. Ahead? Well, it’s obvious. Even if the Council are forced to move in and complete the tidying operation, that will simply provide the man we must be ‘fair’ to with official permission to potter around for another  15 years. So, might we suggest that the Hospital Site be set aside with a new campaign title: instead of ‘Sort It Out’ how about ‘Pull it Down’?
But then again, that’s not being ‘fair’, is it?

16 years and counting....

The following  represents just a small window on a campaign by Mansfield residents to have a major environmental and social blight removed from their midst, where it has remained and festered for over 15 years.
 

When the old General Hospital, in the heart of Mansfield, closed in 1992, it had served the population well for a century. Originally built with subscriptions from miners and factory workers, over the decades and throughout the life of the NHS, the original late Victorian buildings were added to, so that by 1992 the four and a half acre site had become a jumble of incompatible styles, all struggling to connect to provide a comprehensive service to patients. When the new King’s Mill Hospital was opened at nearby Sutton In Ashfield, the Mansfield site was closed down.

Here begins a mystery. It was sold, allegedly, for a ‘knock down’ price (around £200k) to a reclusive and mysterious businessman from Nottingham, Mr. Mumtaz Hussein Adam. No-one knows Mr. Adam’s address. He enters it on planning documents as ‘the old hospital, Mansfield’. No-one knows his occupation – some believe he’s a chemist, others say he owns an old people’s care home in Nottingham. Searches attempting to trace his background have proved fruitless.

Mr. Adam has a dream that he can convert this rambling, decaying asbestos-ridden site into ‘luxury apartments’. Over the years, various desirable and sensible alternative developments have been scuppered by his procrastination. Henry Boot Homes, Plc., wanted a residential development. There was a desire to expand the adjacent West Nottinghamshire College, another plan for student accommodation, and in 2007 a major attempt by a developer, Luna Ventures, for a large residential development, which was abandoned due to Adam’s outrageous asking price - £6.5 million.

In 1997 residents had become wearied by the filth, decay and general misery of this blight, and a campaign group was formed, The West Hill Residents’ Association. Every time Adam applied for various ‘adjustments’ to his planning permissions, despite vigorous opposition and common-sense speeches in the council chamber by residents, (who see only demolition via a compulsory purchase order as a solution), council members, led on by what appeared to be the gerrymandering speeches in his support from the planning Chair, Adam has been given a green light.

Over the years we have:

· Held countless public protest meetings

· Collected petitions via stalls in the market place.

· Appeared regularly on local radio.

· Held a well-publicised ‘Mock Demolition’ on BBC TV.

· Produced newsletters and flyers.

· Appeared on Channel 4’s Demolition show.

· Were the subject of a major feature in The Daily Telegraph.

All this and much, much more have we done to try and get this place demolished. We are thoroughly mystified by the behaviour of our council, and

frequently wonder if there is some odd reason Adam ALWAYS gets what he wants – or do the Council have an ulterior agenda here?

When his 2005 ‘change of use’ permission was due to expire in December 2008, Adam had not touched a brick on the site, yet hired a JCB for one afternoon, invited the Mayor to sit on it, and dug four meaningless shallow trenches in the presence of the media to gain his desired headline ‘Work Begins on Hospital Site’. These trenches are now awash with rubbish and nothing else has happened – in any case, the trenches do not connect to any power, water or drainage systems – they run from nowhere to no-where – they were simply dug for cosmetic publicity purposes.

Dismayed by the Council’s refusal to take residents seriously, we sent a report to the Local Authority Ombudsman complaining the Mansfield District Council had not done enough to proceed to demolition via a CPO. Our complaint was summarily thrown out.

E-mailed queries to Mansfield’s Mayor, Toy Egginton, such as the following, remain unanswered:

Tony

I assume you have received the information regarding our dismay of Adam's lack of action. I would suggest that maybe a financial check is carried out on Mr Adams and see if he has the resources to carry out the alleged works.

I do have knowledge that certain contractors will only work for him "with the money up front" ( i.e. the excavator driver who dug the electric cable connections to no where)
The mains cable is on the opposite side of the street and is not large enough to take this additional load. A new transformer will be required to provide the energy source for this venture. (Circa £70 to £100,000)

More information. Through my contacts with the engineers at Power On and EON, I can assure you that no application has been made for this transformer.

As you may be aware I am a fully qualified Construction Site Manager. I am SMSTS and CSCS qualified. I also hold NVQ Management Level 3 and have just completed my NEBOSH Certificate.

I have even offered to assist Adam set up the works. The current works (if any) are contravening numerous laws under the Health and Safety At Work Act 1974. The Health and Safety Executive would have a very poor view of the site. I am sure there would be a Prohibition Notice issued.

Perhaps you could outline these points to Adam.
Please help us progress this to a satisfactory conclusion,.

Nick Hartshorn 07977 914278 or 01623 660695

We are entering our 16^th year of struggle against dereliction. Is there anyone out there who can help?

Darrell "Shifty" Powers.

Shifty volunteered for the airborne in WWII and served with Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Infantry. If you've seen Band of Brothers on HBO or the History Channel, you know Shifty. His character appears in all 10 episodes, and Shifty himself is interviewed in several of them.

I met Shifty in the Philadelphia airport several years ago. I didn't know who he was at the time. I just saw an elderly gentleman having trouble reading his ticket. I offered to help, assured him that he was at the right gate, and noticed the "Screaming Eagle", the symbol of the 101st Airborne, on his hat.

Making conversation, I asked him if he'd been in the 101st Airborne or if his son was serving. He said quietly that he had been in the 101st. I thanked him for his service, then asked him when he served, and how many jumps he made.

Quietly and humbly, he said "Well, I guess I signed up in 1941 or so, and was in until sometime in 1945 . . . " at which point my heart skipped.

At that point, again, very humbly, he said "I made the 5 training jumps at Toccoa, and then jumped into Normandy . . . . do you know where Normandy is?" At this point my heart stopped.

I told him yes, I know exactly where Normandy was, and I know what D-Day was. At that point he said "I also made a second jump into Holland, into Arnhem." I was standing with a genuine war hero . . . . and then I realized that it was June, just after the anniversary of D-Day.

I asked Shifty if he was on his way back from France, and he said "Yes. And it's real sad because these days so few of the guys are left, and those that are, lots of them can't make the trip." My heart was in my throat and I didn't know what to say.

I helped Shifty get onto the plane and then realized he was back in Coach, while I was in First Class. I sent the flight attendant back to get him and said that I wanted to switch seats. When Shifty came forward, I got up out of the seat and told him I wanted him to have it, that I'd take his in coach.

He said "No, son, you enjoy that seat. Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and still care is enough to make an old man very happy." His eyes were filling up as he said it. And mine are brimming up now as I write this.

Shifty died on June 17 after fighting cancer.

There was no parade.

No big event in Staples Center.

No wall to wall back to back 24x7 news coverage.

No weeping fans on television.

Let's give Shifty his own Memorial Service, online, in our own quiet way. Please forward this email to everyone you know. Especially to the veterans.

Rest in peace, Shifty.

"A nation without heroes is nothing."
Roberto Clemente

As a late-comer to composing poetry, I think I was always held back by a feeling that there was something rather pretentious about it all; but that's all part and parcel of the baggage one carries from a rigourous working class up-bringing shot through with abject cultural and fiscal poverty. I'm always reminded of a Tony Hancock radioshow, The Publicity Photographs, where the portrait photographer, the pretentious Hilary St. Clare, (Kenneth WIlliams) declares
"Snaps? Snaps? I don't take 'snaps'! I paint with light!" So, accompanied by the echo of Sid James's fruity, dismissive laugh, I've finally begun 'painting with light', and here's the early result....


THIS IS THE KIND OF ANNOUNCEMENT WHICH INSPIRES ONE TO CARRY ON...

'PoetCasting invited submissions of poems inspired and informed by the photographs of Altered Land which can be found at www.ernestgoh.com.

Altered Land is a multimedia collaboration between PoetCasting and Ernest Goh, an exciting documentary photographer. The sequence of photographs were taken in Aceh, Indonesia after it was devastated by tsunami waves. This four-year long documentary project charts Aceh’s road to recovery from 2004 to 2008.

Parts of Altered Land have been exhibited publicly and published internationally since the project started and now for the first-time, Altered Land will be launched in its entirety on an online multimedia presentation.

The competition has now closed - many thanks to all who entered.

The Winners - announced 27th May 2009:

First Place: Roy Bainton

Roy’s poem will be included as part of the multimedia presentation, featured on PoetCasting, published in an ebook and he wins a signed Ernest Goh print.'

Here's the poem:

AGAINST THOSE GODS

What gods whose shoulders heave

beneath blue distant, calm horizons

can comprehend the far effects

spontaneous spasms wreak

upon unsuspecting men?

Out there with sailors sailing

through centuries of trade

the sea has dialogue, with

warning in its winds

so men and ships become equipped

to ride impulsive hurricanes

Yet at land’s hopeful sandy edge,

craving the ocean’s sustenance

our hungry children stand,

gamblers against those gods

whose stance is that our life ashore

be washed away forever more.
 

Unlike beneath the sun-kissed waves

No matter how badly oceanic gods behave

Beyond the beach, behind the trees

They will not bring man to his knees

Where waves may crush or fire may burn,

The spirits of plain men return.

Roy Bainton

When I took the plunge to become a full time writer back in the summer of 1997, I was guided by a friend in the media industry to become a client of a newly-formed London literary agency. At that point I only had one book in print, but although it was with a small West Country publisher, it had done reasonably well. Being fascinated by modern history, I decided that this would be my chosen non-fiction genre and my new agent found a small Shropshire publisher, Airlife, for my first major work, a World War 1 Naval biography, Honoured By Strangers. The book gathered a clutch of good reviews, and led on to a more adventurous project, The Long Patrol: The British In Germany Since 1945,  with an up and coming publisher, Mainstream, in Edinburgh. One good review - on BBC Radio, then a wall of silence. The publishing possibilities looked brighter when I was commissioned to write A Brief History of 1917, Russia's Year of Revolution for Constable & Robinson in London. The advance was £5,000, most of which I spent in air fares on field trips to Russia  and interpreter's fees. None of the three aforementioned books have earned me a penny, and Airlife went bust, Mainstream remain silent, and Constable tell me that the book needs to sell at least 10,000 before I've paid back the advance. There have been other works since, with scant success. I began to suspect that my agent felt that every new idea I came up with confirmed the suspicion that I was not going to earn either of us any real money. After writing 9 books in 10 years, the lack of any real financial reward has at least proved to me that writing history, unless one has a sparkling agency and publisher relationship, is simply a waste of time. I parted company with my agent in 2006 - I think he was relieved to get my 'resignation'.

As a freelance 'jobbing writer' I'm fortunate to have been able to make a living in many other firleds of writing - in local government PR work, commercial copywriting and the music industry. This has kept the wolf from the door, but plotting, planning and constructing books remained my real purpose in life, and I made the decision in 2007 that I would finally try my hand at fiction. I applied for an Arts Council Literature Grant to write my first novel, The Scrap Run, and to my surprise, I got one. Since completing The Scrap Run in 2008 I've completed another novel, Cartouche.

However, no matter how one presents a finished MSS to a publisher, if it arrives in London un-agented and un-solicited, then you may as well bring it up on screen, 'select all' and hit the 'delete' key. After a fruitless mission trying to elicit interest from a new agency, and an equally empty experience trying to stir interest in my two new manuscripts with publishers, I now realise that after all the effort of the past 12 years, all the hopes and pointless dreaming, that I'm stuck with a computer full of work and ideas which have nowhere to go.  To see how my new work might have looked, I decided to 'go it alone' and produce both books through Print On Demand. Here's the details, of you're interested.... 

Beyond the Seven Seas,

there’s another voyage…

Successful, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Mac Anderson’s years of wheeling and dealing between Los Angeles and London have taken a toll on his personality. Although a hard-working writer with staunch working class roots, an ostensibly happy marriage with his wife Helen, a devout Buddhist, and two grown-up children, Mac has his dark, secret side as a hard-drinking, chain-smoking adulterer.

When Helen dies in a horrendous car crash, Mac suddenly realises how much he has lost. He suffers castigation by his children who reveal what they know of his wayward, secret life.

Overcome with guilt and recrimination, he accepts an offer from a bizarre shipping magnate, Thomas Lovelock, of a three-month sabbatical, a journey across the South Pacific on the final voyage of an old tramp merchant ship bound for the scrap yards of India. Yet there is more to this vessel, her strange crew and odd captain than he could ever imagine. Challenged by the lusty temptations of two female passengers who join en route, to reach his destination Mac will need all the moral strength and self-discipline he can muster…

THE SCRAP RUN 375 PP 177,000 WORDS.

So - is this a foray into the most despised, stinking corner of the literary arena - vanity publishing? I suppose it would be if I'd not written professionally for the past decade+. That said, it does make me feel quite sick to think of the time and effort involved just to end up with a few printed copies of books one would love readers to have, yet which will never darken a commissioning editor's desk. If you're going to write for a living, be warned.
We're not as clever or talented as we'd like to think.