If you know, you know…
The River is inspired by and a tribute to Pauline Town.
Pauline is the beating heart of We Shall Overcome. Every day, her tireless work feeds over one hundred people, homeless and rough sleeping, and she has helped over a thousand people into safe, secure, permanent accommodation.
At the heart of everything that she does is a raw kindness and down-to-earth humanity: a practical socialism that doesn’t judge but raises a fist of anger at the cruelty of the system while extending the helping hand of solidarity.
If Pauline is the beating heart of We Shall Overcome, then it’s spiritual headquarters is her pub, The Station in Ashton-under-Lyne. Over the course of the pandemic, it has become a community hub and place of safety and refuge.
The Station is re-opening as a pub in May 2022 and costs need to be covered alongside the fundraising for food and shelter, so go and have a pint if you can and chuck a few quid in this digital bucket to help our hero keep doing everything that she does to support people living at the roughest edges of Tory austerity.
You can support Pauline in keeping The Station going here.
She pulled him out of the river
Fed him, clothed him, found him a home
Cos pulling folk out the river
Is the only way she’s ever known
She pulls him out of the river
And tomorrow she’ll pull him out again
She pulls him out of the river
But she’ll never meet the bastards
That keep throwing him in
Keep throwing him in
She pulls them out of the river
Without ever asking from where they’ve come
Fishing souls out the river
And some days her day’s work is never done
She pulls him out of the river
And tomorrow she’ll pull him out again
She pulls him out of the river
But she’ll never meet the bastards
That keep throwing him in
Keep throwing him in
She’s fishing souls out the river
Seems that’s the way it’s always been
While the soulless bastards in government
Keep throwing them in
She pulls him out of the river
And tomorrow she’ll pull him out again
She pulls him out of the river
But she’ll never meet the bastards
That keep throwing him in
Keep throwing him in
She’s fishing souls out the river
Seems that’s the way it’s always been
While the soulless bastards in government
Keep throwing us in
Keep throwing us in
Keep throwing us in
“This is about stopping the Tories killing people. We’ll stop them with a raised fist: in the streets, on demonstrations and by organising in our trade unions, our workplaces and our communities. Tonight we’re going to stop them with a helping hand. All tonight’s acts are playing for free, all the money will go to people on the front line of stopping Tories killing people: a food bank, a soup kitchen, and a charity that supports disabled survivors of abuse and hate crime.”
Well, we all needed that after this week: some joy, some solidarity. Never underestimate the healing power of music.
There is perhaps no better band to lift your post-election blues than Commie Faggots, no better R’n’B to dance the night away to than The Beatpack’s, book-ending our favourite ever pub rockers Graham Larkbey & The Escape Committee, the irrepressible Efa Supertramp, our hero Robb Johnson thanking the audience for lifting his spirits and, of course, us, debuting Air Miles Andy and leading a rousing chorus of Bring the Bastards Down.
We emerge this morning bleary-eyed but calmer, with a renewed sense of purpose.
We shall overcome.
The final fundraising figures aren’t in yet, but the legendary What’s Cookin’ whip-round won’t have let us down. If you couldn’t make it but would like to make a contribution, here are the links:
Steve
The Trussell Trust opened their first food bank in the UK in Salisbury in 2000, by 2004 there were two. Today, after nearly a decade of austerity, there are thousands [1], and their use, as difficult, demoralising, humiliating as it is for some, has become normal. The role of the state to protect the food security of its people has been abrogated in favour of the kindness of strangers, the rise of food banks applauded in some circles as growth in the power of community organising and on the right as demonstration of the success of a small state, Blair’s third sector, Cameron’s big society. [2]
Worse: in-work poverty. The number of people qualifying for the support of food banks who actually have jobs but are paid so poorly, often by super-rich multi-national corporations, that they’re forced to rely on charity for food, toiletries, sanitary products. You might as well pay for your basket of shopping at the checkout then put it all straight back on the shelves. This is life at the coalface of capitalism, this year’s ragged-trousered philanthropists work in call centres and supermarkets.
We Shall Overcome, now in it’s fifth year, offers a raised fist and a helping hand, and the helping hand, directed by local organisers, artists and promoters has often been held out to food banks, a direct interface with some of those hardest hit by austerity.
As for the raised fist: now’s the time. We stand on the threshold of major change if Labour are successful in next month’s general election. Joe Solo and Grace Petrie are hitting the road supporting CLPs, the Protest Family still slip from venue to picket line to fundraiser. While others pontificate about polls and parliamentary arithmetic, WSO activists are focussing their energy on the real possibility of a better world. Sociologist Janet Poppendieck warned that the institutionalisation of food banks can be difficult to resist and overturn. [3] We have a chance to prove her wrong, to consign Food Bank Britain to the dustbin of history.
Whether our next WSO gig, on 14th December, turns out to be a celebration or a show of solidarity in the face of future uncertainty is yet to be seen. What’s clear is the helping hand will still be required, so please, fill the venue, fill the bucket, fill your soul with music and common purpose, it promises to be something of an occasion whatever happens.
Steve
2. In 2017, Jacob Rees-Mogg told LBC that he found the rise in food bank use as “rather uplifting”
Here are some statistics from our local food bank, Eat or Heat, a non-political organisation keeping people alive in our small but perfectly formed piece of east London. And what they say is this: from Stellaville to Iain Duncan-Smith Land, compared to this time last year, there has been a huge increase in the number of people needing to use their food bank, referred in many cases by government agencies; agencies of a government that exists to ensure their safety and security but fails miserably to do so.
While pantomime Tories preen and keynote screech about investment and opportunity and demand double spaces after full stops, people are dying; the phenomenon of in-work poverty is disregarded.
These statistics don’t tell lies, the new man in No. 10 does.
Yes, we know loads of songs about this, and yes this is why we are so heavily invested in We Shall Overcome, but some days we are just plain angry.
Steve White & The Protest Family 