Friday 15th February

‘One of these days I’m gonna lay this hammer down’ so sings Steve Earle.  And I am not going to go on about the song or ask you to buy it or anything, though it is excellent.

The point of the song is that when all injustice has been defeated, when every hungry child has been fed, when the greedy are stripped of their power, when the crooked are brought to book, when the corrupt politicians are hurled out of Government, when the weak are no longer oppressed…..(the list is endless)….then Steve’s work will be done, and he can lay his hammer down.

It is a nice metaphor, and it makes you think.  Which of us is really trying to put an end to all injustice, or even any at all?  I started out wanting to change the world; I joined the Labour party and soon rose up the ranks.  It was a personal tragedy of mine, and a feeling of shame that made me quit; I sort-of knew I wasn’t ever going to be Prime Minister, not with my track record anyway.  But I still believed, I hadn’t laid my hammer down yet.

And right through the Thatcher and Major years I believed.  At last along came a saviour, Tony Blair, but then we soon realised he was just the same as the Tories.  He didn’t want to actually change anything, he didn’t want to smash the foundations, he maybe liked tinkering here and there and rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, but he never wanted to lay his hammer down, in fact he had never even picked it up – not even for the photo-shoots. Gordon Brown was almost as bad – a spent force by the time he got his mitts on the hammer and too tired to lift it.

And now we have Ed and Ed, and we know that when and if their time comes the hammer will be the size of a toffee hammer, ready to smash one or two of the Tory toys, but never strong enough for the job in hand.

And now what of me?  I really don’t know.  Some days the flame burns bright, but others I am just resigned to the way things are.  I may indeed have laid my hammer to one side, if not completely down.  Job still sadly undone, but at least I realise there is a job to be done.