Follow the leader

Posted on Categories dictators, George Orwell, King Canute, Margaret Thatcher, tyrants

Follow the leader

Follow the leader 222

They control people’s lives. They are unavoidable, they impinge on the population’s lives. The weak look up to them. The rebellious despise them. Some dote on their words, while others deplore them. Some are bewitched by them, others see through them. They rule with an iron fist. There is not enough solidarity or the will to rise up and other throw them. Their myth lives on long after their deaths. People are fearful of them. They have a well-oiled propaganda machine and supported an all seeing, all powerful Police force. They are leaders…

Look at a picture of Margaret Hilda Thatcher, that Buffon hairstyle, pearls, ladylike handbags and gloves, and you might imagine a soft woman, the perfect invite to a genteel tea party. The reality being she is one of the most demonized people in modern times. When she died, some would have her canonized, others joined the refrain of “ding dong the witch is dead” as if a cloud had been lifted, that had shrouded the country.

There was a King of England called Canute whose pride led him to believe his command could hold back the incoming tide. He may have failed to influence the rules of nature, but his power and authority is unquestionable, his dominion included all of Denmark, all of Norway, all England, as well as Scotland. His words to the sea were “You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord”. All powerful leaders will at some point become delusional. Margaret Thatcher famously said she slept four hours a night, of course she had a strong work ethic, perhaps she thought the country would grind to a halt if she was not constantly working.

In literature, George Orwell’s Big Brother is a graphic description of tyranny, an all seeing despot, seemingly unbeatable, an absolute power, all citizens have to comply and even those with grave doubts about the system, will have their spirit pounded down, any defiance quashed.

With my book of short stories, I have a number of tyrants, in “Gomford”, the tyrant is a priest called Reverend Salmon. An ugly businessman “Gomford” arrives in a small remote village with a beautiful young woman, who he has allegedly married. The men of the village have never encountered such beauty and one by one each seduces the young woman, only to fall into a deep depression, due to their sexual failings as well guilt for cheating on their wives. The spirit of the village plummets, which is where The Reverend Salmon steps in. When the young woman undermines his authority, when he tries to exorcise the village, he concocts a plan and leads a group of village vigilantes, to perform the long outdated and outlawed practice of “dunking”. The Reverend takes the unusual step of having the victim dunked “naked” for his own sadistic pleasure. The villagers are gormless and compliant to every one of his dictates. Without him they are like a rudderless boat. Like many leaders he is capable of getting away everything and nobody will challenge him (apart from the young woman he feels obliged to crush). He knows what he needs to do preserve this village, which does welcome outsiders, that is in effect still living in the dark ages. The Reverend in the end of the story proves to be a flawed character, with a hefty skeleton in his past.

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Published by Francis H Powell

What better way to put all my angst into short stories. Born in a commuter belt city called Reading and like many a middle or upper class child of such times I was shunted off to an all-male boarding school aged eight, away from my parents for periods of up to twelve weeks at a time. In such an institutions, where I was to rest until my seventeenth year, there was no getting away from the cruel jibes hurled at me from taunting tormentors. My refuge was the arts room, where I started to find some kind of redemption from the stark Dickensian surroundings, whose aim was nurture the army officers, businessmen, and gentry that dominate the class ridden world I was born into. The seeds were sown, I was an outsider, Happier times were to follow, I went to art school, where I attempted to exorcize my time spent at school. At eighteen I turned my back on a parentally enforced weekly visit to church and my head was filled with a range of nonconformist ideas. While at my first Art college through a friend I met a writer called Rupert Thomson, who was at the time in the process of writing his first book “Dreams of leaving”. He was a bit older than myself, me being fresh out of school, but his personality and wit resonated and despite losing contact with him, I always read his latest published books with not only great expectation and unabashed admiration, but also a fascination for a person I had really looked up to, his sentences always tight, shooting arrows that always hit the mark. My yearning to be creative stayed strong and diversified, from my twenties through to my thirties and forties I made electronic music, doing concerts, in front ecstasy infused crowds, at a point I was making videos and short films. When the age of the internet arrived I was really able translate my creative endeavors into something really tangible. To earn a living I have worked as a teacher. I moved to Austria where upon I thought I would try writing. It is sure that my writing at that time was rough and rugged and without direction. I dived into a story about immortality, the story remains vegetating on some dusty floppy disk. Then tried short stories for children with illustrations to go with them. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-forties that my writing took shape. I was at this point living in Paris, France. I spotted an advert for short stories. The magazine happened to be called Rat Mort (dead rat) I sent off a short story, in the hope it would match the seemingly dark world the magazine seemed to embroiled in. I got no answer. Not put off I sent two more stories. Finally I got an answer. It seemed the magazine editor was a busy man, a man prone to travelling. It seemed my first story really hit the right note with him. His name was Alan Clark. He had a flat in the Montmartre area of Paris, where he seemed known to all, especially those who frequented his favorite drinking haunts. He offered me many words of encouragement. I was writing stories that were coming into my head at regular intervals, as if a monster had suddenly awakened. I was writing them on scraps of paper, less I would forget them, while I travelled on the Paris metro, going about my teaching work with staid business types. I had found a format for writing that worked, as well as a hunger to write about the demons of my past that still haunted me. Moving closer to present times, the desire to put together an anthology seemed to resonate in my mind. The Flight of Destiny evolved slowly. Many trans-Atlantic exchanges between myself and two editors seemingly far away. This evolution took my writing to a new level and the stories more depth and resonance.

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