Mead Making, 'Writing with Bees' with Charlotte du Cann, May 2018
Mead
is an ancient bee medicine made by our ancestors since the earliest times. It was
created throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, with
Chinese pottery vessels dating from 7,000 BCE showing traces of honey
fermentation such as takes place in mead making. In Europe similar
traces have been found in ceramics belonging to the Bell Beaker
Culture (2,800-1,800 BCE). Fermentation has a long history and can be
seen as a way to reclaim food from fast food and supermarket culture. I find it
deeply heartening ans hopeful to have fermenting food in the hedgehermitage
kitchen; a substance in a constant state of transformation, just as I like to think I am. With the
simple recipe that follows we might also use mead making to connect
to the land and the plants around us in our everyday lives; this too
is a radical act in a culture so threaded through with disconnection
from nature.
The
Hispanic-Roman naturalist,
Columella, gave a
recipe for mead in his
‘De re rustica’, in
about 60 CE;
“Take
rainwater kept for several years, and mix a sextarius
of this water with a
(Roman) pound of
honey. For a weaker mead, mix a sextarius of water with nine ounces
of honey. The whole is
exposed to the sun for 40 days, and then left on a shelf near the
fire. If you have no rain water, then boil spring water.”
Many
recipes will also include yeast but
an older way is to make it without as adding raw honey to spring
water will cause it to ferment. I was given the following mead-making
recipe by Charlotte du Cann at a ‘Writing with Bees’ workshop
held by the Natural Beekeeping Trust in May 2018 and I am only just
now trying it out. The thought of it obviously needed to ferment first!
Blackthorn blossom, nettle, and strawberry mead, April 2019
All
that’s needed for the recipe is a jar; a Kilner jar is perfect as
it needs to be shaken vigorously at the beginning, spring water (not
tap), raw honey (runny is best as less shaking is needed!), together
with soft fruit, flowers, berries, and leaves. By changing the recipe
it’s possible to follow
the seasons in the most simple and beautiful of ways. I can think of
few things nicer than going out with my foraging basket in search of
ingredients for mead making. We might try elderflower, rose petal and
strawberry, or wild cherry and meadowsweet in the summer,
blackcurrant and fennel, blackberry and mint, as the seasons change.
Other possible ingredients are things like herb robert leaves, lemon
balm, lavender (both leaves and flowers), violets,
forget-me-nots, rowan
or hawthorn berries, sloes, rose hips, mallow flowers, borage, and
heather, among countless others. It is
important to be sure of our identification of course, and to be
mindful of where we are collecting our ingredients from, but there is
so much for us to experiment with. And we are taking part of the land
into ourselves; offering the honey made by the bees back to the
flowers.
Foraged primroses, nettles, and blackthorn flowers
To
make the mead, take around 1 litre of spring water (the less water,
the stronger the mead) and half a 227g jar of honey (although I had a much larger jar and probably put more in!), put them in a
jar and shake energetically. This will activate the honey and it will
begin to froth. You can then add your sliced fruit, together with any
leaves or berries you like. Swirl it around again and leave, making sure to stir once a day. After a few days it should
begin to froth; continue to stir once a day, and when the frothing
begins to calm down, you can strain it and drink it. The process
should take around ten days. It can become too fermented. If this
happens, just strain out the flowers, fruit, and leaves, and put it
into the fridge.
I put my flowers in first, but I'm sure that it will be ok!
Adding the honey
Filling them up with spring water
After energetic shaking ~ the blackthorn mead was especially excited!
I
am currently trying two different recipes. My first thought was to
make nettle mead from the nettles in the hedgehermitage garden. I am
doing that, with the addition of some primrose flowers from the
churchyard of the church I go to and which has stood on that spot for
over 1,200 years; ancient ground. My other jar contains blackthorn blossom and some
nettle tops from the companion plants growing under the blackthorn just down the road from here. I
have added strawberries to both, although I think that I would rather
have just used the nettles and flowers. I am not yet confident enough
to do that though, as I wonder whether the soft fruit aids the
fermentation process. I was mindful of keeping the nettles from the
two different locations separate. I would like to use one to weave
connection between my home with my church and the other to connect
more deeply with the blackthorn being and her edge-place plant
allies. I will perhaps sip a little each day and see what comes. I
think of this more as a sacred ‘medicine’ than an alcoholic drink and
will treat it in that way. I
will perhaps write about that another day.
In
the meantime, do let me know if you make this simple mead
and what recipes you decided on. I
wish you many blessing of honey and land if you do choose to make this mead
prayer.
"Beloved,
gaze in thine own heart, the holy tree is blooming there..."
W.B. Yeats
I
absolutely adore this stunning blackthorn pattern by William Morris,
which was first sold by Morris & Co. in 1892. It is mostly the
work of John Henry Dearle, as Morris was reaching the end of his life
during its design, but it contains many of Morris's signature themes,
such as daisies and entwined leaves.
I
can see so many aspects of the Blackthorn Being here; owls, with shades of Blodeuwedd, foxes, stags, the presence of serpents in the snake's head fritillary which form the eyes of the Mother of the Woods; she is serpent-eyed indeed. In
the Irish legend, 'The Pursuit of Diarmaid & Grainne', the deer
goddess, Sadhbh, becomes pregnant as a result of eating sloe berries, the dark fruit of the blackthorn.
Her son is born with a lump on his head, which contains a snake.
Later, the snake is killed in sacrifice to save another man,
underlining blackthorn's sacrificial service in mythology.
Since I wrote about blackthorn the other day, I have been reflecting on this sacrificial aspect which
feels to be part of her purifying medicine. She is a great stabiliser
of emotion & a bringer of hope & joy, a healer of depression.
She does this by taking in negative, stagnant energies which are not her own; scapegoating
herself, just as the, primarily Welsh, 'sin eaters' once did for the newly dead. How appropriate then that she was believed to be one of the trees
woven into Christ's crown of thorns; the crucifixion as the ultimate
scapegoating, sin eating for the world. Sacrifice and service. Blackthorn too seeks to
transform despair into hope, death into life, just as winter
transforms into spring. Indeed, the Buddhist practice of 'tonglen', or taking and sending, does much the same thing; breathing in the negative as a thick dark smoke and allowing it to settle in the heart chakra before breathing it out as transformed light. At its most powerful we are not working with only our own suffering but the suffering of others, whether of body, mind, or spirit, seeking to transform it as a gift, and a relief, to them. With our breath we can offer others a breathing space, an opportunity to also, at last, 'breathe out'. This turns on its head our usual human urge to avoid discomfort and seek out only what makes us feel good. Sacrifice and service. In this way we awaken compassion in ourselves for the suffering of others, whether human or non-human. Might we do this for humans with whom we vehemently disagree, as well as for those we love? Might we offer our heart breath to the victims of the badger cull, to trees cut down? But, of course, what we do for others we also do for ourselves, and vice versa. Pema Chödrön describes this as "breathing in for all of us, breathing out for all of us". It may be that we are too deeply entwined in our own emotional, spiritual, or physical, journey to feel that we have anything to offer to others. I have written about this before; the sense I have that some of us who feel a great deal are also feeling for those among us who are too overwhelmed, numbed, or disconnected to feel. This is the path of the serenydd, which I hope to write about more this year when I can find the words. Here is the path of the wounded healer, offering healing from our own pain & turning what seems like poison into medicine. Sacrifice and service. "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on." Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’
And this is the gift that the blackthorn also offers us; physiologically, as all trees do in breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen, but also spiritually in the power of her deeper prayer. She is so often regarded with suspicion and fear, as all beings associated with death are. That is because we have cut death off from life. Still, she keeps breathing for us and offering us her medicine.
And of her association with death, blackthorn is a tree of the 'warrior's journey' helping us to face our own
dying, perhaps the bravest journey of all. But she also teaches us
how to be fully alive. She is a wise, wild teacher to anyone who has
an enduringly negative or pessimistic attitude, interpreting their
life story through the bad, rather than the good. Blackthorn reminds
us that the stories we tell ourselves about our lives matter, that we
can re-frame them & change everything. I dislike intensely the
'New Age' view that we are somehow to blame for the terrible things
that happen to us, just as we would not blame a blackthorn if she were mindlessly cut down. There are many with power in this world who do not use it well but it is good to be reminded that we have some
power. On a day when we are feeling particularly compassionate we might choose to breathe in their suffering. Again, blackthorn teaches us that we don't need to rid ourselves of our 'thorns', or let go of our protection against what wounds us, in order to offer healing to that which wounds. As for our own power to interpret our stories, I once read, I think in 'New
Scientist' magazine, an article which talked about the disturbing trend for aid workers
seeped in our cultural way of thinking to go to other parts of the
world where natural, and other, 'disasters' had occurred and think
that they were being kind by persuading the victims to take
anti-depressants, of course encouraged by pharmaceutical companies
who were keen to increase the market for their wares. But the issue
was the assumption that the people who had experienced the death of
loved ones, the destruction of homes and livelihoods, would be
depressed. But often this wasn't so. They may have been in shock,
desperately grief-stricken, angry, horribly sad and distressed, all
entirely appropriate in those circumstances, but they had ways of
framing their experiences within a worldview that we can scarcely
even imagine. Anti-depressants just weren't the sort of medicine that were needed. Indeed, our propensity to medicate perfectly valid human reactions to experience is to be questioned in our deepest core. It might be also be suggested that, increasingly, natural disasters due to climate change are caused by the rich Western world disproportionately effecting the poor elsewhere, and that, rather than seeking to truly offer healing, we wish to numb victims in order to avoid seeing, or engaging with, the pain that we ourselves have caused. Even medicine becomes the tool of oppression in the wrong hands; a colonisation of the heart. Unfortunately I have been unable to trace the article but there is an equally interesting, and more recent, article here on similar themes. In our culture happiness has become a tyranny, but in
so many ways victimhood is becoming equally attractive. The
inauthenticity of emotion is a disease; the denial of grief, when
there is so much to grieve, the burying of anger, when there is so
much to rage against, and the refusal to see beauty in spite of, and because of, our grief & anger when there is so
much that remains beautiful. Grief AND gratitude is increasinly the wild edge that we must walk upon. As in so many fairy stories, we perhaps
need a jab from the sharp thorn to wake us up to reality and then the
medicine of her petals to help us forgive it. There is so much that needs to be re-written and re-framed.
Tony
Benn comes to mind. He said;
"There is no final victory, as
there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be
fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up."
A true warrior of the blackthorn speaking truth to power! No one said
that it was meant to be easy. That's why we need to befriend the dark
and the beings who understand its medicine, lest we should slip into
a fairytale of denial or depression.
Interestingly
all of this is a conversation that often arises here in the
hedgehermitage, most recently today even before I had fully thought about
blackthorn in this way. There is always a reason why our attention is drawn to a sister or brother being at a particular time and blackthorn is so rich with medicine and meaning. There is a lot to share, but of course it is personal too.
Returning
to this lovely pattern, Morris & Co. tell us that, "the face
of the Mother of the Woods in the wine red version gives life to the
tree & the forest ~ a sort of a Morris 'green man'". They
also note that, "sometimes children are afraid of the Mother of
the Woods, kindly though she is, & so it's possible to place the
daisies in the centre to 'ofset the crone'. I'm not at all sure that that's but I wish them much luck!
I
want to begin writing about some of the people who inspire me and
give me strength for the journey. Paul Robeson is one of those
people; one of my own ‘folk saints’, a ‘holy activist
ancestor’. And truly I knew very little about him until I happened
to go and see a play about
his life, ‘Call Mr Robeson’ by Tayo
Aluko, in 2013.
I can’t even remember what prompted me to go now. I rarely went to
the theatre but I think that a friend had been to see it and
recommended it, and I had such fond
memories of my dad singing, ‘Ol’ Man River’ in his beautiful
voice. I think that
somewhere I have a recording of him that
I can’t quite bear to listen to
singing along to it with ‘Show Boat’ on the telly and it was one
of the songs that we chose for his funeral.Yes, I think that I
went to see the play because of my dad. I
had no idea that I
would discover in that play a man of such fire and dignity, of such
hugeness of hope and
heart. I am ever
grateful.
Paul
Robeson was born on 9th
April, 1898, and so this week has marked the 120th
anniversary of his birth. So much has changed, and so much hasn’t,
since he joined us. His father, William Drew Robeson, a descendant of
the Igbo people of Nigeria, was born into slavery on the Roberson
plantation, North Carolina, in 1844. In
1860, when he was 15 years old, he escaped with his brother, Ezekiel,
via a
network of secret routes and safe houses known
as the Underground Railway to
make his home in the free state of Pennsylvania. He worked as a
labourer with the Union Army in the American Civil War, joining at 16
in an effort to help the work of ending slavery in the South.
After the war he went
on to college and became a Bachelor of Sacred Theology in 1876.
Whilst there he met
teacher, Maria
Louisa Bustill, a
member of a prominent black Quaker family and
whose ancestry was part
Lenni-Lenape Native American, part Anglo-American, and part Igbo. Her
family had been free since the 1700s and her great-grandfather, Cyrus
Bustill, had been one of the founders of the Free African Society,
which held religious services and provided aid for ‘free Africans
and their descendants’. Her
father, Charles Hicks Bustill, was an abolitionist and a conductor on
the Underground Railway. Nevertheless,
it was considered by her family that she had ‘married down’ when
she chose William Drew Robeson.
Maria Louisa and William Robeson (Public Domain USA)
Maria,
who was known as Louisa, and William married in 1878 and had seven
children together, five
of whom survived into adulthood.
Louisa worked as a teacher and tutored privately and William became
the minister of a Presbyterian church in Princeton, New Jersey, where
Paul was born. However,
when Paul was 3 years old, his father was ousted from his church
after 20 years service having refused to bow to pressure from white
financial supporters of
the church to stop
speaking out against social injustice. On
leaving his entirely
black congregation, all
of whom supported him, he said that his heart was filled with nothing
but love and urged them, "Do not be discouraged, do not think
your past work is in vain." On
resigning his ministry, William was forced to take low paid work and
three years later, Louisa, who had become almost blind with
cataracts, died when an ember from their kitchen stove set fire to
her clothes. Only two
of their children, Ben and Paul, were still living at home but
William eventually became unable to provide a house for them and they
moved into an attic above a store in Westfield, New Jersey. In
1910, William again found a position as a minister at the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, where Paul would stand in for his
father in giving sermons on occasion.
(newstatesman.com)
Both
William and Louisa
believed in the importance of education for their children and Paul
attended a High School where, despite racial taunts, he performed in
Julius Caesar and Othello, sang in the chorus, and excelled at
sports. Prior to
graduation, he won a statewide academic contest and earned a
scholarship to Rutgers, the eighth oldest college in the United
States, where he became
only the third ever African-American student (and the only one at the
time). On arrival
his resolve to join the football team was tested via ‘excessive
play’, which resulted in his sustaining a broken nose and dislocated
shoulder! He also
joined the debating team and sang off-campus
to gain
spending money. He also
sang with the on-campus glee club, but this could only be informal as
membership required attending all-white events from which he was
excluded. During
Rutger’s sesquicentennial celebrations he was left on the bench
during a football match when a team from the South refused to play
because their opponents had fielded a ‘negro’. Nevertheless,
he was recognised in The Crisis, the official magazine for the
National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, for his
athletic, academic, and singing talents. A true Renaissance man! It
was at this time that his father, William, became very ill and Paul
took sole responsibility for caring for him, noting that his father
had been, the “glory of his boyhood years.” It
is touching indeed that he cared for his father so tenderly,
especially at a time when he was just beginning to make his own way
in the world; a care that was echoed by his own son, Paul Robeson
Jr., when he himself became ill in his later years. A beautiful
fatherline.
William
died in May 1918 and was buried next to Louisa. Paul
went on to make a huge success of his time at Rutgers, being
recognised both for his sporting achievements (Walter Camp,
considered to be the ‘Father of American Football’ considered his
to be the “greatest end ever”), and by his classmates, who
elected him
class valedictorian. In
his valedictory speech he urged them to work for equality for all
Americans, having been critical during his time there of a country
who would allow African-Americans to fight for them in WWI but not
offer them the same opportunities as whitre citizens at home.
Paul
went on to graduate
from Columbia Law School in 1923, having abandoned his footballing
career several
months earlier. During his time at the school he had met and married
anthropologist, author, actor, and civil rights activist, Eslanda ‘Essie’ Goode. Essie
graduated from Columbia with a degree in chemistry and it was her
time there that stimulated her interest in racial equality. After
university she became the first black person to be the head
histological chemist of surgical pathology at New York Presbyterian
Hospital but she
gave up her intention to study medicine when her husband’s career
began to take off and became his business manager. Paul Robeson
credited her with encouraging his acting career, saying that he only
took roles in order to stop her ‘pestering’ him. Theirs was a
tumultuous relationship, shadowed by rumours of his unfaithfulness.
It was his affair with
Peggy Ashcroft whilst he
was appearing with her
in Othello in London, that let Essie and Paul to become briefly
estranged.
At that
time Essie resumed her career, taking parts in three films and
gaining an anthropology degree from the London School of Economics in
1937, together with a PHD in the subject in 1946. She learned more
about Africa whilst in England and made three journeys to the
continent, later writing a book, ‘African Journey’, which urged
black people to be proud of their ancestry. Her
perspective as a black African-American woman was considered to be
both unique and important. Like
her husband, she had her passport revoked during the McCarthy era
under accusation of being a Communist. When it was returned she again
travelled to Africa, attending the first post-colonial All-African
People’s Conference in Ghana in 1958. She
was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1963 and died in New York in
1965.
Essie, Paul, and Paul jr, circa 1950 from chs.org
As
for Essie’s husband, he
worked briefly as a lawyer but renounced that work due to rampant
racism. When a white secretary refused to take dictation from him, he
resigned,
saying: “On the stage only the sky could hold me back.” Essie
financially supported them for a time but his acting and singing
career soon led to startling
success, despite his
own reported indifference. Following
various roles at home, he
appeared in 1928 in
the American musical ‘Show Boat’ at the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane, which ran for 350
performances. He
was hugely popular in his role, was summoned for a Royal Command
Performance at Buckingham Palace, was befriended by MPs, and he and
Essie bought a house in Hampstead. Nevertheless,
he was refused seating at the Savoy Grill and issued a press release
describing the insult. In
1930 he became the first black actor to take the lead role in
‘Othello’ since Ira Aldridge more than 100 years earlier. On
opening night he received 20 curtain calls but reviews were mixed,
suggesting that he was ‘too genteel’ in the role. He later stated
that the sensitivities around a black man embracing a white woman had
made him tense, "I was backin' away from her all the time. I was
like a plantation hand in the parlour, that clumsy." Off-stage
they fell in love and
there are suggestions that they had planned to marry but the pressure
of opinion against
unions such as theirs was just too great.
Paul Robeson and Peggy Ashcroft in Othello, 1931
However,
it was whilst in London that Paul Robeson experienced an ideological
awakening. In the
winter of 1929, he had heard the sound of a Welsh miners’ choir.
They had walked all the way from Wales to protest their desperate
poverty and to petition the Government for help. He immediately
joined them to sing, later paying for their train journeys home,
together with food and clothing, and visited the Rhondda to sing for
mining communities and talk to the people there. Later,
it was often the people of Wales who supported and
lifted him as he became
more isolated in his own country. In
1934 he enrolled in the School of Oriental and African Studies, where
he studied 20 African dialects and became more acutely aware of
African history and its impact on culture, together
with the effects of colonialism.
In December 1934, due
to his friendship with members of the anti-Imperialism movement and
British Socialists, he visited the Soviet Union with Essie and said
that it was the first time in his life that he had felt like a human
being who could walk with “full human dignity”. In 1936, he and
Essie decided to send their son, Paul Jr., to school in the Soviet
Union so that he could experience a culture without racism.
It
was the Spanish Civil War which Robeson credited
with turning him into a poltical activist. He began to use his stage
performances to advocate for the Republican side
and for refugees of
the war, together with
permanently changing
his rendition of ‘Ol’Man River’ from a resigned and world weary
sorrow-song into one
of defiance. When he was warned that this might affect his commercial
success he refused to change his stance. Whilst
in Wales he spoke in
tribute to the Welsh people
who had died fighting for the Republican cause and said, "The
artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or
slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative." Those
fine words were to become his epitaph. He
later visited the Spanish battlefront, singing to wounded soldiers
and attempting to lift morale.
On
returning to England, he developed a close friendship with Nehru, who
was working towards Indian independence, and, having heard him
speak on Imperialism’s links with Fascism, decided to refocus his
career on the struggles of the ‘common people’. He became an
important voice in the Second
Sino-Japanese War,
sympathising with China and holding concerts to raise aid. A song,
written by progressive Chinese activist Liu Liangmo, and recorded in
the Chinese language by Robeson, became China’s national anthem in
1949. Even though Liangmo died in a Beijing prison in 1968, Robeson
made sure to send royalties to his family. Robeson
often recorded songs in languages other than his own, such as Gaelic
and Yiddish, seeing this as a form of protest against colonialism. I
so agree that, in order to be free, we must hear and dare to speak
our Older Tongues.
Paul
Robeson’s last film
in Britain was, ‘The Proud Valley’ (1940), set in a Welsh
coal-mining town. It was filmed on location in the South Wales
coalfield and documented the harsh realities the lives of Welsh
miners. Although by the
time of its release Robeson was on Lord Beaverbrook’s publicity
blacklist, having spoken out against British and French appeasement
of the Nazis and remained pro-Soviet, his performance was praised as
powerful and sensitive. He later said that the role, in which he
built relationships across boundaries of nationality and race, was
his favourite due to its sympathetic portrayal of workers and their
lives. He was firmly of
the view that the struggle for freedom transcended all differences,
and that the fight of the Welsh miner was exactly that of the black
slave in America.
Although
he was feted as ‘America’s no.1 entertainer’, on his return
there he was refused almost all hotel accomodation and the one hotel
that would let him stay insisted that he use an assumed name. Because
of this he dedicated two hours to sitting in the lobby each day! He
had also come to the attention of the FBI, who declared the
documentary ‘Native Land’, which he
narrated and depicted
the struggle of trade
unions
against corporate power, to be ‘communist propaganda’. Not
long afterwards, he said that he would no longer appear in films as
the roles written for black actors were demeaning.
After
abandoning his film career, Paul Robeson went
on to reprise his role in ‘Othello’, becoming the first black
actor to play the central role with a white supporting cast on
Broadway. His political activism was tireless, as he learned and
spoke out about anti-fascism, continued racism within sport, and
imperialism. In 1946,
he founded the ‘American Crusade Against Lynching’ organisation,
when President Truman refused to enact anti-lynching legislation
after the mass lynching of four black men in July of that year. Some
years later he
delivered a petition
accusing
the United States government of genocide under Article II of the UN
Genocide Convention. He
became a great advocate for union rights, believing them to be
crucial in the fight for civil rights. When he was called before the
Senate and questioned about his affiliation with the Communist Party,
he replied, "Some of the most brilliant and distinguished
Americans are about to go to jail for the failure to answer that
question, and I am going to join them, if necessary." Later,
he was forced to again travel abroad as so many of his US concerts
were cancelled at the request of the FBI.
The Red List
Whilst
travelling, he spoke at the World Peace Council, where he was
misreported as equating America with a Fascist state. On
visiting the Soviet Union in June 1949, he learned of the persecution
of Russian Jews but he never publicly spoke of it in order to prevent
the Right Wing of US politics gaining ground. Speaking at the Paris
Peace Congress soon afterwards he said, "We in America do not
forget that it was on the backs of the white workers from Europe and
on the backs of millions of blacks
that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it
equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on
anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong. We shall not make war
on anyone." Words
that many of our leaders would do well to heed now. Because
of this he was blacklisted by the mainstream US press, including by
many black periodicals. Attempts
were made to remove him from history; a book described as ‘the most
complete on American
football history’ ignored his contribution, television performances
were cancelled, and his passport was removed.
When he asked why, he
was told
that it was due to his, “extreme advocacy on behalf of the
independence of the colonial peoples of Africa." and that "his
frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States
should not be aired in foreign countries."
Further
attempts were made to
politically isolate him and articles designed to ruin his reputation
and the popularity of the Communist Party were distributed in Africa.
In 1952, he was awarded
the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples
by the Soviet Union and,
on Stalin’s death the following year, he wrote ‘To You My Beloved
Comrade’, praising Stalin as a peacemaker and a guide.
He saw the Soviet Union
as an essential source of political balance in an unbalanced world
and continued with this stance even though it assured that his
passport would not be returned. As an act of defiance, the union
movement held a concert for Robeson at the Peace Arch on the border
between Washington State and British
Columbia
in 1952. Three
further concerts were performed by him there in the following years.
At the same time he was encouraged by his friend Aneurin Bevan to
record radio concerts
for his supporters in Wales.
With Welsh Labour MP, Nye Bevan
Robeson
said that, "here was an audience that had adopted me as kin and
though they were unseen by me I never felt closer to them.” That
he remains much loved there
is proven by the Manic
Street Preacher’s 2001
song, ‘Let Robeson Sing’.
In
1956, during the McCarthy era, he was
called to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
after he
refused to sign an affidavit confirming that he was not a
Communist. When
asked why he hadn’t previously remained in the
Soviet Union with which he had such an affinity
he replied, "because my father was a slave and my people died to
build [the United States and], I am going to stay here, and have a
part of it just like you and no fascist-minded people will drive me
from it!", going on to say that, “I will not discuss anything
with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people.” He
was refused the right to travel for the next four years and, in 1957,
sang for sell out audiences in both London and Wales via the
Transatlantic Telephone Cable, saying that "We have to learn the
hard way that there is another way to sing". Amen to that!
Although
he continued to find ways to perform by 1957 his recordings and films
had been
removed from distribution and it became harder and harder to hear him
sing, buy his music, or see his films. However,
an appeal to have his passport returned was successful the following
year and he was able to visit the Soviet Union, England, and Wales,
attending the National Eisteddford and becoming the first black
performer to sing in St Paul’s Cathedral. In
1960, he visited Australia and New Zealand, becoming the first person
to perform on the construction site of the Sydney Opera House and,
having been brought to
tears by their conditions,
spoke
out against the inequality faced by the Maori and Aboriginal
Australian peoples,
saying that, "..the people of the lands of Socialism want peace
dearly".
Paul_Robeson_yn_Eisteddfod_Genedlaethol_Cymru,_Glynebwy,_1958 Geoff Charles Wiki Commons
On
their return
to London, Essie argued that they should remain there as she feared
that Paul
would be killed should he return to the US. However, determined to
resume his work with the civil rights movement, he insisted on going
and left her in
England to travelback
alone via Moscow. Whilst in
the Soviet Union a
party, described as ‘uncharacteristically wild’, took place.
During the
evening Robeson
became unwell, locked
himself in his bedroom, and attempted to commit suicide by cutting
his wrists. Days later he told his son that he had felt extreme
paranoia, together with overwhelming emptiness
and depression. His
son continued to believe to the end of his life that his
father had been drugged and that his
suicide attempt, and many subsequent health problems, were due to the
FBI’s and CIA’s attempts to ‘neutralize’ him. Others believed that he had already been suffering from a debilitating depression. If so, it is even more remarkable that he continued to fight for the dignity of others through it all.
Paul
remained in the Soviet Union for a time until
he was recovered enough to
return to London. There,
he later suffered a relapse and was admitted to The Priory where
he endured many sessions of Electroconvulsive Therapy and heavy doses
of drugs (but no
psychotherapy). In
August 1963, distressed
at his condition and treatment,
family and friends were able to facilitate his transfer to a hospital
in East Berlin where doctors expressed ‘doubt and anger’ at the
treatment he had been given in London. He quickly improved under
their care but was never the same, physically
at least.
At
the end of 1963 Paul
returned to the US and,
following Essie’s death, lived quietly with his son and then with
his sister. In 1973, he recorded a message to be played at a concert
at Carnegie Hall in honour of his 75th
birthday. He said, "Though I have not been able to be active for
several years, I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated
as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace and
brotherhood." He
died following the complications of a stroke on 29th
July 1976. Subsequent reflections on his life downplayed his
political activism and his refusal to bend, describing him as a
‘Great American’. How
easily the powerful believe that they can silence rebel and
revolutionary with flattering words. They
are wrong of course. Some keep listening.
Since
his death, Paul Robeson
has been honoured many
times for his work to
end racism and imperialism, including
a posthumous award from the United Nations for his efforts to end
Apartheid in South Africa.
In addition he has been
acknowledged for his other achievements ~
In
1995, he was at last
admitted into the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1998, the
centenary of his birth, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy
Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I
wonder whether that would have been the case if he were still here
singing out? His
portrayal of Othello on Broadway was the longest running Shakespeare
production ever staged there, and his performance has been described
as ‘a high point in
Shakespearean theatre in the 20th century.’
The main campus library at Rutgers is
named after him and a
black cultural centre at Penn State University bears
his name. His rendition
of ‘Joe Hill’ remains the third most popular choice for Labour
Party politicians on ‘Desert Island Discs’. In
2010, his granddaughter, Susan, began a project with Swansea
University and the Welsh Assembly to create an online learning
resource in her grandfather’s memory. I
think that of all the accolades and tributes he might have liked that
the best of all.
I
can’t pretend to know a great deal about history and so I find it
hard to understand the fullness of Paul Robeson’s political
activism, particularly his unflinching respect for the Soviet Union,
and yet it seems that he was able to somehow see the vastness of so
much that was happening in his, and our world, that he could sense
the ‘ecosystem’, tap into the roots, and gain an awareness of
where so many issues that we might see as separate join together. I
wish that there were more who could do the same. I
have always found such people inspiring, but
what I most love about Paul Robeson is the determination that he had
to speak his truth, the relationships that he built with people who
seemed so different but who he knew faced the same struggles, and the
heart and the passion that I hear in his voice, whether speaking out
or singing. A
visionary, a true prophet speaking truth to power.
And I love that under all of that I
can hear my dad.
After
death huge efforts are made to tame the memory of so many
activists who were
unbowed in life. Martin
Luther King has become a ‘national treasure’, despite the fact
that at the time of his death he was wildly controversial, Nelson
Mandela, a sort of kindly grandfather, and Paul Robeson’s rendition
of ‘Ol’Man River’ is in most of our heads as
the ‘resigned and world
weary’ song of old.
Has it been so easy for the river to put the fire out? Somehow
I don’t think so, and fire that has gone underground is often the
wildest of all.
I
will end with the words
of Naomi Shihab Nye and her poem, ‘Cross That Line’… Paul
Robeson stood
on the northern border of the USA
and sang
into Canada
where a vast audience
sat on folding
chairs
waiting to hear him. He
sang into Canada.
His voice left the USA
when his body was
not allowed
to cross that line. Remind
us again, brave friend!
What countries may we sing into?
What
lines should we all be crossing?
What songs travel toward
us
from far away to deepen our days?
Our
holy activist ancestor, our prophet, our friend, Big Paul. Just as
big in death as in life. Still singing to us across the line. It's up to us to make sure that he can hear us singing back.
