A trusting and caring 15 year old girl happens to meet a charming 22 year old man and her fate is almost sealed from that moment. He is a brash car salesman she is a shy and naïve girl, the daughter of a brigadier. Their relationship becomes a cruel one as he knows that he can dominate and manipulate and humiliate. Against all of these odds they eventually marry and have 2 children and stay together for 30 years even though he is unfaithful and shows no abatement in his cruelty. It ends in tragedy when a demoralized and downtrodden wife kills her husband.

She was convicted of murder but crucial evidence proving that she was guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter was not heard in court. In addition to this the law about coercive control was not yet on the statute books. However she has served her time, but hers is a pyrrhic victory. Her case has opened up the debate on coercive marriages, there are many women who are still living in the thrall of their husbands. Many have no control over their finances they are literally “kept women”, kept within the confines of their own homes.

Unfortunately after 3 decades of feminism women are still being controlled or manipulated by powerful men. These men just view women as objects, ornaments and even their own possessions. Women are used to feeling like mere decorations and it surprises some when we dare to speak and offer an intelligent opinion. We are human beings, we do not have a price, we are not bargaining tools we are worthy as much as men. This is our woman worth.

In 1981 I moved with my family to a semi rural area located in the West Midlands. It was sold to us as a “village with modern amenities”. It had a post office, a doctor`s surgery, a village hall, a Pub, a school and a residents committee. I remembered that amongst this relative modernity there was a quaint English village steeped in tradition. The villagers lived as all English village dwellers would, they would cycle to Evensong and watch cricket with a glass or two of warm beer.

This homeliness was on a knife edge. It looked as if this picture of rural idyll was close to being shattered. The political and social changes that were reverberating through the country were edging ever nearer to home. This threatened the decade long peace which we had enjoyed and expected. The calm which once blanketed the sleepy neighbourhood was turning into a state of fraught anxiety.

The Falklands war was a tense conflict which resolved itself after ten weeks of combat, but two years later when the miners went on strike civil war almost erupted. Police officers from our village were enlisted to quell it. This was the year in which I learned to be vigilant of danger and consequently feel afraid. Public information films alerted me to this, often in the form of cartoons. Most of the animation was in an eerie shade and combined with the bold graphics only served to intensify my fear.

I remembered that there was a year in which an alarming number of children had gone missing. Their haunted portraits were on display in shop windows. I wasn`t sure how they could have vanished just like that and I pondered about their fate. I was too young to understand what death really meant, but I had a horrible feeling that they would never come back. I wondered how long I would survive when I was feeling so frightened all of the time.

Margaret Thatcher`s legacy is assured, 40 years on from her victory. Her stance as the “Iron Lady” in particular, at a time when the world seemed on a precipice. The seventies were a time when the West and East settled for a détente. Her epithet was meant as an insult but she viewed it as a compliment as she sought to liberate people from an oppressive value system.

Thatcher and Reagan were both ideologically opposed to socialism and maintained their hopes in Free Market Capitalism. When Thatcher took the reins of power she looked upon the left leaning social democratic governments in France and Germany with disdain.

She was elected due to the economic failures of democratic socialism. She had an uncompromising philosophy similar to Ayn Rand where individual liberty is paramount. This was evident in her seminal speech “There Is No Such Thing As Society”. Her belief in enterprise and creativity boosted the economy and helped to initiate the independent or “indie” music scene of the early 80s.

Reportedly she was disturbed by the nuclear disarmament policies of the opposition which was a hard Left Labour cabinet fronted by Michael Foot. Foot and his colleague Denis Healey sought to placate the Soviets and some suspected that Foot also retained a degree of sympathy for the regime. Thatcher knew that the Soviet Union posed a real threat to the West and so with her American ally she developed a base for nuclear weapons at Greenham Common. This base became a focal point for occupation and protest for peace lead by women and families

However Thatcher remained convinced that peace and order could be maintained through strength. This philosophy influenced her domestic policies in curbing the unions powers. In 1984 the Miners strike began and she was nonchalant in her imposition of a nationwide police force against the union leader and Soviet sympathiser Arthur Scargill.

That same year this incendiary atmosphere influenced the popular culture. It lead to the phenomenal record “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The record contained samples from the public information film “Protect and Survive”, a government campaign to inform people how to survive once a nuclear attack occurs. It was also visualized in the film “Threads”, a drama about a nuclear attack on Sheffield.

Eventually the Cold War ended through the bullish attitudes of Thatcher and her allies as in her mind Capitalism meant freedom as well as progress. Her tenacity throughout this period was remarkable even if you were opposed to her brand of politics. It quickly became obvious that the inhumane regimes across the East could not survive. She was vindicated when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Ian McEwan has just published a revisionary novel of the early 80s, exploring that bright neon period of our cultural history. The raw DIY ethics of the late seventies had transformed into shiny beacons of promise. Sophistication entered our milieu, as we bid farewell to the barren post-industrial landscapes to greet new wave and new romanticism. It was a time of a glaring aesthetic, modernism infused with futurism.

The robot theme was everywhere. It was first popularised by the “Replicas” album by Tubeway Army. The frontman Gary Numan adopted a robotic stance while singing about dehumanisation. A week after the album`s release a triumphant Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. She ushered in an entirely new culture, our country was transformed but at a heavy cost.

The blight of strike that characterised the winter of 1978 had ceased to a halt by the following February. It was an incendiary period of history. Britain`s economy was fragile and even its democracy was on the brink of collapse. There was a real fear that anarchy could erupt on the streets.

However that February a loose musical collective called Crass released an album provocatively entitled “The feeding of the 5,000”. The material on the record was considered shocking, blasphemous even. However it was designed to provoke and ignite, so that people could reflect upon deeper issues. Crass lived collectively as a commune of artists, and art was their central focus. Their members weren`t just musicians, there were writers and film makers as well and they rejected conventional ways of making a living because art to them was the only honest and humane existence.

When George Orwell wrote his most prophetic novel, “1984” he was unaware of its potential to inform and shape the political and cultural landscape of the future. Doublethink and Newspeak are now the two devices that guide President Trump and the shameless wreckers that call themselves Brexiteers. “1984” was a nightmare made flesh, it was a warning from the future, but for many politicians today it seems to be a guidebook. The absurd simplifications, the dehumanisation and the reduction of our beautiful language for simple political expedience are all being enacted upon the political stage. We no longer fear the boot upon our face because we have all felt it kick us. Orwell dreaded the consequence of political extremism as he had lived through it during the Spanish Civil War. The intransigence of Francos hordes and his Communist foes inspired another novel "Animal Farm". This book sums up the stubbornness of the people who are supposed to be representing us.

The most inarticulate and crude man is now behind the helm of the worlds most powerful office. It seems now that we have no hope for our future.

This is my philosophy and my political belief, as the 21st century has been wrecked by other philosophies and political beliefs. Most only serve to dehumanise or belittle. However artistic expression is something in which we can rediscover our shared humanity.

I was born in Jamaica in 1975. My parents were white British. My very existence seems to be a paradox, but I feel an almost defiant pride both in my British heritage and with my citizenship status as a de facto member of the Commonwealth. I have felt a great affinity with other Anglo-Caribbean writers like the Domenican born Jean Rhys and her lesser known contemporary Eliot Bliss.

Eliot Bliss was a Jamaican born author. She moved to Britain when she was still small, however she reminisced about the island of her birth as if was a lost Eden,

“Purple peaks going up in the sky. How large and near and blue the mountains loomed”.

Now all of my dreams feature those looming blue mountains, as if they are mislaid characters from the narrative of my life. For me this begs the eternally foxing question, “who are we, really?”, are we just flesh and bones? Is our state of being a purely ontological one in that we are simply and basically human? There other notions that serve to beguile us. It is the elemental things that make us unique individuals, where we are born, our early childhood memories of significant places and people, and our parental ideals and practices.

I wrestled with contradictions all through my life, and at 18 I felt piqued by a maelstrom of conflicting ideas. I had been brought up by socialist parents but at heart I had romantic yearnings, these were the direct opposite of perfunctory political philosophies. Literature and music were the centre of my life (they still are now). I couldn`t contemplate what I wanted to do in the future because I was far too busy daydreaming. However my artistic impulses inform who I am today and in the future, they provide hope in a world consumed by despair. I want to inspire others to follow me in this pure philosophy of aestheticism.

(for example)

“as he walks behind the plough, the farmer forces out a few of nature`s secrets, and the truth he uncovers is universal”. Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton