Issue 1, Volume CVIII by Clare Market Review

THE JOURNAL OF THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS STUDENTS’ UNION VOLUME CIX, ISSUE III

GUEST EDITOR EDWARD BAYES

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ANNIE MAY LEONARD

CONTENTS EDITOR LAUREN WOON

LITERARY EDITORS MALVIKA JAGANMOHAN EDWARD BAYES

ART CURATOR JADE JACKMAN

COVER ARTIST & DESIGN EDITOR EDWARD BAYES

Clare Market Review LSESU Media Centre (SU2.02) Saw Swee Hock Student Centre 1 Sheffield Street, London WC2A 2AP

CRADLE

The Paradox of the Protective State

Peter Ramsay

Protection for all ‘from the cradle to the grave’ was how Prime Minister Winston Churchill welcomed the recommendations of the former LSE Director William Beveridge in his celebrated wartime report on welfare reform. The pithy phrase came to summarise the aspirations for the welfare state that grew from Beveridge’s report and would eventually occupy a central position in Britain’s national identity. In recent years however, as the welfare state idea has come under sustained political attack, the principle that informed Beveridge’s protective state has begun to reveal a political paradox at its core.

and welfare services are said by the UNDHR to be ‘indispensable’ to a person’s ‘dignity and the free development of his personality’. In one form or another, compulsory collective insurance is the way to deliver social security as a right. The trouble is that the principle of cradle-to-grave protection from the risk of harm by means of collective insurance is an expansive one. Once the state begins to look, it will find risks of harm to people’s development everywhere. This is most obvious in the area of healthcare where risks have steadily expanded to include almost every aspect of daily life, from the way we get from place to place, through what we eat and drink, to our lifestyle pursuits. But awareness of risk pervades all aspects of our social relations: in the danger to young people’s self-esteem posed by social media, for example, or to people’s cultural identity posed by religious hatred, or to the integrity of our representative institutions posed by corrupt politicians, or to the safety of almost everyone posed by potential sex offenders or terrorists or to the welfare of future generations posed by our carbon dioxide emissions. The list goes on and on.

Beveridge’s basic idea was that all would contribute to a compulsory national insurance scheme and all would gain benefits in the form of pensions, child benefit, unemployment benefits and healthcare. National insurance became one of the pillars of the welfare state, along with a political commitment to full employment, universal state education and the foundation of the National Health Service. The idea that the state should organise the collective provision of security against the risks associated with poverty, ignorance, joblessness, ill-health and old age was a powerful one. So powerful that in 1948 it became enshrined in Article 22 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) as ‘the right to social security’.

As our political life has become oriented to protection from risk, the consciousness of the risks posed to us (especially by what other people do or fail to do) has become the central preoccupation of political life. We have come to live in a ‘risk society’.

Cradle-to-grave protection by the state has been a powerful idea because it is a profoundly liberal and egalitarian idea. Liberals are committed to individual freedom. But freedom to choose is an empty formality if the choices people can actually make are limited by a lack of basic resources, ignorance, ill-health and so on. Without some protection from the harms of poverty, illiteracy, sickness and disability, too many short lives will not really be free but determined by the accident of birth, specifically the accident of whether your family is rich or poor. Equality will be a sham: lack of resources will set back people’s chances whatever their formal freedom. For this reason, rights to health, education 9

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The collective insurance principle is expansive in another way too. Explicit insurance contributions are not the only way we can seek collectively to provide security. The collective effort to fund welfare was always supported by taxation as well. But the best way to insure against future harm is to prevent the harm from materialising in the first place. To do that, we can impose regulations that coerce us all into avoiding any behaviour that creates a risk of harm. Better still, from the point of view

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risk reduction, we can add comprehensive surveillance to the regulation so that the authorities can anticipate any possible breach of regulation before it happens. Obedience to these regulations and acquiescence to the surveillance are also compulsory contributions to collective security. These two expansive tendencies of the right to social security work together to expand the state’s coercive power in the name of freedom: a new risk of harm is identified, followed by a new preventative regulation backed by criminal penalties and greater surveillance power. In this way, the surveillance state expands its cradle-to-grave protection and in this way, the part of life’s short span that remains free from state control contracts. Supporters of the welfare state will protest that ‘social security’ should not be equated with plain old ‘security’ and that contemporary security politics identifies all the wrong risks —and they have a point. The expansion of risk regulation has continued even during the current period in which the postwar welfare state has come under political attack. Our contemporary surveillance state makes much of the tiny risk posed to most people by terrorist attack while cutting back on benefits and services that ameliorate the all too common harm of housing shortage, unemployment, chronic disease and so on. But this argument only disputes the relative importance of particular risk calculations. It seeks to ‘police the facts’ and to set different priorities, but it does nothing to counter the underlying logic of the right to (social) security. The underlying paradox of liberalism is a real one. Reducing risk as matter of right leads the state to create ever more criminal wrongs, to threaten punishment against those who commit them and to spy on everyone in order to find out who might be committing them. That appears to be the price of state protection from the cradle to the grave. Is there any escape from this bind? either freedom itself or the idea that than merely formal equality, we will achieve it that transcends the liberal

ARTWORK BY ADÉLE BOURBONNE

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If we are not to abandon real freedom requires more need to find some way to principle of individual right.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALICE AEDY

I wore a sari today! I looked in the mirror. They say I look like my mother. I wonder if I do. Age has taken its toll on her beauty though they say in her younger age, she was a beauty of the town.

The Beauty of my Mother Namita Bhaladhare

As she reached woman-hood, men were impatient to marry her! She was gorgeous to gaze upon: showered with countless offers from men of all ages. My grandfather only wanted her to marry a vegan and he refused all the good money that men offered. She became a bride of a very humble household and has led a hard life since then. Poverty has made her ruin herself in many ways “Life is not easy,” she says to me. This mirror does not reflect her beauty in me. “You look like your mother,” they say, and I wonder if I do.

notes from underground

jason hickel

Russell Square, King’s Cross, Caledonian Road … the tiled stations trundled by those winter night as they had for the past year; the Piccadilly line swaying her northward, shoulder to shoulder with her fellow commuters. Each time the doors slid open with that familiar windy whoosh she watched them, eager to see who they would usher in.

She couldn’t admit defeat just yet. She couldn’t go back north. A girl from North doesn’t just leave a good job in London. Everyone was proud of her for getting out, for escaping. But they knew nothing of her emptiness now, nothing of her regret, nothing of the tunnels of loneliness boring through her soul like the underground. When she felt like this the game relieved her … it let her imagine for a second that things might be different. So when at last it happened she found herself paralyzed. He walked in with his face buried in Hemmingway – The Old Man and the Sea – a book she treasured herself. It looked well worn, its cover creased and scruffy, not unlike his appearance … his tousled hair and scuffed brown shoes whose laces missed a hole.

It was a game she had played ever since she moved from the North. She promised herself that if someone ducked into her carriage reading a book she liked, she would start up a conversation with them. Maybe something would happen. It was worth hoping. London had proven to be a lonely place so far – paradoxical, since it seemed she was always cheek by jowl with other people, packed into small spaces … the tube, the streets, the cubicled office where she worked, the narrow house she shared in Zone 3.

She tried to summon the courage … “It’s now or never,” she told herself, “you have nothing to lose.” Holloway Road, Arsenal, Finsbury Park ... her heart beat faster, her body twitched forward, ready to speak, but each time she stopped herself – “it’s too loud, he won’t hear me … someone just took the empty seat next to him … his station is probably next.” And then it was. Manor House. He got up, met her eyes for a moment, stopped … and then shuffled out the door with the crowd.

It didn’t help that she found her job so isolating. As a copyeditor for a small journal she spent her days pouring over the words of others, growing intimately acquainted with their minds but never getting to meet them. Not that such an encounter would go well. She wasn’t cool – she knew that much – she couldn’t really relate to Londoners and she worried that her Oxbridge colleagues would secretly mock her Northern accent.

The train creaked forward. She looked down, flattened her skirt over her knees … smoothed out the flower-print fabric, folded her hands neatly in her lap. The ads ticked by on the walls outside the windows, faster and faster and faster and then – blackness, again.

So she never joined them when they went down to the pub after work. They kept inviting her, but she was certain it couldn’t be sincere. Instead, she would work late and then walk back alone through the alleyways of Covent Garden towards Holborn station, passing restaurant after restaurant – candle-lit and buzzing with patrons warmed against the misty winds outside half-hoping that someone would invite her in to join them.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY LILLIE ASHWORTH

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PHOTOGRAPH BY FABIAN WOOD

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BACK TO BASICS

Alasdair Kenney At the same time as this explosion of medical advances, we as a society have come to expect more and more from the NHS. Individual rights to eat and drink alcohol to excess, smoke tobacco and take illegal drugs such as the widespread use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and so called party drugs does not come with a corresponding individual responsibility for the negative healthcare effects. As we have paid our insurance we expect the NHS to pick up the tab for diabetes, coronary artery disease, mental health issues and many other disease that are either caused or exacerbated by our behaviour.

The welfare state was conceived at a time of great upheaval both politically and socially. It is hard for many today to comprehend the levels of social injustice and poverty at a time still in living memory for some. That citizens should pay a National Insurance dependant on their earnings was, and still is the very best way to share the burden of healthcare costs. The problem is the expectation that this has created and the monstrous expenses that have been built into this provision due in part to medical innovation; an increase in middle management; and changes in societal attitudes and expectations. This goes beyond what the NHS what designed to provide. As a result, changes need to be made collaboratively between interested parties, citizens of the UK and employees of the NHS to ensure that the NHS works effectively.

This is akin to saying I have paid my household insurance so I don’t bother to lock my back door. If my property gets stolen I can claim for new on the insurance. Of course your insurance company insists on a contract that says you must fit five lever mortice locks and use them, that you fit window locks on downstairs windows and use them and if you don’t they will not pay out. The NHS was never designed to be a luxury but an essential service to be used sparingly when needed.

The NHS was set up at a time when a large section of the population had little access to basic healthcare on grounds of cost. A trip to see the GP was a private arrangement and had to be paid for. Many GPs would run a two-tier system charging those who could pay a healthy sum and those who could not a nominal sum or nothing at all. This was of course entirely subjective; however, local GPs knew their own communities and patients individually. In the early days of the NHS (1940s and 50s), the treatments available in Primary Care were rudimentary and by todays standards often ineffective; however, they were low cost.

If the NHS is to continue in the form we now know, our expectations must change. Free at the point of use does not mean it is free so I will help myself to whatever I can get; rather, that it is free when I need it but I must do everything I can to avoid that and perhaps, like an insurance contract, if I routinely abuse my body I may not get what I thought when making a claim. This is the responsibility of individuals.

The Pharmaceutical industry has made discoveries that have made huge improvements to healthcare outcomes and individual patients lives but there has been a corresponding leap in cost. Such advances in diagnostic technologies means diseases that were previously difficult or impossible to accurately diagnose are now routinely screened for, again at huge cost. Every advance in any branch of medicine comes almost inevitably with a large price tag. With the spiralling budgets came an ever-expanding army of management to monitor costs and of course and with them the creation of fiefdoms and empires within the NHS structures to look after particular interests.

I am sure that the politicians and campaigners of the day did not think that the entitlement that they sought to extend to all citizens meant that the state would fund “from cradle to grave” and all other costs in between. The NHS is perhaps the largest social enterprise in the world. It is essential that politicians and employees treat it as such and demand from their peers and colleagues the discipline of running a good business for the benefit of all. The large Pharmaceutical companies must be allowed their say, the Trade Unions must also be allowed their say, other interested parties can have their say but it is for the citizens of the UK and employees of the NHS to identify best practice and make the necessary changes, or risk failure and return to a pre-1940 healthcare system where only those that can pay are able to afford proper healthcare.

The NHS must address this, as well as the waste of consumables, to collectively save money so that it can invest in better and more services. This is the responsibility of politicians, clinicians and healthcare managers.

PILLS BY STEPHEN PLASTER AND ARTURO ALEJANDRO ROMO ESCARTIN FROM THE NOUN PROJECT

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RE: FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

WOULD NOT FALL THROUGH THE NET!! MEN NEED TO IMPROVE INFO ABOUT THIER HEALTH FROM AN EARLY AGE. AND THEY WOULD BE BETTER AWARE WHEN THINGS GO WRONG, PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN THE CURE!

REMEMBERING PRE1948. I CAN REMEMBER GOING TO THE DR SURGERY OF DR BROWN WHO WAS WELL RESPECTED IN THE AREA, AND YOU WOULD HAVE TO QUEUE IN THE WAITING ROOM OF THE HOUSE THAT THE SURGERY WAS HELD: HALLWAY AND THE GARDEN PATH OF THE HOUSE, RAIN OR SHINE!!! PEOPLE WOULD SEE THE QUEUE AND WALK AWAY. IF IT WAS A CHILD THEY WOULD GO AHEAD OF THE QUEUE! IN 1948 DR BROWN RETIRED AND A GROUP OF GPS TOOK OVER, AND AN APPOINTMENT SYSTEM STARTED. PRE1948 THE SCHOOL DR AND NURSE CHILDREN WERE LOOKED AFTER BY THEM ON REGULAR VISITS, THEY CHECKED HAIR FOR LISE, NAILS, TEETH, AND BODY FOR INFECTIONS. WE WOULD STAND IN A DRAFTY HALL IN OUR PANTS WAITING TO SEE DR /AND NURSE! I’M GLAD I WENT TO AN ALL GIRLS SCHOOL.

I REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS KNOWN A CHILD HAD AN INFECTIOUS DISEASE IN THE AREA MY MOTHER WOULD TELL US TO WALK TO SCHOOL VIA A DIFFERENT ROAD INCASE WE CAME IN CONTACT WITH THE FAMILY! THE INFECTIONS WERE SUCH AS TYPHOID, DIPHTHYIERIA, SCARLET FEVER, WHOOPING COUGH, AND TB. MANY LOCAL CHILDREN DIED AND IT WAS VERY FRIGHTENING. ALL HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED, BUT LAST NIGHT I SAW A PROG ABOUT THE RETURN OF TB THE PROBLEM IS BAD IN LONDON, THEY HAVE SET UP A MOBLE CLINIC, NOT GOOD NEWS!!!

1. IN 1948 I WAS 12 YRS OLD 2. THE CHANGES WERE INCREDIBLE FOR THE FAMILY; MUM, DAD, BROTHER, SISTER AND ME. MY MOTHER WORKED IN A GOVERNMENT JOB, SO HAD TO PAY A HIGH RATE FEE TO THE DOCTOR (DR J BROWN) THIS WAS PAID WEEKLY UNTIL THE ACCOUNT WAS SETTLED, MY MUM WOULD SAVE MONEY RATHER THAN PAY ON ACCOUNT. SHE LIKE MANY HATED OWING MONEY. SO AFTER 1948 IT MEANT THAT WE WERE ABLE TO ATTEND DR BROWN’S SURGERY WITHOUT COST, THIS MEANT LESS STRESS FOR FAMILIES TO FIND MONEY FOR GP PAYMENTS. WE ONLY WENT TO THE GP IF IT WAS URGENT. MY MUM BECAME VERY ABLE SORTING OUT MINOR PROBLEMS. 3. NHS HAS CHANGED WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY. DRUGS, THE DEMAND ON ITS SERVICES, THE EQUIPMENT, DRUGS, STAFF ALL COMES AT A VERY HIGH PRICE THAT WAS NOT AVAILABLE YEARS AGO. I AM SORRY WE ARE NOT EDUCATED ON MASS TO USE THE NHS BETTER. IN CANADA AND THE USA PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIER HEALTH AND AS THEY HAVE TO PAY THEY USE MEDICAL SERVICES BETTER. I’M SORRY SO MANY PEOPLE ARE NOT COVERD WITH MED CARE!!! WE SEEM TO BE HEALTHER BECAUSE WE CAN GO TO THE GP .IM GLAD THE GOVERNMENT IS MONITORING NHS COSTS. HAVING WORKED WITHIN AND USED THE NHS, I SEE SUCH A LOT OF WASTE. IN MY LIFE TIME MED /SCIENCE HAS CHANGED BY HOUR AND THE COST IS HIGH. 4. FROM CRADLE TO CRAVE YES I FEEL IHAVE BEEN PROTECTED. I HAVE TRIED TO LEAD A HEATHY LIFE STYLE, ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN NEW INFO ABOUT HEALTH THIS HAS HELPED ME ACCESS NHS WHEN NEEDED. THANK GOODNESS NOT OFTEN. I HAVE RECENTLY HAD EYE PROBS, AND HAVE HAD TO TRAVEL AT GREAT COST TO THE NHS INCLUDING THE DRIVERS COSTS, AND THAT IS NOT GOOD .IM SURE IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS NOT SEEN BY A CONSULTANT SOONER I HOPE THE KNOWLEDGE GAINED BY THE 10 CONSULTANTS I SEE WILL HELP PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE I REGRET I AM SUCH A MESS THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO TO MY EYES!!! 5. WHAT I WOULD CHANGE. I THINK GP AND NURSING STAFF SHOULD GET TOGETHER AND MONITOR PATIENTS BETTER, INCLUDING AGENCIES BLIND /DEAF SOC ETC, WITH NEW TECH GP COULD BE ASSISTED AND IT WOULD SOON BE POSSILBE, THAT WAY PEOPLE

THELMA 23

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A Little Bird

Rose Schutzberg

A little bird with grey and black down feathers comes home every night to her perfect corner where she finds warmth, comfort, and protection from predators. Her corner happens to be just above the steps that lead to my house. Without fail, she has returned to my family home night after night, only to be gone the next morning. Sometimes she stirs, looking around as people pass her by or as one of my family members comes home for the evening, jingling the chimes on our burgundy glass door that rattle her awake. I’m usually the last one in, so I get the day’s final glimpse of her.

proof of her presence, just like Victoire had done in the early dawn hours du 13 mars 2001.

I cannot figure out why I find this bird so intriguing; I know various animals have made the multiple crevices of my house’s foundation their home for years, yet for some inexplicable reason, ‘tis this little bird who caught my attention. A day after returning home for the holidays, my mother formally introduced me to our family’s newest plump and feathery friend. Ten years ago on that very day— le 24 décembre—I met another plump and feathery addition to our family, a beautiful, brunette baby sister. Her name? Victoire. I made the connection between the bird and Victoire when I realised the magnitude of our little bird’s loyalty. Every year, she burrows in her familiar nook through mid-March, waiting for the harsh cold of winter to become slightly more forgiving. Suddenly, she disappears, leaving only her droppings behind as

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Though I have no tangible evidence, I cannot help but see my precious Victoire in this fluffy, winged creature. Perhaps she has returned from the grave, reincarnated as a bird so that when she must leave she can do so freely, quietly and in peace. Perhaps I’m merely conjuring up vivid projections of my imagination. Or maybe our sweet sparrow is simply surviving winter’s frigid temperatures. For now, each night that I find her underneath the light on my front porch, I smile and watch her breathe rhythmically, peacefully. On March 13, 2001, maman and I found my two-and-a-half-monthold sister, Victoire, dead in her crib. She died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), when apparently healthy infants die unexpectedly in their sleep due to a combination of risk factors. My parents do not smoke or drink and Victoire was born to term. The night of March 12, 2001, Victoire was put to sleep on her front in what is known as the ‘unaccustomed prone’ position. She was also suffering from a mild upper-respiratory infection. Aside from her age, she was exposed to no other known risk factors. If you would like to learn more, please visit the following website: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Sudden-infantdeath-syndrome/Pages/Introduction.aspx

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A CAPACITY

BUILDING ELECTIVE

IN SIERRA LEONE Global health is an emerging issue, but by no means a new one. The world we live in is constantly evolving and the boundaries between populations continue to change. Sneha Baljekar & Alexandra Malet As a result of this, we have become increasingly more aware of not only the inequities in healthcare, but what the response to these inequities might be. This awareness inspires a need in some of us to take action on these issues in an attempt to bring about change. Observing a struggling healthcare system can be difficult and upsetting. A hospital often serves as a landmark throughout a lifetime: it is the place where most of us are born, become ill, lose a loved one, and ultimately where we may spend our final days. It should therefore be a place of safety, and an institution which is synonymous with empathy, compassion and effective treatment. This is 29

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why as students in the UK, it can be upsetting to witness failings in patient care, because we are privileged enough to have the knowledge, skills and equipment to provide patients with safe and dignified treatment. Solid training and sound clinical experience enables nursing responsibilities to extend to whomever you choose to care for, in your own country or anywhere in the world. Nursing care extends beyond the walls of a hospital, and can involve supporting younger generations to care for their elders, and hopefully their own children in the future. Last September, we travelled to Freetown, Sierra Leone for a four-week nursing elective. During this time, we rotated to four different clinical areas, including A&E and Intensive Care. We quickly realised how difficult it is to provide even basic nursing care when you are unable to rely on the facilities and equipment that we are fortunate to have in constant supply in the UK. We shared the frustrations of our Sierra Leonean colleagues that came with not always being able to change

a dirty sheet or a dressing when the need arose. International development in Sierra Leone has traditionally taken the form of aid delivered primarily by Western organisations. While this was invaluable and necessary during and immediately after the Civil War, there is now a shift towards supporting more sustainable development. This is known as capacity building, where local communities work in partnership with organisations to strengthen their own systems and infrastructure. In this way, individuals and communities are provided with the tools to make their lives more meaningful, and to ultimately enable future generations to be brought up in a world of possibilities and not just

obstacles. The shift towards capacity building gave us the opportunity to undertake project work in the main adult referral hospital in Freetown, as well as a clinical elective. This was through working with the Kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sierra Leone Partnership (KSLP), a capacity building initiative. The aims of our projects were varied, ranging from identifying much needed hospital equipment, to improving access to drugs VOLUME CIX, ISSUE III

and infection control systems. However, all of these aims were governed by the same outcome – increasing survival rates and prolonging life. Engagement in this partnership made us realise the value of change from within. Combining capacity building projects with clinical work meant gaining specific and often rare insights. Working alongside hospital staff and seeing the daily challenges of healthcare provision in Freetown ensured the project work was relevant, and shaped by those providing the service. The inspiring level of tolerance and innovation displayed by nurses who are not given even the basic tools to do their job is sadly not always enough to give a patient the care they deserve, or to save a life. However, seeing the active role of the Sierra Leonean family in everything from attending to the patient’s personal care to still hoping for a bright outcome against all the odds at times made us hopeful too. Capacity building is also a productive outlet when faced with difficult clinical situations. It can be comforting to feel part of the change that everyone is striving for, even though this process can be slow, and the results often appear undramatic. Previous 31

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experiences abroad, coupled with those gained through our nursing programme, have illustrated the components of a safe and operational healthcare system. This prior knowledge enabled us to make valuable contributions to the projects we were involved in, despite the fact that we are still students and very new to the field of nursing. Nursing, at its core, is about teaching and sharing skills, which is at the very heart of capacity building. These are attributes we all possess, even as students. Often, it is the little things in nursing practice which make the difference to a patient’s time in hospital, and the same can be said of capacity building. While the projects are part of a much longer process, small changes can greatly impact patient’s lives in a positive way. Our continuing involvement with KSLP means there is the potential to see the results of these changes over time. In such a challenging healthcare environment, pain, loss and death almost become accepted as the norm, when this attitude would be unthinkable for most of us. It is for this reason that change is needed now, to rekindle hope and the expectation that people deserve better. It is possible for everyone to play a part in this. As students, we are encouraged to believe that we can be future leaders, and to inspire each other to believe the same. Ultimately, there are a great many things we can learn from our global colleagues and the patients they look after – and it’s never too early to start. For more information on the Sierra Leone Partnership, please http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sierraleone.

King’s visit:

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHARLOTTE KESL

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GRAVE

A SUNDAY HANGING (Reflections on ‘Studies of the foetus in the womb’ by Leonardo da Vinci)

AE BALLAKISTEN

‘From the moment we are born, we start to forget,’ the blaspheming thief proclaimed, as the thick rope was placed over his despicable head. ‘We start to forget what our tongues have known for millennia. We start to forget the geometry of our whole, the algebra of our truth.’ He had been caught with an ancient drawing stolen from the home of a dying priest, and accused of hurrying the priest’s death. ‘As our mothers’ heartbeats grow silent in our chests, we forget our footsteps in a golden time, an age of walking-with: man, rhinoceros, tree, the Great Flame,’ as the rope was tightened in place.

‘We are born chanting the psalms of the angels but silenced, our mouths crammed with worship that chokes the wisdom we know, for angel voices are like pinpricks to pagan ears. We are wrapped with layers that add to our vocabulary but

upon man-before-man, the still-cocooned caterpillar,

render us mute. Our seeing eyes like large windows

bearing heart-shaped wings of a miracle on its back,

negligently left open for progress to sneak in by day and escape with our souls. We celebrate walking apart, synthetic rains on barren lands, cracked ocean floors that drain our spirits of abundance. We become more man but less human, more like our fathers and less like ourselves.’ The crowd jeered and spat at him. ‘And so, to gaze

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before it unfurls and blooms, is to gaze upon truth, upon beauty, to know the most spiritually pure state of man. Da Vinci knew, he remembered, and by his studies in ink and chalk, left a reminder, lest our memories, our humanity, fail completely.’ Then justice silenced him, and everyone went back to church.

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ARTWORK BY JENNY LUNDMARK 37

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A rapturous sermon (shook the very earth on which he stood) delivered from the hearth in the heart of the home. Firm and stoic,

An Ode to The Prophetic

Evangelist

Adolphus Olu Lewis

the rising and falling of the consonants makes the air electric. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eccentric!â&#x20AC;? (his friendsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; words not mine!) Who used to tag along on his late night excursions into the darkness of the undecided to purge them of their uncertainty. He was designed to bring light into their lives but he finds himself discarded. Consigned to the hearth in the heart of the home,

Edward

Bayes

like a puppet erect on a table, surrounded by children. Reticent, he begins again trembling with the light.

Seedless grapes Grapes made without seeds.

And vines won’t grow in our stomachs.

w a fe

Crunch and taste what is bitter.

p es

So we don’t have to spit.

of ra

To fulfil our desire for grape.

d r

Grapes with a single purpose of existence.

Hopeless to make more grapes.

e f d enc n i e s

This is not a life. I don’t want to eat clones.

ARTWORK BY HEIDI NICHOLLS

AS ABR

M A

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A BRICK IN THE HEAD

RYAN MIGEED

“TAXI!” I screamed. Frantically, I waved one down. It swept into the gutter next to the curb and its lights flashed. “Michael,” I breathed. Gently, I held his head.as if it were a baby chick hatching. Except the only thing emerging from his head was a profuse amount of blood. The brick had come from nowhere. “Michael,” I said, “we’re gonna get in a taxi. I’m taking you to the hospital.” Finally, the cab driver came to his senses and helped me lift Michael off the ground and into the backseat. “Put preshoor, put preshoor,” the cabbie ordered in his thick Middle Eastern accent. He handed me a rag, and I forced it against the side of Michael’s head. “I get you there fast, don’t woory,” the cabbie said. As if to prove his point, he promptly cut across two lanes of traffic. The journey is now just a vaguely harrowing blur. I had never seen the inside of George Washington University Hospital, had never needed to go. But it somehow felt familiar, like St. Michael’s in Trenton (what an ironically eerie name-association), where my grandmother had been in and out on nearly a monthly basis, until I visited her there for the last time. I waited up all night while Michael was taken care of. I remember asking myself if this was the last time I would see him too; I know nothing of medicine. But of course a brick doesnn’t give you cancer and send you into the hospital every month until the blood drains from your face and a hand-hold replaces all the warmth and security of a hug, even if the love remains.

live their uniquely fascinating life together. “I finally brought him over to my friends’ place to introduce him – it’s so…I was nervous, you know, to bring him to them,” she buzzed. “It’s hard to introduce this person who means so much to you to other people, you know what I mean?” “Yeah,” I replied distantly. “What did they think of him?” “Well, when he went to the bathroom, I asked them what they thought, and Liz said, ‘Annabelle, he seems so serious’…” Annabelle’s eyes grew wide behind the large rectangular-framed glasses that already magnified them; I always thought they had a strange pigment, befitting something like the feet of those Galapagos boobies – and now they were at least the right size. I stifled a snort. “…and I said” – she grabbed my arm – “oh my God, is he too serious?! Because you know me, Tyler, I’m not serious at all. I can’t be with someone serious.” A raucous laugh, head thrown back, as if to prove how un-serious she was. “Oh, that’s not the impression I got,” I said. “You don’t think he’s too serious?” “No. No, I mean – you’ve met him, you know he’s as crazy as I am. But tell me about you. What’s going on in your life?” I was suddenly aware of the traffic that rumbled by outside. “Oh, you know, the same,” I managed. “Always on the lookout, never on the hunt.” I smiled, my best attempt at charm; another raucous laugh from Annabelle. “How’s the year going?” she pressed, but gently. “Pretty good; I finally have more time than I’ve ever had to do some writing, which I’ve really appreciated.” “That’s so great,” she said, head held in her palm, eyes beaming in a – was it a patronising look? “What are you writing?” “A young adult novel; it’s coming along.” I hedged; why did I make excuses for my work?

Yesterday I was at a table in The Bean Press, that café I like around Seventeenth and U, while Annabelle sat across from me in one of the more comfortable orange leather chairs and chattered on about her nascent love-life as if all the world stood still to watch Annabelle and Dan

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“That’s fantastic. Well, I have to get going,” she said, a hand on her bag, her eyes on her watch. “This was so much fun; we have to do it again sometime.” “Absolutely.” I stood as she left, and then returned to my cappuccino, pulling out my small notebook and a pen from the folds of my jacket. I lived in that notebook these days, a starving writer thinking I was extracting some career-saving crumb of culture in possibly the worst city to do so – Washington, DC. I guess of all the dark alcoves in this valuesdeprived?starved? city, U Street was the enclave in which to find these crumbs. I noticed as I wrote that I hadn’t told Annabelle about Michael.

was because they couldn’t take credit cards – some problem with the machine – so instead we walked away together and he moaned, “That is so dumb! I want to pay, but they’re not taking cards. I just wanted to go out and forget about things tonight.” “Oh, don’t be sad,” I said lamely. I have no patience for people currying sympathy over their lost and broken love-lives. I’ve been brought to my knees by that thing called ‘love’, drowned in its anguish until I didn’t believe it existed anymore, only to have its reality proven by those closest to me, who would die for me, who would give me the will to wade in again with the hope that, maybe this time, it wouldn’t hurt – who would then, by their own words, make me question again my ability to feel it for myself. “But I am sad – and lonely,” John added. Before I could offer some version of ‘there’s more fish in the sea’, he veered off and growled, “I’m going for a walk.” This sounds contrived, but it actually happened – leaving me the rest of the night to do some writing. (I have the most fun Friday nights of anyone I know, I mocked myself with scornful gusto.) At long last, I stumbled back into my room and turned on my computer with sloppy, drunken fingers. My phone chirped: a text from Michael, who I hadn’t seen or heard from in a week. “Want to get a drink?” he asked. I waited till I had pulled up my latest culture-crumb-inspired work – creatively titled ‘Stream of Consciousness’ – and given the first page a cursory glance before responding: “Can’t. Writing.” It was cruel, I’ll admit, just like when my father said if I were gay it’d be like a knife in his heart. But I have come to the conclusion that it’s best not to ask the question, “Am I happy?” If you’re bothering to ask, you’re bound to realise that you’re not and that realisation will turn your world upside-down. Of course I’m not and of course I don’t have to seek sympathy for it, and that’s all I’d be doing if I went out with Michael. So instead, I tossed the phone onto my nearby bed and began to write. And a brick hit Michael in the head.

Last night, I met some friends at Millie’s Bar, a horrid place with too-loud TVs and too many people – though it’s a great place to get away from your thoughts (if the people there have any). Vicki got Tom to come, though he never seems to want to go out unless he can get black-out drunk and the rest of us can take care of him; and somehow John had gotten pulled into our orbit, along with Tom’s friends, April and Kelly, who were visiting for the weekend. John: what a guy. The whole two hours at Millie’s felt like a therapy session as we tried to cure him of his fixation on Rachel, his once-and-never girlfriend who had ‘dumped’ him. “You shouldn’t drink when you’re sad,” was my helpful advice, to which he made some joke about already being an alcoholic. (“We shouldn’t be joking about that,” I insisted.) Vicki played the role of sympathising-friend-who’s-a-girl-andunderstands. Naturally, after this exhilarating encounter at Millie’s, Tom wanted to go to Town. Again. Never mind that he, too, is a recently-single straight man. We traipsed down Fourteenth Street and back onto U Street. I suppose I was now the grumpy one, refusing to pay a high cover; I was still waiting on that coffee blog to direct-deposit the money for three weeks’ worth of posts into my account. Finally, we got to the door and, after the unpleasant pat-down, I called up to Tom and asked what the cover was. My response to his muffled answer: “Ten dollars?!” Remember the ‘starving writer’ part? John, too, didn’t pay, but that

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VOLUME CIX, ISSUE III

UNTITLED james dunn PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARINE STRAUSS

Lashing, cutting down on single glaze the water bouncing off at angles opposite to the cold, which carries on only our bones can stop that.

crumbling this time, sinking unremittingly into clay; second-to-last holiday.

damp pillow, crypt-like reassurance of

replicates every other, equally spaced

her head, heavy now on my dead arm

and permanent on concrete foundations

that I will move after this sentence

rendering its supposed accident illusory.

or endure from now until morning.

you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to remove yourself from

wakefulness exposes me to keenly

and return with dirt and bodily fluids on your slippers stained green and ruined.

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remain poised on their own foundations,

Rented caravan - static - exactly

the aluminium confines to take a piss

Food-poisoned, sour monochrome complainants

welcomed effects of serotonin, unveiled single glaze exposing yellow and blue and the coffee pot and her.

VOLUME CIX, ISSUE III

I spin once in this life and to look back is death and to look forward is birth. I spin once in this life and the womb is a wet coffin,

the cord the roots of a new emerging tree.

YA JAY M A R •

and every breath I take is my last. I spin once in this life and every kiss is a tear that falls as my hand grasps no more and my mouth utters no laughter. I spin once in this life

E• C

towards the open maw of a grave.

I spin.

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AY • I SPIN

O N

for me

J YA

for you

I spin once in this life

• R A

and the kick of a child is a kick

SPIN ONCE

and the Angel in white is Death in black

•I

I spin once in this life

the walls like mulch

CE • R AMY N O A N J PI

VOLUME CIX, ISSUE III

words, words, words

vanessa lim

history, it seems, remembers

only

the beautiful

or the tragic. there is no place for the fact that i never learnt

to ride a bicycle without training wheels because my mother

would not bear the pain of a grazed knee.

on the other hand, favour Icarus—all sunsoaked ambition

and radiant hope, then inevitably,

but no one will remember i loved you from afar for all

of my years: humble constancy does not make a good story.

there must be a Fall somewhere.

fragile and weathered, your grandmother slips.

the story needs a man with appendages of the feathered variety

and always

even if you, holding her broken hand, know that you are also

damned.

but these stones have heard so many eulogies.

they will forget.

still

the poets,

always,

hubris.

no, not the kind where preferably,

the taint of damnation

look, i’m trying. i’m saying miss me and remember. and i,

i am frightened

i am a poor historian and a worse poet

and i don’t even know how

to cycle

and that

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makes it difficult to

outrun

time

to perfect the(se) words to leave behind

ARTWORK BY JENNY LUNDMARK

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The city is the mouth of a monster Rainy streets are slimy tongues; buildings, bridges, lampposts – fangs, teeth, tusks We are flies crawling, swarming, festering We are chewed and put to the side, we are mangled bodies rotting put to the side We are parasites festering on chewed mangled bodies rotting put to the side

A rotting carcass gets stuck in an alleyway behind a vacant building from colonial years of which only the façade has survived Few flies know that on it’s hollow inside there is a dirty picture show by day and a torture cell by night The rotting carcass rots in peace

Until the monster spits you out you move to other mouths, other teeth, other tongues and change the way you speak and run

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CLARE MARKET REVIEW

VOLUME CIX, ISSUE III

T R I B U T E

The Clare Market Review is the oldest student journal in the United Kingdom, and, in its heyday, was read by intelligentsia of the likes of Karl Popper, who had it in his personal papers. With this relaunch of the Clare Market Review, we want to look to the heritage and tradition of the journal, and celebrate its vital place as one of the core publications of the LSE.

honour our past and look to the present and future, never losing sight of the sacrifices and hurdles we’ve crossed to get here.

The Clare Market Review is over a hundred years old. It has seen the LSE through two World Wars, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the advent of globalisation and the rise of modernity. It is a stalwart of the LSE Community, and holds a unique place as a publication that lauds not only the arts, but also the celebration of academia and academic articles.

We welcome contributions and submissions of all kinds: art (traditional and/or digital), photography, poetry, prose, features analysis, academic articles, and essays centred around the theme of Tribute. If you have an idea of what you’d like to contribute, but it’s of a medium that isn’t listed, get in touch with us and we’d be more than happy to accommodate you!

Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.” The Clare Market Review was a labour of love by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, founders of the LSE. George Bernard Shaw contributed art reviews. William Beveridge developed his notions of taxation in the journal’s pages. Bertrand Russell wrote a scathing critique of the Vietnam War. So with the relaunch of the Clare Market Review, make your mark. Walk in the footsteps of giants. Contribute.

The deadline for submissions is 4 January 2014, so there’s ample time to be creative and contribute! Contributions should be sent to:

editor-in-chief@theclaremarketreview.co.uk Feel free to direct any queries you have to us there!

With Tribute, we reflect on how far the Clare Market Review and the LSE has come. We