I confess that into my 70s my stamina occasionally falters. I find myself pausing, not only unsure how to proceed with what but short of the energy required to proceed per se. This blog eschews further self-analysis in favour of a discussion of alternate ways of committing my time and limited resources.
As it happens, I have one book published this year, ‘A Critical Realist Theory of Sport’, which I have read through and am satisfied represents what I had and wanted to say on the topic. It will be up to my peers, proper sociologists of sport, to deliver their verdicts in due course. I have also made available on my website what might have been another book, ‘Sketches from a Sociologist’s Career’, but which I opted not to re-edit to appease possible publishers; this somehow absorbed 75,000+ words (see www.grahamscambler.com). Plus, I have a few book chapters written and ready to go to press, and three journal articles awaiting provisional or final editorial judgement. So I’ve been busy.
But what now and next? Well, I am hoping for a contract to write a book on ‘the healthy society’ and I should hear shortly about this. In (overly) eager anticipation, I have in fact already drafted the Introduction to this and sent it to the series editors/publishers. We’ll see.
Sitting in my favourite local corner café, The Cosy Moose in Dorking, I’m suddenly tempted to revisit a project I’d previously flirted with. Given the truly awful character of our contemporary ‘fractured society’, I am at least halfway inclined to pen a ‘manifesto for change’. What is slightly daunting me is my fitness to do this.
In my last blog I invited a surge of public anger at the new levels of exploitation and oppression being promulgated by the successive post-2010 Tory regimes of Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak (see ‘The Time is Right for Public Anger!’ at www.grahamscambler.com). You do not have to be a committed or practising Marxist to recognise that we are currently experiencing a ramping up of ‘class warfare’. Even as the obscenely super-rich are buying favourable policies from the Tories and relishing as well as hoarding their rapidly accumulating capital, more and more of those occupying what are still rightly called the working classes are struggling day-to-day to pay the rent, heat their homes and feed and clothe their kids. We have in fact reached a point when this class-based exploitation, backed and enforced by state-based oppression, is brazenly open: ‘they are laughing at us!’ What people widely recognise to be ‘corruption in public office’ has become normalised. There are numerous reasons for this, including the rigged character of our pro-capitalist parliamentary democracy; the system of self-perpetuating elites that comprise ‘the establishment’; the attenuated and disengaged political culture in the UK; a working-class quiescence born of a pressing a sense of impotence due to living subsistence lives (accentuated of late by the Truss-provoked ‘cost of living crisis’); and so on.
Why am I hesitant? Two reasons (at least). The first is my capacity to break the longstanding habit of writing largely for my academic peers. In my defence I think I communicate complex ideas clearly. BUT, if you haven’t already noticed, I tend to be overly succinct. In short, I am hard work to read. While I have abandoned an irritating predilection for brackets within brackets within single sentences, I have I am sure obstinately clung on to complicated, longish and fullish sentences. So I would have to reinvent myself by learning to be not only clear but more readily and easily intelligible.
A second reason is that I am unsure of my judgement of what to include and what exclude in a manifesto. After all, the whole point of a manifesto is to inform, advocate, arouse and signal and exhort effective action. This requires a new language, one of activism, as well as a new writing style. I am wary of reading too many examples of manifestos for fear of losing originality as well as personal authenticity and bite.
One answer to these two qualms would be to involve other like-minded people, and I am leaning towards this option. As I stop for a moment to get another flat white, I am halfway resolved on a strategy. I may well – any minute now – begin to draft a manifesto which, when complete, I will invite a handful of like-minded colleagues and activists to read, help revise and join with me in disseminating. If those I approach wish to keep clear, then a lesson will have been learned.
I will let you know how it goes!