EXACTLY one hundred years since he published his modernist masterpiece, TS Eliot has returned with his trademark black irony from beyond the grave to poke at our fears once more. ‘April is the cruellest month,’ he wrote as the first lines of The Waste Land in 1922 - and our April here, in 2022, will certainly be cruel.
Today, the domestic financial crisis which we’ve long dreaded has finally arrived. Who knows what will be left standing once it ends? Lives will be ruined, businesses destroyed - and unquestionably governments will fall. This crisis will turn into rage and rage brings change. Politicians who do not rise to the occasion, and fail to save ordinary people from agony, will be history. Those who are seen to side with the people will ride to victory.
The question is, though: what sort of victory? Economic crisis and rage often lead to bad change - not good. Must we go back to Eliot’s time for another lesson. In 1922, Mussolini led The March on Rome, his fascist coup d’état, triggered by … you guessed it … the rising cost of living.
It won’t just be politicians with the guts and the brains to take on big business and find solutions to help ordinary people who will come out on top. We need to prepare for those who will peddle slippery, divisive rhetoric - who will look for scapegoats to blame - for they too will have a chance to grab at power.
Anyone who thinks that chaos and upheaval aren’t on their way, really hasn’t been paying attention. Teachers are now going to food banks. Food banks are giving away bed clothes - as people can’t afford the blankets to keep warm. The crisis will destroy the poor and brutalise the middle class. That’s a recipe for complete political realignment.
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