Tuesday 5 August 2014

RIP Norman Cornish

Last of the pitmen painters.

Once upon a time, the State provided the economic basis of the civilised and civilising worker-intellectual culture historically exemplified by the pitmen painters and the pitmen poets, by the brass and silver bands, by the Workers’ Educational Association and the Miners’ Lodge Libraries, by the people’s papers rather than the redtop rags, and so on.

In order to restore a civilisation in continuity with it, that culture must be rescued from “the enormous condescension of posterity”.

And the State must return to doing its duty of providing that economic basis.

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