Ceremony: The Return of Friedrich Engels

HOWLING

SHE HOWLS

Manchester is where the idea of Communism was born,

the first industrial city, not Imperial Russia.

Friedrich Engels, whose work with Karl Marx

inspired the Russian Revolution, lived here for more than 20 years.

His most famous work, The Condition of the Working Class in England,

was based on what he saw in Manchester.

I wanted to bring a symbol of Communism back to its roots,

and to make this connection concrete.

Ceremony is three things seen through the prism of Engels.

One, the search for a statue of him and its journey back home.

Two, the everyday stories of people from Manchester who welcomed me

into their lives.

And three, a homecoming party to inaugurate the statue.

Since the financial crash, Britain has changed beyond recognition.

It seems to many that the parallels between the conditions Engels was

writing about and the realities of life in Britain today

are blindingly obvious.

I am awake.

Again.

Unawake, I think...

And me, I never left the area.

The words they used against us changed around me.

The litany of tabs and sanctions,

the imperative sell yourself.

Sell yourself again.

As if you have an appetite.

So I set out to look for a statue of Engels.

I hit the road in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine,

and I discover that an Engels in good nick with a passport out

is a hard thing to find.

The poster boys of the revolution have always been Lenin and Marx.

Engels, for the most part, appears only as Marx's sidekick.

In some countries, they still keep pride of place.

In others, the statues are removed,

but the villages hide them, just in case.

As they explained, things might change, you never know.

Well, true enough, you don't.

1989 means different things to different places.

Mention it in Manchester, epicentre of a pop cultural revolution,

and people remember acid house, ecstasy, Hacienda.

Mention it in the former East,

and people talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

CHEERING

"Workers.

"To you, I dedicate a work in which I have tried to lay before

"my German countrymen a faithful picture of your condition.

"I wanted more than a mere abstract knowledge of my subject.

"I wanted to see you in your own homes,

"to observe you in your everyday life.

"To witness your struggles against the social and political power

"of your oppressors.

"Having, at the same time,

"ample opportunity to watch the middle classes,

"your opponent.

"I soon came to the conclusion that you are right.

"Perfectly right in expecting no support whatever from them.

"Though they always will try to maintain the country,

"and to make you believe in their most hearty sympathy

"with your fates, their actions give them the lie."

NOISY CHATTER

All right, OK.

See you, man.

Oh, yeah, I got a job now.

No, it's in a corner shop store.

But I get £7 an hour, so I'll be rolling.

And then I'll come visit you, probably. Probably, if you're lucky.

If you're lucky.

No, I'm joking!

As soon as I get my first pay cheque, train booked, everything.

I have missed you, I have missed you.

Like the smidge-ist bit, you get me? Not too much.

Not too little, though,

so I don't want you to think that I don't miss you at all.

I'll speak to you in a bit, then.

All right then.

All right. Easy.

It's like, nothing can touch me at that moment of time, like,

I'm the coolest dancer in Manchester. In my head, obviously!

But that's what you've got to think.

I'd love to be a dancer, that is what I want to be.

But, like, I look after my little brother, so that's kind of a stop.

Because I have to look after him from 8am to 8pm.

Money comes in here a lot, because if you don't have money,

then you can't get to the place where you need to perform,

or the place where you need to audition.

Because if you're low on money, then you can't get there.

If you can get there, how you getting back?

CHILDREN SING IN OWN LANGUAGE

And that's us off. A year after the uprising of 2014,

the Ukrainian government passed a law

insisting that all Communist monuments had to be removed.

Over 2,500 statues were taken down,

and one lucky Engels gets a new home in Manchester.

When he arrives, he will be taken to Engels's Exchange,

a square transformed for one day into a shared space of ideas,

and the kind of a good time which Engels loved.

As well as being a committed revolutionary,

his favourite saying, unbelievably, was the very Mancunian,

"take it easy".

I invited local activists and community groups

to set up stations where they could discuss with the public

the continuities between today's situation and Engels's work.

He should be as relevant to us today

as he was for the Russian Revolution.

You get sent home now. You get sent home.

Why are you going to the palace?

Because that's where the Emperor is.

We got him, we've got Russia.

We've got factories!

Roll the dice.

Boom!

THEY CHEER

So, that was Friedrich Engels on his way.

Who is Friedrich Engels?

Well, the son of a German mill owner.

And the family owned a factory in Weaste in Salford.

It's called Ermen and Engels.

And later on, it gets called Winterbottoms,

some of you might remember it as Winterbottoms.

In 1842, Engels's dad says, "Right, son,

"it's your turn to go to Manchester and take over the family business."

So he's 22 years old, and he comes over here, starts off as a clerk,

and later steps into the boss seat.

And that's the brilliant contradiction about this man.

He's a capitalist boss by day,

but he's a Communist party animal by night.

And he spends the next 20 years living, and loving,

and working in Manchester.

And he does fall in love,

he falls in love with a woman on the factory floor,

and her name is Mary Burns.

They don't get married, because they don't believe in marriage.

They don't believe in the idea of women as property.

We haven't got any pictures of Mary, we don't know what she looked like.

But she's really important in the story of Engels,

because she took him into the back streets of Manchester,

and she showed him the real life of the working people,

which at that time was poor housing, ill health,

exploitation, overcrowding,

and a general lack of workers' rights.

Sound familiar?

And after Mary's death, he actually takes up with her sister, Lizzie,

and on Lizzie's deathbed,

Engels goes against his principles

and he marries her, to fulfil her dying wish.

What a guy.

You know, I was 28 when I had my stroke.

I woke up and thought, "this is unusual".

I always remember your face just dropped,

you just looked...

I tried to stay strong,

but that broke my heart when I seen you walking like that.

-What have you got for dinner?

-Salad sandwich.

Woohoo, not beans on toast today, then, with cheese on top?

-No, that's your speciality, isn't it?

-Yeah.

I still get stiffness now.

When I tell people about it, I say that you can't see it

until you really look.

Because, like, when you're picking up stuff, you know...

Or carrying them cups, and spill it all over people?

But if people just see you how you are...

I thought that was funny, that isn't funny.

Remember when I kicked someone? I was riding my bike!

I was riding my bike once, because I weren't allowed to drive at first,

and then I kicked someone!

Oh, no, I've had a stroke!

They were looking at me like they were going to beat me up!

She was dead good though, you came back to work quite quickly.

I couldn't afford to stay off, could I?

I've got no money.

But that's how it is, isn't it?

I don't know how we do it.

Sometimes I don't know how we do it.

"Of course, only a few actually die of hunger.

"But what guarantee has the worker

"that this will not be her fate tomorrow?

"Who will give her security of employment,

"if for any cause her employer dismisses her?

"Who will ensure that success will follow the practice of honesty,

"hard work, and thrift?

"Those virtues so heartily recommended

"by the middle classes in their wisdom.

"Nobody.

"The worker knows only too well that employment and food today

"do not mean employment and food tomorrow."

Make no mistake.

The tenor of the times, paying for banks to lift your pockets.

For millionaires to vent their fears and rage on you.

Watching your freedom like an egg timer.

Like some limping sitcom you can't switch off.

Forking out

to be a hostage of pleasure.

Wanking over bank statements,

and paying for your own prison cell in easy instalments.

Hi, there! Have you ever thought about shoplifting?

It's a really great time to start.

There's 2,000 less police on the streets.

Crime's down, shoplifting's up.

It's a fantastic time to do it.

SHE MAKES A BEEPING SOUND

But they're not on my case because I've actually created a mystery bag.

Are you anti-austerity?

Well, actually, there is an increase in shoplifting due to austerity,

a lot of people shoplift for their dinner and personal hygiene.

But you do not know about pioneers, for example.

-The pioneers' work. Partisans.

-Oh, partisans?

-Yeah.

-Chetniks?

-Chetniks? Yeah.

-National Liberation Army?

"Instead of rising with the progress of industry,

"the modern labourer sinks deeper and deeper

"below the conditions of existence,

"and is allowed to live only insofar

"as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

"The worker is, in fact, the slave of the middle-class capitalists.

"He is a slave because he is sold in the same way as goods are sold.

"He is sold piecemeal by the day,

"the week, or by the year.

"He is not sold by one owner to another,

"but he is forced to sell himself in this fashion."

Hi, good morning. I'm ringing from a work club in Cheatham Hill

in Manchester, on behalf of one of my clients,

who would like to apply for Job-seeker's Allowance.

-Have you had Job-seeker's Allowance in the last six months?

-No.

No, he hasn't, he hasn't, no.

He's had a job at the Amazon warehouse.

Yes, he has, he's had housing benefit, yeah.

Oh, so you can put a claim in for housing benefit at the same time?

Do you want us to put a claim for housing benefit at the same time?

-Please, yeah.

-Yes, please, yes, please.

-No, you don't own the property, do you?

-No.

-No. He'd like to.

No, I'm only joking, he doesn't own it, no.

Who lives at the property where you are now?

There's eight other people, it's like a shared house.

He lives with eight other people.

Yeah. Have you got a partner?

-No.

-No, he doesn't have a partner, no.

Um...

Sorry, what's your sexuality?

-Do you know?

-I'm a man.

-Yeah, do you...

-I'm male.

Do you like women, or...

-Cars?

-..men?

Yeah, he's heterosexual.

Huh?!

INAUDIBLE

-You don't share your room?

-No.

No, he doesn't, no, he's on his own.

Do you have your own bathroom?

No.

No, it's a communal bathroom.

-Yeah.

-Do you have your own kitchen?

-No, it's a shared kitchen.

-Shared kitchen, as well.

Yeah, it's communal, a communal kitchen.

Yeah, yeah, he's just been working, so he is permitted to work.

Do you have £16,000 in savings?

It'd be nice. I wish I had it. No, he doesn't have it.

No, no, sorry. I haven't got it either. No, he hasn't got £16,000.

Have you got any more small plates?

..with ballpoint pens, cooking up schemes to cost cut your future.

Can they charge you for walking?

They'd probably like to.

Charge you for drinking water, they already do.

Charge you for pissing?

They do that, too.

For breathing in air, or looking up at the stars at night.

And the marketing companies are the extremists of the age,

writing large,

believing in nothing.

They don't care about you.

They'll never care about you.

APPLAUSE

..the different connections between people who are sat here, yeah?

We've got the phone line,

and a brother, and he's connected to the driver

by trying to make phone calls...

"The whole legal system has been devised

"to protect those who own property from those who do not.

"The laws are needed only because people exist who have no property.

"If the worker cannot find employment,

"he can steal.

"Unless he's afraid of the police.

"Or he can go hungry,

"and then the police will see to it that he will die of hunger

"in such a way as not to disturb the equanimity of the middle classes.

"The English workers call this social murder."

SHE LAUGHS

A ceremony is ultimately an act of collaboration,

and I knew I'd need an anthem to roll out the red carpet for Engels.

And if you want an anthem for statue of a communist revolutionary...

..who better to ask than Gruff Rhys,

a North Walian Renaissance socialist pop star

with an original Soviet Polivoks synth at hand?

This sort of thing any good, Gruff, this sound?

TECHNO BEAT

# All that's saw it

# Melts into it

# We've got nothing to lose

# But our chains

# Hail the oppressor

# That frees the oppressed

# We've got nothing to lose

# But our chains

# Renationalise

# The hope in your eyes

# We've got nothing to lose

# But your chains

# Don't rationalise

# The jars on your mind

# We've got nothing to lose

# But your chains... #

What does Engels think of as he travels from east to west?

Does he recognise places and sites?

Have they changed much since his time?

I've lived in Berlin for ten years now.

It's a city which forces you to confront the fact

that society's unwilling to reflect on its own ideological structures.

East Germany was an autocratic police state,

with a ruling elite obsessed with surveillance,

and unelected leaders dominated by the interests of the superpower.

Sound like anywhere you know?

The mass-organised May Day parades,

with their emphasis on solidarity and liberation movements,

were part of what I thought of when I dreamed of Engel's Exchange.

I wanted to remember a socialism not of uniform activity,

but of collective interests.

Berlin still has competing ideologies riven into the city.

With the West cannibalizing the East,

building castles and banks in what was once public space.

Which begs the central question, what is liberation?

Liberated into what?

Good morning, Julie!

How many orders have you got in?

Right, seven. OK, that's not a problem.

How many children in the families?

Right, OK. So baby formula, wipes... Er...

Yeah, brilliant.

No, I can do that, I'm just getting to the food bank now.

Yeah, that's great. All right, see you in a little while.

Bye-bye!

-All right, Jude?

-Yeah, I delivered the food.

-I think I managed to get everything, even the nappies.

-Oh, good.

-Right, no worries, I'll copy you into it as usual.

-Okey doke.

Where have you come from?

-Wythenshawe.

-Wythenshawe?

-Yeah.

-Didn't realise it was that far away.

What's it like, the place you're in? Is it all right?

-Yeah, it's all right, yeah.

-Is it all women, or all men, or...

It's all men, and there's me, and one old woman.

-Is that all?

-Yeah.

There's only two women in the place?

-Yeah.

-What are they like? What sort of people are in there?

Like, everyone, obviously apart from me...

-Yeah?

-..takes heroin and stuff.

-Really?

-Crack, spice, and drinks...

And what do the staff do about it?

It's a wet house, you're allowed.

Oh, is it a wet house? Right, I didn't realise.

-When I went to the Booth Centre...

-Mm?

..someone hit me.

-Right.

-So, then I got took straight to the top of the list,

because it was a danger, me being on the street.

-How old is he?

-He's six.

Because I was thinking about supervised visits...

Like babies, because you've had him for five years,

with babies, if someone's homeless and pregnant,

the baby's more or less usually removed at birth,

and then they've got to jump through all the hoops with social services

before they can have the baby back.

And you had him for five years before he went away,

so you got that built-up relationship with him.

-Yeah.

-So, I think the stuff that we're going to do with you

is increase contact first, what do you think?

It wouldn't be suitable for him to him stay overnight, would it?

No, he's not allowed in. He's got to be over 16 to stay there.

Right. Where are you up to with him at the minute?

I see him every two weeks, so twice a month,

and I have phone contact on a Sunday.

When he gets on the phone, like, if he's got something in front of him,

he's, like, showing me.

You know what I mean? I can't see, though!

-He thinks he's showing you.

-Yeah, he goes, "Can you see it?".

-I see.

-Yeah.

-If I could wave a magic wand and sort everything out for you

now, what would it be?

Um...

Just me and Thomas in our own house together.

"So what, they said to the poor is,

"you have the right to exist, but just to exist, and no more.

"You have certainly no right to breed,

"still less to live in a civilised world like normal human beings.

"You are like a plague.

"We shall stop you from contaminating others

"who might become idle or unemployed through your evil example.

"We shall let you live,

"but only as an awful example to others

"who might be tempted to become superfluous."

Public statues are interesting,

because even though they memorialize the ideology of a nation,

they become invisible over time.

Like everybody, when I look at a statue, I ask myself,

can statues feel? And, what do they see?

Are they excited about the changes in fashions and tastes?

The tourists and the stray dogs, the spliffs and the cruisers?

The demonstrations and rallies?

First dates and break-ups?

Pension days and riot squads?

Are they minded by the bird shit, the piss, and the drizzle?

The scorching heat, and the slow death of snow?

What does the onslaught of decades feel like?

In 2010, I was working on a film with former Marxist teachers.

I heard that an iconic statue of Marx and Engels

was going to be moved from its original location

to a nearby less conspicuous site.

Discreetly obscured by bushes,

and cruelly reorientated to face the West.

Ah!

Ooh!

If you're paying in order to be cared for in the home,

then what happens is that your first and foremost experience

of that violence is coming from that institution.

If you're a service user of the welfare state, or job centre,

if you're a job seeker,

your first and foremost experience of that violence

is coming from the job centre.

If you're a service user of the NHS,

your experience of violence has come from the NHS,

and that's what we mean by "institutional violence".

Can you take the front off. I'm going to do the mounting underneath.

-How much did you pay for this one?

-80 quid.

What do you reckon we'll get for it?

Eh?

Hopefully more than £80!

Yeah, I know, but what though?

The cat's 60.

Yeah, that was £60 for the engine.

£60 for the engine, that's 120.

60, for the car, the shell...

Yeah, that'll cover...

So that's £180, is it?

-Yeah.

-And then you've got, how many good tyres for it?

-Wheels, three.

-Three good tyres, tenner a tyre.

-30 quid.

£210, alloys?

-And the alloys, yeah.

-£40?

-Yeah.

-250, spend £80 on it.

-Do the maths.

-You didn't go to school, you?

No, I'm no good at maths! You know I'm not, I'm useless at it!

-I did go to school!

-Yeah, not very often.

I didn't start learning to read and write, though, till I was about 13.

-You know what book I read, don't you?

-Uh, The Governor?

-The only book I've ever read...

-LAUGHTER

What are you laughing at?!

-It's the only book.

-It don't mean I'm what's it called, illiterate?

-Is that the right word?

-No.

-I can read.

-Well, you ain't illiterate then.

I can read a newspaper.

-Doesn't make a difference.

-You know where I read that book?

-Eh?

-Buckley Hall.

-Yeah.

-Robbery, wasn't it?

-Robbery, yeah.

Two sleeves with eyes cut out of it!

Two knots at the end of it.

I remember! I still remember that like yesterday!

"The middle classes have little to hope and much to fear

"from the education of the workers.

"It is in the interest of the middle classes that wages should be high

"enough to enable the workers to bring up their children,

"who will, in due course, be fit for regular employment.

"On the other hand, the worker's wages must be low enough

"to force him to send his children to the factory,

"rather than encourage them to improve their lot by training

"for something better than mere factory labour."

-I have to do six more than you.

-Yeah, I know, I told you to do that.

-All right, Dad?

-All right, love?

-What have you been up to?

-School.

-Everything all right at school?

How did the exam go?

Ahh, don't shut my fingers...

-It went crap!

-Why?

-Well, I just couldn't do it.

-What do you mean, you couldn't do it?

-Dad, I just couldn't do it.

-You revised for it, didn't you?

Well, I've tried, I just can't do it.

You need to try harder, mate, try harder.

Try harder? I'm trying my hardest!

-Yeah, whatever.

-Oh, you know what? I don't care, whatever.

Let's get these in, Dave. Get the ramps put in.

Come on, love.

-Eh?

-What?

-Well, tell us, you know, how bad's it gone?

Rubbish, dad, it went crap.

Why did it go crap? Did you finish it, did you complete it?

-No.

-Well, you've had time to revise it.

Dad, I've not been able to do it,

I don't have a clue about what's going on with any of these papers.

I told the teacher, and she just couldn't care less.

I can see your teacher, see if you can do it again, or something.

There's got to be something we can do, isn't there? Eh?

-Having my own room would help.

-What?

I just can't focus in there, Dad.

All there ever is screaming and mess.

Listen, people make do with what they've got, yeah?

That's what they do, love, so cheer up.

Come on. I'll see your teacher, see if you can get a re-sit, yeah?

-Like she's going to listen to you!

-Yeah, she's going to listen to me.

Stop trying to cheer me up.

Why? Is this cheering you up?

-Is it?

-No...

Oh, come on, I know what I'm talking about.

I know what I'm doing, I'll see your teacher.

Cheer up, don't let it get you down, yeah?

-You don't want to work at McDonald's, do you?

-No.

-So what do you want to do?

-I want to be a poet.

Well there you go. Don't let it get you down, yeah?

-All right.

-All right, don't worry about it.

-Ow!

Stop right away!

-All right? Don't let it worry you. Yeah?

-All right.

You make me proud.

There's not that many traces of Engels left in Manchester.

Partly because he moved around a lot, and lived under pseudonyms.

Partly because they knock everything down in Manchester

to build luxury flats and office blocks.

But, in the working-class movement library,

there's a portfolio scrapbook made by a local schoolteacher,

Roy Whitfield, who, when he retired in the 1980s,

dedicated his life to going around Manchester and Salford,

photographing the sites where Engels lived and work.

OK, so the portfolio's called Friedrich Engels in Manchester.

1842 to 1844,

and 1851 to 1870.

So those were the two crucial periods when Engels was resident

-in Manchester.

-Yeah.

-And...

..according to this photograph,

this is where they began writing the manifesto.

-Yeah.

-The Communist Manifesto.

It's just to the back of Victoria Station.

-That was where they moved from.

-Right.

-And that's Cecil Street now.

-Yeah, yeah. Wow, gosh. It's changed.

-And this is...

-Moss Lane East.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

That must be the Central Library.

That's the Central Library.

1856.

Probably around the time that Dickens was doing talks there.

I think this is Victoria Mills.

That was Engels's factory, wasn't it?

-Yeah.

-This is obviously the photographs from the 1980s.

-And it's changed already since the 1980s.

-Yeah.

I think it's a motorway, isn't it?

I keep getting confused with my bearings

because it's changed so much.

But this was the area where people emigrated to during the famine...

-Ah.

-..in Ireland.

There used to be a homeless hostel.

And that's gone now.

A few months before Ceremony,

I came across a rooftop protest just across from what in Engels's time

used to be the slums of "Little Ireland".

A group of rough sleepers squatted in an empty building for shelter.

It's been slated for redevelopment,

and the authorities have tried to evict them.

Homelessness in Manchester is at an all-time high.

The protest made me think again about the magnetic power of simple,

everyday resistance,

and its immediate abstraction into spectacle.

Abroad on a raft.

In my own back yard.

Discounted outlet to drive to on the edges of town.

And the breadline queues of Britain, its prisons fit to bursting.

And you?

Tired for the ache of admiring all the new cars owned by no-one.

Arm wrestled into convenience,

frog marched into debt.

Lie back, and take one up the arse

for an England of white teeth detention centres,

and the undeserving persecuted.

"Terrible poverty prevails among factory workers in Wuppertal.

"Out of 2,500 children of school age,

"1,200 are deprived of education and grow up in factories,

"mainly so that the manufacturer need not pay the adults

"twice the wage he pays a child.

"But the wealthy manufacturers have a flexible conscience,

"and causing the death of one child more, or one less,

"does not doom a pietous soul to hell,

"especially if he goes to Church twice every Sunday."

CHURCH BELLS TOLL

I live half my time in Wuppertal.

It's in North Rhine-Westphalia, the industrial heartland of Europe.

And in the 19th century,

Wuppertal was known as the Manchester of Germany.

It's where Engels was born and grew up.

There's a replica of his family home,

and a museum for early industrialization.

And the Chinese, for whom Engels is still a household name,

recently sent a new statue as a gift to the city.

Next to the area north of Jordan,

next to Palestine and Lebanon.

I'm from this small town, it's called Dafna.

I used to live in Damascus, and I used to study in the city.

I fell in love with a girl.

I asked my dad, I want to marry that girl.

He said, "How do you want to marry her if you don't have money?"

"Though my English may not be pure,

"I hope you will find it plain English.

"No working man in England treated me as a foreigner.

"With the greatest pleasure,

"I observe you to be free from that blasting curse.

"National prejudice and national pride,

"which, after all, means nothing but wholesale selfishness.

"I observe you to sympathise with everyone

"who earnestly applies his powers to human progress,

"to admire everything great and good,

"whether nursed on your native soil or not.

"I found you to be more than mere Englishmen,

"members of a single isolated nation..."

"I found you to be man.

"Members of a great and universal family of mankind,

"who know their interest, and that of all the human race

"to be the same."

So we make it back with a statue born in a Ukrainian Village in 1970,

made by an unknown sculptor.

What would Engels think of England today?

Why is the undisclosed war on those with the least

dressed in the rhetoric of nationalism and xenophobia?

In what forms are the relentless pursuit of profit and resources

responsible for the violence of austerity and the refugee crisis?

And who would he see as the new proletariat?

I imagine he'd see links where we seem to have stopped looking,

and that he'd read them as part of the ongoing struggle

between property, capital, and the working-class.

And without a doubt, the sites of potential change.

# Engels had an angle

# On this world I've joined

# With the workers international

# World-wide

# But Weaste was his base

# To reconfigure our race

# Against capitalism's brutal shackles

# And pain

# Maybe Marxism had the x-factor

# That's Engels-ism never had... #

Watch you don't go on the road!

-Are you all right?

-Yes.

-You look tired.

-Are they new shoes?

-Yeah!

-You've got the creep!

I wanted to ask her if it's all right.

She might want white shoes.

Give me a hand with crossing the road.

So you can sunbathe!

-Watch your step, Auntie Mary.

-How was work yesterday?

-OK.

I know you guys have got two weeks off.

-Yes!

-I'm not! It'll cost a fortune.

# But our chains

# Hail the oppressor

# That freed the oppressed... #

Yeah!

When we're busking, we can go, one, two, three!

And one more time.

Yeah!!

They're not ready for this dance, man!

# But our chains

# ..the new age oligarch

# Got nothing to lose

# But our chains... #

We find him a permanent site in Tony Wilson Place,

outside an art centre fittingly called Home,

and a stone's throw away from Little Ireland.

Why bring Communism back to where it all started?

1989 brought the curtain down on one historical chapter,

but socialism continues to evolve,

and remains our best shot at human dignity.

Or, in Engels's words, the choice is socialism or barbarism.

Overhead in the skies above.

The ghouls now speak on our behalf,

half choked from burgers in the bins,

half crazed from watching marathons of property shows,

selling luxury flats that aren't yet built,

to babies who aren't yet born.

Turn your living rooms into cash,

turn your cupboards into cash,

turn your bedrooms into cash.

Petty hatreds, cash.

Here's a TV show idea.

Children storm the palace, and the Windsors in electric chairs.

Here's some primetime entertainment.

Bankers in Strangeways hunger strike.

Free, but ticketed event.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# To roost

# To roost

# To roost

# To roost

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# Communism's coming home

# To roost

# To roost

# Nothing to lose

# But our chains

# We've got nothing to lose

# But our chains

# We've got nothing to lose

# But our chains. #