Planet Camden - an interview

Many people puzzle over just how it started. What's your take?

There's no 'take' as far as I'm concerned. The managers at the Central Library wanted to put all the cleaning staff on half-time. We were all paid by the hour. None of us could possibly live on half-wages, could you? No. So, we had to do something about it. My Daughter, Lucy started it all.

But, what prompted her to act?

Haven't I just explained to you...?

As opposed to doing nothing. No one's compelled to fight back, are they?

Well, she'd, um, she'd discovered something, a pamphlet about the Old Philosophy. I mean she's a reader, she always was, but didn't I didn't know she'd been reading up on, on that.

Can you tell me more about the Old Philosophy?

It's much more common that people, people not in the know, if you know what I mean, it's much more common, widespread than you'd think. It came from Earth, of all places. Can you believe it? It's about work and exploitation and how people can fight back and assert their dignity. That's how I saw it, anyway.

The way we found out about it was typical, I think. When we were young, my Husband and I, we couldn't afford to go to any fancy college. We went to a Working Educational Society, it was in a community centre, back on Erin. Only a small thing. It all happened after work. You had to pay for the books, the room and so on, but the lecturers were volunteers, usually amateurs, though sometimes we'd get university professors come down. I remember, once, we had a professor from the local university, a respected chemist, do An Introduction to Biology. We paid for him to come, although he agreed to halve his hourly rate. He started by saying what a privilege and an honour this was but how sorry he was the meeting would be a makeshift:

“This is not my subject of expertise, please excuse me if I vulgarise or gloss over anything”.

Someone in the class immediately shot back.

“You're paid to know. Get on with it”.

That was the attitude we had. The right attitude, I think.

Back to the point. I had a history class. We were studying with a book called A People's History of the Galaxy. It was an inspiring read, how ordinary people not only stood up to empires but started to build the world afresh, in their own image. When your husband to be is out driving a bus while you're still fruit picking on an asteroid it's... it's a mind blowing thing... Well, it made me look at the world differently.

I told the lecturer this, she was very pleased. Eventually John and I got in with a reading group. There were fragments of this stuff, branches all over the galaxy, which amazed me even more. There were only a few dozen of us, but the discussions we had were amazing. John, I remember, he gobbled up all this stuff about economics. He became something of an expert on it.

When the recession hit Erin we tried to put some of this into action. We were naïve, so green. Some of the group got arrested for “industrial incitement” (our leaflets were blamed for a strike in a brewery). John got blacklisted from the transport system. Then I was pregnant with Lucy. Things were pretty bleak, so we decided to leave Erin and take our chances elsewhere.

We never really found anything like the Working Educational Centre on Camden. There was a whole different culture here, although there was that movement for a while, Java-Borneo solidarity. People here seemed quiet and subservient. We kept some of the books but we both dropped out, effectively.

Of course now I know we were wrong. Lucy showed us.