If I die earlier than expected, let these writings be used as a working class history of the things that were past and have now returned to torture us.

I started this Sub Stack in December 2022. I've used it as a means to preserve my Dad's writings as well as the final mission of his life to not make his past our future. My Substack, at least I hope, is a good place to store and share these writings especially because my health is problematic. I don't expect to die for at least a few more years. But if I go earlier than both me and medical science predict, this sub stack preserves,  a personal working-class history of Things Past that may have some utility for others when I am gone.    

It's a testament to the worth, uniqueness and profoundness of the lives of ordinary people who are continuously erased from history. It's a worthy endeavour that I am proud of and thankful that all of you have come this far with me on the journey across the shadow lands of the Great Depression and how it shaped the lives and politics of people like my dad.

The Green & Pleasant Land was unfinished at the time of my dad’s death. I've been piecing it together from all the written notes, & index cards my father left behind. It now has its own subfolder on this Substack because reading an excerpt here and there doesn't do it justice. The whole manuscript will be available in July before final revisions and its journey to a publisher.

It is a brilliant read and an important history of working-class life- during a time before the Welfare State. It is so important now that people own their working-class history because democracy in the 21st century has become more about giving the good life to its top-income earners at the expense of everyone else.

You can read the book from the beginning by heading to the Green and Pleasant Land subsection on this Sub Stack.

I am offering a 20% reduction on a yearly subscription because I need to collect my prescriptions today that keep in check my heart disease etc. However, just one yearly subscription will cover the cost. But and this is always the big but, subscribe to the paid section only if you can afford to otherwise, it's all good to be a free subscriber because your loyalty to me and this sub stack is greatly appreciated.

The Green And Pleasant Land

Chapter Fourteen:

With Dad gone; Bill Moxon became the central male figure in my childhood. Moxon was a man of quick temper, explosive rages and extreme intolerance. As human beings go, Moxon and my dad were polar opposites. My dad loved poetry, history and nature. He was a socialist and a kind man who believed in trade unionism as a path to a better society.

Moxon was barely literate and no socialist. My mother's new boyfriend was an angry man and I tried to stay well clear of him. Soon after my dad left, Bill lost his position as a cowman because he got into a fight with a foreman, over some real or imagined slight. To my mother's relief, Moxon quickly found another job. He was hired as a pig handler at a nearby farm.

In the mornings, Moxon travelled across Bradford with a horse-drawn cart. He collected slops from the restaurants and pubs for the pigs to dine on. On occasion, he brought home for Alberta and me a large formless mass of discarded toffee that was intended for the pigs to eat from the Mackintosh sweets factory.

With a hammer, Alberta and I chipped away at the mound of toffee that had bits of wax paper stuck to it. Eventually, our hard work transformed the mass, into shrouds of thick brown treacle. We sucked the sweetness from it as a carnivore licks the marrow from a bone.

Not only was Bill in charge of feeding the pigs, but he was also responsible for cleaning their styes of their shit. Every day, he shovelled, washed, and scraped away the effluence of four hundred well-fed pigs. After his shift was done he rode the bus home stinking of shit. When he returned home, his stench enveloped the doss. But the other residents feared his temper. So in his company kept schtum about his foul odour.

One weekend, Bill needed me to give him a hand at the pig farm to do a "man's job," he said. Moxon was too ignorant to understand I'd been doing a man's job ever since my mum put me to work as a beer barrow boy for the off-license down the road from our doss house when I turned seven.

When we arrived at the farm, Bill explained he had come to kill a pig. I was required to assist him because the business was dodgy. But me helping him would mean Moxon would be allowed to take some of the slaughter home for our tea. I was terror-stricken. Blood-curling images danced in my head about having to slay a giant pig.

Bill had me wait in a shed while he dragged a pig from its stall over to its place of execution. In the distance, I heard a pig wailing in terror and Moxon cursing the animal's reluctance to be dragged by a rope to his appointment with death.

The shed had a tin roof, cement sides, and a stone floor. Across the back of the shed were two large steel rails. There was a hook with a rope attached to it. The hook rode the rails on a metal wheel attached to it. On the floor, there was a giant sledgehammer, which appeared to be the same height as me.

When Bill arrived at the shed, he yelled.

“I’m going to put this noose against pig’s mouth on top of teeth. Come quick, I need you to hold the rope as tight as you got. Piggy’s head has got to be high- to the sky. Don’t let go of im, lad, because I am going to clout im, from behind with hammer.”

The pig struggled with every turn to break free. I was terrified that the pig would escape and attack me for threatening his life.

I stammered “I can’t do it, Bill. He’s too strong.”

“You better lad or you are our tea tonight.”

The pig cried out in fury and fear. Its back end dropped dollops of shit.

I grabbed the short rope and was now so close to the pig that I smelled its frightened breath while its giant tongue slapped back and forth against yellow threatening teeth.

“Higher, lad, higher,” Bill instructed.

I felt I could not hold on for much longer.

Finally, Bill smashed the back of the pig’s head with the sledgehammer, with an executioner’s strength, and the pig collapsed.

Bill slit the throat of the pig with a long knife blade which caused blood to explode from its jugular. I was sick to my stomach and rushed away to retch.

Moxon hoisted the pig up onto the rail trolley to let the blood run clean of the carcass. Moxon butchered the pig, and we took home a small portion of meat for a Sunday roast.

When the Sunday meal was being prepared, I didn't think of the pig, its fear and brutal death. I only thought about how I was always hungry and missed having the sensation of a full belly and the feeling of safety that brings.

Chapter 15:

Through each hour, day and month of 1931, my mother clung to Bill Moxon the way a shipwreck survivor holds tight to the side of an overturned lifeboat. She tried her best to never let him out of her sight because Moxon was a man in employment, a rarity for Yorkshire during the worst of the Great Depression.

His job didn't pay much at the pig farm. But it was steady work, and because of it, fried bread, drippings, and potatoes- as well as an occasional roast, kept our bellies full.

Moxon was our meal ticket, and Mum was always fearful he'd bolt from her affection, leaving us worse off than we had been when our dad lived with us. Mum was paranoid because Moxon leaving her was always a real possibility. Moxon had no loyalty to her and certainly had none for Alberta, me or our little brother Mathew as we were his by default rather than by blood.

Moxon wasn't a man of deep thought of loyalties, and after the first year as my mum's boyfriend, he grew tired of her and the responsibilities that came with it. He wanted out and found his exit by quitting his job as a pigman at the industrial farm on the outskirts of Bradford. He thought he'd be clear of her and us children. The one thing he didn't bargain on was my mother was a desperate woman. She wasn't going to let him slip away from her without a fight.

One Friday evening, Bill returned from the pub and announced he had quit his job. “There be no more shovelling pig shit and muck for me. I am moving to Sowerby Bridge. Some rich bloke built a sparkling new rendering plant there. And, he promises good wages for anyone willing to put in a hard day's labour slaughtering livestock.”

Moxon figured that considering he'd done his fair share of killing Germans in the Great War, he'd be all right butchering cows from sun up to sundown.

Bill told my mother he'd be leaving the next day. Half-heartedly, Moxon said- once he was sorted- he would send for her and us.

My mother was aware that Bill was no more likely to send word for us to join him in Sowerby Bridge than he was to purchase a pair of dentures; which he was in desperate need of as he had lost most of his teeth from decay and brawling.

Panic overcame my mother at this news. If Bill left, she had no means to feed and keep us housed in the doss.

Mum's only option was to travel to Sowerby Bridge and convince him through guilt and seduction that he was responsible for her and her children.

A few days after Bill left Bradford, my mother made preparations to find him in Sowerby Bridge. Alberta and I were taken out of school on the excuse there was a near and dear relation on death’s door. My brother Matt was deposited with our mum's sister Alice because he was far too young to assist in our nomadic search for Bill Moxon.

The three of us took a bus to Halifax where Mum let a room in a doss for me and my sister while she tracked down Bill in the neighbouring Sowerby Bridge.

There, Mum deposited us in a dilapidated and seedy doss house. We were left with two loaves of bread and some jam.

Mum said before leaving.

 “Don’t scarf it all at once; I might be gone a few days. Be good. Don’t get under anyone’s feet.”

In our room was one bed with a mouldy mattress that reeked strongly of the sweat of the many who had rested on it before my sister and me. After our mother had left to find Bill, my sister and I began to eat the bread with some jam slathered on top. In between, chewing, we talked about whether our mother would find Bill and convince him to be the head of our household again or whether we were for the workhouse.

By nightfall, my sister and I began to feel hungry. From our bedroom, we smelt a stew cooking on a stove in the nearby kitchen. We ventured out of the room and headed toward the direction of the aroma. We quickly found the kitchen and were pleased because no one was in it.

Alberta told me to return to the room and fetch what was left from our remaining loaf of bread. She said it would be a shame not to taste the stew cooking on the stove.

When I returned, my sister and I took turns soaking chunks of the bread into the pot of hot and succulent meat, potatoes, and veg simmering on the stove.

Sated, we went back to our cramped room with content stomachs. Tired- both of us slipped underneath the dirty blankets of the bed and gutted the candle on the table beside us. But once the light was doused, bed bugs began to devour us. The bugs sucked our blood with as much relish as we had shown when we stole another resident's meal in the kitchen. Itching and dejected, we spent the night squashing them with our bare fingers and then used our shoes against the ones we flicked with our fingers onto the floor.

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The following morning, Mum returned to collect us and told us her hunt for Bill Moxon was successful. Mum described her encounter with Moxon as if it was a victory for her and us. But in truth, it was a complete surrender of her autonomy.

Mum begged and pleaded with Bill. She even swore subservience to him if he promised to protect her and her children.

Bill accepted my mother's terms of unconditional surrender. The conditions were harsh. If we wanted to eat, we had to follow without deviation Bill Moxon’s orbit. The trajectory my mother was placed on to break free of the gravitational pull of our poverty was about to become a rocket ride of violence against her from Bill.

Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I am offering a 20% reduction in a yearly subscription to ensure my prescriptions can be purchased today. One new subscriber covers that cost. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. But if you can’t it all good too because I appreciate we are in the same boat. Take Care, John