Grey Panthers
As the young embrace materialism, it is left to the old to voice dissent, says Will Hodgkinson
Britain’s power base has shifted. For most of the last century, control of the country lay in the hands of a wrinkled elite, protecting their own interests and those of their peers, who held the means of production and most of the wealth. But these days the country is run by men who only develop grey hairs after they take office, and financed by an affluent youth happy to support multinational conglomorations by accepting that they must have the trainers/interiors/lifestyle that capitalism wants them to have. Most company executives meanwhile, are barely out of nappies. Which begs the question: where lives the voice of dissent?
The answer is, of course, in retirement homes. Increasingly alienated from the forces that drive commerce, pensioners are the only true rebels left. Richard Farnsworth’s 75-year-old, crossing America on a lawnmower in David Lynch’s The Straight Story seems far more revolutionary than today’s teens-in-trouble fare; and a widespread dislike of CCTV amongst seniors who regard it as a facet of intrusive authoritarianism makes the rest of us painfully aware of our own blind acceptance. In America there’s already a name for these ageing insurrectionists: Grey Panthers, people of a pensionable age who have organised themselves to fight against what they dislike. Their website, Third Age, reveals a mistrust of big business (Microsoft is particularly odious), a frustration at declining sexual abilities (recent newsletter topic: I can’t get past first base with men), and most importantly, an overriding concern with the disintegration of democracy through an increasingly centralised government; a concern that is being acted upon effectively. In Miami in 1998, 82-year-old Grey Panther David Samson succeeded in turning the small retirement home of Sunny Isles (pop: 14,000) into an independent city, of which he is now mayor, and relatively free from intervention by Washington executives.
The Grey Panthers are yet to make their mark in England, but a post-war generation who fought against the excesses of capitalism in the Fifties and Sixties are now reaching pensionable age. Gwen Evans, 63, is an ageing insurrectionary par excellence; filled with righteous anger at our young government’s behaviour and at duplicitous big business practices. “Companies are interested in the people with spending power, which tends to be the young. When it gets to the elderly there isn’t much you can market, apart from holidays, with beautiful grey-haired people skipping about on the sand. I tend to go into a trance when I see those ads.” Gwen’s concerns are the facts of modern life that most of us take for granted. “I don’t like supermarket reward cards, because they monitor everybody so that they can feed you back what they think you already want. The government does this as well. And the government have access to the information on reward cards, which they can use for tax investigation, which is outrageous. Nobody tells you about that. The Big Brother aspect of the current government is more obviously manipulative than with the Tories, who generally didn’t bother with anyone. These days there are endless focus groups constantly trying to predict what we don’t like.”
On this point, Richard Neville, founder of Oz magazine and now 60, concurs. “Sometimes I do find Generation Xers exasperating because of their constant obsession with brand loyalty and their general acceptance of the corporate agenda. Even the corporatisation of education, culture, rock and sport has been accepted without question.”
The aged are in a good position to be revolutionary: many have more time on their hands to devote themselves to fighting the power, and it’s far harder for the state to slap the hands of those with the grand bearing of age. Gwen’s own twelve-point statement of what she dislikes about contemporary British authority illustrates perfectly how the future of dissent is grey.
Cycling on the pavement
It is currently illegal if you’re under sixteen, and in fact it’s the under-sixteens who knock you over! People of my age cycle very slowly and we’re forced onto the road, which is outrageous, so I do cycle on the pavement. This old lady gave me a look which I knew was going to be a reproach, so before she said anything, I said “Shut up, you silly old bitch,” and carried straight on.
Erosion of democracy
You should have the right to choose a representative to go to the House Of Commons and speak on your behalf, but now the person who is your MP is not selected by you, but by their party loyalty and obedience to Blairite law. And once they’re in parliament, there’s an enormous amount of thuggery to get them to conform. So they’re not there for you at all.
“Thank you for not smoking”
“Thank You” means “you have to”. It makes me want to do whatever they want to “thank me” for not doing.
Charity
We should help the poor by tax, not by charity.
Catastrophic drug laws
As long as we have criminalisation of drugs, there’s no stopping all the criminal activity that goes with it. The police want this as well. Far more people die of drink than heroin.
The nuclear policy
Nuclear companies BNFL and Lockheed-Martin are taking over Aldermaston, which is so shocking. Lockheed-Martin’s record is of making local inhabitants sick time after time, and denying that they have anything to do with it.
So-called public lavatories
These new single ones are awful because they might open up at any time. You might step out and meet somebody you wanted to impress, and - as you know - it’s very difficult to impress anyone when they know you’ve done a poo.
Motor traffic
We’ve completely eradicated natural dangers and replaced them with a system that is so dangerous that you can step out of the house, take a false turn and you’re dead.
Christmas
I’m not a Christian, but now I have to go and buy presents. I’d rather someone came up to me in June and said, “buy me a garden fork”.
The futures market
How can anybody expect to run a business when it’s such a butterfly organisation, which has nothing to do with the firms themselves?
CCTV
When I park my bike outside Sainsbury’s something gets nicked off it, so I asked the security guard if I could put my bike where there are cameras. He told me that they’re only dummies, which is quite normal apparently.
As the young embrace materialism, it is left to the old to voice dissent, says Will Hodgkinson
Britain’s power base has shifted. For most of the last century, control of the country lay in the hands of a wrinkled elite, protecting their own interests and those of their peers, who held the means of production and most of the wealth. But these days the country is run by men who only develop grey hairs after they take office, and financed by an affluent youth happy to support multinational conglomorations by accepting that they must have the trainers/interiors/lifestyle that capitalism wants them to have. Most company executives meanwhile, are barely out of nappies. Which begs the question: where lives the voice of dissent?
The answer is, of course, in retirement homes. Increasingly alienated from the forces that drive commerce, pensioners are the only true rebels left. Richard Farnsworth’s 75-year-old, crossing America on a lawnmower in David Lynch’s The Straight Story seems far more revolutionary than today’s teens-in-trouble fare; and a widespread dislike of CCTV amongst seniors who regard it as a facet of intrusive authoritarianism makes the rest of us painfully aware of our own blind acceptance. In America there’s already a name for these ageing insurrectionists: Grey Panthers, people of a pensionable age who have organised themselves to fight against what they dislike. Their website, Third Age, reveals a mistrust of big business (Microsoft is particularly odious), a frustration at declining sexual abilities (recent newsletter topic: I can’t get past first base with men), and most importantly, an overriding concern with the disintegration of democracy through an increasingly centralised government; a concern that is being acted upon effectively. In Miami in 1998, 82-year-old Grey Panther David Samson succeeded in turning the small retirement home of Sunny Isles (pop: 14,000) into an independent city, of which he is now mayor, and relatively free from intervention by Washington executives.
The Grey Panthers are yet to make their mark in England, but a post-war generation who fought against the excesses of capitalism in the Fifties and Sixties are now reaching pensionable age. Gwen Evans, 63, is an ageing insurrectionary par excellence; filled with righteous anger at our young government’s behaviour and at duplicitous big business practices. “Companies are interested in the people with spending power, which tends to be the young. When it gets to the elderly there isn’t much you can market, apart from holidays, with beautiful grey-haired people skipping about on the sand. I tend to go into a trance when I see those ads.” Gwen’s concerns are the facts of modern life that most of us take for granted. “I don’t like supermarket reward cards, because they monitor everybody so that they can feed you back what they think you already want. The government does this as well. And the government have access to the information on reward cards, which they can use for tax investigation, which is outrageous. Nobody tells you about that. The Big Brother aspect of the current government is more obviously manipulative than with the Tories, who generally didn’t bother with anyone. These days there are endless focus groups constantly trying to predict what we don’t like.”
On this point, Richard Neville, founder of Oz magazine and now 60, concurs. “Sometimes I do find Generation Xers exasperating because of their constant obsession with brand loyalty and their general acceptance of the corporate agenda. Even the corporatisation of education, culture, rock and sport has been accepted without question.”
The aged are in a good position to be revolutionary: many have more time on their hands to devote themselves to fighting the power, and it’s far harder for the state to slap the hands of those with the grand bearing of age. Gwen’s own twelve-point statement of what she dislikes about contemporary British authority illustrates perfectly how the future of dissent is grey.
Cycling on the pavement
It is currently illegal if you’re under sixteen, and in fact it’s the under-sixteens who knock you over! People of my age cycle very slowly and we’re forced onto the road, which is outrageous, so I do cycle on the pavement. This old lady gave me a look which I knew was going to be a reproach, so before she said anything, I said “Shut up, you silly old bitch,” and carried straight on.
Erosion of democracy
You should have the right to choose a representative to go to the House Of Commons and speak on your behalf, but now the person who is your MP is not selected by you, but by their party loyalty and obedience to Blairite law. And once they’re in parliament, there’s an enormous amount of thuggery to get them to conform. So they’re not there for you at all.
“Thank you for not smoking”
“Thank You” means “you have to”. It makes me want to do whatever they want to “thank me” for not doing.
Charity
We should help the poor by tax, not by charity.
Catastrophic drug laws
As long as we have criminalisation of drugs, there’s no stopping all the criminal activity that goes with it. The police want this as well. Far more people die of drink than heroin.
The nuclear policy
Nuclear companies BNFL and Lockheed-Martin are taking over Aldermaston, which is so shocking. Lockheed-Martin’s record is of making local inhabitants sick time after time, and denying that they have anything to do with it.
So-called public lavatories
These new single ones are awful because they might open up at any time. You might step out and meet somebody you wanted to impress, and - as you know - it’s very difficult to impress anyone when they know you’ve done a poo.
Motor traffic
We’ve completely eradicated natural dangers and replaced them with a system that is so dangerous that you can step out of the house, take a false turn and you’re dead.
Christmas
I’m not a Christian, but now I have to go and buy presents. I’d rather someone came up to me in June and said, “buy me a garden fork”.
The futures market
How can anybody expect to run a business when it’s such a butterfly organisation, which has nothing to do with the firms themselves?
CCTV
When I park my bike outside Sainsbury’s something gets nicked off it, so I asked the security guard if I could put my bike where there are cameras. He told me that they’re only dummies, which is quite normal apparently.
"I do nothing and then I do something. But it's taken years of investigating idleness in all its forms to be able to achieve this. My discipline is borne out of concerted study of idleness."