With MacHeath – aka (probably) Knife, gangster, murderer, polygamist and businessman – on trial for the murder of a female employee which he did not commit (though much of the blame for the woman’s actual suicide could be laid at Mac’s feet), his spiel about how his bargain “B” shops are helping the poor to buy cheap goods and supporting the franchise owners in a trade, is swallowed and repeated by almost all of the newspapers who cover it. We hear that:

“Only a proletarian publication slung mud at the B. shop Napoleon. But they could not be taken seriously because, contrary to the sporting spirit, they denied their victim any redeeming qualities and devoted most of their space to an impassioned demand for the forcible liquidation of the existing social order.”

The Death of Capitalism

One of the traditions of the Mexican Day of the Dead, I learnt recently while working as poet-in-residence at Hackney City Farm’s celebration of the event, is that people write poetry: either to bring back their loved ones from death or to send living people the other way! Writing bespoke poems was moving and at times quite fun: I sent off a nasty ex-boyfriend, an evil stepmother and a couple of world leaders. One person asked me for an elegy mourning the death of Capitalism. And here it is: