I am yet in my increasingly long life to be so motivated to write, yet felt so lacking in an idea worth turning my motivation to, as I do right now. I have resorted to trying to coax an article out of me by artificially creating an atmosphere that is most conducive to musing. I have placed myself on the most comfortable couch in the house, am listening to a relaxing waltz by Strauss, I’m drinking my favourite of drinks (ginger beer) and have even filled the room with the smoke and smell of incense to drift my mind off into focus…

ahhhh, here it comes, at last, an idea!

Hasta la victoria siempre… This was the famous last sign off by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in his final letter to Fidel Castro before he was captured by a CIA agent who promptly executed him and cut off one of his hands to keep as a souvenir, sending a finger to Fidel Castro and even keeping Che’s watch, flaunting it for decades. I digress.

It loosely means, ‘Keep fighting until victory’, and has since been recognised as the universal slogan for revolution. The word ‘revolution’ itself is one that is thrown around far too often and in my opinion has suffered at the hands of roll-up cigarette smoking, student hippies who have nothing better to do with their time than attend any protest that could see them potentially clash with and run away from the police and collect battle scars which they can catwalk to the eyes of their socialist buddies or stories of how they were forcible dragged off a premises by ‘the pigs’.

I’ve seen them since my first day of university with a table outside my campus collecting support against pretty much everything. They cry revolution in response to anything, and to me are reminiscent of the boy who cried wolf and obviously hold to the spirit of another boy and girl who just generally cried a lot. It’s now at a stage where you can’t realistically take the idea of revolution seriously because you can’t take them seriously.

However, recent events (albeit not huge global events,) indicate to me that underneath that content exterior we display, people are just burning up to rise and rage against the machine (so to speak). It’s funny I should say that, because in December of 2009, the band Rage Against The Machine (henceforth shall be known as RATM) with their song ‘Killing in the name of’ had been chosen by Jon and Tracy Morter on Facebook, who merely created a group and launched a campaign to earn it the coveted and once exciting Christmas number one slot in the UK charts, a prestige that had previously been held by all the X-factor winners since 2005.

It appears people had become sick of seeing Simon Cowell’s puppets taking the top spot over what was supposed to be the happiest period of the year. However let’s be honest, who can truly be happy with the thought of Simon Cowell grinning with his fake teeth and botox-injected face, at the back of your mind?

RATM’s song is all about nonconformity, which is why it in particular was chosen as it aptly summed up people’s disdain for our friend Simon and the mainstream media in general dictating what we should or shouldn’t like. I am by no means suggesting that this was a revolution of any sort but it is an act of rebellion, one that demonstrates that people are no longer willing to accept that which they do not stand for. Despite the fact that we went to war anyway, two million people in the UK felt the need to exercise their democratic right to protest the war in Iraq, in what was the largest street protest in UK history; just another example of people empowering themselves to voice a unified opposition to something. It is an event that can neither be wiped from history nor denied it’s place in the lives of all those who attended.

Another small insight into the feelings of restlessness that fill that space just below the calm and content exterior and an example of a people’s rejection of what is imposed in very recent times can be seen at Old Trafford. The Manchester United fans have grown sick of their American owners and have decided they will no longer stand for it. A rather sinister-sounding group called the Red Knights, a mixture of lawyers, bankers and most importantly life-long United fans have come together to launch a takeover bid, hoping to oust the current owners who seem devoid of any football knowledge whatsoever.

Once again, the support they have received has been overwhelming. Fans in the crowd have started to don the gold and green scarf, which is being used as a symbol for protest and support for the proposed displacement of the Glazers (the current American owners) which will see fans given a majority stake in their beloved club. Even David Beckham (the spirit of che is strong in this one) sported the gold and green scarf upon his return to Old Trafford with his current club AC Milan.

Whether it’s the weather, the credit crunch or just new secret ingredients in Weetabix, it appears to me that people are not content to rest on their laurels. If people are unhappy about something, they will (increasingly nowadays) kick up a fuss about it until victory is taken (or they’ll wait till tomorrow and give the weather a second chance) …or at least I would like to hope so!

Hasta la victoria siempre

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