“I shall vote Labour”

Christopher Logue, whose poems were published by the NS in the 50s/60s, dies at 85.

The poet Christopher Logue, who died last Friday at the age of 85, was best known for his project – which spanned fifty years – to adapt Homer’s Iliad as an epic, modernist poem. Logue’s War Music appeared as five print volumes and the final collection, published by Faber as Logue’s Homer: Cold Calls: War Music Continued: Vol 1, won the 2006 Whitbread Poetry Prize and long overdue recognition for the English poet.

Unlike the modernist greats whose attachments to the Greek classics were coupled with deep rooted Conservatism – think Eliot, Pound – Logue was of the loosely-liberal British Poetry Revival movement and an active leftie throughout his life.

In 1960, Logue became an original member of the Committee of 100, the anti-war group set up by Bertrand Russell to voice their opposition to the British government’s nuclear policy. From the late Fifties through the Seventies he contributed to Private Eye and the New Statesman, participated in CND marches and lead social programmes to bring poetry to workers on the factory floors.

In March 1966, after just 17 months in office, sitting prime minister Harold Wilson held a general election and campaigned under the slogan “You know Labour Government Works”. The same year, Logue wrote the following poem. “I shall vote Labour” was first published by the New Statesman, and that spring the British public re-elected Prime Minister Wilson, increasing the Labour government majority from just four seats to a comfortable 96.

I shall vote Labour

I shall vote Labour because
God votes Labour.
I shall vote Labour to protect
the sacred institution of The Family.
I shall vote Labour because
I am a dog.
I shall vote Labour because
upper-class hoorays annoy me in expensive restaurants.
I shall vote Labour because
I am on a diet.
I shall vote Labour because if I don’t
somebody else will:
AND
I shall vote Labour because if one person
does it
everybody will be wanting to do it.
I shall vote Labour because if I do not vote Labour
my balls will drop off.
I shall vote Labour because
there are too few cars on the road.
I shall vote Labour because I am
a hopeless drug addict.
I shall vote Labour because
I failed to be a dollar millionaire aged three.
I shall vote Labour because Labour will build
more maximum security prisons.
I shall vote Labour because I want to shop
in an all-weather precinct stretching from Yeovil to Glasgow.
I shall vote Labour because
the Queen’s stamp collection is the best
in the world.
I shall vote Labour because
deep in my heart
I am a Conservative.