Across the pond

I knew Adrian Mitchell, who died during this holiday season, as a neighbour in that part of Hampstead, where the ‘chattering classes’ live cheek by jowl with working class folk, some of whom have lived here for generations, and others, who are housed in the vast housing estates of Gospel Oak, erected by Camden Council.

I liked him as a person. He seemed to me always to have time for the folk around, although he was a ‘celebrity’. And he always had time for the children.

I liked the philosophy behind his poetry. He was a pacifist, but also a fighter. He was a socialist by heart, rather than by doctrine. He spoke up for the oppressed, although he was not particularly oppressed. His father was a scientist, his mother a school-teacher. Part of his education was private and he had the benefit of a small legacy, which enabled him to write what he wanted, rather than make his living by working full-time for the media.

He lived and wrote with zest and enthusiasm. I am not sure whether he would have relished the column Jackie Ashley wrote after his death, just before Christmas, in The Guardian. She raises him high above Bernard Crick and Harold Pinter, two far better known left wing writers who died during 2008. Mitchell was a modest man.

But Ashley shows herself to have been touched by those qualities for which I valued Mitchell. Here is her last paragraph.

But in terms of spreading good values, getting people to laugh and feel angry for the right reasons, it may be that Mitchell mattered most. Across the country there are people who have been influenced by Mitchell’s socialist, pacifist and kindly values. We have plenty of cleverness. We need a bit of heart.