The 11th Day Of the 11th Month And Our Madness

Made In Birmingham By A Mental Health User

Its a short film and a voice of poetry on UserWatch Birmingham UK , a token of memory and yet it moves the autumn leaves and walks the paths of some old places with ghosts in Birmingham that some of us can recall the shadows of.. Highcroft Mental Hospital housed people who were affected by the "Great War" - there were even signs left by those who were "mad" or made mad by the stoic and emotionally iron clad working classes whose suffering was a darkened place and rarely shared or spoke of .. Some of us remember them and remember how mental suffering was placed off limits by a culture that found it virtuous not to scream the pain it was in or was caused by its national "character" social habits and class conflicts ...

Iron jaws over hell was what some of recall and iron children. And encased post victorian affected people ... We remember the knock on effects of habitualising that personal suffering should not form tears but only some outer inner spaces where screams could not be heard .

Did we learn ? No.....We did not learn compassion enough but there again the mess of mass neurosis and societies that are inhumane and believe that humans are for dominating and using are all around us still .. We are them .. Is there hope ? ...Who knows .....?

See below the short film for a photo of a "mad" man's scrawling with a nail on the Highcroft Mental Hospital wall - some of which (we cannot show here) showed he had taken "The Kings shilling" and had probably fought in the Great War 1914 - 1918 .. He was on "K1" Ward which was knocked down in the days of the ambitious 2003 merger of the North Birmingham Mental Health Trust with the corporately slick South Birmingham Mental Health Trust .. The North has never been the same since that merger ......Our rearguard is perhaps our memory .....If we can grow wise and compassionately arted with it .....Shame about the current South and North merged Mental Health Trust of which 1500 staff are threatening to strike

Seems like the old days are back again of managers wanting some forms of Workarses ... Both staff and patients are being lined up and marched towards more cold hearted political bullshit...So much for winning wars when we often lose the human spirit ....