31 October 2019
Halloween Demonstrations
Even the dead are protesting.
By Neil Tidmarsh
It’s halloween. A crescent moon – as bright and cold and sinister as a psychopath’s smile – looks down on a graveyard where a sharp wind chases yellow and black leaves around the tombstones like a werewolf scattering its prey.
But the graves – the graves are emptying! Their skeletal inhabitants are climbing out into the moonlight with a ghastly clatter of bones. They crowd and jostle each other among the tombs. So many skeletons – hundreds, thousands of skeletons – surely one small graveyard can’t have produced so many? No, indeed. More and more are pouring in from outside, having risen not from graves or tombs but from glass cases in museums and galleries, from cardboard boxes in archaeological archives and from air-conditioned units in scientific laboratories.
All the skeletons are angry. They’re shouting at the tops of their voices and brandishing placards and waving white bony fists at each other. What are they shouting?
“We demand equality among the dead!”
What do their placards say?
“Death the leveller? Don’t make me laugh!”
Fights break out among different groups. A placard sends a skull flying – it bounces and rolls about among the white bony feet as a pair of white bony hands blindly gropes after it.
“Gentlemen! Ladies! My brothers and sisters in death!” A voice rings out above the uproar as a fine and fresh-looking skeleton climbs up onto the top of an ornate tomb. “We must remain united! We must speak as one if our voices are to be heard!”
“Oh yeah? And what makes a freshie like you think he can tell the rest of us what to do?” A grubbier-looking skeleton shouts from the crowd, shaking his cranium angrily. “You’d better check your privileges, mate. Looks like you were buried only a few years ago. Looks like you’ll be resting in peace for all eternity. Me, I was buried six centuries ago, but did I rest in peace? No! A bunch of nosy archaeologists dug me up eight years ago and subjected me to all kinds of embarrassing tests and investigations before re-burying me! Shouldn’t be allowed! Should be a law against it, that’s what I’m shouting about! You wouldn’t understand – a modern like you can’t have any idea of what I’ve been through!”
“Who are you to complain?” Another skeleton – ancient but strangely clean-looking – shouts at the second speaker. “At least you were re-buried! You’d better check your privileges! I’m just as old as you are, I was dug up by archaeologists too, I was subjected to the same tests and investigations, but was I re-buried? No! Why not? Because I was dug up twenty years ago, twelve years before you were, and it’s only been ten years since the Ministry of Justice – taking over the issuing of licences in 2009 under section 25 of the 1857 Burial Act – decreed that human remains must be reburied within five years of being dug up! So I missed out, and I’m stuck for all eternity in a cardboard box in a dusty cupboard in the archaeology department of Camford University, while you’re safely back underground, all comfy and cosy in the soft, dark earth! Is that fair? No! It’s an outrage! Equality, that’s all I’m asking for!”
“What are you complaining about?” a similarly ancient but oddly clean-looking skeleton shouts at the third speaker. “You think you’re a victim, do you? Well, you’re not! You’re lucky! You’re privileged! A cardboard box? I dream of a cardboard box! In a cupboard! So quiet, and peaceful, and private, and dark, just like the grave! Me, I’m stuck in a glass case in a gallery in Camford museum, on public display, under bright lights, where the noisy crowds come and go, gawping rudely at me and making jokes about me, day after day! And why are you protected from this indignity while I’m not? Just because I died and was buried thousands of years ago, rather than your paltry centuries, that’s why! You Christians, you’re so lucky, interred in your seventh to nineteenth century burial grounds with special protection under sections of the Planning Policy Statement number Five not to mention all kinds of ecclesiastical laws! So don’t talk to me about unfairness and inequality!”
“You’re safe and sound behind a glass case, untouched and untroubled, and you talk about unfairness? You think you’re a victim?” A fresh-looking but oddly stained and disfigured skeleton turns, outraged, on the fourth speaker. “You should thank your lucky stars that you’re not stuck in a scientific laboratory like me! I’ve been poked and prodded and cut up and injected and tested with all kinds of chemicals and machines ever since my so-called loving and caring relatives donated my remains to medical research when I died forty years ago! Try my hell for a day and you’ll soon realise that your glass case is heaven!”
“Hell? You don’t know the meaning of the word!” A similarly-stained and disfigured but older looking skeleton turns on the fifth speaker. “I’m stuck in a scientific laboratory too, the subject of medical research, but you’ve got it easy! The kind of things they do to me – I won’t go into details here, they’d make your calcium levels plummet – they wouldn’t dare do to you. Why not? Because you’re less than one hundred years old so you’re protected by the 2004 Human Tissues Act and I’m not, because I’m one-hundred-and-one years old. Most of us are over one hundred years old, so all we have is the 1857 Burial Act and the 1981 Disused Burial Grounds (Amendment) Act for protection. Is that fair? Is that just? Is that equal? No!”
“And what’s so special about that lot over there?” A particularly hideous skeleton points to a corner of the graveyard where a small group of exotic skeletons stand together. One of them has coloured-glass spheres set into his eye-sockets and the crown of his skull is decorated with gold-leaf. Another has pearls and diamonds studded all over his skull. A third is covered all over, from his cranium to his distal phalanges, in a vivid red ochre. They’re surrounded by an adoring crowd of fine-boned skeletons with delicate skulls and wide hip-joints. “Why does case law give them special consideration? Just because they’re ‘altered by skill’ and so considered to be ‘material artefacts’, whatever that means. Flash bastards! What about the rest of us? What about equality?”
“And what about all the data – all the private information about me – which those archaeologists harvested from my remains before reburying me?” wails the second skeleton. “Shouldn’t it have been buried with me, for privacy’s sake? I mean, I had a particularly embarrassing disease – well, didn’t we all in the Middle Ages? – but I don’t want everyone in the future to know about it, do I?”
“That’s nothing! Call that data? You were lucky you lived and died in the Middle Ages! What about all the digital data us moderns leave behind?” exclaims another skeleton, well, almost a skeleton, at least half his body is still clinging to the bones. “I was buried only last week, but I can’t stop worrying about all the stupid things I said on Twitter and all the private emails I sent and the candid photos I put on Facebook and Instagram – they’re all still alive somewhere in cyberspace! Shouldn’t they have been killed off with me and buried in the same grave? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rest in peace, knowing that they’re all still out there!”
“Gentlemen! Ladies! Brothers and sisters in death!” The first skeleton, still standing on top of the ornate tomb, raises his voice again. “We can’t stand here arguing all night! We’re running out of time! The morning approaches, and if we’re to march on the Houses of Parliament we must – ”
But it’s already too late. A cockerel crows, like a riot-policeman’s siren, and the first rays of the morning sun appear on the eastern horizon like an approaching fleet of squad-cars and police vans full of officers eager to disperse crowds of protesting demonstrators. And the ghastly crowds do disperse, with a panicked rattle of bones, back into the welcoming earth, or into cardboard boxes in forgotten archives, or into glass cases in museum galleries not yet opened to the public, or into sterile units in laboratories full of humming machinery but as yet unattended by scientists, or into the art collections of fabulously rich men and women who are still asleep between silk sheets in penthouses and palaces. Once more the graveyard is silent and deserted.
As the sun rises in Hong Kong, Catalonia, France, Iraq, Lebanon, Russia, Indonesia, Peru, Egypt, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, the living protesters wake up and resume their demonstrations. But Death the Leveller reigns unchallenged once again – the protests are over in his kingdom at least. For another year, anyway.
I’m indebted to the fascinating article “Debating the Dead” by Bennjamin Penny-Mason in “Current Archaeology”, issue 355, for the legal details mentioned above.
