The Death Of Grass - John Christopher

THE DEATH OF GRASS -

JOHN CHRISTOPHER

It was during the summer heatwave as I watched the fields turn yellow, the reservoirs deplete, and swarms of insects emerge from the earth sending seagulls into a feeding frenzy that it became ever more clear how close society actually is to major disaster. Just four months earlier the snows had come bringing towns and cities to a grinding halt and the shops running out of food after a couple of days. How close exactly are we to the edge, I wondered?

Only recently when talking to one of the soldiers stationed at the army training camp close to where I live, the conversation turned to the worst case scenario from a no-deal Brexit. Current austerity might be a walk in the park compared to what could happen. Might there be major riots? Might the army be sent in to help restore order? He seemed to think so. It was discussions that soldiers at his camp had already held and not idle chat but serious debates.

Would you shoot me, I asked? Of course, he replied. Would you shoot your own mother, I asked? Too right, he said, she'd be the first...

The Death Of Grass by John Christopher is a book that had been out of print for years with original hardback and paperback copies being sold for silly money on the Internet. In 1970 it was turned into a film called No Blade Of Grass that likewise hasn't been shown on television or been easily available for years. Written in 1956, it's a cult classic that details the rapid disintegration of society when a virus wipes out all forms of grass; which means not only your typical green grass but also rice, wheat, corn and barley etc. This leads, of course, to there being no more sheep or cows etc due to there being nothing for them to graze on.

The story is relayed via the experiences of a typical middle class family and the effect the epidemic has upon them. It's not really the most thrilling of premises to view mass starvation through the eyes of the middle class but the way John Christopher handles it is quite brilliant. The first mention of the virus is when it's casually dropped into a conversation during a pleasant afternoon walk through a countryside pasture:

'There's such richness everywhere. Look at all this, and then think of the poor wretched Chinese.'

'What's the latest? Did you hear the news before you came out?'

Apparently there is mass starvation taking place in China, Peking is in flames, and the starving millions are swarming to get into Hong Kong to gain access to food. In India, Burma and the rest of Asia it's a similar story. It's anticipated that the swarming hungry will be machine-gunned to keep them at bay and if that fails then napalm will be dropped on them. All this stemming from a virus that kills grass.

Just as casually, it is then dropped into the conversation that the virus has now reached England.

It's the casual acceptance of multi-millions of starving people in the world that John Christopher highlights with this. The normalization of it. The concern that lasts for 5 minutes before the conversation moves on. The passive acceptance of there being nothing to be done about it. The passive acceptance of there being nothing they can personally do about it. Leave it to others is the accepted line. Leave it to the government.

Even when they know the virus is in England they sweep aside a frisson of fear because after all, this is England and they are English and they do things differently from the Chinese and other foreigners. The stiff upper-lip, the moral codes, the standards and the ethics are but a thin veneer, however, as they very rapidly break down to reveal the core sense of self-preservation at all costs.

As soon as the father of the family the story centres upon is confidentially informed that the virus is proving to be indestructible, that global mass starvation is pending and that the British government have hatched plans to bomb major British cities in a bid to cull the population so that some, at least, may stand a chance of surviving; all his middle class sensibilities are discarded and he turns into a lying, robbing, looting, ultra-conservative killer. Without a moment's hesitation he also then derides the altruism of others as being naïve and the displaying of basic human decency as being weakness.

Amusingly, in today's terms, the father could be called 'alt-right' and those he derides be called 'snowflakes'.

The main characters in the book are middle class and whilst John Christopher rips away the facade of their civility to expose the cold-bloodedness beneath, the story could just as easily have focussed upon a family from any other class. The difference being that the middle class family have the means and the connections to make a bid to escape to a sanctuary (in their case, an isolated farm in the north of England) and in that sense they can be lumped in with members of the government, the Royal Family, and other VIPs who are reported as having fled the UK to a sanctuary in Canada.

Those from any other class without the means and without the connections are simply abandoned and left to cope for themselves. They can go hang, take a hike, go to hell, or as writer Whittaker Chambers once put it: 'To a gas chamber – go!'

The Death Of Grass serves as a warning shot – a distress flare – signalling how close society actually is to total collapse. It serves as a reminder that come the time, if the ship should begin sinking that our leaders and our so-called 'betters' will leave us to drown if not firstly shooting us dead beforehand and then simply throwing our bodies to the sharks.

As Martin Luther King once pointed out, it's essentially socialism for the rich and dog eat dog turbo-capitalism for the poor. So when next there are food shortages, or when next the riverbeds run dry, there is really no room for us to complain. We can't say we've not been warned. Ultimately, we have only ourselves to blame...

John Serpico