Should you not want to listen to me rambling on, the short film begins at 6mins 52seconds. Always here to help.
Today is a true milestone for me, it marks the beginning of a journey I hadn’t even considered eight weeks ago. Activism is part of my DNA. My father was a well respected local councillor and political activist who began work sweeping the floor in the town’s glass factory. He worked for the one company all his life and rose to the ranks of upper middle management. He wasn’t without his flaws, but never once did he need to sacrifice his values in pursuit of doing the right thing. He had lived experiences of what many who sought his help as a councillor came for help with. He was on call 24/7 365 days a year, because he understood that problems don’t always occur 9-5 Monday to Friday.
Everybody knew who Pat McSweeney was, he had is own reserved seat in the local pub and his pint was always pulled and ready on the bar before he walked through the door, that’s how amusingly predictable he was. The pub was often his surgery and I used to smile, he was like a good version of the Godfather who sat in his usual seat where people came to cry on his shoulder or get advice on social housing and benefit entitlements. He was director of a charity that helped the vulnerable and low paid with refurbished household appliances and furnishings if they had fallen on hard times and needed a leg up. It was an inspiration to overhear the way he dealt with people, never in judgement and always with respect and compassion.
He represented a child poverty action group in the UK Parliament and had friends in high places who respected him for his selfless approach to representation. He was always either late or didn’t bother at all to claim the expenses he was entitled to as a councillor, because for him it was not about the money and his employers gave him paid time off work for many of his council duties. The little joys he got from life aside from a pint, which was incidentally his primary flaw, was a Christmas card and a signed bottle of House of Commons Whisky from the Prime Minister when Labour were in power. He loved to raffle it off to raise funds for the local Labour Party as he hated whisky.
As a young kid, I would go out canvassing and pushing leaflets through doors to get he and his Labour colleagues elected. He smoked 40 cigarettes a day and that was his eventual undoing. One thing my father was, was a pragmatist. He understood that to get things done, compromise was all to often necessary, but that compromise NEVER meant letting people off the hook for failings which had left his constituents in distress. The council department heads knew if Pat McSweeney was raising it, they had to have a very good reason why the problem had not been solved. He would defend the council in public to his dying breath if he felt they were being criticised, but if he thought that criticism was valid, behind closed doors there would be hell to pay.
He loved and I mean REALLY loved cricket. My mother hated it, but for him it was his passion. He was a Yorkshire Cricket Club Member and a big supporter of the local community cricket team. People knew if they had a problem in the summer months they could be sure to find him with a cold beer in his hand watching the local cricket team. They could find him and his notebook which he always had with him sat on the boundary with his Yorkshire Cricket Club hat on. He lived his whole life in a council house with my long suffering mother who he loved dearly, but never seemed to be able to express it in a way for outsiders to truly appreciate. She just loved him for who he was with all his faults and failings. He wasn’t an emotional man, so it was always difficult to see who he really was as a family man.
It was not until he was in hospice care dying with lung cancer, laying on a bed looking like a newly rescued survivor from Auschwitz, that I saw him for the first time as a vulnerable old man. For the first time, he opened up to share some of the feelings he had buried for all the time I had known him. He was really struggling to breathe, but we had long chats about his passion, politics and had England lost the latest test match again?
This was a white British man who had done more to build relations with the immigrant Pakistani community than most people I knew. Even in his time, young white British men were not keen on the hot thirsty work of a glass foundry, even though the wages were above the national average. In contrast, the young Pakistani men had no problem just working, they’d work overtime too.
He became known as Mr Pat, they would recommend a friend or a family member to my Dad and he would give them a chance to see if they were up to the task. The glassworks had in my dad an unpaid recruitment manager. He recognised that the strength of a community is in its diversity.
On his deathbed, he told me how much he loved my mother in a way I was sure he had never told her. I wish I had a tape recorder with me on that day, because it would not be the same coming from me. While he would never admit it, he had lived with a drinking problem and while he had never to my knowledge hit my mother, he could be a pretty unpleasant character when he had had too much to drink and I know it did frighten my mum as it did me when I was younger. I went home the night of our conversation and wrote down to the best of my recollection what he had said about my mum. I gave it to her in the evening on the day of his funeral, as a message from him for the love she had shown him so often for little in return. I asked her to read it after I had left for the day and she later told me it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever read. She knew he loved her, she just never comprehended how much.
The last time I saw my father he said to me, ‘I never knew it took so long to die’. The following day around 4pm I got a call from the hospice asking me to get there as quick as I could. I didn’t have a car at the time. There had been a snowstorm and the roads were barely passable. I did manage to get a cab to take me there, but by the time I arrived, he had already gone. My mother had arrived separately but she was too late also. She was however at peace, because she had been witness to the suffering he was enduring at the end.
They say you can tell the value of a man to his community by the number of people who attend his funeral. It was standing room only. My mother had had notes from numerous Members of Parliament, and was swamped with cards from both staff and members of the council. I stood up and gave what was to this day the most difficult speech in my life as I delivered his eulogy. While I was heartbroken, I was equally proud of a man that had left a mark on his community.
So why do I tell you this story? It’s because it is his compassion and unwillingness to compromise his beliefs that brings me to this moment. He never once betrayed his values and he was NEVER fearful of speaking truth to power. He was offered the Mayor’s job three times and turned it down because he believed that true representation is done on the streets and in the homes of those you represent.
When I see AOC, I see a young female version of my father and she makes me so proud, because she has had to fight not just the Republican Party, but her own party too, she is the embodiment of the memory of my father’s values and while they may be an ocean and two generations apart, they are one in their belief of putting people first in a world dominated by dark money and malign actors. It takes a strong person and an even stronger women to become the politician she has become and with every fibre of my being I believe she is the one.
The problem is not her, it’s American voters who now live in a world dominated by lies and deceit. An America so insecure and brow beaten by the lunatic right, they would even deport Jesus if he walked down an Ohio street. The right are going after her hard. Even right wing voices on Substack are tearing down their paywalls on articles about her. She is beginning to live rent free in their heads because she’s resonating with people they desperately need to keep on their side.
This piece and accompanying video today represent WHO I AM AND WHAT I BELIEVE. Now you can sit there and say, what does a guy on the other side of the Atlantic know about US politics or even care for that matter? I think I have demonstrated from my work here I am more that well versed in US politics. I have been immersed in it since 2016. In many ways this is not even about politics, the politics is just a byproduct of the attempt to preserve democracy.
I live in the UK and we are importing this shit that I want to put a halt to, so where better to be involved that at the source of the problem. Globally, we stand on the precipice of oligarchical rule and Trump is driving the bus. The UK is always the next to suffer from the mistakes of the US political system, so believe me when I say I’m more than invested.
I believe regardless who who the Democrats choose to be their candidate, it’s going to need a new approach and I believe I’m in a position to bring a objective messaging proposition, unhindered by the political baggage so many are carrying around. I don’t believe this is even about politics anymore. It’s simply about doing the right thing and that’s a universal politically agnostic statement. Trump is not just destroying America, he’s attempting to dismantle the whole world order. You can rally against a globalised economic system, God only knows it has its flaws, but this is not being done for good, it’s being done in the name of GREED.
I genuinely believe I can help. Though I say so myself, I’m good at messaging and I have the added advantage of both being a writer and a producer of political content. I’m not here to profit from the insecurity of new candidates struggling to be heard. I’m not building a profit center, I just want to develop Truth Matters into a force to be reckoned with, ultimately not just in the US.
I believe that in Substack I have found the perfect home from which to build out a trusted presence that can evolve into a formidable force for good. I have an international following not just here but on X too and a TikTok channel as well as a YouTube channel. While I am present on BlueSky, I really don’t see the platform as a driving force for 2026. It simply does not have the reach.
The reason Substack is perfect, is because it offers a win win. I want people to be invested in what the Truth Matters brand stands for and they can do that by becoming a paid subscriber. To be clear though, I absolutely DO NOT intend to put my content behind a paywall, save for some special content designed to say thank you to those who have decided to chip in their hard earned cash to support this effort. That investment comes with the knowledge of while getting a good read, you are contributing to the battle to end tyranny. If you have the means, the platform gives you the ability to be a founding member. So whether you are struggling to make ends meet or able to chip in a little each month or each year, everyone is welcome.
Truth Matters operates a totally open source policy. Feel free to use my words, my content or anything I produce to punctuate your own messaging, you will NEVER get any comeback from me providing you don’t quote me out of context. Consider my work your work. I want this to become a large family of like minded warriors for democracy, not a gold rush political operation. The Freedom from Tyranny Project will become the banner under which the video content will be produced. I am gathering together a coalition of great content producers to work within a framework that will cross promote their wider work in return for creating content for the coalition. I truly hope you will join me in the bold endeavour.
Thank you once again for your continued support and I hope you enjoyed the video? If you are a paid subscriber, YOU helped make it happen, so give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.
Upcoming in the next couple of days are two very thought provoking pieces on Ukraine and Gaza.
Martin
