That was the title of a fine novel by the esteemed Australian novelist Alan Sillitoe
And if there were a proper metaphor for the travail of the progressive in this society I would reckon this is it. Support or fail me beneath this thread, fellow walkers.
I should by rights deliver the fuller import of this fine text, and by half-assed inference, recommend it to my fellow travelers---but I am inebriated past the purview of Christopher Hitchens, and so will stop here:
[Audrey: You'll end up in prison one of these days.
Gladys: If he aint careful.
Colin Smith: It'd get me out of this dump.
Audrey: It ain't the only way to get out of it.
And, later:
Stacy, Drake House Leader: And always remember, they've got the whip hand.
Colin Smith: Do you know what I'd do if I had the whip hand? I'd get all the coppers, governers, posh whores, army officers and members of parliament and I'd stick them up against this wall and let them have it 'cause that's what they'd like to do to blokes like us.
Stacy, Drake House Leader: You'll learn.
Colin Smith: We'll see.]
But in the end the early anglo-anti-colonialist writers had it right, didn't they?