'I heard a young man talk about Holocaust denial on a train. I couldn't sit by and not challenge it'

There are two excellent memoirs about St Helens: Johnny Vegas’s Becoming Johnny Vegas and Lewis Hancox’s Welcome to St Hell. In both books the town is the backdrop to two people wrestling with their identity as they grow up and find the space to be themselves. 

Only one of them tells of a boy with worms who takes to scratching his itchy arse on the corner of a wall. Unfortunately, that image is now gaudily drawn in my head every time I approach St Helens. 

Julia has given me a lift to The Book Stop, a beautiful quiet space in the town centre. It takes a while to get there as we park in a brutalist car park, into which time and teenagers have chipped holes, so I have to take photographs of each crack and hastily drawn cock that decorates the stairwell. 

In the comic book alcove of the shop is a wooden chair with Judge Dredd menacingly painted on it. This chair is in memory of Alan McKee, who died while still only in his thirties. Alan didn’t find it easy to go outside, but The Book Stop was a place where he could go and feel secure and excited to be surrounded by things he loved. 

He always enjoyed challenging the bookshop to find scarce comic books. Much of the rhetorical eulogy at his funeral was about what the bookshop meant to him. This is a space that those who work there know is important for people. It is not just a shop. 

We eat cake and then go to Haydock Library. Recently refurbished, it’s another kind and bright space. I eat another bit of cake. This basking in books is sugary work. 

After my talk, I hurry to Newton-le-Willows and the train delay allows me to enjoy a pinky pink dusk. I am off to Manchester to perform at a Stand Up for Gaza gig. The theatre is full of love and the hope that we can continue to fight to stop the needless barbarity and slaughter in the world. 

Read more:

• I’m an aid worker in Gaza – the situation has never been worse
• My family faced hell on earth in Gaza. Leaving was their only option for survival
• What will the Middle East conflict mean for UK energy bills?

That night, I read that two Jewish men have been stabbed in Golders Green by a psychiatric patient. The opportunist politicians and press soon use this as another way to demonise those who speak out against the war crimes in Gaza. This relentless division seems to be the only way these powers can work. 

I think back to the gig the night before and the love in the room. 

I think about the kind woman in her seventies that I met in a bookshop in Falmouth who was about to go on trial for peacefully holding up a sign that protested against the violence in the Middle East. 

The people I have met who do not want a world where governments sanction shooting children in the head, chest and genitals are the very people who’d have stood up in the 1930s, when much of the mainstream press and politicians stood up for the far right. 

Those I have met who protest, who have been arrested, and some who have been jailed, are not driven
to speak because of the culture or religion of the victims of violence, but because these are human beings.

Back in March, I boarded the last train out of Euston on a Saturday night. There were sleeping drunks, talkative boozers and one man with a double bass. One young man was talking loudly with his friends about Auschwitz, how his “research” had shown that it was not nearly as bad as what is made out, and the prisoners even had swimming pools to lark in. 

After five minutes, I decided I needed to approach him and ask him where he had learned these things. I’m sure he thought, “Who’s the crazy old man?” But I could not sit and listen to Holocaust denial and not challenge it and try to point him in a better-informed direction. 

This is why I do gigs for Stand Up for Gaza; this is why I speak out. 

Because I am against barbarism. Because I believe we can’t survive as a species if we are unable to change. We are pitted against each other because otherwise we unite and turn our sights on the powers that drain us and use us. 

Robin Ince is touring bookshops and libraries across the UK until 28 June. 

Ice Cream for a Broken Tooth: Poems about life, death, and the odd bits in between by Robin Ince is out now (Flapjack Press, £12).

You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.

You can also support online:
Subscribe to the magazine or support our work with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.

Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.