Immigration and jobs

More depressing newspaper ‘stories’ emerged this week, following an ‘official report’ claiming that non-EU migrants ‘destroy British jobs’. The Daily Express triumphantly trumpeted it on its front page, under the screaming all-caps headline “IMMIGRANTS DO TAKE BRITISH JOBS”:

MIGRANTS have snatched 160,000 jobs from British-born workers in just five years, an official report said. One British job was lost for every four non-EU workers arriving here between 2005 and 2010. The study by the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee revealed that the total number of foreigners working in the UK has soared by 2.1million in the past 15 years. [...] The startling findings come with 2.6 million Britons now jobless and youth unemployment crashing through the one million barrier. They vindicate the warnings the Daily Express has sounded for years over the dangers of Labour’s open door on immigration. [1]

The story was reported in rather less inflammatory and more considered detail by the Guardian, which also made it the front page headline:

Immigration to Britain from outside Europe is linked to unemployment in depressed economic times, according to an explosive report from the government’s own expert advisers. The migration advisory committee research published on Tuesday suggests that for every extra 100 non-European migrants who come to Britain, 23 fewer British residents are employed. The finding directly challenges the established academic consensus that there has been little or no direct link between immigration and employment levels in Britain. It flatly contradicts research from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research published on Monday, which found that even in the recent recession there was no direct impact.[2]

The journalist Zoe Williams followed this up with a sober article [3].  Plenty of other writers and bodies have, over the decades, destroyed the myths and lies about immigrants taking jobs (and scrounging benefits at the same time), and it’s important to do this, but the depressing truth is that such debunkings make feck-all difference to the backward English petit-bourgeois suburbanites and White Van Men whose views dominate the barking sewer Press.  The really depressing thing about this ‘story’ is that it’s been manufactured by the Tory government in what’s plainly a deliberate attempt to further stir up racist feeling against foreign workers and refugees, and to set the default agenda on immigration. With an ‘official’ report behind them, the racists inside and outwith the ruling regime will claim legitimacy for their views, and will demand that their opponents disprove the report. The ‘report’ has thus significantly shifted the battle to ground of the racists’ choosing.

It is the classic ‘divide and rule’ tactic, trying to deflect worker anger into hatred of immigrants, but the state of Ingerlan is such that such sentiments fall on fertile ground. The Express is only too happy to promote and amplify this line [4], and the cost will be felt in racist attacks on foreigners or anyone who looks foreign. Once again, the racist Press exercises power without responsibility or accountability.

A future dark laugh will be had when the English economy collapses in a year or two into deep depression, unemployment soars to 4 million or more, and sterling becomes a junk currency. English workers will pile out into foreign countries in desperate search of work, and many of these workers will be the same White Van Men who so loudly loathe and abuse foreigners now. I wonder if they’ll see the irony in their going to Germany, say, to ‘take German jobs’ and ‘sponge off German benefits’. Or if they’ll condemn themselves for not speaking the language and not integrating (as the expat Brits in Spain are so infamous for) with the host culture. Probably not.

References

[1] Immigrants do take British jobs. Martyn Brown, Daily Express, 11/01/12

[2] Non-EU immigration linked to unemployment, says report. Guardian, 10/01/12

[3] Migration caps aren’t about British workers. Zoe Williams, Guardian, 11/01/12

[4] That the openly racist Express can thrive in Ingerlan is a clear indication of how far right the country has moved, and how racist it’s become. That the good petit-bourgeois burghers who read the rag aren’t bothered about Richard “Dirty” Desmond being the owner of a host of hardcore porn channels and mags shows that their moral standards are rather more lax than those riff-raff and ‘liberals’ whom they look down their moral noses at.

Criminal classes and their sponsors

It’s a bit late in the day, I know, but I’ve just now watched the documentary Inside Job on video. There are scads of reviews of it around, ever since it premièred at Cannes last year, and I’m no film critic. It is, though, the most powerful condemnation of Finance Capital that I’ve ever seen, and all the more powerful because of its understated approach, its liberal pro-capitalist viewpoint, and its forensic attention to detail. It’s all well, and justifiable and true, to say that the recession/depression is man-made [1] and to castigate the 1%, but rhetoric, though necessary, is nothing without evidence, and this film provides evidence aplenty that the criminal classes wear suits, and are fully supported by the State. Had Michael Moore or Ken Loach made this as a polemic it would have preached to the anti-capitalist converted but been written off by everyone else; made by a capitalist liberal, Charles H Ferguson, with unimpeachable establishment credentials, and featuring big noises like George Soros and IMF bigwigs such as Christine Lagarde, it can’t be summarily dismissed as socialist agitprop. It goes to show that, sometimes, the deadliest attacks on ‘the system’ can come from within [3].

The very clear points to come out of the film are:

• Suits are criminal scum. They’re filthy, rise to the top, block light from those of us beneath them in the pond, and consume the lion’s share of the nutrients. The only differences between Suits and the Mafia are:
  • Suits have State backing and are ‘legal’, and have effective immunity from prosecution [4]. Indeed, Finance Capital uses the US and UK States as enforcers.
  • Suits cause suffering many orders of magnitudes greater than the Mob
• corrupt and fraudulent politicians made tens, hundreds of millions in personal gain, then used trillions of public funds to bail themselves and their Suit sponsors out
• corrupt and fraudulent Suits gambled on a staggering, mind-boggling scale using non-existent money, to the extent of selling ‘products’ which they not only knew were ‘crap’ but on the failure of which they actively wagered.
• corrupt and compliant credit ratings agencies (yes, those same ones who are deciding the fates of national economies) stoked the bubble with fictitious ratings for which they were paid enormously. And still are.
• corrupt and compliant media took the Finance Capital shilling and shilled beautifully in return
• corrupt, fraudulent, compliant and thieving States stole trillions from their publics in order to bail out their capi
• everyone in the criminal classes gets away with it, and many even have the chutzpah to demand ‘freedom from regulation’ and ginormous bonuses for the ‘national interest’

The simple, overall lesson is that Finance Capital and its State sponsors are profoundly criminal and destructively anti-social. Parasitic is too gentle a term as a successful parasite doesn’t kill off its host. Wilfully, amorally destructive is the only way to describe how this criminal class operates. Ok, in a way this is old news, though on a massively greater scale, with enormously more damage, than in the past when capitalism was primarily concerned with making things and providing services, but the bleedin’ obvious needs to be restated time and again for new generations and to counter compliant and complicit media that root for the Suits and make unemployment, poverty and economic crisis out to be natural disasters that we just have to put up with as a forces of nature, rather than deliberately man-made evils to feed profit margins.

SFW?

So what’s this issue to do with Ingerlan? Everything. Finance Capital, which was made dominant in the 80s by the Thatcher regime’s plundering of public resources (sorry, ‘privatisation’), has roundly defeated Industrial Capital and is now the dominant economic force in the UK, such that it can tell the Prime Minister what to do, as Cameron so aptly demonstrated with his EU veto which was explicitly on behalf of the “Financial Services industry”. Though the Mail and Express readerships, and the Colonel Bufton-Tuftons and White Van Men, want to believe that he was ‘standing up for Britain’, he was no more than a little boy obeying his masters’ orders. The UK is, economically and politically, a semi-detached State of the USA, as discussed in an earlier blog entry [2], such that what happens across the Pond happens here, often on a more damaging scale. And, of course, we are ruled by a bunch of Atlanticist toffs who are implementing Thatcherism Phase II, intent on privatising what little is left of public service and industry, on driving down wages,  on pursuing a class war in Spades, and on rendering the already enfeebled English working class into a barely skilled, unconscious casual labour pool of McWorkers. All so as to further boost the coffers of City Suits.

References

[1] And I mean “man”. All the prime actors in the ‘crisis’ were male, and a telling section of the film is about traders being testosterone junkies who were plied with coke and prostitutes on expenses.

[2] Europhobia on the rise

[3] On a tangent, John le Carré’s Smiley novels are a blistering critique of the English haute bourgeoisie and ruling class because the author is a part of that very class and knows it intimately.

[4] As the film points out, not one Suit has even been investigated, let alone stood trial, for criminal offences.

Links

Inside Job: movie website

Wikipedia: Inside Job (film)

Wikipedia: Charles H Ferguson

Reasons to leave England, part 4

Part 4 in an occasional series featuring news stories that just make me want to pack my bags and escape across the Border to a civilised country.

Cameron should forget about compassion – what people clearly want is the nasty party back

Alexander Chancellor, The Guardian, 8/12/11

David Cameron once preached “compassionate conservatism” to make his party seem nicer, but that’s not what people want at all. What they actually want is “the nasty party”; and the nastier, the better. The latest report on British Social Attitudes, published annually by the National Centre for Social Research, reveals a sharp lurch to the right in public opinion. Most Britons, it finds, believe that the unemployed are deterred by excessive state benefits from looking for jobs, child poverty is the fault of parental indolence, and global warming is a myth. The amount of people willing to pay higher taxes to spend on health and education has fallen in nine years from 63% to 31%. And while people agree that Britain needs more housing, 45% don’t want any new houses built near them (and the percentage is higher – for example, 58% in outer London – in areas where the housing shortage is greatest).

The full, and highly detailed, report is available to download from the NCSR website, and makes depressing reading for liberals and socialists, or indeed anyone who values compassion and solidarity over hatred and self-interest.

Bubble trouble at South Coast derby

Football Supporters Federation, 15/12/11

Fans of Portsmouth and Southampton are unhappy with Hampshire Police thanks to their decision to force a so-called “bubble match” onto supporters this Sunday. Bubble matches place severe restrictions on fans’ freedom of movement and supporters of both sides say the move is unnecessary. [...] Bubble matches are games where ALL away fans must travel on designated transport – usually club coaches – from specific pick-up points. No independent travel is allowed and fans are usually given match tickets en route to the game, which guarantees compliance. It is a tactic that police forces around the UK have used – fans from Bristol City, Burnley, Cardiff City, and Wolves have all been on the receiving end in recent years.

Now police can shoot rioters

Daily Express, 21/12/11

POLICE should be prepared to shoot arsonists during riots to save innocent lives, one of the UK’s senior officers has said. An official review of police tactics during the shocking summer disturbances has found that officers should be ready to use “extraordinary measures” if yobs endanger lives by attacking homes and businesses.

The Super Soaraway Scum also led on this ‘story’:

COPS could shoot rioters who start fires that threaten life, a watchdog said yesterday. Water cannon and rubber bullets could also be used to stop a repeat of the summer disturbances. Live rounds could be used by gun cops against arsonists who torch businesses and homes with people inside, reported HM Inspectorate of Constabulary. It stated: “In extreme circumstances, where life is threatened, (police) commanders must also be able to use extraordinary measures.”

Shooting unarmed people is ‘oppression’ when it happens in Egypt or Syria, but just an ‘extraordinary measure’ to safeguard ‘life and property’ when it happens in the UK. Same old, same old – when under threat on the streets, all States are the same. You might say that the rioters in the UK were just ‘criminals’ and ‘yobs’ with no political aim, whereas ‘protesters’ in Egypt are revolutionaries aiming at removing dictatorship, and many (especially in the chattering classes) said precisely that during the 3 nights of rioting across England. Perhaps we now have two types of rioters, as we now (again) have two types of poor these days: deserving and undeserving.

London Olympics security to be boosted by 13,500 troops

The Guardian, 15/12/11

Up to 13,500 military personnel will be on duty in London and across the country during the Olympic Games next summer, the government has revealed, including 7,500 to boost the number of security staff inside Olympic venues. The number is greater than the 9,500 deployed in Afghanistan, although the defence secretary, Phillip Hammond, insisted the large call on the armed forces would not affect operational capabilities elsewhere. Hammond also revealed that the Royal Navy’s largest ship, 22,500-tonne helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, would be based in Greenwich for the duration of the Games, while assault vessel HMS Bulwark would be moored in Weymouth, where the sailing events will take place. An “appropriate and scaleable” air security plan includes Typhoon aircraft at RAF Northolt, helicopters operating from HMS Ocean and “appropriate” surface to air missile systems.

Reasons to leave England, part 3

Part 3 in an occasional series featuring news stories that just make me want to pack my bags and escape across the Border to a civilised country.

Police turn back 50 cars in operation to stop criminals entering city centre

Manchester Evening News, 13/8/11

Police used number-plate spotting technology to turn known criminals away from Manchester in the days after the riots. Officers stationed on key routes into the city were instantly checking registration plates of vehicles against a string of national databases. Known criminals have been intercepted and ordered to turn around. On Wednesday evening alone, 50 vehicles were turned away from Manchester by officers determined to keep the streets trouble-free.

GMP search protesters outside BBC in Manchester under S.60, Public Order Act. YouTube, 12/8/11. Video taken by passer-by of nonviolent, non-aggressive protesters taking part in a peaceful protest against the Dear Leader – sorry, PM David “Bullingdon Boy” Camer0n – who were stopped and searched in the street by Greater Manchester Police under the Public Order Act.

Shut social networks in riot – poll

The Guardian, 08/11/2011

“More than two-thirds of adults support the shutdown of social networks during periods of social unrest such as the riots in England this summer, new research has revealed. A poll of 973 adults carried out for the online security firm Unisys found 70% of adults supported the shutdown of Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), while only 27% disagreed. Three-quarters agreed that governments should have open access to data on social network users in order to prevent co-ordinated crime.”

Circle in deal to run Hinchingbrooke NHS hospital

BBC News, 10/11/11

“A groundbreaking £1bn, 10-year deal for a private firm to run a struggling NHS hospital has been confirmed. Circle is to take over Cambridgeshire’s Hinchingbrooke Hospital in February – although it will stay in the NHS. The deal will see Circle assume the financial risks of making the hospital more efficient and paying off its £40m of debts. But fears have been raised it could pave the way for “wholesale transfers” of hospitals to the private sector.”

Plastic bullets available to police for Wednesday’s student protests

Guardian, 7/11/11

“Baton rounds of plastic bullets will be available to police chiefs in an attempt to prevent disorder from breaking out in the capital during the latest round of student fees protests. Trained officers will be free to use baton rounds for “extreme” measures as 10,000 protesters march through London on Wednesday to voice their anger over tuition fees and cuts. Scotland Yard commander Simon Pountain said about 4,000 officers will be on duty to police the event amid fears the march could be hijacked by anarchists.”

‘Death threat’ in union jack row

BBC News Nottingham, 17/11/11

“A man who complained about the permanent flying of a union jack in his Nottinghamshire village said he had received racist death threats. Gamston Parish Council voted in favour of the year-round display of the flag on the village common. Roger Henry said the flag had become a symbol of far-right political groups. He said he had since received a letter which said “we hope you get killed” and “go back to your own country”.”

See also, on this story in the Nottingham Evening Post:

Row over flying of Union Jack in Gamston (8/11/11)

Village in U-turn over plans to take down the Union flag (16/11/11)

It’s the comments to the NEP stories that are the most depressing and disturbing.

A song for radical patriots

I was listening to the CD “No rest for the wicked” from the radical folk/punk/rock group New Model Army in the car yesterday. NMA were a very angry and politically radical and active band back in the 80s, and indeed they’re still going. I’ve a soft spot for them on account of them coming from Bradford, where I spent many happy if skint years, and I’ve always admired their righteous and no-nonsense anger.

The wrote much of their best stuff during the time when the Thatcher regime was cynically fomenting a nasty little colonial war in the South Atlantic and whipping up reactionary patriotic fervour to distract attention from their real and continuing class war, and from their wholesale looting of the UK economy to enrich their neo-liberal friends and an army of freebooting yuppies growing fat off privatisation. This virulently nostalgic patriotism, harking back to Empire when Britannia Waived The Rules – sorry, Ruled the Waves – was invoked, after the rather lucky victory over the Argentine forces, against the “enemy within” during the Miner’s Strike of 1984, indicating whom the capitalist classes saw as their true enemy. These were days when class war was a daily, in-yer-face reality, and folk in Yorkshire and Lancashire manufacturing centres, including Bradford, were suffering the economic and social destruction of their communities and livelihoods. Add to that the nuclear colonialism of the Reagan regime, treating the UK as its missile carrier, and you had a political and social fervour not seen since the defeat of the Miners (as ever, thanks a fecking bundle for the scabbing, Nottingham).

So the NMA had plenty to be angry about, but theirs was a constructive, radical anger, and the words of My Country would serve, I think, as an anthem for those, such as Billy Bragg, fighting for a radical, inclusive Englishness.

Tell all the people who believe what they read in the press
Tell all the folk who stare from behind suburban walls
The enemy is not some nation far across the sea
The enemy is with us every single breathing day

So yes, I will fight for my country
The land that I love so well
Yes, for justice, a land fit for all our futures
Yes, I will fight for my country
The land that I love so well
Hear the voices of our history echo all around

Fight all the ones who divide us rich against poor
Fight all the ones who divide us white against black
Fight all the ones who want their missiles in our earth
Fight all the powers who would lead us into war
No rights were ever given to us by the grace of God
No rights were ever given by some United Nations clause
No rights were ever given by some nice guy at the top
Our rights they were bought by all the blood
And all the tears of all our
Grandmothers, grandfathers before
For all the folk who gave their lives for us
For all the folk who spit out – never say die
For all the fires burning on our highest hills
For all the people spinning tales tonight
Fight all the powers who would abuse our Common Laws
Fight all the powers who think they only owe themselves . . .

This is even more powerful when sung – the album version is available on YouTube.

Europhobia on the rise

The Europhobic Right is on the advance again. At this very moment, Tory blowhards are gassing away in the Commons about the EU superstate, UK sovereignty, the Euro crisis, and how much they hate Johnny Foreigner. This is but the start of what the super-reactionary Express calls, unselfconsciously and quite possibly as a deliberate insult to Muslims, its “Crusade“. The Europhobes are a motley mix of Little Englanders and US agents, or less inaccurately petit-bourgeois English nationalists and bourgeois Atlanticists. Such is the febrile atmosphere of reactionary English nationalism carefully stoked and propagated by the current and previous regimes, the petit-bourgeois and reactionary print media, and of course the BNP and UKIP (nicely described by Jeremy Hardy as “Fascism Lite”), that ‘Eurosceptics’ have the confidence to call for outright EU withdrawal. Quite possibly, in a few years, they’ll have their way.

Political pundits are forever saying that the Tories are “split over Europe”, but that disguises the reality, which is that the Tory Party reflects UK Capital by being divided between Atlanticist and European interests. Usually this is hidden behind the rhetoric of patriotism and sovereignty, but the recent Liam Fox scandal brought the Atlanticist faction momentarily into the spotlight through his membership of the Atlantic Bridge , a body which describes itself as a:

“Group which coordinates the sharing of policy ideas and personal networks between conservatives in the UK and the US”

It could more accurately be described as an alliance of Finance Capital across the Pond, with the Thatcherite Atlanticist Tories making common cause with the US Tea Party [1]. There have been previous spats between Europeans and Atlanticists which have occasionally brought the factions blinking into an unwanted light, one of the most notable in the Thatcher reign being the “Westland affair” [2] which become a very public US v EU struggle. That was in the days when manufacturing Capital had some leverage with the Tories, but now the party is dominated by Finance Capital [3] its political axis has moved sharply towards the US and away from the EU. For all that the Tories bang the nationalist drum about sovereignty and the “overweening” power of Eurocrats, they’re really following the money. Tories are traditionally pragmatists who know which side their bread’s buttered on and who’s doing the buttering, and there’s no question these days that it’s Washington providing the spread. From a national viewpoint it might seem to make more economic sense to stay with an EU which, for all its travails, is a growing economic and political power with a currency set to derail the dollar as a reserve currency [4] and not weighed down with the multi-billion costs of a parasitic massive military-industrial complex and of waging imperialist wars producing relatively little return (not enough buck to be worth the bang). However, from a factional viewpoint, there’s little doubt that Finance Capital is dominant in the UK economy, and that’s inextricably linked to US interests. The nation might benefit from the EU, but factions in Capital make their money across the Pond.

Still, WTF does it matter if the UK is a declining peripheral nation in an Atlantic ‘alliance’ or a European superstate? It’ll make a difference to the bourgeoisie in the opposing factions, but the working class has a ‘choice’ between:

a) a corporate authoritarian racist EU superstate in hock to European corporations

b) a corporate authoritarian racist UK state (in reality, a 51st US state) in hock to US corporations

Hobson’s Choice, right enough, so why get up tight about it? Because it signals the inexorable rise of virulent English nationalism which may lead to fascism. EU withdrawal would lead to:

• greater authoritarianism
• intensified racism
• sharper intra-UK conflicts leading to hostility, possibly violent, towards Scotland and Wales
• subordination to the USA [5], such that the UK becomes part of a dollar zone and resumes its role as US military outpost
• steep economic decline, with sterling nose-diving against major currencies

Undoubtedly the Scots would be aghast at UK withdrawal, and would rush to independence to become a State within the EU [6], particularly with the UK regime increasingly acting as an English State. Scotland is already a ways to the Left of England, with Tories wiped out North of the Border, and has far more in common with European social democracy than US/UK neo-liberalism. Serious noises about EU withdrawal would be the final goad towards independence. That will undoubtedly lead to conflict, stoking English nationalism, and you can just see the Sun and Daily Mail calling for action to secure ‘UK assets’. The Welsh might have less room to manoeuvre, but they also wouldn’t want to be part of an isolationist English regime and would at the very least be pushing for full economic and political autonomy.

Without Scotland and the EU, there would be no brakes on English reaction, and England would rapidly move to a form of fascism portrayed in the films V for Vendetta and Children of Men. England is already virulently racist and violently authoritarian and becoming more so, under official sanction, by the week, so without the checks of EU legislation and Scottish social democracy, and with a rapidly declining economy driving sharp social tensions (the recent riots will be a tea party in comparison to what would follow) the creep towards fascism would become a headlong rush.

There is a respectable strain of opinion on the Left for EU withdrawal, so as to build a progressive and socialist, or at least social democratic, nation free of an EU in hock to multinationals. Whilst in theory this is an option, in practice, with a Tory majority solidified in England after Scots independence and zilch political consciousness in the English working class, there are two chances of a socialist England: fat and slim (and Slim just left town). EU withdrawal would result in an isolated and xenophobic England, deeply racist and reactionary, in which worker’s interests would be ruthlessly stomped on by the State. Those on the Left (Bob Crow and Tony Benn come immediately to mind) who support EU withdrawal are living in a state of denial, and their attempts to distance themselves from Right-wing Europhobes are futile.

Still, this is all just wibbling. In practical terms, all these games are played out by factions way above our heads and completely unaccountable and uninfluenceable by ordinary people. We might get a referendum, but if Europhobia has reached such a pitch that that takes place then the result will be a foregone conclusion. If that ever does happen, then this writer for one will be for the off to a Celtic civilisation before the borders are sealed. I’m no fan of the EU superstate, but I’ll take a civilised European country over a fascist England every day of the week.

References

[1] Liam Fox’s Atlantic Bridge linked top Tories and Tea Party activists. Guardian, 15/10/11

[2] Wikipedia: Westland affair. Accessed 22/10/11

[3] Revealed: 50% of Tory funds come from City. Guardian 8/2/11. City’s influence over Conservatives laid bare by research into donations. Guardian 30/9/11

[4] And has gone up significantly against Sterling. According to the Interactive Currency Table, the Euro is currently worth 87p, and five years ago was worth 67p. That’s an appreciation of over 30%, and that with the Euro in crisis.

[5] Those Right ‘idealists’ who dream of a UK independent of power blocs are naive fantasists

[6] The SNP’s stated objective is “an independent Scotland within Europe”. See, for instance, the press release “SNP to relaunch Independence in Europe campaign” on the SNP website.

Rioting: simple explanation

An awful lot of spleen and verbiage has erupted into print and on the airwaves since the recent riots kicked off. A true volcano of hot air that’s grounded all rational discussion. Nearly all of it tells you more about the ranter than the riots, and is easily discountable as the English bourgeois and petit-bourgeois letting its hair down in a 2-minute hate of the ‘lower orders’. WTF, let them have their fun, and with luck the rising blood pressure will bring a few to an earlier demise than would have otherwise been the case (or, more ironically, will bring them into the arms of the NHS they so want to slash and burn).

The explanation for the rioting is simple: when the rich get richer at the expense of the poor who get poorer, then you’ll get social tensions that will occasionally explode. The State knows this only too well, and has spent the last two decades increasing its social control through surveillance, interception, detention without trial, laws creating thought crime, and ratcheting up repression of Left and radical opposition. Whilst the State’s been steadily withdrawing from the public sphere through spending cuts (driven by income and corporate tax cuts) and privatisation, it’s been spending like crazy on the Security State for the time when the lid comes off.

And the lid has come off, if only for a short time, so the Security State kicks into action and arrests and jails everyone it can get its mitts on, even for just nicking a packet of fags or a bottle of water [1], pour encourager les autres. So add to spending cuts and the rapidly increasing wealth gap between haves and have-nots indiscriminate repression, and you get a vicious (or, for the Security State, a virtuous) circle: more folk criminalised with even less to lose will be more likely to riot again, leading to further repression leading to further hatred and rioting.

It’s bleedin’ obvious for any of us who’ve been on the dole and skint (unlike most of the pundits and pontificators and moralists). The skinter you are, the fewer prospects of becoming not skint, and the richer the feckers above you get, the more likely you are to eventually shout “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” and to lash out, and if possible cop a few desirable goodies through looting. It’s no coincidence that less unequal societies, such as Norway, are more stable and settled.

Unequal societies in history, including this one, have regularly suffered riots and insurrections as the inequalities worsened. Cause and effect: simple, no? No need to invoke ‘loss of community’ or ‘moral decline’ or ‘mindlessness’ or ‘greed’ or any other moralist hobbyhorse. The more unequal a society, the more violent it is.

There are more than a few ironies in the moralist’s rants. Posh boy Cameron bangs on about the loss of community blithely ignoring what his predecessors did in the 80s, when the Thatcher regime deliberately and systematically destroyed manufacturing and extraction industries around which communities had evolved since the Industrial Revolution (mining, shipbuilding, car manufacturing, steel making, etc), and actively and gleefully dismantled those communities in the process.

As for ‘greed’ being a motivating factor of rioters, that really does bring out the darkest belly-laughs. Whose greed started this feckin’ economic recession in the first place? The answer’s bleedin’ obvious. The damage that the City Suits did to economy and society through their greed for massive bonuses and profits dwarfs any physical damage that rioters have done by several orders of magnitude, but when a Suit shows greed it’s ‘enterprise’, when a hoodie shows it it’s ‘sheer criminality’. As has always been the case going back centuries.

A more ‘intellectual’ outlook on the recent events will follow in due course, if I can be arsed.

References & Notes

[1] Fears grow over excessive sentencing as cases pile up. Independent, 14/8/11. “On Thursday a 23-year-old was sent to prison for six months for stealing a £3.50 case of water from Lidl. A 43-year-old is still being held in prison for stealing items worth £1 from a newsagent”

These riots reflect a society run on greed and looting. Seumas Milne, The Guardian, 10/8/11

English-only riots

Here’s a curiousity which I’ve not seen mentioned in the English media during the recent riots/disturbances/unrest/anarchy (delete according to taste): all the riots have taken place in English cities. Not a one in Scotland or Wales (NI has its own sectarian rioting tradition that puts it in a league of its own). This has not gone unnoticed in Scotland – whilst the Herald headlined a story “Britain under siege“, the commenters quite correctly pointed out that it’s England under siege. Similarly, commenters on a Scotsman story “Riot-hit UK branded tourist danger zone“. Whilst I can remember back to the 1981 riots, I can’t remember if any happened in Scottish cities and a cursory web search doesn’t pick anything up.

It’s not as if Scotland doesn’t have areas at least, if not more, ‘deprived’ than those of inner-city London or Liverpool or Manchester. Govan and Easterhouse in Glasgow are rougher than a scabby dog’s arse and poorer than a dead church mouse, as is Sighthill in Edinburgh, and areas like Gourock are so down and out that Ken Loach makes films about them. So if deprivation, alienation and no future were the motivations of English rioters you’d think that would apply in Spades to Scotland. Neither are Scottish neds much different from their hoodie counterparts South of the Border other than in clothing and dialect, and street violence is a not-unknown occurrence in Glasgae and Embra, especially during sectarian football matches and the Prod marching season.

I don’t have any answers as to why Wales and Scotland have remained riot-free. I could speculate based on the many differences between Ingerlan and Scotland (wealth distribution, political autonomy, political consciousness, cultural identity, and more) but frankly there’s enough speculation and pontificating in the media on the basis of sod-all evidence and I don’t want to contribute to the volcano of hot air that’s grounded all rationality over the last few days. I just note the ‘discrepancy’ as a curiousity, and will be on the lookout for evidence as to why it exists. Of course, the neds might be out in force in the Central Belt tonight for all I know…

PS: as a bit of light relief, some folk have been busy Photoshopping riot photos with some quite silly and sometimes surreal accessories. Have a look at photoshoplooter for a chuckle or three.

E-petitions

The Tory regime’s new ‘e-petition‘ scheme got under way today, and it was immediately reported that the most popular petition by far was that calling for “restoration of the death penalty” [1], with other reactionary beauts not far behind, such as “that prisoners’ diets be restricted to bread and water” [2], EU withdrawal, and repeal of the Human Rights Act. Of the top 10 petitions by numbers of signatures [3], only two could be considered vaguely progressive.

There could be all sorts of reasons for the majority of petitions being barkingly right-wing, but without analysis of the socio-economic backgrounds of those who’ve signed them any speculation would just be whistling in the dark. What is clear, and has been for some time, is that a major part of the population of Ingerlan is backward and regressive, and this backwardness and reaction has only got worse as the economy’s gone down the tubes. In a country with a bit of political consciousness and an active worker’s movement, economic decline goes hand in hand with class struggle as people get the rough end of the economic pineapple. In Ingerlan, though, it’s the immigrants and the shirkers and the scroungers and the ‘liberal elite’ in the media that are to blame for all our ills, and we need the firm smack of strong government, retributive eye-for-an-eye ‘justice’, and a retreat to inglorious isolationism by leaving the EU [4] to restore Ingerlan to its ‘rightful place’ in the world (as the USA’s 51st State and aircraft carrier, say).

As the blogging White Van Man podger Guido Fawkes said on C4 news this evening: “There is a regressive majority in this country” [5]. He may well be right. What’s clear from the last quarter century since the defeat of the Miner’s Strike in 1984 is that the Great English Public has become irredeemably stupid and backward. Individually, or even in small groups, many English folk are rational and reasonable and occasionally progressive, but en masse the GEP is as thick as a lorryload of two by fours and has the morality of a witch-hunting mob.

Here’s an idea, though. I’m sure that all those who’ve backed the petition for the restoration of State killing would agree that with power should come responsibility.  If judicial execution does become law, it would only be ‘right and proper’ that, when there’s to be an execution, the executioner is drawn at random from all those who’ve voted for the ‘death penalty’. He or she would have to throw the switch or press the button or pull the handle to kill the alleged perp, and would have to look them in the eyes whilst they do it. Seems fair enough to me – wodger reckon, Guido?

References and notes

[1] I’ve never understood why judicial killing is called the “death penalty”. A punishment can only be meaningful if the perp understands and suffers it. A long stretch certainly fulfils that purpose – the perp understands why s/he’s locked up and is suffering for it. Kill the perp, and there’s no suffering and thus no punishment. I think that folk who support State murder ought to be clear and honest about the “death penalty” – it’s not a punishment, it’s revenge. Nothing more. Any other ‘justification’ is rationalisation of the basic retributive urge to kill a killer or, these days, anyone who pisses off the petit-bourgeois and White Van Man – remember The Execution of Gary Glitter on C4 in November 2009? The ‘debate’ on the C4 website is as instructive as it is chilling, with many contributors willing to kill “people who commit crimes against children”. So much for the ‘death penalty’ being restricted to ‘capital crimes’, eh?

[2] E-petitions urge MPs to debate return of death penalty, BBC News 4/11/08

[3] You can view petitions by numbers of signatures on the e-petition site. At the time of writing, the top 10 petitions by signatures are:

Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment View	3,455	04/02/2012
Keep Formula 1 Free To Air in the UK View	1,674	04/08/2012
Restore Capital Punishment View	1,538	04/02/2012
Britain wants referendum to leave EU View	636	04/08/2012
Legalise cannabis View	636	04/08/2012
Absolute right to self-defence within ones home View	397	04/02/2012
Return of Hanging for Serious Crimes View	345	04/08/2012
Decriminalise recreational drugs View	283	04/08/2012
Remove the ban on gay blood donation View	246	04/08/2012
withdraw from the european human rights act View	229	04/08/2012

[4] When presumably we’ll feed ourselves on Churchillian rhetoric and Vera Lynn songs (“we’ll eat again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but we’ll eat again some lucky, lucky day”).

[5] Guido Fawkes, C4 News, 4/8/11. Emphasis in original.

“Our country, right or wrong!”

I came across the following quote on a web forum today – does it remind you of any recent events? Go on, try to guess who it’s from and when it was written:

“Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object — robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician’s trick — a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor — none but those others were patriots.”

It could have been written about any of the ‘imperialist adventures’ undertaken by the US and UK in recent years, from the Falklands/Malvinas war to Iraq and Afghanistan, and how they’ve been propagandised by compliant and complicit media. In fact, it was written back in the early 20th century by Mark Twain, author, journalist, and latterly anti-imperialist. The quote continues:

“To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, “Our Country, right or wrong,” and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

For in a republic, who is “the Country”? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is “the country?” Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Is it the school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn’t.” [1]

Bear that in mind the next time the Mail or Express or Super Soaraway Neo-Fascist Sun claims to represent ‘true England’, and slags all us bothersome Lefties off as ‘traitors’ to that ‘England’.  It’s quite simple really: there is no one ‘England’ with a common culture which unites queen and commoner, suit and chav, black and white.  There’s a whole heap of Englands, and it’s cynical arrogance for those in the dominant culture to claim to speak for all of them, and to declare those that don’t fit into their reactionary mythology as traitors.

I also liked another of his quotes, which is very apposite given the various revolutions under way in the Arab world:

I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolt.

Is that the bleedin’ obvious, or what?

References

[1] Mark Twain in Wikiquotes, accessed 3/8/11

[2] Wikipedia entry on Mark Twain, accessed 3/8/11