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Britain 2003 - A Fake Society

In 2003, there is an overwhelming fakeness about British public life. It is expressed through the government, the media and what the priviledged say about their lives.

On the one hand, those with power and money are ever more vicious, corrupt and cynical in their greed; on the other hand they pretend that we are the fortunate recipients of a government motivated by benevolence to the poor and downtrodden. It is an increasingly ludicrous charade.

Recent British politics is a direct consequence of the defeat of the 1984/1985 miners strike by Margaret Thatcher.

This strike was in response to the closure of what the government called 'uneconomic pits' - this was quite simply untrue. Thatcher's real objective was the destruction of the trade union movement by destroying its heart, the National Union of Miners. She succeeded in so doing, which meant that she could turn Britain into a low wage economy attractive to foreign investment, undermining wages and social benefits in the rest of Western Europe by offering better returns on investment and undercutting the European market.

There was a real revolution when she was overthrown by John Major, who although a member of her party, represented the resurgance of the 'one-nation' faction of her party and a period of some decency, despite the attempted introduction of the poll tax.

The left establishment hated Major with a passion - he wasn't from Oxbridge - didn't even go to a university, had working class origins and for a Tory, had a certain amount of decency, as was evident when he set up safe havens to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein, against American wishes.

Their secret weapon to reinstall Thatcherism was Tony Blair, a natural Tory who became leader of the Labour Party. The 1997 general election was like a Punch and Judy show, with Blair publically making bland, meaningless statements about a caring society, accompanied by utter hammed up stage whispers like his secret meetings with Rupert Murdoch and utterly transparent code language like 'New Labour is friendly to business' (furious winking - i.e. meaning we're going to screw the poor) Despite the pretence, it was clear what message was intended by Blair's avowed admiration of Margaret Thatcher, returned by her - she visited him for a lengthy period a few days after his election. And if you still hadn't grasped what was going on you could take in his super-rich barrister wife who prosecuted poll tax protestors, and the kids at private schools. Oh, there were alibis, but they were pretty thin.

I call Blair's constituency the New Labour strata - the solidly middle class graduate layer of the public and voluntary sectors. I have had frequent contact with these people - at work in Christian Aid, Amnesty International and South Bank Univeristy, as a user of housing co-ops, benefit offices, homeless centres etc, and as a member of campaigning groups on mental health and globalisation. Publically they espouse a paternalistic concern for the poor and oppressed; in reality they are vicious, lazy, corrupt and incompentent, and concerned only to make as lucrative a living as possible from those on the bottom at their expense. Incidently I don't want to tar all of the people in the above organisations with that brush - you can of course find decent and genuine people everywhere, but the falseness of the

I've left the sentance above unfinished because I have censored it - it contained a very nasty, even fascist phrase. I've had a lot done to me, and had the capability for malevolence burnt into me, but I know that some of the people who may look at this site are more decent and well-integrated individuals than I am and I don't want to unnecessarily alienate them.

Their relationship to both the poor of the Third World and the lower orders at home is one of indirect violence - people in the Third World are kept under the rule of tyrants or pseudo-democracies symathetic to exploitative multi-nationals by covert operations carried out by anonymous security companies staffed by ex special forces or intelligence personnel. It's all on a nod nod, wink wink basis with the government but the operations have the virtue of being deniable. Of course there are the economic injustices of globalisation as well. Although it's not very hard to find this stuff out you won't ever read about it in the trendy-lefties newspaper, the Guardian. The Guardian does not report the global conflict which has dwarfed all others for the last 3 years - the war in the Congo in which 5 million people have died. I used to think that anyone in the Guardian who referred to the existence of the Congo, let alone the origin of the current situation in the neo-colonial war of the 1960s, would be taken out and shot but there were a few reports of one small corner of the conflict - that between the Hema and Lenda tribes in the Ituri region, reported by James Astill recently.

The New Labour strata hate any kind of horizontal, community based organisation like trade unions which can provide resistance to authority and exploitation.

The New Labour Party is the military organisation of these people in their war against the poor, which is largely carried out through the benefit system. On the one hand, people are supposed to survive on about 50% of what is possible; - benefits are paid at about half the rate of other countries in Northern Europe - on the other hand the incredible bureaucracy, particularly in housing benefit, causes relentless stress and waste of people's lives. I have written about this in detail in New Labour's secret war against the poor The reason for this endless pressure is to coerce people into pressurised low-paid work, but its other benefit from the point of New Labour is that is has caused a predictable explosion in crime, which keeps people fearful and divided, and in social breakdown. And you sure as hell won't read about this in Polly Toynbee's column in the Guardian. Don't you think she would be a good replacement for Alistair Campbell - so much more convincing.

But the New Labour strata can pretend that none of this is happening (pretending to believe what you read in the Guardian is part of the social deal) They will tell you that they voted New Labour to keep the Tories out, and that they are disappointed in Blair (pull the other one mate) Don't worry - you'll give him 'another chance' in the next election