(The 2017 General Election)
When the Daily Express and the Daily Mail tried to control
The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, back in the thirties,
He commented in his masculine way:
‘What the proprietorship of these newspapers is aiming at is power,
But power without responsibility,
The prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.’
In the 2016 referendum,
We had Arron Banks:
‘Facts don’t work, and that’s it …
It just doesn’t work.
You have to connect with the people emotionally.
It’s the Trump success.’
And the General Election of 2017?
The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express,
With their slew of headlines,
Make it difficult not to think of John Heartfield,
And his Weimar agit-prop:
Big business pulling Hitler’s puppet strings;
What a coincidence that Boris Johnson should speak on the very subject
Of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘soft on terrorism’ trope,
The very day before The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express
Splashed their similar views all over their front pages –
I think this means that we now have a new category
Of political system for the text book:
A liberal-democratic 21st century variant of Fascism:
‘Strong and Stable Government’; ‘Coalition of Chaos’; ‘Brexit means Brexit’;
‘We make no apology for drawing attention to the fact that Jeremy Corbyn
has spent a lifetime siding with people who want to do Britain harm,
would weaken our defences and make our country less safe …’.
Nearly two centuries ago,
Five thousand Chartist supporters met on Selsley Common,
Affirming their support for working class political power,
Through the Six Points,
Five of which have become law:
Secret Ballot (1872); Equal Constituencies (1885); Universal Franchise (1928);
Abolition of Property Qualification to stand as an MP (1858);
Payment of MPs (1911);
Annual Parliaments;
It was thought that this would usher in democracy,
But the transgressions of our so called free press
(Remember the Zinoviev Letter forgery in the Daily Mail at the 1924 election?
The Daly Mail has got a long history and a lot of previous),
Mean that those points have been nullified:
The ballot is no longer secret – voters’ heads are full of lies
(Or ‘cultural hegemony’ as Gramsci put it,
Or ‘false consciousness’, as Marx put it);
The next constituency redrawing will favour the Conservatives
In their bid to establish a one party state;
Many people have forgotten the struggles of men and women:
Imprisonment, hunger strikes, death, transportation,
Or they’ve not been taught about it, or listened,
And abstain on principle,
Or vote ‘on principle’,
Or forget to vote …
MPs are unrepresentative of the population,
Even with 51% of the new intake educated at comprehensives …
The Chartists could not imagine a world where money talks so persuasively:
They thought votes for all would mean equality of power,
Where one vote is worth the same as another,
And where the voter was free from coercion, intimidation and control:
But what we have today is not democracy,
It is a liberal-democratic variant of fascism,
A stepping-stone towards a one party state,
Where Brexit might not just mean Brexit,
But also mean a form of totalitarianism;
But Momentum,
With the new wave of young activists in the Labour Party
Are the new Chartists:
The Chartists of the twenty first century,
People who remind us that we can control history,
We can fight back against the lies of the press,
We can prevent a liberal-democratic fascism,
We can establish socialism,
We can fight back,
‘For the many, not the few”,
Carrying the mantle of Shelley’s rage against Peterloo,
And the dictatorial Six Acts:
‘Ye are many – they are few!’
And in tune with this noble democratic tradition…
The Politics Kitchen initiative on Stroud High Street –
The inspiration of Skeena Rathor –
Is centrally about recognising and empowering
The forces of the heart
In our broken political system.
A return to “3-D politics” –
Face-to-face, body-to-body –
Heart-to-heart, relational politics.
A deep democracy that is both
Witness and friend.