Generation Loss - Short Story

Content warning: This is a story about institutionalised historic child abuse.

Course we didn’t call them predators back in the day. Nor paedophiles neither. As our social betters constantly reminded us back then, we lacked for the benefit of their Classical education. Latin to enter Law or the Church, Greek for medicine. No, in our vulgar vernacular, we would have referred to them as kiddy fiddlers or child molesters. Not like now when people scream and shake their fists at police vans with vertiginous window slits on our collective behalf. Barely able to enunciate a syllable in their fury. Being jostled by the photographers from the gutter press. Predators of a different sort, but drawn from our very same class, albeit with their cloaca intact and as undisturbed as their moral sensibilities. Eleven Plus more than common entrance exam, they could certainly string a sentence together, or a couple of words at least. Banner headlines. Where have they been all this time? Just where were their words until now? No of course playground gossip couldn’t meet your standards of evidence, but we have been proved right haven’t we? In spades. A Scottish stand up comedian also knew just the same as us. But since his schtick was outrage, you all just laughed outrageously and that was the limit of it. Defanged and purged of all rage. Soften the belly rather than sharpen the broadsword. Only the problem with that, is then society merely rolls over to have its tummy tickled. All the while others offstage spurt into our suppurating swollen arses. Reclining there purring, even as we are prostrate mewling. Catamite caterwauling. You lot having a good belly laugh while we are face down in carpet fibres or Egyptian linen, having our sides split by far more heft than a legionnaire’s spear, our tears silently importuning the warp and woof. We are red eyed, flushed rosy cheeked, our slapped buttocks livid crimson and the crowning glory, our rubicund anuses. How we matched one another, burst blood vessel for burst blood vessel. Theirs in ecstatically flaring, burgundy clown noses. What a hoot. 

Historical sex abuse? You got that right. Institutionalised all the way back to Ancient Greece. Amongst the aristocracy. Pedagogic ephebophilia. Underpinning the social and moral values of their society. Specious philosophical and poetic propagations of pederasty (my Classical auto-didactic Education obtained online). Plato’s “Symposium” posited that it strengthened the hand of democracy over tyranny, as a man would fight to defend his love in the face of despotic imperatives. Through Medieval knights with their squires and the rites de seigneur, of course girls could be married off as children back then. Dynastic pederastic. Church and State. Of clergy exorcising their demons by transplanting them into convent girls and choirboys. Repudiating the symbolism of the Eucharist in their hunger for my blood and body, a rectal chalice playing host to their wafer fat crosiers. Teachers with canes, rattans, blackboard pointers, all manner of instructional scourges, whipping across flesh exposed bare by schoolboy shorts. Further glossed with public school fagging. Wellington claimed that victory at Waterloo was brought about on the playing fields of Eton. Not just Eton, but St Pauls, Harrow and Winchester too. Wykehamist and The Guards, a well worn aristocratic career path. Trailing a cold stream of cum in its wake. British society forged in the smithery of porksworded degradation. The Establishment established upon gaping rumps and prematurely penetrated pudenda. A kleptocracy of our youth. Even when not born into silver spoon privilege, you didn’t have to hide your desiderata. You just applied to the Civil Service for a job in the colonies. Out of sight out of mind. Turn a blind eye? The eye didn’t have to be blind. Different rules applied there. Initiation rites and child brides. Colonial female genital mutilation by sarcous lancet. Perfectly natural. Good as law, not that the fuzzy-wuzzies had law until us British brought it to them. Two world wars knocked the stuffing out of the aristocracy. Saw the end of empire and the loss of untrammelled access. The easy pickings. But not the end of our inveterate deflowering. Britain was rebuilt and reconstructed. A country fit for heroes fabricated on the back of six to eight inches of scabby, scaly pneumatic drills, pouring cold concrete and cement to seal up the gapes and breaches in our flesh. With AIDS in the 1980s, suddenly children with their virgin clean blood were even more prized as safe. And today, they perpetually bang on about British values. A Britain built on our backs as we lay on our stomachs. These days everything’s about identity isn’t it? What it means to be British. You never asked for ID proof of age, even as you stripped us of our identities. You rip and tear the tissue of our membrane in order to preserve the fabric of society intact. So you can go on your way and legislate hypocrisy, or perform catharsis rituals for you and your audience both.

Each power shift in political and economic class we anticipated might emancipate us. After the aristocracy, we discovered that the bourgeoisie were no better. That we were Moloch’s children. The offspring of self-made fathers who had nothing to do with parenting as they courted Mammon. All relationships reduced to commodity and exchange. And until we were productive, we were just a drain on the domestic housekeeping. Workhouse rough trade, low rent boys. A perfectly elastic supply of under-age gamins and urchins, with perfectly inelastic sphincters for you to buck the laced up trend. Yet even they were not the true parasites. No, a new post-war class of arrivistes and parvenus fetched/filched/felched up. Deriving from our own class. Social climbers like poison ivy. Cultural capitalists. Pop stars and footballers who could buy your crumbling country pile ten times over. Who gave us all what we craved for. You peddle us these dreams then you infect us through them. Of being dancers, singers, footballers, or just even inhaling the perfumed air of our heroes in the same TV studios. But your upstart stench was corrupt up close. Stardom reeks of fetid half-life decay. Secreting sweat, animal musk and roused pheromones, only we were too callow to arrogate them. But we were savvy enough to make comparisons. We gauged how limited and stunted your imaginations were. For folk supposedly fired by fecund creativity. Since you could only ape your social superiors in how you spray marks of your wealth. How you displayed and conspicuously consumed it. But you had no breadth of experience. It hadn’t, couldn’t, be bred into you. So your champagne, cigars, silks, mood music, were all of inferior quality to those of the blue bloods, because you couldn’t tell the difference. You didn’t know any better. With your palates jaded before their time. We knew, we had a better idea, because of the smack of it on you, just as we could smell it on them. We’d been rogered by a better class of paedophile, with better Class A drugs than you and we detected better vintages, greater purity. Epicures rather than gourmands. Sweeter and less sickly sweat exuded from their stately pores. Their breath marginally more aromatic, their saliva less granular. Their cum tasting of higher quality tinctures than yours could muster. We were less likely to develop cavities and caries noshing on their posh nob knobs than yours, packed full of your sugar-high takeaway and fast food super-vitamins. There was inherent deference cinched into our relationships with them. But with you, it was just degenerate and raven. 

We are the broken generation. Generation loss. So what’s new? What’s changed is that we answered back. We didn’t suffer us little children to come to you. Behind our legal screen of anonymity we couldn’t be seen, but we most definitely and determinedly made ourselves obscenely heard. No longer stiff upper lips, tough to maintain when you have a tumescent tallywhacker thrusting between quivering labia. We don’t care lest you make good on your threat to kill our families if we spill the beans on your spilt seed. For our families are broken asunder and dispersed and neglectful, so we despise them all anyway. Why else would we be rounded up and concentrated in children’s homes and on at risk registers, for you to procure with a big bulls eye target painted on our chests? We were hoist on your petards not by our own. You ran us up the shafts of your flagpoles and then saluted us. The Red, Black and Blue. The involuntary union with Jack the Impaler. Like the Act of Union yoking the Scots into Great Britain. But now the Scots too have found their voice as they looks to tear down the flag and rend it into its separate stripes. It took Scotland over 400 years to make its case, so none to shabby for just fifty or so until we pointed our fingers with nails bitten to the quick in order to accuse our abusers. Mind you, now that we’ve raised our objections, the authorities can’t even sort out a judge to hear our complaints of historical assault. Hardly surprising since the judiciary is riddled with sexual peccadillos, though that’s never stopped them sitting on the Bench weighing up the fates of their malfeasant social inferiors. Funny word peccadillo. Derived from the original Latin for ‘sin’, yet the Romance languages, in this case Spanish, dilute it to an indiscretion; similarly the French, a faux-pas. A wrong step, a mere slip. Where’s the romance in violation? So can I just reappoint us closer to its original moral weight, where ‘discretion’ is the ability to act out of one’s own free judgement? Something we are forever denied by this monstrous phallusy. 

It’s not your fault the therapists counsel. You did nothing wrong. These are bad, wicked people. Exploiting your vulnerability. And thereby ‘therapist’ splits into ‘the’ ‘rapist’, as we are plunged all over again into our emotional turmoil, fraught with all the promises and oaths against divulgence we were made to swear to our transgressors, only now self-imposed. Why were we so vulnerable? Why were we so weak? Why were we the ones picked out, picked on and picked clean? Others ask us why we males didn’t fight back, what bare our milk teeth you mean? No they contend, once we’d reached maturity - overlooking that it is forever suspended and our body fails and quails away from us - why didn’t we strapping lads go seeking after our violators and exact revenge? Else us little girls were teases, who led our vilipenders on and got what we deserved for our provocative ways and raiment. Do I look like a tease, stood here sporting torn hymen, mouth gouged into a permanent rictus with downturned corners? Smile, it will never happen. Oh you can’t, because it already has. Do I seem over-sexualised to you? Rather I’m desexualised. They have de-pithed and decorticated me. Pulled all my petals off. He rapes me, he rapes me not. He rapes me, he rapes me not. No, he definitely is raping me. Before puberty, already there will be no futurity of blooms and blossoms. My genitalia have been deadheaded. Scarred and cicatrised pudenda. I am a cut flower in a vase of stagnancy. Before I had ever bled, they had plugged and blotted me with their gnarled pulpy tampons. They foreshortened and accelerated my pubescence. Blood marked. Difficult for the naked eye to distinguish menstrual blood from the blood of injured tissue. Impossible when both become permanent wounds. You don’t think we already torment ourselves enough with these thoughts? 

Yet now we are emboldened with the aegis of social media. The virtual Gorgon’s head on our breastplate that enables us to stitch back our tongues in place. However, it is a double edged sword. And we cut ourselves. Crowdsourcing shared tales of abuse also invites reproaches to get over it. Get over ourselves. There is not so much abuse for us naming septuagenarian disc jockeys, especially dead ones who have thereby cheated justice and had their Twitter accounts closed down. Those never brought to book now not in a position to update their Facebook. Yet if we dare broach the partisan sacrosanctity of a football club, then we are rounded on with death threats and yes, further promises of adult rape. Why are you only just bringing this up now? Why haven’t you mentioned it before? Well we did and you cocked a deaf’un. In the main we stayed mute because they had a whole network behind them to keep their secrets safe. Chockfull of character witnesses who claim they never witnessed any impropriety. He’s not that kind of guy. He wouldn’t take the chance of ruining his reputation. He’s got a career to think of. Yeah and we were the riders in the green room contractually codicilled in as part of that career. Served up on a silver salver. No play, no play. You move heaven and earth to protect the stellar entertainers, the ones that keep the rest of our kind entranced. To defend the talent, who ironically in turn, call us young things the talent. Less a false modesty, rather a salacious leer. They send their snatch squad of fixers, their unofficial talent spotters, out into the gathering auditorium audience and invite us backstage. What chance of we for revelation, when even the Royal Household is at it? At us. With friends in the highest of possible places. In palaces. 

Cut off the rapists’ hands goes the cry. For this is not so much a crime of sex but one of power. Except those with power have valets, aides-de-camp, batmen, stewards, equerries, man servants, internuncios, factotums, flunkeys and all manner of lackeys to carry out their will. So any of these hired hands could in their stead, throw us up against the wall, kick-splay our legs, spreadeagle our arms and guide their Master’s member into the holes of us junior masters. Or even the bourgeoisie without a household retinue to brace any underhanded unhandedness, would just jab, jab, jab us continually backwards with their engorged middle leg, until they too have us hard up against the wall and unerringly pathfind its one-eyed slither towards the winking anal bull’s eye. There is no escape, how can there be when the commonwealth is constructed upon those yet to reach the age of majority? 

See you in Court. With the peccadildoing judges. Wonder how many of them we will know first hand?

The Grenfell Tower Fire

I am 50 years man and boy a Londoner. Let me paint you a picture of my once fair city. The West side has always been regarded as the richer part. People say they're going 'up West' when they're going shopping or out for entertainment. From the shops of Oxford and Regent Streets, the cinemas of Leicester Square, the theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue, all in the West End of the centre of London. Keep moving west just beyond Marble Arch that marks the beginning of this West End, and you soon leave the borough of Westminster and arrive in the even more expensive borough of Kensington and Chelsea, known as a Royal borough because of a clause in a monarch's will, even though it only holds one Royal palace compared with Westminster's two. RBK&C has some of the most expensive real estate in London, in Chelsea, Belgravia, Notting Hill and Kensington, which are also supported by exclusive upmarket shopping areas in Knightsbridge, Sloane Square and the King's Road. Harrods is located here.

But in the northern margins of the borough, lies an enclave of poorer communities, around Ladbroke Grove, Kensal Rise and North Kensington. Densely populated, mainly in high rises. centred around a raised major trunk road the Westway, which carries you out of the area as fast as possible into the West End.

The raised Westway and tower blocks

This area is culturally diverse and vibrant. It is the creative heart and soul of the Notting Hill Carnival (the council are trying to neuter this, moving it inside an arena or commercialising it in other ways). It was the launching pad of punk rock, with members of the Clash living in squats off the Portobello Road, while Sex Pistols svengali Malcolm McLaren ran his shop "Sex" with Vivienne Westwood, located on the Kings Road. The Jam were not even from London, but affirmed their punk credentials with the cover of their album "The Modern World" being photographed under the Westway. While 'Dystopian Modernity' author JG Ballard's works are suffused with the Westway skyline, whether in "Concrete Island" (based on the Westway itself), or books like "High Rise" and "Crash". There was also in the 90s what was called London's frontline of drugs, on the infamous All Saints Road. North Kensington is a symbol of soulless urban modernity and blight, yet it has always forged a community who have used that to spark off their creative imaginations and to utterly transcend their surroundings.

I lived on Ladbroke Grove for two years (above a funeral director's) and worked in the area for about 16 years, splitting my time between a record shop just off the Portobello Road and their skateboard warehouse on Latimer Road (a stone's throw form Grenfell Tower). During my time there, the local Council twice waged war on parts of the community as they sought to further gentrify what was already an expensive area of Notting Hill. Portobello Road is the site of a world famous antique market, but it only runs over the weekend. For the rest of the week, a small section of Portobello Road plays host to a fresh fruit and vegetable market, who also ran their stalls at the weekend an island deluged by the antique stalls. The Council decided they wanted rid of the fruit stalls. First they shut the public lavatories so that the stallholders on their feet all day were inconvenienced to the maximum. Sympathetic shops and pubs allowed them to use their facilities instead. Meanwhile 7 minutes down the road the local residents commissioned a top architect to design them a public convenience and produced the so called "Turquoise Island" with a flower shop woven into its structure.

Compare & contrast, these are the Portobello toilets closed by the council

When the Council targeted the stallholders more directly, wanting to remove them in favour of more antique stallholders, I was involved in a community campaign to defend them. I volunteered our shop's photocopier for producing the leaflets (without seeking permission of my bosses) and stallholders came in and out frequently to get or drop off their petition sheets, standing out like a sore thumb among all the punks and techno DJs picking through the record racks. I attended local meetings and we won this particular round. I haven't been to Portobello for 10 years or so, and wonder if the fruit stalls are still there or not.

What has any of this got to do with the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy? It's indicative of the attitude of the local Council, who have for ideological reasons undertaken a policy of the economic equivalent of ethnic cleansing, to drive the poorer residents from the area, because its most valuable resource is land. Land for building houses on, in the costliest property area throughout the whole of the UK. But to restate, it's not solely an economic greed, it is also ideological. This all started in the 1980s, when Left and Right were diametrically opposed to one another on either of the far ends of the spectrum. The Right were in power under Margaret Thatcher, with a multi-pronged programme to change the face of this country. The Parliamentary Left were in no shape to offer effective opposition, instead their power base was centred on the major urban metropolitan local councils, including at the time, the Greater London Council which was a unitary body for all London. The Thatcher government disbanded the GLC and returned responsibility to each individual London borough. At the same time, they attacked the funding of local councils and starved them of the means of providing their services. The drive was to privatise everything, such as rubbish collections to traffic wardens. Councils were further starved of funds, through the Right To Buy policy, whereby their housing stock was sold off to those tenants who applied to buy it from them at discount. Councils lost the rental incomes from houses they no longer owned and although the sales income was initially given to the councils for building replacement housing stock at a level of 75% of sales proceeds, this was continually reduced so that councils received less and less return for their sold off properties. This was ideological in that a whole upper strata of working class people were creamed off by being invited to join the property-owning class, twinned with invitations to become share owners by buying the heavily underpriced stocks as nationalised industries were sold off and privatised. This was an ideology of converting traditional working class Labour supporters into middle class Conservative voters. Though it suggests a class egalitarianism, it was only achieved at the expense of those who weren't able to buy homes and shares, who were to come to subsidise their more fortunate neighbours through cutbacks to the services they needed. More of which below. The Conservatives also deregulated the housing market, lowering the standards for house conversions, having cheap money and credit to facilitate mortgages and constructors taking out loans. London had a housing boom which has changed its economic and cultural landscape forever, like Paris, New York and Tokyo making it almost impossible to own a house now without significant funds and turning it into a de facto city-state. My first flat was an ex-council property, we bought it off the tenant who had purchased it at a 30% discount before selling it on immediately to us, making a nice tidy profit on a windfall that fell in her lap.

Before I consider a specific initiative by Conservative local councils, I just want to finish the story of national forces on the state of housing. Once Thatcher left power and Tony Blair came in for Labour, make no mistake, he did very little - despite huge 100+ majorities in Parliament - to reverse the policies of the previous Conservative regimes. Right to Buy had run out of steam anyway, since those who could afford to buy had done so by now. Deregulation was not reversed, standards within selling property remained low. Credit was still cheap, so that now property was regarded as much as an investment as it was the place for you to live and call home. The budgets of local councils were not refloated, low public housing stock not significantly replenished. Let's be clear about this, Labour failed the most distressed communities that the Conservatives had created. And when the Conservatives returned to power under David Cameron, the UK economy and level of debt was in a very parlous state. Austerity became the watchword, with cuts to every aspect of the public sector. The commodification & privatisation under Thatcher was even more central to Cameron who looked to make budget savings. Rather than go after their allies in Big Business to make them pay appropriate tax, they trimmed and slashed services already at critical levels. This includes the many aspects that notionally fall under the responsibility of local councils, but had in fact been contracted out to private firms and agencies whose primary motivation is profit. Add to that that Cameron declared war on what he called the health and safety culture and standards slipped even more off the bottom of the scale. Everything was done on the cheap, with little scrutiny since the numbers of inspectors had been cut as a cost saving, while ideologically there was not only no appetite for due oversight, but downright hostility to it.

So now we return to the local council level. Despite its property riches, London is a Labour city. Consistently since 1997 it has voted for a majority Labour representation, with the sole exception of two terms as London mayor for Conservative Boris Johnson. The Conservatives are in the main restricted to the richest central boroughs and those well-off suburbs around the fringes of the city. Three of the central boroughs are Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Wandsworth. In the 1980s, bolstered by Right To Buy and the property boom sending house prices shooting up, the Conservatives undertook the most ideological (and craven) of policies to try and ensure these boroughs remained Conservative in perpetuity. While the poll tax that replaced the local rates system of local taxation went up in most London boroughs to try and make good the shortfall of government funding, in these three boroughs the poll tax was at negligible levels. This was subsidised by an incentive from central government, allowing the councils to run a low level of local taxation. But in Westminster it went further. The then council leader Dame Shirley Porter ran a clandestine scheme of "Homes For Votes" , trying to socially engineer parts of the borough to make them guaranteed Conservative wards. This was a more naked, far-reaching expression of the class cleansing that RBK&C were envisioning in the next door borough. On the border between the two, was the Harrow Road tower blocks which were condemned for containing asbestos, yet still undesirables and the homeless were moved into them, immortalised in song in 1988 by RBK&C squatters World Domination Enterprises in their song "Asbestos Lead Asbestos". Eventually Porter's regime were taken to court for their flagrant gerrymandering and found guilty. Like all good patriots with a stake in their country, Porter immediately fled overseas to avoid sanction and financial punishment. Wandsworth at a Parliamentary level has two Labour MPs and one Conservative, RBK&C for the first time in history returned a Labour MP a fortnight ago as one of its two MPs. Westminster also has one MP from each Party. So the Conservative initiative has not taken, Londoners have retained their independence of mind.

And finally to the Grenfell Tower fire. All the above factors feed into this tragedy. Private management of housing, austerity and cutbacks (though RBK&C has a contingency fund of £300 million so that it has no excuse for being too cash strapped), and class cleansing. RBK&C didn't have to be as blatant as Westminster, since it was under less threat of losing control to Labour and its poor and impoverished were already grouped together in a specific locale of the borough, that of North Kensington. Every council has a legal requirement to house the 'unintentionally homeless' and because those that could buy their council homes have, this means that all councils now only really house the most vulnerable and needy members of society. Look at the survivors of Grenfell Tower on TV, or consider the list of names of the missing and unaccounted for and this is abundantly clear. In some places such areas might be considered ghettos, but not here so diverse was the local population, truly representative of all continents of this earth. But they were vulnerable, mainly economically rather than social and cultural. The Council just did not care or value them like it did its private householders. Local residents had warned for years about the deficiencies of their housing, including safety issues. No sprinklers. Shortage of lifts and so on. They were ignored and palmed off as troublemakers. The Council allowed their private contractors to 'upgrade' the fire safety of Grenfell Tower with a cladding material that saved the measly sum of £6,250 on the total budget. If the death toll is of the likely order of 100, that works out to be £625 saved at the cost of each life. Read that and weep. Really really weep. The sight of people waving for help on the top floors and babies being thrown out windows to those down on the ground, echoes the imagery of the Twin Towers during 9/11. Our terrorism was not based overseas and the low level campaign against residents was to unsettle rather than terrorise, but our terrorism is named corporate manslaughter. It is a campaign waged for profit and ideology that has been running since the 1980s and the people responsible must be brought to justice. It is time for all people's lives in this country to have a genuine equal value, rather than this faux rhetoric of Thatcherite egalitarianism, or Cameron's "we're all in this together". If Britain isn't moved by this tragedy towards a whole different way of thinking and regarding of our fellow citizens, then we have not only missed an invaluable opportunity, we are actually lost as a nation for good. 

Why Referenda are Bad For Britain's Democracy

What could be more democratic than asking the adult population to vote on an issue rather than entrust our delegated representatives to come to a decision?

Whilst there has been several referenda on devolution and sovereignty issues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and those asking metropolitan areas whether they wanted an elected mayor of not, the upcoming EU referendum on June 23rd will only be the third UK-wide vote. The first concerned Britain's membership of the European Economic Community as it was called back then in 1975, but I was only 11 so not entitled to vote. Then we didn't have one until 2011 on the issue of a version of proportional representation called AV (Alternative Vote) replacing our first past the post system. Now I consider myself a political animal, yet such was the level of disengagement with the way AV was presented, that I can't even remember if I bothered to cast my vote. I wasn't the only one, turnout was a poor 42% (compared with 60-65% on average for a general election). This was generally felt to have been the result of AV being an inadequate voting system compared with all the proportional representation systems on offer and that even then no one really understood how it worked because the campaign to promote it was so lacklustre.

And now we come to the major referendum currently on the table, continued membership of the EU or to withdraw. I credit that whatever the outcome, the whole thing has been a disaster and weakened the credibility of british democracy. here's why:

1) The campaign isn't about the issue of EU membership at all:
Whatever the merits of In or Out has been partly sideswiped and colonised by the internal politics of the two major political parties. For the Tories, with David Cameron announcing he would not run for another term as Prime Minister after this one, there has been a power struggle to see who is in the best position to replace him when he goes. It's worth noting that if the vote is to leave, Cameron might have to go sooner than expected as he has nailed his colours so firmly to the Stay mast. That would only bring the whole succession battle forward and probably overshadow the mechanics of negotiating our way out of the EU as the country is paralysed without a leader and the bloody struggle to appoint one. So senior Tories have been positioning themselves in the referendum campaign with their eye firmly on the main prize beyond. The will he/won't he bated breath of which side Boris Johnson would side with went on for an age as Johnson made his calculations of support. Tory cabinet ministers in favour of Brexit screamed and shouted for their right to break cabinet unanimity and campaign for what they believed in, and having been granted that right have helped ratchet up the hysteria with attacks on their colleagues in the Remain camp and vice versa. If David Cameron imagined this vote to once and for all heal Tory divisions over the principle of Europe that first holed John Major's government back in the 1990s, he has been seriously mistaken. It's widened those enmities further and at a cost of degrading the quality of the debate. It's all got very personal and very stupid with appeals to an imagined Tory lineage stretching back to Winston Churchill. In other words, the debate has not really been about the EU at all.

Labour have performed no more credibly. The last referendum saw solid Labour support in Scotland wiped out by the simple fact Labour had joined with the Tories to oppose independence. Whatever the Scots thought of the merits or demerits of going it alone, they could not abide the sight of Labour and the hated Tories sharing platforms and singing off the same hymn sheet. "Red Tories" they called the Labour Party and duly annihilated them at the general election by returning just 1 Labour MP in Scotland. So Labour have been very careful not to make the same mistake again and alienate their support in England and Wales by being seen to be in close cahoots with the Tory government. Entirely understandable for a tactical point of view, but doing a huge disservice to the issue under debate, to go or stay in the EU. Labour as a party are contributing virtually nothing to the debate or the issue, beyond the efforts locally of individual MPs. A shameful dereliction of the democratic process by simply distancing themselves from the referendum.

2) Both sides of the debate are based on lies:
I am an avid 'Remain' voter, yet even I, along with every other pro-EU supporter I suspect, knows that the current EU is massively flawed. Just consider the EU's lamentable failure over the migration crisis, its impotency over Ukraine, its mutterings of admitting Turkey into the community despite it failing any standard of liberties and rights of free press and expression, etc etc. So we are voting to keep us in an imagined entity that doesn't in fact exist as it is currently constituted. We are voting for an ideal. On the other hand, since no country ever has left the EU, let alone an economically significant one as the UK is, nobody can have the first inkling as to what that means and how it will play out. For both the UK and the EU itself (it is not impossible that it could signal the break up of the whole Union). We just don't know, so every argument that avers that X will be a benefit of leaving and we will be better off regarding Y by going our own way has no basis in evidence. They are predictions and forecasts at best and entirely coloured by the ends they are seeking to secure.

This begs a question about all referenda; if the choice is between changing to something that has never been done before, (or to leave something as an exit which has never been tried before), is it even possible to posit and empirically back up arguments at all? In which case, how can you properly have a referendum on the issue?

3) Our politicians are not sophisticated enough to do justice to the arguments involved in the issue:
The inherent contradiction at the heart of any referendum question that threatens to tread new ground, makes it really tough for the public to grasp the issue. However, we are not being well served by our politicians and key society movers and shakers in helping us understand the issue any better. The level of debate has been risible. We've had spurious anachronistic reference to Hitler's likely sympathies with a European super-state. We have statements that the EU prohibit more than 3 bananas being bound together to constitute a bunch. We've had the appeal to UK house prices dropping significantly with an Out vote, or the price of your summer holiday increasing if we leave. Like that's the most important thing under consideration here. Politicians demean us the voters when they imagine they can appeal to us through such base and simplistic impulses. We're too ignorant to appreciate what will happen the Balance of payments, VAT revenue and the City of London's golden egg, so let's restrict it to the level of summer holidays since the public can understand that. We've had different sections of the military and security forces opine that our security will either be improved or degraded by the result of the vote. Each side of the campaign wheels out these expert witnesses that support their case and they just end up cancelling one another out and leaving us the voters contemptuous of them all.  If you've ever watched a US real crime programme and the court case where the two sides bring out their pet forensics expert and of course the two radically disagree on what the evidence tells them, so the jury are thrown back on their own instincts as to how to weight the two expert testimonies against one another. Well then you might as well not bother with specialist insight if we end up falling back on what our gut tells us. It's pretty much the same in this debate. I can't help feeling that while these talking heads have a right to hold a personal opinion informed by their professional experience, it probably shouldn't be offered as chapter and verse to us the public. That they do so is not their fault, they are called upon to do so by the politicians.

The upshot of all this? I am predicting a low turnout of similar magnitude to that of the AV vote. And that will be a terrible indictment not on public apathy, but on the performance of our politicians selling us the importance of this vote and the usefulness of referenda themselves, given their innate contradictions.

An undoubted fan of the European superstate 

 A non-compliant bunch of EU bananas

Quids in for car number plate manufacturers if we vote 'Leave'

Rock Against Racism - A Music Video Playlist

Punk rock had very close ties with reggae. Groups like the Clash had grown up in multi-racial communities and been heavily influenced by reggae music and culture. Reggae DJs played the music before the live bands in punk clubs. Both were music of protest and in the late 1970s there was plenty in Britain to protest about. Another protest group were the far-right political party (and in true Nazi tradition street fighting thugs) The National Front. With the state of the UK economy they were beginning to make some political headway with the usual dreary simplistic argument of immigrants taking British jobs. Music turned its force on them partly due to a spark from their own industry. Eric Clapton, who seemingly was oblivious of the Afro-American blues roots of his own music, made some inflammatory anti-immigrant and racist statements from the stage during one of his gigs. David Bowie's iconography of the character of the Thin White Duke was also unfortunately timed, as he rode around in a limousine like a 1930s Fascist dictator from Mitteleuropa.

There's a very good retrospective here containing some wonderful photos, so I'm just going to present videos of some of the bands who were involved, many like Ruts and Misty in Roots who went up and down the country touring with Rock Against Racism. It's impossible to measure what effect the campaign had, but it was most definitely a battle for the hearts and minds of British youth, to stop them being won over to the National Front's cause. When the whole country swung to the right with Mrs Thatcher, the National front beset by splits and personality clashes faded away. But they were replaced by other fascist and far-right groups and of course the anti-immigrant argument is being loudly trumpeted today by mainstream politicians. Time for another Rock Against Racism? I can't quite see any of the Simon Cowell created bands carrying it off.

How many of the below bands do I possess albums of? All of them excepting Sham 69...


1) The Clash - "White Man In Hammersmith Palais"
Of all punk bands, the Clash were most heavily influenced by reggae, producing their own reggae originals and covering reggae classics. Their song "White Riot" was influenced by the 1977 Notting Hill riots when the Caribbean carnival erupted in violence at police treatment of the community.




2) Misty In Roots - "How Long Jah"
It's ironic but Misty in Roots played more RAR gigs than anybody else, yet initially they were never part of the main stage, but a sort of side act on a flat bed truck at the head of the anti-racist marches preceding the gigs. Seems just a little bit like segregation to me. But they more than most had direct experience of racial violence when their manager was beaten into a coma by the police at an anti-racist march in their home town of Southall, West London.




3) The Ruts - "Staring At The Rude Boys"
The Ruts came from Southall as well and were close band mates with Misty. Their sound was heavily influenced by reggae and like Misty they were solid supporters of the RAR campaign playing up and down the country.



4) Steel Pulse - " Handsworth Revolution"
This song preceded the Handsworth (Birmingham) riot of 1985. People could see what was happening and tried to alert us to the situation, but seems no one in authority was listening. With songs like "Klu Klux Klan" and "Drug Squad" they painted the experience of the Afro-Caribbean community in the late 1970s better than anybody.



5) Tom Robinson Band - "Winter of '79"
Tom Robinson Band were perhaps the most overtly political band that emerged from 1970s punk, fronted by a gay guitarist-singer, they sung songs for all oppressed and minority groups.



6) Sham 69 - "If The Kids Are United"
Sham 69 were a working class band who sung about beer and fighting and attracted a far-right skinhead following. It took a lot of too-ing and fro-ing to get lead singer Jimmy Pursey to agree to play a RAR gig, as he himself had received death threats. It was crucial when the band did eventually play, as it forced their fans to confront the message of the concerts and see the multi-cultural nature of the bands.



7) Aswad - "Drum And Bass Line"
Aswad were from West London and when they weren't away touring they would go to the local playing fields and play football every Sunday, the same pitches my team played at & occasionally we saw them down there.



8) Stiff Little Fingers - "Doesn't Make It All Right"
Hailing from sectarian Ulster, SLF lived in the middle of another low rent form of apartheid that separated two communities there. This is a cover of a Specials' song, one of the best anti-racist songs ever written. Check out the original version if you get the chance.



9) Elvis Costello & The Attraction - "Two Little Hitlers"
Yep Elvis played an early RAR gig, before jetting off to the US and making strange Country & Western hybrid music.



10) Au Pairs - "Steppin Out Of Line"
Another new wave band that fused rock with reggae and dub. Singer Lesley Woods gave up the music business to become a lawyer. oh well.



11) Specials - "Racist Friend"
The Specials were a living, breathing embodiment of anti-racism. A multi-ethnic band playing Caribbean influenced Ska but with lyrics pertinent to the situation out on the streets of the UK. They became best known for their excoriating comment on post 80's riot-torn Britain "Ghost Town" and "Free Nelson Mandela"

I Vow To Thee My Country - That You Got It Badly Wrong

There's no doubting that the situation in Syria is immensely complicated. Two ex-members of the military who are Conservative MPs voted against their Party and opposed a bombing campaign of Syria. An ex-member of the military who is a Labour MP opposed his Party line and voted in favour of bombing. Perhaps the most telling individual vote was that of the Chair of the Parliamentary select committee on Foreign Affairs, Conservative MP John Baron, voted against bombing (as he did in the vote on bombing Libya).

You'd hope your delegated political representatives would have some handle on the intricacies. But in the recent day long Parliamentary debate and vote, the level of political and strategic analysis was in short supply, replaced by moral and emotional pleas on one side or the other. Or the debate was partly hijacked by the Prime Minister's rather inflammatory assertion that to vote against the proposed campaign equated you to a terrorist sympathiser and consequent demands by outraged MPs for him to apologise for such a statement.

But I'm going to try and pick the emotions and moral outrage out of the debate and offer some crystal clear rebuttals to the arguments made in favour of bombing Syria. Of course readers may not agree with either these arguments or the position to oppose bombing and that's fine. But I hope to show that that the points offered during that debate are not enough to clinch any argument.

                             


The main argument was that bombing Syria increases the security on Britain's streets. Actually it does the very opposite. Those in Syria are not the threat to us here at home. Rather it is from UK citizens already living here. You may say that such homegrown terror is co-ordinated from Syria. But it doesn't have to be. Recently a fourteen year old boy from Blackburn was jailed for mentoring a would-be terrorist in Australia. The nature of global communications means you don't actually need a command and control centre to co-ordinate your terror campaign. Of the Paris terrorists, no more than two had returned from Syria. To fight for ISIS's cause does not entail seeing service or training in Iraq or Syria. There will not be ISIS fighters coming back from Syria at this point in time to perpetrate a terrorist act on British soil. If any potential UK terrorists have seen service there, they are already back in the UK (and you have to ask questions of our intelligence service as to how they have been able to sneak back in).

So the terror threat remains ever-present. Why therefore do I say that the vote for bombing makes the UK less secure? Look at the way Islamic terror operates. They cannot sustain a campaign against any single country. So there have been individual attacks in Canada, Australia, France, Lebanon, Turkey. And of course the Russian airliner shot down in Egypt, a very rapid response to Russian bombs falling on ISIS areas. In the case of the Western targets, each time their participation in the air war against Islamic State is cited as the reason. Terrorists want to send a message and with only one chance to do so (such is the nature of suicide missions) they have to stage what they see as a spectacular. By voting to bomb Syria, the UK has just placed itself in line for a similar response from ISIS and it supporters. Britain will need to be taught a lesson is the logic. Or the logic or reprisal. Terror acts in the UK have always been a possibility, but with this vote I believe it has now become an inevitability. Not just me either, for only today UK intelligence services report that the vote has increased the likelihood we would become a target. Have they only just realised that? Or did they they know this all the time but fail to inform the Prime Minister? Or maybe he just ignored that advice.

Ah but we are already fighting the Islamic State by bombing Iraq were some of the arguments advanced during the debate. For the sake of a few hundred yards across a border that ISIS has abolished what is the difference? Well seems to me you can't have it both ways, if you want to deny the legitimacy of ISIS and re-establish the territorial legitimacy of both Iraq and Syria, then you have to continue to recognise the integrity of those borders.

The next argument was that France has asked for us to step up to the plate and assist them in the light of the atrocities in Paris. Added to that is that the UN basically gave a green light to go to war on ISIS. The argument is advanced that we in Britain must not only support our friends and allies, but we cannot allow others to do the job of protecting us while we stand to the side doing nothing. And yet that is exactly what we and the whole of the West has been doing by allowing the Kurds to bear the entire burden of facing ISIS on the ground. Since ISIS' dramatic expansion of territory, we have apparently been perfectly happy to have others provide our protection and security, so that argument just does not hold water. Now there are perfectly strong reasons why Western troops should not be committed to Syria and Iraq, since that will just escalate everything in the region and provide a rallying call to the ISIS cause. But don't then posit that we take care of our own security.

Jumping in to the cause of our allies is hugely problematical as well. Since the collapse of Communism, NATO s no longer facing a united bloc of foes. I would argue that it has ceased to be of use, rather it increases the likelihood of war and conflict rather than head it off. An attack on one NATO country is deemed an attack on them all. If Francoise Hollande had called for NATO to attack ISIS for bombing Paris, we would have been duty bound. I find it significant that he didn't quite go that far, because he knew what it implied. You can argue that although Russia has been stripped of its former allies of the Eastern Bloc, it still remains a threat to the West as Putin continues to provoke by his actions. Yet NATO proved incapable of preventing Putin's actions in Ukraine, partly prompted by Ukraine's stated desire to turn away from Russia in favour of the EU and NATO. But the key to the NATO argument is the behaviour of NATO member Turkey. Turkey is following its own agenda in the region. It shot down a Russian fighter. Whether it was correct in law or not, if Turkey had declared itself under attack from Russia, again we would all have been duty bound to jump in and escalate hostilities well beyond the local militias and terrorist groups. Again you may argue that it was only the threat of NATO doing just this that prevented Russia from reacting more strongly to the downing of its fighter. And that may be true, but with Turkey being a loose canon, who is to say that it won't do something else that this time provokes irresistible response from Putin? Turkey also has been aiding ISIS fighters by providing sanctuary across its border and is almost certainly involved in ISIS's trade in oil and other assets that funds their State and continued military activities. Not a very united front or consistency of action on display from NATO here.

David Cameron asserted that there are some 70,000 anti-Assad rebels who could be used to fight ISIS on the ground. This is an utterly absurd notion and frankly a most worrying one if our Prime Minister has the level of understanding to believe this is gospel. Take a look of a map of the various forces in Syria courtesy of BBC


The rebel forces are nowhere near ISIS strongholds except in a couple of areas near Damascus. Plus they are solely concerned with fighting Assad's forces. They are not going to give up that primary aim to turn they efforts against ISIS, unless you first remove Assad and that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. Also of those 70,000 troops, how many are Jihadists and Islamists? Do you really think the fighters of the Al-Nusra Front are people we want to be dealing with? They are extremists too. I'm curious whether there is any thinking about rewarding the Kurds with an independent Kurdistan as they have been calling and in some cases battling for for years prior to this particular conflict? How would that be received in Turkey I wonder? Turkey regards its Kurds as more of a threat to the state than ISIS

Which leads on to the wider question, of just what is the long-term vision for the area? We have been fed a few clues, that it wouldn't include Assad, that the Islamic State would be dismantled. And what territorial borders would be established? As with so many of the states created out of former Ottoman colonies, the borders created for the likes of Syria and Iraq are somewhat arbitrary and don't reflect the various tribal and ethnic divisions of the populations there. Also there are scant traditions of democracy in the region, so again, how does one go about establishing such a thing from so low a base? Hasn't worked in Libya, is clinging on by its fingertips in Afghanistan... Destroying the Caliphate, which seems to be the one thing all the allies have agreed on, will not remove the threat of islamic terrorism. Instead it will spread it like a virus. As said earlier, they do not need a command and control centre in a specified territorial space. After the insurgency in Iraq was supposedly put down, the insurgents just slipped away and returned to blend in with their fellow citizens until ISIS collected them altogether into a new menacing force. The same is likely to happen again. Also IS is just as much an idea, an aspiration as it is a territorial reality. If I can resort to a crassly inappropriate phrase, it is a genie free from its bottle never to be recaptured. A Caliphate functioning under Sharia law will remain an aspiration for many Muslims and next time it could be in Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia or Yemen. ISIS are currently making great strides in Afghanistan. In Libya. The place does not matter. It will not fade away if this one in Syria and Iraq is destroyed.

So:
1) Bombing Syria makes us less secure here in the UK not more
2) This is not about an abnegation of the responsibility to protect ourselves and relying on others
3) Formal military alliances make it more likely to draw us into full war rather than less
4) There are no 70,000 Syrians on the ground who can take on ISIS
5) There is no plan of what to do if and when ISIS falls
6) The Caliphate as an idea is here to stay and will remain a recruiting tool to the flag beyond the destruction of the Islamic State itself

Some Thoughts on the UK Election Campaign

Everybody accepts this election is unlikely to deliver an outright winner. That warring parties will have to somehow unite to form a government. So with an emphasis on the need to find what can be joined together, it's highly depressing and yet predictable that it seems to be going the other way; a drive to divide, isolate and scapegoat.


We all knew UKIP would target immigrants and blame them for all our economic woes, but that's extended into a call to refuse access to treatment to those from abroad with HIV.


The SNP are being simultaneously wooed and castigated, with the line skirting quite close to racism in that the Scots are not to be trusted with the fate of the English. We may not like it, but our democracy has thrown up this situation where the SNP are likely to be the power brokers, so to castigate them anti-democratic because they find themselves in this position even though they would rather be independent from Westminster is churlish. They have grown exponentially in the last few years because the Westminster government of whatever stripe has failed to represent their views and requirements.


And all this has further dragged us into disrepute in the week where the tragedies of migration from Africa and the loss of life in the Mediterranean has been front and central in the news, so that the politicians are forced to take time out from their carefully choreographed schedule to address the issue.


For me it highlights the two streams of political thinking, neither which addresses the other in the same terms. On the one hand you can have the kind of country you would envision, one that cares for those less well off, with provision of free health care, a welfare system that allows a dignified quality of life, a country that looks abroad to help and save lives and is welcoming to those who wish to join it by settling within its borders. Against this is ranged the simple counter, that the UK cannot afford to provide this level of rights and benefits. Everything is costed and commodified, not least human life.


Yet despite the cleft between the two, all sides pay lip service to both. Hence we have microscopic focus on each other's budgetary figures and we have accusations of selling the country short on its fundamental values. UKIP make it very clear what sort of values they aspire for the country, a very narrow and exclusive one. The Greens make it clear the values of a society they envision, but for many it is a leap too far and they are attacked for the economics of it all. Labour, Tory and Lib-Dem do have differing policies from each other, but they are all couched in exactly the same narrow terms of the debate.


Like I say, depressing and predictable. And we ain't seen nothing yet, for when the results come in and it's a stalemate, then the really vicious horse trading will start. My prediction? we'll need a second election within a year.

Riotous Assembly - FridayFlash

(If you want to read my commentary on the thoughts behind this piece then click here)

broodboy: Same time next year yeah?

Meta_Lurgi: @GeneralCustard Do you mean out on the streets or here on Twitter?

Carly: Bring your broom tomorrow to clean up Clapham. The community to reclaim our streets from the thugs

GeneralCustard: It's a free for all. There's absolutely no control whatsoever

GeekChic: Flash mob rioting 2.0. This is the future folks!

sicpuppy: @eBaying4Blud Bravo dipshit, your ugly guilty mug now all over Twitter for the Police to identify you. You're going down

HoarseWhisperer: a building has just collapsed. I saw people jumping from it earlier. Just pray no one else was still in there?

eBaying4Blud: Electronic Booty @twitpic All offers?

EveHo: nuffink 2see here world jog on

TiddlyWink: To @skpollard Have you got home okay? Please just let me know

shabbashanks: Croydon's getting a facelift! Burn it down, can only look better that way

Under8: Police car on fire! BBQ pig!

VoyErr: I'm so frightened, I can hardly tweet straight

AJWheeler: Have just been threatened by a thug in a balaclava. it's really ugly out here. Don't know how I'm going to get home

BrapBrap: this aint no egg twitter mongs, its a molotov bomb an its coming your way

SkipJackTuner: <3 LOL and disorder

policeuk: Please RT to get @UK_blackberry to shut down #BBM till riots end #BlockBBM let's get it trending #LondonRiots

RTRT: RT fuzz are in full retreat! #Hackneyriot

RayLeeOtter: So apart from that Boris, how was the holiday? #LondonRiots #WhereisourMayor

RationList: If it's mindless to steal plasma tvs and smartphones, who emptied our minds with drooling over that shit in the first place?

smileyculture: we're all in this together right? U R now mothafuckas!!!!!!

SinNic: whatever can have possessed the dispossessed to take power for themselves?

R_Cane: Avoid Clapham Junction. It's a warzone

HighHeelDrifter: Why isn't there a curfew in place?

gangstar: U say were scum? What about police? Killed another innocent man. Shot him dead in his car

OscarBravo: we need the water cannons to clean this SCUM off our streets

QuantumAl: Stealing blackberries to organise riots to steal blackberries by...

FlimFlammable: That'll be the Wembley, Harlesden, Hammersmith posses. Window shopping now all the windows are kicked in

Trinny: What about Ealing? that's nothing to do with anything from the past. This isn't about deprivation or political protest

memememe: Why not? Nothing's changed since the last lot. Still Tottenham and Hackney gone up innit?

AliciaQ: I can't believe the police are letting it just happen

Nikos: I can't believe this is all happening. Again! #LondonRiots

CitizenSmith: Anyone looting in Tooting?

policeuk: incitement to riot is a serious criminal offence and carries heavy punishment tariffs

Gash: fancy me an upgrade on ma teevee. may roll down to ealing

topboy: keep the party going. keep getting more boys down and at it. They can't stop us. No police. No government. it's all ours for the taking

HistoryMan2.0: @StringVestTheory The Chavnots living the dream!

StringVestTheory: JD Sports? Truly this is the uprising of the Chavs

CarlSBerg: Broken Britain? it is now! #LondonRiots

RagandBone: #NottingHill shut your shops early and pull the shutters down. We're hearing rumours we're next #LondonRiots

clevertrevor85: there's something rioting in the state of Primark

Haughtense: They're breaking into all the shops. Clothes, mobile phones, hulking great tellies

Mash_Yeti: Come to Catford Bluds. No 5-0 down here at all. Make it happen. Mobb rule

OldMaid: There's people breaking into houses here #Ealing

ProfPlum: How many pairs of nicked Nikes equates to the education maintenance allowance? #youdothemaths

Brittstick: too few coppers to enforce order #cuts

SimonShelley: Bunch of about 50 hoodies gathering at Clapham Junction station #LondonRiots

gangbanger: Bluebottles lost their bottle. Oh no wait found it. Crashing down on their tit helmets!

dentedStu: rioters & police playing kiss chase down Peckham back streets

policeuk: Parents, do you know where your children are right now tonight? #Londonriots

sansculottery: Arab Spring, London Summer. Finishing what Guy Fawkes started but we're not lightweights like him #LondonRiots

MCShitehawk: No hype, we own the streets. Feds just standing back watching us. They bare scared

TriggerFinger: Dap @twitpic of mi boys. Took it on mi brand new phone rinsed bout 10 minutes ago #londonriots

2Wheeler: Yeah our riot vans in convoys not police ones! We're cleaning the high streets out

PithHelmet: I've seen vans pull up and collect stuff looted. This is organised #Londonriots

TomCollins: Ppl are stashing their loot in front gardens under bushes & going back 4 more gear #Clapham

HighPilbrow: Can someone tell me what a shooting in Tottenham has got to do with the thuggery in Clapham? Just looking for any excuse

SoldierTru: An fuck snitches too

w7fyt: Fuck da police

SallyArmy: OMG ppl jumping from the flats above and people on the pavement are catching them. Where are the fire brigade? And the Police?

Crunk: Police vans heading to Clapham Junction, roll on to Lavender Hill and Battersea

RayWhittle71: There's shops on fire with people leaning out the windows in the flats above. They're trapped

Links: Fire sale in Clapham. price is right, come on down. everything must go #LDNriot

Mash_Yeti: no we're gonna burn yours!

PlanC: What, you going to burn down your own communities again?

pinhead: smell of petrol and smoke. Uncle says brings back sweet memories #Tottenham

DisU: Endz beef ends tonite

streetfighter: Its ours. its all fuckin ours. Not one Fed in sight

DeadEnds: Feds getting a beating. Bring your bottles and bricks

Tricksy: Bruv this aint about ends right now. Were together against 5-0 cos of Duggan and weve got the streets

SnareDrum: Heard that someone protesting the Mark Duggan killing was beaten by police. Don't they ever learn?

M16N17: Edmonton got no bizness being out of their ends. Lets smack em back down

IWitness: Bus on fire in Tottenham. Police being pelted with all manner of stuff

ghettofuck: Edmonton? Those tards dont even got no proper postcode

hoodboy: enfield? Those pussyoles got no boys. gotta be edmonton

flyboyagaric: its all kicking off tottenham & enfield an i dont mean footy seasons started early