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| “Most of the times when patrons give us a counterfeit bill they don’t even know its fake so when the police are called there is no crime being committed, they just want to know where it came from and that’s usually what takes place" |
BLACK LIVES REALLY
DO MATTER!
The slogan, BLACK LIVES MATTER, has led to some people
saying there should be a footnote acknowledging that ALL LIVES MATTER. I can
see why; but you could also interpret the ALL LIVES approach as taking away the
energy and importance from a movement that has been deflected and ignored for
far too long, diluting the impact of the BLACK LIVES MATTER campaign.
What is going on around the world on this issue seems
to me, after all, to be about focus, not exclusion. If something matters it
doesn't imply that nothing else matters. You have to put it in context or ALL
LIVES MATTER will appear to be dismissive. And after hundreds of years of
treating black people first as chattels and then as inferior human beings to be
exploited, it is time we all face up to how insidious racism can be, even infecting
all kinds of people who cannot see how they are being racist.
And, unlike Dominic Raab, I would be happy to “take a
knee” – even though I am too damned old and arthritic. I guess someone would
just have to help me up afterwards! Or I could lean on my cane? And, unlike
Priti Patel, I think that the hostial environment and its impact not just on
Windrush people but also so many EU citizens, is a shameful and despicable
approach to the immigration issue and distressingly ignorant about what immigration
and freedom of movement has done for this country since WWII.
To rephrase something I read reacently: Anti-black
racism is hardwired into America's DNA, and it touches Black lives every single
day—from cop killings to predatory lending by banks, to poorly-funded schools.
To say ‘Black lives matter’ acknowledges that history in many ways we never
did—and does not to suggest that anyone else matters any less.
Meantime, several other matters matter:
MAKE
AMERICAN SANE AGAIN
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is Trumpian code. The true
underlying message is: MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.
That is what those crowds of white supremacists are
responding to. Sadly, it is also what is behind the Hostile Environment
approach in the UK: clearly that is saying: MAKE THE UK WHITER AGAIN.
And the people who feel threatened, scared, the people
who are bullies and cowards, will follow the Coward in Chief, Humpty Trumpty,
or the Excluder in Chief, Priti Patel, unquestioningly. Trump may not get the
great fall that he should. Which will mean, after four more years of his
Presidency, the definitive end of the American ideal. Trump is corrupting and
picking away at the Constitution daily. Trump has also already done things to
the courts of the USA that it will take years to undo.
People are notionally swearing allegiance to the
Constitution when they swear allegiance to their flag in the USA, not to some
trumped up bully-boy autocratic demagogue. And we in the UK swear allegiance of
the Queen, not to the Prime Minister who constantly complains these days about
being challenged to explain himself by the Loyal Opposition. The whole point
for the Founding Fathers in the USA was that they did not want someone to
become another kind of king. And so they set up various systems for removing anyone
causing peril to the Constitution. But the entire Republican Party seems to be
determined to swear allegiance to King Donald Trump and be his courtiers and
reap their rewards. They, like Senator McCarthy of old, have no shame.
STARVING
CHILDREN AND STUDENT NURSES
The treatment of first the starving children of this
country (the UK), the need to make that U-turn about actually making sure they
do not starve this summer; then the dismissal of the needs and the
contributions during the Covid Crisis of the student nurses: all this simply
proves that the Conservative government and probably, by now, rather like the
Republicans in the States, the majority of supporters of this Conservative
excuse for a government, are deaf. They are not listening. They are still primarily
focused on the narrow interests of the rich people of the UK who do not give a
damn.
These are the same kinds of people that Jonathan Swift
was thinking of when he wrote A Modest
Proposal. What has changed? Yes, some progress may have been made — we did
abolish the slave trade, though we had to pay off the slave owners and that
debt was only cleared around 2015 — but clearly not nearly enough is different.
If you are worried about finding food for the starving
children of the UK or the cost of subsidizing medical training for nurses and
doctors, is it not time to bring back the offshore money of UK citizens (never
mind whether they are residents or not?) so that it can be properly taxed?
Is it not time to join forces with the rest of the
European economies to get the major global companies to pay proper taxes?
But, oh no, we Brits cannot do that because we have
left the EU and we must not do anything with them because it is essential that
we are independent and ready to make the best and fastest deals ever made in
the history of mankind for trade with all the rest of the world who are all
queuing up and gagging for trade deals with us as their top priority. If you
believe what the Government tells you …
So, just as after WWII and the Marshall Planning, we
are not in any way a part of the European deal. Which means we don’t have to
contribute anything, we have not obligations to anyone but ourselves, we are
not members of that community and we have no moral obligations whatsoever to
the rest of Europe — just as we didn’t under the Conservatives government of
1938. And we all know what a great idea that was!
STATUES ARE
REPLACEABLE, PEOPLE AREN'T
Finally, stop going on about the damned statues.
Statues are replaceable, people are not. And that one of Edward Colson in
Bristol. Who got hurt? There was no riot. It was actually a rather positive
event, as far as I could see, with people finally doing something important that
should have been done years ago. But of course Priti Patel and the government
of Boris Johnson can only see vandalism. To them it is another Boston Tea
Party. It is like that guy in the Doctor
Strangelove film who was unwilling to break into a Coca Cola machine to
retrieve 25 cents that could be used to make a phone call that might save the
world. Why? Because it was private property and you cannot mess with private
property!
If I were a black person, probably in the UK because
descended from slaves who had worked the plantations of the Caribbean once upon
a time, I too would find it pretty painful to walk past that statue in Bristol
and also Colson Hall every day. So the guy gave a lot of money to the city of
Bristol? Good for him. Do not deny that. But do not deny, also, that the money
came from owning human beings as livestock and that the livestock human beings
were worked harder than any horse or dog, refused any kind of education or
chance to widen their understanding of the world, and often treated with
contempt and sadism, except maybe for a couple of privileged house slaves —who
were cossetted sort of like the Kapos in the Nazi concentration camps, keeping
things in order for those in power. It was illegal in many states to teach
slaves to read. Think about it.
And while we are on the subject, apply some of the
thinking about these things to the anti-Semitic racism of the Labour Party
under Jeremy Corbyn. Not to mention the anti-Muslim problems of the
Conservative party. Muslims and Jews are telling you something. Are you
listening? Racism is not just the nasty, overt stuff that everyone decent can
abhor. It is also a lot of insidious acceptance of attitudes that perpetuate
the system and without even knowing it or noticing a lot of us probably are
colluding much of the time. That is how the accepted and “acceptable” attitude
towards Jews in Europe from about 1880 grew into death camps. That is how
policemen in the United States feel they can murder black men in their custody
and not be held to account.
JUSTICE
Rebecca Long-Bailey seems to have discovered the World
Jewish Conspiracy. Or had she been informed about it already by Jeremy Corbyn,
that great political theorist of international repute? How interesting: the
police forces of the USA have been sending their recruits to Tel Aviv to learn
about choke holds in all their variety. I see. And there is no instiutional
anti-Semtism in the Labour Party to deal with. Of course … Well, it would seem
that Keir Starmer, unlike his predecessor and also unlike Boris Johnson, can
actually be trusted to do what he says he will do and act decisively. He has
fired Ms Long-Bailey from the front bench. He seems to know anti-Semitism when
he sees it. Meantime, however, the Department of Justice in the USA is
effectively introducing the Divine Right of Presidents into the mix.
Ah, what a lovely world we do live in.
I propose, therefore, that instead of Fred and Ginger
movies the BBC iPlayer should have a season of classic Frank Capra films. He
deals with the impact on life of the wicked and the greedy, but they are always
secondary characters motivating the actions of the good people, and the good
people always win in the end. And sometimes the bad people even reform! Barbara
Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Jean Arthur – those characters you
played, where are they now?
