Students threaten to reanimate the Levellers claimed one satirical news article back 2010 at the height of the student protests. This came as a surprise to a lot of Levellers fans who knew the band had been consistently touring and producing great music during fourteen years since the Swampy and the Fairmile A30 protests. In fact their 2008 album, Letters from the Underground, is the best thing they done since the Zeitgeist.
A sign of the continuing popularity of Levellers is the fact they a simple Google search for their name returns the band as a result above the 17th Century political moment they take their name from. This is interesting as the 17th Century Levellers had a profound influence on the shaping of western democracy and a lot of what we now take for granted began with them. I find it strange that they are not more widely known about, just as I thought it strange that The Daily Mash thought The Levellers were dead.
The Levellers were an important political movement after the English Civil War and were one of the first movements campaigning for what we would understand as modern democracy. They had no fixed goals or manifesto and were not a political party, however, they did have a loose list of demands for reform. These included suffrage for the entire adult male population, reform of the electoral process, parliamentary elections to be held every two years, religious tolerance and end to debtors’ prisons. These demands did not make up the whole of what Levellers stood for; they were a broad political and social movement for all men aimed at removing corruption from the political and judicial system. They wanted to make the government more open to ordinary people and remove some of the bias towards the wealthy land owners who dominated 17th Century politics.
During the lifetime of the movement, few of the Leveller’s demands were adopted by parliament. The surviving Levellers themselves might have thought they failed - but ultimately they our modern democratic system is based on a lot of their demands. No longer is the country ruled by the landed elite, and suffrage for all, religious freedom and regular elections are considered the cornerstone of the democracy Western nations export around the world.
More than this, the Levellers became an icon of the everyman’s resistance against the oppression of the wealthy elite. They are the promise that a corrupt and exclusive political system will fall and that egalitarianism will triumph. This spirit lives on in the radical politics of today, as it did in the late 1980s when the band Levellers formed. Levellers incorporated the earlier Levellers iconography into their own identity, combining it with modern ideas about anarchism and environmentalism. This all felt very appropriate under a Tory government in the pockets of wealthy business owners, with no working class representation in government. Thatcher had been power for a decade when their first album, A Weapon Called the Word, was released and the goals of the Levellers seemed as relevant then as it did during the time of the New Model Army.
It is also relevant today with growing numbers of MPs from privileged backgrounds - a third of MPs are privately educated, compared to only 7% of the population. Again we have a Tory government in the pocket of large business and growing feeling that most people’s views are not represented by the political classes. The time seems right for another Levellers movement, what we go was something similar.
When Occupy took up resident on Wall Street on 17th of September 2011 they were accused of being a lot of unwashed anarchists, the age old accusations levelled at anyone who wants change but does not come from an acceptably privileged background. There was also a lot of criticism of their lack of focus and absence of clear goals. They only had a nebulous list of demands, including more protection for the environment and an inquiry into the role of big business in politics. I am sure the same criticism was made of Levellers over three centuries earlier.
I cannot help the seeing the similarity between two these two radical movements, both staked up against enormous vested interests, both with a list of general critiques of the political system. Both with the same underlying principals: our government is skewed towards the vested interests of the wealthy, our political system is corrupt and we do not get an adequate say in how we are governed.
Occupy might seem like a failed dream now, much like the Levellers goals did in 1650, but the criticism lives on and maybe in the future things will be different. Perhaps in three hundred years time the goals of Occupy will underpin our political system, political systems where checks and balances are put in place against views of the wealthy being over represented. Maybe in the future there will be a band called Occupy who will be more famous than the movement and most people will take for granted the political freedoms people in the past suffered for.
The enduring legacy of the Levellers is that the desire for change, for a fairer society, does not die and gets reborn with every new generation who take the goals of the past and combine it with the needs of today. The desire for a fairer, free, less corrupt and skewed society cannot be stamped out. It might take centuries for change to manifest itself but a wealthy few cannot hold back the tide of righteous anger of the many forever. Remember that Levellers are still alive and producing good music and remember that the dreams of 17th Century radicals are still alive and influencing people today.
Socialism. The word used to strike fear into the hearts of the rich and privileged. It is the patient insistence that everyday people would someday seize the excess of the wealthy few and spread it around more fairly. It has been the foundation of nations and political movements. Leading right-wing politicians and economists have spent enormous amounts of effort convincing the poor they would be worse off if the wealth was distributed more evenly. Socialism was a banner under which large sections of the left were happy to assemble.
Today socialism has little traction. Few, if any, British politicians openly identity as socialist and not even the most easily rattled elements of the right wing press feel the need to argue against it. No one seems to take socialism seriously anymore. If someone identifies as socialist it gives the impression of either being chronically out of touch with current political debate or being a generational throw back who is still fighting the miners’ strike.
This seems strange if you read the news. Unemployment is high, The gap between rich and poor is widening, class mobility is at an all-time low, private utility companies are making huge amounts of money while ordinary people are having choose between food and warmth. Global inequality is reaching crisis point, as the 85 richest people in the world now own more wealth than half the population. Oxfam has expressed concern about the massive inequality of wealth.
The current situation appears to be the perfect breeding environment for socialist ideas.
However, the political establishment is yet to be rocked by hordes of people assembling outside parliament singing Billy Bragg songs and demanding the renationalisation of the utility companies. Instead politicians continue to cut benefits and the media stereotypes the poor as criminals and scroungers on shows like Benefit Street.
So if we accept that the time is right for socialism but nothing is happening is the problem socialism itself? Does the public feel the socialism has been given its time and has failed? Given a low level of interest in socialist ideas it is a plausible explanation. This means that ideas of wealth redistribution and public ownership could be revived under a new banner, one which brings in modern ideas of environmentalism and multiculturalism and combines them with old values like full employment and progressive taxation redistributing income.
Giving the old ideology a fresh coat of red paint and send it back out into the world to frighten the rich all over again is a tempting course of action. The problem is this has not happened. No new movement has emerged as a successor to socialism. Occupy packed up and went home. The trade unions occasionally try and launch a new left-wing party but nothing comes from it. Even the Green party can barely get a representative on the news despite having more MPs and more supporters than UKIP.
At this point is helpful to take a look at feminism, the only left wing ideology making any form of progress right now. Campaigns such as No More Page Three or Lose the Lad Mags are getting media attention and have genuine grass roots support from activists. On top of that there is the growth in feminist groups at universities and colleges, successful social media campaigns such as Everyday Sexism and young rising star MPs such as Stella Creasy openly identifying as feminist. It would be nice if socialism had this level of exposure.
However, it was not always this way. In 1998, Time magazine proclaimed that feminism was dead. Feminism had a poor public image and was losing support amongst young politically engaged women, the key group it needed to be successful. It was argued that the word feminism was too inflammatory and had the wrong image. It was said that women’s rights needed a new movement to reach out to young women and get them interested in gender politics. This did not happen and eventually the old movement rose again with young feminist thinkers of today drawing their ideology directly from the last hey-day of feminist activity in the 1960s.
So what happened? Mainly a core group of activists remained loyal to the ideology and continued to work hard keeping the movement alive. Feminism adapted to a new political environment and used modern resources such as social media to unite a divided movement around important, clearly stated goals such as making The Sun drop Page 3. Successful campaigns have built momentum and encourage others to be active in the movement. The evidence is against dropping the old ideology and reinventing. Stay true and wait for the world to take notice again.
The good news for socialists is that there are places where this already happening. The US has seen a growth in socialist movements as liberal voters becoming increasingly dissatisfied with how similar the two main parties have become. It seems unlikely that America could the basis of a socialist revival, a country where the mere accusation of being red can ruin political careers. Although socialists have yet to have any impact on the political establishment there has been a growth in Marxist and left leaning journals such as the New Inquiry. As the notion of liberalism is watered down in America, the genuinely progressive need somewhere else to go.
A political party with a commitment to socialism in the UK seems a long way off, but that does not mean socialism is dead. A revival will come, partly because the current state of the economy and the growing wealth inequality proves that the ideas are still relevant. Socialism does not need a name change, what it needs are activists that can keep the struggle going and adapt to new opportunities as they come along. The sun does not set on ideologies; they just go out of fashion temporarily before being popular again.
It is one of those strange footnotes to history that there were still Japanese soldiers fighting World War Two up until the mid-1970s. It seems almost farcical and would doubtless make the subject of a great comic tragedy, a cross between Blackadder Goes Forth and Letters from Iwo Jima. This bizarre occurrence is back in the public’s perception with the death of 91 year old Hiroo Onoda.
Hiroo Onoda was a Lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War 2. He was ordered not to surrender and was cut off from the main Japanese army when they surrendered on 15 the August 1945. Lieutenant Onoda continued to hold out on the jungle island of Lubang, part of The Philippines, until 1974 when his elderly former superior officer was dispatched to rescind the orders he had been carrying out for three decades.
It is easy to mock Lieutenant Onoda as someone who ignored the blindingly obvious truth that Japan had been defeated and that continued resistance was futile. It seems logical that after ten years with no word and no one sent to relieve his position Lieutenant Onoda would give up, which makes it is easy to dismiss him as crazy, deluded or fanatical but I admire his strength of will and refusal to give up despite very difficult circumstances.
This not to say that I condone the killing of up to 30 other inhabitants of Lubang through raids and skirmishes with Lieutenant Onoda over the 29 years where he kept fighting the Second World War but his circumstances are clearly extraordinary, which is why The Philippine government pardoned him when he finally did surrender to Philippines President Marcos in 1974.
The story of Lieutenant Onoda, and the humour which usually accompanies it, is a reminder that it is easy to scorn and mock people of strong, sometimes unmovable, beliefs. Many people believe that an ideological flexibility is superior to the petty squabbles of politics and look down on those who identify as belonging to either side of the spectrum. A lot of the time this is just aggressive centrism and a healthy sense of self-superiority but it indicates a marked distain for anyone with strong principals. I for one prefer identifying as belonging to an ideology and having a set of principals which I can be held to. It makes it easier to tell who has genuine principals and whose beliefs are mutable to whatever is fashionable.
In my life I have been accused of a certain ideological Onodaism; not changing course, denying plain evidence and refusing to accept when I have been proved wrong. I believe having strong beliefs is not a character weakness, I believe it shows strength of character and courage of conviction. Having strong beliefs gives people courage during hard and testing times; as I am sure Lieutenant Onoda’s belief in Japan gave him the strength to continue to carry out his orders. Sometimes it seems easier to flip-flop in the face of great opposition, but the most interesting and courageous people are the ones who stand by what they believe in.
This is not to say that it is acceptable to be aggressive towards people who have less strong or different convictions to yourself; just as it was not acceptable for Lieutenant Onoda to kill those people. However it should be remembered that what is a plain and obvious truth to one person can be opaque to a different person in different context. We can see that in the leaflets dropped on Lubang to encourage Lieutenant Onoda to surrender. He later said in an interview: "The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans". A simple fact can be viewed differently by different people. This is why we need a spectrum of political debate to ensure that different interpretations are taken into account. Ideological flexibility or aggressive centrism can be bywords for letting the majority always have their way.
It is easy to laugh at Lieutenant Onoda and his three decades of personal warfare but I feel it shows exceptional strength of character and determination to continue for so long. I hope these are characteristics we value as a society and aspire to individually. I hope we can all show some of the determination of Lieutenant Onoda.
I was 4 years old when Nelson Mandela was released on 11th February 1990 and 28 years old when he died on 5th December 2013. In the intervening 24 years, I dealt with explicit episodes of racist behaviour punctuated with the word “Paki”, and insidious questions about why I didn't conform to stereotype and to whom my cricket allegiances belonged.
All these are small things compared to life for black South Africans prior to 1990, many hardships attedant upon their status as second-class citizens under apartheid – no votes, racial segregation and the infamous Pass Laws, restricting their free movement. A non-exhaustive list of abuse, all happening because of race.
Much was said about Mandela the peacemaker. Some have called him a terrorist – this notion is disabused in detail within this post from the blog “Africa is a country” and I don't seek to rehash what Tony Karon says under the first myth, save to say that amongst all the obituaries, this included, his post is worthwhile companion reading.
Beginning with his birth in 1918 and a childhood in Mvezo, Transkei, his time at Fort Hare University would set the tone of much of his adult life. It was here he met Oliver Tambo, future leader of the African National Congress, the party that he joined in 1943 and would eventually lead as president in 1994.
Much was made about the violence wrought by him in the bombings when he led the “Umkhonto we Sizwe” (Spear of the Nation), in pursuit of branding him a terrorist. His actions as a guerilla were a response to the disproportionately violent repression meted out upon non-violent protestors, his actions only targeting symbols of the ruling Afrikaner powers, never civilians. When non-violent protest failed, he felt he had little choice but to respond with armed struggle.
Charges of sabotage brought against him in 1964 would eventually see him spend a life sentence in Robben Island, 26 years of which he would spend carrying out hard labour whilst the world around him saw the success of the US Civil Rights Movement, the blood spilt in the Vietnam War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
During those 26 years, people woke up to the evil perpetrated by the apartheid upon black South Africans and surely, though certainly not without its impediments, progress was forthcoming. The world’s attention was focused on their suffering and demands pushed on the regime to repudiate the repression wrought on them. The UN passed arms embargoes and pressured the other nations of the world to pass economic sanctions. Some would try to gloss over these wrongs, like Barclays’ R90 million sponsorship of the South African army during the currency of the regime, the Thatcher government’s resistance to imposition of sanctions, and the 1980s Young Conservatives “Hang Mandela” posters, amongst many.
Mandela pushed through in those 26 years, never losing his dignity, though his relationship with his family was strained. He emerged into a world different from the one he was taken away from, but never lost his focus and, despite turbulent events in the process, helped to negotiate the end of apartheid. This led to the first multi-racial elections in South Africa and his election as President in 1994, whilst heading the ANC party. His establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was part of his ethos of national reconciliation, helping the country move on in the face of latent post-apartheid strife between white and black South Africans, even boiling down to encouraging the nation to back their national rugby team, the Springboks. Later years would see him help in the Northern Ireland peace process and take part in bringing resolution to the Lockerbie bombing.
During his years in Robben Island, Mandela would recite Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” to other prisoners, and provided an extract of the speech to Francois Pienaar, the Springbok captain who led the team to victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Mandela was such a man, his face marred, but never faltering. He knew victory when he helped defeat apartheid and became President in 1994. His example will continue to shine and inspire the ever-continuing struggle against injustice and prejudice.
A young man sits in a cream coloured chair; he is thin and tall, unshaven, with long messy Hoxton hair. His clothes are fashionable and the top few buttons of his shirt are undone. He leans forward earnestly; desperate to be taken seriously, when he speaks it is with a manic energy. He moves seamlessly from off the cuff remarks to buzz words taken from the meta-tags of any news website: “the 1%”, “occupy”, “apathy”. His words do not always make sense, his points half formed, he has more passion than facts and towards the end he starts to lose his temper.
Opposite sits an older man, relaxed, confident in his own element, his suit is well tailored but not flashy. He has a beard, a change of image, it looks a little out of place. He leans back with easy confidence. His body language, his mood, his words are dismissive. He knows the problems with everything the young man says; the flaws, the details passed over, the over-ambition and the under-planning. He remains calm but over time grows more hostile and less accommodating.
It would be easy to characterise this as an argument between the young and the old or the left and the right, but it is really an argument of change against more of the same. The young embrace new ideas and flirt with left wing radicalism. The old have become jaded, they have seen so many grand-narratives rise and fall and see the same arguments, the same failings, repeated endlessly. They have become cynical and selfish and it’s easier to dismiss someone for their lack of thought than listen to their complaints.
This is the point we have reached as a society, change or more of the same. Soon, the political parties will begin the run up to the 2015 general election. Labour will promise change and the Conservatives will stand on the “more of the same” platform. However many young, poor and disenfranchised voters will see both as offering more of the same. On the ballot paper there is the same austerity, the same bowing to the Murdoch press and big business, the same paralysis to tackle the growing problem of climate change. There is a feeling that a vote will change nothing. The change we want individually cannot be gained by a single vote so it seems to be worthless. Any change that is promised is rarely delivered on. So many do not vote.
Onto this stage steps Russell Brand: to some an icon, to others a misogynist and for many, easy to dismiss as another pop-culture fad. The main message people will take away from his recent New Statesman editorial and his interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight is Billy Connolly ‘s old gag of “don’t vote - it only encourages them”. I think Brand was aiming for something grander, closer to Gandhi’s “be the change that you wish to see in the world”, something encouraging to the disaffected. However, the cliff notes version has been condensed to “don’t bother voting, nothing changes”.
This is, of course, what a lot of people think: “the current crop of politicians on offer does not represent what I want so I won’t vote for any of them”. This is usually countered by: “if you do not vote for X, Y will get in.” On the left Y is usually the BNP, UKIP or Tories. This is hardly a call to revolution: “vote Labour, the best of a bad bunch”. It is hard to build an energising national campaign around: “we’re not Y”. But this is where the left is. Many of feel us less than inspired by our leaders, both in parliament, the trade unions and the media. Tony Benn is old and ill, broken down by a lifetime of not quite achieving his aims. His son, Hilary Benn, does not represent the values we want. This seems like the best metaphor for how we feel on the left.
Brand, the Hoxton Hipster, with his don’t vote, spiritual revolution in the mind message could be the best encapsulation of a generation of young lefties. He is easily dismissed by the right for being childish, impractical and sensationalist, but he makes some good points in his Paxman interview and 4,500 word New Statesman leader which resonates with a lot of people. He says some of things we want our leaders to be discussing which are firmly off the table, mainly inequality and the environment. However his overall message lacks a grand narrative and falls down on the details.
So this is where we are as the left? Russell Brand as our spiritual leader? Is this because the right is so dominant in media? Is it because in a post-Thatcher world the political spectrum has moved so much to the right that only someone who is pretty far out can represent us? Are our views so far out of touch with mainstream politics that only a clown can voice them? Or is he a medieval court jester, the only one who is allowed to criticise the king because his comments are couched in humour? If no one takes him seriously he can say whatever he wants, which is the perfect moment to say something deadly serious.
I for one approve how of Brand is bringing leftwing issues to national attention. His personal life, obsessive self-promotion and endless discussion of his own life make his good points easy to dismiss and I sometimes wish he would just tone it all down a little to be taken that much more seriously. However if it gets people talking, thinking and most importantly reading more on left wing subjects than he can only be a good thing. He can be a gateway drug to the left. The convert goes from Russell Brand to Laurie Penny to Robert Tressell. Much the same way that Catlin Moran works for feminism. I am glad someone is kicking up a fuss or no one would be.
When it comes to his non-voting I must disagree. Partly because I subscribe to the “if you do not vote for X, Y will get in” tribalist leftwing view but mainly because democracy is decided by those who show up. Brand’s comedy shows are aggressively marketed at the youth because they turn up to them. However they do not show up to the ballot box so politicians do not target their policies towards the young. If the young voted at the same rate they purchased Hoxton haircuts then a whole range of issues would be on the table. Politicians would take inequality, the environment, youth unemployment, LGBTQ rights and drug legislation much more seriously than they do now. Brand lays the problems for disenfranchisement squarely at the feet of politicians. Others lay it out feet of those who do not vote. I personally think it is fault of both. The youth let politicians down by not engaging with political issues. Politicians let the youth down by not engaging with the issues that matter to them. It takes courage to involve yourself in the political process (and this goes beyond voting) and can be painful but it is essential to achieve want you want. Brand’s change of consciousness sounds like a good idea but it will mean nothing if the change stops short of the ballot box.
We are left with the basic decision of change or more of the same and I think the young, the poor, the disenfranchised and apathetic are still not convinced by either argument. The mainstream left has drifted dangerously close to more of the same as we need to stand for change like Russell Brand does. The left is in trouble when only a clown to speak for us and take the ridicule. We are also in trouble if old cynical people can dismiss us so easily. We have legitimate criticisms but sometimes we make them in ways which do not resonate where they are needed. Converting disenfranchised non-voters will be essential to winning the argument. The left needs to work harder at listening to their reasons for not voting. Above all we need to be better. Better at what we do, how we argue and how we present ourselves. When Russell Brand is the best icon of our movement we need to think hard about what sort of movement we want to be. Then go out and build it.
It’s easy to be taken in by headlines. Not least when they’re about something that most of us enjoy: a few drinks. With headlines such as “Binge drinking costs NHS billions”, not to mention the Daily Mail’s propensity towards ‘hell in a hand-cart’ stories complete with photos of drunken young women sprawled on benches, you could be forgiven for thinking that Britain is in the midst of a binge drinking epidemic. Young people – those lager louts and alcopop-swigging girls – usually seem to take the lion’s share of the blame.
The statistics tell a different story, though. Overall alcohol consumption per capita in the UK peaked in 2004, and has declined since then – a trend that began noticeably earlier than the the current recession, when reduced consumer spending of all kinds could be expected. In real terms, alcohol is less expensive, mainly due to a shift in sales from pubs to supermarkets. And from 2003, we’ve also had 24 hour licensing laws, resulting in the demise of the mandatory 11pm call for last orders at the bar. So alcohol is less expensive and available for more of the day, yet we’re actually drinking less of it. It’s not even as if this trend masks a more specific problem of youth binge drinking. Alcohol consumption among men aged 16-24 has been declining sharply and consistently ever since 1998 (from 26 units per week then to 15 now). Some reports suggest that, despite perceptions, it’s the baby boomer generation who are more likely to overdo the booze.
Singling out and demonizing young people by the hand-wringing rightwing press is unfair and misleading. But this isn’t to say that there isn’t a problem with the drinking patterns of young people, or that these patterns can’t be changed for the better. What policies could foster a healthier drinking culture amongst young people? My argument is that, far from helping, stricter ID laws (such as ‘Think 25’) have the exact opposite of their intended effect, and exacerbate an unhealthy drinking culture. Instead, the government ought to ‘call time’ on this approach, and instead reduce the legal drinking age from 18 to 16.
When I was 16-17, it was relatively easy to get served in many pubs – illegally, of course. By the time my peers and I reached 18, we were familiar with pub culture, how to behave when drinking in a public place, and the risks (i.e. getting chucked out or worse) of not doing so. It’s become much more difficult since then. A friend of mine who worked for years behind a university bar claims that this change could be seen in the way freshers drank. They began turning up, aged 18, with very little experience of pubs or how to behave in them, whilst drinking just as much as previous students – much of it in their rooms instead of the bar. This is because making access to pubs more difficult doesn’t reduce under age drinking, it just drives it into homes – or parks and wasteland – with cheap supermarket spirits. Young people who are excluded from pubs may well never come back to them even when they are old enough, and instead develop a potentially more dangerous pattern of drinking exclusively at home. The current trend away from pub sales and towards supermarkets, not to mention runaway pub closures, appears to back this up.
Allowing 16 and 17 year olds to legally drink in pubs, in a supervised environment, would be a good way of teaching young people to drink responsibly. For this to work, it would have to be limited to pubs only – not supermarkets or off-licences. But this would be no bad thing; the supermarkets are already powerful and profitable enough as it is, whereas pubs – many of them struggling small businesses – could use the extra income. Ideally, it would exclude sales of unmixed spirits and shots, although I accept that this aspect may be difficult to enforce. It should also exclude clubs, where antisocial behaviour or excessive consumption may go unobserved more easily.
It’s a given that there’d be a lot of opposition to such a policy. The big supermarkets and off licence chains would hate it for a start, and they’re a powerful lobbying voice. Some would claim that it would merely increase alcohol use in a society that already drinks too much. Others may argue that, whatever the benefits, pubs are an adult environment and should remain so. But how can we expect 16 and 17 year olds to act responsibly if society treats them like children? How can it be right that you can legally have sex, join the army or even get married at 16, but can’t buy a drink at your own wedding reception?
In a society that always seems to believe the worst about young people, the temptation is to turn the screws ever tighter, make alcohol ever more difficult to legally obtain. This is the prevailing attitude in a society seemingly run by and for the now ageing and suspicious baby boomers. But like all prohibitionists, those who support this deny the reality of consumption. Much like cannabis, or the sex trade, consumption already exists. In the same way that the ‘war on drugs’ hasn’t reduced drug taking, stricter drinking laws haven’t stopped young people obtaining and using alcohol. It just relegates it from the controlled environment of the pub to the unregulated and dangerous sphere of the alley or park. If we accept that drinking alcohol is a part of our culture, it’s nonsensical to deny young people a setting in which to learn to do it responsibly. It’s not about whether we should ‘encourage’ consumption or attempt to curtail it. It’s about being pragmatic, realistic, and for want of a better word – adult – when it comes to booze.
Being bullied in school is not something I choose to remember often. At the time it had to be endured until I had passed my GCSEs. Looking back at it now, there were broadly two types of bullies: there were the kids from the bad estates and the broken homes who lashed out seemingly at random, you could forgive them for their circumstance, never offered a chance at life, they did not know who or what they were angry at.
Then there was the other type. The posh, sporting alpha-male bullies, who even by their early teens knew that society existed for their benefit. They bullied because they could get away with it. I am sure their self-confidence, ability to intimate others and the fact that society is structured to progress them has allowed these bullies to become highly successful hedge fund managers.
Or they could have turned into politicians like Godfrey Bloom, a UKIP MEP who sees himself as a champion of the ordinary, powerless man in the street who has been disenfranchised by the liberal political elites. His view is that the sensible voice of the British public has been drowned out by a torrent of political correctness, EU regulation and feminism. Yet for all his claims to be a political outsider who fights for the voiceless of Britain, it is clear he is nothing more than a pro-establishment bully.
Like most bullies Bloom seems to enjoy picking on people weaker than him, not the physically weaker but the politically weaker, people in less developed nations. He caused serious offence by suggesting that the government should cut aid to ‘Bongo Bongo land’. He also clearly has little respect for women after writing on the website politics.co.uk "Women, in spite of years of training in art and music - and significant leisure time in the 18th and 19th Centuries - have produced few great works." He goes on to claim that women are better in the pantry (what normal person has a pantry anymore) and that men are better at parallel parking. By using these offensive stereotypes he gathers support for his policies of protecting white male establishment at the expense of everyone else.
Life must have been pretty easy for Godfrey Bloom, being sporty, posh and confident. Success in life is generally graded against things he is good at. He succeeds in competitions, sporting and commercial, because the rules are fixed in his favour. However this process of fixing the rules of society in favour of rich white men is threatened by liberals and feminism which Bloom dislikes and takes every opportunity to insult. He wrote this confusing statement on men who support feminism: “They are … men who seem to have no link with the usual social and sporting male preserves, the slightly effete politically correct chaps who get sand kicked in their face on the beach.” I have read this over about ten times and I have no idea what it means. What I do know is that he is talking about me, someone who does not like sport or beaches. I am not sure why he thinks people kick sand in my face, but I think that Bloom implies that he is the one doing the kicking.
Well of course he is kicking sand into the faces of liberals. Why would such a person support an ideology that seeks to enfranchise others? Bloom stands to lose out from liberalism and feminism. Liberals and feminists stand directly opposed to a system rigged in Bloom's favour.
Bloom is the worst kind of bully. The one with the weight of society behind them. He claims to be a dissenting voice against the liberal establishment, but this is a lie. It is a lie he has told so many times he believes it himself, but it is still a lie. The truth is that Godfrey Bloom is the embodiment of the establishment and it is only because of the implicit support for establishment figures that anyone listens to him at all.
However, as school taught me, the one thing worse than the bullies were the kids who stood behind the bullies and jeered them along. The ones who gave the bullies the validation they need. These are the people who like Bloom's political incorrectness. These jeering lackeys are the white middle-class men who are so afraid of change because it will diminish their lot.
UKIP are playground bullies but their jeering supporters are those who are lazily pro-establishment. It is our simple minded dislike of Europe, of immigrants and belief in a fictional British history that gives power to UKIP. It also our belief that the poor are poor because they are lazy and that feminists are complaining about non-existent inequality that helps the bullies go stronger. As a nation we are the truly despicable ones, the ones who jeer as bullies like Godfrey Bloom pick on someone else.
