beware
long angry rant
by Dave Douglass
David Douglass worked as a coalminer in the coalfields of Durham and South Yorkshire, and was NUM Branch Delegate for Hatfield Colliery from 1979. He appears in the documentary The Miner's Campaign Tapes
to
discuss the role of the popular media in the strike of 1984–85. In
1994–95 he was Branch Secretary at Hatfield Main, but after the pit was
privatised the NUM no longer had any recognition there. Dave was also
until the 12th, August 2019 a Friend of Freedom Press, the anarchist
publisher.
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SINCE
Thatcher and Major decimated Britain's industrial base there has been
a seismic change in 'left' perceptions, and who exactly speaks for
'the left'. Consistently the working class itself, self-consciously
advancing its own interests not only embraced the politics of social
change, anti-capitalism, and socialism, it determined for itself the
how and what of strategy, tactics and general social outlooks. The
middle class 'left' the liberals the paper sellers in general stood
in awe at the mighty columns of organised labour and respected 'the
workers' as people who knew what was best for the class but knew who
the class was and how it thought. All other struggles and oppressions
and individual hardships suffered by this or that specific, sexism
or racism as symptoms of capitalism not necessarily overthrown by the
end of capitalism were nonetheless subsumed into the overall class
struggle, that being the struggle of the working class itself.
Some
tectonic plates however have shifted, and we find now on issue after
issue 'the left' is not by enlarge represented by horny handed sons
and daughters of labour, nor yet the mass of intellectual or
technical white-collar workers. Almost at every stage 'the left' now
confronts the opinions and politics of the working class , by 'the
working class' I am not talking figuratively here, I mean literally
the folk who labour by hand and by brain , the working class
communities, though mostly these are now post-industrial centers of
unemployment and social deprivation. These are the heartland of the
working-class traditions with conscious class struggle halls of fame.
The left now isn’t us, not these people, the left is now the army
of middle-class liberal leftists who deem to speak on our behalf and
know what’s best for us. In order to do this they have of course to
confront our own attitudes and outlooks and conclusions, so
consistently over the last twenty years 'the left' has defacto become
'anti the working class' at least how we express our opinions and
outlooks and conclusions.
Any collection of normal working-class folk
expressing opposition to what currently passes as left politics, is
likely to be designated 'far right' or any of the numerous 'isms'
which separate us out from the shining paths of liberal agendas.
Often the aspiration of the 'left' is synonymous with that of the
state itself, on issues such as remain or leave the EU, or racism,
transism, censorship, safe spaces etc. So often the 'left' has become
the cheerleader of the state singing off the same hymn sheet and
forgetting the most fundamental principle of class warfare, to keep
an independent identity from the state and its interests. The
bleating of the 'left' over social distancing, scooting folk out of
the parks or beaches, crying for harsher and longer curfews and
abandoning any notion of civil liberties and social freedoms.
The
Trade Union movement now that the big militant industrial unions like
the miners and shipyard and heavy engineering proletariat have gone
and construction workers and car and others have paled into
insignificance, it is the white collar and professional unions which
dominate. Not that the nature of the work union members do, or even
our opinions matter too much. The unions and the TUC are now
dominated by middle class liberal agenda's, re-education classes, PC
speak schools, and making policy fit the liberal middle class left
agenda is now the dominant 'culture' of the TUC. it is doubtful how
far workers are actually allowed to express their opinions on subject
like Brexit with unions like UNITE and GMB swinging in behind leave
agenda's despite their rank and file's opinions (RMT and ASLEF were
exceptions). The passing of anti-radical feminist policies denying the
existence of women as a biological sex, even in the Women’s
Commission of the TUC is a case in PC point.
You
could cite almost any major issue over the last twenty years and the
so-called left will have drawn the opposite conclusion to the bulk of
the actual working class and particularly the traditional working
class, postindustrial communities and regions. Brexit comes to
mind, but then also the degree of hysteria and anti-industrialization
in response to climate change is another, the remain position of the
PLP and NEC and host of bright young mainly southern middle class
liberals in the Labour Party itself, Identity
politics
and the trans
impositions, and oddly the lock down and attitudes to withdraw of
civil liberties and rights . There is now a miss match between those
who see themselves as the left leaders of the working class and the
working class itself. The attitude of the current left tends be
one of 'fuck
em'
if they won’t do as we tell them, they are all Tory, racist,
xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, fascists anyway. They appear
to find the working class and engaging with our politics at large,
entirely superfluous. In one way, it was this contempt for the
opinions of the working class communities which led to the surprising
victory of the Tories, the belief that Brexit- committed communities
in the rust belts who were the heartlands of Labour support would
never vote
Tory and could therefore be ignored. Actually I was one who swore
they would never vote Tory too I knew they were never going to vote
for Labour on a remain anti-industry program, but the degree of their
anger transcended for the space of time it took to put the cross on
their deep hatred of the Tories over generations of struggles. The
left is now expert at painting the working class into corners
charging us with racism, and empire loyalism monarchism and
patriotism and other such absurdities.
The
statue toppling hysteria sweeping the nation, no I understand not
many are being knocked over by groups of Simon pure iconoclasts, but
the fear that they will and the fear of being regarded as
reactionary, or racist has panicked City Councils into the
pre-emptively felling them themselves. Let’s be clear I have no
attachment to any of the victim statues thus far and I doubt that I
will shed any tears for any on the secret hit list. What rattles us
is that someone else has come along and imposed these judgements upon
us, that without public discussion and debate a group of unelected
vigilantes can decide what is 'appropriate'
for us to continue to view.
Cities are being scoured.for
offending masonry and brass and any obscure imperialist lackey can
now pay the price. This is
an
attempt to sanitize history it is
an
attempt to make the nasty history go away and remove memory of it,
when clearly we should be doing the opposite. They were erected
within a social and political context and thankfully that context has
now changed , the statue though is a reminder of social attitudes and
politics of the past , as long as there is adequate information
boards alongside there is no reason why they need to be removed. The
statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square is a case in point, was Nelson a
distinctive character of history who served the state and the cause
of his country as he would have seen it at the time? Obviously,
nobody today including the ruling class would aspire to empire
building and defense and colonialism which they did at the time,
almost anyone with a brain cell knows this is a historical monument
in a historical context. Actually it is quite interesting from
a social history point of view, walk round the base plinth and look
at the images of the seafarers in the height of the battle, look at
the racial composition of the crew and the ages of the lads running
through bombardments with gun powder for the guns, there is a clear
presence of black seamen and boys, volunteers earning their freedom
from slavery serving 'their' country. Statues and plaques are
interesting platforms for discussing history and understanding it.
Following the logic of the liberal iconoclast would surely see the
pyramids fall and the colosseum? There are already moves afoot to
move the statue of the emperor Constantine from York, it appears the
guardians have suddenly found out Roman Society was based on slavery,
there noo ! I think most of us knew that, it really doesn’t make
us want to run through the country uprooting all the many Roman
monuments and remains for fear we upset. Well who exactly?
Churchill
and the miners existed in mutual hatred and class warfare, as miners
children right through the post war period and before we were raised
on stories not so much of Goldilocks and three bears, but Churchill
and Tonypandy, and 26, and his hatred toward us. Was he due his
distinctive Mohican grass haircut and spray-paint during the class
war protest of a few years ago? Of course, he was. Was
he a distinguished member of the British ruling class and a memorable
character from history, of course he was. A statue of him in
the coalfields would be blown to kingdom come, but outside parliament
is fine by me, of course when we the miners pass it, our tale our
history in regard to him is somewhat different than the ones told by
the tour guides (incidentally see: 'The Day Britain Said No' a
more clear sighted history of Churchill) and dauntless any
demonstration by the working class or radical movements will find
expressions of class war on the statue and plinth, no problem here.
Can
I warn against allowing a simple 'hit list' of statues
and monuments and plaques as this will always favour those opposed to
and rarely those who defend, not least because the defenders won’t
know whether or not they need to do any defending or whether someone
is attacking something they think is valuable. Can I also warn
against taking at face value accusations against particular historic
figures, these may well come down to poor research or a particular
political or cultural or class interpretation. Scratching
around for something to link Tyneside and the river and the region
with the Slave Trade in order that we too might be suitably contrite
and consumed with self-guilt, on the day of the first, BLM
demonstration in Newcastle, Look North focused on Blackett Street.
Repeating a poorly researched piece in I think the Journal, talking
about Newcastle and the slave trade, the author firstly couldn’t
even spell Fredrick Douglass's name right ! But then went on to talk
about Blackett having made his fortune in an offshoot of the slave
trade by importing Rum. A totally misguided image was thus conjured
up enough that now the name Blackett Street is now on some hit lists.
Let’s be clear Blackett was a Liverpudlian , Liverpool being
certainly a center of the slave trade though also strongly working
class opponent of it. Blackett had started as a young merchant
apprentice to his Cousin who did make his fortune in slaves, but he
himself didn’t. The fortune and business and wealth of the river,
city and region was coal not slaves. Of course, at this time boy
miners from six years old worked in the mines, bonded to the coal
owners and not allowed to run away or be employed elsewhere on pain
of imprisonment the blacklist and starvation. This is the wrong sort
of slavery of course, since these children who happened to be
sometimes white, if they found time between the 18 hour shifts to get
bathed and eat and sleep. Doubtless some middle-class liberal PC wit
will tell us they had 'white privilege' although I’ve never
discovered just what that was. It’s almost certainly true Blackett
would have received cases or barrels of rum from his cousin, all rum
consumed worldwide was based on the slave trade , as was tea, and
cotton and much else, but this wasn’t how fortunes were made on the
Tyne or Newcastle which were NOT part of the slave trade other than
living in a country and state which overall was. We had no specific
connection and the penitents ought to stop scraping the bottom of
(rum) barrels to find one.
The
problem with a witch hunt is once you start looking, the world is
full of witches. All Judeo-Christian traditions including Islam have
condoned slavery. Neither Mohamad or Jesus condemned it or
banned it or spoke or instructed against it, the bible
euphemistically refers to master’s 'servants' rather than
the slaves they actually were. Paul went further and instructed the
slaves not to disobey their masters and work hard for them.
This means all religious statues, churches, temples in that tradition
Islam, Judaism, and Christianity could be charged with complicity and
excusing slavery worldwide and therefore should be removed and shut
down.
Modern
morality imposes strict age limitations on sexual relationships,
courtship and marriage, all sorts of outrage and repudiation is
heaped upon those who breach the law or the consensus, but history
had no restrictions especially on kings and queens. If the trend is
to take modern values and mores back into ancient history regardless
of context and understanding of past society, the censorship of past
artifacts could be unlimited. How many kings and queens have
been under 16 or were not even teenagers when they married,?
How many preteens and even on occasion babies, were married? The
whole of European history as it is represented could be shut down.
So,
buildings, paintings and statues and books and even the history of
such times could be banned and removed from view or knowledge.
The young comrades of the Chinese Red Guard during the so called
'cultural revolution' in their enthusiasm for change,
destroyed swathes of ancient Chinese heritage believing it was
keeping China in the past. it wasn’t of course, as the miner’s
slogan says 'the past we inherit the future we build'.
We
have to acknowledge that Britain was a long time Imperialist and
colonialist state, it invaded other countries, it imposed empires it
suppressed other cultures and peoples, throughout that long period of
the 'empire of which the sun never set' statutes and heroes of
the time were built and commemorated. If the attempt is to be
allowed to remove all markers to these people and any attempt to see
them in historic context then essentially any appreciation of history
will be impossible. All statues of Victoria and all other imperial
monarchs, generals, wars , must be removed, Lord Collinwood springs
to mind, certainly no Mr Nice Guy to his crews. Baden Powell the
founder of the scout movement, unsurprisingly an imperialist empire
loyalist, was not put up for that reason, but for founding the
international scouting movement. Shock horror they now discover he
condemned homosexuality, but society condemned homosexuality, it was
highly illegal and poor souls rotten in jails, were beaten and
murdered for the offence, that was the injustice of the period in
which he lived. Also as man trying to found an organization of
little boys would hardly be a public advocate of same sex
relationships would he ?, pedophilia being synonymous with
homosexuality in those days.
A
controversial figure in history, not particular Mr Nice Guy might
well still be important corner stones of history and events and
worthy of marking. I would expect that if Adolf Hitler had been born
on Pilgrim Street Newcastle a plaque at least would mark this fact,
that would simply be a historic marker and not some celebration or
badge of honour.
The
miners have particular reason to remember our slavery and oppression
and see in the character of Lord Londonderry in Durham City Centre a
monument worthy of removal, but how would that serve our history?
That statue allows us to tell that story, and to demonstrate that the
same history can have at least two versions and two sets of facts. I
use it often given on the stump lectures.
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