as a miner dies in relative obscurity
by Les May
EARLY
last Friday morning, a miner called John Anderson was killed in an East
Cleveland potash mine. His death was
relegated to page 13 of the 'i' newspaper and merited just a quarter of a page
of newsprint. Last Thursday an MP called
Joanne Cox was killed in the street. So far the same newspaper has devoted
eleven pages to her death which today included the fact that £800,000 has been
donated to a charitable fund set up by her friends.
For the
families of both of these people their deaths are an ongoing tragedy. But that is all that they have in
common. Mr Anderson's death has been
reported to HM Mines Inspectorate and no doubt there will be an inquest. That may merit a few lines in the national
press or it may not. Local Labour MP, Tom
Blenkinsop, has spoken of his concerns following the death and intends to meet
the mine owners ICL Ltd and the mine unions.
There is no reason to suppose that Mr Anderson's death was anything
other than a tragic accident. But
history suggests that if that presumption were to prove to be wrong no one
would appear in the dock charged with causing his death. A man has already been charged with the
murder of Joanne Cox.
There's
a bandwagon rolling and lazy journalists are determined to scramble aboard
before its too late. A particularly
inept sub-editor at the 'i' managed to confuse Joseph Priestley who in 1733 was
born in Birstall where the murder happened, with author J. B. Priestley who was
born in Bradford in 1894. A day before
in the same paper Joan Smith in an otherwise sensible article decided there was
a bit of mileage in referring to 'an apparent normalisation of the most
grotesque misogyny' and Andrew Grice took yet another opportunity to have a
go at Jeremy Corbyn just as he did the day after. It seems no one can resist the temptation to
use this tragedy to further their own agenda.
But it's
not just the media which have tried to use the killing to their advantage. The organisation 'Unite Against
Fascism' which sees a climate of 'racist discussion' on
immigration having been 'stirred up' during the EU referendum
campaigning. Whilst the Tories, Lib Dems
and UKIP all announced they would not contest the seat at the forthcoming
by-election the Liberty GB prospective candidate, a former BNP
member, announced his intention to stand by saying 'We cannot let Jo Cox's
death be in vain'. The North-east branch of 'National Action'
took the opportunity to post on Twitter, '#JoCox would have filled Yorkshire
with more subhumans'. I usually
think that invoking the word Nazi means you know you are losing the argument,
but for this comment it seems entirely appropriate.
Eager
not to be labelled as 'Stirrer up in Chief' Nigel Farage turned
psychiatrist saying the killing was the act of 'one man with serious mental
health issues'. This line will no doubt play well with those papers which
have done so much to use immigration to stoke up resentment against the EU, 'It wasn't me gov it was him'.
Even the
usually excellent Al Jazeera news channel managed to use it as an excuse to ask
why the killing had not been labelled 'terrorism' when this epithet is so
frequently attached to incidents involving Muslims.
Whatever
this killing was it was not terrorism.
The whole idea of 'terrorism' is to terrorise the population at large by
causing panic and uncertainty about whether you are going to be
the next casualty. Like the killing of
Lee Rigby in 2013 Joanne Cox's killing was a carefully targeted attack. Terrorists see the whole
population of a country as a legitimate target.
The IRA Manchester bomb of 1996, the Twin Towers attack of 2001, the
London Bombings of 2005, can all be accurately described as 'terrorism'. By the same token the targeted killing of
secular bloggers and academics in Bangladesh isn't terrorism either.
I find
it distasteful that after her untimely death Joanne Cox is being given the 'Sleb'
treatment by some sections of the media.
It's an old trick. Lavish praise
on what someone has done. Associate
yourself with similar views, which are of course the views of all 'right
thinking people', and hey presto, a nice bit of self praise emerges.
Whatever
Joanne Cox's qualities personally I'd like to see fewer MPs with a background
of university, working for a charitable organisation, then the House of
Commons, and more from John Anderson's background.
Whatever
I think of Simon Danczuk's antics as an author and MP, he is surely right to
draw attention to the fact that so many of his colleagues really do form a 'metropolitan
elite'. He could have added that
they inhabit the same 'Westminster Village' as the journalists who write
about them.
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