Fuck Neo-Liberalism!
By Ed Clarke
So for the last few weeks, I've been at somewhat of a loose end, in the respect that I really want to be out, placing my boots on the ground, fighting the Tories with all my strength and muster but I found that strength and muster was diverted away from where it should be. It had to be redirected into defending my ideals, the ideals of hundreds of thousands of people and the idea that one man has made mainstream.
I've found that I've had to use all my energy in defending the ideals of anti-austerity, of kinder politics, of democratic socialism as opposed to a hard, vicious free market capitalism for the privileged few. A hard right political ideal that is being marketed by chosen people from the top of our society, a group of people that have no clue what it's like for people in real life, a life that is the polar opposite to a life of expenses claims for anything they like, a life that is a polar opposite to £76,000 a year salary whilst the rest of us can barely make ends meet and are living a hand to mouth existence.
These were the people I should have been fighting but I wasn't, because I was forced into having defend our movement from the onslaughts we faced on a daily basis from the Tory party, the mainstream media and sadly people who we should have been calling comrade but who sadly had become our attackers.
This whole farcical episode I can only assume was an attempt from the capitalistic structures of our establishment to beat down what in my eyes looks like a shift in the spectrum, away from the usual political machinations of Westminster, whereby we, the people, have our little serving of democracy every 5 years and then it's business as normal, and there's nothing us “low achievers” can do about it – to a more democratised system with people and the environment at the very heart of it. A political machination whereby the needs of the many and our environment are put ahead of the very capitalist structures that are causing the absolute cluster fucks of situations which we are witnessing unfold daily.
We only have to look around and see how our society is gradually failing and turning in upon itself, and how we are slowly descending into an abyss which we will struggle to climb out of.
Child poverty in this country is at a record high yet we are one the richest, highly intelligent (apparently), technologically advanced countries on this planet we call home. Homelessness has soared. Our democratically elected government (apparently) believes it's ok to draw distinct lines between people of this country and people from outside this country. What is a country? What makes someone born in Great Britain any different from someone born in Poland or Spain or Jamaica ? Other than imaginary fucking line on a piece of fucking paper.
Our government gave a green fucking light for racist and fascist attacks to be acceptable in the wake of EU referendum. Now I'm not saying that everyone that voted to leave is racist as that's a ridiculous statement, however what is has done is that it has stirred some of the most vile people in our society to believe that their views are the accepted mantra. Well they're not and they can fuck off back to where they came.
There were two parties that made the EU referendum toxic and all about race, the Tories and UKIP.
At no point was there any intelligent debate being offered to the British people. The whole fucking episode was a mess of lies and vitriol. How on earth were the people supposed to make an educated decision? But then perhaps that's what they wanted, polarise the issue make it black and white – immigrants or no immigrants.
Now what do we have? Amber Rudd,the Home Secretary, at the Tory party back slapping contest making a speech whereby apart from one journalist accurately pointing out it is akin to chapter two of Mein Kampf, has been completely ignored by our “FREE” press. Schools are now sending letters and text messages to parents demanding to know in what country their child was born and what nationality they are. But am I surprised? Not really because I knew this would happen. Am I sad because of this? Yes, I am.
Yet all the while the “FREE” press focus on a man that has radically altered the way politics is done in this country. Now before I start, there will be very many people who disagree with what I say next and there will be many who do agree, however I state what I say as merely my own opinion, if you agree fine, if you don't then too bad.
A man was elected he presented a set of ideals, a lot of people said “Hey, I agree with that, let's vote for him." So they did and he won. That was September last year, straight away the cogs and sprockets in the engine of Westminster were revving hard. Up to this point they'd been in total control. THIS could not be allowed. THIS is not the status quo. WE don't do things like this, it's just not cricket.
The next 12 months for me were the most taxing time of my life politically. So many blind individuals who just outright failed to see what the fuck is going on in the world and why the idea presented by this man – not the man – but the idea – the hope that this idea gave, was a good thing.
We have a government that has caused tens of thousands of our neighbours, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, family members to die in work capability assessments. We have a government that has actively sold weapons and munitions to the country with one of the worst human rights records in history and then actively ignored the end consequence. We have a government that has allowed countless industries to fail, industries upon which communities thrived and now they are destitute. We have a government that has caused doctors to stage all out strikes and remove emergency care for the first time, and that battle is still continuing.
We have a capitalist, neoliberal bullshit structure that is controlling everything we do, from what we eat to what we learn at school. We have a hard right government being controlled by fucking business men and media moguls who are tearing our very existence apart.
And we are the bad people…… my arse.
And in all that bullshit that I find myself surrounded with, I've seen the true nature of this country.I see ordinary people, standing in solidarity with those who are having to strike.
I see ordinary people giving to those who find themselves homeless.
I see ordinary people helping those less fortunate than themselves and not for reward whether it monetary or for fame, just simply because it's the right thing to do.
I see racists and fascists being chased out of towns.
I see doctors and nurses fighting this corrupt unelected government.
I see groups in Liverpool banishing “The Scum” from the fair city.
I see people, normal people helping normal people.
I see an idea, a belief that actually we can do things nicely and politely with out all the bullshit.
I see a change in the engine that makes up Westminster.
The Commons is supposed to be a house of elected representatives but it seems more like a house of we do whatever the fuck we want, a house of uncontrolled animals.
That is what we are trying to change, we want a system that is there for all, not just Phillip Green or Rupert Murdoch. We want a system that supports the most vulnerable and the weakest. Not a system that allows the strongest to prey upon the weakest.
Theresa May's cabinet is almost exclusively white, almost exclusively male and is entirely made up of millionaires.
Yet Corbyn is the sexist, the racist, the misogynist. Get a grip of yourselves. This isn't about Corbyn, this is about a neoliberal capitalist structure that is on the brink of collapse a system change is upon us. That is why the establishment have tried to tear him down so violently for last 12 months. Not because they are not scared of him but because they are terrified of the people, petrified by us.
They don't want to see an end to their status quo. They want their leaders picked and not decided.
Well to that I say fuck you, we will pick who we want not who you decide.
For too long we, the people, have been subservient to this capitalist neoliberal structure whereby we have simply stopped arguing and debating and accepted our fate – 'what can we do, it's always been this way,' I hear people say. Well, for one that is the attitude we need to leave behind, as it is that attitude that has allowed these capitalist pigs, the Tories to get away with whatever they want for so long. Or maybe it's that we've become too comfortable in our sedentary existence that we now live, wake up, go to work, come home watch telly, read the news that they want you to see, don't get angry and accept our truth. Maybe the apathy runs too deeply now for us to change the system.
But maybe, just maybe our society is changing for the better. People are no longer willing to accept the status quo, of cricket on the village green on a Sunday afternoon with warm beer and cucumber sandwiches. People are awakening to the reality of the structures of the system that is ruling over our societies. There is an air of change. I can smell, hear and taste it.
People are mobilising in less than 24 hours against this government and their puppet masters. The mainstream media is no longer the accepted norm of news deliverance. The people have become their own news broadcasters, heavily organised protest groups are springing up left right and centre. Rumours are circulating that the traditional newspapers are financially struggling massively with hundreds of jobs at risk.
Collectively our societal interactions are changing because of what we perceive to be unjust.
How is it in this day and age we have families reliant on food banks? How is it that families are being forced to travel 30-40 miles a time just to visit an A&E department? How is it that banks can be deemed too big to fail so that when they are about to we have to bail them out to the tune of £84 billion, and yet an industry such as steel making can be allowed to go to the wall? How is it that a politician is allowed a second home at the cost to the taxpayer, when thousands of taxpayers can't even afford their first home? How is it that life saving medications can be available in my postcode but not in yours? How is it we can afford hundreds of billions of pounds for a nuclear defence system, which many defence experts and international agencies now deem to be obsolete but we can't afford to build more houses, schools, hospitals, or fire stations?
Is this all the fault of you and me or is it the fault of policymakers in Westminster who have been corrupted by outside lobbyists who coincidentally now happen to be MPs.
Our political system is so inherently corrupt, I am surprised our different denominations of government even function at all. Even at local government level, the will of the people is overturned and even ignored by the people we choose to represent our interests and protect us from corporate malpractice.
When did we choose to allow the dynamics to change so that we work for the representatives rather than the representatives work for us – that is their role, they are in the position they are in to represent us, the people.
Something is inherently wrong in this society and the wider world, when the situation comes about that people are no longer represented by the people that chose them to represent them.
We need to change the system, it has failed and is no longer fit for purpose.
How many of you, are just completely pissed off all the time, working a job that doesn't pay enough to cover your basic needs, finding you don't have enough time to spend with your family, or on the things that you really enjoy? Are we working (those of us who are lucky enough to have a job) too long to make up life's financial shortfalls that we have to sacrifice the time that we should be spending with our families?
Are we forgetting what is important?
Has the system we live under forced our society into evolving into something we do not like and no longer recognise?
I do not claim to know all the answers to these questions, but they are questions none the less that need serious consideration and answers, as we cannot simply continue to just exist any longer. Our society should not in the 21st century be continually divided into sub categories and subjugated. We should be miles and miles ahead of where we are scientifically, technologically and environmentally. But it all comes to back to finance and how we spend that monetary supply. Do we continue on the path that we currently travel or do we embark on a new course?
I certainly feel we cannot continue along the same beaten track that we have already travelled. I personally believe we need whole scale change. We definitely need to change the model system of our society.
Is that possible under the Tories? A party that once said in 1964 “if you want a coloured for a neighbour, then vote labour. If you're already burdened with one, vote Conservative. We will speed up the repatriation process of the expelled”
A party that once classified the Irish as lower than dogs. A party that is now wanting to expel foreign doctors and schoolchildren.
This is a party that wants to and to be honest I'm not going to even sugar coat it, they want to ethnically cleanse our communities and workforces so that they can return us to the archaic times of the Victorian era. They have no interest in a country that works for everyone only one that works for the privileged few, the ones born into wealth – a wealth that was born on the back of the slave trade.
Now is it possible to change our current course under the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn? I think that when/if the Labour Party, truly remember their origins and why they came into being then, yes we can change course. I think whilst there still elements of the PLP that are hell bent on carrying on with the teachings of Tony Blair, then that change will take a lot longer than the time frame I would like to see it happen in.
But the change can't just come from the top it needs to come from the bottom too. It needs to come in at a local level and a county level as these benches are just as bent and corrupt as the ones in Westminster.
There are plenty of us with wise minds and bright ideas and we are all good people. We should use those assets to effect change in all departments of government. We all want the best for our families and our communities and for our fellow man.
It is human nature to help one another, yet we have become divided by the lies and hatred peddled in the “FREE” press, we become more worried about whether X Factor has been fixed than if the General Election has been fixed. We are more intrigued by celebrity pop culture than we are by arts, science and culture. We have stopped learning and progressing as a society and we are stagnating. Therein lies the problem in that we are not moving forwards, we've allowed ourselves to accept the comforts that have been offered to us by those at the top and have become too easily pleased.
The Tories won the last general election on the back of a campaign powered by rich people in mansions, CEOs of big corporations that pay no tax and 30 candidates who are being investigated for organised electoral fraud. The very same party that sold off all the council housing stock, the very same party that covered up Hillsborough, the very same party that sanctioned Orgreave, the very same party that privatised all of our industries to their mates, the same party that is closing our libraries, the same party that had made thousands of hardworking people redundant, the very same party that sold off Royal Mail at a loss and the very same party that is now selling off piece by piece our NHS.
We need to stop accepting the crumbs that the Tories are offering us and tell them, 'sorry but we're here for the whole fucking bakery.'
It is people, good, honest, hardworking people that built this country, not politicians. We, the people, built everything there is in this country. Without the people nothing happens. I'm not saying we should all walk out and down tools, although that may have to be an option. I'm saying we simply need to change our behaviour patterns, and instead of being so wilfully obedient, we stop, think and challenge everything we are told to believe. We need to increase our presence at rallies and protests and fight back against the injustices we see. We also need to be there out helping in our communities, we need to start volunteering where we can to help at retirement homes, at kids groups, at schools, at community events. We need to build networks within our communities. This is the society that Thatcher tried to deny existed. This is the society the Tories are still trying to tear down, because this is the society that won't accept their ideological hatred of us.
We need to show the Tories that they aren't in control. We need to show them that their neo liberal capitalist bullshit info wars mean nothing to us. We need to show them, that communities are in charge, that people are in charge and that if we don't like the ways things are then we will remove them from office and put someone in who is capable of doing the job they were elected to do.
To any Tories reading this, just please for once in your measly, rotten lives realise this isn't a fucking game, it is real life, that your bourgeois attitudes are destroying the very lives which you need to enable YOU to subsist.
Without us you're fucked.
So please people I am begging you, stop reading newspapers like The Scum, switch off your televisions, get out in your communities. Volunteer, take pride in your street, plant flowers and trees. Spend time with your families rather than only meeting up for weddings and funerals, saying your hellos and goodbyes. Without wanting to use a cliché, be the change you want to see.
Stop accepting the crumbs of life they allow you and take the cake you deserve.
A community that is united is a lot harder to defeat than a community divided.
Join a workplace trade union.
Get involved in local politics and pressure groups. Protect your libraries. Buy your kids a book not a tablet, take an interest in what interests them. Spend some time outside in nature.
If we really are wanting the change that we need then WE need to make it happen if not, then we are simply allowing the greedy bastards at the top to shit on us and our kids forever more.
I do not want to have to explain to my son why there are people with no homes, or why there are children in Syria with no families. And the reason I don't want to explain is not to protect him from the cruel truths of our world but because I haven't done enough to stop these things from happening – have you?
Together we can change anything we want, divided we will always fail.
Unite.
In Solidarity.
#UnityMarchUK
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