The middle class war campaigners are on the march

? | 04.09.2002 23:58

The middle Englanders surely know how to upset us working class folk with their ever so subtle ways of making us feel worthless.

I went to an anti-war against Iraq film show tonight at the Cassa, the sacked Liverpool dockers club in the Liverpool City Centre. The film was very good. There were about 200 people there. The venue was organised by the "Stop the War Campaign". A guy from the Socialist Labour Party M H, who has a massive business and lives in a big house in the prosperous suburbs, was there with his wife. Of course M being a superdupa organiser and fundraiser is now highly respected by the Socialist Alliance and the SWP crowd. As usual he was going out of his way to be noticed. He even spoke briefly to the crowd asking for money and he never introduced himself as a Socialist Labour Party (SLP) member. There was also other members of the SLP there keeping a low profile. M kept out of my way, as M always does when middle class SWP socialists are knocking about, heaven forbid that he be seen talking to a poor working class scumbag like me, it may harm his credibility amongst the middle class nerds from the Socialist Alliance and SWP. The SWP members also gave me a wide berth.

It would seem that local issues have now been demoted to the bottom of the ladder. The middle class anti war activists are now on the march and fuck local issues. I agree with what they are doing, but I find it very hard to get on with them. I wonder if the SWP and the other middle class nerds will be at Scargill's meeting at the end of this month in the Liverpool Gladstone Hotel? Christ it is really hard trying to get on with these middle class brainwashed socialists. It's also hard to understand why other working class comrades refuse to except that these people even exist. If you want to upset a middle class socialist just mention the word utopia and they recoil in horror, must be because they have been brainwashed from childhood up to think that the word utopia is an swear word.

I tried to have a conversation with an SWP guy who was selling one of their papers, but it soon became apparent to me that the middle class nerd was not interested in a word I was saying. After a couple of minutes he tried to discreetly bring the conversation to an abrupt end by literally thrusting one of his papers at me. In the end I told him to f… off back to his middle class suburbia. One of his middle class comrades who was walking down the corridor to the auditorium, a rather fat from good living ugly women, heard me and immediately, as the middle classes always do when one of their own is verbally under attack by a working class activist, jumped to his defence. I said why don't you report me to the police after all I am working class and you people look at the likes of me as scum. What amazed me was his reaction, he honestly did not know what he had done wrong, he didn't for one minute understand that by ignoring me he had made me feel worthless and not worth listening to. I'm sorry but these ever so prim teetotaller vegetarians really know how to make us working class socialists feel like shit.

Comments

Hide the following 29 comments

Are you the Judean People's Front?

05.09.2002 00:44

BRIAN:
Are you the Judean People's Front?
REG:
Fuck off!
BRIAN:
What?
REG:
Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front. Cawk.
FRANCIS:
Wankers.
BRIAN:
Can I... join your group?
REG:
No. Piss off.
BRIAN:
I didn't want to sell this stuff. It's only a job. I hate the Romans as much as anybody.
PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA:
Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhh. Shh. Shhhh.
REG:
Stumm.
JUDITH:
Are you sure?
BRIAN:
Oh, dead sure. I hate the Romans already.
REG:
Listen. If you wanted to join the P.F.J., you'd have to really hate the Romans.
BRIAN:
I do!
REG:
Oh, yeah? How much?
BRIAN:
A lot!
REG:
Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.:
Yeah...
JUDITH:
Splitters.
P.F.J.:
Splitters...
FRANCIS:
And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA:
And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.:
Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
REG:
What?
LORETTA:
The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG:
We're the People's Front of Judea!
LORETTA:
Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.
REG:
People's Front! C-huh.
FRANCIS:
Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?
REG:
He's over there.
P.F.J.:
Splitter!

Monty Python

question

05.09.2002 06:19

Who the f**k are you?
What do you organise and who do you represent?
Do something constructive, or piss off, you miserable creature.

grappa

Mental health issues

05.09.2002 09:29

The one thing that probably prevents some people from going to political meetings is the feeling they may be unwelcome. The normal response to being at a political meeting is, "at least I'm able to debate with people and perhaps I can meet up with some who are like-minded", which is more than you'd get by going down the pub. However, some people are shy and I believe that we, as proponents of non-hierarchical organisation, should bear this in mind. I think "?" feels inadequate, disempowered and depressed at these meetings, so he portrays everyone there as "middle class wankers", thus making himself feel superior in some way.

Perhaps he feels, probably unreasonably, that anything he says will seem ineloquent and blundering compared to the supposedly cerebral people around him. Maybe some guy from the SWP who he was talking to wasn't listening to him because he had his mind on other things, or he was looking around for a mate or just simply wanted to go home. Yet, matey here thinks the guy is looking down on him, gets angry, calls him a "middle-class wanker" and storms off in a huff. Maybe I'm wrong.

My response to this feeling of social inadequacy, which many people get when joining a new group, is to stand up for what you believe in and state your case in a reasonable sensible manner. And treat people how you yourself would like to be treated. From the point of groups organising meetings, perhaps organisers need to make newcomers more welcome, buy them a beer, have a chat and make them feel comfortable. That way, they'd feel more easy about expressing themselves.

Antidote

SPLITTERS !

05.09.2002 10:05

Can't help but feel that the monty python quote is too fucking relevant. I don't want to have to talk to a member of the swp any more than any normal person would. But, so long as the left remains as comicly divided as it is, power remains firmly with the sniggering, scoff-scoffing classes.

Unite under 1 banner and sort out the finer details after the revolution.

Biggus Diccus

Mi 5 alert

05.09.2002 10:13

Isnt it interesting that as the propaganda machines are being revved up for the Iraq War, and as the military deployment in the Gulf that we have this kind of post which is TRYING TO OPEN UP CONFLICT WITHIN THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

(and to caricature it as a SWP/SLP front ....)

It makes me think back to a very interesting post I read this summer, I think it was called "Indymedia as Target" and was about the security services plans to attack Indymedia. I'd be grateful if one of the Indymedia bretheren and sistren might post a link below

emmanuel goldstein

Stupid

05.09.2002 10:16

You sound stupid to me. Granted, we can all blow our heads off when it comes to politics, but in the end you have to treat people decently. Any decent person would give an apology for that kind of behaviour. If you can't see what you've done wrong by shouting your mouth off at someone who has done you no harm and because you hold certain prejudices, then maybe you shouldn't go to political meetings at all.

Dan

Being Working Class isn't a MH problem

05.09.2002 10:36

While I agree with your points about local meetings being more welcoming I have to disagree with your analysis of 'shyness' and of being working class ( and rightly angry)in a predominantly middle class enviroment. I don't know who posted the original piece ( wasn't me!)but I can take a good guess.

You mentioned feeling inadequate, disempowered, and depressed. What you failed to mention is that the daily impact of the state/capital actively induces feelings like this among working class people and then waives the carrot of consumerism as the way to feel better. The idea that people have mental health problems because they feel ignored, undervalued and exploited is a very dangerous one, particularly as it's the same argument that states' throughout the world use to incarcerate radicals and activists.

The fact that (?) went along to the meeting in the first place is positive. The negative part is that there wasn't more genuine anti-authoritarians there so (?) was left feeling isolated.

Well (?) there are other people in Merseyside who understand why you feel the way you do and personally I think it's about time we got organised locally, so I'm gonna put a call out for other anarchists/anti-authoritarians in Merseyside and surrounding area to get together with the intention of creating a local anarchist group. Anyone want to get involved? If so mail me.

Paul.

Paul H
mail e-mail: mersey_a@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks Paul H

05.09.2002 11:16

Why is it that Paul H is the only one who can get his head around what happened to me at this well organised SWP film show on the war in Iraq? The other guys and girls who always jump to the defence or refuse to even admit that the middle classes exist must be middle class themselves. Then you get the people who try to frighten you with veiled threats, then the idiot conspiracy theorists that think that people like me have a hidden agenda and are trying to disrupt. What ever happened to critical dialogue?

These middle class SWP socialists think that they understand us proletariat, they think that they know what is best for us. They have even come amongst us to try and understand were we are coming from. But what they will never except is that to understand the working classes, to really empathise with them, one has to be one of them and to live among them, not just for a period of time as many famous middle class authors and journalists have done over the years in their vain attempts to portray the hopelessness of the poor and their pathetic existence. One has to be poor and to have been borne into poverty, the type of poverty which one finds it impossible to escape from. There is one invariable fact concerning these middle class authors, who have gone amongst the poor or the lower classes, they can always retreat back to their comfortable existence in the middle class suburbs. There is no question about the fact that these people can write and that they are very descriptive in their writing. It seems to be just accepted amongst many publishers that these literary scholars are far more equipped to portray a better synopsis of the way in which the impoverished live and interact with each other, this is why it is so hard for working class folk to have their work published, our language, our culture and our perspectives are often looked upon as being an antithesis of the middle class dominant culture and how that culture perceives things. It is as though the middle classes have a monopoly on right thinking and whatever they say is sacrosanct.

Bigotry

05.09.2002 11:27

Would you rather have some kind of class apartheid, where middle-class and working-class socialists were segregated and neither interacted? Do you think that people should be prevented from going to political meetings if they have the wrong accent or if their paycheck is too high? Or maybe middle-class people should be barred from political activism, or better still slaughtered. This is the height of stupidity and narrow-mindedness. If you've got a problem with someone's class, it's your problem. Maybe you seek counselling.

Dan

Poverty?

05.09.2002 11:39

As for you trying to make out you're somehow more worse off than anyone, therefore you know everything - that's bullshit. I've lived in India where parents break their childrens legs so they become beggars because that's the only way they can survive. I've seen young, malnourished men on the streets with maggots breeding in open wounds caused by disease. I've seen young women dying of AIDS after sleeping with men to earn enough to eat. Yes, I'm more worried about these people than people in the UK who are relatively comfortably off even on state benefits. I am fighting a system that creates and encourages disease and poverty throughout the world. If you think that's middle-class and irrelevent, then frankly I couldn't give a flying fuck about you or your "working-class" pride. If you want to exact change, then you had better step out of your parochial bigotry and learn to work with others. Otherwise, people like me will just think you are a whingeing little shit.

Dan

!

05.09.2002 11:43

You don't fool me

05.09.2002 11:49

? / Paul H / the various MI(5/6)kes

demonstrate an amusing synergy. Such bullshit

It all fits well with the post on "Indymedia as Target" to which I referred earlier (someone please post the link if you can find it)
which talked about the campaign by the security services to create cracks in the broad left community of Indymedia via setting up artificial maoist vs. trotskyist, trotskyist vs. anarchist, middle class vs. working class, asian vs. black etc. etc.
give it up boys, you're not getting any traction on this, and in the meanwhile why not keep a closer eye on the dangerous people who are planning a minor atrocity to spur Europe on the war way?

By the way, anyone tempted to respond to our putative Merseyside anarchists invitation for comrades to contact him: DON'T BE SO STUPID --- never, ever, respond to an advertisement of this kind. Work with friends, with people you trust, small quiet circles. Or go to public meetings and try and identify people whose positions you feel you can respect or trust. Do not reply to people who advertise on the web for comrades.

Emmanuel Goldstein

You don't fool me

05.09.2002 11:53

Emmanuel Goldstein

Michael Lane

05.09.2002 11:57

Michael Lane had a strange hobby
Collecting clothes
Moonshine washing line
They suit him fine
On the wall hung a tall mirror
Distorted view, see through baby blue
Oh, Michael Lane
It's not the same, takes two to know
Two to know, two to know
Why can't you see?
Michael Lane, Michael Lane, Michael Lane, Michael Lane

Now he's caught - a nasty sort of person
They gave him time
Doors bang - chain gang - he hates it
Oh, Michael Lane
It's not the same, takes two to know
Two to know, two to know
Why can't you see?
Michael Lane, Michael Lane, Michael Lane, Michael Lane

Don't do it again

Pink Floyd

You took your time

05.09.2002 12:34

Well well Mr. "Goldstein" you took your time didn't you?

So I'm some kind of government agent then? Well no I'm an ordinary bloke holding down a shitty job and trying to put across some ideas about organisation within the anarchist movement.

It's funny to watch the various authoritarian socialist groups running around like headless chickens when anarchists talk about organising. I don't know, you slag us off as disorganised rabble then you fill your boots when someone puts together a few web pages.

I'm simply using the resources I have to hand, and coordinating info that's freely available, to show the strength the anarchist movement has here in Britain.

The movement is growing and there's nothing that snide remarks and dodgy insinuations by you or anyone else can do about it.

Now if any anarchists have got a problem with what I'm doing then contact me (I'll leave the method up to you) and I'll be happy to discuss it.

Cheers,
Paul.

Paul
mail e-mail: merseyA.tk

For fuck's sake.

05.09.2002 12:41

Mate- you went to a meeting. Someone was/may have been an arsehole to you. Get the fuck over it.

Jay-B

trying to get through here

05.09.2002 13:50

in case my previous comment didnt get through, may i just say that the author of the original item is abosolutely right. the trick of the bourgeois left is to divide working class concerns from the wider world, thus giving them sway over the movement and relegating the proletariat to a an adjunct. the background of someone shouldnt really matter, excpet the likes of GR and SWP exacerbate the divide, instead of trying to diminish it. For example, would they want 50 black workers from MacDonalds turning up to a meeting, proposing an immediate strike against the war ? No, theyd fidget in embarrassment and relocate to somewehere a little more congenial, where they could maintain their felling of superiority visavis the underclass. They hold sway through social weight alone, which is precisely how the oligarchy has been ruling Britain for centuries now. Without social revolution and the breakup of the oligarchical mentality, there can be no political revolution either

Mr Opinions

Moe thoughts on 'social weight'

05.09.2002 14:06

remember, this is clue to the mystery of the British establishment for the last few centuries. How DOES it rule ? It doesnt seem to have any brilliant ideas, it isnt a single party totalitarian structure, no one particular class seems to be in control (rather a strange conglomerate) and the entire edifice seems to be almost inert, impervious to change, all- surrounding yet oddly intangible. I admire the orginal writer for having the courage to say what many of us feel but cant admit; that the bourgois can make one feel like shit !
the insular nature of the British class system has pervaded all aspects of society, to the point that it almost runs itself, and the ruling oligarchy only needs to make minute adjustments on occasion (such as in the 1860s, 1920s, 1940s, 1960s and so on). There can be no change in Britain so long as the orgainsed left appear to be so jealous of their minor privileged poisitions, they stand in absolute opoostion to egalitarian notions.

Mr Opinions

Yawn ......

05.09.2002 14:36

... .. yeah right

but if you are who you pretend to be
(unlikely- I still think you're full of cointelpro shit and know it)

then we'll meet on the same side of the barricades comrade

(where I hope we won't have to have a competition about whose more working class than the other)

Emmanuel Goldstein

"Indymedia as Target" link

05.09.2002 17:26

http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=39111

brethren

Dialectic

05.09.2002 18:53

I'm not sure about the soundness of the contributor's dialectic.

John Allman
mail e-mail: John_W_Allman@hotmail.com

Are you joking???

05.09.2002 21:42

If 50 black McDonalds workers turned up at an SWP meeting, the comrades would think all of Trotsky's birthdays had turned up at the same time!

Spike Militant

please... stop it

06.09.2002 01:01

I won't waste more than 60 seconds on this. Some bloke felt a bit left out at a meeting about THE THREAT OF WAR IN IRAQ. I've capitalised the part of that sentence relating to an IMPORTANT issue.
Solidarity, mutual support, respect, yes - but goddamn, there are more responses to this post than on any of the discussions ABOUT IRAQ.. Get some perspective. Move on. Next!

Orwell hated his own class

06.09.2002 10:45

George Orwell, who the middle class SWP hate and have tried to discredit ever since his death, spoke quiet elegantly about the despicable way in which the middle class think, he said in his book the “The Road to Wigan Pier”, quote: There is much in middle class life that looks sickly and debilitating when you see it from a working class angle and the fact that the working class know how to combine and the middle class don’t is probably due to their different conceptions of family loyalty. You can not have an effective trade union of middle class workers because in times of strikes almost every middle class wife will be egging her husband on to black leg and get the other fellows job.

Orwell, himself middle class, speaks in depth about the sneaky behaviour of the middle classes in his brilliant book “The Road to Wigan Pier”. This book is a must for us working class people who want to know how the middle classes operate.

Never trust a middle class person, they are quite dastardly, there is no end to their despicable connivance and they are constantly scheming and slapping each other on the back. Go in amongst them in their offices and observe their sickly behaviour, see how they reward themselves for doing things, which are quite useless and in many cases amount to nothing. Observe their incompetence and see how they make a mess of almost everything they touch and how we, the working class, always have to pull them out of the mire.

An apology?

06.09.2002 11:25

EG It's obvious you've got a problem when it comes to admitting you're wrong. That was a totally uncalled for, and totally untrue smear against me. You were bang out of order lad and I guess you know that so I'll leave it now.

Apologies to the good folk at indymedia for getting a bit heavy about stuff.

Paul.

Paul H

George Orwell

06.09.2002 11:51

George Orwell also disliked much of working class culture and thought workers were easily bought off by consumerism and lotteries promising wealth. Moreover, he thought the working-class could be easily lured into fascist politics because of their supposed ignorance. He hated Communists for being Stalinist, but ridiculed anarchists for their chaotic organisation. All-in-all, Orwell was a brilliant writer and journalist, but a poor theorist.

He was also from a different age. Skilled workers, such as plumbers, electricians, mechanics and builders, are now generally richer than teachers, policemen and social workers. Plumbers, when you can get them, can charge you up to £60 per hour - well above the pitiful minimum wage that many graduates get in call centres.

The distinctions between the middle- and working-class are extremely blurred and overlapping. "?" is unable to give a proper definition of class because he is not particularly interested in it. He just wants to slag people off because they don't follow his interests or mindset. He appears to be a narrow-minded, bitter individual who I doubt many people could have a decent conversation with.

Dan

Our anonymous contributor

06.09.2002 13:18

is actually getting to the heart of how the entire movement is failing, and may actually lose out.
The point about Trotsky and the Permanent Revolution theory is that you cannot parcel off different sections of the struggle; the internal political is ineveitably linked to the social question, and if the working class or underclass is either pushed out or diverted, the whole thing will fail. Unless the international situation is adressed as a proletarian question, we leave the field to the vacillating pacifists and the Labour party. The SWP has built among the latter because the SWP is almost wholly bourgeois in its mentality and indeed they misappropriate the struggle and keep it as a token of their own social differentiation. The scenario described by our contributor is so commonplace yet an odd open secret.
Class relations are at an extremely distorted level in Britain, and it is paradoxical that such class consciousness could possibly exist while simultaneously, socialist ideas are not prevalent among the proletariat. In such a country, where ideas are poorly developed and ill-defined, personal intuition is very important and if a party or movement doesnt feel right to you, it probably ISNT! The intuition expressed in the article is entirely in keeping with my own experience.
Doesnt anybody study sociology anymore ?The 'standoffishness', the detached quality so typically regarded as 'British' is not a strange feature of no susbstance; it is itself a function of the political- social reality, just as is the warmness of other countries or the exuberance of others still. All these things have a basis in the relations of property, commerce, and the long experience of the classes in existence; dont blame cold people on the cold weather, for that wouldnt explain why the Irish people are much more open , friendly and far less class-ridden than here. No, the bourgeois class has rightly assumed that it can afford to cut itself completely from the proletariat, and is now starting to liquidate the latter under the general cloak of "Blairism".
Marx said "workers of all countries unite" not for fun, but because he could see the working class as the one which had the most to gain from the defeat of capitalism, aside from any moral objections. So long has his formula echoed around us that we seem to have forgotten what Marx really meant.

Space - Trotskyist

The Irish

06.09.2002 15:16

In my experience of Ireland, I find that there is definitely a class distinction between the yuppies of Dublin and those "others" who are regarded as peasants. Yet, in the countryside, I find the atmosphere cloistered and overwhelmingly conservative. Granted, there are distinctions according to cultural preferences and Ireland's unique history, but overall, the situation in the Celtic Tiger and the overall attitude of the Irish people is more or less the same as it is in the UK. I would also dispute the notion that the British are somehow "colder" than other Europeans. It's such a generalisation, it beggars belief. Globalisation is bringing a uniformity of attitudes within the developed world and, I think, a greater chance to resist the global capitalist system.

Dan

Britain colder ? of course !

06.09.2002 15:57

Of course, class is a phenomenon of all modern societies, as are conceited fools and idiots of all kinds. But Britain is several degrees colder, that is to say , noticably more disfunctional in its social relations . WHY ELSE WOULD PEOPLE WRITE IN TO IMC LIKE THE ABOVE ? Sure there are reasons, and not so much in sociology (no, i dont think anyone does study it now!) but in recent historical experience. All of Europe has recently undergone revolutions or other drastic events which have toppled the political economic establishments and called all people of all classes to mobilise directly for their own needs. This is why France and the USA were considerably closer to revolution in 1968 than we were here. As it is, social relations in Britain have stagnated, and reached the point of neurosis, and Blairism is only making it worse. We must stop thinking about Utopias, but merely in terms of EMANCIPATION. While most most of Europe operates in terms of ideas and rights, Britain still moves along on rules and opinions; it is curiously UNemancipated. The socialist movement has long had a dilemma- either work with a non-socialist proletarait, OR work with a socialist bourgeois element but the hopeless anti-war sentiment seems to enshrine a bourgeois, NON socialist tendency, which should be anathema to serious Marxists. Putting their hopes in Labour, the truth is they know it wont stop the war - ALL THE PARIAMENTARY LABOUR PARTY WANTS IS TO BE CONSULTED !Does it matter who endorses this war ? We have to stop it, and I will NOT rely on the creeps hanging around the SWP to do it !

Tory B. Liar