Kids Today eh?

What is it with kids today eh? With all their Snapchats and video games and YouTubers. It's like they don't care about the world around them or about the things going on in it. Isn't it?

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152806752352088

Warning, the above video is full of the colourful British vernacular which some viewers may find offensive.

"Who's side are you on?"

"We live in the 21st Century, don't be a racist cunt!"

Well said. Very well said indeed.

It's Oppression, Not Privilege

The notion of White Privilege is one that I have had some issues with since I first heard about it about 5 years ago. It's a recent import into left wing, particularly liberal-left wing, political discourse from the USA into the UK. There are a number of reasons that I think that the notion is harmful to anti-racist work, and more broadly working class organisation, in the UK. I'll come to those in a moment.

[caption id="attachment_779" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Source removed because the original poster is probably completely lovely and I wouldn't want to send douche bags her way.[/caption]

A good friend of mine shared the image above on Facebook today as a reaction to the disgusting goings on around the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in the USA. I understand what the person is saying here but I don't think that it's an appropriate response.

I, rather flippantly I must admit, commented that rather than being white privilege it's also a case of 'being black anywhere aside from the USA' privilege. There is nowhere else in the world, that I can think of, where the racist murdering of young black people by the state is such an endemic problem. In the UK you are more likely to be murdered by the police for being, or sounding, Irish. And Irish people are, generally, white. Certainly all those murdered by the British police are anyway.

It most certainly is true that, in some areas, young black people are stopped and searched, assaulted, and generally fucked with by the police on a massive scale. However in areas that are less diverse we see young white working class people going through the same harassment and violence that black young people go through. Basically the police seem to hate working class youth and target them as automatic suspects. I know that when I was young we got an inordinate amount of hassle from the police. Stop and searches, getting roughed up and so on.

Racism in Britain seems to work differently to how it works in the USA. In the UK we didn't have segregation, we don't have the recent history of slavery (despite British capitalists getting fat and rich off the slave trade), and racism tends to be as directed to non-British Europeans as much as it is against non-white British people. We have disgusting levels of racism against Polish people and other Eastern European migrants, against Gypsies and travellers, against Irish people. Hell, I've even had someone in the South East of England try to assault me because I'm from Wales. I've also been denied medical care because of how and where I've lived (as a traveller).

So I don't feel that the concept of white privilege can be transposed to this island as the context in which racism occurs is completely different to the USA. I can't comment on how useful a conceptual tool it is in the USA as my knowledge of the States comes purely from the media/internet. It may well be that, due to the recent history of segregation, the concept has a value there that it does not here.

My other issue is wit the wider notion of privileges vs oppressions. The way that I understand the world is that we are the working class. Our class status is defined by our relationship to the means of production and so you're either proletariat or bourgeoisie. We all also experiences our own oppression, both as individuals and communities, in particular ways. So a black person or a traveller or an Irish person is likely to experience the oppression of capitalism differently to a white English person, a woman to a man, a gay person to a straight person and so on. This is because the ruling class encourages the fracturing of the working class through the promotion of bigotry and hatred. Using them as weapons against us. Oppressing us with them. It isn't a privilege to not be the subject of a given oppression.

Which bring me on to my next point. Class struggle should promote unity within the class by seeking to destroy the weapons with which the ruling class divides us. The politics of privilege turns the direction of the focus towards the individual rather than outwards towards society. It is concerned with the individual 'checking' their privilege rather than working to address issues in society. It is navel gazing and narcissistic. It doesn't matter a jot if all the liberals and lefties of the world recognise their privilege as there is nothing that they can do to address it. How does one give up being white? Or male? Or straight? Or cis? It isn't possible.

The divisions that permeate society, and which are used by the ruling class to divide us, need to be addressed and recognised for what they are. Are symptom of hierarchical class society. They can not be done away with without doing away with capital and the state and capital and the state can not be done away with without doing away with these oppressions.

The politics of privilege, however, has little to do with the creation of a fair and just world. It attempts to change the nature of these oppressions, warping them into a tool that reinforces and encourages these divisions. Which should be of little surprise as it is a politics born of academia.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, all these things need to be addressed head on. They need to be destroyed by working class organisation that ignores these divisions and treats us all as workers who all share the same interest.

We shouldn't be worrying about whether X has Y privilege or how that makes their experience of capital worse than Z's. It isn't a competition. As workers we should focus on that which unites us because, at the end of the day, that's the only way we're going to be able to do away with the forces of oppression.

…

Oh, and one more thing. It also bugs the hell out of me that white privilege seems, from what I've seen online, to be a way for white people to turn the focus of the discussion of the experience of racism back onto themselves. Rather than actually engaging with people it seems that the modern white proponent of white privilege wants to make sure that it is acknowledged that they are acknowledging their whiteness and LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME! So, with the picture at the top, we see yet another white person who chooses to, rather than showing solidarity with the people of Ferguson, make it all about herself.

Gah. And so, that was reason 47645 that I decided to have naff all to do with the left...

Attitude Problem

This song is pure class. Working class that is. ;) I've been searching for a decent quality version of this tune for years and lo and behold it's now on Soundcloud. WOOHOO! (Lyrics below)

https://soundcloud.com/the-1926-committee/attitude-problem

 

I thought I was working class 
But after all that, it was an attitude problem
I thought I was working class, but it was only me
And I drink too much and I smoke too much
Curse too much and I cough too much
I get a lot of paranoia and I never go to church

And I love too much and I care too much
I laugh too much and I share too much
I know a lot of things but I’ve still got a lot to learn
And I’m not afraid to say it
Ha ha ha I’m not afraid to say it

I thought I was working class, but after all that it was an attitude problem
I thought I was working class but it was only me
Because there is no working class, there’s just some people with an attitude problem
There is no working class, there’s only you and me

I build too many walls, use too many tools,
Lost touch with my mates I took too many days off school
I hardly ever see my folks
And I spit in the street all the time

But I’d give you anything I had,
Because that’s what I inherited from my mum and dad
I could kiss with passion and stand with pride on a picket line
And I’m not afraid to say it
Ha ha ha I’m not afraid to say it

I thought I was working class but after all that it was an attitude problem
I thought I was working class but it was only me
Because there is no working class, it’s just us people with our attitude problems
There is no working class in a classless society

Who digs the roads
Who drives the buses
Who works the markets in the pouring rain
Who cleans the floors
Who cleans the toilets
Who does the mining where the mines remain

Who drives the tubes
Who collects the tickets
Who puts the letters through your front door
Who shifts the bins
Who does the packing
Who fills the shelves in the superstore

Who makes the beds
Who wipes the arses
Who does the cooking in the school canteens
Who works the ferries
Who packs the terraces
Who keeps all those offices clean

Who are the labourers
Who are the plasterers
Who are the chippies and who are the sparks
Who reads the meters
Who picks potatoes
Who put the apples on the apple cart?

Who made my clothes
Who built the ring-road
Who works in those factories
Who pulls the pints
Who collects the glasses
Who gets the gear off the back of a lorry

Who drives the trains
Who laid the track
Who made the shoes that are on my feet
Who cuts the grass
Who sweeps the gutters
Who put the road signs on my street

Who’s never missed
Who’s on the waiting list
Who does all the work in all those posh hotels
Who’s never named
Who’s never mentioned
Who’s signing on in Tunbridge Wells

Who works in the chippy
Who does deliveries
Who does the service wash in your launderette
Who’s got a head for heights
For chimneys and street-lights
Borrows money to pay their debts

Who are those kids
Standing at the bus-stop
Or playing in the rain with an old tin can
Who helps the nippers
Get across the road
It’s a lollipop lady or a lollipop man

Who cleans the windows
Who works the check-out
Who makes the carpets and lay ‘em on the floor
Who’s forever saying sorry
Who drives the lorries
Who put up the statues of your ladies and lords

Who cleans the drains
Who laid the gas-mains
Who made the water run out of my tap
Who made my bread
Or the hat upon my head
Who treats the turdies when I’ve had a crap

Who are the nurses
Who’s in the fire brigade
Who takes care of the sick and the old
Who’s the receptionist
Who’s the telephonist
Who’s drinking in the park, sleeping in the gutter

Who’s on the bus
Struggling with a push-chair
And all them shopping in the carrier bags
‘Cause they’re on the double
Whenever I’m in trouble
Who are the best mates I’ve ever had

Who d’you call the housewives
Who made my bread-knife
Who made this pen and paper in my hand
Who drives the minicab
Works in the rehab
Holidays in margate or camber sands

Who fails at school
Works in the typing pool
Who laid the pipes underneath your floor
Who takes the rap
Who takes the rubbish
And who’s in the trenches in every war

Who’s dying in the trenches in every war
Defending our enemies in every war
Well I thought it was the working class
But it was just me with my attitude problem
I thought it was the working class
But it was only you and me
Because there is no working class
So you’d better get to bed you're up early in the morning
There is no working class
So you’d better go back to sleep!

[caption id="attachment_775" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Image from prole.info[/caption]

The Welsh

HPL being bang on the nose about my people. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sHfhuXfNJE

See more on Leeman Kessler's channel and blog.

NaNoWriMo ToMoRo

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. It does for me at any rate. I've been in work this weekend and so I'm already just under 3,000 words behind target. I do however have every weekday afternoon for the next few weeks free so I should be able to make up for the last couple of days soon enough.

It does however mean that I probably won't be posting on here quite as much as I ordinarily would. Not that I'm the most prolific of bloggers anyway. I will though be posting a review of my little treat to myself this week. I recently won second prize in a wee competition for a piece of flash fiction, read it here, and thought I would pick up a book I should have bought ages ago. Should have on account of being a Welshman and a Weird Fiction Freak. :)

Table of Contents

• Forword - S.T. Joshi


• Introduction - Mark Howard Jones & Steve Upham


• What Others Hear - John Llewellyn Probert


• The Bicycle-Centaur - Rhys Hughes


• The Cawl of Cthulhu - Bob Lock


• Pilgrimage - Mark Howard Jones


• Song of Summoning - Brian Willis


• The Necronomicon - Charles Black


• Un-Dhu-Milhuk Would (If He Could) - Liam Davies


• Periphery - Paul Lewis


• Stranger Crossings - Adrian Chamberlin

I've only read a few of the stories so far but I'm sure I'll have it finished in the next few days. It will make for great NaNoWriMo procrastination. :D The stories I've read so far, What Others Hear, The Bicycle Centaur, and Pilgrimage, have all been fantastic. Especially the classically Lovecraftian What Others Hear. I'm definitely going to seek out more by John Llewellyn Probert.