The Fragile Progress of Democracies and Bad Bedfellows

It’s now almost a year since the Labour Party won the last election and the context in which it was won is in itself interesting: my view is rather than “Labour Sweeping to Victory,” it was the Conservatives that “Crashed to Defeat.” Either way, it felt pretty good at the time!

“If you want to make the gods laugh, show them your plans” (or similar), this sober reflection on the unpredictability of life came to horrific fruition when the brutal murders and assaults of Southport and the ensuing Civil Unrest, brought into sharp and stark focus, the dangerous currents that move beneath the surface of society; ones that are strong enough to pull us all out to an unforgivingly dangerous seas. And for every action, there is a reaction: the Government's response? Swift, decisive and divisive one it could be argued, that it contributed to further pressurising the fault lines and cracks in a series of already stressed society.

What's The Direction of Travel?

There’s an old line from Ireland: a traveller asks, “How do I get to Dublin?” and the reply is “Well, I wouldn’t start from here!”

But, we seldom have a choice do we? Lame as it sounds, the line “We are where we are,” has deep and important significance as we try hard to work out why the present is so difficult to understand, that the future is uncertain and it seems, determined to thwart our journey; you know, “It just shouldn’t be like this!”

So, why? Well, I’m not going back too far here, (honestly, I have a life!), but here we go. Since 2020, we’ve had: the Pandemic and Lockdown, and these combined, I feel, to expose some cruel social and economic fault lines that have (in some cases) been developing since the end of WW2. The Russian invasion of Ukraine together with its impacts on economies, supply chains and our general sense of safety and well-being, the increased impacts of Brexit, Liz Truss, strains on the NHS and Care Gazza. Add to this a toxic narrative that thrives and grows and multiplies in the petri-dish of informal immigration that contributes to to pre-existing cultural and religious hostilities and we have an increased potential to become more open to accepting of a narrative formed around this idea...

“The reason you’re doing so badly, is because they are doing so well”

Bad news is amplified, good news and fine intentions are mocked, the Nation is persuaded to see itself as weak and at the mercy of dangerous international conspirators and we are encouraged, by default, to be less kind to “all but our own.” I wonder where this has happened before?

And then there’s Donald Trump: I’m not sure what happened to the collective American psyche, however his presence on the world stage is truly Shakespearian, and in a not-good way. I’ll leave it there...for now at any rate

There was in 1987, the release of a six series sitcom called “Big Jim and The Figaro Club.” Set in the 1950’s, it revolves around the “relationship” between a group of builders and their foreman: a strong social metaphor in itself! The builders talk of,

 .'when we was going to build the new Jerusalem - you know, before the world turned lax and sour'. “

 and the series was in my view, a delightful gift of high comedy combined with sharp social commentary and its voice is more important now then it was then, as our individual and collective worlds appear to have  turned “lax and sour.” Mistrust and cynicism appear, for now, to have won. Our world has indeed appeared to have turned "lax and sour!"

I follow a few “The Way We Were” type groups on Facebook. You might know this sort of thing, photos of towns and cities from not so long ago. Safe enough eh? Well, not really: nostalgia is manipulated through comments that refer to

 “Safer and happier times, when Britain was Britain”

And the explicit and implicit messages therein are a concern to me, mainly because this approach works and feeds not, “nostalgia” as we understand it, but rather a “toxic nostalgia,” one that leaves us open to misinformation and manipulation.

So, where to now?

We need to talk with each other, not at each other, and these conversations need to happen at a highly localised level. They need to create both tangible and “feel good” outcomes and will need to take place in venues other than formal structures within which there is an explicit or implicit political (or Political ) agenda. My emergent vision is one where political institutions, organisations and organisers are known for their ability to facilitate that which is good and needed at local, almost street levels. Given that I’ve cast some shade (getting down with the kids here-yeah, right!) on nostalgia, I want to take you back to the earlier days of the pandemic. It was at this point that people went out of their way to help each other: small acts of great significance made life better at a challenging time, the spirit of which was eventually diluted by greedy,corrupt liars, ones for whom the only standard was a double one: they were and still are the worst of bedfellows to fragile democracy. But we mustn’t forget what we can be, especially when we talk to each other a little more, care for each other a little more and in so doing, reinforce the ties that bind us together, much more.

The Not So Magnificent Seven.

I wonder at what point we will look at the current position in France and accept that this is part of a multi-level and complex narrative that has led us to once more adopt a language that dehumanises and  "otherises" people?

You know, "people," the same DNA and so on who are now "cockroaches", are part of a swarm or a pack. These words are important because they grant a hidden permission to perceptually disperse, cleanse and stamp on rather than to embrace, help and accommodate.

And like all dangerous miss-assumptions a mythology is created. We are told that we are being invaded, not because we are good but because we are soft. We are also the most invaded because we are the softest and in some bizarre world of twisted logic, we kind of deserve it. 

This puts us in an apparently strong yet disastrously flawed moral place. Because we see ourselves as "over-good" we allow ourselves to believe that other nations are "under-good". That's why migrants think the UK is a soft touch and they ALL want to come here.

Here's something from the Irish Times, published a couple of days ago.

Far be from me or the Irish Times to burst anyone's bubble here but I'm pretty certain that this information is unlikely to make its way into the (our) tabloids that seem to have a vested interest in distortion and misrepresentation.

The significant hike in the numbers since 2014 isn't the result of global misunderstanding based around easy benefits, free housing, health care and education in the UK, rather it's to do with the humanitarian disaster in the Middle East that produced his sort of thing-a refugee camp in Jordan.

Umbilically linked to "The War On Terror", it is one of the the ill-considered outcomes of what happens when myopic nationalism is allowed to transcend greater humanitarian well-being. It is fuelled when national interests are gleefully re-branded by the business of war and the profits it generates as it exponentially multiplies in the toxic Petri-dish of:

1. Enforced military service (including child soldiers) as a weapon
2. Rape and torture as a weapon
3. Starvation as a weapon
4. Religion as a weapon
5. Ethnicity as a reason
6. Difference as a justification
7. Mass population movement/genocide regarded as a desirable outcome

So there's my Not So Magnificent Seven. One that we, our European and Global partners need to get to grips with in order to design an intervention template of more productive outcomes for the stricken-many.

Will it cost? Of course it will! But, wealth isn't the problem here. It is the manner in which it is produced, distributed and recycled that has reduced us to a point where good people are prepared to advocate the death by drowning, electrocution on rail-tracks or shooting of another human being who has been dehumanised not by their behaviour and aspirations but by us and our pitiful, ongoing self regard.

Oh My God, What Have We Become

"Call up the craftsmen

Bring me the draughtsmen

Build me a path from cradle to grave

And I'll give my consent

To any government

That does not deny a man a living wage

Go find the young men never to fight again

Bring up the banners from the days gone by

Sweet moderation

Heart of this nation

Desert us not, we are

Between the wars" 

From "Between The Wars" by Billy Bragg
 http://youtu.be/xjUA3RU4B8E

A while ago Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head because she wanted an education. For the perpetrators the concept of articulate and questioning young people who challenge the cherished principles of bigotry, power and loathing of difference is so frightening it is better to carry out summary execution and face the temporary wrath of a world that will move on to the next media hit than it is to accept the inevitable outcome of a developed and inter-connected generation with a strong and growing sense of justice, access and liberty. Malala was shot in the head. Well known in her native Pakistan for her Blogs that spoke about the importance of access to education for women and indeed the right to access to education for women. And because of this, she and two of her friends were shot.

Having been given life saving surgery in Pakistan Malala was flown to the UK where at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth hospital, her shattered brain was repaired by experts and her body and spirit were restored by a dedicated team of the passionate, compassionate and dedicated. It was with some considerable emotion that I heard the restored Malala speak at the opening of the New Birmingham Library speak to her "fellow Brummies." I was proud to be considered part of a process that was an iconic testament to what good people can achieve. And that this had happened in our hospital, in our city gave further energy to the hope I felt that day. A hope that we are bigger than we seem, better than we are judged, technically skilled beyond the ordinary and compassionate above what is needed.

I remember too the chill experienced as I heard a strident caller to Radio WM declare that Malala shouldn't have been given this role-opening the Library because, she shouted "She's foreign!" And then there's Facebook and its fellow travellers.

I fear that any re-positioning of access to and use social media is a bit like getting toothpaste back in to the tube: yet what I have read about Malala being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize has saddened me. The energy vampires post their ill informed venom and puss on thread after thread wherein one abscess after another erupts and bursts like this:

• We should look after our own first 
• She;s already had an operation and opened the Library, now they're giving her a prize!
• What about an award for hard working people who have to wait for operations?
• She soon forgot about her friends in Pakistan
• What about pensioners who fought in the war?

And the liturgy of spite goes on: a bile-bitter cocktail of ill-informed nastiness, the flirts with comedy with its devastating capacity to jolt assumptions about reality. But it's not funny: it's awful.

We have repaired a broken icon: an icon who has spoken to the United Nations on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed everywhere making  it clear that a better world will emerge as a result of the changes brought about not by armies and hatred but by education and the capacity to draw judgement between right and wrong as we consider what connects us rather than immerse ourselves in that which divides us. We, in the Great City of Birmingham have done this and we should embrace our new citizen, celebrating her bravery, her ambition and her capacity to reach out and include others in her simple, powerful words.

It feels we are in danger of sleep walking into a new reality as: a tiny outpost of Northern Europe, changed and worsened not by change but by the way we have dealt with change, As we have sought to find the monster in others we have it would appear, discovered the monster in ourselves.
                                                     Sweet moderation

Heart of this nation

Desert us not, we are

Between the wars"