The rights won in the 1960s need defending

Posted by celticman on Sat, 17 Aug 2013

Vin Jones writing in Observer Review, ‘The rights won in the 1960s by the black community need defending,’  had me thinking that many of the things he mentioned apply equally to the poor in Britain.

‘When you live in a country where one of the major political parties, by its own utterances and plans and designs, has written off 14% of the population strictly because they’re black[poor and working class]. It’s hard to say we live in some kind of post-racial [post –class] utopia.’

‘What I think you are seeing is a complete collapse of white [working-class Labour] moral leadership in the country.’

‘You get these racial upper-class conservatives who say: “These guys in the black [poor working-class] community are whining and complaining, they should just get over it—slavery [poverty] was a million years ago”.’

 

Comments

Submitted by valiswaverider on

so very true, the working class are being shafted by goverment and corporate bastards. Who reguard us as below contempt the ultimate irony being many members of the general public are more intellegent and far less cynical about their fellow man than these so called public servants.

Its just that we are,nt born with silver spoons in our mouths public school connections and a thousauds years of hypocracy to back us up in the power structure they,ve engineered to keep us down

 

Submitted by Ed Crane on

I grew up in the fifties and sixties. I know people say this when they get old, but there certainly were more opportunities then. Life seemed more 'human' not counting the cost of every item the state provided. Sure taxes were higher then, but you got value for money. I left the UK after the excesses of Thatcher, and there's been no change it seems to me ... worse really.

What you have now is a state falling apart and its money being skimmed by the mates of corrupt politicians (of all parties) and Herr Ober Lieutenant Cameron wants the rest of Europe to be the same? NO THANKS.

 

 

Submitted by Steve on

I'd like to think it was a class issue in the US, but it's not true. An all black jury acquitted OJ SImpson of murder when it was plain that he committed the murder of 2 people. An all white jury acquitted Zimmerman of the murder of Trey Von Martin. I thin when you look at other cases, you will find similar verdicts. It's a game of numbers... if an all black jury releases a black criminal, then an all white jury convicts a black innocent. In jails, 85% of blacks using crack get arrested and jailed, only a small percentage of cocaine using white people get arrested and jailed. It's both class and race. If we are to help the poor, we have the help the white poor, the jewish poor, the asian poor, and the black poor and not play this game of whoever courts the politicians the most. I don't hear anything about Michael Jordan helping out the black poor, but I believe that Magic Johnson does. It's really ridiculous how rich asians, jews, blacks and other can be classists against their own race. But you can't just blame the rich. The poor have to realize that in the end it's up to them. I know the odds are against them... but a capitalistic society, being rich is good and being poor is bad. If you don't speak english and you are poor, corporations try to take advantage of you whenever they can. Hispanics can be deported at a moment's notice. The future is very uncertain.  

 

Submitted by Steve on

I'd like to think it was a class issue in the US, but it's not true. An all black jury acquitted OJ SImpson of murder when it was plain that he committed the murder of 2 people. An all white jury acquitted Zimmerman of the murder of Trey Von Martin. I thin when you look at other cases, you will find similar verdicts. It's a game of numbers... if an all black jury releases a black criminal, then an all white jury convicts a black innocent. In jails, 85% of blacks using crack get arrested and jailed, only a small percentage of cocaine using white people get arrested and jailed. It's both class and race. If we are to help the poor, we have the help the white poor, the jewish poor, the asian poor, and the black poor and not play this game of whoever courts the politicians the most. I don't hear anything about Michael Jordan helping out the black poor, but I believe that Magic Johnson does. It's really ridiculous how rich asians, jews, blacks and other can be classists against their own race. But you can't just blame the rich. The poor have to realize that in the end it's up to them. I know the odds are against them... but a capitalistic society, being rich is good and being poor is bad. If you don't speak english and you are poor, corporations try to take advantage of you whenever they can. Hispanics can be deported at a moment's notice. The future is very uncertain.  

 

Submitted by valiswaverider on

 

I contend that in the West since the age of Revolution we have merely extended concept of feudalism, that is to say that corporate capitalism is in no way different to the Monarchist structures it seeks to replace. This is not to advocate communism on my part, but rather to say that we do not live in a consumer paradise as it is presided over by political rhetoric which ties us into a boom and bust economy. When the ancient Greeks created the concept of democracy , citizenship was at its heart that is to say that all citizens have the right to sit in Congress. Whilst this is still true in theory in practice politics is really a game of class ties and economic brinkmanship based on conglomerate control of mass media.

Where in then does the common citizen have their say? The whole concept of the ballot box is antiquated in that you can vote for a government who done wholeheartedly go against the policies and which they were elected. All hierarchal system must have a resonant feedback loop, this is a law of nature not just a political law. The failure of our system is displaying symptoms, in the form of social disappointment which can only in time add up to social unrest.

John Major claimed famously that we were now living in a classless society, and yet less than 20 years later social divisions have never been sharper within the country than since the 1930s. Victorian imposition of class values sees the working class as mere units of production rather than human beings with hopes and aspirations. Therefore the working classes have been demonised in the right-wing press as somehow lacking in moral fibre.

This is completely untrue, as the first member of my family to attend university an aspiration which could not be achieved by the previous generation. I can tell you that there are more working class graduates than ever. However as a generation they're becoming completely disenfranchised seeing no hope of career entry, promotion or even the promotion of well being within the current economic climate.

The current Prime Minister David Cameron is on record as stating that every school should be like Eton. As a father myself I think that represents fantastic ideal(education is the primary root to social improvement), however the power structure that created institutions such as Eton and Burkes peerage is one whose primary aim is to repress the ambition of the working class and Institute for policy which keep them in control of the political landscape in order to maintain the rigid class structure for generations to come.