Engaging Reverse

I'm not a religious chap. As an impressionable stripling I admit that I rather enjoyed religious education and readings from the Old Testament filled to the brim with tales of woe, water and wilful wanking. As I progressed through school, I found the greatest pleasure in teasing out its inconsistencies. My mid to late teens saw me finally eschew the supernatural and the illogical cobblers of The Bible and Erik Von Daniken with his caravan of alterneratii, for a solidly materialist perspective. The transition from impish ignorance to Montesquieuian maturation was an eurekan enlightenment transformational process not dissimilar to the Vulcan mating ritual of pon farr, which I assumed most people including Leonard Nimoy, went through.

In a way, I was lucky. My dad was an advocate of Marx's maxim of ruthlessly criticising everything that exists including my first pierced ear lobe. (1) Yet I recall him once telling me that he had reached a point in his life, that so dispirited was he that he'd seriously considered going into the Catholic church. I believe this was in response to the crisis of Stalinism in the USSR during the 1950s which created a series of internal crises of confidence for many communists. At the time I found it difficult to reconcile this admission with his Marxist views. It was only later that I began to understand how Stalinism had sowed political and ideological confusion widely and deeply throughout the left in the second half of the 20th century. With the international revolutionary left divided on the best organisational strategy to roll-back the juggernaut of neoliberalism currently bulldozing its way across the Mercator and through what remains of state-funded public services, it's clear that the dead weight of Stalinism still weighs heavily on the Marxist left. But it got me to thinking, which regular readers of this blog will know, is nearly always a bad thing.

An engaging chap

Jean Jacques Dessalines - kicked Napoleon's arse
and did more to end slavery than 
Abraham Lincoln and William Wilberforce

I recently stumbled across a 2011 article by Melvyn Bragg in the Telegraph on the King James Bible. Bragg is a great admirer of this lexicon of liturgy. Within this article, he dips a slender business finger into the sticky honey pot of common sense. Take for example, the matter of the abolition of slavery and one Mr William Wilberforce. Now I remember reading about slavery at school and Wilberforce featured in the abolitionist camp to some fine tune. And of course, only a poltroon of the highest abandon would denigrate Wilberforce's role in the wider campaign to abolish slavery. But where, I wondered, were the Quakers in Bragg's abolitionist schema? They did after all tirelessly campaign for abolition in Britain? Where was Thomas Clarkson? Clarkson did as much if not more than any other individual to raise in the wider consciousness the brutality and inhumanity of the trade in 'black skins'. He was also rather an adept organiser riding somewhere in the region of 35,000 miles on horseback, criss-crossing Britain, spreading the abolitionist word. While he was at it, he also took great pains to gather first hand testimony for the abolitionist cause whilst founding anti-slavery committees in whichever town he rested. What of Olaudah Equiano, a slave who earned his freedom and wrote a best-selling life story that was read by tens of thousands? Nor was there a nod towards the nationwide mass boycott of slave-grown sugar, which at its height was reputed to have involved around 300,000 people, being quite possibly the first PR based, mass consumer campaign.(2)

The beginning of the end

Finally, and most importantly, there is no mention of the slave uprising and the self emancipation from slavery by the slaves for the slaves, in the French slave colony of St Domingue (present day Haiti) led by Toussaint Louverture in 1791. It was the military success of Louverture (and after his capture Jean Jacques Dessalines) and the sheer bloody determination of the black slaves to free themselves and found their own free, self governing state which was to send shock waves around the pro-slavery world and bring this African holocaust to the beginning of its end. Abolition certainly wasn't brought to these oppressed by the warships of the British Royal Navy enforcing the belated will of the British Parliament nor in any of the speeches of William Wilberforce. There's a slight whiff  of a 'great men' reading of history in Bragg's view. We might also call it a common sense reading of the anti-slavery movement in Britain, and it's one I'm sure the Gove-ish right would positively endorse.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh. Lord Bragg is after all... well he's a Lord. He's a cultured chap, having curated the South Bank Show for many a year. One needs more than a modicum of intellect to wade in such culturally refined waters. But there's an overtone to this article and I can't help feeling it's ever so slightly hostile to the concept of 'reason' or more precisely what Bragg denotes as 'atheistic reason':

'I respect those who have no faith or little faith or are indifferent to it, but the current notion that atheistic reason marks the apotheosis of human intelligence, strikes me as being very doubtful. I’m as certain as I can be that there’s more to come.'

Lord Melvyn doesn't really elaborate on what this 'more to come' might be. Yet it's possible to divine from his words his real meaning and it's a word which carries with it a considerable degree of authority - it's the word 'belief'. As if to buttress his newly rekindled religious reawakening, Bragg calls up the names of Einstein, the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees and the physicist Stephen Hawking. He doesn't raise the name of one noted scientist Professor Richard Dawkins to reinforce his case for one very good reason. Dawkins' recent foray into the spume of what's been described 'militant atheism', is intrinsically hostile to Lord Braggs' personal view of faith. However Bragg is onto something when as it's reported, he 'poured scorn on the famous atheist's reliance on “reason” to destroy the Christian argument, insisting that faith was something that should be carefully examined.'

Dawkins: accepts that evolution goes only in one direction. 
What are his views on the establishment of a private
university which would appear to go in the 
other direction?

The Dawkins Delusion?

Here Bragg and I agree. I don't see there's much in the way of value in engaging in debates or long expositions with religious fanatics or leading churchtypes as a way to undermine religion and religious ideas. He might convince a largeish handful to reject their gods. However, US imperialism and its sponsorship of various Middle Eastern autocracies, the antics of it's best Zionist friend in that region and a few unmanned drones over Pakistan will inevitably create far greater numbers of radicalised religious adherents. The world's most advanced technological industrial economy is perfectly happy to co-exist, indeed encourage the rantings of the Christian fundamentalist right, a group not known for advocating progressive or liberal policies.

If Dawkins wants to see the back of religion, it aint gonna happen his way. So, if it's not Professor Dawkins militant atheism that exerts a tidal influence over serious numbers of humankinderies, what does? It's capitalism and religion - in that order. That religion can still command the loyalty of hundreds of millions of believers on the grounds of an idea, stands as a testament to the sheer flexibility of the various doctrines. To put it bluntly, if it didn't adapt, it wouldn't survive the titanic forces that it's exposed to on a daily basis by the hegemonic system of capitalism. Surely Professor Dawkins sees the immense irony in the persistence of organised religions and their concomitant religious ideologies within an inherently hostile environment, demonstrating in real time, the evolutionary theories he famously expounds?

Your eminently flexible friend

Religion is as globally relevant today as it was in the time of the First Crusade in 1096. It's inherent theological and textual flexibility allows adaptation, refinement and bespoke tailoring for the benefit of a dominant ruling class that a Saville Row suit maker would envy to the nth degree. Don't take my word. Look at the historical record which provides ample examples. Religion rarely if indeed ever, runs ahead of systemic socio-economic/political change. In fact the opposite is the case. The historical record shows us that established religious institutions and doctrines have acted like an fouled anchor chain on newly emerging systems of production and exchange. The friction created by this inertia has led to periods of intense social, economic and political contestation - they're called revolutions and their impact on society is usually profound. Take the English Revolution for example.

For God, for Queen King and for Country!

Our ancestors largely accepted the common sense that the monarch sat at the right hand of God. The pulpit and the sermon maintained and disseminated this prevailing wisdom across Europe and beyond. In consequence, European ordinary folk (usually poor and horribly exploited under an oppressive feudal system) suffered the whimsies of kings and tribulations often associated with monarchical absolutism. Between the years of 1640-60, a huge grass roots social movement developed in what we know today as Britain which attempted to dislodge this nugget of common sense with the not inconsiderable assistance of an army of russet-coated chaps and an executioner's chopping block. This process spread further with revolutions in America (1776), France (1789) and later two revolutions in Russia in 1917 which finally laid to rest the spectre of this type of absolutism in the West. It was a process which managed to remove by force of arms, God's divine fingers from of the plum duff of the political and economic sphere. These first three revolutions, although important for the promulgation of the enlightenment project, can be said to have provided the ideological and scientific foundations for capitalism to develop: they were firmly bourgeois revolutions.

Howzat: the first wicket keeper?

Cauldron of the revolution?

Despite the far-reaching consequences of these revolutions, they failed to completely eviscerate the church from the state, allowing it to re-root itself in the fertile soil of emerging bourgeois (capitalist) society. In Britain, Protestantism and later Methodism, proved eminently adaptable taking their place in the vanguard of unregulated industrialisation. Both demonstrated how religion could through a variety of twists and turns, continue to provide valuable services to capitalism particularly in the sphere of ideological control. And as Marx recognised, so often because of the propensity of capitalism to shift into overdrive in the 'race to the bottom', religion also acted as a salve on its worst excesses, providing a haven or 'a heart in a heartless world' to the impecunious individual.

Gandery sauce

Throughout history, to the oppressor and the oppressing minority class, religion provided a code by which to live (and importantly a schematic by which the majority 'others' should live). Yet for the oppressed, religion provides a common framework by which they may conceptually locate and thus interpret their own oppression. It can also provide the oppressed with a common language of resistance, and the means or an arena (the congregation or church) whereby radical or even revolutionary levelling ideas can be translated into direct actions:

" …a numberless crew of locusts have sprung out of the bottomless pit, assuming to themselves the names of Arians, Arminians, Socinians, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Familists, Antiscripturists, Antisabbatarians, Antitrinitarians, Libertines, Erastians, Levellers, Mortalists, Millenaries, Enthusiasts, Separatists, Semiseparatists, Quakers, and many more of the same brood … No country from the foundation of the world hath brought forth and brought up, so many monstrous births as it [England] hath done." (3)

Yet Bragg chooses to invert this schematic, putting the cart before the horse:

"There is much else that secularists, atheists and the indifferent choose to ignore in our history. This Bible inspired many great philanthropists, it gave purpose and support in the 19th century to the Bible Women and the Slum Sisters and the Sunday Schools, all of which took on the dispossessed and destitute in society and insisted on redemption and improvement. And there is more. But mostly we find other causes to explain these movements, and of course there were economic causes and political causes and the Enlightenment played an increasing part, but the King James Bible, the national book which fed so many of our great writers and gives us so much of our daily speech still, was the life force of much that makes the modern world."

Adapt and survive

Unlike Bragg's idealism, I see the motivations of the groups he mentions, as residing either in their guilt or self-interest, or for the more socially minded, based in their intrinsic humanity. African slaves, converted to Christianity on the plantations, hardly had need of a holy book to make them conscious of their own miserable oppression. That they framed it and their gradual but increasingly organised opposition to it in the religious language of the day, was premised upon their own interpretation of 'the Good Book' and the sermons of anti-slavery proselytes.

Yet what should we make of a body of theology that can with apparent ease, have an appeal for those at the top and bottom of society? Religion like nationalism, acts like reinforced concrete, setting hard in the interstices between contending class interests in societies. The structurated wooliness of religion presents the likes of Dawkins with an insurmountable obstacle: as long as class oppression exists, religion (in all its forms) will adapt and survive. I can provide a golden nugget of evidence straight from the horses mouth. Even in the face of the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that validates Darwin's evolutionary theories, the  Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in a 'public dialogue' with Richard Dawkins, can embrace evolution without fear of contradiction from a higher authority when he states that 'he believed that human beings had evolved from non-human ancestors but were nevertheless “in the image of God”.

Agar capitalism

The insurmountable problem Dawkins has to confront is not religion per se. It's the conditions that allow these superstitious anachronisms to persist and flourish. Simply put, in order to consign religion to the ash heap of history, one must also consign to the shitter-emptying-pit, the systemic causes of want, war, ignorance, poverty, exploitation and oppression in its multifarious guises - ie capitalism.

I'm no spring chicken. Nor is Lord Bragg. I'm nearer to the end than I am the beginning. Nor am I a churl of the first order of magnitude. I respect a person's right to 'believe' and to practice any religion or form of worship they so wish as long as they they're not trying to impose it on others, particularly when those others are me. Maybe his 'first steps back on the road to faith' provide him with some solace and warmth in realisation of his own mortality? Maybe this reverse rests on the apparent global hegemony of a liberalising capitalist system that appears to have seized the ideological high ground? I understand why it daily humiliates former left leaning intellectualites into an accommodation with the prevailing wisdom of 21st century. Yet I find it odd that the same forces should drive Lord Bragg into an apparent accommodation with the common sense of a bygone 17th century autocrat.

Notes and References

(1) Marx to Ruge Kreuznach, September 1843, sourced at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm

(2) Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains, Mariner Books, 2006
(3) Thomas Hall 1660 sourced at http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/367-072.htm

Usual disclaimer: This work is and expression of opinion on a matter of public interest and contains the opinions of the author. It is intended to report current events that are of public interest and public concern. The reproduction and use of any documents, photos and video images herein is to provide humour and accuracy in order to avoid civil litigation and claims of misquoting. In reporting current events they are used within the context of Fair Dealing or Fair Use. The author is happy to provide further acknowledgement if requested (email below). 

 The author also suggests that before embarking upon expensive civil actions for libel, contact the author. We have reams of documentary evidence which we are happy to provide. A right of reply also operates. We are also happy to make corrections and if necessary provide an apology. Email garypaulduke@gmail.com

Forward the abolitionists! (resisting the nouveau enclosurists)

July the 4th is an important day for many people. My mum Teresa Mary Duke was born on this date, as was  the soulful Bill Withers, radical anti-Vietnam War activist Ron Kovic and screenwriter and fine actor Colin Welland (of Kes fame). I believe it's also got something to do with Boston, tea and a widely celebrated federal holiday. It's also going to be an auspicious day this year for a chap of some considerable side-face-hair who rumour has it, will be attending and presenting his appeal before the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London at 10am at a preliminary hearing. All are invited to attend.*

The innate hectivity of the last few weeks...

It's been a hectic few weeks preparing for this day. It involves writing skeleton arguments, reading lots of legal authorities and the substantial input and invaluable assistance of certain individuals who shall remain nameless but they know who they are and I thank them. It also explains why a chap's been a little remiss in lodging new posts here on Vagrants. To those that have enquired as to the root cause of a chap's lack of  blog-diligence, one tries to keep up to speed and there are quite a few 'works in progress' waiting to be signed off so to speak. And there's always a myriad distractions that conspire like an underground cell of malign grassy knollers, to divert attention away from the fusty legal tomes and postings. Such distractions as a newly acquired interest in evolutionary biology, and hours spent pouring over a the minutiae of intensively recorded audio material by Salford's premier nouveau proggers Trojan Horse. It's a lonely existence. Naturally one tries to keep up with cutting edge developments in the world of interesting things, so the odd dip into blogger Hall's weekly festival of erudition is a must. It's always a fascinating read and never boring. Last week's posting had some resonance among a chap of some drain-piped trews, focusing on research into the causes behind homelessness, strategies for survival on the streets and how these can inform public policy, which got me to thinking, which, as regular purveyors of this site will know, is nearly always a bad thing.

Re-branding morality

Iain Duncan Festor: no relation
to the Tory millionaire or the Salford Hegemon

First things first. Although it's a bit short, I'm glad Hall has raised the matter of homelessness. It's a matter close to my heart. One of my former students was made homeless a couple of years back. It's sad tale and the roots and causes of his homelessness is something I'll be exploring in this blog in the near future. However, I found upon reading further that I'm not at all keen on the label Hall has used to describe a generic someone-lacking-in-the-employment department. It's the word- 'worklessness'. It's the new buzz word. It's everywhere. It's the political equivalent of that vile expression 'go for it' that was all the rage in the mid1980s among twats. It's akin to the silly word 'dude' that now and again still continues to stroll out of the gormless mouths of one or two Iron Maiden T-Shirt wearing berks with chronic  Bill and Ted fixations.

No. I prefer the word unemployed. It's an eminently honest word. It's contextual and it's precise and it's worth some elaboration. For example, Professor Hall is currently making quite a few academics unemployed. He's not making them 'workless'. If they're unemployed, as Chief Executive Officer and the person at whose desk the buck should stop, he's responsible. If they're 'workless' (according to the mantra), it's their own fault. 'Worklessness', in the tired old opinion of a tired old beardo-buffer, reeks of the tired old Victorian morality of the deserving and undeserving. 'Worklessness' like its bedfellow 'idleness', becomes the responsibility of the individual, not something inflicted on people by their employer or the government during yet another round of spending cuts due to a capitalist crisis. It's also a word the ludicrously haired Iain Duncan Smith bandies about quite a bit as does he his barely concealed nouveau Victorian values. I for one am all for IDS providing those claiming Job Seekers Allowance with a master class in how to produce an accurate Curriculum Vitae.(1) It's just a thought.

Prog Capitalism or Prog Rock?

Capitalism is widely portrayed as progressive. New technologies are imbued with almost supernatural properties by ostensibly intelligent types and Star Trek fans. Technology is sold to us as the provider of neat solutions to all modern day problems. Any alternative (including renewable energy) is often portrayed as backward looking, idealistic, unaffordable or unworkable. Yet despite the brave new world promised by the technologists, some things persist. Unemployment and homelessness, poverty and the death of 21,000 children worldwide every day from preventable causes is highly suggestive that the equation capitalism = progressive is bollocks. Only a buffoon of the highest order could seek to counter the argument that the widespread prevalence of such social ills in modern society is more akin to the world of Charles Dickens than it is to that of Sir Jean Luc Picard. As an 'app' hasn't yet been developed to provide a solution to homelessness, I for one welcome any research into this area - homelessness that is, not 'apps'.

Prog Politics?

But David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith patently do not agree. The re-emergence as the Tories as the 'nasty party' has been duly plastered over the TV screens and 'broadsheets' as Cameron threatens to deprive 380,000 working class under 25s of £2 billion of Housing Benefits. Justifiably so, charities have attacked these proposals as an auger of increased future homelessness among young people from already impoverished backgrounds. It's unlikely any BBC newsreader will mention the fact that since the Tories-Lib Dems took power, '150,000 families have been forced onto housing benefit'. With over one million young people unemployed because of government policies and the capitalist crisis, one wonders what other ills can be apportioned to the unaccustomed shoulders of the British working class (youth section).

Partially correct Hall

Hall is partially correct when he says that '[h]omelessness is particularly complicated.' The causes of homelessness may be. The visible homeless (those sleeping rough on the streets) are the most obvious manifestation of this social ill. They are however just the tip of an iceberg. There's the 'temporary homeless' who may be individuals or families made homeless but placed by local authorities in private rented accommodation, as the local authority have a duty to home those in 'priority need'. And then there are what we might describe as the 'temporary-temporary homeless' who are families or usually individuals who the local authority do not deem to be a 'priority' who end up sleeping on the sofas or floors of friends. It's a class thang. That the homeless as a group is comprised of predominantly working class people, is evidenced by those disproportionately represented: black and ethnic minorities, who in 2008/09 made up around 27% of all homeless, whilst only making up 11% of the population. Unlike the working class, homelessness is socially mobile due to the global economic crisis and Tory-Lib Dem cuts. The social demographic appears to be shifting with more 'middle class' families homes repossessed and increasingly dependent on local authorities to provide a roof over middle class heads.

But I'd like to take Hall to task when he states that 'there are no simple fixes'. You see I think there are. The 'fix' I'm going to advocate, is the sort of 'fix' that you'll never find in the results of any academic research into homelessness. And readers can rest soundly in the knowledge that it won't involve encouraging people to sleep under bridges in London, which is a tad inhumane in the opinion of one whisker-chopped bench-dweller. Clearly such a policy would fall far short in providing a long-term solution to either a) homelessness or; b) unemployment. So if anyone comes across an individual advocating such policy, particularly one known as Molly Prince, who's a convicted criminal and runs a business called 'Learning Development Centre and has a 'virtual office' based at Technology House at University of SalfordManchester(2) take heed.

The medicine of ages 

Should the government build more park benches?

Having spent much time on park benches, providing solutions to intractable problems has become a chap's stock in trade. I'm sure there's a ruddy good argument for 'migrating' entire philosophy departments to local park benches. Notwithstanding, I for one would hazard caution as I'm not in the game of engendering mass cider consumption amongst academic or academic related staff-game. Yet the 'solution' a few ironweeds and myself have mulled over, and will be laid out here, is one we might describe as an 'overarching solution'. Like a stilt-wearing millipede, we believe this one has legs. It would it is argued, not only ensure that no individual should ever have to place themselves in a position of casual vulnerability on the streets, but would provide a short, medium and long-term permanent solution to the question of overcrowding and ever growing housing waiting lists. Just to give a sense of the scale of the problem, statistics show that waiting lists for 'social' housing have risen 72 per cent from 1 million in the 1990s to around 1.8 million in 2008. If nothing else, it's an indication that the neoliberal housing policies of successive governments have failed. The current proposals on offer from the Tory government to this execrable state of affairs would appear to hinge on:

• the removal of employed status among wide sections of the population
• removing housing benefit;
• making increasing numbers of people homeless;
• a return to Rachmanism and/or;
• a return to the Dickensian squalor of overcrowding and/or;
• a broad expansion of the concept of the 'favela' with its inevitable associated marketisation by Gok Wan in the ideological embracement of 'favela chic'.**

Duelling banjos and 'Little Ireland'

Minister for Housing Grant Shapps          

The best way to convince potential council house dwellers of the obvious merits of a system based on a living hell is to wipe away the collective memories of the multifarious 'Little Irelands' that were the hallmark of many industrialising cities. Like the re-classification of the word 'unemployment', the erasure of this facet of capitalist enterprise has been achieved through a process of gentrification. What subtle methods of persuasion have politicians used to convince sceptical council tenants that the market knows best? Things like the deep slashing of housing budgets for the building of social housing, whilst whittling away, like a cadge of banjo-hopping red-necks on speed, the protection council tenants have historically enjoyed in their tenancy agreements. Although austerity provides the rationale for the new spate of scythings, what underlies this attack is a wider neoliberal hostility to state provision. 

What's the solution smart-arse?

Given that we live in the most advanced form of technologically-based and advanced capitalism ever known among regulars of The Lamb in Eccles, providing homes for around two million families appears an insurmountable obstacle. Even if there was political will where would they be built? How could such an project be undertaken and ensure the survival of what's left of the protected greenbelt? At times like these, I always like to look at eminently logical solutions. Sometimes  the most obvious exposition provides the neatest outcome.

If the solution for unemployment is the abolition of unemployment; ie the creation of jobs (and we can argue over whether these jobs should be created in order to provide for the 'public good' as opposed to the market and the 'private good'), then the solution to homelessness, overcrowding and an acute shortage of affordable homes, would seem to be simple; ie the creation of roofs over heads. I shall not dwell on the self-evident 'two-tree feller solution': a huge investment in public works in the form of mass house building that would also remove swathes of people from the dole queues which is a bit Keynesian. I shall instead concentrate on a single, and eminently simple knacker-kick to the matter of housing the homeless (and bringing down nationally high waiting list for local authority homes).

Riker: Shall we nationalise this three dimensional square
in order to provide homes for intergalactic vagrants?
Picard: Make it so

What a waste

It doesn't need restating but I will all the same. Capitalism is marked by its propensity to create levels of waste unknown in human history. That bottle of Sainsbury's Bathroom Cleaner Original you've just used to clean your shitter may have a recyclable bottle but its trigger mechanism is destined for landfill. As capitalism has globalised, its propensity to establish large pools of mass unemployment has also globalised. It's one aspect of this waste. Unemployment wastes human potential  and is emminently wasteful of human life.

Some sums

Yet in the arena of housing, this propensity to waste is equally prevalent. Statistics show that there are estimated to be 930,000 empty homes across the UK (3) which by anyone's standards mixed-metaphorically speaking, is a massive pool of roofs. In 2009, it is estimated that in the City of London alone 10.2% of all commercial property was standing vacant.(4) Now I'd hazard a guess here that commercial property is quite sought after in the City of London. So at very conservative estimate, we might be able to state quite comfortably that around 10% of commercial property stands idle across the UK as a whole. It's probably much higher. As of January 1st 2009, the total amount of commercial floor space in the UK stood at 574.9 million square metres. Just ten percent of this figure is 57.4 million square metres. Calculations show that one Westfield Shopping Centre in London's Shepherd's Bush = 133,333.3 square metres). Currently, the equivalent of around 49 Westfield Shopping Centres lie empty across the UK, at a conservative estimate.

How many people could be housed in 48 of these developments?

It's also reported that in 2010, 1.2 million square metres (or nine Westfields) of empty commercial property was 'wiped out' after the introduction of 'empty rates' in 2008.(5) Simply put, landlords or owners of empty commercial property, instead of electing to pay rates on the empty properties, chose instead to have them demolished destroyed. Housing charity Shelter call it a housing crisis. That property should be destroyed and the land lie fallow waiting for the 'market to pick up' is in the opinion of a dyed-in-the-wool expropriator, nothing less than a crime against humanity... at a conservative estimate. So the solution we advocate is this. Empty homes should be nationalised. Empty commercial properties should be nationalised and immediately converted into homes. All privately owned land currently not in use, should be nationalised and a program of housebuilding initiated. When I say 'nationalised' I do of course mean the taking into public ownership of all this property WITHOUT COMPENSATION. I think it's a rather elegant solution. 

The world according to the Right Honourable Sir Bag O'Vind

"Utterly impracticable and not workable in a liberal democracy" I hear you stammer through your soggy Bran Flakes."What about the rights of those who own property to enjoy the right to their property?" you bellow, as your be-yolked freshly waxed moustache and piss-tweeds take a good spittle-ing. "Go back to Russia thirty years ago!" resonates across the th'web... Come... come... it's not as if the notion of private property has always existed. Clearly, and once again history shows us, that it took successive Parliamentary Acts and often armed force to ensure that the majority of the commonly held land  would end up in the hands of a minority of the population or in sums-chap speak, a mere 0.06% of the population.(6) Today what's left of the common lands represented by the commonly owned housing stock (and public buildings such as schools which of course reside on commonly owned land), is being enclosed through Parliamentary and legal acts carried out by the heirs and descendants of the original thieves.

The post war politics of consensus and the post Keynesian neoliberal politics of consensus

Not every council house tenant can afford the
private King Edward VII hospital to ensure
one's husband's urethra and bladder
gets a clean bill of health

It took five years of world war and the destruction of huge swathes of capital coupled to the very real fear of revolution among political elites to ensure that in 1945 there was political will to fundamentally rebalance the clear inequalities that existed in Britain between the wars. The Welfare State meant that for the first time in history, ordinary working people could gain access to welfare, healthcare and homes 'fit for heroes'. 'Butskellism' was the political manifestation of the consensus among political elites in the UK in the post-war period. Central to this project was cheap, affordable housing owned by the state and administered through democratically elected councils.(7) The by-product of such a huge investment was an educated and healthy workforce necessary for the rebuilding of British capitalism in a world devastated by war. It took an economic crisis of global magnitude in 1973 to break this consensus.(8) Sustained 'stagflation' in leading Western economies saw the abandonment of Keynsianism and the embracing of the new liberalism. One of the ideological flagship policies of the Thatcher government was the re-seeding of the idea that private ownership was better than public ownership, epitomised in her 'right to buy' policy. It was this policy that was responsible for unleashing privatisation into the public housing sector and has helped deplete the stock of council homes nationally. Aided by Labour's 1996 rejection of Clause Four effectively sealed a new form of consensus politics.

Two spectres and his dog went to mow a meadow...

Go on boy... bite the head off that 
monarchy over there

Nationalisation is a four letter word in ruling class circles. The spectre of 'nationalisation' has also returned to haunt the capitalist ruling class. Call it a 'bail out' if you like. But fear of total capitalist collapse forced the ruling class to embrace 21st century nationalisation with a twist. One can almost taste the bitter irony as housing budgets are slashed and millions left to rot in the purgatory that is the ever lengthening council waiting lists, all to ensure that a tiny privileged elite keep their well proportioned roofs over their own heads. But another spectre has returned to haunt political and capitalist elites. The Arab Spring has demonstrated to many hundreds of millions that we do have the power to change the world. Even the war criminal Tony Blair recognises that these revolutions are far from complete. Neoliberal political and economic policies were responsible for that. The worry for our rulers is that the crisis within capitalism is here for the foreseeable future. As the neoliberals and the nouveau enclosurists move into fifth gear in their feverish haste to stuff their mouths with gold while we're forced to subsist on the meanest cake, the ground is being laid for mass social upheaval.

Now where did I put my russet coloured jacket...?

Notes and References

* Dr G Duke v University of Salford, 10:00am at the Employment Appeal Tribunal, Audit House, 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS
** The wealthy, with their innate ability to collectively accessorize, although embracing the concept of living in a shit hole poverty as a fashion item, would never of course choose to actually live in a favela as its unlikely there'd be an ideally situated Starbucks nearby.


(1) Newsnight, 19th December 2002, sourced at http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2002/12_december/19/newsnight_ids_cv.shtml
(2) “Leadership Development Centre rents a subsidiary ‘virtual’ office from the university on a commercial basis and has no other relationship with us … LDCUK does not provide any other training services to staff or students.” sourced at http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/06/company-owned-by-jubilee-stewards-director-in-salford-uni-sham-offices/ and reported in the Guardian sourced at  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/06/unpaid-jubilee-stewards-downing-street?intcmp=239
(3) Empty Homes sourced at http://emptyhomes.com/statistics-2/
(4) Sourced at http://www.sitexorbis.co.uk/sitexorbis-survey-reveals-key-vacant-commercial-property-concerns--n34.html
(5) Sourced at http://www.capitasymonds.co.uk/news__events/news/12_million_sq_metres_of_comme.aspx
(6) Kevin Cahill, Who Owns Britain, Canongate, 2001 sourced from 'A Short History of Enclosure in England' located at http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain
(7) See Lavellete M and Penketh L, 'The Welfare State in the United Kingdom', in 'Welfare Capitalism Around the World, Ed Aspalter C, Casa verde Publishing, Hong Kong 2003, pp 61-86
(8)Bresser-Pereira LC,'The Global Financial Crisis and a New Capitalism?'May 2010, sourced at http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_592a.pdf

Usual disclaimer: This work is and expression of opinion on a matter of public interest contains the opinions of the author. It is intended to report current events that are of public interest and public concern. The reproduction and use of any documents, photos and video images herein is to provide humour and accuracy in order to avoid civil litigation and claims of misquoting. In reporting current events they are used within the context of Fair Dealing or Fair Use. The author is happy to provide further acknowledgement if requested. To make any such request press here.

The author also suggests that before embarking upon expensive civil actions for libel, contact the author. We have reams of documentary evidence which we are happy to provide. A right of reply also operates. We are also happy to make corrections and if necessary provide an apology. So, to save £££sss please avail yourself of this opportunity if you really feel it necessary, which you can do by clicking here or by emailing garypaulduke@gmail.com

In the land of the arse-kickers, the three-legged man is King

I find the notion of 'common sense' fascinating. How often do we hear such general sentiments as: 'they should bring back hanging... bring back corporal punishment... humans are selfish by nature... students are smelly, lazy bastards...' I could labour the point by throwing in the odd 'young people today have no respect for their elders'. I could but I won't, as far too many surly pre-Cambrians have walked through doors I've held open and not registered one decibel on the acknowledg-ometer. Given much of the trollop that passes for 'common sense' in the sphere of politics, I think it's an area that could do with some exploration over the coming weeks.

The strange death of Western liberal democracy

The reason I raise this issue is because of a particularly pervasive common sensical baguette which has pretty much bitten the dust over the last month or so. And this baguette is no trifle despite the lack of real analysis   in the news and in more 'serious' newspapers. Mixed comestibles aside, at a personal level, the removal of two prominent European political leaders has been a bit of a Christmas spoiler. You might be asking 'My dear chap.  Given your obvious political leanings, why are you showing such concern for an obviously conservative type as the naturally dark haired Mr Berlusconi... a chap like you would surely be celebrating his demise? You might also be wondering why I should dwell on such a matter for this, the first posting of the new year. Well these events got me to thinking which as regular readers will know is nearly always a bad thing. You see I spent a large part of the holiday period pondering long and quite hard the concept of liberal democracy in the 21st century, in light of the manner in which both leaders were ejected from their Prime Ministerial positions. Events in Europe had instilled within me a deep concern and for very good personal reasons.

A heavy investment in the system

Some might already know that I've spent quite a few years studying politics and history in an official capacity - as a sort of student type. The recent political developments on the European front brought forth an apparition which like Dicken's famous spectre Jacob Marley, was almost too horrific to endure without a second bottle of Glenfiddich. I felt a bit cheated. Like many other British subjects, I'd been scrupulous in voting at every general election during the last thirty three years. By my calculations and using my excellent powers of recall, I estimated that I'd voted in precisely eight general elections. Even on my gnarled and twisted fingers I could work out that I'd invested heavily in parliamentary democracy. At three minutes a vote (the time it took to walk into the voting station and place a cross expertly on a ballot paper and walk out again) I figured that the political system had consumed twenty four minutes of my time which I'd never get back. It was rather irksome. Yet even then the ramifications of what had occurred hadn't properly sunk in. I knew there had to be another reason for me being sweaty. It dawned on me on Boxing Day.

Back to the drawing board? 

It concerned how Mr Berlusconi's resignation would impact upon the elemental validity of my undergraduate degree? Question after question raced through my pyretic mind... was it now more worthless? Would former students now bereft, organise themselves into an errant commonwealth called the 'quite disgruntled' and seek to collectively realise the scrap value of the paper their degrees were written on? The possibilities seemed endless. At a personal level, I found myself reassessing my period as a knowledge apprentice. Was my time spent at university reading, researching, debating, and engaging in something called 'political activity' a complete waste? What about that tortuous process where one spends days and weeks... even months writing up their research producing dissertati and doctoral thesi of the highest quality and originality? Was this nothing less than a fools errand best undertaken by a chap dressed in a harlequin suit with bell-infused headwear?

The games of the mind

But there was something niggling away in the back of my withered consciousness that like a fear that dare not speak its name, dared not speak its name. Drawing deeply from the large glass of 12 year old single malt, I girded what was left of my loins and lay bare my most apocalyptic anxiety... would I forthwith be receiving a letter from a Deputy Vice Chancellor stating that in light of these momentous European events, I would be required to resit the manifold politics exams I'd taken as an undergraduate? Moreover, would he be stipulating that there'd be some expectation that I'd also be required to comprehensively re-write all those expertly written and plainly interesting essays I'd produced during my three years as an undergraduate, essays that had promoted so much conspicuous pleasure among lecturers in the past?

The author of a series of fine political essays prior to
finding out they were in fact shite

The Quill and the Quotidian

The thought of resurrecting my quill appalled me. In my mind, despite lacking the most basic personal hygiene skill-set, I pictured myself as a revered essayist with sideburns. And those essays had clearly been procured from the depths of my innermost methodological sanctum. It wasn't pleasant down there. Drawing forth such cerebralatorious sagaciums had proved personally taxing on many levels, most of them personal and all of them taxing. I found it difficult to conjure up from my extensive lexicography an appropriate simile. I could only liken the deleterious consequences of even considering reproducing such intellectual chef d'ouevre to maybe the barren efforts of a once consummate literary Onanist on a downward Viagran spiral with an arrested urethra.

Persona non grata

At the most primordial level, and considering my status as persona non grata, would I be able to find a geodetical interlocutor with a taste for human sacrifice worthy of peer-worship, one who would even consider giving me a mark over 60 percent? In the circumstances I found it hard to remain objective. Was I being too optimistic? Could it be immeasurably worse than I was trying to imagine? The wider ramifications of Berlusconi's fall from power, like a stone cast into a pond, splashed a bit. Had all the official texts on politics so cherished by undergraduates, now been rendered obsolete by events? Were 19th century Fourdrinierists eagerly lining up to secure the contract for the mass rendering of tens of thousands of tomes like so many chicken bones into the environmentally friendly bouillon destined for the manufacturies of moist anal wipes?

The inevitable consequences of a severe
lack of attention to detail in humans

Empty shelves?

A series of midnight sweats ensued, induced by fear and copious handfuls of Pseudoephedrine. It did little to help, invoking an unholy trinity: erectile disfunction, pulmonary palpitations and a peculiar dream-like state where an imagined tracking shot in staggered slow-motion captured sepia-tinged reminiscences of pregnant bespoke shelving, attended by leagues of desirous savants with pretensions towards melancholy. Almost immediately the image dissolved offering the viewer a counter-tableau of academial abhorrence. In this inflamed immateriality of unawakened contingency, where once was poised a proud university library teeming with a variety of political and theoretical discourses, now stood an anachronism, a materiality of bricks and mortar, reduced in form to a choleric penury more reminiscent of post-reformation priest's occasional wank-hole.

Down in the cellar

On waking, I decided to forego my New Year's eve celebrations and instead try and see if there was anything worth salvaging. I dug out the bundle of essays I'd written well over a decade ago. Thumbing through them, I was immediately struck by their brilliance. It confirmed the correctness of my original decision to put in three 100 watt bulbs and bugger the consequences for the environment and my pocket. I had the feeling there was some form of redemption buried away somewhere in this pile of perspicacity. I recalled that somewhere lay a fine piece of work with the words 'interesting' scrawled on it by professor of some renown. As I leafed through the ream of dusty, yellowing essays, I drew out the substantial dissertation and pondered the typed words on the crumpled page, I mentally kicked myself.

Yes, if my memory served me correctly, I remembered how I'd made the ineffable decision in this final killer essay to eschew a comparative study. Instead I chose to put all my physical energies into more empirical approach; analysing a political system that was opaque and moribund, where the involvement of ordinary people was negligible, where strong leaders were chosen by a tiny unrepresentative, unelected, privileged elite, backed by a subservient press and media who accepted and reported their decisions uncritically?

Reading the words ten years later, I realised that my anguish through the Christmas week had clearly been based on some form of diabolical personal imprudence. And hindsight's a wonderful thing with hindsight. Gazing over the typed paleology I breathed a sigh of relief as I reaffirmed my original correct decision to write about the British parliamentary system.

Usual disclaimer: This work is the opinion of the author and is produced in order to report current events that are of public interest and public concern. The reproduction and use of any documents herein is to provide accuracy in order to avoid civil litigation and claims of misquoting. In reporting current events they are used within the context of Fair Dealing. The author is happy to provide further acknowledgement if requested. To make any such request press here.

The author also suggests that before embarking upon expensive civil actions for libel, contact the author. We have reams of documentary evidence which we are happy to provide. A right of reply also operates. We are also happy to make corrections and if necessary provide an apology. So, to save £££sss please avail yourself of this opportunity if you really feel it necessary, which you can do by clicking here.

The Pestilence and the Poppy

Yes.... we’re a little late. It's axiomatic of our lifestyles and the odd night or two spent imbibing the meanest quality turpentine in what is unusually clement weather. The controversy has once again raged in the tabloids and media excoriating some in the public arena including Channel Four's Jon Snow. It goes something like this: people like Mr Snow should bow to the peer-pressure and the ideology of the right-wing rags, don their red floral emblems in the most public manner on our screens in order to remember the dead of the First World War.

Raging bull... shit

We won't dwell too long on the arguments for the red or indeed those for the white poppy. We won't delve into the history/rationale for the adoption of the poppy as a symbol in the first place as writers such as Mark Steel, Robert Fisk and others have pretty much covered this base. We won't raise the issue as to why we never seem to remember the war dead of South East Asia, the millions killed in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, as well as the war dead of Africa and the Middle East: Angola, Algeria, Congo, Kenya and countries such as recently invaded Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine.

We shan't linger on those who argue that Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday have been hijacked by the pro-war lobby in order to justify the two most recent invasions and occupations of foreign countries by British troops (something we were taught only the nasty Nazis did during the war). We'll ignore for now the despicable way 'our boys', the so called 'heroes' have to rely on such a simple mechanism as charity to reintegrate the physically and mentally war-crippled back into society. We'll also avoid for the time being the way in which this kind of unquestioning support for foreign imperialistic endeavours is always usually the sub text which states 'we're all in this together' as part of the wider project of building some sort of 'national interest' which will no doubt serve the British ruling class well as they slip the neoliberal juggernaut into its final top gear and dismantle what's left of the publicly provided welfare and health systems and all recognisable forms of social provision. 

The cauldron of heresy

Instead, we've come up with an alternative and we'd like to throw into the cauldron of heresy. It goes something exactly like this: that we should eject good old Papaver rhoeas (the traditional red poppy) from its premier position on the combined lapels of the British masses and replace it with a variety that is equally well known around the globe - Papaver somniferum more commonly known as the Opium Poppy.

Try wearing this fucker with
pride on any Remembrance
Sunday

We can almost hear the national accord resonating across breakfast tables as hirsute Mail-reading opinionists scream forth “Why you hypocritical pre-Christian berserker...!” And anyone who read last week’s sorrowful serving from our campfire pot might at first glance agree with this general sentiment as they wipe what’s left of their unannounced and reconstituted early morning tea and toast from their impeccably waxed handlebars. Yes we’re arguing for the good old Opium Poppy and we won’t be deterred. We will of course endeavour to explain why. It’s got something to do with trade and of course war... oh yes, and it’s also got something to do with the growth and consolidation of the British Empire and British capitalism. We hope it will give some food for thought.

The British state - drug pusher extraordinaire

At the root of our justification of the above is a short historical analysis of drug addiction of the opium based variety. We're not discussing such addiction at a private or individual level, but its use at the macro level.

John Newsinger in his fascinating expose of the bloody history of the British Empire puts it rather succinctly: ‘The British Empire was the largest drug pusher the world has ever seen.’(1) Putting the forced enslavement of millions of black Africans to one side for the moment, it appears that far from being a civilising force for good as some revisionist historians would have us believe, the good old British Empire was also founded in large part on using military force as well as illicitly state-sponsoring smuggling operations in its initial stages, to 'encourage' millions of Chinese people to become... well... heroin addicts! At the centre of this operation was the East India Company which was granted a monopoly in its production and trade by the British government in 1775. Newsinger shows how:

[i]n the 1760s some 1,000 chests of opium (each weighing 140 lbs) were smuggled into China, and this figure gradually increased to around 4,000 chests in 1800... Expansion only really began after 1820 so that by 1824 over 12,000 chests were being smuggled into China, rising to 19,000 in 1830, to 30,000 in 1835 and to 40,000 chests (an incredible 2,500 tons of opium) in 1838.(2)

In Gibb-ian terms are we talking jive or simply talking shite?

“Sir, although reasonably eloquent, you are little more than a tripe-speaking adjunct to the periphery. What the devil does this have to do with war and the fallen?” can almost be discerned among the general hubbub emanating within the plate glassed environs of the bald and apparently untouchable. Given the involvement of the East India Company, we thought it was worth doing a little digging. It appears that the East India Company still exists today. On its website it states:

‘Since its creation in 1600 by The Royal Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I, the influence of The East India Company has been well documented. Without The Company our world would not be as it is today. It changed the world’s tastes, its thinking, and its people. It created new communities, trading places, cities and shaped countries and commercial routes. Singapore and Hong Kong were established by The Company and India was shaped and influenced by it. At one point The Company had the largest merchant navy in the world and conducted and controlled 50% of world trade. With statistics like that it’s easy to forget that at its heart, were real people.

Our heritage is in the spirit of those pioneers. The East India Company’s employees did not set out to change the world. They were people who set sail to establish trade routes, to discover and bring back new goods, and in doing so broke down the barriers of the world. They were explorers, traders, innovators. They took risks, they broke new ground and they sometimes got it wrong...’

The Honourable East India Company - changers of taste

Well it certainly changed the tastes of many Chinese. And we've never heard of drug pushers referred to as 'pioneers' before. Maybe today's pushers of narcotics could re-invent themselves by whacking on a Playtex body-shaper, dropping the word 'pusher' and replacing it for the more business friendly and taxable word 'trader'. It appears that the history of the East India Company has had a similar makeover:

The East India Company made the first successful sea venture to China in 1699, and Hong Kong’s trade with British merchants developed rapidly soon after. The Company was interested in Hong Kong’s safe harbour located on the trade routes of the Far East, thus establishing a trade enterprise between Western businessmen and China. Chinese commodities, namely porcelains, landscaped-furnishings and tea were popular among the European aristocrats. As trade grew the British Government became concerned to reduce its huge purchases in silver from China and replaced the silver with opium. The trade of opium for Chinese products grew rapidly. The Chinese emperor banned the drug trade in 1799 but to no avail. Smuggling came about as neither foreign traders nor Guangdong merchants were inclined to forgo the profitable business, and this led to the Opium Wars. Throughout the next few years, the British enjoyed a fruition of success from opium. When they lost monopoly of the trade, other foreign traders stepped into the illegal opium business for a share of wealth.(3)

A postmodernist take on pipe smoking?

All in a day's work

Give those chaps at the contemporaneous East India Company their due, it is at least a dabble into a form of history albeit of the 'cod' variety. It does mention the Opium Wars. It also mentions the trade in opium but it manages this in a rather sanitised sort of way. So let's just re-adjust the historical record slightly and establish here that not only did the Honourable East India Company trade opium, the Company mass produced it in India. It was a fortunate consequence of the Company's conquest of Bengal (the East India Company had its own large private army of around 200,000 men and a large private navy) that it 'took control of a well-established opium industry involving peasant producers, merchants, and long-distance traders.' 

These activities were reflected in this region with the Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-58 and finally from 1859-60 where the British and their French allies finally occupied Beijing) which consolidated Britain's stranglehold on the trade in opium in China.

Opium - the super commodity of its day

The consequences of the initial illegal trade in opium and the later wars to establish its 'legitimacy', ensured that opium would become the most profitable commodity of this period. This resulted in huge levels of addiction with the inevitable social breakdown. For Britain and the East India Company the 300 million inhabitants of China were viewed as 300 million potential 'customers' for their highly desirable commodity. The statistics are quite staggering. By 1830, the illegal trade in opium had created around 3 million Chinese addicts with some estimates stating that the levels of addiction among the Chinese was as high as 12 million, fed principally by illegal importation by the Honourable East India Company. Britain and the East India Company can bask in their shared glory knowing that by the early 20th century approximately twenty seven per cent of the Chinese population were regular opium users.

'On the company lies the responsibility of fostering the trade in every way possible, the revenue from this source alone, in Bengal and Bombay amounting probably to some five millions sterling a year … at present the British government holds the position of a producer and dealer in opium; a postion not only anomalous, but highly derogatory to the dignity of, and which can hardly be maintained with honour to, the crown'. (4)

There were more direct human costs with the imposition of the will of the British state on the Chinese state and its people? Militarily there was a huge technological imbalance. It ensured massacre after bloody massacre. For example, in October 1841 around 2,000 Chinese were slaughtered in the taking of Jinhai by the British. Mass rape and pillage were also commonplace in order to ensure the appropriate conditions for trade.

Opium and war

Natural bed-chaps: war and opium

We've seen how three wars were fought by the British to establish and monopolise the trade of opium to China and to create a 'free market' for the East India Company's products. Conversely, and rather ironically, today the language of 'war' is used by the US and UK governments to conduct their largely futile 'war on drugs'.(5) And at a military level we are told, wars are needed to stop the production and export of cocaine from countries such as Colombia. How does one fight such a war? By funding right-wing paramilitary death squads of course. Investing billions in countering the trade in untaxed cocaine really has nothing whatsoever to do with maintaining a foothold in its 'backyard'. Nor does it reflect a worry among the US ruling class that the poor and disenfranchised have brought to power the likes of the often leftish Hugo Chavez in neighbouring Venezuela.

Oddly enough, the biggest producer of opium today is Afghanistan. Given the invasion by NATO forces led by the US and UK, common sense might suggest that the trade would be declining. We were told after all that one of the reasons for the invasion was to stop opium production in Afghanistan. Even more ironically it appears that under the brutal pre-invasion Taliban regime, production had decreased markedly. What can we extrapolate from this? The actions of the US and its NATO allies have led directly to the huge increase in opium production and its concomitant - the growing problem of heroin addiction in that region and throughout the West.(6) A cynical type might even say that the evidence shows that the British troops stationed in the Helmand Province who we are told are there to help in the efforts at reconstruction, have done little more than help reconstruct the pre Taliban opium trade.(7) Long gone are the promises that the invasion would help reduce the production of opium.

The history sanitisers

Rarely does the British state recognise its culpability in the heinous crimes perpetrated in the name of trade or the protection of the right to trade. More so when the victims of these crimes are hidden from view, half a world and a century and a half away. There are quite a few high profile historians who are perfectly happy to assist them in this endeavour. Despite the teeth gnashing of the 'glory-in-death' pundits or the analysis-free liberals who believe that those who were slaughtered on the fields of Flander died 'in the service of Queen and country', there is no glory, nor indeed is there any victory in marching across the life-hungry corpulence of no-man's land towards certain death in order to establish the primacy of British capitalism over its German competitor. There's no glory in slaughtering hundreds of thousands simply to establish a framework for 'free trade' in the Middle East and the right of Britain to 'do business' in Iraq or Afghanistan when the true human costs remain conveniently hidden from our view.

Outside of the rarified atmosphere of the jingos' glorious Valhallah of blood and blue, for many, seeking to impose what is for all intents a rather British foible on the world, is a little like the 'red in tooth and claw' British imperialists imposing their blood-soaked 'Butcher's Apron' on their former colonies.

So next year we'd like to propose the wholesale adoption of Papaver somniferum to be worn on our collective lapel-age to both internationalise an event, but more importantly as a symbol to remember those who were the innocent victims of the greed of a tiny but powerful group, and who saw nothing but profit in the misery of the untold addicted Chinese millions.

Notes and Resources

(1) Newsinger J, The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire, Bookmarks, London, 2010, Pg 44
(2) Greenberg M, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-1842, Cambridge, 1951, quoted in Newsinger J, The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire, Bookmarks, London, 2010, Pg 49
(3) Website of the East India Company sourced at http://www.theeastindiacompany.com/
(4)Lockhart W, William Lockhart: The medical missionary in China : a narrative of twenty years’ experience London : Hurst and Blackett, 1861, pp 401-402
(5) For an excellent analysis on the role drug use plays in Western societies see A Farrell 'Addicted to Profit: Capitalism and Drugs at http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj77/farrell.htm
(6) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime sourced at http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/drug-trafficking/index.html
(7) The Independent, 28th August 2007 sourced at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/record-opium-crop-helps-the-taliban-fund-its-resistance-463283.html