There were many things I did not like about the pro-Brexit marches on Friday.
The right to protest is, of course, vital.
And I try very hard to understand the Brexit viewpoint, although when it is the racism I heard from a stallholder on Ely market yesterday I fail to do so, and I made that clear to him.
But there is something I cannot tolerate, and that is intimidation. And the presence of flute and drum bands on Friday was meant to intimidate.
The history of these bands in Northern Ireland is obvious. Marching in their quasi-military uniforms they were meant to intimidate catholics, and for decades they did just that. Now they are meant to intimidate those who will not agree to hard Brexit. The intimidation comes with menace attached, just as it always did in Orange Order parades. And that is wholly unacceptable.
What is bizarre is also how contradictory it is. The bands on Friday did, apparently, come from Scotland. And yet Brexiteers harassed SNP MPs that day, telling them to go back to their own country. It takes some doing to embrace both the band and the comment. My sympathy is with the MPs who suffered the abuse.
There were good points arising from this. Some in the media called out those leading the protests for what many of them are.
The tone of these tiny protests were appropriately contrasted with the People's Vote march.
But let's not ignore the fact that it only takes a small minority to intimidate a lot of people.
We have to be aware of the threat. No one knows what will happen on Brexit as yet. We may hard Brexit. I still think that the most likely outcome.
But I now give almost as much chance to a long extension, MEP elections in May and a second referendum.
Most will accept this. That is what happens in democracy. Courses of action change. But some will not be willing to do so. And the long term legacy of these ghastly three years will be a country divided for decades if not generations. And some of that division will turn to anger. I sincerely hope that the protection required for those that might suffer it is in place.
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Thank goodness there is at least one commenter in England who appreciates the significance of these bands.
Following several twitter threads yesterday it was clear flute bands, and their significance, were largely unknown south of the border. Worryingly the media also seemed to be unaware of the background to the bands – or was it a case of lying by omission?
Hopefully, people living in England have had their eyes opened to the bigotry that many living in Scotland and Northern Ireland have to live. And, now appreciate how the failure of politicians in Westminster to understand and empathise with the people of Northern Ireland will not help with solutions to the problems there.
You are wrong to infer, though you do it constantly, that those who voted for Brexit are either racist or fascist. It is as absurd as claiming the left is anti semitic (just because a few are) or the Green movement is a violent organisation because of a tiny number of eco terrorists.
I did not do so
I made it clear it was an exception
Just as those who make it sectarian are a minority
But that does not mean they do not need to be called out for what they are
And you are wrong to criticise me for doing so
I oppose discrimination and violence from wherever it comes
Your claim is false
I will judge your sincerity by the fulsomeness of your apology
You’re right about the lack of awareness. I even heard one TV commentator refer to the marchers having “a PIPE band”!
I don’t know which tunes the FLUTE band played but if it included one notorious one, I’ll bet she might have referred to it as Marching Through Georgia. You’ll know the one I mean, Gordon.
I do too
I feel that I have to point out that I know plenty of pro-Brexit people and I would say that the incidence of racism and xenophobia amongst them is very pronounced. Some of these are members of my immediate family and friends.
These people are angry – they have been wound up for years by an out of control media and very foolish politicians toying with Fascist tactics on issues like the EU, immigration, the Union, and the Left.
In the last 10 years, mix in the undoubted austerity (underfunding of services and more restrictions on the qualification for help) with lies told about money creation and ‘balanced budgets’ and that is what you get – people who are scared of losing out to others and feeling that they have to compete aggressively all of the time to get help from resources that have been made scarce by choice.
As much as I understand how this mindset is created, I’m afraid also abhor it and will take them on any time, any place intellectually or physically if necessary (as I think may become the case). It is difficult not to see such people as weak and easily led. I also believe that existing mal-adaptive cognitions such as racism and jealousy also play a part.
However, it is also plain to me that they are desperate and also want many on the Left want too – which is tragic. They want to feel that they matter and that someone is looking out for them. Parties that chase swing voters please note.
The problem is that in turning their backs on the Left, they become an impediment to their own relief because (1) they have also bought into the Neo-liberal trope about being independent and self supporting even though the means of doing so (work, fair pay and conditions, education, pensions) are being destroyed by the very people they support; (2) they cheer on the demise of those advocating the destruction of other people’s jobs, pay and conditions because it is what they suffer when they should be voting for people who want to expand the economy and those factors of pay, conditions, pensions – not contract it and (3) they are far too susceptible to the blame game for their woes and blame those who are different in a way that conforms to their existing mal-cognitive racist/anti-social attitudes and (4) having been told and got the clear message that no one cares about them and that they can only really rely on themselves (see 1 above) they are impervious to reasoned argument and debate because effectively they only trust themselves and those in the same boat (and their are lots of them).
Their programming is complete (and it all started in 1979).
The world of these people is a very dark place for which there is no room for macro thinking – its all micro – up close and personal, intimate. They’d rather blame a teacher for their life than a politician because they can actually see the teacher, whose life seems better than theirs and therefore must be made as bad as theirs because that is only fair in their view. Therefore everything is a threat to them except the very thing that is the cause of their pain.
To the Left or any progressive they must be like wounded animals at the side of the road who bite you even though you are trying to help them.
On another note, I watched Dave Allen Night on TV last night and was thrilled to see this fantastic comedian once again – he is much missed. The show mentioned the furore over his use of the ‘F’ word in one of his jokes (the one about clocks).
My conclusion was that the complaints were derived from one simple fact: Allen was Irish. The objection was quite clearly from a racist point of view.
This country and its insistence on remembering and celebrating those we have tussled with ensures that we remain a strange place where conflict generated racism can still exist generation after generation.
This my friends, is England.
“Their programming is complete (and it all started in 1979).”
You are so right. Thatcher’s legacy has finally come home to roost. In the early eighties, the miners and steel workers were sacrificed in order to allow her to crush the unions and pursue Neoliberalism with as few impediments as possible. In doing so, entire towns and villages became dependent on benefits and these people quickly got the message that they were surplus to requirements. Over the past few decades, things haven’t improved too much in these forsaken pockets of the country and so the children and grandchildren of Thatcher’s victims have grown up without hope. Their despair is similar to that experienced by the German people following WW1 – a sense that everything had been taken away from them and that they had been victimised and abandoned. No wonder then that they responded (just like the downtrodden Germans) with such fervour when Farage and the media provided them with scapegoats on which they could vent their rage.
No-one can blame these people for their anger and frustration. They have been abused and ignored for way too long. The tragedy is that, as you point out, they seem unable to recognise their oppressors and side with the very people who are intent on destroying them. I like your analogy of a defensive wounded animal but their behaviour also reminds me of a dog, which licks the boots of the master who has just beaten it to within an inch of its life because it is so unquestioningly loyal that it cannot even entertain the notion of finding another master or going it alone.
It also brings to mind Martin Seligman’s study on Classical Conditioning. Seligman would ring a bell before administering an electric shock to a dog and after a while the dog began reacting as soon as the bell rang. Seligman then set up the dog pen so that the dog had the opportunity to jump across an obstacle to avoid being shocked. Surprisingly, the dog chose not do so as it perceived the shock as an inevitability. When he repeated this part of the experiment with a dog that had not been subjected to repeated shocks, it consistently jumped to safety and avoided being shocked. Seligman had witnessed Learned Helplessness in the behaviour of the original dog and that is precisely what we are seeing now; victims of a cruel and callous government can see the escape route but they just don’t see any point in trying to head towards it because experience has taught them that struggle is futile. Brexit, however, gave them a brief glimmer of hope (even if it was false hope) and how do we now take that away from them and convince them that it’s in their best interests?
Yes, Thatcher was the true architect of Brexit Britain and it’s a brutal, dog eat dog country where nihilism rules.
Very interesting stuff Susi.
You might want to read Guy Standing’s ‘The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class’ (2011/15) too.
I think that another driver for this group is also shame.
In a world of conspicuous consumption, people get really het up and embarrassed about money – especially a lack of it – and this sense of shame (not having as much as they are supposed to) and – given the advertising they are bombarded with all day to keep up – this results in the usual cognitive dissonance that leads to dissatisfaction and then anger. Anger that is then capitalised on by populist politics.
In their defence, this group I find work hard to try to get by and be independent and provide for themselves but factors like reductions in vocational training investment, zero hours contracts, low pay and conditions grinds them down.
And do you now what? It could happen to any one of us.
Shocking. When David Cameron said in 2011 that Britain had to compete on the basis of low wages we know that the bastard meant us – all of us – but not the MPs who can’t even stop BREXIT, who are now on £77K+ a year.
“Their programming is complete (and it all started in 1979)”.
I’d agree things changed with the introduction of Thatcherism but the programming has been going on for far longer than that.
I rather like this article, seems to sum it up nicely – https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/society-is-made-of-narrative-realizing-this-is-awakening-from-the-matrix-787c7e2539ae?fbclid=IwAR29I3_J_G3hfO0g3xTshb8yxH83yJZDLz_oi6N4mR-vXXCXI7-pqmnAuW0
What a fascinating, thought-provoking article! It really is quite a revelation to consider what would be left if we stripped away all of the constructs that make up our ‘civilisation’. The narratives Johnson speaks of are so embedded in the fabric of our society that they have become invisible and the most powerful narrative of them all is the ‘American Dream’ because this fairytale of achieving upward social mobility through hard work and determination still prevails across vast swathes of the globe. Adopting another narrative will require a monumental shift in our collective consciousness because so many of us have invested so much time and money in pursuit of the goals set by the established narrative. However, there are indications that people are beginning to question it and seek out a story that focuses on our shared humanity rather than our baser instincts. This is great news as our survival as a species may depend on us doing just that.
While much of what you say is undoubtedly true and Thatcher’s decimation of industry left behind a toxic legacy of people feeling thrown on the scrap heap, together with austerity, stagnant wages, attacks on “scroungers and benefits cheats” and all the rest while the top 1% and the even more rarified top 0.1% effortlessly draw away into the income & wealth stratosphere thanks to deliberate government policies since the mid 70’s, all this probably contributed to the state of the nation as described on here, the xenophobia, racism and so on and made so many ardent to accept the lies of the chief Brexiteers.
However, I wonder if we may be guilty of stereotyping “who these people are”? Danny Dorling has a different take, based on research – it was the middle class southerners wot done it: http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/middle-class-bregretters and this argument is developed in his book “Rule Britannia” (with Sally Tomlinson)
Thanks for the Guy Standing recommendation. I’ll be sure to check it out.
It’s good
Joanna Cherry tweeted how she was intimidated and abused as she made her way home on Friday after the vote. She also told ITN News about the significance of the Loyalist Flute Bands and how their purpose is to intimidate Catholics like herself.
Article here: https://www.thenational.scot/news/17539611.brexit-abuse-joanna-cherry-reveals-women-followed-her-and-called-her-a-bitch/
As a Scot I fail to understand what purpose the Orange Order serves marching in commemoration of a Battle and overthrow of a monarch in favour of a war monger and the consolidation of anti-catholic sentiment and discriminatory legislation that has blighted the history of the UK and Ireland for several centuries and has been hidden in plain sight.
Of course, they deny that their marches are designed to intimidate. To which the Mandy Rice-Davies defence comes to mind.
The Orange Order exists to promote sectarianism
It’s a dire history
For the background to the flute band and the whole malignant brew of the Orange Order, blind adherence to Unionism, far-right politics, quasi-religious fundamentalism and the KKK, here’s an article: https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2019/03/30/flutes-in-whitehall-fascists-on-the-streets/ What the article doesn’t mention is the factor which provides the energy that drives the brew: football and the intense rivalry/ hatred between Glasgow’s two big teams.
This toxic brew is the one thing that makes me ashamed of my native land: it’s the 21st century FFS and here are people whose mindset is shaped by events in 17th century. It’s as though the Enlightenment never happened.
In my train spotting days I remember visiting Glasgow St Rollox Loco works (Springburn) and the thing that I never forgot was the pro-IRA graffiti everywhere on the blocks of flats! I had never seen anything like it and as much as I liked Glasgow, it made for a very unnerving experience.
Sectarianism is the ultimate hypocrisy of religion.
Rather as neoliberalism is the ultimate hypocrisy of of the lesser faith of economics.
Those whose goal in life is to achieve, and abuse, power for their own ends, will march under any banner. 🙁