Pot And Kettle In Row Over Colour

Pot




Kettle



The Daily Mail today ran a large story attacking Nick Griffin as a "bigot". This is a bit like Adolph Hitler slagging off Benito Mussolini as a fascist!!! Were it not for papers like the Daily Mail, the Express and other gutter publications, spewing out bile, day in day out, for the last several years, in attacking Asylum Seekers and Illegal Immigrants, then its likely that the BNP would not have gained much of the traction it has. In fact, its a classic example of the contradictions that run throughout Capitalist society.

The Daily Mail is caught between trying to be a profitable newspaper, whose readership are the largely backward and ignorant sectors of society, the disgruntled middle classes and so on, whose general powerlessness leads them continually to look to someone weaker than themselves, some scapegoat on which to vent their frustration. To such people, stories about someone supposedly getting something they are not entitled to are red meat. If that someone is Johnny Foreigner, then, often, all the better. In order to keep such people happy, then papers like the Mail pump out a steady stream of stories, usually of the kind that any intelligent person would immediately call into question, but, which feed the bigotry and paranoia of Mail readers. Yet, at the same time, the Mail, like all the other Capitalist press is a part of the complex machinery of Capitalism's headfixing industry, and has to remember that it has to look after the interests of Capital, and in particular Big Capital, as well as pandering to the reactionary notions of the small businessmen and middle classes who make up its readership.

The small back street businessman might feel he is quite happy in his insular world on this "septic isle" to quote Del Boy, without need to relate to the wider world, and still less to the impositions of the Brussels bureaucracy, but the real Capitalists, the people to whom papers like the Mail are ultimately responsible, cannot afford to go along with such fantasies. To them, there is no existence outside the world of Global Capitalism, or outside their integration into the bloc of European Capital. And, for these Capitalists, the reality has been, over the last decade, that the British economy needed a steady stream of imported cheap labour. As unemployment fell, it became impossible to force indigenous workers to take on the low paid, low status work that needed to be done, and which was only profitable at such low wages. The alternative would have been to engage in the creation of mass unemployment and an almost complete dismantling of the Welfare State in order to force workers to take whatever job, and under whatever conditions, the bosses deigned to give. That would have caused a massive amount of social unrest, which would have been counter-productive for Capital.

Yet, importing cheap labour also caused social unrest, and papers like the Mail profited from it, by selling papers on the back of the unrest, just as the BNP grew on the back of that unrest. So long as the BNP remained just some small organisation that acted as a release valve for that unrest, so long as it was just a few immigrants getting beaten up by racist thugs, like those on this week's Panorama, the Mail and its clones could continue to feed the bigotry, and continue to sell more papers on the back of it. But, it has become clear that the growth of the BNP, the fact that it now has two MEP's has become uncomfortable for Capital. Capital has decided to rein it in. Hence the invite to Griffin to "Question Time", where the bosses agents hope to snare him - though on past performance they may have overestimated their own abilities in that regard - hence the newspaper attacks, hence the attacks on the BNP by the ex military top brass, hence the anti-BNP campaign launched by a number of prominent ex servicemen like Simon Weston, which is apparently being organised by some Tory activists, hence the leaking again of the BNP's membership list, probably by agents of the State working on the inside, and also probably hence the EDL.

The Capitalists only need fascist parties like the BNP when there back is against the wall. At the moment it is not. Capital is strong, bourgeois democracy is strong, despite all the broo ha ha over MP's expenses, whilst the working class is still yet weak, and its leaders almost non-existent. For now, the BNP represent a bigger danger for Capital than does the working class. During the 1970's and early 80's that was not the case. Then, it was the working class that was strong, and Capital was on the back foot. In a Programme a few years ago about the Secret State, an ex Special Branch officer recounted how, they alone, had 250 Trade Union leaders on their books as paid informants. Every Left organisation was riddled with police spies, or spooks of one form or another. Those of us, on the Left, took it for granted that our phones were bugged, and all my post arrived already opened. One comrade who worked at the Post Office told me that Special Branch had their own facilities for engaging in such action.

Its pretty certain that the State is engaged in similar actions inside the BNP and other fascist groups now.

The Daily Mail's attack comes on the back of the BNP responding to the Generals by comparing them to Nazi War Criminals. They have a knack for irony if nothing else. They argue that the Generals were as guilty as Blair and co for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. To an extent, of course, they have a point. When most people think of the idea of "Defending Britain", they think of defending the people of Britain. Of course, that is not what Capital means by that term, nor what its State means either. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were nothing to do with defending British people, but were to do with defending the global interests of British Capital! But, the row, in part, erupted over the BNP's use of WWII imagery, and, of course, WWII was just as much about defending the global interests of British Capital as was the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Britain did not declare war on Germany because Britain had been attacked. Indeed, during the 1930's the negotiations and machinations between the various powers was such that Britain and Germany could easily have been fighting on the same side! We now know that the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, who nearly became Prime Minister, even after the War had begun sent representatives sympathetic to Germany, to discuss with Hitler, a proposal that if Germany left the British Colonies alone, Britain would leave Europe to Germany!

And, of course, during the 1930's, that same Daily Mail was an enthusisastic supporter of Hitler, and of Mussolini, praising them both for their efforts in crushing the working classes of their respective countries. Indeed, that other WWII icon used by the BNP, Winston Churchill, was himself a well-known and rabid anti-semite. Finally, the remaining icon used by the BNP was the Spitfire. Living only a a mile from where the inventor of the Spitfire, Reginald Mitchell, was born, I feel some pride in the machine as a piece of technology. But, although its imagery is closely associated with the Battle of Britain - wrongly because the Hurricanes played a much larger role - the fact is that the same Spitfire was used by the British State to also keep in chains millions of British Colonial slaves throughout the Empire.

The reality is that in terms of Nationalism the BNP are probably more consistent in their ideas than are the Daily Mail, or even the military top brass. For them Nationalism is merely a tool to be utilised to further the interests of Capital. If the BNP want these Nationalistic images I say let them keep them, the interests of the working class lie not in such Nationalism and warmongering, but in Internationalism and the solidarity of workers against the bosses whatever their Nationality, colour or creed. The BNP and the Daily Mail and their ilk all deserve each other. They are all the enemy of the working class.