Witch-hunt Of The Establishment

The media has been full, in the last couple of days, of claims of a witch-hunt, over the accusations of paedophilia and child abuse, arising from the Jimmy Savile Affair, and claims over child abuse in North Wales. The charge of a witch-hunt was raised by David Cameron on daytime TV, but has been picked up by David Aaronivich and others. Marxists, have more reason than most to oppose witch-hunts, but the response of the establishment, and its representatives, here, smacks of hypocrisy.

By definition, the members of the Establishment are more than capable of looking after their own interests. Whenever there is even the slightest possibility that their reputations might be being impugned, they have the gravitas and, more importantly, the money, and the contacts, to be able to sue and silence those responsible. In fact, that is one of the reasons that even the tabloid newspapers gave for not investigating, and running stories, about Jimmy Savile. A look back, over previous decades, shows many instances of celebrities, and others in positions of power, who have been paid millions of pounds in damages, whenever anyone has suggested they may have been up to something they shouldn't. Is it any wonder that a large proportion of the population, of Britain, today, sees the way to make money being to win a court case, for damages, of one sort or another, to become a TV celebrity, by whatever means possible, and so on?

But, of course, when ordinary people follow that route, they are disdained. What is more, ordinary people do not have the advantages that the rich and powerful have to defend their reputations or to gain from those that impugn them. No ordinary working class person would be paid, even hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of pounds in libel damages, for instance. In law, as in every other area of life, we clearly are “not all in it together”, there clearly is not “one nation”, but rather there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, or just the rest of us.

So, for example, over recent years, we have numerous examples of where the gutter press have run the typical moral panic stories over paedophilia, which have resulted in angry mobs, on council estates, rampaging to pick out potential suspects, and drive them out. Many years ago, I went to a council estate, under similar circumstances, where a young man, who had been arrested for rape, lived with his parents. The aftermath looked like something from Syria today. His parents' house had been totally trashed, and for a couple of hundred yards or so around, there was devastation, with the road covered in broken house bricks and other debris.

And, in these protests, we have seen the consequences of Britain's inadequate State education system, with people attacking the homes of completely innocent workers, because the reading and comprehension skills, of the attackers, were not even sufficient to know the difference between someone being a paedophile, and being a paediatrician!!!

But, these are just the tip of the iceberg. For decades, the gutter press have run stories, against unnamed people, that were clearly a bunch of lies, but which supported their agenda, in attacking immigrants, or benefit scroungers, and often conflated the two. There have been endless, ridiculous stories, in the Daily Express and Daily Mail, about immigrants being provided with luxury homes, or being provided with driving lessons, and free cars, and other such nonsense. A couple of years ago, the Daily Mail ran a story about someone who it claimed was being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in benefits. Any journalist worth their sort would know this was nonsense, because it was impossible for anyone to be receiving the amount they claimed. In fact, the person involved was housed in London, where housing costs are ridiculously expensive. The vast majority of the money was going, not to the person named, but to the Landlord, who owned the property they had been housed in by the Council. Responsibility for that situation rested with the Council that has not built sufficient Council housing for people, and with Maggie Thatcher who forced Councils to sell off the Council Housing they did have. But, of course, the Daily Mail would not provide the actual facts on that.

But, where has been the media outrage about all of these witch-hunts, of ordinary working people. Where have been all of the column inches, exposing the media, for these lies, that lead to these attacks on ordinary working people. They only take notice when it is their own that are under attack.

But, what has been seen, over the last few years, shows that, rather than a witch-hunt, what we have had, for far too long, is a culture of cover-up and secrecy, for those in positions of power. For years, MP's and Peers, none of whom are as hard up as the average worker, found guilty of fiddling a few quid on their benefits, were fiddling thousands of pounds through the Expenses Scheme. Others were able to secure, for themselves, peerages, by the odd donation to a political party here and there, and such boondoggles are themselves lucrative. Its not just that you get well paid for sitting in the House of Lords, for instance. Its that you have companies falling over themselves to pay you thousands of pounds a year, just to add your name to their company board as a non-executive director, that you are asked to sit on this or that commission, and so on.

Then we have seen the links between politicians and the media, exposed through the Leveson Inquiry, not to mention the links between both of the above and the Police, and the way that was covered up. In recent weeks, we have seen the way the Police lied about the events at Hillsborough, and the way sections of the media were complicit in spreading those lies. It is being suggested that some of the abuse in North Wales was organised by people who were all Free Masons. But, its not necessary to see things in some kind of Dan Browne Conspiracy terms to understand the way things can be organised, and covered up, because the everyday links, between the people who make up the Establishment, make such cover-ups, and protection of other people's backs routine.

That is wh,y as I've written before, we need to open all the books on bourgeois society. We clearly cannot rely on any aspect of the Establishment to inquire into other areas of the Establishment. How can we trust the Police that lied over Hillsborough, and that have lied over so many other events, to investigate themselves. Its one reason Marxists should be standing candidates in the elections for Police Commissioners. We can't believe that such Commissioners will have real power, but they will have a platform to stand on to raise a campaign for greater democracy within policing, including democratic rights within the Police Force, for the establishment of neighbourhood, democratically controlled policing by communities themselves and so on.

Nor can we rely on politicians, who have lied and covered up on many of these issues. We certainly cannot rely on the media that have shown themselves to be closely tied to the police, and the politicians, and big business. We need to open all the books, and we need a Workers Inquiry, into corruption within the Establishment as a whole.

It is becoming clear that it is not just a matter of corrupt individuals, but of a thoroughly rotten structure as a whole. Its not a matter of trying to fix that rotten structure, but but of giving it one almighty kick with a big, steel capped, worker's boot.