Grayling's Ignorant and Ridiculous Argument

Tory Transport Minister, and Brextremist, Chris 'Failing' Grayling, is arguing that another referendum over Brexit would give rise to a potential for extremism in a way not seen in Britain since the Restoration of the Monarchy, in 1660.  This argument is ignorant, and ridiculous.  It is historically false, and logically unsustainable.

Firstly, what Grayling's argument amounts to saying is that Brextremists like him, if they do not get their way, have a right to be offended, and to report to violent, and extreme measures, but all those who feel, equally passionately, for Remain, that their rights and opinions have been ignored, have no such right to respond in that manner.  Yet, the fact is that, according to all opinion polls, and simply on the basis of the logic of the transformation of the electorate since 2016 - around 1.5 million young voters joining the rolls, and around 1.5 million old voters leaving the rolls - those supporting Remain are in the majority.

If we were to take it purely on the basis that those in the majority camp have a right to be offended, and to react violently to being ignored, then it is Remain supporters who would have every right to do so, in the face of being denied a democratic vote on the issue, not the Brextremists.  In what rational universe is support for democracy, rather than rule of the mob to be defended, by refraining from a democratic vote, for fear of provoking a violent reaction from the mob?  The supporters of Brexit claim that there is no majority for Remain today, any more than there was in 2016.  That matter is open to debate, and the only democratic way of deciding that issue, is by holding a vote!  Those who believe that there is a majority for Remain have every democratic right, therefore, to demand such a vote, and the argument that to hold such a vote would lead to violence is no argument at all for anyone who has any credible claim to being a democrat.

For all the reasons I have set out previously, here, I do not believe that the appropriate means of holding such a vote is via a referendum, which is the chosen vehicle for all demagogues, dictators and Bonapartists.  The preferred way is to hold a General Election, but if such a General Election is not possible, or if Corbyn continues to ignore the view of 80% of Labour Party members, and pushes ahead with his crazy backing for Brexit, then another referendum, might be the only credible alternative.

But, Grayling's claim that such sharp divisions in society, as opposed to some cosy centre-ground consensus, is alien to British politics is an historical fabrication.  For example, after the Restoration, there was the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the rising bourgeoisie, put its own chosen candidate, William of Orange, on the British throne, symbolising the fact that the British state, if not yet the political regime had become dominated by the interests of capital, and not landed property.  The subsequent struggle of that rising bourgeoisie to capture the political power, via a political revolution, continued over the next 150 years, as the bourgeoisie, as a whole struggled to obtain the right to vote, culminating in the 1832 Reform Act.  But, on the way to it, that bourgeoisie, supported by a growing urban proletariat also had to engage in violent political clashes, with the old order, such as that which occurred in the Peterloo Massacre.  At that time, only the owners of landed property, constituting just 2% of the population, and excluding many of the bourgeoisie itself, had the right to vote.

After the 1832 Reform Act extended the franchise to most of the bourgeoisie, a number of sharp political battles raged, more sharp, indeed, than that currently over Brexit.  Firstly, the industrial bourgeoisie, backed by the urban proletariat, demanded a Repeal of the Corn Laws, which kept food prices high, and directly benefited the landed aristocracy, and the sections of the bourgeoisie amongst the financial oligarchy connected to them.  The issue split the Tory Party.  But, also at this time, following the extension of the franchise to the whole of the bourgeoisie, the working-class now also demanded the right to vote, and as Engels pointed out, the industrial capitalists, the middle-class realised that, in order to hold political power themselves, such an extension of the franchise was necessary.

"The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of 1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to the credit of Free Trade. Both these circumstances had turned the English working class, politically, into the tail of the ‘great Liberal Party’, the party led by the manufacturers. This advantage, once gained, had to be perpetuated. And the manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist opposition, not to Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade into the one vital national question, had learnt, and were learning more and more, that the middle class can never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of the working class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between both classes... And, practically, that horrid People’s Charter actually became the political programme of the very manufacturers who had opposed it to the last. The Abolition of the Property Qualification and Vote by Ballot are now the law of the land. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make a near approach to universal suffrage, at least such as it now exists in Germany; the Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates equal electoral districts-on the whole not more unequal than those of France or Germany; payment of members, and shorter, if not actually annual Parliaments, are visibly looming in the distance and yet there are people who say that Chartism is dead.” 

(Preface To The Second German Edition of “The Condition Of The Working Class)

But, as Engels says, here, it had not always been the case that the bourgeoisie had supported that demand.  In the 1840's, the bourgeoisie took fright at the idea of giving workers the vote.  As revolution spread across the continent, the Chartists, from whom both Marx and Engels, separately grasped the nature of the working-class as the vehicle of social change, fought violent battles, as the bourgeoisie had done before them, for the right to vote.

Where Brenda From Bristol, found democracy to be way too taxing, and time consuming, even when limited to the requirement to spend just a few minutes every few years putting a cross on a ballot, the Chartists engaged, on a mass scale, in political debate, activity and a struggle not just for the right to vote every few years, but for a series of political rights, including Annual Parliaments.  The Chartists found themselves imprisoned, deported and their allies continually attacked by the local dragoons of the old ruling class.  Here, in Stoke, which was a main centre for Chartism, it led to dozens of workers being shot and killed, and many more wounded.  One demonstrator in Burslem was decapitated as a result of being caught in the lash of a bull whip, wielded by one of goons sent in by the local ruling-class.  No wonder, that in the pubs of Hanley, the Chartists began to arm themselves, in the run up  to the General Strike of 1842, which began in the Potteries coal mines, and spread into the potbanks, and then across the country.

Grayling also seems to have removed from his tiny mind the struggles over Women's Suffrage at the start of the 20th century, or the violent actions of the state against the working-class during the 1926 General Strike, or of the violent confrontations to defeat Mosley's Black Shirts, at Cable Street, when his nationalist gang was promoting many of the same ideas of xenophobia couched in anti-capitalist rhetoric that today's Brextremists promote.  

Indeed, there is a lesson for today of those who blindly look at "traditional" Labour seats and seek to tail the prejudices of the most backward sections of workers in those seats.  In the 1920's, the Stoke parliamentary seat (what is now mostly Stoke South), was held by John Ward.  Ward was originally a member of the "Marxist" SDF.  He quickly moved right.  Initially, he was involved in the creation of the Labour Party, but in 1905, objected to the inclusion of Socialists, and socialist principles in its constitution.  By 1918, he was recruiting "Labour Battalions" to go to Russia to fight against the Bolsheviks!

Ward was succeeded in the Stoke parliamentary seat, in 1929, by Lady Cynthia Mosely, wife of Oswald Mosley.  She was elected under a Labour ticket, but soon after followed her husband into the New Party.  In 1931, Mosely himself stood, in the seat, under the New Party banner, getting 24% of the vote.  In the 1970's, I worked with someone who lived in Longton at the time Mosely stood, and he recounted all of the packed meetings and social events he attended, as a teenager, organised by Mosely's mob.  Just because, people are part of the working-class, and because they feel left behind, or alienated, or antagonistic to the status quo, does not mean that they are "traditional" or "core" Labour voters, or people whose bigotry we should appease, let alone give backing to.

And, more recently, Grayling's failing history also forgets about the way the Tories used the full might of the state to oppose the Miners in the 1984-5 strike, including the imposition of effectively martial law on large areas of the country, the use of troops, disguised in police uniforms to break strikers heads, at Orgreave and elsewhere, and the use of undercover police as agents provocateurs to infiltrate workers and other oppositional movements, promoting illegal acts, and sometimes themselves taking part in those illegal acts, so as to maintain their cover, and provide grounds for prosecution of others of those involved in them.

No, British political history is not one of peaceful coexistence, and centre-ground consensus, but of bitter political differences fought out sometimes literally to the death.  No one should be under any doubt the extremes that the ruling class will go to to hold on to power, and the extent socialists will need to be prepared for it.  But, for now, the dominant section of the ruling class is opposed to the Brextremists like Grayling, who stand not for the status quo, but a dangerous, reactionary turning back of the clock even from the advances that have been made over the last century.  It is why people like Grayling are led to look to the men of violence from that same kind of reactionary swamp, because they do not have the backing of the state and its monopoly of violence.  It is the Brextremists that have their back against the wall, which is why their incitements to violence, like those displayed by the bullies outside parliament have become all the more frantic, as they try to make up for their small numbers, by more intensive, and more threatening behaviour.

As with their refusal to allow another vote, it simply reflects the fact that they know that they are a minority, and a minority that is rapidly shrinking in size.