It being a rather lovely Orkney day yesterday - sunshine, no wind, just a mild sea breeze, I took a walk down to the bay. There was dinghy racing, the little boats scudding along with the wind behind them, spinnakers swelling fat, then spilling the wind on the turn, sails just dipping into the sea, then righting themselves, dripping water, as the racers used their best abdominal muscles, hiking out over the waves to rebalance the dinghy. The seaweed floated over the stones in water clear as glass until blurred by a shiver of a wave from the passing of the nearest dinghy.
"There's too much fighting, don't you think, mrs ishmael?"
"Gosh, yes - Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon..."
But it turned out that she was thinking about the civil unrest in the north of England.
"They are just spoiling things for the law abiding, mrs ish."
She lives in a neat four bedroom bungalow, surrounded by fuschias, rosa rugosa, honeysuckle and sycamores, with views across the bay, two cars parked in front of the double garage, free range chickens as her nearest neighbours and wide views of the bay with its busy traffic of cruise liners. She doesn't have much of a clue about life in northern English cities - indeed, I doubt she's stepped foot outwith Scotland. But she's scared. She's scared of the fighting encroaching upon her peaceful corner of the world and terrified by the war photos shown nightly by the broadcast media.
I was thinking again about the disgraceful show made by the French of their bloody history for the entertainment of the masses during the Olympic opening ceremony.
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| The head sang, by the way. Marie Antoinette wore a simple white dress when executed. |
Marie Antoinette was born on the 2nd November 1755, the youngest daughter of the Emperor of Austria. She was married at the age of 14 to the 15 year old Dauphin of France, the man who would become Louis XVI in 1774, when he was 20 and she was 19. They were cousins once removed. It was a dynastic marriage - the couple had met only two days before their arranged marriage. They were sheltered, badly educated and naive: the marriage was not consummated until Louis was 22, when he received sex education from his brother-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, who visited France incognito and spoke frankly to Louis, curious as to why the royal marriage had not been consummated. He concluded that the Queen was not interested in sex and the King was unwilling to exert himself. Joseph wrote to his brother, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, disclosing that Louis had confided in him his approach to doing the deed, saying that the King "introduces the member", but then "stays there without moving for about two minutes", withdraws without having completed the act and "bids goodnight". Following his brother-in-law's instruction, Louis learned that some throb and thrust would result in a kingly emission, and the couple eventually had two daughters, two sons and two miscarriages. Only one child, their eldest daughter, lived to a ripe old age: the others died aged 8, 10 and 1, respectively, causing their parents huge grief.
The French public deeply disliked Marie Antoinette; France and Austria being hereditary enemies, and many libels were circulated about her. Louis was a weak and vacillating King, quite unable to deal with the problems afflicting France: its economy was shattered by involvement in a series of unsuccessful foreign wars, poor harvests led to famine, aristocratic absentee landlords took what profit they could from the land and made no effort to improve it, corruption was widespread, Paris was a filthy hole and the Seine an open sewer. (no change there, then. ed.) Louis was officially arrested on 13 August 1792 and imprisoned. On 21 September, the National Assembly declared France to be a republic, and abolished the monarchy. Louis was stripped of all of his titles and honours, and from that date was known as Citoyen Louis Capet. He was beheaded by guillotine, aged 38, on the 21st January 1793.
Marie-Antoinette was removed from her family and transferred, alone, to the Conciergerie prison on the night of the 2nd August 1793. She was imprisoned in the Conciergerie for 76 days, and conveyed from there to her place of execution in an open cart, her hair shorn, her hands tied behind her back and constrained by a rope leash. She was publicly executed by beheading by guillotine on the 16th October 1793, aged 37.
And it is this short and tragic life that, 231 years later, the French chose to mock in the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Okay, the regicide was the defining act in the creation of the French Republic, but to celebrate the birth of their nation in this particularly tone deaf and unpleasant fashion was a vulgarity too far, demonstrating yet again a lack of civilisation. (have you seen their traditional toilets?)
And I was thinking about this in the context of the current civil unrest in England. I was particularly struck by the name-calling indulged in by the media, pundits and politicians. The protesters are called "right-wing yobs, thugs, far-right rentamobs". 'Twas thus during the French revolution. Then, the name-calling was sans-culottes, (left and right as political terms not having been invented). This literally means without breeches. The nobility and bourgeoisie wore silk knee breeches called culottes. The working class wore long trousers in practical fabrics instead. The sans-culottes, most of them urban labourers, served as the driving popular force behind the revolution. Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, with little or no support from the middle and upper classes, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary army and were responsible for many executions during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars. How many? It is estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 people were executed by guillotine or killed in summary executions or massacres, the majority during the Reign of Terror, a period of extreme violence and political repression that lasted from 1793 to 1794. For comparative purposes, during the Rwandaforfuck's sake genocide, it is now estimated that 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi were killed.
Many of the conditions that drove the sans-culottes two and a quarter centuries ago are extant now, in Britain's cities. Okay, the people are not starving, and they do have nice trouserings to wear:
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| Mainly these long shorts, joggers or jeans, but definitely not satin knee breeches or pin-stripe suitings. but they have deeply-felt grievances which are being ignored by the establishment and they have taken their grievance into the streets. Okay, I know its a hot summer, and that Britain traditionally riots during hot summers, that rioting is great fun for the testosterone-addicted, looting even more fun and profitable to boot, and the possibility of getting your own back on the establishment's police force, dogs and horses is a massive draw, but politicians ignore at their peril the deep dissatisfaction with living conditions and policy direction. Just calling them names, threatening them with prison and setting elfin, ice maiden careerist entitlementista, Yvette Cooper, Home Secretary, onto them, won't cut it. |
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| nothing there that a slap with a wet haddock wouldn't improve. |
So, mrs ishmael, what are these grievances? Pretty much the same as for the sans-culottes: trashed economy, high interest rates, can't make ends meet, ruinous foreign wars, corruption in high places, job insecurity, competition from foreign workers, low wages, and an establishment that has no clue, no idea at all what life is like at the bottom of the urban heap. An establishment whose only response is to threaten the people rather than listen to them. They refuse to hear the deep concerns about the enemy within: cities being turned into something stridently non-British; the whole city of Bradford smelling of curry on a Sunday afternoon, instead of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, mr inmate's tales of a fleet of south Asian taxi drivers running drugs, prostitutes and child sex slaves between and within Lancashire cities.
People are scared within their own country. And the establishment response is to assert that the majority of Britons are happily living in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country of mutual respect. By repeating the lie, they intend making it so. By calling the rioters names - ignorant, ill-informed, racist, bigoted, far-right - etcetera, they hope to marginalise the threat.
Oh yes - left and right: back to the French Revolution again. The terms were originally coined to describe the seating arrangements of politicians in the French National Assembly. In 1789 the delegates started work on drafting a constitution for the new country. They were deeply divided over how much authority Louis XVI should have, and the two main factions staked out their territory in the assembly hall - with the anti-royalist revolutionaries sitting on the presiding officer's left and the more conservative, aristocratic supporters of the monarchy gathered to the right. As you will recall from earlier in this piece, it was the left who killed the king.
So to insult the current British protesters as extreme far right is just lazy gobble-de-gook.
Less insults and more serious discourse is required. It might be an existential matter.
- If you would like to read some original ishmael or stanislav, then the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected and curated by editor mr verge, is available on Lulu and Amazon.
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these stepsplease register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfrLink for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzuxhttps://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
13 comments:
Old Enoch was spot on. Just ahead of his time. Re the Seine: "Rivers of Blood" springs to mind.
BTW, lest I be accused of being a racist (I may be?) but I think Enoch's point was about the scale of the immigration and the effect this would have on the "English" culture, and the trouble this would inevitably cause. Same point Tommy Robinson has been making. But nobody wanted to hear and the horse has now bolted.
I think comparisons with the French revolution are scarily appropriate.
Do you remember the pile on on poor Enoch, mr mike? I do and I was a child. The "rivers of blood" reference was turned into a threat that he had not made. It was a classics reference from a scholar. It was foolish of him because only he and a few tens of folk would understand it but he had outlived his time. An Edwardian in a beatnik age. He was just saying that you will break it if you carry on like this. And, lo, it came to pass, and it is broken.
I am afraid that it is the Internationalists, the idiot lefties, who have broken it. So angry were they, and are they, about folk with money that they will break everything to take that money away. I used to berate mr i, and I have berated mrs i too, about his (their) slack-witted adhesion to socialism and redistribution. Well, we must carry on berating until reason prevails. What we do not need is redistribution of the wealth via socialism - confiscation and force of arms - or redistribution of the poor via immigration. What we need is discipline and family and trying. And then from the folk who have already had discipline and family and trying, kindness and honour when they have it to spare from their own lives. You cannot make the world lovely and cuddly with a bayonet!
BTW can somebody tell Starmer that he got fewer votes than the Magic Grandpa?
I was a young teenager then, Mr mongoose, I remember it well.
At the time his speech was calmly received there was no reaction until much later, and much of what was attributed to Enoch was a lie or at least a mis-representation.
It seems that there were other forces at work, but we were naive and under-informed then.
It is a deliberate mistake to conflate racism with the natural objection to mass and illegal immigration. Apart from an obvious class of cultures, the country (UK) simply doesn't have the resources or social infrastructure to cope, and the indigenous population which relies on such services will naturally object. And its the working class which bears the brunt of competition for resources and jobs and wages. I won't get into crime etc.
BTW we have strong debate, but somewhat better informed, about the scale of immigration here in Australia. We only allow immigrants who have the skills we need, but even so this is balanced against social infrastructure (health, education, housing etc). There are times when this gets out of balance as it has recently been, so the numbers gets cut back until balance is found.
It is the nature of these debates, is it not, mr mike, that is eternally confusing. On the one hand we have the threadbare honour of what works and on the other the glory of what might be but never turns up. "If we just spend a few more quid, we'll get there." And taxation in 200 years has been multplied by 10 and still they cry out for more. (BTW it looks to me that wars are the keys to tax. Levels rise to fund them and never fall back beyond half.) If the government cannot fix everything - and they cannot - with half the money in the world, why, let's give them 75%.
It is a sadness but an historical fact that governments are crap at buying things and spending money. It was ever thus and ever thus it shall be. Ergo, as Mr Van Hee used to say, we should try something else.
A little harsh, mr mongoose, surely? I confess to being hurt. We should be able to hold different political and economic views without resorting to insults - slack-witted, indeed!
But we do, fundamentally, disagree - if this summarises your position: "kindness and honour when they have it to spare from their own lives. You cannot make the world lovely and cuddly with a bayonet!"
The world will never be lovely and cuddly - it is a battleground between light and dark, if you are a Manichean, or the creation of a substandard god - an apprentice piece, if you are a Gnostic. Or it is just a random happenchance, a world of suffering, with a very flawed species at the top of the food chain. Humans being what they are, deeply selfish and committed to the furtherance of their own genetic thread, the only way to stop their more outrageous excesses of greed and cruelty is through force. With the entirely honourable exception of the Quakers, any measures taken by the establishment to alleviate poverty, hunger and exploitation in the nineteenth century were because the aristocracy, legislators and wealthy were terrified that the French Revolution would be repeated in Britain. The infrastructure of employment law and health and safety legislation are in place only because of the willingness of the working class to collectivise and take strike action, often at great personal hardship.
As Robert Bolt has it, in a Man for All Seasons:
"This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down.... do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
Yes, quite right, mrs i. What a rude rotter I am. I apologise.
To be fair though, the bastards have been in power for a month and are talking about a "standing army" to police the streets and "COVID-style restrictions" to erase the right to protest. What the actual fuck? As the children ask.
My point, I guess, is that you might be a socialist but Kier Starmer is just a power-mad zealot who wants the world to function as Kier says it will. It has not taken long for the cuddly mask to slip.
Being a bit slow on the uptake, I only just realised that the new establishment's Diversity Equity & Inclusion slogan lends itself to a sinister pun : "Opus D.E.I. 2.0." Motto on the coat of arms? "Look on thy works, ye whitey, and despair."
The fucker, mr v, is on the telly saying not just that you will face the consequences of your actions but that we will hold you on remand. ie We will pick you you up off the streets if we suspect you and bang you the fuck up immediately. This is a not-even-covert instruction to the legal branch of the establishment to circumvent the rule of law and issue punishment ahead of process.
Apology accepted, mr mongoose - you are forgiven.
We don't hold a brief for any of the political parties here - remember how stanislav was once described as a conservative sock puppet due to his coruscating invective against the then masters of the Labour Party in office? His diatribes and invented rhetoric about Gordon Brown and his nappy shambles and Jackie Smith, Domestic Science teacher in Redditch High School? There you go.
Tilting at windmills - its what we do.
Your last comment to mr verge was held up in the Spam bucket, mr mongoose, where I found it and released it into the wild. Some bot considered it to be inflammatory stuff!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but, after the atrocity of the murder of three little girls and the injuries to eight others, in Southport, the govament were caught on the back foot, or not. Paid agents of the state whipped up the locals with stories of jihadists killing innocents. This then fired up white working class lads, especially in the north and midlands. Govament could have nipped all the trouble in the bud, from the start, by releasing information about the perps religion, or connection to islam, that day. But they didn’t.
Now we see that, govament funded, Hope not Hate put out the list of 100, potential, far right riots, yesterday, to get the good guys out on the streets to show that hope not hate wins, always.
Anyways why have the mythical leaders of the so called Far Right not been named, shamed and arrested? Strange.
Who would know were all these immigration lawyers addresses are? Who could afford to have professionally printed posters printed and distributed, overnight, around the country? How do you organise a standing army of, ‘highly trained riot coppers’ overnight? How do you bring in facial recognition technology, overnight, when it was was unlawful yesterday? Twotierkier, that’s how.
These "far right" people being banged up? They're almost all natural Labour vters, are they not? Care worker gay folk wh go to the bing in Hartlepool? FFS!
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