Rachel North:

I burned my mother’s pan. I cooked chicken and bacon for a warm salad for my father and sister when we came back from hospital, and I forgot that I left the pan soaking on a high heat. I was sitting in the study, the one room in the house that is Dad’s not hers, listening to ‘Fix you’, whilst replying to anxious messages on behalf of my father, who is too distressed to cope with the phone calls and emails telling him that so many people are praying for him, for mum, for us. He has gone to be with my brother and his wife and his one-year old grandson; they were the last people to sit with Mum today, before visiting hours ended, and if he cannot be with her, he can be with the last people who sat at her side, and he can hear from them how she was, and look into my brother’s face when he tells how he is hopeful, he is calm, how Mum’s amazing grace defies the expectations of a severe stroke, day 2 .

Just read… and think.

Having spent so much time on other matters of late, I suppose I should really get around to writing something about my own party, which as most people know is the Labour Party, and a rather interested debate thats developing around Jon Cruddas’ campaigm for the Deputy Leadership of the Party - regular readers of other political affilliations can feel free to skip this post and read some of my other recent stuff.

I suppose I should start out by stating my current position on the Deputy Leadership, which is that I haven’t reached a final decision on how I’ll vote as yet, and probably won’t until the ballot paper actually arrives. That’s not to say that I don’t have some very clear views on what I’m going to looking for from candidates, merely that I prefer to reserve judgement on a number of the possible contenders until the actual ballot is called and I have the change to see exactly who’s in the frame and what they have to say for themselves.

What I will say, thus far, is that I’ve pretty impressed with much of what Jon Cruddas has had to say, enough to have reached the conclusion that it would be a mistake not to find a key role for him in the development of future campaign strategy - as to whether that also goes hand-in-hand with the Deputy Leadership, I’m a touch less certain at the moment, but at least Jon has thrown some interesting ideas into the ring and has a sense of what he would like to achieve in the role, which is something I certainly will be looking for in the other candidates.

As for the other ‘possibles’, I think you can safely assume that someone who described Hazel Blears’ performance on Question Time, last year, as making her look like a meerkat doing an impression of Stevie Wonder is rather unlikely to casting their vote in her direction. Harsh though my opinions of Blears might appear, I harbour no real personal animosity towards her (never having met her) and it may well be that away from the media spotlight she is ‘good value’ as a politician and an individual. But her media ’skills’ do leave a considerable amount to be desired, both in terms of her somewhat off-putting mannerisms on camera, many of which seem to stem from her trying just that bit too hard to convey the ‘right impression’, leaving her looking desperately unnatural, and her all too obvious lack of adroitness in fielding awkward questions.

Frustrating as it is, there are times when a politician, especially one in government, can do little but stick to the official party line, even when the message one has been briefed to deliver appears manifestly absurd in the context of a discussion, but there are ways of slipping the question with sufficient subtlety so as not to be left looking like a complete automaton; an art that Hazel seems unable to master.

As for Harriet Harman, please, please drop the ‘look, I’ve got tits y’know’ campaign strategy. If it comes using factors like gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or anything else of that ilk to reach a decision on who to vote for then, frankly, I’d rather quit the Party as a complete fraud in my views on equality.

What I expect from the next Leader is an inclusive leadership that make the most of the talent and ability that the Party has to offer; one that doesn’t require their Deputy to serve as a mediator cum referee in barely suppressed internecine conflicts between highyl place individuals. That leaves the Deputy Leadership as something of a ’spare wheel’, a role that lacks a clear definition and sense of constructive purpose.

So don’t tell me about your chromosomes, that cuts no ice with me, tell how you see the job and what you would like to do with it - then I’ll be able to see whether I think you have what it takes to secure my vote.

As for the other presumed runners in the ‘race’, there’s rather to little to report as yet. Alan Johnson appears to have some good basic credentials, but the manner of his getting backed into a corner on faith schools doesn’t really sit well with me (as you might expect) even if, as I suspect, his otherwise good intentions were overridden at a more senior level. The moral of the story is both ‘don’t promise what you can’t deliver’ and ‘don’t try to use your public office as a springboard for a private campaign’ as if it does go pear-shaped it invariably raises questions about your tactical acumen.

To a lesser extent, the same applies to Jack Straw if, as is widely assumed, his opening pitch was indeed his comments about the niqab. I don’t consider that Jack was wrong to raise the issue from a personal standpoint and in the context of his approach to his constituency surgeries, but he should have left it at that and not got drawn into widening the debate into a more general one about Islam.

And, indeed, to Peter Hain, if personal motives played any part in his pushing forward the implementation of the Sexual Orientation Regulation in Northern Ireland, for all that their introduction is a welcome step forward.
As for Hilary Benn, well it’s fair to say that I don’t share his views on Iraq but I do respect the consistancy of his position in circumstances where it would be, perhaps, easier to prevaricate and dodge the issue or try to intimate that his position might have altered in order to pick up cheap votes from the anti-war wing of the Party.

The message I have to any/all present Ministers who are considering throwing their hat in the ring is a simple one - your performance as a Minister will probably not be a factor in my own thinking, unless your vision of the role of the Deputy Leader is primarily a ministerial one. Again, I want to know how you see the role and what you want to do with it before judging whether you have the qualities I’m looking for.

That brings me, finally, to Jeremy Corbyn, who I can’t fault for the consistancy of his principles. As with the others, it’s not clear as yet as to whether Jeremy will pick up sufficient support within the PLP to make the ballot, but I am happy to listen to what he has to say and will judge his arguments on their merits.

That seems, so far as I can tell, to be all the potential contenders covered - I don’t think I’ve missed anyone but am happy to be corrected if I have.

The last direct comment I have on the contest, itself, is to note that I do think it important that both ballots (Leader and Deputy) are contested but, perhaps more importantly, given that we have a clear (and some might say unassailable) favorite for the Leadership, it is important that Gordon Brown (no point being coy about it) avoids offering any sort of public endorsement of any of the main candidates for the Deputy Leadership (and it goes without saying that the candidate, themselves, should be circumspect and not seek such an endorsement). One ‘coronation’ or near-coronation does not unduly damage our democratic credentials - even in a democracy, life sometimes produces an overwhelming favourite - but two apparent coronations would call our commitment to democracy into question.
An even hand and a light touch, Gordon, if you please - unless, of course, the oft-threatened Blairite ’slate’ does materialise (much as I doubt it will), in which case all bets and constraints are off.

Getting back to the emerging debate, the core of this is to be found in this article, jointly authored by Liam Byrne and Bill Rammell, which has drawn what amounts to two ripostes from Jon Cruddas, here and here plus an intriguing YouGov poll, commissioned by Jon, the result of which I’ve uploaded - it’s just easier this way than seaching YouGov for the raw results.

YouGov Poll commissioned by Jon Cruddas (pdf) - you’ll also find a link to the Groan’s assessment of the results of the poll in one of Jon’s two articles - and the only reason I’m not linking directly is that I prefer to do my own analysis from the data rather than rely on the assessments of others.

To start with Liam and Bill, their basic contention can be handily summarised as follows:

1. To win the next election, Labour needs to ‘revive’ the broad coalition that swept us to victory in 1997.

2. This requires us to stick with ‘the politics of aspiration’.

3. The next election will be ‘decided’ by the outcome of 48 key ’super-marginals’ in which either Labour had a lead (at the last election) of 2.5% or less or the opposition had a lead of 3% or less.

4. Within these marginal seats, results will turn on four or five precisely deliniated groups of voters, as identified by ’sophisticated research tools’, necessitating a ‘precision bombing’ electoral strategy in, at least, those seats.
All of which is topped off by a general dig at Jon:

Jon Cruddas, one of our colleagues vying to become Labour’s next deputy leader, argues that Labour’s best new year’s resolution is to kick the habit of “precision bombing” this vital territory, as if an appeal to these voters represents some kind of mission creep for the party. Set aside the minor point that these voters are critical to winning government: the sober reality is that it is utterly false to suggest that Labour can’t appeal to both the centre and our traditional base as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have proved these past 10 years.

Reading all that, I have to admit that my initial reaction is one of ‘why bother with a full general election at all’? If that’s what our election strategy has come down to then why not just poll these 48 super-marginals, call whichever party takes the most seats the winner, and save the rest of us all that faffing around in polling stations? At the very least it give David Dimbleby an early night.

One of the near constant complaints of politicians, in recent years, has been that the electorate has become too cynical in its view of politics and political culture and yet, for all that it may be true, does it not strike you that Liam and Bill’s analysis of the next election is the direct product of the most desperate cynicism?

More than 600 seats will be contested at the next general election, and yet here are two fairly senior Labour politicians stating that in reality less than fifty actually count, and even within that only four or five narrowly defined segments of the electorate actually matter.

Where does this reductionist view of politics eventually lead? Do we somehow arrive at a point, at some unspecified point in the future, where a general election will not only turn on a single vote, but the main parties find themselves in a position where their ’sophisticated research tools’ enable them precisely identify the precise voter who’ll make the difference?

Okay, so I’m extrapolating to the point of absurdity here, as much for the amusing mental picture this creates; one in which election day turns into the equivalent of the US Groundhog Day tradition with the massed ranks of the media camped outside 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam, awaiting the emergence of ‘the voter’ upon who’s decision the fate of the government rests, as to make a serious point.

The problem I have with this ’strategy’ is not that I necessarily suspect their analysis is incorrect - although it does seem to take rather too much for granted - but the manner in which this is presented ’side by side’ with the concept of the ‘politics of aspiration’.

Who’s aspirations? Mine? Yours? Or just those of our key group of ’swing voters’?

Is that really the future of politics? No more grand sweeps of history or ideological visions for a brighter future, just the ‘aspirations’ of a narrowly defined ‘constituency’ of electors who happen to live in the few locations where the outcome of the ballot is in some doubt?

And is that not an entirely depressing vision? A curious form of Henry-Fordism in which you can any aspirations you like so long as they’re the same as those of an upwardly-mobile young IT professional living in an end terrace in Milton Keynes, because its their aspirations, and theirs alone, that the political classes are pandering to in the increasingly desperate search to the winning vote.

There is much in Liam and Bill’s analysis to dislike, not least that much of their prescription smacks of glib complacency; of too much time spent pouring over spreadsheets and pie charts and too little time spent out in the real world talking to real people.

Its one thing to talk of Labour needing the 1997 ‘coalition’ to win the next election, quite another to deliver that coalition. Times have changed. We’re now the Party that has to defend its actual record in government, while its the opposition who can campaign on our failures and make promised of untested competency. We can no longer rely on, and maybe even credibly ask for, the ‘get the government out at all costs’ vote we had in 1997, no surreptitious local quietism amongst those Lib Dems who were prepared to forego their own electoral fortunes in 1997 in order to remove a desperately unpopular government - if anything it will be the opposition parties who are likely to benefit from any tactical voting next time out.

Nor, indeed, can we rely on the Tory Party to remove themselves from both the centre ground (and the contest) as they have in the last three general elections - next time out our main opposition will be trying to slug it out with, toe-to-toe, in the centre ground, rather than removing itself to the fringes.

Conditions have changed. Access to the coalition we were handed by default in 1997 (and to a lesser extent since) while the Tories wrestled with the legacy of the Thatcher years, is far less certain and will be hotly contested. Reviving that coalition is easier said than done and while we and the other mainstream parties cluster together in the centre like Emperor penguins at the height of an Antarctic winter, the risk is that other parties may creep in at the fringes and draws votes away from us - may be not sufficiently to take seats themselves, but perhaps enough to cost us seats in constituencies we thought (assumed) we could rely on.

The inherent weakness in Liam and Bill’s position (and the cause of their tunnel vision) is nowhere better illustrated that here:

Although it’s true that globalisation has to be made to work for poorer communities, voters in the centre and in our traditional base share an ambition and an analysis: an ambition to get on in life, and an analysis that tells them that getting on is easier with the right kind of collective action on your side. The politics of aspiration is quite simply the common denominator of the New Labour coalition.

Yes, people do want to ‘get on in life’, but how exactly does one define this ‘getting on’ and by who’s terms?

Globalisation has to be made to work for poorer communities, say Liam and Bill - how? If one looks at the real impact of the cult (or credo, if you prefer a less loaded term) of globalisation across the world it has brought little or nothing in its wake for poorer communities (and poorer countries) than greater poverty, more inequality and increased social unrest.

How should one properly assess the impact of globalisation and its one-size-fits-all economic prescription of privatisation and deregulation.

In terms of original poster-child, the Chilean economic miracle that wasn’t?

Chile, under Pinochet, was, after all, the first great ‘experiment’ in large-scale privatisation and deregulation; one that even today is held up as ‘proof’ of the benefits of Freidmanite economics and the near-unfettered liberalisation of markets, for all that this proof is a lie and myth - after ten years of free market liberalism, Chile was near bankrupt. Hyperinflation in the mid 1970s, as market reforms were hastily put in place by Pinochet, followed by a severe debt crisis resulting from a massive overdependence on foreign loans, in the early 80s, pushed the country to the brink of collapse and almost entirely destroyed its small business sector. After ten years of the free market and economic liberalisation, unemployment stood at 33% and 1982 Chile’s GDP fell by 14% - now that’s a recession.

And how did Chile pull out of its nosedive into financial and social chaos? Its government reversed course, ejected the private interests that had been allowed to develop in its key industry (Copper mining) over the previous ten years and took the industry completely under government control, reinstated banking regulations, placed controls on currency movements out of the the country and instituted a ‘New Deal’-style programme after the fashion of that of Roosevelt in the 1930’s, to rebuild their economy.

That’s the reality of globalisation, a pattern to be found pretty everywhere that the malign influence of the IMF and World Bank has touched in the last 30-40 years.

Chile is but one example of the consequences of globalisation and the economic credo that goes with it - I could just as easily point to other examples of its real impact, the gangster economy that developed in Russia in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or perhaps the you’d prefer to consider its impact on Argentina, where it successfully managed to bankrupt the countries previously affluent middle classes in a matter of six years.

You say globalisation has to be made to work for poorer communities. I say first show me an example of where it has actually been made to work in just that way (tough question, eh?) and then tell me what exactly makes you think you can succeed in a venture in which everyone else has failed over the last forty years.

Globalisation has it winners and losers - the rich win and the poor lose - and its precisely that which extremist parties are exploiting to a such a significant extent across Europe and to a lesser extent in this country. In targeting white working class communities, far-right parties like the BNP are doing nothing more complicated that pitching their message to globalisation’s losers, those amongst us whose aspirations are not being met.

What most lacking in Liam and Bill’s analysis is the human factor - even if one allows for the fact that we all share the same basic aspirations; a decent home, a good job with a fair income and prospects of improvement over time, a good local school and a good education for our children, access to good quality services, especially health services; the route we take to achieve those aspirations is not the same for all of us.

We are not all the same. We do not all have the same talents, abilities and capabilities, and the solutions that work for one individual - or one community - may not work for others.

If, for example, we take the view that, as adults, a good job with a decent wage is a minimum precondition for most of other aspirations given that many of other aspirations, not least a home, are contingent on having sufficient income to pay for them, then the central question is ‘what is a good job?’ and more importantly ‘What do I have to do to get one?’

And the answer is… well according to government it’s education, education, education…

Why? Well, lots of reasons, but one of the biggies is globalisation, which tends to lead to the majority of low-skilled, manual jobs and the industries that provide them relocating overseas to countries where labour costs are a fraction of what they are in Britain.

In many industries, not least manufacturing, Britain cannot compete with the likes of, say, China, because labour costs in this country are way too high by comparison.

Okay, in economic terms one can say that’s the inevitable consequnce of globalisation and the free market, given a suitable pool of labour, industry’s naturally gravitate to those countries where labour and other costs are lowest in order to maximise profits. But then where does that leave our own labour pool? The one that serviced that same industry in the days when it did operate from Britain?

Yep, you guessed it - it hasn’t gone away, it’s there on the ’sink’ estates, soaking up the ASBOs and, increasingly, voting BNP.

What’s the prescription then? Education and a high-skill economy.

We set targets. We push up those targets. We make high-minded statement about not leaving anyone behind and raising education standards. And some make the grade and are feted for their success and some fail and are cast down into the underclass to live on MacJobs and criminality and to be called feckless and undeserving. Because anyone can real their goals and amke good on their aspirations if only they get a ‘good education’.

But do all of these people really fail simply because they’re feckless and irresponsible?

No. And that’s where the human factor comes in.

We’re all the same, We don’t all possess the same potential, the same abilities, the same talents. Some people fail to the reach the educational targets we set for them because they don’t, or won’t put in the work that success demands…

…and some for no more reason than those targets lie beyond the limits of their potential.

Britain is no place to be living. today, if all you have to offer by way of talents, is a good strong back.

In some respects, the Labour Party has come full circle. It’s origins lie, to a considerable extent, in Britain’s first great flirtation with liberal economics and the free market, which occured in the latter half of the 19th Century. Then, as now, there were winners and losers and then, as now, those winners and losers were markedly the same people; the industrialist, merchants, businessmen and the burgeoning middle classes increased in wealth, the poor, made little or no real progress - it was that climate that spawned the modern trade union movement and, ultimately, the Labour Party, to represent the interests of the working class.

And then, as now, there was, right at the very bottom, an underclass made up of those whose talents and abilities were surplus to the requirements of the new economy.

And then, as now, if one looks at the history of the Fabian Society in particular, the intellectual ‘leading lights’ of the Labour movement, most if not all of whom came from the middle and upper-middle classes, were much taxed and vexed by the question of what to do with this underclass and the social problems that stemmed from it.

Some things, it seems, don’t change - although some do and its to Liam and Bill’s credit that, at least so far, they managed to avoid being drawn into some the ’solutions’ that were quite seriously debated by Fabians and other left-wing intellectuals of the era - eugenics being one of the more outlandish suggestions and yet one that had some initial support (from HG Wells, amongst others, as I recall). Nevertheless, there is something in the overall tone of Liam and Bill’s comments that is faintly reminiscent of the Fabian ‘forebears’, a sense that they see the problem but fail to appreciate its human dimensions and, as a consequence, are completely stuck for a solution.

For Wells and others on the left at the end of Victorian era, what animated their thinking was science and the scientific method. Hence it was assumed that one should look to science for the solution to the ‘problem’ of the underclass of the time, which is where eugenics cames into the picture.

Today, managerialism has replaced science as the ‘ideology’ of government and, as with Wells and his contemporaries, the solution is presumed to lie within the correct application of this dominant ideology. The underclass is a problem to be managed, and the preferred solutions reflect the prejudices of their root ideology; targets, initiatives, programmes, behavioural modifications (by way of ASBOs). The system, whatever that is, will deliver a solution, eventually, by driving the underclass to ‘get with the programme’ and share the same aspirations that drive everyone else.

What Wells et al could ever fully appreciate is that the real problems of the underclass stem not from their aspirations, of the lack thereof, but from their limitations - they have the same basic aspirations they all share, but if giving the best they have to offer means failure because the benchmarks for success are set beyond their reach, then where is the incentive to give their best? This was a problem that was beyond the capabilities of the science of Wells’ time, in fact it remains beyond those capabilities today and will stay that way until (and unless) it becomes possible to override the natural limitations that humans are subject to by means of genetic manipulation.

Until (and unless) that happens, we have no choice but to accept that within society there are those whose limitations hinder, and sometimes, exceed their aspirations and adjust our thinking accordingly; either we accept the existence of the underclass (and its intractablilty) or we seek alternative solutions, of which the 20th century provided two - war (always good for reducing poverty by reducing the numbers of poor and a solution much favoured throughout history) or politics, as expressed in Roosevelt’s New Deal, Keynesian economics and, of course, by the Labour Party and, in particular, the Attlee government of 1945-50.
Me? I always though politics the more human of the two solutions.

I spent a lot of time on my comments on the article Liam Byrne and Bill Rammell (hopefully productively, but you’ll have to be the judge of that) and find myself rather time-constrained in turning now to Jon Cruddas’ articles, which means deferring my detailed thoughts to another occasion.

What I will say about Jon’s comments, in general, is that by comparison to those of Liam and Bill his seem considerably more human in tone, much more about people than systems, statistics and sophisticated research tools. By instinct and ideology its a position to which I am much more readily drawn than that advanced by Liam and Bill.

Whether this leads us down the path of what is widely referred to as Labour ‘traditional values’ is a little open to question - it depends what you mean when you talk about our ‘traditional values’, a wholly ideologically derived and driven programme of ‘old-school’ policies, some of which clearly do look rather dated and shabby in the cold light of the modern world, or a programme driven by human qualities and values, by a deep-rooted understanding and appreciation of the needs, aspirations and, yes, limitations of real people of a kind one can only get by living firmly in the real world - ‘from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs’ is quotation I’ve always thought to be rather more profound in meaning that is commonly presented/understood, even by many avowed Marxists.

If we can all agree on one thing, its that there is a need to rebuild (and, yes, renew) the Party - but how?

Do we go back to ‘traditional values’ as Jon suggests, or do we trust that carefully conceived tactics, strategies and precision-targeted ‘messages’ will see us through to a fourth term?

Do we need the right policies, or the right presentation?

Ideology or pragmatism?

Intellect or practicality?

Or some combination of all these things, and if so, what combination?

Or do we need to strip things right back and consider something rather more visceral and deep-rooted, the question of just exactly who we really are and what we really believe in?

I think, or perhaps believe, that politics and political culture, in general, has lost its connection with ‘humanity’, it has become remote, abstract and disconnected from the real world, real lives and real people. that’s not just a criticism of Labour, it runs through the whole of mainstream modern political culture.

Politics has lost its human touch, and its that we need to rediscover and reignite in order to rebuild and renew the Labour Party.

How we achieve that? Well, that’s the $64,000 question, and if I had the answer to that then maybe I’d be running for the Deputy Leadership.

But perhaps there is a way of of posing a few questions that might enable us to give this some serious thought.

Given a choice of two books; Anthony Giddens’ ‘The Third Way’, ostensibly the original ‘bible’ of New Labour, or Robert Tressell’s ‘the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, which of the two would you choose when seeking ‘inspiration’?

Which is closest to the ‘heart’ of what it means to a socialist and/or a member of the Labour Party (I know ’socialism’ has been disavowed in some quarters) and what, if anything, does that say about our ‘traditional values’, what we believe in and how we can respond, in a human way, to the world around us?

Like many other bloggers, I’ll be taking some time to do real world things over the next few days (mainly ‘Dad things’), so bloggage will be touch lighten than usual.

I’ll also be using the holiday period to finish off a couple of projects I’ve had in the pipeline for a while, one of which is particularly relevant to this week’s Guardian ‘expose’ of the BNP, which was fairly interesting but, for those us veterans of anti-racist activism, fell largely into the category of ‘tell us something we don’t already know’.

As some may recall, one of my more popular posts this year, took a little trip into the tiny mind of a local BNP councillor, as revealed by his comments on the Stormfront forums, and over the last few weeks I’ve be quietly working away to turn some of that material into a general ‘resource pack’ of posters, flyers and leaflets, which I plan to make available via MoT to anyone, of any political party, who wants to use them in campaigning against the racist scumbags.

The pack should be ready early in the new year, and will include some ready to use materials and others formatted to enable campaign groups and political parties/associations to add their own branding. Some of the material is also going to be pretty hard-hitting, as befits source material like ‘These are some comparisons that came to mind between Jesus Christ and Adolph Hitler:”

And with that, I’ll bid you adieu for a day or two. Have a good one.

In every hyperventilated political ’scandal’ there is, inevitably, backbench MP on the make and desperate to get his name in the paper, and the Tory MP for Monmouth, David Davies, has to be one of the more desperate examples of a political nonentity you’re likely to find anywhere at the moment.

Here, this is him - take a good look…

And before anyone get’s the idea that I’ve been playing with Photoshop (again) he’s apparently sitting on a balcony at an election count in that photo, and not in the dock - just so no one (i.e. PragueTory) gets any more dumb ideas and starts emailing the press to claim that this nasty wickle blogger’s trying to make a fine upstanding Tory MP look like a criminal. Just thought I’d mention that, to be on the safe side, you know - never underestimate the political venality of some Tories and all that.

But back to David Davies, who’s the MP for Monmouth in Wales and (apparently) the party’s deputy leader in Wales - which sounds impressive until you look at how many seats the Tory’s have actually got in Wales and realise that all this means is that he came second in a three horse race.

It can’t be easy for young David to make his mark in Westminster - not only is he one of the intake elected in 2005 but he has the desperate misfortune of having a name only an ‘e’ removed from the far more illustrious and well known David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary (and the ‘e’ is not a drug reference, either - fuck me you have to be soooo careful these days), so if he does manage to pop up from behind the media parapet from time to time and get his name mentioned in the press the most people will think they’re talking about the other David Davis.

“David Davies said what? You mean the David Davis, the guy that ran for the Tory leadership? Oh. There are two of them… MP for Monmouth, you say… who’s he?”

He does, however, ask a lot of Parliamentary questions, 412 thus far in his parliamentary career at £134 a pop - so that’s £55,000 worth of worth of questions in a little over 18 months including a most illuminating series in which managed to ask every single government department in turn (individual questions every time) about their total expenditure of taxi fares in the last five years…

…look, can we stop there for a second.

Why the fuck can’t this kind of banal information just be put automatically on an internal website for MPs (at a considerably reduced cost) without all the time, trouble and expense of a question in the House. Surely, most of this stuff is so routine that its been asked loads of time before, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to predict what this years of crop of banalities and likely to ask in advance and have the information ready in advance.

Oh, and if David’s so desperate to find a cheap Taxi firm, why not just ring Yellow fucking Pages at 40p a minute?

But that’s by the by, because his sole significance here is that he’s the Tory rent-a-gob making noises about reporting Bob Piper to the Commission for Racial Equality for reposting an image on his blog that was first posted here and judging from the information on his parliamentary career to date (provided, as ever, by They Work For You) that’s more excitement than he’s had in the last 18 months.

Mind you, I don’t suppose it helps his public profile that thanks to the bizarre nature of some Parliamentary conventions, he contrived to make his maiden speech in the Commons (which must be on a non-political topic) in the middle of a Foreign Affairs and Defence debate, rising to speak on the history of Monmouth since the Middle Ages right in between discussions of extraordinary rendition and international development. I guess parliament just has this way of making newbies look like total idiots.

That’s the thing about the media - no overheated non-story is complete without its Sir tufton Bufton to huff and puff in the background about how terrible it all is and how something must/will be done - blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. All about as real as everything else over the last few days. Just another dickhead jumping on the bandwagon in the hope of getting his fifteen minutes of fame… because Andy pwomised.

What a load of bollocks!

By far the most ridiculous element in this whole furore has been the faux outrage this has supposedly cause in Tory ranks.

David ‘Who’s he? No not that one.’ can’t even report the right guy to the CRE.

The Daily Mail have made claims that Bob (and I guess me as well) was taking a shot at the Tory’s efforts to be more inclusive of ethnic minorities, an allegation that never once came up in debate - at least until we a dumb fucker turned up to parrot it at me, having read the Mail’s half-arsed interpretation of events - not even from the Tory bloggers who swarmed all over Bob’s blog - I guess that just shows why PragueTory et al are just bloggers and not tabloid journalists. No imagination.

That’s really sad, when you think about it. Not having sufficient imagination to work for a tabloid.

By far the most ridiculous arguments, however, are those that are trying to conflate this ‘incident’ with Ellenor Bland’s recent faux pas, in which she was caught out emailing ‘The Illegal Immigrant’s Poem’ from her own mailbox and the stock claim that ‘A Tory would never have got away with this’, which sadly has cropped up amongst a few Labour bloggers as well and, perhaps, says rather more about them than it does about either Bob or myself.

These two things seem to run together, as the general allegation seems to be that Labour and the Lib-Dems don’t ‘play fair’ with the Tories on race issues and are far too quick to (hypocritically) play the ‘racism card’ and swarm all over Tories who might inadvertantly drop a bit of bollock, like dear Ellenor.

That may well be true - in general terms - but is that really a valid excuse?

Does joining a political party really mean that one loses all trace of individual identity (no Blair jokes, please - I’ve heard them all before, trust me) and all capacity to think for themselves (and yes, I will grant you Hazel Blears on that one) or should we not still be trying to treat people as individuals?

You see, again we’re back to stereotypes again. Over the last few days its been Labour-this, Labour-that, Labour-the-other - for the last few days, Bob, and to a lesser extent myself, became nothing more than generic and entirely stereotypical Labour supporters, and in some cases even ‘New Labour supporters’ (come on guys, leave off the fucking insults) even though I doubt that anyone who actually reads either of our blogs could consider us to be representative of some sort of generic Labour supporter of the kind that does routinely chuck in the racism card at the drop of a hat. I’m not going to say that there aren’t the odd one or two Labour bloogers out there to whom such a charge could be fairly and reasonably levelled, but no one stopped to ask, ‘well, are either of these two bloggers really a part of all that blind political tribalism?’

Bob, you’ll have to judge for yourself - I don’t think he is - but as for me, well ask yourself this, just how ‘tribal’ is someone who habitually refers to the current Labour Home Secretary as Dr Demento (whoops, there I go again) and has recently decribed the Party Chairman as both a ‘demented ginger weeble’ and, after a particularly awful appearance on Question Time, as having wobbled around in her seat like a meerkat doing an impression of Stevie Wonder.

Would a Tory blogger have ‘got away’ with posting a picture of Tony Blair in Blackface? Probably not - there are as many ‘tribalists’ as our side of the political fence as there are on theirs. But then that’s not really the question that should be asked - that question is ‘is there any to suggest that this guy might join in with that kind of thing?’.

In my case the answer’s no - as mnay of those who’ve kindly posted supportive messages in the last few days know all to well.

How I’d respond to an image like that all depend on context - on what the image is trying to say. Is it making a political statement, offering up a bit of social commentary, talking about race relations in an intelligent way. And most importantly, who is talking about and why.

Let’s not be mistaken, if a Tory, or anyone else for that matter, did produce a ‘blacked-up’ image of Tony Blair (or anyone else) as a means of denigrating Black people or deriding Black culture, then not only is such an image racist but you’ll find me up at the head of the queue to lay into the wanker responsible.

If, however, its just a pisstake of Blair or a play on racially loaded imagery to make a valid point, then no, I’m not going to lay into someone for that. In fact my inclination would be applaud their bravery to taking on a taboo in an intelligent manner and defend them and their actions - even against members of my own party.

You see I have this unfortunate habit of thinking for myself - try it some time, you might just get to enjoy it.

Do Tories get handled with unnecessary roughness if and when they make a bit of faux pas around race?

Some probably do, but then any sympathy I might have in such circumstances tends to be mitigated by the fact that their rather iffy reputation is largely a rod they’ve made for their own back.

The area in which I live, oddly enough, is famous (or notiorious, depending on you point of view) for having played host to the most nakedly racist by-election campaign fought by a mainstream political party - the Tories - in the modern era. A campaign so racist that it prompted Malcolm X to the visit the town (this was not long before he was assassinated.

That was back in the 1960s, more than 40 years ago but still within living memory for some, and something that people round here still remember vividly. You see the Tory candidate at the time, Peter Griffiths, had a nice catchy campaign slogan which he put on his literature:

“If you want a Nigger for a Neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour’

- awww, how sweet, it even ryhmes.

Smethwick, the town in question, actually has a bit of a strange history in that respect - despite being the most ethnically-mixed area in Sandwell, it also ranks amongst its former MPs one Sir Oswald Moseley.

I guess that unless you’re local, or you have an interest in the history of such things, that particular campaign has been rather forgotten, having been overshadowed by Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, given just a few years later.

Then there was Tebbit’s ‘Cricket Test’ and, more recently, the massive over-concentration on immigration in general election campaigns and even the marked for ordinary Tory members to get themselves into a bit of strife by saying the wrong thing.

Younger Tories may well feel that most of that is now ancient history and that they, and the party, have moved on and turned over a new leaf. Good for them…

…but that doesn’t mean either that their party’s past misdemeanours aren’t going to follow them for while longer or that their party’s unfortunate reputation when it comes to equality and race relations isn’t one of its own contrivance.

Sorry guys, you’re going to have to do a bit more that push a new model Toff front and centre and carry out a bit of tokenistic jiggery-pokery with your selection procedures to slough the reputation you’ve created for yourself over the years - coming on all self-righteous about race is not going to make that much difference, at least not for a while. It just leaves you looking like a bunch of sanctimonious arseholes.

(And don’t think for a minute that I’m suggesting that my own party is 100% squeaky clean right down the last individual member - it isn’t, we’re just rather better at keeping our own minority of idiots in check and out of situations where they can fuck up in public)

The comparisons made between this latest artifical furore and the situation that Ellenor Bland found herself in are simply absurd.

For one thing, the poem she was emailing around is quite clearly racist in its tone and intent, although thanks to the coyness of the media coverage I can’t be certain of the exact version she sent out - it comes in many different variants - but this is one version fo the poem from the US, that’s been doing the rounds in racist circles over on that side of the pond.

Illegal Immigrants Poem

I cross ocean, poor and broke,
Take bus, see employment folk.
Nice man treat me good in there,
Say I need to see welfare..

Welfare say, “You come no more,
We send cash right to your door.”
Welfare checks, they make you wealthy,
Medicaid it keep you healthy!

By and by, I got plenty money,
Thanks to you, American dummy.
Write to friends in motherland,
Tell them ‘come fast as you can.’
They come in turbans and Ford trucks,
I buy big house with welfare bucks
They come here, we live together,
More welfare checks, it gets better!
Fourteen families, they moving in,
But neighbor’s patience wearing thin.
Finally, white guy moves away,
Now I buy his house, and then I say,

“Find more aliens for house to rent.”
And in the yard I put a tent.
Send for family they just trash,
But they, too, draw the welfare cash!

Everything is very good,
And soon we own the neighborhood.
We have hobby it’s called breeding,
Welfare pay for baby feeding.

Kids need dentist? Wife need pills?
We get free! We got no bills!
American crazy! He pay all year,
To keep welfare running here.

We think America darn good place!
Too darn good for the white man race.
If they no like us, they can scram,
Got lots of room in Pakistan.

The difference between that poem and the image of Cameron in Blackface should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. The poem sets out to denigrate and deride migrants in everything from is affectation of a form of pidgin English to its depiction of them as workshy spongers who bleed the welfare system dry and breed like rabbits.

Does having e-mailed that to a few people make Ellenor Bland a racist?

My immediate reaction is ‘how the fuck should I know, I’ve never met the woman’.

The poem certainly is racist but without knowing more about her and the context in which the poem was sent out to people I can’t say whether her actions are motiviated by or indicate any real racist intent. Sure, if there was something else in the email to support the contention that she made be racist, derogatory remarks of her own contrivance and made of her own violition, then maybe I could make a judgment, but on its own and on the strength of the poem alone I really can’t say whether she’s racist or not. It just be a email she’d received from someone and forwarded on to others without comment (or thinking).

What I can say is that she’s a fucking idiot on several grounds:

- for not appreciating just how racist the content of the poem is

- for forwarding it one to others

- for being dumb enough to forward the fucking thing from her own e-mail box instead on an anonymous Hotmail account.

And I think I can also say, fairly safely, that she appears rather naive when it comes to matters of race, ethnicity and identity. Why else would they try something so obviously dumb as the Fuckwit Defence - “And we have friends who are Asian. I wouldn’t be rude to them.”

Sorry Ellenor, but that’s not really a defence in this case. Just because you wouldn’t racially abuse someone to their face is not proof-postive that you aren’t racist, just as forwarding this email doesn’t prove that you are.

That being said, on this occasion, the Lib Dems provided the rent-a-gob:

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem chair of campaigns and communications, has asked the CRE to rule on whether the message conformed with the watchdog’s guidelines to political parties and individuals in elected public office.

“It is totally unacceptable for elected representatives to be distributing this kind of material. Racism has absolutely no place in British politics and I am asking the CRE to advise on what further action can be taken,” he said.

Which all seems a bit excessive, if you ask me. Her political career’s already nicely down the shitter and you want to rub her nose in it even further. Fuck off!

Offensive as the poem is, it does fall some considerable way short of anything like incitement to racial hatred, which would, quite rightly, demand further action and as far as I can see she (or her husband, who she claims actually forwarded the email using her account - guess he’s in the fucking doghouse, big time, if that’s true) was acting in a private capacity - it doesn’t look to me as if she prefaced the email ‘Dear Constituent’, so what the fuck it should have to do with the ‘watchdog’, which I suspect is a reference to the Standards Board, is beyond me.

Well not, beyond me, as I’m fully that the SBE can get involved, but only because its guidelines a drawn far too widely - if her constituent’s think she’s racist or just a complete idiot, they’ll get a chance to tell her so and vote her out of office the next time she comes up for re-election. So let them decide what to do with her and keep the bureaucrats out of it.

And of course, Davey’s asking the CRE to advise on what further action can be taken - and beyond laying criminal charges, which would get laughed out of court if they even got that far, I can’t see what else the CRE could advise Davey to do, apart from to fuck off and stop bothering them with trivial matters that have already been more than adequately dealt with just to make a political point at the Tories expense.

Just like PragueTory have been laying it on thick with Bob Piper to make a political point at his, and the Labour Party’s expense.

It might be politics, but I don’t have to like it - nor do I have to put up with it and do/say nothing, which is why I’ve already posted a message to Bob, who’s sadly decided to take a (hopefully short) break from blogging, to the effect that should the CRE or Standards Board come calling then not only am I backing him all the way, but I’ll stand up for him and make any representations necessary, even at the price of shedding my own anonymity as a blogger.

That’s solidarity - a word we used to use a lot in Labour circles, although I’m beginning to wonder whether some of our current members either know or understand what it really means. Not swarming all over someone, or something, to make a pathetic political point or to try to elevate yourself into the next Guido or Iain Dale, but standing by someone you know to be a damn good person, to have a good heart to be committed to doing the right thing - and someone who’s honest enough to try and be himself and not just toe the party line and play safe.

I’ll leave the last word, as I often do, to a quotation, which I’d hope some people might just muse upon if and when they come to consider what any of this has to say about the state of our current political culture.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless. - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

UPDATE:

One thing I should have said at the time I wrote this, which echoes my comments on the later post about Peter Willows.

Unless Ellenor Bland (or her badly in-the-dog-house husband, if what she says is true) did something mind-bogglingly stupid, like send the e-mail to a journalist, then someone, somewhere down the line ratted her out to the press - which is pretty fucking low in my estimation if it was done without first giving the Tories the chance to sort this out for themselves.

Again, the only mitigation here would have been a refusal by the Tories to respond to or act upon an ‘internal’ complaint about conduct, or a genuinely held and well-founded belief either that such a complaint would not be dealt with appropriately or that Bland is a raving fascist wingnut better suited to life in the BNP.

In the absence of either mitigiating factor, the right thing to do was to report the matter to her Local Association and Tory group (and because she was up for a slot as a parliamentary candidate, to Tory Central Office) and give them a chance to deal with it.

And again, I should repeat, that if the Tories are to throw off their reputation as the nasty party, they need to be given some space to deal with their quota of unreconstructed idiots and headbangers of their own violition - commitments to equality mean fuck all if they only come into play because the press are screaming, its what the Tories do off their own bat that actually matters and will demonstrate whether they’re really making progress or not.

It say’s a lot, I think, about the general banality of political culture in the UK that you really have to hang it out there and take risks just to try an get people to think about what they see, read, listen to and watch.

Yes, I produce an image parodying the Tories recent ‘Tosser’ Campaign that has proved to be controversial – not because the image itself is that controversial but because it was reposted to his own blog by a Labour Councillor, who understood quite a lot about what the image was driving at, and then used, by people who didn’t, as a stick to beat him with for their own political advantage.

Fucking depressing isn’t it – one more topic joins the long list on which its seemingly impossible to make a challenging statement or ask difficult questions without it all degenerating into a dick-swinging contest.

Just think for a minute of all the different things its nigh on impossible to debate rationally, without the politicos taking over and using it as a point-scoring contest to show who’s best at sucking up to the tabloid press?

How about the ‘war on drugs’?

There’s a fair old body of opinion out in the real world that takes the view that maybe legalising some, or even all drugs, might just turn out to be the lesser of two evils, that while no one really wants to see people fucking up their lives through drug addiction, many of worst ills that drugs bring, particularly in terms of crime, and especially organised crime, might be better tackled if we remove the one thing that feeds their profits and incentivises the drugs trade more than anything else – prohibition.

It an argument that may have merit, if only we were ever allowed to hear it, But the mere mention of even talking about legalising drugs send the tabloids in spasms of indignation, the political pissing contest kicks of, with everyone claiming that everyone else is ‘soft on crime’ and the debate goes nowhere, entirely drowned out by the very people who should, more than anyone else, be leading this debate and considering what it might have to offer.

Any while politicians fall over themselves to pander to the tabloids and wave their ‘I’m tougher on crime than you are’ credentials at each other, people die on Britain’s streets because of badly-cut smack, homes are burgled and people mugged to pay for drug habits that could be treated by rehab, and the drug barons get richer, and richer, and richer…

Our blind adherence to the ‘tough on crime’ credo is even, right now, putting the lives of British servicemen at risk in a foreign land, Afghanistan.

This is not difficult to figure out.

For many Afghani farmers, the only cash crop they can grow that gives then a living income is opium. These are people whose hearts and minds we should have been winning over to ‘our side’, but instead we go in there and start torching their sole livelihood and means of making ends meet – or rather we carry on doing that, as before we through them out, the Taliban were doing the same thing (at the West’s instigation), and the rest, as they say is history. A quick volte face from the Taliban, who now just lurve heroin because it both wins them the hearts and minds of the farmer’s whose fields we’ve been merrily burning and finances their arms expenditure, and whoops! Before you know it the Taliban are back, they’re bad and they’re gaining more support than ever.

And the few bright sparks who popped up to point out that this is exactly what would happen if we went all slash and burn on their fields without providing an alternative means of earning a living and that maybe we’d be better off buying their opium for pharmaceutical use and not torching it? Well they we quickly silenced, weren’t they, because is part of the ‘war on drugs’ and that means that you have to be ‘tough on crime’ – but not so tough on this particular cause of crime it seems.

One can see the same thing in so many other debates. A senior Police officer publicly pilloried in the media for daring to suggest that the word ‘paedophile’ refers specifically to adults with a sexual interest in prepubescent children – which is both its literal and ‘professional’ meaning within the field of psychology – and not to anyone and everyone who has sex with someone under the legal age of consent (16). The Times, of all papers, actually ran a poll asking whether it was right for Police officer to suggest that not all instances of underage sex are actually acts of ‘paedophilia’, even though they could have got the answer out of a dictionary.

Israel? Palestine? Don’t even try to go there. Each side has its own official narrative in which they’re the squeaky clean good guys (and victims) and the other side the evil villainous fascists, and any suggestion that maybe, in the real world, things aren’t quite so clear or straightforward is leapt upon immediately from both directions. That whole debate must surely be unique – the only debate in which is possible to be both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic at the same time, just for suggesting that neither side is absolutely perfect.

All of which brings me on to the subject of race, ethnicity and identity – and that image of course, which looks like this?

Is it racist, as some allege? Is it offensive? Ill-conceived? Just plain dumb?

And if it’s any of those things, in your opinion, then why?

That’s one of the most interesting, and not entirely unexpected things to emerge out of all this, the apparent inability of those complaining about that image to articulate their complaint in an meaningful sense – the basic presumption seems to be that merely having an opinion is sufficient to merit action being taken, without any effort whatsoever to explain, justify or validate that opinion.

The genesis of that image is not racism – I’ve been involved in anti-racist activism for more than 20 years on and off – but sheer frustration with the depressing state of public and official dialogue surrounding issues of race, ethnicity and identity. Yes, for my new found Tory fans, this is a lefty who’s thoroughly pissed off with the whole state of the ‘race relations industry’ in this country, and more pissed off than most because its something I’ve seen at work, up close and personal, good and bad, for a hell of a long-time.

I’m sick of the bullshit. Sick of the artificial taboos, the lines that no one dare cross for fear of causing offence, even if one is self-evidently capable of debating difficult and challenging issues with confidence and in their proper context. I’m sick of people relying on political correctness and trite euphemisms, by far the worst of which is “The ‘N’ word’ to cover their arses because they’re either too stupid to understand the real issues or too scared of inadvertently offending the stupid by saying something that might just be a bit controversial.

I’m sick of a system that for all its good intentions and all the good work that individuals within it do, is too often let down by its own intellectual dishonesty and inability to deal with the realities of racism.

I’m sick of the double standards and the hypocrisy, of dealing with too few honest, genuine people and far too many sanctimonious arseholes.

What I’m into is equality. Genuine, honest-to-goodness treat everyone the same equality, not the kind of ‘some people are a bit more equal than others because they’ve been oppressed in the past’ equality that some seem content to peddle under the guise of ‘promoting good race relations’.

Some of the responses I’ve had in the last day or two are just ridiculous?

It’s offensive. Why? Because it offends black people? Why? …… (no reply).

What is this, some kind of conditioned Pavlovian response? We’re all dogs that should yap and drool when someone rings the right (or wrong) bell? Can no one think for themselves anymore and articulate a coherent argument.

I mean FFS, the image plays with Blackface, the stereotype of the ‘Nigger Minstrel’ – I couldn’t have thrown you all an easier bone to gnaw on and yet no one would come right out and say, “it’s offensive, because…”. Jeebus, if you’re that short of an argument there’s a page on Wikipedia that explains it all for you.

Oh, and while we’re on that subject, how many people are aware that as well as Blackface, there are old theatrical traditions that take in Yellowface (oriental), Brownface (Indian, which most might recognise, but also Hispanic), Redface (Native American) and even Whiteface (not in the context of clowns but as is black performers singing ‘white’ songs in white pancake make-up – Arthur ‘Dooley’ Wilson, who played Sam in Casablanca, got his nickname from his signature tune, an Irish song called ‘Mr Dooley’ which he performed in Whiteface)?

How many people have noticed just how often Blackface is used in Tom and Jerry cartoons when a character gets blown-up – even if Boomerang are starting to edit out some instances in which its used, albeit inconsistently? What do you say if you’re watching TV with your kids and that comes on? Oh no, don’t look its racist, or Ha-ha the cat got it again?

Or maybe you look at that in context, think about how old many of the cartoons are and how they belong to a different era with different sensibilities, so maybe you’ll just let it pass.

Blackface is a cultural artefact, one with racist origins certainly but also with context – and context is what this is all about.

The image says nothing at all about Black people, or what it means to be Black – which is why everything in the image is fake. Completely artificial from start to finish, from beginning to end.

It’s been suggested that the references to ‘Homeboy’, ‘Niggahs’ and ‘Is it because I’s Black?’ were somehow putting words into Cameron’s mouth and suggesting he might stoop to saying such things. Of course he wouldn’t – I don’t think he’s that stupid and even if he were, someone would manage to stop him before he dropped such an obvious bullock. But then but for the last ‘remark’ which is a direct reference to Ali G (and a clue that this is about fakery) I have seen white people talk to Black youths and refer to them as ‘Homeboy’ and even ‘Nigga’ in the mistaken belief that they were somehow ‘talking their language’, ‘relating to them’ and ‘trying to engage with them’ - talk about making you fucking cringe when you see it as well, I just stick to hello and take it from there.

Why do some people make such idiotic mistakes? Because show them a Black youth and what they see is a stereotype, not a real person – and you have no idea how much I fucking hate that kind of thing.

The image plays around with a stereotype to show just how absurd and ridiculous stereotypes are and does so in a way that risks causing offence to some Black people as a price of almost certainly offending some Tories.

Why?

Because – and this is my opinion – the stereotypical orange permatanned wideboy used in the original ‘Tosser’ campaign is no less absurd, ridiculous and, to some, offensive – but then no one cared about that stereotype did they? All they were concerned with was whether ‘tosser’ is offensive.

I also chose Cameron, knowing that a few Tories would squeal and cry foul. I could just as easily have used Blair, with the same intent but with lesser effect – both are completely remote from the world I’m talking about. Bit of hint, guys – If every hospital you visit in your job smells of fresh paint, then you don’t live in the real world.

Its situations like these where the public discourse around race, ethnicity and identity descends into hypocrisy, if not outright farce. It’s okay to play with some stereotypes – to label poor, white, working class people as chavs and wideboys and have a damn good laugh, but chuck in a stereotype relating to a Black minority community and the knives are out straight away and the machinery of the race relations industry swings into action to demand that ‘something must be done’.

Unlike a lot of people who consider themselves to be anti-racist activists, I’ve spent most of my time working in white, working class communities – you know, that’s the place where the racism is, not the offices of the local authority, and I’ve seen first hand just how this kind of hypocrisy impacts on those communities, how it creates a sense of injustice (real or imagined) and a feeling that equality isn’t something for them, its just for Black people.

It isn’t, and I’ve never believed that, but you try telling that to someone who’s derided for being a pig ignorant white chav and has to just sit there and take it, because no one give a toss whether they’re made a figure of fun or exposed to public derision, and yet at the first hint of a slur on someone from a Black community, people are seen to crawling all over the situation to right a terrible wrong. Is it any wonder, that some of these people start listening to the messages put out by the likes of the BNP and start swallowing all their crap about how the country is being ‘taken over by foreigners’.

When was the last time you saw the CRE complain about an offensive white stereotype, other than when nationalism came into it and the complainant was something like Welsh, or Scottish? When did you last see a race equality body out working on a mainly white council estate? And if you have seen one doing that, or work for one that does it, please say so – I know of a few that could learn something useful from you!

Sorry, but if you got the idea into your head that being White and English means that you’re somehow automatically privileged and part of the dominant power elite in society then you haven’t been to a fucking council estate in a long time, if ever. Poor and powerless is poor and powerless no matter where you’re from or what your ethnic background might be.

So I took an image that I knew would rankle, added a few sarky comments, put it up and let it swing for a while, expecting that any blowback would come to only one place – here. I honestly thought that anyone else would else would think the image too hot to touch, and forgot in doing so, about people like Bob Piper who are smart enough to understand the nuances of the images, understand what I was up to and supportive enough to try and pull with me on this.

That’s the one thing I regret here, that Bob’s good intentions dragged him into this and have caused him problems that he doesn’t deserve and would not even have had were he not a Labour councillor – make no mistake this has only become a media ‘issue’ because of Bob’s public office, had he not reposted the image, this would have stayed safely online as a debate between bloggers, which is where it was intended to stay.

Why didn’t I say any of this in the first place, you might think? Perhaps if I’d have explained from the outset, then it would have kicked off like this?

Well that rather misses the point, because one of the real problems of this kind of debate is that people too often respond in a fashion that reflects how they want to be, and be seen, and not how they really are. If you explain what you’re about then many people don’t react naturally or honestly, they react in a way that they think puts them in a good light. They don’t say ‘that’s offensive’, they say ‘ah, I see what you’re doing’ and you lose the authenticity of the reaction. And without that authenticity it becomes impossible to drive the point home and shake people preconceptions about how they see the world.

Sometimes a shock is necessary to wake people up and make them think.

So, I’m not going to apologise for shocking a few people or even offending one or two along the way – if you thought, or even still think, that the image is racist then good for you, just try to think about why you see it that way. Is it because you thought about it or are you just buying in to a narrative promoted by others?

Actually, scratch that, slightly – there is one person who’s commented here who does deserve an apology for the offence caused, one that would have been forthcoming a little sooner had she not gone for insufferably smug in her remarks, and that’s Morag the Mindbender who, if she is, indeed, who the information left behind here when she commented suggest she is, has rather more cause than most to consider the Blackface image as being offensive. I’m not going to reveal anything more about her identity, but my understanding is that she has spent a considerable amount of time, in the past, living in the United States, where the cultural and historical connotations of Blackface are considerable more marked, more recent and much closer to the surface of the debate around race, ethnicity and identity. Writing for a primarily UK audience, one forgets that some cultural artefacts that appear remote enough to be played with reasonably safely on this side of the pond (and there is always a modicum of risk, anyway) are not quite so remote to those who lived in or are from the US – an omission that stems from my own Anglo-centric perspective, as I’m talking here about the public discourse in the UK and not the US.

And that’s part one – and I’ve got to go do a few family things now. Part 2, which expands on some of the themes here will be along later.

Oh FFS - I suppose this is what you get when you have Daily Mail readers turning up.

No, it is not racist or offensive, but it does reveal a nastyish mindset that adds to the cynical image that politics already has. For many years now, Labour has made generalised accusations that the Tories are racist. Now that Cameron is actively trying to reach out to all voters, no matter what colour their skins are, Labourites start deriding him for it. I think it stems from the fact that the Labourites have lost the Race Card, which they have always used a stick to beat the Tories with (something very patronising for black Tories who has always been insulted as Uncle Tom types)

For the record, the claim in the Daily Mail that all this has something to do with lampooning Cameron’s efforts to encourage more people from ethnic minorities to join the Tory Party is a load of bollocks - at least as far as what was posted here and how it was posted.

That’s their interpretation - certainly not mine, and they’ve been forwarded a complaint by e-mail to that effect.

Its also not about Labour ‘losing the race card’ to Cameron - in fact its not about Labour anything at all and I’m getting a bit off with all this half-arsed political partisanry.

Look, just to prove a point that, unlike some people, I don’t just swallow the party line and regurgitate it wholesale, here’s a few images I did earlier… Lets see if these make the Daily fucking Mail.

Before getting into this, in my next post, there’s just one a quick point that needs making.

Like many who value free expression, I’m more or less happy to tackle anything, even subjects that some consider to be taboo, which is where this story all begins, but even I recognise that there are reasonable limits to free expression, particularly when it comes to libel and incitement to violence.

If someone wishes to contend that the image is ‘racist’ then feel free to do so. I happen to disagree strongly and can articulate why I take this view, which seem to rather more than some people can manage. However it’s not gone unnoticed that a small minority of idiots have taken their views a bit further that that are are talking about ‘Labour racism’ and implying, if not stating directly, that either I or Bob Piper are personally racist - which is where the line into libel is being crossed.

I really would much prefer to keep the debate civil and discuss the issues here, of which there are many that deserve consideration, but if anyone does wish to make unfounded allegations about my personal character then, reluctantly, I will have to ‘lawyer-up’ and start treating some of the comments and the misuse of the image out of context rather more seriously that I’d like to.

I stress that this is only because of the all too obvious inability of some to discuss the issues it raises seriously and without making libellous comments.

I will make one thing clear, to prevent this getting out of hand, the image is question is subjetc to copyright and in not, unlike most of the content on this blog, made available for use by others under the usual creative commons licence. Any use of the image is subject to express permission from myself. I’m not intending to remove the image from this blog at this time, in the hope that once the current artificial furore has died down, it may be possible to a facilitate the genuine debate that I have aiming to spark off all along, but if that becomes impossible due the current witch hunt against Bob Piper, I will have to do just that, and an opportunity to hold a serious discussion around issues of race, ethnicity and identity and its relationship with current political culture will have been lost.
I have noticed that a few sites are displaying the image and will contacting all of them to ask that it be removed, immediately.

Oh well, Bob’s had to remove his post about my post after the Tories kicked up such a stink that it made the BBC’s website - slow news day, guys?

Still, its nice to the see the fine old art of the political witch-hunt is alive, well and thriving in Dave’s new realm of Torydom.
As for your truly, the post stays and if anyone want’s make an issue of it with the Police, the Commission for Racial Equality or anyone for that matter, then feel free to do so. I more than happy to defend the image and my reasons for posting it, just as I’m happy to debate its content with those who come armed with something more than faux outrage and sanctimonius indignation. Mr Angry of Tunbridge Wells is also alive and well, it seems, and as pig ignorant as he ever was.

It also stays on this site because without it the issues it seeks to raise and the debate it is beginning to engender now that the half-arsed politicking has (hopefully) come to an end, remain as valid as they were when I posted it, and without that image an important element of context would be lost from the debate.

One of George Orwell’s most famous comments is ‘Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear’ - or indeed show them images that make them uncomfortable and cause a modicum of offence, and that concept has to the be the starting point for any serious and meaningful discussion about the politics of race, ethnicity and identity.

What this last couple of days shown, however, is just how we still are from being able to hold such a debate, and how quickly opportunities for debate can dissipate in the face of hypocrisy and (politically) venal self-interest. I wonder how many of those who’ve been tut-tutting over the weekend about this image were also those running off at the mouth about liberty and the importance of free expression over summer during the course of the ‘Mo-toons’ controversy? As most of the complainers are Tories, quite a lot I expect.

Well get this, folks. You can’t have it both ways, certainly not if you plan on getting all self-righteous about racism.

You can’t wrap yourself in a flag of liberty and tell Muslims that they’ve no right to complain or protest when you insult their religion and tell them that they’re threatening your freedom of speech, and then kick off a witch hunt when someone takes a satirical shot at your own party leader. It doesn’t work like that - you either have to accept that more or less anything goes (the exceptions being libel and incitement to violence) or you tolerate censorship in a form that elevates the ‘right’ not to be offended above the right to express yourself freely, even if what’s being said contains a grain (or significantly more) of truth.

You may be fine with the likes of Christain Voice dictating what you can and can’t see on TV, read or listen to - I’m not!

There seems to be the odd idiot, still, who wishes to contend that ths image itself is racist.

In fact is has little or nothing to say on the subject of race and racial identity except, perhaps, a little something about Black culture is routine appropriated by white people to suit their own ends and how stupid and banal white people frequently look when they do just that. The image is about pretence and fakery, about trying to create the appearance of being something (or someone) that you’re not, which seems an apt metaphor for our current political culture.

It’s been asked ‘What would Labour Party members have said if the Tories had produced an image like this?’.

What? Of David Cameron? I’d have laughed like a drain, of course. I’d also have done the same if a Tory had given Tony Blair the same treatment. I can’t speak for other party members, some of who would undoubtedly made the same kind of fuss that Tories have been making this last couple of day, but that doesn’t mean that I have to follow the herd. In fact, as most of my readers should know very well, following the herd’s not really my kind of thingin any circumstances.

I mean, for fuck’s sake have you not seen the cartoon commissioned by Keith Vaz to promote the party’s ethnic minority taskforce?

Check out the close-up - it’s even better.

Don’t this just say it about the utter banality of current political culture?

I get pilloried for trying to make a serious point - or rather Bob Piper does because, as a councillor, he’s a bit more newsworthy, while Keith Vaz thinks that a nice, jolly way to promote an Ethnic Minorities TaskForce is a cartoon of John Prescott in a fucking turban. At least what I was trying to do had an actual fucking point to it!
Exactly what was it I was saying about how dumb it looks when people try to appropriate the cultural artifacts of other communities to their own purposes? Never mind, for now, we’ll pick up that particular debate when all the fuss has died down.
Okay, so I can appreciate why a few Tories got so upset about an attack on Cameron’s image - it can’t be easy living with the fact that you’ve got no policies, so you have to jealously guard his image, because that’s all you’ve got, but really all this fuss?

Anyway, I’ll just a say big hello to all the visitors coming in from the BBC, and if its racism you’re looking for then I’d recommend you try this article, which will tell you all about a man who used to call himself ‘Steve Freedom’, who he is and what he thinks of Jews, Black people, Women, Footballers and Aliens, or this one, which explains how a story that made the Front Page of the Sun in October turned out to be almost a complete fabrication.

(Might as well get some value out of all these extra visitors - you never know, I might even top Guido for a couple of days and wipe a trace of smugness from his lips… it’s an ill wind, as they say…)

UPDATE…

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Mail On Sunday’s reporting that £50,000 a year buys you meeting with Cameron, Pinochet’s dead (and about fucking time too), oh, and Thatcher’s ’saddened’ apparently, and the news ticker at the Telegraph has John Reid claiming that a terrorist attack at Christmas is ‘highly likely’ (no link yet) so that one will be boring the tits off everyone on the Brekkie News in the morning.

I’ll comment rather more fully on the background to my somewhat (deliberately) confrontational spoof of the Tories ‘Sort-It’ website, but before doing so I think it about time that I put the shit-stirrer-in-chief, PragueTory, firmly in his place (the sewer) by explaining a little about how this whole thing unfolded.

Oh, and can I say a big hello to the Stirrer, who’ve picked the story up and are running with the absurd headline ‘RACE ROW OVER CAMERON SATIRE’ - sorry guys, it’s not really a ‘race row’ at all, just a bit of piss poor political opportunism that’s about to backfire.

So where does out story begin. Well the spoof image was posted here in the early hours of Thursday morning and was picked up by Bob Piper and posted on his blog the following evening.

So far, so good.

Kaz, the first person to ‘complain’ about the image, put in her first appearance here, at 3:51pm on Friday, when she posted:

“take it off”

Thank’s Kaz, plenty to go there…

She then popped up at Bob’s site at 4:06pm, with:

“I don’t like this posting and I am surprised that you have used this picture.”

However, look above Kaz’s first post at Bob’s and you’ll see that PragueTory, who’s been squealing like a stuck pig about this fromt he last two days, had already posted a comment on this same thread.

This is what PragueTory had to say at 3:40pm that day:

“Bureaucracy Bob - Home Office and Dept of Education and Dept of Health edicts driving people who want to nurse, educate or catch criminals out of their chosen profession. Just take a look at any of the police bloggers in my blogroll that the authorities are trying to silence.”

PT doesn’t appear particularly shocked by the image contained in the post he’s just commented on here, does he? I mean, if he found the image shocking, as he later claims, then why not say something straight away.

No, you see PT doesn’t become ’shocked’ by the image - publicly at least - until two hours after he made that comment at Bob’s site, and only after Kaz has ‘complained’. And even then, he prefers a little showboating at his own blog to trying to debate the matter directly with either Bob or myself.

And here the plot thickens, because this is a screenshot taken of PT’s blog at around 6pm that day, which shows his original comments - you’ll see why I’m using screenshots in a moment.

Now, you’ll note that PT states very clearly that Kaz is a BME Councillor in Birmingham - which is a hell of statement to make on the strength of contributions to the discussion, thus far, that amount to ‘take it down’ and ‘I don’t like this posting and I am surprised that you have used this picture’.

At this point, it seemed to me that there were two possibilities

- either Kaz really is a BME councillor in Birmingham, and has either contacted PT or been contacted by him to confirm here identity, and a quick scan through the councillors pages on Birmingham City Council’s website does turn up a Black, Liberal Democrat councillor by the name of Karen Hamilton, who might just fit the bill of being ‘Kaz’, or

- PragueTory has seen what he thinks is an opportunity to embarrass a Labour councillor, and being the idiot he is, thinks that ‘gilding the lily’ by claiming that Kaz is both from a BME community AND and elected representative of the people, will make things look far worse for Bob than it would if Kaz is a just an ordinary visitor.

How do we find out which of these two possibilities it is?

Well, at 6:51pm, I posted this at Bob’s site:

Should just point out that ‘Kaz’, from info provided by PragueTory, is Lib Dem councillor for Perry Barr, Karen Hamilton.

And shortly afterward, my (and Bob’s) esteemed local blogging comrade, PoliticalHack, made this comment at PT’s blog:

Kaz is a BME councillor in Brum?

Well, she isn’t a Tory. ‘Cos all of them are white (and most are male).

And got this reply from PT:

Did I say she was a Tory?

So maybe our mystery ‘Kaz’ is indeed a Liberal Democrat councillor for Perry Barr, except that at 8:07pm, Kaz posted again at Bob’s blog:

Bob not complaining about you having a go at the Tories, just the way that you and the Ministry of Truth have done it.

Don’t like the ministrel thing and the wording…it’s insulting. Ask a couple of black people what they think. Let me know what they say. I stand to be corrected.

Plus that Praguetory person has given you dodgy information about who I am.

Now this is an interesting comment for two reasons.

First, it very strongly suggests that Kaz is NOT Black.

Why? Well if she were, would she really say, ‘Don’t like the ministrel thing and the wording…it’s insulting. Ask a couple of black people what they think. Let me know what they say. I stand to be corrected.’?

Of course not. Why would she suggest that Bob get an opinion from a couple of black people if she were, herself, black. Why not just say, ‘I’m Black (or that she’s from another minority community) and I’m offended’ and then we can get on with having a proper debate.

He statemate simply doesn’t fit PragueTory’s claims for her identity.

She also point out that, ‘that Praguetory person has given you dodgy information about who I am’ - which seems to confirm both that she isn’t Karen Hamilton and, more importantly the that she doesn’t know PT and has not had any contact with him ‘behind the scenes’.

So how is that PT is claiming that Kaz is a BME Councillor in Birmingham when the Kaz that actually posted on Bob Piper’s site, doesn’t appear to be Black and doesn’t know him from Adam?

There is an all too obvious answer, which I’ll leave you to work out for yourselves.
I’ll throw in the next sequence of posts from Bob Piper’s blog almost verbatim - I’m omitted only one irrelevant post from the middle of the conversation, which has nothing really to do with the main thread of this narrative, but what we will see is PT’s little fiction unravel even further:

Unity said: December 8, 2006 8:32 PM

Thanks for that info - so PragueTory is basically shit-stirring.

Good, that’ll make my upcoming remarks even more interesting.

BTW - as the point seems to be escaping you entirely, yes that image is offensive…

…because I devised it specifically to cause offence and with a clear purpose in mind.

That last comment is what would rightly be called ‘dropping the bait’ - the image, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is intended to offend Tories, for reasons and purposes too convoluted to go into here in detail, but whihc I may get back to at the end.
And a mere 18 minutes later, PT bites:

Praguetory said: December 8, 2006 8:50 PM

Unity, you jumped to your own conclusions about Kaz’s identity. As I have blogged, I think it is perfectly understandable that she is offended. The words and images you and Bob have used to score a political point are disgraceful.

There is a wider point. You Socialists in Birmingham seem very quick to accuse Tories of being racist. This doesn’t contribute to good race relations and actually drives a wedge between communities. I am afraid these postings are a typical example and if this is what you are prepared to say in public, God knows what you say in private.

But PT - you didn’t just say that she is offended. You said that Kaz is a BME Councillor in Birmingham, despite it being patently obvious that you have no idea at all who she really is. So why make the claim in the first place? It can only be because you think that such a claim would be more embarrassing for Bob, especially as you’d contrived to claim that he’d committed the heinous political sin of offending a Black person.

To make matters even more interesting, a quick visit to PT’s blog immediately after reading this comment, showed that his original post had been quietly stealth edited, and now read…

So by now its Kaz who (may or may not be) a BME Councillor, just to cover PT’s tracks, and whoops there goes his little fiction, which is now heading inexorably towards the toilet bowl.

So I composed another reply - which is why I didn’t notice that Kaz had been back, again, at Bob’s site and posted this comment:

Kaz said: December 8, 2006 9:10 PM

So Unity who exactly are you trying to offend?
You need to explain it to me.

Do you think the Tories are going to be bothered about what you have done?

I think the amount of faux outrage and general whinging coming from PT’s direction answers that last question. But that’s by the by as I posted this reply to PragueTory, noting that I had, indeed, spotted the stealth edit on his post.

Unity said: December 8, 2006 9:15 PM

Guess what - I’ve got plenty to say and its going to get said in public - and don’t think I haven’t spotted the edit on your post, either.

To which I got this reply…

Praguetory said: December 8, 2006 9:28 PM

You guys made the guess that Kaz is Karen Hamilton. Before you pointed the finger, I had no idea who Karen Hamilton was. I can understand that Kaz wants to protect her identity - why not - why should she reveal her identity. Her points remian valid - as do mine. Stop bullying people.

Translated, this amounts to nothing more than, ‘Oh shit. I’ve been rumbled - quick how can I cover my arse’?

Kaz may well want to protect her identity, although having posted here I have both an e-mail address and IP address for her, both of which indicate that she’s local, but there still no evidence whatsoever to sustantiate PT’s claim that she’s a BME councillor in Birmingham.

PragueTory has since reverted back to his claim that Kaz is a BME Councillor in Birmingham, (and AGAIN, the post has been stealth edited) even though her comments and manner of writing suggest that its extremely unlikely that she’s anything of the sort (and she, herself, has not made a claim to this effect either) and that PragueTory certainly hadn’t got a clue who she was at the time he made claims about her identity, so its looks for all the world as if he’s just made up the claim about her being a BME Councillor in Birmingham because he thought it might cause Bob (and perhaps even myself) a bit more embarrassment and make this more of an issue that it really is.

Last word on PragueTory - at 1:06pm on Saturday, he posted this comment at Bob’s site in response to my remarks about him stealth editing his site.

Guys - this is well out of my control now - you are the story, not me.

PS - Unity, I’m looking forward to your future “piece” on my edits. Other than the section titled update, I made no significant change.

That last comment is, of course, a complete load of rubbish, as the screenshots taken from his site and displayed above nicely demonstrate. Oh, and before PT tries the old ‘but he’s know’s how to use photoshop’ gambit, I’ll just point out that I do have the full screenshots, showing the exact time they were taken, sat here on my PC.

And still, he persists in claiming that ‘Kaz’ is a BME councillor in Birmingham despite offering no evidence whatsoever to substantiate that claim.
As a final comment, I’ll take on the supposed issue of my use of the phrase ‘Yo Niggah!’, which PT stupidly renders in his own comments as ‘Niggar’, which suggest either poor eysight or a piss poor effort (again) to make things appear worse, in his eyes, than reality actually merits.

Actually the ‘H’ in ‘Niggahs’ is entirely superfluous as its more normally spelt simply ‘Nigga’ and, as anyone with a love of the comedy of Richard Pryor (who was also a screenwriter on Mel Brooks’ satire on racism, Blazing Saddles’ and wrote the majority of the ‘Nigga/Nigger’ jokes in the film) or Chris Rock’s ball-achingly funny routine ‘Niggas vs Black People’, its use and context, though admittedly controversial, is for the most part rather different from that of the perjorative ‘Nigger’ from it was derived.

One of more interesting illustrations of how the context of the two terms differ (in some circles, as the term is not universally liked) was attributed to the Black American (and deceased) rapper, Tupac Shakur.

NIGGER- a black man with a slavery chain around his neck.

NIGGA- a black man with a gold chain on his neck.

It’s use in this particular context is in much the same vein as that explored by the California Punk band, The Offspring, in their song, ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy‘:

He needs some cool tunes, not just any will suffice
But they didn’t have Ice Cube so he bought Vanilla Ice
Now cruising in his Pinto, he sees homies as he pass
But if he looks twice, they’re gonna kick his lilly ass!
So don’t deflate, play it straight
You know he really doesn’t get it anyway
Gonna play the field, keep it real
For you know a way, for you know a way
So if you don’t break, just over compensate
At least you know you can always go on Ricky Lake
The world loves wannabes
Hey, hey, do the trendy thing!

It’s about the absurdities that arise when white people attempt to imitate Black culture, and especially Black street/youth culture, despite being ignorant of its own unique social and culture mores (and the actual reference point for this is Cameron’s comments earlier this year about the BBC playing ‘Gangsta’ rap). Interestingly, ‘Pretty Fly’ is the Offspring’s only No.1 single in the UK and attracted no controversy at all on release, depite playing with much the same kind of issues.

Urban Dictionary, an online dictionary of urban slang, lists seven different definitions of ‘Nigga’, from that ascribed to Tupac to this one, from ‘DJWhiteBoy’, which I think nicely illustrates the confusion the term causes:

Nigga

Something I would get my ass kicked for saying.

Me to Black person: What up my nigga!
Black person: You better run whiteboy!

Especially when juxtaposed with this definition:

Nigga

Slang term for homie, friend, buddy, etc., used primarily by African-Americans but has spread to other races as well;

“‘Sup my nigga?” “How’s it hanging my nigga?” “Yo, nigga wassup?”

There is an even more illustrative definition offered, that does manage to be both utterly confused and almost certainly racist at the same time, which is worth pointing out.

Nigga

A derogatory word used by black people to retain (and exploit) their ancestors past as slaves. Many blacks claim it’s a term of endearment (akin to brother, homie, etc), but in no way can it be as its root meaning is ignorance. It’s another double standard of racism in our current time.

White guy “what up nigga”
Black guy “nigga?”
White guy “you know what I mean bro”
Black guy “you mean I’m a nigger”
White guy “Nah man, it ain’t like that”
Black guy punches the white guy.
Black guy gets arrested for assault and released without charges because the white guy is accused of using racial slurs (that the Black guy uses everyday in his vocabulary with his “brothers” that he has no idea if he’s actually related to)

Now do you see what I mean about context?

Tell you what, lets take this question a little further, by looking at two different sets of lyrics from Hip Hop songs.

First, there’s this:

Yeah nigga, MC Ren up in this motherfucker
(West West y’all)
Yeah, L.A. niggaz
L.A. niggaz rule the world nigga
Y’all niggaz gotta recognize, yaknahmsayin?
Niggaz don’t wanna peep game, yaknahmsayin?
But this shit come all the way back around here
My nigga Dre, droppin heat box on y’all bitch-ass
Yaknahmsayin? You gotta recognize
L.A. niggaz, connected all over the motherfuckin world, nigga
Recognize this

And then this:

I’m like santa clause, i deliver niggas grams raw
straight from panama, they eat it up like hannibal
and my dons, they appear like magic wands
i sell em to the crack of dawn, and destroy every track im on
plus i have a clan packed in the back of vans
more raw than the taliban, murk you for a half a gram
i get bboy a truck, yo truck in the river
fuck some doe, he be like “thats my nigga fo real”

Thats my nigga fo real
Thats my nigga fo real
Thats my nigga fo real

The first song (’some LA Niggas) is by Dr Dre, the second (’That’s my Nigga fo Real’) by another black rapper, Young Zee, but written by Dre’s (very) white protoge, Marshall Bruce Mathers III - or Eminem as he’s more widely known - and features on the soundtrack to Eminem’s semi-autobiographical film, ‘8 Mile’.

Does Eminem having written a song that uses the word ‘Nigga’ repeatedly, make him racist, even though the song is written for and performed by a Black artist?

You see, here’s a very curious thing.

There are several instances of songs written by Eminem and which feature Eminem as a performer. in which the word ‘Nigga’ is used and used prominently - at yet never, so far as I’ve been able to ascertain, by Eminem personally, despite his having written the lyrics.

The same applies to Quentin Taratino’s screenplay for Pulp Fiction, which resulted in Tarantino receiving heavy (and unjustified) criticism from Spike Lee, for its use of the word ‘Nigga’, even though, again, its only (so far as I can recall) the characters of Jules Winfield and Marsellus Wallace (played by Samuel L Jackson and Ving Rhames) who ever use the word in conversation.

The ‘offence’ in the use of the phrase ‘Yo Niggahs!’ in this particular image lies specifically in its juxtaposition with the image of Cameron in ‘Blackface’, another example of white culture imitating Black culture in a poorly conceived and racist manner - to suggest its possible use outside of its accepted (in some circles) context. This is, of course, alluded to most obviously in the use, also, of the phrase ‘Is it because I’s Black’, which refers to Sacha Baron-Cohen’s creation Ali G - yet another instance in which the efforts of some white people to adopt Black culture as an affectation is, aomgst other things, satirised.

Had I used, instead, an image of say Dr Dre, or Busta Rhymes or 50 Cent, instead of that of a Cameron, the ‘offence’ in the image would be lessened, if not largely non-existent, because the image conveyed by those artists is one in which the use of the word ‘Nigga’ would not be contextually inappropriate at all - although it might still offend some who think the word should never be used at all.

The image is a fake, a fake that operates on multiple levels and also a fake that plays quite consciously and deliberately on stereotypes and taboos to make a serious point about the absurdity of modern political culture and its remoteness from the lives of the real people it seeks to govern and whose very behaviour, attitudes and values it is attempting to define - as in the case of Blair’s ‘Respect Agenda’ - but doesn’t really understand. And I could just as easily have used Blair rather than Cameron in that image to the same basic effect, but then that would have had Tories like PragueTory clapping like seals in the background rather than whining like a bunch of stuck pigs.

The risk, in producing an image like this, is of course that one creates a measure of genuine offence amongst those who have genuinely held views on race and ethnicity but who react reflexively to the image without quite getting or considering fully what, where and whom its driving at - in fact Cameron’s concerted efforts to come across as a Mr Touchy-Feely Everyman in the wake of years of the Tories being the ‘nasty party’ create numerous opportunities for edgy visual satire - I could just as easily provoked the same kind of fuss by putting him in drag or depicting him as religious figure. (And the same goes for Blair, although his marked authoritarian streak provides opportunities lacking in Cameron, as were exploited recently by NO2ID).

However, that’s a risk I consider manageable, not least as in my experience, the kind of people who respond to images like this is a genuine manner are at least intelligent enough to articulate their views and debate the issues it raises for them in a failr reasonable manner - and such visitors are always welcome here.
It’s also a risk I considered worth taking to skewer my real target - Tories.

Or to be a little more precise, those Tories who’ve spent the last few years revelling in the freedom of being the ‘Nasty Party’ and baying along with every fatuous and intellectually herniated Daily Mail op-ed on the subject of ‘political correctness’ only now to find themselves forced to adopt political correctness as an affectation in order to fit in with Cameron’s ‘New Model Tories’, even though deep down many of them hate the thought of it with a passion.

You see, political correctness may be an innovation in Cameron’s newly liberal Tory Party, but for those of us who’ve been involved in real anti-racist activism for the last 20 years (and more in Bob’s case), its well-worn territory and all a bit old-hat.

Political correctness serves many functions, not all of them useful or valuable, and some just downright disingenuous and dishonest. And one of it’s more disingenuous functions is to cover up the ignorance of some of its most fervant adherants; white middle-class liberals (and Tory pseudo-liberals, of course). The whole point about political correctness is in this context is that it provides a script of euphemistic terms and stock phrases that, once adopted, ensure that that you never have to worry about offending people by inadvertantly saying the ‘wrong thing’ in discussions on race, ethnicity and identity, even if you haven’t got the first fucking idea of what you’re talking about or the merest shred of understanding of the nuances and subtles of such debates.

Stick to the script, which includes the ludiocrously melodramatic phrase, ‘the N Word’, and you can bluff your way through such debates without causing offence to anyone, whether you’re a complete idiot or a secret would-be scion of the master race - or so some people think, especially if you go out of your way to establish your supposedly ‘liberal’ credentials by saying things like, ‘I have to admit that I was shocked, but not personally offended’ and ‘ I think I’m a pretty liberal guy (doesn’t everyone?)’ just to ensure that everyone gets the message.

In reality words like ‘Nigger’ (and ‘Nigga’ for that matter), ‘Paki’, ‘Wog’, ‘Coon’ and whole bunch of other racial epithets can be used perfectly correctly and validly in discussion, just as long as you’re intelligent enough to understand how to use them in their proper context, as they are being used here - and if people care to search this blog you will find that I’ve used them in a number of posts (and without complaint) in their proper context and always to make or illustrate a serious point.

The kind of faux outrage this image has generated in certain quarters isn’t evidence of genuine feeling but belongs broadly to that classic strand of debate around race, ethnicity and identity which, quite frequently, begins with the absurd statement, ‘I’m not racist, but…’ and the ‘outrage’, itself, no more than a bit of ill-conceived, deliberate and rather pathetic politicking initiated by PragueTory, which is why the vast bulk of the ‘attack’ has been directed toward Bob Piper, for reposting the image in question, and not against myself, for actually putting it together.

This whole issue, such as it is, boils down to PragueTory trying to swing his dick in public and embarrass a Labour councillor, in the hope that it might turn him in the next Guido or Iain Dale - in reality he’s just a wannabe without either the wit or political nous of either.

One of his follow-up posts absurdly contends that this image is ‘Campaign Literature’ - funny, don’t recall putting ’sponsored by the Labour Party’ into it, precisely because it isn’t sponsored by the Labour Party and its isn’t campaign literature, its a spoof image designed to wind up dickheads like PT in the hope - actually more expectation - that they’d go on to make a complete arse of themselves in their desperation to make something of it…

…desperation that, in PT’s case, has led him to everything from faux outrage, to unsubstantiated claims about the identity of ‘Kaz’ to breaches of blogger’s netiquette (stealth editing his comments) to increasingly histrionic follow-up posts in which he gets increasely close to line of levelling a direct allegation of racism against Bob (in particular), even though he’s too much of a chickenshit to actually make the allegation in full (in case he got called on it and had to back it up in court, one suspects) to actually ‘bussing’ in a black female Tory blogger - Morag the Mindbender - to complain…

From Morag’s blog:

Praguetory
December 8th, 2006 at 5:12 pm

Hi Morag - Good post. Personally I find that a lot of Left wing whites are very happy to play the race card (e.g. intimate that all Tories are racist you know). I find this very damaging to race relations. On this theme you may be interested in my most recent post.

Frm PT’s Blog

moragthemindbender said…

Dear PT, Many, many thanks for a spectacular bit of entertainment. Upon your guidance I have now visited both sites and have left suitably remonstrative comments. In fact I am currently packing my bags and preparing to leave town as at least one of them will come looking for me My 12 year old is more clever t