Caught In The Act: Slogans (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slogans

Connoisseurs of political slogans will have more than their fill during the long, wearying months leading up to the next general election. When it is all over they may well need a period of abstinence, to recover from gorging themselves on the concentrated nonsense poured forth from the fertile minds of the slogan-composers.

Labour and the Liberals, as the parties out of power, will be hoping the voters will fall for an appeal to a brighter future. The Liberal Democrats have already settled on Changing Britain For Good and in the last election Labour went down to defeat when the voters did not accept their invitation to Meet The Challenge—Make the Change. On the other hand the Tories will be trying to scare us with the prospect of a Labour government wrecking the prosperity they have so carefully organised on our behalf, as they did in 1959 with Life’s Better Under the Conservatives, Don’t Let Labour Ruin It and at the last election when they warned us Britain Is Great Again— Don’t Let Labour Wreck It. This last kind of slogan may not appeal to the unemployed, the homeless or social security claimants fretting over their meagre benefits but never mind.

Patriotism will certainly feature in the slogans for nothing goes down better with the voters than stimulating their pride in this grand old, polluted, crime- ridden, poverty-stricken country of ours. In 1950 the Labour Party, which was once thought to be internationalist, assured the voters that Labour Believes in Britain; in 1959 they startled the propertyless working class with Britain Belongs To You (it didn’t then and it doesn’t now) and in 1974 Britain Will Win With Labour which by 1987 had been slashed to Britain Will Win. Of course the Tories are not to be left out when it comes to patriotism; in 1974 they promised Firm Action For A Fair Britain and later that year Putting Britain First.

It is unlikely that any of the 1992 slogans will be more memorable than Labour’s battle cry of 1945—Let Us Face the Future, which was not so much an encouragement to look ahead as to divert attention from the embarrassments of their past. In 1970 the Tories under Ted Heath promised Action Not Words, by which they did not mean the kind of government policies which brought about the futile struggle with the miners and the inertia of the three-day week.

But this is all good clean fun and it keeps the advertising and media people happily busy. The people who should worry are those in the sloganeers’ sights, whose intelligence is so grievously insulted by their being the target of so much rubbish but who react in the only way the politicians understand—with their votes.

The voters will doubtless make their choice, either way, for callous Kinnock or malevolent Major. After the election everyone—or almost everyone—will be convinced that by choosing one or the other they have done something significant.

In fact whoever is in charge of capitalism, and whatever their personality, it makes no difference to how the system operates nor to its effect on its people. To change the world in any fundamental and permanent way we need to dispense with leaders and instead to rely on ourselves and our ability to run the world in our own interests.

Between the Lines

Watching Margaret Thatcher being cheered ecstatically—a six minute orgasmic ovation by the assembled Tories, to be precise—was an unnerving experience. I had watched leaders being wildly cheered for saying absolutely nothing on previous occasions, but in those eases their lips were clearly moving and audible world-like phrases were being emitted. Watching the Thatcher silence on BBCl’s Conservative Party conference coverage (Tuesday, 8 October, 2pm) offered a short flash of what it might have been like to have seen Stalin sit at an opera and have all the party hacks watch him suck his toffees while the performers sang to themselves. Mind you, with John Major as the Tory Pavarotti, watching Thatcher suck a mouth ulcer would be exciting alternative viewing.

At the event advertised as a Labour Party conference—in fact, a stage show for viewers with votes but no thoughts—the assembled players sang "We Are The Champions of the World" (BBC2, 4 October, 4pm). These lyrics were more Hitler than Stalin; the song by Queen, who play to chanting mobs in football stadiums, was one of the more embarrassing pieces of political indignity that Labour has stooped to in its bid to convince the electorate that it is harmless and toothless. In this respect, Roy Hattersley sang particularly well, winning second prize in the contest for the most foolish singing performance of the week. First prize must go to Kinnock for his leading part in this year’s Gang Show when he led a hall-full of pathetic-looking Labourites in a pathetic-sounding rendition of "We Shall overcome—Some Day". Kinnock neglected to sing the obscure fifteenth verse of this hymn which adds that unless "we" overcome next time round, i. e. the next election, there will be endless daggers heading for the back of the smiling leader. But that was what everyone was thinking as they underwent this humiliating televisual ritual.

By contrast, there was something quite cute about Eugène Terre Blanche, the Leader of the South African AWB. Nick Broomfield’s superb documentary The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife (C4, Monday 7 October, 10,30pm) did not waste its time on the easy job of highlighting the foulness of the racist ruffians of this little outfit. Instead, the programme concentrated on the silliness of the AWB Leader (known to his followers as The Leader) and the sad way in which workers like The Leader’s driver JP and his soppy wife Anita were taken in by Terre Blanche’s amateur dramatic bid to become the new Boer Fuhrer. Terre Blanche showed himself to be a boorish Boer: arrogant, thuggish and with the kind of delusions of grandeur which makes some people imagine that they alone will determine the outcome of history. Hitler was never interviewed by Jeremy Paxman and exposed as a dopey little twit (there was no Newsnight in those days, but only Charlie Chaplin who carried out the same mission in The Great Dictator), but Terre Blanche was interviewed by Broomfield; it was like a smiling cat "interviewing" a mouse with a low IQ.

Terre Blanche claims to represent "the master race"; Kinnock claims to be a "democratic socialist" (what exactly is an undemocratic socialist? A non-socialist); and Major claims to stand for a "classless society". They are each as big liars as the next one. The Socialist Party is hostile to the lot of them.

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

In the original Standard this column was actually unsigned but Caught In The Act was Ivan's (Ralph Critchfield's) column, so I presume it was just a mistake at the printers that month. It happens.

Between the Lines: From the people who brought you John Wayne (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the people who brought you John Wayne

When all that stands between us and the mass annihilation of a third world war are a few hours on the clock, who will we have to turn to and find out what is going on? Who will be telling us that it is right to fight? Who will say that the enemy is satanic and must be defeated at all costs7 Who will insist that the wasted lives of war are heroic gestures? Who will scream at us from morning to night that war is noble, that 'our side' has god on its side, that 'they' will never win. even if most of us must die to stop them?

It is one of the sickest ironies of capitalism that if there is a third world war, fought over the interests of the competing millionaires and billionaires, it will be the media, which is largely paid for and almost totally ideologically obedient to those billionaires and millionaires, that will have the monopoly on explaining what is going on. The capitalists not only possess the power to blow us up, but they have the power to con us into believing that it is right and necessary that we should be blown up.

The power of the media is never more dangerous than in time of war. It is then that the lies become bigger, the audacious assaults upon our intelligence greater, the resorts to half-truths and historical distortions grosser. If the news broadcasts are always but an echo of the interests of our masters in their world affairs, in war time the news becomes a blasting verbal cannon-fire of propaganda

In this war in the Middle East the TV newsreaders have done everything but put on uniforms. They have been recruited to the task of justifying the military force of 'our side' and attacking without explanation the 'madness' of the newfound enemy, to whom Britain used to be a major arms supplier. It is like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four: four years ago Saddam was the friendly dictator who could be relied upon to kill the Iranians: now that he is the official enemy people who have never even heard of him before must be taught to hate him with a passion that only the media can whip up.

Who will the next hate figure be? What further methods will the media use to brutalise us into screaming that we want war? It is a dangerous box which workers have invited into the corners of their living rooms: it emits the poison gas of pro-war propaganda. Never mind all the reports of on links between TV violence and real violence — what about the link between news reporters who glorify war and tho widespread support for the indiscriminate slaughter of warfare which that generates? Or is that a legitimate use of TV to corrupt the minds of tho vulnerable7

Turning women into thugs

Speaking of corrupted minds and also of war — the two are closely linked — Channel Four showed a truly frightening documentary called Soldier Girls (16 August, 11pm). It was directed by Nicholas Broomfield and Joan Churchill. (Broomfield must be one of the most powerful and perceptive makers of documentaries depicting the lunacy of nationalism and militarism) The documentary was about the training of women to become soldiers in the US army. There are few things more disgusting to see than rows and rows of women, capable of producing life, lined up with guns and idiot's uniforms, learning how to destroy life. The documentary showed with awesome clarity just how these trainee thugs are brutalised, their sense of dignity and decency is forced out of them as they learn to become nothing but unfeeling cogs in the killing machine. Those who do not conform are punished by crazed officers whom the Iraqi army could only hope to match for madness.

One trainee, Private Johnson, made it clear from the start that the lunacy of army life was not for her. The officers tried everything to push her into line. What angered them most was that she kept on smiling as they shouted at her. Soldiers are not meant to smile. They punished her, they lectured her, they verbally assaulted her, and still she smiled when she should not have done. In one part of the documentary Johnson is taken into a room by two officers for what is laughably called 'counselling'.

A uniformed female officer and a male nutcase scream and shout at her The latter tells her: "Every time I look at you, Johnson, you got that same smart-arse look on your face, that same silly little smile. And then you got the gall to tell the lieutenant that you want to stay in my goddam army — and not do a damn thing for it. That's what irks me, Johnson You don't give a damn. The troops can't stand you. I mean, even our worst troops out there can't stand you. They don't even want to be around you. You are the type that irritates people just by your presence, without oven opening your mouth. Haven't you realised, Johnson, that you have that capacity to piss someone off just by standing there? Just the way you stand radiates total apathy, complete uncaring about god, man, animal, life water . . ." Incidentally. Johnson was black and the two officers were white. At the end of the documentary Johnson is seen leaving the army; if there are medals for smiling in the face of military madness. Johnson should receive one.

The only difference between training US killers and training Iraqi ones is that the latter are more likely to be killed. Perhaps the Middle East lunatics talk more about the god who is not there; the American screwballs talk about red. white and blue rags on poles which they would die for. It is all crazy — and those who deliver its messages are crazier still.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Chasing the dragon (1994)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chasing the dragon

Aaah! Just when you thought it was safe to come out in the dark, she’s hack . . . and Nicholas Broomfield was out to make a documentary about her whether she wanted him there or not. (C4, 9.30pm, Thursday, 19 May.) The subject in question is Margaret Thatcher, a one-time Prime Minister who said that there was no such thing as society. See the Postcards from Hell on other pages for a more vivid guide to her preferred habitat. Broomfield, who is used to following around confirmed fruit and nutcases (it was he who made that superb documentary about the mad Boer, Terre Blanche), was as welcomed by the Thatcher groupies as a cockroach at a cocktail party. It Is good to see just how small and foolish "the mighty" really are.

In the same week the BBC was chasing the story of the Chinese political prisons where countless detainees are locked up for speaking out against the government. Down at the BBC they have no need to lock up the journalists who are vetted by MI5 before they can have a job and then only allowed to interview those whose words have not been banned by government edict. That’s what they call capitalist democracy, that is. On Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30pm, Wednesday, 18 May) Jeremy Paxman interviewed a smarmy businessman who insisted that human rights abuses should not interfere in commerce. Paxman put it to him that to trade with a state that can do this makes him and his fellow capitalists collaborators. Quite so. And what’s new about that? When have a few camps filled with tortured victims ever stood in the way of a healthy profit? Perhaps next time Paxman interviews Douglas Hurd he would care to ask him whether as a major arms-seller to Indonesia his government feels just a tiny bit like collaborators in the slaughter of the people of East Timor.

What’s all this then, Arfur?

ARFUR: 'Ang on Phil, I’m reading this ’ere election manifesto.

PHIL: Reading? You goin’ soft or something Arfur?

GRANT: You want me to sort him, bruv. That’s how we do things in the East End see. We put the boot in first and ask questions later. Right?

ARFUR: It says ’ere in this ’ere Socialist Party manifesto that all politicians are out to take us for a ride. Now, I’m only a simple bloke, as you well know, but 1 can’t ’elp thinking that they might have a point. What you think Michelle . . . I mean, you’ve been to that there university, ’avn’t you?

MICHELLE: Well, according to what I’ve been reading this totally leaves out of account the post-modernist critique of metatheoretical discourse. I mean, haven’t these socialists ever read Lyotard? Anyway, I’m off to tell my daughter that’s she’s really my cousin.

GRANT: Yeah, and I’m off down the Arches to sort out some geezer with a shooter who reckons Minder was just a comedy.

[Enter an old drunk with a blue suit and a political rosette who looks a cross between that dodgy lawyer used by the Mitchell Bruvvers to get them off at their last court appearance and at least half the members of the House of Commons]

SWINDLER: Hello there, jolly working folk. I’m your candidate . . . 

ARFUR: Ah, perhaps you can ’elp us. I was just reading this Socialist stuff about the likes of you being a lot of useless leaders. They reckons ’ere that the emancipation of the working class can only be the . . . 

SWINDLER: Put it away, my good friend. Subversive nonsense. Pure idealism. You can’t run your lives without us. Any chance of a G and T?

PHIL: You saying we can’t run the world without being led by a load of old duffers like you?

GRANT: Want me to sort him, bruv?

SWINDLER: No . . . what I’m saying is that the likes of you — decent working chaps that you are — need the likes of me — educated at Jesus and the bar, you know — to do a few things to improve life for you. A couple of new beds in the local hospital, for example. And free chiropody for all those of ninety-five and over. Jobs for everyone . . . 

ARFUR: Well thank you very much indeed. I’ll put this socialist stuff away right now. And buy this man a large G and T on me.

DOT: Did somebody mention Jesus?

BIG RON: Did somebody mention a late bar?

MICHELLE: Oh, hasn’t anyone ever told them that they’re just pathetic caricatures of workers invented by people who drink in wine bars. No wonder they’re stupid enough to be taken in by another bloody politician.

Steve Coleman