The ruling class is no longer even pretending to justify its own laws through consistent use
~ Rob Ray ~
One of the (many) silly things about the recent political “debate” over how poor old teen-bullying 57-year-old Graham Linehan got arrested for doing nothing wrong except advising people to beat up trans folk—has been a sudden turn against the Serious Crime Act 2007. Specifically Section 44, encouraging an offence.
This used to be known as incitement, a common law crime used by prime ministers and kings alike to deter the sort of language that might cause disorder, or worse, rebellion. Editors of Freedom itself have been charged along these lines when in 1944 they suggested soldiers hang on to their arms post-war.
There were, historically, very good reasons for the ruling class to take incitement seriously—catching people at the stage of handing out literature is an awful lot easier than putting down a riot or an insurrection.
But today we see no lesser organs of the bosses than the Telegraph, the Times, and Wes Streeting complaining bitterly that the law is not fit for purpose, being employed as it is against people they actually like, such as transphobes and people who want to burn Muslims alive.
It’s not an entirely rare thing when the hang-‘em-and-flog-‘em brigade does this, but such sheer brass-necked Rules For Thee, Not For Me hypocrisy is always a head turner.
In this case, though, I think it’s also indicative of something else—a decline in fear.
That might sound odd to say, on the face of it. Fear is near-enough Britain’s defining modern characteristic. Fear of migration, of breaking services, of fracturing communities, of declining prosperity and a diminished position on the world stage.
But that’s all stuff affecting the broad national id. Incitement, for the most part, is a ruling class concern. And they have less reason to fear right now than at perhaps any time in modern history.
The working class is angry, and it’s frightened, and it’s increasingly desperate. But what threat does it pose to those in power, in its current mode?
The electoral left is not only out of power, it’s out of the party in power, trying desperately to cobble together an electoral outsider coalition out of old Corbyn fans and the bleary-eyed affability of the Greens. The non-electoral left (including the anarchists, for convenience) is either non-existent, or stuck firefighting the community-level results of 40 years of neoliberalism.
There is no collective force confronting the bosses for their balls-out looting of everything from public services to the very concept of exchanging money. In fact, quite the opposite—complaining about them is met as often with suspicion as recognition, a combination of decades of alienation, atomisation, technopoly propaganda and grindset fetishisation having thoroughly seeped into all our lives.
The ruling class can look upon its works with nothing less than wonder when it sees the vote build-up for Reform, a party run by millionaires and populated by ex-Tories which, the moment it gains any seats, showcases exactly the same basic agenda, incompetence and corruption as its peers.
No wonder the sanctity of a law designed to protect their safety is less of a concern for them these days. It’s been so long since they had to deal with a coherent threat from below that they’ve come to fear the personal inconveniences of limited phrasing more than working class anger.
They might be right in that, certainly at the time of writing. It’s been 14 years since the last serious wave of riots, and those were relatively incoherent. The union movement has been in near-continuous decline since the 1980s, the radical left sliding alongside it.
Many people, coming to the conclusion that the rich can’t be beaten, are instead picking up on fights they think they can win against opponents who won’t call on the full might of State and capital. Talk to the average anti-migrant activist about organising this group of people who they insist are undercutting wages, and the look you’ll get will be one of incredulity.
A coward’s conflict, perhaps, when you stand outside hotels demanding the persecution of frightened refugees rather than besieging the most expensive street in town, or taking on the decamillion-pound mansions of Park Lane (let alone the fortified edifice of Downing Street). But it’s easy to see the appeal. Some people can’t stomach a real challenge, even when it’s slapping them in the face.
Much working-class anger has been redirected to topics that don’t threaten ruling-class concerns, the other most common target being “wokeness”, and it’s actively quite useful for the bosses to encourage these, especially if you can present something as evidence of a “liberal elite agenda”.
None of which is to say we’ll suddenly be allowed, picking an example from the air, to directly urge whoever is within reach of Wes Streeting to hang him upside down by his balls from the nearest lamp post. Such sentiments, expressed by anyone with a sizeable platform or whose words might find themselves acted upon, would rapidly see a full reimposition of that law he thinks is too harsh.
But it’s an indictment of our times that the ruling class, having made any and every act of disruptive defiance to business as usual illegal, is seemingly no longer of the opinion that it needs to even pretend to justify its own laws through consistent use.
Put an LGBT+ flag up? That’s getting taken down and you might face a fine for littering, or vandalism. England flags? Get a nod from the PM and solidarity bunting hung from Labour Party constituency offices. Block the M25? Jail if you’re left, approving column inches if you’re a farmer. Smash up town centres, try and burn buildings and intimidate anyone you can see who looks foreign? Well you won’t be getting proscribed for that, but spray painting a plane is a shoe-in.
The fair and unflinching rule of law has, ultimately, always been a fantasy mainly sold to the middle classes. But rarely has the British bourgeoisie allowed and encouraged that disparity to be both so obvious, and so baldly stated by its own propagandists.
It’s an extraordinary abandoning of our rulers’ historic subtleties and cleverness and, in an indirect sort of way, a sneering insult directed against the British working class itself.
Incitement? Who cares any more, they’re no threat.
Image: Romanywg on Vandalog