Precedents
Nov. 27th, 2010 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI can think of two famous occasions in my lifetime when police cavalry were used against demonstrators. The first was at Orgreave in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher defeated the striking miners in a pitched battle. The second (Thatcher again) was during the Poll tax riots of 1989.
Earlier there was Peterloo. The cavalry that charged the demonstration in St. Peter's Fields in 1819 have been described as "younger members of the Tory party in arms". An unknown number of people were killed that day- sabred, shot, trampled by the horses. Among them was a two year old child.
The Tories have an affinity with cavalry charges. Maybe it's in the genes- all that ancestral fox hunting, all that riding down of peasants.
They don't see as us as citizens. They don't know us. We don't count. We don't feature in their world except as annoying noises off. We are the "enemy within" (Thatchers phrase) to be kettled and ridden down. In this latest episode of class warfare the "enemy within" are our students and school children.
Earlier there was Peterloo. The cavalry that charged the demonstration in St. Peter's Fields in 1819 have been described as "younger members of the Tory party in arms". An unknown number of people were killed that day- sabred, shot, trampled by the horses. Among them was a two year old child.
The Tories have an affinity with cavalry charges. Maybe it's in the genes- all that ancestral fox hunting, all that riding down of peasants.
They don't see as us as citizens. They don't know us. We don't count. We don't feature in their world except as annoying noises off. We are the "enemy within" (Thatchers phrase) to be kettled and ridden down. In this latest episode of class warfare the "enemy within" are our students and school children.
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Date: 2010-11-27 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 12:28 pm (UTC)David Cameron never had to worry about his tuition fees. Daddy was a millionaire. During his time at Oxford he was a member of the famously snobbish and boorish Bullingdon Club.
George Osbourne and Boris Johnson were members too.
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Date: 2010-11-29 03:37 pm (UTC)Kettling, the game.
Date: 2010-11-30 01:34 pm (UTC)Simple Flash game.
Re: Kettling, the game.
Date: 2010-11-30 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 03:08 pm (UTC)Rode the six hundred...
Oh, the British and their cavalry charges. When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn...
(Mind you, back in 1991 or 1992 Copenhagen saw some serious rioting in connection with the referendum on the Edinburgh Agreement, and a famous video recording has a police officer audibly shouting to his men "aim for the legs!"... I guess I'd rather face a horse than a police force with orders to maim me.)
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Date: 2010-11-27 04:08 pm (UTC)Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 06:28 pm (UTC)What I must criticise is your attribution of evil intent to me and my friends and those who share my political opinions. In the first place, it's projection: I seem to recall that the only national politician ever to have called his party (and, as he saw it, wrongly, class) enemies as 'lower than vermin', was the Rt Hon Member for Ebbw Vale. In the second instance, it's simply false. We Conservatives do not, it is true, see the rest of the GBP as 'citizens', in that we consider ourselves and all others as, not mere citizens, but rather as fellow subjects of the Crown. We do - hold on a moment: Fulham have just scored - we do rather believe that the result of a democratic General Election and any Government that emerges in accord with the usual procedures that inhere in a Westminster system, is not to be subject - whether that ministry of the day be Conservative or Labour - to a sort of ongoing heckler's veto. To that extent, perhaps, one might call any group that seeks to overturn that democratic result an internal enemy, but that is not what you have charged Conservatives generally with holding, is it. But this assertion that I and those with whom I share - sometimes uneasily - a party, are the Wicked Barons oppressing the 'smallest hee in England', as the Putney Agitators put it, thirsting to ride them down, is not only rot, and offensive rot, it's a simple lie.
You are of course perfectly free to hold and express such opinions as seem good to you. You are not at liberty to assert without challenge or contradiction that those who disagree with you are actuated by evil and take a malign pleasure in somehow oppressing you and those whose views you share, and do so because it is in our inherently vicious character to do. Assert that if you like, I repeat, but it shan't be unchallenged, because it is false in fact (like the odd assertion that the PM is an 'aristocrat': upper lower upper middle, shurely?).
The more I see of Labour as it has been for most of my life, the more I miss Major Attlee, Major Milner, Colonel Wedgwood, and Captain Bellenger, frankly.
Well, Enough of that. To more important matters. What in buggery got into Hussey and the Australians at the Gabba? I don't recall Hussey's being quite so bloody indomitable when he played county cricket for Glos, do you?
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 06:37 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 07:27 pm (UTC)I agree with all those statements.
He has since resigned his front bench seat and been arrested for drink driving.
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 07:32 pm (UTC)I'm sorry, I don't care whether the Mail "spun" his words for their agenda or not. I find it repugnant. If you have *that* much contempt for the electorate, then don't run for office!
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 07:57 pm (UTC)OK.
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 08:50 pm (UTC)All I tried to point out was that if there is a class wat in this country, the Left are just as capable of taking shots as the Right. Yes, some voters are racist. So, are some politicians. Yes, it is hypocritical to drink heavily and condemn drug use. Yes, paedophiles deserve to be strung up. But to imply - as that MP did - that the middle-classes are more pre-disposed to that than anyone else, is offensive. Simple as that.
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 09:55 pm (UTC)I've just read Joyce's original article. He doesn't use the word "middle-class" once. It's the Mail that has assumed he was getting at their readers. If the cap fits, wear it.
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 08:50 pm (UTC)Read what he actually said first before believing what it said in the
Volkischer BeobachterDaily Mail. You'll find Joyce said nothing of the sort, and actually made sensible points. All lies as per usual from the Mail. There's a link to what he actually stated below, and it differs greatly from Tim Shipman(any relation?)'s account.jeez, I can't believe I'm defending Eric bloody Joyce
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 07:15 pm (UTC)No, we're not going to agree on much, are we? I do however share your dismay at Hussey's proficiency.
Also your nostalgia for Attlee and co. I take your point about them having been military men. That was a "great generation". I think of myself as a lefty- but there's no place for me in the modern Labour party- not after Blair and Brown. I don't like Cameron, but I heartily despise those two.
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 08:45 pm (UTC)As indeed was the aforementioned Major Eric Joyce, whose actual words were quoted here as opposed to in the Mail.
Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
Date: 2010-11-27 08:55 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, what utterly tendentious rubbish, Tony.
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Date: 2010-11-29 09:15 am (UTC)Maybe this by-election will attract a range of amusing Independents.