It's Class War, Karl, But Not As We Knew It

Sixty years without serious material disruption to a way of life is a long time when that life has been accruing more and more means to buy 'space' with which to elaborate itself. When you've never known famine or other self-and-kin-threatening crisis, had plentiful time to develop your personality and preferences, and the last war to necessitate your land's entire attention is a significant part of your programme (ie ultimately a positive, a moral cornerstone) then it's easy to act and talk as if you don't have a body, don't need to use the lavvy, and that your personal code will conquer everything.

Despite Tony's assertion that the Class War is over it looks to me to be in full swing, indeed approaching some kind of major juncture, as the developed world starts to divide into (very broadly) two new classes for each domain - geographically we could call them the mobile and the immobile. The mobile have the means (skills, networks and/or capital) to move from country to country (or within them) at something like will, availing themselves of global opportunities and transcontinental special offers. The immobile don't.

Then there are the mere wannabes who take the Western tradition of individualism and implicit anti-ethnocentrism to its logical conclusion by decrying 'narrow national' outlooks whilst spending far more vitriol on members of their own ethnos who fail to measure up to the highly-pious standards necessary for jet-setting moral-entrepeneurs than on outrages committed by aliens. Anti-nationalist fervour is the moral equivalent of collecting air-miles.

Someone asked in reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the New World Order thus partly inaugurated -

"Did Communism collapse, or was the West quietly absorbed into it?"

Could anyone living through the then-seemingly-unending Thatcher era imagine that PC would have the hold it does on public discourse in Britain? The weird combination of sell-the-country's-assets free-marketeering, nihilistic permissiveness and witch-hunting piousness is not something I'd have envisioned even fifteen years ago.

The response of the political class to the ever-rising power of corporations, and the latters' arguable attainment of a quasi-state character, seems to be to remodel their countries' internal make-up so as to better enable them to attract ever-volatile investment that can up and leave in a moment. Early in his premiership Tony Blair addressed a conference of business people, stating that social cohesion was a vital part of the macroeconomic framework necessary to their enterprises' success. Offering a deal in other words -

"Look, you know...we know we need you...but also, you need us. Work with us and we will deliver the non-elite populace over to you".

Enforcing the kind of social cohesion necessary to make Britain an attractive proposition to cold-eyed investors is something that comes naturally to the pragmatically-power-seeking creatures whose outlooks were incubated during the long years outside central power, in the unions and in 'loony-left' town halls. Here was at last an opportunity to remake the social fabric, to police people's most banal actions (where judged significant) and their very utterances, an opportunity to wield the kind of power they'd always felt was their due, to ooze righteousness in the process, and to make an excellent living into the bargain.

What is Britain for? Who is it for?

As the title suggests these likely-meandering posts are more likely to consist of questions more than answers. Any constructive response is welcome via the Comments feature.

Could the British Isles be populated with a majority of peoples who have arrived within the last 2 or 3 generations and still sensibly be called Britain? Isn't 'Britain' a shorthand for the story of the peoples who have long inhabited, and been shaped by, the lands bearing that collective name?

The gathering speed and rising unpopularity of mass immmigration into Britain would seem to suggest that those in executive power don't see it that way. Evidently the people who identify themselves with Wales, England, Scotland and N Ireland have a very different notion of a claim on, and loyalty to, their country than the elite. I suspect much the same could be said for many in the Irish Republic.

I've often heard expressed the soundbite that Tony Blair's govt regards itself as engaged in "rebranding" Britain, but heard little about what this really means, as if it had little consequence, or as if its most serious consequences were reserved for those that the person talking was not interested in reaching. "The need to compete in the increasingly-competitive global market" and "the growing challenge of China & India" are also soundbites that turn up a lot. Can't shake the feeling that these are specimens of coded utterance where members of local elites using public communication channels disguise the significance of their discussions (essentially, "How are we going to drive down the pay & conditions of those proles still in work without eliciting an inconvenient reaction") so as not to risk attention from those whose business (by virtue of their position in the food-chain) such affairs are not.

Probably the elite see themselves as synonymous with Britain, the remaining bodies being a bulky cost or large resource depending upon the issue at hand, and one that can be attracted, repelled, swapped out, remaindered, replaced with higher value stock, put away in a cupboard etc as the terms of the competition between each country's elites determines. Perhaps this is the working definition of the 'Market State'.