Dystopian Britain: from Rivers of Blood to Rivers of Shit
As bloodied horses run through London city centre and policies that were not long ago consigned to the far-right fringes, Britain is entering darker and more macabre times. For years Britain has felt like its creeping into V for Vendetta territory. This week, the British govt passed laws that take us way off the map, by forcing the fantasy that Rwanda is a safe place into law. This formal entry into the post-truth world is to be preceded by a dystopian election-winner – rounding up foreign people to win votes.
The sunday papers explain that the Home Office will launch a surprise operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK on Monday, weeks earlier than expected, in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda. Home Office Officials plan to hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration service offices and will also pick people up nationwide in a major two-week exercise.They will be immediately transferred to detention centres, which have already been prepared for the operation, and held to be put on flights to Rwanda, including the first one due to take off this summer.
The policy has been talked-about for so long it’s just been normalised ahead of its awful reality. This is nothing less than state sponsored people trafficking, Britain is going to round-up people for mass deportation to a country on the verge of war with its neighbour. This is beyond any dystopian fiction penned in the last hundred years. This has been a long time coming – and we now sees the convergence of two tributaries of English politics – Rivers of Blood meeting Rivers of Shit – if you will. You can see the long tail of this from Oswald Mosley to Enoch Powell, from Norman Tebbit and the policing of the urban riots in the 80s to the extension of powers of the police and the state over this period, to the ratcheting up of racist language and cultures normalised and cultivated by an aggressive and well-funded tabloid media over decades. It’s what Nesrine Malik has called:
“a raging furnace of right-wing provocation, spitting out lies, fear and spite, shaping a political culture of miserliness and insularity”.
A new low might have been marked this week when Ben Habib – the Reform UK party’s “co-deputy leader” was interviewed and suggested that leaving people to drown had become a normal part of the right’s discourse. John Harris has written (‘Children left to drown in the Channel – is this where Britain’s drift to the right is taking us?‘):
“What Habib said on TalkTV was surely a window into not just his party’s soul, but the warped mindset of a growing political faction that is tightening its grip on Conservatism. Self-evidently, it is following much the same script as a whole host of hard-right authoritarians: Donald Trump, the French politician Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. But these days, I keep thinking of a passage from the music and culture writer Jon Savage’s peerless book England’s Dreaming, taken from a diary entry in 1975: “Fascism here won’t be like in Germany. It’ll be English: ratty, mean, pinched”.
It’s been a long time coming, we can remember Farage’s Brexit posters,, and his trawling the channel for clickbait like a human vulture, we can recall Theresa May’s ‘Hate Vans’ – the Tories ‘Hostile Environment’ or right back to Labour’s immigration mug.
John Harris writes:
Members of the Left scold others for the misappropriation of the term ‘fascist’ insisting on its correct historical context and political meaning. But what other language are you to use for these policies, as Sunak & Co fight for their discredited political lives, and people are dehumanised for naked opportunism and those facing hardships here are convinced that the cause of all of their suffering are vulnerable people seeking sanctuary from war, violence and climate catastrophe?
We can’t be complacent about what’s happening, nor believe that the incoming Labour party will be much different. Most of the time their public opposition to the Rwanda scheme is based on how it’s ‘inefficient’ or illegal, not that its morally abhorrent. Labour are quite comfortable using dog-whistle politics – even if they (sometimes) use softer language for the same ends.
It’s difficult to see where this ends, the casual racism the moral abyss seems to have no end, no bottom to it. Even if the Conservative party is obliterated at the next general election, as seems highly likely, the cancer of the far-right has already morphed and flowed elsewhere taking up new residency in Reform UK or a myriad of semi-clandestine networks manifesting as libertarian, English Nationalist, ‘anti-Net-Zero’, or ‘patriotic fronts’ honing in on Islamophobia and Christian Fascism. It was no surprise that the post-truth Rwandan act was passed on St George’s Day, where bigotry and nationalism could happily co-mingle:
I went to Whitehall to meet the English patriots celebrating St George’s day pic.twitter.com/cdEZDZ4mmm
— Ed Campbell (@edcmpbl) April 25, 2024
Back in 2014 we were sold Britain as a font of progressive multiculturalism. Seems a long time ago now.
Excellent Mike. No way to get this info to a wider audience?
We are a wider audience … share
I read England’s Dreaming when I was 12, and would count it as an absolutely formative influence. It should be on all high school reading lists, imho. Amazing book.
Good article, too!
Thanks for saying what many have been thinking for some time. Fascism’s symptoms such as extreme nationalism are really just propaganda or window dressing. In reality it is based on the idea that wealth and power are their own reward and justify any means to get and keep them. It is an extension of international corporate ‘stakeholder capitalism’.
It’s said that that racist Henry Ford funded the Nazi rallies of the 1930s.
Of course modern fascism is a 21st century, business suited version rather than the jackboots of the 1930s, but that’s just a change of style. All our political parties, not to mention politicians, public servants, academics, journalists, etc, are bought and sold for oligarch’s gold. And blackmailed and threatened if they don’t do as they are told. My experience again and again is that if you ask an awkward question you will face a wall of silence. The so called culture wars are just ways to ‘other’, divide and rule people. Those in power play both sides.
What to do?
This is all based on fear. Power is given on the basis of protection. The answer is surely to be the change. The lesser of two evils is still evil. We need to refuse to co-operate because we have more to fear from this ideology than standing against it. We also need to think of those who gave their lives fighting fascism in the 1930s, and recognise La Peste when it reappears. We can start by voting only for independent candidates who will commit to represent those who elect them before party loyalty.
“What Habib said on TalkTV was surely a window into not just his party’s soul, but the warped mindset of a growing political faction that is tightening its grip on Conservatism.” – Writes John Harris, in the article cited.
It’s interesting… how these things only really bubble to the surface when they affect, or prick the thick-skinned-conscience of the chattering classes. “Tightening its grip”? Hardly… the warped mentalities that define that faction are at the very heart of Toryism; which is a different thing from the small-c conservatism that many people seem to imagine they are endorsing when they vote Conservative.
1980 was the year in which I turned 18; and began working in London as an ‘ACTT Apprentice’ News (ENG) Cameraman… In the coming years, travelling back to my native Glasgow once a month or so, it became obvious how the ‘progress’ and affluence of the South East was being bought. – A creeping Tory disease was stripping away every social advance fought for by our grandparents’ and parents’ generation; to the advantage of an inevitably-decreasing minority.
The rot has been going on for a long long time… and before anyone says it – no I haven’t forgotten the Tory B Liar years when they claimed ‘things can only get better’… then carried on with Thatcher’s rout. New Labour – her ‘greatest achievement’ simply a stage in the de-civilisation of the British Isles…
That cancer has (as it was bound to) simply crept closer towards ‘Little Englund’ – a place which thinks itself to be the entirety of Britain; but isn’t!
It must now (for example) be close to two decades since I found myself working on a London job with a local ‘fixer’. We discovered on day one that this young lady lived in one of the bleaker towns on the south coast – she couldn’t afford to live in London. We assumed she was in digs somewhere or holed up with a friend for the week. When the day’s filming was over and we dumped our equipment at our digs; we wondered why she clung so doggedly to the large rucksack she had with her…
It emerged she intended to sleep rough for the week – she could not afford to commute, could not afford digs; not on what she was being paid for the gig. She’d left her young child at home with her partner. The money was needed – what the chattering classes call the ‘gig economy’ and bleat long and hard about; well that’s the reality of life as a freelancer, has been for decades!
If you’re lucky and can survive within it; it will be an option-limiting feast-or-famine existence. Thing is; many people never see a feast; at least not unless they went to ‘the right school’ and/or have ‘the right connections’. – It rarely has anything to do with merit, talent, competence, training or qualifications. – It’s a cliquety-claque world.
The young lady? Well fortunately we had a female crew member with us who was on her own in a twin room; and even if she hadn’t we’d have got her a room somewhere! – After all; what kind of low-life sub-human animal leaves a young girl to sleep on the streets?
When I challenged the two ‘yah-yah’ public school nonentities who owned (but were in no way qualified to run) the production company involved; they laughed! These two ‘Tory Boys’ though it not only perfectly acceptable to treat someone like that; but funny. – And yes; they did know that the girl had nowhere to go and were happy to exploit her desperation for work. – That was their normal.
In contrast; back in my own ‘London days’ the ACTT (Trade Union) had ensured that as a young trainee I was properly accommodated in a subsidised flat, and properly supported – but they were long-gone; subsumed into something that is noting more than a self-serving political incubator for elites. – Its demise and perversion a symptom of the cancer.
But that’s not just a feature of life in ‘the meeja’. – Digging around further I learned of tradespeople and delivery drivers sleeping in vans through the week, cleaners living in cupboards etc. Bleak ways to live your life and not just those ‘airy fairy’ creatives making a bed of nails for themselves. – It’s a ‘normal’.
This is one of the many reasons (just a tiny illustration of) why I’ve held the line that to be a Tory (again stressing that this is probably something different from a conservative) is to be something vile and inhuman… cruel, morally bankrupt and far from acceptable let alone ‘respectable’ or ‘decent’… A warped mindset that over the decades has become ever-more amoral.
Like the porn-addicted, they crave ever-increasing levels of depravity and perversity… Which is why we now see such bare-faced cripple-kicking proposals for the already inadequate and cruel benefits system. Leaving women and children – as well as desperate men – to drown? No problem. Endorsing genocide? – no surprise.
Many of those persuaded by all this are as boiled-frogs… their own lives and circumstances are now in freefall; that was, is inevitable. Yet still they cannot see who is doing the boiling, who controls the heat…
“a raging furnace of right-wing provocation, spitting out lies, fear and spite, shaping a political culture of miserliness and insularity”
There’s no point – or credibility – in calling ‘left, right’ or changing dog-whistles – all things used to split the flock (of sheeple) and have them follow Judas Goats to the same destination. There are no obvious let alone correct answers here… No, the incoming ‘ghost of Labour’ party will be little different; but none of this is anything remotely new or unexpected.
There seems to be little or no hope of the ‘Scottish administration’ bringing about any improvement either. – A clutch of ‘branch offices’ of the English parties; an SNP which is clearly rotten to the core, corrupt, dishonest and interested only in keeping as many of its carefully-chosen-few from a self-serving ‘elite’, with their noses in as many troughs as possible. …And then who or what exactly? A rhetorical question of course.
“Back in 2014 we were sold Britain as a font of progressive multiculturalism. Seems a long time ago now.”
No we weren’t… we were sold the ‘United [sic] Kingdom’ in various ways a guises. The UK is something routinely conflated with Britain; mostly by certain of the English who do like to confuse foreigners and the hard-of-thinking into believing the terms are interchangeable.
The islands of Great Britain will remain long after the so-called UK is gone… and unless someone builds the world’s biggest Stihl saw, Scotland will be a part of it. The common history will also remain. – It’s the United [sic] Kingdom (a political Union) which makes any pride in being British toxic. It’s not just the dog-whistled tune of Britannia that makes it dystopian.
– The post-UK Britain will not necessarily have to be a ‘federal’ state, but it will have to be – it’s a geographical and historical reality. One in which it is not-entirely unreasonable (not that I do personally) to take pride in.
Conflation only serves to bind that which is toxic; the union.
Thanks Matt.
Have any if you noticed what’s happening in Ireland? Civil unrest because of mass immigration, and an Irish government changing legislation to do what the EU and France have done in accepting back illegals from the UK!
Did you see the reports of the economic migrants in France using children as human shields, whilst yielding machetes? Probably not because the mainstream press ignore the unpalatable things that undermine the mad progressive ideology they support. They even try to minimise the revelations of the Cass report.
What about the Islamist march in Hamburg demanding the creation of a caliphate, complete with the imposition of Sharia?
At Least Hamza Useless has gone, along with his divisive race baiting (white speech), and his full-blown identity politics. He should have stuck to focusing on independence rather than trying to create the Neo-Marxist state so desired by the Greens.
Calling Humza Yousaf ‘race baiting’ is not just factually wrong and ridiculous its objectionable and toxic. Steve I have tolerated your view on here but this is a fair warning – you are now tipping into spreading malicious propaganda points. Have a word with yourself or you’ll be removed.
@SteveH, the Guardian (Observer too) has provided a great deal of coverage on the Cass Report, and all I’ve read is positive.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/transgender
It even covered vile threats against the author. Not that you are interested in facts or would ever admit you were wrong, I guess.
Yes but it should be said that an SNP MSP said only yesterday that the Cass report is ‘awful’ and repeated the lies about its apparent wrongness.
I agree that the press has taken it seriously, even The Guardian. I have read that paper for decades but it has over recent years been pretty woeful when it comes to the trans issue and the politicisation of anti-semitism. Its biases have been palpable and its journalistic credentials woefully undermined I assume by its editor and several of its journalists. Finally in the last 6 months or so it has begun, cautiously to change its tune in the face of incontrovertible evidence it cannot ignore (any longer – it was always there but suppressed by the likes of The Guardian who simply refused to report things either accurately or more likely, not at all). Mind you in the case of Steve Bell, he remains sacked and the several female journalists who were hounded out by the likes of Owen Jones, remain pariahs.
Unfortunately all this has had the effect of undermining my faith in the paper and God knows what it has done to those who were never sympathetic to it in the first place. Ditto the SNP and their biased and at times nonsensical obsessions, that still are being paraded by fools in their ranks.
@Niemand, I’ve noted that sea change in the Guardian’s reporting. I’ve read the paper since studying politics, and probably Jon Pilger is right about its trajectory since. The Guardian has lately been more critical of Israel, too. Again, for recent evidence-based reasons. I am appreciative of some of its initiatives like Cotton Capital and (at last) increasing coverage from neglected areas of the world, including those the British have long colonised. It has extensive environmental coverage, though still seems pretty schizophrenic on that as critics point out. Probably better turning to sources like Greenpeace’s Unearthed and Declassified UK for environmental and imperial news, and Al Jazeera for balance and criticism.
But as a laboratory and marker of an Overton boundary (AUKUS-approved), the Guardian is of considerable interest. Plus, its articles aren’t paywalled, and can be easily shared. Its editorial shifts are perhaps more significant than that of rival corporate media (until the day the BBC backs republicanism, communism and equal pay for women, of course). There may be more to the Garrick Club stories, for example, than initially meet the eye.
I think your own personal opinions are clouding your judgement on Guardian. Sonia Sodha regularly comments on trans issue from a negative viewpoint.
I appreciate you do’t like Owain Jones but he does represent how a lot of younger left leaning people think on issues.
I just don’t understand what you are saying about politicisation of antisemitism- care to explain?
I personally find their political correspondents (Martin Kettle, Rafael Behr) commenting on Scottish politics uninformed but they do have other columnists such as Rory Scothorne and Danni Gravelli. I also appreciate this may also be my personal bias.
There are other articles I don’t get but I am a 60+ straight guy and realise that there are other people (especially younger) have different perspectives and it does me no harm to open my eyes, and sometimes my mind, to these opinions as my children also do.
Comedy gold.
“What about the Islamist march in Hamburg demanding the creation of a caliphate,”
…….yes, but you missed out the bit about some of them carrying placards with recipes for cooking Christians (with or without garlic).
Come on old chap, you need to try & be a bit more accurate – & do tell us what you really think.
“nor believe that the incoming Labour party will be much different.”
I am confident that they will be different – unlike the ghastly tories – everything they do will be done with a smile & I’m confident that those that displease Sir Kid Starver & LINO will be shipped off to … Rwanda… Brit or not – think of it as outsourcing the jail industry to a sunny clime. We are entering “A State of Denmark” territory.
One thing missed by LINO/Tory alike: the Brits are not breeding – 1.6 is the current birth rate – you need circa 2.1/2.2. Without immigration – UK faces a declining (and ageing) population. Lots of old useless buggers soaking up the services being paid for by … young people.
Fine blog by the way.
Thanks Mike
When I expressed the hope that Bella would start using blockquote, I meant the standard HTML element which aids readability and accessibility, not text-as-images which cannot be read by assistive technology like screenreaders. Please adopt good practice for the sake of readers who benefit from standard Web markup practice.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/blockquote
Fair shout SD. Mea Culpa.
Mike Small writes of ‘fascism’, ‘the moral abyss’ and the ‘cancer of the far-right’. Yet, at the heart of his article is the fact that people – very often people of colour – are risking their life and paying large sums of money to get out of the EU and get into the UK, in particular, to get to England. Very few of them want to come to Scotland.
Most ordinary people recognize this paradox; that the hell-hole described by Mike Small and others is an extremely attractive place to live and work.
Politicians whose job requires them to talk to people also recognize this. The left has given up on electoral politics and, in consequence, has lost touch with ordinary people. In Scotland, it is eight years since a party of the left – R I S E – made a serious attempt to win votes. With each passing year, it becomes more difficult to re-establish a connection.
‘RISE’ – its 2024 mate. Do better.
Mike Small tells me to ‘do better’ on the basis of my comment about R I S E in 2016. Yet in his own article he quotes John Harris on the 2010 General Election and the same journalist quoting a book published 49 years ago.
I was just surprised that you thought RISE was still somehow relevant.
Ah yes, RISE. Whatever became of them ?
“Less shit than a war-zone where you might be tortured”
It’s a great strap-line. We really should stop criticising our own country.
This article spells out a lot of uncomfortable truths in a most eloquent manner.
Mike – thanks again – I think you and we are all gasping for humane air in an increasing unbreathable, befoulded atmosphere of nastiness. The problem is just so deep, it’s the failure of our whole political and economic system in the face of its own internal contradiction, its damage to our human societies around the world and its damage to the very planet that sustains us. I remain unconvinced that we haven’t dug such a big entropic hole for humanity that we’ll be able to climb out of it. These political turmoils are but the outward manifestation of this deeper problem, just as there are a number of diagnostic skin eruptions and rashes that are a first sign of a serious underlying malignancy.