When the Roll of Honour of Great British Class Warriors is finally compiled, it’s fair to say Diane Abbott’s name is unlikely to be among their ranks. Having convicted Tory crim, Jonathan Aitken, as your nipper’s Godfather might be one reason. Another might be that, despite her longstanding opposition to private education, she chose to send said nipper to the elite fee-paying City of London School instead.
Similarly, there might be sound reasons to dislike the woman personally. Certainly, a somewhat robust constitution is a requirement if one wishes to watch her lolling around on Andrew Neil’s sofa, pawing and gushing at Michael Portillo of a Sunday morning.
Or, perhaps, despite the strident proletarian rhetoric of the younger Abbott, her decision not to declare the seventeen grand earnings she pocketed from the BBC might suggest a certain hypocrisy and just another grubby politico on the make.
But let’s not flinch from the unpalatable truth, either; for the 1922 Committee troglodytes and Daily Mail readers everywhere; her two greatest sins are simply those of being black and being female. And, I’m sure; there are many other faults the woman has, but that of being racist? Bollocks, frankly.
The mock outrage of those who responded to her ‘divide and rule’ tweet has been nauseating but also instructive. In the context of 19th century colonialism, her observation was both true and entirely unremarkable. I’d go further; it’s as true today as it was then. One has only to look at the hysterical denunciations of immigrants, the continuing attempts of the establishment and its poodle media to shift the blame for their greed and failure onto foreigners to see that the most disadvantaged and voiceless are still being sold as the cause of your poverty, your deprivation and your unemployment.
If that isn’t the very definition of divide and rule, I don’t know what is.
Apart from anything else, the whole idea of some equality-driven morality on the subject of race is laughable. Of course black people can be, and are sometimes, I’m sure, guilty of racism and yes, it’s not on but while there might be few excuses for it, there are often depressingly valid reasons.
When black people are twenty six times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by the police, a certain resentment is, one might think, understandable. When even a conservative white establishment describes its own capital city’s police force as ‘institutionally racist’ and cites that very factor as the reason the vicious murderers of an innocent black youth continued to roam around with impunity, for eighteen years, before justice was done, well, it’s not hard to see why the ‘black community’, ahem, might be a little pissed off, you know?
Let’s not even bother looking at the reasons for the proportion of blacks in jail, out of work or who have suffered from race-related violence in comparison to their white counterparts. The reasons are obvious and the point is clear.
The backlash and resentment of the oppressed cannot be judged by the same criteria as the violence, racism and discrimination of the oppressor establishment. It’s just ridiculous. Now before all you closet racists howl in pretend fury and start bleating about one rule for us and one rule for ‘them’, let’s just honest here; the people most ‘offended’ by Abbott’s remarks firstly weren’t offended at all. They were actually delighted because it provided them, they thought, with some sort of twisted justification for their own already pre-existing racism.
They welcomed the opportunity to rail against ‘political correctness’, to complain that things have gone too far in one direction and that there should now be an immediate return to the days before liberal meddlers and their political correctness ruined society, opened the flood gates and made it so as a decent white man can’t even speak his mind in his own country any more.
You know; a return to the gloried age when sooties didn’t have chips on their shoulders and could take a joke. When the Black and White Minstrel Show and Jim Davidson were just wholesome family entertainment and hotels brazenly displayed signs proclaiming, ‘No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish’.
Because let’s face it, while political correctness, in all walks of life, might drive the most unhinged a little bit mad from time to time, is it really that bad and as prevalent as the privileged white majority would have us believe? Frankly, it isn’t. It barely exists at all and when it does it hardly touches anyone in any meaningful way. Apart, of course, from the proliferation of urban myths, peddled by racists to do, guess what? Set us one against another. It’s a classic, time-honoured tactic of ruling elites everywhere and we could call it, oh, I don’t know, divide and rule, maybe?
Yeah. While we’re busy attacking Abbott and indulging in middle England-style self-righteous indignation, let’s not forget black kids are still being shot and stabbed simply for being black.
The Tory-controlled media just love it and while we’re attacking each other, on the basis of skin colour, they quietly get on with the business of robbing us all blind.
It was always thus and it’s long overdue the racist idiots who unthinkingly swallow this noxious filth saw beyond the tactic and recognised that the real enemy is the class enemy and not the one with a darker skin.
Riots, unemployment, violence and poverty coming, yet again, to a town near you soon. For once, don’t let the establishment win. Black and white unite and fight and let’s make ‘em stuff their austerity measures where the sun don’t shine. Measures, it’s worth reminding, that are rolled out to make the poorest and most disadvantaged pay for the greed of the privileged and yes, white establishment.
For once, Diane Abbott was spot on. What a shame she didn’t have the spine to stick to her guns and tell her critics to piss off.