What Ed Said: 1

Tracking the barely-noted progressive arguments put forward by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.

In my first installment of “What Ed Said” in recent days – and in a week where Labour repositioned themselves on public sector pay freezes – we find Ed standing up for working people and defending the NHS…

Miliband told his Welsh conference delegates that he’d like to introduce bankers to a young girl he met a few miles from the City of London who couldn’t find employment apart from an offer to work in a fish-and-chip shop for less than minimum wage, calling for a “responsible capitalism” where a Labour government would insist on companies taking on apprentices whenever they received a state contract, and putting ordinary workers on remuneration committees: “If you can’t look ordinary workers in the eye and justify your salary and bonus,” he said, “you shouldn’t be getting the salary or bonus.” (BBC) He also declared his desire to “tax the bankers’ bonuses, and use that money to create real jobs for young people.” (Telegraph)

Based on findings from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Miliband cited that “the average worker will be earning the same in three years’ time as they were ten years ago, but the weekly shop costs more, it costs a lot more to keep the house warm and we have a government that doesn’t believe that its job is to stand up for ordinary people against powerful vested interests.” (The Guardian) Criticising “unfair” overdraft charges, he went on to add that those who could least afford it were being made to pay the most for energy and travel while companies were “laughing all the way to the bank”. (BBC)

Miliband also pointed out how Prime Minister David Cameron was deliberately shutting out the medical profession itself as the Conservative-led government held a summit to supposedly deliberate the way forward on reforms to the NHS that Dr Kailash Chand described at a recent Labour Party meeting as privatisation via the back-door. As the GMB, SOR, RCM, CSP, RCGP, Unite, British Medical Association, and the Royal College of Nursing all oppose the Health and Social Care Bill, Miliband stated, “You don’t get progress on the NHS by shutting the door of Downing Street on doctors, nurses and patients’ groups. It’s not the actions of a Prime Minister to exclude from an NHS meeting the people who are the experts on the health service. The Prime Minister should listen to these experts and drop the bill.” (Independent)

Having ran a campaign at the last general election driven by a vow to “cut the deficit, not the NHS,” Cameron went on to freeze much of the government’s spending on the NHS (essentially a devastating cut when taking into account inflation) and now introduces a bill threatening its existence as we know it. Miliband said Cameron broke “all these promises and more… it is bad for our NHS and bad for politics…Before he became prime minister, David Cameron concealed his plans for creeping privatisation of our National Health Service, so people didn’t get a vote on these plans at the last election. But I give you my word that if he goes ahead, they will be a defining issue at the next.” (BBC)

Of course, you may have missed much of these statements, because The Daily Mail were busy highlighting a hospital visit where a toddler happened to start crying while being held by Ed, while the Telegraph showed Lord Prescott was scrutinising what was spent during Miliband’s time at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

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Whitney, Witney, and Maggie

News of Whitney Houston’s death is sad – moreso, perhaps, because it wasn’t a shock. The singer had reportedly abused drugs for several years as her career went into freefall following her role in The Bodyguard movie, for which she famously covered Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”

But the corporate mainstream media, as is often the case, offers a perverse perspective on such things.

I’ve spoken before about the manufactured human life exchange rate that the press purvey. Certainly, a single celebrity’s passing has greater impact than the 16,000 children who die each day from hunger. Like the consumption of meat in its grossly wasted way is taken for granted, so is this; what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve. In their failure to cover these preventable deaths with equal or greater impact, the media is complicit in them.

While thousands of people in disadvantaged communities also die of drug abuse, Whitney Houston was someone who gained opportunities to wealth and, through that, potential rehabilitation. But celebrities, maybe now more than ever, are given media attention based on who someone is, rather than what someone did. If life is the sum of our actions, then recent deaths of high-profile figures like Harold Pinter, Howard Zinn, or even actor Pete Postlethwaite – all of whom devoted time to social justice – should be seen as terrible losses to society.

Following 1980s Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that “there’s no such thing as society,” sure enough, British culture became focused on the individual, measured by short-term gains: The Weakest Link, X-Factor, Pop Idol and especially Big Brother were driven by the quest of the individual to succeed at all costs over their peers or housemates, ratting them out, voting them out, and surviving as the fittest; an advertisement for the Social Darwinism ideology.

Of course, Thatcher’s policies absolutely devastated communities and destroyed lives. She called on all citizens to shake off those responsibilities that citizenship carries with it, and only worry about yourself, or, at best, your grandparents – not other grandparents – being warm; your children – not other children – attending a decent school; your world – not the wider world – being bright.

Even though such a model is unsustainable and is only short-term, it doesn’t matter. As harsh as it was, the ethos of “no society” was more honest than current Prime Minister David Cameron’s “big society” which, incredibly, still means the same thing: “You’re on your own.” In other words, if you’re poor, work for free, but if you have money, start your own social enterprise that the poor can’t, and have those poor work for you for free; anything – anything at all – as long as the state doesn’t reflect collective responsibility funded by taxing the obscenely rich. It’s as individualistic as it ever was.

As a result of this regression to Victorian-style Social Darwinism, council houses were sold, and unionised industries were shut-down – for no other reason than daring to be unionised. Take, for example, the former coal mining town of Worksop, in north Nottinghamshire, once home to communities of neighbours who worked together and depended on each other while providing fuel for their houses literally built by the colliery, today home to over a thousand drug addicts, with estimates of at least 80% of crime being drug-related, heroin a particular problem for the people who lost hope when they lost their main industry overnight thanks to Thatcher. On top of the domestic violence that erupted in these areas as people cracked and broke down, many people drugged themselves to early graves. But their deaths aren’t sexy enough to make the news.

Meanwhile, Thatcher herself is subjected to the royal treatment she prepared us for: judging an individual on an individual basis – the recent film The Iron Lady looking at who she was, rather than what she did. There’s no attention paid to the thousands of people she condemned so that some of her friends could make a few lousy million, no highlighting of her warm relationship with ruthless Chilean dictator General Pinochet, who had people kidnapped, tortured, or murdered for daring to disagree with his perspective. No, she’s just a lovely old woman with dementia framed by camera, direction, and script. And so, we are told not to care about the other old people with problems, just this one; don’t care about what she inflicted on society, just care what was inflicted on her. It’s perfect: Thatcher’s portrayal a result of her own ideology.

And what of the ideology? Is it really the same now as it was then, stripping away citizenship, comradeship and camaraderie?

No, it’s worse.

David Cameron agreed with New Labour’s levels of government spending until, in 2008, his aides saw the economic crisis as the perfect excuse to sell off the state, reduce taxes for the rich, and slap a price tag on everything – if you could afford services, great; if you couldn’t, tough shit.

And so, the cuts cut deep, again in the communities he and his ilk so detest – what’s left of them. The couple dozen or so millionaires in the government cabinet smirk, saying “we’re all in this together,” and no doubt duck and dive away in their sharp suits and fancy cars for a good belly-laugh as those at the bottom yet again lose opportunities, financial safety nets, youth centres, and libraries. But not in Cameron’s constituency of Witney: no, the Tories saved that library. That one’s special.

Today’s an ideal day to remember those words first heard in 1986, at the peak of Reaganomics and Thatcherite individualism:

The greatest love of all is happening to me. I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself – it is the greatest love of all.

- Whitney Houston

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What Ed Said

In a recent entry, I looked at how British leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband, has been marginalised by the mainstream media while some of those around him have undermined his leadership of the Labour Party for their own interests.

To offer further evidence for my argument, I’m going to update this blog regularly with reports of what Ed’s said, and how much of it was given press attention through airtime or column inches.

In the United States, Barack Obama has operated in a structure where the military industrial complex and other lobbying arms have great power, and in what is essentially a two party system – “only one more choice than they had in the Soviet Union,” as Jesse Ventura said. Yet despite this framework, Obama’s often been attacked by those on the progressive side of the political spectrum, failing to do enough on healthcare, for example, even though he was blocked by Republicans.

In opposing a coalition comprised of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats – the only other two major parties – Ed Miliband has been the best bet in the British system for any hope of relief from a right-wing ideological agenda. And yet, as I argued, while the press sought to damage him, party members expressed disappointment in him, and, in turn, the media has further marginalised him – without staunch backing of his base, Ed’s language has slowly shifted to less radical terms.

Nonetheless, what’s also come from this is a pattern where those shaking his foundations are further playing to the tune of the media because much of what he says that is radically different from the coalition simply isn’t reported.

This is why, for the duration of Miliband’s quest for Downing Street, I will be posting a regular entry here listing what people might have missed in the media: What Ed Said.

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The Church and Occupy Sheffield

I’ve written before about the actions to “Occupy Wall Street” and its movement that’s grown around the world. Today, I made my first visit to the Occupy Sheffield camp right out in front of the city’s Cathedral.

As is no secret and stated elsewhere on my website, I’m very proud of my city of Sheffield, and it’s been pointed out to me many times that it’s become a significant part of my work, my life; my identity.

Sheffield’s unshakeable progressive position in the face of 1980s adversity, spawning of Pulp and their working class anthem “Common People,” and its tenacious attempts to reinvent itself as a city of technology and culture boosted by a population of fifty thousand students, many of whom remain in the area after graduating, reinforces its status as “The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire” in the present day climate of Friedman economics-induced financial crisis and undemocratic draconian coalition cuts.

During the recent riots, upheaval and disruption swept the country from London to Bristol to Birmingham to Nottingham. But not the “People’s Republic.”

Why?

Was it because this was a city rooted in industrial heritage – of community cohesion and camaraderie? If that were the case, then how do you explain progressive northern cities like Liverpool and Manchester playing host to rioting and violence as well?

No, there’s something special about Sheffield. But let’s not get carried away.

Sheffield, too, has its unscrupulous elites operating in its city streets and office buildings and ivory towers. Without meaning to sound like something from a comic book or graphic novel, evil lurks here, too. So after hearing the news of the Occupy Sheffield camp’s presence in the aftermath of the riots, it was kind of dumb of me to ask my partner Jane Watkinson, “Why here?”

Naturally, although Sheffield does not suffer from the racial tensions, prejudices, and narrow-mindedness of many other cities (heck, we churned out the Human League for goodness sakes, so that’s proof we’re open-minded), and the Tories here have been an endangered species since Irvine Patnick’s presence in the 80′s, we still have our fair share of greedy businessmen, bankers, and embarrassing politicians.

So when I saw Billy Bragg live at the Leadmill on my birthday a couple of months ago, he talked about having visited the Occupy Sheffield camp earlier that day, and with people from Rotherham and other nearby towns even traveling over to be a part of it, I made it a point to promise to finally pay a visit to it at some point myself. It didn’t matter how busy I’d been; there was no excuse to fail to visit the camp in my own city.

And so today, Jane and I swung by, and we talked with a nice young man there named Scott, who was wearing a Fawkesian mask pulled back so we could see his face and have a little chat. I was familiar with the Cathedral as an organisation: I knew someone who was involved in their marketing, and my social enterprise, SilenceBreakers, had held a meeting there in the early weeks of its formation because they seemed to be particularly supportive of progressive causes.

I perhaps wrongly assumed, then – in my ignorance – that the Cathedral would be backing the Occupy Sheffield camp and the movement as a whole of which it is a part: opposing avarice, injustice and inequality. Instead, Scott told me that the Dean wanted them gone.

When they offered to move further away from the entrance of the cathedral, Scott told me, the Dean refused to accept the compromise. When they considered moving away completely if he gave them ten days, he again rejected any such diplomacy. He wanted them gone, right away, on principle. But what principles, then, is he standing for?

After parting with an irreverent comparison to the underhandedness of Bishop Lilliman in the graphic novel V For Vendetta, and sharing praise for the book’s author Alan Moore, I went away to learn a bit more about this Dean.

Cambridge-educated, Priest Bradley actually appeared to initially welcome the Occupy Sheffield camp in various media reports, but as time went by expressed greater concern for the good work of the Cathedral being put at risk by the camp. How?

Occupy Sheffield is, as I’ve said, one of the many movements raising awareness of the killing being made by elite interests while the rest of us pay for the financial crisis through slashed services, rising unemployment, and benefit cuts. It encourages diplomatic discussion and debate on alternative ways forward, and welcomes people from all backgrounds. But the Dean’s excuse for mounting increasing pressure and legal action on the camp? It was supposedly stopping the Cathedral from helping vulnerable people.

Of course, the Dean’s talking about helping people through the Cathedral’s Archer Project, which is an excellent endeavour, but why should it end there?

The Cathedral is more than just a brand, more than a business, and needs to compromise. Granted, the campers will inevitably affect the day-to-day efficiency of the good that the Cathedral does in many ways if they become too dependent not just on the area but on the venue itself for resources.

But by harnessing the altruism of its congregation perhaps the Cathedral’s “brand” would be improved. Using legal action and, potentially, brute force to remove the campers who are expressing the same sentiments that the Cathedral preaches, would be a much better outcome for everyone.

Despite some idiotic remarks to come from the church, there are many religious representatives that wholeheartedly support this movement. So which side is the Dean on, we may ask? Is he standing for good Christian values, or the interests of the elite he rubs shoulders with? These are the kinds of questions being posed by people. Here’s an excellent opportunity for him to broker a deal and score the most effective kind of public relations victory.

Let’s hope clearer heads prevail. The Occupy movement isn’t a movement at all unless it engages with the public and raises awareness. That means it needs sympathetic parties to help it.

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How the Left Helped the Media Marginalise Miliband

In my first book I included a prediction that New Labour was an unsustainable election-winning machine that would eventually break down, fixed only by the progressive values that the party was founded upon. That’s what happened.

When Ed Miliband became a candidate for leader of the Labour Party, he was seen as the best hope for a realistic opportunity to take the party back on its progressive course. When he became leader via a total of votes cast by MPs, members, and union members, many of us celebrated. His statesmanlike yet Blairite brother was defeated, and it was the demise of New Labour; time to start over.

As I’ve discussed at length several times here, Ed faced an immediate backlash from:

• The right-wing media: The Guardian backed the Liberal Democrats at the general election, and despite that party forming a coalition with the Conservatives and becoming their apologists, the broadsheet continued to undermine Ed Miliband, as did John Rentoul over at The Independent. But as if that wasn’t enough, naturally the press of Rupert Murdoch and his ilk were pulling out all the stops, too. Christening Miliband “Red Ed,” the right-wing rags focused on the large amount of votes from unions that contributed to his leadership win. All these votes were trivialised as not, say, the will of membership card-carrying workers, but their bosses, cleverly called “union barons.” Unite’s head representative – pardon me, union baron Len McLuskey, had even forged links with a “militant” union boss abroad – Canadian Leo Gerard, who came from the nickel mines of Sudbury, Ontario and has worked to globalise workers’ unions to match up with the globalised nature of the corporations they work for…a scary “militant” if I ever heard of one.
• The BBC: Despite being responsible for one of the greatest media manipulations in British media history when it edited footage of the Battle of Orgreave during the miners’ strike to falsely portray the picketers, and not the police, as instigators of the violence, the BBC’s old school small-C conservatism wasn’t enough to keep at bay constant claims by the right-wing media (as in, all the rest) that they were too “left-leaning” (which, as many media groups and experts will tell you, is a fabrication). So, they’ve only aided and abetted their more unashamed right-wing counterparts in framing the Credit Crunch™ as something related largely to Labour rather than Thatcherite financial deregulation, and presenting the cuts as part of TINA* instead of an ideological quest to sell off everything no matter the cost (as per Tory policy since Thatcher).
• The Blairites: Furious that their boy David Miliband had been pipped at the post in the last moments of the race to be leader, Ed was soon surrounded by those from the inner circle who clung to New Labour’s broken legacy and all the big business opportunities it opened up for them as individuals post-retirement. Lord Sainsbury even pulled his party donations because of Ed’s leadership. Their feeding of the negative news stories about him via their think tanks was only part of the action taken to stop Ed from listening to mass majority of progressives who comprise the grassroots base of the political party. To assuage their fears right away, he made Alan Johnson, not Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, despite the fact everyone knew two Eds was better than one. However, Balls got the post later on anyway, and the Blairites weren’t happy.

So, straight from the start, Ed Miliband had it made clear to him that trying to pry himself and his base away from the clutches of New Labour ideology that sought to support much of Thatcher’s capitalist quests wouldn’t be easy: he was being bullied into backing off from the stuff that would’ve made his dad proud. But hey, he still had his party members and all the grassroots activists to stick by him, right?

Wrong.

They crucified him.

Party members complained about his presentation in public. Bloggers ranted that he wasn’t socialist enough. Citizens in cities across the country blamed him for “allowing” Labour councils to slash services despite their budgets being cut by the national coalition government on high. In spite of the fact he even brazenly spoke at the March 26th “March for the Alternative” organised by major unions and even being cunningly juxtaposed by Murdoch’s Sky speaking over footage of rioting protesters, Ed got nothing much from the lefties besides a bashing. It was incredible. Did they, deep down, long for New Labour? Had they long since fallen in love with their oppressors?

As the months went by, Ed’s language softened. He took baby-steps away from anything that could be spun as reinforcing his “Red Ed” image as all the knives came out from inside his party and other parties, while the press slaughtered him. Few rallied to his side to stand up for him, making it easier for these forces to pile on the pressure to have him change his position further.

The one hope Labour had in a leader considered by undecided voters to be the best bet – by proxy – of abandoning New Labour was, incredibly, actually lacking in support from the reds. With each passing month of his leadership, the armchair experts spent more and more energy criticising Ed Miliband than I’d seen them use even to criticise his New Labour predecessors. In turn, this vulnerability was capitalised on by the media. He was defenceless. He remains defenceless today.

If Ed Miliband actually loses the leadership before 2015, what would that do to Labour? Well, apart from the party resembling the mess that was the Tory Party from 1997 to 2005 and starting a series of upheavals that could last several elections, it would likely leave its leadership position immediately open to a more Blairite politician.

Sure, we all know that no matter what they tell the press, Labour would never wreak upon Britain the kind of devastation done by the Tories at the moment, pay freezes and spending cuts or no – because they answer to a broad base of left-wing unions and community members who forced even the odious Tony Blair to pass some progressive policies. But isn’t it better to stick by a leader who comes from a more progressive position on a personal basis, rather than one doing things for people under duress? Ed Miliband is, on paper, arguably the best Labour leader the party’s had since 1994 at the latest. The Labour party needs a strong leader, but any leader is only as strong as his followers entrust and empower him to be.

So far, too many of Labour’s followers have guided their party right into the right-wing media’s hands. If they want to win the next election at all, they’d better rally round their leader, and they’d better do it fast – activists, bloggers; all of them. While they’re wanting him to stay progressive, in this system he needs all the help he can get.

*TINA: There Is No Alternative

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Gayle O’Donovan

I’ve been very fortunate in my life so far, in that I’ve barely known anyone who’s died. There were a few distant relatives, and the odd acquaintance here and there, but never anyone I had spent any quality time with on a one-to-one basis.

That changed this weekend, when I learned of Gayle O’Donovan’s death from my partner who is a member of the Green Party, of which Gayle’s been an activist for several years.

As many of you will know, I’m not in the Green Party. I met Gayle through a group comprised of a broad spectrum of political backgrounds when, post-economic crash, thousands of us protested the G20 Summit on April 1st, 2009, and – whilst holding a peaceful vigil for Ian Tomlinson, who’d died after being attacked by a police officer – found ourselves in a “kettle.” The catch was, they’d free us from the kettle if we agreed to be subjected to a stop-and-search on the way out.

After hundreds took their chance at freedom, twenty of us remained in a sit-down demonstration against this police approach, as we felt we were part of a peaceful vigil and did not deserve to be a) removed, and b) searched. Eventually, after being subjected to intimidation tactics by riot cops with barking dogs, the police realised they had other protesters to attend to elsewhere, and left us alone. We won. Our very own G20 embraced, bonded, and went for celebratory drinks later.

I stayed in touch with many people from that day, several of whom are on my Facebook and make me smile whenever I see their faces and updates, but Gayle O’Donovan was someone I really connected with. She met me for drinks, she phoned me, she chatted with me on messenger on many a late night, she even welcomed me into her home, and was always fun, caring, and attentive. She was someone who always seemed to put herself last, who fought tirelessly for social justice. There weren’t many people I decided to acknowledge in my first book, but she was one of them. She was the real deal.

I remember Gayle telling me all about her hometown of Limerick in Ireland, and after informing me that it was nicknamed “Stab City,” this was something I used in order to gain cultural capital with my other Irish friends! Oh yes.

Sadly, I hadn’t had quite so much contact with Gayle in recent months, and she’d moved away from Northern England to battle away in the Green city of Norwich, but just the day before her death I remember clicking on the “Like” option on one of her posts on Facebook. Facebook: so often we rely on it to maintain contact with people, and yet it then serves to replace real contact, doesn’t it? I wish I could’ve spoken to her.

I can’t quite comprehend this news; it makes no sense to me. For all that goes on in this world, it seems so unfair that it would now lose someone like Gayle O’Donovan.

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Arbiters of Taste: The Iron Lady and the UK Film Council

There is no such thing as society.

- Margaret Thatcher

Six years ago I went to see The Constant Gardener at the Showroom here in Sheffield, then the largest independent cinema outside of the country’s capital. Directed by Fernando Meirelles and starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz and the late great Pete Postlethwaite, it was an incredibly brave story of governmental and corporate corruption, exploitation of Africa and its people, and integrity and love. The film was based on the book by John le Carré, who claimed that, “by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.” In short, the project raked some muck, and raised some questions.

A year later, I watched an excellent film that challenged my own views, again at the Showroom: The Wind That Shakes the Barley, starring Cillian Murphy and directed by Ken Loach, who I had the chance to meet at the Showroom just a few years earlier. It was an intelligent drama made with Ken’s courage to carefully look at the events that led to the creation of the IRA, a story seldom told. Yet again, film did what art is supposed to do, by provoking thought.

A couple of years on, I immensely enjoyed In The Loop, Armando Ianucci’s political satire on the illegal invasion of Iraq. I hadn’t seen Ianucci’s successful series The Thick of It at the time, and it was this film that made me aware of the brilliance of both his work and the actors he utilises to offer a humorous insight into the dark and twisted minefield of British politics. It was the dark humour British productions were once known for.

And just over a year ago, I saw Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth as King George VI. This film, for me, exhibited the inhumane nature of a system of monarchy in forcing people into positions they didn’t seek, and thus subsequently struggle with. The movie – having cost £8 million but gained a box office revenue of £250 million – won no less than four Oscars, reported on as a massive triumph for British film.

The Constant Gardener, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, In The Loop, The King’s Speech: these films – along with such productions as This is England and Gosford Park – were all funded by the UK Film Council.

The UK Film Council was formed by the Labour government in the year 2000 to attempt to stop the haemorrhage of British film creativity. At the time, the heyday of Pinewood Studios epics and Ealing Studios comedies was as passed as the late British filmmaking icon David Lean himself. In turn, Ken Loach and others like him received more homegrown opportunities to create thought-provoking pictures. David Puttnam – who had himself produced such major movies as Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire, and Bugsy Malone – called the UK Film Council “a layer of strategic glue that’s helped bind the many parts of our disparate industry together.” The films usually generated far more in revenue than they cost to produce, raised questions, and shed light on many issues. The UK Film Council was a cultural and financial success.

On July 26th, 2010, mere weeks after taking power, the Conservative-LibDem coalition abolished it.

Now, sure, David Puttnam is now a Labour Lord, and progressive actors like Pete Postlethwaite, Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Timothy Spall, Ian Holm and even American Clint Eastwood campaigned against the closure of the UK Film Council while pompous posh right-wingers like Julian Fellowes (himself a Conservative) and Michael Winner – who gave us such ingenious life-changing gems as the privately-financed Death Wish – publicly supported the decision. So, sure enough, it looked like Labour’s baby was becoming a party political issue. But why?

It’s simple. Progressives love to challenge the status quo; their opponents conserve it – that’s why they’re called Conservatives. The closure of the UK Film Council was ideological, just like all cuts made by the Tories. This is further evidenced by the fact that the Council cost around £3 million a year to run, yet tearing it down cost nearly four times that amount.

What does the British film industry have left now, under the Tories? Enter The Iron Lady.

The Iron Lady, if you hadn’t guessed, is a supposedly moving tale of 1980s Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s struggle with success and, later, dementia. None less than the great Meryl Streep portrays her today as the Tories hold power in Britain. Yes, in 2012, buses with fares rising about as fast as unemployment roll along roads across the country bearing the image of Streep as Thatcher to promote the movie; no expense spared by the likes of Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox, who bankrolled its distribution.

Thatcher, of course, is one of the most despised leaders in British history, being the Social Darwinist who ruthlessly decimated Northern England’s industries because they dared to be unionised, condemned millions of people to years of psychological and economic depression as a result, deregulated the media for Rupert Murdoch to swallow up, deregulated the financial sector for the bankers to run amok and eventually cause the crisis of the last several years, and befriended Chile’s dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who tortured and murdered thousands. She did all this while Labour were sheepishly laying as low as the voter turnouts and the rest were waving Union Jacks in British nationalism thanks to her lovely little war in the Falklands that she cleverly manipulated by – according to her own biographer in “Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady” – almost inviting Argentina to invade the islands, later costing 255 British soldiers their lives.

Unsurprisingly, then, there have been protests at cinemas screening The Iron Lady. We have to remember that people are still suffering to this day as a result of Thatcher’s actions. Those lives she destroyed, go on. Sure, there was Downfall, Germany’s first major movie about Adolf Hitler and his last days in the bunker. But though it (rightly) humanised him, it stopped short of being a warm portrayal of the Fuhrer. Pinochet’s many victims would not have been happy with a film celebrating his successes and his life, either; it would have been considered in bad taste. So it’s not that easy to overstate the offence caused to so many good people in Britain upon the release of The Iron Lady.

Soon, The Iron Lady will be dead. Thatcher, who like no other championed the ethos of putting a price-tag on everything for private corporate interests, will have her funeral paid for not by those companies, but by the state itself. That is the reason people will no doubt protest at her funeral as well. However, you can bet that Murdoch will summon all his media gods and the power of the dark arts to portray the picketers as sick people acting in poor taste. Despite that, the real bad taste is The Iron Lady itself, with protesters of Thatcher to gain publicity only when those in power get to be the arbiters of taste through their media machinations.

With the abolition of the UK Film Council – and with it films like The Constant Gardener, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, In The Loop and The King’s Speech – and the rise of The Iron Lady, the arbiters of taste have made their agenda clear yet again: the individual is more important than the many, who will be condemned by the system and its media whenever they protest.

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One for the Status Quo

Written for La Bouche

I’ve frequently argued that entertainment media needs to be less violent, whilst news media ought to be more violent. The reason? Too often, action genres desensitise us to the effects of violence, and this is too often complemented by the absence of graphic reality in the news.

Take Iraq, for example: most viewers merely saw a veritable fireworks display in the Baghdad skies at the start of the illegal invasion by the Coalition of the Killing Willing. The United States, in particular – after the real downer that was the imagery of flag-draped coffins coming back from Vietnam – learnt its lesson in marginalising media coverage of war. Gradually, reporters were kept at bay and into press pools, for their safety, we were told.

Yet when a Reuters media crew were turned into a press pool of blood in an Iraqi hotel on April 8^th of 2003 – apparently accidentally killed by Western forces – the response (from retired Marine Lt Gen Bernard E. Trainor) was, “There’s nothing sacrosanct about a hotel with a bunch of journalists in it.”

It’s important that we see the effects of war, so that we can comprehend its horror, and only allow it to commence when all diplomatic avenues have been exhausted. Tony Benn once suggested that all war represents a failure in diplomacy. It should never be taken lightly.

Yet still, war is covered by much mainstream media as just a regular occurrence that’s to be almost accepted. It isn’t a horrific outrage, or a scandal in itself; it’s depicted as an unavoidable battle between the good guys and bad guys in black-and-white perspectives but in living colour and high definition (so the fireworks look as good as the male newsreader with plastic greying hair alongside his female counterpart with youth on her side).

But for the Libyan unrest, much of the corporate news media decided to depart from their usual editorial approach.

Let us for a moment set aside the history behind the conflict. Let’s forget that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi vowed his own parents wouldn’t receive a home until everyone else did, and created a socialist Islamic state with free universal electricity, newlywed support, 0% interest loans from state-owned banks, free farmland, greatly improved literacy rates, overseas education aid, strong welfare support. Let’s not remember how the West felt greatly threatened by these, and likewise, Gaddafi similar to so many others like him, became increasingly erratic, dictatorial, and aggressive as the world squared up to him. Let’s not recall how both Tony Blair and David Cameron spent periods of time assisting Gaddafi’s ability to terrorise, no matter how terrible he could be, provided he was an ally.

With such facts aside, we can look at what happened when Libya was torn apart and the usual suspects moved in from the global community (in particular the U.S. and UK, with France on board this time). It followed the modus operandi used against Osama Bin Laden: the assumption that while certain people are terrorists flouting international law, we have some sort of God-given right to then reject such regulations ourselves in the pursuit of them.

Gaddafi was murdered. He didn’t face arrest, trial, or conviction for any crimes committed, just as Bin Laden didn’t, either. Perhaps Saddam Hussein’s much-censored diatribe in the kangaroo court he was subjected to was another lesson learnt of Vietnam casket proportions: even if you’re going to wipe them off the face of the earth anyway, for goodness sakes don’t allow them to embarrass us over our aiding and abetting them when it suited us.

You may have seen Gaddafi’s murder. Yes, in this case, it was just fine to show graphic images of “war.” After being located and pursued by US, UK, and French forces, Gaddafi cowered in a tunnel, clearly surrendering, when he was dragged from it, beaten, pulled behind a vehicle, and then shot dead; his carcass dragged through the dirt roads.

Britain’s Sun newspaper, owned by the odious Mr Murdoch, declared, in all its thick, thuggish nationalism, “That’s for Lockerbie!” Yes, our consciences were apparently clear; he was dead; no discussion, debate, or drawn-out sentences or even analyses were to go on. The bad guy was gone, and we could be self-righteous even in aiding and abetting a horror we demonised him for. What’s most disturbing is that our consciences could be clear at all after witnessing – and, apparently, enjoying – the sight of any human being subjected to those final minutes.

It doesn’t matter that our government has funded, supported, and perpetuated “Lockerbies” all around the world for scores of years, and continues to do so. Murdoch’s national newspaper pushed the buttons, dispensed with shades of grey, and instead remained black and white, and read all over. That’s for Lockerbie? No. It’s one more for the status quo.

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Splatter Goes My Heart

“Viewers may find the following images disturbing.”

It’s strange how we’ve often protected people from the horrors of reality, whilst peddling graphic fictional films to the public.

On TV in 2003, we saw the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation who hadn’t threatened us, but all the majority of news media showed us was a distant fireworks display above Baghdad, Iraq. The United States were so determined to conceal the flag-draped coffins from view after learning from the public relations disaster that was the Vietnam war thirty years earlier that they created press pools to tell the media exactly what was happening, in The Truth According to the Department of Offense Defense.

One million innocent civilians died as a result of that invasion. Protests continued, but whilst they battered the political credibility of Tony Blair and George W. Bush – with the former resigning and the latter suffering the lowest popularity ratings of any President since Harry Truman – they weren’t enough to outright stop the onslaught. The corporate mainstream media succeeded in predominantly covering much of the military assault as a legitimate conflict, refraining from conveying the impact of a million dead and thousands wounded, amputated, or scarred for life, both physically and mentally. That’s horror. Horror we didn’t see.

I’ve often said, news media needs to be more violent; entertainment media needs to be less violent. On this All-Hallows-Eve, I felt it appropriate to explain why, and to look at the concept of media horror in that context, drawing on something I’ve been meaning to refer for some time.

Not long ago, I was interviewed on the subject of horror films by film and video graduate Claire Watkinson as part of her research into the genre. I was asked to discuss the impact of “splatter” movies as a relatively recent phenomenon and how these have taken traditional horror to the next level.

Gone are the days of Max Schreck’s Nosferatu, or even Bela Lugosi’s Dracula; the suspense of their films or even those of genius Alfred Hitchcock are a fading philosophy. It’s now a culture of instant gratification, where filmmakers are offering chills, thrills and spills, spilling of blood, slashing of skin, splattering of guts, and blown-out brains as frequently as possible, each time gorier than the last.

The genre is darkly comedic in its absurd, throwaway, over-the-top approach, sometimes sort of satirical, but most often not. When they are not making a satirical statement, the dark humour is extremely manipulative in its desensitisation of violence, particularly towards women. Bereft of political/sociological awareness and invention, the aim has been to deliver as visually explicit a violent act as possible, which marks a regression in filmmaking. But there are a few welcome exceptions that offer a glimmer of hope in the darkness, some by both Claire Watkinson herself and my friend Brian Lockyer, both of whom have successfully penetrated the notoriously cliquey film festival circuit recently with their often-experimental indie works.

Even a Hollywood-based female director, however (in this case Mary Harron) has been able to take an utterly horrific, verging-on-misogynist novel by Bret Easton Ellis – American Psycho – and translate it to the screen with minimal misogyny and graphic, detailed, gut-wrenching violence found in most films – here, the misogyny was used as a statement about misogyny, and the violence was abhorrent without being blatant, so audiences saw the film for the message it was. In addition, the Blair Witch Project (harking back to Alfred Hitchcock’s methods) utterly petrified many audiences without showing almost anything at all; the viewer’s subjective imagination creating the horror for themselves. This proves that there are opportunities to create horror without this pornographic approach.

It can be argued that splatter films are another form of visceral pornography, a question raised by my interviewer. They say the difference between pornography and erotica is that the latter does not have to be blatantly visually explicit; it creates a subjective sense of sexuality and is not necessarily designed for the purposes of titillation. Likewise, the horror genre works best – artistically and ethically – when it creates room for a more subjective experience while making a specific point. The ability to make a statement, yet allow interpretations to be had subjectively, is after all the height of art.

As time has gone by, there has been an increase in awareness and liberal attitudes, buoyed by the French-driven Situationist International, and this has offered many progressions in the lives of people in society as prejudices have retreated. However, this – in addition to resistance of censorship – has often been used as an excuse to push the boundaries of explicitness. So, while there has always been “violence,” and “violence” in films, the representation of this violence has become more and more literal; blunt; blatant. In some cases it has even been OTT, which has an even worse effect by desensitising viewers to violence (see the “funny” scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega inadvertently blows off the head of a young African-American male without rhyme, reason, or artistic merit other than to lead to the director’s on-screen role in discussing “dead nigger storage”).

There has, again, been a mass-produced method of artistic and creative shortcuts where filmmakers have wanted to pay no mind to political points or consequences and more towards the of-the-moment approach of topping whatever has been done before in the visuals. This is representative of mainstream culture as a whole being, essentially, style over substance.

The irony of this movement was when Oliver Stone used violence in such an OTT, bombarding, almost oppressive way in his masterpiece Natural Born Killers in order to make a point about precisely that, and yet was promptly censored for it. Censorship is dangerous territory; interpretations are subjective, and all violent images are likely to be “triggering” in inducing trauma to some viewers, as well. So I am not advocating censorship.

The art and entertainment world – even professional wrestling – has always been the scapegoat for powers who pass policies harming societies, exploiting the poor, leaving people vulnerable, and generally – when forced to actually look at a cause instead of a cure (such as being “tough on crime”) – a useful place to point the finger towards as a form of “brainwashing.” (Interestingly, they do not accept this argument when the debate turns focus to corporate news and tabloid press – suddenly, then media is absolved of blame or responsibility).

There is a danger of powers calling for censorship of any creative form, because there is such a grey area and it is such a dark road to go down. I believe Heinrich Heine stated,

“where they burn books, they ultimately burn people”

Instead, just as with the “Axe Factor” mentality of pseudo-reality television, there needs to be a serious debate had around why these productions are being made, what they are doing to the culture, and what thought they provoke. When the excuse is “art for art’s sake,” then it’s an alarm bell for a piece of work that serves no purpose and makes no statement, and even dumbs-down the culture – why should this be funded? While private interests are in complete control of these sources of entertainment (moreso now that the UK Film Council has been predictably abolished by the Conservative government), they will bear no responsibility to contributing to society; there will only be an attempt to maintain the status quo and bolster the tried-and-tested studio formulas and reinforcements of the genre/star/auteur selling points to the public. To raise questions, is not a question for them.

So, yes, through this entertainment media, society becomes more immune to violence – for example, against women, or against the poor; one only has to sit with others when American Psycho’s main character, Patrick Bateman, stabs a homeless African-American man to murder him, then stomps his dog to death, to see what people are more horrified by (hint: it’s rarely the homeless man).

Meanwhile, perversely, corporate news continues to sanitise true life horror for us.

In Gaza – when, interestingly, the BBC reported “War In Gaza” while Al-Jazeera reported “War on Gaza” – only Al Jazeera itself had broadcast journalists on the ground showing bombs exploding around them. During the attack on Iraq mentioned earlier, when bombs were being dropped and men, women, and children were being murdered, most news programmes avoided broadcasting such images.

The image you saw at the top of this page was, from all accounts, very real: a photograph of an Iraqi man killed by the U.S. military. Images like that were allegedly used by American soldiers to trade, in exchange for sexual pornography. This is the desensitised culture being nurtured, where everything’s unreal, everything’s a video game, everything’s got a price.

It can be said, then, that desensitisation is inevitable when we live in a society where non-fiction violence is seen less, and fictional violence is rampant. Without seeing the realities of violence or its consequences, what messages are we sending to people? What is happening to the culture? It leaves me, for one, with a heavy heart indeed.

Claire Watkinson’s own horror film, Sitting Amongst the Apple Trees, premiered at the 2 Days Later short film competition festival this past weekend. Her company, Cherry Tree Productions, can be followed on Twitter.

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American Fall

Many empires have fallen over the centuries. One of the greatest ever, of course, was the Roman empire, where – in the dying days of the Julio-Claudian dynasty – Nero was believed to have been responsible for the Great Fire of Rome so that land could be cleared for his planned Domus Aurea villas.

While it’s considered a myth that Nero played the fiddle as Rome burned to the ground, the accusations against him that compelled him to commit suicide before trial were based on his motivation for expanding his extravagant ways even if it meant destroying his own communities. That was the beginning of the end of a Roman collapse. Now comes the American fall.

The comparison of George W. Bush Jr to Nero, in Paula Cole’s protest song, “My Hero, Mr President,” may seem at first like another melodramatic slant as embellished as the fiddling story itself, but there are certainly parallels.

George W. Bush Jr, who came to power in extremely dubious circumstances, was the first president in recent history of the United States to break from the tradition of walking the last block to the White House after being sworn in, faced with protesters on the verge of rioting, raging against his party’s theft of their democracy. Son of George H.W. Bush Sr, he was often referred to as “King George the Second” due to the undemocratic manner in which he seized power.

Like his father – in conflict with their “small state” Reaganomics rhetoric – Bush Jr cut taxes for the elite while at the same time spending massively, in his case to fund aggressive and legally suspect military campaigns in the resource-rich Middle East, gifting obscene uncontested contracts to cabinet darlings like Halliburton to “rebuild” Iraq with taxpayers’ dollars.

As if this wasn’t dangerous enough for the American economy, then came the 2008 financial crisis where Bush’s other friends, Goldman Sachs, essentially held the nation to ransom as economist Max Keiser succinctly puts it, and were gifted $700 billion without the consent of American taxpayers (who were dead against it).

The damage this has done to the United States is incredible, and yet the corporate right-wing mainstream media never held many people to account, and instead denounced Barack Obama and his healthcare plans for the poor as “socialism.” The elite interests were hoping the distraction was enough for them to slip away with the loot.

It wasn’t.

The anger of the American people has been growing since they were first ignored, and so was a movement. Now, Wall Street itself is being occupied by thousands who have simply had enough. So called because of the seventeenth century wall built to keep out the poorer Native Americans who also saw many of their resources stolen, Wall Street today represents the greed Gordon Gecko declared “good” in Reagan and Thatcher years of mass financial deregulation so the bankers could run amok and Social Darwinism could take effect.

Students, shopkeepers, even pilots have all been marching onto Wall Street to demonstrate their intolerance of this reverse socialist transfer of wealth from the many into the deep pockets of the few. After the Arab Spring and the union actions in Wisconsin, many wondered when, or if, the U.S. would have it in it to show some people power there too. It took its time – it wasn’t in the spring, or even the summer – but now we are witnessing not an autumn, because they don’t call it that, but an American Fall.

However, something strange has been happening. Unless you’re there, you’re unlikely to be aware of it. The media have only given the attention the Wall Street protests warranted when there were arrests by police – a tried and tested media method of movement marginalisation, by discrediting; by disconnecting apathy from the consumer at home and the citizen on the street.

Fortunately, social media is increasing and despite reports of Facebook removing imagery of the Wall Street demonstrations, word is spreading. It is up to each and every one of the aware to awaken others, too.

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