The Weakness of The Working Class

[Dougie Do'ins]

What the fuck has happened to us ? How have we let ourselves become so fucking downtrodden and apathetic ? We're continually fucking shafted at every given opportunity and we do fuck all about it. It makes me fucking sick. 

 

Thatcher has been out of power for 29 years and dead for more than six of them yet we're still in the grip of what she did.  

 

People are depending on food banks for survival that we make the donations to while £300m + can be found to put new plumbing into Buckingham Palace.

Banks and financial institutions are allowed to bring the country to it's fucking knees and get richer on the back of it because we bail them out.

MPs and their fucking second homes and expenses scandals.

Those poor fuckers in Grenfell Tower still waiting to be rehoused.

Homelessness on the increase.

HS2 and the ever increasing costs.

Fuck knows how much to repair the houses of parliament.

Retirement age upped.

The NHS in shreds.

The emergency services on their fucking knees.

The justice system is a fucking joke.

 

 

I could go on but what's the fucking point ? The shit will continue to be thrown at us and we'll just continue to lap it up. 

 

What has happened to the will to fight for ourselves and our rights ? Rights that previous generations fought for and and some cases made the ultimate sacrifice. 

We could have 20 years of a Labour government but nothing will really change, because the people with the real power wont allow it. 

 

We'll get nothing unless we get up of our arses and fight for it. But we wont will we ? We'll just keep on lapping it up while the rich get richer and we get poorer.

 

The people of Hong Kong have put us to fucking shame. 

   

[Bjornebye]

I blame the media for a lot of it. 

 

Entitled kids growing up wanting to be Kim Kardashian instead of someone more useful and inspiring. Lies and propaganda being rammed down our throats at every opportunity. The 1% control the minds and dreams of the 99% through news and visuals and you are right, we shouldn't fucking put up with it. 

[Chip Butty]

It all started with the right to buy, inadvertently brought in by Thatcher at a time when she was trying to brake the unions and by bringing that in, from there people became more insular, the have's and have nots appeared within working class streets and the social fabric of all mucking into together and supporting one another, was lost. 

Society is so stuck up it's own arse in this me me me, bucket list, nimby society that we live in, that any dream of bringing back a wide spread community spirit, is pretty much dead and buried.

 

As a socialist, 30+ year union member and Engineering manager, dealing with so called 'union' men, makes me weep with their self centered 'what can the union and this business do for me mentality' makes me sick. maybe thats why I'm a fucking cunt with them at times and thats not right to say, but this modern shower of shite so called 'union' men, want fucking off and shooting, the self centered shithouses. 

 

 

 

 

*rant over*

 

 

soz

 

 

[Mook]

I've been saying it for a long time, the working class in this country are their own worst enemy.

 

Feeble minded, gullible shower of fucking sheep. Anyone who has the bollocks to say anything about it gets shouted down as well which means it'll never end.

[Creator Supreme]

I had a 'heated debate' with two old mates on Friday, intelligent working class lads who are against Brexit, but have swallowed the whole Corbyn is an terrorist supporting cunt, we need a centrist Labour leader, anybody but Corbyn would have won the last election for Labour, blah blah blah! The working class it seems have swallowed the whole centrism is the only way to go bollocks! There's no fight left.

[Oh Buoy]

Completely agree with what you're saying but I think I needs to get worse before it snaps. 

 

If one place goes under and a lot of job losses happen, that could be the momentum it requires - similar to the 2011 riots. 

[Dougie Do'ins]

14 minutes ago, Chip Butty said:

It all started with the right to buy, inadvertently brought in by Thatcher at a time when she was trying to brake the unions and by bringing that in, from there people became more insular, the have's and have nots appeared within working class streets and the social fabric of all mucking into together and supporting one another, was lost.

 

 

Yep. I mentioned that in my rant in the Leave/Remain thread. Put the people in fear of losing the roof over their heads and they'll soon fold. Like it or not but it was a fucking master stroke by her and the obsession with getting a foot on the housing ladder seems to get worse with every passing day.

 

What will it take for people to fucking wake up and go out and fight ? Food shortages ?

[Bjornebye]

6 minutes ago, foam said:

Completely agree with what you're saying but I think I needs to get worse before it snaps. 

 

If one place goes under and a lot of job losses happen, that could be the momentum it requires - similar to the 2011 riots. 

The 2011 riots were thugs using an excuse (a murdering career criminal getting shot by the police) to steal things and smash the place up. 

[Bjornebye]

Just now, Dougie Do'ins said:

Yep. I mentioned that in my rant in the Leave/Remain thread. Put the people in fear of losing the roof over their heads and they'll soon fold. Like it or not but it was a fucking master stroke by her and the obsession with getting a foot on the housing ladder seems to get worse with every passing day.

 

What will it take for people to fucking wake up and go out and fight ? Food shortages ?

Go out and fight who though? 

[Dougie Do'ins]

1 minute ago, Bjornebye said:

Go out and fight who though? 

The system that's allowed us to get into the fucking state we're in. 

 

Barry Wom made a great point recently. Something like, 'we've changed from a nation built on industry to a nation controlled by financiers'.

[Chris]

As far as apathy goes. Here is the problem. 

 

[Section_31]

It's all about tipping points. People essentially want the same things, they want food, shelter, safety, predictability and they want the same for their kids. They won't fuck with the programme as long as they have that, or think they have it. 

 

The only time the working class has fought for something better is when it literally had nothing else to lose, such as after Second World War. Blokes came back from horror, came home to nothing, and they knew how to use guns. Needless to say, the powers that be were amiable to a national conversation. 

 

Over the next two or three decades (in the States and the UK) the economy and society boomed because the wealth was more evenly distributed. The working classes had money to spend, and they spent it. The money went back into the economy and in turn created and protected jobs. 

 

As time went by attempts were made to claw back some of that newly distributed wealth, subtly at first and then via the atom bomb of Thatcherism. 

 

Thatcher's 'genius' for want of a better word was to make us complicit in what she was doing. It was an Impreial strategy. When you look at how the British conquered 25% of the planet they didn't do it through force and fear (that doesn't work, just ask the yanks)  they did it by buying off people they could do business with, who in turn would do the ruling for us. Said it before, but if we'd invaded Iraq in 2003, both of Saddam Hussein's sons would be at Sandhurst and they'd have a half decent cricket team by now, while Peter Mandelson's oil shares would be through the roof. 

 

That's what Thatcher did with us. She divided and conquered. She clobbered people she couldn't do business with (the miners, the unions, infiltrating them with MI5, upping the wages of the police and the army and stockpiling coal before executing Order 66). The ones she could do business with though, she tempted with an apple. The image of the barrow boy,  the willing working class 'go-getter' for whom greed was good. It's still going strong now. People who swan around in flash shit even though they're not actually that well off. Fancy phones, fancy tellies, not much under the bonnet. If they need money it's on the blower to mum and dad. 

 

Over the next few decades as the council estates fell, they were replaced by the new build estate and the working class chap done good. Estates bereft of community, of family, of friendship, but where it was all about image. Now, that's pretty much all most people have. The house, the car on the drive, it's not a lot - but they don't want to lose it. 

 

New Labour was a trendy face of the same ideology. Updated for the 21st Century, but it still didn't deal with the underlying issue - the fact that wealth was unfairly distributed.

Instead of tackling that root truth, the cause of most of our ills, it put money in our pockets that wasn't real, allowing us to borrow more and allowing the property market to overheat. We could keep on spending, but it wasn't real money. 

 

When that 'popped', once again the ruling class and its ideology found yet another way to use that to its advantage, making private debt public and selling off most of our assets. Still now,  the situation is dire and most people still don't have real money to spend. The economies of major city centres outside London are built around things like student debt. Anyone who'd point this out of course is denounces as a Marxist loony lefty. 

 

It's pretty easy to make people be satisfied wit this, all you have to do is put the shits up them and then gradually reduce their expectations, settle  things down a bit and then whatever is left becomes the 'new normal'. When I started my last job for example, I was on worse pay and pension than the person who started five years before me, while the girl who started two years after me was on worse than me. Yet the company was owned by two billionaires who lived on an island and owned a newspaper. Such was the fear caused by the credit crunch, and the subsequent rounds of redundancies that lasted years, that people were just glad to 'have a job' when the dust settled each time. HR told us that was actually a strategy, to create uncertainty when people were being laid off, then gradually bring things back to normal. It's like the way some people react to domestic abusers. Sooner or later, the absence of abuse, even for one night, feels like a benevolent act. 

 

All of this being said, I'm not particularly dewy eyed about the English working class. I think it's traditionally been quite right wing anyway and only largely got of its own arse to protect what little it had. The Unions in Liverpool for instance were more fixated with protecting their own members' jobs and getting their kids jobs than they were about changing the world. Most of any social movement along those lines have come from the intellectual left. The likes of Atlee, Benn etc who were to the manor born but were able to think outside of themselves. The English working class feels, I think, that it's above other working classes, that it's somehow benefited from Empire even though it hasn't. It has a generally servile sensibility. That's why slavery never took hold in England, it didn't need to. 

 

 

[Bjornebye]

4 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

The system that's allowed us to get into the fucking state we're in. 

 

Barry Wom made a great point recently. Something like, 'we've changed from a nation built on industry to a nation controlled by financiers'.

Yes but who and how? Do we march into Canary Wharf and start battering the bankers? Do we march on Downing Street and attack MP's? Those in power don't give a fuck about protests. 10 million could march through London demanding anything and they wouldn't give two fucks. Full scale anarchy isn't going to help the working class either is it? Peoples livelihoods will be destroyed. 

 

There are far too many divisions within society that a mass revolution can't happen as much as we want it. 

[TheHowieLama]

16 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Go out and fight who though? 

Fascists -- or the antifa.

 

Or both, they are always good for a punch up.

[cloggypop]

I usually put all this squarely on the shoulders of Paul Weller when he split up The Jam and started Style Council. Things would never be the same again. 

[Dougie Do'ins]

25 minutes ago, Chris said:

As far as apathy goes. Here is the problem. 

 

Do they not have these in Hong Kong ?

[Lee909]

Everyone fell into the trap of a mortgage. Hence why she sold council housing. It killed people's ability to strike. Nobody wants to be working class its all about being middle class with a new car on the drive and everything on credit cards. The added effect of Murdoch led media manipulation 

[Dougie Do'ins]

41 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Yes but who and how? Do we march into Canary Wharf and start battering the bankers? Do we march on Downing Street and attack MP's? Those in power don't give a fuck about protests. 10 million could march through London demanding anything and they wouldn't give two fucks. Full scale anarchy isn't going to help the working class either is it? Peoples livelihoods will be destroyed. 

 

There are far too many divisions within society that a mass revolution can't happen as much as we want it. 

Peoples lively hoods are being destroyed every day of the week. Sitting on our arses arguing with each other on unsocial media certainly isn't going to do anything.

[Bjornebye]

8 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Peoples lively hoods are being destroyed every day of the week. Sitting on our arses arguing with each other on unsocial media certainly isn't going to do anything.

I am not in anyway arguing with you mate I'm right behind you, just wondering who we go out and shout at? 

[Dougie Do'ins]

1 minute ago, Bjornebye said:

I am not in anyway arguing with you mate I'm right behind you, just wondering who we go out and shout at? 

I know your not Stig. We should take inspiration from what's going on in Hong Kong.

 

Doing nothing will change nothing.

[Guest]

I would like to see no-one turn up to vote at the next General Election and watch how they form a government from their supposed democracy.

[Bjornebye]

Dougie tomorrow morning

 

 

 

[Elite]

There needs to be a 'big bang' in order to instigate change but these 'big bangs' come with massive sacrifice before a rebuild can happen.

 

So it's either: World War 3, an asteroid wiping out the south or the EV winning 3 games on the spin. Which makes the first two options the most likely.

[Section_31]

I suspect this is one of the most isolated societies that's probably ever existed. One of the things the news conveniently usually skirts over when they talk about the 'mental health' crisis is that very fact, the fact communities have been torn up and all we do is work, like battery hens. 

 

There would have been a time when in a working class estate you'd have known a lot of people where you live, drank with them, your kids would have gone to the same school, you would have watched/played sport with them at the weekend. Communities, friends, families, people willing to step in and help when your mrs had a kid, people willing to root out a dickhead in the street/pub causing problems, people who knew your name when you walked down the street. 

 

All gone. 

 

Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed - possibly after you've had a few drinks (this applies to all classes, huge problem for middle class women by all accounts), outsource your parenting to a nursery. Hope you don't lose your job. Retire on cat food. Tremendous fun. 

[Lee909]

There does seem to be a big proportion of young teenagers wanting change and wanting it now. There is some hope with them. See if they carry it on when they start working and having bills to pay