The campaign to leave the EU showed a focus on Britain that is still needed. Calling for the government to implement the Leave vote, March 2019, London. Photo Workers.
The media in Britain seem obsessed by the politics and political thought of the USA, a trend shared by too many. It’s an unhealthy obsession and a deliberate distraction from our pressing needs.
Elections and other events in the USA are covered and discussed as if Britain were part of the US. It is taken as an opportunity to overlook and distract from events in Britain.
Consequently – as with religious and cultural divisions from the Middle East and South Asia – this obsession with the USA imports conflicts from elsewhere to discussion in Britain.
Our working class has enough divisions of its own to resolve, without importing others.
We are told Scotland, England and Wales are different nations; or that older people steal the birthright of the young; or that women must fight the oppression of men. And above all, that questioning open borders is inherently racist.
The British ruling class of course has a long and inglorious history of colonising and dividing other countries, starting with Ireland. It’s an object lesson closer to home, if one were needed, of the interest the ruling class has in dividing workers – and what happens if workers acquiesce.
‘Britain needs to change its own internal politics and way of looking at the world. We must learn not to leave important things to others…’
Britain needs to change its own internal politics and way of looking at the world.
We must learn not to leave important things to others, not to seek, against all experience, an honest politician for salvation, and not to follow one who seems to say what we think, for now. All are within the parliamentary system and beholden to capitalism and its workings. All will disappoint in the end.
Have we learned nothing nearly 100 years after success in the struggle to achieve universal adult suffrage? It became an end in itself, a reason to rely on others, rather than a springboard to greater working class development.
Let’s learn about other countries’ workers, politics, economies – of course. Let’s learn about global economic changes and trends affecting Britain. But let’s not mistake either for the political analysis and guide to action that we desperately need.
Don’t join the deniers and denigrators of Britain and its workers. Oppose those who can’t wait to get back to the domination of the EU, or who seek instead complete subservience to the USA. They fear working class unity above all else, and want to ignore any expression of working class political action.
These heroes wilt at the sight of a few flags – the Union Jack or St George’s Cross. These flags were a V-sign to the government – not a threat to other workers. Those politicians who seek to divide in the end see only division; they are the only ones who should be worried. A working class wanting collective progress welcomes national independence.