caleb2006

11:27 am: My journey.
For a number of years i have been feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the world i live in, the system that supports me/i support (here is my first confusion), the whole political & 'establishment' system that regulates us, the system of policing.... so much more to list. Last nights news of the assault upon Ian Tomlinson took me to a new level that i am uncertain i will be able to come down from.
It's a long rant so to protect the bored

My first memories of the state and of society were, no surprise, very naive and accepting of whatever i was told, (i still laugh at the memory of my dad telling me that he was a spitfire pilot in the war). I was one generation past those raised in the heyday of the empire, when all British people thought that we had fairly and generously brought order to the world, protected and educated the unwashed of our ex Empire and they should be grateful for our help.
School lessons still taught that 'the best steel in the world is British steel', and TV adverts for Cadburies dark chocolate used the 'Dark Continent' strap line.
TV news told me that Catholics in Belfast were IRA terrorists because they attacked the British Army, but the French Resistance were heroes because they fought the invading Germans.
Likewise, the Viet Cong were bad because they were communist and the American invaders to Vietnam were liberators and defenders of the free, and the word 'Palastinian' was a bye word for 'evil. bombing terrorist'.
Totalitarianism was relegated to '1984' and to The Soviet Union, Vietnam, China.
The courts were always right, well apart from that poor Timothy Evans fellow but we put that right by making a movie about it, and it could never happen again..... the Birmingham Six definitely did it, as did the Guilford Five, and the murderers of Carl Bridgewater.
The police were selflessly here to protect us, sought the truth at any cost and only ever hurt the guilty.
I know that it sounds incredible, i know how naive it all looks now, but that was how it was for a working class lad from deepest North Staffordshire.
So when did it begin to change for me, and where am i now?
God, so many small steps have moved me ever so slightly, each one making the slightest difference, like the little hand of a clock that moves, but does so with such slow speed that only by going back later can one see that it actually has.

I think that my first uncomfortable views were when the legal system was first explained to me, i think i was 9 or 10, and i first began to grasp the adversarial nature of law and told that this was what made it so fair, this and the jury of 'twelve good men and true.' I remember asking myself how '12 good men and true' like my Uncle Joe (illiterate and racist) would protect a black man charged with burglary and went a little quiet. I remember wondering how a prosecution lawyer or policeman would deal with coming across evidence of a prisoners innocence and thinking, of course they would say something... wouldnt they.
Later i asked myself why the French Resistance were freedom fighters but the Viet Cong were terrorists, why the IRA (and thus Northern Irish Catholics) were murderers, and yet Ian Paisley was 'loyalist'.
I am now ashamed to say that i did not always think further on my discomfort as i grew and developed... i had school work to worry about, girlfriends to find, music to dance to, a wedding to plan, a marriage to build, a family to raise, a career to build. And yet without really thinking about it i remember a point, i dunno, maybe 15 years ago when things began to change.

I remember an interview, i don't know who it was, a man from The West Indies, giving his view of the gift of Empire to his nation..... 'like raping a woman but expecting her to be grateful for being given a ride home afterwards'
I remember one Irish 'marching season' when Ian Paisley described one of the most contentious Orange Marches as a group of men 'walking home from Church on a Sunday morning'
Protests have taken me perhaps the longest to come to terms with..... never able to fully accept the perceived wisdom of the press that said protester=thug, and never really supporting the view that the police had only the objective of protecting 'us' from wrong doers...who is 'us'? i asked myself, but then not thinking more about it, and whilst i knew that the 'few rotten apples' theory applied to both police and protesters, gave the benefit of doubt to law and order.

I remember the Thatcher years, when whole towns and cities were blighted by her policies, estates that now have 3rd generation unemployed and are castigated for being the 'Shameless' generation. Now don't get me wrong, i hate idleness, hate the manipulation of the system to support some of the scummy people in those estates, and i see 'class' being confused with 'standards' (i am from a working class background and have standards) but scum exists everywhere. How different is Fred Goodwin, the countless MP's claiming for 2nd homes when the live closer to Westminster than i do. On the other side, i look at the dirty video claim much less angrily.... i do expenses every month and you should see me with dozens of bits of paper on my desk, the ones that i lose or the maths i have to do to remove things not claimable, add things that are claimable etc - its a nightmare and all that happened here i believe. I remember the coal strikes and police charges against striking miners - they were not protecting you or me, they were not preserving law and order - they were instruments of state control, and the fact that Arther Scargill was a wanker does not make what the police did right.

My problem is that i think i am too nice, too eager to believe what i am told, too willing to trust the system, despite its failings, to protect its citizens, too willing to give way for a quiet life. Or am i letting myself off the hook here?

One huge shock to my system was when that very establishment ganged up on someone close to me. I won't go into details but a member of my family was arrested, accused, charged and convicted of a crime, a crime that i know in my heart that he could not, would not, did not commit. The evidence was flimsy, based on the word of 2 people - a policeman (of course policemen never lie) and the other person involved (convicted twice of the same offence and offered a lower charge if he implicated my brother). My brother was 'bang to rights' , so much so that he was then pretty much forced to plead guilty in order not to be sent to prison.

Since the.... shite so many things, so much has happened, to me and in the world.

9/11... knowing that the world would never be quite the same again and yet despite those shocking events being hugely distressed to see war inflicted in my name upon a country far away. Yes the regime was a bad one, yes its population suffered under that regime and yes they harboured terrorists. Well, fuck, how much better are the lives of those people now? The ritual categorisation of all things Muslim as potentially terrorist, just as in the 70's and 80's all things Irish & Catholic were the same. Bin Laden is a terrorist, but we supported and armed him a few years before when the Russians invaded and he was a 'freedom fighter'

War in Iraq that despite whatever i am told was NOTHING to do with weapons of mass murder, NOTHING to do with any threat to us, but EVERYTHING to do with Bush family business, oil and corporate greed. Yes Saddam was a monster, but we supported him when he was at war with Iran, and again i ask.... how much better are Iraqi lives now?

London bombings when though i had yet to move here, i had found friends and formed a relationship with the city. An innocent man gunned down by the police, and i thought 'shit. it is NOT acceptable to say that the police were under pressure due to perceived terrorist threats and so this was somehow mitigation.'

ID cards - 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' Fuck You! I have nothing to hide but neither did my brother, neither did the Birmingham Six or the estimated 20% of people in prison for crimes they did not commit. Neither did Barry George or the countless other 'odd' people who happened to live, or walk near to where some high profile crime was committed. Just as i have nothing to hide, i have no wish to be catalogued and boxed so that some future bureaucrat or politician or policeman can make decisions about me, or lose my detail on some database, or monitor my actions, or justify beating me to death if i happen to be protesting at something. Jesus, i can imagine the police now if ever they searched my house - i could be the next Barry George, Nazi sympathising, war mongering, sexually deviant all round criminal.

Recession. How many people have trusted the system over the years, been fed the crap dished out to them that the state will provide, that hard work and prudence will ensure a safe future, etc etc, (and why i am ranting, don't you hate it when people say etc etc?).
Now don't get me wrong, capitalism has been great for all of us... capitalism has helped us all, contributed to the pleasant lives we have and opportunities that we take or not as we wish. i have a pretty fine life due to capitalism, but what is happening now disgusts me. Tony Benn used a fantastic analogy when considering how the banks and bankers have been bailed out after their greed and short term-ism brought about the near collapse of the system. He reminded us that when slavery was abolished, that it was the slave owners and not the slaves who were compensated.

G20. I have heard the phrase 'kettling' today on the news. I had never heard of it before. The state, in my name, is containing protesters into small areas, for hours on end and refusing to allow anybody to leave. In there are men, women and children... undoubtedly the vast majority completely innocent people protesting, as we all have the right, against things that concern us, and of course they never beat them, indeed they are doing it for their own good THEY DO IT IN MY NAME! They beat an innocent man, on his way home from work and nothing to do with the protests, (not that being a protester would give them the right to beat anybody). This is State Control. This is against all that i hold dear and against all of my instincts for fair play.



The frustration and anger that i feel becomes more acute as the day goes on.
We are in a police state. I know that now. It is 1984. And for all of these years i have been the ideal citizen for them to control and manipulate. I stood back, i swallowed their crap, i stayed silent when i should have spoken, i let my discomfort subside rather than express it. I assumed that the state, despite its failings was more a force for good than bad. I think it still, (and even this frustrates me) is but the margin of difference is tiny now.