To start with, of course Hastings Battleaxe condemns and utterly abhors the wave of right-wing fermented violent thuggery going on right now. Battleaxe loathes the Reform and Tory right-fanatics who dare to call themselves politicians. They have enabled this garbage. She detests their disgusting media backers and the social media grotesques who promote lies. She also detests anyone who has anything whatsoever to say in justification/defence. Go away, right-wing sympathisers and apologists who might be reading this. Battleaxe doesn’t want you. While she’s at it, she hates the so-called mainstream media who sparked this off by deifying the little girls who died. It was a truly awful event, but glorifying the ‘innocent little angels’ and plastering their smiling little faces across our front pages didn’t help anyone.
But, on the other hand, it is riot season in glorious Britain. Look, maybe Battleaxe is too old. I remember, back in 1981, a hot, humid evening just like it is now, in Birmingham. Me and my friend Mandy Lifeboats were strolling through Balsall Heath on our way to somewhere I don’t remember. No, of course she wasn’t called that. She was Mandy Collett. She became an actress/playright. Sadly, I’ve long ago lost touch with her. We rounded a corner and came upon a riot. Ladypool Road, I think. A crowd of bellowing, drunken white men – the fathers and grandfathers of the very ones you see on telly right now – were throwing stuff at a crowd of young black men and any police that tried to get in their way. Various things were on fire. The 1981 Birmingham riots were portrayed on a recent TV drama ‘This Town’ as dark, grim and terrifying. What Mandy and I saw was not like that. For a start, it wasn’t even dark – it was a bright summer evening. We stood and watched for a bit, shouting ‘Booo, shame on you’ at anyone who gave a Nazi salute, until we got bored and wandered off again. I’m sure modern riots are grimmer though – thugs are bigger and thuggier now. In the 70s, folk were still quite skinny,
Back in the 1970s, I was more committed. In the long hot summer of 1976 I was living in Gloucester with my first husband. My daughter was either just born or due to pop out. The then leader of the National Front, John Tyndall, was going door-to-door in the area. I now forget why. I prepared a bucket of cat-poo and ashes, all ready to throw over him when he knocked at our door. Unfortunately he stopped at the bottom of the road… still, the contents of the bucket were great for fertilising my vegetables. After that, I joined the anti-Nazi League… but all these things have faded away.
So, this riot stuff is not new. Far from it. Give ’em a few humid sunny days, a few slogans to shout and ignorant thugs will riot, attack police, terrorise anyone weaker than themselves, overturn cars, set fires and loot shops. They always have. Most of them do not need a pretext or an ideology to make them get stuck into a good old violent rampage. Makes a change from football violence, throwing bar stools through windows and beating up their womenfolk I suppose.
What’s more worrying today is the way the violence has been enabled. The rioting morons have had their empty heads filled with far-right misinformation and dog-whistle incitements from irresponsible politicans, and are apparently directed to do what they do, and where they do it, by social media. The current riots are cropping up all over the UK, whereas in the past they were contained.
What’s more, let’s face it, Britain (like most other places, I fear), is infested with racists. Racism lurks just beneath the surface of society and it just takes a few prods on the right buttons to bring it to the surface. Right now, the focus is Islamophobia, in the past it was about anyone with a non-white face. Latent racism is only held in check by a mixture of community work, education, reasoned regulation and use of the media and, most important, responsible and thoughtful government including good leadership, appropriate legislation, and challenging/punishment of offenders. In the last few years of the Conservative government all this was thrown away, and we are now paying the penalty. In addition, poverty and desperation have increased massively.
But don’t try and tell me about people being vile because they have ‘legitimate concerns’ – they are desperate, got no prospects etc. Sure, they may be poor and desperate, but most join this riot business because they enjoy it, they see their leaders condoning it, and they see others doing it. Read this if you want to know more.
Yes, of course overt racism is a massive step on the road to fascism. Are we there yet? No. Battleaxe is confident that enough people, despite whispering behind closed doors in their homes, deplore this sort of going on.
Fortunately, touch wood, none of this has come to Hastings yet. But it is not far away. Apparently, our one, tiny mosque was threatened, but a crowd of people gathered to protect it, and nothing happened. I just hope and pray that’s the end of it. This place is tatty enough without being wrecked by thugs.
Last week there was a concert on the Stade to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the RNLI. Unfortunately I couldn’t go because was at Poetry Stanza, but Philosopher went down there, and our friend Tom Kelly was singing. Afterwards, there was a post on FB about the event from the Hastings Observer, and it was dreadful to see many comments slagging off the RNLI for being the ‘migrants taxi service,’importing illegals’, ‘two-tier policing/Keir’ and even ‘traitors helping the invasion.’ You can totally see what I mean about ignorant people picking up on dog-whistle cues from their ‘leaders’. We all know where this ‘Stop the Boats’ business came from. Sunak had it plastered on the front of this bloody lectern. But here’s a question for you… Who used the term ‘invasion’ in this context? Answer, our former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. ‘Two-tier Keir? Elon Musk. ‘Give us our country back’? Lee Anderson/Farage. See this.
You can tell people the facts as often as you like – if there were as many boats as people imagine, the sea off Hastings would be like Cowes Regatta… but lots of people just love nasty shit, always fixate on the negative/sensational. That’s why they like horror movies.
By the way, readers will know that Battleaxe is a great admirer of the RNLI – see this post about our recent visit to their HQ in Poole. Whatever, the event in Hastings was well attended and very successful, and I hope the RNLI raised a pile of money. When we went to Poole they said donations were down because of all this boats bollocks…
So, the government is in a quandry right now, I guess. Throw the rioters into prison – hmmn, they are already full. Can they hope this summer rioting will fizzle out when the weather breaks? Hopefully, but it’s risky. Should they be fiercer with social media companies and the ‘leaders’ of this nastiness? Yes, but it’s very hard to catch them. I didn’t envy poor Keir Starmer when he was elected, and envy him even less now.
No wonder I want to work with animals instead of people…
