Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed (Show of Hands - 2009) - State Murder

This is an incredible time to be living in, but what’s truly extraordinary is that there is nothing new here, nothing that hasn’t been going on for time immemorial. As the Band, Show of Hands, sang of ‘Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed’, the attitude of the ruling classes against ordinary people has been with us forever as has protest against it.

What was Wat Tyler facing in the Peasants Revolt in 1381 other than what we are still facing today?

Theresa May is nothing new, in fact she is just today’s poster girl for the historic abuse of the ruling classes. Grenfell Tower is the latest incarnation of the contempt and casual indifference that the ruling elites have for the lives of ordinary people.

At 66 years old I’ve been racking my brains and Grenfell Tower is the worst disaster in the UK since WWII, it is utterly horrific and yet, like the inferno and the circumstances leading up to it, the handling of it is a testament to the governments monumental indifference to the lives and well being and suffering and deaths of ordinary people.

This callous indifference was summed up by someone who chose to pick up her phone and call LBC radio to talk about how she felt if survivors of Grenfell Tower were moved into the block of flats were she lives, “I feel sorry for those people but my husband and I work very hard to be able to afford this. And for someone to get it for free, I would move.”

‘Those people’, Britain’s untermensch, those regarded and treated as racially or socially inferior, like rats, vermin, unwanted, their suffering a matter of complete indifference and, in fact, every effort made to sweep them under the carpet.

There is a reason that no one knows what’s happening in North Kensington, least of all the victims of the inferno, it’s because the lives of poor people don’t matter. As David Lammy MP wrote, “Grenfell Tower was a crime. Rich, powerful people often get away with crimes. We need answers, and we need justice.” The response to the disaster is itself a continuous, rolling crime in real time, a crime of arrogance, ignorance, greed and indifference.

The escalation of state murder has been going on since 2010, every provision of anything that provides for the well being of ordinary people in the UK has been and continues to be stripped to the bone and the poorest and most vulnerable people are being brutally punished and driven to their graves for simply being poor and vulnerable.

In 2015 David Cameron said, “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone’.” And oh how true those words ring today. Not one of us is safe from these Tory murderers, to whom the law offers not the least obstacle in their inhuman attacks on our lives and which provides no protection for us.

They sneer at our protests and love to tell us how ineffectual and pointless protest is. I am very sure they would like us to shut up, how very convenient for them that would be. And if we did, if we obeyed these masters of arrogance, avarice and greed, what would be our reward?

To die in silence. To die for their arrogance, their ignorance and their greed.

Fuck that and fuck them. Think about this, someone signed off the flammable cladding for Grenfell Tower, signing the death warrants of all the victims of that act of obscene arrogance, cowardice and indifference. No one will step forward and take responsibility and they will for certain be working right now to cover it up. Theresa May has refused to commit to retro fitting sprinklers in all high rise residential accommodation despite the Fire Brigade Union stating that ‘there has never been a multiple death in a building fitted with sprinklers’, yet the government can find £1.3 million to fit sprinklers in the houses of Parliament. The government can use £370 million our money to refurbish Buckingham Palace, £7.6 million for Wentworth Woodhouse, but for poor tax payers, nothing, not even an honest death count for the survivors of Grenfell Tower.

And what can we do? Keep fighting and never stop. Never, ever, give up against these callously indifferent, bastard state murderers.