A question I never thought I would be forced to ask myself. What do I do if the government of the UK not only betrays me but is, in any meaningful sense, of no damned use to me, my life and well being, at all? In fact, quite the reverse.
The head of the government may have changed three times over the last three years, but the body is resolutely the same and as hostile and toxic to us and our public services as a plague of rats in the larder.
And ever since the election, Boris Johnson appears to be either looking smug or gloating.
He’s already dumping promises he made prior to the general election in the few days since the election and the racism and attacks on people of colour are ramping up to new disgusting heights. Clearly Johnson is a man who believes in leading by example and his infamous racism is paying off among right wing fascists, even if they have no idea they are fascists or responding to fascism and are acting out of profound ignorance.
The response in the financial markets the day after the election saw UK’s biggest firms gain more than £30bn in value following a Tory win. [1]
This is not just a government for the 1%, it is also the government which has, for ten years, delivered the violence of poverty on an estimated 14.3 million people [2], killed untold hundreds of thousands of people [3] and caused life expectancy to go into reverse [4].
This may be a government fit for its own internal, self defined and self serving purpose, but it is not a government fit to serve the vast majority of ordinary people.
The question is, what do I do now? I have always enjoyed the rough and tumble of politics, but that is over. The Tories, coupled with the billionaire owned main stream media, have destroyed politics and representative democracy. But, and it is the biggest ‘but’ in living memory, we, the people, have to find ways to survive under a rogue government that is actively hostile to our very existence.
In my last article I wrote about the grass roots revolution that is taking place in Frome, Somerset [5]. It’s a town which is doing what Jeremy Corbyn stood for at the election, empowering people at a local level, creating local endeavours which are inclusive at all levels of the local community, including the most socially excluded, disenfranchised and vulnerable people.
This is a new era of activism, bottom up, participative democracy, having care and responsibility for our fellow beings, in whatever inspires us to act and express our common humanity with one another.
To my way of seeing things, the greatest protest we can raise against the government is any act, initiative, or organisation that not just enables people to survive, but to flourish, which is what life should be about in our brief time and tenancy on this planet.
We are all consumers, we have no choice, but the consumer world of capitalism, which is about ever increasing profits and the polarity of wealth, is in its death throes. What Capitalism and the Tories have done is turn on the last resource that remains to be exploited to death – people – the last exploitable and expendable, in their eyes, commodity. It’s happening across the world, in a synchronised process of murder for profit.
It would be bad enough if we were ‘all in this together’, as the uber-privileged David Cameron spun it, but this is happening in a world of plenty and of vast inequality managed and exploited by governments. Make no mistake, poverty is violence managed by those in power and the death toll in Britain and across the world is stage managed for profit.
I cannot go on like this but that does not mean I am willing to kill myself, which would be tantamount to enabling their final victory.
I care far too much about life to end it by my own hand and, thankfully, I survived the one time I did despair and attempted to end my own life.
I didn’t get it then. My sister asked me, “Did you not consider what that would do to us?” And the fact is, I didn’t. I lived with acute depression and saw myself as a burden on life and that it would be best for all concerned if I removed myself.
I vowed I would never try that again. I sought help, which continues to this day, and I learnt to understand how precious and fleeting life is. I learnt to love life, and now life itself it is under attack and I will not stand aside.
There is one thing about being human that stands above all others, our ability to be creative. Creativity is the supreme expression of humanity. As I recently commented on social media: Imagine a world without music, art, books, performing arts, creativity, humour, love, caresses, joy. None of these things come from government, all these things are for us, by us, great and small, so it is worth pausing to consider their and our incredible power…
I don’t have answers, answers come over time out of enquiry and effort. But we can begin immediately by feeding people, all else follows.
The failure of, and abandonment by, government is a call to action and I am faced with a stark choice, in a land of plenty, give up or stand up and work for something I have never had to consider before, to win. For life, all life, because the price of failure is death.
The world was pretty fucked up before 2010, but it was nowhere near as fucked up as it is now. It doesn’t have to be this way. It is through the mendaciousness and violence of those in power that we are here and the time to fight for life is right now.
It’s time to get creative, because that is what we do best.
Keith Ordinary Guy
[2] https://fullfact.org/economy/poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/mar/07/life-expectancy-slumps-by-five-months
[5] https://fearandloathingingreatbritain.wordpress.com/2019/12/17/we-are-the-people/
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