What about the Workers?

Why the Working Class Votes Against It’s Economic Interests?

I am from a working class background. I was 8 years old at Junior School in the 1950s when Danny Jones one of the school bullies started punching me on my back as we run up the concrete stairs back to class from playtime in the school yard. I don’t know why, it was just the way the bullies, from the huge Curzon Crescent Council Estate in NW London, did things. At the top of the stairs I turned and lashed out my right fist connecting with his jaw and he stumbled all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. One lucky punch finished it and him. He never came back to school. My mother held down 3 jobs to keep my elder sister and me. Our Dad had left when I was 6 months old. I was the only child for miles around to pass the 11+ and get a uniform to go to the Grammar School, One afternoon, walking home from school, ten kids in my road chased me with broom sticks. Fortunately I had a highly strung big dog called Chum, and as I opened the front door, the noise turned Chum into a coiled spring. “Go get em Chum” I said and he bounded down the path jumped the gate hit the kids like a ten pin ball, strike, and as they scattered screaming in disarray . He grabbed Johnny Doyle’s shorts at the rear and ripped them off, bringing the trophy back in his mouth his tail wagging. I did not hear from those kids for 3 years.

1. Today’s working class still knows violence and hatred. It is stirred up by the Daily Express, the Sun, the Daily Mail and GB News. All aspects of media intent on selling advertising so giving stories that they think their readers and viewers want to hear. Hatred is also stirred up by right wing politicians so dividing a nation, to conquer it. 2. Football hooligans are mainly working class. They protect their home turf and when they travel away, they like to leave their calling cards and cause trouble. It is part of the working class make up, their tribalism. They have leaders that they follow and to whom they are extremely loyal to, without question. They love their club , hate the opponents. This hatred has been used over the years to create skin heads, the National Front, UKIP, who attract the anti social behaviour brigade like a magnet. Fascist Political Parties that fan the waves of hate and intolerance. These right wing ideologies also attract members of the armed forces and the police, who also become indoctrinated and surrounded by like minded colleagues. Outsiders are considered a threat, the enemy. Then there are the merchant bankers, the something in the City types who look down their noses at the working class riff raff and again lean heavily to the fascist right of politics for reasons of power, not violence, but they too harbour a hatred, a contempt for others.

3. Brexit appealed to the fascists who are not patriots, they are flag waving nationalists who hate Johnny foreigner. So with this working class, underprivileged background, the Brexiteers were easy fodder for the lies about a better life, sunlit uplands, unicorns, and fairy tales. Even RMT’s union leader Mick Lynch told his members to vote for Brexit, more in protest than in anticipated economic benefit, because they all got the complete opposite of what they wanted. Now the workers still feel under privileged and have no longer got Johnny Foreigner to blame, because they all left via Brexodus. Except the ones that were nothing to do with Europe the ones that came from Caribbean, Africa, Asia, not Europe. However geography is not a fascists strong point. Europe still gets the blame from Brexiteers because now they are no longer a member of the club, but they still want the benefits they had as members.

4. Throughout History, throughout the world, workers have been conned into believing a so called educated elite. Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, Spain, Italy, France, Germany. Usually the intellectuals who are better educated are seen as a threat to power and control and are eliminated early on , mocked and ridiculed “who needs experts we are fed up with experts” “project fear” said Michael Gove during the Leave Campaign 2016.

5. Workers are used to being told what to do by their employers and accepting their lot as wages for their labour. So they are easy prey for being told how to vote by lying Politicians and propaganda media. They become polarised, caught up in a spiral of dishonesty, in the hope they can better themselves.

6. Workers are more worried about their culture being changed by immigrants than about their jobs, but they will blame migrants for taking their jobs as well as part of the hatred indoctrination.

7. Extreme right wing fascist politicians play on these fears and offer workers a better tomorrow. They will tell workers, that all their problems about health, education, transport, infrastructure are because of migrants, whereas the truth is, the problems are because Politicians have failed to invest in public services, so that supply now fails to meet demand. 8. Workers are encouraged to protest vote against opposition parties and less extreme politicians in a drive for “National Socialism” or “Neoliberalism”. The Right wing fascists use misleading names like “Libertarians”, because they believe in small government, no workers' rights, no standards of health, environment, food, plus low taxation, because there are no public services. No liberty for anybody, no right of protest no freedom of movement. 9. Educated Fascists can use persuasive slogans, that appeal to the less educated masses. These slogans are repeated parrot fashion, brow beating the workers into submission, believing the voice knows best. They are indoctrinated and like a robot, question nothing only give praise and salute. This is a human failing since time began. Britain in 2022 is approaching what Nazi Germany was in 1933, and if Liz Truss carries the baton from Boris, Britain will have no unions, and could easily be at war with Europe or Russia or China, to feed the appetite of power and control . It will be the workers sent to the front line to die, not the Politicians.

10. Most working class people are trying, like everyone else, to elevate themselves from lower to middle to upper-middle or upper class. To achieve this goal they seek good jobs, lower taxes, personal possessions. Most workers should be left wing socialists, for the common good and just causes. But, they will be encouraged to buy shares in sold off national assets, buy their council houses and so become part of a wealthy society and they will forget their roots, even disown their roots. They will get in debt to buy a smart car for the driveway and keep up with Jones’s. They will be encouraged into debt and use credit cards so making the bankers richer. The rich don’t have to worry about things because they are rich, and the worker aspires to be the same.

11. And herein lies the problem. The Ministers who purport to speak for “working class” do not in fact speak for these people and never have. From their ivory towers they have no concept of what working class means. Politics is not a straight line left and right, it is a circle. Was there much difference between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia both pretending to be socialist and killing their own kind. Now in Britain after the worse election defeat since 1935, Labour is moving away from socialism under Keir Starmer, who rightly wants to win the next election, but is prepared to sacrifice all principles along the way.

12. So, in todays, Westminster, where can the workers turn to, who wants them, who is prepared to stand up for them. No wonder the red wall reneged on the votes of their fathers and grandfathers and voted for lies. IF the working class finds a candidate that is one of their own, the ruling class springs into action making up a bunch of lies and scary projections, calling them “dangerous” because they don't like their personal style or it could really be anything, because what the ruling class really wants is to pick our leaders for us. The same goes for Experts who are rubbished by the Ruling class as they are a threat to Power and so the lies are told to discredit their expertise.

13.The ruling class desperately wants to redirect working class energies to anti immigrant, anti climate change, anti foreigner, anti gay. This hatred keeps the workers down, isolated in their extremism they have adopted. It is not only a lack of education, but subservient in a belief their lot could be improved, when the reality is that is far from the truth. The ruling class want to rule, they want power and the indoctrinated working class are considered pawns in achieving that power. 14. Conclusion: There are more ordinary folk than rich people. There are more workers than the elite. But that is not reflected at the ballot box. Neoliberalism is an ideology created by extreme right wing nationalist fanatics who want a return to the world of lord of the manor and serfdom. They pretend to be one of the people, but really want to rule over people and not serve in governance, but keep the masses down trodden and silent. They will create wars, division, curtail people’s standards of living and rights, to retain their hold on the nation and it’s people.

BUT………. try telling the working man all that, after all he voted for them, because he believed the deception, hook, line and sinker. Allan Sharpe