Is it wrong to say you agree with
Donald Trump or Nigel Farage? I instinctively hate both of them but have found
that occasionally I find myself guiltily nodding in agreement with them. It’s
usually on the bits where they appeal to the common man, of which I am a proud
member. I know they are bullshitters and don’t mean any of it but I’m not smug
enough to believe that I’m immune to their carrier cries to populism.
My political awakening happened
when I was ten. I spent that long hot summer in England, staying at my aunt’s
house. She was a landlady who owned several rundown Victorian tenement blocks
in the city centre that mainly housed Irish labourers. One Tuesday morning she
brought me into town to buy me my first watch. Needless to say, I set out that
morning with a gay heart. The sun blazed brightly in the sky, the sweet shops
contained exotic delights that weren’t available in my Irish home town and I
was gripping the hand of my kindly aunt who was about to endow me with a
present.
An hour later, I was a bitter and
confused child who had learned that the world was a cruel and unfair place
where the poor were kept in their place.
My aunt had stopped off on the
way to the shops to collect some late rents from her unfortunate tenants. This
involved entering some of the hovels she passed off as attractive residential
properties. I can still remember the
smell. It was a pungent mixture of sweat and urine with an overtone of mould.
My aunt was targeting the tenants who worked the night shift. There were two to
three beds in each room and many of the beds were double booked. The stained
grey sheets would still be warm when the night worker arrived home and the day
shift labourer had left for the day.
She woke a number of these men
and whispered threats of eviction while searching the pockets of the trousers
which were draped across the only chair in the room.
It had a profound effect on me
and I guess in hindsight was my first realisation that the world is split
between those with capital and those in desperate need of a roof over their
head.
When I was twelve, I wrote my
first essay in secondary school. We were allowed to choose our own topic and I
decided to write about the middle east crisis and the nasty treatment that
Israel was imposing on its Palestinian neighbours. My English teacher didn’t
appreciate the sentiment and that was the first challenge I received from the
great unwashed, otherwise known as the right wing.
Later on in secondary school, I
wrote a couple of pieces for the school magazine on the subject of American
Imperialism in Central America and the differences between Socialism and
Communism. My new English teacher was more benign but still left a patronising
comment on my work “He has no heart who is not a Socialist at twenty and no
head who is still one at thirty”.
I remember voting for the Labour
Party not long after my thirtieth birthday and thinking “Fuck You”, although
that language might have just proven him right and that I had no head.
I then spent a year of my late
teens in what turned out to be a Trotskyist party with secret links to the what
was then the Soviet Union.
I went on of course to become an
Accountant and have spent most of my time working for dollar chasing, corrupt
American Banks who would impoverish an entire continent while sipping cocktails
in a posh New York restaurant. But I just saw it as a job and tried to do no
evil. I was even once part of a shadowy group called “Accountants for a Labour
Victory” which campaigned, unsuccessfully, for Neil Kinnock in the UK.
As the years have passed by, I’ve
tended to vote for left wing parties wherever I’ve lived and engaged a lot of
friends in pointless debates on the merits of internationalism or the
corrupting influence of parish pump politics.
But the events of the past year
have shaken my core beliefs. My heart wept when I saw the plight of Syrian
refugees and I instinctively felt like I was privileged to live comfortably in
the West while many in the world need safe refuge because of the actions of the
West. But the Brexit vote and the election of Trump made me realise that
immigration is a double-edged sword. While it gives refuge to those who need
it, it is also used by greedy Capitalists to drive down wages and trample over
the few rights that the working class still have.
I have struggled with this
paradox and it seems I’m not alone. The left is adrift and rudderless in almost
every developed country as it struggles to come up with a saleable message in
this post global meltdown world. And of course, Trump and Farage charged
straight into the vacuum that this created like riders on the four horses of
the apocalypse. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more despairing. For most of my
life, I’ve lived under right wing governments wrapped in an arrogant comfort
blanket on the left. Secure in the knowledge that we had the code to the secret
to human happiness if only the foolish electorate would come to their senses.
And now we have lost that code.
The old politics of trade unionism, community solidarity and the drive for
equality are lost in a fog of globalisation, jihad and austerity. We live in
strange and troubling times, but it’s also Christmas and hope comes with a
January flower.
