The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria earlier this month was greeted with celebrations across a country fractured by 13 years of civil war. The Assad family had ruled over Syria with an iron fist for over half a century, with long-documented reports of mass incarceration, torture, extra-judicial killings and atrocities against their own people.

There were celebrations, too in Hastings, where a small group of Syrian refugees who escaped from the conflict now call home.

Abdul Salam Youssfan and his wife, who own the popular Daydream Café on Robertson Street, fled from their home in the bombed-out city of Hama in 2011. Qamar was pregnant with her second child at the time when they made their way by motorcycle to the then safe haven of Lebanon. Yazan was born in Damascus before they continued their escape from their homeland.

When they finally crossed the border into Lebanon, they were homeless, nearly penniless and wearing only the clothes on their backs. They registered with UNICEF as refugees, along with thousands of others, and waited.

After five years, and the birth of their third child, Sulaf, they got a call from the UN Refugee Agency to be told they were going to the UK as part of the Resettlement Programme, set up by the then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015 to offer a safe haven to 20,000 vulnerable Syrians.

The family travelled to Beirut for medical and background checks by British authorities and after three months of waiting they boarded a plane for the UK, a place they had never even heard of. 

They arrived in Britain just before Christmas in 2016. They spoke no English, and the weather was “damp and very cold.” Crucially, however, they felt safe and welcome in their new home, in Herstmonceux. They soon made friends and attended Eastbourne College to learn the language. Abdul Salam volunteered in a charity shop and trained with Mencap as a support worker for people with learning difficulties.

Their family increased again with the birth of daughter Baraah in 2018, and all four children now attend local schools and regard England as home. However, Abdul Salam, who was a successful clothing designer and merchant in Syria, and his wife Qamar, still regard Syria as their home.

Abdul Salam is hopeful for the future of his country, but acknowledges that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the organisation which stormed into Damascus, has a complicated past and offers an unpredictable future. He says whilst he would like to return to Hama to rebuild his clothing business, he feels things are currently too uncertain.

He has not lost his entrepreneurial spirit and earlier this year he turned his hands to running the Daydream Café, which serves a classic breakfast and lunch menu with a distinctly Syrian twist. It has proved to be very popular, offering good food, a cosy atmosphere and staff who are friendly and kind.

Abdul Salam and Qamar say they are “so grateful” to the British people for taking in their family eight years ago. “They gave us hope when we had none. Our children are safe, and they can look forward to a brighter future. This Christmas we want the same for everyone back home in Syria.”

Simon Finlay, Project Co-ordinator of the Syrian Resettlement Programme at Hastings Borough Council, seems a happy man these days. He has spent half a lifetime working for organisations that have endeavoured, on a shoestring, to assist refugees to negotiate the tortuous and frustrating process of gaining asylum in the UK through a bureaucratic system designed to make life hard for them. But since 2016 he has been directing a refugee project which is well-funded and designed to succeed – all the more so in Hastings, he says, being the parliamentary constituency of the Home Secretary who set it up: a certain Amber Rudd MP.

It was David Cameron who in 2015 pledged to welcome to Britain 20,000 refugees from camps on the borders of Syria over a five-year period, offering them immediate rights to welfare benefits but also the right to work and receive appropriate education. Many liberal critics have complained, both at the time and subsequently, that this was a shamefully low figure in proportion to the total numbers of war-fleeing refugees. But to the credit of those implementing the policy, a proper level of funding (raised from the budget of the Department for International Development, not from cash-strapped local authorities) is, according to Simon, enabling a good service to be delivered to those that are selected to come.

The deal is as follows. Simon seeks properties offered for let by private landlords in the local area – not confined to Hastings and St Leonards, at least one of them is in Herstmonceaux – where the letting is likely to be available relatively longterm. Social landlords are excluded. He assesses each in terms of geographical location – is it urban or rural, is there a serviceable bus route, does it have access to health and education facilities; and physical condition – is it in good repair, how many bedrooms, is it suitable for the physically disabled – and sends his report in. Then he waits for the UNHCR (the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to select an appropriate family from one of the refugee camps to which Syrians have fled – could be from Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya or Iraq. 

The UNHCR is supposed to select on grounds of vulnerability. But, in circumstances where everyone has lost their homes and their livelihoods, most have suffered bereavements of one kind or another, many have suffered torture or other severe physical injury and may have been waiting in camps for five years or more, it is probably difficult to assess one set of needs against another. The important task is to identify a family whose future needs will match the property on offer. I ask Simon how many selections he has turned down or found inappropriate. “None”, he says, “I’ve taken them all”.

His next task is to ensure that the families not only take up the housing offered but also receive, as soon as practicable, other ‘statutory’ services: English language tuition, schooling for children, establishment of benefits provision (Universal Credit if they are within Hastings borough) and access to health provision, including mental health counselling where their previous experiences have caused breakdown or other trauma. They get a minimum of eight hours per week language tuition at East Sussex College, and school enrolment has not been a problem. But Simon says he has to “manage expectations” in respect of health services: the system in Syria may have been less universal but those who were accustomed to getting what they needed there (prior to the war, at least) seem surprised by the waiting lists and other rationed provision they now experience in the hands of the NHS.

Equally important, from Simon’s point of view, is the integration process, the ‘soft’ inputs which the families need to rebuild their lives. He has high praise for the buddy hub being administered by Rossana Leal at Open on St Leonards seafront, where refugees can find a sociable space and make English language contacts. But he also describes the town and surroundings of Hastings as being “universally welcoming” to the families who have arrived, with none of the displays of xenophobia or other hostility reported (or sometimes just imagined) elsewhere in the country. “There are no issues”, he says. “It’s working brilliantly”.

In five out of the 20 refugee families, at least one member has so far found a job, appropriate, says Simon, to his or her qualifications and attributes. People who have the skills that once maintained a professional career should not be required to work as potato-pickers in his view.

What are the longer-term prospects? Most say they once enjoyed a pretty good life in Syria and hope to go back there if and when the military and political conditions allow it. In the meantime, most will be hoping to contribute positively to the society they find themselves exiled in. 

And what about the future of the scheme itself? The border camps are still full; the war grinds on. Will the UK agree to take more needy families after May 2020? That should be an urgent item on the incoming Prime Minister’s agenda.  

In September 2015, the then Prime Minister David Cameron pledged that the UK would welcome 20,000 refugees from camps on the borders of Syria over the next five years. The Syrian Resettlement Programme was the result of this pledge, and involved a negotiation between national and local authorities within Britain as to how and where this influx should be housed and supported.  Between 200 and 260 refugees were allocated to East Sussex. Eastbourne, Lewes, Wealden and Rother initially agreed to resettle 40 households each. Hastings Borough Council offered homes to a total of 100 households over a five-year period. Four years on, only 20 seem to have arrived so far, but it’s a start.

The systems set up for selection of these refugees from within the camps, and for transporting them into the country and then dispersing them within it, give the Home Office a strong level of control. Those that arrive under this programme will have been identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as the most vulnerable, whether by reason of their recent history  –  in most cases fleeing from a war zone with the loss of all material possessions, if not worse  – or of other disabilities. Their back stories will have been checked out.  The Home Office will know who they are (or think it does). 

And, in turn, the deal offered to them is comparatively liberal. They can expect to receive positive assistance to learn English, they are likely to be funded in respect of the cost of any appropriate studies they choose to undertake, they are also entitled to take paid employment.

The Hastings Buddy Project, devised by Rossana Leal and celebrating its Open Day last week (see below), is aimed squarely at this cohort of refugees. 

But the nature of asylum seeking tends generally to be rather messier. For every refugee who flies in with his or her papers already approved by, or on behalf of, UK authorities to give immediate status to work and study, there are a lot more who have come either hidden in the back of a lorry or with a tourist visa that will be effectively torn up on entry. UK law recognises that a significant percentage of such people will have a genuine claim for asylum notwithstanding their clandestine mode of entry. But the Home Office makes no bones of its reluctance to provide a similarly liberal regime for this class. The fear is that any such liberalisation would encourage a limitless flood of would-be migrants. The clear intention is to maintain a harsh regime that deters all but the most desperate and determined. 

Two current residents of Hastings, who prefer not to be identified, but whom we have called A and B, tell their stories opposite. One has made it through the system after three years of struggle. The other remains in limbo. 

A is from a country in Latin America. He and his family (wife and two school-age daughters) applied for asylum on entering Britain in February 2018. They have been living in Hastings since June 2018.

“When we arrived we were processed by the Home Office in Croydon and sent to Cardiff. My wife and I were not allowed to work. She was able to enrol in basic English language classes, as her knowledge of English was very limited. My English was already fluent, so there was no point in me doing so.

I had qualifications in my own country as a paramedic and also as a teacher, besides having played a lead role in regional politics that led to my seeking asylum. However, I can’t demonstrate my skills by reference to any paperwork.

In Cardiff we were aided by an organisation called Oasis who ran theatre and dance sessions in which we participated enthusiastically. They showed me what kindness is. We put on a musical theatre performance for refugees. By that time (after four months) we had been required to re-locate to Hastings – the Welsh Refugee Council paid our fares to return to Cardiff to perform.

The re-location to Hastings in June 2018 came as a bitter blow to us, since we felt really well integrated into local life in Cardiff. My elder daughter became extremely depressed and would not leave the house we had been moved to for most of the summer months. However, both daughters were enrolled in local schools from September onwards, and they have each been doing very well there. My wife has resumed English language classes at East Sussex College, and I found that Refugee Aid would pay for me to undertake some studies too. The only course offered to me at ESC that I could start without proving qualifications was a Level 2 diploma course in catering and cooking – so I did that and enjoyed it. I would like to move on to Level 3 in September.

Life without work has been really tough. It is not just the money, it is the sense of feeling useful, of providing for yourself and your family. I had always been able to do that, and it makes me feel crippled that I am not allowed to do so here. I understand that some employers might take advantage of asylum seekers if they were allowed to work.  I also agree that it is vital that refugees arriving in Britain learn to speak English. But my English was already good enough to work with, and I could have made a real contribution straightaway.”

B is Eritrean. He applied for asylum upon entering Britain in May 2015, but had his initial application refused. After a tortuous appeal process he was eventually granted full refugee status in November 2017. Work and study restrictions were finally lifted. B has lived in the Hastings area since the summer of 2015.

“Throughout the first three years of my residence in Britain I was given hostel accommodation and an allowance of £35.95 per week (£5.14 per day). I could not work; the only study course I could attend without paying fees was in basic English. and I was told that my English was too good for that.

The lack of money wasn’t too dispiriting. You can live on £5 a day if you cook food and share it. What I found almost unbearable was not being allowed to work. It was like a torture waiting week after week, month after month, for something to happen. 

But I was helped by the charity Horizon, who paid for me to study (and pass) GCSE exams in maths and English. That was two full days a week. On another day I worked as a volunteer at the Links Project at Concordia Hall, helping other refugees – my knowledge of English language was a big advantage. That still left four days empty.

Since I gained status last year, I have been able to fulfil my
aims of working and studying to qualify as a maths teacher. The work has been basic – currently I am serving at a petrol station. But I joined a teaching foundation course at East Sussex College for 2018/19, I will graduate with a diploma next month, and I am applying to various universities to start a full two-year course from September.

In my view the ban on asylum seekers working is inhuman. Everyone needs to work. But it also stops people learning English and therefore integrating. The refugees I know who are able to go out to work learn quickly – much quicker than those who study at college but spend the rest of their time alone or speaking their own language.”  

Refugee Numbers
Correction 26th July 2019

In the above article we stated that under the Syrian Resettlement Programme Hastings Borough Council (HBC) had offered housing for a total of 100 refugee households over a five year period, whilst Eastbourne, Lewes, Wealden and Rother district councils had each offered housing for 40. These figures should have referred to individual refugees, not households. In fact, the 20 families which have so far arrived and been housed by HBC constitute 93 individuals, only seven short of its target figure. Simon Finlay says that, by the end of the five-year period of the council’s commitment, expiring in May next year, it is likely to slightly exceed this100-individual target.

(Image by Catrin Austin)

As tensions run unusual high in the political climate all sides are scrambling to prepare for a general election that could come as early as 13th October. With the markets in shock, the leaders of both main parties temporarily out of action, Scotland and Ireland looking to hold independence referendums, and until recently laughable xenophobes jostling for position, the possibility of a Little England run by a team of quasi-fascist Blairites is upon us. Store tinned goods and bottled water.

Following the 52-48% vote to Leave the European Union, David Cameron has resigned. He had already declared intentions to resign this year and after identifying himself as a front runner in the Remain campaign the result presented a good opportunity to withdraw. Cameron’s exit leaves open a new government cabinet that will likely feature some of the more prominent Brexiteers, including Michael Gove, Priti Patel, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Ian Duncan Smith, and my tip for next Prime Minister, Stephan Crab. Whoever takes the top job has to take responsibility for taking the UK out of the EU, so it has become a bit of a poisoned chalice, whoever takes the top job has to plunge the country into economic and social instability, at least for a while, as their first act. This is David Cameron’s smirking revenge.

The pound and stocks are getting battered again by #Brexit https://t.co/OObo3wswjf pic.twitter.com/Fl0IAm9q4J

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 27, 2016

Hastings and Rye MP Amber Rudd is rumoured to be running for leadership but may regret her comments about Boris Johnson as part of her Remain stance, she said of him, “Boris is the life and soul of the party. But he isn’t the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening!” In terms of power plays within the Conservative Party, she picked the wrong team.

A petition quickly emerged – now signed by more than 4 million people – calling for a second referendum, this turned out to be created by a Leave voter who expected a Remain victory. 

There was the inevitable attempt from within the Labour Party to blame Jeremy Corbyn for the voting choices of 10M people. Within a day of the result being declared a vote of no-confidence was called by two MPs, Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey, supported in the media with a roll-call of the usual Blairites that are wheeled out to do their best to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, the party, and themselves whenever the opportunity presents itself. Hilary Benn tried to turn the Shadow Cabinet against Corbyn and was summarily fired, leading to a group of resignation threats from the Shadow Cabinet, so far 28 MPs have been identified as part of a coup. The no-confidence motion was passed and there will be another Labour Party leadership election. It has been suggested that this coup has been deliberately orchestrated by The Fabien Society to coincide with the release of the Chilcot report which is due to be released in mid July, which for many is a travesty of justice, because Jeremy Corbyn is expected to be one of the strongest voices in holding Tony Blair to account for the Iraq War, for others this was cynically predictable.

Jeremy Corbyn is still extremely popular among the membership and unions. Dianne Abbot, a long standing Corbyn ally, welcomed a leadership election because it would prove his popularity, and called out those involved in the coup for putting their own agenda before the needs of the membership and the country. In response to the coup Corbyn gave a statement calling for unity and appointed the most diverse Shadow Cabinet ever, many with ‘real life’ experience working in their respective departments.

The right wing of the Labour Party have missed out on the nuance in these referendum results, responding to it by blaming Jeremy Corbyn for not correctly instructing Labour voters how to vote. Their assertion assumes that voters somehow got it wrong, that their experience is invalid, and that it is up to leaders to correctly instruct them. Treating the electorate as if they should be told how to vote is precisely the political elitism that this result is a rebellion against.

Labour need to respect the result of the referendum and the mandate that their membership gives Jeremy Corbyn. To do otherwise is to insult the public. If Labour could learn anything from this referendum it is that respect and empowerment go a long way with the electorate, even more important, it would seem, than the economy. That’s why the Corbyn and Leave campaigns did so well. Jeremy Corbyn’s election to Labour leader and the Leave campaign made people feel as if ‘we were taking back control of our country/party’. Leave related to and empowered people. 

There were lots of data to suggest that reasons to vote were influenced by age, education, location, social identity rather than economic class, and racism. The typical Leave voter being older, in rural or post-industrial settings, with less education, from a socially conservative background, with fewer opportunities and a propensity to intolerance of other ethnicity and cultures.

There was pretty clear evidence that older voters voted to Leave and younger voters voted to Remain proportionally. The younger generation are pretty frustrated by this, it raises issues of inter-generational justice, younger people tend to vote in smaller numbers, but a highly motivated minority of politically educated young people will be aware that the older generation grew up with: more jobs, more housing, free university education, and a fully funded NHS. In maturity this generation voted for overwhelmingly for policies to cut all of these things to protect their gold plated pensions. 

They called us #Leave supporters “Uneducated”
” Stupid”
” Racist”
” Fools”
If wanting change makes me all of the above then so be it ?? #Out

— A.Brooks (@EssexPR) June 23, 2016

The Remain campaign treated anybody who had concerns about the free movement of people like racist idiots who needed to be told what was best for them. In response to this Leave voters defied the perceived establishment intelligentsia elite. The Remain rhetoric was a rebellion, actively garnering an anti-intellectualism vote, in spite of and perhaps because of UKIP supporters’ stereotype of being unintelligent. If this was a motivating factor for you then the referendum was a collective IQ test, one that we failed, perhaps on purpose, but still failed. 

There were clear geographical trends. Those deprived areas in receipt of the most funding from the EU voted most strongly to leave, e.g. Cornwall and Wales – Hastings is a prime example, receiving £9M in funding from the EU, but voting to leave by a margin of 55-45%. The geographical mapping of the Leave vote coincided almost perfectly with the socially conservative vote of deprived post-industrial areas of the 70’s with low ethnic diversity – it is a rejection of a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural vision of England. 

Part of this election result was about taking back our country. It was about giving the establishment a good kicking. In this sense, it was about pride and about control. That word more than any other: control. It works both on a collective political level of sovereignty, in terms of defying Brussels, and on the individual psychological anti-political level of defying the smug British political elite, who overwhelmingly backed Remain. People want to feel in control. People want to do something, anything, in a world devoid of political autonomy. The actual consequences of a Brexit were so obscured that for many it was a choice of: Remain, do nothing, stick to the status quo, because they want you to; or, Leave, do something, jump into the dark, because you can.

There is sadly a worrying rise in English nationalism. Whereas this is not inherently dangerous the identity as English rather than British is a very confused identity with a very strong idea about ‘them’, and a very muddled idea about ‘us’.

There were many different reasons for voting Leave, each section of the Leave debate has taken the result as a 52% endorsement of their particular angle. Including the racist vote. Which means the extreme groups such as Britain First and the National Front falsely believe that the majority of the country is behind them. Moderates failed to challenge or create an effective counter-narrative alleviating concerns about competition for work from the free movement of European citizens and in that void, racist media, the Leave campaign and the same powerful elites, that they were pretending to oppose, insidiously fueled the rise of fascism. Deflating economies historically give rise to fascism and this debate has tragically been marred by fascist terrorism. This is the enduring shame of the Leave campaign. The murder of Jo Cox and a spike in racist/xenophobic attacks and abuse since the referendum campaign raise issues that must be met head on. Whether in or out of Europe, racism and fascism should never be tolerated. Whenever encountered in Britain we must act quickly to stamp it out. Mutual respect for each other is our only way forward.

In response to the referendum result many liberals and leftists are trying to consolidate a broad coalition, locally and nationally, between, The Labour Party, SNP, Green Party, Liberal Democrats, unions, activists, and the general public, in order to: protect workers’ rights, environmental safeguards, living standards, education and the NHS. The fear being that Conservatives will use this as an opportunity to rewrite British law. Now that we have ‘taken back our country’ a battle has begun to determine the nature of it. If this movement is to be successful it needs to use the same rebellious terms that were successful in the referendum: Creating a narrative of pride, of control and self-determination.

What is needed now is to learn from this rejection of the old divides of left and right and the modern PR mold of a politician with more spin than bottle. We need to teach people about the proud history of British protest. We need to run events with Union Jack bunting, free tea and cake sales where we invite people from all backgrounds to talks about the peasants revolt, the Levellers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the suffragettes, the abolition movement, and gay pride. We must show that British socialists are proud of British institutions and through nationalisation we want to people to take back control of our water companies, our Royal Mail, British Rail, and the NHS. 

What we need is a leader that relates to both progressives and social conservatives, someone who is a bit older, someone who fights for the disenfranchised rather than blaming immigrants, someone who was not too much of a zealot about the divisive EU referendum, someone who speaks in a way that is honest, simple and kind. 

The time has come to deselect Labour MPs that betray their membership. The time has come to take back our Corbyn. 

I will update this article as various power struggles play themselves out…

Tax avoidance is legal.

Google “offshore investment” and the results are a ‘how to’ of investing: ‘you don’t have to be a millionaire to be treated like one’ as one site states…this is the problem. We yearn for wealth and we have a culture and system that rewards it, despite what Sir Ian Duncan might say. The trouble is that massive wealth accumulation by individuals is at the expense of those who will never be anywhere near the same position financially (unless they win the Euromillions) or at worst are barely surviving under the current paradigm due to supposed austerity.

The loopholes that have been legislated for during a long history of treaties and laws are the basis of the complex transnational system of financial secrecy that makes this kind of activity legit. The release of the Panama Papers highlights this but mainstream media has taken to pointing fingers at individuals, a tactic which simply provides fodder for forthcoming satirical youtube remixes but will do little but preach to the converted.

Sure it’s great to see David Cameron on the back foot when confronted with details of his inheritance from his father, but this is old news. Of course, it is two-faced when in 2012 during UK’s presidency of the G8 Cameron committed to deal with this very issue while the Tory government continues to support tax avoidance as part of the neoliberal rollout, but the media has failed to focus on the problem which are the laws that encourage this unethical financial behaviour.

To link it to the local context, the ownership of Hastings Pier was transferred to Panama based company Ravenclaw Investments Incorporated to avoid any liability, thus causing massive delays in the rebuild by being uncontactable, resulting in the sale of the pier forced by court order. This is just one example where the loopholes available to avoid responsibility has damaged our local community. But it’s all legal.

This week Caroline Lucas has tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament “calling for the network of destructive tax havens to be shut down. The EDM [1336] follows the leak of 11.5 million files from one of the world’s largest offshore law firms….calls on the Government to immediately force full transparency by insisting that the UK’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies adopt public registers of beneficial ownership in line with the UK’s register; calls on the Prime Minister to reassure UK taxpayers by listing all the investments he has held since first elected as an hon. Member; and calls on the Government to use the International Anti-Corruption Summit in May to persuade other countries to adopt public registers of beneficial ownership…”

This is not a matter of diplomacy. The UK government, regardless of its leadership, has failed to simply legislate to change the laws which allow British Territories to be used as offshore tax havens – yes it is that simple (the UK can pass laws in those territories over which Westminster has jurisdiction, abolishing the death penalty in the BOT in 1991 and the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in the Cayman Islands in 2000 for example).  The problem is there has been no political inclination to do so. In fact for Cameron it is preferable to hang his head in guilty shame and admit personal fault for taking daddy’s money because this deflects from any accountability as Prime Minister of the largest tax avoiding country in the EU, with the City of London historically embedded in the system. 

To avoid this getting swept under the rather lumpy carpet of political scandals, demand for systems of banking and finance as if society matters would need to increase exponentially – imagine a world if corporations and the 1% were not allowed to hide their wealth.  

The episode reminded me of attending a friend’s wedding several years ago in a small, idyllic church located in the Cornish countryside, where I suddenly and unexpectedly, found myself being directed, with the other guests, to recite aloud psalms and prayers; “We ask this through Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

I was quite taken aback having not been to a church wedding in years, and as an agnostic bordering on atheist, I had to look around to see if I was the only person not reciting these odes on principle knowing full well I wasn’t the only non-believer in the congregation.  It did appear that I was alone in my little act of rebellion.

For Corbyn, a politician behaving as someone with principles, shock horror, to have sung God Save the Queen (not the Sex Pistol’s version), an anthem born solely to uphold an archaic class system, would  have been capricious at best, having publicly celebrated his Labour leadership victory with a rendition of the socialist anthem, The Red Flag two days earlier.

Yet, last week the media set their sights on taking him down for this apparent slight to Queen and country. Meanwhile, in parliament, MPs voted to reduce tax credits up to £1000 a year for 3 million working families which seemed to go unreported that morning. This perverse spin tactic, presumably advocated by old ‘New Labour’, the Conservatives, and an unsurprisingly complicit media, should raise our awareness not to Corbyn’s lack of love for his country (clearly inaccurate), but to the public school bullyish culture that oppresses democracy in England (and this all before #piggate but after the Westminster paedophile rings have come to light).

Histrionic parliamentary debates create diversions from underlying agendas and the lining of pockets, spun while MPs bugger the British people over. Within hours of being elected leader, the bullies gathered together, led by David Cameron, in the playground, jostling about, finger pointing and calling Corbyn a “threat to national security”. An anonymous senior serving General has, in The Sunday Times this week, basically threatened a coup and stated that the military will deal with Corbyn if he were to become PM in 2020 by “whatever means possible, fair or foul ” if there are any moves to downsize the armed force or scrap Trident. Immediately images of weapons expert David Kelly and former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook flash through my mind. If this public school boy bullying isn’t the behaviour of a ‘fascist regime’ I don’t know what is. What’s more disturbing is the pre-existing general public passivity that creates the space for the intimidation and abuse, which is accompanied by the acceptance of the language and ceremony, in my case psalms, in Corbyn’s case the anthem, of the current paradigm.

There was no media coverage deriding my own silent, self empowering stance at that wedding and I’m quite certain none of the congregation noticed, but then I am not, as an individual, a threat to the status quo. Or am I? If we accept the Orwellian notion of thought corruption through language “from the gentlemen’s clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains”, we can equally reverse this as Slavoj Žižek puts it, “words are never ‘only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.” It seems a new song is long overdue to vanquish the antagonists and I’d be inclined to knock down the public schools and plant allotments to replace the playgrounds while we’re at it.