REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY NOVEMBER 8TH

I’ve put this post up for the last two years – but once again having seen not one poppy wearer at the Anarchist Bookfair I think it’s worth repeating. Are we out of sympathywith the common culture of our country comrades? Anyone drink down the  Legion? We are not ‘ALL PALESTINIANS’ for fuck sake! The new Black Flag contains an article by Manchester No Borders crtical of my enthusiasm for Frank Newbould’s wartime propaganda poster ‘ Our England – Let’s fight for it’ – presumably it should have read ‘Our England – lets  throw the towel in to the Nazis – thank god we got rid of borders by concreting in the Channel’

Another of Newbould’s brilliant  wartime posters – it don’t exactly look like the Toff’s Britain he’s assking us to fight for?

Here’s a post on POPPY WEARING I put up last year – but it bears repeating I think:

Wearing poppies this year then?

Despite its annual proximity to Remembrance Sunday I can never recall seeing anyone at the Anarchist Bookfair wearing a poppy. Maybe this year – as the outporing – indeed out of the closet – support for our WW2 fighters on the previous post demonstrates – some poppy wearers might be a first step before we contemplate a wreath laying at local war memorials or the Cenotaph. Certainly anything at the Cenotaph ought to be heartfelt and low key……..but we really ought to be reclaiming the day from Royals and Party leaders.It was our fucking class that won the war – maybe at long last we can show some pride in it. I did wear a poppy last year on the Notting HilL BTR march and there was a furious response on the Libcom Forum from one indivdual like it was the sell out of a lifetime!!

It may be that after all it wasn’t  my generation of  1968 that were the true radicals but our boring old mums and dads in their stuffy clothes and values that were the truly radical generation – fighting the war, bringing in the Labour landslide of 45, voting in Communists, ILP ers and the almost anarcho-utopian Commonweal party in the war. As always Orwell summed up the Left’s problem with patriotism  and derided how out of touch with our people they were.  Orwell said it was the upper class and the working class who valued physical courage and bravery – the middle class sneered and mocked it…….check out how that pans out in our movement  now comrades.For Orwell in 1940 that meant dismissing the leftie pacifists and turning the forerunner of the Home Guard into a revolutionary fighting force. He even imported Spanish anarchists to teach petrolbomb throwing in sedate OSterley Park! We need a similar sea change in our attitde to our Englishness and our recent history.

Seeing Michael Vaughan’s tearful exit from being England’s cricket captain – stress mate stress – recall’s Australian cricketer Keith Miller’s response when asked if he got stressed in a test match. Miller had been a fighter pilot in the war……….’LISTEN MATE – A MESSERSCHMITT UP YOUR ARSE IS STRESS – THIS IS JUST A FUCKING GAME’+

HOWZAT! Miller takes  out Nazi’s middle stump!

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