Friday, 24 June 2022

What the Mick Lynch phenomenon tells us about UK politics and the media



Not so long ago few people outside of the rail industry had even heard of Mick Lynch, but in the space of a week, the head of the RMT union has absolutely taken the UK media by storm by
calmly stating the facts in the face of relentless provocation from members of Britain's depraved media class.


Lynch has been such a success that even liberal dweebs like Gary Lineker have been singing his praises, because in just a few days he's managed to do more to stand up for working people and hold this atrocious Tory government to account, than the Silent Knight Keir Starmer has done in two interminable years.

This fascination with Mick Lynch is easy to understand, because we live in a country where left-wing and working class voices are routinely marginalised. 

The media, politics, and the whole rotten establishment is absolutely stuffed with people from privileged backgrounds. And it's absolutely obvious that most of the tiny minority of working class people who did ever get anywhere near the top, knew that they needed to demonstrate conformity to the establishment ideology to get where they were.

And just look at the absolute state of the Labour Party, which was founded to represent the interests of ordinary working people in parliament, yet all but a few of its MPs are anti-socialist,
 "more of the same" liberal-capitalists from comfortably wealthy backgrounds, not real workers and real socialists from working class families.

For a few years Labour had a party leader who wanted to bring more local, working-class, and genuinely socialist people back into the PLP, but the liberal dweebs had a four and a half year tantrum aimed at keeping the Tories in power until Corbyn could be driven out and replaced by someone who would deliver what they wanted; marginalisation of the left and the relentless rigging of internal party elections and nomination processes to parachute in ever more of these turgid, uninspiring middle class yes men.

The liberal dweebs got exactly what they wanted, yet now they're looking at Mick Lynch's brand of passionate, informed, and authentic politics with envy, and wondering why the bland, unprincipled, triangulating liberal mess they've made of the Labour Party is so utterly incapable of generating the same kind of popular appeal!

Imagine how different things would be if the BBC actually committed to its so-called neutrality by balancing every politician from a posh background with a working class voice, and by balancing every capitalist mouthpiece with an alternative view (socialism, anarchism, trade-unionism, left-libertarianism, communism, anti-capitalism, syndicalism, green-left ...).

But we all know the BBC commitment to neutrality only extends to countering evidence based stuff like climate science with some slimy mercenary creep from an oil industry bankrolled radical-right think tank, and never to balanced class representation in the media; ensuring trade unionists get equal airtime to capitalists; or highlighting actual alternatives to the ruinous hard-right capitalist orthodoxy Britain's been trapped in since 1979.

It's in this context that Lynch has, in the space of a few days, made Kay Burley, Richard Madeley, and Piers Morgan look like the vapid hyper-partisan fools they are, which makes for incredibly viral content, but you'd have to be profoundly naive to not see that he's playing a very dangerous game.

There are an awful lot of people in Britain who absolutely hate to see uppity working class people making their social superiors look stupid and venal by calmly stating facts at them, not least Britain's depraved punditocracy themselves.

And the media class motivation to take Lynch down keeps on multiplying. There's their underlying hostility to left-wing and working class voices; the class solidarity amongst the pundit class is making them furious that he's repeatedly making their compatriots look foolish; and there's now the self-interested desire to go viral by being the first media figure to finally take this 'uppity pleb' down a peg or two.

They're behaving like a swarm of bees trying to eject an intruder from the hive, and they're doing it right in front of our faces.

This relentless bias against left-wing and working class voices means we've all just become normalised to the idea that it's generally only posh capitalists who participate in politics, or talk about politics in the media.

But in reality there are hundreds of thousands of educated, informed, genuinely left-wing, politically active working-class people like Mick Lynch in Britain, it's just that the establishment gatekeepers don't want people like us in the media, or anywhere near the corridors of power.

The fact that Lynch is being portrayed as some kind of strange and exciting novelty by all and sundry speaks volumes about the under-representation of working class voices in British political discourse.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. Access to my online writing will always remain free. If you see some value in what I do, please consider supporting my work with a small donation/subscription.



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25 comments:

Adam said...

Well said!! An excellent read. From a working class, left wing Yorkshire man 👍

Anonymous said...

Well stated mick lynch is a working class hero.
From james dyer

Anonymous said...

Absolutely bang on!!

Exiled in Ard Mhaca said...

Take no crap from them Mick. More power to your elbow.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant piece of informed journalism, well done sir💯👏👏👏

MR MARTIN THOMPSON said...

I watched the interview with Kay Burley a couple of day's ago, I found it profoundly funny. She was completely out of her depth like a fish out of water. She obviously is not used to being confronted by simple truths and honesty. She was totally side lined.

Steve W said...

A good analysis but the adoption of the epithet "dweeb" is ill advised. It is a US word used mainly in schools and by young adults generally to insult studious, academic people who are not part of a popular, trendy in-group. Centrists and liberals may well be academic and definitely are part of a trendy in-group.

Gary Lineker is obviously a liberal and politically naive but clearly tries to "do the right thing" as he understands it and cannot honestly be said to have "had a four and a half year tantrum aimed at keeping the Tories in power until Corbyn could be driven out". Jeremy Corbyn clearly understands this: when Lineker stood up for refugees Corbyn was astute enough to say "I admire Gary Lineker... for showing Britain at its best: compassionate, welcoming, and standing up to fear and division"

Pamela Sloan said...

Re the media: an example of the bias in favour of the bosses and the side-lining of the workers is presence the long running BBC Radio 4 programme, " In business" with a total absence of an equivalent programme about the experiences of workers.

Anonymous said...

[This is Mr. Magoo posting anonymously because I'm using different computer and can't log into my account]

TRADE UNIONS

Foreword

This pamphlet is directed to all workers-unionists and non-unionists alike. Membership of a trade union does not determine whether or not you are a member of the working class. Workers are an economic unit, because they work for a wage or salary. They are compelled to sell their mental and physical energies and in the process are exploited, inasmuch that they produce a greater amount of wealth than they receive. Our analysis of trade unions, and the position of the workers in the capitalist system, is based upon this theory which is dealt with in detail in Chapter Eight.

Preface

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has a distinctive view of the problems facing the unions. It is that-necessary as they are to prevent employers depressing wages excessively-the unions are strictly limited in what they can achieve for their members within the capitalist system of society out of which unions arise and within which they operate.

Capitalist private companies and State-capitalist nationalised industries are both operated for the purpose of making a profit and they cannot long survive without it. Trade unions cannot push wages up to a level which prevents profits being made. When companies are marketing their products profitably a union can hope to win concessions by threatening to halt production and interrupt the flow of profits. But against a firm nearing bankruptcy, or during a depression when firms generally are curtailing production, standing workers off or closing down whole factories, the strike is a blunted weapon.

Trade unions, fighting the same old battles over and over again, offer no way out of the dead-end of capitalism. There is nothing the unions can do which will substantially alter the way capitalism works.

However, there is a solution, the one for which the Socialist Party of Great Britain is organised. It is the replacement of capitalism by Socialism-which, it must be emphasised, has nothing to do with nationalisation or with having capitalism run by a Labour government.

Only Socialism will free the working class from the problems which flow from capitalism-including war, exploitation, poverty, unemployment and bad housing.

The purpose of this pamphlet is to show the limitations of trade unions and why the establishment of Socialism-an aim far beyond the horizons of the unions-calls for the understanding and support of all workers.

Executive Committee
Socialist Party of Great Britain
April 1980

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/trade-unions/

Matthew S. said...

This article from 99 years ago could have been written today.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2021/04/be-self-reliant-1923.html?fbclid=IwAR2t1yhAIKH_CRRLCOwcoGn0-6Wifnr-S6G7zUMbPX6RBcgiHiZJVoUpbYM

Vivien Markham said...

The capitalist system works as long as there are working class people doing jobs which pay poverty wages. They are ignored because they do useful jobs ie refuse collectors local council workers, carers looking after the disabled and elderly. Nurses and medical staff and teachers are supposed to not mind being low paid because of their vocation to society and considered vulgar to ask for a pay rise part of a group the government takes advantage of.

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