Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

14
Now, there is – sad to say – an ugly truth here.
These panics were not wholly unfounded.
Crime was high in the 80s, and football
hooliganism was a genuine problem; Heysel
happened just four years before Hillsborough.
However, a pound of fact became a ton of
moral panic and class hatred.
It’s in this context that we should interpret
the slanders against the Hillsborough
victims by Tories such as Irvine Patnick,
Bernard Ingham and Kelvin Mackenzie.
Their fear and hatred of working people
had reached such feverish heights that they
were prepared to believe them capable of
robbing the dead.
In all these cases, the police were brutal
enforcers of this class-based hatred – and
unlawfully so. After the battle of Stonehenge
in 1985 Wiltshire Police were found guilty of
ABH, false imprisonment and wrongful arrest.
And after Orgreave South Yorkshire Police –
them again – paid £500,000 compensation
for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious
prosecution. As James Doran says:
The British state is not a neutral body
which enforces the rule of law - it is a set
of social relations which uphold the rule
of the capital. Law is a matter of struggle
- ordinary people are automatically
subject to the discipline of the repressive
apparatus of the state.
All this poses a question. Have things really
changed? Of course, the police and Tories
have much better PR than they did then.
But is it really a coincidence that the police
still turn up mob-handed to demos whilst
giving a free ride to corporate crime and
asset stripping? When the cameras are off
and they are behind closed doors, do the
police and Tories retain a vestige of their
1980s attitudes? When Alan Duncan spoke
of those who aren’t rich as “low achievers”,
was that a minority view, or a reminder that
the Tories haven’t really abandoned their
class hatred?
Many younger lefties might have
abandoned class in favour of the politics
of micro-identities. For those of us shaped
by the 80s, however, class matters. And I
suspect this is as true for the Tories as it is
for me.
From the excellent blog:
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.
com/stumbling_and_mumbling/
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER ELEVEN