New Year Post

A complete version of this post is available on The Thursday Briefing, including exciting economic indicators.

I guess this is how traditions are established: one is a one-off, two is a repeat, but more than three is a tradition. So, welcome to my fourth annual New Year post. I think it was at the start of 2008 that I first noted the financial turmoil, which makes it nice to see that as 2010 looms over us, the coming year might end in a rosier state than it starts.

Still, there is more to hope for next year than simply the alleviation of economic problems. Something that marked 2009 with a great big grimy smudge was the success had by the far-right, especially the British National Party in the North West and Yorkshire, where the good Lancastrians and Yorkshire-folk are now represented in the European Parliament by fascist MEPs. The problem though, is not that people are thinking horrible things about anyone who is a little bit different, but that they have little alternative but to think that. I firmly hold the opinion that the vast majority of the BNP’s voters are not nasty people, but simply forgotten people. Every major political party has neglected these constituents, and every major political party has been on the back foot in the debates on the far-right’s core issues.

I’m not just talking about immigration and racism, the BNP, with its new, clean image (laugh if you want, but not everyone is a liberal lefty with a built-in disgust of the BNP), champions a distortion of traditional values and morals that are just similar enough in image, though little else, to the traditional values that used to form part of British society in the ‘50s. Guess where the political mainstream is (and I include the green movement in this)? Nowhere is the answer; Mr Cameron might make some inconsequential moves to offer financial incentives to getting married, and Mr Brown and Lord Mandelson might talk about Britishness in a few speeches, but the debate on values, morality, and the question of what it means to be from Britain has been firmly grasped by the likes of Mr Griffin.

Morality has, of course, traditionally been the realm of the Church. I think the best way to describe my attitude to religion would be “actively agnostic”: I don’t currently believe in any particular god or religious structure, and I don’t think it is really possible to prove the existence of God, or even of gods, but I would never say for definite that these things cannot exist; I might one day be struck with a spiritual revelation, leading to a belief of the religious kind, so it would be foolish to keep a closed mind. The advantage of this convenient fudge is that I can do stuff that atheist can’t do, while not feeling guilty for being half-hearted as an apathetic agnostic might: in short, I can go to the Watchnight Service at St Giles Kirk on Christmas Eve, and pay attention to the sermon, without a Dawkinsian complex of any kind. In this particular sermon, the Minister took the time to praise Atheists and decry agnosticism: to paraphrase him, atheists present worthy opponents in debate, whereas agnostics are responsible for the downfall of society. I’m sure he didn’t mean to present such a sharp message, but I think it goes back to what I wrote about the far-right’s grasp on debates. For a debate to be had properly, all sides must be confident enough to make pronouncements on all ideas. Bad ideas must be exposed for what they are, and good ideas must be brought forth on sturdy legs.

In the Green Party, and indeed, in all major political parties, we need to grasp the debate and say what we think about Britishness, morality, and all the other issues which are held so tightly in the fists of fascists. We need to truly talk with all of the electorate, and we need to realise that the way that we can prevail in our political ambitions is through honest and fair discourse, not through aggressive confrontation with English Defence League, or by sneeringly mocking the BNP.

For all the apparent futility in the campaign to push Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name to the Christmas number one spot (sure, the profits from sales of the song went to the same musical multinational that McFabricated’s profits would have gone to, but did anyone notice that the Facebook group used to orchestrate it also managed to raise over £90,000 for Shelter?), it did raise my hopes for 2010, simply because it demonstrated a desire for a more honest and less fake way of doing things. If we can keep that spark of dissatisfaction with plastic society, then I’ll be a lot more confident that debate can be had.

Here’s to 2010, an honest, argumentative, real, and better year!

Click here for an archive of past new year posts.