Britain is a sinking ship. Once one of the world’s greatest powers, it ruled over a quarter of the globe and was the economic powerhouse, it now is no more than a lapdog to American imperialism and a country where life, for many, is getting worse.
The government, not satisfied with stripping the country of its industry and social spending, is now attempting to strip people of their personal rights. Activists who were found guilty of criminal damage to an Elbit Systems factory are now being tried as terrorists, something that has never happened before in the UK. The government is attempting to make an example out of these activists who dared challenge Britain’s involvement and support for the genocide in Palestine.
Further attempts to dissuade people from standing up to the state’s tyranny include rolling out more surveillance technologies. Since February of this year, the British Transport Police have been trialling facial recognition technologies in train stations across London. This technology is racist, both before its deployment and in its results.
Multiple cases of wrongful arrests of minorities as a result of this technology can be found from within the past year alone. Similarly, the police interestingly decided to deploy this tech at last years Notting Hill Carnival (predominately attended by black people) due to it being a crime hotspot, but not at Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally (a march led by a man who has 20 years of violent convictions under his belt).
Unhappy with its current authoritarian techniques, the government is also selling off lots of sensitive NHS data to Palantir. A private intelligence company that helps businesses and states efficiently… uhm well survey and kill people. This relationship began with a £1 contract during COVID and has snowballed into a 7 year £330 million contract giving the company unlimited access to patient data. The company has attempted to get its blood-stained claws into another abhorrent organisation, the Metropolitan Police, but has so far been unsuccessful.
So far this may read as a bitter 25-year-old who hates Britain. Whilst I do resent our ruling class and most of our history, I still do not hate this country. I may only feel patrotism in terms of international sporting competitions (or when Americans talk about us online) but I do have a deep love for our cultural heritage, shaped by our working-class communities and the brilliant diversity brought to us by immigration. But I cannot ignore that Britain is working for increasingly fewer people. I am lucky enough to have come from relative privilege: I come from a nice posh town, I went to a great school and university, and I have wonderful parents who support me and would probably financially do so too if I needed. Yet all around me I see my peers, struggling to enter the job market, working multiple jobs to pay rent and still living at home into their late 20s. If this is how Britain’s petty-bourgeois live, then how must the most oppressed classes in society live?
Historically, this country has produced misery for its own working class and also the worlds alike. Our colonial projects, first in tested in Ireland and then exported worldwide, have produced some of the most destabilised countries in the world. Our empire even paved the way for the Israeli state and our training of their armed forces and violent Haganah led to the Nakba and the near-century-long repression of the Palestinian people. Our state today exists as America’s goon, gleefully allowing Trump to use our military bases for airstrikes, spying for Israel and bankrolling imperialist warfare in Ukraine. I do however have hope; Britain has some of the most radical traditions within its working-class movements. Our general strike in 1926 sent shockwaves to the ruling class and could have been incredibly revolutionary had it not been for its poor leadership. There is real potential with the building of revolutionary organisations, such as the Revolutionary Communist Party, for Britain to play a real pivotal role within the downfall of the capitalist system.
A revolution in Britain alone isn’t enough; whilst dealing a blow to global capital with the expropriation of the City of London, a worldwide internationalist movement would be required for any successful overthrow of capitalism. We must ignore made up borders and see the real material connections in the world, it is not some created conception of a nationality, it is our economic positon, the workers who do not own the means of the production against the few in society who control it. Only by ending this exploitation worldwide can we effectively deal with issues such as climate change.
People may read this and ask, okay but isn’t a worldwide revolution is a bit extreme just to solve Britain’s issues? To that we must look to history, isolation in the Soviet Union led to its degeneration and ultimate stifling by the bureaucracy, a lack of support (and true Marxist understanding) meant that the Chinese revolution was deformed and soon returned to capitalism after Mao’s death and finally we see this today with the isolation and strangling of Cuba. Sixty years of blockades and embargos have led to the Cuban government appearing to agree to the reintroduction of capitalism, in an attempt to stop the US’s barbaric blocking of essential energy and supplies to the island. These are the realities facing the working class when they overthrow their oppressors; the capitalist class is not a docile being but actively counter-revolutionary and without its worldwide overthrow, any successful revolution would struggle to survive. Revolutions ignore borders, just look at the revolutionary situations unfolding in Azad Kashmir and India simultaneously.
This is why Britain cannot be fixed by any small means. It is a sinking ship going through a crisis. Removing immigrants or electing reformist politicians will not help, it will only further the decline of British capitalism and with it the country and its people. Only with the removal and destruction of the parasitic cancer that is capitalism and its cronies can this country, and humanity, truly thrive.
by n8n.
