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T
he trouble with ‘nor- mal’, as Bruce Cock- burn famously sang and I regularly quote,
is that it always gets worse. Things that would have seemed unacceptable in the past now occur with little com- ment or resistance. This minori- ty Tory government which we’re suffering is now stuck into a programme of sweeping ideological change under the
thin disguise of ‘deficit reduction’, backed up by Clegg’s gang of unprincipled, opportunist turncoats (and I say this as a lifelong Liberal voter who is unlikely to ever endorse them again). Don’t be surprised if you wake up in a few years time and find that the NHS has been dismantled, the BBC sold to News International, all the libraries and muse- ums closed, opera the only ‘art’ still supported and fox- hunting the official national sport…
As we were going to press, they announced their desire to scrap the May Day holiday as part of plans to ‘boost tourism’. They’d like to replace it with Trafalgar Day, osten- sibly to extend the bank holiday season into October. But rather than simply give this hard-worked nation one extra day off – we’re hardly overwhelmed with national holidays compared to other countries – they want to cancel the one associated with the tourist-friendly pleasures, celebrations and traditions of ordinary people and replace it with one celebrating bashing Johnny Foreigner. I’d hope to see the likes of the EFDSS leading a huge campaign against this, or is everybody already too worn down and preoccupied with firefighting to be bothered?
As Michelle Griffiths of the Belles Of London City (see page 43) recently commented to me on Facebook, “This May Day deletion is upsetting and frightening me. Its like some sort of slow apocalypse. The Tories built a cheap ver- sion of the Large Hadron Collider and there's been a weak black hole opened up that sucks away things I like.” I’m afraid that’s the new normal, and it’s getting worse…
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Cameron’s outburst against multi-culturalism, apart from playing into the hands of the EDL and BNP, is all part of the same thing – knee-jerk ideology. I grew up in the culturally monochrome lands of a small middle-class sea- side town in the 1950s, where even ‘foreign food’ was a scary monster. My life has been incredibly enriched by mov- ing off into and becoming part of the modern multi- cultural England where people are proud of their roots, that important thing of knowing where you come from in order to be confident of where you’re going.
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It’s a shame that the so-called ‘native English’ aren’t generally as proud and knowledgeable of their roots as more recent settlers. If they were, they’d know that down the centuries, this country’s culture has been continually influenced and changed by people who brought elements that the greater population accepted into the mainstream. It’s why English folk music, song and dance has the unique character it does. But then you wouldn’t expect a Tory, or Nick Clegg, to know or care about that.
Ian Anderson
Photo: Judith Burrows
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