From Boom To Doom

FMTTM, v Brighton & Hove Albion, 10th December 2011

Remember the 80s, when times were bleak and Rioch’s young Boro were the only good thing about life?  Remember remembering the 80s in the 90s and 2000s, when things were better and we could all rest safely in the knowledge that those dark days were behind us?  If not, don’t worry –there’s no longer any need to reminisce about the 80s these days, for the simple fact that we seem to be reliving them again anyway.

You know this is happening when: a) Boro mould a relatively successful team of hungry local youngsters on a shoestring budget; b) unemployment goes through the roof and nobody on Teesside can find a job; and c) strikes and demonstrations start popping everywhere in protest against the lying bunch of Tory b*stards who run the country.

One such strike took place a couple of weeks ago on November 30^th, and saw over a thousand local workers and their supporters march through Middlesbrough in protest against the government’s proposals to slash public sector pensions.  Culminating in a rally outside BhS in the town centre, the rally was a massive show of force by the local labour movement – the one social movement in society with the potential strength to stop this bent, undemocratic government in its tracks, if only it wasn’t dominated by trade union bureaucrats and mealy-mouthed Labour politicians.  Ideally, I would have liked to have seen the assembled crowds form themselves into democratic workers’ councils and storm Middlesbrough town hall to seize power from Mallon and the hopelessly complacent local Labour group, before declaring a workers’ budget in direct confrontation with the government and the ruling class.  As it is, I had to settle for a Billy Bragg tribute act.  Bugger.

Still, the march and rally were a pleasure to participate in, if only because they marked a reminder that there are hundreds, thousands and millions of decent people out there who haven’t bought into the philosophy of selfishness, greed and envy that has been promoted by politicians from Thatcher to Cameron (via Blair in-between) over the course of the last three decades.  Public sector workers are now being asked to pay more and work longer for less because the government needs to raise money to reduce a budget deficit which emerged after the banks were bailed out with taxpayers’ money in 2008.  Sadly, this blatant theft from ordinary workers to pay for a crisis caused by City spivs and speculators hasn’t stopped some sour souls from attacking public sector workers on the basis that many workers in the private sector don’t have pensions at all – which is a bit like demanding that your friends who are better looking than you all be forced to have plastic surgery to make them uglier.

It must be one of the most spectacular achievements in modern history that the Tories’ propaganda has ended up convincing vast swathes of the population that a deficit caused by a global banking crisis (and collapsing tax revenue) is actually the fault of “profligate spending” on health, education and community services, and that the only way to solve the resulting economic crisis is more of the same unbridled neoliberalism that caused it in the first place.   It’s like a doctor telling a recovering heroin addict that they need to flush the smack out of their system with a massive dose of cocaine and ecstasy.

Still, these are the times we’re living in.  I personally will settle for nothing less than international workers’ revolution by May 2012.  That, and the play-offs.