‘I met murder on the way –
He had the mask of Castlereagh –
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:’
THESE are the famous opening lines of the poem, ‘Masque of Anarchy’, by Percy Bysshe Shelley written in 1819 in the immediate aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre.
Around 60,000 men, women and children had gathered in St Peter’s Field Manchester to peacefully demonstrate for parliamentary reform and for the vote to be extended to workers and the middle classes.
The response of the local magistrates, under instructions from the Tory government, was to launch the cavalry to charge at demonstrators killing 14 and injuring up to 600 more.
Lord Castlereagh, a central figure in the Tory government and known to support harsh actions against agitation for reform, took the brunt of the blame for the Peterloo Massacre.
This poem, which was suppressed by the authorities and only published 10 years after Shelley’s death, resonates today in the UK, US and in Gaza especially as world capitalism under the ‘smooth’ mask of bourgeois political democracy is daily unleashing murder on a mass scale across the world.
This week it transpired that former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair was in Washington briefing US president Donald Trump on plans to ‘rebuild Gaza’, after the Israeli’s had ethnically cleansed the Strip of every last Palestinian.
According to media reports, Blair and Trump have been considering rebuilding Gaza after the Zionists have reduced every last Palestinian home, hospital, school or tent site to rubble.
Trump has already announced his plans to turn Gaza into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ complete with luxury hotels built on the rubble and bodies of Palestinian men, women and children.
Clearly Trump’s ‘vision’ is a little too blunt to be sold to the world and is in need of a more ‘smooth mask’ to cloak its murderous intent.
Step forward Tony Blair.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who Blair is said to be closely advising, told Fox News Channel on Wednesday that they were putting together a ‘very comprehensive plan’ and that many people will see ‘how well meaning it is and it reflects President Trump’s humanitarian motives here’.
The very idea that Trump has ‘humanitarian motives’ will be treated with contempt and disbelief by the world.
Blair is being drafted in to provide a mask for a criminal and murderous attempt to crush all Palestinian resistance to illegal occupation and genocide.
Even more importantly, Blair brings with him his expertise in manufacturing lies and falsehoods to justify military invasion of Middle East countries, as he did in Iraq when he claimed the country had ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
Iraq was shattered, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and the country condemned to decades of instability and conflict by Blair, who when confronted with the truth could only say: ‘I thought I was right,’ at the subsequent inquiry.
Blair should be on trial as a war criminal, not swanning around the world advising how to stage-manage genocide and organise destroying Middle Eastern countries on behalf of US imperialism.
Shelley’s poem, which deserves to be read in full, ends:
‘Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.’
Now is the time for the working class to rise up like lions and demand that the leaders of the trade unions immediately organise their strength in mass general strikes to bring down the capitalist governments that seek to survive the crisis of capitalism through wars to re-establish its dominance across the world and class war at home to dump the capitalist crisis on the backs of workers.
We call on workers and youth to come to the Young Socialists lobby of the TUC on September 7th to demand the trade unions call an immediate general strike to bring down the Starmer Labour government and bring in a workers government and socialism.
Forward to the victory of the British and World Socialist Revolution.
There is not a moment to lose!
