BLAIR in his Callaghan Memorial lecture in Cardiff came out as an admirer of the right wing Labour premier, who he says ‘had neither the luck nor the time, nor, in the 1970s, the Party he needed.’
In fact Callaghan was premier for only three years and was brought down by the working class in 1979, in the ‘winter of discontent’ against his wage freezing policies. He was a failure whose policies brought about a return of the Tories.
For Blair, however, he was a hero, who did not seek causes in society for the youth rebellions of the 1960s and 70s, but advocated instead repressive measures.
Blair says of Callaghan – ‘He also rightly sensed that though the years of Roy Jenkins at the Home Office had been stellar in their action on discrimination – and he was fully supportive of that; liberalism was not necessarily the correct response to the growing disrespect and lawlessness that in the 1960s and 1970s saw crime rise.’
Again – these were revolutionary years from May and June 1968 in France, to the miners bringing down the Tories in 1974. Blair continues about Callaghan: ‘He saw – and I agree with him – no contradiction between a liberal view of personal lifestyle or action against prejudice; and a tough view of violence or wrong-doing that harmed others.’
Callaghan ‘described – at the time of the “permissive society” – the word “permissiveness” as “one of the most unlikeable words invented in recent years”. He powerfully opposed calls to legalise cannabis. And he described his commitment to order and authority in ways that at that time seemed old-fashioned but in 2007 seem remarkably close to where the consensus is.’
Callaghan knew that the bourgeois answer to revolution in society was counter-revolutionary state violence.
Blair depicts himself opportunistically to his Welsh audience as today’s Callaghan, not afraid to depict terrorism as a Muslim crime, and not afraid to spell out that gun and knife crime have a colour – black.
He says ‘In this instance, we need less Jenkins and more Callaghan. We tend to see this as a general social problem which, with the right social engineering, we could cure.
‘What we are dealing with is not a general social disorder; but specific groups or people who for one reason or another, are deciding not to abide by the same code of conduct as the rest of us.’
What do we need to do? We need repression. ‘In respect of knife and gun gangs, the laws need to be significantly toughened. There needs to be an intensive police focus, on these groups. The ring-leaders need to be identified and taken out of circulation; if very young, as some are, put in secure accommodation. The black community – the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening – need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids. But we won’t stop this by pretending it isn’t young black kids doing it.’
He continues: ‘This is the missing dimension to the regeneration of our towns and cities. . .’
‘Jim Callaghan would have understood this. . . He had a simple, clear code by which he lived.’
Jim Callaghan as John Wayne. Blair as Dirty Harry ‘taking out’ black youth and ‘taking them out of circulation’ after ‘mobilising’ the black community ‘in denunciation’ of them.
He is the hammer of the ‘Muslim terrorists’ and the black knife and gunmen, and with it of course the growing hero of the racist extreme right wing.
His outlook is that the crisis of capitalism is not responsible for the conflicts of all kinds that rip through capitalist society, just as in the same way that his horrific terrorist assault on Iraq is not responsible for the growth of counter-terrorism.
It’s all a product of the minds of deranged individuals, who can be spotted as early as three years old, ‘who decide not to abide by the same code of conduct as the rest of us.’ This is Blair’s cretin’s outlook. The solution then is to ‘take them out’ with a programme of repressions, from ASBOs, CCTVs, curfews, to house arrest, and then ‘shoot to kill’.
In fact the only solution to the crisis of capitalism and the social crisis that it creates is the socialist revolution.
