How Britain’s Culture Secretaries set up Nasty Mammon v Hairy Nutters

There was a confrontation in Bristol between two sets of mad folks on Friday. The event does I think present people of good heart with a dilemma. It’s the same feeling neutrals must’ve had when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941: ‘I don’t really like either side’.

Tesco, like Newscorp, is a direct threat to the culture of Britain. When it comes to the preservation of real communities, the supermarket giant is anti-matter incarnate. It has in the past used its money and thinly-disguised bribes to persuade local Councils strapped for money that another Tesco is just what they need. On rare occasions (for example Honiton in Devon) direct citizen action in defiance of the Planners stops them. In others (like nearby Seaton) Tesco knocked down the only gym in town to build another cathedral to obesity and conformity. The site has ripped the centre out of this small seaside town, and it now transpires that Big T has been given permission to use most of the site as a distribution depot. There isn’t a single wide road out of town – and almost every dwelling on the bigger of the two is a listed building. The Tesco development is being constructed on a flood plain (now allegedly illegal) perilously close to avian wildlife on the Ax river.

It’s hard to imagine money didn’t change hands somewhere in such an episode. It’s hard to credit that we had a Culture Minister who ignored the whole thing – but then, it was Tessa Jowell. Today we have Jeremy Hunt in the same role; anyone who thinks Mr Hunt gives a toss about cultures beyond Mammon and yoghurt is asleep.

The problem is that the activist inhabitants of St Pauls in Bristol are the same deadly mix of Fluffy and Trot I endured for seven years living in 1970s Brixton. Scattered in among the harmless ninnies recycling farts and making nettle wine were deranged polemicists sending fraternal greetings to Leningrad Council (I’m serious) while quietly supporting any organisation hell-bent on proving that the police were the paid agents of fascist oppression.

Firmly rejected at the ballot box during the 1980s, these latter matured into local government pc-police; but the new generation of activists is busily engaged today in turning every peaceful demonstration into a farrago of stone-throwing, window-smashing and cop-baiting. However, on the other hand, the politicisation of the police (via everything from ‘hate crime’ to incompetent raids on ‘terrorists’) worries me.

The Bristol incident involved a raid on one particular squat known to be a breeding-ground for Molotov cocktails. The concerning thing is that this was a raid on folks engaged in direct action because there was no form of redress available from those who are supposed to represent the average citizen. I’m all for keeping an eye on the nutters – be they Nazis, Islamists, Hard Left or Animal Righters – but I immediately feel uneasy when ordinary coppers are wielding batons and raiding flats to defend serial community-killers like Tesco.

Much of my anxiety is related to the fact that the overwhelming majority of those local to Friday’s riot had made it perfectly, peacefully clear to the local authority over time that they didn’t want or need a Tesco Express. But they were ignored. So here we have a situation where both sides engaged in the combat are unthinking, anti-democratic fascists. The police wind up having to keep the peace – but get typecast as if they might be former members of BOSS.

The dilemma for everyone of sound mind and good heart is what to do about this.

Here is the core issue: Tesco is aiming to achieve a form of monopoly in as many parts of its business as possible. This makes the company a sitting duck for the Uncut, SWP and eco-warrior axis of bollocks. But it also makes the retailer yet another enemy of real society and healthy entrepreneurial capitalism. Thus, sane and reasonable citizens find themselves against both sides.

This is why we have governments. But for some fifteen years now, the ‘professional’ political class has walked away from responsibility for such matters. The end of this slippery slope will be a police force doing the bidding of all politicians in power. And that will be the worst of all worlds.

So – and I do not apologise for banging on endlessly about the same thing – real, commonsense people must become virtual activists. The medium for this is the internet. The catalyst for change will be all of us using creativity to so inconvenience the elites, they will be forced to listen.

In the wireless age, such activism doesn’t even require one to move from the sofa. All we have to do is coordinate, click and send.