by Mat Capper
John Lennon wrote the songs 'Working Class Hero' and 'Power to the People'. Anyone would believe Lennon was a left wing working class icon. If you dig a little deeper you realise that he was in fact brought up in an extremely middle class environment. A friend of mine was the drummer in a band called the 'Road Runners' that used to play with the Beatles in the Cavern and in Hamburg. He knew the Beatles well and says the real working class heroes were Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. John was in fact brought up in a wealthy affluent part of Liverpool.
This got me thinking about my own background. On the one hand my mother was 17 when she had me, my dad was in jail, we literally had no money, lived with my Nan because her husband (my granddad) was also in jail, and I now live in Toxteth, Liverpool. On the other I am grammar school and university educated, my mum is now a top research scientist, and I live in Princes Park(the new name for Toxteth), Liverpool. I'm sorry to admit I am guilty of playing on both of these stories and backgrounds depending on the company I am in, which is a tad perverse and I suppose a little insecure.
The point is that the real 'enemies' to you and me are the upper classes, the small percentage of people who hold the world's wealth and our planet to ransom. These corporations and multi nationals are what we should all be attacking. The old perceptions that the working classes are the real socialists who care, and the middle classes are disjointed from 'real living' and attached to the credit card, are false. In fact I doubt whether there are any real socialists anymore.
Capitalism has invaded even the most idealistic lefties. Artists like Banksy who would abhor his work being valued by the yard, now find themselves being offered millions by overpaid actors to come and decorate their houses. Could you imagine Brad Pitt saying to Picasso 'yeah could you do us something like Guernica, but just cut it down a bit because it's too big'.
Among the traditional working class there is a lack of pulling together. Kids shoot kids if they sell drugs on their patch, the older crooks abuse the young by getting them involved in moving smack, dealers who would have stood in unison with their fellow men years ago now sell them drugs.
The old style revolution is dead. I remember supporting the Liverpool Dockers when they went on strike. I collected for them, got involved in pickets and organising bands to play in the city. Margaret Thatcher in her sick wisdom saw the hole in the master plan. Instead of fighting them head on, she simply gave them money through stocks and shares. Immediately the picket lines disappeared. People who had stood hand in hand for months holding red flags and wearing T Shirts with Che Guevara were all sat at home checking whether their stocks had gone up. Only recently I took Noam Chomsky to meet the Dockers in their own club. He had supported them throughout their campaign. The sad truth? Only three people turned up. Everyone tends to look after themselves and their immediate family first. The common good and the principle are always sacrificed. Selfishness and self-centeredness are actually the root of all evil.
I admire Che Guevara. In fact I have his mug tattooed on my body. Right or wrong, he was a man who had first hand experience of what conflict was like. I'm pretty sure Tony Blair would reconsider sending soldiers to kill or die if he had the same first hand experience. He would be a little more educated and less flippant about what he is asking people to do, and what he is ultimately responsible for. Modern day revolutions are of the educational variety. The revolutionaries are the people who create this profound change in thinking and attitude.
The reason for the shift in what revolution stands for is down to the shift in the quality of life for society as a whole. In the UK we do not have the poverty we used to have in the post war generations. People were forced to pull together in order to eat and have somewhere to live. The modern welfare state was established through desperation. People looked after 'their own' in order to survive. Nowadays this poverty doesn't exist and people now abuse 'their own' for profit and greed.
So who are the revolutionaries in today's society? People like my own Ma. A lady who had three children to an abusive male by the time she was 22. Who had no qualifications to speak of. Who endured years of poverty in trying to bring up a family with little or no help. Who decided enough was enough and went to college, then university and then finally after receiving a PHD went into research. She now spends her time educating people about how to cure disease, and about how to continue to research, while at the same time refusing the big bucks to go and work for some plutocratic pharmaceutical company. Or the scientists who saved my wife's life by offering her a way out of her own hell with surgery, who waved their fees and found theatre time for nothing if we could raise the funds for the equipment. Or indeed the wife who has endured her own personal hell as her illness took over. Or the artist Peter Cameron who I had the pleasure of meeting this week, who has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's. Gradually his world is falling apart, yet he has the calmest, most friendly and interesting exterior of any person I've ever met. These are the modern day icons, the modern day revolutionaries, the people that deserve my respect and full attention. These are the heroes whose class is actually totally irrelevant.