Saturday, July 07, 2007

Gordon Brown and the Union Rag

We know that Gordon Brown has a thing about the Union Jack from a speech he made earlier this year saying that we should all hang it from our window or fly it from a pole in our garden. So it was no surprise to see that his response to the recent Islamist bomb attempts should be -- fly the Union Jack, a campaign that the Scum newspaper has enthusiastically taken up. Here's their front page on Wednesday 4 July

The text reads:

"GORD: ALL HOIST FLAG.

Premier Gordon Brown said the Union Flag should be flown proudly from every public building in Britain. The move would be a signal of defiance to terrorists like those that attacked Glasgow airport last Saturday".

Then in an interview on ITN on Thursday he revealed that he had given orders that the Union Rag should fly permanently over his new residence at NÂș 10 Downing Street.

So, not content with trying to outflank the Tories by presenting Labour as the natural "party of business" he now wants to outflank them by showing that Labour is more jingoistic than them.

Soon, the Trotskyists will be debating whether to vote Tory as the lesser evil!

As far as socialists are concerned all flags, as the emblems of the capitalist states into which the world is now artificially divided, are rags on the end of an idiot stick. We reject them all. We are internationalists, or rather one-worlders, who stand for a united world with no borders where the Earth's resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity.

One place where you'll never see the Union Rag flying will be 52 Clapham High Street, in London.

ALB

1 comment:

C64 said...

"Soon, the Trotskyists will be debating whether to vote Tory as the lesser evil!"
This seems to imply that Trotskyists in Britain vote for Labour. However this is not the case. Those in the SWP vote Respect (along with some other left wing groups who back it).

Those on the more sectarian Trotskyist left vote for their electoral fronts "Socialist Alternative, Red-Green Alliance, etc".

I'm not attempting to be pedantic. It's just this statement didn't make any sense. Trotskyists did use to vote for Labour (some trots were even members and held factions within the Labour Party: see the The Club, The Militant etc). Since the Blair era that just doesn't happen anymore.