Extremism of the centre [1976]

No longer has parliamentary democracy any connotations of participation or control by the people as we remarked in our last issue. Most accept that they have no control whatever; the only gauge they have as to what constitutes a ‘democracy’ is the extent to which the repressive forces of the State are used against them. If ‘they’ leave us alone, do not knock us on the head (too often), do not raid us in the early morning (without a warrant), do not send us to prison camps (without a judicial sentence) it is a democracy; if they do, it isn’t – though some of the ones that practise it like to call themselves a ‘people’s democracy’ just to distinguish.

The tendency now in the ascendant in many countries of Western Europe is the Centre, once discredited, once unable to impose its extremism or totalitarianism in the way the Right or Left could to the extent it was thought that by definition it could not be so. Yet the Centre exists as a viable and ruling political force; it has its package deals as do the Right and Left; while it poses as being moderate, its ‘moderation’ consists in the way in which it administers capitalism but has nothing to do with the ‘moderation’ that suggests calmness and reason – any more than ‘liberals’ are ‘liberal’ or ‘communists’ have anything to do with communes.

Too often the extremism of the Centre is labelled ‘fascism’. This is fair enough rhetorically; but it is not the same thing. The Centre can also be totalitarian, aggressive and dictatorial. 

In Britain we do not as yet have a police state though in Northern Ireland we are moving towards it. Political power is in the grasping hands of the lawyers who traditionally dominate Centre politics – indeed, part of the propaganda of the Centre Establishment is that ‘parliamentary democracy’ owes its existence to the lawyers, that they are the guardians of its liberties (not the people) and that any attempt to by-pass rule by lawyers means a plunge into ‘anarchy’ or into tyranny. The idea of lawyers as guardians of liberty, of anything except guineas, has been a fantastic one throughout the ages! What they thrive on are legal cases and the accumulation of money by trickery. In such an atmosphere liberty does not thrive. What thrives are deals and the so-called parliamentary democracy is a series of deals … how to settle problems of labour, immigration, Ireland … formulae, formal agreements, legalistic argument and phraseology … but nobody’s liberty is safeguarded. At most they build hedges round the fields of liberty.

In pre-Hitler Germany, when the Centre reigned supreme, the judiciary tended to be a faltering one, because it was up against an aggressive Right and an apparently overwhelming Left (which ultimately ran away from the struggle); it was preoccupied with its own problems, since it was not comfortably economically cushioned as in England, salaries were at the mercy of financial fluctuations, the old men of the Bench were worried about getting their quotas of black market meat and what would happen to their pensions. They were in no position to make a firm stand. The first moves of the successful Right were totally illegal and could still be challenged in the courts. But just as the Left collapsed when its leaders were (illegally) arrested, the Centre collapsed when these unconstitutional moves by the Right went unchallenged and they found they had yielded their power.

Today, in this country and many others, the judiciary is powerful – which is never realised by people who think usually in terms of ‘jackboots’ and cannot understand that the physically decrepit – for the most part – can be ‘strong men!’ It shapes political decisions, and lawyers – who dominate the Commons – even make the laws the lawyers administer. The essential thing about British politics is that the police are subordinate to it. This can change – many would welcome it if it did – but there is now a growing totalitarianism of the Centre run by the lawyers who look on liberty as legal loopholes, and the exercise of civil rights as ‘driving a coach and horses’ through their carefully devised acts. They are more than holding their own in the drive to totalitarianism; they do not need ‘fascism.’

The most trite slogans, of the Centre are passing into popular imagination as accepted ‘truths’ in particular the idea that they are both somehow an embattled minority and at the same time the vast majority. It is suggested that politicians who run the State are self-seeking but at the same time that they are representative, their decisions sacrosanct and unchallengeable; it is agreed – it scarcely could be otherwise – that lawyers are greedy but that by ignoring their decisions one is guilty of anti-social behaviour.

The State is a parasite on society. When it is run by lawyers there is a particular dimension in that one naturally prefers a lawyer, who rules by garnishees,[1] to a soldier who rules by bullets. But that is to estimate the degree to which they oppress, to formulate the type of oppression. They themselves have no words in which to justify their rule except by saying that somebody else would be worse – and it may well be so. There is no reason, however, for anyone to feel there is some natural justification for them being there other than they once had the chance of power and took it.

Black Flag, vol.4, no.9, July 1976

Note
1, A garnishee order requires a third party to ‘surrender money that he or she holds on behalf of or owes to a debtor.’ [OED]