Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The revolution will not be banned

If you fancy a laugh, and have the time to spare, check out the website for REVOLUTION, aka Permanent Revolution, the Trot group some of whose members smashed up Conservative Central Office this week. You might also check out Workers’ Power, the Trot group from which REVOLUTION split a year or two back for the usual Pythonesque ideological reasons. Both are, I think, members of the Fifth International, unless they’ve already split from that too. Of course they are committed to overthrowing the oppressive capitalist system by force and handing power to the worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkiing classs. Their members are called Laura and Emily and James and and Giles and they have never ever met anyone from the working class. And if anyone from the working classes actually met them they’d most likely ram a glass in their throats.

But still, hey, they’re kids and we should not begrudge them their moments of youthful rebellion occasioned by a fatuous and outdated ideology which the rest of the world has long since left behind. Nobody, however, is calling for these organisations to be banned, despite the fact that they are actively working – however ineptly – for the destruction of our country. Compare that to the odium heaped upon Muslim groups who do not smash anything up, or hurt anyone, but nonetheless call for the overthrow of the state. REVOLUTION and Workers Power get away with it because they are on the political left and they are white. People want to ban Hizb ut Tahrir because they are on the political right and are, in the main, darkies.

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