Rough Music is a series of reflections on ‘a watershed in British political culture’, provoked by the war in Iraq and then, even more acutely, by the bomb attacks on London of July 7th 2005. Though written quickly under the impetus of events, I think few readers will be deterred; and they shouldn’t be, for this ‘instant book’ makes many points going beyond British culture, and invites wider speculation on the world of contemporary nationalism and ideologically motivated violence. It documents recent events too thoroughly to be journalistic, as well as voicing shifts in the author’s own political attitude. The title comes from Edward Thompson’s Customs in Common (1993) and is not chosen only for effect. ‘Rough music’ was a cacophony directed from those outside and below, to annoy insiders on high, ‘against individuals who offended against certain community norms’. It was also meant to suggest how democratic retribution might come. Interestingly, Tariq Ali’s conclusions move him into partial alignment with the much older positions of Thompson—one of the founders of New Left Review over forty years ago, and (indirectly) of Verso Books, publishers of Rough Music.
The five items in Ali’s subtitle—Blair, bombs, Baghdad, London, terror—are naturally centred on the Iraq War, and reactions to it. But both his diagnosis and his prescriptions for the future return the reader constantly to one causative factor: the futile archaism and contradictions of the British constitutional order, so easily abused by Blair and New Labour that they simply must be reformed, as a precondition of any tolerable post-Blairite future. Left-wing policies and reassertions of traditional ‘radical’ values are no longer enough. Neoliberalism’s global offensive may have generated ‘hollowing out’ and autocratic trends everywhere, from Iceland to Australia. But these have been worse in the uk ‘thanks to the grotesque nature of its constitutional arrangements—its unrepresentative first-past-the-post electoral system, tv monarchy and unelected second chamber’. Westminster used to consider itself a world model. It has become a dry-rot infested ruin, where one shame succeeds another. In 2005 (for example) New Labour won its ‘convincing majority’ in the House of Commons with just 21.8 per cent of electoral votes. Should this go on, and the abstention rate rise again, it is quite conceivable that in 2009 Blair’s (or Brown’s) fourth term in office will be supported by well under one fifth of the electorate. ‘Thin democracy’ may have become a general trait of capitalist polities; but even in this dark realm distinctions survive between the more and less abject. And the uk is ceasing to be a democracy in any acceptable sense.
It has become an autocracy by ill-concealed stealth. Ali’s Chapter 3, ‘The Media Cycle’, shows how Blair got away with it over 2001–05, and why some of his coterie think it can go on indefinitely. Like other flotsam on the ‘no-alternative’ wave of the nineties, they think that the essence of ‘modernization’ is adjusting society to fit economic and technological advances. Which means serving such changes, via a machinery of collusion between government public relations, a compliant legal system and a servile press. In Britain the bbc was the only serious obstacle, above all at the difficult turning point of the Iraq War. For a Great-British nationalist like Blair—‘in decline’ but still a semi-world power—participation in the war was essential, if clearly unpopular. Hence dissent had to be stifled by legal means, the low point of which was Lord Hutton’s odious Inquiry into the suicide of scientist David Kelly. Kelly had been deeply troubled by the Weapons of Mass Destruction farce, and evidence of official deceit. ‘Don’t worry, we appointed the right judge’, said Blair’s key public-relations man, Philip Gould.
Since Rough Music appeared there has been a further illustration of media cycle functioning. Blair is reported as having met with Rupert Murdoch in New York, and agreed with him on the deplorably ‘negative’ (i.e. ‘anti-American’) coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, notably from the bbc. The positive mission of laws and media alike is, by contrast, ‘steady as she goes’: that is, the maintenance of Britain’s status, and her contribution to neoliberalism’s ongoing revolution. Where can that contribution come from, but the uk’s chosen position in the new firmament?—‘Up the arse of the White House’, as Blair’s Chief of Staff is reputed to have instructed his Ambassador in Washington.
The mission is ‘radical’ in character: that is, it arises from manifested truths and allows no compromise, a quasi-religious destiny whose attainment justifies any means, and must by definition pass through traps, traitors and travails. Ali condemns Tony Blair for having ‘no radical streak in his political make-up’, but this isn’t quite accurate. New Labour naturally despises traditional Old-Labour, Marxist and other versions of the radical, but has made up for that with its own—a now perfectly familiar capitalist-based intransigence and intolerance, appealing powerfully to the same psychology and inherited emotions. Later on he does admit how recognition of capitalism as ‘the only game in town’ has been successful in remobilizing for itself ‘the same dogma that had once characterized Trotskyism or other isms’, but without drawing the possible conclusion.
That is, without concluding that the transition must have been more than ‘prestidigitation’. Nemesis played her part. Certain aspects of the former Left and Liberal dogmas invited the neo-conservatives in; and it is these that today’s democrats must distrust the most. On the Left, the real sinner was ‘historical materialism’, not Lenin, Stalin or any of their progeny (whether dutiful or critical). It was this philosophical conviction of last-instance economic determinism that made it relatively easy to ‘switch sides’ from the eighties onwards, for Eastern and Chinese ruling elites, as well as for so many Western intéllos. Destinarians lurked on both sides of the Cold War. This is why the state-socialist avalanche of the eighties deposited so many troubled souls so briefly on the valley floor. They found a chair-lift waiting (padded, modernized) to bear them once more on high. There, the terminus provided more secure heights of inevitability and superiority, as well as better-paid media ‘realism’.
In Graeco-Roman mythology the Furies were the three deadly sisters born from the blood of God falling back to the earth (after he suffered castration by Kronos). Virgil depicts these hair-raising siblings in his Underworld: the descendants of the God-King Uranus and Gaia (the earth), scary enough to make Cerberus run for his life. They are human nature (as it were) casting off its chains, following upon recent unfortunate events in the upper spheres, and determined on a new deal for itself ‘at all costs’. The latter now includes a higher premium on meaningful death.