image As I always say to any arsehole who’ll bloody listen “abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity—one’s own and that of other people.” Friggin’ Trotsky wrote that.

The headline on the front page of the current issue of The Weekly Weekly is aiming for the shock factor. “Vote preference one for Abbott … and fuck warmongering ex-ministers”. We can assume that they are not advising carnal relations with the Milibands and co but are rather inviting that large section of the Labour Party membership which takes its political guidance from the paper to avoid casting a second preference. It could decide the result.

Diane Abbott must be thrilled to have support and a political line expressed so pithily and it may turn out to be one of the classic front pages of 21st century socialism. Yet for a paper that makes a feature out of long, dense, sophisticated articles requiring a fair level of knowledge of both Marxism and the British left it is a peculiar departure. It might make sense on a leaflet for youth or on the cover of Class War but in this context it’s just bizarre. The target audience is mainstream Labour and union opinion, one assumes. In my experience they are like most other people who might express an idea one way in a pub and use a different register when making a political point or coming up with a front cover.

As an object lesson in making your views utterly marginal this takes some beating.

21 responses to “Neither big nor clever”

  1. Bizarre headline? The weekly worker? Surely this can’t be so?

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  2. Bill – they’ve let you down, they’ve let me down, they’ve let the Leninist tradition down but most of all they’ve let themselves down.

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  3. Ha ha the same Diane Abbot who supports imperialist wars as long as they are legal?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/7948886/Diane-Abbott-I-would-lead-Britain-to-war.html

    Of course it can be right to support a candidate who would weaken the right in the Labour party and may be that could be a reason to vote Abbot but only if it is based on a clear class politics, building independent working class organisation and overt socialist politics.

    On swearing I agree with Liam (and Trotsky)- at least in public political pronouncements.

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  4. though I must admit I did quite enjoy Public Enemy chanting “F*** Goerge Bush! F*** Tony Blair!” during the Iraq occupation, even if it wasn’t one of their best examples of lyrical dexterity. It has its place on occasion- not on the front page of a political newspaper though!

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  5. I am not a fan of swearing in speeches or in print – I think it shows disrespect for your audience. I swear like a trooper at the match though!

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  6. Put the little fuckers on an ASBO!

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  7. My speculation is that it came out of a bet to raise money for their “Summer Offensive”- “£100 if you put the word ‘fuck’ on the cover and double that if its alongside Diane Abbott”

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  8. One has hopes. One has dreams. Crushed. Bitter tears.

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  9. On swearing, it depends who at and why. Swearing at managers is therapeutic…..
    Agree, who takes advice from Weekly Worker on Labour leadership election?

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  10. The slogan Bollocks to the Poll Tax did encapsulate the mood of the day.
    If swearing isn’t big, why are adults allowed to and children not, and cleverness or stupidity depends on the way the words are used and is not an absolute.

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  11. “though I must admit I did quite enjoy Public Enemy chanting “F*** Goerge Bush! F*** Tony Blair!”

    My favourite lines in popular music must be Ezy E of NWA solemnly declaring in Fuck Tha Police: “The jury has found you guilty of bein a redneck, whitebread, chickenshit muthafucka.” Followed by said white bread screaming as dragged off, “Wait, that’s a lie. That’s a goddamn lie. I want justice! I want justice! Fuck you, you black muthafucka!”

    Genuine wit and political points along with rude words in that song, in a way that sharply falsifies Trotsky’s point, about slavery particularly. But yes it’s all about the register appropriate for the context.

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  12. Blow me – bollocks a swear word????

    Excellent point about context Nick

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  13. Whilst I’m sure Mark H meant down with a feather, ‘blow me’ could be misinterpreted.

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  14. bristolred no not an asbo, community service to serve the labour movement in a non sectarian way for say, x hours until they repent!

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  15. A survey of the language of London teenagers (published in 2002) examined, amongst other things, the incidence of various swearwords in their speech. It noted that the top ten swearwords make up 81% of the total swearwords. “Bollocks” was the seventh most frequent swearword, after “fucking”, “shit”, “fuck”, “bloody”, “hell” and “fuck off”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollocks

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  16. Looking at the top ten swear words, isn’t that normally what people say when they read the Weekly Worker and pretty much in that order too!

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  17. Mark Victorystooge Avatar
    Mark Victorystooge

    Most probably, as someone else said, it arose from a bet at the “Summer Offensive”. This is a paper that has been known to use words like “paradigm” and “Berufsverbot” in headlines. Perhaps, like opportunists everywhere, they are bouncing from one extreme to another.

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  18. Or maybe they’re just bad journalists?

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  19. “There are two common mistakes we have sought to avoid when it came to writing our Draft programme: Lilliputian coyness and Brobdingnagian prolixity.”
    Ah, the language of the street.

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  20. Ha! Ha! I spoke to soon, its not journalism its art…

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  21. Mark Victorystooge Avatar
    Mark Victorystooge

    Art, like the soiled knickers of Tracey Emin.

    They do seem to have a mastery of some of the darker arts of journalism, like a sub-Woodward and Bernstein knack for obtaining the internal documents of left orgs bigger than themselves.

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