Newspeak

Lee went back to Watermouth yesterday as the DHSS had promised him his money by Tuesday, but when he got back it hadn’t come.

He phoned me at 6.30 today with some unexpected news: As Alex was in the process of climbing in through a window at the Grey House yesterday, he was stopped by a policeman who searched his room and discovered a skull that someone had taken from the crypts on Smith Square and also the gravestone he’d nicked from a stonemason’s yard when we lived at Jervis Terrace.

Alex was arrested for desecrating a grave along with his friend Tom (who I’ve never met). The latter admitted to smashing a window at Lloyd’s bank and causing £1000 worth of damage. Alex has been charged with acting as an accomplice in this latter crime and he may even serve time. Lee also told me that Sarah has left the squat and is—surprise, surprise—living in Brixton. I felt relieved when I was told all this and from the tone of Lee’s voice I think he was too. Alex will no doubt use the fact that he’s got nicked for desecrating a grave to perpetuate his street cred.

Mum and Dad visited Uncle George’s wife Judy in a Whincliffe hospital tonight. She’s suffering from kidney failure and looks very ill. George naturally is very worried and Judy’s demise won’t lessen his already strange demeanour. For three months he hasn’t missed a day visiting her: he leaves work at five and gets three buses to the hospital, getting home after nine.

The last in the TV series The Paras (complete with jolly whistle-along theme music) made my blood boil but I forced myself to keep my mouth shut. As the programme presenter conceded that the Paras “went a little too far” on Bloody Sunday by shooting 13 unarmed civilians dead, many in the back as they fled, Dad sat there with a blank and unreceptive expression on his face.

His blind glorying in the activities of the British Army sickens and disgusts me and he obviously believes the bilge we are fed on the TV news and in the ‘papers. I know how futile it is to rage and rant but it still frustrates me. “Soldiers are trained to be aggressive ” after all . . .

Likewise with the miner’s strike. Rob says that the miners in Saxton and district are all morons and skivers; he describes his next door neighbor John as a “professional scrounger” who hasn’t worked since Rob and Carol moved there four years ago, but still, in principle I’m on the side of the miners. They’re up against the orchestrated attack of police and media and popular prejudice and it will take a great effort on their part, with much struggle and bitterness, to win this dispute.

When Scargill lets fly accusations of media bias as he did recently at a conference, the individuals who present the news may protest, and I’m sure individually they believe they’re presenting an even handed account of the dispute—The Sun, Express and Daily Mail staff excluded. But this is an organized campaign by a society in which capital holds the reins, a programme by which the state bureaucracy defends what it sees as its interests. It’s reached the situation where these supposed interests don’t even serve other purposes—they’re self-perpetuating and are reinforced by the ideological obedience of the greater mass of people in this country who are inculcated since birth by TV newspeak lies of familycountryworkneverbreakthelaw ethics.

The illusion of free will means that we’re brought up believing we own our own minds when really what we regard as ‘right’ simply serves the interests of the state bureaucracy. The only way to escape is to disbelieve everything you read or hear and to always treat every news item and angle with the utmost cynicism and contempt.