EDL, Sutton Coldfield & maintaining your own privilege

Strangely I was thinking this morning about how a major tactic of those who want to promote or maintain their own privilege is to claim that it's what God wants. Of course you only do this when you're in a safe position of comfort, usually by converting everyone else to your religion & teaching them that this is the God-given order. I didn't realise that power & privilege would be such a theme today.

Going through the city today I found the Broad Street area thronged, I mean thronged with police. As I came back Broad street was actually closed & half way up New Street was a solid line of riot police (after all if you're going to demo or riot in Birmingham city centre you wouldn't waste your time going down Hill Street, would you?). You can't see what was happening because I took the pictures on the bus coming back. They're probably not used to compliments from witches, but a big heads-up to the police for not inflaming the situation. People were chatting to the police & they didn't feel like they were overly keyed up for battle, although the threat was obviously considered serious enough to draft in personnel from Wales.

This was occasioned by the presence of the English Defence league in the city. Here is what their mission statement says they are:

'The English Defence League (EDL) is a human rights organisation that was founded in the wake of the shocking actions of a small group of Muslim extremists who, at a homecoming parade in Luton, openly mocked the sacrifices of our service personnel without any fear of censure. Although these actions were certainly those of a minority, we believe that they reflect other forms of religiously-inspired intolerance and barbarity that are thriving amongst certain sections of the Muslim population in Britain: including, but not limited to, the denigration and oppression of women, the molestation of young children, the committing of so-called honour killings, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and continued support for those responsible for terrorist atrocities.'

Source: http://englishdefenceleague.org/home/about-us

On the outward journey, before Broad Street was closed I got to see the static demonstration by the English Defence League. I actually didn't know what it was, & here's why: it looked like there was a football match on. The EDL people had St George flags, there was a bunch of them looking like football fans in a pub. The independent mind smells a rat. The EDL's reasonable & measured mission statement does not to my mind represent what I saw today. If it was going to do what it says it would be called 'league for the defence of reasonable people from islamic extremism.' EDL makes it a racist thing. I appeal to magical people both to bind the powers of Islamic extremists, & to bind those who would turn others' extremism into an occasion for racism.

As it happens I was on my way to Sutton Coldfield, for an outing on the bus. What Sutton is is a hamlet of the ancient capital of Mercia, Tamworth, which got ideas way above its station. If you don't believe me, it's on wikipedia so it must be true:

'Upon the Roman withdrawal from Britain to protect the Roman Empire on the continent in the 5th century, the area of Sutton Coldfield, still undeveloped, passed into the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Mercia. It is during this period that it is believed Sutton Coldfield may have originated as a hamlet, as a hunting lodge was built at Maney Hill for the purpose of the Mercian leaders.[15] The outline of the deer park that it served is still visible within Sutton Park, with the ditch and bank boundary forming the western boundary of Holly Hurst, then crossing Keepers Valley, through the Lower Nuthurst and continuing on south of Blackroot Pool. Due to the marshy ground at Blackroot Valley, a fence was probably constructed to contain the deer, and the ditch and bank boundary commences again on the eastern side, on towards Holly Knoll.

This became known as Southun or Sutton; "ton" meaning townstead to the south of Tamworth, the capital of Mercia. Middleton is situated between the two. "Coldfield" denotes an area of land on the side of hill, that is exposed to the weather. It may also denote a place where charcoal burning took place.'

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Coldfield

I do want to do Sutton Park one of these days, not least because I know someone who lost his virginity there & it's high time I lost mine! I somehow doubt that the English Defence League will be on hand to protect me from any radical moslem queer bashers who may be around, though. In real terms, Sutton is today an affluent suburb of Birmingham. If a branch of Pandora is any indication of affluence, that is.

What strikes me about the people of Sutton is first that their affluence seems to have made them in no way happy. You wouldn't believe the long faces these peole have as they run around barging into each other. There is this thing called nobility, by which you can always tell people who are real top drawer by the fact that they don't cause discomfort in others, & can pass among all sorts of people without making them feel looked down on. The people I saw in Sutton Coldfield may be rich & plumby, but I saw no evidence of quality.

There is an interesting psychological twist here. Most people have some insecurity in them somewhere: frequently it often drives you on to 'succeed'. If this is in a person with low self-esteem their success in an attempt to improve their self-esteem merely worsens it, because they will feel more inadequate, not less, so their fragile, pressured ego will resort to all the tricks in the book to bolster itself. But here's the thing: they'll never get there. So what happens then is the person will continue to pressurise themselves, or they'll frequently do it through their children, who will be fucked up for life by their inability ever to meet mummy & daddy's relentless expectations. The children will go to a private school, they may even come first in everything, but when they get to Oxbridge, where they are in a much larger pond, they'll have 'failed' again because they won't be top at everything.

If this relentless need to bolster self-esteem in an attempt to prevent 'failure' is combined with entitlement issues the person is even less pleasant. By entitlement issues I mean the attitude, conscious or not, that if someone else has got something, it's your right to have it too. These people will happily kid themselves that their lack of achievement is because they're a bad person - actually it's a *perceived* lack of achievement on account of poor self-esteem. They then actually arrogate more & more to themselves, are often extremely privileged people, but perceive the slightest fall as a lack of privilege.

I don't think this is really that different from the EDL mentality. Don't get me wrong: I'm aware of the dangers inherent in all monotheistic missionary religion. But what may start off as a desire to protect your patch (England) from a perceived threat (extremist Islam), combined with the sort of mindset above, too easily turns into a worse situation than what we had to start off with, such as wanting to rid the country of all practitioners of all sorts of Islam.

I don't really have an answer to this one, since on the other hand all groups like this grow if they're outlawed, must not be silenced because that feeds them with martyrdom, in fact I'm even tempted to say the sort of attention they've got in Brum today feeds their inadequacy more than it should be.

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