Ownership of The Truth
subverts The Pursuit of it.
“In the early 1990s, the Western democracies seemed to be The Future.
The collapse of The Soviet Union meant that their ideas
were now going to spread all across The World.
But at Home, in both Britain and America, there were still forces deep in the heart of both societies that had little to DO with Democracy.
It seemed that despite all the changes of the past 30 years,
that underneath, the OLD structures of Power and The Corruption
and The Anger that created, was STILL there.
In Los Angeles in March 1991, Rodney King was
chased and stopped by police for drunken driving.
Despite offering NO Resistance, he was
beaten REPEATEDLY by FOUR officers.
It was videoed by a man watching from a balcony.
He took it to The Police, but NO-ONE was interested.
So he gave the tape to a local TV station.
When it was shown, there was an outburst of anger against the police violence.
Four of the officers were put on trial.
But they were ALL acquitted by an overwhelmingly white jury.
“Due to the escalation of the situation, and the seriousness of the problems that are occurring, The Sheriff has mobilised ALL department personnel.”
For six days, thousands of people rose up and rioted across Los Angeles.
It was only STOPPED whenthe National Guard and soldiers from Marines were brought onto the streets.
It was an outpouring of the anger that had been simmering throughout the 1980s in the black community — that despite ALL the reforms and the changes in attitudes since the 1960s, nothing
had REALLY changed.
It seemed that those in Power in America were still DEEPLY racist, and would use violence AGAINST blacks in America to MAINTAIN that Power —
“ALL of it needs to STOP, but I'm gonna to tell you...
Get down on our knees and pray to God that the violence….
I know that The Government, whatever, can't STAND us black people — He's doing everything in the world to make The Black Man be extinct.
But I'm going to tell you one thing,
Us black people are gonna to SURVIVE —
And that's Wrong about —
the black people tearing up the, you know,
burnin’ down buildings, that's WRONG.
But still, through it all,
We Gonna SURVIVE!!
So f**k everybody, I'm off —“
“….All right, that's just an example
of the frustration that's being FELT here —“
In Britain, a series of scandals revealed that dozens
of innocent people had been
held in jail...
..some for over 15 years.
They included the Guildford Four
and the Birmingham Six.
Most of them were Irishmen who'd
been accused of being
members of the IRA and planting
bombs in English cities.
Every time they had tried to
prove their innocence,
they had been blocked by some
of the most senior figures
in the British establishment,
despite overwhelming
evidence of false confessions
and faked evidence.
Eminent men at the very
centre of power,
from the most senior law lord
to the Attorney General
and to the Commissioner
of the Metropolitan Police,
all of them, it was alleged, knew
that the prisoners were innocent.
But they had done nothing,
and the evidence remained
locked away...
..because they had an unshakeable
conviction that the establishment
must never be shown to be wrong.
Finally, in March 1991,
the Birmingham Six were
freed at the Old Bailey.
Ladies and gentlemen.
For 16 and a half years,
we have been used as political
scapegoats for people
in there at the highest.
The police told us from the start
that they knew we hadn't done it.
They told us they didn't care
who'd done it.
They told us that we were selected
and that they were going to
frame us just to keep
the people in there happy.
That's what it's all about.
To save face.
Justice? I don't think them people
in there have got the intelligence
nor the honesty to spell the word,
never mind dispense it.
They're rotten.
But there were others, also
at the heart of power in Britain,
who seemed to have lost all
contact with reality.
The intelligence agencies,
from MI6 to GCHQ,
whose job was to watch and monitor
what was happening in the world,
had completely failed to predict
the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mrs Thatcher, who had supported
the spies throughout the 1980s,
was shocked.
Her foreign policy adviser wrote...
"All that intelligence that they
gave us didn't tell us
"the one thing we needed to know.
"That the Soviet Union
was about to collapse."
It was a colossal failure
of the whole Western system
of intelligence.
But some of the spies still didn't
believe what was happening.
Sir Percy Cradock was head of
the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Despite everything, he was convinced
the Soviets were just
faking the collapse.
They were just up
to their usual tricks.
They were still planning
to take over the world.
Both Britain and America were
societies that had been
built on empire and conquest through
violence and the exercise of power.
But neither of them
had ever faced up to this.
And instead, they had both built
dreamlike myths
about their exceptionalism,
to shield and protect themselves.
But in both cases, those myths
were rooted in fear.
In Britain at the start
of the 20th century,
not only were those in charge
frightened by what
they had done abroad,
with the slave trade and in China,
they now had a feeling
that it was coming closer,
that something dangerous might also
be happening inside England itself.
The Empire had led to giant
industrial cities
rising up all across England.
They were dark, frightening places
where millions of people
lived in appalling conditions.
What alarmed those in charge was
the violence and the anger that
was building up there among what
was called the masses.
But the danger also seemed to come
from the top of society as well.
From the new industrialists and
bankers, who ran the global empire.
They also seemed to be
out of control.
There was a wave
of financial scandals
and no-one seemed to be
able to stop them.
The novelist EM Forster wrote...
"England is being menaced by the
inner darkness in high places
"that has come with this
commercial age."
Trapped by what they saw
as a danger below
and corruption above,
the middle classes retreated.
They turned away into another
imaginary version of England,
where there were none
of these threats.
It was invented for them by a whole
generation of writers,
artists and musicians who,
in an act of
collective imagination,
created a complete dream
image of England's past...
..one that still haunts
the country today.
At its heart was a vision of a
natural order in the countryside,
outside the cities.
One of the key figures was a man
called Cecil Sharp.
He travelled through England
recording old songs,
and he filmed himself and his
friends learning old rural dances.
Sharp made it absolutely clear
that this was a political project.
His aim was to create a new
kind of English nationalism
which had, at its heart,
the idea of The Folk.
It was a concept that he had
taken from German nationalism :
The Innocent rural people
and Their Culture.
Now, is the sort of dancing he does
the dancing that would have been
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