Back To The Beginning 16: Pictures of an Exhibition

Pictures circulating on Twitter show Met cops standing 'on guard' around a statue of Saint Churchill. He must be a saint of course, why else would anyone deserve such protection? Certainly not the potential victims of male cultured violence, by which I mean women. It's laughable. What are these people so afraid of? That a statue built as a bulwark of the British institution, in all its shameful glory, be knocked over or somehow attacked? So what if it is? That's the unthinkable though, isn't it. If that were to happen it would clearly prove, in the minds of roasted gammon across the land, that we had descended into the ninth circle of hell. That we'd be living in anarchy (if only), or there vision of it. Utter nonsense, but you can't reason with these people. Churchill has been elevated to the level of cultural messiah to these people, who refuse to accept any facts or analysis of his power and position. He was PM, there was a war, we won the war (we, in this case, means far more than simply Britain), ergo Saint Churchill.

So a detachment of the brave and the bold is sent to stand a sad vigil around a statue because statues are now seen as the new flashpoint. I suspect no one at the actual vigil, the one that mattered, gave a second through to the statute; probably had more important things on their minds. One wonders if this was performative: if you send the cops out, take pictures and post them, then it sets in mind that there was a real threat. No smoke and all that. Insidious.

What the pictures do of course is far more instructive. You aren't seeing cops defending women, keeping them safe at a vigil to campaign for greater awareness of institutional misogyny (and police violence). You are seeing the state's sheriffs depending that which commemorates and thus reinforces the violence of the state. Not a war hero, but a ruling class icon who willingly propped up and used its worst elements. They are defending the institution of the state and by extension the British ruling class, and with it the means by which the victims of institutional violence continue to suffer. It's a slap in the face to those protesting.

But I guess that's the point.

And at long, long, last the weather is turning. Oh let the good times rock! Or at least vote against our nasty thicko home secretary's disgusting police bill.