NO MILITARY ON OUR STREETS
In the last couple of years, the ‘Help for Heroes’ army PR campaign has tried to make us love Britain’s military forces. We have been told they are ‘our boys’, ‘our troops’. We have been encouraged to think of them as our friends, and our comrades. They are not. An army needs an enemy to be an army. They are an occupying force fighting the enemies of the bankers, the politicians, and the new social order. The people are this enemy. And so ‘our boys’ are our enemy. War abroad, repression at home. This summer, and already, a military state will be rolled out on the streets of Britain for the security of the Olympic games, as the Tories and Security Services continue their unrelenting demolition of people’s freedom and means of survival. The Army is being trained to quell future riots and widespread social unrest which is inevitable as we struggle to live in intolerable conditions. The people have been at the receiving end of intense propaganda via the ‘Help for Heroes’ campaign for years now, in order to make us accept the occupation which is coming and the role of the Army in breaking the back of any industrial action or strike which has the possibility to create any rupture of the ‘Queen’s Peace’.
The Olympics is the excuse to put the Army on the streets, arm massive numbers of police and create a surveillance state which will not end when the gold medals are given out. The Army will never be withdrawn from their role of social control after the Olympics, nor will the cops give up their murderous role. Britain is now a modern fascist State. Just like Italy, where the army is in occupation in city and town squares, public transport hubs and urban streets – all to defend the State and the capitalist system against the people. This is happening just as soon in Greece, with the emergence of a new Junta – which is the only way that ‘democracy’ can stop the people taking what they want and need using the methods of self-organisation – self-organisation for their own survival against the capitalist austerity. Austerity is not for the rich and included, it’s for the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the population. The economic crisis and the rise in food and fuel prices will not just go away, the entire modern industrial-technological system is based on consuming vast amounts of natural resources which are now running out. This is a problem which cannot be solved by strike-breaking armies and by turning societies into open prisons under the gaze of millions of surveillance cameras.
Those who join the world’s armies are not heroes. They are, by definition, mercenaries – invading, occupying, murdering and terrorising in return for a pay-check. There is nothing heroic about this. Heroes do something extraordinary and spontaneous for no reward, monetary or otherwise. All soldiers – whilst they agree to murder and dominate on behalf of the oppressors – are mercenaries.
The only heroic thing that armies have done in history is to defend each other against danger in the theatre of war, to refuse the senseless orders of their political masters, to refuse to occupy their own or another’s country, to refuse to act as scabs against striking workers, and to refuse to carry arms or use force against their own people. Only when the troops understand that they are pawns in a game played only for the benefit of the rich and which is hurting the freedom of their family, friends and society at large, only when the troops turn their guns on our masters, will they be considered heroes. It has happened many times in history, and it can happen here.
Revolution – Now and Always
