GIVING AN EMPTY CRISP PACKET A GOOD KICKING.

Although I am a poet of sorts and enjoy and use metaphor, I don’t like the rhetorical use of the word “fight”, as in “We will fight global warming”. Obviously this example isn't brilliant because it literally advocates impossible actions but it would be possible to, say, “fight to defend the NHS”, but in the contemporary UK (or most of it, most of the time), this kind of exhortation, is, so far, purely rhetorical, and most of those who use such slogans know it.

Strict pacifists sometimes object, that you shouldn't even metaphorically call for violence, and I have some sympathy with this, because as the example of jihadis from Britain going to wars like the one in Syria illustrates, sometimes some people will take it seriously. However my main objection is that it can easily make sensible political demands look ridiculous; something which the headline writers of Socialist Worker often do and even of the second edition of the Eco-Socialist is also in danger of.

Perhaps in the context of British leftie politics “fight” has become so usual that its hardly noticed by some seasoned protesters but when a local Lib-dem ward newsletter* states under the sub head “FIGHTING TO KEEP OUR STREETS CLEAN”, that LD councillors and the Brent Central MP are “…fighting to keep our streets free from litter, fly-tips and dumping.” I get worried.

I get worried because they know where I live, they have access to the electoral register, and they just put their ward newsletter through my letterbox. I know the ward newsletter to be the first snowflake in an impending avalanche of electoral piffle in the run up to local and euro elections in May 2014 and so I will carefully place it in the appropriate recycling bin, in case a “FIGHTING” Lib-dem litter vigilante beats me up. Who knows, on the way out to the bin, I may spot Sara Teather MP or Councillor Alison Hopkins engaged in mortal combat with an errant bin liner or giving an empty crisp packet a good kicking.

(*ward newsletter for Dollis Hill, Neasden and Cricklewood published pp  Brent Liberal-Democrats delivered in Dollis Hill 17/11/2013)