The Roots of Political Discontent
“Creative rebellion? Not-love? What the f*** does that all mean?” my mate Graham* asked me. (*name changed to protect privacy)
“And what does that have to do with the piss-poor state of politics in the UK?”
We were sitting outside Alibarbar in the sweltering dusk of Singapore sipping dark potent Belgian beer.
Graham had been moaning for a good ten minutes about how he was never going to settle back in the UK because of the appalling politics that has been destroying the country since the 1970s.
“If we are to meet the world with love, then we really need to know what not-love looks like,” I had said to him - and he was not impressed. Graham was calling ‘bullshit’. I pointed out to him that terrible politics have been going on a lot longer than the last 50 years that he remembers.
“The industrial age that started in the late 1700s is coming to an end, and we don’t get any changes for the better until we’ve seen the worst of what man can do with greed and scarcity.”
Industrial Age Exploitation and Its Legacy
I continued, “In the town where I was born, the Egerton family are the descendants of the family of the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater. The beginning of the industrial age in the West started in Manchester. The 3rd Duke of Bridgewater was the first man to build a canal to move coal from his coal-mines into Manchester.
In the 1700s, the Duke employed four-year-old children to work in his coal-mines, and more than 80% of them didn’t survive to six years old. They were kept underground naked and barefoot, except for a rope tied around their waist. They hauled large chunks of coal out of the mine that was tied to the rope, seven days-a-week, 12 hours a day. And when they died, their lifeless small bodies were discarded like trash into the river next to the new canal.
As a consequence of this, and many other terrible exploitations, Manchester was the birthplace of trade unions that fought for freedom - the five-day week, the 8 hour day, paid leave, low-cost healthcare. Cooperative societies were formed that provided basic food at low-prices, and not-for-profit banking to counter the exploitation of loan-sharks.
These are things that everyone takes for granted today that were born out of love, in the face of not-love.”
