The war against the poor

antrim | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Thursday October 28, 2004 00:37 by never trust the rich

For as long as time immemorial, the greedy rich, have been waging war against the poor/working class/peasants, all over the world.

From the shanty towns of africa, to the slums of brazil and sprawling run down council estates of the developed world.

In western industrialised countries the war takes the shape of the destruction and degradation of working class community spirit and cohesion through the authorities encouragement of dog eat dog competitive criminality, flooding working class areas with hard drugs such as crack/heroin.

A FRU operative admitted to me, he was supplied heroin by the brixton police to push to the working class community of brixton in the 1980s.

Life in working class communities has never been so harsh and brutal. With areas such as north belfast deprived of recreational outlets, such as leisure centres, the chance of educational progression, training and real jobs. Everyday the poor are ground down, through the maze of punitive DHSS beaurocracy, micky mouse training schemes and the scramble for the ever decreasing public housing stock.
Is it any wonder our children turn to crime, drugs and suicide to escape the harsh brutal grim reality of poverty and homelessness.

You can rest assured everything is being done to break the will, spirit and dignity of the poor/working class and to bring us to our knees.
What capitalists/rich envisage for for us the poor/working class who live in the relative poverty the industrial west and developed countries, throught the increasing destruction of the welfare state, is for us the poor/working class to experience the absolute grinding poverty of the third world poor, that is their future for us.

What they want is an uber capitalist playground for the rich where the poor/working class and our children are their new commodity to be bought, sold, abused and used like the women and street children of the third world.

My husband who was unemployed throught the turbulent 1970s and 1980s, spent his days trainning at Maysfield leisure centre. It took him many years of hard physical trainning, despite a disability to get his brown belt in karate,

At his physical peak he could do 70 press ups on his first 2 fingers, in the end poverty defeated him because in those days, being unemployed and from a working class area like the short strand he could not afford contact lens to correct his near total blindness, to enable him to progress any further in karate to get his black belt and become an instructor, if he had been rich he would be a black belt instructor today and his life would have taken a different path, instead he had to replace the high of martial arts with the high of drink and drugs.
Even today it is very hard to progress through martial artsdue to financial constraints, if you are poor/unemployed/working class, many of whose martial art ranks are filled with the privileged, militaristic, redneck, charles bronson type vigilantes, who specifically have the poor/working class in their target as the enemy/object of hate.

What there is available at community level for the poor/working class and unemployed is the harmless tai chi/physiotherapy for geriatrics type martial art.
It is a similar situation to that of brazil/the carribean in the olden days, when slaves/peasants/the poor were banned from organising and trainning in martial arts, instead they had to disguise this as a dance which is the origin of some forms of brazilian jujitsu.

It is a different case in london and manchester, where members of class war/AFA are black belts in and kick boxers.

It is clear the rich and right wing are waging a not so secret war against the poor/working class and its time we woke up and learn to fight back.