The flag-craze epidemic is feeding off despair, but our side can offer hope and change minds, if we organise to fight back, argues John Westmoreland

Gary Neville seems to have upset quite a few white middle-class men doesn’t he? Simon Jordan, Jeremy Kyle, Piers Morgan, Matt Le Tissier and all those who believe in the magical properties of the Union Flag are up in arms, all keen to show that they are patriots through and through.

The accusations against Gary Neville, and Gary Lineker too, are pretty serious. Covert Islamists possibly, unpatriotic definitely, traitors even? Could well be. It is after all, the duty of every sports personality who has played for England, to be a right-wing flag-waving chump.

Meme production on the far-right is working flat out. Neville is being scrutinised. He was never that good was he? He’s a boss who pays his workers too little. And, ‘recently discovered footage’ shows Neville not singing the National Anthem before the kick off in an England game.

The anti-Neville hysteria is not just a cathartic experience for the flag people. It is about demonstrating that anything deemed unpatriotic by the right will be called out with public shaming. Farage has called for Neville to be sacked as a football pundit for Sky Sports, and his property in Manchester has been surrounded with another proliferation of flags.

Gary Neville clearly has to be thanked for speaking out. He said what lots of people are thinking, that the flag is not an innocent expression of love for one’s country, it is part of a campaign of bullying and intimidation. Neville’s crime was that he refused to submit. And that is what the far right are all about.

Submit to the flag! Submit to the anthem! Submit to the bosses who are screwing us!

Nothing’s worse than submission

Karl Marx saw the working class as the collective force that could bring about an end to class society and emancipate humanity from the constant misery, conflicts and wars that capitalism creates.

The working class, said Marx, is a class born to fight, implying that a day of reckoning was inevitable. And at the minute, the working class has a lot to fight about. The cost of living combined with inflation and downward pressure on wages has given workers a lot to be angry about: unaffordable rents; rising energy costs; the waiting lists for hospital treatment and so on.

This misery is happening at a time when wealth is visibly shooting up in an obscene mockery of the despair so many are feeling. And it is this fact above all other explanations, that is what is driving the flag frenzy, the racist scapegoating and the villainising of anyone who speaks out effectively against the hell we are being dragged into.

That the far right is gaining traction in working-class communities, confronts Marx’s optimism about an inevitable showdown between the workers and the capitalist system. The flag craze has taken hold spectacularly around the deindustrialised towns that used to be strong Labour-voting places, often with a high level of trade-union membership.

As Labour has mocked working-class hopes for some economic and social justice, Reform has made political capital. Where the collective strength of the working class has been eroded, the hope against hope, that a man with a vision, who shares their hatred of what Labour has done, can offer something better is tangible.

And Reform, the Tories and the fascist right, supported by the right-wing media, are urging on the flag craze. They are applauding workers who are finding comfort in raising a flag that demands their submission to capitalist power, popularised as a force for liberation.

Nothing’s better than a fight

Marx wasn’t an idealist. He didn’t have a blind faith that the working class would automatically come together and do the right thing. He understood how the system controlled workers and prevented them acting collectively. Marx summed up this problem, which can be paraphrased as: ‘The dominant ideas are always those of the ruling class’. This side of the revolution that is always true.

As Marx explained, the capitalists own the means of production and also control what he called the means of mental production. This is an obvious problem for us now.

Corporate power owns the factories and controls supply of goods, housing, food etc. They also own the media, the Internet, social media, publishing and, increasingly, educational institutions. And where they don’t own it, they can use their power to attack any and every left presence that can give the workers hope, whether it’s Jeremy Corbyn, Mick Lynch or Greta Thunberg.

This raises the obvious question that if the ruling class forever wins the battle of ideas, how will we ever have a revolution?

The answer is an obvious one. The ruling class exploits the working class and that fact is made apparent every day. We have to get up when we would prefer to stay in bed. We have to do a job we don’t necessarily want to do, and in a way that could be done more humanely.

The demands of the bosses are never ending, and when the pressures of hard work and lack of reward get too much, workers fight back. Fighting back might mean telling the boss where to go, or going on strike. But at every step the absolute control over the workers cannot be sustained. Even in dictatorships where trade unionists are murdered and rebels are arrested, resistance takes place.

When workers fight back, they gain the confidence to question the dominant ideas. When resistance takes the form of strikes, workers feel their collective power. And as the forces of the state and the media turn against them, workers discover ideas that further explain the crisis and point to how the fight could be won.

If there are no strikes that win real gains between now and the next general election, Reform will benefit. If there is a meaningful fightback, Reform will be exposed as another bosses’ party that is against working-class people having a say in how the country is run. The stakes are high.

Trade unions against Farage

Farage has said that he intends to attack the trade unions if he becomes PM after the next election. He has said numerous times that he wants a showdown with education unions, to inflict a patriotic curriculum on our kids, and take revenge on ‘lefty teachers’.

The Tories have said they intend to cut the welfare budget and especially benefits, massively. They will back Farage to the hilt, and they seem to expect no pushback from the trade unions either.

Are the unions a pushover for these right-wing fanatics? Maybe. That the TUC and trade-union leaders are not offering any lead to the horrors that await us is a disgraceful abdication of duty in the face of the enemy. Cowardice and confusion on our side will see more demands for the working class to submit.

The trade unions are in a tough spot. They exist to negotiate peacefully the rate of exploitation that workers have to suffer, but they are facing a political attack that will brand them sectional, divisive and unpatriotic.

We need trade unions. We need to be organised. We need to be able to defend ourselves and our communities. But we need trade unions that are going to fight back. If that fight back is not going to be led by trade-union leaders, then we have to look at how ordinary members can prepare us for what is to come.

Your Party can play an important role in organising a working-class fight back over the things that are making workers angry and afraid. The conferences called in November give us the opportunity to establish the foundations of a socialist labour movement. A movement that refuses to submit to flag-waving bullies, and that leads a meaningful fightback based on our collective strength.

Nothing is worse than submission. Nothing is better than a fight.