A kid from Deane
Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen quite a few people on social media saying they were surprised they’d never heard of the Winter Hill trespass. I grew up in Bolton and never heard the tale either. As a kid growing up in Deane, I could see the hill on my way to primary school, except on the very few days of the year that it was chucking it down, or there was low cloud.
I was taught about Canute and the waves, Alfred burning cakes, Clive of India and a bloke in the sky who looked after us all. Strangely, in a mainly textiles town, I never learned that every month mill workers like my big sister coughed up a couple of shillings a month to fund a union to push for better wages, nor was there ever any mention of the time that local workers organised to try to prevent the capitalist Ainsworth from denying them the opportunity for a bit of fresh air and exercise.
Let’s face it, the education system is the ideology mill for the next generation of docile workers, who have to be taught the 3Rs (Reading, Riting and Resignation) and, of course, stories of defiance of class privilege find it hard to get a look in.
You don’t need to be a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist to think this way either. The government recently ordered that schools ‘Should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters.’
Now, ‘the extreme stances include a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections’*
So socialist advocacy of common ownership of the world’s productive resources – which entails the democratic abolition of capitalism – is an extreme stance. Not only that, their word-association game makes it appear that democracy, capitalism and ‘free and fair elections’ are all of a piece. Utter nonsense of course – genuine democracy will only come about once the owning class can no longer control us through its education system and media.
*See government instruction here A new tab will open. You’ll need to scroll down a lot!