POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE – THE LAST ACCEPTABLE FORM OF PREJUDICE

I recently went to watch the band Foals play a gig in Birmingham, as part of their COVID-delayed UK tour. We arrived at the venue nice and early, with plenty of time to get some drinks at the arena bar and take our seats just as the support act were starting to play. They were a band called Goat Girl – not one I had heard of before (and judging by their music, might well not hear of again. Very much a dated mid-90s teenage “grunge” angst to their sound). Nonetheless, no-one goes to a gig for the support act, and it at least provided some background sound while we awaited the main act to take the stage.

About mid-way through their support set, the crowd was filling up nicely, and whilst I wouldn’t say they were fully engaged with what Goat Girl were offering, they were providing a polite applause and occasional whoop to encourage them along. At this point, perhaps not totally satisfied with what they were getting back from the crowd, the band decided completely out of the blue between songs to yell the words “F**K THE TORIES”.

Now this got a minor ripple of appreciation from some segments of the crowd. My reaction however was a combination of sadness and alienation. Sadness that a band who had been given the opportunity to play to a 20,000-seater arena (albeit only part-full), had failed so miserably to get the crowd excited that they felt a need to resort to a completely unnecessary and out of context bit of Tory bashing to try and grab the attention that their music was quite clearly not managing to do so. And alienation because, as a life-long Conservative voter, I was filled with an immediate feeling that this band didn’t respect me, nor want me engaged in their music, simply because of my political persuasion.

Now I appreciate that it is not new or even unusual for music acts to use their platform to make political statements. This is something that has always happened. And right now it is very easy, and in fact a bit lazy, to take a swipe at the Tories to try and get the masses to buy into your message.

However, this incident did lead me to a rather disturbing realization. THAT IT IS ABSOLUTELY FINE IN MODERN SOCIETY TO PUBLICLY INSULT, IN A RATHER VULGAR WAY, AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE, WITHOUT RISK OF BEING CANCELLED. And Conservative voters are THAT group.

What performers like Goat Girl and so many others fail to realise, is that when you publicly attack “The Tories”, you are not simply levelling criticism at a small group of MPs who preside over our Parliament. You are in fact attacking every individual member of the public in this country that voted for them, agrees with their principles and aligns themselves with their political ideologies. At last count, this represented approximately 14million people in the UK (or 43% of everyone who voted in the 2019 General Election).

Now just imagine for one minute that the band had substituted the word “Tories” for the word “gays” or the word “blacks”. What do you think would happen? I’ll tell you… their statement would be met in the first instance with condemnation from the crowd, I suspect taking the form of an initial disbelieving silence followed by angry boos. They would likely take no further part in the tour, quite rightly losing their spot as a support act to the main event for all future dates. They would be dropped from their record label, and quite likely find it very difficult to get another record deal with anyone. Like it or not, that is how cancel culture operates these days. Depending on how public the incident became, they could also expect a furious backlash across social media, and even in the mainstream media.

But none of this happened. The crowd responded to the statement with an undercurrent of general agreement, and the band continued playing. As far as I am aware, they have continued to support Foals on their UK tour, and the statement received no publicity.

So, what is the difference? Why is it deemed completely acceptable to express prejudicial sentiment against a group of people based on their political views, when it would be considered a hate crime to do so against virtually any other group in society?

We are led to believe that we live in a society that encourages free speech and freedom of opinion, which surely makes me entitled to hold and voice political sentiment free from prejudice, provided I am not hurting anyone in doing so?

Sure, none of us are born with our political views, in the way that others are born into a race or a sexual persuasion. But then neither are we born into religion. Both religion and political persuasion are a product of nurture rather than nature, and our views in both regards are molded through our upbringing and influenced by the views of our family and friends from a young age. And yet prejudice based on religious views is rightly considered a hate crime.

The fact that I can sit in an arena to watch a gig for entertainment purposes and to enjoy a few hours of escapism from real life, and find myself being made to feel alienated and prejudiced against because of my political allegiances by a band whose political views I did not ask to hear (and pay up to £100 for the privilege), represents an irrefutable inconsistency in how our society selectively applies its cancel-culture mentality.

Surely this is a wrong that must be addressed?

How was Angela Rayner allowed to get away so easily with her “Tory scum” comments? As a reminder, here are the words she used when talking about Tory ministers in her speech to Labour party members in September 2021…

“We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile…banana republic, vile, nasty, Etonian…piece of scum”

I know that she was specifically referring to MPs in Westminster at the time. However, as a Conservative voter I inherently align my views and values to those of our Tory MPs, and therefore by association she was also insulting me and anyone else like me with these vile slurs. As such, I consider Miss Rayner’s comments are aimed at me as much as they are at the MPs I voted for, and to that effect consider myself a victim of a hate crime committed by Miss Rayner.

I am not racist, homophobic or misogynistic. I consider the accusation defaming, and do not consider that her faux-apology issued days later (only I might add after considerable pressure, having initially refused to apologise on the basis that she was “angry”) was sufficient to close the issue.

Of course the mainstream media failed to adequately follow up the incident. If it had been a Conservative minister using such language to disparage his Labour equivalents then I suspect he would have faced pressure to resign, as is the fashion these days.

The point is, from top to bottom in our society it is somehow completely acceptable to publicly express a prejudice against others for being Tory. This is the last form of acceptable prejudice in our progressive society, and I believe it has to change. The example has to be set by our MPs first and foremost, from whom we should expect better.