Mrs Thatcher's war on football violence is a bit like J. Edgar Hoover's famous wars on American gangsterism.
The~football hooligans who have rampaged through the cities of Germany, shouting abuse and threatening violence against Germans, Turks, and Irish people alike, are fitting representatives of Tory Britain. They deserve a place in Thatcher's Hall of Fame, alongside Rupert Murdoch, Ian MacGregor, Peter Clowes, and the whole crowd of spivs, scabs, and strike-breakers who have profited from Tory rule.
Thatcher condemns the hooligans. When J. Edgar Hoover was chief of the FBI, he waged a ferocious war against crime. He published a regularly updated list of 'public enemies', a sort of 'top ten' of criminals. A gangster like John Dillinger would be proclaimed Public Enemy No. l and hunted down amidst immense publicity.
Then someone else would be promoted to top of the list. Newspapers movies, radio, and later TV, ail publicised the FBI's 'war against crime'.
Meanwhile Hoover built up dossiers on politicians, and used blackmail to keep himself in the job to the end of his days. After his death it was discovered that he had been covering up for the vast and ever-growing network of Mafia-organised crime, which spreads its tentacles throughout American society, including both business and labour organisations.
Today John Dillinger is in his grave, but organised crime is as great a power as ever in American society.
Mrs Thatcher, likewise, has preached loudly against crime and violence, while presiding over its vast increase.
The brutal stranglehold of the wealthy over the poor has been greatly strengthened in Thatcher's Britain. Dog has been told to eat dog. The law of the jungle' has been held up as the highest moral code of human society: "do to others what they might do to you, but do it first".
The number living below the official poverty line has doubled, and is now over nine million, out of 55 million. Meanwhile vast fortunes have been made in the City, by profiteers following Ivan Boesky's motto "Greed is good".
Peter Clowes has ripped off some £50 million from small investors. Around him hundreds of millionaires prosper by doing much the same sort of thing and not getting caught out. Outside the wealthy Square Mile, Mrs Thatcher's government harasses claimants on the breadline.
The rich flaunt their wealth amidst the hopelessness of millions. Lots of people are excluded from getting on in Mrs Thatcher's jungle because they lack money, or skills, or the 'right' colour pigments in their skin. No wonder crime and violence are on the increase'-When Thatcher denounces crime, it is the leader of the licenced spivs and boot-boys denouncing freelance spivving and violence.
Britain's soccer violence comes from that launching pad, and from the boredom and alienation of life in Mrs Thatcher's jungle. Thttcher's noisy 'crusade' has about as much to do with stamping out violence as J Edgar Hoover's campaign had to do with stamping out crime
Let's kick out the wholesale hooligans and wreckers - the Tory Government, and the profiteers whom it serves! That is the only way to a society based on human solidarity and cooperation - a society which fosters care and respect for others, rather than the prevelent bourgeois spirit of "Devil take the hindmost!".
SO 360, 16-6-88