Following Christopher Hitchens over a cliff: the descent to neo-conservatism (part II)

(If someone wanders around with a large sign reading "KICK ME" on their back, it would be churlish not to oblige.)

Bat has revealed a small biographical detail in his interesting post on the Galloway case. In a small break from their usual mahco posturing, Harry's Place have got their Arnie-style neo-con posing pouches in a twist over Bat's previous employment at the Daily Telegraph, bastion of the Establishment and recent recipient of a certain hefty libel fine. Lenin deals appropriately with at least some of HP's confusion:

1) The Bat did work for the Telegraph.

2) HP Sauce raises a furry eyebrow at the claim that Telegraph journos were angry about the war and also in agitating against the management:


"But Torygraph hacks nodding their heads sympathetically to a junior Trot's take on world politics? Hmmm."

Well, look. The struggle for union recognition alluded to by Bat is a simple matter of record. Rising militancy among the journalists there has been extensively reported It is also a matter of record that they won recognition and have been a pain in the managerial arse ever since.

The author of the piece, Marcus, previously displayed an unusual commitment to Left values of egalitarianism and equality of opportunity by coming out in defence of Charles Windsor's feudalism-lite approach to education. He showers himself in further glory by here revealing his innate contempt for the working class:

...you'll no doubt remember graduates from Surrey who had joined SWSS and been instructed by their branch to take jobs after their graduation in hospitals and factories to - you know - get close to the workers. [This was never SWP policy, but we'll leave aside that minor detail.] They always turned up at meetings to report excitedly on whatever the subject of the discussion was that:

"There's a lot of anger on the shopfloor about this ! "

Let's extend them the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe the workers at the local cigarette factory were exercised about events in Nagorno Karabakh. Perhaps they talked of little else in the works canteen.

Stupid proles. (To continue in the pro-war "left" tradition of egregiously misapplying selected passages of Orwell, Marcus may as well have claimed that the working classes smell.) So much for HP's oft-stated concern for the workers, at least; combined with the apologetics for homophobia, it seems HP are hesitating only a moment before taking the plunge. Christopher! Christopher! Wait for meeee.....

(Apostate Windbag has a fine old rant about such matters just here.