Church and King

The state needs two things to continue existing: a divided working class and the ability to use force.

The state is not identical to the government. The elected government is the visible, changeable face of the state. Thatcher Out, Starmer Out, doesn’t matter, the state remains.

In 1780 the state was weak. Globalism was in its early days, but Britain was losing its American colonies and was also at war with Spain. Anti-catholic feeling had been promoted and used by the state for over 200 years, so when Catholics were allowed to join the Army, fear of catholics led to rioting, the result of which was increased police powers and a larger army. A win-win for the state.

Eleven years later protestant dissenters, encouraged by the French revolution, demanded civil rights. Fearful that the revolution could spread, the state encouraged at a local level, and did little to stop at a national level, the ensuing riots. The rioters were known as “church and king mobs” as they invoked the established religion and the head of state as their reasons for rioting. The mass of working people were doing the state’s job for them.

During the run-up to WWI, radicalism was spreading through the working class, not just here, but in Germany and Russia too. In 1919, two years after the first socialist country was born, one year after British (male) workers were allowed to vote, and the year Ireland declared independence, there were more national riots. Radical workers, facing unemployment and trained in warfare, are a massive threat to the state. In Scotland, tanks were sent to break up protests against slum landlords.

Further south, there were anti-immigrant riots. The media had been spreading stories through the trenches, of Chinese and black South African workers being brought over to “replace” those fighting. The resulting violence was not directed just at immigrants, but black people who had lived in places like Cardiff and Liverpool for decades.
Again, the state had workers attacking other workers to preserve and strengthen it’s position of dominance over us.

In 1958, rising unemployment, including record levels amongst young people, resulted in the Notting Hill riots. They were stoked by the likes of Oswald Moseley, an admirer of Hitler who was imprisoned during WWII, and the White Defence League, a forerunner to the National Front. Using similar tactics as the NF did with skinheads, they used rebellious youths (who all listened to Black music – rock and roll in the 50s, then ska, reggae and soul from the 60s) to fight against people from other parts of the empire. The state had recently helped the USA  occupy South Korea to fight against socialism (charging us for prescriptions and dentistry to pay for it) so it benefitted our rulers for angry, unemployed young people to take their anger out on people who were just as much victims of capitalism as themselves.

Today, mass protests are being organised by groups such as Turning Point, funded by rich Americans whose way of life would be ruined by socialism. The interests of the American capitalists are aligned with the interests of the British state, but not our interests as a class, we want peace and plenty, they create war and scarcity. Their interests are global economic control. Control of everything from land here and overseas, minerals in Africa, oil in Arabia, the cost of our daily necessities and control of the narrative.

They are blaming immigrants, mainly Muslim, for causing our problems. Saying our way of life is being eroded, claiming common identity as Christians. Deliberately confusing genuine socialism with liberalism and individualistic identity politics. Even claiming that socialists want an Islamic State!

Christianity has been on the decline for decades.
Of the 48.7 million white British in England and Wales, just over half claimed to be Christian at the last census and recent surveys (2024) say only 13% of these go to church regularly. There are around 7 million Muslims in Britain, so they are hardly destroying our national religion. This is just a modern example of what has happened before, unemployment, high food prices, anger amongst workers, rulers can’t let us turn against them, so use race or religion to distract.

The liberal left aren’t doing anything to help.
Knowingly or unknowingly, protest and counter-protest are both doing what the state want. Dividing the working class into camps shouting slogans at each other and giving the police practice for when something really significant, a real threat to state control, happens.

These are not cases of “history repeating itself” to shrug our shoulders at, it is case after case of the state acting in the same way, over and over again, because we workers have not united to stop it.