The Enemy Above

Today, fifteen Islamic anti-war protesters foolishly descended on a parade held for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. This miniscule action was enough to distract the editors of the Sun and the Daily Star from their quest to find the most photogenic pair of tits in the world. HATE FOR HEROES thundered the Sun, while the Daily Star went for the more stylish, and more unnerving THE ENEMY WITHIN. (Amusingly, searching for 'Enemy Within' on their website brings up two stories, both about radical Muslim sentiment, showing that originality eludes them as much as proportionality). Normally, this would be cause to gently tut and smugly chuckle at venal stupidity of the tabloids, but there is another dynamic at play here, and one that's worth exploring further.


The above picture comes from the work of the artist Steve McQueen, made while he was artist in residence for the British Army, 'Queen and Country'. It shows three of the 324 soldiers killed as a result of our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (179 and 145 respectively). These people need not have died, each of their deaths was avoidable.

Needless to say, the stamps didn't get made. Who wants to face the human costs of geo-strategic cockwaving while paying a gas bill? Of course, this poses the question of who wants to look at the Queen's increasingly heavyweight boxer-like features , but you get my point. To put these people, who died young, for a set of lies, in front of the populace, might cause a bit of thinking - about blood sacrifice made for mysterious reasons, hidden cabinet minutes, missing terrorist masterminds and WMD. And Her Majesty's Government can't risk us thinking, when there's a crunch on.

For the Sun and the Daily Star, soldiers are not people to be protected, but to be possessed and infantalised ('Our Boys'). They're simultaniously living and breathing embodiments of Great Britain - Blitz spirit, bulldogs staring nobly out from the White Cliffs of Dover, wondering which country to invade next - and instruments for use.

The bluster of the Sun and Daily Star at the activities of a tiny contingent of protesters at this parade would hold more weight if they didn't fulsomely support throwing these young men and women to the lions for the most slender of reasons - the paper invasion of nearly unoccupied islands in the South Atlantic, a tiny civil war in 'Europe's backyard'. As it stands, the Stop The War Coalition has done more to protect British soldiers than these wank-merchants ever have, and if any of the 15 protesters have ever marched against their government endangering these soldiers and their fallen comrades, they've shown greater respect (if not love, the presumable opposite of Sun HATE) for human life than the tabloid press and the government.

But, just to finish, it's interesting how the increasing severity of the recession, and the promise of a summer of rage has led to the brushing off of the notion of 'the Enemy Within'. The Miners, 25 years ago, faced a similar label, and similar conditions. Let's hope we can avoid the temptation to strike horizontally - at Muslim radicals, striking workers, the unemployed - and instead strike vertically - at the fuckers who see soldiers' deaths as a part of a cost-benefit analysis, at bosses turfing workers out potless into the harshest labour market in a generation, and at the fascists and profiteers yelping about 'an Enemy Within'. There is just an enemy above, and we forget that at our peril.