Re: [Marxism] The British Nazi Obsession

["Paul Flewers" <trusscott.foundation@xxxxxxxxxx>]

As someone born in 1955 and who grew up in a Britain that was steeped in the
shadow of the Second World War -- London was still scarred by bomb-sites
long after the war finished, kid's comics in the 1960s were full of war
stories, kids played with toy guns in war-games in the parks, the couple of
telly channels then running had lots of things on the war -- I'd agree that
Britain is obsessed with the war, and the whole business has since been
emphasised to the extent that the further we leave the war behind us, the
more it's on the telly and in books. We didn't have thirtieth anniversaries
of D-Day, Auschwitz and VE-Day in 1964-65 as far as I remember.

What's behind it must be the fact that the Second World War was the last
time that Britain played an important role on the world scale. Since then,
it has been a minor world power, tagging on the coat-tails of the USA. It's
an unconscious reflection within the ruling class of this unhappy fact, and,
in the near-absence of an alternative left-wing interpretation (the majority
left-wing interpretation of the war differs little from that of the ruling
class), this leaks into popular consciousness. By 1942, Britain's military
production actually outstripped that of the Third Reich -- Britain today has
a tiny manufacturing industry sector, and the economy really lives on
percentages reaped on the money-markets.

The real irony is that Britain was a loser in the war. It emerged from the
war well and truly knackered, was forced whilst the war was raging by the
USA to open up the Empire to the dollar, and lost most of the Empire after
the war. But this is something that most bourgeois commentators would be
loath to recognise. That would be too painful!

Paul F



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