IN 1953 East Berlin became the epicentre of a national uprising against the Communist regime of the German Democratic Republic.
Discontent with economic and political conditions reached breaking point when construction workers – the supposed heroes of Soviet proletarian mythology – went on strike after being forced to work longer hours for the same pay.
On June 16 they marched to the House of Ministries, the seat of government. They demanded to speak with Otto Grotewohl and Walter Ulbricht – Prime Minister and First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party. Both refused.
The crowd called for the government’s dissolution and for free elections. Western radio broadcast the news across the country and by the next morning a wave of demonstrations had swept East Germany. Party offices and state stores were attacked. In the Communist paradise, reality burst through the window.
The Marxist-Leninist aristocracy was in trouble. People were irritated and exhausted, despite official efforts to present a grim world as the best of all possible ones. With the nomenklatura overwhelmed and the police outmatched, the Soviet military commander declared a state of emergency. The tanks rolled out.
Epic and melodrama feed the insubstantial verbiage of the state bureaucrat – elected or appointed.
Governments, oppositions and the news industry reduce politics to a weekly soap opera. The United Kingdom, not a pioneer in this field, has nonetheless become one of the most conspicuous poster children of Western regression.
Labour apparatchiks move forward because no force is strong enough to stop them. The obsessive daily repetition of the leader’s name generates clicks and followers for allies and enemies alike.
Leaders are not bothered by excess; it propels them, though not without a hint of melancholy. Deep down the ruler feels that most Britons are unworthy of his statesmanlike gifts.
The people are a lost cause, he probably sighs in the unbearable solitude of power. In truth, most people care about little beyond what is within arm’s reach: mobile phone, remote control, a pint and a bag of nuts.
Barons of Western collectivism yearn for a model of society that even the masters of the Theatre of the Absurd would have rejected as overdone.
They dream of declaring homicide a social disease and of a psychedelic Eden where everything springs from the miraculous Status Marchitus.
They release criminals, wave in illegal migrants, impose lockdowns as moral treatment and masks as compulsory virtue-signalling, jail those who utter forbidden words, and postpone elections whenever the polls look unfavourable.
Racism, xenophobia, discrimination and nationalism are always practised by those who believe that a totalitarian collective contraption – state, nation, people – must override the individual. In short, the left, in its most French, nocturnal and promiscuous meaning.
At best, nothing will improve. The disorder – born of neglect and corruption – is global and irreversible. A microbe stripped rulers naked and displayed them in all their shamelessness. This is not an imaginary conspiracy. The ultimate conspiracy theory is the belief that authorities care about citizens. ‘With the sweat of your brow we shall eat from your pantry’ is the creed of the modern oligarch.
But beware: Starmer may yet read a book – Brecht, for example.
In 1953 hundreds died; thousands were tortured or sentenced to a combined total of more than 5,000 years in prison. It was then that Brecht wrote Die Lösung (The Solution), a satire identifying the real culprit: a citizenry deemed incompetent, unfit to play the role assigned to it.
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed on the Stalinallee
Which stated that the people
Had squandered the confidence of the government
And could only win it back
By redoubled work. Would it not in that case
Be simpler for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Will Starmer dissolve the people and elect another – or should we reserve a table at Fortnum’s and watch the tanks roll down Piccadilly over tea?
