"The Privatization of Politics"

As the late Mark Fischer writes in his essay "The Land still lies: Handsworth Songs and the English Riots" (2011), "struggles are never definitely won."

So true, so true, as Trump would mutter sotto voce after one of his strategically inflammatory declarations. But no -- we mean it! Like the handlebars on our bicycles, or their pedals.

In his essay Fischer recalls George Shire's contribution to the Tate Modern's 2011 post-screening discussion of the Black Audio Film Collective's Handsworth Songs (1986). Fischer writes:

"...many struggles have not been lost so much as diverted into what [Shire] called 'the privatization of politics,' as former activists became hired as 'consultants'."

Following this, Fischer cites Paul Gilroy, whom "Shire echoes":

“When you look at the layer of political leaders from our communities,” Gilroy observed, “the generation who came of age during that time 30 years ago, many of those people have accepted the logic of privatisation. They’ve privatised that movement, and they’ve sold their services as consultants and managers and diversity trainers.”

I came of age 30 years ago, and yes, I remember the UK Miners' Strike and the riots in Birmingham, Wandsworth and Tottenham. I remember Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, just as I remember its influence on the Bill Bennett-era B.C. provincial Social Credit government (1975-1991). I remember American economist Milton Friedman and his influence on the SoCred's think-tank, the Fraser Institute, and the Reagan Administration (1980-1988) and its president singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" with Canadian Progressive Conservative government prime minister Brian Mulroney, who held power from 1984 to 1993, and who sang it again -- solo this time -- for Trump at Trump's Palm Beach party house earlier this year.

I also remember former Greenpeace president Patrick Moore who, after leaving Greenpeace, went to work as a forest industry consultant, and who continues to chastise an environmental movement that he claims has, like Trump today, "abandoned science and logic in favour of emotion and sensationalism."