A Student Federation poster from Chile in
1920 echoes down the years to warn a Jersey public who fail to stand up to
those who hijack the democratic process…
I was fascinated in reading about a man, Salvador
Allende, who is not only a personal political hero but also without doubt one
of the most important champions of democracy of the 20th Century to
stumble across details of a 1920’s poster issued by the then FECH Chilean students’
federation newspaper ‘Claridad’ (Clarity). Indeed, given two highly
symbolic events of the past seven days here in Jersey the message contained really
could not resonate as being any more relevant:
Firstly, the final launch of the Committee of Inquiry
into the decades of horrific child abuse concealed from Jersey’s ordinary people
by years of corrupt Establishment politicians, ‘law lords’ and media sycophants.
And equally, of course, the final ‘heads-in-the-sand’ decision to commit us to
the huge burden of a Financial District that within twenty years will be as
redundant as the crumbling ‘Off-Shore’ tax evasion industry on which it is
based.
For the poster (the words of which I reproduce below) sums
up in language as adroit as it is blunt the cost of what happens both
individually and as a community when, as Plato so famously highlighted, the
ordinary populace fail to engage in the political process or look beyond the
lies and motives of those who would tell you theirs’ is the best and only way.
Indeed, replace the names of the Chilean newspapers of
the 1920’s quoted within the poster with the Jersey Evening Post, Channel ITV
and the local BBC and the words of 94 years ago could have been written specifically
about the Jersey of 2014.
The words sum up not just Haut de la Garenne and so
many other horrors which were allowed to happen by this failure of humanity but
also how the victims/survivors, the two brave police officers who finally set
out to drag out the truth; and, indeed, the handful of Leftist politicians and
bloggers who stood tall alongside them were then trashed by the Establishment
and their lackeys to protect the guilty.
Just as it sheds light on how so many ordinary people
continue to be sleep-walked down the crumbling, neo-liberal capitalist road to a
moral less Nowhere by the same ‘leaders’ when the evidence of what lies ahead
are all around to be seen if only one brave enough to look and see. Read the
words of the poster; open your eyes and take heed.
As for Salvador Allende, a great leader whose
democratically elected government was destroyed by the mass-murdering fascist
General Augusto Pinochet at the behest of equally corrupt US President Richard
Nixon – if only we in Jersey had a leader of his stature, vision and commitment
to social justice to lead us away from the edge of the Abyss today! As we
haven’t I guess it is up to us to save ourselves...
Chilean students’ federation newspaper ‘Claridad’
(Clarity) poster of December 1920
‘You are a coward. Yes a complete coward. And don’t
think that we are saying this to attract you to this poster. No. Quite simply,
you, whoever you are that is reading this, have you noticed how you live? What
is it that you do every day? You are silent when convenient. You always
ingratiate yourself with the more powerful. You opine like everyone else. When
have you ever raised your voice against the scandalous infamy around you? When?
Tomorrow or maybe the day after you may die and what purpose have you served? Do
you know what the society we live in is, this capitalist society? Do you know
what the society is that we push for and that you try to delay? No doubt you
think the same as ‘El Mercurio’, ’La Nacion’ ‘El Diario Illustrado’ etcetera,
the same as the newspaper you read every day. Learn for yourself man. Don’t be
a puppet. Have some shame. Use your own head, that’s what it’s there for. Find
out. Investigate. Don’t be fearful. And don’t leave calmly after reading this.
In vain you try to be deaf. You are a coward, at the mercy of he who pays you
best, or shouts at you loudest. Don’t fool yourself. When have you ever said
anything that could jeopardise you? Because of docile individuals like you the
world is unliveable with swine.’
Do you want to be on the easy side or on the
side of what is right? I personally am proud to say that no matter the cost I
have always stood – and will continue to stand – on the latter.
Keep the Faith.
