A four year old boy sleeping on a floor wasn’t enough and that feels shitty. But that four year old was never enough, neither the elderly Jamaican man dying in a country he never knew, or that woman under the rubble created by UK arms dealers, or the species that are being choked by big business, the deaths on universal credit, None of it. But for some reason we’re still not talking about capitalism. 

Thatcher destroyed the unions, Blair destroyed Labour. That is when the rift started. So now middle class Londoners are more Labour than working class northerners. Orwell would be having a field day. And solidarities have disappeared. Working Class solidarities don’t hold up under racial scrutiny. The left is being accused of piety, being preachy, far too distant from its base. Really? And the right isn’t preachy? Curious. I wonder how many people have died at the hands of a far left extremist recently. The right comes with entitlement over bodies, women’s bodies, Brown and Black bodies, working class bodies. And those bodies are still commodities. 

Society has always been broken. There has always been the haves and the have nots. What has happened is that the haves have managed to convince the have nots that they are working in their best interests. 

Brexit was never about sovereignty but about elite ambition and money. Look at how much Rees Mogg has made since the referendum. Capitalism. Like salt it runs through everything. 

Look at whose to gain from Brexit, look at who gets the tax breaks, who gets the most help. Not our most vulnerable. Those that spent time and labour, out canvassing and making phone calls and writing op eds and signing petitions were doing it for that thing that feels more invisible today, that sits tasteless on the tongue and just in the shadows of our vision, the hope of something better. But when will we learn we must always follow the money? If you’re shocked by this result you’re part of the problem. If you thought anything else could be possible then you haven’t been watching. It doesn’t make it any less shitty tho, it doesn’t mean our hearts can’t break. 

We have no answers, but we continue to fight, to agitate on behalf of those that can’t or won’t, to defend and organise. We hope you join us.

By Desiree Reynolds @desreereynolds (RJN Trustee)