The best of English writing historically has been from the left. Something has gone radically wrong if it is somehow considered low class to use all the skills of a writer to use bathos, to use rhetoric, to use irony. But seriously, one of the difficulties is that, with the amalgamations of modern business, it s very difficult for an independent radical press to survive. Where is the advertising which would support it, when the local coffee shop has been replaced by Coffee Republic, and the radical bookshop has given way to Waterstones. To do something like, say City Limits would be so much harder today.
Every age has a spirit, and the spirit of our age is deconstruction.
They might think themselves very radical for saying this, but its effects are profoundly conservative, because all you breed is a cynicism, which substitutes facts for opinion and places a great premium on the personal. So debate gets reduced to journalists burbling on about Irritable Bowel Syndrome or aren t husband s horrid. It s afault of mine that my work tends to depress people. Firstly, because you can t do anything unless you see things clearly, and secondly, I think if I can get a bit of fire in someone s stomach or a mocking smile on one person s lips, then I ve succeeded. Darcus Howe founder of Race Today magazine and collective, journalist and broadcaster Cruel Britannia by Nick Cohen is published by Verso.