The election of a dark skinned male immigrant, Rishi Sunak to leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister in the UK, follows the slightly earlier ascension of a pale skinned son of a former immigrant family, Charles Windsor (formerly Sax-Coburg) to leader of the UK’s royal household. October 2022 appears to some to be a moment of modern egalitarian fairness, but of course it is not. Both families, originating outside of the country and now occupying the two top positions of power and wealth in the United Kingdom, are also among the richest men residing within the borders of this tiny Island in the North Sea. Class has triumphed over ethnic origins yet again, as it did during the colonial period.

The Conservative Party, long the political wing of the British establishment elites who made Britain ‘great’ (sic) on the backs of centuries of dark-skinned slavery from Africa and the ruination of the masses on the Indian sub continent, has apparently – in the form of its MP’s – turned over a new leaf. Or has it? Patriarchy and class have long remained the defining features of exploitation and oppression and Charles and Richi demonstrate that it still does. For all wealth ultimately accrues from the, labour, taxes, rents or purchases expended by ordinary people no matter by what convoluted or hidden route the wealth finds it’s way into the pockets of the rich and super-rich.

And of course, despite the deliberately distracting gloss of elite propaganda, ordinary people have been gradually impoverished during the very same years as Rishi’s family and Charles’ family have gradually become steadily richer. Moreover, if one followed the partly hidden or disguised income streams of these two families, (from profits, rents and purchases) it would reveal a definite economic connection between the two extreme outcomes of extreme poverty and extreme wealth.

The question outstanding is this; will the membership of the Conservative Party and the general population of the UK be as reconciled to the sudden ascendancy of these two upper class myopic parasites as are a majority of the Tory MPs? After all the general population are not trying to keep their seats in Parliament nor hoping for a royal medal or appointment. My guess is that they will not. Indeed, given the nature of elite directed UK education where the issues of class have been painted out of the narrative on poverty (as it has in all European countries), whilst the invention of race in past justification for ‘empire building’ has still not been rooted out in some sections of society. Indeed, residual racism (along with sexism) is still firmly lodged in many individual brains and its associated attitudes are still institutionally entrenched in many organisations.

This inheritance track of patriarchy, empire and poverty has for decades been causing recurring problems and divisions among many of the poor and oppressed, most of whom have not yet fully understood the main source of their problems. In fact it is the existence of class structures and class rule that makes people all over the globe poor and oppressed not the colour of a person’s skin or the their gender. But by having a lack of understanding people can be prone to the misdirection of their anger onto other victims of the system rather than on the real perpetrators. I therefore suggest in the coming period (even before any new election) there will be a hidden or sometimes open anger based upon Sunnak’s ethnicity rather than his class position and that the ones targeted by that anger will be members of the working class who share the same ethnicity.

In previous decades, dark-skinned working people have been frequently scapegoated by pale-skinned racists for existential problems and there is now a growing tendency for pale – skinned working people to be scapegoated by darker skinned working people for their continued existential problems. So the problems facing working people in the coming period remain essentially the same but now even more care must be taken to raise the class nature of the problems facing humanity at every opportunity. Activist’s should not be suckered into blaming social problems on ethnicity or gender and omitting or blurring the glaring social and economic distinctions based on class.

In this sense the social ascendancy in 2022 of Charles and Richi as two of the UK’s richest men promoted to the pinnacle of the English establishment is the most glaring and naked example of the maneuvering that elite class rule is prepared to undergo to maintain its position of wealth and domination.

Roy Ratcliffe (October 2022)