Return To Slavery Underpins The Jubilee.

One of the most shameful and disturbing aspects of the Diamond Jubilee celebration was exposed in the "Guardian" today in a story that outlined the use of slave labour to marshall the crowds in London. Unemployed people, forced to work for their benefits, were bussed into the Capital in the early hours of the morning, forced to change clothes in the street and made to work with no toilet facilities for 24 hours. Arriving after an overnight trip from Bristol many of them were only able to snatch a couple of hours of sleep under London Bridge before they made to marshall the crowds that lined the Thames. Of course in those halcyon days before the Tories seized power these people would have been given temporary contracts and paid at least the minumum wage. But today, with the unemployed demonised as "feckless," the Tories have managed to turn public opinion against themselves to the point where such a monstrous piece of profiteering would even be contemplated. Worse yet it calls into question the very idea of the Jubilee which now stands exposed as nothing more than a political diversion, a celebration of how the "haves" can command the "have-nots" to undertake any demeaning task or risk punishment and how 1,000 years of British history shows us in no incertain terms that there has been no progress whatsoever. Perhaps the Queen, when she sees this story, will find those people, so shamefully treated, and pay them a decent amount of money out of her own personal vast fortune. Perhaps, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The Jubilee gives Britain the opportunity to look at itself. The question is can it look itself in the eye?