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Zarah Sultana insists that ‘our media class is rotten to the core – they are class enemies’

In a powerful speech in Huddersfield at the weekend, Zarah Sultana said millions of people around Britain are angry, and justifiably so. Not only are the political class and their super-rich backers “laughing at us”, she said. But “our media class is rotten to the core” too. And as she stressed:

They are class enemies. They fight for the super-rich.

The establishment tried to “drive the left out of public life”, but “we’re done begging for the crumbs”

Zarah Sultana told attendees at the Northern March for Your Party that:

millions are fed up, and so they should be. In fact, they should be fucking furious: furious that life is getting harder while wages stagnate, furious at privatised water companies, profiteering energy firms and landlords squeezing us dry, furious at waiting for weeks for a GP appointment, furious at being made to pay for the crises we did not cause, and furious at being told there is simply no alternative to this broken system.

We know that millions of people are crying out for real change. And when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party it finally gave us hope that politics could be about honesty, decency, it could be about solidarity and working-class power. But the establishment attacked him and what he stood for, trying to drive the left out of public life.

Yet here we are and we are not going anywhere. If you knock on doors in Huddersfield, if you knock on doors in Coventry, you will know that millions of people have lost faith in democracy. They see politicians in Westminster as self-serving, more interested in freebies like Sabrina Carpenter gigs and free clothes than the struggles of working-class people.

The remedy to that, she insisted, is a bold plan:

We’re fighting for a thing called socialism. Not tweaks to a broken system, not a wealth tax here and lowering of bills here. We are calling for a fundamental transformation of society…

We see the political class and we see the super-rich laughing at us. Well, we’re done begging for the crumbs. We’re taking the fucking lot!

Zarah Sultana: “our media class is rotten to the core”

The mainstream media, meanwhile, has participated in the rich and powerful’s attempts to silence the left. And in doing so, it has enabled and empowered fascists. But as Zarah Sultana insisted:

Reform is not the answer. It is just another wing of the establishment. Funded by billionaires and aristocrats, fronted by a millionaire stockbroker, it is peddling racism to distract us from its real agenda: more privatisation, more deregulation, more handouts for the super-rich, more cuts for everyone else. We are told that there is no money for our schools, for our homes, for our hospitals, yet somehow there is always money for war, corporate bailouts and tax giveaways for the super-rich.

She added:

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the anti-Tommy Robinson demonstration. Because we have a duty to fight back. And I’ve had my fair share of abuse. Tommy Robinson is constantly tweeting me abuse, and a so-called journalist from the Daily Express has supported calls for me to get deported.

Fuck off! I’m staying right here and fighting for the country we all deserve.

We understand that our media class is rotten to the core. They are class enemies. They fight for the super-rich.

The Express propagandist in question has since sought to squirm out of his comments and turn himself into the victim, but Sultana’s having none of it:

“Radically democratic” and anti-fascist to the core

Zarah Sultana praised the history of Huddersfield, saying:

From the textile mills to the railways, from the quarries to the classrooms, this town has always been powered by the working class.

The radical history of Huddersfield and surrounding areas “helped lay the foundations of the labour movement across Yorkshire and beyond”, she said.

This town has always understood that progress isn’t handed down from above, it is fought for, won from below, through collective action and struggle.

Dealing with “deindustrialisation, austerity, [and] cuts to public services”, she argued, the town’s “strength lies in your diversity”:

From the Irish migrants who built the canals and railways, to the Caribbean and South Asian communities who revitalised towns and industries after the war.

She noted its “proud anti-racist tradition”, insisting:

When the far right tried to spread their hate and division here, Huddersfield stood up and said, not in our streets.

And she stressed that, like in the past, the country now needs “an anti-fascist league for the 21st century”. Trade unions need to be organising coaches to get “people on the streets whenever the fascists turn up”, she said. That needs to be a key part of left-wing politics in the coming months and years, alongside:

A party rooted in our working-class communities, proudly socialist, radically democratic, a party that builds power from below.

Huddersfield’s march on 18 October absolutely represented that vision. And that unity and energy now needs to grow and transform into a mass movement that can stop the far right in its tracks and overturn the economic, political, and media establishment that has enabled its growth.

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.