By Adrian Chan-Wyles
LAST
WEEKEND saw the annual Chinese New Year celebrations usher in the Year of Horse
in and around Gerrard Street, that area of Soho known as London’s
Chinatown. In the Chinese lunar calendar
the New Year is counted as the 4712th since the rule of the
legendary figure known as the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi). Whatever the actual historicity of Chinese
civilisation, archaeology confirms that it is ancient.
The celebration of
the Chinese New Year has spread out of China and into the international
community, making it a truly multicultural affair. It is a time of old ritual now used in a
modern context to facilitate psychological and physical renewal. Its widespread appeal is confirmed by the
thousands who gathered before 10am on a cold Sunday morning at the beginning of
February, to witness the parade that initiated the celebrations, to be followed
by dragon, unicorn and lion dances up and down the streets.
What used to be
limited to Gerrard Street is now spread out into Soho proper, and from there
into Trafalgar Square, and what used to take an hour or two, now takes up most
of the day. This is the general area of
London lived in and frequented by Karl Marx in the latter half of the 19th
century.
The police presence is always strong during Chinese New
Year, but crime always remains small, despite the crowds. People from every conceivable ethnic group
attend and are brought together in the celebration of what amounts to the looking
forward to prosperity and good fortune for the year ahead. To this end, corporate business has its foot
in the door. When families arrive in the
general area they are met by a bewildering array of stalls selling all kinds of
articles from food and drink, to balloons and toy horses and so forth.
A mobile telephone
company was giving out colourful flags on wooden sticks to children who then
ran around waving them. The flags said
in Chinese characters ‘Sun Lin Fai Lok!’, or ‘Happy and Joyous New Year’, and
above this message was the name of the mobile telephone corporation in big
letters!
Small children ran
around acting as free advertising for a brutal and ruthless capitalist business
entity that does not care about their well being whatsoever. The parents looked on seemingly mindless of
the exploitation unfolding in the name of celebration, that was being
perpetuated (with their agreement) by big businesses using their children as
commercial fodder.
The Labour Party was up to its usual tricks. It had a stall with information in both
English and Chinese, hoping to recruit British born Chinese people to the
Labour cause. Labour lurched dangerously
to the right of the British political spectrum under Tony Blair and has never
recovered.
In London, however,
and amongst ethnic minorities such as the Chinese, Labour presents a false
image that implies that it is in political accordance with the Communist Party
of China, which it certainly is not.
Labour has no intention of repealing the anti-union laws, or turning
back the Tory cuts to the welfare State, the NHS, or the education system. Toward the mainstream British electorate, the
Labour Party panders to the Tory Press and treats the ordinary British Worker
as some kind of error or illness in the system.
This is not surprising when it is considered that Clause Four has been
removed from the Labour Party’s constitution, breaking the direct link with
Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
Chinese people are
intelligent and should not fall for the Labour Party’s misleading political
rhetoric. Only the communists can lead
the people and mirror the success of the Communist Party in China. In this way Chinese New Year can be raised
out of the feudal conditions that created it and used to create a truly
progressive and advanced socialist society.
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