GBS—The History of the English Parliament—and the American Congress?

What is the historical function of Parliament in this country? It is to prevent the Government from governing. It has never had any other purpose. If you study the constitutional history of this country, you will see that Parliament has grown up out of the old struggle against tyranny.

The Englishman, being a born Anarchist, always calls government tyranny. The result of that generally is that the Government does become a tyranny, because its subjects cannot interfere intelligently with it—they can only riot and get their heads broken.

Parliament was not in the first place an English institution. It was introduced into this country by a Frenchman named Simon de Montfort, whose father was concerned with the Parliament of Toulouse in France. Its object was to resist and disable the King. Its use—the only use it has ever had—was to ventilate grievances, to give the people it represented an opportunity of complaining of how they were being made uncomfortable.

But it never forgot its object of delaying, defeating, and if possible destroying whatever power happened to be governing the country at the time, whether it was the king, the Church, the barons, or the Cromwellian Majors-General. Bit by bit it broke the feudal monarchy, it broke the Church, and finally it even broke the country gentlemen.

Then, having broken everything that could govern the country, it left us at the mercy of our private commercial capitalists and landowners. Since then we have been governed from outside Parliament, first by our own employers, and of late by the financiers of all nations and races.

G B Shaw, In Praise of Guy Fawkes (1932)

GBS—“In Praise of Guy Fawkes”

Neglecting society is the cause of the political mess we find ourselves in. Capitalist society encourages individualism to the neglect of society, and the US’s irrational hatred of communism, fomented by its richest people and their lackeys in academia and the media, has led to “social” becoming a dirty word. The same rich elite buy politicians, so that we no longer have people dedicated to the good of society, but greedy sycophants dedicated to bringing home the bacon for rich men’s dishonest corporations. Look at Murdoch’s News Corp.

We abandon our societies to idle rich dilettantes, overambitious superannuated grocers and car dealers, and the class of three card tricksters and glorified bookmakers who now call themselves bankers, who take our money, giving us little of nothing for leaving it with them, but charging us large amounts of interest to borrow it, and meanwhile gamble with it thereby making the rich richer still without investing a penny themselves. As George Bernard Shaw said, “they are expert in nothing but making private fortunes and doing the other fellow down”!

GBS spoke to the UK Fabian Society in 1932 “In Praise of Guy Fawkes”, whom he thought was before his time for his perception of the need to end Parliament “by an explosion of the hot air which is its chief output”. Hot air is currently being spouted from both benches of Parliament about the riots and arson all over the UK being nothing but theft and thuggery, as if government policies of destroying the future chances of many of our youth through exporting their jobs, exhorbitant educational charges and savagely cutting social services and amenities has nothing to do with it.

The dishonest bought men we call politicians support not just riots but rebellion in countries the rich cannot profit from while ignoring the plain fact that our home brewed riots commonly arise when the burdens of society are being piled on to those who can least afford it. When society is perceived to be blatantly unjust our own youth can take their cues from the cues our grasping hypocritical politicians have given to rioters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and especially Libya! If rioting and rebellion can be admirable there, then why cannot it be here?

Where then is the modern Guy Fawkes that Shaw praised to the Fabians all those years ago. Certainly, he is not to be found among the Fabians, for most of them now aspire to making themselves prominent enough to be bought like their hero—not Bernard Shaw!—Tony Blair, accumulating his rewards for supporting the rich oilman's attempt to take over Iraq. Guy Fawkes objected to the government of his day for scapegoating Catholics. All the mini-Guys today object themselves to being scapegoated by our government. When society is unfair, anyone among the oppressed underclasses can become a Guy Fawkes.

That goes for the US even more!