Bill and Ben (44" x 60") by Paul Baines is the seventh limited edition print in the Indoor Street Art series available here.

I was born in an age of protest, people across the world were fighting for their inalienable human rights, democracy had finally grown a backbone. In 1968 America was in the midst of anti-Vietnam War protests, France was entering into its second Revolution in its turbulent and highly politicised history, a pitched battle ensued in Grosvenor Square London as student protests and "sit-ins" peppered the rest of Britain, Czechoslovakian workers rebelled against the tyranny of Stalin, Northern Ireland began to fight for its civil rights. Socialism and the unions in a plethora of states and countries began to fight for their last breath as a new wave of conservatism flooded Western politics. Whilst I, well I for the majority of the time lay sleeping, crying, drinking milk, eating Farley's Rusks and uttering my first words.

As the 1970s passed before my eyes I watched Britain and my parents cope with deep recessions, strikes, fuel shortages, power cuts, social unrest, race wars, the death of the "hippy movement" and the rise of Punk, the collapse of centuries of tradition and a transfer of wealth from the artistocrats to the bankers and business tycoons. By the end of the decade Margaret Thatcher's conservative government were elected and within a relatively short period of time Britain became unrecognisable.

With the end of the Miner's Strike came the end of the relevancy of unions in Modern Britain, as did many other aspects of British life, some good and some bad. Slowly more and more sections of society were afforded equality and proper legal representation, on the other hand workers had few rights, and many were now in low-paid temporary positions. The ideology of the nuclear family collapsed and divorce began to soar, As more women entered the workplace employers lowered the rates, without union representation there was no way of controlling a new breed of injustices in society. The choice of products and availabilty of new tehnologies increased exponentially, as did the cost of living. The British diet improved as food from across the world was imported to cater for new tastes. The manufacturing industries collapsed as the service industry exploded, skilled workers had no choice but to serve food, work in call centres or work for a commission in sales and marketing. Britian stopped making anything bar military hardware, it just sold what was available, and thus the GDP became more and more reliant on the successes of the stockmarket. North Sea Oil was starting to dwindle, unemployment increased, and consecutive Conservative governments were replaced by "New Labour".

"Old Labour" fought for the rights of the people under a socialist agenda, New Labour would begin to remove them. We have more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world, we are watched wherever we go, we cannot gather in groups of more than a dozen without the risk of arrest under suspicions of incitement, we cannot even protest outside our own place of Government. All we can do is watch television, buy products, and try to earn money. The lottery has replaced religion, society is now a statistical ideology for the purposes of marketing and social control. We are at the end of our history, a small and petulant island on the verge of being swallowed by a Federal state, run by an unelected leader and an incompetent government, bullied by the greatest influx of petty and pernciious laws since lawmaking began. Yet we have no real legal representation, unless we are rich we can't afford it, and if we could we most likely wouldn't need it. The country is a slave of the corporate agenda, the corporations want nothing more than a sedate and subdued market, willing to accept the mass media at its word, willing to allow government to remove our human rights one by one, willing to serve as subjects to the state. We as a people are no longer angry, we are utterly depressed.

Bill and Ben depicts a group of police officers enforcing the will of the government, "The Old Bill" is a colloquial term derived from many sources, the Metropolitan Police have stated some of them here and The Guardian Newspaper refers to others here. Big Ben is actually the bell housed within the bell tower situated in the Houses of Parliament. The government are untouchable, they create laws as they choose, they simply serve the plutocracy. Many of the population are disenfranchised, should they wish to protest against the British Government, this would most likely be the scene they will have to confront.

Bill and Ben (44" x 60") by Paul Baines is now available as a limited edition print. To purchase this work please click the button below.

This post is tagged big Ben, Bill and Ben, conflict, government, human rights, New Labour, Paul Baines, politics, revolution, riot, The Old Bill, Westminster