Down with the Black Shorts!

What lies beneath? This has become the pressing political question of the week, as Britain's increasingly emboldened coterie of fascists have decided to embrace their inner fashion diva and ramp up the cosplay. The result has been hilariously and painfully British, referencing many important strands of this island's comic tradition and combining that with dark and shameful parts of our political history from the same periods. It culminated in the ludicrous sight of the Black Shorts picketing, of all people, the Daily Mail. The publication, once notorious for its headline, ‘Hurrah for the Black Shirts’, and which has since specialised in peddling racism and bigotry under the thinnest veneer of lower middle-class curtain-twitching respectability, is now apparently not bigoted enough.

This episode perfectly encapsulates the dilemmas and anxieties of the British Right. While the Tories, Reform and elements in Labour have sought to cloak their positions under the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability—citing immigration not racism, social cohesion not authoritarianism, women's rights not patriarchy, reasonable concerns not bigotry—it has been, let us say, unhelpful to have their outriders on the street so obviously adopt the fashion choices of the Moseleyites, who in turn were aping the trappings of Mussolini and his cohorts. After spending decades being professionally outraged for their views being precisely diagnosed by hysterical leftists such as myself, it has to hurt to have fellow travellers challenge them for not ripping off the veil. They are, after all, quite keen on promoting the ripping off of other people's veils.

But shorts? Really, shorts? Snarky observers among those of us who would undermine British culture and all it stands for have observed the continuities between these contemporary heroes of the far right struggle and their eponymous forebears in P. G. Wodehouse's comic takedown of the British Union of Fascists and their uniform stylings. Moseley claim to represent the decent ordinary Briton, but combined that with an establishment background and a fondness for the trappings of luxury, a model which Nigel Farage is doing his level best to imitate. At least the fascists of the 1930s had shirts.

For the comic pedigree of black shorts goes well beyond Wodehouse. Now, I have to admit that I was having images of the picket outside the Mail HQ audio described to me. Nervously, I asked whether these were 1970s/early 1980s short shorts, whose potential I leave for anyone who can find reruns of Match of the Day. No, it was worse: mostly middle-aged men or older in mid-to-knee length shorts, plus trainers (or possibly shoes) and athletic socks to mid-calf, some of them white. Now, as every teenage boy learns, white socks in anything other than a tennis context are irredeemably naff; the shorts and socks combo rather suggests US postal workers, if not alluding to the socks-with-sandals faux pas; and the attention drawn to that most unglamorous of joints, the knee, is deeply unfortunate. Above all it evokes the unedifying spectacle of the knobbly knees competition so beloved of British seaside humour and which wends its way into the Carry On franchise. Worse, there was evidence of lycra cycling shorts, which immediately leads one to consider the possibility of lunchboxes, and then desperately try to unthink it. The assorted kinds of shorts on display, in their different ways, draw attention to what lies beneath.

Reader, this is not a pretty thought. Sagging men of a certain age, bald spots peeking out from behind face coverings, are hardly symbols of puissant masculinity, and attention drawn to the male body, particularly anything in the genital area even more so. In the British context, post-Victorian primness and repression have created social taboos that have been mercilessly plundered by satirists (and here I am thinking of Python, for example). It is amusing to see a bunch of goons who would take us back to the repression that the Pythons mocked, so cruelly expose themselves to such ridicule. It is not, however, just a British thing. There is something cross-culturally humorous about male genitalia, rarely aesthetic at the best of times and full of comic potential in its spontaneity on the one hand and failure on the other. I discussed this once in relation to Aristophanes: his tradition of comedy had the phallus always on view, but when it was noted, or became the centre of attention, it was much more often the site of vulnerability, failure and abjectness than of power or success. You will observe that even gods, heroes and grown men in Greek statues are rarely hung like, er, mules: there is something ineffably laughable about the male member. (Apologies to those who have a fondness for it, whether their own or someone else's.)

Clearly, this was not the vibe they were going for. The fascists have of late been trying to amp up their on-street intimidation visually, as well as attempting to burn down hostels with people in them, harassing people in the street or closing down social housing offices, all of which have happened in Scotland lately, including in Glasgow. Their attempts at visual uniformity have, however, repeatedly failed to deliver, as with the shorts. Nary a jackboot in sight, and, really, I've seen smarter turn-outs in the cub scouts (and in those days it was proper, polished shoes I'll have you know, none of your trainers). Face coverings have latterly been favoured, but again very inconsistently. It is also rather underwhelming when in the tedious demonstrations in the vicinity of Buchanan Steps, it is the same handful of usual suspects recognisable in their outfits and hemmed in by Sainsburys by the thousands of anti-fascist counter-protestors. Even their occasional surprise rampage in Glasgow city centre is as nothing to the chaos of the aftermath of a high profile Old Firm match. I'm not endorsing the latter, but it is important to keep things in proportion.

The Dover and Portsmouth events seem to have offered a better showing, at least in conception. The adoption of the balaclava clearly nods to the British right's long association with football hooligans and, even more so, loyalist paramilitaries. The Glasgow manifestations have been rather undermined by having thousands bellowing variations on ‘Cowards!’ and ‘Take off the mask!’ It is, admittedly, much easier to rustle up a counter-protest on a Saturday in Glasgow than for a weekday in Kent or Hampshire (I mean, what else is a self-respecting woke leftist to do on a Saturday in Glasgow except attend a demo at Buchanan Steps?), but the lack of a significant counter-demonstration did mean that the pathetic nature of British fascism was far less obvious than it could have been. Certainly, they would in any case have been aided by the usual promotion of the fascist right by British media, even the both-sides imperative that grips the supposedly progressive Grauniad, and also by the curious failure of assorted police forces to put up with blatant intimidation, even arson and attempted murder, when they have to deal with the far more serious threat of retired vicars holding placards or youngsters merely planning a non-violent roads protest. Still, the fascists did still manage to make themselves look like monumental prats by wading out to sea, getting into difficulties and having to be rescued by the very people they were trying to harass. The RNLI are fucking heroes; anyone who has genuinely grown up on the coast (including, cough, Clacton) knows that.

I don't want to suggest for a moment that it is fun to be doxxed, harassed, or otherwise targeted by British fascists, particularly if one is in a vulnerable position or situation. In the manner of bullies and cowards everywhere,they instinctively pick on the easiest targets. Nor, indeed, is laughing at their absurdity alone enough to make them shrivel up and crawl back under their rock, any more than an earnest appeal to truth and reason. But I insist that the common thread of the British right is to try to hide what hides beneath, whether it is personal identity (out of cowardice), the identity of donors (from Reform to the assorted transphobic astroturfers) or the lace-glove bigotry and thuggery of the British media and political establishment. It is not that the emperor is wearing no clothes; rather the clothes cannot but suggest the ugliness and shamefulness beneath. Those absurdities deserve our mockery and derision.