Reform UK have complained to police about Green Party leader Zack Polanski for sharing an image on Instagram [which Polanski has since removed] which they claim was an incitement to violence against their leader Nigel Farage. The image is of the slogan “We’re only making plans for Nigel” with the image of a guillotine. The line itself is a reference to the title of a 1979 song by the British band XTC which reached number 12 in the singles chart. While the t-shirt design has no image of Farage nor any branding pertaining to Reform UK, it also bears no reference to the visuals of the song’s sleeve, nor the band’s logo. As with many commercially sold t-shirts, a cultural reference has been repurposed to make its satirical point.
T-shirt slogans are less a call for action, more a proclamation of allegiance. “This machine kills fascists” has the actual word “kill” in it, but is a reference to Woody Guthrie’s motto painted on his guitar (sold by the same company as the “plans” t-shirt, albeit it has since been removed from the website). Wearing the t-shirt is proclaiming an allegiance to the idea of art being used to win the battle for hearts and minds. The appearance of the guillotine in this case is hardly an incitement to imminent action, because a guillotine is an unwieldy weapon for any would-be lone wolf assassin. Were it a noose, gun or knife, that might be a different case. Since the guillotine is not a significant part of British history, we can deduce that here the guillotine serves to express a wish for a revolutionary state in the future (and the wearer’s allegiance to such political change). A future idealised political state of being is far removed from incitement to imminent action.
When demonstrators hold up placards saying “Death to …” or “Kill all … “ that is far closer to incitement. People have gathered en masse in a licensed space for political protest, confident that the camera lenses of mass broadcast outlets will be trained on them. In such a formally constituted space, there can be no doubt about the expressly directed political nature of such signs. A lone individual walking an ordinary high street with “We’re only making plans for Nigel” on his chest may attract citizen lenses, but is not in any formally designated protest space, nor can he be directing his message to any specific audience, as there is no guarantee who will come into his orbit that day.
As an author, I look at the phrase “We’re only making plans for Nigel” and it doesn’t make sense beyond a very specific context. I would never write it, unless there was a group of people from which “we” were only selecting Nigel for some plan, or that “we” wouldn’t even be making plans at all, were it not for Nigel. I would just write “We’re making plans for Nigel” which still retains either meaning, but where the word “only” has become redundant. This is important because it reattaches the phrase back to the XTC song in its specificity. My guess is that XTC simply inserted the word “only” to make the lyrics scan with the musical rhythm. Which makes it a word usage unique to them. Yes, it has been co-opted by the makers of this t-shirt, but to proclaim a specific allegiance, not an incitement to violence.
