Jimas Gets Police to Threaten Tendance Coatesy.
I have just had an unpleasant visit from the Police.
Apparently it follows a “complaint” from Ipswich-based Islamists, Jimas.
The details of the complaint were not given.
But they apparently centre on this Blog, posts on this organisation (notably a dossier sent to me by somebody close to Harry’s Place) and, it is claimed “E-Mails.”
What they are specifically I do not know.
It all took place, believe or not, well over a year ago, when and what, they did not see fit to elaborate much upon.
But is was claimed that I had a met a leading member of Jimas – completely untrue – to discuss matters.
It was also said that E-Mails from somebody calling themselves The Usual Suspects, were at issue.
I am not the “Usual Suspects” and it is a slander to suggest that I am.
Equally I repeat: I have never met anybody from Jimas.
As for the political attacks on Jimas (and other Islamists) on the Blog Tendance Coatesy, I wonder if it is the business of Suffolk police to act on these matters.
One could say that this is a case of political intervention way beyond their remit.
As for Jimas, well, rest assured that your attempts to ‘get’ me are not appreciated.
Particularly the claim – wholly made-up – that I ‘met’ with them.
As this Blog has an international readership I wonder what people in other countries think of this.
People’s Assembly and Left Unity.
Real Left Unity.
Marxist Dentists around the UK leave copies of The Lady and Country Life to stir up class hatred.
At least that was my theory on reading Rachel Johnson’s magazine this morning waiting for an appointment.
One article about a Lady of the British Empire who could not boil an egg, had crossed the planet, swum with dolphins, holidayed in the Savanna, struck me.
I doubt if she was prepared to walk to Liddle to get 15 pence off a tin of sardines.
This, I suspect, is not a lone reaction.
Margaret Thatcher’s death and the rise of UKIP brought back a cold draft of class politics to this country.
Many realised that the Thatcher project, to make everybody stand or fall in the gales of competing on the market, and the pumped-up loathing of foreigners |(notably excepting the USA) that went with it, is alive and well.
Like many on the left, trade unionists and anti-cuts activists, I am committed to the People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
This is a grand occasion for us to get together on issues that affect us all, to build a constructive left-wing alternative to the politics of hate and the priorities of the wealthy.
It will unite us with our fellows across Europe in opposing the financial forces that have imposed cuts and more privatisation in the UK, and destitution and mass unemployment in countries from Greece and Spain to Portugal – not to mention the misery brought upon UKIP’s bogies in Rumania and Bulgaria.
There is a serious debate to be had about the European Union, and the role of the ”Troika’ in pushing through austerity.
The French left is divided between those who think that Angela Merkel is at heart a pragmatist and will – eventually – see sense and launch an expansionist drive. French president Hollande’s intervention yesterday, in which he proposed a European economic “governance” went in this sense. Some on his side believe in federalism, a politically united Europe.
Others are sceptical. They want a radical overhall of the EU. A few want greater national sovereignty restored.
In the UK we have by contrast, as Seamus Milne noted in the Guardian this week, a debate on Europe whose agenda is set by the right.
This is a threat,
a successful Tory-led campaign to pull out of the EU would risk unleashing a carnival of reaction, anti-migrant hysteria, more attacks on social rights, and a further lurch to the right.
Milne states, rightly,
What has been almost entirely missing from the mainstream British public debate has been the progressive case for fundamental change that has been central to the struggle over the EU and its treaties in mainland Europe. In the 1975 referendum, the left case against the then common market was that it was a cold war customs union against the developing world that would block socialist reforms. But the modern EU has gone much further, giving a failed neoliberal model of capitalism the force of treaty, entrenching deregulation and privatisation and enforcing corporate power over employment rights.
He concludes,
What would be fatal would be to allow the nationalist right to continue to dictate the EU agenda and wrap itself in the mantle of democratic legitimacy. The terms of debate have to change – for the sake of both Britain and Europe.
Much of the British left remain dominated by the anti-EEC ideas of the 1970s.
They have not confronted this menace.
Indeed they think their tiny forces can intervene to make the “progressive” case for a sovereign UK outside the EU.
We need a real campaign in place of this: for a united social Europe!
The People’s Assembly could be a place to make the case of this.
Left Unity.
Some of the left think there is a mileage in the Left Unity appeal of Kate Hudson and Ken Loach.
Recent prominent members of Respect , who failed to protest against George Galloway’ s politics, they are not in a position to preach unity to anybody least of all the ‘left’.
I merely cite this report by Tina Becker from the Weekly Worker to show that this is a dead-end,
Kate Hudson and Andrew Burgin (important driving forces) would have liked the proceedings to have gone differently. After all, the Stop the War Coalition and Respect – organisations both comrades were prominent in – were far more choreographed. But, ironically, bureaucratic coherence in fronts like these was provided by the likes of the Socialist Workers Party, part of the organised left to which LU is to a great extent a reaction. The politically decrepit Socialist Resistance – the one ‘insider’ group – is no substitute.
The proposed political platform written by Kate Hudson was circulated three days before; a proposal for the electoral procedure to the national coordination committee was sent out 20 hours before; the chairs seem to have been pre-chosen on the basis that they had no previous experience of handling big meetings (one chair was actually introduced as someone who had “never attended a political meeting before”). No wonder that quite a few times people in the room (the chairs included) did not actually know what exactly they were voting on. It was pretty chaotic, in other words.
This was also reflected in the rather uneven attendance. Local groups were supposed to send two delegates each, but where more people expressed an interest in coming, they were advised by the interim leadership to simply divide their group into smaller parts. For example, Manchester comrades – all sitting together in the same meeting, in the same room – selected five delegates from different parts of the city. Elsewhere, groups had not even met yet. Andrew Burgin admitted that about half of the “90 or 100” local groups exist only in so far as one person had volunteered to be the local contact. So the reality was that pretty much anybody who wanted to come could do so.
Unless, of course, you happened to be a representative of a political organisation. The interim organising committee had decided to bar existing groups from even sending observers – apart from a representative of the Red-Green Alliance from Denmark, who showed up halfway through the meeting. Obviously it would have been a little harsh to send this poor comrade packing after he had made such a long journey, presumably on a well-informed hunch.
Followed by the latest TUSC (Left involving the RMT, Socialist Party and SWP) election result.
Election of a Borough Councillor for Rawmarsh Ward (Rotherham) on Thursday 16 May 2013
| Baldwin, William George | British National Party | 80 |
| Gray, Andrew Tony | Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts | 61 |
| Meharban, Mohammed | Liberal Democrats | 28 |
| Parker, Martyn Lawton | The Conservative Party Candidate | 107 |
| Vines, Caven | UK Independence Party | 1143 Elected |
| Wright, Lisa Marie | Labour Party Candidate | 1039 |
Syria: New Horror Video.
From Le Monde,
Des insurgés du Front Al-Nosra, lié à Al-Qaida, ont exécuté onze Syriens accusés d’avoir pris part à des massacres imputés aux forces de Bachar Al-Assad, selon une vidéo mise en ligne jeudi 16 mai.
Les onze hommes sont qualifiés de “soldats apostats”, et leur bourreau, le visage couvert d’une cagoule noire, affirme dans cet enregistrement qu’ils ont été condamnés par un tribunal islamique de la province de Daïr Az Zour, dans l’est de la Syrie. Les “condamnés”, agenouillés et les yeux bandés, sont exécutés d’une balle à l’arrière du crâne. A chaque détonation, des islamistes brandissant des drapeaux noirs crient “Allah est grand.
The rebels from the Front Al-Nosra, linked to Al-Qaeda, have executed 11 Syrians accused of taking part in massacres committed by Bachar Al-Assad’s forces – according to a video put on line Thursday the 16th of May.
The 11 men are called “apostate soldiers”, and their butchers, their faces covered with a black hood, claim, in the video-recording, that they have been condemned by an Islamic Tribunal in the province of Daïr Az Zour in the Eastern Syria. The “condemned”, kneeling and blindfolded, are executed with a bullet in the back of the head. At each shot the Islamists wave black flags and shout, “Allah is Great.”
A further report in English,
Another video from Syria has emerged on YouTube showing jihadists of the rebel al-Nusra Front executing 11 men accused of playing a role in massacres by President Bashar al-Assad.
Earlier this week, footage posted online by a group loyal to the Assad regime showed a man, knife in hand, slicing parts of a dead soldier’s torso before turning to the camera and putting the heart in his mouth.
Here.
Like many, every day we have less and less sympathy for the Syrian Islamists.
Indeed with anybody engaged in killing.
Bangladesh May 6th: Human Rights Watch Calls for Inquiry into Deaths, But Says ‘Genocide’ Claims Unfounded.
Al Jazeera reports,
Al Jazeera has obtained video footage suggesting that the Bangladesh government has been providing inaccurate death tolls from recent violence.
According to official figures, 11 people had died during fighting between police and protesters from Hifazat-e-Islam, an Islamic group, on May 6, a day protesters refer to as the “Siege of Dhaka”.
Human Rights Watch, a US-based rights group, said that the exact number of deaths resulting from the protests are “unclear”.
“Independent news sources put the figure at approximately 50 dead, with others succumbing to injuries later,” HRW said in a statement on Saturday.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Dipu Moni downplayed reports of inaccuracy in government figures.
Human Rights Watch says,
The Bangladeshi authorities should immediately set up an independent commission to investigate the large numbers of deaths and injuries during the Hefazat-e-Islaam-led protests in Dhaka and elsewhere on May 5-6, 2013, Human Rights Watch said today.
The commission should also investigate violence that killed dozens in February, March, and April after protests and counter-protests broke out after the announcement of verdicts by the country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT).
The exact number of deaths during the May 5-6 protest remains unclear, with figures ranging from the official government figure of 11 deaths to Hefazat’s estimate of thousands. Independent news sources put the figure at approximately 50 dead, with others succumbing to injuries later. The dead include several security personnel.
“Bangladesh will see a plethora of demonstrations this year in response to additional verdicts from the ICT and in the run-up to national elections,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Without an independent investigation, accountability, and improved policing methods, we could see serial bloodbaths.”
Human Rights Watch said that political tensions are likely to increase as more war crimes verdicts are handed down at the ICT and as elections scheduled for late 2013 or early 2014 approach. Opposition parties, including Hefazat, have already announced several protests scheduled over the next week. A flashpoint could be the reaction to the May 9 death penalty handed down by the ICT against Mohamed Kamaruzzaman, a leading official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. Past war crimes verdicts have been a catalyst for protests and violence throughout Bangladesh.
Human Rights Watch called on opposition parties such as the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jammat-e-Islami Party, as well as independent organizations such as Hefazat, to condemn and take steps to deter their supporters from carrying out unlawful attacks, including on law enforcement officers or members of the public with different political views.
Human Rights Watch called on the government to publicly order the security forces to follow the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which state that security forces shall “apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms,” and that “whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall: (a) Exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and the legitimate objective to be achieved; (b) Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life.”
Section 22 of the Basic Principles states that: “Governments and law enforcement agencies shall establish effective reporting and review procedures for all incidents…Governments and law enforcement agencies shall ensure that an effective review process is available and that independent administrative or prosecutorial authorities are in a position to exercise jurisdiction in appropriate circumstances. In cases of death and serious injury or other grave consequences, a detailed report shall be sent promptly to the competent authorities responsible for administrative review and judicial control.” Section 23 states that, “Persons affected by the use of force and firearms or their legal representatives shall have access to an independent process, including a judicial process. In the event of the death of such persons, this provision shall apply to their dependants accordingly.”
“The Bangladeshi government has a responsibility to victims, whether protesters, bystanders or police, to ensure that an effective investigation is carried out into each death,” Adams said.
Hefazat, the conservative Muslim group that draws support from thousands of religious seminaries, led a “siege of Dhaka” on May 5, with demonstrations taking place in other parts of the country. Human Rights Watch said that claims of “genocide” by Hefazat and other opposition parties are unfounded and have only served to heighten tensions.
“The toxic swirl of rumor and rhetoric surrounding the protest of May 5-6 will only get worse unless the government acts quickly in a transparent manner,” Adams said. “Given the lack of trust between various parties, it is imperative that these answers come from an independent and impartial body.”
Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Hefazat recruited boys from madrassahs to participate in the “siege.” Many of the boys were unaware of the risks of marching into Dhaka. Independent journalists told Human Rights Watch that after the protests were broken up by security forces, they encountered groups of boys who had never been to Dhaka before and were terrified by the experience of seeing dead bodies and large-scale violence. The boys asked journalists for directions to bus stations so they could go home. They were no longer accompanied by adults.
Human Rights Watch called on the government to ensure media and civil society are able to independently report on the protests. Two television stations that support opposition political parties, Islamic TV and Diganta TV, were taken off the air by the government on the night of May 5-6 and remain off the air at the time of writing. The stations were reporting live from the site of the protests. In April, the government shut down opposition newspaper Amar Desh and jailed its editor, Mahmdur Rahman, and other journalists. The government has also jailed some bloggers who had expressed atheist sentiments in their writings.
“The government’s claims to be the most open and democratic in Bangladesh’s history are undermined by censorship of critical voices,” Adams said. “The government can take reasonab
This is what George Galloway said when calling for the overthrow of the Bangladeshi government last weekend ,
Galloway denounced the massacre of Islamic scholars earlier in the week.
“Even on the most conservative estimates of the number of people murdered, it exceeds the loss of life in 9/11,” said Galloway.
Galloway to back Bangladeshi Islamists in Parliament Today.
George GallowayToday in parliament I will raise the massacre of thousands of democracy protestors by the gangster govt of Bangladesh.
13th of May.
Galloway talks of a “massacre of Islamic Scholars”.
On Saturday he called for “, a peaceful revolution that will remove this gangster government. The media is now under the almost total control of the Hasina government”. He claims there “has been an almost total media blackout about the massacre.”
Galloway added this threat,“I’m against hanging anyone but it’s a fundamental truth in politics that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. There has to be an end of the politics of revenge.”
This (NYT) is an objective report on the 6th of May events Galloway describes,
The skirmishes began Sunday when thousands of Islamic activists staged a march on Dhaka, the capital, followed by speeches and a mass demonstration. The authorities say several hundred shops were vandalized, and local television channels showed fires in the central part of the city. Later, when protesters refused to leave, security officers unleashed tear gas and fired rubber bullets to drive them out of the capital.
The confrontations escalated on Monday, as a major clash occurred about 15 miles outside the capital in the district of Narayanganj, where photographs show stick-wielding protesters fighting police officers in riot gear. Bangladeshi news media reported that three security officers were beaten to death while a dozen other people were killed, including protesters shot by the police. Traffic was halted for at least eight hours on one of the country’s most important highways, connecting Dhaka with the southern port of Chittagong.
“They put trees and bricks and many other things on the road,” said S. M. Ashrafuzzaman, a police official in Narayanganj. “When police went to clear the road, they attacked police.”
And this (Independent),
Clashes broke out between many thousands of members of the Hefazat-e-Islam – a coalition of around a dozen groups that has a 13-point agenda for the country – and police. The clashes mainly took place during a rally on Sunday but carried on late into Sunday night and Monday.
The Associated Press reported that the police had said that eight people, including three members of the security forces, were killed in the Kanchpur neighbourhood on the outskirts of the capital, while seven more died in the Motijheel commercial area.
After clashes that involved protesters setting fire to tyres and logs and the police responding with tear gas and rubber bullets, the authorities banned all further protests until midnight in an effort to control the violence.
Today it was reported that the leader of Hefazat-e-Islam had been sent out of Dhaka by the authorities.
This ”pro-democracy” movement is led by Hefazat-e-Islam.
.In 2013 they made headlines after holding a large demostration asking the government to take action against the Shahbag protesters, who are demanding capital punishment of Bangladesh liberation war criminals.
The Islamists defend war criminals and genociders.
Their background is this,
“Within a month after formation Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh started violence at Chittagong. They engaged thousands of madrasa students in this violence. They were protesting against the secular education policy and demanded presence of religion-based politics. A few of these madrasa students were captured by police and later released.” Wikipedia.
These are their present demands.
1) Reinstatement of ‘Absolute trust and faith in Allah’ in the constitution of Bangladesh and abolish of all laws which are in conflict with the values of the Qur’an and Sunnah.
) Enactment of (anti-defamation) law at the parliament keeping death penalty as the highest form of punishment to prevent defamation of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) and Islam, and prevent spreading hate against Muslims (highest penalty prevalent for defamation is 2 years).
3) Immediate end to the negative propaganda by all anti-Islamic bloggers in a leading role in the so called Shahbag movement who have defamed Allah, Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w), and Islam.
4) End to all alien cultural practices like immodesty, lewdness, misconduct, culture of free mixing of the sexes, candle lighting in the name of personal freedom and free speech.
5) Abolish the anti-Islamic inheritance law and the ungodly education policy. Making Islamic education compulsory in all levels.
6) Declaration of Ahmadis (Qadianis) as non-Muslims by the government and put a stop to their negative and conspiratorial activities.
7) Stop instating more statues in the name of sculpture at road intersections and educational institutions to save Dhaka, the city of mosques from becoming the city of statues.
8) Remove all the hassles and obstructions at Baitul Mukarram and all mosques in Bangladesh which prevent Musallis from offering prayer. Also stop creating obstruction for people to attend religious sermons and other religious gatherings.
9) Stop the spread of Islamophobia among the youth through depiction of negative characters on TV plays and movies in religious attire and painting negative stereotypes of the beard, cap and Islamic practices on various media.
10) Stop anti-Islamic activities in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) propagated by several NGO’s and Christian missionaries under the guise of religious conversion.
11) End to the massacre, indiscriminate firing and attacks on the prophet loving Muslim scholars, Madrasah students and the general public.
12) End to all threats against Islamic scholars, Madrasah students and Imams and Muslim clerics of mosques throughout the country.
13) Immediate and unconditional release of all detained Islamic scholars, Madrasah students and members of the general public and withdrawal of all false cases filed against them. Compensation to families of all injured and deceased and exemplary punishment to all those responsible.
There is controversy about the events of May the 6th.
The official figure was that 27 people died.
Others suggest a violent crack-down and more killed.
The Islamists claim that they were attacked by the Police and Awami League supporters and then up to 2,000 people were killed.
This is reported,
“News reports from Bangladesh allege that a series of attacks on demonstrators have taken place, at around 3am today, May 6, 2013. The extent of the injuries and death is difficult to be ascertained at the moment. The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper, gave the figure of deaths as 5. However, several internet reports have mentioned that the number of deaths could be as high as 2,500 or more. Pictures of dead bodies have also been distributed over the internet. Major news channels in Bangladesh have been silenced. Two private television channels that were showing live pictures of the attacks upon the demonstrators were immediately closed down. All forms of public gatherings, rallies and protests have been prohibited until the midnight of May 6.”
Some things are however clear.
Hefazat-e-Islam has a violent background.
They were not demonstrating for “democracy”.
The protests which brought them to international attention, were to defend war criminals, and then to demand the imposition of an Islamist tyranny.
By his acts Galloway supports Hefazat-e-Islam
The question is now, is Galloway a far-right Islamist as well?
Galloway Backs Efforts to Overthrow Democratically Elected Bangladeshi Government.
Galloway has marked a new step in his descent into support Islamist reaction,
Galloway calls for the peaceful overthrow of Bangladesh’s ‘gangster government’
“George Galloway last night called for the peaceful overthrow of the Sheikh Hasina/Awami League government in Bangladesh. Speaking at a huge protest rally in East London, Galloway denounced the massacre of Islamic scholars earlier in the week.
“Even on the most conservative estimates of the number of people murdered, it exceeds the loss of life in 9/11,” said Galloway.
“This is a game changer as the Americans would say. Bangladesh will never be the same again. This is the beginning of the end of this corrupt, murderous government.” He went on to deny there was now any possibility of free and fair elections in Bangladesh.
“Either they will be fixed by the government or they will be cancelled. That is why the only way we will get the change Bangladesh needs is through people power, a peaceful revolution that will remove this gangster government. The media is now under the almost total control of the Hasina government and in the West there has been an almost total media blackout about the massacre.”
Galloway added that the British-based Bangladesh TV had boycotted the rally and called on them to do their duty and tell the truth. “I’m against hanging anyone but it’s a fundamental truth in politics that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. There has to be an end of the politics of revenge.”
ibn muftishah sadr @georgegalloway very powerful speech @ waterlilly regarding bangladesh crisis and showing your support.
I think we can guess what a bunch of far-right, sectarian, racists Galloway addressed.
Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome. Jérôme Ferrari. Review.
Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome. Jérôme Ferrari. Actes Sud. 2001.
Le Sermon won the 2012 French ‘Booker’, the Prix Goncourt. The author, Jérôme Ferrari, is a lycée philosophy teacher. Born In Paris but installed in Corsica he spread popular debates in the cafés philosophies in Bastia. He has translated from Corsican and written on Schopenhaur. He has also taught philosophy in a secondary school in Algeria. Ferrai’s previous novel, Où j’ai laissé Mon âme (2010), touched on French torture in Algeria during the war of national liberation.
The title of the novel evokes Saint Augustine’s Sermon on the Fall of Rome. The sack of the City by Alaric and the Goths in 410 was the occasion for Augustine’s greatest attempt to offer a Christian explanation for this event, to defend his faith against the charge that it had contributed to Rome’s defeat. The Sermon heads its seven sections with epigraphs from this, the City of God and ends by imagining the Saint’s final preaching. They evoke the God’s eternal kingdom and the promise of Salvation in the face of the destruction of the works of humankind. His message? All empires are mortal.
So far, so much philosophy. But far from being overwhelmed by serious intent Le Sermon is a novel, of interlinked, and gracefully recounted, stories. A Corsican bar is the pivot of a tale that begins with its own “malédiction divine sur l’Égypte”.
These curses come in succession. Bored with the repetitive hunting clientele, and thieving staff, the owner, Marie-Angèle, decides to let out the bistro. A succession of owners follows. In events that will have an echo with anybody familiar with pubs and bars across Europe, the new lease-holders try to relaunch the business. One re-opens as El Commandate bar with a Che Guevara neon-sign. After a blaze of techno-music and partying, he leaves – debts unpaid. Another, Bernard Gratas, is abandoned by wife and family and left to drink himself into the gutter.
Matthieu and Libero, childhood friends from the village, graduates in philosophy at Paris, take over. They set up with a new batch of staff – young attractive women –and generously employ Gratas to do the washing up. They offer a limited and affordable range of ‘terroir’ fare. It succeeds. This, Matheiu wistfully thinks, is a world dreamt of by Leibniz, a universe ruled by God’s good will, “le meilleur des mondes possibles”.
And, for a while, it is.
The Sermon local details, the tourist ‘season’, Corsican chasseurs, a memorable castration of a young boar-pig, an economy dominated the tourist season, and the fraught, and intimate, tie with France. But there is little of what would expect about the Island’s mafias, or, reference to the inability of younger characters to understand the lingua corsa, or to the movement for independence.
The history of Mathieu’s grandfather, Marcel Antonneti, interwoven in the chapters, revovles around 20th century French wars and the Empire. It is of a constantly darker hue. From the Second World War, life as an administrator in French Africa, reigning over “insectes, de Nègres, de plantes sauvages et de fauves” (wild beasts) and death, back to Corsica and the collapse of the French Empire Marcels’ life is a “vide” (void). The other characters, like Aurélie, Matheiu’s sister, have their own set backs to contemplate.
Matheiu and Libro’s dream of a, more limited, empire of happiness, ends too. The conclusion of Le Sermon, announced early on as ““une nuit de pillage et de sang” (pillage and blood), indicates that there is no “demiurge” around to forgive the sins of the world.
Yet the impression these events leave does not washed way the lightness, the “sinuosity (as French reviewers have called it) of Ferrari’s prose, nor the happiness it, briefly, conveys. There is something of the Julian Barnes (much admired in France) in the novel, a graceful way of dealing with serious things. It is to be hoped that Le Sermon will find an English speaking audience as soon as possible.
English Language Wikipedia on Jérôme Ferrari here.
Ipswich People’s Assembly.
Last night Enrico Tortolano, spoke on neo-liberal economics and politics to a public meeting at he UNITE offices held by the Ipswich People’s Assembly Against Austerity.
Up to 30 people turned up her brother Tortolano, who has worked on human rights with social movements in Latin America, and now is a research officer for the PCS union as well as writing for Tribune.
Enrico gave a talk of great clarity on how the wealthy have established free-market economics as the foundation of state policy in many countries. Everybody is told to be ‘self-reliant’ as taxes are lowered for the well-off and all forms of redistribution are undermined. We have, Tortolano said, crept back to pre-First World War levels of inequality.
In Britain attacks on welfare and privatising the state were being pushed through as part of what Naomi Klein called the “shock doctrine”. That is, taking advantage of a crisis to push through extreme free-market ideas.
He noted that the first to apply this method had been Augusto Pinochet , the Chilean dictator.
The recently deceased Margaret Thatcher had admired the leader of the Chilean coup, which had left thousands of left opponents dead and many more imprisoned and tortured.
From annual get-togethers in Davos (Switzerland), to thousands of ‘think-tanks’ and sympathetic media, their message has been relayed by all the main political parties in the West.
British politics seem to be restricted to the limits set by the ‘orthodox’ free-market economics.
The People’s Assembly, Tortalano said, offered a real opportunity for the left to unite and to put forward a different economic and political strategy. Ultimately the threat to the planet’s resources from the market would affect everybody.
The audience, which included trade unionists, local Labour councillors, library campaigners, and activists from the Green and socialist parties, joined in a fruitful discussion on this talk.
It was suggested that the People’s Assembly should take up the issue of low pay (very important in Ipswich), of the Bedroom Tax, and the fight against the wave of further cuts in public spending that will affect council (above all County Council) services in the coming months.
The Secretary of the Trades Council, Teresa Mackay pointed out that 80% of the cuts were still to come.
It was argued that the People’s Assembly needs a constructive and a positive message. It was not enough to just fight neoliberal economics and the hatred of the poor and migrant workers stirred up by the Liberal-Tory Coalition.
The left has to offer a democratic and egalitarian way of creating institutions for equality and collective need.
A co-ordinator will organise E-Mail contacts for the Ipswich People’s Assembly.
Transport will be available from Ipswich to take people to the London Assembly.
In the coming weeks we will be organising a campaign locally to draw attention to the links between Primark and other retail outlets and the terrible deaths of garment workers in Bangladesh.
As an activist said, “The numbers of the dead just keep rising.”
SWP to “Attract” Bangladeshi Fascists.
Peaceful Bangladeshi Islamists in Dhaka.
This is how Socialist Worker reports a march with Bangladeshi fascists in London.
Around 1,000 people protested in central London last Sunday in solidarity with anti-government protesters in Bangladesh. The protest marched from Hyde Park to the Bangladeshi Embassy.
Muhammad Ayyub is part of the Feb28 Justice for Bangladesh group that organised the protest. “We stand with the people of Bangladesh against the government,” he told Socialist Worker.
“Police are killing protesters there and opposition supporters have been unlawfully arrested.”
The protest coincided with a deepening political crisis in Bangladesh.
“Ordinary people in Bangladesh don’t matter,” said Rashid. “Many live on less than a dollar a day. But when the rich people came here for the Olympics they booked a whole floor of a five-star hotel.”
Protesters chanted, “We want peace. We want justice,” at a rally outside the embassy.
Speakers who talked about the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt won loud cheers.
Charlie Kimber, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, told the crowd, “The tide of revolution has swept through Tunisia and Egypt.
“Now the tide of revolution must sweep through Gaza, Syria and Bangladesh.”
There is no mention in the article of who is behind this Feb28 movement.
We can help,
“The Feb28 Justice for Bangladesh movement came about in response to this escalating crisis that has engulfed Bangladesh. It aims to expose the tyranny and anti-Islamic hatred of the oppressive Awami League regime and is dedicated to bringing you fresh and unbiased news on the struggle of the Bangladeshi people.”
This is some of its ‘unbiased’ news,
An estimated 2500 Muslim scholars and devotees killed
· Thousands injured, hospitalised in critical conditions and thousands arrested.
· Night completely blackened out to comfortably commit genocide.
· Media clamped to hide genocide.
It is rare in the history of human civilization that a Muslim country’s ruling government can be such fascist, ruthless and brutal to run a barbaric violence and systematic killing spree of such scale against the nation’s peaceful, unarmed and Islam-loving most revered scholars (ulama) of high repute and the devotee mass Muslims that took place in the deep black night following May 5, 2013 in Bangladesh’s capital city of Dhaka that is well known as the city of masjid (mosque).
It is also unprecedented in the history of human civilization to observe serious insult on Allah, the Prophet (PBUH), his highly respected wives, Islam and different forms of Islamic ibadah (worships) like prayer, fasting etc. in such shameful vulgar language used by some Bangladeshi atheist bloggers and political activists belonging to the ruling Awami League party of Bangladesh that the world has never experienced before.
These, as cited yesterday are some of the demands of the Bangladesh movement these creatures back,
1. Reinstatement of ‘Absolute trust and faith in Allah’ in the constitution of Bangladesh and abolishment of all laws which are in conflict with the values of the Quran and Sunnah
2. Enactment of (anti-defamation) law at the parliament keeping death penalty as the highest form of punishment to prevent defamation of Allah, Muhammad (S.A.W) and Islam, and prevent spreading hate against Muslims (highest penalty prevalent for defamation is 10 years).
3. Immediate end to the negative propaganda by all atheist bloggers in a leading role in the so called Shahbag movement who have defamed Allah, Mohammad (S.A.W), and Islam and their exemplary punishment.
4. End to all alien cultural practices like immodesty, lewdness, misconduct, culture of free mixing of the sexes, candle lighting in the name of personal freedom and free speech.
5. Abolishment of the anti-Islamic inheritance law and the ungodly education policy. Making Islamic education compulsory in all levels from primary to higher secondary.
6. Declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims by the government and put a stop to their negative and conspirational activities.
The SWP in another article published today suggests that in Bangladesh,
The Islamic protest comes as thousands of workers have been on the streets demanding justice for those killed in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory.
The week of demonstrations proves there is a massive political vacuum in Bangladesh which many forces are trying to fill.
The left needs to draw those who rage against putting profit before people into a movement that can challenge the rich.
This can attract those who look to the Islamists.
No doubt those raging at atheist bloggers, “lewdness”, demand the death penalty for blasphemy and the persecution of fellow Muslims they call ‘heretics’ are potential recruits to the SWP.
No doubt at all.
Galloway Backs Bangladesh Far-Right.
Twitter / Feb28info: “The real people of Bangladesh … http://fb.me/PZ9EEtqr
Retweeted by George Galloway
Abjol Miah, Respect’s chief ’operator’ in Tower Hamlets, has form as a religious Islamist.
His views on Gay Marriage (predictable) can be seen here.
This is the Twitter Feed.
JusticeForBangladesh
@Feb28info
Official Operation. Bringing you the latest news and development from the uprising in #Bangladesh #BanglaSpring #Revolution
Bangla Spring,
Ahmad Jibril الشيخ Why aren’t the Bostonians of yesterday, Bangalians today? Over 2500 Muslims dead in 1 night in #Bangladesh! #BanglaSpring #DarkNight #islam
This is what Jibril refers to,
HAKA, Bangladesh — Violence erupted across Bangladesh on Monday as Islamist fundamentalists demanding passage of an anti-blasphemy law clashed with security forces, leaving a trail of property damage and at least 22 people dead after a second day of unrest. NYT.
The protests that Galloway favours are organised by the far-right, Hefazat-e Islam*. They call for those who insult Islam to face the death penalty.
Is the SWP to follow Galloway’s lead?
This is far from established, despite what Harry’s Place insinuates.
The SWP has rightly focused on the terrible factory accident in Bangladesh which at present is recorded as having killed 705 people.
But HP does cite this,
“Charlie Limber Socalist Workers Party “The tide of revolution spread across Arab world and now must spread in Bangladesh” #BanglaSpring.”
We are waiting for clarification on what ‘spring’ Kimber means.
* These are the demands of these fascists.
1. Reinstatement of ‘Absolute trust and faith in Allah’ in the constitution of Bangladesh and abolishment of all laws which are in conflict with the values of the Quran and Sunnah
2. Enactment of (anti-defamation) law at the parliament keeping death penalty as the highest form of punishment to prevent defamation of Allah, Muhammad (S.A.W) and Islam, and prevent spreading hate against Muslims (highest penalty prevalent for defamation is 10 years).
3. Immediate end to the negative propaganda by all atheist bloggers in a leading role in the so called Shahbag movement who have defamed Allah, Mohammad (S.A.W), and Islam and their exemplary punishment.
4. End to all alien cultural practices like immodesty, lewdness, misconduct, culture of free mixing of the sexes, candle lighting in the name of personal freedom and free speech.
5. Abolishment of the anti-Islamic inheritance law and the ungodly education policy. Making Islamic education compulsory in all levels from primary to higher secondary.
6. Declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims by the government and put a stop to their negative and conspirational activities.
7. Stop instating more statues in the name of sculpture at road intersections and educational institutions to save Dhaka the city of mosques, from becoming the city of statues.
8. Remove all the hassles and obstructions at Baitul Mokarram and all mosques in Bangladesh which prevent Musallis from offering prayer. Also stop creating obstruction for people to attend religious sermons and other religious gatherings.
9. Stop the spread of Islamophobia among the youth through depiction of negative characters on TV plays & movies in religious attire and painting negative stereotypes of the beard, cap and Islamic practices on various media.
10. Stop anti-Islamic activities at Chittagong propagated by several NGO’s and Christian missionaries under guise of religious conversion.
11. End to the massacre, indiscriminate firing and attacks on the prophet loving Muslim scholars, madrassah students and the general public.
12. End to all threats against Islamic scholars, madrassah students and Imams and Muslim clerics of mosques throughout the country.
13 Immediate and unconditional release of all detained Islamic scholars, madrassah students and members of the general public and withdrawal of all false cases filed against them. Compensation to families of all injured and deceased and exemplary punishment to all those responsible.
France, I Year of François Hollande, 150,000 March for Alternative Left Policies.
In Paris on Sunday up to 150,000 demonstrators marched for a VIth Republic», and against “l’austérité et la finance”.
This was their way of marking one year of Socialist Party led-government and the election of President Hollande.
At the appeal of the Front de Gauche leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon many came to bring a “new broom” to French policies with real brooms, of all kinds.
This morning on French Radio stations supporters of the governing Parti Socialiste expressed their disdain for the sometimes colourful language used by their left critics.
But it was noted that François Holllande,elected with 51,6% of the vote Holland today gets only 25% backing in Opinion Polls.
Below are some reasons for this:
France: Unemployment Up.
Hollande stands accused of failing to offer a serious alternative to financial austerity that would change these figures.
Is there another way out?
At the Paris March Pierre Laurent Communist Party), Eva Joly (left Wing Greens) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Parti de gauche) argued for new radical left policies (Here).
As the first speaker said,
Nous sommes tous Grecs, Espagnols, Italiens, Irlandais, Portugais, Chypriotes et notre ennemi c’est la finance. La finance dehors, l’humain d’abord !
We are all Greeks. Spaniards, Italians, Irish, Portuguese and Cypriots. Our enemy is finance. Out with Finance! Put Humanity first!“
March for the 6th Republic in France, Against Austerity
Thousands of people are expected to support the firebrand leftist presidential candidate Melenchon, who has shaken up France’s election campaign with a surprise jump in the polls. Melenchon, represents a coalition of leftist parties including the Communists. Supporters of French Front de Gauche candidate for the 2012 French presidential election Jean-Luc Melenchon gathered on the Bastille square in Paris, wave flags as they listen to the candidate’s speech after a march from Nation.Paris,… (from Here)
This demonstration has attracted support from the Front de gauche (le Front de gauche est une coalition de partis de la gauche antilibérale et anticapitaliste réunissant le Parti communiste français (PCF), le Parti de gauche (PG), la Gauche unitaire (GU), République et socialisme (R&S), Convergences et alternative(C&A), le Parti communiste des ouvriers de France (PCOF), la Fédération pour une alternative sociale et écologique (FASE), laGauche anticapitaliste (GA) et Les Alternatifs , left-wing Greens (Eva Joly), the Nouveau Paru anti-capitaliste (NPA) and many trade unions.
- L’appel de Jean-Luc Mélenchon
- L’appel de Pierre Laurent
- L’appel d’Eva Joly
- L’appel de La vie est à nous / Le Sarkophage
- L’appel de Christian Salmon
- L’appel du NPA
- Appel de Fabienne Brugel
- Appel de Zinn-Dinn Boukhenaïssi
- L’appel du PPLD
- L’appel de Gabriel Amard
- L’appel d’Aurélien Bernier
- L’appel de l’association l’Ange Bleu
- Appel de l’AGAUREPS-Prométhée
- L’appel du Front de Gauche
Song,
Le Roi Des Cons de Georges Brassens:
Non certes elle n’est pas bâtie
Sur du sable l’oligarchie
Il y a peu de chances qu’on
Détrône le Roi des cons.
Peuple affamé par l’austérité
Pour engraisser une bande de rentiers
Il y a peu de chances qu’on
Détrône le Roi des cons.
Il est possible au demeurant
De convoquer une constituante
Il y aurait une chance qu’on
Se passe d’un Roi des cons.
Qu’un jour on dise c’est fini
la domination des nantis
Il y a bien une chances qu’on
Se passe d’un Roi des cons.
Peuple debout et prend la Bastille
Pour la 6eme République
Il y a bien une chance qu’on
Se passe d’un Roi des cons.
You can hear this here.
UKIP: UK Now Has Real Far-Right Populist Politics.
French Left’s Dilemma After Front National Breakthrough in 1984.
Like Cabu’s Grand Duduche you start by feeling that you don’t want to have anything to do with anybody who voted UKIP.
This came to me when the BBC’s Look East showed a chippie in Great Yarmouth. That town elected UKIP Councillors to Norfolk County Council. The chip-shop owner was vociferous in his UKIP support, as were many others in the seaside resort.
I like Yarmouth chips. They sell them with a choice of sauces. Inspired by Belgium custom you can get mayonnaise and curry, amongst other flavours.
I will make a point of not going to Yarmouth for my annual day-trip.
The party now has 15 councillors in Norfolk and scored 23.47% of the county vote - Conservative 32.6pc, Labour 22.75pc, Liberal Democrat 10.97pc, Green 6.55pc, Independent 3.27pc, Christian People’s Alliance 0.13pc, United People’s Party 0.02p
They got a councillor in Ipswich too, in Whitehouse and Whitton.
I will not feel comfortable in the company of anybody who backed James Crossley, or those , 20% of the electorate across town (and they didn’t stand in 2 divisions) who voted for them in Ipswich.
But that’s a reaction, not a strategy.
A Strategy?
We need clarity on how to deal with UKIP.
For a long time people on the left have been convinced that the threat from the far-right came from the BNP and the English Defence League.
Principally that there was a “massive surge” in hostility towards Muslims.
This view was reinforced by a whole industry of speculation about the Islamic ‘Other’.
This was always a skewed analysis: there is a little evidence that the masses were ready to engage in a wholesale attack on Muslims.
‘Islamophobia’ was also used by those who took this line to denigrate those who backed the secularists, feminists and trade unionists who, after the Arab Spring, have had to face right-wing Islamist governments.
Now we have a party that has focused on an ‘Other’ that is lot closer to home: the Eastern European hordes from Bulgaria and Romania.
Standing in, of course, for the ‘foreigners‘ already here.
In place of abstract ruminations about the Other, we had better look at an older anti-racist idea: scapegoating.
This is not a vote of the ignored’ working class’s expressing their real needs.
It is the result of a conscious attempt to deflect people’s anger at austerity, stagnating wages, and mounting personal debt, onto an easy target.
Foreigners, we know, are not the only thing UKIP are about.
They want to make life easier for British capitalists, they attack trade unions and the poor, and their cultural views are a mix of Norman Tebbit, Jeremy Clarkson and the US Tea Party.
They are dyed-in-the-wool free-marketeers.
UKIP councillors will no doubt often make fools of themselves.
But we cannot count on their ability to self-destruct.
We, the left, need to attack them where they are weak: are they for austerity or are they against it?
What will they do to help working people defend their rights?
Will they support the Living Wage?
Will the fight against tax breaks for companies and the rich?
Will they back the NHS?
Internationalism.
Before anything else the Left should shout, loudly, its internationalism!
Against hatred between the peoples!
For European unity of the peoples, the workers and the poor!
For a European Social Republic: level wages and benefits upwards!
Down with the Xenophobes!
Down with UKIP!
Suffolk Elections, Labour Gains but County (and Country) now has its own Front National, UKIP.
Tory Judy Terry is Out: The Heavens Cry their Joy!
Suffolk Election Results leave the Tories in Charge.
Conservative 39
Green 1
Independent 2
Labour 12
Labour and Co-operative 3
Liberal Democrat 7
UK Independence Party 9
This is a good result for Labour and their candidates who have worked really hard, year in and year out, on the County Council (where they were only 4 till today) and have fought against austerity and privatisation tooth-and-nail.
It is a good result for the labour movement more widely as Suffolk Labour Parties have worked closely with the union and left campaigners against the Tory-led Council cutters and floggers-off.
One result brought great joy to the progressive Suffolk masses: the defeat of Judy Terry in Rushmere (figures and intro from Ipswich Spy).
“The Conservatives have LOST the Rushmere Division, previously held by Cabinet Member Judy Terry, to Labour’s Sandra Gage.
Ellis, Peter (UKIP) 401
Gage, Sandra (Labour) 1117
Jackson, Dale (Ind) 34
Jones, Garath (Lib Dem) 90
Terry, Judy (Con) 628
Wilmot, Kirsty (Green) 94″
As a County Council Cabinet member she has pushed through the privatisation agenda, notably creating a so-called Industrial and Provident Society (private ‘charity’) for the Library service. This has caused great damage.
Overall Labour made gains in urban districts, notably Ipswich, which has more in common with parts of London (including the ‘inner city’) than rural Suffolk.
In my own ward there was a very a good result (I campaigned for Mandy – Labour),
Labour have GAINED the St Helen’s Division from the Liberal Democrats, who were pushed into last place, with UKIP second, two votes ahead of the Tories, and the Green’s in fourth.
Gaylard, Mandy (Labour) 900
Lockington, Tim (Lib Dem) 155
Parkinson, Katherine (Con) 359
Tinney, Mark (UKIP) 361
Wilmot, Tom (Green) 201
There was also a by-election,
“Alexandra Ward By-Election – Ipswich BC – Labour Gain
Labour have taken the Borough Council by election in Alexandra, a gain from the Liberal Democrats. Turnout was 27.6%.
Cook, John (Labour) 772
Cotterell, Stephen (UKIP) 279
Phillips, Edward (Con) 274
Toye, Kenneth (Lib Dem) 126
Wilmot, Thomas (Green) 193
Rejected 7
“So the Liberal Democrats have gone from first to last in what was a bastion of Liberal Democrat power in the town – just three years ago they held all three Borough Council seats, plus the County Council seat. It means the Liberal Democrats are reduced to just three councillors on Ipswich Borough Council.” So says the Spy.
In fact it was not so much as a Liberal Bastion but a freak base, created by boundary changes, and a protest vote against the Labour government, which was always going to go back to Labour when real politics kicked in.
The worst result is in Whitehouse and Whitton where UKIP slipped in.
9 UKIP councillors on the County Council is a disaster.
They did well elsewhere though not enough to win.
Note that in the area I live (St Helen’s/Alexandra, which cover the town centre and is largely working class or employee, and highly ‘mixed’, including a substantial migrant worker population) UKIP came above the Liberals and even the Tories with hardly any local activists whatsoever.
Or indeed none...
Their vote comes from a ‘virtual’ campaign of leafleting, and the full-time agitation of the far-right daily press, the Mail, the Express and the Sun.
They beat poor old Kevin in his vain attempt to win Chantry for the Tory (Holy Roller) Party.
UKIP put the Tories into 4th and 5th (no guessing which Tory came 5th) and the Liberals, way out on the margins at Monster Raving levels of support. (Algar, Kevin (Con) 1043 Armitage, Helen (Labour) 2169 Broom, Barry (Green) 404 Cenci, Nadia (Con) 1096 Fletcher, Julie (Lib Dem) 243 Gardiner, Peter (Labour) 2051 McHardy, Stuart (Lib Dem) 146
Newton, Robert (UKIP) 1301)
Across the County UKIP have pushed the Liberals out to the fringes (7 seats) and are not far behind Labour.
Campaigning on an openly racist basis, against the threat of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants, they join a sorry list of European far-right populist parties.
The left has long shouted about the menace of the tiny and irrelevant English Defence League.
Dealing with UKIP is going to be a lot harder than shouting ‘nasty Nazis’ at them.
But this is a start,
Jean-Luc Mélenchon: for “une défense souveraine et altermondialiste.”
Is Jean-Luc Mélenchon going to way of the French ‘patriotic’ left of yesteryear?
His response to the Socialist-led Government cuts in military spending certainly indicates a drift in that direction.
This is what the leader of the Front de gauche writes on his Blog.
Austérité et atlantisme sont les maîtres mots du livre blanc de la Défense remis ce jour au président de la République. Ce sont deux dangers mortels pour la souveraineté et l’indépendance de la France.
Austerity and Atlanticism are the hallmarks of the Defence White Paper presented today to the President and of the Republic. These are two mortal dangers for the sovereignty and independence of France.
Ce livre blanc est une nouvelle preuve de l’hypocrisie des solfériniens et de l’incohérence du gouvernement.François Hollande annonce qu’il ne touchera pas à la dissuasion nucléaire mais il a accepté d’inscrire la France dans le projet atlantiste de bouclier anti-missile en Europe.
This white paper is, yet again, proof of the hypocrisy and inconsistency of the government. President Hollande has announced that he will not touch nuclear deterrence but has agreed to include France in the Atlanticist project of ‘ a ‘shield’ of missiles in Europe.
François Hollande annonce des moyens préservés pour le budget militaire mais le livre blanc prévoit des dizaines de milliers de suppressions d’emplois et la vente d’actions de l’Etat dans les industries de Défense.Holland’s announcement means that the military budget is maintained, but the White Paper envisages tens of thousands of job cuts and the sale of state-shares in the defence industries.
Ce livre blanc marque un nouvel étiolement de la puissance militaire de la France. Il prépare les grandes phrases selon lesquelles ”on ne peut rien faire sans les autres”. Air trop connu !
This paper heralds that the military power of France will again be sapped. It claims that we cannot act alone….a phrase with all too obvious implications.
Mélenchon then digs explicitly from the midden of nationalism.
Le renoncement à l’indépendance et à la souveraineté est toujours présenté comme une fatalité indépendante de notre volonté.
Presented as inevitable, and wished for, we are being led to abandon our independence and sovereignty.
Je refuse cette liquidation de l’argument militaire de la France. Loin de l’atlantisme et de l’austérité, la France doit construire une défense souveraine et altermondialiste.
I reject this way of abolishing the argument in favour of France’s military. In place of Atlanticism and austerity, France must build a sovereign and ‘other’ (or ‘anti’) globalisation defence force.
One can translate ”une défense souveraine et altermondialiste” in different ways.
But clearly any kind of ‘other’ or ‘alternative’ form of defence, that rejects cutting the military budget, to that offered by ‘globalisation’ is a highly contentious concept.
Not to say utterly confused.
How can we have a military power based on global justice?
And what exactly is this ‘sovereignty’ ’ Mélenchon is talking about?
In recent issues of Le Monde Diplomatique Régis Debray has argued (La France doit quitter l’OTAN March 2013) for France to leave (again) NATO.
He has been answered by Hubert Védrine – the former Socialist Foreign Minster (L’OTAN, terrain d’influence pour la France. April 2013)
Both of their arguments on the assumption that ‘sovereignty - France’s - is a central value of the left.
Mélenchon seems to think that ‘Atlanticist’ policies - that is aligning France to the US – are intrinsically bad things.
Indeed it is well-known that he considers the USA a very bad thing.
That’s as may be.
But is ‘France’ a ‘good thing’?
Is the French military something the left should defend to make it even better?
As a French Blogger says (other critics here) here , if we follow this ‘argument’ for the military we,
“sombre dans le non-sens voire le ridicule. “
Here we fall into nonsense, not to say the ridiculous.
Holland, Republicans Speak as Monarchy Celebrates .
In Holland Not Everybody Waves Back.
This morning the media is full of the ascension to the Dutch Throne of the new King.
It was suggested this morning on the Belgium French-speaking radio le Première (which as a neighbouring country, takes a keen intrest in this) that opponents of the House of Orange were isolated cranks, even right-wing homophobes (???).
e Christian Science Monitor reports on another side of today jamboree in Holland,
Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, will be inaugurated as the new king. It’s expected to be a major event that will be celebrated across the country by a supportive public.
But just a few days ago, some 500 yards away from the Dam Square in central Amsterdam where the abdication and inauguration will take place, a small group of Dutch republicans met to discuss how best to call for the abolition of the country’s 200-year-old monarchy and instate a true republic.
The workshop was organized by the movement #HetIs2013 – Dutch for “It’s 2013″ – which was started in February when a student protester named Joanna was forcibly removed by police from an event in Utrecht that the queen attended.
Joanna had been holding up a sign that read “Away with the monarchy, it’s 2013″ – which the policemen took to be a violation of the Netherlands‘ lese majeste law, which still prohibits insulting the royal family despite the country’s general support of freedom of speech.
Willem-Alexander later said during a TV interview that the policemen had made “a mistake” by removing her.
The plucky Dutch republicans are organised in the Nieuw Republikeins Genootschap.
Wikipedia has an English entry on them.
Their main demand is to reduce the King’s salary and have launched a petition to this end.
With around 1,200 members the republicans are small but determined.
Polls, cited on the Belgium radio, indicate around 10% of the Dutch agree with them.
UKIP Campaign in Ipswich on Hatred of Foreigners.
Cat Herdsman.
“Massive Threat to Our Local Services.
No it’s not the cuts, austerity, or the recession.
UKIP leaflets distributed in Ipswich over the weekend begin by stating,
Within a year, 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians will gain the right to live, work and draw benefits here.
Only UKIP is taking seriously his massive threat to out local housing, schools, health and council services.
Ipswich Spy downplays UKIP’s potential here.
Certainly after reading press reports over the weekend we come away with the – justified – view that a bigger gaggle of cranks, nutters, racists and venomous right-wing extremists would be hard to find.
The Spy points out that,
Locally UKIP don’t have a branch in Ipswich. They have branches all over the Eastern Region, but none in Ipswich. The UKIP agent is from the Bury St Edmunds branch, although he was the UKIP candidate here in Ipswich at the last General Election and he lives in Stowmarket. So they don’t have the huge numbers of activists the Liberal Democrats could boast before they came into Government.
One could add that their candidate, Mark Tinney (for St Helen’s) has a shaky grasp on what local councils do.
His main policy plank is to “try to reduce parking charges and extended free parking in the town centre”.
These are County Council elections.
Parking is the responsibility of the Borough Council.
His other ideas are more police visibility and encouraging ”more business for Ipswich”.
We suspect that nobody will read this part of the leaflet.
They will alight on the ‘threat’ of hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians descending on Ipswich.
We consider, based on what Ipswich people say, that they will have more of an echo than Ipswich Spy thinks.
Informed people may well ‘ridicule” UKIP’s claims.
But the Tories and the right-wing media have relentlessly pursued the line that migrant workers are a ‘menace’.
They have continually attacked ‘Europe’, the EU’s social policies, the ‘regulation’, the ‘bureaucracy’ and the ‘waste’.
It’s no good bleating about what a bunch of odd-balls UKIP are.
They have feathered the UKIP nest.
Much of the Left too has failed to stand up for Europe.
Sections of the organised left have attacked the EU to such a point that they fail to distinguish between the free-market policies of the present Commission (backed by all the major states, and only feebly challenged by the French left government), and the potential of a Continent-wide union of the peoples.
If they want to get rid of the European Union what would they replace it with?
Many on the left go very quiet at this point.
Do they seriously think an “Independent” Socialist Britain or an “independent” Socialist Scotland would come about from leaving the EU?
To challenge the hatred and division spread by UKIP and the Tories, we need the politics of internationalism.
Unity between the peoples, between the working classes and the poor, across Europe.
For this we stand for a European Social Republic!
Iron Curtain. Anne Applebaum. Review and a Note on Totalitarianism.
Die Partei, die Partei, die hat immer Recht!
Und, Genossen, es bleibe dabei;
Denn wer kämpft für das Recht,
Der hat immer recht.
Gegen Lüge und Ausbeuterei.
Wer das Leben beleidigt,
Ist dumm oder schlecht.
Wer die Menschheit verteidigt,
Hat immer recht.
So, aus Leninschem Geist,
Wächst, von Stalin geschweißt,
Die Partei – die Partei – die Partei.
Oh The Party, The Party is always right
And comrade, may it ever be so;
For who fights for the right
He is always right
Against lies and exploitation
[women] Whoever insults life
is stupid or bad
Whoever defends humanity
Is always right
Grown from the spirit of Lenin
Welded by Stalin
The party – the party – the party.
Das Lied der Partei.
Iron Curtain. The Crushing of Eastern Europe. 1944 – 1956. Anne Applebaum. Allen Lane 2012.
A Note on Totalitarianism.
Iron Curtain is an important and deeply researched study of Eastern European Communist states. It begins with their blood-stained birth, illustrates their brightest hopes, and deepest fears, it travels from the sweated labour that built Socialist Cities, to the spying and the stridency of everyday life. Anne Applebaum’s book is equally an investigation into regimes that aspired to “total control” and how they used their power to achieve this.
Anne Applebaum is, as Duncan Bowie observes (Chartist March/April 2013) highly “partisan”. She is married to the centre-right Polish foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski. She is, nobody will be surprised to hear, far from neutral about assessing the damage done in the name of Communism.
It would be derisory, and irrelevant, to make her parti pris stand against the mass of historical detail, mastery of several of the countries’ languages, and weighed judgements that Iron Curtain offers.
Why? The answer comes in the opening pages. The first chapters of Iron Curtain Applebaum overwhelm the reader with the terror brought in the wake of the Second World War. Axis atrocities are laid out in full and the Shoah is never far away from the narrative. Readers of Timothy Synders’ Bloodlands will be acquainted with the terrible reality of destruction on the Eastern Frontiers. But it is other events that stay in the mind the undoubted heroism of the Red Army in fighting its way to Berlin and defeating Nazism, was accompanied by its own brutality against civilians and, in particular, mass rape. The Red Army re-opened camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald almost as soon as they closed them, to house their own undesirables.
The cruelty, oppression, and ethnic cleansing (notably of those of German origin, or even, in Hungary’s case, of those with Teutonic names of other ethnicities) that followed in the first years after the war, principally, East Germany, Poland and Hungary are memorably described. Whole populations of Poles, Rutheniums, Hungarians, were summarily ‘re-allocated’ to new territories.
During the late 1940s Communists consolidated their rule. At the pivot of the system – even before the countries were openly Communist-led – were the security services. Moscow trained local functionaries under the ultimate command of the Soviet NKVD quickly consolidated these. From the Interior Ministries they directed wholesale purges of real and suspected opponents. Executions, consigning people to local camps, even sending them to the Soviet Gulag, followed. The take-over of each state proceeded remorselessly, “first (by) the elimination of right-wing; or anti-communist parties, then the destruction of the non-communist left, then the elimination of opposition within the communist party itself.”(xxxiv)
True Believers.
Yet at the same time the Communist parties were led by true believers. Their Central Committees initially allowed (relatively) free elections because they thought they could win. They thought their doctrine was true. They “really did think that sooner of later the working-class majority would acquire class consciousness, understand its historical destiny and vote for a communist regime.”(P xxxiv)
Harsh policies were a reaction to defeat in elections, notably by the Small Holders’ Party in Hungary, and (if electoral fraud had not obscured this) by the Social Democrats and others in East Germany, ‘patriotic’ parties in Poland, and elsewhere Even in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, barely covered in Iron Curtain) where the local Communist parties did have deeper bases (something Applebaum plays down) they were unable to reach a majority on their own.
Iron Curtain’s principal thesis is that Communist rule under the period of High Stalinism (that is, from the late 1940s to 1956) saw an effort to eliminate any independent life for civil society. “The nascent totalitarian states could not tolerate any competition whatsoever for their citizens’ passion, talents and free time.”(Page 185) They took over youth groups, women’s leagues, churches, trade unions, independent educational movements, and, above all, the mass media, beginning with the Radio. In doing so, “They managed, undermined and sometimes eliminated churches, newspapers, literary and educational societies, companies and retail shops, stock markets, banks, sports clubs and universities.”(Page 496) Read the rest of this entry »
New Workers’ Left Emerges in Belgium
“Nous voulons la rupture avec le PS”
Daniel Piron, of the left-trade union federation, the FGTB*, was on the Belgium Radio station, La Première this morning (Here).
He charged the country’s Socialist Party of participating in “neo-liberal” governments.
La FGTB Charleroi organise samedi avec la CNE-Hainaut un meeting pour créer une “alternative de gauche à la crise capitaliste”. Des formations de la gauche radicale sont aussi invitées, mais il n’est pas question de créer un nouveau parti explique Daniel Piron, secrétaire régional de la FGTB Charleroi/Sud-Hainaut. “Il y a une volonté de travailler ensemble et d’élargir la réflexion aux autres instances syndicales de la FGTB et de la CSC“**.
The FGBT Charleroi is organising a meeting on Saturday with the CNE-Hinaut to “create a left-wing alternative to the capitalist crisis. Organisations of the radical left have been invited, though there is no question of forming a new party, explained Daniel Prion, the regional secretary of the FGBT Charlero/Sud-Hainaut. “There is a will to work together, to deeper our analysis, with other parts of the union structure inside the FGBT and the CSC”.
Daniel Piron added,
le PS et Ecolo “ne sont plus des partis qui relaient les revendications du monde du travail. Ces partis sont intégrés au système.
The Socialist Party and the Greens are “no longer parties which reflect the demands of working people. These parties are part-and-parcel of the system.
Background information on La Lettre aux syndicalistes Blog here.
The left groups invited include (see article here), Le parti de Gauche (aligned with its French counterpart of Jean-Luc Mélenchon) the Front des Gauches (alliance of 6 small groups, including Communist Party, and the LCR) , LCR (Fourth International), LRT (Committee for a Workers International CWI) , PTB (Parti du travail de Belgique – Partij van de Arbeid van België – Marxist-Leninist)
* 1,5 Million members. La Fédération générale du travail de Belgique (FGTB) (Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond = ABVV.
** 1,7 million members La Confédération des syndicats chrétiens, ou CS
People’s Assembly: International Socialist Network Talks Sense.
Excellent article on the International Socialist Network by Kieran Crowe,
The Fight Against Austerity and the People’s Assembly.
He begins,
I think we need to talk about how we are going to deal with the People’s Assembly.
The piece continues,
I have been trying to locate some good data on the effectiveness of anti-cuts campaigns, and must confess I’ve drawn a bit of a blank. There does not seem to be brilliant data out there to say where cuts have have been successfully blocked. Suffice to say, the movements have not been without successes – though they have not been across the board anywhere, it has been far from impossible to organise against cuts.
Kieren observes,
The role of the organised left in the anti-cuts movement has, to say the least, been inconsistent and marked at times with gross sectarianism. As mentioned before, the Labour left has taken some time to find any footing at all with opposition to austerity, due to the key role of New Labour and Labour councillors, but they seem to have regained the initiative to a large extent with opposition to the bedroom tax. The smaller centre-left parties have been similarly contradictory: Green and Nationalist councils have pushed cuts through, while their activists in other areas have criticised Labour for exactly the same.
The role of the far left has not been particularly more glorious. The 2008 crisis prompted by the collapse of American hedge funds led us to a big push on anticapitalist rhetoric, but most of the tactical and strategic initiatives we produced were objective failures. Numerous campaigns and front groups were founded, usually as more or less exclusive tools of the founding organisation and with grand goals that they were objectively unable to pull off. The activists (often full-timers) pushing them were highly enthusiastic though, and often so adamant that ‘their united front’ was the one that would deliver victory that they would happily engage in Popular Front of Judea arguments with their counterparts for other groups pushing very similar looking campaigns.
Need we rehearse the disputes around the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) and the so-called Unite the Resistance? Not to mention TUSC?
One development we are going to have to discuss is the People’s Assembly Against Austerity (PA). The PA is, in some ways, not really new as a concept – it is an outgrowth of the ‘Coalition of Resistance’ campaign that the was launched when several left groups were founding similar initiatives and that has received significant backing from the leaderships of several trade unions, notably the centre-left leadership of the mass Unite union under Len McCluskey.
The PA has, to say the very least, managed to stand out by being on a considerably larger scale than previous conferences. With a venue for over 2,000 booked, there is already the possibility of spill-over space being hired. This would make the PA four to five times larger than its nearest rival and probably one of the biggest activist conferences for a generation in Britain. The publicity it has generated has similarly been far greater than previous events: it has been plugged in the Guardian and denounced in the Spectator, which is a rare breakthrough into the mainstream, recalling a little the publicity that Stop the War got at its height.
Exactly.
My immediate reaction was to get on board.
There is, inevitably, a layer of the left that will attack the PA this way and make a point of principle out of it: witness the anarcho-miserablist Ian Bone of Class War, a man who famously advised people to stay away from anti-war demos in 2003, who has pledged to stand outside the PA venue, telling attendees how very wrong they are. If we take our activism seriously, we must find a mid-position between nodding along to McCluskey and abstaining on the sidelines with people like Bone who just think they’re smarter than everyone else.
Which will be fun, if nothing else.
My guess is the right approach to the PA would be to intervene through and as part of delegations to it from genuine campaigning groups. Most IS Network members ought to find this easy: we have, most of us, been part of anti-cuts groups at some stage, or can easily join one. Going into an anti-austerity body with the express purpose of getting it to participate in the PA would, in fact, be a useful thing to do and might help reinvigorate groups that have stalled.
This is in tune with what many of us feel.
Something I feel to be worth throwing into the debate is the role of trade union councils – in Barnet the trades council was central to the founding of the anti-cuts group and manages to remain in alliance with it even as it operates with its own autonomy. Anti-cuts groups elsewhere that have become moribund and trades councils that have been conservative for decades could potentially be revitalised in local areas if they get encouragement and support from similar groups that are doing better, giving us a far wider pool of activity to operate.
As a Trades Council activist I could not agree more.
There is also likely to be an interesting debate about regional People’s Assemblies later in the year – which have the potential to be very large and attract further layers of activists. Regional PAs would be quite different from a national one – indeed if you want a version of the event that is less ‘top table’, this may be what you would end up producing. It is still not counterposed to the national event.
One thing I do not believe can be argued is that that the event can be simply abstained from, though if other people do have other ideas for fighting austerity, we should hear about those too.
This analysis is so spot on that I nothing more to add.
Obviously The International Socialist Network is going places.
Good places.
French Right and Far-Right Radicalised over Gay marriage.
Des opposants au mariage homosexuel manifestent à Paris, le 23 avril 2013 (Photo Kenzo Tribouillard. AFP)
“Vous êtes en train d’assassiner des enfants !”
You’re murdering children!
Reactions against gay marriage and adoption rights in France are extreme to say the least.
This was not a statement the far-right but France’s’ but from a deputy, of the Rhône Philippe Cochet, from the ‘centre-right’ UMP, during the Parliamentary debate.
You can’t help but think that Jean-François Kahn had a point this morning on the Belgium radio La Première when he said that the UMP (once led by Nicolas Sarkozy) has outdone the neo-fascists in this campaign against gays.
They have marched, arm-in-arm, with the Front National, as this picture indicates,
Well, the marriage for everyone (le marriage pour tous) is now on the way to being law (subject to an ultimate appeal to the Constitutional Council).
Not without the most ferocious resistance threatened for the coming months.
The anti-gay movement behind figures like the ‘comedian’ Frigide Barjot (what card she must be, say the name out loud! – and Barjot means nutter as well…), is virulent beyond belief.
In the mouvance called the Printemps français you will find well-dressed thugs, religious fanatics, and the shadow of Petanism.
That is the direct descendants of the collaboration (details here in today’s Libération).
They constantly harass supporters, government members or not, of gay marriage.
They claim to have launched an «insurrection permanente».
It is quite vile.
John Rees and Counterfire: Ministry of Truth Rectifies.
Diamond Geezer.
Ministry of Truth Communication,
“Tendance Coatesy: unbad Counterfire, John Rees and Lindsey German. Misprints rectify. Immediate upsub to Ministry, vaporise duckspeak or Coatesy joycamp.”
Coatesy writes,
“It has come to our attention that Tendance Blog has published material that may give an impression that John Rees, Lindsey German and Counterfire can be criticised.
Our multi-volume series, “The Struggle against Reesite Liquidationism” and our pamphlet, “What Counterfire is and how to Smash it” are in the process of being re-edited.
The Children’s book, “The Famous Five Unmask the Zinovievite-Rees Spy Centre” has been returned to the publishers.
We now accept that, following Georg Lukács that 2 plus 2 can sometimes, in an “Aufhebung ” be dialectically sublated into 5.”
Sitting at his usual table in the Chestnut Tree Café Coatesy sipped his clove-flavoured Victory Gin.
Watching the telly-screen he saw John Rees on Russia Today.
He felt a swelling of pride: he had always backed Counterfire!
Galloway and Miliband: Worse than a Crime, a Mistake.
Galloway and Friend.
Galloway in Secret meeting with Miliband, the Mail reported on Sunday.
Phil in a quick response on A Very Public Sociologist unwisely commented,
It’s good politics to explore areas where some form of cooperation can be reached across party lines, even when a MP is from an organisation many times smaller than your own. And, needless to say, it is an utterly mundane and common occurrence. The only surprising thing about Ed and George’s meeting is that it hadn’t happened before now.
This led to the usual crew of pro-Galloway cretins (as one could politely call them), praising the Great Man whose immense political weight has been recognised at last.
Now in the Guardian Mark Ferguson of Labour List comments,
There’s been a certain amount of (entirely justifiable) anger and confusion from many Labour supporters today at reports in the Mail on Sunday that Ed Miliband met George Galloway in his Westminster office recently. The spin from the Mail – to the surprise of no one at all – was that “Red” Ed Miliband was attempting some form of reconciliation with George Galloway, in an attempt to have him rejoin the Labour party.
Thankfully, this is not the case.
A senior source in Miliband’s office told me this afternoon that this was “certainly not about reconciling with Galloway”, while another told me that “there is no possibility, prospect or chance of George Galloway rejoining the Labour party”. Allowing him to rejoin the party would happen over my dead body – and I suspect a substantial proportion of the party membership feel the same way.
In fact, the meeting was about a rather more prosaic – but crucial – matter: the boundary changes vote that at the time looked like it might come down to just one or two votes. All parties in parliament (except the Tories) were approached, and it paid dividends as the boundary changes fell. A Labour party spokesperson confirmed that this afternoon, saying:
“There is no attempt to bring George Galloway back into the Labour party as many of his views are unacceptable and extreme. Ed met him purely as a courtesy to discuss the recent vote on changing parliamentary boundaries. No communication has taken place since.”
Now this is may well be a matter of winning a “crucial Commons vote” .
But why on earth did Miliband have to talk face to face with Galloway?
One can imagine that Galloway is chuffed.
We will no doubt learn more, from other sources if not directly from North Korea’s greatest friend’s own foam speckled mouth.
On this meeting one could say, “”C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute!”
People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Ipswich and District.
A People’s Assembly Against Austerity group is being set up in Ipswich, Suffolk.
Counterpunch: US Imperialism Caused Boston Bombs.
American Imperialism, says Counterpunch.
Whether or not the bombing in Boston was carried out by a group originating in the Middle-East, if we are serious about ending attacks like these we must consider their causes, of which U.S. imperialism is certainly one.
Ken Klipperstein Counterpunch.
They say that fools rush in…..
Yes, that is fools, plural.
For Counterpunch also publishes this tasty bit of whataboutery.
The Real Terrorists are the Corporate Execs Who’ve Bought the RegulatorsTwo Acts of Terror, Only One Investigation
by DAVE LINDORFF
The way I see it, we had two acts of terrorism in the US this week. The first took place at the end of the historic Boston Marathon, when two bombs went off near the finish line, killing three and seriously injuring dozens of runners and spectators. The second happened a couple days later in the town of West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up, incinerating or otherwise killing at least 15, and injuring at least 150 people, and probably more as the search for the dead and the injured continues.
The real terrorists in our midst are not men with knapsacks and white baseball caps who plant homemade bombs. They are not swarthy terrorists from the Middle East. Rather, they are the mostly white men (and women) in business suits on Wall Street and Main Street who callously use their wealth to subvert the political system to their short-term advantage, causing common-sense safety and health precautions to be ignored, or getting those laws watered down or outright cancelled.
Anti-Gay Marriage Movement in France, “May 68 in Reverse”.
May 68 in Reverse?
French religious and right-wing agitation against legislation for gay marriage (‘le marriage pour tous’) is reaching a new pitch as the law is due to be voted in.
Last night France’s Parliament, l’Assemblée Nationale, nearly descended into violence.
The debate lasted all night, only finishing just before 8 o’clock this morning.
In a scene described on France-Inter today as worthy of the Russian Duma, right-wing deputies approached the government seats screaming and ready for a fight.
Libération reports this morning,
Scène surréaliste : l’hémicycle avait échappé de peu à une bagarre. Dans la confusion et sous le regard interloqué des journalistes en tribune de presse, des députés UMP, excédés par une mimique d’un collaborateur du ministre de la Justice - ils l’ont expliqué ensuite - se sont précipités au bas de l’hémicycle. Aux cris de «dehors, dehors», ils se sont approchés des bancs du gouvernement. Des huissiers et le ministre chargé des Relations avec le Parlement Alain Vidalies se sont interposés pendant plusieurs minutes.
A surrealist scene: the chamber nearly descended into fist fights. In a confused state, and journalists looking askance from the press box, UMP MPs, enraged by being made fun of by an associate of the Justice Minister, (that is, their version) – rushed to the lower half of the room. Shouting “Out, Out, Out!”, they approached the Government benches. Ushers and Alain Vidalies, the Minister in Charge of Parliamentary procedures, stood in their way for some minutes.
According to the Libération report blows were exchanged.
Outside around 3,000 demonstrators, many from the extreme-right “Printemps français” vociferously voiced their opposition to gay rights.
This movement believes the time has come for a “May 68 in reverse” (see La jeunesse prête pour un Mai 68 à l’envers !).
French President Francois Hollande hit out at “homophobic” acts by opponents of a same-sex marriage bill following violent protests that included an attack on a gay bar.
The interior minister asked protest organisers to throw out members of far-right organisations who have been involved in the violence, as opposition intensifies ahead of the bill’s expected final approval.
On Wednesday, a several-thousand-strong protest in the streets of Paris turned ugly with cars and public property vandalised and police officers and journalists attacked. Several people were detained for questioning.
In Lille, three employees of a gay bar were injured late Wednesday in an attack by four men who smashed the building’s windows. The owner linked the incident to “tensions” over the parliament vote.
After Thatcher: The Movement to Destroy the Legacy of Thatcherism.
George Osborne Weeps: Will Thatcherism Now Die as well?
With that funeral Class Hatred came back yesterday.
David Cameron boasted that “We all Thatcherites now”.
He can say it three times but it will still not be true.
The ceremony was said to be truly moving magnificent .
But Jonathan Freedland could not be more wrong when he comments in the Guardian,
For all the grandeur, they claimed a simple purpose. They had come, they said, not to bury a political figure or an “-ism”, but a woman of flesh and blood, a mortal who was “one of us”. And yet there were moments when it seemed they had come to bury an entire era, to conclude at last that dizzying, turbulent decade where she reigned supreme. The ceremony that hushed central London on Wednesday morning was a farewell to Margaret Thatcher – but also to the 1980s.
The sight of so many grasping, grudging, gruesome, mean-spirited, mean-minded, and mean-intentioned mourners stirred up great feelings of class loathing across the country.
Sharp divisions sprang up again, as if they had never gone away.
Thatcher was “one of them“.
The Liberal-Tory Coalition is trying to complete the ‘Thatcher Revolution’ by destroying everything that remains of social democracy, equality and care for others.
Instead of collective pride in our common wealth, they promote the private richess of the few.
Instead of joyful unity between people they bring hatred and fear of the many, the poor and migrants,
On the television a succession of admirers of Thatcher have paraded their own merits.
They have done down the efforts of those who have not benefited from the market.
This is a different picture that will remain seared on our minds,
An Effigy of Margaret Thatcher (‘Thatcher the Scab’) is burnt in the former Mining Village of Goldthorpe.
Against fear and hatred the left can build something new.
Sisters, Brothers, Comrades – there’s a place for you: in the People’s Assembly Against Austerity!
Before Thatcher: the Movement for Workers’ Control.
The 1970s and the Movement for Workers’ Control.
“Trade unions have historically bargained for better terms for the sale of labour power; they have not been able to challenge the existence of the labour market itself. Today, however, the relation between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ struggle have changed.”
Perry Anderson. The Limits and Possibilities of in: The Incompatibles. Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus. 1967.
Perry Anderson was writing about incomes policies. Attempts to impose, or reach by union consent, agreements about pay levels would be made by successive governments, Conservative or Labour, right until Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979. That is, pay disputes became political because the Cabinet and the State were involved.
These, as is well-known, featured prominently during the decade. The unions’ efforts to defend and increase their members salaries, from the late ‘sixties ‘wage drift’ to the need to adjust to inflation, led to countless disputes. Some on the left thought that the resulting “profit squeeze” of the period was a sign of growing working class strength. Other held them responsible for the country’s (relative) decline.
There is a library of literature on this subject. But Anderson could equally have referred to the way in which the authority of British capitalism was challenged from the inside. That is through demands and efforts to make real workers’ power within companies. This movement had an influential and coherent voice. The Institute for Workers’ Control was formed in 1968, with the support of Hugh Scanlon of the Engineering union (AEU) and Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T & G). It was influential (though never dominant) within the Labour Party and the wider left. The Institute’s conferences debated a broad range of proposals to introduce industrial democracy Above all, management’s right to manage was disputed.
In the wake of Thatcher’s death her supporters have shouted loudly about the role of the unions in the 1970s. They state that organised labour had undue influence over the Wilson and Callaghan Cabinets (1974 – 1979), that they pressured them to shore up unprofitable industries, that they stifled enterprise. It was common to talk about “corporatism”, the way in which efforts were made to draw unions, employers and the state together formally through bodies such as the National Enterprise Board (NEB).
The media has given ample publicity to those who claim that Thatcher freed them from union backed State regulation. That an open market enabled them to succeed. That they took responsibility for their own fate and succeeded. Everybody should be like me – look at my wad ! – is the boast.
Perhaps instead of pointing to the delusions of those who think so highly of their own talents, or to the victims of the same market process, we should consider the forward-looking ideas of the 1970s left. Indeed, with their grass-roots democratic hopes, it might be better to look at this not so distant past, before going further back to the 1945 Labour Government.
An Offensive Movement.
The Institute for Workers’ Control was not a defensive but an offensive movement. It asked the simple question: if democracy is such a good thing for politics, why is it not the rule at work? If individual responsibility is to forced down people’s throats (as is now happening again under ‘welfare reform’), what is wrong with people taking responsibility for the companies that employ them? Marx described the way in which in the market we are ‘free’, the “very Eden of the innate rights of man”? But at the same time, within production, factory, office or shop, there is a sign “No admittance except on business.” (Page 280. Capital Vol. 1. Penguin Edition). In this respect have we not gone beyond the 19th century?
Workers’ Control. Another World is Possible. Ken Coates. (2003) offers valuable material from the Institute for Workers’ Control (which dissolved in the 1980s). Ken Coates article, Democracy and Workers’ Control (published in Towards Socialism. Eds. Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn. 1965) describes the “antithetical natures of private property and democracy”. He criticised ‘paternalistic Fabianism”, that is the nationalised industries run by civil servants. Read the rest of this entry »
Feminist Secularist Caroline Fourest Attacked by Opponents of Gay Marriage Law.
Caroline Fourest: Attacked by Far-Right and ‘Anti-Imperialists’.
There were many virulent anti-gay marriage demonstrations in France over the weekend.
On Saturday at Nantes, Caroline Fourest, was at a meeting to debate Islam and secularism. (Caroline Fourest était venue débattre d’islam et de laïcité).
The journalist, who is herself gay, was violently taken aside by those against the law enabling “marriage for all”. (Report here)
As she arrived at Nantes by train over 100 screaming demonstrations from the extreme-right were waiting for Caroline.
That was only the beginning.
They followed her to the meeting venue.
They disputed the meeting, shouting, and throwing stink bombs and tear gas.
Returning to Paris at Montparnasse the anti-gay marriage far right were waiting for her at the station.
It appears that these thugs were part of the ‘Printemps français’ alliance of Christian extremists and the neo-fascist right and racists.
Caroline was attacked in September last year at the annual Fête d’Huma by the Indigènes de la République and the Indivisibles. They prevented her from talking about her latest book against the Front National
They claim she is ‘Islamophobic’ and had no right to speak.
Caroline then, has been shouted down by Islamists, so-called ‘anti-imperialists’ and now, the extreme right has taken upon itself the task of stalking her.
Is it a coincidence that she is a gay women feminist?
Perhaps the Printemps français and the Indigènes de la République could get together and organise a united attack against Caroline Fourest.
Her report: Les homophobes sont allés trop loin à Nantes
Far Right tries a “French Spring” through anti-Gay Demos.
French Religious Right Threatens Violence Against Gay Marriage Law.
This morning on French radio station RTL a right-wing spokesperson, and former Sarkozy Housing Minister, threatened a “civil war” if the laws on gay marriage (le Mariage pour tous) and adoption open to all, reach the statue book.
Christine Boutin, la présidente du Parti Chrétien-Démocrate n’a pas mâché ses mots.
Invoquant “les colères multiples et grandissantes du peuple de France”, elle a évoqué sur Twitter une “guerre civile”.
Christine Boutin, le President of the Christian Democrat Party did not mince her words
She evoked the “swelling rage and anger of the French people”. On Twitter she spoke of a “civil war”.
The right have referred to the mass anti-secular campaign in 1984 against plans to bring religious education establishment into line with the public system (Loi Savary).
Boutin continued,
Nous mènerons jusqu’au bout ce combat pour la famille et l’avenir de notre pays. C’est la démocratie que nous défendons ! Tous à Paris le 26 mai ! »
We will continue our fight for the Family and the future of our country, right to end. It’s democracy that we defend! Everybody Come to Paris on the 26th of May!(from here)
Elswhere it’s reported that another leader of the anti-gay movement, Brigide Barjot, said, «c’est un déni de démocratie. C’est violent, et une loi violente, qui va passer violemment, va provoquer de la violence».
This is a denial of democracy. It;s violence, it;s a violent law, it will come in violently, and will provoke violence. (Here)
These are ‘mainstream’ opinions.
But much more extreme groups are moblising.
Libérati0n reports today on the far-right groups involved in the anti-gay movement.
Taking the name “Printemps français” this involves a variety of extreme groups, including ultra-traditional Catholics of Civitas, the Bloc identitaire, the fascist student militia, Groupe union défense (GUD) and their ‘student union’ the Union nationale interuniversitaire (UNI)
Thatcher and Enoch Powell.
And never satisfies.
Yesterday on Question Time Charles Moore, the author of the soon-to-be published updated biography of Margaret Thatcher, spoke vociferously in defence of her memory and legacy.
He practically foamed with anger at those who ‘disrespected’ her with protests and Death Parties.
Charles Moore combines a boundless admiration for Thatcher with warm feelings towards one of Thatcher’s major influences, Enoch Powell.
Writing of the later Moore said last year,
Powell’s passion was a virtue as well, because political leaders should be able to feel and to dramatise the history that makes a nation what it is.
His commitment to the British nation state, and above all to the Parliament which embodied it, made him pay relentless attention to the visceral issues which lay behind the questions of the day. “Enoch was right”, taxi drivers always used to say 25 years ago.
They meant, right about the dangers of mass immigration. Some of them were racists, but I don’t think most were. They had a pride in the identity of their nation and a fear when they felt it threatened. Powell spoke to these feelings, and although his language was inflammatory, he was right to raise the subject.
If you were around in the 1970s it was not necessary to see the connection between Thatcher and Powell, even after Powell had been forced out of the Conservative Party.
One could simply feel the strong bond.
But if proof were needed Thatcher later said this – on Powell’s views on immigration.
In an interview for Today shortly after her departure from office in 1991, Margaret Thatcher said that Powell had “made a valid argument, if in sometimes regrettable terms.” (Wikipedia)
In more detailed terms the connection is described as follows.
“The former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, based many of her defining policies along the lines of Enoch Powell’s rhetoric. There are not a great many differences; although Margaret Thatcher did make attempts to curtail immigration, it was not to the extent that Powell had proposed in 1968. Thatcher also intended to greatly reduce the power of the welfare state and national assistance, which Powell had not been so enthusiastic about.”
Andrew Gamble was to call Thatcherism the politics of the “Free Market and the Strong State” .
It was this ideological debt to Powell as well as the New Right that he referred to.
People were forced to be free on the market, and if they didn’t like it they would be stamped on.
Richard Seymour’s Obituary of Thatcher is well worth reading on these links.
When admirers of Thatcher talk of how ‘vicious’ the 1970s left was, and had tasteless and hateful those holding Thatcher death parties are, look at the poem of her hero above.
Its stench is hard to forget.
Ben Gummer Ipswich MP to Consecrate Shrine to Baroness Thatcher.
Lady Lane, The Beautiful Site for New Shrine to Baroness Thatcher.
Ben Gummer Ipswich MP (Con), Minister for Ipswich, Mayor of Ipswich and leader of the National Amalgamated Associated Operatives for Bankers* gives an alternative view in this guest post on Tendance Coatesy.
Thatcher was the most truly great PMs in this country’s history.
I met her several times over the years – the last time was at the funeral of Ted Heath – and she always had time for me.
She did more to form modern Britain than any other person. She reversed decline and gave the nation a most significant endowment, a renewed spirit of confidence, enterprise and endeavour.
I would like to add that Baroness Thatcher inspired me to go into politics.
As a lad, taking pot shots at some ne’er-do-well peasants on the Suffolk Estates of my father (now Baron Deben), I played my part in that spirit of endeavour and enterprise.
The people of Ipswich owe a lot to her work.
The closure of the Ransomes and Rapier in 1987 and the clearing of the Engineering firms, and other industry based at the head of the River Orwell paved the way for today’s much-needed Neptune Marina.
Without this reversal of decline would the much-loved Bistro On The Quay be there?
That is why, with a committee of local figures, we have formed the Lady Lane Shrine group.
A historic site, dedicated to our Lady, will become the destination for new pilgrimages.
This time in Baroness Thatcher’s Honour.
The young folk begging in the gutters of Ipswich and sleeping in doorways will find great consolation in this.
Gifts and tributes to the former PM can be placed at my Central Ipswich Office.
We are pleased to have received the sponsorship of Wonga Dot Com.
*From Ben’s Blog, latest post:
Three Cheers for the Bankers 29th March 2013.
My post a few weeks ago included a letter from City UK, which lobbies on behalf of the financial services sector. It is a clever outfit, because despite its name it works hard to represent companies and employees working outside London in other financial centres across the country. And they know how to lobby: with the letter came a factsheet on my constituency. Frankly, in the case of Ipswich they don’t need to do any explaining – the numbers speak for themselves.
There are two things to note here. First, that of all places in Britain we should be the last to indulge in ‘banker bashing’. There are a few in London who give this sector a bad name but in the main people working in financial services are very normal: they might even be your neighbour or the person who you sat next to on the bus this morning.
Secondly, this sector produces enormous amounts of wealth – the better part of £1 billion in Ipswich alone. Without it, we would not be able to afford Ipswich Hospital or your local primary school or the roads, not perfect as they all may be.
Not a Tear for Madame Thatcher says French Left Paper.
Pas une larme pour Madame Thatcher
José Fort, from l’Humanité.
Nous ne pleurerons pas Mme Thatcher. Cette fille d’épicier a consacré toute sa vie politique à détruire le monde ouvrier, à laisser mourir des patriotes irlandais, à privilégier la caste des riches, à casser les plus pauvres.
We will not shed tears over Madame Thatcher. This grocer’s daughter dedicated her political life to destroying the working class. She let Irish patriots die, promoted the caste of the rich, and ground down the poor.
La politique atlantiste de cette forcenée de l’ultra libéralisme fabriquée dans le même moule que Reagan restera dans l’Histoire non pas comme “La dame de fer” mais plutôt comme “la préposée aux sales coups”.
The Transatlantic policies of this enraged supporter of ultra-liberalism was in the same mould as Reagan. She will be recalled in History not as the Iron Lady but as somebody with a bent for low tricks.
The article ends with some lines from the French singer Renaud.
In Miss Maggie, (YouTube link with subtitles) his most famous sentence is,
Moi je me changerai en chien si je peux rester sur la Terre et comme réverbère quotidien je m’offrirai Madame Thatcher I will change into a dog if I can stay on Earth and as my daily lampost I will use Mrs Thatcher ***
One could get the impression that Thatcher did not inspire universal international admiration.
Ex-Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher dies, aged 87, a Nation Mourns.
British Mourning for Thatcher (Photo courtesy of the Daily Mail).
No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
The BBC has just reported,
Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has died “peacefully” at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke, her family has announced.
David Cameron called her a “great Briton” and the Queen spoke of her sadness at the death.
Hang Atheist Bloggers Say Bangladeshi Fascists.
Bangladeshi Fascists: Hang Atheist Bloggers!
100,000 Bangladeshi Protestors Rallied To Demand The Execution Of Atheist Bloggers
The Islamists converged on Dhaka’s main commercial hub to protest against what they say are blasphemous writings by atheist bloggers, defying a pro-government national strike by secular protesters — who staged a smaller rival protest in Dhaka Saturday — aimed at resisting the march.
Police said about 100,000 people attended the rally during which protesters chanted “God is great, hang the atheist bloggers”.
This week four online writers were arrested on charges of hurting religious sentiment through their Internet writings against Islam.
Following recent protests over the on-going war crimes tribunal the government has blocked about a dozen websites and blogs to stem the unrest. It has also set up a panel, which includes intelligence chiefs, to monitor blasphemy on social media.
Solidarity and love to the ‘atheist Bloggers’!
Left Journal Falls for Sokal Style Hoax.
Historical Materialism Journal has Posadist Moment.
In the latest Historical Materialism, apparently a Marxist journal, there is this,
Marx on the Dialectics of Elliptical Motion, Thomas Weston
The central interpretative problem of the ellipse passage is the meaning of the assertion that elliptical motion solves [löst] an actual contradiction but does not overcome [aufhebt] it.”
Elliptical motion occurs only when neither the inertial tendency nor the gravitational tendency is too strong or too weak in relation to the other. If the initial velocity of a planet or satellite is higher than a critical value, it will fly off into space on a hyperbolic or parabolic trajectory. This critical value is called the escape velocity , vesc. If the mass of the planet or satellite is small compared to the mass M of a central body, G is the gravitational constant, and ..
In order for the planet or satellite to fall into the central body on a ‘suborbital’ path, its tangential velocity must be smaller than a critical value v0. To calculate v0,we calculate the parameter e, the eccentricity of the ellipse, which is defined as….”
The source is this,
“”This paper examines Marx’s discussion of elliptical motion and some other physical phenomena, and shows that he did indeed find contradictions and oppositions in nature, and thus recognised a dialectics of nature. In addition to analysing relevant passages in Marx’s texts, his study of the physics and mathematics of elliptical motion is reviewed and compared with Hegel’s position. Marx’s conception of how dialectical contradictions are resolved is reviewed in order to interpret his claim that the contradiction in elliptical motion is ‘solved’ but not ‘overcome’ by that motion. Textual evidence is presented that Marx regarded ‘real contradictions’ as resolved only by ‘development’, a process in which the conflict between the opposing sides of the contradiction becomes more intense. The consequences of this interpretation for Marx’s analysis of elliptical motion are explored, and some alternative interpretations are discussed.
Now there are two generally held view in this kind of ‘dialectics’
One is that is a harmless hobby, akin to counting the numbers of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
The other is that is pretentious gibberish.
There is a third, a ‘dialectical’ resolution of this contradiction.
Thomas Weston is ‘aving a laugh at the expense of the oh so serious editors of Historical Materialism.
Parti de Gauche Builds Links with Arab Left.
A Tunis, le Parti de Gauche jette les bases de l’Euro-Méditerranée
At Tunis the Parti de Gauche forges Euro-Mediterranean bonds.
La délégation du Parti de Gauche présente au Forum Social Mondial (FSM) à Tunis a rencontré le 28 mars une délégation représentant une dizaine de partis et d’organisations progressistes du Maghreb, prolongeant ainsi la récente tournée de Jean-Luc Mélenchon dans la région.
The delegation of the Parti de Gauche was present at the World Social Forum meeting at Tunisia. It met up with a dozen representatives of progressive organisations from the Maghreb, extending the recent tour of the region by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
They discussed the construction of broad unity against the financial oligarchy and the diktats of the European Union.
The PdG presented its 18 theses for Ecosocialism and an alternative for the ‘Euro-Mediterrean’. (full report on site link above).
It is encouraging to see this kind of initiative take place.
Steward in SWP Backed Mêlé, “Kick their Cunts in”.
Kick Their Cunts in Say Some.
In Glasgow, Saturday, faced with protests against the SWP,
… something happened at the Glasgow Anti Bedroom Tax demo yesterday, and it needs to be talked about. It happened because a rape apologist was invited to speak on the platform. Dave Sherry was invited to speak in his capacity as UNITE Scottish Federation of Housing Associations branch secretary, but one of his other roles is as a member of the Disputes Committee of the SWP which it has emerged has delivered a “not proved” verdict in the case of senior party member Martin Smith raping a teenage member of the party. It has also taken it upon itself to “rule” on several other rape cases. That Disputes Committee, and all in the SWP who have lined up to support it and silence internal dissent against its decision to even entertain holding its own rape trial, let alone come to the decision that they “didn’t think that Comrade Delta [Martin Smith] raped W” (Candy U, Disputes Committee member, from leaked transcript of an SWP conference), is a Committee of rape apologists.
“ One unknown young female steward was very keen to let every female Sherry protestor know that she wanted to hurt them, threatening various women with ripping their throats out/kicking their cunts in/stabbing them. I very much doubt she was SWP and to be honest it was more upsetting to see older people who should have been diffusing that situation for both her own safety and ours actually egging her on – it seemed to be a pretty clear example of them using a working class woman as their disposable attack dog while they stood comfortably behind her. For all anyone knew she could have personal reasons why her immediate response to feeling under attack was to threaten violence, and the stewards and bystanders who definitely knew exactly what we were protesting against had a duty not to allow the situation to escalate to threats of violence (but you know”
This is the report we have.
There have been no denials.
Julian Assange Joins SWP.
Julian Assange: Soon to be Selling Socialist Worker.
In a shock move Julian Assange has joined the British Socialist Workers Party.
In a Press Statement from the Ecuadorian embassy Julian said,
“The SWP’s stalwart anti-imperialism is second to none.
The IS tradition and the Permanent Arms Economy, not to mention Cliff’s views on State Capitalism, are right on line.
They way they replied to some unpleasant women in Glasgow on Saturday deeply impressed me.
But it is the fashion with which they have dealt with accusations of rape against Comrade Delta which has really struck home.
My team of lawyers is at present negotiating with the Swedish authorities to arrange that the allegations against me be settled by the SWP Disputes Committee.”
The SWP announced, “Julian is right to fight US imperialism, and right to bring assault cases to our Disputes Committee. “
The People’s Assembly Against Austerity and its Critics.
Sheldon: Better leader than John Rees.
The People’s Assembly Against Austerity is a welcome initiative.
It comes at a time when there is a need to concentrate minds and activism on the fight against the Liberal-Tory Coalition.
It is a response from what Ernest Bevin would call the “bowels of the labour movement”.
And a lot more, Greens, anti-cuts campaigns, and plain ordinary people sick with austerity politics.
Its ideas reflect the young brilliant writer Owen Jones who has been taken to the heart of that labour movement.
People around the country are already inspired.
But, and there’s always a but, there are concerns.
Why has John Rees appeared as a leading figure cited in the Independent?
John Rees is, to put it mildly, ‘controversial’.
Some people, and I have spoken to them face-to-face, say he is a good person.
However, the politics of the group he leads, Counterfire, (a split from the SWP with very similar policies and ideas) are not universally admired.
Comrades as diverse as Anna Chen * and Ian Bone reflect – strongly- this feeling.
On any measure Rees is not a suitable figurehead for a unifying movement.
We are at a crucial political point.
Our movement has to respond to the hate and fear of the Liberal-Tory Coalition with unity.
There is no place for discredited divisive figures.
Personally I would prefer Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to head our movement.
* I have to cite comrade Anna in detail.
For who do we see at the helm? John Rees and his Counterfire crew — the usual suspects with the reverse Midas touch, turning everything to shit; arch-bureaucrats bringing order and stasis to the struggle like Blue Meanies invading Pepperland. If you want to see what’s in store for this much-needed initiative, it would pay to examine what’s happened every time the former Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leaders — the John Rees/Lindsey German axis — have bolted themselves to the head of a campaign: how Rees took an axe to the Socialist Alliance (SA); how they sunk Respect; and how they sat on the anti-war movement in the Stop the War Coalition (STWC). They can’t see a flicker of life without holding a pillow over its head and declaring themselves king and queen of the castle.
like some Mafia don testing out a henchman intent on making his bones, Rees instructed me to carry out a character assassination on them in the SA email lists and media for being late.
Back the People’s Assembly!
Sisters, Brothers, there’s a Place for You in the People’s Assembly!
The People’s Assembly was launched this week.
In a powerful article in the Independent Owen Jones argued,
How the People’s Assembly can challenge our suffocating political consensus – and why it’s vital that we do
The cartel of modern politics is only ever disrupted from the right. Now, with the help of like-minded others, I will be touring the country to set up a left-wing movement.
Comrade Jones included the following points,
Inevitably, such an initiative will have to plough through a fair amount of cynicism from both left and right. Put “left” into a sentence including “piss-up” and “brewery”, and few would disagree.
But this isn’t going to fall into the trap of being a recruitment exercise for some obscure sect with newspapers to flog.
It’s being driven by a formidable coalition of unions such as Unite, Unison and PCS, representing millions of workers in both the private and public sector; Labour activists and the Green Party; campaigners for disabled people, tax justice, women, BME people; and people frankly who are just stranded and without a political home.
It’s not the 867th attempt to set up yet another doomed left-wing party, but a movement that will nonetheless fill a chasm in British politics.
The evidence is there:
Around the country, including Suffolk and Ipswich, local meetings will be held in the near future to build support for this initiative.
There will be not just the Assembly but marches and protests.
As somebody involved in the local Trades Council and who has been to recent meetings at the London TUC where this has been raised (the latest a couple of weeks ago) I can truly say that it has support from all shades of the real labour movement and the left.
But this is more, it is a People’s Assembly, for us lot to get our voices heard against the Liberal-Tory Coalition that is ruling through fear and hate.
Counterpunch Takes the White Supremacist Road.
This from beloved comrade Spanish Prisoner is a must-read.
Mike Whitney has posted an article on CounterPunch titled Our Chavez: Huey Long. There seems to be an effort in recent years on the part of some people to to try to portray the sometime governor of Louisiana and U.S.Senator as a great champion of the people, no doubt because of his anti-capitalist rhetoric. Yet when one takes a closer look at his life, it becomes clear that things were not that simple.
During Long’s lifetime, most of the Left regarded him with deep wariness, if not outright hostility. There were good reasons for that. First of all, he governed Louisiana as a virtual dictator. He even organized a secret police force to keep watch on his opponents as well as on his followers.
Long was also a white supremacist. He maintained Louisisana’s Jim Crow laws. (Long would sometimes smear his opponents by spreading rumors that they had “coffee blood”. This gives a bitter irony to calling him “our Chavez”.) Long’s apologists point out that he didn’t talk about white supremacy in his speeches. This was perhaps because he didn’t need to. In 1935, Roy Wilkins interviewed Long for The Criis. They discussed an anti-lynching bill that Long opposed in the Senate:
Read the rest on Spanish’s excellent Blog.
I trust that SERGE HALIMI will re-consider his name being put on this racist site as a contributor.
On the American International Socialist Organization: the Joy of Sects.
Since the Fall of the British SWP some people have got interested in the American IS (full name International Socialist Organization).
Now there are some solid reasons to like the International Socialist Organization (though I can’t say I will ever get round to that ‘Z’).
Let me list them.
- They have a link with Hal Draper, who is the Tendance’s all-time favourite American Marxist (also about the only one, but there you go). We are aware that there were, shall we say, differences between Draper and the ISO (see in detail here) But their basic ideology, democratic Marxism, is not too far off ours.
- My beloved comrade Steve Buttle (1 January 1953 – 5 June 2012), the footballer, was a member of the ISO in Seattle for some years. He had a good opinion of them.
- The British SWP CC don’t like them. The CC told the ISO to sod off because they had some sensible things to say about the anti-globalisation movement. That is, as far as we can grasp, they said was not the next wave of the world revolution. The ISO were right, doubly right.
Against this we have this.
- They sell a paper and have an on-line daily called Socialist Worker.
- Oh and there’s this,
“ISO: The Joy of Sects
John Lacny
A WIT once remarked that of all the Jesuits, the worst are the Protestant ones. I have come to the conclusion that this cogent observation has a counterpart when it comes to the world of the sectarian left: of all the Stalinists, the worst are the Trotskyites.
While the group has the good sense to call itself the International Socialist Organization, rather than ridiculously terming itself a “party”, it makes no secret that its activities are intended to be the “beginning stages” of building a party. (No doubt the plan is to follow the example of its parent organization, the International Socialists of Britain, who renamed themselves the Socialist Workers Party in the mid-1970s. The group’s own estimates – which are not necessarily to be trusted – put its membership at over 10,000. That’s a lot o’ Trots, but even still does not qualify as a real political party. The designation is arbitrary, and ultimately rests only with the group itself.) And the kind of party it intends to build is clearly to be modeled on classic Leninist lines, with an emphasis on the principle of “democratic centralism”.
The comrade continues,
I know for a fact that there was at least one purge within the Pittsburgh branch some two or three years before I arrived on campus. The local commissar who was directly responsible for it told me her version of the story, beaming with pride at how she had engineered a virtual coup to clear out the “petty-bourgeois intellectuals” from the branch. I have spoken to several of those who were purged as well, and their story jives with that of the apparatchik – excepting, of course, that it is told from the other side. Apparently, the Pittsburgh ISO had around a dozen members at the time the above-mentioned member arrived from the branch in Providence, Rhode Island.
This member got in contact with “the Center” (the ISO’s name for its Politburo in Chicago), which in turn sent an agent to Pittsburgh to set the branch on the approved course. He held a meeting in which he denounced the members for allegedly running a mere “intellectual” talk shop, for insufficient aplomb in selling Socialist Worker, for not recruiting enough members, and for being “petty-bourgeois”. All of the branch quit, with the exception of the local enforcer of the Party Line.
This particular action was part of a wave of crackdowns by the Center on branch autonomy throughout the country. And while I cannot substantiate the hunch, there are indications that there may be another purge occurring within the ISO right now. This is a ripe time for such an event, because the ISO has undeniably seen some growth in its membership since the victory of the Teamsters’ strike at UPS, which raised the profile of the labor movement in general. Having temporarily switched to a more liberal membership policy, the Center may now be trying to fully impose organizational discipline on newer members. The branch in Pittsburgh was far too small to exhibit any of the telltale signs of this, but I have heard stories of members in other cities being insulted for being “class traitors” and for “opting out of the class struggle,” with some leaving the group in tears.
And even in Pittsburgh, I recently talked to another member with years of experience who left after a barrage of insults (a matter to which I will return), thus reducing the membership of the Pittsburgh branch to five. A fine achievement, indeed, for a group that expelled ten or twelve “petty-bourgeois intellectuals” several years ago for their ostensible failure to recruit enough members.
Read the full article here.
Sticks in yer gullet.
No amount of pro-ISO comments can wipe that away.
Weekly Worker Announces New Intergalactic SWP/CPGB (Provisional Committee) Bloc.
Say HISlaH to new Weekly Worker Initiative!
“Feminists do not look terribly much like allies just now” with these words cde Paul Demarty announced the newly launched SWP/ CPGB (Provisional Committee) Intergalactic Bloc.
He continued, “Now the curtain-twitcher’s finger is being wagged at the SWP – and it has no answers at all.”
The CPGB (Provisional Central Committee Planet Venus and Mars Sectors, Tendency 3), went on to say,
“The succesful campaign of cde. Jerry Hicks for Presidency of the The United Federation of Planets, is the way forward.
As the Weekly Worker merges with SW and we become a daily, our ”very style of politics practised by the SWP” becomes a breath of fresh air to all species.
Our ongoing negotiations with our Klingon Empire comrades show the potential is there.
Onwards and Upwards!”
End of Internal Document.
Against Austerity. SERTUC Conference.
Comrade: There’s a Place for You in the People’s Assembly!
Conference – Resisting Austerity in Europe and the UK.
Report.
SERTUC, the Southern & Eastern Region of the TUC, held an important meeting last Saturday.
At Congress House we began by hearing speakers from Greece, Portugal and Ireland on their labour movements’ resistance to the economic and social crisis.
The depth of this crisis was underlined by the Greek comrade, Marina Prentoulis, who spoke of how even middle class Greks were unable to heat their homes and even eat normally.
Fernando Mauricio from the Portuguese CGPT was impressive in underlining “Our Common Struggle” against the Troika of the IMF the European Commission and the European Central Bank.
The Irish speaker, Paul Murphy, summed up the main point: the economic crisis was being used, as the “shock doctrine” to implement far right privatisation policies.
After a short break comrade Owen Jones brought us back to the UK in his appeal for us all to back the People’s Assembly.
The Tendance intervened on the need to build the People’s Assembly on a regional basis.
Lunch was the opportunity to exchange ideas on how to do this.
In the afternoon there were other excellent speakers on topics that ranged from the privatisation of the NHS, Schools, and, most signficantly, the call for a TUC led General Strike.
Personally I could have done without the Socialist Party’s Single Transferable Speech on the latter.
As for the anti-European Union stuff, what is anybody going to replace it with?
Another, Socialist, EU?
Be serious.
But, the day was well worth it.
That Stathis Mithroleos ofSyriza’ dropped in was a real plus.
Labour movement activists, inspired by a hope for a better future, came away with a real glow.
Megan and her comrades should be well proud of their efforts.
Comrades, Build the People’s Assembly!
‘No’: A Political Film Review.
No, directed by Pablo Larrain, brings back the politics of the1970s and the 1980s with a thump.
Chile’s in the late 1980s was a military regime. From the September 1973 coup against Socialist President Salvador Allende, Augusto Pinochet had emerged as Junta leader. The left alliance, Unidad Popular, had suffered years of brutal oppression. A pioneer of free-market economics, a more than faithful ally of the United States, the ruling Generals had received the blessing of Pope Paul ll. Their example was widely followed across Latin America.
In 1988 the regime felt confident enough to legitimise its rule by a Plebiscite. This sop the world opinion allowed the opposition to emerge and campaign against this. No narrates this contest, from inside the team that successfully challenged the dictatorship.
René Saavedera – played by rising Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal – is an ad-man, from a left-wing family. No revolves around his influence on the ‘No’ campaign’s communications strategy. René is determined to modernise their style. Sometimes it is not clear whether he is anything more than modernisation.
To neutralise the anti-Communist fears whipped up by the Military’s publicists he nudges and pushes the No camp towards a hopeful, forward–looking approach. With the Rainbow Logo, hHappiness, an end to fear, a joyful youthfulness, are spun into calls for freedom. As the contest runs on his own conflicts, with his regime-tied Advertising Agency Boss, Lucho Guzman. His former wife, a good-hearted left activist, and his young son, are drawn into the drama as the heat rises against anybody on the ‘No’ side.
The bleached out colours, the Big Hair, the Dynasty couture and toned bodies of the actors, remind you that we are definitely not in the present. René’s ex-wife remarks that in Chile, where people are largely small and dark, there are not many of these Danish giants.
No gives a place to those on the left determined to keep this memory alive. They do not come over easily, or at all, to the new style. But their sombre, emotional, television spots are pushed aside as the broadcasting business gets underway.
One side of the picture has rankled Many feel that it was not by advertising alone that they won the vote, the opposition campaign on the ground, grass-roots led, was decisive. Others have pointed to Larrin’s own family. His parents, Herman and Magdalena, are on the Chilean hard-right.
Perhaps it is true that the director’s own forays into advertising shaped the film. But the viewer is left with little doubt about the regime’s viciousness. And who can not share the joy in the film as the Victory of the NO camp comes through?
The long period of Chilean dictatorship took place in the country long renowned for its democratic institutions. No amount of whataboutery can minimise the suffering of the Chilean opposition. The tortures and deaths they suffered were compounded by the misery into which large parts of the population were plunged by liberal economics.
Such was the shock of the Chilean coup that the European Social Democratic, Socialist and Communist Parties in the 1970s were deeply affected by it. Some called for democratically elected left governments to remove any such military threat by smashing the power of the armed forces. Others, famously in the Italian Communist Party (PCI), developed the theory of a “historical compromise” so wide that an electoral victory could not be contested by force.
Things have changed. The horizon of the left is narrower. It’s not a transition to socialism that’s on the cards, but a transition from liberal economics. This includes Chile, where the military influence remained institutionalised long after the No’s victory and the free-marketeers continue to dominate.
One might ask whether a campaign to free our countries today from the hate and misery of this economics of despair would be improved through the kind of hopeful calls for a better future that No brings to life.
Tunisian State Detains Rappers for Being Rude about the Police.
Not to Islamists’ Taste.
More repression by Tunisian Islamist Government.
Alakhabar reports.
Tunisian authorities have detained two people and charged them with insulting security forces in a rap video uploaded to the Internet, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.
“The rap video posted on YouTube called ‘Boulicia Kleb’ (The Police are Dogs) has words and gestures that are unethical, abusive and threatening towards security forces and magistrates,” the ministry said.
“A police investigation identified those who made and released the video… there are eight of them. On Sunday, March 10, two of them, a young man and a girl, were arrested,” the ministry added.
The Ben Arous court in Tunis authorized their detention, the ministry said.
Media outlets reported that the two were a cameraman and an actress seen in the clip, adding that the rapper, Weld El 15, was being sought.
Interior ministry spokesman Riahi Adel said the two were arrested for slander and rebelling against officials, and that they could face up to five years in prison.
In the video Weld El 15 is heard saying “I will slit the throat of policemen like sheep,” and “give me a gun, I’ll shoot them.”
According to this report the law under which they are being prosecuted is for ” la calomnie et la rébellion contre les fonctionnaires”, slander and revolt against state employees”.
The Interior Ministry has justified its action by saying that the words of the songs, « contient des expressions et des gestes contraires à la morale, injurieux et menaçants envers les agents de la sécurité et les magistrats ». They contain expressions and gestures contrary to morality, that are insulting and threatening towards the Police and Magistrates.” (Jeune Afrique).
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