Wilf Page: Norfolk Red.

Norfolk Red. The Life of Wilf Page Countryside Communist. Mike Pentelow. Lawrence & Wishart. 2009.

There are some people who truly make a difference. For the greater good of the world. Wilf Page made a deep impression on left and trade union activists across East Anglia. And much further afield, as Norfolk Red narrates. Born just before the Great War Wilf became a socialist, a long-term member of the Communist Party, a stalwart of the Agricultural Workers Union, and then, after its merger, with the Transport and General Workers Union, active in upholding trade unionism across the region. He made a mark in campaigning groups, above all in the peace movements, and helped the workless set up (now sorely needed once again) Unemployed Centres. In his later years he was a pillar (Vice-President) of the National Pensioners’ Convention. Many people will remember him at the annual Burston Rally to whose growing success he contributed a major part. Will would welcome all and sundry with a smile. Remaining eager for news while waiting for the speakers, his stanch socialism never dimmed. Wilf was, in short, widely respected and loved.

Mike Pentelow puts Will’s life within the “history of the struggles of the rural workers of Norfolk.” One of the few regions of Britain where farm labourer radicalism continued up to the twentieth century (and beyond?) this has roots far back. Wymondham, where Wilf was baptised, was the home of Robert Kett (1492 – 1549), who led a famous rebellion in 1549. The Captain Swing revolts of 1830 were in response to the capitalist mechanisation of farming. Begun in Kent with the destruction of threshing machines they quickly had an echo in East Anglia – in Norfolk and neighbouring counties. Disputes over the conditions of rural workers continued throughout the century. In Sharpen the Sickle! (1948) Reg Groves described Norfolk as the “stronghold and birthplace” of the Agricultural Workers Union. Its founder Joseph Arch (1826 – 1919) made his mark there. The agricultural workers’ strike of 1923 – which precariously halted the farmers’ efforts to reduce wages and increase the standard week and ended amongst a wave of victimisation – had its stronghold in Norfolk. Wilf’s first political action was inspired by the dispute. He led fellow school pupils “to try to prevent the leaving of his much loved teacher, Miss Bunn, who was getting married”. The County authority did not employ women after wedlock, and Wilf’s protest failed. The children were all punished. This was but one injustice that marked Wilf’s early life.

Norfolk Red (named after a famous bull breed) describes how in the 1920s the rural and urban East Anglian poor were treated as beasts of burden. The poverty Wilf grew up in still shocks. Initially he drifted to London for work, and then in Jersey got employment in backbreaking potato picking. Serving in the RAF from 1933 he met a Communist Party member Dan Cohen. “He used to talk to me about the frictions in the world where anti-semitism was an historic problem, and explained the economics of capitalism. He thought the Soviet Union was a new experiment that was going to succeed and produce a new world society.” Wilf was stirred by his message. “My old Sunday School teacher used to say about world problems, the wealthy and poor, Dan was doing the same thing but a much higher level.” He spent 13 years in the RAF, continuing to educate himself and his wife, Christina, whom he married in 1939, in socialist ideas. During a largely uneventful war, apart from some North Sea flights, he became a lecturer in the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA). This organisation is often credited with helping to shift opinion in the Service leftwards. Wilf played a part in that move. A Sergeant and never commissioned, he was demobbed in 1945.

Back in Norfolk Wilf plunged into the agricultural workers’ union and politics, working full-time for the local Labour Party. The latter, which maintained a network of rural agents in East Anglia up till the 1980s, was not to be his political home. He resigned in 1949 – over the Labour Government’s conservative approach to running nationalised industries, its failure to confront farmers over tied cottages, and colonialist repression in the Far East. By 1950 he had joined the Communist Party, becoming their election agent in the Paddington North. He stood as a Communist candidate for Edgefield on Erpington rural district council (where he sat as a Labour member) and was returned as a Communist councillor for every election from then until 1974 – including a spell on Norfolk District Council. Through the union and council he pursued his opposition to the tied-cottage system (the practice of bonding workers to their employers by letting them accommodation tied to their jobs). Defending those threatened with eviction, and writing on this and other topics in the Communist party aligned journal the Country Standard Wilf was a thorn in the side of the country gentry, farmers, and their Tory friends. As a Red he was an obvious target. He tried many different occupations, briefly an extra-mural lecturer, a bus driver, and many jobs. But “it would not be long before Wilf was organising his workmates and getting victimised for this – and getting sacked again.” Fortunately his wife had more stable employment with the County Council.

For the texture of a life well spent one needs to read Mike Pentelow’s description of the union and community activist that Wilf became. He played a part in the British Czechoslovakia Friendship Society. He supported the early CND. In 1961 Wilf helped draw up the Communist Party’s plans for agriculture – public ownership of land, improved pay and conditions for farm workers. This developed over the years. Perhaps not everyone will agree that “increased food production” – in opposition to the Common Market – was a step towards a modern approach to ‘produce locally’. The CPGB’s main aim was for national “food security”. But Wilf really came into his own inside the Agricultural Workers’ Union. Despite hostility from anti-Communists (he was only elected to the Executive in 1969) he kept on agitating. From a Norfolk base he pushed forward a whole range of policies, opposing endemic low wages, supporting increased training, demanding equal pay for women. The cause of tied cottages remained vital. It finally wound up on the Parliamentary agenda. Wilf “drew attention to the case of a young farm worker who, having been made redundant, was living with his wife and baby daughter in a shed, while their two other children slept in a car.” Joan Maynard, closely linked to the union, steered the Rent Agriculture Act into parliament. Legislation in 1976 ended summary evictions without alternative accommodation. Finally recognised by the movement in 1979 Wilf became the President of the European Federation of Agricultural Workers’ Union. This campaigning did not cease in later years. Domestically he stayed deeply involved in the union, peace activism, and left politics. After retirement he was a leading figure in the pensioners’ movement and was, as mentioned, a very welcome sight at Burston every year.

Wilf Page stayed with the Communist Party during the turbulent years of 1980s. He eventually joined the Nina Temple offshoot (that retained the party property), the Democratic Left. While he sold its short-lived paper, New Times, he also, his daughter Carol says, continued to read the Morning Star. The fall of Official Communism did not undermine his socialism. He considered that “I have realised that communists have got to start thinking for themselves..” That, “I think my Marxism has been enriched as a result of the downfall of the Soviet Union, I still think of myself, as I have done since the war, as a Marxist.” “I’m optimistic. I think people are beginning to think for themselves and create new ideas and new structure. He old militarist structure has got to disappear and new ones have to emerge from grassroots experience of life.” As the Democratic Left evaporated, and a variety of political groups disputed its legacy – from some of Wilf’s colleagues who looked to the Greens, to others who claimed the mantle of social democracy – he kept with the labour movement. When Wilf Page passed away in 2001, the Norwich Labour MP at the time (who had been in the International Socialists), Ian Gibson, said that he “turned up like a magician whenever there was a struggle”. For this, and many other sterling qualities, individuals of Wilf Page’s stature will always be dear to the hearts of the people. He stimulated, encouraged, organised, and was true, throughout his life, to the socialist principle that people should think for themselves.

An inspiring biography – this is a must-read.

For more information see the Country Standard (here).

Work for Benefit: Labour’s New Helots.

This article appears in the December issue of Labour Briefing .

Work for Your Benefit: Labour’s New Helots. 

Welfare reform legislation is due to be one of this Government’s enduring legacies. From this autumn there will be two benefits: Jobseeker’s Allowance, and Employment and Support Allowance. Already there is pressure on medical assessors to channel those on Incapacity Benefit into the former, where many lone parents and others will also eventually join them. JSA brings a lower income – down to the standard rate of £64.30 a week, in contrast to £89.80, the starting point of incapacity allowance – and, after six months, puts claimants on the Flexible New Deal. This, being tried out in large parts of the country, will eventually replace all existing welfare-to-work schemes. For a year the jobless will be farmed out to private companies, intensively advised and obliged to carry out a minimum of four weeks of “work related activity” (they may be “advised” to do much more).

This sounds relatively benign. It replaces 13 weeks in “work placements” of dubious value or simply stuck in “training centres” (where the only “training” is sitting in front of computers “job searching” for work that does not exist) of the previous New Deal. However, the Government has learned nothing from its experience of farming out the New Deal to private companies, two of which at least have been accused of malpractice. The faith-led YMCA has also run schemes. Most have scraped through their contracts with low employment outcomes and feeble training standards. The approximately 600,000 claimants who have faced sanctions for not complying with every aspect of the schemes shows how they are used to punish people. If participants were in charge of inspections, the companies would fail in an instant – yet the DWP has been told to contract out its new scheme to the same bodies.

The new regime will closely regulate people’s lives. Partners of JSA claimants will also have to seek work actively. Those dependent on drugs and alcohol will undergo compulsory rehabilitation. There is no clear notion of what will happen if they fail, other than they will have no benefits.

Most worryingly, after two years unemployment people will be forced onto the Work for Benefits programme. This will involve full time activity in “training options, short term work trials, a remuneration subsidy for employers to take them, or voluntary work in the local community,” (DWP October 2009). With unemployment set to rise to 3 million by October next year, when this policy is enforced, they will have plenty of compelled “volunteers”.

Some argue that since JSA is supplemented by housing and council tax benefit, it is “fair” to work for this money. However, those further benefits are paid at varying rates, making the overall pay rates different between individuals – and still leaving them well below the minimum wage.

This all raises fundamental issues. First, why should those who through no fault of their own have no job be forced to do what has up to now been the task of those sentenced to do community service by the courts? Indeed, what will happen to community service orders when the long-term unemployed start to undertake similar “sentences”?

Second, this will corrupt the voluntary sector, parts of which are already gearing up for it. The character of the voluntary sector will change. The nature of forced labour is to give power to the employer while discouraging the worker, making them dependent on the goodwill of the employer. The rights of volunteers are not the same as those on paid contracts. Groups and no doubt individuals will profit financially.

Third, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that cash-strapped local government will see this as an opportunity to plug gaps in their services. A tied labourer is cheaper than a paid employee. In areas as disparate as home helps to environmental projects volunteering could become a new national service, replacing those working for real salaries.

Those opposed to welfare reform have to date had little impact on Brown’s take it or leave it decision that this is the direction welfare will go in. The umbrella initiatives organised by the TUC have petered out in well-meaning but ineffective lobbying by a coalition of “antipoverty” NGOs with some union support. There are now signs of a more militant approach emerging from unions of the unemployed and other groups. There are web sites promoting opposition and plans for a decent benefit system that could really cope with people’s needs. As mass unemployment returns pressure for change will increase.

Labour looks set to leave behind a new body of helots – the work-for-the dole underclass. An incoming Conservative Administration will have plenty of conscripts for its plans for workfare. Both ideas were pioneered by the same person – once adviser to Labour and now the Tories, the exceedingly wealthy Lord Freud.

Andrew Coates

􀁺For more information, visit Ipswich Unemployed Action Here.

Tariq Ramadan, What I Believe. Review.

Review. What I Believe. Tariq Ramadan. Oxford University Press. 2009.

Tariq Ramadan is a “controversial intellectual”. He faces “many-sided opposition”. The soft-spoken supporter of “solidarity, human dignity, and justice” is accused of “doublespeak”. “Criticisms first of (and mainly in) France, then taken up by some French loving groups of some ideological currents, have built up a haze of controversy around me and my commitment.” He asks, “What are the “ideological and/or interests” of these groups?” Not too savoury, as we shall see. He, by contrast, tries to “build bridges between two universes of reference”, “Western and Islamic ‘civilisations’” “and “between citizens within Western societies themselves”. The book’s contribution to this “process of mediation”? It’s an “opportunity to read me in the original and simply get direct access to my thought”. To show that we “share many common principles and values”. That it is possible to ‘live together’” (all liberal English Anglian inverted commas Ramadan’s). That he belongs to a “reformist trend” within Islam. Which is? A “great and noble religion.” And what of the West’s achievements? “Freedom and democracy.” Its faults? “Murderous ‘civilising missions’, colonialisation, the destructive economic order racism, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings”. Ramadan is bold enough “to contradict accepted opinions” – even by raising these all-too often ignored features of the Western world. Particularly the “other failings”.

There is much in this pamphlet on the need for Muslims to engage in Western society. Its tone throughout is high ‘inverted comma’ clericalese. He pleads for Islam’s European future as part of a new ‘We’. “Western Islam is now a reality” – that is there are European populations with Muslim beliefs immersed in Western culture. So, “Islam is a Western religion”. Apparently this is a big plus. For bridge-builders this implies, Openness to Others (reciprocally), “Handling Fears” and “post-integration” pluralism. Up to, political engagement, and a commitment to worrying about the rights and oppressions of other groups than Muslims (why does this need to be said?). This has to be negotiated through “the fluctuating multiplicity of personal identities”.

Islam, in all its complexity, has to reach into the public domain. This will come about not by playing on “community feelings” and “community-oriented political logics”. A much more ambitious strategy is afoot. Much like the early Christian Christians the Muslim faithful need to integrate, to become part of the institutions of the state. Why? Muslim organisations would wield power and influence. As bearers that is, of a “consistent global vision”. This would be one that assembles a variety of interests in an effort to capture a position in society. Not just politics are important. There is ignorance of Islam’s intellectual richness. To counter this, he claims, the religion’s contribution deserves a larger place in the culture. Revised syllabi, he argues, may help. There needs more mention of Muslim thinkers, from al-Kindî (ninth century), al-Ghazâlî (twelfth century) to Ibn Khaldûm (fourteenth century) To rival no doubt the attention already given in Europe’s school trivium to Thomas Aquinas, Dun Scotus, and Anselm of Canterbury.

Not everyone from an Islamic background wants to span the division between Islam and the West. More shame them, apparently. Ramadan is forthcoming about his battles with Qu’ranic literalists – those who see in the Qur’an signs enough to justify their rigorist interpretation of the Sharia. Who, though he is fairly coy about this, do not exactly like non-Muslim societies, or indeed non-Muslims.

Hands off the People of Iran AGM this Saturday.

 Saturday November 28 2009
Somers Town Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, London NW1 1EE (near Euston station). Registration from 10am.

More Information here.

It will be interesting to watch this on BBC Two tonight:

“This World tells the story of Neda Agha Soltan, with exclusive accounts from those who really knew her. Many young Iranians have claimed her as a ‘martyr’ for Iran’s protest movement; but the Iranian regime has tried to blame the West.”

Peter Sloterdijk: No to Forced Taxation.

Radical Icon?

There is an intellectual controversy ranging in Europe. France has been outpaced in its usual autumn row: this one’s  in Germany. Launched by Peter Sloterdijk. A mad-cap theorist to rival Slavoj Žižek, Sloterdijk is best known to British readers through a review I did (a long time ago) in Labour Briefing of his Critique of Cynical Reason (three paragraphs). This book, still available from an academic US publisher (here), was described as the philosophical answer to airport “shopping and fucking” novels.

Sloty’s campaign against the “Steuermacht”, the state-tax machine, has raised a debate. Neatly dovetailing into his other obsession - loathing of Die Linke. His line? Rather simple: taxes are forced out (‘Zwang’ being the operative term) of productive workers. They are thus the object of the new class struggle. For those who care to follow this, the discussion (largely opposing this pose) is all over the Germanophone Web (start perhaps from here).

 

Montgomery Burns  has found a Court Philosopher.  

Camus in the Panthéon ?

Albert Camus in the Panthéon ?

Nicolas Sarkozy would like to transfer the ashes of Camus – on the  50th anniversary of his death (the 4th of  January 1960) to the Paris Pantheon. That is the national memorial for GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE (“To the great men, the grateful homeland”). Interment here is severely restricted and is allowed only by a parliamentary act for “National Heroes”.

His son Jean  is opposed (here).

There was an extraordinary brilliant and concise interview with Camus’ biographer, Olivier Todd, in le Monde yesterday (here). Todd, a first-hand witness of the post-War Left Bank, refers to Camus’s brief membership of the Algerican Communist party in 1934 – he left because it failed to support independence movements clearly enough. In the full article (the on-line version is cut), there is an account of the author of the Etranger’s later hesitation about the FLN’s campaign for full independence. And an account of  his disputes with Sartre – right about Stalinism, wrong about anti-colonialism.

Todd’s judgement on Camus is worth citing, “ Camus fut d’abord un écrivain, un artiste, un artisan, beaucoup plus qu’un philosophe dans la série Platon, Kant, Sartre, Wittgenstein.” He was first of all a writer, an artist, a workman, much more than a philosopher in the mould of Plato, Kant, Sartre, Wittgenstein.” This view TC shares.

His courageous Resistance  activity, his journalism,  moral presence on the left, and searing novels deserve better than a credential-boosting stunt by Sarkozy.  

Social Democracy: From MacShane to a New Civilisation?

Time for a twenty-first century Socialism – not Social Democracy. 

Denis MacShane writes (here) that,

“Social democrats need a new understanding of the historic compromises that are necessary for the practice of power.

The German election defeat followed on from losses for social democratic parties in the European Parliament elections. To be sure, socialists kept power in Portugal and Norway, but without a majority of votes. And PASOK’s win in Greece was based on a new politics, of criticising state bureaucracy and pledging support for small businesses, in place of old-style statist clientilism.

At a regional or city level the left can win power. But this is less and less the case at state government level. The democratic left is challenged by other parties that claim to represent its values or its electorate. The national-populists in the anti-European parties of the xenophobic right attract many of their voters from the white working class. The anti-capitalist parties of the populist left attract some of the proletariat, and workers protected in public service unions. The anti-industry parties of the greens also steal many progressive votes.”

Why? To the former European Minister it boils down to people being scared, in an economic downturn. They turn, turn, and end up with the established Right. Trusted with managing the crisis. Or the far-right, preying on fear. Or the greens, growing through the public’s concern about climate change and the environment. Or even ‘anti-capitalists’ feeding off worries about capitalism (I helpfully added that bit Denis). That much of the left (Denis excepted) has no thought-out economic policy – based not on slogans but on grasping the international nature of capitalism. It needs a realistic one, reaching about beyond the “prison the nation”. The left has to be  serious about the “conquest of power. ” This can only be achieved “through  historic compromises – with market economics, with the nation, and with voters.” To do what exactly, in the light of the abject failures of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown,a nd their Continental ilk, is less than clear. Perhaps MacShane might care to enlighten us.

Still, like Tendance Coatesy MacShane dislikes, “metropolitan elites organising endless conferences”.

That’s about as far as our agreement goes.

To clarify this analysis (to inject a bit of serious compromising with the need to look at reality that is)  Henri Weber (French Socialist, and former Trotskyist, LCR, here) makes some points. Rather more concrete than MacShane’s (here).

That Social Democracy’s present crisis rests on the unravelling of the ‘compromises’ (historic in fact) that  underpinned its European hegemony in the late ‘nineties. This political offer underpinned the successes of socialist parties in the second half of the 1990s.  This reached its limit in  2002  when 11 governments out of 15 in the European Union were socialist.

The first was a liberalisation of the economy, varying in form across different countries but present everywhere. In our ‘mixed economies’ the weight of the public sector was reduced, while that of the private sector was strengthened. “

In brief the ‘market state’. It did not result in either increased society-wide equality, or a solution to the long-term (relative) industrial decline (core social democrat vote) of Europe. Prosperity was a brittle and uneven thing – the same processes  created a massive ‘flexible’ labour force which could be dumped as quickly as possible (a lot swifter in the UK than many EU countries).

They expected in exchange, from state and industry, more investment and innovation, leading to a more efficient specialisation of our economies in the new international division of labour. They expected an ‘upscaling’ in all sectors of activity, so that they could reinstate full employment and ‘good employment’.

Which did not happen. An economic crisis – something beyond the end of Brown’s history apparently – did. European social democracy (in all its variants) was worst hit. Its  policy and institutional strategy was a recipe for disaster. The competitive advantage of market-states was thrown into doubt when the first breezes of economic problems reached them. This affected liberal ‘third way’ countries the UK above all. Because of its greater adaption to global flows those in the current got caught up and thrown into the vortex.  Social democracy’s electorate was hit; its strategic compromises with business partners left the latter  safe, not their ‘own people’. Mass unemployment, reinforcing the  structural worklessness neoliberalism rests on, has returned.

The second pillar of the compromise of the 1990s was the mutualisation of the costs of modernisation. It was believed that these costs should be borne primarily not by individuals but by the nation as a community. This required high levels of taxes and social redistribution, quality public services, a reduced but preserved welfare state, and negotiation between all social partners.

One should add that in Britain the said market state farmed out broad swathes of public services. To expensive and incompetent private companies. Whose costs are a massive drain on public finance. Social partnership ceased to have any meaning for anybody except these private groups, and the increasingly state dependent and private modelled ‘third sector. It is this apparatus which is now being marshalled in the UK (other countries, now under right-wing control, are following suite) to coerce the unemployed away.  A doomed project if ever there was one.

The third element was the affirmation of social progressivism. Socialists were the champions of the liberalisation of mores, gender parity and equality, homosexual marriage, the right to die in dignity, and the defence of the quality of life.

In other words it promoted social liberalism without social equality. Diversity, multiculturalism, and other aspects of this agenda took root. They took over from the reforms for universal human rights. In doing so they became attached to the market state. And the alienating forces of division and private gain they embodied. The worst example was the British state’s embrace of faith-based institutions in civil society. From bringing religious groups in welfare services, the authority given to faith leaders in minority communities, to a strategy of equal opportunities that replaced equality for all, this has undermined popular consent for social democratic parties. It has left the door open for the right and far-right to reassert national identity (and xenophobia)  as an alternative source of cohesion.

Weber notes that “The 2007-2010 crisis, followed as it will be by a period of weak growth, will condemn this compromise to obsolescence.”

Which it has.

Unfortunately all Weber can offer is this,

“If it wants to return to power, European social democracy must propose a new political offer. And such an offer has to be conceived, from its inception, at the level of the European Union. Furthermore it must embody – beyond its economic objectives – a civilisation project.”

Which is as clear as North Sea silt.

The democratic socialist project, in measured or radical form, is to replace the above ‘pillars’ by 1) A programme of publicly ownership to re-orientate the economy. Based on popular control – to re-root the left. 2) A transformed public service agenda to replace the market state with a popular (secular)  one. 3) An end to diversity and multiculturalism, a beginning to equality and universal public rights. Its appeal can be gauged from the fact that ’social democracy’ is having to take the radical left into account.

 

If you want to see a completely wrong and disastrous way of dealing with these issues look at France (Britain’s Labour Party  is a bit too obvious, poor old Brown does not bear much looking at). As much of its left has split off to the Parti de Gauche Weber’s Parti Socialiste has not the slightest coherent project. Its politics? A mix of very civilised green waffling, gestural opposition to Sarkozy, municipal Parti Radical politics (in the 1930s sense) and some tax reforms. It has shifted to an alliance with the centre and the Greens. And some strange ideas about shaping itself on the US Democrats – through primary selections of candidates  (a disaster you’d have thought they’d seen coming from the Italian experience of them). Not to mention a permanent drama largely caused by Madame Royal, which has made them the second biggest laughing-stock (after New Labour) on the European Left.

The radical left is known best for its slogans. True. The previous remarks are just phrases to hook a deeper programme around. And we should recognise that the European radical left is fragile. The news that Oscar  Lafontaine’s illness (cancer) may threaten the whole project of Die Linke shows this. But this is clear. It requires a strong force to make its way. Not willingness to surrender before it begins. More aggressive than MacShane’s recommendation that we must compromises before we’ve started. To say the least. 

Oh, and did I mention the wars? The left is a bit more civilised that MacShane on that.

Compass: Social Democracy Against Democratic Socialism

Manifesto of the Conference-Going Classes.

Jon Cruddas MP and Andrea Nahles MdB have announced that “European social democracy needs a fresh start”. They have launched the “Good Society” debate (here). About the future of the European left. And ideas of what a good society should be. All within the background of declining electoral weight for the main socialist and social democratic parties.

In Building the Good Society, launched this April, Cruddas and Nahles, set out some ideas. They define the contours of the Compass project.

This document consists of tightly written paragraphs around seven main topics. Its admriers see at as a major step forward. In defining the post-Brown agenda of the left.

So what is its defining agenda? Not much is sparkling, new. Much is ‘ante’, not ‘post, the Third Way. A few good points, though not much.

As we can see:

• The pages open on the screen with the observation that social democracy (New Labour, the German SPD onwards) has failed to offer an alternative to unrestrained globalisation. That it saw (as we can read in Anthony Giddens’ work) a “positive” side of the process. This ignored the down-side of free-market expansion. Markets and growth have to be harnessed. For a better version of social democracy, Cruddas and Nahle assert that redistributive approaches are needed.  For, well…a better world. As indeed does Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, all relying on on the same processes of international agreements that underpin the institutions they claim to want to reform.
• They emphasise the central place of democracy to social democracy - not perhaps a very new idea.   
•  That social democracy  is based on the principles of solidarity, social justice and autonomy. Does it need pointing out that this is an even older trilogy? It could have been stated any time since the setting down of the Synoptic Gospels.
• Justice and equality are core values for the social democratic left. A claim that repeats Crosland’s View in The Future of Socialism (1956) – whose aim as a “just, co-operative and classless society”. The classless bit never got defined then. This document does not care to offer any development.
• That society should be run on a  co-determination (Mitbestimmung) basis. The German model which obliges companies to have a degree of responsibility to ’social partners’ – a principle the TUC used to promote in the days when Will Hutton was listened to.  It has failed to take on in the UK. The employers don’t want it. So it’s got forgotten. Now it’s come back. Whoppie!
• Welfare – making people into “assets” in the economy. This is a market state idea full of pitfalls for the left (see below).
•  Social Europe – a range of social policy standards set on a Continent-wide basis. The best bit. Better than dead-end nationalism. But there si no programme to overturn existing EU institutions to make this possible.
• Wrapped around the document is the ideas that a ‘civic state’ should replace the ‘market state’.  idea about how a “civic state” should replace the ‘market state’. That a wide range of forms of social enterprise (co-operatives, not for profit projects) , including renationalised utilities,  should reassert  a democratic imput into mixed economy. There is little that is  different from Crosland’s original description of social democracy.

It would seen that ’social democracy’ in this form is just the ‘left-wing’ of the Third Way.

Two major problems are not tackled.

The first is that the ‘market state’ is not just the result of a political choice by  Labour Governments to deepen the rule of private companies over public life. It now has its own material logic  – a stratum of parasitical contractors carrying out state functions. This lobby, representing a class fraction of the state bourgeoisie, is not challenged by words,. It needs a programme to cut it out. Secondly, the Good Society, fails to begin to grasp the problem of equality. Notably in the area of  welfare. Cruddas backed welfare reform – in fact his support for making people an ‘asset’ is a pure market state concept. It is  not to support people on an equal basis but to ‘equip’ them to ‘compete’ on the ‘global market’. This involves compulsion and payments of benefits at such low rates that any employment will be taken – making the system a permanent drag down on working conditions and wages. Work for Your Benefits, which he endorsed, will accelerate this process, and undermine public services by creating a pool of unpaid forced labour to take over public functions.

Secondly, the document does not begin to look at the structural nature of ownership and control of the economy and the state. Its ambitions are limited to restoring the ‘balance’ of the mixed economy which was lost during the 1970s. It fails to identify the political agency (one created by political parties as much as structurally inevitable), that could change these relations. In short, it is no democratic socialist programme based on the labour movement. Its ambitions are for reforms, by the well-intentioned. That is, not the popular masses, but  the conference-going classes. And some grandstanding pundits (Polly Toynbee).

It is not surprising that the journal Soundings has warmed to the Compass debate. The review’s editors come from the tradition that was immersed in 1980s concept of “radical democracy” and “populism” as alternatives to class based socialism. During the Blair decade those that had a residual belief in working class participation in participative democracy have tried to reinvent themselves. On the Left. But they have not dropped the strategy of ‘hegemony’ through coalitions  ’articulated’ in a  wider programme . More recently their allies have opposed (or, in they’d say, ‘critiqued’ ) universal human rights. Notably  the ‘cultural imperialism’ of gay rights.  Andy Newman of Socialist Unity adds to this mix an embrace of ‘progressive national identity’. 

Perhaps Andy’s warmth for the good side of the national progressive identities of the old Soviet Block  is a trail-blazer here. For some of Sounding’s writers to go back to their own past. O those halcyon days Sally, we had in the Woodcraft Folk!

All of which avoid the central mechanisms of class formation that left politics tries to latch onto. In its ambitions to fight oppression (of a wide nature) and exploitation (capitalism), through a democratic movement. Or the argument made by left specialists in Europe’s left, for example, John Callagham. That social democracy, based on the above approach, has failed in the past. That the Third Way was  a dilution, not a replacement, of it. And  that class continues to play a significant role in British politics which the left should grasp (The Retreat of Social Democracy. 2001), amongst other writings) More specifically, social democracy failed in the past to answer the democratic socialist alternative. One based on the dominance of social ownership  and popular control.

It is not suprising that in this debate (at least as far as one can see) there is little mention the rise of new left parties, such as the German Die Linke, or alliances, such as the Front de Gauche, in France. These are broad enough to cover a radical  strand and traditional labour movement lefts. But they involve people doing things. Not just attending prestigious media-eying conferences to agree with weighty debate on values, and  ‘concerns’ about Gordon Brown and the Tories.

That would be a tent too big by far.

Trotsky: Two Recent Books.

Review: Stalin’s Nemesis. The Exile, and Murder of Leon Trotsky. Bertrand M. Patenaude. Faber & Faber. 2009. Trotsky A Biography. Robert Service. Macmillan. 2009.

“Estimations of Trotsky tend to shade into explanations for his political downfall.” So comments Bertrand Patenaude. How should the man be considered? Why should we be interested in his defeat? Rigid, lacking sound political instincts, the overweening “flaw” in his haughty personality, – all judgements of Stalin’s Nemesis – Trotsky offered brilliant justification of the Russian Revolution, and mordant criticisms of Soviet rule under Stalin. To Robert Service Trotsky was “an exceptional human being and a complex one”. He was a major actor in a central drama of the 20^th century, whose “ideas, including those about Russian history, had a lasting impact”. Patenaude’s Stalin’s Nemesis is a solid, if not particularly friendly, account of Trotsky’s life following his expulsion from the Soviet Union. It frequently expands to encompass the longer course of his vocation, from inspiring mass leader to marginalised founder of the Fourth International. But to get the full flavour of a study that puts the emphasis on how the one-time Commissar’s personality, imprinted with a “definite ideology”, shaped his career, from a leading player in the October capture of power, to exile, and victim of Stalin’s brutal revenge one needs to read Robert Service’s biography. With all the faults, and these flow in abundance, of such a method. Not that would have expected a sympathetic portrait. In Stalin (2004) Service compared Trotsky’s use of violence to Stalin’s and stated that he alone of the leading Bolsheviks approached the Georgian “in bloodthirstiness”. Or indeed a rounded grasp of Communist ideology and history. In his Comrades (2007) Service asserted that by the end of the 19^th century Marxism had become “an infallible set of doctrines and political substitute for religion.” And that Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ “new type of state” based on “one-party, one-ideology” with no respect for “law, constitution and popular consent” that had spread to “mutate like a virus”, infecting the body of Fascism, and Nazism. It remains around, apparentl, to taint “the Islamist plans of Osama Bin Laden” and the Taliban.

Each book then offers not just narrative but assessments of Trotsky. That is, to the history of Communism and the Soviet Union. Patenaude’s story is largely centred on life in his Mexican homes in Coyoacán. Wider historical description and judgements about Trotsky tend to flow from this location. Despite its dismissive conclusion about the “dogma of Marxism” and Trotsky’s faith in the “glorious Soviet future” (did Patenaude mislay his style guide?) the book is gripping and illuminating. Aware of his previous writings, one expects less, and gets a lot less, from Service. In an ‘orthodox’ Trotskyist review David North (here) has rigorously unravelled the string of howlers that litter the book – apparently produced by a serious historian – from names, dates of people’s death, (including that of Natalia, Trotsky’s wife) to graver errors. The claim that this is the “first full-length biography of Trotsky written by someone outside Russia who is not a Trotskyist” may, nevertheless, be true. It is less than sure that Service’s efforts, to offer a “more searching approach” than previous biographies, such as Isaac Deutscher’s celebrated Trilogy, or the painstakingly documented publications of Pierre Broué, not to mention his subject’s own “self-serving and misleading” accounts, offer more than acres of darkness about Trotsky.

Purge Looming in Respect?

“Respect’s leadership is absolutely determined that the influence of the ultra-left will remain marginal. There is no place for the kind of political sectarianism that is indifferent to a Tory victory or bitterly hostile to cooperation with the Green Party. Such views, often articulated by politically irrelevant grouplets of the far left, are an obstacle to the growth of a radical party of the left.” (more)

Ger Francis – leading Respect Light (Birmingham, Nationally).

No place for obstacles, eh

Indeed.

Comrade Ger (Geeeer to his friends) further states that,

“I fully expect the new National Council, on which the more sectarian voices are a shrinking minority, to drive through this perspective more forcefully in the coming year.” (here)

Sectarian voices be warned.

Ger’s background? SWP cadre.

You know I could have guessed that.

Rime of the Ancient Socialist

 

 

September the 20th-25^th sees the Manchester Convention of the Left.             

 

 

(http://www.conventionoftheleft.org/  Coming from many quarters of the left the organisers are “united in our determination to combine our strengths”. They hope to “open a debate”. Chris Strafford in the Weekly Worker asks “what is the point?” of this. Bruce Robinson of the AWL notes that the Convention is designed to “avoid controversy”.  Indeed apart from rallying the committed, attracting (?) new blood, and having face-to-face discussions – not such bad ideas – it is unclear what the goal is. The final session is named “Question Time for the Left.” The BBC programme of that name is a platform for the loud-mouthed, the know-alls, and the – interesting – know somethings. Select your own featured speakers to fit that description. Only the most ecumenical will foresee much value in George Galloway or Lindsey German’s perspectives.

 

The hubris staring Brown in the face after a decade of overweening self-confidence in his own merits and the virtues of the market economy overshadows everything. As a response it is surely important to discuss a socialist economic project. From the global re-regulation of finance and banking, we ought to look at a European-wide strategy to bring (first) utilities and public transport under social ownership, and an equally cross-Continental centralisation of upgraded social rights and benefits. Brown’s market state is uniquely vulnerable to the banking and credit crisis through its dependence on private finance, and (incompetent) private contractors. Instead of farming out services (in the NHS for example) to instruments like problem-ridden Equity Funds, renewed publicly funded Welfare institutions need to be expanded to cope with the existing inequality and potential economic disaster. To propel this we have to have strong trade unions with expanded rights.

 

No doubt there will be many at Manchester with their own ideas on these topics. Not to mention others, from feminism, anti-racism, local government, anti-war action and ecology. The Socialist Movement published nearly two decades back still useful documents on many of these subjects – indicating how much we have retreated in the intervening years.

 

Anyway, this may not be welcome (hah!). But like the Ancient Mariner collaring the Wedding Guest I would like to tell the Convention a few things. Let’s clear the decks of a few albatrosses, and if we have to do penance for this, so be it.

To begin with, Nick Wrack of Respect Renewal is right to say that, The experience of the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Alliance, the Scottish Socialist Party and, latterly, the split in Respect would make the most optimistic exponent of left unity reach for the nearest barge pole.” The fall-out from this squabbling has not gone away (nor the guilty parties held to account). Nevertheless an inability to win large-scale political (as opposed to union) support is common to all the left. Inside the Labour Party John McDonnell has not made great headway either. Next, a major unresolved issue is the failure of the Respect/Left List factions to confront their own communalist and opportunist alliance with cross-class Muslim notables and Islamist groups. This has been combined with covering for Islamicist bodies violently opposed to the most minimal of progressive politics and human rights. Domestically there has been an inability to build a democratic programme axed around the kind of secular equality which can confront communitarians and racists. Finally, the Convention’s call for serious thinking makes no sense if the left jumps, without some of this, at the latest get-rich-quick scheme: a turn to the Green Party, whose identity as “on the left” is not at all clearly established in the eyes of many of us. There’s a lot to say on this, but my glimmering eye fades and I turn away – for now. 

Last of the Pabolites. Utopie-Critique

This interesting journal is the home of the last of the Paboites. It contains articles on self-management, radical socialist republicanism and a host of other criticial Marxist contributions. Highly recommended. Utopie-Critique seems one of the most interesting left publications around.

Sommaire Utopie Critique N°45

Par Utopie Critique

Gordon Brown.

Hysteria no doubt will reign today at the Labour Party Conference. Gordon Brown will no doubt be welcomed with enough enthusiasm to send shivers down the spines of the panicking delegates. Fear strikes the soul of the Labour Party. Yuck!

Cartoon, Sep 23 2008:

French Socialists

 

I will post on this in detail later but it seems that the Parti Socialiste Francais is in a real state: no enthusiasm, no deeply-felt ideology, or clear platform of any kind, a collapse around its central spine, and just the everlasting battle between the ‘elephants’ for leadership in the coming Party Congress.

Lutte Ouvriere Expels ‘the Spark’.

 

 22 septembre 2008

Lutte Ouvriere has expelled ”l’Enticelle’ (the Spark), its permanent faction. Reports state that this is due to the faction’s closeness to the LCR’s project of a New Anti-Capitalist Party. It is believed the people affected number a few dozen at most. Given LO’s regime – they are compared to ’soldier  monks’ – this is a sign of an even tighter internal grip on members. Obviously the attraction of the LCR-led new party (which has had enormous publicity in the French media and seems to have had genuine resonance amongst a wide swathe of people) is being resisted by pulling up the drawbridge.

 

 

     Réunis en conférence nationale, le 21 septembre 2008, pour examiner les relations entre la majorité de Lutte Ouvrière et la fraction L’Étincelle, les militants ont voté à une majorité de 97,3 % la motion suivante :
     ”Le constat qui s’impose est que la Fraction L’Étincelle s’est, depuis sa création, de plus en plus éloignée de la majorité de Lutte Ouvrière, au point de constituer aujourd’hui une organisation complètement indépendante et autonome n’ayant plus aucun lien politique avec Lutte Ouvrière.
     Pendant toutes ces années, elle n’a pour ainsi dire jamais accepté de soumettre ses projets, non seulement à une discussion véritable, mais à un vote pouvant décider d’une attitude commune. Elle a toujours confondu « informer » les instances de Lutte Ouvrière avec débattre et décider en commun.
     En dernier lieu, avant les élections municipales, elle a décidé unilatéralement de soutenir et de participer à des listes de la LCR et surtout de soutenir, à Wattrelos, des dissidents n’ayant plus rien à voir avec Lutte Ouvrière. C’est son refus affirmé de respecter la décision prise par la majorité qui a amené celle-ci à la suspendre jusqu’à ce qu’une décision statutaire puisse être prise à leur propos.
     A cela s’est ajoutée leur participation à la construction d’un NPA, ce qui les place non seulement en dehors mais très loin de Lutte Ouvrière.
     L’existence d’une fraction faisant partie de Lutte Ouvrière est donc une fiction depuis déjà longtemps, et il est temps d’entériner cet état de choses.”
     Ce vote décide en conséquence la fin de toute relation entre Lutte Ouvrière et le groupe nommé jusqu’à présent Fraction Lutte Ouvrière – L’Étincelle.

 

The reply by L’Étincelle is here, which describes LO’s drawbridge strategy (replie sur soi), criticises their alliance in some municpalities with the Parti Socialiste, and refers (rather obliquely) to exploring the possibility of a new left party (that is, the Besancenot project) :

         

 

22 septembre 2008

 Après avoir suspendu la Fraction l’Etincelle de Lutte Ouvrière, le parti d’Arlette Laguiller l’a exclue ce dimanche 21 septembre lors d’une conférence nationale extraordinaire convoquée tout exprès deux mois avant le congrès annuel de décembre prochain qui devait débattre de cette suspension ainsi que des orientations politiques de l’organisation. De toute évidence la direction de LO ne pouvait supporter ni les critiques concernant sa politique de soutien à l’union de la gauche et au PS lors des dernières municipales ni surtout le débat sur le bilan de cette politique désastreuse : d’une part LO n’a absolument pas obtenu le nombre d’élus escomptés de la petite place qui lui avait été consentie sur les listes du PS, du PC ou des deux contre son soutien à des programmes et des politiques qui n’étaient pas les siens ; d’autre part cette politique opportuniste a terni auprès d’un certain nombre de ses partisans et de travailleurs l’image de rigueur et de fermeté qu’elle avait gagné à juste titre par sa politique antérieure.

Les raisons invoquées pour l’exclusion de la Fraction sont soit un prétexte grossier (reproche d’une alliance passée avec la LCR aux municipales à Agen alors que la majorité de LO s’est retrouvée dans d’autres villes sur des listes avec la même LCR, ou encore d’avoir refusé que à Wattrelos des conseillers municipaux sortants LO, proches de la Fraction, soient écartés pour ne pas accepter la nouvelle alliance électorale avec le PS), soit la démonstration du repli sur soi et de la frilosité politique actuelle de Lutte Ouvrière (accusation d’avoir entrepris d’explorer avec d’autres courants d’extrême gauche les possibilités de construire un Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste proposé par Olivier Besancenot).

L’exclusion ne change évidemment ni l’activité, ni la politique ni les orientations fondamentales de la Fraction l’Etincelle de Lutte Ouvrière qui milite pour la construction d’un parti communiste prolétarien révolutionnaire, l’implantation du courant trotskiste dans la classe ouvrière et le développement d’un mouvement d’ensemble des salariés, nécessaire pour s’opposer aux attaques redoublées du patronat et du gouvernement contre le monde du travail et les classes populaires.

I can’t say I see much immediate future for LO – the ‘eternal candidate’ for  French Presidential elections will not re-present herself (she has been in eclipse anyway) and its Marxism is, to say the least, a kind of unappealling dogmatism. Their full members – real cadres – are enormously dedicated and have to be given credit for that. But faced with Olivier Besancenot they have lost much of their popular attraction. As Krivine (love to name drop!)  finished a sentence of mine at the Conway Hall May Event: I was describing to him how I found the LCR’s video clips of their campaigning moving and how in them “les gens etaient ….” (people in them were)  he popped in the obvious word  - “normaux” (normal). Quite.

See: Lutte Ouvriere in Wikipedia (English).

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Brown Speech.

So it’s all hard-working families again (Guardian). Plenty of the predicted hysterical aplause, delegates in a willing-state-of-believing, the nerves frayed. Shame about the Srah being dragged into the public psycodrama, she came across as a pleasant enough sort. New Labour relies ever more heavily on the Hunting of the Snark  device of saying things three times so they must be true: witness repetition about having made Britian fairer and life being better for ordinary folk. Not to mention the references about progress in ending child poverty, and shameless sentiment to helping deal with the injustices facing the world’s poor.

Or maybe not, since I barely listened to it all.

Some questions:

• If Brown is ending poverty how is that unemployed people without children will not get a penny to help them cope with massive fuel price-rises?
• We all know – even a babe in a buggy must be partly aware – that Brown loves, absolutely loves, hard-working families. But what of us drink-sodden idlers? Eh? How is Brown going to deal with unemployed anyway? How is his New Deal Deal scheme – an open prison for many of those on it, a business opportunity for those private and ‘voluntary’ bodies cashing in on it – going to deal with a rising dole queue?  How will the Minisiter of Work and Pensions – undoubtably one of the most repellent creatures in the Cabinet - introduce his forthcoming legislation to bring in forced labour – workfare – when there is growing unemployment?
• If Brown believes in fairness how is it that he is pledged to introduce yet more repressive social legislation to busy the Courts and fill the Gaols – this time against the sex trade?
• If Brown believes in ending world injustice what are his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan? I don’t have an easy answer even remotely to offer, but surely Mr Brown  who plans to finish off the planet’s poverty could at least start by looking at these lands’s problems. From him till now: motus.
• Apart from a few feeble criticisms of the kind of shark-toothed (do sharks have teeth or fangs?) City types, what are Brown and Darling going to do about the Rich? In Coatesy’s view doing nothing is not an option. Where are the public trials for profiteering, the lengthy sentences, the permanent loss of civic rights?

Terror and Consent. The Wars for the Twenty-First Century. Philip Bobbitt.

  

Phillip Bobbitt has already made a name for himself, in the realms of high politics, and Academies closely chained to Power in the West, as the author of The Shield of Achilles (2002). This described the replacement of nation-states (jealously sovereign, territory-bound, responsible for its citizens’ well-being) by market-states (inter-linked at all levels, enabling people to produce wealth, not redistributing it, guaranteeing protection and human rights). Economically this change-over resulted (rather vaguely) from the kind of ‘connectivity’, networking of finance and information, and contracting out of state activities, readers of globalisation literature are only too familiar with. Constitutionally, and above all, militarily (Bobbitt’s fortes), the market-state appeared to give priority to new criteria of legality. Weapons of mass destruction, mass abuses of human rights, from ethnic cleansing to residual totalitarian regimes   destroyed the case for recognising the sovereignty of every state. The new technologies of war (extending the planetary reach of armed force) made possible targeted interventions to correct these abuses. As Gopal Balakrishnan remarks (Algorithms of War New Left Review. No 23. 2003) “In Bobbit’s terms, the American regime is the detonator of an expanding legal universe of market-state, bursting asunder an old international order based on the nominal recognition of the sovereignty of all nation-states.”(P 25) A world in which, Balakrishnan observes, Bobbitt foresaw looming threats to the “new constitutional order.”

 

A few years later, post post 9/11, and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, these menaces have taken definite shape. Above all in terrorism.  In Terror and Consent (2008)  “The looming combination of a global terrorist network, weapons of mass destruction, and the heightening vulnerability of enormous numbers of civilians emphatically require a basic transformation of the conventional wisdom in international security.”(P 5) Just as the market-state works in tandem with “global, networked, decentralised, and devolved” instruments so its opponents (a nebulous category in the book) have their own international vision, and reply on equally transnational link-ups, outsourcing and incentivising (translation: providing incentives per piece of work, rather than permanently). Terrorist organisations are the most dangerous of these enemies of the market-states; “Terrorism will become a far more important security issue because market state terrorists, unlike their twentieth century predecessors, would actually use WMD against civilians.”(P 9)

 

Terrorism and Consent is centred on the war on terror. Bobbitt has no time for those who claim that terrorism is a method not an object. There are networked, non-state, organisations, such as Al-Qaeda, using extreme violence against civilians for political ends, which amount to the same thing: pretty real entities with pretty real murderous acts. So,

 

A war against terror makes sense, as an idea, because terrorism has become more warlike, and war is becoming indistinguishable from counterinsurgency and counter terrorism operations…. the war aim of the U.S and the U.K. is to preserve states of consent by protecting civilians, and this means that the Wars against terror will pursue three intertwined objectives; to pre-empt twenty-first century market state terrorism, to prevent WMD proliferation when these weapons would be used for compellance rather than deterrence, and to prevent or mitigate genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the human rights consequences of civilian catastrophes. (P 236)

 

Let us hold in suspension numerous doubts about this analysis. These range from the obvious: the Islamicist doctrines of Jihadists merit a study of their own. To piece together this network you have to have in common not just terror but a common ideological basis. Support is needed in the frustrated sections of pious Moslem bourgeoisies. An ability to secure a social base around a project of a restored Caliphate which rejects the creeping – or ‘consensual’ – repressive moral order of such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliates. What sections of these classes, and in what nations, does Al-Qaeda appeal to, and why. Or the less clear: if terrorism is a kind of necessary doppelgänger of market-states’ military structures, and a reaction to their monopoly of violence, it seems at times to function in Terror and Consent as a Manichean devil: the darkness produced by the light. Human rights will thus always produce human wrongs.

 

The important point here however lies elsewhere. Bobbitt’s book is not a disinterested academic study: it is full of words of power. He asserts that the UN must become a  “claviger and steward”. That is a club and a guardian, not a (Achilles) shield to stand behind. The point at which this weapon is wielded is the crucial one. Bobbitt has doubts about the results of existing US policies, and “lawless behaviour in its penal colonies”.  But note the word, “pre-empt.” Both candidates for the US presidential elections have taken Bobbit’s ideas seriously. Both equivocate on exactly what this term means. Does it signify yet more armed interventions, notably to pre-empt Iranian development of weapons of mass destruction? Does it imply anything about the crisis unfolding in Pakistan, where Islamicist groups swarm and terrorist atrocities have reached a new peak?

 

Perhaps it is the latter difficulty that indicates just how shallow Bobbitt can be. He fails to offer any indication of Pakistan; the hurricane-eye of modern Jihadism can repair its nation. The problems there are so deep, from the religious exclusive nature of the state, its military-as-ruling-class, to its economic failures, that to talk of ‘terrorism’ in general without delving into this is frankly ridiculous.

 

Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos. (2008) is a searing commentary on the nature of the ‘war on terrorism’. He – from a liberal position informed by human rights  - describes how the US began waging the war on terrorism by rejecting the Geneva Convention, “denying justice at home, undermining the U.S. Constitution, and then pressuring its allies to do the same set in motion a devastating denial of civilised instincts. America’s example had the most impact in Afghanistan, where no legal system existed; in Pakistan, ruled by a military dictatorship; and in central Asia, where the world’s most repressive dictatorships flourished. By following America’s lead in promoting or condoning disappearances, torture, and secret jails, these countries found their path to democracy and their struggle against Islamic extremism set back by decades.”(P 293) So much then for the market-state’s (the US Template at any rate) ability to uphold the rule of universal law and supersede obsolete doctrines of sovereignty. 

 

It is not only the principles of democratic Constitutions and Treaties that are disregarded, or people’s most basic rights violated. The legacy is one of overwhelming social disaster, “The enormous cost of these wars has crippled the Untied States and world economies, the military deployments have shattered the U.S. and British armies, and the death and destruction have bled civilian populations and worsened the humanitarian crisis for neighbouring countries.”(P 401)

 

If this is the legacy of pre-emption and humanitarian intervention is it any wonder than many people are hostile to both of them?  And worry about any future American leader who clings to these doctrines? If Bobbitt leaves us with anything it is that a serious human rights left should have no truck with the wanton use of power in disregard of basic principles. A left that took such values seriously would be fighting the terrorism of Islamicist Jihadism by building amongst these populations to fight oppression and exploitation, to build real democracy. Support the world’s superpowers, in the guise of humanitarian interventions, or the removal of tyrants such as Saddam. This position is visibly weakening even amongst those ‘muscular liberals’ who saw this, with all their reservations, as at least a step in the right direction. 

 

AWL Versus CPGB

 

Weekly Worker versus the AWL: should people take sides?

 

The Debate of the Decade, Mosover versus Matgamna, (or ‘M/M’) will be held (according to the latest Weekly Worker, hot off the Memory Stick) on October the 12^th.  Perhaps this is the moment to post the following comments.

 

It is without the slightest qualm about the fact that the Tendance Coatesy is almost entirely  irrelevant to the whole debate that I enter to the fray – or put my toes gingerly into it. These are some points of a very recent E-Mail correspondence – initiated by Martin Thomas of the AWL, with some bearing on the Historic M/M Encounter:  

 

 

Coatesey: “the debate with Machover. There are serious points
 made on both sides.
 But I am really not the person to take sides.”

 

 

AWL, “Apart from the taking-sides-in-debate question, there is the question of
basic truthfulness. As you say, “the stuff about driving the AWL out of
the workers’ movement is frankly silly – possibly worse”; but it is in
its turn based on something else “frankly silly – possibly worse”, i.e.
the lie that Sean “excused” Israeli nuclear-bombing of Iran.
 
If straightforward lies like this go little-challenged (“not the person
to take sides”) and become widespread in diluted versions, then the
whole currency of ideas on the left is debased. We had the same
experience with the Healyite WRP, though they never went in for lies as
gross as the WW.

 

The WW construes it into positive advocacy of an Israeli attack,
constructs a technical argument that nothing short of a full-scale
nuclear-armed attack could dent Iran’s nuclear programme, and
“deduces” that Sean is “excusing” a nuclear attack on Iran.
Then they follow up with the wild stuff about driving the AWL out of
the labour movement.

In the same way as we tried to rally people when the Healy WRP ranted
against us in similar style, we want to encourage people who are
within earshot of the WW to voice a protest.

 What do you think?”

 

A good point.

 

Now we have some clarity: the CPGB’s Mark Fisher’s latest (this week) contribution to the furore:

 

 

To clarify the point about ‘driving out’ the AWL made by Peter Manson, Mark Fisher cites the original:  “We shall strive to defeat the ideas of first campism and seek to drive them out of the workers’ movement. Hence we not only fight the AWL minnows, but the rightwing and Blairite parasites who dominate the Labour Party, the TUC and many trade unions. Of course, that does not mean witch-hunting the AWL (as they accuse us of wanting to do). We are against proscribed lists, bureaucratic bans, etc. But, yes, because we recognise that the AWL’s politics represent alien, reactionary, antiworking class ideas in our movement and have a terrible and treacherous logic, it is quite right to clear out those leaders who insist on upholding them” (Weekly Worker September 4).

Moshé Machover (who holds some similar views on the Middle East and has been a fierce critic of the AWL’s leading figure) and Matgamna will debate in London... Mark Fisher concludes, “I can assure the AWL that CPGB comrades will be very much in evidence at the October 12 debate (assuming the AWL finally agrees to it), will make their views of Matgamna’s scab, pro-imperialist line very explicit, ill record the proceedings for wider dissemination and will write an extensive report for

the following issue of our paper.”

 

Now, I broadly sympathise with the CPGB on many issues. The fact is that Matgamna’s written opinions on Israel are open to question, and not only by the virulent anti-Zionist. But the tone of the whole exchange is, well, hard to justify. Does the heat of the polemic means it’s fine calling him a ’scab’? It should be said that in response the AWL has used its full share and more of ‘ripe’ expressions and its most famous Web supporter (a certain JD) has engaged in, let us politely say, in somewhat fruity language in attacking the CPGB. 

 

Far be it from me to put my oar in. Coatesim is famous in the movement for its loathing of sectarianism, specifically, revisionists, backsliders, anti-Coatesite elements, queasy quisling quacks and slobbering hyenas of the international bourgeoisie dressed up in wolf’s clothing. But chaps, and indeed chapettes, isn’t this going it a bit far?

 

 

 

Charlie Hebdo.

 Charlie Hebdo should be Veiled!

The Danish Mohammed cartoons – unpublished by an allegedly ‘Islamophobic’ British media – were reprinted in France by the weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. With many of France’s finest radical cartoonists contributing their own designs, notably the front page. That,  by leftist Cabu,  had Mohammed saying, “C’est dur d’être aimé par des cons” (it’s hard being loved by prats). Such  is now the title of a just released documentary on the trial of Charlie Hebdo that resulted. The charges were brought by the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman, In contrast to the British liberal and left’s pandering to religious community leaders, in France almost the entire left, from liberals to Marxists, backed Charlie’s freedom of expression. I haven’t seen the film, though no doubt there will be ways through the Web to get hold of it.  

 

Unfortunately my anticipated pleasure is already spoilt by the ructions of the present Chief Editor of Charlie, Philippe Val. This man does a frequent early morning ‘thought for the day’ (chronique) on France Inter, the most-listened to French Public radio station. Now it is well-known that self-styled ’social democrat’ Val is a ferocious ‘anti-totalitarian’ and backer of humanitarian interventions left-right-and-centre and whether-they-like-it-or-not. He showed his own commitment to absolute free-speech by recently sacking much-loved cartoonist Siné (here) amid allegations (hotly disputed) of anti-semitism (more).

 

This morning Val was in full-throttle: mud-slinging at the French Socialists for voting against continuing to send French troops to assist with the occupation of Afghanistan. Peppering his rant with laboured ’satirical’ remarks, with a simpering France-Inter type sniggering in the background, he declared it was Western Troops or the Taliban.  No mention of the corrupt, piously Islamic, violent, torturing, forces clustering around the Kabul regime, the attrocities of the occupying forces, or indeed the failure of the occupation to achieve a secular democracy. That much of the inability to deal with the Taliban stems from a long-standing complicity of the US with the Pakistan army and its intelligence services is beyond question. So, a result, rather than unbending support for the the Carrying On Up the Kyber we are faced with plenty of doubts. The Left in the French National Assembly is therefore justified in seeking alternative ways to encourage nation building and liberty in Afghanistan.

Charlie: good cartoonists, shame about the Editor.

Breaking the Conventions of the Left.

 

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.* The world’s financial institutions are in chaos, Marx gets cited everywhere, and capitalism looks shaky. Time for a socialist revival? In fact the left faces a profound dilemma. Despite all this  the main political choice in the UK, for the foreseeable future, will be between centre-of-right Gordon Brown’s responsible capitalism, and David Cameron’s, right-of-centre sensible free-market.

Any attempt to break out of this impasse is welcome. Last week’s Manchester Convention of the Left attracted around 300 participants. Their ambition: to define a working platform for co-operation between all sections of the left, from Greens, Left Labour, social movements, Communists to Marxists. This was, and is, despite reservations, a good beginning. The call-back meeting in November should, it is to be hoped, take into account the views of a larger swathe of the left than made its way to Manchester.

 

These are some reflections, largely about the democratic demands of the left:

• The Convention appeared to accept the ‘break-up of Britain’ principle. That is that the UK is a ‘prison of the peoples’ and that it is progressive to form independent states, notably Scotland and Wales (Ireland’s Unity remains controversial). It is said that there were calls for an English parliament as well. The basis for this view, and its use in the Charter 88 campaign (who?), supported in previous left gathering (Chesterfield Conferences) by Convention sponsors, the main writers of Red Pepper, is open to serious question (The Break-Up of Tom Nairn). Such small nations are vulnerable to competitive tendering (lowest bid on social conditions and taxes) for investment and business on the global market. They encourage the growth of a political and administrative class who existence depends on accentuating differences between nations. Finally, they split working class and popular unity, notably by the kind of incessant squabbling about constitutional rights and the division of resources between devolved or breaking-up lands. This can be witnessed in Catalonia and, most viciously, in the Flemish nationalists’ demands on Belgium.
• In place of the Break-up of Britain we should aim for a European Social Republic.  That is, one that unites peoples around the class demands of raised welfare and labour rights (equally set out), and democratic devolution within a common political structure. A host of demands of the Convention, from measures to control finance to taxation, need (at least) European-wide implementation to be realistic. Furthermore as capital internationalises ownership, such as the French EDF’s take-over of British nuclear, we need a European strategy, in and against the state to build a new Continental pattern of socially owned, and democratically managed, industries. Obviously this would be premised on introducing democratic principles, a massive task, to transform the existing European Union. Nevertheless, such an aim, a minimum democratic platform (in traditional socialist language) could serve as a launch-pad for an outward-looking movement to confront the real problems of capitalism. Real internationalism is not about general calls for solidarity with those in other countries fighting against exploitation and oppression: it means constructing real mechanisms – in our case in Europe within a revolutionised EU – with political and economic clout to do so.  
• No democratic strategy for the left can ignore the importance of secularism. The Conservatives have ditched an already discredited multiculturalism, for Britishness, as has Brown, though both still stick to the ‘diversity’ agenda (empowering ‘community leaders’)  that has encouraged ethnic, communal and, above all, religious reaction. A secular programme, based on a complete removal of religious privilege from the state and education, and an anti-racism that unites people rather than encourages difference, is more than ever urgently needed. In particular no form, however ‘anti-imperialist’ (in appearance), of Islamicism is an ally of the left, though the SWP and Galloway’s Respect (the latter most fervently) seems to think it is. The Convention showed no sign of confronting these issues, and indeed continued the path of encouraging reactionary religious ideology with its acceptance of the chief culprits.

* So much better than that ‘between a rock and hard place’ don’t you think?

The Camerons are Coming.

 ”A Future Conservative Britain”.

Michael Grove takes a leaf out of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s book by Inviting key Blairites into a future Tory Cabinet. This news, part of the build-up to next week’s Conservative Conference,illustrates how, like the resident of the Élysée ,  David Cameron out-steps his opponents by co-opting the most self-seeking amongst them. No doubt figures like James Purnell (the Minister for Forced Work) and Andrew Adonois (Selling off Education) are much further to the right than, say, the Gallic Minister Foreign Minister and former Socialist, Bernard Kouchner. But the Conservative Party gathering of the power, and attention-seeking clans, already experimented with green gestures and the wooing of the Goldsmith Boy,  or, in London by Johnson’s liberal advisers, such as Rosie Boycott, is mustering.

 

The Conservatives’ strategy is taking root largely because there is so much in Brown’s legacy to fertilise it. Not least is New Labour’s creation of a vast para-state – private contractors or ‘partnership’ arrangements- which are institutional supports for even further privatisation.  What is there to fear from Tory plans to get those on the Dole into chain-gangs? Purnell already intends  quasi-Workhouse conditions (forced labour, minimum benefits, constant surveillance) for the unemployed. They even agree on making the workless sweep the streets. Both want to reward handsomely the companies with overseeing the job. This similarity can be extended right across social policy, and governance. What are the differences? Cameron wants to be an ‘architect of choice’ , not a statist, Brown has had to admit that the State is the decider of last resort when the present financial crisis broke. Does this mean that the Tories will oppose this? Sarkozy in Paris now hails a positive role for the State. It is probable that they will, as with their Cabinet plans above, take notice of this, and, if in power, follow suit.

 

Many British voters, a massive chunk of them, have abandoned faith in the Labour government. They are looking for an excuse to vote Tory. Unfortunately there is no other political pole of attraction able to draw them away. Cameron’s team are free to perfect their vote-winning strategy and PR. Hence the big marquee Tory trend. Hence the fuzzy liberal edge: many of them oppose the harshest anti-terror legislation (for the moment) and their hearts bleed over civil rights. They are against multi-culturalist ‘excess’, but back diversity and tolerance. And Greenery. Especially Greenery. Though no liberalism for criminals, the work-shy and the wrong kind of migrants.  Soft words for soft liberals, hard words for hard rightists, all wrapped up in ‘libertarian paternalism’.

It’s working.

The Tories’ Local Laboratories.

“Tory Municipal Leader.”

The shape of a future Conservative government is emerging. Some of its contours can be seen in Tory-led local councils. Obviously there are major differences between a party in a position to legislate and one which is largely confined to administration. Particularly as Municipal powers have famously shrunk – a  process begun by Margaret Thatcher herself. But there are plenty of signs in the Town Halls to indicate the direction they will take. Better guides than this week’s Birmingham Tory Conference.

Ipswich, Suffolk, is a fairly typical-untypical town, a very urban district in a rural county. It is predominantly working class . After decades of Labour control it is now run by a Conservative-Liberal  Coalition (or the Junta). Despite the local Liberals’ claim to be on the centre-left (the Lib-Dem Council Group Leader Andrew Cann, is the son of the former Labour M.P. Jamie Cann, and therein lies a bitter tale, or so he likes to tell it) there is no doubt that the administration has a clear class bias. It is for those who elect it (Ipswich’s minority Middle Class, the constituency that votes the most). While not overtly hostile to the Working class, it has no time for the undeserving poor, or the “riff raff” as a prominent Tory Councillor calls us. The Tory Leader, Liz, is a bit of a Fluffy with a Spikey edge. Not surprisingly it’s the latter that runs the show. The real power in this Alliance lies in the hands of a certain John Carnall, a free-market Tory, whose main objective is to reduce Council Tax. His long-term goal is: the Council pared-down to a contractor for private service providers (a return to the job-stocking Victorian Municipality that did much to thwart Ipswich’s entry into the Twentieth Century). To this aim some community resources are hived off (Cinema, Foundry Road Resource Centre now in the charge, nominally, of the ‘voluntary’ sector), the International Community Centre threatened with closure, some closed, Ipswich Buses (Council owned) are squeezed of resources and made ripe for privatisation, and a host of measures are taken to favour the comfortably off (the jewel being the new tea-rooms in St Lawrence Church). Not much by national standards of course. The legacy of one of the last social democratic (and generally decent, anti-privatising)  local Labour administrations is too heavy to cast off in a couple of years. It’s coming though.  

 However, and this gives a clue to how a Cameron Cabinet would operate, the local Tories recognise not only the need to appease Liberal Councillors, but to attract the wrong-headed voters who thought that Clegg’s party was to the left of Labour and who now need convincing to cross a Ballot Paper for the Tories (in this case their singularly unattractive prospective Candidate, the son of John Gummer). Hence there are, (what could be better to win over the worthy and well-meaning?), expanding spending on culture. New galleries in the Old Town Hall, and arts-exhibition centres in medieval churches. A welcome for the East of England Dance Centre. That keeps the chattered up classes quiet, and indulges the pretensions of the Tory Councillor in charge of this. Her nibs, Judy Terry, is at the moment even relatively calm (though she does tend to go off the rails: she has been obliged to undergo a special training course on ‘bullying’). Go for some old fashioned moral panics clamp down on street prostitution (a cross-party project), and anti-social behaviour, drinking in public (without the slightest effect), and the vital issue of litter. Next, however, do not ruffle any liberal feathers too much: go for the  multi-cultural/Britishness Cameron mix, fair-trade, and green awareness. Much of this is the Right’s own gesture politics, a lot of it is about the essential: winning support, dampening down fears of a reactionary clamp-down while still, er, clamping down.

 

This strategy of paternalistic liberalism was much in evidence at the local Community Fair I attended on Saturday: loads of rozzers(Community Police), Councillors, the Labour MP Chris Mole, and voluntary groups, gay, ethnic, social campaigns, and the usual crowd of us activists and social ‘entrepreneurs’. About the only group missing (or not very visible) were local Christian or other religious proselytisers  who have been encouraged in Ipswich (as elsewhere), by local politicians of many stripes anxious to give ‘faith communities’ a greater Say over how the rest of us should live our lives. One scene struck: there was the Tory Mayor David Halle chatting in a friendly way to a SWP member staffing the Love Music Hate Racism stall. And some star out of Big Brother, though not, alas,  George Galloway.

I should underline that the Swoppie, she still is a ‘Tory hater’.   But I can’t help feeling that, amongst all the other aspects of such events, one that the Conservatives are ardently pursuing is an outreach programme to assuage the feelings of sensitive liberals.

Capitalising on the State.

“New-Look Tory Candidate.”

 

The Tories have got a glossy make-over. Why not the Left? Panic strikes the stock-markets, banks are going for  a Burton, and recession peaks over the horizon. Socialist economists surely have something to say. But one area, where left explanations have been strong in the not-so-distant past, the state, dominates attempts to grapple with the market’s utter failure. Congress rejected the Bush bail-out plan partly because of a horror of public, apparently socialist, intervention in capitalism. Gordon Brown sees his role as the embodiment of the collective capitalist to make it work smoothly. Is there not a space for an anti-capitalist, in and against, the state, left strategy to pose an alternative?

 

In the 1970s Marxist discussion on the state reached a crescendo around the Miliband- Poulantzas debate. This centred on left criticisms of pluralism (sociological, the theory that the state was made of up of multiple and conflicting pressure groups). Miliband claimed demonstrated empirically that business dominated. Poultazas concurred but made this a structural feature of the capitalist state. Much ink was spilled, and many undergraduates disputed, a further argument over the  relative autonomy of the state, a political arrangement with room to manoeuvre to ensure the economy worked, exploitation continued, and the working class was subordinated to the existing order.

 

This discussion became rather pointless when Thatcher, and other free-marketeers across the planet,  came to power. She declared that the state should aggresively serve capitalism, strengthed its market underpinning, and dragooned the population behind this. Enterprirse culture was a centrla part of its ‘ideological apparatus’. Exit relative autonomy. State theory gradually ebbed away, replaced by discussion about the economy, post-Fordism, post-modernism, and, latterly, globalisation. If the state had become a ‘market state’ whose objective was to prepare its citizens for market competition with only a minimal safety net left of the welfare state, then this too obvious to need much theorising. A few individuals, notably the always interesting Bob Jessop, continued to plough their state-centred furrow. Jessop has synthesised Poulantzas’ last works (which conceived of states as a ‘condensation’ of complex class conflicts, with Foucault’s account of the meshing of surveillance techniques and ‘mico’ power), with post-Fordism and theories of globalisation (finance and capital flows). However this research has become largely academic even for academics.

 

Perhaps not for much longer. First signs of its relevance were in the growth in the importance of a social group Poulantzas identified as the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’, the managerial, clerical and state functionaries whose numbers, post-Second World War, kept expanding. Leaving abstract categories aside (about their ‘unproductive/productive nature in Marxist theory) this is clearly a social group that rose enormously with the information technology switch-over. Most significantly a minority within the new ‘petty’ bourgeoisie became not so small. Market states gave birth to a full blown para-state capitalist class, exploiting the hiving-off of public functions, making profit out of tax -guaranteed revenue. It is now one of the chief drags on New Labour, a source of incompetent second-rate public provision, and financial abuse. This layer, now wooed by the Conservatives, is an underlying cause of the crumbling of Brown’s popularity.

 

Secondly, the early Poulantzas tended to consider, in a very traditional Marxist fashion, that the state in the West existed to automatically guarantee capitalism’s survival. Can we say this now? Is the gulf  between its deregulation role (a kind of regulation of markets in itself) and clumsy attempts to come to grips with the banking crisis not signs that it is not able to do this at present?  If hard-right American Congress members scupper rescue plans for the market what of the theory of the state as the ‘collective committee of the bourgeoisie’ . In any case the State, notably the US one, doesn’t seem to be doing a good job in saving the market.

 

Why is this. It is in the ideas of the latter Poulatzas that, perhaps, answers could be explored: how compteition between the state’s interests, banks, finance, and other ‘factions’ of capital develop, how its administrative technology evolves (or fails to adapt), how the state can be vulnerable to pressure. We can see here that the market state is clearly not fit for purpose if he has fostered the present mess. This gap in the market lets open room for new proposals.  For the left the issue is, how it could be shaped in an alternative direction, maybe even to a new society, where banking and stock-market crises are, well, not there. That’s another half-forgotten debate due for revival: the transition to socialism.

Tories’ Libertarian Paternalism: Working on the Chain-Gang.

“Don’t Demonise us Tories !“

Just in case you thought that all the Tories had become fluffy  social liberals here’s Chris Grayling the shadow work and pensions secretary speaking against the ’something for nothing’ Welfare State (Here):

 

And for those who don’t manage to find work and claim jobseeker’s allowance for more than two years, we’ll introduce a year-long community work programme to get them back into the work habit.

“No one benefits from sitting at home on benefits doing nothing.”

Grayling said the chaos in the economy should not distract from the social problems facing the UK and added that he had learned from the success of welfare schemes in New York during the downturn after the dot-com bubble burst.

Setting an example: “Let’s party: Empty bottles of alcohol await collection outside Birmingham’s International Convention Centre during the Conservative Party conference.” (Daily Mail  Ist of October).

 

 

Curious Support for New Anti-Capitalists.

 

Interesting case of someone claiming to be on the left who’s not learned anything from his own experience, the misery he casued, and history. Who refuses to condemn or regret his past acts:

ACTION DIRECTE (the French violent ultra-leftist group|): Nouvel Observateur 1st of October. They refer to Rousillan, one of its historic leaders, convicted for murder, now in ’semi-liberty’.

 

Jean-Marc Rouillan

“Jean-Marc Rouillan, le cofondateur d’Action Directe aujourd’hui en semi-liberté, laisse entendre qu’il ne nourrit aucun regret pour l’assassinat du patron de Renault Georges Besse et s’explique sur son engagement auprès d’Olivier Besancenot, dans une interview à L’Express à paraître jeudi 2 octobre.”
Interrogé sur l’assassinat de Georges Besse le 17 novembre 1986.

Apart from not having any regrets about killling Georges Besse he was asked about the LCR’s new anti-capitalist party, which he has expressed sympathy for:

“Au sujet de l’intention qu’il a exprimée d’adhérer au Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste qui doit voir le jour fin janvier 2009 pour prendre la succession de la LCR d’Olivier Besancenot, Jean-Marc Rouillan évoque son besoin de se réapproprier “vingt ans d’histoire de ce pays” en rencontrant “des gens d’origines et d’obédiences extrêmement différentes”.
“Je peux faire peur à beaucoup de monde… A notre première rencontre, j’ai prévenu Besancenot : ‘ma présence peut faire du bordel. Réfléchissez, vous pouvez dire non’… Il m’a dit que c’était réfléchi et qu’ils étaient d’accord”.

 

He admitted then, that his support for the new anti-capitalist party could cause fear amongst many people, make trouble (to say the least!) but then claims Besancenot was fine with his adhesion. Still there’s a silver-lining for sanity,
“Au sujet du nom du futur parti, aujourd’hui en débat, il estime que si le mot “révolution” en était absent “ce serait une démission”, vouant cette formation à n’être qu’un “petit parti électoral”.
Dans ces conditions, “à plus ou moins longue échéance, je serais naturellement éliminé de ce processus”, confie-t-il, soulignant: “Pas besoin d’envoyer une lettre de démission”.”

So, the new anti-capitalist party is not revolutionary enough. And he won’t try to join up when the (revolution-less named) party is born.The curious point here is why did Besancenot ever speak to this man who has such a misguided violent past? Roullin it should be noted was originally a ‘marxist-leninist’ (spontex as we say, Maoist sponteneist), very far from the LCR’s Trotskyism.  

The French Alternatifs.

 

Action Directe’s Jean-Marc Roullian is grabbing the French headlines. Besancenot’s Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, might have a little contretemps. Apart from what he said, or rather didn’t say, about his involvement in ‘armed struggle’ how can they explain that Rouillan had joined them in the first place?  

The convicted terrorist, a Bourbon who has forgotten nothing and learnt not a jot, lays claim to the revolutionary legacy of May 68. The nearest Action Directe came to mass action was during the first half of the 1980s with its squat in the Parisian 18ème Arrondisment. At the same time the left of the French left had its own activity in the area, linking up the LCR, some former Marxist-Leninists (Parti pour une Alternative Communiste), the PSU, and the Fédération pour une Gauche Alternative. Their politics were expressed in various united campaigns (defending Greenpeace after the Rainbow Warrior for example), and an electoral bloc in Paris, called The Alternative, which received 0.26% of the vote in 1986.

It was from the PSU and FGA, through a complex, not to say, convoluted, political process that the French federal organisation called the Alternatifs emerged. The organisation’s politics are a historical enrichment of the French current of ‘autogestion’ (self-management) – with roots in the Parti socialiste unifié, (itself influenced in this respect by Britain’s C.D.H.Cole and the 50s Bevanites). Another input was the tradition known as ‘Pabloism’, which rallied around the objective of the “self-managed republic”. This fused with the social movements that arose in post-69 politics (feminism, gay rights, anti-racism). The Alternatifs have a very strong ecological commitment. They criticise the official French Green party (les Verts) for their compromises with the French Socialist party in government, and their embrace of the liberal and ‘humanitarian’ interventionist policies of such as Daniel Cohen-Bendit. The  Alternatifs illustrate the kind of grass-roots politics and authentic radicalism which stands in contrast to the managerial fuzziness of the bulk of the British green leadership.  They have around 800 members and 50 local councillors. During last year’s Presidential elections they largely backed José Bové and criticised what many considered the LCR Majority’s candidate, Besancenot,  for putting their own interests first.  As one can imagine the Alternatifs tend to be more than sceptical about the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste.

 

In the UK the self-serving interests of most of the left organisations (none of which have a stake in popularising this tradition)  have meant this important political current has been largely ignored (except for one figure, whom modesty forbids me to name). The affinity, say, between green politics anti-capitalism and secular social republicanism is, however, important in France. There are ideological, cultural and individual cross-overs between the Alterntifs and the Ligue’s Minority current (Christian Picquet and Léonce Aguirre), as well as some parts of the Parti Socialiste (which stand for a ‘Social Republic’ and self-management).  The Alternatifs’ criticisms of liberal globalisation are untainted by the ulterior motives of the oldstyle Leninists.  Better investigate their politics than the failed ones of Action Directe.

LCR Statement on Rouillan

 

This is taken from the LCR site:

 

La LCR est en désaccord avec les déclarations récentes de J.M.Rouillan, publiées dans le prochain numéro de l’Express.

Ayant purgé sa peine, il a bien le droit à l’engagement politique. Il a demandé son adhésion au NPA. Du point de vue de la LCR, il avait sa place dans ce nouveau parti à partir du moment où il renonçait à ses actions du passé.

La LCR dénonce enfin une opération politique visant à tenter de criminaliser le NPA au moment où les préoccupations principales des français, de la population tournent autour de la crise économique et de ses conséquences et au moment où les réponses politiques du NPA rentrent de plus en plus en écho avec ces préoccupations.

Le 1er octobre 2008.

 

“The LCR disagrees with the recent statements of Monsieur Rouillon, published in the latest issue of L’Express. Having finished his prison sentence he has the right to be politically active. He asked to join the NPA (new anti-capitalist party). For the LCR he has his place in the party from the moment that he renounces his past activites.

Finally, the LCR denounces a politically motivated stunt: an attempt to criminalise the NAP at the very moment when the people are preoccupied with the effects of the capitalist crisis and the political responses of the NPA have found a widening echo amongst the population. “

 

This response itself is pretty blatant at avoiding the point everyone is asking: why on earth accept dealings with a man who is well-known, indeed hyper-well-known, for not abandoning his ‘ideals’ and the violent means to implement them that Action Directe used.

 

I am not overly moralistic about this. The folly of AD was pretty small beer (though hardly for its victims, naturally). But let’s not forget that some are still defending the cause (here) . More seriously the AD contributed to a criminal complaisance towards all types of ‘anti-imperialism’ (abandoning democratic class politics in the process). European leftist armed-struggle has largely (Spain excepted) disappeared. But the  devastating legacy of romanticising violent ‘anti-imperialism’ can be seen in those who ally with, apologise for,  or tolerate in any shape or form, Jihadism.

Just from the Nouvel Observateur Site:

La question du jour

Action Directe : Jean-Marc Rouillan ne regrette pas l’assassinat du PDG de Renault il doit s’excuser (he must apologise) il doit quitter la LCR (he must leave the LCR) il doit retourner en prison (he must go back to Prison) c’est son droit (it’s his right – to say that)       Nombre de votants : 2208 Votez !

Voir les résultats Les autres questions

Rouillan Back Full-time in Prison

Rouillan privé de sa semi-liberté

Dès le lendemain de la diffusion d’une interview dans laquelle il laissait entendre qu’il n’éprouvait pas de regret pour l’assassinat en 1986 du PDG de Renault, le cofondateur d’Action directe a été privé de son régime de semi-liberté. (from here)

“The morning after an interview, in which he gave the impression that he did not regret the 1986 murder of the Renault CO, the co-founder of Action Directe’s partial liberty (he. under Court licence. works during the day for a Printer’s) has been revoked.”

Amongst the LCR rank-and-file there seems heated  discussion (from some) as to whether they have given in to “respectabilité bourgeoise” by criticising “armed struggle”.  It is said though, as noted here, that Rouillan is “incorrigible.” I still ask how on earth is this political error corrected by skirting around the whole issue of revolution?  This was, and I cede to no-one in my dislike for him, Cohen-Bendit’s point.

I might be one of the few on the left to think this an awkward question. But does the NPA seriously think that a revolutionary violent struggle is either going to happen in France, and is it, in any case, desirable?

Yeah, all those the previous ones have been such blood-free democratic successes in building socialism.

Besancenot: Mobilise for Jean-Marc Rouillan

Action Directe’s Journal, early ‘eighties. Curiously,  this was available in French kiosks.

 

 

Since no-one else on the British left (of which more below) seems to be blogging about this, here is the latest:

 

Besancenot calls for a ‘unitary campaign’ to defend Rouillon.

 

Olivier Besancenot a dénoncé, vendredi 3 octobre, la réincarcération de Jean-Marc Rouillan, et appelé à une “mobilisation unitaire” contre ce qu’il considère comme une “double peine”, précisant que le cofondateur d’Action directe est membre à Marseille d’un comité local pour la construction du NPA.

(Besancenot has denounced, Friday October the 3rd, sending Jean-Marc Roullianbackto Prison and called for a ‘unitary moblisation’ against what he considers to be a ‘double sentence’. He specified that the confounder of Action Directe is a member, in Marseille, of a local committee for the construction of the NPA (new anti-capitalist party).

“Jean-Marc Rouillan est incarcéré de nouveau, ce qui est absolument révoltant, puisqu’il a purgé sa peine”, a affirmé à l’AFP le porte-parole de la LCR.

(‘Jean-Marc Rouillan is back in Prison, which is completely revolting, as he has served his sentence’ affirmed the Principal Speaker of the LCR)

“Légalement, il a le droit de sortir et il n’y a rien qui justifie le fait qu’il retourne en prison, si ce n’est un acharnement judiciaire de la part de l’Etat” qui invoque “non pas ce qu’il a fait, mais ce qu’il a dit et même sous-entendu”, ajoute Olivier Besancenot.
“L’heure pour nous est à une mobilisation unitaire de toute la gauche sur la question de la liberté d’expression pour défendre les libertés démocratiques”, et pour que “la loi soit respectée”.

 

(Legally he has the right to go out, and nothing justifies the fact that he is going back to gaol, other than a relentless use of the judiciary by the State.  (This measure) is based not on what he did, or even said, but what he implied.The time has come for a unitary mobilisation of the left to defend free speech and democratic freedoms in order that the law be respected.”  (Nouvel Observateur).

I leave it to those with a legal background to judge much of this. However it is noteworthy that, firstly,  Besancenot is taking a risky, ‘double or quits’, strategy by publicly standing up for Rouillan. I am not at all sure that it is wise to pursue the claims of the convicted AD founder so far. Obviously some of the French left will be embarrassed, and the Ligue have put them in a spot because of their long history of supporting the legal rights of such ‘armed struggle’ prisoners when the state has been heavy-handed with them (though the less said about Sartre etc and the RAF prisoners  many would say…the better). Even so many would not have much sympathy for AD in any shape or form.

 

Secondly, we are still unsure about how far the LCR differs not just from the strategy of AD but political violence as such. On the former, I recall a complete divorce between AD and all the French left. So if the LCR opposes, completely,  AD’s past activities what is meant by Besancenot’s call? The ’co-founder’ of AD doesn’t help matters. His present position remains ambiguous: what is being defended by Rouillan is not just ‘words’ but words and silences relating to actions. Will the LCR elaborate on their judgement about the latter? By no means everyone feels inclined to accept the whispered hint, that somewhere somehow, AD members have, may be, might in some fashion, face up to their actions. Or on what basis, regarding their stand on political violence, might the Ligue disagree with Rouillan, agreee to disagree, or what?

 

Finally, it will be interesting to see the reaction of the British left, if any, to this. I have always had the impression that there is a distorting prism at work here: people see the French left through the lens of our left (giving importance, for example, to insignificant grouplets like the SWP’s French sympathisers, or any other, however minuscule, faction aligned with UK organisations). Here we are dealing with something that doesn’t fit easily into any of these people’s schema (including mine). But which has become extremely important in real French politics. Not to mention wider implications (about ‘revolution’ and the left). Well, for the UK left’s response, I’m waiting….

MacShane Shows the Way!

Nil desperandum.

Mandelson is coming back to British politics. Denis MacShane (of the Henry Jackson Society and here) and very former Minister of State for Europe is due to lecture France. About his and New Labour’s successes and the future of the European left (here). 

We’re saved!

Prochain débat : lundi 13 octobre 2008 à 20 h 30 sur le thème
“Gauches européennes : quel avenir face à la crise ?”

Avec :

• François Hollande, premier secrétaire du PS
  
• Jean-Pierre Jouyet, secrétaire d’Etat chargé des affaires européennes
  
• Denis MacShane, député travailliste britanique

Are you’re going (and who isn’t )? It’s worth remembering that a few years back MacShane made an indelible impression on French left-wing opponents of the Referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty. He called them the ‘con-tres’. A no doubt drôle play on the words ‘con’ and ‘contres’ (against, that is). Unfortunately MacShane’s wit went down less well amongst Socialist Party ‘non’ backers than expected. I wonder why ?

Hats off to Mandelson!

It’s not often that we at Tendance Coatesy disagree with the esteemed comrades at Stroppy Blog. Yet is this fair? Is it just? Describing the return of Peter Mandelson to British Politics as Business Minister in these terms? “Back again like a bad penny, a blast from the Blairite past.”

It’s this kind of sour reaction that has got the British left a bad name.

Peter, as we at the Tendance call Mr Mandelson, stands on the world stage like a colossus. A Prince amongst darkness. His achievements in the British Labour Party speak for themselves.  As European Commissioner for Trade he has certainly made his mark. A People Person, he will find a warm welcome amongst his colleagues.

Now is not the time for leftist shilly-shallying. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Get down to Business. For Britain, for Gordon Brown, for Labour, there’s a job to be done.

Well done Peter!

Blunkett to Stage Come-Back: Tendance Coatesy Salutes!

“David Blunkett and Patriotic Friend.”

Good News always comes doubly: Blunkett looks set to return to Cabinet as Mandy wrecks Miliband’s leadership bid (Mail on Sunday).

Tendance Coatesy has had its differences, with former Home Secretary, and all round good-natured, working-class, Sheffield-lad-made-extremely-good, David Blunkett.

Hence the threatening letter which comrade Blunkett sent us, menacing legal proceedings were it suggested that the Man brimming with Blunt Commonsense had spoken utter reactionary gibberish at some public meeting (details lost in the mists of time).  True it’s value has depreciated over the years as many (how many? we shall never total them all) similar communications have been sent out to all who cross the Man of the People, Mr David Blunkett.

Some may ask, rudely, why a laughing-stock, a grasping right-wing pillock, and an enemy of all progressive humanity, should be sought, or be seeking, a position, under Gordon Brown. Ian Bone may have made, in impolite terms, suggestions about the ex-Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s alleged weakness for pecuniary reward, and asked why he was such as “fecking greedy bastard”. Others point to his toadying to right-wing toffs, and his own private welfare-state. Then there is his overweening dippy vanity.  Is this the man for the job of getting Gordon re-elected, and dealing with approaching State bankruptcy?

Frankly, do we need to pose such questions?

We at the Tendance are rolling up our sleeves  and learning to love Peter. David, though a hard-case, will make good our word of law.

Debates of the Decade.

Two Debates of the Decade, one after another:

First there is this:

“Iran and the left – a public debate between Sean Matgamna and Moshe Machover.

Start: 12 Oct 2008 – 5:15pm - 7:15pm

The Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross.

A joint Workers’ Liberty-Campaign for a Marxist Party event.”

Then there is the Paris Debate with Denis MacShane the following day.

Crowds are assured for the London event. Dave Osler is “turning up outside the pub with a sleeping bag the night before, just to be assured of a place.” Sparks are certain to fly – though if they will shed any light is not certain. Jim Denham is rumoured to be descending from the West Midlands in a tank (gas fueled) to lend support to Sean Matgamna. The CPGB, marshalled to back Moshe Machover, are accused of synthesising enriched uranium.

No doubt the kitsch left will whinge if cde Denham obliterates Sommer’s Town and the CPGB (Provisional) CC. But does not he have the right to self-defence? Are the claims that The Weekly Worker is manufacturing uranium only for civil purposes to be taken seriously, eh?

The next day in Paris  will be a unique opportunity of another kind. It will be the occasion to hear MacShane, one of the European Left’s giants, speak the mellifluous French he learnt in Geneva from a Swiss Yodeler Professeur. Oh, and say something or other.

 

Not to be missed: neither.

Lend me Ten Pounds and I’ll Buy Ye a Drink.

 

Bankers’ Confidence.

Maybe I am terminally thick. Or just terminal. But this plan to buy up the UK banks to restore confidence in lending strikes me as a wee bit odd.

I mean.

 

‘Mad’ Timmy Palfry asks me to lend him a tenner pretty regularly. He’ll give it back in the morning.

 

Now as the chances of him doing this are about as sure as the Orwell Estuary turning into pea-soup, I politely decline.

 

Is Gordon Brown saying that I should trust Timmy?

A Must Read: Mike Marqusee.

 

 

“Mike’s Favourite Marxist Practice.”

A must-read in the run-up for the Debate of the Decade:

Mike Marqusee, If I am not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew (Verso 2008).

Mike stands out on the British Left in a) being American and b) liking Cricket as much as CLR James. He has also found time to,  amongst other things, being the brilliant editor of Labour Briefing, and writing a string of excellent books on such varied subjects as Mohammad Ali, the Labour Party, Bob Dylan and, er cricket. He is also from a Jewish background, (hence the book) something I personally was unaware of, which just goes to show how far Coatesism is interested in the whole subject of Israel and indeed Jewishness.

The centre of the book is an account of Mike’s grandad,  Ed Morand. who is captured in the kind of heart-felt prose he obviously deserves. He was an activist in the New York Labor Party, which (and believe me I really didn’t know this) had City councillors and a real presence in the US in the late ‘thirties. Another part of the autobiography which I found showed light on something I was unaware of is Mike’s description of his break with his family over Israel.

This seems to be a big question. No doubt this book is at Sean Matgmana’s bedside as I write.

Stalinist liars and petty bourgeois poseurs.

Just thought I’d post this latest pensée of the gas-fueled Jim Denham (pictured above).

 

Re CPGB et al: “ Stalinist liars and petty bourgeois poseurs.”

 

Now remind me why most of the left Ioathes the AWL and all of its works?

Iceland: Stop Screwing My Bird.

Those of us who are North London echt will grasp this.

 

But don’t it really get on your bleeding tits that Gordon Brown is picking on Iceland (and Birds, famous national dish, Puffin Pie)  to blame for the collapse of international capitalism?

 

I mean what have them there lot done to him.

 

My sister visited Iceland. Once.

 

For the duration, the entire Troll population went into voluntary political exile.

Ian Bone

 

Just on the subject of plugging books (done Mike’s), here is another must read, Bash the Rich.

Ian is something of a hero of mine: a fellow enemy of ponce David Blunkett.

 

The history of how Class War came to be, and, notably, the stuff about his Cardiff activities..well, top class. The book is one of the best written, witty, and all-round can’t-put-down stuff I’ve seen in a long time.  My mate Steve, and my matette Sarah, rave about it.

 

I was interested to read that his dad was a bitter lefty Scot – like mine.

Give my regards to Tom.

 

 

In Defence of Iceland.

Zenobia makes the point that it’s all a question of who has money in Iceland  in this financial débâcle. To read the British press, and hear the media, one would think that the Icelandic Folk are some kind of hereditary enemy of us English. Last night on Channel Four there was some Trustafarian given prime-time telly space to whingeing about her Nana losing loads-a-dosh in an Iceland bank.

 

I would like to point out the following points about Iceland:

 

1) It has one of the most brilliant and good-looking populations in the world (see above).

 

2) Its people are, generally speaking,  left-wing.

 

3) It stood by Blighty in the Second World War.

 

Now in Coatesy’s reckoning these are strong pluses.

Obviously not for Gordon Brown who is now on a doomed mission to save global capitalism and crush the Icelandic economy.

Remind Me Again of Why the Left Loathes, really Loathes, the AWL?

 

 

Sean of the AWL pictured on  a good day.

 

From what I take to be an AWLer (Okay it’s Jim), ,

 

“we have the most liberal, tolerant and multicultural society in the Middle East – the state of Israel.”

 

The rest of the post is devoted to saying nice things about Julie Burchill.

 

Vomit…I nearly did.

Brown Goes Europe

 

 It’s all go with international capitalism showing what a useless load actually run the show.

The French and the rest of the European media, dripping with sarcasm, seems to accept that Brown’s ‘plan’ to save global finance, is going to work.

Dave, on his Blog,  recently featured a necessary re-reading, Galbraith’s book on the Great Crash.

 

I submit my own recommended reading on the present crisis (above).

Coates Goes Roofie

Mass unemployment is returning.

 

Brown thinks the way to solve this problem (after he’s done with the rest of the world and the solar system and a few more galaxies en plus) .

 

His latest plan is get us work-shy lazy-lubbers to toil  repairing the roofs of houses, and do insulation work,  to , er save, energy.

 

 

MInd you he’s not going to pay us to do it.

 

 

Picture of Coatesy hard at work insulating houses below,

 

 

 

 

 

ERr he’s not visible. He’s  down the local Wetherspoon’s.

Besancenot in Le Monde

 

I am not going to link this because I feel that reading hard-copy is important (get mine from my local newsagent in Ipswich so it can’t be that difficult to find elsewhere).

There was an important interview with Olivier Besancenot in Le Monde yesterday.

 

On the economic crisis. It expresses the view that faced with the obvious (bleeding obvious) failure of capitalism the left may be coming out of its doldrums and seeing new possibilities.

 

A must read.

Obama and the Wetherspoon’s Underground.

Tendance Coatesy HQ.

Tendance Coatesy is not noted for its interest in America, its politics, well, frankly its culture (apart from Buffy and the Simpsons). Hey?

Nevertheless the allegation that American Presidential Candidate Obama was a member of the Wetherspoon’s Underground has been brought to our attention. Or he was best mates with one of the founders.

 This heroic comrade deserves all our support from now on!

Another Reason to Loathe the AWL.

 

 

Sean M on an even better day.

Well there is the little matter of their ‘merger’ with Labour Briefing, which strangely does not figure on the Wikipdeia entry on the AWL (though I note that most of their ‘unity’ campaigns and mergers do). As Sean no doubt does not recall, I was one of the principal LB comrades to back this move.  The Bash though had reservations. 

Bitterness, ashes and tears.

 

Ô  sweet memories!

 

 

The comrades are still waiting for the dosh, Sean.

Slime Monsters and the AWL.

AWL cadre in training.

 

Mike  Macnair provides a pretty cogent explanation of the AWL’s history. That its background is from some American variety of Trotskyism that no-one in Europe (apart from the UK) gives a toss about.

 

However on the interests of furthering historical materialism there is a more profound, dialectical, and materialist, explanation.

 

The AWL is actually a movement of primeval slime monsters which was spawned in the Bayou in the Deep South.

Every three years they feel the urge to mate and propagate their kind. To this end they assume forms resembling human beings (very briefly). And get us innocent lefties ensnared in their ways.

 

When the horrible truth is revealed the victims of these unseemly copulations turn on the monsters and attempt to slay them (as seen in the CPGB/Weekly Worker).

Palin, Sarah: the Mark Thatcher Connection

 

Sarah Palin and Mark Thatcher?

 

You’d betta believe it.

 

The hockey mum from some deep-freezer is said, by reliable sources, to have a secret love-nest with the UK’s most popular neo-conservative.

 

This makes her victory in the US Presidentials certain.

On the Greenstein Affair.

 

 

There is a post by Mickey on Harry’s Place alleging acts of violence by comrade Tony Greenstein at some obscure ‘anti-Zionist’ event.

 

Let me point out two salient points about Comrade Greenstein.

 

One, if (as one of the posters at Harry’s pointed out) he has the political electoral weight of a gnat, he is also a thoroughly decent activist who does work for the popular masses, which the Harry’s Place types don’t give him credit for.

 

The second is that he is engaged in the extremely dodgy ‘don’t buy yid‘ (aka boycott Israel) campaign of his madder anti-Zionist mates.

 

When challenged on the latter he regularly throws wobblies.

 

Above is a photo of Comrade Greenstein’s Hove Rest Home, from which he normally goes to shoot seagulls with his blunderbuss.

Badiou on Renegacy.

Affiche chinoise avec Marx, Engels, Lénine, Staline et Mao ; légende : « Vive le marxisme-léninisme et le maoïsme »

 

Badiou on Renegacy.

There is an article in the latest NLR  and interview with Alain Badiou on the history of French Maoism trying to explain why a certain level of French Maoists has become, as he puts it, like Doriot, (now that is a pretty strong comparison to say the least) and moved from left to hard-right.

 

A few points.

Badiou makes the distinction between ordinary members of the Gauche prolétarienne and other ‘Maoist groups’, who who have, by in large remained on the the left, and the careers of the likes of Glucksman and BHL. This is of course true, (having known a few ex-GP members myself) . However he offers absolutely no self-critique for the idiotic ideology he himself still half-believes in, so-called Marxism-Leninism.

 

Not that most people can grasp a word of the philosophical gibberish he utters (and I say that in a kinda caring way).

 

Furthermore he makes some imbecile side-swipes against French secularist left republicans. Who are the true anti-racist French left. Unlike his pitiful group of mates, the modestly entitled : l’organisation politique

 

Oh well that’s New Left Review these days for you.

Prescott Paradox.

 

Telephone call to chez Coatesy a few years back. From John Prescott.

 

Thought of it when I watched Prescott on Class on the telly last night.

 

Instant connection. Real row (we were both half-cut) but real contact. Liked the bloke immensely.

 

Watching the telly last night I had to strive to resolve two things about John. First, he was an utter class traitor in aligning with Blair, someone, and I say this politely, who is and was a despicable piece of cack. Second, that Prescott is the kinda bloke you’d get on well with. A real class conscious geezer.

 

It warmed the cockles of me heart that all the Henley Regatta crew hated him with venom. And that he got on well with some young birds from a London Housing Estate. Instantly.

 

So how is a bloke you’d trust your life blood with, become the ally of that them there Blair?

 

I out it down to ambition.

 

Pure naked ambition.

On James P. Cannon and Slime.

 

 Genesis of Cannonism.

What is the enduring fascination of one of the most repulsive figures in the history of the Trotskyist movement, James P. Cannon ?

 

He ran some organisation in the US which had the distinction of being one of the most unsuccessful political movements in the history of the planet. One that spawned renegades a minute. As a legacy his organisational practices left a legacy of hate and bitterness that survives to this day.

 

He wrote Prison Diaries (Letters from Prison) which far from rivalling Gramsci would be well considered a candidate for the Mills and Boon collection. My favourite is a bit where he mentions his a-readin’ Aris-tootle (as I believe Americans pronounce the name).

 

Oh and he didn’t like my mate Michel Pablo (Rapitis).

 

But the AWL consider him some paragon.

Mind you Higgins put them and all Cannon’s mates in their place on that one.

Defend Foreign Extremists!

 Our Future Constitution

Plans to ban ‘foreign extemists’ from the UK are rightly condemned by notable democrats, such as George Galloway and his influential Islamicist/Radio Show/Iranian/Footy/ Spankers’ Telly Party Respect (George since we are such old mates I take the liberty of attributing your denunciation before you wrote it).

Tendance Coatesy has always been a defender of free speech.

 

The plight of Islamicists in this country, suffering under the iron heel of international imperialist monopoly globalised neo-liberal capitalism has been brought to our attention, as indeed it has has been to all class conscious leftists.

 

Liberty of expression is very important.

 

Therefore Tendance Coatesy stands for the very seductive teaching of Islamicism to be broadcast every day directly into every living room.

 

Surely with ideas such as killing all gays, and feminists, trade unionists, Jews, Secularists, Socialists, Communists, non-Muslims, these views need constant exposure?

Liberate the Rossites!

Poor old Ross.

It is rare that Tendance Coatesy disagrees with our normally sage mentor, David Osler.

 

But this really is an outrageous act of class treachery. Comrade Dave has backed the imperialist-Zionist pre-nuke strike attack on Jonathan Ross and some other geezer whose name I forget.

 

The fact  that pompous tossers on the Socialist Unity site have joined in the rush to condemn should have alerted our beloved comrade Dave.

 

Yet, no. He has rushed like a Garadene swine into the sea of despondency.

 

As Marx explained in Wages Prices and Profit, a labourer is worthy of his hire. The fact that Ross only has to scratch his arse to get a few hundred quid, is surely a just reward for his toil.

 

Now he faces a life of exile, persecution, ashes and sackcloth.

 

An international campaign to back to the two latest victims of Imperialist brutality is as I speak being launched.

 

Please give generously: C/O the Vaults Ipswich.

Don’t buy Yid? Er buy me a Bagel.

 

 Coatesy’s Lunch.

The campaign waged by certain elements on the Left to ‘Boycott Israel’ really sticks in my craw.

 

It is so totally misconceived I hardly know where to begin.

 

But here I start: it panders to the anti-Semitic ideology of the far-right racist Islamicists who in point of fact began their own ’campaign’ to boycott Israel  some time back. It will not succeed in giving a drop of support to the legitimate demands of the Palestinians, for it will focus attention not on politics but on gestures. Finally, the whole thing stinks of the don’t buy Yid campaigns of the Nazi scum.

 

Tendance Coatesy is a historic friend of the Jewish people (Not the state of Israel, very obviously).

 It is also a friend of the oppressed peoples of the world, in this case the Palestinians. Who we know suffer.

 

So, it is not going to countenance this farcical ‘campaign’ any longer.

 

The last time it came up at our Trades Council it was the Socialist Party who said it was a load of cack.

Well if it comes round again they’ll get me leading the charge,

‘Boycotting Jews’ in Action.

 

Sans commentaire.

We’re a Jolly Ploughman.

 

Now as an old lefty with a bit of an Irish in me (me Dad’s middle name was Kelly) I recall a certain Rebel song about a Jolly Ploughman.

 

I wonder if Mr Wetherspoon knows that his guest ale has this connotation.

Ultra-Left Binge: Weekly Worker.

CPGB (Provisional Committee) Editorial Meeting

The Weekly Worker is undergoing one of its periodic ultra-left binges.

 

Apart from calling not to vote for comrade Obama, it published some drivel about Action DIrecte. Saying they were some kind of class heroes.

 

I have some news for you in the CPGB. I know rather a lot more about AD (and perso stuff, like they tried to recruit me,  just to cite one minor example)  than you do, and can honestly say, that that the bloke in question Jean-Marc Rouillan, is a class A nutter and can go and se faire foutre.

Coatesy Goes Obama Mania.

 Am I not a Man and Brother?

It’s been said before, many a time, (and by me, but hey I like repetition) but there is an immense hope growing amongst the popular masses of the world that Obama will win today.

 

Us European leftists no doubt feel that he will still carry on the imperialist politics of the US and will not abolish capitalism. Tendance Coatesy is about as far from empathy with American politics as you can get. On these and just about every other issue.

 

But I do know a few things.

 

Firstly the fact is that Obama is better than a doddering old fool and some far-right Christo cretin (who’d sell her grandmother for tuppence) who are standing against him. He is apparently a fairly decent bloke.

 

Secondly the fact that he is mixed race. There are at lot of feelings on this. Mine is: I like the African-American people.They are our mates.  It will be an historic victory for all progressive peoples of the world if a mixed race type gets to be President.

 

Finally when I see the bleeding poor people in the US queuing up to vote for him I feel a shiver of real emotion.

Hail to the Chief!

 

It has been my deepest wish that Obama was elected. Now he has got elected!

 Hail to the Chief!

We know that he is not going to change the world towards socialism. But as the American Communist Party put it in the Morning Star yesterday, he is a force for progress, and if they can create a movement on the ground he will be susceptible to pressure from the left.

 

As a Marxist obviously I regard him as a lackey of neo-Liberalism and imperialism. But, blimey, as a human being I am filled with joy,

 

The fact that he is mixed race (and clearly a progressive in the broad sense)  is an historic advance of such magnitude that it makes my heart bleed.

Rejoice Ye Starvlings!

 

Still on a high about Obama winning.

 

Watching on the telly last night after my T & G Branch Meeting I was deeply moved.

 

The Republican Party slave-drivers with their bullwhips are cowed, the popular masses of the world are rejoicing, and the Islamicist reactionary filth are in mortal fear.

 

Let’s savour the moment, before we get back to our critical Marxist analysis of the politics here.

SNP: a Wee Greet (not)

Scots Tosser.

The Glenrothes by-election victory of the Labour candidate should give pause for reflection for the Scots ‘left’ nationalists. Solidarity got less votes than the ultimate’ Brit’ candidate, UKIP, Kris Seunarine, UKIP: 117,Louise McLeary, Solidarity: 87 ) and the Scottish Socialist Party got joke candidate ballots, Morag Balfour, SSP: 212.  In fact they looked like a bunch of tossers.

Main point,  the SNP has got well and truly shafted by the Labour candidate Lindsay Roy, Labour: 19,946 Peter Grant, SNP: 13,209 (Labour majority: 6,737).

Why?

Could it be that the kenspeckle cretinism of a political project for an  ’independent’ Scotland, home of kelpies, mists, tattie scones and tartan social democracy, finally free from the horrid imperialist ‘Brits’ is now seen as a load of cack?

 

We realise that nationalists, whether of the ‘left’ or the right, are usually impervious to reason.

 

But surely even they must recognise that the global financial crisis is proof positive of the global nature of the most fundamental parts of capitalism, which you cannot escape by denouncing UKANIA? That an international left response is needed? Beginning with a United European Left in a Europe-wide Social Republic.  Not some retreat to your ain folk and the kaleyard.

Small wonder after the Bank of Scotland went into crisis and so on and so forth people lost interest in the SNP. This is a  party whose leader is so vain he sniffs his own armpits to get high. They equally failed to turn to ‘left’ versions of the same nationalism.

They voted for safe-pair-of-hands, Banker Gordon. Full stop.

Tom Nairn: An Obituary.

Model of Future Nairn Home.

Pasted: Tom Nairn is an expert on globalisation, nationalism, British institutions and Scotland. He is professorof globalisation at the Globalism Research Centre, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. His many books include Global Matrix: Nationalism, Globalism and State- terrorism (2005), The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its monarchy (1994) and After Britain (2000).

 

As a main man in New Left Review, and the split from the Scottish Labour Party that joined the SNP (aka Alex Salmond), he is also one of the central people responsible for the pathetic delusion that the SNP are some kind of progressive force.

 

He is also a first rate Scottish nationalist tosser. As expounded here.

I’m, as a Marxist Internationalist,  just enjoying his misery today.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon Leaves Parti Socialiste

Halycon Days in the Parti Socialiste

The French  Parti Socialiste  is in a mess. This weekend, before their national conference the vote was, frankly, pathetic. Ségolène Royal’s Motion (one only the most dedicated can even be bothered to read) at their congrès de Reims won. The left got a respectable score (19% for the Benoît Hamon platform). The various rights still hold significant power (not least the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë). But frankly the whole direction of the socialists is awry. Are they really for an alliance with the centre, are they becoming social liberals?

 Who really cares?

 The most significant for me is the resignation of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Elected senator. All round lefty, and pole of all the alliances on the left.

 

 What Party is he going to align himself with? Le Monde yesterday (Print edition) said that he admired Die Linke. Will he go with the new anti-capitalist Party of Besancenot? I have my doubts there.

Former Lambertist, but evolved in a direction not too far from Coatesy (Republican Socialist), he is apparently a bit offy but not too bad a bloke. Politically I suspect he could not hack the way the Parti Socialiste has gone, and the type of quivering liberal free market politics it has got itself involved with.

Simpson and the Transport and General Workers’ Union

 

This deserves the  widest circulation. From an E-Mail to T & G activists.

 

Subject: Derek Simpson’s address to officers and staff in Scotland

 We have heard a number of reports over recent months of Derek’s addresses to meetings of lay activists, and officers and staff, where he has criticised the T&G, blamed us (quite wrongly) for the delay in integration, attacked certain individuals in the T&G and denigrated the organising department etc. He has also criticised the Executive Council for electing Tony Woodhouse from the T&G Section as its Chair, as if this was in breach of some deal or agreement. Last month he made an outrageous outburst at the Executive Finance and General Purposes Committee which he taped and sent a copy of to Tony Woodley!

 

Last week Derek Simpson addressed officers and staff from Scotland in the Glasgow office.This time he appears to have gone way beyond any acceptable standard of behaviour. I am reliably informed that he referred to those who work in the Organising Dept as “SS Officers” – a clear Nazi reference and a most outrageous insult to some of the most hardworking and enthusiastic people working for us in UNITE. He also made some derisory remarks about them wearing ra-ra skirts and pom-poms.

 

Tony Woodley has received a written report from a senior officer present at Derek Simpson’s address, and I am pleased to say Tony has reacted swiftly and effectively. He has written to all officers and staff in Scotland rebutting Derek’s remarks and reiterating not just his support for the Organising agenda but that of the Executive and indeed UNITE under its instrument of amalgamation. He has also written a very strong letter personally to Derek Simpson.

 

I am aware that lay activists across the country are also reacting to this news. I understand that Region 1 T&G E&GP earlier this week has agreed to write a letter of protest to the Chair of the Executive and Region 7 has just agreed to do the same at its meeting yesterday. I am sure all of us in the T&G Broad Left would welcome a similar response across the union to make it clear once and for all that Derek’s behaviour at these meetings is not acceptable in a progressive democratic trade union.

 

I am copying this email to colleagues in AMICUS Unity Gazette

 

Martin Mayer

I must say that we lay activists in the T & G in Suffolk are very concerned about these developments. We have heard of them on the grapevine for some months now. We talked about our worries regarding the internal situation at our Branch meeting last week. We love our union, its fight for the working class, its  progressive politics, and are (despite all our criticisms) deeply loyal to it.

Now this…..

Rodents of the World Unite!

 

 The Most Oppressed Species on the Planet. 

This is a Guest Post by Revolutionary Rodents React-Back.

The Oxford Animal Laboratory is up and running. The first animals moved in were mice, and rodents will make up 98% of the inhabitants.

First they came for the mice, then for us rats!

 

As a pillar of neo-liberal imperialist capitalist exploitation this so-called Laboratory (more like concentration camp) is backed by such bogus neo-liberal imperialist gangs as the Pro-test group.

 

Centuries of suffering under the capitalist boot  have left us rats with a ‘bad reputation’and like all oppressed groups get called vicious names, such as ‘vermin’, and ‘pests’ not to mention the verb ‘to rat on someone’. We were blamed for the Black Death and Bubonic Plague (in reality caused by a feudal coterie, early so-called ’scientists’ and animal testers, and this myth blaming us created by the usual alliance of ‘rationalist’ Enlightenment figures and other racists).  The memory of the old ‘rat-catcher’ is still fresh in our minds as we rise up to fight for equality and our rights.

 

We are glad to hear that the Green Party has recently backed the struggle of rodents. In pursuit of equal opportunities the SWP has elected several rats to its leadership. Respect (Renewal) is now led by a rat (though Comrade Galloway we have political differences about your role trying to make alliances with cats by dressing up as a feline).

 

Forward to true animal liberation! Defend the excluded. Fight imperialist science!

Ca suffit comme ça! Jean-Luc Mélenchon et Marc Dolez

For a Real Republic!

Mélenchon’s New site: http://www.casuffitcommeca.fr/

This describes their call for a new party and appeals for support.

 

I can’t help being reminded of the doomed split of  Jean-Pierre Chevènement, sénateur du Territoire de Belfort, président du Mouvement Républicain et Citoyen (MRC), from the PS, also on a ‘republican’ line. That was way back of course. And mind you I like Jean-Luc much much better. He is definitely a socialist.

Parti Socialiste at Reims: After the Vote, the Battle Commences

Royal in an Exalted mood.

The Parti Socialist’s congrès de Reims opens tomorrow. The party membership votes, sorted by motion, which determine the composition of the national leadership, have been cast and counted. But all is not decided. The PS is descending in an orgy of in-fighting as the rivals of Ségolène Royal search all means to beat her off from assuming real control of the Party.

 

It will be a sad weekend for the European Left to see a party, which still has a strong Left (though it lost half its votes this year round) centre on a personality clash. The ideas of Royal, which offer some way of synthesising participative (though not self-management) democracy and classical social democracy would be more deserving of debate were it not for her desire for an alliance with the Centre party of F. Bayrou. Who is a smug toss-pot, or gentleman farmer as they say in French.

Puff for New Interventions and Chartist.

 

 Weekly Worker Sub-Editors Discuss French Politics.

New Interventions is a brilliant Socialist discussion journal. The latest issue has a particularly interesting article by Paul Flewers on the Soviet Union. A real forum for the left it is growing in importance. This Review is very internationalist. C’est très recommandé…

 

The Other is Chartist. Ultimate (with the Briefing) rampart of the left of the Labour Party and other democratic socialist forces.

 

Us liquidationist Pabloites, who back the the er, liquidationists in the LCR (Picquet), plus the other sneerers and nay-sayers of the ultra-left binge of the Ligue and the Weekly Worker,  not to mention having at least understanding for Jean-Luc Mélenchon et Marc Dolez, have, naturally, associations with both journals.

Obama Against Gay Marriage.

Obama’s Tootsies.

It had to come. It has come: Obama stands on feet of clay.

 

His opposition to Gay marriage is becoming an issue.

 

Coatesy feels very strongly in favour of gay rights, or LGBT rights as we very correct people always call them. We are particularly in favour of what we in the UK call ‘civil partnerships’. We once saw a film on the telly about an American woman whose female partner died. All the property and assets were in the partner’s name. A profoundly loving relationship they had made no formal documents to show joint contributions. After the death the family of her beloved came, took the house, and turfed the poor woman onto the street.

 

We asked a local gay activist who is Labour Councillor about this. He said that he knew of a number of cases where this had happened in England, and that was one of the principal reasons for civil partnerships, though naturally an open declaration of love was somewhat of a factor as well.

 

Shame on you Obama.

Parti Socialiste: Dégringolade

 

Latest news, despite the dominance of Royal’s Motion she has failed to draw under her wing the other competing tendencies (which together outnumber her). Tout sauf Ségolène (anyone but Royal) seems to be a pretty dominant mood amongst them. The whole charade is having the effect of winding down/ruining the party and the tumble  (dégringolade) of its support. Even the British Guardian is commenting (in a relatively well-informed piece, that misses out mention of Jean-Luc Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s resignation) on the looming disaster and basket case that is the PS.

On the Mélenchon, it is reported the Parti Communiste wants negotiations with him for an electoral alliance for the European elections, and that some prominent other social-republican leftists have joined up with him, as well as people from ‘anti-liberal’ collectives.

Besancenot Lurks.

 Besancenot Gives a Lesson.

Hovering in the background to the Parti Socialiste Congress (unfolding in all its misery)  is the rather visible presence of Olivier Besancenot. Him of the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire and the nouveau parti anticapitaliste. The Rhinoceros in Le Living who’s turned up with attitude.

Opinion polls give him between 11% and 12% of the vote in a future Presidential contest. Given that the Parti Socialiste’s potential candidates only get mid-20s% voting intentions this is a lot.

 

I am writing some stuff in more detail about this but here are some preliminary observations.

 

Before I get the usual accusations against our proud tradition of liquidationism, I would like to point out that I have an extremely long connection with the Ligue, going back to my IMG Cell in Central London in the mid-1970s where two members were French; one is still an active member of the ISG. Culturally and politically I have been, since adolescence, close to the LCR (though closeness does not mean sameness). As I was saying to Krivine in May (this is not made up), at the Conway Hall May event, I was very impressed by the NPA’s ability attract ‘normal’ people (one can see clips of this on the LCR’s site) who were outside the milieu the far-left normally comes from. He was visibly glowing.

 

That was not all we chatted about. Actually if anyone’s interested, this is the first time I’ve mentioned it publicly (which shows how much it affected me),  we spent most of our conversation  talking about the tragic death of our dear comrade and beloved friend Maurice Najman.

But let’s face facts.

Fine, they’ve got around 11,000 card-holders (maybe more). They have workers (the PS by contrast is estimated to have around 5% of its membership who are working class). But, but but. The NPA runs against the grain of unity amongst the left: it is launched on its own and brooks no opposition from the Left. Its attitude towards the left of the PS, and those who have broken from the PS (such as MÉLENCHON)  shows just how far they are inflating their own sense of self-important  donneurs de leçons (‘lesson givers’). The PCF have accused Besancenot of sectarianism. Given that they are world-class experts in this I think their judgement must be given weight.

 

Let’s not forget that the structure of French Presidential elections (two rounds) is designed for the voters to ‘dream’ for their ideal candidate, and then (second round) vote for the real one. Somehow I do not think that Besancenot is going to get far towards that.

 

Naturally there’s always the revolution!

PS: Nothing Decided. Paris is surely a Mess!

 

 Has Known Better Days.

Parti Socialiste Congress. Nothing really decided. No synthesis (agreed platform). No agreement on the leadership. Hate in the gut.

Ce sera donc aux militants de trancher puisque les chefs ont été incapables de s’entendre. Le congrès de Reims s’est achevé, dimanche 16 novembre, sans que l’on puisse deviner qui succédera à François Hollande à la tête du PS. (Le Monde)

It will be the activists who decide, since the leaders are incapable of reaching an agreement. The Congress of Reims has finished, on Sunday the 16th of November, without anyone being sure who will succeed  François Holland at the head of the PS.

 

What a bleeding Mess!

Defend the AWL.

 

Readers of this Blog may have got the (correct) impression that Tendance Coatesy loathes the AWL. But here is a good reason to stand in their defence. Like a rock.

 

Something called  David Ellis has been making these accusations on Stroppy Blog: “ VP [Volatire's Priest and a mate] is simply a useful arse hole for the AWL and Jim Denham is paid by their wealthy Zionist supporters to propagandise for the Zionist cause. Clive is a prick and Janine is autistic.”

He also has opinions about Israel (no doubt also on the 9/11 ‘myth’ and those Jews who were ‘absent’ from the Twin Towers). Apparently it is building the biggest concentration camp in history (naturally the ‘myth’ of the Shoah  is another one these wise guys wish to demolish).

 

Which gives a sick taste in my mouth.

 

Apparently the creature is a member of the Galloway Respect.

Ségolène Royal on France-Inter.

 Members will Decide.

This morning I listened to Ségolène Royal on France-Inter. In the run-up to the direct vote (by the membership of the PS) for General Secretary (Premier secrétaire) or one could say, the Parti Socialiste Chair, she will be standing against Martine Aubry. At times Royal sounded like a wounded animal. She did however declare that she will stand up for the victims of capitalism, was for socialism, and (this repeated) that she was a staunch defender of La laïcité (secularism). Very ambiguous about an alliance with Modem François Bayrou  though. Still it was so obviously heart-felt and genuine that even a political opponent ( I would count myself amongst them) would have been touched. She admitted that there a “front” against her, notably endorsed by ’social-liberal’ Mayor of Paris,  Bertrand Delanoé. I would put it no lower, but there is obviously an element of bullying against her.

 

These are terrible times for the Parti Socialiste.

 

Were I a member I would  say vote Benoît Hamon.

Don’t criminalise the Sex Trade!

The English Collective of Prostitutes showed true love in our hour of need.

Ipswich Trades Council  has worked with this group. As hardened leftists we are well aware of the background of the Kings Cross Women’s Centre (now relocated to Kilburn).  However it must be said that they have treated us with great respect. The two young and wonderful anarchist women who  organised the Ipswich Reclaim the Night demo say the same.  I need not say why Ipswich comrades are involved in the issue.

 

Plans to criminalise the buying of sex, are now afoot. The influence of scum like Julie Bindel, in the media and other reactionaries is well known. But…

“Public opinion is increasingly hostile to repressive policies that force prostitution underground, and make it less safe for sex workers. 

 

o        In February, the Safety First Coalition with MPs and Peers defeated government attempts to “rehabilitate” sex workers and increase arrests. 

o        On 14 November, the IQ2 debate at the Royal Geographical Society defeated “It is Wrong to Pay for Sex “by 449 to 203.

o        The Communications Workers Union has voted for decriminalisation.

o        Long established women’s organisations are canvassing their members.

o        Lapdancers handed into Downing Street a 3,000-strong petition against tightening licensing laws.

o        Internationally, New Zealand’s five-year review showed decriminalisation is a success. In US, the historical election that voted Barrack Obama as president by a landslide, was also memorable in San Francisco for Proposition K to decriminalise prostitution in the city. Prop K got 43% of the votes – astonishing given that its sex-worker-led campaign had no funding, and that the police, District Attorney and Mayor used their position to misinform and scare voters. 

 

Workers don’t benefit from criminalisation.The ECP has been inundated by women who have been raided, arrested and charged, and face imprisonment for running safe, discrete premises where no coercion is taking place. Anti-trafficking legislation is being used to justify these raids. Who will support families hit by recession when mothers and daughters who sell sex are imprisoned? How can women who want to get out of prostitution find another job if they have a criminal record?

 

Pimps, violent men and “rehabilitation” projects benefit. Pimps are attracted by any illegal economy. Violent men know that illegal workers can’t report violence or exploitation. And more anti-prostitution projects will be funded to “save” the rest of us.

 

Why are resources wasted on policing consenting sex when most rapists are getting away with it? Why are anti-trafficking laws used to deport women? 

 

Sex workers want rights, not charity. We want safety, not prison.

Listen to the workers, not the preachers.

 

 

ecp@allwomencount.net

www.prostitutescollective.net

 

 The spine of the oppressed rises with this call.

 

 

 

When the Victory of Communism Comes.

 

.

Symbol of Hope and Freedom.

 

When the the Red flag flutters from Capitol Hill, Big Ben and the  Élysée. When we can have a decent pint of real ale in Mecca, and the capitalist roaders have been expelled from the Kremlin and Beijing.

When true human liberty is established. And there is an equal association of the producers and all human kind.

When every pauvre hères stands upright, and the capitalist crooks, racists, and religious bigots are cowed.

Just a Thursday dream, eh?

Parti Socialiste: Totale Verklopps.

Socialist Party Maître Penseur  at work.

Actually I thought I’d just made the word Verklopps up. Though I found when Googling that it has an existence in German.

 

But it seems to me that the Parti Socialiste is in such a mess that something needs making up.

 

There will be a second round in the election of their General Secretary. The fight between Martine Aubry, Benoît Hamon et Ségolène Royal has been reduced to one between the two women.

 

Bienvenue  à la misère!

To the Glory of the Working Class.

 Every propeller is straining in Defence of the Working Class.

Getting on my tits.

 

This association  made by people between the BNP and the English working class.

 

The working class is full of people who are anti-racist, violently anti-racist I would say. The English labour movement is one of the prime vectors of anti-racism. The toffs think we lot (I am intelligentsia but closely aligned) are thick and chavs. I ask: who are the blokes and blokettes who stand up for socialism when shove comes to push? Answer: the working class.

 

Its political formation in Chartism was led by Irish men. My own mates are a group of mixed Caribbean, Irish, Bengalis, Londoners, oh and a few Ipswich and Suffolk  lads. We talk about such political subjects as food (in fact our main topic), birds, films, what we saw on the telly, football (well there I couldn’t give a toss about football), ancient philosophy (I am not making this up), and politics. Yesterday in the pub one very working class bloke said to me how pleased he was to see that the BNP got their comeuppance when after the publication of their membership list someone shoved a Molotov cocktail up their arses. We really do not like racists.

Aubry: PS Winner by 42 Votes

 Martine Aubry looking very Christian.

Socailist Party. election of First Secretary. I seem to be rather alone on this but it is one of the most important events for the European Left. Anyway, “Il y a eu une avance très faible, mais une avance pour Martine Aubry de 42 voix”.  That is Martine won by a sliver of 42. Bad looser Royal says this:

 

Ségolène Royal ne s’avoue pas vaincue et réclame un vote “clair”

PARIS – Ségolène Royal a refusé de s’avouer vaincue, après l’annonce de la courte victoire de Martine Aubry dans la course à la tête du Parti socialiste.

 

That is, she refuses to accept defeat. In fact she is calling for another vote. There are plenty of allegations circulating that votes went ‘missing’ and that the ballot boxes got interfered with.

They don’t make stuff like this up.

 

Plug for La Commune

 Que les réacs crèvent !

It is very encouraging to see that a  new group is now standing up for self-management, workers’ control and communism from below.  The Commune has produced an excellent magazine and web-site. I notice that an old mucker of mine, Terry Liddle, has an article in it. All tip-top material.

 

Personally I thought our tendency, for self-management, had all but died. Ken Coates sent me a reprint of articles on workers’ control about three years back and I felt that it was but of historic interest.

 

My own first contact with this current came from when I was about fourteen and used to buy stuff from Collet’s in Charing Cross Road. From the Institute for Workers’ Control. And Solidarity. I left school at sixteen and did a string of manual and clerical jobs where these ideas (that is, we should be in charge not the bosses) had great appeal. When still a teenager and back in part-time in education I was very closely involved with the Portuguese Workers’ Co-ordinating Committee (actually I was a student organiser when it became the Campaign to defend the Portuguese working class) many of whose members were supporters of the MES (Movimento de Esquerda Socialista), a ‘centrist’ organisation which stood for democratic self-managed socialism during the Carnation Revolution.

 

Centrist, for those of us who are on the left, means a democratic Marxist, disliked by Troskyistsand right-wing social democrats alike. Our heritage lies in the Independent Labour Party, Austro-Marxism, the independent Russian Marxists, the Spanish POUM and the French PSU. In some ways (on this subject of workers’ power) we are similar to the ‘left-communists’

 

I have been involved with the self-management tendency in France (FGA/PSU and the ‘Pabloites’). When I came back to Britain, the ‘centrist’ group the Socialist Society (I was on their Steering Committee). Noticed a few embers glowing, mainly around the anarchist left. Red Pepper does have the occasional article, (though since it published a few articles grovelling to the Islamicists I have don’t have much time for it). Not much in general.

 

As I say I really though our lot had died out in the UK.

 

Apparently Dave Broder and his mates are doing sterling work.

 

Vive La Commune!

Shocked and Stunned: French Parti Socialiste Members.

La Tristesse.

From le Monde today, the unfolding débâcle that is the French Parti Socialiste and its failure to  settle on a new First Secretary clearly (this will be formally resolved by the Party shortly but I have a feeling that it won’t end there). Just one example, 40 federations are already the subject of legal actions.

 

Les militants du PS, choqués, ne voient pas d’issue à la crise.

Members of the PS, shocked, don’t see an end to the crisis.

“Grande tristesse, grosse frustration”

 Great sadness, great frustration.

There is talk of an open split in the Party.

Less than Four votes separate the PS candidates. Allegedly.

Julien Dray, former leading LCR member, then of the Gauche Socialiste, now lieutenant of Ségolène Royal.

From le Monde:

Selon le “royaliste” Peillon, plus que quatre voix séparent les deux candidates.

According to the ‘royalist’ Peillon (Euro-deputy) less than four votes separate the two candidates.

From  Libération

Les partisans de Ségolène Royal posent un ultimatum à la commission de récolement, menaçant de saisir la justice et d’appeler à une manif devant le siège du PS si la commission ne se saisit pas de certains cas litigieux.

 The supporters of Ségolène Royal have laid down an ultimation to the (PS) control committee, threatening to to go to the courts and have called for a demonstration outside the PS HQ if it does not deal with the votes that are in doubt.

In principle the Commision will make a decision today.

I realise the British left is more interested in its own internal obsessions, like whether George Galloway will appear as a Panto Dame ‘Kitty’ this year, the fate of the various left ‘unity’ groupings (all strangely rather separate) or where the the CPGB/AWL battles are leading.  But I think that the vicious internal quarrels of one of the most important social democratic parties in the world, that contains an important socialist minority, merit some attention.

French Parti Socialiste on E-Bay.

In the light of Aubry’s short victory, endorsed last night by the PS, in an atmosphere said to be like the ‘Supreme Soviet’ (by Le Monde) today’s  Nouvel Observateur carries this story which casts doubt on the Head Command:

“Un internaute a mis en vente le Parti socialiste sur ebay.fr, l’annonce faisant état d’un parti “peu utilisé” mais vendu “sans capitaine”. Le prix a déjà atteint 10 millions d’euros mais la livraison est offerte.”

 

Someone has put the Parti Socialiste up for sale on ebay.fr. The ad stated that it was little used and up for offer however ‘without a captain’. The price has already got up to 10 millions but the delivery is included.

More comment about the PS (in French and from a while back)  which gives reasons why she is not universally loved.

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=D0gjvrmDXA4

So Farewell then John Rees.

 John Rees with Friends.

It is with great sorrow that we learn of the SWP’s decision to dismiss Comrade John Rees  (and here) from its Central Committee. The pro-imperialists and globalising liquidators  may have criticised his alliance with the murdering clerical fascists of al-sadar (see above photo), his role in destroying the Socialist Alliance in order to huddle up with huckster Kitty Galloway, Islamicist communalists, businessmen, and his personal obnoxious arrogance. We say: nay, nay, thrice nay!

Tendance Coatesy’s Court Poet, Emily Thribbs (aged eight) immediately penned this moving ode in commemoration of one of the great leaders of the International Proletariat.

 

So Farewell then to John Rees?

“Ress, the most unhappy of men,

Wither the whistling Swoppie tend his line?

Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind

Powers, that wish for thee: smog, dirt and spit

There’s not a breath of the flatulent wind

That will forget thee; thou hast great allies,

Thy friends are exhalations, agonies,

And goatee beards”

Sarkozy Nous Voilà!

 

This fantastic satire, with acid sarcasm, sends shivers down yer spine. It is to remind us what the real class enemy is like.

Here Sarkozy takes the place of Pétain, following the famous song Maréchal, nous voilà!! It was an anthem of the Vichy regime. The fascist French daily Présent takes its name from a line in this chant.

 

The music was stolen from Casimir Oberfeld who was murdered in Auswitch – because he was Jewish.

Indian Communists Condemn Mumbai Attack.

 There is no image for this post: it is too painful.

 Communist Party of India (Marxist)

 

November 27, 2008  Press Statement  The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:  On Terrorist Strike in Mumbai  The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) expresses its deep shock and outrage at the multiple attacks in Mumbai city which have led to the loss of more than a hundred lives and injuries to many. These attacks targeting a railway station, hotels and other places by groups of heavily armed men accompanied by explosions, bear the hallmark of a carefully planned terrorist strike.  The country expects the government and the security agencies to uncover the full scope of this nefarious attack and the forces behind it. Given the recurring and widespread pattern of terrorist attacks occurring in the country, the Central Government has to assure the people that concerted efforts are being made to tackle the problem.  The immediate need is for the people to face this grim situation with fortitude and foil any sectarian attempts to exploit the situation. The entire country expresses its solidarity with the people of Mumbai in this difficult situation.  The Polit Bureau conveys its heartfelt sympathy to all those who have lost their loved ones including the police personnel who have died.  The loss of Hemant Karkare, the brave officer who was heading the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad and other police officials is especially grievous.

Simple, dignified and to the point.

 

[I wonder how long it will be before some British liberal Islamophile or 'anti-imperialist' will come out with a comment 'understanding' why these creatures attacked the beloved people of Mumbai. Suggestions: US oppression of Muslims, European oppression of Muslims, British oppression of Muslims, India's oppression of Muslims, Zionist oppression of Muslims.]

[Note added to Note. I spoke too soon. Tariq Ali has already been at work finding ‘reasons’ for mass murder. With explanations at hand for the Mumbai attack he pontificates that“It’s hardlty a secret that there has been much anger”within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimation and acts of violence (in India.)”.

Tariq since you speak all tongues and are an expert on every country on the globe, and their politics, as well as those of a few planets outside the solar system, you’ll get this expression in French that sums up your stand, ‘tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner’. Roughly to ‘to say you have ‘understanding’ for something, is to excuse it.’

Gramsci: Death Bed Conversion to Catholicism?

Gramsci is Buried in the Protestant Cemetery (for all non-Catholics in fact) in Rome (I have visited his grave).

‘Revelations’ that Gramsci converted to Catholicism  on his death-bed (here) have been made. This claim surfaced through the mouth of Luigi de Magistris, a former Apostolic Penitentiary Archbishop. This week on the Vatican Radio he made the assertion that the Italian Communist Party leader returned to the faith of his childhood before dying.

 

This (similar claims were made in the late sixties) has been vigorously denied by the Philosopher and ex-Parliamentary deputy Beppe Vacca, President of the Gramsci Institute. “None of the numerous documents, published or unpublished, about the last hours of Antonio Gramsci give any support to the suggestion that he was converted”. (le Monde) There is no proof (here). Apperently there aren’t any journalists on the Times who know much about Gramsci or who can read French* well enough to include these statements in their piss-poor report on the matter.

Most secular people would have thought that the Catholic Church, indeed any Church, had given up that little trick about last-moment confessions and dying sinners embracing the faith, in, well, say the late Victorian era.

 

Obviously not.

 

* Added following day: or Italian. Story here rigorously exposing the falsity of the claim.

Robert Hue leaves Parti Communiste National Council.

After John Rees another Dodgy Beardy who brought Failure in his Wake.

From Libération:

 ”L’ancien leader du Parti communiste français Robert Hue a annoncé dans une lettre à la secrétaire nationale du PCF, Marie-George Buffet, qu’il quittait le Conseil national (parlement) du parti, et entendait prendre prochainement une “initiative”.”

The former leader of the French Communist party Robert Hue has stated in a letter to the National Secretary of the PCF, Marie-George Buffet, that he has resigned from the National Council (Parlement) of the party and intends shortly to take an ‘initiative’.

Robert Hue was in charge of the PCF (1994 – 2001) during its most dramatic period of decline. From a national force capable of getting in 1969 21,5% in the Presidential election, and even in 1981, obtaining 15% ,  to his own score of 8,6% as Candidate in 1995 , to, finally, 3,37% in 2002. Party membership went from 200,000 in 1998 to 138,000 in 2001.

 

Hue has always given me the creeps.

 

Perhaps that because his beard resembles a bit Raymond’s, the psycopath in the film, The Vanishing.

 

The Question everyone on the Left is asking: what is it about Beards?

Tariq Ali: Renegade or Patrician Pillock?

Back to the Sixties: Ali with Kindred Spirit.

‘The East is Green’ announced Tariq Ali in New Left Review 38 (2006). Now we have news that he has definitely passed over the the Green side, praising the Taliban and Hamas.

In NLR (after some vile comments calling the Iraqi Kurds the ‘Gurkhas of the invador’) he described the present rise of Islamism, from the Middle East to Iran,

“A radical wind is blowing from the allies and shacks of the latter-day wretched of the earth, surrounded by the fabulous oil wealth. The limits of this radicalism, so long as it is captured by the Koran, are clear enough. The impulses of charity and solidarity are infinitely better than those of imperial greed and comprador submission, but so long they offer as what they offer is social amelioration rather than reconstruction, then they are are sooner or latter liable to recuperation by the existing order .”

What they need is someone resembling Simon Bolivar,  a Morales, a Chávez .

Put simply, come back 1960s third-worldism. Fanon was right. On one side stand the ‘wretched of the earth’, in this case the Muslim masses bound by ’solidarity and charity’. On the other ‘imperial greed’. Ali helpfully notes that the Qu’ran has ‘limits’ (surely not!). But in any case a great leader is needed, a Helmsman perhaps, to steer the masses away from the ‘existing order’.  

This dérive, as we say, has not drifted away. Imtiaz Baloch reports an Ali speech made  In Toronto, Canada,  on November the 14th this year.  All began well, with Ali sagely giving the usual round-up of the world conflict between imperialism and the oppressed,  offering his opinions on the US elections, many many other lands, the situation in South Asia, and no doubt the price of milk in Sainsbury’s.

Then doubt began to surface in Baloch’s mind,

He also managed to present one dramatized case of forcible disappearance of a Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiquiin US custody for alleged links with Al-Qaida.

Speaking of torture, Tariq Ali slammed Hasni Mobarak’s Egypt, but a kept a complete silence on the brutal practices of torture by the Islamic Republic of Iran where thousands of progressive activists have been tortured and hanged publicly.

He praised Sheikh Nasarullah’s Hezbollah in Lebanon as “heroic”, conveniently forgetting to mention this group’s ideological, financial, and military support from the Islamic Republic of Iran and Syria.
The two states, one theocratic and the other a dictatorship – both infamous for brutally repressing their own people including torture and murder of communists.

Then the ‘bombshell’. Talking of Afghanistan,

Instead of denouncing the atrocities carried out by the Taliban, the beheadings and the throwing of acid on the faces of schoolgirls, Tariq Ali eulogized the neo-Taliban as an indigenous movement representing Pashtun nationalism.

Baloch comments,

The old Left and the neo-Taliban have bonded into a new friendship with a common cause – Bush-bashing, for which, Islamic populist sentimentalism, state and strong army have become important tools of the trade. Today, it is not surprising to see former Marxists collude with Jihadis, but to see Tariq Ali in that role was a huge let down.

Now much of Baloch’s post is taken up with discussion of  Balochistan and Ali’s denial of its right to self-determination. Tendance Coatesy is not capable of judging this cause (unlike Ali we do not have the patrician desire to be a a Universal Pundit), except to back the comrades fight for democratic rights to the hilt.

Once upon a time Ali denounced the clash of fundementalisms:  neo-liberalism-imperialism, and Islamisim. Now he has found virtue in the latter, a mask (as Fanon might have put it) for the legitimate aspirations of the world’s oppressed, or maybe (as he gets ever more doting towards his new found friends) the vehicle of the wretched that will bring down the US and its comprador allies.

Is this a case of the ‘eternal return’? Further back sixties ‘fightin’ man’ Ali indulged himself fully in the romance of third-worldism, in which class was obscured by a fog of rhetoric, and national liberation over-rode democracy and socialism.

Today democracy and socialism have been shown, in the most forceful manner, to be indissolubly linked. In all its various forms Islamism is a enemy of democracy, and the movements Ali now admires are its most brutal opponent. Every Islamist party or faction, from ‘moderates’ to jihadists,  is led by the pious Islamic bourgeoisie, and represent this class interest. It aims to destroy class solidarity in favour of the united community of the believers in a capitalist theocracy. While ‘consensual’ oppression may be the declared aim of some, no type of Islamism has ever liberated anyone. These forces are opposed by the entire progressive left. From the gaols of Tehran to the killing fields of Sudan, the masses of the world cry out for democracy, an end to Islamic oppression and racism. Without being in the slightest emotional Tendance Coatesy says that the bloody corpses of our fallen comrades scream out for justiceagainst their Qu’ranic inspired foe.

 

Apparently their voices haven’t reached Ali’s chocolate box village of Sweffling in Norfolk.

Workfare: Slouching Roughly Towards the Workhouse.

Workfare Has A Long History of Success.

The BBC Reports today that the Wednesday’s Queen’s Speech will contain Welfare ‘reform’ measures and that, “Almost everyone on benefits would have to prepare themselves for work or face sanctions under proposals in a report commissioned by the government. ” and that, “unemployed people should do a 9-5 day looking for work or doing community work, to tackle joblessness.”

A central issue is: how exactly will these the workfare proposals be organised?

We know that Gordon Brown’s words about prioritising ‘hard-working’ people and families are not mere rhetoric (he has a tendresse for those who sweat it out in order to rake money off the backs of the poor). Now he intends to force the unemployed (of all categories, including the disabled and lone parents) to piss around all day staring at the ever-decreasing pool of job vacancies, and filling in application forms asking questions about your sexuality and religious beliefs. Or do ‘community’ stuff and  work bloody hard, be it for a pittance.

Compass has published a declaration (here) against the Government’s new welfare ‘reform’ measures. This follows the National Conference of Trades Councils which passed a resolution (here) earlier this year (originally from Ipswich and District TUC). It noted that existing New Deal programmes were rife with exploitation, riddled with the potential for bullying, that the private companies and ‘voluntary’ bodies offering them made large profits while offering a very variable level of training (often of no value whatsoever) and that work ‘placements’ were open to abuse by employers who used them as as a source of free labour. The Trades Councils called for (notably): the end of compulsion in existing schemes, a decent level of pay for any work undertaken, full workers’ rights for those on such schemes, independent tribunals to supervise the system, and the creation of real jobs.

It seems (see Compass) that our concerns are being heeded by a growing section of the labour movement and the left.

Already Income Support is explicitly based on the Poor Law criterion of ‘least eligibility’. That is, the standard of living on the Dole is worse than that of the worst possible employment. A blitz on Incapacity Benefit claimants is already causing great distress and cuts in benefits as they are aligned to the same principle.

It will get worse. If the government presses ahead (and there is no reason at present to think otherwise) we will see (at a time of rising unemployment) massive amounts of money transferred to an already multi-million pound cluster of businesses engaged in ‘training’ and obliging people to take up ‘placements’ (three months work of a kind for Dole plus £15 a week). I am not an expert on single-parents and Incapacity Benefit, but it is certain that many people’s lives will be made worse as they come under close inspection by these bodies. In future no doubt they will supervise the gangs of the out-of-work made to carry out tasks previously undertaken by those sentenced by the Courts to do Community Service. The existing period of ‘placements’ will be extended indefinitely. Services offered by existing public bodies (such as the notorious ‘cleaning the streets’ proposals) will be done on the cheap. Without any rights, bullying and intimidation will relentlessly expand. This will undermine the existing pay and conditions of public sector workers. Finally, since the ‘reform’ contains ‘tough love’ clauses about cutting off benefits to those who do no comply, there will be a growth in absolute destitution.

Are Gordon Brown’s New Poor Laws a reasonable answer to mass unemployment.

 

I think not.

Gordon Brown’s Mentor.

Brown’s Mentor with Unemployed Trainees.

Much has been made claiming that the Government’s Welfare ‘reforms’ (to be announced today in the Queen’s Speech), are inspired by Nordic social democracy. Like bleeding hell they are. In these lands the benefits and genuine training would make the average UK doley, disabled and lone parent, weep (though Denmark has its vicious liberal market side, no doubt the bit Brown likes). But in general this reference is sand in the eyes of Labour supporters, to make them feel better (not that sand in your peepers  makes you feel anything but irritation).

There are two real inspirations.

The first lies in Brown’s idea of making social policy fit a ‘market state’.Instead of welfare to support people in tough times (a ’safe home’) , which encourages you to go out an explore the world in security, this entails endless ‘training’ to ‘equip’ you to compete in the market economy. The fact that the training offered is patently incapable of teaching more than basic literacy and numeracy (no doubt useful for workless bankers), is passed over. To make this system function all benefits have to be set at the lowest possible level, as an ‘incentive’ to find employment. The clearest proof of this is that there are no payment increases whatsoever in the pipe-line to compensate the out-of-work on JSA for the massive gas and electricity rises underway.

The second is more colourful. Tendance Coatesy can exclusively reveal the identity of the Cabinet Adviser (pictured above) behind the latest welfare legislation. He is Deputy Dawg of Houndstown Texas. We talked to him in his home town last week. His own ‘Workfare Program’, affectionately known as the ‘Chain Gang’, has, in his own words,  reduced the number of “criters lazin’ round town.” From picking cotton, to cleaning the sidewalk, to shining honest citizens’ shoes, a variety of skills are learnt. Not forgetting diversity issues Dawg has made sure that “them colored folks” are fully participating. Indeed they make up over 50% of the intake (an encouraging figure since African-Americans are only 5% of the population of Houndstown). The dedicated Deputy is the source for the bright idea of using lie-detectors to sniff out false benefit claims. he has further ideas, “Old Sparkey is a sure way to keepthem mean varmits on their toes.” He looks wistful, “But while my lille Buddy Parnell likes the idea some of them tree-huggers are agin it.”

There are plans for the Deputy to produce a new series of his evergreen cartoons, broadcasting this example, to be shown in Schools and Job Centres.

Review: Strange Fruit Indeed.

Strange Fruit. Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate. Kenan Malik Oneworld 2008.

 

Kenan Malik has a mixed reputation. He is best known for his criticisms of race ‘realism’ (or bluntly – racism), conventional multiculturalism, and his defence of the scientific traditions of the Enlightenment against cultural relativism. Whatever their stand on this, to some on the left he may as well have scarlet letters branded on his breast reading Living Marxism. To others however, who have long developed a parallel critical stand on these issues, his writings are stimulating and always worth reading. Though, sometimes, he can seriously irritate.

 

Proving he has not lost the capacity to annoy, Strange Fruit begins with a contestable claim. That, “racial talk today is as likely to come out of the mouths of liberal antiracists as of reactionary racial scientists. The affirmation of difference, which once was at the heart of racial science, has become a key plank of the anti-racist outlook.”(P 5) While ‘difference’ remains a popular principle amongst a certain kind of leftist (public employees and academics), and the idea that people should replace fear of the Other with Respect, is still a liberal hobby-horse, it seems that its high-water mark has passed. Equality and rationality are coming back into fashion. Malik’s book therefore raises reservations, above all on the claim that “Antiracism has become an irrational, anti-scientific philosophy”. (P 6) A growing number of anti-racists are, as some have long been, opposed to precisely the relativist and romantic ideas of race and culture that Malik so forcefully attacks. 

 

The core of Strange Fruit is its discussion of the role of genetics of race-thinking. Classic old style racism has continued in the belief that our genes show profound differences in humans, and there are still psuedo-scientific studies claiming differences of intelligence. He demolishes these (largely socio-biological) theories  by a clear overview of the Human Genome project, and other elements such as discoveries about the distribution (mixed everywhere) of blood groups. Clearly race is not a scientific category in any real sense, it is a cultural one. Unfortunately as Malik demonstrates for many (the givers of courses in ‘diversity’ are a notorious case) identity is seen as a “genetic heritage, inextricably linking race, culture and belonging.”(P 63) The world is divided into distinct blocks of different human kinds, Diversity against Unity.

 

Where does this come from? Why pit these against each other? One source is a would-be radical assault on ‘rationality’ and ‘Euro-centeredness’. The notion that science and rationality are bureaucratic monsters (Foucault’s power-making-truth machine) has played a part. That there is something particularly obnoxious in European civilisation that smothers other societies.  That, in particular, the Enlightenment annihilated the cultural worth of non-Europeans. That it denied any merit to Non-European thought, making its science the sole criterion of knowledge.  That it was racist. Even (to the kind of theorist who finds even Cloud Cuckoo Land a bit too mundane) that it is ultimately linked to the Holocaust.

 

Malik tackles the assertion that the Enlightenment is to blame for racialism. Obviously real race-ideology derives from its opponents: the Counter-Enlightenment (Gobineau to cite but one). He points out that its universalist principles offered ‘civilisation’ even to those from cultures which were at present deemed (from their 18^thcentury vantage point) as primitive or barbarian. Equal worth and capacity were the essence of the human condition, only circumstances marred them. He divides the Enlightenment (following Jonathan Israel), rather schematically into radicals and conservatives “whether reason reigned supreme in human affairs, as the radicals insisted, or whether reason had to be limited by faith and tradition, the mainstream view.” (P 88) Malik puts Kant in the latter category, even though the author of What is Enlightenment? answered his own question as: it meant above all the use of your own reason with no deference to authority. Diderot, hard to classify, has a cautious strain but was very anti-colonialist. And so it goes..

 

His claim that “toleration, personal freedom, democracy, racial equality, sexual emancipation and the universal right to knowledge” comes from the Radical Enlightenment. (P 89) equally needs some needs qualifications. These would bring him down from the world of ideas to that of politics, supremely those of the French Revolution. There he would have been able to explore the beginnings of social institutions that put these into practice, the barriers faced by the radicals, their heroism and their shameful defeat. He would consider the brilliant Olympe de Gouges, the feminist pioneer, guillotined for her pains, the paradoxes of the anti-Slavery founder of the Société des Amis des Noirs, Abbé Grégoire (Anti-racist but anti-regional French languages), and the philosophe turned politician, Condorcet.  This might have shaped the direction of Strange Fruit away from the ideological heavens, and hells,  to the politics which play the decisive role in the present power of multiculturalism (from a state desire to incorporate ethnic groups to the interests of self-appointed ‘community leaders’). Not to mention the occasions when politicians play the ‘race card’.

 

There is a great deal of interest in Malik’s outline of how UNESCO’s attempt to confront racism after the Second World War, and cultural anthropologists wish to reject assumptions of Western superiority ended up approaching a relativism so pure it cannot even stand for basic scientific rationality. Enter ’science’ of every kind of magic and alternative gibberish. Authenticity (a modern invention) leads to worshiping one’s (race-cultural) roots. The volkish notion of culture at its heart lent support for the notorious case of human remains, ‘Kennewick Man’ in the US. Discovered in Washington State these ancient bones, of enormous antiquity,  appear to be of no known human group, but were claimed by the local Native Americans as their own and tried to prevent scientific research on their origin.  In this case even the dead are instructed that they had “to bear a particular culture.”(P 177)

 

Another jump and we find Mailk baldly claiming that that the New Left adopted similar ideas, dropping the working class for new agencies in splintered cultural identities, each fighting its own oppressions. This may be true for some of the wilder forms of the US left, and remains a truism amongst the dying embers of post-modernism and such sects as the British Socialist Action (Ken Livingstone’s bag-people). But Malik would here again have benefited from having a wider political background than British groupuscules: these opinions are, and have always been, ultra-minority amongst most of the European left which has always tried to unite class movements and those of the oppressed (objectively oppressed that is, not by their ‘identity’ being thwarted). Cultural assertions have an importance nevertheless. Languages, like species, should be allowed to flourish and die without being suppressed or starved of oxygen. There is no contradiction between supporting, say, regional languages, which bear a culture that, to cite but literature and poetry which is unique, and standing for universal rights (equality before the law). The universalistic argument was made effectively long ago (by Saint Augustine in On Christian Doctrine) that while some judgements and tastes are properly relative (dress, family arrangements) some maxims are without exception. Augustine sharply cited the key test of the exceptions’ rule, “Treat others as you would be treated yourself.” Secularism which Malik unfortunately does not discuss, could be said to be an extended working out of this basic principle. Which itself deserves discussing within the broader context of a Marxist approach to ‘identity’ (what of nationality by the way? Malik barely mentions this) that links it to class and political forms, hey, let’s just call them states.

 

Malik only touches on Marxism in the vaguest terms, referring to its stand on human liberation, opposition to class exploitation, and positive attitude towards reason. But he does call for a return to the fight  for, ”humanism and reason.”(P 288)

 

 

Many of us have never abandoned it.

 

 

 

French Ultra Left Faces Unhinged Repression: Tarnac Affair.

Dangerous Stuff.

The French Political Police (okay, the  La Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur ) has developed an obsession with what it calls ‘ideological terrorism’. The arrests of nine young people at Tarnac (Corrèze) andParis, which have caused a national scandal, form part of what the DCRI calls the “return of Action Directe and the RAF”.

They stand accused of criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise. Specifically five of them are charged with having sabotaged TGV rail tracks on the 7th of November. The Paris Public Prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, has not hesitated to describe this as “armed struggle”. That is despite having no proof of this ‘project’ nor having found a single real weapon They did find  ’engines explosives’. Nevertheless that word generally (though not always)  designates, in French,  not bombs designed to kill but to cause damage. Like their British counterparts in similar circumstances the Prosecution has refused to divulge all the information which led to the arrests on the grounds that to do so  would affect  national security.

The basis for these claims lies in a wider thesis: that after the collapse of the French Communist Party (PCF) radicals would increasingly find turn to violent methods of opposition. The criminologue Alain Bauer, a self-styled ‘expert’ on political extremism, played a significant part in creating this climate.  On the Internet site of the Fnac (Paris’s biggest bookshop)  and  Amazon.com he discovered  L’insurrection qui vient (éd. la Fabrique). Claiming to foresee a strategy in  this text which resembled that of Action Directe he bought forty copies and sent them off to the head of the French police. In other words, here are people plotting a new wave of armed struggle, in a short time they will be acting on their words.

This annoymous work, produced by an ‘invisible committee’, has been clearly attributed by the Police to Julien Coupat, the principal accused in ’ l’affaire de Tarnac’. So it was a but a matter of when the opportunity cropped up before the Police went for him. Police raids discovered anarchist literature and (as mentioned) small explosive devices.  (Based on le Monde)

On the alleged sabotage the French Fédération Anarchiste comments,

Que sont quelques caténaires arrachées (parmi 27 000 actes de malveillances recensées par la SNCF pour la seule année 2007) causant le retard de quelques dizaines de trains 

It was a few catenaries (don’t ask me – I don’t know what this word means in English either) ripped up (amongst 27,000 acts of vandalism listed by the French Train Service for 2007 alone) which caused delays for a few dozen trains. 

At present, of the nine people arrested on the 11th of  November at  Tarnac (Corrèze) and  Paris, only two remain in prison, Julien Coupat  34 ans, considered as the group’s leader and Yldune, 25, his companion.  Both face charges of having deliberately damaged rail lines (Here) The actual shape of the trial will become clear in the coming weeks. 

Tendance Coatesy has no time whatsoever for any form of terrorism, and is not too fond of ‘autonomes’ in general either. But there is something about this whole affair, and the French state’s role in it, that stinks. To begin with the charge, that these people form an « association de malfaiteurs en vue d’une entreprise terroriste » (a criminal  association  with terrorist  objectives), is ambiguous, to say the least. Next, the central accusation, of sabotage, may or may not be true. But by whom and for what reason?  On the first question nothing is at all clear. On the second,  if these acts were committed for political reasons  I would strongly suppose that they were a gesture of solidarity with something or other (rather a futile one I would say, like autonomism and anarchism generally). Sabotage of course is said to derive from the ’sabots’ (clogs) which 19th century trade unionists put on rail tracks and the symbolism is obvious to all. However, and it’s a big however, the main evidence for the prosecution lies in this accusation of  ’ideological terrorism’. That is from reading ‘between the lines’ of anarchist and autonomist literature. This is quite a step to take. Unlike, say, Jihadist material, which urges the murder of all Kufers and contains detailed instructions on killing, the ultra-left does not revel in massacre, or even advocate what is conventionally called individual or elitist terrorism. This was one of their big differences with, say the Italian ‘armed struggle’. So, we say: halt this farce of a trial and end the repression!

Hilary Wainwright Goes Localist: Why the Left Is Barely Fighting Workfare.

From Popular Democracy to Parish Pump Politics. 

 

Today the Sunday Times  leads with the much pre-publicised news that James Purnell is to introduce a ’shake up’ of the Welfare State. This includes plans to turf the jobless onto the street if they live in large houses, allow companies to profit from getting the long-term unemployed into work, introduce a rigorous ‘medical testing’ procedure for the disabled (on the 1st World War Conscription template), make the long-term unemployed carry out ‘workfare’ (US style), and to make ’welfare mothers’ (charming expression) work.  

Now it has been a source of wonder to myself, and the few comrades who have been agitating about this looming threat for many months now (such as the brilliant Louise and the Sheffield Welfare Action Network), why the left and the labour movement has not moved heaven and earth to set up a mass campaign against these moves. Still, at least, the labour movement has begun to build its forces to oppose them now, the greatest attack on democracy and the welfare state since it was founded, as the excellent initiative by Compass  powerfully demonstrates. But from the famous social movements (apart from those very directly concerned) barely a peep.

I suggest that one reason is that the part of the left which is capable of organising grass-roots campaigns has been caught up in nationalist and localist hallucinations. That it sees its future in the ‘break up of Britain’ rather than a united fight-backs across the land. That it lost the ability to campaign on class issues outside of  the  the unions. It has become obsessed with a dead-end retreat to its patch, its nation (Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, English) its soil (‘green politics’). That it considers, as Hilary Wainwright puts it,  that “a left that is based on a recognition of national and regional autonomy and creativity” is the way forward.

Here is the sad evidence. Hilary Wainwright ’s Editorial in the October/November issue of Red Pepper (which is the Heimat of this trend).

Where the left is having an impact is where it is part of – and has helped to create – initiatives that reach beyond itself, to challenge the political class with a vision of a radical and egalitarian democracy. This is invariably a vision that is not explicitly socialist. Look at the Convention for Scottish Independence, Plaid Cymru’s coalition-building work in Wales or the broad-based coalition to save democracy in the NUS. Look too at the movements in support of Barack Obama in the US.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the Convention for Scottish Independence endorsed the project of a venal  party, the SNP, which is in thrall to the bankers, Edinburgh businessmen, is planning to flog off large part of public forests to private firms, and is full of smug self-satisfied right-wing gits. That Plaid is weak reed which has a valuable role in defending its culture, and language, but has  done little else. That both are, er nationalists. That Obama is, well for the left what is Obama? The essential is the simple fact is there is no radical egalitarian democracy when you split people on national grounds. Full stop.

She continues,

In the UK, Europe’s most centralised and executive-dominated of political systems, the loyalties and sense of rights associated with place are an important base of this democratic challenge. This is obvious in the nations of the UK but it applies also to English cities.

This particular fantasy, that UK centralisation is a major source of our woes, goes against the reality that all European countries, without exception, and with wildly differing constitutional and administrative structures, have suffered from neo-liberalism, mass unemployment and the massive economic crisis and quasi-slump unfolding as I write. Europe’s  economies are dominated by,wait for it, centralised transnational corporations. And many are pretty politically centralised as well. Or hasn’t she heard of how the French state retains control despite ‘decentralisation’, to cite but one case. Quoi qu’il en soit, it is not ‘centralisation’ that is the problem in itself. Many social policies would be better centralised on a Europe-wide basis, on the principle of raising Welfare standards to the highest level offered. Decentralisation all to often leads to a beggar-thy-neighbour polity, as the consequences of Catalan and Northern Italian and Flemish nationalism clearly demonstrate. The real difficulty is the lack of  radical democracy at the base, and ensuring means to communicate deliberations and decisions to any level, local, national or trans-Continental, or Planetary.

As national political structures crack and lose their authority, initiatives from Scotland, Wales and the English cities and regions will have the chance to break through, setting a new kind of example, stimulating a new direction for debate and developing their own international links.

The importance of place is not as a romantic retreat for the left. On the contrary, it offers a base for creating a left that is sufficiently rooted to be effective and a source of autonomy from the Westminster/Whitehall rootless elite. More immediately it provides the basis for the cross-party kind of left politics that must surely be the way to avoid the Tory dystopia that hovers ominously on the horizon   

So now we have it. The common folk of this country are there underneath the iron heel of centralised UKANIA.  Truly as Hilary’s forerunner, G.K.Chesterton said, The People of England have not Spoken Yet. When they do, their authentic voices (drowning out the Man from Whitehall and the Metropolitan elite) will  emerge and they will explode into political creativity. The ‘rooted’ (in place) left will flower.  Cross-party radical politics will bloom. Hilary Wainwright will become a MP under Proportional Representation.

Of course this is not a ‘romantic retreat’. And the dog ate my Communist Manifesto. Maybe all this will come to pass….. But there is another possibility: look at Holyrood. Local cliques and local bosses are just as bad, if not worse, than national ones. This dream too could end in tears.

 

In the meantime James Purnell’s steel-capped boot will be firmly placed on the throats of single mothers, the disabled and the unemployed.

 

Bye Bye Arlette, Wotcha Nathalie

Even Nathalie doesn’t actually read LO’s terminally boring  paper.

 

Changing of the Guard at Lutte ouvrière.  Just announced (here) Nathalie Arthaud, 38 ans, will be the organisation’s porte-parole (public spokesperson, and eventual candidate). She faces stiff competition in the shape of Olivier Besancenot. Described as an « Arlette bis » (second Arlette) it remains to be seen if she will halt the decline in the Party’s fortunes.

Milton: Herald of Freedom

 

Would that Thou wert Alive Today

John Milton (1608-1674),was a wonderful poet and a voice which, across the centuries, still sounds in the cause of freedom. Today is the anniversary of his birth.

True, many of his ideas were of the time. It would take a Quentin Skinner to unravel all his philosophical, cultural and political references, deeply embedded as he was in the unfolding of the English Revolution. His paean of praise to ‘unlicensed printing’ – liberty of expression – was hemmed in by his virulent anti-Catholicism. But his very courage in defending freedom of thought echoes throughout the ages.

Milton’s poetry, above all Paradise Lost, has made a deep impression for centuries. For us leftists perhaps lines such as Satan’s pledge to have “courage never to submit or yield”, to “eternal war, irreconcilable to our grand Foe”, and that it were “Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n” rest dear to our hearts.

This extract from the densely argued prose poem, Areopagitica (1644), in defence of free-expression, remains a thunderous riposte to every would-be censor, political tyrant or religious bigot (Priest, Imam, Rabbi), on the planet.

“Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when ascended, and his apostles after him were laid to asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, who with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that is made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up an down gathering up limb and limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall we do, till her Master’s second coming; he shall bring together every joint and members, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibition to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to out obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.

Welfare Reform: Purnell, Nous Voilà!

 

“I would Prefer Not to.”

“Family, Work, Country.”

(Marshall Gordon Brown’s Device)

 

“It is the duty of the workless Bloke,

to toil and serve the Gentlefolk.”

(Labour jingle)

 

“And Blokettes.”

(Harriet Harman)

 

 

 Now we have it. The White Paper on Welfare Reform (Here ), and  James Purnell everywhere. With the media  indulging him by  interviews with people saying, “make the idle break rocks” (strangely no show for the out-of-work who’d done existing worthless New Deal schemes – I wonder why..).  How folk love to tell others how to live their lives!

 A few points.

Firstly, if we are forced to labour for our benefits, why won’t we get the rate for the job? Or the same rights as other workers? Why indeed is this described as a punishment, “mandatory community service” (BBC site’s words) ? Are the unemployed criminals?

Secondly, Purnell is fond of obscuring the above issue. He tried to claim this was all some kind of Scandinavian plan (the better to hoodwink Labour supporters). That failed. Now watch out for references to pre-1st World War socialists who talked of all having to labour (those who do not work shall not eat). Reservation: I didn’t  know that Keir Hardie and, say, Blatchford wanted the workless to toil, at below any conceivable market wage, at the behest of their supervisors’ whims, for the benefit of  employers and (in this case) Lord and Lady Bountiful (that is, a tranche of the ‘voluntary’ sector which no more recognises workers’ rights than the worst bosses)? Anyway, if these figures are such an authority, why not adopt Hardie’s teetotalism. (Note to self: shouldn’t have said that, some health fanatics in the Cabinet would no doubt like to).

Thirdly, these measures will affect some of the most vulnerable people in society. Much will be said about lone parents and the disabled. Hell knows they will suffer. But one group which I estimate will get little attention are those with psychological problems. These ‘invisible’ incapacities can be crippling. But they vary, as people go ‘up and down’, sometimes able to cope, sometimes utterly devastated.

I speak with some bitterness about this. A friend, Chris (I’m sure he won’t mind me citing his name), that I met about four years ago, is one of them. Despite a long history of mental difficulties (euphemism), he was obliged, as a former regional newspaper reporter, to do the New Deal. This alone brought about a collapse: he spent his time filling in literally hundreds of job applications, writing reports, and badgering the patently ill-equipped staff at the ‘training’ body charged with him.

Chris once gave me a cassette recording of a Radio programme about idleness, in Praise of it, that is. He reckoned that his role model was Bartelby the Scriviner. This is a character of a  short story by Herman Melville. Bartleby, the Clerk of the tale, gradually refuses to do anything at all. He retreats completely not just from social life and work, but from everything. And fades away. His motto, when asked to do anything was “I would prefer not to.”

To no-one’s surprise Chris disappeared at one point and tried to live as a hermit in Rendlesham forest.

 

These are the people Purnell wants out cleaning the streets and other types of ‘community service’  under the watchful eye of his army of overseers.

 

Campaign For a Marxist Party: Letter from A-Near.

 

 Our Glorious Past. Our Spendid Future?

 In the Weekly Worker  ‘Mary Godwin’, reports.

“The Campaign for a Marxist Party has been disbanded. This is a necessary step backwards, if we are to go forward on a serious basis in 2009. The 2008 annual general meeting, held in London on December 6, agreed a motion proposed by the national committee to dissolve the campaign. As the motion explains, some members of the CMP intend to establish a committee in the new year with the aim of promoting the study of Marxism and the unity of Marxists as Marxists. Not the unity of Marxists in yet another crazy halfway house project. ”

It is hard to envisage exactly how this initiative could have succeeded. Being a Marxist, in the sense the CMP at least publicly defined it on ocassion, is a matter of defining oneself as a Marxist.  Or rather not. The actual principles of the CMP are as follows,

1. We are in favour of a planned, democratic socialist society and against the market.

2. Socialism will be achieved in a single step when the working class seizes power over society; there are no intermediate ‘democratic’ or other ‘stages’.

3. The campaign is against the destructive incubus of Stalinism and will seek to make clear the counterrevolutionary and anti-human nature of the Stalinist regimes and parties. Stalinism was responsible for mass slaughter, brutal incarceration and the atomisation of the people of the countries under its control. In addition the Stalinists were responsible for the most cynical and costly betrayals of the working class everywhere from Germany to South Africa – no party which has as its aim the liberation of humanity can do other than condemn the Stalinist current and seek to undo the damage done to Marxism by it.

Let me point out that this excludes any conceptualisation of the ‘transition to socialism’ – a rich lode of theory, developed by figures such as Nicos Poulantzas and Charles Bettelheim. It condemns not just Stalinism, but left Eurocommunism, a variety of ‘centrist’ organisations and Marxisant social democracy, and market socialists who consider themselves Marxist inspired (cf Marx on co-operatives). Without serious analysis to boot. It puts beyond the pale those who consider that a lengthy radical democratic class struggle in the social relations of production and the state are conditions for the introduction of socialism (communism in fact). That those who believe these reconfigurations and transformations are a process not a “single step” are outside the fold. No doubt the fact that the CMP’s definition embraces the SPGB is a step in some direction or other, but not in my view a particularly positive one.

Furthermore though its criticism of Stalinism is welcome the assertion’s relation to the actually existing world’s left is unclear. Only, say, isolated lunatics in the Stalin Society, who don’t have the current to run a torch bulb,  would own up to being Stalinists. But what is meant by  Stalinism in the CMP’s list of principles? Given that the reform-minded South African Communist Party is gracelessly (not to say, obscenely) lumped together with Mass Terror in the Soviet Union we can assume it’s a pretty wide category, covering parties from the Official Communist (Comintern) tradition and later ‘Maoist’ organisations.  Given such origins the assumption appears to be  that such an  ”incubus” does not die. So what remains of it? Does it equally live on in some fashion in amongst Orthodox Communists who are, very partially,  critical of Stalin, such as the Communist Party of Britain (Brezhnevites), The Parti Communiste Français, the entire Marxist-Leninist movement, the Dutch Socialistische Partij , which was M-L  at its origins (one of Europe’s most important left groups) Italy’s Partito della Rifondazione Comunista  (part of which has a Stalinist background) , the Communist Party of India (Marxist)  and Die Linke’s PDS (ex-Communist) wing.  To name but a few. Opps and the CPGB’s own background itself…..

Another issue is defining exactly what Marxism is. It can be strongly argued that its heart is Historical Materialism (the explanatory concepts that unravel how the capitalist mode of production and social formations operate). Its essential couple is the political practice of working class parties inspired by the broad stream of Marxist writing and debate (though by no means exclusively: truth needs no brand-name) to advance a strategy of transforming capitalist social relations into a communist mode of production. But obviously beyond the generalities there is both the vast ‘continent of history’ (as Althusser said) to study and a whole new strategic debate about the means to create present-day Marxist parties.  The whole area is so rich and complex, as any reader of the main Marxist academic theoretical journal, Historical Materialism, can see, that there is definitely a need for a ’study’ group – to say the least – that can relate these conceptual innovations to real politics. In my own opinion this would require breaking with the nostalgia for nationalism and past left movement’s (prevalent in the UK). It would be grounded on a grasp of the neo-liberal regime of accumulation (and crisis) the ‘market state’,. Instead of the Trotskyist or Leninist party form this would mean a mass political force, spiraling across countries like the helix on a snail’s shell. A minimum programme would advance the objective of European Social Republic; a maximum, Democratic (Self-Managed) Communism.

But I digress.

The Democratic Socialist Alliance  has vented its anger at this dissolution. The principal opposition to the CPGB/Weekly Worker has come from the Trotskyist Tendency.  John Pearson rails against “CPGB hijackers” who have unleashed a torrent of “lies, smears, abuse and character assassination”. Now whether they are right or wrong, such in-fighting is highly unpleasant and justifies the wariness many felt at the CMP’s inception (aware of this potential from long years of left activism).

The Weekly Worker notes the statements of Comrade Macnair from the national committee.

“He said we have to recognise that the CMP has failed. Partly because in the current objective conditions the farcical results of the attempt to act as a proto-party discredits the idea of a Marxist party; and partly because of the profound political differences between the DSA minority and the CPGB, which make it impossible for the two groups to work together in such an organisation.”

So that’s it. The differences do seem pretty severe. I can’t say that the CPGB’s principal opponents use of the strident name, Trotskyist Tendency, inspires much affection. It appears to raise a mental drawbridge that doesn’t seem likely to be lowered for some time. Meanwhile, then,  study is always welcome and sometimes calming. Perhaps both sides can have their own groups to do this. But in practical terms I shall continue to back ‘mass’ initiatives, campaigning against the Destruction of the Welfare State and broader movements that are attempting to create a real left presence, such as the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party. My own template remains: The First International. That is a combination of workers’ organisations, oppressed groups, and intellectuals, which began to combine theory and action. But then again that had quite a few bouts of in-fighting….

 

Appeal for Another Europe.

Will the Appeal link up with these Forces?

Appeal for Another Europe: French List for the 2009 Euro-Elections.

This will have wider implications for the European Left.

Les politiques de l’Union européenne ont lourdement contribué à la crise financière, économique, sociale, écologique et démocratique. Elles ont sur nos vies des effets désastreux.
Plus que jamais, il est nécessaire de remettre en cause cette Europe libérale et de construire autrement l’Europe, avec les Européens, et pour eux. En 2005, les peuples français et néerlandais avaient rejeté, par référendum, le traité constitutionnel européen (TCE), sur la base de leur expérience, et après un très large débat sur le contenu et les conséquences de ce traité.

The policies of the European Union have heavily contributed to the economic, social, ecological , democratic, and financial crises. They have had a devastating effect on our lives. More than ever we have to put into question the  neo-liberal Europe, and construct, through other means, another Europe, by Europeans and for them. In 2005 the French and Dutch people rejected the European Constitutional Treaty, on the basis of their experience and after a broad debate on the content and consequences of that Treaty.

Un projet d’Europe sociale, écologiste, démocratique et de paix, c’est-à-dire de coopération et non de concurrence entre les peuples, en Europe comme dans le monde, avec les changements des institutions et des traités internationaux que cela implique. Avec une harmonisation des droits par le haut, favorisant une meilleure répartition des richesses.

We need a project for a social, ecological, democratic and peaceful Europe, based on co-operation not competition between the peoples, with all the institutional changes and new international treaties that this implies. With equality of rights brought up to the highest level, to encourage a better distribution of wealth.

.. alors qu’au sein du Parti socialiste dominent les forces favorables au traité de Lisbonne et à l’Europe libérale, dont la crise montre la nocivité et l’échec.
Pour sortir de cette impasse et rendre possibles d’autres choix, nous appelons toutes les forces de la gauche de transformation sociale et écologiste à faire front commun.

Inside the Socialist Party those who favour the Lisbon Treaty and a neo-Liberal Europe, are in charge. The crisis shows how noxious these policies are. To get out of this dead-end and to make way for other strategies, we appeal to the whole radical and ecological left to come together in a common front.

That is for a national united French Left List for the 2009 European Elections.

Jean-Jacques Boislaroussie, responsable des Alternatifs ;
Patrick Braouezec, député (PCF) de Seine-Saint-Denis ;
Marc Dolez, député du Nord, cofondateur du Parti de gauche ;
Annie Ernaux, écrivain ;
Jacques Généreux, économiste ;
Susan George, présidente d’honneur d’Attac France ;
Robert Guédiguian, cinéaste ;
Gérard Mauger, sociologue ;
Michel Onfray, philosophe ;
Christian Picquet, membre du courant Unir de la LCR ;
Yves Salesse, responsable des Collectifs unitaires ;
Denis Sieffert, directeur de Politis.

For more Information see: Politis and compare the programme with the interesting Platform of the European left.

Reflecting on this: perhaps a political log-jam on the Left is being broken in France. This Appeal is signed by a broad range of figures, from ‘altermondialistes’ (‘anti/other-globalisation), greens, alternatives (self-management left), Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Parti de Gauche, anti-liberal collectives (from the ‘Non’ campaign in 2005), the independent  left weekly Politis, the Parti Communiste Français, the famous atheist writer, Michel Onfray,  and last, but not least, Christophe Picquet of the ‘Unite’ tendency of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire.

Apparently the so-called ‘liquidationists‘ (that is,  the independent-minded democratic and republican left, like Picquet) are well on the way to building a campaign of practical unity. One awaits the PCF’s response to the Appeal, which may be favourable. As with others from the galaxy of left of the Socialist Party ex-Communist, Republican left and alternatives, initiatives, clubs and associations now expanding exponentially. Meanwhile it will be interesting to see how the LCR reacts to this call. Do they intend to ride alone when they found the Nouveau parti anti-capitaliste (NPA)? or co-operate? I have heard strong indications, from good authority, ordinary LCR members, that the number of supporters who will join the NPA is far lower than the 11,000 claimed. More in the range of 6,000. That may weigh on their decision.

Spokesman: Ken Coates For the European Left Initiatives.

Just a quick note: Ken Coates has sent out a mailing to his contacts (got it this morning) with material about the new French Left Party (blogged below) and Die Linke.  The documents inside include an article by Oskar Lafontaine (Left Parties Everywhere) , and an English translation of a speech the German Socialist gave to the French Parti de Gauche initiative. Another print-out is the programme for the Euro-elections by the European Left (Link). He ends by asking, “Will there be an answering response to the developments on the Continent?”

The Spokesman (100) has a special issue, he announces, dedicated to the subject. Nothing as yet on the  Bertrand Russell Foundation site about the latest developments. (Here)

Support for a Common Front with Mélenchon in the Euro-Elections Grows in French Communist Party.

PCF: Still Searching for a Reason for its Existence?

Last weekend the Parti Communiste Français (PCF)  held its Congrès. 900 delegates, representing  its 130,000 members, debated the Party’s future. With only 1,93% of votes in last year’s French Presidential elections, and its Parliamentary representation down to 19, the PCF faces a serious crisis. Nevertheless the Conference gave its support to the Head of the reigning team led by Marie-George Buffet, at 67,72% of ballots cast. The organisation now faces the task of implementing their new ‘common basis’ – which calls for a profound transformation of PCF structures enthused by campaigning and radical energy.

Though one must comment that this document does not exactly shine with clarity and rigorous analysis. Thus:a key principle is that faced with a deep economic and political crisis, the PCF and the left have to open up to «des chemins concrets aux politiques de changement transformatrices » (concrete paths to the policies of transformative change). So be it.

The ‘Communistes unitaires’, who advocate alliances with the radical anti-globalisation Left (though wary of  the LCR’s project of a New Anti-Capitalist Party, NPA)  got 16,38% for their List for the PCF National Council. Despite earlier accusations of a purge directed against them they will be represented on this body on a proportional basis.  The ‘orthodox’ currents (there are no formal tendencies in the PCF), got 10,26% and 5,62%. The ‘Unitaries’ accused Buffet, despite her announced intention to run the Party on a ‘collegial’ basis, of forcing through over her critics’ heads, concessions to these remnants of classic French Official Communists. The former Communist Chief, Robert Hue, is setting up his own group outwith (calling it a party would be too kind) and  has distanced himself from any alliance with radical forces to the left of the Parti Socialiste (here).

Libération reports today that  Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s appeal for a common left front for the 2009 European elections was heavily applauded on Saturday by the delegates. (Libération) This adds to the already significant forces aligned for this new initiative. It hardly needs emphasising that the PCF’s membership dwarfs any other group’s on the radical left, and with its links with the union federation the CGT (looser than in the past it is true), it remains a force within the working class movement. Considerably more, to say the least, than the NPA, for all Olivier Besancenot’s undoubted popular appeal.

If the alliance for the European Elections succeeds (even if only in drawing in the left) we will see further evidence of  a Continent-wide trend towards a new radical democratic left pole. That is neither ‘third way’ capitalism, failing social democracy, Gordon Brown’s Workhouse and Market State, the Green alliances of vain self-seeking liberals and harmless cranks, or maximalist Trotskyism.

Or so Tendance Coatesy says in its most jargon ridden moments.

Political Personality of the Year: Nominate Purnell and Mandelson Now!

It’s Time to Back James and Mandy.

It’s that time of year again. Channel Four has issued the call for its Annual Political Awards (here).  It is appropriate that us commoners will not be the ones to vote on all the much-coveted prizes, that’s for our betters to decide, but we can make Nominations and cast our ballots for the Channel 4 News Political Impact Award 2009.

James Purnell  is the obvious first choice. A tireless campaigner against fecklessness, idleness and sloth,  he is slated to make a compulsory impact on the lives of millions of people. Charming, well-spoken, with a background at the ‘coal face’ of advising, and Corporate Planning, an expert on Private Equity and Venture Capital, this former Parliamentary dogsbody is well-placed to sort out the problems of mass unemployment. Nominate this worthy successor to Sir William Beveridge now.

Peter Mandelson  (Baron Mandelson). Already running in the category of  Politician’s Politician. But Mandy would not say no to an extra prize, would he? With a few new E-Mail addresses (easy-peasy on Hot Mail) we can get him in the above race. His Baronship  could squeeze out any competition to James Purnell.

New Parti de Gauche: Policies in Question.

 

 Who Ate all the Greens’ Pies?

This morning on France-Inter Daniel Cohen-Bendit was the political invite of the day. He waffled about his success in convincing the, shrinking,  French Parti Vert (Dominique Voynet, Presidential candidate in  2007 got 1,57% of the vote in the First Round) to set up a broad list for the European Elections. This campaign has drawn in José Bové (who should have known better) and a motley crew of liberals, self-publicists (the telly presenter, Hulot) pure ecologists and the kind of people Danny works with in his capacity as leading figure in the  European Parliament Green Group – otherwise known as snotty self-important believers in marrying Greenery and the market. The Ecology Manifesto for next year’s election campaign centres on: ” la mutation écologique et sociale comme colonne vertébrale de la communauté de destin des peuples européens, l’Europe deviendrait le moteur d’un nouveau foyer de civilisation.” (ecological and social change, as the backbone of the European community of fate.  Europe will become the new home of civilisation. N.B. it reads as badly in French as this so don’t blame my lousy translation).

So it was with no surprise that one heard Danny le rouge arrogantly dismiss criticism. The Interviewer put it to him that Jean-Luc Mélenchon  described him as “centre right”. With his customary finesse, or bumptuous bile, he opined that “je m’en fous” ( couldn’t give a toss) about what Mélenchon says about anything. Then the dagger went in: these people are “Eurosceptics” and we are far a real democratic Europe.

Danny, hard as it to admit it, has a point.

There are important political difficulties about the Parti de Gauche project. Samy Johnsua in the LCR’s Rouge  has, quite rightly, pointed to a number of ambiguities. There is the question of the PG’s acceptance of the possibility of a post-electoral agreement with the Parti Socialiste – something for reasons of their own, a desire for utter purity perhaps, the LCR rejects. Then there are more fundamental disagreements. These concern the attempt to join together a ‘going beyond’ capitalism with an acceptance of the mixed economy, and the PG’s support for representative democracy. Personally I have no problem with either: a minimum programme must recognise that the first priority is to reestablish a commanding public sector, but let a large swathe of commercial  enterprises co-exist with this, while introducing measures for self-management and direct (internal) consumer power in both sectors. On the other area it is important to support reforms in representative democracy, but direct democracy is best  a local, limited, arrangement in the first instance. The idea of reconstructing the state on a soviet model is frankly ludicrous (and anti-democratic since it excludes non-workers). So unless the LCR is proposing to bring everything, up to hot chestnut sellers, under social ownership, and replace the Assemblée National with a new series of Communes, I suggest they shut up on this.

However, there remains a very vexing issue: a social Europe can’t be built without having a positive programme outlining how to replace it. Otherwise you simply break it up back into strongly sovereign capitalist states – even more at the mercy of the world market and its financial flows. That is the aim of the Sovereigntist (Euro-sceptic nationalist left, such as France’s Lambertists, the Parti Ouvrier Independent - their current name in case you’d missed that one). Or as Johnsua puts it, we ought to say,  ”non au nom d’un repli sur les frontières nationales, mais d’une ouverture internationaliste, européenne et mondiale” (a no to  retrenching inside national borders, instead an internationalist opening, European and worldwide).

Quite right comrade.

In fact one can say that the choice between campaigning for a social Europe and the nationalist retreat to (old or new) State Fortresses should be confronted by every section of the European Left, including in the U.K.

SWP: The Spirit of Sects.

“ Yesterday upon a Site,

I saw a Line that that wasn’t Right,

It wasn’t right  again Today,

I wish that Line would go away!”

                  Emily Thribbs (aged eight).

This extract is from a Tendance Coatey forthcoming Magnum Opus,

On the Spirit of Sects.

“Those who have the least character to spare can least afford to part with their good word to others; a losing cause is always the most divided against itself.”

 On Jealousy and the Spirit of Party. Richard Hazlitt.

 

Political factionalism is, intrinsically, no more damaging or a threat to social order than cabals in golf-clubs, cliques in 18th Century coffee-shops or feuds in football. On condition, naturally, that their supporters are not armed, or bent on inflicting violent physical damage on their opponents. For all of Hazlitt’s dismissal, I would think it more appropriate to praise people’s ability to find fault with others while sticking with their own group, to split, to gossip, to fight, to reconcile, and to weigh everything up to the light of their own party’s standpoint. The nature of factionalism lies in the springs of decision-making and the dialectic of loyalties and side-switching – or betrayals from another viewpoint. A person without a party, or more precisely a faction, is a person without any political ability. To be deeply immersed in politics is to take sides. A person above factions is the worst enemy of democracy, someone who refuses to take her opponents seriously enough to dislike them, a reconciler who cannot in reality admit contradiction at all. The worst political sectarians are those who claim to loathe all sectarians.” 

**********

Naturally a major source of this great work’s research is the Socialist Unity site. This has offered the highly entertaining spectacle of Respect tearing itself apart, the rise of the MP for Woolies, George Galloway (unaccountably not performing as Puss-in-Boots at Thogmorton Pier), and the delightful scene of the SWP ripping itself to shreds.

 

Here are some random comments.

From Neil Davidson’s analysis of the crisis in the SWP. Is there a difficulty in that the core SWP membership is composed, amongst some fine individuals, of waifs, strays and it is led by sociopaths? Apparently not:  “the party is full of extremely talented individuals.”

“The problem is rather that there seems to be a limit beyond which the Party is unable to grow.”

Build the Party.

“We are the only real revolutionary party in Britain, but let us not be so complacent as to imagine that other forces, with superficially plausible arguments and strategies, will not seek to take advantage of a new upsurge, if we are not there to put our arguments.”

Note to self: Must Recognise that the SWP is the only real revolutionary Party in Britain.

Davidson concludes with a Timely Warning: one response to our (SWP’s) crisis may be “that our internal discussions may find their way into the websites and publications of the sectarian left, once rightly described by George Lichtheim as “tiny ferocious creatures devouring each other in a drop of water””.

Further note to self: must not devour any more little angry creatures this morning.

Then we turn to an old favourite, Chris Harman, “Underlying the discontent is a clear sense that the CC failed to prevent some of its members making mistakes in the building of Respect, in dealing with Galloway’s decisions to smash it if it did not suit his own purposes, and then in coping with the aftermath of the split.”

Galloway, poor much-defamed man, simply wanted a well-paid stage in which to parade his ego. It was cruel to have tried to deny him that pleasure. The SWP was rightly punished. It has now, nevertheless, learnt its lesson:

“We need a unified CC, capable of acting decisively. That is the only way the party can respond to sudden changes in the objective circumstances as the crisis develops—and it is the only way the party as a whole can judge whether the leadership is responding correctly.”

Get rid of the Opposition! Remove the Spavined Splitters! Unity, Unity, what Benefits are due to thy name!

Ex-Leader of French Socialist Left Under Police Investigation.

Who’s Got an Account to Settle with Dray?

A Rough Guide To  How French Politics Work (Part 227).

Julien Dray, former Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire student activist and until recently a leading figure on the French Socialist Party Left,  (Gauche Socialiste) is under police invesitagation (here). The Socialist M.P. (deputy) for  l’Essonne was visited by the Police at his Paris home this Friday. It is alleged that a total of 351.017 euros was paid to his funds, from bank accounts belonging to the association of  Les Parrains (sponsors) de SOS Racisme and from the Fédération indépendante et démocratique lycéenne (Fidl) – a secondary school student union. That this is a case of money-laundering. The affair has been marked by a  series of leaks to the Media which have led Dray’s lawyers to protest that the Deputy has nothing to hide, and that these reports undermine the presumption of innocence. (Le Monde)

Observers of the French left will note that there are long-standing cases of the anti-racist organisation, SOS-Racisme, being used by the Parti Socialiste. That there is an equally lengthy history of French student and lycéen associations being tapped as a source of cash by Parti Socialiste politicians who have emerged from that background (one a few years back  in particular involved ex-Lambertists). And that there is a big mobilisation underway of secondary-school students against Sarkozy plans to ‘reform’ the education system, which accusations against the unions organising them might weaken.

Not to mention the fact that Julien Dray’s decision to throw in his lot with Ségolène Royal has not made him universally popular.

Secularist Sunday Notes.

Radio Four’s interminable religious programme Sunday this morning was more than the usual pile of cretinous cack-handed cackling. There was a bloke defending Rowan Williams criticism of ”unbridled capitalism”  and a vision of a market society based on social justice, free of exploitation. Whatever. An Islamic banker claiming that the Qu’ranic based rules would have prevented the global financial crisis  and that the rentier states that follow them are saving the West’s economies. It’s hard to see why there are still people who haven’t recognised that religion is there to feed the hungry, end poverty and stuff our faces with gold.

No-one who’s a major player on the god-botherer front, apart from some admirable Methodists, seems to have got round to criticising the Purnell ‘reforms’ of the Welfare State. These will leave millions on shrinking benefits languish in the limbo of half-cocked ‘training’ schemes, or in obligatory ‘voluntary’ labour, exploited by razor-tooth usurers (the proposed private providers of the ‘Social Fund’).  I notice that Catholics are more vexed at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill than this assault on human rights. Still you must give them a prize for consistency. The Vatican has always been concerned with human life, come what may. One only has to look at the role the Catholic clergy  of Rwanda played in the genocide to see how far they are willing to stretch an arm and a limb (and skulls, fingers and torsos) to see this carried out.

Meanwhile Spain is witnessing the biggest confrontation between secularists and the Church since the 1930s. The issue at present dividing the country (after tussles over ending the Catholics’ privileged tax regime, same-sex marriage, euthanasia and other ethical subjects)  is Civic Education. That is the José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero government’s attempt to introduce universal school courses (with no exceptions for the massively subsidised Catholic private sector) explaining equality, democracy and human rights – not to the taste of those crusty old Cathos. Where they have been, with admirable determination, introduced into confessional schools, the ecclesiastical have incited parents to boycott the lessons.

Honi soit qui mal y pense!

Callinicos, SWP: Chief Big Heap?

SWP Maître à Penseur.

“Blackmail”, “recklessness and unaccountability”  “the unrelenting struggle of an undeniably talented comrade to shield himself for being held to account for the mistakes he has made”. John Rees is well put in his place by the SWP’s leading theoretician and international Marxist leader, Alex Callinicos.

Why does he stoop so (or rave) to conquer? Here’s a man who’s led a sheltered academic life, who produces readable and sometimes stimulating tomes on subjects such as Postmodernism (1991: Against Postmodernism: a Marxist critique (Cambridge: Polity Press). Marxist historical research (1995: Theories and narratives(Cambridge: Polity Press) political theories of Justice and Equality (Rawls, communitarianism etc), 2000: Equality (Themes for the 21st Century)(Cambridge: Polity Press). a substantial critique of Blair, Mandelson,  and Gidden’s ideological pretentions 2 002: Against the Third Way (Cambridge: Polity Press). and some engaging, if largely off -the-wall, wishful thinking, anti-globalisation stuff, 2003: An anti-Capitalist manifesto (Cambridge: Polity Press). 

Most people would be satisfied with that. They would have no wish to be (as the Weekly Worker calls them) Philosopher Kings. Not so Callinicos! He truly seems to think that his position at the head of  the band of waifs and strays he represents makes him an organic intellectual. The chap sees no reason to limit his good advice to the theoretical sphere. He is, or at least, thinks he is, engaged in real politics, albeit of a curious kind in which he considers himself a Delphic Oracle for the World’s Left.

So, he has seen fit for a long time to criticise Le Monde Diplomatique and the ATTAC movement, no doubt on the justified grounds that they told his lot to piss off when they tried to do a bit of entryism. More recently Callinicos has scolded the French left for its failure to adopt the successful SWP approach to Islamicism. He denounces the embrace of militant secularism and republicanism by many of them (Marxists, Muslims and Religion: Anglo-French Attitudes Historical Materialism. Vol 16. No.2. 2008). Written before his own comrades attacked the de facto Respect alliance with right-wing Islamicists, he defends the record of that body (though does not explicitly cite their dealings with the Jamaat-I-Islami in the East End, and the Moslem Brotherhood and its satellites  in the StWC’s campaigning). In another recent case Callinicos has taken upon himself to offer rulings to the Fourth International (LCR variety) on their(admittedly cretinous) support for the Sinistra Critica during the last Italian elections. No doubt Besancenot is waiting with bated breath for the next tonne of SWP’s comradely instructions on how to build the Nouveau parti anti-capitaliste (NPA).

Now the Trotskyist tradition has long dealt in what one might called divination  by necromancy: calling up the dead spirits of Trotsky and Lenin to settle disputes. But Callinicos has his peculiarly obnoxious addition to an already revolting practice: he shrouds the results in bile.  According to reliable accounts AC  resembles Charles Hawtry’s character in Carry on Cowboy: the mild mannered Indian Chief Big Heap. After a few glasses of firewater, total transformation: CBH  is ready to massacre the palefaces!

So, one minute Callinicos is all gentle theoretical musings; the next, after a stiff draught of Party-Line,  it’s: Shoot the slavering hyenas!! 

Just a point: the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire has for many years made the main lines of its  internal discussions available to anyone interested. The Web forum associated with them (Forum marxiste révolutionnaire) posts wide-ranging discussions, from virulently critical to hard-line supportive, of its politics. Apparently it is beyond the wit, or the intention, of the SWP to permit such freedom. So we rely on ‘leaked’ documents on the Socialist Unity site.  And oracles.

Christmas Comes Cassoulet.

Tendance Marxist Christmas: all the Ingredients Made by Workers!

 

Tendance Coatesy is celebrating the festive season for a few days. We will be plotting, thinking of the next snide and uncalled for attack on the glory that is  Britain’s Government and certain elements on the British left, not to mention any other left groups around in the Solar System and beyond.

 Look on our works ye mighty, and, if it’s not too much trouble, despair.

Que la fête commence!

Darfur: the Easily Forgotten War

Wrong Skin Colour?

I post on this for one simple reason: the Israeli attack on Gaza, wholly unjustified,  will obscure the far greater war crimes being carried out by the Sudanese Islamicists against the people of Darfur. The janjaweed militas can be compared to the Hutu murderers, and indeed to Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

I realise that for a certain type of European the dislike of Israel is paramount. For all Islamicists it is an article of faith that the  Tel Aviv State is a monstrous aberration that must be wiped from the map. For certain leftists, to their shame, ‘Zionism’ is a word describing some kind of nest of conspiracies.

I have only the words on this clavier to condemn the killings in Gaza.

Would that a few more would do something to alleviate the suffering of the people of Darfur.

But they are black, and perhaps count for little.

Praise for Human Rights Activists.

And at Last Comes the Age of Kant!

Kant said somewhere that he was not sure of the existence of god, but that of one thing he was certain: he knew that there were people of good will. There truly are good people in this world. Here are some.

 

Praise be to them!

Awami League Wins Landslide in Bangladesh.

 

Bangladeshis say NO to Galloway-style Politics!

Good news, really good news, comrades. The secular left-leaning (backed by the Left bloc) Awami League has won a landslide victory in the Bangladesh General Elections. 

The grand alliance has clinched two-thirds majority with 261 seats compared to the BNP-led four-party alliance’s 30, down from 217 in 2001.

The cause of the peoples is not yet dead!

 

The fascist organisation, Jamaat-e-Islami, a central ally of Galloway’s Respect in East London, got the following result:

Jamaat-e-Islami, the BNP’s key ally in the four-party alliance, has seen its once-proud seat tally plummet from 17 in 2001 to a humiliating two, in what appears to be a wholesale rejection of the party by the voters.

 

Funny I don’t see a mention of this on the Respect Renewal site.

Jamaat Condemens.

 

 Is it Diversity Training Again?

LAHORE, Dec 29: Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad has said that Israeli bombing on Gaza and massacre of Palestinians is shaking Ummah’s conscience but the delay in calling meetings of OIC and Arab League is the worst betrayal with the innocent blood of Palestinian Muslims.

 

George Galloway  concurs: “We stand in solidarity with the protests called by diverse groups across Britain.”

It is true that every socialist and leftist should be against the Israeli actions. They are frankly unpardonable.

Just a point though but Galloway’s mates in the Jammat seem to think that there are no such people as Palestinian atheists, or indeed Christians.

 

Diversity? Problem sorted!

Tommy Sheridan and Big Brother: Exposed!

Sheridan and a Fellow Media Star.

I thought Ian Bone was, well, like taking the piss when he announced on his Blog  that Tommy Sheridan was going to be on celeb Big Brother. Turns out it’s bleeding true!

Apparently though oor Tommy has a few issues with the Polis to sort out while he performs (here).

I wonder what other non-UK European lefties who inhabit the Blogsophere think of the Tartan Tosser winding up on the same the path as Kitty Galloway.

What was the Burn’s line about a parcel of rouges in a nation?

Here is some of it here (I cut the anti-English cack):

“What force or guile could not subdue
Thro’ many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor’s wages.”

Well said my good man.

Why I Shall Not Be Demonstrating Today.

They Murder our Comrades.

The Israeli assault on Gaza should be condemned by all progressive humanity. I have few words to express my feelings when I saw the Channel Four broadcast with a Palestinian woman showing how she was reading her children the story of Cinderella when the bombs fell. That is a reality.

I cannot demonstrate against ‘Zionism’ today because I will not and will never align myself with Hamas, and its British Islamist supporters.

 

Ever.

Parti Socialiste: Self-destruction Spiral.

 

 From Chartist, just published. (It is from the Print-Edition not the reduced On-Line one).

PARTI SOCIALISTE: IS PARIS WORTH THIS MESS?  ANDREW COATES.

 

 “Psychodrama”, “Sadness”, even “the Night of the Long Knives”. Words that crop up in the wake of the French Parti Socialiste’s (PS) November Reims Conference. The fight for the key post of General Secretary, which ended as a duel between Ségèlone Royal and Martine Aubry, was extraordinarily vicious. When the initial results came to a difference of 42 votes (in Aubry’s favour) there were threats of legal challenges to alleged fraud, even a demonstration outside the Party’s HQ. A final party Commission decision, taken in an atmosphere described as that of the Supreme Soviet, was reached on the 26^th of November gave Aubry victory with an advance of 102 ballots (134 790 had been cast). Royal accepted defeat but announced that her “battle will continue” (Le Monde 27.11.2008). The new leader, Mayor of Lille, now faces an uphill task to rebuild Socialist confidence, and prepare for the 2012 Presidential elections.

 

How have the Socialists found themselves in such a mess? The roots lie in the disastrous score PS leader, and former Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, got in the 2002 Presidential contest with Jacques Chirac. Jospin was eliminated in the first round with only 16%, which led to a run-off between far-right Le Pen and the Gaullist – the latter won the Presidency comfortably. In 2007 Ségolène Royal did much better, with 25, 87%. She lost however in the second round to Nicolas Sarkozy: 46,94% to 53,06%. Proving himself an adroit politician Sarkozy toned down his hard-line image by recruiting centre-left ministers (such as Bernard Kouchner), and several women of a North African background. Initially a neo-liberal the President has proved flexible enough to denounce ‘laissez faire’ capitalism during the recent crisis. While the Socialists have done well in local elections they have been unable to mount a serious national challenge. While their traditional rivals on the left, such as the Parti Communist Français (PCF) have declined to electoral insignificance, a new rival, Olivier Besancenot’s Nouveau Parti Anti-capitaliste (NPA), has made its mark. The Trotskyist ‘postie’ scored up to 12% voting intentions in opinion polls (roughly half a PS candidate’s).

 

The run-up to the Reims Congress revealed a vacuum at the heart of the Socialists. It exacerbated their long-standing tendency to split around personalities (the famous ‘elephants’ of the party). The future shape and of the party divided these figures. In 2006 there were measures to recruit ‘supporters’ at a reduced subscription rate (not too dissimilar to some Labour proposals), which resulted in 100,000 new members. This formed the base of Royal’s support. But while the PS has backing amongst the working class (24% in the Presidentials first round) a major weakness of the organisation is that less than 5% of its adherents are blue-collar workers. Indeed apart from support amongst public employees it is hard to identify exactly any definite class stratum supporting them. Ignoring this problem Royal wants to recruit on an even looser basis, and make decisions by internal referendums rather than through the traditional highly structured sections (branches).  Hence an underlying clash has emerged between two conceptions of the party: Aubry has repeatedly accused Royal of wanting to transform the PS into a “party of supporters” (Le Monde 18.11.08).  A pop-star style rally in September of 4,000 of her admirers at the Zénith stadium increased this suspicion. Doubts about the ex-Presidential candidate increased when she appeared to advocate an alliance with the centrist party, the MoDems of François Bayrou.

 

Ideological divisions have declined. The new PS Declaration of Principles in April 2008 talked of democratic socialism in terms of the heritage of the Enlightenment, defined themselves primarily as republicans, though admitted a ‘critique of capitalism’. This blotted out, almost without debate, the Socialists’ own (largely verbal) references to class struggle and a rupture with capitalism. A flurry of books by leading PS figures this year, such as Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë began to talk of being ‘social-liberals’ rather than socialists (Aubry noticeably attacked this, considering her moderate socialism was democratic and needed no extra qualification). Recent criticisms of finance capitalism have not seriously reconnected the PS with its left heritage.

 

The Socialists’ central body, the Conseil National, is proportionally elected, on the basis of votes for ‘motions’: platforms of its different ‘currents’. This year their content was more than usually opaque. A Kremlinologist would feel at home. All proposed some form of state intervention to make France more egalitarian, ecological plans, anti-poverty measures, and international financial regulation. Benoît Hamon (motion, Reconquêtes), who called for some strong state economic intervention and resented the party’s left, won 18,52% This encouraged the former Young Socialist Leader to stand in the first round for Party secretary where he got 22,6%. He eventually backed Aubry. However the left had halved its support. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, one of its historic leaders, resigned on the eve of Congress. He asserted that the PS had lost all sense of direction and was drifting towards becoming a party of the centre-left. He announced his intention to set up a new left party, based on the German Die Linke, that would try for a common platform with the non-PS in next year’s European elections. (Le Monde. 14.11.2008).

The task now is to integrate Royal’s backers into Party positions. All the signs are that the Aubry-Royal clash is far from over. There appears to be a degree of mutual loathing between the two camps that is unlikely to dissipate. Added to the burning sauce is the enmity between Royal and her former partner, outgoing PS General Secretary, François Holland. It is a measure of the Socialists’ confusion that the supporters of each include personalities from every side: Ségolène’s lieutenants include Pellion, from the right, and Dray, a former Trotskyist (LCR) student leader. Aubry, who is pro-European, is backed by those who actively campaigned for a ‘Non’ vote in the vote on the European Constitutional project, such as former P.M. Laurent Fabius, as well as the social democratic ‘Second Left’ leader (a current she has been close to) Michel Rocard. Not to mention Hamon and the ‘hard left’ Henri Emmannuelli.

 

Such a political kaleidoscope may bedazzle the activists. It blinds the electorate. This at a time when Sarkozy is taking personal control of the State, and subordinating the public media to his will. At one point, at the start of new millennium, it seemed as if the Parti Socialiste would offer a way of combining a degree of left-wing principle with practical progressive reforms. Now the worst features of the old SFIO (the PS’s predecessor) – clans, naked power struggles, high-flown rhetoric and low blows – appear to have been revived. Alternative democratic socialist voices are splintered in a variety of parties of which Mélenchon’s is but one. This can only strengthen the hand of those calling for Besancenot’s maximalist programme.

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Have Mixed Feelings About the Anti-War Demos.

 

I Could Never be on a Demo with Them.

 

(apart from the fact that I have physically fought Khominists in the streets of Paris).

 

Israel’s Attack on Gaza: this revolts. Respected comrades, such as Modernity, Dave Broder and Enty, have expresed their views, elsewhere and on this Blog . Posted extensively   on the Blogosphere, views are so numerous no-one can keep abreast of them. Still: very valuable thoughts.

 

Saw Bianca Jagger on the telly on Saturday. Since she is one of the doughtiest fighters for human rights in the world, she almost convinced  me it was right to stand at the front of the pro-Palestinian demo with likes of Galloway.

With the racist supporters of Hamas?

Lobby and Dave make the weighty point that if we do not fight the attack through the demos that were organised, what else do we do?

 

One of the ideas of Blogging is that we sail out views. We  try to respond to these whatever is said.

When I checked the Blog last afternoon in Ipswich Library a mate of mine, a black guy (not that that’s totally relevant execept he dresses with Dreadlocks and so forth) very militant during the attack on Iraq, saw me. Came over and was staring at the Site. Said, “Yes, That’s exactly why I’m hesitating about joining these movements: I can’t stand these anti-gay, anti-women Islamists  - in fact I hate their guts (and he added something about dope and beer of less political interest).

I was at a loss what to say.

Don’t Bother with Big Brother: Gail to Sheridan.

A Real Working Class Hero with one of Tommy’s Ain Folk.

From the Scotsman, today,

 Don’t Bother with Big Brother ye puir auld numpty ! (quote with some elaboration)

By MARTYN McLAUGHLIN

“(Gail Sheridan’s encouraging words to her husband before he entered the Celebrity BB house)

TOMMY Sheridan was warned against taking part in the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother, by his wife.

Gail Sheridan told the former MSP he was at risk of being deliberately misrepresented by the show’s producers, adding that his political beliefs might win him few fans among viewers.”

There I was hoping Tommy’d do a Rab C. Nesbitt and down some swallies in public (like Rab he’s taken the Pledge they say but those who watched the BBC Documentary on Rab know how long that lasts) and grab a few luscious ladies. All we get is some poncing around in a lefty-T Shirt and a few words of ..er, of what?

More amusing seeing that LA Rapper (whatever his name is)  getting totally out of his depth and telling  Terry Christian that he had a thick accent!

Ipswich Port: Gateway to Hell. Brits Thinks Animals More Important than, er, Everything Else.

 

 

Cuddly Green Ian Bone’s Comrades?

Ipswich Port: Gateway to Hell (today EADT and Evening Star). Everything you need to know about animal rights’ protesters is in this story. The Evening Star reports (here). Bear in mind, these are yer fluffy lot, who don’t (‘in principle’) go in for writing hundreds of letters to neighbours accusing animal researchers of being paedophiles,  and bring misery to some fine scientists, and their families.

Apparently our town’s port may (or may not) be allowing the export of live animals. The local animal rights lot are such incompetents that they once had a demo outside the Co-Op for the old canards, despite the fact that store doesn’t sell delicious duck. So who can judge, as yet?

Now maybe Mary’s Little Lamb,  may dread a sea voyage. Maybe Veronica the Veal likes ‘em. I neither know nor care. Nor about animals, raised by farmers, to die, dying. As if I could even compare that to scenes of horror we see on the telly every night and the plight of the human victims. That brings  to all our eyes something really important about human existence and what we should be fighting for, or rather against.

All I know is that with what’s happening in Gaza, Central Africa (the one that always gets ignored by the left), Iraq, and Afghanistan, not to mention Latin America, and indeed our own Land of Gradgrind and the Workhouse, might have thought of other priorities than standing in the Whertsead Road screaming hysterically about the plight of a few beasts.

I didn’t  notice any well-known ‘anarchist’ faces in the paper, or their mates the Greens, but they may well have been there.  The harmless cranks of the so-called East Anglian Social Forum will be lending their backing. or some of them. No doubt. Even Ian Bone, in his dotage, has taken to loving fury creatures (okay in his case he loathes Upper Class Hunters but he has posted somewhere, if I could be arsed to find it, joining some animal rights’ demo in London).

Here’s to me tea of foie gras and chips!

Un journaliste viré (kicked out) d’une conférence (lecture) de Tariq Ramadan

Is this most boring duplicituous book ever written about Islam’s Founder?

LIBERTÉ DE LA PRESSE -Hier soir, un journaliste de la Voix du Nord, Lakhdar Belaïd, a été éjecté d’une conférence publique à la mosquée de Lille-Sud sous les yeux de ses confrères. Tariq Ramadan s’y exprimait surla Palestine. Le recteur de la mosquée, Amar Lasfar, a justifié ce geste devant l’assemblée en l’accusant d’avoir écrit «des mensonges», et précisant que «tout journaliste qui joue de la sorte avec nous, nous saurons lui dire que nos portes ne lui sont pas ouvertes» (Libération: 8.1.2009, read more here)

 

“Press Freedom. Yesterday a journalist of the Voix du Nord, Lakhdar Belaïd, was ejected, in the presence of his journalist colleagues,  from a Public Lecture  at the Southern Lille Mosque given by Tariq Ramadan on Palestine. The Head of the Mosque justified this act in front of the audience by saying the reporter had written ‘lies’, and that “any journalist who plays around with us should know that our doors are not open to him.”

Tariq Ramadan is presented in Britain as the voice of reasonable Islam. A pompous and fairly unreadable one (as anyone who has glanced at his portentous writings knows). His website, written in American, is on a par. This figure is lauded by those seeking  a progressive Isalmicism (on the grounds that Ramadan has vaguely criticised the financial crisis of globalisation and calls for something called ‘justice’ – not explained in detail). Oh and he calls for some moratorium on Sharia punishments (not their abolition Nota Bene).

He also  associates with people who take such exception to a journalist who has upset the Mosque, that they take it upon themsleves to prevent him from doing his job. Because, apparently, he wrote something which they didn’t like and they consider him a ’social-traître ’(needs no translating).  I wonder if many democratic organisations would fling out a journalist from their public meetings on such grounds?

Will Ramadan stand up for that journalist’s write to report in liberty? Or will it be taken that Mosques have a special right to hold public events and only allow reporting that is favourable to them?

New Left Review Shall be Beaten on its Interlingual Internationalism.

 Tendance Coatesy Manifesto.

The latest issue of New Left Review contains a review article by something which has long claimed to be a Marxist, Fredric Jameson. No doubt a decent geezer, kind to his geese, but this ill-written piece contains more idiomatic German phases and  words, without translation, than the normal chippie user can grasp. 

As an internationalist organisation with deep roots in the expanding multi-disciplinary, anti-colonial, feminist and gender studies  that are leading  the proletariat to victory, we would like to point out certain polices of Tendance Coatesy. All members must have:

 

• Fluency in Hittite (old Kingdom).
• A Degree in Natural Science.
• Composed a Poem in Attic Greek.

 

One hopes that these levels of achievement will be shared by the revolutionary working class. In the meantime: New Left Review:  you ain’t even started on the level!

Why I am Glad I did not Demonstrate with Hamas Yesterday.

No Comment.

I was talking to my sister on the phone early last night. Subject comes up: what are we to do about our opposition to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. I said I feel very strongly that the Israeli actions are wrong,politically,  and on the most basic level of humanity. But who are our allies? Who do we defend? Should we participate, come what may, with reactionary religious forces in the name of a greater cause? I have had this kind of discussion with  a bloke I really admire, David Rosenberg (of the Jewish Socialists’ Group), before, and I gave the same argument to me Blister that I gave to him in May:  I could absolutely never never demonstrate with Hamas.

David said that they had to be there on these marches. I dissented.

Too bloody right was I: see pics and reports on Harry’s Place today.

The filth who marched with these obscene anti-Semitic banners, which were not torn down and ripped into shreds (as they would have been in most European Capitals – by the left) should be shunned by all progressive humanity. Those who wallow in the SWP calling on ‘Zionists’ to “Go back to New York” are racist scum.

Opposition to Israel’s actions, profound and based on respected arguments made by some of the best people on the planet, Bianca Jagger to the fore, is mired forever by association with this.

 

Is David having second thoughts?

Street-Fighting Anti-Zionist Man.

 

Would these Comrades have Fought for Islamicists?

 There is loads to say, so much space to say it in.

On the Saturday Demo against the Israel attack on Gaza that is. There is a ‘report’ on the Commune site which fair stirs the hackles of an ageing street-fighting man. Behind the chant of  “Allahu Akbar” they marched, “ This spirit of international solidarity, structured by religion though it is, is nonetheless stronger than that held by any other component of British society.” (Or in other words a sense that being a Muslim  is more important than any other identity).

Apparently they got a bit of a mob up, some fisty-cuffs with the coppers, did a bit of shop trashing, really puffed up in front of the Polis, and, hey bébé, there was somethink goin down in Paris at the same time a bit like this.

This shows that, “The movement continues.  The militant demonstrators yesterday drew a line in the gravel, as well in their own hearts. We know which side of that line we are on.”

Soit. You are backers of the enemies of the real Paris Commune. That stood for militant secularism.

The Communards would spit on the face of those who work with the Islamists.

 

Or so I bloody well think.

East Anglian Stuff: Towards the End of the EADT.

A Heimat under Threat.

I realise that on the scale of things this is minor. But for us East Anglians (not always by birth,but by naturalisation)  this News is pretty bad:

Plans to cut about 20 jobs at the two main daily newspapers for Suffolk have been announced.

Editorial and photographic jobs will go at the East Anglian Daily Times, which covers Suffolk and north Essex, and the Evening Star.

These papers play a very important part in our part of the world.  They are, dare say I, an absolute stem of our being. They have figured in my life: reporting my resignation from the Labour Party, the deaths of loved ones (giving a full page to one of them, Anthea), and more recently devoting two pages to Lee Chadwick, a Communist in Leiston(married to artist Paxton) and a family friend. Oh, and giving my photo and quotes on the big Feb anti-Invasion of Iraq Demo. When I went to a funeral of a beloved person a few years back the EADT had a stringer listing the names of those attending. Any other East Anglian could give you tales like these: it is so much part of our lives that we forget to mention it.

No longer. Except the forgetting.

The paper risks becoming such a shadow that it simply fades away.

French Left: Reservations about Demos on the Israeli Assault in Gaza. .

 

Don’t Touch My Mate!  Does this Apply to Gaza?

 

There are reservations about the marches held against the Israeli brutal actions in France as well as in the UK.

Dominique Sopo, President of SOS-racisme (one of France’s leading anti-racist organisations)  (Libèration,) “

En soi, cela ne me gêne pas d’organiser des manifestations selon les opinions de chacun sur ce conflit. Mais il serait mieux d’organiser des manifestations unitaires sous des mots d’ordre qui reprennent la récente résolution de l’ONU: arrêt immédiat de l’offensive israélienne et des tirs de roquettes du Hamas.

“In principleI not opposed to different demonstrations according to Antone’s opinions on the conflict in the  middle East. But it would be better to hold them on the unitary platform of backing for the UN resolution: immediate cessation of the Israeli offensive and the end of Hamas’s rocket attacks.”

 

Pourquoi SOS-Racisme ne participe pas à ces manifestations?

Parce qu’elles ne sont pas organisées sous des slogans rassembleurs.

“Why does SoS-Racisme not participate in these demonstrations (the marches held last weekend, against Israel’s actions, and one in defence of them)?

“ Because they are not organised behind unifying slogans.”

However Alain Krivine in Rouge has made an appeal of serious dignity and clarity arguing the contrary position. . He says we  should march in the streets against  Israel’s actions and internationally organise against the violence inflicted on Gaza.  

“il nous faut affirmer notre solidarité avec la résistance du peuple palestinien ,

 sans oublier le combat courageux des pacifistes israéliens.  

“Without forgetting the courageous fight of Israeli opponents of the attack on Gaza.”

 

Oh and he doesn’t mention what brave chaps Hamas are – funny that.

If only we had a Krivine here!

Rumpole (John Mortimer) is dead.

 

A friend of Humanity, Warts and All.

John Mortimer has just passed away.

The creator of  Horace Rumpole was one of the best loved figures in Britain. In his television contributions, his writing, and his political stand, he was part of what  is the best of human culture. His books to us Brits, and no doubt to many other nations, resound in our minds still. With the laughter only P.G.Woodhouse knew the secret of. Very much a man in the mould of a ’un homme de gauche’, he stood up for freedom for Underground Press during the Oz Trial and a host of causes, notably defending the Sex Pistols. His comment about New Labour, saying, “we don’t ask for much, but it would be nice to have a spoonful of socialism” showed where his heart lay(here).

Who could dislike a man who said, “One of my weaknesses is that I like to start the day with a glass of champagne before breakfast. When I mentioned that on a radio show once, I was asked if I had taken counselling for it.” ?

Who could dislike????

There are two groups: the Tories who regarded his left support of the permissive society and his attacks on Thatcherism as Anathema, and the kind of animal rights type who thinks that Mortimer’s backing for Fox Hunting was the  same as  supporting the Holocaust.

Were there a Pantheon in London he should be there: but he had too much of sense of humour to like that kind of thing.

Tommy’s Still In There!

Hey check-out the Dream-Boat!

Tommy Sheridan, every bird’s funky-hunk (and quite a few blokes!), is still, amazingly in Big Brother. He wasn’t even posted up for eviction (though I suggest, humbly, that Gail may have a few thoughts about him staying in the same gaff as her good self).

The gob-shutting episode last night, (okay I only watched it for about ten minutes) shew the glamorous trot totty looking very sheepish. He seems to be overtaken by coolio as a hate-figure.

Cannae even get as loathed as that woman who got shoved out? Or some third-class American Rapper?

What of the traditions of the SSP now?

Guardian Reaches New Illiteracy Hights.

Guardian Literary Critic.

Today the Guardian published a supplement of the 1000 must read novels.

Now this promises to be a seven part series. Hell preserve us from this!

I note that the pompous  pundits omit from the top ranks of their first issue: Dickens, Zola, Balzac, Kafka, and  Galdós . To name but a few. Mind you they did recommend Jeanette Winterson, who no doubt is sure to endure the centuries (or it seems like that to read even one of her books).

Mind you this is the Newspaper that publishes a ’style book’ which talks about something called active verbs.

The nature of verbs is to be active.

I think the poor chap meant, active voice.

Guardian Love Story: Not.

 

 Not a Must-Read Writer on Love?

Just thought I”d mention some of the books the Guardian Dunces have missed in their must-read series. Starting with their ill-starred list of love-stories.

Now I could go on and on about Balzac because he was one of the greatest writers about love that ever existed: in all of its forms. I restrict myself to La Fille aux yeux d’or, Balzac. Well of Loneliness? Balzac was writing about a woman in a gay relationship a century before.

Zola, Nana: everything, literally everything (and a lot more besides) you ever wanted to know about love and kinky sex.

Dickens: Great Expectations.

 

To cite but a few.

AWL Attacked by Thugs.

Care to join this lot?

Report on the AWL site  of how thugs dealt with them on a Sheffield March. The guilty slogans on the soon-to-ripped-to shreds placards were opposed to both the Israeli Defence Force and Hamas.

I wonder which was the bit these bullies who tore into the AWL (see photo) didn’t like…

Now no-one could accuse me of being soft on the AWL, and I vehemently oppose the actions of the Israeli state.

Yet perhaps this kind of behaviour might explain why lefties with some doubts about HAMAS and Islamism generally don’t go on these marches.

Ségolène Royal: I inspired Obama and his Team copied us.

 

Message to Obama: My Most Beautiful Story is YOU.

Madame Royal will be at the Obama Inauguration.

With this comment, (Le Monde)

“elle ne voit pas pourquoi elle “n’assumerait pas : oui, j’ai inspiré Obama et ses équipes nous ont copiés”. C’était au temps où elle était candidate à la présidence et où Barack Obama envisageait seulement de réussir à l’être. Il a envoyé une équipe à Paris étudier son site Désir d’avenir. “Chez nous ils ont enregistré les idées de ‘gagnant-gagnant’, de ‘citoyen-expert’” Ensuite, M. Obama a adapté sa “démocratie participative” à la mode américaine, “fort différente de l’européenne”.

She does not see why she shouldn’t state this: “I inspired Obama and his Teams copied us”. It was at the time when she was Presidential candidate and Obama was only an aspirant one. He sent a group to Paris to study her Web site, Désir d’avenir. “With us he got the idea of ‘win-win’ (Huh? Editor’s Note) and ‘citizen-expert’ (Huh Huh? Further Editor’s Note). Afterwards he adapted her principles of ‘participative demcoracy’ to the very different conditions of America”. 

France’s shooting-star lays claim to have created a new ‘conception of leadership’.

Surely an  inspiration to her comrades in the Parti Socialiste, such as Martine Aubry.

What some people will do to get in on the act!

What act? It is not known with whom Royal will actually meet in Washington…

Meanwhile Le Monde notes that questions have already begun to arise concerning Obama’s proposed governing team, notably around Bill Richardson, who has dropped his attempt to become commerce secretary. The US Press observes that the proposed Secretary is under  investigation for financial dealings as Governor of New Mexico.

Tendance Coatesy comments that: firstly, it is surely a great day to see Obama replace Bush, and a historic event of prime importance. We wish his supporters well. But, secondly, Oboma is (as Le Monde has pointed out in the past) not a European social democrat, not even a moderate one. How he will change American society is far from clear. His position on international interventions remains to be determined. In that area above all the augers are not good. One man, even if he wanted to, could he alter the structure of Military, commercial and financial power that determines US policy internationally? Really, deeply, truly?

Campaign Against Workfare Goes Mainstream.

Plenty Queuing-up for Purnell’s Solution to Unemployment.

Commenting on of the Welfare Reform Bill, the Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group, Kate Green, has said:

“The ‘work for your benefit’ clause is a disgrace. It will mean an effective wage of just £1.73 an hour for up to 6 months.

“British people believe in a fair day’s pay for an honest day’s work. If the Government can find temporary work for an unemployed person, they should give them a wage too.

“We support moves to provide high quality tailored support to people without work and believe this should be an entitlement on the face of the bill. But it is completely out of step with the Government’s stated aims on child poverty and social mobility to force people to work without a wage. “ (More) 

A version of this statement was published in yesterday’s Guardian. Kate Green has written an article on the subject for the latest  Chartist (Jan-Feb 2009). Another recent Chartist piece on the topic can be seen on this site (by Coatesy natch).

Meanwhile the capitalists and financiers, not to mention Gordon Brown, who can’t even organise a banking system, and have helped drive the economy low,  are no doubt rubbing their hands. What a boost they’ll get when they can corral the masses into work-for-nearly-nothing schemes. What a bleedin’ boost.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and the man behind these clean-the-streets-you-idlers plans, Purnell is even happier. His empire is expanding by the minute.

Will he respond to the TUC call for JSA to go up by £15 a week?

The man’s grinning at the idea already!

Today’s Guardian also reports:

Jobless rate expected to hit 3 million by 2010
Bank bail-outs taking a heavy toll on public finances
Bank of England voted 8-1 to cut interest rates to 1.5%

Ain’t the market a wonder!

Tommy Sheridan: You Done Scotland Proud Son!

Tommy and Gail: Look at the Love Birds!

From the Daily Record .

Sheridan booted out of Big Brother. Wifey Stands by her Man.

“PROUD wife Gail Sheridan couldn’t wait to be with her Tommy last night – and defied BB host Davina McCall and the bouncers to give him a big hug.

“Gail had gone into the crowd outside the door of the Big Brother house so she could shout for Tommy when he came down the stairs.As he emerged, she yelled: “You done Scotland proud, son.”

It is believed that sizable cheques from the Daily Record helped put a spring in the bonny lass’s step.

Meanwhile the usual sour leftists from the SSP moan and groan. Has not Tommy shown ample social skills during his all too brief stay in the House? Has he not spread the message of republican Scottish socialism to a new generation of telly-viewers? Has he not now got a few pennies for the cause of the Scottish people in his pocket? Comrade Phil even takes the whole thing seriously!

More donations to Tommy’s swelling pouch are welcome via the Defend Tommy Sheridan Campaign.

We at Tendance Coatesy say: The Boy Done Good!

Our Official Poet, little Emily Thribbs  (aged eight) is under the weather after we sent her out to the fields yesterday to dig over the frosted soil. But she still found time to write a few lines in Tommy’s praise:

“A fig for those by Golf* protected! 
Tommy’s due  a glorious feast!
Courts for heroes were erected,
Parties built to please us meist!”

* A reference to former Housmate Coolio’s favourite sport, which Tommy rightly described, in his careful way, as a ‘pussy’s game’.

Riots Spread Across Europe.

EU states monitor spread of civil unrest

LEIGH PHILLIPS. This very important article notes the following:

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU member states are “intensively” monitoring the risk of spreading civil unrest in Europe, as riots over the economic crisis erupt in Iceland following street clashes in Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Greece.

 

The central causes are not hard to find: it’s the plunge into economic crisis at a time of rising popular expectations. With the wittering Western governments trying to save capitalism by a fusion between the banking system and the state.Politics were dominated by the interests of finance for more than two decades (otherwise called neo-liberalism, and the globalflow’ of capital). The social arm of the public domain, once a welfare state, was transformed into a Foucaultean disciplinary machine and a Deluezian-Guattarian ‘capturing’ mechanism that marshals the population and excludes the ‘outsiders’.

The operation worked  as long as there were rising living standards, and people were entrapped in the ‘invisible chains’ of debts and the ever-rising cost of privatised utilities and the housing market. Tbe beginning of the latter’s collapse, to the rest of the debt mountain, fueled by the chiseling and sheer incompetence of  the banks and the derivatives markets, has made the return to the business cycle turn nasty. The something-for-nothing culture of finance has run aground. The population is left adrift. Unemployment grows massively (well over 10% in many European countries, well well over). The State proposes ever harsher discipline, dragooning and moralising the workless, and those demanding their rights as claimants. As it nationalises banking it flogs off public servives to incompetent private companies. In Ireland it is proposed even to cut public employees pay.

Something had to crack. It is starting to. From the periphery to the centre?

 

 

Iceland Leads the Way!

 

 Ultima Thule No More.

This went largely unoticed (Obama Mania week), at least by me:

From the Guardian by Eirkur Bermann, describing the events in Reykjavik:

“The word “revolution” might sound a bit of an overstatement, but given the calm temperament that usually prevails in Icelandic politics, the unfolding events represent, at the very least, a revolution in political activism.”

Maybe this sounds a bit familiar,

Four months after the collapse of Iceland’s entire financial system, no one has accepted any responsibility. Our currency has lost more than half its value, rampant inflation has already eaten up most people’s savings, property values have dropped by more than a third and unemployment is reaching levels never seen before in the life of our young republic. The fault is clearly shared between the business elite and the government, which failed to regulate the newly privatised financial sector, allowing a few incompetent and egotistical business tycoons to gamble with the nation’s fortune. And yet neither the government nor the bankers – who, by the way, seem to have disappeared into the cold thin air – see anything wrong with their own behaviour. 

We don’t have inflation here (though the Euro’s rise means Le Monde costs £1.40 when this time last year it was 90 pence) . For the rest: well the kind of privateer who can’t even tie up his/her shoes-laces are still set to take over more and more of the former public sector. And officially we are in recession.

My Sister has a passion for Iceland. She took her family there twice in recent years. I gave her my precious copy of Letters from High Latitudes by Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood Dufferin and Ava (same name etc). This nineteenth century account of a visit there contained valuable advice on using Latin as a lingua franca (with a Priest they met). There doesn’t seem much doubt that English nowdays works better in practice. But my search on Icelandic left sites revealed a degree of linguistic difficulty unknown to the Tendance since my attempts to learn Basque.  But I paste the link anyway: http://www.broadleft.org/is.htm

The People of Iceland shout, protest and cause trouble. Today’s Independent carries a long report on how they have forced Iceland’s PM, Geir Haarde, of the right-wing Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn), to resign.

That’s my kinda people.

I note in passing that Geir’s background is pure professional US neo-liberal economics, of the type so admired by our PM. Would that we did something here instead of just sitting listening to that Holy Willie Brown and the non-meetings (Galbraith’s term) of bankers, biznezmen and Mandelson’s lot!

Where Iceland leads we should follow.

Nick Cohen Goes Riot, Coatesy Goes Purge.

 

Solidarity with the Very Rocks and Trolls of Iceland!

Iceland dominates every class conscious socialist’s mind these days. Even our opponents are worried. It is notable that a certain Nick Cohen devotes his column in Sunday’s  Observer to what some might consider a direct flitch from this site. It’s entitled: Be Very Worried Rioting’s Coming Home. By coincidence (and the journalist had time to have read the post on this very topic,  below) it covers unrest in the Baltic states, Greece, and oh yes Iceland. He rightly states that a recession, at a time, TC notes,  of ever-swelling hopes, will mean not only that political protests may grow, but that the crime figures and violence are bound to increase as well.

The Tendancy wishes to underline that it has no truck with romanticising violence, as a manifestation of displaced politics (a notion distorted from Hobsbawn’s  book on ‘primitive rebels’). To cite the obvious: the principal victims of the French rioting in the banlieues a couple of years back were the urban poor. But we celebrate this political upheaval as a sign that a new mood is in the air, and a potential for real change is there.

Cohen opines that,

For all the differences between Britain and Europe, our authorities look likely to greet the disorder of recession with all the nervous bafflement of the Icelandic “riot squad”.

This is probable. Yet I thought that Britain is, geographically and politically, in Europe. But our betters know better.

Here at home we are preparing solidarity actions, tous azimuts. Yet is it a coincidence that we are now under threat? Comrade O’Brien, from the inner Tendance Coatesy Party,  has informed us that the post filed under Theory, as Reading and Politics, is in fact a draft version of the text. The crystal clear prose of  a later edition was not transferred by the memory stick, but this inferior version. Suspicion about this act of sabotage focuses on a certain group, with vacillations about the long and  proud Tendance tradition of liquidationism: the so-called Rodents React-Back. It is no accident that this cabal deeply resents the close links we are building with the Icelandic section of the Garden Gnome Liberation Front (Trolls).

Yesterday Emily reported that the allotment shed showed signs of gnawing by sharp teeth. Whose teeth does this benefit we ask?

As we prepare a People’s Trial of the wreckers and spies Reading and Politics (best edition) is being searched for any further infilitration. It will not be published until any error and deviation has been purged.

For information of Iceland’s Left (hat tip to Nick): Left Green Alliance (in English). Elections in the country in May will be followed by the Tendance with great interest. This will be a primary source of news.

European Left and Mounting Protests.

 

Strike on the 29th of January!

Iceland and the Baltic states have been hit first and amongst the hardest. The people there have struck back. But now anger at  the looming recession, and financial profiteering, is growing across the Continent. Faced with waves of redundancies and the looming depression more and more cross-continental protests are taking place. This coming Thursday, January the 29th, France will see a big day of protest. It has been called, in a rare display of unity, by all the main union federations, the CFDT, la CFE-CGC, la CFTC, la CGT, FO, la FSU, UNSA and the Solidaires  (SUD associated with the Nouveau Parti anti-capitaliste). The objectives include to defend employment, against deregulation, insecure jobs, for a decent welfare state, social protection, and to maintain salary levels threatened by a downward push in pay and conditions.

In effect a one-day General Strike, this has caught the public imagination. Against Sarkozy’s economic policies, it has nevertheless obliged even the Secretary of his Party, the UMP, Xavier Bertrand, to admit that “employees want to be heard”. The French Parti Socialiste is backing the mobilisation, “à la fois sociale et politique” (both political and social).

The revolt is spreading, if unevenly. But we need more than symbolic strikes and street action to translate these demands (which we in the UK could well echo). We have to have left political representation. Perhaps the best way to begin to respond is through the approach in a just published Socialist Renewal pamphlet. This reproduces Oskar Lafontaine’s appeal for Left Parties everywhere, and the election Platform of the European Left Party. In many countries left political organisations are gaining ground. In contrast here, Ken Coates notes the appalling situation the British left faces under the “New Labour stranglehold”. More information of the European Left is available here.

We ought to consider the importance of this May’s European elections. An anti-EU programme does not begin to cope with globalisation – Iceland is of course not in the EU and it has suffered more than most from financial liberalisation. The difficulties and failures of banking and private capital are spreading daily, and show few signs of being mastered. This is  a Continent-wide phenomenon.  A spiral of bankruptcies, followed by more and more restricted lending, has led to belt-tightening, short-time working, and pay cuts.

 A political platform for the labour movement could addresss three major problems with some immediate alternatives (this list is not exhaustive…).

• The return of mass unemployment. The introduction of coercive workfare (which undermines the minimum wage)  and control over the workless on very low benefits, will park a large segment of the population in a vast disciplinary machine that further reduces their living standards and crushes their hopes. This needs to be replaced with different schemes for those out of work,. On the one hand there should be genuine training to obtain recognised and valued qualifications (not just low-level NVQs but BTEC, City and Guilds, and University level BAs, MAs, MScs). On the other hand there should be a modern version of the ‘community programme’. That is employment (up to 25 hours a week) paid at the ‘rate for the job’, undertaking socially useful tasks. These measures would give a powerful boost to consumer spending power. A final suggestion is the renewal of launch-pad projects for co-operative and social enterprises – a more secure future than the tens of thousands of failed ‘entrepreneur’ subsidised Sole Trader scams.
• The pension crisis as fewer and fewer companies offer last salary schemes. Linking future benefits to stock market investment funds has already led to a major catastrophe in Chile and Argentina. The signs are this is starting to happen here – in both the private and public sector. The basic state pension will have to fill the gap, and should be raised to the level where it provides a decent standard of living .
• State Expenditure is under great pressure. One cause is that the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) as suggested here already, is confronting a collapse in confidence as their funds dry up, and the public has to accept hefty bills for already undertaken projects with guaranteed revenue for the firms involved – at many times the present level of interest. As a step forward all the contracts and debts should be renegotiated. This obviously comes up against the objection that such is impossible, but then so was taking over much of the banking sector six months ago (and the banks are players in this in anyc ase0.

 

In these conditions the left, we at the Tendance suggest, needs a fundamental rethink around a viable economic programme. We have always argued that it needs to be based on support wider than the UK: in the framework of a European Social Republic. Is this realistic? Well, it’s more realistic than shrinking back during this crisis to ever smaller nationalisms, however left they may seem. Iceland shows how powerless such nations can be. Better more than lesser.

After Iceland’s Victory: Test for French Unions this Thursday.

 

Sometimes the Impossible Happens.

Iceland moves forward. The Government has fallen. Reuters reports, “Iceland’s ruling coalition collapsed under pressure from sometimes violent demonstrations, the first government to fall as a direct result of the global economic crisis.” They are now scrambling around for a medium-term Cabinet - caretakers before the May General Elections (Here).

No doubt the success of popular action  will give some other people ideas…

Libération this Morning.

Echo.L’initiative syndicale, soutenue par les partis de gauche, d’extrême gauche et nombre d’associations (de retraités, de parents d’élèves, de jeunes…), rencontre en effetunécho très favorable dans l’opinion. C’est ce que mettent en évidence les sondages, notamment ceux publiés hier et réalisés par l’institut CSA (1) et par l’Ifop (2). Pour CSA, 69 % des personnes interrogées ont de la sympathie pour le mouvement. Ils sont même 75 %, selon l’Ifop, à le trouver «justifié».

 Echo. The unions’ initiative, supported by the left and extreme left parties, as well as numerous associations (pensioners, school parents, young people..) has found a very favourable echo amongst the public.  This is clear from opinion polls, notably those published  yesterday and carried out by the CSA Institute, and by IFOP. For the CSA 69% of those interviewed are sympathetic to the movement. For the IFOP even more: 75% find the movement ‘justified’.

After Sarkozy’s Presidential victory it seemed as if the hyper-active French leader would effortlessly outmanoeuvre his opponents for the foreseeable future. Now French politics are changing yet again. The unions are gaining wide backing for their Day of Action. There has been an incredible degree of social ferment, and creative political activity by the popular masses and left groups. Nevertheless unlike the last great revolt in the mid-1990s (1995) there has not been much of public role taken by intellectuals, at that time by Pierre Bourdieu. Alain Badiou, for once, sensibly observes (here) that, “nous sortons péniblement d’une période où bon nombre d’intellectuels paraissaient s’accomoder de l’ordre établi” (we are painfully coming out of a period during which a good number of intellectuals have adapted to the established order).  The issue at stake for this Initiative is, he continues, whether unity of purpose and action can be created and maintained. The immediate aim is clear: stir up as much trouble for Sarkozy as possible. Fight every regression, social and economic, as hard as they can. But for the future, nothing is less certain.

From Greece to Iceland Europe is in uproar. Some movements, like the Spanish and Italian students’ actions, are hardly reported outside their countries, and not at all in the parochial UK.

One thinks of just how far the acceptance of the Market State permeated British intellectual fashion, and the left. How  Blairism was once brand new and smart. That free reign was given to managerial bullies who profited from this.  How former leftists here considered markets too strong for anything so outdated as unions and the masses to combat. Or the deluded leftist souls (I use this word by choice) dreamt that religious dogma (principally Islamic, but also Christian), was a serious alternative. That some aligned themselves with the pious Islamist bourgeoisie in pursuit of this delusion.  Or that some nebulous Green politics formed the coming agenda. Now that the old class struggle has returned, well, I expect they’ll turn their coats again!

Kaschke vs Osler libel case: Solidarity with Dave.

David Osler writes, that the Royal Courts of Justice has ruled that the libel action brought against him by former “Labour Party parliamentary hopeful, former Respect member, former Communist Party member and current Tower Hamlets Tory activist Johanna Kaschke should go to a four-day jury trial towards the end of this year.”

The legal process will centre on her arrest on terrorism charges involving mid-1970s German armed struggle organisations. Dave has already stated, that ” Ms Kaschke admits arrest on suspicion of terrorism in 1975, and spending two months or so thereafter in custody. As I made clear in the article complained of, she was in 1977 paid compensation for false imprisonment, and has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Despite her contention otherwise, I have at no time accused her of being a ‘hardline terrorist’, or indeed a terrorist of any stripe.”

Reading Dave’s account of  Kasche ’s endless political gyrations makes her sound one very strange creature indeed – even for local government (here).

For lots of us a central issue in this case is this:

Many of the ‘words complained of’ – to use the legal expression – were not even written by me, but consists of comments from the comments box. While I am confident that all of them fall within the realm of fair comment, the outcome of the case could have considerable implications for the freedom of the blogosphere.

Ms Kaschke certainly seems free with her own comments on the Web. In a prominent post she cites the European Convention on Human Rights, that, “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.” However she adds at another place on her site, “Please do not copy and paste content from this site into your blogs and interpret them in a context that I would not approve of. Please ask me what I think directly before making libellous comments.”

Elsewhere she offers this little suggestion: “All copyright 2008 with Johanna Kaschke, do not copy, quote anything without permission.” So we won’t reproduce by pasting her paean of praise for one old Purple Socks, Pope Benedict XVI, and her views (not exactly pro) on homosexuality.

Though her references to Sodom and Gomorra are too interesting to ignore (I believe they have been expressed before). She says the fact that these places were pretty gay before being brought down by the Lord, makes her consider that going in for irresponsible, heedless, sexual activity may well  be associated with large-scale disasters (I paraphrase just in case the daft old bat reads this and throws such a wobbly she harms herself).  

 Deary me. We’ve got a Right One here.

Political parties certainly know how to recruit ‘em.

Left Parties’ Joint-Declaration on French General Strike.

Déclaration unitaire de partis de gauche

From L’Humanité (published as well in a number of other left media, and organisations, such as the Alternatifs).

Plusieurs partis de gauche, dont le Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (NPA), le Parti communiste français (PCF) et le Parti de Gauche (PG), ont rendu publique lundi une déclaration unitaire de soutien à la journée de jeudi, intitulée “ce n’est pas à la population de payer la crise”.

A large number of Left parties, including the New Anti-Capitalist Party, the French Communist Party and the Left Party, have made public a unitary statement of support for the Thursday Day of Action, titled, ‘It’s not the people who should pay for the crisis.”

“Les classes populaires sont durement touchées par la crise. La politique du pouvoir est plus que jamais au service des privilégiés. L’heure est à la riposte”, affirment les dix organisations signataires. 

Ordinary people are heavily affected by the crisis. The government’s policies take the side of the privileged. Now is the time to fight back, announced the 10 different organisations [1] who have signed.

“Les grèves et manifestations comme celles du 29 janvier expriment les colères et amplifient les luttes. Une riposte populaire d’ensemble est urgente. Nous nous engageons à mettre toutes nos forces au service de la convergence des luttes contre les licenciements, la vie chère, le chômage et la précarité, et pour la défense et l’élargissement des services publics”, poursuivent-ils.

They continue, strikes and demonstrations, like those of the 29th of January, express the anger of the people and amplify their struggles. A joint, united, popular response  is essential. We are committed to put all our resources behind the struggle against redundancies, high prices, unemployment, insecure working and living conditions, in order to expand and defend public services.

Appelant à se “mobiliser pour une Europe sociale, écologique, démocratique, féministe”, ils estiment qu’”une autre politique est possible, en s’attaquant aux profits et à la spéculation financière, en remettant en cause la rémunération du capital”.

They appeal to “mobilise for a social, ecological, democratic and feminist Europe” and estimate that “other policies are possible” . Attacking the profiteering brought by financial speculation, they question the rewards given to Capital.

Parmi leurs propositions, figurent notamment l’augmentation des salaires, du Smic, des minima sociaux, “l’annulation du paquet fiscal de l’été 2007″, ou la “remise en cause du pacte de stabilité et des directives européennes de privatisation”.

Amongst their proposals are, notably, a demand for salary rises, an increase in the level of the minimun wage, and social benefits, an annulation of Summer 2007 Fiscal reforms [2], `and an end to “European Stability Pact and European Union Directives on Privatisation.”

Les organisations affirment aussi leur opposition aux licenciements et “exigent l’annulation des 30.000 suppressions de postes décidées (dans le secteur public en 2009), le retrait de la privatisation de la santé, la création d’emplois socialement utiles”.

The organisations equally affirm their opposition to redundancies, and demand a cancellation of the pubic sector plans (for 2009) to reduce staff by 30,000, the withdrawal the introduction of privatisation of the Health Service, and the creation of socially useful employment.

The  Parti Socialiste has supported the Day of Action and called for its memebrs to participate in the march.

Just a little prediction: given that Sarkozy and his mates have been waxing increasingly hysterical about the ‘ultra-left’, would it be by ‘chance’ that some violence happens today?

[1] Alternative Démocratie Socialisme (ADS), Alter-Ekolo, Alternative Libertaire (AL), l’Association des Communistes Unitaires (ACU), la Coordination Nationale des Collectifs Unitaires pour une alternative au libéralisme (CNCU), les Alternatifs, le Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), le Parti Communiste Français (PCF), le Parti communiste des ouvriers de France (PCOF) et le Parti de Gauche (PG).

[2] Amongst Sarkozy’s first measures these were the usual neoliberal tax changes favouring the better off.

 

First Photos (Libération): 300,000 at Marseille. Below, 60,000 at Bourdeaux.  

French General Strike Success: Observations.

“Quand il y une grève en France personne ne s’aperçoit.” Nicolas Sarkozy.

“When there’s a Strike in France, nobody notices.”

How right he was!

Mind you someone somewhere might have paid a bit of attention yesterday.

The details of the strike, it’s success (between a million and two and a half million people in action, choose your figure), and the link to the pan-European wave of unrest, have been described at length in the media. Even the BBC last night made it a top story. I would like to make three reflections.

• This revolt is nothing primarily to do with the Euro, as obsessives, from the nationalist and green left and the nationalist and blue right, suggest. It has everything to do with the crisis of finance and capital flows which has touched the entire planet. In France, the Right’s effort to create a market-state moulded to the eneds of Capital has shaken the republican consensus the 5th Republic is based on. As such it affects everyone: and therefore any fight-back has the potential to unify a movement on class, ‘popular’ (in French political language)  lines. Communalist and nationalist identities and politics,  which have begun to appear even in the Hexagon may even increase their appeal. However we now have the basis for unity: both against those who have caused the crisis, and for an alternative.
• The Paris clashes with the Police (predicted by the Suffolk Soothsayer) received only minor attention in the French media (France-Inter this morning and the Press). Nevertheless one should not rule out the following. Given that great expectations during a boom create great frustrations when the economic atmosphere turns sour, aggressive reactions, at till now suppressed greivances, may multiply. Renewed rioting in the banlieues cannot be ruled out. Secondly, that the diversity of objectives of the union-led movement, may fuel this further, a general rage may create wider and wider reactions. We may well see this spread to other European countries, and despite Nick Cohen’s opinion, Britain is a European land. Thirdly, as I suggested there may be a role played here by agents provocateurs, or the deliberate use of  heavy-handed policing.
• It is significant that this weekend the new Parti de Gauche of Jean-Luc Mélenchon is holding its first Conference. The following weeks see the formation of the New Anti-Capitalist Party of Olivier Besancenot. Both will be founded during an intense period of social upheaval. These initiatives are signs that the left is thinking of realalternatives to liberalising capitalism. Far from the splintered British left, and the directionless mix of serious radicals and harmless cranks of the old Social Forums – at least I hope. Will they be able to challenge pro-market parties (a hefty chunk of European social democracy)  who principal solution to financial melt-down has so far been to support (subsidise by buying-ins) banks and trying to boost finance? Will they follow suggestions that the non-Parti Socialiste left should present a united list for the coming  European elections? 

These are not just French issues, as the entire European democratic socialist and radical left has similar problems while facing this moment of opportunity for revival and renewal.

European Unrest: UK, Strikes Against Foreign Labour or Social Dumping?

Where Will The Next Unrest Break Out?

On Wednesday the Lindsey oil refinery in Linconshire awarded a portion of a £300 million construction project to an Italian firm. Workers protested and have held a wildcat strike, claiming that the company will only be using Italian and Portuguese workers.The BBC  reports a massive wave of solidarity walkouts and protests. The Times calls this the “dawn of a new age of unrest”. Something we have been blogging about for a while here.

Unite states,

30 Jan 2009 Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson said: “Unite has raised the growing problem of UK workers being excluded from important engineering and construction projects at the highest levels of government, including with the prime minister and the secretary of state for energy and climate change.”Unite’s national executive (the governing body of the union) has today called for a national protest in Westminster. Unite is consulting its lawyers on the potential illegality of some employers’ practices in the engineering and construction industries. ”The union is doing everything in its power to ensure that employers end this immoral, potentially illegal and politically dangerous practice of excluding UK workers from some construction projects.

 

Sign the Unite Petition  Against Social Dumping.

The Morning Star comments that this is a result of pro-business legislation from the European Union, noting that the practice is legal, “In the case of the dispute in Linconshire, this has meant that Italian subcontractor IREM has brought in its own workers, apparently housing them in a ship at anchor in Grimsby dock.  This may well be in keeping with the bosses’ freedom to exploit as enshrined in EU law, but it has effectively deprived British workers of the right to seek work in their own country” Phil makes a more constructive comment, that , “Instead of capitulating to the anti-immigrant sentiment fanned by the gutter press, unions must demand legislation that prevents employers from taking on workers at below the basic rates of its workforce.” There is more discussion on the Socialist Unity site.

As a T & G/Unite  Branch Chair I have naturally have a direct interest in this dispute; my union understands the reasons for the protests. These concerns are well known: for a couple of years now I have heard workers grumbling about how contractors and agencies accentuate differences between different national groups, and obviously prefer a non-union workforce (which appears one reason behind Total’s choice of IREM). Our ‘general’ Branch is mainly based on local authority workers and the voluntary sector, but we hear echos of this all the time. At the Trades Council not so long ago there was even an expression of hostility to foreign workers, which was swiftly answered needless to say.

There are those who call the strikers ‘racist scum’ for using Brown’s sound bite, British Jobs for British Workers. There’s no doubt that nationalism is brought into this dispute, by the employers’ manipulation of the labour market and by the xenophobic press. Not to mention the BNP lurking in the background. But it’s surely good sense to realise that if Grimsby has a pool of skilled workers fit to do the job it is odd to say the least that the company now hires people from half way across Europe in their place.

Jon Cruddas  (who was brilliant on Newsnight yesterday) rightly says that,” The government has abandoned workers to exploitation, more concerned with making them fit the global market than in protecting their interests. In Labour’s working-class heartlands there is a powerful feeling of being dispossessed. British and European labour market policies have centred on the drive for flexibility.”  Cruddas then describes the growth of insecure agency work, and the gamut of New Labour measures to increase this ‘flexibility’ at the cost of workers.  Instead of more liberalising globalisation, or the Morning Star’s national seige economy, he demands that “We need to create new forms of economic citizenship, and bring the economy and work under greater democratic control. That should be the agenda, not “British jobs for British workers”.” Recent European legal decisions have prepared the way for ’social dumping’ – the use of the lowest cost employees, transported across frontiers to undercut domestic workers. He tactfully fails to mention that in the race to lower standards, the British government (Lisbon onwards  has been a leader, outdistancing even Merkel and Sarkozy by metres.

Sorely needed then is new legislation, which controls and protects working conditions, and is based on workers’ own demands. This then is a movement for continent-wide equality in labour legislation, for equal social provision, and for a public boost to employment. It is against social dumping, not foreigners.

What could carry out such measures? Surely not the British left’s  mascots of ever smaller nation states and social movements.  Or ‘anti-globalisation’ wishful thinking. The resentment, at the iron cage of the market and the threats to individual living conditions brought by the recession, that is now boiling over across the Continent needs something serious.

In place of the EU -  a  European Social Republic?

Parti de Gauche: tous ensemble dans le front de gauche pour changer d’Europe!

All Together in the Left Front to Change Europe!

Europe is in upheaval, with strikes, demonstrations and popular discontent spreading – the factory occupation in  Ireland’s by Waterford Glass workers is the latest flash point.  

Is there a European political response? In France the new Parti de Gauche (left Party), initiated last November,  held its first Conference over the weekend. It was principally created by Parti Socialiste left-wingers,  Senator  Jean-Luc Mélenchonet the Deputy (MP) Marc Dolez. They resigned from the PS on the eve of its national conference, last November, declaring that the Socialists were headed towards a dead-end right-wing future. There inspiration is the German Die Linke: a left party, backing radical reforms, anti-capitalism, ecology and feminism, within a democratic republican framework. They have drawn strongly on opposition to the neo-liberal cast of European Union legislation, and were opposed to the proposed Constitutional Treaty, and, the (substituted) Lisbon Treaty. Both are considered part of  the free-market ideology and practice they stand against. This platform had resonance. In the following weeks other significant Socialist figures, such as Deputy Jacques Dessangre and the Senator François Autin,as well as local councillors and members of left republican organisations,  joined them.  Further support has come from intellectuals and a raft of trade unionists. Behind is the experience on much of the left of working together during the Referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty.

At the Limeil-Brévannes (Val-de-Marne)Congress 500 delegates listened to speech’s decalring that, with mounting crises and unrest, “L’heure est à la riposte” (The time has come to Fight Back).  The party claims 4,000 members (organised in 250 committees). Naturally the unfolding social and economic crisis in Europe formed the background to the meeting.  The Parti de Gauche declared that, faced with the burgeoning slump, “C’est la responsabilité des partis de gauche disponibles pour rompre avec les logiques capitalistes qui ont si lourdement faillies.” (it’s the responsibility of the left parties who are ready to break with failing capitalist logic.). Their answer? To fight by both popular mobilisation and by the ballot box. To this end they propose a common Front, “Il s’adresse à toutes les forces qui refusent le traité de Lisbonne, combattent pour une autre Europe sociale, démocratique, écologique et porteuse de paix..” (it is a call to all the forces opposed to Lisbon treaty, and who fight for another Europe, social, ecologists and promoting peace..) . The New Party notes that, Les élections européennes de juin prochain nous donnent l’occasion de changer la donne.”  (With the June European elections we have the possibility to change the political landscape – I clarify the meaning).

Can the French non-PS left work together? There was  a joint declaration on Thursday’s general strike (which the NPA claims they initiated). What of the European contest? The PG wants to present a list of all those on the left who oppose the Lisbon agreements (which endorsed the rules which have created the social dumping UK workers are protesting against). A strong argument in favour, which Mélenchon cites, is that an opinion poll indicates that if a left front, from the Parti Communiste Français, Lutte Ouvrière,  Mélenchon’s Party to the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste stood in the European Elections it could get up to 14,5% of the vote.  With the PCF on board he asks if Olivier Besancenot will assume his responsibilities and make this alliance. The LCR postie is  the leader of a party that’s  ”no longer a groupuscule” (here). Will the NPA agree with his proposal at its own founding Congress the coming weekend? The LCR aligned unions in SUD seem generally favourable. Christian Picquet of the  LCR minority has said that “there is no reason at bottom to refuse this.” (here)

We shall see.

British Jobs for British Workers? Reservations.

Dispute Spreads to Here.

Although I support the cause of the Lindsey strikers – for work and against the manoeuvres of the employers – there are doubts about the both the clarity of the goals behind the walk-outs and some of the emotional demands they have unleashed. These came to a head for me when I saw on Look East, the regional news programme, last night. There were protesting workers outside Sizewell Nuclear plant, Suffolk. The crowd  held up hand-made placards calling for ‘British Jobs for British Workers’. There are further reports on Anglia. (and the EADT, More here) No question there of flinging back Gordon Brown’s sound-bite in his face. I know Sizewell fairly well (in retirement my Father was for a decade Chair of next-door Leiston Labour Party and my mother was Secretary). There  is a left tradition in this working class  enclave (Paxton Chadwick was the Communist Mayor just after the War, and his widow, Lee, kept the CP flag flying for decades). Sizewell contractors come from all over the country, and at one point the Labour District Councillor was  a Scottish employee at the Plant. But this seemed to me purely and simply against foreigners.

I hear this message from quite  a broad tranche of people.

Two major areas of concern then.

Firstly, what direction are these protests going in? An anti-European Union one, an anti-Emploeyr one, or an anti-foreign labour one? The first is obviously the Morning Star and aligned UNITE Broad Left’s preferred one. They are hard-line national sovereigntists. The second gets a bit lost in the sound, fury and flag-waving. The third may be headed off. But I am sceptical. Claims about some Polish workers joining in seem exaggerated.  Secondly, the Socialist Party have listed some excellent demands for the wildcat strikes, which some seem to accept. But how exactly are they going to be implemented? Not by this Cabinet that goes without saying. But where is the truly mass movement of workers that could force at least some of them onto the political agenda. Not in sight yet.

Does this help?

ETUC  (European Trade Union Confederation) General Secretary John Monks commented today on the dispute centring on the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Linconshire. 

Mr Monks declared: ‘We do not yet know all the details of the contractual arrangements made in the United Kingdom (UK) regarding the Lindsey Oil Refinery. But it is apparent that, while we support strongly the free movement of labour, we need clearer and stronger traffic rules in the European Union which guarantee equal treatment of workers regardless of nationality, and that collective agreements are fully respected by employers. Some employers are undercutting such collective agreements and workers’ anger should be directed at them and not at the migrant workers. ETUC is calling for a revised Posting of Workers Directive and a social progress protocol attached to the European Treaties to counter recent adverse decisions of the European Court of Justice which permit employers to ignore established agreements and, in effect, give them a license to undercut wages and conditions.’

Le Monde today devotes its Editorial to the background to this unrest, and the dangers rerpesented by demands for protectionism, restricting the freedom of labour to move. I am not sure about this: capital eneds social control (if not abolition) not the right to flow where it wishes, and the freedom of movement should be in the hands of the workers and people, not determined by companies. But Le Monde’s conclusion is useful:

Fermer les frontières aux hommes est aussi dangereux – et souvent illusoire – que les fermer aux produits étrangers. La réponse passe par plus de protection sociale et par une plus grande solidarité internationale. Pas l’inverse.

Closing borders to people is as dangerous – and often an illusion – as closing them to foreign goods. The reply is to have more social protection, and more international solidarity. Not the contrary.

Now if one meant (unlikely in le Monde’s case it’s true)  class solidarity here, I would agree wholeheartedly.

Tarnac Affair: Review of L’insurrection qui Vient.

Coming Near You Soon?

The Tarnac Affair rumbles on (Here - in English). At recent French demonstrations in support of the accused, in particular for the, still incarcerated, Julien Coupat,  there were arrests. (Here). Clearly those marching in support of people facing the Courts are, rightly, most concerned about a miscarriage of justice. One should recall the seriousness of the charge:  sabotage of the French railway system, something potentially murderous. Questions about its truth are, then, of prime importance.

Nevertheless it’s worth looking at the ideas which are said to have inspired the group marshalled before Justice  by the French police. Their origins lie in writings in  the ‘post-situationist’ review Tiqqun (more here and here). As is the way with such reviews they appeal to small groups of the interested -  whatever replaced the avant-guarde, and  groupuscles of anarchist-autonomist origin. The same applied to other material produced by the anarchists-autonomists  now under investigation. It  took the affair of the Tarnac Nine to bring L’insurrection qui vient to a wider audience. Given the rising European unrest, it may reach even more readers. So, does their concept of a “coming uprising” have much to tell us? These  are some – critical – reflections.

Review: L’Insurrection qui vient.  Le comité Invisible. © La fabrique éditions, 2007

 

To the French Police and (some) Magistrates the country is menaced by the avatars of the Bande à Bonnot. These libertarian, individualist, anarchists, carried out the first motorised hold-up in France (1911), in the Rue Ordener, Montmartre. Some in the modern equivalent of the Sûreté have dreamt up a similar threat from anarchists. They are echoed by right-wing politicians. The President of Sarkozy’s Parliamentary group, François Copé calls the extreme left (from anars to the Nouveau Parti anti-Capitaliste) an “abcès idéologique” for the left as a whole. Today’s enemies of the State, the Tarnac accused,  are accused of sabotaging rail tracks.  For their part those accused in the affaire Tarnac (see above), have little time for any elected left, or conventional politics. Their central concerns lie elsewhere. The authors of L’insurrection qui vient, a certain Comité Invisible – which included Julien Coupat – denounce, as a major target ‘le quadrillage policier’ (omnipresent police control) of the country. In doing so they seem to have run up against something that goes back even further than the pre-Great War anti-anarchist Bloodhounds: the counterparts of Balzac’s early 19th century Peyrade and Corentin (Splendeurs et misères des courtisans). That is the state’s henchmen, with a  flair for conspiracies. Such a secretive arm of the Sarkozy règime does exist: paranoiac, manipulative and heavy-handed. It really seems to have got it in for the Tarnac accused.    

 

The text at hand is probably the most lucid up-to-date summary in French of what is often called ‘Autonomism’. Seven sections are headed, circles, a title of no doubt profound significance that nevertheless escapes me (Dante had nine circles of Hell).  It begins with customary French left grandiloquence that “ Le futur n’a plus d’avenir”. Or no future. Well, well. An equally strident and gratingly wrong-headed celebration of the 2005 riots in the French banlieues follows. “L’incendie de novembre 2005 n’en finit plus de projeter son ombre sur toutes les consciences. Ces premiers feux de joie sont le baptême d’une décennie pleine de promesses.” (the conflagration of November 2005 hasn’t stopped projecting a shadow on everyone’s conscience. These first celebratory bonfires baptized a decade full of promise). Claiming that those arrested came from all social and ethnic groups, they assert that only a hatred of existing society united them. We should, they assert, revel in the destructive nature of these disturbances, identify with the ‘dangerous classes’ and ‘bandits’ and their violent rejection of the existing order, their violence indeed tout court. With an unpleasant sneer, teachers who regretted that their schools were burned down are described as having “pleurnicher” (snivelled) about it all.

 

With this kind of prose, well known to aficionados of the French ultra-left, we know where we are going. Strikingly it leads us back to some ideas popular amongst anarchists during the Bande à Bonnot epoch. A meme transmitted across the generations? There’s a clarification of the difference between a capitalist-spectacular ’I am What I am’, and real freedom. So, «Devenir autonome», cela pourrait vouloir dire, aussi bien: apprendre à se battre dans la rue, à s’accaparer des maisons vides, à ne pas travailler, à s’aimer follement et à voler dans les magasins.” (becoming autonomous, that means, as much: learn to fight in the street, take over empty houses, not working, loving each other madly, and stealing from shops). Action should not concentrate on the wage-labour capital sphere, but more widely in “insoumission” (insubordination),“Nous avons la totalité de l’espace social pour nous trouver. Nous avons l’hostilité à cette  civilization pour tracer des solidarités et des fronts à l’échelle mondiale.” (we have the totality of social space to find ourselves.  We have the hostility of this civilization to lay down the path of solidarity and ‘fronts’ on a world scale – blocs of those in rebellion). So the marginal, the eternally stroppy, the true individual, in her own band of mates,  is the Figure of Autonomy. With this language in full flow, no-one will be surprised to find written that, “L’État français est la trame même des subjectivités françaises, l’aspect qu’a pris la multiséculaire castration de ses sujets.” (The French state is the framework of all French individual subjectivity, the aspect which has for centuries castrated its subjects – a use of the word castrate which one imagines would not occur to an Anglophone leftist, I note). Nor is it long before the claim that, “Toutes les organisations qui prétendent contester l’ordre présent ont elles-mêmes, en plus fantoche, la forme, les moeurs et le langage d’États  miniatures.” (all political organisations that claim to fight the existing order have themselves, in a puppet-show form, the customs, and the language of miniature states) is reeled out. That’s a few leftist lives wasted, hein? What fools we labour movement and left political party activists are. What fools.

 

There is reference to Capital, its transformations, its domination and integration of human tissue, and the sphere of value which now “embrasserait toutes les qualités des êtres” (which embraces every quality of human beings). Rather sub-Negri, Hardy and Virno I would suggest (on Tendance Coatesy’s analysis of these authors see here). As for work itself, with automation and information sciences, many “ travailleurs sont devenus superflus.” (Workers have become superfluous). This leaves capital’s gigantic machine pumping out profits while excluding large sections of the masses. Those inside are dedicated to ‘personal development’ shaping themselves for Capital’s needs; those outside are in precarious, typicallyAgency work, or in the ‘slave’ sectors of domestic employment, even prostitution, in sum:  ‘personal services’. Preferring not to have anything to do with the State, Politics and Capital marks off all the autonomist tradition and so we find it here. Reference to a Situationist-type social spectacle, (that vamps our energy) are accompanied with a Bartleby refusal to work. An eagerness perhaps to smoke dope.  As well as backing for wildcat strikes (grèves sauvages) – unions naturally are lieutenants of Capital. For good measure they also throw in some stuff about the environmental catastrophes (Hurricane Katrina), and ecology being appropriated by the system. As a small mercy there is none of the usual anarchist drivel about animal liberation. The  alternative? A dose of playfulness. Communes, self-organized, outside the circuits of power and production, with an autonomy, a life in liberated zones, living off the black economy, even fraud; whatever resources can be found, and shared.

 

So, they ignore the potential positive side of the Labour movement and the left. Equally the massive anti-revolutionary bloc in France, la Droite, (which managed rather effectively to get Sarkozy elected I observe) is little more than an obscuring fog over the domination of Capital. The central enemy is the Police. Since resistance can come from nearly anywhere (though especially the poorer urban zones), why bother with even this sketchy economic and class analysis? Nobody would have any idea from this text that a massive fianncial crisis (signaled in advance by people such as Larry Elliot in the UK and plenty of writers in France’s Le Monde Diplomatique), was looming and would cause popular unrest across Europe – there is no economics here to speak of. Or investigation into the political economy of neo-liberalism. All is rolled down to the – in their opinion – central conflict between the police and the ‘dangerous classes’. As for these potential supporters: it’s a commonplace that autonomists have a crippling inability to relate to the popular masses. Except no doubt those who have ‘Mort aux vaches’ (Death to the Pigs) tattooed on their arms. Here the rhetoric smothers and ignores the hostility of the majority of the inhabitants of the Cités (Council estates) to the violence that unfolded in their areas during the Banlieue revolts, and which hurt them more than anyone else. No doubt all this goes down well in their proto-Communes – though not possibly so swimingly when they dine with their parents and grandparents on Sunday, as a majority of the French ultra-left, for all their radicalism (famillies je vous hais)  tend to do.

 

As the L’Insurrection qui vient continues in this vein one wonders what all the fuss is about. Perhaps some clues lie in the analysis of the great metropolises. These are no longer anything but points in a network of flows, and “La métropole est le terrain d’un incessant conflit de basse intensité” (the metropolis is the site of a continual low-intensity confect). Hah! Something for the experts in terrorism and counter-insurgency to grasp. They aim furthermore to halt the urban perpetuum mobile. Stopping its incessant movement can proceed by blocking production, and the circulation of goods. “les autoroutes sont des maillons de la chaîne de production dématérialisée” (motorways are the links in the chain of dematerialized production) – leaving aside the fact that Negri, Hardt and Virno see this originating in a rather more ethereal dimension (immaterial production in fact), we can see why keen coppers’ ears prick up. Isn’t the French Railway network, the SCNCF another essential link? Weren’t the accusations that led to the Tarnac all about breaking this circuit – by sabotage no less? The description of Paris as not a centre of power to be ‘captured’ but the “cible de razzia, comme pur terrain de pillage et ravage” (target of raids, a place to loot and wreak havoc in) touches some raw nerves. These after all are the chaps whose profession is to protect the Capital from such attacks. The rozzers must have also felt rather, well, personally, affected by the demand to “Libérer le territoire de l’occupation policière” (free the country from Police occupation). To say the least.

 

Unfortunately for anyone drawing neat conclusions from  L’Insurrection qui vient  tops its ‘circles’ by some further dense paragraphs, strongly opposing a strategy of armed struggle. Naturally they indulge in some waffle about all uprisings being armed. But, given that power is not truly centralised and autonomists have no wish to build a ‘counter-state’, even a  ‘dual power’, they declare that, “la perspective d’une guérilla urbaine à l’irakienne, qui s’enliserait sans possibilité d’offensive, est plus à craindre qu’à désirer. La militarisation de la guerre civile, c’est l’échec de l’insurrection.” (the prospect of urban guerrilla warfare, Iraqian style, bogged down, without any possibility of going onto the attack, is more to fear than to wish, it’s a setback for the insurrection). The militarisationof civil war is a failure for the insurrection itself). All rather mealy-mouthed – the Islamists in Iraq are murdering reactionaries whom one would not even bother considering in a serious left perspective. But clear on the criticism of classic, RAF style, terrorism. In case even Inspector Plod doesn’t get the meaning of this they refer to the libertarian view that the Russian Revolution was set back precisely at this point. He might also reflect on the claim that new oppositions will emerge, in the wastelands of the banlieue, and that one day, all his fruits of his society will be “grandement ruinée” (ruined completely) and that “cette effroyable concrétion du pouvoir qu’est la capitale, “(Capital’s terrible concentration of power) will fall. Or not.

 

So, a text whose politics boils down to a celebration of revolt, and (in real terms) a kind of late ‘sixties/early ‘seventies ‘alternative society’, filled with a great deal of lyricism, romanticism about the 2005 riots (as if the rioters were incarnations of Victor Hugo’s Gavroche) that makes some good, if unoriginal, points, about the nature of the social and institutional dislocations underway, rooted in the purest autonomist ideology – that’s to say, perpetual grandstanding – is the basis for a new version of Action Directe. Maybe. But I think not. Unfortunately, to continue the reference to Les Misérables, the presumed authors have a pack of would-be Javerts yapping at their heels.

 

 

New Anti-Capitalist Party: Joy and Doubt.

 

Now is the Time?

Following the Continent-wide outbreaks of social unrest there are some signs that left forces are emerging with clear objectives and structures. In France the historic tradition of Fourth International Trotskyism is in full transformation.  The NPA (Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste), is being founded. On Thursday 300 delegates assembled at Plaine-Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), voted by 87,1% to 11,15% to dissolve the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire into the new organisation. Spokesperson Olivier Besancenot declared that the party would take ”le meilleur des traditions du mouvement ouvrier, qu’elles soient trotskistes, socialistes, communistes, libertaires, guévaristes” ou issues de l’écologie radicale” (take the best from the traditions of the workers’ movement, whether it’s from trotksyists, communists, libertarians, and Guevarists, of from a radical ecological background.” It is anti-capitalist, green, and its politics are, in principle, open to a range of radical ideas about how to create a socialism for the 21st century. With a claimed membership of 9,000* (some, however,  put it in reality a few thousand lower)  – well over double its main parent, the Ligue Communiste Rèvolutionnaire (LCR) –  the NPA looks in a good position to respond to growing French protests that have followed the January General Strike.

In a welcome change from the once fashionable mood of ‘changing the world without taking power’ the NPA is engaged in both the political process, the unions federated in SUD, and social movements outside formal institutions. The LCR has a substantial record of serious political intervention and democratic internal culture - and it ill behoves (like the word!) the British SWP to give them lessons about ‘dissolving’ themselves in the new organisation (apparently an error – to Callinicos, whose wisdom, gleaned from his experience as a leading figure in Respect speaks for itself). 

Debate on the French left has been wide (here and here) and deserves further coverage. The formation of the NPA has had a great impact well outside the Hexagon, and that alone raises a lot of issues. One of the focuses on Olivier Besancenot – in the media and no doubt internally. Besancenot, a former student with a  degree in History, became a postal worker in the 1980s during a LCR turnwhich sent members “out to the workers” in a manner reminiscent of the Russian Populists and 1930s American Trotskyists. He genuinely come across well (you can see him via the NPA site, on many French telly programmes and hear him frequently on the Radio). Yet, many political commentators regard his popularity as a potential source of difficulties: gaining votes but not necessarily real political allegiance. Another problem lies in what their ‘anti-capitalism’ really means (and what on earth is Guevarism – building French foci?) . Which is far from clear. I will not Blog for the moment on the details of the NPA’s  programme, and project, but will concentrate on some immediate problems the NPA. .

The NPA represents a hope: that  it will become a substantial left alternative in France. Alternative to what? To the rightwing President Nicolas Sarkozy, his UMP government, to the ambiguous Parti Socialiste, drifting towards ’social liberalism’, and to the …? The Unity declarations of the new Parti de Gauche, the Parti Communiste Français, and the other republican left and alternative ecological groups at present negotiating a common list for the June European Elections? Now comes the catch. Indications are that the majority of the NPA are not warming to this proposal. More than indications: there will be a discussion between those who want a List “totally independent of the Institutional left” and those who back Mélenchon’s Left Party proposal for a Left Front, including the Communist Party (here). Looks unlikely that Picquet’s minority, a central force for the alliance, will prevail.

Libération reports that Christian Picquet has already found much of the programme/manifesto ultra-left, an attempt too outbid anyone else. He comments,

«Même à 10 000, vouloir révolutionner la société, c’est un peu mégalo»,explique Picquet, qui compte défendre l’alliance avec Mélenchon et le PCF aux européennes face à une majorité du NPA plus encline «à rester sur son Aventin» pour faire la fête anticapitaliste entre soi

 Even if we had ten thousand members, to want to revolutionise the whole of society – that’s rather megalomaniac, he explained. Piquet is ready to defend an alliance with Mélenchon and the PCF in the European elections, against the Majority of the NPA, who are minded to stay alone on their Mountain (Mont Aventin§), fêting  their anti-capitalist party between themselves.

Quite.

*Significantly not the 10,000 target – as yet.

§ I thought about this translation when I got home and looked the expression up, it refers to Mount Aventin (one of the 7 Hills of Rome) and separating oneself off , that is, retreating to its lofty heights: a better rendering would be ‘in splendid isolation’. French leftists do love their classical references.

New Anti-Capitalist Party: Real Politics Emerge.

 

Now for some real politics: how the NPA will affect the French institutional and electoral scene. This is an interview with Henri Weber (a former leader of the LCR, co-founder of Rouge, passed long ago over to the social democratic wing of the Socialist Party and a MEP). From Le Nouvel Observateur.

Onze partis de gauche, dont le NPA et le PS, ont signé un texte commun pour un “changement de cap” du gouvernement. Quelle peut être la suite de cette initiative ?

Eleven left parties, including the NPA and the Parti Socialiste*, have signed a common declaration calling on the government to change course. What could follow this initiative?

 Le PS doit débattre et agir avec la dizaine de partis qui se disent à sa gauche, même s’il est en désaccord avec la plus grande partie de leur programme, tant qu’ils se réclament de la démocratie – ce qui est le cas. PS et extrême-gauche se rejoignent pour dénoncer la politique du gouvernement, au sein des mouvements sociaux, et lors des élections pour battre la droite. Le but final est tout de même de rassembler très largement au-delà de son électorat. C’est une condition nécessaire pour remporter les élections (nécessaire, mais pas suffisante : LCR et LO avaient appelé à voter PS en 2007).
Mais cette union de la grande famille de la gauche n’exclut pas la confrontation. Le PS doit apporter des solutions ambitieuses et radicales, dans le nouveau paysage idéologique mondial qui a suivi l’effondrement de Lehman Brothers.

The PS should debate and act in common with these 11 parties, who consider themselves as on the left, even if it disagrees with most of their programme, insofar as they are identify themselves as democratic – which is the case here. The PS and the far left meet each other and work together inside social movements, to denounce the government’s policies, and to beat the Right during elections. The aim (ie of the PS,  AC)  is to bring together a  much wider constituency than its own electorate. It’s a condition of winning elections, (necessary, but not sufficient – LO and the LCR called for a PS vote in 2007). Such a union of the great left family does not rule out differences. The PS should bring forward its own bold and radical solutions – in the new worldwide ideological landscape that followed the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Wary of the perennial efforts of the Parti Socialiste to colonise other left organisations (or eclipse them), the LCR and now the NPA have decided to be resolutely independent. Not that this excludes such joint statements, or actions. These can  be placed, obviously, within the movement born during the mobilisation for the January General Strike. As such I suppose the qualify as ‘United Front’ tactics, common action around agreed aims. As such rather more genuine than the British SWP’s  who use the term to refer to their deals with the cabals that made  up Respect. This united front  strategy for the LCR/NPA  goes hand-in-hand with demarcating themselves(that is, standing alone, or with very close allies)  in electoral politics (such as municipal agreements). 

Yet how far should they remain apart? The frontiers appear variable. The LCR have called for votes for other parties, including ‘reformist’ ones,  during many elections: in 1995 (when they had no candidate of their own)  they recommended no less than three Presidential candidates, Robert Hue (PCF), Arlette Laguillerr (LO) and  Dominique Voyant (Greens) ! (here) Now however, the will to strike separately’ is on the ascendent. It  appears to extend even to left groups which, while independent, nevertheless have links and electoral agreements (local and often national) with the Socialists. As the extract below indicates.

 L’Humanité reports a strained atmosphere at the  founding Conference, and the following comments by Christian Picquet (Blog Here) :

Christian Picquet du courant UNIR a dressé un réquisitoire sévère contre la manière dont la direction a piloté la mue de la LCR. « Un tel projet méritait un autre congrès. » Il déplore « l’ambiance morose » dans les comités locaux. Il reproche à la direction de sacrifier le mouvement social, le rassemblement de la gauche vraiment à gauche à des intérêts de parti. Christian Picquet dénonce les « faux prétextes » pour refuser de participer à des listes du front de gauche avec le PCF et le Parti de la gauche aux élections européennes. Il est encore possible de faire un autre choix pour éviter que le premier geste du nouveau parti soit précisément le refus de l’union. « Ce serait la marque du nouveau parti. »

 Christian Picquet, of the Unir tendency, laid down a tough judgement on the way in which the LCR leadership has carried out its transformation, “such a  project deserves another Conference”, and he deplored the “glum atmosphere” in the local branches. He accused them of sacrificing  the unity of the real left and social movements to the interests of the party. Christian Picquet denounced the “false pretexts” used to reject an alliance , the Left Front, with the PCF (Communist Party) and the PG (Left Party) for the European Elections. Though “it is still possible to change this decision and avoid making the first choiceo f the new party a refusal of unity“. Otherwise “that will be the trademark of the new party”

Anyone doing some elementary electoral arithmetic will know that to get over the 10%  qualifying hurdle in the European ballots an agreement is needed if there is to be any reasonable potential for the success of left of PS candidates. Without it,  a long stay on Mount Aventine is in store for the NPA.

Added Sunday: On the possibility of an agreement for the European Elections, (Nouvel Observateur) on the Conference (which definitely adopted the NPA name):

 Si le texte proposé au congrès affirme aussi le soutien du parti à “un accord durable de toutes les forces qui se réclament de l’anticapitalisme”, cette condition devrait rendre difficile un accord avec le Parti communiste, qui siège avec les socialistes dans les conseils régionaux.

If the Congress’s text asserted that the party would back a firm agreement of all forces which affirm their anti-capitalism, this conditions will make it difficult to make an alliance with the Communist Party, which sits with the Socialists in regional council groups.

Note to NPA: get those warm woolies for the peak-tops ready now!

 * Les Alternatifs, la Coordination nationale des collectifs unitaires (CNCU), Lutte Ouvrière, le MRC, le NPA, le PCF, le PCOF, le Parti de gauche, le PS, Alternative Démocratie Socialisme (ADS), Alter-Ekolo. Full declaration here.

Welfare Reform on the Rocks?

Minister Purnell’s Amateur Dramatic Productions Under Threat?

The Observer today reports that, “The government’s flagship policy to revolutionise welfare by paying private companies to find jobs for the unemployed was in crisis last night as firms said there were too many people out of work – and too few vacancies – to make it viable.”

Will Hutton comments in the same Sunday Paper that the return of mass unemployment may not find people as resigned and docile as in the past. I have plenty of evidence of this: one Ipswich friend has absolutely refused to go on the happy-clappy god-botherers’ (YMCA) New Deal scheme. He has been suspended from all benefits (appeal pending). Another case I heard about a couple of day ago was of a bloke who loathed the YMCA open prison at the ‘Den’ (as they call it) so much, he – temporarily – disabled all their computers.  How long it will before throwing a wobbly becomes something a lot more serious I can’t predict (even with all my soothsaying powers). But I can be absolutely sure that Hutton’s idea of paying the out-of-work £300 a week to carry out useful and much needed tasks for the common good is very unlikely to get very far with Bankers’ Buddy Gordon Brown.

Financial and welfare genius, Work and Pensions Secretary  James Purnell, must have have foreseen this, no doubt temporary, hold up. The ‘jobs’ (I use this word loosely) on his CV include such successes as Head of BBC Corporate Planning, and Chair of the All Party Group on Private Equity and Venture Capital (2002-03). He is keen on theatre, and whipping (that is, he was a government Whip). These give him a background in the creative industries: culture and accounting.  So prepared, he’ll find some way of financing the forced labour schemes, subsidising  half-baked training programmes and work-finding subventioned scams. Come what may.

Important Note: in case parasite ponce Frank Field MP thought we didn’t notice his call for young people to have to work for their benefits, and his condemnation of the Government as too soft on them: we did.

New Anti-Capitalist Party: Coup de Force?

Here We Go!

The ex-LCR Unir tendency has all but been eliminated from positions of influence inside the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) – not by democratic debate but by bureaucratic manoeuvres (here). Present at the NPA’s founding Congress, the current played an important part in the former LCR for many years. Its best known member is  Christian Picquet. Clashes with the majority have been accelerating since the 2007 Presidential Campaign , during which UNIR supporters tended to back a ‘unitary’ left candidate (from the anti-liberal collectives that campaigned for a Non vote to the European Constitutional Treaty). The complex history of the various initiatives (pre-Presidentials) behind this is given here. and (in English)  here.

This time they represented a Congress motion as the sensibilité européenne. Their delegates  argued for an agreement with other left groups (PCF, PG, and a host of republican, Left and ecological groups) to stand as the Left Front in this year’s European Elections. Their platform of alliances with those opposed to the Lisbon Treaty and neo-liberalism, was however strongly rejected by the Conference: it would have involved compromises with left parties that work with the Parti Socialiste – denounced as ’social liberal’.

 The Nouvel Observateur reports that the official membership if the NPA is  9.100 adhérents (against 3.200 in the LCR) of which 35 % are women. That of 192 members of the NPA National Committee (the  Conseil politique national , CPN) , nearly half  (45%) are from the LCR and that there is near equality of male-female representation

The existence of a radical left alternative  to the French Parti Socialiste is welcome. One should not exaggerate any minor negative aspects of a new party. If there is a trend to be proud of the achievement and not too willing to listen to critics, this is inevitable if  a strong identity and structure are to be created. Still,  a certain amount of  unnecessary bullying appears to be creeping in. An ultra-minority group, the CRI were hustled off the platform by security guards. Much more significantly only 13 (out of 192) members of the CPN are from the pro-Left Front tendency, which however had received 16% of the vote for its motion.

No doubt the Weekly Worker,which is full of interesting detail about such groups as the CRI, will fill in the facts about them, and others of a similar kind. For others it’s the rejection of the Unitary Minority which is of most importance.

The Nouvel Observateur carries in its latest print edition four pages on the Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste. It mentions the wide, and deserved, popularity of Olivier Besancenot. Picquet (who is attacked by NPA members for ‘washing our dirty linen in public) suggests that an “illusion” has gained a hold over the organisation: that Besancenot’s high opinion poll ratings mean that the NPA will expand rapidly. There dangers indeed standout: over- personalising the party around Olivier’s charisma, a fog around the NPA’s – public- ideological foundations – a mesh of Trotskyism, anti-capitalism, ‘alter’-globalisation, and the rest (I repeat this: why all the references to Che? Is Monmartre’s Vineyard about to become a basis for rural guerrilla warfare?). In reality I have no doubt that LCR-Trotskyism will be the pierre angulaire of the NPA. But  the basis of membership is loose enough, and one could see the kind of confusion prevalent in Social Forum movements – such as  the harmless cranks of the UK’s own version.  Finally, that intolerance of opposition is always the easiest way on the leftto hide political difficulties, and the easiest way to leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

Meanwhile France prepares for another General Strike in March.

Bad Science, Secularism and the Left.

 

Essential reading.

Darwin’s anniversary has inspired some astonishingly beautiful television programmes and books. The Theory of Evolution, in all its stark elegance, has been, I hope, become as brand-new to a wide audience. The pessimism about grasping today’s science (a ‘black box’ to most of us), and the relativism of the liberal and post-modernist left (which, astonishingly still exists, claiming that reason is imperialist tyranny) has proved false. In the last few years scientific popularisation has taken off. People are beginning to use their own Reason. Tendance Coatesy has itself worked its way through a  small mountain of such books: about language (recommended: Steven Pinker), about anthropology and archeology (recommended, Colin Renfrew). None of which would have been written without Darwin, who opened the way to the notion of the ‘antiquity of man’ and its scientific study.

Despite this, though it hardly bears repeating, Creationists, from Turkey to the US, passing by certain UK Academy Schools, contineus  obdurately to spread darkness. In welfare provision Christians are spreading their tentacles over the country – including this town  (here).  Ipswich Heart in Action claims , with Christian reticence, they involve  ”truly inspirational faith driven-people“, engaged in “life-changing projects” . These range from Soup Kitchens, Counselling, to caring for addiction, and something called the Town Pastor, a right-on guy who boogies roundthe centre during the Weekend till late at night. It all culminates in plans for a central Town prayer-room ( poverty – problem solved!). Clearly the aim behind this is to assert public influence, and partially take over from the state in offering social services. The Conservative leader of Ipswich Council, Liz Harsant,  gives her “total support” to the projects.

In what direction is politicised religion leading? Muslims and other believers still would like to ban any vigorous (offensive) criticism of their religion. They have won a battle in forbidding entry to the Dutch anti-Islamist, Geert Wilders,  from these shores. In Spain, hardly reported in the UK, the Catholic Church  furiously battles modest secular reforms (civic education, abortion, gay marriage). The confidence of the faithful has to be contested.  Butterflies and Wheels, one of the best sites on the Web, exposes the sickness behind  belief in the flapping and hissing of imaginary beings. As well as its dire social and political effects. All religion divides the saved from the dammed and cannot fully recognise independent reason and equality. Secularism is not just about toleration and equality in the public realm: it means actively fighting religious ideas.

One should not exaggerate. William Paley’s Divine Watchmaker can be accommodated to science (except its First Cause) , and it’s well known that a hefty chunk of believers in god or gods (at least those exposed to evolutionary proofs) accept Darwin. Refined Western theologians, such as the leading UK Christologist, Terry Eagleton, would no doubt consider that questioning their evolutionism is an impertinent vulgarity.

Education, we rationalists thought for long, was supposed, at least, to advance critical reason. Yet we the widespread tendency to absorb preposterous theories, to drop the criteria of rational proof, shows no sign of disappearing. Right into areas which affect the most significant aspects of our lives, from health to politics. What, then,  if the sleep of reason is not simply a matter of religion?

Health? Bad Science. Ben Goldacre (Fourth Estate. 2008) is the full of examples of how science is undermined. Not by the veneration of sacred tomes, but through an industry and a culture which drives “marketers, lifestyle gurus and alternative therapists” (page 10). The field of unscientific studies is a vast one, ploughed by alternative therapists, Hopi Candles, Primal Screams, food supplements, acupuncture, and (a group Goldacre particularly loathes) ‘dieticians’.

He singles out the meaningless concept of ‘detox’ (one I have to admit I half accept myself: I drink Green Tea once a day and feel virtuous). Psychological processes Goldacredemonstrates, do not involve ‘de-tox’ in any sense other than the normal elimination of waste.. Instead its origins lies in ancient rituals of purification and redemption, “In the developed Western world, we seek redemption and purification from the more extreme forms of our material indulgence: we fill our faces with drugs, drinks, bad food and other indulgence, we know it’s wrong, and we crave ritualistic protection from the consequences, a public ‘transitional ritual’ commemorating our return to healthier behavioural norms.” (Page 12) .  There is no doubt these fads are wildly popular. Not just amongst the Vegan Animal worshiping classes,  but at at all levels of society. The Royal Family are half-cracked in this area. Benacre has fun describing the Blairs’ mixture of Catholicism and the New Age. Plenty of the respectable professional middle-aged are amongst the most enthusiastic consumers of alternative wisdom and its marketing arm.  

All of which is easy to laugh at. But Bad Science demonstrates how something more is involved. A retreat from rational  testing (in labs and statistically) which has filtered through the entire mass media. The alternative practitioners are unable to provide and judge statistical proof. There is barely a shadow of scientific rigour in the claims of this industry (he gives detailed examples from nutritionists to homeopaths). Scares about medicines, not to mention the drip-drip of shifting claims about how certain foodstuffs  are ‘bad’ or  ’good’ for you, on flimsy evidence, are typified in  the seriously misjudged fright around MMR injections. Goldacre’s site (here) updates these cases, as does his Saturday Guardian column.  At the base is, her says, that evidence had got warped in the medical process of shared-decision-making. The media is a prime culprit, “Everything in the Media is robbed of any scientific meat, in a  desperate bid to seduce an imaginary mass that aren’t interested.”(P 320)

Bad Science is not only worth reading alone. It should be bought for friends – including the all-too numerous Leftists who have faith in natural remedies and the idea that there is ’something’ in alternative  medicine . Without proof, that is.  

Yet the sleep of reasons has brought forth more monsters than a branch of Holland and Barrett. The absence of a rational culture of proof, and the ability to set up criteria to disprove theories is at the core of  the 9/11 Truth Movement. equally the even more distasteful Rwanda Genocide Denial. Pierre Péan, currently famous for his new book attaching French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (over alleged pre-Ministerial dealings with West African Autocrats) came to fame initially for his ‘questions’ about the mass murder of  Rwandan Tutsies. This cast of mind is widepread in politics. How far is the Left implicated? A type of ‘wise guy’ approach to 9/11 (proto ‘Truth’ movement in fact) is more widespread than is often recognised. And absolutely clear that there is a dearth of rationality on many issues: particualrly the appeasement shown to  political-religions. Perhaps we ought to apply some of Goldacre’s criteria of proof to our own way of thinking.

Fatwa Against Rushdie Anniversary: The Secular Left Spoke Out.

           Still Worth Defending.

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. A time of vicious Islamic (and not just hard-core Islamist)  demonstrations against the ‘blasphemy’ of the Satanic Verses, of Book Burnings and murders. There has been some media interest in the legacy of the affair. Some observe that the campaign for censoring Rushdie’s book played a key part in the assertion of British Muslim identity; others, including believers in the Qu’ran, regret the intolerant reputation it left behind. Plenty of discussion still takes place.

But what of the left’s reaction? A charge often made against the British left (by Nick Cohen above all) is that it has caved in to, or ‘appeased’, Islamism. Really? This is the time to look back on the see how some of the left reacted to the first major assertion of Islamist demands in the UK .

Interlink (May/June 1989), the journal of the Socialist Society, and an ancestor of Red Pepper, carried two articles on the Fatwa and Rushdie.  Pride of place should go to Gita Saghal, of Southall Black Sisters and Women Against Fundamentalism. In Transgression Comes of Age she argued that that the controversy was stirred up and used by fundamentalist leaders to consolidate their power over their communities. The multiculturalist consensus allowed these figures anxious to “maintain faith in a  secular society.” Bolstered by international backing (and finance) from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran, the protests were part of a movement towards Islamicisation of whole communities. Speaking from the women’s movement Gita mentioned the fear these patriarchal  ’leaders’ felt not only at secular Westernisation in general, but at female emancipation in particular. 

Religion, Politics and Democracy, by a certain Andrew Coates, was equally critical of multi-culturalism. He praised Rushdie’s playful style and subversive prose (the meat of the conceit about the imagined Qu’ranic verses and the exploits of the books characters). Then  he went straight to the politics of the affair. Like Saghal he pointed out that relativism (all beliefs are valid in some way) encouraged fundamentalists to build their ‘own’  “cultural fortresses”. By contrast, “The equality of secular rights (however ‘formal’) can be sharply contrasted with the  inequalities of the religious world-view: its hierarchy of the saved and the damned,  the saint and the sinner, the pure and the impure.”  He demanded the complete secularisation of the state. There was no need to give ‘respect’ to any religion – still less privileged protection from criticism. Above all it was the textual obsession behind the anti-Rushdie protesters (who alleged that the Satanic Verses were not ‘true’ – its literary inventions did not accord with the Qu’ran) was at fault. He noted, “Unless the textual foundations of religion are weakened we may face even worse manifestations of violence.”

At the time most of the UK left stood by Rushdie. Those dissenting tended to be post-colonial-studies academics and their followers, or some dyed-in-the-wool ‘third-worldists’ who considered Muslims to be part of the world’s oppressed. They thought absolute free-speech and criticising minority religions was a cover for Western rationalist imperialism. Liberal multiculturalists considered that  Muslims were unfairly insulted, that we should ‘understand’ their reaction. The Satanic Verses had in any case given succor to racist intolerance. An influential section of the establishment simply loathed  Rushdie as a trouble-maker who should have kept his mouth shut.

Since that time we have seen a number of developments. Religious identity has become a key part of the multiculturalist consensus. Barely a government body now operates without consulting non-elected defenders of the Faiths. Islam is treated with ‘respect’, while efforts are made to incorporate (with varying success) so-called moderate forms of it into the state. Partly this is a modern version of the British Empire’s strategy of ‘indirect rule’, through local potentates. Hence some of the left, respect most notoriously, and its efforts to have its ‘own’ Islamicist (and why not Christian,a and other  ’faith communities – as Ken Livingstone has attempted) on its side. The left’s strategy is supported by those who consider that Islamismhas an ‘anti-imperialist’ core (certainly an anti-Israeli one – few with any sense would consider the goal of a Universal Caliphate anti-imperialist).  To these allies, at a safe-distance, of Islamism there is a class dynamic, invisible to all but themselves, (and certainly hidden from the millions of victims of Islamist regimes and jihadists) that is progressive. I wonder if Red Pepper would so stoutly defend the Satanic Verses were it first published today.

Critics of this stand have got used to being bullied with the label ‘Islamophobia’. It has not succeeded in silencing them. Religion in its political form is anti-democratic. It demands a privileged position for faith in the public sphere. Islamism, far being the cry of pain of the oppressed is the pain itself. It  (or rather, they) is/are the the pious Muslim bourgeoisie’s vehicle. Their  nexus is the ideology of the Sharia: a ‘law’ (in every kind) which bears as much  resemblance to real law (based on equality) as Tolkin’s Orcs do to Elves do: that is, its parody. For all the various shapes political-religion takes, it can never compete with the equality and freedom that secularism offers, notably to the religious themselves.

It is noteworthy that attempts to stifle free-speech and protect religion have continued since the Rushdie Affair, with Sikhs, Hindus and Christians getting in on the act. The banning of Geert Widlers should be seen in this light.

Conclusion?

Opposing religiously inspired campaigns for censorship remains as important today as twenty years ago.

Workfare: Freud Flies Fast.

 

 Gordon’s Favourite Banker Bunks Off.

David Freud, the banker behind Welfare Reform – pulling yourself-up-by-your-own bootstraps - is to be nominated to a grace-and-favour House of Lords Peerage. From now he will, the BBC reports, become Tory Party Front  Bencher for Welfare. What does this mean? The BBC states that  “The Conservatives promised a “full-blooded version” of what they termed the Government’s “half-hearted” implementation of Sir David’s radical proposals.”

There was a time when radical meant something admirable, not a synonym for near fascist Gradgrind. But I digress….

There is no doubt that David Freud is an expert in welfare: he has helped build one of the cosiest nests for himself and other top banking colleagues in the world.  

Naturally there’s half-hearted, and half-hearted. Freud’s mate, James Purnell, Minister for Work and Pensions, has, for all the Tories’ claims, chosen the stoniest bits. His plans are full of indigestible pebbles.  Anyone with any left values, and, hey, basic economic literacy can see this. The ‘reforms’ are doomed to costly failure, and will wreak misery on millions of people.

Let’s go through some of the major problems. That is, there will be vast subsidies to private companies ‘placing’ people in jobs (a recipe for market-distortion as employees recruit only those with this cash attached); compulsory workfare (a surefire way to bring down wages in the public services they will compete with, or replace); punitive sanctions (putting the unemployed on the same standing as those convicted by the Courts to do Community Services); and driving the halt, the lame and the ill into work, come what may. And plenty more. All of which will require an expensive coercive apparatus (making sure claimants comply), elaborate supervision, and leaves open a gigantic potential for scams and frauds of all stripes.

Freud couldn’t care less. Like a locust he has just moved onto new green pastures to ravage.

Now I have often wondered where Brown got his inner feeling for destroying the universal welfare state from. For a long time we at the Tendance considered it some kind of spontaneous growth, like a blister. The fascination with theVictorian welfare ‘model’ seemed to fit with his background in the Manse. But we weren’t aware of how far it went. However it is now becoming clearer that Brown’s ideology is not just a causal expression of his narrow-minded Calvinism, loathing of left-wingers,  and an inability to relate to other people, particularly the undeserving poor- the great unwashed, and the ’socially excluded’. That is, it’s not just his personality that’s flawed.

Apparently not. Brown really does have an ideologue. Some neo-conservative American (as they so often are) who truly believes in the division between the deserving and undeserving poor. A certain Gurtrude Himmelfarb. To make matters worse this crusty reactionary thinks the French Enlightenment was all wrong, preferring (you’ve guessed it) the ‘American’ and the ‘British’ one. Actually, apart from Brown, who gives a toss what she thinks?

Poor Brown: and now he’s going down to defeat as the biggest traitor to the labour movement since Ramsay MacDonald.

In retirement will he follow Blair’s example and set up a charitable foundation to defend his blind religious faith?

Or is he considering a MacDonald and aiming for a National Government?

Revolt against High Prices: Guadeloupe, Sign of the Times?

 

More World Unrest.

The general strike in Guadeloupe (in the French Antilles) began on the 20th of January. It continues to paralyse the country. Tens of thousands have come out, shops are closed, petrol pumps are dry. 50,000 people demonstrated  in the Capital, Basse-Terre, on the 6th of February -  an enormous number for the Island. The movement is co-ordinated by the Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon - the Collective Against Profiteering  (here) The main trade union, led by Jean-Marie Nomertin, the CGTG (Confédération générale du travail de la Guadeloupe), has played a leading role. Some consider that the atmosphere is turning quasi-insurrectional. There are reports today of violent clashes last night at Pointe-à-Pitre. Strikes have spread to the other Caribbean French Isle, Martinique.

The reasons for this revolt? Both ‘la vie chère’ (high prices) and the way Paris  exercises its control. As a DOM (département outre-mer, overseas region) the island (population just under half a million) is formally part of France.  Guadeloupe’s largely agricultural and tourism based economy is strongly influenced by the descendants of French colonialists, the békés. Business, and notably transnationals, operate in an opaque system, with high profits. Despite low wages (excepting those in state employment)  prices are up to 50% higher than in Europe. With the global economic disorder the plight of the inhabitants has grown. Unemployment is over 30% . The strikers’ central demand is for a 200 Euro rise in wages. Behind this are far deeper grievances (here). The French government is finding it hard to negotiate. It is even suggested that this dispute may spread to Metropolitan France (I am listening to France-Culture on the Net as I write this and that is the very topic of the day).

I mention this as a comparison, but in the UK despite claims of every-lower inflation, the cost of basics,  foodstuffs above all, has risen exponentially. A tin of chopped tomatoes in Sainsbury’s has gone up in a year from under 15 pence to just under 40, before dropping again a couple of coppers. Extend this to other products… In the French Antilles one can imagine similar price hikes, with much more serious effects.

We’re not too happy about la vie chère  either!

Guadeloupe: First Death.

 

Breaking News from From France-Info.

Première victime de la grève qui dure depuis un mois en Guadeloupe : un syndicaliste d’une cinquantaine d’années a été tué par une balle tirée “depuis un barrage tenu par des jeunes” la nuit dernière à Pointe-à-Pitre.

 

First Victim of the month-long strike in Gaudeloupe: last night at Pointe-à-Pitre a trade unionist, around fifty years old, has been killed by a bullet fired from a road-block set up by youths.

It appears that the man, who was coming back from a Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP) meeting engaged in organising the general strike, was hit by a  stray shot.

The same night there were serious incidents in the town, with youths, armed, some with light rifles, looting, and pillaging shops and a hypermarket (here). Some shots at the police (helicopter) and 3 injured officers are reported.

In Paris negotiations take place today, at a Social Summit, between the French unions and the government. The former demand a radical change of policy to stem unemployment and maintain their standard of living, the climate in France is reported tense. While they are not directly linked, there is increasing media speculation about the Antilles unrest spreading by ‘contaigon’ to metropolitan France. President Sarkozy (to speak ‘to the nation’ tonight) and the employers appear anxious at the prospect of  the March 19th Day of Action called for by all the trade unions.

Capitalism and Fraud.

Mr Merdle: Man of the Moment.

 

 

“Savez-vous comment on fait son chemin ici ? par l’éclat du génie ou par l’adresse de la corruption. Il faut entrer dans cette masse d’hommes comme un boulet de canon, ou s’y glisser comme une peste. L’honnêteté ne sert à rien…….. La corruption est en force, le talent est rare. Ainsi, la corruption est l’arme de la médiocrité qui abonde, et vous en sentirez partout la pointe. ” Vautrin (Trompe la Mort). Le Père Goriot.  Balzac. 1835.

 

(“Do you know how we make our way in the world here? By brilliance,  genius, or through corruption? You must dive into the human masses like a cannonball, or infiltrate them like a virus. Honesty is useless…. Corruption rules and real talent is rare. Thus, corruption is the weapon of our all-pervasive mediocrity, and you can feel its sharp point.” )

 

“In Empire corruption is everywhere. It is the cornerstone and keystone of domination. It resides in different forms in the supreme government of Empire and its vassal administrations, the most refined and most rotten administrative police forces, the lobbies of the ruling classes, the mafias of rising social groups, the churches and sects, the perpetrators and persecutors of scandal, the great financial conglomerates, and everyday economic transactions. Through corruption, imperial power extends a smoke screen across the world, and command over the multitude is exercised in this putrid cloud, in the absence of light and truth.”(P 399) Empire. Negri and Hardt.  2000.

 

 

“ David Mills, Estranged husband of Olympics minister Tessa Jowell sentenced to four and a half years’ jail by Italian court for taking $600,000 bribe as reward for withholding court testimony.” Guardian.

“US investigators who accused cricket tycoon Sir Allen Stanford over a multi-million-dollar fraud have admitted they do not know his whereabouts. Hunt For ‘Fraud Scam’ Cricket Tycoon Stanford. Sources at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirmed they were still searching for the billionaire.  Stanford has not been seen in public since news of alleged fraud totalling £9.2bn (£6.5bn) broke on Tuesday.”  (Yahoo).

Spectacular swindles, and infamous frauds, are, as we are often told,  nothing new. Since the days of John Law and his Mississippi Company(early 1700s) , with faked development plans for Louisiana, capitalism’s history, from its merchant, colonial and manufacturing origins,  has been studded with fraud. Dicken’s Merdle in Little Dorit, a Banking pyramid scheme, has had numerous real-life counterparts. Bernard Madoff, down to his ability to secure confidence, appears almost a copy of this trickster.  Celebrated muckrakers, too often unheard until the dénouement, have published some searing exposés of this world, most recently in occupied Iraq: the  siphoning off of  ‘reconstruction’ money. In Italy a whole political system collapsed under the weight of political corruption – which has returned under Silvio Berlusconi. Though no doubt Mills would claim his court conviction is a manipulation, ’strumentalizzazione’. Domestically there remains (for all the accumulated cases)  work to be done on the proliferating profiteering from privatisation and contracting out of public services.

 

For all the journalism about fraud and economic crime, there is little written in the way of systematic investigation and explanation. Yet Capitalism, in its globalising forms, seems ever more reliant on semi-legal and frankly illegal earnings. There is a mechanism  at work –  not just individuals, or cliques. Marx could well ironise in Theories of Surplus Value, about the productivity of crime’, that,

 

“The criminal moreover produces the whole of the police and of criminal justice, constables, judges, hangmen, juries, etc.; and all these different lines of business, which form equally many categories of the social division of labour, develop different capacities of the human spirit, create new needs and new ways of satisfying them.  Torture alone has given rise to the most ingenious mechanical inventions, and employed many honourable craftsmen in the production of its instruments.”

 

All very true. Law itself is not fair: its formal equality is held by every Marxist, Uncle Tom Cobbly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who, to regulate ‘fair’ exchange while surplus value is pumped out silently during production.  I think that’s unfair as well, but some consider a merely ’scientific’ fact. Anyway, crime, that is openly ‘unfair’ acts in circulation, and illegal acts in production, (from violating contracts, to avoiding the costs in social reproduction due from enterprise, aka taxes) has always had a direct bond to capitalism. A criminal fraction alled to the bourgeoisie is long standing (and not just through the so-called ‘lumpen’ followers of demagogues). It has been part of the supervision process (American labour gangsterism), surplus extraction (extortion), and production (illegal commodities, gambling) since its origins. Even a kind of ‘dual power’ in some cases – a tyrannical one it’s true (words, Mafia, triads, come to mind). As capitalism has undergone a transformation in the late 20th century there is a growing gap between formal legality and real economic activity. The novelty is patent: crime, that is the use of force or guile to circumvent legal rules,  is not just part of the distribution of surplus value (clawed away by illegal means) but part of the mode of production itself. Sometimes it is the classic draining of profit: tax evasion, getting round labour laws, and simple chiseling. But increasingly a layer of capitalists are aligned with criminality; gangsters equally turn above-ground capitalists. More fundamentally a whole spheres of production, drug manufacture, counterfeiting, and provision and supervision of labour power, are under criminal control. The underground factories in China, the dealers in migrant workers, waste disposal, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, are affected, far beyond the wildest dreams of the  Mafia of the Godfather. One of the best (and practically the only) serious recent books on the flourishing connections between commerce and criminality is Misha Glenny’s McMafia (2008). It’s a detailed investigation, of vast scope, into the world of mafias, para-state gangs, drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion, counterfeiting commodities, right up to terrorist enterprises. Beginning amongst the chaos that followed the collapse of Official Communism, it traces its relentless expansion to the present moment. His first-hand reporting into the underside of the world economy is vivid and memorable. And pioneering. Glenny states that, “As consumers, we are all involved – often unwittingly – in the shadowy world of trans-national organised crime,” More limited in its coverage, but denser in texture, another book, concentrating on the Neapolitan Camorra, Gomorrah. Roberto Saviano (2008) drives the message home: from chic clothing to waste disposal, organised crime, The System, is a major part of the economy.

 

 

What does this tell us on the left? The slide towards economic depression is throwing up cases of dishonesty at the heart of society, not just in its underbelly. Glenny, writing before the banks went into crisis after crisis, thought that a regulated globalisation, true freedom of movement(goods and people) will help clean up the mess. Such an idea, that social justice, or at least, honesty,  could be imposed on  the fluid, ever-mutating, world market, not to mention the armed and militant power of organised capitalist crime, always looked like a wedding between Naomi Klein and Pablo Escobar. The words social justice and market don’t go together. This kind of liberal (in the American left-of-centre sense) reform of globalisation, now, with each company and every state looking out for themselves, looks ridiculous.   But what do have as an alternative? In the absence of the world revolution that is. I merely ask….

 

 

Nouveau Parti Anti-capitaliste: Plateforme B.

Some People are Seriously Unhappy about the NPA’s Direction.

The Majority of the NPA, and some goupuscules linked to the British Left, have had their views broadcast in the Left press. Here are extracts from the less known, though important,  Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste’s Minority statement ,

La LCR s’est donc fondue dans le Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste. Peut-on, pour autant, parler d’un véritablement dépassement ? Tant le congrès de dissolution de la Ligue, que celui du NPA, ne permettent pas de répondre par l’affirmative.

So, the LCR has dissolved into the NPA. Can one really say that this is a new stage? Neither the National Conference of the LCR, which wound up the party,  nor the NPA’s, allow us to to reply positively that it is.

Un congrès bâclé, presque expédié à la sauvette dans une ambiance morose, et au cours duquel la préoccupation essentielle de la direction majoritaire fut de dénoncer avecviolence sa minorité, ne l’aura pas permis. L’ex-LCR reste aujourd’hui l’unique composante nationale du NPA, le plus significatif des petits groupes d’extrême gauche qui s’en étaient rapprochés n’y ayant finalement pas trouvé sa place

A badly run, nearly rushed, Congress, with a sorry atmosphere, during which the major obssession of the majority leadership was to denounce, violently, the minority, should not have been allowed. The LCR remains the only real national force in the NPA, the only one with any weight amongst the small left groups that have were drawn to the NPA which have themselves  been unable to find a place inside it.  

The Minority make further accusations. Firstly, that the refusal to align with the ‘Left front’ in the coming European elections was a great mistake with lasting consequences. Secondly, that it was the majority leadership itself which selected the 13 winning candidates of the (minority) sensibilité unitaire (out of 26) for the  National Party Committee (CAN). This they consider not only a very bad beginning for the New Party but also  a return to “pratiques d’un autre âge” (that is, bureaucratic centralism).

(Signed: Alain Faradji, Christian Picquet, Francis Sitel)

I note that this statement was published in Rouge (its last issue before the NPA’s new paper). This itself does not show much of a sign of bureaucratic centralism. That said, the minimal requirements to join the NPA (essentially agreement with the party and a loose commitment to work with its  local committees), and the absence of any large organised non-LCR force inside it (though no doubt the British left will continue to be fascinated by the confetti of Trotskyism that have joined up),  are factors of concern. Far more than the ludicrous campaign by the Weekly Worker against ‘liquidationism’ in the NPA, as if the party was some kind of steel-hardened Bolshevik Vanguard in danger of being waylaid into a ‘centrist’ swamp. No, there are more genuine worries. The Ligue had a very rigorous tradition of political education which served as a rampart against bureaucratic domination. Will this continue? The treatment of the Minority, explicable according to posters here and on NPA discussion sites, may be partly justified. They may be a right pain. But are they therefore not right to stand up for their dissenting opinions? 

UPDATE ON GUADELOUPE: Olivier Besancenot (NPA) is due on the Isle today – in the midst of what appears to be a slow-unwinding of the near-insurrection. Sarkozy has made concessions (report in English). Negotiations are to restart between the LKP and the French government, a rise of 200 Euros a month for the low-paid, more subsidies and welfare measures are on the table.  What has brought Sarkozy to cede? Reports suggest that ‘youths’ were spiralling out of control. That nobody in the State could see a solution emerging. Full-blown repression would not work on tight-knit communities. Classic Gallic alternatives – letting people blow off a head of steam and then leaving things rot until everyone is sick of upheaval – haven’t been successful either. The danger for Sarkozy now is that once people have seen that the Caribbean mass revolts can get results, others may want to use the same methods elsewhere.

Guadeloupe Video.

Shots of the Guadeloupean revolt.

Good on them!  Qu’ils gangent!

European Unrest Speads and Spreads: Ireland, Latvia, France.

When are we going to see this here?

100,000 out in the streets of Dublin this Saturday. A magnificent display of anger (BBC). Marchers protested at government plans to impose a special pension levy on public employees, and against the handling of the world economic crises. On Channel Four News last night trade unionists were pictured chanting, ”The Workers united will never be defeated!” Their site comments, “These could be scenes Europe will get used to.”

Reuters reports that on Friday,

“Latvia’s coalition government collapsed on Friday after the prime minister resigned to stem a fall in popularity during a deep economic crisis. President Valdis Zatlers said he had accepted Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis’s resignation and would start talks with all parties on a new government. It was the second European government to succumb to the economic crisis after Iceland.”

It is no coincidence that on January the 14th  the Latvian police detained 126 people after a peaceful protest by about 10,000 people calling for a referendum and elections turned into a riot. reports say that the police used pepper spray and batons to disperse protesters. Nor is this confined to purely European issues.  In France yesterday there were demonstrations in support of the Gaudeloupean strikers. Between 10 and 30,000 in Paris. For Razzy Hammadi, Socialist Party national secretary for Public Services, “The government must accept its defeat” . “”Our real solidarity will be to make the government back off. “said  Sandra Demarcq (Nouveau Parti Abnti-capitaliste)speaking of “class and colonial oppression. “  Ntahalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière) stated that “our demands” in Metropolitan France  ”are the same”as those in revolt in the Antilles. (Here)

It was noteworthy that the Dublin protesters photographed  holding a banner saying, The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated had Unite trade  union flags. When will our UK trade unions break from Gordon Brown and lead marches against the policies of Gordon Brown? The man is an albatross around the neck of the labour movement. Not only are his policies responsible for aggrevating  an unfolding economic crisis (as a herald of de-regulation Brown is as culpable for its origins as as any other neo-conservative), an oppressor of the poor (the workless, the halt and the lame – aka, Welfare ‘reform’), but he is loathed by the popular masses.

Get rid of him before he drags us down to the fate of Iceland and Latvia!

Summer of Rage: Bring it on Baby!

Cancelled this Year.

Britain Faces Summer of Rage – thus Paul Lewis on the Guardian Front Page.

Police are preparing for a “summer of rage” as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institution., the Guardian has learned. Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming “footsoldiers” in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

“The warning comes in the wake of often violent protests against the handling of the economy across Europe.” 

 Intelligence reports suggest that “known activists” are also returning to the streets, and police claim they will foment unrest. “Those people would be good at motivating people, but they haven’t had the ‘foot-soldiers’ to actually carry out [protests],” Hartshorn said. “Obviously the downturn in the economy, unemployment, repossessions, changes that. Suddenly there is the opportunity for people to mass protest.

Seems like a few dozy Dock Green coppershave been reading this and similar Blogs!

Here’s a further reason to froth-at-the-mouth and chuck a few brick-bats around: Welfare Reform. In the same day’s  Guardian the pious Madeleine Bunting has finally woken up to the horror of impending Workfare. Not bad article, though she doesn’t go to the heart of the matter: Purnell’s plans to get us out cleaning the roads with our toothbrushes. When we agitators are obliged by the DWP to do this  ’return to the streets’  we’ll be sure to find recruits there.

A Real Marxist, Georges Labica, Passes Away.

Georges Labica: Real Critical Marxism.

Georges Labica (1930 – 2009), one of France’s most important independent Marxist writers and theorists, passed away on the 12th of February (See: here). During an extremely productive life (bibliography here) he wrote important studies of Marxist theory, from editing the Dictionnaire Critique du Marxisme (1982, 1984, 1989), to short accessible works, such as Le marxisme-léninisme, Eléments pour une critique (1984). He worked with,  amongst many others, the theoretical review, Marx Actuel and  L’Utopie Critique (homages here) . Politically engaged throughout his life Labica-operated with the non-establishment left, notably self-management political organisations, such as the Alternatifs. His last published work, Théorie de la violence (2007) attempted to explore the conditions of legitimate violence (as opposed to ’substitutions’) in the South, and the synthesis of democracy and Marxism (Review)

Georges Labica had a long engagement with the left. A member of the Parti Communiste Français from the 1950s to 1981, he was was conspicuous for his anti-colonial activism (from his time teaching in French Algeria),  and was prominent enough to be threatened by the OAS.  Academically his research continued in the line of Louis Althusser, though he never adhered to the Althussarian ’school’. After leaving the PCF (as it drifted aimlessly in the first blush of Mitterrand’s Presidency)  Labica continued to describe himself as a Communist (in the democratic Marxist tradition). He produced critical works on Marxism-Leninism, from a Marxist prospective. In general he researched into the fundamental problems of Marxist theory and practice, producing a string of studies as a result. Without ever creating a grand  ’Theory’, in the vein of Foucault, Negri or Guatteri, Labica’s importance lay in sustaining the independent critical spirit on the left. His writings have influenced generations of socialists and Marxists. Above all he kept alive the kind of First International democray of Marx himself.

Largely unknown to the left in the English speaking world (where the academic left tends to live cloistered from the kind of activism Labica represented), he was recognised by the German, Spanish and Italian ones, to cite but a few.

Labica ’s death is a great loss.

I need hardly add that I have been influenced by Labica – or that I was once due to meet him at a TMR meeting. But he was delayed at his work. 

European Unrest Reaches Ipswich (We Hope).

Ipswich TUC AGM

Ipswich and District TUC AGM last night. After reports, which underlined our very successful Ipswich May Day Festival, backing for various public sector disputes, and support for campaigns (amongst others, defending Council Housing, fighting for Trade Union rights and international solidarity) we moved onto administrative business. Re-election of officers, discussion of the coming year. Our main resolution for the Trades Council Conference is on Primary Education, opposing the over-use of testing and evaluation, with a  call for a wider curriculum, including humanities and arts. Another motion, proposed by Lowestoft TUC, will seek to expand the demands that arose from the Lindsey refinery dispute. In  place of attempts to divide workers, it will focus on opposition to the bosses’ efforts to use EU legislation to divide them, and will demand measures to support employment rights.

 

An important discussion took place about a labour movement sponsered scheme to introduce information about Trade Unions into Secondary Schools. This is now taking place, with good results. To no-one’s surprise many of the students had previously not been exactly keenly aware of the existence of unions.

Politically the months ahead look interesting.  Taking the cue from comrade Plod we activists hope to find foot-soldiers for a Summer of Rage. There are plans to organise seriously for the 28th of March Demonstration – backed by the TUC . This calls for Jobs and Fairness,  ”an economy based on fair distribution of wealth, decent jobs for all and a low carbon future”. No prizes for guessing what we will focus on.

 

Gordon Brown is visibly ailing. An alternative on the left has yet to emerge. From the other side of the spectrum, the BNP, far-right nationalism is undoubtedly picking up support. It will be shoved aside not by preaching about the Nazis, and certainly not by weakening a commitment to anti-racist secularism by alliances with political religion. Nor by well-meaning march-against-poverty moralism. No, what we need are strong class politics, an identity of unity and action: a real fight against exploitation and oppression (see Crumb cartoon insert). Dublin and Paris (to name but two) show the way!

Or so I like to think.

Welfare Reform: Making Opposition Effective.

This coming Tuesday 3rd of March there is a mass lobby of Parliament against the Welfare Reform Bill. It is sponsored by a  number of unions (including the PCS) and Welfare campaigning charities, such as the Child Poverty Action Group. A Public Meeting will be held in at 12.30 at Committee Room 14.  For those unaware of the seriousness of the Government’s attack on the pillars of the Welfare State I refer them to more information via the categories section of this Blog under Workfare. The prospect of a punitive system, based on throwing large amounts of cash to private companies in order to dragoon the unemployed, the disabled and single parents, into a rapidly shrinking labour market market is beginning to ring alarm bells. Initially only small independent Left magazines, like Chartist and Labour Left Briefing, a handful of left Blogs,  and campaigners took the issue up.  The PCS and other Unions have also been deeply concerned. While the liberal left has up till now either tacitly endorsed its plans to compel the workless sweat for their Dole, or has (in Red Pepper’s shameful case)  simply ignored the plans of Minister James Purnell and his banker Adviser, David Freud, the mood seems to be changing. After all it is nice well-educated people who are signing on these days.

There remain serious problems about the shape of the campaign against Welfare Reform. Mick highlight the fact, for example, that the Disability Alliance (and others) Charter of rights  (proposed to counter the more draconian aspects of the legislation) is flawed: it does not reject  the principle of compulsion clearly enough. Some years back (2002) the Unemployed Workers’ Centres Combine published a Bill of Rights for Benefits Claimants and Department for Work and Pensions Staff. This notably demanded a a “decent benefits system free from compulsion”. It noted the Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that,

• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions for work and protection against unemployment.
• Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration, ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary by other means of social protection.

Clearly Workfare violates every one of these provisions. From ‘free choice’, equal pay (with those in employment, remuneration to ‘dignity’, it promises serious attakcs on basic human rights. Existing New  Deal Schemes (which the Bill of Rights ciriticsed0 equally involve compulsion, meaningless ‘trianing’ (imagine sitting five days a week in front of a Computer screen doing ‘job’ search), and bullying. Not to mention the involvement of profiteering companies and questionable (that is, motivated by, for example, religious doctrines, or empire building) ‘voluntary sector’ bodies.  Pouring cash into the ‘providers’  to operate  public provision for the out-of-work and welfare system, will aggravate assaults on human rights. Putting the unemployed into forced labour will require an army of overseers, a potential for siphoning off money (already a difficulty), and will cause a great deal of useless pain.

Counter-demands, for a decent Benefit system, have been published. But are existing campaigns fit for purpose? Charitable campaigning bodies have a role, but are they the right vehicle to challenge the whole system? Who actually’speaks’ for those affected if not themselves? Do we want to become just a “lobby group”? Is this the way we can get Gordon Brown or David Cameron to back down? Do we want to rebuild a real unemployed workers’ movement with effective trade union backed centres? These are political, class, issues, which need radical labour movement backing. Tony Greenstein asks these questions, in a  way which resonates with those activists involved in the issues. He has asked this to be posted. Posted it is. (see also Tony here).

 

28 February 2009

 

Richard Exell,

Senior Policy Advisor

Economic & Social Affairs Department

Congress House

Great Russell Street

London WC1B 3LS

 

Dear Richard,

 

Re:      National Consultative Meeting of Unemployed Workers’ Centres. [NCMUWC]

 

My apologies for not being able to attend today’s meeting of the NCMUWC.

 

I was elected to the NCMUWC some 18 months from SERTUC and after having become read the minutes of one of the meetings I sent a paper to the NCMUWC entitled‘What is the purpose and role of the Unemployed Workers Centres’ Committee?

 

When this was eventually discussed, about a year ago, instead of it enabling those present to try and think about the role and purpose of the committee, it merely produced a defensive reaction amongst those attending, not least its Chair Kevin Flynn.  I have therefore come to the conclusion that it would be futile to believe that the present committee, or indeed the present structures, are capable either of reform or rising to the challenge of the new circumstances we face today with unemployment expected to hit at least 3 million, which is the level that occurred during the Thatcher era when unemployed centres were first formed. 

 

At the same time as unemployment is rapidly rising the Government’s Welfare Reforms are also hitting claimants hard.  Claimants are being pilloried by New Labour with their obnoxious ‘benefit thieves’ advertisements, which are the modern equivalent of the attitudes of the Poor Law Commissioners.  I have though seen no sign that the Committee is capable of rising to the challenge.  Indeed it is content to continue along the same path it has trod in the past decade and more. 

 

In particular the NCMUWCseems wedded to a wholly useless and ineffective joint campaign ‘End Child Poverty’, with the Child Poverty Action Group.  CPAG does, as any welfare advisor will confirm, an excellent job in producing a handbook and other information, taking test cases etc.  However as a charity CPAG is not a political organisation and its campaigns are very much restricted to lobbying for amelioration of the situation of particular groups without seeing what is happening in the wider, political context of ensuring a continuous supply of cheap labour to the British economy.

 

The very title of the 2008 TUC Poverty Conference says it all.  ‘Challenging Povertyism’.  Apart from the fact that such a word doesn’t exist in the English language and that its use displays a poverty of imagination, it should be obvious that Poverty is not an attitude of mind or prejudice but a situation caused by the nature of the system we live in.  Unlimited money to bail out bankers from the consequences of their own gambling habits and sanctions for claimants who don’t jump through the necessary hoops.

 

There is an urgent need for the trade union and labour movement to begin the task of organising an unemployed workers movement which is capable of providing a voice, direction and campaigning structures for those of their members who have been laid off or made redundant.  One would expect such a body to resist proposals such as the abolition of Incapacity Benefit (something the TUC itself has been all but silent over) and the use of sanctions as a whip to coerce the unemployed into becoming a reservoir of cheap labour.  The forcing of parents of young children to attend work focussed interviews and be available for if not actively seeking work, is producing mass resentment amongst people yet the NCMUWC is incapable of formulating any proposals for a campaign.  The NCMUWCsees itself as just one more lobby group.

 

We are thus facing a situation whereby Unemployed Centres are continuing to decrease or cut their links with the trade union and labour movement and yet the need for them is ever increasing.  The NCMUWC hasn’t even begun to address this issue or the fact that there isn’t a single unemployed centre in the Greater London Region.  The refusal of trade union leaders to provide adequate funding to Unemployed Centres, at one and the same time as they are funding New Labour’s attacks on their own members is an absurdity which the NCMUWC, in its supine timidity, would not dream of even raising preferring instead to accept the odd crumb from the table.  For example in the minutes of the meeting of 2.10.08., the raising of £1,900 from five national unions for the National Offa appeal, of which £1,000 came from PCS alone, is seen as some kind of victory.

 

The other problem is that the Committee is a ‘consultative committee’ rather than an organising committee.  Because I see no future for this committee, other than as a rest home for those whose whole life has entailed running UWCs, I am tendering my resignation as of today.

 

Yours fraternally,

 

 

 

Tony Greenstein

Secretary – Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre

Suspect Accused of Killing Guadeloupean Trade Unionist.

Fine for the Yatch-owning Classes.

And end to the Crisis in the French-speaking Caribbean? The upheaval may be at a pause, but nothing is settled. The negotiating stalemate continues in Gaudeloupe, notably due to the refusal of the main employers’ organisation the MEDF, to agree to wage rises. There has been serious unrest in Martinique. Now we hear that the French island, la Réunion (Indian ocean) will see a General Strike next week.  This news arrives (and flatly contradicts the idiotic rumours put about by anglophone anarchists that the police were to blame) :

“Un Guadeloupéen de 35 ans, meurtrier présumé du syndicaliste Jacques Bino, a été mis en examen pour meurtre et tentative de meurtre et écroué à Pointe-à-Pitre.” (Nouvel Obsevateur).

A 35 year old Guadeloupean, presumed to be the killer of the trade unionist Jacques Bino, is being examined in the investigation for murder and imprisoned at Pointe-à-Pitre.

Reflection: a majority of French metropolitan inhabitants favour Independence for these ‘departments’. However, while there are strong reasons to push the French Antilles to ‘identity’ demands (language, culture) the economicties are strong. The views of those who live there (according to polls) are more mixed. Many people in these Caribbean isles may criticise the hold the descendants of the French colonialists (the békés)  have over their countries, but  worry about losing even relative equality with France for services and a standard of living with some social protection.Polls indicate this ambiguity: the problem is to guarantee these advantages with independence.

Interesting to re-read Franz Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs (in English, White Masks, Black Skins). Fanon was from Martinique, and, despite a common colonial legacy,  there’s a slightly different background there. But he very acutely outlines the cultural contradictions between an Antilles black self-sense, notably the use of the local créole, both considered even today as ‘without a history’, and European French culture  and language. Yet, some things have changed. The wonderful writer, activist and poet, Aimé Césaire (from Martinique), who died last year, opened many people’s eyes to black consciousness (négritude), without being an advocate of bourgeois multi-culturalism or identity politics (here: in English). One should always be aware of this background. I note that when Césaire died the French media made it their major story. At the same time I found myself having to explain who the man was to local black (anglophone) Africanists’!

Euro-Elections, RMT and Front de Gauche.

A Real Euro-Elections Campaign.

The British transport union, the RMT, at the initiative of Trades Unionists Against the European Constitution,  is said (here) to be indulging  itself (and its members’ money) in an ‘anti-EU’ List for the June European elections.

Supporters claim that such a List (assembled in a few months) can win votes – on the basis of some London meetings and the generosity of the RMT. It’s policies are said to centre on these points:

* Reject the Lisbon Treaty
* No to EU directives that privatise our public services
* Defend and develop British manufacturing
* Repeal ECJanti-trade union rulings and no to social dumping
* No to racism and fascism
* No to EU militarisation
* Restore democracy to EU member states
* Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
* Scrap EU economic rules designed to stop member states from implementing reflationary policies
* Keep Britain out of the eurozone 

Nearly all this wish-list is, I note,  negative. Sure, get rid of the Lisbon Treaty. Why not every other Treaty the Government has signed – I can’t think of any good ones. What’s in their place? Not a word on how to construct a socialist or social republican Europe. That is one which encourages social ownership, pro-trade union legislation, and expanding European democracy. Instead we get ’restoring’ democracy to ‘member’ states, and backing ‘British manufacturing’. So after this  ‘Restoration’, the aim is to implement something like the old Alternative Economic Strategy. That’s  plans to make this land a shining City on the Hill. Towering above militarism. Still, International solidarity has its place: charity (‘fair trade’).

Save the Pound chaps!

In France there’s a real electoral campaign being launched by the left. If anyone want to see how a  serious challenge in the ballot box is organised they couldn’t do better than look at the way the Front de Gauche in France is setting about things (here and here). I disagree with the PCF and Parti de Gauche’s (more nuanced) anti-EU stand: Iwant to emphasise means to change it, not walk away from it. But in any case, their activity makes you realise how far  the UK anti-EU Constitution lot have to go before they even begin to be taken seriously.

Welfare Reform Lobby: Inspiring and to the Point.

A Great Success.

I was down in London on Tuesday at the Welfare Reform lobby- co-ordinated by the PCS union. It was truly impressive.  A packed (it is traditional to say this but it’s true)  House of Commons Committee room listened to an inspiring platform. With around twenty speakers it’s hard to single out any individual. There were high-powered trade unionists (General Secretaries no less, such as Tony Woodley, UNITE/T&G),  the FBU, and the GMB (who spoke on the cruel fate of Remploy – factories for the disabled now heartlessly discarded), the NUS,  doughty Labour left MP, John MacDonnell, and a gamut of activists, from the excellent Ms Cohen of a single-parents’ pressure group, a representative from the drugs Charity Release,  to disabled activists. All were present to stand up against the Government’s plans to privatise welfare, introduce workfare, and penalise  the vulnerable.

That we are not a minority, but a coalition of the majority was clear during the event. Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary, set the right tone by citing a PCS-sponsered opinion poll that 79% of people are not confident of surviving on the current rate of jobseekers allowance (£60.50) according to ICM. A mere 6% trusted  private firms to properly run DWI services (Here).

The atmosphere was extremely comradely (Tony Woodley and the GMB chap called us comrades so I feel it’s correct to use this word). It was a real people’s meeting. The loathing in general of the ‘reform’, and Purnell in particular, was almost palpable.

What brought such a solid platform, from the heart of our movement, to express this rage at the Labour Government?

Readers of this Blog will be aware of the threat the Purnell-Freud Legislation poses to the basic principles of the Welfare State. It will introduce coercion for the workless, hive off  hefty chunks of welfare and Job Centre  provision to profit-making companies, and make the lives of those on benefits a misery. Mark Serwotka  targeted the centre of this strategy, privatising and introducing forced labour (now relabeled ‘work experience’ ). This will be compulsory work (ranging for a short sharp shock for newcomers to limitless drudgery for the long-term unemployed), at well less than 2 quid an hour. At the same time PCS members are to see their jobs transferred to exactly the type of incompetent profiteers who have brought this country to the brink of a slump. Serwotka warned that we should expect to see Cabinet spin on this, that there would be ‘tailored’ services for all, and ‘opportunity’ – which will no doubt demonstrate Brown’s minions’ capacity for spouting cack  – after all else has left them.

During the meeting one aspect of the ‘reform’ caught my attention: the introduction of a total surveillance state for drug addicts. The most intimate details of their lives will be traded between police and welfare agencies, their existence regulated so thoroughly it will resemble imprisonment in a gaol. 

To Purnell, he will not shrink from all this because it is “right”. He’s not so wrong. That is, it goes right to shatter the most fundamental core of the Welfare State: to protect, and provide a ’safe home’ for those who are in need. In its place we will have a mixture a system based on threats, and profiteering, no doubt with a dose of charity, religious or otherwise (‘voluntary’ and ‘faith’ groups are now in line for a surge in their hold on the provision of welfare). In brief: Gradgrind, Mr Beadle and Mrs Bountiful will replace the Welfare State.

A chap from Compass sounded a hopeful note towards the conclusion: the free-market ideology of New Labour is dying on its feet. One might say that it was based (explicitly in Mandelson’s case) on the idea that finance-capitalists and wealthy entrepreneurs were the ‘rising’ class. In a strange throwback to the stand of  some before the 1st World War they saw these ‘big beasts’ (from that time, now known as Robber Barons – who knows what we’ll call the present crop) – they wagered on their success. Bet lost. What we need, are plans for real welfare, and social justice – I believe they used to be called democratic socialism.

For that we need to start campaigning, agitating against the New Poor Laws, now.

Waiting for the Etonians: Review of Nick Cohen’s Latest Book.

 

Eton Spats.

 

REVIEW: WAITING FOR THE ETONIANS. NICK COHEN. Fourth Estate. 2009.

 

Nick Cohen is dismayed. Professionally. He rants, but is terribly reasonable. He finds little reasonableness in the world he looks on. There lie the ruins of popular capitalism. This gives Cohen but small pleasure. He had pointed to the complacency of the Labour governments of Blair and Brown, which inflated the housing and financial bubble. Its policies funded by a deal with Capital, or bluntly, by “prostituting itself” to the City. Cohen had seen that “The spivery of the City afflicted the political left as severely as its blind optimism.”(P 26) He had uncovered subsidised tax breaks for private equity barons, foreign billionaires and British companies with boltholes in tax havens. (P 345) In short, had we read his columns, we would have learnt the truth. This collection of articles bears witness. Not to praise folly, but to condemn it.

 

Nobody listened. Now he listens himself. It’s time to admit the free-market reformist wing’s merits: Labour’s public investments and the consumer boom together fostered a degree of modest personal happiness. Yet (see above) these conditions are evaporating, as the sources in expanding finance dry out. What has the Cabinet, the Third Way, or whatever they call it now (other than save your own skin), to offer? Cohen has more to say. Brown manages some ‘social democratic’ measures – taking the helm of the banking system. Will he go further? Where to? Cohen can only note that the left, from Government to the wilder shores of Trotskyism, has nothing to offer. Nothing whatsoever.

 

The author of What’s Left? (2007) is something of a cult figure on the British left. Admired for his capacity to roar, bellow indeed, though some, who do not measure up to his standards of decency, do not always relish his assertions about the left’s history and ideology. Sample, no doubt weighed on a heavily broken scale, “Because there is no coherent left-wing political programme, anyone can affect a leftist posture, just as anyone can walk into a shop.”(P 188) Ouch!

 

Cohen’s collection of journalism shows him generally in fine fettle. Sharp digs at once fashionable ideas from the ‘therapy culture’, and personal growth (though done better by the late Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism 1979), go down well amongst bitter and twisted leftists. So does attacking the culture industries’ treatment of “underprivileged whites” with “suspicion and condescension” living in a “parasites paradise, scrounging of the cozened middle classes” continues unabated. We lack, he rightly says, someone with the moral depth of Dickens to stir opinion about the poverty of millions. Or, I add, a Balzac to rip into the speculators and financiers.

 

The long-term trend, partly imported from America, for the liberal left to prioritise ‘equality of opportunity’ through promoting people’s identities, is rightly lambasted. Diversity often means flattering diverse prejudices, “..it has become racist to oppose sexists, homophobes and fascist from other cultures.”(P 191) There is an “intolerance of the intolerable inculcated by postmodernism, and the doubts about democracy in the liberal mainstream.”(P 192) Real equality, and better living conditions, are not achieved through a race with plenty of losers, endless ‘monitoring’, and promoting ‘diversity; while failing to improve the lot of all. Again, Robert Hughes’ Culture of Complaint (1993) has been there before. But there’s nothing wrong is rattling out the good old tunes.

 

Nick Cohen is famously opposed to appeasement of religious reaction, above all Islamism. He writes that, “When society decides that people’s religion, rather than their class or gender, is the cultural fact that matters, power inevitably passes to religious fanatics who believe religion justifies any crime.”(P 144) He appears to think that, when “confronted with ultra-reactionary movements and dictatorial regimes, liberals recommended surrender.”(P 31) Recent cases include Iraqi Baathism, and, above all, Islamist movements and regimes. All partly right. There is a kind of appeasement, exemplified in George Galloway that deserves Cohen’s loathing. Self-righteous followers on this path, can scream all they like about Cohen’s ‘apologies for liberal murder’ (he doesn’t make any): they are wrong.

 

Yet the basic analysis demands a challenge. Such surrenders are not principally due, as he elsewhere asserts, to ‘post-modernist relativism’. Galloway and those of that kidney have transferred their loyalty to the Revolution to ‘anti-imperialist’ Islamism, as in poor old Tariq Ali who thinks the Taliban are a national liberation movement, or those who consider the ultra-right-wing Hamas ‘anti-imperialist’ (for being against Israel). Livingstone is largely trawling for City Boss lieutenants.  But with others, who seek to ‘understand’ Islamism, the motives are more mixed.  Cohen’s definition of liberal tends to be an American not British one. That is a mixture of faith in social improvement, wishful thinking, transcendentalist optimism (the living experience of the Soul), and (in modern times) the betterment of a kaleidoscope of worthy oppressed groups. It is this kind of ‘trying to be fair to everyone’ liberal tolerance (deeper rooted that the transient fashion of postmodernism) which is at fault here.

 

 

It would be better to state that by definition no believer in liberty would indulge in excuses or (in the case of Respect and Ken Livingstone) alliances with reactionary religious-political groups. Nor would they, for example, praise, as Cohen’s friend Bernard Henry Lévy did, for the Afghan warlord and (non-Taliban) Islamist, Commander Massoud (here, here). What is a liberal anyway?  Mill’s definition of liberty included the freedom to think and write as one wants, freedom to tastes and pursuits, regardless of ‘moral’ rules (provided they are ‘self-regarding’ and cause no harm to others), and the freedom of assembly. Exit the Sharia and any Autocracy. For Marxists and socialists the choice is simpler: Islamicism and the dictatorships Cohen cites are vehicles of oppression. The former of the pious Moslem bourgeoisie; the latter of various hybrids of state kleptocracy and robber capitalism. 

 

 

Now that a “battered public seemed willing to embrace its old ruling class with something approaching relief.”(P 32) – the Etonians (aka David Cameron’s crew) – is there really no left in the offing? Brown’s Cabinet barely keeps its head above water. The anti-globalisation movement had little concrete to say, and its Social Forum wing has become (in the UK) the haunt of harmless cranks. The Green Party has plans to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.  Respect and the SWP are, well Respect and the SWP.

 

But there is a left that it emerging. It is one the spans the distance between radical social democracy, Compass, the unions, the small independent socialist publications, such as Labour Left Briefing, Chartist, and many others on the democratic socialist left, a gamut of groups, feminist, gay, anti-racist, green, and which extends to many on the ‘far left’ who are fiercely democratic. Ideas are now being developed, on welfare, public ownership and working conditions, that connect with the legacy of the socialist and labour movement. A left that never had any time for tyrants and dictatorships of whatever ilk, Stalinist, Nationalist, or Religious.  Or so I think – because I come from this movement. As do many. It’s a shame that other than offering some warmed over diatribes, and a few real insights on class and culture, wrapped in well-written prose, that Nick Cohen doesn’t seriously engage with us. Perhaps the East Wind has frozen his frowning face.

 

 

 

 

Police Data Base on Protestors: Secret Plods Have a Ball.

 Inspector Plod’s Bedtime Read.

The Guardian today leads on – more than probable -  revelations about official activist-spotting. That the British Bobbies (warm furry chaps and chappetes) are trying their hands at being the Secret Police (cold, haughty, of no known, or trans, gender). Their efforts to assemble data bases on political protesters  have obvious origins:  suspicion of people who ruffle the State’s feathers. Not to mention something called the Surveillance Society, put plainly, bureaucratic empire-building. In general these schemes get caught up, like Gabriel Syme’s (in The Man Who was Thursday) in fictional organisations (‘Central Council of AlterGlobalisers’?), and various kinds of pointless skulduggery. All of which get publicised through the media. It will always be thus under capitalism…until the oceans are lemonade and Tendance Coatesy comes to power. I make the prediction, for example,  that before the 28th of March TUC-backed Put People First March there will be stories in the press about ‘wild’ anarchists ‘planning’ something or other on the demonstration. But crudely, all this is not a surprise.

Some observations:

• The existence of a ‘black list’ in the building trade, principally aimed at the stroppy and the unionised, is something concrete which shows how information-gathering can hurt lives. I’m not so sure that electronic methods alone are the worst. I know that in my own case that when a New Deal Adviser phoned up a variety of local employers they found (and said to me) that I was black-listed de facto – without a data base in sight.
• If the Rozzers want to know what political activists are doing that can read the Web, the Weekly Workers, etc etc. We have little to hide and much to uncover (about our opponents). Mind you that’s cheaper and less imposing than photo-shoots and getting up glossy dossiers,  so I suppose this helpful tip will not be listened to.
• There are some ‘activists’ (I hesitate to call them political since they are ‘anti-politics’) who are a real problem. I cite Islamicists. An element amongst them promotes brutal actions against a variety of targets, above all ‘kaffirs’.  Some on the liberal and not so liberal left show an unwarranted tolerance for them. Reasons? One suspects better found in the works of Sacher-Masoch  and Freud’s texts on the Death Instinct. Similarly the Animal Liberation movement has a violent fringe. These are loathsome to all progressive humanity. Proof? I simply mention the recent cases of vicious harassment of individuals and their families. No-one can object to surveillance when anti-human violence is a menace.

Is this data-base a threat to civil liberties?  Yes, clearly. Is it going to make me lose sleep? No: I’ve always worked with the assumption that the State is aware of left activists. Partly flattering, often annoying. But what am I going to do to change it  this week?

Welfare Reform Therapy: There’s a Lot of Ruin in the Notion.

Therapy for the Workless.

The Observer today reports that a keystone of its Welfare ‘Reform’ programme is flawed. Well, a bit more. A tissue of lies and cover-ups for the usual crew of useless private companies touting for business on the backs of the less fortunate, (end of clause) has come to light. In the sensitive area of incapacity claimants no less.

 A report marked “restricted” revealed how the private companies placed just 6% of incapacity benefit claimants on their books into work, rather than the 26% they had claimed would be possible when they bid for contracts. This compared to 14% achieved by state job centres during the same period. The report described the performance of the private contractors as “not satisfactory”.

Now unbiased commentators like Tendance Coatesy could have foretold this. We have heard a slew of heart-rending cases of people harassed, forced into unsuitable ’schemes’, and the usual range of personal tales of great misery. The fact is that getting people with physical and mental difficulties into jobs is no simple task. It’s certainly not aided by money-grubbers, of whatever well-turned out stripe.

Not that all, it must be said, the problems in the to-be-farmed off benefits system are the  fault of the way existing private contractors operate. Job Centres themselves can be pretty threatening places, and not just for work-shy gobby Marxist dossers like our good selves. Just to give one case: they are already charged with funnelling people into the notorious ‘New Deal’ programme. Willy-nilly. This can be calmly described as an ‘open prison’ and a make-dosh opportunity for a variety of dodgy ‘trainers’ and ‘placement providers’ (amid a few good eggs that is). Apart from anything else the Dole queues have got too large for them to deal with effectively. Sign on, and meet the crowds. Due to multiply. Hell knows what it’ll be like when they roll out the full workfare boot-camp call-up. Tasar manufactuers will make a killing.

Yet help is at hand. Damp down the protests lads and ladettes. The same Observer leads with this encouraging news. “Victims of the recession to get therapy. State aid planned to fight job anxiety.”

Fears of a depression and an anxiety epidemic, caused by the recession, are forcing the government to offer psychological help to millions of people facing unemployment, debt and relationship breakdown. Sufferers will be referred to psychotherapists for expert counselling via an advice network linking Jobcentres, doctors’ surgeries and a new NHS Direct hotline.

Under the plan, which will involve training 3,600 more therapists and hundreds more specialist nurses, psychotherapy centres will be established in every primary care trust by the end of next year.

Further legislation, exclusively leaked to Tendance Coatesy, reveals plans to combine the scheme with the New Deal/Workfare. To adapt to the changing patterns of market positioning and reskilling, the unemployed will be given ‘talking cures’ to resolve their maladjustment issues. ‘Fitting in’ will be a quality programme individually tailored and incorporates health and safety legislation. In line with existing rules those failing to comply with the assessment/compliance criteria will be ‘exited‘.

International Women’s Day: Iranian Activists.

 Iranian Women Activists In London.

International Women’s Day. Just some interesting photos and reports from the Iranian left women’s movement all over the world (largely Worker Communist Party). In Battaile Socialiste.

 

Tendance Coatesy cannot stress enough how important it is to back the Hands off the People of Iran’s Campaigns, from opposing sanctions (that would bolster the Clerical Regime), opposing a US-led military attack (if it gets back in the picture), to supporting the democratic secular opposition, from trades unionists to women’s and LGBT rights.

 

Here and here (both 2007) are some further reasons why. We await up-to-date reports of what happened yesterday.

French Radical Left: Strong but Disunited for European Elections.

NPA: Only a United Front From Below.

According to the opinon pollers, Ifop, the PCF-PG (Left Front) has  4% voting intentions, against 9% for the NPA (Olivier Besancenot)  and 3% for Lutte ouvrière. This totals 16% for the combined radical left score, against 8,6%  2004 results (when neither the NGA’s forerunner, the LCR, nor LO got seats). 

Olivier Besancenot, generally thought to play a major part in his party’s good image,  is on a NPA list, but not far enough up to be in sight of any position to win a seat at Brussels. One would attribute this decision to a desire to stay close to the terrain of day-to-day politics. I must say that I warm to Olivier, and the fact that he lives a couple of bus stops away from where I had my Parisian flat does little to lessen this. But I underline that those expressing reservations about the strategy of the NPA have a lot on their side: you can’t just ‘jump over’ forces like the PCF and the PG; not at least if you want to build something substantial on the left  – see below.

Christian Picquet, leader of the NPA minority current that’s favourable to an alliance between the Front de Gauche and his party, has maintained his backing for such a List. In its absence he says he supports the PCF-PG electoral bloc. He argues that apart from a better election result, it would offer a serious challenge to the Parti Socialiste, and break with the endless fragmentation of the French left.

Of the current NPA direction, Picquet says

«Le NPA était censé apporter un renouvellement des pratiques à gauche. En réalité, il se comporte comme une boutique qui fait prévaloir ses propres intérêts par rapport à l’intérêt général du peuple de gauche», a-t-il déploré.

He regretted, “The NPA was meant to bring  fresh air to the activity of the left. In reality it has behaved like a business, and puts its own interests well before those of the left as a whole.”

Selon lui, «l’écho qu’a le NPA aujourd’hui et la popularité d’Olivier Besancenot les amènent à penser qu’ils ont les clefs de la réponse politique à la crise dela gauche et à la colère sociale», mais le NPA est «dans une bulle qui les enferme dans une illusion mortifère».

According to him, “The echo the NPA has found at the moment, and Olivier Besancenot’s popularity, have led them to think that they are they key forces that can respond to the left’s crisis and society’s rising anger.” But the NPA is, “in a bubble which imprisons them inside a deadening illusion.”

 

The Weekend’s  6,000 strong meeting for the PCF-PG and allies succesful rally here. Piquet’s role in standing up for Unity is extensively covered on this, the Humanité site.

Watchers of the French left await the NPA’s response to this defiance. Note added Wednesday: it seems as it’s coming to the turning point as if Picquet’s crew have ’self-excluded’ themselves.

Review: Under Two Dictators. Margarete Buber-Neumann.

Train to Where?

Review of ‘Under Two Dictators. Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler’. Pimlico 2008.  

 

Margarete Buber-Neumann’s testimony of suffering in Stalin’s Camps, and then, in the Third Reich’s, is a key document of the twentieth century. After an intense period of activism in the German Communist Party (KPD) she and her husband, the leading KPD official Heinz Neumann, fled when Hitler came to power, and headed for the Soviet Union. Employees of the Comintern, they worked in France, and in Spain, during the Civil War. As the Communist International  became, as she puts it, a branch of the secret police, the GPU, any disagreements with the Soviet run leadership, and ‘unreliability’ became capital offences. When the Great Purges began in 1937, and hundreds of German Communists were arrested,  Heinz was one of them,  a ‘deviationist’. Neumann was tortured in the Lubyanka and soon shot. Initially in a social limbo, ostracised (though a few managed to show her acts of kindness) and frantically trying to get news of her partner, Margarete was arrested in 1938 and spent miserable months crammed into a Moscow gaol. In January 1939 she was sentenced to five years imprisonment and sent to the Gulag.  From there, in one of the most sordid deals of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, in 1940 she was handed over to the Nazis and then sent to Ravensbrück. Miraculously she survived to write down her story, published in 1948. This,  as the enlightening Introduction states, is “one of the most important survivor memoirs of totalitarian terror.”(P xxii) It is now back in print through Pimlico. Nearly every page makes harrowing reading.

 

Buber-Neumann reached an international audience for her role in exposing the lies of the French Communist journal, Les Lettres Françaises, in the famous liberal case brought against Soviet defector Kravchenko (I chose Freedom). The PCF denied the Soviet Archipelago of Penal Servitude. She, to their chagrin, was living proof of the existence of the Gulag. That is, sent East with others on a hundred thousand strong slave labour mission to turn barren steppe into fertile fields for crops and grazing. Not even  cutlery and mess tins were provided for their daily use. Everything, primitive huts ownards, had to be built. Great disorder reigned amid back-breaking toil. The division between favoured ‘Criminals’ and ‘Politicals’ (noted by all survivor accounts) made their lives a living hell. The description of remorseless oppressive and chaotic daily life prefigures Solzhenitsynby many years. Initially (soon to be disabused) she found conditions in Germany a relief, “The Ravensbrück hut seemed a palace to me after the wretched clay huts of Birma. And the equipment: a proper lavatory, a washroom with proper basins, tables, stools and lockers!”(P 166) This was not to last as the Nazi extermination programme was stepped up. Everything went worse and worse. But. in the hard winter of 1944 – 5 the Cremetorian was in full swing, its “.. glow at nights was almost always there.”(P 263)

 

 

The narrative must be read in full, a vivid word picture of existence at its lowest,  from the Gulag, to the darkness  in the Konzentrationslager. Memorable are acts of resistance, however ultimately to little avail, from left oppositionists to the most downtrodden victims. In the course of this journey to hell, two reflexions stand out.

 

 

The first, is the mechanism which undergirded Stalin’s mass murders had its original in a Bolshevik institution of long-standing. It was not just the constant adulation of the Leader and the Party. It was permanent efforts to ‘purify’ the CPSU, an urge whose origins lie in Lenin’s not Stalin’s time. That is, the “Tchistka, or purge, was a regular institution in the Russian Communist party.”(P 15)  Originally designed as a way of clearing out ‘dead wood’ (human beings deemed unsuitable, unworthy, then, unreliable, then nonconformist, non-orthodox, dissident, anything other than fully obedient Stalinists). A fright that leaves those saved all the worse morally.  Any Party member had the right to get up and denounce any other member, pointed questions about political past and present activities, if guilty of some deviation had to do public penance, Often a preliminary to actual arrest. “It can be imagined what an opportunity all this offered of paying off old scores.”(P 15)  One can easily imagine.

 

The second is a moral observation, “Christian morality declares that suffering ennobles the sufferer. That can be only a very qualified truth. Life in a concentration camp showed the contrary to be true more often than not. I think that nothing is more demoralising than suffering, excessive suffering coupled with humiliation such as comes to men and women in concentration camps. That is true of individuals and probably of whole people.!”(P 185) To her, it’s not like ordinary prison, where there’s  one blow, loss of freedom, is only the first. “You had lost all human rights – all, all without exception. You were just a living being with a number to distinguish you from the other unfortunates around you.”(P 185) What can you say to that?

 

The final passages contain further reflections. In the wake of her liberation Margarete was, like millions, adrift in a defeated Germany. On her wanderings she met with dissident Communists, who had rebelled against Stalinism in the KPD and retained their faith under the Nazis.  Her host began by stating that, “The Comintern was used only for what was useful to the Russians.”(P 311) Something went deep inside Buber-Neumann, “I experienced a long, long forgotten feeling of happiness, K hesitatingly, and with uncertain words, directed the following question at me: ‘Comrade Grete, what do you actually think of Soviet Russia. You have been there, haven’t you? To us, you surely can tell the truth.”(P 312) Friends came in the room as she told them,  “All of them former members of the KPD, members of the opposition who, like K, had left the Communist Party yet had remained antifascists imprisoned by the Nazis for many years in penitentiary or KZ,”(P 312) Nevertheless they remained treated by Communists as traitors, “Yet they still considered themselves to be Communists, they believed that they were the fighters for the true the fact that their ideological foundations was already damaged at all its corners. They didn’t dare yet to doubt Lenin, let alone the October Revolution or even Marxist theory. The great traitor was called Stalin.”(P 312) She described the full extent of the Big Cleansing and the Show trials. When she  got to the Hitler-Stalin Pact and  the Soviets handing her over to the Nazis one of her audience couldn’t control himself, “filthy killers!” he shouted.  

These are surely good people every democratic  left-winger would identify with. But is the following the case? “The path of suffering hadn’t ended yet for them, but already they had known the pain that a Communist feels when he loses his political   faith and has to re-orientate himself in this life – lonely and banished. (P 313) It seems an impertinence to comment after such a series of terrifying experiences. But one holds to the democratic root of Marxism so firmly because it is strongly planted, for all the efforts to tear it up.

 

The tale finishes on the most glorious of notes. Her heart-rending welcome in the House of Johannes Thuring, by her mother, sister, brother in law Dr Fleiss, and their children, rings in the mind, “From above on the steep wooden stairs at the entry to the house my mother’s voice, which had turned old, called over and over again, ‘Had  she really come? Has she really come…’”(P 341)

Margarete was embedded in the culture of the 20th century. Apart from her link to the core of German Communism her first husband, Rafael Buber, was the son of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher. In Ravensbrück she befriended Melina, that is the woman of  Kafka’s beautiful letters Briefe an Melina. The two had promised that the one who managed to live would write down what they had seen. Melina wasted away, but Margarete managed to survive. She must be listened to. I don’t care about her eventual support for German Christian Democracy. This book has something that stays. 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a French Minister of the Family: No Web Rude Comments about Me.

On France-Inter this morning and on various French newsmagazine sites (here and  (here).

The Secretary of State for the Family, Nadine Morano, has brought a legal complaint against Dailymotion and Youtube for having published links with videos containing comments about her that she considers insulting and wounding. The Public Prosecution service will investigate and consider the case.

The above is an amusing shot of Nadine pissed out of her head (bourrée) and shows her ‘dancing’ (cavorting as only politicians know how). There’s plenty of savoury comments posted about her on the site.

Let’s be clear, whatever the fact that some of the rude remarks are pretty juvenile, this risks turning into another test case against Internet freedom of expression.

 I hope this doesn’t give British politicians ideas. I’ve a got a few videos to dub in mind: Peter Mandelson on ‘Money, Money Money’ as he gyrates in front of a closed post office, George Galloway, ‘You can’t hide your lying eyes’ as he grovels to some tyrant, and Gordon Brown, “It’s my party…” weeping into his whisky.

Booze: It’s The Poor Wot Won’t Get Blootered.

Save these from the Grubby Poor!

The news this morning is dominated by plans to stop poor people getting drunk (BBC).

Apparently a bottle of wine will go up to £4.50.  More to the point a tinnie of 9% cider or strong lager will probably double (at 50 pence per unit of alcohol).

No guesses for who are targeted by Sir Liam Donaldson (who’s something called the Government’s Chief Medical Officer). The least well-off. The chavs, the dole queue, the n’er-do-wells, the teenage bingers. That’s those who don’t have the money for a decent lunch of country-scavenged rocket, sun-dried tomato salad, organic goat’s cheese, and pain Poilâne.  Washed down with one glass of fair-trade Chardonnay.

Leading from in front (or wherever he can squeeze his enormous frame into) Donaldson is reported on Wikipedia as clinically obese.

Let’s be clear about this one: this is the result of the temperance lobby’s tireless campaigning. That’s right, they’ve renamed and rebranded themselves under names like ‘alcohol concern’. We are meant to forget the origins of the animosity towards drinking. It’s religious (like Sir Liam, in the broadest sense): we are (potentially) the noblest work of god. But beset by sin. People should be clean-living good girls and boys; booze, fags and lazing around – signs of the old Adam/Eve. Needs rooting out. Exorcised by Cognitive Therapy. Banned.

New Labour is full of prissy health conscious moral reformers. It is bred in the bone. Given a boost by the post-68ers who believed (unlike the left) not in changing the world but in changing themselves. One lot went into the Ayn Rand type of let-the weak-die-in-the-gutters ‘libertarianianism’. The other went holy and holier. Seeing that efforts to lead by  example (wind-mill on every roof, tofu in every tummy), they have resorted, more and more, to the brute compulsion their ideological ancestors revelled in. Hence, to cite but one case, workfare. Hence the Health Police.

This proposal is naturally a bit of a kite-flying exercise. Typical. Few now need hearing how this works. Committee, of Bumble the Beadle, Lady Bountiful and Sir Herod, advise Government that first-born of all receivers of Job Seekers’ Allowance should be sent to Artful Dodger Co. Wiltshire Salt Mines. Agonising in liberal quarters. Guardian sees merits in introducing less well-off to new skills, but reservations about lack of diversity programme in providers. Doubts elsewhere. Daily Mail points to scheme provoking shortage of chimney sweeps. David Cameron wants checks on Immigration status of all births.  Faith communities get in on act: MCB points to benefits of Sharia Law in salt production,  Archbishop of Canterbury suggests introducing Sharia for Muslim first born. Green Paper. Consultation and ‘road show’ across country. White Paper: families to be compensated with extra child care funding for remaining offspring.Polly Toynbee writes Guardian article praising foresight of Cabinet in  tackling root cause of over-producing first-born.

End result: salt mines plan introduced in ‘pilot’ for inner-city job-seekers.  

This is what will happen with the make-drinking-too-dear for the poor. The way is being prepared. As a ‘collective capitalist’ the State’s Adviser is telling business as whole that it will save money (NHS and better, soberer workforce) by this heavy price increase, even if the drinks trade loses and a further run of pubs is closed for ever. Gordon Brown goes down in history as the man who not only watered but flitched the workers’ beer.

Important Article in Taz Today about Islamist Manipulation of ‘Islamophobia’.

Necla Kelek: Doughty Fighter for Secular Freedom.

There’s a very important article today  in the German centre-left daily, Die Tageszeitung, by Necla Kelek, (who’s of Turkish origin), taking apart, root and branch, the campaign against  ‘Islamophobia’ by various kinds of Islamists (here). The piece,  a solid essay, goes into the whole misuse of the concept of ‘racism’ in this context. She points out the racist ideas of Islamicists: that one is ‘born’ a Muslim and can never stop being one. There is a promiennt place given to  the manipulation in Turkey by pro-AKP conservative Islamicists of the alleged anti-Islam atmosphere in Germany. In short, it paints a sad picture of the ideology of Islamicism: rather than fight for equality and act against real racialist politics, it serves as a counter-banner of prejudice around an Islam beyond criticism. That is, a closed ideology constantly under ‘threat’.

I observe that it seems a common religious trope. It could be extended very widely (put in other faiths for the one cited above)  to those who continually see their religions ‘menaced’.

France: Day of Action Tomorrow, Students Already in Uproar.

 

European upheaval continues to grow, from Iceland, Ireland, the Baltic states, Greece, to France. Oh yes, France. Tomorrow’s one-day General Strike promises some mass activity. Not just by official union and left parties. As a taste of the urnest brewing last night there was a student demonstration of several thousand  in Paris which wound its way through half the capital. It ended up in Montmartre, accompanied by ‘incidents’. As Le Parisien reports,

“Manifestation étudiante cette nuit à Paris : 4 gardes à vue.”

As part of the protests against the government’s ‘reform’ of higher education, a ”universities night’ began in the 13th arrondisment. The students then decided to have a spontaneous demonstration, which wove its way across the capital. After briefly blocking the traffic at Châtelet, they headed for Barbès and Montmartre (this is a hell of a route I note). At this point confrontations with the police took place. Around 150 youths began breaking shop windows, and attacking cars. The CRS (riot squad) moved in and arrested four people.

Thursday’s Day of Action – called by all the unions and backed by the left parties (and the Greens, who notably refused to do so for the previous General Strike) -   has overwhelming popular support (around 70% in the polls). The defence of the public sector (the famous ‘French model’ of social protection, its difference with other European systems rather exaggerated in our view), is important, and as in the UK the future of the Post Office is an issue. This comes together with widespread anger at Sarkozy’s tax breaks for the well-off.  The latter,  ’le bouclier fiscal’ (a shield that protects those who earn the most), is causing as much anger as the Bankers’ bonuses and pensions in the UK. There is this is dissatisfaction in the private sector, anxiety about unemployment and wages drifting downwards. A further range of causes, such university researchers’ fury at plans to to base their work on a quasi-business template – as is projected for higher education as a whole is pouring fuel onto the social fire.

 

The central demands are: 

•  Donner la priorité au maintien des emplois dans un contexte de crise économique. (Priority to keeping jobs during the economic crisis).
•  Améliorer le pouvoir d’achat, réduire les inégalités dans les politiques salariales. (Raise spending power, reduce salary inequalities in pay-scales).
•  Orienter la relance économique vers l’emploi et le pouvoir d’achat. (Turn plans to reboot the economy towards bettering employment and pay levels).
•  Préserver et améliorer les garantiescollectives. (Preserve and improvec ollectively adopted standards – a  big difference from the UK, there are tripartite negotiations and binding agreements on a whole range of working conditions and salaries).
•  Réglementer la sphère financière internationale. (Regulate the international financial sector).

Where this will end is not at all clear. Apart from these rather wishy-washy demands the real meat is in whether the State will back down in its drive to privatise and drop the coddled status for the higher earning classes. Sarkozy says – in effect – “I’ve already acted to deal with the financial crisis and helped protect employees. I’m not abandoning  my modernisation projects”. Will he change his mind? He has proved less ridiculously stubborn and a free-marketeer than Gordon Brown, who is notorious in Europe as the last man standing who will protect ultra-liberal EU Commissioner, Barroso. But a different Cabinet would be needed for the unions’ minimum demands to be met  - the traditional way for French Presidents to alter direction. The Unions are not seriously up for a strike to topple the François Fillon government – yet.  

 

Globalising Hatred – The New Anti-Semitism. Denis MacShane.

Globalising Hatred. The New Anti-Semitism. Denis MacShane.Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2008.

 

I had expected to be intensely irritated by this book. Denis MacShane is Tony Blair’s former Minister for Europe, and is well-known on the Continent for preaching the Gospel of the Third Way. If only the French Socialists had listened to his message, broadcast in Le Monde and Libération, as elsewhere… They could have enjoyed the glory Gordon Brown now bathes in. While as a contrariest, one has a certain sympathy for MacShane, capable of annoying people on a grand scale, it was not to be expected that this book would contribute much to an already overabundant public debate. Yet in discussing contemporary  anti-Semitism, MacShane is unexpectedly modest, and makes a whole set of well-judged (if contestable) points. Is it therefore right to claim that “The anti-Semitism of old has morphed into something new. It is a significant component of the new ideology; one might call it the ‘Endarkenment;’ which is seeking to deOccidentalise the world.”(P 159) ? Or that, “It is Islamism the ideology that has unleashed the new twenty-first century anti-Semitism..”(P xi) ? Yes and No. In any case, these are real issues, and not provoc’ Denis being provoc’ Denis.

  

MacShane, like many of us on the left, managed to pass most of his life without being over-conscious of religious or ethnic identities. He begins by noting that it was only comparatively recently that he became aware, for example, of the Jewish background of some of his comrades (I have the same experience). That doesn’t mean he is not conscious of cultural identity, an important fact – I observe that defending for example the Yiddish heritage has played a role in the admirable Jewish Socialists’ Group. I doubt if his own Catholic, Irish and Polish background is forgotten either. Just that it doesn’t function as an overwhelming fact. That is when close, he could “simply stop seeing people in terms of their skin colour or religion.”(P 1)  

 

Good. Cleared the decks.

 

Now why is anti-Semitism important today? MacShane took part in the All Party Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into anti-Semitism. (Report, 2006.)  People tend to dismiss anti-Semitism, “as not important as a contemporary phenomenon” (P 7) But, he asserts, “it is a growing component element of international politics.”(P 9) I find myself in agreement. Firstly, anti-Jewish remarks and acts are far more widespread than some liberals are willing to recognise. Keeping a sense of proportion – it is rare to meet anyone in the UK with the virulent Jew psychosis of some from the former Eastern Block – it certainly exists. Secondly, this prejudice is given a boost by a noxious mix of conspiracy ‘wise-guy’ thinking, and, most significantly Islamism. Even multiculturalists have had to confront the bigotry of those who brandish the Qur’an as the solution to all ills. Thirdly, there are European political parties, such as the BNP and the French Front National, that cluster round an anti-Semitic ideology. They’re part of a wider culture. The French black ‘humourist’, Dieudonné, now parades the Holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, on stage, and collaborates with the FN and Shiite zealots. 

 

Islamism. That’s it said. There have been, MacShane doesn’t mention, anti-Jewish (and anti-Non-Muslim generally) persecutions in societies where Islam has been the state faith over a long historical period.  For instance, under the 17th century Persian Safavids. There appears a diiffulty here of the dominance of religious judgement in politics – which has existed in Europe (as if anyone will let us forget this) But doctrines that believe that salvation is an exclusive property of one Faith are wide open to modern (militarised and tooled up) intolerance, and (media led) mass moblisations. Not to mention a  few (civil and external) wars of religion. On such fertile soil in the 20th century European anti-Semitic ideologists took root in historically Christian lands  but ended up embraced amongst the Islamist founding fathers. Minus the biological gibbish about race these figures encouraged, nevertheless, pure religious-racialism(faith as a quasi-gene). Globalising Hatred pays a lot of attention to this in the thinking of Sayyid Qutb - the Egyptian Islamist always cited in these cases.  His writings show a “world of unremitting hate against Jews.”(P 100)

 

I wonder. The Muslim Brotherhood has had more factions than Trotskyism. Its ideology, shifts around politics, and its own power, using the Sacred in different ways. The Jew is but one target, puppet-master and scapegoat. In The Root of Radical Islam. Gilles Kepel (2005) we get a broader picture.  The hatred of the Moslem Brotherhood is wider and narrower: against the Jew, for sure, but the Secularist-Freemason, Communist and Westernisers figure equally. -This goes back to the reaction against the French Revolution and the origins of the far-right. It’s angst at modernity’s shattering of the Divine Order, a fear of Obedience threatened by Critique.

This hate is a major problem. There is no way we should ‘understand’ it:  religious fanaticism can only be opposed. But is  MacShane right to work with the assumption that Islamism as such is identical to Jihadism, to suicide bombing and mass murder? Clearly not. There are those who wish to use peaceful means to impose their theocracy, those who use mass movements, and these, well those who wish simply to kill. Is not just that Muslims are victims of Jihadism, as a kind of spin off from their loathing of Jews: it is inherent to their programme to want to ‘cleanse’ the world. What and Who? See the four figures just listed. Add (and this is by no means the least): its hostility to women’s rights, to gays, to non-Muslims generally. Hey – that’s a lot.

 

Every chapter of Globalising Hatred is not so heavy. The pages on Tariq Ramada are a joy. Especially since the ‘Professor’ get reverential treatment in the United Kingdom. MacShane is sometimes too eager to attack political enemies (claiming, for example that Le Monde Diplomatique is purely anti-Western and pro-Islamist, ignoring secularist authors in its stable). But here he is spot on. Ramadam’s shaky qualifications, poor-level academic work, pontificating, well-funded propaganda, obscurantist puffery, platitudes, unreadability, and shifty slippery inability to answer straight questions about the Sharia should be widely broadcast. Ramadam’s role in banning Voltaire’s play, Mohamed in Geneva (an act of ‘politeness’ that makes you cringe), should be brought to very Islamophile’s attention.

It is worth thinking, for anyone, like myself, who is opposed to Zionism (from its ‘national liberation’ claims onwards), and backs a ‘two state’ solution in the Middle East, that “Just as anti-Semitism was a euphemism for anti-Jewish politics, so too is anti-Zionism an attempt to find a formula that covers up a call for the eradication of the state of Israel. And on the whole when a state gets eradicated, its citizens vanish, one way of another. So anti-Zionism is Jew-Hatred by other linguistic means”(P 83) Maybe. But it won’t stop leftist internationalists pointing out the ruthless brutality of the Israeli government, and the fundamental wrongs of the state’s nationalism. Or, at the same time, against those who back the Brotherhood inspired Hamas as a national liberation movement (with Islamic charity as some kind of ’socialism’), it is surely justified to point to its foundations in the far-right ideology of tis founders.  

 

Ultimately, then, MacShane only partly persuades. Anti-Semitism is a problem. But the problem of Islamism is far deeper. His largely muted criticisms of the British government’s failures to deal with it – partly the result of their own pandering to religious communitarians – show this. Getting rid of Islamist diatribes against Judaism will in itself not break its underlying totalitarianism. That needs thorough-going criticism and social movements of hope to counter its despair.

 

What then is the wider nature of Islamism, and what could combat it?  Islamism is a collection of movements, whose leaderships are bourgeois, or at least middle-class. Its programme is a forced harmonious form of capitalism. Its totalitarianism is Book, not Leader, based. It claims to express a desire for justice. But fighting global injustice need egalitarian secularism, not religious supremacy, unity, not the divisions of faith. Confronting real oppressions and exploitation needs rational thought, it can’t be done on the say-so of ancient texts.  Or say-so I. Socialism, which remains a hope, has a part to play – a central one for many of us. There is no place for religious bigotry amongst all shades of democratic socialism. On a  very optimistic day I think that MacShane might one day stray from the Third Way and consider this road. He might…

Alain Bashung: Funeral Today.

 

Gaby by Alain Bashung. It’s been going through my mind all week. His funeral is today. Not often that the passing of a Musician affects Coatesy so much. A la gloire d’une grande âme!

Bloody Great One Day General Strike in France.

A great success.

 

The first clip was for the lead-up,  to show a bit of political music done well.

 

 

Up to four million people were involved in the union-led protests. There were scenes, a bit of a barney, at the end of the Paris March.  Followed by arrests (details). An enormous success, and an inspiration. Though apparently barely worthy of comment on the British telly last night. No doubt the fog isolated the Continent.

No2EU: Egg on the Dead.

They’re Bidding for His Vote.

No2EU, Yes to Democracy!

The Euro-Election alliance of the RMT, the CPB, the Socialist Party (still to be announced Galloway’s Respect and Sheridan’s Solidarity’s backing), and the Campaign to Defend Imperial Measures and Winding British Lanes (actually I made that bit up) is off to a flying start. To the Morning Star, the June European elections will be “electrified” - and as experts on how electricity brought Soviet Power their judgement must be respected. Meanwhile Tendance Coatesy is taking wagers on whether this doomed enterprise will get above 0,1% of the  vote.

Let us leave aside the fact that this platform’s anti-EU trademark is hotly contested by a  host of Barmy Britishers, that its exclusion – with one fell swoop - of left groups (SWP, et.al), is somewhat arbitrary. The important – though not redeeming – fact is that the original nationalist edge of the RMT-CPB has  been affected by some discreet changes in its original platform. The line about ‘restoring democracy’ to sovereign states, has been replaced by ‘repatriate’ democratic powers to EU member states. But still, a simple ‘No’ to the European Union sits badly with the strategy of demanding such changes to the EU – such as altering directives on privatisation (actually competition, but what the hell, this is not ever going to get near Brussels decision-making), and the ECJ etc. So we have an appeal to the worst traditions of the left, blaming the capitalist crisis on foreigners, the EU,  (not only British, one can find them elsewhere, such in Chevènement’s current in France), mixed up with something that could be reasonably supported if it was part of a campaign for a democratised-united social European republic. But not in this form. No.

There thus seem two programmes waiting to emerge: one, for democratised European political and economic structures, the other for a retreat to national sovereignty, with (dredged from the CPB’s dreamtime) reviving  the old Alternative Economic Strategy (national Keynsianism plus nationalisation). We can debate for a long time about whether the former should be United, Federal or Confederal, or Social or a Socialist Republic. Okay, that’s a bit of a reverie as well. But please, let’s look to the future, not to a (as they call it in France) ’sovereigntist’  withdrawal faced with the – international - structures of capitalism (or, globalisation, neo-liberalism, etc etc etc).  Phew!

Here is the No2’s bullet point list, in all its finery:

Reject the Lisbon Treaty

No to EU directives that privatise our public services

Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain  

Repeal anti-trade union ECJrulings and EU rules promoting social dumping

No to racism and fascism, Yes to internationalsolidarity of working people

No to EU militarisation

Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states

Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations

Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies

Keep Britain out of the eurozone.

NO, NO NO.

That’s about it.

Oh, YES, YES, YES: Democracy!

Collapse of all anti-democrats.

 

 

Anarchists Amok; Cool with Coatesy

Tremble Ye Mighty: Your Day is Done!

It had to happen; it has happened. The anarchist-black-bloc-foaming- faction-fighters are set to cause mischief during the august G20 demonstrations. The press is well-full of ‘reports’ from concerned coppers (as forecast on this Blog by the Sage of Suffolk). Don’t you just love our quaint British traditions?

Sunday’s papers  saw plenty of amusing material on the usual suspects: the cuddly comrades of Class War, Chris Knight of the Samba Subversives, and the usual story about a Tank being commandered to drive through the City of London. No doubt to crush under its treads the lily-livered Bankers and feeble Financers who are told to ‘dress down’ to avoid targeting. Oh Joy!

Today’s Evening Standard leads the way in fearless reporting: “Black Bloc’ anarchists to hijack summit protests using shields and truncheons”. Poster Boy of the Day (again) is a certain Alessio Lunghi. A stalwart of the Wombles (if a wibbly-wobbly Womble can be a stalwart).

While the No2EU, Yes to (?) campaigns against the Common Market, these brave chappetes and chaps will be out there next week bringing international capitalism to its knees.

April 1st Demos: Suffolk Sealf-Dwellan Gemoot Swoops.

Suffolk Socialists Storm by Ship.

The Suffolk Sealf-Dwellan Gemoot is a leading East Anglian progressive movement. Its promotion of the local language (Olde Angliane, ‘Lille bote an Man ni Maither ne kenne hine thaet Suffolke zunge’), and its stategy, Socialism in One County, have solid support  in the small peasantry, allotment holders, and working class. From the samphire gatherers of Barrow Hill, to the miners of Wolpit, its influence is deeply-rooted. No surprise then that it intends to play a  leading role in the April 1st Protests against Internat’ Monopoly neo-liberal imperialist capitalism and the bourgeoisie.

Ipswich comrades are busy personning a reconstructed Sutton Hoo Burial ship moored on Neptune Quay. They will sail up the Thames and occupy the hated Tower of so-called Lon-don (more like ‘den’ – of crooks). They will then muster forces with a Samba division to storm the Bank of ‘Eng-Land’ (historic oppressors of the Angles). Exclusive: it is said, and yet to be denied, that a trained squad intends to visit the British Museum to liberate the stolen hoard of Redwald’s treasures. The Gemoot had long demanded their return to the homeland.

Tendance Tips for Trouble-Makers.

 

Militant Training.

This week the Tendance is taking a well-earned rest from theoretical production. Relating our highly developed scientific world-viewpoint to practice we offer some helpful suggestions for demonstrators during the G20 Summit. This time we’re presented with significant challenges. Capitalism is having its final crisis, and soon the streets will be running with the blood of our oppressors. What kind of politics should the dialectic follow? For a start we would like to make clear our utter abhorrence, indeed our horrencetotally, at the acts of vandalism against Sir Lordlyship Fred Goodwin more than comfortably ensconced in his Northern Château, while outside beggers in rags sort through his midden. Former Comrade Dave Dudley is occupied with campaigning for the turncoat backsliders of the No2theCommonMarkt. He is cast into the outer darkness. In place of these dodgy deviations, these are some constructive alternatives that will appeal to the new political forces moblised in the Meltdown G20 campaign.

Warning: some of the below are rather good ideas.

The French left, which likes to think of itself as the vanguard in kooky kontestation (with some reason), as in all else,  there’s a veritable flowering of forms of action. The association, La Pelle et la Pioche. (the shovel and the pick) won its spurs by organising ‘free’ tastings in Supermarkets (pick and shovel, gettit?). They turn up in the local shop and invite the public to ‘help themselves’. Nothing passes beyond the doors, so it’s an on-site pick-nick. Tendance Coatesy has some vague memory of this in one of Godard’s films if not a time-homoured custom of the Italian autonomists. But, hey, why not try it here?  Génération Précaire organises against the exploitation of ’stages’ (work placements, or what the Americans and their imitators call, ‘internships’ which sounds pretty sinister already). Why the hell we don’t do something like that here is beyond me. We could start with the rubbish thrown at us on the New Deal, say we.  

Another group, jeudi-noir, campaigns on homlessness. It does exemplary squatting, which we have here, but has managed to get a much more sustained campaign off the ground.

 

 

Here at the Tendance our own little project (Emily Thribb’s favourite wish, though the poor lass is too ridden with blisters after her daily toil in the fields to do much) is this:

 

Emily's Little Project for Trafalgar Square.

 

 

 

Tarnac Affair: No Material Proofs.

 

A great injustice pursues its course.

 

In Radical Philosophy Alberto Toscano provides a good introduction to this.

 On 11 November 2008, twenty youths were arrested in Paris, Rouen and the village of Tarnac, in the Massif Central district of Corrèze. The Tarnac operation involved helicopters, 150 balaclava-clad anti-terrorist policemen, with studiously prearranged media coverage. The youths were accused of having participated in a number of sabotage attacks against high-speed TGV train routes, involving the obstruction of the trains’ power cables with horseshoe-shaped iron bars, causing a series of delays affecting some 160 trains. The suspects who remain in custody were soon termed the ‘Tarnac Nine’, after the village where some of them had purchased a small farmhouse, reorganized the local grocery store as a cooperative, and taken up a number of civic activities from the running of a film club to the delivery of food to the elderly.

Le Monde yesterday commented that in the dossier of the affair (as a big as seven or eight telephone  books) that, it had ” beau être dense, il ne contient ni preuves matérielles ni aveux, et un seul témoignage à charge, sous X, recueilli le 14 novembre. ” It may have been dense, but it contains neither material proofs nor confessions, and a single witness cited, under X, has been received on the 14th of November.”  The documents contain the following exchange:

“– Le juge:”Pensez-vous que le combat politique puisse parfois avoir une valeur supérieure à la vie humaine et justifier l’atteinte de celle-ci?

– Julien Coupat: “Ça fait partie (…) du caractère délirant de la déposition du témoin 42 [sous X] tendant à me faire passer pour une espèce de Charles Mansonde la politique (…) Je pense que c’est une erreur métaphysique de croire qu’une justification puisse avoir le même poids qu’une vie d’homme.”

The Judge: “Do you think that political struggle can sometimes have a greater value than human life, and can justify causing harm to human beings?”

Julien Coupat, “This is part of the insane delirium of the testimony of  42 (X ). which tries to make me out as a kind of political Charles Manson. I consider it a metaphysical error to give any (abstract)  justification a greater weight than human life.”

Meanwhile Julien Coupat  languishes in gaol, and the other accused (out on bail) wait to see if charges are brought.

The cost of the surveillance operation, which lasted some years before the Tarnac autonomists were raided and slung into the clink, must be enormous. We are seeing the same State-Media obsession with anarchists and autonomists in the run up to the London anti-G20 Demos.

 

More information (in English) here. Coatesy’s critique of the autonomist ideology here.

GM20 Demo: Notes of a Leftist Trainspotter.

TUC Leads the New Revolution: March Against Those Who Put People Last!

Apparently, according to the Police,  there were 35,000 people on the Put People First March yesterday, (Here). I hate to disagree with our ever-reliable coppers but this is probably an over-estimate (yes, you got that right). While it was a successful event, we at the Tendance say it was around 20,000. True it was cold, which led to less bunching, and the march had got split into half at some point(some say it was a police tactic, others some anarchist protest that involved a sit-down, Coatesy says, who cares?)  but we stick by our scientific Marxist method of counting demos (Units based on the length of Park Lane).

Lowlight of the day was the presence of Tony Robinson as comic compère on stage. He introduced the ever bubbly Brendan Barber in terms which would have made Kim Il Sung blush. We know that poor old Tony lavished similar praise on Tony Blair, and was elected to the Labour NEC on that basis. All went well until he made some mild complaint. Punishment was swift. He got reminded that he was a lowly Baldrick after all. So watch out Tony: history has a habit of repeating itself.

Still, Mark Thomas distinguished himself by being funny (not uncommon, but a first for his political platform performances). He was in fine fettle -  socialism, Yes! I would have liked him to say something on the lines that  all the Blairite-Brownite  Bourgeois Bastards (and Banking Bosses)  should be strung up from the nearest Mobile Phone Mast. He didn’t. But one sensed that the thought was not far away.

We had up to 40 people on the coach from Ipswich, not bad (we did leafleting and a street stall which helped get the word out). On the March the Tendance had comradely conversations with the Weekly Worker lads, and indeed ladettes, the AWL, a leading  Briefing Cadre, and a Norwich anarchist. Topics covered were Iran (with a prominent HOPI comrade) , the doomed N2EU election slate, the anti-Workfare campaign, for Decriminalising Prostitution and Trades Council activism. In case anyone thinks we are dropping our guard and becoming a spreader of light, peace and friendship to all the left, we sneered at the Swoppies, Turned our Nose up at Newsline, Snubbed the Sparticists, and Stood away from the Socialist Party (extend list if and when group comes to mind). The Black Bloc – we listened a while but they struck us to amiable but aimless. We were able to ignore the scattered charity types and eco-warriors or whatever name ineffectual green herbivores call themselves this year. Poueff – and there were some desultory leafleteers for the No2EU.

Back home for a healthy dinner of two thick bacon rashers, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding,  poached eggs and fried bread. With mug of Co-op 99 Tea.

No2EU, RMT, Sir Teddy Taylor and Far-Right Henry Nitzsche.

The People’s Flag is Red, White and Blue?

In the Morning Star Monday Column, usual  ad for the Korea Friendship on the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, “exploring his work on anti-imperialism, and the socialist economy.” Hah, just before, we find something a bit odd: Campaign for an Independent Britain and Campaign against Euro-Federalism. Public meeting, Democracy or EU Dictatorship’. Saturday 4th April. Friends Meeting House. Speakers; Frank Keoghan, People’s Movement Ireland, Brain Denny, Trades Unionists Against the European Union Constitution, and RMT Press Officer, Sir Teddy Taylor, former MP, Henry Nitzsche, MP, (Germany).  I was initially alerted by comrade Ian on Socialist Unity (though he has yet to post about it on his Blog) who questions workers’ interests in sharing a meeting with the likes of Taylor. Just in case you’ve not got the slant of the event it is further advertised on UKIP sites such as this.

 But there is worse than the fact that this is a platform of the RMT initiated No2EU, with British and Irish right-wing chums, such as Teddy Taylor. A lot worse.

On Henry Nitzsche (here):

“I am sick of being the bogeyman,” Nitzsche said on Friday, confirming his resignation from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Nitzsche had recently caused an uproar in Germany when he said that Germany “should never again be governed by multicultural fags from Berlin.” He was referring to the previous German coalition government consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green party.Nitzsche also spoke about the German “cult of guilt” in the way Germans deal with their country’s past. (15.12.2006)

 

Nitzsche is reported saying a few years back  that, “”A Muslim would sooner allow his hand to rot away before checking the box next to the CDU on his ballot.” (here)

 

According to Wikipedia’s German pages: “Seit dem 18. Februar 2008 ist Nitzsche Vorsitzender der von ihm gegründeten Wählervereinigung Bündnis Arbeit, Familie, Vaterland – Liste Henry Nitzsche.” That’s how he got elected.

 

 

Family, Work, Fatherland – sounds familiar, hein?

 

 

Added 1st April.

This is too good not to miss (Hap-tip to Herbert): Kilroy Silk to stand on No2EU list. Poisson d’Avril? ‘Apparently’ not: official confirmation here.

 

The Believers. Zoë Heller. Review.

 

Angry Woman

The Believers. Zoë Heller. Fig Tree. 2008.

Zoë Heller is a spinner of acerbic tales, as those who’ve watched the film of Notes on a Scandal know. The Believers is equally riveting, using literary rivets that is, and as a plus has a cast of interesting figures in a dynamic New York setting. The Litvinoffs, the ultra-radical lawyer, Joel (currently defending suspected terrorist Mohammed Hassani) his English wife, Audry (in the thick of post 9/11 anti-war activism), the grandmother Hannah, offspring (undergoing religious and personal crises) and their politicised milieu.  From the first pages, the prose grabs our attention. It begins closer to home, near Malet Street (home of so many left encounters) Audrey and Joel met in London, both on the left – her in the outer orbit of the Healy cult, he a young American legal fighter. Both have a secularised Jewish background – hers, lower middle class Polish, his, assimilated US immigrants, strongly left, himself already soaring in Civil Rights circles.

 

 

Why do novels feature these kind of glamorous left wing characters in interesting circumstances? One thinks of Russell Bank’s The Darling (2004), an ex US underground leftist who ends up in the vicious disintegration of one of West Africa’s failed states, or Unity, by Michael Ardetti (2005) about an upper class Brit actress who acquired a taste for Palestinian supporting armed struggle in Germany. Why not, say a fictionalised account of life as an Ipswich activist? Er well.. 

 

If, as Heller heads the novel, “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusion without becoming disillusioned.” (Gramsci no less), The Believers are much challenged. The unfolding plot, refracted through the prism of intense leftist culture (real and imagined), revolves around a set of potential and actual disillusionment.  

Switch to other side of the Atlantic. Joel still perusing his career of defending. defending. Against. Against. Suddenly he is taken ill and falls into a coma. The family gather round. Only for Audrey to be forced to face the news, after understandable reluctance to believe, that her husband had fathered a son by a black woman, Berenice, who (no doubt to make it more hurtful)  takes action-art photographs of her vagina, and has a room full of  “gerund-heavy non-fiction titles: Mindful Eating, Writing the Body, Understanding Gynocritcal Theory, Reading Tarot”.

 

Heller portrays Audrey’s leftism in ways which hardly evoke much sympathy. She declares, to cite but one instance, after 9/11 that, “The anger that motivates the suicide bombers is a political anger. A perfectly rational anger against the American hegemon.” A lippy young Englishwoman she has become a termagant in late middle age (not uncommon – for either sex). A conversation with her friend Jean is the occasion for reflecting on the shrillness of her ideology.  For decades now, she had been dragging about the same unwieldy burden of a priori convictions, believing herself honour-bound to protect theme against destruction at all costs. No new intelligence, no rationale argument, could cause her to falter from her mission. Not even the cataclysmic events of the previous September had put her off her stride for more than a couple of hours, By lunchtime on the day that the towers fell, when the rest of new York was still stumbling about in a daze, Audrey had already been celebrating the end of the myth of American exceptionalism and comparing the event to the American bombing of a Sudanese aspirin factory in 1998.”(P 33 – 34) I hate to evoke realist criteria but this is a realist novel: most of the left also went around “in a daze” at that time. Those with Audrey’s response, callow and bellowing, stood out like sore thumbs. But that may not have been the case in the cosier reaches of Manhattan’s left. Maybe after all Wolfie Smith emigrated and has a smart apartment near Central Park.

A confrontation of another stripe occurs with her daughter Rosa. She had been a believer, a Revolutionary, but a long stay in Cuba had shattered her faith. Not to mention her self-image as a Soviet muscular heroine. The “paradisical era of righteousness had come to an end. After a long and valiant battle against doubt she had finally surrendered her political faith and with it’s the densely woven screen of doctrinal abstraction through which she was accustomed to viewing the world.” Absorbed in the discovery of her Jewish interior Rosa attends Synagogue and religious education classes. These lead to more believing. The Red Heifer sacrifice (which purifies the recipient’s but pollutes the sacrificers) and many other ideas which “cannot be explained in logical terms that defy human reason.” are easily absorbed. Audrey tries to sneer her conversion away but Rosa brushes this off. She insists on Israel’s right to exist and defend itself (the ultimate betrayal to the WRP-culture of her mother). Auderey is lost in a welter of feeble counter-arguments, unable to deal with things seriously – rather a cop-out on the issue one might think.

As can be gathered, The Believers has a fine sense of character. It is studded with miniature portraits, prickly and sharp. Her wayward drug abuser adopted son, Lenny, floats in chaos, yet Audrey wraps this in cotton wool. His birth mother, gaoled as a terrorist in the ’70s for the semi-Weather Underground New York Cong, is a blinkered pathetic hard-case.  Audrey’s overweight social-worker daughter, Karla who flees from a loveless marriage to the arms of an apolitical Egyptian lover, Kahled, a Newsagent owner, is so put in her place than one wonders if her feelings ever register. Karla, a ‘caring person’, is somebody one warms to, a sickly heat when one realises just what a meaningless choice she’s made.   

 

The dénouement of The Believers takes place at Joel’s funeral. Audrey recognises her husband’s lover and son. She speaks of being part of a ‘tribe’, and the guests, the exotic fauna of American leftism, political and artistic, attend. Indeed in many senses her politics are a cultural, not ideological choice, for originality, striking a pose. That is, it suggested that they are like the ”arcane tastes” of adolescent Indie Music enthusiasts. Chosen for their rarity. More fundamentally Heller suggests that this kind of leftist will never recognise any refutation of her beliefs. As Audrey spits out, `You want to know what I’d do if the truth revealed itself to me and it wasn’t the truth I wanted to find?” Audrey smiled, “I’d reject it.”

 

For all the undoubted talent shown in The Believers, its taut syntax and its stylish ethical satire (that is: I liked it), and that anyone, there are some indeed, who hides in this shell merits a few verbal lashes, this is not a leftist approach. Indeed I would expel and shun not to say eradicate from the pages of History, and refuse to listen to anyone anyone who dared to advance such views! 

New Deal: YMCA Training, A Major Scandal.

 

Plan of Dencora House, Ipswich.

 

For Important Updates see here.

Forget Gordon Brown’s success in solving the global financial crisis, bringing food and water to the world’’s hungry and thirsty, and eliminating child poverty for ever. His star project, the  New Deal for the Unemployed, a foretaste of the Workfare schemes to be  introduced by the Government’s Welfare Reform, is facing a major crisis.

In Suffolk this programme is managed by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Or rather its Training arm. This is  Brown’s support for religious charities taking over the welfare state in action. The YMCA  promises high quality services. It says that “We are dedicated to inspiring individuals to develop their talents and potential and so transform the communities in which they live and work.”  There are two centres in Ipswich, one for young people on the town outskirts. The other, Dencora House (popularly known as ‘the Den’) on an industrial-commercial estate in another far-flung suburb, Whitehouse. After varying periods of unemployment (dependent, for example, on age), the workless are assigned, in their majority, to a ‘course’ of thirteen weeks at these units. In theory, after a short period of CV and presentation skills induction, participants should be sent on ‘placements’ in various enterprises, local government, or the voluntary sector. The latter is an important growth area. In many cases taking over from  ’community service’ ordered by the Courts. Then you have to attended a session back at ‘the den’ to do ‘jobs search’ – sit in front of computers (never enough available) looking at a page of ads, filling in a few forms – in fact what you would normally do anyway if you’re looking for work.

The last time I was obliged to undergo this rigmarole there were the following complaints. Dencora House is in the middle of nowhere. It is very hard to get to from a lot of East Suffolk (its catchment area). It costs £1,70 pence each way on the bus there, from Ipswich that is. From other places, plenty of rural districts,  it’s double, even treble. Dole is just over £60 pounds a week, New Deal is £15 plus, minus (yes) the first £4 of your travel expenses. The rest of the journey’s cost is covered. But you had to queue up every Friday with all your tickets to get this back. In some cases this meant £30 to £40 – laid out beforehand on the Dole money just mentioned. Next, placements have been known to be thinly disguised exploitation of free labour. A training scheme offered for some over 55 year olds was on learning to ‘lay bricks’ (guess what the qualification is worth). Then there was the fact that even then some people never found placements and were stuck in the Den all week, doing little. At around forty people there during peak days there was also the question of health and safety – one men’s toilet for about 35 men. Anyone getting stroppy was threatened with being “exited” (charming word) – that is suspended form all benefit whatsoever. Finally there was the simple fact that the process rarely lead to work for anyone who was not already highly employable.

 

Switch to the present. Numbers of those thrown out of work swell and swell, even in relatively prosperous East Anglia. Yesterday I was told by someone on his way to ‘the Den’ that there on many days there are around 170 people there. Sometimes just two members of staff. The jobs supplement of the Ipswich Evening Star has roughly five pages of ads – at most. Those at ‘the den’ have to work through them – there is an even worse ratio of participants and computers. Many, hell of a lot in fact,  are now obliged to spend their whole 13 weeks at Whitehouse. Even those with a placement promise spend weeks waiting for it to be processed. Staring at the walls and the odd screen. Waiting for the few toilets to be free (large waiting list there as well). They are thrown out at lunchtime for an hour. Believe me the charms of ASDA, a chippie and a small café are about all the area has to offer. Any complaints? Exit! Get really angry? Exit! Want an alternative? Exit!

 

Translation: No Money, Live in the Gutter.

Strange to say we were talking about this when the local full-time Labour Party Secretary-Agent walked by. He heard it all from the foaming horses’ mouths.

I have checked this account with four other participants. It is borne out. One told me of a letter they had signed one day protesting against their treatment. It went to the DWP. I will report on the outcome.

It is an utter scandal that the YMCA is getting paid to pen people in a shed in the Ipswich Wastelands. Similar abuses are taking place all over the country. But who is digging the stories out? What is being done to bring them to a halt?

Non à l’OTAN!

 

Just thought I’d post this after having got really sick of all the stuff in most of the English language media about how wonderful Obama and his wife are, what a magnificent G20 Summit it was, and how all is going swimmingly in Strasbourg (though the BBC is more balanced). Okay, some are a bit coy, even justifiably snide, about Gordon Brown. But about Obama: crawl, crawl, crawl.

Bigre!  Je commence à en avoir marre.

There’s a massive demonstration against NATO’s birthday celebrations going on in Strasbourg – with violent confrontations all along the line. Libération has a good detailed report from Strasbourg.  Meanwhile here we hear more about ‘Michelle la belle’ than this:

 

European Unrest: Strasbourg. UK: Dead London By-Stander was Assaulted by Police.

NATO Adviser at Work.

The British news today downplays the anti-NATO rioting in Strasbourg. German Radio reports that their authorities are angry. They managed to prevent any serious trouble on their side of the near-by border; why didn’t the French poulets do the same? Well, they didn’t. In fact the French police blame the violence on..German Black Blocks! (here)

The happy image of Barrack Obama travelling through Europe as a charismatic leader is forever wedded to pictures of black clad autonomists wreaking havoc and burning Alsace buildings. Deutsche Welle paints an even more extreme picture, with some protesters apparently armed. A picture show is available via Le Monde (including shot of 7,000 German marchers  blocked off from entering France). Now I feel that for all his merits (beginning with not being George Bush) Obama barely touches the surface of the problems these acts of rage stem from.

People don’t like NATO’s work: Afghanistan is a quagmire in which it’s sinking. That raises the hackles of a broad range of liberals, leftists and people with common sense. Who, the Strasbourg demonstrators are saying (I am speaking on their behalf thank you very much – elected by TC to do so), “enough posturing around the ‘New World Order’ – end your Great Game.” Not much positive, but there you go.

So, it seems that the thaumaturge Obama, and his loyal assistant, Gordon Brown, have been unable to squash opposition to capitalism and militarism. How wide is the span of discontent, or simple dissatisfaction the market? As broad as it is deep. There is a profound annoyance, fed-upnesshood to the max. Hate. And that’s just at this keyboard! Not onky against the Bankers who’ve scuttled off with their money bags full. It’s (well, some of it) against the ”moral capitalists’ in charge of state and market.  The ones running the show now.  People have had rising expectations dashed. They are getting mass unemployment, huge price rises in basic necessities (food above all), more coercion, and more moral and health police.  A bit of shouting and protest, mindless or not,  is the least the popular masses can do. Ian Bone (among other Bloggers) at least has his finger on this racing pulse. Even perfide Albion is showing a bit of protesting backbone in factory and school occupations.

The chance to touch the  hem of the anointed leader of the world doesn’t quench a thirst for real change. Mind you that at least is tangible, not like Gordon Brown’s witless remarks about bringing ethics to the market.

Meanwhile, here in the UK this story has broken: Dead City Protests By-stander was Assaulted by Police (Observer). That’s morals for you.

Coatesy Gets Kool!

 

Coatesy gets his own Fan-Club (here):

 

“This blog has no connection with anyone alive or dead. All characters are fictional (except the future Coatsey, and even that, of course, being a fictional future, is thus fictional) . Ipswich Cornhill,the Town Hall, The Golden Lion and Aldi/Lidl have not sponsored me. The Socialist Adviser is not a real newspaper, magazine or pamphlet, although I’m sure that it if Coatsey was selling it, it would be one of the better reads (superior to Socialist Worker, The Socialist, perhaps in the heady leauge of the Socialist Standard) if it really existed. Read, Sell, and Support the Morning Star!”

 

As we are a throughly good chap, and our chappette comrade (little Emily), plus the Chums of Chance and other affiliates who team around us,  all have finely honed senses, even of humour, we shall take this snivelling parody of all that is good and noble in Tendance Coatesy as a jolly jape.

For now….

Gordon Brown Shows the Way!

Brown’s Mentor.

Gordon Brown in the Independent today,

The Prime Minister considers that the era of unbridled free-markets is over, ”Mr Brown insisted that the end of the free-market consensus – and need for greater regulation– could yet help Labour to neutralise the “time for change” factor that would normally play strongly for Mr Cameron.” The philosopher in Downing Street considers the world ready for global governance – just like all those books by David Held on Cosmopolitan Democracy predicted. He says, “This is going to be a progressive decade. I think people do understand that some of the problems we had can only be solved, first of all, by governments working together with other governments, nations co-operating with nations. There is a new internationalism, a new strategic role for countries working together to solve common problems.” We hate uncommon problems.

We hear what brought Gordon into his relentless campaigning. No doubt as well that quality of gavitas that explains why he does not waste time listening to those he disagrees with,

“Some will be found to help the jobless back into work. “What brought me into politics was that I saw the waste of unemployment and importance of tackling it as quickly as possible, so we don’t allow a large number of people to become unemployed.”

 Maybe Brown should read the exposé of the YMCA open-Prison, Denocra House, Ipswich,  on this site, here. There he will find that he allocates large numbers of the unemployed to an enterprise unit in the Ipswich wilds, doing little, being hectored and having their behaviour under tight surveillance. That’s how he can, and indeed does,  stop more people becoming workless: for statistical purposes every participant in YMCA ‘training’ is not counted as unemployed!

Alain Badiou: The Meaning of Sarkozy. Review.

President of France?

The Meaning of Sarkozy. Alain Badiou.  Verso. 2008.

Everywhere you look in Europe enthusiasts for Mao are flowering a thousand blooms. The President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barros, once an activist in Portugal’ s PCTP/MRPP, thunders for the free-market. La COPE, Spain’s steadfast Catholic radio, stars Frederico Jimenez Losantos, a former Mao fan in the anti-France underground. He rails against  socialists, Communists, separatists, free-masons and secularists. But it is from France, home of the Maoist movement, that we hear from a great  philosopher with a Mao badge past. Alain Badiou, ex-Union communiste de France, Marxiste-Léniniste (UCF-ML) polemicises against Nicolas Sarkozy, the “rat-man”. Inter alia he makes fun of Blair, following his discovery that Blaireau means Badger in French, and notes that Sartre called an anti-communist a dead-dog (chien crevé – inexplicably translated by Verso as ’swine’). As Pierre Assouline remarks, “Après les rats, puis les blaireaux, les chiens. Décidément, drôle d’oiseau que ce philosophe.” (after the rats, then badgers, and dogs.. Certainly what a strange bird this philosopher is..) A period of enthusiasm for the Great Cultural Revolution and its Helmsman does give one  such a way with words.

But that’s enough on les noms d’oiseux (insults) for the moment.

The Meaning of Sarkozy (De Quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?) is a political pamphlet. It is written by a professional philosophy teacher (in the ENS – France’s most elite college in the discipline). Born in 1937, and a long period of adhesion to leftist causes behind him, Badiou is  still active in L’Organisation Politique – a group principally committed to defending immigrant rights. Badiou’s tract made a splash. Including comparisons with the political interventions of the late,  much respected, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The main conceit (in all senses) of the polemic is that the Victory of Nicolas Sarkozy and his UMP Party in the French 2007 elections heralded the triumph of Pétainism.  Yes, the puppet far-right regime that ruled the Southern half  of France from Vichy during the German Occupation. Sarkozy represent a ‘restoration’, after (very much after one would say) May 1968, a national revolution to ensure, “unconditional obedience to the potentates of world capitalism.”. Its themes, an end to moral decadence. Its models, the US and Blair’s Britain, servility, like Pétain, to the foreign powers (see potentates). It loathes immigrants.  France has undergone a huge reaction. A way prepared by the anti-Communist Nouveaux Philosophes, André Glucksman (an ex-Mao rival), and Bernard Henri Lévy. And the whole political class, left included, very much included. The Communists? Enemies of 68 par excellence. Result? Now we have France under Petanism “on a  mass scale”. A return to the social ‘transcendental’ (underlying structure beyond appearances) – France’s – apparently – eternal ultra-conservative order.  There is  ”fear, informing, contempt for others” around Sarkozy and his Prime Minister Fillon. The President encourages work, family and dislikes criminals! This is the spirit that gave 1940s France total censorship, banning of political parties, repression of all dissent, not to mention co-operation with the Nazi Final Solution. This New Order is truly an equal  threat.

Sarkozy is a ‘rat’ who rushes in on what’s on offer, obsessively gnawing away. Badiou then explains how this sharp-tooted vermin  came to power (counter-revolution)  in a highly original way. It appears that ‘democracy’ , at least in the sense Badiou gives it – “equality in the face of the Idea” – was not involved. In any case, “voting is a state operation. And it is only by assuming that politics and the state are identical that voting can be conceived as a political procedure.” In fact, “Rejecting our illusions means categorically denying that voting is the operation of a genuine choice”. Thus, there was no choice. None. Voting for a Socialist alternative, like Ségolène Royale, or for the various Trotskyist, Communist, Green candidates on offer during this (bogus) election? Not a true choice. Poor fools who backed them, weep now at your folly.  These marionettes were not prepared really to confront the system. The ballot – piège à cons!

The author of Ethics (2001 – English Translation) offered an alternative: “politics without party”. A crude Marxist analysis of the state (basically that the state is class domination)  and a politics of truth. That is fidelity to the ‘event’,  unique bursts of life in the world unsullied by the existing Order (something similar to the existentialist notion of ‘authenticity’). Badiou’s cumbersome writings on ‘ontology’ may explain something. I couldn’t put them down (having never picked them  up). Practice? Essentially Badiou backs “local experiments in politics”. His central one is his - feeble group of mates,  if truth be my politics – L’Organisation Politique. A few principles are strewn around, that all workers belong here, that art is creation, science is superior to technology, love must be reinvented, any sick person is entitled to treatment, and that newspapers that belong to rich managers do not deserve to be read (a reference no doubt to Libération, now under Rothschild Bank control).  Apparently he works with “our African friends” (cosy expression), to “exchange experiences”. And that, “The Morrocan worker forcibly asserts that his traditions and customs are not those of the petty bourgeois European.” Noble North Africans! This ‘test-bed for political experience” is already showing its worth.

Or not. Badiou seems to be groping towards the, commonplace,  idea of unifying the oppressed, without imposing uniformity. Nothing much wrong there. But it hardly needs the strident vocabulary he uses to get there. Such as the wholly misguided idea that the State in his 3rd Period Stalinist rhetoric, is a bogus simulacrum of democracy, based on naked  repression  and obedience to the rule of world capital. Furthermore one can do without the comparison between Sarkozy and Pétain: History involves no such “eternal return”. Sarkozy is a right-wing liberal (economically) and a conservative morally (except in his public-private life – Carla to the fore). Far from encouraging a Corporate Organic Vichiest state he has sought to reform his bureaucracy on free-market lines. His Catholic moralism does not extend to any legislative effect (unlike Pétain). Sarko comes from the Neuilly Haute Bourgeoisie, which gives him a brittle smartness and narrow-mindedness. Sarkozy’s cosmopolitan origins (his, absent,  father is Jewish), is very far from the provincial terrain of the Vichy notable. A smart-arse, nervously rushing around and hard to bear. I can loathe him quite happily without any comparison with the Marshall. I do and I will. Full stop.

Mass opposition to the President is under way, from workers, intellectuals, and students. Led by democratic parties and uni0ns who spend a lot of their time engaged in that mystifying democratic process.  We do not need to be amused any longer by Badiou or others’ hysterical hyperbole. As unrest spreads in Europe we , in each country, need to act: not to stew in this warmed-up dish of puerile rancour.

All of which amounts to less than a hill of haricots blancs. Badiou has none of Bourdieu’s seriousness and clear objectves (direcetd at preventing backward looking neo-liberal ‘reforms’).  Is there anything of comparable urgency on offer here? No: an abstract call to vigilance and to stand behind banner. Of what? The assertion of the  ”Communist hypothesis” is about all Badiou has to affirm: the conjecture that a communist society is worth trying to create (discussion of the economics and politics of Das Kapital are noticeably absent here). Plus a few historical examples of when people have tried to verify the theory. Such as, Maoism oblige, the Shanghai Commune. Can anyone who’s for the self-emancipation of the working class can so easily dismiss the electoral process? Clearly L’École normale supérieure, is a better vantage point from which to decide the workers’ views than the voting slip. In the face of such certainty it seems impertinent  to observe   that more participate in the latter than get educated at the former.

Badiou is clearly not a Marxist in any substantial sense. Certainly an active one. He has many admirers amongst the kind of folk who play at leftism at  academic symposia and buy books that are hard to read. The Meaning of Sarkozy may be a step downwards to near-ordinary language. But it contains a  sufficiently strong dose of disdain for ordinary people to satisfy a need for the esoteric.  Or provocative, in a pointless way, prose. Badiou announces his scientific discovery that France’s President is a rat man a number of times. When Assouiline remarked that this reeked of the images of Jews as rodents, that this reminded one of Vichy propaganda  films, he exploded. Is Assouiline Cultivated? Doesn’t he know Sigmund Freud’s  case-study  of the ‘rat-man’? What is he, a cretin?

As a fellow cretin I can only say: the Jew as vermin in Der ewige Jude is exactly what Sarko-rat made me think of, and to pity, not admire, the man who thought of this, and wrote thispile of worthless cack.

Political Islam. Tariq Amin-Khan Versus Samir Amin, and Vica Versa.

Eurocentric Demands?

I really cannot recommend reading this recent (March) exchange  of views too much. The American Monthly Reviewis far in advance of its British counterparts in giving a platform for serious debate about Political Islam. Unlike in the dominant UK  Islamophile left, Marxist opponents of this trend are given a central place.

 Tariq Amin-Khan makes a case (here) for ‘understanding’ Political Islam, based largely on a critique of a ‘clichés’ of ‘Islamophobia. That is, the left supporters of an ‘uncritical’ Enlightenment adopt, ”the dominant narrative in Western societies of “the Muslim” as violent, as oppressor of women, and as a medieval aberration against modernity.” I observe in passing here that there isplenty of evidence that “medieval aberrations” exist in abundance in mvoements and states dominated by Political Islam, and this is simply a fact. Enlightenment values for all their complexity (etc)  are at their most universal when they oppose oppressions and violence. If Amin-Khan is saying that this is Eurocentric then he is seriously misguided. He might as well say that Train Time Tables are an imperialist Canon imposed on railways. The truth is that these standards work, or should work. And does he have anything better?  

Amin-Khan’s conclusion is that, “Similarly, the popular anti-imperialist sentiment in Muslim majority states should not be confused with the actions of militant Islamists, which are not anti-imperialist. Militant Islam is conceived and imagined in the present, current context. It is, therefore, a “modern” manifestation that posits its own version of the Islamic “welfare state” for the current conjuncture to rival the Western capitalist state and Enlightenment notions of modernity. Understanding militant Islam in its current context will only enable the development of a coherent strategy of opposition and an alternative non-Eurocentric vision of society.”

Samir Amin, (here) contests this. To me Amin-Khan’s most serious error is to think that the Islamic ‘welfare state’ is really about people’s well-being, and is in opposition to the capitalist one. Amin argues notably in support of secularism as a basic principle for the left,

” I am in favor of adopting the absolute principle of secularism, of separating politics and religion. Radical secularism is the condition for implementing a creative democracy, one which does not justify its progress by an interpretation from the past, religious or otherwise, which always acts as a conservative obstacle. Radical secularism is inseparable from the aspiration to liberate human beings and society. That is why radical secularism was proclaimed by all the great revolutions of modern times (the French, Russian and Chinese), which led to the best moments of democratic and social progress. Nevertheless, the progress of secularism was slow, governed by the rhythms of the advances of bourgeois modernity, the beginnings of socialist-inclined advances, which opened the way to go beyond this bourgeois modernity..”

And that, “The major fight, the one that defines the very nature of a progressive (and socialist, obviously) left, unfolds on the terrain of social struggles for the rights of workers (wages, working conditions, union rights, right to strike), peasants (access to land), women (radical reforms in personal status laws) and citizens (access to education, health and housing). Fighting in these areas is not “to substitute these struggles for the struggle against imperialism”. On the contrary, the anti-imperialist fight, which should not be reduced to rhetoric, becomes real and effective only insofar as it is led by the working classes strengthened by the conquest of their rights.

On this plane, the current regimes and the Islamist movements are fundamentally opponents of these social struggles. There is no need to recall the violence of the repressive means they use — together — with the approbation (or silence) of imperialist diplomacy.”

There are interesting discussions on development (Amin’s forte) and so-called Orientalism. The latter is a  rather hackneyed term these days. Globalisation’s effects on world culture, politics and society  erode  the meaning of a distinct so-called Other all the time. One notes with satisfaction that both authors are serious about their opposition to Islamism. Amin-Khan tends to give some credence to the claim that its rise is partly a deflected popular radicalism, running up against imperialism’s interests (that is, the US and Europe’s) That an Islamic ‘welfare state’ , its source of appeal,  is its objective. Clearly a capitalist  religious dictatorship would be a better description,  or a totalitarian theocracy. But the quality of the exchange is striking.

 I couldn’t help thinking of this when reading about the Algerian Presidental elections Le Monde yesterday. It illustrates the reaction that the Left should be confronting, without pandering to comforting illusions about Islamism.

As the voters turn out to ballot (without real legitimacy), Le Monde describes how much of Algerian society has become ultra-conservative.

In 2000, 27 % of the population favoured equality between the sexes, today only 16 % do so.  With the exception of Kabylie, this has affected the whole land. Only two out of ten Algerians favour women working. Seven out of ten back women wearing the Veil. Young people are barely more progressive than their elders.

One can explain this in many ways – effects of the Military repression and search for some kind of safe haven in religion. Or that poverty, precarity, and a huge level of unemployment drive people back to traditional certainties.

 But clearly Islamism, ideologically that is,  has played a dominant role. The Islamicisation of Algeria has indeed been backed by the Military-Presidential clique, le Pouvoir, and their bureaucratic-entrepreneur claque. Their ’secularism’ does not mean free opinion and secular values (the article notes the increasing persecution of Algerian Christians for preaching in a Muslim lands. It simply signifies that this state  faction rules and not one from the Mosque. The have encouraged, a conservative moral atmosphere, and the authority of religion. Only the relentless Arabisation has met successful resistance, from the Kabyle speakers – who have retained a more popularly supported  progressive outlook.

What of these elections? The establishment candidate, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has won, and participation was higher than expected. But it is a hollow triumph. The Algerian ruling class has prepared the way for Political Islam to make a return to overt activity – with all the oppression and blood spilt, not least by the Islamicists, that implies. 

Shame on le Pouvoir!

New Deal for the Unemployed, Major Crisis and A Right Carry On.

Reaction to the Victorian New Deal.

The Independent and the Guardian  both carried a story on Saturday on the New Deal. That’s the scheme to ‘help’ the unemployed. It’s been exposed here as an utter waste of time for the workless. But it’s also a highly profitable scam for the ‘training’ industry. That’s all going to end. It  will soon be the ‘flexible New Deal’. Run by shiny new ‘training’ companies. Different (???)   – that is, private, firms will have their faces stuffed with gold to get people jobs in an ever-shrinking employment market. The Independent – on the basis of documents leaked to the Tories – revealed that the DWP’s little helpers had created a gap. Between the 18thof June and the start of October. That’s when the old system ends and the new one is  set up. In the meantime those on the New Deal  Mark l will be left in limbo waiting for New Deal, Mark ll. Which is, regarded, it’s safe to say, as a cruel joke even by the bosses (here).

Already the introduction of the Flexible New Deal is causing a host of problems. Work out the time-scale and one can see that anyone wishing a ‘placement’ on it is in a quandary. Those providing them are shutting the doors. There is confusion about what will happen on the 4th of October. When I signed on this morning in cheery St Felix House (even the name is a ray of sunshine) nobody had a clear idea. Still,  Coatesy’s little local birdies in Ipswich have been telling him of vague plans to place the workless into ‘voluntary’ centres (think of one just by Portman Road to start with). Where they will do…er what? As the old system ekes out its last days those doomed to be penned in Dencora House face the prospect of more time doing absolutely nothing. Oh, and being hectored.

They say that misery loves company. Miserable Gordon Brown may be, by nature and because of his Spinner-in-Chief’s crass stupidity. One suspects his mate Purnell, who’s responsible for the New Deal mess, will only happy when he’s safely in some highly paid business job after he loses his seat as a M.P. So old misery-guts must be pretty satisfied  at all those people on the Dole awaiting their transfer to the new gaol.

Abel Paz: (August 12, 1921. Died April 13, 2009)

A Great of the Workers’ Movement: Abel Paz (1921 – 2009).

Abel Paz, pen name of Diego Camacho, has died.

Brought to politics in the 1930s as a  member of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) (CNT Obituary) Diego fought in Spain against Franco and the counter-revolution. A member of the legendary Durruti column he took part in some of the most violent batttles.  As a supporter of the libertarian syndicalist side he participated in the – failed – 1937 Barcelona combat against the Stalinist take-over. At the end of the war, when Catalonia finally had gone down in 1939,  Paz survived and fled to France. The author of a number of important histories of the Spanish war, he remained a committed anarchist all his life, saying that,

“El anarquismo invoca una vida completamente diferente. Trata de vivir esta utopía un poco cada día.

Anarchism means a completely different  form of life. Try to live a little of  this utopia every day.

If anyone on the left dismisses anarchism,  one should contemplate the life of this hero of the international workers’ movement.

Hat-tip to Entdinglichung  (here), some more details (in French) of his initial internment in France, and  later war-time armed opposition in the Spanish maquis to Franco (here.)

Afghan Women’s Protests Stoned.

 The BBC reports on the attack on women protesting against new Afghan laws (for the Shiite Community) reducing them to chattel. The women were faced with counter-protesting men, who cried “Death to the slaves of the Christians.” And threw a hail of stones.

“Dozens of Afghan women who tried to protest against a new law they say legalises rape within marriage have been attacked in the capital, Kabul.  ”

News from Afghan defenders of women’s rights on the background here.

The Independent carries a detailed story.

Meanwhile after the acceptance of Sharia ‘law’  in Pakistani province Swat Islamists vow (here) to extend it to the rest of the country. “Joyous over the implementation of sharia law in Malakand region of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Tehrik Nifaz-i-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Mohammad has said that the law would be extended to other parts of the country too, The Dawn reports.”

Yes, the aged bigot is a Sufi.

On Afghanistan, Anne McShane is right to point out in the latest Weekly Worker that, “despite the constitution and various other conventions and protocols signed by Afghanistan since 2003, even the US itself is forced to admit that ‘these commitment and efforts do not appear to be translating into safer and healthier conditions for Afghan women and girls. These paper exercises are simply a cover for a  wracked by war and backwardness. A backwardness that US intervention has worsened, not alleviated.”

The issue remains: how do we express solidarity with the Afghan women’s fight? A start might be by recognising that the conservative Islamists (many with their own blood-drenched Mujaheddin past) in charge of the state (such as it is), under US control, are to be opposed. But that the Taliban who after all want to accelerate the descent into Sharia reaction, cannot be regarded as a ‘resistance’ worth anything other than contempt. In these conditions some, from New Left patricians to Islamophiles,   are  tempted to imagine that there is  a ‘good’ Pashtun nationalism waiting there to overthrow imperialist occupation and when that happens,  then we will deal with such issues as women’s oppression and human rights. Experience shows, by contrast, that this concern has to to begin now.

Couscous (la Graine et le Mulet): DVD Review.

La Graine et le Mulet (Couscous) is now available on DVD * . It’s one of the most important films of 2008 and won a French César (Oscar) in that year.  Set in the Mediterranean Port of Sète, it follows the  crises of everyday life, and the joys, of a warm unselfconscious family. Nothing special. The Director, Abdellatif Kechiche, says he wanted to show a milieu of the French working class, of North African,  Midi, and more recent immigrant, origin, as ”ordinary“. 

This friendly and rowing clan is the backdrop of a solid drama. This unfolds around the plight of Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares)  a sixty-year old shipyard worker. He is a Tunisian immigrant of long-standing. He is devastated to find himself dismissed as work dries up. Is delocalisation of boat-building and repair at fault (that he is sacked as ’un français’ when they can get the job done cheaper elsewhere)? Clearly it is his age that counts – badly. But the background is the death of commercial fishing. The accelerating transformation of Mediterranean ports into marinas and tourist resorts  is happening in many other seas.

Redundancy money does not go very far. Beniji reacts dismissively to suggestions that he - as was the dream (rarely  fulfilled) of many North Africans,  returns  ’au bled’ (back ‘home’). Wracked by feelings of impotence, he flounders a while to find a way to keep going in Sète.  Scenes from the less than happy married lives of some of his family heighten the tension. But Beniji’s quiet dignity – his principle that he wants to leave a decent legacy (achievement, not money) - wins out.

His former wife, Souad (Bouraouïa Marzouk), cooks a brilliant fish couscous (hence the Mulet). At one of those long extravagant diners shared by the French working class it has pride of place. North Africans and French, drink, and talk – as they really do, not as in some kind of diversity training course – about their different languages and culture.  The food gives Beniji inspiration. Helped by Rym,(Hafsia Herzi) the daughter of his present companion Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), he sets about creating a floating restaurant offering the speciality. Rym carries the plans forward.  They face a  frosty (realistic) reception from banks and local bureaucrats (one emphasising that ‘here in France’ we do such and such). As is the way in film the restaurant gets a grand Opening Night: the occasion for the final dramas of La Graine et le Mulet. Do not under any circumstances miss the Belly Dance.

La Graine et le Mulet has traces of Ken Loach’s slices of working class life (without the didactic tone). Herzi’s performance as Rym has been described as ‘fizzing’: I’d say it’s guts electrified. There are tastes of sexual conflict, in the raw way of the world. There is a lot of other rich fare here. The couscous meal has echos of the glorious feast in Renoir’s Partie de Campagne (working class Parisians escaping to the countryside). One side (the vistor’s ) of Sète is a kind of escape; reminding us of Georges Brassens, and a feed by the Mediterranean. 

Abdellatif Kechiche  shows that  there are vibrant working class communities in Sète still. Even if their employment is threatened. Or that the Parti Communiste lost in 2001 to the UMP. One might call the picture soft-focus realism. If the camera shots weren’t so sharp. It is a truly humanist  film, with a fine balance between optimism and realism. As a celebration of ordinary working class people’s lives, and the genuine mixture of cultures and individuals, La Graine et le Mulet is up there amongst the greats.

* DVDs are the only way we at the Tendance can see the latest World Cinema since Ipswich Council leased  off the Film Theatre to a ‘businessman’ more interested in Manchester United than film. They do have the advantage of an option where you can turn the subtitles off.

New Labour’s Unfinished Revolution Finished Off?

 

Philip Gould: Thank you!

The plight of Georgina Gould, her contretemps in the Eirth and Thamesmead constituency, must have touched many hearts. It reminded me of the role her father, Lord Philip Gould, played in New Labour, for both Blair and Brown. His book, The Unfinished Revolution (1998) rightly stands as a classic. Gould set out the strategy for government whose results are with us today.

The Polster retells some anecdotes about the hard, ” aspirational” working class, that he knew in his (non-Lordly) youth. Today, he notes, the “new middle class” is at the centre of the country – drawing energy both from his old acquaintances, and the dynamic forces unleashed by markets. Newness, he discovers, is happening all over the planet. This globalisation needs “managed change”. People need to be equipped to go out and sell on the world market. Old fashioned statism, and class based politics cannot cope with these changes. Mandelson and Liddle (in their Blair Revolution. 1996) saw the key to winning British elections, and successful government, in wedding the “dynamic market economy” , “real equality of opportunity”, with a dose of social equity. Gould added that this “social” awareness should appeal to New Labour’s core constituency, the “people of the suburbs.”

Apparently, at 19% behind the Tories, the leafy lanes and driveways of the UK, not to mention my terraced street, are deserting New Labour in droves (here).

The only book on political polls which made a serious impact on me was Butler and Stokes Political Change in Britain. This, appearing in the 1970s, worked with a methodology that differentiated voters according to ‘cohorts’. That might mean, for example, that Gould’s aspiring hard-working, car-driving, home-owner, is a group that ‘came of age’ politically with Thatcher. They backed her primarily on economic grounds – mortgages, low taxes – with a degree of patriotic pride. They went over to Labour when they were convinced that the same ruthless pursuit of their interests and British self-assertion was served by Blair. A bonus was that the ’social’ but of New Labour appealed to the Old Labour constituency and even those flinty types who liked good public services. Those to the left of that had nowhere else to go.

This strategy – a coalition hinged on the new middle class, the new Subject of History – had a lot of faults. For a while they could bear having to pay increased costs. Of privatised utilities. More and more farmed-out state provision,. Or the cost of schemes like PFI. Okay, what was left fully public was undermined. The managers-turned-businessmen taking over the rest were useless grasping cack. So? That group, the privatising middle class, did very well thank you. Having got rid of the Labour Party as a real political power-base, they created a version of Craxi’s Italian Socialists – a ‘big tent’  dependent on state largess.

A problem. Not foreseen - the economy would not always be “dynamic”. Even the hardest of hard employees don’t like facing the Dole. Or dynamic entrepreneurs enjoy going bust. They tend to whimper. Ask for help. When they don’t get it they take their votes elsewhere.

Instead of building up a lasting constituency based on an egalitarian, class, interest – making conditions better across the board — Gould successfully argued for this competitive ‘equality of opportunity’. When it’s become equality to fail, then the strategy falls apart.

Still Gould’s got his Lordship and I’m sure his daughter won’t end up on some  ‘training’ scheme for the unemployed.

Caterpillar (France): Back to Work? French Workers’ Anger Remains.

Caterpillar Stuff.

In France the world-wild-and-wide economic downturn has met resistance. Facing the wave of redundancies, attempts at pay-cuts,  and mounting unemployment there have been massive united union days of actions, huge  demonstrations, workplaces have been sat-in,  and managers ‘kidnapped’. The conflict at Caterpillar (at Grenoble et d’Echirolles) has been a symbol of this fight-back. The company produces real things of use. That it is hard hit by the recession shows the downward turn’s  depth.

Reports (in English) suggest that the Caterpillar conflict has been radical. At one point four bosses were held ‘hostage’ (here). The police were used at Echirolles and activists charged. The magistrate who judged the workers’ actions illegal talked of a « situation insurrectionnelle » or in legal terms, « une entrave à la liberté de travailler » (attack on the freedom to work).  He decided that any further blockages will be met with daily fines. Today the latest news is  that  after the plant occupation, negotiations have restarted with the American-multinational. On offer is a reduction in the number of employees laid off (from 733 à 600) and some better conditions for those forced onto part-time employment. The main redundancies stand. Union reps have signed up to this accord.

This agreement will be submitted, by secret ballot, to the affected. In the meantime work has restarted “à contre coeur” (unwillingly). It’s  hard to see how those fired up will accept such limited gains, and more sackings – but I am not writing as one of them.

On the Left all parties have supported the workers. The Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste,  offfers good  coverage of  this, and many other disputes. They  demand an end to legal proceedings against the Caterpillar workers, and a halt to all redundancies.

French Reactions to Ahmadinejad.

Doughty Anti-Zionist.

A quick round-up of reactions in France (which will doubtless develop).

Ultra-Catholic French ‘intégrists’ welcomed Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s ‘anti-Zionist’ declaration at the UN Geneva Conference on Racism: (here). ‘Anti-imperialist’ opponents of ‘Juiverie’ commended his ‘flying start’ (here). Not so strangely these two Blogs are interlinked.

France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, and a noted defender of human rights, has refused to follow  advice not just to walk out from the Hitler’s Birthday speech, but to pull out altogether. He called the event the ” le début d’un succès”, (the start of a success”) (here). The Parti Communiste Français has talked of the Conference being ‘held hostage’ by the American led boycott, and Ahmadinejad’s ‘extremist speech’. Socialist Party General Secretary Martine Aubry was forthright and has demanded that France withdraw from the Conference.

No doubt Ahmadinejad’s British admirers on the ‘left’ who work for, or appear on,  Press TV – Iran’s state-funded ‘information’ broadcaster – would disagree.

Interestingly Press TV reports a proposal to set up “a secretariat to follow up and coordinate exchange of information on war crimes, genocide and other forms of organized crimes and holding periodic conferences in the Islamic and other interested countries to discuss the agreed subjects.”

These states certainly have plenty of their crimes to discuss.  

Hamas Kills Opponents; Clare Short Turns a Blind-Eye.

Do we seriously want this in Power?

Clare Short and Liberal Democrat Lord Adlerdice held a House of Commons Meeting last night.With a video-link to Hamas leader Mashaal . Supporters of recognising Hamas have welcomed this event. It happened that the connection wasn’t working (here) but the pro-Hamas intention was there, Short’s that is.

It appears largely up to to those who stand with the Israeli hostility to Hamas to criticise this. Yet there are plenty of reasons to do so. Without ceeding an inch to Israeli policies. That nationalist, militarist and human-rights breaking state, with plenty of blood on its hands, deserves serious democratic resistance. But is Hamas it?

Hamas’s platform for government (minimum programme) is anti-Israeli occupation and for the building of a Palestinian state. It supports resistance, and a range of measures, including backing for political pluralism. Behind this is an Islamist ‘maximum’ programme, the reign of the Qu’ran on Earth. The enforcement of Islamic standards of ‘modesty’  for example – dress code. These are ‘transitional’ measures. They bring the day-to-day party regime to its final goal of a pure society. Called the Sharia – the denial of human equality made into a parody of law. What has this, even remotely, got to do with the left? It’s the opposite of the socialism in any form. It is based on private property, inequality (for women and non-Muslims). Life is ruled by Divine decree. As interpreted by god’s representatives.

Parties are to be judged on how they carry out their aims. We have evidence of how Hamas operates in practice. Human Rights Watch (here) gives plenty of reasons to be more than wary of the Palestinian Islamists  - such as killing suspected ‘informers’ (aka, political opponents) notably during the Israeli armed forces attack on Gaza.

 

On the left it is customary to reel out the stale old arguments. That it is not up to us to tell ‘resistance’ movements what to do. Or that we don’t ‘really know’ about the conflict. We should let those ‘there’ decide. They are not brief on telling us how we should  support Hamas. Make as much noise as possible (following Clare Short). Boycott, people, and goods manufactured in Israel or by ‘Zionists’ generally. Do some flag waving and cheer-leading.

It is one thing to ask for, say, opposition to Israeli attacks on civilians. To oppose its policies, from the West Bank to Gaza. To give a general welcome to a Palestinian state. It’s another to work closely with Hamas – as George Galloway does, and Clare Short gestures towards. If anyone wants us to endorse this degree of  co-operation they had better come up with some pretty solid evidence that the group they link with is sound. Start with the  democratic, progressive, nature of the organisation. It’s no longer good enough to point to past practice, when Europe’s left enthused about all Third World movements without looking too closely at them. That we stood by African national liberation, or, the Indo-Chinese Communists, without telling them what to do. Or indeed really knowing too much about them. Well Galloway has ditched the PLO, too venal, and now he tells us that Hamas it tickity-bo. He would, wouldn’t he? Who else would take the words from his ilk, or from the other pro-Hamas groupies, from Islamist Tariq Ramadam, to grizzly Patrician Tariq Ali? Or Gilad Atzmon… (all on the same lletter calling for recognising Hamas).

It all ended so happily didn’t it? Naturally all these countries are now basking in such prosperous social democratic plenty (er….)  because of the lack of unwanted European leftists’ advice. Hamas will surely…yes, we have plenty of reason to think that if it gains more power its rule will be followed by more tomb stones in the self-proclaimed anti-imperialist cemetery. While outside the Peter Pans of the left will move onto the next Cause.

France: “Extreme Left Manipulation” Behind Social Conflict.

Les ‘Contis’.

Today former French Labour Minister, and present UMP (Sarkozy’s Party) General Secretary Xavier Bertrand accused far-left ‘manipulators’ of being behind recent labour unrest and social conflict (here). Speaking of this week’s trashing of the sous-préfecture of Compiègne (government offices) by angry Continental workers, he said, 

 ”J’y vois l’action de certains manipulateurs d’extrême gauche. Il y a des militants d’extrême gauche qui sont dans certains conflits et qui n’ont qu’une seule volonté, attiser la violence”

“I see there the activity of certain far-left agitators. There are extreme left activists who are only involved in such conflicts with one aim: to incite violence.”

This outburst comes with the background of continuing industrial and social disputes. Facing a galloping recession employers are scaling down enterprises. Their employees are reacting with fury.  The Continental (tyre manufacturers) conflict continues, with doubtful claims of a potential take-over. The Caterpillar workers (already cited here) have refused to participate in a vote on an agreement while colleagues remain under threat of victimisation. Encouraged by tough talk from Sarkozy and his employer allies, Caterpillar has begun legal proceedings as a result of the ‘kidnapping’  of four bosses. A host of other disputes are taking place (here). Former centre-right Prime Minister, Dominique Villipin, has talked of a “risk of revolution” building up (here). Electorally it seems likely the radical left Nouveau Parti Anti-Capitaliste (NPA), and to a lesser extent the Front de Gauche,  will make a splash in the coming European ballot. They have been involved in supporting these struggles, with other groups, such as Lutte Ouvrière.

Blaming these ‘extreme left agitators’ has become part of Sarkozy’s crisis strategy. The vindictive “ Tarnac affair” attacked autonomists. Now new laws on demonstrations and labour disputes appear likely, repressing ‘hoodies’ in the former, and ‘kidnappers’ in the latter. One theme wins out: blaming social unrest on anything but the failings of the capitalist economy and the UMP-State.

Coatesy the Grass?

Can We Join Too?

Following this.  Here is an offer to the UK’s Political Coppers: name your price!

We at the Tendance are a bit short of rhino. We are so boracic that have to send little Emily to sell Horseradish root door-to-door. We stuck our last brass farthing into Ipswich Library’s photocopier. We so hard up that we scavenge nettles and jack-by-the-hedge – opps that’s the organic Guardian reader’s treat.

Be that as it may, we have lots of information.

On dangerous characters. Lefties, crusties and cruds. Seemingly respectable. People who have been nasty to us. Those who glanced at us with unpleasant looks. How dangerous? Well, it’s up to you to judge.

Our rates are very reasonable.

Please send your contact Man, Mr ‘WayGallo’, to the Corn Hill this Monday for further discussions.

Terry Eagleton and the Supremacy of Faith.

Don’t Worry Terry’s With You!

Terry Eagleton is thoroughly upset (here). At the “militant rationalism” of Dawkins, novelist chaps called Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, not to mention, Christopher Hitchens, and philosopher AC Grayling. They have become “weapons in the war on terror.” Indeed “Western supremacisim has gravitated from the Bible to Atheism.” He forgot Rosie Bell - who inched the path of doom last year.

Why? Apparently it’s because these sceptics and secularists are liberals. And liberals holds that “the state should tolerate any opinion that does not seek to undermine that very tolerance.” Eagleton, reader of Gnostic hidden meanings, sees that this is a “form of partisanship”. That they don’t like  Islam. That some of them, Hitchens and Amis, want not just to lock up terrorists.  They stand for “western cultural supremacism”. That Dawkisn is “self satisfied” critic of “benighted Islam”. That Grayling even believes in Progress! They end in a “slanderous reduction of Islam to a barbarous blood cult.”  Yes, Islam, the rationalists soil it with the same libels. These reductionist Islamophobes: they are all of the same kidney!

To Eagleton, agnosticism is “part of late (how late?) capitalism’s everyday routine.”  These characters look at other people’s faith with “superiority” ,”disdainfully above it.” Unlike Eagleton. He knows the sense of “national injury and humiliation” that underlies Islamist terrorism.  Having to hear Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling and the rest of the gang of atheist sneerers and witherers can’t help either.

Poor Islam.

Terry Eagleton briefly mentions socialism, which stands for civil liberties, a key demand of  the working class movement. Apparently it is different from liberalism, which tolerates “any opinion” (even if it turns its nose up at them). One awaits clarification of this difference.

While waiting (a long time one suspects), let’s give a case. What might a socialist stand on Islamism be? For socialists it is one of complete and total opposition. Islamisms, in their various  forms, are movements led by the pious Muslim bourgeoisie. They are anti-socialist (standing for private enterprise), anti-democratic (believing in a harmonious society based on divine Law), and oppressive. Generally pretty racist as well. Class enemies we might say.

Eagleton, by contrast, has a lot  in common with post-modernism liberalism. And with the high-minded thinking-the-best-of-everybody of American Transcendentalists, Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. That is ways to relativise difference, to reach out to the Other. Thus: Eagleton is against  Islamism. But understands where Muslim self-assertion is coming from. Better than most. Certainly better than supercilious metropolitan liberals who probably lack the balls of a gutsy Manchester Irish boy, an EngLit prof who’s done a couple of years in the Weasels (Workers Socialist League). Hard-types, orthodox Trotskyists.

But….Eagleton is not really talking about politics at all. If he dismissed (here)  Dawkins’s The God Delusion as a book written by a man ignorant of religion, the literary commenator shows few signs of acquaintance with political socialism. Socialism after all has strong roots in anti-clericalism, (even socialists with a  religion). Few socialists want a religious state – in that they agree with liberalism. That’s a reason why they loathe Islamism – amongst the others already given. Secularism is a belief in a state which attempts to be neutral about religious by not ceding to any of them. We might have an interesting debate about how this might come about in the United Kingdom, where under New Labour organised religion has unprecedented state influence. Or the faults of secularism, say, as interpreted in the French political tradition. Or how imperialism is a structure of economics and politics, not some kind of ‘anti-Islamic’ ideology. Again, what unites and separates the liberal rationalists Eagleton cites from the atheists and rationalists in the Marxist and socialist ranks.  But I digress.

What Eagleton is really talking about is the Christology and Ethical Theory he elaborates in The Trouble with Strangers (2008). This rests on the Imitatio Christi - the image of a Christ who takes on the suffering of the world. Who struggles for Justice. Eagleton opines that Christians follow this, in love and solidarity, in their reach out to identify with ’strangers’ in a common humanity.

Humbly he imagines a Christian standing in for another in the queue for the Gas Chambers.

Truly the man is a worthy successor to Thomas à Kempis.

Atheists? They have fallen “at the first hurdle” – or we could say, at one of the stations of the Cross on the way to Calvery. Turned away. To wander in error eternally. 

There is indeed nothing like a Christian to endure the suffering of others.

Carnival of Contrarians.

A la Bastille!

 

There’s something called the ‘Carnival of Socialism’. It’s a rotating list of Blog posts the ‘Carnis’ decide are socialist. I suppose they must be  -  if I could be arsed to check up on all of them. Like most self-appointed glee clubs it’s terribly dull. The latest one looks as if it’s written by a professional dullard. Somehow Tendance Coatesy, despite its leading position in the labour movement, and the hope and joy it spreads amongst the world’s struggling oppressed, doesn’t get mentioned. In its place too many Quorn pies of bland comment maketh a sorry feast.

← Left is what a real Bakhtin Carnival looks like.

With a proud tradition of contrarianism we at the Tendance are now holding an alternative Carnival, of, you guessed it, Contrariness. Here are some recent recommended Posts that grade the make: Tony Greenstein has a go at David Aaronovitch and ‘anti-Zionist’  Gillad Atzmon  (here). Bob from Brokley (where?) is a, “Blog about trans-Atlantic translation, Jews and Jew-haters, the old and new Stalinists, islam and secularism, contrarians and refuseniks, and South London.” Voltaire’s Priest has some excellent musings on religion’s claims to spread peace  at Shiraz Socialist. This drew forth a  reply from the Grande Dame of West London, Red Maria (not, I suspect, her real name). Charlie, who actually thinks about economics, asks if the left should consider a ’sustainable austerity’ programme. Stroppy pleads,  “can commentators on this please try to debate without calling people names such as scabs and nazis?”   Nation of Duncan does a bit of battling for the class struggle. Mick talks up the Japanese Communist Party. Pouminista does a magnificent job speaking about the often forgotten parts of the anti-fascist, anti-Stalinist left. Social Republic has some sharp thoughts on Italian nationalism. The Soul of Man Under Capitalism opines that “the man is screwing you through every fucking orifice…” Ian Bone recommends that we “get up off your arses..” Dave Osler controversially argues against Tax Cuts for the Rich. And Modernity does a Quick ‘Anti-Zionist’ Quiz that is certain to bring joy to members of George Galloway’s dwindling band of last-standers. Rosie Bell  has thoughtful reflections on the play Seven Jewish Children. Enty gets ready for May Day.

Finally, 3AM Magazine extends the domain of Contrarian struggle to the cultural field.

This List of Glory is by no means exhausting or conclusive. Be Contrarian !

 

UPDATE: Modernity raises questions about the other  ’Carnival’s’ tolerance of pro-Iranian apologists, here.

Tariq Ramadan: New Homophobic and Sexist Charges.

To Ramadan the Qur’an Says Gays, Sick, Women, Be Modest!

Tariq Ramadan,  faces a new crisis (here). This time it’s in Holland.

Ramadan is employed part-time as an Adviser by Rotterdam City Council. His role is to  ’stimulate discussion” on immigration and to ’build bridges’ with the Dutch Muslim community.  At the pay of  27 500 Euros a year he does two days a month work, has produced two reports and has led some public debates. This adds to Ramadan’s active presence in various guises across the world: in France, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Which includes the  United Kingdom where  he has an academic reputation, and is fêted by Conservatives, New Labour,  multi-culturalists and Islamophiles alike.

According to Le Monde this week Ramadan stands accused by the magazine Gay Krant of homophobic and sexist comments.

Ramadan aurait déclaré que l’islam prohibait l’homosexualité, laquelle serait “un dérangement, un dysfonctionnement, un déséquilibre”. “Dieu a fixé une norme qui veut qu’un homme soit destiné à une femme et une femme à un homme”, aurait aussi indiqué le philosophe. 

Ramadan is alleged to have declared that Islam prohibits homosexuality, which is ‘a disorder, a disequilibrium, a disfunction’. He is also said to have declared that ‘God has fixed a norm that means a man is intended for a woman, and a  woman for a man’.

Regarding women’s public appearance he recommended that they take less care of their appearance, and behave with modesty (soberly). In the street, they should “garder toujours les yeux fixés sur le bitume” (keep their eyes fixed on the pavement).

Reactions to these reported remarks  have hit Rotterdam Council. An enquiry has been launched. The comments are alternatively denied or considered taken “out of context”. The Islamist has been defended by the Green Party, whose Rik Grashof holds the  portfolio of Integration. he has declared that even if Ramadan is opposed to homosexuality he gives priority to “respect for people.”

In France long-standing secular critics of Ramadan place these remarks in context (here). Caroline Fourrest remarks that  ’Brother Tariq’,  praised as a religious progressive, has more in common with Jerry Falwell than Martin Luther King. In brief his comments are par for the course. While the Council has (here) apparently ‘exornerated’ Ramadan, the controversy rumbles on.

YMCA New Deal Training: Shut the Detention Centres Down!

Storm Dencora House!

Let the following know what you think about this:

Chris Mole(molec@parliament.uk)

YMCA Training(banbury@ymcatraining.org.uk)

Disturbing information reaches Tendance Coatesy that YMCA Training in Ipswich is reaching a major crisis. In the run-up to the ‘Flexible New Deal’ in October the DWP and the YMCA are pushing as many people as possible into the scheme. They have no placements. People are stuck in the ‘Den’ with nothing to do. They are effectively in prison 5 Days a week. We cannot be optimistic about how the ‘Flexible’  version will look like. If past private companies involved in the provision of such ‘training’ are anything to go by this will involve the usual problems (scams, lack of decent facilities and a total absence of real training). The plight of tens of thousands of the unemployed – harassed in programmes designed to force them into jobs which do not exist – will get worse and worse.

Dan who has been posting in the Comments Box of the original posts on the topic says,

” As usual this has become a very complexed issue. For each page of already over complicated law written regarding changes to the benefit system they write about 7 pages of guidelines for staff.

If history is anything to go by, half the law will be lost in translation (from law into guidelines) that is to say policies will be created that differ slightly from what the law says.

For example, the process of “signing on” even though staff members even say this has an official term called “signing labour market declarations” by DWP which JCP staff appear unaware of.

Only two New Deal Advisers in Ipswich have been “upgraded” for the Flexible New Deal, the rest currently as stand will be useless. There is still major confusion over the different stages.

Lets be grateful that there is still time.

My New Deal adviser told me I can’t change my New Deal option however I have found an current manual stating that participants may transfer between New Deal provisions – and that ability has been available since march 2004!! That’s 5 years…

Do they really still need to threaten you with the disclaimer to each job they find you ((”when”) however rare that is)?? But when they get you to sign most times they let you sign then remember to ask whether you [I] have done any “paid or unpaid work” blah blah – if you [I] did would have been too late and you [I] would have been sanctioned if not prosecuted for signing.”
He earlier commented, that,

There is one solution: Close the YMCA Training Centres Down Now! There needs to a through investigation. Ipswich is unlikely to be a lone case of abuse of public funds, and the waste of human potential these New Workhouses have brought. Ultimately two people are to blame: Gordon Brown and James Purnell. They are responsible for the misery  involved. They need to be made to answer for their decisions.

In the meantime despite opposition to the next stage of Welfare Reform (a further tightening of the screws) only the left of the Labour Party has expressed Parliamentary opposition. Unions and campaigners are not being heard in the media (even by some left magazines like Red Pepper, which seems to be getting quite a reputation for ignoring anything to do with welfare reform). The Tories promise an even tougher regime.

Now is the time to step up the opposition!

Mass Unemployment: Brown Makes Life for All Worse.

Time Again for This?

Economists predict that mass unemployment will return in Europe (Guardian). “Unveiling revised economic forecasts, the commission said it expected the recession across Europe to be twice as bad as previously predicted and more than 11% of the workforce to join the ranks of the unemployed.” 

One effect is to stimulate bosses’ drives to cut wages and lower conditions for those in employment.

Thus (here): “A growing array of unions in Britain are reporting that a number of unscrupulous and capricious employers are using the recession as a convenient cover to make cutbacks on workers’ terms and conditions of employment to boost their profit levels.” One can see that the ‘light touch’ labour legislation in the UK, vaunted by Brown, helps this no end. Without proper job regulation and protection the field is open.

Next, as we have posted at length, the open sore of unemployment is made worse by Brown and Purnell. The existing New Deal is an open scandal – detaining tens of thousands on bogus ‘training’ schemes. Just to cite one scam, As Dan points out, there is an inventive for providers to make a profit out of people’s misery by ‘exiting’ them (and removing their right to benefits) when they still get the same money as if they had attended! The Flexible New Deal, which will introduce forced ‘voluntary’ labour, will make the matters even worse (and that’s not even going to the plight of the lone parents, the disabled and a host of other aspects of the Grandgrind scheme).

In Victorian Times the workeless shuddered at the name of the Workhouse. Those out of work  in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties recoiled at the shadow of the Means Test. Today the New Workhouse, Welfare Reform, is s