Tendance Coatesy

Never forget: Germany produced this poem of unspeakable beauty!

I am deeply influenced by German culture. I spent several years of my life reading Kant and Hegel. In depth. I have gone to evening classes in the speech and my German is to an extent that I can understandthe beautiful language. I went with a German bird to Heine’s grave round the corner to my gaff in Paris and know what he means to the Germans. I have his poems in me front-room.  My politics are strongly influenced by Germany. I think I do not need to cite the name. Or names.

All eyes on the European left are on howDie Linke is going to do in the forthcoming elections.

But I have a problem. We English are not Teutonic. I do not really speak German. On Facebook as a French-speaker I can communicate with Italian comrades with a flash of an eye-brow. I cannot do this in German.

Last night  I read Chesterton’s essay on this.

Our eyes have been turned towards the Latin world for over a thousand years. We are in fact more Latin than Germanic.

But as I say, all attention on Europe’s left is now on Germany.

We wish you well comrades.

Er not.

 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?

 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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 ”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.