Posts Tagged ‘European Left’
Festival of Brexit: Morning Star and Socialist Worker to get Top Billing.
Nostradamus of the Left to get top Billing.
“The festival is said to aim to celebrate creativity and foster unity among the British public, with the event’s organiser Martin Green describing the events as “open, original and optimistic”.”
I thought this was the wits of the Internet or that April the 1st had come early, but apparently not.
A celebration of British weather and a grow-your-own food initiative will be among the festivities.
A celebration of the British weather and the largest grow-your-own food project of modern times will be among the events being staged for a nationwide festival of creativity aimed at bringing the UK together in 2022.
Organisers of the £120m festival, commissioned by Theresa May’s government and supported by Boris Johnson, announced 10 teams who had successfully pitched ideas.
The Paris Commune Commemorated Amidst Controversy.
Thursday, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo (centre) “la Commune n’est pas morte !
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune there have been events, exhibitions and many excellent documentaries and radio programmes. There are so many articles, newly published, or re-issued books, that one risks being overwhelmed by the quantity.
This Blog strongly recommends this, from Arte (you can see it on Arte directly through Smart Televisions in the UK).
On the English speaking left worth signalling are:
The Paris Commune of 1871, Banks and Debt.
And from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.
The Paris Commune and the Union des Femmes
Kelly Rogers.
2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune; the moment that the working class seized political power for the first time, and held it for 72 days. Thousands of women took part in the events of the Commune and, against a backdrop of deep-rooted sexism, championed a revolutionary vision for the transformation of working class women’s lives.
Also available at Shiraz.
There have also been intense arguments over the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune in France.
Streets named after Thiers, who led the crushing of the Commune, have been the centre of calls to have them renamed, or ‘re-baptised’.
Nowhere have the controversies more intense than in Paris itself. The right wing on the City council refused point blank the proposed celebrations of the Commune.
Yesterday,
A Paris, Mairie et manifestants célèbrent la mémoire de la Commune
Le Monde.
This Thursday, March 18, the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo and a handful of elected officials from the left are celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune on Place Louise-Michel, at the foot of the Sacré-Coeur.
…
Fifty Parisians wore as many colourful silhouettes representing anonymous people and a few celebrities such as Louise Michel, Jules Vallès or Arthur Rimbaud, while a narrator told of the unfolding of the events and their heritage: “One hundred and fifty years later, the Commune is not dead! “
Radical leftists protested at the spectacle,
Below, blocked behind the gates, some demonstrators waved red flags and protest. “From Versailles to Paris and Hidalgo, always the same!” They shouted. ‘Down with Macron, down with Castex! “ Their voices disturbed a little the official show, but the accordion amplified by the PA is more powerful. Especially when the singer sang the Internationale, “Arise ye wretched of the earth…”, and continued with Le Temps des cerises, and selected people recited lyrics. “I know my classics” laughed Anne Hidalgo.
Earlier this year there had been a violent debate in the City Council Chamber.
On February the 3rd, at the municipal council, Anne Hidalgo and her rosé (Socialist)-red-green team received violent criticism from the right, very hostile to the idea of glorifying the event, “this sad moment of civil war “. For the right-wing party Les Républicaines there should have been no question of transforming the Communards into into heroes ” who took hostage and murdered” religious figures, and killed gendarmes, or for “those who chose to burn the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal, the Palais d’Orsay , the synagogues and our City hall ”.
Here is a detailed article on that row: « Légende noire » contre « légende rouge » : la difficile commémoration des 150 ans de la Commune de Paris.
There is a video to accompany it:
The BBC also reports on the issues,
A century and a half on, the Commune continues to divide.
For three months from today, Paris’s left-run city hall has prepared commemorations focusing on what it sees as the movement’s great social advances: equality for the sexes, disempowering the Church, participative democracy.
But the right-wing opposition says that Socialist mayor and presidential hopeful Anne Hidalgo is “instrumentalising history” for political ends.
“You can summarise the Commune in one word: violence,” says Rudolph Granier, a member of the centre-right Les Républicains (LR) on the city council.
“It was a populist movement. And in the current state of France and the world – when in Paris we have the yellow vests and in Washington they’re storming the Capitol – I do not think we should be celebrating people who burned down our city hall.”
or another LR councillor, Antoine Beauquier, “the left-wing majority is doing its usual thing of mixing up history and politics”.
“Of course there was an event called the Commune which we should remember. But we should remember what it actually was – not the fantasy of the Communist Party (PC). They think every Communard was a hero. But many were also killers.”
According to the right, by allowing them to run the Commune commemorations Anne Hidalgo is throwing her PC allies a bone in the hope that they’ll support her in the race for the French presidency next year.
The left has retorted by accusing the right of being “sectarian” and failing to see the justice behind the Communards’ cause.
“It is a sign of the times – the French right is getting more and more hardline,” says Laurence Patrice, Communist deputy mayor of Paris.
“They never used to care that much about the Commune. But now with Emmanuel Macron, the French have a president who has abandoned his centrism and is in fact more and more right-wing.
“And that is forcing the traditional right into positions that are ever closer to the extreme.”
Welcome Sign of Unity on French Left.
This is extremely good news.
A “grand slam” to ensure the return of a left that has disappeared from the region under pressure from the extreme right: representatives of Europe Ecologie Les-Verts (EELV), the French Communist Party (PCF), La France insoumise (LFI) and the Socialist Party (PS) announced, Thursday March 11, that they had reached agreement to unite in Hauts-de-France for the regional elections.
Negotiated for months, this agreement “unique at this time in France” places the Green MEP Karima Delli as head of the list, specifies the text, signed by the Communist, and Socialist leaders, the deputies of the North Fabien Roussel (PCF) and Ugo Bernalicis (LFI) and the North Senator Patrick Kanner (PS). The objective “is to ensure that history does not repeat itself” and “to seek an exemplary victory for all of France,” Ms. Delli told Agence France-Presse (AFP) .
Hauts-de-France, whose capital is Lille, could in many respects to former industrial and mining areas in the North of England. Like one time Red Wall seats which voted for the hard right Brexit and Tories in the last election, some parts of it has moved to the extreme right Rassemblement National.
Les territoires de la région Hauts-de-France sont plutôt ancrés à gauche, toutefois au cours de ces derniers années, on remarque une montée du vote pour l’extrême droite ou populiste de droite, notamment dans les anciennes cités minières .
The territories of the Hauts-de-France region tend to be on the left, however in recent years, it has been marked by a rise in the vote for the extreme right or populist right , especially in the former mining towns.
There are hopes this example may spread, although in other regions the left is far from negotiating a parallel united front. The General Secretary of the Parti Socialiste Olivier Faure has called for regional lefts to face up to their responsibilities. In the Huffington Post political scientist Bruno Cautrès has noted that the electorally winning strategy of left unity began at a local level in the 1970s. For the moment this looks unlikely for next year’s Presidential elections.
Régionales: la gauche unie dans les Hauts-de-France, laboratoire ou exception?
