A gentle polemic on the notion of national identity

On Facebook recently I have been having a 'debate' with Allan, a thoroughly decent man with one great weakness-he stood as a UKIP candidate on May 2nd.

He genuinely that there is space to debate our differences and perhaps even believes that they are in some way reconcilable,that they are only differences of stress and emphasis and really we are all operating in the same political arena.

Sorry Allan we are not.Our world view is as far apart as it possibly can be,our starting point is completely different and our end point will never coincide.
Let me explain why.

You think and write about a 'United Kingdom' as some sort of commonality between us, that we live in the same nation state and therefore we have common interests that promote a sense of nationhood and a sense of 'national identity'.
From the outset you know I'm a Scot, that is a culture and a language that I am familiar with.However that does not mean that I embrace all things Scottish, pipe bands and tartan and tins of shortbread and the martial story!
The great Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid described all that tosh as the 'kailyard' and he always summed up that image of Scotland as one embodied in the dreadful 'Sunday Post' and its homely pithy third rate Presbyterian monoculture.
I am a Scot by accident of birth, that is all.
The Scotland of stirring highlanders killing folk in far off lands for 'King and Country' is not my Scotland, any more than the aristocratic parasites that own vast areas of that country,greedy landlords who cleared people off the land to allow their fucking sheep to wonder untrammelled.

The fact that the Windsor family claim to love Scotland because their granny preferred a big hairy highlander who looked suspiciously like Billy Connolly to an effete German princeling is of no iterest to me whatsoever.

My only commonality is based on class.
It is the relationship to people who earn their living and contribute to the common good that determines my world view.
And as it with Scotland so it is withy everyone else.I have far more in common with the teacher or the bricklayer or the lorry driver or the farmhand anywhere else in the world than I have to the Edinborough banker,the London stockbroker or the Russian oligarch!

My world view is an internationalist one not a nationalist one.that's  why I have more in common with the European worker or the Asian worker or the Latin American worker than I'll ever have with the Scottish, English or any other elite.

You will probably as would I fight for my country?
Well,I'm no pacifist,but I'm no bloody sheep either, and I would view any conflict,not in national terms but in class terms.
Would I have fought in World War One-no, it was an imperialist war that was only about the conquest of territory for the greater good of the competing capitalist classes,nothing more,nothing less.
World War Two was very different,it was a struggle between two ideologies,and fascism was determinedly anti people.It's worth remembering however that in the lead up to WW2 there were many in the British ruling class who wanted to do a deal with Hitler,many of the Tory cabinet were desperate to appease Hitler and who can forget the 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' front page in Lord Rotheremere's 'Daily Mail'.

Every other conflict since then has been in the interests not of the British people but in the interests of the multi-nationals.
Allan you mentioned the Falklands,well that cost 300 young men from this country to do what?
Preserve the political reputation of a discredited Prime Minister and look after the interests of the oil companies in the South Atlantic! real patriots would have not sent those young men to dreadful deaths  for no purpose.It would have been cheaper to ghave given every resident of the Malvinas a million quid and all the sheep they could eat and allowed them to resettle elsewhere.

And whilst on that subject the billions being spent on a new nuclear deterrent that this government can only use with the permission of the USA could be far better used to rebuild our infrastructure and our public services.

I'm sorry Allan I don't buy into your patriotic schlock

Can I finish my rant with a quote from another great Scots poet of the last century,the incomparable Hamish Henderson, who in 1960 wrote 'Freedom come all Ye'

Nae mair will our bonnie callants
Mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw
Nor wee weans frae pit heid an clachan
Mourn the ships sailin doon the Broomielaw
Broken faimilies in lands we've herriet
Will curse 'Scotlan the Brave' nae mair,nae mair
Black an white ane til ither marriet
Mak the vile barracks o their maisters bare." 

You see Allan it is my view that your leader is just one more xenophobic braggart,and in the end I prefer internationalism and solidarity to what UKIP has on offer.
     

Now the carnival is over.....

The County Council elections were a tragedy for Northampton in every sense.The re-election of a Tory administration means more of the same.An economic strategy based on cutting services and boasting that what people want is even more cuts so that they can use the money they save in paying low rates to do what?
It is obvious that the rural areas like South Northants,with some of the most expensive properties in the country will be happy with their low rates and thatched cottages and a police officer guarding their garden gnomes 24/7.
But for the urban areas like here in Castle ward we can expect further reductions in services,less street lighting,no youth service,privatised schools,and the usual paraphernalia of the Thatcher legacy.
And what is worse still we have no voice to speak up on behalf of our communities.
Hee in Castle Ward we have lost an outstanding Independently minded Councillor in Tony Clarke.The former Labour MP for Northampton South and an excellent advocate who articulated the needs of this poorest of areas.
The Labour Party in Northampton have proved to be a startling failure of will,a bunch of New Labour clones and retreads who are unable to speak on behalf of their constituents.
In castle Ward(but really the bulk of St Crispins )  Winston Strachan was elected, a nice man whose heart in in the right place but has spent the last four years on the County Council  behaving as if he had taken a monastic vow of silence.
Apart from the group of Corby Councillors we have nothing,there was a time that Labour could win the County Council with the majority coming from Northampton.
With all that is happening nationally,with the coalition in tatters and the Tories savaged by UKIP what does the labour Party achieve in Northampton.
A whole gain of three seats!Even the bloody Lib-Dems have done better than the Labour Party.
We were promised a bunch of bright young things who were going to challenge the Tory hegemony.
Fat chance!
What we are seeing is the legacy of New Labour,or rather old Keeble and a party so enfeebled by in-fighting and bitter internal feuds that just when there is a need for a strong fighting force to rattle the windows and kick down the doors of County Hall we have.......a vacuum where a political party should be!

A few days ago I drew attention to the NBC's Labour Group's feeble effort in opposing the 'Bedroom Tax'- a trivial battle that they managed to loose.
I feel desperately sorry for the comrades in Corby who once again have to carry the weight of expectation because Northampton Labour Party are simply unable to deliver a coherent message.

If Winston's leaflets were typical of the stuff the party was putting out then frankly they deserved to fail.The desire to find the centre ground has robbed the Labour Party of any capacity to fight on behalf of the people.
Neil Kinnock once described Labour local government as the 'battered shield' to defend the people against the Tory attacks.Here in Northampton we don't even have a battered handkerchief !

Yet the opportunities to defeat the Tory coalition are legion, as they split between themselves in the coalition and the UKIP wing of the BNP in suits assaults the Tories from the far right,now is the time for the left to do what it is doing all over Europe .To present a genuine popular socialist alternative to the crisis of capitalism.
By that I do not mean a call for a one day general strike,or even an insurrection on College Green or even the elevation of St.Dennis Skinner to a secular papacy.
The opportunity at last is to bring together all the disparate forces of the left.Those brave but seriously weakened 'forlorn hope' comrades still in the Labour party, the left groups operating in ideological bubbles,the Greens,the single issue campaigns and all the other merry pranksters of radical intent.
There are new red shoots tarting tom emerge, the Ken Loach Left Unity initiative and the creation by Unite the Union of Community branches  represent the coming together not simply of an extra-parliamentary opposition but maybe even the creation of a new force of progress.
This may be the best chance the left has to re-group into a movement that can change the world,or at least our little corner of it!
It may also be our last bloody chance.
"Then  Comrades come rally....."  

The job of an opposition is to oppose!

The twenty second of March 2013 was the day that the Labour Party in Northampton  finally gave up its claim to be a political party that represented anyone other than itself.
The evening in the Guildhall started off well enough, as a piece of gesture politics the walkout by Labour councillors before the Tory administration gave its eulogy to Thatcher was quite good theatre.Marred only be the fact that their colleagues in Corby had done it in a far more stylish way the week before,but at least it erred on the side of righteous indignation.
However it went downhill after that,in dramatic style.
A couple of weeks ago there was a demonstration on the Guildhall steps against the bedroom tax.A couple of Labour councillors, Stone and Mennell turned up and spoke passionately against the legislation.Sally Keble also appeared,at least for the press photo-call and then scurried off.
So far so good.
Then came the meeting.Labour had five motions to be debated and the last one was about the bedroom tax.
To call it a motion is in fact stretching credulity.it was more a whimper,it was the mom and apple pie version of a motion.
First it called the bedroom tax 'so called', thus rather undermining the national party's decription of the tax.It then rambled on a bit about it being something the Labour group was against and would fight it 'through the usual channels' and it then came to a dramatic dénouement- the high point of the labour Party's stand against what many think is Cameron's poll tax moment.
NBC Labour group was urging the Tory administration to speed up the creation of an appeals panel!
Yes you've read it here first-the labour party has decided that barricades and defence of tenants is a bit passée, so instead of calling for no evictions as the Green led Council in Brighton has done,or redesignating rooms as many Labour council's have done-the passionate political giants on Northampton want an appeals panel to be set up quickly.
Of course the fact that the Tory administration would set up and dominate the panel and that it demonstrated quite clearly the defeatism of the Labour Party really diodn't bother the assembled comrades.
After all Lee Mason, former Labour leader and former Chair of housing cheerfully admitted that it was a non-political resolution!
A non- political resolution about the most politically contentious issue facingf local government today!
For good measure she also confessed that as an opposition party they did not have a majority and therefore could not win a vote.
The logic therefore is to present a defeatist motion, get it passed and proclaim in every Labour Rose a great victory!
Torry Wire the Leader rather lamely criticised those of us who urged that they withdraw the motion that we should have heard them last montgh,when no doubt in an opposition business statement they told the Tories that they were all very naughty boys and girls.

The tragedy of all this is that over the next few months things are going to get worse, and tenants might have hoped that the opposition would at least put up forceful arguments in the Council chamber to give them some hope and inspiration.
But the rules of debate in NBC mean that the topic cannot be revisited for several months(six months seems to be the period)
This was known to the Labour group and even discussed,but yet they allowed the  weakest and most pathetic resolution to stand.And they even managed to lose that fucker!
The Tories were playing with them, the anodyne resolution from Mason had its rug whipped away by a sanguine Tory leader who was enjoying himself hugely at the expense of the official opposition.

Even the Lib-Dems made a better fist and tried to warn the Labour party of where their Tory appeasing motion was headed.It was instructive to see the look of anguish on the faces of some of the Labour councillors,but sadly anguish was not enough.
Lee Mason and her non-political motion has failed the Labour party in Northampton, if they win more seats in the County Council elections it will only because the Tories and Lib-Dems are even more unpopular, but this sad display of ineptitude has revealed just how hollow and directonless the local Labour Party have become.
And that is not only bad news for those who seek socialist transformation but for the people of Northampton.

Labour councillors hang your heads in shame!      

I've been trying to avoid mentioning her

Far too many trees have gone to the great forest in the sky on order to give the last rites to Margaret Thatcher. I'm completely bored with the idolatry that has surrounded her death and the endless vilification that has been heaped on anyone who has dared to criticise her.
One huge piece of of irrelevant fawning that has accompanied every apology about her from people who know how much damage she has done begins with the :
"She was an old lady and you have to think of her grieving family...."
Her grieving family who both lived thousands of miles away,allowed her to live alone in that private home for the rich and useless-The Ritz
Her doting family cared so much about her in her dotage that they stayed as far away as possible from leaving,leaving her care to paid minders and the odd sycophantic Tory MP.
The only unforgivable thing about her doting family is that the boy Thatcher wasn't arrested when he finally touched down for all his dodgy activities in Central Africa and elswewhere.
How did a knob like him amass a multi-million pound fortune?He even managed to fail his accountancy exams!

The fact that she was an old woman who died alone in her expensive suite,donated by the Barclay Brothers(offshore newspaper owners and arrogant gits) is quite sad.But before too many tears are shed think about the thousands of working peole who died prematurely because of her actions.
Suicide rates in mining communities have been high ever since she used the state to break the miners and their union.
Unemployed youngsters in the communities her policies ravaged are greater victims than any sad old millionaire popping her clogs on the Strand.

Those of us who oppose her are not bothered about her as a person,but rather the politics that her administration promulgated that gave power to the wealthy and greedy,as well as the corrupt and in some cases frankly evil.
Just look at the guest list to her funeral that we are so generously paying for, what a bunch of bloodsucking leeches, has-been politicians,underwhelming 'entertainers' and neo-cons and failed authoritarian leaders from the dark side.
If Jimmy Saville was alive he'd be in the front pew,along with Pinochet,PW Botha and that lunatic Reagan.
She chose her friends well,but then she served her class interests well.So it is a huge but not unexpected surprise to see the Blairite hegemony circling  her wagon protectively.No wonder Blair is keen to remind everyone that he won three elections too and when his time comes will expect a Queen or two following his coffin.
He was as most remind us the natural heir to her policies,he was happy to keep up the privatisation fandango,enrich the bankers,ignore and weaken the trade unions, and start fucking useless overseas wars when things got a bit tough at home.

The last few days and the next four or five have given the Tory party a lifeline, they have cowed the official opposition into being complicit with the longest and most sustained party political broadcast for this discredited coalition.

Here in Northampton the slightly foxed and largely discredited local Tories have launched a Thatcherfest with memorial resolutions at council and books of condolence and flags at half mast and all the other symbols of state power.
I expect they are only sorry that they can't deck all the lamposts with union jacks,portraits of the dear departed leader and solemn funereal music piping out of loudspeakers all over town.
I expect there are some who would like to hang a couple of retired miners or unemployed steelworkers just to give added authenticity to the ceremonial  mourning.

There is a chain we have to break, from Thatcherism through monetarism   via the free market to Blairism. 
Working people and their organisations didn't create the crisis of capitalism, capitalism created the crisis of capitalism and the local manifestation in this country was the political ideology that dominated the 1980's.
If the people are ever to get off their knees then two things need to happen, the independent organisations of people need to be rebuilt and we need to create a new party that will look towards a progressive future for the young people who are wondering why we old grey beards are humming a tune from the 1931 film 'The Wizard of Oz'
The forward march of the Munchkins resumes!

Time for the party to come to the aid of the people

FAO George Carr-Williamson -Regional Organiser East Midlands Labour Party

Dear George,
You told me that Cllr. Naz Choudary has been sending you my columns,presumably not because he is a fan but rather he is hunting out heretics and thought you should know.Well this time I'll save him the trouble,and you can judge directly if I should be burnt at the new labour stake!
On Saturday in common with many other places we had a demonstration here in Northampton against the iniquitous 'Bedroom tax'.
A respectable 60-70 people turned up from a variety of groups and individuals to demonstrate on the steps of the Guildhall.
It wasn't quite the magnificent effort that Corby put on, with between 200-300 people and Andy Sawford MP, John McGhee(Leader of NCC Labour group) and the Leader of Corby Council, as well as a number of local councillors.

In Northampton by contrast we had the PPC for Northampton North who posed for some photos then scurried off to do something more important.
We did however have two Labour Councillors,who both spoke and made a welcome contribution.
But on an issue that will affect so many people in this town it has to be asked,where were the other 14 Labour Councillors?

I ask because in the past Labour Councillors here have been in the forefront of such struggles.many years ago,when the late Roger Winter was Labour Leader we turned up with him at 6.30am to join a picket line of  UCATT workers on a council building site.It was a freezing day but we gamely stood there,a pity by the way that the Union convener,a SWP member failed to show!

Some years later another fine comrade,the late Ron Linsdell  during his mayoral year joined a print workers picket line outside the Chronicle & Echo offices.Ron was a print worker but put solidarity with his workmates against the glory of the office.The local Tories and the press excoriated Ron, but the group were proud of him and gave unconditional support.

In those seemingly far off days the Labour Party banner was frequently to the fore, on Saturday there was the Green Party banner,the Co-op Party banner and Defend Council Housing's banner, I wonder if the Labour Party still have a banner?

However there is something important that the 16 Labour Councillors still can do, they can offer leadership and resistance to this dreadful legislation.They have a wordy and pious resolution going forward to the next council meeting.That is frankly too little too late.
The resolution that needs to be put is a very short one:
"NBC will not evict and tenant affected by the 'Bedroom Tax'"
Of course they will not win it,but they might detatch one or two Lib-Dems and add to the coalition chaos.
The other thing of course they need to do is use their size to requisition a special Council meeting, and keep the Tories there all night!
that would not only show leadership but give hope to thousands that there isd a battle on and that it can be won.This tax is the Tories nmew Poll Tax moment and the battle lines are starting to grow.
The other obvious thing that has to be done is the passive defence of any tenant faced with eviction.A disabled speaker on Saturday said that he was facing imminent eviction.If that proves to be the case then apicket line outside her flat by as many Labour Councillors as can get there would be a positive signal that Northampton Labour is getting off its knees!

It was good to see a number of young Labour candidates in May turn up on Saturday,but now the Party must match its rhetoric with political action.

ps
That sufficiently inflammatory Cllr.Choudary?Does it perhaps make you want to slam the phone down again? 

There is no 'Free'Press

Over the past few days we have witnessed a torrent of comment from our beloved 'free' press attacking the somewhat piddling little reforms passed in the Commons.
Lets first of all get the reforms out of the way, they are insignificant in the scale of things, I doubt very much if Murdoch and any of his acolytes lost a millisecond of sleep over the percieved threat to the freedom of the press!

The Royal Charter was simply an excuse for a bunch of self indulgent parliamentarians to slap each other on the back in the chamber,before they sloped off to lick Rupert's arse in private.

'We have a Free Press'-I don't think so!
The last time anyone in this country seriously challenged the power of the rich by using a newspaper was John Wilkes when he published 'The North Briton' that upset Lord Bute and George the 3rd.
Wilkes was declared an outlaw and even imprisoned,but it was all a bit of a stooshie that really was a falling out amongst a bunch within the ruling elite.
Wilkes posed as a bit of a radical at the time,and the London mobs were fired by the slogan 'Wilkes and Liberty',but quite soon the MP for Middlesex became a magistrate in London, put down the Gordon Riots with considerable violence and strongly disapproved of the French Revolution.

The simple fact is that a free press would imply the it was pluralist and represented all strands of opinion,that as well as impartial reporting of events,the press would act in an investigative way and hold the executive to account!
Instead of which it has always been the property of the rich and powerful, and as Thompson once said"a licence to print money"(he was in fact talking about owning TV stations-same difference)

Newspapers represnt class interests as surely as aristocrats own thousands of acres of our land and oligarchs own everything else.
Consider for a moment who is making the most noise against the Royal Charter- The Sun and the Times owned by News International(prop.R Murdoch), The Mail- Associated Newspapers(Rotheremere) The Express Group,The Telegraph group(owned by the Barclay Brothers, and so it goes on!
We are of course reminded that the Mirror is on the side of working peop0le-oh sure,Trinity Mirror is a group owned by it's readers?
Then there is the Independent and the Guardian,alleged bastions of radical thought.
Well it's true they employ a few radical journalists,but essentially they are the human shields for newspapers that uphold the status quo.

There have in the past been newspapers that supported organised labour, the Daily Herald was once owned by the TUC, but it succumbed the a savage circulation war and was eventually turned into the bland Sun that itself became the vicious and ignorant Sun of Murdoch.
There was also Reynolds News, a Sunday owned by the Co-op movement, but it too was killed by being unable to attract advertising.

So our 'free press' is really a creature of powerful owners with a specific political agenda,in the 1930's Lord Rotheremere ran a campaign in his Daily Mail-'Hurrah for the Blackshirts'-supporting Sir Oswald Mosley's fascists.
Today how 'free' is the press that requires Blair to rush to Murdoch to get his endorsement,which of course he later changed to support Cameron, and now it would appear the old 'newspaperman' is frolicking with Nigel Farage.

As long as newspapers and other media outlets are owned by a handful of wealthy interests then there is no freedom.We like the illusion that our media is democratic,but of course that is an illusion.Opposition voices may get a hearing,but the dominant voice is always that of the establishment.

If you want to hear people like Len McCluskey or Bob Crow then the only place you'll find them is in the minuscule circulation papers like the Morning Star.
Of course the democrats will chant-we have a free press,look we let the Morning Star publish, and look too we let opposition voices put their case in occasional articles in 'mainstream' newspapers.
Why the Chronicle & Echo even allows that eccentric old radical Dickie.J. a monthly column to rant almost at will!

We will not have a free press until the ownership of the media is distributed fairly amongst all sections of the community, and its scope and influence is not dettermined by the whim of an individual owner of the powerful advertisers lobby.
It is perhaps a salutary fact that in the middle of the nineteenth century the New York Times published articles from Germany written by none other than Karl Marx. 


  

It is a bedroom tax!

There is a curious debate going on the Chronicle & Echo's website about whether the coalition's 'bedroom tax' should be called a tax.
Some more reactionary contributors want it described as a benefit reduction and even claim that it somehow a measure to 'help' thousands of people on the housing list by redistributing homes eitherb those in the public sector or those belonging to housing associations.
It all seems so simple-there are people living in council properties with extra rooms, and there are people waiting for homes-whether bigger ones or just a home!
So the simple solution is that you decant those selfish folk living with an extra room and move them elsewhere!
Now it would seem that the legislation is not simply talking about  bedrooms, but if your old council property happens to have a dining room,then that is deemed a bedroom and subject to the legislation.Either move out or pay more!

My Auntie lived in a council house in Stranraer for many years.It was built with a wee dinettebetween the kitchen and the living room.
Would that be considered an extra bedroom?
Now apart from the brutally arbitrary nature of this legislation it has all the hallmarks of social engineering, or if you prefer it,urban cleansing.
It originated in the days of the Shirley Porter regime in Westminster when the Tory Lady hated the idea of working class families living in wards that might return Labour councillors,and so they were 'cleaned' from the area,making the likelihood of a Tory councillor.
It was also a policy that kept some areas free from the infection of poor people,never attractive to the eye of Tory grandees.
To suggest that a family perhaps settled in a home(for which they will have paid for many times over) should be required to move from their neighbours and friends,from their familiar environment,from the home they have built up over many years,is simply inhuman.

many of the ranters and ravers on the website were concerned about value for money, and feigned a concern for those on the housing  waiting list and their suffering.
The answer of course is not to shuffle people from place to place as their family size changes but simply TO BUILD MORE BLOODY HOUSES!

Of course the coalition has no problem with selling off council houses-then you can have as many empty rooms as you like, but all that means is the housing stock is reduced and there are even less houses available to rent,driving more people into the arms of private landlords.
And of course there is the insurmountable problem,both locally and nationally of the shortage of smaller houses and flats anyway.
Even if a tenant in Northampton agrees to downsize to avoid paying extra,there are no smaller properties available anyway.
Does that mean if there are no properties available then the 'tax' does not have to be paid?
I understand at the last count there was a tiny handful of small properties available,and evn less now NBC has promised priority to servicemen returning (and there will be more of them given the redundancies  in the armed forces!)
So the coalition is offering a cheap gimmick,designed to appease the Taxpayers Alliance and other assorted opponents of public housing and at the same time making no effort to really solve the problem of public housing.
No building programmes,the greedy bankers why have a stranglehold on any prospect of mortgages and of course the usual litany that seeks to blame the poor,the dispossessed and migrant workers.
This is a government with no shame,and the greatest shame is that the Lib-Dems are party to this and the Labour Party failed to build enough homes during their term of office.

However I have ome suggestion that might help.There is an elderly couple living in central London with a house that has ooh hundreds of spare bedrooms, they also have a large empty property in Windsor  a big one out in Norfolk and an enormous property up on Deeside.
They also have dozens of other big houses that they call 'grace and favour' residences dotted all over London.
Perhaps they could help?