It will be interesting to see who blames who if the whole referendum story in Scotland doesn't turn out quite how the masters of the universe predicted it would go.
Already they are blaming dreary Darling for making a complete arse of the 'No' campaign, and the Tories are getting ready to blame Labour for their failure to keep the Union intact and labour are blaming the Tories for only being half hearted in support of the status quo.
It could have all have been so different, and why didn't they see the possibilities coming down the road?
I believe passionately that an independent Scotland is the best solution, both in terms of the people of Scotland but also in the best interests of the working people of England too.
An independent Scotland might give the ;lacklustre labour movement in England some cojones.It might convince them that the only way is not Essex and that a progressive settlement is possible.
If Scotland can do without the obscenity that is Trident, why England could do without it too, and the £25 billion a throw on a useless submarine,commanded by the USA anyway,might be shown up as the waste it is so obviously.
One consequence of Scotland getting shot (sorry for the phrase) of Trident would be the thorny issue of where to relocate the bloody thing.
Fine when its in a berth up near Glasgow, a little more uncomfortable however if it had to be parked somewhere near the home counties-in Hampshire for instance!
If the nimbys don't like a few council houses or a downmarket supermarket on their doorstep-imagine their reaction to a fully armed nuclear sub skulking at the end of their waterfront?
That would certainly bugger up the property prices!
The Unionist parties have thrown everything at Scotland, including the cabinet,the shadow cabinet, the Bank of England,a herd of Generals,Admirals and Air Marshals, as well as bankers,oil companies and even Favid Bowie.
But those stubborn Celts appear to be ignoring the plaintive howls from the South and even being love bombed by Cameron and Miliband. You'll know when things are getting desperate when they send Clegg up on a sleeper to Aberdeen.
What I find strange is why the Tories are bothering.They instinctively hate Scotland and Scots, and of course the feeling in mutual.With only one MP in Scotland, as the joke goes, there are more pandas in Scotland than Tory MP's.
It is easy to see why Miliband needs the Scottish seats, the 41 Labour MP's are his only hope in 2015.That's why that old hasbeen Gordon Brown was sent on the stump last week.His presence no doubt added many thousands of 'Yes' votes.
I bet Alex Salmond is praying that they enlist Tony Blair's silver tongue in the 'No' cause!
Yet it could have been different.If from the outset Scotland had beeen offered a Federal option, with the right to control more of the economy, foreign and defence policy as they affect Scotland and a greater degree of fiscal control, I suspect that would have met with approval all over Scotland, and in many parts of England not in thrall to the London hegemony.
It would have given Scotland an alternative to demonstrate that a social democrat, if not a socialist state could prosper away from the bleak negativity of austerity Faragism.
I am impressed however by the astute leadership of Alex Salmond and especially Nicola Sturgeon.They have both played a blinder and have gaugedthe mood of the coutry.
It is of course possible that the 'No' vote will prevail, the combination of all the big guns focussed on Scotland plus the scare tactics that are the stock in trade of the Unionists might still win.But the anger will still be there, and it will only be a matter of time....
Mind you id the SNP had promised to create a Scottish Republic,left Nato and nationalised the oil industry,rhen I think there would have been no contst!
Sunday, 27 April 2014
Sunday, 13 April 2014
And you thought only the Stuarts had a divine right to rule!
Three hundred odd years ago the people of this country fought a civil war to end the divine right of Kings.
They almost got there,but sadly when the crunch came old Noll was disinterred and his head stuck on a pike.
The old order reverted, and whilst they lost the 'divine right' they retained the right of succession through a bunch of useless German princelings and princesses right up to the present day.
From the preposterous Hanoverians to the mediocre Saxe-Coberg-Gothas.
But at least we had an elected parliament that allowed some degree of democracy,albeit it took most of that 300 odd years to get anywhere near a free equal and working democracy.
For much of the time parliament was ruled by rich boys from top public schools,often from the landed gentry.many came from the military,the higher reaches of the legal profession and were frequently large landowners or obscenely rich factory owners.
Thinking about it not really much has changed!
But of course many of them, when the couldn't buy the odd totten pocket borough or the land where the borough itself stood made sure that the parliamentary power kept strictly in the family.
Most of the great landowners made sure that political power was dynastic-that seats passed from father to son in the usual ordered way.
Then about 100 years ago a great change appeared to happen, a small number of working stiffs got themselves elected,many started out as Liberals, but in 1900 the emergent trade unions decided that Liberal toffs with a scattering of working class Liberals did not really represent their interests.
The labour party was born.
A party that represented working people, their needs and their aspirations.
It was never a revolutionary party in the sense that the Levellers and even the Diggers were in Cromwell's' time.Indeed it was nothing like the great revolutionary parties and movements that were churning up Europe and had been since 1848.
What was important was that the Labour Party was not a party of privilege and was not one with a hereditary principle at its core.
But asa social democratic party it found itself a house divided.For decades it was never quite sure if it was a social democratic centralist party with a tinge of socialism or a socialist party with a tinge of social democracy.
Generations of good men and women gave their life to the party because they believed that whatever the foibles of the 'leadership' at any given time its collective heart was in the right place.
This has of course allowed it to degenerate , as the Thatcher era destroyed much of the strength and solidarity of the trade union movement the Labour Party, with no strong ideological core simply drifted into becoming another 'political' party.
So it attracted in growing numbers men and women who if push came to shove would join whatever party deemed to give them the best chance of a political career.It didn't really matter what the party stood for, as ling as they could chat up a selection meeting ot buy off a few local party officials or trade union hacks.
I well remember years back when an aspiring parliamentary candidate came to solicit support for the Northampton South constituency.
What a speaker the guy was and how he paraded his working class credentials before us.His father had been a miner, his granddad had been a miner, even as far as I can remember his fucking dog had been a miner.
He of course was a barrister! Now by the way in the House of Lords!
And where have we come to now?
Why the dynastic Labour Party.Neil Kinnock's son,married to the Prime Minister od Denmark no less has been selected for the safe labour seat of Aberavon (be interesting to see where his second home will be located-or maybe his third one)
Then we hear that Jack Straw's boy is going for a safe Labour seat(wasn't he once done for possession of drugs?) and it would appear that the offspring of the noble Lord Prescott is on the hunt for a safe Labour berth.
But if that all stinks of nepotism then the worst of all is that Euan Blair,son of you know who is hoping to be parachuted into the safe Labour seat of Bootle on Merseyside(majority 21,000) His claim is that as his mum came from Liverpool then thats alright!
Is it possible that in the whole of Merseyside the Labour Party there could not find a working class candidate?
Are they so bereft of talent that they need a London lad educated at Brompton Oratory to speak for those inarticulate scousers?
Is this what the workers party is now reduced to/
I know people can point to the Benn dynasty and say that it has happened on the left, but I suspect Hilary Benn was carefully vetted to make sure that his was not infected by the old mans radical politics and I suspect there were many in the party hierarchy who were nervous of another Benn.
Luckily they got one of their own.
The sad truth is that the party is now picking candidates few of whom have any trade union experience or local government experience either.
Clones by any other name,
A party whose idea of inspiration and values has nothing to do with Keir Hardie or Nye Bevan but rather Dolly the Sheep!
postscript
According to the local press in Liverpool Blair will only get a chance at the shortlist if the 81 year old sitting Mp decides to stand down voluntarily,then the party nationally can designate the seat a 'women only' shortlist.If however he decides to stand again-they can't.
The irony here is that it would appear that he too believes in a sort of hereditary principle(he wants his agent and the current leader of Sefton to replace him!)
So the outcome might be that young Blair,who part owns a £3 million property in London with his mother might end up representing one of the most impoverished constituencies in Britain!
postscript
According to the local press in Liverpool Blair will only get a chance at the shortlist if the 81 year old sitting Mp decides to stand down voluntarily,then the party nationally can designate the seat a 'women only' shortlist.If however he decides to stand again-they can't.
The irony here is that it would appear that he too believes in a sort of hereditary principle(he wants his agent and the current leader of Sefton to replace him!)
So the outcome might be that young Blair,who part owns a £3 million property in London with his mother might end up representing one of the most impoverished constituencies in Britain!
Saturday, 5 April 2014
Exquisitely Dumb-and she's the Culture Secretary!
Maria Miller is seriously dumb.The events over the past few days have revealed once again that national politicians think and behave like Plantaganet Monarchs.or worse Stuarts! They really seem to believe that they have some sort of divine right to rule,that are somehow part of a 'political class'.
Trouble is that the hysteria surrounding the narrative of 'Another fiddling MP' serves only the press and Nigel Farage.
I refuse to be stampeded into the lobby of the Daily Telegraph bleating about press freedom and the glories of a free press.
Lets get one thing straight from the outset this country does NOT have a free press.It has a bunch of censorious oligarchs as bad as any who hold sway in Russia.They own vast swathes of the media,they control much that passes for television,radio and the new technologies and all of the press.
The dailt Telegraph has for long been the authentic mouthpiece of the Tory Party, and will long remain so.What we are seeing is not an assertion of their freedom merely a shot across the bows of the Tory Party to remind them who the real masters of the universe are.
Next week the barclay brothers will get back to the usual business of beating up on trade unions, working people and all the myriad of demons they like to conjure up to frighten the masses.
Frankly I think it was despicable of any so called 'journalist' to doorstep and elderly couple and badger them about their living arrangements.
It was mean and shabby and not even central to the story.
The story was that Miller over claimed on her mortgage and when found out tried to bluster her way out, and when all else failed got her parliamentary mates to reduce her repayment from over £40k to about£5k.
That is the real scandal and that is what she should be punished for,not her parents and not about being rude to the House of Commons.
I'm also getting a bit fed up with Labour members standing on the dignity of the parliamentary process and aall the old guff about the sovereignty of the 'Mother of Parliaments'
What we have is a huge majority of time serving numpties.Without ideology and a reason for being in parliament its just another job and so many of them are interchangable.Remember only 13 Labour MP's had enough of the ideology of socialism to remember whose side they were on when it came to support people on benefits.
Apart from members of the SNP,PC and the Green Party the majority of 'honourable members' trooped into the coalition lobby to support further cuts.
And that's where Farage will win support.He is a sleazeball of monumental proportions.He is so like the poujadists of inter war France.But like his great mate Le Pen he is using populism to win popular support, and its interesting just to see how much exposure he and his sordid racists are getting in the popular press.
It is of course no coincidence.The one thing the political class, the media and the populist politicians most fear is a literate and organised working class.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about the referendum in Scotland is that after many hundreds of years there is an awakening of political thought north of the border.
People are starting once again to think not just about what the press tells them to think but they are thinking and discussing ideas.
It's as if the Enlightenment has caught the public imagination once again.
Trouble is that the hysteria surrounding the narrative of 'Another fiddling MP' serves only the press and Nigel Farage.
I refuse to be stampeded into the lobby of the Daily Telegraph bleating about press freedom and the glories of a free press.
Lets get one thing straight from the outset this country does NOT have a free press.It has a bunch of censorious oligarchs as bad as any who hold sway in Russia.They own vast swathes of the media,they control much that passes for television,radio and the new technologies and all of the press.
The dailt Telegraph has for long been the authentic mouthpiece of the Tory Party, and will long remain so.What we are seeing is not an assertion of their freedom merely a shot across the bows of the Tory Party to remind them who the real masters of the universe are.
Next week the barclay brothers will get back to the usual business of beating up on trade unions, working people and all the myriad of demons they like to conjure up to frighten the masses.
Frankly I think it was despicable of any so called 'journalist' to doorstep and elderly couple and badger them about their living arrangements.
It was mean and shabby and not even central to the story.
The story was that Miller over claimed on her mortgage and when found out tried to bluster her way out, and when all else failed got her parliamentary mates to reduce her repayment from over £40k to about£5k.
That is the real scandal and that is what she should be punished for,not her parents and not about being rude to the House of Commons.
I'm also getting a bit fed up with Labour members standing on the dignity of the parliamentary process and aall the old guff about the sovereignty of the 'Mother of Parliaments'
What we have is a huge majority of time serving numpties.Without ideology and a reason for being in parliament its just another job and so many of them are interchangable.Remember only 13 Labour MP's had enough of the ideology of socialism to remember whose side they were on when it came to support people on benefits.
Apart from members of the SNP,PC and the Green Party the majority of 'honourable members' trooped into the coalition lobby to support further cuts.
And that's where Farage will win support.He is a sleazeball of monumental proportions.He is so like the poujadists of inter war France.But like his great mate Le Pen he is using populism to win popular support, and its interesting just to see how much exposure he and his sordid racists are getting in the popular press.
It is of course no coincidence.The one thing the political class, the media and the populist politicians most fear is a literate and organised working class.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about the referendum in Scotland is that after many hundreds of years there is an awakening of political thought north of the border.
People are starting once again to think not just about what the press tells them to think but they are thinking and discussing ideas.
It's as if the Enlightenment has caught the public imagination once again.
Sunday, 30 March 2014
How careless to make the same mistake!
What is ir about the Labour Party?
It is widely accepted that the first and fatal mistake that the Blair/Brown government made in 1997 was to continue to impose the spending constraints they inherited from the Tories.
Remember the slogan 'Things can only get better'?
Well they never could get better when you started your administration with both hands and both feet tied together.
It's true that they were able to make small reforms and some of them significant,but the minimum wage legislation was never likely to end poverty-one of Keynes five 'giants'- and reforming zeal perished on the rocks of banker happiness!
So now we have Miliband and his brave new world,and what does he promise?
Why to continue the attacks of folk on welfare and in order to buy the votes of the deserving rich pledges to continue austerity.He also drives his parliamentary party into the coalition lobby.
Lets make it clear, the poor are not,have not, and never will be responsible for the crisis of capitalism.
At the same time the object of government is not simply to pay off the National Debt,or indeed to drive down the deficit.
The national Debt has been with us since Henry VIII wanted to build a navy to fight France, and over the centuries has fluctuated wildly.The Attlee Government in 1945 faced a much higher debt, a broken infrastructure and a war damaged country, and yet it managed to create a health service,a massive housing programme,a welfare state and nationalised the major industries that the private sector had ruined.
The lesson of that government,just as the lesson of Roosevelt's New Deal was simple, don't blame and punish the poor,but take bold decisions to rebuild the nations' infrastructure.
This dreadful coalition has built its entire strategy on blaming people for the crisis in capitalism,demanding that wages are restrained, that contracts are torn up, that public services are sold off at knock down prices and worst of all that the poorest are made to pay even more.
The demonisation of people on welfare benefits has been the leitmotif of everything this lot have done.
The potent mixture of scroungers,welfare cheats, greedy migrants and the undeserving poor have sent a frisson of terror through the respectable poor.
There is masses of evidence that the hardest hit section of welfare claimnts are the elderly,the disabled and those in work on rock bottom wages and zero hour contracts.
And if that is not enough every piece of legislation is designed to turn the screw a bit tighter,even their own flagship legislation,'the bedroom tax' is a failure and only adding to the distress of social housing tenants and increasing rent arrears.
So we should expect boldness fro the Labour Party, I well remember Neil Kinnock describing Labour local authorities as 'battered shields' against Thatcherism.
With the emasculation of local authorities (aided in part by New Labour!) the best we can expect is that the Parliamentary labour Party will stand up and vote against further attacks on working people.
OK its only a vote, but at least it would offer hope that something better might come along.
Yet only 13 Labour MP's voted against the Government, over 100 strolled into the coalition lobby.
In fact the voting record of the SNP,PC and the Green Party MP was far better that that of the people's party.
Shame on you all.
So here is a simple question to the Labour Party hopefuls in Northamptonshire-if you were in Westminster-how would you have voted on the welfare cuts?
So far all we have seen from all of you has been nothing more than party platitudes, and even they have been few and far between.
Is the new Labour orthodoxy akin to being political trappists?
There is a dark shadow of fear passing over this country, a rising tide of reactionary thought and a Labour Party afraid of its own shadow,
Now is the time for boldness-is the Labour Party up to the challenge?
It is widely accepted that the first and fatal mistake that the Blair/Brown government made in 1997 was to continue to impose the spending constraints they inherited from the Tories.
Remember the slogan 'Things can only get better'?
Well they never could get better when you started your administration with both hands and both feet tied together.
It's true that they were able to make small reforms and some of them significant,but the minimum wage legislation was never likely to end poverty-one of Keynes five 'giants'- and reforming zeal perished on the rocks of banker happiness!
So now we have Miliband and his brave new world,and what does he promise?
Why to continue the attacks of folk on welfare and in order to buy the votes of the deserving rich pledges to continue austerity.He also drives his parliamentary party into the coalition lobby.
Lets make it clear, the poor are not,have not, and never will be responsible for the crisis of capitalism.
At the same time the object of government is not simply to pay off the National Debt,or indeed to drive down the deficit.
The national Debt has been with us since Henry VIII wanted to build a navy to fight France, and over the centuries has fluctuated wildly.The Attlee Government in 1945 faced a much higher debt, a broken infrastructure and a war damaged country, and yet it managed to create a health service,a massive housing programme,a welfare state and nationalised the major industries that the private sector had ruined.
The lesson of that government,just as the lesson of Roosevelt's New Deal was simple, don't blame and punish the poor,but take bold decisions to rebuild the nations' infrastructure.
This dreadful coalition has built its entire strategy on blaming people for the crisis in capitalism,demanding that wages are restrained, that contracts are torn up, that public services are sold off at knock down prices and worst of all that the poorest are made to pay even more.
The demonisation of people on welfare benefits has been the leitmotif of everything this lot have done.
The potent mixture of scroungers,welfare cheats, greedy migrants and the undeserving poor have sent a frisson of terror through the respectable poor.
There is masses of evidence that the hardest hit section of welfare claimnts are the elderly,the disabled and those in work on rock bottom wages and zero hour contracts.
And if that is not enough every piece of legislation is designed to turn the screw a bit tighter,even their own flagship legislation,'the bedroom tax' is a failure and only adding to the distress of social housing tenants and increasing rent arrears.
So we should expect boldness fro the Labour Party, I well remember Neil Kinnock describing Labour local authorities as 'battered shields' against Thatcherism.
With the emasculation of local authorities (aided in part by New Labour!) the best we can expect is that the Parliamentary labour Party will stand up and vote against further attacks on working people.
OK its only a vote, but at least it would offer hope that something better might come along.
Yet only 13 Labour MP's voted against the Government, over 100 strolled into the coalition lobby.
In fact the voting record of the SNP,PC and the Green Party MP was far better that that of the people's party.
Shame on you all.
So here is a simple question to the Labour Party hopefuls in Northamptonshire-if you were in Westminster-how would you have voted on the welfare cuts?
So far all we have seen from all of you has been nothing more than party platitudes, and even they have been few and far between.
Is the new Labour orthodoxy akin to being political trappists?
There is a dark shadow of fear passing over this country, a rising tide of reactionary thought and a Labour Party afraid of its own shadow,
Now is the time for boldness-is the Labour Party up to the challenge?
Saturday, 15 March 2014
But when your dead.....
The last week has seen the loss of two outstanding and inspirational socialists from two generations.Both Bob Crow and Tony Benn will be mourned by most folk in the socialist movement for the contributions that they made in reminding people that the ideals of socialism are far from dead.
What is shocking is the number who are jumping on the sadness of their deaths to proclaim how inspirational they both were in their lifetimes,when for most of the time they were vilified and traduced.
There have of course been the usual caveats-"I didn't agree with much of what they said but they were blah blah blah..."
Bob not unnaturally came in for more weasel words, the sycophantic bleatings of Boris Johnston were at considerable odds to what he had been saying about Bob only a few days ago.The silence from the leadership of the Labour Party said it all
Truth to tell Bob Crow was the most effective trade union leader of his generation, and his capacity to lead from the front produced the best conditions for his members despite the austerity.
Bob believed that nothing was too good for the workers and his philosophy echoed the words of Brecht in the 'song of the patch and the overcoat'- I don't want a new patch for my overcoat, I want the whole bloody overcoat!
Bob also led his union out of the unequal relationship with the Labour Party that unions have 'enjoyed' for decades.The railway workers have for generations been led by donkeys, from the corrupt anr treacherous JH Thomas in the 1920's to the slimy and pathetic Sid Weighell in the 70's.
Jimmy Knapp was a considerable improvement on all that had gone before but Bob was a real step change.
No surprise that in a period of rapid decline in trade union membership, only RMT put on over 20,000 new members.
The crocodile tears shed for Bob were perhaps best explained by the fact that there are some in the Labour party that hope by appearing 'sincere' and 'well disposed' to Bob and his union they can lure the union back into the straightjacket of Labour party affiliation.
I hope the members are as wise to the Labour Party's tricks as they are to the wiles of management.
The death of Tony Benn has also unleashed an outpouring of synthetic grief. The notion that he has somehow become an iconic figure for the Labour Party, and as Tam Dalyell described him as a 'prophet not a king' is more in the spirit of 'thank christ he too has gone'.
Everyone and their hampster is now an expert on Tony Benn,and how he brought the Labour Party to the brink of disaster and drove those nice SDP types out of the party.
Those of us who lived through the SDP episode know what was really happening.Those miserable opportunists and careerists were the ones who wrecked the party, they took delight in trampling on the socialist aspirations of many, and in fact the bastards won!
Blairism and Kinnockism were the real heirs to Jenkins,Owen and that clique.Truth to tell the vicious attacks on Tony and others on the left was what fatally damaged the Labour Party.They never wanted the Labour Party to win on a socialist programme.
Now is the time when that dreary Gerald Kaufman quote about the 1974 election manifesto being the 'longest suicide note in history'- no it was the last manifesto that put clause 4 of the Party at the centre of its political programme,and you all remember what happened to Clause 4 under New Labour.
many of us stayed in the Party because we hoped that things might get better and when people like Tony were still around it sometimes seemed that there was a small still radical heartbeat somewhere in the core of the party.
The price we paid was the total destruction of a party that had at its whole purpose the advancement of 'Labouring people'-after all that was why it was called the Labour Party in the first place.
It was created by the organisations of the labour movement to fight for and defend the interests of working people, and that was why it recieved the funds to do that from the trade unions.
But of course not any more, rather a handout from Lord Owen and Tony Blair instead of the pennies from the workers, and indeed as the Co-operative passes into the hands of the money men and the international speculators, where is the future?
If we are to undertand the legacy of both Bob Crow and Tony Benn we need to start again,we need to build a new movement once again from the bottom up.Bob had it right,and in his heart of hearts I suspect the 'icon' knew that too.
What is shocking is the number who are jumping on the sadness of their deaths to proclaim how inspirational they both were in their lifetimes,when for most of the time they were vilified and traduced.
There have of course been the usual caveats-"I didn't agree with much of what they said but they were blah blah blah..."
Bob not unnaturally came in for more weasel words, the sycophantic bleatings of Boris Johnston were at considerable odds to what he had been saying about Bob only a few days ago.The silence from the leadership of the Labour Party said it all
Truth to tell Bob Crow was the most effective trade union leader of his generation, and his capacity to lead from the front produced the best conditions for his members despite the austerity.
Bob believed that nothing was too good for the workers and his philosophy echoed the words of Brecht in the 'song of the patch and the overcoat'- I don't want a new patch for my overcoat, I want the whole bloody overcoat!
Bob also led his union out of the unequal relationship with the Labour Party that unions have 'enjoyed' for decades.The railway workers have for generations been led by donkeys, from the corrupt anr treacherous JH Thomas in the 1920's to the slimy and pathetic Sid Weighell in the 70's.
Jimmy Knapp was a considerable improvement on all that had gone before but Bob was a real step change.
No surprise that in a period of rapid decline in trade union membership, only RMT put on over 20,000 new members.
The crocodile tears shed for Bob were perhaps best explained by the fact that there are some in the Labour party that hope by appearing 'sincere' and 'well disposed' to Bob and his union they can lure the union back into the straightjacket of Labour party affiliation.
I hope the members are as wise to the Labour Party's tricks as they are to the wiles of management.
The death of Tony Benn has also unleashed an outpouring of synthetic grief. The notion that he has somehow become an iconic figure for the Labour Party, and as Tam Dalyell described him as a 'prophet not a king' is more in the spirit of 'thank christ he too has gone'.
Everyone and their hampster is now an expert on Tony Benn,and how he brought the Labour Party to the brink of disaster and drove those nice SDP types out of the party.
Those of us who lived through the SDP episode know what was really happening.Those miserable opportunists and careerists were the ones who wrecked the party, they took delight in trampling on the socialist aspirations of many, and in fact the bastards won!
Blairism and Kinnockism were the real heirs to Jenkins,Owen and that clique.Truth to tell the vicious attacks on Tony and others on the left was what fatally damaged the Labour Party.They never wanted the Labour Party to win on a socialist programme.
Now is the time when that dreary Gerald Kaufman quote about the 1974 election manifesto being the 'longest suicide note in history'- no it was the last manifesto that put clause 4 of the Party at the centre of its political programme,and you all remember what happened to Clause 4 under New Labour.
many of us stayed in the Party because we hoped that things might get better and when people like Tony were still around it sometimes seemed that there was a small still radical heartbeat somewhere in the core of the party.
The price we paid was the total destruction of a party that had at its whole purpose the advancement of 'Labouring people'-after all that was why it was called the Labour Party in the first place.
It was created by the organisations of the labour movement to fight for and defend the interests of working people, and that was why it recieved the funds to do that from the trade unions.
But of course not any more, rather a handout from Lord Owen and Tony Blair instead of the pennies from the workers, and indeed as the Co-operative passes into the hands of the money men and the international speculators, where is the future?
If we are to undertand the legacy of both Bob Crow and Tony Benn we need to start again,we need to build a new movement once again from the bottom up.Bob had it right,and in his heart of hearts I suspect the 'icon' knew that too.
Monday, 10 March 2014
Everyone is an expert now!
Who would have believed it? A few short weeks ago most people thought ,if they thought about it at all,that Ukraine was part of Russia and Crimea certainly was,and indeed always had been.
I must admit I always thought that they were all one and the same and I grew up in a household that had Soviet Weekly delivered alongside Boxing News and the Daily Worker!
My Dad never really got the hang of the Morning Star, till his dying day he always called it 'the Worker' and as a matter of fact with regard to Soviet Weekly they sent that to him free because he had been a subscriber since the 1940's.
I probably knew more about the Donbass coal field than I knew about any mining areas in Britain, other than of course the heroic miners of Fife and the equally heroic ,or almost as equally heroic men of South Wales.In our house it was a stretch of great imagination to think that there were coal mines in England.
Mining was a celtic occupation,rather like deep sea fishing and goading the English.
Yet the news over the last few weeks has concentrated on events in Ukraine,which again as a child I knew as 'the' Ukraine in the way that I knew things happened behind 'the' urals and anyway it was all part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
I knew Uncle Joe was a Georgian,ut that was OK too because Georgia was part of the USSR- the 'unbreakable union of freeborn republics' as described i the Soviet national anthem.
Now I should be used by now to the breakup of the Soviet Union and all those pesky small and like Ukraine enormous separate republics but even now its fairly difficult to make the separations
And if its hard for us, think how difficult it must be for so many millions of citizens of the former USSR.
Especially the older folk, who lived through or were directly affected by what they still call the Great .Patriotic War.Twenty-maybe thirty million Russian people died in the fight against fascism.They didn't much care if they were Georgians or Ukrainians or Tartars or whatever, they were Russians fighting for their homeland.
Now the war did throw up contradictions, there were some within the minority peoples who saw the war as a situation where they could escape th Russian hegemony,and of course there were still remnants of the White Russian forces who sided with the Germans in the hope of defeating the Communists.
So I', not surprised that there are lingering distrusts amongst sections of the community and that is easily fanned by both sides.
It is ironic perhaps that Leni believed in the rights of small nations to self determination and one of the best statements ever written about the rights of small nations was by JV Stalin when he was Commissar for National Minorities .
But of course socialist history is littered with ironies and contradictions.
However it does seem that what is going on at the moment in Ukraine is a nasty powrplay etween competing oligarchs, their stooges and the jockeying for power bases.
I have no doubt that amongst the crowds in Kiev there are many genuine radical democrats who hated the corruption and exploitation of their country.A genuine yearning for self determination that today every Scot should be acutely aware of(other than that numpty Darling!) but within that movement there lurk some very unsavory elements- anti-semites,racists,the worst possible nationalists-and of course the ususal band of free marketeers,opportunists and criminals
Yet on the other side there is the mirror reflection of Putin and his oligarchs, gun thugs,motor bike gangs,and corrupt officials and politicians.
What we are seeing is the criminal bands fighting amongst themselves for the spoils whilst the people get trampled in the middle.
Its a battle we have seen repeatedly in the Middle East, in the Balkans and almost anywhere where gangsters fall out!
And people wonder still why China is resistant to any attempt to break up the Peoples Republic!
I must admit I always thought that they were all one and the same and I grew up in a household that had Soviet Weekly delivered alongside Boxing News and the Daily Worker!
My Dad never really got the hang of the Morning Star, till his dying day he always called it 'the Worker' and as a matter of fact with regard to Soviet Weekly they sent that to him free because he had been a subscriber since the 1940's.
I probably knew more about the Donbass coal field than I knew about any mining areas in Britain, other than of course the heroic miners of Fife and the equally heroic ,or almost as equally heroic men of South Wales.In our house it was a stretch of great imagination to think that there were coal mines in England.
Mining was a celtic occupation,rather like deep sea fishing and goading the English.
Yet the news over the last few weeks has concentrated on events in Ukraine,which again as a child I knew as 'the' Ukraine in the way that I knew things happened behind 'the' urals and anyway it was all part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
I knew Uncle Joe was a Georgian,ut that was OK too because Georgia was part of the USSR- the 'unbreakable union of freeborn republics' as described i the Soviet national anthem.
Now I should be used by now to the breakup of the Soviet Union and all those pesky small and like Ukraine enormous separate republics but even now its fairly difficult to make the separations
And if its hard for us, think how difficult it must be for so many millions of citizens of the former USSR.
Especially the older folk, who lived through or were directly affected by what they still call the Great .Patriotic War.Twenty-maybe thirty million Russian people died in the fight against fascism.They didn't much care if they were Georgians or Ukrainians or Tartars or whatever, they were Russians fighting for their homeland.
Now the war did throw up contradictions, there were some within the minority peoples who saw the war as a situation where they could escape th Russian hegemony,and of course there were still remnants of the White Russian forces who sided with the Germans in the hope of defeating the Communists.
So I', not surprised that there are lingering distrusts amongst sections of the community and that is easily fanned by both sides.
It is ironic perhaps that Leni believed in the rights of small nations to self determination and one of the best statements ever written about the rights of small nations was by JV Stalin when he was Commissar for National Minorities .
But of course socialist history is littered with ironies and contradictions.
However it does seem that what is going on at the moment in Ukraine is a nasty powrplay etween competing oligarchs, their stooges and the jockeying for power bases.
I have no doubt that amongst the crowds in Kiev there are many genuine radical democrats who hated the corruption and exploitation of their country.A genuine yearning for self determination that today every Scot should be acutely aware of(other than that numpty Darling!) but within that movement there lurk some very unsavory elements- anti-semites,racists,the worst possible nationalists-and of course the ususal band of free marketeers,opportunists and criminals
Yet on the other side there is the mirror reflection of Putin and his oligarchs, gun thugs,motor bike gangs,and corrupt officials and politicians.
What we are seeing is the criminal bands fighting amongst themselves for the spoils whilst the people get trampled in the middle.
Its a battle we have seen repeatedly in the Middle East, in the Balkans and almost anywhere where gangsters fall out!
And people wonder still why China is resistant to any attempt to break up the Peoples Republic!
Saturday, 1 March 2014
And on the other hand....
Harriet Harman has never given any evidence of being a political thinker of any great depth or indeed of any great consequence.She always appeared to be in the right place at the right time and demonstrated the knack that so many in the Parliamentary Labour Party have of not upsetting too many people.
The closest I ever came to her was once in the Commons car park when Tony Clarke and I were waiting for a taxi when Phil Hope, the shining pale pink MP for Corby pushed past us to climb into a cab with the memorable excuse:
"I'm off to a party at Hattie's!"
Such comradeship at the heart of the Labour Party.
That encounter with the elite of the Party however does not detract from the witch hunt that is being carried on against Harman by the odious 'Daily Mail'.
The fact that she was the legal officer for the NCCL in the 1970's merely indicated the route to parliament that many aspiring politicians took in those days, and was in fact a far more honourable and useful route than the political assistant,intern and party hack route so favoured today.
NCCL was ,and indeed is still, the sort of organisation that civilised nations always need.It is true that in the 1970's there was a libertarian tinge to the organisation, and in many ways it was imitating the American trends for outrageous extremism,but that does not detract from the good work that it was undertaking in the fields of human rights,anti-racism,against homophobia and all the other causes that required a progressive stance.
Inevitably some oddball fringe elements crawled in under the 'libertarian' banner, and its worth remembering that many of them were quite right wing and reactionary.
NCCL as a campaigning group for civil liberties had often to defend the rights of quite unsavory individuals and even groups.
I have no doubt that PIE(Paedophile Information Exchange) was no more than five men and a dog(and I bet the dog was not a willing member!) but as so often happens with self promotion,they bullied their way in.
Gay Liberation as a movement was just finding its feet in this country and was under constant virulent attack from many quarters-not least the 'Daily Mail', it has many other things on its collective mind to worry about -and the five men and a dog pie outfit was low on the priorities.
And if it was low on the GLF priorities, it was almost certainly far lower on the paid officers of NCCL's agenda.
Harman has nothing to apologise for, and indeed even if she had,who would she apologise to,and for what exactly.On that basis should the family of Thatcher apologise to the victims of Jimmy Savile for hugging the old brute in public?
The most interesting aspect of the 'affair Harman' to my mind is the contrasting coverage given this week to her and Peter Bone, the right wing xenophobic Tory MP for Wellingborough.
Credit to 'The Times' for bringing out the story of the Police investigation into Bone's alleged criminal behaviour in defrauding the County Council of many thousands of pounds in benefits for his mother-in-law's care in a nursing home.
If the CPS decide to bring charges, then that is far more significant an event this week than Harriet harman's alleged pecadillos over 30 years ago.
Strange how silent the 'Daily Mail' appears to have been on that story!
The closest I ever came to her was once in the Commons car park when Tony Clarke and I were waiting for a taxi when Phil Hope, the shining pale pink MP for Corby pushed past us to climb into a cab with the memorable excuse:
"I'm off to a party at Hattie's!"
Such comradeship at the heart of the Labour Party.
That encounter with the elite of the Party however does not detract from the witch hunt that is being carried on against Harman by the odious 'Daily Mail'.
The fact that she was the legal officer for the NCCL in the 1970's merely indicated the route to parliament that many aspiring politicians took in those days, and was in fact a far more honourable and useful route than the political assistant,intern and party hack route so favoured today.
NCCL was ,and indeed is still, the sort of organisation that civilised nations always need.It is true that in the 1970's there was a libertarian tinge to the organisation, and in many ways it was imitating the American trends for outrageous extremism,but that does not detract from the good work that it was undertaking in the fields of human rights,anti-racism,against homophobia and all the other causes that required a progressive stance.
Inevitably some oddball fringe elements crawled in under the 'libertarian' banner, and its worth remembering that many of them were quite right wing and reactionary.
NCCL as a campaigning group for civil liberties had often to defend the rights of quite unsavory individuals and even groups.
I have no doubt that PIE(Paedophile Information Exchange) was no more than five men and a dog(and I bet the dog was not a willing member!) but as so often happens with self promotion,they bullied their way in.
Gay Liberation as a movement was just finding its feet in this country and was under constant virulent attack from many quarters-not least the 'Daily Mail', it has many other things on its collective mind to worry about -and the five men and a dog pie outfit was low on the priorities.
And if it was low on the GLF priorities, it was almost certainly far lower on the paid officers of NCCL's agenda.
Harman has nothing to apologise for, and indeed even if she had,who would she apologise to,and for what exactly.On that basis should the family of Thatcher apologise to the victims of Jimmy Savile for hugging the old brute in public?
The most interesting aspect of the 'affair Harman' to my mind is the contrasting coverage given this week to her and Peter Bone, the right wing xenophobic Tory MP for Wellingborough.
Credit to 'The Times' for bringing out the story of the Police investigation into Bone's alleged criminal behaviour in defrauding the County Council of many thousands of pounds in benefits for his mother-in-law's care in a nursing home.
If the CPS decide to bring charges, then that is far more significant an event this week than Harriet harman's alleged pecadillos over 30 years ago.
Strange how silent the 'Daily Mail' appears to have been on that story!
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