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Chill-out for summer/Luis Corvalan; Chilean Communist leader during the Allende and Pinochet years.

Between now and September I intend to only post the occasional blog, most folk have better things to do at this time of year than spend hours in front of a computer screen, myself included. 


Below is an obituary of Luis Corvalan, the Chilean Communist leader, who was a political force to be reckoned with in his day. He was a controversial figure on the far left, not least because he allegedly refused to encourage the socialist President of Chile, Salvador Allende, to distribute arms to the Chilean working classes just prior to Pinochet 1973 military coup. Allende's refusal to distribute arms, left the workers defenceless and at the mercy of Pinocet's thugs in police and military uniforms. Who quickly rounded up the cream of the Chilean working class, and having herded them into football stadiums and detention camps, the best of them were taken out and slaughtered.


Indeed, for many Allende's lack of trust in the workers seemed inexplicable, especially as he seemed to have placed total trust in the head of the country's armed forces Augusto Pinochet, a man who within a month of taking up that post ordered Allende's murder. When Allende rejected the right of workers to defend themselves against the threat of fascism, and instead told them they to should, like him, place their faith in the democratic credentials of the Chilean military. He set the agenda of the far left for the rest of the 20th Century. Having witness the catastrophic consequence of Allende's decision, few left socialist were prepared to take a chance on a democratic road to socialism.


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Luis Alberto Corvalán Lepe (September 14, 1916– July 21, 2010)

The leader of Chile's Communist Party for more than three decades, Luis Corvalan was a driving force behind the election of the socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970.

When Allende was overthrown, and died, in a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973, Corvalan was arrested and sent to a series of detention camps. Three years later, at Zurich airport, he was released and flown to Moscow in a highly-publicised, spy-style swap for Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident jailed for "anti-Soviet propaganda" who now, aged 67, lives quietly in Cambridge.

Such was Corvalan's importance to the then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that he became a VIP guest in Moscow, treated like a statesman. Brezhnev had already awarded him the Lenin Peace Prize while he was detained in Chile. During his exile in Moscow, Corvalan remained Secretary-General of the Chilean Communist Party and remained so until he returned to his homeland in 1988 to witness the restoration of democracy. He stepped down as party leader in 1989 but remained on the Central Committee and active as a communist for the rest of his life .

Luis Corvalan Lepe was born in Pelluco, just outside the southern Chilean port of Puerto Montt, in September 1916 to Moises Corvalan and Adela Lépez (he would later drop the "z" from his maternal surname). After going to school in the town of Tomé he joined the Communist Party at the age of 16, trained as a teacher, but found himself working underground as a journalist during most of the 1940s and 50s when the party was banned and he spent spells in detention camps at Pitrufquén and Pisagua. With the party legal again he was elected Secretary-General of the Communist Party in 1958 and twice as a national senator, serving from 1961 until 1977.

As the communist leader of a large South American nation during the Cold War of the late 1950s, '60s and '70s, Corvalan was a force to be reckoned with, one who instilled at least unease in successive US governments and presidents starting with Dwight D Eisenhower. After Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, but especially after Castro declared himself a communist in 1961, the Americans became increasingly concerned with and focussed on events to their south.

When Allende, a socialist heading the Unidad Popular [Popular Unity] coalition with Corvalan's Communist Party support, won the presidency in 1970, President Richard Nixon was more than uneasy. He was already fighting communists in Vietnam and had urged the CIA to do all they could do keep Allende and his communist allies out of power. After Pinochet's forces stormed the presidential palace in Santiago on 11 September 1973, Allende was found shot dead and Pinochet took power as a military dictator, the US denied directly backing the coup but Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger admitted: "we helped them ... create the conditions."

Corvalan, his only son Luis Alberto and the communist singer/songwriter Victor Jara were among the thousands of leftists rounded up and detained. Jara was tortured and executed a few days later, making Corvalan the highest-profile Chilean detainee in the high-security detention centre on Dawson Island in the Strait of Magellan. Corvalan's son was also tortured and would die of his injuries two years later in exile in Bulgaria.

It was on 18 December 1976, on the tarmac at Zurich's Kloten airport, that Corvalan, flown in from Santiago, and the Soviet dissident Bukovsky, flown in from Moscow, were exchanged. Brezhnev, whose 70th birthday was the following day, had been pushing for the deal as a "birthday present" since the Chilean was his epitome of a Latin American communist, a staunch Soviet ally on the same hemisphere as the United States.

Corvalan lived in Moscow with his wife and daughters until 1988 when Russian secret service agents helped him get back to Chile clandestinely via Argentina, after plastic surgery and with a false name and CV. The restoration of democracy the following year allowed him to come out in the open.

Such was Corvalan's prominence and respect in Chile, even among his opponents to the right, that his wake was held in the National Congress building in the capital, Santiago.

Phil Davison

Luis Corvalan, politician and activist: born Pelluco, Chile 14 September 1916; married Lily Castillo Riquelme (three daughters); died Santiago 21 July 2010.

First published here.

Obituary: Harry Beckett; a doyen of Jazz trumpet and flugelhorn.

It was with great sadness I read this morning that Harry Beckett, the great jazz trumpeter, flugelhorn player and composer had died. Between 1963 and 75, where ever my musical tastes took me, Harry Beckett always seemed to be there. I first came across him at Soho's Flamingo Jazz club in the early 1960s, I as a callow, pill popping youth and Harry as a sideman in one of the best UK 1960’s R@B bands, Herbie Goins and the Nightimers, the jazz guitarist, John McLaughlin who went on to play with Miles was also part of this outfit.

By the early 70’s I was into free jazz, Harry was amongst a group of fine London based musicians who congregated and let their hair down most Friday night at Peanuts, a small club I frequented above a pub at the back of Liverpool Street station. Amongst them were the baritone and soprano sax player John Surman, alto players like  Mike Osborne, and Elton Dean, and tenor sax Alan Skindmore, another Flamingo old boy.  The key thing about Peanuts was no matter whose name was on the bandstand, they invited all and everyone to sit in and the night usually ended with a rip roaring version of the 'music while you work' radio show theme, although beyond the tag line I doubt many regular listeners of the show would recognize it.

For me Harry was at his best in a big band environment, especially when playing flugelhorn, he was great with Mike Westbrook’s big band, but came into his own as a member of Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath. Their blend of jazz and South African township music simply was the best of its kind and long before anyone had heard of the publicity tag world music. Foot stumping stuff, none of the “ye man, cool” nonsense. At the core of McGregor’s band  were a group of exiles from the apartheid regime, McGregor himself, drummer Louis Moholo, alto sax Dudu Pukwana, cornet, Mongezi Feza and basist Johnny Mbizo Dyani, who were joined by musicians of the calibre of Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker, Paul Rutherford, Harry Beckett, Marc Charig, Alan Skidmore, Mike Osborne, Elton Dean, Nick Evans, and John Surman. We may not see such a life giving jazz ensemble again. 

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Harry Beckett by John Fordam. (30 May 1935; died 22 July 2010)

Blindfold tests – invitations to identify players by listening to short snatches of their work – have always been popular challenges in jazzcircles. There have been a few innovators whom the cognoscenti could spot from the proverbial "handful of notes" (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins might top the list), but the task gets tougher when it comes to the thousands of talented yet less influential locals from the multifarious jazz scenes of the world.

Harry Beckett, the Barbados-born trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer, who lived in London from 1954 and who has died after a stroke aged 75, made blindfold tests easy. He was one of those rare jazz artists who, while not dramatically changing the course of the music, had a sound that was unmistakably his own. I characterised it so regularly in print as the infectious sound of someone quietly chuckling that I began to wonder if even the perpetually genial Beckett might get irritated by the comparison. But what the Penguin Guide to Jazz On CD more circumspectly described as "a kind of chastened happiness" really did catch the spirit of this much-loved performer.

Coming into contact with the British modern-jazz scene for the first time in the early 1970s, I quickly realised that Beckett showed up everywhere – and that he was the kind of player you would always feel heartened to discover was on the stage. He brought a lightness and vivacity to everything he played, but a sinewy precision too – whether in the briefest vignette of a solo in the powerful, talent-packed ensembles of Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs, Chris McGregor or Graham Collier, or in the merciless free-fire zone of a cutting-edge small group such as that of the late saxophonist Mike Osborne.

Beckett made everybody's music sound better, without showing the slightest desire to draw attention to himself, and he sustained that balance all his life. Later in his career, Beckett became an inspiration and elder statesman to the late-1980s generation of young, black, jazz-playing Britons. When Courtney Pine, Gary Crosby and others conceived the Jazz Warriors big band in 1985, he was an automatic choice as player, composer and arranger.

If he might have seemed to represent the perennially dependable sidekick, Beckett was an independent force in his own right. His Caribbean roots audibly influenced original compositions that he revealed on his own records from 1970 onwards; his 1991 All Four One album featured an unusual four-flugelhorn lineup, and as late as 2008 he was relaxing into the most contemporary of mixed-idiom projects with the reggae and dance producer Adrian Sherwood, making The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett for Sherwood's On-U Sound label.

Beckett was born in St Michael parish, Barbados. He took up the cornet to play in a Salvation Army band, explored several other brass instruments, and moved to Britain aged 19, where he soon found work with the Jamaican bandleader Leslie "Jiver" Hutchinson's popular group. Beckett was also one of the demanding composer Charles Mingus's favourite recruits for the British band Mingus assembled to play his soundtrack for the 1961 jazz-and-reefers movie All Night Long.

Beckett joined Collier's group in 1961 and became his muse for the next 16 years. He was one of the most creative interpreters of the Englishman's softly shaded and gracefully crafted pieces. Beckett also confirmed his flexibility and employability in the mid-60s in the blues and R&B Nightimers group with the singer Herbie Goins.

Collier contributed to the writing for Beckett's debut album, Flare Up, a boppishly punchy yet typically lyrical 1970 session that also testified to Beckett's clout by featuring stars of the calibre of Osborne, John Surman, Alan Skidmore and John Taylor. The same group also made the equally colourful and engaging Warm Smiles and Themes for Fega albums in 1971 and 1972.

Those lyrical qualities that had endeared Beckett to Collier also worked for the raft of younger UK jazz composers who emerged from the all-night workshop-space of Ronnie Scott's original "Old Place" club in the 60s, and to the innovative South African coterie led by McGregor, which had arrived in London in the same period. Beckett began working with McGregor's thrilling townships-influenced Brotherhood of Breath; with the composer Westbrook; with the bands of Gibbs, Neil Ardley and John Warren; and even with the often fiercely abstract London Jazz Composers' Orchestra alongside such uncompromising improvisers as Evan Parker.

In small groups, Beckett partnered powerful soloists, including the saxophonist Surman and the groundbreaking guitarist Ray Russell; and from 1975 he became a regular member of a rejuvenated Stan Tracey's bands, and of groups led by the saxophonists Elton Dean and Kathy Stobart and by the great South African altoist Dudu Pukwana.

In the 1980s, Beckett became involved with the Jazz Warriors, and also with the Danish guitarist Pierre Dørge's Ellington-esque jazz-and-highlife New Jungle Orchestra. He collaborated on McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath reunion venture, Country Cooking, in 1988. In 1991, he made a series of duet recordings with the piano stars Keith Tippett, Joachim Kuhn and Django Bates for the Passion and Possession album, and formed his four-flugelhorn lineup with brassmen Chris Batchelor, Jon Corbett and Claude Deppa.

The next year, Beckett made the spare but evocative trio album Images of Clarity, his resourcefulness as an improviser getting a rare extended outing in the company only of the bassist Didier Levallet and the drummer Tony Marsh. He also participated in the Dedication Orchestra, a spectacular tribute to McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, featuring some of the best musicians on the UK scene, in particular contributing a beautiful solo to Pukwana's Hug Pine on the band's 1992 album Spirits Rejoice. At the end of the 90s, he struck up a productive relationship with the saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Biscoe – an association that continued into the 21st century, not least in a three-year engagement with France's Orchestre National de Jazz.

Its contemporary grooves and dancefloor ambiance might have surprised the trumpeter's jazz-rooted fans, but The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett only reflected the warmth and curiosity that had characterised the Barbadian's open-handedness from the start. Beckett had worked with the dub and world-music star Jah Wobble over the years, and Wobble's connection with Sherwood always made the collaboration likely.

Beckett remained a legendary figure for the Jazz Warriors generation and for today's young jazz students (he taught trumpet and lectured extensively). He was brought onstage at the Barbican in London last month to join (somewhat unsteadily, but to audible admiration) Jason Yarde's Warriors tribute, as part of Guy Barker's Big Band Britannia venture.

The saxophonist and bandleader Trevor Watts was among those who paid tribute to Beckett: "He was a great player who found the key all musicians like us are looking for. The way to get it on every time he picked up the horn."

He is survived by his wife, Veronica, and two sons and two daughters.

• Harold Winston Beckett, trumpeter and composer, born 30 May 1935; died 22 July 2010

First published here.

Cartoon of week.

Coalition Government memo predicts chaos when benefit changes are put into practice next year.

Below is a letter leaked to the campaigning organization Benefits and Work by a mole within the Department of Work and Pensions.(DWP) It deals with the likely chaos which will prevail when the coalition governments decision to target with benefit cuts the sick and disabled is put into practice en-mass next year. According to the DWP letter, not only will many of those claiming benefit have them considerably reduced, the DWP have no real idea whether there computers will be able to cope with the mass migration of those claiming Incapacity Benefit to either Job Seekers Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance. The letter also reveals that the DWP expect “about 20% of existing IB claimants to subsequently submit JSA claims” after being refused ESA. (Note how the DWP calls claimants customers, never mind as tax payers they own the store) This means that Jobcentre Plus is expected to cope with an additional 300,000 JSA claims beginning in March 2011, at the same time as it is cutting around 84,000 staff, curtesy of the coalition. As if this were not bad enough, the letter admits whilst between October of this year and Febuary next, when the mass migration begins, 1,700 trial migrations will be carried out clerically, the DWP computer software will not be used or tested until full migration starts in February 2011.  The letter acknowledges that migration “carries a certain amount of risk” because of this lack of testing.  In fact, the document admits that the trial will not: “Test any of the IT functionality Test any of the key process design involving IT/User interaction Test timings not related to customer phone calls e.g. assessment and payment of the case, as this will be managed clerically Stress test business volumetrics required from Go Live Test Atos capacity required from Go Live” So, the supposed trial, will deal with only a tiny number of claimants, approximately 1,700, over a period of four months with no use of Jobcentre Plus computer software, everything will be done on paper.  Immediately afterwards, full migration will begin with 10,000 claimants a week,  approximately 75 times as many being assessed in the trial and using entirely untested DWP software.  If anyone is still dim witted enough to believe the coalition Tory government had the best interest of those least able to defend themselves, they should consider the fact the DWP admits it is totally unprepared to deal with the fallout from these proposed benefit changes.  It seems Cameron, Clegg and Osborne simply do not care that claimants will be plunged into increased poverty, nor the staff at Job Centre Plus will be place under an intolerable burden which will make it impossible for them to provide a civilised service. All they care about is their reactionary ideology being put into practice and to hell with the human cost. Risky IB to ESA transfer may affect DLA, leaked DWP letter reveals

21 July 2010 A DWP mole has provided Benefits and Work with a confidential letter which reveals that DLA claims may be affected when 1.5 million incapacity benefit claimants are transferred to employment and support allowance, beginning next year.  The letter also discloses that the DWP consider migration to be a ‘risk’ because the pre-migration pilot will test almost nothing . Until full migration starts the DWP will have no idea whether its computer software will work or whether Jobcentre Plus or Atos will be able to cope with the huge volume of extra medicals, phone calls and letters involved. The confidential letter, dated 29 June 2010, informs Jobcentre Plus managers that the DWP will reassess approximately 1,518,000 claimants out of a total of 2.5 million currently on incapacity benefits.  This number allows for ‘off-flows’ of claimants due to death or recovery and for those reaching state pension age. The letter reveals that the DWP expect “about 20% of existing IB customers to subsequently submit JSA claims” after being refused ESA.  This means that Jobcentre Plus is expecting to cope with an additional 300,000 JSA claims beginning in March 2011, at the same time as it is cutting around 84,000 staff An “Early Migration Trial” will run from October 2010 to January 2011 to test the processes for migration and to “gauge customer reaction”.  Claimants will be selected from Burnley and Aberdeen Benefits Delivery Centres and the trial will also involve the use of Contact Centres in Coventry, Bangor and Bridgend. However, all 1,700 trial migrations will be carried out clerically, meaning that DWP computer software will not be used or tested until full migration starts in February 2011.  The letter acknowledges that migration “carries a certain amount of risk” because of this lack of testing.  In fact, the document admits that the trial will not: “Test any of the IT functionality Test any of the key process design involving IT/User interaction Test timings not related to customer phone calls e.g. assessment and payment of the case, as this will be managed clerically Stress test business volumetrics required from Go Live Test Atos capacity required from Go Live” So, the supposed trial, will deal with a tiny 1,700 claimants over a period of four months with no use of Jobcentre Plus computer software – everything will be done on paper.  Immediately afterwards, full migration will begin with 10,000 claimants a week – approximately 75 times as many - being assessed using entirely untested DWP software. The DWP won’t know how long it will take to process cases and pay people or have any idea whether Jobcentre plus or Atos can cope with the workload once migration begins.  Whilst Atos will be using the same software they already use for work capability assessments, they are having to recruit new staff to carry out medicals and open new medical examination centres in an attempt to cope with the increased workload. The possibility of chaos, not just for claimants being transferred but for everyone else using Jobcentre Plus and Atos services is immense.  If everything doesn’t run smoothly call centres will be jammed with thousands of angry and distressed claimants, paperwork will pile up as staff spend their time fire-fighting and the tribunals service will struggle beneath the weight of additional appeals. The DWP, however, appear to be hoping to reduce the number of appeals by getting decision makers to explain decisions over the telephone: “Reassessment decisions will be given to customers in an outbound phone call from Decision Makers in the BDC [Benefit Delivery Centre]. Despite this we should anticipate that we will need to continue to handle a significant number of appeals against the reassessment process.” The letter also explains that the claimants undergoing migration will be subject to “a number of touch-points through their journey to provide support and encourage compliance”.  There is no indication of what a “touch-point” might be. Finally, the document warns that “The outcome of the reassessment process may ultimately affect customers claims for Disability living allowance (DLA but not Attendance Allowance” The letter does not enlarge on this statement in any way, but it is a worrying indication that the DWP is intending to use the work capability assessments carried out on migrating claimants to also reconsider some DLA awards.. Whether this will be at the discretion of individual decision makers or whether the DWP software will automatically trigger a review of a DLA award in specified circumstances is not clear. What is clear, however, is that because of an absence of any proper preparation or testing, the DWP has no idea whether migration will run smoothly or be a total disaster.

Documentary on the IRA volunteers escape from the Maidstone prison ship.(1972)

If you want cheering up, or wish to have a laugh at the British authorities expense, there is a half hour documentary here, which looks at the escape back in 1972 of seven PIRA volunteers from the UK prison ship Maidstone. Sadly only four of them survived the war, but one of them, Tommy Gorman is interviewed in the film along with a number of other people who were either on the prison hulk, or covered the story for the media. Whilst it is in Irish, it has English sub titles and comes in two parts. As one of the escapees said, looking back "it seemed more like Monty Python," but of course if the men had been spotted by their British army jailers whilst breaking out, they undoubtedly would have been shot dead.

Part one

Part two.

Classic cartoons by Fred Wright.

Thanks for the heads up to international journal of socialist renewal

More liberal drug laws introduced in the Czech Republic.

As the centre right coalition in the UK looks at ways to toughen the UK's already draconian illicit drug laws and treatment programs, by restricting the time heroin addicts can legally be prescribed methadone. In the Czech Republic a new law has come into force which makes it a misdemeanour to possess for personal use, a small amount of cannabis or speed, the law also covers possession of less than 1.5 grams of heroin, 1 gram of cocaine, or four tablets of ecstasy. Those found to be in possession of small amounts of illicit drugs will receive an on the spot fine and no longer have their lives scarred by being brought before the Courts. 

As the UK prime Minister David Cameron has all but admitted taking illicit drugs it is impossible not to conclude his governments attitude to illicit drugs is yet another example of this government demanding of the electorate. "Do what we say, not what we do."

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Every summer, outdoor techno parties are held in secret locations across the Czech Republic. Sometimes, the illegal rave will be held in the countryside, a field where many of the young people keep going for days on a cocktail of drugs – ecstasy, speed and increasingly methamphetamine, a highly dangerous drug commonly known to the wider world as crystal meth, and to Czechs as pervitine, piko or pernik.

But if by chance they're caught by the police, and if they have less than two grams of pervetine, these techno fans are safe in the knowledge that  - thanks to the new law codifying drug possession - the worst that can happen is a 600 euro ($777)  fine.

The new Czech law spells out exactly what constitutes a misdemeanour - for which you pay a fine or receive a caution - and what constitutes a criminal offense, for which you can go to prison.

“From January 1st, what amounts to ‘more than a small amount' of drugs will be clearly classified," then Justice Minister Daniela Kovacova said in December 2009.

"Any more than 40 magic mushrooms will be regarded as ‘more than a small amount'. For marihuana, ‘more than a small amount' will be regarded as possessing more than five cannabis plants.”

A crime or a misdemeanour?

Previously, it was up to invidual policemen to decide what constituted ‘more than a small amount of drugs'.

The new law is clear: a person found with more than 15 grams of marihuana, or 1.5 grams of heroin, or 1 gram of cocaine, or four tablets of ecstasy will most likely be arrested and sent to court. Anything under that amount is a misdemeanour.

Czech journalist Jiri X. Dolezal, who had been campaigning for the legalisation of so-called ‘soft drugs' such as marihuana, welcomed the new legislation.

“The new law is without doubt a good thing, mainly because of the new legal security, not just for the police, but also for users, who I suppose I'm representing here,” he said.

But the new legislation has also increased the rift between those who say the Czech Republic has de facto ‘decriminalised' drugs, and those who believe the change is merely the clarification of what was just a very vague law.

"It doesn't change your attitude to drugs."

Possessing fewer than four ecstasy pills - a mísdemeanour Dr. Ivan Douda has been treating Czech drug addicts for 33 years. He agreed that the new legislation was relatively liberal compared to other European countries, but laughed off suggestions that the new law would encourage drug use among Czechs or even attract drug tourists from elsewhere in Europe.

 “If you want to try something, it's possible in Prague, in Paris, in London or wherever," he told Deutsche Welle. "If you want to. If you don't want to, I think this small change of the law doesn't change anything in your attitude to drugs.”

If the new law had really ‘decriminalised' drugs, Douda said, one would expect their use would have increased, which hadn't happened. As for HIV/AIDS, he said, of the 157 new HIV cases recorded last year, just four were intravenous drug users. 75% of hard drug users regularly came forward to get themselves tested.

Author: Rob Cameron

First published here.