Friday Video Corner

Keep our NHS Public - Kill the Bill & Defend abortion rights

Via the LRC

The Health and Social Care Bill will be returning to the House of Commons on 6th and 7th September for the Report Stage and Third Reading. This is when MPs vote on the amendments and vote the Bill through (or not) before it goes to the House of Lords). It is absolutely clear that we have to put pressure on MPs in their constituencies to demonstrate how the public want to reject this Bill, and will reject their MP at the next election if they vote for the Bill. Lobby your MP today to vote against the Bill.

The Bill would break up and sell off parts of our health service.

• Lobby your MP today and save the NHS! See the Unite4theNHS website on how to lobby your MP
• In London? Join the demonstration on Wed 7 Sep
• Sign the ‘withdraw NHS Refom Bill’ on Government e-petitions website

Independent lawyers for 38 Degrees have found that:

• The Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide a health service will be scrapped. On top of that, a new “hands-off clause” removes the government’s powers to oversee local consortia and guarantee the level of service wherever we live. We can expect increases in postcode lotteries – and less ways to hold the government to account if the service deteriorates.
• The NHS will almost certainly be subject to UK and EU competition law and the reach of procurement rules will extend across all NHS commissioners. Private health companies will be able to take new NHS commissioning groups to court if they don’t win contracts. Scarce public money could be tied up in legal wrangles instead of hospital beds. Meanwhile, the legislation lifts the cap on NHS hospitals filling beds with private patients.

In London, Unite has organised a demonstration on 7th September at St Thomas’ Hospital at 6.30pm, prior to the TUC candle-lit vigil outside Parliament at 9.30 pm.

For more information see the Keep our NHS Public website

Right-wing Conservative MPs have also tabled amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill designed to delay women’s access to abortion. The LRC has a clear pro-choice policy and is affiliated to the Abortion Rights campaign. Lobby your MP to support the right to safe, legal abortion in this country and the right to impartial information. Follow the link on the Abortion Rights website.

The 'decent left' and anti-fascism

Peter Tatchell turned up to yesterday's demonstration with a placard attacking "far right Islamism". To describe this as unhelpful is an understatement. As is often the case these days, Twitter got to the heart of the matter. Labour councillor David Adley tweeted this:

"stop far right Islamists" is completely missing the point of today's demo. Where were the "far right Islamists" today?

Presumably Tatchell believed himself to be acting in the spirit of an earlier post on his website. I quote the relevant part,

Islamist fundamentalists mirror the right-wing ideology of the BNP and EDL. In fact, they are far worse. They want to establish a religious dictatorship, ban trade unions and political parties and deny women equal human rights. They endorse hatred and violence against Jewish, Hindu and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Muslims who do not conform to their harsh interpretation of Islam are harassed and threatened. They support terrorism and the suicide bombing of innocent civilians. Not even the BNP and EDL are this extreme.

The failure of anti-fascists and the left to speak out against Islamist fundamentalists has created a political vacuum, which the EDL is seeking to exploit and manipulate.


To be credible and effective, opponents of the EDL need to be consistent by also taking a stand against the Islamist far right. Only this way can we offer a principled alternative to the EDL, which isolates and targets the extremists without demonising the whole Muslim population,” said Mr Tatchell.

We are not told which "Islamic fundamentalists" Tatchell has in mind. We are not provided with any examples of their effects on vulnerable groups. I don't doubt, of course, that there are homophobic Muslims. And yet we are not told why these are any more of a problem than homophobic Christians, Jews, or atheists, all of whom exist, but many of whom are possessed of the foresight not to be born with brown skin. And there we have the beginnings, only the beginnings mind, of what is wrong with Tatchell's position.

Not a Muslim

 A similar position got articulated on the eve of the march in a more sophisticated and less messianic fashion by my friend and LRC comrade Carl over at Though Cowards Flinch. For all that I respect him as a socialist, Carl is very wrong on this issue. It's worth looking at what he says, in order to bring into focus why socialists should reject the 'decent' position on anti-fascist mobilisations - "take the opportunity to oppose fascist and Islamist 'extremists' alike". Here's Carl:

For a few on the Left, tomorrow’s counter-protest has one minor caveat, in that it will centre around the East London Mosque (ELM).

In 2009, the London Muslim Centre, which is part of the ELM, located adjacent to it, hosted a video link of 9/11 spiritual leader Anwar al-Awlaki, as part of a conference on the “end of days” – advertising poster of which illustrated bombs dropping over a darkened New York City.

Prima facie, this is quite a serious caveat. We can all agree that Anwar al-Awlaki is a dreadful man, and no friend of anyone with an interest in human liberation. Things are not quite as straightforward as they first appear. Carl himself quotes the East London Mosque as saying that the event of concern was the doing of an 'external hirer'. One wonders what has happened in church halls over the years. And here, I think, is part of what is going on. There is a basic failure to understand the function of a mosque as a fairly fluid community space. There is some sort of thought lurking in the background that a centralised authority is privy to everything that happens within its walls. Carl is by no means alone in this: mosques have come under intense scrutiny from the right and liberal-left alike. A good deal of this, and not a little of the subsequent outrage, results from a basic failure of white secular enquirers to understand the dynamics of religious institutions, especially within minority communities. We could call this sociological imperialism.

So, as it happens, I think Carl is wrong on the details of the particular case, or rather on how to interpret them. But ultimately that's not important. Let's hand him the strongest possible case for the sake of argument. Suppose the ELM was not only culpable, but complicit in, the screening of the al-Awlaki video. Even then, it would be wrong to push the point in tandem with an anti-fascist mobilisation.

The first point to be made here should be bread and butter to the left. Context matters. It is not just what you say that is of political importance, but when you say it, to whom, and how. We do not speak into politically neutral thin air, but into definite social contexts, already defined by faultlines of power.  In the particular context where people are under attack as Muslims, where their experience of oppression is defined in terms of their Muslim identity, and where the attacking party is a fascist group: that is not the time to talk about faults internal to Islam in Britain. Uniting against an immediate fascist threat is an absolute priority. The failure of Tatchell and Carl to grasp the vital role of context is, I think, another (exponentially more serious) instance of a mistake made by much of the liberal left around the papal visit.

This is particularly irksome when one considers it in the light of the EDL themselves. Although the backbone of that organisation is constructed out of old-fashioned street-power fascists and soccer casuals, some moves have been made to emulate the Dutch far-right's model of appealing to a crisis of multiculturalism (on which see this interesting book, to be reviewed here in due course): liberal (or at least 'English') values are under attack from extreme Islam. Women and LGBTQ people are especially threatened. The EDL will defend them: so they claim. Given this narrative, it is irresponsible to the point of stupidity for the likes of Tatchell to repeat something that looks very much like the EDL's own narrative at the very point the fascists try to come to a largely Muslim area. An area, it should be added, which has already been the focus of attempts to exploit this narrative for far right purposes around the fiasco of East End 'Gay Pride'. For more, see Andy here.

Photo by Kit Withnail

Returning specifically to Tatchell's point about LGBTQ rights. Of course there are issues with these amongst Muslims, as there are in all other significant religious and cultural groups. The first point has to be to refuse the exceptionalism, to which Tatchell seems prey, and which cannot but be racist and Islamophobic in effect. Fine: but what about the young bullied gay Muslim, whose taunters use religion to justify their action? The question is a good one. If the left doesn't care about him, we may as well pack up and go home. It is undoubtedly worth pointing out that the EDL care just about enough for this gay Muslim to consider him worthy of having his head kicked in. But that's not a sufficient answer.

We have to say something, and we can. The choice is not one between the context-insensitive one-man liberal interventionism of Peter Tatchell and doing nothing to combat homophobia amongst religious minorities. The principled left position can only be to oppose all oppression: "No to Islamophobia! No to homophia!" to put the point in slogan form. Refusing the false dilemma, we have to recognise that as well as the top-down approach to oppression on offer from Tatchell, there is also a bottom-up version. This version has the humility to acknowledge that gay and lesbian people and groups exist within minority communities, that they have a voice, and that voice should be listened to. This version engages in the day-to-day work in wards and constituencies, building up political relationships, and responding to incidents of homophobia as and when they occur. Crucially, this version realises that the experience of shared struggle can be transformative. I want my neighbour to be less homophobic? After I've stood shoulder-to-shoulder to him on a protest march, or formed a line around his mosque, after he has witnessed a local LGTBQ group helping to defend him and his fellow worshippers from fascists - then the response might be very different when I challenge a homophobic comment than it otherwise might have been.

Religious communities do not exist in a social vacuum. They are divided along lines of class. They are subject to tensions around gender and sexuality. Their members sit at diverse points on a spectrum of opinions. Contradictory positions co-exist within the mind of a single individual. Stances are adopted with varying degrees of convictions. It is, and nobody on the left claims otherwise, part of the job of socialists to support the resolution of these tensions and contradictions in a direction which furthers the ending of exploitation and oppression. How we do that is what is at issue. The biggest indictment of Peter Tatchell is that his words will do absolutely nothing for gay Muslims, but they might just possibly provide a handy quotation for the EDL; "even lefties agree with us".

But back on planet Earth, I fear, Peter Tatchell stopped being a lefty some years ago.

Fascists on the streets of London

As we were walking through Tower Hamlets yesterday, a friend mused that this was probably the most politically contested space in England. He had a point. At every area this part of East London has been the scene of conflicts. Electorally, it has been home to significant contests between Labour and RESPECT, and more recently between Lutfur Rahman, the democratically selected Labour candidate for mayor, and a New Labour imposed pretender. Historically, there has been a strong Tory showing. Working class Toryism has always had a certain home in the East End. More recently, a Toryism that is certainly not working class has followed the Docklands development. An electoral struggle against fascism resulted from the election of a BNP councillor on the Isle of Dogs in 1993. Economically, the past couple of decades have seen local working class people increasingly priced out of housing, first by the Docklands 'yuppies', latterly by fashionable young professionals. This situation is open to exploitation by the far right, with immigrant communities - various types of which have found their way to East London since Huguenot times - being scapegoated.

It is, however, external racism which has posed an immediate physical threat to the East End, both in the past and presently. The Battle of Cable Street of 1936, in which locals stopped Moseley's blackshirts from marching, has entered the annals of anti-fascist history. The resolve which drew 1,500 organised anti-fascists to Tower Hamlets to oppose the EDL, and the determination of local youths out on the streets in their hundreds, belongs to the same history as this.

It is just possible that there are still people out there who doubt the parallel because they don't believe that the EDL are a fascist group, perhaps preferring to give credence to the EDL's own superficial image as defenders of 'liberal' English culture against Islamic fundamentalism. Having watched a party of three EDL members, probably sent out as scouts by a larger group, sporting swastika tattoos and bothering Bengali teenagers on the back streets of Whitechapel, I find this position almost incredible. Just in case there is anyone reading this who is prepared to give it the time of day, I refer you to the extensive research on the EDL's far-right nature. And because the EDL are a group of violent fascists, committed to force and intimidation, the voices which suggested that there shouldn't be a counter-demonstration yesterday were deluded in their naivety. We are not dealing here with small-time school bullies, for whom the maxim "ignore them, and they'll go away" might have some applicability. These people mean business, and will do it unless we stop them.

Image by Louise Whittle

So what did happen yesterday? About a thousand EDL members, along with the odd supporter of the Scottish Defence League, came to London. Their planned march in Tower Hamlets, targeting the East London Mosque, had been banned by Theresa May, along with all other marches in five London boroughs for a 30 day period, following an ill-advised campaign by Searchlight and local politicians. Instead, they eventually held a static protest at Aldgate, outside the borough. Over the course of the day 60 EDLers were arrested. Some members of the group briefly set foot in the borough later in the day when a coach taking them out of London broke down. These met with a concerted response from locals.

On the other side, a static anti-fascist protest was held in Whitechapel from mid-morning. There was a rally with speeches. When the EDL had gone, a 'victory march' was held.




The claim of victory was warranted, as Richard argues persuasively over at Lenin's Tomb. This is no thanks to the ban on marches. There were many reasons to oppose this -  see the LRC statement here, Richard again here and Nina Power here. Additionally, and at a purely practical level, static demonstrations of the sort we had yesterday are not good for keeping people's attention and involvement. Significant numbers went home over the course of the several hours. From a wider perspective, a worrying precedent has been set by the ban, and we are likely to see the fruits of it with respect to the anti-cuts movement over the next year.

Also, whilst the victory cheers are warranted, they should be relatively muted. The EDL mobilised a thousand people with the intent of intimidating Muslims. This makes for a sobering thought, and is a reminder that the organisation is an ongoing and serious threat. Fun though it may be to laugh at the EDL's more, um, intellectually challenged members, in the final analysis the group is no laughing matter. Yesterday needs to followed up with a concerted rejuvenation of the anti-fascist movement in this country. That means making the argument for counter-mobilisations of the sort we saw yesterday. It also involves the less exciting, but equally necessary, task of patient work in communities, building unity and combating racist ideas. Above all else, we have the job of supplying a coherent and attractive left alternative to the failed mainstream politics of the past few decades. This alone will ensure that groups like the EDL do not channel justified discontent into the poisonous world of fascism.

Did they pass?

The poor quality photo above (OK, it never was a skill of mine) shows police lines kettling EDL members outside Liverpool Street Station. Soon after it was taken, the group was dispersed, proceeding to be drunk and offensive around the area. Elsewhere there were reports of big EDL gatherings, anti-fascist counter-demonstrations, and all sorts from around the East End. It was very confusing to be on the ground.

Previously, I'd been at the UAF demonstration in Whitechapel, and had walked around the back streets with Harpymarx and her partner: you could feel the tension as local youths hung around, nervous but organised, not knowing what to expect. Local councillors were out and about and visible.

I'm still not sure what happened today from an overall point of view. News is still coming in. According to the staid establishment anti-fascists of Searchlight the EDL did not enter Tower Hamlets all day.. I have no idea at this point if this is right.

This weekend, I'll do a long post on today. I'll also do a post on Peter Tatchell's, supposedly even-handed but concretely damaging position on opposing the Islamophobic right. Sadly this has found support from Carl over at Though Cowards Flinch.

In the meantime, there has been a live blog from Hope Not Hate. Much though I have major issues with their political take on anti-fascism, it gives a sense of what's been happening.

ETA: A friend from Unite Against Fascism has confirmed that the EDL did not enter Tower Hamlets, but rallied at Aldgate, a few metres from the borough border. We can chalk that down as a victory, although I think there's a lot to be learned from today. On which more at a later date. 

ETA2: There now seems to be an ongoing incident within Tower Hamlets. (7:38pm)

LRC statement on the EDL march in Tower Hamlets

From the LRC website:

The LRC vehemently opposes the racism and bigotry that underpins groups like the EDL and the BNP, and postponed the date of our National Committee meeting in London to allow members to take part in the counter-mobilisation to the proposed EDL march in Tower Hamlets on 3 September.

We did not add our names to calls for the EDL march to be banned however. We believe the most effective way to defeat racism and fascism is to campaign and mobilise against it. The EDL cannot be banned out of existence, it must be defeated by political campaigning to mobilise communities against the bigotry they promote and the hatred they incite.

As socialists, we also have an analysis of the state. Unlike liberals, we do not believe the state and its police force are neutral actors, but protectors first and foremost of the capitalist order. Socialists must resist the lazy thinking that believes the state can fight our battles for us and the delusional thinking that it will act in our interest, especially under an extreme right wing government that is determined to rip up the last vestiges of social democracy.

There is also a problem in the anti-fascist organisations in Britain that themselves have little in the way of democratic decision-making structures. The tactical mistake of asking for the state to ban the EDL, led to the entirely foreseeable consequence that such bans would be used to ban peaceful protest. It is therefore no surprise that buoyed by such support, the Home Secretary gladly banned all marches across five London boroughs for 30 days.

That the Hope not Hate campaign regards this as a victory compounds their tactical failings and emphasises the need for trade unions (who are now banned from marching in defence of jobs, pay and pensions) and communities (now banned from marching against cuts and the fascists) to discuss and debate tactics within the anti-fascist movement.

The reality is that the EDL will still mobilise to demonstrate in a ‘static’ protest, which is just as likely to lead to violence, as it did when marches were banned recently in Leicester and Telford.

The LRC continues to support the mobilisation on 3 September in Tower Hamlets and encourages all LRC members to attend from 11am at the corner of Vallance Road and Whitechapel Road, London E1 (near East London Mosque)(see event details)

Kill your idols

I have been a Monty Python fan from primary school days. The thing is you can like a piece of art, and I'm not nearly snooty enough to think sketch comedy can't be art, whilst thinking the artist is a complete tosser. I am, after all, also an admirer of T.S. Eliot's poetry.

Why am I telling you this? I'll lead into that by reminding you about an incident a couple of years ago. The BBC, unwisely, invited BNP Grupenfuhrer Nick Griffin onto Question Time, where he was given a rocky reception by the studio audience. On behalf of the Master Race, Griffin replied that it was unfair that the programme had been filmed in 'ethnically cleansed' London, which was 'no longer a British city'. These pesky foreigners with their anti-fascist ways.

Enter John Cleese, him of silly walks fame. He has carried off the incredible task of being more racist than Griffin. Nick, in a major concession to namby-pamby inclusivism, complained only about London not being British. Cleese, however, has identified the real problem - London is no longer English. Take that Griffin, with your new-fangled acceptance of the Scots and Welsh!

It's a case study in nostalgic nationalism leading down the path to racism. And be in no doubt that is what this is.

Southwark/ Friday Video Corner

In a happier world, Councillor John, leader of Southwark's 'Labour' council would be facing expulsion for bringing the Party into disrepute. In an even happier world than that, Labour would be so perfused with socialist values, that nobody who would ever countenance a policy of enforced homelessness would go within a hundred miles of him. We don't live in a happy world, however, so instead I'd just like to repeat my call for you to write to him, protesting against his policy of evicting rioters' families. You may also be interested to learn that he is on Twitter.

Enough of this. Some Friday video love for you. First up, some 90s nostalgia:



And then some brain food for the weekend:



Have a good one.

Religion and abortion redux

Well, some good news on the Dorries abortion amendment. The Government has refused to back it, making its passage look much less likely.

That is the most important thing to be got from the Guardian piece I've just linked to. I can't resist, however, drawing attention to the final paragraph:

But a combination of the unpredictable intake of new Tory MPs, split between social conservatives and modernisers, the number of Roman Catholic Labour MPs, and the high degree of nuance of the amendment make it extremely unclear which way the vote will go.

Roman Catholic Labour MPs, huh? Plenty of these have always voted pro-choice. The most prominent such MP, Jon Cruddas, is a case in point. Which didn't prevent people hounding him over his views on abortion when he stood as a deputy leadership candidate. On the other hand, Dorries' 'Labour' partner-in-crime, Frank Field, is a rather middle-of-the-road Anglican, and other important Labour opponents of abortion rights - notably Roy Hattersley - have had no religious beliefs at all.

Lurking here is the classic slander that Roman Catholics are mindless drones in the sway of a foreign power. It is bigotry and should be called as such. Not least, because until that happy day when Labour is recovered for socialism, the dimmer amongst the sub US Democrat liberals who insist on joining our party have a tendency to lap this stuff up.

Two bits of activism

I've been a bit theoretical of late. By way of redressing the balance, two bits of activism, one real world and one cyber, for you.

First, for those of you in London, this on Saturday (via UAF):

The national demonstration against the English Defence League on 3rd September will now assemble in Whitechapel.

The new assembly point is 11am, corner of Vallance Road and Whitechapel Road, London E1.

The site is very close to the East London Mosque (see map, below) where we will show unity against the EDL racists and fascists, who particularly target Muslims.

Turnout crucial

It is crucial that we get the biggest possible turnout on the antiracist demo to show the widest possible opposition to the EDL. The EDL has confirmed that it intends to go ahead with its planned demo in multiracial, multicultural Tower Hamlets on 3 September – the home secretary’s “ban” is only on marching and the racists now plan to hold a “static” demonstration.

EDL leader Stephen Yaxley Lennon (AKA “Tommy Robinson”) told BBC London his group would “still show up”.
We want the biggest possible turnout on the UAF/United East End demo to show that the vast majority of people don’t want the racists and fascists of the EDL in Tower Hamlets or anywhere else.

Second, you may have noticed that the Labour-led Southwark Council is moving to evict the families of convicted rioters. I've just emailed the leader of the Council. If you're a Labour Party member you should do the same:

Dear Councillor John,

As a Labour Party member I am writing to you to express my disgust at Southwark Council's move to evict the families of convicted rioters.

This is an unacceptable punitive measure, which will impact disproportionately on vulnerable people, is absolutely antithetical to Labour's core values, and risks alienating key elements of our core support in the run-up to a crucial mayoral election. I urge you to reconsider a policy which, I strongly suspect, will place you out of favour with the overwhelming majority of the Party's membership, and give your authority something of a pariah status within our movement.

Yours sincerely,

Bank Holiday Video Corner

Whilst we're on the topic of Dorries:

Dorries, Abortion, and Religion

Nadine Dorries is back. And this time she's dangerous.

And no, Cranmer, it is not sexist to be angrily opposed to a woman who seemingly believes her sex to be incapable of making adult choices at important moments in life, so that they stand in need of state-enforced counselling prior to abortions.

Dorries is putting an amendment to next week's Health and Social Care Bill requiring that women be giving counselling independent of abortion providers prior to abortion. The concerns of charities described here are more than justified. This is a reactionary piece of legislation, the aim of which is to restrict reproductive choice, and which is grounded in an infantilising view of women. You can help to oppose it by writing to your MP.

Enter the Guardian and the usual suspects on social media. Quickly the issue is 'religion': people trying to force doctrine, which should belong in the private sphere, down others' throats. Cue "keep your rosaries out of my ovaries" - a slogan which manages to fail on theology and elementary anatomy in one go - and the recapitulation of the general religion-is-authoritarian narrative. The Grauniad, in particular, leads on backdoor machinations by evangelical groups. Meanwhile, Laurie Penny described Nadine Dorries as "every Christian lobbyist's favourite MP". This will, no doubt, come as news to Christian CND.

As a Christian pro-choicer I can't help but feel got at by all of this. In itself, this shouldn't matter: I am a man, and hardly therefore a member of the most oppressed group in this scenario. The priority right now has to be defending reproductive rights, not calming the minds of the religious left. In any case, I do feel disquieted by the positions of not a few anti-choice public Christians. However, I think the presentation of the abortion issue in terms of a secularist culture war is damaging for reasons that extend beyond my own peace of mind. I think it is bad for the pro-choice movement.

The use of the abortion debate to have a pop at religion misses the target. Lots of people are religious, billions worldwide. Within religious communities there are a diversity of views on abortion, as on almost any other political topic. These communities are themselves divided along lines of class and sex, and are home to competing traditions and interpretations of key texts, which give rise to internal tensions. This subtle complexity, requiring of the secular left a thoughtful selective solidarity, gets steamrolled over by the "blame religion" approach to anti-choice sentiment. And this helps nobody more than the religious conservatives. Take a self-professed "traditionalist" Roman Catholic or a conservative evangelical. These people have developed the haranguing of their co-religionists to an art form. "We are the only real adherents of the faith", they say, "You cannot be pro-choice and a Christian". Now, suddenly, the secular left has formed an unholy alliance with these ultra-conservatives. "They're right", opines the Guardianista, "To be a Christian is to be anti-choice". What is the feminist Christian to do?

Meanwhile patriarchy gets let off the hook. There is no political or psychological depth to the account that understands anti-choice beliefs to result from religion. It is fair to say that the FHM reader who scoffs at a pro-choicer, "well, they should keep their legs shut then, shouldn't they?" is not taking his inspiration from scripture. The ambivalence of patriarchy to female seuxality runs back a long way historically, goes deep within contemporary psyches, and is intimately tied up with the dominant power relations in our society. Now, of course, religious institutions have played a big part in this. It could not but be the case, given the longevity of religion in human socieites, and its importance to so many people. Any successful ideology will need to make some impact on religion to reproduce itself. But that does not make religion the principle cause of patriarchy. On the contrary: there is patriarchal religion, just as there is patriarchal art, clothing, music, and law. To oppose wholeheartedly patriarchal religion no more requires being anti-religion than opposition to patriarchal clothing entails naturism.

The pro-choice movement is in danger, then, of loosing allies. It is playing an active part in fuelling a siege mentality that aids the religious right, and makes it more difficult for religious believers to align themselves with feminist causes. To the minds of many ardent secularists this does not matter very much, because religion is a minority concern, dying out rapidly. And, if you are a white, Anglo-Saxon, middle class European city-dweller, you might reasonably think that. It has not escaped the notice of some of us, however, that the world is not populated entirely by white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, European city-dwellers. Even in Britain, let my audience be amazed, there are people who don't fit into this category. And they constitute, I suspect, a significant proportion of the swing-voters on the abortion issue.

The line "religious beliefs should be private, and should not affect policymaking" is also not nearly as unproblematic as it might appear. These days it often co-exists with a commitment to something called "evidence based policymaking", cheerleader for which is the unmourned former LibDem MP Evan Harries. I dislike the evidence-based movement, on the grounds that it depoliticises policymaking, and fails to recognise - movement dominated by bourgeois men that it is - that the gathering and interpretation of 'evidence' are already tinged with politics. That's for another post. There is a bigger problem with the neutral state vs. private belief framework, which should concern feminists.

Human beings cannot be compartmentalised in the fashion that liberal neutralism seems to require. Of course our substantive beliefs and ethical frameworks, religious or otherwise, will affect our political reasoning. It is senseless, and dangerous, to pretend otherwise. We might as well be up front about it. But the converse is also true: our, supposedly private, beliefs, lives, and relationships are not immune from the impact of the kind of power relations we term political. My religious beliefs are not immune from political criticism. Hence, for instance, the kind of internal divisions within religious communities I have already described. Not do my thoughts or actions magically become desocialised when I close the door, whether to my flat or to the church. The personal is political, as the old feminist slogan has it. It is damaging, as well as naive, to try to conduct the abortion debate within the framework of a political theory that exists in intrinsic tension with feminist claims. There is no neat division of human existence to be had: nothing is by nature excluded from the domain of politics, whether as an input or as an object of criticism. We just have to live with that, and work through the struggles, in our societies and within ourselves.

Then there's the culture wars angle on all of this. I've mentioned this before, funnily enough in the context of an absurd proposal from Nadine Dorries and an equal and opposite absurd reaction from the liberal-left. The first time as tragedy...

We are in danger, in Britain, of following the professionally opinionated down a road that leads to US style culture wars. Those of us who yearn for a model of politics more fertile than this, one which pays attention to the dynamics of class and sex that get sublimated by the God vs. Reason, Old vs. New, Values vs. Evidence dichotomies should resist this. We do not not need a grand story about the pristine secular state being polluted by the shadowy dealings of underground evangelicals and wicked bishops in order to fight for reproductive choice. The memory of the coat hanger ought to suffice.

The roots of the riots : some thoughts

What caused the riots? I take it that we can bracket the "they were without cause" hypothesis, heard usually alongside the familiar falsehood that to explain is to excuse. This view makes rioters into quasi-divine moments of pure will immune from the casual order of thing, spontaneously bringing havoc to branches of Footlocker the nation over. It is odd how many residents of 21st century secular Britain are prepared to sign up for such a metaphysically extravagant thesis.

Following Zizek, we should also have short shrift for the pet narratives of right and centre-left alike. For a standard issue Tory MP, this was about proletarian (they wouldn't use the word) ill-discipline, often female proletarian ill-discipline: will the poor never cease breeding? The view, on the other hand, in the cafes of Hampstead is that we need more youth clubs, and perhaps that the cuts caused the riots. Social democracy, with its courageously upbeat view of reality, refuses to believe that capitalism itself could breed arson on the streets whose lives it dominates. So, instead the problem is capitalism with not enough youth workers. This is a view which belongs in the mouth of Mr Mackey from South Park, m'kay: it is not a serious critical analysis.

A serious critical analysis will not be forthcoming from me in this short(ish) blogpost. Instead I'd like to make three points, in three paragraphs. As follows:

First, there is a clear sense, which hasn't been emphasised nearly enough, in which there is an obvious answer to the question "what caused the riots?" namely the police shooting of Mark Duggan. The initial riots in Tottenham were a direct consequence of the police killing, and subsequently seemingly lying about, a local man. This sparked initial events, and these in turn acted as a tinderbox for other parts of London, and ultimately of elsewhere in England. Why people in these places emulated events in Tottenham is what is really being asked when we say "what caused the riots?" But we shouldn't lose sight of Duggan. A city where the police can kill with impunity will never be free from riots. And be clear, that to be shot with the hollow point bullets the Met are now using, banned under the Hague convention for use in warfare, is almost certainly to be killed.





Second, there is an equally important sense in which we should not be content with any purported explanation of the riots which stops short of implicating everything - the totality of capitalist social relations. There is a natural correlation between non-totalising explanations and reformist politics: if the riots were just the result of cuts to youth services and/ or lack of educational opportunities, then the wound in the body politic can be healed without fundamental transformation of the system as such, just so long as the system is able to make good these deficiencies. But capitalism by its nature is a totalising system, drawing diverse and disparate lives and communities together, forcing their participation in a circuit of commodities, dominating cultures, moulding senses of identity, and dictating patterns of life. Making this point doesn't force us to be the kind of useless leftist who answers "it's capitalism's fault", and no more, to any question about a social problem. The transition from capitalism, in the abstract, to burning shops in Hackney is mediated by a plethora of features of the lives of inner city working class youths. Our city forces young people who, in capitalism's own terms, have nothing to look forward to, into close proximity with people who have everything. "Succeed, consume, enjoy", they are commanded. They are trained to want what they cannot have, only to undergo the double humiliation of denial and denunciation: they are chavs, their parents are scroungers. There is the racism and the police brutality, there is the grinding reality of poverty itself, and there is nihilism. These all gave rise to a growing frustration, much of it undoubtedly unconscious. The events following the killing of Mark Duggan were this frustration finding expression. We can acknowledge all of this, and seek to understand it better,  just so long as we don't forget its systemic origins.

Class hatred for the internet age

Third, the left should be painfully honest about what it is we are seeking to explain. These were not insurrections or revolts. They were directionless acts, the articulation of rage without attention to the deep causes of that rage. To say that they had this collective character is not to deny that some individuals participating in them had more developed political ideas. This video went viral amongst the internet left in the days after the riots. But we need to be so careful here: there is an unhelpful sort of left-wing optimism which sees revolution lurking behind every corner, and thereby avoids facing reality squarely or ever undertaking the kind of hard uninteresting work which could finally issue in genuine change. Much though folks might have wanted there to be revolution, as well as panic, on the streets of London, there wasn't. As Dave Broder argues at length here. To admit this is not to buy into the media slur that the rioters were mindless, a term which dehumanises these young people by denying them the most characteristically human quality, reason. Rather,  the kind of anger which boiled over a couple of weeks back is precisely the result of human agency, of thinking living subjects, being immersed in material conditions which systematically deny them the exercise of that agency. The task of the political left is to meet this anger and propose an outlet that is neither a therapeutic reconciliation to existing reality nor an undirected lashing out. We have failed in that task. Over a course of decades, huge parts of the left have ignored urban working class people, and at this present moment the extreme right are probably as well placed to offer a voice in many areas as we are. Whether this remains the case is up to us.

Source: Danny Robinson

The Carnival of Reaction

As the looting continued, the calls for a violent response began. Should the army be brought in, people asked. Some unlikely characters mooted the use of rubber bullets, sometimes in full knowledge of the fourteen civilian deaths the use of these had caused in the north of Ireland. Less surprising was the call by Tory MEP Roger Helmer for looters to be shot on sight. Whilst government voices did not go quite that far, it was not long before David Cameron was boasting of the availability of water cannon. For some sense of what this means in reality, see here  (graphic image of injury).

The cities calmed down, and the national soul-searching began. Politicians and commentators were heard in almost the same breath to deny that the riots had tangible causes and also to proclaim that they were the result of fatherless families, ill-discipline in schools, want of national service, human rights legislation, or an envy driven by rampant consumerism. As is now notorious, David Starkey offered the view that the problem was with something called 'black culture', which had caused 'the whites' to 'become black'. The right could afford to dismiss this open racism, throwing the ageing don as a sacrificial lamb to the liberal wolves; they already had more than enough material to revive the Broken Britain narrative.

If lack of discipline was, on some accounts, the root of the cancer, then discipline, dispensed by the state, was to be the cure. Since looters and rioters have started appearing in court, sentencing has been systematically severe. Ursula Nevin, a 24 year-old mother, was jailed for five months for receiving a looted pair of shorts (this sentence was subsequently quashed); two young men were jailed for four years for inciting disorder on Facebook - the disorder in question never happened; and a student got six months for the theft of a £3.50 bottle of water. These sentences, obviously deterrent in intent, seem to be the result of central government orders. Nor is this regime without public support. According to YouGov, 81% of the British public believe that the sentences are either 'about right' or 'too soft'.

The populist authoritarianism of the last weeks deserves careful analysis, much deeper than is possible here. It is likely to provide the background for political debate and struggle for months, possibly years, to come.  An interesting, if also moderately terrifying, aspect of it all is the harmony of a wide variety of initial responses, from the general public as well as pundits, with the subsequent governmental line. People called for a tough police clampdown, and Cameron yielded one, like some perversely beneficent collective father. But this was not a soft pliant state in action, responding willy-nilly to the democratic will, because what was being demanded was more control, and less freedom. The courts locked up the looters, the councils threatened to evict them, and the people cheered. Many of the offensive aspects of the clean-up movement should be seen as part of the same phenomenon, a willing popular co-option into a state backlash, although the class basis of the wider co-option is much broader than that of the clean-up.

How did this populist authoritarianism find such a fertile ground? Part of the answer lies with the prominence of conservative ideas in the run-up to, and especially after, the election of the ConDems in 2010. David Cameron's story of a broken society, damaged by the claiming of rights without responsibilities, and divested of any sense of community, was ready made for appropriation in recent weeks. In passing, I should say that the left's response, as with conservatism in general,  needs to be far more subtle than straight out undialectical rejection. The moralising anti-feminism of Nadine Dorries and her ilk, cheered from the sidelines by the Mail and Express, prepared the ground nicely for the acceptability of the line that single mothers breed rioters. Then, of course, there was the demonisation of the working class, especially those sections of it living in social housing or claiming benefits, so brilliantly described recently by Owen Jones. If a group of people are already viewed as scum, as a threat to well-being or prosperity, it is so much easier to advocate gunning them down in the street.

More, however, is going on. The instinct which led well-mannered chartered accountants to call for the Army had a spontaneity about it, it came from inside. It cannot be explained solely in terms of party political broadcasts and attendance at the odd university 'Chavs' party.  When people saw the images from London they were frightened. They were not in the main frightened by threats to their physical safety, unless they lived above a shop in inner London. Nor were they concerned about their property, leaving aside shareholders in JD Sports. Something more primordial was at work: there was a fear, we all felt it, of disorder. And this is very suggestive regarding the kind of subjects who inhabit modern societies.

In order for the state to maintain its citizenry's allegiance, most of that citizenry need to internalise the state's claim to monopolise legitimate violence. They need to feel the need for the state to defend them. They need to view order as good, disorder as bad, and to understand both of these notions in terms of legality. Comprehending this, recognising the psychological depth of insecurities about state power, is vital to grasping what is going on with populism.

What has been internalised, what all of us hold to some extent within our minds, is the capital's fear of the great majority of humankind. It is this fear which gives rise to the violence of the modern state, even as the social form it issues from requires state power for its founding act of theft. The violence of guns and prison cells, however, would not be enough if the state could not, at crucial moments, rely on us to participate in the fear that gave birth to it, to clamour for order, and feel comforted at the sight of a policeman. Because of this, populism is not a counterbalance to state power, but a means to it.

All of this is going to have big consequences for the left. The autumn will witness a new round of anti-cuts protests and industrial action. The post-riots shift to the right will provide the norms for the policing of these. We can expect more surveillance, and perhaps restrictions on our use of social media. The criminalisation of dissent, already well-developed in the response to UK Uncut, will become established. On-the-ground policing of the autumn's actions will be, as the euphemism of the moment puts it, robust. Water cannon have already been cleared by Theresa May for use at demonstrations, and the current climate of reaction will make it easy for the Government to justify their deployment. We can expect the tough sentences of the riots to be mirrored in the treatment of anyone arrested at future anti-cuts actions - and remember that the sentences of student protesters before the riots were already punitive. The experience of the riots, the ensuing authoritarian populism, and the hold it has on people, mean that we cannot rely on an automatic groundswell of support. A good number of people, including plenty who are opposed to cuts, will be minded, when presented with an image of a police officer confronting a protester, to side with the former.

We can also expect the reactionary mood to give new wind to policy initiatives. Cameron has already declared war on the Human Rights Act. A scapegoating of single mothers, of the sort last seen in the 1990s, is already well under way. This, in turn, is linked to a panic about adolescent sexuality which is likely to give fuel to the Dorries bandwagon. The abortion issue is never far from view in these debates. Meanwhile, the foregrounding of concerns about race and culture is concerning: one can imagine anything from censorship of music through to assaults on immigration being the fruit of this particular bigotry. Then, we can confidently expect the perceived background of the rioters to provide cover for a renewed attack on benefits and council housing.

These are bleak times. We should take them very seriously indeed. A backlash is no reason not to fight. It is every reason to think, to organise, and to adapt.

An orderly mob bearing brooms

A week ago on Monday the riots came to Hackney, where I live. The following morning I wandered down to a hastily organised cleanup operation. Arranged through Twitter, under the hashtag #riotcleanup, these events took place all over London. Friends of mine were critical of the events, seeing them as ready-made for co-option by a government narrative. I initially viewed the cleanup as something positive: community self-help, organised 'from below' independent of state control.

There was a lot of truth in that first reaction of mine. I turned up at Hackney Town Hall to find over a hundred people, many of them equipped with brooms, buckets, gloves, and other assorted bits of household equipment, prepared to clean up the streets. As it happens, our willingness was superfluous. Council non-jobs had been done to good effect, and a cleaning operation put into play in the early hours of the morning. None the less,  we marched up Mare Street to express solidarity with local shopkeepers. There was a good feel, some genuine fellow-feeling on display, and a sense of the need for a collective response to the night's events. Now, there are collective responses and collective responses - the question 'what sort of a collective response should we engage in, and with whom?' is a political question. That question would weigh on me later. Even at the time, I had my worries. The clean-uppers were much whiter than the borough. The hipster demographic was disproportionately represented. Then there was the man marching near me who huffed, "of course there won't be anyone from the Pembury here". For him at least, it was us versus them. And I, for one, wasn't on our side.

It turned out that there wasn't much damage to central Hackney. Some broken windows and a couple of burnt-out cars. Devastating for those immediately involved, of course, but hardly the aftermath of an urban apocalypse. Still, the sense that I was participating in a collective over-reaction was the least of the things that disquieted me in the week that followed.

The slogan "reclaim our communities" starting flying around the internet in association with the cleanup movement, which by now had acquired the broom as a symbol, often perched in a militaristic fashion on a clean-upper's shoulders, or raised high for a photo opportunity. Something cannot be reclaimed unless it is reclaimed from someone or something. Well whom, or what? The rioters? Were they not part of the community? What about their families? I strongly suspect that many of them had a better claim to be Hackney people, in a straightforward geographical sense, than the clean-uppers, having lived here since birth, before the area became trendy with art-school types. Were we reclaiming our community from the gangs of TSG who ran through the borough's estates in the following week, effecting unnecessarily heavy-handed arrests, often for pseudo-offences? Not a squeak of criticism of the police could be had from the cleanup establishment. On the contrary, they worked closely with them. Again, who are the 'community' in whose name this in being done? A good number of people in this borough view the police not as a last bastion of safety but as a threat. Skin colour and class play an enormous part in determining which side of this divide people fall on.

Then came the "looters are scum" stuff, described by Lenin here, and drawing the cleanup operation within the ideological orbit of the backlash I'll be writing about tomorrow. As attention turned to 'rebuilding businesses', a righteous crusade entered into enthusiastically and seemingly entirely ignorant of the realities of insurance, the cards of class interest became visible in the players' hands. High-end niche businesses were presented as somehow uniquely deserving of our charity: I was invited to donate money to a by-royal-appointment boutique in Peckham. Believe me, if I had any spare cash to put into that area, one of many parts of London where economic extremes rub shoulder, it would go to someone else. These riots laid bare the divisions which underlie our city, and yet the response of these initiatives was to redistribute petty cash amongst the haves, whilst all the while the have-nots watched their neighbours' doors get kicked in.

Note: if you want to avoid criticism from the left, avoid posters with slogan and style Berlin c. 1936

There was the call for volunteer labour. It is fair to say that hard-pressed skilled workers need being denied work by well-meaning sorts doing jobs for (again I stress) largely insured businesses like a hole in the head. Whilst DIY, these days the closest the English middle class has to a religion, might seem like the natural response to any adversity, things look rather different if your ability to pay the rent turns on getting carpentry work.

All of this spoke of narcissism, of a community spirit which extends only to those sharing the economic position and outlook of those involved. This, in turn, is the product of a modern capitalist city. In boroughs like Hackney, hip young professionals and business people rub shoulders with a forgotten inner-city working class. For all the interaction, this could be the world described in China Mieville's The City and The City. The former group, an acceptable face of the upwardly mobile New Britain built in the Blair-Brown era, think of themselves as 'progressive'. They will, if a warehouse conversion doesn't suit, perhaps move to something that used to be a council flat. Such places have an ironic charm. And so there are fewer places for the latter group, demonised as 'chavs', to live. Increasingly shops, cultural events, facilities, the entire orientation of an area's life has nothing to offer its once-residents, who still live there. For this to be seen as a problem, they'd first have to be noticed. Some of them got themselves noticed last week. And the response of much of London's nouvelle bourgeoisie was 'scum'.

For all these misgivings, there were, and are, good people involved in the cleanup. I would want to remain generous about individual motives. However, as individuals, we exist in social structures. If you want an image of the sublimated tensions of large parts of inner London, walk through London Fields one day. It won't be long before you see skinny jeans and hoodie pass one another, their wearers' eyes not meeting. This is just an image, though. There is a deeper reality, a pathological symbiosis. The very existence of the web guru and the trustfundarian depends on the labour of others, and on an economic system which keeps millions out of work. Understanding that, I think, is a prerequisite to having anything useful to say about the causes of these riots.

Returning to riots

Your host has been kept away from the 'sphere owing to work pressures. Such is his lack of self-discipline, that this blog has been down over the past months. Self-discipline is, as is well-documented, a frail thing, and the persuasive powers of Delilah sufficed to prompt the return of Latte Labour to the net.

This blog will stay up. After this weekend there will be no more posts. A lot has happened, personally and politically, in my absence, as a net result of which there will be a new blog project coming soon.

In the meanwhile, it can't have escaped your notice that there has been a bit of bother in London town of late. The British left doesn't seem to know what to make of the riots, if the events of a fortnight ago deserve that title at all (which is one of the things we can't agree about). The diversity of opinion in these posts, some of the best I've found, is indicative of the wider picture:

• Lenin's Tomb on a crisis of ideology and political leadership.
• Delilah on society, understanding, and compassion.
• Richard at The Third Estate on some unity demonstrations.
• The Commune on those with nothing to lose and nothing to win.
• Jane Clare Jones on saving morality from the right.
• Owen Jones making sense of the riots.
• DSG being succinct. 
• Slovenia's finest referencing The Smiths.

Since I'm here, I may as well say something myself. Later tonight, a snippet on the cleanup. Tomorrow, something on the backlash. Sunday, some reflections on the vexed issue of the riots' causes.

News International : Reply to Lenin's Tomb

Well it's a great privilege to be engaged with at post length by Lenin's Tomb, in my view the best left-wing blogger out there. That remains the case even if that engagement does consist in accusing my post on News of the World of "moralism". Part of me wants to say "what I have written, I have written". But some points deserve a quick response.

I accused the liberals baying for NOTW's blood of moralism. I should be clear what I mean by "moralism". Moralism is something different from morality, even more so from ethics. The moralist has a trenchancy about him, he speaks only the language of imperatives, and divides the world simplistically into the good and the bad. Once one has fallen into this latter category, one is beyond redemption. There are no shades of grey, and no second chances. Tabloid papers, along with those who spend disproportionate amounts of their lives damning these papers, are generally moralistic. Moralism is an important site of ideology. Its sitting lightly to the complexities and murkiness of the real world, its sublimating of social divisions beneath a manichean worldview, serves to confuse and disorientate our critical capacities.

I think it's perfectly obvious, not just from their tone, but also from their excessive jubilation at their apparent victory that the liberal mob have been moralists with respect to News of the World. It is, I should add parenthetically, an odd sort of victory - the News of the World is dead, long live The Sunday Sun. For the liberal moralist, Rupert Murdoch, the repository of all evil has been dealt a blow. Moreover he has been dealt it by THE PEOPLE: yes, social media brought Rupert to his knees. Worried about the effects thousands of negative tweets might have on his advertisers, Rupert pulled the plug on his Sunday organ. Avanti populo! This is a remarkably rosey way to view what is, in reality, a very adept piece of brand sterilisation, by an expert businessman, in the cause of profit. It is precisely not what Richard claims it as: "the beginnings of a comprehensive crisis in the class power of the capitalist media, with News of the World comprising the weak link in the chain". That Murdoch can pull the plug on a title, and the jobs that go with it, before carrying on as before demonstrates class power in its prime.

Indeed, the idea that something big has happened here is a fetishised substitute for politics. We have brought down the News of the World. Simply by getting a bit angry, and writing some angry tweets. Tomorrow belongs to us! Richard, I think, falls victim here. He writes "it's a victory for those against whom the Murdoch media's culture wars are directed". No it's not. No victim of, say, sexual or racial violence in the next few weeks will say to themselves, "well, thank God, at least that wasn't motivated by something they read in the News of the World". What needs transforming are real concrete relationships between human beings, not the contents of news-stands. I don't deny, of course, that ideology shapes those relationships, as well as being determined by them. I do, however, think the ideological function of the media is a complex, multiply mediated, affair. And I certainly think that people are not the kind of helpless saps before the mass media that some anti-tabloid commentary makes them out to be.

Part of this "readers as braindead blank slates" view, what we might call the Kaiser Chiefs theory of media, is a function of ideas about class. Note: ideas about class, not class itself. It just is the case that part of what is going on when swathes of people (not including Richard himself) direct hyperbolic criticism at tabloids but let, say, disgracefully Islamophobic and plagiarising broadsheet journalists off the hook, is that the function of newspapers as social signifiers is coming into play. To point this out is not to be "prolier than thou". Nor does the fact that the right note this class aspect of liberal criticism in constructing their own defence, as they certainly do, make it non-existent.

Getting down to class, the real thing: we are now faced with a group of workers who have been deprived of a livelihood. This has happened in a particularly callous way, in order to safeguard the profitability of News International, and to save senior figures within that organisation from being held to account over the phone tapping scandal. I just cannot begin to fathom why it should be controversial for anyone on the left to call for solidarity with the NUJ. Nor do I regret having put the emphasis on this fight. The concrete class struggle, workers versus Murdoch over jobs, this is real politics - this is the stuff that has the capacity to change things. Give me this over the weightless fantasy politics of the Tweetosphere taking on a brand in the name of ill-articulated outrage any day.

Lefties for unemployment?

A major transnational corporation has shut down an operation, resulting in 200 redundancies, these staff being invited to apply for jobs with another of the corporation's operations as part of a 'rationalisation' process. Numerous contracted and casual workers will also lose their jobs. How should anyone who considers themselves to be on the political left respond?

You'd think the answer ought to be obvious: we oppose the closure, and the resulting redundancies. As it happens, I think that is the answer, and that it is obvious. I seem to be in a minority amongst self-identified leftists.



As anyone who hasn't spent the past 48 hours in a cave will know, Rupert Murdoch is shutting down the News of the World, in the wake of a phone-hacking scandal involving the tapping of phones of murder victims, payments to police, and much else of a murky nature. To fill the market gap left by Murdoch's Sunday paper, the Sun looks set to become a seven-days-a-week publication. The NUJ has condemned the closure:

Closing the title and sacking over 200 staff in the UK and Ireland, and putting scores more freelances and casuals out of a job, is an act of utter cynical opportunism.  Murdoch is clearly banking on this drawing a line under the scandal, removing an obstacle to the BskyB deal, and letting his senior executives off the hook. That simply won’t wash. It is not ordinary working journalists who have destroyed this paper’s credibility – it is the actions of Murdoch’s most senior people.

Plenty of folk don't agree with the NUJ. I've heard the NOTW's departure from news-stands hailed as "a victory". After questioning whether job losses are something that should be cheered, I've been met with the response that these journalists "deserve it", and that they were morally compromised by working for such a disgusting paper. In a curious echo of Norman Tebbit, I've been informed by social democrats that there are lots of jobs out there, that the former Murdoch employees won't be on the scrap heap for long, and that I shouldn't waste any tears on them.

There is much to sympathise with in some of the motivations at play here. The phone hacking scandal was a disgrace; perhaps not the worst thing done by a Murdoch title, many of us remember the lies about the Hillsborough victims - but none the less inexcusable. And the NOTW is not something that would exist in an ideal world. I'm not sure I can quite climb to the stratospheric levels of disgust some liberals have reached in the past two days. For all its sexism, invasion of privacy, and default right-wing setting, I consider the paper to have been a good deal less deleterious in its ideological effects than the Mail and the Express. And its opinions seem to take root in its readership to about the extent that water does on a duck's back. A majority of Sun/ NOTW readers consistently vote Labour. On the other hand, I fear many Independent readers take Johann Hari's views seriously. Might it be that class is lurking somewhere in the subconscious regions of all this uproar? Could NOTW readers (and peoples' images of them), be under attack, as much as NOTW?

It remains the case that NOTW  was a detestable rag. Didn't those journalists have it coming? No, of course they didn't: and the silly moralism which brands these workers as just having joined the ranks of the deserved unemployed resonates, not with a little irony, with the worst sort of tabloid sentiment. Not for the first time, the perpetually outraged Guardianista begins to bear more than a passing resemblance to Nadine Dorries. Journalism is a tough trade. Permanent jobs are few and far between: people certainly lack, for the most part, the luxury of choosing papers on the basis of political allegiance. Low-paid casual work is the norm. Journalists, like all of us, need to feed themselves and their families. In any, case let the person who has managed to find a job under capitalism which doesn't involve compromise cast the first stone.

As it happens, had Murdoch's workers been treated better, the phone-hacking scandal could have been avoided. Writing at Comment is Free, Donnacha DeLong, argues that NUJ organisation could have forced editorial hands. He cites the case of NUJ members at the Star, who got an Islamophobic front page pulled. This story alone ought to force some people towards a re-assessment of tabloid journalists.

And while we're on the subject of re-assessments, how about a re-assessment of the role of the press in society? Newspapers both reflect and shape opinion, in complex ways, that cannot be reduced to the crude moral binaries of the outraged liberal mobs. Newspapers are run for profit by proprietors. This finds reflection in their content. Every one of Murdoch's then 247 titles supported the invasion of Iraq. But the need for profitability puts limits on the extent of ideological duplicity that is possible: the Sun simply could not carry now the kind of homophobic material that was commonplace during the 1980s. Contrary to stereotypes, the readers just wouldn't have it.

By all means attack papers. By all means advocate boycotts over specific issues. I'm a long-time supporter of boycotts of the Murdoch Press over Hillsborough. However, I'm clear that the intention of these is to force a climbdown and a proper apology from News International. Any attempt to pass on lost revenues to the workforce is something I would oppose absolutely. As for the suggestion, that we'd be better of without these papers. No doubt. But as long as we live in the kind of society we live in, we will have a pernicious press. Fostering the illusion that things could be otherwise is not worth livelihoods.

Brooks sacks journalists with pep talk

Friday Video Corner

Let's go classical this week.



Post coming tonight on the News of the World.

This charming man

Ooh, I've had a reply from John Cryer:

When I entered parliament that morning there was no picket at any of the entrances I looked at – which was three.

The PCS said they were putting pickets on all entrances bar the Tube which I assumed meant it would be acceptable to enter at that entrance.

I would also point out that there was a debate that day caused by me. If I had failed to be there I would have let down my constituents. I would further point out that I went out of my way in Business Questions to defend trade unions. The PCS must be living on another planet if they imagine it’s a great idea to give Tories and Lib Dems a free run on a day of public-sector strikes.

I would also be obliged if you could forward this email to Mark Serwotka with my mobile number which is ************* so he can explain to me why his union followed such a ludicrous strategy. And you can refrain from sending me vaguely threatening emails – if you think that sort of behaviour will intimidate me in any way whatsoever then you know nothing of my history.

Yours etc,

John Cryer

"Vaguely threatening"? See here. This man seriously needs a summer break.

Dear John

Email to John Cryer MP:

Dear John,

As a Labour Party member who admires your consistent left-wing politics, I was deeply disappointed to see that you had spoken in the House of Commons on 30th June.

There were PCS pickets at parliament (whether or not you physically 'crossed' one of these on entering the building is entirely academic). Given your strong trade union background, I would fully expect you to understand the vital importance of honouring these and showing solidarity with striking workers.

In my opinion any MP who claims to represent working people ought to have been on the picket lines, rather than in the chamber, last Thursday. I sincerely hope you reconsider your position in advance of future public sector strikes.

Yours,

Latte

Go thou and do likewise. Full list of strikebreaking MPs here.

Don't mourn for Hari, organise against liberalism

I've been a lax blogger of late. Coming soon a series on the left's visceral hostility to religion, and why it's a bad thin, as well as a piece on the culture of the picket line. What you will not be getting from this blog is anything on the deserved downfall of vile bigot Johann Hari. Some things are just too easy.

This having been said, it is worth asking why so many leftists have flocked in recent days to the defence of the plaigirising hack. Why was there such a widespread feeling that one of our own was under attack? Some folks suggested that this was a right-wing attack on a campaigning journalist - such things certainly do happen, but it does seem to me that the ultraleft Deterritorial Support Group is an unlikely channel for Toadmeisteresque reaction. The sad truth is that entire sections of the left, especially the younger parts of it, are enamoured with cultural and political liberalism. Hari, for all his moralising bleeding-heart advocacy of a clinically secular world being tugged into the future by the locomotive of Progress, for all the disempowering elitism and suppressed class-basis of the politics implicit in this outlook, was saying things a lot of people on the left wanted to hear. And this is far more of a problem than a few dodgy interviews.

Ed Miliband attacks workers - attack Ed Miliband!

"When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?"

Thus Keynes. And he had a point.

Less than a week ago, I argued that, in spite of his backsliding on party democracy, the left should still support Miliband's leadership. Since then the facts have changed, and I have changed my mind. Specifically, Miliband explicitly advocated scabbing on today's strikes, and added insult to injury today by writing a response to his intra-Party critics. Apart from demonstrating his inability to write in paragraphs, this piece bought straight into the Tory line that negotiations are ongoing. Talks are still taking place, that is true; but with an agenda entirely set by the Government, they do not deserve to be dignified with the term "negotiations", any more than striking workers deserve to be betrayed by a Labour leader.

So I've changed my mind. The time is right for the left to oppose Miliband's leadership. There is an honourable and well-founded tradition in our movement of regarding scabbing as a particularly damaging fault, a point-of-no-return. We cannot credibly argue for the use of the Labour Party as a channel for workers' demands whilst supporting a man who - as was made clear today repeatedly - is widely, and rightly, viewed as a strikebreaker. Merely attacking the leadership isn't nearly enough, of course: as I pointed out in my post, the malaise at the top is symptomatic of a right-wing backlash that requires a response. None the less, withdrawal of support for the Miliband leadership now has to be part of that response.

So, let's get to it. And right now, let's make it clear that Ed is out of step with the movement, by signing up to Owen's statement here.