Hi all. After a long break I have resumed blogging, with three posts below that have been accumulating this year. First there is a comment on the Egyptian revolution, comparing the successful overthrow of Mubarak with the disastrous western intervention in Iraq (A tale of two Squares). Then there is a brief restatement of the history of the political philosophy of liberation from below, drawing on the history of the international workers movement (No Saviour from on High Delivers). Finally, these themes are brought together in a commentary ‘On the Libyan Tragedy’.
I have also updated a backlog of comments that had accumulated – both supportive and critical of the positions taken here – so let the debates resume!
The break from blogging since October signified something else – a return to ‘real life’ activism on my behalf. For it was in October that the anti-cuts movement took off in the UK. Since then I have been busy helping to organise local protests and meetings in my town – often hundreds strong – to defend public services. Time will tell if I can maintain both commentary and activism – and my day job – and my normal life!
The art of revolution entails two things – uniting the masses and dividing the ruling elites. This appears to have been behind the success in Egypt, where the army top brass calculated that its interests would best be served by abandoning Mubarak, given the threat that ordinary soldiers would side with the people on the streets. The urban masses of Cairo – one of the great cities of the world – had overcome religious and other divisions and suddenly stood millions strong. In Libya, the opposite has now happened.
The revolution that began a month ago on Feb 17th also had initial success. Not only did the youth lead the seizure of cities from Benghazi to the outskirts of Tripoli, but the revolt also began to split the regime, with sections of it coming over to the revolution – including state and military figures. By the end of February Gaddafi looked isolated and ready to fall.
But Libya is different from Egypt in two ways – firstly it has OIL fields and secondly its tribal divisions are deeper. So Gaddafi had always been able to use the oil wealth to buy support from sections of the masses and play off one tribe against another – a long game of divide and rule. This oil means another thing – the Western imperial powers will want to use any opportunity to assert their power to protect their substantial interests in Libya’s oil fields.
At the end of February we saw a change of tone from the western political leaderships. While they had been lukewarm about the Egyptian revolution, praising Mubarak as an ally and scaremongering that the revolution was really an ‘Islamicist takeover’, suddenly they found a new stridency over Libya. It was then that David Cameron began calling for the overthrow of Gaddafi, for a no-fly zone, for arming the rebels – and the SAS made their abortive intervention in Benghazi. While the revolutionaries of Benghazi kicked out the SAS and hung a banner prominently denouncing western interference, the damage was done.
This was a gift for Gaddafi. He could now credibly portray the revolution as a western imperialist plot while posing as the great ‘national hero’ and ‘anti-imperialist leader’. Western threats would inevitably and rally more support behind his regime. Cameron’s sabre rattling – rather than opening up further cracks within the ruling elites, would help cement Gaddafi’s teetering rule. Ruling elites throughout history have used fears of foreign invasion – real or imagined – to suppress dissent. But in the Arab world, which has long smouldered under the heel of western colonialism, such threats of western interference are political and cultural dynamite.
The joy of the Arab Spring of 2011 was that the masses would (even if only briefly) take the centre stage of history – acting for themselves. This act of revolution promised to overcome years of indignity and oppression meted out by both Arab rulers and their imperial overlords. Bush and Blair’s adventure in Iraq has lead to such a bloody disaster because liberation can never come from above, from a foreign army. In contrast to the unity and solidarity achieved on the streets of Cairo, post invasion Iraq saw only years of civil war and sectarian strife.
Now it looks like the imperial powers will get embroiled in Libya – even given the experience of the Iraq disaster showing the bankruptcy of so called ‘humanitarian interventionism’.
Now the tyrant Gaddafi is threatening to become the butcher of Benghazi. But can the powers that levelled Fallujah in 2004 save Benghazi in 2011? In Iraq’s Fallujah, the USA and UK forces suppressed a city-wide uprising – when ‘our side’ used chemical weapons such as white phosphorous and killed thousands of civilians. The western powers are no better than the tyrant Gaddafi – and they can be worse. 100,000’s died because of Bush and Blair’s invasion.
If the west intervenes in Libya it will be to secure its assets and interests there, especially around Oil. Most probably they will partition the country, between East and West – a Balkanised Libya, leading to bitter civil war. Tyranny will be strengthened – not democracy and freedom. This is the Libyan tragedy. The people of Libya are stuck now between a rock and a hard place – between the murderous Gaddafi regime – and the imperial greed of the west.
And the stench of hypocrisy rises pungently from every utterance of Cameron. For at the other end of the Middle East, the dictatorship in Bahrain is also using bloody force to crush a democratic revolution. And the forces of repression are being backed up by the pro-western absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia, armed by Britain. What do we do? The Queen is inviting the murderous and brutal King of Bahrain to London to the Royal Wedding! Why don’t they be even handed and invite the murderous Gaddafi as well? The palace garden party will be full of dictators, corrupt monarchs and war mongers – he will feel in good company.
Adding to the post below about the Middle East. The long story of winning democratic rights in Britain has given us a hard won experience – from the Chartists of the 1840’s to the struggle for women’s rights to vote at the beginning of the twentieth century. Liberation can only come from below – not from above. In 1864, the First International Workers Association declared in the opening lines of its founding statement ‘That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves’. This political reality was then widely recognised. A verse from the 19th century working class anthem the ‘internationale’ famously declares that ‘No saviour from on high delivers’. No saviour from on high – especially raining bombs down from the sky – can liberate the working people.
Remember the famous media event in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq? When ‘the masses’ pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein? This was supposed to signify the ‘liberation of Iraq’ - a popular revolution. At first the media only showed us a close up. Later, long shots of the incident were published (reproduced below) which show that it was a tiny event stage managed for the world media. This helps explain why the aftermath of the invasion saw years of bloody civil war in Iraq, full of sectarian strife. There was no popular revolution from below – only a decapitation of the regime from above by an imperialist war machine.
Firdos Square during the famous toppling of the Statue of Saddam Hussein
A mass popular revolution achieves two things – not only can it bring down a tyrannical regime – but it also organises something to fill the vacuum. Civil society grows in a revolution – mass democratic organisations and associations emerge at the grassroots, able to unite the people. But none of this emerged out of the chaos of Bush and Blair’s ill advise Iraq adventure, and nor could it.
Now contrast the picture of Fardis Square, Baghdad in 2003 with pictures from Tahrir Square, Cairo in 2011. This is what a real revolution looks like – not a stage managed event – but the masses taking centre stage of history.
Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011 - the masses topple Mubaraks tyranny
Lets hope this revolution – liberation from below – can bring real democracy and equality for the people of Egypt – in a way that Bush and Blair’s war machine never could for the people of Iraq.
Most towns and cities in Britain have just seen substantial local protests against the cuts. This week there were waves of protests either on the 20th of Oct (day of the Con-Dem governments spending review) or today – the Saturday after. And more local protests, marches and rallies are planned everywhere. The biggest so far has been todays 20,000 strong STUC march against cuts in Edinburgh. Thousands also took to the streets in Sheffield, Manchester, Cambridge, London and Bristol. Reports are coming in of good turnouts everywhere.
I attended a lively protest of around 300 people outside the Town Hall of the small northern town of Lancaster on Wednesday. This was called at short notice to launch a local campaign, ‘Lancaster and Morecambe Against the Cuts!‘ and had a fairly good turnout for a weekday evening in a small city of only 50,000 people. Lots of people seem willing to demonstrate and campaign, hand out leaflets, put up posters and email workmates and friends.
This feels like the build up to the big anti-poll tax uprising of 20 years ago, or the big anti-war upsurge at the beginning of 2003. And this is before the scale of the cuts have hit home – communities will see their sports centres, swimming pools, libraries and many more local facilities threatened. Such measures could spark outrage and bigger protest campaigns reaching well beyond the various organised lefts and trades unionists who make up the bulk of this current initial wave of protest.
The Scottish TUC must be congratulated for calling todays march – and bringing together protest on a national scale. Today the TUC (covering all the parts of Britain) announced a national demo for London, proclaiming it would be its ‘biggest and boldest’ protest ever. This is good – but it is scheduled for the 26th March 2011! We need a big London March in the next few weeks! And looking to France, days of coodinated strike action might work here in the current climate of anger. However, we should still promote the TUC’s March 2011 event – which really could be big if it coincides with the anger that will be generated as the cuts really bite next year.
We also need the kind of politics which can unite the whole working class and wider society – otherwise people might fight each other in a game of divide and rule as councils try to get people to choose which services are cut – swimming pool users against library users, or whatever. We need to be able to point to the billions of pounds the super-rich have been exploiting from this society over the past decade. The richest 10% now own £4,000 billion – which is nearly 50% of all private wealth in the UK. The poorest 50% of the population own just 9%. The rich have got richer at the expense of the poor. Even if we just collected the unpaid taxes of the wealthy, we could get 100 billion a year! This is without raising the taxes to the level Thatcher had them at for most of her period in office – restoring these tax levels would bring in many billions more.
In other words, we need to re-articulate a popular politics of class in Britain. But Labour’s newly elected leader has already broken his campaign promises that made Trades Unionists feel he might do this. He pledged during the recent leadership campaign that he would speak at the TUC’s westminster rally on the eve of the cuts announcement last week. This was a major way in which he differentiated himself from his brother, who flatly refused to speak at the Trades Union protest. So Ed was able to pick up large numbers of Trades unionists votes, which won him the leadership. However, this week he backed out of this commitment, and refused to address the TUC event, frightened of the media jibes of ‘Red Ed’ and desperate to appease the bankers, ruling elites and the powerful right wing inside the Labour Party.
We will need to generate a grassroots movement of protest and resistance, like we did 20 years ago with the anti-poll tax movement that broke Thatcher. This movement had no official sanction from the unions or the labour party. Grassroots local groups just did it! But its still sad that our union leaders, with 7 million members and enormous resources are not pulling their weight. We can see what would happen if they really did get off their arses and mobilise properly – we only have to look across the channel and see the mass union actions shaking France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and elsewhere.
Yes, its an old slogan – but as it rings through our streets once again, voicing the rage of a new generation, it has never been more relevant. Over the next few years it could become the battle cry of millions.
Great to see thousands of trades unionists and community campaigners lay siege to the Tory party conference yesterday. The footage on this well-made video shows a rich diversity of grassroots campaigners and working class movements. These included postal workers, health workers, teachers, council workers, private and public sector trades unionists, disability rights campaigners, community groups, including young and old and people of all ethnic, racial and religious groups. It was heartening to see all these united in the great common cause of our time – resistance to the public service cutbacks. Cameron and Clegg’s cut agenda aims to intensify the process of wealth redistribution from the working classes to the super-rich, making us pay for the crisis of their out of control system of finance driven capitalism.
This is just the start – protests, strikes and occupations must grow in response to the cuts that will be announced in the governments spending review on the 20th Oct.
Things are not going well for Nick Clegg. Take this video news clip (posted below). It shows his disastrous photo-opp visit to a Children’s Centre in London yesterday. This video nicely illustrates at least half of his problem. The hapless Clegg was visiting the ‘Shepherd’s Bush Families Project and Children’s Centre’. His intention was to to promote his plans to ‘improve social mobility for the young’ – and also to promote his image as a caring politician, of course.
The problem was that the centre is being cut – has just lost £47,000 – and the building itself, used by 44 local groups, faces closure as the council wants to sell it off! An outraged local community is campaigning against this, of course. He was therefore filmed being confronted by angry and concerned local people including parents, children, and workers at the centre. He even face the embarrassing and politically damaging moment of being presented with cards specially made by the children begging him and his government to stop the closure! Poor old ‘Nice Nick’ is inexorably becoming reframed as ‘Nasty Nick’.
Click here for the footage:
Opportunism in Crisis
This is of course a first class political blunder. But it is part of a much wider picture. The Lib-Dems have created their electoral base by hijacking popular local community campaigns against cuts exactly like this one. In the past they could always play the nice guy, opportunistically posing as all things to all people. Now we can see the real face of economic liberalism, as this party helps bring about the deepest and most destructive cuts in generations. In their foolish and greedy impatience for high office they have hitched themselves to an unprecedentedly vicious neo-liberal ideological and economic offensive against the welfare state lead by the Tories. Over time, as people experience and sometimes resist these bitter losses, the Lib-Dem’s electoral support will be fatally eroded, and they also risk tearing themselves apart.
Everywhere Clegg now goes, he will start to melt in this political heat. He is getting incredibly bad press – risking becoming typecast as ‘Calamity Clegg’ – as everywhere he goes he faces angry former supporters. So the very next day after this disaster at the childrens centre in London, he walks into the fire in Tyneside. The BBC headline is “Cuts dominate Nick Clegg’s return to Tyneside” while the Daily Mails spin is: “Clegg loses his cool: Deputy PM silences LibDem voter during ill-tempered meet-and-greet”.
But this only makes up half of Clegg’s crisis – the half composed of angry communities resisting cuts (communities which include dissillusuioned former Lib-Dem supporters). The other half is the Tory press and the Tory establishment who will also punish Clegg for two reasons. Firstly, they don’t trust him or like his occasional divergences from Cameron (seen as disloyalties) over issues like Trident or Iraq. Secondly as the coalition government becomes ever more unpopular and even hated by large sections of the public, the Tory press will need to find and focus attention on a variety of scapegoats. One of these scapegoats will be the Lib-Dem’s and their leader, who will be the fall-guys, crucified in a vain effort to save Tory skins (and seats)!
Clegg and the Lib-Dems are particularly vulnerable precisely because of their opportunistic past – of being all things to all voters. To appeal to disillusioned Labour voters the Lib-Dems posed as a leftish alternative to Labour, opposing the previous governments appalling record of wars, repressive laws, student tuition fees and other right wing policies. But they would put out a different tone of leaflet and campaign in more prosperous Tory voting areas. This usually worked until they took over a council, started privatising services and punishing the poor, soon becoming as hated as the Tories or the worst New Labour regime. But in the past, these were merely local problems for them caused by limited and localised exposures. Now, however, they are part of central government and this trick no longer works for them – and the chickens are coming home to roost.
So to answer the question posed in the title – yes – enjoy!
In this instance schadenfreude seems not only permissible, it may even be positively de rigueur! The Lib-Dem’s are the weakest link, the vulnerable pressure point in the Cameron regime. As their electoral support evaporates, more of the party will want to leave the coalition. This is the clearest way of bringing down the Cameron government and fighting its cuts.
But also lets build a genuinely radical alternative force in politics – one that challenges the dominant agenda of big-business, the war-mongers and sycophants of the super-rich. We need a force in politics which stands for liberty, equality and solidarity and which puts people and the planet before profit. We need a social and political movement which as its first priority organises to fight these cuts – and therefore fights to prevent this ugly Tory-Lib-Dem attempt to shift the balance of wealth and power still further in favour of the rich and ever further away from the common people.
