After the big march: what next?
Workers Liberty reports (below); but how was it for you?
There were many flashes and flurries of militancy on the London demo – from direct action against companies involved in ‘Workfare’ to disability activists blocking Park Lane and stopping traffic at the end of the demo. Hundreds of marchers carried home-made signs identifying themselves as “Plebs”. Demonstrators heckled Ed Miliband for saying there would have to be some cuts.
Despite discouragement from the TUC, there were a number of lively feeder marches. These included several thousand from South London anti-cuts groups (with a large anarchist presence), and more than a thousand on a student bloc organised by the student left through University of London.
And of course, 150,000 is still very big – a clear indication that, despite setbacks, vast numbers of workers want a fight. There were very large numbers of Unite and Unison members marching together in enormous contingents. But as well as the decline in size, the mood generally seemed positive, but less militant than in March 2011. Although comrades report that many from their workplaces and unions marched who had not marched before – and some found it very inspiring – demonstrators seemed on average a bit older.
This is not a surprise. The 26 March demo came at a time of ‘ascent’, a few months after huge student protests and just before the first strikes to defend public sector pensions. Despite the obvious inadequacies of the union’s campaign, it felt like things were moving, like the struggle was going somewhere. This protest came after the union leaders have squashed the pensions campaign, and left things to decay for almost a year.
There was some militant rhetoric from the union leaders. Unite’s Len McCluskey used the closing rally to “start the consultation” on a general strike agreed at TUC conference. “Are you prepared to strike?”, he asked the crowd and was met with a huge din of cheering and vuvuzela horns. Thousands of people then put their hands up to “vote” for strike action.
Such dramatic flair would be welcome – if it was linked to something concrete. Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka, Christine Blower and others made similar noises. But this was not matched by a commitment to much of anything. There was no real attempt even to highlight victories won or to champion the workers’ battles which are in progress, despite the lull.
The SWP and the Socialist Party report that their calls for a “general strike” (in the latter case a “24 hour general strike”) got a good response. This does not make such calls a serious strategy. As Trotsky put it in the early 30s (in ‘What next?’), for many workers “‘the general strike’ signifies the prospect of struggle”. But neither the SP nor the SWP had much to say about how to get from where we are now to a general strike, or about what demands the movement should be campaigning for.
The importance of clear demands was shown by the fact that not even “No cuts” was featured in the official union campaign. Labour leader Ed Miliband was invited to speak at the rally, and he told marchers “There will still be hard choices — it’s right that we level with people.”
There were hundreds if not thousands of heckles from the crowd – quite right too, though no doubt Miliband was pleased, so he can show how ‘tough’ he is – but the unions are not suggesting any real alternative to the Labour leadership’s programme. (To be fair to Bob Crow, he did use his speech to criticise Miliband.)
The fact that, so far, ‘left wing’ Unite has pressured Labour councillors not to vote against and defy the cuts but to vote for them shows how far there is to go. So does its tame performance at this year’s Labour Party conference, despite its formal new commitment to a fight in the party.
Unsurprisingly, it was harder than on 26 March to sell socialist literature. We think we sold about 400 copies of Solidarity, but a lot of comrades said sales seemed slower. We did have many interesting and useful conversations.
The NHS Liaison Network statement calling for a union campaign to push Labour into implementing its new policy on the NHS got a good response on the NHS bloc and on the Unison and Unite contingents, with many marchers refusing a leaflet and then reconsidering when they read the headline (“Fight for Labour to carry outs its policy: rebuild the NHS!”) Liaison Network activists made some useful contacts for the campaign.
No matter how gloomy things look, serious socialists should not respond to the SWP’s “general strike” demagogy by rubbishing the prospect of any mass struggles. It will take generalised industrial action to defeat the cuts – but that poses, rather than answers the question. Trotsky again: “Does this mean that the strike struggle should be renounced? No, not renounced but sustained, by creating for it necessary political and organisational premises.” What that means now is:
• Championing, publicising and encouraging every dispute, every struggle, every spark of resistance – and demanding the unions do the same, rather than ignoring or stifling them.
• Advocating and organising resistance, in workplaces, locally, nationally, to cuts and attacks now – not waiting for hypothetical coordinated action in the future.
• Arguing for a serious assessment of how the pensions dispute was sunk, and a different strategy for future national struggles, including properly coordinated and mounting action.
• Seeking opportunities to build rank-and-file networks in the unions, like the Local Associations grouping among teachers, which can challenge the union leaders, including ‘left’ ones.
• Developing clear demands about what policies we want to see (restore the NHS, scrap the anti-union laws, expropriate the banks, etc…), developing a campaign around them and bringing real pressure to bear for them in and on the Labour Party.
The BBC at its worst…and best
Tonight at 10.35 something extraordinary will happen: a TV programme will call into question the competence and integrity of its own Chief Editor.
BBC Panorama will air the fact that BBC Newsnight journalists (notably reporter Liz MacKean and producer Meirion Jones) do not accept the explanation given by the Corporation’s top brass for having pulled Newsnight‘s Savile exposé in December of last year. The clear implication will be that pressure was brought to bear from the very top of the Corporation to pull the film.
Those who heard Newsnight editor Peter Rippon trying to explain away the decision, or who read his original blog account (now amended) of the reasoning behind the decision, already know that his ’explanation’ stinks. But for nearly three weeks the Beeb’s official line on the matter held firm in its denial and compacency – which makes Rippon’s ”decision” (allegedly forced on him by the new director general George Entwistle) to “stand aside” today and the admission that his account was “inaccurate or incomplete” all the more remarkable.
In tonight’s Panorama, Liz MacKean will state that she knew at the time the Newsnight report was nearing completion on 30th November of last year, that the previously supportive Rippon had changed his mind and would not be prepared to see the film aired. She does not, it seems, offer any explanation as to why Rippon backed down, and Panorama has no proof that any pressure was brought to bear on Rippon.
It’s hard to escape the obvious explanation: the BBC had a number of grovelling “tribute” shows scheduled to celebrate the national treasure, tireless charity worker and serial paedophile Savile over the Christmas period. The Newsnight exposé would have been, to say the least, a bit embarrassing.
But now comes the most interesting bit: what did the new BBC director general (at the time head of BBC TV) George Entwistle, know about the allegations against Savile and the Newsnight report in the period immediately before the film was pulled?
According to Panorama, Helen Boaden (head of BBC news), warned Entwistle in December that something was about to be broadcast on Newsnight, that might cause him to have to re-think his planned Savile tributes over Christmas. Entwistle acknowledges that this conversation happened, but insists that he didn’t ask Boaden for further details – something that I am not alone in finding difficult to believe.
What we know for sure is that shortly after that convesation, Rippon pulled the programme and later gave reasons for doing so that have now been withdrawn as untrue (sorry: “inaccurate or incomplete”).
Naturally, the Murdoch press, the Mail and the Tories are having a field-day at the Beeb’s expense over the Savile affair as a whole, the Newsnight business in particular, and the BBC’s monumental mishandling of the whole fiasco. And it has to be admitted that the Corporation’s compacency, dishonesty and ineptitude has played into the hands of its enemies. If today’s reports that BBC has been briefing against its own Newsnight journalists are true, then heads will have to roll, starting with Enwistle’s.
But it must be borne in mind that tonights’s Panorama will be something that no commercial broadcaster would ever allow: a devastating and potentially career-threatening attack upon its own senior management. It was encroaching commercialism (ie: the imperative to protect Savile’s reputation during and after his life) within the BBC that got it into this mess in the first place. It’s the public service ethos (to be demonstrated by Panorama tonight) that may yet save it.
Red against Feds
I thought the Andrew Mitchell affair was a storm in a teacup, and was thoroughly irritated that it has been the lead item on the news for the last few weeks, displaced only by Jimmy Savile. Chris Mullin’s take on it is that the real story is of the Police Federation showing their muscle.
Accusing those stoking the row of making a “mountain out of a molehill,” Mr Mullin described the Police Federation, which has repeatedly called for Mr Mitchell to be sacked, as a “bunch of head-bangers”.
Describing his own run-in with the Federation, which, he said, had sought to have him removed as chairman of the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee when he raised questions about the probity of the police disciplinary system, he said: “The Federation is a bully.
“It has a long track record of intimidating ministers, journalists and anyone else who gets in its way. It also has a track record of defending the indefensible.”
‘. . .
“The Police Federation is a mighty vested interest that has seen off just about all attempts to reform the least reformed part of the public service. They need to be taken on, not appeased.”
The former minister’s intervention follows claims from three Cabinet colleagues of Mr Mitchell that the Police Federation are seeking to exploit the row for political reasons, and in particular grievances about changes to officers’ pay and conditions.
The crazy world of George Galloway
(or: The Strange Case Of The Sleeping Policeman)
Pure comedy gold from Georgie Galloway and his Respect posse:
- The Guardian, Thursday 18 October 2012 22.10 BST
From today’s Graun:
By Helen Pidd
Even given his own talent for hyperbole, the claim George Galloway made on Sunday night was extraordinary: that he had discovered his secretary was working as an “agent” for a Metropolitan police counterterrorism officer who was running a “dirty tricks” campaign against him.
It was a serious allegation. “A direct attack on not just me but on democracy,” the MP said. He complained to the police, who promised an investigation, voluntarily referring the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. And he wrote to Theresa May, the home secretary, demanding an inquiry, saying he had “incontrovertible evidence” that the duo had set up fake email addresses to spread “rumour, disinformation and downright lies”.
But Galloway’s now former secretary, Aisha Ali-Khan, is fighting back. She says she is married to Afiz Khan, whom Galloway correctly identified as a detective inspector in the Met’s counter-terrorism unit, SO15.
She says the two wed in a Muslim ceremony in 2009 and have had an on-off, hush-hush relationship ever since. She is furious that their relationship is being presented as somehow illicit.
“Not only have I lost my job and my credibility but I’ve been branded this tart sleeping with random police officers.”
Suspended on full pay but not expecting her job back, Ali-Khan has filed a complaint with the Met, accusing Galloway of either hacking into her private emails or ordering someone else to do so. She believes there can be no other explanation for how he was able to quote verbatim, in his letter to May, from emails she and her husband had written to each other. Galloway says he was given the emails by his lawyer.
Ali-Khan believes she has been “thrown to the wolves” because she was disliked by certain male figures in Bradford’s Respect party who wanted her out, and because Galloway wanted to deflect attention from a story about his personal life which he believed was about to hit the papers…
Read the rest of this wonderful story, here
After 20 October, organise!
By Maria Exall (CWU, TUC General Council, Chair of TUC LGBT Committee), in a personal capacity:
Click on the above for the official demo site
The TUC has called its second mass demonstration in two years against the Coalition Government’s cuts agenda.
The first, on 26 March 2011, was successful in mobilising a large number of people from labour movement, campaigning, and community organisations to take to the streets.
The focus of 20 October (slogan: “a future that works”) is against job cuts as well as against “austerity”.
The TUC is in a unique position to call this demonstration. It is the only organisation with links to all the unions and the ability to reach out to community and campaigning organisations.
Individuals and groups of marchers will all have their own agenda, from the “pink/black bloc” called by Queers Against the Cuts, to those fighting to keep their local library open. The show of the strength and diversity of the opposition to the brutal policies of the Tories and Lib Dems is very important.
Precisely because of the diversity and breadth of support the demonstration will attract, the bourgeois media will both downplay and misrepresent the march. They will construct a negative narrative, as they did in March 2011, by juxtaposing pictures of speakers at the rally with those of protesters breaking glass, and by overreacting to any additional peaceful protests (such as the occupation of Fortnum and Masons in 2011). They will use the power of the media to suggest that supporting even the moderate demands of the march is in fact to side with “troublemakers”.
Our business as socialists is to recognise the popular support for the calls to reverse austerity and make clear political demands that mobilise people to fight the cuts in their workplaces and their communities.
This is the time to organise and popularise the case for a socialist response to the economic crisis. To explain politically what being “against austerity” really means. Our enemy is not “austerity” (which always comes over to me as a positive albeit moralistic demand that I should diet/go the gym/ not waste my disposable income on intoxicating substances). It is the capitalist class. It is they who are asking working-class people to pay for the crisis, and demonising different sections of the class in order to divide and rule.
On a gut level, large numbers of people in the UK know this. They know that the attacks on benefit claimants, people with disabilities, public sector workers, the cuts in the provision of the services they rely on, or the fact that their young relatives or friends cannot get a job, are not the result of an inevitable economic fate. They are rather the deliberate actions of a class which wishes to shrink the state, take away our rights at work, and intimidate working people in order to increase economic exploitation.
But there are also large numbers of working-class people who do not know that these things are not inevitable. To them, they appear as immutable economic laws rather than political choices by a partisan bosses’ government.
It is our job to organise with those who know, and persuade those who don’t, of the real causes of “austerity”, the real way to fight them, and our real alternative.
(From Solidarity, paper of the AWL)
Unite adds:
March top tips
Remember marchers have fun and be safe. Download Unite’s top tips for a top day out here.
Check the weather forecast and Tfl website for travel and tube line news: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravelnews/realtime/tube/default.html
Unite is leading the march. Form up for Unite members is at the front of Zone A on Victoria Embankment by Hungerford Bridge. Make sure to get there for 11am. We want to see Unite in a sea of red.
Check out the map to the route here:
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=204639635371731701782.0004c6301e01b76e8aa82&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=51.507407,-0.133209&spn=0.018698,0.051498&z=14&source=embed
The march will end with a rally in Hyde Park at 4pm.
Abolish the Monarchy!
The government has blocked the publication of 27 letters from Charles Windsor to Labour ministers over a seven month period between September 2004 and April 2005. In doing this, the Attorney-General Dominic Grieve has overturned the decision of three tribunal judges who last month ruled in favour of a freedom of information request from the Guardian. The judges had ruled that the public had a right to know how Charles had sought to change government policy.
In an extraordianry admission, Grieve argued that releasing the letters “would potentially have undermined [Charles's] position of political neutrality.” The letters, says Grieve, contain the “most deeply held personal views and beliefs” of the heir to the throne and are part of his “preparation for becoming king.”
So much for the myth of a passive, apolitical constitutional monarchy.
We may never know what the “views and beliefs” expressed by Charles in those letters are, but we do know that he holds some profoundly reactionay and downright cranky views on a range of topics from architecture to homeopathy.
The decision to veto the publication of these letters is an affront to democracy; the prospect of an opinionated, political monarch seeking to exert an influence over government policy is an even greater affront.
The would-be Marxist left in Brtitain has, in recent years, tended to down-play the call for the abolition of the Monarchy. At one time that demand, like our insistence upon secularism, was one of the crucial issues that distinguished us from various varieties of reformists and soft-lefties. Now is the time to once again proudly raise the republican banner in Britain.
As for Charles Windsor: he has a perfect right to express his personal opinions if he renounces the throne and becomes a private citizen.
NB: the pressure group Republic has launched a “Royal Secrets Campaign.”
Get well soon, Malala
Malala has continued to be a vocal advocate, of education for all, in Pakistan and was the runner up of the International Children’s Peace Prize last year. Her contribution was recognised within Pakistan in December 2011 when she was awarded the National Youth Peace Prize. Malala is an inspiration for people across the world. On October 9th 2012 the Taliban attempted to assassinate her as she travelled home after an exam on the school bus. A national day of prayer has been held for Malala across Pakistan.
http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/malala-yousafzai
Chávez: what would Trotsky say?
The Chávez victory in Venezuela’s presidential election last week, has been greated with unbridled enthusiasm by some on the Stalinist-influenced left, and by a quiet gnashing of teeth and subdued wailing on the right. Others have taken a more nuanced view. There can be no denying that Chávez’s social programmes have brought real benefits to the poor. But the endemic corruption amongst the Chávista ruling elite, the lack of anything remotely resembling workers’ control of industry, Chávez’s unpleasant (but all too common amongst Stalinoid populists) penchant for antisemitism and some truly foul international alliances, mean that the regime cannot be considered ‘socialist’ except in the most debased and meaningless sense of the word. It is, perhaps, social democracy sui generis. The Chávez regime is also, quite clearly, what educated Marxists call ’Bonapartist‘ (to be precise, in the case of Chávez, “petty-bourgeois-democratic Bonapartism“).
Some Trots are very keen on Chávez, others slightly less so. Some are very critical indeed. But what would the Old Man himself have had to say? Well, we don ‘t need to speculate. Between Januay 1937 and his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent in August 1940, Trotsky lived in Mexico under the government of Lazaro Cárdenas - a regime very similar to that of Chávez’s. To pre-empt one obvious question about Trotsky’s generally charitable assessment of the Cárdenas regime: yes, of course, Trotsky was dependent upon the Mexican government for his survival and wasn’t about to do or say anything to piss them off. But Trotsky’s undertaking to Cárdenas not to “intervene in the domestic or foreign politics of this country” also meant that he was under no obligation to praise the regime: he could simply have stayed schtum.
As it was, Trotsky ventured some praise for the Cárdenas regime - and also some friendly criticism. But the crucial point is that he never recognises or describes the regime as ‘socialist.’ On the contrary, he writes:“it is not our state and we must be independent of the state. In this sense we are not opposed to state capitalism in Mexico; but the first thing we demand is our own representation of workers before this state. We cannot permit the leaders of the trade unions to become functionaries of the state. To attempt to conquer the state in this way is absolute idiocy. It is not possible in this manner peacefully to conquer power. It is a petty bourgeois dream…”
The article below is adapted and modified by Jim Denham, from an unattributed piece on the Workers Liberty website:
Above: Trotsky thanking the Cárdenas government (accompanied by cockerels)
Trotsky had been expelled from the USSR by Stalin in 1929, and spent the rest of his life trying to find a country which would let him live in exile. He arrived in Mexico on 9 January 1937.
Thanks to the efforts of Mexican Trotskyists, such as the renowned artist Diego Rivera, the Cárdenas government granted Trotsky asylum on the condition that he would not interfere in Mexico’s domestic affairs. Trotsky accepted this condition, in a statement on his arrival, promising “complete and absolute non-intervention in Mexican politics and no less complete abstention from actions that might prejudice the relations between Mexico and other countries”. (Writings 1936-37 p.86)
Trotsky was forced to break with the Mexican “Trotskyist” organisation, the LCI, after six months in the country, when the Mexican Trots (the LCI) issued a manifesto calling for “direct action” against the high cost of living, implying that workers should attack shops. Coming at the time of the Moscow trials and the attacks on Trotsky by the Stalinists in Mexico, this call by the LCI was particularly stupid. After Trotsky’s intervention, the LCI dissolved itself for the remainder of 1937.
Trotsky publicly supported Cárdenas’ expropriation of the oil industry. On 23 April 1938 he wrote to the Daily Herald in Britain, pointing to the hypocrisy of the British government and defending the nationalisation of oil of the grounds of national economic development and independence. He argued that the Labour Party should set up a commission to investigate how much of the “living sap of Mexico” had been “plundered” by British capital. (Writings 1937-38 p.324)
He also criticised some of his Mexican supporters. On 15 April 1938 Trotsky wrote to his closest collaborator, the US Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon: “Galicia, in the name of the revived League [LCI], published a manifesto in which he attacked Cárdenas for his policy of compensating the expropriated capitalists, and posted this manifesto principally on the walls of the Casa del Pueblo. This is the ‘policy’ of these people.” (Writings 1937-38 p.314)
Trotsky characterised the oil expropriation as a matter of self-determination. He wrote: “Semi-colonial Mexico is fighting for its national independence, political and economic. This is the basic meaning of the Mexican revolution at this stage… expropriation is the only effective means of safeguarding national independence and the elementary conditions of democracy.” (Writings 1937-38 p.359)
He compared “this courageous and progressive measure of the Mexican government” to the work of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the United States, adding that, “if Mexico should find itself forced to sell liquid gold to fascist countries, the responsibility for this act would fall fully and completely upon the governments of the imperialist ‘democracies’.” (ibid p.360)
He summed up his attitude thus: “Without succumbing to illusions and without fear of slander, the advanced workers will completely support the Mexican people in their struggle against the imperialists. The expropriation of oil is neither socialism nor communism. But it is a highly progressive measure of national self-defence.”
He reiterated his support, without losing sight of the character of the Mexican government: “The international proletariat has no reason to identify its programme with the programme of the Mexican government. Revolutionists have no need of changing colour, adapting themselves, and rendering flattery in the manner of the GPU school of courtiers, who in a moment of danger will sell out and betray the weaker side. Without giving up its own identity, every honest working class organisation of the entire world, and first of all in Great Britain, is duty-bound—to take an irreconcilable position against the imperialist robbers, their diplomacy, their press, and their fascist hirelings.” (Writings 1937-38 p.361)
A particularly important article of Trotsky’s, in the light of the current situation, is one on freedom of the press, which he published in the first issue of Clave magazine (October 1938).
In the summer of 1938 a Stalinist agent within the Cárdenas regime, Lombardo Toledano, began a campaign against the reactionary press in Mexico, intent on placing it under “democratic censorship” or banning it altogether. Trotsky was unequivocal in opposing this drive. He wrote: “Both theory and historical experience testify that any restriction of democracy in bourgeois society is, in the final analysis, invariably directed against the proletariat… Consequently, any working class ‘leader’ who arms the bourgeois state with special means for controlling public opinion in general and the press in particular is, precisely, a traitor.” (Writings 1937-38 p.417)
“Even though Mexico is a semi-colonial country, it is also a bourgeois state, and in no way a workers’ state. However, even from the standpoint of the interests of the dictatorship of the proletariat, banning bourgeois newspapers or censoring them does not in the least constitute a ‘programme’, or a ‘principle’ or an ideal set up. Measures of this kind can only be a temporary, unavoidable evil…
“It is essential to wage a relentless struggle against the reactionary press. But workers cannot let the repressive fist of the bourgeois state substitute for the struggle that they must wage through their own organisations and their own press… The most effective way to combat the bourgeois press is to expand the working class press… The Mexican proletariat has to have an honest newspaper to express its needs, defend its interests, broaden its horizon, and prepare the way for the socialist revolution in Mexico.” (ibid pp.418, 419-420)
Trotsky began to write about developments in the unions in mid-1938. Before a Stalinist-organised “Pan-American Trade Union Congress” in Mexico City in September 1938, which set up the Confederation of Latin American Workers (CTAL), he wrote (in the name of Diego Rivera) to denounce Toledano’s links with Stalin. He wrote that Toledano was “a ‘pure’ politician, foreign to the working class, and pursuing his own aims”. His ambition was “to climb to the Mexican presidency on the backs of the workers” and in pursuit if that aim had “closely intertwined his fate with the fate of the Kremlin oligarchy”. (Writings 1937-38 p.426)
His attitude seems to have hardened after the CTAL conference, when Trotskyists were excluded for their politics. He was also prompted by the increased attacks on him by the Stalinist bureaucrats in the unions. After Lombardo Toledano presented a dossier to the (Stalinist) Mexican trade union congress (CTM) in 1938, it voted “unanimously” for the expulsion of Trotsky from Mexico.
Then the August 1938 issue of the CTM magazine Futuro carried an attack on him by Lombardo, accusing him of organising a general strike against Cárdenas during the oil expropriations.
Trotsky distinguished between leaders and the unions: “Toledano of course will repeat that we are ‘attacking’ the CTM. No reasonable worker will believe this rubbish. The CTM, as a mass organisation, as a mass organisation, has every right to our respect and support. But just as the democratic state is not identical with its minister at any given time, so a trade union organisation is not identical with its secretary.” (Writings 1938-9, p.22)
Other attacks followed. The Mexican Communist Party (PCM) leader Hernan Laborde accused Trotsky of having links with General Cedillo (who had led an abortive coup against the government). The Stalinist agent Lombardo also claimed that Trotsky had met with fascists during a summer holiday trip. Trotsky’s response was to offer to participate in a public investigation into Lombardo’s charges.
Trotsky also sought to galvanise an opposition to the Stalinists, drafting a statement intended for publication. It stated: “[In Mexico] the unions, unfortunately, are directly dependent on the state” and “posts in the union bureaucracy are frequently filled from the ranks of the bourgeois intelligentsia, attorneys, engineers etc”.
He described the way these bureaucrats gave themselves a left cover by becoming “friends of the USSR”. He described how they kept control of the unions: “they ferociously trample on workers’ democracy and stifle any voice of criticism, acting as outright gangsters towards organisations that fight for the revolutionary independence of the proletariat from the bourgeois state and from foreign imperialism.” (Writings 1938-39 p.83)
Trotsky went further in November 1938, arguing that the trade unions in Mexico were “constitutionally statified”. He told his closest collaborators that, “they incorporate the workers, the trade unions, which are already stratified. They incorporate them in the management of the railroad, the oil industry, and so on, in order to transform the trade union leadership into government representatives… In that sense, when we say ‘the control of production by the workers’, it cannot mean control of production by the stratified bureaucrats of the trade unions, but control by the workers of their own bureaucracy and to fight for the independence of the trade unions from the state.” (Writings supplement 1934-40, p.791)
“In Mexico, more than anywhere, the struggle against the bourgeoisie and the government consists above all in freeing the trade unions from dependence on the government… the class struggle in Mexico must be directed towards winning the independence of the trade unions from the bourgeois state.”
He made it clear that revolutionaries would continue to work in the unions, even though they were partially integrated into the Mexican state. (Writings 1938-39 p.146)
He criticised the Cárdenas government’s second six-year plan in March 1939 for a participation proposal which “threatens to incorporate a bureaucratic hierarchy of the unions etc, without precise delimitation, into the bureaucratic hierarchy of the state”. He went as far as to characterise the unions as “totalitarian”. (Writings 1938-39 p.222, p.227)
This advocacy of intervention in even the most reactionary unions remained in all Trotsky’s articles until the end of his life. For example Clave carried articles in 1940 on the first congress of the STERM teachers’ union and on the 7th national council of the CTM, both characterised by little democracy.
Trotsky made few remarks on the nature of the Mexican regime in the first eighteen months of his asylum, and when he did, these were brief allusions. For example in the article on the freedom of the press in August 1938 he described Mexico’s democracy as “anaemic”.
He argued that “a semi-democratic, semi-Bonapartist state… now exists in every country in Latin America, with inclinations towards the masses”, adding that, “in these semi-Bonapartistic-democratic governments the state needs the support of the peasants and through the weight of the peasants disciplines the workers. That is more or less the situation in Mexico”. (Writings supplement 1934-40, pp.784-785)
What did Trotsky mean by Bonapartism? He had employed the concept to understand the regime in Germany before Hitler and to describe the situation in France in the mid-1930s. He summed it up succinctly in March 1935: “By Bonapartism we mean a regime in which the economically dominant class, having the qualities necessary for democratic methods of government, finds itself compelled to tolerate – in order to preserve its possessions – the uncontrolled command of a military and police apparatus over it, of a crowned ‘saviour’. This kind of situation is created in periods when the class contradictions have become particularly acute; the aim of Bonapartism is to prevent explosions.” (Writings 1934-35 pp.206-07)
In his discussion with comrades in November 1938, he explained: “We see in Mexico and the other Latin American countries that they skipped over most stages of development. It began in Mexico directly by incorporating the trade unions in the state. In Mexico we have a double domination. That is, foreign capital and the national bourgeoisie, or as Diego Rivera formulated it, a ‘sub-bourgeoisie’ – a stratum which is controlled by foreign capital and at the same time opposed to the workers; in Mexico a semi-Bonapartist regime between foreign capital and national capital, foreign capital and the workers… They create a state capitalism which has nothing to do with socialism. It is the purest form of state capitalism.” (Writings supplement 1934-40, pp.790-791)
Discussing the ruling party’s second six year plan in March 1939 (which had been endorsed by the CTM) Trotsky described how “the government defends the vital resources of the country, but at the same time it can grant industrial concessions, above all in the form of mixed corporations, i.e. enterprises in which the government participates (holding 10%, 25%, 51% of the stock, according to the circumstances) and writes into the contracts the option of buying out the rest after a certain period of time”.
Summing up he wrote: “The authors of the programme [i.e. the plan] wish to completely construct state capitalism within a period of six years. But nationalisation of existing enterprises is one thing; creating new ones is another… The country we repeat is poor. Under such conditions it would be almost suicidal to close the doors to foreign capital. To construct state capitalism, capital is necessary.” (Writings 1938-39 pp.226-227)
Trotsky never equivocated on the nature of the ruling party, including the character of the PRM (the “Mexican Revolutionary Party” created by Cárdenas). In his discussion with comrades in November 1938 he argued: “The Guomindang in China, the PRM in Mexico, and the APRA in Peru are very similar organisations. It is a people’s front in the form of a party… our organisation does not participate in the APRA, Guomindang, or PRM, that it preserves absolute freedom of action and criticism.” (Writings supplement 1934-40, p.785)
At the beginning of 1939, prospective candidates in the PRM resigned their posts and began to campaign for the presidency, which would take place in July 1940.
At the outset the candidates were Francisco Mujica on the “left”, Manuel Ávila Camacho in the centre and Juan Andreu Almazán on the right. The PCM and Lombardo threw their support behind Ávila Camacho, calling for “unity behind the only candidate that can defeat reaction”.
Trotsky condemned the support for Ávila Camacho offered by the CGT, and wrote: “At the present time there is no workers party, no trade union that is in the process of developing independent class politics and that is able to launch an independent candidate. Under these conditions, our only possible course of action is to limit ourselves to Marxist propaganda and to the preparation of a future independent party of the Mexican proletariat.” (Writings 1938-39 p.176)
Later he registered his attitude toward Diego Rivera, who had broken with the (Trotskyist) Fourth International and briefly supported Mujica. Trotsky wrote: “You can imagine how astonished I was when Van accidentally met the painter [Rivera], in company with Hidalgo, leaving the building of the Pro-Mujica Committee carrying bundles of pro-Mujica leaflets which they were loading into the painter’s station wagon. I believe that was the first we learned of the new turn, or the passing of the painter from ‘third period anarchism’ to ‘people’s front politics’. The poor Casa del Pueblo followed him on all these steps.” (Writings 1938-39 p.293).
Despite Mexico’s relative economic backwardness in the 1930s, Trotsky did not rule out the possibility that its workers might seize power – even before their counterparts in the US. (Writings supplement 1934-40, p.785) However he was concerned about a mechanical interpretation of permanent revolution as applied to Mexico by some of the LCI.
“The Fourth International will defend… [Mexico] against imperialist intervention… But as the Mexican section of the Fourth International, it is not our state and we must be independent of the state. In this sense we are not opposed to state capitalism in Mexico; but the first thing we demand is our own representation of workers before this state. We cannot permit the leaders of the trade unions to become functionaries of the state. To attempt to conquer the state in this way is absolute idiocy. It is not possible in this manner peacefully to conquer power. It is a petty bourgeois dream…
“I believe we must fight with the greatest energy this idea that the state can be seized by stealing bits of the power. It is the history of the Guomindang. In Mexico the power is in the hands of the national bourgeoisie, and we can conquer power only by conquering the majority of the workers and a great part of the peasantry, and then overthrowing the bourgeoisie. There is no other possibility.” (Writings supplement 1934-40, p.792, p.793).
Trotsky’s evaluation of developments in Mexico went through a series of stages and modifications, as the battle between the state and the working class was played out. In the last eighteen months of his life, in discussions with Mexican socialists, he further clarified his views on the nature of the regime and the ruling party, its relationship to the unions and on workers’ administration.
The first collaboration of note was with Francisco Zamora, a member of the editorial board of Clave who had also sat on the Dewey Commission. He was a professor of economics at the National University of Mexico and a member of the first committee of the CTM. Between October 1938 and May 1939 Zamora published a series of articles in the magazine Hoy, which contain some ideas influenced by Trotsky.
Zamora criticised the CTM and CGT leaders and pointed to how their bourgeois politics had accommodated with the Mexican state. He argued that the Mexican revolution, particularly in its agrarian relations, was unfinished. However he predicted that Ávila Camacho would not continue the work of Cárdenas, but rather destroy it.
Zamora also discussed the way the state represented the interests of the dominant class, although during periods of stalemate allowed the state “a certain momentary independence” – alluding to the idea of Bonapartism.
Around the same time Trotsky held discussions with the Mexican Marxist Octavio Fernández on the nature of the Mexican revolution. Between February and April 1939, Fernández published three articles in Clave with a wealth of statistical material dealing concretely with the Mexican social formation and in particular with the peasantry and the working class.
Fernández distinguished between the military-police form of Bonapartism of the Calles period and the “petty-bourgeois-democratic Bonapartism” of Cárdenas. He also argued that the expropriation of the oil industry was made possible by the international crisis of relations between the imperialist powers. He believed that further expropriations were unlikely as long as a bourgeois government was in power in Mexico. He nevertheless urged workers to push the nationalisations as far as possible, to press the government not to pay compensation, to set up control committees in factories and for price control committees. (León Trotsky, Escritos Latinamericanos 1999 pp.233-234)
In a later article in Clave, ‘Qué ha sido y adónde va la revolución mexicana’ (November-December 1939), Fernández warned that in Mexico, everyone was a “revolutionary” and for “the revolution”. This was because the Mexican revolution (1910-20) was “aborted”, in the sense of an unfinished bourgeois revolution – but in a country where the working class was increasingly becoming an independent factor.
Probably Trotsky’s most important discussion took place with Rodrigo García Treviño, an official at the CTM. Following the exchange, Trotsky wrote a paper on whether revolutionaries should participate in the workers’ administration established in the nationalised rail and oil industries (reprinted here). The key passage is this:
“The nationalization of railways and oil fields in Mexico has of course nothing in common with socialism. It is a measure of state capitalism in a backward country which in this way seeks to defend itself on the one hand against foreign imperialism and on the other against its own proletariat. The management of railways, oil fields, etcetera, through labor organizations has nothing in common with workers’ control over industry, for in the essence of the matter the management is effected through the labor bureaucracy which is independent of the workers, but in return, completely dependent on the bourgeois state. This measure on the part of the ruling class pursues the aim of disciplining the working class, making it more industrious in the service of the common interests of the state, which appear on the surface to merge with the interests of the working class itself. As a matter of fact, the whole task of the bourgeoisie consists in liquidating the trade unions as organs of the class struggle and substituting in their place the trade union bureaucracy as the organ of the leadership over the workers by the bourgeois state. In these conditions, the task of the revolutionary vanguard is to conduct a struggle for the complete independence of the trade unions and for the introduction of actual workers’ control over the present union bureaucracy, which has been turned into the administration of railways, oil enterprises and so on.”
García Treviño wrote an article quoting (anonymously) passages from Trotsky’s document – including on Bonapartism sui generis and the concluding emphasis on the need for a revolutionary party. He praised the workers’ administration as just as efficient as under the previous management — for example by centralising production — and rejecting the hostility of the Stalinists towards it.
But he pointed out that in the rail industry, workers had also been saddled with the old debts of the company. He criticised the form of control because it could not break out of the laws of the bourgeois economy, the firm was bankrupt and because compensation was paid. He said that although workers had a bigger say in the industries, the state remained in control and pointed out that cooperatives could be a “cruel and merciless” form of exploitation of the working class.
Trotsky was unable to add much over the next year. The world was sucked into another global war and as hostilities began, a huge faction fight took place in the Trotskyist organisation in the United States, the SWP. On top of that, the Stalinists in Mexico stepped up their attacks on Trotsky’s asylum and prepared the ground for the GPU assassins to do their work.
For example PCM leader Laborde accused Trotsky of involvement in a rail crash in its paper La Voz de Mexico in April 1939. Lombardo’s press, including Futuro magazine and the daily paper El Popular slandered him during the early months on 1940. Trotsky again proposed a public commission of investigation of the charges.
On 24 May 1940 a serious attempt was made to murder Trotsky, with the Stalinist painter David Siqueiros leading an armed assault on his house at night.
Accused of slandering the Stalinists, Trotsky offered to take the matter to court. He identified the role of the GPU, which had begun making plans to kill him from April 1939. These plans were stepped up by Vittorio Cordovilla, a Stalinist agent who arrived in Mexico in late 1939 and organised a purge of the party (including its leaders Laborde and Campa) for not prosecuting the anti-Trotsky campaign hard enough. Within months of this intervention, Trotsky’s life was ended by a Stalinist ice axe to the head.
On Trotsky’s desk at the time of his death was an unfinished manuscript from April 1940 on the trade unions, with a valuable assessment of the relationship between the state and the working class in Mexico and similar countries. Entitled Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, it once more characterised the Cárdenas regime as Bonapartist.
Trotsky also distinguished between different forms of Bonapartism, with some leaning “in a democratic direction, seeking support among workers and peasants”, while others “install a form close to military-police dictatorship”.
He criticised the nationalisation of the railways and oil fields as aimed simultaneously at foreign capital and the workers – and registered that these industries were run by the union bureaucracy for the bourgeois state.
Trotsky also repeated his assessment that the Mexican trade unions had been transformed into semi-state institutions – but maintained that Marxists still had the possibility of working inside them. But he emphasised the need for workers’ organisations to assert their own independent politics, from the state and the labour bureaucracy, and to fight for trade union democracy.
One thing is clear from comparing Mexico in the late 1930s with the situation today (especially in Venezuela), and that is that Mexico’s history anticipated present political issues of strategy and tactics in almost every case — the nationalisations, workers’ participation, coup attempts, union splits, the press, the creation of a ruling party etc, — as part of the creation of a Bonapartist regime. And in almost every case, Trotsky set out a clear position for how Marxists would navigate in these circumstances.
Of course, we cannot read off mechanically from the past what to say and do in the present. For one thing, Venezuela and Mexico today are much more industrially developed than in Trotsky’s time, and the form of domination by the US is different today than it was in the 1930s. And the Venezuelan UNT trade union federation is not today incorporated in the state but is an independent movement with some militant and longstanding rank and file forces.
But our tradition is an anchor – it demands a critical stance. Other Marxists, including Trotskyists in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, have used Trotsky’s comments to develop their analysis of the Mexican regime in terms of Bonapartism – and applied to to other cases, such as Peron in Argentina and Velasco in Peru. Events in Venezuela under Chávez should be assessed on their own terms: but much can be learned from the attitude that Trotsky took to comparable developments.
Atzmon, the “liberal” establishment’s favourite self-hating Jew and anti-semite, raises his foul head again
I see that the anti-semite Gilad Atzmon, a moderately talented jazz musician, is once again receiving the plaudits of the “liberal” establishment. This foul creature is a holocaust-denier, a conspiracy theorist and an anti-semite. The fact that he was born an Israeli Jew seems to convince some stupid people that he can’t be an anti-semite. He clearly is. I always hesitate to use the term “self-hater” about Jewish people who oppose the policies (or even the very existence) of Israel. But in the case of Atzmon, the the term is one hundred per cent true and accurate. He is a now a Christian, which in itself is fair enough I suppose. But his foul propaganda (endorsed by, amongst other ultra-right wingers and neo-Nazis, David Duke of the KKK), reapeats all the old Christian (and Nazi) anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
The only excuse that can be made for this sax-playing racist is that he is almost certainly mentally ill. That’s certainly the opinion of several people I’ve spoken to who know him personally.
Happily, more amd more pro-Palestinian campaigners are seeing through Atzmon and denouncing him.
Woricker simply takes at face value, Atzmon’s lying description of himself as an honest “anti-Zionist,” persecuted by his reactionary enemies. The programme even features the pro-Atzmon film’s director, Golriz Kolahi, invoking jazz’s role in the civil rights movement as though that noble cause was pretty much the same thing as Atzmon’s anti-semitic agenda.
The most laughable part of all is when Woricker suggests that Atzmon’s politics may have put at risk his musical success – as though a minor league sub-Parker jazz saxophonist would be being interviewd on the World Service if he hadn’t come out with his “controversial” views.
As a jazz loiver, I hate Atzmon mainly because in my opinion he’s betrayed the very essence of jazz with his foul racism. I wrote this following some time ago, but I think it bears republishing once again:
Atzmon, why is that you make me so angry? Maybe it’s because I love jazz. I love jazz in all its forms, including post-bop, which I don’t really understand. But even when I don’t understand or like a particular form of jazz (latter-day Miles Davis, or John Coltrane, for instance; also Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers) , I always respect the integrity of the musician(s), trying to do something new — which is what jazz is all about.
Actually, jazz is about something else as well: from its earliest days in and around New Orleans, it was about what would now be called “social inclusion”: at a time when blacks and whites could not mix socially, jazz began to break down the barriers.
On 17 July 1923 the (white) New Orleans Rhythm Kings recorded with the black pianist/composer Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton. It was the very first “integrated” recording session. A few years later (1929) Eddie Condon organised a band of his favourite musicians for a recording session (‘That’s A Serious Thing’ and ‘I’m Gonna Stomp Mr Henry Lee’) that happened to include both white and black musicians. Condon thought nothing of it at the time:
“Five nights a week I went to Harlem, early or late, whether I was working or loafing. At Small’s Paradise on 135th Street I heard Charlie Johnson’s band, with Leonard Davis on trumpet, Happy Cauldwell on tenor saxophone, and George Stafford on drums. Someone, I thought, ought to put this music on records; it’s too good to miss. I went to Ralph Peer, of the Southern Music Company, a subsidiary of Victor. He looked dubious when I outlined my idea. ‘I want to use Davis, Cauldwell, and Stafford,’ I said, ‘with some friends of mine — Jack Teagarden, Joe Sullivan, and Mezzrow.’ After listening to me talk for twenty minutes about the music which would come out of such a combination, Peer gave in and set a date. ‘This will be for Victor,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s good’.
“It was, though Mezzrow and I played too. We made ‘I’m Gonna Stomp Mr Henry Lee’ and ‘That’s A Serious Thing’. The negro Joe Sullivan [NB: the pianist on the records was the white Irish-American stride and blues master, Joe Sullivan — JD] supplied us with some special introductory chords for ‘That’s A Serious Thing’. When the masters were cut Mr Peer congratulated me. ‘You were right about the music’, he said. ‘It is excellent. All in all I should say this has been an interesting experiment.’ It wasn’t untill I got out in the street that I realised what he meant. I made some inquiries: so far as I could discover we had made the first mixed recording date on any national label, using both white and negro musicians. I thought it had been done long before.”
Condon was not a political person, but he was a decent human being who loved jazz music, and so understood that catagorising people on the basis of race is simply wrong. A member of the audience once asked Condon, “Is your clarinet-player a negro?” (a reference to the light-skinned Afro-American Edmund Hall); Condon replied. “I dunno: I never asked him.”
It is that spirit that should inform jazz. It is the music of democracy, anti-racism and equality. Of course, many of the great pioneers were black Americans: Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Theloneous Monk, John Coltrane, etc, etc. But plenty, too, were white — and quite a few Jewish (at a time when Jews were experiencing a milder form of the racism meted out to blacks in America): Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Max Kaminsky, Red Rodney, Zoot Sims, etc, etc. The fact that none of these ever made a big deal about being Jewish, is rather the point. They regarded jazz as simply music, and music that was the property of everyone — regardless of race, country of origin or skin pigmentation
Do you agree with that premise, or not, Gilad?
There is an interesting alternative story: that of Charlie and his Orchestra. Have you heard of this outfit, Gilad? It was formed during World War Two by the Nazis, when they realised that jazz and swing were a powerful propaganda tool for the Allies. So the Nazis formed their own broadcasting “swing” band — Charlie and his Orchestra — to play the hits of the day, with lyrics modified to convey Nazi propaganda. It was not a very good swing band, but its Nazi message was effective.
A few years ago I was discussing these matters on a jazz e-mail list, when someone brought up Charlie and his Orchestra, and I immediately denounced ‘Charlie’ and stated that I would never listen to it. Someone pointed out to me that quite a few of the musicians in the Charlie Orchestra were Jewish: they were playing for the Nazis in order to save their lives, and the lives of their families.
So, Gilad, when you make mock (as you do with your “Artie Fishal and the Promised Band”) of Israeli Jews simply for being Israeli Jews, and when you make statements to the effect that the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” may be accurate in describing Jews, and that “American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder [sic] of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy” (www.workersliberty.org/node/4325), what is it you think you’re saying?
And you go on to say (this is all on your website, by the way, so I presume you won’t be denying any of it): “The Jews are the ultimate Chamelions, they can be whatever they like so long as it serves some expedient…not only can’t they win…they can’t lose either, they can never be defeated…They move forwards and backwards, from left to right, from right to left, from spirituality into materialism, from orthodox Marxism into hard capitalism…”
You may not realise it, Gilad, but this kind of stuff is classic European and Russian anti-semitism: the Jews as both Bolsheviks and Rothschild capitalists: the ultimate conspirators. Your stupid, ignorant “Artie Fishal” routine is worse than Charlie and his Orchestra: at least the Jews in that band played anti-semitic material because they had no choice; you do it because you want to. Because you revel in baiting your homeland, which you wish to see destroyed.
You are free, of course, to bait Israel and to spout your antisemitic filth. The degenerate ex-Marxists of the SWP are free to promote you [*] and your band (though why, exactly, they should allow you to speak on the politics of the Middle East, remains a mystery).
But, as a jazz-lover, I have to say that I hate your racism. Jazz is the music of integration, of humanity and equality. Your racism has no place in our music.
[* Since the Open Letter was written, the SWP have fairly obviously broken with Atzmon, though they have not accounted for their dalliance with him].
The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex by Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode has seen about a hundred films to my one, but as his opinion of the one we’ve both seen coincides with mine, I naturally find him an intelligent film critic. The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex is a collection of essays – on the economic facts behind block blusters; the baseness of the selection process for the Oscars; the awfulness of going to the flicks today where 90% of the commercial thinking goes into flogging popcorn; the hideousness of 3D, and diatribes about very bad films, especially Sex and the City 2. He’s broadcasting his opinion of this “ghastly and putrid and vomit-inducing” film in this YouTube clip:-
When I first heard this I had imagined Mark Kermode was a small “l” liberal provoked into a tumbrel moment but he says he’s an old Trot, so seeing the Sex and the City 2 as the nadir of American capitalism and imperialism comes naturally to him.
There are also engaging anecdotes of how he started life as a film critic when a boy scribbling pages about Dougal and the Blue Cat (the film spin off of The Magic Roundabout) then maturing to Blazing Saddles – in order to relive the experience. One bout of entertainment went a long way in those pre-internet, DVD and even video days.
On block busters – he sees them, in corporate speak, as an Opportunity not a Threat to good film-making. To make money – and they almost always do – they have to include a big star, great special effects and a newsworthy budget (he makes the point that the 100 million plus dollars spent in themselves are an audience draw – if it’s that expensive people go to see what the pricey buzz is about).
“If you spend enough money, bag an A-list star and pile on the spectacle, the chances are your movie will not lose money (unless it’s a comedy), regardless of how smart of dumb it may be. . . an intelligent script will not (as it is widely claimed) make your movie tank or alienate your core audience. Even if they don’t understand the film, they’ll show up and pay to see it anyway – in just the same way they’ll flock to see films that are rubbish, and which they don’t actually enjoy. Like Pearl Harbour.”
(Pearl Harbour, the movie, has the weakest, wettest, love story ever devised to insult you, the audience member.)
“The idea that creative risk must be limited to low or mid-priced movie-making (where you can in fact lose loads of money) while thick-headed reductionism rules the big-budget roost is the opposite of the truth.”
Mark Kermode does love movies and does love his job as film critic even if it means seeing everything including all the Saw series. He talks of the annoyance critics cause film makers who denounce them as elitist snobs, when they are not quoting them out of context to ramp up their movies.
“the difference between film criticism and pub talk. Pub talk can be all opinion and nothing else; film criticism, if it is done properly , should involve opinion, description, contextualisation, analysis and . . entertainment. . .
To illustrate these essential elements, here are five short reviews of Saw 3D, each adding another key ingredient:
1) Opinion
Saw 3D is rubbish.
2) Opinion and description:
Saw 3D is a horror film that is rubbish.
3) Opinion, description and contextualisation:
Saw 3D is the seventh episode and the first stereoscopic instalment in a long running horror series, and it is rubbish.
4) Opinion, description, contextualisation and analysis:
Saw 3D is the first stereoscopic instalment in a series that began life as a tortuously inventive low-budget chiller but which as descended over the course of six sequels into gory, boring torture porn which is rubbish.
5) Opinion, description, contextualisation, analysis and entertainment.
It took the once-inventive but increasingly depressing Saw series seven movies to resort to the hackneyed headache of 3-D, but despite the promise that this is “The Final Chapter” (just wait until the sums say otherwise) you keep wishing those protruding spikes would leap a little further out of the screen and puncture your eyeballs to ensure that you never have to watch rubbish like this ever again.”
(The movies marketeers extract “inventive” from that paragraph and mount it on the marquees.)
Kermode is a total cineaste, a lover not just of movies but of movie theatres; of the smell of celluloid and the look of reels from the pre-digital age, which always jumped at the same point; the actual physical appearance of a strip of film with frames missing because the projectionist had snipped a piece showing a female naked bottom for a souvenir. He’s the vinyl lover – even the shellac lover – groaning at the CD and I-Pod and lamenting that the skilled projectionist has been replaced by a button pusher.
He’s good fun and good company. If you want to spend an easy 10 minutes look him up on YouTube on any film and he’ll come out with something worth listening to.
