Kick over this statue

The legendary 1980s band The Redskins once had a hit of sorts with a song entitled 'Kick Over the Statues' - not a bad sentiment, particularly in a country like Britain where one does not have to look too far for statues honouring various bloodsoaked ruling class 'heroes' - as chronicled by the late Colin Gill and Leon Kuhn in their marvellous little book Topple the Mighty.

It is therefore encouraging to see that a campaign has sprung up in the North East Welsh town of Denbigh against plans to build any new sculpture to pay tribute to a local ruling class 'hero', a particularly brutal imperialist adventurer HM Stanley, of 'Dr Livingstone, I presume?' fame and a central figure in the late nineteenth century European 'scramble for Africa'. As the campaigners letter of protest notes:

'We call on the people of Denbigh not to erect any statue to 'honour' the imperialist HM Stanley. A statue would convey uncritical approval and celebration of all aspects of Stanley - something not possible for such a controversial figure today. It is wrong to romanticise the African "adventures" of Victorian era imperialists. The racist ideas of the day led to hundreds of thousands of Africans being killed or mistreated - Europeans believing that their supremacy entitled them to confiscate land and exploit natives and resources.'

The nineteenth century diarist, W.S. Blunt, once recorded the following note after reading Stanley's autobiography, which gives some indication as to why Stanley became such a racist barbarian after arriving in Africa:

'Stanley, before going to Africa, though ill-bred and ill-educated, was a decent working man with a modest opinion of himself and a good heart, but the position he found himself in in Africa filled him with the usual idea of being the representative of a superior race, with right of command over the people of the country he was travelling through, and little by little he got into the way of shooting them if they did not obey his orders, or provide him with food. All of his later writing is an attempt to show that he had a high motive in excuse for these violences, the cause of Christianity, civilisation and the rest, till he became a contemptible humbug.'

John Newsinger on British Imperialism

What it is important to recognise is that Britain’s Imperial adventures have always met with domestic opposition, that there have always been individuals, organisations and sometimes mass movements that have opposed the Empire. One thing I tried to do in my book was to make clear that there was always opposition to Empire in Britain. What history shows is that it is when the British working class is fighting in its own interests that you get British workers beginning to identify with other people’s struggles.

Clearly we face an uphill struggle today as far as arguing for recognition of the realities of Empire is concerned. This is demonstrated most clearly by the new government’s intention to involve Niall Ferguson in developing the history curriculum for schools. But growing resistance both at home and abroad will strengthen our arguments, will make our words flesh, so to speak.

A timely interview with the author of The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire

New book: Neo-Liberal Scotland

NEOLIBERAL SCOTLAND: Class and Society in a Stateless Nation
ISBN 97814
Edited by Neil Davidson, Patricia McCafferty
and David Miller
CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING
Academic Publishers

ISBN 9781443816755 470pp £24.99/US$34.99

Neoliberal Scotland argues that far from passing Scotland by, as is so often claimed, neoliberalism has in fact become institutionalised there. As the mainstream political parties converge on market-friendly policies and business interests are equated with the public good, the Scottish population has become more and more distanced from the democratic process, to the extent that an increasing number now fail to vote in elections.

This book details for the first time these negative effects of neoliberal policies on Scottish society and takes to task those academics and others who either defend the neoliberal order or refuse to recognise that it exists. Neoliberal Scotland represents both an intervention in contemporary debates about the condition of Scotland and a case study, of more general interest, of how neoliberalism has affected one of the “stateless nations” of the advanced West.

Chapter One takes an overview of the origin and rise of neoliberalism in the developed world, arguing that it repudiates rather than continues the thought of Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Part One addresses the fundamental issue of social class in Scotland over three chapters. Chapter Two attempts to locate the ruling class both
internally and externally. Chapter Three explores the changing nature of working class membership and its collective experience. Chapter Four follows the working class into the workplace where heightened tensions in the state sector have provoked an increasingly militant response from trade unionists.

Part Two engages with the broader impact of neoliberalism on Scottish society through a diverse series of studies. Chapter Five assesses claims by successive Scottish governments that they have been pursuing environmental justice. Chapter Six examines how Glasgow has been reconfigured as a classic example of the “neoliberal city”. Chapter Seven looks at another aspect of Glasgow, in this case as the main destination of Eastern European migrants who have arrived in Scotland through the international impact of neoliberal globalisation. Chapter Eight investigates the economic intrusion of private capital into the custodial network and the ideological emphasis on punishment as the main objective in sentencing. Chapter Nine is concerned with the Scottish manifestations of “the happiness industry”, showing how market-fundamentalist notions of individual responsibility now structure even the most seemingly innocuous attempts to resolve supposed attitudinal problems. Finally, Chapter Ten demonstrates that the limited extent to which devolved Scottish governments, particularly the present SNP administration, have been able to go beyond the boundaries of neoliberal orthodoxy has been a function of the peculiarities of party competition in Holyrood, rather than representing a fundamental disavowal of the existing order.

Neil Davidson is a Senior Research Fellow with the
Department of Geography and Sociology at the University of
Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

Patricia McCafferty is a Lecturer in the Department of
Geography and Sociology at the University of Strathclyde in
Glasgow, Scotland, and Associate Lecturer with the Open
University.

David Miller is a Professor of Sociology with the Department
of Geography and Sociology at the University of Strathclyde in
Glasgow, Scotland

Michael Rosen on a visit to London's Jewish Museum

I'm the result of a few families out of the 150,000 people who came to Britain from Russia, Romania and "Russian Poland" around 130 years ago. Beginning with the Norman invasion and ending recently, other kinds of Jews are on display, too - Spanish, Portuguese, Indian - as well as converts: in the entrance foyer, a Chinese woman talks alongside a Hasidic rabbi and Jonathan Freedland. Jewish multiculturalism, even.
My parents grew into something else: Jewish internationalism. I see it on a trade-union banner. Across the top it reads: "The London Jewish Bakers Union". Across the bottom: "Workers of the World Unite". In the middle: "Buy bread with the union label". On the reverse, not visible when I visited, it says the same in Yiddish. So, these bakers seemed to think that they could speak their own language, bake Jewish bread, have a Jewish trade union and yet also say: "Labour is international."

Read the full article here

Eugene Debs on what Socialists say about Immigration

[The American radical Eugene Debs (1855-1926) was one of the greatest revolutionary socialists who ever lived. In 1910 he wrote this letter to counter the arguments of those 'socialists' who argued for the necessity of supporting immigration controls - a letter which 100 years later still speaks to us today on an ever topical issue given the current climate of racism in Britain around the question today being whipped up by all manner of mainstream media 'social commentators' and politicians from Gordon Brown ('We are fighting for Britain's future', 'We will put the British people first') downwards...]

My Dear Brewer:

Have just read the majority report of the [Socialist Party] Committee on Immigration [which called for the exclusion of Asians from America]. It is utterly unsocialistic, reactionary and in truth outrageous, and I hope you will oppose with all your power. The plea that certain races are to be excluded because of tactical expediency would be entirely consistent in a bourgeois convention of self-seekers, but should have no place in a proletariat gathering under the auspices of an international movement that is calling on the oppressed and exploited workers of all the world to unite for their emancipation...

Away with the “tactics” which require the exclusion of the oppressed and suffering slaves who seek these shores with the hope of bettering their wretched condition and are driven back under the cruel lash of expediency by those who call themselves Socialists in the name of a movement whose proud boast it is that it stands uncompromisingly for the oppressed and down-trodden of all the earth. These poor slaves have just as good a right to enter here as even the authors of this report who now seek to exclude them. The only difference is that the latter had the advantage of a little education and had not been so cruelly ground and oppressed, but in point of principle there is no difference, the motive of all being precisely the same, and if the convention which meets in the name of Socialism should discriminate at all it should be in favor of the miserable races who have borne the heaviest burdens and are most nearly crushed to the earth.

Upon this vital proposition I would take my stand against the world and no specious argument of subtle and sophistical defenders of the civic federation unionism, who do not hesitate to sacrifice principle for numbers and jeopardise ultimate success for immediate gain, could move me to turn my back upon the oppressed, brutalized and despairing victims of the old world, who are lured to these shores by some faint glimmer of hope that here their crushing burdens may be lightened, and some star of promise rise in their darkened skies.

The alleged advantages that would come to the Socialist movement because of such heartless exclusion would all be swept away a thousand times by the sacrifice of a cardinal principle of the international socialist movement, for well rnight the good faith of such a movement be questioned by intelligent workers if it placed itself upon record as barring its doors against the very races most in need of relief, and extinguishing their hope, and leaving them in dark despair at the very time their ears were first attuned to the international call and their hearts were beginning to throb responsive to the solidarity of the oppressed of all lands and all climes beneath the skies.

In this attitude there is nothing of maudlin sentimentality, but simply a rigid adherence to the fundamental principles of the International proletarian movement. If Socialism, international, revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the exploited and oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare.

Let those desert us who will because we refuse to shut the international door in the faces of their own brethren; we will be none the weaker but all the stronger for their going, for they evidently have no clear conception of the international solidarity, are wholly lacking in the revolutionary spirit, and have no proper place in the Socialist movement while they entertain such aristocratic notions of their own assumed superiority.

Let us stand squarely on our revolutionary, working class principles and make our fight openly and uncompromisingly against all our enemies, adopting no cowardly tactics and holding out no false hopes, and our movement will then inspire the faith, arouse the spirit, and develop the fibre that will prevail against the world.

Yours without compromise,
Eugene V. Debs.

Racism in Britain Today

International Socialism journal seminar:

Richard Seymour on 'Racism in Britain Today'.

Richard Seymour, author of The Liberal Defence of Murder and the 'lenin's tomb' blog presents the latest in our series of seminars.

The electoral success of the fascist British National Party and the emergence of the English Defence League has forced activists in Britain to look again at the issue of racism. Cultural racism and Islamophobia seem to supplant traditional racist ideas based on biology—but what is behind this shift and just how novel is it? Richard Seymour argues that the rise in racism in Britain is driven to a considerable extent by government policies and media reaction, both liberal and conservative.

6.30pm, Friday 26 March, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H 0GX
(Room FG06, Russell Square Campus— Map: http://bit.ly/soasmap)

This seminar is free to attend and open to all. For more information email isj@swp.org.uk

Some of Richard's earlier articles on racism can be found at the 'lenin's tomb' blog, available online here

Those interested in fighting racism in Britain today should also try and get themselves to Bolton this Saturday (March 20) to counter yet another mobilisation by the racist thugs of the EDL.

Gary Younge on the growth of the Nazi BNP under New Labour

An excellent article

There has always been more to the BNP than racism and always been more to racism than the BNP, which is merely the most vile electoral expression of our degraded racial discourse and political sclerosis. Under such circumstances setting Straw – and the rest of the political class – against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom without any suggestion of an antidote.

This has been New Labour's problem all along. While they have long recognised that racism is a problem, it never seemed to occur to them that anti-racism might be the solution. This should not obscure some of the positive things Labour has done – most notably the Macpherson report and the Race Relations Amendment Act. But in the words of the late African American writer James Baldwin: "What it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other."

The BNP's victories are a product of our politics. Its defeat, when it comes, will necessarily be a product of a change in our politics. But since New Labour's politics enabled the BNP, it is in no position to disable it. The BNP is a bottom feeder. But the system is rotting from the head down.

Join the Demonstrations outside BBC centre today organised by Unite Against Fascism

An Anti-Imperialists Guide to Duxford

Since it is the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, I may as well mention briefly my recent visit to Duxford, a one time RAF airbase in Cambridgeshire which is now part of the Imperial War Museum and which markets itself modestly as 'Europe's Premier Aviation Museum'. If you have ever seen the 1969 film 'Battle of Britain' starring among others Ian McShane from Lovejoy/Deadwood then you will have seen part of historic Duxford being blown up for cinematic effect. If you happen to hail from anywhere within easy driving distance of Duxford then it is more than likely you will have grown up having made several visits to the place over the years, whether school trips or whatever. If you have never been to the place, which I guess is the majority of Histomat readers, then this post may give you a better idea of whether you might want to bother to make a visit or not.

I have only actually been to the main Imperial War Museum in London a couple of times I think and a very long time ago but I understand that generally speaking the impression it aims to generally rightly leave in the mind of most visitors is one of horror at the barbarism of imperialist warfare. Lets just say that I think it is fairly safe to guess that the impression that Duxford leaves in the minds of the most visitors is not quite this. Rather one is left with a kind of imperial nostalgia for the heroism displayed by RAF pilots during 1940, 'their finest hour' to quote Churchill, when 'never before in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'. Duxford resembles a kind of shrine, a homage to 'the few'. It kind of caters for the fantasies of British schoolboys who dream of flying either Spitfires engaging in dogfights with Messerschmitt 109s - dreams that I guess some never really grow out of going by a quick look around at some of the other visitors to the place. It is not surprising that part of Duxford itself is actually an army recruitment display ill-disguised as a history of the Royal Anglican regiment.

In part this is of course inevitable, and even were a dedicated anti-imperialist placed in charge of the place it would still be difficult for it to promote any other kind of 'message'. Any museum is defined by what it has as exhibits - and Duxford has hangers full of old planes, centred around a core of Spitfires, Hurricanes and Lancasters - and my personal favourite of this ilk, the Short Sunderland, (that I even have a personal favourite is a slightly worrying tendency for any Marxist - feel free to pick me up over it in the comments box). Of course, as you might expect from 'Europe's Premier Aviation Museum', Duxford does have a whole range of planes from around the world - new and old - including Tony Benn's beloved Concorde - as well as other things such as mini submarines/tanks etc etc - which it has accumulated over the years.

However, any self-respecting anti-imperialist who found themselves for whatever reason visiting Duxford would do well to take note of three notable aspects of the 'experience'. Firstly, hidden away in the small section detailing the colonial troops at the disposal of the British Empire ( the black West Indian RAF members who fought in the Second World War for example are often forgotten - see here), there is a small tiny box that does admit that during the 1920s the RAF spent its energies er, 'Policing the Empire' which involved among other things bombing innocent people in er, Iraq and Afghanistan. I would guess about 90 percent of visitors miss this amid the general glorification of the RAF that is going on - still I guess we should be grateful it is there at all.

Secondly, largely because it is an ex- RAF airbase in East Anglia mostly centred around RAF planes, the dominant narrative one has of the Second World War itself is a quasi nationalist almost romantic focus on the British at war. Aside from a few Soviet tanks hidden away in the very farthest darkest corner of Duxford (visiting them was of course my personal highlight of the day, though admittedly a tank called 'Josef Stalin II' was less impressive sounding than the legend that is the T-34) the Russian people's resistance to Hitler's war machine which was so crucial to the eventual victory of the Allied Powers is all but absent. I would guess about 70 percent of visitors to Duxford never even find the Russian tanks, and few of those lucky few who do realise their significance.

The only other Russian artefacts I saw was a MiG fighter from the Cold War - and a rather quaint exhibit about Captain Augustus Agar, 'the Mystery VC' who it seems won a medal for torpedoing a Soviet cruiser and rescuing a British spy from Soviet Russia in 1919 - for a breathless account by the raving and rabid reactionary Andrew Roberts of the alleged 'heroism' of 'Operation Kronstadt', 'a feat out of the annals of Drake and Nelson' apparently, see here. What I liked about this exhibit was the way in which it naturally assumed that British forces had every right to be 'intervening' in the Russian Civil War as though St Petersburg was just off the Suffolk coastline or something, an assumption naturally shared by Andrew Roberts.

However, and perhaps most objectionably of all, over the last ten years or so slap bang in the middle of Duxford has appeared the American Air Museum:

The American Air Museum in Britain stands as a memorial to the 30,000 American airmen who gave their lives flying from UK bases in defence of liberty during the Second World War, and also honours those who fought in Korea, Vietnam, Libya, Iraq and other conflicts and battles of the 20th and 21st centuries. This outstanding example of contemporary British architecture houses the largest collection of American warbirds on display outside the United States, including a vintage B-17 Flying Fortress, B-24 Liberator, B-25 Mitchell, P-47 Thunderbolt, and aircraft from the Cold War era such as a B-52 Stratofortress, SR-71 Blackbird and F-4 Phantom, with many suspended from the ceiling as if in flight.

This blog does not appreciate crude anti-Americanism. I once dug out a old pamphlet published by Ipswich Communist Party from the British Library written in about 1953 by the Marxist historian AL Morton, author of a People's History of England entitled bluntly 'Get Out!' - a litany of alleged corruption and abuses made by American service personel while in East Anglia during and after the Second World War. Naturally, I am against American military bases being in Britain and indeed elsewhere outside of well, America, (the New Statesman recently did a fascinating survey of the American bases that still exist internationally) - though the key problem is surely that they are military bases being used for imperialist purposes - rather than that they are American - something that the anti-Americanism of the old CP often didn't seem to grasp.

But that said, there is no doubt that if you happen to be looking for a celebration of the air-power of US imperialism outside of America itself, there is surely no better place to come than the American Air Museum - it truly aims to shock and awe. Throughout Duxford, of course pretty much all the exhibits are artefacts or symbols of imperialist barbarism in one way or another - yes, even the good old Soviet T-34 tank - and any decent human being often finds oneself thinking and wondering about the innocent people killed by this or that plane. Of course, the accompanying notes by each plane rarely encourage such a line of thinking but instead talk in euphemisms - 'this plane was used in counter-insurgency in the French colony of Algeria during the 1950s' - that sort of thing. In the centre of the American Air Museum is a massive B-52 Stratofortress bomber, one that was actually used in the Vietnam War. On its side are the huge number of 'successful' bombing missions marked by little bombs. Of course, I am sure there is a little sign somewhere in there retailing some of the horrors that this weapon of mass destruction inflicted upon the people of Vietnam (for 'balance'), just as they do mention in there somewhere the devastation left in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after American use of the atomic bomb. Nonetheless, it still remains that the B-52 is a symbol of actually existing barbarism and yet a whole museum is built around paying a kind of respect to this thing, as if to say 'don't mess with Uncle Sam or we will literally bomb the shit out of you'.

And yet, the contradiction stands out. The American Air Museum is full of highly technologically advanced killing machines and yet, and yet, for all this hardware they were unable to defeat the heroic ordinary peasants of Vietnam, just as Afghanistan is proving once again the graveyard of empires again today. Amid the horror and the barbarism on display at Duxford, there is at least one lesson of hope.

Edited to add: Mark Mazower on how war-time nostalgia blinds us to Britain's changed realities

Out now! The Enoch Powell Dog Whistle

Are you a Conservative MP or MEP who has recently taken a nose dive in the popularity stakes?

Maybe you recently accidentally on purpose declared that Britain's most popular institution, the NHS, was all a terrible 'mistake'?

Does everyone in your constituency now hate you with a rare vengeance?

Are you worried about whether you will survive the next election?

Then you maybe are in of need of...

The Enoch Powell Dog Whistle

'I used the Enoch Powell Dog Whistle and found it worked a treat. Before everyone hated me, but now at least racist voters respect me. The BNP even declared me their favourite 'politician of the week' - so I must be doing something right!'' - 'Desperate' Dan Hannan, Kent.

The British Way of Death

Between 1969 and 1999 over 1000 died in police custody in Britain. Film maker Ken Fero, who made the classic film Injustice, writes on domestic British state terror in the new Socialist Review

London Unite Against Fascism Rally

Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet fascism has given them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.
Leon Trotsky, 'What is National Socialism?' (1933).

Public rally, Wednesday 29 April, 7pm, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL

Speakers include: Christine Blower (NUT), Jerry Bartlett (NASUWT), Glyn Ford MEP, Dr Abdul Bari (MCB), Steve Hart (Unite), Martin Smith (Love Music Hate Racism), Weyman Bennett (UAF). Rally called by Unite Against Fascism, sponsored by the National Union of Teachers

The BNP is trying to get its first MEPs elected on Thursday 4 June. And London is one of its targets. There is a real danger that the BNP could grab enough votes to grab a London MEP at the European elections on Thursday 4 June. They could get in with as little as 8 percent of the vote. London is a multiracial city and the vast majority of Londoners are opposed to the fascist politics of the BNP. We can come together to stop the prospect of a BNP MEP in London. But we need to act now.

Remembering Blair Peach

Blair Peach was a teacher, an NUT member and a committed anti-fascist who campaigned against the National Front in the 1970s. He was on a demonstration in Southall against the NF on 23 April 1979 when he was killed by a blow to the head from a police officer. Thirty years on we still remember him – but we also have to continue his fight by campaigning against the BNP, today’s equivalent of the Nazi NF.

Leeds: Live it, Love it, Get Hounded to Death

With murderous British police brutality riding high in the news currently, what better time to read Kesper Aspden on the dark side of the city of Leeds, or how David Oluwale, a Nigerian migrant was hounded to his death at the hands of police in a city whose council, with no sense of shame about its past, currently brands itself to the world under the slogan Leeds: Live it, Love it.

The Brown Plague and how to fight it

A couple of years before Gordon Brown, 'World Statesman of the Year' according to Comic Relief - sorry the 'Appeal of Conscience Foundation', began borrowing from the slogans of the 1930s British Union of Fascists for soundbites for speeches to Labour Party Conference, ('British Jobs for British Workers'), his unhealthy obsession with 'Britishness' was already on full display. In 2005, Brown famously glorified the British Empire on a trip to Africa, declaring the 'days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over...We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it'. Back in the 1930s, high days of white colonial power, when Britain ruled a vast swathe of the African continent as well as huge chunks of Asia and the Middle East, celebrating the greatest empire the world had ever seen was distinctly 'respectable' politically. This is what one famous German politician of the inter-war period, who in his autobiography had declared 'I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather see India under English rule than any other', had to say in a speech in the Reichstag of 28 April 1939:

'During the whole of my political activity I have always expounded the idea of a close friendship and collaboration between Germany and England...This desire for Anglo-German friendship and co-operation conforms not merely to sentiments which result from the racial origins of our two peoples, but also to my realisation of the importance for the whole of mankind of the existence of the British Empire. I have never left room for any doubt of my belief that the existence of this empire is an inestimable factor of value for the whole of human cultural and economic life. By whatever means Great Britain has acquired her colonial territories - and I know that they were those of force and often brutality - nevertheless, I know full well that no other empire has ever come into being in any other way, and that in the final resort it is not so much the methods that are taken into account in history as success, and not the success of the methods as such, but rather the general good which the methods yield. Now there is no doubt that the Anglo-Saxon people have accomplished immeasurable colonizing work in the world. For this work I have a sincere admiration. The thought of destroying this labour appeared and still appears to me, seen from a higher human point of view, as nothing but the effluence of human wanton destructiveness.'

The politician in question was of course Adolf Hitler.* No wonder the British Nazi Party are looking such a threat in the coming Euro elections this June - almost a dozen years of New Labour trying to shove nationalist ideas imbued with connotations of race and empire down the throats of the rest of us - together with vigorous modern day acts of neo-colonialism and barbarism - are bound to have dangerous consequences. Oh yeah, and as Richard Seymour recently noted, 'I don't know if you saw it or not, but there's apparently this huge crisis in the capitalist system right now' going on as well. In my opinion, if humanity is going to do the whole '1930s thing' again, lets organise to try and make the rich and powerful - not the rest of us - end up paying for their crisis this time around. And that means building solidarity with the small number of factory occupations already underway, such as the workers in Dundee who yesterday decided to defiantly and gloriously occupy their plant rather than simply passively succumb to the idea that there is nothing we can do in midst of a jobs massacre of epic proportions. An international wave of 'sit-down strikes' such as those which swept America, France and even the Caribbean during the 1930s would rapidly transform the current political situation, and send out a beacon of hope to millions that 'another world is possible'. Such a strike wave would also do something else - it would begin to undermine the very social logic of the whole rotten system from within. Indeed - it is the only thing that can. As Rosa Luxemburg - who knew a thing or two about mass strikes - famously once put it, 'Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they must be be broken'.

*From N Ferguson, Empire, (Penguin 2004), pp. 335-6.

Debates of the Communist Party Historians Group

Ideology, Absolutism and the English Revolution:
Debates of the British Communist Historians, 1940-1956
David Parker

This book offers a fascinating insight into ideas in the making - a glimpse into some of the early debates inside the History Group of the Communist Party of Great Britain, whose members included Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton and Eric Hobsbawm. The outstanding contribution to historical studies of these and other members of the group is now almost universally recognised. The debates they initiated formed the ground for academic research that is still continuing, in particular their work on the nature of English civil war and revolution in the seventeenth century, and on the development of capitalism in Britain. This book focuses on the debates of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century section of the group and their work on ideology and absolutism. It reproduces original documentary material - single contributions, reports and minutes - from the debates, and also includes an informative introductory essay as well as useful notes and appendices.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Ideology, Absolutism and the English Revolution: Debates of the British Communist Historians 1940-1956

Documents 1-16: Absolutism
1. Amended Draft: The English Revolution 1640 (R. Palme Dutt)
2. Absolutism in England (Christopher Hill)
3. The Pokrovsky Controversy (Christopher Hill and Brian Pearce)
4. Discussion on the Problem of Absolutism (Academic Board of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR)
5. Theses for Discussion on Absolutism No 2: The Tudor State in English History (Victor Kiernan)
6. Theses for Discussion on Absolutism, 4: A note on Feudalism (Brian Pearce)
7.Comments on V. G. Kiernan's Theses on Absolutism as far as these discuss Feudalism (Rodney Hilton)
8. Note on Merchant Capital (Victor Kiernan)
9. Note in Reply to Kiernan on Merchant Capital (Maurice Dobb)
10. Note on the Origin of the Tudor State (Victor Kiernan)
11. Brief Definition of Feudalism (Rodney Hilton)
12. The Basis and Character of Tudor Absolutism (History Group discussion)
13. Discussion on Absolutism (Group Minutes July 1947)
14. Discussion on Absolutism (continued) (Minutes January 1948)
15. Postscript (Absolutism) (Victor Kiernan)
16. State and Revolution in Tudor and Stuart England (16th-17th century section)

Documents 17-26: Ideology
17. Some Notes on the Changes in the Mode of Production in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century (Maurice Dobb)
18. The English Bourgeois Revolution and Ideology (Christopher Hill)
19. Notes on Science and the Battle of Ideas in the English Revolution (Stephen Mason)
20. Notes on Science and the Battle of Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2) (Stephen Mason)
21. Bourgeois Ideology after 1660 (Christopher Hill)
22. Calvinism and the Bourgeoisie (Christopher Hill & G de N. Clark)
23. Calvinism and the Transition from Medieval to Modern (Victor Kiernan)
24. The role of ideology in the 16th and 17th centuries (Minutes of the 17th Century Section)
25. The German Reformation (Roy Pascal)
26. Notes on Religion and Class Struggles in France during the Sixteenth Century (Mervyn James)

Appendix 1: Note on the Organisation of the History Group
Appendix 2: Extant Papers and Minutes Relating to the 16th & 17th century section of the History Group
Appendix 3: Discussion Meetings of the 16th & 17th Centuries Section and Aggregate Meetings of all Sections 1947-1958
Appendix 4: Biographical Appendix of Contributors to the Discussions of the 16th & 17th Century Section

David Parker is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds. His books include The Making of French Absolutism (1983); State and Class in Ancien Regime France. The Road to Modernity? (1996); and (as editor) Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West, 1560-1991, Routledge, 2000.

Paperback, All Rights L&W;
ISBN: 9781905007868

Right kind of snow, wrong kind of strikes

I am sure there is a point that socialists in Britain could make regarding the way in which when we are hit by a sudden fall of snow as we have been that the whole transport network should not come to an almost total halt. And I am sure a critique of privatisation would be part of this, as would the point that under socialism, I am sure that we would have plenty of snowploughs etc lying around. But as someone called Snowball, it is worth noting that if it is going to snow, this definitely is the kind of snow you want - it is solid and heavy enough for kids to make snowmen, snowwomen and yes, snowballs. We haven't had 'the right kind of snow' in Britain for ages, and I thought global warming might mean we would never again have this kind of snow again - which shows how little I know about global warming and its consequences.

Unfortunately, Britain has also been hit over the last week by 'the wrong kind of strikes' - ie. not strikes against the power of capital or even against a particular multinational or national capitalist enterprise - but a strike against er, other workers. Genius. In other European countries the economic crisis is seeing general strikes and very high levels of class struggle break out (for example in Greece and France), while in Iceland workers have helped to bring down a government.

Yet in Britain, a section of the organised working class movement has decided that they are not going to take direct action in the face of the jobs massacre targetted at those responsible for the jobs massacre - ie those bosses wielding the knife - but against er, other European workers simply on the basis of their foreign nationality. You get a sense they are the 'wrong kind of strikes' because a) they have got massive media coverage and b) the media coverage is on the whole fair to the strikers.

It is important for socialists to understand why this has happened - and what we can try to do about it. The reasons why it has happened it seems to me are, firstly - the fact that New Labour has played the 'race and nation' card consistently since being in power and even more since the economic crisis began. I commented on Brown's 2007 speech where he called for 'British jobs for British workers' at the time, and also his 2008 speech where he called for 'A New British Century'. It is also worth recalling in this instance Brown's Immigration Minister Phil Woolas's recent comments about 'It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and it's going to get harder'. When racist scapegoating of migrant and foreign workers comes from the very top of the body politic, it is only a matter of time before the poison is seen as legitimate and spreads.

The second reason why these latest strikes have happened is because of the craven and cowardly nature of the British trade union bureaucracy in the face of the jobs massacre. The top of the official trade union movement have not even so far come together to organise one national demonstration to fight for the right to work - let alone led any other form of action. In part, this is because they don't want to rock the boat for Brown. However, in part they are prepared to back the recent strikes because they accept the strategy of protectionism and think the idea of a fight for 'British' workers' jobs is a good one.

What should socialists response to these strikes be? There are obviously a lot of contradictions at work here (was it Lenin or Trotsky who said 'every strike, rebellion and protest may not destroy the state, but it bears the germ of revolution'?) - and many of those striking will not be racists but simply concerned about fighting for their jobs and showing solidarity with other workers fighting for their jobs. We should not therefore join in with the Tories and New Labour in denouncing workers taking strike action. Our role should be to try and put socialist solutions to the capitalist crisis to the workers' taking such action, and try to challenge the racism and nationalism implicit in the strike. In 1968, when Enoch Powell made his racist 'Rivers of Blood' speech, socialists in Britain were confronted with a similar (if not quite so extreme) situation. As Simon Basketter notes, 'after [Powell's] speech racists took comfort, gained in confidence and pulled the political climate to the right – opening up the door to more racism from the state and the establishment. That is a cycle which continues until it is challenged.

While some dockers did march in support of Powell, the racism that Powell fuelled in the docks did not go unconfronted. The late Terry Barrett was a London docker active in the International Socialists, the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party.

Together with a small group of socialists and others opposed to racism, he tried to dissuade dockers from marching by distributing a leaflet that read:

'Who is Enoch Powell? He is a right wing Tory opportunist who will stop at nothing to help his party and his class. He is a director of the vast National Discount Company (assets £224 million) which pays him a salary bigger than the £3,500 a year he gets as an MP. He lives in fashionable Belgravia and writes Greek verse. What does he believe in? Higher unemployment. He has consistently advocated a national average of 3 percent unemployed. Cuts in social services. He wants higher health charges, less council houses, charges for state education and lower unemployment pay. Mass sackings in the docks. Again and again he has argued that the docks are ‘grossly overmanned’.'

The current situation is not as bad as that - but if such socialist arguments are not put forward and basic class politics are not injected urgently into the body politic by the trade union movement, then the current political vacuum in Britain will instead be filled with such racist 'solutions' to the crisis akin to Powellism - that blame the victims of the capitalist system - other workers - for the crisis rather than those - overlords of international capital like bankers and politicians like Brown (loyal servants of international capital) - who are responsible for the crisis in the first place.

Off with their heads

At a time when that Prince 'All is good in the Empire' Harry continues to try to inspire more young people in Britain facing economic uncertainty, shit jobs and low wages to go and fight and die for the profits of gigantic multinational oil companies and arms manufacturers in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is worth remembering the radical popular traditions of revolutionary democracy that have existed in the past - and continue to express themselves on anti-war demonstrations and the like up to the present day. The following conference organised by the London Socialist Historians Group should therefore be very timely indeed, and should be attended by all those who feel it is not those racists like Prince Harry deem 'ragheads' that are in particular need of a 'civilising mission' but rather the likes of Prince Harry and the British ruling class...

1649 and the Execution of King Charles

30 January 1649 is the day when King Charles 1st was beheaded and the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, the foundation of modern Parliamentary democracy, came into effective being. It was a revolutionary moment and it brought onto the historical stage people, ideas and movements that went well beyond anything that Cromwell and the senior leadership of the New Model Army had in mind. Brian Manning in his seminal book on 1649 notes that this was a year when popular mobilisations did not happen. There was no popular uprising to mark the Commonwealth, and no popular protest at the execution of the King. There was however an Army revolt at Burford, also celebrating its anniversary this year, which was brutally put down by Cromwell. 1649 was also the year when Cromwell landed in Dublin to initiate brutal episodes in Ireland. This conference will look at the liberties and democratic practices
ushered in by 1649 and at those who wanted to take them further.

1649 and the execution of King Charles

Saturday 7 February 2009
Venue: Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London.

Programme

9.30 – Registration (Wolfson Room)

10.00-11.15 Welcome and Keynote addresses (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Keith Flett, LSHG
Geoffrey Robertson, author of The Tyrannicide Brief
John Rees, author of A Rebel's Guide to Milton, forthcoming

11.15-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.30 PANEL ONE: Cromwell's coalition and its critics (Wolfson Room)
Chair: David Renton, LSHG
Martyn Everett, 'The Agitators – between Rebellion and Reaction'
Dr. Ariel Hessayon, Goldsmiths College, 'Early modern Communism: the
Diggers and community of goods'

11.30-12.30 PANEL TWO: 1649 in contemporary eyes (Pollard Room)
Chair: Tobas Abse, LSHG
Claudia Guli, University of Melbourne, 'Historical Precedent in
Contemporary Justifications of the Trial of Charles I'
Ángel Alloza, CSIC (Spain), '"An Outrageous Incident": the execution
of Kings Charles seen from Abroad'

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.30 PANEL THREE: The regicide, terror and Restoration (Pollard Room)
Chair: David Renton, LSHG
Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester, '"Original Villany":
Foundational Terrorism'
Alan Marshall, Bath Spa University, 'The Trials of Thomas Harrison, regicide'

1.30-2.30 PANEL FOUR: The Republic and something more (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Paul Burnham, LSHG
Alejandro Doering De Rio, Queen's College Cambridge, 'James Harrington
as a theorist of political of equality'
Dr John Seed, Roehampton University, 'The politics of remembering: the
execution of Charles in C18 England'

2.30-2.45 Coffee

2.45-4.00 Closing Plenary (Wolfson Room)
Chair: Keith Flett
Norah Carlin, author of The Causes of the English Civil War
Geoff Kennedy, author of Diggers, Levellers and Agrarian Capitalism

£10 waged, £5 unwaged. Order from Keith Flett keith1917@btinternet.com

Happy birthday John Milton

Milton did more than hymn the praises of revolt, as Blake and Shelley did. He was also a political activist and propagandist, an architect of the modern liberal state. As a militant ideologue in the defence of liberty, he assisted in the revolutionary upheaval that brought modern Britain to birth - a revolution all the more successful for us having quite forgotten that it ever happened.
Terry Eagleton on Milton

Dean Ryan on the sanitisation of Black History Month

Today, when I tell young people about the racism my generation faced, there is a sense of disbelief that things were ever so bad. The fact that there is a generation that can’t imagine the racism that took place in Britain only 25 years ago shows the importance and effect of the struggles of that time. Yet too many young people don’t know about these struggles. They hate the police, racism and their treatment at the hands of the authorities, but they don’t think anything can be done about it.
The establishment is now trying to roll back the gains that black people have made, but a benchmark has been set. There will be no going back to the levels of racism we saw in the 1970s...We need a renewed grassroots movement of black and white people to challenge the increase in police stop and search, school exclusions, racism and the rise of the fascist British National Party. And this has to be an ongoing movement, not a once a year event. We need to teach young people the lessons of mass battles against racism – and inspire them to fight again.

Full article here

See also here and here - basically buy the Guardian this week for free black history timeline posters...

Brown's Project for a New British Century

Apologies to readers outside Britain for once more blogging about Brown and New Labour, but his speech to Labour Party conference yesterday demands comment. And I am not talking about the delusional and downright dishonest comments that it got from Labourites. "It was absolutely brilliant. He delivered it humbly but with a passion we don't often see in Labour politicians … That was an Obama moment a la Britain," said Ian Gibson, the Norwich North MP. Even the trade union bureaucracy lapped it up. 'This is exactly the sort of agenda that people wanted to hear from their Labour government,' said Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison union, which is the second biggest in Britain with 1.3 million members. `He set out clearly his vision for that fair society and an action plan.' Paul Kenny, general secretary of GMB, the third-biggest union, said Brown's language was `very different to that which we have heard before' and `welcome' to his members.

In reality it was neither inspirational nor brilliant nor really (aside from a brief moment when he discussed the NHS) that passionate. In reality it felt more like a farewell speech - because it almost certainly was the last time he will address Labour Party conference as leader, and Brown knew it. The knives are well and truly out for him, despite the warm words of praise he got yesterday. More importantly, if people actually read the speech they will see that despite the odd sop to criticism from the Left within the Labour Party and trade union movement, it has to stand as one of the most right wing speeches ever made to a Labour Party conference -essentially putting forward a pro-capitalist solution to the capitalist crisis - and it is this aspect of it that makes it comparable to something by Barack Obama. For both Obama and Brown are essentially loyal servants of imperial capital - and the speech reflected that.

With a tie and a backdrop of imperial purple, Brown felt compelled to once again confirm his utter loyalty to what he called the 'new global society' under American hegemony. 'We will work with America not just to deal with the immediate security challenges in Georgia and in Iran. And I tell you that what we do together for the poor and vulnerable is an act of compassion, but it is more than that. It is what will determine whether this new global society succeeds or fails. And David Miliband, Douglas Alexander and I will do everything in our power to bring justice and democracy, to Burma, to Zimbabwe and to Darfur.' Chilling stuff for the people of Burma, Zimbabwe and Sudan.

British troops would continue to be a kind of foreign legion to American imperial power, the loyal Gurkhas prepared to pay the 'blood price' and die as cannon fodder to maintain Britain's 'special relationship' with whoever is the next American emperor. 'We pay special tribute to the heroism of our armed forces,... to their service and sacrifice in Iraq and in Afghanistan and in peacekeeping missions around the globe. Quite simply the best armed forces in the world.'

There was never going to be any sign of repentance for the war crimes of New Labour over the last decade or so in power. 'The Conservatives say our country is broken - but this country has never been broken by anyone or anything. This country wasn't broken by fascism, by the cold war, by terrorists.' Indeed not - but no thanks to New Labour. New Labour has however participated in the breaking of other countries -most notably Iraq. The innocent people of Iraq and Afghanistan who have died or been made refugees by war are of course not even worth counting let alone mentioning in a conference speech - they are truly 'unpeople'.

In terms of the economy, Brown was committed to saving capitalism from its crisis by making tax payers and workers in general pay the price for the greed and financial speculation inherent in the system. 'We are and will always be a pro-enterprise, pro-business and pro-competition government. And we believe the dynamism of our five million businesses large and small is vital to the success of our country. But the continuing market turbulence shows why we now need a new settlement for these times - a settlement that we as a pro-market party must pursue. A settlement where the rewards are for what really matters - hard work, effort and enterprise.' The key word is 'enterprise' which was mentioned over and over again during the speech. Big bonuses for City bankers was fine - providing it flowed from 'hard work, effort and enterprise'. The pay freeze - effectively a pay cut - for public sector workers would continue. 'What counts is not the pursuit of any sectional interest but the advancement of the public interest' - and the 'public interest' under Brown remains whatever the dictates of imperial capital require.

As Ellen Meiksins Wood notes in her 2003 work Empire of Capital, there is: 'an inevitable contradiction between capital's constant need to drive down the costs of labour and its constant need to expand consumption, which requires that people have money to spend. This...is one of the insoluable contradictions of capitalism.'

'But, on balance, global capital benefits from uneven development, at least in the short term (and short-termism is an endemic disease of capitalism). The fragmentation of the world into separate economies, each with its own social regime and labour conditions, presided over by more or less sovereign territorial states, is no less essential to "globalisation" than is the free movement of capital. Not the least important function of the nation state in globalisation is to enforce the principle of nationality that makes it possible to manage the movements of labour by means of strict border controls and stringent immigration policies, in the interests of capital.'

Here we come to the great underlying theme of Brown's speech - Britishness - enforcing 'the principle of nationality' in the interests of capital. One only needs to glance through Brown's speech to hear of the apparent wonders of 'Great Britain', 'this great country', 'this incredible country'. He even called for a new 'British century' as though he was living in the late 19th century: 'With Britain's great assets - our stability, our openness, our scientific genius, our creative industries, and yes our English language - I know that this can be a British century and I'm determined it will be.'

And so to that apparently most quintessentially 'British' of things: Fair Play and Fairness. Other 'lesser nations' and people are incapable of grasping 'fairness' of course - only British people can understand it apparently. Brown's vision of 'fairness' is distinctly authoritarian and reminiscent of a police state. 'We will be the party of law and order... justice seen is justice done - so you will be seeing more neighbourhood policing on the street, hearing more about the verdicts of the court, able to see the people who offended doing community payback which will be what it says; hard work for the public benefit at the places and times the public can see it. That's only fair to the law abiding majority.'

Brown's 'Britishness' also inevitably involved paying the race card against migrant workers. 'Nobody in Britain should get to take more out of the system than they are willing to put in...we recognise the contribution that migrants make to our economy and our society, but the other side of welcoming newcomers who can help Britain is being tough about excluding those adults who won't and can't. That's why we have introduced the Australian-style points-based system, the citizenship test, the English language test and we will introduce a migrant charge for public services. That's only fair to the public who play by the rules and to the new citizens who uphold the rules. So across the board, we will create rules that reward those who play by them and punish those who don't. That's what fairness means to me.'

All in all, Brown's vision of 'fairness' and 'fair play' to build a 'British Century' is a mixture of 19th century imperial nostalgia and racism towards 'the Other', 20th century totalitarian state building, and 21st century craven complicity in the Bush Doctrine and the right of the American military-industrial complex to 'full spectrum dominance', all held together with a thin grimy ideological cement of warmed up Fabian bluster and bullshit. The fact that New Labour as a Party lapped it up while preparing to stab Brown in the back in 9 months time tells you everything you need to know about the moral, intellectual and political bankruptcy of Labourism today. People in Britain and internationally do deserve 'a new settlement for new times' and 'a fair Britain for the new age'. The Labour Party, whoever is in charge, can never and will never deliver that because it is so fundamentally tied to the capitalist system, with the bloody wars and devastating recessions inherent in that system. We need to build a socialist alternative now more than ever.

New Labour's rewriting of history #94

'in freeing hundreds of millions of people from imperialism after the war (not least in India), he laid the foundations of a commonwealth of equals.'

David Blunkett on former British Labour Prime Minister Clem Attlee. Words fail me at times like this.