The appointment of Diane Abbott as shadow home secretary has received a predictable cacophony of faux outrage. The coverage in the Express is typical, replete with sexist references to her sexual history and insults.

The appointment of Ms Abbott, a close ally, supporter and one-time girlfriend of fellow north London MP Mr Corbyn, was seen as a particularly provocative move.

She moves from Shadow Health Secretary to replace Andy Burnham who has stood down to focus on his campaign to be elected Greater Manchester Mayor next year.
One anonymous Labour MP commented: “Diane Abbott is now in charge of our response to security, terror and immigration. Do they want anyone to vote for us again?”

Another branded her “incompetent” while former Labour HQ official Jo Green Tweeted: “Labour’s top three are Corbyn, (Shadow Chancellor John) McDonnell and Diane Abbott. Electoral suicide awaits.”

Last week, Ms Abbott told a Labour conference meeting that voters backing limits on European Union immigration simply “want to see less foreign-looking people on their streets”.

In fact it is a very smart move. The senior leadership of the shadow cabinet is now in hands of those who are loyal to trajectory of the party, as now twice endorsed by the membership.
Like McDonnell and Corbyn himself, Diane Abbott has historically been a figure outside of the golden circle of the Westminster elite, and the last year has clearly required adjustments from all of them, in response to their greater responsibility. However, over the last few months she as done extremely well as shadow health secretary, and she is accomplished in front of the television camera.

But most significantly, a time when the Conservative Party is seeking to polarize British politics over the issues of race and immigration, hoping to seek the shift the centre ground on the issue as a smokescreen for their problems over Brexit, then Abbott’s appointment is the clearest signal that Labour will not follow them down that path.

Let us be clear, the wisdom of the centre-right in the party that Labour should not drift too far way from the Conservatives over policy simply doesn’t work when politics is in flux. The economic prescriptions which the three defeated candidates in last year’s leadership elections were triangulated around George Osborne’s policies, and would – in logical terms – be to the right of the current government.

Triangulation is part of a tired process that the electorate is disillusioned with. What is more, the chaos in UKIP and the opaqueness of what Thereas May’s government actually believes in, shows that all political parties are struggling to position themselves in a dramatically altered political landscape.

Abbott is the right choice, and she will do well.

Even for those of us who have a positive assessment of George Galloway’s political career, it has been hard to get the image of him pretending to be a cat fed by Rula Lenska out of our heads.

Poor Ed Balls should have seen this coming. Enjoy.

The Thomas Helliker lecture.
Organised by the White Horse Trades Union Council.
In the memory of Thomas Helliker, the Trowbridge Martyr 1784 – 1803

22 October 2016
10.00 – 3.30pm.
Free entry – The Cause, 42 The Causeway, Chippenham, Wilts. SN15 3DD

A day of discussion about Civil Liberties

Speakers include leading authors, journalists, campaigners, union activists

Phil Chamberlain – Blacklisted – The full story
W Stephen Gilbert – Jeremy Corbyn: Accidental Hero
Ray Packham – Working in and for Palestine
Paul Dobson – Venezuela: the truth behind the headlines

Phil Chamberlain – blacklisting
We are in particular delighted to be joined by Phil Chamberlain, co-author of the explosive book “Blacklisted” which reveals the full story of how major corporations maintained an unlawful blacklist which prevented a number of people, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, from gaining employment, often for years.

Read the original review in the Guardian of the first edition: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/undercover-with-paul-lewis-and-rob-evans/2015/jul/09/blacklisted-the-secret-war-between-big-business-and-union-activists-a-book-review

Thomas Helliker
The anniversary of Helliker’s death, March 22nd, is celebrated each year by a wreath laying at St James Church in Trowbridge. White Horse ( Wilts) trades council is now also reviving the practice of holding a memorial lecture each year.

Thomas Helliker is an important figure in Wiltshire and working class history. In the early nineteenth century the introduction of machinery into the woollen trade impoverished thousands of workers; the best organized of the dispossessed workers, and the most opposed to mechanization were the shearmen. Littleton Mill near Semington was allegedly burnt down by a shearman in 1803. For his supposed part in this, a young Trowbridge apprentice, Thomas Helliker was hanged in 1803. Despite Helliker having an alibi from his friend Joseph Warren he was charged and lodged in Salisbury gaol. He refused to give evidence that would clear his name because it would have incriminated the real culprits.

The fact that there has been a rise in anti-Semitic incidents across Europe and elsewhere is simply not a fact which can credibly be disputed. To take just two egregious examples.

In January 2015, an Islamist terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly shot dead four Jewish men at a kosher supermarket in Paris before security forces stormed the building, killing him and freeing the remaining hostages. These men were murdered solely for being Jewish.

In March 2016, six ISIS terrorists were detained in Turkey, associated with a threat to target Jewish schools, nurseries and youth clubs in Europe.

It is entirely reasonable therefore for Jews to be apprehensive of their safety, and in particular for Jewish parents to be concerned about security of the schools where their children are educated.

This is the context by which we should judge recent comments by Jackie Walker, Vice chair of Momentum, and a Labour Party member. The crassness of her comments at a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference questioning why one speaker had raised the issue of enhanced security at Jewish schools is staggering. It is certainly true that anti-Semitism is not the same thing as anti-Zionism; and that a critique of the political project of Zionism, as well as the specific actions of the Israeli state, is compatible with robust rejection of all forms of anti-Judaic prejudice. However, it is also true that the political and social roots of Zionism arise from the oppression, and persecution of Jews. Seemingly, the anti-Zionism of Jackie Walker has extended into seeking to belittle the experience of Jews facing hatred.

Her comments about the Holocaust were equally offensive. Speaking at the event discussing antisemitism at the Labour Party conference, Walker asked: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all peoples who’ve experienced Holocaust?”

Now, as Joe Mulhall has written, , factually Walker is ill-informed because Holocaust Memorial day already does just that:

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) commemorates the Holocaust, victims of Nazi persecution and the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Even the most cursory of glance at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website would reveal this information on the home page.

But it was not only ignorant, but deeply offensive. Not dissimilar to bursting into a funeral and demanding that the grieving congregation should think about all dead people, not just their own recently departed friend or relative.

The genocide against the Jews was historically unique, as of course are all instances of genocide. There are times and places where it is appropriate to discuss the historical comparitors, there are times and places where it is not. The Holocaust by the Nazis against the Jews was of intense ferocity, and it both drew on the deep well of anti-Jewish sentiment in European Christian culture, but also merged this with the modern industrial ruthlessness of European colonialist attitudes to their non-European subject peoples.

Let us be clear, there is not a current and live danger of racist hate crimes against Armenians, Hutus, Herero people or Native Americans on the streets of Britain today. The distinguishing feature that the Nazi anti-Semitism exploited centuries of prejudice, some of it woven into the very cloth of our culture, means that anti-Judaic stereotypes still abound, even among those in left and progressive politics. The rise of anti-Semitism, and concern by Jews for their own safety are live and real issues.

Jackie Walker had already caused controversy over her claims about Jewish funding of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Many on the left defended her. However, her comments were at least ill advised, if we consider that the majority of the slave trade was funded by Christians, and particularly in the early period from the 1680 to 1750s it was often by Quakers.

In Madge Dresser’s excellent work “Slavery Obscured, the Slave Trade in Bristol”, she observes that the later involvement of Quakers in the abolitionist movement obscures “the significant involvement of Quakers in the slave trade and the wider slave economy. Eight of the 20 largest contributors to Bristol’s new Quaker Meeting House built in Quakers Friars in 1747, were by 1755 members of the newly formed Society of Merchants Trading to Africa” – slavers. Dresser lists a number of prominent Quaker slavers, and traders dependent upon the exploitation of slave labour. But in Bristol, the crucible of the slave trade, Jews there were none. Indeed, in 1784 when a Tory candidate was standing for election in Bristol on an abolitionist ticket, he was popularly mocked for his association with stock caricatures of Jews. Crude popular stereotypes that had been used earlier in the century in the political campaign against the naturalisation of Jews were resurrected, conflating circumcission with emasculation, and presenting it as a threat to national virility. These anti-Jewish sentiments were coming from the pro-slavery camp, not the abolitionists.

For Walker to disproportionately stress the involvement of Jews in the slave trade is highly unfortunate, as it intersects with stereotypes of Shylock type ruthlessness. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that her discussion of the role of Jews in the slave trade was not related to the issue of the historical record, and was more related to her attitudes to contemporary Israel.

I don’t know whether Jackie Walker is anti-Semitic. But clearly she has shown lack of judgement in making statements that could legitimately be interpreted as anti-Semitic. What is more at a critical time for the Labour Party she should have had the self-awareness to be open to educating herself about what would and would not be offensive and could be open to interpretation as anti-Semitic.

Manuel Cortes, General Secretary of TSSA is correct. Walker’s position as vice chair of Momentum is untenable and she should go, and go now.

It is surely a remarkable illustration of how political parties change over time that the current Presidential candidate for the political party of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant is Donald Trump. Whereas, during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, white supremacist terrorists hunted down and killed members of the Republican Party across the Southern states, nowadays leading members of the Ku Klux Klan endorse the Republican candidate.

The reconfiguration of the Republican Party has been a long drawn out contest, and has been a process of evolution. While a consideration of the internal arguments in the party can partially explain such turns as Nixon’s Southern strategy, for example, that orientation can only itself be understood by the enormous changes in the Southern states, the process of industrialization and urbanization, and the crisis in the Democratic Party over racial issues.

Today, the totally unnecessary leadership challenge that is currently limping to its conclusion in the Labour Party can arguably be understood as institutional stakeholders of pre-Corbyn Labour seeking to prevent the party from changing.

In order to understand political parties, it is generally necessary not only to consider their own internal dynamics, and their competition with other similarly constituted parties; but also how those parties intersect with social and economic interests, and how the political divisions of the day are reflected through the party system.

It is also necessary to understand the degree to which political parties, and election contests, are only one component of democratic and civic society. Ideologies, reform strategies and economic plans, among other ideas and programmes, are generated not only by political parties, but also by think tanks, trade unions, public intellectuals, universities, government departments, faith groups, single issue campaigns, charities and others. Contested elections are certainly an indispensible element of liberal democracy, but democratic society can be reduced to neither the electoral cycle, nor to the political parties which contest elections. Political divisions in society and competing economic and social interests lead to conflict at the political and ideological level, and also more direct conflict, for example, such as industrial action by trade unions.

To stay with the example, of the Republicans; in the mid nineteenth century in the United States the two issues of slavery and Catholic immigration cut across both the Whig and the Democratic parties, so that the most vital political issues of the day could not find expression through the existing party system, leading to the eclipse of the Whigs in favour of the newly created Republican Party. The campaign against slavery, which Owen Smith would have perhaps decried as a mere “protest movement” eventually triumphed, and of course for many years it was a protest movement that had no realization through a political party capable of winning power. However, sometimes it is necessary to stick to your principles, time and time again protest movements change history.

While much is made of the continuity between Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diana Abbott and others with the legacy projects of the Labour left, and the absurd attempts by self-proclaimed “moderates” to conjure up the ghost of the early 1980s; the far more significant phenomenon is the discontinuity with the establishment consensus about austerity economics, and the development of economic policies by John McDonnell and his team which commit a future Labour government to calibrated state intervention for a capitalist economy that works.

McDonnell is not arguing for “nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy” or other nostrums from the 1980s, but for a “mixed economy of public and social enterprise… a private sector with a long-term private business commitment” and a national investment bank channeling £500 million into the productive economy. Labour now argues for economic stimulus through, for example, a council house building programme. In a move that is controversial with some Keynesian economists, Labour is committed to “a fiscal policy framework that broadly states that the Government should borrow for investment (the capital account) and that over the business cycle Government day-to-day spending (the Government’s current account) should be in balance”.

As Tom o Leary explains:

[Since the second world war,] high points in net public sector investment coincide with the very large surpluses on the public sector current account (or in reality precede those surpluses by 18 months to two years). This demonstrates a fundamental law of public finances. The returns to the public sector from investment are not registered in the investment account but are overwhelmingly returned to the public sector current account.

When governments build a rail network, a university science park, superfast broadband, or when a local authority builds a home, the investment return is not more rail networks or homes than those built. It is registered as increased tax revenues and, via job creation, as lower social security outlays such as on unemployment, payments for poverty such as tax credits, and so on. The investment comes back mainly as tax revenues, which is part of the current account balance. The UK Treasury estimates that every £1 rise in output is recorded as a 70p improvement in government finances, 50p of which is higher tax revenues. Those revenues can either be used either for more investment, or to increase current spending or some combination of the two.

The challenge of “Corbynism” for the establishment is that it has created a mass party committed to an economic policy that breaks with austerity, and this means a wholesale rejection of the mainstream political consensus.

The phenomenal popularity of Corbynism cannot be understood by considering the personality or personal attributes of Jeremy Corbyn himself, notwithstanding the qualities of the man which genuinely do inspire so many people. His much commented upon honesty and sincerity connect with huge numbers of people outside of normal politics not only because they are admirable traits, but because when he addresses the problems of job insecurity, NHS waiting times, the housing crisis, low pay and benefits sanctions, he does so in a way which acknowledges that these are not merely debating points to be checked off by a politician seeking votes, but are the grinding daily reality which oppressively shape the lives of millions of citizens for whom the society and economy we live in simply does not work.

Yet up until now, the aspirations of these millions of people has not found expression through the mainstream political process, instead there has been a growing gulf between them and the professionalized, managerial politics of the Westminster elite. This has expressed itself in a number of morbid symptoms: through falling voter turnout, the rise and fall of the BNP, through the advance of UKIP, the vote for Brexit, through hostility to immigrants, and the near total eclipse of Labour in Scotland. Alongside this has been a growing phenomenon of progressive politics finding expression outside of the Labour Party, whether through the patchy but nevertheless substantive electoral challenges of the Green Party (and latterly Respect), or through manifestations like the Occupy movement, or the growing networks of alternative media on the Internet.

The political landscape has been so transformed by all these aspects of anti-establishmentism, that it has become extremely challenging for future electoral success by the Labour Party. Continuing in the old way is simply not an option.

Those opposed to Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party broadly fall into two camps. Liz Kendall’s recent article in the Financial Times is truly remarkable in that it demonstrates almost no reflection about the challenges facing Labour. According to Kendal the immediate task is to accommodate to Tory policies over welfare spending and the economy. These irreconcilables are utterly bereft of ideas, and the most signal characteristic of the centre-right in the Labour Party for the last decade has been its inability to develop new tactics, leadership or strategy. The last general election saw 36.8% vote for the Conservatives and 30.5% for Labour. A strategy only of triangulating to win over swing Tory voters may close that gap, but only at the likely expense of further moving Labour away from the millions who are disenchanted by politics as usual. The self-proclaimed moderates are locked into a Groundhog Day of low aspiration.

The other camp, personified by the hapless Owen Smith, partially understands the need to embrace radical policies, but do not want the Labour Party to be changed in the process. The ridiculous purging of individuals from the party for such misdemeanors as tweeting agreement with the Green Party shows a dangerous lack of understanding of how mainstream political parties need to adapt and change. The Labour Party has played an historical role as “gatekeeper” allowing those who have previously been involved in radical anti-establishment activity to bring their creativity and new ideas into the mainstream, in exchange for adapting to the constitutionality of the Labour Party. In the current context, those behind the Labour purge are not only seeking to exclude handfuls of individuals, but seeking – like King Cnut – to arrest the tide of history, and prevent the Labour Party from stepping outside the tired and failed routines of Westminster politics. Adopting Corbyn’s policies, but without seeking to connect with the social phenomenon that has seen hundreds of thousands flooding into the Labour Party, is doomed to failure.

The achievement of the last year in Labour’s politics is that the party is now articulating an increasingly coherent ideological opposition to the Conservatives, based upon a fundamental critique of their economic presumptions. Of course, further elaboration of policy needs to happen, and sadly the turbulence from the Parliamentary Labour Party has delayed that necessary process. The anti-Corbyn rebels say that winning the election is indispensible, without acknowledging that such an election victory will be highly challenging whoever is leader, and that harnessing the party to the mass movement building behind Corbyn is an advantage not a disadvantage. Mass rallies may not win election, but they are certainly better than small rallies, whether or not Ice Cream is provided.

But in any event, political opposition cannot be reduced to elections. We do need to build the best, most effective and determined campaign to win the next general election, and that means uniting as far as possible all the talents of the Labour movement, and overcoming the divisions of the last few months. I think we can win and that Jeremy Corbyn will be Prime Minister, but it will be a tough battle.

But Labour also needs to win the battle of ideas: in arguing for and campaigning for an economy that works for ordinary people and that benefits and revitalizes communities, we can change the ideological consensus. The best way to finish off the Tories is to expose the degree to which they are the party of the past, and that Labour is the party of the future.

There is something about Webb Pierce which is deeply satisfying. He was a stranger to emotional nuance, and banged out simple country tunes evocative of a rural, pre-industrial south that was disappearing around him. If you put a nickel in the juke box in a Arkansas Honky Tonk in the mid 1950s, then Webb would be the architypical sound you would expect to emerge. It was a haunting Webb Pierce song, “More and More” used in the sound track of “The Hills Have Eyes”

Webb was also the man who pretty much invented the lavish lifestyle later associated with rockstars, spending $30000 on a guitar shaped swimming pool in 1955, and having two convertible cadilacs lined with silver dollars, and had the car-door handles replaced with gold plated revolvers.

This is a late recording, from the Johnny Cash show in 1971. Webb first recorded this song in 1959 by which time he had adapted to the impact of Rock and Roll. Great stuff: