Left Socialist Blog
The UK is at a crossroads in its relationship to the rest of the world, and so is our party. Immigrants and free movement are being scapegoated by a political and economic elite that is subjecting ordinary people to cuts and austerity. During the greatest refugee crisis in recent years, the Tories have responded with brutality and detention centres.
Labour should respond with clarity, humanity and solidarity. We fought the last General Election arguing against such scapegoating, and celebrating the contributions of migrants to our society. That tone must now translate into policy.
Migrants are not to blame for falling wages, insecurity, bad housing and overstretched public services. These are the product of decades of underinvestment, deregulation, privatisation, and the harshest anti-union laws in Europe. On the contrary, migrant workers have been on the front line of fighting for better pay and working conditions. Labour is the party of all working people – regardless of where they were born.
A system of free movement is the best way to protect and advance the interests of all workers, by giving everyone the right to work legally, join a union and stand up to their boss without fear of deportation or destitution. Curtailing those rights, or limiting migrants’ access to public services and benefits, will make it easier for unscrupulous employers to hyper-exploit migrant labour, which in turn undermines the rights and conditions of all workers.
Free movement enhances everyone’s rights. There are more than a million UK citizens living in the EU, and millions more who may enjoy the right to do so. UK workers in the EU have access to benefits, healthcare and other public services. Tens of thousands of UK students study abroad each year under ERASMUS schemes. UK and European citizens have the automatic right to family reunion.
Labour must build a society for the many, not the few. We need well-paid, secure jobs for all, with guaranteed hours, collective bargaining and stronger, freer trade unions. We need a policy of massive investment in council housing, public services and infrastructure. And we need to tell the truth about who and what is to blame for the crisis: an unaccountable elite who have run the economy in their own narrow interests. Ending free movement would be counterproductive to achieving all of this.
More information: Labour Campaign for Free Movement.
This important initiative has been signaled by Shiraz Socialist. We hope it gets the widest possible support.
Labour MPs Clive Lewis, David Lammy and Geraint Davies have joined trade union leaders in backing a new Labour campaign for free movement. (New Statesman.)
Their participation in the campaign underlines the tension between the Labour party’s official line that free movement will end after Brexit, and the theory expounded by many leading Labour politicians that migration has forced down wages.
The MPs were joined by the MEP Lucy Anderson, Transport Salaried Staffs Association general secretary Manuel Cortes, National Executive Committee members Ann Black and Darren Williams, and the leaders of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union.
Cortes said: “We are fully committed to challenging and fighting unscrupulous bosses who exploit EU migrants. We put the blame firmly on the perpetrators not the victims. We strongly believe that free movement enriches our society.”
A statement from The Labour Campaign for Free Movement said: “Migrants are not to blame for falling wages, insecurity, bad housing and overstretched public services. These are the product of decades of underinvestment, deregulation, privatisation, and the harshest anti-union laws in Europe.”
BBC report: New campaign urges Labour to back free movement
Guardian report: Labour MPs ask Corbyn to commit to free movement post-Brexit
The Sun says, “The move would be in defiance of the referendum result – as the British Social Attitudes Survey found the main reason people voted to leave was due to concerns over uncontrolled immigration from the EU.”
Comment:
Will this call be supported by everybody on the left.
In 2016 (September, Socialism Today. No 201) the Socialist Party said this on free movement,
The socialist and trade union movement from its earliest days has never supported the ‘free movement of goods, services and capital’ – or labour – as a point of principle but instead has always striven for the greatest possible degree of workers’ control, the highest form of which, of course, would be a democratic socialist society with a planned economy.
It is why, for example, the unions have historically fought for the closed shop, whereby only union members can be employed in a particular workplace, a very concrete form of ‘border control’ not supported by the capitalists.
How many others wish to create a form of “closed shop” against free movement remains to be seen.
The Morning Star reports,
LABOUR MP Graham Jones declares that he would have “gone further” than shadow foreign minister Liz McInnes’s criticism of Venezuela.
McInnes had urged “the government of Venezuela to recognise its responsibilities to protect human rights, free speech and the rule of law.”
She demanded a response to concerns expressed by the “international community” about supposed authoritarianism and very real hardships affecting Venezuela’s people. This is presumably the US-led “international community” rather than regional states such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba that have declared solidarity with Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution.
Jones, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Venezuela, advised Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that he must make a statement “at some point” and told frontbencher Chris Williamson that “he’s backing the wrong side.”
Several Labour MPs, including Corbyn, and many unions support the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, but Jones wants “everybody in the Labour Party (to) condemn the Venezuelan regime” for not looking after its citizens. His colleague Angela Smith asks Corbyn to condemn President Nicolas Maduro’s government as “a very serious threat to democracy in that country.”
If Williamson is on the “wrong side,” it follows that Foreign Minister Sir Alan Duncan, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable and Tory MP Mark Pritchard, who all attacked Corbyn for his silence, while on holiday, over Venezuela, must be on the right side.
What would the Morning Star say about this?
Blogging from a marxist economist
As the Maduro regime tries to impose its new Constituent Assembly as a rival or replacement of the existing Venezuelan Congress and arrests the leaders of the pro-capitalist opposition, the dire economic and social situation in the country continues to worsen.
According to the IMF, Venezuela’s GDP in 2017 is 35% below 2013 levels, or 40% in per capita terms. That is a significantly sharper contraction than during the 1929-1933 Great Depression in the US, when US GDP is estimated to have fallen 28%. It is slightly bigger than the decline in Russia (1990-1994), Cuba (1989-1993), and Albania (1989-1993), but smaller than that experienced by other former Soviet States at the time of transition, such as Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Ukraine, or war-torn countries such as Liberia (1993), Libya (2011), Rwanda (1994), Iran (1981), and, most recently, South Sudan.
So, on this measure, according to Ricardo Haussman, former chief economist of Inter-American Development Bank, Venezuela’s economic catastrophe dwarfs any in the history of the US, Western Europe or the rest of Latin America.
Back in 2013, I warned that the achievements of the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ under Chavez were seriously under threat. Chavez had improved the conditions of the poorest with increased wages, social services and reduced inequality. But these improvements were only possible within the confines of capitalist economy by using the revenues of oil exports at a time of very high global oil prices. But oil prices started to mark time and have virtually halved in the last two years.
Oil exports fell by $2,200 per capita from 2012 to 2016, of which $1,500 was due to the decline in oil prices. The Maduro government started to rack up huge foreign debts to try and sustain living standards. Venezuela is now the world’s most indebted country. No country has a larger public external debt as a share of GDP or of exports, or faces higher debt service as a share of exports.
More,
The minimum wage – which in Venezuela is also the income of the median worker, owing to the large share of minimum-wage earners – declined by 75% (in constant prices) from May 2012 to May 2017. Measured in the cheapest available calorie, the minimum wage declined from 52,854 calories per day to just 7,005 during the same period, a decline of 86.7% and insufficient to feed a family of five, assuming that all the income is spent to buy the cheapest calorie. With their minimum wage, Venezuelans could buy less than a fifth of the food that traditionally poorer Colombians could buy with theirs.
Income poverty increased from 48% in 2014 to 82% in 2016, according to a survey conducted by Venezuela’s three most prestigious universities. The same study found that 74% of Venezuelans involuntarily lost an average of 8.6 kilos (19 pounds) in weight. The Venezuelan Health Observatory reports a ten-fold increase in in-patient mortality and a 100-fold increase in the death of newborns in hospitals in 2016.
Importantly,
Before Chavez, most Venezuelans were desperately poor after a series of right-wing capitalist governments. But now once again, under Maduro, this is the situation for the poor and the majority of the Venezuelan working class. No wonder support for the Maduro government has subsided while the forces of reaction grow stronger. While the majority struggle, many at the top of the Maduro government are as comfortable as the Venezuelan capitalists and their supporters who are trying to bring the government down.
The Maduro government is now relying increasingly not on the support of the working class but on the armed forces. And the government looks after them well. The military can buy in exclusive markets (for example, on military bases), have privileged access to loans and purchases of cars and departments, and have received substantial salary increases. They have also won lucrative contracts, exploiting exchange controls and subsidies, for example, selling cheap gasoline purchased in neighboring countries with huge profits.
As Rolando Asturita has pointed out in a series of posts. the army has strong direct economic power, since the FANB directs and controls a whole series of companies: the bank BANFANB; AGROFANB, for agriculture; EMILTRA, transport; EMCOFANB, company communications systems of the FANB; TVFANB, an open digital TV channel; TECNOMAR, a mixed military technology projects company; FIMNP, an investment fund; CONSTRUFANB, constructor; CANCORFANB, Bolivarian Mixed Company; Water Tiuna, water bottling plant; And then there is CAMINPEG, the anonymous military, mining and oil and gas company.
Many of the Maduro government elite have used the economic crisis to their own personal benefit. They have bought up government debt for rich returns, while at the same time ensuring that there is no default, all at the expense of falling living standards for the people who must pay this debt through taxes and foregone oil revenues. Foreign exchange earmarked for the payment of foreign debt has been offset by the reduction of imports of food, medicines or essential industrial inputs.
Robert’s concludes,
What went wrong with the laudable aims of Chavismo? Could this tragedy been avoided? Well, yes, if the Chavista revolution had not stopped at less than halfway, leaving the economy still predominantly in the control of capital. Instead, the Chavista and Maduro governments relied on high oil prices and huge oil reserves to reduce poverty, while failing to transform the economy through productive investment, state ownership and planning. Between 1999 and 2012 the state had an income of $383bn from oil, due not only to the improvement in prices, but also to the increase in the royalties paid by the transnationals. However, this income was not used transform the productive sectors of the economy. Yes, some was used to improve the living standards of the most impoverished masses. But there was no plan for investment and growth. Venezuelan capital was allowed to get on with it – or not as the case may be. Indeed, the share of industry in GDP fell from 18% of GDP in 1998 to 14% in 2012.
Now the right-wing ‘free marketeers’ tell us that this shows ‘socialism’ does not work and there is no escape from the rigors of the market. But the history of the last ten years is not the failure of ‘socialism’ or planning, it is the failure to end the control of capital in a weak (an increasingly isolated) capitalist country with apparently only one asset, oil. There was no investment in the people, their skills, no development of new industries and the raising of technology – that was left to the capitalist sector. Contrast that with ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, albeit in the largest country and now economy in the world.
Just over a year ago, I argued in a post that, to save the aims of Chavismo, “it is probably too late, as the forces of reaction gain ground every day in the country. It seems that we await only the decision of the army to change sides and oust the Chavistas.”
Left critics of Maduro:
Criticizing Venezuela from the Left.
Venezuela, increasingly, resembles today’s liberal democracies, where institutions are becoming formal appendages of the power of the markets and securitization. Español
RAFAEL UZCÁTEGUI. May the 3rd.
The human rights situation in Venezuela is getting worse. Fortunately, some on the Left are deciding to speak up. Español
¡Contra el fraude constituyente redoblemos la movilización! ¡Fuera Maduro! (Unidad Internacional de los Trabajadores – Cuarta Internacional).
El gobierno hambreador, corrupto y represivo de Maduro, consumó el pasado domingo un gigantesco fraude en alianza con el CNE.
Au Venezuela, ce sont les travailleurs qui ont le droit de dire à Maduro : dégage ! 30th of July.
Against Venezuela’s authoritarian turn . May 3, 2017
On May 1, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro signed an executive order to form a Constituent National Assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution. Predictably, Maduro’s right-wing opponents howled about a lack of respect for democratic rights and procedures, which they themselves routinely violated in seeking the overthrow of Chavismo.
But many on the left see the latest move by the ruling Venezuelan United Socialist Party (PSUV) to consolidate its power as a dangerous further lurch toward authoritarianism. Here, we reprint a March 29 statement by , which joined the PSUV when it was founded in 2007 by the late President Huge Chávez, but left it in 2015 in protest of the course set for the party by Maduro. The statement by Marea Socialista’s National Operations Team was first published in Spanish at the Aporrea website and appears here in a version edited by Todd Chretien of the English translation published at the Portal de la Izquierda website.
How should the Labour Party respond?
Two Views:
Jeremy Corbyn will be on the right side of history – if he condemns Venezuela’s left-wing leaders. James Bloodworth. New Statesman
The country appears to be marching toward full-blown dictatorship.
The demand that a politician “condemn” something is usually an exercise in political performance. It typically has no measurable impact beyond a minor point scoring exercise. But calls for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to condemn the government in Venezuela are different in one important respect.
On seemingly good terms with the government of Nicolás Maduro, Corbyn’s words may actually carry weight in Venezuela. This is a matter of some importance when the country appears to be marching toward full-blown dictatorship.
…..
Demanding an apology from those who did not see the true nature of the Venezuelan government earlier on would be self-indulgent. It is also, for many, wildly hypocritical. Britain sells weapons to Saudi Arabia after all, another brutal dictatorship. Those getting on their high horse about Venezuela include admirers of Margaret Thatcher, whose relationship with Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet makes Corbyn’s relationship with the Venezuelan leadership look decidedly frosty.
Yet Corbyn, who engaged in a cordial conversation with President Maduro over the telephone in 2014 for the television show En Contacto con Maduro, arguably has it in his power to influence developments in Venezuela. However small his influence might be, he ought to be calling publicly for the release of the political prisoners López and Ledezma.
Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn like to say that their man has always come down on the “right side of history”. If this is to mean anything at all, then it should also mean speaking out against the abuses committed by one’s own side.
A different approach is offered here:
Ken Livingstone ‘s Adviser on Anti-Imperialism.
Items today:
Ken Livingstone: Venezuela should have followed my economic advice.
Ken Livingstone gave an extraordinary interview on talkRADIO this morning, saying the country ignored his economic advice – and this folly is the root cause of its decline.
The former mayor of London also said America had played a major part in Venezuela’s crisis, that Hugo Chavez’s failure to kill the country’s oligarchs is a “problem”, and that Nicolas Maduro seemed a nice and fair men when he met him.
Livingstone spoke to Julia Hartley-Brewer this morning about the mounting crisis surrounding Maduro, which escalated further this week following the arrest of two leading opposition figures.
Livingstone told Julia Hartley-Brewer that he’d offered personal advice to Venezuela’s minister of finance, telling the country to move away from its economic dependence on oil.
But, Livingstone said, “he ignored my advice… and that’s one of their problems.”
He then went onto speak of this:
Ken Livingstone: Venezuela crisis caused by Chávez’s failure to kill oligarchs
Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London, has blamed the turmoil in Venezuela on Hugo Chávez’s unwillingness to execute “oligarchs” after he came to power.
Livingstone, who is suspended from the Labour party, also blamed the economic crisis in the country on the government’s failure to take his advice on investment in infrastructure, which he said would have reduced the Latin American state’s dependence on oil.
The former mayor, a longtime supporter of the late president Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro, said the socialist leader’s enemies wanted to restore their power.
“One of the things that Chávez did when he came to power, he didn’t kill all the oligarchs. There was about 200 families who controlled about 80% of the wealth in Venezuela,” Livingstone told Talk Radio.
“He allowed them to live, to carry on. I suspect a lot of them are using their power and control over imports and exports to make it difficult and to undermine Maduro.”
The Newshounds of the influential Labour Party Marxists state today (August the 3rd),
….unconfirmed reports in the party suggest that Ken Livingstone is facing a new investigation over his comments on the relationship between Zionist organisations and the German Nazi government in the early to mid-30s. The comrade remains suspended for statements he made about the limited cooperation between these two otherwise bitterly opposed forces; concretely over the immigration of Jews from Germany to Palestine.
Indications from reliable sources inside the Labour Party indicate that investigators will have a lot more on their plate after the latest outbursts.
The Socialist Party, formerly the Militant, today condemned Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft for reporting a local student to the police – over an art project which proposes socialist policies.
The party – which has stood candidates against the Labour Party – continued in its official paper,
Socialist Party member Ellen Kenyon Peers, the art student in question, has now been expelled from the Labour Party over the project.
Ana Key ‘represents’ the currently non-existent south London constituency of Deptford and Greenwich for the Socialist Party and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). Her website includes proposals for building new council homes, capping private rents and making roads safer for cyclists.
Anybody wishing to continue reading can learn that,
The Socialist Party’s forerunner, the Militant Tendency, had three MPs who were known for their active backing for local and national campaigning.
Dave Nellist, Terry Fields and Pat Wall only took the average wage of a skilled worker in their constituency, and donated the rest of their salaries to workers’ struggles. They also used their parliamentary positions as platforms to build these campaigns.
Although Ana Key is a personal art project, not solicited by the Socialist Party or TUSC, the attention it has drawn to socialist politics is welcome.
It is clear that the Labour Member saw her creation as a member of a rival party, called the Socialist Party.
Ana Key:
First Socialist Party MP
Elected to Westminster
You voted for change on June 8th!
Huffington Post takes up the tale,
Student Ellen Kenyon Peers Who Posed As Fake Socialist MP ‘Ana Key’ Expelled From Labour Party
A university student who was reported to the police for posing as a fake socialist MP as part of an art project has been kicked out of the Labour Party.
Goldsmiths University student Ellen Kenyon Peers sparked uproar on Tuesday after it was revealed she had passed herself off as the newly elected MP for Deptford and Greenwich – a constituency which is set to be created in the next election.
The 24-year-old – who called herself Ana Key – was accused of running a fake Twitter account where she offered help to constituents, using House of Commons headed paper for correspondence and creating a website to list fake constituency surgeries.
Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft, who represents an area close to Peers’ fake constituency, reported the student to police, slamming her actions as “extremely irresponsible”.Foxcroft told the Telegraph: “As an MP I deal with thousands of constituents with emergency cases, some of them about very serious issues on housing or immigration.
The Story continues,
“In 2014, the student stood for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in the Blackwall and Cubitt Town ward election, winning 11 votes.”
Yet,
But in 2015 Peers went on to join the Labour Party, signing up after Jeremy Corbyn became leader. She now claims she has been expelled from the party.
She told the Evening Standard she has received a “standard legal letter” from Labour HQ cancelling her membership on the grounds she had written for the Socialist Party and stood for election on a “hard-Left ticket”.
Peers, who says she comes from a “traditional Labour-supporting family”, said: “My mum and dad were quite upset that I have been expelled from Labour.”
However, she claims that she has not been contacted by the police or Parliament over her stunt.
A Labour spokesperson confirmed that Peers is no longer a member of the party.
The student at the posh London University has yet to comment further.
But Socialist Party member Nancy Taaffe, tweeted: “The reason we have to #DefendAnaKey is because this imaginary character makes a better MP than the local one, Vicky Pollard or something…”
This looks decidedly unfunny,
A previous art project of the Socialist Party drew national attention.
A Socialist candidate who was left red-faced after getting NO VOTES at last week’s local elections is demanding a re-count – after saying he “definitely” voted for himself.
Paul Dennis, who stood for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in Rainham North ward in the Medway Council elections in Kent, was left “baffled” at the count when the announcer revealed he had not got any votes at all.
The Socialist Party is best known on the left for its fanatical support for Brexit and for ending the free movement of labour,
Why the Socialist Party opposed the EU.
What ‘free movement’ exists in the EU is used to allow big business to exploit a cheap supply of labour in a ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of low pay, zero-hour contacts and poor employment conditions.
Any EU citizen with problems about the end of free movement would be well advised to steer clear of such an ‘MP’.
New York Protest at Atzmon this May.
Gilad Atzmon is a ‘controversial’ figure.
Wikipedia notes, “The Community Security Trust report on antisemitic discourse in the UK published in November 2012, but reviewing the previous year, describes Atzmon as increasingly regarded among anti-Zionists as an unwelcome antisemite:
Atzmon’s analysis of Jewish history, identity and culture introduces an unusually explicit and quite new antisemitism into far left-wing politics. Leading Jewish anti-Zionist figures have denounced Atzmon as an antisemite. Most anti-Zionists have followed suit and now also condemn Atzmon, but some factional splits have occurred due to a minority of activists defending him
This just about the sums up the position of anti-racists in the UK:
Nick Lowles writes at Hope Not Hate.
GILAD ATZMON: Supporting Holocaust Deniers and spreading hatred of Jews
Our decision to ask Raise Your Banners to withdraw its invitation to Gilad Atzmon has caused a lot of controversy from his small, but very vocal, band of supporters. In all the years of writing this blog I don’t think I have received as many abusive and angry emails as I have over this issue, though it must be stressed that many of the emails are from the same two or three people.
I’m sticking to my position – namely that Gilad Atzmon flirts with Holocaust Denial, has supported Holocaust Deniers and is a racist antisemite. I will not be bullied or threatened into silence. HOPE not hate stands for decency, tolerance and equality. I will speak up against racism and antisemtism just as I will campaign against fascism and anti-Muslim prejudice.
Gilad Atzmon supports Holocaust deniers and claims that the established history of the Holocaust is misleading. He attacks Jewish identity in a way that would clearly be recognised as racist if it were about any other minority identity, and claims that because of how Jews behave, in the future people might think Hitler was right about Jews. He tells crude antisemitic jokes and mocks any concerns about antisemitism.
Much of the criticism against our position stems from those who believe that we are part of some Zionist plot which seeks to silence criticism of Israel. Nothing can be further from the truth. To me, this has nothing to do with the Israel/Palestine conflict but merely opposition to a man who makes racist and antisemtic comments.
While pretty much universally despised in Europe ‘controversial’ writer Gilad Atzmon still has fans amongst the US ‘left’.
As one would except his popularity has been high in the past with the ‘Wise guys’ of Counterpunch, who like ‘low down’ on ‘Zionism’.
On Gilad Atzmon’s “The Definitive Israeli Lexicon” (May the 22nd 2015.
Infamous for his earlier book, “The Wandering Who?: A Study in Jewish Identity Politics” (2011), Gilad Atzmon has collaborated with Italian cartoonist and interior designer, Enzo Apicella to produce “The Definitive Israeli Lexicon, A to Zion”.
Since the publication of “The Wandering Who?” Atzmon has been vilified and dragged through the mud of slander by the Jewish/Israeli establishment, accused of anti-Semitism and being a self-hating Jew.
…
Please, run out and buy a copy of this book. It will knock a hole in all your prejudices.
Earlier this year (May) this took place in New York,
Clash Over Anti-Semitism as Controversial Speaker Gilad Atzmon Appears at Theatre 80.
They weren’t wearing black masks or hurling smoke bombs. But a small group of no more than 20 anti-fascists made it clear Sunday afternoon that they strongly opposed the appearance of British jazz saxophonist and author Gilad Atzmon at a panel discussion on politics after Brexit held late yesterday afternoon in Theatre 80 on St. Marks Place.
“Jew-Haters [get] out of the East Village,” blared a leaflet handed out by local journalist Bill Weinberg, a leftwing anarchist who writes a blog called New Jewish Resistance. His leaflet describes Atzmon, who was born in Israel and served as a medic in the Israel Defense Forces, as a “proud self-hating Jew” who allegedly traffics in anti-Semitism and has made a career out of “legitimizing hatred.”
..These people are a bunch of a racist assholes!” shouted one demonstrator, apparently referring to attendees who had paid $10 to hear Atzmon speak with three other panelists, including radical leftwing lawyer Stanley Cohen.
..
Cohen added that any attempt to repress speech is “an invitation to violence.” He said there’s a “growing repression” worldwide that now includes some people on the “insular Left” who are, he said, “attempting to dictate the dialog and to shut down the marketplace of ideas. That’s called fascism.”
The fiery lawyer also claimed without substantiation that there had been “discussions” before the demonstration to shut down the panel, possibly create violence and exact “economic punishment” on Theatre 80, allegations which Weinberg, one of the organizers of the protest, said was news to him.
For his part, Atzmon read passages from his book and railed against “the tyranny of political correctness,” sometimes drawing laughter from attendees–especially when he declared that Archie Bunker of the TV series from decades past was a beloved show that created a kind of cultural revolution eventually leading to the election of Donald Trump.
In an opinion piece Bill Weinberg explained why he had got to the point of protesting against Atzmon,
While Atzmon and his defenders hide behind “anti-Zionism” (or “criticism of Jewish culture”), he has been roundly condemned by legitimate anti-Zionists. Please read the US Palestinian Community Network statement, “A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon.”
Jewish anti-Zionists such as myself are committed to making common cause with the Palestinians and fighting anti-Semitism in the diaspora rather than rallying around a settler state. That’s why picketing Theatre 80 is my responsibility.
This is the above call,
Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon
Bearing these events in mind the following call was circulated yesterday,
Holocaust denier and neo nazi supporter Gilad Atzmon is still due to perform at 2 venues in London this Wednesday and Thursday. If you prefer your jazz without a side of fascism, contact the venues today and ask them to cancel the gigs. If you’re a local to either hackney or camberwell, why not stop by?
http://www.jazzlive.co.uk/contact.html
http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk/contact-us/For those who might say ‘what’s wrong with him playing a saxophone’ – 1)No platform for nazi supporting holocaust deniers. Ever. 2) Atzmon uses his gigs to promote his views. He advertises them side by side on the same website. His success as a musician gives him a platform that he would not otherwise have, a platform that he more recently seems to be using to network with prominent, dangerous nazis. He does not keep his musical and political careers separate, so why should we.
This is Atzmon’s reply today (Tuesday the 1st of August)
Zion Declares War on British Jazz
Back in the day, my detractors at least attempted to encounter my arguments and debate me. They didn’t get too far. Since the publication of my new book Being in Time: a Post-Political Manifesto, they have changed their tactics: they insist on obliterating my international jazz career.
Earlier today, a book shop in Oxford that regularly hosts my concerts posted the attached letter (see below) to my Facebook page. The Oxford venue received the letter from the ultra-Zionist Campaign Against Antisemitsm (CAA). The CAA letter is blatantly and intentionally defamatory and duplicitous.
The CAA and other Zionist institutions have been busy subjecting every British jazz venue that features my music to intense harassment. It is no secret that Zionism has been destroying Palestine, its people and its culture for decades. However, eradicating British culture and British jazz in particular may be taking this carnage one step too far.
A number of the British promoters, venues and festivals who received a copy of this defamatory letter against me attempted to investigate the CAA’s accusations and have found the allegations to be baseless, delusional and duplicitous. By way of illustration, the band I am touring with at the moment is led by a NY Jewish musician and the bass player is an ex- Israeli: not exactly a ‘Neo-Nazi’ quartet.
A YEAR has passed since the death of the greatest man of the Third Republic. Events the like of which history has not previously known have welled up almost as if to wash away Jaurès’ blood with new blood and to divert attention away from him and to swallow up even his memory. But even the very greatest events have only partially succeeded in this. In France’s political life a great void has been left behind. New leaders of the proletariat answering the revolutionary character of the new era have not yet arisen. The old leaders only make us remember the more clearly that there is now no Jaurès.
The war has thrown on one side not only individual figures but a whole era with them: the era during which the present leading generation in all spheres of life had been educated and brought up. Today this departed era on the one hand attracts our thoughts by the obstinacy of its cultural heritage, the uninterrupted growth of its technology, science and workers’ organizations; and on the other seems petty and characterless in the conservatism of its political life and in the reformist methods of its class struggle.
After the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (1870-1871) a period of armed peace and political reaction set in. Europe, if one excluded Russia, knew neither war nor revolution. Capital developed on a mighty scale outgrowing the framework of nation-states and overflowing into the remaining countries and subjugating colonies. The working class built its trade unions and its socialist parties. However the whole of the proletarian struggle of this period was impregnated with the spirit of reformism, of adaptation to the existing order and to the nation’s industry and the nation’s state power. After the experience of the Paris Commune the European proletariat did not once pose the question of the conquest of political power in a practical, that is, a revolutionary way. This peaceful, “organic” character of the era reared a whole generation of proletarian leaders thoroughly steeped in distrust for the direct revolutionary mass struggle.
When the war broke out and the nation-state embarked on its campaign with all its forces armed to the teeth, this generation could without difficulty place the majority of the “socialist” leaders down on their knees. The epoch of the Second International has thus ended with the violent wrecking of the official socialist parties. True they are still standing as monuments to a past age and supported both indirectly and forcibly by the governments. But the spirit of proletarian socialism has fled them and they are doomed to collapse. The working masses who have in the past accepted the ideas of socialism are only now, amid the terrible experience of the war, receiving their revolutionary baptism of fire. We are entering upon a period of unprecedented revolutionary earthquakes. New organizations will be brought to the fore by the masses and new leaders will stand at their head.
The two most outstanding representatives of the Second International have left the scene before the onset of the era of storms and earthquakes: namely Bebel and Jaurès. Bebel died in ripe old age having said everything that he was able to say. Jaurès was killed at the age of 55 in the full flower of his creative energy. A pacifist and a sharp opponent of the policies of Russian diplomacy, Jaurès fought right till the last minute against French intervention in the war. It was considered in certain circles that the war of “liberation” could not commence its march other than by stepping over Jaurès’ dead body.
Two important and recommended books on Jaurès
Gilles Candar – Vincent Duclert, Jean Jaurès, Fayard, 2014.
This biography has set a new standard. Beautifully written, with a proper ‘critical apparatuses’ (not a noted feature of many French biographies or indeed works of political theory), it is the best study of the French socialist leader that I have come across.
Candar (of the Société d’études jaurésiennes and Duclert (a specialist on the Dreyfus affair) point out that, while never held office, Jaurès remains one of the most influential figures in the country’s history, revered on all sides. Amongst its many merits the book is illuminating on the general history of the 3rd Republic, from the Dreyfus Affair, in which the Socialist, initially reluctant, was drawn to take the side of those defending not just the unjustly accused by the universal values of human rights, to the separation of state and Church, the foundation of French Laïcité . The authors do not skirt around one issue, which has always irked me, the absence on the French left at the time (indeed up till say, the 1970s…) of any recognition of the importance of feminism. The socialist leader, active in the Second International where these issues were raised more frequently than in France, was they illustrate, was committed to women’s rights, if, as a homme du Midi of the age, he was marked by patriarchal culture.
Jaurès’ struggle for peace on the eve of the Great War and the ferocious hatred that he inspired on the French nationalist right, today, on the anniversary of Passchendaele has passed, and xenophobia has returned throughout Europe, serve to underline the grandeur of one of the greatest leaders of international socialism.
Jean-Paul Scot, Jaurès et le réformisme révolutionnaire, Seuil, 2014.
For many Jaurès’ socialism is summed up in the phrase, “the republic must be made social“. Scot argues that it rested on deeper foundations. Tracing his intellectual development the author of unravels a dialectic between a belief in the reformist (though not ‘revisionist’) belief in ‘evolution’ and the need for radical change. Taking from Marx the concept of “évolution révolutionnaire” to bring the two sides together Scot, illustrates this through the socialist leader’s speeches, articles and political career. Jaurès began as a republican, much as his British counterparts in the late 19th century, started as “radicals”. He became a ‘collectivist’ and republican socialist, but, with his reading and experience began, Scot argues, to offer a perspective that went beyond the structures of capitalism.
Lucid and always readable this essay ploughs into the world of 19th century socialism. We are spared the details of the rifts between the Marxism of Jules Guesde and the Parti ouvrier français,, pure republican revolutionaries (Parti socialiste révolutionnaire), mutualists, the allemanistes, the electric ‘integral socialism’ of Benoît Malon, and the wider current of reformism, (possibilistes) as Scot underlines Jaurès’ ability, as an “Independent” to bring most of the left together for the creation of the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (SFIO, French Section of the Workers’ International), the first French Socialist Party in 1905.
This hopeful essay, which does not skate around the difficulties Jaurès lyrical French republican side leaves us, but focuses on the profound problems created by capitalism, is a tonic against those who imagine that the division between Right and Left can be wished away by the election of a new President.
ISIS Fighters Should be Tried for Crimes Against Humanity.
This is in the news today,
Isis fighters’ bride reveals horror of life in the so-called caliphate. Independent.
Islam Mitat describes a ‘Little Britain’ in Raqqa where many young British people fought for Isis
An Isis fighter’s wife has revealed the horrors of the life of jihadi brides under the so-called caliphate after she was forced into Syria by her husband.
Islam Mitat, 23, a young mother of two said her life was turned around when her husband of three years, Ahmed, forced her to go to live in an Isis bastion in Syria, where he became a jihadi fighter.
Originally from Morocco, Ms Mitat a physics student and keen former fashion blogger, discovered life in “Little Britain” within the caliphate.
Speaking to The Sunday Times from a safe house in northern Syria, she revealed how she set up home with teenage British twins, Zahra and Salma Halane, who ran away from their home in Manchester in 2014.
Will the jihadists, many of whom are said to be involved in crimes which the UN has described as Genocide (ISIS’ Yazidi Genocide) and Human Rights Watch has said are Crimes against Humanity, face justice?
The British government has just announced this:
The UK has stripped more than 150 suspected jihadists and other criminals of their citizenship to stop them returning, it has been reported.
Ministers have issued the “deprivation orders” in case the collapse of the Islamic State in the Middle East leads to a sudden influx of militants from Syria, according to the Sunday Times.
Quoting official figures and security sources, the paper said more than 40 suspects have had their right to a passport removed this year, with about 30 targeted since March.
It added those who have had their citizenship removed include gunmen and “jihadi brides” who have travelled to Syria.
The news comes as the Syrian army and its allies reported made gains in the last IS-held territories in Homs province.
They are all dual nationals, including British-born people with parents of different nationalities, as ministers cannot take away citizenship if it would lead a suspect stateless.
A senior security source told the Sunday Times: “There’s an awful lot of people we have found who will never be coming home again.
“Our number one preference is to get them on trial. If we don’t think that’s possible, we use disruption techniques.”
Last week the Home Office revealed that just six suspects in Britain who cannot be deported or prosecuted are subject to Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims).
Security minister Ben Wallace said: “Prosecution and conviction is always our preference for dealing with terrorists.
“Tpims (Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures) are one of a range of powers at our disposal to disrupt terrorism-related activity where prosecution is not possible.”
The fighters for Daesh have not just committed acts of terrorism or are a potential threat in the UK.
They, like their forebears in the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, stand accused of crimes against humanity.
They should be tried for that by an appropriate court.
The ‘Good Old Cause’ Says leading Labour Leave Writer.
‘arry’s Place, Sarah AB, broke this story (though it had been going around Facebook yesterday afternoon)..
So here it is: as HP calls it,
This piece has been cross-posted by Labour Leave. (who have removed it….)
Trigger warning: the author shows the curious mixture of xenophobia, Stalinist nostalgia and sheer lunacy that marks out some of the Lexit, pro-Brexit, self-styled left.
Kenneth Bell (4 followers) writes,
Let’s be honest, the left argument against the EU is not an anti-immigration one. Rather, it’s about the wholesale importation of scab labour by management to cut British wages and put us in our place, both economically and socially. That is a fact that Jeremy Corbyn made clear when he said that people will still move around after we leave the European Union. However, he then went on to say: “What there wouldn’t be is the wholesale importation of underpaid workers from central Europe in order to destroy conditions, particularly in the construction industry.“
The man of the moment goes on to say,
I can describe them as genuine scab labourers because they come from countries which had the type of economic system that we want for ourselves. One that guaranteed full employment, a functioning health service that was free at the point of use, and two weeks holiday every year at a Black Sea resort. Most important of all was the fact that management were little more than errand boys, with the major economic decisions being taken by the government and the unions.
Sadly, because socialism was introduced courtesy of the Soviet army, it was seen as something imposed on those countries from outside, so we can fully understand why the peoples of Eastern Europe wanted the Soviet Union out of their countries. However, throwing out the socialist baby with the Soviet bathwater has never made any sense to me, nor I suspect would it to any of the British workers who now spend a lifetime doing a crap job for a crap wage for a crap employer.
Bell is oh so keen on Brexit,
A year ago today we voted to free ourselves from the clutches of Brussels. We had been told by various scum sucking Federast types that if we voted for freedom we would be condemning Britain to another generation of right-wing Tory rule, a line that I look back on today with a head-shaking grin.
Enjoying our new found liberty Bell has developed a frolicsome line in humour.
“This is a scold’s bridle, used to keep scolding woman, or gobby birds as we now call them, quiet. Photographed in the Edinburgh Museum today.”
His unique line on women’s issues is not doubt widely shared amongst his Lexit comrades.
Pippa Middleton is Still Best Viewed From Behind.
A fierce commitment to free speech opened Belly’s heart to this guest post:
Guest Posting: The Wankery that is Intersectioanality
According to well-established rumour Bell is in line for a weekly Morning Star column.
Time for the Left to Defend Human Rights in Venezuela.
Many people will have watched yesterday’s report on Venezuela on the BBC Newsnight.
It was deeply disturbing.
“In Venezuela, activists say the government is using torture and imprisonment without trial against those who oppose it – a claim the government denies. So who are the people hoping to overthrow President Maduro? Vladimir Hernandez reports.”
The programme showed evidence of repression that would shock all supporters of human rights.
I am not in a mood to listen to those who will try to cast doubt on the BBC report.
There are plenty of other reliable sources of information which confirm their facts begining with, La represión de Maduro se salda con al menos 36 muertos en un mes. El País (May.
The Guardian reports today, “It takes a lot of courage’: Venezuelan protesters tell of rising police violence.As general strike begins, more than 100 have died and hundreds more arrested in anti-government protests since April. Spanish language media takes the same angle, Una huelga general endurece el pulso contra la Constituyente de Maduro. Tres muertos, 367 detenidos, calles desiertas y barricadas en el paro organizado por la oposición a una semana para la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente. El País (Today). The mass emigration of the population is also startling, Les Vénézuéliens s’exilent en masse vers la Colombie. (le Monde)
The splits inside the Chavista side (signaled in the Newsnight film) are well known: La procureure générale du Venezuela critique la répression de l’opposition.
Here is some more of the BBC coverage:
How is the left reacting?
First of all we have the Morning Star’s ‘reports’ which say nothing of state repression.
VENEZUELA’S right-wing opposition launched a 48-hour “civic strike” yesterday, calling on workers to stay at home in its latest campaign to derail plans to convene a new constituent assembly.
President Nicolas Maduro has confirmed that Sunday’s elections will go ahead to choose the members of the assembly, despite the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) coalition’s three-month campaign of rioting which has led to hundreds of deaths.
The CTV union federation, which supported the 2002 coup against late president Hugo Chavez, said its 333,000 members would join the strike.
On Tuesday, Mr Maduro said Venezuela would “choose between peace and war, between the future or the past and between independence or colonialism.” He has said that the new constituent assembly will promote peace and reconciliation.
Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada has demanded answers from the US over “systematic” efforts to overthrow its elected government. He said there was a “campaign of intelligence operations at the highest level to overthrow the constitutional government of President Nicolas Maduro.”
The Foreign Ministry accused Washington of providing “finance and logistical support to the Venezuelan opposition as an integral part of its destabilising efforts against democracy.”
It also condemned former president Barack Obama for extending his 2015 decree designating Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to US national security” before leaving office in January.
It also attacked Mr Obama’s successor Donald Trump for additional sanctions imposed since he took office.
This is what Cuba said….
Cuban Communist Party second secretary Jose Ramon Machado denied claims Havana would mediate between the government and opposition.
He said it was up to the Venezuelan people and government to overcome their challenges “without foreign meddling in their internal affairs.
“Those who from the outside try to give lessons on democracy and human rights while encouraging coup-mongering violence and terrorism should take their hands off that nation.”
Counterpunch,
Time for the “International Left” to Take a Stand on Venezuela July the 17th
Venezuela is heading towards an increasingly dangerous situation, in which open civil war could become a real possibility. So far over 100 people have been killed as a result of street protests, most of these deaths are the fault of the protesters themselves (to the extent that we know the cause). The possibility of civil war becomes more likely as long the international media obscure who is responsible for the violence and as long as the international left remains on the sidelines in this conflict and fails to show solidarity with the Bolivarian socialist movement in Venezuela.
…
So, instead of silence, neutrality, or indecision from the international left in the current conflict in Venezuela, what is needed is active solidarity with the Bolivarian socialist movement. Such solidarity means vehemently opposing all efforts to overthrow the government of President Maduro during his current presidential term in office. Aside from the patent illegality that the Maduro government’s overthrow would represent, it would also be a literally deadly blow to Venezuela’s socialist movement and to the legacy of President Chávez. The international left does not even need to take a position on whether the proposed constitutional assembly or negotiations with the opposition is the best way to resolve the current crisis. That is really up to Venezuelans to decide. Opposing intervention and disseminating information on what is actually happening in Venezuela, though, are the two things where non-Venezuelans can play a constructive role.
Socialist Appeal (17th of July) continues in this vein,
Defeat reaction with revolution
The reactionary opposition represents the interests of the oligarchy (bankers, capitalists and landowners) and imperialism which stands behind them. If they were to take power they would launch a massive austerity package on the Venezuelan workers and the poor, with brutal cuts in public spending, the abolition of the Bolivarian social programs, the privatisation of social housing, the privatisation of expropriated companies, the privatisation of re-nationalised utilities, the abolition of the main rights and protections in the Labour Law, etc. At the same time, they would launch a political purge of all state institutions, ministries and state-owned companies and an all out assault on democratic rights, unleashing a lynch mob against chavistas and their organisations.
For this reason we must oppose their reactionary campaign and stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan working people.
But,
As we have explained elsewhere, this does not mean giving support to the present policies of the Maduro government, which are ineffective in combatting reaction and by making constant concessions to the capitalist class undermine the social base of support of the Bolivarian movement. Even now, during the campaign for the Constituent Assembly elections, the so-called “patriotic businessmen” are advocating the privatisation of expropriated companies as well as the use of the Assembly to “strengthen private property rights”. This is the main plank of the campaign of Oscar Schemel, for instance, with the full backing of businessman and minister Perez Abad, which has been given ample time in all the state media. That road leads directly to disaster.
The only way to defend the conquests of the revolution is by unleashing the revolutionary self-activity and organisation of the masses of workers, peasants and the poor. An example of what is possible can be seen in the campaigns organised by groups like the Bolivar Zamora Revolutionary Current (which has organised Popular Defence Brigades) or the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force (which is calling for a new revolutionary leadership).
The offensive of the oligarchy must be defeated, but it can only be defeated by revolutionary means.
The duty of revolutionaries and consistent democrats internationally is to oppose the insurrectionary attempts of the reactionary opposition and defend the gains of the Bolivarian revolution. Taking a “neutral” position puts you objectively on the side of counter-revolution. We must wage a relentless campaign against the lies of the international media, to denounce our own imperialist governments which support reaction in Venezuela in the name of “democracy” and “human rights”. At the same time we must support and encourage those in Venezuela who are beginning to draw the correct revolutionary conclusions from this crisis: we cannot make half a revolution.
These might be fringe leftist groups but more seriously El Pais has accused Podemos of complicity with Maduro: Cómplices de Maduro (28th of July). That is, “guardan silencio, cuando no justifican a Maduro y acusan a la oposición de antidemocrática..” Podemos leaders have kept silent, when they are not justting Maduro and accusing the opposition of being antidemocratic.
Others are beginning to ask broader questions.
Being honest about Venezuela. Socialist Worker (USA, no relation these days to SW UK).
The world’s media, overwhelmingly hostile to the Bolivarian process, sneer at President Nicolás Maduro’s rhetoric while presenting the right-wing parties, which certainly launched this wave of violence, as defenders of democracy. This definition of democracy apparently allows whole populations to fall into poverty and illness, with nearly 100 people left to die in the streets.
Meanwhile, the international left has accepted the explanations government spokespersons offer, still believing that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thus, when a helicopter attacked government buildings on June 28, some observers simply added the event to the catalog of right-wing violence.
It is, unsurprisingly, far more complicated than that.
Oscar Pérez, a retired officer of the state security services, piloted the helicopter. Pérez has close ties to ex-Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, whom Maduro dismissedin 2014. Torres, like the majority of the current cabinet and around half of Venezuela’s state governors, belongs to the military. He also leads one of a number of Chavista factions angling for power.
Behind a façade of governmental unity, another struggle is developing, but none of the groups are fighting to continue the revolutionary project or to reconstruct the mass movement that saved it after the attempted coup and the bosses’ strikes of 2002-3.
The opposition is also split into rival factions. Some advocate dialogue with the president, while others, especially the group that Leopoldo Lopez and his partner Liliana Tintori lead, almost certainly support the most violent street fighters. They aim not only to get rid of Maduro but also to destroy Chavismo itself.
Most Venezuelans know the major players on the right: they belong to the wealthiest and most powerful families, who controlled the economy until Chávez arrived. Since the first street barricades went up, Maduro has tried to work with representatives of these right-wing sectors. In 2014, for example, he called in Lorenzo Mendoza, head of the Polar multinational and one of the richest Venezuelans.
Gustavo Cisneros, another member of that exclusive clan, has remained untouched in the nearly 20 years of Chavismo. He recently claimed that Venezuela needs a Macri, referring to the militantly neoliberal Argentine president, who is currently working to dismantle that country’s public sector. Cisneros likely speaks from knowledge of the right’s strategic thinking.
As the economic and political crisis deepens, it’s become obvious that neither the government nor the opposition will offer any real solutions. While Maduro betrays the revolution by courting the bourgeoisie and sliding backwards into neoliberalism, right-wing forces have brought in violent mercenaries to try and disrupt the country even further. As these two groups struggle for power, ordinary Venezuelans are watching the gains of Chavismo slip away.
It must have been hard for the comrades of the ISO to say the above, but it needed to be said.
Nobody can accept the state version of what is happening in Venezuela, or its claim to ‘defend’ anything resembling socialism.
We have to defend human rights.
It is time for those in this country who are close to these issues to speak out.
Identity Politics?
Jean-Luc Mélelenchon perhaps set a precedent.
“They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. “We alone,” they say, each behind his shelter, “we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!” Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism–which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred–out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace.”
Under Fire: The Story of a Squad, by Henri Barbusse, 1917
Denham and key Corbyn ally join forces for “patriotic” English Labour initiative
A former Labour cabinet minister has joined forces with one of the leading lights of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign for the launch of a “patriotic” initiative to give English voters a voice.
John Denham, the former communities and local government secretary under Gordon Brown, has set up the English Labour Network in an attempt to help the party win again in the largest of the home nations.
The network aims to build on Labour’s progress in the June general election and allow it to take the seats in the “large towns and small cities”which are necessary to be able to form a government.
It will provide “practical support” rather than be “yet another internal party group lobbying for individual policies or individual candidates”, Denham writes on LabourList today.
George Orwell famously distinguished between patriotism and nationalism. “Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.” (Notes on Nationalism. 1945)
It is unclear if things are so clear cut, we find plenty of people talking sentimentally about ‘their’ nation, places and culture, in good times, but using these to defend the superiority of their way of life against all others. Or simply giving priority to ‘their’ ain folk. It surely is not a coincidence that the ‘identitarian’ movement in the European extreme right tries to connect the two.
Orwell is nevertheless useful when we realise that it’s issues of power, that is the state, which mark nationalism. Sovereigntist ideas, on the populist right, and sections of the left which try to create their own radical populism, which see the capture of national sovereignty by the ‘people’ as the premise of political success, have a tight link to nationalism. If the right bases itself on the People against a variety of Enemies, from Globalised elites, to migrants, the left version targets Oligarchs and claims to ‘federate’ the people. There is some convergence in that both could be said to reflect something of Zygmunt Bauman’s idea that today, in ‘late modernity’ “the settled majority is ruled by the nomadic and exterritorial elite” (Liquid Modernity 2010).
David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere (2017), is perhaps the most recent attempt to put forward this themes in British terms. His writing, on the opposition between ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’, talks of the need for the left to take up the concerns of ‘decent populists’. He argued for the importance of the ‘restless’ anywheres who dominate Labour policy making to take up the concerns of those, who vlaue “group identity, tradition and national social contracts (faith, flag and family)”.
Drawing on this feeling for “a particular place and way of life”, in the line of Blue Labour, along with “work family and community”, the English Labour Network, now proposes the following.
Sam Stopp ” a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Brent and is the Chair of The Labour Campaign to End Homelessness. He has written regularly for LabourList, LeftFootForward, Progress Online and Open Labour. “
offers some important critical reflections.
Labour has slipped rightwards on immigration. That needs to change
Both Denham and Liam Byrne stress that they want good, not bad, patriotism. But Byrne also asks us not to dwell on “dusty history”, as if the toxic nature of modern jingoism isn’t derived precisely from the predominant chauvinistic version of our nation’s past. It will take more than a half-baked rebranding exercise to deal with these deep-seated issues. After Brexit, the idea that our national identity should be simply celebrated rather than critically re-examined is not only irrational but deeply irresponsible. Currently, the ELN looks more like a triangulating appeal to rightwing voters than a serious project for reimagining and building a more inclusive England, with all the difficult conversations that will necessarily involve.
This is connected to a wider strand of thinking in and around the Labour party that sees xenophobia and racism as confined to a minority of cranks on society’s fringe, with the current high levels of public antipathy towards immigrants being due for the most part to nothing more than the “legitimate concerns” of primarily working-class voters. It’s a view resting on spectacular naivety about the true nature and breadth of prejudice in Britain (which is in no way class-specific), as well as the misconception that it is experience of, rather than prejudice about, immigration that drives this antipathy.
This narrative becomes a shade more sinister when the dubious category of the “white working class” (apparently neglected more due to its whiteness than its class) is elevated to the status of Labour’s “traditional” support – the “core vote” residing in the “heartlands”. One wonders where in the pecking order this leaves the non-white working-class residents of Grenfell Tower, for example. It would be unfortunate if the answer to that question were to be found in the expressions of sympathy one hears from some Labour figures for people “anxious about … the rate of change of communities”. Labour neither has nor deserves a future as the party of those who don’t want black and brown people moving into their street.
We suspect that the problems lie deeper than this.
It is not just the cultural issues Wearing rightly highlights and which make a mockery of efforts to revive a ‘national identity’ from the left.
Brexit has been followed by the attempt of some inside the Labour Party to assert their own brand of sovereigntism.
Calling on support from ‘anger’ of the anti-EU camp, the sturdy “northern working class” to the people of England who have not spoken yet, these forces – they have a name, and that is those within the Lexit campaign, and supporters (who include Labour leadership advisers) wish to mobilise the ‘people’ against any commitment to oppose the Tories’ Hard Brexit. They believe that they can ‘federate the people’ around a new version of the old Alternative Economic Strategy, Keynesian economics administrated by a ‘captured’ state.
The real difficulty is that the world is too ‘liquid’ economically and culturally, for any radical left government both to moblise popular enthusiasm and to build the links we need with ‘other’ nationalities, other peoples with their own loves of place and “particular ways of life”, without at the very elast making direct agreements across Europe, inside and outside of the institutional structures of the EU.
International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression in the 21st Century
This is important and we extend our solidarity to those standing up for freedom of thought against religious bigotry.
The International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression, the largest gathering of ex-Muslims in history, was held during 22-24 July 2017 in London.
Over 70 notable speakers from 30 countries or the Diaspora gathered in what was dubbed “The Glastonbury of Freethinkers” and “a Conference of Heroes” to honour dissenters and defend apostasy, blasphemy, and secularism.
The sold-out conference highlighted the voices of those on the frontlines of resistance – many of them persecuted and exiled – and included the first London film screening of Deeyah Khan’s film, Islam’s Non Believers, a public art protest of 99 balloons representing those killed or imprisoned for blasphemy and apostasy, a body-painting action, and crucial discussions and debates on Islamophobia and its use by Islamists to impose de facto blasphemy laws, the relation between Islam and Islamism as well as communalism’s threat to universal rights, art as resistance and Laicite as a human rights. The conference hashtag, #IWant2BFree, trended on Twitter during the two days.
At the conference, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) honoured ten individuals to mark its tenth anniversary, namely Bangladeshi freethinker Bonya Ahmed, Saudi freethinkers Ensaf Haidar and Raif Badawi, Moroccan atheist Zineb El Rhazoui, Philosopher AC Grayling, Centre for Secular Space’s Gita Sahgal and Yasmin Rehman, Algerian Sociologist Marieme Helie Lucas, Jordanian Atheists’ Founder Mohammad AlKhadra, Egyptian Atheist Founder of The Black Ducks Ismail Mohamed and Author and Scientist Richard Dawkins.
The conference issued resolutions against the no-platforming of Richard Dawkins by KPFA radio station, in defence of Ismail Mohamed who was prevented from leaving Egypt to speak at the conference by the Egyptian government, and on CEMB’s presence in Pride in London as well as a Declaration of Freethinkers (see below).
The event was live-streamed, which can be seen here. Professional video footage will be made available soon as well photos and more details of the event.
Report from Sedaa, London conference sees ‘largest gathering of ex-Muslims in history’.
Sedaa founder Iram Ramzan, who was co-hosting the event, said: “The conference reminded us all that there are people in the UK and around the world who are ostracised or persecuted simply for deciding to think for themselves.
“It was also noted that one does not necessarily have to be an atheist in order to be a champion of secularism. In fact, a lot of religious people at the event recognised that secularism allows them to worship in the way they want to, just as it would protect non-religious people. A secular state would remain neutral in religious affairs.”
No apologies. Maryam Namazie
This is my letter to you.
Not you, the Islamist, who wants me silent or dead whilst dreaming of your vile caliphate, nor you, the racist, who wants my Muslim and migrant family out whilst dreaming of your contemptible white, Christian Europe. To me, you are two sides of the same coin.
This is my letter to you who I should consider a friend, an ally, but who refuses to make a stand with me. You: the progressive, the anti-racist, the supposed defender of human rights.
How come your defence of freedom of conscience and expression never includes my right to reject and criticise Islam?
You exclude, bar, ban, blame and shame me – or at the very least – remain silent, simply because of who I am: an ex-Muslim, an atheist, a critic of Islam.
Of course, you have a right to your silence.
You are not responsible for my persecution. Only those who threaten, kill and harm freethinkers in countries and communities under Islamist control are directly responsible; justice, after all, can never be about placing collective blame.
But I do accuse.
I accuse you of blaming me and never the perpetrators.
They always seem to have some ‘legitimate’ grievance or ‘hurt’ sensibility that justifies their incitement to violence or mass murder.
I, on the other hand, am always at fault:
‘If only I had not offended’ Your religion offends me but I am still able to stand with you and defend your right to religion.
‘If only I had not provoked’ Islamists kill, maim, silence and I am the one provoking them by saying what I think? Is that you speaking or them?
‘If only I had respected Islam’ You don’t respect my atheism; why must I respect your religion? In any case, one is not required to respect beliefs but the right to belief.
‘If only I had kept my opinion about Islam to myself’… You do not keep your opinions to yourself. Every day, from every corner I hear how ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ and that ‘Islamists are not practising real Islam’. Religion is shoved down my throat until I suffocate; yet I must keep my opinions to myself? Do I not also have the right to speak and think as I choose? Until Islamists stop threatening me, I will shout my atheism from every rooftop.
‘I am aiding racism because I criticise Islam’ Are you promoting terrorism because you defend Islam? I do not blame you for terrorism; stop blaming me for racism – which, by the way, affects me too.
Dear ‘friend’,
Is it really so hard to grasp that freedom of conscience is not just for the believer? That it includes the right not to believe, the right to reject Islam – publicly or otherwise. That freedom of expression is not just for those who defend and promote Islam. It is also my and our freedom to criticise Islam, mock it, and even see it as the regressive ideology of the Islamist movement.
And to do so publicly without fear.
Frankly, when I hear the Quran recited, it feels like a kick to my stomach. It reminds me of executions in Iran and the totalitarian nightmare from which I have fled and sought refuge.
Nonetheless, I can still make a distinction between beliefs and human beings. I can still defend the right to religion; I can still stand with you against fascists of all stripes.
Why can you not defend my right to reject religion?
Why can you not stand with me?
Can you not see that freedom of religion is meaningless without freedom from religion? These are corresponding freedoms. They cannot exist fully without the other.
Maybe you can afford your silence. After all, religion and its defenders have always been privileged and freethinkers have always been persecuted throughout the ages. But I and we cannot.
Because we have no choice.
Because we have a right to think and live freely – even if it offends you.
Because if we don’t speak for ourselves, who will speak for us? You certainly won’t.
Because we must speak for ourselves, our loved ones, for those who cannot speak, for those who are beaten into submission in homes in London, imprisoned in Riyadh or are facing the gallows in Tehran and Karachi.
For Raif Badawi, for Sina Dehghan, Sahar Ilyasi, Ayaz Nizami, Ahmad Al-Shamri, Taimoor Raza, Avijit Roy…
Because we are the tsunami that is coming…
Yes, I don’t blame you for my persecution, but I do often wonder how much of a role your victim blaming and silence play – even if unwittingly – in normalising the open season on Islam’s atheists and freethinkers.
I wonder. If you were not so tolerant of the culture of offence and so intolerant of my criticism, would the world not be a different place?
I accuse.
#IWant2BFree
“Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them.” ― Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach
Concern Grows as Suffolk County Council Tories Try to Stop Libraries Connecting with the Public.
More than 50 jobs could go at Suffolk libraries due to budget cuts
EADT. Paul Geater.
More than 50 jobs at Suffolk libraries are under threat as the service is being forced into a major restructure following two years of serious budget cuts.
Formal consultation starts on the job losses at the start of next week and the service restructure is due to be in place by April next year – none of the county’s 44 library branches are expected to close and opening hours should not be affected.
The restructure comes after the library service budget was cut by £230,000 by Suffolk County Council in April – and that followed a £300,000 cut last year.
The service has recently been awarded a £700,000 grant by the Arts Council, but that is for a specific project and cannot be used to subsidise basic services.
Suffolk Libraries Chief Executive Alison Wheeler said this would be the first major reorganisation of the service since 1990: “Then the work of the libraries service was very different to what it is today, but we understand this will be a very difficult time for those going through the redundancy process,” she said.
Over the next two weeks there are a series of meetings for library staff across the county to hear more about the plans and those directly involved in the redundancy process will have a 45-day consultation process.
Ms Wheeler added: “We do of course recognise that this is very stressful for people affected, and we are doing what we can to ensure that they are well informed, and have plenty of opportunity to give their views.
“What we all care about is ensuring that Suffolk’s libraries have a sustainable future.”
The library service was set up as an industrial and provident society in 2012 to run Suffolk’s libraries on behalf of the county council – it relies largely on finance from the county but its buildings in towns and villages have become community hubs as well as places to borrow books.
All the branches have remained open and Ms Wheeler said this remained a key aim of the service as it prepares to restructure itself for the future. Ms Wheeler herself is planning to take early retirement from the service early in the new year once a successor has been appointed.
Campaigners opposed the creation of an Industrial and Provident society on the grounds that it would both remove direct democratic accountability for Suffolk Libraries and would not, in the long run, shelter the libraries from the hostile treatment towards all public services by the Conservative ruling group on the County Council.
Suffolk has been spared the wholesale closure of libraries that has wreaked havoc on the services in many parts of the country.
The dedicated staff are to be congratulated on their efforts to open the service to wider communities and to keep the libraries as welcoming public spaces.
But the drip drip of cuts has began to eat into the provision of books, and has led to the almost complete removal of periodicals, from Private Eye to the Times Literary Supplement, from the central library.
Coincidentally or not Suffolk Libraries was a subject of informal discussion very recently (last night) amongst Labour activists, including representatives of the Labour group on the County Council.
Volumes of important texts have been sold off for not more than a few pence.
The number of qualified – and therefore better paid – librarians working in the service is approaching zero.
Efforts to raise money include this:
Suffolk Libraries launches new supporters’ scheme
People can sign up at three different price levels: £20 for Silver membership, £50 for Gold, or £150 for Platinum. For more information and to apply, visit the Suffolk Libraries Extra page, call 01473 351249 or visit any library. You can also email extra@suffolklibraries.co.uk if you have any questions about the scheme.
All money raised will go into a dedicated Development Fund which will be used to support and improve the services we provide.
Tony Brown, Chair of Suffolk Libraries, said: “Suffolk Libraries is determined to provide the best service we can to the people of Suffolk and to make a positive difference to the lives of as many people that live here, even if we face continuing financial pressures. We want to do our bit and raise additional income which will be used to improve the services we provide to communities across Suffolk.
“All our other customers will continue to get the same free services and benefits, we just want to provide something extra for those who feel able to give us some extra support.”
This is a matter of deep concern.
A Million Member Party. New Socialist. Review.
The churn of news stories about the Labour Party is hard to keep up with. From the exhilaration of the post General Election we have seen the drip feed of hostility to the Jeremy Corbyn and his team return. The sometimes over-the-top admiration of the Leader, that there are problems, above all in the Party’s strategy towards Brexit. Some of the left, bogged down in a war over Momentum, in which few outside limited circles take an interest, perhaps forget that not only is the Party above concerned with beating the Tories but also that some of the debates which took place during the last period, late 1970s to 1980s, that radical socialists had an influence may be returning.
New Socialist, whose name recalls Labour’s 1980s journal (ceased publication 1991), which tried to capture something of that radicalism in serious discussion, has just published on the Web contributions that connect with that past and the potential future. These open-minded and thoughtful articles indicate – it is hard not to guess from familiarity with what’s happening in the Labour Party – a widespread thirst for more than a ‘battle’ in local parties and Conference. They explore a revitalised, re-imagined democratic socialism that is in touch with ordinary people not faction fights. Taking from the best side of the New Left, adding up-to-date approaches – A Million Members is one of the most promising collections of grassroots thinking to appear this year.
Feminism and Labour.
Andrea Marie’s Prefigurative Social Relations takes us back straight away to some of some of the key books of that period, Hilary Wainwright’s Labour: a Tale of Two Parties (1987). She focuses on what is the best-known achievement of Wainwright, Sheila Rowbotham and Lynne Segal’s Beyond the Fragments (1980), introducing feminist concerns into the daily life of the left, and labour movement. Marie talks of creating “democratic relationships, personal and political, here and now”. The book, it should be underlined, also put an emphasis on “democratic organisation” and control in the economy, not just in ownership but also in the “principles of and details” of production, as well as the state.
For Wainwright, reflecting the view of the Socialist Society we needed a “strong state in relation to powerful institutions and a supportive, decentralised state as regards popular associations and individuals.” The Two Parties ends by asking if Labour, instead of pursing such a course would, post-1987, and Neil Kinnock’s election, would become “Just an Electoral machine”, against what Wainwright referred to as a “party built up from below”, which could stand as a subtitle for the whole of A Million Member Party. (1)
The Editor Tom Gann observes that the legacy of the Kinnock years, not to mention Blair and Brown, means that for existing “Labour the winning of state power is prioritised” By contrast A Million Member Party discusses ideas of a networked party (Torr Robinson), the party as a social movement (Jan Baykara), labour in conversation with the public (oidptg) a census of popular needs (Casper Hughes) as part and parcel of making labour anew, . “the necessary preliminaries of raising and extending socialist consciousness and grass-roots organisation among working people in general.” In this context, some reflection on the successes and failures of social movements, such as the much publicised Occupy! movement (see Thomas Frank. Yes, but what are you for? would not be amiss. The experiences of European radical left movements, such as the recent French Nuit debout and the Spanish Movimiento 15-M, entwined with mass left politics, are certainly even more relevant.
Remaking Labour.
Bilsborough’s call to reconfigure Labour’s Parliamentary and local politics, that is by selecting new representatives, also raises issues, more sensitively than media fuelled rage over individuals, to deeper problems. As Marie says, the everyday practices of the Party, the cultures and sedimented institutional practices equally need to be transformed. Many will, doubt that any political party can or should “prefigure” the co-operative social relationships, or Cotterrill, “associative democracy” (a term associated with the late Paul Hirst) that socialists would wish for society to adopt in the future. Politics involve clashes and that is not going to disappear, an indeed have not, as the recent history of ‘another way of organising’ in Podemos indicates . It is much easier to be convinced that neither bureaucratic manoeuvres, no shouty opposition, are not welcome practices. (2)
There are many other important interventions, including a section summed up in the title “desalienation” But economics, and in particular austerity, are the rub. The issues raised by Brexit, and the problem that those inside Labour, on both left and right, who support sovereigntism’, the idea that the UK can ‘go it alone’ in the world, no doubt to return to another 1980s idea, the Alternative Economic Strategy, are not raised. Mark Seddon and Soule put the problem of low pay on the table. This is important. But Tom Blackburn in “Corbynism from Below” made the point earlier on New Socialist: “continuing austerity” looms still larger. Labour’s priorities have to lie with challenging the cuts in budgets, the fiscal tap that is ever-tightening on local government, the cause of the freeze on benefits. These do not just have obvious effects of people’s lives. Austerity is a justification for expanding one of the most undemocratic aspects of the state – the hive off of public goods to private profiteers.
Economic and political power rests on money. Without replacing austerity we have no ground on which to advance the kind of generous democratic socialist politics and culture advocated by A Million Members. However many more card carrying Labour supporters can be recruited…….
*******
(1) Pages 256, 264 and the concluding chapter, No7. Labour: a Tale of Two Parties The Hogarth Press. 1987
(2) Associative Democracy is often thought of as an alternative to most forms of socialism as in Associative Democracy. New Forms of Economic and Social Governance. Paul Hirst. University of Massachusetts Press. 1994.
Marine Le Pen and her Ideologue: Florian Philippot.
The decision came after a two-day, closed-door meeting at the group’s headquarters west of Paris, to learn the lessons of May’s presidential election that saw its candidate Marine Le Pen lose by double digits.
But while the policy position remains, a statement said it had been pushed back to the end of the five-year term of any future FN government, in what appeared to be a concession to critics.
Some inside the party — and many commentators outside — think this issue helped sink Le Pen’s campaign.
And according to some of those present at the meeting, several of the group’s leading members abstained in a vote on the final text.
Le Pen, campaigning on an anti-EU and anti-immigration platform, lost with 34 percent of the vote to centrist Emmanuel Macron’s 66 percent in the May 7 runoff.
In parliamentary elections just weeks later, the FN won a mere eight seats in the 577-member National Assembly, missing its target of 15, as Macron’s centrist party captured a comfortable majority.
As late as Friday, FN secretary general Nicolas Bay told FranceInfo radio he thought the party could reverse its stance on the question of an exit from the euro.
“I think we need to listen to what the French people said,” he told the broadcaster. “We did not convince people with this idea.”
But the party’s deputy leader Florian Philippot, a strong supporter of the euro withdrawal policy, had warned against abandoning it.
He insists the party needs to speak to French voters “on issues beyond the traditional subjects of the National Front, such as immigration and crime”.
Le Pen herself has said the FN will hold a “wide consultation” with party members, probably in September.
Le Monde talks of the FN “Tearing itself apart” over the issue and over whether to keep its line based on triple themes of “security-immigration and identity”, advocated by the hard-line Florian Philippot and his opponents whoa rgue that modifying their programme on these issues is a condition for a new “union of the (nationalist) Rights.
Le FN se déchire entre la ligne de son vice-président, Florian Philippot, qui place l’hostilité à l’euro au-dessus de tout, et celle de ses adversaires internes, pour qui le parti ne gagnera qu’à la condition de revenir à son triptyque fondamental « sécurité-immigration-identité » et de réaliser l’union des droites.
As yet there seems no indication that Marine le Pen and her leadership intends to go ahead with the idea, floated earlier, of a name change, Front national : une « transformation » qui pourrait passer par un changement de nom.
Just before this meeting a report indicated that apart from the Euro, the far-right party had put this, the issue of alliances with other forces, and making the organisation more “open” to its voters, would be on the table, Alliances, nom du parti, sortie de l’euro… Le Front national à l’heure de la « refondation .
Such disputes are rare inside the Front National.
The last one ended in a split and the formation of the Mouvement National Républicain by Bruno Mégret in 1998.
We await the “grande consultation” in September.
Background on the FN: see Yves, A propos de quelques livres récents sur le Front national.
Orwell and Fake News, Alt-Right, Alt-Right.
George Orwell never ceases being cited. These days he more often appears for good reasons than for bad ones.
Recently people have had recourse to Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes in Salvador Dali (1944) in order to defend his ability as a “ good draftsman” while being, “a disgusting human being”. That qualified support highlighted, few share the judgement that the Surrealist’s “Mannequin rooting in a taxicab’ as “diseased and disgusting”. The important idea, one, which Orwell repeats about Dickens as Bechhofer Roberts published an early version of what much later developed in the account of the Other Woman, Ellen Ternan, is the distinction between public work and “private life”. In this instance Dali’s alleged infidelity, and the search for his DNA to prove paternity, is irrelevant to the merits or otherwise of his products.
A more weighty issue is taken up in yesterday’s le Monde (Relire « 1984 » à l’ère de la post-vérité). Stéphane Foucart discusses Orwell as a reference in the era of “post-truth” (post-verité). He quotes Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942), “..for the first, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary life.” Life in Republican Spain was portrayed as “one long massacre” by the pro-Franco British press. Orwell went on to imagine a future in which “the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only he future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event “it never happened” – well it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.”
English speaking readers are more familiar with this passage, a premonition of the theme of 1984, than French, who, to Foucart, only began to register that dystopia in the 1980s, with intellectuals such as Michael Gauchet dismissing it. More recently there are those who have taken Orwell to their hearts, for his “common decency”. The idea that the over boiled cabbage and Thought Police of Ingsoc, and a planet divided into three rival Party-Oligarchies, has relevance today may seem to stretch a point.
That we know that the past is both so obviously not there, yet is worthy of objective inquiry in ways that other ‘not theres’ are not, is an old metaphysical difficulty. That the standard of objectivity was weakened by what used to be fashionable in the old days of ‘post-modernism’ is well known. But that there are different ‘truths’, a liberal, in the American sense, rather than a conservative principle has become less about controlling history than the present. Was the telly screen a rudimentary form of the Internet asks Foucart? Are Trump’s efforts to purge the Presidential archives of documents challenging his view on climate change? ‘Alternative facts’, reports that bear no relation to truth, have, with the sacking of the White House’s Sean Spicer is now a topic which has made the news.
The Media and State Power.
Orwell was concerned not just with Red Atrocity reports in the Daily Mail. He also wrote of the potential totalitarian effects of government control of the media, in his time the Radio. He defended freedom of expression against all forms of censorship, including the suppression of critical reports about the USSR which he believed was taking place post-war in favour of “uncritical admiration of the Soviet Union” (The freedom of the press – Animal Farm. 1945). As Orwell later wrote, “If you do not like the Communism you are a red-baiter, a believer in Bolshevik atrocities, the nationalism of women, Moscow Gold and so on.” (In Defence of Comrade Zilliacus. 1947. Intended for Tribune, not published…)
The Trump administration has power. But there is nothing resembling an effective state broadcasting monopoly outside of North Korea, despite accusations against the People’s Republic. Trump supporters have their networks, their web sites, the loud media outlets. The British right has the dailies, the internationally influential Mail, the declining Sun, the poor old Telegraph, the ageing Express and the Star, which few get beyond the front page to read. Its media imitations of the American alt-right, languish in obscurity. In Britain if these forces are capable of manufacturing truths, from the endless drip drip against migrant workers and Europe to scare-stories about left-wingers, and have an effect on opinion, they took a jolt at the last election. As the laughable Election Day front page of the Sun demonstrated so well.
The Alt-Left and Alternative Facts.
Come the arrival of the ‘alt-left’. In Britain this means enthusiastic pro-Jeremy Corbyn people. Sites such as The Canary may not be to everyone’s taste but have a readership. But the debate over alternative facts has spread inside the left. Is it justified for Skwawkbox to engage in its own war of attrition with the arms of sensational, scaremongering, stories. The best known at the moment is their recent ‘scoop’ that claimed that everybody on disability benefit transferred to Universal Credit , who did not find a job in two years would be subject to sanctions? That is that they risk losing a large part (if not all) of their income?
This story has been demolished by Disabled People Against Cuts. (1)
Is their mealy-mouthed justification for running the tale acceptable?
They continue to publish wild stories.
That the Daily Mail has attacked the site with its own falsehoods does not give the author a free-pass when it comes to truth and accuracy.
The writer of 1984 did not live in the age of click-bait. Nor of self-publishing on an industrial scale. But some things have not changed. It would not be to misuse Orwell to cite this, “the controversy over freedom of speech and of the Press is at bottom the desirability, or otherwise, of telling lies. What is really at issue is the right to report contemporary events truthfully. Or as truthfully as is consistent with the ignorance, bias and self-deception from which every observer necessarily suffers.” (The Prevention of Literature. 1947)
***
(1) The 2 year job rule for disabled people on Universal Credit is not true!
Disabled People Against Cuts.
Thank you to Gail Ward who put this together.
In the last few days it has been widely reported by various bloggers that those disabled claimants claiming Universal Credit are subjected to finding a job within two years or face a 1 year sanction. This is utter fabrication and feeding many claimants fears which could potentially cause harm. So today I called Welfare Rights ,who called DWP while I remained on the phone, they denied that this information was correct and was downright alarmist and dangerous. That doesn’t mean I trust DWP and have submitted a FOI too given 7 years of shenanigans. So you see folks, you can take the fear project and destroy it with Facts!
All Orwell references in Essays. George Orwell. Everyman’s Library. 2002.
Red Star to Doug.
Every week your letters page is clogged up with tedious, long-winded guff by Steve Freeman and Gerry Downing.
Can we please have a moratorium on this until I’m dead. My son will contact you when the inevitable happens. If I have to read any more of their crap, that day will be a lot sooner. Please!
Doug Lowe
Weekly Worker. Issue 1164. 20th of July.
Doug is an old comrade.
The Respectable Revolutionaries: Leamington Anti-Racist AntiFascist Committee 1977-1981. Doug Lowe.
My own criticism is that he could have added that we have all had enough of Monster Raving Greenstein as well.
France’s charismatic far-left leader Melenchon embroiled in EU fraud scandal. France 24.
An investigation into alleged misuse of European parliamentary funds by members of a number of French political parties has been extended to include far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, a judicial source said on Tuesday.
The preliminary investigation – already targeting members of France‘s centrist MoDem party, conservative party The Republicans and the Socialist Party – was opened after a member of Marine Le Pen‘s far-right National Front asked the Paris prosecutor to look into the issue.
Le Pen is herself under formal investigation for breach of trust in a separate case on the same subject.
According to Le Parisien daily newspaper, three people who were Melenchon‘s parliamentary aides while he was a member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2017, are to be investigated.
Being a target of a preliminary investigation or a formal investigation in France does not necessarily lead to a trial.
Melenchon, now a member of the French parliament, leader of the France Unbowed party and a vocal opponent of the government of centrist Emmanuel Macron, denied any misconduct in a weekly briefing on Tuesday afternoon.
In a Blog post titled Jupiter déraille Jean-Luc Mélenchon offers his own take on the important questions of the day.
He begins with an extended reflection on the role of the French armed forces, and bemoans the loss of national control over the Force de frappe and the provision of military equipment. Pontificating on Macron’s cuts in funding for these ends, on Trump’s Paris visit (against which, perhaps I am wrong, La France insoumise mounted no public protest) and the reception of the r Netanyahu, the Israeli far-right PM, the Man of Destiny wonders if budget cuts are in line with the strategic objectives of France. Not to mention the land’s national independence, threatened, it appears by an “improbable plan de rapprochement militaire avec l’Allemagne”. he speculates that Trump and Macron share the same goals, “Trump et Macron partagent la même vision à propos des alliances et des guerres en Europe.”
Mélenchon’s real beef is that Macron accepted French responsibility for the round-up of French Jews at the Vel’ d’Hiv’. “dire que la France, en tant que peuple, en tant que nation est responsable de ce crime c’est admettre une définition essentialiste de notre pays totalement inacceptable.” To say it was France, as a people, as a Nation, was responsible for the crime, is completely unacceptable.
No it was not France, but Vichy.
“Non, non, Vichy ce n’est pas la France !”
For those who are surprised this is the standard Gaullist argument.
Wrong or Right.
What is perhaps more objectionable is the effort to outdo Charles Péguy in lyrical eulogy and a wrathful defence of France.
We should all remember the words of the leader of La France insoumise.
“…qu’on accepte d’en parler avec le souci de l’amour que nous devons à notre pays avant tout autre.”
That one should speak of such things with the concern and with the love that we owe to our country above all others.
Past Lies by Skwawkbox; Now they spread Fear amongst Disabled.
The latest scaremongering by Skwawkbox has caused great distress.
They put about the rumour that disabled people will be subject to this,
“DISABLED CLAIMANTS TOLD: 2 YRS TO GET JOB OR BE SANCTIONED FOR A YEAR.” 17th of July.
The government is pressing ahead with the roll-out of its Universal Credit (UC) replacement to the benefits system in spite of huge delays and problems – and continuing problems so ingrained that foodbank use has increased sharply in every area where is has been implemented.
UC contains a draconian set of provisions, including a ‘Claimant Commitment’ (CC) – a set of imposed requirements to which the claimant has no right of appeal whatever. As the government’s guidance on CCs states:
There is no right of appeal if a claimant refuses to accept their Claimant Commitment and the requirements that have been set out in it.
A JCP adviser – who might be incompetent, inexperienced, bitter, have a personality clash with the claimant or just simply be having a bad day – is the final arbiter of whether a CC is reasonable and achievable, and even a patently bad decision cannot be appealed for a higher opinion.
The key bit is this:
A fixed time to find a job – or a one-year sanction? A sanction is the immediate and complete removal of support. Anyone who has seen Ken Loach’s superb I, Daniel Blake knows how devastating this is and what the consequences can be.
And the most hideous aspect of this hideous system is that it applies to disabled people. Two years to find work or you’re cut off from support.
It’s hard to imagine that this could be true, that anyone could be so lacking in humanity as to devise such a system, let alone enforce it. But it is true. A DWP insider told the SKWAWKBOX:
They are now furiously backtracking: IMPORTANT: WRAG/SANCTION – DON’T PANIC YET.
Earlier today the SKWAWKBOX published an article about the application of the Universal Credit (UC) ‘claimant commitment’ to disabled people. That article was based on information from a recent DWP employee and the details were confirmed before publication by a current DWP employee of 15 years experience. It indicated that disabled people not placed in the ‘Support Group’ by the DWP’s contracted medical assessors would have two years to find work and would then face sanction.
However, others have challenged whether the claimant commitment would be applied in this way, so the SKWAWKBOX has checked with other DWP veterans.
And has received mixed answers.
So the real situation may not be as bad as sources originally indicated – but it’s so unclear that the only thing everyone agreed on is that the rules are opaque and confusing.
So don’t panic yet. We’ll bring you a definitive answer as soon as one can be obtained.
There seems to be pattern about Skwawkbox’s behaviour.
We await the latter ready and willing to do battle with those who have caused distress to people we know and love.
More see Bob Pitt: Skwawkbox — an embarrassment to the Left.
The reality, however, is that Skwawkbox functions as a sort of left-wing mirror image of the right-wing tabloid press, or of alt-right sites like Breitbart News. It employs the same unscrupulous, sensationalist journalistic methods, but for opposite political ends. Skwawkbox appears incapable of grasping that socialist aims cannot be achieved by such anti-socialist means.
And Phil: The Alt-Left: A Critical Appreciation.
In his critique of Skwawkbox, Bob Pitt argues that blog proprietor Steve, and by extension the rest of the alt-left stable, blur the line between political analysis and conspiracy theorising – and establishes this via a forensic analysis of Steve’s piece on Grenfell and his argument the media were subject to a D Notice. As such, he suggests they have a cavalier attitude to the truth similar to the fake news we find peddled by Breitbart and co, except from the diametrically opposed perspective. Because these pieces can then easily be picked apart by fact-checking, Bob believes they flout journalistic ethics and embarrass the left as a whole.
Southall Black Sisters: One of the Most Respected Campaign Groups in Britain.
Pink News: Ex-Muslim group hit back after Pride ‘Allah is gay’ sign row: ‘They are trying to silence us’
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Great Britain (CEMB) has hit back after the controversy concerning their placards at the Pride in London paradeearlier this month.
Members of the secularist group held signs reading “Allah is gay” and “F**k Islamic Homophobia”, prompting an official complaint from the East London Mosque claiming that the group “was inciting hatred against Muslims”.
Prior to the march, the CEMB rejected claims of Islamophobia, their co-founder Maryam Namazie saying: “We need to stand up to racism and bigotry and at the same time we should be able to criticise religion and the religious right… people should be allowed to criticise without threat or intimidation.”
Following last week’s complaint from the East London Mosque, Namazie took issue with the suggestion that the signs and protest were in any way “anti-Muslim” – the group also published a full press release outlining its response in full.
“Why are signs critical of Islam (a belief) and Islamism (a far-right political movement) ‘anti-Muslim’?” she told Pink News.
“Muslims are people, with as many different opinions as anyone else. They are not a homogeneous group but individuals.
“Some will agree with us, others won’t. In fact, several Muslims visiting from Bangladesh joined us.
“The incredible support we received from minorities in the crowd cheering us on is a reflection of that. Not everyone was offended. And offence can never be a reason to censor and silence dissent.”
She added that ex-Muslims, including LGBT ex-Muslims, should have the right to speak beyond the confines of Islam and away from the control of “regressive” so-called leaders, including the East London Mosque.
“The East London mosque’s accusation that we are inciting hatred against Muslims for criticising their incitement to violence against apostates and LGBT would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic and if so many didn’t buy into it,” she said.
“The East London mosque has a history of inciting hate and violence against apostates and LGBT. It has clear links to the Islamist movement which executes apostates and gay men.
“Moreover, it has no ‘track record for challenging homophobia’. If so, where is its support for Muslim and ex-Muslim LGBT or LGBT persecuted outside of Britain in countries under Sharia?”
Namazie argued that the Mosque has refused dialogue with the LGBT community.
She noted that Peter Tatchell claimed to have asked to meet with the Mosque 11 times since 2015 but been knocked back each time.
Read more here.
It’s not often these days when we agree with ‘arry’s Place.
But on this one they are more than right to point out that if the kind of racist, violent misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-humanist views expressed at the East London Mosque were broadcast by anybody else, notably Christian fundamentalists, they’d be the target of a massive left-wing campaign.
The East London Mosque – Surrealist Politics
Here’s Maajid Nawaz’s take on the CEMB protest:
Maajid accepts that “these posters are provocative” but argues that this “is not Islamaphobia.”
He said “I wouldn’t want to hold up those banners, you may not want to hold up those banners, but it’s their right to hold up those banners. It’s like complaining about The Book of Mormon or The Life of Brian.”
The LBC host said that the East London Mosque were using the Islamaphobia as a “shield to prevent people from critiquing the religion of Islam itself.”
He went on to say the only signs that could be considered Islamophobic were those that encourgaed hatred and violence towards Islamic people and none of the signs reached that criteria. He said that a poster saying “‘Allah is gay’ that isn’t telling anyone to go and target a Muslim.”
Yes, that’s pretty much where I stand.
The East London Mosque’s record is far, far more “provocative”. And we’re helping to pay for it all – the mosque has raked in public sector grants totalling £3.2 mn over the last decade. This includes grants for “community cohesion” (£325,000 in total). No, really.
The mosque’s surreal “track record” stance will be backed by the malignant and the deluded, of course. They are sadly numerous in East London.
For those with eyes to see, though, yet more scales should fall now.
PERRY ANDERSON AND THE FRENCH LEFT AFTER MACRON.
Part Two of a response to The Centre Can Hold.
In Part One of this critique we suggested that Perry Anderson’s analysis of the result of the French elections barely proceeded further than the affirmation that the “centre left” was a lieutenant of capital, that he lacked any notion of the specificity of different French government ‘neoliberal’, pro-capitalist politics, that his account of Macron’s victory was barely more than a tale of how the electorate was hoodwinked by the media and the establishment.
We noted that Anderson’s analysis of the role of France as a ‘hinge’ in the European Union, which he permits himself some meagre speculation on the potential effects of Macron’s Presidency on the EU. If as he claims these changes will be largely ‘cosmetic’, though one would not imagine that measures resulting from France pressure, to ensure debt relief for Southern Europe would not look like face paint to those affected, what is then the role of oppositions? Our conclusion, which dwelt on the radical utopian alternative of Dardot and Laval, suggested the ambitious scope of radical alternatives to the existing EU.
Anderson’s assumptions about the EU underpin much of The Centre Can Hold. One can note that the theme, clearly stated in 2012 against his critics, that Brussels, led by Germany, “corralled” EU members into fiscal “stability. One of his critics, Jan-Werner Müller, offered at that time an account of the “conscious delegation” of powers that constitute the inter-state body. It may be, Müller indicates, that Germany could, if the will were there, shift towards a more open system of EU decision-making. (1) This premise suggests that rather less than a total rejection of the existing institutions – reform – might be possible. That Europe is indeed a changing body is further indicated in the fate of Anderson’s speculation about the Union as “deputy Empire” of the US. Here does this stand now? No doubt the reign of Emperor Trump, who promoted Brexit, requires a further analysis.
The Jargon of Resistance.
But when it comes to looking at French elections perhaps this is not the point. New Left Review, we have to remind ourselves, has turned into the Organ of Resistance. In an Editorial in 2016 we were treated to a lengthy treatise on Left Oppositions (I will not refer to the article on Poetic Resistance in the same issue). Susan Watkins indicated that “in the last few years” “left oppositions started to produced national political projects with an impact at state level”. This covered Greece’s Syriza, Italy’s Five Star Movement (…), Podemos, Jeremy Corbyn, and apparently, Scottish independence campaigners.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s 4 million Presidential votes in 2012, as the candidate of the Front de gauche (FdG), a bloc of his own group, the French Communists and leftists involved in groups such as Ensemble, figured on this list. He features equally amongst the “charismatic leaders” with his old style “oratory”. A paragraph, informed by sources which can guess not unfavourable to the leader of what was then the Parti de Gauche (PdG) complained of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF). It was “mummified”, a “ball and chain”, and, over egging this already egg splattered account, amongst the faults of the PCF, “In the National Assembly it regularly supports the Socialist government against the positions of the Parti de Gauche.” Writing in this vein the Mélenchonistas were given star rating, along with the thousands attending Nuit Debout rallies – over the, unmentioned, trade union led millions-strong campaign against the El Khomri labour reforms.
With the NLR condescension Mélenchon was judged “in part” social democratic, but with more ‘heterodox elements” “including sweeping constitutional change – not a social-democratic trait”. Those familiar with the Journal’s views on such issues, will realise that the importance they attach to the calls for a 6th Republic, although the Editor fails to mention that the same banner has been raised by a number of the left inside the Parti Socialiste (2014: Appel de socialistes pour une sixième République).
La France insoumise.
Shift forward a year, the formation of La France insoumise (LFI), the effective end of the Front de Gauche, and the 2017 Presidential elections. Against the ‘pale figure” of Benoît Hamon. We have the Grand Orator Mélenchon standing with the backing of hundreds of thousands of on-line supporters and – on the ground – “groupes d’appui”, organised supporters.
“..the change was more than just organisational. Fascinated for some time by the success of heterodox governments in Latin America, he drew particular inspiration from the example of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, like him a former minister of a social-democratic party, who had pioneered the idea of a ‘citizen’s revolution’, rewriting the constitution, redistributing wealth and protecting the environment. This was the way forward, to abandon the exhausted schemas of the traditional European left for a radically progressive populism, summoning the people to battle against the elites in control of a bankrupt political and economic system. Impressed with the strategic insight of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, encountered in Argentina in 2013, Mélenchon set about applying their lessons at home.”
We pause for a moment to consider this.
A Movement not a Party.
La France insoumise is a “movement”, not a party. Mélenchon declares, “Il peut disposer des moyens d’être représentatif de cet ensemble globalisant qu’est le peuple en réseau de notre époque” That is, it can be a network that represents the people ‘globally’ in our era. Is it democratic? “Le mouvement n’a pas à être « démocratique » au sens basiste que souvent on donne à ce mot dans les organisations politiques où l’on doit alors affronter le climat de confrontation des courants et des textes qui les fondent avec les votes contradictories.” The movement is not ‘democratic’ in the the grassroots sense of the word in political parties, where different tendencies and resolutions are presented confrontationally, or with oppositional voting.” The movement is as “collective” as possible (“c’est d’être aussi collectif que possible”) In other words, there is no formal debate over competing views, or, more significantly, any means to do so – LFI operates internally through cyber-space with the direction set by….the leadership. For his supporters Mélenchon is the “embodiment” of the programme; there is no need for opposition to him. Inside La France insoumise there are, as yet, not plans for a place for a democratic opposition or channels for one to exist. It is run, as report after report indicates, by a core of close Mélenchon advisers from the PdG.. (2)
A further pause, La France insoumise its admirers claim, is not a tactic, a political ‘start-up’ adapted to the new era of personalised politics. But what is it? The organisation is more that symbolically linked to other models – we shall discard the reference to Ecuador (which few will have heard of and which counts for even less than erstwhile evocations of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela), but to Podemos. LFI is not, nevertheless, the product of a French Moviemento 15 Mars, no mass street protests preceded its launch, and only the figure of the producer of Merci Patron François Ruffin stands in for the brief flash of the Nuit Debout square occupations.
La France insoumise was first and foremost the vehicle for Mélenchon’s Presidential ambitions. It was a temporary body, It is secondly an ambitious claim to ‘federate the people’ into something resembling the ‘left populism’ of Laclau and Mouffe. Although one should be wary of politicians claiming intellectual authority from fashionable figures (Hamon has also claimed to be influenced by Mouffe: Benoît Hamon, Inspirations au programme), there is more than a little of a demand for “equality and popular sovereignty” in LFI’s version of ‘agonistic’ (conflictual) democracy to feel an imprint. In place of class conflict in the sense of a contradiction rooted in a mode of production, classic social classes, we have the opposition between the People (demanding equality and sovereignty) and the Elite/Oligarchy. We have an even more rudimentary opposition between Friend and Foe (Carl Schmitt), beneath this. Political reform, “sweeping constitutional change”, a ‘citizens’ insurrection’ through the ballot box, are designed to clean the institutions of the corruption of the oligarchs and to bring alive the general will inside a new Republic, one that can (and this is repeated) ensure French independence (3)
Le Grand Replacement ..of the Left.
It is finally, a movement whose central strategy is to replace the existing left, not to unite it, not to bring together it for common objectives, but to call for traditional left-wing parties to …sod off (dégagez!) For those wishing to pursue this analysis from the numerous criticisms levelled at Mélenchon and LFI, they will find many more critical accounts, so abundant that one might have thought a reference or two might have crossed Anderson’s mind….(4)
LFI’s patriotism, and rejection of any reference to class in favour of the conflict between the People and the Oligarchy, can hardly escape the casual observer.
“La France insoumise banned red flags and the Internationale for the tricolour and Marseillaise at its meetings, appealing to all patriots regardless of class or age to rise up against the decaying order of the Fifth. Borrowing the cry that drove out Ben Ali in Tunisia, Dégagez!—‘Clear out!’—became the leitmotif of the campaign.”
It takes a strong stomach to digest this, one no doubt fortified by memories of 1950s PCF tricolours and references to national liberation heroine Jean d’arc. Is there more criticism, at least more than implicit, from Anderson? Perhaps this sentence could still be expanded… “In reality, the two anti-systemic forces, rather than aggregating to a common populist insurgency, largely cancel each other out. However similar their critiques of the social and economic system, insuperable moral and ideological differences on immigration hold them apart at opposite ends of the political spectrum, where each freely demonizes the other.” Immigration, FN as a ‘scarecrow’ used to rally people behind the Macron and the Republic……..and there it ends…
Or not. Anderson is soon bored by French Politics and drifts back to geopolitical, European, issues. He notes that, “the balance of forces in a neoliberal but not yet neo-federal system of power militates against dramatic changes”. The final paragraph of The Centre Can Hold talks of the single currency, the Euro, and the possibility of a French exit from it. Recasting monetary union, is, Anderson pats Mélenchon on the back, a “geopolitical” issue, not a technical one. Of that, all we hear that can be brought down to immediate relevance is the question: can there be an effective means to compel Germany to help a reform of the EU?
The future of La France insoumise, as it announces a Convention in the autumn, remains to be analysed. Will it become a real party? Where will it go? Many suggest that Melenchon has still not come to terms with the idea that he will not be President. In the National Assembly, having made a splash, there are strong independent figures in the group of 17 who may have their own ideas about the direction it should take. One thing is certain, neither the PCF (10) the PS (45 seats), nor the rest of the left, including Hamon’s own new movement, the mouvement du 1er Juillet nor the extra-parliamentary left, nor the union federations, look ready to be “replaced” by Mélenchon. The failure of LFI’s stunt this week, holding on its own, without trade union backing, rallies against Macron’s new labour reforms, indicates the limits of how far its “recuperation” of social movements can go. (5)
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(1) After the Event Perry Anderson. Beyond Militant Democracy. Werner Müller. New Left Review. No 73. 2012.
(2) Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Le peuple et le ‘ mouvement ‘ November 2016
(3) The Democratic Paradox. Chantal Mouffe. Verso. 2005. A much more detailed critique of Laclau and Mouffe’s influence on ‘left-populist’ politics is in preparation. The motif of French independence, militarily, economically, and related themes, such as “producing French”, stand out in the pages of La France insoumise’s programme, L’Avenir en commun. 2017.
(4) See: La France insoumise – « L’ère du peuple » et « l’adieu au prolétariat » ? jeudi 3 novembre 2016, par JOHSUA Samuel, MELENCHON Jean-Luc Rousset provides the best summary. Mélenchon, France insoumise, populisme : questions sur la séquence électorale 2016-2017 et ses implications ROUSSET Pierre.
(5) La France insoumise se met en chantier – Vers une convention fin octobre ? BESSE DESMOULIERES Raphaëlle
Review: The Road to Somewhere. The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. David Goodhart. Hurst & Company. 2017.
A golden opportunity for commentators like the Brexit vote does not often come. For some on the left, the EU ‘neoliberal elites’ were given a welcome shock. Dismissing the role that organised fear of migrant workers played during the vote the ‘People’s Assembly’ sagely observes that racism played a part “in both sides” of the referendum campaign. In New Left Review, which has begun to dabble in British politics, Tom Hazeldine, declares that while the “rhetoric of Leave was anti-immigrant; the anger that powered it to victory came from decline.” (North and South. NLR 105. 2017) An unlikely mouthpiece, the Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, is recruited to express the view that it was a “vote against London”, “them down there”.
In words which could not doubt be taken from the Morning Star, Trade Unionists Against the EU, Spiked on Line, or the Socialist, and other anti “Brussels” outlets, we learn from Hazeldine that the “golden triangle of Whitehall, Westminster, St James” and the media “megaphones of the Remain Establishment”, were not strong enough to silence the voice of the authentic ‘rustbelt’ Northern proletariat, albeit – sotto voce – allied with “affluent Tory pensioners in the Tory shires.”
David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere shares many of the themes of these illustrious organs. It is billed as an essay on the faults of “metropolitan elites” and reflections on the reaction to them, the “populist revolt”, “a “socio cultural and identity phenomenon”. But the meat is in the emotions, above all the recoil from the EU. Preferring Charles Leadbeater to the Lexiters, he cites the fellow commentator, suggesting that the Brexit majority was also support “for pride, belonging, community, identity, and a sense of ‘home’ – it was rejection of the market…”(Page 53)
No doubt this is how some people think, though how many embrace the full list of opinions stuck together is hard to gauge. Goodhart makes a telling point against those who consider that a nationalist-led break up of “Ukania” (one-time New Leftist, Tom Nairn’s unfunny name for the United Kingdom, a joke so hoary I will confine it to a footnote) might escape this outpouring of glutinous sentiment, “Brexit was a movement to reclaim control/sovereignty from a supranational EU and the SNP is a movement to reclaim control/sovereignty from a multinational United Kingdom (though happy to cede sovereignty to and even more remote Brussels).”(Page 53) (1)
Somewheres and Anywheres.
The framework of The Road to Somewhere is set down by Goodhart’s distinction between “Anywheres” and “Somewheres”. The former, London urban based, university educated, have “ a worldview for more or less successful individuals who also care about society”. They value autonomy and mobility and little interest in “group identity, tradition and national social contracts (faith, flag and family)”. Set in contrast to such enthusiasts for “restless change” are those who are “more socially conservative and communitarian by instinct” who are not ease with contemporary cultural and economic transformations – ‘globalisation’ “mass immigration, an achievement society in which they struggle to achieve, the reduced status of non-graduate employment and more fluid gender roles.” For some this is a pronounced geographical identity that Hazeldine claims. For others they have something in common with the constituency called in France, the ” périurbain”, at the edges of cities, and the countryside, poorly served by public services and often, ‘disconnected’ rather than rooted, linked populist voting, and the Front National. Then there is the ‘left behind‘ feeling of many UKIP supporters, amply documented (Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain. Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin. 2014) This suggests a much more fragmented set of reasons and potential electoral reservoirs for ‘revolts’ against the ‘system’, often less identity affirmation than resentment against others.
Put simply, this capitalised distinction enables Goodhart to draw lines between the core constituencies for Remain, and those who backed Leave. That is between those who are willing to “dilute the claims of national citizenship” in a “borderless Europe and the language of universal rights”, “and those who pushed by “Anywhere overreach” are both unwilling to “relinquish most national control over economic life” and wish for, “greater respect for national citizen protections”.
While Goodhart claims that the referendum debate largely pushed these concerns away from public debate, which was between two versions of ‘Anywheres’, a claim he does not pursue in detail, the Somewheres largely plumped for Leave. He, as an “apostate Anywhere” who claims to have supported Remain, can still find the better sides of the Somewheres. Some may be xenophobic and authoritarian, but there may also be support for – oddly not unlike his own favoured policies, “localism” in a globalised world, the importance of community and duties. There is need for dialogue with a “decent populism” that respects others and strives for social solidarity. Progressives, above all Labour, wedded to metropolitan Anywhere elite ideas, needs to go out to the left-behind Somewheres; hooking up again with issues of economic justice to form national social contracts.
Too Diverse.
Without any surprise the author of Too diverse? (2004) which warned of that mass immigration erodes “feelings of mutual obligation, reducing willingness to pay tax and even encourag(es) a retreat from the public domain.”does not try, as leftists do, to duck this issue. The founder of Prospect sees the Referendum result as the occasion to underline “concern about ethnic diversity”, and, EU sanctioned, “mass immigration”, which is “in-your-face-globalisation”. This is central area for a new social contract. The time has come, Goodhart asserts, to recognise the fears of “decent populists”, “to return to lower levels of immigration, place more emphasis on stability, and also renew the national social contract, especially in post-school education and employment.”(Page 233) He goes somewhat further in suggesting a diluted form of Marine Le Pen’s ‘national preference’, “In the future, temporary citizens should have more limited social and political rights – corresponding to their own transactional relationship with the country – and should leave after a few years.”(Page 126)
These ideas are straightforward proposals for re-creating the old German Gastarbeiter system. “Temporary citizens” will not only have fewer rights abut will also be easy to use to undermine the very pay and conditions that ‘left’ critics of EU migration already complain about.
The Sovereigntist Impasse.
The Road to Somewhere is riddled with unresolved difficulties. How limited with these grudging rights be? And how does Goodhart propose that this will deal with the ethnic segregation and ‘parallel lives’ of existing, often third or fourth generations from previous migrations? It is wrong to dismiss the idea that to at least set out common ground in “ethnically heterogeneous societies” might lie in the appeal to universal rights that have the great merit of transcending religious and national difference?
The new social contracts are another exercise in rhetoric. Does Goodhart seriously believe that national ‘sovereign’ control over the economy is going to be created by Parliamentary fiat? That the “will of the people”, the General Will, is going to come alive, take flesh, and reside in Westminster? That, in short, that the Labour Party should embrace the ‘sovereigntism’ of the nationalist left in some European countries? In other words is “listening” and giving space to the Somewheres just a pretty cheap means to justify supporting such a turn?
A more grounded, left, not ‘liberal’ approach would not take as given the idea that globalisation is a political decision of elites. It is equally, if not more fundamentally, a financial and economic process that would take global measures, beginning from the decisions of the pooled sovereignty of bodies like the European Union, to transform? That it up to the organisations of civil society, starting with the trade unions, to agitate and to bring social justice in the workplace, challenge wage and condition undercutting, and to work for a Labour government that makes these goals part of law, and, as would be the case were we part of the EU, building blocks of a social Europe, Another Europe….
One wonders how the game of reading the runes of Brexit will end. There are those now stating that Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France is the result of a (voting) majority in favour of the market and neoliberalism. Others, keen to read so much oppositional potential into the British Referendum result seem suddenly to have discovered the merits of explaining election victories by Establishment hoodwinking Goodhart, no doubt, has his explanation-kit ready to hand: Anywheres won…..
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(1) “Nairn uses the term ‘Ukania’ to suggest the irrational and Ruritanian nature of the British constitutional monarchy. His original source for the term is the nickname “Kakania” that Robert Musil uses for the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in The Man Without Qualities. ” The term Kakania was coined by Musil using the stem Kak – shit, cack. How we laughed!
Muslim leaders make formal complaint over ‘Islamophobic’ banners at London Pride.
This story follows attempts to smear and slander the Council of Ex-Muslims, including from the anti-secularist Counterfire which suggests, that, ” “These placards are something the EDL or a Nazi would carry. “
Counterfire a leftist groupuscule with influence over the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) and what remains of the People’s assembly, has form for this kind of attack. They notoriously responded to the killings of our comrades at Charlie Hebdo, by saying that “what happened at Charlie Hebdo was not an assault on some generalised notion of press freedom but an attack on a specific news outlet that has regularly and proudly featured offensive images of Muslims. “
The latest offensive follows a preliminary expression of outrage by other forces hostile to the Ex-Muslims as the group outlines here.
Muslim leaders have lodged a formal complaint with the organisers of London’s Pride festival after placards allegedly bearing Islamophobic messages were spotted at the event.
A secularist group of former Muslims were seen carrying a series of controversial signs during the march through the capital last weekend.
Banners bearing slogans such as “Allah is gay”, “F*** Islamic homophobia” and “East London Mosque incites murder of LGBTs” were carried at the event by members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), who were a participating group listed on Pride’s website.
But leaders from the Muslim community wrote to the event’s organisers to raise concerns the messages incited hatred.
East London Mosque spokesman Salman Farsi told the Standard: “We’ve raised a complaint with the co-chairs of the event that the group was inciting hatred against Muslims, and in particular [in relation] to our good name, based on absolutely groundless reasons.
“Our track record for challenging homophobia in East London is quite well known,” he added, citing campaigns to condemn “gay-hate” stickers that sprung up around Tower Hamlets several years ago and the mosque’s public condemnations of attacks on LGBT people.
“For us to see such a mainstream event that is supposed to celebrate tolerance and love used as a hate platform was really quite shocking.
“One of the signs said ‘Islamophobia is an oxymoron’.
“Our religion doesn’t promote hatred or homophobia. Yes, there might be theological topics dealing with homosexuality in Islam, but that’s clearly very separate from promoting hatred and homophobia,” said Mr Farsi.
More here.
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain has just issued this reply which, as this is a serious attack on the right to criticise religious hate-mongering, we reproduce in full. The links at the bottom are particularly important to back up their defence. They have been helped by comrades Ansar Ahmed Ullah, Gita Sahgal and Daniel Fitzgerald people I and many of us would trust without question.
East London mosque has filed a formal complaint regarding the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain’s presence in Pride in London and stated that our placards, including “East London mosque incites murder of LGBT” were “inciting hatred against Muslims” and that the mosque had a “track record for challenging homophobia in East London”.
In fact, though, the very reason CEMB was at Pride was to combat hate and to highlight the 13 states under Islamic rule that kill gay men (14 if we include Daesh-held territories). We included placards on the East London mosque to bring attention to the fact that there are mosques here in Britain that promote the death penalty for homosexuality and apostasy.
As ex-Muslims, we are at risk from hate preachers that speak at some mosques and universities; our gay members are at an increased risk.
The East London Mosque has a long history of hosting hate preachers who incite against blasphemers, apostates and homosexuals so we felt naming and shaming them was very apt.
In our experience, whenever incitement to hate and violence has been exposed, it is explained away as mere “theology”. Here, too, the East London Mosque spokespersonsays: “Yes, there might be theological topics dealing with homosexuality in Islam, but that’s clearly very separate from promoting hatred and homophobia”.
We beg to differ.
Given the context of executions for homosexuality and apostasy in many countries and the threats, violence and shunning that ex-Muslims, including LGBT, face here in Britain, the hate preaching can be considered incitement to murder though it is ignored because it is done under the cover of the “right to religion”.
Moreover, the East London mosque is merely using double-speak. Their supposed “track record for challenging homophobia” only seems to extend to white gay men in East London and never to Muslim and ex-Muslim LGBT or LGBT persecuted outside of Britain in countries under Sharia.
This is because the mosque is part and parcel of the Islamist movement. The East London Mosque (and its affiliate, the London Muslim Centre) share the ideology of theJamaat-e-Islami – the Salafis of South Asia so their promotion of an Islamist worldview that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality, apostasy and blasphemy is business as usual.
Why are we inciting hatred by exposing their incitement to murder?
And why is criticism of Islam off-limits?
Self-appointed “Muslim leaders” say our placards were “Islamophobic”. But in our point of view, Islam, like all religions, is homophobic. Why is it not possible to say this without accusations of Islamophobia?
The only reasons our signs are seen to be “provocative” are because criticism of Islam is deemed to be impermissible, because there is the constant threat of violence by Islamists against ex-Muslims but also dissenting Muslims and others in order to silence and censor and because criticism of Islam and Islamism is erroneously conflated with an attack on Muslims.
Pride is full of placards saying “God is Gay”, “Jesus had two fathers”, as well as those mocking the church and priests and pope, yet CEMB members hold signs saying “Allah is Gay” – as we did – and the police converge to attempt to remove them for causing “offence”.
Offence has become the catch-phrase to impose de facto blasphemy and apostasy laws here in Britain. Yet aren’t we all offended at least some of the time? Some of us are offended by religion but we don’t ask believers to stay away from Pride or stop praying because of it. Why is it that what offends us is irrelevant? Because we do not back our offence with threats and violence?
The politics of offence is a politics that rewards bullies and blames victims.
Critics say our presence in Pride is a provocation in the weeks following the attack at Finsbury Park. But why must our criticism be linked to an attack on a mosque? Did anyone tell those holding “Jesus has two fathers” signs that it was a provocation given that a priest was murdered in Normandy and Christians killed in Egypt? There is no connection, except of course it seems when it comes to Islam.
Believers are not told to stop any expression of their beliefs because of an attack on children at a concert in Manchester but our placards apparently have some link with an attack on Muslims and a mosque. Why?
This is the Islamist narrative that equates criticism with an attack on Muslims. Its aim is not to stop bigotry but to silence dissent.
After all, bigotry affects us too. We were Muslims once; our loved ones are Muslims. And fascists and bigots cannot tell any of us apart anyway. We all look the same to them.
But as a minority within a minority facing serious threats to our lives, shunning, ostracisation, discrimination (and that’s only in Britain), is it fair to ask us to remain silent because of other forms of persecution or bigotry? Why can we not confront racism AND homophobia, bigotry AND hatred against apostates, women, blasphemers… To do that, we have to be able to criticise the far-Right (including our far-Right – the Islamists) and religion and regressive beliefs.
We ex-Muslims, including LGBT ex-Muslims, are fighting for our lives. We too have the right to live, think and love as we choose. And to fight for that right, we have to be able to confront apostasy and blasphemy laws as well laws that criminalise and execute apostates, LGBT, and freethinkers.
We owe it ourselves but we also owe it to those living under Islamic rules who are in prison, on death row or being murdered by vigilantes for doing just that.
The right to religion is a basic human right that must be defended but what is often forgotten is that there is a corresponding right to be free from and to criticise religion. As long as we can be killed for being ex-Muslims, LGBT, apostates and blasphemers, we have a duty to speak up – especially for those who cannot.
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As an aside, the Pride spokesperson has said that the East London mosque’s complaint has been referred to the community advisory board to assess whether CEMB can join Pride next year and added: “While our parade has always been a home to protest, which often means conflicting points of view, Pride must always be a movement of acceptance, diversity and unity. We will not tolerate Islamophobia.”
This is significant.
A note to Pride: There were for sure some Muslims who were offended by our presence and others who supported us, as there were some Christians who were offended by placards poking fun at Christianity and others who found them funny. This is what real diversity looks like. For too long, self-appointed Islamists feigning to represent the “Muslim community” have stifled dissent via threats and accusations of offence and Islamophobia. CEMB has fought for ten years now to bring real diversity into the debate, which is a matter of life and death for many of us.
Criticism of Islam or Islamism is not anti-Muslim bigotry just as criticism of Christianity or the DUP is not anti-Christian bigotry. CEMB plans to be at Pride next year and every year and hopes the community advisory boards sides with dissenters and those fighting for LGBT right and not those inciting hatred against Muslim and ex-Muslim LGBT.
For those on the community advisory board who are interested in finding out more about the East London Mosque beyond the double-speak, there is a wealth of information on their links to Islamism and their incitement to violence and hate:
In this piece: Almost immediately after Jamaat’s arrival in government, attacks against religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh began to be reported. A British peer and parliamentary human-rights representative, Eric (Lord) Avebury, said that “Bangladesh is an increasingly dangerous place for women, minority faiths and ethnic groups, opposition parties and secular organisations”. He argued that at the root of these problems lies the “cancer of a maverick branch of Islamism” that aims to “transform the country into a Taliban-style dictatorship”.
The ELM/LMC’s reaction to requests to ban these hatemongers was to “go quiet” for a few months, and then return to hosting the worst of Britain’s extremists. It is pretty clear that promoting hatred is part of the ELM/LMC’s core mission. Ibrahim Hewitt: – a “reformed” white racist, who now works for the Hamas fundraising charity, Interpal. He wrote “What Does Islam Say?”, a pamphlet explaining what he sees as the Islamic approach to several social and political issues. Apostates and proven adulterers get the death penalty. Sexually active gays must face “severe punishments” for their “great sin”, possibly including death.
Open letter posted online by 12 LBGT campaigners, including writers Julie Bindel and Paul Burston, which lists a series of events hosted by the East London Mosque allegedly attended by anti-gay Muslim clerics. These included Abdullah Hakim Quick, a supporter of the death penalty on gays and Abdul Hattin who incorporated a ‘Spot the Fag’ contest into his sermon in 2007.
Andrew Gilligan in The Telegraph: The East London Mosque’s response to accusations of extremism has three stages. First there are the injured protestations of its deep commitment to community cohesion, democracy, etc, often accompanied by straightforward lying…Then there are silly legal threats from its libel lawyers, again often based on lies: tedious, but perfectly easy to see off if you know what you’re doing. Finally, if none of that works and their backs are absolutely against the wall, the mosque will crank out one of their statements claiming they’ve banned hate preachers. The supply of bad guys will dry up for a month or two, then as soon as the coast is clear they’ll start creeping back again. Let’s hope it’s different this time. But you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for being a little sceptical about the East London Mosque’s “good faith.”
The charity Oxfam cancelled an event at the East London Mosque after it learned the headline speaker had declared gay people should be “severely punished” under Islamic law.
At the East London Mosque, the Friday sermon was delivered by hate preacher Assim al-Hakeem who teaches that apostates must be killed (“As long as they have been Muslim, once they reject it, their Devine punishment is execution. This takes place on the instruction of the ruler after a panel of judges talk to him and try to convince him. His execution is due to his betrayal to Islam which is like grand treason.”)
In Police ‘covered up’ violent campaign to turn London area ‘Islamic’ it says: Khalid Yasin, a hate preacher who describes Jews as “filth” and teaches that homosexuals must be killed has spoken at least four times since 2007 at the East London Mosque. Although the mosque claims to be against extremism, discrimination, and violence, it has hosted dozens of hate, extremist or terrorist preachers and also hosted a “Spot The Fag” contest. In the same week that it issued a press release condemning the anti-gay stickers, the mosque was also due to host a “gala dinner” with Uthman Lateef, a homophobic hate preacher. The mosque is controlled by a fundamentalist group, the Islamic Forum of Europe, which says that it is dedicated to changing the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed … from ignorance to Islam.”
According to ‘Nationalism, Community & the Islamization of Space in London’, see page 219: “The East London mosque was more closely aligned with Arab states, in the Middle East and Pakistan. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia contributed over 1 million for the building of the new centre and ambassadors of Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the mosque management.
According to ‘Bangladeshi diaspora in the UK: socio-cultural dynamics, religious trends and transnational politics’ See page 5: The East London Mosque – this claims to be the oldest mosque in London going back to the early 1940s. It has maintained close links with the Jamaat i Islami, largely through the Islamic Forum Europe and the Young Muslim Organisation, whose offices are located nearby. The ELM’s leaders and other local activists have been highly successful at building alliances with local government officials through campaigns against drug abuse, family breakdown, anti-social behaviour, school truancy, etc.
Further Links supplied by
The Spirit of ’71: how the Bangladeshi War of Independence has haunted Tower Hamlets.
Jamil Iqbal and Richard Phillips – ‘Taking Stock: Respect, SWP and Islamist politics in Tower Hamlets’
Communities & Local Government – ‘The Bangladeshi Muslim Community in England Understanding Muslim Ethnic Communities’. See pages 42, 61
‘Bangladesh Genocide: what human rights, anti-racist and peace organisations won’t tell you’, at 54 mins Chowdhury Mueenuddin/IFE, at 1.10 mins MCB/Iqbal Sacranie, 1,13 mins Chowdhury Mueenuddin and at 1.20 SWP/Left/Muslim Brotherhood
‘Siding with oppressor: the Pro-Islamist Left, London’, One Law for All, pages 27-29
Jamaat-e-Islam links to East London Mosque & Darul Ummah
DeHanas, Nilsson (2013) ‘Elastic Orthodoxy: the Tactics of Young Muslim Identity in the East End of London’, Farnham, Ashgate, Pages 15, 16
East London Mosque admits Chowdhury Mueenuddin’s involvement
The East London Mosque has confirmed Mueen Uddin was involved with the mosque from 1978 as honorary secretary, and was until recently vice chairman, but has not been a trustee since 2009.
East London Mosque/London Muslim Centre link to Jamaat
Policy Exchange’s ‘Choosing our friends wisely’ (2009), p 36
Channel 4 Dispatches programme investigated fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami headquartered in Britain, and its network in the UK. Using undercover recordings, investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan reveals the group’s ambitions to create a worldwide ‘Islamic social and political order,’ and the concerns of a mainstream party that they are being ‘infiltrated’.
Britain’s jihadi bride groomer: Schoolgirl radicalised in East London mosque recruited her three classmates to join ISIS in Syria
How Jamaat’s UK wing IFE infiltrated Tower Hamlets Council youth service 2016
Facing Jamaat-e-Islami by SADF 2017 See page 16 http://sadf.eu/new/blog/sadf-policy-brief-5-facing-jamaat-e-islami-bangladesh-global-threat-need-global-response/
10 April 2017 Azad Ali, a Jamaati Islamist who has said that he supports killing British soldiers, was named a director of Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), a group which advises the British government. Ali recently said that the jihadist attack at Westminster on March 22, 2017 was not an act of terrorism.
11 April 2017. The Charity Commission, which regulates charities in England and Wales, asked Islamic Relief to explain why it invited a hardline Muslim preacher to star in a fundraising tour of Britain. Yasir Qadhi, a Saudi-educated American academic, has been recorded telling students that killing homosexuals and stoning adulterers was part of Islam. Qadhi, who featured in an eight-city tour, described Islamic punishments such as cutting off the hands of thieves as “very beneficial to society.” The commission also questioned two other charities, Muslim Aid (Jamaat charity founded by Chowdhury Mueenuddin) and Read Foundation, about their sponsorship of a speaking tour by Qadhi in 2015.
Thanks to Ansar Ahmed Ullah, Gita Sahgal and Daniel Fitzgerald for the above information.
Trump: Guest of honour to celebrate Bastille Day.
This is how he arrived (from top Sketch artist/Ace reporter, Plantu).
Robbie Travers has yet to post on his appearance.
Despite this hiccup everyone else that matters has and was there to celebrate Bastille Day.
You can watch the splendid event direct here:
Live: Trump, Macron attend Bastille Day military parade.
A less exalted commentary is available below (L’Humanité).
This appears about the sum of the protests:
Before the day this took place.
Over a Thousand Rally in Paris for La France insoumise against Macron’s labour reforms.
Plus d’un millier de militants ont répondu à l’appel de La France insoumise, pour exprimer leur rejet du projet de réforme du Code du travail. Jean-Luc Mélenchon a défendu une opposition frontale au texte et annoncé le lancement d’une campagne pendant l’été.
More than a thousand activists responded to France insoumise’s call to reject the project of a reform of the Code du travail. Jean-Luc Mélenchon defended frontal opposition to the text and announced the launching of a campaign during the summer.
(Other estimates put the figure at nearly 2,000 attending the major rally in la place de la République.)
Between 300 and 1000 people in Toulouse, 300in Montpellier, 200 in Lille, around 60 Strasbourg responded to the call by Las France Insoumise.
Fabien Magnenou France Télévisions.
La France insoumise (FI) claims to be the principal force of opposition to the Macron government and its liberalising measures.
These actions were organised by FI and it alone.
Critics allege that the FI strategy of “replacement” the rest of the left, now extended to replacing trade unions, which led the movement against the Hollande/Valls El Khomri reform of the same code du travail, is against the grain of the tradition of left and labour movement unity.
This division is explored in details here:
Meanwhile in the National Assembly the debate over the law reform remains heated: Les députés ont poursuivi mercredi l’examen de la réforme du Code du travail avec de vifs débats sur les indemnités prud’homales et le CDI de chantier. La France Insoumise reste à l’offensive.
Hundreds pay tribute to “heroic” Birkenhead man killed while fighting ISIS in Syria.
The Liverpool Echo (more here) reports,
Luke Rutter joined Kurdish forces last March.
Hundreds have paid tribute to a Birkenhead man who was killed while fighting against the so-called Islamic State in Syria.
Luke Rutter, 22, was fighting with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) when he is reported to have died on Wednesday, July 5.
The group called him a “martyr” in a statement announcing his death and that of an American Occupy Wall Street activist on their website.
After we reported the tragic news yesterday, ECHO readers posted their tributes on Facebook to the “heroic“ young man.
Dave Hinds said: “RIP. No doubt had his own reasons for going. Fought with a great crew who will not forget him. Prayers and blessings to family and friends.”
Peter Levis added: “Only knew Luke for a bit but from what i seen he was a very strong man and knew what he had to do.
“Rest in peace Luke gone but never forgotten. A hero in my eyes for what he done.”
Luke reportedly travelled to Syria last March without telling his family, according to The Guardian.
The YPG said he had been killed while he was patrolling an area in the Syrian town of Raqqa, where the Islamic State has a strong presence.
He is believed to be the fourth British fighter killed in Syria fighting against the group.
Posts on the YPG Facebook page called Luke a “brave soldier“ and a “great and humble“ man.
Clarissa Castrello said: “Rest in peace in our hearts and in our souls our beloved British YPG Luke Rutter, Comrade, Hero and Angel.
Brave soldier, proud warrior and valiant fighter. God bless you and all Martyrs. My prayers are for you and all Martyrs. Her biji Kurdistan.”
Michael Michaelssen added: “One of the greatest and most humble guys I’ve ever met! Thanks for the lessons.”
Erik Scurfield from Barnsley, Dean Evans from Warminster and Ryan Lock from Chichester have also been killed while fighting alongside the YPG.
YPG’s British Martyr Luke Rutter (Soro Zinar)’s final message and photos.
Comrade Soro travelled to Rojava in March and joined the YPG to fight the fascist and reactionary Daesh (ISIS) gangs in Raqqa. He was martyred on 5 July 2017 after battling bravely in the terrorist group’s so-called capital. The people of Rojava will not forget his sacrifice.
Sehid Namirin! Martyr’s don’t die!
Yesterday on BBC 2 Newsnight reported on the battle to liberate Raqqa. After interviewing a heroic Kurdish woman commander, the programme talked to Kimberley Taylor, 27, who has joined the forces against Daesh, reminding viewers that some brave people from across the world have taken their side.
This has also happened, another courageous volunteer amongst the martyrs who have joined the struggle against Jihadist Islamism.
This has also happened, one amongst the martyrs against Jihadist Islamism.
American Anarchist Killed in Battle to Liberate Raqqa from ISIS.
Report from: It’s Going Down July the 10th, 2017.
According to the IRPGF (International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces), an anarchist militia fighting within the Rojava revolution against ISIS in so-called Syria, an anarchist from the United States, Heval Demhat (nom de guerre) has been killed during the struggle to liberate Raqqa in Syria from ISIS control.
Heaval was interviewed by ANF News about his decision to come to Rojava and fight against ISIS and for the Rojava revolution. He stated that he had just started a family and also worked as a wielder. He gave the following statement:
“In 2014, that was when Kobanê was under siege and everybody I knew was kind of watching and waiting. It was a tense sort of moment. But as the fight started to turn, people got hopeful, more people started turning up at friends that left and came to help.
And I’d just started a family, so I hadn’t but the plane ticket just yet, but it was something on my mind. Last year, a buddy of mine, who I was really close with, came out here. And when I saw him out here, I was like ‘That’s it! I got it. I got to go’. I talked with my partner and my family and I’m like, “I’m going to Syria, it’s something I care about”. And I got in contact with the YPG international. I had friends who told me exactly what I need to do, and I started to plan for it. And then I showed up about five months ago and helped through it.”
For Demhat, “it’s been the political struggle that’s been going on in the region. Watching it develop over time and seen a real chance to take a hand, take a hand in something. And that’s really important for the region. It is not, to me it’s not just important for just the Kurds. It’s important for the Middle East to have something like this take hold and work.”
The American fighter remarks that contributing to the revolution is a very big part of all why he is here, adding: “It’s also about setting an example. I mean, this is a fire that may have started here but it can, you know, candle elsewhere. There can be other people that learn from the examples, there can be other people that welcome the example and hopefully things develop in an important progressive sort of way towards a better region.”
Demhat points out that most people in America don’t know about Rojava, they don’t know at all about Kurdistan, ans continues: “You don’t see Kurdistan on a globe. Anywhere, it doesn’t show up, you know. You have to Google it to really know what it is. And the only way you’d google it is if someone told you, “Oh! Have you heard about the Kurdish liberation movement. Oh! My son is fighting in Kurdistan right now.” My family knew only about this because I told them I’m going. Otherwise, they would have continued on their lives without knowing about Kurdistan.
According to Demhat, it is always easy to get people motivated for big, drastic actions like war and conflict because it seems important, it seems “some sort of thing that you really have to fight because there’s a real consequence to not fighting.”
Meanwhile in Raqqa, a bloody battle ensues between various forces, in an attempt to retake the city from ISIS control. Follow IRPGF for more updates.
‘Dying for socialism is an honour,’ say volunteers facing terrorists’ car bombs, mines and snipers.
Sad Update.
Macryites: the Anti-Imperialism of Fools.
Louis Proyect recently had a post about some the more unpleasant figures on the US left.
On Friday, July 14th at the Solidarity Center in NYC, Stephen Gowans will be speaking on “Washington’s Long War in Syria“, his new pro-Assad book. Solidarity Center is the HQ of the International Action Center, the antiwar front of the Workers World Party, a group that emerged out of the Trotskyist movement after the founder decided to back the Soviet tanks rather than the Hungarian workers in 1956. They are essentially Stalinists–much more so than the Communist Party.
Among the sponsors of the meeting is something called UNAC, the United Antiwar Coalition, that has a steering committee that is a mixture of WWP’er Sarah Flounders and independent Stalinists like Phil Wilayto.
But the largest party representation is from Socialist Action, a tiny sect led by Jeff Mackler. After splitting from the SWP, Mackler and other party veterans formed SA in the early 80s to rebuild a purified Trotskyist group. It has failed abjectly but like the group it split from, it soldiers on in the foolish notion that it is to the USA that Lenin’s party was to Russia. Mackler is on the steering committee as is Marilyn Levin and Christine Gavreau, who like Mackler are in their seventies. I can’t say for sure if they are still in SA but I strongly suspect that they are. This is definitely not a formation that is going to compete with the DSA for fresh young blood.
As part of our wider project of charting “Confusionism” Lois has made a contribution.
“the ideological cocoon of the Marcyite wing of the American left that now includes Socialist Action. Indeed, nothing that took place within Syria held even the slightest interest for them. These are people who get their ideas from ZeroHedge, Moon of Alabama, Global Research, Information Clearing House and other bottom-feeding click-bait outlets of the lunatic left.”
Now Marcyites….
Recently we had a hard job on Facebook trying to explain Campism to French comrades, or rather I and one French comrade had a difficult job in explaining this to people in France and Belgium.
What is Campism? As used by the AWL and others it describes those who, despite the Fall of Official Communism, the end of the time when the planet saw the ‘Socialist Bloc’ pitted against the Imperialists still divide the world into two camps, Imperialism, and Anti-imperialism, to French comrades.
Oddly (….) they had not heard of Max Shachtman …
Macryites are the ultimate ‘campists’, the defenders of the original anti-imperialism of fools (a term which French left-wingers did not find hard to get). In the original version they believed in a “global class war”, one waged between states.
The term comes from Sam Marcy (pseudonym) and his faction.
“Basically he took the concept of “deformed worker’s state” in the opposite direction that most traditional Trotskyists do. In essence he believe that socialist states were necessarily deformed because socialism can not co-exist with capitalism. To that extent he opposed the idea of socialism in one country. At the same time through his theory of global class war he saw the socialist nation state as a key factor in the final downfall of world imperialism. WWP was one of the few parties to call for PRC-USSR unity. Of course WWP was in the awkward position of being a Trotskyist group condemning Khrushchev for being revisionist in denouncing Stalin.
In general as far as Trotskyism goes, the Sam Marcyist brand is the closest to genuine Marxism-Leninism. Of course in practice it amounts to simply supporting any anti-US force as anti-imperialist or even socialist. Its a sort of reverse Trotskyism.”
Marcy wrote, (The Global Class War and the Destiny of American Labor by Sam Marcy May 20, 1953)
the camp of the proletariat today, unlike the previous epoch, has the bulk of the oppressed peoples in the colonies and dependent countries within its camp as allies. The class of peasants, semi- and non-proletarian elements of the backward countries, which in previous epochs were the reserve of imperialist reaction, can now be regarded not merely in a social but the political sense as well, as having been attracted to and daily becoming more and more part and parcel of the camp of the proletariat. The revolutionary ferment all over the colonial world is testimony to this fact. Our class camp is numerically much larger, much more politically conscious than in all previous epochs. The second characteristic of our class camp is that it has state allies, states where the working class, if not in a political sense, then certainly in a social and historic sense, holds the ruling power.
Today’s Marcyites believe that while there are no longer many states where the working class ‘holds power’ on a formal socialist basis that there are some kind of ‘objective’ allies of the left in the ‘colonial world’. According to some positions this would go right down to ‘anti-imperialist’ states like, as Proyet complains, Syria.
Workers World in the US keeps the flame lit.
Perhaps the nearest we have to this line is the groupuscle Socialist Action around Gerry Downing though some in the Stop the War Coalition often sound like them..
Background,
Sam Ballan (1911 – February 1, 1998), known by his pen name Sam Marcy, was an American Marxist of the post-World War II era. He co-founded the Workers World Party in 1959 and served as its chairperson until his death.
Marcy was born in Russia to Jewish parents. During the Russian Civil War, his family was a target of anti-Jewish pogroms by the White movement and received protection from the Communist forces. They resettled in Brooklyn, where Marcy became an activist for the Communist Party USA. He studied law at St. Johns University and provided legal advice to labor unions in New York.[1]
Marcy grew discontented as a member of the Communist Party, viewing the Third International as increasingly detached from working class interests and instead a mouthpiece for Joseph Stalin, whose oppressive bureaucracy he despised. He joined the Trotskyist movement in the 1940s, building a branch of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Buffalo.[1] Yet he again became dissatisfied, finding the SWP uncommitted to revolutionary politics and instead oriented toward parliamentary reform.[2] Marcy, Vince Copeland, and other SWP members developed a theory of “global class war“, according to which Marxists had a duty to defend the existence of the USSR and its satellites in spite of their bureaucracy[3]. Over several years Marcy clashed with the SWP leadership on several questions, including their approach to Communist China and North Korea, whether the SWP should endorse Henry A. Wallace,[4] and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. On the last question, Marcy’s faction supported the Soviet military intervention, arguing that the initial worker uprising had attracted class elements that sought to restore capitalism.[5][6]
In 1959 the “global class war” faction set up a new organization, the Workers World Party, characterized by outspoken defense of all Communist governments in the world. After the first issue of the Workers Worldnewspaper was published, Marcy started applying his view of Marxism–Leninism to contemporary issues. Marcy’s writings included extensive works on socialism, the Cold War era and the rise of the powerful military-industrial complex. He also wrote about the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War, the economic forces behind capitalist downsizing and the impact of the scientific-technological revolution. [1] Selections of his works have been translated into many languages, including Persian, Spanish, Turkish, Korean, French and German.[citation needed]
His writings show a strong support for Mao Zedong and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, though he continued to defend China against imperialism following the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. Marcy defended China and also the Soviet Union against the charge of imperialism even while disagreeing with some policies and practices of the Communist Party leadership of both countries.
Protest at Court of Appeal hearing on 11 and 12 July 2017 at 9.30am.
Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LL.
Pack out the public gallery in the court so that the judiciary is under no illusion as to what is at stake.
GENDER SEGREGATION IS GENDER APARTHEID
Southall Black Sisters Intervention in Court of Appeal case on Gender Segregation
SBS is intervening on a legal case in the Court of Appeal on 11th – 12th July against gender segregation and has organised a protest outside the court.
Gender segregation in education
School X – a co-educational, Muslim voluntary aided school in the UK – segregates its pupils based on their gender. From the age of 9 to 16, boys and girls from Muslim parents are segregated for everything – during lessons and all breaks, activities and school trips.
On 13 and 14 June 2016, the school was inspected by the regulatory body, Ofsted, which raised concerns about a number of leadership failings including those involving gender segregation, the absence of effective safeguarding procedures, and an unchallenged culture of gender stereotyping and homophobia. Offensive books promoting rape, violence against women and misogyny were discovered in the school library. Some girls also complained anonymously that gender segregation did not prepare them for social interaction and integration into the wider society. As a result of what it found during the inspection, Ofsted judged the school to be inadequate and placed it in special measures.
‘Separate but equal’
The school took legal action to stop Ofsted from publishing its report. They argued that, amongst other things, the report was biased and that gender segregation does not amount to sex discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.
On 8 November 2016, following a High Court hearing, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Jay, found that there was no sex discrimination because of his reading of the law and the lack of evidence before him. He found that gender segregation did not amount to sex discrimination since both boys and girls were ‘separated equally’. He noted that although women hold minority power in society generally, there was no evidence before him that girls suffered specifically as a result of the segregation in this school. Mr Justice Jay noted the differences between segregation on the grounds of race in the USA and South Africa in previous decades and gender segregation in the UK today, concluding that he had not heard evidence that gender segregation made girls feel disadvantaged or inferior.
Ofsted appealed against the ruling of the High Court which will be heard at the Court of Appeal on 11 and 12 July 2017.
The case for intervention
Southall Black Sisters and Inspire are intervening in the case because of its great public importance – especially for minority women and girls. Although, gender segregation and its implications are not specific to School X, but apply equally to a number of other faith schools, the point of our intervention is two-fold:
First, to show how the growing practice of gender segregation in education is not a benign development: Like racial segregation in the USA and South Africa, gender segregation within BME communities in the UK, has a social, and political history that can be traced back to the Rushdie Affair when religious fundamentalists sensed an opportunity to seize education as a battleground and a site on which to expand their influence. Since then, we have seen emboldened fundamentalists in South Asian communities attempting to impose gender segregation in schools and universities. Mr Justice Jay did not look into the wider social and political context in which gender segregation is practiced in minority communities. Had he done so, he would have seen its broad-ranging and long-lasting effect on all areas of women’s lives: that gender segregation is a political choice and that the struggle against it mirrors the struggle against racial segregation.
Second, we want to ensure that gender equality is placed at the heart of Ofsted inspections in all schools, irrespective of their status and composition. We recognise that gender segregation can sometimes be educationally beneficial. But in the hands of ultra-conservatives and fundamentalists, it has an entirely different intent and consequence which is to mount a wholesale assault on women’s rights: socially, culturally and politically.
A violation of human rights
UN human rights experts have noted that ‘fundamentalists everywhere target education in different ways: In some places, they kill teachers or carry out acid attacks on students. Elsewhere they attempt to impose gender segregation in schools or to exclude women and girls altogether. In other places, they seek to change the content of education, removing sex education from the curriculum or censoring scientific theories with which they do not agree’
School X’s approach is consistent with Muslim fundamentalist ideologies that strive to create a fundamentalist vision of education in the UK: one that discourages mixed-gender activities as ‘Un-Islamic’ and ultimately legitimises patriarchal power structures. Their aim is to reinforce the different spaces – private and public – that men and women must occupy, and their respective stereotyped roles, which accord them differential and unequal status. This approach constitutes direct discrimination under the UK’s Equality Act 2010. It also violates International human rights laws, standards and principles on equality and non-discrimination such as CEDAW and Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals, to which the UK has signed up. Women’s rights must take priority over intolerant beliefs that are used to justify sex discrimination.
Gender segregation is gender apartheid
This is a significant and potentially precedent-setting case about sex discrimination and equality. Ultra-conservative and fundamentalist gender norms are seeping into the everyday life of minority communities. Education has become a gendered ideological terrain upon which the potential of women and girls together with their hopes, aspirations and dreams are extinguished. Gender segregation in school X is part of a wider political project that is ideologically linked to the creation of a regime of ‘gendered modesty’: one that promotes an infantilised and dehumanized notion of womanhood and, ultimately, amounts to sexual apartheid.
What you can do
We are mobilising for the Court of Appeal hearing on 11 and 12 July 2017 from 9.30am onwards.
We urge you to join us by:
More information.
http://www.southallblacksisters.org.uk/…/gender-segregation…
See the High Court judgment here: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/…/uploa…/2016/11/x-v-ofsted.pdf and here: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/…/11/x-v-oftsed-press-summary.…
Southall Black Sisters is also part of the One Law for All campaign which also includes the Kurdish Culture Project, Centre for Secular Space and others working to challenge the rise of religious fundamentalism and extremism and it specific impact on the rights of black and minority women in the UK. We are currently running a campaign against the accommodation of Sharia laws in the law or as part of alternative dispute resolution systems in relation to family matters. See here: http://onelawforall.org.uk/over-300-abused-women-issue-sta…/
Information about previous challenges to gender segregation in universities can be found here: http://www.southallblacksisters.org.uk/…/campaign-gender-ap… and here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/pragna-patel/’shariafication-by-stealth’-in-uk and here: http://www.wewillinspire.com/tag/segregatio
A political earthquake in Britain has shocked the Tories. Labour made a huge advance in the June General Election while Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is now unassailable. What will happen next? Theresa May is a wounded Tory leader or ‘a dead woman walking’. The coalition of chaos is unlikely to last long. Another General Election can’t be far off. A hard Brexit and austerity look set to be ditched as part of the Tories survival strategy. So what are the likely scenarios? What must Labour do? What are the tasks for the Left?
Chartist, a journal of the democratic socialist left, held its AGM yesterday in the University of Westminster.
Around 30 people attended, including a significant group of younger activists from Tower Hamlets Momentum.
Buoyed up by the encouraging General Election results, a series of important, open-minded, discussions took place around the aftermath of Brexit. In everybody’s mind was the possibility of a future Labour government.
In the morning John Palmer, former European Editor of the Guardian and a veteran of the radical democratic left, outlined the problems that Brexit brings. From a pro-European stand – John evoked the goal of a social, socialist united Europe – argued that the ‘cliff edge’ strategy of the Theresa May government has reached an impasse. The voice of British capital, muted during the referendum, has begun to be heard, now loudly warning of the consequences of leaving the EU for the economy. How far Labour’s position on Brexit, recognising the result of the Leave vote, and letting the process of leaving proceed relatively unhindered, will be sustainable remains open, above all in view of the support of the majority of Labour members for Remain and the overwhelming pro-European views of young people.
Ann Pettifor, Prime Economics and an Adviser to John McDonnell, focused on Labour’s economic policies. She argued, drawing on her recent book,(The Production of Money. How to Break the Power of Bankers. 2017) that a Corbyn government should boost the economy. Concerned that Labour appears reluctant to commit to a programme of increased public spending Pettifor explained money creation. Her views, summarised here, Could a Labour government safely borrow to invest and spend? are a programme for radical re-tilting of a left-government.
Speakers from the audience raised issues about the Labour Manifesto’s strengths, and weaknesses, were raised. Its cautious approach, marked in the refusal to challenge the benefits freeze, was, perhaps, it was said, the result of the short-time in which the document was prepared. But for the future much more detailed and thorough-going proposals are needed. Pettifor’s bold approach was, some argued, in need of elaboration and justification.
It is equally the case the role of right-wing, former Blair and Brown supporting MPs who are hostile to any left-wing policies, has played a damaging role in Labour’s attempts to strike out in a new direction, despite the growing popular support for Corbyn and his ideas, often, Pettifor remarked, in advance of the Party.
“On the Brexit issue the problem of Sovereignty remains a live one. The view was expressed that the ‘sovereigntist’ left, whilst only attracting a minority amongst Labour Party members, still retains influence. The reaction of expressed by one of the editors of the ‘flagship of the Western Intellectual left’, New Left Review, that Brexit was a welcome “Big kick up the backside” for the EU, or more overtly nationalist positions, have to be challenged.
Pettifor made the bold claim that it was the loss of democratic power in an earlier phase of globalisation which had led to the rise of the 1930s Fascism and Nazism. The post-War process of globalisation encouraged the rise of extreme-right populism today.
A couple of dissenting voices from the anti-EU quarter aside, Chartist supporters remained committed to the internationalist European project.
But how this can be carried forward remains an open question.
One theme emerged during the discussion, the need for Labour to engage in open policy debate and formation. It was a common thread throughout the day.
In the afternoon, Don Flynn, from a background in the Migrant Rights Network, raised a number of further issues about populism and argued that there may well be radical variants that the left can engage with. Don also expressed caution about Labour’s prospects, “we can still mess things up” he observed.
Julie Ward, Labour Co-Op for North West England made an impassioned speech in favour of the European Union, illustrated by her experience in being able to to promote progressive campaigns through through the Brussels and Strasbourg Parliament. Ward questioned the legitimacy of the Referendum, which had earlier been criticised as an inappropriate means, in a representative democracy, to deal with the issue of British membership. The MEP hoped that Brexit may not yet come to pass.
Puru Miah, from the Momentum national committee, described the work of the group’s activists. One feature stuck out, Momentum is in the process of developing a system of canvassing which does more than “register” the opinions of those on the doorstep, but tries to engage with the views of the public.
In the final session Mike Davis reiterated the issue of policy making. Many Chartist supporters are closely engaged in this process, on issues such as Housing, Welfare, local government and migrant rights. While not rejecting the existing system of Policy Commissions it was felt that more transparent ways, based on wider democratic participation, of making decisions about what becomes part of the Labour Manifesto are a key to a radical reforming Labour government’s success.
One concern was aired: that not all of the Labour Leader’s advisers came from the democratic socialist tradition and were not always open to ideas from quarters outside their circle.
The day’s debates were ably chaired, and this is not an exaggeration, the content was exceptional.
It is to be hoped that as a vehicle for a variety of democratic socialist, green, and feminist voices, Chartist will play a part not just in campaigning for a Labour victory but in shaping the party’s policies in a left direction.
The following recent article, by a comrade with great experience in the area, Duncan Bowie, comes highly recommended:
‘The Centre Can Hold’: Perry Anderson: a Critical Look.
Part One.
“Chaque pensée devrait rappeler la ruine d’un sourire.”
Each thought should evoke the ruin of a smile.
Syllogismes de l’amertume. Emil Cioran.
For Perry Anderson “the revolutionary working class went AWOL somewhere around 1970.”
Roger Scruton. Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. Thinkers of the New Left. (1)
Has the 2017 French Presidential contest, followed by the June Parliamentary elections, redrawn the political map not just in France but also across Europe? Emmanuel Macron’s conquest of the Élysée (66,10% of the vote), in a second round against the far-right Marine Le Pen (33,90%), marginalising the Parti Socialiste (PS), eliminated at the first hurdle with 6,36% and Les Républicains (LR), at, 20.02% is said to have seen off the anti-European Union “populist revolt”. Others talk of his pro- EU “populism of the centre”. Some on the left draw comfort from the respectable score in the initial contest, 19,58% for Jean-Luc Mélenchon of la France insoumise.
The success of Macron’s brand new, ‘start-up’, movement-party, La République en marche (LRM), with 314 seats, and close allies, the MoDems, 47 MPs, out of 577 députés, is overwhelming. Backed by ‘compatible’ deputies from the fragmenting Socialist Party and the Republican centre-right, which now dominates the French lower house, the Assemblée Nationale, illustrates, it is claimed, the obsolescence of the old-party form. To some this has shaken up not just the old French blocs of left and right but introduced a new form of political representation. For Pierre Rosanvallon Macron, and his still-standing opponents, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, are the “personalised”, “direct catalysts of popular aspirations” (Idées. Le Monde. 17.6.17) Introducing Perry Anderson’s The Centre Can Hold (click for full text) The French Spring. New Left Review’s (NLR) Programme Notes begins rather with political economy. Macron, liberal in economics, and liberal (in the American sense) socially may mark another shift. “Has neoliberalism finally arrived in force in Paris and if so what are the implications for Europe?”
Macron’s journey from liberalising Minister of the Economy (2014 – 2016) in François Hollande’s Socialist Government, some tussles with Prime Minister Manuel Valls – not to mention mass protests against labour reforms – to the entry of the former high-flying Banker and Civil Servant into the gilded chambers of the Élysée, is a tale worth telling. That it did not happen without help, unwilling as much as willing, is recalled. Attacks on finance soon forgotten Hollande had rapidly begun “tilting to business and tailing Berlin”. Nor is the inability of his governments to tackle mass unemployment, poverty, to stand up to EU financial ‘rigour’, forcing the Mediterranean members to suffer the blast of monetary discipline and ‘restructuring’, unchronicled. The President’s manifest failings, low, described in Valérie Trierweiler’s Merci pour ce Moment (2014), and high, beginning with Hollande’s opinion of himself, and the both at the same time, as revealed by Gérard Davet and François Lhomme, are there for all to read, or at least the media’s extracts and commentaries. The outgoing tide of Hollande’s support, the his “self-destruction”, the mass protests and strikes at labour law reform (Loi El Khomri) under PM Manuel Valls, to “please business” – Anderson at least does not finger the EU for that measure – paved the way for the marginalisation of the Parti Socialiste. The transfer of PS card-holders and, above all, notables, to the new Master, was preceded by the mobilisation of an active core behind Macron’s Presidential bid.
Tenebrous back-door manoeuvres
Macron appeared, in short, Anderson affirms, at length, more than a providential “embodiment of all that was dynamic and forward-looking in France”. Behind this public portait, Anderson suggests that not only was their was transfer of allegiances, the use of PS networks, and the development of an establishment cabal behind him, there was a vast media-political operation, with wider business and ‘civil society’ support. Le Canard Enchaîné, with, he notes, close links with the “tenebrous world of back-door manoeuvres” and the “manipulative operations of the French intelligence services” leaked evidence of the abuse of public funds by Macron’s right-wing rival François Fillion. Dubbing the satirical weekly the Great Elector we are treated to Anderson’s lengthy speculations on the origins and motives of those who may have used these leaks to destroy the candidate of Les Républicains.
If Anderson is to be believed, “Macron’s background guaranteeing he would be a business-friendly icon of deregulation of the kind Hollande wanted” the transfer of the President’s claque to a new icon was well judged. The Centre Can Hold describes him marketed as part of “a movement transcending the outdated opposition between Right and Left in France, for the creation of a new, fresh politics of the Centre, liberal in economics and social in sensibility.” Enough people bought the message for an electoral landslide to take place.
Opponents were trounced, deals were made, François Bayrou was squared, the middle class were quite prepared…Anderson has, we can be sure, not revealed more than a fraction of the contents of a hefty shelf of breathless Secret Histories of the 2017 Election Campaign. That the new Boss has been sometimes ungrateful, the Editorial suggests, at least to his one-time Patron, and, we could add, to those, like Valls, with whom he has accounts to settle will doubtless lend piquancy to the narrative.
This entertaining, depressing but far from unprecedented story, is only part of a larger picture. The ‘operation’ succeeded as a consequence of the withering on the vine of the Parti Socialiste’s social base and the political impasse of the party that has failed in recent years to manage more than Léon Blum’s “exercise of power”, without conquering the solid bastions that give a real lever for social change.
The Republic of the Centre.
The NLR Editorial locates the origins of the PS’s difficulties in relief against a long line of attempts to create a Republic of the Centre, a term taken from the widely read. La République du centre (1988). In that book, subtitled, La fin de l’exception française, Pierre Rosanvallon, with François Furet and Jacques Julliard, announced the end of French ‘exceptionalism’, above all the persistence of an electorally and socially significant radical left. For Anderson President Mitterrand “had laid the foundations of a stable Republic of the Centre: no longer dependent on the individual charisma of a national hero who was distrustful of parties, but now solidly anchored in a cross-party ideological consensus that capitalism was the only sensible way of organizing modern life.”
Crucial to this turn was not the “stable republic”, a cross-party consensus and left-right alternation of power, but the left’s acceptance of the market. Since the Mitterrand ‘turn’ in 1982-3, the Socialists have constantly drifted, but they have always been marked by efforts to create a market-friendly liberalising ‘republic’. Anderson does not cite exactly why this change happened, here, or in his previous writings on France, where we learnt that it was ‘neoliberal’ and a “decisive turn towards the logic of financial markets”. Indicating, rather than defining ‘neoliberalism’, with the label Hayek stuck on it too boot, obscures what lay at the origin of their trajectory. (2)
The 1982-3 ‘moment’, a conjuncture that brought together political and economic strategic change with a cultural shift towards the market, remains marked in PS history. The Mauroy government, abandoned a strategy, reinforced with the entry of Communist Ministers in the cabinet, of nationalisations, proactive industrial policy, and increased consumption, came as the first Mitterrand governments failed to reduce unemployment or stimulate growth. Put simply, with the world in recession, going it alone was not working. Warnings of economic disaster starring the President and Prime Minister in the face during the summer of 1982 and the judgement that the franc risked going through the floor, strained the country’s membership of the European Monetary System (EMS) to breaking point. Retrenching at this point was more than a “pause” in reform. The government suddenly dropped all the idea of top-down ‘statist’ economic intervention. The initial wave of nationalisations (which remained in place for the time being, including important parts of the banking system) were not the ‘instrument’ of economic growth and social change. Industry had to be “restructured”, that is modernised at the cost of closures and layoffs; budgets had to restrained. The PS, soon free of a vestigial alliance with the Communists (PCF), came to grips with what they considered the impossibility of ‘Keynesianism in one country’. The “mutation” of modern capitalism was embraced.
What remained of a left-wing ambition beyond clamouring for creative destruction and extolling model entrepreneurs? For Anderson, it was the European ideal. For Mitterrand Europe was France’s future and economics had to follow. The two term President seized on “the inspiring ideal of Europe”, that is, staying within the EMS (European Monetary System). It was in its service that the French were called upon to “liberalise and modernise themselves.”
That the austerity programme in 1983, and the zealous pursuit of ‘modernisation’ under the subsequent PM Laurent Fabius, has marked the governing French left ever since is not in doubt. But the alternative answer, argued by the Minister of Industry, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, for France to “go it alone” outside the EMS, may well have led, as his opponents claimed, to a collapse in the franc, and to France going cap in hand, for help to another international “neo-liberal’ institution, the IMF, with an equally severe plan for budget cuts. A left-winger might well ask about the reaction of the labour movement. From Mitterrand’s victory in 1981 to the policy change, there was little popular activity, and the brief displays of CGT militancy that followed the exit of the Communists from government never rose beyond fragmented protest. (3)
The Centre Can Hold spills the beans on some more confidential reasoning, “In private, Mitterrand—more candid than his successors—knew what that meant, as he confided to his familiar Jacques Attali at the outset: ‘I am divided between two ambitions: the construction of Europe and social justice. The European Monetary System is a condition of success in the first, and limits my freedom in the second.’ Once the eu was in place, every market-friendly initiative could be extolled or excused as required by solidarity with Brussels.”
Is this another way of saying that French politicians, like political figures across the Continent, put responsibility for the unpopular consequences of market-friendly policies, which they fully support, onto ‘Europe’? Or is it to say that “pooling” sovereignty through the EU had given rise to an “accumulation of powers” by the “elites of the Council and Commission and their subordinates”, as Anderson put it in The New Old World (2009)? Is he suggesting that Keynesianism in one country was a viable option, and should have been pursued, regardless of the absence of mass popular mobilisation, and whatever the consequences for the ERM, and France’s position as the “hinge of the European Union”?
One way of avoiding these hard questions is to call upon the people to speak. That is, to demonstrate that, despite having filled their ears with Brussels’ wax, French politicians, unlike Ulysses, have had difficulty in resisting – much much later – the Sirens of popular discontent. Anderson fills several paragraphs with evidence that the masses recoil at pro-market reform. The Centre right has many object lessons in this, “as Juppé discovered in 1995 and De Villepin in 2006.” He then turns to the more difficult task of explaining how ‘neo-liberalism’ could be introduced.
The Centre-left, by contrast, was a better Lieutenant of Capital. It “was the better equipped of the two blocs actually to introduce neoliberal reforms. Resistance to these was always most likely to come from the popular classes where the larger part of its own social base lay, in particular—though not exclusively—from the trade-unions, where only the collaborationist cfdt could be relied on to swallow virtually anything…..still claiming to represent the injured and oppressed—and interpret their best interests—the PS was in a more favourable position to neutralise such opposition, as Valls’s success in ramming through a labour law to please business in 2016 showed. So too it was no accident that over the years the Centre-Left privatised many more public enterprises than the Centre-Right.” Except, of course, that these policies played sufficiently badly with the “popular classes” to contribute to the mass defection that caused this instrument to shatter. As their electoral disaster and the transfer of support elsewhere, including, Anderson notes, many went to La France insoumise.
Fighting Neo-liberalism.
From this account one might ask what is ‘neo-liberalism’ other than any pro-business policy? And what is the alternative other than the resistance of the masses to these measures? And where did these pro-market measures originate? Are they domestically determined, or can we, as appears to be suggested with the evocation of the ‘European ideal’ assign it to forces within the structures of the EU. The New Old World lists a lack of a common democratic will at the European level, the construction, from these quarters, of a Hayekian “semi-catallaxy” of free markets beneath, and an apparatus removed from accountability and stuffed with “prebends”. This picture looms only faintly over the present article. Even that charge-sheet against “self-satisfied” Europe seems feeble set against, to cite a representative from a mountain of critical literature, the account of a neo-liberal European Union apparatus in Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval’s Ce cauchemar qui n’en finit pas (2016) They talk of a “Empire des normes”, budgets, debts, “le bloc idéologique néolibérale”.
Dardot and Laval’s call for countervailing international democratic coalitions, and an “espace oppositionnel mondial” has so far, been largely unheeded. Yet despite the obstacles, the Union remains an area of “pooled sovereignty” in which national governments, if no longer unanimous about ‘rescuing the nation state’, still enjoy the determining power. That the EU – and Anderson, as we will see, homes in on the future of the Eurozone – can be shaped by political will. That domestic policy formation remains the key to change, that Macron’s decisions matter, and efforts to mould or block them, are at least one of the keys to the success or failure of neo-liberal, or, more simply, pro-business acts and legislation. And what could be the role of an opposition to undo Macron’s plans?
END OF PART ONE.
PART 2 TO FOLLOW: THE LEFT AFTER MACRON.
References.
(1) Page 232. Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. Thinkers of the New Left. Roger Scruton Bloomsbury. 2015.
(2) Prognoses. The New Old World. Perry Anderson. Verso. 2009
(3) See Pages 326 – 333. Les Socialistes français et le Pouvoir. Alain Bergounioux and Gérard Grunberg. Fayard. 2005. Pages 362 – 376. Mitterrand A Study in Ambiguity. Phillip Short. The Bodley Head. 2013.
Theresa May with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud in April
Saudi Arabia is the chief foreign promoter of Islamist extremism in the UK, a report has warned.
The conservative Henry Jackson Society said there was a “clear and growing link” between Islamist organisations preaching violence and foreign state funding.
In a new report entitled “Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK”, the thinktank calls for a public inquiry into extremism bankrolled by other countries.
It suggests several Gulf states and Iran are responsible for much of the foreign funding of extremism in the UK, but that Saudi Arabia in particular had spent millions on exporting its conservative branch of Wahhabi Islam to Muslim communities in the West since the 1960s.
The thinktank, run by controversial journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray, said this typically took the form of endowments to mosques and Islamic educational institutions which host radical preachers and distribute extremist literature.
The report calls for a public inquiry in Saudi Arabia’s connections with UK based extremism.
The UK’s Saudi Arabian embassy told the BBC the allegations were “categorically false”.
The Henry Jackson Society is not a friend of the left. But this report cannot be dismissed. The left needs to come up with a response to Islamism. Opposing anti-Muslim racism does not mean protecting the ideology of Islamism and the actions of violent Islamists.These are opponents of human rights, the enemy of all democrats, feminists, progressives and the left. We have to oppose all forms of Islamism, but above all the jihadists.
The Guardian reports,
Tom Wilson, a fellow at the Centre for the Response to Radicalisation and Terrorism at the society – and author of the report, said: “While countries from across the Gulf and Iran have been guilty of advancing extremism, Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly at the top of the list.
“Research indicates that some Saudi individuals and foundations have been heavily involved in exporting an illiberal, bigoted Wahhabi ideology. So it is ironic, to say the least, that Saudi Arabia is singling out Qatar for links to extremism when it has patently failed to get its own house in order.”
The report argues that although Saudi leaders have acknowledged the need to rein in some of the funding of extremism, including by setting up a counter extremism centre this year, the level of funding of Wahhabism has been on the increase.
It claims in 2007 Saudi Arabia was estimated to be spending at least $2bn (£1.5bn) annually on promoting Wahhabism worldwide. By 2015 that figure was believed to have doubled.
The impact of this increased spending may well have been felt in Britain: in 2007, estimates put the number of mosques in Britain adhering to Salafism and Wahhabism at 68. Seven years later, the number of British mosques identified with Wahhabism had risen to 110.
It argues that Saudi Islamic charitable groups have tended to fund Wahhabist ideology. Some of Britain’s most prominent extremist preachers — such as Abu Qatada, Abu Hamza, Abdullah al Faisal and Shiekh Omar Bakri — have all sat within what can be described as a broadly Wahhabi/Salafi ideology, the report says. In 2014, it was estimated that Britain’s Salafi Mosques had a collective capacity for a 44,994-strong membership.
The report by no means exclusively blames Saudi – pointing out that the Qatari-funded Al-Muntada Trust has been connected with a number of mosques where radicalisation has taken place. Specifically, in the case of a group of young British men from Cardiff, it has been suggested that “attendance at the al-Muntada-linked Al-Manar Mosque was significant in their radicalisation and decision to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State”.
In its own outline the Report says,
This comes after this (the Blaze)
Intelligence officers have said they have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the United Kingdom, according to a report by the Times of London on Saturday.
Of the 23,000 radical jihadists identified in the United Kingdom, the intelligence sources said about 3,000 are believed to pose a “threat” and are currently being investigated or actively monitored. “The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a ‘residual risk,’” reported the Times.
The BBC stated earlier this year,
Approximately 850 people from the UK have travelled to support or fight for jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq, say the British authorities.
This BBC News database is the most comprehensive public record of its kind, telling the story of over 100 people from the UK who have been convicted of offences relating to the conflict and over 150 others who have either died or are still in the region.
Many of these people, the modern-day equivalent of those who joined the Nazi Einsatzgruppen have committed war crimes.
The jihadists of Daesh above all have murdered Syrian, Kurds and Iraqis, enslaved and committed genocide against our Yazidi sisters and brothers (Genocide of Yazidis by ISIL).
They need to be brought to justice.
Defence of universal human rights begins with the fight against the ideas and the people who give the jihadists succor and support.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu (third from left) : a single word, “Adalat” – “justice”.
Turkey’s opposition leader launches court challenge as he marches to Istanbul
| ISTANBUL Reuters.
Turkey’s main opposition leader launched a European court appeal on Tuesday over an April vote that granted President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping powers, stepping up his challenge to the government as he led a 425 km (265 mile) protest march.
Erdogan accuses the protesters, marching from Ankara to Istanbul, of “acting together with terrorist groups”, referring to Kurdish militants and followers of a U.S.-based cleric who Ankara says was behind last year’s coup.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), hit back on Tuesday, defending his “justice march” and accusing the government of creating a one-party state in the wake of the failed putsch on July 15.
On the 20th day of his march, triggered by the jailing of a CHP deputy on spying charges, Kilicdaroglu signed an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the election board’s decision to accept unstamped ballots in the April 16 referendum.
“Turkey has rapidly turned into a (one-)party state. Pretty much all state institutions have become branches of a political party,” he told reporters. “This is causing profound harm to our democratic, parliamentary system.”
Kilicdaroglu, 68, wearing a white shirt and a baseball cap with the word ‘justice’ printed on it, then set out on the latest leg of the march from the city of Izmit, around 100 km (60 miles) along the coast to the east of central Istanbul.
The protest has gained momentum as it passes through northwest Turkey’s countryside and representatives of the pro-Kurdish HDP, parliament’s third largest party, joined the march on Monday near the jail of its former co-leader Figen Yuksekdag.
There are deep divisions among opposition parties but Yuksekdag, stripped of her parliamentary status in February, issued a statement from her cell on Monday calling for them to put those differences aside.
“We must set up the shattered scales of justice again and fight for this together,” she wrote, saying justice had hit “rock bottom” with the jailing of 11 HDP lawmakers and around 100 mayors.
The party rejects charges of ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, designated a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, which launched an insurgency in 1984 in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.
As the protesters advance, Erdogan has stepped up his attacks on the march, saying the CHP was longer acting as a political opposition.
“We can see that they have reached the point of acting together with terror groups and those powers which provoke them against our country,” he said in a speech to officials from his ruling AK Party on Saturday.
“The path which you are taking is the one of Qandil, the one of Pennsylvania,” he said, referring to the northern Iraqi mountains where the PKK is based and the U.S. state where Erdogan’s ally-turned-foe Fethullah Gulen lives.
Kilicdaroglu launched his march in Ankara on June 15 after Enis Berberoglu was jailed for 25 years for espionage, becoming the first lawmaker from the party imprisoned in a government crackdown in the wake of the attempted coup.
Since the purge began, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial, 150,000 have been suspended or dismissed from their jobs. Ankara has also shut down 130 media outlets and some 160 journalists are in prison, according to union data.
In April a referendum was held on constitutional changes that sharply widened Erdogan’s presidential authority and the proposals won 51.4 percent approval in a vote, which has triggered opposition challenges including the latest CHP move.
Opposition parties have said the poll was deeply flawed and European election observers said the decision to allow unstamped ballot papers to be counted had removed a main safeguard against voting fraud.
(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Richard Balmforth)
Turkey’s main opposition changes focus from ‘secularism’ to ‘justice’
As I was writing these lines, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was marching on the highway somewhere near Hendek, a town 200 kilometers (124 miles) east of Istanbul. He had been on the road for two weeks, walking some 15-20 kilometers (9-12 miles) a day and resting at a hotel or in a bus at night. He had at least 10 more days to go. And neither him, nor the thousands of people who joined him for this remarkable march, held any party flag or partisan slogan. They marched only with one simple motto: Justice.
This is the “Justice March” Kilicdaroglu began June 15 in reaction to a court decision that sentenced one of the CHP’s deputies, Enis Berberoglu, to 25 years in prison. Berberoglu’s alleged crime was to help publish the photos of weapons that Turkish intelligence trucks were shipping into Syria back in 2014. This, in the eyes of the court, made him a criminal who “exposed state secrets” and carried out “espionage.” In the free world, however, people would probably just say he did something called “journalism.”
The Berberoglu sentence was in fact only the last straw. Since the July 15 failed coup, Turkey has been going through one of its darkest eras in which “justice” has become desperately lacking. The coup attempt, for sure, was a bloody episode that required a rigorous prosecution and a state of emergency. But after a few weeks of “national unity,” the government began to use the state of emergency as a tool to crack down on all opposition voices in every walk of life, from politics to journalism to academia. More than 50,000 people found themselves in jail, and another 140,000 people have been fired from their jobs. These arrests and purges were often based on nothing but suspicion, and someone’s political stance against the government was often seen as enough evidence of “treason.” Prosecutors and judges themselves faced the pressure of arresting more and more people to prove their loyalty to the system.
Given the unprecedented display of opposition from the CHP, all eyes in the next few days will be on Erdogan’s response to the Justice March.
His options range from letting the march end in Istanbul in a peaceful protest, blocking access to the final demonstration, allowing pro-AK party thugs to descend on the protesters or ordering a security crackdown. Coming as it will, just days before the July 15 2016 coup anniversary, these are options Erdogan will have to carefully weigh. “The Justice March is going to leave Erdogan with some unsavoury possibilities,” noted Eissenstat. “It forces him to either allow the opposition to oppose him on the streets or forces him to use force. But if it comes to seeing Kemal Kilicdaroglu in shackles that would be politically explosive. None of the options work out well for him.”
French Left-wingers Take Sides Against Assad.
Ensemble is a bloc of a number of radical left wing groups in France.
They, by majority vote, backed Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the recent Presidential election and some of their supporters were candidates for his list, La France insoumise .
Two of them are at present MPs in the National Assembly: Clémentine Autain, 11e circonscription de Seine-Saint-Denis, and Caroline Fiat, 6e circonscription de Meurthe-et-Moselle.
This declaration, signed by Roland Merieux, Ollivier Mollaz and Francis Sitel appears on the Ensemble site.
Solidarité avec le peuple syrien !
Without translating the whole statement – which concerns the place of foreign policy in the overall strategy of newly elected President Macron in Syria – the key points are:
(Il n’existe qu’un « ennemi absolu » : les « groupes terroristes » (un lexique extensif qui est celui de Poutine et de Bachar al-Assad). 2) Contre cet ennemi, il faut la coopération entre tous ceux qui le combattent, en premier lieu la Russie. 3) La solution politique à rechercher pour la Syrie ne saurait inclure le départ de Bachar al-Assad.)
The declaration underlines, by contrast, that Assad is guilty of crimes against humanity, that he has waged war against his own people, and that he, as a result is “our enemy” and an enemy of France.
It concludes that only the Syrian People can legitimately decide who is in Power.
Comment:
In the light of these policy changes, which are not confined to France, it would be perhaps better if the left in Britain began to look into its position on Syria, where real genocides have taken place and where the Assad regime murders and tortures, rather than other parts of the Middle East.
What is our stand on solidarity with the Syrian people against Assad?
The issue has come to the heart of French politics at present, as this public letter in Libération today demonstrates:
Dans une interview donnée à la presse européenne le 21 juin, Emmanuel Macron ne fait plus du départ de Bachar al-Assad un «préalable à tout». Une centaine d’intellectuels et de spécialistes de la région réagissent.
******
Emmanuel Macron doit conforter la légitimité de son pouvoir.
Sur les questions sociales, pour précipiter et gagner l’affrontement sur le Code du travail et l’augmentation de la CSG, la procédure des ordonnances offre un moyen certes peu démocratique, mais efficace pour précipiter la concrétisation de la volonté présidentielle.
Pour ce qui est des questions internationales, il ne lui est pas même besoin d’user de ce type d’opération faisant peu de cas du rôle du Parlement. La Vème République les inscrit dans un « domaine réservé » où le Président décide souverainement. Emmanuel Macron a donc toute liberté pour déployer son activisme.
Outre les rencontres avec les dirigeants de l’Union européenne, Angela Merkel en premier lieu, une visite remarquée auprès du roi du Maroc, des entretiens avec Trump et Poutine, le voici qui se saisit de la décisive question syrienne.
De longue date monte au sein des cercles dirigeants la volonté d’imposer un tournant à la diplomatie française : en finir avec un « moralisme », louable mais hors de propos, pour rallier la realpolitik. Admettre enfin que Bachar al-Assad est toujours au pouvoir, et que l’appui massif de la Russie et de l’Iran lui permettra d’y rester. Donc qu’il faut cesser de vouloir l’écarter, et s’appuyer sur l’argument que l’ennemi prioritaire c’est Daech et les « groupes terroristes » pour prôner un accord avec Poutine et Bachar !
François Hollande, au lendemain des attentats de novembre 2015, avait évoqué un tel changement de la politique française à l’égard de la Syrie. On en a entendu des échos dans les propos tenus par Jean-Yves Le Drian lorsqu’il était ministre de la Défense. Mais le cap avait avait été maintenu : pas de solution politique possible incluant de manière durable le maintien au pouvoir de Bachar al-Assad.
Dans un grand entretien accordé à huit journaux européens, dont le Figaro, Emmanuel Macron opère un tel tournant. « le vrai aggiornamento que j’ai fait à ce sujet, c’est que je n’ai pas énoncé que la destitution de Bachar al-Assad était un préalable à tout ». C’est maintenir une ambiguïté puisque les rapports de force avait déjà conduit à une inflexion de la position française, conduisant à envisager une solution de transition préservant l’existence du régime, mais préparant la mise à l’écart de Bachar al-Assad : non un « préalable », mais une conséquence de ladite transition. Emmanuel Macron affiche également une grande fermeté apparente à propos de l’usage des armes chimiques, qu’il s’engage à sanctionner, seul s’il le faut. Depuis 2013 et la reculade d’Obama on sait ce que vaut ce type de « ligne rouge » !
« Dans le même temps », deux idées décisives sont avancées :
1) Il n’existe pas de « successeur légitime » à Bachar al-Assad.
2) Cette autre concentrée en une formule terrible : « Bachar n’est pas l’ennemi de la France, mais l’ennemi du peuple syrien ».Donc pour résumer le propos du Président :
1) Il n’existe qu’un « ennemi absolu » : les « groupes terroristes » (un lexique extensif qui est celui de Poutine et de Bachar al-Assad).
2) Contre cet ennemi, il faut la coopération entre tous ceux qui le combattent, en premier lieu la Russie.
3) La solution politique à rechercher pour la Syrie ne saurait inclure le départ de Bachar al-Assad.Ainsi, alors que Bachar al-Assad est coupable de crimes de guerre et de crimes contre l’Humanité, que pour se maintenir au pouvoir il mène depuis six ans une guerre barbare contre son peuple, qui est cause de centaines de milliers de morts, de millions de déplacés, de la destruction du pays, lequel est livré à des occupations étrangères… Cela ne suffit pas selon Emmanuel Macron pour qu’il soit considéré comme un « ennemi de la France » !
L’auteur de Révolution a oublié la « guerre aux tyrans !»…
Faut-il rappeler au Président de la France qu’on ne combat pas le terrorisme en s’alliant à ceux qui en sont les fourriers. Et qu’un peuple n’a pas à confier aux dirigeants de ce monde le soin de désigner qui a la légitimité pour le gouverner.
Parce que Bachar al-Assad est l’ennemi du peuple syrien, il est notre ennemi. Il devrait être celui de la France, même présidée par Emmanuel Macron.Et c’est au seul peuple syrien de décider qui ne doit pas être au pouvoir, et qui peut légitimement y accéder.
Roland Merieux – Ollivier Mollaz – Francis Sitel.
Hamon: I’m Leaving the Socialist Party, not Socialism.
Alors qu’il lançait son Mouvement du 1er juillet, le vainqueur de la primaire a annoncé qu’il abandonnait le PS. (Libération)
Benoît Hamon, this year’s presidential candidate of the French Parti Socialiste (during which he scored a humiliating 6,36%), has announced his departure from the Party on Saturday afternoon at the first meeting of his Movement 1 st July, Reuilly in Paris. “I spent thirty long and beautiful years in the Socialist Party. I loved this party, I loved it passionately. Today, I am leaving the party but I do not leave Socialism and the Socialists, “ he said. They were nearly 10,000 present at the rally, according to the organisers. The former MP continued “I have not changed my beliefs, but it is time for me to turn the page.” He added, I’m not saying farewell to the Socialist Party activists.”
Hamon, with a background of many years of work in the PS, as a party spokesperson (2008 – 2012) including serving as a Minister (2012 – 2014) he played a leading role amongst its left-wing tendencies, including amongst the ‘frondeurs‘ who criticised the drift, fiscal orthodoxy, and market friendly politicies of President François Hollande and his governments, considers that he and his new association will be part of the foundations with which the French left will be able to build a new “common Home”, ( ‘la maison commune de la gauche’).
For the recent Presidential contest Hamon was selected as the candidate of the Parti Socialiste through the publicly open “primary” of the Belle Alliance populaire (BAP) launched by the PS and its close allies.
In the second round he won with 58,69% of the votes (1,181,872 ballots). His rival, former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, lost with 31,48% (831,871).
Despite signing an agreement to respect the result Valls (and it is alleged many others close to President Hollande) lost no opportunity to sabotage Hamon’s campaign. Amongst those who blamed the left-wing ‘frondeurs’ for the collapse of the French left vote, Valls was at the forefront of those who backed Emmanuel Macron. The right-winger left the PS a few days ago to more clearly show his support for the ‘centrist’ new President. Valls now sits as an MP as part of Macron’s La République en marche (Manuel Valls quitte le Parti socialiste et rejoint le groupe LRM à l’Assemblée).
Hamon accuses Macron of representing a social minority. His counter objective to bring together that social majority with the left to become a political majority.
“Notre objectif, c’est que la majorité sociale d’ici cinq ans, et pour commencer d’ici 2020 aux élections municipales, redevienne une majorité politique” (le Point)
Amongst those present at the new movement’s first public meeting were former Ministers Philippe Martin and Dominique Bertinotti, Green politicians, Jannick Jadot and former Green party (ELEV) leader, Cécile Duflot as well as representatives of the Communist Party (PCF) Fabien Guillaud-Bataille and (a former leading member of the Trotskyist Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, at present a member of the PCF) Christian Picquet.
More Le Monde: Benoît Hamon annonce qu’il quitte le Parti socialiste.
This report summarises the contributions of the meeting. All were agreed, despite their differences on the need for “new structures for the left” “reinventing” the and building anew the left. (tous, malgré leurs divergences, s’accordaient à dire que la gauche devait se « reconstruire », « se réinventer » et abandonner ses vieilles structures.) on the ruins of the PS which seems now to be like a Church without believers.
In a Tweet Hamon said to members of the PS that he did not say adieu but see you again
In his pre-Presidential book, Pour La Génération qui Vient (For the Coming Generation 2017), Hamon begins by describing his own generation (he is still in his forties), born after the post-War boom, a cohort that has known four decades of crisis. Yet today, he continues, politicians look backwards to an “imaginary” country, a land now ‘besieged” and in “decline”. The supporters of fear and nostalgia have to be faced up to, there is no “homme providential” (Man of Destiny) that can save us, no saviour, “Au culte assumé du chef, la gauche a toujours oppose la force d’un espoir collectif” (against the claims of the cult of the Leader, the left has always put forward the power of collective hope, Page 18).
We hope that Hamon can fulfill his objectives.
The new association, the Mouvement du 1er-Juillet, will be based on participative democracy and local committees.
Simone Veil, the revered French politician who survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and defied institutional sexism to push through a law legalising abortion in France, has died on June 30th 2017. She was 89.
A widely respected figure across the political divide, Veil was the first female leader of the European Parliament and the recipient of France’s highest distinctions, including a seat among the “Immortals” of the Académie française, the prestigious state-sponsored body overseeing the French language and usage. She was renowned for her endeavours to advance women’s rights and the gracious but steely resolve with which she overcame male resistance throughout a remarkable life scarred by personal tragedy.
As one of the more than 76,000 Jews deported from France during World War II, Veil appears on the Wall of Names at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, under her maiden name Simone Jacob. So do her father André, her mother Yvonne, her sister Madeleine and her brother Jean. Of the five, only Madeleine and Simone survived the ordeal, though Madeleine would die in a car crash just seven years after the war.
Simone was the youngest of four siblings, born in the French Riviera resort of Nice on July 13, 1927, in a family of non-practising Jews. Her father, an award-winning architect, had insisted her mother abandon her studies in chemistry after they married. Like most other Jews in France, he reluctantly obeyed orders once the Nazi-allied Vichy regime came to power in June 1940, registering his family on the infamous “Jewish file” – which would later help French police and the German Gestapo round up France’s Jews and deport them.
As French nationals living in the Italian occupation zone, the Jacob family avoided the first round-ups, which targeted foreign Jews, mainly in the northern half of France that was occupied by German troops. But they suffered the sting of anti-Semitic laws, which forced André Jacob out of work and led to Simone adopting the name Jacquier to conceal her origins.
The situation worsened after September 1943, when the Nazi occupiers swept all the way down to the Riviera. Simone, then aged 16, had only just passed her baccalaureate when she was arrested by two members of the SS on March 30, 1944. The Gestapo soon rounded up the rest of the family with the exception of Simone’s sister Denise, who had joined the Resistance in Lyon. Denise would later be detained and deported to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, from where she returned after the war.
..
Still only 17, Simone returned to France devastated by the loss of her parents and sister, but determined to pursue the career her mother had been denied. She studied law at the University of Paris and the Institut d’études politiques, where she met Antoine Veil (1926-2013), a future company manager and auditor. The couple married in October 1946, and would go on to have three sons, Jean, Nicolas, and Pierre-François.
Simone Veil began work as a lawyer before successfully passing the national examination to become a magistrate in 1956. She then took on a senior position at the National Penitentiary Administration, part of the Ministry of Justice, thereby securing a first platform to pursue a lifelong endeavour of advancing women’s rights. She notably strove to improve women’s conditions in French jails and, during the Algerian War of Independence, obtained the transfer to France of Algerian female prisoners amid reports of widespread abuse and rape.
Switching to the ministry’s department of civil affairs in 1964, Veil continued to push for gender parity in matters of parental control and adoption rights. A decade later, her appointment as health minister in the centre-right administration of President Valéry Giscard D’Estaing paved the way for her biggest political test. She first battled to ease access to contraception, then took on a hostile parliament to argue in favour of a woman’s right to have a legal abortion.
“No woman resorts to an abortion with a light heart. One only has to listen to them: it is always a tragedy,” Veil said in a now-famous opening address on November 26, 1974, before a National Assembly almost entirely composed of men. She added: “We can no longer shut our eyes to the 300,000 abortions that each year mutilate the women of this country, trample on its laws and humiliate or traumatise those who undergo them.”
After her hour-long address, the minister endured a torrent of abuse from members of her own centre-right coalition. One lawmaker claimed her law would “each year kill twice as many people as the Hiroshima bomb”. A second berated the Holocaust survivor for “choosing genocide”. Another still spoke of embryos “thrown into crematorium ovens”.
“I had no idea how much hatred I would stir,” Veil told French journalist Annick Cojean in 2004, reflecting on the vitriolic debate decades earlier. “There was so much hypocrisy in that chamber full of men, some of whom would secretly look for places where their mistresses could have an abortion.”
The bill was eventually passed, thanks to support from the left-wing opposition, though Veil had to withstand the affront of swastikas painted on her car and home. Today, the “loi Veil” enjoys overwhelming support in France, where few mainstream politicians dare to challenge it.
…she was elected to the Académie française, becoming only the sixth woman to join the prestigious “Immortals”, who preside over the French language. Her ceremonial sword was engraved with the motto of the French Republic (“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”), that of the European Union (“United in diversity”), and the five digits tattooed on her forearm in the inferno of Auschwitz, which she never removed.
Le Monde: Mort de Simone Veil, icône de la lutte pour les droits des femmes
Libération: Simone Veil, une femme debout.
The extreme right hated Simone Veil, and still do,
This is a recent Blog piece.
Un site d’extrême droite se réjouit de l’état de santé de Simone Veil
The Communist Party leader saluted Simone Veil.
Robbie Travers, Right-Wing Millennial to appear on QT to ‘balance’ left-wing firebrand Kerry-Anne?
Following the announcement that Kerry-Anne Mendoza is to appear on QT this week well established rumour has it that Robbie Travers will be on soon to offer ‘another view’ to the respected left-wing political commentator.
Oor Robbie….from the Official Travers’ Blog Site, “Things that Never Happened.”
Rapunzel hair and a dedicated social media following are just two of the many things that caught our eye about Robbie Travers.
A third year lawyer at Edinburgh University, the outspoken student has been coined the city’s biggest name on campus thanks largely to his unashamed political views. We’re not just talking politics chats around the pub table; Travers is a professional political commentator and consultant who founded his own think tank in 2014.
A combination of these things means Travers has nearly 10,000 followers on his Facebook page, where he regularly posts current affairs commentary (an example of which is embedded below).
Alongside his social media musings, he writes regularly for think tank the Gatestone Institute and sometimes the nationals (an article the LLB student wrote on the “dangerous fallacy” of university safe spaces featured in The Telegraph earlier this month). He is pals with Liz Kendall MP, and needs an administrative helper to sift through the emails he receives from journalists and clients.
Phew, that’s quite the bio. But, if that wasn’t BNOC-y enough for you, the Russell Group student has another claim to fame. In December, he posted on his Facebook page that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, had blocked him on Twitter.
Robbie, like Kerry-Anne, a master of the new social media, has also starred on the Victoria Derbyshire Show.
He has recently joined the Conservatives:
Valls, Humiliated by Macron, Now Faces Charge of Electoral Fraud.
Former French prime minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday he was leaving the Socialist Party, with a source adding that he would now be allied to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist group.
“Part of my political life is coming to an end. I am leaving the Socialist Party, or the Socialist Party is leaving me,” the 54-year-old told RTL radio.
Valls, who was prime minister under Socialist president Francois Hollande from 2014 to 2016, was rejected by Socialist voters in the party’s primary to choose a candidate for this year’s presidential election.
The party chose hard-left candidate Benoit Hamon instead and he failed to reach the run-off of the presidential election in May as France’s two main parties fell at the first hurdle for the first time since 1958.
Emmanuel Macron sealed the humiliation of his Socialist former bosses yesterday when Manuel Valls was allowed to sit with the president’s MPs in parliament but excluded from any post of responsibility.
Mr Valls, right, the former prime minister whose own presidential ambitions were sunk by his young economy minister, said that he was quitting the Socialist party and would sit as an ally of La République en Marche, Mr Macron’s new centrist group.
“Part of my political life is coming to an end,” Mr Valls, who served for nearly three years as President Hollande’s prime minister, said. “I am leaving the Socialist Party, or the Socialist Party is leaving me.”
His passenger status with the all-conquering La République en Marche is likely to be bitter…
The Times
Latest news:
Valls Faces Challenge to his election. His La France insoumise (FI) opponent Farida Amrani who lost out to Valls in the recent legislative contest by a narrow 139 votes, alleges forged signatures, voter intimidation and the shredding of ballot papers cast for his opponents.
Farida Amrani a déposé un recours contre l’élection de Manuel Valls : “Des dizaines de signatures ne correspondent pas” Radio Bleu.
Législatives : Farida Amrani aurait des photos et vidéos contre Manuel Valls
La candidate de La France insoumise dépose un recours pour faire annuler la victoire de son adversaire dans la 1re circonscription de l’Essonne. RTL
It has been the long-standing view of Tendance Coatesy that ‘political confusionism’ has been on the rise in the last decade. This is a trend – with many historical precedents – for the left to get mixed up in conspiracy theories, and leaning towards the right, if not explicitly endorsing racist and fascist views.
Established enough in some countries to have led to people in France coining the word, “confusionnisme“, and “complotiste“, for those obsessed with conspiracies, or plots, the English word derived from “complot”, there’s some pretty hairy examples in the Hexagone.
Perhaps the best known is Alain Soral’s Égalité et Réconciliation associated with the ‘comedian’ Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala . Soral variously decsirbes himself as left-wing nationalist – he is a strong anti-EU ‘sovereigntist’, his publications and sites are full of conspiracy theories. Soral is both a supporter of Assad in Syria, Vladimir Putin, the Italian fascist CasaPound Italia movement, which began as a squat in Italy, and expresses admiration for Hugo Chávez (Hommage à Hugo Chavez). He is also very, very, ‘anti-Zionist’, presenting a Liste antisioniste with Dieudonné and a prominent Shiite, Yahia Gouasmi, for the 2009 European election. This campaign, which scored its highest vote at 2,83% in Saint Denis, is said to have been financed by the Iranian government.
Until recently this kind of confusionism seemed to have been confined to the margins in the English speaking world. On these strident fringes one section of the US left seems bent on giving a platform to the notorious Diana Johnstone. During the recent French presidential campaign she spoke up for Marine Le Pen’s ‘left wing’ politics on the ‘left-wing’ site Counterpunch. Another individual James Petras, has joined the ranks. The academic, professor of Sociology, active in many leftist causes, wrote an article published on the 1st of May, Twenty Truths about Marine Le Pen in praise of the French far-right.
Now Cynthia McKinney, who has served as a Democratic Party Congresswoman (2005 – 2007), and was Green Party nominee in the 2008 Presidential election, with 0.12% of the votes cast, has taken confusionism to a much wider audience.
As this post illustrates:
PLEASE LIKE Cynthia McKinney’s FAN page!
Cynthia’s website: http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com
This is her source:
This article was first published on Global Research June 1, 2011
(Part one of a four-part series)
The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.
According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]
So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?
This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.
The Morgan financial octopus wrapped its tentacles quickly around the globe. Morgan Grenfell operated in London. Morgan et Ce ruled Paris. The Rothschild’s Lambert cousins set up Drexel & Company in Philadelphia.
For those who wish to read the full content of this drivel here is the link: The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families.
Do not forget: Next Week: Part II: Freemasons & The Bank of the United States!
There comes a time in any serious activist’s busy life when they must address the key issues of the class struggle.
Be there!
(Thanks to Cde BW).
Background reading.
THE QUEST FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
July 31st 2015 Posadists Today.
“The ability to see has progressed not so much from the optical, but from the social point of view. It is true that we can see today thousands of kilometres away with new instruments and better mathematics. The true vision, however, is that of Marx: Marx who saw that capitalism would be destroyed.” J. Posadas.
The Posadiststoday.com give importance to the recent discovery of Kepler-452b, an exceptional exoplanet in the constellation of Cygnus, with an Earth-like year and a Sun-like star. This event took place around the time of the publication of the new NASA photos of Pluto and its Moons. And on 2nd of July 2015, the Russian PROGRESS spacecraft M-28M cargo ship had safely reached the International Space Station.
Encouraged by those capital events, we have chosen to summarise (immediately below) an extract from the journal LE MONDE of 21.7.2015 about the human quest for intelligence in the universe. We give importance to this article because J Posadas wrote many fundamental Marxist texts on this subject – texts which represent a unique and historic contribution to the Marxist method. To illustrate the point, we reproduce further below two texts by him entitled: “Flying Saucers, the Process of Matter and Energy, Science and Socialism”, J Posadas, 26.6.1968 – and “Childbearing in space, the confidence of humanity, and Socialism”, J Posadas, 12.8.1978.
Today new ideologues and renegades join the old swamp of opportunism; Karl Kautsky finds a new champion in Lars T Lih. Max Shachtman and Raya Dunayevskaya, previously only defended by Sean Matgamna, find new adherents in Cyril Smith, The Commune, Permanent Revolution, the Movement for Socialism, etc. István Mészáros and Cliff Slaughter et al seek to trump the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky with the counter-revolutionary reformist dross of history from the likes of Kautsky. IDOT does battle with all these petty bourgeois ideologues,
enemies of humanity’s communist future.
Text of article following above here.
The Marxist theory of the state: Deformed and Degenerated Workers’ States and Capitalist States/.Reply to RCIT Part 3 (assessment also of the positions of Workers Power/LFI, Ted Grant and the Socialist Party/CWI, Socialist Appeal/IMT, the Spart family ICL/IBT/IG, Mandelites/USFI/US SWP, David North’s SEP/WSWS/ICFI and a passing look at the Cliffite UK SWP).
The New Worker
Democratic Korea’s Path of Peace and Unity.
Update: Britain on the brink
To understand the gravity of the tasks that fall to the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat in the present conjuncture we can only cite the latest Socialist Appeal.
“In developments of such magnitude twenty years are more than a day – though later on days may come again in which twenty years are embedded.” (Karl Marx, 9 April 1863)”
The British ruling class, who have ruled Britain for the last 200 years, are also gripped by a sense of despair and despondency, as things go from bad to worse. In the 1930s, Trotsky referred to the ruling class “tobogganing towards catastrophe,” which is an apt expression. He went on to say: “The economy, the state, the politics of the bourgeoisie and its international relations are completely blighted by a social crisis, characteristic of a pre-revolutionary state of society.” (The Transitional Programme)
In many ways, we are faced with a similar situation unfolding today. In fact, the events in Britain have a striking resemblance to the situation that existed in 1931, which Trotsky described as a pre-revolutionary situation. Despite all the power in their hands, the capitalist establishment have seemingly lost control of the situation. They have certainly lost control over the Labour Party, which they regarded in the past as a useful prop to the capitalist system.
Phil’s latest merits a wide audience.
The Alt-Left: A Critical Appreciation
Among the big winners of the general election are the wave of new blogs collectively dubbed the “alt-left”. You know who I’m talking about. The Canary, Skwawkbox, Novara, Evolve Politics and Another Angry Voice have been singled out by the mainstream as the authentic voices of the new socialism that has seized hold of the Labour Party and powered it to its highest number of votes for 20 years. Despite these blogs being around for some time (AAV since 2010, Skwawkbox 2012) they constitute part of the third age of blogging, which saw outsiders seemingly appear from nowhere to muscle in on online comment. In a short period of time, they have all carved out serious audiences, according to Buzzfeed’s in-depth feature (itself a product of the third wave). How, and why is it – Novara’s Aaron Bastani aside – they are all outsiders? Why didn’t established radical journalists, other socialist blogs, or the regular output of the far left become key artefacts of the Corbynist zeitgeist? It’s because of how this “outsiderness” relates to their content which, in turn, has found substantial audiences.
Novera, Phil comments, operates in the more traditional field of political analysis. The present Page offers on article that suggests that present outage over Grenfell Tower and the issue of housing, has something in common with the Spanish mass movement, the Indignados,or Movimiento 15-M or which involved millions of people, in protests against the ruling parties’ corruption, incompetence and formed the groundwork for Podemos, although how the “current wave of indignation will crystallise” in the UK is left open (Britain’s Indignant Moment? Grenfell, Neoliberalism and the New Common Sense).
One can, with regret or not, say that last week’s Day of Rage, was not much of a sign of such a movement.
Novera also includes a piece by Richard Seymour that offers a sober and pretty decent analysis of the rise of Corbyn in conditions where such protests were absent, or marginal. After the Miliband defeat, “he had an analysis not only of the grimly familiar litany of austerity’s failures but also of Labour’s crisis. He understood it as a crisis of the roots, a failure to connect to the activists and movements without whom Labour was just a professional political elite obsessed with psephology and spin.” Leaving aside the contentious claim that it was “he” Corbyn rather than Team Corbyn, that propelled the successful campaign for the Labour leadership, Seymour points out rightly, that there emerged a “protest movement in itself, attracting enormous rallies of the angry and disaffected Labour base in that that post-election, “
Unfortunately there is a lot of speculation – wishful thinking would be a better term – in Seymour’s conclusions, “He (Corbyn) has found hidden reservoirs of support and strength for the Left, raw materials for social transformation. In doing so, he has also exposed the inherent fragility of the supposedly indomitable, terrifying Tory machine, accentuating its inherited crises and long term decline, and potentially hastening the end of its role as a viable party of government.” (Where We Go From Here.)
These examples perhaps pass the line between taking the time to grasp political reality and expressing hopes and wishes for the future, but optimism is often welcome even if the will may overreach itself. One might ask, were one from these quarter, the radical left, if a movement focused on elections, and creating a mass party with some social activism, is really something new and path breaking in European social democracy? Labour’s programme that while offering a series of reforms and nationalisations, is some respects to the right of this year’s unfortunate French Socialist Presidential candidate, Benoît Hamon, 6,4%, which offered Basic Income, a Europe-wide minimum wage, and the legalisation of cannabis amongst its policies
The Canary, strikingly, passes well beyond the reality principle, “In one sentence, Corbyn drops a truth bomb that should have the Tories running for the hills.”
The phrase is, apparently, “Yes, the £10 an hour living wage, real living wage, is correct and also should apply to all workers, because I don’t think young people eat less than old people – that’s my experience anyway.
Other stories, again from the Canary, live up to the point that, “What they all share is a default (and correct) assumption that the system is rigged and the powers-that-be will conspire, collude, and collaborate to forever gerrymander privilege for themselves and their cronies. The stock-in-trade for the blogs are stories that reinforce this healthy scepticism.”
Witness, the headline, “We’ve been investigating the evidence about the Grenfell fire. And what we’ve found is numbing.
It is hard to find anything in this article that is not common knowledge, broadcast in the MSM.
Another Angry Voice is simply what its name gives, enraged: “Taking back control” by handing control of HS2 to one of three foreign governments.
Evolve Politics is a front for a nationalist ideology, called ‘sovereigntism’ which considers that the British Parliament ‘taking back control’ from the EU, Brexit, is a step forward.
In this version of National Parliamentary Socialism the EU is an obstacle to the left and those who want a ‘soft Brexit’ with the UK in the single market are out to stab Corbyn in the back.
Yet what of the fact that young people and most Labour members backed the EU, including the radical left who supported Another Europe is Possible?
This is is the answer: Brexit, when backed by anti-EU ‘progressives’ is really ‘internationalist’.
Those who claim that the majority of Labour’s new membership backed remaining in the EU so Corbyn had to follow suit fail to grasp the complex dynamics of the situation. If Corbyn had put forward a socialist leave position, it would have reconstituted the party membership on different lines, possibly winning back much of UKIP’s voter base to a progressive position. Many of the progressive remain voters as well, who see the EU in terms of their own feelings of internationalism, of solidarity with workers and young people in other countries, could also have been won to a socialist leave position.
Against the ‘Blairite’ supporters of the EU who “will use the single market as a tool to sabotage Corbyn’s programme” action is needed.
This means campaigning for mandatory reselection of the Blairite MPs and a Brexit in the interest of the working class
Now it is not generally a good idea for other bloggers educated in the school of hard-blows that was the UK Left Network – whose ‘style’ makes any of the above look tame – to comment critically about those trying to make original points, from the left, about politics. That is the function of Blogs and the wider democratisation of news and opinion that the Web encourages. But Third Age bloggers are no more above criticism than the MSM. We could explore other sites, such as We demand UK, Britain is the People, Little Britain First. PigGate 2, Jeremy Corbyn The People’s PM, Mock the Right, The Daily Politik, Red Labour, Walking the Breadline, The Ragged Trousered Philanderer, Nye Bevan News.
But the ones we have singled out, from Phil’s list have the clearest ambition to be something that resembles the 1960s and 1970s underground press, to be alternative media. In present conditions they aim as high as to offer their own news.
It’s in this respect that Phil points us to some substantial points made by one Bob Pitt, well-known in this parish.
It is an exceptional, and as Phil says, “forensic” demolition of one site, Skwarkbox.
Skwawkbox — an embarrassment to the Left
The almost uniform hostility that Jeremy Corbyn has faced from the press and broadcast media since his election as Labour leader (only slightly mitigated by the party’s impressive showing in the general election) has given a boost to alternative news media whose declared aim is to defend Corbyn’s politics and nail the lies of the “MSM”. Novara Media, The Canary, Evolve Politics, Another Angry Voice and The Skwawkbox are notable examples.
The influence of these alt-left sites shouldn’t be underestimated. In the run-up to the general election BuzzFeed News reported that they were attracting “enormous audiences”. The Skwawkbox, a one-man operation apparently run by a Labour Party member from Liverpool, featured in a BBC News At Ten report, which stated that “many of his articles go viral, with some achieving hundreds of thousands of readers”.
Comrade Pitt registers this impact on the wider media,
On Saturday, Skawkbox also made the front page of the Daily Telegraph, where it was presented in a rather less favourable light. Taking its cue from the Guido Fawkes website, the Telegraph ran a report titled “Corbyn-backers spread ‘fake news’ about blaze toll”, which attacked Skwawkbox’s coverage of the Grenfell Tower fire. The story was then recycled by the Sunday Express which similarly accused Corbyn supporters of misreporting the tragedy.
Without recounting the full story we note.
On 16 June, in an article headed “Video: Govt puts ‘D-notice’ gag on real #Grenfell death toll #nationalsecurity”, Skwawkbox took up the claim made by grime MC Saskilla on the BBC Victoria Derbyshire programme that the number of victims in the Grenfell Tower fire was far greater than had yet been officially admitted, with as many as 200 people having died.
Skwawkbox used this claim to give credence to rumours that the government was engaged in an attempt to prevent the media reporting the true extent of the disaster: “At the same time, multiple sources told the SKWAWKBOX that the government has placed a ‘D-notice’ (sometimes called a ‘DA Notice’) on the real number of deaths in the blaze.”
When the tale fell apart this was the reaction,
Did Skwawkbox apologise for getting the story wrong and offer assurances that there would be no repetition of this stupid and provocative reporting? You must be joking. Instead, Skwawkbox’s proprietor was stung by the well-deserved criticism of his article into posting an indignant defence of his shoddy journalistic methods. In a quite astonishing display of chutzpah, he declared that he himself had been the victim of “fake news”!
Nowhere, he complained, did he claim that the government had imposed a D-Notice on media coverage of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. He insisted that he had merely raised the possibility that a D-Notice could have been issued. Did he not write “if it is true that the government has issued a D-notice”? Well, yes, he did — but that was immediately followed by the words “and every instinct is screaming that it is”! The author then proceeded on the basis of that assumption to outline his theories about the government’s motives for imposing a media gag.
The former Editor of What Next? and Islamophobia Watch, covers a few more tall tales and concludes,
But I stopped following Skwawkbox last September after it published ludicrous claims based on dodgy maths about vast numbers of people being excluded from the Labour leadership election (“no fewer than 67,000 eligible voters have not received a vote — over 16% of the Labour electorate”), followed by the baseless accusation of a cover-up by party officials.
That, unfortunately, is how Skwawkbox operates — hyping up stories in order to generate clickbait headlines, with little or no concern for accuracy, often combining this with unsubstantiated claims that the authorities are involved in some sort of conspiracy. The evident purpose of this is to whip up hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn’s political opponents in order to bolster his leadership.
Skwawkbox’s approach is entirely counterproductive. Far from defending Corbyn against right-wing attacks, this irresponsible nonsense just provides ammunition for his enemies, allowing them to portray the Labour leader’s supporters as a bunch of liars and political fantasists. It also degrades the political culture of the left, by sidelining serious analysis and debate in favour of false polemics and crackpot conspiracy theories.
Skwawkbox has a featured post that includes a tweet from an admirer: “This blog is journalism as it should be. True, fair, accurate and in the public interest.” The reality, however, is that Skwawkbox functions as a sort of left-wing mirror image of the right-wing tabloid press, or of alt-right sites like Breitbart News. It employs the same unscrupulous, sensationalist journalistic methods, but for opposite political ends. Skwawkbox appears incapable of grasping that socialist aims cannot be achieved by such anti-socialist means.
Phil by contrast remarks of the alt-left Blogs,
The size of their audience is one reason why they cannot be dismissed with a flick of the polemical wrist. The other is their impact on the political process. Despite the conspiratorial thinking, they have proven effective in cohering armies of social media activists around the Corbyn project. During the election, they inspired and encouraged thousands of peoples to get active in campaigns independently of the herculean mobilisation efforts of Momentum. Those activists are not disappearing either. They’re turning up to constituency meetings in increasing numbers and are steadily making their presence felt. In short, the new blogs top the collective propaganda efforts of established left activism and are helping touch off a mass radicalisation, and that is not to be sniffed at.
This Blog tends to agree with cde Pitt’s critical stand
Conspiratorial thinking, of the kind painfully exhibited in Skwawkbox, and just plain sloppy playing around with facts, is not just to be sniffed at: it is to be opposed.
The Canary gave space to this Opinion in February this year:
Donald Trump is trying a move from Hitler’s playbook, and the media gifted it to him
At the end is this sentence: We actively invite you to question what you read at The Canary, to follow the hyperlinks we reference, and to search for more information.
Hitler’s playbook is not available on-line.
The End of the Socialist Party? Not so sure….
The French Socialist Party (PS) is still in the throes of its historic rout in this year’s Presidential and Legislative elections.
While some of its representatives have switched sides and now support centrist President Macron, others are calling for a ‘refoundation’ of the party.
The PS will not support a vote of confidence in the government of Eduouard Phillipe, although sufficient ambiguity has been left open for those who will abstain instead of actively voting against.
For former First Secretary of the PS, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, interviewed in Libération today, the party must remain socialist, green and pro-European. Its future lies in resisting both the “bonapartisme social-libéral” of d’Emmanuel Macron and the (leftist) “gauchisme autoritaire de Jean-Luc Mélenchon”. He floats the idea of “Launching a movement that will lead to a new party.” (Il faut déclencher un mouvement pour déboucher sur un nouveau parti.)
Former Presidential candidate Benoît Hamon – 6,36 % in those elections, he lost his seat in the Parliamentary contest – has created a new movement. This “transpartisan” body, which aims to draw in support and debate from the whole left, will hold its first meeting on the 1st of July. Also on the PS left, Arnaud Montebourg, has called for the party to adopt radical policies, an internal shake-up rather than an approach outside its organisation. His proposals, centring around ‘Inventing a new left”, have so far attracted 700 PS supporters (PS: des proches d’Arnaud Montebourg veulent inventer “la gauche nouvelle”.
The Parti Socialiste’s National Council meets today (Saturday).
Some commentators suggest that, given its long existence, structural roots in civil society, and no obvious signs of internal collapse, that the Parti Socialiste, despite its reduction to 34 MPs and 7,44% of the vote in the Legislatives, is not going to disappear. Re-branding, negotiating a new ‘synthesis’ of ideas, or reaching out to other parts of the left, or a further haemorrhageing to Macron, will take time. To begin with. Where they will end up is very far from clear.
Ramadan Faces, “campaign by far-right circles, fundamentalist secularists, inveterate Zionists, lying ex-Muslims…”
Tariq Ramadan (Arabic: طارق رمضان; born 26 August 1962) is a Swiss academic, philosopher and writer. He is the professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and also teaches at the Oxford Faculty of Theology. He is a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies (Qatar), the Université Mundiapolis (Morocco) and several other universities around world. He is also a senior research fellow at Doshisha University (Japan). He is the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), based in Doha.[3] He is a member of the UK Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief.[4] He was elected by Time magazine in 2000 as one of the seven religious innovators of the 21st century and in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world[5] and by Foreign Policy magazine (2005, 2006, 2008-2010, 2012-2015) as one of the top 100 most influential thinkers in the world and Global Thinkers. (Wikipedia)
To get an idea of why this Blog has nothing but disdain for Ramadan his reaction to the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher is a good place to start,
Speaking on the BBC’s Today Programme earlier this morning, Prof Ramadan condemned the attack on the Paris headquarters of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, saying that, “these are very difficult times and a very sad situation” and expressing his “deepest sympathy for the victims’ families.”
“We must start by condemning what happened and what was done in the name of Islam… what they did in fact was to betray our principles, our values and the overall message of Islam,” he stated.
…
Prof Ramadan also outlined the need for a more nuanced reaction to the atrocities, and for there to be a real attempt to understand the grievances that might lead such people to commit such extreme acts of violence.
The Oxford Don is perhaps best known for calling for a “moratorium” – not the abolition – of some Sharia law penalties as stoning people to death (An International call for Moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in the Islamic World. 2005)
A new controversy about Islamic Legality began last week (June the 14th).
It has not stopped growing.
… on Monday, influential Islamist thinker and activist Tariq Ramadan released a 10 minute video on Facebook expressing support for Elsayed staying on. Ramadan stated Muslim leaders who advocate for FGM should be understood as “brothers,” part of “our community” and Muslims who disagree should engage them with “internal discussion” and are instructed “not to expose them.” Here are some of the highlights from this video.
The author continued,
First Ramadan starts by framing opposition to FGM as a critique coming from “outside the community” and stating that he opposes the calls for firing Elsayed:
“I’m reacting to what I heard and some questions that I had about what happened in Washington with this controversy round a shaykh who was not yet fired – I hope he is not going to be, but he was asked to stop preaching and to stop being active within the community or within the mosque in Washington. And I think that some of the brothers and the sisters even wrote a letter after the controversy around female genital mutilation and excision asking for him to be fired from the mosque and reacting to a video that was posted about what he said in the gathering with Muslim students, men and women. Let me say three things about this because I think this [sic] are critical times and we have to be quite serious about the way we are reacting to controversies and the way we are reacting to some critiques that are coming from outside the community and we have to ask ourselves what we are doing.”
Next Ramadan makes his argument that because FGM is defended by some Muslim scholars it qualifies as “part of our tradition” and is therefore worthy of being “promoted”:
“My position as a Muslim scholar, my position: it’s wrong that we should not promote this because I think that first, it’s not in the Koran and second, it’s part of the Sunnah that we have, and it’s something that is done in African countries, among the Christians and the Muslims and it’s not religious. Having said that, I cannot deny the fact that some scholars at the highest levels of their institutional position are supporting the fact that this is possible that you can go for excision, not to go up to the mutilation and infibulation as it is known in African countries, but we have this in our tradition and it’s part of the internal discussion that we need to have. So to please people who are attacking Islam by saying ‘Oh no, no, no, this is not Islamic. It’s illegal,’ it’s not even faithful to our tradition. We need to have an internal discussion… So, once again, we have to be serious. Any one of the six months of any basic Islamic training, no one can say it’s not part of our tradition. It’s controversial, it’s discussed… you need to take a position, but you then cannot deny the fact that this is something which is part of our tradition.”
Then Ramadan shifts to attacking opponents of FGM, decrying them as Islamophobes, attacking MEMRI by name, and criticizing Muslims for wanting “to be perceived as moderate, open-minded”:
“You need to ask yourself: who are these people who are using videos, putting them and creating controversy? If you are reacting only when Islamophobes – and the people, MEMRI, we know who they are, we know what they want to do, we know in which way they want to make Islam problems, not only in the United States of America but around the world through the translation, distorting and covering in ways that are very specific, they have a very specific objective, they have a very specific way of dealing with scholars, intellectuals, and Islam. These are Islamophobes, and you react to them by just exposing one of your leaders, a shaykh that has been serving the community for more than 30 years and you ask for him to be fired so quickly just to be on the safe side of the political discussion in the United States of America by saying ‘Oh, we have nothing to do with this’ while your tradition is there and it’s discussed within your tradition and whoever is attacking you at least you have to be cautious with the people who are using this and are putting you in a situation which is yes, problematic, but you have to stand for your rights to have opinions, and at least to have internal discussion and not to react so quickly to these issues… And the last thing that I wanted to say: we disagree. I don’t agree with the statement. I don’t with one brother, I don’t agree with one leader. Can’t we take the time to have an internal discussion? To say ‘Look we are not going to respond to the controversy, we are not going to fire the people just to be on the safe side and to be perceived as moderate, as open-minded.'”
Ramadan’s concluding comments are perhaps the most revealing [emphasis added]:
At least we take the time and we let the people know these are internal issues, these are discussions that we want to have among ourselves and it’s not for you to decide when we have to fire somebody or even what are our priorities, because at the end of the day the context is now deciding for us, and people around us are deciding for us what are our priorities, what are the main principle of Islam, and we are not able to come with dignity, with consistency, with confidence and say, ‘Ok, this is who we are, we don’t have all the same opinions, there are discussions, there are internal discussions, we will take our decision, we will have our Shura, our deliberation with it, and it is for us to decide, not for Islamophobes, not for racists, not for people who have political agendas that are now deciding for us… The way you have to be dignified as a Muslim is to rely on him [points upward] to be consistent with yourself and to respect your brothers, not to expose them, not to expose your sisters, even though you disagree, even though you don’t agree. And no double standards, no selective indignation, or selective rejection of some of our brothers because they are exposed outside. And as to our internal business, we talk about it but we let the people, we let the brothers say whatever they want to say.
This insistence on “no double standards” is loaded with irony, as double standards are inherent in Ramadan’s worldview. He advocates for one moral standard for his Muslim “brothers” and “sisters” to engage in “internal discussion” and for imams to “say whatever they want to say.” But for non-Muslims who oppose the barbaric (and illegal) practice of FGM – that makes one a racist and “Islamophobe.”
The international religious authority has tweeted,
Ramadan’s further reply:
I thought it was not needed as I repeated three times in the video that I do not support either excision or FGM. In any way and I have been involved around the world against both practises. I disagree as well with the comments made by Shaykh Shaker about hyper-sexuality. Yet, this was not my point and I made it clear in the video. To say this discussion has no ground within the Islamic tradition is wrong : it has been debated and still is. Even though I am against these practises as I think it is not the right Islamic interpretation, it cannot be denied that it was condoned by some Muslim scholars (even contemporary ones). So let us be clear about it and address the issue the way it should be, in a clear, wise and scholarly manner. My other point was about our reactive way to deal with issue when vicious islamophobic agencies, such as MEMRI, are attacking people and leaders within the Muslim community. This is the time where we should be wise and decide for ourselves how we have to deal with these issues and prioritise our struggles. Instead of exposing people, let us have an open internal debate even if it has to be heated, tough with no compromise. This is where I stand and I hope it is clear enough by now.
In a more forthright vein, in French the scholar talks of,
A new campaign by far-right circles, fundamentalist secularists, inveterate Zionists, lying ex-Muslims, and propagandists from all sides…claims that I am a defender of female genital mutilation! Not satisfied with altering my remarks and twisting their meaning, these imposters are waging a campaign in all directions, at Muslims, at Africans, and my self…I have campaigned for 30 years in Africa, and across the world against female circumcision, and all forms of mutilation. These claims are abject smears. But there is no greater deafness than the deafness of liars, racists and the dishonest.
One assumes that the erudite savant was referring to this report in French language media,
Ramadan’s response is, one might observe, in just the kind of tone which we need in the present climate.
#JusticeForGrenfell #Justice4Grenfell
We returned to the site today, speaking with people who live locally, people who came from all sides of London & outside. All races and ethnicities, all faiths and none, migrants and citizens, ALL of us coming together to grieve, to connect, and to fight so this never happens again. ALL of us are London, we are ALL Britain.
This government has presided over thousands of deaths from 7 years of austerity and anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant racism and bigotry. THEY NEED TO GO. NOW.
* MARCH * STRIKE * WALK OUT *
21/06/17 Queens speech – march on Parliament. We march from Shepherds Bush to Westminster.We have came out and shown in the last elections what society we want: progressive, equal, just, hopeful. And we will fight for it by any means necessary. May’s coalition of millionaires & bigots must go, if we are to win a progressive hopeful future for all.
On Wednesday 21st
Bring your rage, bring your anger, bring your hurt, we will be loud and bold, speaking the only language the rich and powerful understand: a mass integrated movement in the streets.
#DayOfRagehttps://www.facebook.com/events/1490621807662608/?ti=icl
The Daily Mail boils with its own rage,
If Jeremy Corbyn truly believed in democracy, he’d roundly condemn today’s ‘Day of Rage’, organised by the storm troops of the hard Left to bring London to a halt and help overthrow the Government.
Leave aside the sickening way his Marxist supporters have exploited the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire to promote their hate-filled agenda – ‘hijacking our grief’, in the words of local residents and churches.
The very thought of a revolutionary mob seeking to overturn an election result should horrify anyone who cherishes our constitution and rule of law.
Yet from the Labour leader, deafening silence. Worse, he has pandered to protesters’ thirst for class war by echoing their demands to seize the empty homes of the rich.
As for Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, yes, he has said half-heartedly that he ‘repudiates’ the Day of Rage. Yet as the Mail reveals, he has given his backing in the past to the protest’s organisers from the chillingly-named Movement for Justice by Any Means Necessary.
Meanwhile, this man who would be chancellor has egged on union militants to topple Theresa May in a ‘Red October’, with mass protests and a summer of strikes that could do untold harm to the economy.During the election, Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell presented themselves as misunderstood idealists. How quickly the mask has slipped. And what a warning to anyone tempted to give them power.
The Evening Standard adds,
Stand Up To Racism has organised a demo for 6pm called: “Protest the Queen’s speech – no to May/DUP racism & bigotry!”
London Socialist Party is hosting a Facebook event called “May Must Go! Protest the Queen’s Speech” which is scheduled for 4pm.
One assumes they are both going to protest against the Queen’s Speech, unless they are organising the event from Washington DC.
Grenfell Tower fire: Local residents do not want their ‘grief hijacked’ by ‘Day of Rage’ protest
This report is more significant, from Get West London.
“They’re angry, they’re grieving but they are working to bring about positive change”
Some of the residents who have been affected by the fatal Grenfell Tower fire , have talked about having their ‘grief hijacked’ following the announcement of the ‘Day of Rage’ protest outside the Houses of Parliament.
According to the Clement James Centre, a local educational charity which has provided temporary shelter for residents, those affected by the fire do not support the planned protest.
…
Posting on Twitter, the Clement James Centre said: “There has been a ‘Day of Rage’ announced for Wednesday, trying to bring London to a standstill.
“We cannot emphasise enough how against this many of the affected residents we’ve spoken to are and they do not want their grief hijacked for any violent or destructive means.
They’re angry, they’re grieving but they are working to bring about positive change and action through conversations with the right people.
“They want their voices about this to be heard just as loudly.
“If the streets are closed, we cannot effectively continue our aid operation in the area, and if any violence ensues, the issue takes a whole new direction.”
The charity also spoke of a #peaceforlatimer trend, where the local community are trying white ribbons around their wrists to ensure their message is heard.
Others have condemned the “Day of Rage” protest, Facebook user, Joanne Green posted on the event, saying: “Rioting will not work. It will destroy the last 2 years of hard work that we have done to get this close to a real Revolution as is possible.”
To which the event organisers replied: “Where exactly are you seeing that we are calling for a ‘riot’?
“We don’t let the fears of those who oppress us determine how we fight”
Activists will also take note of the following, which I agree wholeheartedly with:
Another post on the event, by London Black Revs, who describe themselves on Facebook as a “self-determined working class URBAN and strictly working class revolutionary organisation”, says: “Were residents consulted on this?
“They are really against having a demonstration without being told, asked or leading it, especially for other political agendas, which may or may not be important.
“There is a lot of anger locally that things are being done in Grenfell’s name and they’ve not had the time to even bury their family members.”
But,
The organisers replied by saying: “We have been in the community for several days now, speaking to hundreds of people, many who have friends and loved ones missing or dead.
“We’ve had tonnes of support, people taking flyers, saying they are coming, wanting to speak out about their experiences.”
*****
This Wikipedia account of the Movement for Justice is said to be broadly correct – according to our sources.
One should add that their site, Movement for Justice, does not seem to have been updated since 2013, and people indicate that they may have less than a dozen supporters.
Movement for Justice by Any Means Necessary
“The Movement for Justice was set up in 1995 by people around the Kingsway College Student Union in the London Borough of Camden to tackle racism in institutional and established forms. The group confronted organised fascism as well as death in custody and wider racism to black people as well as travellers, refugees and asylum seekers. It is also the sister group to the American organization The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which has been accused of being a cult by former members. Movement for Justice is headed up by members of the Revolutionary Internationalist League (RIL), a Trotskyist group.”
The origins of this group are obscure even by Trotskist standards<
“The Workers Internationalist League was a Trotskyist group in Britain founded in the summer of 1983 by the Internationalist Faction of the Workers Socialist League. It was the British affiliate of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee until that body was renamed the International Trotskyist Committee.
Although a small group, it immediately moved to producing a paper which was called Workers’ International News in mimicry of the magazine of the war-time Workers International League. For a small group of no more than 35 members this was a major undertaking.
The main concern of the new group was to clarify its ideas and where to concentrate their work. Therefore the question of how to orient to the Labour Party was a major area of debate. On the one hand, comrades around Mike Jones, close to the views of the Workers’ Party (Argentina) (PO), were for working in the Labour Party Young Socialists and were hostile to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International forces then in the Labour Party. This was an important question for the group as the Italian section of the TILC moved to join the USFI group in that country. On the other extreme of the group, Chris Erswell was supportive of the Italian TILC group’s orientation.
Meanwhile the senior leader of the WIL, Pete Flack, found himself isolated when the rest of the National Committee opposed the Italian tactic of fusion with the USFI. The WIL was being pulled in different directions by other Trotskyist tendencies, with the TILC, PO and the Workers Power group all representing different poles of attraction. This became obvious at the first national conference of the group, held in December 1983.
The conference solved none of the problems of the group and in January 1984 eleven supporters of the TILC left the WIL to establish the Workers International Review Group. The TILC refused to make them their official British section, instead choosing TILC sympathisers still in the WIL. They formed a Tendency for Political Clarification which was itself clarified when 3 of its 5 members left to join Workers Power. The remaining two members of the tendency then formed a Liaison Committee with the Workers International Review Group which led to the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist League in November 1984,[2] which was the British section of the International Trotskyist Committee (formed that summer from the TILC) until its split in 1991. The rump WIL would seem to have expired in the meantime.
The WSL was originally a faction inside the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.
Seats in the Assemblée Nationale.
| Nuances de candidats | Nombre de sièges |
|---|---|
| Extrême gauche | 0 |
| Parti communiste français | 10 |
| La France insoumise | 17 |
| Parti socialiste | 29 |
| Parti radical de gauche | 3 |
| Divers gauche | 12 |
| Ecologiste | 1 |
| Divers | 3 |
| Régionaliste | 5 |
| La République en marche | 308 |
| Modem | 42 |
| Union des Démocrates et Indépendants | 18 |
| Les Républicains | 113 |
| Divers droite | 6 |
| Debout la France | 1 |
| Front National | 8 |
| Extrême droite | 1 |
Percentages of the vote and abstention (57,36%)
| Nuances de candidats | Voix | % inscrits | % exprimés | Nombre de sièges |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parti communiste français | 217 833 | 0,46 | 1,20 | 10 |
| La France insoumise | 883 786 | 1,87 | 4,86 | 17 |
| Parti socialiste | 1 032 985 | 2,18 | 5,68 | 29 |
| Parti radical de gauche | 64 860 | 0,14 | 0,36 | 3 |
| Divers gauche | 263 619 | 0,56 | 1,45 | 11 |
| Ecologiste | 23 197 | 0,05 | 0,13 | 1 |
| Divers | 100 574 | 0,21 | 0,55 | 3 |
| Régionaliste | 137 453 | 0,29 | 0,76 | 5 |
| La République en marche | 7 826 432 | 16,55 | 43,06 | 306 |
| Modem | 1 100 790 | 2,33 | 6,06 | 42 |
| Union des Démocrates et Indépendants | 551 760 | 1,17 | 3,04 | 17 |
| Les Républicains | 4 040 016 | 8,54 | 22,23 | 113 |
| Divers droite | 306 240 | 0,65 | 1,68 | 6 |
| Debout la France | 17 344 | 0,04 | 0,10 | 1 |
| Front National | 1 590 858 | 3,36 | 8,75 | 8 |
| Extrême droite | 19 030 | 0,04 | 0,10 |
| Nombre | % inscrits | % votants | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inscrits | 47 292 967 | ||
| Abstentions | 27 125 535 | 57,36 | |
| Votants | 20 167 432 | 42,64 | |
| Blancs | 1 397 496 | 2,95 | 6,93 |
| Nuls | 593 159 | 1,25 | 2,94 |
| Exprimés | 19 176 177 | 38,43 | 90,13 |
This morning on the French radio the expected news of the triumph Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche was immediately followed by an announcement that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would tolerate no pot-shots at his government from his own quarter. The fresh-faced majority would not see its own deputies becoming “frondeurs” – critics that the right-wing of the Parti Socialiste now blame for their own crushing defeat, from the Presidential elections to the legislatives.
To one admirer of the new President, Will Hutton, “Macronism is the emergence of a fresh grounded economic and political philosophy – a landmark moment.” (Macron has led a brilliant coup – could the British now do the same? Observer). In the grip of enthusiasm he continues, “An ancien regime of tired and corrupt conservative and socialist politicians, indissolubly linked to the immobilisme that has plagued France, has been swept away.”
As in Macron Minister Richard Ferrand (accusation of dodgy property deals) Justice Minister and leader of Macron’s allied party, the Modems, François Bayrou (alleged misuse of European funding)…..
Hutton’s 1995, The State We’re In, proposed a ” radical social democratic ” programme for Tony Blair’s Labour Party, with a strong dose of constitutional reform – apparently the key condition for transforming the UK’s dominance by financial interests – as the answer to British economic difficulties. It drew support from a constituency that emerged at the end-tail of the ‘New Times’ politics of the disintegrating Democratic Left, the largest Eurocommunist tendency of the former Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), some within the Trade Union Congress, and the liberal left. He has since sifted through a variety of ever more diluted versions of these themes, ending up with a plea for “fairness” in Them and Us: Changing Britain – Why We Need a Fair Society (2010), and others whose contents I defy anybody to remember anything about.
In the latest of the columnist’s band-wagon efforts his embrace of the glimmer of a new ‘progressive’ movement – it seems that Macron is keen on “social investment” is on very wobbly ground indeed.
Hutton rushes overboard to back the very measure which will raise the hackles of the French trade union majority – apart from the ‘negotiating reformists of the CFDT – ‘reform of the labour market’. This “loosening” of the Code du travail met with mass protests and strikes in 2016.
Will Macron’s priority for legislation in this area, apparently based on a (vaguely sketched) ‘Nordic Model’ though perhaps the ability to sack at will does not figure there, run into a similar storm?
The subject is not mentioned.
A Defeat for Populism?
Macron has been described as populist, in the sense that his idea of ‘progressive’ is ‘beyond left and right’ and is, well, popular. But there is little else to tie him to the debate about populism. He does not support the incarnation of the People in France, or pit the Nation’s sovereignty against Europe and Globalisation. He is not anti-pluralist, En Marche! does not promote an exclusive form of identity, aim at actual or potential ‘occupancy’ of the state, the suppression of civil society and pluralism, or use any form of demagogy.
Macron’s policies on the European Union (pro, with the promotion of reform) and globalisation (pro- but moderated) are anti-populist.
So how do we begin to come to grips with his politics?
Since the Referendum Campaign and the victory of Brexit, and Trump’s election, many commentators have talked up the ‘populist wave’. David Goodhart (The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. 2017) talked of “values tribes”. The somewhere people – those rooted in a specific place or community – were contrasted with the anywhere people, urban, socially liberal and university educated.
Macron’s party, with its strong support (up to 90% in Paris) in cities and amongst those with degrees, open minded on social issues, liberal on equal rights and equality of opportunity is anywhere placed and given a location. These French anywheres have been beaten off the somewheres, the ‘periurban. the inhabitants of France’s ‘rust belt’ who voted for the Front National.
The constituency of En Marche!, one suspects, is less ‘socially liberal’ on policies that cost money and taxes, real equality, or is social in the sense of engaging with the social struggles waged by trade unions.
The ‘freedom’ of the market come first.
But this is only the beginning of efforts to come to terms with Macron, and his party-movement.
The Basis For French Political Realignment.
Thibault Muzergues (Le réalignement politique n’est pas vraiment idéologique, il est d’abord sociologique) fleshed out the sociology behind the changing French political scene. First of all Muzergues talks of “millennials“, white I find this claim goes against the observable pattern) , educated, frustrated at not finding a job, and one could add, at the cost of higher education, above all at the continued fallout from the 2008 economic crisis, austerity. They tend to back the radical left, Corbyn in the UK, Podemos in Spain, and La France Insoumise in the Hexagogne.
Then there is a “white minority”, the left behind, the inhabitants of the ‘rust belts’ in Europe (and the USA). They are the ‘losers’ of globalisation. They tend to back the Front National, supported Brexit, and, obviously, Trump.
Next is the the “creative class”, the winners of globalization, cosmopolitan Bobos (bohemian bourgeois), from high-flyers to right-wing smug Hipsters (I add this latter bit off my own back) who are Macron’s constituency.
Finally, Muzergues sketches as those attached to their ‘somewheres’, “terroir’ et tradition’, They are the polar opposite of the Bobos, the bourgeois bohemians who like Macron. The “boubours” (bourgeois-bourrin, which comrade Google translates, as “philistine nag” and I would say something approaching Essex Man) are as much a part of this cohort as the French equivalent of Home Counties pious Tories. Unlike their British counterparts included in their conservative values are the existing system of social protection (in France, and no doubt the UK – the Welfare state, notably for the elderly). These lean towards the classical right, Les Républicains onwards.
The game of identifying the constituencies in the new French political landscape will no doubt continue, with the addition of exploration of the largest body in this second round: the abstentionists, who included 4,2% who voted, blank or spoiled ballot papers.
For one person at least, Mélenchon not voting was a form of “civic strike” “forme de grève civique) , a protest whsope negry can be deployed in futrue against Macron (France Culture)
But if Muzergues tends to work backwards, from the choices on the ballot, voting patterns, to constituencies, it is a better framework than the somewhere/anywhere couple. It has the merit of outlining one group which appears distinct from the sterile distinction between populist salt of the earth anti-EU, anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation somewheres and the urbane creatives. The constituency of the millennials is an interesting one and has can be seen to have parallels elsewhere, in the United Kingdom and the basis of much support for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn to start with. A lot more needs to be added on the Front National, which I will postpone until the slew of post-election books arrives.
End of Left and Right?
There has clearly a game-changing series of changes in this election. Some argue that these new voting blocs are overshadowed by a profound transformations in French political topography. This year’s elections have undermined the traditional blocs of left and right, as organised and institutionalised parties, bodies with histories dating to the early years of the 20th century – Socialists, to the foundation of the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO, in 1905 – with origins still further back to the tumult and aftermath of the French Revolution.
An emerging political system which centres on personalities and their ‘movements‘ , as it is emerging in France, sidelining decades of a (complex) left-right party system, is without direct counterparts elsewhere. Even Italy, after the break up of the Communist Party, continues to cling to a stem of organised parties, and the 5 Star movement looks well past its peak. (Pierre Rosanvallon : « L’élection de Macron redéfinit le clivage droite-gauche ». 17.6.17)
That the Parti Socialiste has managed to get 29 seats with a pitiful 5,68% of the vote, masks its own split between those who consider that they are “Macron compatible” and those hostile to him. One of them Myriam El Khomri, in whose name the previous labour ‘reform’ was carried out, lost to the traditional right in the second round on Sunday. The Socialist Presidential candidate, Benoît Hamon, was also eliminated in the first round. As a sign of their divisions, Hamon then called for a vote for La France insoumise in the constituency where his PS rival, Manuel Valls, was standing.
Re-founding the Left.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise (LFI) now has a parliamentary group. Apart from those primarily devoted to his own person it includes, François Ruffin, the author of the film Merci patron!, credited with inspiring the Nuit Debout movement, and Clémentine Autain, the independent minded spokesperson for the left alliance Ensemble (Législatives 2017 : La France insoumise de Mélenchon aura un groupe à l’Assemblée nationale.
How far they will fit in with the Left Populist leader’s plans to lead the People against the Oligarchy, and whether agreements can be reached with the 10 Communist deputies, pleased not to have erased from the electoral map, as once seemed possible (Législatives : le PCF retrouve quelques sièges historiques) remains to be seen.
Their priority will obviously be to defeat Macron’s plans to liberalise the labour market by weakening employees’ rights.
In the longer term many have called for a profound re-thinking of the basis on which the left has stood, and the future of all forms of socialism. (1)
Their debates will be of great interest to the whole European and international left.
As the ‘incarnation of the programme’ Mélenchon may not have to face people who might disagree with him inside his rally, La France Insoumise that Pablo Iglesias has found in Podemos, or opponents of the statue of Íñigo Errejón. But it may well be that he’ll find that he meets his equals in the new National Assembly, people who are more interested in this re-foundation of the left than in an individual’s plans for the French People.
*********
(1) The Parti Socialiste General Secretary, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis in his resignation speech called for thoroughgoing change “La gauche doit tout changer, la forme comme le fond, ses idées comme ses organisations. La gauche doit ouvrir un nouveau cycle. Il s’agit de repenser les racines du progressisme, car ses deux piliers – l’État providence et l’extension continue des libertés – sont remis en cause. Il s’agit donc de repenser l’action publique, en mêlant principe d’efficacité et demande citoyenne. C’est le socle indispensable d’une nouvelle offre politique à gauche pour contrer à la fois le néolibéralisme et le nationalisme.”
More Information: France 24.
Record abstention
While Macron’s triumph paves the way for the sweeping reforms he has promised, it also comes with a number of important caveats, starting with the massive level of abstention that made it possible. For the first time in history, turnout in a legislative election has slumped to below 50%, in both rounds. On Sunday, a mere 43% of voters bothered to cast their ballots. This means the 42% of votes won by LREM candidates account for less than 20% of registered voters.
The record level of abstention underscored the widespread election fatigue accumulated over more than 12 months of non-stop campaigning, successive primaries, and a two-round presidential election. It also highlighted the imbalance inherent to France’s electoral system, in which legislative polls tend to be seen as a sideshow to the all-important presidential bout. With his hyper-personalisation of politics, Macron has dramatically increased this discrepancy.
Above all, the measly turnout reflected voters’ widespread disgust with the mainstream parties of right and left that have dominated French politics for decades. A few weeks ago, the conservative Les Républicains were still hoping to win a majority of seats. As results trickled in on Sunday, they were projected to win just 126, their lowest-ever tally. Reflecting on the debacle, their campaign leader François Baroin had little to offer, besides wishing Macron “good luck”.
Socialist wipe-out
As for the former ruling Socialists, they slumped to an all-time low of 29 seats. Last week saw the first-round exits of party boss Jean-Christophe Cambadélis and presidential candidate Benoît Hamon. More heavyweights fell on Sunday, including former education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who was seen as one of the party’s rising stars. As the scale of the defeat became obvious, Cambadélis announced his resignation, adding that “Macron’s triumph is uncontestable”.
Among the survivors from left and right, several have already pledged to support the “presidential majority”. They include former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls, who saved his seat in the Essonne, south of Paris, by a mere 139 votes – and only because LREM chose not to field a candidate against him. His far-left opponent has challenged the result alleging voter fraud, and a recount is on the cards.
Indicative of the extraordinary realignment of French politics was a flashpoint contest in northern Paris, in which centrist Socialist candidate Myriam El Khomri enjoyed Macron’s support, while her conservative challenger Pierre-Yves Bournazel was backed by Macron’s prime minister. Victory went to the latter, marking a huge upset in a constituency that was once solidly left-wing.
Le Pen enters parliament
While LREM capitalised on the anti-establishment sentiment, other parties that had been hoping to ride the same wave fell way short of their objectives. It was notably the case of the far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen, the runner-up in last month’s presidential contest, which failed to translate its strong showing in presidential polls into a large parliamentary contingent.
Hard-left activists blasted for ‘hijacking’ the genuine outrage over the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. The Sun.
Members of Corbyn fan group – Momentum – spotted at the invasion of Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall.
HARD-LEFT activists were blasted for “hijacking” the genuine outrage over the Grenfell tragedy.
Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn fan group Momentum were spotted during the invasion of Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall.
Hundreds of people with placards reading “we demand an inquest” gathered outside.
But a separate group broke away from the other protesters and gained access to the building — within them one activist was spotted wearing red Momentum t-shirt.
And Corbyn-supporting popstar Lily Allen — who was slammed for accusing the media of a cover up over the disaster — was also photographed inside the town hall building.
Later Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party activists flooded a protest on Whitehall with pre-prepared placards and banners.
A group of hundreds of activists shut down Westminster and marched on Downing Street, demanding Theresa May resign.
Socialist worker placards read “MAY MUST GO” and “KICK THE TORIES OUT” and other signs said the Tories had “blood on their hands” and urged the public to “back Corbyn.”
Another banner unfurled was from the hard-left students union at London uni SOAS.
A dozen riot vans were on standby and a police helicopter circled above.
But one eyewitness slammed the Westminster protest as “a bunch of white middle class students, who were handed their signs.”
They went on: “These kids had nothing to do with Grenfell, it was just the usual suspects and the students turning up.”
Tory MP David Morris hit out: “This does not come as any surprise after the vile intimidation Momentum pumped out across the country during the election.”
He added: “It’s sad to see genuine anger and hurt hijacked for cheap political stunts and these people should be ashamed.”
This Blog dislikes the way the groups named turn up at demos with their placards, trying to give the impression of wider support than they have in reality, and attempting to impose their political agenda on other people’s campaigns.
The real left supports the campaign for justice led by the people from Grenfell Tower.
We do not have any agenda other than theirs.
But the people who printed and carried these placards did not burn people alive in the tower block and cause the justifiable anger of the protesters.
This is a distasteful distraction.
It pales into insignificance at the the justified rage against those responsible.
The far-right British media have mounted their own operation to take attention away from what is turning into the biggest catastrophe and political scandal in London of the new century.
This disaster was caused by free-market, loose-regulation policies, and the strategy of putting the working class and poor into substandard housing, above all those of Conservatives Governments, and the specific responsibility of the Tory Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
he people operating the printing presses did not burn people alive in the tower block and cause the very justifiable anger
Like millions in this country we can only endorse the demands of the campaigners:
1. Written commitment from the council on immediate rehousing of all the victims of Grenfell Tower fire, within the borough
2. Immediate release of funds to cover costs of welfare and all losses suffered by the victims
3. Commission investigation into the recent £10m refurbishment project of the same tower and bring those who failed to install adequate health and safety measures and equipment at the building
4. Release full list of victims of the tragedy so families can bereave their dead
5. Commission investigation into all other similar buildings in the borough to identify fire, health and safety risks and put in place immediate control measures
It is also hard not to agree with the ‘extremist’ views of Polly Toynbee (Guardian),
That tomb in the sky will be forever Theresa May’s monument. Grenfell marks the spot and her visit marks the moment the last vestiges of her career were finally rubbed out. She made it her own yesterday by that fateful “visit” to a handful of senior fire officers, guarding her from any contaminating contact with the bereaved and newly homeless. Dead to emotion or empathy, she sealed her fate.
The Disappearance of Émile Zola. Love, Literature and the Dreyfus Case. Michael Rosen. Faber & Faber 2017.
The Dreyfus Affair, which began in 1894, was the supreme battle against a miscarriage of justice. The anti-Semitism of those who opposed the Dreyfusards is seen as the template for hostility to Jews ever since. The public polemics between defenders and opponents of the Jewish officer’s conviction are credited with the origin of the idea of an intellectual.Theodor Herzl said that the Dreyfus case turned him into a Zionist. For the left it was the moment when human rights, not without resistance and ambiguities, became an important issue within the socialist movement. The Affair continues to make its mark within French politics, on both the open-minded and the less tolerant sides of Republican orthodoxy.
There would appear little new to say about Dreyfus, although Ruth Harris’s The Man on Devil’s Island (2010) offers a fresh look alongside rigorous research. Yet Michael Rosen casts new light on an episode familiar to those acquainted with the history. He begins, “on the evening of Monday, 18 July 1898, Émile Zola disappeared”.
J’accuse.
The publication on the 13th of January 1898, in the daily L’aurore, of J’accuse had inflamed opinion. This immortal defence of Dreyfus was met by riots and attacks on Jewish homes and shops, as nationalists and the Ligue antisémitique railed at its author. The Minister for War, General Billot, brought charges of libel against Zola. In a Court, surrounded by hostile crowds and police, he was convicted to 3 years in gaol, and a 3,000 francs fine. Facing an appeal, which the writer felt was certain to fail, he had fled to London.
Over the pages of Disappearance of Émile Zola the writer’s London exile is brought to life with a fine touch. Zola was bemused and far from at ease in the British capital. He did not speak English. Boiled potatoes failed to work their charm on him. The housing, shops and surroundings in the South London suburbs were uneasily different. The houses lacked shutters, which we still seem to able to do without.
With his translated novels enjoying a mass readership Zola was already a celebrity. But this was infamy as much as fame. While religious figures and organisations such as National Vigilance Association had, a more than a decade previously, been hostile to “his odious indecency”. His translator Henry Vizetelly served time in Pentonville prison for publishing his more explicit works. Unabridged versions of books like Nana (1880), the story of the prostitute offspring of the alcoholic couple in l’Assommoir (1877), with its lesbian and sado-masochistic scenes, were only available, at £25 a copy and marked “For Private Distribution”. Rosen justly remarks, that this was not a simple moral or prudish issue; it was about social order “Those who were opposed to Zola’s fiction felt that he undermined that order”. Readers of Germinal, the epic of working class struggle in the Northern French mines, can only agree.
Zola’s Two Households.
Rosen excels in portraying one of the least appealing sides of Zola’s biography His two households, his wife Alexandrine, and the mother of his two children, Denise and Jacques, Jeanne Rozerot. Their correspondence, presence, and, for the latter, visits to England, are warmly and fully described. For many this set-up, like Dickens’s relationship with the Other Woman, Nelly Turnan, is less than attractive, but Zola’s two hearths dominated his life during the exile as much as the campaign for Dreyfus’s innocence.
The Disappearance of Émile Zola recounts that one of the activists for that cause, the Socialist Jean Jaurès, made the voyage to London to see the writer. In Les Preuves (1898) Jaurès had placed the duty of the working class movement to cast aside the questions about the class background of Dreyfus in the name of “humanity” and to take the side of the victim of injustice. In France’s Parliament the Deputy had defended Zola, and attacked a court case brought to defend the “honour” of the army (Discours du 24 Janvier 1898 devant la Chambre des députés).
Truth Will Prevail.
Rosen signals that readers of the British The Social Democrat would have been aware of the link between left-wing politics, the Dreyfus case, and Zola’s protests. An interview with the British based German socialist, Max Beer, author of the pioneering A History of British Socialism (1919) illustrates Zola’s take on the left and anti-semitism. Held in Paris before the forced London stay, it was not published until 1902. At the start the novelist remarks that previously he had portrayed “despicable” Jewish characters – something that readers of L’argent (1891) with characters such as the swindling financier Gunderman, and Korb’s nose, “en bec d’aigle” (Eagle beaked) indicating his Jewishness, would not hesitate to endorse. Some socialists, he remarks, reproaching him for backing a “rich Jewish captain”. But, “he is for me only a symbol, a victim of terrible forgeries, a witness of the degradation of our republic, which inscribed on its portals the democratic trinity: Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. But, after all truth is almighty. It will prevail.”
In Britain, a 120, 000 strong petition on behalf of Dreyfus and a demonstration in Hyde Park on 1899 attracting between 50,000 and 80,000 illustrates that the issue was also of burning concern to those in this country who stood by that “democratic trinity”.
Michael Rosen is, I confess, not an author I would have expected to bring new light on one of the important moments in the Dreyfus Affair, or on the life of one of its leading actors. Yet The Disappearance of Émile Zola does exactly that. It does not gloss over the less appealing aspects of Zola’s beliefs – his “natalism”, a wish for the growth of a healthy population, set out in the work he began writing in England, Fécondité, and published in 1899, not to say his fear of ‘hereditary degeneracy’ – once described by Philippe Muray as the idea that the dead are reborn in us. It resists the temptation to make facile comparisons with contemporary politics or 21st Century anti-Semitism. The book covers exactly what the title indicates, “love, literature and the Dreyfus case.” It is is a success and, one hopes, will encourage not just interest in the history but bring new readers to Zola’s path-breaking, and enduring, novels. Congratulations.
“Our fears over fire were ignored because we are working class.”
The Evening Standard has just reported,
Grenfell Tower estate residents: Our fears over fire were ignored because we are working class.
Distraught residents of the estate where at least 17 people were killed in a horrific tower block blaze have told how they believe safety concerns were ignored because officials “don’t care” about working class people.
Residents living in tower blocks close to Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West estate said they were now “scared” for their own safety, and that managers and the council had not acted on concerns raised in meetings.
It comes after it emerged a resident of the tower block had written a chilling blog post after a renovation in 2016, saying only a “catastrophe” would lead to changes being made.
…..
Scrawled alongside tributes to victims on a wall outside Latymer Community Centre were messages calling for “justice for Grenfell.”
Another referenced “poor people politics”.
Cye Elliot, 75, a visa adviser who lives close to the estate, said: “It’s just total neglect.
…
“It’s arrogance, disrespecting people. Because they were working class they can get away with it.
He added: “You see the block where all these people were killed and then you see the people coming along with the kids going to private schools. It’s poignant.”
The Grenfell Tragedy is Class War
Writes Phil, A Very Public Sociologist.
The victims of yesterday’s fire at the Grenfell tower in north Kensington are casualties of the class war. There is no other frame, no other explanation that can convincingly thread together the answers to questions about how this unnecessary and entirely avoidable tragedy happened, and why it was allowed to happen.
Shiraz Socialist posts,
Grenfell Action Group: “All our warnings fell on deaf ears”
It is becoming apparent that the residents of Grenfell Tower had made repeated representations to the (Tory) Council and the so-called Tenant Management Committee, about their fears over the safety of the building. But these were poor working class people, isolated within a prosperous borough. They were ignored, as the Grenfell Action Group’s blog demonstrates.
The Guardian carries this story,
Grenfell Tower fire is corporate manslaughter, says Labour MP
David Lammy, whose friend is missing after the blaze, calls for arrests, as confirmed death toll rises to 17.
….
Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, whose friend Khadija Saye and her mother, Mary Mendy, lived on the 20th floor of Grenfell Tower and were missing, gave a voice to the growing anger in the community.
“This is the richest borough in our country treating its citizens in this way and we should call it what it is. It is corporate manslaughter. And there should be arrests made; frankly, it is an outrage,” he said.
“Many of us across the country have been caught up in an election knocking on housing estate doors, travelling up to the top floors of tower blocks and we know as politicians that the conditions in this country are unacceptable.”
….
The newly elected Labour MP for the area, Emma Dent Coad, said there was growing fear among residents made homeless by the fire that they would be rehoused outside of the borough, in cheaper housing in places far from London, such as Hastings or Peterborough, where the council has tried to rehouse tenants previously.
“I can’t help thinking that poor quality materials and construction standards may have played a part in this hideous and unforgivable event,” she said.
The Mirror says
Grenfell Tower fire shows that the poor and working class are once again left behind to live in danger
The face of Grenfell is like the face of so many tower blocks across Britain – residents rely on the state to keep them safe and I fear they have been failed
….
There are real questions about the viability of these buildings.
New high rises being built across the capital are largely luxury apartments and pent-houses, and of course they are equipped with sprinkler systems, fire-proof walls and fire escapes.
Yet again we have one rule for the rich and the poor are being left behind and left in danger.
There is also this claim (Vox Political): Outsourcing firm Capita runs ‘catastrophic’ dispatch system that delays firefighters.
The Tories outsourced the fire and rescue service dispatching system to outsourcing profit-maker Capita in 2012. As a result, it doesn’t work.
After the horrific scenes we witnessed there is great sadness and great anger across the country. There is little doubt that nobody is going to stop talking about the class issues involved; the simple reason is that it the contrast with the Tower bloc’s neighbours is so stark, as anybody who has visited the borough can see, feel and touch. The image of the burning building is imprinted in millions of minds. A kind of whirling machine of faults that surrounds the origins and response to the tragedy, and the response to it, incarnated in the gruesome figure of Theresa May, the Council and its outsourced companies.
More than anything, it’s that the residents will not keep their rage to themselves.
A comrade in Germany has told us that the controversy over the censorship of a documentary on anti-Semitism in Europe, Auserwählt und Ausgegrenzt. Der Hass auf Juden in Europa (« Un peuple élu et mis à part : l’antisémitisme en Europe » Le Monde), (Zensur einer Antisemitismus-Doku. Taz) has not stopped growing.
It was due to be shown on the German-French channel, Arte.
Then it was withdrawn.
He comments, “WDR won’t let Arte send it because it is “anti protestant, and islamophobe” apparently “anti protestant” being the main problem, I presume i.e. they interviewed people at the “Kirchentag” (like the churches version of “Marxism 2017″ but much larger and funded almost completely by the German state) and they were clearly anti-semites.”
A French journalist, one of the authors of the film, considers however that Arte was embarrassed by the way the director tried to show a link between historic European anti-semitism, more recent anti-semitism amongst Islamists, and the connection between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. Bringing in radical Islam was unacceptable for some at Arte, because they consider that this would feed hatred of Muslims. (Europe 24)
“”Ce qui gêne je pense, c’est que le réalisateur tente de montrer un lien entre l’antisémitisme d’antan et l’antisémitisme islamiste plus récent, et il fait aussi le lien entre l’antisémitisme et l’antisionisme”, ce qui n’est pas acceptable pour une partie des gens d’Arte, car ils considèrent que cela alimente la haine des Musulmans, explique la journaliste.
The controversy already has its own – German language – Wikipedia page: Auserwählt und ausgegrenzt – Der Hass auf Juden in Europa
Arte defends decision on European anti-Semitism documentary
The Franco-German TV channel’s director has denied charges of censorship and anti-Semitism lobbied at the broadcaster. His defence also hinted at tensions between German broadcasters.
Arte Program Director Alain le Diberder on Thursday defended his broadcaster’s decision to pull the documentary entitled “Chosen and Excluded – The Hate for Jews in Europe” from its planned Arte airtime because the film did not meet approved project requirements.
He laid out the reasons for Arte’s cancellation in a letter to Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who had previously criticised the broadcaster’s decision in his own letter to Arte and German public broadcasters WDR and ZDF. Schuster had asked the Arte to reconsider the decision, saying he could not understand why formalistic considerations would derail a broadcast of the documentary.
In his response to Schuster, Diberder said he was deeply affected by accusations of censorship, although he could understand why the Jewish leader was perplexed by the decision. The Arte head reiterated that “honourable and good reasons” had formed the basis of the channel’s decision to pull the plug on the documentary’s broadcast.
RT continues,
RTE, a Franco-German public TV station, has been accused of censorship over its decision to remove a 90-minute documentary titled ‘Chosen and Excluded – The Hate for Jews in Europe’ from its planned broadcasting schedule, saying the film lacks “balance.”ARTE’s program director, Alain Le Diberder, said in a press statement that the film’s producers, Joachim Schroeder and Sophie Hafner, failed to make a documentary about anti-Semitism in Europe because they used too much footage from Israel and too little from European countries.
Schroeder told the Jerusalem Post on Saturday that “it is impossible to make a film [in Europe] today about anti-Semitism that shows a pro-Jewish perspective.”
Michaela Engelmeier, a Social Democratic deputy in the German parliament (Bundestag), said in a written statement to the Times of Israel that “a documentary that aims to present the problem of anti-Semitism in a reflected manner has to consider the relationship between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. In order to do so it is necessary to refer to the situation in the Middle East.”
She said the public tax-funded German TV networks ARTE and its sister outlet in Germany, WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk), “increasingly promote anti-Israeli narratives, while at the same time refusing to show a documentary on anti-Semitism that has been hailed by experts.” Volker Beck, a German Green Party lawmaker and president of the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group of the Bundestag, said the decision not to show the documentary “is even more disturbing when considering that ARTE and WDR have shown programs which could be seen as criticizing Israel one-sidedly.”
Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of German Jews, urged Le Diberder, who previously rejected the film because it lacked “balance,” to reconsider the decision, noting that the film is “highly relevant.”
Schuster’s request fell on deaf ears, however, with Le Diberder saying that ARTE has “like almost no other outlet in Europe, committed itself to education about the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism” and that “the decision-making process was so as to ensure editorial quality and responsibility.”
Diberder went on to stress in a statement to Deutsche Welle that ARTE had “good reasons” for its decision not to air the film. He said the documentary was a WDR production, approved by ARTE back in 2015. It was designed to focus on rising anti-Semitism across Europe, namely in Norway, Sweden, the UK, Hungary and Greece. But in late 2016, ARTE realized that the film “did not correspond to the proposal which had been submitted: it concentrates primarily on the Middle East and does not address the five designated countries in any way.”
This explanation did not satisfy Charlotte Knobloch, the head of the Munich Jewish community and a Holocaust survivor, who said that ARTE is on a “dangerous path.”
German dailies Focus and and Der Tagesspiegel asked whether it was a case of censorship.
In the letter to the Franco-German public broadcaster, seen by the Jerusalem Post, Knobloch described the documentary as an “honest” presentation of anti-Semitism in Europe, saying that ARTE owes it to its viewers, who pay a fee for public programs, to show ‘Chosen and Excluded’ because it fulfills the outlet’s educational mission to “fight anti-Semitism.”
Historian Michael Wolffsohn told German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last week that the feature is “the by far best, smartest and historically deepest documentary on this topic, while at the same time being very much up to date and true.”
The Jewish Chronicle:
Alain le Diberder, Arte’s director, said that “honourable and good reasons” had informed the network’s decision not to broadcast the documentary. He claimed the network had taken a “necessary procedural decision taken to ensure editorial responsibility and quality,”
According to the network, the documentary had been commissioned to focus on antisemitism in five countries – Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Greece. Arte claimed the documentary “concentrates primarily on the Middle East and does not address the five designated countries in any way.”
However, the documentary did look at antisemitism in Belgium, France and Germany.
It included an interview with François Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, a northern suburb of Paris which has been a flashpoint for antisemitic incidents.
Mr Pupponi said that “French Jews think they have no future in France, that they have to leave the country to live in security and peace.”
He also said that hatred of Israel, encouraged by Pro-Palestinian groups, had led to some of the problems.
“For a certain number of young people ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are one and the same so if you’re against Israel, you’re also against synagogues,” he said.
Here is the film:
Projected Seats: French Left Reduced to a Rump.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon is apparently, on cloud nine: Jean-Luc Mélenchon sur un nuage
Malgré un nombre réduit de sièges potentiels, La France insoumise devance à nouveau le Parti socialiste dans les urnes.
Reports Le Monde.
His Movement La France Insoumise (LFI) won 11% of the national vote in Sunday’s first round of the French legislative election, ahead of the Parti Socialiste and allies’ 9,5% and the PCF, which was reduced to 2,7%.
If you add these percentages up, drink five swift glasses of pastis in a row, put on rose-tinted spectacles, burn a scented candle and play the Marseillaise, you can feel great that the total left support, at 22.2% is greater than the Front National’s 13,2% vote.
That is even if La France Insoumise lost 8 points compared with the Presidential support for the populist leader of the French People.
The 51,29% who could not be bothered to vote weren’t attracted to his movement either.
Meanwhile in less cloudy territory:
President Emmanuel Macron continued bulldozing France’s political establishment as his upstart La République en Marche! (LREM) party topped Sunday’s first-round legislative vote and appeared poised to claim a historic majority in parliament.
Based on the first-round results, candidates from Macron’s LREM, a political party that barely existed one year ago, were projected to take between 415 and 445 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly next week. It would represent the largest parliamentary majority for a single party in France since the end of World War II.
The LREM party won 32.32 percent of all votes, according to official final results published by the French Interior Ministry, in an election that was also marked by a record-high abstention of 51.29 percent. The mainstream conservative Les Républicains party finished the night in second place with 21.56 percent support. They were projected to win between 70 and 110 seats in the next Assembly according to a projection by Ipsos for FRANCE 24.
The Communist Party, which has lost its Parliamentary Group, and faces near extinction, diplomatically blames divisions on the left for its poor result: Législatives. Les communistes pâtissent des divisions à gauche.
PCF leader Pierre Laurent announced, Elections législatives 1er tour: Déclaration de Pierre Laurent
La division des forces de gauche se paie en effet très cher. Les forces qui ont soutenu Jean-Luc Mélenchon, se sont retrouvées en concurrence suite aux décisions de la direction de la France insoumise. Elles en subissent toutes ce soir les conséquences. C’est aussi le cas du Parti communiste dont le résultat national est très bas.
A heavy price has been paid for the division of the left. The forces which have supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon found themselves competing against each other, following the decisions of the leadership of la France insoumise. All of them have suffered the consequences this evening. This is also the case for the Communist Party whose national score is very low.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon looks likely to win a seat in Marseilles, with 34,31 %, in front of Macron supporter Corinne Versini at22,66 %).
Although it is easy to see why he is overjoyed at what counts most, his future as a Tribune of the People in the National Assembly, there are other factors at work that explain his good mood.
For those wishing to understand why Mélenchon is happy that the French left is reduced to political irrelevance this gives some indications, and develops many of the themes discussed on this Blog.
Quelques réflexions sur la «France insoumise» VINCENT PRÉSUMEY.
Présumey outlines the ideological core of Mélenchon’s La France insoumise (LFI). The movement does not talk of class struggle, even social classes. They oppose “le peuple ” (also called the 99% ) to the « l’oligarchie » also called « la caste ». The ‘People’ exists as a Nation, France, with its national symbols, the Tricolor, and its hymn, the Marseille. To make this into a political force, to ‘construct’ the People from the material of “individus-citoyens”, is the objective of LFI.
For the origin of these ideas author notes the debt Mélenchon and his immediate team owe to the “post-Marxists” Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe which they have simplified and made into a kind of political tool-kit.
From the former comes the ‘populist’ idea of the People uniting around a Leader , like Argentina’s Peron. LFI denies any such thing, that their Leader is only the “l’incarnation vivante du « programme » que nous avons collectivement produit”, the living incarnation of a programme that we have collectively drawn up. Nobody else is in any doubt that Mélenchon, and his tight band of advisers, are La France insoumise and that he is the – would-be – charismatic chief.
Apparently not charismatic enough to hold into the 8% of the electorate he has lost in a few weeks. Or self-controlled enough to avoid descending from the hypnotic lyricism of his Presidential speeches to – in the run up to the legislative elections – the more familiar sounds of a barking yap-dog.
Yet….the problems with La France insoumise are deeper than Mélenchon’s personality.
As Présumey observes LFI rests on a denial of pluralism on the left. Its leader candidacy was the not the result of anybody’s decision but his own. As these elections approached it swiftly dropped the left bloc the Front de Gauche (FdG). It says: come to us, we will lead the ‘citizens’ insurrection’.
But beneath this rhetorical claim the focus is on political representation. There is no sense of a movement that has emerged from working class and social movement self-organisation. Its ‘mass action’ can be reduced to stage-managed demonstrations (as earlier this year on the anniversary of the Commune), social media (chat without decision making power) and, campaigning for electoral contests.
The movement (parties are old hat) claims 500,000 supporters, something you can become, for free, at the click of a button in the Web. Beneath a veneer of ‘horizontal’ organisation, LFI is vertically structured around the commands of the leadership. LFI has joined French social movements, such as the protests against the reform of the labour law, were the occasion not to engage in the fight but to publicise their presidential bid, with stickers reading, ” JLM 2017″.
The article notes another contribution of Mouffe. The focus on the division friend/enemy, taken from Carl Schmitt. This does not only refer to the People against the Oligarchy. It means that LFI considers everybody else on the left as a foe, potential or actual, from the Socialists to the Communists and the rest of the Green and radical parties. They have poured bile on personalities, from the Socialist Benoît Hamon, to respected radical left-wing Socialist labour law expert, Gérard Filoche – some names that stick out from a very very long list.
With the perspective of the dissolution of the French left à la Italienne, into a centrist ‘progressive’ Parliamentary bloc, what is their response? Mélenchon’s strategy rests on the “la liquidation des courants politiques issus du mouvement ouvrier”, the liqudation of currents which have come from the workers’ movement.
Noting that inner core of LFI itself is ‘petty bourgeois’, he sums up their ideology as a mixture of populism, and stalinism.
The former is a banner held with pride. The second is less clear. That their culture and policies reflect something of the pre-1991 PCF’s belief in French ‘national independence’ and fondness for an independent nuclear deterrent, or indeed the Communists’ evocation for French national traditions is hard to contest. But, as Présumey also states, Mélenchon comes from the equally patroitic tradition of the ‘Trotksyist’ faction known as Lambertism, and loses little time in expressing his admiration for the glory of the very anti-Communist President François Mitterrand.
Wherever their original inheritance many of LFI’s activists share the cast of mind of the “anti-imperialism of fools’. They are, he indicates at length, recycle the teaming conspiracy theories that have thriven in recent years. The illusion that they would get into the second round of the Presidential election, when shattered, was met with many a ‘theory’ explaining how ‘they’ has thwarted JLM.
Perhaps, in view of its supporters’ penchant for such conspiracy theories, its links with Vladimir Putin, and its barely concealed support for Assad in Syria, the word confusionisme suits them better.
It is, it goes without saying, immensely saddening that these confusionists will be the largest Parliamentary force to the left of the French Socialists.
‘Mr Ipswich’ Off to Spend More Time in the Pub.
“Just 48 hours ago he was one of the most powerful men in the British government. Now Ben Gummer’s parliamentary career has come to an abrupt end – whether temporarily or permanently. Why did he lose?”
Writes the ‘Big Fella’ Paul Geater in the Ipswich Star.
During the campaign Ben Gummer always seemed supremely confident, talking confidently about Labour voters switching to him because they didn’t like Jeremy Corbyn. If this was all spin then he and his team were acting very well when they spoke to me!
Even after our survey suggested Sandy Martin was in the lead, they insisted all was well – but clearly things were not going as well as he hoped. Why?
Firstly many people voted for the first time. Turnout was significantly up and many of these appeared to be young people.
They were motivated to vote Labour because they liked Jeremy Corbyn’s radical plans, especially abolishing university tuition fees, and were determined to make their voice heard.
The number of people voting Conservative in Ipswich actually went up between 2015 and 2017 by about 1,600 – but Labour’s vote increased by more than 6,000 votes. The UKIP vote fell by 4,000 – but these votes appear to have been split evenly.
Some policies were not popular: workers said the confusion and mixed messages over pension reform and social care payments had worried some voters.
The lack of attention from big-name visitors also gave the impression that Tory High Command took Ipswich for granted. They seemed to think that a Cabinet minister with a 3,733 majority couldn’t need help.
Some voters appeared to feel that Mr Gummer’s focus was no longer on the town with his new ministerial role – and the fact that he did not have a home in Ipswich at the time of the election did not help.
Given his work in the town, this was probably unfair – but it created an impression his opponents could exploit by emphasising that Mr Martin had lived in Ipswich for decades.
And a number of small policy statements caused real problems – one of the most irritating for workers was the suggestion that the government could repeal hunting legislation. One of his team said to me: “Why couldn’t she (Theresa May) just shut up about that. It’s not a big issue but it could cost us a few hundred votes!”
Another series of explanations:
Then there is his opponent, Sandy Martin who ran an enthusiastic campaign, backed by an energetic team that included many young people.
Finally,….
Not everybody likes ‘Ben’s Bridge’ either,
General election 2017: New Ipswich MP Sandy Martin to ask for rethink on Orwell Crossing link
New Ipswich MP Sandy Martin is to ask the Department for Transport to look again at the proposals for a large new bridge between Wherstead Road and Cliff Quay.
He is to ask the government to look at diverting the money to help fund the £100m project to a northern by-pass for the town.
It was one of his pledges during the election campaign, and he is planning to take up the issue when he travels to Westminster next week.
He said: “There are three bridges proposed as part of the Upper Orwell Crossing. Two of them – the road bridge to the island site and the footbridge over the lock gates – I wholeheartedly support.
“But the largest bridge does not have public support and I shall be speaking to the department to see if the funds can go to a more important strategic route, the northern by-pass.”
The crossings were strongly backed by former MP Ben Gummer – and are now a formal county council-managed project. The government funding is due to come through when work is about to start.
County council cabinet member for Ipswich Paul West said it would be pressing ahead with the project. He said: “This is a full project, you can’t plan to have one or two of the bridges.
“And it isn’t possible to move the money from one Ipswich project to another in the town – if it is taken away from this then it would go to another part of the country.”
The crossing is also backed by the business community in Ipswich.
Catherine Johnson, chair of Suffolk Chamber of Commerce in Greater Ipswich said: “Firstly, on behalf of the Chamber we’d like to congratulate Sandy on being elected as Ipswich’s MP.
“Secondly, as with the other six Suffolk MPs, we are looking forward to working with him on a range of issues of interest and concern to the business community.
“We note his comments about diverting funds from the Upper Orwell Crossings scheme to that of the northern bypass. We hope to listen in more detail to his thinking on this particular issue.
“We also look forward to a productive dialogue on the overall need for Ipswich to have a modern infrastructure that allows a much freer and more efficient flow of goods and people both within and to and from the town.”
