The British Labour Party has been tortured by the results of bi-elections (23 February) in the Copeland constituency in England's North West and in Stoke, a city in the north of the English Midlands. The British media has been spinning analyses over these two elections, all of which lead to the result that the Labour Party is experiencing 'meltdown' mainly, it would seem, as a result of its current far left leader Corbyn.
UKIP's leader, Nuttall also failed personally in Stoke and his party generally failed across both bi-elections in its explicit aim to replace Labour in both constituencies. In fact the newspapers and TV and Radio commentariat, albeit hesitantly although in some cases trembling with excitement, are suggesting that it is May's Tory party, now in government, that has persuaded many traditional working class voters that it is they who now best represent the interests of Britain's working class!
It is certainly true that in the Copeland constituency the Tory Party absorbed UKIP's vote. And although Stoke was 'held' by Labour, the most pro-Brexit constituency in Britain, the Tories came close to beating UKIP into second place. But this does not tell us that Prime Minster May's Tories are now winning the working class. UKIP wanted to win Labour, working class seats in the North of England using the racist card - but it never did. It is important not to confuse an aim with a reality. What the Tories have done is to 'win', partly in Stoke and in a major way in Copeland, what was, potentially, the UKIP vote. Some commentators revelled in May's brilliant tactics. Others said that UKIP have no longer got their main reason to exist anymore as Britain is now on its way out of the EU. But May's 'brilliant' tactics amount to adopting the main policies that UKIP stood on. The Tories have not begun to win the working class interest. They have adopted UKIP's racism and won a large part of their vote.
Despite claims to have workers on company boards and to look out for those only just getting by, May's Tories have cut welfare (again), are reducing living standards (again) and ruining the NHS and public services in general. They are increasing anti-union laws way above Thatcher's limits. And now they demand that Britain should celebrate Trump. They are, in practise, the most right wing government seen in Britain since WW2. Worse than Thatcher.
Traditionally voting in bi-elections is less than in general elections. Voting for a single MP is not as significant as voting for a government. In Copeland 51% of potential voters voted. In Stoke it was 37%. These are significantly low voting totals, low even for bi-elections. Which raises the first fundamental point about the real meaning of the Copeland and Stokes' elections.
Who are the half of Copeland's voters and the 63% of Stokes' voters who did not vote? Overwhelmingly, they are working class voters. The main thing that the working class of Copeland and of Stoke did is abstain or, in a minority of cases, vote Labour. (Copeland had become far more marginal between Labour and the Tories than most British media admitted.) The meaning of that, which will be of interest to the pundits and commentators but which is a life and death question for the Labour Party, is that a large part of the working class of Britain has disconnected from the traditional political routine, via the continued failure of the Labour Party, over decades, to do anything different.
But this is not just about the Labour Party. In reality millions in Britain find it hard to see any connection between their lives and Parliament - or any of the other melange of institutions by which, apparently, they are ruled. So it is not enough for John McDonnel (Labour's shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer) to say on the BBC's Today program (24 February) that Labour's reputation is still being spoilt by ex - Labour PM Blair and Mandelsons's speeches a few days before voting. He is right, but not really right enough. The main political institutions of the country, including the modern history of the Labour Party, are all soiled goods. Corbyn promises a new politics, but that must mean a new Parliament; fair votes; control over all the real controllers - in the City - in the major corporations. It must mean the guarantee that each new generation will have a better life than its predecessors.
From which emerges the second substantial reality of Copeland and Stoke. The current Labour Party, without any realistic chance of winning a General Election, because of Scotland, because of abstention in England and Wales, because the remains of the Parliamentary Party will sabotage their own leadership, can never present itself as the insurgent, new, rebellious, future oriented force, that would be able to speak directly to and work directly with the people. What is more, already millions realise it. The continued insistence that traditional Labour Party unity can be won, that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, that working class people across Britain can return, once again, to the way things used to be, is the real, hopeless and utopian fantasy in British politics today.
As the right becomes more confident across the West, and as the resistance to the next wave of austerity and racism rises up while reaction tries to roll over society, the left wing leadership of the British Labour Party must imagine, build and project much more to people in Stoke, Copeland and the rest of Britain - than their sorrow for unavailable unity with the bulk of Labour MPs.!
Friday 24 February 2017
Wednesday 22 February 2017
Dates of note - the rise of the right?
The Dutch General election falls on March 15th. Trump junior lookalike Wilder, seems set to get the most seats in Netherlands's Parliament but, as with the French political system, the Dutch 'failsafe' mechanism then comes into play, and all the other parties get together to block a Wilder government. The 'failsafe' mechanism assumes of course that nether the Dutch nor the French right can win more than 49% of the vote. Perhaps. But what is missed here is the effects on a large part of the population of globalisation and continuing austerity. In both the Dutch and French cases only more despair will be evoked against a bankrupt political system unable to provide any clear and straightforward answers. In other words such an outcome will be part of the growing problem rather that any sort of solution.
The right in the US, in the UK, in the Netherlands in France and across Europe lead on racism and the need to halt types of immigration as their answer to the effects of globalisation. Wilder's latest insult against what he called 'Moroccan scum' demonstrates the directly racist leading edge of his campaign (against the 4% of the population who are Dutch Muslims and live in Holland.) But the foundations of his agitation are actually primitive but radical propositions about Tax and State authority. In his 'WEBLOG' he writes at the end of his program
'9. A lot of extra money for defence and police
10. Lower income taxes
11. Halving of car taxes'.
There is emerging across all the new right in the West, another 'solution' to the insurgency caused by unemployment, poverty and racism. Besides attacks on minorities it suggests a more directly authoritarian answer to the failure of mainstream politics to deal with the impact of globalisation.
The 23 April is the opening round of the French Presidential Election. 7 May will be the final round between the top two candidates. Again, Marine LePen is a shoe-in for one of the final two. Again it is supposed that the French electorate will vote 'anybody else' against France's fascist. France has been in a state of emergency since 130 people were killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris. A state of emergency also describes the situation of the two main parties that have ruled France since the 1980s with the independent Macron, a politician deracinated of politics, the only answer to the far right wing threat. Already this latest 'independent' is weakening in the French polls. Already the establishment's political answer to the threat from the right is faltering. And Le Pen junior is now ramping up the 'defence' of French society to deal with the 'thugs' that have risen from Paris's Banlieues once more defending themselves against the police. According to Le Pen, the confidence and the authority of those 'defending' law and order must be rebuilt!
Meanwhile Douglas Williams on the British 'Guardian' website (17 February) has pointed out some of Trump's less well circulated executive actions to deal with the impact on those left behind by globalisation in his first days in office.
'The executive order titled Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers' promises to:
Pursue appropriate legislation, consistent with the Constitution’s regime of limited and enumerated Federal powers, that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.
Review existing Federal laws to determine whether those laws are adequate to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.'
"That’s right. In a country where police chiefs consider resisting arrest a hate crime punishable by ten years in prison and where state legislatures are considering immunity for those who run over protesters, the Trump administration has signalled that, actually, we are not tough enough on protesters and activists. As bad as this may be, however, it is this part of the executive order that is the most chilling:"
'Following that review … make recommendations to the President for legislation …. defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes.'
Enhancing or even reconstructing state power is invariably a critical objective for the far right. The new right's objectives in the West are a so far a weak echo of a more direct and brutal process in Egypt that was as a response to the Arab Spring and now in Turkey, with its fear of the emergence of a Kurdish state.
Another date of note is therefore the 16 April, when a constitutional referendum will be held in Turkey. Voters will vote on a set of 18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey. They are singularly authoritarian in character. They include the introduction of an executive presidency with a wide range of judicial and military powers, including the extension of the office which in Erdoğan's case could run on to to 2029. It would replace the existing parliamentary system of government, abolish the Office of the Prime Minister and change the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors. While tens of thousands of critics of the regime are in jail, convulsions are expected around the referendum and will certainly be provoked if they do not arise spontaneously.
The new right's need to destroy the 'enemy from within' emerges from its first steps to reconcile the irreconcilable. Trump, the Tory right, Wilders, Le Pen and Erdoğan lead on the race/culture/national threat as the reason for impoverishment, lack of services, loss of jobs etc., but their notions are utterly absurd and ineffective. Accordingly repression is required to resolve the ensuing quandary. The right's answers do not work. But if resistance is supressed then there is less and less of a problem to sort out. And with the ensuing silence new and more expansive ambitions become possible.
If this all seems a little bloodthirsty in the UK context, with its apparent history of stable politics and society, then readers might turn to comments written by Britain's leading liberal political journalist (Observer 19 February). Andrew Rawnsley's weekly half page was entitled
'Why some Tories fear blood on the streets in a couple of years'. Underneath Rawnsley wrote 'Further spending cuts, higher taxes and a renewed squeeze on living standards all add up to trouble ahead.' Rawnsley was anti-Brexit and tried to paint his picture of gloom as a result of Britain leaving the EU. Unfortunately for his perspective he had not read the pages in his own newspaper about the catastrophic situation in Greece, or previous pieces about the crisis across Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, all inside the EU. Being inside or outside the EU was never any sort of answer to the impact of globalisation (except in part in Germany.) Now it seems that Britain too may have to try and resolve the issue of the effects of globalisation via an increase in state power rather than via Brexit or a change of mind about the EU and a new referendum on EU membership.
And of course on 23 February the British Labour Party and its Corbyn leadership will face the results of 2 bi-elections. (See Blog 13 February.) It looks likely that working class spiv Nuttall has blown away UKIP's chances in Stoke with lies about his role in the Hillsborough disaster. (Middle class spiv, UKIP's Nigel Farage, never faced anything like the media barrage that Nuttall has endured.) And the fight to defend the NHS against the plan to close the general hospital in Copeland seems to have overwhelmed local fears about Corbyn's previous views about nuclear power. If Labour scrapes by, it will still be a Corbyn failure as far as the right majority of Labour MPs are concerned (lots of stuff about the small majority vote etc.,) but will probably put off any immediate direct action against the leadership. Nevertheless while the Labour right's revolt is a minor and fluctuating part of the general trend of the times, it is as inevitable as the arrival of the new Spring and Summer. The old Labour Party as it exists today has no answer whatsoever to the impact of globalisation either. It will thereby inevitably fracture, possibly into a new future with a recomposed left, or perhaps just dissolve into parliamentary leavings composed of some ambitious hotspots. As with the position in most of the West (and even in Turkey) the social forces that could drive an alternative to the new right are still strong and certainly not defeated. The challenge for the left is to create a new left that really does have an attractive, popular and credible alternative to globalisation and austerity.
The right in the US, in the UK, in the Netherlands in France and across Europe lead on racism and the need to halt types of immigration as their answer to the effects of globalisation. Wilder's latest insult against what he called 'Moroccan scum' demonstrates the directly racist leading edge of his campaign (against the 4% of the population who are Dutch Muslims and live in Holland.) But the foundations of his agitation are actually primitive but radical propositions about Tax and State authority. In his 'WEBLOG' he writes at the end of his program
'9. A lot of extra money for defence and police
10. Lower income taxes
11. Halving of car taxes'.
There is emerging across all the new right in the West, another 'solution' to the insurgency caused by unemployment, poverty and racism. Besides attacks on minorities it suggests a more directly authoritarian answer to the failure of mainstream politics to deal with the impact of globalisation.
The 23 April is the opening round of the French Presidential Election. 7 May will be the final round between the top two candidates. Again, Marine LePen is a shoe-in for one of the final two. Again it is supposed that the French electorate will vote 'anybody else' against France's fascist. France has been in a state of emergency since 130 people were killed in the November 2015 attacks in Paris. A state of emergency also describes the situation of the two main parties that have ruled France since the 1980s with the independent Macron, a politician deracinated of politics, the only answer to the far right wing threat. Already this latest 'independent' is weakening in the French polls. Already the establishment's political answer to the threat from the right is faltering. And Le Pen junior is now ramping up the 'defence' of French society to deal with the 'thugs' that have risen from Paris's Banlieues once more defending themselves against the police. According to Le Pen, the confidence and the authority of those 'defending' law and order must be rebuilt!
Meanwhile Douglas Williams on the British 'Guardian' website (17 February) has pointed out some of Trump's less well circulated executive actions to deal with the impact on those left behind by globalisation in his first days in office.
'The executive order titled Presidential Executive Order on Preventing Violence Against Federal, State, Tribal, and Local Law Enforcement Officers' promises to:
Pursue appropriate legislation, consistent with the Constitution’s regime of limited and enumerated Federal powers, that will define new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes, in order to prevent violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.
Review existing Federal laws to determine whether those laws are adequate to address the protection and safety of Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers.'
"That’s right. In a country where police chiefs consider resisting arrest a hate crime punishable by ten years in prison and where state legislatures are considering immunity for those who run over protesters, the Trump administration has signalled that, actually, we are not tough enough on protesters and activists. As bad as this may be, however, it is this part of the executive order that is the most chilling:"
'Following that review … make recommendations to the President for legislation …. defining new crimes of violence and establishing new mandatory minimum sentences for existing crimes of violence against Federal, State, tribal, and local law enforcement officers, as well as for related crimes.'
Enhancing or even reconstructing state power is invariably a critical objective for the far right. The new right's objectives in the West are a so far a weak echo of a more direct and brutal process in Egypt that was as a response to the Arab Spring and now in Turkey, with its fear of the emergence of a Kurdish state.
Another date of note is therefore the 16 April, when a constitutional referendum will be held in Turkey. Voters will vote on a set of 18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey. They are singularly authoritarian in character. They include the introduction of an executive presidency with a wide range of judicial and military powers, including the extension of the office which in Erdoğan's case could run on to to 2029. It would replace the existing parliamentary system of government, abolish the Office of the Prime Minister and change the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors. While tens of thousands of critics of the regime are in jail, convulsions are expected around the referendum and will certainly be provoked if they do not arise spontaneously.
The new right's need to destroy the 'enemy from within' emerges from its first steps to reconcile the irreconcilable. Trump, the Tory right, Wilders, Le Pen and Erdoğan lead on the race/culture/national threat as the reason for impoverishment, lack of services, loss of jobs etc., but their notions are utterly absurd and ineffective. Accordingly repression is required to resolve the ensuing quandary. The right's answers do not work. But if resistance is supressed then there is less and less of a problem to sort out. And with the ensuing silence new and more expansive ambitions become possible.
If this all seems a little bloodthirsty in the UK context, with its apparent history of stable politics and society, then readers might turn to comments written by Britain's leading liberal political journalist (Observer 19 February). Andrew Rawnsley's weekly half page was entitled
'Why some Tories fear blood on the streets in a couple of years'. Underneath Rawnsley wrote 'Further spending cuts, higher taxes and a renewed squeeze on living standards all add up to trouble ahead.' Rawnsley was anti-Brexit and tried to paint his picture of gloom as a result of Britain leaving the EU. Unfortunately for his perspective he had not read the pages in his own newspaper about the catastrophic situation in Greece, or previous pieces about the crisis across Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, all inside the EU. Being inside or outside the EU was never any sort of answer to the impact of globalisation (except in part in Germany.) Now it seems that Britain too may have to try and resolve the issue of the effects of globalisation via an increase in state power rather than via Brexit or a change of mind about the EU and a new referendum on EU membership.
And of course on 23 February the British Labour Party and its Corbyn leadership will face the results of 2 bi-elections. (See Blog 13 February.) It looks likely that working class spiv Nuttall has blown away UKIP's chances in Stoke with lies about his role in the Hillsborough disaster. (Middle class spiv, UKIP's Nigel Farage, never faced anything like the media barrage that Nuttall has endured.) And the fight to defend the NHS against the plan to close the general hospital in Copeland seems to have overwhelmed local fears about Corbyn's previous views about nuclear power. If Labour scrapes by, it will still be a Corbyn failure as far as the right majority of Labour MPs are concerned (lots of stuff about the small majority vote etc.,) but will probably put off any immediate direct action against the leadership. Nevertheless while the Labour right's revolt is a minor and fluctuating part of the general trend of the times, it is as inevitable as the arrival of the new Spring and Summer. The old Labour Party as it exists today has no answer whatsoever to the impact of globalisation either. It will thereby inevitably fracture, possibly into a new future with a recomposed left, or perhaps just dissolve into parliamentary leavings composed of some ambitious hotspots. As with the position in most of the West (and even in Turkey) the social forces that could drive an alternative to the new right are still strong and certainly not defeated. The challenge for the left is to create a new left that really does have an attractive, popular and credible alternative to globalisation and austerity.
Monday 13 February 2017
The British left takes a major initiative
For those who don't receive the Peoples Assembly Emails, the main Anti-Austerity movement in Britain took the initiative on the 10th February to convene a meeting and organise a committee with the following objective;
'The Committee aims to campaign locally and nationally to get Theresa May’s invitation to Trump rescinded because of his racist, misogynist and warmongering policies, and his climate-change denial. It aims to build the broadest-possible movement against Trump, and to work with everyone interested in organising a huge public protest should he visit London as the government intends.'
Below are a list of those who support the initiative and the date of the next rally
'The attending organisations interested in establishing the campaign were:
Abortion Rights
Alliance for Free Movement
Communist Party of Britain
CWU
Daymer
Egyptian revolutionary committee
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Friends of the Earth
Friends of Equador
Jeremy Corbyn’s Office (observing)
Kate Osamor MP
Muslim Engagement and Development
Momentum
Muslim Association of Britain
Muslim Voices
NUS
NUT
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
People’s Assembly
Rainbow Coalition
Stand up to Racism
Stop the War Coalition
Student Assembly against Austerity
TUC (observing)
UCU
Unite the Union
Venezuela Solidarity Campaign
Woodcraft Folk
Stand up to Trump: National Organising Summit
Saturday 18 February 10am - 5pm, Friends House Euston, London.'
All sorts pf poisonous political leaders have 'been (invited) to London to see the Queen' in the past. None of them should have been allowed to come. They all demonstrate the fawning hypocrisy of the British State. But the significance of Trump is that he and his coterie seek to lead the West into an authoritarian, war-mongering, planet ruining, racist and sexist future. This is something that the people of Britain can directly effect. The need first to refuse Trump, and then to push back all the right wing leaders popping up all over the West who have the same agenda and who draw their strength from Trump, is the most profound and critical matter in the here and now. We must hope and plan for the largest mass actions that Britain has ever seen.
There is another vital concern in this great moment.
On 23 February voters in Stoke Central (a city to the north of the English Midlands) and Copeland (in Cumbria in the Northwest of England) will play a major part in the future of the Labour Party. Polls show that both of these two previously held Labour Constituencies (seats) are in serious danger of falling to far-right UKIP's new leader, Paul Nuttall in the case of Stoke and to the Tories in the case of Copeland.
Any Labour losses will be put down to Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, both by the national media and by most Labour MPs. Corbyn's anti nuclear views have featured heavily in the Copeland campaign. The constituency hosts the Sellafield nuclear plant, and nuclear submarines are built in nearby Barrow. The local Labour Party has tried to insist that Corbyn's views are not Labour's real policies and have refused to have him campaign in the Constituency. (It is also worth noting that the largest British Trade Union, UNITE, currently support Corbyn but oppose his stance on nuclear weapons and energy.) In Stoke the UK Independence Party, which ran second in many traditional Labour constituencies in the Midlands and the North in the 2015 General Election, are making a huge effort to topple Labour in Stoke and crown their own party leader with a seat in Parliament (which previous UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, has never achieved.)
In reality Corbyn's leadership has very little to do with the meltdown of the Labour Party. There is no sign that Labour's Scottish bloc of MPs will return after decades of complacency and lack of interest that Scottish Labour was renowned for. The same applies to many regions in England and Wales, where the traditional vote for Labour was ignored and despised by a Labour leadership desperate for decades to be part of the establishment. In reality Corbyn (as a Labour rebel for most of his life) offers what embers of enthusiasm are still there to be stoked, for those who want a transformative government. But the house whose tenancy Corbyn took over was already falling down. The hostile press are writing that Corbyn will step down voluntarily if the polls stay bad. That will simply make things worse. There is no way forward either inside or outside of Parliament via a shift to a leader with a new route, stuffed with concessions to the past, leading only to a dead future.
What the Peoples Assembly's initiative does is potentially rally the heartland of a new left in Britain - in action. It is still possible for the Corbyn leadership of Labour - and the movement against Trump (and his wretched European epigones) to fuse; to become a new political movement of the left; to begin the creation of a new political radicalism, out of the wreckage of Labour; with the best of the MPs who want and who give faith to those millions who want change. In other words to accept that Blair's New Labour is in its death throws and now the new left needs to reconstruct an alternative.
What is the alternative ... if there is no alternative? Labour will continue to rot and shrink. Mass action against austerity and the new right will continue, but without a new political point of departure, without an independent political voice. The paradox is that traditional Labour's agony can yet become a tremendous political renewal. And now the Peoples Assembly has made its unifying move, the opportunity to change British political history opens.
'The Committee aims to campaign locally and nationally to get Theresa May’s invitation to Trump rescinded because of his racist, misogynist and warmongering policies, and his climate-change denial. It aims to build the broadest-possible movement against Trump, and to work with everyone interested in organising a huge public protest should he visit London as the government intends.'
Below are a list of those who support the initiative and the date of the next rally
'The attending organisations interested in establishing the campaign were:
Abortion Rights
Alliance for Free Movement
Communist Party of Britain
CWU
Daymer
Egyptian revolutionary committee
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Friends of the Earth
Friends of Equador
Jeremy Corbyn’s Office (observing)
Kate Osamor MP
Muslim Engagement and Development
Momentum
Muslim Association of Britain
Muslim Voices
NUS
NUT
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
People’s Assembly
Rainbow Coalition
Stand up to Racism
Stop the War Coalition
Student Assembly against Austerity
TUC (observing)
UCU
Unite the Union
Venezuela Solidarity Campaign
Woodcraft Folk
Stand up to Trump: National Organising Summit
Saturday 18 February 10am - 5pm, Friends House Euston, London.'
All sorts pf poisonous political leaders have 'been (invited) to London to see the Queen' in the past. None of them should have been allowed to come. They all demonstrate the fawning hypocrisy of the British State. But the significance of Trump is that he and his coterie seek to lead the West into an authoritarian, war-mongering, planet ruining, racist and sexist future. This is something that the people of Britain can directly effect. The need first to refuse Trump, and then to push back all the right wing leaders popping up all over the West who have the same agenda and who draw their strength from Trump, is the most profound and critical matter in the here and now. We must hope and plan for the largest mass actions that Britain has ever seen.
There is another vital concern in this great moment.
On 23 February voters in Stoke Central (a city to the north of the English Midlands) and Copeland (in Cumbria in the Northwest of England) will play a major part in the future of the Labour Party. Polls show that both of these two previously held Labour Constituencies (seats) are in serious danger of falling to far-right UKIP's new leader, Paul Nuttall in the case of Stoke and to the Tories in the case of Copeland.
Any Labour losses will be put down to Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, both by the national media and by most Labour MPs. Corbyn's anti nuclear views have featured heavily in the Copeland campaign. The constituency hosts the Sellafield nuclear plant, and nuclear submarines are built in nearby Barrow. The local Labour Party has tried to insist that Corbyn's views are not Labour's real policies and have refused to have him campaign in the Constituency. (It is also worth noting that the largest British Trade Union, UNITE, currently support Corbyn but oppose his stance on nuclear weapons and energy.) In Stoke the UK Independence Party, which ran second in many traditional Labour constituencies in the Midlands and the North in the 2015 General Election, are making a huge effort to topple Labour in Stoke and crown their own party leader with a seat in Parliament (which previous UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, has never achieved.)
In reality Corbyn's leadership has very little to do with the meltdown of the Labour Party. There is no sign that Labour's Scottish bloc of MPs will return after decades of complacency and lack of interest that Scottish Labour was renowned for. The same applies to many regions in England and Wales, where the traditional vote for Labour was ignored and despised by a Labour leadership desperate for decades to be part of the establishment. In reality Corbyn (as a Labour rebel for most of his life) offers what embers of enthusiasm are still there to be stoked, for those who want a transformative government. But the house whose tenancy Corbyn took over was already falling down. The hostile press are writing that Corbyn will step down voluntarily if the polls stay bad. That will simply make things worse. There is no way forward either inside or outside of Parliament via a shift to a leader with a new route, stuffed with concessions to the past, leading only to a dead future.
What the Peoples Assembly's initiative does is potentially rally the heartland of a new left in Britain - in action. It is still possible for the Corbyn leadership of Labour - and the movement against Trump (and his wretched European epigones) to fuse; to become a new political movement of the left; to begin the creation of a new political radicalism, out of the wreckage of Labour; with the best of the MPs who want and who give faith to those millions who want change. In other words to accept that Blair's New Labour is in its death throws and now the new left needs to reconstruct an alternative.
What is the alternative ... if there is no alternative? Labour will continue to rot and shrink. Mass action against austerity and the new right will continue, but without a new political point of departure, without an independent political voice. The paradox is that traditional Labour's agony can yet become a tremendous political renewal. And now the Peoples Assembly has made its unifying move, the opportunity to change British political history opens.
Thursday 9 February 2017
A new version of the Western World
A 'new' right wing politics has seized the anti-globalisation momentum building up in a large section of the European and US working classes. The traditional left, classically the US Democrats and the British Blairite Labour Party, saw globalisation as inevitable, defended the banks in 2008 and, to all intents and purposes, dissolved themselves into the mainstream right. They face the same shattering future together.
Globalisation in the Western world had the opposite effect to its impact on Asia (barring the Japanese disaster.) Industrial labour was created for the first time for millions and compared with their prior dependence on agricultural labour the mass of the people's living standards rose dramatically, particularly in China. In the West industrial labour declined and working class living standards were substantially reduced. In both regions a new, supra-national, super rich emerged. But this had a different impact in the West and the East due to the reverse experience of millions of workers and their families in the separate regions. Finally, the Western banking crisis of 2008 and the use of state funds and society's resources to bail them and their owners out brought the failure of globalisation in the West into sharp relief.
The US and the EU had enthusiastic but different economic and political approaches to globalisation. In Europe the most advanced countries organised the EU specifically as a means to challenge US supremacy in the number and size of international / global corporations. At the level of technique (creation and application of new technology) and Capital formation (accumulation of profit via increased productivity) the US won this particular contest hands down. But in the end both models are failing. Huge social layers face declining living standards and are mounting an expanding wave of resistance in the US and in Europe, while the giant corporate creations have simultaneously detached themselves from business taxation or any national regulations of significance as they float above the world they control. Indeed, they have created specific parts of the world where they are above any law or social obligation whatsoever. (The British response to all this, via the hegemony of a half-baked rightwing leadership over Brexit, is the biggest piece of wreckage so far in response to globalisation. Britain is on course to become the largest tax haven in the world. And, it is worth reminding supporters of the Brexiteers that none of these super rich ghettos have state health services, labour law or democratic rights.)
Leaving aside the pitiful British example, and despite Trump, it is the EU model that is currently most vulnerable. Led by Germany, the EU's management of globalisation has created a complex and contradictory confection, simultaneously trying to create a national economy, a national bank and a national currency - out of a collection of utterly unevenly developed nations. These conditions are more than simply contradictory. They are already smashing Greece to pieces and have escalated the refugee crisis, as Germany, which as a nation seeks a huge number of young workers to ensure continuing labour investment and productivity in its own manufacturing, but which has tried to impose its requirements across the EU board. The paradox is that only Greece, the most fragile part of the EU, emerges with any decency from a great humanitarian failure in and by most EU countries. The EU is a dead end for 90% of its people, not just in its relations to the impact of globalisation, but also in its ability to deal with the most elementary international disaster.
France is now the European, not to say Western, pivot in the mobilisation of a new right wing political project across both Europe and the US. Le Pen claims her party is not from the right or the left (after all both the traditional right and left have been synonymous for decades). She claims she is for the 'patriots' and not the 'globalists.' She denounces the 'cash rich right and the cash rich left'. She will reduce the pension age and increase welfare. She tied globalisation with the 'universal ideology' of Islam. Le Pen adopts many phrases from Trump, Farage and the British Tory right wing leaders but as Le Pen begins her campaign for the French Presidency, as the crisis of globalisation deepens, so a broader and deeper set of propositions are emerging from the right, who are planning for a new world for the West.
The new right, based in the West, are preparing for international war.
They have two targets, neither of which are the multi-nationals. New right leaders will make all necessary concessions to big Capital consistent with access to wealth and resources required for their true goals. The fundamental engine of the new right in the West is fear. Fearing that the West's historical domination of the globe is ending, the aims of the new right are, first, to destroy all potentially insurgent forces emanating from the Middle East (and at home). This has several critical aspects including the obvious alliances which the new West wants to build up to exterminate ISIS, but in a longer term perspective it is to isolate and make dependent all of the Arab and wider Middle East regimes, mostly through taking whatever means are necessary to guarantee Western energy sources. Initially Russia will be feted as a potentially military vanguard against 'terrorism'. Latterly, an exhausted Russia will take its natural and subservient place in the new Western hierarchy. The US will remain in charge of this operation, but the new right of Europe will be expected to recreate 'their historical crusader role in holding the gates of Vienna against the infidel.' The new Europe will need its own wall, a European initiative for its own patrolled walls, not defined by an economic bloc but by a new grand military alliance against immigration. Second, and this goal is already explicit in US military and security circles where it is at the very top of the strategy table, there will need to be a 'defensive war' against China.
Perhaps surprisingly, the latter course was ramped up during the eight years of the Obama regime. China is already surrounded by the strongest, best armed and most technically advanced 'Cordon Sanitaire' in the history of war. Trump and his key officials intend to use it. They will force retreats on the Chinese leadership or they will fight a 'leashed' nuclear war (where 'leashed' means controlled!) The US planners see various possibilities in this scenario, from a successful proxy war in Korea to a subsidised upsurge in mainland China in Islamic regions in the north west of the country - (Muslims live in every region in China. The highest concentrations are found in the northwest provinces of Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia, with significant populations also found throughout Yunnan province in southwest China and Henan province in central China) - moving on to offensive military bases on Taiwan after US domination of the Taiwan straights. This coming war, believe the new right, is a strategic necessity for US led global domination to survive.
At the moment the new right have the political initiative in the West. But it is still fragile. It can certainly not be defeated by any call to a 'return to normal'. Recent history is not a place where most working class people in the West wish to return. Nevertheless, as France showed in the Spring and Summer of 2016 there are still strong and active social forces ready to challenge the new right's agenda. What is missing is a new left. Efforts to reform the EU or persuade the Democrats have already run out of steam. Huge mobilisations against Trump, against war, against austerity are still the order of the day. However, this energy has yet to be bottled; the social strength of the working class has yet to take a decisive political form. The direct fight with the West's new right and its purposes are another platform for such a political regroupment.
The new right, based in the West, are preparing for international war.
They have two targets, neither of which are the multi-nationals. New right leaders will make all necessary concessions to big Capital consistent with access to wealth and resources required for their true goals. The fundamental engine of the new right in the West is fear. Fearing that the West's historical domination of the globe is ending, the aims of the new right are, first, to destroy all potentially insurgent forces emanating from the Middle East (and at home). This has several critical aspects including the obvious alliances which the new West wants to build up to exterminate ISIS, but in a longer term perspective it is to isolate and make dependent all of the Arab and wider Middle East regimes, mostly through taking whatever means are necessary to guarantee Western energy sources. Initially Russia will be feted as a potentially military vanguard against 'terrorism'. Latterly, an exhausted Russia will take its natural and subservient place in the new Western hierarchy. The US will remain in charge of this operation, but the new right of Europe will be expected to recreate 'their historical crusader role in holding the gates of Vienna against the infidel.' The new Europe will need its own wall, a European initiative for its own patrolled walls, not defined by an economic bloc but by a new grand military alliance against immigration. Second, and this goal is already explicit in US military and security circles where it is at the very top of the strategy table, there will need to be a 'defensive war' against China.
Perhaps surprisingly, the latter course was ramped up during the eight years of the Obama regime. China is already surrounded by the strongest, best armed and most technically advanced 'Cordon Sanitaire' in the history of war. Trump and his key officials intend to use it. They will force retreats on the Chinese leadership or they will fight a 'leashed' nuclear war (where 'leashed' means controlled!) The US planners see various possibilities in this scenario, from a successful proxy war in Korea to a subsidised upsurge in mainland China in Islamic regions in the north west of the country - (Muslims live in every region in China. The highest concentrations are found in the northwest provinces of Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia, with significant populations also found throughout Yunnan province in southwest China and Henan province in central China) - moving on to offensive military bases on Taiwan after US domination of the Taiwan straights. This coming war, believe the new right, is a strategic necessity for US led global domination to survive.
At the moment the new right have the political initiative in the West. But it is still fragile. It can certainly not be defeated by any call to a 'return to normal'. Recent history is not a place where most working class people in the West wish to return. Nevertheless, as France showed in the Spring and Summer of 2016 there are still strong and active social forces ready to challenge the new right's agenda. What is missing is a new left. Efforts to reform the EU or persuade the Democrats have already run out of steam. Huge mobilisations against Trump, against war, against austerity are still the order of the day. However, this energy has yet to be bottled; the social strength of the working class has yet to take a decisive political form. The direct fight with the West's new right and its purposes are another platform for such a political regroupment.
Thursday 2 February 2017
Prospects in France
Between February and September 2016, leading battalions of organised workers, associated with tens of thousands of French youth, definitively put an end to President Holland's vainglorious ambitions as well as the political future of the French Social Democratic Party. Despite losing the battle to defeat Holland's labour law, a regulation designed to roll back the gains of the French working class since the 1980s - thereby bringing French labour into line with most of the rest of the EU, the mobilisations, the strikes and occupations of the squares destroyed any remnants of the idea that French social democracy represented the youth or the organised working class.
Meanwhile October 2015 was the 10th anniversary of the risings in the Banlieues, still home to 4.5 million people and still ghettos where more than half live below the poverty line and 40% of the youth are unemployed. These are the areas in France which enthusiastically mobilised behind Hollande following his promises. After 10 years of failure - except for the small social layer who have used state interventions to rise above their neighbour's circumstances - the Banlieues have abandoned Hollande. These areas today have also emphatically turned their backs on French social democracy.
Both these social upheavals have called time on one of the two great parties that have dominated post-1968 France.
As for the Republicans, the other great party of modern French history, the growing incoherence and fear of the EU's refugee policy associated with ISIS attacks following the Syrian war has stimulated a nationalist resurgence to its right. Already the State of Emergency, provoked by the murder of 130 Parisians in November 2015 has been extended 4 times by the Hollande government, and is currently to be ended only by July 2017.
Meanwhile October 2015 was the 10th anniversary of the risings in the Banlieues, still home to 4.5 million people and still ghettos where more than half live below the poverty line and 40% of the youth are unemployed. These are the areas in France which enthusiastically mobilised behind Hollande following his promises. After 10 years of failure - except for the small social layer who have used state interventions to rise above their neighbour's circumstances - the Banlieues have abandoned Hollande. These areas today have also emphatically turned their backs on French social democracy.
Both these social upheavals have called time on one of the two great parties that have dominated post-1968 France.
As for the Republicans, the other great party of modern French history, the growing incoherence and fear of the EU's refugee policy associated with ISIS attacks following the Syrian war has stimulated a nationalist resurgence to its right. Already the State of Emergency, provoked by the murder of 130 Parisians in November 2015 has been extended 4 times by the Hollande government, and is currently to be ended only by July 2017.
2017 is the year of French elections. The class wide battle of 2016, its retreats and its successes, its novelty, drama and insurgent atmosphere, its popularity in opinion polls, but also its inability to reach out across wider society, the continuing unmet need to crystallise a new political leadership, this underdeveloped revolt, has gone on to shape the chaotic, response of the French left. The failure of the EU economically and in its confused and fragmented responses to refugees, combined with ISIS attacks and the endless, purposeless State of Emergency, has mobilised the right - but yet also without coherent direction.
The far left, the most obvious repository for the activist forces of 2016 to find their home, is riddled with confusion. For example Phillipe Potou, a leader of the New Anti-Capitalist Party, (a split from the Anti-Capitalist Party) has had difficulty assembling the 500 signatures required to mount a Presidential challenge. The major far left hopeful, the long standing Jean Luc Melenchon, has morphed his Communist Party alliance under the umbrella of the Left Party, into an individual based movement called 'Unsubmissive France.' In different ways both show the as yet unformed capacity of the far left to be able to represent even the most progressive forces that 2016 unleashed, let alone the wider reach out to the Banlieues or France's disaffected working class. The mounting tragedy is the lack of their connection with the millions who have finished with Social Democracy. Far left parties are too small and isolated. At a wider, Melenchon level, they are being turned into 'trust' campaigns focusing on the individual 'hero'. But this European version of Chavas in Uruguay or even Tsipras in Greece has already passed its sell by date.
Social democrats have ended up voting for Benoit Hamon as their presidential candidate. (He is dubbed France's Corbyn - the leader of the UK Labour Party.) In a deeply sophisticated political culture, Hamon was the only social democrat candidate with a genuine program. His utopian ideas (750 Euros a month for all French citizens without jobs for example) are tied to fantasy economics (no income tax increases; state money to the unemployed will free them to create their own enterprises). So, no nasty class conflict. A Silicon Valley solution to globalisation and late capitalism which mobilises the intelligentsia, but which shows no real political intelligence when it comes to the gaping fissures and possible, indeed essential unities yet to be created in modern French politics - that has failed so badly in the hands of social democratic France and the EU's failing versions of globalisation.
Meanwhile Francoise Fillon won the Republican vote in a classical right wing version of utopia because of his Thatcherite intentions, his religious tempered social programme and, together with his (Welsh) wife, an outstanding, uncorrupted reputation. (Essential after Sarkozy, Christine La Guard, now of IMF, etc., etc,.) Except it turns out he has thieved hundreds of thousands of Euros from the state, paying for fake jobs for his wife and his children. Fillon was the bookies' shoe-in for President. But that was 48 hours ago.
In the context of the crisis of both traditional French Parties - as well as the unresolved shape of the far left - two apparent oddities emerge out of the mists of history to 'resolve' the French 'problem.'
The first of these is Emmanuel Macron, who hints at his political legacy in the title of his 'movement' 'Let's Go!' (Or "Forward.') Besides his packed meetings, Macron has powerful supporters behind the scenes. Some years ago he was identified as a member of ‘les Gracques’ — a discreet centre-left pressure group loosely staffed by influential chief executives and civil service mandarins. They are pro-market socialists who long ago gave up on the Socialist party. Macron talks about himself, his wife and his family. He offers a mystery and an absence. The absence is his lack of association with either mainstream party and his mystery is the blank canvas on which voters can write their own desires. Here we have France's technocratic version of Berlusconi; the managerial solution to the failure of politics. Invented in 1930's France, we now have a new generation that despises history and seeks an anti-politician! Macron contests French polls with Le Pen for top billing.
In the context of the crisis of both traditional French Parties - as well as the unresolved shape of the far left - two apparent oddities emerge out of the mists of history to 'resolve' the French 'problem.'
The first of these is Emmanuel Macron, who hints at his political legacy in the title of his 'movement' 'Let's Go!' (Or "Forward.') Besides his packed meetings, Macron has powerful supporters behind the scenes. Some years ago he was identified as a member of ‘les Gracques’ — a discreet centre-left pressure group loosely staffed by influential chief executives and civil service mandarins. They are pro-market socialists who long ago gave up on the Socialist party. Macron talks about himself, his wife and his family. He offers a mystery and an absence. The absence is his lack of association with either mainstream party and his mystery is the blank canvas on which voters can write their own desires. Here we have France's technocratic version of Berlusconi; the managerial solution to the failure of politics. Invented in 1930's France, we now have a new generation that despises history and seeks an anti-politician! Macron contests French polls with Le Pen for top billing.
And finally, Le Pen junior. In establishment circles French expectations regarding Marine Le Pen rely completely on the relatively permanent 77% of the polls that say the French, in the end, will vote for anyone rather than her. French commentators sagely explain the lock on the 2 stage Presidential election, where she would always be up against a single opponent, and she will never get a 50% plus vote in a 2 horse race. Nevertheless Le Pen starts with 25% plus ratings. And decades of voting shows that, unlike the UK, the US, Germany etc., France has 2/3 million solid fascist supporters in their voting population, with their roots in Vichy and Algeria, and who will not always restrain themselves within electoral politics.
Now Fillon's moral laxity opens another door - to his right. Le Pen leads the most 'traditional' party in France. It is a movement that predates WW2. Fillon's failure means Le Pen can reach out beyond her long-term base in the direction of those in fear over immigration and towards those who seek nationalist solutions to the damage caused by globalisation. Imagine the electoral temptation of a British UKIP, but now in France without the equivalent of a hard core Tory right wing to divert its progress.
Most international and many French commentators describe the coming elections as a 'right shift' in French society. This is the simplistic conclusion emerging out of the collapse of the Social Democratic Party and the general fear of more ISIS attacks. The reality is both harsher and more significant. Undoubtedly France will be the axis on which the whole European/Western crisis swivels. But the elements that are coalescing and repelling each other, underneath the coming Presidential carnival, include a social revolutionary aspect as well as fear and political alienation. France's left political organisations may well require as great a non-sectarian reformation as the corrupt, 'ancien regime' needs its overthrow. Traditional French politics no longer work at either level. But that does not rule out insurgency and the creation of new, bold progress; not in the most revolutionary country in Europe and not in the absence so far of drastic social defeat.
Now Fillon's moral laxity opens another door - to his right. Le Pen leads the most 'traditional' party in France. It is a movement that predates WW2. Fillon's failure means Le Pen can reach out beyond her long-term base in the direction of those in fear over immigration and towards those who seek nationalist solutions to the damage caused by globalisation. Imagine the electoral temptation of a British UKIP, but now in France without the equivalent of a hard core Tory right wing to divert its progress.
Most international and many French commentators describe the coming elections as a 'right shift' in French society. This is the simplistic conclusion emerging out of the collapse of the Social Democratic Party and the general fear of more ISIS attacks. The reality is both harsher and more significant. Undoubtedly France will be the axis on which the whole European/Western crisis swivels. But the elements that are coalescing and repelling each other, underneath the coming Presidential carnival, include a social revolutionary aspect as well as fear and political alienation. France's left political organisations may well require as great a non-sectarian reformation as the corrupt, 'ancien regime' needs its overthrow. Traditional French politics no longer work at either level. But that does not rule out insurgency and the creation of new, bold progress; not in the most revolutionary country in Europe and not in the absence so far of drastic social defeat.
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