Teresa May, the originator of the description of Britain's Tories as the 'nasty party', and Britain's Home Secretary, has probably just skewered Tory millionaire Zak Goldsmith's bid for the London Mayoralty. Her savage attack on immigration (an appeal for future Tory leadership) went down well among the ancient ranks of the average Tory conference audience, but it will sink like a stone in the political life of London, threatening to drown all those associated with her ugly tirade.
Cameron concluded the conference with a speech that initially reminded everybody of Blair. He focused on what he thought were the intractable problems of British society that remained to be dealt with (inequality, poverty, Victorian prisons etc.,) and titled his regime as the 'turn around' decade. He did not talk about the deficit (now considerably larger than when he came to office, 5 years ago.) He did not refer to the frighteningly low levels of productivity in the UK (now 20th in the OECD) or the big-capital investment strike that is causing it. Last May ex Labour leader Milliband was denounced for missing out the deficit in his conference speech - by Cameron and the entire political and media establishment.
Cameron reserved his vitriol for Labour's new leader Corbyn. He did not pull his punches. Following his philosophical ruminations about the great problems of Britain that he would solve, (not including the deficit, investment, the housing bubble, etc., etc.,) he described Corbyn as a 'Britain hater.' Cameron's meditative puff, combined with his violent excoriation of Corbyn, gives pause for thought after the media's generally smirking denigration of Corby's political capacities - that Corbyn's generalities and abstract ideas might have rather frightened Britain' supremo.
One of the great truths of British political life for the last 20 years has been the enormous growth of the feeling among millions of voters that 'they' - the main Westminster based parties - 'are all the same.' Thoughtful and serious studies of this phenomena have drawn out the fact that the electorate are more inspired by politics when they see parties and leaders who identify with a larger vision for society and the future. Corbyn has successfully sketched out a clear and distinct line of advance; which left Cameron with the yawning horror of the absence of any such perspective which described his own office.
The role of the Tory party is to shore up and promote the status quo - particularly when it has to be defended in a crisis, when the people at large may challenge its basis. It is difficult, as Cameron's woolly and implausible meanderings illustrate, for the Tory party to do that in the absence of fighting for an expanding Empire or crushing an Irish or Miner's revolt. Holding on to the City of London, nukes, the wealth of the wealthy and reducing the social wage, do not inspire.
So yet again the British media have missed a trick here and underestimated Corbyn's response to an important trend in British (and European) politics. (Which Cameron felt but could not grasp.)
Thursday, 8 October 2015
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Labour's future under Corbyn
A short essay on the future of the Labour Party (LP) in Britain.
The dust has settled following Labour's conference. And the media's 'Corbyn hunt' has calmed down after Labour's new leader said he would never push the UK's nuclear button. Commentators like Andrew Rawnsley (see the Observer 4 October) have him installed for the long haul, despite the almost universal despair of Labour's parliamentary party. According to Rawnsley, Corbyn's huge and increasing following among the party membership will hold off any short term attempts at coups by Labour MPs. The vast bulk of Labour MPs are now left sincerely hoping for bad news in the coming elections in Scotland, London and Bristol to make their dirty work easier.
Meanwhile Corbyn's entirely genuine 'common man' persona continues to charm those who like the novelty of politicians in a human form. And some distinct political priorities have emerged through Corbyn's conference speech and in interviews, albeit not yet hardened into party policies.
At first sight Corbyn was cautious, inclusive, but a bit rambling at the party conference, as though still a little overwhelmed at his often mentioned 'mandate' from Labour members and supporters. The unsure commentators therefore sought in vain for Corbyn's analysis of Britain's deficit, or an explanation of Labour's recent defeat in the General Election. It is true that his speech did mainly focus on the future of the LP. It was therefore more significant than his absent thoughts on defeat at the General election and on the deficit, that Corbyn offered no explanation of his own dramatic success in the leadership race, despite the repeated reminders he gave of his mandate. His references to innate British values coming to the fore and the desire 'out there' for a new politics did not nail it. Yet he nevertheless drew out a most significant and dramatic political revelation for the future of the LP from his election as leader.
Corbyn, with a rare fire in his words, challenged those who argued that the social democratic British LP was going the same way as the 'hollowed out' European social democratic parties. In Britain, he enthusiastically insisted, social democracy was not only alive but was in a process of rebirth as tens of thousands of new members flooded into the party. The current LP was now the largest mainstream party in Britain for decades - and on its way to become a mass party and movement again.
There were therefore three key points that emerged out of Corbyn's first LP conference. First was opposition to austerity and the makings of a Keynesian type plan for growth; (undoubtedly a growing mainstream political and economic view in the world as the neo-liberal adventure remains stuck in the mud - especially in Europe.) It is common sense for Corbyn to stress the completely orthodox and coherent arguments against the Tory's fetish with austerity, especially as the danger of a burst UK property bubble increases. He judges, quite rightly, that the absence of the national presentation of a clear economic alternative so far, the failure to deal with the mantra that 'there is no alternative', is a major factor in the hesitation and retreat of Labour support in the country. Miliband's policy of 'austerity light' just encouraged people to think that as all British political leaders seem to agree austerity has got to be done, let's just get it done as sharply and quickly as possible. Second was an affirmation, both personally by Corbyn and more generally, that British warmongering would be curtailed. Even the small Corbyn team (borrowed in significant part from Ken Livingstone's back room) are acutely conscious of the impending public emergence of the Chillcott Enquiry report on Iraq. The Iraq fiasco is now a hated memory for the majority of Britons. Corbyn's team hopes he will emerge as the one Westminster leader without bloodstains on his hands.
These two themes, developed into policy, are designed to establish a new Labour Party based common sense across the wider population in the years leading up to the 2020 election. And it is true that most political observers in the main media have generally underestimated the potential strength of these ideas to win popular support.
But a third theme emerged from conference - showing where the new leader's strength of purpose now lies. It lies in his mission to (re) build the LP.
Growing the party is certainly the main immediate means of holding back eager Labour MPs from their regicidal purposes. It is a crucial measure to bring enough pressure to bear in the constituency parties and from the left unions to hold the ring for the new leadership. But there is a more general proposition being made here. The Corbyn leadership are arguing that a rebuilt LP, a British social democracy in their own image, is the decisive instrument to deal with the list of British cruelties and inequalities, imposed both at home and abroad and currently experienced to some degree by everyone outside the 1%. This is nothing less than a plan to reorganise the whole of British politics, based on a reborn LP.
Unfortunately there are blind spots in this rosy vision.
There is a curious paradox in the thinking of Corbyn's team in their optimistic projections on the potential future of their new Labour Party. For decades up until about three weeks ago, the aim of Labour's minuscule left was to hang on to what remained of the dregs of the LP 'for fear of something worse.' (From this thinking has stemmed some of the Labour left's continued sectarian approach to developments like the Greens or the SNP - thoughts that are now being triumphantly magnified by their new internal success.) Yet the cosiest of roads to a progressive victory in 2020 is being laid out for the Corbyn led LP in its solitary glory. If we can just hang on to the LP leadership apparatus they suggest, then the Scottish question, the Greens, austerity and war, UKIP and mass voter abstention will all wash away in the progressive tide of History.
What period are we living in? What is the real state of our social and political systems and parties (at least in Europe) and the ebb and flow of the social classes' multitudes of frictions, contradictions and antagonisms?
The period of relentless defeat of working class movements, parties and organisations in Europe, a period which started in the 1980s, is over. Left, progressive and new working and middle class movements have arisen, albeit in the context of increasing global, social, political and economic polarisation. The biggest traditional social forces in society and the ancient monuments of cold war architecture and western global dominance are all weakening. The political landscape shifts and grinds and constantly reorganises itself. The new movements and the shifting political terrain spark intense collisions and fractures; even wars and the destruction of nations and the collapse of whole populations, as in the case of Yugoslavia or the Ukraine. Meanwhile the West, more and more belligerently, exports its domestic crises to the periphery (Greece, Spain, Italy and Turkey) and overseas. New powers emerge as traditional imperialism no longer dominates the world. All this turmoil and recomposition is associated with rapid shifts and vicious struggles as the tectonic plates of the last half century tip over and split against each other.
New leaderships emerge. Some of the most powerful so far have been born from a reactionary radicalism that refracts the mirror images of long distance violence, hatred and poison of imperialism into a ruthless, personal brutality; and that will continue to expand in the absence of any substantive, alternative insurgent perspective. Their necessity is solely to express fury and revolt. The slide from what often looked like bedrocks of imperious stability to war is sudden and unfocused. In essence a social system is cracking and its associated politics are in convulsion, first, inevitably, at the edges of the most powerful nations. The weight of the world's difficulties are far too great for societies' current organisations to bear (as the current refugee crisis demonstrates.) The results from this turmoil are not inevitable. But major social, economic, political and military battles will have to occur to establish any new 'normal.' Whatever else is true a slow, gentle and steady evolution to a new social democracy is not on the cards. Even in Britain! A period of sharp turns and dramatic political shifts is already underway - so far relatively peacefully but that is only in the most developed countries and, with the growing alienation from the West's democratic systems - not at all guaranteed.
Focusing on the British LP in this wider context; it is first immediately obvious that Britain's social democracy has not at all avoided the 'hollowing out' of its European associates. The recent collapse of Labour's traditional base in Scotland; the loss of five million Labour votes since Blair's ten year dominance, the four million who voted for UKIP, half from traditional Labour areas; the million that voted Green; the literal and political hollowing out of thousands of Ward parties and Constituencies and their power to alter anything; all of it has left the British LP in a state of near collapse. It is as a consequence of the tremulous fragility of the LP that Corbyn has been able to win its leadership! In the now desperate creation of a new Labour hinterland, a direct result of its increasing collapse as a party, hundreds and thousands of a new left, that had already started to fight austerity, that was tired of Westminster and its lack of real power as well as its increasingly self seeking ways, voted for Corbyn.
This new internal Labour 'electorate', at least that part who are not old party members returning, do not want to 'fix' the Labour Party. They want to stop austerity, to stop war and they want to change the British political system into one that provides political and social justice. The returning old LP members and the left unions, by and large, do see the reform of the LP as the decisive means to remove the Tories and change society. Whatever the tastes and predictions of the political commentators and theorists an experiment in and on the LP is underway - but in the most convulsive times since WW2.
Labour's MPs are almost universally hostile to the current party's leadership. Some powerful trade unions likewise. The whole of the rest of the British establishment is against the Corbyn leadership. We have seen already the immense pressure on Syriza in Greece, which had succeeded in winning the Greek people and is now carrying out the Troika's plans, on Podemos, which in May was level pegging with Spain's two major parties and is now at 12%. Corbyn's Labour Party will go through much more. And if it is not 'restored' to its post Blair anchorage by internal manouver it will be blown in that direction by its initial collapses in the polls. Corbyn needs to prepare a tremendous struggle, not a 'gentle' type of politics at all.
It seems therefore that the next stage of the 'hollowing out' of British social democracy will, in this case, pass through the social democratic party itself, the LP. When change is afoot however, all the old clothes are dug out and tried on for size first. All the old banners are waved at the start. But history only ever repeats itself in fast motion and because Britain has no vast Bennite current of the 1980s, nor a trade union movement of twelve million, the old clothes and flags will be dumped very soon.
Three decisive preparations (assuming the continued oppostion to austerity and war) need to be made by the Corbyn leadership for the battle to come. First, it needs to help bring the new working class into action, in a movement at the base of society; a movement that campaigns against austerity and war. That is the real source of the new working class political leadership - a leadership that in time and through experience might propose itself as the leadership of the whole of society - a recomposition of a new social class drawn from its new types of labour. And that is the context in which old time Labourist sectarianism against the Greens or the left of the SNP has absolutely no place at all.
Second, the Corbynistas have to fight (again alonside the Greens and the SNP) for the root and branch reform of the political system - starting with the clearest possible call for a fair voting system. Whatever comes out of the impending battle of the LP, the Corbyn leadership must stand for the real representation of the people with meaning for all votes and voters and an end to their Lordships. That means if the right decide to wreck the party then a core, with some real purchase on the political system, would remain.
Third, Corbyn and his supporters should form an organised current, trend, society, within the party. The right have them already. There is no need for such a measure to be exclusive or secret in any way. But such organisation is an absolute necessity among the new and returning members from the start. (Most of them know that they will be in a fight to the finish inside Labour. They are right.)
If those who seek progressive change in Britain are to benefit from the developments now underway in and around the Corbyn led LP, they cannot stand aside from, or worse, dismiss, the Corbyn victory. There is enough work to be done both inside and outside the LP to push this development as far as it will go and to help a nation wide, left political mass movement, emerge - even if the right and the establishment are able to break up Labour's current leadership. This fact, the fact of Corbyn's internal LP victory, can prove to be a decisive experience in the regroupment of a new working class movement and its political formation in Britain.
The dust has settled following Labour's conference. And the media's 'Corbyn hunt' has calmed down after Labour's new leader said he would never push the UK's nuclear button. Commentators like Andrew Rawnsley (see the Observer 4 October) have him installed for the long haul, despite the almost universal despair of Labour's parliamentary party. According to Rawnsley, Corbyn's huge and increasing following among the party membership will hold off any short term attempts at coups by Labour MPs. The vast bulk of Labour MPs are now left sincerely hoping for bad news in the coming elections in Scotland, London and Bristol to make their dirty work easier.
Meanwhile Corbyn's entirely genuine 'common man' persona continues to charm those who like the novelty of politicians in a human form. And some distinct political priorities have emerged through Corbyn's conference speech and in interviews, albeit not yet hardened into party policies.
At first sight Corbyn was cautious, inclusive, but a bit rambling at the party conference, as though still a little overwhelmed at his often mentioned 'mandate' from Labour members and supporters. The unsure commentators therefore sought in vain for Corbyn's analysis of Britain's deficit, or an explanation of Labour's recent defeat in the General Election. It is true that his speech did mainly focus on the future of the LP. It was therefore more significant than his absent thoughts on defeat at the General election and on the deficit, that Corbyn offered no explanation of his own dramatic success in the leadership race, despite the repeated reminders he gave of his mandate. His references to innate British values coming to the fore and the desire 'out there' for a new politics did not nail it. Yet he nevertheless drew out a most significant and dramatic political revelation for the future of the LP from his election as leader.
Corbyn, with a rare fire in his words, challenged those who argued that the social democratic British LP was going the same way as the 'hollowed out' European social democratic parties. In Britain, he enthusiastically insisted, social democracy was not only alive but was in a process of rebirth as tens of thousands of new members flooded into the party. The current LP was now the largest mainstream party in Britain for decades - and on its way to become a mass party and movement again.
There were therefore three key points that emerged out of Corbyn's first LP conference. First was opposition to austerity and the makings of a Keynesian type plan for growth; (undoubtedly a growing mainstream political and economic view in the world as the neo-liberal adventure remains stuck in the mud - especially in Europe.) It is common sense for Corbyn to stress the completely orthodox and coherent arguments against the Tory's fetish with austerity, especially as the danger of a burst UK property bubble increases. He judges, quite rightly, that the absence of the national presentation of a clear economic alternative so far, the failure to deal with the mantra that 'there is no alternative', is a major factor in the hesitation and retreat of Labour support in the country. Miliband's policy of 'austerity light' just encouraged people to think that as all British political leaders seem to agree austerity has got to be done, let's just get it done as sharply and quickly as possible. Second was an affirmation, both personally by Corbyn and more generally, that British warmongering would be curtailed. Even the small Corbyn team (borrowed in significant part from Ken Livingstone's back room) are acutely conscious of the impending public emergence of the Chillcott Enquiry report on Iraq. The Iraq fiasco is now a hated memory for the majority of Britons. Corbyn's team hopes he will emerge as the one Westminster leader without bloodstains on his hands.
These two themes, developed into policy, are designed to establish a new Labour Party based common sense across the wider population in the years leading up to the 2020 election. And it is true that most political observers in the main media have generally underestimated the potential strength of these ideas to win popular support.
But a third theme emerged from conference - showing where the new leader's strength of purpose now lies. It lies in his mission to (re) build the LP.
Growing the party is certainly the main immediate means of holding back eager Labour MPs from their regicidal purposes. It is a crucial measure to bring enough pressure to bear in the constituency parties and from the left unions to hold the ring for the new leadership. But there is a more general proposition being made here. The Corbyn leadership are arguing that a rebuilt LP, a British social democracy in their own image, is the decisive instrument to deal with the list of British cruelties and inequalities, imposed both at home and abroad and currently experienced to some degree by everyone outside the 1%. This is nothing less than a plan to reorganise the whole of British politics, based on a reborn LP.
Unfortunately there are blind spots in this rosy vision.
There is a curious paradox in the thinking of Corbyn's team in their optimistic projections on the potential future of their new Labour Party. For decades up until about three weeks ago, the aim of Labour's minuscule left was to hang on to what remained of the dregs of the LP 'for fear of something worse.' (From this thinking has stemmed some of the Labour left's continued sectarian approach to developments like the Greens or the SNP - thoughts that are now being triumphantly magnified by their new internal success.) Yet the cosiest of roads to a progressive victory in 2020 is being laid out for the Corbyn led LP in its solitary glory. If we can just hang on to the LP leadership apparatus they suggest, then the Scottish question, the Greens, austerity and war, UKIP and mass voter abstention will all wash away in the progressive tide of History.
What period are we living in? What is the real state of our social and political systems and parties (at least in Europe) and the ebb and flow of the social classes' multitudes of frictions, contradictions and antagonisms?
The period of relentless defeat of working class movements, parties and organisations in Europe, a period which started in the 1980s, is over. Left, progressive and new working and middle class movements have arisen, albeit in the context of increasing global, social, political and economic polarisation. The biggest traditional social forces in society and the ancient monuments of cold war architecture and western global dominance are all weakening. The political landscape shifts and grinds and constantly reorganises itself. The new movements and the shifting political terrain spark intense collisions and fractures; even wars and the destruction of nations and the collapse of whole populations, as in the case of Yugoslavia or the Ukraine. Meanwhile the West, more and more belligerently, exports its domestic crises to the periphery (Greece, Spain, Italy and Turkey) and overseas. New powers emerge as traditional imperialism no longer dominates the world. All this turmoil and recomposition is associated with rapid shifts and vicious struggles as the tectonic plates of the last half century tip over and split against each other.
New leaderships emerge. Some of the most powerful so far have been born from a reactionary radicalism that refracts the mirror images of long distance violence, hatred and poison of imperialism into a ruthless, personal brutality; and that will continue to expand in the absence of any substantive, alternative insurgent perspective. Their necessity is solely to express fury and revolt. The slide from what often looked like bedrocks of imperious stability to war is sudden and unfocused. In essence a social system is cracking and its associated politics are in convulsion, first, inevitably, at the edges of the most powerful nations. The weight of the world's difficulties are far too great for societies' current organisations to bear (as the current refugee crisis demonstrates.) The results from this turmoil are not inevitable. But major social, economic, political and military battles will have to occur to establish any new 'normal.' Whatever else is true a slow, gentle and steady evolution to a new social democracy is not on the cards. Even in Britain! A period of sharp turns and dramatic political shifts is already underway - so far relatively peacefully but that is only in the most developed countries and, with the growing alienation from the West's democratic systems - not at all guaranteed.
Focusing on the British LP in this wider context; it is first immediately obvious that Britain's social democracy has not at all avoided the 'hollowing out' of its European associates. The recent collapse of Labour's traditional base in Scotland; the loss of five million Labour votes since Blair's ten year dominance, the four million who voted for UKIP, half from traditional Labour areas; the million that voted Green; the literal and political hollowing out of thousands of Ward parties and Constituencies and their power to alter anything; all of it has left the British LP in a state of near collapse. It is as a consequence of the tremulous fragility of the LP that Corbyn has been able to win its leadership! In the now desperate creation of a new Labour hinterland, a direct result of its increasing collapse as a party, hundreds and thousands of a new left, that had already started to fight austerity, that was tired of Westminster and its lack of real power as well as its increasingly self seeking ways, voted for Corbyn.
This new internal Labour 'electorate', at least that part who are not old party members returning, do not want to 'fix' the Labour Party. They want to stop austerity, to stop war and they want to change the British political system into one that provides political and social justice. The returning old LP members and the left unions, by and large, do see the reform of the LP as the decisive means to remove the Tories and change society. Whatever the tastes and predictions of the political commentators and theorists an experiment in and on the LP is underway - but in the most convulsive times since WW2.
Labour's MPs are almost universally hostile to the current party's leadership. Some powerful trade unions likewise. The whole of the rest of the British establishment is against the Corbyn leadership. We have seen already the immense pressure on Syriza in Greece, which had succeeded in winning the Greek people and is now carrying out the Troika's plans, on Podemos, which in May was level pegging with Spain's two major parties and is now at 12%. Corbyn's Labour Party will go through much more. And if it is not 'restored' to its post Blair anchorage by internal manouver it will be blown in that direction by its initial collapses in the polls. Corbyn needs to prepare a tremendous struggle, not a 'gentle' type of politics at all.
It seems therefore that the next stage of the 'hollowing out' of British social democracy will, in this case, pass through the social democratic party itself, the LP. When change is afoot however, all the old clothes are dug out and tried on for size first. All the old banners are waved at the start. But history only ever repeats itself in fast motion and because Britain has no vast Bennite current of the 1980s, nor a trade union movement of twelve million, the old clothes and flags will be dumped very soon.
Three decisive preparations (assuming the continued oppostion to austerity and war) need to be made by the Corbyn leadership for the battle to come. First, it needs to help bring the new working class into action, in a movement at the base of society; a movement that campaigns against austerity and war. That is the real source of the new working class political leadership - a leadership that in time and through experience might propose itself as the leadership of the whole of society - a recomposition of a new social class drawn from its new types of labour. And that is the context in which old time Labourist sectarianism against the Greens or the left of the SNP has absolutely no place at all.
Second, the Corbynistas have to fight (again alonside the Greens and the SNP) for the root and branch reform of the political system - starting with the clearest possible call for a fair voting system. Whatever comes out of the impending battle of the LP, the Corbyn leadership must stand for the real representation of the people with meaning for all votes and voters and an end to their Lordships. That means if the right decide to wreck the party then a core, with some real purchase on the political system, would remain.
Third, Corbyn and his supporters should form an organised current, trend, society, within the party. The right have them already. There is no need for such a measure to be exclusive or secret in any way. But such organisation is an absolute necessity among the new and returning members from the start. (Most of them know that they will be in a fight to the finish inside Labour. They are right.)
If those who seek progressive change in Britain are to benefit from the developments now underway in and around the Corbyn led LP, they cannot stand aside from, or worse, dismiss, the Corbyn victory. There is enough work to be done both inside and outside the LP to push this development as far as it will go and to help a nation wide, left political mass movement, emerge - even if the right and the establishment are able to break up Labour's current leadership. This fact, the fact of Corbyn's internal LP victory, can prove to be a decisive experience in the regroupment of a new working class movement and its political formation in Britain.
Thursday, 1 October 2015
Corbyn touches a nerve!
We have all learnt something about the British nuclear deterrent thanks to Labour's new leader, Jeremy Corbyn. (If you haven't, then you are probably reading this as part of your job.) But for the rest of us it came as news that any new Prime Minister has to write a letter (it was shown as written in long hand) to the Captain of the nuclear submarines that carry the Trident missile. This is placed in the sub-mariner's on-board safe and is to be opened in the event that the PM and his representatives are 'unavailable.' (Wiped out.)
Corbyn got into trouble sticking to his traditional anti-nukes position. What's the point in Corbyn's principles - railed his angry fellow shadow cabinet members - as his public statement that he would not use these weapons removes the deterrent effect of Trident to our enemies? And that is very dangerous.
What should the PM's letter say?
'Dear Captain,
Whatever you do, and for the sake of the continued existence of humanity, do not fire your missiles at anybody. I'm gone and a great swathe of our population is already wiped out. Your duty is clear. Use your wits, your technology, your communications, to preserve whatever you can of the human population wherever it is to be found.
I remain ... etc'
Seriously; who are likely to use nuclear weapons against Britain? And if the UK got rid of them would that make the threat greater? In the past Britain's nukes were meant to protect Western Europe and the UK from Russian invasion. It turned out that Russia did not invade the West - even including nations not under the West's (the US's) nuclear umbrella. So that was not it. Today Britain has joined the West's war against Islamic fundamentalism. Certainly, some of the fundamentalists' military groups would use nuclear weapons to murder millions - if they could get them. Is Trident a deterrent to that? Where would the Trident missiles be aimed in retaliation? The paradox of nuclear weapons in the 21st century is that those mad or bad enough to use them - cannot be deterred. In this century nukes would be a 'first use' weapon.
So what exactly is the safest thing to do 'in defence' of Britain's population? Get rid of the bloody things. Remove as many of them as possible from the face of the earth. And start up a campaign, like those organised by the UN to eradicate polio or small pox, to end them across the globe. If they did not exist then neither the Middle East's fundamentalists, nor those of the Barry Goldwater / Donald Trump hue in the West would have access to them.
But the British 'powers that be' are not idiots. With the exception of some really loopy Generals the arguments against Trident (leaving aside its truly enormous cost) are well understood. So the public are fed mainly on a diet of fear about nobody knowing what might happen in the future to maintain their support for the nuclear status quo, as though it has any relation to keeping the peace. (At the same time, the British establishment have commissioned the Chinese to build the UK's next nuclear power stations - decades into the future!)
What is really at stake for Britain's rulers in their defence of their 'independent nuclear deterrent'?
Leaving aside a seat in the Security Council of the United Nations and the prestige aquired to sell enormous amounts of arms round the world, Britain's nuclear weapon is a decisive keystone in the political and economic structure and ambitions of its ruling class. There is no doubting Trident's 'global reach': or its integral relationship to the military and political power of the US. Its existence was a part of the underpinning, up until 2008, of the biggest bank in the world, the Royal Bank of Scotland with its assets of £1.9 trillion. Trident was and remains a decisive part of the military wing of Britain's political and economic power across the globe.
Corbyn wants a different country. So do the SNP in Scotland. When they challenge Trident, Britain's rulers know that in their guts. And they will fight by all means that they can bring to hand to break the anti Trident, anti-war movement.
Corbyn got into trouble sticking to his traditional anti-nukes position. What's the point in Corbyn's principles - railed his angry fellow shadow cabinet members - as his public statement that he would not use these weapons removes the deterrent effect of Trident to our enemies? And that is very dangerous.
What should the PM's letter say?
'Dear Captain,
Whatever you do, and for the sake of the continued existence of humanity, do not fire your missiles at anybody. I'm gone and a great swathe of our population is already wiped out. Your duty is clear. Use your wits, your technology, your communications, to preserve whatever you can of the human population wherever it is to be found.
I remain ... etc'
Seriously; who are likely to use nuclear weapons against Britain? And if the UK got rid of them would that make the threat greater? In the past Britain's nukes were meant to protect Western Europe and the UK from Russian invasion. It turned out that Russia did not invade the West - even including nations not under the West's (the US's) nuclear umbrella. So that was not it. Today Britain has joined the West's war against Islamic fundamentalism. Certainly, some of the fundamentalists' military groups would use nuclear weapons to murder millions - if they could get them. Is Trident a deterrent to that? Where would the Trident missiles be aimed in retaliation? The paradox of nuclear weapons in the 21st century is that those mad or bad enough to use them - cannot be deterred. In this century nukes would be a 'first use' weapon.
So what exactly is the safest thing to do 'in defence' of Britain's population? Get rid of the bloody things. Remove as many of them as possible from the face of the earth. And start up a campaign, like those organised by the UN to eradicate polio or small pox, to end them across the globe. If they did not exist then neither the Middle East's fundamentalists, nor those of the Barry Goldwater / Donald Trump hue in the West would have access to them.
But the British 'powers that be' are not idiots. With the exception of some really loopy Generals the arguments against Trident (leaving aside its truly enormous cost) are well understood. So the public are fed mainly on a diet of fear about nobody knowing what might happen in the future to maintain their support for the nuclear status quo, as though it has any relation to keeping the peace. (At the same time, the British establishment have commissioned the Chinese to build the UK's next nuclear power stations - decades into the future!)
What is really at stake for Britain's rulers in their defence of their 'independent nuclear deterrent'?
Leaving aside a seat in the Security Council of the United Nations and the prestige aquired to sell enormous amounts of arms round the world, Britain's nuclear weapon is a decisive keystone in the political and economic structure and ambitions of its ruling class. There is no doubting Trident's 'global reach': or its integral relationship to the military and political power of the US. Its existence was a part of the underpinning, up until 2008, of the biggest bank in the world, the Royal Bank of Scotland with its assets of £1.9 trillion. Trident was and remains a decisive part of the military wing of Britain's political and economic power across the globe.
Corbyn wants a different country. So do the SNP in Scotland. When they challenge Trident, Britain's rulers know that in their guts. And they will fight by all means that they can bring to hand to break the anti Trident, anti-war movement.
Thursday, 24 September 2015
Greek solidarity - on the ground.
The massive solidarity (not charity) structure in Greece is a great achievement. (See last blog.)
The anti-austerity Popular Unity split from Syriza polled 2.9% of the popular vote and failed to get into parliament in the September elections. But the absence of a national political lead for the Solidarity movement has already been discussed by Greek activists.
Here is the view of one Greek activist on the future for Solidarity under the new conditions.
The anti-austerity Popular Unity split from Syriza polled 2.9% of the popular vote and failed to get into parliament in the September elections. But the absence of a national political lead for the Solidarity movement has already been discussed by Greek activists.
Here is the view of one Greek activist on the future for Solidarity under the new conditions.
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
Greece elections; what has changed?
Syriza's ex economics minister, Vourofakis, wrote in the British 'Guardian' (22 September) that the economic deal made by Alexis Tsipras with the Troika would fail. Indeed his argument was that it has been tried already, over 6 years, and 5 General Elections, and that it has already, definitively, failed.
Syriza gained 2.2 million votes in the elections in January 2015 and 1.9 million in September. They therefore lost 15% of their vote between the two elections. (The overall Greek vote declined by 13% from January.) Syriza now leads the government in coalition with ANEL, a right wing party opposed to austerity, as it did after January's election, when it opposed any more deals with the Troika.
What has changed?
Back in June, when the Greek people voted on the Troika's latest proposals in a referendum, 64% of the Greek voters voted. 2.2 million voted 'yes' and 3.6 million voted 'no', despite the 'no' vote almost certainly requiring Greece to leave the Euro and repudiate their debt mountain. Alexus Tsipras then led Syriza in the opposite direction to the Greek peoples' decision and accepted the most recent Troika plan.
As Vourofakis has explained, the Greek people now face another impossible economic mountain to climb. But there have been other, political, changes that flow from the Tsipras led Syriza rejection of the referendum result.
1. 'Nothing to vote for.'
After the results of the June referendum were dumped by the Tsipras leadership there was nothing to vote for in the September General Election. The new Syriza leadership ( a third of its 149 MPs resigned) were simply, in effect, another pro-austerity party. And some sort of EU organised austerity plan was now the only choice. The new Syriza made much in the election of their 'new politics' and there was some truth in the fact that they had made a fight with the EU and that they had been open with the Greek people about that fight. But there were many attempts made by the new Syriza in the election campaign to 'soften' and to 'spin' their latest concessions and the previous hope and enthusiasm of the anti-austerity electorate had dissipated according to all the main Greek political commentators. Popular Unity, led by the Syriza anti-austerity rebels, failed to make an electoral impact.
While 'Golden Dawn' (Greek's fascists) only slightly increased their vote, they are Greece's third party with 18 MPs despite a leadership that has just come out of prison still on bail for murder and other serious crimes. They are now the major 'anti-austerity' mainstream party, albeit that the (mainly) magnificent reaction of the Greek people to the refugee crisis so far shows that all is far from lost.
2. Erosion of the mobilisation of the Greek people.
The tremendous efforts made at the base of the movement for change in Greece, the 'Solidarity for All' structures that provided health care, teaching, shelter and food, have been hit. At its height in the summer more than 3 million Greeks were using these self organised resources and facilities. While it was never the plan of the organisers of the solidarity movement to stand in for what should be any modern state's responsibilities, nevertheless the tremendous inspiration created by the movement suggested to all that the Greek people could, and would be able to organise a new type of society.
The Solidarity for All umbrella for the movement seems to have blown out by Syriza's turn. At the most severely practical end of the spectrum the health clinics, at least in and around Athens, seem to be the least effected so far.
3. A critical social/political alliance has been pulled apart.
Greek polling (except the post election night polls) are notoriously innaccurate. Nevertheless pre election polling consistently showed that Syriza had lost its majority among the unemployed and among young people aged between 18 and 24. (Indeed the latter group showed a consistent majority for Golden Dawn. GD's previous base among young people in Greece had been largely overturned by the time of the January 2015 General Election.) The new Syriza did not poll a majority among 18 - 44 year olds either.
Additionally, Syriza's radical wing, the 'conscience' of the party, certainly the group with the most history of involvement in the Greek squares movement and in Solidarity for All, in other words the group with the most contact with the Greek peoples' daily lives and resistence, have now been definitively cut out of the Syriza alliance.
4. A new/old leadership emerges.
Tsipras's leadership of Syriza has always been a major factor in the popularity of the party. Indeed part of the left in Europe has 'theorised' this new type of leadership phenomena (see blog re Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, 8 September). But the contact that popular leaders like Chavez had with the Venezuelan people, were premised on the enormous self activity and mobilisation of the poor and disadvantaged, who could see, in practice, how the leadership directly and concretely supported their efforts and their aims. At the same time, the oligarchs and the 'great families' were confronted and denounced.
While popular and displaying a 'common touch' (no frills and no social pretensions) Tsipras never displayed such radical charactersitics (despite being 'suspected' of them.) But since the June referendum his personal leadership style has turned into its opposite. Tsipras's eldest son enrolled into one of Greece's most prestigious, expensive, private schools in September. Tsipras and his family spent part of the summer in a villa owned by a wealthy Greek shipowner and commuting to Athens by helicopter. (See Financial Times, 19 September.) Earlier in the same week Tsipras posted a Twitter cartoon of himself as the messiah which was captioned
'There may not be any miracles if you abstain.'
It's just a joke! Yes, but it suggests how Tsipras now sees the role and function of the Greek people in their own future.
These and other changes in Greece's political life do not (yet) amount to a definitive defeat. But they are signs of a major stepback. And we will see in the October elections in Portugal and the December elections in Spain what the Greek retreat means for other anti-austerity political forces in Europe.
Syriza gained 2.2 million votes in the elections in January 2015 and 1.9 million in September. They therefore lost 15% of their vote between the two elections. (The overall Greek vote declined by 13% from January.) Syriza now leads the government in coalition with ANEL, a right wing party opposed to austerity, as it did after January's election, when it opposed any more deals with the Troika.
What has changed?
Back in June, when the Greek people voted on the Troika's latest proposals in a referendum, 64% of the Greek voters voted. 2.2 million voted 'yes' and 3.6 million voted 'no', despite the 'no' vote almost certainly requiring Greece to leave the Euro and repudiate their debt mountain. Alexus Tsipras then led Syriza in the opposite direction to the Greek peoples' decision and accepted the most recent Troika plan.
As Vourofakis has explained, the Greek people now face another impossible economic mountain to climb. But there have been other, political, changes that flow from the Tsipras led Syriza rejection of the referendum result.
1. 'Nothing to vote for.'
After the results of the June referendum were dumped by the Tsipras leadership there was nothing to vote for in the September General Election. The new Syriza leadership ( a third of its 149 MPs resigned) were simply, in effect, another pro-austerity party. And some sort of EU organised austerity plan was now the only choice. The new Syriza made much in the election of their 'new politics' and there was some truth in the fact that they had made a fight with the EU and that they had been open with the Greek people about that fight. But there were many attempts made by the new Syriza in the election campaign to 'soften' and to 'spin' their latest concessions and the previous hope and enthusiasm of the anti-austerity electorate had dissipated according to all the main Greek political commentators. Popular Unity, led by the Syriza anti-austerity rebels, failed to make an electoral impact.
While 'Golden Dawn' (Greek's fascists) only slightly increased their vote, they are Greece's third party with 18 MPs despite a leadership that has just come out of prison still on bail for murder and other serious crimes. They are now the major 'anti-austerity' mainstream party, albeit that the (mainly) magnificent reaction of the Greek people to the refugee crisis so far shows that all is far from lost.
2. Erosion of the mobilisation of the Greek people.
The tremendous efforts made at the base of the movement for change in Greece, the 'Solidarity for All' structures that provided health care, teaching, shelter and food, have been hit. At its height in the summer more than 3 million Greeks were using these self organised resources and facilities. While it was never the plan of the organisers of the solidarity movement to stand in for what should be any modern state's responsibilities, nevertheless the tremendous inspiration created by the movement suggested to all that the Greek people could, and would be able to organise a new type of society.
The Solidarity for All umbrella for the movement seems to have blown out by Syriza's turn. At the most severely practical end of the spectrum the health clinics, at least in and around Athens, seem to be the least effected so far.
3. A critical social/political alliance has been pulled apart.
Greek polling (except the post election night polls) are notoriously innaccurate. Nevertheless pre election polling consistently showed that Syriza had lost its majority among the unemployed and among young people aged between 18 and 24. (Indeed the latter group showed a consistent majority for Golden Dawn. GD's previous base among young people in Greece had been largely overturned by the time of the January 2015 General Election.) The new Syriza did not poll a majority among 18 - 44 year olds either.
Additionally, Syriza's radical wing, the 'conscience' of the party, certainly the group with the most history of involvement in the Greek squares movement and in Solidarity for All, in other words the group with the most contact with the Greek peoples' daily lives and resistence, have now been definitively cut out of the Syriza alliance.
4. A new/old leadership emerges.
Tsipras's leadership of Syriza has always been a major factor in the popularity of the party. Indeed part of the left in Europe has 'theorised' this new type of leadership phenomena (see blog re Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, 8 September). But the contact that popular leaders like Chavez had with the Venezuelan people, were premised on the enormous self activity and mobilisation of the poor and disadvantaged, who could see, in practice, how the leadership directly and concretely supported their efforts and their aims. At the same time, the oligarchs and the 'great families' were confronted and denounced.
While popular and displaying a 'common touch' (no frills and no social pretensions) Tsipras never displayed such radical charactersitics (despite being 'suspected' of them.) But since the June referendum his personal leadership style has turned into its opposite. Tsipras's eldest son enrolled into one of Greece's most prestigious, expensive, private schools in September. Tsipras and his family spent part of the summer in a villa owned by a wealthy Greek shipowner and commuting to Athens by helicopter. (See Financial Times, 19 September.) Earlier in the same week Tsipras posted a Twitter cartoon of himself as the messiah which was captioned
'There may not be any miracles if you abstain.'
It's just a joke! Yes, but it suggests how Tsipras now sees the role and function of the Greek people in their own future.
These and other changes in Greece's political life do not (yet) amount to a definitive defeat. But they are signs of a major stepback. And we will see in the October elections in Portugal and the December elections in Spain what the Greek retreat means for other anti-austerity political forces in Europe.
Thursday, 17 September 2015
Corbyn, Labour and Scotland
Jeremy Corbyn told the parliamentary Labour Party (14 September) that Tom Watson, Labour's new deputy and he would be visiting Scotland at least one day per month in order to boost Scottish Labour's vote before the May 2016 elections for the Scottish parliament (Holyrood.)
Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, told the media that she hoped Jeremy Corbyn's victory in the vote for the leadership of the Labour Party would mean that Labour would collaborate with the SNP to build a common front against austerity and to oppose Trident - Britain's nuclear weapon. She also told the Scottish media that as Jeremy Corbyn was unlikely to win the 2020 British election, the only way for Scots to escape future Tory rule was to achieve full independence in Scotland.
Behind this opening salvo there is a tangled web of confusion among different parts of the anti-austerity movement in England, Wales and Scotland. There is, undoubtedly, a debate to be had. If Scotland wants an end to austerity, surely it should vote for a UK wide Labour Party, for Corbyn. Indeed, without Scotland voting Labour there is little chance that Corbyn's Labour Party could win any General Election. On the other hand surely Corbyn's leadership is fragile. It would be better to ensure the end of austerity in Scotland if it were independent. On top of that, is it not 'more progressive' for Scotland to be able to decide its own political future anyway?
The debate will rage and roar away. Without in anyway intruding on the right of the Scots to determine their own future here are some (hopefully clarifying) thoughts.
Some (influential) supporters of Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party are completely convinced that the national question in Scotland (and therefore the SNP) are now a dangerous, 'blind alley' for the real 'battle for socialism'. Scotland must get behind Corbyn's chance to become a Labour Prime Minister for the whole UK and the SNP 'diversion' should be totally defeated. Such opinions in England are found most forcefully represented among some of the leadership of the left unions. (In fact this stance is actually an extension of their previously held views about the Scottish referendum campaign.)
This blog has argued before that Scotland is not a colonial nation dominated by English imperialism. But there is no doubt that Scottish politics is dominated by Westminster. This is not the same as the political conditions in Newcastle or Liverpool. Scotland has a national, political identity which means that just as Greek and Spanish anti-austerity movements call for the establishment of the people's sovereignty over remote and wealth-serving institutions that drive the EU, so millions of Scots tie their domination by the Westminster political class to the possible freedom that might be offered by the achievement of their own national sovereignty. In Scotland, the poverty question, the question of inequality, of Trident and of welfare, in other words the class questions, are not the opposite or alternative to the national question. They are now inextricably linked.
Unfortunately for this perspective, the Scottish Labour Party (despite the removal of the hapless Jim Murphy) is now led by another ex-Blairite. In Scotland most people voted SNP in the last General Election (May 2015) because, unlike Labour, the SNP argued for an end to austerity and to Trident. Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour leader, attacks the SNP in Scotland over education results, over 'pushing' for a new referendum, over a long list of things — but not over the absolute need for no Trident and an anti-austerity Scotland. Scottish Labour is unlikely to be promoting Corbyn's politics anytime soon.
Just as it was the anti-austerity, anti-war movement in England that toppled the traditional leadership of Labour in favour of Jeremy Corbyn (and certainly not some long term mushrooming campaign inside the Labour Party, or even inside the unions) so the same trend in Scotland has, up to now, associated itself with support for the SNP - albeit critically (including many of the Scottish members and activists in those same left unions whose leaders are hell bent on burying the national question). This is because Labour has been more than tried, and then tested to destruction, over decades in Scotland. And what the Scots have learned is that Labour cannot defeat the Tories in England - even if they hold Scotland. Worse, that they have tried to become them. They note Corbyn's victory and are glad for it. They also note Corbyn's weak social base and the political fragility of his leadership, and they feel the absolutely decisive requirement to get away forever from Tory governments of both the Conservative and the Labour kind. And more; to get away from the distant, overbearing and corrupt Westminster political class, with its thousands of representatives in the leadership of all three traditional parties.
Can Corbyn's tremendous victory mesh with, even push forward a more radical perspective and political movement in Scotland?
Undoubtedly. But not by trying to unwish the hard political experience of the Scots. (Although some of Corbyn's English well wishers will need to learn the value of modesty.) It is perfectly reasonable, from any point of view, to promote the requirement for Scottish Labour to take its own 'independence' from Westminster. An independent Scottish Labour Party might then stand more than a fighting chance to take on the SNP's programme — from the left. If the Scottish Labour Party removed the issue of an independent Scotland from the agenda — by supporting it — then the social question, the class question would determine the direction of Scottish politics, to the benefit of the Scots - to the benefit of Scottish Labour and to the benefit of the rest of Britain.
A determining socialist presence in Holyrood would transform the political debate in all of the rest of the UK, while breaking up the power of Britain's political class and the over-mighty post imperial ambitions of its rulers. England would be a smaller country and with smaller European countries in mind, it might even begin to learn to behave itself better. The key is that the movement in England, against war and against austerity, that has already pushed over the rotten leadership of a decaying mass party, as another aspect of Westminster's political crisis erupts, would be immensely strengthened. And that is good for all our futures.
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