THE SISYPHEAN TASK OF THE SOCIALIST

I must be getting touchy in my old age, cantankerous even. Someone uses the word “socialism” out of term and it’s like a red rag to a bull. I can’t help it – the word means something definite to me.

I’ll be talking to someone in the street, a Labour Party member for instance, and he’ll say something like: “We socialists should stick together,” and I’m off on my high horse. Or someone on the letters page of the local paper will advocate some policy which he or she thinks is ‘socialist’, like “let’s renationalise the railways”, and that’s it!

I’m not being an awkward git, confrontational for the hell of it. It’s just that to me if socialism means anything then it is the antithesis of capitalism. If capitalism means commodity production, production for profit, wage slavery, then socialism as a competing political ideology (I hate that bloody word) must stand for something else. And it does. It is everything capitalism is not and everything every mainstream political party does not stand for. The Labour Party certainly has nothing to do with socialism. As Tony Benn said, writing in The Independent not to many years ago: “Labour is not now nor ever has been a socialist party. Individual members do not decide its policy and neither are its election promises meant to be taken seriously.”

Socialism to me means a global system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources. It means a world in which each person has a free and equal say in how their society is run. It means a world without borders or frontiers, social class or leaders, states or governments, force or coercion. It means abolishing the money system, releasing production from the artificial constraints of profit and establishing a world of free access to the benefits of civilisation. It means a world in which people give freely to society whatever skills or abilities they have, for the betterment of society, and taking in return whatever they need, according to their own self-defined needs, from the stockpile of communal wealth. And I keep referring to “a world” because socialism can only exist on a global scale, just as capitalism, does. It can’t exist in one country, in isolation.
Socialism, you hear!? Not bloody capitalism. Show me when the Labour Party has ever advocated any of the above and I’ll eat this keyboard!

I’ve came across dozens of organisations claiming the socialist title and spreading all manner of reformist gobbledygook. I have a decent collection of their leaflets and publications. I’m damned right to be livid. They spread nothing but confusion and make the job of genuine socialists all that more difficult when it comes to untangling the mess of ideas they have created in people’s minds. I mean, I’ll meet someone who’ll buy a pamphlet from me, or who’ll take a leaflet, and who will then tell you his ‘socialist’ ideas about pulling Britain out of Europe, saying ‘no’ the Euro or nationalising the top one-hundred-and-fifty companies, and when you ask him where he gets these ideas he’ll say, “Oh, the Socialist Party of England and Wales” or “the Socialist Labour Party,” as if there are a set of policies on which all socialists, of whatever hue, agree are‘socialist policies’ - and you wince!

And it’s at this stage you get to realise just what a sisyphean task being a socialist really is.
Put it this way: Back in 1997, we were contesting the Jarrow Parliamentary Seat at the General Election. We had a stall up in Jarrow shopping centre, with a banner attached to the front of it. We were handing out leaflets, selling the Socialist Standard and generally engaging the public in quite friendly discussion as they stopped by our stall. The people of Jarrow are generally affable. We were doing okay and then along come the SWP. They set up a stall 20 feet in front of ours, attach a banner to the front of it advocating support for the Labour Party and then start selling the Socialist Worker, which is also promoting the Blairite cause.

Christ! In 1997 Tony Blair had stolen Thatcher’s clothes and left her stark staring naked. Labour was moving to the right of the Tories and there was this allegedly socialist group urging the workers to vote for Labour, urging them to acquiesce in their own exploitation.
I went across and challenged them. I showed them the editorial of the Socialist Review they were selling – it’s their monthly magazine – which says: “We urge our readers to support socialists wherever they are standing and the Labour Party where they are not.” And I ask what the bloody hell they are playing at.

“Don’t you realise we’re trying to put the socialist case to the workers in this town and that you’re undermining our efforts by urging them to support capitalism?”
The only reply I get is that I am an “abstract propagandist.”

Of course there is logic in the SWP approach. The idea is that: 1) you urge the workers to support Labour; 2) The workers support Labour as asked; 3) Labour gets into power, fucks up and can make no improvements to capitalism; 4) The workers then get disillusioned and turn away from support of Labour’s brand of capitalism and turn to the SWP 5) Who also support capitalism, albeit state capitalism in which the revolutionary hierarchy will manage the exploitation of the workers instead of private capitalists, shooting anyone who will not comply for being a counter-revolutionary.

And you wonder why I get vexed over the use of the word ‘socialism’? Okay, I’ll relate another situation.I’ll be standing at the Party pitch at the Annual Durham Miners’ Gala – we’ll have the Gazebo up and a display with literature and banners - and around the field there’ll be half a dozen lefty groups in attendance. I’ll be talking to a visitor to the stall who is querying the number of different ‘socialist’ groups at the event and she’ll say “Why don’t you socialists all get together and form one big Socialist Party?” And I just want to cry.

So you spend quarter of an hour explaining that there are not just little differences that separate, say, ourselves from the SWP, or the SPEW or the SLP or the WRP or the CPB or the RCP or the AWL or the RP, and which stop us from joining forces, but an unbridgeable ocean. They defend capitalism and we support socialism. They all want to reform the system, to ameliorate the harsher effects of capitalism. We are alone in wanting to abolish it. It’s like asking why we don’t get together with the Conservative Party – we, after all, all breathe oxygen. And the poor woman will walk away totally bewildered; under her arm half a dozen newspapers from the various stalls she has visited and which you know she is just not going to read.

This may lay me open to the charge of sectarianism. But we, the SPGB, have been around for 101 years and are the oldest existing socialist organisation in Britain. Most of the leftist groups out there are the result of a split from a split from a split, Johnny-come-lately. We have not compromised out position in those 101 years. Our standpoint is as it was in 1904 - the abolition of the wages system - whereas many leftist groups change their policies more times than they change their underpants, as if the generals of capitalism are forever changing their battle plan prompting them to retreat, regroup and attack again in a different formation. In truth, Capitalism has not changed – it is still the same social system it was 100 years ago and to which the time-honoured Marxian critique still applies.

And yet another anecdote. You’ll be out spreading the message, so to speak, and someone will turn on you and call you an “opportunist” and lambast you for jumping on every bandwagon going. “You’re all the bloody same,” they’ll snap, infuriated at having been offered a leaflet. And, before you get a chance to ask them to explain their criticism, they are off. But you know what it is based on – its based on their experience of having been asked to sign a thousand petitions outside of Sainsbury’s on a Saturday morning, in support of everything from a ban on fox hunting and the lifting of immigration restrictions to the legitimisation of cannabis and bringing the troops home. Moreover, they will have seen a hundred demonstrations in which the usual suspects march along holding aloft the same old placards in one hand and their party paper in their other, led by others with loudspeakers through which they encourage the faithful to chant the mantra of the day.

Once more, you are the victim of the confusionists who have sullied the socialist title, guilty by virtue of the fact you call yourself a socialist and to whom some rule-of-thumb syllogism can be applied: socialists latch on to any lost cause; this man is a socialist, therefore he must have latched on to some lost cause.

So I think I’ve a right to be vexed. Your average genuine socialist spends more time explaining who he or she is not than the message he or she set out to impart in the first place:
“No, I’m nothing to do with New Labour….No, I have no petition for you to sign… No, I’m not asking for money from you…No, I’ve no leaflets in support of abolishing student fees….No, I don’t think Che Guevara was the bees knees….No….”

And all of this before you have to regurgitate your explanation of how Lenin and Stalin never established socialism in the Soviet Union and how human nature is not a barrier to a communistic system of society.

Being a socialist means you become a myth shatterer – because you spend the greatest portion of your activity shattering myths, dispelling illusions, setting the record straight. And sometimes its like trying to sweep up leaves in a park on a windy autumn day – sweeping them into a nice pile which is then scattered a moment later – because you go along carefully trying to show people the insanity of capitalism, explaining how a different world can come about and what it might be like, and behind you this whirl-wind of leftist confusion is on its path of destruction, undoing your work.

So forgive me if you hear me scream now and again.

Whoops Apocalypse

The beginning of February saw the world’s top experts on climatic change descend on the Met Office’s HQ in Exeter for a meeting called by Tony Blair and in advance of the coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol two weeks later. They painted a picture of a world not unlike that portrayed in the film The Day After Tomorrow, where humans have destroyed their own planet through their disregard for the environment – melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, global warming and drought.

Evidence was presented by Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, showing that the West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to melt, threatening eventually to raise sea levels by 15ft. He reminded his audience that 90 per cent of the world's people live near current sea levels.

Other scientists presented evidence that the world’s oceans are turning acidic, threatening marine life and there were many experts on hand ready to present their latest findings on the effects of global warming on ecosystems. Significantly, the number of scientific papers that have recorded changes in ecosystems due to global warming have increased from 14 to over a thousand in just five years.
Blair did not need to call a meeting in Exeter to find about the threat to the environment. Experts from every field have been flailing their arms around frantically for years trying to get governments to sit up and notice.
While Blair pursues policies aimed at securing Britain’s share of Iraq’s oil stores for the foreseeable future, we are warned by scientists that oil production will peak within 10 years; that half of the earth’s available oil is estimated to by used by then, and that within another 20 years countries like China and India will have huge demands that will far outstrip supply. Consider the conflicts this will create!
Far worse than a shortage of oil is a shortage of water. We already know that 500 million people live in regions prone now to chronic drought. Scientists now warn us that within 20 years that figure is expected to increase fivefold to between 2.5bn and 3.5bn people. Already over 5 million people die - including 2 million children - from diseases caused by drinking contaminated water. Again, what desolation does this foreshadow for the human race?
In the oceans, almost 50% of fish stocks are fully exploited, 20% are over-exploited, and only 2% are recovering. On land, soil erosion and degradation mean that half a billion people live in countries whose arable land can no longer support their own crops. The natural habitats of many animal species are being lost on an alarming scale, which with the decline of bird species, plants, forests - on which, ultimately, the human race depends - signals a real crisis for biodiversity.
Back in 1997, to head off some of these problems, governments met in Kyoto, Japan, to negotiate a treaty according to which the industrialised countries each agreed a target to control emissions of six gases know to cause global warming.
The Kyoto protocol, for those countries which have ratified it, came into effect on 16th February this year, with Russia finally signing up after a EU bribe in order for the 55% quorum to be reached before the treaty could come into effect, but minus the support of the USA who, with only 5% of the world’s population produces 36% of carbon emissions. And the reason for US obstinacy? They simply felt that China and other developing countries, not facing the costs of cutting emissions, would gain a competitive edge on them.
The agreement, the first “legally binding” treaty on the environment, gives each of the industrialised and ratifying countries of the world their own limit to the greenhouse gas emissions they can pump into the atmosphere. It is envisaged that this will eventually lead to a situation in which the world produces no more greenhouse gasses than the environment can tolerate.
Will the Kyoto treaty stave off the unimaginable? Well, it would seem that not only are the treaty’s formal greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives infinitesimal compared to what scientists say is actually necessary, the treaty’s corporate-friendly, market-based mechanisms to achieve these reductions appear counterproductive.
To start with, the treaty requires that Annex One countries (the industrialised countries), which have hitherto been the biggest polluters, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on average to just 5.2% below their 1990 levels by 2012. However, even though a 60-80% reduction is said to be needed by 2050, no additional reduction goals or timetables are in place for beyond the year 2012.

Plenty of opportunity is provided by the treaty’s “flexible mechanisms” for the governments of richer countries to indulge in creative accounting. It is possible for governments, with a bit of nifty handwork, to claim cutbacks in their country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions although actual reductions may not have taken place. Furthermore, a country might even increase its emissions and still be credited with a reduction.

Industrialised countries who find they have in fact made reductions in greenhouse gas emissions below that required of them are moreover entitled to sell on their spare polluter credits to those countries either unable or unwilling to adhere to their own set reduction targets. This arrangement – to sell the right to pollute –also became the privilege of corporations in January when European carbon markets became operational.

Emission measurements are by and large taken from a starting date of 1990, and the targets for each country must be reached by the period 2008-12. Former state capitalist countries (ie the former Soviet Union) , referred to in Kyoto jargon as "countries in transition", were allowed to chose a different date since, after the collapse of the Kremlin’s empire, a lot of heavy industry closed, resulting in a 40 per cent fall in emissions. This means that countries such as Russia and Ukraine will be in a position to sell other Annex One countries the right to increase their greenhouse gas emissions by that figure.

There are numerous accountancy tricks that help countries reach their Kyoto commitments, without them actually reducing their very own emissions. Little wonder that since 1990 annual greenhouse gas emissions from the Annex One countries have increased overall by more than 7%.

Consider the treaty's ‘Clean Development Mechanism’. This will allow the governments of highly industrialised countries to claim credits if they can prove they have invested in schemes aimed at reducing emissions in underdeveloped countries.

Wealthy countries will be able to finance the planting of fast growing forests in poor countries and then claim credits for the amount of CO2 they claim these will absorb.

Again, corporation’s investing in new technology will be able to palm their decrepit technology off onto poor countries, to whom such technology is an advance on what they currently have, and again demand emission credits. And of course, there is further logic to this – with such outdated technology, factories in poorer countries are hardly going to steal a competitive edge on their western counterparts.
Greenhouse gasses are suddenly commodities to be bought and sold on the world market, a market in which the underdeveloped countries are duped by the richer ones and their corporate elites. And when the time comes for underdeveloped countries to make reductions they will find themselves in a fix, unable to afford the technology needed to curb their own rampant pollution.
Kyoto is hardly going to save the planet as it stands. For one thing it was only ever foreseen as a first step to curb global warming and to be replaced after 2012 with tougher legislation. But even in seven years time there will be trouble. At last year’s climate summit in Buenos Aries, China and India could be found joining the US, the major villain of Kyoto, in an attempt to scupper any post-2012 agreements. Interestingly, and as The Christian Science Monitor recently noted, by 2012 coal-fired plants in those three same countries will be emitting 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, five times the cuts ordered by the Kyoto protocol
Add to this projections from the International Energy Agency that there will be a 60 per cent rise in global energy within 25 years, the bulk of this coming from carbon-emitting fuels and you begin to wonder just what lies ahead.
Currently, global CO2 levels are the highest they have been for 20 million years. Meanwhile the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change predicts that by the year 2100 temperatures will have risen by anything up to 5.8 degrees centigrade.
Kyoto looks nothing more than some environmental monopoly board on which governments can buy and sell and trade the air we breathe.

Ironically, Whilst the world’s governments will heed calls for such an early warning system that can warn of natural disaster which we have no control over - such as one warning of tsunamis in the Indian ocean - they are somewhat deaf when it comes to those blaring in our ears, the early warning systems scientists have been shouting about for decades: acid rain, soil erosion, poisonous seas, melting glaciers, a hole in the ozone layer etc.

And it’s not as if these are new problems. The world has known about them for so long that the facts seem hackneyed and you feel something of a wally quoting them repeatedly. The point is, these early warning systems are ringing non-stop. Capitalism’s problems are hitting the human race with the force of many tsunamis a day, killing millions, and more, threatening global disaster. Yet governments believe the problem can be traded away, camouflaged by a creative accounting that ‘mother nature’ won’t notice.

And the simple truth is that we place our trust in governments to solve environmental problems within the context of capitalism at our peril. They serve to administer the present system on behalf of a minority for whom environmental protection is an obstacle to profit, to whom any means is legitimate in the pursuit of that profit.

When you consider the future of the planet you are faced with two choices. You can continue to support the defenders of capitalism – they come in many disguises - and acquiesce in the destruction of the natural global environment or stand in their way by joining the struggle for socialism and the destruction of a system that will nonchalantly prioritises profit over not only human well-being but the world we live in. But, hey, don’t wait until your living room is a foot deep in water to make up your mind. Think hard and now. Capitalism, and with it the worsening of every environmental problem we cite, or socialism, a world social system that places control of the earth in the hands of a global majority who will tend to it with respect and without the barriers profit places in the path of production?

Whey's gunna dee the durty wark?

For those unfamiliar with the dialect of Tyneside, this is a common question members of North East Branch hear whilst out with the literature stall, whether it be in Jarrow Shopping Centre, at the Monument in Newcastle or a local political demonstration. Its translation is “Who will do the dirty work?” - meaning what incentive will there be to do dirty work in a communistic society if there are no wages or salaries and everything is free?

Well, it depends what you understand by ‘dirty work’. As a Socialist, what I look upon as dirty work is the killing carried out by the armed forces, or those whose job it is to destroy food in the knowledge that their fellows, thousands of miles away, might be dying for the want of it, or the duties of the bailiff who is sent into the home of a single parent with five kids because they’re months behind with the rent.

Such work is not what my opponents mean by ‘durty wark’. So I can press them:

“Oh, you mean the type of work where a man will go come in from his job, exhausted covered in mud, stinking of sweat, having endured a shift filled with endless insults from people urging him to work harder?”

“Aye,” comes the reply.

“You mean like a Newcastle United football player?”

“Nah, man! They make thousands.”

When this method of Socratic reasoning is pursued it is common to find that my critic is referring to the menial, droning, poorly paid and unpleasant jobs - money seemingly the determining factor. Of course, when asked if sewer work would be classed as ‘durty wark” if the sewer worker earned £100,000 a week, just like a Premier League player, the answer is a definite ‘no’. He’d be a ‘lucky bastard’, the envy of his friends.

The detractor asks who will sweep the streets? Well, even under capitalism street-cleaning vehicles operated by drivers are now in regular use and I would envisage that in socialism people will have a lot more respect for their surroundings when they feel valued and a part of something, and will thus be less likely to litter. And if we can land a man on the moon, does it really take that much more technology to put machines into sewers, operated from the surface?

Of course, in socialism, not everything will be mechanised. Spades, axes, sledge hammers, brushes and the like will still be in use as they are today. People use them today in their spare time, in their gardens, carrying out home improvements, doing charity work. Ask them and they will invariably confess that they enjoy using them, even though they are not to be paid for their toil. Many will say ‘there’s nowt better than a good and honest bit of graft’. Neither would they consider the work they do to be ‘durty wark.’ They’re happy to do it without pay, but the thought of doing it full-time for a minimum wage is unthinkable.

Thousands come home from hours of wage-slave drudgery and pass their spare time pursuing any one of a thousand hobbies, some demanding a lot of energy, patience and expense. None would consider, if asked, that their hobbies and leisure activities were work. They find these activities gratifying, rewarding and relaxing, an escape from the pressures of the office or the harassment of the shop-floor rate-setter with his stop-watch.

It is clear, then that dirty work only becomes ‘durty’ when it is carried out for a pittance of a wage, and set against the backdrop of say an eight-hour day. If a surgeon, standing many hours at a time in an operating theatre, his hands deep inside somebody’s bowels, or his fingers up a patient’s rectum, were to receive £4.50 an hour, the job would be considered degrading, pitiable, and ‘durty work’. Add a couple of noughts to that hourly figure and this is a respectable, worthy and enviable job.

Critics might derisively suggest that if we established a moneyless system of society, with free access to all goods and services, and no coercion, that people would become languid, preferring to ‘sit aroond on their arses aall day.’ In truth very few, even today, take up such a lifestyle. Anybody who did would soon end up overweight and with deep vein thrombosis. Indeed, it is nigh on impossible to find a really lazy person, someone who will not exert themselves in any way. Those we find like this are either suffering from some severe physical disability or a psychological problem that induces in them a state of profound lethargy.

In socialism, there would be no ‘durty wark’, only work that ‘needs deeing’, useful toil, if you like. Menial jobs, in the sense of butlers and servants waiting on royalty and other sundry parasites would disappear. No one would be servile in a society in which all the good things in life are freely available.

We would also see the disappearance of countless millions of jobs that today only have a use in capitalist society, a world where buying, selling, exchange and competition, killing and coercion are the norm: bank clerks, supermarket check-out staff, accountants, police, soldiers, prison officers, munitions workers, ticket inspectors – the list is indeed a long one.

Take the above with recent suggestions by economists that within 20 years the total world demand for goods will be provided by 2% of the global work-force (and this is in a capitalist society) and it takes no bold leap of the imagination to picture socialism as a society in which each of us need only contribute to society a few hours of necessary work a week.

Who would then complain about going down a sewer for three hours on a Monday if it meant having the rest of the week free, to pursue their own interests or to travel? Would such workers feel their jobs were degrading if they knew that the money system had been abolished, that the criterion that had once served as the “dirty work” gauge was history, that a society of free access to the benefits of civilisation now existed, and that they were all cooperating freely and contributing to the common good?

‘Durty wark’ would become necessary work. Sewer work, cleaning and all those other unpleasant jobs that had hitherto attached to them negative connotations (in capitalism) would simply become work that needs to be done because society is dependent upon such work.

At present, if the sewers and streets are not cleaned, if bins are not emptied, because of strike activity by those employed in these occupations, disease can spread and the well being of millions is endangered. If brain surgeons were to go on strike a few might die. Yet one worker is highly valued, the other held in low esteem, simply because of the money they earn.

And of course, in socialism, with increased chances of personal fulfilment in various fields, many could learn new abilities in their free time. A sewer worker may well study surgery a few days a week and a surgeon may well, after a his work for the day at the hospital is over, wish to volunteer his spare time carrying bricks or digging a garden - both happy in the knowledge that their species has cooperated to create a beautiful world, and that ‘durty wark’ is now history

THE NATIONAL INTEREST

A hell of a lot has been said of British and American ‘values’, of ‘freedom and democracy’ and the ‘national interest’ in recent months. Tony Blair can often be found making embarrassing conference speeches – any one of which is a rival for the Sermon on the Mount – punctuated with such nauseating terms and George W Bush’s pavlovian addresses to the mind numbed, jingoistic masses serve to remind us to be ever on our guard against the sleazy cant mouthed by politicians in time of war.

The ‘national interest’ is an all time favourite for jingoists, indeed a much bandied about term in any crisis. But what the hll is it supposed to mean?

Well, for one thing, it’s not something the lay person ponders too much. After all, if the politicians think something is in our ‘interests’ then it must be just that. They know best and if we didn't trust them we wouldn't have voted for the buggers, would we? This is, in fact the kind of mind-set politicians count upon before they can come out with such dribble.That politicians continue to use terms like national interest is evidence that they premise their speeches on the assumption that the average person on the street is a bloody imbecile. Moreover, the term is so designed, and used, as to distort our perception of reality. From the cradle to the grave we are discouraged from asking significant and searching questions - the type that might embarrass our betters and superiors. We are nurtured to mistrust our own ideas, to respect the views of the clergy, teachers, parents, politicians, the royals and all manner of counsellors and advisers. Little wonder, then, that so many injustices prevail and that so many can speak in defence of the government line, unwittingly acquiescing in their own exploitation - albeit in the national interest. But this is how it is - so many are prepared to accept that the government embodies the people's “interests”.

The national interest conjures up an image that we are all one big happy family, all pulling and working together for the good of all; that we all have something to be proud of, to defend and to benefit from. It suggests an absence of strife and antagonism and that the real enemy is 'out there'. We're meant to feel good about the national interest, secure in the knowledge that the well-informed are thinking on our behalf. It harks back to the 'bulldog spirit' of the blitz years, when even the king and queen seemed half decent because they had been bombed ('Gawd bless 'em all, Guv.') – even though most Londoners didn’t realise the royal family were shooting off to Windsor Castle, 50 miles away, every night and feasting on swan.In reality, the national interest is anything the master class and their executive, the Blairs and Bushes of this world, deem it to be at any given time, or rather anything that helps perpetuate their ideology and keeps them in power; anything that can undermine the potential for political action geared towards real change.

The national interest is the paternalistic jargon of a profit-hungry elite, trying to rationalise in our eyes the lengths they will go to accrue more profits at our expense. It is used by politicians largely to secure support for a course of action they are finding difficult to promote. It is designed to block serious discussion of an issue - who'll argue against the national interest and risk being denounced as unpatriotic? – and to marginalise opponents, thus stifling deeper understanding of issues.

Thus, the national interest is a Labour government contemplating the selling of arms to Indonesia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, the mobilisation of a Western coalition of 750,000 soldiers to tackle a third-world army of farmers in the Middle East (the First Gulf War). It is a government campaign urging us to shop our neighbors to the state's protectors. It is an army of police wading into a picket line, truncheons swinging. It is the appointment of ‘drug tsars' and the teaching of the benefits of marriage to schoolchildren. The national interest is the Russia army in Chechnya, Israeli troops invading Palestinian settlements and US bombers getting ready for bombing runs over Syria and Iran.

One thing is clear. While all the above can be pushed as national interests, none are in the interests of the working class. The interests of the majority - or the working class - are diametrically opposed to the interests of the master, or capitalist, class. True, we all have basic needs and desires, whichever class we belong to, but talk about shared interests in a two class society is nonsense. The capitalist class have one real interest - and let them deny it - to maximise their investment and to accrue more profit at our expense. How many people get hurt and trod on or slaughtered in the process is of no consequence. Anything is legitimate in the pursuit of profit (just watch the film The Corporation). As Madeline Albright commented when pushed on the issue of the 500,000 Iraqi children who had died as a result of sanctions: ‘It’s a price worth paying’. Neither is much consideration given to environmental concerns. We, the working class on the other hand, own little more than our ability to labour by brain or by hand - an ability we sell to the master class. Our interest under capitalism becomes getting the best price for our labour. Indeed such is the onus on us to sell our labour power at as a high a price as possible that its consequences dominates every aspect of our lives.

Whilst the likes of Tony Blair are all for promoting Britain's 'values of freedom and democracy' around the world, in our interests, you can bet they are quiet on the subject of how this freedom and democracy came about. One thing is certain; it was not handed to us on a plate by an altruistic master class, but fought for over centuries. Workers' blood was spilled campaigning for what miserly rights we enjoy. Even trying to exercise our right to free speech, thousands of us, these past 500 years, were burnt at the stake, hung, drawn and quartered and, more, all of this was passed off as being in the national interest! - a national interest which was in reality the interest of a small elite who held political power.

It has to be remembered that the master class depend on our complacency for their continued survival. Our silence, our willingness to accept everything they say without question, is the victory they celebrate every day.

Our job should therefore be to doubt and question everything they say - if we stand for nothing we fall for anything. For we do have interests. As a globally exploited class, denied so many of the benefits of civilisation in a world of abundance, it is in our interests, our real class interests, to help put a stop to their insane system, not just for the future of humanity, but for the future of our planet. Our real class interests lie in establishing a global system of society, devoid of borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states governments, force or coercion, money, wages or salaries, a world in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to its fullest potential and for the benefit of all. These interests are far removed from the national interest we are supposed to identify and moreover, they benefit all of today's classes.

Filming the man who consumed the most expensive fish supper in history

(I wrote the following a while back but did bugger up with it and decided it needed an airing, if only for the fact that people who eat £1 million fish suppers need exposing)

It’s a chilly mid afternoon, Thursday, 20th November, 2003 and I’m one half of a camera crew that has blagged its way onto the TV media platform on the runway of Teesside Airport to film President George W Bush’s visit to Tony Blair’s Sedgefield parliamentary constituency. We really look the part, with state of the art camera equipment, housed in expensive looking carriers, and permits, okayed the day before, stuck to our coats. We’re there with the teams from the BBC, ITV and Reuters.

I’ve been there since early morning and I’m busting for a pee and shivering with the cold, so much so my knees are aching. But it’s worth it – I have some great footage of Bush arriving on board Airforce One* and we may well find a buyer and I hope my numbed hands can operate the fidgety camera controls when Marine One (a helicopter) is spotted approaching the airport for Bush’s departure. Christ, I’m cold. I wish I’d put on a decent coat.

The airport staff have generally been very accommodating. Their PR man was welcoming and his colleagues led us (me and my co film maker Carol) to a waiting area, upon our arrival, where we were offered refreshments. Even the police inspector standing next to me on the platform is on real friendly terms. Not so the paranoid security staff who have twice searched our equipment and bodies in a manner which, if I had have done it to another, would have been classed as sexual assault. Every bit of our equipment is thoroughly searched and X-rayed and our clothing scanned for explosives residue with some expensive piece of gadgetry. The bastards even demanded a look under my eye patch, I shit you not – Usama bin Laden has to be somewhere! Still, not to worry; I get through security without having to bend over and endure an internal. But the episode made me think that if you’re into touching people up and want to do it without getting arrested and imprisoned as a filthy perv, then go into security or customs.

As we wait for Marine One and the accompanying Black Stallion helicopters to arrive, the police inspector informs me that he has learned that Blair and the presidential party had a meal of fish and chips at the Dun Cow pub in Sedgefield.

“Christ on a bike,” I chirp, remembering the cost to Durham Constabulary for the day’s security operation, “a million quid for a fish supper? He could have stayed on the plane and I’d have got him fish and chips for a tenner, tip included.”

The sun is going down as Bush arrives back at the airport and there is much cheering and the usual sycophantic shouts of “Mr President!” from onlookers who will proudly tell their grandchildren that the gloopiest president in history looked their way.

In front of me a dozen local cops reach for their cameras and behind and to the right of me a dozen black clad snipers, perched on the roof of the airport terminal, drop and assume the position. I zoom in on the door of Marine One and await Bush’s descent, hoping to get footage of Dubya tripping or a close-up of a bit of fish batter sticking to his chin. And then:
“Fuck!” The camera battery has died on me. “Twat!”

I hastily remove the battery and squat, fumbling about in the camera case that is steadying the base of the tripod for the spare. I look up, smiling embarrassingly at the police inspector, who suddenly looks worried – maybe he thinks I’m going for a gun – and then directly in front of me where a sniper’s silhouette suggests he has his sights on me. I make it clear to anyone watching that it is only a battery, not a grenade, before fitting it and refocusing on Bush, who is now shaking hands with his ‘guard of honour’.

Lined either side of the steps up into the plane, and at right angles to the steps, are a few dozen members of the police, the local territorial army and US airforce staff. This is a last minute change to the schedule and the friendly police inspector standing next to me is happy his boys are being involved. And it suddenly occurs to me that this is not so much a last minute guard of honour but, with the airport widely exposed to the countryside on its southern side, Bush’s short walk from his helicopter to his plane exposes him to sniper fire. These mugs are a human shield for Bush against a sniper’s bullet.

I keep the film running, getting a mixture of close-ups and long shots of the scene, and when he’s aboard and the plane begins to taxi to the runway I zoom in on the front wheel of the plane and do a slow pan out to reveal the blue and white presidential plane in all its magnificent glory as it rolls along and film it until it is so far in the distance it is indistinguishable from a distant sparrow.

I’ve got some great footage – an assortment of shots and some clever stuff too and feel chuffed to bits. We pack our gear away and hurriedly head for the airport’s toilets and then a coffee and chat about the day’s shoot.

Aboard Airforce One and heading back to Washington DC, President Bush was given some distressing news. A fire at the White House earlier that day had destroyed the President’s personal library. Both of his books were lost in a blaze thought to be caused by an electrical fault. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer later said at a press conference the president was devastated, as he had not finished colouring the second one.

*Airforce One is actually two planes - identical planes – the logic being presumably that an attacker would target the first, which contains mostly entourage - press, secret service agents and sundry Republican arsewhipes.

Some 500 Secret service agents had been in the country for weeks, posing as American tourists, and could been found sitting alone in pubs and cafe’s, looking somewhat conspicuous with their square jaws, crew cuts, long coats and well-thumbed copies of “Larn Yerself Geordie” (this being the nearest White House researchers could find to a ready translator for the North East accent.)

Off With their Heads?

It must have been not long after 10 am, Saturday, September 6th, 1997, that I left my comrade’s house – he lived near Stockwell tube station in South London and I’d been staying there overnight – and headed down Clapham Road, which leads on to Clapham High Street and to the head office of The Socialist Party.

Anyone who has seen the film 28 Days Later will know what a lifeless London looks like. From my comrade’s home to the SPGB Head Office is a half hour’s walk, yet during that journey I spied perhaps only two other humans and not one car passed me on that generally congested 4 lane road.

London had not been evacuated; nor had some neutron bomb disintegrated every piece of organic matter for miles around and neither had some super-bug wiped out the South London population overnight. No. Today, in fact, was the funeral of ‘Princess’ Diana, the “Queen of Hearts” and the country was in mourning. Londoners were either watching the event on TV or lining the route of the funeral procession.

Every shop along my route was closed. Everywhere were hung posters of Diana, in shop windows and in the front windows of a thousand homes. The only door open for business at that sacred hour was the outer door at The Socialist Party’s head office -announcing to the world, that the revolution was not on hold for the funeral of a parasite – I had opened it and I entered at perhaps the same time Diana was entering Westminster Abbey.

There was no doubt in my mind how important an event this was to the brain-numbed masses. I had seen the wailing crowds on my comrade’s TV as Diana’s funeral procession left Kensington Palace and I had travelled down to London the day before aboard a National Express coach (a mobile violation of human rights) full of ageing royalists whose flowers packed the coach’s hold and saw the thronging crowds, some of whom had been there for days to secure a decent vantage point, as the coach (the 525 service from Newcastle) neared Victoria station.

Yet despite all of the grief, the Windsor ascendancy was not secured that day. Indeed, the popularity of the royals had plummeted to an all time low in the week after Diana’s death – she wasn’t one of them, she was “one of us”, was the popular misconception – and if Tony Blair had have stood up in the House of Commons that week and demanded a republic the country would have handed him one on a plate.

I had been watching the film Reds – based on John Reed’s book 10 Days that Shook the World – on BBC 2 when Diana’s car crash was announced. It was late at night and the film was interrupted with a news flash and I just knew she was dead and her death was indeed confirmed an hour later. “They’ve got her,” I told my wife as I woke her up in the early hours, to tell her of the hit. I still have the video recording of the film with that special announcement of the Paris tragedy.

I wasted no time in writing an obituary the next day – not the sycophantic, fawning variety, that would increase the weight of many a national newspaper by a few kilograms in the coming days – but the ‘tell it like it us’ kind, about how she courted the media when it was to her advantage and avoided them like the plague when it was not.

She was popular for many reasons. She had poured her heart out in a TV interview in which she imparted she had contemplated suicide, bemoaned her relationship with Charles and spilled the beans on the three-way marriage – the other partner to this ‘manage a trios’ being Camilla Park Your Balls – and was seen as a friend of the sick, filmed comforting cancer and Aids sufferers and clearing land mines in less fortunate countries. Moreover, she was quite bonny and coy and had a motherly grace about her.

But she was still a bloody parasite and for all her ‘good work’ was not noted for throwing open the gates of Kensington Palace to the homeless, or for offering pensioners a lift home from Netto with their weekly groceries in her Rolls Royce or for her blood donations.

And as for the obituary I sent to six regional newspapers, none published it; none dared publish it! The press were raking it in, so to speak, and couldn’t print enough pull-outs about their fairy tale princess, so there was no way they were going to print some anti-Di piece from a gobshite on South Tyneside. The TV networks were just as obsessive with their coverage, constantly showing us the spreading acres of flora laid at the gates of Kensington Palace by sobbing hoards of admirers, ever ready to tell the camera crews how their lives would never be the same again and what a miserable twat the Queen was for not flying the flag at half-mast above Buck House and what Tampax head needed was a good stiff kick in the jacobs.

It took the House of Windsor many years to recover from the popularity nose dive they had suffered after Diana died. And nothing they could do could raise their pre-Diana public profile. The Queen seemed to be having one “annus horribilis*” after another, and nothing her degenerate offspring did helped – they seemed hell-bent on living life as if it was one fun-filled holiday.

Husband Phil the Greek continued to make the racist royal gaffes* that have made him the toast of the BNP and the KKK and her sons looked destined to make prats of themselves at every opportunity, as if life was one long Monty Python sketch.

Even the Queen’s grandchildren kept on dragging the house of Windsor into the mud. On one occasion, back in July of 2001, Prince William, on one of his strenuous overseas visits, was pointed out a protected species of ibis flying over head. Just like gramps, his inbred reaction was to reach for a gun and shoot the poor creature dead, no questions asked, thereby showing that both stupidity and bloodthirsty sadism runs in the family, every bit as much as noses. For further details of Philip's bloody roll of dishonour go to the bottom of this post.

It was going to take something big to warm the multitudes to the occupants of Buck House. This happened on March 30th 2002, when the Queen Mum, who a year previous had received her 100th birthday telegram off her daughter, decided what the royal family needed right now was the sympathy vote, and promptly died – just six weeks after the funeral of the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret and which had attracted about as much attention as a USAF bomb-laden sortie over Iraq.

Anarchists jubilantly observed how you can wait for decades for one of the royals to die and then two pop their clogs at once and then went out and got pissed.

The public outpouring of affection in the days after the Queen Mum’s death was both amazing and nauseating. Again the press wasted no time in running off no end of obituaries and souvenir pull-outs, and the TV ran documentary after documentary about her wondrous like, from her humble beginnings in a stately home in Scotland to her wartime heroism (travelling to London to see the blitz victims each day, before making the 50 mile dash back to Windsor for he favourite war-time meal of swan and chips) and to her position as the nation’s favourite 101 year old gin-totting scrote. The queues of people waiting to file past her coffin as it lay in state for a week was estimated – if laid out in one line – to stretch to Neptune and back. Kleenex made another killing.

I again wrote a royal obituary and this time had it had it published! Several times - one paper, with a national circulation, even phoning up asking if they could also use it. The Queen mum may have been popular, but her age meant that she could not claim as her epitaph – as Diana had done – “only the good die young.” This coffin dodger had lived it up for over a century, so was fair game.

For over a year previous to the Queen Mum’s 100th birthday we had heard non stop the news of the preparations of this momentous occasion. Newspapers have given over thousands of column inches to this most important of national events, even stimulating debate as to whether the occasion be afforded the status of a bank holiday. On Wednesday, 19th July 2000, there was a national tribute to the Queen Mother, with military parades and presentations and the dropping of a million rose petals over the crowds who turned out in their tens of thousands and similar events were planned for the coming weeks.

As a socialists and hater of privilege, I was certain I was not alone in believing that not one penny should have beeen spent celebrating the 100 years of luxury that this ageing parasite had enjoyed; not that I believed it should have be put to better use. No doubt it could, but I’m not into the business of juggling the nation’s accounts.

For one thing, the Queen Mother was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, into the aristocracy and into a family which, at her birth owned three luxurious homes at a time when 99% of this country lived in various degrees of poverty. And 100 years later, she was still enjoying the good life, jumping hospital queues, waited on hand and foot by maids and servants and chauffeurs, whilst the average pensioner, after decades of struggling to survive, living in the shadow of debt, having been insulted by successive Labour and Tory governments, was given a weekly rise that year that could not, quite honestly, have bought a packet of chips.
Undoubtedly, the cost of keeping this wizen-faced has-been alive and in the manner to which her ilk have grown accustomed – in the finest accommodation, the best food, the most expensive clothes and jewellery – for 100 years, was perhaps equivalent to the annual income of many a third world country.

It is estimated the Queen Mum was ‘worth’ £60 million at her death, yet still managed to sponge of her relatives and receive £650,000 from the civil list, while being £4 million overdrawn. The crown that lay on top of her coffin was encrusted with 2,500 diamonds, any one of which could have given the average pensioner years of relative luxury.

The contribution made to society by the Queen Mother and her greedy and incestuous clan was, in my opinion, quite simply zilch. Each one is capable of happily consuming in one day more resources and commodities than any 100 members of the working class, perhaps 1000 times as much as the inhabitants of a small African village. Yet we are meant to kowtow to this bunch of indifferent, self-seeking brain-dead leeches, to prostrate ourselves like imbeciles in front of them?

As I wrote in my obituary on the Queen Mum: “It is time we, the working class, celebrated something of far more importance – ourselves and the latent strength we have and can utilise to help bring about a world in which we can all enjoy the nice things that civilisation ought to bring. It seems we have been led for so long by idiots, convinced we should look up to our ‘betters’ and to celebrate their shenanigans, brainwashed into thinking the same by the media, that we have forgotten our own collective strength. The Queen Mother’s 100th birthday deserves no more our sanction than the bombing of Iraq or the reintroduction of the slave trade. If the injustices that plague our world and perpetrated in the name of profit were to receive one-tenth as much coverage as this 100th birthday do, then our case would have been well publicised and our ranks undoubtedly swollen.”

But all said the Queen Mum had made the ultimate sacrifice – she died and saved her family. Or so many thought, for without the guiding hand of the Queen mother, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren just did what they bloody liked.

A few months ago, Diana’s cute little son Harry, now an upper class, hedonistic, beer swilling, nymphomaniac, prone to outbursts of rage - once slamming a camera into the face of a member of the paparazzi – thought it would a good giggle if he turned up for a fancy dress party dressed a World War 2 German soldier. Of course, Harry saw nothing wrong with the stunt. He was simply following a long royal Nazi tradition. The Nazi uniform is just one of the traditional costumes of royalty.

It is well known that the Queen Mum was the guardian of the secret vaults at Windsor castle, which house war time records of the dealings the House of Windsor had with the Third Reich. Sending a copy of Mein Kampf to a friend in the pre-war years, she commented: “Even a skip through gives a good idea of his obvious sincerity.” Harry’s Grandpa, Prince Phillip, had a brother in law in the SS, and his (Phil’s) uncle Prince Christopher of Hesse was in the Gestapo

In Germany, in 1997, Phil welcomed German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a trade fair as “Reichskanzler” – the last German leader who used the title was Adolf Hitler. And, Edward VIII, Harry's great-great uncle, is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. After giving up the throne to marry divorced American Wallace Simpson in 1937, the couple visited Germany and met Hitler, voicing admiration for his policies. He once remarked while on a visit to the USA: "It would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler were overthrown."

With the "Prince Harry the Nazi" story still making the news weeks after the event, what was noticeably absent from the debate about whether Harry was right, wrong or silly to wear a Nazi uniform, was that pertaining to the very existence of the Royal Family. It seemed to be taken for granted that we have one, we need one, they have always been there etc., and all that needs to be discussed is how the bastards should behave in public. No mention at all that the sole purpose of this parasitical and unscrupulous family is to serve as a repository for ‘history’ and ‘tradition’, which of course provides the glaring injustices of capitalism with some form of moral authority. What pissed people off was that Harry had dressed as a Nazi. If he had have come as a Coco the Clown the press would have applauded his sense of humour and written reams on what a fun-loving chappy he was and how Diana would have adored him..

Lately, and once again, we are subjected to endless reams of newspaper commentary and TV debate about the legality of Tampax head’s coming marriage to Park Your Balls. This morning’s Daily Mirror (9th March, 2005) ran a front page photo of a new first class postage stamp which will be produced to mark the occasion on April 8th and protested at the commemorative stamps (there are actually two). Why, the Mirror queried, if this is such a low key affair is the occasion being marked with commemorative stamps? Again, no mention that the Queen’s profile has graced every British stamp since 1952!!

Debate has been ongoing for weeks as to whether they should marry, where they should marry, whether the Queen should attend the wedding or only the piss up afterwards and whether, in marrying such a commoner, Charles would forfeit his right to the crown. And amidst all this intense debate there has been lost one far more important question: who gives a shite? Just why should it concern any member of the working class if these sad old spongers marry or not? What the hell are the mass media thinking of, imagining that the majority of people will really take an interest in this farce?

Who the hell gives a toss for Charles? Anyone out there elect him Prince? He doesn’t give a bugger for any of us yet he thinks he can lecture us on every aspect of life: how to identify architectural ‘carbuncles’ – he should know, he’s marrying one – and how to get the best out of plants by talking to them. Incidentally, I’d like to see him talk to the plants in my garden – they’ll grow for no bugger, royalty or not – far too many cats have pissed on that plot of soil.
But for the future king of England to lecture us on family life, whilst phoning his lover on the phone and telling her he wants to be reincarnated as her tampax, is just taking the piss and perhaps suggests it is high time he met the fate of a previous king Charles. And…hold on a second…just what made him think that a woman that age still used a tampax? Christ, a colostomy bag, yeah - a tampax? Fuck off.

So there you are – my slant on royalty. You can love them or you can hate them, but how much, either way, determines your continuing acquiescence in your own exploitation. You may well think that the country would fair better without royalty, but at the end of the day in a republic we would be exposed to the same inequalities of the present system and our class position would change not one iota. So, are we going to allow ourselves to be brow beaten with royal sentimentality by the media again? Isn’t it time we snapped out of our hypnotic vulnerability to such garbage and threw the whole sorry spectacle back in our masters’ faces? More! Let’s just topple their god-damned system and refashion the world in our own interests!!

Notes

* annus horribilus: does not actually refer to the Queen having a horrible arse, but was actually her description, during one Christmas message to the people, of theyear that was coming to an end: “a horrible year”, which sounds more impressive in Latin, as if her “horrible year” was more horrid than ours.

*Phil the Murderer: By 1993 deranged Phil’, who has an arsenal of over 56 shooting rifles, had personally killed for the pleasure of murdering 15,000 pheasants, 15,000 assorted other birds, 2 crocodiles, 60 wild boar (killing 50 in one day), hundreds of stags, and a tiger.
Not bad for the president of the World Wildlife Fund.
(source, Mail on Sunday,7.2.93)
___________________________________

* Phil the Racist:In China in 1986, he described Beijing as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed."

And meeting a Briton on a 1993 visit to Hungary he joked "you can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly" - in what was seen as an unflattering allusion to the national cuisine.

He was savaged by the media when he quipped during a visit to an Edinburgh electronics company that an unsophisticated fusebox looked as if it had been "put in by an Indian".

In Egypt he quipped "You Egyptians breed too much."

TWELVE MAD MONARCHS

First 10 taken from Time Out, November 1998

King George III once walked over to an oak tree, shook hands with one of its branches and chatted to it for several minutes. The King thought he was talking to the King of Prussia.

Princess Alexandria of Bavaria believed she swallowed a grand piano as a child and kept up this belief until she dies.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria decreed that day was night and night was day and had a moon painted on his bedroom ceiling.

Prince Otto - Ludwig II's youngest brother decided that the only way to keep his sanity while Ludwig reigned was to shoot a peasant a day. He shot peasants working in his garden.

Catherine The Great of Russia imprisoned her hairdresser for three years to stop him spreading the news that she had dandruff.

Queen Juana of Spain went mad when her husband Philip died. She refused to let him be buried and had his coffin accompany her wherever she travelled.

King Fedinand II of Sicily would only allow his face to be used on stamps if franking marks were never placed on his image.

Prince Philip of Calabria was mad about gloves - and wore up to 16 pairs at once.

King Charles VI of France was convinced he was made of glass and refused to travel by coach in case the vibrations caused him to shatter into a thousand pieces.

King Henry Christophe of Northern Haiti forced his guards to prove their loyalty by marching off a 200ft cliff. Those who refused were executed.

Prince Charles of Wales talked to plants and professed a desire to be reincarnated as a sanitary product. Despite being as thick as pig-shit he felt he could tell other people how to educate their children, what types of houses they should live and work in and what foods they should eat. He seemed confused that his proclamations were met with the near-universal derision.

Prince Philip of Edinburgh felt that the best way to advertise his commitment to world wide environmental issues was to be seen as often as possible shooting at domestic wildlife. After Scottish school-children were massacred by a crazed gun-men, Philip proffered the view that a cricket bat was as dangerous as a gun.

Into the national security state with New Labour

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 27/01/05

Dear Sir,


As I write, it is with having just heard that the Home Secretary has proposed the house arrest of UK citizens ‘suspected’ of involvement in terrorism, inclusive of curfews and tagging. British citizens are being included in these proposed changes after the law lords declared the present powers were discriminatory because they could only be used on foreign suspects.

Currently we are witnessing Labour politicians taking measures calculated to turn the United Kingdom into a national security state. The impact of this on those millions of decent working people who have over decades voted for the Labour Party must be utterly shattering. Socialists oppose the Labour Party because we stand for social ownership and democratic control of the means of life, while Labour promotes the flawed idea that capitalism can be legislatively humanised. That said, we sympathise with the motives of workers who vote Labour even if we wonder at their credulity as Labour aims to outdo the Tories in every area of repression of working class aspirations.

Now we have to ask Labour voters are they concerned, even frightened, at this savage curtailment of personal freedom and democratic rights? These authoritarian careerists in the Labour Party need your vote in the forthcoming elections; in exchange they will grant you the freedom to do what you are told.

Labour is attempting to induce in us the psychosis of threat, such as now exists in the USA where fear has become the natural condition of many Americans and which lends legitimacy to Bush's repressive actions. Just as Bush told the world, "either you're with us, or with the terrorists", so to is Labour telling us "either you're with Tony or you're with the terrorists." Blair's logic is that we will be so afraid of terrorists that we will gladly agree to anything he claims to do in our name. How long before pacifists, human rights activists and critics of Labour are denounced as unpatriotic?


It is surely ironic that at a time when the media is urging us to think about Auschwitz and the growth of fascism the Labour Party takes its first bold steps down the road to the savage denial of basic democratic rights.

Yours,

John B

Open Letter to Michael Howard

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 25th January 2005

Dear Sir,

This is a piece I have just written in response to Michael Howard's call for a debate on immigration and which I'd be obliged if you could consider it for publication (personal details at the end of the open letter).


Yours,
John B (Gen. Sec., SPGB)


Dear Mr Howard

Fully aware that the Tories face another electoral pounding in the coming election, perhaps also aware that the racist BNP are contesting 105 seats and the recent victories they have enjoyed, you are making immigration the main focus of the Tory election campaign in the full knowledge that your party is bankrupt of new ideas, desperate for support and fully aware just how popular xenophic scaremongering can be at election time. Shame on you!You now boldly announce you want a debate on immigration in the hope you can outflank the racist hierarchy of New Labour.

Okay, Mr Howard, let's start by acknowledging that the fundamental cause of immigration is global capitalism. It causes huge inequality in the world, inflicting poverty and deprivation on billions of people. It also creates endless wars over natural resources, strategic areas and other "vital interests". This inequality, uncertainty and conflict impels people to escape to better lives and safety. Who can blame them?

Let us also acknowledge, Mr Howard, that capitalism in Britain also causes inequality, poverty and deprivation, which affects millions of working class people who, unaware of the real cause of their suffering, are prone to believe power-hungry politicians playing the "race card" and blaming immigration for their problems.

When capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and anger arise from the failed promises and expectations that litter the political landscape, is it any wonder that workers will fall for the scapegoating lies of the far right and the quick fix they offer? That you can even think of making immigration part of the Tory election strategy is thus utterly despicable. Moreso at a time when we remember the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the mass slaughter resulting from Hitler's xenophic rantings.

I'm sure many of my fellow South Tynesiders, hearing your comments on immigration, remembered the fate of one popular local family, the Reys-Prado family, who have recently been forced into hiding in Venezuela not more than a year after they were deported from their home in Laygate, South Shields, following a ruling by immigration chiefs that it was safe for them to return to their native Colombia. Their case is only one of many.

My solution, Mr Howard? By switching to a classless, moneyless society (socialism), where the people themselves directly owned and controlled the means of production and distribution (farmland, oil fields, factories, power stations, railways etc), the global population could use those assets to provide for all their needs. Goods and services would all be freely available. And with an end to deprivation, wars and money problems, people would no longer be compelled to leave regions they were born in.

Yours,

John B

A Fantasy of Freedom

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 24th January, 2005

Dear Sir,

GY (A Fantasy of Freedom, 24th January) highlights well the hypocrisy that punctuated President Bush's inauguration speach. What Mr Y failed to consider was that President Bush also declared that freedom overseas was a precondition for freedom in the USA.

I can only presume the words 'freedom' and 'liberty' (used 42 times in Bush's speech) have taken on new meanings in the White House dictionary. History testifies that as soon as the US takes an interest in your country then you can say goodbye to freedom. Since 1945 the US has leant its support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Pinochet. Since 1945, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe, turning a blind eye to the most horrendous affronts to the democratic process. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments.

Perhaps Bush was telling the truth, considering the growing restrictions on personal freedom in the USA - i.e. the Patriot Act. If freedom is not allowed to thrive overseas, then why the hell should it be allowed to exist in the USA

Yours,

JB

The Coming Elections in Iraq

Since the end of the Second World War, when the US forced the Italian government to discharge its communist cabinet members as a prerequisite for aid, to its support for the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2003, the US has been regularly subverting elections around the globe for the benefit of its own corporate elite.


Ever fearful that foreign governments should respond to the real needs of their people, for instance introducing labour and environmental legislation, instead of the wishes of US investors, Washington has opposed the principle of democracy on every continent on the planet, even helping to overthrow democratically elected governments whenever it felt its interests threatened (i.e. Iran in 1953, Guatemala 1954, The Congo 1960, Ecuador 1961, Bolivia 1964. Greece 1967, Fiji 1987).


Neither has its methods been peaceable. Indeed its agents, in the CIA, have carried out assassination of prominent individuals with as much indifference as its embassies have supported right-wing death squads and bloody coup attempts throughout Central and South America. Across the world, the US has backed dictators of every hue, turning a blind eye to their horrendous affronts to the democratic process.


We are now to believe that the US, presently occupying “sovereign Iraq” (for President Bush has declared Iraq is now “sovereign”), a country with sizeable oil reserves, and which has lost 100,000 of its people since the US-UK invasion, will see free and democratic elections to take place on January 30th. Moreover, President Bush has since informed the people of Iraq—the same Iraq in which the CIA helped Saddam Hussein pull of a military coup: “We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave."


John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Iraq, was adamant that the US would not allow a delay in the Jan. 30 vote, a necessary step toward establishing the first “broadly accepted” government in Iraq since the demise of Saddam Hussein and would honour Bush’s promise.


Speaking to reporters at the Embassy in Iraq he assured them that the elections would go ahead and that the security situation would be improved by then and went so far as to say that conditions in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were already safe enough for elections to be held.


He said:” I think once they realize that the elections will go forward as planned, then they [Sunni opponents of the election] are going to have to deal with that reality. Do they want to really opt out of an electoral process that is going to pick a National Assembly that drafts the constitution and shapes the political future of their country?” (Washington Post, 1st December).


Perhaps Negroponte is unaware that the resistance looks set to spiral, his comments coming just after it was reported that US deaths in Iraq matched the post invasion record set in April – 135 troops dead.


In Washington and London, the claim is that the ongoing attacks by insurgents is an all out attempt to disrupt the coming elections, when in truth the overriding fact is that many Iraqis still see the US as an army of occupation whose presence they have a right to oppose. An opinion poll carried out in September by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority confirmed that opposition to the US presence was widespread. It revealed that just 2 per cent of Iraqi Arabs—minus the Kurdish population—agreed wholeheartedly with the occupation. If anything this shows that in spite of the age-old hostilities between Sunnis and Shiites, one thing that could unite them is their hostility to an occupying army of 138,000 – a figure set to increase in time for the election.


Securing the peace in Iraq in time for the elections has so far meant installing a pliable puppet regime, and implementing Order 39, which The Economist described as “a capitalist dream” and which opened up the Iraqi economy to complete foreign takeover. It has meant the deliberate bombing of homes, hospitals and religious buildings by squadrons of bombers and helicopter gun-ships, turning cities into rubble (Fallujah was napalmed), cutting off water, electricity and medical supplies and spreading hunger and disease.


A comprehensive new study by the British-based charity organisation Medact, that looks at the impact of war on health, reveals that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years has increased from 4% prior to the invasion to 7.7% since the invasion and that about 400,000 Iraqi children are suffering from 'wasting' and 'emaciation' ­ conditions of chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiency.


A recently published UNICEF report reveals that, "Before 1990 and the imposition of sanctions, Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East". Now "at least 200 children are dying every day. They are dying from malnutrition, a lack of clean water and a lack of medical equipment and drugs to cure easily treatable diseases".


Despite such facts as these, Washington would have it that people in Iraq—who, on the face of it—faired better under Saddam, are being irrational in not supporting US organised elections. And little wonder that various groups of rebels have promised to upset the elections with waves of attacks around the country, including Baghdad, where many insurgents are claimed to have fled as Fallujah fell.


As we go to press, Iraq's delicate political arrangement looks to be on the brink of collapse, with Sunnis, Shias and Kurds at odds over whether elections can take place on January 30th as planned. Iraq's 60 per cent Shia majority, who clearly suffered worst under the reign of Saddam Hussein, are keen for the elections to go ahead on time, knowing they are likely to consolidate the increased power they have enjoyed since the Sunni president's overthrow.


However, as rebels have continued their assaults on other towns since the fall of Fallujah, a campaign led by Sunni politicians has gathered momentum, with Shia leaders claiming that a postponement of the election date would only play into the hands of the insurgents.


The head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has said he would discard calls to delay the elections to choose a national assembly. He has been backed by 42 mainly Shia and Turkmen parties who have issued a statement to say moves to delay the elections were illegal.


Contemplating the stalling of elections, Al-Hakim said: 'This would mean the terrorists have been able to achieve one of their main objectives; that there be no elections and that a suitable political process does not start…We will insist on the necessity of holding elections and that a delay will not be in the interests of the Iraqi people.' (Observer, 28/11/04)


Conversely, Adnan Pachachi, a former Sunni minister, is heading a group of 17 political parties asking that January 30's vote be delayed by six months because of the violence, fearing the insurgency in Sunni towns will discourage people from voting, thus disenfranchising them. Significantly, the two major Kurdish parties have also signed up to the delay


Pachachi claimed it was “unthinkable that a large and important section of Iraqi society be left out of the political process…Security has to improve to enable people to vote without fear.” (Observer, ibid).


Iyad Allawi, the interim leader appointed by Washington to run Iraq, has said that in centres of resistance like Fallujah elections could be “delayed” until stability existed there, without the vote being invalidated, or in other words Washington-style Democracy would will be available in the first instance only to those who did not resist the occupation by US forces.


Alawi, it seems, has no real control over the situation and though it is said he has the power to cancel the election if he wished, there still exists the US hand-picked seven-member commission set up to run the elections, and which has the power to bar any candidate or party from standing and which will be deciding who is and who is not eligible to stand as a candidate.


Under the rules, the Iraqi electorate will vote for a 275-member Transitional National Assembly. Political parties will submit a list of candidates and every third name has to be a woman's. Those Parties with alleged connections to militias are disqualified from taking part, along with former leading members of the Baath Party.


Only recently has the US taken into consideration the fact that the elections will coincide with the haj (one of the five tenets of Islam), when millions of pilgrims are en route to Mecca via Iraq. Many of these pilgrims will be fundamentalists, aware that numerous mosques across Iraq have been bombed by US forces and with fresh memorises of Fallujah, Najaf and Samarra and other instances of US hard-handedness and with 120 parties allegedly contesting the election, many “foreign” fighters are expected to be smuggled in amidst the mayhem. Shopkeepers who have been asked to take on the job of distributing election registration papers have been threatened with death should they comply

The US hopes to have 150,000 troops in place in time for the election, evidence if ever it was needed that the crisis in Iraq is escalating. It was not so long ago that Bush was boasting how US troops had been greeted as liberators and projected that the country could be policed with 50,000 troops by the end of 2003. Now military analysts are cautioning that the Iraq army and police force will not be in a position to police the country for another ten years. So much, then for Bush’s claim that once a legitimate Iraqi government is up and running the troops will be on their way home

And as for the post-election situation, make no mistake, any government elected in Iraq will be permitted to function only so long as it kowtows to the dictates of Washington and any member of a forthcoming Iraqi parliament will be allowed to breathe only so long as he does not point to US corporate designs on the country, or mention words like “trade unions” or “accountability”. Whatever, government is elected to ‘rule’ Iraq on January 30th it will only be allowed to do so with the endorsement of the White House.


Here in Britain, Bush’s sidekick, Tony Blair, is likewise looking forward to a post-election regime in Iraq that has no real say on foreign investment. Moreover, Blair is desperate for elections to take place in Iraq for the simple reason that he needs something resembling a foreign policy success to present to voters in the run up to the election. Indeed any good news at all at the moment would be welcomed by New Labour.


The essential goal of the Bush regime in the Middle East remains the same as that of preceding administrations going back to WWII, and that is to reinforce control of the region’s oil reserves and the profits that arise from them. Furthermore, Washington is well aware that control of Middle East oil gives the US enormous leverage over its economic rivals, Europe, Japan and China, all of whom are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than the US, the latter expected to have the same oil demands as the US within 25 years.

That Iraq has huge oils supplies is the sole reason the US cannot allow a government—freely elected by its people and one advocating a US departure—to exist.

Bush and freedom

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 22nd January 2005

Dear Sir,


Speaking at his inauguration on January 20th, President Bush declared that freedom overseas was a precondition for freedom in the USA. He certainly never elaborated on this theme and made no reference to the utter misery the US has, in the last few years, brought to Afghanistan and Iraq. He moreover, in his short speech, used the words “freedom” and “liberty” 42 times.


I can only presume these two words have taken on new meanings in the White House dictionary. History testifies that as soon as the US takes an interest in your country then you can say goodbye to freedom. Since 1945 the US has leant its support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Pinochet. Since 1945, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe, turning a blind eye to the most horrendous affronts to the democratic process. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments.


Perhaps Bush was telling the truth, considering the growing restrictions on personal freedom in the USA – ie the Patriot Act. If freedom is not allowed to thrive overseas, then why should it be allowed to exist in the USA?

Prince Harry

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 20/01/05

Dear Sir,


With the "Prince Harry the Nazi" story still making the news, what is noticeably absent from the debate about whether Harry was right, wrong or silly to wear a Nazi uniform, is that pertaining to the very existence of the Royal Family. It is taken for granted that we have one, we need one, they have always been there etc.


In truth, the sole purpose of this parasitical and unscrupulous family is to serve as a repository for ‘history’ and ‘tradition’, which of course provides the glaring iniquities of capitalism with some form of moral authority.


Honestly considered, the contribution made to society by Harry and his greedy and insensitive clan is zilch. Each one is happy to consume in a day as much resources and commodities as 100 members of the working class, indeed 10000 times as much as a small African village. Yet we are encouraged to bow with suppliant’s before this bunch of indifferent, self-seeking leaches like imbeciles, crying and sobbing at their misfortune, debating their transgressions, negligent of the immense global suffering of our own class?


What real loss to society would there be if the entire House of Windsor was abolished overnight? None. Though I would certainly not oppose the abolition of the monarchy, I would hardly find much to celebrate. For we would simply exist in a republic as wage slaves, every aspect of our lives still subordinated to the worst excesses of the profit system.


One thing is certain, however. If the injustices that plague our world were given one tenth the media coverage afforded royal gaffes, then the case for world socialism would have been well publicised and our ranks greatly swollen, and real injustice would at last be nearer a solution.

Yours,

John B