It's time for the latest crop of new and newish left blogs that have caught my eye over the last month. A number of anti-cuts blogs are starting to come through, which is a trend I expect will continue over the coming months. But once again, apart from the newcomer from the Socialist Party in Ireland, the organised far left are conspicuous by their absence. Are comrades too busy campaigning and selling papers to start blogs these days?
1. Andy Burnham MP (Labour) (Twitter)
2. Bad Reputation (Unaligned/Feminist) (Twitter)
3. Chinese for Labour (Labour)
4. Circumlimina (Irish - Unaligned) (Twitter)
5. Diary of a Benefit Scrounger (Unaligned/Disability Activism)
6. Elizannie (Labour)
7. Fermanagh Fightback! (Socialist Party Ireland)
8. Golem XIV - Thoughts (Unaligned)
9. Hackney Downs Labour (Labour) (Twitter)
10. Minority Thought (Unaligned) (Twitter)
11. Next Year Country (Canadian - Unaligned/Ecosocialist)
12. No Comment (Unaligned) (Twitter)
13. Norwich Justice for Ian Tomlinson (J4IM)
14. Paperback Rioter (Unaligned) (Twitter)
15. Political Dynamite (Unaligned) (Twitter)
16. Rage against the Coalition (Unaligned)
17. Shibley Rahman (Labour) (Twitter)
18. Step to the Left (Labour)
19. The Brain of Chris Allen (Unaligned) (Twitter)
20. The Broken of Britain (Unaligned/Disability Activism)
21. The Poll Pot (Unaligned) (Twitter)
22. UK Uncut (Unaligned) (Twitter)
23. Wine in the Morning (Unaligned) (Twitter)
That's it for October/November. If you know of any new blogs (a year or less old) that haven't been featured before, drop me a line via email, the comments or on Twitter. The new blog round up is posted on the first Sunday of every month.
Ahad, 7 November 2010
Sabtu, 6 November 2010
Zombies and Ideology
Sheriff's Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln, or Egg from This Life) is wounded in a shoot out and wakes up in a hospital bed. In scenes reminiscent of 28 Days Later and Day of the Triffids he gets his bearings and staggers through a deserted but battle scarred hospital. Rick comes across a half-eaten nurse, walls daubed with blood, and a locked door bulging with trapped undead. He gropes his way down a murky stairwell into the corpse-strewn grounds. It is a quiet desolate scene punctuated only by the buzzing of feeding flies. There are unmistakable signs of battle but vehicles, military equipment and battlefield positions are all intact. It's not long before Rick is confronted with the full gravity of what's happened. Pausing to pick up a bike on his way home he notices a badly mangled decomposing corpse ... and it notices him.
And so the scene is set for a gripping and gritty pilot episode. The production values are very high and the characters are very believable. Walking is the first zombie serial for TV, but if it maintains this standard it need be the only one.
Assuming the first season is deemed a success by notoriously fickle television executives I expect some elements of the comic book won't cross over to the small screen. Sex and violence is one thing, but torture, rape and paedophilia are quite another. But I expect the plot - which is little more than a spin on the classical 'group of survivors find a hold out, gets overrun, finds a hold out, gets overrun' template - will survive without many changes.
But what is it about shambling bags of bones bent on eating your brain that commands widespread cultural attention and popularity? Why now? Why zombies? I have a couple of sketchy ideas.
In one sense the rise of zombie culture condenses a number of ambivalences and anxieties haunting the 'bourgeois condition'. As I've argued before, Charlie Brooker's Dead Set could be read as a revenge-of-the-working-class allegory (despite his injunction that the mini-series is "not a chin-stroking exercise"). And the same is true of wider zombie culture as manufactured by various media interests. Despite burying the Soviet Union and having things their own way for 30 years (at least in Britain and the US), the end of history has proven to be a period as uncertain as any other. Far from ushering in a von Hayekian utopia, capitalism has been rocked to its foundations by a financial crisis few of its apologists saw coming. Keynes has been dug up and reanimated to get things going again, but at the same time the spectre of Marx has been disturbed and has taken to haunting their imaginations. On the one hand there's the geopolitical challenge represented by the Chinese (communists!). And on the other the declining salience of mainstream political parties, the retrenchment of irreverence, and the uncertainty around the character popular opposition to the cuts will eventually assume make the dangerous classes ... well ... dangerous again.
Zombies as a horror staple are the result of some unfathomable biological or supernatural crisis that cannot be reversed. They are mindless. They are faceless. They are ugly. And they want to invade your home and feast on your flesh. If this does not work as an allegory for bourgeois attitudes to and fears of the working class, I don't know what does.
But this in itself cannot explain why zombies are so zeitgeisty. It might go some way to help explain how effortlessly the media's creative minds churn out undead product, but does not account for how this continually finds an eager market. I would suggest this has something to do with consumer capitalism. Since Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, the point has been repeated to banality that zombies are a satire of a society that encourages people to find their souls in consumption. This, in my opinion, is no longer the case. Neoliberalism has assiduously cultivated an individualism that is not stupefied by the aura of the commodity. Instead contemporary capitalist culture offers choices, which in turn demands an active individual subjectivity capable of making them. Hence consumption is less a matter of finding one's self in objects and more objects being a means of marking and displaying personality and identity. This is not dumb mass culture as Adorno and the Frankfurt School would have it, but massified bourgeois culture: of the penetration of the social fabric by the common sense, outlook, and individuating practices of the ruling class.
What's this got to do with zombies?
1) Neoliberalism and bourgeois culture places the individual (the self) at the centre of the universe. From this perspective the bulk of society appear as an immense collection of herd-like Others engaged in an array of apparently meaningless and mundane activities. You and your immediate circle are the individuals. The rest are a homogenous mass.
2) Sometimes so many choices can be tiring.
Zombie product can appeal to both these coordinates of neoliberal individualism. Zombiescapes of The Walking Dead, Zombieland, World War Z are very simple. It's an escapist world where choice is taken away. There is no ambiguity - all zombies want to nibble on your innards. None of them will pretend friendship or seduce you by guile. It's a black and white world of life and death. Your fellow survivors might be dodgy characters, but you won't wake up in the night to find them chewing your leg.
But at the same time zombies offer an opportunity for asserting superiority, mastery, contempt, and individuality against the mass. Zombies are slow and stupid. Humans are quick and intelligent. Zombies are limited by their reach. Humans can use all manner of weapons. Provided they are not swarming in great numbers, humans run rings around them - lopping off a limb here, beheading another there, removing their teeth, chaining them up, what fun can be had! And all without a troubled conscience too.
In other words zombie settings offer a simple fantasy where one can assert the self - sometimes heroically - against the world. You have to beat the undead hordes. Unlike the ever-popular vampires, one cannot join them. Zombies tune into ruling class anxieties and a popular longing for recognition and simplicity. And as long as capitalism blindly lurches from crisis to crisis in the mindless pursuit of profits, so the popularity of the zombie will endure.
Jumaat, 5 November 2010
Celebrity Strikebreakers
Some readers might remember Terry Wogan wishing pickets the "best of luck" during the last BBC strike ... before crossing them to do his radio show.
And judging by Chris Moyle's inclusion on this roll of shame, he's kissed and made up with BBC management. I'm at a loss to explain his volte face. Just over a month ago Moyles was moaning on air about not being paid. Fast forward to November he's a-okay with management butchering his pension entitlement. What a twonk.
As for the rest of them, they will not be forgiven nor forgotten.
Plenty of people have had a bit of fun with celebrity scabwatch on Twitter earlier today. Comedians Robin Ince and Alan Davies have covered themselves in a bit of glory for refusing to cross picket lines. In the open surveillance world of Twitter it has been funny to see some of the ire Davies has earned, such as from this Tunbridge Wells-type and this.
Conversely, Andrew Collins, a broadcaster and someone I previously had down as a celebrity lefty has turned his Twitter stream into a tortured torrent of self-flagellation for crossing the picket line. Good. It's one thing for a Murdoch lackey like Brillo to cross picket lines, quite another for someone who sees themselves on "our side".
In a lame attempt to justify his actions (to himself as well as others) Collins has tweeted "If I don't go in, I don't get a "day's pay", as I am self-employed, freelance holiday cover with no contract". As a writer, broadcaster, and currently on a successful tour, I'd wager most striking NUJ workers had more to lose than Collins. And then there's this: "Bectu advice: "We are not taking industrial action you should work normally but not do any work normally undertaken by striking NUJ members". What he fails to mention is the advice directly beneath: "If, however, as a matter of conscience you decide not to cross a picket line and the BBC attempts to discipline you then you will have the full support of BECTU." Oh dear.
We might live in a time when the cultural norms of the labour movement aren't as widespread as they used to be. But when anyone is facing a picket line they have a choice. They can respect the democratic will of the workers involved and aid them by refusing to cross. Or you can crap all over them and stand with management by going in. If someone - especially a celebrity - does not respect the action then they can't complain when they're taken to task for their shabby behaviour.
Update In the comments below, Modernity points to a more up to date list.
Damned Lies and Election Leaflets
Most Labour people I've spoken to are happy to see Woolas out on his ear. There's a few shedding tears and lamentations for their ideological bedfollow on the hard right of the party, but they're very much out of step with mainstream Labour opinion.
Dan Hodges (also from the right of the party) makes one of the most interesting comments on the Woolas affair so far. He rightly argues Woolas is a product of the Labour machine, a machine that has pandered to racism and anti-immigration bigotry (aided and abetted, as always, by the tabloid press). As Dan puts it, the case highlights "the Labour Party’s shameful failure to adopt a coherent, let alone moral, stance on any of these issues". Quite right. Though I dispute his claim everyone in the party is responsible for this, New Labour created the conditions that allowed the likes of Phil Woolas to happen.
How did we get here? As well as being thoroughly authoritarian and contemptuous of civil liberties at home and abroad, Blair and Brown were pragmatic leaders. Not in the sense of ideology - they were/are neoliberal down to their bones - but in terms of responding to public opinion as filtered by medialand. The idea that political leadership is sometimes about swimming against the stream, about asserting your politics in the face of opposition from elites was alien to them both. New Labour's response to press hysteria around immigration and terrorism (a link it did nothing to challenge) was accepted as a reality to be adapted to, not fought. Instead of taking on the BNP's lies when it looked like they were getting some traction, New Labour tacked further and further to the right. Labour and the Tories were locked in a race to the gutter to see who could be most beastly to immigrants. Woolas was an obnoxious but not untypical example of this ugly Powellite trend that has colonised the "common sense" of the party's upper echelons.
It shows Ed Miliband in a very bad light. Not only has he remained silent on the issue - leaving Harriet Harman to hang him out to dry - but he appointed Woolas as a junior shadow minister with the race and immigration brief. Not only did this bode ill for his stated position that immigration is a lightning rod for concerns around housing and jobs, and that Labour should challenge it, but what does it say about his political nous when his chosen man for an important and sensitive job stood a good chance of losing his seat amid a storm of lies and racism? Not a lot.
It seems to me there are two reasons why Ed Miliband took the risk. First, internal politics. As this blog has noted before Ed peppered his team with Blairites to head off the possibility of future treachery. As a Brownite he is keenly aware of the cack-handed plots to depose Brown - so you can't blame him for trying to cover his bases. Second, and related to this is Ed's aversion to challenging consensus politics. By sticking Woolas in race and immigration he could deflect press and Tory criticism by simply pointing to the continuity in personnel. Both make some sort of sense in a craven and insipid sort of way, but they hardly speak of a "new generation" committed to new ways of doing things.
One last point, the manner of Woolas's suspension from the party has been fair. He was presumed innocent and action was only taken after the special election court found him guilty. The question has to be asked if this procedure was good enough for Phil Woolas, then why wasn't it for Lutfur Rahman?
Rabu, 3 November 2010
Labour Councils and the Cuts
There were two interrelated points the subsequent discussion turned around. The first of these was leadership. The meeting heard there have been gatherings of Labour council leaders to discuss strategies in the face of the Coalition's cuts. Whatever transpired wasn't related to the rest of us in any depth but it is clear they are all operating in the dark and cobbling together plans on the hoof. There has been no steer of any kind from the national leadership on what actions Labour and Labour-led coalition councils should take.
As we have seen, Ed Miliband has shied away from challenging the Coalition and proven wobbly on the cuts, reserving the right to back some while opposing others. But in travelling this line of march Ed has sleep walked into a trap the Tories have laid for him. By accepting their terms of the debate this has allowed the Tories and the media to paint Labour as defenders of millionaires' entitlement to child benefit, and being relaxed about the state throwing tax payers' cash at fat cat landlords. Like Ed's predecessors, the leadership are overly concerned with playing the Westminster game, a game governed by received wisdom, ideological conformity and the preoccupations of the media elite. The leadership are operating in the sphere of 'non-punishment' and will not launch an adequate assault on the government's programme unless the pressure of the anti-cuts movement forces them to.
For rank-and-file Labour, labour movement and anti-cuts activists the tasks remain building a strong opposition as well as clearly and unambiguously arguing that there is a viable alternative to fast and deep or slow and shallow cuts.
The second big issue is the question of Labour councils and the cuts. The Coalition has decreed a cut in government grants to councils and as these make themselves felt Labour-affiliated unions will be organising the most of the industrial opposition on the ground. In some cases Labour councillors will have the unenviable task of passing on these Tory cuts. Stoke City Council, for example, is having to cut £83 million over the next four years. This means the loss of 713 jobs this year and deleterious knock-on effects on The Potteries' notoriously fragile economy. Councillors at the meeting expressed their anger at having to pick up the tab for bailing out the banks, and the statement prefacing the consultation budget document makes that plain.
As a couple of people from the floor pointed out, this was a politically calculated move on the Tories' part. Forcing Labour councils to cut services and jobs is designed to drive a wedge between them and the rest of the labour movement, and tar the party with some of the blame for cuts and damage them electorally. So, what is to be done?
As Darrell argues refusing to go along with the cuts is one option. In the mid-eighties Labour councillors from Lambeth and Liverpool City Councils failed to set a legal budget. This led to the surcharging and debarring of 80 councillors from public office. These councillors were backed by significant sections of the trade union movement and the Labour party (who were able to pay off the fines) and, it should be noted, without that support it's doubtful this highpoint of municipal socialism would have been reached.
Unfortunately that's not where we're at today. In the absence of a strong labour movement what are the chances of that happening now? It can't be ruled out over the coming years but it's highly unlikely similar council-led struggles will happen over the course of the next financial year. From the standpoint of Labour councillors, the thought of being surcharged in excess of £100k isn't an attractive prospect. And even before the setting of an illegal budget is a possibility measures have long been in place to prevent recalcitrant councils from doing a Liverpool or a Lambeth again. One sniff of serious defiance and an authority can be taken over by a Pickles-appointed bureaucrat and cuts rammed through. Whether that measure would succeed is a moot point as the vast majority of Labour councillors will not place themselves in the firing line of likely financial and political ruin and allow things to get that far. With the costs of defiance so high most would rather face electoral defeat.
That is the position Labour councillors see themselves in. The question is how does the anti-cuts movement relate to them? Should they be branded as opponents and excluded from anti-cuts campaigns? Should dialogue between councillors, unions and anti-cuts activists remain open for the purpose of launching a campaign to ensure proper funding for local authorities, and for future collaboration should a council go down the defiance route? Should they be ignored and left alone to wrangle with their consciences while everyone else gets on with campaigning?
Suggestions please.
(Image Source)
Selasa, 2 November 2010
Education on Trial
This from Jacob of the The Third Estate. While we're on the subject Brother S and I will be on the NUS/UCU demo organised for next Wednesday - anyone game for a meet up?
Hosted by ULU President Clare Solomon and featuring speakers from School Students Against War, NUS Campaigns, and the Middlesex Occupation, academics and other special guests, Education on Trial is a carnivalesque evening of live entertainment, art and discussion exploring the issues facing our education system today and building resistance to those threatening it. The night begins with speed debating, followed by interactive sessions focusing on schools, academies and privatisation; higher education, cuts and fees; pedagogy, radical education and the future.
In a change from our usual venue, 'Education on Trial' will be held at the University of London Union, on Thursday 4th November from 6pm. The event is taking place shortly before the ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’ demonstration called by the National Union of Students and the University and College Union on Wednesday 10 November 2010. Mutiny will discuss the future of education in the face of the planned cuts and Browne review recommendations, helping to mobilise for the march.
For more information, please see the attached flyer and sign up to the facebook event here.
Tickets are already available here, and cost just £3 if purchased in advance.
-----The series of ‘on Trial’ events are organised by a London-based activist collective called the Mutiny, with the aim of bringing together meaningful debate, creativity and live entertainment in a safe nonpartisan space. We provide lively discussion, music, performance poetry, interactive technology and visual art in an event which encourages people to share ideas and skills. Sessions are participatory and nondidactic, and guests are invited to engage with speakers and other participants around a central discussion table.
Hosted by ULU President Clare Solomon and featuring speakers from School Students Against War, NUS Campaigns, and the Middlesex Occupation, academics and other special guests, Education on Trial is a carnivalesque evening of live entertainment, art and discussion exploring the issues facing our education system today and building resistance to those threatening it. The night begins with speed debating, followed by interactive sessions focusing on schools, academies and privatisation; higher education, cuts and fees; pedagogy, radical education and the future.
In a change from our usual venue, 'Education on Trial' will be held at the University of London Union, on Thursday 4th November from 6pm. The event is taking place shortly before the ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’ demonstration called by the National Union of Students and the University and College Union on Wednesday 10 November 2010. Mutiny will discuss the future of education in the face of the planned cuts and Browne review recommendations, helping to mobilise for the march.
For more information, please see the attached flyer and sign up to the facebook event here.
Tickets are already available here, and cost just £3 if purchased in advance.
-----The series of ‘on Trial’ events are organised by a London-based activist collective called the Mutiny, with the aim of bringing together meaningful debate, creativity and live entertainment in a safe nonpartisan space. We provide lively discussion, music, performance poetry, interactive technology and visual art in an event which encourages people to share ideas and skills. Sessions are participatory and nondidactic, and guests are invited to engage with speakers and other participants around a central discussion table.
Expose Violence Against London Firefighters
The reckless endangerment of life against striking London firefighters is utterly disgusting and should be condemned in no uncertain terms. But, as per usual, this has been passed over in silence by the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media. As with the case of Ian Tomlinson it falls to bloggers to publicise it far and wide until its ubiquity is such that the gatekeepers of modern Britain's eyes and ears can ignore it no longer. Below I reproduce the press release from the Fire Brigade's Union (original here) with details of the incidents. Don't let management and scabs get away with it. Spread the word!
A DAY OF SHOCKING VIOLENCE AGAINST LONDON’S FIREFIGHTERS
Vehicles driven at speed into three FBU pickets
Two strikebreakers arrested
Strikebreaking contractors refuse first aid equipment to the injured
Yesterday, three members of the Fire Brigades Union were hit and hurt by speeding vehicles driven by strikebreakers.
“An incredible pattern seems to be emerging. It looks as though the private company hired to do our work has instructed its drivers to drive fast through picket lines. We ended the day in the extraordinary situation where the police had to protect striking firefighters from recklessly speeding vehicles, which were driven by those paid to break the strike.
“If our people had done a fraction of what they did, there would be inflammatory and self-righteous condemnation from the London Fire Brigade, and no doubt it would find something else from the personnel files to feed to its friends in right wing newspapers. But they have not even condemned what happened. Can it possibly be that they do not care about the danger in which their contractor has placed their LFB’s own employees? Could they, incredibly, even be a party to decisions which have led to this? They have brought hired thugs into London who have driven around at speed with their faces hidden by balaclavas in an attempt to menace and intimidate our members. Tragically three of our members have been injured as a result. I wonder whether the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and the others who have spent the past week condemning the FBU for our industrial action will now condemn this violence against us.”
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Francis Beckett 020 8349 9194 or 07813 001372
Helen Hague 07889 792360 or 020 8340 5571
A DAY OF SHOCKING VIOLENCE AGAINST LONDON’S FIREFIGHTERS
Vehicles driven at speed into three FBU pickets
Two strikebreakers arrested
Strikebreaking contractors refuse first aid equipment to the injured
Yesterday, three members of the Fire Brigades Union were hit and hurt by speeding vehicles driven by strikebreakers.
First, a Croydon firefighter was hit by a speeding car driven by a non-union manager at Croydon fire station. FBU president Mick Shaw, who was there, described what happened.
“A fire engine returned from an incident and drove into the fire station, its crew refusing to wind down their windows and talk to the pickets. But at least it drove slowly, at the brigade maximum of five mph, so that the pickets could get out of the way before they were mown down.
“It was followed by a car driven by the officers, and as the pickets tried to talk to the driver of the car, it accelerated suddenly and one of the striking firefighters was thrown up and into the windscreen, then several feet in front of the car.
“We asked the AssetCo employees who had control of our fire station for the first aid kit and some blankets, but they would not give them to us despite the obviously serious nature of the injuries.
“An ambulance was called at once, and the ambulance crew asked for an air ambulance. Our member was not able to move during the 25 minutes between being hit and being taken away in the ambulance.”
The LFB manager was arrested at the scene. Mr Shaw and general secretary Matt Wrack intend to visit the member (whose name cannot be given until his family consents) today, Tuesday. It is understood he has injuries to his spleen and spine.
Second, two hours after the strike, Dagenham firefighter Graham Beers held his hand up at the side of a road in Southwark, to signal to the crew of a fire engine being returned to Southwark Fire Station that they should stop and speak to him. “The fire engine swerved towards me and hit my hand” says Mr Beers, who suffered a sprained and badly bruised hand.
Third, a fire engine was deliberately driven into the FBU London representative Ian Leahair, at Southwark fire station. This happened more than two hours after the strike ended.
There was a huge police presence at Southwark, and FBU members who were there accepted with cheerful good humour being penned in across the road, away from the incoming fire engines. Just eight pickets were allowed.
Although the strike ended at six, the fire engines did not start coming until about 8 pm. When they did start coming, the permitted eight pickets, in the midst of dozens of police officers, stood in front and asked the drivers to stop while they spoke to them. The first two fire engines stopped, and waited for the two minutes or so the police allowed the eight pickets to try to talk to them, without winding down their windows.
But the third didn’t stop. It just kept coming. As the pickets fled before it, the great, heavy fire engine actually picked up speed, and hit Ian Leahair and then one of the police officers, before the police finally persuaded the driver to stop. By then, Ian Leahair’s legs and half his body were underneath the fire engine and he was clearly in pain. If he had been standing an inch or so further left, his legs would have been crushed under the fire engine’s wheels.
FBU pickets yelled at the driver to reverse, but he would not do so until instructed to do so by the police. The police officer, we understand, had a bruised leg. Ian Leahair has injured ribs. He was pulled out and helped to the side of the road.
The fire engine was deliberately driven at the pickets. There was no reason to do this. The driver cannot have felt in any way intimidated. He could see at least 50 police officers who would have protected him, had any violence been offered, which it was not.
After that, the police handled the arrival of the rest of the fire engines very differently. They decided, with great fairness, that they were not going to stop the picketing because a driver had endangered the pickets. So police officers themselves stopped the fire engines, gave the pickets their couple of minutes, then cleared the way for the engines.
The police, in effect, began to protect the pickets from the strikebreakers. It was the police who ensured the right to lawful picketing.
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said today: “This has been a day of shocking violence directed at London’s firefighters.
“A fire engine returned from an incident and drove into the fire station, its crew refusing to wind down their windows and talk to the pickets. But at least it drove slowly, at the brigade maximum of five mph, so that the pickets could get out of the way before they were mown down.
“It was followed by a car driven by the officers, and as the pickets tried to talk to the driver of the car, it accelerated suddenly and one of the striking firefighters was thrown up and into the windscreen, then several feet in front of the car.
“We asked the AssetCo employees who had control of our fire station for the first aid kit and some blankets, but they would not give them to us despite the obviously serious nature of the injuries.
“An ambulance was called at once, and the ambulance crew asked for an air ambulance. Our member was not able to move during the 25 minutes between being hit and being taken away in the ambulance.”
The LFB manager was arrested at the scene. Mr Shaw and general secretary Matt Wrack intend to visit the member (whose name cannot be given until his family consents) today, Tuesday. It is understood he has injuries to his spleen and spine.
Second, two hours after the strike, Dagenham firefighter Graham Beers held his hand up at the side of a road in Southwark, to signal to the crew of a fire engine being returned to Southwark Fire Station that they should stop and speak to him. “The fire engine swerved towards me and hit my hand” says Mr Beers, who suffered a sprained and badly bruised hand.
Third, a fire engine was deliberately driven into the FBU London representative Ian Leahair, at Southwark fire station. This happened more than two hours after the strike ended.
There was a huge police presence at Southwark, and FBU members who were there accepted with cheerful good humour being penned in across the road, away from the incoming fire engines. Just eight pickets were allowed.
Although the strike ended at six, the fire engines did not start coming until about 8 pm. When they did start coming, the permitted eight pickets, in the midst of dozens of police officers, stood in front and asked the drivers to stop while they spoke to them. The first two fire engines stopped, and waited for the two minutes or so the police allowed the eight pickets to try to talk to them, without winding down their windows.
But the third didn’t stop. It just kept coming. As the pickets fled before it, the great, heavy fire engine actually picked up speed, and hit Ian Leahair and then one of the police officers, before the police finally persuaded the driver to stop. By then, Ian Leahair’s legs and half his body were underneath the fire engine and he was clearly in pain. If he had been standing an inch or so further left, his legs would have been crushed under the fire engine’s wheels.
FBU pickets yelled at the driver to reverse, but he would not do so until instructed to do so by the police. The police officer, we understand, had a bruised leg. Ian Leahair has injured ribs. He was pulled out and helped to the side of the road.
The fire engine was deliberately driven at the pickets. There was no reason to do this. The driver cannot have felt in any way intimidated. He could see at least 50 police officers who would have protected him, had any violence been offered, which it was not.
After that, the police handled the arrival of the rest of the fire engines very differently. They decided, with great fairness, that they were not going to stop the picketing because a driver had endangered the pickets. So police officers themselves stopped the fire engines, gave the pickets their couple of minutes, then cleared the way for the engines.
The police, in effect, began to protect the pickets from the strikebreakers. It was the police who ensured the right to lawful picketing.
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said today: “This has been a day of shocking violence directed at London’s firefighters.
“An incredible pattern seems to be emerging. It looks as though the private company hired to do our work has instructed its drivers to drive fast through picket lines. We ended the day in the extraordinary situation where the police had to protect striking firefighters from recklessly speeding vehicles, which were driven by those paid to break the strike.
“If our people had done a fraction of what they did, there would be inflammatory and self-righteous condemnation from the London Fire Brigade, and no doubt it would find something else from the personnel files to feed to its friends in right wing newspapers. But they have not even condemned what happened. Can it possibly be that they do not care about the danger in which their contractor has placed their LFB’s own employees? Could they, incredibly, even be a party to decisions which have led to this? They have brought hired thugs into London who have driven around at speed with their faces hidden by balaclavas in an attempt to menace and intimidate our members. Tragically three of our members have been injured as a result. I wonder whether the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and the others who have spent the past week condemning the FBU for our industrial action will now condemn this violence against us.”
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Francis Beckett 020 8349 9194 or 07813 001372
Helen Hague 07889 792360 or 020 8340 5571
Ahad, 31 Oktober 2010
Notes on Organisation and Consciousness
The first of these remaining sections is 'On Bureaucracy'. Here Gramsci notes each state has its own particular cadre of functionaries. The tasks they perform are broadly the same - the day to day running of the state bureaucracy - but at the same time they possess their own nation-specific traditions (and, it should be noted, different sectors of the bureaucracy have their own cultures too). Rising classes, whether bourgeois or proletarian, must pay heed to them and develop ways of neutralising/binding them to their own hegemony.
For Gramsci an historical inquiry into the development of bureaucracy would arrive at two qualitatively different forms of organisation to which all empirical examples can be reduced. The first of these is 'organic centralism', the development of organisation around a specific individual. But real organicity, a real reflection in organisation of the (class) relationships that sustain it is a property of democratic centralism. As we have seen previously, democratic centralism enables a party to become the transmission belt of the interests of the working class. Gramsci notes that organic centralism in the state has a tendency to petrify and become bureaucratic centralism. You could say such a fate awaits self-described democratic centralist states, parties and groups if permanent and unaccountable leaderships are at their head.
In 'The Theorem of Fixed Proportions' Gramsci argues there is a link between the organisation and politics of a class. In short, the more it is organised the better it is able to sustain an independent politics. The same rule is true in reverse: the less organisation there is, the less likely political ideas organised around class interests will find a purchase. One should however avoid an absolute separation between the two. Both are dialectically reciprocal and always conditioned by the overall balance of forces.
Gramsci responds to contemporaneous fascist critiques of liberal democracy in 'Number and Quality in Representative Government'. What fascism shares with mainstream advocates of representative democracy is the assumption all citizens have an equal say in the exercise of governance, regardless of their individual capacities. As a fundamentally elitist and anti-democratic body of thought, fascism holds that this is a recipe for mediocrity and ruin. However they are dealing with a definition of liberal democracy at its most abstract. Elections are not a battle of atomised ideas, rather it is a measurement of the persuasive capacities of competing elites. While the freedoms liberal democracy afford are valuable, need defending, and be used as a spring board to argue for more democracy socialist must also recognise the severe limits imposed upon any form of democratic state structures by the rule of capital.
Turning now to problems of organisation, in 'Continuity and Tradition' Gramsci poses the problem all socialist must face: how do we assimilate the mass of the working class party (in the sense described here) to its most advanced (socialist) section? For the bourgeoisie this is performed by the state and codified in the law. This organises them as a class and promotes conformity. For the working class, the body of its organisation requires something that can perform similar tasks and prosecute the class struggle to its victorious conclusion. For Leninists the answer is the "general staff" of the revolutionary party. For others it's the attempt to embed themselves and socialist ideas in the class as a means of diffusing consciousness. These are different methods but the outcome they wish to reach is broadly the same.
Moving onto 'Spontaneity and Conscious Leadership' Gramsci argues here that all political developments since the dawn of class society have at their centre conscious leaderships. The slave revolts and peasant rebellions of antiquity and feudalism were conscious in the sense of intentional activity, but were reflections of the common sense of the day. These constituted rudimentary forms of popular consciousness because they could not become conscious of their class position in the same way the classes of modern capitalism can. This means spontaneous mass working class action contains a germ capable of passing over into more durable forms of collective consciousness and organisation. Hence there's no real opposition between Marxism and proletarian spontaneity, but neither is there an unproblematic relationship. Socialists have to respond and relate to it in all its forms - including those with apparently reactionary objectives - with sensitivity and tact to strengthen the tendency toward independent collective activity. Opposing them, as some have done in recent times runs the risk of deepening reaction and alienating workers. The job is to convince, not condemn.
'Against Byzantinism' is a small polemic against what Althusserian Marxists call 'theoreticism' - of treating theory as if it had an independent value. For Gramsci its value is always measured in concrete terms. Proof of utility lies in being able to explain situations outside of the context it was conceived and crafted, and its capacity to materially incorporate itself into these realities (i.e. successfully guide subsequent theory and practice and therefore influence the course of events). Value therefore does not lie in logical coherence but an ability to understand and facilitate change.
In 'The Collective Worker' Gramsci restates the basic relationship between the working class 'in itself' and 'for itself' - that the workplace reduces the worker to a cog in the division of labour with scant knowledge of the processes that placed them there. But this position can generate a social solidarity between others in a similar position, and it's this that's the starting point for seeing themselves as the collective worker. It's the first step on the road to resolving the gap between their position and consciousness of it.
In 'Voluntarism and Social Masses' Gramsci tackles the problem of 'volunteers': political adventurers that appear independent of any class. This was a pronounced historical phenomenon of Italy prior to Mussolini because of the traditional passivity of the rural mass, and the preponderance of dissatisfied and declassed intellectuals from the petit bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Without a class environment by which to navigate they were drawn to any number of causes and created all kinds of organisations. Politically their parties never succeeded in winning mass audiences and were frozen into sects. Because of this they have a tendency to settle into two types of voluntarism: as a collective of supermen vis a vis the historical process, or as harbingers of am imminent reality that they're preparing the way for. These are pitfalls and obstacles labour movements need to avoud. The task for socialists is to base themselves on the existing organisations of the class and build consciousness and capacity from there, not to try and break a new path that can only lead to dead ends.
These notes on organisation and consciousness restate many points Gramsci has made before as well as some basic positions of Marxist politics. There are a number of applications that still have relevance to building socialist politics in Britain now. These will be discussed in the next post summarising The Modern Prince.
A list of posts in this series on the Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be found here.
Sabtu, 30 Oktober 2010
Housing Benefit Cuts and Class
Not only is the deficit out of control, the monstrous and growing housing benefit bill threatens to devour us all in our beds. Or at least that's what the Tories and LibDems would have us believe. As far as I'm concerned that anyone has to have their housing subsidised by the state condemns British capitalism unfit for human habitation, but I digress.
The Tories find the growth of the housing benefit bill over the last 10 years unacceptable. They say it's unfair claimants can live it up in mansions and penthouses while the rest of us struggle to pay the rent or keep up with the mortgage. And they (justifiably) attack the Blair/Brown ancien regime for allowing private landlords to gorge themselves on taxpayers' cash. But the Coalition's solutions - to cap housing benefit and reduce it by 10% for Jobseekers' Allowance claimants on the dole for more than a year - betrays their class instincts.
The Mail, backed with choice quotes from the Quiet Man, says housing benefit cuts means a £10 or £20 shortfall in rents for the low paid and unemployed who depend on them. Far from leading to a social cleansing of London and the South East - something even a buffoon like Boris Johnson recognises - the Tories and their press allies believe the market will adjust and rents will come down. It absolutely isn't an attempt to clear out people who are likely to vote Labour. No siree.
I have a hard time believing the Tories. If they were only interested in getting the housing benefit bill down surely it would make more sense to introduce a rent cap. Administratively it wouldn't be any more complex than the measures they're already seeking to implement. It would quickly adjust the market instead of waiting an age to correct itself. In a snap taxpayers would cease subsidising landlords, and most importantly no one runs the risk of losing a roof over their heads.
This option doesn't even appear to have been considered by the government. That should tell you all you need to know. This is their attempt to do a Shirley under the guise of welfare reform.
The Tories find the growth of the housing benefit bill over the last 10 years unacceptable. They say it's unfair claimants can live it up in mansions and penthouses while the rest of us struggle to pay the rent or keep up with the mortgage. And they (justifiably) attack the Blair/Brown ancien regime for allowing private landlords to gorge themselves on taxpayers' cash. But the Coalition's solutions - to cap housing benefit and reduce it by 10% for Jobseekers' Allowance claimants on the dole for more than a year - betrays their class instincts.
The Mail, backed with choice quotes from the Quiet Man, says housing benefit cuts means a £10 or £20 shortfall in rents for the low paid and unemployed who depend on them. Far from leading to a social cleansing of London and the South East - something even a buffoon like Boris Johnson recognises - the Tories and their press allies believe the market will adjust and rents will come down. It absolutely isn't an attempt to clear out people who are likely to vote Labour. No siree.
I have a hard time believing the Tories. If they were only interested in getting the housing benefit bill down surely it would make more sense to introduce a rent cap. Administratively it wouldn't be any more complex than the measures they're already seeking to implement. It would quickly adjust the market instead of waiting an age to correct itself. In a snap taxpayers would cease subsidising landlords, and most importantly no one runs the risk of losing a roof over their heads.
This option doesn't even appear to have been considered by the government. That should tell you all you need to know. This is their attempt to do a Shirley under the guise of welfare reform.
Khamis, 28 Oktober 2010
UK Welfare Spending in One Easy Graph
Time to scotch another Tory myth. Is UK welfare spending at historically high levels, acting like a deadweight around the neck of UK plc and dragging the economy into the gutter? The graph below showing welfare as a proportion of GDP (thanks to Duncan's Economic Blog) suggests not:
The more the Tories lie, the more they expose themselves.
The more the Tories lie, the more they expose themselves.
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