Say Hello to Dr Phil

At 11 o'clock this morning I had a very important appointment. It was the moment four years of PhD work had been leading up to - the end point, the oral exam, the viva voce. And, thankfully, it went very well. The examiners spent the next 90 minutes quizzing me about my thesis, A Reflexive and Value-Added Analysis of Contemporary Trotskyist Activists in Britain. It's very difficult to remember the detail of their queries, but I can recall them asking why I settled on this topic, why the thesis drew on the sociology of social movements rather than political science, the relationship between the work and Marxism, the role of emotion and ideas in processes of radicalisation and commitment, the senses in which the work could be described as scientific, the importance of relationships, the contributions of Marxist anthropology and no doubt a few more things I've left out.

About half past 12 they sent me out the room to confer over their final verdict. When I walked back in it was crunch time. Had I passed? Or would I have to return to the coal face and resubmit after a substantial rewrite? There was no need to worry - the verdict was positive! I passed only with the need to undertake minor corrections - a few font size errors here, a couple of grammatical howlers there, and the addition of a short paragraph to flesh out what I mean by 'value-added'. But that's it. I'm a doctor. I can put the initials PhD after my name should bourgeois respectability demand it.

There are many people I need to thank for this. But most of all I'll forever be in debt to the 16 comrades in the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers' Party who very kindly sat down with me for up to four hours and told me about their lives as socialist activists. The thesis would never have got off the starting blocks without them freely giving their time.

So what now? Sort out the corrections ... write a few papers ... work the thesis up into a book ... try and find a job ... think about new projects ...

The PhD may be finished. But in many ways, I'm only just starting.

Bullying: The Real Scandal

In 1994 I got a job at a newly opened supermarket on the outskirts of Derby (I'll refrain from naming the firm - we live in litigious times). The wages were utterly shit (£2.21/hour starting rate for 17 years olds, going up to a whopping £2.63 when I turned 18), the company was crap, working hours long and hard, and the store management were awful. They were always looking for more reasons to find fault, bully and intimidate. And it was young folk and women who especially got it in the neck.

This more than anything else taught me that class mattered. If you have to work for a wage, you place yourself on the pain of dismissal at the mercy of those who manage your labour. Now if that isn't a recipe for abusive and exploitative relationships, I don't know what is.

Thanks to these experiences, even just thinking about workplace bullying makes me angry. So what do I make of the accusations made by a dodgy-looking "charity" that claim Gordon Brown has bullied prime ministerial office staff?

Well, they piss me off. Not because the credibility of the National Bullying Helpline is seriously suspect. Nor because the Tories, who are looking to score off a cheap attack, conveniently and hypocritically forget a bullying scandal of their own. And as heartily sick as I am of the personalist and, yes, bullying attacks on the person of Gordon Brown, that hasn't worked me up.

What has is how workplace bullying is being used as a football in the daily kickabout of pre-election politics. If, for instance the Tories gave two shits about it at the very least we're entitled to a serious examination of the link between workplace bullying, macho management and the erosion of workers' rights that took place under their watch. Any chance of that? Not on your nelly.

And before any Labour readers start feeling smug, it is an uncomfortable truth that this government has done little to redress the situation. Indeed, Brown has presided over far more serious cases of bullying the right and the media are more than happy to cheerlead. That's to name but two.

That's the real scandal here, not some half-baked accusations cynically released to damage Labour's election campaign.

The Shameful Music Meme

I haven't got the time to blog properly today. And so I'm being frivolous with y'all again and try and get another pointless Sunday meme off the ground. This one is a bit of a toughie for me. Since leaving my teeny bopper past behind me my musical tastes have evolved in a shamelessly snobby direction - first electronica/dance, followed by indie, then a detour into heavy rock, and for the last seven years or so back to the bleepy beaty side of things. It's the sound of the future, man. At all times I've dismissed the mainstream with a derisive snort, and quite rightly so - most of it is pap. But now and then one song stands out among the dross and gets its hooks into you. You can't get the bloody thing out of your head and to your eternal shame, you really like it. This post is dedicated to three such songs from the 80s, 90s and 00s.

I'm ashamed to say it but I've always liked this

This



And this



Shocking and shameful.

Now it's over to you. What three songs from the 80s, 90s and 00s do you hate to love? Would admitting you penchant for a bit of Cliff, Kylie and Boyzone wreck your standing as an arbiter of quality culture? Let's tag the usual suspects - Jim, Dave and Paul, Louise, Splinty, Anna, Red Maria and Glyn.

National Front to Stand in Stoke Central

It's not very often the prospects of a National Front candidacy warms the hearts of anti-fascists, but I couldn't help a wry smile when the news below was announced. This comes via The Sentinel:

THE extreme right-wing National Front is to contest a Parliamentary seat in Stoke-on-Trent.

The party has set its sights on Labour MP Mark Fisher's Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency.

It will be the first time in more than 30 years that the whites-only organisation has fought a General Election in the city. The last time was in 1979 when it contested the Stoke-on-Trent North seat.

But this time the National Front (NF) faces direct competition from British National Party (BNP) deputy leader Simon Darby.

...

NF executive member Steve Reynolds confirmed that the party was contesting Stoke Central.

He said: "We have got a local man who will be standing for us, but we are not in a position to release his name just yet.

"Our main platform will be anti-Muslim and anti-immigration.

"We have always had a number of members in the Stoke-on-Trent area and we always get a lot of enquiries and feedback from there, so it's a natural choice for us.

"We are also getting a lot of disillusioned BNP members and supporters joining us, because they are not happy about the party's new membership rules."

But Mr Darby said he believed fighting a NF candidate will help his and the BNP's campaign.

He added: "We're always being accused of being the National Front in disguise, but now people will be able to see that we are two totally different parties with different policies."

The full report can be read at the link above.

The prospect of the far right vote getting split three ways certainly reduces the likelihood of Simon Darby overturning Labour's 9,774 vote majority (remember, former BNP council group leader Alby Walker is supposedly standing too). And contrary to received wisdom, going from previous experience the socialist challenge coming from the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is as likely to eat into the BNP vote as Labour's. Considering the BNP were over 2,000 votes behind the Tories in 2005, these are votes they cannot afford to lose if they stand any chance of beating the Conservatives and the LibDems, let alone winning the seat.

The three way split doesn't mean anti-fascists can be complacent. The fact the NF - an organisation whose membership figures are on a par with the more marginal elements of the far left - feel it's worthwhile putting their slender resources into Stoke Central is indicative of how emboldened the far right is by the BNP's success in The Potteries. It is down to the anti-fascist movement to make sure the BNP, Alby Walker, and the NF take an electoral beating in the general and council elections (which seem very likely to be held on the same day) by turning out the support for the other parties.

But the main battles with the far right come after the election. If Labour win we have to make good the promises made to get Stoke regenerated and nationally pursue the kinds of policies Mark Fisher has put his name to. Otherwise the far right will continue to deform Potteries politics. If you provide new jobs and tackle the horrifying levels of deprivation seen across the city, the BNP and its ilk will wither on the vine.

It Came from Outer Space

On slow news days it's inevitable stories normally reserved for the silly season start percolating through the filters and make the headlines. This is one of them:

Thousands of UFOs have been spotted in the last 20 years around the UK, according to newly released documents. More than 6,000 pages of reports describe people's experiences with unidentified flying objects between 1994 and 2000. They include reported sightings over Chelsea Football Club and former home secretary Michael Howard's Kent home.

Details have been released under a three-year project between the Ministry of Defence and The National Archives. The fifth instalment to be released consists of 24 files of sightings, letters and Parliamentary questions, which are available to view online. The reports detail how objects of various shapes and sizes have been witnessed flying over a range of locations. Some drawings by witnesses have also been released.

What the report doesn't say is the craft spotted near Michael Howard's house was John Redwood's favoured method of transport.

Confession time. I saw a UFO once. It was late afternoon in 1995. As I came out of college there was a bright flash in the sky that rapidly faded to a single point before disappearing. Not very exciting, I know. I put it down to a piece of debris burning on re-entry or an exploding meteorite.

But had that happened a few years previously, I would have taken it as proof positive of alien intelligences. For most of my early teen years (and before) I was fascinated by the supernatural generally and UFOs in particular. Nearly every story I wrote in English classes featured extra terrestrial visitations, and I regularly poured over the nine volumes of The Unexplained my Nana gave me (I knew all about Roswell and government cover ups way before The X-Files were a twinkle in Chris Carter's eye). But as time wore on I grew into the miserable Marxist I am today and turned my back on the fantastical whimsies of my childhood. It seems obvious to me now an absence of hard physical evidence means an absence of alien visits rather than evidence for ultra-efficient conspiracies on the part of the US or a global shadow government.

That said, I still have a residual interest. You will never catch me leafing through a copy of Nexus magazine, but if a story turns up in mainstream media outlets I'll take a look.

What do you think about this UFO malarkey? Can they explained scientifically with reference to anything but little green men? Are stories of abduction examples of exotic psychological and sociological phenomena? Have you seen a UFO? Do aliens exist, but they're holding off on first contact until we've overcome the barbarism of class society (Posadas style)? What do you think? (Readers with alien tales to tell are encouraged to stay anonymous - you really don't want a visit from the men in black).

Why I Resigned from the Socialist Party

This is not an easy post to write. After four years and one month of being an active member of the Socialist Party, I resigned a week last Thursday. I had been turning it over in my mind for a long time and it wasn't a decision I took lightly.

Why? Let me say my resignation is entirely political. I don't think Peter Taaffe has become the anti-christ. There are no personality clashes with other members. Nor do I think the CWI should retrospectively back the International Committee's split with the International Secretariat of the Fourth International in the early 50s. Instead it comes down to central questions of political strategy on three matters.

Firstly, I am opposed to Stoke SP's decision to stand against Labour MP Mark Fisher in Stoke Central. There's no need to rehearse the reasons why - they are outlined in this report of the relevant meeting the branch held on the subject (though it's worth noting it still might not happen - the challenge is subject to national SP and the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition endorsement).

Secondly there is TUSC itself. In this critical post I wrote on the new coalition I was very downbeat about its prospects after the general election as a vehicle that can weld the warring factions of the far left together and lay the ground for future developments. Since then there's nothing that has shifted me from my gloomy prognosis.

Thirdly is the question of the Labour party. For anyone concerned with socialist strategy and working class politics, how one deals with Labour remains *the* central strategic issue. Though I have blown hot and cold over the characterisation of Labour since being a SP member, I never believed the party's settled position that it was a straight party of capital not fundamentally different from the Tories and LibDems. Aside from the formal affiliation of most of the major trade unions, there remain thousands of small scale links. For instance the majority of union activists who are members of a political party are in Labour. You'll find thousands of Labour party members in community-based campaigns too. Neither can you hide from the fact that despite some decomposition in Labour's support, its working class base remains stubbornly welded to it. Where the far left have broken through, such as in Scotland in 2003 and Liverpool in the mid-80s the success has proven episodic. It remains an unfortunate political reality that despite the SP's excellent record in Coventry, every council election - including when Dave Nellist is up for re-election - is an up hill struggle.

All this is a round about way of saying there's life left in the Labour dog yet. At the next election it is highly likely the only socialists returned to parliament will be those standing on a Labour ticket. I've also become increasingly convinced over the course of the last year that it is in the interests of the labour movement to see the present government returned, despite its 13 year record of implementing a raft of regressive policies. Also, win or lose, because of the organic links to the labour movement Labour cannot insulate itself from debates and pressures coming from the organised working class forever. I think we've got to the point where the political space to Labour's left is closing and the space for socialist ideas are opening up inside the party (more on the character of that space here).

It's plain to see that these strategic conclusions are not compatible with SP membership. That's why I have left and joined Labour and the Co-op Party. I don't join with any illusions. Stoke Central CLP has a job of work ahead of it to see off the challenge of the BNP's deputy fuhrer, Simon Darby. Things are not helped either by an ongoing faction fight between the dominant faction in the CLP, and the city and regional party. Fun times!

I will however say this about my time in the SP. In contrast to the blood-curdling stories I've heard from ex-members down the years, my experience has been completely positive. The SP has given me an awful lot and I have much to be grateful for. But most important of all are the comrades and friends I've made, which made my decision to resign all the more difficult. When I told the local organiser I did not receive a curt note informing me of my responsibility to cancel my standing order but instead got an expression of genuine concern and regret. Other comrades I've spoken to have been the same. They disagree but have not cast me into the dark recesses of their minds. We *remain* friends and comrades and I wish them all the best.

There's something else I would like to say about the SP too. I may fundamentally disagree with its strategy but compared with the rest of the far left, including the SWP, its politics and methods of work are immeasurably superior. If you're an independent socialist I urge you to join Labour. But I know full well there are many leftists who won't touch Labour with a barge pole. If you fit in that category the SP is a serious Marxist organisation that avoids the twin pitfalls of moonbat politics and cult-like party practices. As I hope this blog has demonstrated, taking out SP membership does not mean you leave your critical faculties at the door.

What now? I plan to carry on dishing up the usual blogging diet of opinion, analysis and sectariana, but as you might expect my writing will be more pro-Labour than it has been previously. Please note, that does not mean uncritically so. I'm continuing being active too. I'm wedded to the same perspective as I was when I first joined the SP. The ongoing priority of socialists is the rebuilding of the labour movement. And whatever organisation we're in we should never lose sight of this.

Introducing the New 'Non-Racist' BNP

At a secret location in Essex yesterday, the BNP's boneheads voted to amend their constitution to allow non-white members take out membership for the first time.

Of course, this was foisted on the BNP by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on pain of facing further action in the courts and I'm sure some of the hardcore Nazis in the BNP's ranks will not be best pleased. I'm inclined to agree with former Stoke group leader and ex-BNP councillor Alby Walker who said "I think some hard-line members will see this as a sell-out by Nick Griffin and leave the party." With any luck this might include a few in The Potteries who then go on to stand against the BNP in the imminent local elections. If any of them are reading this I say go on, you know you want to ...

Ultimately this won't make a blind bit of difference. You can't really disagree with Weyman Bennett, chair of Unite Against Fascism, who notes "I think that regardless of the vote, the changes are cosmetic and have only happened because the courts forced them to stop racist practices." Even in the unlikely event of an influx of deluded idiots from BME backgrounds, nothing will stop the BNP facilitating and sustaining the racist networks that in turn animate the organisation. The window dressing of a few non-white faces will not prevent it from being a danger to the labour movement and any kind of democratic politics.

Fortunately, so far the BNP have proven completely inept. After a decade of near perfect conditions for the far right - a decay of the Labour vote, the ebbing away of 'class politics', media obsessions with radical Islamism, alienation and atomisation, the largest wave of immigration Britain has ever seen *and* an economic crisis - their support remains around the two per cent mark, they have around 50 local authority councillors (and, apparently, another 50 parish councillors), one member of the London Assembly and two MEPs. Only a political leadership devoid of all talent could equal the BNP's dismal show of support.

But one must not be complacent. I pretty much agree with this piece from Mark Seddon. The EHRC ruling will make it easier for the BNP to market itself as a non-racist populist hard right alternative to mainstream politics. Because the BNP's leadership are too stupid I don't think they will pull it off (plus there is too much ugly political baggage attached to the name). But that isn't to stop something even more frightening in the future from emerging. An immeasurably greater threat to politics as is would be a neo-fascist organisation at peace with the presence of most minorities and wraps its message up with a strong dose of liberal tolerance. It happened in The Netherlands once.

In the mean time, immediately after declaring the BNP "had changed" they proved their democratic credentials by assaulting an invited journalist and publishing an endorsement by a fictitious black guy. So the new 'non-racist' BNP marks a significant milestone in its history with violence and lies. Oh well, start as you mean to go on.

Miserable Music Meme

The old brain isn't in tip top condition today and seeing as the blog's been super serious of late, I thought I'd try and brighten things up by getting a new meme off the ground. Unfortunately all I could think of this Valentine's Day are bloody miserable songs about bloody miserable things. If you want happy, go and listen to Kylie and Jason or something.

I've selected one each from the 80s, 90s and 00s. They are:

Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy (1984)



It doesn't get much grimmer than a song about suffering hassle for being gay (but it does look like Jimmy's going to crack up when his "dad" threatens to hit him).

There's no cheer to be found in my next choice. This one comes from 1999, which is probably the best year for electronic music in the history of ever. Mind you I can't see many going wild on the dance floor to this one. This is Portishead's Roads:



Fast forwarding to 2004, here's Dark Globe with Break My World:



Probably the most zeitgeisty video of the mid-00s.

That's my downbeat selection from the last three decades. Now it's over to you. I hereby tag HarpyMarx, Madam Miaow, Everyone's Favourite Comrade, The Daily (Maybe), A View from the Public Gallery, Though Cowards Flinch, Luna 17, and Solomon's Mindfield. This should be easy for those comrades who spent their teenage years holed up in their bedrooms nursing dark thoughts ...

And those of you without blogs, what would be your misery picks from the 80s, 90s and 00s?

Who's Afraid of a Minority Government?

Some things have always filled Tory hearts with dread. One thing is smelly, unruly working class people. Another is a general election resulting in a hung parliament. Where no one party has an overall majority, the party with a plurality of seats must form a coalition with others or attempt to stick it out and hope the parties of opposition don't find common cause. As the organic party of the British ruling class the idea Tories would have to share power with social inferiors political opponents is an anathema.

Political science has a thing or two to say about minority and coalition governments. In Kaare Strom's seminal work, Minority Government and Majority Rule, he argues political science treats "normal" (i.e. majority) governments as unproblematic expressions of legislative majorities, be it a one party majority or one achieved through a coalition of two or more parties. Strom identifies a further type of coalition - an informal arrangement or 'policy coalition' in which a nominal minority government is supported in office by parties without government portfolio, but are content to support government legislation.

Just as there is an aversion on the part of the Tories (and for that matter, large swathes of Labour) to minority and coalition government, this is reflected in the body of relevant academic writing. They are often located as an outcome of political crisis and deemed not viable in the long term after things have died down. The literature also believed minority governments usually occur when the main parliamentary parties cannot cooperate sufficiently to form a majority government. Often this itself is a result of fractionalisation and conflict within and between the interests political parties represent. A party's receptivity to coalition building is conditioned by the intensity of the conflict raging around its social roots. For instance, the perpetual difficulties of trying to build coalition governments in Northern Ireland, or the recent massive constitutional crisis in Belgium are more than just personality clashes among politicians or wrangles over office holders. Whatever the case, the received wisdom of political science was that minority governments were likely an outcome of “unstable and conflictual political systems, whose party systems may be highly fractionalised. Such cabinets are sub-optimal and unstable solutions, which are resorted to only when all else fails. … minority governments are usually associated with social and political malaise”. (1990, p16).

The problem with the assumption that minority government is a recipe for ineffectual government is the tendency for the to stubbornly recur. In a 1984 study of 20 liberal democracies between 1945 and 1980, Arend Lijphart found that 67 of 218 governments (30.7%) were minorities. For Strom, rather than being aberrations minority governments are an outcome of cost/benefit behaviours of party leaders working within the constraints of given party systems. He argues that parties (or rather, their leaders) in coalition negotiations pursue certain actions and strategies aimed at securing certain objectives (e.g. portfolios). These potential outcomes are organised into a preference order, and finally a consistent choice of strategies is associated with preferred outcomes. For example, until recently the Greens in Germany viewed the Social Democrats as its preferred coalition partner to pursue its office and policy oriented goals.

In other words, Strom pursues a rational choice model to explain the formation of minority governments, cutting against the 'breakdown' assumptions of previous attempts to explain them (there are very serious issues with rational choice as a perspective, but Strom maintains that it works for modeling coalition negotiations). To demonstrate, because legislative majorities are unnecessary for government formation, party leaders might purposely not seek a majority, secure in the knowledge that an informal policy coalition will ensure the passing of legislation. Or a minority government could calculate that it's in the party’s long term interests to accept minority status for now, believing future electoral prospects will be enhanced by incumbency.

However, on some occasions 'core' parties (i.e. the major parties of a party system) form minority governments when the cost to them is greater than the apparent benefits, and sometimes even when this cost could be spread if they were in coalition with others. Why? For Strom coalitions contain their own costs, such as conflict between the constituent parts (as anyone who followed Italian politics before Berlusconi will tell you). Tensions with coalition partners could lead to future poor electoral performance; a cost perceived as greater than forming a minority government.

Core parties have assumed the mantle of minority governments in periods of extreme cost, i.e. periods where the party system is in danger of collapse and/or undergoing significant transition. Ultimately by attempting to save the system in this way, the party is taking an entirely rational view of its own long-term survival.

And so if the next election returns a hung parliament, the political system won't collapse. There will be an absence of panic on the streets of Britain. But those who are pinning their bets on meaningful electoral reform on such an outcome could be disappointed. Proportional representation is likely to be the price the LibDems demand for supporting a minority government, whether taking up posts themselves or coming to a policy-based arrangement. Because Labour and the Tories will lose out under a reformed system they may calculate soldiering on without a majority and call a further (snap) election when political fortunes pick up might suit their interests. A minority government in a few months time could preface a historical shift in how Britain does parliamentary politics, or be a short pause before resuming business as usual. Minority governments are not inherently unstable or harbingers of political doom. Their impact, as always, is conditioned by the relationship between parties and the social forces that sustain them.

Defining Stalinism

What is a Stalinist? It's a word that gets bandied about the left a lot. The Communist Party of Britain are often described as Stalinist. So is Cuba, China and North Korea. Even our very own (state-cap) Socialist Workers' Party has been described as such. Is Stalinism merely abusive shorthand for authoritarian practices in the labour movement, or is a more precise definition possible?
Shane on the ever-green Leftist Trainspotters discussion list has had a stab at a definition. He writes:

Stalinist is the proper appellation for self-described Marxists, Communists, or Socialists who practice or apologise for, in regard to the present and/or the past, extremely repressive or totalitarian oppression of the workers and peasants and intellectuals by self-described Marxists, Socialists, or Communists.

I think that's a pretty good starting point for a definition. It reminds me of a similar cursory attempt by Ralph Miliband in his entry on Stalinism in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. He writes "... the terms 'Stalinism' and 'Stalinist' have been given a loose and highly pejorative meaning, notably on the left, and ... denote dictatorial, arbitrary and repressive modes of conduct by leftwing individuals and regimes" (1991, p.517).

But there remains two stubborn problems neither definition addresses. Most Trotskyists have no problem defending many actions of the early Soviet Union but obviously would bristle at being compared with those that continued to speak for the USSR after Lenin's death.

The second is a certain fuzziness over what constitutes the defence of the USSR and similar regimes, and an apology for them. Like the parties of official communism, Trotsky lauded the achievements of the Soviet Union in the 1930s in his The Revolution Betrayed and made a case for defending it on the basis of its 'proletarian property forms' (planned economy, absence of the law of value, etc.). Does this make him an apologist for Stalin's regime? Similarly in a series of interesting posts on the former East Germany (see here and here for example) on Socialist Unity, Andy Newman has tried painting East German society and its regime in its full complexity, which includes acknowledging progressive economic and cultural features despite the repressive character of one party government. Is that apology or analysis?

Where do you draw the line? Can 'Stalinism' be spoken of scientifically or does it break down as a meaningful category when applied to anything other than Stalin's dictatorship at the height of its powers? I'm interested to see what readers think.