The Bhutto succession dips Democracy in the Gutter.

As I new it would, my piece on Benazir Bhutto has created a choppy sea with friends and comrades reminding me that Miss Bhutto was not all bad and perhaps I should forgive her corruption as they are all at it in Pakistan. One comrade sharply reminded me that I should stick to writing about Ireland and Turkey as I obviously know nothing about Pakistan. He then enforced this fact by reminding me that the political party that Benazir’s father helped create and which she led, the Pakistan Peoples Party was an affiliated to the Second Socialist International. As if that fact alone gives it a clean bill of health and makes it beyond criticism. Thus now that Miss Bhutto has been laid to rest in the ground and we have had sight of her last will and testament, I thought I might in a comradely way confront my critics.

Whilst it is perfectly true that I am no expert on Pakistan nor its politics, I do know a class enemy when I see one; and any criticism I made of Benazir Bhutto was based on that fact alone. Nothing my critics and others have written about her of late has made me change my mind or reassess my opinion. I have never doubted she was a class enemy ever since I first read the statement she made to Tariq Ali, in which she said that she could not afford to be on 'the wrong side of history'. With this comment alone Benazir not only repulsed me, but she had also forewarned me that she was both ignorant and arrogant; which is a dangerous combination within a politician as it is likely to be a recipe for disaster and so it proved.

If anything events that have taken place since she was murdered have reinforced my belief that politically she was rotten to the core. For what loving mother would have willed the leadership of a major political party to her 19 year old son, and if she was not corrupt why insist that her husband Mr Ten Percent Zardari becomes prince consort to that poor boy whilst also acting as keeper of the party books. For Miss Bhutto could not have been blind to the fact that Mr Zardari was hated and despised both within the PPP and in the nation as a whole. If any one wishes to understand more fully the depth of Miss Bhuttos corruption and links with the US administration, Tariq Ali’s article in the November issue of the London Review of Books might be a good place to start.*

Finally one of the most depressing things about this whole Benazir Bhutto story, apart from the people who have had their lives stolen needlessly in its wake. Is the way the British media have handled this story, for me this was best summed up in the London Guardians headline of today, [31.12.07] ‘My mother said democracy is best revenge--Bhutto son.’ A kid and a crook get anointed, not elected to lead one of Pakistan’s main political party’s and the Guardian with that headline alone dips the word democracy in the gutter.**



*Daughter of the West--Tariq Ali, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/ali_01_.html

** http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/todays_stories/0,,,00.html

London Assembly May 1st elections: An opportunity to run a Broad left List?

In his Morning Star column of Saturday the 22nd December, George Galloway wrote of the possibility of the Broad Left standing a progressive list of candidates to contest the London Assembly Elections, which are due to take place on the 1st of May 2008 . Such a Left list in London is long over due and if it can draw in support from across the London Left then it should be welcomed and supported. For far to long Capital has held sway in London, despite the fact that in many ways it is one of the most radical cities on Earth. Sadly to date this radicalism is not represented within the London Assembly, bar the odd Green and the Mayor when he is having a good day.

If one is to be critical of London’s current Mayor Ken Livingstone, it is because beyond his own election he has never made any real attempt to build a progressive coalition, let alone a new Left Party. Indeed his decision to return to the Labour Party must rank as one of the most opportunistic decision any Left-wing politician has made in decades. Still we are were we are; and there is little doubt for all Ken’s faults he is head and shoulders above the Conservative candidate Boris Johnson, who represents the ruling class elements who under David Cameron are making a real attempt to grab back the levers of power from the middle classes as represented by the New Labour elite.

In today’s New Labour Party, Ken Livingstone being on the political left is something of an aberration to say the least, although central government and its new Labour cohorts in the London Assembly quietly monitor and restrict his every move. However, as those of us who are on the left have no viable alternative to offer up as a candidate for Mayor of London, I see no reason why the London Left should not give its support to both Ken Livingstone and a Broad Left list. The more so if some sort of deal, official or otherwise can be reached with the Livingstone camp. If this were to happen there is every likelihood that for the first time the Left may have Comrades sitting in the London Assembly; and during the process of the May 1st electoral campaign trust could be slowly re-built amongst the various Left organizations and individuals who were part of any broad Left List.

If this were to occur it might just be possible to put the implosion of the Respect Party on to the back burner and the Left may be able to move forward collectively. Not easy I know, but the current situation demands it and there are undoubtedly left forces who would be willing to work for a broad left list and beyond, especially now the control freaks have temporally decided to withdraw from the field of play.

Benazir Bhutto: Not the death of a Tyrant, but nothing much to cry about.

I did not intend posting on Miss Bhutto's demise and some may feel my comments are a bit harsh considering the woman has only just been laid to rest, but I have not read the type of sycophantic drivel that has been published in the media about Miss Bhutto death since Diana Windsor fell off the twig, so I thought I would make an attempt to balance things out with this piece.

For me Benazir Bhutto represented every thing that is wrong and rotten with Pakistani politics; and not only Pakistani I might add. Opportunist to the core she drifted towards power elite’s, whatever their political values and justified her craven behavior by claiming she could not be on the wrong side of history.

When socialism was on the rise in the West she toyed with it, but once the USSR imploded she worked hard to become the USA’s favorite daughter in the East, unfortunately for her the US administration already had a favorite son in Pakistan. Although when President Bush due to domestic disquiet needed Pervez Musharraf shady election victory painted with a shiney coat of democratic paint, Benazir became useful once again to the US administration and willingly accepted the job of being the Bush administrations paint brush, for which she has now paid with her life.

Dynastic to such a degree that personal ability was not a factor in her rise, an accumulator of great personal wealth gained in the long run at the expense of the peasants and the urban economically poor, who were the very people her party the Pakistan Peoples Party claimed to represent and wished to empower. In her personal behavior and life style she was a third world bourgeois to the core, greedy, arrogant, haute, and contemptuous towards those who did not belong to her class.
Her husband Asif Zardari was known throughout Pakistan as Mr 10% and not without good cause, however she was always the chair/CEO of the family business whilst he was merely chief accountant.

To those on the left who have shown sympathy towards Miss Bhutto I would remind them that she and her ilk since the State of Pakistan was first formed have worked hard keeping power in the hands of small cliques, whether military or civilian. In the process they have built a nightmare State in which human life is cheap and what revenue the state possesses is used for private gain and what is left is syphoned off to the military or on vainglorious project like the Islamic Nuclear Bomb. The economically poor in Pakistan live a short life in poverty and ignorance, education is little more than a dream for their children who are set to work at a very young age. Perhaps the writers of those rosy obituaries of Miss Bhutto should consider that such poverty does not come about due to an accident, but because people like Miss Bhutto will it. One should also consider it is almost impossible to attain and retain great wealth in Pakistan without acting corruptly.

So I say to hell with the theoretical maybes and the this and that’s, for in their hearts all of these leftist know full well that Miss Bhutto had no intention when she returned to Pakistan of fighting against the vested interests who create such appalling poverty. To praise a women, as one known leftist has done, who ended her life as the willing tool of the most reactionary US President in decades was a disgraceful act. Have the left slipped to such a low level of consciousness that we no longer rejoice in an exploiters demise, whilst I did not wish her dead, I see no reason to be a hypocrite now she is. She was not courageous, simple vain and over confident, one only had to see this silly woman waving from the sun roof of her car to understand that she believed the great satan would protect her. She never gave a thought to those of her supporters who would be killed if she were attacked, she simply epitomized the me, me, me, age we live in.

The Banality of Evil

Below is a link to a photo album once owned by the Deputy Commandant of Auschwitz death camp. In it are photos of the camps officer corp at their leisure, we see them on away days, when they visit the countryside that surrounded the hell hole they helped administer. When they are enjoying a drink or in the festive season.

When you look at these photos Hannah Arendt book 'Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil' comes to mind. Arendt's thesis was that people who carry out unspeakable crimes against humanity may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats.

The men and women in these photographs, bar the uniforms, could be any governments or local authority bureaucrats on a works outing. Which for me makes them all the more terrifying, as when these people returned to work next day after having had an enjoyable day out, they continued with their ghastly work slaughtering countless men women and children.*

The link to the Photo album.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/arts/20070919_ALBUM_FEATURE/index.html

* I would like to thank Tony Greenstein for giving me the heads up on these Photos and congratulate both the New York Times and the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum for publishing them.


Forget Global Warming: Inequality is the number one priority facing the human race.

The British Labour Party, the SPD in Germany, the Communist Party of India who govern West Bengal,[M[ and the ANC in South Africa have all bought into the false neo-liberal consensus that the most important political issue of the day is how one creates a dynamic economy which produces both economic growth and wealth. By doing so, all of these once progressive political organizations, along with countless smaller ones such as SF in Ireland, have become nothing more that the purveyor’s of gross inequality. For by choosing to trust big business implicitly and act as if it is a sublime influence within society, in reality amounts to inviting the fox into the hen-coop and by so doing we have ended up with a society which is the opposite of what the majority of the memberships of these organizations originally intended.

It is no accident that reformist politicians like Gordon Brown, Gerhard Schröder, Budhadeb Bhattacharya and Thabo Mbeki have been to the fore in advocating neo liberal economics, for they are people who in middle age have found it impossible to push against a closed door. Thus they were easily enticed by the power elite’s of big business that circulate like vultures around leading politicians, whilst making promises that would make a snake oil salesman blush with embarrassment.

The main task of Capital in the 21st Century is no different from that which it has always been, to enrich a small group of individuals at the expense of the mass of humanity. As with their counterparts in the past , todays political gofers of Capital have attempted to justify their reactionary policies with talk of the trickle down effect. Given that Capitalists and their political ilk have been using this preposterously pathetic excuse since the industrial revolution first began in the 19th century; and with the gap between the rich and the economically poor widening at an alarming rate in almost every nation on earth, the aforementioned theory has been proved to be wearing a little thin, not least as it is based on bunkum and absolute bullshit.

Thus for progressive politicians it is all very well talking about creating wealth, but in todays world that is far from the main issue, for the single most important factor today is how the wealth humanity produces collectively is distributed equitably. As it is, the vast majority of the wealth created sticks to the greedy fingers of those who provide the finance capital, those who actually produce the goods or provide the services receive very little of the profit from their labour; and what good is that for the majority of humanity. Indeed those who produce the goods and provide the services receive a smaller percentage of the profits that their toil provides today than at any time in the last 50 years, which in itself demonstrates the high level of greed and avarice Capital has descended to.

A mad rush for growth and wealth is pointless unless the mass of humanity benefits from it. Forget Global Warming as the number one priority facing the human race, it is a red herring which is designed to take humanities eye off of problems that could be solved in the here and now. Bar the odd G8 announcement on Global Warming, which are never followed through on, Capital has no intention of getting to grips with over production etc as under the current economic set up it provides Capital with such a delightful honey trough to get their greedy snouts in. Whilst Global Warming is an issue which humanity will have to deal or come to terms with, how we distribute the wealth we earn as a society is by far the most important and pressing question facing human kind in the 21st Century, For it is happening in the here and now and if we do not get this right we are on the road to barbarism.

Gross inequality is something we over look at our peril, for the ruling elite from China to the USA, the EU to the middle east, Russia to the continent of Africa are well aware of this fact and by passing prohibitive and draconian legislation it looks like they intend to deal with this problem not by redistributing wealth and creating a better life for all, but by oppressive administrative means which will reinforce the status quo.

One of the main hurdles to be overcome is that due to the detrimental legacies of Thatcherism and Reganomics, people are finding it difficult to face up to the question of a major redistribution of wealth. As they cannot get beyond the issue that private property is sacrosanct, even to the extent they now believe ‘God’s’ bounty water belongs to multi national corporations. Capital and its media gofers reinforce this viewpoint by making a big thing about Capital risking all when they are engaged in a business venture, as if they are like a guy climbing Mount Everest.

Those days are long gone if the ever actually existed, as today business people take risks with their own money in much the same way a man who has just robbed a bank does when he places all his ill gotten gains on the spin of a roulette wheel. Today even when a CEO losses the company they oversee and its share holders money, they walk away with a massive redundancy package. We have had plenty of examples of late when the CEO or members of the board's of large multi nationals have awarded themselves massive wage hikes, bonuses or similar extravagances whilst the companies books show a massive deficit, but I cannot remember the last time I read that a CEO had risked their own money on a business venture. It is worth noting when the Northern Rock bank Chairman Matt Ridley gambled his customers savings in the Prime Mortgage Market, not a penny came out of his own pocket book.

Whilst I am not for a minute advocating a Stalinist state run economy, what I am saying is the increasing gap between the rich and economically poor poses a greater threat to human kind than global warming ever will, not least because it enforces billions of people to live short, ignorant and miserable lives. Not in 50 years time as is claimed to be the case with the approach of global warming, but in the hear and now!

If we refuse to get to grips with such blatant and unfair inequality, future generations can expect to live in a nightmare world in which the super rich live there lives terrified of the majority on whose backs they leach, whilst living a life of luxury and to protect their decadent pleasures they will demand of the governments they finance that they implement oppressive legislation against the ‘have nots’. A world in which an arrogant and ignorant middle class act as the political and economic gofers for this extremely wealthy elite, but who will possess none of the virtues of the post WW2 middle classes which made them such a powerful force for social change for the good.

Whilst the masses will either accept a slave like existence or be forced into permanent rebellion. Is that really the type of world we wish to will to future generations. If not we must get to grips immediately with the problem of inequality and find a reasonable and viable way to redistribute fairly the wealth that the mass of humanity creates collectively.

Organized Rage is taking a short break for the Christmas holiday.

Organized Rage is taking a short break for the Christmas holiday. I would just like to thank all those who have visited the site since its inception and especially those who have left comments, even those who remind me about my dreadful spelling ;)
I wish you all a happy Christmas and a contented New Year.

Take care

Mick

Obituary of Dave Hallsworth, Trade Unionist and revolutionary socialist activist.

Dave Hallsworth, who has died aged 78 of bone cancer, was a working-class activist who joined the Communist Party while on active service in Korea, but resigned in 1956 after the suppression of the Hungarian uprising. He finally found a political home within the small Revolutionary Communist party.

Born in Manchester, he left school at 14 and joined the Royal Navy as a boy sailor. He was discharged after being jailed for a month for trying to organise sailors on a warship. Years of trade union work followed and in 1981 Dave led a long and bitter strike against redundancy at the engineering company of Laurence, Scott and Electromotors, in Openshaw, Manchester, where he worked. The strike featured in Ken Loach's banned Channel 4 documentary, Questions of Leadership (1983).

Dave was secretary of the Tameside TUC Trades Council at a time when the Trades Council Movement was near its peak, TTC supported many of the most pressing issues of the day and unlike many labour movement organizations, it supported those who were at the time fighting for the reunification of Ireland, calling a conference to discuss the Northern Ireland troubles. As a result, the TUC sent its future general secretary John Monks to disband the council. Tameside was not the only Trades Council to receive a visit from the then TUC's Witch Finder General Monks, as my own Trades Council also received a visit, although unlike Tameside we did not end up being disbanded. In 1983, Hallsworth stood as an Independent candidate for Ashton-under-Lyne in the general election, he received appro 400 votes.

Dave Hallsworth was active politically right up to his death, and contributed often to the online journal Spiked, which the remnants of the Revolutionary Communist Party set up after the demise of their party. This element seem to have moved more to the right with every donation they receive from corporate elements, indeed one of their number Mick Hume now has a column in the London Times, which in itself is no problem, but the fact that at times he writes right wing drivel is a sad indictment of many of those who move through the sects.

However not being an anorak of the UK left perhaps I am being unfair, as Dave Hallsworth in the days when I new him was solid. On the morning after PIRA volunteer Bobby Sands died, I was working for the south east region of the TUC out of the TUC headquarters Congress House; and it lifted my spirits no end when comrades from Dave's RCP came rushing through the door demanding the TUC act in support of Bobby's young comrades who were continuing their hunger strikes for political status. In doing this they were showing solidarity when it was desperately needed and I will always be grateful to the RCP for that.

He is survived by Elsie, his fellow activist and wife of more than 50 years, and their sons, Andrew and Duncan.

A longer assessment Of Dave Hallsworth can be found here.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3797/

The Tony Blair's factotums line up to receive their Brown Envelopes.

It seems the Blairite cabal that worked out of 10 Downing Street and the surrounding UK Government Ministries are being well rewarded for there hard work. If anyone seriously doubted where their political loyalties lay, it is worth noting where the inner circle have washed up after being made redundant when Tony Blair left the Prime Ministers Office.

Sally Morgan.
Who was known in the media as Tony Blair’s gatekeeper was rewarded by her master with membership of the House of Lords, she supplements her income from the later by running a charity which is funded mostly by hedge fund millionaires. Who seem to be expressing their gratitude to Ms Morgan and her ilk for allowing them act like 21 St Century robber barons and avoiding having to pay their fair share of tax like us ordinary mortals. She along with a number of Blairite creeps is also a director of some of the more disreputable business such as Car Phone Warehouse and those who entered the Care Home business on the backs of the Blair/Brown privatizations.

Philip Gould.
Blair’s bagman, admits to living a portfolio existence, when he was networking on his masters behave he like the good flim flam man he is allegedly worked on the premise of two for the boss one for me. Through his wife who runs the UK end of publishers Random House, Gould has been able to provide Blair and one or two other Blairites with very lucrative publishing deals. This man will survive in almost any gutter, although without his masters protection he may well once again come into the sights of Yates of the Yard, we can but hope.

John Reid.
The turn coat in chief, he went from being a left wing communist to an advocate of any thing Blair and the money markets desired. Had Stalinism still been the flavor of the day, John Reid is the type of man who would have served Lavrenti Beria loyally. Predictable he has found himself a nice little birth as Chairman of Celtic Football Club. One can only hope the supporters of Celtic turn their fire away from the old firm and on to this nasty little turncoat bully, for they should take into account this is a man who has turned on his own once, thus if a better offer is made he will more than likely become chairman of Rangers. How any self respecting Celtic fan can sing Irish republican songs whilst this lackey of British imperialism is perched cosily in the Directors Box is beyond me.

Jonathan Powell.
A man who moved effortlessly through the front door of 10 Downing St whilst his odious Brother Charles ‘Pole’ went out the back door, having served the Tories whilst they were the gofers of Capital. Like his brother before him he has been handsomely rewarded by those he served best, in young Jonos case by becoming the Managing Director of the investment section of the bankers Morgan Stanley. Although his new bosses cannot be to pleased as the bank has just shown a deficit of four billion pounds plus, still no problem to make up for this loss they have simply sold 5% of the bank to the Chinese dictatorship for £5 billion..

Alan Milburn
One of the most obnoxious toadies of the Blairite area, who changed his accent from ship yard Geordie to Lord Snooty a tad more each time Blair promoted him. A former Health Minister who once claimed it is PFI or bust. He has made sure those who benefited most from the privatization of our public services pay him in kind with consultancies, these include private equity firms and companies looking to profit from new private contracts in the NHS. He also sits on the boards or committees of UK Pepsi Cola, Bridgepoint Capital and that old standby from which so many former Blairites supplement their incomes, Lloyds Pharmacy’s. A company that is at the fore of NHS privatization, running ‘services’ within NHS hospitals like pharmacies and GPs practices. Milburn who was once I’m told a Trotskyist, no more it seems as his cup runneth over with the gratitude of multi national corporations.

Matthew Taylor
The thinking man’s midget told the Guardian “he had never worked before and I never expect to work again in such a committed and effective team” and for this great work he has been rewarded with the Chief Executive-ship of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce. I know readers it is hard not to scoff, here is a man who worked alongside “a committed and effective team” which helped destroy Britain manufacturing base, being rewarded by becoming head of an outfit that promotes manufacturing, is not the British class system wonderful. It even provides for its rejects in old age.

The younger Blairites have also been provided for, although some have been forced to go farther a field, lets hope the Russian mafia doe not take offense by Wegg-Prossers attempting to move in on there ground, Tom Kelly can be seen handing out champers and brown envelopes on behalf of BAA, who seem extremely pleased with their new terminal at Heathrow, no connection of course with Kelly’s new job as their Group Director of Corporate Affairs..

All of the aforementioned made me think back to the 1960s when a wise old bird told me, “you can forget brown envelopes being given to British Prime Ministers and government ministers whilst they are still in office, they reap their rewards when they leave government with publishing contracts and non existent jobs, if they play the game that is.” If one looks at the type of work the aforementioned individuals did before they entered government and the positions they now occupy in the private sector it is difficult to argue against the old boys point.

Still, we all have to make a living I suppose but what strikes me about all of these people, despite at some time every single one of them having claimed they have devoted their life's to socialism, the disadvantaged and the LP, not one of them despite having decent pensions intends to stay and fight their corner as rank and file labour party members, they all prefer the company of businessmen and women..*

* Some of the information in this article came from the Guardians G2 magazine 19.12.07.

Has Gordon Brown and New Labour marginalized the LP left to such a degree that it has become a brake on progressive politics.

These days it seems to me to be the Labour Party left which is acting as the brakeman which prevents the English left moving forward; and not as was often the case in the past the far or Trotskyist left. What ever one may feel about the antics of the SWP and some of the rest of what in the UK is called idiotically the far left. They at least do not go to the working classes and reinforce any illusions working class people might still have in the Labour Government. But this is just what the Labour Party left continue to do when they call for a vote for the labour party come election time, despite knowing full well that since 1997 both the Blair and Brown government have been the bulwark of big business and privatization within local government the NHS and the economy as a whole.

After the invasion and continuos occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the recent research issued by the Sutton Trust and the OECD report in which it was claimed Britain had the lowest socially mobility out of the 12 major industrial nations. It must be increasingly difficult for the comrades who remain within the Labour Party to justify their reasons for doing so. That the Labour left is beginning to run out of steam is highlighted by the fact that almost the only argument they now put forward to encourage workers to vote New Labour, is they will be better off under Labour than a Tory government; and just how pathetic is that, the worst of two evils. Of course it is worse than that because the LP left are actually members of one of those evils.

I am not accusing those leftists who remain in the LP of selling out or consciously betraying the class, as I am well aware these comrades are as dedicated as those of us who work outside the party, simply asking if it is not time they re-considered their position.

If LP leftists still had any illusion that the party could be a vehicle for progressive change, they surly should have had them blighted when Gordon Brown’s first act as Prime Minister was to invite Mrs Thatcher, the architect of much working class misery at home and in Ireland, to be his guest at 10 Downing Street. What Brown was doing here was publicly stating to the multi national hordes that they have nothing to fear from him becoming PM, it would be more of the same.

During Gordon Browns years at the Treasury we have seen a massive expansion of the privatization of public services. Which in many cases will eventually take the provision of societal welfare and health care back to the Victorian days when working class people had to rely on charities to provide their basic needs when sick, homeless and old. I am not over exaggerating this fact for those public services in which there is very little profit to me made, are being turned over to charities like Help the Aged etc.

It is not over egging the pudding to claim that the Blair/Brown Labour Government’s have displayed a hatred for the public sector ethos, private profit is all. It has intentionally done all in its power to undermine the moral of those who work in our public services whilst attempting to buy off the middle class professionals working within it with unsustainable salary hikes, [police] which when they are not repeated will allow the private sector to entice them away from the public sector.

We have already seen this happening within local government and I might add some of the Labour local Council have been amongst the most enthusiastic privatizers and why would they not be as it is Labour Party government Minister’s who are behind this drive. Whether it is the NHS or local authorities there is only one 'road map' coming out of central government and it is the patronage of money making above all professional skills. Whether it be a social worker, teacher, nurse, doctor, health care professional, every single task they carry out must be priced and the only reason for this is to make the change over from public to private as smooth and as profitable as possible.

Yet the LP left despite being fully aware of all of the above still cling to the corpse of the LP, the only other argument they put forward beyond ‘less of two evils’ that has a smidgin of truth is that the Trade Unions created the party and whilst the unions remain they will remain. But this is burying ones head in the sand, for few of the more progressive unions remain affiliated to the LP and of those that do there is a massive gap between the TU leaderships and the members they represent, if anyone doubts this I suggest they check out the salaries of the Top TU leaders.

In any case times have changed dramatically since the LP was first formed and the party with them, and it is impossible to over look the fact that some Trade Union bureaucrats have sat on the hands and refused to challenge New Labour’s Neo-conservative economic and political platform, thus they must carry a great deal of responsibility for the demise of the LP as a vehicle of progressive change; and by refusing even to consider whether there is a need for a new Left Party the LP left are allowing these bureaucrats to set their agenda..

If the progressive group around John McDonnell MP were to stealthily set up a committee to look at the viability of a break to the left of labour, then at least it would be a start, but to carry on as if the LP can be reclaimed and once again become a vehicle for progressive politics is nonsensical and is to play Capitals game. The consequences of this strategy will undoubtedly eventually lead to the demise of the parliamentary left as a political player. With the UK following the lead set by the Democrats and Republicans in the USA, in that no matter which party gains power its main priority will be representing the best interest of Capital.

Tommy Sheridan, Perjury and the odious Murdoch conglomerate.

As the Scottish socialist Tommy Sheridan has been charged with perjury I am unable to write about the case in question, but since Sheridan has been such a prominent figure in the socialist movement within Scotland and the United Kingdom, I thought I would add my thoughts on this matter. Myself I have always thought Sheridan was a bit of a loose cannon, but he is a saint when compared with his nemesis Rupert Murdoch, who traded his wife of 25 years for a younger model who would be more advantages for his business interests in the far east.

As to the charge of Perjury itself, it is an infantile charge, as every single day in the British courts, defendants, witnesses, lawyers and judges lie through their teeth. Indeed the very fact that before giving evidence believers are asked to read out loud that they will tell the truth by their Almighty God, all but accepts this fact, for it attests to the courts belief that even if those giving evidence lie to the court they will have to answer to a higher power. As to does the adversarial system within the British judicial system, for if everyone told the truth there were be no need of defense nor prosecution lawyers, nor would there be the need for a judge to be highly schooled in the ways of this judicial system, for all those who administer judgement would requirer would be intelligence and a good heart.

In any case if the legal system took seriously the fact that defendants and prosecution witnesses told lies, almost every single case would have to be tried twice, the first time to reach a verdict and the second to prosecute all those who told lies which enabled the jury reach that verdict. In other words deadlock and mayhem would prevail.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mr Sheridan would not be coming before Betsy Windsor's court again if he had not down the years been the tribune of the economically poor within Scotland. If anyone is still gullible enough to believe the British courts act in an independent manner then this case should wake them from their slumbers. For on one side you have Tommy Sheridan and his loyal band of supporters, which include a fair number of ordinary working class people.

On the other you have the odious Murdoch media empire which in itself would make any decent fellow puke. In my mind for the Murdoch conglomerate and its gofers in the British State to accuse others of telling lies is absolutely surreal and in any honest judicial system it would be laughed out of court.

For Murdoch is a tax dodging crook without a moral bone in his body, he changed his nationality to advance his business interest and then condemns the European Union for diluting that very principle. His newspapers daily spew out poison and lies and give their political support to which ever politicians agrees to dance to the greedy and odious Rupert's tune. These days he is tangoing with the exploitative Stalinist regime in China, he agrees to anything these corrupt bureaucrats ask no matter if it pushes billions of Chinese people further into the grasp of a vicious dictatorship, if the government in Peking ask Murdoch to jump he replies how high, as long as it increases his bottom line.

To those who say that Mr Sheridan has a case to answer I would say this, why now? The Murdoch empire has appealed against Mr Sheridan winning the original case and this appeal was due to be heard in the Scottish courts directly. For the last year the Murdoch papers have been following Sheridan and carrying regular stories that blacken his name. They have also claimed the appeal for them was a done deal which they would win with ease.

So why has the State decided to act now and in the process used hundreds of police man hours and spent over a million pounds investigating and prosecuting Mr Sheridan. Could it be that the Murdoch claims have been hot air, for if what they have been claiming was true Tommy Sheridan was due to get his just deserts in the appeal court any time soon.

What these charges show is that there is one law for some and another for others. Yates of the yard was not allowed to place a finger on to Tony Blair and his pals despite claiming he had put together a prosecutable case, the same happened with the BAE arms scandal when that company bribed members of the Saudi royal family. But a left wing working class lad who got above his station is fair game, after all by prosecuting Mr Sheridan it takes the heat off the real political crooks who help run this society.

Strike-Bike workers defeated: Another nail in the EU working classes standard of living..

I have just had a piece of unwelcome news from Germany, regular readers may remember the piece I wrote about the occupation of their factory by the former employees of the Bike Systems company in Nordhausen in the German state of Thuringia, after the company was asset stripped, closed down and declared insolvent. The workers were looking for investors who were willing to put several million euros into the business and if successful in finding this financial support they had hoped to run the business as a co-operative.*

Sadly it is not to be as these gallant workers and their supporters were unable to find an investor, despite producing a number of special editions of their excellent product to prove the factory could be viable. The machinery is to be sold off to a company registered in Hungary where Labour cost it seems are far cheaper than in Germany as to are welfare benefits etc. There is a chance that a small number of the workers may set up a small manufacturing bike-production business, but that is in the future and will bring little joy to the majority of workers who now find themselves unemployed...

Still I for one wish to thank these workers for the fight they displayed as at least by their determined struggle they exposed neo-liberal economics and globalization as nothing more than a vehicle for the multi nationals to enrich themselves at the expense of working people.

* http://organizedrage.blogspot.com/2007/10/first-strike-bikes-wheeled-out-of.html

Education, education, education; my arse!

As someone who officially left school at 15, but unofficially left much earlier due to my refusal to bow to the brutality and class prejudices of many of the ‘masters’ who masqueraded as teachers at the sink school I was unfortunate enough to attend, a report issued by a UK educational charity the Sutton Trust breaks my heart and enrages me. It must also make grim reading for all those who followed the advice of Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee at the last General Election and placed a clothes peg on their noses and went out and voted for Tony Blair and New Labour. For according to the new research that the Sutton Trust has just published, middle class advantage in the United Kingdom is just as prevalent today as it was 35 years ago, if not more so. A three-year-old child from an economically poor working class home, who excels in educational tests is likely to be overtaken by a low-performing middle class child by the age of seven.

For working class children born into the bottom of the UKs class pyramid the inequalities are stark and make a nonsense of New Labours claims that Britain has become a meritocracy in which the bright and able will always rise to the top. It also highlights the infantile notion that there is no need to tax fairly the very wealthy as society as a whole benefits from their great wealth via the trickle down effect.

The research concludes that 44 per cent of young people from the richest fifth of the population go on to university, compared with only 10 per cent of those from the fifth of the population living in the economically poorest households. The Sutton Trust also reports that the expansion of higher education has almost exclusively been achieved by increasing the number of students from middle and upper class families going to university to the exclusion of working class teenagers.

Indeed the report makes shameful reading as it becomes clear that the New Labour governments, education, education, education policies under Blair and now Brown have benefited the middle and upper class children to the detriment of their working class counterparts. Whilst masquerading as being an egalitarian government set on creating a meritocratic Britain NL have in fact put the brake on any actual expansion of educational opportunities for many working class children.

What they have created is a meritocracy for middle class people, in which the role of the working classes and their children is to service this middle class meritocracy by doing the menial but vitally necessary tasks any society needs to run effectively. Whereas in the dark days of industrial capitalism, working class children were educated only to a level which enabled them to become factory fodder or muscle in the mines, construction industry and on the land. In New Labour’s brave new world, working class kids will be educated to a standard which will enable them when they become adults to man the service industries that meet the needs of the middle and ruling classes. Some progress.

If any one doubts this the Sutton Reports conclusions spell this out starkly, the proportion of children from the economically poorest working class homes who attended university dropped from 11 per cent to 10 per cent between the early 1990s and 2002, while those from the middle and upper middles classes rose by four percentage points.

What is so unforgivable about the fact that social mobility is no greater today than it was thirty five years ago, when even back then the UK was bottom of an international league table, Is that the whole ethos and justification for the Labour Party’s decision to hitch its wagon to neo-liberal economics was entirely based on the false hypothesis that it would produce results that benefited all sections of society. Instead it has not only failed to give all working class children a fair crack at life’s chances, but in the process it has allowed people already at the top of the economic pile to become as rich as Croesus; and it is difficult not to conclude that there is a direct linkage between the two.

It is also a crime that New Labour has ensured that the economic benefits from the boom period have not flowed downwards to improve the lot of our most disadvantaged citizens and given them means to ensure their children did not remain at the bottom of the economic heap. No matter how well intention Polly and her peg may have been, like many do-gooders they have managed to make a bad situation worse.

By their negligence and reactionary policies the Brown/Blair governments have ensured that if and when this country is hit by a major economic crises, it will be the economically poor who will be hit hardest as this labour government have left them with out the economic padding that is necessary to survive troubled times.

The common belief there is less respect today for authority is balderdash and bunkum

I was reading through a thread yesterday on the excellent Slugger O’Toole web site, which developed along the lines of that old chestnut, “There has been a decline in respect for authority in recent years.” Whilst in years gone by such talk was the terrane of the elderly, these days it is something one hears often and from the young and old, not least because the media spouts it on a regular bases and it got me to thinking about whether there is any actual truth in such claims.

Undoubtedly if one asks the man or woman on the Claphan Omnibus whether there has been a decline in respect for authority; they are liable to reply yes and they might even go further and claim that the lack of respect for authority is an affliction of the modern age. Of course in reality the reverse is true as we in the west today accept the diktat of those in authority without question far more than in our parents and grand parents day. So why do people seem to believe the contrary that there is a general revolt against authority.

There are a number of reasons for this and they all centre on the desperate need of those in positions of power to turn reality on its head, for they live in a world in which reform means turning back the clock, those denied the benefits of our society are deemed scroungers, a military aggressor becomes a victim; and those who invade and occupy another’s land become peace makers whilst stealing even more land from their victims in the process.

The unsustainable pace of life inflicted upon individuals by Capital and its political gofers due to its mad rush to produce and consume ever more; and the pressures this puts upon the psyche of the average human being, cannot but make us far less tolerant of our fellow man. Which sadly we often display by being rude and inconsiderate to each other as we go about our daily life's.

Thus what some people mean when they say there is less respect for authority, is in reality that people are showing them personally less respect; and when this is coupled by a continues bleating from the media and politicians that there has been a decline in respect for authority and the solution to this is to build more prisons, recruit more policemen etc, then people start believing this nonsense.

If there was any truth in it the first question we need to ask is how does this disrespect for authority express itself, do we refuse to tax our cars on pay for TV licenses, no it seems less people are being prosecuted for such misdemeanors. Are we going on strike more often or protesting about government decisions. No these days we accept almost anything our employers and the government gets up to no matter if it is against our best interest. Leaving the invasion of Iraq to one side, we were more interested in canoe man than complaining about the fact that the government lost the personal records and bank account details of every family in the nation, or loaned the greedy capitalists who ran the Northern Bank incompetently £30 billion of our hard earned tax to dig themselves out of a hole, whilst our own council tax rises by leaps and bounds.

Are we up in arms against the disrespect and contempt this countries millionaires display towards us almost every day, no, not even when we pay our taxes and they do not. Nor when the rich award themselves and their fellow millionaires massive salary hikes or redundancy pay offs whilst the average working man must make do with a below inflation wage rise. Are we angry, enraged and disrespectful to those in authority who instigate and administer such blatant incompetence and unfairness, I wish!

One of the main reasons why people feel there is a decline in respect for authority is there is so little real disrespect shown towards authority these days. Thus when it occurs it becomes an event which the media plays up to the hilt; and they always come down on the side of authority. Today if a group of workers go on strike after their employers have treated them dismally, it becomes a front page news story, whereas in the past it would have maybe made it on to page 10 as back then people were continuously standing up for there economic and political rights.

No where is this better demonstrated than when the London Tube line workers went on strike over issues of public safety. They were portrayed in the media as dinosaurs who have no respect for authority, with their leader Bob Crowe being portrayed as the devil incarnate. Never mind that these striking workers were defending the publics best interest against the callousness of their employers, who had refused to make the traveling publics safety their main priority.

And there is the rub, for respect for authority in todays world means accepting what the rich and powerful deem to be our lot. Employers decide what a worker earns, public and employee safety is for them alone. anyone who has the gumption to stand up to this 19th Century boss class mentality is deemed a trouble maker and tagged as being someone who has no respect for authority.
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That people are under such pressures today, working longer hours in more unregulated work places than at any period since WW2. That the gap between the rich and economically poor has widened to an obscene level. That the London police shoot a man dead when he was on the way to work and then blatantly lie about it. That one in every three children live below the official poverty line. That the UK is involved in an occupation of Iraq which came about via an illegal war and the lies of the Prime Minister.

All of the aforementioned and countless other issues tells me one thing, we need to show much less respect for authority and in the process display a bit organized rage. For by bending the knee to authority as we have done increasingly over the last decade, it has done us as individuals and our society as a whole no good at all. To hell with all this winging about a lack of respect for authority, for authority is not an abstract thing, it has human form and must earn over and again any respect we are prepared to give it; and until it does we should treat those in authority with the contempt they deserve unless they prove otherwise.

Led Zeppelin, typify New Labour's cultural legacy.

After all the carefully choreographed hype around Led Zeppelin’s recent gig at London's 02 Arena, I got to thinking about the low level of popular culture under the Blair regime. Whilst far from scientific, a useful benchmarks I have found over the years when judging whether a government is progressive or radical, is to take a look at the cultural output during its period in office. For example the first years of revolutionary Russia saw some of the finest poetry, poster design, music and writing of the 20th Century. However once the Bolsheviks locked down Soviet Russia and Stalinist rule took hold, the arts despite being heavily subsidized, as far as innovative work was concerned withered and died.

Two of the Soviet Union’s and the worlds finest writers Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak were two amongst many who had their work banned in their homeland, which would be an anathema for any artist. The great composer Dmitri Shostakovich was forced by bureaucratic and political philistines to beat the Stalinist drum and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky preferred to put a bullet in his brain rather than betray his art and people, which are often one and the same.

The Hitlerite period in Germany is a similar sordid tale as there was a stagnation of that nations once not inconsiderable artistic output. Many of its best writers, artists, architects, film makers etc preferred exile, whilst others were blacklisted or worse. Modern art had no place in either the Third Reich or Stalinist Soviet Union, the purpose of an artist within these societies was to glorify the great leader, the State and the people; although not as living beings but in a mythic infantile way in which human foibles did not get in the way of political reality.

In the UK the three post WW2 Labour Government's for all their limitations and which were led by Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan not only created the political space from which progressive political ideas could blossom and grow, but something similar occurred in the cultural realm. True the Attlee administration coming as it did at the end of world war two mainly concentrated on economic and organizational matters, but even so amongst many artistic endeavors that took place between 1945-51, British cinema produced some of the 20th Centuries classic films and George Orwell managed to produce 1984, which would be in the top ten of most influential books of that century. It was however during the Wilson administration when the UK experienced an explosion of creative endeavors; and even James Callaghan’s government was far from a barren period as far as the arts were concerned.

From 1964-70 free thinking magazines like Oz, International Times, Private Eye and Red Dwarf flourished and whilst Gay News and Spare Rib did not hit the streets until the early 1970s, the idea to create it came to fruition in the late 1960s. There were also countless other leftist newspapers and publications, many of which came out of the progressive publishing houses which were founded during these years such as Pluto Press. Of course if one looks back at the aforementioned publications, especially the papers, they look quite staid, somewhat conservative and a little under-whelming. However if you think back to those days their real value was that they broke out of the intellectual middle class ghetto and were read by all social classes. I remember first reading IT whilst a young worker employed in a Paper Mill, where my younger work-mates were as keen as I to read the latest issue of the paper . That there was this explosion of cultural output alongside left wing political activity, was no accident but a living example of that half inch of space we had come to expect when social democracy ruled and which we miss so much these days.

TV drama and documentaries was at the fore with many leftists believing that television would become a liberating and democratizing force for the good, indeed they viewed television in much the same way that many people view the Internet today. TV programming moved from being middle class melodrama and angst, [much as it has returned to today] to become something much more, when at long last the BBC finally recognized that the British working classes existed in human form and were determined to play an important role in the Nations affairs. Left wing program makers like Ken Loach and Tony Garnett were to the fore busy exposing the inequality which existed within British society. Problems of inequality I might add that previous generations of broadcasters and program makers had swept under their nice middle class carpet.

The whole point about this generation of program makers was not only that they sympathized with working class people but they actually liked us, which made this period in history almost unique as far as TV in the UK is concerned. The example of Loach, Garnett and others encouraged working class writers like Jim Allen, Barry Keefe and Trevor Griffith's, and later Alan Bleasdale, Jimmy McGovern, all of whom came at their work from a left wing working class perspective and worked in both TV, theater and film.

Pop music was to play a massive part in the social changes that took place between the mid 1960s and 1979. The coming of the Beatles, four working class lads, internationalized and politicized more working class kids than all the great tomes written by the socialist old beards, I for one owe far more to Lennon than Lenin. During the more conservative Callaghan years we saw the birth of punk rock, rock against racism, and bands like the Clash and UB40. A band which took its name from the then unemployment benefit card which you had to produce when drawing your dole and god forbid it if you failed to produce it.

Skip forward to 1997 and the election of Tony Blair, expectation was high not least due to the large majority Blair possessed, as this Labor Government would be able to pass whatever legislation it so wished. Politically its period in office could have been golden years, surpassing Clem Attlee’s administration let alone Harold and Sunny Jim. In the cultural realm a million blossoms would bloom and the arts would finally be properly funded. Or so many people dared hope.

It was not to be, politically Blair was a disgrace, for not only has he removed the working classes further from the levers of power, but he also committed this country to cowardly military adventures overseas which border on criminality. Culturally the arts have reflected the political track that Blair’s government has taken. Money is all as displayed by the Led Zeppelin gig, thus the Opera House in London has been refurbished and returned to its glittering days, whilst at a local level the arts are in a deplorable state. All is show, fur coats and no draws. Vain glorious architectural project like the Dome and silly and pompousness as epitomized by Damien Hurst’s skull with diamonds and billingsgate crap. Popular music began as Blair’s pals in the music industry conglomerates meant it to continue with the two louts from Manchester aping the Beatles as if they were a tribute band.

What ever their artistic endeavor or abilities under NL, artists and musicians placed paying the publicist above buying paint or guitar strings. Almost all of those artists who have come to prominence in the last decade have reverted to the age old custom of artists being courtiers. They go about the business not by first creating great work but by courting slimy Billionaires as if their art can gain substance via the Midas touch.

Whenever the media cover the arts the first thing they come out with is the sale price, whether it is a Hockney, Hurst or Bacon, or the million pound contract a new recording artist has signed. If a movie takes millions at the box office it is not only judged a financial success but a great cinematic piece of work. Of course there are exceptions that disprove the aforementioned and great art can be created whatever the political climate, one only has to hear Amy Winehouse sing to understand that class can win through given half a chance.

However there is no doubt in my mind the cultural legacy of Tony Blair will by Pop Idol, Dinosaur Pop stars reunion concerts and Damien Hurst's over priced crap; plus countless bank vaults around the globe, full of the artwork of past masters brought as investments which the general public will never get a chance to see.

Obituary: Red Robbie.

Forgive me for including Red Robbie on Organized Rage, for whilst she was not well known in the Labour Movement, she was as solid as any. A strong heart, a tireless worker when each year she attempted to make a nest in the curtains, during the summer months she would use her platform in the Garden to call her fellows to come forth and eat the bread that had been put down for them whilst taking the opportunity to propagandize amongst them

Whilst she had her home situated on an inside window ledge she was only ever at home in the evenings and at meal times. The rest of the time she spent roaming the house upstairs and down on her quest for equality. A vegetarian herself she by her example alone converted me to vegetarianism, when one day I was eating a chicken meal, she looked at me with such contempt that I felt I could no longer eat members of her family.

She grew old gracefully but always kept her looks as you can see from the photos above, a private service was held for her without religious rights. Instead of flowers those who attended sent a small donation to the RSPB[renewal committee]

Ms Red Robbie, born January 2000, died 9th December 2007.

A warning from history: In conclusion.

Below is an email I received about my article A warning from history: Poll: the Nazi NPD overtake the SPD in Saxony. I have decided to publish it in full as I feel it adds considerably to my original piece as it sets both the SPD and the Nazi NPD in context within Saxony. The writer asked me not to mention his name, although I will say he is an expert on the political situation in Germany, past and present.

MH

"The SPD has probably more members in Saxony than the NPD, but nearly no activists, who are doing grassroots work, the SPD in Saxony (like in Thuringia) is partly the party of some former GDR-dissidents (many of them protestant ministers, musicians, writers, etc.), partly dominated by state and trade union bureaucrats imported from the west after 1990 (among them a certain number of "Lambertists", doing entrism inside the SPD) ...

What was left of old "Red Saxony" (which was already in decline in the 1920ies) is represented by "Die Linke", who have together with Berlin their strongest regional federation in Saxony ...

The NPD was quite successfull, mainly in economically marginalized rural and smalltown areas in the south and east of Saxony, far less in cities like Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Zwickau.

On the fringes of Saxony, they were highly successful in recruting not only from fascist skinhead gangs but also inside the local petty bourgeoisie, often through a single or a few influential members in crucial positions (like chairman of the local sporting association, only driving instructor in town, owner of the local bakery shop, landlord of a pub, social worker in a youth club), building networks in civil society for being able to create something like "cultural hegemony" on a local level ...

The main leaders (and also the main finalcial sources) of the NPD are from the west of Germany ... in comparison to the BNP, the NPD is less inclined to show some respectability and does not try to hide, that they are no "humble patriots" but people, who are at least higly influenced by nazism."

A warning from history: Poll: the Nazi NPD overtake the SPD in Saxony

According to the Deutsche Welle web site* a survey conducted by the Forsa Institute found Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) is less popular than the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) in the eastern State of Saxony.**
If true this must be an important wake up call for the SPD as it will reverberate across the whole of Germany, for this is the first time ever in an opinion poll the Nazi NPD has overtaken the SPD in an opinion poll.

The popularity of the Christian Democratic Union, (CDU) the governing party in the State of Saxony dropped to 39 percent in the poll whilst the Social Democrat SPD face a nightmare scenario where they are now below their previous lowest level, dropping from 9.8 percent to just 8 percent. 


In the State elections in 2004, the SPD recorded its worst ever result, but even then it was marginally more than the rightist NPD's 9.2 percent. While the far-right party has also dropped points in the current poll, the fact is that the SPD is now seen as being less popular than a right-wing extremist Nazi party in the State of Saxony. 

As I have aforementioned the SPD was hardly a force to begin with in Saxony, coming in well behind the CDU and the Left Party, the new kid on the block who gained 27 percent at the last general election, but the SPD was ahead of the free-market liberal FDP (7 percent) and the Greens (5 percent). However the impact of being beaten further down, and by the far right NPD, even if it is only in a poll, will not only have implications in the State of Saxony, but throughout Germany.


Werner Patzelt, a political scientist from Dresden, the Saxony state Capital, told the daily newspaper Der Spiegel that “the figures were dramatic and that he thought that the question of social justice, the most important issue for many in the region, had driven the low SPD vote in the poll”. "The feeling among the population is that the big parties do not act on its behalf in the State Assembly in Dresden and in the Federal government in Berlin," he said.***
Saxony. SPD leader in Saxony Thomas Jurk said the poll was "harrowing; and It was now up to the SPD to reverse the party's failing fortunes as quickly as possible.”

Since reunification, the SPD in the east of the country has never been able to gain the mass support of the German working classes like it does in Western Germany. The party is clearly paying the price for entering with the CDU in an unpopular National coalition, which has attempted to steal the social benefits that the German working classes have built up over the decades that followed WW2.

The SPD leadership in Berlin is beginning to wake up to the fact that simply telling the capitalist class to enrich themselves whilst covertly stealing the past gains of the working classes, is hardly good politics especially if your core support base is that very working class whose pockets you have been riffling whilst in government. The more so when there is a socialist party to the left of the SPD like the Left Party, which is hovering up working class support and been at the fore of the struggle against any reemergence of German fascism.


Politics

*http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,266,00.html
**http://www.forsa.com/
** * http://www.spiegel.de/international/

Floyd Mayweather, Ricky Hatton: Will the Hitman cometh

“Your hear how hard they are hitting each other, the little groans and cries.” “its horrible, but you know it is also fantastic.” So said champion boxer Ricky Hatton’s trainer Billy Graham, I understand exactly what Billy means for I too am a fight fan and I regularly suffer pangs of guilt for being one. There is often a great dignity about boxers and not only those who rise to the top of their profession but also amongst amateur fighters too. There is a confidence about many of these guys that most men do not possess and they seem to me to have very little bitterness against their fellow man. Of course you cannot generalize about such things but watching a fighter in his prime, who has peripheral vision, perfect balance and reflexes that come into play with the speed of lighting is to watch a great artist at work; and when they have the dignity and humility of say Mohammed Ali tears can almost come to your eyes.

I kept away from the sport for many years after coming away a from a local amateur clubs boys show appalled at the behavior of some of the parents when supporting their sons. In truth they behaved like animals demanding that their child beat their opponents into a pulp. It was not a pretty sight, think touch line parent at a local soccer match only far worse. I vowed never again to go to another live boxing match and I have stuck to that, although I still watch boxing on the television.

Of course it hardly surprising that most professional boxers seem to despise the majority of punters who pay to see them fight, as they have all experienced at some time in their careers a time when the crowd bayed for their blood.

Never the less in the early hours of tomorrow morning I will be up listening to the radio as Ricky Hatton takes on Floyd Mayweather. Whilst boxing is full of hype this particular fight is the real thing, comparable to Mohammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle as both of these guys are at the very pinnacle of their profession. Floyd Mayweather may well be the type of guy one hopes does not become ones son in law, but as a boxer his standing is comparable with the two Sugar Rays. One only has to look at Ricky Hatton’s face and score card to see he is a bruiser like Rocky Marciano, he loves targetting the rib cage.

This will be a very tough test for Ricky Hatton but if he pulls it off he really will deserve his handle the ‘hitman’.

Obituary of Peter Cadogan: A passionate campaigner against injustice.

Obituary of Peter Cadogan: By Michael Randle

Peter Cadogan, who has died aged 86, returned to civilian life after the second world war determined to bring about radical change in Britain. He spent the next 50 years on a long quest of resistance to global injustices, bringing impassioned dissent to campaigns against nuclear weapons and the Biafran war before moving on to explore ideals of democracy.
Cadogan was in the tradition of English radicalism dating back to 17th-century movements such as the Levellers, but in his later years he identified himself most closely with the Gnostics, "the arch-rebels of Christian society from the 2nd to the 4th century" as he termed them, whose spirit and understanding he detected in later individuals and movements, most notably William Blake.

Born into a middle-class family in Newcastle upon Tyne, where his father was employed by a shipping company, he was educated at the King's school in Tynemouth during the 1930s depression. After working as an insurance clerk, he joined RAF Air Sea Rescue in 1941. Demobbed in 1946, he joined the Communist party, drawing inspiration from its historians' group, which included Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm and Edward (EP) Thompson. But he found the CP's authoritarian style, and uncritical support of the Soviet Union, hard to stomach. He was suspended from the party for publicly criticising it in 1956 for its failure to denounce the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution, and he then joined the Labour party. Meanwhile, he had studied history at Newcastle University, married Joyce Stones in 1949 and taken up teaching posts in Northampton and Cambridge.

Influenced by Trotskyist ideas, he took part in the 1959 founding conference of the Socialist Labour League (later to become the Workers Revolutionary Party) under the leadership of Gerry Healy. He was expelled from the Labour party when it added the SLL to its list of proscribed organisations in 1959, and expelled in turn from the SLL, whose leadership style he found to be no different from that of the CP. In 1960 he joined the editorial board of the Trotskyist publication International Socialism and contributed subsequently to its more populist paper Labour Worker - which, as Socialist Worker, is still extant as the paper of IS's successor, the Socialist Workers Party - only to be expelled too from that group.
"So it was," he stated in a 2001 interview, "that I qualified at the time as England's most expelled socialist." It could indeed be said of him, to improvise on Groucho Marx's theme, that he never joined a party that was not willing to expel him from its membership.

After 1960 he found his home in the milieu of the direct action movement against nuclear weapons. Already in the summer of 1958 he had organised a demonstration by the Cambridge, Ely and Huntingdon Labour parties against the US Thor nuclear missile base at Mepal, near Ely. When the Committee of 100, committed to civil disobedience against nuclear weapons, was launched by Bertrand Russell and the Rev Michael Scott, Peter joined in its first demonstration in 1961, a sit-down outside the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. He set up the East Anglian Committee of 100 in late 1961 and was centrally involved with the national committee from 1962 until its demise in 1968.

Peter's style could be abrasive, delivering often controversial judgments in terse clipped phrases that appeared to brook no dissent. But he bore no grudges against those who disagreed with him and periodically reviewed his position - stating his new convictions with equal vigour.

He was no less courageous in acting on his beliefs. I have an abiding image of him, in December 1961, striding at the head of some 200 demonstrators to sit down outside the gates of the US base at Wethersfield in Essex, despite a warning by the then Conservative attorney general, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, of possible prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. In 1962 he was one of the organisers of a Committee of 100 demonstration against Soviet nuclear weapons in Red Square during one of Moscow's peace jamborees, to which the committee had been invited. In 1968, during the Nigerian civil war he set up the Save Biafra Campaign and described later flying from Lisbon in a plane so overloaded with ammunition and crates of whisky that it had difficulty taking off. Though a champion of nonviolent direct action, he was never a pacifist.
From 1970 until 1981, when he lost a vote of confidence, he was chairman of Bloomsbury's South Place Ethical Society. In June 1975 he refused, on the grounds of his belief in freedom of speech, to cancel an arrangement for the National Front to hold a meeting in the society's Conway Hall premises. This was despite intense pressure from leftwing organisations and Peter's abhorrence of the NF.

In 1987 he concluded that his focus had to move from protest towards positive alternatives. He devoted more and more time to thinking and writing about direct democracy and on building alliances of people at the grassroots, outside parties. His writings include a book on Direct Democracy (1974), and numerous pamphlets, monographs and contributions to newspapers and journals. From 1981 until 1983 he was a tutor in the history of ideas for the extra-mural department of London University (later part of Birkbeck College). He was a founder of New Consensus/New Dialogue in 1990, co-founder of Values and Vision, 1991, and chairman from 1998 of the London Alliance for Local Democracy. He was active with the Blake society - of which he had been chairman and president - up to his death.

During his last few days, the actor Roger Lloyd Pack went to see him in hospital and read him a number of Blake poems, including Holy Thursday, The Garden of Love, and London. Peter had seemed to be in a coma and had not spoken for some time, but as Roger was reading he opened his eyes and struggled to sit up. Almost at the point of death, Blake's lines of passionate indignation and joyous affirmation could still inspire and arouse him.*

His marriage ended in divorce in 1968. He is survived by his daughter Claire, granddaughter Laura and brother Jack.
· Peter Cadogan, campaigner, born January 26 1921: died November 18 2007

* First published in The Guardian.

Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley: Every picture tells a story.

They say every every picture tells a story and as far as the photo at the top of this piece is concerned it is a sad and pathetic tale. For if ever there was an example of how far Sinn Fein's leadership has been enticed into the mire of big business it is this photo of the north of Irelands very own ‘chuckle brothers’, Martin McGuinness alongside the religious bigot Ian Paisley when taking the begging bowl to the New York Stock Exchange. OK some might say having signed up for the mockney Stormont Administration Martin McGuinness as Paisleys deputy first Minister must go through the motions, perhaps but if so does he have to look like he is enjoying it so much. Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London has to mix in a similar unsavory environment but he manages to do it without losing his dignity.

The New York Stock Exchange is not some harmless and neutral force, but an organization which with a spin of its roulette wheel can impoverish billions of people around the world. We are now being told that whilst in New York one of the ‘Chuckle Brothers’ met Donald Trump; and attempted to entice him to come over to the north of Ireland and ruin part of the historic coastline with a housing project and golf course designed for the super rich. Trump is notorious for constructing these unsightly abominations around the world and to suggest Trump has no moral compass would be an understatement. After the construction of these so called millionaires paradises, the only advantages they bring to the local economy is at best minimum wage jobs. The disadvantages are numerous, not least once Trumps monstrosities are built in their wake come legions of mini monstrosities of the type favored by Ian Paisleys son.

In the past there have been rumors about Martin McGuinness being either a British informer or someone the UK State regarded as an asset worth protecting and encouraged his rise to the top of the greasy pole. I know nothing about any of this, but it does worry me that a man who claims to oppose both the British in Ireland and capitalism can appear so comfortable when he visits the powerhouses of global Capital.

Viva the Workers, Viva Hugo Chavez, Viva Democracy!

I doubt there are many leftists in the world who do not get real joy from the way Hugo Chavez tweaks GW Bush and the Neo-conservatives tails. If anyone has exposed President Bush for the small minded political minnow that he is it is the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez. As Greg Palast wrote ‘The Family Bush can fix Florida. They can fix Ohio. But it’s just driving them crazy that they can’t fix the vote in Venezuela.”[and remove Chavez]

The Bush family and the US Neo-conservatives hatred of Chavez is not simply about oil and the fact that Hugo governs democratically a country that is sitting on top of 1.36 trillion barrels of crude oil, five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. But that Chavez believes Venezuela’s huge supply of oil must be in the hands of the Venezuelan people not the US Government and the multi national corporations it represents. The Bush administration also cannot abide the progressive message that another world beyond neo-conservative free market globalization is possible that Chavez example is sending around the globe.

Venezuela has been awash with oil money for some time, but the difference between Hugo Chavez and his predecessors as President of Venezuela is that whilst in the past the ruling and middle classes benefited from the oil wealth whilst workers lived in ignorance and abject poverty. Today the fruits of the nations oil wealth are channeled to the masses and provide free schooling and health care for all the citizens of Venezuela.

That the Venezuelan middle class Media rages daily against Chavez decision to provide the economically poor the aforementioned social benefits plus the means to build decent homes, simply demonstrates just how dehumanized these ruling classes elements have become. That Hugo Chavez ignores these lackeys of big capital and turns to the masses for support encourages other South American socialists to do likewise; and create social programs that benefit the masses not the great satan to the north.

I don’t agree with everything President Chavez does and whilst agreeing with many of the propositions within the recent referendum, I feel it was a mistake to include certain more contentious issues amongst them. I am against an extension of the Presidential term beyond two periods in office. Not because I doubt the democratic credentials of Hugo Chavez, but two terms in office is enough for any President to serve and if after 12 years in office President Chavez has not brought forth a worthy successor who will gain the support of the Venezuelan masses then in truth he has partially failed in his task to liberate the masses.

We must not allow the USAs attitude to Hugo Chavez to warp our judgment, to date the left should view the the powerful figure of Chavez as a necessary negative. For surly history has taught us certain lessons when it comes to ‘great leaders’; thus the sooner Hugo Chavez recognizes that a successful revolution is one in which the masses are dominant not a single leader the better for all. For it is a political fact of life when a politician is given unlimited power he and the bureaucracy that serves him will in time slip into authoritarian or dictatorial rule. We should also consider that when the going gets tough as it undoubtedly will, the masses will be more likely to defend their Bolivarian Revolution than that of Hugo Chavez Bolivarian Revolution.

Having said that it is not for the USA to become involved in the internal affairs of any independent nation, and the people of Venezuela have shown in last Sundays ballot that they take their democratic responsibilities seriously. More to the point Hugo Chavez has acted like a true democrat and accepted the will of the people without criticism, which makes it possible for all democrats to cry out Viva the Workers, Viva Hugo Chavez, Viva Democracy!

Politics

If the UK Left fails to build a Left Party, it will whither and die!

The 1960s hippy political activist Richard Neville, once claimed the advantages of having a Labour Government in power is that it gives the political Left half an inch of space in which it can live and breath. I have always thought there was a certain amount of truth in what he said, for until the day comes when the UK Left becomes a major parliamentary political player in its own right, to a certain extent in the past it has had to rely on the LP to create the political space in which the left can work.

This changed dramatically after the New Labour Government came into office in 1997 and moved from being a party which supported modest social democratic reforms, to become an organization which acts as a vehicle for the implementation of Neo-liberal economic reforms, privatization and Globalization. Up until when Tony Blair became Prime Minister, all of the previous post WW2 Labour governments have inadvertently created the political space in which the left can live and breath. This was especially useful for those leftists who felt unable to work within the LP, as it not only allowed them independence when reaching out to new forces, but also enabled them through their trade unions to work in established Labour Movement structures. This enabled the Left to punch way above its actual political weight by influencing Labour Governments through the Trade Unions and TUC. True this was hardly storming the Winter Palace, but is was solid left reformism that bettered the lives of millions of working class people.


The Left is often at its best when reactionary Conservative governments hold power, not least because reacting to oppressive legislation whether at home or abroad is what we are best at. The very nature of reactive struggle suits the coalition of leftists Party’s and organizations as it enables them to maintain their independence whilst engaging in struggle whilst punching above their actual weight. This is mainly done by working in broad political fronts, engaging with people whose political aims are not always the same, but who are willing to engage in a common struggle in the short term in opposition to the Government of the day. This type of work is best demonstrated in the Stop the War Coalition and Anti Apartheid Movement and to a lesser degree the Trade Unions.

However the Labour governments which have been headed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been an entirely different kettle of fish from their predecessors. NL has worked hard to liquidate that half inch of political space that Neville referred to. If anything the space to the left of Labour has retracted rather than expanded as often occurred in the past. This is partly due to the fact that in the past the non Labour left could organize campaigns at a local level whilst the parliamentary LP left could move forward within Parliament etc. This is no longer possible as the leadership of Blair and Brown have gradually shut down the democratic space within the LP to such an extent that a once vibrant party is a democratic corpse. Its governing body of last resort the Party’s annual Conference has been transformed from being the Labour Movements highest democratic forum into a party rally with bunting, union jacks and all; and at which standing ovations are carefully rehearsed and 84 year old lifetime members, for partaking in a spot of light banter are bundled out on to the street by hired thugs. The same is true of the party in the Constituencies, come the next general election bar sitting members, in all probability not a single left wing Laborite will be nominated for a parliamentary seat. What this means in reality is once the current crop of LP Left wing parliamentarians retire, the Parliamentary LP left will no longer exist.

The recognition by many on the Left that there has been no half inch under the Blair/Brown New Labour governments has been a wake up call for many leftists. When Blair stood down as Prime Minister and Party leader some leftists within the LP allowed their hearts to rule their heads and hope that when Gordon Brown became PM his government would revert to a traditional form of Social Democracy. It has after six months of Brown in office now become pretty clear this is not going to happen. It was never going to occur as Mr Brown is the man who since 1997 has said to the City of London enrich yourself at the tax payers and future generations expense with his ridiculously costly public-private finance initiatives.

To conclude it has become clear to the vast majority of leftists that if they and the workers they represent are to have any real influence within this country, they must accept the days of piggybacking and accepting scraps from the LP’s table are long gone, not least because that party has now changed out of all recognition and no longer even claims to put the best interest of the working classes first, but sees the middle class and Capital as its core constituency.

The Left must enter the parliamentary arena under its own steam with a new Left Party for England and Wales or it will whither and die. The recent brouhaha in the Respect Party, the collapse of the Socialist Alliance before it, the split in the Militant Tendency, the failure of the Parliamentary LP left for the first time in its history to mount a viable challenge [to Gordon Brown] in the Party leadership contest, and other minor convulsions that have taken place on the political left in recent years are all part of the process of building a new Left Party. Not only does the working class deserve a new Left Party, they desperately need one to defend their interest in the political arena, both at local and national level, for at this moment in time bar their trade unions the working classes are politically defenseless.