Viva Palestina: Plus Charity in General.

It has been clear for some time that the UK media operate a list of those charities it will support and publicize and those it will not. The charity convoy, Palestina: A lifeline from Britain to Gaza, despite being a great success, clearly falls into the latter group. The convoy started out from the UK with 100 vehicles, but whilst driving through France, Spain and across north Africa it has grown to almost 300 vans and lorries loaded with urgently needed supplies for war torn Gaza.

This lack of publicity within the UK for the Palestina convoy, got me to thinking about charities in general, for there is little doubt in my mind, that this charity, where it fronted by puffed up middle class comedians and was headed for anywhere bar Palestine, would be guaranteed daily UK media coverage.

Like many I was brought up in a home where money was very tight. My mother, when my sister and I were youngsters, had been the victim of far to many patronizing comments from charity do-gooders to see any good in Charity. For her the very word charity sums up a great deal, very little of it good.

That both my parents were employed on the land and worked dam hard for a pittance, yet still at times had to accept second hand clothes for us kids was an injustice to say the least. That the husband of the same woman who used to come around with the second hand baby cloths was later to evict us from our farm cottage without a backward glance, because my father had been off work for three weeks with pleurisy, was all my mother needed to know about charity. For my Mother and me this is the contradiction that lays at the heart of the charity conundrum.

I'm sure some of today's charities do fine work, however it is work that should in truth have been done by society as a whole. Plus for me those who work for a great many charitable NGO's appear just a tad to self satisfied for my liking. It is no accident that many of those who take Betty's silly gongs, gain them or so the citations claim, for 'good or charitable works' the likes of which are designed to whitewash away a lifetime of robbing and exploitation of others.

As to those who make large donations to 'charitable causes', for example Bill Gates, well, if they paid a reasonable level of tax on their great wealth and ceased over charging for their products, etc, the world would be a better place and they themselves would not have as much cash to swan around the world doling out money to people whom they clearly regard as 'the natives.'

Of course there is nothing new in capitalists, former presidents, prime ministers and people who have been nothing but a bloody nuisance to humanity supporting charitable causes. They have been doing this for decades if not centuries, as Alfred Nobles proves yearly. Mercifully in the immediate post WW2 years such deceit was temporally placed on hold, sadly no more.

Although, just perhaps, with more people realizing the markets are not all they were made out to be; and the main purpose of business is usury, whether it be the workers, tax payers or consumers who get shafted. More people may begin to demand we put in place a system where charities are our very last option, instead as they have become a reflex action to solve all problems of magnitude.

At best, as with Viva Palestina, a charity can be used as a propaganda vehicle to wake up the world to a great injustice, however even when taking desperately needed medicines and supplies it can only be a temporary measure. That is why to bring charities front of house, as is the way today, in the long run can only make a difficult problem worse, as all it does is act as a sticking plaster. Charity is not equipped to solve complex problems in the long term.

That many of us have concluded that the only way we can bring immediate respite to the people of Gaza is by supporting Palestina is admitting our impotence; I must stress this is not a critism of the convoy as we should all get behind it. However I do wonder if underneath her thanks, whether a Palestinian mother who accepts clothes or medicines from Palestina will feel as angry and resentful as my mum did when the 'lady' of the manor knocked on her door with a handful of castoffs.


MH

Obituary: Edward Upward 1903-2009: Marxist and the last living link to writers like Isherwood, W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender.

Edward Upward, Influential Author, Dies at 105

By Eamonn McCabe (first published in the Guardian)

"Two students turned off Silver Street in Cambridge, England, into an alley. They saw a little door in a high wall.

“It’s a doorway into the Other Town, Edward Upward said.

Mr. Upward and Christopher Isherwood used their febrile imaginations to pass through the doorway into a chimerical, surreal, flagrantly perverse imaginary village that became a touchstone of 20th-century English literature. They called it Mortmere, and they soon delighted in writing stories with titles like “The Leviathan of the Urinals” to amuse each other."

With Mr. Upward’s death, on Feb. 13 in Pontefract, England, the last living link was broken to writers like Isherwood, W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender who shaped English literature in the 1930s. In reporting Mr. Upward’s death, London newspapers said that at 105 he was Britain’s oldest author.

His influence on his contemporaries was both literary and political, silly and serious. The Mortmere tales — for which biographers give the main credit to Mr. Upward — inspired Auden’s poetry. Isherwood sent manuscripts to Mr. Upward for judgment. Mr. Upward helped convert Spender to Communism.

But some saw Mr. Upward as determined to bury his distinctive early genius in leftist dogma. Leonard and Virginia Woolf published his first book but rejected his second, saying there was too much Communism in it.

He could not publish some other works and destroyed still others, and from 1938 to 1954 he suffered from an insurmountable writer’s block. An autobiographical trilogy he published in the 1960s and 1970s was praised by socialists as documentary, but dismissed by critics as doctrinaire.

In “British Writers of the Thirties,” Valentine Cunningham wrote that Mr. Upward would “scarcely be noticeable without his chums’ repeated advertisements for his merits and importance.”

But Mr. Upward’s compellingly odd stories were lovingly passed hand to hand among cognoscenti decades before they were published. Auden was so taken by his most famous Mortmere fable, “The Railway Accident,” that he read it to audiences. It included the memorable image of a train crash, describing how the “coaches mounted like viciously copulating bulls.”

Mr. Upward drew high praise for his first novel, “Journey to the Border” (1938), which tells how a young tutor finds salvation in socialism. His 1937 essay contending that literature must be judged by Marxist criteria fueled fierce debate.

In 1969, when he published “The Railway Accident” for the first time under his own name, The Times Literary Supplement declared, “Among the literary legends of the 1930s, Edward Upward is surely the most legendary figure.”

In the early 1990s Mr. Upward was discovered anew by Enitharmon Press, which published old and new works by him, including “A Renegade in Springtime” (2003), timed to coincide with his 100th birthday.

“The renegade is the one with a sense of reality and everyone else is too happy-go-lucky,” Mr. Upward said in an interview with The Guardian in 2003.

Edward Falaise Upward was born in Romford, England, on Sept. 9, 1903. He attended the Repton School, where he met Isherwood, who saw him as “a natural anarchist, a born romantic revolutionary.”

Their mutual admiration proceeded to Cambridge, where they honed what Mr. Upward called their “surreal medievalism.” Peter Parker wrote in “Isherwood: A Life Revealed” (2004) that Mr. Upward had “the leap of imagination which brought this whole nebulous world alive.”

Isherwood became Auden’s best friend, and it was through Isherwood that Mr. Upward influenced Auden. Sending a copy of his “Poems” (1930) to Mr. Upward, Auden wrote, “I shall never know how much in these poems is filched from you via Christopher.”

Auden’s “Orators” (1932) incorporated the Mortmere vision. Also in the early 1930s, Mr. Upward gave Auden some of his political writing. Describing the effect, Humphrey Carpenter wrote in “W. H. Auden: A Biography” (1981): “It begins to seem as if Auden’s Communism, if it can be called that, was distinctly second-hand.”

Auden in turn advised Mr. Upward on his poetry, saying, “It’s no good, drop it.” Despite having won a major poetry prize at Cambridge, Mr. Upward did.

He joined the Communist Party in 1932, after a short visit to the Soviet Union. In an essay in “The God That Failed” (1949), Spender recounts a conversation with Allen Chalmers, who had just returned from Russia. Chalmers was the fictional name Isherwood gave Mr. Upward in his “Lions and Shadows” (1938), in which Chalmers assures Spender that Stalin’s purges do not matter when compared with socialism’s glories.

Mr. Upward and his wife, the former Hilda Percival, left the British Communist Party in 1948 because they felt it had become soft. He fell into a depression after leaving the party, then threw himself into campaigns to ban nuclear weapons.

Mrs. Upward died in 1995. Their son, Christopher, died in 2002. Mr. Upward is survived by his daughter, Kathy; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Mr. Upward wrote one of his later stories about a seemingly successful artist observing another artist’s funeral. “It is the corpse of the better artist you had it in you to be, but never were,” the observer says.

“It is the same for all of us — not just the artists, but everyone alive in this century, even the luckiest of the lucky, and three quarters of the human population of the earth are not among the lucky,” the story continues.

“We are none of us able to be what we have it in us to be.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is a short obituary published by Upward’s Grandson in the Socialist Worker.

Edward Upward 1903-2009

by Ian Allinson

Edward Upward was a poetic writer and unrepentant Marxist. He died recently at 105, the last of a group of writers who were radicalised by the fight against fascism and workers’ struggles in the 1930s, and sought to connect their politics and their writing.

Edward did not become as famous as the others in the group – WH Auden, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood. Partly this was because he was determined to be politically active and in 1932 he joined the Communist Party (CP).

He put his efforts into being a CP activist. Though he published a novel in 1938, he struggled to reconcile his imaginative and dream-like writing with political commitment.

It was only in the 1960s, having broken from the CP, that he published further books. His Spiral Ascent trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels followed his political development.

The first, In The Thirties, gives a feel for what being a CP activist at that time – paper sales at bus garages are nothing new, comrades!

The Rotten Elements follows the struggle against the overt reformism of the CP and his eventual break with it in 1948. The last part of the trilogy, No Home But The Struggle, celebrates his return to political activity in the 1960s with the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a key mass movement at the time.

Edward was my grandfather. I remember how he and my grandmother Hilda encouraged me to get involved in CND as a school student.

They kept up a keen interest in politics, from the Anti Nazi League to the anti-capitalist movement.

In recent years Edward was very excited by the growth of the radical left in Latin America.

His confidence in revolution was unshakeable. His last book, A Renegade In Springtime, was published for his 100th birthday.

I will remember him as a witty, mischievous, inventive and entertaining grandfather.

Socialist Review published an appreciation of Upward’s work in 2003 » www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8607

-------------------------

Thanks to Tim for heads up

MH

Welfare Reform Bill: 'Claimants Charter' is NGO's and Charities trying to calm their own consciouses

During the second reading of the Welfare Reform Bill, which took place earlier this week, the ‘Labour’ Minister for Workfare and starvation wages James Purnell, indicated that he was prepared to look at a Claimants Charter. My first thought was I bet he did, and anyone who picks up and runs with this should be treated with absolute contempt. It is hardly surprising that charities and NGO's like Disability Alliance, CPAG, Gingerbread and the CAB have responded positively to the wretched Purnell’s offer. For both the Charities and State financed groups like the CAB have grown fat and sleepy on New Labour’s schemes to further pauperize and demonize ‘the underclass.’

Let me be clear here, these people intend to accept workfare without even a whimper and in return for supporting the ‘Labour’ Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, they will continue to have their coffers filled with tax payers coin. Incidentally it cannot be stated enough times that this disgraceful government bill was drafted by one David Freud, a City of London banker and equity asset stripper who recently defected to the Tories.

In return for these charities and NGO’s acquiescing to Purnell and the Tory Freud’s insidious Welfare Reform Bill, those who claim State benefits will be given a useless piece of paper called a Claimants Charter, the only good that can come from this, is if they happen to get caught short, they will have something to wipe their arses on.

Millions of Tax payers pounds have been given by this government to greedy and incompetent bankers; and the very unemployed they and the government helped create, must beg for their dinner. To hell with that.

We must all say No! to Workfare; and these charities if they accept it, let alone help administer it, should be sent to Coventry and treated with the contempt they deserve and told they are not welcome in civilized company. By attempting to fob claimants off with a worthless ‘charter’ these people are just trying to calm their own consciouses, they are well aware of the fact that by accepting workfare, they have betrayed those they claim to represent and the founding principles of an organization like the CAB, which was set up to work alongside their clients not to help penalize them.

Claimants charter my arse. Why would anyone wish to support such a miserable document, it legitimizes the whole wretched business of work-fare. Wake up and smell the coffee, workfare is not about training or getting people into decent jobs etc. If is about driving people off of legitimate State benefits and on to a minimum wage job or worse the soup kitchen.

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3653

http://www.disabilityalliance.org/charter.htm

Is there a conspiracy to keep the British people in the dark over War on Iraq.

In a statement yesterday to the British Parliament, UK ‘Justice’ Minister Jack Straw announced his decision to veto the release under the Freedom of Information Act of minutes that were taken in the Blair Cabinet meetings that led up to and approved the invasion of Iraq.

The importance of these minutes  cannot be over-stated, as the British governments decision to support GW Bush ‘war on Iraq,’ [we are told] was made collectively by the men and women around that Cabinet table. 

That the outcome of that decision has proved so costly, both financially and physically, to both the British and Iraqi people makes it imperative that we know just what was said and by whom at these meetings.

The fact that the current British government, with the full support of the Tory Opposition has vetoed this information being placed in the public domain, is about as clear an example as one needs of the destructive secrecy that lays at the heart of the British governmental system. However this willingness to toady and cover for central government goes far beyond the mere politicians.

One would have expected Todays British newspapers to be full of this attempt by the Government and Tory opposition to deny the right of the British people to know what their politicians got up to in this vital period. Yet not one of the three main UK broadsheets carries this story on their front page. 

The Times leads with a government powder-puff about forcing the train franchisees to cut fares. The Guardian  led with a ‘may happen' tale about the “Fight against Terror spells end of privacy,” alongside a large photo of a statue of Betty’s mum, which this bastion of liberal democracy felt the need to repeat on page 5. The Daily Telegraph leads with Betty’s mum’s statue, plus what amounts to fillers about strokes linked to the number of cups of tea we drink;  a piece of nonsense about savers withdrawing their cash as interest rates slide, and council tax being raised this April.

Bar Betty’s mum [Thats the British for you;) not one of these articles are worthy of space on a newspapers front page and when you factor in all three papers had an important story on which they could and should have led, it is impossible not to believe the politicians have been bush working the telephones to keep Straw’s veto off the front pages. Not only should the papers have led with this story it was in the public interest that they did so.

It is becoming increasingly clear that there was a conspiracy between the leaders of the Labour government and the Conservative party to support Bush’s criminal adventure in Iraq. That this coalition is still in place became clear from the Conservative front bench’s behavior in the Commons yesterday.

That both Conservative and Labour MP’s understand their party leadership have and are still acting in a cowardly and despicable way was demonstrated within the Commons yesterday, when the benches were almost empty of party loyalists when Jack Straw made his pathetic statement on behalf of the Government; and Tory Justice spokesman Dominic Grieve replied.  When he gave support to Straw, one could almost see the few Tory MP's present leave the Chamber to wash their hands Pilate like in the posh Palace of Westminster toilet’s, in truth they would been better off sticking their heads down the toilet bowl. 

MH

Pirate Bay: Multi national State sponsored buccaneers await to pick up the spoils.

The owners of The Pirate Bay, the popular Swedish based file-sharing website are currently before a Swedish court charged with "assisting making available copyrighted material,” a charge which could land them in jail for two-years and fines of 1.2 million kronor. This is not the first time Pirate Bay has come under attack by powerful foes as it has earned the hatred of Multi National Corporations like Fox, Sony, Universal, and EMI.

The Pirate Bay defendants appear very upbeat about their situation, clearly believing under Swedish law they can beat the rap, if so it would not be the first time they have emerged victorious. The aforementioned ‘entertainment giants' lobbied the Bush administration hard, donating large sums to the war criminals reelection campaign; and in all probability are doing much the same with Obama’s to ensure the US Government puts pressure on the Swedish government to drive Pirate Bay out of business. 

This trial should be seen as part of an of this going process by the multi nationals.

It is impossible to have any sympathy with the Media 'giants', as they have had a decade to reach a compromise which would have allowed the public to download music and movies for either a nominal sum or free at the point of use. 

Believing correctly they had the Bush White House on side, the media multi nationals refused to even to consider a reasonable compromises; and did not give a fig about public opinion. As with the US governments ‘war on drugs’ and ‘war on terror,’  they believed they were able at will to bring pressure to bear on European and Scandinavian national governments; and their judicial systems and by so doing this would enable them to scupper and send to the bottom, the good ship Pirate Bay.

Fortunately Pirate Bay is not moored in a poodle state like the UK, where when the US Ambassador comes calling in Whitehall making demands, Betsy's political  minnows simply ask how high he would like the British Prime minister to jump. The Swedish judiciary is less pliable than its class ridden British counterpart, demanding Pirate Bay is given a fair wind in the Swedish courts. This could be because many members of the judiciary there can see no justifiable reason why these defendants are before the courts. Bar the US bully that is.

The general public are with PB, according to Wikipedia, quoting the Los Angeles Times, “The Pirate Bay is one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading," and "the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright—or pro-piracy—movement." On 15 November 2008, The Pirate Bay announced that it had reached over 25 million unique peers. The Pirate Bay has about 3,400,000 registered users so far. Registration is not needed to download though, only for writing comments and uploading torrents.

MH

http://trial.thepiratebay.org/information/

More info here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/features/pirates_fight_goliath

Turkish Elections: Fortress Diyarbakır; Kurdish DTP stands firm against AK Party inroads.

One of the key battleground regions in the upcoming March 28 Turkish mayoral, municipal and local elections, will be in the mainly Kurdish southeastern part of the country, especially in the city of Diyarbakır, a traditional stronghold of the Kurdish Democratic Society Party. (DTP) Recent opinion polls taken in the region show the DTP being slightly ahead of the ruling Justice and Development Party. (AK Party)

So far in the campaign the police have treated harshly DTP supporters who have come out on the streets in support of their party. A number of Turkish civil liberty activists have claimed the police have deliberately provoked young demonstrators in order for the media to cast the DTP in a bad light.

When visiting Diyarbakır, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s attempt to focus away from ethnic identities, and on to ‘serving the people’ and 'the economy,' may be falling on deaf ears. Not least because the worldwide recession is beginning to bite hard into the Turkish economy; and ethnic identity has been placed at the heart of the Kurdish problem by the Turkish States refusal, until very recently to even admit the existence of Turkeys Kurds, regarding them as mountain Turks. 

Whilst admittedly Erdoğan’s government has liberalized some of the harshest anti Kurd laws, most independent observers still believe there is a long way to go before the inequalities the Kurdish people often face are ended.

The Kurdish Workers Party(PKK) position seems some what inconsistent, with its imprisoned leader putting out statements about being willing to accept a federated State, whilst the PKK leadership in northern Iraq is said to have told Kurds who live in Turkey not to watch the new Kurdish language TV Channel, which has proved popular,  the PKK are also calling for demonstration's against Erdogan’s visits during the election campaign. The latter has enabled the police to turn on the young demonstrators with venom.

According to Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper, 

“The AK Party and the DTP are head-to-head in the region, while support for other parties is almost nonexistent in the region. The AK Party's candidate for Diyarbakır mayor is Kutbettin Arzu, while Osman Baydemir, the current mayor, will be running for re-election as the DTP's candidate.

The DTP sees Diyarbakır as a bastion, and it has few worries that it might lose. It strongly believes that the new facilities the prime minister will open will not change the voters' minds. Baydemir's election campaign uses the slogan "Notes from the Diyarbakır bastion" along with a series of posters and banners that try to explain the services the DTP has delivered to the city. The campaign focuses on the services that have been delivered until now, instead of future investments.”

The fact that the AKP made gains in the Southeast in the last Turkish general election should have been a wake up call for the DTP, the party slogan for this campaign, ‘Notes from the Diyarbakır bastion’ hint’s at a certain complacency. There is a real need for radical opposition parties when elected to deliver good local services, Islamic organizations like Hezbullah, Hamas and in a different context the AKP have been conscious of this fact. Simply to demand of the people continuous sacrifice will no longer guarantee automatic support.

If elected to office, radical party’s need to prove two things, they can run their areas better than the mainstream party’s and provide for the daily needs of their core electorates. Whether it be emptying bins, providing education and health care and maintaining infrastructure like highways. Of course this is no easy task, especially in areas like the Southeast of Turkey which in the past has been starved of Central government funding.

However if the DTP retain the majority of Kurdish votes, they will have Erdogan on the back foot. For during the campaign he has promised the Southeast a considerable amount of new money coming from the government exchequer. The DTP’s role will be to force him to deliver on his promise. 

Having said this, as anyone will know who has been involved in an election campaign against governing party candidates, it is not a level playing field. It has been reported the DTP have had at least one rally banned in Diyarbakır. Incidentally local shopkeepers closed their shops as a protest against this ban, however this was reported by sections of the Turkish media as being due to "illegal groups" (code for PKK) having demanded that they shut their shops which was apparently untrue. 

What is clear is a great deal rests on the outcome of the elections in the south east, not least the very survival of the DTP. For it is difficult to see how, if the DTP emerges  victorious, the Turkish Constitutional Court, which currently has an application before it to ban the party, could go ahead and do so without a major conflagration breaking out around its ears. Like wise if the DTP vote drops considerably, this may well embolden the court to ban the party. Interesting times.

Obituary; Victor Kiernan: Historian with a global vision of empires, Marxism, politics and poetry.

Victor Kiernan

Historian with a global vision of empires, Marxism, politics and poetry

By Eric Hobsbawm

Victor Kiernan, who has died aged 95, was a man of unselfconscious charm and staggeringly wide range of learning. He was also one of the last survivors of the generation of British Marxist historians of the 1930s and 1940s. If this generation has been seen by the leading German scholar HU Wehler as the main factor behind "the global impact of English historiography since the 1960s", it was largely due to Victor's influence. He brought to the debates of the Communist party historians' group between 1946 and 1956 a persistent, if always courteous, determination to think out problems of class culture and tradition for himself, whatever the orthodox position. He continued to remain loyal to the flexible, open-minded Marxism of the group to which he had contributed so much.

Most influential through his works on the imperialist era, he was also, almost certainly, the only historian who also translated 20th-century Urdu poets and wrote a book on the Latin poet Horace. The latter's works he, like the distinguished Polish Marxist historian Witold Kula, carried with him on his travels.

Like several of his contemporaries among the Marxist historians, including Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton and Edward Thompson, he came from a nonconformist background. In his case it was a lower-middle-class, actively congregationalist family in Ashton-on-Mersey, though in his time as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, he used his Irish name as an excuse to justify a lack of zeal for the British monarchy.

He came to Trinity College from Manchester grammar school in 1931 and remained there for the next seven years as an exceptionally brilliant undergraduate, research scholar and, from 1937, fellow. In 1934, the year of his graduation (double starred first in history), he joined the Communist party, in which he remained for the next 25 years. His first book, British Diplomacy in China 1880-1885 (1939) announced his consistent interest in the world outside Europe.

Unlike his Trinity comrade John Cornford, about whom he wrote with remarkable perception, his public profile among Cambridge Communist party members of the 1930s was low. Only those with special interests were likely to meet him, a boyish face emerging in a dressing-gown from among mountain ranges of books on the attic floor of Trinity Great Court. This was because he soon took over the officially non-existent "colonial group" from the Canadian EH Norman, later a distinguished historian of Japan, diplomat and eventual victim of the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the US, and first of a succession of communist (and later ex-communist) historians who looked after the "colonials" - overwhelmingly from south Asia - until 1939.

Marxism and the irresistible friendship of Indians moved Victor, in 1938, to use one year of his four-year Trinity fellowship to visit the subcontinent. This was nominally "to see the political scene at closer hand and with some schemes for historical study" and he also had a Comintern document for the Indian CP.

He was to stay there until 1946, mainly as a teacher at a Sikh college and, somewhat unexpectedly, at that stronghold of the raj and its rajahs, Aitchison college, both in Lahore. He returned, "reading Thucydides on the Peloponnesian war" in his cabin, with a cargo of friendships, a permanent passion for the great (and progressive) Urdu poets Iqbal and Faiz whom he translated, but with no apparent trace in his subsequent life of a short-lived marriage to Shanta Gandhi, whom he had got to know in London in 1938. Few of his British friends were even aware of it, or expected to see this quintessential bachelor don with a wife, before his fortunate second marriage in 1984 to Heather Massey.

He returned to Trinity, an unreconstructed, but always critical, communist with vast plans for a Marxist work on Shakespeare. His referee denounced his politics when he applied for posts at Oxford and Cambridge universities, but - such was Britain in 1948 - did not mind the charming subversive contaminating the history department at Edinburgh University. There he remained until retirement from a chair in 1977, to all appearances at ease with himself, though not, except for some science fiction, with the post-1945 cultural world. He returned from long bicycle rides across the Pentlands to a flat at the top of an austere staircase in the New Town, to write - not least the diary which he had kept since 1935 - and amaze students and admiring friends by his surprise that they did not know as much as he.

He settled down in the 1950s to publish on everything: from Wordsworth to Faiz, evangelicalism to mercenaries and absolute monarchy, Indo-Central Asian problems, Paraguay and the "war of the Pacific" of Chile, Peru and Bolivia, not forgetting a full-scale study of the Spanish revolution of 1854. In the 1960s he discovered his unique gift of asking historical questions, and suggesting answers, by bringing and fitting together an unparalleled range of erudition, constantly extended by one of the great readers of our time. He became the master of the perfectly chosen quotation inserted into a demure but uncompromising survey of a global scene. Nobody else could have produced the remarkable works on the era of western empires he wrote after the middle 1960s, and by which he will be chiefly remembered, notably The Lords of Human Kind: Black Man, Yellow Man and White Man in an Age of Empire (1969).

Age increased his output and the range of his writings. Co-editing A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (1984), he wrote entries on agnosticism, Christianity, empires in Marx's day, Hinduism, historiography, intellectuals, Paul Lafargue, nationalism, MN Roy, religion, revolution and war. Before the end of the 20th century he published books on State and Society in Europe 1550-1650 (1980), The Duel in European History (1989), Tobacco: A History (1991), Shakespeare Poet and Citizen (1992), Eight Tragedies of Shakespeare (1996) and Horace Poetics & Politics (1999) on his admired poet.

To mark his 90th birthday, the future general secretary of the Communist party (Marxist) of India edited Across Time and Continents, a selection of Victor's writings and reminiscences of the subcontinent which had been closer to his heart than any other part of the 20th-century world.

His wife Heather survives him.

• Victor Gordon Kiernan, historian, born 4 September 1913; died 17 February 2009.

More here .

Hugo Chavez must reject the El Caudillo road.

The newspapers reported this week that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has vowed to advance his "Bolivarian revolution" after winning a referendum to abolish presidential term limits, boosting his ambition to rule Venezuela for decades. Chávez, 54 and a decade in power, signaled he will run again when his term ends in 2013. Apparently he has spoken of ruling beyond 2030. 

The European left has mainly welcomed this, Redmond O’Neill, a member of Socialist Action who acted as deputy chief of staff to the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, went further and wrote a piece welcoming the outcome of the referendum in the Guardian. Seeing the outcome as a progressive step.

Far from welcoming the prospect of Hugo Chavez governing Venezuela for decades, I find the prospect horrendous. A large warning light goes off in my head when any politician demands to be allowed to be in office for an unlimited period of time, I am a great believer that ten years is more than enough for any politician to serve in a senior post, whether it be Prime Minister, President, or Secretary General. When it is a left-wing politico, rather than seeing it as a sign of success I view it as the first sign of failure. For it makes no different whether a governing politician is of the left or right, the longer they remain in office the more autocratic they become and the more they are surrounded by yes men/women and opportunists on the make, it cannot be otherwise as power inevitable corrupts.

However my objections are based on the mere corruption of human beings whilst in high office. If socialism is to mean anything and have lasting value it must be based on a continuous renewal of both personnel and political ideas. Otherwise a cirrhosis sets in, which when State power is involved is epitomized by the bureaucratization of the state machine. Those within it, whether politicians or bureaucrats will end up defending their positions and privileges ferociously. They come to see the working classes, who make regular demands upon them, as the enemy and any demands for an extension of democratic freedoms will be seen as an attack on the State. Thus overtime they will chip away at democratic freedoms and begin to act in an oppressive and coercive manner.

There is little doubt Hugo Chavez has been a breath of fresh air in Venezuela and has inspired millions of people across the South American continent. The working classes of town and country and the dispossessed have made real gains under the Chavez governments. On the downside, after ten years in power, the fact the Barrios still surround cities like Caracas and within them workers often live in appalling housing conditions, displays the limits of Chavez’s achievements so far. His administration is increasingly becoming victim to the great leader syndrome, that Chavez has been unable or unwilling to bring along a successor who would replace him in 2013 speaks volumes on where his government is heading if it continues on its current course.

The lack of any viable successor is not simply about the outcome of the 2013 presidential election, Chavez is a mere man, thus were he to die tomorrow, due to giving the appearance that his revolution is a one man show, many of the achievements of his Bolivarian revolution may die with him as the masses descend into a period of grief and confusion.

Chavez is often portrayed as a second Fidel, but nothing could be further from the truth, his ‘revolution’ is more on a par with Peronism than the Cuban revolution. Although it has achieved far more for its working class electorate. Nevertheless it is paternalistic in a big way. One need only look at what happened in Argentina to understand that in the end the El Caudillo road runs off the rails. 

There are also questions of the demographic changes that take place over the years within the electorate and the sheer exhaustion many voters display when a politician over stays their welcome. Ken Livingstone was a partial victim to this in the last London Mayoral elections and by not having a successor in place he may well have put in jeopardy many of his achievements as Mayor.

Hugo Chavez has approximately four years before the next presidential election, he can, and may do great things within this period of time, but those on the left who genuinely wish him well, must argue that these years are also used to bring forward a number of comrades, one of whom will eventually become a worthy successor as President of Venezuela.

One Minute: To See the Truth About Palestine

Ronnie Biggs, David Mills and Silvio Berlusconi: What a difference power makes.

Ronnie Biggs, the former mail train robber will be 80 in August, he is a frail and sick old man and was recently returned to Norwich prison after receiving three days of hospital treatment for pneumonia. He is said to be unable to speak properly or walk after a series of strokes. Despite having served a third of his sentence, which makes him eligible for parole, the State still demands its pound of flesh from this sick old man.

His son Michael said, [who is a living example that Biggs amounts to far more than his media image]

"I think the public will be appalled to see what state my father is in once he gets released from prison. Perhaps the government was not hoping that he would last this long, but he has, and now that he has done his time they have to let him out."

Compare the treatment Biggs is receiving with that of David Mills, the husband of the New Labour politician Tessa Jowell, who has been found guilty in an Italian court of excepting a half million dollar bribe and perverting the course of justice. Is he soon to be whisked away to an Italian jail to serve his sentence, of course not, for not only are Mills and his wife part of the British establishment, but Silvio Berlusconi, the creature who paid him the bribe is now once again Prime Minister of Italy. Thus Mills court file will be lost in the maze of the Italian justice system until the statute of limitations on his case runs out. 

Whereas Biggs committed the crime for which he is incarcerated 50 years ago, Mills crime was comparatively recent and it is the type of crime that has helped plunge the worlds economies into depression. The outcome of which has been disastrous for millions of ordinary people.

The only bright spot about this tale is the bleating of Jowell, for it exposes her as a liar and hypocrite. “This is a terrible blow to David and I have never doubted his innocence.” Oh really, then just why did Jowell pretend to separate from him on Blair’s orders, only days after it became public knowledge that Mills had taken a massive backhander from the ships crooner.

What a bunch, what a world.

MATT: Amongst the best political cartoonists on the block.

A recent report said the population of the UK is the most spied upon in the world, whether it be CCTV, government departments and agencies or the private sector, almost every thing we do beyond the home is recorded. Regular readers will know I am a great admirer of the Daily Telegraph cartoonist MATT, for me some of the more popular of todays cartoonists put far to much detail in to their drawings. MATT is of the old school and sticks to drawing everyday situations which run a coach and horse through the underhandedness, stupidity and pomposity of those who govern us.  

Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism.

Irish Republicanism is currently passing through a traumatic period of reassessment and regroupment. It is not an exaggeration to say that many Republicans have been shaken to the core by Sinn Fein’s (SF) willingness to not only enter the Stormont Assembly, which many support, but to also help administer British rule in the north of Ireland and by so doing sending out a signal that it accepts the Police Service of Northern Ireland as a legitimate vehicle of law and order.

Whilst the more traditionally minded Republicans have found a home in Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s Republican Sinn Fein,(RSF) which was founded after Ó Brádaigh’s supporters broke from the Provos back in 1986, over Republicans taking their seats in the southern parliament. Although firmly established RSF has failed to gain a mass support base in either of the Irish political jurisdictions.

Those who defected from the Provisional’s over the last decade, after the terms of the ‘Peace Process’ became to onerous to accept, have also struggled to build an alternative to SF. The largest group to emerge has been éirígí, whilst it has managed to recruit some of the more experienced activists from the SF, along with young people who are new to Republicanism, it has yet to decide whether it will stand candidates for local and parliamentary office. Which demonstrates that this is still a contentious issue amongst its membership. It has carried out some audacious act of agitprop, but as one experienced left republican said to me, “Fine, it gets éirígí name into the public consciousness but it does not put bread on the table. 

What he meant was that for Republicans to be effective there must be a combination of political activity on the street and within local councils and other elected bodies. One of the major failures of Left Irish republicanism has been its inability to gain a foothold within and thus have a left republican voice within Stormont and the Dáil, the lower house of the ROI parliament. This leaves the way clear for SF’s brand of Republicanism, which some critics believe comes close to being a form of collaborationist politics, which has resulted in SF making major concessions in both jurisdictions to the political right.

Thus a new book by Sinn Fein member and left republican Eoin Ó Broin is to be welcomed, Eoin was part of a left republican grouping within Dublin SF. Whilst many of these comrades went on to found éirígí, Eoin has remained within SF and regularly argues his corner in the Party’s paper An Phoblacht. http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/37430 

It is from this paper that the piece below was first published.

MH

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New book: 'Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism'

A NEW BOOK, Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism, by An Phoblacht columnist and Sinn Féin activist Eoin Ó Broin, is set for release next week in Dublin and in Belfast.

Published by Pluto Press of London, the book is a critical analysis of the past, present and future of Sinn Féin and ‘left republican’ politics.

 

The premise of the book is that, despite the growth of the party in recent years, Sinn Féin is much misunderstood and often misrepresented.

Speaking to An Phoblacht this week, Ó Broin said:

“I wanted to write a book which, on the one hand, told the history of Sinn Féin and left republicanism from its origins in the 18th century to the present while, at the same time, offering a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the left republican project.”

CHAPTERS

The book is divided into four chapters.

Left Republican Origins explores the history of the United Irishmen, Young Ireland and late 19th century socialists.

The Arrival of Left Republicanism takes a critical look at Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party and asks why this project was such a political failure.

Left Republican Interventions looks at various left republican forces during the 20th century, including Liam Mellows, the Republican Congress, Clan na Poblachta and the Workers’ Party/Democratic Left. Again, the author explores why each of these projects failed to develop into significant long-term political projects.

The book’s final chapter, A Century of Struggle, charts the history of the Sinn Féin party from Arthur Griffith to the present.

Ó Broin again asks why left republicanism failed to become dominant within the broader nationalist movement or indeed in the country as a whole. He also explores the relationship of Sinn Féin’s nationalism to its socialism, and issues of class, gender and the party’s attitude to unionists.

HISTORY LESSON

The book’s conclusion, The History Lesson, looks to the future and asks how Sinn Féin can become the dominant political force in Ireland.

“The vast majority of books on republicanism,” Ó Broin says, “are written by non-republicans. This does not diminish the value of books by such authors but it is time that we started to engage in the debate about our own past, present and future in a more analytical, critical and reflective way. To do so can only strengthen our ability to advance the struggle for a 32-county democratic socialist Ireland.”

The Belfast launch will take place the following Wednesday, 18 February, at 7pm in Lecture Theatre 2, St Mary’s College on the Falls Road. Sinn Féin Mayor of Belfast Tom Hartley will chair and former Hunger Striker Dr Laurence McKeown and Queen’s University Belfast Professor Richard English will speak.