The BNP is facing serious opposition to its plan to stand 300 candidates in the coming general election. While the party’s leader, Nick Griffin, believes that it has a chance of winning its first seats in parliament, the Nazi party is opposed wherever it shows its face. Protesters drowned out most of its press conference at the launch of its campaign in Stoke. In Barking, east London, an angry demonstration forced Griffin to move a planned walkabout last Saturday. Unite Against Fascism activists leafleted shoppers in the centre of the constituency where Griffin is planning to stand in the general election. Griffin and his supporters were forced to retreat from a key part of the constituency and go leaflet elsewhere; the demonstration was brought together by local people with just a day’s notice. The BNP’s thugs are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up the “respectable” image they put on to win elections. The party tries to convince voters that it is in favour of law and order, but leading members are returning to street violence - several are involved in organising the violent protests organised by the English, Welsh and Scottish Defence Leagues.
The BNP has launched its election campaign under the banner “Support Our Troops – Bring Our Boys Home”. Rose Gentle from Military Families Against the War, whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq in June 2004, was shocked to hear that the BNP is using the war to win votes. She said, “Military Families is made up of different people from different backgrounds. The boys who have died come from different nationalities. “If the BNP thinks we will support them they are very wrong and people need to know that. It is a disgrace that they are using the deaths of our family members for electoral purposes.” Activists in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire are organising to block a two pronged assault from the forces of fascism. The thugs of the English Defence League (EDL) say they will descend on the city this weekend, while the British National Party (BNP) plans to stand in three local seats in the coming general election. A protest in the city will oppose the EDL’s attempt to terrorise the Muslim community. Jason Hill, president of North Staffordshire TUC, told Socialist Worker that the trade union movement is mobilising to join with students and others. “We are expecting a good turnout – the NASUWT, Unison, the NUT and other unions are asking their members to attend. “There are coaches coming from across the north west of England and the East Midlands.”
The British National Party (BNP) and the English, Welsh and Scottish Defence Leagues are flip sides of the same Nazi coin. Fascists have built their support through a combination of legal electoral activity and street violence. Fascists have built their support through a combination of legal electoral activity and street violence. Nick Griffin has tried to temporarily rein in the BNP’s most overt displays of bigotry and violence in an attempt to worm his way into the political mainstream. This has fed the frustration of many Nazi thugs—and boosted the EDL. The EDL and the BNP deny they are linked, yet leading BNP members were involved in setting up the EDL. Key BNP members and supporters have been spotted at EDL protests. The EDL has fascists at its core. Its members make Nazi salutes and been heard chanting racist slogans. EDL members went on the rampage in Luton earlier this year, attacking areas with a large Muslim population. But they have been beaten back by anti-fascist protests in Birmingham, Harrow and Manchester - it is our responisbility solely to protect the equal, diverse, liberal democracy and society we have for the protection of all. Modern society needs to reject this filth, otherwise we could see a repeat of Nazi Germany.
Unite Against Fascism (UAF) will hold its annual conference on Saturday 13 February in central London. The conference will be crucial for all those who oppose the Nazis and want to stop them making gains – both in elections or in strength on the streets. The BNP has made some gains on the back of the economic crisis, anti-immigrant racism, Islamophobia and anger with mainstream politicians. But they have always been opposed – and the next few months will be key to building up that opposition. Nazi Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, has declared that he will stand in the east London seat of Barking in the general election. Anti-fascists in the area are campaigning to expose his racist lies and maximise the anti-BNP vote. Many local community groups and trade unionists are backing Unite Against Fascism’s Don’t Vote Nazi campaign. Activists from across London will be joining a national day of activity in the area on Sunday of next week, leafleting wards with anti-fascist leaflets. The rise of the National Front in the 1970s saw an increase in racist and homophobic violence – but also of resistance that drove the Nazis back. They grew in the 1970s against the backdrop of a Labour government that had let working class people down. Unemployment was rising and wages were falling.
That provided the background for the Nazis to exploit the growing misery and insecurity – and try to direct that anger at inority groups. The NF started polling high in elections, which gave them the courage to march on the streets and attack black people and socialists amongst others; many were trying to stop them, but it was mostly local and uncoordinated. A group of leading BNP members from the Midlands have been pictured speaking at a recent neo-Nazi rally in Germany. BNP organiser Mike Bell headed a group of British fascists, joining others from across Europe at a rock festival organised by the German fascist NPD group. This shows that the BNP is serious about building a network of fascist groups across Europe. A BNP councillor in Carmarthenshire, Wales, has provoked outrage with calls for drug dealers to be killed. Kevin Edwards, a community councillor in the village of Penygroes, told the local paper that drug dealers should be hanged on live television. We need to strip the mask away. The BNP’s ultimate aim is the destruction of democracy. That is why we need to physically confront the Nazis wherever they try to organise.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
We must address child poverty
Another year, another set of disappointing child poverty figures. This is the third year in a row that ministers have had to admit that they have failed yet again to make any headway on achieving their goal of halving child poverty by 2010. To be fair, yesterday's statistics show no change, compared with increases in poverty rates in the last two years. But that is not much cause for relief when government looks set to miss its self-imposed target by 600,000 children next year. In fact, the government has essentially given up on the 2010 goal, with ministers all but admitting this is one target they are prepared to miss. They are now focusing exclusively on the bigger (and more distant) goal of ending child poverty altogether by 2020. Last month's budget, the last one that will make any difference to the 2010 poverty figures, allocated a paltry £200m to child poverty measures, compared to the £4.2bn that campaigners say was required. The job creation programme announced in the budget will help some struggling families, but is unlikely to make much difference to the 2010 target.
Clearly, finances were tight in this budget and Alistair Darling had no extra cash for child poverty. But we should never have got into a situation where we needed £4bn in one budget – government should have been making sustained investment every year, with a final push this year. Labour's failure on the 2010 goal shows what happens when historic pledges are not backed up by real investment. Ending child poverty by 2020 is the right long-term vision, but in practice, Labour has now almost certainly missed the first two milestones along the way – to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2005 and halve it by 2010. The fact that it has failed to make sustained progress on the scale required raises questions about the point of the longer-term goal. And every year of stalled progress means hundreds of thousands of children living with the everyday realities of poverty.
Targets can be crucial for catalysing action and investment in Whitehall but they can distort priorities and reduce complex social issues to simple statistics. Shifting a child over the poverty line is not a miracle cure and there is a danger that by focusing on a simple target we forget what poverty actually means for the millions of poor children in this country – no holidays, meals skipped, the stress of parents struggling to cope rubbing off on anxious children. This is perhaps Labour's biggest failure – to convince the public that child poverty is something worth caring about. Despite the boldness of the original pledge, and significant progress up to 2004, Labour has never found a way of getting the public to buy into the goal of ending child poverty within a generation. The idea of child poverty in the UK remains an oxymoron for most people and there is no consensus about the concept of relative poverty. This lack of resonance makes it easier for government to dismiss the lobbying of child poverty campaigners, particularly when public finances are stretched.
Everyone who is concerned about child poverty must urgently find new ways of talking about poverty and inequality that engage voters, parents and people working with families and children. At a political level, the major parties need to reassert their commitment to the 2020 goal – and show us how they intend to get there. The Conservatives have said that the 2020 target would be an aspiration if they were in government, but they need to demonstrate that they understand the root causes of poverty, which go far beyond family breakdown and low aspirations. Most importantly, any government with a genuine commitment to end child poverty will have to demonstrate that they are prepared to make the necessary investment over the long term – which means spending money, whether on tax credits, employment programmes, skills or parenting support. This will be difficult for the next few years, but it is a vital investment in future generations and in our future prosperity.
Clearly, finances were tight in this budget and Alistair Darling had no extra cash for child poverty. But we should never have got into a situation where we needed £4bn in one budget – government should have been making sustained investment every year, with a final push this year. Labour's failure on the 2010 goal shows what happens when historic pledges are not backed up by real investment. Ending child poverty by 2020 is the right long-term vision, but in practice, Labour has now almost certainly missed the first two milestones along the way – to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2005 and halve it by 2010. The fact that it has failed to make sustained progress on the scale required raises questions about the point of the longer-term goal. And every year of stalled progress means hundreds of thousands of children living with the everyday realities of poverty.
Targets can be crucial for catalysing action and investment in Whitehall but they can distort priorities and reduce complex social issues to simple statistics. Shifting a child over the poverty line is not a miracle cure and there is a danger that by focusing on a simple target we forget what poverty actually means for the millions of poor children in this country – no holidays, meals skipped, the stress of parents struggling to cope rubbing off on anxious children. This is perhaps Labour's biggest failure – to convince the public that child poverty is something worth caring about. Despite the boldness of the original pledge, and significant progress up to 2004, Labour has never found a way of getting the public to buy into the goal of ending child poverty within a generation. The idea of child poverty in the UK remains an oxymoron for most people and there is no consensus about the concept of relative poverty. This lack of resonance makes it easier for government to dismiss the lobbying of child poverty campaigners, particularly when public finances are stretched.
Everyone who is concerned about child poverty must urgently find new ways of talking about poverty and inequality that engage voters, parents and people working with families and children. At a political level, the major parties need to reassert their commitment to the 2020 goal – and show us how they intend to get there. The Conservatives have said that the 2020 target would be an aspiration if they were in government, but they need to demonstrate that they understand the root causes of poverty, which go far beyond family breakdown and low aspirations. Most importantly, any government with a genuine commitment to end child poverty will have to demonstrate that they are prepared to make the necessary investment over the long term – which means spending money, whether on tax credits, employment programmes, skills or parenting support. This will be difficult for the next few years, but it is a vital investment in future generations and in our future prosperity.
Recession & class
2009 will be remembered above all as the year that the political and social fallout from the world capitalist crisis began to dramatically affect hundreds of millions of workers throughout the entire world. But it began with the savage Israeli invasion of Gaza. Millions watched in anger as the Israeli army fought a grossly one-sided war against the Palestinians. At least 1,400 Palestinians were slaughtered while only 13 Israelis were killed. Four of these were killed by so-called friendly fire, although the Palestinians no doubt didn’t think it was friendly. The invasion sparked mass protests which demonstrated the fact that, in the world of the internet and 24 hour news, the crimes of imperialism are a lot more difficult to cover up. But of course everything was apparently about to change with the inauguration of Barack Obama. It’s probably true to say that no other US President in history (including JFK) has ever come into office with so many hopes riding on him. Many of those aspirations and expectations have been cruelly dashed over the past months as US unemployment has continued to rocket, standing now at 15.1 million. As it appears from the last set of elections, the Apathy Party has begun to gain ground.
The consequences of the banking crisis have revealed themselves as a slump. Throughout the world, companies have been falling like ninepins. In Britain unemployment is approaching 3 million and tragically 1 million of these are young people under the age of 25. But that’s not the end of it and next year could see the rate rising to 4 million. As might be expected, figures like these don’t engender a warm, loving feeling towards the government and New Labour’s woes only increased in the June local and European elections. Large swathes of what were previously Labour heartlands have now turned a murky shade of blue and yellow with victories by the Tories and LibDems. The stench of privatisation in these councils is more reminiscent of the sort of bile and brimstone of the Thatcher years. It was 25 years since the beginning of the miners’ strike in March this year, a timely reminder of what a Tory victory nationally would really mean for workers. New Labour’s star is on the wane. Murdoch’s Sun has now nailed itself to the Tory mast and the days when Tony Blair and Mandelson were the toast of News International editors and the bosses are long gone. The MPs’ expenses scandal, though it affected all parties, inevitably served to further discredit New Labour as the party in government.
It is to the eternal shame of Blair, Brown and New Labour that tens and even hundreds of thousands of Labour voters just don’t bother turning out to vote at the moment. After all, the right wing of the party has had 12 years with a huge parliamentary majority but, far from squeezing the rich, Blair and Brown have frustrated many workers with their pro-business policies. A minority of disillusioned workers have turned to the racist programme of the BNP. Griffin and another BNP candidate managed to get elected to the European Parliament, but what was most noticeable in those elections was the abstention rate. The reformist/nationalist programme presented by the Communist Party of Britain and Socialist Party’s NO2EU campaign received a derisory vote, proving that there are no short cuts to fighting in the official labour movement for a socialist programme. This socialist programme is also necessary to undermine the BNP and send them scuttling back under their stones. We saw a glimmer of that fighting approach in November in Glasgow with the Scottish Defence League nazis being fought off by the decent majority. But despite the lack of movement on the political front, the workers have moved towards industrial struggle instead. Notable in 2009 has been the reappearance of factory occupations in Britain. Some readers will be familiar with the wave of occupations in Latin America, but it’s been a long time since we saw factory occupations here. In fact the first examples of occupations in these islands weren’t in Britain, but in Ireland. The workers of Waterford Crystal took over the factory after management announced it was going to close.
While the depth of the recession forced many workers to take a sharp intake of breath in 2008, what’s been noticeable in 2009 has been sections of workers taking a stand against job losses and pay cuts. This was particularly the case with the construction workers at Lindsey who took on the bosses after they had tried to undermine their national trade union agreement. Despite a virulent campaign in the press, which tried to present the strike as a battle around “British Jobs for British workers”, the management were forced to back down in the face of solid united strike action. Just recently the postal workers have been involved in a series of strikes against Post Office privatisation, backed up by an absolutely solid strike ballot result. These struggles have fed through into the trade unions themselves, most notably in Jerry Hicks’ support in the Amicus-Unite General Secretary election. In a sense 2009 represented the passing of one political period and beginning of the next. It was the end of the series of fireworks associated with the banking crisis and little old ladies queuing up outside Northern Rock, and a period where workers began to draw their conclusions from the political and economic crisis that they found themselves in. There are big changes in workers’ consciousness taking place under the surface and big struggles and class conflicts are being prepared, not just in Britain, but on a global level. Three international examples stand out.
On the one hand the enormous movement against the electoral fraud in Iran, which has refused to die down despite repression by the state. From Iran’s history: the revolutionary movement of 1979 demonstrates that the Iranian working class are quite capable of toppling even the most heavily armed regime. On the other hand the mass movement in Honduras against the coup that toppled Mel Zelaya reveals the weakness of reaction. Despite the farcical agreement signed recently, the working class, properly prepared and mobilised, could potentially overthrow the illegitimate government provided that the correct leadership is present. In Venezuela the Bolivarian movement continues to develop and the next period will see the strengthening of the PSUV, the mass party led by Chavez. Sooner or later the Bolivarian Revolution needs to move forward and challenge capitalism in Venezuela, and then in the whole of Latin America, if it is to succeed. The limits of imperialism are further revealed in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, which has now spread into Pakistan. The conflict is proving a huge drain on US and British resources - and for what? The recent elections have proven to be a farce with widespread irregularities, and neither Karzai nor the Taliban offer any solution for the masses. If the health of a society is reflected in the way that its women are treated, then Afghanistan looks to be on life-support for decades to come. The only solution for the workers and peasants of Afghanistan lies in a socialist federation in South Asia. That can only come about through the strength and combativity of the South Asian working class.
As 2010 struck across the Middle East, Asia, South America, the ruined European economies and the USA, millions of workers are looking for a way out of the misery of capitalist crisis. Capitalism has reached an impasse. The capitalist crisis has seen a bigger collapse in production than in 1931 but, given the growth of the world market and the interpenetration of the capitalist economies, its political ramifications will echo around the whole of the globe for years. We have a world economy, a world market and world politics. A successful socialist revolution in one major country would have a dramatic effect and would act as a beacon for the entire world. Latin America has been the epicentre of huge movements over the past few years, but the effect of the crisis means that the potential to transform society along socialist lines exists all over the world. World socialism would allow us to transform the lives of millions of people, to plan the harmonious development of society and to lift whole continents out of misery. It would see an end to the horrors of capitalism, sectarianism and poverty, starvation and disease. That’s a big prize.
The consequences of the banking crisis have revealed themselves as a slump. Throughout the world, companies have been falling like ninepins. In Britain unemployment is approaching 3 million and tragically 1 million of these are young people under the age of 25. But that’s not the end of it and next year could see the rate rising to 4 million. As might be expected, figures like these don’t engender a warm, loving feeling towards the government and New Labour’s woes only increased in the June local and European elections. Large swathes of what were previously Labour heartlands have now turned a murky shade of blue and yellow with victories by the Tories and LibDems. The stench of privatisation in these councils is more reminiscent of the sort of bile and brimstone of the Thatcher years. It was 25 years since the beginning of the miners’ strike in March this year, a timely reminder of what a Tory victory nationally would really mean for workers. New Labour’s star is on the wane. Murdoch’s Sun has now nailed itself to the Tory mast and the days when Tony Blair and Mandelson were the toast of News International editors and the bosses are long gone. The MPs’ expenses scandal, though it affected all parties, inevitably served to further discredit New Labour as the party in government.
It is to the eternal shame of Blair, Brown and New Labour that tens and even hundreds of thousands of Labour voters just don’t bother turning out to vote at the moment. After all, the right wing of the party has had 12 years with a huge parliamentary majority but, far from squeezing the rich, Blair and Brown have frustrated many workers with their pro-business policies. A minority of disillusioned workers have turned to the racist programme of the BNP. Griffin and another BNP candidate managed to get elected to the European Parliament, but what was most noticeable in those elections was the abstention rate. The reformist/nationalist programme presented by the Communist Party of Britain and Socialist Party’s NO2EU campaign received a derisory vote, proving that there are no short cuts to fighting in the official labour movement for a socialist programme. This socialist programme is also necessary to undermine the BNP and send them scuttling back under their stones. We saw a glimmer of that fighting approach in November in Glasgow with the Scottish Defence League nazis being fought off by the decent majority. But despite the lack of movement on the political front, the workers have moved towards industrial struggle instead. Notable in 2009 has been the reappearance of factory occupations in Britain. Some readers will be familiar with the wave of occupations in Latin America, but it’s been a long time since we saw factory occupations here. In fact the first examples of occupations in these islands weren’t in Britain, but in Ireland. The workers of Waterford Crystal took over the factory after management announced it was going to close.
While the depth of the recession forced many workers to take a sharp intake of breath in 2008, what’s been noticeable in 2009 has been sections of workers taking a stand against job losses and pay cuts. This was particularly the case with the construction workers at Lindsey who took on the bosses after they had tried to undermine their national trade union agreement. Despite a virulent campaign in the press, which tried to present the strike as a battle around “British Jobs for British workers”, the management were forced to back down in the face of solid united strike action. Just recently the postal workers have been involved in a series of strikes against Post Office privatisation, backed up by an absolutely solid strike ballot result. These struggles have fed through into the trade unions themselves, most notably in Jerry Hicks’ support in the Amicus-Unite General Secretary election. In a sense 2009 represented the passing of one political period and beginning of the next. It was the end of the series of fireworks associated with the banking crisis and little old ladies queuing up outside Northern Rock, and a period where workers began to draw their conclusions from the political and economic crisis that they found themselves in. There are big changes in workers’ consciousness taking place under the surface and big struggles and class conflicts are being prepared, not just in Britain, but on a global level. Three international examples stand out.
On the one hand the enormous movement against the electoral fraud in Iran, which has refused to die down despite repression by the state. From Iran’s history: the revolutionary movement of 1979 demonstrates that the Iranian working class are quite capable of toppling even the most heavily armed regime. On the other hand the mass movement in Honduras against the coup that toppled Mel Zelaya reveals the weakness of reaction. Despite the farcical agreement signed recently, the working class, properly prepared and mobilised, could potentially overthrow the illegitimate government provided that the correct leadership is present. In Venezuela the Bolivarian movement continues to develop and the next period will see the strengthening of the PSUV, the mass party led by Chavez. Sooner or later the Bolivarian Revolution needs to move forward and challenge capitalism in Venezuela, and then in the whole of Latin America, if it is to succeed. The limits of imperialism are further revealed in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, which has now spread into Pakistan. The conflict is proving a huge drain on US and British resources - and for what? The recent elections have proven to be a farce with widespread irregularities, and neither Karzai nor the Taliban offer any solution for the masses. If the health of a society is reflected in the way that its women are treated, then Afghanistan looks to be on life-support for decades to come. The only solution for the workers and peasants of Afghanistan lies in a socialist federation in South Asia. That can only come about through the strength and combativity of the South Asian working class.
As 2010 struck across the Middle East, Asia, South America, the ruined European economies and the USA, millions of workers are looking for a way out of the misery of capitalist crisis. Capitalism has reached an impasse. The capitalist crisis has seen a bigger collapse in production than in 1931 but, given the growth of the world market and the interpenetration of the capitalist economies, its political ramifications will echo around the whole of the globe for years. We have a world economy, a world market and world politics. A successful socialist revolution in one major country would have a dramatic effect and would act as a beacon for the entire world. Latin America has been the epicentre of huge movements over the past few years, but the effect of the crisis means that the potential to transform society along socialist lines exists all over the world. World socialism would allow us to transform the lives of millions of people, to plan the harmonious development of society and to lift whole continents out of misery. It would see an end to the horrors of capitalism, sectarianism and poverty, starvation and disease. That’s a big prize.
Friday, 15 January 2010
Islam4UK ban is undemocratic
Alan Johnson's decision to ban al-Muhajiroun and its various incarnations (including Islam4UK) will no doubt be publicly welcomed by many of our tabloids – ironically the very same ones that have done so much in recent years to hype the activities of this minuscule group – but is banning the group really how a confident liberal democracy should be responding? To be sure, the overwhelming majority of British Muslims have been left greatly embarrassed and frustrated by al-Muhajiroun's continual publicity-seeking and frankly repulsive antics which have included holding a 9/11 commemoration meeting entitled "A Towering Day in History", shouting abuse at British soldiers returning from duty in Iraq, and declaring a "March for Sharia" through Trafalgar Square to expound on their vision of what Britain would look like under their interpretation of Islamic law. The statement they made regarding the Wooton Basset march did not mention the date of the proposed march and indeed the local Wiltshire police confirmed that they had not received any notification from any organisation asking permission to hold any such march. Furthermore, no one seemed to have stopped to ask how a tiny group of unemployed layabouts from the London area would be able to afford the train fare to Wootten Bassett, let alone have enough supporters on hand to carry coffins through the town.
Still, the very idea of such a demonstration was enough to send much of our media, including the so-called quality press, into a tailspin and play right into the hands of Islam4UK who must have marvelled at the amount of publicity they had managed to generate. For the patently evident goal of al-Muhajiroun and its off-shoots has been to seek to divide and polarise communities by inciting public opinion against Muslims. And for all their mock outrage at the activities of al-Muhajiroun, much of our media has been complicit in this mischief-making. It is true that a ban on al-Muhajiroun may temporarily deprive our newspapers of their favourite bogeymen, but for how long? In 2006, the government banned two previous outfits containing al-Muhajiroun elements, al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect, but it was not long before the very same faces emerged behind new organisational names and carried on as usual from where they had left off. So, there is a very real question about how effective this ban will prove to be in practice. This in turn lends credence to the view that the move to ban al-Muhajiroun is perhaps more to do with domestic electoral considerations than intelligent and effective policy-making.
Al-Muhajiroun members openly denounce the "evils" of democracy and freedom. "Freedom go to hell" says one of their placards. The controversy over Wootton Bassett was a good opportunity to demonstrate to al-Muhajiroun and their sympathisers the benefits of these values in action. The appropriate way to deal with the actions of al-Muhajiroun members is surely transparently and through our legal system. If individuals are known to have incited violence then they should be prosecuted. But we should be very wary of giving our government the arbitrary power to ban entire organisations. It also sets a bad precedent. The Conservative party has already made clear that if they attain power they will ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, a party that is fiercely critical of the UK's foreign policies in the Middle East but is also an avowedly non-violent group. It increasingly appears that, given sustained media scaremongering, many of us may be prepared to see the criminalising of dissent.
Today, the British government will proscribe the Islamist organisation Islam4UK and gift its leader, Anjem Choudary, with the useful satisfaction of telling its "former" members, "See? I told you so." Choudary argues that this latest ban, one of a number that have been imposed on extremist groups he has been involved with, is a prima facie example of the narrow inadequacies and febrile delusions of liberal democracy. The annoying thing is that, according to his own limited and specific agenda anyway, he is right. Ostensibly, Islam4UK has been banned for the same reason as its former incarnations have been banned. People involved in Choudary's groups, which have been operating in Britain for years, previously under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed, have gone on to be convicted of acts of terrorism. Choudary argues that the group should not be held responsible for the crimes of people who are no longer members. Yet logic dictates that since such a large proportion of former members become involved directly in terrorism, then Islam4UK and its proxies play a large part in their incitement. They do, of course. In the face of a slew of persuasive evidence, there can be no doubt of that.
Specifically, though, the timing of this latest ban is intimately connected with the group's claim that it was going to march through Wootton Bassett, which is situated near RAF Lyneham. The small Wiltshire town has come to prominence in recent years because its townspeople, on their own initiative, had begun paying silent tribute to the dead British servicemen whose bodies were driven through it as part of the grisly process of repatriation. Their act of simple respect attracted attention in the media. Why would it not? The Wootton Bassett tributes stood for something. That something, in turn, attracted the attention of Choudary, for whom the media, in its very hostility, is an important ally. Yet Choudary is not the first man to have alighted on the tributes at Wootton Bassett as a means of advertising his own agenda. Those who initiated the tributes, primarily the town's mayor, were keen to emphasise that theirs was not a political gesture, but a human one, signalling only individual sorrow for the young people who had lost their lives in far-off wars. They were making no statement about the wisdom or the justice of those wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet regimental standards started to appear in the crowds. People had to be asked to refrain from parading medals. An ex-serviceman started a petition, asking for Wootton Bassett's main street to be renamed Highway of Heroes. There was talk of the town being awarded the George Cross. Whether those who initiated the tributes liked it or not, their gesture was not always accepted on its own terms. In a quiet and still-dignified way, matters took on their own momentum, and the tributes were easy to interpret as expressing sympathy with military action. This was hardly a surprise. The Wootton Bassett tributes may have pretensions towards political neutrality. But they are inherently conservative, or at least inherently in tune with the needs of the establishment. They suggest that the role of the public is not to question the decisions of government, but merely to honour without complication the sacrifices of those who carry them out. All citizens of Britain have the right to support such humane passivity, or reject it. Choudary's showy rejection was hardly a surprise, despite all the expressions of shock and anger that it inspired.
None of this is pointed out in mitigation of Choudary's limited but successful attempt to co-opt Wootton Bassett into his own propaganda effort. The unwritten rule in the town was that theirs was a space for simple respect. Choudary wished to gatecrash that space, and publicise his own lack of simple respect by despoiling it. Liberal democracy enjoins people to let others get on with their own thing, uninterrupted, as much as possible, in theory, at least. Choudary, against liberal democracy, is very much against letting people get on with their own thing, uninterrupted, as much as possible. His crass but unanswerable point is that if liberal democracy were as good at fostering a multiplicity of views as it claims to be, then it wouldn't have such a problem with people like him, who make their free and inalienable choice to trample all over its conventions. Yet, the double-bind that Choudary perceives is real. Nothing could have made that more patently obvious than this week's decision by the European court, which condemned Britain's use of stop and search, under the Terrorism Act, as illegal. Again and again, Britain erodes democratic rights with the intention of defending them, the opposition generally supporting the government as it does so. Even though they are frustratingly simplistic, hopelessly partisan, horribly provocative and wholly destructive, Choudary's views, in this matter anyway, are not intellectually unsound.
Liberal democracy may be able to accommodate a wide range of viewpoints. But its operation ultimately rests on consensus. In that one respect, it bears a distant yet real resemblance to Choudary's dreamed-of Caliphate, in which society is stable because everyone adheres, at a fantastically prescriptive level, to exactly the same set of values. Islamists like Choudary, given the opportunity, are happy to explain that in the Caliphate all those problems that beset western individualist nations would vanish. No drinking, so no binge drinking. No abdication of respect for parents and other senior family members, so no crisis in care for the elderly. No female sexualisation, so no porn, no rape, no prostitution, no need for such ideologies as feminism. No charging of interest, so no volatile economic activity. An obligatory tithe for the poor, so no want. And so on. Islamists like Choudary, when asked to give a single example of a Muslim society that has actually achieved such splendid tidiness, will reel off centuries of examples of European-colonial or US-interventionist sabotage of Muslim states, reserving special contempt for the sponsored puppets who led Muslim countries under the connivance of Britain or the US or both, from Saddam to Gadaffi to Karzai and far beyond. It's a tribute to the robust attractions of liberal democracy that Choudary and his ilk do not have more success in peddling their abject tale of Muslim victimhood.
In Choudary's opinion, the British men who die in Afghanistan should not have been there at all. For him, this latest Afghan adventure is like all of the others, in which foreign powers try to impose their own ideologies on the country, in person or by proxy. Certainly, Afghanistan was invaded with the intention of establishing it as a liberal democracy. It is now clear that this was far more easily said than done, and it's time that was admitted. Men like Choudary should not be appeased. But when a town has to defend itself against the hijacking of simple, basic rituals for a variety of forms of political gain, as Wootton Bassett has, then something is not right. Choudary's views can be dismissed. But the other tensions in Wootton Bassett cannot be.
Still, the very idea of such a demonstration was enough to send much of our media, including the so-called quality press, into a tailspin and play right into the hands of Islam4UK who must have marvelled at the amount of publicity they had managed to generate. For the patently evident goal of al-Muhajiroun and its off-shoots has been to seek to divide and polarise communities by inciting public opinion against Muslims. And for all their mock outrage at the activities of al-Muhajiroun, much of our media has been complicit in this mischief-making. It is true that a ban on al-Muhajiroun may temporarily deprive our newspapers of their favourite bogeymen, but for how long? In 2006, the government banned two previous outfits containing al-Muhajiroun elements, al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect, but it was not long before the very same faces emerged behind new organisational names and carried on as usual from where they had left off. So, there is a very real question about how effective this ban will prove to be in practice. This in turn lends credence to the view that the move to ban al-Muhajiroun is perhaps more to do with domestic electoral considerations than intelligent and effective policy-making.
Al-Muhajiroun members openly denounce the "evils" of democracy and freedom. "Freedom go to hell" says one of their placards. The controversy over Wootton Bassett was a good opportunity to demonstrate to al-Muhajiroun and their sympathisers the benefits of these values in action. The appropriate way to deal with the actions of al-Muhajiroun members is surely transparently and through our legal system. If individuals are known to have incited violence then they should be prosecuted. But we should be very wary of giving our government the arbitrary power to ban entire organisations. It also sets a bad precedent. The Conservative party has already made clear that if they attain power they will ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, a party that is fiercely critical of the UK's foreign policies in the Middle East but is also an avowedly non-violent group. It increasingly appears that, given sustained media scaremongering, many of us may be prepared to see the criminalising of dissent.
Today, the British government will proscribe the Islamist organisation Islam4UK and gift its leader, Anjem Choudary, with the useful satisfaction of telling its "former" members, "See? I told you so." Choudary argues that this latest ban, one of a number that have been imposed on extremist groups he has been involved with, is a prima facie example of the narrow inadequacies and febrile delusions of liberal democracy. The annoying thing is that, according to his own limited and specific agenda anyway, he is right. Ostensibly, Islam4UK has been banned for the same reason as its former incarnations have been banned. People involved in Choudary's groups, which have been operating in Britain for years, previously under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed, have gone on to be convicted of acts of terrorism. Choudary argues that the group should not be held responsible for the crimes of people who are no longer members. Yet logic dictates that since such a large proportion of former members become involved directly in terrorism, then Islam4UK and its proxies play a large part in their incitement. They do, of course. In the face of a slew of persuasive evidence, there can be no doubt of that.
Specifically, though, the timing of this latest ban is intimately connected with the group's claim that it was going to march through Wootton Bassett, which is situated near RAF Lyneham. The small Wiltshire town has come to prominence in recent years because its townspeople, on their own initiative, had begun paying silent tribute to the dead British servicemen whose bodies were driven through it as part of the grisly process of repatriation. Their act of simple respect attracted attention in the media. Why would it not? The Wootton Bassett tributes stood for something. That something, in turn, attracted the attention of Choudary, for whom the media, in its very hostility, is an important ally. Yet Choudary is not the first man to have alighted on the tributes at Wootton Bassett as a means of advertising his own agenda. Those who initiated the tributes, primarily the town's mayor, were keen to emphasise that theirs was not a political gesture, but a human one, signalling only individual sorrow for the young people who had lost their lives in far-off wars. They were making no statement about the wisdom or the justice of those wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet regimental standards started to appear in the crowds. People had to be asked to refrain from parading medals. An ex-serviceman started a petition, asking for Wootton Bassett's main street to be renamed Highway of Heroes. There was talk of the town being awarded the George Cross. Whether those who initiated the tributes liked it or not, their gesture was not always accepted on its own terms. In a quiet and still-dignified way, matters took on their own momentum, and the tributes were easy to interpret as expressing sympathy with military action. This was hardly a surprise. The Wootton Bassett tributes may have pretensions towards political neutrality. But they are inherently conservative, or at least inherently in tune with the needs of the establishment. They suggest that the role of the public is not to question the decisions of government, but merely to honour without complication the sacrifices of those who carry them out. All citizens of Britain have the right to support such humane passivity, or reject it. Choudary's showy rejection was hardly a surprise, despite all the expressions of shock and anger that it inspired.
None of this is pointed out in mitigation of Choudary's limited but successful attempt to co-opt Wootton Bassett into his own propaganda effort. The unwritten rule in the town was that theirs was a space for simple respect. Choudary wished to gatecrash that space, and publicise his own lack of simple respect by despoiling it. Liberal democracy enjoins people to let others get on with their own thing, uninterrupted, as much as possible, in theory, at least. Choudary, against liberal democracy, is very much against letting people get on with their own thing, uninterrupted, as much as possible. His crass but unanswerable point is that if liberal democracy were as good at fostering a multiplicity of views as it claims to be, then it wouldn't have such a problem with people like him, who make their free and inalienable choice to trample all over its conventions. Yet, the double-bind that Choudary perceives is real. Nothing could have made that more patently obvious than this week's decision by the European court, which condemned Britain's use of stop and search, under the Terrorism Act, as illegal. Again and again, Britain erodes democratic rights with the intention of defending them, the opposition generally supporting the government as it does so. Even though they are frustratingly simplistic, hopelessly partisan, horribly provocative and wholly destructive, Choudary's views, in this matter anyway, are not intellectually unsound.
Liberal democracy may be able to accommodate a wide range of viewpoints. But its operation ultimately rests on consensus. In that one respect, it bears a distant yet real resemblance to Choudary's dreamed-of Caliphate, in which society is stable because everyone adheres, at a fantastically prescriptive level, to exactly the same set of values. Islamists like Choudary, given the opportunity, are happy to explain that in the Caliphate all those problems that beset western individualist nations would vanish. No drinking, so no binge drinking. No abdication of respect for parents and other senior family members, so no crisis in care for the elderly. No female sexualisation, so no porn, no rape, no prostitution, no need for such ideologies as feminism. No charging of interest, so no volatile economic activity. An obligatory tithe for the poor, so no want. And so on. Islamists like Choudary, when asked to give a single example of a Muslim society that has actually achieved such splendid tidiness, will reel off centuries of examples of European-colonial or US-interventionist sabotage of Muslim states, reserving special contempt for the sponsored puppets who led Muslim countries under the connivance of Britain or the US or both, from Saddam to Gadaffi to Karzai and far beyond. It's a tribute to the robust attractions of liberal democracy that Choudary and his ilk do not have more success in peddling their abject tale of Muslim victimhood.
In Choudary's opinion, the British men who die in Afghanistan should not have been there at all. For him, this latest Afghan adventure is like all of the others, in which foreign powers try to impose their own ideologies on the country, in person or by proxy. Certainly, Afghanistan was invaded with the intention of establishing it as a liberal democracy. It is now clear that this was far more easily said than done, and it's time that was admitted. Men like Choudary should not be appeased. But when a town has to defend itself against the hijacking of simple, basic rituals for a variety of forms of political gain, as Wootton Bassett has, then something is not right. Choudary's views can be dismissed. But the other tensions in Wootton Bassett cannot be.
Labour on life support?
Having spent the past decade attacking its own supporters, the Labour Party is now in deep crisis. Elected on a wave of revulsion with the Tories in 1997, New Labour today is in crisis. The party faces wipeout at the next election. Opinion polls predict it could lose 17 of its 44 MPs in London alone. Millions who hoped that Labour would be different are now asking questions – about why the party attacks ordinary people, what that shows about the nature of Labour, and whether the party has a future. Talk of the “death of Labour” is premature – even if a Tory government is elected. The party could revive as a symbol of opposition and could even shift its rhetoric to the left. For people who are shocked by the scale of Tory cuts, Labour could become a beacon of hope, even if it maintains its right wing policies. Part of the reason for this is the strength of reformist ideology. Reformism – the belief that capitalism can be improved to meet the needs of working people without the need for more radical social change – is common sense to most people, most of the time.
This is hardly surprising. The key institutions of society perpetuate the ideology of capitalism. The parliamentary system, schools and the media all present the world in a way that makes alternative ways of organising seem unrealistic, or worse, dangerous. The main reason why working class people accept reformist ideas has to do with their position in society. Workers produce all of the wealth. But because they have no control over what is produced or what happens to it afterwards, rather than feeling like they are players, workers usually feel like pawns. Society becomes something that shapes them, rather than something they can shape. Reformism flows from these feelings of powerlessness. Because it raises confidence, workers’ self-activity – such as strikes and industrial action – is a key element in weakening the hold of reformism. The ideas it rests on can be broken down when we assert control over our lives. When workers’ experiences don’t coincide with what they’ve been told, many will question aspects of the system. But some experiences, like big strikes or major campaigns, can lead people to question the system as a whole and push them to look to alternatives like socialism.
Nevertheless, even at times of mass struggle, people often still have contradictory ideas – on the one hand embracing new notions of militancy and solidarity, while as the same time continuing to hold on to old prejudices. Therefore reformist ideas won’t completely melt away. And even if workers are driven away from a reformist party, like Labour, this is not necessarily a wholesale rejection of reformism. It is for this reason that the Labour Party has been able to rebound from crushing defeats. The fact that Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats are all united in demanding spending cuts adds to a general assumption that all the main parties are essentially the same. But for all its crimes, Labour is not the same as the Tories. The party’s history and connection to the workers’ movement mean that despite its betrayals, millions of workers have seen it as their party. Trade unionists and socialists formed the Labour Party in the early 20th century because they wanted workers to have a political voice. Much to the disgust of New Labour “modernisers”, the party retains a political and financial link to the trade unions. And, unlike the Tories and Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party contains a few principled left-wingers who take up battles on the side of ordinary people.
But today’s Labour left is both small and politically weak; while it wants to push for left wing policies, it does not want to risk damaging the government. Many on the left of the party share the pessimism that lay behind the creation of New Labour – that class struggle is a thing of the past. They believe the left must “modernise” if its ideas are to get a hearing in their cynical bubble. Many former left wingers have found that rather than changing the party, they are changed by it. Those like Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman, who were once proud to stand on picket lines, can become cheerleaders for the most horrendous attacks on workers and the poor – particularly at times of economic crisis. Labour’s history of attacking the working class did not begin with Tony Blair. New Labour represents a serious shift in ideology from Old Labour, but it doesn’t represent a fundamental break. It is true that New Labour has enthusiastically embraced neoliberalism and the idea that big business can run society more efficiently than the state. Its attacks on jobs, pensions, welfare provision and services are a direct assault on its own core supporters.
Yet so-called “Old Labour” attacked workers too. Within a few years of heralding the birth of the welfare state, a Labour government began rolling back its reforms. The 1948 budget froze wages and changed tax rules to benefit the rich. The prescription and dental charges that were to undermine the NHS started as ideas under Labour. Labour prime minister Harold Wilson responded to a financial crisis in the 1960s with cuts to wages and spending on health, housing and pensions. His government worked with the security services to break a strike by the National Union of Seamen. During the economic crisis of the 1970s, it was a Labour government that slashed pay and spending and created the demoralisation that was a prerequisite for the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in 1979. And, to the shock of many on the left, it was precisely the link between the party and the workers’ movement that allowed Labour governments to get away with it. The leaders of the trade unions would greet the announcement of every new assault with the cry, “however bad this is, it would be worse under the Tories”.
Surely if the government rejected bosses’ demands for cuts and instead implemented policies that people actually want, it would stand more chance of being re-elected? Most people who have voted Labour in the past are opposed to policies that allow the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. They want to see an end to privatisation and war, and support greater funding for services like health and education. So why does Labour continue to attack them? The answer to this conundrum lies not only with the free market ideology that Labour has so wholeheartedly adopted. It lies in the very nature of the Labour Party itself – and the nature of capitalism. Labour was formed by the trade union bureaucracy. It is a reformist party that accepts the constraints of the capitalist system. Crucially, it believes in the concept of a “national interest”. In reality this means that the profits must come before people, and that what’s good for big business is good for us all. Past Labour governments that have attempted to resist this pressure have quickly found that power lies not with parliament, but with the ruling class – those who own the factories and workplaces and run all of the major institutions of society.
In the mid-1970s Labour cut business taxes after bosses caused a crisis by moving their money abroad and caused the value of the pound to collapse. Having learnt its lesson, the government set about making workers pay for the crisis with the biggest assault on living standards since the Second World War. Progressive reforms, like the welfare state and the NHS, can’t simply be explained by looking at which party introduced them. Sometimes even the most profit-hungry capitalists will support reforms they think they will benefit them – or ones that could prevent social explosions. In boom times, more reforms may be possible. But accepting the logic of capitalism means that, in times of crisis, Labour will advocate sacrifices. New Labour will likely lose the next election – not because most people want David Cameron’s Tories in power, but because they are so disgusted with Labour that they can’t bring themselves to vote for the party any more. Building resistance to the attacks – whether they come from a Labour or Tory government – is crucial to defending our living standards. But is also key to revival of working class confidence necessary to both break the hold of reformism and fight for a system that does not fail the majority.
This is hardly surprising. The key institutions of society perpetuate the ideology of capitalism. The parliamentary system, schools and the media all present the world in a way that makes alternative ways of organising seem unrealistic, or worse, dangerous. The main reason why working class people accept reformist ideas has to do with their position in society. Workers produce all of the wealth. But because they have no control over what is produced or what happens to it afterwards, rather than feeling like they are players, workers usually feel like pawns. Society becomes something that shapes them, rather than something they can shape. Reformism flows from these feelings of powerlessness. Because it raises confidence, workers’ self-activity – such as strikes and industrial action – is a key element in weakening the hold of reformism. The ideas it rests on can be broken down when we assert control over our lives. When workers’ experiences don’t coincide with what they’ve been told, many will question aspects of the system. But some experiences, like big strikes or major campaigns, can lead people to question the system as a whole and push them to look to alternatives like socialism.
Nevertheless, even at times of mass struggle, people often still have contradictory ideas – on the one hand embracing new notions of militancy and solidarity, while as the same time continuing to hold on to old prejudices. Therefore reformist ideas won’t completely melt away. And even if workers are driven away from a reformist party, like Labour, this is not necessarily a wholesale rejection of reformism. It is for this reason that the Labour Party has been able to rebound from crushing defeats. The fact that Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats are all united in demanding spending cuts adds to a general assumption that all the main parties are essentially the same. But for all its crimes, Labour is not the same as the Tories. The party’s history and connection to the workers’ movement mean that despite its betrayals, millions of workers have seen it as their party. Trade unionists and socialists formed the Labour Party in the early 20th century because they wanted workers to have a political voice. Much to the disgust of New Labour “modernisers”, the party retains a political and financial link to the trade unions. And, unlike the Tories and Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party contains a few principled left-wingers who take up battles on the side of ordinary people.
But today’s Labour left is both small and politically weak; while it wants to push for left wing policies, it does not want to risk damaging the government. Many on the left of the party share the pessimism that lay behind the creation of New Labour – that class struggle is a thing of the past. They believe the left must “modernise” if its ideas are to get a hearing in their cynical bubble. Many former left wingers have found that rather than changing the party, they are changed by it. Those like Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman, who were once proud to stand on picket lines, can become cheerleaders for the most horrendous attacks on workers and the poor – particularly at times of economic crisis. Labour’s history of attacking the working class did not begin with Tony Blair. New Labour represents a serious shift in ideology from Old Labour, but it doesn’t represent a fundamental break. It is true that New Labour has enthusiastically embraced neoliberalism and the idea that big business can run society more efficiently than the state. Its attacks on jobs, pensions, welfare provision and services are a direct assault on its own core supporters.
Yet so-called “Old Labour” attacked workers too. Within a few years of heralding the birth of the welfare state, a Labour government began rolling back its reforms. The 1948 budget froze wages and changed tax rules to benefit the rich. The prescription and dental charges that were to undermine the NHS started as ideas under Labour. Labour prime minister Harold Wilson responded to a financial crisis in the 1960s with cuts to wages and spending on health, housing and pensions. His government worked with the security services to break a strike by the National Union of Seamen. During the economic crisis of the 1970s, it was a Labour government that slashed pay and spending and created the demoralisation that was a prerequisite for the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government in 1979. And, to the shock of many on the left, it was precisely the link between the party and the workers’ movement that allowed Labour governments to get away with it. The leaders of the trade unions would greet the announcement of every new assault with the cry, “however bad this is, it would be worse under the Tories”.
Surely if the government rejected bosses’ demands for cuts and instead implemented policies that people actually want, it would stand more chance of being re-elected? Most people who have voted Labour in the past are opposed to policies that allow the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. They want to see an end to privatisation and war, and support greater funding for services like health and education. So why does Labour continue to attack them? The answer to this conundrum lies not only with the free market ideology that Labour has so wholeheartedly adopted. It lies in the very nature of the Labour Party itself – and the nature of capitalism. Labour was formed by the trade union bureaucracy. It is a reformist party that accepts the constraints of the capitalist system. Crucially, it believes in the concept of a “national interest”. In reality this means that the profits must come before people, and that what’s good for big business is good for us all. Past Labour governments that have attempted to resist this pressure have quickly found that power lies not with parliament, but with the ruling class – those who own the factories and workplaces and run all of the major institutions of society.
In the mid-1970s Labour cut business taxes after bosses caused a crisis by moving their money abroad and caused the value of the pound to collapse. Having learnt its lesson, the government set about making workers pay for the crisis with the biggest assault on living standards since the Second World War. Progressive reforms, like the welfare state and the NHS, can’t simply be explained by looking at which party introduced them. Sometimes even the most profit-hungry capitalists will support reforms they think they will benefit them – or ones that could prevent social explosions. In boom times, more reforms may be possible. But accepting the logic of capitalism means that, in times of crisis, Labour will advocate sacrifices. New Labour will likely lose the next election – not because most people want David Cameron’s Tories in power, but because they are so disgusted with Labour that they can’t bring themselves to vote for the party any more. Building resistance to the attacks – whether they come from a Labour or Tory government – is crucial to defending our living standards. But is also key to revival of working class confidence necessary to both break the hold of reformism and fight for a system that does not fail the majority.
Tory rule's ugly reality
David Cameron moved to attack immigrants this week as the Tories proved they’re still the nasty party. Pushed on his immigration policies, Cameron said, “I don’t support our population going to 70 million. “The pressures, particularly on our public services, have been very great.” He went on to say that he wants to slash migration by an incredible 75 percent using a “cap” system. Yet most of the population increase is from births – and the cuts are to pay for the bank bailout, not because of population “pressures”. Cameron also made his starkest statement yet about his cuts plans this week. Asked if he wanted to make more cuts or make the cuts earlier, he replied, “It’s both, and one leads to the other. We think it should start now. We would have an emergency budget within 50 days. It would start to do some of those things.” Meanwhile, John Redwood, Cameron’s economic adviser, wants cuts too – cuts to the taxes of the rich. He said, “Tax cuts must be cuts in taxes on enterprise. Cut the higher rate of income tax, cut the corporation tax rate.”
Cameron’s airbrushed, rosy cheeks are plastered on billboards across the land, selling brand Cameron like cheap washing powder. But behind the Eton toff’s smile is the real, vicious face of the Tories. On the posters he pledges not to cut the NHS – but he’s already admitted that hospitals could be closed. And this week multi-millionaire Cameron made a major speech saying it is the “strong and secure families” that determine children’s chances in life – and that poverty has nothing to do with it. Cameron’s latest wheeze is to tackle “yobs” in schools by forcing parents to sign “behaviour contracts” saying they will discipline their kids. Cameron has also insisted that plans to hand out tax breaks for marriage will go ahead, taking money from lone parents and handing it to middle class couples. At the same time he’s planning to cut £200 million from SureStart children’s centres. What’s he going to do with the money? One of his firm policies is to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million – handing cash to the children of the super-rich; this is just the tip of the Tory iceberg. The ruling class has ditched New Labour. Now it is looking to the Tories to try to make the working class pay for the economic crisis. A Conservative government would give every racist and every boss confidence to go on the offensive. But we can stop their cuts – if we fight back.
Cameron’s airbrushed, rosy cheeks are plastered on billboards across the land, selling brand Cameron like cheap washing powder. But behind the Eton toff’s smile is the real, vicious face of the Tories. On the posters he pledges not to cut the NHS – but he’s already admitted that hospitals could be closed. And this week multi-millionaire Cameron made a major speech saying it is the “strong and secure families” that determine children’s chances in life – and that poverty has nothing to do with it. Cameron’s latest wheeze is to tackle “yobs” in schools by forcing parents to sign “behaviour contracts” saying they will discipline their kids. Cameron has also insisted that plans to hand out tax breaks for marriage will go ahead, taking money from lone parents and handing it to middle class couples. At the same time he’s planning to cut £200 million from SureStart children’s centres. What’s he going to do with the money? One of his firm policies is to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million – handing cash to the children of the super-rich; this is just the tip of the Tory iceberg. The ruling class has ditched New Labour. Now it is looking to the Tories to try to make the working class pay for the economic crisis. A Conservative government would give every racist and every boss confidence to go on the offensive. But we can stop their cuts – if we fight back.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Will Tories be worse than Labour?
In some cases, it is difficult to see how. The truly awful Woolas and Purnell, to give two examples of Ministers who have used their power against the weakest and most vulnerable in society (as well as taking it out on civil service unions) would be difficult to beat for sheer nastiness; though this is a list that could go on and on. But, of course, they will be.The real question is whether the Tories’ savage cuts will be any worse than the long-lasting cuts that Labour would inflict if elected. That’s a harder one to tell. On the one hand, the union leaders might stand up and fight the Tories, instead of posturing about the "influence" they have had over Labour while indulging in the beer and sandwiches in the corridors of power (or rather the prawn cocktails and cappuccinos). On the other hand, the degree of demoralisation these leaders have injected into their own ranks, and their failure to take up the struggle (with the few very noteworthy exceptions, such as Mark Serwotka, Matt Wrack, Bob Crow), and their seeming desire to witch-hunt their own activists in preference to fighting the cuts and privatisations of what they say is their own government - all suggest that it will take something more.
We need an alternative. Not just to fly the flag of socialism, but to make public the fact that cuts are not inevitable, that this recession is the fault of the government and the bankers, not the workers and those who want to work but can’t, that the wealth exists in society to fund our essential needs and services – and that environmentally sustainable jobs and production are possible. In short, to say that we should defend public services and promote public ownership and that we should argue for a democratically accountable society that plans and organises for the needs of the many and not the profits of the few. And we need the left to present this alternative. A simple and clear alternative to cuts and privatisation, to war and racism, to ecological destruction, and to the far right – notably the fascists that seek to fill the vacuum created by New Labour. And to be clear that the responsibility for the rise of the far right is that of Labour and its odious spokespeople who have legitimised their smears and lies and practically written the BNP’s website for them.
To do so, we need the left to organise in new ways, to develop a broad understanding between ourselves and our many organisations, to put forward an alternative that goes beyond the bourgeois democracy of first past the post and single party monoliths – and the obsession with tv debates and party political broadcasts. We have seen this year the trust develop between sections of the socialist left and the green left, so that candidates will not stand against each other in key seats. We need to encourage this trust and reject the age-old attempt to launch new flags shortly before elections and to insist that unity means everyone must come and join them, now. The list of things we can do together is not finite. Three immediate initiatives have identified themselves recently. First, the Peoples Charter has set out six simple demands, and local activists (for example in the North West) have started to ask all potential left candidates (including Labour) if they will support and implement these demands if elected.
Second, the Convention of the Left (prompted by Robert Griffiths of the CPB at the last Convention meeting in Brighton in September) is organising the one day conference "Making It Public" on February 27th in Manchester, where it is hoped everyone can unite to develop and promote the public alternative to cuts and privatisation, regardless of which electoral parties we may be supporting shortly after. And third there is a chance for ordinary activists on the left to "back the left". A simple letter now circulating [send to backtheleft@sent.com or join the facebook group at http://bit.ly/backtheleft] suggests that there are candidates of the left, across several political organisations, who should be supported by everyone who agrees that there is an alternative to Brown, Cameron or Clegg. Its not a definitive list, just some of the most well-known and principled left representatives, with Green Caroline Lucas, Respect George Galloway, independent Val Wise, Socialist Dave Nellist and Labour John McDonnell. And in the interests of unity the letter calls for left candidates to avoid clashing in the same seats.
He called it a "sit up and think" moment. For all those musing on what being David Cameron means, and who the Conservative leader is, this might indeed be a "eureka" day. Now we finally begin to get it. In a lecture today at the thinktank Demos on how families build character, he said he had found the social science equivalent of E=MC2. The research on which he will base his child poverty policy was "one of the most important findings for a generation". As used by him, the research for Demos was certainly a gem, a priceless pearl, a gift to conservatism beyond his wildest dreams. It proved, he claimed, that "the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by confident and able parents". What matters is not "the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting". He challenged "the left who have always argued that the best way to tackle disadvantage is to redistribute money from the rich to the poor". Instead – eureka – what children from every background need is "strong and secure families, confident and able parents, an ethic of responsibility instilled from a young age". With one bound, he is free.
In the realm of the blindingly obvious, children brought up by loving parents do better than the unloved. Is it all about money? No, the beloved children of a curate as poor as a church mouse will do fine. Unloved children of rich but frosty parents may do badly (don't mention the Queen). But there is no escaping the fact that children of families poverty-stricken for generations stand least chance. No one ever said they only lack money – they lack nearly everything. There was a wince at Cameron's interpretation from the Demos researcher who analysed the figures from the Millennium Cohort – a large group of children born in 2000. Jen Lexmond, co-author of Building Character, says poverty has an immense effect. Looking at what the report defines as the two key ingredients of good parenting – love and consistent boundary-setting – the authors found love scattered regardless of social class. But poor children had fewest rules imposed, because, she suggests of "more pressure, less support, a harder life".
And Cameron's "no statistical significance" between poverty and bad parenting stands everything on its head – though it may suit him to imply they are all down there because they are bad characters. Lexmond, however, makes another telling point: "It may not be in the best interests of the child growing up in hostile surroundings to be trusting and full of empathy. It may be rational to be bad, aggressive and impulsive." Cameron is a serial abuser of social research. He has form. This time he also turned upside down the work of Leon Feinstein, whose famous research found that after 23 months of age, the dim but rich child begins to make faster progress than the bright but poor child – until at the age of six their achievements cross over, the poor child sinking, probably for ever, as the dim but rich rises inexorably. Nurturing, conversation, stimulation, a good nursery and attention from educated parents push one upwards while the other falls prey to adversity.
In his recent Hugo Young lecture on poverty, Cameron badly misused the ground-breaking work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level. He acknowledged their incontrovertible proof that "the more unequal countries do worse according to every quality of life indicator", but in the next breath he ignored the very foundation of their work when he said: "That doesn't mean we should be fixated only by a mechanistic objective like reducing the Gini coefficient" – the measurement of the inequality that causes social dysfunction, crime, drugs, drink and all the social evils that put Britain near the bottom of the league for civility. But no one could be a Conservative and want to narrow the gap between top and bottom. Instead Cameron said he would seek to "focus on the gap between the bottom and the middle". Leaving the rich untouched is, of course, exactly what his inheritance tax plans do. But how lightly he treads, how delicately he picks his way among the prickles of the wicked issues, scattering a caveat here and there. Speaking on what builds "character", he was in his airy element yesterday, opining on family, parents and responsibility. But his dreamy vision of good parenting with two loving married parents sealed in matrimony by a tax allowance was blasted off the lectern by the reply to his speech from the magnificent Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company.
She takes no prisoners in her raw description of the 1.5 million children she estimates are profoundly neglected and abused by drunk, drugged, mentally ill and incapable families. Two parents? If only they had one half-functioning carer. Baby P is just one that came to notice – but shortage of social workers means most are kept off the register and thrown off after a few short visits. Long queues for children's mental health services leave them unsupported. These children are often left bereft by state as well as parents, a world away from the moralistic finger-wagging of politicians. And, no, she told him, voluntary organisations can't do it all. What would David Cameron do? Ominous threats were breezily implied, leaving no fingerprints. How about this? "We support tax credits but this exciting new evidence from Demos sets us a new challenge: to alleviate poverty of parenting, in the knowledge that it is the best way to help children escape material poverty." Will parenting classes compensate for tax credit cuts? He promises much needed extra health visitors – but Sure Start would face cuts, contracted out to voluntary groups in "a new spirit of enterprise" that would "pay by results". Here was his final homily: "Parenting is the coalface of creating character" – and who could disagree?
One deep character question remains: the nature of David Cameron, slippery as silk, smooth as his airbrushed cheeks, adept at allusion yet elusive on everything and totally out of touch with the real world. But little by little the blue beneath the skin seeps out with each new speech. We can now see the elitist Eton-educated Bullington Boy David Conman is; and increasingly as we realise this, we loathe him. Compassionate Conservatism, let alone "Progressive Conservatism" is exposed as a head-swivellingly empty oxymoron. Day by day we may understand it a little less and condemn it a little more.
We need an alternative. Not just to fly the flag of socialism, but to make public the fact that cuts are not inevitable, that this recession is the fault of the government and the bankers, not the workers and those who want to work but can’t, that the wealth exists in society to fund our essential needs and services – and that environmentally sustainable jobs and production are possible. In short, to say that we should defend public services and promote public ownership and that we should argue for a democratically accountable society that plans and organises for the needs of the many and not the profits of the few. And we need the left to present this alternative. A simple and clear alternative to cuts and privatisation, to war and racism, to ecological destruction, and to the far right – notably the fascists that seek to fill the vacuum created by New Labour. And to be clear that the responsibility for the rise of the far right is that of Labour and its odious spokespeople who have legitimised their smears and lies and practically written the BNP’s website for them.
To do so, we need the left to organise in new ways, to develop a broad understanding between ourselves and our many organisations, to put forward an alternative that goes beyond the bourgeois democracy of first past the post and single party monoliths – and the obsession with tv debates and party political broadcasts. We have seen this year the trust develop between sections of the socialist left and the green left, so that candidates will not stand against each other in key seats. We need to encourage this trust and reject the age-old attempt to launch new flags shortly before elections and to insist that unity means everyone must come and join them, now. The list of things we can do together is not finite. Three immediate initiatives have identified themselves recently. First, the Peoples Charter has set out six simple demands, and local activists (for example in the North West) have started to ask all potential left candidates (including Labour) if they will support and implement these demands if elected.
Second, the Convention of the Left (prompted by Robert Griffiths of the CPB at the last Convention meeting in Brighton in September) is organising the one day conference "Making It Public" on February 27th in Manchester, where it is hoped everyone can unite to develop and promote the public alternative to cuts and privatisation, regardless of which electoral parties we may be supporting shortly after. And third there is a chance for ordinary activists on the left to "back the left". A simple letter now circulating [send to backtheleft@sent.com or join the facebook group at http://bit.ly/backtheleft] suggests that there are candidates of the left, across several political organisations, who should be supported by everyone who agrees that there is an alternative to Brown, Cameron or Clegg. Its not a definitive list, just some of the most well-known and principled left representatives, with Green Caroline Lucas, Respect George Galloway, independent Val Wise, Socialist Dave Nellist and Labour John McDonnell. And in the interests of unity the letter calls for left candidates to avoid clashing in the same seats.
He called it a "sit up and think" moment. For all those musing on what being David Cameron means, and who the Conservative leader is, this might indeed be a "eureka" day. Now we finally begin to get it. In a lecture today at the thinktank Demos on how families build character, he said he had found the social science equivalent of E=MC2. The research on which he will base his child poverty policy was "one of the most important findings for a generation". As used by him, the research for Demos was certainly a gem, a priceless pearl, a gift to conservatism beyond his wildest dreams. It proved, he claimed, that "the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by confident and able parents". What matters is not "the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting". He challenged "the left who have always argued that the best way to tackle disadvantage is to redistribute money from the rich to the poor". Instead – eureka – what children from every background need is "strong and secure families, confident and able parents, an ethic of responsibility instilled from a young age". With one bound, he is free.
In the realm of the blindingly obvious, children brought up by loving parents do better than the unloved. Is it all about money? No, the beloved children of a curate as poor as a church mouse will do fine. Unloved children of rich but frosty parents may do badly (don't mention the Queen). But there is no escaping the fact that children of families poverty-stricken for generations stand least chance. No one ever said they only lack money – they lack nearly everything. There was a wince at Cameron's interpretation from the Demos researcher who analysed the figures from the Millennium Cohort – a large group of children born in 2000. Jen Lexmond, co-author of Building Character, says poverty has an immense effect. Looking at what the report defines as the two key ingredients of good parenting – love and consistent boundary-setting – the authors found love scattered regardless of social class. But poor children had fewest rules imposed, because, she suggests of "more pressure, less support, a harder life".
And Cameron's "no statistical significance" between poverty and bad parenting stands everything on its head – though it may suit him to imply they are all down there because they are bad characters. Lexmond, however, makes another telling point: "It may not be in the best interests of the child growing up in hostile surroundings to be trusting and full of empathy. It may be rational to be bad, aggressive and impulsive." Cameron is a serial abuser of social research. He has form. This time he also turned upside down the work of Leon Feinstein, whose famous research found that after 23 months of age, the dim but rich child begins to make faster progress than the bright but poor child – until at the age of six their achievements cross over, the poor child sinking, probably for ever, as the dim but rich rises inexorably. Nurturing, conversation, stimulation, a good nursery and attention from educated parents push one upwards while the other falls prey to adversity.
In his recent Hugo Young lecture on poverty, Cameron badly misused the ground-breaking work of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level. He acknowledged their incontrovertible proof that "the more unequal countries do worse according to every quality of life indicator", but in the next breath he ignored the very foundation of their work when he said: "That doesn't mean we should be fixated only by a mechanistic objective like reducing the Gini coefficient" – the measurement of the inequality that causes social dysfunction, crime, drugs, drink and all the social evils that put Britain near the bottom of the league for civility. But no one could be a Conservative and want to narrow the gap between top and bottom. Instead Cameron said he would seek to "focus on the gap between the bottom and the middle". Leaving the rich untouched is, of course, exactly what his inheritance tax plans do. But how lightly he treads, how delicately he picks his way among the prickles of the wicked issues, scattering a caveat here and there. Speaking on what builds "character", he was in his airy element yesterday, opining on family, parents and responsibility. But his dreamy vision of good parenting with two loving married parents sealed in matrimony by a tax allowance was blasted off the lectern by the reply to his speech from the magnificent Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company.
She takes no prisoners in her raw description of the 1.5 million children she estimates are profoundly neglected and abused by drunk, drugged, mentally ill and incapable families. Two parents? If only they had one half-functioning carer. Baby P is just one that came to notice – but shortage of social workers means most are kept off the register and thrown off after a few short visits. Long queues for children's mental health services leave them unsupported. These children are often left bereft by state as well as parents, a world away from the moralistic finger-wagging of politicians. And, no, she told him, voluntary organisations can't do it all. What would David Cameron do? Ominous threats were breezily implied, leaving no fingerprints. How about this? "We support tax credits but this exciting new evidence from Demos sets us a new challenge: to alleviate poverty of parenting, in the knowledge that it is the best way to help children escape material poverty." Will parenting classes compensate for tax credit cuts? He promises much needed extra health visitors – but Sure Start would face cuts, contracted out to voluntary groups in "a new spirit of enterprise" that would "pay by results". Here was his final homily: "Parenting is the coalface of creating character" – and who could disagree?
One deep character question remains: the nature of David Cameron, slippery as silk, smooth as his airbrushed cheeks, adept at allusion yet elusive on everything and totally out of touch with the real world. But little by little the blue beneath the skin seeps out with each new speech. We can now see the elitist Eton-educated Bullington Boy David Conman is; and increasingly as we realise this, we loathe him. Compassionate Conservatism, let alone "Progressive Conservatism" is exposed as a head-swivellingly empty oxymoron. Day by day we may understand it a little less and condemn it a little more.
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