Daniel Bensaid memorial meeting

These were my remarks from the chair at to open the meeting. The contributions from Alex Callinicos, Gilbert Achcar, Stathis Kouvelakis and Terry Conway were affectionate, moving without being sentimental and intellectually rigorous. The videos will be online over the next couple of days.

Welcome to this meeting to celebrate the life and work of our comrade Daniel Bensaid who died on January 12th.

Socialist Resistance which has organised this event is the section of the Fourth International in Britain and as you will all be aware Daniel was a prominent member of the International for the bulk of his political life. Like Chris Harman who also died recently Daniel was one of that generation who were brought to revolutionary politics by the wave of internationalism, militancy and class struggle that swept the world in the 1960s and 70s. Unlike many of their contemporaries Daniel and Chris lived and died as unrepentant, unbroken fighting socialists.

Last weekend in this building members of SR met in this building to discuss the International’s upcoming World Congress and to a great extent our debates were influenced both by Daniel’s personal legacy and the revolutionary Marxist tradition of which he was a part.

I’d like to briefly spotlight three elements of this legacy.

The first is an inflexible commitment to revolutionary democracy. You can see if you read the conference documents on the International Viewpoint website that a range of contending views are expressed. To borrow Rosa Luxemburg’s aphorism “freedom is only the freedom to dissent” and in common with other Fourth Internationalists Daniel vigorously defended this right in his own organisation and the organisations of the working class. Anyone familiar with the life of the LCR will be aware of its culture of lively debate and more or less comradely disagreement. We think that this has helped it emerge as a small but significant force in French politics.

The second is a shared conception of the necessity for a broad class struggle party to fill the political vacuum being created by the Europe wide march to the right of the traditional workers’ parties. Different national settings impose different tactical choices. The LCR decided to dissolve itself in order to establish the NPA. This was not an uncontroversial choice inside the Fourth International. In Britain members of SR are active inside Respect which we see as a potential component of a broader working class party and in our discussions over the weekend the French experience was an important point of reference and it has been one which has strongly influenced our political approach in recent years.

The third and final point I want to make is a shared awareness of the necessity to see Marxism as a creative instrument with which we can change the world. Just as in the 1960s and 70s Marxists were obliged to deal with the new realities created by the women’s movement and the LGBT movement now we have to integrate an understanding of ecology in a way that is novel for many of us. An attempt to elaborate a Marxist approach to the catastrophic climate change that capitalism is creating has been a central part of the political work that SR has been involved in over recent years – to the extent that we call ourselves an ecosocialist current in order to register the centrality of this issue in our politics. Again this is being reflected in the discussions in the International. This is only right since unless the working class and its organisations elaborate our response to climate change the people who created the problem will impose theirs.

So it’s apt that on the day when as the result of the crooks, gamblers and speculators  who play the currency markets the working classes of Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy are facing attacks on their pensions, wages and social services that we meet to honour Daniel.

Margaret Hodge, New Labour and old racism

Alf Filer writes

The call for tighter immigration controls and the adopting of a points system, is Margaret Hodge’s response to the BNP in Dagenham and elsewhere. She argues that the present system is unfair and argues for a new points system to be based on length of residence or national insurance contributions in determining whether migrants have made a fair contribution to society and whether they should be treated the same rights as local families. Her views are welcomed by Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the MigrationWatch, “’This sounds like a very promising idea.”

Dave Landau of the No One is Illegal campaign, in making the case for open borders reminds us of the famous phrase from the Communist Manifesto, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” This, he says, is the underlying principle of Socialism. But Margaret Hodge has added a caveat – ‘unless you are a migrant’. No surprise really: she long abandoned the principles of socialism – if she ever truly embraced them.

What about the unfair advantages of New Labour and Tory economic migrants who come and go with their millions to evade tax? What about the Treasury’s slowness in tightening up of the tax loopholes? How many companies have reregistered in tax havens over the past decade to evade tax, whilst making their profits in this country at the expense of their workers on the minimum pay and under dreadful working conditions? How many jobs have been lost as a result? Then the same bosses turn round and expect workers to be patriotic and sing God Save the Queen. The only response we can have to this is an internationalist response which acknowledges the international nature of capitalism and for an international eco-socialist set of solutions.

Dave then goes on to ask “Within much of the Left there has arisen a strange self-censorship in respect to immigration controls. In private the Left will say it is opposed to all controls. However at the same time it argues that such a demand is “too advanced” or “too abstract” to argue in public. We consider this bizarre position is based on pessimism about confronting the hard and popular racism behind immigration controls.”

New Labour’s record on the maltreatment of asylum seekers, the horrendous conditions at Yarl’s Wood, and the methods by which young families are forcibly deported puts this country to shame. As Dave states, “those subject to control are human beings not vegetables or inanimate objects”.

Racist abuse at the immigration removal centre run by the private company Global Solutions Ltd (formerly Group 4 ) have been well documented. At present, around 50 women are in their 5^th day of hunger strike at Yarl’s Wood protesting over their detention and conditions of imprisonment. It houses 405 women and children in unacceptable surroundings. They are trapped in hallways, kettled in and denied access to medical attention.

Cristel Amiss of the Black Women’s Rape Action Project is calling for the women to be immediately allowed back in their rooms and demanding an immediate investigation into this. She pointed out that “over 70% of the women are rape survivors, many are sick and vulnerable”. She asks, “why are they being punished for raising serious injustices?”

E.U. supporters argue in favour of the Single European Act, upholding the free movement of labour within the enlarged Europe. What they really mean is the absolute freedom of capital to move anywhere it wishes to, with the aid of the WTO rules and have the freedom to exploit globally labour and our planets’ resources in the pursuit of profit. They can then be free to dictate the rules and turn on and off the tap of immigration as it suits them.

Free Nelson Mandela Anniversary T-shirt

27 years in captivity. Nelson Mandela was finally released by South Africa’s Apartheid regime on 11 February 1990 two decades ago. And this year the country, which he was democratically elected President of, celebrates 20 years of freedom as well as hosting Africa’s first World Cup. Philosophy Football’s 20th anniversary ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ T-shirt is the perfect kit for 2010, whatever your team. Available from Philosophy Football.

During the magnificent campaign for Nelson Mandela’s release one song stood out, The Specials AKA’s  ‘Free Nelson Mandela’  revisit it  at 
Philosophy Football’s  shirt both celebrates this message that inspired a generation to dance, march and boycott but also South Africa’ achievements in its two decades of freedom. Plus the shirt helps raise funds for Action for Southern Africa,www.actsa.org,  the successor to the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

(On an autobiographical note – Mandela Hall in the students’ union in QUB used to be called the Mc Mordie Hall in honour of a Belfast industrialist slagged off by James Connolly. I moved the motion changing the name. Thankfully I was prevailed upon to change my original proposal which had been to call it the Arthur Scargill Hall. But as the man said “those were different times”.)

Some Lessons of the Recent Events in the SWP

Dave Packer and Jane Kelly have asked me to publish this contribution to the recent discussions.

The whole of the left in Britain, from those few still in the Labour Party to far left and revolutionary groups is in crisis. For twenty-five years, since the defeat of the Miners’ strike of 1984-5 we have been mostly on the defensive and the class struggle, measured in strike actions, or TU involvement in campaigns, compared to other European countries such as France, has been at a very low level. Only the anti-war mobilisation – for a time – and the growing movement against climate change have generated significant momentum, while the anti globalisation movement, or action against debt, have been a pale reflection of that in Europe. Attempts at left unity to fill the political space vacated by a right wing Labour Government, have either failed or at best found it difficult to make an impact. Most have floundered due to typical British sectarianism and bureaucratic and undemocratic manipulations of the movement

In this context, the crisis in the SWP is significant for the whole of the left. To understand and learn the lessons of this crisis we have to analyse the situation and place it in its historical context. It is not adequate to blame this or that leadership or individual.

The divisions in the SWP which led to the formation of the Left Faction – now dissolved – has not yet led to a major split and most members of the faction remain in the group. However this process is not over. The resignation of Tony Dowling after being ordered to resign his membership of the North East Shop Stewards Network followed by the resignation of eight members of Tyneside SWP shows that the crisis continues and is leading to a haemorrhaging of members. It is both a sad reflection of the politics of the SWP, but also highlights the failures of the British far left in this period when capitalism faces the unique twin crises of the collapse of the banks, severe credit restrictions triggering a general economic down turn and the accelerating effects of climate change.

The failure of the left in Britain to come together in the face of this double crisis of capitalism and its immediate failure to offer some form of united socialist alternative in the coming General Election is alarming. This needs some explanation and solutions. The two factions in the SWP, while proclaiming the need for some kind of broad unifying left party, fail to offer a serious balance sheet of their past errors in the Socialist Alliance and Respect and consequently fail to outline any credible perspective. But first we have to ask why their internal discussions have led to such extreme conflict of split proportions. It can’t just be explained by clique politics but comes down to the nature of party democracy and functioning.

Tendencies and factions

The right of dissent in the SWP has always been severely curtailed with tendencies and factions only allowed in the three month period leading up to the conference. Tendencies hardly ever exist and instead differences seem to go immediately to the formation of a faction – but the right to organise around either is limited. This flawed democracy in itself creates explosive tensions. In the recent past Molyneux has taken a different position to the leadership, but failed to be integrated into the leadership. A genuine revolutionary democracy will always try to integrate loyal minorities. It would also promote the right of self organisation of youth, black people, LGBT, women, etc., in the organisation.

Whether the left faction was really a faction is questionable, the issues seem closer to those of a tendency suggesting this may be more about personal resentments than politics. The faction’s claims of undemocratic practices in the election of delegates to conference, which apparently included some full-timers for example, or the fact that Rees was dropped from the leadership slate at the last conference, are disingenuous, as for many years the faction leadership was part of that same regime. There is no balance sheet of this lack of internal democracy in the faction’s documents.

Why is this important? Partly because the practices of the SWP and their wrong interpretation of democratic centralism (often described as Leninism in the debates on the blogs) give these terms a very bad name indeed. As some have pointed out, you’d be very wary of such a leadership gaining power after a revolution. But more importantly in the present context the leadership (and membership) of the SWP have consistently imported these over-centralist, top-down methods into the labour movement, campaigns and recent attempts to build broad parties to the left of Labour. It is a methodology learnt inside the organisation, which they wrongly think of as combative, Leninist party building.

The need for a broad party of the working class and the oppressed.

In fact both the SWP and the Socialist Party have a lot to answer for over the past decade. Without going into the ins and outs of the evolution of the Socialist Alliance and the first attempt at building Respect (let alone Scargill’s SLP) the necessary attempts to build broad class struggle parties to the left of Labour have been stymied by undemocratic methods (this includes No2EU and its successor TUSC), sectarian responses to other organisations with legitimate rights to be part of the process and confused understandings by so called, or self styled Trotskyist organisations, of the relationship between revolutionary parties and broad parties. The SWP’s use of the term ‘united front of a special kind’ was indeed simply used to treat the Socialist Alliance and Respect in the same way they treated campaigns – to ensure they dominated and got through whatever policies they had decided on. This is not to deny some objective problems connected to their size, which meant that they numerically dominated Respect, but there was blindness to this issue as well, which was therefore not tackled.

The question of how to build a revolutionary Marxist organisation in the context of broad parties, and the importance of democratic practices both inside and outside the revolutionary current and the fundamental organic link between them are key elements in the crisis in the SWP. If there is no internal revolutionary democracy, all you can build is a top-down sect, however large, because training in undemocratic practices is inevitably taken into the movement of the class and ruins everything. This is what has happened in the recent attempts to build anything substantial. Democracy is not ‘icing on the cake’, but essential for the successful building of revolutionary or anti-capitalist parties.

The unitary character of the British labour movement

However, it is simplistic to blame the difficulties in building the SA or Respect solely on the crimes of this or that particular grouping. The SWP crisis and its organisational character needs to be placed in a broader political context, in particular the nationally specific unitary character of the British labour movement and the historic difficulty of the Marxist left to deal with it. Even the Communist Party in Britain was unable to build the kind of mass base it achieved in France, Italy or Spain. The character of the labour movement may be changing, but today it combines with the current economic crisis and the coming to then end of the reformist politics of the post-war settlement. We now live in a period of counter-reform. We have seen the adoption of neo-liberalism and the abject failures of New Labour (and most of the trade unions) to fight for working class interests and the rights of the oppressed, or their failure to take the necessary measures to do anything meaningful to combat the effects of climate change. This has resulted in demoralisation and disorientation in the working class and the oppressed. There is a desperate need for new political alternatives, broad class struggle, and if possible, anti-capitalist parties in England, Wales and Scotland, built in a non-sectarian and democratic way. Only the creation of such a broad party or organisation, can overcome the relative marginalisation of ALL the current forces of the ‘Left’, who are still confronted with the strong traditions of a unitary labour movement (reinforced by a low level of combativity) which has made this task particularly difficult in this country.

The SP/Militant current once understood the problem of ‘Labourism’, but chose to politically accommodate to it, before it finally broke from deep entryism and did a political flip-flop arguing that the Labour Party was a bourgeois party, while the SWP banged its head against this British phenomenon, maintaining a long term, ultra-left sectarian and ‘rank and fileist’ attitude to the workers’ movement, for example, failing to understand the political character of the shop-stewards movement in the 1960/70s and failing to properly understand the method of the united front. This sectarianism, necessarily reinforced by a tough undemocratic regime – they always are – was not always applied consistently, for example, when the SWP built the ANL, or played a leading role in the Anti-War movement, or made the important turn to building broad parties, the Socialist Alliance/Respect. However, they have shown they could not sustain such an orientation. This is not simply due to a particular leadership but to their flawed sectarian and undemocratic tradition.

Recent history of the labour movement

The problem is, however, that the past decades – probably at least since the defeat of the great miners’ strike of 1984-5 – the labour movement has been on the defensive and the vanguard increasingly dispersed and heterogeneous compared to some other European counties. In the 1980s the growth of New Realism in the trade union movement meant that the unions refused to confront Thatcher’s anti-working class policies and the development of New Labour and the election of Blair – according to Thatcher, her ‘greatest achievement’ – has led to a halving of TU membership, bringing to an end the era of post war reformism on which traditional Labourism was based. Young people especially have been deeply affected by this process. Few are in a trade union, and few, even those radicalising over for example climate change, look to the labour movement for support or solidarity.

This is not to argue that a vanguard does not exist in Britain today, just that it does not automatically turn to trade unions for solidarity, as for example, sections of the women’s liberation movement did in the 1970s. In fact there have been a series of issues which have engaged young people in particular, from the anti-road campaigners to Reclaim the Streets, from anti-globalisation protesters to climate campaigners, many young people have become actively involved in fighting what are effectively anti-capitalist struggles, but few have seen the labour movement or the ideas of socialism as a way forward. At the same time few trade unions have gone beyond narrow sectional interests to support such campaigns. This is not to say it cannot happen, as the initial successes of the TU section of the Campaign against Climate Change shows, just that it is exceptional and unusual over the past period.

European broad parties

This history goes part of the way to explain why it has been possible to build anti-capitalist and broad left parties in other parts of Europe – the NPA in France and the Left Bloc in Portugal, The Red/Green Alliance in Denmark, even the left reformist Die Linke in Germany, while here it has been much more difficult. It can’t just be reduced to British sectarianism as important a phenomenon as it is. In fact the British left has been marked by both sectarianism AND opportunism, a situation that has its roots in the material and historical conditions outlined above – not in the peculiar psychology of the British!

Although part of the same overall trend, these left parties in Europe are not all the same. They are based on different social and political conditions, forces, organisation and platforms. Clearly a plurality of tactics is needed for different national conditions. Forces of the Fourth International have been in the forefront of addressing the need in this period to organise and build broad parties, sometimes anti-capitalist/revolutionary vanguard parties like the NPA, but also in some cases politically broader formations within which they are organised tendencies. There has been a recognition that in this conjuncture, in most countries the forces of revolutionary socialism are too small and too politically narrow to hegemonise the broad vanguard at the highest political level.

Further, in some countries the conditions for anti-capitalist vanguard parties do not exist, nor are we strong enough in most European countries to organise them, except possibly in France. Here in this country we are trying to build a potentially broad, anti-imperialist but otherwise left reformist formation – Respect – quite unlike the NPA. In some ways the Left Bloc in Portugal might be more of a model for us, and if we can’t achieve that or similar in the English context (and we certainly can’t construct an NPA in the foreseeable future), we should rather be part of an organised left tendency inside Respect (or in Germany, Die Linke) or, speculatively, participate in the formation of a new left after the general election. But this is mostly out of our hands. All these organisations require different tactics by revolutionaries.

Today in England, in the run up to a general election, now unofficially launched, probably for May 6th, we are building Respect, ‘warts and all’, because it is the only broad-based, nationally organised, working class left alternative going. We have called for the left to be united, strikingly illustrated on a recent cover of Socialist Resistance, preferably behind Respect, but if that is not possible, in alliance with other initiatives, such as the recently announced platform TUSC, coming out of the No2EU current but even narrower than before, or any initiative by the SWP, or other important local initiatives, such as those in Cambridge, Wigan, Lewisham, Tyneside, Liverpool, Barrow & Salford. If there are no credible left candidacies on offer we call for a critical vote for Labour.

However the left of the labour movement is in the process of closing ranks behind the traditional lesser evil, the Labour Party, in order to stop the Tories. This is true to form for Labourism, and has put considerable pressure on trade union leaders, including those leaders on the left such as in the RMT, other TU forces in the CPB, for example, and of course active unity behind Labour is promoted by the inside/outside Socialist Action. This right wing unity is reinforced as Brown has created some detachment from the Tories. Looking both ways, Janus-like, Brown is both implementing unacceptable cuts, as demanded by international finance and their credit rating agencies, while at the same time taking some pages from the neo-Keynesian bible. He recognises the importance of fiscal stimuli, quantative easing, etc., in other words the importance of maintaining demand within the economy, both for stabilising the capitalist economy itself and for saving jobs. Sections of the ruling class, mainly manufacturing capital, know this and if he has the political courage to carry it through against the media barrage, it is Brown’s secret weapon against the Tory policy of ‘slash and burn’ to balance the books. Not surprisingly things are looking bad.

Conclusion

What we are saying is that it is simplistic and apolitical to explain typical British sectarianism and democratic weaknesses by reference to bankrupt tacticians, or odd personalities. To make a serious analysis of the failure of the left, which is more than just descriptive, it is necessary to get to grips with this historic phenomenon. The leadership of the SWP – Callinicos, Rees and German, et al – are products of the SWP methodology and regime and they also reproduce it. But the SWP (and the Socialist Party) is also a peculiar product of the British labour movement and the difficulties that Marxists have always had in relating to it.

The historically determined character of the British labour movement makes it very difficult to build more than punctual united fronts with this or that section of the worker’s movement. To support alternative candidates in elections means breaking from Labourism. Even in its decay, such a course of action is a very, very big decision for them, as history has shown us. Even the RMT, currently one of the most militant unions, is under huge pressure from the Labour bureaucracy, a wing of the CPB, and from sections of its membership, to fall in line behind New Labour in the general election.

We do not claim to have all the answers, but the task is to develop a flexible line or tactic. We need to sustain tactical flexibility with programmatic intransigence on the key class issues, which must involve some form of the united front method and democratic functioning. Only this approach can unlock this problem for revolutionary socialists. History shows that all leftist adventures, or rightist tail-ending of the Labour bureaucracy are doomed to failure.

Climate change deniers gain momentum

An early element of David Cameron’s attempt to detoxify the Conservatives was a little bit of non committal rhetoric about climate change and a photo opportunity in the frozen north. He does not seem to have carried his party with him. One report claims that six members of his shadow cabinet don’t feel that it should be a priority for his incoming government. A cynic might add that based on Ed Miliband’s woeful performance at Copenhagen it’s not a priority for the current Labour government either.

The sceptics fall into two broad groups who for ease of reference we’ll call the stupid and the really stupid. The stupid ones just refuse to accept the science. All that physics and chemistry is just hogwash. The really stupid ones accept the science but are worried about the damage to the economy. Making money is more important than trying to keep the planet habitable.

Climate change deniers have a small wind in their sails at the moment. The scariest viewing on TV over the weekend was the footage of the welcome Sarah Palin got at the Tea Party Convention. Hundreds of people were urging her to run for the presidency and fractious though it is the Tea Party Movement has been very successfully pulling American politics to the right.The one man who made Miliband look good at Copenhagen was Obama. He’ll be terrified of doing too much to antagonise those fruitcakes and his already vague proposals for mitigating the polluting effects of the American way of life are certain. to be further weakened.

From being the preserve of marginal eccentrics climate change denial is being given increasing credibility. The reporting of the IPCC data about the rate of melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and what rags like the Daily Mail predictably label “climategate”  have started to shift the public debate away from the incontrovertible science. What’s alarming is the defensiveness of the scientists in the eye of the storm and the lack of a comparable response from the climate change movement.

More on this here.

Contemporary British folk music and the BNP

Paul Micklethwaite is a musician who wrote this piece for the current issue of Socialist Resistance.

The newly-thriving British folk music scene has recently been disturbed to find itself attracting the attention of the far right British National Party.

The BNP evidently feels it may gain a sympathetic reception from the traditional folk audience. This has provoked a strong collective counterblast from the contemporary folk music world in the form of the Folk Against Fascism campaign

The anti-BNP response centres on a contention that “folk” music, as a contemporary cultural form, by its nature excludes the extreme nationalist politics and values of that far right party. Any attempt to claim solidarity is therefore misguided and unwelcome. But is this so clearly the case? Is there any basis in the BNP’s tactic?

The politics of folk music

Defining folk music, and it limits, is clearly a challenge. Folk performers are drawn to debate their genre more than any other musicians. The notion of tradition, and a healthy respect for it, is a strong consideration as is inclusivity.

The contemporary folk music scene might be characterised in terms of: respect for an inherited musical tradition; politically on the left (deriving from a recent Communist heritage); musically reactionary (the fact that folk musician Jim Moray is constantly billed as a controversial innovator proves the rule); white, middle-aged and middle class (despite the proletarian perspective of much traditional folk music). These are generalisations, but will be recognisable to anyone who participates in the culture of folk clubs and festivals, magazines, radio shows etc. Above all, the folk world is culturally homogenous.

The aspect of the folk scene which the BNP has apparently picked up on is its sometimes uneasy relationship with notions of place, region and national identity. The traditional folk repertoire is often concerned with specific regional locality and identity. Socialist songwriter and performer Ewan McColl famously insisted on performers confining themselves to the songs of their home county. The otherness of, for example, “gypsies” is also a common lyrical theme. What the BNP is perhaps trying to engender is a development of local and regional pride into nationalism, jingoism and perhaps even xenophobia.

Wolfgang Becker’s 2003 film Goodbye Lenin portrays the co-opting of (quite possibly invented) folk “traditions” to reinforce national identity by the government of the old East Germany. Unease surrounded the St George’s Day 2009 concert in Trafalgar Square, conducted under the auspices of Boris Johnson, Conservative mayor of London. While many leading folk performers were happy to take part in what was billed as a celebration of “the best of everything English” (1), some were uneasy with the association. A rival event took place simultaneously elsewhere, commemorating the historical protest in support of the Tolpuddle martyrs. Several performers intended to attend both events, seeing no tension. ‘You can’t not celebrate something for fear of somebody you don’t like misunderstanding the reasons’, commented Jim Moray.

BNP leader Nick Griffin is a declared fan of folk music. The BNP’s website sells British folk compilations under its imprint Excalibur Records, including an album of songs written (though not performed) by Griffin himself. According to journalist Marek Kohn “folk culture and myth are at the heart of the BNP’s vision”, and “the party is a folkish nationalist group based on a belief that peoples have essences that must be preserved by keeping blood and culture mixed together, and separate from those of other peoples.”(2)

A keen interest in regional authenticity is certainly an element in folk music culture. Much traditional folk music adopts the perspective of the dispossessed working class, and commonly portrays the otherness of “gypsies” and outsiders generally. Thus the BNP might see the folk audience as potentially sympathetic to the party’s far right political agenda. After all, the BNP has had success in appealing to just these kind of sensibilities in Burnley and other constituencies in the north of England.

Folk against Fascism

The folk scene is having none of it.

Folk against Fascism (FAF) is taking stand against “the BNP’s cynical and unsettling targeting of folk music and events in the UK”. It sees the party’s message of hatred and cultural purity as completely out of step with the inclusive and multicultural unity within the folk world. In a recent folk events email Folk Against Fascism said: “They (the BNP) have no right to associate themselves with us and a unified voice is needed to make this clear. Sign up now on the FAF website to see how you can help and partake in the celebratory events being run to show that the folk community as with most other communities actively does NOT support this party or their ideals!”(3)

Martin Simpson, one of contemporary folk’s biggest stars, began a recent show with a song he introduced as an English version of an American version of an Irish song. ‘That’s folk music right there, which the BNP should take note of. They should also fuck off,’ he said. He repeated this, more politely, at Cambridge Folk Festival, inviting the audience to participate in the Folk against Fascism response. For Simpson and most others, folk music performance is fundamentally about transmission of tradition though adaptation, not arbitrary historical preservation.

Internationalism may not have been encouraged in folk performance settings historically, but is increasingly the norm, as a glance at recent Cambridge programmes will show. ‘Our evenings … are for traditional folk music, and run along the lines of a traditional folk club… If you like traditional folk music, of any country or culture, do come along.’

British sociologist Anthony Giddens has written that “fundamentalism is beleaguered tradition” (4). It opposes cosmopolitanism and multiplicity of perspective, and focuses on the uncritical upholding of a politically or culturally expedient dogma. The nationalist fundamentalism of the BNP represents an attempt to cling to a carefully selective historical precedent which privileges the currently dominant cultural group in Britain.

It is possible to see the reasoning behind the BNP’s attempts to co-opt the British folk music scene. Yet the hostility of that scene’s concerted reaction demonstrates that the BNP’s relationship to (and indeed its idea of) British “tradition” is quite different to that found in contemporary folk music culture. The possibility that a concern with localism is a cover for xenophobia seems unfounded.

Further information: www.folkagainstfascism.com

Footnotes

(1) Irwin, Colin (2009) The battle over British folk music. The Guardian, Thursday 23 April.

(2) Kohn, Marek (2009) A faded vision of folk. guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 July.

(3) The Magpie’s Nest events email, 16 July 2009.

(4) Giddens, Anthony (1999) Tradition. BBC Reith lecture, number 3.

Paul Micklethwaite is a folk musician who has performed at or attended all the clubs and festivals mentioned here; hopefully they’ll welcome him back.

NPA’s challenge to Islamophobia

This comes from France 24.

The veil issue has shown its face in French politics once again, after radical anti-capitalist fringe party the NPA revealed that one of its candidates (pictured) in forthcoming regional elections wears an Islamic headscarf.

A candidate for a radical French anti-capitalist party in the forthcoming regional elections wears a headscarf as a token of her Islamic faith, something that has raised eyebrows in this rigidly secular society.

All the more so because the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party), led by Trotskyist postman Olivier Besancenot, is a party that generates headlines for its extreme left wing position on issues including militant secularism.

Scarf-wearing Ilham Moussaid (pictured), a student and a party treasurer, is NPA candidate for the regional council of Vaucluse in southern France, Besancenot confirmed to French daily Le Figaro.

“A woman can be a feminist, can uphold secular values and wear a [Islamic] headscarf at the same time,” he told the newspaper.

The veiled meanings of a very French issue

Wearing a headscarf – as well as the wearing of other religious symbols such as crucifixes – is strictly prohibited in French public institutions such as schools.

And a cross-party parliamentary commission last month came up with a list of recommendations for a law to ban wearing the full face veil (niqab) in public places such as hospitals and on public transport.

It is a very French issue. Islamic headscarfs in France are all referred to as “voile” – meaning veil – whether or not they cover the face.

The French public dislikes veils because they are seen as the embodiment of male domination over women, as well as symbols of religious attachment in a country that clings fiercely to the principle of the separation of church and state.

But veils and headscarves are also an overt reminder that France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, something that makes the (often Christian) right wing uncomfortable.

Radical pragmatism of a fringe party

Making headway in the country’s deprived suburbs, notable for their large Muslim immigrant populations, could pay political dividends for the NPA, which is very much a fringe party.

The “banlieues”, Besancenot told Le Figaro, are “deserts where social associations, unions and political activity barely flourish.”

They are also places where women, some of whom wear Islamic veils, are starting to carry the torch for the NPA’s brand of militant anti-capitalist Trotskyism.

In a statement, the party said the choice to put Moussaid forward as a candidate had come after “a serious and complex debate”.

“[Moussaid] is a militant feminist, anti-capitalist and internationalist who happens to wear a headscarf for religious reasons,” the statement continues. “The NPA welcomes young people, the unemployed and wage-earners of all walks of life who hold our ideals dear. Religious faith is a private matter that should in no way be an obstacle to the NPA’s fight for its fundamental principles of secularism, feminism and anti-capitalism.”

A magnificent allegory

The Magnificent Seven succeeds as a piece of cinema on every level. As an allegory illustrating the role and necessity of the revolutionary party it is without peer.

The opening scenes introduce us to the hyper oppressed peasants – allegorically representing hyper oppressed peasants scratching a living from the land. The bandits are the parasitic exploiters whom we can immediately identify as the bourgeoisie extracting surplus value by force from the subaltern class. Forced by the harsh economic climate to intensify the extraction of food and money from the peasants the bandits provoke a debate and a reaction. All the heterogeneous moods of the class are expressed. Some want to yield to the pressure and carry on living in ever greater misery. Some think that a compromise is possible, if only by hiding their possessions. A handful argue for resistance.

The village’s organic intellectual counsels them to resist but cautions them that they need the backup of people who have dedicated their lives to struggle, professionals with the skills needed to fight successfully.

Chris is the Lenin figure. He is introduced to us as the tribune of the oppressed who faces down the small town racists who refused to allow a Native American to be buried in Boot Hill. His use of a mixture of armed force and support from the proletarian stagecoach drivers shows that he is more than the stereotypical gunfighter. Through a process of patiently explaining, slow recruitment and ideological clarification he assembles his combat party who will fight for little more than subsistence wages. The reference to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is made explicit by the number of fighters. Seven.

Each is a pen portrait of a revolutionary type. Britt is good with a knife but taciturn to the point of being anti-social. We are given no hint about his standards of personal hygiene. Chico the youngest cadre is impetuous, headstrong and insecure around the others but always on the lookout for a bit of love action. Lee is burdened by the knowledge that he is burned out and prone to finding comfort and motivation in the bottle. He likes to reminisce about when he was great. Bernardo O’Reilly is the dependable middle cadre who, with a little prompting, is enthused to resume the fight. Harry Luck is there to meet the recruitment target and lacks the ideological conviction of the others.

Immersed in the life of the villagers it soon becomes apparent that the professional revolutionaries are a separate breed. They have trouble fitting into normal life and lack the interests and attachments of those for whom they are fighting, often finding them tedious and unfulfilling compared to the satisfactions of the lives they have chosen. Though they are not without a sense that they are missing something.

At the heart of the film is the dialectical process through which the peasants liberate themselves from their oppressors. The Seven share with them the skills that they have spent years perfecting and the disunited mass learns the importance of technique, discipline and organisation through its struggle against the bandits. Sacrifice is part of any revolutionary process and victory is bought with the blood of several villagers and the majority of the vanguard party, a reference to the war against the White armies which is as plain as a barn door.

With the battle won we are offered a vision of a self-governing workers’ state. Decisions among the villagers had been made by consensus and there was a pronounced absence of hierarchy. A small oversight is the absence of women in the decision making processes but only a rampantly petit-bourgeois anti-materialist would expect a film made in 1960 to be free from some of the prejudices of its epoch. Probably.

The ending is self-evidently in the Trotskyist tradition, daringly so if we remember the dominance of Stalinism in the workers’ movement at the time. Having overthrown the old oppressors and gained massive political credibility and social weight the fighters could have chosen to remain in the village and become its new rulers. They self consciously remain true to their anti-bureaucratic heritage, refuse to coalesce as a caste and move on in search of fresh revolutionary opportunities. Vin and Chris ride out of town leaving the peasants in control. In this they prefigured and perhaps inspired Che Guevara’s campaigns in Africa and Bolivia .

It’s all obvious, isn’t it?

Two “stars” of British nationalism

by David Broder at The Commune.

Jerry Hicks is out shaking trees again.

“British workers target Gordon Brown”, screamed the Daily Star on January 19th. One year after Unite leader Derek Simpson posed with two Daily Star ‘glamour models’ holding ‘British jobs for British workers’ placards, the rag promised that thousands of angry construction workers would today “march on London claiming Gordon Brown has failed to honour his “British jobs for British workers” pledge”.

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Meanwhile over at the Morning Star, the comrades were fuelling the flames of ‘working-class nationalism’ with a piece on yesterday’s demo over the Kraft-Cadbury deal. In true Communist Party of Britain tradition they almost seemed more concerned about standing up for the “historic British chocolate manufacturer” and “the national interest” than how to effectively resist redundancies.

However, at the construction workers’ demo today, all was not quite as we might have been led to believe…The protests at the Alsthom office, Peter Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Houses of Parliament’s Old Palace Yard were attended by about 100 people, most of whom were unemployed construction workers from power stations in the Midlands and the North. The demo was organised by the GMB after an audit proving that at the Staythorpe power station site in Nottinghamshire, migrant workers were being paid only 500 euros a month – i.e. 1300 euros a month below the industry rate. Agency workers and the EU Posted Workers’ Directive are a means for management to better control and order about the workforce as they please.

The union’s placards demanded equal pay for all, and attacked undercutting which meant the subcontractor Somi preferred to use foreign labour rather than local unemployed workers, since it could do so more cheaply and undermine the industry agreement. Speakers at the closing rally repeatedly and clearly expressed solidarity with the Portuguese, Italian, Polish and Greek workers who were being underpaid and demanded that they be paid the industry rate.

This was marred somewhat by the repeated invocation of the idea that these workers were unskilled and not proper tradesmen, reflecting ’skilled-ism’ and sectionalism, if not British chauvinism as such. Indeed while GMB leader Paul Kenny referred to the dialogue the union had established with migrant workers at power station sites, they did not appear to be involved in the demonstration.

However, whereas the Daily Star had quoted an Amicus/Unite shop steward to the effect that “All we want for Brit workers is a fair crack of the whip to have first preference on jobs”, and at yesterday’s Cadbury demo Unite’s Jack Dromey had commented that “Our fear is that the Kraft takeover is not in the national interest”, most speakers at the Old Palace Yard rally steered well clear of such sentiments. A Daily Star photographer attempted to hand out ‘British jobs for British workers’ posters but was shouted down and I did not see anyone holding these afterwards. Paul Kenny said he would not be seen in a pose like Simpson last year.

Phil Whitehurst, GMB National Organiser for Engineering Construction Workers, specifically attacked British chauvinism, and  Jerry Hicks who is contesting the election for Unite general secretary also gave a powerful speech. Hicks expressed concern at the lack of progress made in levelling up industry rates since the oil refinery wildcat strikes of January 2009, although a strike is mooted for Staythorpe later this month. While a local shop steward emphasised that this action would be all the better for being official, indeed “a correct strike”, Whitehurst and Hicks both hinted at the need for solidarity from other sites.

However, while most speakers stressed that the struggle was over the industry agreement and agencies’ monopoly of recruitment, the New Labour MP John Mann injected his own special venom into proceedings. Mann “had no problem” with ‘British jobs for British workers’ and stressed that there was plenty of land in his constituency to build more power stations. He argued against employing migrant workers who supposedly “don’t pay tax towards the NHS” and put British workers on Jobseekers’ Allowance, decrying this as ‘bad economics’ for Britain.

With an eye on the upcoming General Election, Mann announced that he would be tabling a motion in Parliament to the effect that all major construction projects are carried out by British workers: if anyone had a problem with that, he assured us, he had the “100% backing of all 79,000 men women and children” in his constituency. A pity, but I’m still hoping the more internationalist-minded children of Bassetlaw will be spoiling their ballots.

While what Mann had said was at odds with the general themes of the rally, he received enthusiastic applause, more than anyone except Hicks’ militant class struggle speech. Whitehurst and Kenny’s speeches were several times interrupted by unemployed workers asking what precisely the union was going to do about the situation, which has left many without work for as long as 9 months. It seemed as though, just like Hicks’ call for solidarity action and fighting rather than lying down, Mann’s overt and defiant nationalism might also perhaps have appealed to a sense of frustration at the lack of progress made by the GMB and Unite over the last year.

The Staythorpe strike, and any solidarity action that follows, will hopefully follow and continue this demonstration’s turn away from the kind of slogans which appeared during last year’s oil refinery walkouts. However, for that to take place then clearly there will have to be much more engagement and involvement of migrant workers themselves, rather than them merely being the subject of sympathy. As with disputes over recessionary cuts, we must not just seek to defend a specific industry or just one group of workers, but more broadly to resist management’s right to manage, control and dismiss workers just as they please.

Scottish Socialist Party Election Challenge

SSP joint national spokesman Colin Fox will challenge Chancellor Alistair Darling in the General Election and the party will look to target 10 key seats across Scotland in the poll.

Colin Fox said :

"The SSP will fight the General Election on two key battlegrounds, the economy and Afghanistan.

"We will take the fight to Alastair Darling in his own constituency on his stewardship of the economy, the fact that he took this country into the deepest and worst recession in 80 years and because he now intends to slaughter the jobs and services of working people to pay for his incompetence and his banker’s greed.

"Equally, we will be the only party in this election opposed to the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan and calling for an immediate withdrawal of British troops.

“Despite the undemocratic voting system and exorbitant cost of standing candidates the Scottish Socialist Party will offer a bright alternative to the 4 neo-liberal, warmongering parties in Scotland—Labour, Lib Dem, Tories and SNP—who are shamefully trying to outdo one another to see who can make the most savage cuts in jobs and essential services.

“Our message is clear therefore—those who caused the banking crisis should pay for it. That means higher taxes and sacrifices by those enjoying their luxury lifestyles. Working people like nurses, teachers, firefighters and postalworkers didn’t cause the crisis and they shouldn’t be expected to pick up the bill for it with pay cuts and sackings. That’s the social justice we believe millions of Scots expect to see.

“In what will be an unsavoury ‘doom and gloom’ election contest about which party can best satisfy the City of London’s demands for slashed public services and cuts jobs the SSP will stand out as a bright alternative, a welcome light of optimism, with our message that there is no way we will accept cuts and hardship for working people. There is an alternative, the SSP say another way is possible.”

“I particularly relish the prospect of challenging Alastair Darling the former revolutionary socialist and now arch conservative neo-liberal Chancellor justifying his plans for feather bedding the rich and assaulting the pay and conditions of those who used to be Labour’s key supporters in Edinburgh South West.”