Careless Talk Costs Votes

by Les May

I RECENTLY described how Labour MP Chris Williamson had been given a platform for his ‘Democracy Roadshow’ and was given a standing ovation at the end of his talk.

My assumption was that an attempt had been made to deny him a platform at the recent event to remember those killed at St Peter’s Field in August 1819 for much the same reasons that are detailed in the Wikipedia entry at;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Williamson_(politician)

These boil down to the fact that some Jewish groups object to him speaking.

Having listened to him speak I am more inclined to accept that the only other reason mooted, that he is ‘divisive’, may have some merit. Although he made it clear that he is a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and I accept he was ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’, I was not convinced he was singing quite the same tune.

I see Corbyn’s approach to domestic issues as being in the same mould as Clement Attlee, someone who was never mentioned by Tony Blair. Williamson’s concerns seemed more in the mould of Tony Benn with some vague ideas about worker’s co-operatives and some ideas about finance which did not seem to have been worked out. He also found time to criticise Denis Healey’s Chancellorship, Ed Millibrand and shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. (The Wikipedia entry on Healey’s stint as Chancellor is well worth reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Healey)

Many of the Fleet Street scribblers are old enough to remember Labour in the days of Tony Benn, but too young to remember what the Atlee government did for people like my parents, and hence for me and my siblings. So it’s easy, very easy, for them to frighten voters into accepting the story that Corbyn is part of the ‘extreme Left wing’ of the Labour party.

When I sat and reflected upon what he said I came to the conclusion that Chris Williamson was trying to convince his audience that the socialist millenium was just around the corner, if only we followed his nostrums. I don’t think it is. The pressing issues I want Labour to put right before we start thinking about anything else, including arguing over Trident, are the obscene inequalities in income and wealth in this country, the lack of council houses with affordable rents, the rise of the ‘rentier’ class, lack of job security, the no pay/low pay cycle which means the ‘poor’ stay poor. As Denis Healey pointed out in the 1970s these have to be paid for, and it’s the very rich who are going to have to do some of the paying. And they are not going to like it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/wealth-banks-google-facebook-society-economy-parasites

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Vain Expectations on British Road to Socialism?

Blackballed MP, Chris Williamson, addresses Rochdale folk 

  by Brian Bamford

IN 1951,  I had a newspaper round and I use to deliver the odd copy of the Daily Worker to one customer up Long Hill in Rochdale.  The Daily Worker attracted my curiosity as it, the Renolds News and Sunday Citizen.^[5] and a Polish paper a refugee family took were unusual compared to the News Chronicle which my Dad read mainly for its coverage of horse racing and sport.  One day on my paper round I would read of a conference in which the slogan was 'FOR the MILLIONS & AGAINST the MILLIONAIRES', and the next I would see some story about a communist program about 'The British Road to Socialism'.

Last night, I listened to Chris Williamson, the Labour MP, who has fallen foul of some senior people in the Labour Party for making light of the claims of anti-semitism within the party, and for daring to suggest that there had been too much apologising for this 'sin'.  One can sympathise with him for the treatment he has received over this and for the vicious attempts to 'no-platform' him at events like the recent Manchester Peterloo commemoration: see (North West TUC Snubs Peterloo Rally over Chris Williamson MP!)

Yet there was something very quaint about Mr. Williamson's approach last night:  In 1951, Harry Pollitt, who had been elected as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1929 wrote a Forword to the Programme titled 'The British Road to Socilism', which was adopted by the then Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).  In the Foreword Pollitt wrote:  

'This is the message of this programme. It is a call above all to the whole Labour Movement to recall its glorious traditions of struggle for the immediate interests of the working people, and to safeguard their future interests in a Socialist Britain.  But it is no less a call to the great majority of the British people to join with the Communist Party and the whole Labour Movement in the struggle to win a new future for Britain in the socialist world which history is now shaping.'

Those were the utterances of Harry Pollitt in 1951, when the country was then, as now we suspect, facing a General Election and I was about to start delivering the Daily Worker.   Allowing for the time lapse, the utterances of Chris Williamson last night were only slightly different in tone from those of Harry Pollitt almost almost 60 years ago.  His rhetoric was all too easy, suggesting we can do it; a sovereign Labour Government after Brexit could print the money and build a better Britain afresh, no trouble there he claimed.

Working people could take over failing companies to save them from the asset strippers, and establish cooperatives to manage business.  Denis Healey, when he was Chancellor, was wrong in the past to go to the IMF for money and fall into the hands of the Wall Street bankers.  'He should have listened to Tony Benn', who knew what was what!*

This is all post-facto 'What if?' stuff, if you like:  But, what if the James Callaghan government had accepted Tony Benn's 'Alternative plan B' in the 1970s would it have resulted in avoiding Thatcher, Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom revisted', Milton Freedman economics, and the consequent problems of what came to be called neo-liberalism as Chris Williamson claimed in his theatrical performance last night?  **

Tony Benn admitted his own plan would result in a 'siege economy', but he claimed the difference is that in the monetarist course 'you will have the bankers with you and the British people, the trade unions, outside the citadel storming you; with mine it will be the other way round'.^[3] ***

All this was referred to in the speech of Chris Williamson last night at Woolworth's Social Club in Castleton, Rochdale, but it was not easy to discern among the gabbling annunciations from the megaphone beneath his mouth.  Les May has criticised this presentation in the post below entitled 'Our Answer to "No Platforming".'

Despite our concerns about his performance and some the things he has to say, we are anxious to continue to hear him speak.  Unlike some senior people in the Labour Party!

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* Healey became Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1974 after Labour returned to power as a minority government. His tenure is sometimes divided into Healey Mark I and Healey Mark II.^[21] The divide is marked by his decision, taken with Prime Minister James Callaghan, to seek an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and submit the British economy to IMF supervision. The loan was negotiated and agreed in November and December 1976, and announced in Parliament on 15 December 1976.^[22][23] Within some parts of the Labour Party the transition from Healey Mark I (which had seen a proposal for a wealth tax) to Healey Mark II (associated with government-specified wage control) was regarded as a betrayal. Healey's policy of increasing benefits for the poor meant those earning over £4,000 per year would be taxed more heavily. His first budget saw increases in food subsidies, pensions and other benefits.^[24]

 **  The Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) is the name of an economic programme proposed by Tony Benn, a dissident member of the British Labour Party, during the 1970s and 1980s.
The Secretary of State for Industry in the Labour government, Tony Benn, wrote a paper for his Department in January 1975, which he described in his diary: "It described Strategy A which is the Government of national unity, the Tory strategy of a pay policy, higher taxes all round and deflation, with Britain staying in the Common Market. Then Strategy B which is the real Labour policy of saving jobs, a vigorous micro-investment programme, import control, control of the banks and insurance companies, control of export, of capital, higher taxation of the rich, and Britain leaving the Common Market".^[1]
 
***  With Britain in economic crisis in October 1976, Benn put forward the AES in Cabinet with the partial support of Peter Shore.^[2] He claimed the two courses open to the government were the monetarist, deflationary course recommended by the Treasury and "the protectionist course which is the one I have consistently recommended for two and a half years...protectionism is a perfectly respectable course of action. It is compatible with our strategy. You withdraw behind walls and reconstruct and re-emerge".^[3] Benn further said that both courses were a "siege economy" but the difference is that in the monetarist course "you will have the bankers with you and the British people, the trade unions, outside the citadel storming you; with mine it will be the other way round".^[3] However the Cabinet rejected the AES (along with two other proposals) on 1/2 December and accepted the terms for a loan from the International Monetary Fund on 12 December.^[4]

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Squaring the Brexit Circle Revisited.

by Les May

THE political system of the United Kingdom (UK) is a representative or parliamentary democracy.   Apart from the 1998 referendum in Northern Ireland on the Good Friday Agreement, the only attempts at direct democracy that I am aware of are the 1975 referendum and the 2016 referendum.   Neither of these took place to determine ‘the will of the people’.  Both were attempts to prevent the political party which formed the government of the day from tearing itself apart. In 1975 it was the groupings around Tony Benn and Roy Jenkins who had differing views about the UK being a member of the Common Market.  In 2016 it was the European Research Group (ERG) and the rest of the Tory party which had, and have, differing views about remaining a member of the European Union (EU).  Each of the treaties which transformed the Common Market into the European Community was voted on by the parliament of each of the member countries, including the UK House of Commons.  That is the way a representative democracy works.

I voted to leave the Common Market in 1975.  About 60% of the people who took part voted to remain.  I considered this was an overwhelming endorsement and accepted the result.   I voted to remain in the EU in 2016.  About 52% of those who took part voted to leave.  I did not, and do not, think this is an overwhelming endorsement, but I accepted the result and its logical consequence, that we leave the EU.

What I do not accept is that I, and others, can have no say in what relationship the UK has with Europe and the rest of the world after the UK leaves the EU.  It is simply a fact that the only question on the ballot paper was whether the UK should continue to be a member of the EU.   I am not willing to accede to every item on the shopping list drawn up by the ERG and those who think like them.

For two years we have had a situation where many of the people who voted to leave the EU have been unwilling to accept that many people who voted to remain were and are genuinely concerned about the consequences which would follow and have a right to say so.  Many of the people who voted to remain have spent their time in attempting to overturn the result of the referendum.  They would have been better employed in looking for ways of mitigating the worst effects of leaving the EU and attempting to influence the nature of our future relationship with Europe.

For some people leaving the EU has become an end in itself.  Calling them ‘Little Englanders’ seems entirely appropriate because they are unwilling to recognise that a majority of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland do not want to leave the EU or that the British-Irish agreement of 1998 has the status of an international treaty ratified by the UK parliament. 

******* 

The Left & Brexit: Is Corbyn Trying?

by Les May

LAST Saturday's edition of the 'i' newspaper had a column by Andrew Grice, headed 'Corbyn could decide the EU vote – so why isn't he trying?' 
Now both the 'i' and Grice 'have form' in being negative about Corbyn and this piece was no exception.  So it was hinted that Corbyn is making a half-hearted attempt to persuade Labour voters to back 'Remain' and that he is an instinctive 'Outer' who voted to leave in 1975, and only 'went with the flow' of his party when he became leader.

On the letters page was this:
'On Thursday I was privileged to be in a packed audience in Bristol to hear him (ed. Corbyn) make an impassioned and forceful case for Remain.  Not the modified Tory leadership race but a positive case for the good that has been done for the environment, the right of workers to fair treatment, and care and concern for the disadvantaged.' 
The writer went on to point out that there was no mention on the TV news and local BBC news had something low down in the running order.

So obsessed has the press become with the Tory infighting over the EU that the notion that there might be a distinctive case to be made from a left-wing perspective both for remaining in the EU and for leaving it, is never aired.  This reflects the fact that since the 1970s the whole locus of political debate in Britain has shifted so far to the right to such an extent that anything else is inconceivable.  Grice and the 'i' are manifestations of this phenomenon.

The Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson the economics editor of the Mail on Sunday have been commissioned to write from a left of centre perspective a book on the Euro in the wake of last summer's crisis about the possibility that Greece would exit the single currency.  The book 'Europe isn't working' will be published by Yale University Press in the autumn, but Elliot gave us a flavour of the contents in last Friday's Guardian.

Elliot reports, seemingly with approval:
'Tony Benn's warning at the time of the 1975 referendum that Britain was signing up for something that was 'undemocratic, deflationary and run in the interests of big business' and 'I can think of no body of men outside of the Kremlin who have so much power without a shred of accountability for what they do'.

Is it surprising then that, like me, Corbyn and about one in three of the population voted against continued membership?

But having stated so well the left-of-centre case for leaving in 1975 Elliot weakens his case for leaving now by resorting to a 'catch all' argument when he goes on:
 'The left-of-centre case for divorces is that Europe doesn't work, is not remotely progressive and is heading for an existential crisis anyway.  Last year's crisis was Grexit.  This year's threat is Brexit.  Next years threat will be something else; Italy leaving the single currency, perhaps, or Marie Le Pen's tilt at the French presidency.'

If Elliott thinks this is a 'left-of-centre' case for Brexit he is fooling himself.  Anyone in the Brexit camp could have made it and probably has already.

But in fairness to Elliott he states the case for continued membership of the EU succinctly. 'One left-of-centre argument against Brexit is that it it would result in the break up of the Euro and set of a chain reaction that would lead to the next global crisis; a perfectly fair point.  Those who fear that another recession and even higher levels of joblessness would threaten a return to the totalitarian politics of the 1930s are right to highlight the risks.'

What Tony Benn said in 1975 still applies.  But in my judgement leaving now risks all the above and ignores the fact that we in Britain have our own pretty good record of governments letting the interests of big business override questions of accountability and avoiding democratic decision
making when it suits them.

Here are two recently reported examples.  Last Thursday speaking at a CBI bash Alastair Darling recounted how in May 2008 Fred, 'The Shred', Goodwin had phoned him to say:
'RBS is haemorrhaging money. We can only survive another two or three hours.  What are YOU going to do about it?'  I'll repeat that, 'What are YOU going to do about it?'

A month after Goodwin took early retirement RBS announced the largest corporate annual loss in UK history of £24.1 billion.  This didn't stop the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph saying, 'his grasp of finance is in the Alpha class' and that he was 'unlikely to be in the growing queue of jobless bankers' for long'.

Had Darling let RBS go bust Goodwin would have been entitled to a pension of £28,000 a year at starting at age 65.  Because the state, (a.k.a. you and me), stepped in Goodwin was able to retire early with a tax free £2.7 million lump sum and now gets a 'reduced' annual pension of £342,500.  

At a conference on 'fracking' last week with reference to planning delays Francis Egan, the Chief Executive of Cuadrilla told energy minister Andrea Leadsom, 'the words are good, the intent is good but the delivery is not. Investors have patience but it's not limitless.'  He was complaining that the government had not yet implemented its promise last August to intervene if councils failed to meet the deadline of 16 weeks to approve or reject fracking applications.  Leadson replied 'The new measures we've introduced will help to make this happen.  We are addressing a problem that causes unnecessary delays.'

That's right four months to decide on something that could affect very large areas of the country for years to come and may bring about irreversible changes to ground water.

Incidentally Cuadrilla is privately owned which means very little about its activities will find its way into the public domain.  How's that for accountability?

Voting for Brexit won't change things like this.  But I'm sure it will make some people feel better.  I'd rather they felt angry that things like this are happening in our country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuadrilla_Resources

Why Burnham, Cooper and Kendall should lose.

by Les May

THIS is not a paean of praise to Jeremy Corbyn.  If it were it would be headed 'Why Corbyn deserves to win', and it isn't.  I am delighted that Corbyn was nominated.  Not because I think he is a future prime minister, he is too old, but because the support he has received may re-energise younger and like minded MPs if there are still any left in the Labour party. 

Inevitably the present leadership contest is being presented as a battle between the 'Right' and 'Left' wings or the Labour party.  On second thoughts it's not. It is being presented as a battle between the 'Centre' and the 'Hard Left'. 

A battle for the 'soul' of the Labour party isn't a new phenomenon.  We've seen it all before.  We hear dire warnings that Corbyn will return Labour to the days of Tony Benn and Gerald Kaufman's comment that the 1983 manifesto was 'the longest suicide note in history'.  As we know that verdict was a bit premature and Labour survives to give a couple of hundred Labour MPs rather a good living, and they want to keep it that way, preferably without too much interference from the members and the unions. 

But those of us old enough to be a drain on the benefits system remember the late 1950s and early sixties.  Labour had just lost the third election in a row and it was argued that a fourth defeat would be terminal.  Unlike today there was little criticism of the leader, Hugh Gaitskell, who was generally thought to have performed well in the 1959 election. 

Gaitskell was rather bright and realised that Clause 4 confused ends (equitable distribution of the fruits of labour) and means (common ownership, a.k.a. nationalisation).  In other words a Labour government could achieve its aims without an explicit commitment to further nationalisation.  For younger readers I will mention that the three industries mentioned by Corbyn, railways, gas and electricity, were all publicly owned at the time. 

Although nationalisation has sometimes been seen just as an article of faith for some members of the Labour party, Gaitskell had a well thought out and more sophisticated view.  Recognising that the money to fund a social program has to come from somewhere he thought that the profits generated by publicly owned industries should go towards funding a Labour government's social program.  But a party can commit itself to an equitable distribution of the fruits of labour without explicitly committing itself to public ownership in which case it will have to fund its social program through taxation. 

The first of these I would call the 'socialist' model and the second the 'social democratic' model. 

Gaitskell was not alone in thinking that Clause 4, unchanged since it was drafted in 1918, was always going to provide a weapon for the Tories at election time because they could claim it meant Labour was intent on nationalising everything.  (That's different from today when it is nominally Labour MPs like Tory Lite Simon Danczuk who use the same tactic against Corbyn.)  Nye Bevan had explicitly rejected this in 1952 and suggested that a mixed economy was what most people would prefer.  He rejected it again in 1959. But whilst Bevan came to be seen as the darling of the 'Left', Gaitskell went down in Labour mythology as being on the 'Right' of the party. 

So what did Gaitskell see as appropriate aims for the Labour party?  At the 1959 party conference he set out seven basic principles: concern for the worst-off; social justice; a classless society; equality of all races and peoples; belief in human relations 'based on fellowship and cooperation'; precedence of public over private interest; freedom and democratic self government.

I believe these are just as relevant today as when Gaitskell set them out fifty six years ago. But how many of the present incumbents of the Labour benches would proclaim ALL of them.  How many of the leadership contenders would be willing to fight an election on them?  How many of them are willing to defend the last Labour government's record on spending to deliver its social program via the social democratic model.

With nearly five years to go before the next election and plenty of time both to formulate a coherent social program and for the Tories to fall over their own feet as they did under Macmillan in the early sixties and under Major in the mid nineties, I find the decision to abstain from voting on the Tories welfare bill incomprehensible.  I can only assume that the MPs who did are content to let the huge inequalities in our society continue forever. 

Personally I don't mind if Labour wants to follow the socialist model or the social democratic model, but for heavens sake choose one of them and stop trying to pretend that Tory policies represent the 'Centre' ground.  

Even for people who think Corbyn is too 'Left wing' or dislike his stance on Trident, there is a huge amount of ground to the 'Right' of him upon which Labour once stood and which has been abandoned. That is why Burnham, Cooper and Kendall deserve to lose. 

Postscript:  If you are thinking of calling me 'ageist' for saying Corbyn is too old don't bother for two reasons.  The first is I'll conclude you are an idiot, the second is that I'm a non-decrepit seventy three year old whose walked about 900 kilometres in each of the last six years, so I know what I'm talking about.       

Tony Benn: Will & Testament

On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 6:08 PM, Joanne Taylor <jo@wearethetonic.co.uk> wrote:

Hello

I hope you don't mind me contacting you, my name is Jo and I'm working on the release of a brilliant new documentary - Tony Benn: Will and Testament. I wanted to get in touch to let you know about a special screening of the film at Manchester Town Hall on 8 September. We are hosting a series of exclusive screenings of the film in towns and cities across the UK that have a special significance to Tony Benn’s life and political career and each screening will be followed by a panel discussion with special guests and an audience Q&A.

Please see below for further information and to book click here: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/tony-benn-will-and-testament-town-hallscreening-

and-qampa-tour-6757309359

I'd be really grateful if you could pass this information onto any of your members via your noticeboards, website, newsletters and social media channels please! 

I do hope you'll be able to join us on 8 September, see the film and take part in the post screening discussion! 

Many Thanks

Jo

Jo Taylor

We Are The Tonic