The Death of a Northern Anarchist: Duncan Ball

Duncan Ball – activist, NAN supporter and founding member

of both Wrekin Stop War, and the Wrekin Anarchist Group collective

died on Wednesday 12 March 2014.

___________________________________________________
LAST week, the late Bob Crow and Tony Benn are being hailed as 'big beasts' of the British left but on 12 March 2014, the left also lost one of the 'tenacious terriers' who make up the wider movement to which Benn himself frequently deferred.

Although tenacious, Duncan was no firebrand or soapbox orator – perhaps best described a being in the 'quietist' tradition of William Morris – but his influence in our collective was deeply felt as a voice of calm, considered opinion without compromise to his own beliefs. Together with his son, John, he also dragged us screaming and kicking into the technological age, setting up and maintaining an excellent website as another forum for our campaigns.

And to be sure, he always spoke out when he felt it necessary, never failing to make an intelligent, unbiased and, if necessary, forceful, contribution to the debate – a skill that he also used to great effect in shaking up the conservatism of his particular branch of the trade union movement, often as a lone radical voice.

As a friend, I found Duncan to be a kind, warm and funny man – whether discussing dogs, growing vegetables, the ups and downs of life or global geopolitics. He always put the social into socialism!
Duncan was as at home in the pages of Noam Chomsky as he was in those of Terry Pratchett and given the 'big beast' vs. 'tenacious terrier' comment with which we began it is perhaps apt here to quote from Chomsky himself, who warns us against lionising leaders 'lest the real agents of change fall from history' .
  
But ultimately, Duncan believed in the possibility of a better world without cynicism and always saw the funny side without malice or disrespect, so perhaps a more fitting final word would be Pratchett's particular take on the matter:
'Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.' 

Duncan Ball born 8th, November 1945; died 12th, March 2014.

 



Rachel Whittaker



Tony Benn & Bob Crow!

High Mindedness, and the Fat Fan of Fried Fish    

TWO esteemed titans of the far left died last week; the ex-Labour MP and former Minister, Tony Benn, formerly known as Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, at 88-years, and the RMT trade unionist, Bob Crow, at 52-years, who two years ago enjoyed an F.T. Lunch at an expensive and distinguished fish and chip restaurant in the metropolis; an occasion on which he  proclaimed that the fried halibut was good for building up the brains.  Reviewing their lives is rather like analysing the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: the noble tall  high minded thin man and the pleasingly plump trade unionist.  Despite the radical views he espoused in his later life in Labour Party politics, Mr. Benn managed to turn himself into a little public treasure much loved beyond the main stream left.  Mr. Crow represented rougher tackle purveying himself as the quick-witted cheeky cockney on Any Questions on Radio Four, and even cuddling-up to Ukip and Nigel Farage, in his anxiety at displaying his hatred of the European Union and all its works.   

For his part Wedgwood Benn has been a life-long devotee of the parliamentary system, clearly at ease in the chamber of the House of Commons.  It seems that this passion for all things parliamentary has been something of a family tradition with the Wedgwood Benn clan, because in 1932, when the then Minister of Labour referred to parliamentary proceedings as a 'performance' the then Mr. William Wedgwood Benn, the father of the Tony Benn so recently deceased, complained of this slighting representation of the business of the House, and demanded the withdrawal of a remark so offensive in its implications.  Despite the adoration of the Benn family for parliamentary government throughout the generations the institution has certainly fallen on hard times today; yet even then in his book 'The Thirties' Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge was to observed:

'It is not power which Parliament lacks... rather the will to exercise it.  Power without resolution is as vain as desire without virility, and evokes scant respect.  The proportion of voters who care to register their votes has fallen sometimes as low as thirty per cent, and since 1932 has rarely been above fifty per cent.'

Benn, the son of a hereditary peer who renounced his peerage ultimately was to become a bit of a champion of the hard left, after being a middle-of-road moderate as a Minister and serving as postmaster general under Harold Wilson.  Born in 1925 to a privileged childhood that included   Westminster School and New College, Oxford. His father was a Liberal MP who joined the Labour Party and became India secretary, and later a hereditary peer under  Ramsay MacDonald.   

Mr. Benn, who met Ramsay MacDonald when he gave him a chocolate biscuit when he was five-years-old, is in some weird ways in the MacDonald tradition of Labour politics, as Bob Crow was more like MacDonald's adversary Arthur Henderson.  Malcolm Muggeridge expresses the two crucial elements in the Labour Party thus:  'They (MacDonald and Henderson) represented two elements in the Labour Party whose incompatibility had been perhaps its greatest weakness – the urge on the part of prudent, industrious manual workers to improve their conditions, and the romantic discontent of would-be, and sometimes actual aristocrats.  The trade unions and the Co-operative movement are characteristic products of the former; National Labour and the Left Book club,of the later.'  Benn rather like MacDonald is the romantic idealist who could in the 1930s have so easily slipped into the MacDonald role of appeaser of international conflicts and champion of oppressed peoples, while Crow was clearly more parochial bent on setting up National Shop Stewards Networks, tending his allotment, and eating fish and chips in London's east end.  As Muggeridge says of MacDonald:  'The romantic idealist invariably turns his eye abroad...It is so much easier and more exciting to side with the weak and defy the strong in other countries than at home.'   

Despite their high minded similarities, the difference between MacDonald in the 1930s when he was Prime Minister, and Benn in the 1980s at the peak of his influence is that while MacDonald was an electoral asset to his party, Benn made the Labour Party unelectable helping to craft the Labour manifesto in the 1983 election which came to be entitle 'the longest suicide note in history', and he later defended the Militant Tendency, now re-erected as the Socialist Party, which Mr Crow embraced after he fell out with Arthur Scargill and the Socialist Labour Party.   

MacDonald, high minded and believing his time had come, and though he had been unpopular in his stand against the Great War, the historian AJP Taylor wrote that 'most English people [at the time of the second Labour government in 1929]  agreed with MacDonald that nations had the same interests if they did but know it and that all conflicts could be dispelled by “strenuous and good will”.'  Mr Taylor somewhere describes MacDonald as the 'patron saint of appeasement'.  In the 1980s, with Tony Benn, of course,  it was nuclear disarmament with CND.  Both MacDonald and Benn were great orators: MacDonald with his 'rich Highland voice'; Benn with his southern brogue, and both managed to carry their Christianity lightly into their politics.  Bob Crow, for his part, kept the promise I heard him give defiantly on Radio Four the day before he died:  'I was born in a council house and I'll die in a council house!'  Sancho Panza couldn't have forecast at better result.

Home Secretary announces public inquiry into undercover policing!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from the Blacklist Support Group (BSG)

1. Mick Abbott R.I.P.

John McDonnell MP on Mick Abbott R.I.P. 
"Mick Abbott was a shining example of what trade unionism is all about - solidarity, dedication to the wellbeing of others and a selfless commitment to a just and fair society. Over the years he was a stalwart campaigner who will be greatly missed but his contribution will always be remembered".

Obituary of the blacklisted scaffolder and Shrewsbury campaigner in the Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michael-abbott-9179828.html

Mick Abbott speaking in support of the Shrewsbury Pickets in 2010 (alongside Bob Crow)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVk4pHAuuoQ&list=UUal8h_S-pVPKX5-bwDmGGFA

2. Bob Crow R.I.P.

Bow Crow was a genuine working class hero. A socialist who wasn't ashamed of his political beliefs and a towering figure in the trade union movement. The RMT union has gone from strength to strength under his leadership when many other unions are in almost terminal decline. Activists from the RMT were blacklisted by the Consulting Association and Bob Crow turned up on our early morning protests in support of blacklisted workers during the BESNA dispute. Bob Crow was a fighter. He was a warm hearted funny bloke. He will be sorely missed by the entire movement. Our thoughts are with his family.

Bob Crow speaking in support of the Shrewsbury Pickets in 2010 (alongside Mick Abbott)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1o_jiCLlWM&list=UUal8h_S-pVPKX5-bwDmGGFA

3. Safety

Mourn the dead - Fight for the living 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-26479720

http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2014/mar/investigation-launched-after-construction-worker-43-killed-crossrail-tunnel-holborn

A construction worker was killed by falling concrete while working underground on the Crossrail project at Fisher St in Holborn. Another worker, Kevin Campbell, 46 from Poplar was killed on a construction site in the Warton Rd area of Stratford . He was struck by equipment on an excavator. Another 35 year old crane driver suffered serious head injuries when a crane jib collapsed on Balfour Beatty’s 43-storey Providence Tower site in London ’s Docklands.

Peter Farrell, Chair of the Construction Safety Campaign, said: "There must be no return to the killing fields of old on London’s construction sites. We demand urgent action by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) telling all construction employers they will not tolerate any increase in construction worker deaths. There must also be more HSE construction inspectors working pro-actively to prevent any increase in deaths in the construction industry. 

“Construction employers must also stop banning trade union activity on site as they are currently on some major projects in London . They must be reminded of the positive influence of unions as happened on the Olympics site where happily no-one was killed.”

Blacklisted electrician Stewart Hume writes about the true cost of an industrial accident: http://siteworker.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-true-cost-of-industrial-accident.html

 

4. Public Inquiry into undercover policing

The Home Secretary Theresa May has announced a public inquiry into undercover policing. Her statement to the House of Commons follows the publication of 2 reports earlier this week - one from Mark Ellison QC into the police spying on the Lawrence family and another from Operation Herne (the police) about undercover police in general. The Ellison report condemns the undercover policing, whereas the Herne Report is a complete whitewash and contradicts evidence already in the public domain. 

The Blacklist Support Group has consistently argued that there was active police involvement with blacklisting. The BSG alone have submitted a complaint to the IPCC and we have already had confirmation that senior officers from an undercover police unit actually attended Consulting Association blacklist meetings. Reports in the Guardian have already identified four undercover police officers who spied on individuals who appear on the blacklist. BSG have therefore repeatedly called for a fully independent public inquiry into blacklisting - the police collusion is part of that.

BSG is working alongside the Lawrence family, the women who were deceived into sexual relationships by the police, environmental activists, anti-racists and socialist political groups in the campign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) which was launched last week. All the groups involved in COPS are boycotting Operation Herne.   

As yet there is no confirmed remit for the public inquiry and it is unlikely that it will start this year. BSG are arguing that the public inquiry announced by Theresa May should not just look into the Lawrence case but should be given a wide enough remit to  encompass all the different undercover police units and all the different aspects of undercover policing including blacklisting. 

5. Islington Council take a strong stand on banning blacklisting firms from public contracts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-26518171

http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/islington-bans-blacklisting-firms

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-534e-Islington-excludes-blacklisting-firms#.Ux8BTSziu70

6. High Court and Compensation Scheme update 

The next date for the blacklisting High Court trial due to take place in April has been postponed due to the retirement of the judge hearing the case. Further information will follow when we have the details. 

In the mean time, lawyers for the blacklisting firms are in the process of drawing up a compensation scheme. To date, they have not offered a single penny to anyone. The firms are still insisting that the majority of blacklisted workers would only be entitled to £1000 compensation. The BSG walked out of the first talks because of this insulting offer. BSG are not prepared to sign up to any compensation scheme that does not offer: 

• jobs to blacklisted workers
• significant financial compensation to take account of the years of suffering caused by the human rights conspiracy
• no gagging clause & full disclosure of all documents 
• every single person on the blacklist to receive compensation

7. Secret video of blacklisting meetings discovered (warning the blacklisting firms use strong language)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEiasCiQ83U&feature=youtube_gdata_player&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DHEiasCiQ83U%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player&app=desktop

Visions of European socialism:

Bob Crow & George Orwell!

IN the July-August 1947 issue of the Partisan Review, George Orwell wrote a long essay entitled 'Toward European Unity' in which he made a strong case for a European based Democratic Socialism as a future model for society.  On Tuesday the 11th, February at the Waldolf Hotel in Manchester, Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT union and others, will be arguing for among other things British withdrawal from the European Union.  It is not clear what kind of society Mr. Crow envisages for Britain, except for some kind of retro-public ownership model, a siege economy perhaps rather like that of General Franco's in Spain of the 1960s with precarious links to the EU and Nafta.  Maybe using this 'little-England' strategy Bob Crow would be able to do a deal with Putin and get some preferential Russian oil or gas deal like President Viktor Yanukovych in the Ukraine, or perhaps his recent cruise to Brazil was really part of an attempt to fit up a deal with the Brick countries.

It should come as no surprise to the English socialist that last Saturday's Daily Mail sported photos of Bob Crow  and his girlfriend on Copacabana beach in Brazil 'soaking up the sun' as the culmination of a cruise from Barbados.  The Daily Mail's journalists imply that Bob is a hypocritical socialist sampling the 'Champagne lifestyle', but this kind of lifestyle is the one that most Daily Mail readers, as well as Bob and his girl, would consider to be the desirable good life:  a kind of glorified Benidorm would be their idea of an ideal holiday.  Sadly Bob Crow's sun-burnt concept of utopia explains why Orwell, in 1947, wrote:
'A Socialist today is in the position of a doctor treating an all but hopeless case.'
The case is 'hopeless' because many English people who profess 'socialism' have a rather vulgar vision rather like that of Bob Crow sipping coconut juice from a straw on a Brazilian beach; in the same way as the typical Daily Mail reader in dreaming about the 'good life' is fantasising about the tropics and cruises in the Caribbean.  That's why we can't trust Bob Crow's 'Little Englander' politics because deep down his tastes and instincts are the same as the Daily Mail reader and Ukip voter.

Orwell had a clearer view of the international difficulties when he wrote his essay encouraging European socialists to unite in 1947, writing:
'... democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area.  But the only area in which it could conceivably be made to work, in any near future, is western Europe.  Apart from Australia and New Zealand, the tradition of democratic Socialism can only be said to exist - and even there it exists precariously - in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Britain, Spain, and Italy.  Only in those countries are there still large numbers of people to whom the word "Socialism" has some appeal and for whom it is bound up with liberty, equality, and internationalism.  Elsewhere it either has no foothold or means something different.  In North America the masses are content with capitalism, and one cannot tell what turn they will take when capitalism begins to collapse.  In the U.S.S.R. there prevails a sort of oligarchical collectivism which could only develop into democratic Socialism against the will of the ruling minority.  Into Asia even the word 'Socialism' has barely penetrated.  The Asiatic nationalist movements are either Fascist in character, or look to Moscow, or manage to combine both attitudes...  In South America the position is essentially similar, so it is in Africa and the Middle East.  Socialism does not exist everywhere, but even as an idea it is at present valid only in Europe.'

Our hopes recently with regard to the Arab Spring have been dashed, and it makes one wonder if with regard to democratic socialism that there may well be a case to be argued for European exceptionalism with regard to the kind of society George Orwell was arguing for.  Orwell always believed he had experienced a form of democratic socialism in action in Barcelona in 1936, when he claimed that the people there had made great strides and achievements through their trade unions, especially the CNT.  In his essay Orwell wrote:
'But there are also active malignant forces working against European unity, and there are existing economic relationships on which the European peoples depend for their standard of life and which are not compatible with true Socialism.'

In 1947, George Orwell listed 'Russian hostility' as one of the threats because they would be against a Europe that was not under Russia's control - witness the current problem in Ukraine; he listed 'American hostility' because of the 'special relationship' and the cultivation of Britain as an 'extra-European power'; and he thought that the history of imperialism that had benefited Britain in the past in particular would work against the concept of a united European Socialism.  He was right about his sense of the parochial distrust of Europe among the British people; Ukip, Bob Crow and some elements of the British left are all examples of this narrow tendency.  And yet, by any reasonable standards, the idea of a democratic socialist tradition is still more likely in a unified Europe than anywhere else it seems to me.

European Echoes at Genk & Grangemouth

Primitive Politics of Little England & the intellectual Eunuchs’! WHAT often passes for the left in Britain today is basically anti-European or with Bob Crow and his RMT union crudely just no2eu, and the same goes for the rump Socialist Party, formerly Militant. This is the primitive politics of little England and the political Eunuchs. Yet, when we contrast two recent industrial disputes: that of Ineos at Grangemouth in Scotland where the workers and their union, Unite, was decisively beaten last week, and that of the car workers at Ford in Genk, near Limburg in Belgium, were the ACV union forced the employers to negotiate a respectable settlement. Why did the Belgium ACV union prove a more substantial foe than Britain's Len McCluskey and Unite? The explanation is that the trade union tradition in much of Europe is often more in tune with a culture of 'initiativa' in so far as the workers in places like Belgium, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, operate in a more unpredictable way using political initiative and cunning to defeat their employers. Often these European workers are less disciplined and law-abiding than the Brits. And sometimes they don't even pay their union dues so readily as their English brothers, but they are often more courageous, that means less afraid of the police, than the Anglo-Saxon and the German trade unionists. At Grangemouth almost as soon as Fred Radcliffe announced his plan to close the oil plant in Grangemouth, Mr. McCluskey, his stewards and the workforce caved-in. At Genk, a year ago when Ford decided on closure of the plant in December 2014, the Belgium workers immediately set-up barricades at the factory gates, and according to Jack Ewing in yesterday's International Herald Tribune set about 'penning up 6,000 newly built Mondeo cars, S-Max minivans and Galaxy vans that had already been promised to customers – creating a traffic jam that would effectively shut down production for months – the workers were not going to make things easy for Ford.' This action forced Ford to deal with the union. Ford ultimately got a settlement in Genk but the cost was high at $750 million merely to settle with the 4,000 blue-collar workers, or just about $190,000 per worker. The cost for the white-collar workers will make it higher. Jack Ewing in the International Herald Tribune [IHT] writes: 'That cost of layoffs is substantially higher than in the United States, where Ford set aside $374 million in 2009 to cover severance costs for 2,400 workers, or about $155,000 each. Moreover, European labor law is much more favorable to unions than in the United States and tends to support workers in their tradition of militancy. In Genk, workers prevented the plant from operating normally for more than four months and received unemployment benefits for some of the time they did so.' Genk is a city of 65,000, many of them descendants of Italians, Turks or Moroccans who came decades ago to dig coal. The closure of Ford at Genk will let Ford consolidate production and mean that the next generation of production of Mondeo, the Kuga SUV, the S-Max and some other vehicles at a factory in Valencia in Spain. But justified or not, this decision has left a sense betrayal in Genk that has enraged people with the result that Mr.Dries, the mayor, was seriously anxious about violence. The IHT reports; 'Two weeks after Ford announced the closing, about 170 Belgium workers rode chartered buses to the main Ford plant in Cologne, Germany, where top management was meeting. The workers threw firecrackers and burned tire outside the factory gate. About a dozen people were arrested after they managed to break through security and into the Ford grounds in an unsuccessful effort to confront Mr. Odell.' The Belgium union officials say most of the protesters were peaceful and that 'the rowdiness was just the Belgium way of doing things'. Peter Kunnen, a lead negotiator for theACV-CSC union that represents Ford workers, said: 'A tire in Belgium – that is no problem [but] in Germany this is a big problem,' It is important to understand that if British trade unionism is to become more successful it will have to adopt other tactics that are more European. But this is too much for the rather narrow, small-minded and amatuer British left to grasp.

Reciting Reactionary Rhetoric

Socialist Party Scotland Cheer-leading to the Grangemouth Abyss  

 

LEN McCluskey and Unite have delivered us glorious disaster in their handling of the Grangemouth dispute last weekend.  Last Friday on Any Questions on Radio Four Bob Crow of the RMT said that this would not mean the end of trade unionism as we know it.  On the 29^th, October after a long silence the Socialist Party Scotland issued a long-winded rationalisation for the delivery of a serious disaster for the British trade union movement – perhaps the most significant defeat since the collapse of the miners strike in 1985.  

 

Could it have been different?  Will this be a turning point for trade union rights?  Will Len McCluskey become another dishevelled Arthur Scargill figure in the 21^st century – a tired and forlorn politics?  

 

The Grangemouth débâcle beautifully underlines the hopeless reactionary rhetoric of British trade unionism and what has come to called the left in Britain.  Practically the whole of the left in this country and particularly the British trade unions are ruled by a reactionary instinct.  Analysing the Grangemouth failure the Socialist Party Scotland declares [29^th, Oct. 2013]: 

'In the absence of a fighting strategy by Unite to save the plant, including the occupation of the site and the building of a mass campaign across Scotland to demand that the Scottish/ UK governments nationalise Grangemouth, the pressure proved too great for the shop stewards to resist.'  

 

The left in Britain, as represented by the trade unions, protest movements and left parties, has long been a reactionary force in so far as it has always tended to react to an agenda set by the establishment, the government or the employers.  It does not have an agenda or serious strategy of its own.  Thus when the current coalition government enforced cuts the left because it has no plan of its own is forced to go on the defensive and fight the cuts with umpteen fragmented organisations – this Pavlovian Dog reaction by the Socialist Party resulted in the disintegration of the National Shop Stewards Network [NSSN] in 2011.  This automatic and mechanical quality of the British left stems from something special detected in some of the north European organised working class by such writers as Ignazio Silone and George Orwell:  Silone in his book 'School for Dictators' links it to 'Zumarcherien' (a marching together approach to class war) – a kind of mechanical politics of the German and British worker founded in the kind of work in big factories – Silone uses this concept of the north European worker as automaton to explain the better performance of the Spanish and Catalan workers in resisting the imposition of Fascism in 1936:  the Spaniards with their different cultural and political background rooted in the peasant and the artisan were better able to use their initiative and trade unions to challenge authoritarian regimes than those left-wing parties and trade unions with a more Prussian and Germanic mentality in north Europe.  

 

Today, the Socialist Party Scotland explanation to what went wrong at Grangemouth is to blame the Labour Party  and Ed Miliband personally: 

'This shows yet again that today Labour does not support workers in struggle and that Unite should come out clearly in favour of a new mass workers' party, public ownership and a real political alternative to the austerity agenda.'  

 

This statement is an example, yet again, of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the British left and our national trade unions.  The Socialist Party Scotland is reassuring: 

'Socialist Party Scotland completely rejects the idea put about by the crowing capitalist media that the union has been smashed at Grangemouth.  Unite has made a big mistake in singing up to a three-year no-strike deal at Grangemouth... Against the backdrop of a no-strike agreement it is vital that Unite rebuilds its strength and its membership at Grangemouth...'  

 

This is voice of despair, the voice of the politics of the automaton of the unthinking 'mass-party man' steeped in a kind of Prussian totalitarian mind-set to which Orwell and Silone often referred.  These people have yet to learn the lessons of Arthur Scargill and the defeat of the miners in 1985:  Thatcher then had a transformation strategy then in the Ridley plan, and Scargill and the miners were fighting to defend the pits and save the status quo, essentially a conservative position which Scargill fought tactically.  Today the battle at Grangemouth was a tactical from the beginning and it was one that Unite couldn't win.  Wee must wait to see if the Socialist Party continues to back Len McCluskey in future.  Over two years ago Bob Crow the RMT leader and a political crony of the Social Party was treated to a fish and chip lunch by the Financial Times famous 'Lunch with the FT' column and he declared that the flat fish 'haliburt is good for your brains', well the British left is desparately short on brains so perhaps the Socialist Party and McCluskey should stuff themselves with haliburt in future.

Durham Miners Gala

The 129th Durham Miners Gala took place last Saturday 13th July with the usual banner parade through the city.    Guest speakers included the ubiquitous Owen Jones, Bob Crow, Frances O'Grady General Secretaty of the TUC, and Len McCluskey General Secretary of Unite.    The Daily Mirrors Kevin Maguire stole the show with a rousing speech.   He also wrote an excellent article in the Durham Miners Gala Special pamphlet.

The 1st Durham Miners Gala was in August 1871.      The Russian anarchist  Peter Kropotkin addressed the Durham  Miners at their Big Meeting (ie the Gala) in July 1882 speaking out against Czarist oppression and also against coercion in Ireland noting "that in the English dominions people are also imprisoned without being judged".   Newcastle Daily Chronicle 3.7.1882.    It is about time that the anarcho-syndicalist message is widely disseminated again at such events and not confined to the periphery which as a consequence allows the trade union bureaucrats to dominate proceedings and engage in vacuous rhetoric.

Danger on East Coast Mainline

RAIL UNION RMT today released a shocking new picture which shows six inches of rail head crumbled away to nothing leaving a potentially lethal gap in the track on the InterCity East Coast Mainline at Hambleton South Junction near Selby where normal running speeds are 125mph. The picture, taken last Friday (1st February), follows the publication by RMT of a similar damning photo taken at Colton Junction on the ECML just a few miles away back in December last year. 

RMT believes that due to renewals and staffing cuts, an initial crack had crumbled away to a six inch gap in the rail head over a period of two weeks in a mirror image of the incident at Colton Junction, leaving trains, passengers and staff at risk of a serious and potentially lethal incident. A train could have derailed, jumped the tracks and collided with an on-coming service. Fortunately, the gap was spotted by on-track teams and the section of track has since been replaced but it raises serious questions about the impact of wear and tear on rail infrastructure, with high-speed trains running on tracks that should have been renewed, in a climate of cuts and sub-contracting.

RMT understands that there is massive pressure to keep the ECML running from the government and the Department of Transport as they look to re-privatise the service. There are also persistent demands on Network Rail from the budget-holder, the Office of Rail Regulation, to cut back on rail renewals work despite the potentially-lethal consequences as exposed in graphic detail by RMT today.

However, pressure from RMT and a high-profile media campaign by the union, has forced RAIB (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) to now launch a full investigation into the condition of the track on the ECML, the latest shocking RMT pictures will fuel the urgency of that investigation which the union says must focus in on the impact of cuts to staffing and renewals and the consequences of sub-contracting core functions.

RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:
'This shocking new picture highlights the reality on Britain's railways today - staffing, inspections and track renewals have been cut in the dash to save money and there is massive pressure right from the top of Government to keep services running at all costs regardless of the potential human cost. If we don’t reverse the cuts on Britain’s railways another major tragedy is inevitable.

'We are now facing exactly the same set of poisonous conditions that lead us to the Hatfield disaster and as this picture, following on from similar evidence exposed by RMT late last year, shows we are dicing with death and risking another major rail tragedy. RMT is demanding action before it is too late and the RAIB investigation must look at the poisonous impact of cuts to staffing and renewals work and the sub-contracting of jobs that should be undertaken in-house.

'RMT has made it crystal clear that we want all cuts to staffing, maintenance and renewals reversed and all track works brought back in house rather than subbed-out to contractors. The current contractor staff should be transferred over to direct Network Rail employment. We also want the pressure from the centre to run services at any costs lifted to enable safety-critical works to take place immediately.

'Finally, we want an end to the further cuts proposed by the Government in its McNulty Rail Review before we end up with another rail tragedy on Britain's tracks with ministers paraded on our screens with blood on their hands. Those ministers have to take responsibility right now for the rail scandal that is unfolding on their watch'.

Prim Britannia & Popular Britannia

Rough-Arsed Northerners who aim to die with their boots on!

IN A RECENT DISPUTE among British syndicalists over the use of the term 'Nazi' in modern political polemics someone invoked Godwin's Law to claim authoritatively that once someone refers to 'Hitler' or the 'Nazis' that ought to close down a discussion. It was further claimed by 'Becca', who I know and respect, that once these terms are used in debate that people automatically 'close their ears' to all further comment. Another contributor 'Nick D' was more aggressive, asserting that even if the terms were used in jest or genuinely in the debate, the discussion ought to end forthwith because the proponent's use of an 'illegitimate' term automatically disqualified all further serious debate under Godwin's Law.

Those of us not so well acquainted with website etiquette or protocol retreated from the scene of battle, licking our wounds and scratching our heads believing the Young Turks may have a point: the point being that it is inappropriate behaviour to challenge a British union boss armed with metaphors related to Hitler. It was as if suddenly someone had presented us with a proposition by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Closer examination of Godwin's Law (Godwin in this case is not the 19th Century English anarchist William Godwin of 'Enquiry Concerning Political Justice', but rather some American Joe Blogs-type 'Godwin': phantom of the internet) suggests that he didn't intend it as an absolute law, but merely wanted people to think carefully before using such terms as 'Nazi': he didn't want the word to become devalued by overuse. In this case the comparison between Chancellor Hitler and RMT union leader, Bob Crow, merely pointed out that both were in favour of nationalised railways (see Chancellor Hitler's speech of December 8th 1934).  In the eyes of some, to do this was seen as both tactically stupid and perhaps equivalent, in some people's eyes, to swearing in Church.

Ought we to swallow 'Godwin's Law' without complaint? Ought we to adopt a prim and pragmatic approach to our opponents and enemies as some people have said, including Nick D, 'Becca' and my old friend Dave Chapple? Should website threads and discussions be closed down at the first utterance of the term 'Nazi' or 'Chancellor Hitler'?

Those of us from the North who publish Northern Voices would refute such suggestions for a prim and pragmatic politics and debate. Ours is a more rough-arsed polemic rooted in the working class culture of the North of England. Those of us who come from this tradition still, I suspect, represent the majority in this country. I myself noticed it when I left school at 15 and became an apprentice on the shopfloor: in doing so I had shifted from the lower middle-class world of the classroom and the schoolmaster to the bold banter and vulgar abuse of the factory floor. Debates should never automatically be closed on account of some fancy protocol like Godwin's Law.

Nor is it the case as Becca suggested that people 'close their ears' at mention of Hitler or 'Nazi': some people might, but it is not typical. As evidence of this a recent program on Radio 4 hosted by Clive Anderson declared that in 2010 there were 850 different books published on the Third Reich, and that after books on celebrity memoirs and celebrity cooking, books on the Nazis are the most popular publications available. As Clive Anderson pointed out on Radio 4, perhaps in bad taste for some, a successful book would therefore try to combine celebrity with cooking and the Nazis: suggesting one on Celebrity Nazi Chefs. Northern Voices embraces whole-heartedly the rough-arsed culture of the Northern English working-classes. We seek to build our readership among working people rather than political activists. Hence we publish stuff on Eccles Cakes and Northern Cooking, Salford Matadors like Frank Evans, local murders, heroic forgers like Shaun Greenhalgh from Bolton, Gangs of Manchester, Walter Kershaw's nude study (see NV11) and Big Cyril's passions and corporal punishment on young boys; as well as the political views of Picasso, who had an exhibition at the Liverpool Tate last year, so we review 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' at the Liverpool Everyman or perruse the ideas of the anarchist social thinker, Colin Ward, and the Big Society.

We would reject Godwin's Law as a reason for closing down a thread debate. In this regard we would turn to the story of Wittgenstein who was visiting the philosopher G.E. Moore in 1944 after Moore had had a stroke. Under instruction from Moore's doctor, Moore's wife insisted that his friends must limit their visits to one and a half hours. Wittgenstein alone objected to this restriction saying no discussion should be cut off until it had reached its 'proper end'. Furthermore, Wittgenstein added that should Moore expire during such a discussion, then that would be a very decent way to die, 'with his boots on'. Despite the recommendations of our detractors employing  Godwin's Law, those of us at Northern Voices are determined to die with our boots on, and not suffer, and be struck dumb, under the prim pretext of the requirements of some fancy rule.

'The healthiest fish ... halibut': Big Bob on protein!!!

Cheeky Cockney Union Man Cocks a Snoop at our Northern Chippy Cuisine

SAYING he had no specific plan to co-ordinate strikes with other unions, Bob Crow told the FT's political correspondent, Jim Pickard, (see 'Lunch with the FT' interview - 26/03/2011) that 'if there are disputes in rail, shipping or bus industries at the same time over cutbacks, we would be fools not to co-ordinate the timing.' He estimates that 5,000 of his own member's jobs are at risk of redundancy.

The SWP and others on the Left have been urging a 24-hour general strike, but a petitioner on last Saturday's Unite train back from the protests in London had a hard time convincing people to sign up to get the TUC to call one. The SWP lad said the last Saturday's protest against the Coalition cuts showed what happens when the leadership of the TUC call for a demo. But it didn't do much good in the 1980s when the TUC last called for 'Days of Action' by trade unionists. This didn't faze the SWP lad, who claimed that it is different now to the 1980s; indeed it is, the trade unions are weaker now than they were in the 1980s.

Curiously Bob Crow told the FT that he is not against all cuts like some other leftwingers, nor is he a 'deficit denier'; his proposed alternative to the cuts is a 'one pence tax on all emails' according the last Saturday's FT. This would, says Full-fact an analytical website, raise £12 m a year well short of the UK's deficit. Other parts of his political philosophy include a dislike for free trade and a passion for bigger import and export duties. He reputably keeps a bust of Lenin in his office but believes in pay differentials being on a six-figure salary himself. He supports a policy of 'opportunities for all', which I suppose Dave Cameron would ascribe to.

The grilled halibut at the Rules "hunting, shootin', fishin'" establishment in Covent Garden, that claims to be London's oldest restaurant, costs £53.90 for two, and the chips were £7.50 for two portions. But Big Bob knows the place well and he said that 'we had a summit here ... five weeks ago' and gossiped about Blair and Brown using the same place not to mention 'Nell Gwynne and King Charles'. Then he said: 'That's the healthiest fish you could have, halibut' it's 'full of oil, good for everything, bones, joints, healthy glow.' That, and the fact that he works out six days a week is what he reckons keeps him so fit.

One is left wondering if he will in the end prove to be a better and more successful leader for the British Left than was Arthur Scargill in the 1980s.

Painful Paradoxies: Hitler praises 'Socialism', Bob Crow backs 'Socialist' Party - Black Jesse Owens kisses Nazi Leni

JUST OVER 75 years ago on the 8th, December 1934, Chancellor Hitler took sharp issue with his Minister of Economy Dr. Schacht in a speech in Nuremberg on the occasion of a celebration of the centenary of the German railways which, as he pointed out, 'is now state-owned and has developed along "Socialist lines".' That was the same week in December last year, that Bob Crow, Secretary of the RMT, threw in his lot with the 'Socialist' Party against the syndicalists, anarchists, SWP and other independent socialists on the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN).

It will be 40 years next year since the black athlete Jesse Owens kissed the 'old Nazi' photographer/ film-maker Leni Riefenstahl at the 1972 Munich Olympics, according to Leni: 'As Owens hugged and kissed me, we were both near to tears. Several guests began to clap, then the applause grew louder, intensifying into a storm. Confused and embarrassed, I left the reception.'

With these kind of painful paradoxies in mind I sent the email below to Bob Crow, National Secretary of the RMT union, who is linked to the 'Socialist' Party through his personal support for the political body Trade Union Socialist Coalition (TUSC) explaining my resignation from the National Shop Stewards Network that Bob's union helped to establish.

Dear Bob, 

Last week I gave in my resignation from the NSSN (National Shop Stewards Network). Normally I would not consider doing such a thing and would have just allowed my involvement to quietly lapse, because normally I wouldn't regard myself as that important in the way of things. This time, following Lynda Taaffe's (NSSN Secretary & Socialist Party leader) assurance that you had not been misled when you gave your backing to the Socialist Party, I have decided to join with the others in making a fuss and a statement. I do this because of nature of the immature takeover of the NSSN by the Socialist Party and having studied the policies of the TUSC and listened to Alex Gordon (President of the RMT union) at his Industrial Society talk in Manchester in December with his reference to exchange controls and British sovereignty, I fear that what you may end up with is national socialism without the racism. I say without the racism, but I think an unintended consequence of your position and that of Alex Gordon - with its nod to 'Little England' - could be a drift to the encouragement of xenophobia in this country. I know that TUSC has an etc. clause here & there that is internationalist in intent, but the underlying policy is reactionary and 'Little England'. I also heard Steve Headley at the special conference criticise Dave Chapple for 'taking his ball home': well does that mean that if we were in Germany in 1933 at the time of Hitler's triumph at the elections there we should behave like good Prussians and accept the result? Far better to behave like good Spaniards and Catalans in 1936 and be the first to confront the Fascists... 

Kind regards, 

Brian Bamford

The German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, in his speech in 1934, supported nationalisation, and the policy of TUSC is as follows: 'Stop all privatisation, including the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), and the immoral privatisation of prisons. Bring privatised public services and utilities back into public ownership under democratic control.' The form of 'democratic control' is not explained, there is no evidence here that it would differ much from Herbert Morrison's model as established in the 1940s.

DID BOB CROW PLAY FOOTSIE WITH SMELLY LITTLE ORTHODOXY?

MEANWHILE AT THE NSSN CONFERENCE NANCY TAAFFE STICKS UP FOR NORTH OF THE BORDER POLITICIAN TOMMY SHERIDAN

BEFORE Linda Taaffe could say 'Easy-Peasey!', or 'Higgledy-Piggledy!', or 'Hop-Skip-and-a-Jump!' Big Bob Crow had jumped into bed. Or so say some of the 'malas lenguas' - foul mouthed folk on the left who don't take a shine to the Socialist Party. Within a day of issuing an open letter to the National Shop Stewards Network and Socialist Party urging the 'maximum possible unity' and insisting 'there can be no question of any political party or organisation seeking to assume leadership of this struggle or setting up a new national organisation that would create disunity', Bob Crow seemingly went to bed with the Socialist Party. That is what his critics are now saying.

Readers must decide for themselves but on the 12th, January 2011, a statement was issued in the name of Bob Crow (RMT general secretary), Alex Gordon (RMT president), Bill Mullins (Socialist Party & co-organiser of the NSSN) and Linda Taaffe (Socialist Party and secretary of the NSSN) in which it was announced that 'Bob Crow and Alex Gordon agree with the proposal of the NSSN steering committee of 4th, December 2010 to launch an anti-cuts campaign...' That proposal was the motion that the Socialist Party and only the Socialist Party supported on the 4th December: all other parties, the syndicalists and those of no party opposed this motion preferring to avoid the process in which the NSSN became just another protest group or rent-a-mob.

What does this mean? It means, if the Socialist Party's critics don't resign, that the NSSN will become a junk shop for every fashionable fancy that the Socialist Party wants to use it for; and the other parties - the SWP, Permanent Revolution or the syndicalists - will serve the purpose of providing a fig leaf for a smelly little orthodoxy that has its roots in some distasteful politics on the left. Witness the recent perjury conviction of Scottish Tommy Sheridan, on behalf of whom Nancy Taaffe, daughter of Linda, shamelessly strode up to the NSSN rostrum on 22nd, January to uphold as a 'victim of capitalism' when what he seems to have done is roam around the downtown suburbs of Swinton with a woman journalist from the News of the World or offer himself as a copper's nark after the poll tax riots in the early 1990s. Or take Derek Hatton in Liverpool a prominent figure in the Militant Tendency, the forerunner of the Socialist Party, now there's a fine specimen of political rectitude for you. This is the unsavory politics which the Socialist Party is knee deep in. The only reason we had owt to do with them on the NSSN is because we thought they may have grown out of it. But alas, it seems we were wrong!

Where does Bob Crow stand on this and why did he turn a somersault overnight and line up with the Socialist Party knowing that it would lead to divisions? In the week following the 4th, December 2010 NSSN steering committee meeting at which the Socialist Party had asserted its control over the other groups on a vote of 21 to 17, I discussed the outcome in Manchester with Alex Gordon, President of the RMT, and he indicated that he was in touch with Linda Taaffe and disapproved of some of her critics. Alex Gordon, some will remember was formerly a member of the Direct Action Movement in the 1980s: an anarcho-syndicalist organisation linked to the Spanish CNT. I had a distinct impression then that he would side with the Socialist Party.

Bob Crow for his part has veered from taking a tactical position close to anarchist type direct action proclaiming a belief in civil disobedience and Swampy during last September's TUC Congress, but later on Radio 4's 'Any Questions' denouncing 'anarchist-style' actions at Millbank when it was raided by the students because it 'only benefited the insurance companies'. The Millbank attack was later shown to be a spontaneous student action. Now it seems with local elections looming in May, that Brother Crow is focused again on ballot box politics and that means the candidates of the Trade Union Socialist Coalition (TUSC). In the TUSC the Socialist Party is the dominant force and the current conflict in the industrial NSSN must now be an irritation if not a distraction.

When TUSC was formed in January 2010 the blog 'A Very Public Sociologist' asked: 'can TUSC break down the awful sectarian culture of the far left, and does it constitute a step toward a new left alternative'?

By provoking a vexatious conflict in the NSSN over the issue of anti-cuts the Socialist Party is closing down a culture of unity and creating resentment. The syndicalists which represented the fastest growing group on the NSSN steering committee - increasing from 3 or 4 to 14 in twelve months - have conducted themselves well in this dispute thanks in no small part to the skillful leadership of Dave Chapple (Chairman of the NSSN, Secretary of Bridgewater TUC and member of the CWU).

BOB CROW AT THE TUC

Now it's Swampy, Direct Action & Extra-parliamentary Man ( & Woman)

LAST SUNDAY on Sky TV Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, was calling for Fathers4Justice type actions, but by Wednesday he was reminding a fringe meeting of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) at the Friends Meeting House in Manchester, of Swampy and other extra-parliamentary actions. The Chair, revolutionary syndicalist, Dave Chapple, was moved to ask him if Swampy had now joined the RMT? He said that what was needed was broad based imaginative campaigns in the community and that he thought that this year's TUC conference had been positive with calls for coordinated action and strikes which, in his view, had to be 'political', and he said that, for the first time in many years, the media had turned up in strength. He argued that we had to put forward real social demands.

Linda Taaffe, Secretary of the NSSN, called for a 'strategy of mass action' like the Poll Tax campaigns of the early 1990s. She said it was not just the poll tax riot that had won that battle but rather the determination of ordinary people not to pay the tax. In the end, of course, the Prime Minister who superseded Margaret Thatcher, John Major, had said that as a tax the Poll Tax was 'uncollectable'. Indeed, it was Margaret Thatcher that who through her anti-trade union laws helped bring back the riot to streets of England. In the 1970s and 80s some Industrial Sociologists like Tony Lane and Huw Beynon saw strikes and industrial action as a safety valve in society and some at that time saw the union official as the 'manager of discontent'. Calls for the increasing use of the law to limit the right to strike from people like Boris Johnson may well lead to more insurrectionary, less predictable forms of action

Amid the slogans and rhetoric at the TUC conference and on the streets during the demo last Sunday, there is a sense in the air up here in Manchester of a possibility of summat different on the horizon, summat more exotic perhaps, some alternative action more surprising than an ordinary strike. The utterances of Bob Crow, perhaps unconsciously imply something strange is in the offing and all week senior policemen, with an eye on their own interests, have been warning of social disorder if the cuts are implemented. Perhaps the National Shop Stewards Network will find a role for itself yet.