'Undercover War': David John Douglass' review

Undercover War Harry McCallion

Britain’s Special Forces And Their Secret War Against the IRA

9781 78946 285 2 John Blake Publishing

£8-99

HARRY McCallion is in a position to know, seven tours of the occupied counties with the Parachute Regiment and the Intelligence Company together with six years with the SAS he also served with the RUC.

The British Army’s war against the PIRA between 1970 and 1998 and its associated war against the republican community is one of its most bitter and controversial in the history of the British Empire. The fact that this is acknowledged within the first two pages of the book “murderous ill-discipline” and “The British Army’s reputation was damaged for decades” was a refreshing piece of honesty at least. The author lays the blame of the early disasters on Brigadier Frank Kitson, a person well known to many of us on the left at this period an open advocate if push comes to shove of a ‘A very British Coup’.

McCallion describes Kitson’s ‘Military Reaction Force’ as basically a self-acting terrorist organisation under no outside control and revolving almost entirely round Kitson and his anti-guerrilla warfare techniques perfected in Kenya fighting the Mau Mau. We are told SAS, SBU, and other covert sections of the army where banned from operating in Ulster initially, but all these regiments assigned men to MRF. They operated in civilian clothes, they attempted to don the hair styles and clothes,beards and dress common to young males of the period and to all intent and purpose where indeed a state terrorist organisation with no formal connection to the armed forces, this was especially so when they went to murder people. There were no ‘rules of engagement’.

The British state took no responsibility for them and troops assigned to them were instructed of the ‘Deniable missions'. There was something of MO and Organisational rational of the Black and Tans in much of this. Their murders of which there were many, and McCallion exposes this early on with many of the names and circumstances of the murders, were either not reported at all, it being left for the RUC and public at large to conclude these were sectarian murders or para-military executions. Or else where they called it in, they were explained as ‘returning fire’ or ‘caught in an ambush’ the crimes were investigated by the Military Police and the ‘Murder Squad’ version recorded as fact without further enquiry. Their so called ‘intelligence’ was woeful, having been brutalised and tortured out of basically anyone from the community and chosen it seems because of their Non-involvement with the armed struggle, on the twisted logic such innocents would have no loyalty the republican military and point the figure. In fact, the attitude of this unit was that everyone in the community was guilty or potentially guilty, so innocence or ‘guilt’ was not a prime concern.

A consequence of the murder of unarmed catholic civilians in drive-by shootings was that the RUC and more generally the British Army blamed the Loyalist militias which often resulted in counter attacks or worse sectarian attacks on unarmed loyalist civilians. One would be naive indeed to see this as an unintended bonus rather than part of the overall reign of state authorised terror. MRF Sergeant ‘Taff’ Williams machine gunned three Catholic men standing by a car in the same spot where innocent car passenger Jean Smyth had been murdered in an attack on their car just previously. Williams used a Thompson machine, a weapon favoured by the Provisionals. Another man in his own house was injured in the fire that killed the Catholic men. By sheer flook the MSR car was intercepted by a RUC patrol and Williams arrested. He was prosecuted for attempted murder. His cover story that the men had been armed was disproved by forensic evidence and eyewitnesses. He was acquitted and stayed with the unit. Indeed, fellow unit members swore to the author they knew he had killed at least 15 civilians to their knowledge. Concern at the cavalier murder and indiscipline were highly counterproductive and solidarizing the community further to the republican movement set alarms bells ringing among more conventional of the states armed forces. By the time they moved to disband them, had killed at least 40 identifiable innocent civilians, comrades in the republican communities say this is a gross underestimate and put numbers over 100. The author says, “the total number of people killed by MRF will never be known.”

The mantle of conducting Britain’s undercover surveillance and counter insurgency would pass to the SAS. But the problem for the Government would be one of recognising the war in Ireland as just that, when they had throughout claimed the violence was just down to criminal gangs and not a political liberation struggle. B company SAS was consequently ‘disbanded’ or ‘debadged’ half the unit was engaged in recruiting and training a force to replace the MRF, the other half were formally disengaged from SAS but were posted as an operational surveillance team operating armed in plain clothes. ‘Debadged under ongoing deniability‘ and the legitimacy they thought they owned, they were operating officially as the SAS. Far from being a clean replacement for the murderous MRF the new force aspired to be a more efficient version of the old one taking over their old barracks in Hollywood. It is interesting that the Author mentions the briefings given to this new team on republican and loyalist militias were built on MI5 infiltration, sleepers and informers within the respective ranks.

After a period of strenuous operations to break the command chain of the Belfast brigade by regular identification and arrest of Brigade Commanders the debadged unit was disbanded, it was replaced by the other half of what had been ‘B’ Company, now under the new title status 14 Intelligence Company nick-named The Det (officially titled the Special Reconnaissance Unit). From its inception this Unit had the operational strength of a normal Infantry Company. That’s a lot of plain clothes civilian looking assassins, in normal cars with lethal weaponry coming and going without apparent constraint and control. The Author was a leading member of this Unit. Operators were allowed to grow long hair and moustaches fashionable among young men of their age in civilian life. A nice touch was the inclusion of shopping bags, cots or child seats to their civilian cars. Operators were taught to imitate and Ulster accent for at least one sentence replies to questions. CQB (close quarter battle) techniques, close range use of the Browning 9mm pistol “the workhorse of the Det”, “most operators could draw and hit a target in less than a second”. The weapons we are told were frequently ‘customised’ an extended 20 round magazine for example a feature one wouldn’t have normally associated with ‘targeted’ still less ‘low key surveillance operations’. All operators would carry a ‘car weapon’ a machine gun or American MAC-10 . This latter is highly inaccurate rapid firing weapon but sprays large numbers of lethal bullets in the shortest possible time, never mind the accuracy feel the death count. This weapon didn’t fall out of popular usage with Det or the SBS until the 1980s when it was replaced by the Heckler and Kosh MP5. The Author makes no apology that the purpose of the Det was to wage war on the insurgency, although by 1976 the ‘non-political’ game was up, and the SAS was officially sent into Ulster where of course in one hat or another it had been throughout.

McCallan while trying to persuade us his unit were now the good guys admits to the murder of two protestant civilian’s with no political or military affiliations, who they had assumed were members of the PIRA. The two men who had been shooting pigeons, had had the air let out of their tyres while they were at their sport. The passing 14 Unit was laughing loudly as they drove by and the men assumed these were people who had done it and set off in hot pursuit. Only to be shot dead as they confronted the unit. McCallan, with more honesty than most, in his cover for other deaths associated with the Unit, as mistakes, or ‘not us’. Indeed as his story unfolds the number of innocent people they accidently or mistakenly kill is quite breath-taking, we had always previously been accused of making this stuff up, or else it was blamed on republican or loyalist fighters, here we have the horse’s mouth. Additionally, the explanation repeated more than once that captured republicans ‘had attempted to grab weapons and were shot dead’ must be taken with a large pinch of salt, I think. 'The Murder on the Rock’ (Gibraltar) in which three unarmed members of the IRA were shot dead in public because they went for their non-existent guns, or in the case of the women attempted to detonate a car bomb in a car found to have had no explosives in it, are repeated in the teeth of witnesses evidence and agreement from the author that in fact they were unarmed without any bomb. Republicans of course will not be surprised by the events they lived through in their communities, but the British public might well be, suppose this book gets wide distribution as it surely should. In among his whole review of the struggles and chronicles of who shot who and how it happened Bloody Sunday is notable by the absence of any description or analysis. Although “bloody Sunday” is mentioned as just one of the ‘events’ of the war, there is a deafening silence as to justification or explanation for what is acknowledged now by the British state to be cold blooded murder.

One of the most pressing absent analysis on the republican left, is the degree of penetration by states forces into commanding areas of the IRA and through them the political direction of the movement. Some of this has broken the surface following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, with senior Provisionals breaking deep cover. This book would be unlikely to provide us chapter and verse or any comprehensive revelation even suppose he knew, and he doubtless knows much more than he says as do current Key players in the Provisional movement in my view. The early highly accurate targeting of Commanders of the Belfast Brigade revealed in this book, was not as suggested due to their intelligence work when so much else of it was so wrong. Someone on ‘our side’ was simply tipping them off even to quite sophisticated undercover identities and safe remote house operations. The author tells us that “increasing penetration of their organisation by both MI5 and RUC Special Branch” the Provo’s formed an internal security organisation aimed at discovering and eliminating informers and sleepers. The author happily tells us that the senior officer of the PIRA charged with setting up and operating the Unit was in fact an RUC Special Branch double agent.

It is literally breath-taking how so many respected and trusted ‘leaders’ of the republican movement, in full knowledge of the sacrifice and loss were all the while pissing up our backs. It is hard to credit that even tiny breakaway teams like the Irish Peoples Liberation Organisation (a split from INLA but with some left dissident PIRA members) in one of its few anti state operations had also been penetrated and the RUC knew about the attack before it happened.

It is illustrative the book claims that the major strategy of the undercover units was recruiting informers and having deep plants inside the PIRA together with misdirecting the movements own internal security unit to killing men totally innocent of collaboration. McCallan claims one of the main drives to abandon the armed struggle was the degree of penetration with three out of every four operations known to the army in advance. The heavy penetration of Belfast Brigade meant three of every four actions were notified to the security forces, the Special Branch claiming one in every twenty members of the Brigade was an informer or enemy plant. Their penetration could not have happened without the gross treachery we had long suspected and this book confirms it. It must also be said that the book reluctantly admits they were far from having things all their own way and many daring and skilful engagements by the Provo’s are recounted in which the occupation forces paid the ultimate price. The author conceding that for every operation that ended in capture or the death of a terrorist, there were hundreds that did not.

One of the not well-known facts from SAS operations is that they used American fragmentation grenades without official authorisation, the author confesses that they were deployed with attack units and their use threatened though they were not in fact deployed. We are not told how they were able to have large numbers of unauthorised American weapons present on raids and how they got them.

One very telling line used by McCallion given the subsequent unprovoked mass civilian murders on Bloody Sunday. In a lull in operations on all sides, he tells us, the SAS troop decided to make themselves a target “and invite the PIRA to come out and play”. I have always thought the Parachute Regiment was doing just that when it went into Derry into what the Para’s considered was the Provo’s backyard and certainly the community in which their families lived. It was a come-on meant to draw out an enraged PIRA into a full blown no holds barred shoot out. Republican units had under agreement with the marchers withdrawn from the area, to prevent just such an excuse for murder. As we know no one was there to be drawn out, and the people who were shot down were all unarmed civilians, but that throwaway line has a wider ring of truth to it.

The heavy penetration of the leadership of the PIRA caused the ASU (operational units) to become almost self-acting & self-contained, with only a loose overall control of operations. This was aimed at stopping plants and informers, but the downside was very dubious not to say murderous targets without any clear strategy aimed at the whole purpose of the armed struggle. For the Provisionals, the ostensible overall control tactics and direction were the eight-member Army Council. The overall political and military leadership by the mid 70’s had moved to Adams and McGuiness who had by that time lost any belief in a military victory for the republican movement, though this wasn’t their public face. It had serious implications for the military campaign and the poor sods at the front end of it. Politically it meant moving the movement back to the positions which it marched out of in their formation. It meant steering the whole movement away from military insurgency and toward at first radical politics and then ultimately constitutional politics. Opposition within the military and the political movement by key individuals was put down with the up-front threat of assassination in the case of Ivor Bell. Other less isolated military and political leaders moved into open opposition to the Leadership and its new strategy. Not only that they devised new military tactics which were proved to be the most successful during the whole campaign. From then on in, a well-placed double agent within the IRA and possibly at least one of the eight on the Army Council started to work for the defeat of the revised military campaign. The SAS spent the five years between 85-90 directing its operations against this new military initiative and leadership. From this point on the most meticulous of operations skilfully planned and prepared for, became excuses for mass executions as ‘senior sources with the PIRA’ gave away the full operational details directly to the MI5 to set up ambushes. The Provisionals ‘dissidents’ were being purged with direct help from the SAS. The authenticity of this evidence, quoting who was being set up and what was known of the plans which were supposed to be highly secret, can hardly be in question.

McCallion had earlier in his book expressed Adams and McGuinesses intention to wage war on anyone within or without the organisation in order to be the only game in town and one whose aims would be directed by them. But speaking either for himself or the SAS and their handlers this was seen as mutually beneficial. “Ultimately the crushing of internal dissent and the forging of a largely unified republican policy was to be one of the most decisive factors in bringing the Troubles to an end” (143). The leading opposition faction within the IRA was focused round East Tyrone Brigade, it had become the main focus of the states war in a conscious effort to intervene into the internal political division (not for the first time in republican history) “In the coming decade, the SAS acting on high level source intelligence from the very top pf the PIRA, would further degrade the capabilities of the East Tyrone Brigade. By the time a political compromise was reached between the Republican Movement and the British Government, the Tyrone Brigade would be in no position to challenge its own leadership’s new commitment to peace.” (219) South Armagh and Tyrone Brigades were also the only main units of PIRA which the states forces were totally unable to penetrate or compromise from within. The author claims it wasn’t until the 1994 ceasefire when these units on instruction lower their guard which allows the conditions for penetration of these Brigades as well.

The suggestion from the author is that Gerry Adams himself was the MI5 informer and the Mail ran with a double page inside story focusing solely on the accusation while ignoring the army’s history of murder also revealed in it. For us of course the two are inseparably connected.

This is a valuable book, it is as said ‘from the horse mouth’ it gives credence to the long held suspicions that the Provisional leadership both political and military were both penetrated from without, and from internal political degeneration and treachery. For ordinary members of the British public who have believed at face value the story of brave and principled British soldiers fighting a ruthless enemy by Queensbury Rules this book should be a revelation. For that reason, I doubt it will be given wide publicity and distribution, I can’t for example see any ‘Panorama TV documentary based upon it. The book is of course written by a faithful member of many of the assassination squads he writes about and has doubtless kept to his chest far for than he has revealed. That he has had permission to publish this book, begs a number of questions. But I totally recommend it , the implications of which are shocking and far reaching.

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Review: Transsexuals vs Cocks in Frocks?

 by Les May

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 "Shit Wigs and Steroids: Anarchism's (and the left's) Tolerance of Delusion" 

 'BOOKFAIRS & BULLSHIT'

This booklet is an A5 size 24-page critique of identity politics which challenges what it sees as the dominant politics of a 'wannabe' London based elite who are setting themselves up as a mouthpiece for current anarchist thought in the UK.  It claims to be rooted in a northern working-class perspective based on anti-authoritatianism.  It is a collective project that questions what it sees as the 'bogus claims of the transgender headcases' ; it entitles itself under the e-mail address:  newoffensive01@gmail.com

 Price £2 including postage & packing.

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I WAS asked to review this booklet by someone who had erroneously been identified as the author.  When this came to the attention of the real author he initiated contact with the supposed author, which led to me receiving a review copy.  Any opinions in this review are entirely my own and should not be attributed to anyone else.

Reviewing this booklet is not easy.  It is difficult to discern a linear sequence and it can be read in a number of different ways.  At one level it is one episode of an anarchist soap opera in which the horny handed sons of toil from the gritty north take on the effete, never done a proper day’s work in their lives, London scribblers and their acolytes.  The title says it all ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids. Anarchism’s and the left’s Tolerance of Delusion.  Bookfairs & Bullshit’.

Eager to wash anarchism’s dirty washing in public we get three pages, or should that be six pages, I said it was difficult to discern a linear sequence, of ‘What Happened at the Liverpool ‘Anarchist’ Bookfair 2018’.  Certainly nothing for the bookfair organisers to be proud of.  At this point you realise that the author’s way of expressing things is, shall we say, OTT.  Here’s a sample ‘… his gang of ponces have supported violence against women through attempting to stop free speech in a public environment’.  So far as I am concerned their ‘crime’ is nothing to do with violence against women, it is attempting to stifle debate on transgender issues.  At this point I began to wonder if the author had swallowed the whole of the feminist lexicon.  Here’s another sample which is the title of a booklet the author encourages us to read, ‘Gender is not an Identity, it is a Tool of Patriarchy a Feminist View of Gender Identity Politics’.  Patriarchy, Feminist, Gender all in one sentence, pass me the sick bag please!

Usually when I read this sort of stuff I assume the writer is what I call one of ‘The Leg Over Brigade’, i.e. a man who spouts feminist pleasing language in the hope of being viewed favourably in the amorous stakes.  I don’t think this is the case here, the author seems to genuinely believe what he is writing and I doubt that his overuse of the slang terms for female genetalia as descriptions for people who views he disagrees with, will endear him to many feminists.

Anarchism he says ‘has pretty much become a wendy house for children to play in’.  He means of course the ‘London effete’ version of anarchism and lays at its door ‘authoritarian behaviour, censorship, bullying and (yawn) misogyny’.  These charges are not unique to anarchism, ‘the Left’ is riddled with similar exponents.  ‘The transgender arguments are at best nonsense, at worst (yawn) misogynistic, indulgent and delusional’, he tells us.  Well that’s a point of view, an opinion, an assertion.  This is anger talking.

But if you first strip away the anger, then all of the feminist rhetoric, you realise he has a point, you’ve just got to unearth it.

What this booklet is all about is the proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which could move away from medical assessment to ‘self certifying’, and about the people who refuse to engage in discussion about the implications of such a change and want to bully the rest of society into accepting it without question.

I’ve written previously about what I see as the absurdity of a man with a full set of wedding tackle being allowed to claim he is a woman and be housed in a women’s prison, the ‘Cocks in Frocks’ syndrome as the author rather nicely puts it.

What I had not considered is how the 5000 transexual women for whom the 2004 GRA was created, might view self certifying.  It’s an interesting perspective.  The rational, understanding, empathetic way the 14 contributors to this piece have structured their argument and their recognition that whilst it is women who will be most affected, changes to the GRA will affect the whole of society, is an example of how this debate should be conducted.

I found this so striking that I was initially tempted to quote it in full.  I won’t; you’ll have to get hold of a copy of the booklet and read it for yourself. Significantly some of the contributors to this are older women who ‘transitioned’ up to 50 years ago.  Almost all the noise comes from those of university age,

Much of the author’s anger is directed at the politicisation of identity, of irrelevant lifestyle choices, of ‘Look at me, me, me I’m non-binary’ or the way that some people portray individual decisions as somehow taking a radical stance, and think we should all take notice. I’m inclined to agree.  My wife, my sister, my sisters-in-law, my daughters, my granddaughters, couldn’t care less. 

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“The Red Flag of Anarchy” by Andrew Lee

A Book Review by Christopher Draper

DO you remember those wooden rulers on sale at Woolworths with the names and dates of all the British Kings and Queens on the back?  That was the kind of history I learnt at school.  Regrettably, a lot of alternative history isn’t much better with a similar emphasis on London-based leaders.  I’ve always preferred to read about radical lives and politics away from the metropolitan bubble and Andrew Lee’s new history of Sheffield’s pioneering socialists and anarchists is a perfect paradigm of “people’s history”.

ANDREW Lee’s book embodies the ideals it chronicles with a beautiful cover designed by libertarian socialist Walter Crane.  The text is printed on decent quality paper and it’s lavishly illustrated with numerous portraits and political posters.  Computer screens might usefully churn out dry facts but Andrew Lee appreciates that wisdom is more surely gained through a slow, aesthetically pleasing book-read and there is a lot to mull over in “The Red Flag of Anarchy”.

Focussed on the Sheffield scene from 1874 to 1900 the author depicts a rich political culture created by predominantly working class activists of every flavour.  He doesn’t push any political line but the book is suffused throughout its 178 pages with an inspiringly libertarian spirit.  Lee’s achievement is to conjure up a vivid picture of a welcoming, inclusive yet militant socialist milieu.  Activists who for an all too brief moment managed to create the germ of a new society within the shell of the old. An alternative society that created communist colonies, embraced gay lifestyles, published a regular anarchist newspaper, operated a “Commonwealth Café”, organised picnics and ran raffles with books by Bellamy and Thoreau as prizes or alternately “A Handsomely Framed Portrait of Ravachol”!

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” is invaluable not just for its contents but as an inspiration and model for socialists all around Britain to get your shovel out and start digging down into your own local libertarian past.  I know from my own researches that there’s always been far more going on out of London than our erstwhile chroniclers would have us believe.

I have just two criticisms which I hope Andrew might address in future editions.  The first is the absence of an index.  This isn’t so much of a handicap as it would be in a text-only volume as the extensive contents list and numerous illustrations facilitate navigation but digitisation makes compiling an index simple and speedy.  Secondly I would like some analysis of why Sheffield’s socialist oasis became barren.  At the end of the book Lee observes, “It was the end of an era, everything was going to change…Parliamentary politics was to become the order of the day” but it wasn’t inevitable, what exactly occurred in Sheffield? My own research, for example, shows that in Leicester all manner of socialists cooperated for years until the foundation of the ILP in 1893.  Thereafter Leicester ILP refused to have any truck with local anarchists whose direct-action was thought detrimental to attracting votes. ILP sectarianism thus transformed Leicester’s lively socialism into bureaucratic electoralism. Were the same forces at work in Sheffield?

If we are ever to regain the radicalism and comradeship of early socialism it’s crucial that we identify what went wrong last time.  Andrew Lee reminds us of an era when Labour Clubs were far more than dreary drinking dens.  Available from Amazon for £10.00, in my opinion “The Red Flag of Anarchism” is the most valuable and entertaining study of grass-roots, pioneering Anarchy in the UK since John Quail’s classic “Slow Burning Fuse”.

Review on Amazon: A lightweight potboiler!

2.0 out of 5 stars A lightweight potboiler, 28 April 2014

By 

Rufus - See all my reviews

This review is from: Smile For The Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith (Hardcover)

I was born in Rochdale and still live there. Two of my siblings went to school with one of the youths Cyril abused at Cambridge House in the 1960s. I knew to a greater or lesser degree some of the people who are mentioned in this book or provided information about Cyril, and I crossed swords with him on a number of occasions in the letters pages of the local paper. I have known about his penchant for spanking since it was revealed in Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) in 1979. My knowledge that at least two of the now old men who had been on the receiving end of Cyril's unwanted attentions were prepared to come forward dates back to July 2012.

Writing about recent history is difficult.  If the subject is already dead there is a temptation to adopt the view that `the dead cannot sue' so you can write anything you like.  Witnesses to what happened perhaps 50 years ago are fallible.  Some things stick in their memories others don't. fields It isn't safe to take everything they say at face value.  Good authors know these things and recognise the need to test and evaluate what they are told, and where possible to seek corroboration.

If you are going to make exceptional claims you need exceptional evidence. This book makes some big claims. The biggest of which is that Cyril was protected from prosecution by the security services for at least forty years. So how does the evidence stack up?

In a book like this a good place to start looking is the bibliography. what we find is a `Select Bibliography'. Of the fourteen books listed eight are memoirs of or about politicians and one of these is Cyril's autobiography. Two others are a book about Gracie Fields and a book about the 1930s. There are two periodicals listed. One is a report from the Home Affairs Select Committee and the other is Rochdale Alternative Press. I assume they mean Rochdale Alternative Paper. Given that the authors say they spoke to David Bartlett and his co-editor John Walker, this is a strange mistake to make. Sloppy some might say.

Later on they call the now deceased leader of the Conservative group on Rochdale council Pam Horton not Pam Hawton. You would expect they would get this right because she also chaired Rochdale health authority and in April 1991 Ian Davey, acting director of social services, wrote to her about what had been happening at Knowl View School, a school to which they devote nine pages of the book.

Conspicuous by its absence is any reference to the cultural and political magazine Northern Voices of which John Walker wrote in spring 2013, `The re-emergence of the 1979 RAP story owes its appearance to Northern Voices. This magazine kept the Smith story running and led to Westminster blogger, and former Rochdale lad, Paul Waugh picking it up, last November. Working with the ex-RAP editors Northern Voices was able to track down two of the 1960`s Cambridge House victims and introduce them to Paul, who ran the story on his national blog.'  Another example of sloppiness or a deliberate attempt to take ownership of the story of the `outing' of Cyril?

Apart from four TV programs that is the full list of source material we are told about. So what about the numerous interviews the authors say they conducted, what about the many unpublished documents they had access to?

Anyone writing a credible study of Cyril's activities and especially of the claims of a security service cover up would recognise the need to be meticulous in detailing for potential readers when an interview was conducted, whether it was face to face, by telephone or by e-mail, and the titles of all documents consulted would be listed. Of these things there are none. In their place we are offered `trust me I'm a politician'.

In a couple of places in the text we get an insight into the nature of some of these interviews. One took place in the canteen of Rochdale town hall, another was over coffee in east Manchester. That's fine if you are looking for a bit of gossip but not if you are going to accuse the security services of a cover up.

There are problems too in figuring out just how many of the people abused by Cyril were interviewed by the authors.  The nearest we get is a reference to meeting `a good number of victims'. Stories of abuse by Cyril pop up throughout the book but we are left in the dark about whether they are a rehash of a previous story or yet another example.  But the authors still feel they can write `Cyril had left a trail of shame and misery in Rochdale and elsewhere as he'd abused any boy he fancied.'  Any evidence for this OTT bit of prose is conspicuous by its absence.  At the very least any serious study would include a chronology of Cyril's abusive activities so far as they are known.

This is important because one school of thought is that before he became an MP and a figure on the national scene, his interest in very young men was confined to spanking, fake medical examinations and voyeurism.

Three brief chapters of the book are devoted to what we are asked to believe are the authentic voices of some of the young men abused by Cyril. The first two are strangely similar in that they contain a number of references to pop music current in the 1960s. Now call me a cynic but I think that if fifty years ago I had just had my backside wacked by a man twice may age and twice my size, pop music isn't the first thing that would be on my mind.The third has a ring of truth but even this manages to make reference to a piece of music which just happens to fit the story.

In the second is to be found 'We drove out to Hollingworth Lake and smoked fat joints as we watched Canada geese flying over the boats while the sun went down.'  Not true!  There were no Canada geese at Hollingworth lake in the 1960s though there are plenty now.  And would a self confessed `Mod', who in the previous sentence had been `racing up St Mary's Gate on the back of a scooter', really write `drove' rather than `rode'?  Like the references to pop music this piece of gratuitous drivel seems to have been added by someone to make the account seem more authentic.  Journalistic licence perhaps?  But not necessary.  Once it has been established that they are true, first hand accounts of abuse don't need any embellishment.  They stand by themselves.

The writing style adopted is to let the narrative drive the evidence not the evidence drive the narrative.  And what is the narrative?  In essence it is that Simon came to Rochdale, found that we had all been turning a blind eye to Cyril's abuse of young people and said `No more!'

Informants pop up, say something derogatory about Cyril and then vanish for two hundred pages. Nothing is too absurd for inclusion.  At one point we have Cyril running an, `I'll spank your child in the comfort of your own home', service for the parents of naughty children.  I think even the most apathetic Rochdale resident might have noticed this.

But this fitting of the evidence into the narrative has its dangers for Simon. One chapter relating events before he became our MP ends with `So you want to be MP for Rochdale?' one person said with a knowing smile.  `Come in for a cup of tea and let me tell you as story.'  The next chapter is headed `Silent Voices #1.  The victims from Cambridge House'.  Now is this just another example of journalistic licence or is Simon trying to suggest that he was being told about Cyril's abuse of very young men even before the 2010 election?  If it's the latter then some people will wonder why he attended the unveiling of a Blue Plaque bearing Cyril's name in October 2011.

Not all the book is about Cyril's sexual proclivities.  It covers his activities as the mouthpiece for the asbestos processors Turner and Newall, and makes a good attempt to understand the reasons for him becoming an instantly recognisable national figure and his ability to maintain a power base in Rochdale.

But even here there's a tendency to `over egg the pudding' and exaggerate his influence in Rochdale outside of his own Liberal party.  Certainly it never seems to occur to the authors to ask, why, if Cyril was really such a powerful figure in the town able to call in favours at will, he never used this influence to take any action against the editors of RAP who had revealed his activities at Cambridge House.  As employees of the local authority they took enormous risks in publishing their story.  In the end Cyril proved to be a paper tiger.

I'm not sure this book would have attracted half so much attention or been serialised in a newspaper if it had not linked Cyril's antics with the grooming of young girls in Rochdale by nine men who were subsequently jailed, and to the somewhat tenuous thread which sought to link some key figures in the Labour party with giving succor to the Paedophile Information Exchange via the National Council for Civil Liberties.

As they say `Sex sells', but was it really necessary to write, `... Cyril, he said, liked them young with tight sphincter muscles. When their sphincter became looser as they got older, he would ditch them.' If you're not faintly troubled by this bit of prose try imagining how this would have read if it has been young women who been the subject of Cyril's attention.

I'm told that one reader described this book as a `Ripping Yarn', a term usually reserved for books like Erskine Childers' `Riddle of the Sands' or John Buchan's `The 39 Steps'.  I'm tempted to call it a `Cock and Bully' story but that would wrongly imply that I thought none of it to be true. So a `Ripping Yarn' it is.  That fits perfectly because, apart from some unbelievably clumsy sections which are supposed to be the unheard voices of those on the receiving end of Cyril's unwanted attentions, it reads like a novel.  It's certainly not a serious well documented study of just how Cyril managed to keep his dirty secret so long.  It's just a lightweight `potboiler'.

I've no doubt that in 20 years time someone will dust it off and turn it into a drama documentary. Which will be good news for Simon's pension pot!

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Book Reviews & Networking

THE media is thoroughly imbricated in these elite networks. Journalists, politicians and lobbyists inhabit the same world and mix at the same parties, while PR companies groom, collude with and recruit journalists, turning hacks into flacks with depressing regularity. Businesses use the media to reach policymakers, place stories, conscript third-party advocates and noisily reframe debates on their terms. The use of third-party front-groups is rife: corporations fund academics, scientists, protesters, think tanks, charities, supportive allies, professional bodies, fake institutes, campaign groups – anyone that will take the money and say the right things. Where necessary, companies keep a low profile, suppressing damaging stories while lobbying in private; “for every story fed to the media,” studies find, “there is one being carefully kept out.” Often PR firms work alongside corporate lawyers, using the threat of litigation to snuff out damaging stories quickly and discreetly, while applying extra pressure through “astroturf” (fake grassroots) campaigns on Twitter or via email. The internet poses challenges, but PR firms are moving in, monitoring opponents and even offering a round-the-clock service whitewashing Wikipedia and Google on clients’ behalf.

The result is a well-oiled machine, constantly at work getting monied interests what they want. “We’re in it for money” lobbyist Peter Gummer (Lord Chadlington) admits – and lobbying can prove a very lucrative investment indeed. One study estimates a return of $90bn on an initial spend of $3.5bn; another of between $6 and $21 per dollar spent; another still of $100. “It seems remarkable,” the Economist notes, “that companies would do anything but lobby”. 

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/tim-holmes/book-review-quiet-word

From Trevor Hoyle

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (The real story behind it)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

["The Witch is dead" from the Wizard of Oz is now at No. 2 in the charts according to Trevor Hoyle, but the Official Charts Company said on Thursday morning that 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead' was on course to reach number four, up from 10 the previous day.]

THE Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first published in Chicago in 1900. Its author, L. Frank Baum, was the editor of a South Dakota newspaper and a supporter of William Jennings Bryan who stood three times, unsuccessfully, as a U.S. Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

The particular concern of both Baum and Bryan was the nature of the money supply then prevalent in the United States, and in the Mid-Western States in particular.

In America during the 1890s, as in Britain, there had been a severe depression. Many businesses had gone bankrupt, farmers forced to sell up, factories closed and workers made unemployed. True, some farms in the Mid-West were suffering from drought, but most were still capable of growing food; the businesses and factories were still capable of providing the things that people needed; the workers still wanted to work to provide those things, and people would still want the goods and services produced if they had the money to buy them.

The money in the USA then, as now, was entirely created by the private banking system. The pretence existed then that money was based on gold. (Even now some people still think that it is!) The major banks, based on the East and West coasts, could vary the amount of money in circulation, lending more to encourage commercial activity, then fore-closing on loans to put people out of business, enabling the banks to acquire their businesses cheaply.

Baum and Bryan wanted money to be based on silver, not gold, as silver was more readily available in the Mid-West, where it was mined. Such a money supply could not be manipulated by the banks. So the story of the Wizard of Oz starts with a cyclone in the form of imagined electoral success for Bryan...

Dorothy, a sort of proverbial �Everywoman�, lands on the Wicked Witch of the East (the East-coast bankers), killing her, so freeing the Munchkins, the down-trodden poor, but the Wicked Witch of the West (the West-coast bankers) remains loose.

To deal with her and to get back to Kansas (normality), the Good Witch of the North, representing the electorate of the North (this is less than 40 years after the civil war), tells Dorothy to seek out the Wizard of Oz (�oz� being short for ounce, the means of weighing both gold and silver). She also gives her a pair of silver slippers (as they were in the book - they became ruby ones in the film). Only these silver slippers will enable her to remain safe on the yellow-brick road, representing the bankers� gold standard, as she heads towards the Emerald City, representing Washington DC.

On her journey, Dorothy encounters a Scarecrow, representing the farmers, who do not have the wit to understand how they can end up losing their farms to the banks, even though they work hard to grow the food to feed a hungry nation. If only they could think it through!

Next, she encounters a Tin Woodsman, representing the industrial workers, rusted as solid as the factories of the 1890s depression, and who have lost the sense of compassion and co-operation to work together to help each other during hard times. Also, a spell cast upon him by the Wicked Witch of the East meant that every time he swung his axe, he chopped off a bit of himself - he downsized!

Then the growing party encounters a Cowardly Lion, representing the politicians. These have the power, through the power of Congress and the Constitution, to confront the Wicked Witches, representing the banks, but they lack the courage to do so.

Dorothy is able to motivate these three potent forces and leads them all towards the Emerald City, whence �greenbacks� had once come, and an encounter with the omnipotent and wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard of Oz is initially quite majestic and apparently awesome, but he turns out to be a little man without the power that people assume he possesses. He does, of course, represent the President of the United States. With the Wizard�s illusion of power shattered, he is replaced by the Scarecrow who would �be another Lincoln�.

The Wicked Witch of the West, fearful for her own power, then attempts to destroy Dorothy but is herself dissolved in a bucket of water, as rain relieves the Mid-West drought, saves the farmers� livelihoods and prevents repossession by the banks.

The Good Witch of the South, representing the Southern electorate, tells Dorothy that her silver slippers, silver-based money, are so powerful that anything she wishes for is possible, even without the help of the Wizard. Dorothy wishes to go home. There all is now well, because the land has a stable and abundant money supply.

More here: http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/money/about_money/wizard_of_oz.php

Spanish Civil War for Infants

Book Review:  'From Manchester to Spain' by Bernard Barry. Price £5: A5 – 57 pages. Published in 2009 by the Working Class Movement Library, Jubilee House, 51, The Crescent, Salford M5 4WX. 
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The Strange Entries in Mr. Barry's 'Roll of Honour'

WHEN it was first published in 2009, Mr. Barry's book was intended 'to mark the 70th anniversary of the stand down of the International Brigade in Spain in October 1938' and he says 'it was felt that a new pamphlet incorporating such [new] research' in the Working Class Movement Library's 'ever-expanding archive on the subject' of the Spanish Civil War should be brought up to date with a new pamphlet to replace one published in1983 by the Greater Manchester International Brigade Memorial Committee entitled 'Greater Manchester Men who fought in Spain'.  He asks us to note that 'Manchester' covers an area now known as Greater Manchester which did not exist in the 1930s and now includes ten Metropolitan Boroughs: Central Manchester, Salford, Bury, Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan.  The book contains no bibliography and we are asked to check Mr Barry's 'facts' by 'reference to the Spain archive held by the Working Class Movement Library in Salford': the website lists 19 boxes of relevant material and a computer list of volunteers. 

The pamphlet describes the historical background of the 1930s in brief, referring to Oswald Mosley, the rise of right wing governments in Europe, the depression and the non-intervention agreement by several European powers including Germany, Italy, USSR, Britain and France, and there are some good thumb nail sketches of some of the Greater Manchester volunteers such as Syd Booth, Ralph Cantor, Maurice Levene, George Brown, Sam Wild, and Clem Beckett from Oldham. One sub-heading is entitled 'The Franco Revolt' and goes on to say 'General Franco [on July 18th, 1936] launched a revolt against the constitutionally elected government of the Spanish Republic'.  Franco, based in the Canarias, was not the leader of the rebel Spanish Generals at the time of the rebellion on July 18th; 1936; General Mola (code name 'Director') in Pamplona was 'the main organiser of the conspiracy' (see Antony Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain') .  Mola led the rebel nationalists until his death in an air crash on June 3rd, 1937. By personalising the rebellion Mr Barry lends a comic book quality to his account.  He gives no serious description of the level of opposition of the Spanish people themselves to the Generals' revolt nor does he analyse why it was that the Spaniards and the Catalans became the first people to seriously resist Fascism in July 1936: what was the special quality in Spanish society that blocked the march of reaction in Europe in the 1930s?  Presumably it must have something to do with the historical development of the Spanish working classes, their trade unions, and their culture that set them on a level that made them more capable of resistance than the more organised, highly educated and disciplined German workers, whose big left-wing parties and trade unions collapsed before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. 

The most troubling and controversial aspect of Bernard Barry's account is his production of a 'Roll of Honour' at the end of his pamphlet.  He gives us 187 names of individuals from Greater Manchester and he writes: 'The Roll of Honour given at the end of this pamphlet includes the names of those from Manchester known to have served in the International Brigade.' He warns that: 'Unfortunately for some no more than the name is known but for a large majority there are varying amounts of detail.' This represents a rather weak health warning that doesn't distinguish between which names are reliable and which are dodgy or at least who are deserters. In 2010, as Secretary of Tameside Trade Union Council, I was in correspondence with James Carmody, the archivist of the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT), who asked me to look for evidence that a man named Greenwood from Ashton-under-Lyne had gone to serve in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. On the 16th, June 2010, I and Barry Woodling of Northern Voices editorial panel went to the Working Class Movement Library and were shown a computer coded list of international brigade volunteers dated 1981 (page 199 to 209) entitled 'Records Office, Kew 1981' research by Jimmy Moon and placed on the records at the Working Class Movement Library by International Brigader, Syd Booth. These official records listed an 'F. Greenwood' of 9, Gerard Street, Ashton-under-Lyne as a 'deserter' (the Ashton-u-Lyne electoral register in the early 1930s shows a James Greenwood living with Lily Greenwood at this address; in the later 1930s the register shows Mr. Greenwood is no longer listed at this address), yet Mr Barry lists 'F. Greenwood', categorised on the Records Office document as a 'deserter', on his own International Brigade 'Roll of Honour' in this pamphlet. Of another Ashton man included on Mr Barry's 'Roll of Honour', Daniel Albert Boon of Taunton Road, it is reported in a note on the Records Office file that while in San Pedro prison in Burgos, he offered to join Franco's forces and we could go on showing other perverse entries on the 'Roll of Honour' in Mr. Barry's pamphlet. 

A couple of years ago at a meeting on the Spanish Civil War, addressed by local historian Chris Carson at the Working Class History Library, Carson was asked about a 'Peter Grimshaw', now deceased, an ex-communist and later a councillor for the Labour Party in Salford who, it was claimed at the meeting, had definitely served in the International Brigade in Spain. Mr Carson, a friend of Eddie Frow the communist founder of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford and a rigorous researcher, told the meeting that he had no evidence Grimshaw had ever served in Spain. Our examination of the list, which we assume Mr Barry must have used, showed that a 'Peter Grimshaw' had gone to Spain but had been rejected at the Catalan town of Figueras and had been repatriated on the 10th, February 1938, his record shows 'NO SERVICE'. Yet, Mr Barry does not hesitate to place 'Peter Grimshaw' on his 'Roll of Honour' as having 'served in Spain' in the International Brigade. Another name given on Mr Barry's list is Ivor Hickman as being from Ashton-u-Lyne. Ivor Hickman did serve in the Spanish Civil War and was killed in action, but he didn't come from Ashton-under-Lyne in Greater Manchester, as he is commemorated on a memorial in Southampton. Our research, despite some who have told us he never came up North, suggests that he may have lived in Stretford, South Manchester, and have worked at Vickers for a time – this is perhaps the least serious of Bernard Barry's errors so far but it could have caused problems for Tameside TUC, where the local Trades' Council applied for a blue plaque for an Ashton lad, James Keogh, who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War in Aragón. If Hickman had been in Ashton-u-Lyne, as Mr Barry claimed, the Keogh application would not have been 'unique' and the Tameside Council Arts & Events Panel could probably have used it to reject the Keogh application. Arthur Clinton from Swinton in Salford, is on Barry's Roll and he certainly fought in Spain, but Clinton didn't serve with the International Brigade as Barry claims, as he was with George Orwell in the Independent Labour Party contingent of the POUM. Interestingly, there is no reference to the POUM or the Independent Labour Party in Bernard Barry's pamphlet, let alone the CNT (National Confederation of Labour) or the anarchist militias. Clinton is mentioned in George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia'; in a letter from Orwell's wife, Eileen, to her own brother* and a sketch of his involvement in the ILP contingent is to be found in a recent book by Christopher Hall on the Independent Labour Party volunteers and the Spanish Civil War entitled 'Not just Orwell' [2009]. Reading some of the parochial accounts like Bernard Barry's and others, one wouldn't think that the CNT and the anarchists were the most influential forces in Catalonia, Aragon and Andalucia and sometimes one could easily conclude from these kind of narrow histories that the Spanish people themselves played a bit part in the Civil War on the Republican side. Some of these accounts (not Mr Barry's) are patronising to the Spaniards, and imply that it was the International Brigades that were crucial in saving Madrid. In truth they did not arrive in time to affect the Madrid fighting on November 8th, 1936 and they represented only 5% of the republican forces (see Antony Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain'). 

Mr Barry's short pamphlet contains list inflation, double counting and bias: our investigations show a man called Greenwood from Gerrard Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, went to Spain yet is listed as a 'deserter' on the Kew official list, and Mr Peter Grimshaw before crossing into Spain was found to be too unfit to fight, never-the-less Mr Barry has no difficulty placing them both on his 'Roll of Honour' in 'From Manchester to Spain'; Ivor Hickman's link to Ashton-under-Lyne is dubious; Arthur Clinton from Salford, referred in George Orwell's book 'Homage to Catalonia',  was with the ILP contingent of the POUM not the International Brigade and so on.  A problem with misleading and exaggerated claims, however well meaning, is that they undermine genuine material and in a way Bernard Barry's pamphlet casts a shadow on the Working Class Movement Library that has published and endorsed this document. When the poet, Steven Spender, who was associated with the Communist Party in the 1930s, returned from his last visit to Spain after the Writer's Congress in the summer of 1937, he was visited by another poet and communist sympathiser W.H. Auden, who he reported in his book 'World Within World' as saying that 'political exigence was never a justification for lies.'  Auden and Spencer were concerned about the nature of the cynical communist and Soviet propaganda put out at that time; Mr Barry's booklet is not guilty of lies but rather of over enthusiasm: a desire to make claims that are not substantiated by documentary evidence.  On our count 21 people on Bernard Barry's 'Roll of Honour', either are 'officially' listed as 'deserters' or as 'not serving' according to the list provided to us by the Working Class Movement Library.  A scientific approach or just doing research methods generally, involves a clearly defined system of classifications by the author not just an uncritical list of names cobbled together without regard for distinctive features such 'desertion' or being 'rejected' for being unfit to serve in the International Brigade on health grounds. Mr Barry has not done this properly, but as Mr Barry is an old man without an obvious academic background one would have thought that the publishers or someone should have had the responsibility for sub-editing this booklet. With something so glaringly flawed it ought not to be left to a reviewer to do the detective work. 

*Writing to a relative from Barcelona on 1st, May 1937, Eileen says: 'There is a chance Arthur Clinton, who was wounded, may go & recuperate in the cottage. He is perhaps the nicest man in the world...' 
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I am grateful to the Working Class Movement Library for all their help in allowing us to examine their records. According to one Library assistant interviewed, it seems, Mr Barry used his own sources and is no longer able to answer questions about his sources, yet his book refers to the Library resources.  I didn't publish this review earlier because Mr. Barry is an old man and I was reluctant to offend him or his family, but as the International Brigade Memorial Trust is still promoting Mr. Barry's booklet I thought I ought to draw their attention to the errors and oversights in it. 

Fifty Shades of French Reaction

THERE is something distinctly Anglo-Saxon about the E.L. James' book 'Fifty Shades of Grey', the French critics last October, when it was first published in France, did their best to dismiss it as 'too consensual' and hygienic in its approach to sex. It is the story of the sexual encounters of a green-horn girl, Anastasia Steele, and a worldly billionaire, Christian Grey, in Settle; the man is into bondage and domination, and the lass is a virgin. The French critics condemned it as typically lightweight, sanitised Anglo-Saxon tripe and hypocrisy, falling well short of the hard-core authentic sadomasochistic style of the Gallic folk across the Channel.

It has nothing of the lyrical style of Anais Nin – the great pioneer of female erotica; none of the intellect of Georges Bataille and no dark Gothic pretensions such as in Marquis de Sade, with his tales of torture, fantasies of sexual abuse and murder. None-the-less, last week, I saw a report in the newspaper about an English bloke, influenced by 'Fifty Shades', who had been so carried away following the script in the book that the lass who'd consented to the sex play took him to court for assault. The case failed because the girl had agreed to take part, presumably expecting a little light spanking.     When I read 'Fifty Shades of Grey', last August, I had just had to help a Safety Representative at Bury MBC to fight a case brought under the Dignity at Work policy, which he was accused of breaching. Avoiding breaching the Dignity at Work policy involves watching your 'ps' and 'qs' while  your at work; that means being careful what you say and being aware that the casual language of jokes and banter can be very risky indeed. Now it seems to me that the significant thing about Christian Grey is his essentially Health and Safety, contractual approach to the business of bondage and domination. There is page after page of contractual terms and negotiations between the parties, with amendments being forced through to rule out certain activities, which the 'Submissive', Anastasia, in her wisdom, feels unacceptable. It's sadomasochistic sex on a contract.

How very Anglo-Saxon! How very English! And yet, recent reported sales of 'Fifty Shades of Grey' give it estimated sales of 900,000 print copies and 40,000 e-books in France, since last October.  It is all about Christian Grey's passion for the torture chamber, while at the same time applying the contemporary moral side constraints of health and safety, dignity at work and the law of contract:  For example 'Does the Submissive concent to accept the following forms of pain/punishment/discipline':  Spanking; Whipping; Biting; Genital clamps, and so on.  I suppose this is what passes for post-post-moden erotica.

Review: The Cleavage in 'Trade Union Solidarity'

Trade Union Solidarity:  Send for 1 for a 20-pages copy of 'Solidarity' on the basis of 4 issues per year: £7 inc. - P&P.  Make cheques out to 'Solidarity' and send to Glen Burrows, 1, Blake Place, Bridgewater, Somerset, TA6 5AU.

I WAS sitting at a Tameside Trade Union Council meeting last year when Derek Patterson, the President, swept into the room and ceremoniously pulled out a crumpled up copy of the 1st issue of Trade Union Solidarity out of his pocket and promptly put it on his chair to keep the dust off his trousers. Seating himself comfortably, he said:
'It gives me no great pleasure to say this, but this is all it's fit for!'
Whereupon, he promptly began picking his nose with one hand and conducting the meeting with the other. 

Is this a fair assessment of this trade union publication; put out mostly by the radical left syndicalists down South and in the Midlands? The early issues I think lacked a certain sexiness and resembled too much the dreary sheets put out by the main stream unions in this country: photographs of picket-lines, union flags and banners.  I say this having done an interview with the blacklisted electrician, Steve Acheson, in the 1st issue, and having helped obtain trade union contacts at Park Cakes in Oldham for the 2nd. 

Somehow, I didn't get to see the 3rd issue so I can't comment on that but this week I received a copy of the 4th issue, and my first impression is that it's vastly improved. I say this, while looking at the cleavage of a voluptuous French woman, a supporter of the CGT with red hair, on the front page. It's not just about cleavages, of course, this issue of T.U. Solidarity covers 'The angry summer of the Spanish miners' in the Asturias in Spain by Emy Castelao, a USDAW Rep. at Primark in Taunton; an account by barrister, Dave Renton, of a redundancy case and his claim that 'redundancy dismissals are almost impossible to win...'; an interview of Keir Snow with French CGT trade union activist, Oliver Delous; a report on the use of prison labour, including an interesting interview with a Category 'D' prisoner on prison labour; and in another article Keir Snow has an interview with a lad from Dundee.

I must confess to being a bit troubled by the suggestion in the piece by Dave Chapple on the PCS that a '15-minute strike' gives members of trade unions the feel good factor and that 'one member said to me “even if we lose in the end at least I feel like I tried...'  Well that's one view!  Another view may be that these kind of actions, and the two big marches by the TUC demonstrate the impotence of the trade unions and create a lowing of worker morale with inconclusive actions. Nor does the window breaking by the Black Bloc do much good either. One feels like Mother Courage in the Brecht play of the same name when she said to that malcontent soldier: 'Get back to your post I can see you're not angry enough!'  The state of the British trade union movement is closer to that captured in an interview by Becca Kirkpatrick with Sophia James, a UNISON Young Members' Officer at Aberdeen Universities Branch on page 2:  where Sophie says:
'The trade union movement to me is crucial... but it's dying out.  There is a significant gap in young members and a substantial risk of apathy leaving a young person open to the erosion of workplace rights...'

What struck me was the prominence on page 3 given to an interview with Carlos Mondaca, a Chilean 'libertarian historian' and environmental campaigner, conducted by Beck Hillman. Senor Mondaca says: 'Reports on trade unionists' cultural and recreational activities should be a must in any trade-unionist publication: we must break up apathy and begin to socialize the trade unions. This means strengthening relations with all sorts of cultural associations that share similar class-struggle horizons...' He then reinforces this with the following: '... there is way too much text in TU Solidarity. This, of course, depends on the reading capacity of target audience, which I don't personally know. But in Chile, that amount of text would be unacceptable for any trade-unionist publication. So it is good to look for other ways to communicate the same messages: cartoons, drawings, photos, and humour all encourage creativity and make links with wider society.' 
Most left-wing publications in this country have too much text, and not enough grapgics or humour.

This 4th issue of TU Solidarity does show signs of taking this on-board with a page of coverage of Bill Douglas's film 'Comrades' by Kevin Leeiton. There's also another Keir Snow interview with Liam Young about films and especially about his film 'Faces of Glasgow' on the back page. Give us cleavages, give us nipples – anything that stops Derek Pattison from sitting on the publication and picking his nose at Trades' Council meetings.

America's Black Spring!

Denver cinema shootings:  Some thoughts on Henry Miller's fantasy foresight

Henry Miller's book Black Spring, published in 1936, was described at the time as a book in which the ordinary events of everyday life are bye-passed in order to venture into a surrealist world of fantasy.  George Orwell accused him in a letter of moving away 'from the ordinary world into a sort of Mickey Mouse universe where things and people don't have to obey the rules of space and time.' 

Given the events over the weekend at the Denver cinema in which dozens of people were shot, Miller's book may not seem so fantastic or surreal.  Here is a paragraph taken from the book:
'... Men and women promenading on the sidewalks:  curious beasts, half-human, half-celluloid.  Walking up and down the Avenue their eyes glazed.  The women in beautiful garbs, each one equipped with a cold-storage smile.  ... smiling through life with that demented, glazed look in the eyes, the flags unfurled, the sex flowing sweetly through the sewers.  In had a gat with me and when we got to Forty-Second Street I opened fire.  Nobody paid any attention.  I mowed them down right and left, but the crowd got no thinner.  The living walked over the dead, smiling all the while to advertise their beautiful white teeth.'

That was from the book Black Spring by Henry Miller, written by an American at the time of Hitler, Stalin, and at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, but written while Miller was living in exile in Paris.  Yet at that time George Orwell considered this prose rather like a dream sequence that had drifted beyond the real world where the 'grass is green, stones hard etc', but to us, after the Second World War and 9/11, it may not now seem quite so unreal or so dreamlike.

Classic Corn with Knobs On!

EFFORTS to spice up the classics by burdening them with the language of Fifty Shade of Grey is, I suppose, just what we should expect in this day and age.  In the way that bad money drives out good, so shity literature should overwhelm the more refine books from the 19th Century.  Is there owt worth reading in E.L. James's novel Fifty Shades of Grey?  I would say that it may represent what has been called a 'Good, Bad Book' in the sense that it may reveal something sociological about the nature of the modern world and modern woman. 

The plundering of the classics to jump on Erika Leonard alias E.L. James's 'Fifty Shades' bandwagon using the trite vocabulary that is added to the fiction of Jane Austin's 'Pride & Prejudice', Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' and Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Sherlock Holmes'.  Mr Darcy turns to Elizabeth and says:  'I have long since desired to have your soft, beautiful body writhing in ecstacy beneath mine own.'  It's shagging on the back-seat of the car that sells stuff these days.

Yet, 'Fifty Shade of Grey' does tell us something of the nature of the legalistic culture of contracts, negotiation and business deals, even when it comes to committing consensual bondage, domination and S&M.  I think Ms. James, or Erika Leonard, has hit on something there about the systematic health and safety culture, and dignity at work policies, that perpetuate now in post-post modern society.

Book Review:

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'Socialism with a Northern Accent:
Radical traditions for modern times' by Paul Salveson
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Paul Salveson's new book will probably irritate quite a lot of people who like to think of themselves as forming the political left; 'old' Labour because he states bluntly that what he calls the 'Morrisonian' model of state ownership was long past its sell by date when Blair rejected it, 'new' Labour because he equally bluntly says that Blair was profoundly wrong to accept that the private sector was the only alternative and the libertarian left because he still sees an important role for the state.

His basic thesis is that in the north of England socialism (with a small 's') developed a distinct regional identity which owed very little to the Fabians or to Karl Marx and much more to that sadly overworked word 'community'. This he calls 'ethical' socialism which found its embodiment in the Independent Labour Party (ILP). But he also notes that around this were many peripheral groups which co-operated on local issues and often had shared membership.

Building on this history of diversity he maps out a possible future direction for socialism in the north which will take many Labour party members well outside their comfort zone.

Paul Salveson has agreed to be interviewed and this should appear in the next edition of Northern Voices.

Les May


'Socialism with a Northern Accent: Radical traditions for modern times' is available from Amazon at £14.24 post free.
_________________________________________________________
The printed version of NORTHERN VOICES 13, may be obtained as follows:
Postal subscription: £5 for two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com

Book Review: Syndicalism Compared!

Ralph Darlington: 'Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism: An International Comparative Analysis' Ashgate, 2009, 323pp.ISBN: 978-07546-3617-5 (hbk) £60.00

Reviewed by Sheila Cohen

SYNDICALISM has not enjoyed a good press over the decades. Frequently conjoined with 'anarcho-', it shares the status of a number of other 'isms' - economism, workerism, fundamentalism - repudiated by the left. So this new, and impressively comprehensive, treatment is all the more welcome.

After all, what is syndicalism? As this book shows, the meanings of the term are many and various, ranging from 'workers' control' through union amalgamation and industrial and 'revolutionary' unionism, to a healthy dose of anti-parliamentarianism and a still healthier suspicion of the union bureaucracy.

One good place to seek more precision is within etymology, and here comes a first surprise. Rather than syndicat meaning 'union', the French term actually translates as 'local trade branch', or, in Darlington's explanation, 'basic unit of organisation which united workers…employed in the same trade or industry in a certain town' (p121). In other words, something close to the Workers' Councils which sprang up across the different national movements surveyed by Darlington and were close in their organisational form to the revolutionary soviets in Russia.

However, the origin of the term 'syndicalism' is not the only 'surprise' in this book. Another is the paradoxical failure by many syndicalists to clearly understand the nature of union organisation. While most critiques of syndicalism focus on its politically naïve dismissal of the state, Darlington's detailed analysis demonstrates that the lack of conscious awareness of the contradictory nature of trade unionism played an even more destructive role.

Thus, although the Unofficial Reform Committee within the South Wales Miners' Federation produced a 'devastating critique of union officialdom' with its 1912 pamphlet The Miners' Next Step, the practical strategy of the group was not so much to guard rank and file independence as to attempt to influence the union bureaucracy, particularly its left wing. As a result, the URC was itself 'not immune from the problem of bureaucracy' (p224). In time-honoured fashion, fire-breathing militants like the URC's Noah Ablett 'ceased', in the words of one contemporary critic, ''to be revolutionary, except in words…'.

The crucial failure by many syndicalists to recognise the internal dynamic of bureaucratisation continued to weaken and dissipate their influence. As late as the Second Congress of the Comintern, Willie Gallacher was forced to report that 'Every time we succeeded in making one of our own comrades an official of the trade unions, it turned out that…the trade unions corrupted our own comrades too…' (quoted p224).

However, the Comintern's own slogan 'Conquer the Unions' demonstrated that the young Communist Party had itself failed to get the point. The Comintern's strategy of 'revolutionary unionism' crucially failed to recognise that 'unions' are not monolithic units but contradictory organisations created out of the struggle against exploitation which, in the process of that struggle, may generate either quasi-revolutionary or, more often, repressive tendencies.

Yet by the time of the First World War the shop stewards' committees of the period were beginning to arrive at a much clearer recognition of the need for rank and file independence from the bureaucracy, as captured most clearly in the famous statement by the 1915 Clyde Workers' Committee: 'We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them.'

This conscious awareness of the need for class independence was carried into the postwar period. As Darlington recounts, 'After the war…the stewards extended the concept of rank-and-file independence to the idea of the seizure of state power by the Workers' Committees, which were now conceived of as embryonic "soviets"…'. Disappointingly, however, this potential 'was quickly undermined by the collapse of the movement after the war…' (p229n)

Yet the 'collapse of the movement' was not the only factor. A key player in the class struggle scenario was, of course, revolutionary Russia itself - and, as Darlington's account demonstrates, its role was not entirely constructive. The Comintern's determination to rapidly create Communist parties in all the key European nations vitiated a more complex awareness of the specific conditions and possibilities of the still highly revolutionary post-war period.

Although the Comintern advocated the formation of factory committees, 'there was no detailed exposition or consideration of how this could be done, let alone any serious integration of the experience of the syndicalist-influenced British shop stewards' movement…' (p231).

For its part, the Leninist leadership chafed at the 'exclusive orientation on the industrial struggle and denial of "politics" ' seen as characteristic of syndicalists (p234). For conscious revolutionaries, 'although syndicalism clearly represented a significant step forward from parliamentary reformism…the exclusive emphasis on the industrial struggle meant that in practice it represented the mirror image of reformism, with its separation of economics and politics' (p245).

Most of all, this 'separation' was revealed in the syndicalist failure to fully recognise the issue of state power, as indicated in the widespread syndicalist strategies of 'workers' control of industry' and the 'revolutionary general strike'. As J.T. Murphy pointed out long afterwards, '…"workers' control of industry" without "workers' ownership of industry" is utterly impossible', and Darlington adds, 'Only if the general strike progressed to the level of an insurrection to seize state power could it prevent an inevitable counter-attack…' (p250).

And yet, and yet…The organisational form which could and should have overcome these contradictions was, once again, the soviet. The Comintern itself 'argued that it was these democratic workers' organisations, rather than the trade unions, that needed to take power from the capitalist class…' (p254, reviewer's emphasis).That this did not transpire, in Britain or elsewhere, marks the tragedy of the post-war failure of revolutionary promise.

In many ways Darlington's study of syndicalism is an extended analysis of the vexed question of party and class. 'Class' influenced 'party' in that '…the revolutionary Marxist tradition was itself refined as a result of the influence of syndicalism, notably with the placing of trade union struggle at the very core of the communist project', while 'party' criticised 'class' in 'pointing to a number of crucial limitations within the syndicalist tradition, including…the insufficiency of unions compared to soviets as the chief agency of revolution…' (p279, author's emphasis). Yet both, it emerges in Darlington's powerful and comprehensive account, faltered over the simple, yet decisive question of how to understand that central class organisation - the trade union.

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Sheila Cohen is a Visiting Lecturer in Industrial Relations and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Employment Studies, University of Hertfordshire. She is the author of Ramparts of Resistance: Why Workers Lost Their Power and How to Get It Back (Pluto Press 2006) as well as numerous articles and pamphlets on trade unionism, working-class activism and the nature of work. She is an activist in and supporter of the National Shop Stewards' Network.