Two Sides Of The Same Coin? by Les May

THERE are two aspects of Donald Trump’s personality which he shares with both Hitler and Mussolini; his contempt for democracy and his belief that he is a great man, a man of destiny sent to save the nation. As with Adolf and Benito there are those who accept his assessment of himself at face value and came out to say so yesterday. In spite of what many of us might feel is good evidence to the contrary they accept at face value his assertion that he won the election. They KNOW that must be true because he says so and anyone who refuses to believe him is just plain wrong.

To some who see themselves being ‘of the left’ Trump’s behaviour is typical of right wing authoritarian politicians. But Trump was sowing the seeds of authoritarianism and intolerance in ground which had been thoroughly tilled by others, in the universities, in some seemingly respectable newspapers and on social media. With the certainty in the absolute truth of one’s beliefs comes an intolerance of the views of those who disagree.

This phenomenon is not confined to the US and the UK exponents of ‘Identity Politics’ are at their core just as authoritarian and intolerant as those who deserve to be labelled ‘Far Right’. They differ only in their chosen weapon. For the far right it’s violence, for those wedded to identity politics it’s no platforming. Both are pernicious.

******************************************************

The Authoritarian Road To Alternative Politics?

by Les May

SINCE the election of Donald Trump we have become used to hearing the term ‘Alt-Right’ to describe an unpleasant strand of the US political landscape.  But before we start feeling smug about this perhaps we should ask ourselves whether there is emerging in UK politics an ‘Alt-Left’ strand which shares the same authoritarian outlook as the ‘Alt-Right’.

Traditional right wing politics is characterised by a conservative approach to economic and social matters, nationalism and opposition to abortion, same sex partnerships, premarital sex etc.  The ‘Alt Right’ differs from traditional right wing politics by these being secondary to being overtly racist in outlook and a readiness to resort to violence against those who oppose it.

Traditional left wing politics emphasises the importance of economic and social justice, income redistribution, internationalism, and a more liberal attitude to sexual and social mores.  The ‘Alt-Left’ differs from this mainstream because it makes tackling the great inequalities of income and wealth that plague the UK subserviant to ‘race’, and readily resorts to accusations of racism against those who do not share this view and are willing to oppose it.

*******************************8

Who is now 'The Left' and what about the workers?

beware long angry rant

by Dave Douglass
  
David Douglass worked as a coalminer in the coalfields of Durham and South Yorkshire, and was NUM Branch Delegate for Hatfield Colliery from 1979.  He appears in the documentary The Miner's Campaign Tapes to discuss the role of the popular media in the strike of 1984–85. In 1994–95 he was Branch Secretary at Hatfield Main, but after the pit was privatised the NUM no longer had any recognition there.  Dave was also until the 12th, August 2019 a Friend of Freedom Press, the anarchist publisher.   
*************************

SINCE Thatcher and Major decimated Britain's industrial base there has been a seismic change in 'left' perceptions, and who exactly speaks for 'the left'.  Consistently the working class itself, self-consciously advancing its own interests not only embraced the politics of social change, anti-capitalism, and socialism, it determined for itself the how and what of strategy, tactics and general social outlooks.  The middle class 'left' the liberals the paper sellers in general stood in awe at the mighty columns of organised labour and respected 'the workers' as people who knew what was best for the class but knew who the class was and how it thought.  All other struggles and oppressions and individual hardships suffered by this or that specific, sexism or racism as symptoms of capitalism not necessarily overthrown by the end of capitalism were nonetheless subsumed into the overall class struggle, that being the struggle of the working class itself.

Some tectonic plates however have shifted, and we find now on issue after issue 'the left' is not by enlarge represented by horny handed sons and daughters of labour, nor yet the mass of intellectual or technical white-collar workers.  Almost at every stage 'the left' now confronts the opinions and politics of the working class , by 'the working class'  I am not talking figuratively here, I mean literally the folk who labour by hand and by brain , the working class communities, though mostly these are now post-industrial centers of unemployment and social deprivation.  These are the heartland of the working-class traditions with conscious class struggle halls of fame.  The left now isn’t us, not these people, the left is now the army of middle-class liberal leftists who deem to speak on our behalf and know what’s best for us. In order to do this they have of course to confront our own attitudes and outlooks and conclusions, so consistently over the last twenty years 'the left' has defacto become 'anti the working class' at least how we express our opinions and outlooks and conclusions.  

Any collection of normal working-class folk expressing opposition to what currently passes as left politics, is likely to be designated 'far right' or any of the numerous 'isms' which separate us out from the shining paths of liberal agendas.   Often the aspiration of the 'left' is synonymous with that of the state itself, on issues such as remain or leave the EU, or racism, transism, censorship, safe spaces etc.  So often the 'left' has become the cheerleader of the state singing off the same hymn sheet and forgetting the most fundamental principle of class warfare, to keep an independent identity from the state and its interests. The bleating of the 'left' over social distancing, scooting folk out of the parks or beaches, crying for harsher and longer curfews and abandoning any notion of civil liberties and social freedoms.

The Trade Union movement now that the big militant industrial unions like the miners and shipyard and heavy engineering proletariat have gone and construction workers and car and others have paled into insignificance, it is the white collar and professional unions which dominate.  Not that the nature of the work union members do, or even our opinions matter too much.  The unions and the TUC are now dominated by middle class liberal agenda's, re-education classes, PC speak schools, and making policy fit the liberal middle class left agenda is now the dominant 'culture' of the TUC. it is doubtful how far workers are actually allowed to express their opinions on subject like Brexit with unions like UNITE and GMB swinging in behind leave agenda's despite their rank and file's opinions (RMT and ASLEF were exceptions).  The passing of anti-radical feminist policies denying the existence of women as a biological sex, even in the Women’s Commission of the TUC is a case in PC point.  You could cite almost any major issue over the last twenty years and the so-called left will have drawn the opposite conclusion to the bulk of the actual working class and particularly the traditional working class, postindustrial communities and regions.  Brexit comes to mind, but then also the degree of hysteria and anti-industrialization in response to climate change is another, the remain position of the PLP and NEC and host of bright young mainly southern middle class liberals in the Labour Party itself, Identity politics and the trans impositions, and oddly the lock down and attitudes to withdraw of civil liberties and rights . There is now a miss match between those who see themselves as the left leaders of the working class and the working class itself.  The attitude of the current left tends be one of 'fuck em' if they won’t do as we tell them, they are all Tory, racist, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, fascists anyway.  They appear to find the working class and engaging with our politics at large, entirely superfluous. In one way, it was this contempt for the opinions of the working class communities which led to the surprising victory of the Tories, the belief that Brexit- committed communities in the rust belts who were the heartlands of Labour support would never vote Tory and could therefore be ignored.  Actually I was one who swore they would never vote Tory too I knew they were never going to vote for Labour on a remain anti-industry program, but the degree of their anger transcended for the space of time it took to put the cross on their deep hatred of the Tories over generations of struggles.  The left is now expert at painting the working class into corners charging us with racism, and empire loyalism monarchism and patriotism and other such absurdities.

The statue toppling hysteria sweeping the nation, no I understand not many are being knocked over by groups of Simon pure iconoclasts, but the fear that they will and the fear of being regarded as reactionary, or racist has panicked City Councils into the pre-emptively felling them themselves. Let’s be clear I have no attachment to any of the victim statues thus far and I doubt that I will shed any tears for any on the secret hit list. What rattles us is that someone else has come along and imposed these judgements upon us, that without public discussion and debate a group of unelected vigilantes can decide what is 'appropriate' for us to continue to view.  

Cities are being scoured.for offending masonry and brass and any obscure imperialist lackey can now pay the price. This is an attempt to sanitize history it is an attempt to make the nasty history go away and remove memory of it, when clearly we should be doing the opposite. They were erected within a social and political context and thankfully that context has now changed , the statue though is a reminder of social attitudes and politics of the past , as long as there is adequate information boards alongside there is no reason why they need to be removed.  The statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square is a case in point, was Nelson a distinctive character of history who served the state and the cause of his country as he would have seen it at the time?  Obviously, nobody today including the ruling class would aspire to empire building and defense and colonialism which they did at the time, almost anyone with a brain cell knows this is a historical monument in a historical context.  Actually it is quite interesting from a social history point of view, walk round the base plinth and look at the images of the seafarers in the height of the battle, look at the racial composition of the crew and the ages of the lads running through bombardments with gun powder for the guns, there is a clear presence of black seamen and boys, volunteers earning their freedom from slavery serving 'their' country.  Statues and plaques are interesting platforms for discussing history and understanding it.  Following the logic of the liberal iconoclast would surely see the pyramids fall and the colosseum?   There are already moves afoot to move the statue of the emperor Constantine from York, it appears the guardians have suddenly found out Roman Society was based on slavery, there noo !   I think most of us knew that, it really doesn’t make us want to run through the country uprooting all the many Roman monuments and remains for fear we upset.  Well who exactly?

Churchill and the miners existed in mutual hatred and class warfare, as miners children right through the post war period and before we were raised on stories not so much of Goldilocks and three bears, but Churchill and Tonypandy, and 26, and his hatred toward us.  Was he due his distinctive Mohican grass haircut and spray-paint during the class war protest of a few years ago?  Of course, he was.  Was he a distinguished member of the British ruling class and a memorable character from history, of course he was.  A statue of him in the coalfields would be blown to kingdom come, but outside parliament is fine by me, of course when we the miners pass it, our tale our history in regard to him is somewhat different than the ones told by the tour guides (incidentally see:  'The Day Britain Said No' a more clear sighted history of Churchill) and dauntless any demonstration by the working class or radical movements will find expressions of class war on the statue and plinth, no problem here.

Can I warn against allowing a simple 'hit list' of statues and monuments and plaques as this will always favour those opposed to and rarely those who defend, not least because the defenders won’t know whether or not they need to do any defending or whether someone is attacking something they think is valuable. Can I also warn against taking at face value accusations against particular historic figures, these may well come down to poor research or a particular political or cultural or class interpretation.  Scratching around for something to link Tyneside and the river and the region with the Slave Trade in order that we too might be suitably contrite and consumed with self-guilt, on the day of the first, BLM demonstration in Newcastle,  Look North focused on Blackett Street.  Repeating a poorly researched piece in I think the Journal, talking about Newcastle and the slave trade, the author firstly couldn’t even spell Fredrick Douglass's name right ! But then went on to talk about Blackett having made his fortune in an offshoot of the slave trade by importing Rum.  A totally misguided image was thus conjured up enough that now the name Blackett Street is now on some hit lists. Let’s be clear Blackett was a Liverpudlian , Liverpool being certainly a center of the slave trade though also strongly working class opponent of it. Blackett had started as a young merchant apprentice to his Cousin who did make his fortune in slaves, but he himself didn’t. The fortune and business and wealth of the river, city and region was coal not slaves. Of course, at this time boy miners from six years old worked in the mines, bonded to the coal owners and not allowed to run away or be employed elsewhere on pain of imprisonment the blacklist and starvation. This is the wrong sort of slavery of course, since these children who happened to be sometimes white, if they found time between the 18 hour shifts to get bathed and eat and sleep.  Doubtless some middle-class liberal PC wit will tell us they had 'white privilege' although I’ve never discovered just what that was.  It’s almost certainly true Blackett would have received cases or barrels of rum from his cousin, all rum consumed worldwide was based on the slave trade , as was tea, and cotton and much else, but this wasn’t how fortunes were made on the Tyne or Newcastle which were NOT part of the slave trade other than living in a country and state which overall was.  We had no specific connection and the penitents ought to stop scraping the bottom of (rum) barrels to find one.

The problem with a witch hunt is once you start looking, the world is full of witches.  All Judeo-Christian traditions including Islam have condoned slavery.  Neither Mohamad or Jesus condemned it or banned it or spoke or instructed against it, the bible euphemistically refers to master’s 'servants' rather than the slaves they actually were.  Paul went further and instructed the slaves not to disobey their masters and work hard for them.  This means all religious statues, churches, temples in that tradition Islam, Judaism, and Christianity could be charged with complicity and excusing slavery worldwide and therefore should be removed and shut down.

Modern morality imposes strict age limitations on sexual relationships, courtship and marriage, all sorts of outrage and repudiation is heaped upon those who breach the law or the consensus, but history had no restrictions especially on kings and queens.  If the trend is to take modern values and mores back into ancient history regardless of context and understanding of past society, the censorship of past artifacts could be unlimited.  How many kings and queens have been under 16 or were not even teenagers when they married,?  How many preteens and even on occasion babies, were married?  The whole of European history as it is represented could be shut down.

So, buildings, paintings and statues and books and even the history of such times could be banned and removed from view or knowledge.  The young comrades of the Chinese Red Guard during the so called 'cultural revolution' in their enthusiasm for change, destroyed swathes of ancient Chinese heritage believing it was keeping China in the past. it wasn’t of course, as the miner’s slogan says 'the past we inherit the future we build'.

 We have to acknowledge that Britain was a long time Imperialist and colonialist state, it invaded other countries, it imposed empires it suppressed other cultures and peoples, throughout that long period of the 'empire of which the sun never set' statutes and heroes of the time were built and commemorated. If the attempt is to be allowed to remove all markers to these people and any attempt to see them in historic context then essentially any appreciation of history will be impossible. All statues of Victoria and all other imperial monarchs, generals, wars , must be removed, Lord Collinwood springs to mind, certainly no Mr Nice Guy to his crews. Baden Powell the founder of the scout movement, unsurprisingly an imperialist empire loyalist, was not put up for that reason, but for founding the international scouting movement.  Shock horror they now discover he condemned homosexuality, but society condemned homosexuality, it was highly illegal and poor souls rotten in jails, were beaten and murdered for the offence, that was the injustice of the period in which he lived. Also as man trying to found an organization of little boys would hardly be a public advocate of same sex relationships would he ?, pedophilia being synonymous with homosexuality in those days.

A controversial figure in history, not particular Mr Nice Guy might well still be important corner stones of history and events and worthy of marking. I would expect that if Adolf Hitler had been born on Pilgrim Street Newcastle a plaque at least would mark this fact, that would simply be a historic marker and not some celebration or badge of honour.

The miners have particular reason to remember our slavery and oppression and see in the character of Lord Londonderry in Durham City Centre a monument worthy of removal, but how would that serve our history?  That statue allows us to tell that story, and to demonstrate that the same history can have at least two versions and two sets of facts.  I use it often given on the stump lectures.

 ******************************

***********************

The Working Class & Leftist Delusion

 by Andrew Wallace

LEFTISM gets itself into bogged down into certain delusional mythologies, one of which concerns the romanticisation of the working work, the heroic proletarian toilers and tillers of the earth,  preordained by Marxist gospel to act as the historical revolutionary agent to overthrow capitalism.  Marx had been pretty disparaging about peasants and 'rural idiocy', instead he and his fellow 19th century socialists felt that a newly emergent class of industrial labourers would shape up as the critical agents of modernity.

Alas some 140 years after Marx's death the working classes across the globe remain as distant from this pre-ordained enterprise as they ever were.  Indeed it seems quite the converse; the working class as hitherto constituted has played a most passive if indeed not reactionary role.

Leftist pretensions to scientific rigour can no longer disguise the romantic fallacy and cognitive bias of 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed'. As Bertrand Russell tartly observed 'Marx was the Wordsworth of the proletariat; its Freud is still to come."

David Selbourne has dissected this fallacious intellectual cul-de-sac as:

'prodigies of useless intellectual labour, whose largely metaphysical character is determined  by the metaphysical nature of the problems to which they seek a solution At the lowest political level, however masked by intellectual sophistication, they can descend to disappointed abuse of the working class for having failed to live up to middle-class socialist expectation. Theories, as we have seen, of 'consumerism', of the 'deferential' working class, of the 'long catalepsy' of the British working-class movement, of a class consciousness 'subordinate' in its very 'texture' to the 'hegemony of the bourgeois', all have silently inscribed within them the figure of a politically defective proletarian who is the obverse of the archetypally active class hero of socialist romance, first cousin to Dyden's noble savage.'

A truth which can still barely be alighted upon in progressive circles, 'socialism' is a not a product of the working class worldview, instead it is a quixotic interloper of sorts, a radical import of déclassé intellectuals who had reason to take issue with the corrosive workings and hardships of industrial capitalism. The wage labourers of course bore the brunt of the exploitative economics that coerced them to work in the most degrading of conditions and had active interests in agitating for improvements in their lot. However 'labourism' isn't 'socialism', whereby the former is to be realised in seeking redress to particular grievances and privations rather than the latter politically undefined and radical goal of usurping the settlement of the day.  Conservatism presented itself in the passivity of the general population and the consequent isolation and containment of dangerous radicals and agitators who threatened to bring anarchy to social order.

Marxism has had the unenviable task of confronting this conspicuous turd in a swimming pool with a battery of impressive rationalisations. Chief amongst these is the infamous idea of false consciousness which has been taken as an unfortunate slur on character in the same way ignorance as a descriptor is taken as an insult even though a concise definition isn't morally pejorative.

Marxists have also proved adept at accounting for a multitude of countervailing tendencies that militate against economic immiseration, such as the co-opting of 'bourgeois' sociology's 'embourgeoisment thesis' of middle class expansion, thereby muddying the waters of class conflict via a bought off 'aristocracy of labour'.

Leftist intellectuals then have erred in projecting a radical telos onto the working class arena, ignoring the utilitarian and individualistic basis to labour politics and the voluntarist and anti-statist ethos that marked these communities. They have also been oblivious to the deep structural incorporation of working class material resources into the capitalist system through mortgage and hire purchase.

However other sociologists have attempted to sidestep the theoretical travails of working class conservatism and the 'deviant' class voter by pointing out the not unsurprising reality of hegemony by way of the deep state ancien regime of a living museum pageantry (monarchy, parliament, church, armed forces, public schools, civil service, BBC) which naturally defaults us all to the dominant culture. Ironically this confinement to functionalist observation and impotent commentary rather nullifies Marx's famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach which implored for more action and less philosophical windbaggery!

It's the culture, stupid

The class voting sociology (Marxism ‘lite’) of the post war years is now having to contend with the other belated but uncontroversial driver of voting behaviour - culture!  As analysists are now recognising, voters are motivated by cultural issues which may not easily be subsumed within an economic paradigm and furthermore may actually be oppositional to the traditional material class interests.  Bourdieu's ideas on social and cultural capital have helped to redress the balance by giving due prominence to education and the cognitive repertoire that help to constitute social class in the modern era.

Many left revisionists had already discerned that traditional class based politics were becoming problematic with declining working class vote share from the 1960s onwards alongside a new counter cultural zeitgeist. With deindustrialisation poised to pulp much of manufacturing and decimate organised labour, Hobsbawm and Gorz wrote in unflinching terms of the likely recalibration of socialist politics. Gorz talked of moving away from class politics in favour of the 'new social movements'. This turn to identity and culture politics followed in the wake of disenchantment with the 'backward' working class. However such doubling down on the new politics exacerbated the cultural and intellectual chasm between the liberal campus radicals and the more socially conservative blue collar workers, leading to a further breakdown of the previous broad based social alliances between the classes.

Working class Hobbesian attitudes to the Welfare State

Fern Brady writing for The Guardian was taken aback by the distinctive authoritarian attitudes towards benefit claimants, particularly the unemployed and disabled.  Those without obvious physical markers of disability were often the target of an inglorious brutalism unveiled in her interviewees who amply demonstrated

(an) 'internalised...Thatcherite every-man-for-himself mentality, wanting benefits for themselves but resenting anyone else getting a handout...it went in a circle, anger constantly directed at other victims of the coalition government's Welfare Reform  Act instead of the politicians and policymakers responsible.'

Houtman et al drawing on Bourdieu’s work discerned the recourse to a 'deserving/undeserving' criteria in relationship to limited social capital and associated authoritarian attitudes which also were marked by penalising attitudes for 'out-groups' and fringe communities.

So ought we really to be surprised at this abundance of working class authoritarianism?  Again Selbourne is illuminative on precisely this point:

‘...any form of illiberalism in the human-as worker can come to be discounted or recycled as an aberration from the norm of a supposedly instinctive or class, predilection for progressive, fraternal and democratic solutions to social and economic problems. That history does not reveal the latter unequivocally, to put it mildly, is inconvenient. Indeed, illiberalism is as much an ideological choice of direction as any other and more explicable, in conditions of insecurity or fear of unemployment, than many’

In critically disabusing leftism of its ludicrous 'salt of the earth' workerism, it is not my intention to deny the very real and toxic nature of capitalism and I continue to desire even if without much hope that a saner politics emerge to reign in the excesses of our times.  However we need to face up to the increasing intellectual bankruptcy of the left.  We are now very much at the whims of the political right who continue to exploit the post liberal environment in their canny take on working class sensitivities.  'White van conservatism' and Boris's new 'Workers' Party' are set to run the show into the distant future.

I have drawn on the following essays/books/articles during the writing of this article:

• The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed, (1937) Bertrand Russell
• Against Socialist Illusion (1985), David Selbourne
• http://www.leninology.co.uk/2010/10/working-class-tory-is-something-to-be.html
• Working Class Conservatives: A Theory of Political Deviance (1967), Frank Parkin
• Social Class in the 21^st Century (2015), Mike Savage
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/12/anti-welfare-rhetoric-families
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9966722/Welfare-reform-Its-class-war-but-not-in-the-way-youd-expect.html
• Farewell to the Leftist Working Class (2008), Houtman, Achterberg & Derks
• The Forward March of Labour Halted? (1978) Eric Hobsbawm
• Farewell to the Working Class (1980), Andre Gorz
• National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (2018), Matthew Goodwin

A Symbol of Global Repression

by Les May

THE title of this piece is that used by the ‘i’ newspaper to preface two extracts, one from The Times and the other from the Daily Telegraph.  Both relate to the case of Asia Bibi the Pakistani Christian woman who was held on death row for eight years accused of blasphemy before finally being acquitted by the Pakistan Supreme Court.   The acquittal resulted in mobs taking to the streets demanding that she be hanged.  The rioting mobs were only placated when the president of Pakistan Imran Khan said that her acquittal would be ‘reviewed’.  Since then she has been in hiding and her defence lawyer has fled to the Netherlands of fear of his life.

A report in The Telegraph quoted Jeremy Hunt the Foreign Secretary as saying:  ‘So often, the persecution of Christians is a telling early warning sign of the persecution of every minority. But I am not convinced that our response to the threats facing this group has always matched the scale of the problem’.

A Times editorial said ‘Asia Bibi’s case symbolises the fate of persecuted Christians around the world. It is welcome that the Foreign Secretary has clarified the Government’s stance whilst acknowledging the UK’s failings with regard to safeguarding Christian’s overseas.’

What is both surprising and disappointing is that it has been left to a Tory cabinet minister and two Tory supporting papers to take up the Asia Bibi case. The normally very vocal so called ‘liberal left’ with its obsession with identity politics has ignored her plight.  I am also aware that some time ago one of the Northern Voices editors contacted Jeremy Corbyn’s office for a response to the Asia Bibi case.  A reply is still awaited.

As I have mentioned before I have no axe to grind on this as I am an atheist.   But I cannot help noticing that all too often, because some Christians express views about homosexuality and abortion that some people do not like, Christians are seen only as persecutors of others and never as victims of persecution.

So far as I am concerned Christians are free to believe that they know what God thinks about homosexuality or abortion and to tell the rest of us if they are minded to do so.  I am free to ignore them. It’s called tolerance and stems from the belief that freedom of speech is having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Given that Asia Bibi is in fear of her life, yet her plight is ignored by the so called ‘liberal left’, puts into perspective the constant whingeing from assorted self interest groups about trivial incidents which they claim are ‘offensive’. A stray hand on someone’s knee or calling someone with full set of wedding tackle ‘he’ when they claim to be ‘she’, doesn’t really compare with having mobs on the street determined to hang you from the nearest lamp post.

Islamo-phobia or Fear of Political Islam?

by Les May

ACCORDING to 'Pakistan Today (PT)', Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, said at a conference a few days ago, “Moses got some mention, but Jesus Christ has no mention in history”, which may not be the most tactful thing to say in a country where mobs wander the streets demanding that Asia Bibi, who is a Christian, should be hanged for blasphemy even though the countrie’s Supreme Court has declared her innocent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXufFc-kAsc

Perhaps a little ‘tongue in cheek’ PT went on to say:

‘It merits a mention here that the two-day conference titled, "Finality of Prophethood and responsibilities of Muslims in light of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)", is the 43rd conference aimed at promoting religious harmony, tolerance, brotherhood and equality, respect for humanity, non-violence, unity, reconciliation and culture of dialogue’

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/21/video-pm-khan-draws-ire-over-controversial-remarks-about-jesus-christ/

What PT did not mention was that according to the 'Times of Israel', Imran Khan has also called for an international convention banning speech deemed insulting to Muslims.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/pakistani-pm-west-using-muslim-anger-over-blasphemy-to-spread-propaganda/

There is a direct translation of the relevant parts of his speech here;

https://www.memri.org/tv/pakistani-pm-imran-khan-no-mention-jesus-history-anti-free-speech-love-muhammad/transcript

What Khan is saying here is that the price for civil peace in Pakistan is our freedom of speech.  The people who have rioted and are demanding that Asia Bibi be hanged are by any reasonable measure on the extreme right wing politically. They make Tommy Robinson and his ilk look like babes in arms. Yet the Asia Bibi case has been largely ignored by the Left which seems more interested in building up Robinson’s profile.

One blog which claims to be ‘of liberal stance and independent mind’ has had a story about Robinson ever day this week, but has not found time to campaign on behalf of a woman who spent eight years in a cell with a death sentence hanging over her.

So far Robinson has not spotted the political capital to be made out of the Bibi case. If he ever does he’ll find that the Left has been too busy burnishing its anti-racist credentials to make any credible response to why it has not taken up the case for Asia Bibi and her family being offered asylum in the UK.

There is an alternative perspective on the Bibi story here;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg-fJp_Lkts

NOAM CHOMSKY & ANTIFA

Back in 2010 Noam Chomsky discussed the parallels between the Tea-Party and the pre-Nazi period in Germany.  Chomsky noted that after the Weimar Republic failed to handle the nation's economic woes, mainstream political parties lost support and the Nazis emerged.  Chomsky warned that the Left would need to take this as a sign that much better organizing was in order to combat the likes of the Tea-Party.  Mocking and threatening the far-right group to Chomsky served no real purpose and was a severe error in principle, tactics, and philosophy.

Chomsky added that, “If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response.”

Don’t get me wrong, many of my friends on the Left admire Antifa’s resistance of neo-Nazis.  And like me they express deep concerns about our persistently fascist leaning country that has devolved in terms of climate, the economy, as well as a variety of social issues.  I am not however, a “soft-fascist,” or “typical liberal,” for supporting Chomsky’s views.  Nor are Chomsky critics all members of a Stalinist cult because they may support Antifa through and through.

Believe me, I’d love to punch Nazis and you can count me in to be an eternal member of resistance to both fringe and mainstream hate, but I’m not sure it would yield any positive result to use my progressive thought as a literal battering ram.  Despite the horrors of this nation’s past and present on so many issues, resorting to violence against a group that thrives on violence seems counterproductive.

Could it be that Chomsky is wrong and his detractors are right?  Could it be that there’s no time for supplicant MLK type resolve in 2017?  I think the broader Left has history on their side.

President Trump made dangerous and inaccurate remarks concerning the “many sides” of Charlottesville.  At the same time, Chomsky correctly asserted that Antifa’s actions served as “a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who [are] exuberant.”

He asserted that Antifa "generally [proves] self-destructive."  Furthermore, Chomsky remarked that Antifa indicates “a minuscule fringe of the Left,” and that "[W]hat they do is often wrong in principle — like blocking talks."

This positioning is very consistent with most of his career.  After taking off as a world-renowned linguist Chomsky first gained prominence as a political writer during the Vietnam Era and one of his main sources of inspiration was the famed revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste.

Muste is famous for articulating,  “There is no way to peace for peace is the way. Peace is the starting place, and you can not end with it if you do not begin with it.”  This helps to explain why Chomsky says that the "toughest and most brutal" always win, which are of course the white supremacists, militarized police forces, government forces, and fascists.

When Chomsky recognizes that there are “opportunity costs [and a] loss of the opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism,” it doesn’t mean he is a pure pacifist either.  He holds that force is only an option after you fully exhaust peaceful means, and one must try every peaceable mean.  Any use of violence on the Left must follow this trajectory since violence in combatting fascist elements and their support networks require massive organizing efforts and highly trained insurgency techniques.  At the moment however Chomsky holds that Antifa is not even remotely related to anarchism.

He is not mistaken to ask Antifa to think through their actions along with the consequences.  This does not equate to showing any patience for the racist right. Chris Hedges, who took even more heat for his commentary, is simply asking for the same amount of introspection regarding tactics.
Tony DiMaggio has managed to stay out of the Left’s crosshairs unlike Chomsky and Hedges, but I believe he too is correct in his assertions.  DiMaggio knows that violence is a part of the real world but remarks that “violence is never something one should actively seek out.”

Fascists, neo-Nazis and right wing terrorists do indeed try to fuse first amendment assembly rights of know-nothings to justifications for violence.  In many ways the mainstream Alt-Right acts much like ISIS, another by-product of failed policies.  Of course, the Left and Antifa is not the same as the Alt-Right, for there is no such thing as an “Alt-Left.”  But this is however precisely why it’s harmful to entertain violence and the fascist playbook. Similar to Osama bin Laden wanting Bush 43 to engage in a crusade, the Alt-Right wants the Left in a violent war to destroy constructive engagement within the Left internally.

Todd Gitlin is correct when he asserts that, “In truth, there is no symmetry between the “alt-right” and “antifa.”  Antifa is the backlash to the backlash, a defensive response to the growing presence of right-wing extremism.”  Gitlin goes on to add however that, “many antifa activists do not think strategically about whom they alienate.”

John Halle is another person who took principled positions on Antifa. He agrees with the politics of the Left but sees a problem with tactics.  Halle simply states that violence, for instance on a university campus in the protest of a speaker, has boiled over when a moderator is assaulted and sustains injuries.
Chomsky told me that although he received some support for his comments on Antifa, he mostly received furious opposition.  Anarchism is of course not some vague, ill-organized and unclassifiable group like Antifa demonstrated.  Chomsky stated that Antifa might be operating on a romanticized vision of muscularity.  It’s certainly possible.

******

‘Of the Left’ or wrap around economics?

by Les May

SPEAKING to students at the Cambridge Union during a book promotion tour of the UK earlier this year Bernie Sanders said 'If I give a speech about combatting racism people would say ‘that’s great we cannot tolerate racism or sexism or homophobia’ and people respond to that. But what is harder for a variety of reasons for people to deal with is the fact that increasingly in this country, and Corbyn makes this point, and in my country, we are looking at oligarchic forms of government where the people on top have increased power, increased wealth, while the middle classes shrink and why many people live in desperate poverty.  That is an approach that makes certain people uncomfortable. They feel uneasy about that, but I applaud Jeremy Corbyn for raising those issues”.

At the Oxford Union he said, 'There is an area which is not nearly so sexy as dealing with race, as dealing with gender, as dealing with homophobia and that is the economic struggle and in that struggle we are not only not making progress, we are losing ground'.  As if to emphasise his point the applause came when he made reference to ‘gay’ marriage in the UK.

He had said much the same thing in his own country. On the campaign trail in 2015 he said 'Once you get off of the social issues — abortion, gay rights, guns — and into the economic issues, there is a lot more agreement than the pundits understand.'

Both Sanders and Trump announced their bid for the presidency in that year so saying that there was ‘agreement’ on economic issues seems strange.  But as Trump went on to show millions of voters were ready to listen to someone promising to reverse the long time decline in their economic prospects. Trump may be a phony but he won the Republican nomination and the election by saying he could do just that. And it was Hillary Clinton not Bernie Sanders who was nominated by the Democrats.

Sanders it seems did not ‘connect’ with ‘women,  Latinas and Blacks’ in the way that Clinton did, or so we are told.   If that’s true it tells you more about the priorities of some members of the Democratic party and their journalist friends than about the priorities of voters.

The response to Sander’s 2015 comment from one Destiny Lopez was to say he had ‘set economic issues against reproductive health’ and he was ‘throwing abortion rights under the bus’.

But as Sanders told his Oxford audience the economic issues ‘wrap around’ all the social issues.  If you are on a zero hours contract, living in a lousy house for a rent which takes a third of your income, are always one pay packet away from being penniless, working but having to use a food bank, it’s not because you are black/white, male/female, gay/straight, cis/trans, keto/enol, it’s because the people who run the system want it that way.  They and their even richer friends benefit from running the political system along neo-liberal lines.  And you will find some of the beneficiaries in all the categories listed above.

It’s not just the Sun and the Daily Mail in their efforts to present Corbyn and his supporters as dangerously left wing which bolster the status quo. At least these have the merit that they are focused on Corbyn’s political and economic policies.   The supposedly liberal papers play the same game and are equally opposed to radical change.  A few week ago the news that one Holly Willoughby was getting a pay rise found its way onto three pages of the ‘i’ culminating in an article by Jessica Barrett with the heading ‘Why stars pay matters to all of us’.  It seems that Ms Willoughby had been given a pay rise of £200,000 taking her pay from a measly £400,000 to £600,000. It also seems that Jessica Barrett was using a different dictionary for her definition of the word ‘all’ than the one I use.

I doubt the lady who cleans the toilets at the ITV studios gave a whoop of joy at the news. I suspect that like me she would be more likely to ponder what qualities Ms Willoughby has which makes her worth £600,000 a year.  If she did, she was more astute than Jessica Barrett to whom it does not seem to have occurred that the ratio between the pay of women at the top and the bottom of the pay hierarchy is much, much, greater than the ratio between men and women. The same is true of the pay hierarchy for men.

In the world that those journalists who characterise themselves as being ‘of the left’ inhabit, Holly Willoughby’s pay rise was no doubt seen as a blow for gender equality. The fact that in Rochdale we now have two ladies who work as loaders when our wheelie bins are collected each week probably wasn’t. It’s not a high status job so it doesn’t count.   Call it snobbery or the antics of the liberal elite the effect is the same. They and their male counterparts are marginalised. The likes of Jessica Barrett aren’t going to write articles telling us that what wheelie bin loaders are paid matters to us all.

Thirty years ago in his book ‘Choose Freedom: The future of democratic socialism’ Roy Hattersley pointed out that there isn’t such a thing as a ‘socialist’ foreign policy. By the same token there isn’t such a thing as a ‘socialist’ view about gender, sexual orientation, racism, abortion, nuclear weapons, women only railway carriages, or whether transexuals should be allowed to enlist in the military or use women’s toilets. But there is room for a nuanced debate about all of these things. And if you don’t accept the possibility of debate you are headed down the road signposted totalitarianism.

Bernie Sander’s question needs to be answered. Why is it that people, and not just young people with their demands for ‘safe spaces’ and the like, cannot resist sniffing out and condemning anything they think smells of racism, sexism or homophobia, yet don’t show the same enthusiasm for combatting the rise in vast inequalities in both income and in wealth, the growth of zero hours contracts, the receding possibility that they will be able to live a dignified and not poverty filled old age, the demonisation of the poor as work shy
scroungers, the lack of social housing and the increasing proportion of household income that is going to a new rentier class?


You can find video recordings of Bernie Sanders talks to the Oxford and Cambridge Unions on YouTube

*******

Podemos, Catalonia, & Spanish labour

The left and self-determination

  Excerpt from 'INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM' Issue: 155 

Posted on 29th June 2017 Héctor Sierra

PODERMOS and IU have refused to lend their support to the pro-independence majority.  They have argued that CiU waves the flag of independence to divert attention from its own role in implementing cuts and have accused CUP and ERC of helping whitewash its neoliberal record.  But CiU never really supported independence, embracing the cause only when it saw it was unstoppable.  And no one has done as much to unmask their responsibility for austerity in Catalonia as the CUP’s militants.
The current attitude towards self-determination by parties such as Podemos and IU has been typical of the Spanish left at crucial points in the country’s history.  Both the Communist Party (closely tied to the Soviet Union) during the Civil War (1936-9), and the Eurocommunist current during the transition to democracy, were dismissive of the nationalist movements, when not openly conceding to Spanish chauvinism.
IU claims to be interested not in any national struggle, but in the social struggle, missing the point that Catalan independence is interlinked with the most radical demands of society.  They pose as internationalists, but Catalan and Spanish nationalism cannot be equated. Spanish chauvinism is an ideology pumped out from the top of society, whose core components were devised by the Catholic Church and the fascist regime over 40 years and which today remains in the hands of the state.  What is commonly branded as Catalan (or Basque) nationalism is a much more complex affair, and does not lie firmly in the grip of the Catalan bourgeoisie.  Independence means different things for the different classes supporting it.  For instance, former Catalan president Artur Mas said in a visit to the US that an independent Catalonia would remain loyal to Nato—but among working class people there is a broad consensus that the country would not have an army.
Refusal to back independence has also been justified on the grounds that it weakens the unity of the Spanish working class.  But, while there have been repeated attempts to divide Spanish and Catalan workers, they have come from politicians and the media, not from below.  In fact, the national minorities are a ruling class’s recurrent scapegoat when it comes to diverting attention from issues such as austerity or corruption.  The way to achieve unity among workers is precisely through supporting the rights of Catalans and Basques, continuously under attack, and challenging scapegoating, something the Spanish left has largely failed to do.
Podemos’s talk of a multinational state, inspired by Errejón’s study of Bolivian politics, was refreshing at first. Iglesias and Errejón tried to appeal to left voters in Catalonia and the Basque Country by arguing that Podemos would bring about the democratisation of the Spanish state that would make possible a recognition of their national rights.  But while paying lip service to self-determination, in practice they have proved unable even to lend support to non-binding municipal initiatives for the democratic right to a referendum.  More recently, Iglesias has proposed a status of shared sovereignty as an alternative to independence.  This, of course, presupposes and is reliant on an eventual Podemos-led government.  Unlike these abstract prospect, the possibility of independence exists now and is within reach.
There is nothing inherent in the Catalan working class that makes it more left-wing than that of the rest of the state, and arguments of that kind should be challenged as they foster illusions about the viability of socialism developing within the limits of a single country.  An independent Catalonia could well end up being another capitalist state, controlled by its national bourgeoisie that goes on exploiting workers.  But there was nothing inevitable about Catalan society shifting to the left because of plummeting living standards. It has been the leading role of the Catalan left, along with the systematic work of the anti-fascist platform Unitat Contra el Feixisme (UCFR) in preventing fascist groups from tapping into the mood, that has ensured this was the case.  The same remains true when it comes to fighting for independence and defining its content.
The unmissable fact is that right now the left in Catalonia has a much more advantageous balance of forces than in the rest of the state, and levels of class confidence and consciousness are higher there—which is not to say that they cannot develop to the same extent everywhere else. Indeed, ensuring a victory for the Catalan left could be the way to achieve this goal.
The damage to the Spanish ruling class that the loss of Catalonia would cause is unimaginable; Catalonia makes a large contribution to the state’s revenues, with 18.8 percent of national GDP.  The centrality of national unity to the dominant ideology of the ruling class would also turn the event into a political earthquake.  A victory for independence would thus precipitate a crisis of unforeseeable consequences, throwing into chaos not only the PP but Spanish capitalism as a whole.
Socialism can only be achieved internationally, but by opening new prospects for the left in Catalonia and by breaking the consensus imposed by fascism in the transition to democracy, Catalan independence would advance the cause of the entire working class.  And, if a triumph of the Catalan left would be a positive development for workers in the rest of the state, what would the consequences of its defeat be?
Due to the need to look strong and stable, and the pressure exerted by the Spanish nationalist lobby, the PP has refused to negotiate with the Catalan parliament.  The pro-independence majority has pledged to organise a referendum on 1 October but all the calls on the central government to cooperate have fallen on deaf ears.  Likewise CiU and ERC have fruitlessly sought the intervention of the EU and third countries to lift the bar on a referendum.  The EU will not accept the unilateral separation of part of a member state, and the idea of being out of the EU sends shivers down the spine of CiU politicians.  As it becomes clearer that to go ahead with the referendum will involve an open confrontation with the Spanish state, and that they no longer control the process in motion, the risk exists that the Catalan bourgeoisie will instead try to strike a deal from above.  However, awareness that supporters of independence are running out of patience and will not accept more excuses complicates this.
Meanwhile, threats and attacks by the Spanish state have mounted. Individuals and associations have been brought to court for organising a non-binding referendum in 2014 that was ruled illegal. Activists of the CUP have also faced trial for burning pictures of the Spanish king at a public event. The main newspapers in Madrid and senior army officers have repeatedly asked the government to send the army in and suspend Catalan autonomy, as the constitution allows.
Only the CUP discounted from the beginning the possibility of an agreed referendum and has demanded the Catalan Parliament stop obeying laws coming from Madrid.  The work of activists in the CUP’s ranks and other left groups in the next months will be crucial to bring pressure from below to bear on the Catalan government.  A half-heartedly called referendum will give Rajoy the excuse he is awaiting to act.  An actual military intervention cannot be ruled out in the end. If this happened, nobody can seriously think that it would not be followed by an immediate clampdown on opposition everywhere else in the state and by new steps towards authoritarianism.  What the left does inside and outside Catalonia can prevent this scenario.  The leadership of Podemos and IU will act according to an electoral logic, but every activist, in these or other groups, who wants to challenge the system must actively support independence.  Solidarity with Catalonia can make a fundamental difference.

Conclusion: further destabilisation

It must not be forgotten that the PP is in office only because of the failure of all the other parties to form a government.  In the long run stability remains impossible and Rajoy does not rule out calling a new general election if the opposition PSOE, whose goodwill his government depends on, obstructs his work.
The PSOE say that they are the real opposition, not Podemos, while siding with the conservatives whenever stability is at stake. But they are deeply divided.  A managing board controlled the party for half a year after Sánchez’s removal, until in May a new leadership election took place.  Sánchez, although marginalised by the bureaucracy, stood again on an anti-Rajoy platform and beat Susana Díaz, the candidate of the establishment.  While this revived the talks of a hypothetical left coalition headed by PSOE and Podemos, the PSOE has since abstained in a motion of no confidence against Rajoy put forward by Podemos in June. It is uncertain to what extent the PSOE, still a pillar of the system, can be moved leftwards.  Nevertheless, the rebellion that has brought Sánchez back to power has exposed the noncomformity of a majority of the membership.
More importantly, the PP might have been able to mitigate the effects of the economic crisis temporarily, but the structural problems that brought the Spanish economy to its knees when the financial bubble burst remain untouched.  Investing in property and other forms of fictitious capital are still an important part of the economy, while productive investment and profitability remain low. This makes the Spanish economy extremely vulnerable to any upheaval in international markets in coming years.
Corruption remains rampant.  Hardly a week goes by without new scandals involving PP members coming to light.  While Rajoy has so far dodged any investigations, he is due to testify in court as a witness in relation to inquiries into senior party members close to him.  The Prosecutor’s Office for corruption is tightly controlled by the conservatives, so many cases do not lead to prison sentences, but corruption is an issue with the potential to unite people from all walks of life against the government.
As the dockers have shown, austerity can be fought.  The labour reforms can be repealed.  The Gag Law can be resisted. Rajoy’s government is weak and it can be brought down before 2020.
On the way to this goal, Podemos, IU and the unions are travelling companions, but the initiative must not be abandoned to their leaders.  If the left stands another chance to form a government, this should be welcomed and supported, without abandoning the critique of reformism or the building of a revolutionary party and without allowing mobilisation to decline again.
In making all this possible, the key issue that can alter the balance of power, throwing the Spanish state’s rulers on the defensive, is Catalonia.
Héctor Sierra is a Spanish socialist based in London and a member of the SWP.

Judge in Undercover Policing Inquiry to Quit

THE Judge, Sir Christopher Pitchford, involved in the Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing used to infiltrate trade unions and left-wing groups in England since the 1960s, has revealed that he has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

This means he will eventually have to stand down from the complex and already-delayed probe.

It is said that this has not yet affected his running of the inquiry so far - although the judge's physical symptoms have been becoming apparent.

The home secretary has been asked to appoint another judge to work alongside Sir Christopher and succeed him when he ultimately stands down.

The inquiry is already well behind schedule because of a complex legal dispute with Scotland Yard over how many former officers from the controversial unit at the heart of some of the allegations ought to give evidence.

This fall-out is expected to come to a head in a public hearing later in the spring which is expected to still take place with Sir Christopher at the helm.

Studies in the Anatomy of the British Left

by Brian Bamford

IT is now almost 50 years since Harold Garfinkel wrote his book 'Studies in Ethnomethodology' in 1967.  Garfinkel's book was a systematic attack on the kind of sociological and ideological thinking that was prevailing in much of the social sciences at that time, and which amounted to 'cookbook analysis'.  With a  functionalist or Marxist cookbook one didn't need to think critically or empirically about social phenomena or real life events; all one needed to do was to produce a suitable recipe to deal with the world.

In his essay in The Independent on the current thinking of the 'radical left' Bailey Lamon seems to have uncovered the latest facet of the phenomena of 'cookbook thinking' among some of the current half-baked student community of scholars at the beginning of the 21^st century.   Claiming to have been 'involved in activism since the Occupy Movement of 2011', Bailey Lamon makes a perceptive observation in which he contrasts the world of what he calls the 'oppressed groups,... such as the homeless, abused, addicted' with that of the half-baked students and activists, who in their wisdom claim to be able to diagnose the problems of those that suffer and to prescribe cures and generally to cleanse us all of our imperfections.  Mr. Lamon addresses the challenge to such clever-dick thinking which besets seemingly most of the British left:

'If you’ve ever worked with oppressed groups, such as people who are homeless, abused, addicted or suffering from mental health problems, there's one thing you learn straight away. They usually don't frame their worldviews in terms of academic theories students learn in gender studies classes in university. For the most part, they tend to not analyse their experiences in terms of systemic power and privilege, concepts such as “the patriarchy”, “white privilege”, or “heteronormativity”.

'While many of these folks know that they're directly impacted by class inequality, they don't sit around pondering capitalism, reading Marx, or tackling the effects of “problematic behaviours”. They are not concerned with checking their privilege.  No.  They are busy trying to survive. Getting through the next day. Meeting their basic needs. They don't bother with policing their language and worrying about how their words might unintentionally perpetuate certain stereotypes.  They are more concerned with their voices being heard.'   
Young students today are desirous of passing exams and the easiest way to accomplish this is in finding some ideological formula or recipe knowledge to spout out pretentious doctrines and slogans such as 'patriarchy'; 'white privilege' or 'heteronormativity'.  What these bumptious people lack in experience of poverty; life in the workplace; the prison yard or living on the streets, they try to compensate by pseudo-intellectual blather.
Mr Lamon writes about some of the people he encountered in the Occupy Movement: 
'Yet I witness so many “activists” who ignore the realities of oppression despite saying that they care about those at the bottom of society.  They think that being offended by something is equal to experiencing prison time or living on the streets.  They talk about listening, being humble and not having preconceptions.  Yet they ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are.'
These people are so convinced that they, and only they, have the key to the universe and that what they believe must be self-evident that they do not accept that their views should be subject to any form of forensic examination.  Consequently as we have noticed on many occasions they believe that they have the entitlement to coerce others to swallow whatever fashionable fad that they have embraced.
God help the British Left!
See http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-this-radical-activist-is-disillusioned-by-the-toxic-culture-of-the-left-a6895211.html 

Pale-faced Reply by Irrelevant Old Man!

Dear Adam Lawrence-Barr,

NICE to hear from you.  I only became aware of you after someone drew my attention to your spat with Nick Heath over your interview with the Catholic Worker.  I think he accused you of returning to the 'Big Tent' approach to anarchism, and you humbly said that Freedom had no intention of returning to the 'Big Tent' approach.  I don't know what the alternative is perhaps it amounts to proclaiming what Orwell called the 'smelly little orthodoxy' of left wing politics.  Whatever is the case, Northern Voices would be more than happy to publish your ideas on the NV Blog.

 You mention a few groups or tenants of Freedom that are doing 'work', implying that by offering rooms or collecting rents and standing in their shadows Freedom is somehow made more significant by its proximity to these bodies.  It's a curious argument to pursue, especially when at the last meeting of the Friends of Freedom you revealed that the inmates at Freedom had managed to 'squander' a large sum of money left to Freedom by a benefactor some 7-years ago.  You did say 'squander' didn't you?  And did you go on to absolve yourself by saying:  'It was before my time'?  Also, is it true that a member of the Friends has been financing the Collective out of their own pocket? 

None of these misdemeanours seems to inhibit you from taking that moral high ground in your e-mail and accusing Northern Voices an 'attempt to steal away the means of production from the workers using it by a bunch of old irrelevant white men'.  I'm glad you raised the matter in this for it suggests that you have not read a word of the Freedom archives or even of Northern Voices.  By couching your profound critique in such terms I suppose that you are claiming that you are more in touch with the shop-floor and the world of work?  And that your record in anarchist politics is somehow superior to mine and the other three supporters of the 'Modest program'?

Well, that is interesting:  how long have you been involved in Freedom?  The problem is that you seem to be representing the Metropolitan elite, and apart from David Goodway from Yorkshire, who is on the Friends of Freedom to represent the provinces?  Your own name sounds like something from the Home Counties and the middle-class, it doesn't have a proletarian ring to it does it?  It doesn't sound owt like someone who has been apprenticed in a factory, or has worked in the shipyards in Gibraltar like me, or has been a weighman in a Lancashire textile mill.  Or someone who has done time in Strangeways, or been detained in a dungeon in the province of Segovia in the summer of 1963, before even Stuart Christie went to Franco's Spain.  I'll not mention about the interviews I did for Freedom during the pyramid sales riots in Albania in 1997, and in Belgrade during the general elections there in December 2000.  What today seems to be held to be 'irrelevant' on the left of politics is the concerns of the blue-collar worker:  take the lack of interest in many quarters in the recent High Court case over blacklisting - that is the elephant which has somehow been left outside the room.  Where are the representatives of North & South Wales on the Friends of Freedom?  Where is the Scottish connection?  Where are the Northerners?  Where are the genuine Proles and blue-collar workers? 

 Come-on Adam Lawrence-Barr, who are you kidding? 

 Kind regards, 

 Brian Bamford