EARTHQUAKES, COAL & 'THE WORKERS' NEXT STEP'

Rousseau vs Voltaire; Whittaker vs Douglas?

The other week I had an email from Dave Douglass, the famous NUM militant who has just published his memoirs of the Miners' Strike of 1984-5, who said he was not willing to review our booklet 'The Workers' Next Step' – a discussion document considering the modern day issues surrounding ideas put forward almost 100 years ago by the South Wales Miners' Federation in their 'The Miners' Next Step'; Dave said he was not willing to review the booklet because of a contribution by Rachel Whittaker, the anarchist environmentalist and conservationist. Both Dave and Rachel support a body called the Northern Anarchist Network. Dave, now a retired miner living in South Shields, believes in clean coal and the NUM; while Rachel from Shropshire rejects this, supporting campaigns like the Climate Camp.

In a way this dispute fought out some years ago at a NAN conference reminds me of the 18th century dispute between Rousseau and Voltaire. This year has seen two serious earthquakes – one in Haiti and the other in Santiago in Chile – and it was the Lisbon earthquake in 1755 that led to the famous quarrel between these great two thinkers. Voltaire wrote a poem on the Providential government of the world. Rousseau replied: 'Voltaire, in seeming always to believe in God, never really believed in anybody but the devil, since his pretended God is maleficent. Being who according to him finds all his pleasure in working mischief. The absurdity of this doctrine is especially revolting in a man (Voltaire) crowned with good things of every sort, and who in the midst of his own happiness tries to fill his fellow-creatures with despair, by the cruel and terrible image of the serious calamities from which he is himself free.'

Rousseau saw no reason to make a fuss about the earthquake and thought it a good thing that a few people should get killed now and then. Besides, the people of Lisbon suffered because they lived in houses several stories high; if they had been dispersed in the woods, as people ought to be, they would have escaped uninjured. One wonders, reading this, if the people living in shacks and shanty towns in Haiti and Chile fared better than those in the big houses? Is modern living bad for us? Should we return to the woods from whence we came with Rachel Whittaker? Or should we, with Dave Douglass, huddle round the fireside stoking the cinders? Should we invoke Rousseau with his implied classical anarchism and return to the wilds, or should we stop indoors and enjoy the comforts of modern living and the enlightenment with a more liberal-minded Voltaire?

In 1755, Voltaire replied to Rousseau's essay 'Discourse on Inequality', in which Rousseau had argued that 'man is naturally good, and is only by institutions made bad'. Voltaire responded thus: 'I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it...'

Do we don our woolly jumpers from Oxfam and retreat to a farm in the mountains of Iberia with Rachel Whittaker in the spirit of Rousseau? Or do we jump in Dave Douglass' scrappage-scheme car and visit Beamish Museum with its drift mine colliery?

Meanwhile, our NV publication 'The Workers' Next Step' languishes on the bookshelves almost unwanted: Dave Douglass won't review it and the Peoples History Museum, which happily stocks Northern Voices and sells our Spanish Civil War booklet like hot cakes, has rejected it. Housmans bookshop in London has said the poor reception may have something to do with the Lucien Freud illustration of a 'Benefit Officer Sleeping' on the front cover and the lady at Bookcase at Hebden Bridge said she didn't expect it to do as well as our Spanish booklet. Another explanation may be that, since the defeat of the miners, workers are no longer fashionable in our post-modern world.

The Workers' Next Step

Shock! Horror! Lucien Freud's portrait of 'Big Sue' Tilley: 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping' graces the cover of a new discussion booklet for the National Shop Stewards' Network published by The Workers' Next Step group. Featuring an attack on New Labour's managerialism & the 'New Workers' Party' idea, it is based on the 'Miners' Next Step' and the critique of Geoffrey Ostergaard 'The Tradition of Workers' Control'. It features essays on the New Deal & an interview with a former inmate at a Government training camp down south; Asbestos, contaminated land, and Health & Safety issues treated by Jason Addy, researcher in occupational and environment diseases at Manchester Metropolitan University; Rachel Whittaker attacks the 'carbon footprint' & the 'prole-cult' in the Vestas dispute.

Direct sales price £1.99 or £2.49 (post paid); Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices'. Available c/o 46, Kingsland Road, Rochdale, Lancs. OL11 3HQ


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