Reform Party UK – an assessment.

 

Nigel Farage

By: Andrew Wallace

Arguably the distinctive peculiarities of British politics have been nurtured under the so-called First Past the Post electoral system which means a single winner at constituency level by virtue of the highest individual tally irrespective of a majority. This has historically proved particularly advantageous to the Conservatives who have been able to achieve something of a monopoly regarding a reliable 40% plus voting bloc for the right, whilst the liberal left conversely proved more factious with a newly assertive centrist wing that had formally seceded from the Labour Party.

It now appears that Conservatives have fallen prey to a mirror trajectory of Labour’s fate in the 1980s, facing a credible independent flank to their right courtesy of the Reform Party. But what is this curious beast and just how serious a political challenge does it pose? Perhaps the Reform Party’s greatest strength also happens to be its greatest weakness, for this is but the latest iteration of Faragism to come down the line of the anti-federalist UK Independence Party to the Brexit Party. Faragism alludes to the charismatic figure of Nigel Farage who has proven adept at inserting himself into the national conversation concerning the perceived failures of mainstream politics. Farage has cannily weaved a heterodox line of nationalist dissent into the otherwise uber-internationalism of hegemonic free market economics, whereby protectionism is invoked if only in terms of the migratory flows of labour across nation-states. This distinctive antinomic premise had already been invoked by Enoch Powell and had put him at odds with fellow free market ideologues like Ralph Harris and the Institute of Economic Affairs (Heffer, p445).

It would seem like Powell; Farage’s cultural nationalism gives a potency which would otherwise be hard to envisage in proselyting for a deregulated small state to a blue collar audience. Regular opinion polling suggests a ceiling for Reform UK, with their best percentage share to date at 25% (Coates, 2025), suggesting Faragism is another overegged electoral phenomenon akin to Cleggmania (Kampfner, 2010). Whilst it seems quite possible that Reform could go on to bag a few dozen more MPs come the next election, it does seem ridiculous to suggest Farage can go on to win an electoral majority from his current 4 MPs or so (Lowe having been suspended). A more realistic scenario is Farage as a kingmaker in a future hung parliament. It just seems a matter of time before the Conservative Party comes to terms with Farage and unless Reform are lucky enough to latch onto another compelling populist figure, Conservatives have no choice but to dig in and wait it out.

References:

Coates, Sam (2025) ‘Reform UK tops landmark poll for first time’ Available at: https://news.sky.com/story/reform-uk-tops-landmark-poll-for-first-time-13302531

(Accessed 04 February 2025)

Heffer, Simon (1998) “Like The Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell” Faber and Faber

Kampfner, J (2010) ‘The lessons of Cleggmania and Lib Dem losses’ Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/may/07/nick-clegg-liberal-democrats-cleggmania

Consultant suspended by GMC for condemning genocide in Gaza on X.

 

Dr. Rehiana Ali

We don't have an absolute right to freedom of speech in Britain and never have done.

The case of Dr Rehiana Ali illustrates this. Having worked as a consultant neurologist in the NHS for twenty years, she got suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC), for 18-months because she condemned on X, formerly Twitter, the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Her suspension arose after a complaint was made by the pro-Israeli body called UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

There are UK laws that seek to restrict or constrain what we say. People in Britain have been jailed and arrested for expressing opinions on social media. Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights which protects freedom of expression, is not an absolute right, but a qualified right, that can be restricted under certain conditions.

What I find particularly worrying, is the trend among some self-righteous lefty woke types, to want to silence debate or prevent people from expressing an alternative point of view or by cancelling and no platforming them or expecting them to self-censor. We saw this in the case of the philosopher, Professor Kathleen Stock, who was hounded out of her job at the University of Sussex, for her views on gender. The university have just been fined £585,000 by the Regulator OfS, for failing to uphold free speech and academic freedom.

This type of censorship is a kind of creeping totalitarianism. Britain's obsession with banning things is also very worrying. We really are a nation of people who are under the thumb of authority. George Orwell famously said that "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they don't want to hear."

We understand that Dr Rehiana Ali asked the Free Speech Union to support her, but she says that her appeals were ignored. If Toby Young, a supporter of Israel, can't accept Orwell’s dictum, then he shouldn't be leading the free speech union.

Tesla & Space X say Trump's tariffs will damage their business.

 

Elon Musk

It looks like Elon Musk might be on his way out of the White House and Tesla.

Since joining the Trump administration and the department of government efficiency (Doge), Musk has become toxic to the brand image of Tesla which is seeing falling sales and profits. Tesla showrooms have been vandalised and Tesla cars set on fire. Tesla electric vehicles are also being boycotted.

The Financial Times recently reported that in an unsigned letter to the U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer, Tesla said it would be "exposed to disproportionate impacts' from retaliatory import tariffs by other countries."

Space X which is also owned by Musk have also written to the U.S. government asking for an exemption from tariffs on products it buys from China. Trump's erratic policy making on the hoof seems to be giving everybody the jitters including Musk.

Roxy Music pop star criticises the Met for police arrests at Quaker Meeting House.

 

Brian Eno

The former Roxy Music band member, Brian Eno, is spot on about the police arrests at the Quaker Meeting House in Westminster, London. When expressing moral concerns is treated as criminal intent by the police then we ought to be rightly worried and concerned. Are we living in a Stasi-like police state under Starmer's squalid Labour government? These people met to discuss and share opinions about climate change and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. The police smashed in the front door, arrested six people, and confiscated laptops and mobile phones.

The U.K. recently came under fire by high-profile politicians in the U.S. for allegedly curtailing citizen’s free speech. J. D. Vance, the U S. Vice President, accused the U.K. of curtailing freedom of expression during a meeting with the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, at the Oval Office on 27 February.

Although we know there have been a number of people including Journalists, who have been arrested by the police for publishing tweets and comments on social media concerning the Israeli offensive in Gaza, Starmer has defended the U.K.'s track record on free speech. Responding to comments made by the U.S. Vice President, Starmer, said: "We've had free speech for a very long time in the United Kingdom and it will last for a very, very long time."

Despite what Starmer says, we don't have free speech in Britain and never have done, because we have laws that seek to constrain what we can say. Following the riots in Southport that occurred following the stabbing of a number of children at a dance class in Southport, many people were arrested, tried, and sent to prison, for comments that they made on social media. The authorities claimed that these people had aimed to incite violence towards others or had aimed to incite racial hatred towards others.

The 'Online Safety Act', is cited as another potential barrier to free speech in the U.K. The government say that it's designed to stop harmful content, threats and misinformation, online. The Public Disorder Act, makes it an offence for a person to use threatening words that can cause distress, based on race, religion or sexuality. A Stockport housewife was recently visited by two Greater Manchester police officers after she called online for a councillor to resign. The police said they were acting on a complaint.

Although Article 9 of the Human Rights Act protects the right of freedom of thought and belief and Article 10, protects the right to freedom of expression, they are not absolute rights. In 2010, the police raided the London home of the freelance photographer David Hoffman, after he displayed a picture in his front window of the Conservative politician David Cameron, with the word 'wanker' written underneath. The police told Hoffman that they were acting on a complaint and he was asked to remove the poster from his window. He was threatened with arrest and handcuffed. Hoffman later made a complaint against the police claiming that they had violated his right to freedom of expression under the Human Rights Act. The police later apologised for breaching his rights under Article 10, and paid him compensation.

Rayner says 'working-class people" don't want hand-outs.

 

Angela Rayner

What a hypocrite! Angela Rayner is no stranger to accepting handouts and freebies but she says "working-class people" don't want hand-outs.

In June 2024, multi-millionaire Lord Waheed Ali, gave Rayner £3,550 for clothes. She also enjoyed free use of Lord Ali's $2.5m luxury penthouse in Manhattan, during a five-day personal holiday with her lover and 'soulmate', Sam Tarry, in December 2023. According to the parliamentary register of interests, Rayner said she was given a flat as accommodation for five nights to enjoy a “personal holiday” which she said was worth an estimated £1,250 overall. She declared that Lord Ali, her fairy godmother, had asked for nothing and got nothing in return.

In 2022, The American fashion brand Adrianna Papell, gave Rayner 11 dresses costing £945. Angela Rayner was also given clothing worth £2,230 from the luxury brand ME+EM.

Angela Rayner reminds me of Moliere’s sanctimonious scoundrel Tartuffe, who was an impostor and a hypocrite.

 

The UK has one of the least generous state retirement pensions in Europe, yet we're told it's unaffordable.

 

Although the UK state retirement pension is one of the lowest in Europe and British workers retire much later, we're constantly told by those that govern us, that the UK state retirement pension is unaffordable and unsustainable in the long run.

The old basic state retirement pension pays as little as £169.50 a week and those in receipt of the new state pension receive £221 a week. Both pensions are well below the national minimum wage. The British government must have saved billions of pounds when they raised the women's state retirement age of 60 years in line with the men's retirement age which is now 66 years. The British government also saves millions of pounds each year because people don't claim the state benefits to which they're entitled.

There has been talk of means-testing the UK state retirement pension or means-testing the 'triple-lock' that uprates the state retirement pension. The Starmer Labour government have said that they will guarantee the triple-lock during their term of office and have no plans to means-test the state pension. But Starmer can turn on a dime, and he can break any pledge or promise that he makes. In opposition Labour campaigned to retain the winter fuel allowance and then means-tested it. They also campaigned for fair compensation for WASPI women and then refused to pay them compensation. Labour calls this good politics and not gutter politics. You promise the people one thing to get their votes and then when you get into power, you shaft the people who voted for you.

The UK state retirement pension is also taxable. At present the bottom rate of income tax has been frozen at £12,570. When the UK state retirement pension reaches this level or above it, pensioners will liable to pay income tax. They will be expected to complete a tax return on paper or online. Many pensioners will be unfamiliar with completing a tax return as they will have had income tax deducted via PAYE as employees. Completing a tax return is not easy and many will not even understand the questions on the form. HMRC provide little or no help with completing a tax return. Many tax offices are no longer open and it can take biblical ages to get through to HMRC by telephone. What pensioners should be aware of, is the massive fines that people can incur if tax returns are not completed or returned on time. Having to deal with HMRC can turn into a nightmare.

Bank of England governor blames Britain's elderly for the state of Britain's economy.

 

Andrew Bailey - Governor of the Bank of England

Although the Labour Chancellor's increase in N.I. for employers and increases in the National Minimum Wage have driven up prices and labour costs, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, is blaming Britain's ageing population for the state of Britain's flagging economy.

The British state retirement pension is one of the least generous in Europe and many British workers retire much later. Many British workers, especially those who work in manual occupations, do not live long enough to get the state retirement pension. Yet we're told that the British state retirement pension is unaffordable and unsustainable and there is now talk of means-testing the state retirement pension.

The British government must have saved billions of pounds since they increased the state retirement age for women from 60 to 66 years of age. The government also save millions of pounds each year because many people don't claim the state benefits to which they're entitled.

Britain's politicians and wealthy individuals like Andrew Bailey do expect to receive generous pensions funded by the taxpayer. Liz Truss, the former Conservative Prime Minister, did far more damage to the British economy than Britain's ageing population and yet this oaf, still received a lifetime allowance of £115,000 a year, after being in office for just 49 days.

Leaving the E.U. has also been another self-inflicted economic disaster for Britain. A recent report by economists and analysts at Cambridge Econometrics, says that the UK will be £311 billion worse off by 2035 due to leaving the E.U.

Angie Rayner asked for a private safari on trip to Ethiopia. Does she think she's the Queen of Sheba?

 

Angela Rayner in Ethiopia

Angela Rayner is a gift that keeps on giving. It has been reported in the press that when the Labour Deputy Prime Minister visited Ethiopia in February, she asked if a private safari could be laid on for her and included in the itinerary. Big Angie must think that she's the Queen of Sheba.

The flights for Rayner and her entourage to East Africa are said to have cost the British taxpayer an estimated £20,000. Rayner's office didn't deny that she made the request but a source told the Times, "She was told that's not how things worked."

Questions have already been asked why Angela Rayner needed to go to East Africa. Rayner claimed that her visit to Ethiopia was intended to "demonstrate the UK's commitment to the region and promote ambitions for partnership and mutual economic growth."

Rayner is currently ensconced in a grace and favour apartment in Admiralty House, where her lover and 'soulmate', the former Labour MP, Sam Tarry, is said to be a regular visitor.

Rayner has come under fire previously for accepting freebies and hospitality from Lord Waheed Ali, when she stayed with Sam Tarry at Lord Ali's apartment in New York. Rayner said that Lord Ali asked for nothing and got nothing in return for the free use of his apartment in Manhattan.

 

'Absque labore nihil' is the motto of Stalybridge and it's very true.

 

Adam Smith

Unless you've got your head up your arse, most of us know that you don't get rich working for somebody else. Adam Smith the father of classical economics would tell you that the source of wealth in any society is people's labour.

Karl Marx outlined a theory of exploitation based on the theft of labour time. When you work for somebody else, only part of your working hours covers the wages that you get paid. This is necessary labour time. The rest of the time is surplus labour time and this is how the boss makes a profit. He extracts surplus value. 

The art of making yourself rich involves keeping your neighbour poor. It also involves a moral or legal claim upon, or power over, the labour of others. This is what we call capitalism or the ownership of the means of production in private hands. The art of accumulating money is the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour.

As the neo-classical economist Leon Walras said, you can't defend capitalism on the grounds that it's natural; the only justification for it, is that it's efficient and it generates wealth. Historically, English workers resisted being turned into proletarians and factory hands and didn't care much for working for a wage.

 

Trump closes U.S. Department of Education.

 

Donald Trump

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Trump said that "the U.S. spends more money on education by far than any country", adding that students rank near the bottom of the list. Trump accused the agency of "breath-taking failures" and vowed to return the money it controls to individual states. Trump also accused the agency of indoctrinating young people with racial, sexual and political material.

I recently saw a posting on Facebook that said that 21% of Americans are illiterate (52 million adults); 54% of Americans can't read beyond the level of an 11-year-old (141 million adults); 57% of Americans have no education past high school. America ranks 36th in the world for literacy levels and white US-born adults, are the largest group with low literacy.

In the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Hilary Clinton the Democratic Party nominee for President, called Trump supporters a "Basket of Deplorables." Professor William T. Kelley who taught Donald Trump at the Wharton School of Business and Finance, said that, "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had."

Is the 'meritocratic' society just a myth and a fallacy?

 

It looks like Dr Jordan Peterson is "ideologically addled" if he thinks that inequality of opportunity can be resolved by a simple psychometric test. Neither the UK or the U.S. are meritocratic societies even though they claim to be so.

In the U.K., only around 7% of the population go to a public school, but you will find them disproportionately represented in many of the top jobs. Most people in Britain couldn't afford to send their children to a public school, even if they wanted to. Their children might be bright but unless they can afford the fees or obtain a scholarship, they won't be going anywhere.

They might tell you that the world is your oyster, but you will rarely find a pearl in your oyster. In reality, most people's options are severely limited. This can be due to limited financial resources or not being part of a small social elite, or privileged group, with its connections.

In his book 'Capital in the 21st Century', the French economist, Thomas Piketty, says that the average income of the parents of Harvard students is currently $450,000, which corresponds to the average income of the top 2 percent U.S. income hierarchy. He wrote; "Such findings do not seem compatible with the idea of selection by merit." He also points out that Harvard spends around $100m a year to manage its endowments of around $30 billion.

In the UK, the social bank of mum and dad opens as many doors as the financial bank of mum and dad. Society with an 'inbred' middle-class elite is likely to become bad at generating innovation resulting in reduced economic dynamism.

Are mental health issues really on the increase in Britain?

 

I certainly don't agree with cutting people's state benefits or disability benefits. But is it true that "our mental health is getting worse"?

Some time ago, I watched a rather biased channel 4 TV documentary called 'Britain's Benefits Scandal' introduced by Fraser Nelson. Nelson interviewed a number of people who were on state benefits or were trying to get on state benefits. Many said they were better off on state benefits rather than working. What the program didn't disclose is that around 39% of people claiming Universal Credit (UC) are already in work. They claim UC to top up their low wages or they have caring responsibilities. The documentary also failed to mention that many people fail to claim state benefits that they’re entitled to which saves the British government, millions of pounds each year.

Fraser Nelson also interviewed a clinical psychologist called Dr Lucy Johnstone. He referred to the increase in people claiming disability benefits for mental health issues and this includes young people. He asked her if she thought that that mental health issues were on the increase in Britain. She told him that mental health isn't getting worse and that she didn't think that these problems were best understood in terms of a medical illness, adding, "we are not sicker, but unhappier." Lucy Johnstone was of the opinion that many people are finding it difficult to cope with life because of the social deprivation and social problems that they face, and pointed to wider societal factors such as access to affordable housing and child care, as ways of improving mental health.

During the COVID lockdown, I spoke to a community mental health worker from Tameside Hospital. I asked her if there had been an increase in people being referred to the hospital since the COVID lockdown. She said the numbers had rocketed and that there had been a massive increase. I asked her what symptoms people were presenting with and she told me anxiety and depression. I'm not a clinical psychologist but I do know people who have experienced mental health problems because of that lockdown. I personally found it a strange experience and probably the worst two years of my life. But some people are more resilient than others and cope with stressful situations better.

I know one man who goes on a three-day bender if he's asked to attend a jobcentre interview. He recently had his benefits suspended because he failed to attend an interview. When he was asked why he failed to attend the appointment, he foolishly told his jobcentre adviser, that it interfered with his snooker. I believe he's now trying to get on PIP.

I'm well aware that both alcohol and drugs can induce psychosis but I wouldn't have thought that alcohol or drug dependency were mental health issues, but they are considered as such, when it comes to claiming disability benefits.

Reminiscences of Ruskin College Oxford.

 

Ruskin College Oxford

I picketed Didcot Power Station with the South Wales miners when I was a student at Ruskin College during 1984-86. It must have been in 1984/85 when I was living in Old Headington. I used to have a drink with the miners in the Labour Club in Headington. I remember a miner called Sid, a big bloke that looked a bit like Desperate Dan. A young miner called Sammy took all the apples in the orchard at the Headington campus, so it must have been around Autumn.

I have very fond memories of some of my tutors: Dr Victor Treadwell who taught me his version of labour history and Jack Eames who taught me economics. I remember one day talking to Victor about British syndicalism before WWI. Vic, who had studied at Cambridge, abruptly dismissed it as "a fart in a bottle." Yet, many British trade union leaders like Tom Mann, had been syndicalists. Jack Eames, was a great bloke and character; an ex-bricklayer from Hackney, who had studied at Oxford University in the 1950s. I think he was friendly with the Cambridge economist, Joan Robinson. I also remember my academic adviser, David Selbourne, who told me that he was brought up in the same town as myself. David, was a former student of Manchester Grammar School and Balliol College Oxford. I remember the history tutor Raphael Samuels, who was one of the founders of the New Left Review, and David Kitson, who was at Ruskin at the time.

A member of the ANC, David had served 20-years in jail after being convicted of terrorist offences. When I asked him what he done to get jailed, he told me that he'd blown up overhead electricity pylons because he wanted to overthrow the racist South African state. He once told me jokingly, that I should spend less time in the 'Stag' and more time on the books. He also told me that in all the years that he'd been involved in anti-apartheid activities, he'd always found that those who talked the most, invariably did the least. I also have fond memories of Violet Hughes, Bill Conboy, and Dennis Gregory, who supervised my dissertation.

I was very disappointed that Ruskin College sold the building on Walton Street, which had been the home of the Plebs League. I liked the little community of Jericho and the Victorian pubs on every street corner. In those days, it was still possible to meet working-class people who had been brought up in the area, but it was becoming trendy and gentrified.

When I was interviewed for a place a Ruskin in 1984, I was shown around the place by a very friendly American called Eric, who told me that he lived on a canal boat on the Oxford Canal with his wife and kids. I think it was Eric that persuaded me to accept an offer at Ruskin rather than accept an offer of a place at Manchester Polytechnic, because he seemed such a humane nice bloke. I was also friendly with a bloke called David Weston, from Vancouver Island.

I used to go in the Oxford Union with my friend Mick Kelly, a joiner and an ex-para from Liverpool. Mick, had been a member of the Young Communist League (YCL) and detested Trots like Derek Hatton. The Oxford Union was the cheapest pint in Oxford and was run by a great woman called Brenda. She told me that she'd been evacuated to Oxford as a child during WWII. Sadly, my good friend Mick Kelly, died some years ago; he was great lad and a character. I am still in contact with another friend from Weymouth, who I speak to on a regular basis.

U.S. health secretary says AI nurses are as good as any doctor.

 

Ana the AI nurse

Meet Ana, the Artificial Intelligence (Al) nurse. Ana isn't human but an artificial intelligence program created by 'Hippocratic AI', a U.S. company that is offering to automate time consuming tasks usually performed by nurses and medical assistants.

Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, the U.S. health secretary, who opposed the COVID vaccine and linked vaccination to autism, has suggested that AI nurses (Chabot’s and Avatars) are "as good as any doctor."

Hippocratic AI offers its AI nurses for $9 an hour compared to about $40 an hour for a registered nurse. Hospitals in the U.S., say that AI is helping their nurses work more efficiently and dealing with burnout and understaffing. The nursing unions say that this technology is overriding nurses' expertise and degrading the quality of care that patients receive. Michele Mahon, of National Nurses United, said: "Hospitals have been waiting for the moment when they have something that appears to have enough legitimacy to replace nurses.”

Wes Streeting, Labour's health secretary, is known to be in favour of bringing AI technology into the NHS. It has been suggested that AI technology could be used to read medical scans and undertake diagnosis.

General Medical Practice in Britain is already being de-skilled with the introduction of less skilled medical people and dilutees like the 'Physician Associate', or the 'Anaesthetist Associate'. The Trump administration also want to make the NHS accessible to American health care companies and part of any trade deal with Britain.

Albert Pierrepoint hanged his singing partner.

 

James Henry Corbitt

I had a copy of Albert Pierrepoint's memoirs which I read many years ago. Pierrepoint had been one of Britain's official executioners for nearly 25-years (1932-1956) and is said to have executed between 435 and 600 people. He executed many Nazi war criminals as well as Ruth Ellis, Derek Bentley,  Timothy Evans and John Reginald Christie, for the same murder. John Christie had murdered both the wife and daughter of Timothy Evans and Evans, had been sentenced to death for the crime. 

I do know that when Pierrepoint turned up at Strangeways Gaol to hang a man in November 1950, he wasn't aware that he knew a man called James Henry Corbitt, because the name meant nothing to him. It was the governor of the jail who told him that the man he was about to hang had said that he knew him. It was only when he looked through the spy hole in the cell door that he recognised who it was. Corbitt and his girlfriend had been regulars in Pierrepoint’s pub in Failsworth which was called ‘Help the Poor Struggler’. Corbitt was known for being a good pub tenor and had often sang duets with Albert Pierrepoint.

In August 1950, Corbitt had strangled his girlfriend Eliza Wood in a bedroom at the Prince of Wales pub in Ashton-under-Lyne. I wrote about this murder in Northern Voices magazine some years ago. Pierrepoint hung Corbitt in November 1950. The pub that was located on Stamford Street, is no longer there but it acquired the nickname, ‘The Stranglers Arms’.

This is the first time that I have ever seen a photograph of James Henry Corbitt (see above). I did see a photograph that had been taken of Eliza Wood in a library book. It had obviously been taken at the scene of the crime because it showed her lying in a bed with a word ‘Whore’ written on her forehead.

Albert Pierrepoint seems to have had no qualms about hanging people and doesn't seem to have suffered any lasting psychological damage. I think he may have seen his job as a 'calling' or 'craft' because both his father and uncle had been hangmen. I think that he said that from being a schoolboy he’d wanted to be a hangman. He also took pride in being able to kill somebody quickly and efficiently.

Some British hangmen have suffered psychological damage. John Ellis, from Rochdale, committed suicide and the Yorkshire hangman, James Berry, also seems to have suffered some kind of PTSD. In his memoirs, James Berry, wrote about hanging Mary Ann Britland at Strangeways Gaol in August 1886. She was the first woman to be hanged at Strangeways. Mrs Britland was also from Ashton and was found guilty of murder by poisoning her husband, daughter, and best friend. I believe that Mrs Britland was dragged to the scaffold kicking and screaming. Berry said that many years after executing her Mrs Britland he could still hear her screams in his head.

Paul Lafargue - The Right to Be Lazy

 

Paul Lafargue

I never really liked the slogan that was used by the International Socialist (I.S.), demanding the right to work. It always sounded to me like a defence of wage slavery and the right to be exploited. In the 1970s the I.S. used to organise right to work marches.

Nor do I think there's any dignity in labouring for others in order to enrich them. Keir Starmer's Labour government are obsessed with the cult of work and glorifying labour. What underpins Labour's obsession with work, is the Puritan work ethic.

The Cuban-born socialist, Paul Lafargue, who was the son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote a book called 'The Right to Be Lazy'. Lafargue argued in his book that if you insist on the right to work, you would be still be under the yoke of having to earn a wage. He wrote that the proletariat "must proclaim the Rights of Laziness, a hundred thousand times nobler and holier than the Rights of Man cooked up by the philosophizing lawyers of the bourgeois revolution.” 

Bankers say that democracy must 'fade' if neoliberalism is to survive.

 

In Britain we have one of the lowest state retirement pensions in Europe. Although the state retirement pension is well below the national minimum wage, we're told that the 'triple-lock' which uprates the state pension, is unaffordable and unsustainable. Starmer's Labour government seem to be able to find money for just about everybody else in the world but cannot find it for Britain's elderly population or for  people with disabilities. Labour says they're not the party for people on state benefits but the party for people in work.

Not very long ago, the Labour government pledged £11 billion in aid to help developing countries cope with climate change. Starmer also pledged to give £3 billion a year to the Ukraine until 2030. And yet, the Chancellor Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves, says Britain has got no money. If Britain increases its defence spending as Keir Starmer has promised to do, then the money is likely to come from cutting people's welfare benefits and pensions rather than taxing the rich. The richest 1000 people in the UK own as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent.

Since the 1980s, beginning with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan, the UK and USA have led the world in pursuing pro-rich policies and have been the countries that have seen the most marked increase in income inequality. Economics is really a political argument rather than a science because it involves making value judgements about who gets what. Whenever one talks about the distribution of wealth, politics is never very far behind and it is difficult for anyone escape contemporary class prejudices and interests.

When the corn laws were in introduce in Britain in 1815, which protected the interests of wealthy English landowners while often driving up the price of bread for the labouring classes, the aristocracy and gentry were espousing the doctrine of laissez-faire, which held that the state should not interfere in the workings of the free market. The British government adhered to the principle of laissez-faire while millions of people were starving to death in Ireland in the mid-1840s. Ireland had been part of the Union since 1801. It was free competition for the English working-class, starvation for the Irish, and protectionism for wealthy landowners who basically governed the country.

It might strike some people as rather odd, but in what is called 'Supply-side Economics', there's a belief that if you want to incentivise the rich and make them work harder, you make them richer by cutting their taxes, whereas, if you want to make the poor work harder, you make them poorer by cutting subsidies to the poor like housing and the minimum wage. Poverty is seen as a spur that leads to self-improvement and industry.

In 2012, Tidjane Thiam, the CEO of Prudential, told the Davos Forum that trade unions were the "enemy of young people" and that the minimum wage was "a machine to destroy jobs." The multi-millionaire financier said that workers' rights and decent wages, stood in the way of capitalism's revival and had to go. In 2013, economists at J.P. Morgan, declared that for neoliberalism (a doctrine of uncontrolled markets), to survive, democracy must fade. The pioneers of neoliberalism came to a conclusion that has shaped our age: that a modern economy cannot exist with an organised working-class. Atomisation and the destruction of Labour's bargaining power, has been the essence of the entire project.

Extreme inequality has to be sustained politically through an "apparatus of justification." People either believe that some people have reached their exalted position in life through talent or merit or they believe that inequality is good for everyone, sane, reasonable, and even necessary. If this cannot be maintained, then states have to act, or revolutions happen. This is what brought about the French Revolution and united England's aristocratic landowners and manufacturers in common panic that made the upper classes tremble. The Napoleonic wars were a war against Jacobinism.

 I've often wondered if the working people of Britain wouldn't have been better off if Napoleon and the French had taken over in Britain and destroyed the old class regime in the country. Oligarchs like Pitt and Sidmouth, made the inequalities of life the basis of the British state and regarded working people as a subject inferior social class.

Noam Chomsky

 

Noam Chomsky

It's sad to hear that Noam Chomsky, 96, has now lost the ability to write and speak. He's best known for his political writings and political opinions. I think he described himself as an anarchist or to be more precise, an adherent of revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism, which advocated workers control and self-managed industry in a non-governmental society run by the working-class.

 Professionally, his academic background is in linguistics and not politics. Chomsky has written a great deal about manufacturing consent and how those that govern us, and the media, set the agenda and the parameters for political discourse. Yet they never managed to shut him up and he was considered one of the most influential people on the planet. He also managed to retain his job at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in spite of his controversial views that many saw as anti- American. Sadly, it's old age that has managed to silence Noam Chomsky and not the U.S. government.

 As the Marxist historian, E.P. Thompson, wrote in his book 'The Making of the English Working Class', "No ideology is wholly absorbed by its adherents: it breaks down in practice in a thousand ways under criticism of impulse and of experience." Not all of us are gullible and inclined to believe what we're told. The big shots in their ivory towers may say one thing but our everyday experiences and lives tell us something very different.

 

Rochdale, Globalisation and Uneven Development - Part 2

 

Rochdale, Globalisation and uneven development (Part 2)

By: Andrew Wallace

Globalisation in Rochdale has proved controversial given difficulties in respect of inter-racial strife, the disproportionate amount of asylum seekers, the widespread levels of deprivation, the grooming scandals, a notorious failure of public housing with a youngster's death as a direct result of a toxic flat, the ongoing problem of organised crime gangs and a legion of controversial local politicians. It seems Rochdale has been pressed into taking a much higher proportion of asylum seekers than the national average and this remains provocative for certain sections of the population, particularly given the huge cuts in public services that were rolled out in the 2010s. Demographics and large migration flows have arguably presented a challenge to the idea of a social contract (Goodhart, 2004) and a welfare state which was originally predicated on contributory national insurance. Goodhart talks about the ‘progressive dilemma’ which speaks to the tensional relationship between solidarity and diversity, or nativist particularities of place versus liberal universalism. With Rochdale already in sharp socio-economic declinism, race and ethnicity arguably became increasingly salient as different sections of the community wrestled over diminishing community funds. As the curiosity of the February 2024 Rochdale by-election illustrated, Middle East politics have proved a significant ingredient for the Muslim community, much to the chagrin of a large section of non-Muslims and others who stressed the priority of local issues or indeed boycotted engagement altogether (Chakelian, 2024). The community hub is but one amongst many former retail outlets that have been repurposed for a number of charities within this comparatively neglected area of the town. The picture perhaps evokes the uneasy relationship within the community as surly low-level resentment of asylum seekers is frequently evidenced by various vox pops across the town (Lyons, 2017).

It was significant that the town’s short lived MP George Galloway claimed inspiration by way of Rochdale’s historic innovative contribution to progressivism in birthing the Co-operative movement. This represents Rochdale’s distinctive contribution to the world at large with Co-ops “found in more than 100 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania” (Co-operatives UK, 2024). Co-operatives represent an alternative model to standard capitalist enterprises whereby ownership resides with workers, customers or the local community, thereby providing a collectivist social dimension which otherwise is absent in capitalist transactions. Co-operative philosophy evinces adaptability to an ideological climate which also proved accommodating to free market anti-statism and the invocation of ‘self-help’ (Da Costa Vieira and Foster, 2022, pp. 295-296). It seems Co-operatives illustrate the ongoing contested forms of globalisation, whereby challenges to a hegemonic neoliberalism have to contend with a disenfranchising counsel of despair that holds any alternative politics are illusory. Co-operatives do however bring a credible historical record of their distinctive agency of doing things differently. The consciousness-raising of fair trade and the brokering of equitable contracts that pay heed to the environment and its peoples are a salutary reminder of viable alternative forms of globalisation and these may prove foundational for broader movements of protest and change to the present problematic realities (Massey, 2004). The picture is also another visually arresting testament to a striking fusion of styles, the modernist museum bolted on to the original warehouse and can be taken as a signifier of playful retrofitting, invoking the dialectic between past and the looming future.

Chakelian, A (2024) ‘Rochdale’s by-election brings the Gaza war to Britain’, The

New Statesman, 21 February. Available at:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2024/02/rochdales-by-election-

brings-the-gaza-war-to-britain (Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Co-operatives UK (2024) Understanding Co-ops. Available at:

https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/how-co-ops-began/co-ops-across-world

(Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Da Costa Vieira, T. and Foster, E. A. (2022) ‘The elimination of political demands:

Ordoliberalism, the big society and the depoliticization of co-operatives’, Competition

& Change, 26(2), pp. 289–308

Goodhart, D (2004) ‘Discomfort of strangers’, The Guardian, 24 February. Available

at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/feb/24/race.eu

(Accessed 06 March 2024)

Richdale, Globalisation and Uneven Development.

 

Unhappy Valley

Rochdale, Globalisation and uneven development (Part 1)

By: Andrew Wallace.

River Roch

Globalisation has become an indispensable concept for contemporary understandings and exploration of our habitat and its relationship to our ideological worldviews in respect of politics, economics and culture. It seems difficult to provide a satisfactory definition whilst the term remains highly contested. Arguably some generalities have been conceded regarding the ongoing process of interdependence and connectivity of the geographical world with its consequent blurring of national boundaries and the increasingly international flows of labour, goods and services beyond the discretionary management of the nation state. Its current prescriptive form is often labelled neoliberalism whereby private enterprise is empowered to traverse the globe in search of compliant and abundant cheap labour and light regulation (Harvey, 2005).

Rochdale Town Centre has had several cycles of redevelopment over the last few decades. Just like adjoining former mill towns in the North West of England, Rochdale suffered a precipitous economic decline in its core industries, this was apparent from the 1950s onwards (Toms, 1998, pp. 35-55). A new retail centre was built in the early 1990s (The Wheatsheaf) and flourished for a time. A number of notable flagship stores went into liquidation throughout the 2010s. A new phase of globalisation was being driven courtesy of the internet and the online retail revolution. Just as a previous era of industrial globalisation allowed for the strategic offshoring of plant infrastructure, the internet provided for a dramatic restructuring of retail and services, much of this directed by the corporate behemoths and leading to a culling of traditional high street outlets. These trends were also drastically exacerbated by the Covid-19 global pandemic which made flesh the remorseless biological realities of globalisation (Blakeley, 2020). Picture 1 provides a useful map provided courtesy of the town planners and it provides a neat distillation of the current wave of ‘reinvention’ for the Town Centre by way of its new flagship Riverside retail and leisure complex. This is marked by a curious bifurcation of the town centre through a fusion of post-modern architectures and the traditional whilst attempting to circumnavigate dilapidated areas of post-industrial neglect. As all that is solid melts into PR (Fisher), Rochdale promotes itself as a historically vibrant locality with attractively revamped public spaces, historic monuments and culturally aspirational education quarters.

Arguably something of a cliché but the trolley in the River Roch (Picture 2) is a defining symbol of the omnipresent challenge of anti-social behaviour and the struggle to protect public spaces. It will likely suggest a backstory of juvenile hijinks. If Rochdale has to contend with the gales of creative destruction thrown up by the unpredictable currents of globalisation, then it also struggles to forge its sense of place within the newer complexities of liquid modernity. Public space management (Carmona and De Magalhaes, 2006) remains key for local authorities and wannabe gentrifiers who are anxious to provide an attractive profile for their domains in order to compete for funding. Public space management must face against anomic behaviours from urban malcontents whose primary motivations seem to be a nihilistic recourse to spoilage and explicit attacks on the idea of civic pride. The ironic backstory to such vandalism likely involves a performative act of some physical effort, appropriating supermarket trolley and scaling the railing barrier of the Roch bridge to deliver the coup de grace. Not so much an acte gratuit, more of a poundland anarchism statement minus the sophistry of Debord’s (1967, cited in Self, 2013) situationism. The trolley is an apposite signifier of consumerism, a proxy of the corporate behemoths, now inverted and weaponised in the war against the idea of civic harmony that offer “visitors a stunning historical attraction and an attractive place to sit and watch the world go by” (original text from picture 1 – map of Rochdale: Historic Bridge). Arguably a symbolic and psychic desecration, an explicit rebuke to ideas of communal repose, a strategically visible ‘hate’ crime of environmental spoilage although arguably rendered itself as rank amateurism as measured against the massive environmental harms of the powerful multinationals (Tombs, 2024). The latter largely remain concealed from the public domain, obfuscated by impenetrable firewalls of corporate public relations and their impressive armoury of experts, legal and otherwise who are able to wrong-foot their critics at every turn. Meanwhile the Rochdale vandals likely employ their low-tech sorties via hoodies and the cover of dark to avoid CCTV.

Spatial divisions are held to be fundamental in characterising the UK's internal geography. These divides speak to class, regional identities and ethnicities. Geographical uneven development is observed at different scales, from the macro regional (within continents, between distinctive regions, intra-regional) to the micro level e.g. city, town, district, ward (Massey, 2004). Rochdale's recent Riverside development can be seen on this micro level as an attempt to cultivate a respectable, attractive and affluent zone that will flatter the middle-class proclivities of consumers conspicuous by their absence in recent years. For all the analysis of Rochdale as a down at heel bastion of working class declinism, there remains a substantial middle-class population, albeit located on the outer periphery of the town. It seems many of these affluent residents preferred to shop out of town. Manchester, Bury and the Trafford Centre seem to have proved superior attractions, whereas Rochdale's ageing Exchange and Yorkshire Street retail concentrated on a 'no frills' plethora of pound and charity shops. The Riverside redevelopment attempted to provide a leisure complex, replete with cinema, restaurants, cafe bars as well as middle brow clothing outlets. The push for a more discerning middle-class presence is also marked by a more visible and active private security team who check potential anti-social intruders and prohibit panhandling. This picture speaks to the intermeshing of post-modernist copper plated geometries within the visage of old boarded up warehouse Rochdale, the juxtaposition of the aspirational and bourgeois alongside the conspicuous symbols of declinism. The spoilage in this instance speaks to the relative failures of urban development. 

References:

Blakeley, G (2020) The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism. London. Verso

Carmona, M. and De Magalhaes, C. (2006) ‘Public Space Management: Present and Potential’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 49(1), pp. 75–99. Available at: https://www-tandf onlinecom.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/09640560500373162?needAccess=true& (Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Fisher, M (2009) Capitalist Realism. Zero Books

Harvey, D (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press

Massey, D (2004) ‘The Responsibilities of Place’ Local Economy, 19(2), pp. 97–101

Self, W (2013) ‘Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle’, The Guardian, 14 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/14/guy-debord-society-spectacle-will-self (Accessed 06 March 2024)

Tombs, S. (2024) ‘1 The emergence of crimes of the powerful’. DD804-23J, Crimes of the powerful: corporate crime and harm. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2147113&section=3

(Accessed 06 March 2024)

Toms, J. S. (1998) ‘Growth, Profits and Technological Choice: The Case of the Lancashire Cotton Textile Industry’, Journal of Industrial History, 1(1) (1998) pp. 35-5

The tragic death of Laura Jane Booth.

 

Laura Jane Booth

I remember the huge public controversy around the Liverpool End of Life Care Pathway. There are now similar concerns about the Assisted Dying Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The inquiry that was conducted into the Liverpool Care Pathway, by Baroness Neuberger in 2013, found that NHS hospital trusts were being given financial inducements to put some patients on palliative end of life care.

This article refers to the case of a 21-year-old woman called Laura Jane Booth, who was put on the end-of-life care pathway, after being admitted to hospital in 2016 for a routine eye operation. She died three weeks later. Laura who had the genetic disorder called Patau's syndrome, had death by natural causes, written on her death certificate. However, a coroner's inquest in 2021, found there had been a "gross failure of her care" and that "malnutrition contributed to her death."

Her parents said that Laura had been denied food for weeks while in hospital and that they had no idea that she'd been put on the end-of-life pathway. A report into Laura's death, found the hospital had failed to take her mental capacity into account in clear breach of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

An inquest into Laura’s death was only opened when a journalist contacted the coroner.