A Fantastical Better Past
Posted on June 29, 2008
Categories: kitsch 'left', nationalism, obscurantism
Hawking the Scottish ‘Government’s’ Homecoming Scotland 2009 (or should that be Will Ye No Come Back Again?) ‘celebration’ on BBC Scotland’s evening news bulletin a couple of weeks ago, nationalist First Minister Alex Salmond said
people who don’t understand that Scottish history is about romance and mystery don’t understand Scotland.
On the face of it the statement is outrageous, completely ridiculous, reactionary — even dangerous. Pace Marx, Scottish history, the same as the history of any other nation or region, is concerned with the interplay of competing social forces — the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. However, the statement, if considered from the Salmond’s point of view, is also true, insofar as the SNP and other nationalists peddle their own mythological version of ‘history’ to further the nationalist agenda.
Cultural critic Jonathan Meades describes Scotland thus:
more than most [it] is a nation folk-woven from frail myths … whimsical fictions — pure corn. The Celtic revival … populist, sentimental, risible … another pragmatic fiction in a country which is composed of pragmatic fictions — Highland dress, Celtic bards, pipes, shinty, Gaelic roots, Jacobite nostalgia and so on.¹
Meades is incorrect when he avers Scotland relies on mythology ‘more than most’, all nationalism is by necessity similarly constructed, a vision of a fantastical better — usually — past, imposed upon the present. He does however correctly identify the prevailing populist ’shortbread tin lid’ version of Scottish history. This narrative seeks at all times to divert attention from the actions of the Scottish ruling class, and to lay the blame for ‘centuries of oppreeeession’ squarely at the feet of ‘the English’. Hence the First Minister has the brass neck to paint Scotland as the benighted victim of imperialism, when Scots soldiers and colonists were the more than willing right arm of the British Empire. The colony of Hong Kong was built on the profits of Scottish businessmen Jardine and Matheson’s legal tea and silk trade with Britain … and their highly destructive illegal opium trade with China. Glasgow grew wealthy on the profits of the slave trade and the associated tobacco and sugar business. Churches in Scotland are full of memorials to soldiers and their families massacred doing what they had no business doing in places they had no business doing it.
In nationalist mythology the Act of Union is portrayed as the act of a rapacious and powerful neighbour eager to devour its rival, when in fact the Scottish ruling class, bankrupted by failed imperial adventures of their own — such as the disastrous Darien scheme — and desperate for access to American markets, effectively sold Scotland to England for £398,000, in return for favourable trading terms, pledging their support to the Hanoverian succession, and retention of their feudal rights (on these they were most insistent) to imprison or string up their tenants as they saw fit. Nationalist mythology applies a form of selective amnesia to the Highland Clearances, glossing over the responsibiity of the Scottish ruling class for the forcible clearance and enclosure of the Highlands and co-opting events into the nationalist ‘Scotland as victim’ narrative — not actor, but acted upon.
Salmond’s supporters include hypocrites such as the snob and proponent of violence against women — they want a smack — ‘Sir’ Sean Connery, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, who ‘refuses’ to live in Scotland until it is ‘independent’ despite having accepted a British imperial ‘honour’, and the singer Annie Lennox who thinks
Scotland could take a stand in a wonderful way, ecologically and morally and ethically.²
There is a first time for everything.
The petit-bourgeois nationalists are hand in glove with local ‘business interests’ such as the right wing homophobe Brian Souter and others who seek to monopolise capital and free themselves from competition with English capitalists; the nationalists lick the arses of American billionaires; and willing to go to any lengths to further their agenda, the nationalists were petitioning the murderous Burmese régime even as it was slaughtering democracy protesters in 2007 — ‘taking a stand in a wonderful way’. The nationalists use their romantic, ‘historical’ narrative to distract attention from the real sources of poverty, misery and disadvantage in Scotland, which are the same as in the rest of Britain — inequality and the uneven distribution of wealth and resources — and, in the short term, to divert the voters’ gaze from a string of broken election promises.
Meanwhile Scotland’s ’socialist’ parties tailend this reactionary rabble and their lies in the apparent belief that the interests of the Scottish working class have more in common with those of the Scottish bourgeoisie than they do with the working class in the rest of Britain, and that a bourgeois nationalist Scottish state would bring the Scottish working class closer to socialism. If Scotland is to be independent, it must be as a completely transformed socialist state, not as the first of a series of ’stages’. It is the duty of socialists to educate and organise for the fight for socialism, not for bourgeois fantasies and chicanery. As for those who employ mystification and obfuscation to further anti-human ends, they deserve nothing more than for the Maiden to be brought from the Museum of Scotland and erected in Parliament Square, and to be submitted to her tender mercies.
¹ Abroad Again in Britain: Edinburgh Castle — Jonathan Meades, BBC Four, 2005.
² Sweet Dreams for SNP as Annie backs independence — The Scotsman, 27 June 2008.
Three Alligators
Posted on June 22, 2008
Categories: antifascism, antiracism, conspiracy theories, immigration, kitsch 'left', totalitarianism
Another success for the free market
The sorry end of Harun Thiyanantham¹, murdered in a London squat, the conditions of which have been described as ‘beyond Dickensian’, prove once again the ruthless efficacy of ‘the market’ at finding the true value of everything — in this case human life. What is that value? For the majority it is nothing, as long as there is a large enough army of reserve labour to ensure the continuing production of commodities and people to buy those commodities. The lives of the proletariat are worth no more than sundry other machine parts — an unfortunate ‘on’ cost to be borne by ‘the business’.
Earlier this week the British Minister ‘for Women and Equality’ Harriet Harman boasted that the government ‘removes’ over 50,000 individuals every year — approximately one every 10 minutes — that’s 50,000 people like Harun Thiyanantham or Ama Sumani, the Ghanaian woman dragged from a Welsh hospital bed by officials of the Border and Immigration Agency and deported to die in Ghana, those officials fully cognisant that their actions would cause her death. All so the Home Secretary can be seen to be ‘tough’ on immigration as ‘New Labour’ and the Tories compete to outdo one another winning votes by pandering to reactionary and racist sentiment.
An insane dictator ‘appointed’ by ‘God’
In Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has announced today that it will not participate in the latest sham election², a pointless exercise considering dictator Robert Mugabe has declared himself divinely appointed and sworn that ‘only God, who appointed me, will remove me’ and promised that the MDC will never rule Zimbabwe, ‘never ever’. Withdrawal from the election process is also the sensible course of action given the number of MDC supporters who have been murdered or made homeless by the criminal Mugabe’s thugs. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said that Mugabe has ‘declared war by saying that the bullet has replaced the ballot’. Tsvangirai has also appealed to the United Nations and African Union to intervene to stop ‘genocide’. The MDC has its roots in the Zimbabwean trade union movement, with its support based mainly in the urban working class and Ndebele peasants. Despite splits — and reunions — and a drift towards a more ‘business friendly’ orientation, the MDC represents the true expression of the yearning of workers and peasants and the only realistic prospect for the delivery of the Zimbabwean people from starvation and the yoke of the authoritarian neo-liberal Mugabe régime.
Popular frontism 2008 stylee
Once upon a time — or was it last week? — popular frontism and cross-class alliances were socialist anathema, for very good and well understood reasons. Now this week, following the resignation of the former shadow Home Secretary in a political stunt intended to strengthen his position on the right of the Tory party, popular fronts are the height of summer fashion as former socialists who really should know better and seem to have very short memories flock to the banner of David Davis. Independent socialist action has fallen down the back of the couch, Lenin’s admonition that socialists should not merge with reactionary social forces, but
should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form³
ignored or more likely forgotten — as history repeats itself, albeit this time as farce. Instead of standing an independent candidate in Haltemprice and Howden on an actual civil liberties platform, they are supporting a candidate who voted to increase detention without charge from 14 to 28 days, a candidate who has never spoken out against the removal of the right to silence, a candidate who supports increasing the number of CCTV cameras on Britain’s streets and expanding DNA databases, a candidate who voted against the repeal of Clause 28, equal age of consent and adoption rights for gay and lesbian couples, a candidate who voted to lower the abortion limit and, to top it all off, is a strong supporter of hanging. In other words he is an old fashioned right wing Tory authoritarian opportunist and unfortunately, it transpires he has no shortage of willing dupes.
¹ Beyond Dickensian — Guardian, 10 June 2008.
² Zimbabwe’s Tsvangirai quits run-off — Al Jazeera, 22 June 2008.
³ Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions — V I Lenin, June 1920.
No — You Can’t Do That
Posted on June 9, 2008
Categories: kitsch 'left', new labour, revolution
You may have seen comedians marching up and down with their placards proclaiming unconditional support for far right reactionary forces such as Hezbollah — forces implacably and violently opposed to socialism and workers’ organisations — instead of offering their solidarity to those who struggle against both the aggression of the Israeli ruling class and rejectionist religious right and feudalist islamist totalitarianism. Islamist forces are not national liberation movements, but the expression of another privileged elite seeking to enslave workers under the yoke of their own backward feudal ideology. Socialists should oppose imperialism independently of so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ reactionary forces — we must not become the left jackboot of fascism or theocracy.
Besides presenting a ridiculous spectacle, support for Hizbollah pushes the limit of what is ‘legal’ under current British law. This fact does not seem to concern the comedy ‘anti-imperialists’ — and fair enough too. However, when their opponents do something to which they object, they squawk ‘you cannot do that — that’s illegal!’ rushing to huddle under the umbrella of bourgeois law. As if socialists should be concerning themselves with the procedural fig-leaves of the bosses or seeking dispensation from our ‘masters’, wagging our tails and waiting under the table for scraps and bones. As if revolutionary socialism is ‘legal’. What is legal about advocating the seizure of state power and overturning the existing social order? The only law we should concern ourselves with is socialist law — that is law enacted in conditions of actual democracy, under equal and not exploitative social relations. Socialists cannot scoff at bourgeois laws one minute and then beg their protection the next. Of course, if we trouble ourselves to look beneath the surface, we find that most of this inconsistent and hypocritical rabble are not revolutionary socialists at all, merely scions of the ruling class, striking radical poses before entry into one of the sheltered workshops of the bourgeoisie — banking or the law.
As leninist or libertarian socialists we are no strangers to ‘illegality’, as it is necessary to work within workers’ organisation and the democratic socialist parties — often against union and political élites — to build the revolutionary consciousness of the members.
Illegal work is work in the mass organizations — for the ILP it is systematic entry and work in the trade unions, co-operatives, etc. In peace-time and in war, it is the same. You will perhaps say: “They will not let us in. They will expel us.” You do not shout: “I am a revolutionist,” when working in a trade union with reactionary leadership. You educate your cadres who carry on the fight under your direction. You keep educating new forces to replace those expelled, and so you build up a mass opposition. Illegal work must keep you in the working masses. You do not retire into a cellar as some comrades imagine. The trade unions are the schools for illegal work. The trade union leadership is the unofficial police of the state – The protective covering for the revolutionist is the trade union. Transition into war conditions is almost imperceptible.¹
Workers’ democracy and workers’ control is attacked — and labelled ‘loony’ or inexpedient — by the reactionary and bureaucratic leadership of social democratic parties and trade unions. In Britain the Labour Party has adopted the cult of managerialism, a sort of Friedmanism-lite with minimal redistributive characteristics, and is busily eroding pubic services, presiding over a flurry of privatisation, while working hand-in-glove with the over-salaried bureaucrats of the Trade Union leadership — ‘New Labour’ is just another bourgeois machine offering a career path for the shiny and faceless managerial élite. The British Labour Party which was once part of the struggle for workers’ rights and workers’ democracy, has become a party which hunts down and expels members who organise as socialists within the party!
Notes:
¹ Once Again the ILP — L D Trotsky interviewed by E Robertson, New International, February 1936.
The Logic Of Racism
Posted on June 8, 2008
Categories: immigration, new labour, no one is illegal, racism
If you thought the British Labour Party’s long journey from the party of social democracy and social justice to the party of managerialism, privatisation and lowest common denominator politics — aka ‘New Labour’ — had reached its nadir, you were wrong. The process of political triangulation set in motion by Neil Kinnock, which was intended to make the party electorally palatable to the petit bourgeoisie and those déclassé elements aspiring to claw their way over the petit-bourgeoisie, has moved the Labour Party ever further to the centre, to the point where it is in serious danger of becoming a party of the right. Socialism is ‘out’ — labelled as ‘loony’ — while pandering to the interests of the ruling class and prostration before the prejudices of the most reactionary and ignorant sections of the electorate is ‘in’.
The most worry manifestation of this drift is ‘New Labour’s’ record on immigration and asylum seekers. Now the ‘New Labour’ MP for Chorley, Lindsay Hoyle has come up with the suggestion that a special army battalion — to be based in Britain’s major ports — should be created to keep ‘illegals’ out and furthermore, that the government should negotiate with the government of France, to allow British troops to be stationed on French soil for the purposes of patrolling French ports as well!
The MP told the [Lancashire Evening Post] that constituents are desperate for the government to take tough action against illegal immigration [...] “Clearly illegal immigration is bothering people. What we have got to do is put security forces in”.
Hoyle’s proposal is precisely the sort of knee-jerk pandering to isolationism and little-englander nationalism which was once the preserve of the Tories and their outgrowth the UKIP, a narrative in which crime is committed by ‘foreigners’ and ‘illegals’ who make no useful contribution to the life and economy of Britain, and whose behaviour and character is determined not by their objective circumstances but by — semi-mystically — their ethnicity (or even ‘blood’), while the sturdy English yeoman is their honest and law-abiding victim. Racist scaremongers constantly strive to manipulate public opinion by associating asylum seekers and migrants with words like ‘terrorist’, ‘rapist’ and ‘murderer’ while carefully drawing attention away from the fact that the overwhelming majority of crimes, including all but one bombing, in Britain are committed by — white — British citizens, when asylum seekers are themselves fleeing war, terrorism, rape, torture and murder.
Compounding this are the myths that asylum seekers, who are barred from working, live the ‘life of Riley’ on government handouts (of £38.96 per week, barely enough to feed yourself, let alone wallow in the lap of luxury) and that migrants are ’stealing British jobs’, when the reality is that migrants from poor countries are willing to take low-paid and often unsafe work in appalling conditions without workers’ representation — remember the death of cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 — they are not in competition with British workers who will not, quite correctly, work in such exploitative conditions — and neither should migrant workers. Hoyle’s constituents should be demanding a fair living wage and safe working conditions for all. And far from overloading the social welfare system, asylum seekers comprise only one in every two hundred people in receipt of government benefits.
Lindsay Hoyle has plumbed new depths of vileness in the ‘New Labour’ project and should be expelled from the party — in fact our preference would be for his head to displayed on a pike — but we hold scant hope of either course of events ever coming to pass.
No racist immigration controls. No sans papiers. No detentions. End deportations.
Stop throwing people out of hospital beds and leaving them to die — a practice it should be noted, used as partial justification for prosecuting the 1990 Gulf War.
Solidarity with the oppressed.
No One Is Illegal!