I have been overwhelming pessimistic about the prospects for the left in Britain, seeing the implosion of New Labour resulting in either depoliticisation or else the strengthening of parties to the right of New Labour. George Galloway, Tommy Sheridan and the SWP together serve to show only the intellectual poverty, self-marginalisation and irrelevance of the left in Britain today.
Though no expert on German politics, I have been impressed with the recent growth of the Die Linke and their chalking up of electoral success across Germany. A few brief words of background.
By 1990 the former ruling party of Eastern Germany had cleansed itself of its Stalinist leaders and was largely a party led by former East German dissidents, such as the writers Stefan Heym and Christa Wolf. Rechristened the PDS (the party of democratic socialism), it scored a miserable 2.4 percent in the 1990 all-German national elections. That figure rose to 4.4 (1994) and 5,1 (1998) before falling back to 4.4 percent in 2002. Throughout this period the PDS vote came almost exclusively from the territories of the former East Germany where in regional elections the party was a major player.
In July 2005 the party formed an electoral alliance with dissident left-wing SDP members led by Oskar Lafontaine and some west German trade unionists, creating a new party Die Linke. In the national elections of that year the party scored 8.7 percent of the vote. The party also entered the western regional parliament in Bremen. By 2008 it has also entered the western regional federal parliaments in Lower Saxony, Hessen and Hamburg. Any attempt to see Die Linke as merely Stalinist old-timers from the former East Germany is clearly no longer valid.
It seems to me that the experience of Germany is well worth studying by people attempting to rebuild a British left. The policies of Die Linke in English can be seen in the link below.
http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/international/programmatic_points.pdf
27 August 2008
9 August 2008
A short existential comment
When you think about it, our life logically consists of three parts:
•what you are doing right now (i.e. looking at a computer screen)
•your memories from the past, partial, selective and decaying.
•your thoughts about what you will, won’t or might do in the future.
As we get older, though, our memories of the past increase while our futures are inevitably on a steady countdown to zero. That thought has from time to time propelled me to tap away at the keyboard.
•what you are doing right now (i.e. looking at a computer screen)
•your memories from the past, partial, selective and decaying.
•your thoughts about what you will, won’t or might do in the future.
As we get older, though, our memories of the past increase while our futures are inevitably on a steady countdown to zero. That thought has from time to time propelled me to tap away at the keyboard.
McEwan, Ian - On Chesil Beach
McEwan, Ian - On Chesil Beach
First published 2007
Vintage 2008
This is a short book, almost a novella, which tells a powerful, but simple, story. The non-chronological narrative is without surprises or the acts of extreme violence which so often feature in McEwan’s work.
A very lower middle-class Edward and a haut-bourgeois Florence both in their early twenties fall in love during the late fifties and early sixties in a heavily repressive England. On their wedding night Florence can’t accept a sexual relationship with Edward, but offers him a platonic but open relationship instead. He rejects it only to fall later in life a series of unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships during the sixties and seventies.
The book paints not only a strong psychological picture of the Edward and Florence, but also comprises a portrait of a forgotten age which is then contrasted with our own.
First published 2007
Vintage 2008
This is a short book, almost a novella, which tells a powerful, but simple, story. The non-chronological narrative is without surprises or the acts of extreme violence which so often feature in McEwan’s work.
A very lower middle-class Edward and a haut-bourgeois Florence both in their early twenties fall in love during the late fifties and early sixties in a heavily repressive England. On their wedding night Florence can’t accept a sexual relationship with Edward, but offers him a platonic but open relationship instead. He rejects it only to fall later in life a series of unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships during the sixties and seventies.
The book paints not only a strong psychological picture of the Edward and Florence, but also comprises a portrait of a forgotten age which is then contrasted with our own.
30 June 2008
Gordon Brown: a failure
Gordon Brown always liked to present himself as the man of substance behind the glitzy Tony Blair. However as prime minister in the last twelve months he has revealed only weakness.
First, he dithered and then lied over his reasons for not holding a general election, making him look cheap in the public eye.
Second, the ten pence band tax fiasco destroyed any image he retained of being a friend of the working class.
Third, his stubborn instance in pushing through 42-day tore to shreds any support he had amongst the liberal left.
Brown was crowned leader in 2007 without election because around 95%of Labour MPs endorsed him. Brown’s failing, therefore, are not his alone, but those of the whole New Labour apparatus.
First, he dithered and then lied over his reasons for not holding a general election, making him look cheap in the public eye.
Second, the ten pence band tax fiasco destroyed any image he retained of being a friend of the working class.
Third, his stubborn instance in pushing through 42-day tore to shreds any support he had amongst the liberal left.
Brown was crowned leader in 2007 without election because around 95%of Labour MPs endorsed him. Brown’s failing, therefore, are not his alone, but those of the whole New Labour apparatus.
16 June 2008
Afghanistan and humiliation in Britain
Is there no end to this?
In the aftermath of 42-day detention vote, we now have Bush in London and an announcement from Brown that the number of British troops in Afghanistan is to be increased to 8000. This utterly pointless war, which has now claimed over one hundred British military fatalities, is being fought only to save face of the US, and Brown the US poodle has been told what to do.
Then today we have leaked plans from the government to ratchet up the humiliation of those undertaking community service orders – due to be renamed ‘community pay back’ with the compulsory wearing of prison jackets and mug shots of the offenders posted on lampposts.
Brown hopes that his perception of ‘being tough’ will reverse New Labour’s collapse in support. But taking measures which in the long run will only add to the coffins coming home and which turns petty offenders into humiliated and angry criminals will only lead him and the country deeper into the mud.
What kind of Labour government is this?
In the aftermath of 42-day detention vote, we now have Bush in London and an announcement from Brown that the number of British troops in Afghanistan is to be increased to 8000. This utterly pointless war, which has now claimed over one hundred British military fatalities, is being fought only to save face of the US, and Brown the US poodle has been told what to do.
Then today we have leaked plans from the government to ratchet up the humiliation of those undertaking community service orders – due to be renamed ‘community pay back’ with the compulsory wearing of prison jackets and mug shots of the offenders posted on lampposts.
Brown hopes that his perception of ‘being tough’ will reverse New Labour’s collapse in support. But taking measures which in the long run will only add to the coffins coming home and which turns petty offenders into humiliated and angry criminals will only lead him and the country deeper into the mud.
What kind of Labour government is this?
12 June 2008
Six Weeks Internment in Britain
Yesterday, New Labour - with 36 Labour MPs dissenting - voted in the House of Commons to extend pre-charge internment under the Prevention of Terrorism Act from four to six weeks.
On The Guardian’s Web Comments the private citizen, Mr Carlos Belafonte, wrote:
If I was dragged from my car or home in the dark hours of the morning, interrogated by the security services for 6 weeks to no avail and then dumped onto the steps of a police station with no more than an 'off you go' I would imagine that my family, work and social life would be in tatters, not to mention that stigma that I would inevitably carry around my neck for some time.
Such internment – six weeks of isolation and interrogation – amounts to psychological torture, and the likelihood of the victim making deluded (and false) confessions.
Nobody can know what will make him or her liable to this treatment: looking at a site on the internet, talking to somebody under suspicion, denunciation by a spiteful neighbour or colleague – or just simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In every case there is no hard evidence against the victim, because if there were he or she would be charged with an offence and brought before a court.
This nightmare for the individual (even if it’s only for two, three or four weeks) happens to innocent people, and in Britain’s all-pervasive surveillance society (CCTV, bugging, intercepting) those falling under suspicion – nearly all of them Muslims – is set to grow.
On The Guardian’s Web Comments the private citizen, Mr Carlos Belafonte, wrote:
If I was dragged from my car or home in the dark hours of the morning, interrogated by the security services for 6 weeks to no avail and then dumped onto the steps of a police station with no more than an 'off you go' I would imagine that my family, work and social life would be in tatters, not to mention that stigma that I would inevitably carry around my neck for some time.
Such internment – six weeks of isolation and interrogation – amounts to psychological torture, and the likelihood of the victim making deluded (and false) confessions.
Nobody can know what will make him or her liable to this treatment: looking at a site on the internet, talking to somebody under suspicion, denunciation by a spiteful neighbour or colleague – or just simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In every case there is no hard evidence against the victim, because if there were he or she would be charged with an offence and brought before a court.
This nightmare for the individual (even if it’s only for two, three or four weeks) happens to innocent people, and in Britain’s all-pervasive surveillance society (CCTV, bugging, intercepting) those falling under suspicion – nearly all of them Muslims – is set to grow.
9 June 2008
State Repression from New Labour in Britain
Last week The Guardian carried the following two headline stories. The first was the on-going determination of the Brown government to whip the Parliamentary Labour party into supporting a period of six week internment; i.e. allowing police to hold and interrogate people for six weeks without charging them with any specific offence. The second was the decision of the justice ministry to commission several mega prison complexes for thousands of additional prisoners.
Matters have indeed reached a pretty pass when intensifying state repression becomes the leitmotif of Britain’s once progressive Labour Party. The new proposed pre-charge detention limits, opposed by the Tories, Liberals and most of the establishment, is Brown’s stubborn attempt to appear ‘tough on terrorism’ in the eyes of so-called Middle England. But just as his plan to raise tax on the low paid to fund a tax cut on the better off backfired, so this attempt to destabilise Britain’s now shaky civil liberties will generate no support for the Brown government.
And what of the new prison colonies? Nothing could signal more the total failure of New Labour’s social policy than the admission that Britain, which already incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other European country, needs tens to thousands of new prison places.
These policies are but pieces in New Labour’s reactionary and conservative jigsaw, all of which raise the question, ‘What is Labour for?’ With a recent poll putting Labour on 23 percent few people are attracted by these forms of bankrupt politicking being sold as high principle.
Matters have indeed reached a pretty pass when intensifying state repression becomes the leitmotif of Britain’s once progressive Labour Party. The new proposed pre-charge detention limits, opposed by the Tories, Liberals and most of the establishment, is Brown’s stubborn attempt to appear ‘tough on terrorism’ in the eyes of so-called Middle England. But just as his plan to raise tax on the low paid to fund a tax cut on the better off backfired, so this attempt to destabilise Britain’s now shaky civil liberties will generate no support for the Brown government.
And what of the new prison colonies? Nothing could signal more the total failure of New Labour’s social policy than the admission that Britain, which already incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other European country, needs tens to thousands of new prison places.
These policies are but pieces in New Labour’s reactionary and conservative jigsaw, all of which raise the question, ‘What is Labour for?’ With a recent poll putting Labour on 23 percent few people are attracted by these forms of bankrupt politicking being sold as high principle.
9 May 2008
Brown’s bloody nose
On 1 May the voters of England and Wales gave Labour 24 percent of the vote, which is four percent less than Michael Foot’s 1983 result. Much of ‘Middle England’ reverted to Cameron’s revamped Tories while swathes of traditional Labour supporters stayed at home. The most prominent issue of the election was the abolition of the ten pence in the pound tax band.
Brown now says he made a mistake over the abolition of the ten pence tax rate. But what kind of mistake was this? Last year Brown announced, without a murmur of opposition from Labour MPs, tax changes, the desired and obvious effect of which would be to increase the rate of tax on lower earners while lowering it on higher paid earners. Brown did this with one purpose in mind, namely to ingratiate himself with ‘Middle England’. He failed totally, and he deserved to fail.
Brown is sinking fast. ‘Middle England’ is ebbing away from New Labour in favour of fresh faces. The working class is alienated from Labour. Brown’s knee jerk response is to charge further rightwards in a hopeless attempt to exploit ‘Middle England’s’ supposed conservative prejudices: forty-two days pre-charge detention, chauvinistic appeals to Britishness and militarism, increasing penalties for cannabis possession. Never under liberal democracy has a once social democratic party become so rotten.
Brown now says he made a mistake over the abolition of the ten pence tax rate. But what kind of mistake was this? Last year Brown announced, without a murmur of opposition from Labour MPs, tax changes, the desired and obvious effect of which would be to increase the rate of tax on lower earners while lowering it on higher paid earners. Brown did this with one purpose in mind, namely to ingratiate himself with ‘Middle England’. He failed totally, and he deserved to fail.
Brown is sinking fast. ‘Middle England’ is ebbing away from New Labour in favour of fresh faces. The working class is alienated from Labour. Brown’s knee jerk response is to charge further rightwards in a hopeless attempt to exploit ‘Middle England’s’ supposed conservative prejudices: forty-two days pre-charge detention, chauvinistic appeals to Britishness and militarism, increasing penalties for cannabis possession. Never under liberal democracy has a once social democratic party become so rotten.
23 April 2008
Brown: falling far and fast
The fortunes of no prime minister can have fallen so far and so fast as those of Gordon Brown. In June 2007 he was ‘elected’ unopposed after it was made clear to Labour MPs that it would be an act of unforgivable betrayal to canvass support for anybody else. Brown then emerged from Blair’s shadow and immediately affirmed the new-Labourism of which he was joint collaborator with Blair by appointing Tories and Liberal to peripheral positions in his new administration.
After dithering about whether to hold a general election, he launched three policies clearly intended to ingratiate himself with Middle England through utilising what he saw as their selfishness and prejudices. Each policy blew up in his face.
First, he set in motion an increase in the lowest tax band from 10 percent to 20 percent, while cutting the middle tax band from 22 percent to 20 percent. The effect was to increase tax on low wage earners while lowering it on higher earners. The real Middle England party, Britain Tories, have cynically ganged up with Labour Party rebels to force a humiliating reversal.
Second, to play the ‘tough on security’ card, which he thought would play well in Middle England and triangulate the Tories, Brown has championed a proposed police power to detain people for six weeks before charging them with a crime. A measure such as this, an anathema to Britain pretence at liberal democracy, has invoked the hostility of much of the establishment and has again brought about the cynical opposition of the Tories, thus leaving Brown attempted triangulation flat on its face.
Third, Brown has embraced the last refuge of the scoundrel, patriotism. As the union weakens, his calls for Britishness, saluting flags and military pride appear irrelevant, silly and an insult even to the intelligence of Middle England.
Brown, the eternal deputy, has tried to nose himself into a political space carved out in Blair decade. But just as Blair has moved on, so have the political circumstances. And with neither principle nor success in his hands he has fallen fast. In local elections on 1 May, Brown needs to be given a bloody nose. Yet voting for Cameron will only make matters worse. Only votes for Galloway and the Greens can send the message that is needed.
After dithering about whether to hold a general election, he launched three policies clearly intended to ingratiate himself with Middle England through utilising what he saw as their selfishness and prejudices. Each policy blew up in his face.
First, he set in motion an increase in the lowest tax band from 10 percent to 20 percent, while cutting the middle tax band from 22 percent to 20 percent. The effect was to increase tax on low wage earners while lowering it on higher earners. The real Middle England party, Britain Tories, have cynically ganged up with Labour Party rebels to force a humiliating reversal.
Second, to play the ‘tough on security’ card, which he thought would play well in Middle England and triangulate the Tories, Brown has championed a proposed police power to detain people for six weeks before charging them with a crime. A measure such as this, an anathema to Britain pretence at liberal democracy, has invoked the hostility of much of the establishment and has again brought about the cynical opposition of the Tories, thus leaving Brown attempted triangulation flat on its face.
Third, Brown has embraced the last refuge of the scoundrel, patriotism. As the union weakens, his calls for Britishness, saluting flags and military pride appear irrelevant, silly and an insult even to the intelligence of Middle England.
Brown, the eternal deputy, has tried to nose himself into a political space carved out in Blair decade. But just as Blair has moved on, so have the political circumstances. And with neither principle nor success in his hands he has fallen fast. In local elections on 1 May, Brown needs to be given a bloody nose. Yet voting for Cameron will only make matters worse. Only votes for Galloway and the Greens can send the message that is needed.
12 March 2008
New Labour's Militarism
One positive aspect of Britain today is the widespread public antipathy towards the two on-going wars that Blair bequeathed Brown. The Iraqi war is being fought for control of Iraqi oil and for continued US dominance in the Middle East. The Afghan war, which we are told will last another thirty years, is essentially pointless: a war being fought so that the West does not lose face.
As an enthusiastic author of these wars, New Labour cannot get off the tiger it is riding; yet it suffers from the deep public antipathy that these wars engender. Its recent solution has been to attempt to promote militarism in Britain: first, by the policy of having the military wear their uniforms in public (when safe to do so!), and second, by floating the idea of having an armed forces day with military parades and the like.
New Labour’s militarism is nothing for anybody to be proud of. Apart from the murder and destruction wrought abroad, already hundreds of young mostly working class young people have been killed or maimed – and thousands have been traumatised, the effects of which will plague Britain for years to come. Some, moreover, have been involved in brutality and the torture of prisoners in custody.
While the intellectual case against these wars may have been won even in bourgeois circles, socialists need to demand a total withdrawal of British forces and a total opposition to the glorification of the criminality of which the New Labour government and the British military is part.
As an enthusiastic author of these wars, New Labour cannot get off the tiger it is riding; yet it suffers from the deep public antipathy that these wars engender. Its recent solution has been to attempt to promote militarism in Britain: first, by the policy of having the military wear their uniforms in public (when safe to do so!), and second, by floating the idea of having an armed forces day with military parades and the like.
New Labour’s militarism is nothing for anybody to be proud of. Apart from the murder and destruction wrought abroad, already hundreds of young mostly working class young people have been killed or maimed – and thousands have been traumatised, the effects of which will plague Britain for years to come. Some, moreover, have been involved in brutality and the torture of prisoners in custody.
While the intellectual case against these wars may have been won even in bourgeois circles, socialists need to demand a total withdrawal of British forces and a total opposition to the glorification of the criminality of which the New Labour government and the British military is part.
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