Though Cowards Flinch

A journalist called Christopher Hitchens, who died a few days ago, has received thousands of column inches in his praise largely because, in addition to a good prose style, he chose to take controversial positions.    One of Britain’s greatest sociologists, Professor John Rex, who died on Tuesday at the age of 86, will gain few column inches, perhaps because he chose excellence, rigour and consistency in all his work.  

It seems a shame that the works of a serious socialist thinker and researcher like John Rex are likely to remain consigned to the backshelves of secondhand book shops, while the entertaining but ultimately frivolous offerings of Christopher Hitchens go off for further reprints.

In 1968, in a typcially forthright piece The Race Relations Catastrophe, Rex predicted what would happen in British inner cities, and urged politicians to take decisive action:

We have just about ten years to break down our ghettoes and to see to it that all men have the same opportunities in education and employment…The difficulties we face do not arise from our ignorance about how the problem should be tackled.  They arise from a lack of will or from opportunist electoral fear.  Yet trying to placate the electorate with semi-racialist policies, or keeping quite in the hope that you won’t be called a nigger-lover hasn’t paid off, while a deliberate assault on the ghettoes with a view to clearing them would eliminate one of the most important of all the secondary causes of racialism.

The politicians did not act, and in 1981 race riots took place across the country.   For another 30 years, politicians continued to pander to opportunist electoral considerations.  In 2011 rioting took place again - though the intervening years had changed some of the specifically racial characterstics in the ghettoes, and some of the ghettoes had been relocated to outer estates.   Most of those involved think further riots will take place soon, and the police are drawing up their plans.

Rex is probably best known in the academic community for his key works Key Problems of Sociological Theory (1964), Race Relations in Sociological Theory (1970), Race and Ethnicity (1986).  However, it is his groundbreaking and meticulous 1967 study (with Robert Moore)  Race, Community, and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook which really mark him out for members of the non-academic-but-politically-engaged community that I like to thing I belong to.

In this, he set out with great precision the overtly racist policies being enacted by local and central government in Birmingham, and the legacy of discrimination it was creating, which would in turn create the conditions for much of the urban conflict we see today.

Rex founded the Sociology Department at Warwick University in 1970, when Warwick was very much a new ‘red brick’, not the institution with the world-class reputation it has now earned.  He stayed with Warwick for most of his career.

I emailed him a year or two ago when I discovered his work – at the back of a secondhand bookshop - seeking his advice.  I got an automatic reply saying that he was in hospital and that he’d reply on return.  Sadly, he was never able to.  I wish I’d read his stuff earlier.

I hope this little obituary note will at least persuade one or two others to look up his work.  He had, and still has through his published a lot to say that is relevant to where we are now. 

As I set out here, better late than never to act on his advice.

As a young man I was a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party – until, that was, I gained my senses and left. In Southend, Essex, where I was at college and starting to get politically active, it was the only organisation taking to the streets nearly every week, and certainly were a notable presence campaigning against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I remember thinking how much I hated the navalgazing, spending weeknights listening to the same old lines on General Pincohet or the Poll Tax riots with a room full of other people who all knew the story, but felt they had to do something under the swappie banner they’d erected upstairs in The Railway Pub function room.

Among us common lot we’d do down on the Middle Class whenever we could – no matter our own backgrounds we knew our enemy, it was all those people not suffering, not cleaning the streets, not emptying the bins. We were decidedly bitter about the petit-bourgeoisie – we had an image in our heads of them we didn’t like, and we found the right company to share that in.

But come conference time, in London, among the Alex Callinicos’ and the other aristos bankrolling the newspaper production, we’d drop the Middle Class hatred like it was hot. Instead we did the dirty on the bourgeoisie proper; we sided with the squeezed middle before there was even such thing as a squeezed middle, it was the owners of the means of production – a significantly smaller percentage of people – that were our bugbear then.

The reason, implictly, being was that to shun the Middle Class at a Swappie conference is like Turkey’s voting for Christmas or noted Nazi Jews acting as architects for the final solution. For every wire-haired, gravel-voiced trade unionist in the room, there were ten double-barrelled silver spoons from Plumshire.

But while my old comrades carried on disavowing the Middle Classes, I learnt to embrace them, and actually see this embrace as being crucial to the eventual dissolution of the class system in general.

I’ve grown to the idea that inter-class relations within a state socialist system will actually spur the end of the class system far quicker than if Trotskyite groups, behind closed doors, denied their own Middle Class roots and/or embarked on class hatred themselves.

As a socialist, I think it is important to have a strong state, and a strong head of state to keep the Prime Minister, and the First Ministers in the devolved governments, under constant check. It will be of no surprise then to find that I am excited that our future King, Prince William (whose RAF salary is to the tune of £37,170), has decided to marry well outside his class – the lovely Catherine Elizabeth Middleton.

It might seem strange to hear, but the dreadful class system in this country, which has single-handedly ruined true social mobility (and with it the lives of many Working Class families), might be dealt its strongest blow to date by the marriage of William and Kate – for which the Left today ought to be truly grateful.

José Antonio Labordeta, the famous Spanish poet and politician, has died this morning aged 75, it has been confirmed by Chunta Aragnesista (CHA), the political party to which he was a representative.

He had been a long-sufferer of cancer.

Labordeta will be remembered as one of the voices committed to democracy at the end of the Franco regime.

Feliz Romeo, a friend of José Antonio’s, in an article from RTVE, the radio station of the Spanish broadcaster, noted that “To be a poet was then a way to escape the Franco regime”.

As well as writing hundreds of poems in the fifties he also brought poetry to other areas of life which mattered to him; in his music where he sang the word of socialism, freedom and anti-fascism; to his students as a professor, and to politics where he once read a poem in parliament opposing the participation of Spanish forces in the war on Iraq.

In his later life, he went from being – in his own words – a “rookie” member of parliament to become a significant character of the political scene (his nickname, which he eventually came to appreciate – was “El Abuelo” or the Grandfather).

While the old school republican made many friends among allies and opposition alike, he was also made enemy of for the things he did. Fiercely anti-war, a congressional record notes that Labordeta shouted “fuck you” and “to hell” during a parliementary debate – which made him notorious in Spanish media outlets.

But his notoriety should only demonstrate his passion, and as Julio Castro has written about the man she was close to, Labordeta should be an example to a new generation who are passionate about politics for the sake of the struggle for equality and the defense of others.

He spent eight years in congress in the Zaragoza constituency. His party CHA – which campaigns for greater financial resources for the autonomous region of Aragon, located in northwest Spain – won 1 seat for Labordeta in the 2000 and 2004 parliamentary elections.

The folk-singer – described by the Great Aragonese Encyclopedia as the most important Aragonese singer-songwriter – has been forever inscribed in Spanish poetry and music as a voice of freedom, and his passion should be highly estimated by those pursuing freedom worldwide.

Dr Ruth Cherrington works in the department of translation and comparative studies at Warwick University where her research focus is identity and representation in multicultural society. A few years ago she was the subject of much interest for research she had carried out on the rise and decline of working men’s clubs.

Image courtesy of the wesbite for Bishop's Stortford and Thorley - A history [http://www.stortfordhistory.co.uk/

The subject for Cherrington has personal significance; she grew up near a working men’s club which she described as being her second living room. Since then she has noticed the gap which the demise of those institutions have created in society.

As homage to this dying institution she set up the club historians website in May of 2008 which provides a detailed history of the club, and gives people the opportunity to share photographs and memories of their times.

Cherrington reminds us in her history that the clubs came to prominence in the nineteenth century as a means to fill a gap; there wasn’t a lot for people to do other than work. Options to go to the pub, watch music and other leisure activities were usually very expensive, rather somewhere was needed that people could call their own, and not simply lined the pockets of landlords.

Cherrington is open about the problems posed by the working men’s club. The name itself suggests there may be problems of exclusion. Throughout the twentieth century the club was seen as somewhere largely dominated by white males, which suggested a strict exclusivity.

That there had been limited or no female membership in the nineteenth century had not been a point of contention; women enjoyed limited rights as it was and people’s attitudes in the men’s clubs – as can be imagined – were not perturbed by this.

Even by the middle to late twentieth century when women enjoyed more political rights the clubs were still very slow to adapt to a changing societal picture, and even though it was not unheard of to have female members, the exclusiveness was certainly a barrier that needed to be reconsidered.

The same must also be said about multicultural society. The national executive insisted that they could and would not tell individual clubs what to do or who to admit as members, but after the 1970s when anti-discriminatory laws were introduced, and society as a whole changed vastly, so too did the face of the clubs.

One of the more attractive elements of the club had been the so-called “club scene” and the “free-and-easy” nights, which were open microphone sessions for budding musicians and entertainment acts to try their luck among a listening, but generally not an easy audience. It has been said that the audiences of the free-and-easy’s did not suffer fools gladly.

Another overlooked part of the club, which Cherrington is very keen to point out, is the community activity and charity attachment. Cherrington makes note of the notion that charity begins at home, a sentiment embedded into Victorian values, which working men’s clubs utilised and reappropriated as charity beginning in our clubs – in what Cherrington calls acts of “mutual self-help”.

Examples of which can be seen by looking at work achieved by the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union (WMCIU). An example of their work was to set up convalescence homes, some time before the creation of the welfare state, which afforded men who may have been recovering from surgery or couldn’t afford to go on holiday, to stay for a week or two by the seaside funded through their subscription.

The clubs were once the hub of local charities who donated good sums of money for special schooling or operations for children where they were not available on the NHS. Cherrington recalls there always being someone passing by in the clubs requesting money for a local charity, alongside someone else selling bingo tickets.

What is worrying about the wide demise of the club is the question of what it will be replaced with, and never has that been a more relevant question. The severe package of cuts has hit community activity rather hard, local sporting centres are either being drowned by expensive private gyms or costs are increasing to keep the centres open at all. Modestly priced places for families to congregate and socialise with friends are all but gone and institutions that bring whole communities together are slow to gain traction – which, I imagine, has a lot to do with how time consuming it is, and how little time people have.

Cherrington sees the closure of Coventry working men’s club – the oldest one of its kind – as a symbol of a dying institution with nothing in its place. She praises charities such as Age Concern and Help the Aged, but notes that with an ageing population these organisations are pushed to bursting point, and are unable to resource for all who need its services. The problem of elderly social mobility, amid the demise of clubs and bingo halls, reduces many elderly people to experience their twilight years secluded and without the social purpose they once enjoyed.

Furthermore, little is available to reconcile the young and the old. In comparison to many countries, there is a noticeable conflict between youth and their elders that really wasn’t apparent in communities brought together by institutions such as the working men’s clubs. The absence of community cohesion is fairly recent and few inspirational ideas have emerged from think tanks and government departments on how to restore it – particularly between the generations.

I’m sure many would have you believe institutions such as the clubs are redundant in today’s society, and closures are not a product of community cohesion in decline, but of people finding different ways in which to entertain themselves. But I’d dismiss that. However my concern about the way in which many of the cuts have been organised, and our rapid descending into mass joblessness and increasing poverty, is that something like the club will be a necessity and not something to fill the hours with at night and at the weekend – and yet such institutions will be absent.

Many commentators and critics are starting to get the impression that what was meant by “cutting waste in public spending to reduce the deficit” was actually a means to, as the saying goes, “starve the beast” that is to say reduce the budget through cuts and breaks which subsequently weakens the role of the state and the social welfare programmes it funds, thereby appearing to strengthen the argument that cuts are necessary and private institutions do things better.

The club, for all its problems concerning who became members and who it excluded, promoted an ideal of “mutual self help” where in society such help had not yet been institutionally founded. We may return to a state where mutual self help is the only alternative – and despite its altruistic good, should not be relied upon since the function of the state, for any decent person, should be to ensure the inalienable right of citizens to welfare.

The return of the club should only be to restore communities and families, the element of the club which preceded the welfare state should be guaranteed by the state alone – since this is its primary function – and this current government is almost certainly trying to creep away from serving its primary function.

Update: On this very same subject Neil of Bleeding Heart Show has his own obituary of a social on his website

I am shocked and deeply saddened to learn tonight of the death of Howard Zinn; my thoughts are with his family and his students.

He was one of those academics who made a lasting impression on me. His prose, in his famous People’s History of the United States, was incisive and his flair for exposing hypocrisy in modern American political rhetoric was unsurpassed.

Bush-era jingoism enraged the socialist academic and, in his interviews, he never failed to cut through the revisionist invocations of American history, of that great country’s ‘freedoms’.

Zinn argued instead for a redemptive politics of activism that could never be uniquely American, that would be shared by peoples and activists all over the world.

It is in this context that his opposition to the Vietnam War, and subsequent US military invasions can be set.

For me, he stands in the first rank of American heroes, like Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Jack London and Upton Sinclair, all of whom he himself looked up to.

Noam Chomsky once paid Zinn tribute in the following terms: “When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”

My last thought is that Zinn’s actions and words can be a lesson to us to be like him, to never give up fighting for our ideals. “Small actions, when multiplied by millions of people, can change the world.”

See also: Virtual Stoa, Raincoat Optimism

A while ago, when I read of Hossein Ali Montazeri’s death, I knew I’d want to write something eventually. The whole organisation of Shi’a Islam, specifically the Twelver denomination, fascinates me. The theology is interesting, but particularly the organisation, the methods of appointing religious leaders and so on. It’s something I can’t for the life of me put an analogy to from the plethora of Christian sects.

The theology of the religion is collegiate. Grand Ayatollahs promote scholars of Islam and related subjects to different ranks. When these scholars reach the rank of Ayatollah, they can themselves issue edicts and interpretations of Islamic texts and law. Individuals of the Shi’a religion are free to choose among these competing maraji, the sources of authority, the people to emulate.

Obviously the central Islamic texts of the Qur’an and the Hadith also play an important role, though even in texts so important as these there are interpretations and even abrogations of ‘earlier’ instructions by ‘later’ ones. The application of such scholarship to the everyday world, in the Iranian state that emerged in 1979, with Montazeri’s support, was to be overseen by religious supervisors, velayat-e faqih.

This is one of those things which most of the newspaper obituaries in liberal papers omitted to mention.

As a secularist and a liberal, I cannot but be repulsed by the support of Montazeri for an institution which gives one person power over another on the basis of religion. And while Montazeri’s support for such a thing put him ultimately on the wrong side of the forces that fought the Revolution, Montazeri at least had the decency to denounce the undemocratic nature of the regime, and its human rights abuses, to call for the legalisation of political parties and protest mass executions.

Despite having helped to create the regime, and being a senior and respected part of it until his downfall, Montazeri sought using his religious influence as an Ayatollah to strip from the regime the one cloak which it continued to use to cover its abuses: it’s claim to be an Islamic state. It reminds me of the way in which religion was wielded by all sides during the English Revolution in the 1640s: scripture was a bludgeon with which to kill and damn one’s enemies to Hell.

Not with any hint of mental reservation either, but with the full strength and fervour that human belief and faith can muster.

So you can imagine my surprise when I read Melanie Phillips’ latest blunder into the realms of extreme bigotry:

Pajamas TV features two interviews with former US security people, one described merely as having been given some kind of intel-gathering assignment by the ‘joint chiefs’ and the other described as a ‘former FBI special agent’. The first describes how, when he discovered to his alarm that there was not only no evidence that Islamic radicals were wrong in Islamic law but that there were no counter-arguments to them in that law, the US intel/law enforcement community that had instructed him just didn’t want to know.

The political point which Mad Mel is trying to make through quoting this guy, subtly as ever, is that the US and UK state organisations are hopelessly compromised in their fight against Islam by their failure to understand that there can never be negotiation with any Muslim, simply because they are Muslims. Following Islamic law means being a ‘radical Islamist’ – a basic, virulently bigotted equation.

She hedges, of course, by referring specifically to the deals between the UK and US governments and the Muslim Brotherhood. The second chap interviewed suggests how worrying it is that the counter-terrorist establishment of the US are going to ‘radical Islamists’ (i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood and other organisations alleged to be MB ‘fronts’) to ask for help in combatting…radical Islam.

Yet radical Islam is hardly a unitary phenomenon, any more than the Catholicism of Bishop Gustavo Gutierrez and that of the then-Cardinal Ratzinger are one and the same thing. But when one is prepared to repeat the allegation that unspecified Islamic radicals (presumably the ones we’re supposed to be fighting the War on Terror against) have the correct, the only, interpretation of Islamic law, well, we’re hardly in the realms of nuanced commentary and great learning.

Even the Muslim Brotherhood is reputed to represent many different trends in Islamic thought, not to mention being a Sunni organisation – rather than Shi’a, which is the largest religion in Iraq and Iran, two of our putative enemies. The very existence of someone like Montazeri throws such blanket assumptions as Phillips’ offers, about any given religion, into doubt.

Sure, Montazeri may have been a radical Islamist, and he may have supported plenty of illiberal measures, but he also spoke up about a great many and opposed the increasing tyranny of a religious faction run amok.

Additionally, though my history is not what it could be in the sphere of the Iranian Revolution, one man at the top in plush surroundings advocating a lily-livered liberalism always means there are many more on the ground, in prison awaiting execution or among the masses, advocating stiff necked, uncompromising, all out resistance, and a better lot for mankind.

Even if their views are couched in religious terminology. In fact, for precisely this reason, we can’t denude elements from within Christianity, Islam, Judaism or the other faiths of the egalitarian and revolutionary edge that can be located within each of those faiths. This is why it is so utterly preposterous for Melanie Phillips to talk as she does.

For every dictator, sanhedrin of saints and their persecutions, there is a James Naylor, a Winstanley, a Lilburne and a Trapnel. Their analogies in Catholicism would be the supporters of Gutierrez, people like Tissa Balasuriya, and those who used the Ecclesial Base Communities as organisation fractions with which to fight back against oppressive states, rather than as a means to impose theological interpretations as law against their fellow man.

Which is more than can be said for the designs of Melanie Phillips, who, were the shoe on the other foot and her brand of Christian fundamentalism in the ascendant, would probably like to make the rest of us pay the jizya to the Christian theocratic state. Perhaps this is precisely why she repeats the accusation that only the radical Islamists have the correct interpretation of Islam. Their fundamentalism is the key threat by which she justifies her own.

I have heard that Professor Cohen, renowned Marxist theorist, has died this morning of a stroke. Virtual Stoa has some touching sentiments. Though I never studied directly under the great man, his books on the Marxist theory of history and contrasting John Rawls with Karl Marx were seminal works that helped me to clarify what I thought (even if mostly in opposition). There are few greater gifts. May he be long remembered.

I am travelling home to Canterbury this afternoon, but when normal blogging resumes, I shall find time to write up a more fitting review of some of Professor Cohen’s work, especially as part of the September Group (which was colloquially titled “Non Bullshit Marxism”).

Beyond that, I’ve already planned out a series of other ‘big’ articles: Lenin on education, about whether or not embryonic totalitarianism is inherent to the revolutionary project; Zizek and understanding racism, about the relevance of cultural studies to political practice; a review of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and a review of “Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”. I’ve also been slacking on the forays into Gramsci that I promised, so expect some of that.

They will all be interspersed between articles on news, general hypocrisy, the irritations of celebrity culture and hopefully Jeff will continue what looks to be an expanding series on the politics surrounding the US Supreme Court.

On Christmas Day, I sat amongst friends and family and together we observed the headlines of Harold Pinter’s death. Almost unanimously around the room there was an expression of unconcern, indeed a few jibes were made about the old man. I suppose it’s true that plenty can be found to poke, such as the petition Pinter signed in support of the freedom and fair trial of Slobodan Milosevic. However, there was a lot to admire also, I think.

One incident in Pinter’s life caught my attention. As part of the International PEN society, Pinter and Arthur Miller went to Turkey to protest human rights abuses. At a dinner given at the US Embassy there, thrown in honour of Miller, Pinter confronted the American Ambassador. When indications were given for Pinter to exit, Miller left with him, preferring to leave with his friend than allow Pinter to be subjected to an indignity on his own, over a few political comments.

I share that tendency with Pinter, and I respect it. I don’t wish to preach, though it may come across like that, but if there is one thing I cannot stand it is hypocrisy. When you add American foreign policy to domestic rhetoric, what you have is almost pure hypocrisy. Regardless of how diplomatic it was to raise the subject, Pinter was right to do so. He didn’t do it because it would be reported by the media; it wasn’t due to ego – it was due to his own personal conscience.

Susan and Paul have recently made reference to the generation gap in politics, but actually this is one of those things which crosses generational lines. Pinter was a great playwright who belonged to the generation before mine, and the generation before that, but the sheer rudeness of his confrontation with the American Ambassador to Turkey is something for the ages. It will always be considered rude to raise Left-wing politics in the circles of high society.

Such circles are much more comfortable with some amusing homophobia, or a little mild racism or anti-semitism. Right-wing humour is the meat and vegetables to the dinner conversation of such circles. To go against the grain in that respect is considered the height of bad form – but we certainly must get used to it. It’s this moral compass, and our almost innate compulsion to follow it which Susan references. Susan also raises a great fear of mine.

Having children has been on my mind for the last few months, and one of my greatest fears is that they will grow up to be completely apolitical. Perhaps one could like this to a homosexual child being born to fundamentalist Christian parents, but I think to be apolitical or vigorously religious would be the most cardinal of sins in my eyes. I have trouble not locking horns with my right-wing or religious friends; how would I be able to control myself with my children?

My ‘moral compass’ points me towards attempting the creation of a genuinely egalitarian project that will tear up capitalism by the roots and rebalance the world. This is why I get up in the morning; it goes beyond relationships, friendships and family – what on earth would I do if none of Harold Pinter’s irreverent spirit was shared by my own children? When I was younger, it seemed like it was little enough shared by my generation and as a result of my rage at this, I got into an inordinate amount of trouble.

And yet, I can’t bring myself to be melancholy about the prospects for our movement and our world. We face challenges from a newly emergent capitalist consensus, that will in time make a bid to gain the allegiance of popular Left-wing consciousness. We face challenges from our own Left flank, the post-Marxists and their Hegelian monism. If my children won’t take Pinter’s words to heart, to inscribe them as motto, maybe yours will:

“I can’t stop reacting to what is done in our name, and what is being done in the name of freedom and democracy is disgusting.”
- Harold Pinter, 1930-2008.

Listening to Radio 4′s coverage of the death of Gwyneth Dunwoody, you’d never know how Tony and his merry band tried to stab her in the back. Such effluent is not present in the Prime Minister’s speech on the death of the 77-year old backbencher. Yet on 16th June 2001, the party leadership tried to remove her from her position as Chair of the Transport Select Committee. It was left to Labour backbenchers to vote against her removal.

Dunwoody was not my sort of MP – voting for a fully appointed House of Lords, absenting herself from other important votes, yet she had a life of service to the Party. In her very eclectic style and voting, in her unwillingness to accept dictation from a Party that, as she said herself, seemed to be losing its way, she represented the very best and most iconoclastic about Labour. I have been reading over some of her exchanges with Steve Ladyman and Geoff Hoon. She certainly ruffled feathers in her day.

I wonder if her “E.J. Thribb 17-and-a-half” poem from Private Eye will involve the phrase, “Mr God, it is always a delight to see you in the Chair…,” a phrase she used in Westminster Hall on many occasions right before smacking people about. That would be fitting, I think. [1][2][3]

Update: The Herald is speculating on the upcoming byelection for Crewe and Nantwich, Gwyneth’s old seat. With a seven thousand and some majority, if we manage to lose this seat because of some New Labour flunky, Gordon should resign.

National Union of Teachers leader Steve Sinnott has died this morning, according to the BBC. Sinnott had only been in charge of the NUT since 2004, after Doug McAvoy stood down. McAvoy stood down as a result of union rules on length of tenure, though this didn’t stop him trying to paint all and sundry as part of a ‘left wing’ plot to remove him – Steve Sinnott included.

The news comes after the NUT voted for national strike action for the first time since Thatcher’s second term. Sinnott had played a key role in pushing for strike action and his video-news bulletins to members were a sign of a union keeping up to date with new ways to organise. I’m sure Steve will be missed by his wife and children, but also by the many thousands of NUT members who thought that this was a leader who could take the NUT to victory in pay negotiations.