Though Cowards Flinch

Labour Left (formerly GEER) have tonight published their opening salvo in the fight for the Labour party heart – amid other recent policy books by Progress in the form of the Purple Book and of course Blue Labour.

The book, composed of chapters by MPs, party activists, bloggers, writers and the four combined (including this very author), covers a wide range of subjects from ethical socialism, the history of and how it can return today; the public services, cuts and the part played by the private sector; education; ethical consumerism; philosophy; sustainability and identity.

It proves to be a fascinating read, and at over 200 pages, insightful and complete.

Download the book here - because Labour needs new ideas.

Being the opposition, the Labour Party during their conference had at least the opportunity to discuss ideas that will fundamentally change the direction of their politics, and hopefully all politics, for some time to come – a privilege not able to be enjoyed, to the same extent, by the Tories this week as they go to conference with this message ‘let’s stick out our dodgy economic policies out’.

During a conversation over the week with a friend, the notion of an ideas deficit came up – that is to say, though some ideas are being discussed as part of the realisation that the politics of New Labour must be put to rest, few people are stepping up to deliver those new ideas – Maurice Glasman being the exception here.

Before conference I had the impression Glasman was given the cold shoulder, but on a few occasions I was reminded that many people in the party still hold him in some esteem. The problem, thus, is not the ideas of Glasman that are contentious (though in my opinion they are still vague enough for many different, perhaps contradictory, constituencies to appeal to them), but his delivery – notable of which was his talk of incorporating the EDL into ideological discussions. 

Creating ideas anew can make politics exciting, and this certainly is lacking today – but perhaps this is not the deficit we should worry about. The real task for us today is to unpack and fully realise ideas of old, the ones that have stood the test of time, that have been widely disseminated but little demonstrated. If this is the case, more should be done by policymakers to unpack the practical kernel of ethical socialism, the subject of much exciting debate in Labour circles today. 

However not much beyond names and epithets are discussed in relation to ethical socialism, though the enthusiasm is there. Which is why I was impressed to read through a new report by Stephen Beer, the senior fund manager with the central finance board of the Methodist Church, on The Credibility Deficit, written for the Fabian Society. In the report, there is not only discussion of ideas central to what we might call ethical socialism (I should point out also that Mr Beer does political communications for the Christian Socialist Movement) but also presents them in such a way as to show their practical policy implications. For example, discussions around dishonest and unethical banking policies, key to the New Labour legacy, need to be overturned (which should go without saying) but the difference in liberal and socialistic measures is the former aims to situate a society where no vested interest is giving primacy in the political system, whereas the latter will legislate to ensure this is so, and is therefore not principally opposed to reining in laissez faire policies in order to see the good society flourish. 

As Beer puts it in the key messages: “values must not be crowded out by markets … [revisiting, revaluating and applying these values] will require Labour to take some tough decisions”. 

Other policy ideas such as investment focused stimuluses and muscular financial reform are also a welcome intervention into where the debate goes from here.

There are problems from the outset. Like the campaigns of Stella Creasy, they detail very opportunistic, and encouraging, reform, but there seems to be no enthusiasm for radical change of the system. I had the fortune of seeing Beer and Creasy share the same platform while at conference, and while their messages resonate with local challenges, it stays safe at times working only to rework the current economic system from within it, and not putting forward challenging longer term aims such as an end to the debt society – a predicate to capitalism (Beer, on the evening I saw him speak, pretty much said debt is a societal good – a notion I find contradicts the good of society).

From the conversations I’ve had over the last week, ideas is again the name of the game, and many people are playing (the forthcoming Red Book by the Labour Left group, in which I have a chapter, is another case in point). It’s now time to translate those conversations into economic policy. The Credibility Deficit is a good beginning to the translation, and I hope it is listened to by the right people to carry it forward.

I was about 11 when I first heard the song Smells Like Teen Spirit, by the American Rock band Nirvana – a title which was born from a spray painting incident involving Kurt Cobain and Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of feminist and riot grrrl influenced band Bikini Kill, over a conversation on Anarchism.

The song features on an album called Nevermind, released for the first time today, 20 years ago. It was as much the anthem for the rebellious contrarian then as it was 7 years later when I first heard it, and 9 years later when it had started to seep into my veins like some mind altering narcotic, informing my purposeful scruffiness, and intolerance towards parental or school-based discipline.

The song came to symbolise grunge, though as any fan will tell you, is quite different from it. Grunge was an accidental fashion trend, at first emulating the hand-me-down clothing of backstreet, depressed areas of America, where much of the best music from the Nirvana-era emerged, consisting of lumberjack wear, torn jeans, and hard boots – later to be ripped off by eager fashionistas, whose poster girls included Kate Moss, mixed together with heroin chic and bourgeois faux teenage angst.

The early music of the Melvins, Tad, Mudhoney and Green River was either consciously political, or a kick back of frustration, stemming of a generation bored on conformity and submission after so much rebellion before it.

In that same year Nevermind was released, a band called Temple of the Dog, later to split into Pearl Jam and Soundgarden wrote a song which defined the politically aware side of grunge, which appealed to me as a teenager in a working class area, lyrics of which were:

I don’t mind stealing bread

From the mouths of decadence

But I can’t feed on the powerless

When my cup’s already overfilled,

But it’s on the table

The fire is cooking

And they’re farming babies

While slaves are working

Blood is on the table

And the mouths are choking

But I’m growing hungry

Although to me Smells Like Teen Spirit carried that same aggression and anger as would be transcribed through the words in Temple of the Dog’s song, this wasn’t how it was universally received. In much the same way that the electric Bob Dylan courted fierce despair and criticism from the purist folkies, so, too, did Nirvana received their comeuppance for releasing on big label DGC (not Seattle based Sub Pop, like their last album Bleach). Further, the work of producer Butch Vig, later of Garbage fame – swallowed up the raw energy that could be heard from peer groups at the time, such as Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. Instead contemporary audiences were given clean-round-the-edges music, worthy of chart success – and indeed this was eventually the thing that led to Cobain’s depression and ultimately his suicide.

To me, the politics still came through. Before my own college days of anti-fascist demonstrations, against the BNP who were making electoral progress in my local area of Basildon (back in the news of late, concerning another prejudice) I was listening to Sonic Youth reminding me of the youth against fascism. Before marching against the marginalisation of all peoples I remember listening to songs like Jeremy by Pearl Jam, detailing the mind of a child who had been pushed over the edge through bullying, neglect and depression.

In Nirvana, the politics was just as clear. Cobain was vocal in his opposition to sexism, racism and homophobia, played benefit gigs against Ballot Measure Nine which was hostile towards the acknowledgement of homosexuality, particularly in schools, and was the very opposite of the machismo that peer pressure often led to. In distinction to some of the hair and stadium rock that dominated the charts, and oozed the kind of white, corporate, anti-union conservatism that someone like Bon Jovi appealed to, Cobain inserted in the liner notes from the B-sides album Incesticide:

if any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us-leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.

To the adolescent mind, the image of Cobain offered another route – and politically it happened to be right on cue.

Of course there are a multitude of factors that lead us to develop a political identity in our adult lives, and I’m no different. But in hindsight, my own rebellious phase, where at the time parents and teachers and the stiff old fogies in the street were trying to impinge on all the pubescent fun and creep in on immature experiments with cider and marijuana, trying to instil false shows of respectability, trying to get you to conform to their blinkered views, happened to coincide with my musical idols waxing on sensible ideas of political justice, social awareness and mutual respect – that just wouldn’t have had the same ring to them, coming from someone without rips in their jeans or Seattle music-based print on their flannel shirt.

During the recent Communist Party Congress, the ‘cuentapropismo’ initiative was adopted after being presented to the country by the Cuban Trade Unions. It will consist of the legalisation of small enterprises, pertinent at a time when many state jobs are being cut, and the private sector increasingly relied upon.

Parallels are already being made to this initiative and the New Economics Policy (NEP) in Russia circa 1921.

Back then there was an economic crisis of epic proportions, war communism became the bane of the peasantry life, which culminated in mass refusals to plant more food than could be eaten owing to the confiscations by the state. Millions of Russians in the countryside had died from famine, which led to an uprising by the peasants, joined by sailors and other workers against war communism policies, who were eventually defeated by the Red Army in what came to be known as the Kronstadt Rebellion.

The NEP was a policy taken by Lenin to allow private enterprise limited freedom in order to raise productivity; in his words it was taking one step backwards in order to take two steps forwards later. It was not a long-term policy, but its use would take as long as it needed. It has been speculated that had Lenin not died a few years after its inception, and had Stalin not committed to central planning and the dismantling of NEP policies, laws for private capital might have been relaxed way past their eventual demise in 1928.

It was of ethical concern to all those involved with the Communist party – particularly the Left Opposition both within and out of the Bolsheviks – but the concession was that trade unions would protect workers in both the public and private sectors.

However, with the state legislating for the creation of a class enemy within the working class itself – the Nepman (rich business people) or the kulacs (better off peasantry) – and the fact that in 1928 Russian production had begun reaching levels not seen since 1914, the bargaining chip of the trade union within an economy which seems to be working, seems hardly a concession towards the achievement of full socialism.

If Lenin’s policy was towards a capitalism mandated by the state, would he really have bent down to union pressure in the face of workers’ rights versus a productive economy? In other words, since Lenin sacrificed socialism – the project he had worked all his life to pursue – for the gain of production, come what may – would he have sacrificed the conditions of a worker in the private sector, against trade union best wishes, for that same goal of increased industrial and agricultural production?

Unfortunately he died before any substantial answer to this question could be made, but its possibility cannot be ignored.

The difference between Russia and Cuba is that while Lenin freed up capital, not once did he give the impression that he’d stopped believing in the socialist model. However on the other hand, even Fidel Castro has been explicit on this: “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore”.

This is where the comparison falls short. Lenin believed that a spell of capitalism would increase productivity – and it did – and then they could re-join the road to socialism. Then he died. Raul Castro has mentioned nothing about the cuentapropismo being a short term measure, in fact judging by his brother’s words, it looks quite the opposite. If history is anything to go by, for socialism to return to Cuba, Raul Castro needs to die. But then, perhaps if history is anything to go by, a new economic policy wouldn’t be such a bad thing as far as production is concerned.

‘Chav’. The word has disputed etymology, and yet everyone knows what it is – or rather, knows that they would prefer not be, themselves, identified as one. ‘Chav’ is that rare beast, denoting a section in society which almost nobody would want to touch with a bargepole, but yet, or so according to Owen Jones, has a well-defined target, at least as far as the mainstream media is concerned, as the newly consumerised working classes – and even in some cases the lower class made good.

Though, rather than being a category worthy of collected denunciation, ‘chav-bashing’ is a concerted campaign against the working class itself. The fact that many working class people would choose not to identify with the term is important in the way it has been used by many middle class people and self-appointed ‘neo-snobs’, such as Jemima Lewis, in the media.

The way in which the word ‘chav’ has been used can be seen within the framework Marxism has used to observe capitalism: as an agenda setting the workers against each other – Thatcher’s preferred means of governance. And yet, ironically, Marx himself would have been none too supportive of the so-called ‘chavs’. The assumption is that a ‘chav’ takes from society without actually giving back to it, and Marx had a word for this himself: the lumpenproletarian. This class, of whom Marx called ‘social scum’ in the Communist Manifesto, were unproductive and likely to be used as fodder for reactionaries.

But Jones has written, not a myth-busting book setting the world right about what is or is not a ‘chav’, but rather a reminder that in recent times, and quite under our noses, the working class have been institutionally demonised wholesale as the very worst, contemptible, subjects society can offer; rowdy, immoral and burdensome.

‘Chav’ is not a catch-all term, but its definition is loose enough so as to allow all to condemn the ‘chav’, thus playing into the hands of Thatcherite politics, key to which is dividing (the working class) and conquering.

As well as saying that this class-hatred (‘neo-snobs’ unto ‘chavs’) stems from the destruction caused by Thatcherite politics, and the age devoted only to a social mobility that sees being working class as a departure, not an ennobled end in itself, Jones is appealing against a rowdy headline-grabbing media, set on a course of snobbery and braggartry, who perceives somebody like Michael Carroll – dubbed the lotto lout – as the sum total of today’s working class.

Indeed, this is what was meant by local Dewsbury Moor community leader Julie Bushby, interviewed by Jones in his book, when she says “Ninety per cent of people here work. We’ve all taken money out of [our] own pockets for this [the search for Shannon Matthews]” (p.17). What she is saying here is Dewsbury Moor is not how the mainstream press paints it; namely as a scum setting with people who care only for themselves and not the communities in which they live.

It’s easy to see how the notion of ‘chav’ fits in neatly with Thatcher’s politics. In the same way that ‘chav-bashing’ is not unique to ‘neo-snobs’ in the mainstream press (the founder of website chavscum.co.uk for example identifies as working class) Thatcher’s policies were not avowedly anti-working class. In fact as Jones points out, for Thatcher class is a “Communist concept”, getting in the way of a society where one is out for oneself. There was one section of the working class Thatcher was happy to side by: the ‘Basildon Man‘. In the 1980s Basildon, a new town, generally speaking working class with a history of sitting Conservative MPs, was seen to epitomise the aspirational working class. In deed, Thatcher wanted to appeal to the “Basildon man” mentality, but in action she was setting about destructive measures which would hit working class families hardest.

In the economy, Thatcher’s 1979 Conservative government quickly “abolished exchange controls, allowing financial companies to make huge profits from currency speculation … at the expense of other parts of the economy, like manufacturing” (p.52). This was a sign that the rich were going to be given allowances, whereas at the lower end of the scale, a “de-industrialization of the economy” would sweep up jobs and opportunities – which many towns to this day have not recovered from.

Thatcher’s plans for society – a concept she was sceptical of – were worse still. Despite her words she did not want to get rid of social class, just stop us from perceiving we belonged to one. On her watch council estates were something to be feared, not somewhere to be proud of, and her callous derision of single Mother families ensured communities were divided (p.67). In an interview Jones conducted with Geoffrey Howe – the longest serving minister in Thatcher’s cabinet, and whose resignation was said to have hastened Thatcher’s own downfall – he was left surprised at how much the living standards of the poorest had become, left only uttering “…at the end of the period they’ve got better off, I think” (p.63).

As Jones rightly puts it: “Thatcher’s assumption of power in 1979 marked the beginning of an all-out assault on the pillars of working class Britain” (p.10). But surely not even she could have foreseen how far this assault would embed itself into future British politics. Jones points out that many New Labour policies were steeped in the kind of middle class triumphalism usually associated with the Tories. Stories about the lazy unemployed became a commonplace, and the era defined a new Labour politician, like James Purnell, who spent more time appeasing Tory attitudes and less time addressing the deep rooted problems that Britain inherited from Thatcherite destruction.

Today, now Labour are in opposition, things are not much better for the traditional party of the working class. While the nation apprehensively awaits Osborne’s deep cuts to the economy, effects of which will hurt the poorest harder, Blairites such as Peter Watt – Labour’s former General Secretary – are calling on the party to accept the Tories’ cuts agenda wholesale. The party historically linked to unions and working people, has become the party of the mainstream. The fire in the belly of the Labour party has been extinguished, leaving the door open for fringe parties to sweep up what has been left –  a gift for far right parties such as the British National Party (BNP).

Jones reflects upon a staggering 1958 gallup poll showing how 71% of britons were opposed to interracial marriage, however it is today, not the fifties, that the BNP is the most successful far right party in the UK to date (pp.222-23). Now that the New Labour party panders to a ruling metropolitan elite community for its votes and support, the BNP have stepped in to raise people’s legitimate concerns (housing, immigration, schools) framing the debate in racial terms. By and large, working class communities reject the appeals of the far right (they got a trumping in the last local elections), but the English Defence League are still making ground, tapping into local  concerns, and Labour is still doing little to counter this. Maurice Glasman, an academic at London Metropolitan University, has raised the debate of how Labour can win back the working classes, with his idea of a ‘blue Labour‘ – which is a start – but clearly there is much thinking left to be had inside the party, in order to reverse years of Tory pandering and working class abandonment.

But Jones doesn’t leave us hanging on what kind of action should be taken today, in order that the working class feel represented by politicians in parliament. He concludes by touching on just a few things likely to re-integrate the least well-off back into society again. Things like a national programme of social housing, reliant as it would be on “an army of skilled labour”. Today even the Tories are discussing ‘Britain making things again’, and so, opines Jones, “there is ample space to make the case for a new industrial strategy” (p.261). Furthermore, giving workers “genuine control and power in the workplace” is not unique to the Left any longer – the benefits of better workforce engagement has been researched across the board from The Work Foundation to centre right think-tank Respublica.  

Certainly the case for working class empowerment has gained traction again, the battle now is to harangue politicians to ensure they keep their word and start to deliver the changes necessary to reverse the tide of recent class prejudice, started by the Tories and carried on through to the present day via the appeasement of New Labour.

As Jones has cleverly noted in his book, ‘chav’ is the perfect embodiment of how far the class war, waged by the political establishment, and perpetuated by many in the mainstream media, has come. No longer is class prejudice simply fought along the lines of ‘them (the poor) and us (the wealthy)’, but a situation has arisen where their demonisation of the working class has created a ‘them and us’ within those very communities. That this happened alongside the political elites’ efforts to weaken working class institutions (such as trade unions) has frustrated working class strength and pride – laying the ground for the expansion of anti-working class politics. Hopefully this book, which is extremely readable and exceptionally researched, will be the wake-up call needed to combat today’s ‘neo-snob’ class warriors, whose sole aim is the destruction of all that the working class hold dear.

“The face of Roxeth has changed, it’s lanes, it’s trees, it’s birds have gone. And to compensate for loss of open space [...] its children have electric light, orange juice and cinemas [...] the changes from fields towards slums are called progress. (T.L Bartlett – Birds of Roxeth (1900-1948))”

The Coalition government should be remembered for one thing: the destruction and loss of space.

It’s no surprise, then, that protest against space loss should colour an anti-government movement.

Protests and occupations by students, for example, have highlighted space as a talking point of their struggle.

Anti-cuts movements across the country have bellowed the concern: “save our spaces”.

Demonstrations over library closures have noted the potential lack in learning spaces, otherwise free for use. And the willingness of private providers to capitalise on public spaces gone to tender, in an approach ironically titled big society – no different in ethos to Thatcher’s opinion that there’s no society – gives us a sour flavour of things to come.

At the moment I am in the middle of Trafalgar Square, London, in a demonstration that has become dubbed “an occupation of public space”. It immediately becomes oxymoronic that a public space need be occupied – but this is the reality. Increasingly the space that exists primarily for citizenry is becoming privatised. Though to oppose this development is not a new idea.

In a small pamphlet called “meanwhile”, author John Berger told us that modern civilisation can now, justifiably, be characterised as a prison. The way in which to perceive the world is not as a free person looking into (over-) governed spaces, but as a ‘subject’ trying to look out. The point, therefore, is to try and free up “subversive” spaces as a hub of freedom among the oppression.

The trendy American liberal crowd, Naomi Klein being one example, talk about subverting corporate spaces, and to some extent they have a point.

Though the problem with trying to fight a vacuous government is that it is easy to use vacuous weaponry. Subverting spaces, in and of itself, demonstrates no given demands – and it is a symptom of post-political “resistance” (which might be, as star trek foresaw, futile).

The point, as a point of future policy demand, is not only to subvert space, but to positively subvert everywhere.

The government can crumble, but it won’t give to a group of people unable to agree on a set of positive demands. This is the most important point of all, and should be most important to those who have become part of resistance movements.

How, I ask, can we win, if we don’t yet know what it is we want?

My opinion of the Monarchy and the royal wedding is nothing you wouldn’t expect from a republican lefty. Conservative estimates say that if we go out and spend our money on 29 April 2011 then £1bn will be injected into our economy, though the wedding itself is to cost nothing short of £5bn – a loss no less.

Surely the Middleton’s can pay for a sizeable wedding and honeymoon, worth – as they are – £30m themselves. Our royal family is worth an inestimable amount of money, and yet next Friday falls upon us – the prolls. Too much money is used to subsidise these unelected tosspots and all for what?

Trade and tourism? Don’t make me laugh; our next door neighbour France is the second largest economy in Europe, fifth largest in the world, and attracted 78.95 million foreign tourists in 2010, making it the most popular tourist destination in the world. They’ve a peculiar government, sure, but no monarchy. The whole thing is a nonsense, and hopefully Kate and William’s wedding will be the last for the royals.

In fact, I mirror what Christopher Hitchens has recently said about the wedding, and in particular Kate Middleton:

Myself, I wish her well and also wish I could whisper to her: If you really love him, honey, get him out of there, and yourself, too. Many of us don’t want or need another sacrificial lamb to water the dried bones and veins of a dessicated system. Do yourself a favor and save what you can: Leave the throne to the awful next incumbent that the hereditary principle has mandated for it.

Though of course I would go slightly further, idealistically of course, and call on Ms Middleton to do everything she can to ensure there is no next incumbent.

The conspiracy theorists have already got themselves excited about the marriage – this has been spurred on by the fact that the wedding falls on the same day as the birthday of David Icke – the man who believes a secret group called the Babylonian Brotherhood controls humanity, a group which includes George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie.

Hitchens in his article on the wedding said: “For Prince William at least it was decided on the day of his birth what he should do: Find a presentable wife, father a male heir (and preferably a male “spare” as well), and keep the show on the road.” The nutters on David Icke’s internet forums have taken this determinism a little too far. One commenter, Hawk944, said:

even more strange is that old footage of her when she was young doing a play for her school in which she (kate middleton) was marrying prince william?

coincidence! not sure, i think she was chosen just like diana before she was even born…

A comment from infinite777, back in June 2009, had similar to say:

Alright most of us know what happened with princess diana and how she was a sacrifice, but what about kate middleton? Somethings telling me that down the line she will suffer the same fate as diana did in a similar way. I mean I don’t know “how much” she is connected to their whole agenda, but it does seem pretty plausible to me. What do you think?

When the silly little buggers found out that William and Kate are cousins and both related to Sir Thomas Leighton, an Elizabethan soldier, diplomat and, for 40 years, the cut-throat Governor of Guernsey, they went berserk.

But rather than the “chosen one” theory that these wombats seem to have clung onto like a German badger clings onto the last batch of scrumpy, I prefer my own conspiratorial theory about the royal wedding. 

As we know the wedding falls on the same day as David Icke’s birthday. Icke was born in 1952, the same year that King George VI died. King George, or Prince Albert as he once was, who the film The King’s Speech was made about, will forever be known as the reluctant King. When King George V died, Prince Edward, brother of Albert, was presumed to take the throne. Though because Edward had no children King George had reservations. Less than a year after King George’s death, when Edward was Edward VIII, he married his mistress Wallis Simpson – a recent divorcee. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told him he could not remain King while wed to a divorcee, so in 1936 he abdicated, leaving the position open to his brother.

Albert, having reservations about stepping up to the role wrote in his diary, the day before visiting his Mother, Queen Mary:

“When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child.”

An article about the royal wedding and The Kings Speech film noted:

The [sic] has been some speculation as to whether or not the couple will be ‘re-titled’ following the marriage, as Prince William has reportedly said that he does not wish to inherit a dukedom, in which case his wife would be made duchess

As recent news would have it, Prince William has now decided on taking a new title (possibly because in not having one, not only would he upset his Grandma – who has the last say anyway – but Kate would have to be re-named something ghastly like Princess William) – but not without hesitation. For the moment we should consider him the reluctant Duke.

Like Prince Albert, Prince William was reluctant to change, but realised he was powerless, and the public may notice that Kate wears the trousers if the decision was taken by her to make title changes. Though perhaps Kate has all the power here. The Sunday Express is already taking polls from the public on how:

60% of people favoured a change to the current system, which would allow Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first child to succeed to the throne regardless of gender.

If Kate now decides against having children with old horsey face, then maybe this whole monstrosity can stop for good – we’ve only got to get her on side (Prince Harry is clearly the lumpenproletariat in disguise so no worries there). The royal family is a stupid, unnecessary institution and should be gotten rid of immediately. But if William is anything like Prince Albert, perhaps his reluctance can spell damage to the Monarchy. And why wouldn’t William take Albert’s original judgement on board? After all, it is David Icke’s birth that really separates them.

This is part of the Carnival of Republicanism series

Gaddafi has always been something of a challenge for socialists. While it was his charisma and strong rhetoric that suited those keenly supportive of Pan-Arabism and socialism in the seventies, later it would be his malleability and weakness that allowed the West to turn a blind eye to him, or even conduct deals with him in the supposed interest of both parties.

A British source once said of Gaddafi: “We thought he was a bit left-wing, but not too bad, and that we could deal with him.”

In 1950s Libya, King Idriss failed to tip his hat to the winds of change sweeping the Arab world. While the sound of Pan-Arabism played out, Libya was still at the behest of the US and UK, that was until 1 September 1969, when Idriss was receiving medical treatment in Turkey, that a successful coup plot installed into office a group Libyan army officers led by Gaddafi, overthrowing the Monarchy and pre-empting Idris’ abdication.

42 years later and Gaddafi is still leader of the country, and is himself now irresponsive to the winds of change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, like the leader before him. But moreover, Gaddafi’s defensive is set to be far more heavy-handed than most of the regions, to the extent that he may face a war criminal indictment over the way in which he has responded to protests.

He has been explicit: “when I [order use of force] everything will burn […] I’ll die here as a martyr”.

Gaddafi’s socialist supporters

His authoritarian dictatorship of the last forty years should spell out everything the left needs to know that support for him is misguided, but in spite of the fact he has incited a major civil war against protesters left wing leaders in Latin America have been positively supportive.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez enjoys good relations with Gaddafi, awarding the dictator the Orden del Libertador Simón Bolívar – something usually reserved for people offering outstanding services to the country. Recently he sent a tweet from his official twitter account saying: “Long live Libya and its independence! Kadhafi faces a civil war!”

Fidel Castro, too, has stated publicly that: “NATO is planning to take over Libya and its oil”, while President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua said he has phoned Libyan Gaddafi to express his solidarity.

Is Gaddafi socialist or a lackey of imperialism?

Chavez’ uncritical support for Gaddafi has once again caused embarrassment for the Venezuelan leader’s UK supporters. The closest tie is between Chavez and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), who in 2009 made efforts to distance themselves from the support he gave to Ahmadinejad during the latter’s reelection. Alan Woods, one of the leading members of the Tendency, has written a piece for the IMT website condemning the use of force by Gaddafi, while explaining that rather than being a socialist he is actually responsible for “privatizations [which] encouraged foreign companies to open up shops in Benghazi and Tripoli”. He goes on to say: “As recently as last November The Economist published a glowing report about Libya, which it compared with Dubai.”

Andy Newman at Socialist Unity has noted that events taking place in the Middle East in 2003 made it wholly undesirable for regimes to present themselves as avowedly anti-American and Gaddafi’s Libya was one case in point. Gadaffi has always described himself as anti-imperialist, however he has never posed too much of a threat to the US (that is until the Lockerbie bombing – context and debates of which are too long to discuss in any detail here).

Even in spite of the well-documented meetings between Gadaffi, Berlusconi, Blair and others, the former should not be looked at primarily as a lackey of imperialism. However nor can he be viewed as a socialist. His ideology is not based upon the concerns of the people (which explains the large contingent rising up against him in Benghazi and other places) but upon a Nationalism that seeks to safeguard a ruling elite through whatever means possible. It’s durability is questionable; when Benghazi was lost Gaddafi ordered naval ships to attack it, however reports suggest there was major deliberation by the crew on what to do. As Woods, mentioned above, suggests, this shows early signs of a military in doubt over their leader.

The violent force planning to be used by Gaddafi is proof – if any more were needed – that he is in trouble. His regime is weakening, marred by resignations; he is flogging a dead horse. But if his last ditch attempt to flatten dissent works, some serious discussion needs to take place over what the rest of the world watching those scenes can do about it.

Conclusion

Unlike the South American leftist leaders, I don’t think Washington as a whole will be rubbing their hands together hoping for another war. If anything, Gadaffi himself by waging civil war and threatening to blow up oil terminals is rubbing the US up the wrong way. There is no doubt of his seriousness when he evokes crimes to humanity. Many hard right Neo-conservatives and left-leaning Liberals in the US senate have agreed that sanctions are the appropriate use of power for now, but they are not a long-term solution, and can often have undesirable effects to the people they are meant to help.

A no fly zone is only an option if there’s a foreign military presence in the country anyway, and an all-out military intervention like the one in Iraq ought to be avoided at all costs. This leaves options slim on the ground for the UN, whose only other option is to do nothing.

Debates on arms sales are tricky; of course small countries have the right to be armed against neighbouring oppressive nations, but the sort of monitoring which David Cameron spoke of recently on countries like Libya arming themselves against dissenters is pure fantasy, nor is it in the profit-driven interests of arms dealers anyway.

The Libyan situation poses many difficult questions, but let’s be clear: Gadaffi’s anti-imperialism doesn’t necessarily make him a friend of the left (this is what confuses Chavez et al); his desire to kill people on a large scale will force us all to think long and hard about the possible use of interventions – which may include forces and nations dubbed imperialist.

Activists have said: “We don’t need foreign forces to oust Gaddafi“. Let’s hope they’re correct.

The setting is the UK in the 1930s. It was hoped that depression in basic exporting industries – and, thus, working class unrest – would soon disappear and output be even with production. In short, it was hoped the UK could be more like the US, where reduction in socially necessary labour time was matched with an abundance of goods to sell on the market and where consumers consumed en masse (Fordism, not Marxism).

Instead, unemployment in Britain reached 3 million – 23% of all insured workers – in 1933 while output was commensurate with the slow and erratic recovery. There were restrictions placed on production rather than a more desirable reduction of costs, tariffs and cartels for fear of over-production, and a country pulling its hair out.

An economy assisted by the state became very appealing to members of parliament on both sides of the house. Harold Macmillan – then a backbench Tory MP – remarked of the mood in the thirties: “the structure of capitalist society in its old form had broken down, not only in Britain but all over Europe and even in the US”.

No, he wasn’t advocating socialism, but he, like so many then, and so many today, did feel that in order for capitalism to remain, it must be helped out by a very visible hand. I’ll no doubt have my knuckles slapped for this, but Marx was right when he asserted capitalism would come to destroy itself; perhaps what he didn’t anticipate was that government would periodically come to its rescue.

The tendency of British investors to export capital into the colonies meant that many industrial plants in this country were left to dry; much the same argument can be said about manufacturing now as it could both in the seventies and the thirties – basic industries were not moving fast enough to maintain pace with the rest of the world. As such, manufacturing was left lacking while Japan, Germany and the US reaped all market rewards.

Even when production saw a recovery in 1934, unemployment remained relatively high to the extent that one in every eight people able to work could not.

This was a reality for the high skilled too, not to mention the so-called middle class. Noreen Branson and Margot Heinemann in their book Britain in the Nineteen Thirties point out the rise of the Middle Class in the mid-thirties was, strictly speaking, the increase of clerical, technical and administrative jobs, still affected by unemployment and of comparable wages to more traditional skilled labour.

Nobody can deny it is to the credit of trade unions at the time that real wages remained pretty steady after the crisis prior to the 1930s. Employers were simply unable to make wage cuts in line with the fall in prices – it would have been poison. Much like Britain of the seventies, the streets could be awash with concerned peoples at the drop of hat. On 21 September 1931, striking teachers caused the government to retreat on reducing wages in the public sector, and admit certain “classes of persons” were unfairly affected, while everybody was “in this together” to quote that familiar phrase.

Surprisingly for the government at the time, action had been taken by the Royal Navy after having their wages cut from 4s to 3s. Whitehall realised the error of their ways, backtracked, and further strike action called off on the promise no pay cut exceeded 10%, with no victimisation.

The latter promise was subsequently broken when 36 ringleaders were sacked and the Incitement to Dissatisfaction Act was later realised, with the aim of curbing subversive influences in the armed forces. In spite of this, however, the affair had a lasting effect on the working class movement who used it as proof of industrial action effectiveness.

The unfortunate grouping at the time were the unemployed. They were promised cut to benefit would not exceed 10%, though according to Branson and Heinemann it was more in the region of 20%. In June 1931 the Royal Commission advocated heavy reductions to benefit payments in their interim report (it was from this report too that a reduction in real wages was floated – in spite of unsettled opinion on it. The Macmillan report of July, which advocated this position on wages, even had as signatories Sir T. Allen of the cooperative movement and Ernest Bevin of the TGWU/TUC). It wasn’t until November 1933 that the Unemployment Bill, Part II restored the standard 10% cut in benefit.

Worse still, agricultural workers and domestic servants who lost their jobs were entirely excluded from benefit and would have to apply to the local Poor Law Authority – making times extremely tough had they no other means of securing money.

The cuts at the time were carried out so as to save the pound from collapsing, and as per usual everybody was in it together. Though, of course, some more than others. Strike action was the method of choice for keeping the government to check on the fairness of cuts, and indeed they were forced on some occasions to revise their sums and admit they had come down over-zealously on some over others.

It’s early days yet, but who can say what will happen in the future when people start to question the legitimacy and fairness of the cuts set by today’s coalition government.

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, the leftist former economist whose popularity and rise to power emerged to coincide with a rapid change in the political landscape of Latin America, is currently under threat from protesting police on the streets of Quito.

Neighbouring ally Hugo Chavez, with characteristic bombast, reported to his followers on twitter that a coup is taking place, and that protestors are trying to kill him.

But Correa looks defiant. From the video of him addressing his supporters, praising them for coming out in the tense streets, and advancing democracy and socialism, to news agency clips of him being wheeled from the hospital, where he was trapped in by police, to a car ensuring his safety.

It is alien to viewers in the UK to see such passion in a politician. In 2007, his relationship with the media was put on rocky roads, to which he, during a press conference, paraphrased Tony Blair by calling them “a group of wild beasts”.

Though, as evidenced by Blair’s recent pullout from touring his autobiography, worried at the implications of rioting protestors, the similarities between them end there. Faced with angry dissenters, Correa is reported to have said “If you want to kill the president, here he is! Kill me!” – as if to anticipate his demise.

The protest is down to money disputes. As part of an austerity package, Correa has put stop to police celebratory functions paid from the public purse, and has extended their promotion period from five to seven years.

Others, such as President Evo Morales of Bolivia, have noted the similarities between this and the recent scare in Honduras. As scenes from inside the hospital show, likening the events to the coup d’état in Honduras is no exaggeration.

Since his re-election in 2009, some have accused Correa of going back on his promises, for the advancement of socialism. His popular revolution, which was helped by his fluency in Quechua, the majority language of indigenous tribes in Ecuador, through to Peru and Bolivia, had been kickstarted by his aim to redistribute Ecuador’s oil wealth to poorer communities. In 2009 he said:

Socialism will continue. The Ecuadorian people voted for that. We are going to emphasize this fight for social justice, for regional justice. We are going to continue the fight to eliminate all forms of workplace exploitation within our socialist conviction: the supremacy of human work over capital. Nobody is in any doubt that our preferential option is for the poorest people, we are here because of them. Hasta la victoria siempre!

Around the same time Correa’s economic minister Maria Elsa Viteri took a trip to Europe in order to re-purchase global bonds, successfully claiming back 91% of the bonds, in order to further commit to a social and economic revolution.

On the current issue, Correa claimed his administration has always been at the side of the police, and expressed outrage that protestors have gone to such lengths to endanger the President’s life.

It is not relativism, but when cuts are administered by the UK Tory government, we tend to look at them as ideological; because that is what they are. It is against received wisdom to draw the axe in the way which George Osborne has been doing so, and there is little or weak evidence to show vindication for his masochism. The quango cull, for example, is very telling; especially since it has been justified as waste cutting – something patently untrue in many cases.

When Correa takes measures to cull waste, to ensure not everyone takes a hit, particularly the most vulnerable in Ecuadorian society, we ought not to draw parallels.

Arguably, the limiting of police ceremonies is one way to ensure not everyone suffers disproportionately for the mistakes of the few, and so it appears as if the police have acted out of hand.

Correa’s “citizen revolution” will not please all the people, all the time, and sometimes protestors can be wrong. This, after all, appears to be a coup attempt.

But the main reason to defend Correa is his heroic fighting talk, almost inimitable in politics today. In the faces of the angered police, armed with flairs and tear gas, the premier said:

I will not take a single step back. I will not sign any agreement under pressure. I would die first. I thank my compatriots for their support and ask citizens to remain calm.

Update 02/10/10 (10.32)

The Guardian are now reporting what Correa, and the foreign minister Ricardo Patino, have been telling the media in Ecuador; that a coup is being organised from within the dissenting police protesters by former president Lucio Gutiérrez, of the centre right nationalist Patriotic Society Party.

The main police chief in Ecuador has stepped down from his position over the disarray.

TVE, the Spanish news agency, are reporting that neighbouring Peru and Columbia – both on the right politically – have closed their borders out of sympathy with Ecuador and Correa, so as to stop coup perpetrators from leaving the country.

Furthermore, the US and the UN have both condemned the coup attempt, while Brazil is the only country in South America which has not taken an official position against agitators.