For democratic socialism #302 January/February 2020 £2 …€¦ · Flynn, Roger Gillham, Hassan Hoque, Peter Kenyon, Dave Lister, Patrick Mulcahy, Sheila Osmanovic, Marina Prentoulis,

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For democratic socialism #302 January/February 2020

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ISSN - 0968 7866 ISSUE

Don FlynnDuncan BowieMary SouthcottTom MillerBryn JonesGE19 ANALYSISGlyn FordJulie WardEurope after BrexitPeter ColeClimate EmergencyApsana BegumSam TarryNew MPs Ricardo SalvaChile eruptsplus Book Reviews & Regulars

Disunited Kingdom

#302 working_01 cover 02/01/2020 02:17 Page 1

Editorial PolicyThe editorial policy of CHARTIST is topromote debate amongst people active inradical politics about the contemporaryrelevance of democratic socialism acrossthe spec t rum of po l i t i cs , economics ,science, philosophy, art, interpersonalrelations – in short, the whole realm ofsocial life.Our concern is with both democracy andsocialism. The history of the last centuryhas made i t abundant ly c lear that themass of the population of the advancedcapitalist countries will have no interestin any form of social ism which is notthoroughly democratic in its principles,its practices, its morality and its ideals.Yet the consequences of this deep attach-ment to democracy – one of the greatestadvances o f our epoch – a re se ldomreflected in the discussion and debatesamongst active socialists.CHARTIST is not a party publication. Itbrings together people who are interestedin socialism, some of whom are active theLabour Party and the trade union move-men t . I t i s conce rned to deepen andextend a dialogue with all other socialistsand with activists from other movementsinvolved in the struggle to find democrat-ic alternatives to the oppression, exploita-tion and injustices of capitalism and class society

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Editorial BoardCHARTIST is published six times a yearby the Chartist Collective. This issue wasproduced by an Editorial Board consistingo f Duncan Bowie (Rev i ews ) , AndrewCoates, Peter Chalk, Patricia d’Ardenne,Mike Davis (Editor), Nigel Doggett, DonFlynn, Roger Gil lham, Hassan Hoque,Pe t e r Kenyon , Dave L i s t e r , Pa t r i c kMulcahy , She i l a Osmanov ic , Mar inaPrentoulis, Robbie Scott, Steve Carver(Website Editor), Mary Southcott, JohnSunderland.

Production: Ferdousur Rehman

or internal party grouping, therewas something for you to do. Aleaflet you’d like - a canvass ortask you’d be keen to help with.Targeting voters is a well-knowncampaign technique. Our volun-teers were organised in preciselythe same way.

We had the bodies to expandour core and reach out to newsupport, to squeeze the Lib Demand Green vote and develop rela-tionships with swing voters bycanvassing the same streets mul-tiple times with the same volun-teers. The word soon got out thatin Putney we did things a littledifferently. After that thingsexploded with hundreds of volun-teers a night and an Election Dayrun by over 1,000 volunteers.

Robbie Scott on how Putney became Labour’s only Tory scalp

Putney Victory

If we were going to be suc-cessful in Putney, we wouldhave to run one of the mostinnovative campaigns sincethe ‘Battle for Barking’

when we destroyed the BNP inEast London. We achieved this inthree main ways.

1) We embedded ourselves inlocal community groups beforethe election was called. An activecommunity approach was essen-tial. We talked up Labour’s trans-formative manifesto, our recordin government, at City Hall andthe achievements of our localcouncillors. Our parliamentarycandidate was part of a largerLabour team who was alreadydelivering for residents.

2) We relentlessly exploited the

growing tensions between smallC conservative voters and thegovernment. First on their aus-terity agenda and as the cam-paign gathered pace on Brexit.This helped steer local opinionand secure the endorsement of allthe tactical voting websites in aconstituency that overwhelminglyvoted to Remain.

3) We effectively managedthousands of volunteers through-out the campaign. We knew thelion's share would probably comefrom Momentum and it did - butgiven all of the other high profileraces across London thatwouldn’t be enough. The cam-paign had to be broad. This wasby far the most tricky aspect tomanage. Whatever your politics

Robbie Scott wasagent andcampaignorganiser forPutney Labour’sFleur Andersonwon with 4,774majority and a6.4% swing toLabour. He is alsoa member ofChartist EB


January/February 2020 CHARTIST 3

CHARTISTFOR DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISMNumber 302 January/February 2020

FEATURES

REGULARS

Climate emergency warning- Page 14

CONTENTS

8 GE19 AFTER THE DELUGEDon Flynn surveys the electoral wreckage

9 VISIBLE REMINDERApsana Begum MP challenging racism andreaction

10 GE19 RETROSPECT AND PROSPECTSDuncan Bowie argues Corbyn and advisers letLabour down

11 LABOUR WALES SETBACKPete Rowlands on lessons from losses

12 BREXIT NOT DONEGlyn Ford on Europe without the UK

13 GE19 AFTER DARKNESS, LIGHTTom Miller outlines a route out for left

14 CLIMATE HUNGER STRIKEPeter Cole explains why he starved for theplanet

15 TORY ECONOMIC POPULISMBryn Jones on prospects for a Labourcounter-offensive

16 TRADE TALKS THREATNick Dearden on dreams and nightmares

17 GE19 LABOUT MUST REGROUPSam Tarry MP on fire-fighting the Tories

18 CHILE UPRISINGRicardo Salva looks behind the turmoil

l

20 SOCIALISTS IN SPAINSanchez leads weaker coalition says Brian O’Leary

21 TRUMP CHALLENGEPaul Garver looks at Democrat presidentialhopefuls

22 GE19 CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONMary Southcott calls for a democraticrevolution

23 POLL TAX LESSONSSimon Hannah looks back on 30thanniversary

4 OUR HISTORY 88The Socialist Challenge

5 EDITORIAL Labour’s long haul

6 POINTS & CROSSINGSPaul Salveson on northern lessons forLabour

7 GREENWATCHDave Toke on nuclear fantasies

24 YOUTH VIEW Alice Arkwright on domestic violence

25 FILM REVIEWPatrick Mulcahy on Parasite

26 BOOK REVIEWSDuncan Bowie on Legacy of Empire,Treason, Otto Bauer, Ellen Wilkinson;Peter Kenyon on Miserablism ; GlynFord on Mindf..k; Don Flynn on WalterRodney; Nigel Watt on DagHammarskjold, Mike Davis on WilliamGodwin

32 STRASBOURG VIEWJulie Ward says keep the Euro flagflying

Sanchez scrapes back in Spain – Page20

Ending domestic violence Page –Page 24

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Cover by Martin Rowson


4 CHARTIST January/February 2020

OUR HISTORY

Stuart Holland was an Oxford educated economist,with degrees in history and economics, who ongraduating worked with the economist ThomasBalogh and then in the cabinet office for HaroldWilson in 1964. After a research fellowship at

Sussex University, he then in 1974 became advisor to JudithHart, the Minister for International Development. In 1972 hehad published a study of ‘The State as Entrepreneur’. This ledto his involvement in develop-ing the Labour Party’s economicstrategy while Labour was inopposition, submitting a num-ber of papers to the NationalExecutive Committee and itssub-committees, with many ofhis ideas being incorporatedinto the Labour Programme1973 and the manifesto for theFebruary 1974 election.

In 1979, Holland was electedas MP for Vauxhall in London.He stood down in 1989 to returnto academia, moving to theEuropean University Institutein Florence. Having taught at arange of universities and writ-ten numerous books and arti-cles, Holland, now 79, isattached to the University ofCoimbra in Portugal.

Holland challenged themixed economy perspective pre-sented by Anthony Crosland inhis Future of Socialism andsubsequent works, which domi-nated Labour Party economicthinking until the early 1970’s.Holland was influenced by theFrench experience of economicplanning and the Belgiansocialist Prime Minister PaulHenri Spaak and President ofthe European Steel and CoalCommunity and was involved inthe development of LabourParty policy on the CommonMarket in the 1960’s and thedevelopment of the Treaty ofRome. He now focuses mainlyon European and internationaleconomics. He has maintainedan interest in internationaldevelopment, having served as shadow Minister between 1983and 1987, under Kinnock’s leadership. He has written a bookon Eritrea.

The Socialist Challenge, published in 1975, set out the theo-retical basis and the programme that was to become known asthe Alterative Economic Strategy. At the time the LabourParty NEC and the shadow cabinet were dominated by a left-wing group which included Tony Benn, Ian Mikardo, EricHeffer, Judith Hart and Albert Booth. Tony Benn as Secretaryof State for Industry tried to implement the strategy, but wasmoved to Energy secretary where he had less influence. The

Stuart HollandThe Socialist Challenge (1975)

story of the rise and fall of the new economic policy is told inJohn Medhurst’s That Option no longer Exists, published in2014.

“What is the socialist challenge? Essentially, it is the claimthat we can transform the injustice, inequality and inefficien-cy of modern capitalism. In Britain in the early 1970’s theLabour Party shaped a radical new strategy for the begin-nings of such transformation. The programme for extended

public ownership, strategicplanning and workers’ democra-cy opened the feasibility of agenuine transition to socialismin a democratic society. For thefirst time since the immediatepost-war period, the socialistchallenge moved from theory tothe politics of a mass party ingovernment.”

“ The main dimensions ofLabour’s socialist challengeinclude not only a penetrationof the commanding heights ofmodern capitalism in the meso-economic sector, but also asimultaneous transformation ofthe prevailing class structureswhich concentrate economic andsocial power in the hands of alargely self-perpetuating oli-garchy. This can never be acomplete or final process. Thereis no socialist utopia at the endof a specific programme fortransformation.”

“ Socialism is the creation ofa society in which it is easier tosecure self-fulfilment throughserving society than throughthe exclusive pursuit of selfalone. .. It is a society in whichpeople are both practical andidealists.”

“Progress to socialism shouldbe an on-going process, but onein which the critical centres ofcapitalist power and class weretransformed by a socialist gov-ernment, backed by the tradeunions. It is a key premise ofthis analysis that such transfor-mation can be achieved troughdemocratic processes. Without

such democratic change, transition to socialism could proveless a controlled transition in the public interest, an explosionof social resentment and political counter-reaction challeng-ing freedoms which are rightly held dear even in a economical-ly unjust society. On the other hand, such democratic reformsmust be effectively revolutionary in character. In other words,they must reverse the current dominance of capitalist mods ofproduction and capitalist motivation into a dominance ofdemocratically controlled socialism. They must transform cap-italist society rather than try ineffectively to alleviate itsimplicit injustice.”

OUR HISTORY - 88



EDITORIAL

Labour suffered a heavy defeat on 12th December.Identifying the reasons for failure to unseat a Torygovernment presiding over nine years of austeritywill rightly occupy some time. Reasons includeBrexit, Jeremy Corbyn personally, the wrong time,

an overfull manifesto lacking in clear priorities, a poorlyorganised campaign, a hostile media, Conservative lies andmany more.

Labour achieved 10.5 million votes, more than GordonBrown in 2010 and more than Ed Miliband in 2015. But the80 seat Tory majority was the worst Labour loss since 1935.We lost in Leave voting areas and failed to achieve key targetseats in Remain voting areas. One factor stands out: Labourlost significant votes in traditional working class heart-lands—the North East, the Midlands and north Wales, not tomention a near wipe-out in Scotland, which raises theprospect of the break-up of Britain. Labour held votes amongyouth and those in cosmopolitan centres. The loss of numer-ous seats held by Labour for decades—Bolsover, Workington,Blyth, Sedgefield illustrates that class can no longer be a surepredictor of voting intention.

Don Flynn looks at this factor and how Corbynism ener-gised a whole new generation while looking atways to sustain and build allegiance. PaulSalveson explores in more detail thecontrast in Tory promises and thereality for northern towns.Similarly, Bryn Jones findsopportunities for a Labourcounter-offensive againstJohnson’s economic populism.Ever since the deindustriali-sation of the Thatcher years,areas of the north have suf-fered a slow economic andsocial decline. The Blair yearsdid little to rebuild infrastruc-ture and more importantlyworking class culture in theseshattered communities. Youngpeople migrated to the cities leav-ing an aging population vulnerable tothe siren calls of the Brexiteers withtheir scapegoating demonisation of Brusselsand Europe and foreign migrants.

The years of neoliberal economic policies offered theconcession to wage earners that there would be ‘British jobsfor British workers’. Whatever Gordon Brown meant withthis utterance it was understood to be a continuation ofBlair’s promise to be tough on asylum seekers, while EdMiliband underscored this with his ‘control immigration’mugs. A platform has been built on which the Tories erectedtheir hostile environment policies. The truth is free move-ment and migrant labour has benefited the country by sus-taining the, admittedly feeble, economic growth of the lastdecade and providing the social and cultural diversity neededto stay abreast in the modern world.

Nevertheless what transpired from the General Electionwas that however much Labour tried to refocus on a domesticpolicy agenda, on the NHS, on nationalisation, on ending aus-terity and boosting public services the question of Europe andBrexit kept coming up. And Labour’s answer was ambiguous:a renegotiated softer Brexit, another referendum with aRemain option and a neutral leader. Johnson’s Get BrexitDone cut through as a simple mantra. Yes, more voters sup-ported Remain parties (54% to 46%) but in the wrong placesto shift the parliamentary arithmetic.

Labour’s shift to a People’s Vote was all too little, too lateand too ambiguous. Earlier fence-sitting proved disastrous.As Julie Ward and Glyn Ford argue, highlighting thenegatives of Brexit and framing our socialist alternative inEuro-internationalist colours should have happened muchearlier with more vigour. Essentially Labour tried to ridetwo horses and got pulled off both.

Now we are in new territory. Barring a political miracleBrexit will happen on 31st January. But Brexit will not bedone then. The transition period until the end of 2020 willsee fevered negotiations to secure a trade deal and manyother arrangements. The symbolic vote by parliament not toseek an extension is fantasy politics. Trade deals take yearsto negotiate and involve much more than tariffs as NickDearden explains in a chilling unmasking of the threat toworkers’ rights, food and environmental standards with pri-vatisation and corporate free-for-alls. With of Trump’s‘America first’ policy we can be sure he’ll be giving nofavours to Johnson.

Brexit and the election result also throw up huge ques-tions on the constitution. Northern Ireland is set adrift witha sea border and a floundering devolved Stormont raising

the spectre of a united Ireland while Scotland’soverwhelming vote for the SNP pushes a

further independence referendum upthe agenda. Mary Southcott looks

at the inequities in the electionresult that gave disproportionate

numbers of seats to the Toriesand puts the case for a broadconstitutional convention tolook at votes at 16, furtherlocal devolution, House ofLords and above all a PRvoting system.Duncan Bowie is more

critical of Corbyn’s leadershipand the role of his key advis-

ers, pointing to his unpopulari-ty among the wider electorate,

including many traditional Laboursupporters and the widely held view

that he was unfit to be Prime Minister.Jeremy Corbyn is standing down and a

leadership election process is underway.Chartist will be examining the merits of various candi-

dates on our website and we urge readers to submit theirthoughts to the Labour Together coordinated review ofwhere Labour went wrong. Labour has a huge task torebuild support. The consequences of this electoral defeatwill be severe for British people and the Labour Party.

Elsewhere in this issue Ricardo Salva reports on theconvulsions engulfing Chile with over 40 days of strikes andprotest against a right-wing regime. In Spain BrianO’Leary reports on the re-election of Socialist Party underSanchez, with a smaller majority and assesses prospects forthe alliance with the radical Podemos. Paul Garver looksat Democrat presidential hopefuls and the battle to unseatTrump.

This is a reactionary Tory government. Don’t believe theone-nation hype. The only nation we’ll hear a rising drum-beat for is England. But it won’t be the best of England—itsmulticulturalism, social solidarity, creativity and culture.Rather it will be the narrow, nasty, xenophobic, divisive anddemocracy-threatening nationalism that characterised theBrexit campaign. Be prepared for much more of the same asthe Boris Johnson show hits the road and starts to unravel.

Long haul for Labour

This is a reactionary Torygovernment. Don’t believe

the one-nation hype


pletely silent on many areas of‘democratic’ policy. Nothing on PR,nothing about bringing the votingage down and an absence of any-thing concerning regional devolu-tion, such as making city-regionmayors more accountable. Labourunder Corbyn seems to accept thatthe current British political sys-tem is the best of all possibleworlds. Many would disagree.

Back in 2012 I argued inSocialism with a Northern Accentthat Labour needs to addressissues around English regionalidentity and build a politics whichis inclusive and radical. We don’tseem to be any nearer that, withsome on the left still pursuing thecase for an ‘English parliament’that would further marginalise theNorth. Why not have devolutionwithin Labour and build a semi-autonomous Northern Labour?

The coming year, including theLabour leadership election but notjust that, will hopefully see a flow-ering of radical ideas whichLabour can mould into a progres-sive politics that chimes with thetimes. It means accepting Brexitand trying to make the best ofwhat may well be a bad job. Butlet’s look for opportunities, notobstacles. It also means beingmuch more collaborative, workingconstructively with other progres-sive forces including the burgeon-ing number of non-party move-ments, often at a very local level.


C

P&C

Paul Salveson on the challenges of rebuilding the red wall

Grim up North

There’s very little withwhich to console our-selves following theGeneral Election.Labour did particularly

badly in the North of England,and there was little evidence ofthe progressive vote switching tothe Greens, Lib Dems or civicregionalists like the YorkshireParty. The results can be putdown to a number of factors,Brexit being almost certainly themost significant, closely followedby Corbyn’s unpopularity. Thecorrelation between leave-votingNorthern constituencies who havetraditionally voted Labour whichshowed marked swings to theTories, is too obvious to ignore.

In some places, it could beargued that the other progressiveparties helped the Tories win. Inmy neighbouring constituency,Bolton North-East, the Tory hada majority of 337 votes. TheGreens picked up a miserly 689votes and the Lib Dems 1,847.Did they cost the highly respectedformer shop steward, DavidCrausby, his seat?

Should the Greens have stooddown (as they did in neighbouringmarginal Bolton West, in 2017)?They’re a legitimate politicalparty with radical and imagina-tive policies. Labour has donethem no favours and stood a can-didate against Caroline Lucas inBrighton. The party has beenaverse to any semblance of pactsor alliances and it could be arguedthat they got what they deserved.But, to paraphrase Neil Kinnockwhen he said ‘Scargill andThatcher deserved each other, butthe country didn’t deserve either’– the rest of us didn’t deserve tobe saddled with an arrogant ToryGovernment that can now actwith impunity for at least fiveyears, and maybe longer. Thevery clear message in England,specifically, is that Labourremains the dominant force inprogressive politics and that’s notlikely to change very fast. But weneed a different sort of LabourParty from what it has become ifit is going to recover lost ground.

By the time this issue ofChartist appears, Labour will bein the throes of a leadership cam-paign which will sap energies butis obviously needed. Politicianslike Alan Johnson, many defeated

MPs and indeed Tony Blair, arealready calling for a return to ‘thecentre ground’ to win back theLabour heartlands, or rebuild theso-called ‘red wall’ which hascrumbled in the North ofEngland.

I don’t think that’s the answer.Labour needs to be radical butmuch more inclusive. Workingwith other progressive forces isn’tjust about tactical advantage, it’sshowing that you’re a grown-uppolitical force that shies awayfrom tribalism and sectarianism.Yet both characteristics haveplagued Labour these last fewyears. I’m sick to death of hearingpeople talk about such-and-suchbeing ‘a true Socialist’ whilstsomeone else isn’t, as thoughSocialism is some sort of theologi-cal belief and the slightest devia-tion from the canon risks consign-ing you to the burning fires ofhell.

Alongside a cultural shift with-in Labour, the party needs toembrace voting reform. The tidehas shifted away from traditionalbinary politics yet the voting sys-tem continues to prop up thecrumbling edifice. It’s reasonableto assume that a proportional vot-ing system would result in astrong Green presence inParliament. Small civic regional-ists such as the Yorkshire Partymight be able to make more head-way. It could also mean thatfringe right-wing parties winsome seats – an argument oftenused by Labour to oppose PR. Butthat’s democracy. You don’toppose the far right by excludingthem from the political process.

Many on the pro-Corbyn leftwill argue that some of Labour’spolicies were popular, e.g. railnationalisation. Yet how radicalwere Labour’s proposals? Despiterhetoric about ‘new forms of own-ership’ what seemed to be on thecards was a very traditional post-1945 model of state ownership.Corbyn’s populist call for a thirdoff rail fares would have causedchaos on a rail system strugglingwith already-overcrowded trains.It isn’t that wanting fare reduc-tions is wrong – but it neededthinking through in terms ofmore trains, staff and extrainfrastructure. All of which wouldtake years, not a few weeks.

Labour’s manifesto was com-

Paul Salveson’sblog is atwww.paulsalveson.org.uk

Blythe Valley abandons Labour, signalling a trend acrossthe North



Dr David Toke isReader in EnergyPolitics,University ofAberdeen

GREENWATCH

construction time, but they arecounterbalanced by the lack ofeconomies of scale. Indeed, thesize of the proposed Rolls RoyceSMR is roughly the size of theUK's first grid connected'Magnox' reactors. The numberand scope of safety measuresrequired for new reactors hasincreased dramatically since the1950s (extra containment, redun-dancy in primary and secondarysafety injection systems, back updiesel generator sets etc), so intu-itively a smaller reactor does notseem the way to go.

Ordinary engineering rulessuggest that costs will not belower per kW. For example, youstill need to make the same num-ber of many of the parts (e.g.reactor pressure vessels) eventhough the parts may be smaller.Hence savings in cost do notreduce proportionately to size.Rolls Royce plans, whose ownprojections of cheap generatingcosts must be treated with awagon-load of salt, are highlyunlikely to go very far, apart fromuselessly soaking up a few tens of£millions of Government funds.

We can expect a lot more ofthis bull and fantasy as time goeson. Yet eventually, like the othergreat objectives this Governmenthas us believe are going to hap-pen, (rescuing the NHS, deliver-ing a post Brexit boom) peoplemay realise that the rhetoricalfantasy is just what it is, fantasy. C

Dave Toke says Government plans for a programme of small nuclear power stations is acostly non-starter

Nuclear fantasy

The Government is busypushing ‘small modularreactors’ (smrs) as oneof its key means ofboosting jobs in the

North. During the election theGovernment attempted to link afaltering and unlikely 'small mod-ular reactor' (SMR) nuclear pro-gramme with target seats in theNorth. The (so-called) SMR pro-gramme seems highly unlikely onfinancial grounds alone as itwould require a massiveGovernment commitment, and ontop of that engineering questionsundermine the credibility of theprogramme.

The Government has nowissued a press briefing namingDominic Cummings as favouringthe technology as being a meansof boosting the North. Like manyof Boris Johnson's schemes, thisparticular promotion has littlegrounding in reality but isdesigned to stoke populist fan-tasies about how the Governmentcan cut through problems andachieve simple solutions.

The UK's SMR programme,such as it is, is neither modularor small or, for that matter, muchin existence. The Government arebacking plans by Rolls Royce, andhave promised an initial £18mil-lion, but in reality even to buildone prototype plant would requireGovernment to commit to spend-ing over a billion pounds. This isbecause even if the cost of the

reactor were to turn out close towhat Rolls Royce claim (£500 mil-lion) it would require an addition-al several hundred £million forthe rector design to go throughthe required 'General DesignAssessment' (GDA) required of allnew reactors (by the Office forNuclear Regulation). As if thiswas not enough, I understandthat Rolls Royce have demanded,as the price of going through aGDA, a Government commitmentto effectively underwrite severalreactors requiring a Governmentcommitment to raise several £bil-lions before there is any chance ofany power ever being generated.

This financial backgroundalone suggests that this SMRplan is a fantasy that is even lesscredible than Boris's plans for aThames Estuary airport or even abridge between Scotland andIreland.

However, basic engineeringquestions also suggest that theSMR plans will go nowhere veryslowly. The idea of building whatis, in historical terms, a mediumsized nuclear power plant (440MW), defies the logic of nuclearpower development since WW2.This has involved building steadi-ly bigger reactors in order to,apart from anything else 'calcu-late down' (in the words of MycleSchneider) the costs of nuclearsafety measures.

Smaller reactors may (or maynot) reduce expensive delays in

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LABOUR DEFEAT

After the DelugeDon Flynn assesses the Corbyn legacy

principled opposition to the turbo-charged version of global capitalismthat had been favoured during theyears of the Blairite ‘third way’.Corbyn was to the forefront of thissmall band.

With a party membership nowsuddenly rising to the half millionmark the question was whether thisnew enthusiasm for left wing poli-tics could translate into success inthe electoral arena. Corbyn’s cen-trist and Blairite critics thought ‘noway’ and the sound of their jawscrashing into the floor was one ofthe most memorable things thatcame out of the general election of2017. Rather than providing themwith a disaster which they coulddemand Corbyn took ownership ofthey saw voting support for theparty rise to a point where it wasnearly on a par with that won bythe Conservatives. The years ofhung Parliament politics openedout as a result.

Depriving Theresa May of themajority she craved seemed like avictory for Corbyn’s Labour partythat was worth celebrating. In fact,it simply created the conditions thatwere most inimical to the left con-tinuing its uncomplicated marchtowards government driven by theanger and frustration of millenni-als. It was in this hung Parliamentthat Brexit became the absolute log-jam that prevented serious consid-eration of the policy measures need-ed to overcome austerity and beginthe restructuring of the economy. Italso exposed the divisions in the

decades, done the most to adapt tothe conditions that prevailed incompetitive, individualised labourmarkets. In the jargon of the time,they had invested in themselves byundergoing extensive periods ofhigher education, taking on the riskof a huge debt overhang in the hopethat they would reap the rewards ofwell-paid, skilled professionalemployment.

The Great Recession that fol-lowed the debt crisis showed what ahollow hope this was for a large pro-portion of these young people. Thejobs market was increasingly con-figured around the principle of pre-carity which replaced the vista ofwell-paid employment with years ofunpaid internships for those tryingto get into the creative industries,and zero-hour and Uber-style jobsfor the rest. Meanwhile asset infla-tion – a direct consequence of thestate support given to sectors whichhad caused the crisis in the firstplace – led to soaring house priceswhich ended the dream of owning ahome, or even that of affordablerenting.

It was this large group of peoplewho saw sense in the demandsbeing formulated on the left of theLabour party for major structuralreform which would give a leadingrole to democratic political proce-dures and institutions in shaping abetter society. In turning in thatdirection they came across a smallgroup of leftist politicians who hadspent decades on the fringe of theparty precisely because of their

Corbyn’s most importantachievement is that hegave a political voice to ageneration destined toexist as 21st century

capitalism’s exploited working class.Considering the need for the politi-cal representation of this new prole-tariat as neoliberal globalisationmoves deeper into crisis is the criti-cal next step for the Labour party.

Does the scale of Labour’s defeatin the unwanted December generalelection mean the end ofCorbynism? How much of thereduction of the party’s share of thevote is down to its four years of dal-liance with left wing socialist stand-points which the electorate hasshown decisively that it is not pre-pared to support? What aboutCorbyn himself? Portrayed in themainstream media as a Londonbubble politician, indecisive on keyissues and tainted with the chargeof antisemitism; was he the reasonwhy so many so-called traditionalLabour voters couldn’t bring them-selves to vote for the party thistime?

Getting a sense of the taskswhich now have to be taken on bysocialists in the party means, in thefirst instance, understanding whatCorbynism was and why the pack-age constructed around the manand his principles were insufficientto get Labour into power this timeround.

Corbynism is best understood asa delayed political response to theearthquake that hit globalised capi-talism seven years previously. Thecrisis that exploded in 2008imposed an all-hands-to-the-pumpemergency response to the collapseof banking credit on all the majorparties. Support quantitative eas-ing, direct bailouts for the banksand austerity-driven cuts to publicservices was embraced across theboard with Labour scarcely distin-guishing itself from theConservative party’s demands fordeep cuts to the living standards ofthe working and lower middle class-es. Millennials take the biggest hit

Over the immediately followingyears one section of the populationamong the worst hit by these mea-sures began to put together a politi-cal response which challenged theassumptions behind austerity poli-cies. This was the younger agecohorts which had, in previous

Don Flynn isChartist’smanaging editor



NEW MP VIEW

heading for the better prospects ofLondon and the South East. Theloss of this segment from communi-ty life in the affected areas meantan end to the renewal of workingclass culture, particularly that partof it that was conducive to resis-tance and struggle against elites.

The dispute over the UK’s mem-bership of the EU suddenly offeredpeople who had lost the habit of dig-ging in and fighting back the chanceto at least take sides in an argu-ment that was driven by splits inthe ruling class. Rebellion in pur-suit of its own interests had ceasedto be a part of the daily life of thesecommunities, but at least they couldnow take on a foot soldier’s role insomeone else’s revolt. The vicariouspleasures to be got from identifica-tion with other people’s victories, sostrongly present in the fanaticismthat goes with supporting footballteams, was present in the backinggiven to the Faragist insurgencyagainst Europe. What next?

In retrospect it seems inevitablethat Corbynism would come to griefbecause of its inability to transcendthe dilemmas imposed on it by hungParliament politics. With identitypolitics mobilised to full screamingpitch, the case for a democraticallyaccountable government to take theleading role in getting sustainable

progressive camp as the debatearound leaving the EU pushed peo-ple into the extremes of Brexit andRemain.

The team immediately roundCorbyn saw the dangers for Labourif it tried to resolve its dilemma bysimply coming down on one side orthe other. Its initial instinct inseeking to honour the referendumvote by arguing for the softestBrexit possible had to confront thebrutal fact that this would mean thealienation of its newly won supportfrom young voters, who largelyfavoured remain. The long period ofattempting to square this circle ledto disaffection among pro-Brexitworking class voters in Wales, theMidlands and the smaller towns ofthe North. But even more, the vacil-lation weakened Labour’s appealamong people of more cosmopolitaninclination causing a drift of over amillion votes to the LiberalDemocrats and Greens.

The conundrum this created forthe party’s strategists was under-scored by the realities of the inter-nal migrations of British citizensover the past forty years which havecome about from the deindustriali-sation of the Midlands, the Northand South Wales. The young andeducated were leaving the parts ofthe country which had been plungedinto bleak economic dead ends,

growth back into the economy,implementing everything requiredunder the terms of the ‘Green Deal’,bringing the provision of homesback into the realm of public policy,and turning the tide on inequalityacross British society was drownedout in the noise.

What next? Dismissing the callsby the right wing and centrists inthe party who think that a leaderwith charisma is all that is neededwill be the easiest thing to do as theelections for Corbyn’s successor getunderway. Socialists will need tocounter banality of this sort withthe demand that post-CorbynLabour continues to engage withthe generation of newly politicisedpeople who are going to spend thenext decades of their lives strug-gling for security in their employ-ment, searching for affordablehomes, and trying to raise familiesin the choking smog of the country’scongested cities.

Viewed from this standpointCorbynism did not fail. Whilst theleap into government office wasbeyond it at this moment in time, ithas forged a bond with the socialforces that will grow stronger andmore combative in the comingyears. The next Labour leader hasto be someone with the vision andstrategies for building on thisachievement.

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A visible reminderApsana Begum is newly elected Labour MP for the East London constituency of Poplar andLimehouse. She has made history by being the first hijab wearing Bengali woman to be anMP. Here she recounts her first week in the House of Commons:

The diversity of Labour’s 202MPs was in striking contrast to thelack of diversity on the Tory bench-es. [Labour has 51% women MPs;20% of its MPs are from BAMEbackgrounds]. Many of the newMPs are rooted in their local com-munities having been born andraised there—as I was in Poplar &Limehouse.

So there is a lot to celebrate andbe proud of. As a Bengali woman itsignals to the Tories that we’re justas much in public spaces as in oth-ers and we can represent all people.I’m proud to be someone who can bea visible reminder to Boris Johnsonthat we are here and not going any-where. Hopefully this gives confi-dence to others. We’ll call outracism and discrimination every-where, especially in governmentpolicies.

to do more to create an environmentin meetings which are less hostileand where we communicate differ-ences in a more civil way. We hadlittle time for reflection.

Outside the House I joinedSocialist Campaign Group andother MPs on an RMT protestagainst Tory plans to restrict theright to strike.

As a hijab wearing Bengali Inoted heads were turned when Iwas first introduced. MPs on theTory benches were thumbingthrough the little MembersDirectory book, checking ‘who’sthat’. I wore my id lanyard all thetime so I didn’t get the reactionDawn Butler had which was a num-ber of Tory MPs thinking she was acleaner. I got comments, irrelevantquestions that you wouldn’t beasked in a job interview.

Induction happened over theweekend (preceding the sit-ting of the HoC). We werebriefed by different depart-ments on parliamentary ser-

vices, personal security and so on. Igot a parliamentary buddy.

Then before I knew it we are inthe Chamber and being sworn in.The first week was pretty intensewith a lot of information to digest ina short time.

Westminster is a bit likeHogwarts. Easy to get lost in themany corridors.

Then there were the first votes. Ivoted against the EU WithdrawalBill. It didn’t take long after theQueen’s Speech to find pre-electionpledges being broken. Quite dis-heartening.

The new intake MPs were wel-comed at the PLP meeting. We need

Apsana Begumwas elected with38,660 votes, a28,904 majoritywith 63.1% ofthe vote

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LABOUR FAILURE

GE 2019 Retrospect and prospectsIn anger as well as sadness Duncan Bowie reflects on failure and lost opportunities

Labour may have hoped the BREX-IT party would split the Leave vote,but in practice much of the Leavevote in Labour ‘strongholds’ went tothe Conservatives, while in Londonand the wider South East someRemain votes went to the LibDemsand the Greens – though not asmany as we had feared as theLibDem ‘Revoke article 50’ positionwas seen as undemocratic and asthe ‘remain alliance’ with theGreens and Plaid Cymru provedlargely ineffective.

Labour however should havespent the last three years not con-templating its position on BREXITbut dealing with the causes ofBREXIT – the growing inequalitybetween London and the widerSouth East and the Northern andMidlands regions. We did notunderstand how fed up people werewith what they saw as London cen-tric elitist politics which had forgot-ten them. The rhetoric of blamingthe Conservatives for austerity wasnot enough. The fact that so manypeople believed that the Toriescould ‘make Britain great again’and that Johnson was a ‘One-nationConservative’ in the Disraelian tra-dition, who understood the ‘ condi-tion of England’ question, and thatLabour could not and did not, repre-sents a change in the politicaldynamic of the country which maybe irreversible. Labour can nolonger claim to be the party of the

how London centric the LabourParty has become and it is themembership not just the MPs andNational Executive who need towiden their perspective. The partymay have the largest ever member-ship, but this does not mean we areany more representative of thewider electorate, as is demonstratedby the fact that this is the worstresult for Labour since 1935 interms of seats won. While manyLondon constituencies might beable to send out hundreds ofactivists to canvass and leaflet, inmany of the so-called safe Labourseats elsewhere, candidates werestruggling to find activists to get outon the streets. Labour does notdeserve votes where it has beeninactive and has no local basis.

BREXIT of course gets much ofthe blame. Given the divisionswithin the electorate as well aswithin the Parliamentary LabourParty and wider party membership,it was difficult for the Party todevelop and maintain an approachwhich avoided further divisions.Labour’s failure to adopt a consis-tent and united position, did usmajor damage. The position of ‘con-structive ambivalence’ or ‘sitting onthe fence’, while calling for a secondreferendum and arguing thatLabour could somehow negotiate abetter deal with the EU, which wewould then neither advocate oroppose, was just not credible.

Losing the election was notjust a consequence of afailure of Labour strategyover the last few weeksbut the perhaps

inevitable consequence of an inabili-ty to face up to the reality of thepolitical context in which we foundourselves and to present a convinc-ing political position. We failed toconvince the electorate that wecould be a party of government. Wefailed to demonstrate that Labouractually had the answers to thequestions the electorate was asking– and the key question was fromthose who had suffered most from adecade of austerity, could we actual-ly improve their quality of life. Thefact that it was in those constituen-cies that the electorate were mostdisadvantaged, that the swing awayfrom Labour was greatest is anindelible stain on the record of ourparty and movement. The fact thatpeople who had suffered most froma decade of austerity, and a longerperiod of abandonment by‘Westminster‘ politicians, actuallystill had most to lose, had more con-fidence in a Conservative govern-ment led by a right-wing upper-class charlatan shows the depth ofour failure. Let us be clear. TheLabour Party’s failure has betrayedthe next generation as well as thecurrent generation.

Those of us in London and thewider South East need to recognise

Duncan Bowie isChartist ReviewsEditor



WALES

quently taking difficult decisionsand responsibility for them hasbeen somewhat of a new experience.His past associations have left himopen to criticism, much of it grosslyunfair. Criticising the Israeli statedoes not make him an anti-Semite,but the impression that he is weakon controlling the behaviour of hishistorical associates, to whom hefeels an obligation of loyalty, howev-er much they discredit his and theLabour Party’s position has doneuntold damage, and he has to takesome of the responsibility for this.

The antipathy to Corbyn washowever not just related to thisissue – he was widely seen as some-one really who did not have much ofa clue about the lives and aspira-tions of working-class people. Givenhis relatively humble lifestyle thismay seem unjust. The fact that theparty leader was more unpopularthan the party as a whole is anappalling basis for an election cam-paign, and Corbyn would havegiven his greatest service to theparty if he had stood down somemonths ago, so we could have select-ed a leader who was a positiverather than negative factor - by thetime the election was called it wasfar too late.

The notion of ‘Corbynism’ and the

working class.This returns us to the issue of the

state of the Labour Party and thefailure of leadership. I supportedCorbyn’s nomination for the partyleadership because I wanted LabourParty policies to shift to the left. Ihad hoped that a more democraticparty would lead to a leadershipcloser to the membership and to amore collaborative way of workingat all levels within the party. I waswrong. We have had increased fac-tionalism within the party to theextent that the electorate as a wholesees us as fighting among ourselvesrather than fighting for them. Wehave had far too little discussion ofpolicy options (how the manifesto,which was actually far better than Iexpected, was written remains amystery) and too much focus on per-sonalities and internal power strug-gles. The cliquism and nepotismaround the Corbyn leadership isunforgivable and resulted us inmarginalising good left politiciansbecause they happen to disagreewith Corbyn or have fallen out withone of his acolytes. I do not doubtCorbyn is a very principled individ-ual. Unfortunately, he remains aprotest politician – he has after allnever had to run anything (otherthan the Labour Party) and conse-

division of the party into‘Corbynistas’ and those criticalof/opposed to ‘Corbynism’, had nega-tive consequences. The socialist casecannot be linked to a single individ-ual, whether it be Lenin, Stalin,Mao, Castro, Chavez or Corbyn (orfor that matter any potential newleader). We must move to a morecollectivist leadership, using a rangeof experience and talents which wehave within the ParliamentaryLabour Party. If the left is to makea more positive contribution, and Iinclude Momentum in that designa-tion, let us focus on developing poli-cies which are both socialist andpotentially popular, and spend a bitmore time promoting them to thewider electorate, and a bit less ener-gy on internal powers struggles, fac-tion fights, compiling slates andslagging off and slandering fellowparty members. You cannot blamethe media, when you supply themedia with its ammunition.

Hopefully Chartist will help tocontribute to an improved culturewithin the party and the widermovement and desist from seekingto attach the future of the Britishsocialist movement to the promotionto leadership of one or two specificindividuals. Leadership is impor-tant to the future, but so are we all.

Labour falters in WalesPeter Rowlands on Tory gains in north and holds for Labour in south

they had regained in a by-electiononly three months before.

The next big electoral test inWales is the election for the WelshGovernment in May 2021. TheTories will be looking to take thoseseats they have recently captured,while Labour and Plaid will obvi-ously fight to at least retain whatthey have, if not better it. Hopefullythe Brexit Party will disappearfrom the Assembly, where theyhave been a complete shambles.

Labour must obviously seek toreconnect with the large numbersthat deserted it in the Leave votingareas, as it must in England.

The future is uncertain. A keyproblem will be the replacement, ifthat is to happen, of the largeamounts of EU aid that Walesreceives, which the Tories mightnot see fit to replicate. And withouta favourable trade deal the Welsheconomy, because of its higher vol-ume of trade with the EU than theUK as a whole, is particularly vul-nerable. It’s likely to be a bumpyride.

the old coal valleys were, like thosein the north, post industrial, moredepressed than the north andstrongly Leave voting, but althoughboth the Tory and the Brexit Partyvote increased substantially in alltheses seats the strength of theLabour vote was much strongerhere than in the north-east, pre-venting a Tory break-through.Although the combined Tory andBrexit Party vote was greater thanthe Labour vote in Torfaen, as itwas in the two Newport seats andAlyn and Deeside, the only Labourseat in the north that the Toriesdidn’t take.

It was a bad election for PlaidCymru also, despite mountinginterest in Welsh independence.They retained the four seats thatthey held, but their vote sharedropped by about 5%, and theyshould have taken Ynys Mon,which they hold for the Assembly.

The LibDems didn’t do as well asin England, as Wales was more tilt-ed to Leave, and they lost their onlyseat, Brecon and Radnor, which

The election result inWales was similar, ifslightly worse forLabour, than the electionin the UK. In Wales

Labour lost 8% of its previous voteshare and six seats out of 28, all tothe Tories. However, there was aclear contrast between north andsouth. In the south seats thought tobe vulnerable like Gower, CardiffNorth and Newport West wereretained, with the loss of onlyBridgend. All except one of a groupof five Labour held seats in thenorth-east, fell to the Tories. Theseseats were in many ways typical ofthe seats that fell to the Tories inthe North and Midlands of Britain.The Tories also took Ynys Mon(Anglesey), a strange three waymarginal.

It is possible that the result inpart reflected problems with thelocal health board, which had beenin special measures for some time,and blamed on the Welsh LabourGovernment.

In the south most of the seats in

Peter Rowlandsis a member ofSwansea EastCLP

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BREXIT

BREXIT after Johnson’s victoryGlyn Ford says Johnson will be torn between machismo and pragmatism over Brexit

Sweden. In Brussels the negotia-tions - to the great disappoint-ment of Phil Hogan the IrishCommissioner responsible forInternal Trade - will be led byMichael Barnier reporting directlyto Commission President Ursulavon der Leyen. He will strike ahard bargain. Von der Leyenhopes the European Council willgive her a flexible negotiatingmandate. She may be disappoint-ed. If the UK wants to re-openlong closed chapters so may coun-tries like Poland and the rest.There is a real prospect that thetwo sides may not be able to makeand ratify any Agreement andwhat is absolutely clear is thiswon’t happen in the mixed compe-tence areas around investmentand transport which require notonly ratification by qualifiedmajority in the Council and by theEuropean Parliament (EP), butunanimity in Council and also bythe EP and the 27 Member StatesNational Parliaments plus insome cases Regional Parliaments.This ratification process in itselfin the past has taken up to fiveyears to complete.

Johnson will be torn betweenmachismo and pragmatism. Thegolden vistas of an FTA with theUSA beckon. From 1st Februarythe UK will be free to enter intonegotiations with potential tradepartners, but few - and especiallyWashington - will signal the dot-ted line until the UK’s futuretrade relationship with the EU isclear. An ideological Johnson willclose early negotiations with theEU to reap the supposed rewardsof Washington and their chlori-nated chicken. All will prove moregruelling than anticipated. Japan,Canada and Korea, who alreadyhave FTAs with the EU, will notbe offering their current terms toLondon. They will be looking fordeals leaning more in their favouras they lose the economies of scaleof dealing with the EU. The situa-tion is not helped by the fact thatWhitehall will be struggling withcapacity problems with scarce offi-cials capable of trade negotiationsafter more than forty years of theUK having no competence intrade matters.

Johnson's majority gives himthe full five years, save for someextraordinary event. However thepromise is hidden in plain sight

December 12th deliv-ered a solid majorityfor Johnson and theConservative Party.All 632 Tory candi-

dates were required to sign apledge to back Johnson’s BrexitDeal in the House of Commons byvoting for the WithdrawalAgreement if elected. The processis already underway and will beconcluded well in time for theUnited Kingdom to leave the EUon January 31st. Despite the 54-46 vote for Remain over LeaveParties there is no question of theHouse of Lords blocking the pas-sage of the Bill with ‘GettingBrexit Done’ virtually the entiretyof Johnson’s election campaign.Remain and a Second Referendumwere always deliquescentdemands. The future for the inter-nationalist left will be REFORM,REVOLT, REJOIN.

Once we leave there will thenbe a ‘transition’ period until 31stDecember 2020 when the UK isoutside the EU and itsInstitutions but remains tied toEU law and regulation. This peri-od, now dramatically shrunk byMay and Johnson’s earlier Brexittravails and the consequentdelays, was designed to providethe space for the EU & UK tonegotiate a Free Trade Agreement(FTA). This is now an impossiblecalendar unless the Tories settlefor a minimal ‘dirty’ deal limitedto goods plus freedom of move-ment for business, leaving ser-vices to be tidied up later. Thedecision not to seek any furtherextension from Brussels meanschronology strangling content andresuscitates the prospect, atworst, of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit and, atbest, the most brutal Brexit withall the consequences that follow.

We have to hope Johnson con-tinues to be duplicitous andtreacherous. For the only way outis to do an interim deal - ratherthan transitional deal - for ser-vices, particularly financial ser-vices, that maintains the statusquo while the base FTA is filledout for additional agreements.

The timing will be tight eventfor a ‘dirty’ deal and all the moreso as the UK seeks to sharplydiverge from current regulatoryalignment with the EU as Britainseeks to model tax, economy andlabour market with Singapore not

with the anticipation of the begin-ning of the end of the EnglishEmpire with the break-up of theUK. On December 12th the Torywrit ran neither in Scotland norNorthern Ireland. TheIndependence Referendum inScotland in 2014 was intended tobe a once in a generation event,but that logic is demolished byBrexit. One key argument used tohold back the late swell of supportfor independence was that a ‘yes’vote would leave Scotlandmarooned outside the EU. NowBrexit sees Scotland, that votedoverwhelmingly remain, draggedout of the European Unionagainst its will. The fact that theSNP won 48 out of 59 seats inScotland provides an unanswer-able mandate for a secondReferendum, and impossible todeny if revalidated in the 2021Scottish Assembly elections.

On the island of Ireland the1998 ‘Good Friday Agreement’provided for, in appropriate cir-cumstances, a Referendum onIrish Unification. Johnson’s EUDeal chooses to draw a regulatoryand customs border down the mid-dle of the Irish Sea rather thanbetween the Republic of Irelandand the North. This creates aneconomic union that alongside thesocial changes in the south makesan inexorable logic of future politi-cal union. The triggering made allthe more predictable when for thefirst time ever the NationalistParties just outpolled theUnionists in the North.

Glyn Ford was aLabour MEP forover 20 years

Johnson - torn between machismo and pragmatism

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Tom Miller is co-chair OpenLabour and aBrent councillor

with Corbyn pose the same ques-tion: when stuck, why couldn’t weadapt?

Perhaps the most over-usedquotation in politics is fromAntonio Gramsci, namely that“The old is dying, but the newcannot be born”. But our job isprecisely to make sure that thenew is born; as such, we need tomake maximum use of the oppor-tunity in defeat. We cannot sim-ply repeat the experience – wemust make deep reachingchanges.

We hold a unique opportunityto preserve Corbynism’s bestaspects (democracy, popular andtransformative policy), and castaside the contradictory urges thathold the left back (top-down sec-tarianism, unwillingness to listenor adapt, refusal to put strategyfirst).

By embracing a more open andflexible model of politics,Corbynism has the chance toevolve into a broader left, capableof being more responsive to criti-cism, promoting party unity, andgenerating much wider appeal.This requires both the defensivetrench mentality held on part ofthe Momentum left and theprospect of a return to liberal cen-trism to be decisively rejected,and quickly. Now is the time foropen minds, open political culture,and the return of socialists to apolitics of hope. C

Tom Miller reflects on the reasons for defeat and identifies seeds for renewal

After darkness, light

It is difficult to imaginemore painful circumstancesin which to be writing.Labour under a socialistleadership has suffered a

defeat so fundamental that evenmany areas which are core to ourParty’s sense of self are lost to us.Boris Johnson has secured a hege-mony for a substantial bloc ofnationalist voters, ranging fromright to left on the economy, whohad previously voted for Labour,the Tories, and UKIP. It mayendure for a decade.

Labour has been unable to rallya rival alliance around a social-democratic internationalism,trapped by party rivalries, a hos-tile media, a fragmenting elec-toral system, internal strife, anddeclining historic base. Left strug-gling with these obstacles, ourleadership team has looked out oftouch, poorly managed and organ-ised, ignorant or hostile to outsidecritics, and supportive of bureau-cratic centralism inside the party.The 2019 election is a coffin witha hundred nails.

Despite popular policies, weproven ourselves to be fundamen-tally not up to the task of keepingexisting support, winning newpeople over, or introducing a realstrategy for either.

It is true that the Party’s Brexitposition has cost it much supportwith ‘Labour leave’ voters. But wealso lost more ‘Labour remainers’to the Lib Dems and Greens thanthe Labour/Tory gap in many ofthese seats. We lost a large num-ber of seats to the remain-friendlySNP.

It now matters little, but thefact is that there was never anadequate Brexit position forLabour to take, and it was alwaysat a disadvantage following theseamless alliance between theBrexit Party and the Tories.

Labour’s Brexit position devel-oped so slowly that it left us mereweeks to persuade people of thepolicy we settled on. It represent-ed a concession to the People’sVote campaign which would havenever come about if Labour hadworked earlier to counter TheresaMay’s framing of what Brexitmeant, and had instead advocatedearly for a model like Norway+. Acommitment to fighting (oftenCorbynite) activists on conference

floor, dithering and splitting inmedia appearances once it wasdone, only added to this.

We can change what brought ushere.

These failures a symptom of thedeeper cause for Labour’s defeat,which is that it is far too slow tolisten and change, and far tooquick to applaud itself for wherev-er it currently is.

The years that have followedCorbyn’s election to office havebeen marked by central control ofcampaigns and policy. A singleloyalist slate dominates the NEC,all of our policy making struc-tures, and has been free to selectcandidates itself and impose themover the will of local parties. Astructure of social media outridersand trench mentality rhetoric inlocal parties both invoke the lead-ership to stifle debate and diversi-ty.

Since the election, those whobenefit by preserving this setuphave tried to exclusively blameLabour’s Brexit position for los-ing. This does nothing to interro-gate the statistics or to explainthe scale of the defeat. It is unde-niable that low public trust in theleadership overall, some ofJeremy’s past, anti-Semitism, thelarge volume of policies requiringbig spends and our image as aparty filled with sectarians allplayed a role.

Both Brexit and discontent

Antonio Gramsci - “The old is dying, but the new cannot be born”

ELECTION BLUES



EXTINCTION REBELLION

Peter Cole is a 76year old emeritusprofessor ofrespiratorymedicine atImperial College,London. He wasactive in thesouth of the USAduring the CivilRights marchesof 1963/4

change to the world’s children. “Iam a rebel so that I can look mygrandchildren in the eye”, stressedthis author. The UN reports 1000children die daily (mainly in theglobal south) from climate change,this figure increasing as feed-backloops accelerate emissions to a tip-ping point when irreversibilityresults in the 6th Mass extinction.

Extinction Rebellion Tells theTruth of social as well as climatescience, using mobilisation throughactions which are disruptive, non-violent, respectful, having an ele-ment of self-sacrifice. It has incon-venienced the public to draw mediaattention to the CEE and build amass movement but there mustalways be a balance between caus-ing disruption and building popularsupport. Hunger striking inconve-niences ourselves rather than thepublic, is socially and psychological-ly rather than economically disrup-tive, and can help mobilise ‘peoplepower’ against inaction of the gov-ernment.

Parliament declared a CEE on1st May 2019 but failed to act with-in six months. The CEE Bill is aresponse to this. We urge everyonein the UK to lobby their MP untilsufficient cross party support for theBill enables it to become law. Ifthere is insufficient progress on theBill by Spring 2020 disruptiverebellion will occur, includingGCHS.

Climate emergency hunger striker Peter Cole explains why he and others took dramaticaction in the UK and worldwide

Hunger strike against global inaction

On 18th NovemberExtinction Rebellion(XR), a peaceful civildisobedience move-ment, began a one

week Global Climate Hunger Strike(GCHS) to highlight the world’s gov-ernments inaction on the Climateand Ecological Emergency (CEE)and to demand climate justice. Itlinked current food shortages in theglobal south with food vulnerabilityeverywhere through the slogan “NoFood, No Future”, with 820 millionhungry and billions threatened withstarvation unless we Act Now.Hunger Strikers chose to forgo theirprivileged access to food to highlightour shared food vulnerability and topressure governments to act.

Those contemplating strikingconsulted their doctor. More than520 people participated worldwide,more than 260 in the UK. They tookwater and some vitamin and miner-al supplements (e.g. vitamin B1,potassium, magnesium and phos-phate). The GCHS was flexible,with people able to join for 24 hoursor the full week, or do ‘rollinghunger strikes’ with 24 hours ormore of fasting interspersed witheating.

Some strikers chose to prolongtheir strike in the USA (2),Palestine (1), Australia (1), Ghana(1) and UK (5). In the UK this coin-cided with the General Election, sohunger strikers sat in front of themain political party headquarters(HQs) seeking to secure their lead-ers’ support for a CEE Bill to beadopted in Parliament. The Greenparty, Plaid Cymru, Labour andLiberal Democrats engaged to vary-ing degrees but the Brexit andConservative parties failed to do so.Hunger strikers were ejected fromthe latter two HQs on attempting todeliver invitations to discussions.Seven invitations were issued toConservative Party leader andPrime Minister Boris Johnson - invain.

Extinction Rebellion is ‘beyondpolitics’ but sought the support of allMP candidates for the Bill, with 220pledging their support (15 nowelected MPs). The Bill has threedemands: for the government toTell the Truth about CEE to thepublic through the media; for thegovernment to Act Now, committingto halting nature loss and carbon

emissions by 2025; and for aCitizens Assembly to determine thepolicies to achieve this, based on adeliberative consideration of the sci-ence.

Non-engagement of theConservative party and their mani-festo seeking carbon neutrality by2050 means mass death as scienceshows. It is akin to calling the firebrigade in 30 years’ time when one’shouse is now on fire. MarkoStepanov said “A green revolutionwill change the economic and sociallandscape. These people behind us(sic Conservative party) are afraidof losing their vested interests, theirprivileges and their entitlements.”

Three UK hunger strikers(Julian May, Marko Stepanov andPeter Cole) completed 26 days feel-ing no hunger after three days.Slow thought and speech, progres-sive weakness and weight loss inthe region of 10 to 15 Kg ensuedand cold, wind and rain took theirtoll but morale was boosted by XRsupporters. Blood tests monitoredelectrolytes, kidney and liver func-tion. Infection during, and re-feed-ing at the conclusion of the strikeare the greatest dangers to life -mortality of World War 2 concentra-tion camp prisoners increased whenliberated and given free food. Re-feeding is gradual over 3-4 weeks.

Motives for adopting a hungerstrike varied but we unite in ouralarm at the threat of climate C

Peter Cole (left) Extinction Rebellion hunger protest



Bryn Jones is apoliticalsociologist andofficer of BathCLP

offensive. If and when the plannedcapital investment could take yearsto regenerate run-down areas whilethe bidding for ‘new towns’ fundingcould trigger new political rifts andconflicts. Labour needs to havealternative policies to promotethrough aggressive campaigns root-ed in social movements and localcommunities.

One such counter-strategy couldutilise the successful Preston Modelthat has grown and revitalised thatarea’s economy by focussing largeanchor institutions’ spending ongoods and services from local sup-pliers. If, as often follows a generalelection, the party in governmentloses control of councils in subse-quent local elections, Labour’snational party organisation needs tobe ready with beefed-up versions ofthe Preston model, and similar poli-cies, to expose the feebleness of Torymeasures for run-down northernand midlands towns.

Tory attempts to ride the twohorses of neoliberal free trade andpublicly funded, infrastructuredevelopment are highly likely tocome unstuck. Their ‘escape’ fromthe EU into the sunny uplands ofderegulated international freetrade, is essentially an attempt tobreathe new life into neoliberalglobalism. However, inherent socio-economic contradictions in this com-bination of economic populism andneoliberalism may undermineattempts to build a solid electoralbase in ex-industrial Labour heart-lands. They could instead providesources for a more credible Labouralternative. C

Bryn Jones finds the Tories adaptation to state intervention is an opportunity for a Labourcounter offensive

Johnson’s economic populism

Following the Tories’sweeping gains inLabour’s northern andmidlands heartlands,Boris Johnson’s pledges

to these ‘left-behind’ areas hasbecome a major post-election focus.One that is also crucial to reverseLabour’s electoral fortunes. For itrepresents a major test of the newTory paradigm. Put simplistically,this is akin to the challenge doggingDonald Trump’s similar form of eco-nomic populism: how to maintain afree-market neoliberal frameworkwhilst simultaneously using stateintervention and fiscal levers toraise incomes and standards for theeconomically – usually workingclass – disadvantaged.

Many believe that Trump repaidpolitical debts to his finance capitalbackers by reinforcing the neoliber-al dimension with tax cuts andderegulation (e.g.in health care) atthe expense of measures that couldreduce working class deprivation.Trump’s popularity partiallyendures because tax cuts haveboosted general economic activity,for a while, and protectionist andanti-immigrant policies play well tomany working class voters. Withthe UK as a supplicant in post-Brexit prospective trade talks withthe USA, EU and others, such cloutand tactics are not at Johnson’s dis-posal.

Some modest income tax reliefdid feature in Tory manifestopromises. However, it also promisedto reverse a planned cut in corpora-tion tax and to boost public spend-ing on health and education ser-vices. Although these sums are rela-tively small they still need to befunded. Johnson’s post-election tourof his new, northern client con-stituencies re-iterated Manifestopledges for a ‘Northern PowerhouseRail’ between Leeds andManchester, followed by Newcastle,Tees Valley, Hull, Sheffield andLiverpool links. It also promised a‘new deal for towns’, rebranding andslightly expanding the previouslyintroduced £3.6bn Towns Fund to:regenerate towns, ‘produce thrivinghigh streets, give young people afuture . . . safer streets, safer towns,new civic infrastructure, communityownership and community spirit.’Utopia awaits. Unfortunately itseems likely that this fund will

actually be country-wide, ratherthan focussed solely on blighted ex-Labour constituencies.

Such capital may generate somejobs but it will do little to raise theabysmally low wage rates in theseareas, where routine services, callcentres and distribution depots aretypical sources of employment.Conservative pledges promised toraise the national living wage -based on a two-thirds proportion ofmedian wages - from £8.21 to£10.50 per hour for those aged over21; theoretically putting another 90odd pounds a week in full-timeworkers’ pockets and purses. Butthere are catches. Many low paidworkers, especially women, are inpart-time jobs with proportionatelylower weekly earnings. Moreoverthe timetable for the higher ratestretches over five years; whichwould mean average, annual risesof only 47 p per hour, or £18.80 perweek for full-time workers. There isno mention of inflation-proofingthese rises and, as the TUC com-ments, if Brexit cost inflation hitsthe economy, the median rate for allworkers will fall. In turn this willreduce the rate of the living wage.Without the regularisation of gigeconomy work that Labourpromised, many employers mayalso transfer workers into self-employment, to evade wage regula-tion.

Johnson’s strategists see theirconquered Labour strongholds inthe North and Midlands as poten-tially permanent pillars of Toryrule. Yet this focus offers Labourconsiderable scope for a counter-

NORTHERN ECONOMY

The Preston Model that has grown and revitalised that area’s economy



TRADE DEALS

Free market nightmare

get higher and more stringentunder trade deals. Trump calls us‘freeloaders’ off US drug researchbecause we don’t simply allow themarket to dictate what the NHSshould pay for new medicines. Intrade deals, he’s trying to forcecountries to remove the ability toregulate medicine prices, poten-tially raising medicine costs to theNHS astronomically. And this isnot all one way – Johnson’s gov-ernment will attempt to do verysimilar things in trade deals withdeveloping countries, potentiallythreatening access to medicinesfor millions of people across theworld.

A new innovation in trade dealsis the so-called ‘e-commerce’ agen-da. This is really about settingnew global rules governing digitaltrade. Sadly, the current push –for US and British governments -is setting those rules in the inter-est of the Big Tech industry. Thismakes it much more difficult forgovernments to hold Big Techcompanies to account – it makes itmore difficult from them to controlwhere Big Tech can hold yourdata, impossible for them to scruti-nise source code and algorithms,and harder for them to tax andregulate Big Tech giants. US nego-tiators have told us that a digitalservices tax would be impossibleunder a US trade deal. Doubtlesspublic broadband would be too.Trade Secretary Liz Truss won’t

hard to reduce labelling standardsunder a trade deal. And perhapsmore importantly, Britishfarmer’s ability to competeagainst this industrial scale agri-culture depends on us too adopt-ing lower standards and ‘gettingbig or getting out’.

Second is services. Trade dealsare increasingly about ‘trade inservices’ and ensuring that sectoris as liberalised as possible. Thisincludes everything from energyservices to financial services totelecommunications, insurance,and much of what we’d regard as‘public services’. Once liberalised,it’s a one-way street – trade dealshave ‘standstill’ clauses to ensurecountries cannot ‘un-liberalise’services and ‘ratchet’ clauses toensure that any policy changegoes in the direction of more liber-alisation.

So taking public control of ener-gy, telecommunications, broad-band, contracted out bits of theNHS, are all extremely difficultunder these clauses. True, youcan opt out services from theseliberalising disciplines, but it’snot as easy as it sounds. You can’topt out services that don’t yetexist (think NHS online services),and it relies on having a govern-ment that actually wants toexclude certain services fromtrade deals.

Related to this is intellectualproperty provisions, which also

Boris Johnson is in officeand moving with greatspeed to embark on anumber of post Brexittrade deals, deals

which could fundamentally andirreversibly shift of the balance ofpower and wealth in favour of cap-ital.

An ‘independent’ trade policyhas always been at the heart ofTory Eurosceptic vision of Brexit.Partly this comes from their impe-rial fantasies, in which Britanniawill once again use her control ofthe seas to impose free trade onthe rest of the world. But there’s ahard reality to their trade obses-sion too – trade deals today aremammoth agreements which caneffect massive changes across aneconomy with no parliamentaryaccountability and the force ofinternational law to hold them inplace. As such they are a keymechanism for deregulation, liber-alisation and corporate rule.

Johnson’s prize is a US deal, ofcourse. This suits Donald Trumpdown to the ground – he’s spentthe last three years using tradepolicy to undermine the economiesof the US’s main competitors – theEU and China. As leaks from theUS trade talks have shown, USnegotiators are desperate for thehardest possible Brexit, movingBritain away from EU standardsand protections both as a way ofincreasing the penetration of UScapital in the British economy,and weakening the EU economyas a whole. The changes whichJohnson has already made to theEU Withdrawal Act are dancingto Trump’s tune.

So what does the US want froma trade deal with Britain? First itwants regulatory changes. At themoment, industrially producedUS agriculture is often blockedfrom EU markets because of thequantities of antibiotics, steroids,hormones and chlorine used. TheUS is demanding these prohibi-tions are removed. This wouldn’tnecessarily change British stan-dards, but it would mean theseUS goods appearing on our super-market shelves.

This is how modern trade dealsput downward pressure on stan-dards and protections across theboard. In case you think, ‘well, it’sup to the consumer what they eat’,remember that the US is pushing

Nick Dearden on the danger of Johnson dancing to Trump’s tune on trade

Nick Dearden isDirector of GlobalJustice Now

Big US Pharma



of reforming the BBC, boundarychanges, ID checks on votersknown to suppress working classcommunities and even rumouredplans to re-examine the SupremeCourt. Make no mistake - theyhave a plan to re-shape Britainthat is every bit as radical as thatwhich Labour put forward from aprogressive point of view.

What’s clear in my first fewdays in office is how aggressivelythis Tory government plans to cut,privatise and roll back even moreof the gains made by previousLabour governments. Whether itbe reneging on commitments toEU rights standards, underinvest-ment in the NHS, the outlawing ofstrikes, or the failure to deliver onmany of its promises, such as theplanned increase in the nationalliving wage. This Tory governmentwill not stop with its ideologicalbrutality. Many on their benchessee this as their opportunity toreignite the fires of Thatcherismfor the 21st century.

They won't be unopposedthough. Despite being reduced innumber, we must now regroupand learn the lessons of why welost the General Election, beingtruly honest and leaving no stoneunturned as we plan to regainpower and rebuild our movement.In Parliament we will challengeand scrutinise the callous legisla-tion the Government has set out inthe Queen’s Speech. We willalways argue the case for a betteralternative for every citizen in thiscountry.

The week after the elec-tion was an incrediblyproud and humblingone for me as I beganmy work as the Member

of Parliament for Ilford South. Not every Member has the

opportunity to represent the con-stituency they grew up in, hadtheir first job in, went to school in,and first got involved in politics in- I’m determined to repay thetrust the electorate has put in me,because it’s my community, myfriends, and the people that I’vegrown up with that I’m now repre-senting.

But that elation and pride hasbeen severely tempered by thesadness I felt for many friendsand comrades who either lost theirseats or fell far short of beingelected to Parliament. Their ener-gy and ideas will be a huge loss forour Party, but I’m confident they’llcontinue the fight in every cornerof our country.

The General Election result wascatastrophic for the Labour move-ment, and a devastating outcomefor millions of people, a vast pro-portion of whom will now be facinga further five years of deteriorat-ing living standards, whilst ourwelfare state and public servicesare further dismantled.

The already downtrodden andhardest up will continue to bearthe brunt of ideologically-drivenausterity cuts that have slashedbillions from the public sector bud-get, held back private sectorinvestment and R&D, failed tocreate well paid and long termjobs on a serious scale, whilst thisnew Government will likely fur-ther demonise refugees andmigrants - in particular theMuslim community, and movequickly to extend the privatisationof our National Health Service,dismantle rights at work and tocontinue to cut taxes for the superrich and large corporations. Neo-liberalism will be unshackled, anddriven deeper into our economyand culture.

With an unstoppable majoritythey'll attempt to rewrite therules. I expect to sees attacks ondemocracy itself under the guise

mind – she’s already said we are“a nation of Airbnb-ing, Deliveroo-eating, Uber-riding freedom fight-ers”.

Finally, modern trade dealsoften include a parallel legal sys-tem only open to foreign-based bigbusiness. This ‘corporate court’system allows corporations to sueBritain for doing almost anythingthey don’t like – environmentalprotection, regulating finance,renationalising public services,anti-smoking policies – you nameit. These things already exist innumerous international deals andhave seen tobacco giants suingcountries for putting cigarettes inplain packaging, water companiessuing when governments raise theminimum wage, and, recently, anenergy company suing when a gov-ernment promised to phase outcoal use.

While such tribunals existalready, they don’t currently existbetween the US and EuropeanUnion. The potential for thou-sands of the biggest corporationsin the world to sue the British gov-ernment for practically anythingthey don’t like is a chillingprospect indeed.

Trade deals today aren’t justmassive. They’re also incrediblysecretive. In the EU we spentmany years fighting for a relative-ly open and democratic trade nego-tiating process. In Britain, wehaven’t even started to have thatfight. That means that as thingsstand, MPs have no right to see agovernment’s negotiating objec-tives, no right to see the negotiat-ing papers and an ability to stop atrade deal that they don’t like.Trade deals will be negotiatedunder royal prerogative. WhileTheresa May relented to parlia-mentary pressure and promisedsome accountability to MPs innegotiating an EU-UK deal, BorisJohnson has removed those com-mitments.

So our ability to stop these dealswill be won or lost by campaigns,in the media, and on the streets. Itis possible. Trade deals have beendefeated by campaigning before –most recently the US-EU dealTTIP. But we need to make crystalclear what these deals mean –both for us and for others, as wewill discover when Johnson startsnegotiating in earnest withAfrican, Asian and LatinAmerican countries. Trade is notprimarily about eating more inter-esting foods from far-flung cornersof the world. Deals like the US-UKdeal is about handing vastswathes of our society over to bigbusiness. We can and must stop it. C

Regroup and learn thelessonsSam Tarry MP on threats and challenges facing the Labourmovement

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Sam Tarry isnewly-electedLabour MP forIlford South

Sam Tarry with London mayor Sadiq Khan on campaign trail

REGROUP



CHILE

No+AFP in 2011, the women'smovement, NI UNA MENOS andthe resistance by the Mapuche peo-ple against discrimination.

A mass movement that started inOctober in Santiago has been trans-formed into a revolutionary move-ment not seen since the Pinochetyears. More and more protestershave become organised. More than50 workers’ and social organisa-tions, including the Chilean TUC,were united in calling for a GeneralStrike in September with more than200 organisations participating.Alameda Avenue and Plaza Italia,renamed “Plaza Dignidad” by theprotesters, rang with the cries of“Chile has woken up", “PiñeraRenuncia” and calls for the estab-lishment of a Constituent Assembly.

Much of the indignation can betraced back to Chile’s role as theoriginal testing ground of authori-tarian neoliberalism where a free-market economy was protected fromdemocratic and workers' demands.This resulted in one of the most far-reaching privatisation programmesknown and one which was alsoenshrined and legitimised in anundemocratic constitution.Following the transition toDemocracy, after 1990, this neolib-eral model was left largelyuntouched. The ‘Concertaciòn’ coali-tion governments of the 1990s and2000s not only maintainedPinochet's Constitution, but alsodeepened the privatisation initia-tives. As a result, most of the publicgoods and services are now providedby private companies or public-pri-vate initiatives, making them unaf-fordable for the mass of the popula-tion.Response to the uprising

The demand for a ConstituentAssembly has been an importantcollective goal together withdemands related to wages, health,education and pensions. Initially thegovernment's plan was for the workto be done in Congress, but this waswidely rejected. The 12-point“Agreement for Social Peace and aNew Constitution" outlined a newconstitution with citizen participa-tion. This will be subject to aplebiscite to be held on 26th April2020 where Chileans will be able tovote whether they want a new con-stitution and if so, whether theywant it to be drafted by a mixed citi-

Tear gas, mass arrests andwater Cannons, also known as‘Guanacos’, shooting people at headlevel with hundreds blinded, haveevoked painful memories. Thecrackdown has reminded people ofthe time when on the 11 September1973, the former socialist president,Salvador Allende was overthrownby armed forces under the com-mand of General Augusto Pinochet.The US-backed coup led to politicalrepression, during which the armyexecuted or ‘disappeared’ thousandsof political opponents. Now, in spiteof the clampdown, daily marches,women dancing in unison in thestreets, to the song of “A Rapist IsIn Your Way", street barricades, cit-izen assemblies and other actionsare continuing. Background to mass protests

Social unrest across the regionhad been simmering for years. It istempting to search for a commonreference, for regions or places witha different character and context.As result of the international finan-cial crisis of 2007/8, the world econ-omy has entered a stage of financialand commercial clashes not seensince the Second World War.

At the same time popular upris-ing in Bolivia was growing. On 11thNovember 2019, Evo Morales,Bolivia's populist president foralmost 14 years, was deposed.Social and political unrest had beenstirring elsewhere, apart fromVenezuela, in Ecuador, Perù, Braziland Central America. Chile’s unresthas spread to Colombia as well.According to the online FinancialTimes (04.12.19) “Unlike theRussian and Asian crisis thatengulfed the emerging world in the1990s, contagion this time is notprimarily a financial market phe-nomenon". The article ironicallyconcluded that this is due to the factthat “populations are much moreaware than in the past".

In Chile the current politicalunrest started in October 2019.However, as far back as 2006, sec-ondary school students revoltedagainst the cost of education in amovement which become known as“The Revolution of the Penguins", areference to the colours of theirschool uniform. Since then, othersocial movements have joined them,such as the movement against theprivatised pension scheme,

The political, economic andsocial system in Chile isin crisis. An historic andconcurrent crisis of thepost-Pinochet economic

and social ‘stability’ era, and a crisisof representation by the currentpolitical parties in Government andby the leadership of the ‘opposition’parties, is taking place.

In a country where there is adeep political mistrust of the insti-tutions, opportunities and spaceshave arisen where new formationswithin the labour movement andsocial organisations are becominginstruments for the protesters’demands. Under the banners of“Chile has woken up” and for a“Free and Sovereign ConstituentAssembly”, Chile has becomeengulfed in mass rallies, hundredsof public protests and events, citizenassemblies (‘Cabildos’, usually heldin public places) for more than 40consecutive days. Protesters havefaced heavy-handed police and mili-tary intervention backed by newand draconian anti protest-legisla-tion.

As 2019 ended Chileans arecounting the cost of weeks of massprotests and once the street barri-cades have been removed, manyprotesters will be asking them-selves where their central demandfor a Sovereign ConstituentAssembly has gone? The rulingright-wing governing alliance andthe opposition political forcesoffered a compromise, a 12-point“Agreement for Social Peace and aNew Constitution". This new agree-ment was made with the aim ofcalming popular indignation andrestoring public order in a clearattempt to escape political account-ability.

From mid-October, provoked byan increase in metro fares, thestreets of Santiago have been alightwith student protest, the mostimportant social explosion that hashappened in Chile since the end ofthe military dictatorship. A violentpolice response, in which nearly 30people were killed, thousandswounded and detained, inflamedpopular indignation, and thedemonstrations swelled into a revo-lutionary revolt against socialinequality, the rising cost of living,and a call for the establishment of aConstituent Assembly.

Ricardo Salva ina member ofBethnal Greenand Bow CLP

Ricardo Salva says the recent turmoil in Chile heralds the beginning of a potentialrevolutionary transformation

UPRISING IN CHILE



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The Money Drain Sunit Bagree shows how Southern Africa faces massive debt injustice

In August 2019, Action forSouthern Africa (ACTSA)the successor organisation tothe Anti ApartheidMovement, published a

major new report; “The MoneyDrain: How Trade Misinvoicingand Unjust Debt UndermineEconomic and Social Rights inSouthern Africa”.

The report finds that theSouthern African DevelopmentCommunity (SADC) region losesUS$8.8 billion in trade-relatedillicit outflows and US$21.1 billionin external government debt pay-ments per year. These huge finan-cial outflows severely diminishresources for realising economicand social rights in SouthernAfrica.

While SADC governments areprimarily responsible for realisingthe economic and social rights oftheir citizens, the governments ofrich countries have significantlegal and moral obligations to sup-port these efforts.

The report demonstrates thatthe scale of unrealised economicand social rights in Southern

Africa remains immense. Forexample, the youth unemploymentrate is 31%, 5.4 million people areundernourished, there are at least617,400 new HIV infections a yearand more than 40% of the popula-tion in 12 countries do not haveaccess to basic sanitation services.

After engaging in trade misin-voicing by falsely declaring theprice, quantity or quality of a goodor service on an invoice submittedto customs, criminals can useintermediaries in secrecy jurisdic-tions to capture and divert illicitprofits to tax havens. The reportestimates that South Africa aloneis drained of at least US$5.9 billiona year due to trade-related illicitoutflows.

While the external debts of gov-ernments are not necessarily prob-lematic for their citizens, some ofthe region’s external public debt isillegal, some is odious, and some isillegitimate. The report calculatesthat Angola alone is drained ofUS$12.1 billion a year in principaland interest payments on publicdebt.

Progress on tackling trade mis-

invoicing is fragmented and slow,and virtually nothing has beenachieved to ensure debt justice.The Money Drain contains 12 rec-ommendations to address theseproblems and promote economicand social rights in SouthernAfrica.

AFRICA & DEBT

Votes of the opposition parties andthose representatives on the leftwere divided in supporting theSecurity Agreement measures,some abstained (including theCommunist Party’s elected parlia-mentarians) and only a smallminority, voted against it. TheAgreement between the right-winggovernment and the opposition par-ties shows that even when theChilean right’s ability to face thenational crisis collapses rapidly, thebureaucracies and centre-left par-ties are acting in defence of the sys-tem in an attempt to halt the massmovement.

Social Unity (Unidad Social),the main umbrella organisationinvolved in leading the socialuprising, comprising more than200 groups, trade unions andsocial organisations is calling foran active opposition to theAgreement, and to continuingmobilisation, Cabildos andprotests. A recent statementissued by Unidad Social (04.12.19)regards the Agreement for SocialPeace, as the opposite, a declara-tion of war against the massprotest movement.

zen-legislator convention or oneentirely comprising elected citizens.Who will control these agreementspolitically and how they will moveforward are obviously key concernsfor protesters.

“This is an historic night forChile" said Jaime Quintana,President of the Senate during ajoint announcement by the rulingand opposition party leaders earlyon Friday 29 November 2019. Theapparent reversal of the govern-ment's and the political opposition'sposition on a potential ConstituentAssembly is seen as an importantvictory by some, while others havecriticised it and rejected it. TheAgreement for Social Peace and aNew Constitution is seen as anescape route for a governmentwhich continues with a free-marketeconomic programme, the longestneo-liberal programme applied toany country anywhere, and onewhich has validated a governmentwith blood on its hands. ThisAgreement has allowed the govern-ment to avoid facing responsibilityfor the serious human rights viola-tions committed during the protestsof the last months.

Thanks to the support providedby the opposition parties, the right-wing Government has gained anintermission, a necessary respitefrom the continuous uprising. Lastweek the Council Leader fromEstaciòn Central, Rodrigo Delgado,publicly expressed a qualified sup-port to The Agreement saying that“The most valuable aspect of it wasto reach an agreement amongst thepolitical parties". Yet, in its refusalto recognise the depth of indigna-tion amongst the mass movement,the Government has attempted toapply an old formula of simultane-ously taking away with one handwhat they claim to be giving withthe other. Gonzalo Brunel, theHome Secretary, has pointed outthe necessity to re-establish publicorder as a condition for reaching“Not just the Social Pact, but alsothe Constitutional Agreement andthe economic recovery agenda".

As a result, a ‘SecurityAgreement’ approved by the govern-ment and opposition parties enablescriminalisation of the social protestswith draconian sentences. Theseare measures openly directed tomake the right to protest illegal.

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Sunit Bagree isSeniorCampaignsOfficer forACTSA. The fullreport can befound onwww.actsa.org



SPAIN

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economy, welfare state, environ-ment and citizen rights, but alsoincludes:

i. Solutions to the Catalancrisis would have to be sought “…within the bounds of theConstitution”

ii. Control of Public expendi-ture to ensure fiscal balance.

These are effectively Sanchez’sred lines. Iglesias, leader ofPodemos, has agreed to these con-ditions to enable a coalition as hebelieves it “...will be the best vac-cine against the far right”.Nevertheless, there are problems.

The Constitution of 1978 includ-ed concessions by the PSOE at thetime of the “…transition to democ-racy” to the political remnants ofFranco, including the military.Besides the monarchy itself, arti-cle 2 guarantees “…the indissolu-ble unity of the Spanish nation”.This remained unchallenged sub-sequently by the PSOE and isobviously a roadblock to resolvingCatalonia. UP, while supportingthe right to self-determination, haspreviously advocated a federalsolution. However, now that Vox isattacking the Constitution for con-ceding devolution and wants thescrapping of all autonomousrights, the left along with the cen-tre right have pointedly and jointlycelebrated its 41st anniversary. Itis unlikely that a coalition can suc-ceed in the investiture unless atleast the left leaning ERC Catalanseparatist party offers its coopera-tion, despite the Constitutionalstraightjacket to its independenceand Republican ambitions and theimprisonment of its leader for 13years.

The Constitution, amendedrecently by the PP, requires by lawthat the Euro Area’s Stability andGrowth Pact is adhered to. Doingso will constrain Sanchez’s abilityto tackle years of austerity and itssocial and economic consequences.

Once formed any left govern-ment would therefore be walking atightrope. Survival cannot just relyon precarious parliamentary arith-metic but also on organising,empowering and mobilising theLeft’s extra-Parliamentary base.

Brian O’Leary reports on a narrow victory for Spain’s Socialist Party with separatist and economicchallenges facing the coalition

Spanish Socialists walking atightrope

In the general election in lastNovember the SocialistParty (PSOE) again becamethe largest party and hasfinally agreed to form a

coalition government with the leftradical grouping Unidas Podemos(UP). However as they are stillonly the largest minority block inthe Parliament they need the sup-port or abstention of smaller,mainly nationalist parties fromthe autonomous regions, for suc-cessful investiture.

In comparison with the Mayelection, after which the PSOEavoided any serious attempt tolink up with the UP, both partieshave lost ground in their numberof seats. On the other hand therehas been a realignment andstrengthening of the right, withnot only a partial recovery of thecorruption ridden conservativePopular Party (PP) but also a dou-bling of representation for theultra-conservative racist partyVox, making it the third largest.

What had happened betweenthe two elections to weaken thetwo main left parties?

The main reason was Catalonia.During the summer the trial forrebellion, sedition and misuse ofpublic funds of the separatist lead-ers of the independence referen-dum of 2017, forbidden by theConstitution, came to a conclusionin the Constitutional Court. TheCatalan President at the timeremained on the run in Belgium.Although they were cleared ofrebellion nine were found guiltyon other counts and sentenced col-lectively to a sum total of nearly100 years in prison. Spain, andindeed Western Europe, now hadits first political prisoners in livingmemory! Unsurprisingly, whileindependence protesters hadalways previously been peaceful,now violent confrontations withthe riot police erupted.

Sanchez, the Prime Ministerand leader of the PSOE, main-tained that the independence ofthe judiciary and the Constitutionitself had to be respected,although he called for dialogue.UP joined in with separatist par-

ties in condemning the outcomeand renewing their demands forthe right to self-determination.Meanwhile the positions on theright ranged from claims thatSanchez was still too conciliatoryand a firmer restoration of lawand order was needed, to Voxstoking up extreme nationalistdemands to end regional autono-my and freedoms along Francoistlines.

Secondly, Spain experiencedmass feminist demonstrationscondemning violence againstwomen, domestic and otherwise,and demanding legal changes.High profile rape cases and farci-cal trials further inflamed belief inthe ingrained misogynist nature ofSpanish society. Again Vox triedto exploit the situation by callingfor the actual repeal of gender vio-lence laws “… that discriminatesagainst one of the sexes”, hopingto co-opt the support of as manymacho bigots as possible.

The continued migration crisisin the Mediterranean, withincreased landings in Spain itself,was also used by the right to stokexenophobic fears, includingIslamophobia. Sanchez to his cred-it offered Spain as a safe haven forships blocked by Salvini.

Then just before the Novemberpoll on 24th October, after a legalfight, permission was given toexhume and relocate Franco’sbody from The Valley of theFallen, a monstrous granite monu-ment celebrating his Civil Warvictory. For the PSOEGovernment and the left his con-tinued burial there was an affrontto democracy. The fascist rightwas livid and saw it as a moraloutrage against their nationalhero. Beyond them it symbolicallystirred unspoken and unresolvedmemories and anger on both sidesin a country that has encoded inlaw the forgetting of all the crimesof the dictatorship.

Which brings us to the recentelection result, with Sanchezundertaking a U-turn by trying toform a left coalition government.The coalition pre-agreementincludes laudable aims on the

Brian O’Leary is amember ofChingford andWoodgreen CLP

Pedro Sanchez



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in sufficient numbers to enlarge theelectorate nor, crucially motivatethem to be politically active over thelong haul.

Elections in our highly polarizedpolity are often won by increasingturnout and enthusiasm ratherthan by persuading a shrinking poolof ‘swing voters’. The Left in andaround the Democratic Party, witha different vision from that of the‘pragmatists’, fights for sweepingprograms to energize the progres-sive base of democratic activists,attract fresh support, particularlyfrom people of colour and youngervoters, and eliminate the influenceof wealthy donors. Higher partici-pation has accompanied such pro-gressive victories as AlexandriaOcasio-Cortez over a long-term NewYork Democratic incumbent,Ayanna Pressley in a Boston areaCongressional seat and DSA mem-bers to Chicago City Council andstate legislatures around the coun-try.

On the presidential nominationthe ‘Squad’ is split, with Tlaib,Ocasio-Cortez and Omar supportingSanders, while Pressley hasendorsed Warren. DSA, PDA andOur Revolution support Sanders;the Working Families Party endors-es Warren. Up to and beyond the2020 presidential election, any pos-sibility of success will depend ondurable collaboration betweendemocratic socialists and progres-sives, both electorally and in thestreets. If Sanders, Warren or acentrist Democrat becamePresident, it would require massivemobilizations of progressive socialmovements to secure radicalreforms. But a Trump (or Trumpclone) victory would jeopardizedemocracy and the rule of law:much of our political work could beforced underground to survive.

Recent national polls showSanders as the only potential candi-date to consistently lead Trump.That many of the huge crowd inIowa recently were there more forOcasio-Cortez than for Sanders isno problem. He long carried thetorch for democratic socialism inrelative obscurity but now he isjoined by a much younger, morediverse cohort with sweeping goalsfor transforming American society.

Paul Garver on the challenge for rivals aiming to stop Trump in 2020

Impeached President Trump re-elected?

In Chartist 282 (Sep-Oct2016), I wrote that HilaryClinton, then leading DonaldTrump by double digits in thepolls, might yet be defeated if

the Democrats continued to supportfree trade treaties, neglect the frus-tration of formerly unionized work-ers in the industrial heartlands, andcampaign against Trump withoutpromoting a convincing program oftheir own. My worst fears were real-ized when Trump rode to victory byedging out the Democrats in formerindustrial areas where disgruntledwhite voters voted out their frustra-tion. For the 2020 presidential elec-tion, I fear the path to hell is easierfor the Democrats to follow.

In December, Trump wasimpeached in the House ofRepresentatives for abusing hisoffice to win political favors fromUkraine. The Republican-majoritySenate will probably acquit him, sohe will remain in office. Followingevery twist and turn of this distract-ing story, the media circus will onlyrelent after Trump declares full vin-dication to his supporters. The realcrises facing Americans – climatedisruption, a dysfunctional healthsystem, persecution of refugees,growing inequality and racism - willstay in the background.

Struggling for attention, numer-ous candidates in the Democraticprimaries soldier on. BernieSanders and Elizabeth Warrenevenly share the more progressivehalf of Democratic primary voters.Both are financed by huge numbersof individual donors, supportingambitious programs like the GreenNew Deal, Medicare for All and freehigher education, based on highertaxes of the super-rich.

Many other candidates are vyingto be the ‘moderate’ alternative tothe democratic socialism of Sandersand the anti-corporate progressivepopulism of Warren. Joe Biden isthe sentimental choice of tradition-alists, invoking the good old days ofcautious presidents Bill Clinton andBarack Obama. Pete Buttigiegseems to be emerging as the mostviable of the younger ‘moderates’.Billionaire Michael Bloomberg nowaims to buy his way into this role. (Ithink he is planning a run as an‘independent’.) African-American

Deval Patrick, a former cautiouslyprogressive governor ofMassachusetts, appears to be hop-ing to become the ‘next BarackObama’ following the withdrawal ofKamala Harris and Cory Booker.

Obama himself is an open advo-cate for a moderate who can beatSanders/Warren in the primariesand then defeat Trump in the gen-eral election. The big Democraticdonors, national party apparatusand their propagandists in the massmedia (e.g. NY Times, MSNBC)appear consumed by the samesearch. This presumes that Trump,emerging unbowed from theimpeachment hearings with hishardcore base intact, will be suffi-ciently discredited amongIndependents and swing voters thathe can be defeated, even in theElectoral College, where politicalgeography favours Republicanswith their reactionary, racist andxenophobic appeals to older whitevoters. The most difficult problem isthat some 35-40% of the electorateappears committed to Trumpregardless of (or because of) hismany transgressions.

We on the Left cannot simply dis-miss the argument that theDemocrats should nominate whoev-er can defeat Trump by carryingmost of the so-called ‘purple’ stateswon by Obama but later by Trump.However, the ‘pragmatic’Democratic strategy of opposingTrump without a strong reform pro-gram to combat inequality failed forClinton in 2016 and probably wouldagain in 2020. It would neithermotivate younger voters to turn out

Paul Garver is amember ofDemocraticSocialists ofAmerica

USA

National polls show Sanders as the only potential candidate tolead Trump



CONSTITUTION

Mary Southcott isa member ofChartist EB

moved from “Labour heartlands” touniversity metropolitan cities.Labour’s members in Red Wall con-stituencies, often untypical Remainvoters, didn’t raise Brexit. it wouldlose votes. The voting system playeda canny role masking the results ofTheresa May’s 2017 incursions intoLabour territory. Many seats werevulnerable to the 2019 Toryonslaught.

Without a decision on our rela-tionship with the EU, Labour wastotally vulnerable. To be successfulLabour needs to nurture its linkbetween those who need a Labourgovernment in the way the 2019Manifesto elaborated and those whosee the benefit of a more equal soci-ety, what we have in commonrather than what divides us.Polarised into Leave and People’sVote broke this coalition.

In 2007, the Labour Campaignfor Electoral Reform, wrote a pam-phlet entitled Reversing LabourRetreat. We warned about underregistration, overtargeting, bound-ary changes which the Tories canlegitimately implement, the need toendorse voting reform while in gov-ernment. It is high time Labouracknowledged that its membershipis already pro PR. Of 632 Labourcandidates over a quarter, 163,were open in their support and 60went on to be MPs. Make VotesMatter commissioned YouGovresearch showing that seventy fiveper cent of Labour’s membershipsupports PR.

We will be working with extraparliamentary forces while stillbeing a Westminster response to arabidly right Tory government. Isthere anything, but money, to stopus holding a citizens’ assembly onour democracy or a ConstitutionalConvention trailed in ourManifesto? Couldn’t we join up thedots on English devolution, financ-ing local government, citizenshipeducation, votes at 16, registration,Lords replacement. We need to findspace to find anti Tory consensuswhich means working in a non trib-al but assertive way with support-ers of other parties also opposed tothe Johnson agenda. That is thechallenge and to find a leader thatunderstands why our policy goinginto the next general election has tobe PR.

Polarisation into Brexit and Remain broke Labour’s coalition says Mary Southcott, nowwe need a constitutional convention and PR to reassemble common ground

No more Labour Red Walls?

If you had one wish for areplay general election, whatto choose? Different Leader,EU policy, anti-Semitism orislamophobia, time of year, no

rain. What about another votingsystem, a political culture fromdoing things for people to empower-ing people to do things together?What did Labour say about democ-racy? Most people thought democ-racy was fulfilling the referendum.After finding a way to win the nextGeneral Election, let’s move fromrelying on Red Walls to findingLabour voters everywhere with aPR system.

Paul Mason, from defeatedLeigh, wrote: “Once Farage stooddown in 317 seats, the only thingthat could have stopped the Torieswas (a) an electoral pact betweenprogressive parties, (b) an unprece-dented turnout by progressiveyoung voters, or (c) massive tacticalvoting”. None of these happened. JoSwinson spent as much time vilify-ing Jeremy as Johnson. We nevermentioned votes@16. And althoughthe Mirror’s guide to tactical votingwould have defeated the Tories,Labour opposition let the voting sys-tem triumph. Now some say: "NoMore Labour Prime Ministers with-out Progressive Pacts and ElectoralReform".

Let’s look back to UKIP winningthe 2014 European elections.Instead of discovering why some redwall ‘working class’ voters were sup-porting this socially conservative,English nationalist party, we toldourselves that they were takingvotes from the Tories, while LyntonCrosby ensured they kept their vot-ers by offering that EU referendum.When the 2015 exit poll gave theTories a slender majority with theloss of all Labour seats in Scotland,except one, Labour’s first red wallhad collapsed. We blamed theScottish Independence Referendumbut it was just as much about oursafe seat mentality.

Straight into the EuroReferendum without the aid of awritten Constitution which mighthelpfully have said, what a Labouror LibDem opposition might haveraised, a threshold of fifty per centof the electorate or two thirds ofvotes cast, advisory not mandatory.The 2016 WARP, ‘without all those

Reading pads’, assumed traditionalLabour voters would either voteBrexit or stay at home. We didn’tknock them up. Had we talked withthem we might have changed theirminds or alerted ourselves to thefuture. In seats where Labour was,they thought, always going to win,our Red Wall, voters could make adifference, protest at being taken forgranted, or blame something andthe EU was as good as anything. Atlast they had an effective vote, tosay here I am, have you noticed?Where the industrial revolutionbegun, Labour voters voted Leave.Did we approach them? Or jointheir condemnation?

Regional offices based tacticaldecisions on polls at the start of the2017 General Election. This mas-sively warped the work that wasbeing done with people misdirectedfrom seats that were won. Labour’sLeadership was fighting for the pop-ular vote as in a PR system. Weonly have to mention Al Gore orHilary Clinton to know that wasn’tgoing to work. Our manifesto was aPR one whereas in a general elec-tion the effective voter is an uncer-tain switcher in a targeted seat whoneeds constant reassurance whilethe media play on fears of immigra-tion, crime and national security.

The Labour membership isskewed to the south and policy C



POLL TAX

that didn’t limit itself to a few tokenmarches but actively sought to dis-rupt the machinery of state andjudiciary.

The fight against the Poll Tax notonly won (it was scrapped by 1991after only two years) it also con-tributed to the downfall of Thatcher.The issue was so politicised that inseveral by-elections in 1990 previ-ously safe Conservative seats fell toopposition parties, outrage over thePoll Tax was front and centre. NoTory MP felt safe. This, combinedwith the in-ternal divisions overEurope, led to Thatcher’s resigna-tion in November 1990. She wasdriven from Downing Street withtears in her eyes as millions cheeredup and down the country.

There are many lessons from theanti poll tax campaign, but a salientone is the role of Labour. Whenmovements erupt that seek to over-turn unjust laws, Labour shouldn’tsee itself as a party of ‘loyal opposi-tion’ wedded to the parliamentarysystem. It should be a part of resis-tance, throwing its political andsocial weight on the side of the peo-ple to stand together against thetyranny of the bosses and theirpolitical stooges in govern-ment.Labour failed the test of the poll taxmovement and then lost the 1992general elec-tion. It doesn’t pay tostand in opposition to the peoplewhen the people are fighting back.That wins you no friends.

As the old slogan goes, “better tobreak the law than break the poor.”

Simon Hannah on lessons of the battle to defeat the poll tax

Can’t pay, won’t pay 30 years on

It is 30 years since the PollTax was introduced inScotland and this year is theanniversary of the riot inTrafalgar Square that made

headline news around the world. The Poll Tax was Margaret

Thatcher’s “flag ship” policy, the cul-mination of a decade of sweepingpolitical, social and economicreforms designed to redistributepower and wealth from the poorestto the richest. The Poll Tax - official-ly called the Community Charge -was introduced to replace the ratesas a way to pay for local govern-ment. It was controversial becausethe Community Charge was a flattax, every adult paid the same.

The tax was designed to fix whatthe Tories saw as a grand iniquity,that lots of poor people bene-fitedfrom local government services butthey didn’t have to pay towardsthem. For the New Right this onlyencouraged feckless lay-abouts tovote for high spending Labour coun-cils that would then rinse the mid-dle classes. If the poor had to con-tribute more then perhaps theywouldn’t be so keen on high spend-ing socialist Town Hall administra-tions.

In the words of arch Thatcherite-Nicholas Ridley “why would a dukepay more than a dust-man? It isonly because we have been subject-ed to socialist ideas for the last 50years that people think this is fair.”In practice many people simplycould not afford to pay the newcharge, despite various rebatesavailable for the poorest. Tax billsmore than doubled overnight.Protests were inevitable.

Whilst Labour opposed the tax inprinciple, the party proved to bewoefully inadequate when it cameto resisting the new proposals. NeilKinnock was hurtling rapidly to theright, desperate to prove to moder-ate voters that Labour was not aradical party of left wing troublemakers but a sensible party capableof ruling for the common good.When the left, led by Militant along-side other socialists and anarchistgroups, began a mass non-paymentcampaign Labour clamped downhard, suspending and expellingactivists. Worse still Labour coun-cils had to implement the tax - thisled to the sight of Labour councillorsimprisoning Labour members andvoters, thousands of people were

impris-oned for non-payment. Manyof those jailed were unemployed,low paid or single mothers with lim-ited finances.

The mass non-payment cam-paign proved to be hugely effective.The slogan ‘can’t pay won’t pay’summed up the principle - somepeople couldn’t afford the new tax,others could but refused to pay onpolitical grounds. Millions of peopledidn’t pay their bills, causing a cri-sis for local councils and the govern-ment.

The non-payment campaign was-n’t passive. Thousands of peoplemobilised to guard homes frombailiffs and sheriffs, sent by thecourts to recover the debts throughseizing goods. When people were incourt it meant hundreds of peopleturning out in solidarity, floodingcourt rooms, arguing with judges,pulling fire alarms, anything thatwould slow down the judicial pro-cess. When people were imprisonedit meant solidarity rallies out-sidecalling for their immediate release.

The mass protest on 31 March1990, the day before the tax wasdue to come into effect in Englandand Wales turned into a full blowninner city riot with the police fight-ing thou-sands of angry demonstra-tors. The scenes shocked the estab-lishment, as did the huge protestsoutside Town Halls up and downthe country as council chamberswere stormed by locals to preventthe Poll Tax levels being set.

This was a radical movement orresistance, not just protest. One

Simon Hannah’sbook on the antiPoll Taxmovement ‘Can’tPay, Won’t Pay’is due in March2020, Pluto Press

C

Poll Tax demo in the 1980s


YOUTH VIEW


ment to ensure this from day one ofa job, there is no specific legislationto expand the national living wageand the government has also begunto attack trade unions, which arethe best way for workers to ensuretheir rights. There was also nomention of the women who will loseout due to changes in the state pen-sion age and no commitment to apreventative duty that would makeemployers legally responsible forsexual harassment at work.

At a minimum, the governmentmust commit to keeping the samelevels of equalities protection thatwe have under the EU includingmaternity discrimination, equalpay and safety at work. Womenalso need real reform of parentalleave policies, so it is easier to sharetime off; stronger rights to flexibleworking; more affordable childcare;increases in statutory parental pay;and more pressure on employers totackle their gender pay gap.Investment in social care Finally, considering that 80% of

paid carers and 60% of unpaid car-ers are women, social care is a gen-dered issue. However, the commit-ments on social care lacked sub-stance. The speech stated minsterswill seek ‘a cross-party consensuson proposals for long term reform ofsocial care’ but there was no specif-ic social care bill.

The Queen’s speech demon-strates this government is not seri-ous about gender equality. Theircommitments are not enough toreverse the impact of austerity onwomen, to prevent violence againstwomen or girls or to ensure equali-ty in the workplace.

Alice Arkwright asks what does the Queen’s speech mean for women?

Tories retreat on gender equality

In the same week as theQueen’s speech, the UKslipped down the WorldEconomic Forum genderequality index by six places

and an independent enquiryshowed that the criminal justicesystem is failing victims of sexualviolence.

Young women are the demo-graphic least likely to have votedand the Young Women’s Trustresearch shows that two thirdshave lost confidence in politiciansas they struggle to cope with theimpact of austerity. The UN reporton poverty showed that lifeexpectancy for women in the mostdeprived half of England hasstalled since 2011 and fallen forwomen in the poorest 20% of thepopulation. At a time when changesare so badly needed for women,what did this Queen’s speech offer.The Domestic Abuse billThe speech included reference to

the bill, which has been beset bydelays including due to the unlaw-ful shut down of parliament. Thebill creates a statutory definition,which states that abuse is not onlyphysical or sexual, but can be emo-tional, economic and include con-trolling behavior. It also prohibitsperpetrators of abuse from cross-examining their victims in personin family courts and monitors theresponse of local authorities andother agencies in tackling domesticviolence.

However, the bill does notaddress the chronic underfundingof support services for womenescaping abuse and violence,including refuges. The charityRefuge has experienced cuts to 80%of its services since 2011. There is adesperate need for investment ininfrastructure, especially spe-cialised services for BME women.

Migrant women are also particu-larly vulnerable as they cannotaccess housing benefits, refugespaces or private rental becauselandlords are required to undertakeimmigration checks. There are alsocases of migrant women beingdetained when reporting abuse tothe police. Given the Conservative’strack record on migrant rights, it ishard to believe they will do more toprotect these vulnerable women.

Universal Credit is noticeable forits absence in the speech. Reformsto the benefits system are vital toprotect women from violence.

Women currently stay with perpe-trators or end up homeless due to alack of affordable and social hous-ing and under Universal Credit onebenefit payment is made to ahousehold rather than separatepayments to the individuals in it,meaning victims can become morefinancially dependent on theirabuser.

The government also committedto pushing through requirementsfor voter ID at polling stations. Thiswill leave thousands of potentialvoters marginalised from politicalparticipation and without a voice,including many women in abusiverelationships who will not haveaccess to ID.

Currently three women a weekdie at the hands of a former or cur-rent partner. These commitmentsare nowhere near enough to endthis. Workers’ rightsThe UK has dropped down the

World Economic Forum genderranking largely due to inequality inthe workplace, our gender pay gapand poor political representation.

Worryingly the government hasstripped out key protections forworkers’ rights that were includedin previous versions of the EUwithdrawal bill. Instead promisingthat a separate employment billwill enhance and protect workers’rights.

The lack of detail means we haveno idea what employment rightswill be in law by the end of 2020,offering little hope that there willbe improvements for women work-ers. Flexible working has beenincluded but there is no commit-

Alice Arkwrightworks for theTUC C

The Step Up Migrant Women coalition calls for new legistlation to protect migrant women



The Audacity of HopePatrickMulcahy on a tenseportrait ofrich andpoor inSouth Korea

If one film encapsulates theend of the 2010s, it is SouthKorean writer-director Bong

Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’. Deservedlywinning the Palme D’Or atCannes in 2019, it portrays withwit, heart, suspense, pathos andhorror, the unbridgeable gapbetween rich and poor in Koreansociety. The more culturally spe-cific a film is, the more universalis its message. ‘Parasite ’explodes with universality. It is afilm that embodies the title ofBarack Obama’s 2006 book ofessays, The Audacity of Hope.

Our heroes are the impover-ished Kim family, whom we firstmeet trying to catch an internetsignal from their mobile phones,chasing it through the dim enclo-sure of their semi-basementapartment. The free access theyhave relied upon has been abrupt-ly stopped – their dependence onother people’s wi-fi is a metaphorfor their parasitical status.Amidst constructing pizza boxesfor a local firm, elder son Ki-woo(Choi Wu-shik) is visited by hiswell-to-do student friend, Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon) whoannounces he is about to go trav-elling. He has a lucrative job asan English teacher to Park Da-hye (Jung Ziso), the daughter ofthe head of an IT company. Min-hyuk will put in a recommenda-tion for Ki-woo as a means of pre-venting other college boys fromseducing Da-hye – he hopes tomarry her one day. Ki-woo - andthe audience – marvel at Parkhouse for its spaciousness andelegance.

Da-hye’s mother watches Ki-woo’s lesson with interest andthen mentions her young son’sartistic ‘ability’. Does Ki-wooknow a teacher? Ki-woo’s sister,Ki-jeong (Park So-dam) is anexcellent forger. She prepareddocuments to convince the Parkfamily that Ki-woo had completedhis college education. Ki-woo pre-sents her as someone unrelated tohim who has a rare talent andwhose services are difficult tosecure. Before long, both siblingshave a job, then work to secureemployment for their father andmother, replacing both the chauf-feur and housekeeper respective-ly. Their plan is executed perfect-ly, until the housekeeper, Moon-gwang (Lee Jeun-eun) returnsone rainy evening.

What happens next entirelyturns the film on its head – and

includes a joke about impersonat-ing a North Korean newsreader.The poor fight one another whilstthe little that the Kim family pos-sess is damaged by flooding.

‘Parasite’ is both very funnyand entertaining. We root for theKim family, at least initiallybecause we sympathise with theirimpoverishment and their inabili-ty to work. The children under-standably want to help their par-ents – they are loyal and respect-

ful – even though their strategy isunfair. Some scenes have the pre-cision of farce.

The shift in tone is also con-summately achieved. The secondhalf of the film has both elementsof horror and Robinson Crusoe.Normally, such shifts dispensewith what we enjoy. Here,though, the shift adds depth andsubstance to the idea that howev-er far one gets ahead, someoneelse suffers.

Although the mother, Yeon-gyois introduced as ‘simple’, Joon-hodoesn’t parody the rich family.Yeon-gyo simply sees the best inher children’s endeavours. Heryoung son has a genuine traumawhich is revealed in the secondhalf.

At the heart of the film is thequestion: how helpful is it toaspire to be rich? Both familiesstruggle. Both feature loving rela-tionships. Money does not conferhappiness – only security. By theend of the film, only the acquisi-tion of excessive wealth will saveone of the characters. That’swhere pathos and realism comein.

The other point Joon-ho makes

is that, although they may havecompetence and education, ‘poorpeople’ cannot escape their back-ground. Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun) complains to his wife of asmell he detects whilst sharing acar with his new driver, Ki-taek(Song Kang-ho). It is the smell ofpoverty associated with the Kimfamily’s flooded home.

Joon-ho doesn’t present classdifference as a problem to besolved. Rather it is the lack of

security experienced by the mostimpoverished that is a majorproblem in South Korea. Thecountry has functioning socialsupport schemes for families liv-ing in absolute poverty, but it alsohas significant youth unemploy-ment and an ageing population.Only degrees from a trio of uni-versities – Seoul, Korea andYonsei (the so-called ‘SKY’) – aresaid to guarantee a job for a chae-bol or conglomerate such as LG,Hyundai and Samsung. Studentswith degrees from other universi-ties struggle to find good jobs.

Private education, as shown inthe film, is a necessary conse-quence of limited access to goodjobs. The real problem is whetheronly degrees from ‘SKY’ are nec-essary to guarantee prosperity.This is really a question for thesixty or so chaebol. One questionnot in doubt is that ‘Parasite’ iscompassionate, tense andthoughtful – one of the few prize-winning movies that genuinelydeserves the hype.

‘Parasite’ opens in UK cinemas onFriday 7 February 2020

FILM REVIEW



BOOK REVIEWS

The Consequences of BalfourLegacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism andthe Creation of IsraelGardner ThompsonSAQI £20

Lewis Goodall is living proofThompson is a colonial histori-an who has previously written

on East Africa. He has been braveto venture into this territory whichis well trodden by specialists andwhich remains highly contentious.Many previous studies are partisan,whether Zionist or anti-Zionist, andthe lack of partisanship inThompson’s work means that thebook is actually a very useful contri-bution to the debate. Thompson’sstarting point is on the Balfour dec-laration of 1917, but after examin-ing, as many other works do, theprehistory and the Zionist campaignto win British support, he focuses onits consequences and on the Britishpost-war occupation and on diploma-cy during the period of the Britishmandate in Palestine from 1922 to1948.

The book therefore examines thefailure of the British government todeliver on the commitment in thedeclaration that “nothing shall bedone which may prejudice the civiland religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”He notes that the declaration did notin fact guarantee the political rightsof the non-Jewish population, whoremained the majority population ofPalestine throughout the mandate

period, despite the rapid increase inJewish immigration.

The book considers the failure ofsuccessive administrations , mostsignificantly that led by the firstHigh Commissioner, the ZionistHerbert Samuel, to constrain bothJewish immigration and the increas-ing political role of the JewishAgency. Gardner points out that thepromotion of Zionism was actuallyincorporated into both the terms ofthe British Government’s 1922White Paper and the terms of themandate, which was drafted by theBritish government, in contradictionof the League of Nations objective ofworking towards self-determinationby the existing population of a man-dated territory.

Gardner is more sympathetic tothe attempt by Sir John Chancellor,High Commissioner from 1928-1931, who recognised the inherentcontradiction in the Balfour declara-tion and sought to adopt a more bal-anced approach to the conflictinginterests of Jews and Arabs.Chancellor’s successor, Sir ArthurWauchope, High Commissioneruntil 1938 was to openly favourZionism, and British support forZionism was to continue, despite theattacks of Zionist organisations suchas Irgun, Hagannah and the Sterngang, on the British military andcivil governance bodies, until Britainsurrendered the mandate in 1947.Ernest Bevin stated in the Britishparliament that “the obligations

undertaken to the two communitiesin Palestine have been shown to beirreconcilable.”

A series of attempts to partitionPalestine between Jewish and Arabcommunities had all failed, and theboundaries established by the UN in1947 were soon breached as militaryaction by the new Israeli state occu-pied territory allocated to the Arabstate, first in 1948-9 and subse-quently in 1967 with the occupationof the West Bank, Gaza and theGolan heights. In his conclusion,Gardner comments that the Balfourdeclaration and the continuedBritish commitment to supportingthe establishment of a nationalhome in Palestine for the Jewishpeople at the expense of the secondcommitment to protect the rights ofthe non-Jewish population bearssome responsibility for the divisionsin Palestine over the last 100 years,and that the centenary of the decla-ration was an opportunity toacknowledge this responsibilityrather than a cause for celebration.

DuncanBowie on thelegacy ofthe BalfourDeclaration

GardnerThompson will bespeaking abouthis book at theSocialist HistorySociety meetingon Saturday 25thJanuary at 2pmin Red Lion Hall,basement,Tresham House,Red Lion Square.entrance viaLamb’s ConduitPassage byConway Hall,Holborn, WC1R4RE. AllWelcome

Rebel Warriors and InternationalistTraitorsTreasonSteve Cushion and Christian HogsbjergSocialist History Society £5

The latest OccasionalPublication from the SHSprovides a fascinating insight

into some curious and largely for-gotten historical by-ways. Thebooklet includes nine essays onradicals and socialists who foughtagainst their home countries orwho supported revolutions in coun-tries other than their own. Therange is wide from JonathanNorth’s study of Polish desertersfrom Napoleon’s army in the1800’s, who on being sent to theWest Indies supported the nativerevolutionaries against the Frenchto Ian Birchall on French support-ers of the Algerian and Vietnameseindependence struggles in the

1950’s. Other essays cover British sup-

porters of Irish freedom in 1916,communist resistance to Nazism, astudy of the German WalterPatzold who fought with the Italianpartisans in 1943, Germans whosupported the Jewish resistance,German and Italian volunteers inthe French resistance and a study

by Toby Abse of Ilio Barontini, anItalian who joined the Ethiopianarmy fighting Mussolini’s occupa-tion before becoming a communistsenator in post-war Italy. There isalso a poem by David Rovics com-memorating the Irish battalionwho fought in the Mexican waragainst the United States of 1846-8.

An introductory essay by theeditors provides an excellent andfully referenced overview from theEnglish civil war to the AfricanNational Congress discussing thenature of the nation state andinternationalism. This is an impor-tant historical project, rescuingsome important partisans from thearchives. The 95 page booklet iswell illustrated and excellent valuefor money. It is also an inspirationfor further reading and research ona largely ignored historical theme.

DuncanBowie on trans-nationalrebels



A Coven of VillainsMindf*ck - Cambridge Analytica and thePlot to Break the WorldChristopher WylieRandom House £20

Wylie makes a convincingcase that the outcome ofthe Brexit Referendum

was as much the result of cheatingand fraud as was Trump’s ‘victory’.Wylie blows the whistle on himself.He was the mastermind behindCambridge Analytica’s crimewave.He was slow to realise that ‘simplyfollowing orders’ was no defence.Just as the National RifleAssociation duplicitously claims‘Guns don’t kill people’ Facebookargues it’s a neutral platformabused and misused by a minority.It was that complacency Wyliepreyed on. The insight was don’tchange the policies to suit the vot-ers, change the voters to match thepolicies.

Yet despite all the revelationsabout technologically enhancedvoter suppression and dirty - andmurderous - tricks, systematic fraudand foreign interference Labour hasremained indifferent. One knowswhy the Tories say nothing. Theyare already long down theRepublican road to winning elec-tions on the backs of those who can’tvote or don’t vote. Dame ShirleyPorter was the Tory pioneer - andposter girl - of voter suppression andmanipulation in the late eighties.She has convictions. Now BorisJohnson plans to nationalise theprogramme with a ground war ofphoto IDs required to vote, whilerefusing to tackle the air war ofsocial media manipulation. It’s thesilence of the lambs. Those about tobe electorally fleeced genuflect tothe myth of voter fraud!

Mindf*ck has a positive coven ofvillains, Steve Bannon and NigelFarage, the creepy Mercer billion-aires in the US and Britain’s

‘Poundshop’ Arron Banks - evenNick Clegg gets a walk-on part - aswe learn how Cambridge Analyticasubverted democracy. There wereno red lines the company was notprepared to cross. In Nigeria tryingto sway the Presidential electionagainst Muhammadu Buhari, amild-mannered Muslim, they ranstealth ads on Google claiming hewould introduce sharia law backedwith actual footage of a group ofmen tying up a woman, drenchingher with petrol and burning her todeath.

Wylie was on the electronic front-line. His insight was to mine dataon millions, with Facebook’s compli-ance, merge it with all the commer-cial and government data that couldbe bought, borrowed and stolen thensort, winnow and dice it into hun-dreds and thousands of clusters forbespoke attention. This waslightyears beyond ‘mosaic’ thatLabour used at the end of the Blairyears to segment the populationinto fifty categories. It was thetransformation of quantity intoquality throwing open the doors tomass manipulation. The neuroticsand conspiracy theorists were seg-mented out and bombarded withmessages designed to enrage andincite - it would be fascinating to seeCambridge Analytica’s messagingfor Thomas Mair, the lone wolf ter-rorist who murdered Jo Cox MP inthe shadow of the Brexit referen-dum.

Minorities were set at eachother’s throats. The set of racistsand xenophobes running the showencouraged Asian voters to backBrexit because 'the EU’s free move-ment provisions discriminated infavour of foreigners over their fami-lies' while hundreds of other votersegments were being fed migrationmyths encouraging them to voteLeave to stop the flood. It was aninvisible campaign running under

the electoral radar. It addressedthose who had lost the way to theballot box decades ago or had neverfound it in the first place. It workedand they got away with it. Notenough of the crime happened inBritain. One of the managers fromthe incendiary Nigeria project wenton to the Cabinet Office.

Surely if paedophiles can be pros-ecuted for crimes anywhere in theworld the same should apply to elec-toral fraud. Those who are caughtcheating in the Olympics arestripped of their medals. Yet theElectoral Commission's view is thateven with an election won withfraud and illegal financing theresult stands.

What is to be done? Wylie sug-gests the establishment of a DigitalRegulatory Agency with statutoryduties for corporations and amandatory professional code of con-duct for software engineers. I’msceptical, but better than nothing.More importantly we need legisla-tion to give us ownership of our owndata. And the right to function inthe digital world without selling itand when we do sell it maintaincontrol over its onward transition.Mindf*ck is a salutary warning ofhow the alt-right is operating toundermine western-style democra-cy. Those who fail to do everythingto stop these imposters and racists,thieves and fascists are not victims,but accomplices!

Glyn Ford on theElectricFrontline

MiserablismWhat's Left Now: The history and futureof social democracyAndrew HindmoorOxford University Press £20

This author asserts that “oneof the distinguishing fea-tures of the left in Britain is

that it holds a remorselessly bleakand Miserablist view of our recentpolitical history”. Well, if that isn'tan Aunt Sally waiting to be bowled

over by an eager author, I promisenever to review another bookagain.

An 18-page Introduction neverendears me to a book. But I strug-gled on. Compared to Paul Mason'sClear Bright Future and LewisGoodall's Left for Dead, Hindmoor 'sanalysis appears dank and shal-low. His final phrase concludes:“...Sometimes it pays to be cau-tious”. Indeed.

PeterKenyon offers avery shortperplexedview



BOOK REVIEWS

Thinker and politicianOtto BauerEwa Czerwinska-SchuppHaymarket $28

Bauer was the leading theo-retician of Austro-Marxismand leader of the Austrian

Social Democratic Workers partythrough most of the interwar peri-od. He served as Foreign Ministerin the first Austrian republic andwas a participant in the SecondInternational, then the Viennainternational of 1921-3 and finallyin the Labour and SocialistInternational. Exiled from Austriain 1934, he died in Paris in1938. Czerwinska-Schupp isa Polish academic, and thebook, which originated as aPhD dissertation, was origi-nally published in Polishand then in German. Unlikemany studies of Marxist the-ory, the book is relativelyeasy to read. As most ofBauer’s voluminous writingshave not been translatedfrom German into English,this book which is both abiography and a comprehen-sive study of Bauer’s theoret-ical work is doubly welcome.It can be read in tandemwith Haymarket’s recenttwo volumes of writings ofthe Austro-Marxists editedby Blum and Smallbonewhich includes some ofBauer’s most importantessays, translated intoEnglish for the first time.

After an introduction toBauer’s personal and politi-cal trajectory, the book isdivided into the themes ofBauer’s theoretical work: hisearly studies of the material-ist view of history; his contri-bution to the theory of impe-rialism; his writings on thenational question (generally regard-ed as his most significant theoreti-cal contribution); his developmentof a ‘third way’ to socialism(between traditional social democ-racy and bolshevism); his writingson the state, democracy and social-ism; his view of war; and his theoryof fascism. In a short review, I willrestrict my comments to two keyelements. Firstly, Bauer was highlycritical of concepts of nationalismand national self-determination.This partly arose from his experi-ence within the Austro-Hungarianstate before the First World War.He argued that nationalism wascultural rather than territorial and

supported federal structures. Hewas therefore in conflict with Czech,South Slav and Polish socialistswho sought to secede from theAustro-Hungarian empire, and whosucceeded in doing so in 1919.However, in 1918, Bauer arguedthat the residual Austria, as a lin-guistically and cultural German ter-ritory should combine withGermany. As foreign secretary,Bauer advocated the ’anschluss’,which was rejected by the Treaty ofVersailles. It was therefore difficultfor Bauer to oppose the ‘anschluss’when it finally occurred in 1938, by

which time Bauer had been in exilefor four years.

The second key issue wasBauer’s attempt to pursue a newapproach to socialism. Bauer was a‘left’ socialist but was also stronglycommitted to democracy and to therepresentative parliamentary routeto socialism. Despite the fact thatthe urbanised working class inAustria never achieved a parlia-mentary majority and was onlybriefly in government as part of acoalition, headed by the socialistKarl Renner as Austria’s first postWW1 president, and the fact thatthe Austrian socialists did notorganise in the rural areas (Austria

being divided between a socialistVienna and a Christian socialistcountryside, Bauer neverthelessretained his belief in a parliamen-tary route to power, that is until1934.

He was highly critical ofBolshevism (being close to theMensheviks, whose exiled leaderswere active in both the Vienna andlabour and Socialist Internationals)but nevertheless founded theVienna international in an attemptto unite socialist and communistmovements. When this attemptfailed in 1923, Bauer’s opposition to

revolutionary van-guardism took him andhis fellow Austro-Marxistsinto the Labour andsocialist International.Bauer therefore did notsupport the uprising ledby the small AustrianCommunist party and thesocialist paramilitaryShutzbund in 1934,though in exile he provid-ed support to theRevolutionary SocialistParty, who sought tooppose the Nazi ledadministration.

In his writings in exile,Bauer acknowledged thefailure of the socialist’sparliamentary strategyand its failure to developan effective response tothe growth of both thereligious and nationalisticAustro-fascism of Fey andthe Heimwehr (whose risethe socialists largelyignored) or the growth ofNazism, which givenBauer’s mistaken supportof the Anschluss, was tobe the greater threat. Itshould however be recog-nised that the Austrian

socialists were debarred by theAustro-fascists, four years beforeHitler’s victory parade in Vienna, aparade that was in fact welcomed bythe majority of German Austrians.

Bauer accepted a personalresponsibility for the failure ofAustrian socialism. However, thedemocratic tradition of Austriansocialism was to have its reward inthe establishment of a new socialistled government after the SecondWorld War. Despite his disappoint-ments and inconsistencies, Bauer isan important socialist theorist andCzerwinska-Schupp, her translatorand publisher should be thanked forgiving him the profile he deserves.

DuncanBowie on the‘third way’Marxist



Lessons of October for Third Worldliberation

Don Flynnon an Afro-CaribbeanMarxist

The Russian Revolution: A view fromthe Third WorldWalter RodneyVerso, £16.99

Walter Rodney’s mostimportant contribution toMarxist thinking about

the emergence of global capital-ism will forever be How EuropeUnderdeveloped Africa, also pub-lished by Verso as a companion tothis volume. With the advantageof his own roots in Caribbeansociety he was able to understandthe phenomenon of under-development as the outcome ofthe aggressive, profit-seekingregimes imposed on his homeregion, rather than the inher-ent backwardness of its people.

His analysis added to thesketches of the role that capi-talist imperialism played intransferring resources,entrenching poverty in oneplace and pooling prosperity inothers which had been providedby Marx, Engels and Lenin.Dealing with the concreteexample of Africa, Rodney laidbare the processes throughwhich exploitation worked toextract value from the labour-ing classes in colonial and post-colonial societies and facilitatedits appearance in the developednations, not just as profit, butalso as higher wages, socialwelfare and security for theirworking class citizens.

But in addition to whatmight be thought of as scholar-ly work primarily intended todevelop a line of argument,Rodney was also an activist wholooked for opportunities to workalongside others struggling forliberation, across the Caribbeanregion, the United States, andAfrica.

The Russian Revolution: AView from the Third Worldemerged from a series of lecturesgiven by Rodney during the fiveyears when he was resident inTanzania and working at theUniversity of Dar es Salaambetween 1969 and 1974. At thattime the newly independent coun-try was trying to forge a versionof socialism that was relevant toits circumstances with a predomi-nantly rural population engagedin subsistence agriculture. The

experiment with cooperative, uja-maa village structures was seenby Rodney as being analogous tothe efforts made by the SovietUnion to solve the problem of thebackwardness of its own ruralsector during the 1920s and 30s.Working with students expectedto play a role in sealing the suc-cess of the Tanzanian model,Rodney sought to provide themwith a broader context rootedMarxism which would help theyoung country along its socialistpath.

Much of the content of theearly lectures deals with prob-lems of histography. How doesthe researcher access ‘the truth’about a particular historicalevent? How much is decided bythe inevitable bias, forged by cul-ture, class and prejudice whichany individual will bring to theinquiry? Is there a reliable wayto check the tendency towardssubjectivity? Rodney’s confidencein dialectical materialism as athoroughly scientific approach tothe study of history sets the scenefor a scrutiny of the revolutionwhich devolves on what isclaimed to be the objective fact ofstruggle between social classes.

For the basic material of whatconstitutes the ‘facts’ of the two

revolutions of 1917 – March andOctober – Rodney draws on anextensive list which consists ofthe works of the officiallyapproved Soviet historians whosework circulated outside the coun-try after the 1930s, contrastedwith a wide range of non-Sovietaccounts, most of which are hos-tile to the claims made for theachievements of the Bolsheviks.In a chapter devoted to a discus-sion of Trotsky’s three volumehistory Rodney clearly finds it theaccount he finds most congenial,

explaining as it does how acontest between the classesin a country conventionallypresented as backward couldlay the basis for a socialistsociety based on the authori-ty of the working class.

All of this must have beenencouraging for the cadre offuture leaders of their coun-try that Rodney was address-ing back in the early 1970s.The bigger problem was howto account for the develop-ment of Soviet society in thedecades after the enthusiasmfor socialist change following1917. The view that thestate built by the revolutionhad degenerated into anoppressive bureaucracy pur-suing its own interests –essentially Trotsky’s inter-pretation from the mid-1930sonwards – is inimical toRodney’s own wish to demon-strate the continued viabilityof the Soviet socialist road.Criticism of the disastrous

effects of the collectivisation ofagriculture, the extensive use offorced labour, as well as the subli-mation of worker-led challenges tocapitalism to the task of support-ing the ‘socialist motherland’, ismuted in the final lectures in theseries.

Despite these failings Rodneyhimself continued to pursue a revo-lutionary socialist line which led tohis role in founding the WorkingPeople’s Alliance in his nativeGuyana months before his assassi-nation in 1980. His death at thetragically early age of 38 concludedthe activism of a formidable ThirdWorld intellectual who soughtalways to develop his work in theservice of social movements strug-gling for liberation.



BOOK REVIEWS

Anti-authoritarian pioneerWilliam Godwin a Political LifeRichard Gough ThomasPluto £12.99

William Godwin (1756-1836) is claimed by theauthor to be the first

major anarchist thinker in theAnglophone world—a philosophereducator. Godwin could equally becited as an early socialist with hisseminal An Enquiry into PoliticalJustice containing many elementsof later egalitarian and democrat-ic thinking, though with an indi-vidualist streak. Neither anar-chism or socialism were recognis-able terms in Godwin’s lifetime.

His key writings and work sateither side of the two centuries

when France was in the midst ofrevolution and political agitationfor social reform and the franchisewere growing in Britain.

Famously married to MaryWollstonecraft, author ofVindication of the Rights ofWomen and mother of MaryShelley, he lies at the heart ofBritish radicalism and romanti-cism.

Thomas’s book is a well-researched, readable study draw-ing on newly compiled letters andjournals.

Godwin was anti-authoritarianand passionate about humans’ability to reason and work togeth-er ultimately making laws andgovernment unnecessary. As

Thomas points out Godwin wasnot a revolutionary but soughtchange through writing and con-versation. He also wrote novels,particularly Caleb Williams, histo-ries and children’s works.

Widowed throughWollstonecraft’s early death heparented the children while fallingin and out with the influentialwriters and thinkers of the time.Thomas divides his life into chap-ters: The minister, the philoso-pher, the activist, the husband,the father, the pensioner--whilethe philosopher theme runsthroughout. He died in relativeobscurity and a bankrupt but hisliterary and philosophical legacylives on as this biography testifies.

MikeDavis on aphilosopherking

Secular PopeDag Hammarskjöld, the United Nationsand the Decolonisation of AfricaHenning MelberHurst £30

It has been said that the UnitedNations was not created tobring us to heaven, but in order

to save us from hell.” This was themission that faced DagHammarskjöld, perhaps the mostoutstanding and the most contro-versial Secretary General of theUnited Nations. A profoundlymoral man, he took the UN chartervery seriously and tried to inter-pret it in the context of events,which meant for him to stand upfor all the members of the UN andthus to stand up to the big powers,who did not like it. This involvedstrengthening the GeneralAssembly vis-à-vis the SecurityCouncil. During the tenure ofTrygve Lie, the first SecretaryGeneral, the UN was a creature ofthe ‘western powers’ but theUniversal Declaration of HumanRights (1948) and the arrival ofNehru and other leaders of theNon-Aligned Movement changedthe dynamics.

Hammarskjöld tried to mediatein the Suez crisis but the Anglo-French-Israeli attack went aheadanyway. It also led to the UNbecoming effectively anti-colonial-ist: a resolution on the rights ofself-determination for all stateswas passed in 1960 -with Britain,France, Portugal and the USabstaining.

Twenty-five African countries

became independent duringHammarskjöld’s tenure and hisattention began to be concentratedon them. He saw the UN’s role as“a type of midwife for the birth ofnewly independent developingcountries”– but aid should be foran initial period only and multilat-eral.

He visited South Africa in 1961making his views on apartheidclear and earning him the enmityof that regime. But the latter partof his time in office was dominatedby the events in the formerBelgian Congo, where the hastilyconcocted independence settlementfell apart within weeks and themineral-rich province of Katangaseceded with military support fromBelgium backed by capitalist min-ing interests. Hammarskjöld, whohad created the first UN force forEgypt organised a second one(ONUC), recruited from neutralcountries, which was rapidly sentto the Congo – but it failed to pre-vent the capture and death of thePrime Minister, PatriceLumumba. Hammarskjöld said hewanted Lumumba to be part of thesolution but many, including thenon-aligned countries, blamed himand the UN for Lumumba’s deathand refuted his claim to have “keptthe Cold War out of Africa.”Rather, they reckoned he had triedto keep communism out.

The Soviet Union called for hisresignation, but most UN mem-bers supported his aim of endingKatanga’s secession – andHammarskjöld – “more a General

than a Secretary” - at this pointtried and failed to solve the prob-lem by attacking the Katangaforces which were mostly interna-tional mercenaries. The situationwas dangerous and in September1963 Hammarskjöld decided to tryto settle the dispute peacefully bymeeting the Katanga leader, MoiseTshombe in Ndola, Zambia, thenNorthern Rhodesia (the countrywhere I had just started working).His plane crashed before landing.Crocodile tears were shed inRhodesia, Britain, Belgium and theUS.

The suspicion that it was a plotand not an accident was given newcredence in Susan Williams’ book,Who killed Hammarskjöld? (seemy review in Chartist in 2011).Soon after this an Inquiry Trust, ofwhich the author of this book is amember, was created, and, whichin turn appointed a formal commis-sion of enquiry, the efforts of whichpersuaded Ban Ki-moon to startofficial UN investigations. Theseare described in this book. The UKand US have not co-operated.

This book describes a complexand sensitive man whose visioncontributed positively to the devel-opment of the UN system and whotried to work for a better worlddespite the messy reality of worldpolitics. It throws light on amoment when the UN was tryingto find its feet, as were the manynew states of Africa, and how thetwo interacted. It also provides anupdate on the question of whokilled him.

NigelWatt on theUN’s saint



Socialist, Feminist and InternationalistRed EllenLaura BeersHarvard £24.95

Remembered mainly for herrole in the 1936 JarrowMarch and her book The

Town that was Murdered and to alesser extent for her short and notvery successful time as Minister ofEducation between 1945 and 1947,Wilkinson had a much more signif-icant role not just in the Britishlabour movement but in the inter-national feminist and socialistmovements. Wilkinson was proba-bly the most important womansocialist in the Labour Party in the1930’s and 1940’s and was ajunior Minister (in charge ofair raid shelters) in thewartime coalition beforebecoming only the secondLabour cabinet minister,Margaret Bondfield beingthe first as Minister ofLabour in 1924.

It is however Wilkinson’searlier and frenetic politicallife that makes her worthy ofthis biography. Beers is anAmerican academic and thisbiography, which is excel-lently researched, gives mostattention to Wilkinson’s roleas international socialist,feminist and anti-fascist - itis only the last 50 pageswhich cover her Ministerialcareer – Wilkinson was to diein office, apparently of an(accidental) overdose ofsleeping pills.

Wilkinson, like many ofher fellow party leaders inthe interwar years, camefrom a working-class back-ground: active in the dis-tributive workers union, shewas a Manchester city coun-cillor, before becoming MPfor Middlesbrough in 1924. Amember of the ILP from the age of16, she joined the CommunistParty on its foundation in 1920.Never married, her intimatefriendships included theComintern agent Otto Katz, thesocialist illustrator FrankHorrabin and Herbert Morrison.

Wilkinson should however bejudged on her own merits not onher relationships. Wilkinson was along-term member of the NationalExecutive Committee of theLabour Party, a friend and sup-porter of Stafford Cripps’s popularfront movement in the late 1930’sbut choosing to stay in the party

when Cripps was expelled. Shebecame Labour Party chair in1945 and oversaw the Blackpoolconference which set the policy forthe 1945-50 Labour Government.A lifelong suffragist and feminist,Wilkinson was not a separatist. Avigorous campaigner on welfareissues such as equal pay and equalpensions for women, her focus wason policies which impacted on theworking class as a whole.

A campaigner against unem-ployment and for investment inwhat were referred to as ‘the dis-tressed areas’, she was also a pro-lific journalist, writing for Plebsand Tribune but also in the Daily

Express and Time and Tide. Shewrote two novels – Clash, whichwas an autobiographical novelisa-tion of her experiences as a propa-gandist in the General Strike of1926, which is well worth readingand a crime novel The DivisionBell Mystery, featuring an oilmogul shot in parliament –Wilkinson was a fan of AgathaChristie, and this is perhaps notthe most successful imitation.

Perhaps the most interestingsections of this biography, arethose covering Wilkinson’s inter-national role, both in internationalwomen’s organisations, but also inanti-fascist bodies and a wide

range of organisations which werewithin the Communist Front net-works set up by Willi Munzenberg,whose main operative, Otto Katzwas a close friend of Wilkinson’sand travelled with her to Spain.This visit, in the middle of theCivil War, also included the anti-fascist Conservative MP,Kathleen, Duchess of Atholl, whowrote the Penguin SpecialSearchlight on Spain, based oninformation, apparently suppliedby Katz.

Wilkinson was also an activemember of Krishna Menon’s IndiaLeague, which campaigned forIndian independence. Wilkinson

visited India and co-authored their Condition ofIndia report in 1934 whichprovided a devastating ifsomewhat partisan critiqueof British administration.Wilkinson, a regular visitorto Germany, also producedone of the earliest critiquesof Nazism – a pamphlet onthe Terror in Germany in1933, which was followed in1935 by the book length WhyFascism?, written with theGerman communist exileEdward Conze. It examinedthe failure of German social-ists and communists todefend the democraticWeimar republic.

While Wilkinson was pre-pared to work with theCommunists in joint cam-paigns, she was no naïve fel-low traveller and was highlycritical not just of Sovietpolicies, but also of theBritish and German nation-al communist parties. Shewas later to become morefiercely anti-Communist andis often seen as moving tothe right politically. This

derives partly from her associationwith Morrison and his attempt toreplace Attlee as Labour leader.Wilkinson saw Attlee as weak, butthis did not stop her from havingpublic disputes with Morrison, forexample when she refused to delaythe commitment to raise the schoolleaving age, first to 15 and then to16.

In the final years of her life,despite her illnesses, Wilkinsonreturned to the international stage,attending the founding conferenceof the UN and in fact chairing thefounding meeting of UNESCO, theUN’s Educational Scientific andCultural organisation.

DuncanBowie on EllenWilkinson


The General Electionresult was deeply disap-pointing for all those whocampaigned to stop BorisJohnson, but the disap-

pointment and dread postDecember 12th is not just for pro-gressive pro-Europeans here in theUK - it also rings warning bellsacross Europe.

The UK has historically beenheld in great affection by most ofour neighbours who adore our popstars, watch our television pro-grammes and learn our languagefrom an early age. Quaint Britishcustoms are aped adoringly and ouraberrations usually forgiven. Butthose watching the regressiveWestminster political drama fromacross the sea have, like many of us,continued to hope that somehow wewould find a way to stop the slideinto dangerous isolationism outsidethe EU. Barring a miracle that hopenow seems to have been extin-guished.

When the ill-advised referendumtook place in 2016 the eyes of theworld were upon us. I heard atouching story from a Lithuaniancolleague, MEP Laima Andrikienė,whose nonagenarian mother stayedup all night to watch the results.Laima did not and awoke on themorning of June 24th to hear hermother saying, "We've lost!"

This story has haunted me. Thecollective ownership of British val-ues by pro-European non-Brits,especially by those whose recentmemories of totalitarianism andfascism remain intact andingrained, is not easily understoodby either the British public or our

politicians, many of whom chooseto remember the far-distant

Empire rather than deeplyreflect on the conse-

quences of two worldwars. There is an

appalling absenceof historical

referencingin public

d i s -

(LAST) VIEW FROM STRASBOURG

Keep the EU flag flying

Julie Ward is aLabour MEP forNW England (untilJanuary 31)

on both sides of the argument. Evenmany of those who voted for us in2017 had grown fed up with waitingfor a decisive position, whilst EU27citizens have, quite frankly, feltabandoned by Labour.

So as we exit a political, econom-ic, cultural and social union that hasacted as the scaffold for a Europeanpeace project and provided a rela-tive buffer against the worst excess-es of Conservative economic andanti trade union policies we woulddo well to reflect on the future ofEurope not just the future of athreatened United Kingdom with aresurgent nationalism in Scotlandand Ireland.

The Party of European Socialistsmust become more not less impor-tant in Labour's future relationships.We must take our place within all itsstructures alongside comrades fromNorway, Switzerland, Turkey andmany of the Balkan states who are,ironically, desperate for accession tothe EU. We must be more present inPES Women where people likeBarking & Dagenham Labour coun-cillor, Sanchia Alasia, have alreadymade their mark. We must stand insolidarity with socialist and democratLGBTIQA+ comrades through thePES Rainbow Rose network, and wemust support our young members toattend the regular Young EuropeanSocialists' summer-camps. We mustalso work at grassroots level withsocial partners and encourage net-working via organisations such asSOLIDAR and the European Anti-Poverty Network. Like liberation the-ologists, our work must now be onthe streets, visibly on the side of thepoor and vulnerable, standing withall those who are other.

course to such an extent that a pollconducted by the HMDT in the leadup to Holocaust Memorial Day in2019 found that more than 2.6 mil-lion British people believe the holo-caust is a myth. The survey alsofound that 8% of our populationclaim the scale of the genocide hasbeen exaggerated.

Aspects of Theresa May's 'hostileenvironment' echoed the sentimentsof 1930s Germany, for example the2013 'go home' vans. Instead ofcountering this Conservative pan-dering to right wing populism, theLabour Party cooked up its own ver-sion with the infamous anti-immi-grant mugs. Instead of boldly cham-pioning the benefits of freedom ofmovement from the outset theLabour leadership joined in the hueand cry with the ill-advised call for"British jobs for British workers"rather than campaign along thelines of 'decent work for all workers'.

After years of politicians of allcolours telling us that the EU wasresponsible for the problems in ourNHS and our education service, forincreased crime and disorder andfor general interfering in Britishsociety, it's no wonder thatJohnson's simplistic 'Get BrexitDone' slogan translated into votesfrom a certain demographic.

This election was most certainlyabout Brexit and it's a shame theLabour Party did not face up to thatand embrace the opportunity toboldly champion its progressiveinternationalist values. The party'sdogged focusing on domestic issueswhilst shunning the biggest politicalquestion of our time, has done it nofavours. By sitting on the fence forthe last few years we leaked support

Julie Ward on taking internationalism to the streets

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