Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 113

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 113th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1528 friends!

Recent blogs:

Message for filesharers

Goodbye Mr Socialism

Politics is too important to leave to politicians

Quote for the week:

" .....a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation... " Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 16, (1867).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

> Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Greasy Pole: Alan Milburn – Days of Despair (2009)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The aftermath of polling in the general election will be a stressful, disorientating time for us as we struggle to adjust to the loss of so many of those we have loved for their readiness to turn back on their promises and distort hard facts. Particularly to be mourned in this way is the Right Honourable Alan Milburn, ex-Secretary of State for Health and Member of Parliament for Darlington. Milburn will not suffer the predicted humiliation at the polls because he announced in June that he would not be standing for Parliament again after a career, notable even among MPs, for its labyrinthine application of the arts of politics. As a child in the little County Durham town of Tow Law, once dependent on its iron works and its coal mines until it was devastated in the slumps of the 1970s and 1980s, he never knew his father and was cared for by his mother. From that – often unpromising – start he blossomed into one of the highest paid Labour MPs with a six figure income from his “extensive outside business interests” (which is perhaps what he meant when he told his constituency Labour Party that he was resigning the seat to give him “the time to pursue challenges other than politics”)

Haze of Dope
“Challenge” is a word too easily used by politicians – especially those who have something awful to disguise. For Milburn, it has been a varying concept, as became obvious when he left Tow Law for the wide, hard world where words mean what the user needs them to, for as long as is useful. He went to study history at Lancaster University (not then feared for any rigorous application in its standards of scholarship). His next challenge was to try for a Ph.D at the rather more expectant Newcastle but this proved beyond his powers of endurance and he gave up – which he ascribes not to any lack of tenacity on his part but to his aversion to studying on his own. So in his twenties he could be found, appropriately shaggy and bearded, jointly running a left-wing bookshop in Newcastle. This hive of delusion advertised itself under the name Days of Hope which was popularly translated as the Haze of Dope.

Declaring himself to be a Marxist or a Trotskyist according to which was the more challenging in the circumstances, Milburn became active in CND and helped run a campaign to save the doomed shipyards of Sunderland. Applying the kind of insidious skills to prove later so useful in the jungle of Westminster, Milburn oozed charm and a consummate ability to exploit the attention of the media. Perhaps he and the other campaigners – not to mention the desperate shipyard workers – were impressed by all of this; if so they overlooked the fact that their opponents could use similar, but more cutting and decisive, methods. Bankers in the City at first offered the workers reason for hope but then abruptly withdrew. Prospective buyers from abroad turned out to be nothing of the kind. The bitter confusion of doubt was finally settled on 7 December 1988 when the Tory minister Tony Newton told the Commons that the yards would close – “reluctantly, with great regret” he said but then he would, wouldn't he. Days of Hope it was not.

Influence
This episode might have been instructive for Milburn as an example of how capitalism operates, producing wealth such as ships not as a favour to human beings but as a means of profit for a minority class, so that employment is not a social service but the imposition of wage slavery. This system works in disregard of someone like Milburn and his delusional ability to charm and manipulate. Faced with this cruel reality he chose to blame the failure to defend the shipyards onto his lack of influence, which he would remedy by joining the Labour Party. Moving up the Greasy Pole, from trade union official to MP to junior minister to a seat in the Cabinet he used his “influence” in ways which dismayed many people who were unwise enough to have believed in him; among other labours he oversaw energetic privatisation of Labour's sacred state health service. Stolidly he supported the war on Iraq, the replacement of Trident, student tuition fees... In this way he earned the recommendation of “leadership material” from the embittered bruiser Charles Clarke but whether this was helpful is a matter for doubt.

Whatever theories Milburn may have spouted to the bookworms of Haze of Dope about influence rightfully stemming from the democratic decisions of the people did not prevent him, after he resigned from being in charge of the Department of Health, taking a £30,000 a year job as consultant to Bridgenorth Capital – a venture capital firm with big interests in the financing of private health companies breaking into the NHS. Notable among these was Alliance Medical which in June 2004, just a year after Milburn had left the Department of Health, was awarded a £95 million contract to supply and operate 12 mobile scanners to the NHS over five years. This nice little earner was signed up to by John Hutton, Milburn's successor at Health, at a time when many scanners were lying idle because the NHS Trusts could not afford to run them, forcing some patients to travel as much as 20 miles for a scan. A year later the whole scheme was being denounced by doctors as a “disaster” and panicky Labour officials were trying to stop MP Kevin Jones asking questions about it.

Social Mobility
Milburn's last fling, before he leaves Parliament in time to evade the ban on MPs holding other jobs, was to chair the grandly titled commission on social mobility, which purported to investigate, and make proposals about, the chances of improving a person's life prospects. To the customary media hysteria, the commission concluded that a person's “social mobility” was related to their level of poverty. There is a wealth of evidence which reaches the same conclusion – about education, health, ambition... So what was the point of yet another dead-end enquiry into the ravages of this abominable social system? To provide a discredited Labour leader with the illusory comfort of “influence”?

Ivan

Pathfinders: Euthanasia? Line on the left, one needle each... (2009)

The Pathfinders column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Euthanasia? Line on the left, one needle each...

It’s not often that nature obligingly weighs right into a political row to decide the matter within a month or so, but in the wake of the recent anti-NHS row across the Pond it might do just that. As you will recall, the usual internecine sniping between workers, managers and policy-makers within the British NHS was suspended as the country went into a collective fit of the conniptions over the defamation being perpetrated in the American press. According to the rabid opponents of Obama’s modest health-care reform bill, we in Britain have enforced euthanasia and face ‘death panels’ of officials who decide which of us get to live. You wouldn’t think even redneck republicans would buy this, but their own political bosses obviously think otherwise, and they’re the ones with their fingers on the arrested pulse of American political consciousness.

It’s not cricket, is it? We can slag off the Health Service all we like, after all it’s the national sport. But do it on American TV, as self-promoting neocon-licking uberturd Daniel Hannan MEP did, and out comes the Dunkirk spirit and a flurry of statistics to show why a), the NHS kicks America’s butt over every Key Performance Indicator, b), 47 million Americans with no health insurance would rather live over here and c), Daniel Hannan should present himself before the next available death panel.

Everybody, calm down. Just wait and see. Swine flu is back this month, so it won’t be long before we’ll have hard evidence about which health system copes best, or least worst. The word on the wards is not optimistic, though, judging from a recent poll of health experts of whom over half ‘seriously doubted that their health authorities would be able to cope’ if the virus became more virulent, as is widely expected (New Scientist editorial, 15 August). Half, too, had ‘stashed away their own antivirals’, even though Tamiflu and Relenza are not likely to do much good for adults and none at all in children under the age of twelve (New Scientist, p 4).

Not to be accused of pessimism, Pathfinders would like to offer its own handy list of flu-busting tips for worried readers everywhere. First, lay in a stock of food and don’t go out for five months. Alternatively, remove yourself to the Seychelles for the winter. Keep large reserves of water, wood, coal and gold for barter in case society breaks down altogether. Always have a large well-armed staff at your disposal to run errands and catch diseases on your behalf. And of course, have your own doctor, preferably married into the family, with access to the best private hospital your banker’s bonuses can buy.

Well, that’s the owning class taken care of, which is the main thing. For the rest of us, well, let’s keep things in perspective. A big die-off will create a labour shortage and that will raise wages and foster strength and unity among what’s left of the unions. No more worries about unemployment and recession – or euthanasia.

Meanwhile Daniel Hannan has been ‘rebuked’ by David Cameron, and many are expecting the disloyal swine to be flushed down the Tory Party’s private Swine Flue for being so off-message. Of course, Hannan was only saying what many in the Gentlemen’s Gestapo privately believe, which is that the Health Service is a giant drain on corporate profits at a time when workers are ten a penny. The American ruling class also know this, which is why they’re keen to tell the American proles that the British euthanise all their old people by leaving them out for the vultures, and pack their sick babies into Soylent Green factories.

Bang goes the science media

Ben Goldacre at the Guardian must be wondering if his Bad Science column is turning into Bad Business, when science journos are being laid off from papers all round the globe as part of a ‘dumb down and ditch it’ campaign to cut staff costs and gloss up the lowest common denominator sections that require the least thinking. Newspapers are in terminal decline due to the internet, and in the Balloon game that editors are playing, the boffin-hacks are getting tipped over the side first. Of course, they all go online and start blogs, but then they’re in competition with a million other blogs touting all brands of ‘science’ from creationism to alien telepathy – and losing. In the ‘Best Science Blog’ section of the 2008 Weblog Awards, Pharyngula, an anti-religion sceptic’s site, lost first place to a climate-change denial blog (‘Unpopular science’, The Nation, 29 July).

Is science really so unpopular? The BBC seems to think so. Its new science programme, Bang Goes the Theory, tries ever-so-hard to be cool, with three young presenters prowling a loud CBeebies-like studio set and conducting experiments carefully selected for their ‘wow’ factor. The breathless pace effectively rules out any real depth, and the hook appears to be not the science itself, as in Horizon or dear old long-lamented Tomorrow’s World, but whether the presenter is going to get seriously injured. If you’re in your teens you’ll feel too old for this show.

Meanwhile in recognition of the fact that many scientific breakthroughs have initially been knocked back, a new open-source academic journal called Rejecta Mathematica has gone online, consisting of papers rejected by peer-review (‘Huddled Maths’, Economist, 29 July). Let us be the first to recommend to the BBC their next piece of prime-time fluff: Science – The Out-Takes.

Competition for the Twittering Classes

The latest fad for micro-blogging is coming under fire, with a study showing that 40 percent of ‘tweets’ are ‘pointless babble’ and only 8.7 percent pass along ‘news of interest’(BBC Online, 17 August). Considering the gargantua of garbage which is the printed book output, this is not a bad batting average. However, keen as ever to raise the bar of public discourse, Pathfinders proposes a competition for the best expression of the Party Case in 140 characters or less. Brief reflection offers: ‘World for the Workers, not the Rich W**kers’ however you are sure to do better than that. Emails or letters to our Clapham office. Closing date 10 November, for our December issue, and best ideas will be printed. First Prize will be, of course, comradely adulation, as we socialists are trying to move away from material remuneration systems.

Paddy Shannon

Harry Patch and the First World Slaughter (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

""War is organised murder and nothing else” . . . “It was not worth it, it was not worth one let alone all the millions” (Harry Patch)

Two of the last known surviving combatants of the first World Slaughter died in July. Both were over a hundred-years old. The second of the two, Harry Patch, had some very enlightening views on the subject of the slaughter. Not surprisingly some sections of the media, not wanting to upset the military and other dealers in death, were not inclined to give some of his views the prominence which they deserved.

The “Great War” (great for whom? Undertakers? Arms salesmen?) was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Given that there has not been a single day since 11 November 1918 when there has not been some armed conflict going on, it can only be said to be a failure in this respect. This can hardy be a surprise to anyone with even the slightest grasp of socialist principles.

In 1914 many people were led by propaganda to think of themselves as belonging to the same “nation state” as their so-called “betters”. Kitchener’s famous poster of “Your Country Needs You!” is simply put down by the socialist maxim that the workers of the world have no country. Alas, countless thousands were intimidated, bullied, coerced or simply blindly led to the slaughter. Those who have chuckled at the antics of Rowan Atkinson as captain Blackadder might like to reflect that behind the humour there is more than a grain of truth in these episodes.

This article is not written to dwell on the horrors of trench warfare, the introduction of gas and tanks or the futility of the mass bloodshed to gain a few yards of Belgian mud. There are countless other articles doing this. Suffice it to say that even though the trenches were an insult to humanity most troops actually gained weight whilst in the army, not that army rations were so good, just food at home was so poor or non-existent. Others covered also the horrors of conscripts, many who had lied about their age to enlist and who should have been back at school, being shot at dawn for cowardice.
Harry Patch’s point was that the war was simply a family squabble which was not worth the shedding of one single drop of (working class) blood for. In that most of the (unelected) royal houses of Europe were related by marriage and blood, he was correct in this respect. Not without good reason were the Empress Maria Theresa and later Queen Victoria known as the Grandmothers of Europe, their children and grandchildren having married into Europe royal houses.

It may or may not be true that Victoria thought submarines were unsporting and ungentlemanly and shouldn’t be used or that her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm was being a naughty boy. It may also be true that the monarchy and their hangers-on had more influence then but the war was simply a continuation of business by other means.

Wars would not be fought unless the profits of some important section of business was under severe threat. The capitalist (ruling) classes are not daft enough to allow their workers to be killed without good reason. And, taking a lesson from the slave owners, they did not expect soldiers to fight well if their stomachs are empty. No access for business to markets, resources or investment outlets = no profits = war. That is the simple logic which condemned so many men and women to death. A fight with other workers who in most cases did not even have a common language, let alone a quarrel with them. Workers who on both sides would rather have been with their families or going about their everyday (peacetime) tasks. Almost 100 years later nothing has changed.

The profit motive shows its head even further. In the current events in Afghanistan troops have been killed because allegedly their equipment was not sturdy enough or up to scratch. Should we or they be surprised? Of course not. The ruling classes want to win their wars as quickly and cheaply as possible and if that means a few more casualties so be it. (Arms manufacturers of course want the war to be as long and expensive as possible).

Harry Patch’s bravery was a type that some might not recognise. His gunnery team made a pledge not to shoot at the “enemy” (with whom they had no personal quarrel or animosity) unless absolutely necessary and then only shoot at their legs to wound them and not kill them. (In subsequent wars weaponry has been designed not to kill but to cripple; wounded combatants coming home minus limbs is bad for moral – ask Thatcher why the wounded of the Falkland’s were not allowed to appear at the “victory” parade – and tending the wounded when they are back home “wastes” valuable resources which could be preparing to kill or maim more people).

Harry Patch described war as “organised murder”. I would go a stage further and call it “legalised organised murder”. When opponents of socialism cite objections to socialism by way of what would we do about murders and robbers, point out to them that capitalism by its very nature is a system based on legalised murder and legalised robbery.

Harry Patch may not have been a socialist but we should salute his courage and conviction in telling the truth, so embarrassing that may have been to the authorities.

JFB

Moore's musings

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog
We might not agree with Michael Moore upon everything in his new movie "Capitalism: A Love story" but in this interview there are points in which we do share . One of those is that the capitalist class rule by virtue of the consent of the many.

" Capitalism is not only an economic system that legalizes greed, it also has at its foundation a political system of capitalism that is, 'We have to buy the political system because we don't have enough votes. We're only 1% of the votes. We have to buy the people, and we have to buy the people by convincing them if they work hard, they too can be rich one day.' "

"I think they

[The wealthiest Americans] exposed themselves to a lot of middle class people who did believe in their system and they showed everybody the Ponzi scheme that it is. It's set up like a pyramid, so that the richest 1% at the top have more financial wealth than the 95% beneath them.
But the trick here is to get the 95% believing that if they work hard and slave away, they would get to the top of the pyramid. Of course, as we know, only a few people can stand on top of a pyramid. The fact that this crash exposed our economic system as a corrupt scam was something I didn't intend on happening while I was making the movie."
"Where's the cure for cancer? Where's the bullet train to take us from New York to L.A. in 10 hours? Where are the alternative energy systems to save us when we run out of oil? I wish these were the priorities. But when Wall Street sucks up our best mathematicians, physicists, engineers, when they should be working on these other things and instead they're working to create derivatives ... c'mon. We're in deep, deep trouble. We need the best minds working on these things."
In the movie , Moore ends with this conclusion: "Capitalism is an evil and you can't regulate evil. You have to replace it with something that is good for everyone."
He is not quite there yet on understanding what that "something" is but hopefully , he is getting there and also hopefully so are many others .

Alan Johnstone

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 112

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 112th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1527 friends!

Recent blogs:

Unholy Wars

The Rise and Fall of the NHS

Parecon or socialism?

Quote for the week:

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind." Aristotle, (384 BC-322 BC).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Socialist Meeting in Manchester: Capitalism in Crisis (2009)

A Socialist Party Day School
Organised by Manchester Branch
Saturday 12 September, 1pm - 5pm

Capitalism and the Crisis: the Latest Recession
Speaker: Adam Buick

Cassandras, Jeremiahs and Chicken-Lickens: Why it’s dangerous to hope for the worst.
Speaker: Paddy Shannon

Friends’ Meeting House
Mount Street
City Centre (next to Central Library and Manchester Town Hall)

*The first person to spot the deliberate typo in the poster gains free admission to the day school.

Cutbacks

From the Capitalism's Gravediggers website

Everyone, it seems, recognizes the need for cutbacks in both the private and government sectors during the current economic downturn. Some argue for increased government spending to stimulate the economy. Many argue about which government programmes should be cut. Few argue against all cuts.

Recession is one of capitalism's self-regulatory processes. Few enjoy them, but as everyone knows, that is just the way it is.

There are still enough workers — skilled, unskilled, white collar, blue collar — to do all the work needed to continue every government programme, and to make every product and staff every service, just as before the recession. The raw resources still exist.

The need for the programmes, products, and services has not disappeared.

But people are losing their jobs and their homes.

Capitalism cannot be concerned about people's jobs and homes. Capitalism does not have a conscience. Capitalism does not have malevolent intent. Capitalism is not a conspiracy and it is not sick. Capitalism is an economic system with its own rules and regulations. They are inherent in capitalism, just as gravity is inherent in mass. Capitalism's rules cannot be changed.

Capitalism's Gravediggers wants people to understand that capitalism is working as it must. No tinkering, no ‘revolutionary’ or evolutionary changes can make capitalism something else, or change its rules.

But people can free themselves from capitalism's rules by replacing capitalism with socialism.

Socialism will be no more and no less moral than capitalism. Socialism will have inherent rules which govern how it must function. But socialism's rules will not be capitalism's rules.

Instead of rules which demand production be dependent upon the expectation of profit, socialism will demand that if people's needs can be met, they will be met.

Instead of rules which generate unemployment and its attendant hardship when workers produce more than can be sold at a profit, the leisure long promised by technology will be delivered.

Instead of rules which force people from their homes, or into unsatisfactory housing, everyone will have a home.

Instead of rules which govern society based upon arcane money economics, socialism will be based upon our ability to provide for each other’s needs. That ability has existed for a long time, but capitalism cannot turn our ability into sufficient goods and services of the kind and quality required to satisfy our needs.

We can accept the hardships of recession, or we can build socialism.

Steve Szalai

Bloodgate: Capitalism corrupts rugby

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back

A scandal like the recent one at Harlequins RFC, where a player elaborately faked an injury according to a plan drawn up by the manager so that a key drop kicker could come on to try to score the points needed to win, was bound to happen sooner or later after the game went “professional”.

When the game was amateur – still in living memory – this sort of thing would never have happened. But now rugby clubs are profit-seeking businesses and players are not just paid but paid bonuses if they win.

My father was the secretary of the Newbridge Rugby Football Club which at the time – the 50s and 60s – was one of the top 16 rugby clubs in South Wales. He was in fact the “Hon. Secretary”, that is the unpaid secretary – which is already a significant fact in that none of the club’s officials were paid; all were volunteers elected by the club’s members at the annual general meeting and carrying out their duties in their spare time. This was the same in the other clubs too. Not any more. Rugby clubs are now profit-seeking businesses run by professional executives.

The players weren’t paid either – OK, occasionally they might find money in their boots as “expenses”. As in all the other clubs in what were then mining valleys, they worked or lived locally. In other words, they were playing for enjoyment and for recognition from the community in which they lived. Not any more. Rugby players today are like paid gladiators, recruited from all over the world with no connection with the area where the business which employs them is situated.

There were no league tables, so every match was what in football is called a “friendly”. In other words, all that was at stake was the outcome of the particular match. Teams played to win of course, but if they lost that was that, there was no other consequence. The top 16 clubs didn’t play just against each other, but also against other, smaller clubs from their local area. Even the most prestigious among the 16 such as Cardiff, Newport and Swansea were prepared to do this.

In short, the game – which was the team sport followed by most workers in South Wales – was free from monetary or commercial considerations. It hadn’t yet been “commodified”. Then the rot set in. It began (at least in my opinion) with the introduction of league tables. This can be argued against since there is nothing inherently commercial about league tables (we could conceive of them existing in socialism and they are also part of the amateur game), but they still meant that, from then on, matches were no longer “friendlies”, and I still say that a friendly is played in a quite different spirit from a league match. Basically, leagues matches are more competitive. Which was why in fact they were introduced.

In any event, the real rot set in when the game became professional. This resulted from international rugby having become a spectator sport. In other words, it had already become a potential commodity from which those with money could make a profit. From then on it’s been downhill all the way, with the Harlequins scandal as the inevitable result. There’ll be more to come, as has long been the case in professional soccer and cricket.

Capitalism is the opposite of Midas. Everything Midas touched turned to gold. Everything capitalism touches turns to crap.

Adam Buick

Harry Potter and the Unchanging Church (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the crazier news items to captivate the hacks of what used to be Fleet Street surely the one about the Pope and Harry Potter must takes a bit of beating. In a world of widespread poverty and hunger, global pollution and the threat of a nuclear conflict, The Times saw the necessity of devoting a spread to this non-event.

"Once condemned by the Pope for undermining the soul of Christianity, Harry Potter has been forgiven. In 2003, two years before he was elected Pope Benedict XV1, Joseph Ratzinger, then a Cardinal and head of Vatican doctrine, said J.K. Rowling's stories of the boy wizard threatened to corrupt an understanding of Christian faith among the impressionable young. ... Now however the Pope seems to have fallen under the Potter spell. The latest in the film series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is on general release in Britain today, and has won surprising praise from the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano" (London Times, 15 July).

The basis of the Times's surprise seems to be the changing of the unchanging church, but the history of the Roman Catholic religion is one of change to accord with the changes in the non-spititual world. Indeed the church's backflips have been many and the Times article even listed a few of them.

Until the Second Vatican Council, in 1962-65, Catholic Mass was celebrated only in Latin. In 2003 the Church withdrew a threat to excommunicate the parents of a Nicaraguan girl aged 9 who had an abortion after being raped. 26,000 signed a petition against the move. In 2007 they abolished Limbo, a sort of halfway point between Heaven and Hell. All these recent changes are in addition to Pope John Paul II in 1992 finally admitting that the Church was in error 359 years before when they condemned Galileo for claiming that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

In order to survive the Roman Catholic Church has had to change in line with how secular society changes. There are some unchanging tenets of their practice however – their unfaltering support of private property and their collecting dishes at church services. The Lord may provide for the gullible faithful but the clergy rely on something more tangible for their income.

Richard Donnelly

'Bloody foreigners' (2009)

Book Review from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloody Foreigners – The story of immigration to Britain. By Robert Winder. Abacus

“In 1859 Friedrich Engels poked a man in the eye with an umbrella and soon heard from the man's lawyers. 'Needless to say', he wrote, 'these blasted English don't want to deprive themselves of the pleasure of getting their hands on a bloody foreigner.'”

This book is an account of the 'tangled roots' of history that make up the mongrel ‘British nation’, pointing out that from the amalgamation of Jutes, Saxons, Romans, Danes etc. up to the present time one would be hard-pressed to find a true (pure) Englishman. Immigration, and conversely emigration, has been an intricate part of its development. In the 12th century came French Jews to London, Lincoln, York and Norwich; in the Elizabethan age Italian musicians, German businessmen and the first African slaves; then Protestants from the Low Countries seeking religious tolerance; Huguenot refugees from France 'en masse' in the 17th century; likewise Greek Christians fleeing from the Turks. In 1768, courtesy of the slave trade, there were 20,000 black Londoners out of a total population of 600,000 and in 1840 400,000 Irish escaping the potato famine came to Manchester, London, Liverpool and Glasgow. By the end of the 19th century 40,000 Italians and 50,000 Germans had settled here plus 150,000 Jewish evacuees from Tsarist pogroms in Russia. At the time of their arrival most of these groups suffered hostility of varying degrees but as the generations rolled by they were gradually accepted.

Some of the well-known immigrants and their institutions include Rothschilds, Reuters, Marks and Spencer, Trust House Forte, Tesco, Joseph Conrad, Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, Simon Schama and Linford Christie.

Kings were imported from Germany and Holland, queens from France and Spain and fighting forces from the wide world were drafted to fight in World Wars 1 and 2 and then post-WW2 large numbers of workers were actively recruited from the colonies.

As a result of intricate research Winder exposes the manipulations, lies and exaggerations of media accounts of more recent waves of immigration and asylum seekers, e.g. in the Thatcher era, with immigrants making up 4 percent of the population, she gave her vision of what made Britain 'Great' – 9 percent felt there were too many immigrants before she expounded compared with 21 percent who admitted to being worried afterwards. Other examples reveal the actual state of monetary and housing benefits to immigrants which are wildly different from the stories abounding in the media.

Poor bloody foreigners – they're just used as a convenient group, easy to label and point the finger at. Instead of falling for the divide and rule tactics which weaken us all, workers should recognise who their real enemy is and work together to defeat the system that enslaves us all.

Janet Surman

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 111

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 111th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1522 friends!

Recent blogs:

Then and Now - The Penny Drops

The call of the patriot

The crisis: an open letter to trade unionists

Quote for the week:

..It doesn't matter if you're black or white, the only color that really matters is green...MacFarlane, Zuckerman, Calaghan, Family Guy, (1999+).

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Material World: March of the far right (2009)

The Material World Column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many parts of Europe far-right populist, as well as fascist and neo-Nazi political parties, have increased their support in local, national and European elections recently (though not everywhere, not in Poland for instance).

In many areas hundreds of thousands of workers have voted, not for socialism, as the economic crisis and downturn of international capitalism deepens, but for localism, nationalism and racist policies. What has happened in part of northern England, has likewise been mirrored in northeast France—the British National Party in England and the Front National in France. An extreme example of the trend was the municipal by-election in June and July in Hénin-Beaumont.

Poverty and Corruption
Hénin-Beaumont, just north of Arras and half-way between Lens and Douai in the Pas-de-Calais, is a former mining town with a population of 27,000; and in the words of Jason Burke, “one of the poorest parts of France, a wasteland of red-brick terrace homes, crumbling blocks of public housing, half-deserted industrial estates and vast fields of wheat bisected by six-lane motorways taking holiday-makers elsewhere” (Observer, 5 July).

Although a recent film, “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” (“Welcome amongst the Ch’tis”, the popular name for people from this part of France), about a postal worker sent there from the south of the country, which I saw (in western France), popularised the locals, it made no difference to the unemployment, now officially 20 percent, alcoholism (mostly cheap beer), drug abuse and domestic violence; and with the lowest levels of education in the country.

As in many areas of Britain, with the Labour Party, this part of France, including Hénin-Beaumont, was a long-time fiefdom of the reformist Parti Socialiste, which has become thoroughly corrupt, subject to cronyism and patronage. The PS, running the municipal council for almost 60 years, is split into a number of allegedly left and right factions; and the mayor is in jail, charged with corruption, fiddling expenses and local taxes, resulting in cuts in the municipal budget. It can’t get much worse.

Enter the Front National
For the first time in recent years the FN decided to field a candidate, for the municipal authority. The party's local candidate Steeve Briois hoped—probably expected—to become mayor, reversing a general decline since 2002. Marine Le Pen, the 40-year-old daughter of the FN leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, canvassed the area, popularising the slogan “France for the French” (shades of Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers,” supported by the BNP), and claiming to be the natural inheritors of working-class politics in France. Since 1990 the FN has in fact increased its influence and support within the working class by beating the nationalist drum and playing the anti-Islam card.

Like the BNP, Marine Le Pen and her supporters, have tended to soften (but not abandon) the FN’s anti-immigration language, and tone down its racism and anti-semitism. She promotes a populist, “Strasserite”, image rather than her father’s former neo-Nazi views (see the Socialist Standard, February and March, 1993).

In the first round of the Hénin-Beaumont election the Front National polled just under 40 percent, more than double that of any other candidate. Briois assumed his mayoralty was “in the bag”. Unfortunately for him, however, the left and right formed an alliance, and collectively polled 52 percent in a 62 percent turnout, thus squeezing the FN out.

Europe
The Front National did not fare particularly well in this year’s European elections either. It won just 6.3 percent, down from 1,684,792 in 2004 to 1,091,681 this year in a low poll.

It has three seats, down from seven in the last Parliament (just one more than the BNP), occupied by Jean-Marie Le Pen, his daughter, Marine, and Bruno Gollnisch, a friend of Nick Griffin. Jean-Yves Camus, writing in the July number of International Searchlight, observes: “The result leaves the FN weaker than before, but not yet dead. It was notably ahead of the two parties of the alternative left, the New Anti-Capitalist Party and the Left Front”.

The Front National in France, like the British National Party, has nothing to offer the working class, but the same old worn-out reformist policies and slogans that have failed, time and time again. The workers of Hénin-Beaumont, France, Britain and worldwide, will have to look, and act, beyond the petty nationalisms of such parties and politicians.

Peter E. Newell

Socialist Meeting in London: Masters and Servants

Socialist Party public meeting

“The free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves”

Speaker: Danny Lambert

Sunday, September 6th

6pm

The Socialist Party Head Office,

52 Clapham High Street,

London SW4 7UN.

(nearest tubes: Clapham North and Clapham Common.)

Website: SPGB

Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org

Socialism Or Your Money Back Blog

Editorial: Capitalism and the two world wars (2009)

Editorial from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The two world wars that disgraced human history in the 20th century were essentially wars to change or preserve an existing carve-up of the world between the leading capitalist states.

In the first world war Imperial Germany attempted to upset, by force of arms, the then existing imperialist division of the world which benefited in particular Britain and France. The second world war too – which broke out seventy years ago this month – was the result of Germany and Japan throwing off unfavourable treaties, territorial divisions and trading arrangements imposed by Britain, France and the United States. From this, historical perspective, it was a continuation of the first world war.

In such wars it is the challenging powers that have to take the initiative and so appear as the "aggressors", but only those completely taken in by the propaganda of the victorious powers (and of course the winners also win the right to impose their version of history) will believe that it was just Germany that was responsible for the first and second world wars. An objective examination of the situation shows that, apart from their "business war" aspects (over markets, raw materials and investment outlets), the two world wars were wars (on the one side) to try to change the existing imperialist carve-up of the world and (on the other side) to preserve it. What was responsible for these wars was the whole world system of capitalism with its competitive struggle for profits and its collection of competing armed states. No one state, or politician, or people can be blamed for them; they were the result of the "normal" functioning of the capitalist world system.

As socialism had been historically possible since the end of the 19th century humanity could have avoided them. Neither of them justified "the shedding of a single drop of working class blood", as we declared in our anti-war manifesto in 1914, or as Harry Patch, one of the last survivors to have fought in that war, who died in July, put it, it was "not worth one death let alone all the millions".

The “War to end all wars” did no such thing. Nor did its even bloodier sequel, World War Nº 2, which resulted in the division of the world into two imperialist spheres of influence, the US sphere and the Russian sphere, with a continuous series of local wars at the boundaries between the two, which lasted until the collapse of the Russian Empire twenty years ago this autumn. This collapse was hailed "the end of history" and there was talk of a "peace dividend". Tony Blair of all people even declared shortly after becoming Prime Minister in May 1997: "Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war".. Empty rhetoric from a capitalist politician who was later to send British troops to kill and be killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect oil supplies and prevent another challenge to the powers currently dominating the world.

There will be wars, the threat of wars and the waste of preparing for wars as long as capitalism lasts. The only end to war is the end of capitalism – the socialist revolution.