The Wind on the Heath (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gypsies are in the news again. Dramatically, because a couple of them have been involved in murder cases and, more prosaically, because of a recent spotlighting of their continual clash with some county by-laws and state regulations. These laws control the rights of vagrants, the permissible period for roadside and common camping, child education, and so on. Some county authorities, in trying to enforce the law, have come under fire from the Gypsies' romantic sympathisers (who are often well enough endowed with worldly goods not to live in a caravan, nor sell clothes pegs for a living).

What is the background to this controversy? Where did these strange folk come from; what is their history? The safest theory is that they stem from the Doms, ancient outcast tribes in India who were musicians, dancers and metal workers. Some Persian monarch, it is recorded, transplanted such a group to the Tigris Valley and North Syria. In 855 A.D. the Byzantines moved them to the Balkans. All the while, they continued their old crafts of metal working, making music and dancing. Records from Greece and Rumania show them, in the 1340's, as serfs and personal slaves of the land-owning Boyars—which they continued to be, in Rumania, right up to 1850. The Turkish invasion of the Balkans caused a widespread emigration and some Gipsy bands, in the 1440's, were caught up in this, moving to Central and Northern Europe.

They seemed to have been under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Church. Some evidence indicates that a Papal order required them to do penance for embracing the Moslem faith whilst they were living under Turkish rule. It is all rather uncertain. Some authorities have them in Europe far earlier, descendants of the wandering metal workers and tinkers, standing apart from the tribes. Here, in fact, is the origin of the “Wayland Smith” legends.

The Gipsy custom of stealing and telling fortunes caused some townsfolk to doubt the sincerity of their penance and the story, like their welcome, were rather thin. All manner of harsh laws were enacted against them. In 1500 the Imperial State annulled the safe conduct which the Princes had issued to Gypsies. Italian states banished them. Some German states ordered all male Gypsies to be shot. Henry VIII forbade separate Gypsy courts and Elizabeth I for a time banished them under pain of death. The Commonwealth executed some simply because they were Gypsies; on the continent they lived in constant fear during the witchcraft manias. Strangely, the Inquisition gave them protection from these. Spain became very popular with the Romanies and many of them moved in, eventually to embrace Spanish names and manners.

The Gypsies were allowed to have their own courts, and to live under their own customs, because they were regarded as a separate race or nation. This was finished in the upheaval caused by the break-up of feudalism in Europe. Peasants were being thrown off the land, merchants were fighting the old feudal lords, aspiring ruling classes tussled with the Roman Church for its land and wealth. Dreadful wars laid Germany waste. Religious intolerance and bigotry with weird maniacal theories tore open the ideas of the Middle Ages. Serfs, landless peasants and unwanted soldiers took to the roads, trying to escape their states’ harsh laws and treatment by joining Gypsy bands. Thus, the Gypsies became connected, in people's minds, with criminals and outlaws and the word Gypsy became a synonym for ruffian and ne'er-do-well. England, France and Spain deported many Gypsies to the Americas; when Australia was discovered, many were shipped there. Such is the tenacity of the Gypsies that they stuck to their old ways in these distant lands—and many still continue to do so.

The Gypsies have shown no desire to uncover their origin. They have, in fact, been content to. be known in Europe as Egyptians; their headmen were referred to as “Counts of Little Egypt.” They were traced to India through originally, the work of an Hungarian named Valyi, who in 1763 noticed a similarity between the language of some Malabar Hindu friends and that of the Hungarian Gypsies. This started a more scientific study of the Romany language, which is now placed as stemming from Aryan, although so far nobody has been able to find the particular area from which such a dialect could have evolved directly.

Although some Gypsy customs have been modified by the areas in which they live, others have remained more or less constant. One of these is the matrilineal nature of their clans, which lays it down that men can only join a clan by marrying into it (although this custom is reversed in the case of the headmen). Property seems to be inherited by the men, although women can and do inherit it. The moral customs of a clan are decreed by the Tribal Mother. The Headman is—or was—elected to his position. The title of Gypsy King and Queen is in fact a misnomer conferred upon them by outsiders which the Gypsies, being sharp, have used to some advantage. The clans, when they reach any considerable size, tend to break up into new groups; it is doubtful if they still exist in the older form in developed countries such as Great Britain.

In spite of everything the Gypsies have clung to their existence to this day. Sometimes—especially in the Balkans and the Middle East—they have existed by doing work that was frowned upon by others; work like latrine cleaning and public hangings. In Spain they provided the bulk of the tobacco factory workers—which must upset a lot of romantic concepts about them. In Spain, also, they have achieved fame by their dancing skills. The industrialisation of Northern Europe has give them the somewhat higher standards of furnished caravans—higher only when compared to their brothers’ tattered tents. Their speciality —and in Hungary some built up fortunes by it—was horse dealing.

But one by one, the doors have been closing against the Gypsies. The horse is fast disappearing as a beast of burden. Mass produced metal and plastic ware is helping to kill the craft of tinkering. A trained mechanic, not a lore-stuffed Gypsy, is needed to repair a combine harvester. Hertfordshire, for example, as a county which accommodates lots of workers in well laid out, expensive dormitory suburbs and estates, is not very keen on having the roads and commons littered with old tins and burst mattresses left there, to boot, by non rate-paying Gypsies. This county, with its agriculture mainly consisting of market gardens, dairy farms and corn crops, worked by modern mechanisation, has little need for floating, seasonable labour. In contrast, Kent is famous for its hop fields and fruit farms. Even today, these need extra casual labour in season, especially for hop stringing and twining, in which Gypsies play no small part. Kent is trying to establish permanent camp sites for the Romanies—and is regarded, therefore, as a humane county by the starry-eyed Gypsy addicts. Even so, things are changing in the hop fields. New hop picking machines leave only one-third of the crop to be picked by hand. Hop-pickers have seen their numbers reduced over the last 20-odd years from 100,000 to 22,000.

It seems, then, that the days of the wandering Gypsies have not long to run. No tears for that: because they live a life on the move in caravans: it does not follow that theirs is an idyllic existence. They have to find some sort of work in order to live; in spite of their reputation as thieves, it is certain that the proceeds of stealing would not last them for long. And anybody who has picked fruit on piece rates will know that it is no more romantic or idyllic than work on a factory bench. Groups which try to exist by just plain begging rapidly degenerate into whining outcasts, devoid of human dignity. Many people wonder why anyone, even a tiny minority, should try to stand outside the world of hire purchase, mortgages, television and social hygiene.

For centuries, Gypsies have tried to hold themselves aloof. But as it has done with so many others, capitalism is about to catch up with them.

Jack Law

Letter: Sri Lanka (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sri Lanka

Dear Editors,

I would like to draw your attention to a mistake in the article on Sri Lanka in the August issue of the Socialist Standard. The article states that the Tamils were brought to the island, then known as Ceylon, from India during British rule to work as cheap labour on the tea plantations. In fact, this group of "Indian" Tamils account for only about 1.2 million of the total Tamil population on the island. They lived until recently mainly on the plantations in central Sri Lanka.

The remaining 1.4 million Tamils live largely in the North and East of the island. They trace their history in Sri Lanka all the way back to the fifth or sixth century BC. when it is believed the Sinhalese began to settle on the island. By the time the Portuguese colonialists arrived in the 16th century AD. two separate kingdoms — Tamil in the North and Sinhalese in the South were well established. During the British colonial period these two kingdoms were brought under a single administration for the first time. At the time of Independence the idea of a separate Tamil state was regarded as rather extreme by most Tamils. Nevertheless the Tamils were concerned about their future status in an independent Sri Lanka, as they were considerably outnumbered by the Sinhalese.

The case of the Indian Tamils is quite different. They have had no share in the ancient history of either the Ceylon Tamils or the Sinhalese on the island. When they arrived in Sri Lanka they were scarcely better off than slaves. They were resented by the Sinhalese as they were settled on estates in the heart of the Sinhalese area. As the plantation economy boomed they found themselves marginally better off than the Sinhalese peasants in the area. The estates often provided them with some medical care, education and housing. They were disliked also by the Ceylon Tamils as they were mostly low caste Hindus living in abject poverty and dependent on the estates.

However, by the time of Independence they just outnumbered the Ceylon Tamils. They held considerable electoral sway in the central area of Sri Lanka, as they outnumbered the Sinhalese in these areas. Their vote ensured that eight Indian Tamil MPs went to parliament in 1947. In 1948 the Indian Tamils were disenfranchised and deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. The Indian Tamil MPs were replaced by Sinhalese MPs This action gained the approval of the Ceylon Tamil leaders as well as the Sinhalese.

Since then there have been several agreements with India to repatriate several hundred thousand Indian Tamils and readmit the rest to Sri Lankan citizenship. These measures have been slow, largely unsuccessful, and have only added to the sufferings of the Indian Tamils. Conditions on the estates have deteriorated and the Indian Tamils live under conditions of considerable hardship.

However, it was not until 1977 that the two separate Tamil groups started to join forces. In that year violent anti-Tamil activity was directed at the Indian Tamil estate workers for the first time. This drove many of them out of the central area of Sri Lanka to the North, where they sought refuge with the Ceylon Tamils whose leaders by now were agitating for a separate state. Here they continue to be harassed by the state forces seeking out terrorist suspects.

KM

London

Lines on maps (2025)

Book Review from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Borderlines: a History of Europe in 29 Borders. By Lewis Baston. Hodder Press £10.99.

This is a combination of history, contemporary politics and a travelogue. The author records his travels around parts of Europe, from Ireland to Finland and Romania, especially the border areas, reflecting on linguistic and cultural issues over the centuries. His account is supplemented by a number of photos and some helpful maps.

Prior to 1500 or so, there would have been no checkpoints at boundaries, and people could cross them as they pleased. Many borders nowadays are completely arbitrary, often going through the middle of fields and roads. There are over two hundred border crossings between Northern Ireland and the Republic, for instance. The Large Hadron Collider at Geneva in Switzerland is partly in France, and when it is operating a proton will cross the border 20,000 times a second. But perhaps the most extreme example is the town of Baarle, which is split between the Netherlands and Belgium: the border sometimes runs through the front doors of houses, and the Belgian part of the town consists of twenty-one enclaves surrounded by parts of the Netherlands. But at least the local fire brigade is cross-border, as ‘fires do not recognise international borders’.

The Sudetenland (the pretext for the Munich crisis of 1938) ‘did not exist before about 1930’. Kaliningrad (formerly called Königsberg) is in an exclave, a part of Russia enclosed by Poland and Lithuania; it was wanted by the Soviet Union as a year-round port on the Baltic. It was tightly controlled under Bolshevik rule, but now it is apparently ‘reclaiming its Prussian heritage’. The town of Chernivitsi is currently in Ukraine, but previously it was at various times in the USSR, Romania and Austria-Hungary.

People often talk about ‘historic boundaries’, as if they automatically have some legitimacy or justification. But borders change so often and so much over the years that they just reflect a particular moment or the balance of power at some period. In the case of Poland, for instance, borders have been altered many times, with partitions, annexations and people being forcibly relocated. After 1945, the German population of around eight million on the Polish side of the Oder–Neisse line was expelled, mostly to West Germany. This was ‘radical ethnic cleansing’, largely because Stalin saw this as a suitable border.

Borders are often a convenient place for smuggling, and also for taking advantage of differences in prices. Several million Russians cross into Finland each year to buy white goods of supposedly superior quality. But more often borders are heavily-policed places of suspicion, where mixed communities suffer and are oppressed. This book gives a vivid account of what borders, boundaries and frontiers can do to humans.

Paul Bennett

World View: Teetering on the brink (1995)

General Sani Abacha

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Nigeria is on the threshold. Chaos and the demons of war, of anarchy and hell are gathering imperceptibly . . . the best minds have fled. Hunger wanders the highway. Corruption has become a god. Distrust lurks everywhere and cynicism pollutes the air.”

Thus wrote Ben Okri in the Guardian last 6 September. The image is immediately one of impending doom, a nightmare scenario. Okri’s words, though, were not overly pessimistic, for in the January 1995 issue of New African, they were echoed by Pini Jason who described the situation in Nigeria as a "chillingly frightening regression into absolute despotism".

Okri and Jason were both referring to the terror now felt by tens of millions of Nigerians, a terror made all the worse by a world that watches from die sidelines, as witnessed most recently in Rwanda.

In August 1994, General Sani Abacha, Nigeria's “leader", overturned what legal rights Nigerians had enjoyed by forcing through some of the most repressive decrees ever known in Nigeria. He earned himself the title of dictator (in every sense of the word) by firstly passing a decree that places himself and his regime above the law. He went on to make anti-Abacha opinions illegal, curbed the right to free assembly and abolished several human rights associations. Were that not enough, Abacha banned three opposition newspapers. dissolved the executive bodies of the Nigerian Labour Congress and the oil-workers unions, and lengthened the period a prisoner can be detained without charge to three months.

The decrees were, of course, pathetically justified by Abacha last November. In a broadcast a year after he came to power in November 1993. he declared his intentions were "to halt the drift towards anarchy . . . to strengthen our security system, revitalise respect for law and order and to restore faith among the citizens whose confidence has been stressed by political crisis in the country" (Quoted in West Africa, 28 November/ 4 December 1994.)

Annulled election

Since independence from Britain in October 1960. Nigerians have known nothing but "political crisis". The country has witnessed coups, counter-coups and internal military coups on six occasions: January 1966. July 1966.1975. 1976. 1983 and 1985.

The June 1993 elections, supposedly the fairest ever witnessed in Nigeria, were initiated by General Ibrahim Babanginda who had ruled the country since 1985. However, when only half of the result had been declared, Babanginda had the count stopped and the election annulled. The reason? Opposition leader Chief Moshood Abiola was storming ahead, capitalising on his promises to build more schools and health centres, to provide cleaner drinking water, cheaper food and improved roads. He was detained shortly after the elections. A leaked military statement later declared that Abiola had secured 58 percent of votes cast.

Arguably, the main reason why Abiola is not president is that he is a southerner, for in Nigeria the same north/south hostilities abound that were in existence at the time of the Biafra war.

Babanginda, however, was soon chased out of office. He was replaced by a civilian, Ernest Shonekar, who went a similar way when the state court ruled his office illegal. It was then that Abacha stepped forward and took power and. with it, brought Nigeria to the brink of ruin.

Abacha is guilty of untold human rights violations. But this does not seem to bother the governments of other countries much. The EU and the US might have imposed the token sanctions, but this did not stop Britain selling tanks and other military hardware to Abacha. The fact is that Britain has always sided with such northern tyrants in times of duress. More, the British High Commission have given their blessing to the judiciary set up to try Abiola.

Oil revenues

Between May and June last year Abacha ordered his army into southeastern Nigeria to destroy the villages of and murder, the Ogoni people. The Ogoni people number some 500,000 but it is to their great misfortune that the land they occupy is also the site of 112 of Nigeria’s 138 oilfields.

For years the Ogoni have protested against the environmental pollution caused by oil production, at the smoggy atmosphere they live in. at the contaminated soil they till — they are an agricultural people — and at their rivers choked with oil run-offs. They have every reason to protest. Nigeria is the largest gas-flaring country in the world. Some 16.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared annually. The acid rain this produces is only matched by the region’s oil spills — 573 spills between January 1986 and May 1992.

The protests reached a high point in late 1992 and in reaction Shell Nigeria put a hold on oil production in Ogoniland and pulled out most of its staff.

In retaliation for this sudden loss of vital revenue, a certain Major P. Okunomo called for a “ruthless military operation” against the Ogoni. sending in 400 troops to stifle protests and opposition to oil production. Not only did the soldiers destroy dozens of villages and kill hundreds of the Ogoni people, they carried out military sabotage against various oil installations in the hope that the Ogoni would get the blame.

Oil provides Nigeria with 95 percent of its foreign exchange and has been the stake in Nigeria’s conflicts since 1966. The country makes some $6 billion a year from oil sales. During the Gulf War. the Babanginda regime made a staggering $12 billion from oil sales — money yet to be accounted for. None of it, however, seems to have benefited the people, least of all the Ogoni. At present 85 percent of the Ogoni are unemployed. They have seven doctors between them (remember they number 500000), a literacy rate of 10 percent and infant mortality stands at 40 per 1.000 births.

In the past twelve months there have been strikes by oil workers and medical workers, aimed directly at the Abacha regime, in a country already teetering on the brink of an economic calamity.

Western capitalists can only look on shrug their shoulders and tut; Nigeria, after all is still Africa — "the white man’s burden”. As one New African writer commented last October: “The international community showed with its reluctant response to Rwanda that it is tired of Africa’s problems."

Socialists, on the other hand, can only imagine how “tired" Africa is of capitalism. and how so utterly tired Nigerians must be of the cabal that rules that country in the interests of capitalism. 

John Bissett

Exhibition Review: Being here (2025)

'Private Face'

Exhibition Review from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Black people may be said to have been excluded from art in two ways. Firstly, there have until fairly recently been few black artists, and secondly, black people have been rarely depicted in works of art and, where shown, are often placed in a subordinate role. These and other issues are addressed in an exhibition of the work of Barbara Walker, ‘Being Here’, at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The Whitworth display closed in late January, but it will move to the Arnolfini in Bristol from March.

Walker (barbarawalker.co.uk) was born in Birmingham in 1964, and only in 1996 did she obtain a BA in Art and Design. Since then she has been a prolific artist, in both painting and drawing, and one aspect of her oeuvre is that she usually works in series, producing not just individual works but linked pieces.

Between 1998 and 2005, for instance, she painted a series of portraits of black people under the heading of ‘Private Face’: friends and neighbours shown undertaking everyday tasks such as playing cards or having their hair arranged. ‘Louder than Words’ (2006–9) focuses on her son Solomon, who was frequently subject to stop and search by West Midlands Police. The report forms from the searches have portraits of Solomon or local scenes added to them. Also included is a reference to the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London in 2005, a newspaper report with a drawing of Solomon on it.

Perhaps the most original and striking is the series Shock and Awe (2015–20). Walker scoured archives for photos of black soldiers in the two world wars, such as a South African general inspecting members of the South African Native Labour Corps in France in 1917. Her drawing based on this photo, ‘Parade II’, emphasises the soldiers, and the general is an almost blank outline. A similar approach is taken in other drawings from the same series, and again in Vanishing Point (since 2018), where classical paintings are re-presented in a new way, with the black individuals drawn more precisely and the white people (the focus of the original paintings) again shown as outlines.

All in all, an unexpected and thought-provoking exhibition.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Life’s a riot (2001)

Editorial from the August 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the summers of 1981 and 1985 inner-city areas across Britain erupted in an orgy of violence and destruction as mass rioting returned for the first time in decades. In St Paul’s in Bristol, in Brixton, Toxteth, Moss Side and Handsworth, dispossessed and frustrated black and white youths looted shops, attacked the police and burnt down buildings in a sequence of events that shook the Thatcher government. Home Secretary William Whitelaw toured the battle-strewn streets like the Queen Mother during the blitz, only even less popular than she’d been. Michael Heseltine was despatched by Thatcher to Liverpool (when the two of them were still on speaking terms) to sort out a regeneration package for the city and for the riot-torn Upper Parliament Street area. It was a mini-renunciation of her free-market idealism – and was brought about by the sort of pragmatic attempt to buy off social discontent more typically associated with reformers of the centre-left.

The far left at the time – somewhat stronger in those days and certainly taken more seriously than now – liked to call the riots ‘uprisings’. It was wishful thinking of the type they are specialists in, as the disturbances in question did not have quite that sort of focussed, political dimension to them. They were in fact the directionless expression of frustration and bewilderment at rising mass unemployment, inner-city poverty and the type of crushing boredom associated with social decay rather than the stirrings of a potential revolutionary vanguard.

Fifteen, twenty years later, and the riots are back. In truth, of course, they never entirely went away. As violent crime has risen so has serious disorder in towns and cities across Britain. What is most noticeable about the most recent spate of riots though is the numbers of youths involved and the magnitude of the destruction caused. It is the sheer scale of events in Oldham, Burnley, Bradford and elsewhere that immediately leads to direct comparisons with the riots of the eighties.

There is another obvious comparison with the riots of the past too: “race”. In 1981 and 1985 the majority of those taking part in the disturbances were black youths from inner-city areas with large black populations. The rioters were not first generation blacks, but second and third generation, born and brought up in the UK but even more powerless and disenfranchised from mainstream social, economic and political life than the bulk of the rest of the working class. Theirs was a rebellion against the police who harassed and intimidated them and implicitly against a culture that still insisted on seeing them as outsiders.

This time around the rioters have been second and third generation UK Asians feeling the same sort of social exclusion and powerlessness felt by black youths in Britain before them and typically residing in some of the most deprived council wards in the country. Their rebelliousness has been given an added dimension by the intimidating presence of fascist and racist organisations – particularly the British National Party – in towns and cities where they are most heavily concentrated. If there was relatively little involvement by far-right groups in the riots of twenty years ago, the same could certainly not be said this time, with the provocative and violent activities of fascist gangs being the catalyst for some of the most serious events, most notably in Burnley and Bradford.

In Burnley it was alleged by elements of the white working class that Asian areas in the town had received preferential treatment from the local council and other agencies responsible for handing out regeneration monies. In Bradford local white youths complained that Asians were treated with “kid gloves” by the police, for fear the police be labelled as racists.

Viewpoints such as these are rarely the product of genuinely held grievances. Asians in Burnley live in the same type of slums by and large as many white workers do in the town; and in Bradford claims of harassment by the police are far more likely to be made by Asian youths than white youths. Instead, these ideas are in essence the product of a situation where the existing poor fear being made even poorer through the close presence of even more of their number. If the ‘new poor’ in question have a different colour, different religion and different culture from the majority, the suspicion and distrust is all the easier to justify.

One thing is certain: whatever the precise causes, the rioting that has been taking place is unlikely to get either the Asian or white youths involved very far (unless a police cell for the night is the extent of their ambitions). If New Labour do what Thatcher did and throw a little money in the direction of the affected areas as a token gesture, that will be something (as it was in Liverpool); but the laws of the market dictate that just as one hand gives so the other takes away – probably in the form of lost investment and business shut downs (again as happened in Liverpool).

Tony Benn has said that rioting is the oldest form of social protest and in that he may well be right. But there is no point in white and Asian youths protesting about the other’s allegedly preferential treatment and conducting running battles in front of the TV crews each evening. Any meaningful action has to be democratic and organised and based on the recognition that white and Asian youths have far more in common than they have that divides them. They would both do well to recognise that as the poor and excluded they are kept poor because the rich are rich. For it is only then that they can formulate actions based on where there interests truthfully lie – and in fundamental opposition to those who have really gained from keeping them in their subject, inferior position all along.

Greasy Pole: High Noon In Southall (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ealing was once known, by those who were adept at ignoring the large chunks of serious impoverishment there, as the Queen of the Suburbs. As might be expected of a place with so impressive a name, it regularly returned Conservative MPs to the Commons. It’s all changed now though; other bits of west London have been tacked on to the original area and all three of the recast constituencies elect Labour MPs. The safest of them is Ealing Southall, at the western end of the area, where the sitting MP is Piara Khabra.

Southall was a railway town and there is very little left from how it was before Brunel pushed through the line to the west. The railway brought immigrants from Wales and Ireland, to work in the factories which sprang up along the line. It was not the railways which brought the Asians, in the 1950s; the first of them were recruited by a rubber factory which had difficulty in persuading the locals to work in its sulphurous confines. Few of the Asians who came then thought they were making a lifetime commitment; they imagined making enough quick money to set themselves up to go back to the place they called home. It didn’t happen like that and the population of Southall is now about 50 per cent of Asian origin – the second largest in the country.

Piara Khabra has been the local MP since 1992. Before that it was Sydney Bidwell, who had emigrated from the Revolutionary Communist Party when they disbanded and advised their members to infiltrate the Labour Party. Towards the end of his time in the Commons Bidwell seemed to be not entirely in touch with reality, although that was not what caused him to be de-selected. Khabra had long been prominent and influential locally, through being chair of the Indian Workers’ Association (Southall is teeming with community support organisations), a local councillor and so on. There was a flood of new members into the local Labour Party, which simply washed Bidwell away. Miserably, hopelessly, he stood against Khabra as “True Labour” – there were rumours that he did this only to qualify for his ex-MP’s pension – but got only 4,665 votes against Khabra’s 23,476.

Swing

In 1997, in tune with the rest of the country, Khabra tightened his grip on the seat. By then there was no Bidwell, who had retired with his revolutionary delusions and his pension and Khabra benefitted from a 15.1 per cent swing against the Tories, racking up an astonishing 32,791votes and, at 21,423, the country’s second largest Labour majority. In some ways this was surprising because the constituency boundaries had been extended eastwards to include older, posher parts of Ealing more accustomed to voting Conservative. But of course that was an exceptional time, with widespread anger against the sleaze and complacency of the Tories, their in-fighting and arrogance. A lot of voters really thought that things could only get better. But in Southall that was not the whole story for there was disquiet, not about Khabra holding the seat but about him being the Labour candidate in the first place.

For some time Southall has claimed to be the largest constituency Labour Party in the country. Of course this could mean that it is populated by people who have carefully examined the party’s policies and decided that these are in tune with their own principles. If that were true the place would surely be unique. Before Khabra ousted Bidwell there was some restlessness in the party – and outside it – about all those new members and about how genuine many of them were – or even whether some of them actually existed. At one stage Khabra faced a legal challenge from Valerie Vaz, sister of the embattled ex-minister Keith Vaz (who was rumoured to have tried to help rig the selection procedure against Khabra) but this came to nothing. Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that Valerie Vaz – who, as a forceful, articulate lawyer and media presenter could be expected to be picked out for a plum Labour seat – has only ever been nominated for more hopeless prospects such as Twickenham. Recently, for example, she was considered to be the front runner for the by-election in Betty Boothroyd’s old constituency of West Bromwich West but Labour headquarters had other ideas.

Ineffective

So far Khabra has shrugged off all the opposition to him; “I have been misrepresented in the press,” he said just before the election “but that doesn’t bother me, nothing does”. But with the approach of this year’s election the opposition against him has gathered strength as an electable rival came on the scene with the resources to air popular criticisms about him. Khabra has an established reputation as one of the most inactive and ineffective MPs, who is reliably evident only when he sits behind Tony Blair at Prime Minister’s Questions, which gives him some valuable TV coverage. Occasionally he stirs into action, as he did in 1993 when he tabled a Ten Minute Bill to legalise voluntary euthenasia only to withdraw it at the last minute. In February this year he asked a question which conveniently enabled Paul Boateng, who was then a minister in the Home Office, to give some detail about the planned enquiry into the coroner system. In December 2000 he wrote to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in support of the Hinduja brothers’ resistance to being extradited for investigation in India over an arms-sale scandal. In the light of recent events, this was not entirely wise of him. (Cook promised “full consular support” for the Hindujas).

Meanwhile there has been a burgeoning discontent in the constituency about local problems – traffic congestion, crime, decay and a massive heroin problem among young people. In face of this Khhabra has been hard put to detail any intervention on his part which has been to any degree effective. The local Socialist Labour Party (of course, hardly an objective observer) calls him “congenitally demented” and rages at his “self-seeking careerism…his inability to be even an effective bourgeoise politician…” One constituent old the AsianXpress newspaper : I’ve never seen Mr. Khabra but I know of him and all the scams he’s done over the years”. And on 15 February this year the Daily Telegraph put the boot in:

“Piara Khabra…confirmed himself as surely this Parliament’s weakest performer…His question was near inaudible and his delivery laughably weak. Perhaps because he is Indian, or perhaps because he is old, the House listened to him with a straight face. How patronising. Mr Khabra deserved a loud and long raspberry. If he cannot lift his game he should make way for someone better.”

Stranglehold

And when it came to the elecetion there was someone who claimed to be better. Avtar Lit is a Labour supporter, the multi-millionnaire owner of Sunrise Radio whose personal fortune is put at £60 million. “Money,” he said recently, “to me isn’t everything “. . . and then again “I am known as a man of the people”. Lit complained about Khabra’s “strangelehold” on the local selection process and the MP’s “dismal record . . . an insult to the people who elected him”. On the basis of a rather dubious opinion poll, which may not have been any more valid that all those Khabra recruits, Lit claimed that he was about to be elected, after which he would join the Labour Party.

But on the day he managed only a little less than 6,000 votes, to Khabra’s 22,239 which gave a comfortable majority of 13,683. As the evening wore on the bundles of votes for each candidate were in lines on the central table, with Khabra’s stretching far beyond all the others. There was little perceptible difference between Lit’s votes and those for the Tory, whose startlingly young face settled into a bewildered despondency as he contemplated the humiliation facing him. Towards the end a group of Khabra supporters filtered into the room. They were large, groomed men wearing immaculate turbans, exuding influence and privilege and the expectation of always getting their own way. They cheered dutifully – but restrainedly – when Khabra was announced as the winner but it was a fair bet that at the same time they were calculating how best they could do to him what he did to Bidwell – and what advantage they would get from it. These are probably the men Lit will have to best if he is to get the seat.

So Piara Khabra, who says he is 76 years old but who may be 80 or more, is back in the Commons for another spell – four years or maybe five – to hang on to his position and to “represent” the people of Ealing Southall. This is the very essence of capitalism’s politics—the politicians denying the truth of their impotence while they cynically manoeuvre to keep themselves in power and so the system in being.

Ivan

Chechen war (Part II) (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

For too long now, the Chechen people have held that second-class status was often afforded South Africa’s black population. Indeed, in Moscow they are disparagingly referred to as “blacks” and the prejudice can be traced back over 150 years to the time when Tsarists conquered the area.

Stalin’s hate for them was such that he had the entire population deported to Central Asia in 1944, citing charges of Nazi collaboration—a venture that would wipe out some 60 percent of the Chechen population.

In recent years they have been blamed for every social ill facing Russia, from drug trafficking and kidnapping to black-marketeering. It was therefore not really surprising that the latest Moscow bomb attacks got blamed on Chechenya’s aspiring islamist secessionists—in spite of no evidence existing to suggest this—while providing the Russian rulers with another opportunity to send troops into the tiny republic.

Ostensibly, the present Chechen conflict was sparked by the seizing of border villages by islamic militants—the fundamentalist Wahhabi muslims, intent on creating an independent islamic republic made up of Daghestan and Chechenya. In the Chechen republic Wahhabi support has increased recently, chiefly because of high unemployment, despair at a corrupt local elite, frustration with the slow pace of market reforms and at the little effort Russia has made to rebuild the republic after the bungled Chechen war of 1994-6.

The Russian rulers, however, didn’t need much of an excuse to send troops into Chechenya at the end of September. They still feel the humiliation of Russia’s venture into Chechenya in the mid-90s, when 6,500 Russian troops lost their lives fighting Chechen guerrillas and the consequent pull-out sparked by public outcry at home. Moreover, here was a former superpower being whipped by a tiny band of poorly-trained fighters.

In the wake of that particular conflict, though still claiming Chechenya was breaching laws laid down in the Russian Federation constitution, Moscow was embarrassingly forced to accept the republic’s de-facto independence, but not formally.

More importantly, the Russian rulers are all too aware of Chechenya’s real significance. In spite of its size (7,350 square miles compared with the 8.64 million of the former Soviet Union) Chechenya is a veritable goldmine, and all the more important considering that previous successful secessionists—Georgia and Azerbaijan—took with them a wealth of mineral resources.

Chechenya, landlocked on three sides by Russia, includes fertile farmland that straddles the wheat fields of southern Russia. It has key transport assets—rail/road routes that link the Black and Caspian seas and trade routes to other trans-Caucasus republics. Most importantly, Chechenya controls vital oil pipelines that connect the Black and Caspian seas, as well as vital oilfields and refineries. We can add to this Chechenya’s chemical and engineering industries as well as its supply of building materials. All said, Chechenya equals roubles equals profits.

But one wonders why Russia, in recent weeks, has concentrated air strikes on oil terminals, bridges and dams. The strategy seems to be one of destroying Chechenya’s infrastructure and raw material supplies and to seal it off from the outside world. Sounds familiar? By all accounts Moscow has modelled the attack on the NATO strategy in Kosovo, hoping to bring Chechenya to its knees in as short a space of time as possible and with minimum loss of Russian life.

Nine years after the Chechen nationalists first informed Moscow of its secessionist ambitions, and with hundreds of thousands of Chechens now living the meagre life of the refugee in neighbouring republics, stability looks a long way off, and with President Aslan Maskhadov now enlisting the help of the region’s most prominent warlords—such as Shamil Basayev, a veteran commander of the first Chechen war that Maskhadov initially disowned—the conflict looks set to be long and protracted.

With so much mineral wealth at stake, wealth they are afforded no real share in, the Chechens should at least realise that whichever elite—Russian or Chechen, Russian Orthodox or Muslim—calls the shots, they will always come a poor second to the lure of the rouble and the profits that await the real victors. The 80-100,00 who lost their lives in the first Chechen war is a poignant reminder of this fact.

John Bissett

Cultures, multi and otherwise (2021)

From the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in 2011, in a speech at a security conference, then Prime Minister David Cameron discussed extremism and Islamist terrorism. He noted that Islam and extremism were not the same, and saw the issue of identity as crucial to why some young Muslims were drawn to extremist views:

 ‘In the UK, some young men find it hard to identify with the traditional Islam practised at home by their parents, whose customs can seem staid when transplanted to modern Western countries. But these young men also find it hard to identify with Britain too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream’.

State multiculturalism was thus seen as implying separation, with people from different cultures living in their own distinct ways, perhaps with little integration with those from other cultures. Society, Cameron went on, should not just be passively tolerant; rather it should pursue ‘a much more active, muscular liberalism’, promoting freedom of speech, the rule of law, equal rights and so on. What was needed, he claimed, was ‘a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone.’

But just what is multiculturalism (state or otherwise)? And how do politicians and others use this concept to construct arguments and policies? And what might a shared national identity consist of?

In Keywords, Raymond Williams describes culture as ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’, due to both its complex history (related to cultivation, among others) and its variety of current uses. On the one hand, it involves such activities as cinema, theatre, museums, music, and so on. But also it can refer to the kind of topics studied in cultural or social anthropology: a way of living, covering religion, language, kinship and family structure, work and production, food and diet, rural vs urban, and customs in some general sense. It is this last meaning which the idea of multiculturalism takes up: the position that a society consists of a number of different cultures, and it would be preferable if that were not the case or the differences were much reduced.

A detailed critique of multiculturalism is found in The British Dream by David Goodhart. The concept, he says, ‘has come to refer to the arrival of non-European, “visible” immigrants in western countries in recent decades and their political and social interaction with the majority society’, but apparently it ‘also implies a favourable and accommodating attitude to the arrival on the part of the majority society’. There are two versions: liberal multiculturalism expects immigrants to integrate into mainstream society, while the separatist version ‘privileges minority identities over common citizenship’ and thus slows down integration. The separatist variety in particular states that immigrants do not need to adapt, other than in relatively minor ways, to the society they now live in. As usual in such accounts, immigrants are not just those who have themselves migrated but their children and grandchildren at least too (second- and third-generation immigrants).

Opponents of multiculturalism, of whichever version, usually emphasise the lack of integration by immigrants and their descendants. At one level, this encompasses support, or at least toleration, for practices such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation. It can also extend to segregation in terms of residence, with towns such as Bradford and Oldham being highly segregated, with immigrant populations living in particular areas where most of the residents are immigrants from the same region, Pakistan and Kashmir serving as examples. Eric Kaufmann (nationalreview.com, 6 February, 2019) identified a supposed contradiction at the heart of multiculturalism: ‘White majorities are compelled to be cosmopolitan, urged to supersede their ascribed identity. Minorities are enjoined to do the reverse.’ Multiculturalism was thus asymmetric, making different demands on ‘natives’ and immigrants, with the latter getting an easier ride. This is seen as one of the main reasons behind the rise of populism, which often views immigrants as not truly part of ‘the people’.

According to the Fabian Society, Blair’s Labour government from 1997 was the most multicultural in Britain, if not in Europe, introducing faith schools, bringing Muslims into governance and passing the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, seen as a positive step. This made it illegal to discriminate in immigration matters on grounds of race or colour but, as Maya Goodfellow points out in Hostile Environment, it permitted discrimination on grounds of nationality or ethnic origin. New Labour, she says, also dehumanised asylum seekers, and all in all their policies and rhetoric ‘helped to embed anti-immigration ideas into British politics’. So the 2000 Act and Labour’s policies more generally were by no means all their supporters claimed them to be.

Opponents of multiculturalism seldom identify specifically what counts as British culture. Perhaps it is such things as having a sense of fair play, keeping a stiff upper lip and not pushing in at the front of a queue. Or football, the pub, Christmas shopping, holidaying in Spain, a Chinese or Indian takeaway, talking about the weather, and so on.

The socialist view is that multiculturalism is a misplaced and irrelevant idea, that being for or against it really misses the point. Putting people into categories (Muslim, immigrant, whatever) ignores the fact that people have far more in common than these labels suggest. We are all human beings, and under capitalism most of us are members of the working class, forced to work for a wage or dependent on someone who does so. Thus we are all subject to the exploitation of capitalism, and to varying degrees to its inequalities and discrimination. People differ of course: gender, sexual orientation, abilities, interests, but allotting people to pigeon-holes disguises what brings us together. Nations are artificial entities, and the ‘shared national identity’ mentioned by Cameron would have to be invented and constantly reinforced by propaganda.

Goodhart identifies a trend he terms ‘post-nationalism’, which he ascribes to George Monbiot and Danny Dorling: a view which supposedly rejects all national borders and emphasises universalism and support of the interests of everyone globally, not just those of one nationality. We need not concern ourselves with how accurately this reflects the actual views of Monbiot and Dorling, just point out that in this sense socialists are post-nationalists. Socialism will be a global society, with no countries or borders or passports, where the whole idea of migration, if it exists at all, will be purely geographic. As for culture, it will be up to people in socialism to organise their lives as they wish. We cannot predict now, but there are likely to still be differences such as language, diet, sport and so on. This of course does not mean permitting such barbaric practices as FGM. Aspects of climate will result in differences in how people live, with some finding ways to pass the long winter nights while others will spend far more time outdoors, with some places perhaps having siestas.

In the words of the Chinese saying, ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’. Though later hijacked by Mao Zedong, this expresses well the idea that people in a socialist world will be able to live as they wish, as long as it does not infringe on the freedom of others.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: ‘She’s Part Of Those Statistics Now’ (2021)

The Proper Gander TV column from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘All the doctors came in. And I knew. … I felt her leave. And then they told us. What do you do?’, says Naomi Ventour, as she recalls the day her sister Natalie died shortly after giving birth to her second child. ‘She’s part of those statistics now’, Naomi adds, referring to how as a black woman, Natalie was at least four times more likely to die during or soon after pregnancy than a white woman. This disparity is examined by Channel 4’s recent documentary in the Dispatches strand, The Black Maternity Scandal. Presenter and mother-of-three Rochelle Humes is of dual heritage, and so is three times more likely to suffer a maternal death than a white woman. She speaks with women like Naomi who have been affected, and also with researchers and campaigners aiming to address the problem.

Of the 2.2 million women who gave birth in the UK between 2016 and 2018, 34 black women in every 100,000 died up to a year after, compared with 15 Asian women and eight white women (tinyurl.com/59akcr63, p.1). For every one who dies during pregnancy, a hundred more will suffer a life-threatening complication, and again this affects a disproportionate number of non-white women. One such additional risk is coronavirus: in the UK, ‘black pregnant women are eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid-19 [than white pregnant women], while Asian women are four times as likely’ (tinyurl.com/n4rba64n, p.17).

What causes these depressing disparities? A possibility not raised by the programme is whether they are due to genetic differences between groups of people which put some inherently at higher risk. The prevalence of a few health issues is related to genes found more commonly in particular ethnic groups, such as sickle cell disease. But maternal death isn’t a single condition, and therefore doesn’t have a single cause which can be reduced to a set of genes. Maternal deaths are often associated with conditions like heart disease, blood clots and mental health problems, all of which can have multiple causes, including social factors such as lifestyle and environment. So, if women in particular ethnic groups are more likely to have health conditions which contribute to maternal deaths, then this is because they are more likely to lead lives which exacerbate those conditions. Living in poverty comes with increased chances of having a poor diet, depression and inadequate housing, all of which would impact negatively on a pregnancy. Consequently, women in the most deprived areas of England are three times more at risk of suffering a maternal death than those in the most affluent areas (tinyurl.com/59akcr63, table 2.10). There are higher proportions of non-white people living in poorer areas, especially first and second-generation settlers who came into the country with little money and few opportunities.

But the disparity isn’t only accounted for by the additional health risks which come with poverty. Another factor is an inconsistency in how people of different ethnic groups are treated by the health service. One study from the USA highlighted a mistaken belief that black people can bear more pain than white people, which led to lower amounts of painkillers being prescribed (tinyurl.com/mjfmuawn). In the documentary, Humes talks with women who felt that medical staff didn’t take their concerns seriously enough because they aren’t white. When this isn’t down to ignorant individuals being racist, an explanation is given by Dr Christine Ekechi of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She says that historically, the institutions of medical care were set up around the needs of white men who had most power in society, and particular needs of women and non-white people were added on, and still don’t always have equal recognition.

So, what is being done to address the issue? November 2020’s report by the government’s Joint Human Rights Committee – Black People, Racism and Human Rights – made the blunt admission that ‘the NHS acknowledge and regret this disparity but have no target to end it’ (tinyurl.com/n4rba64n, p.3). The widely criticised report by The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which concluded that the system is no longer rigged against non-white people referred to the disparity, but was vague about any proposed solutions because first ‘the increased rates seen in ethnic minority groups need to be better understood and explained’ (tinyurl.com/t8rrrcy4, p.218).

Hopefully, further research will expand on the social and economic reasons behind the disparity and maternal deaths in general, but where will this lead? Nadine Dorries, Minister for Mental Health, Suicide Prevention and Patient Safety has said that she is ‘absolutely committed to tackling disparities and making sure all women get the right support and best possible maternity care’. If this is more than just a soundbite, there may be reforms or changes to procedures which will help prevent some future tragedies. But whatever measures are put in place will depend on how much funding is politically and financially viable, and how much of a priority the issue has among society’s countless other problems. The deeper causes of the issue – poverty and division – can’t be legislated away because they’re built into how society is structured.

Mike Foster

Material World: Balochistan – Redrawing the Map of Southwest Asia (2012)

The Material World Column from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “There will be no peace… For the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe… The role of the U.S. armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing” (Lieut. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret’d) in summer 1997 issue of Parameters (published by the U.S. Army War College).

In January, the U.S. State Department expressed “concern” at the human rights situation in Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, where the government is fighting a secessionist insurgency. There have been atrocious violations of human rights in Balochistan for many years, but the U.S. had never complained about it before (at least in public). Then in early February there were congressional hearings on Balochistan.

Why this sudden burst of interest in a previously ignored region?

Background

The Baloch are an ancient people, thought to be mainly of Persian origin. They live in southwest Pakistan and southeast Iran, scattered over a vast expanse of mostly desert and mountain terrain. Balochistan is the largest of Pakistan’s provinces, covering 44 percent of the country’s area.

The economy and society of Balochistan are very underdeveloped. It is, however, rich in gas, coal and metals. Most of these resources have yet to be exploited. Four foreign companies are mining copper and gold – the Metallurgical Corporation of China, Antofagasta Minerals (Chile), Barrick Gold (Canada) and BHP Billiton (Britain and Australia). American companies do not appear to have a foothold. A new deep sea port at Gwadar began operations in 2008, its management entrusted to the Port of Singapore Authority.

When the British Raj was partitioned in 1947 the Baloch rulers wanted to join India, but geographical location forced them to accept incorporation into Pakistan. Initial promises of autonomy were later broken. Insurgencies against both the Pakistani and the Iranian government have continued intermittently ever since but grew in intensity in the 1990s and 2000s.

The Baloch lobby

So long as Pakistan remained a reliable client state of the U.S., the Americans turned a blind eye to Balochistan. Now, however, Pakistan is moving out of the U.S. sphere of influence, which in turn makes continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan untenable (see Material World, March 2012). In this context, the ‘Baloch card’ is a way to exert pressure on Pakistan.

The official U.S. position stops short of support for an ‘independent’ Balochistan, but a lobby in favour of such a policy has appeared in Washington (see Eddie Walsh in Al-Jazeera, Feb. 2012). It is possible that the options openly advocated by this ‘Baloch lobby’ are being secretly considered inside the U.S. government bureaucracy.

The Baloch lobby includes a group of members of congress that is said to be bipartisan, although its main spokesmen – Representatives Dana Rohrabacher (California), Louie Gohmert (Texas) and Steve King (Iowa) – are Republicans. Other active participants are Ralph Peters, the retired army officer and novelist quoted above, and M. Hossein Bor.

The key role in liaising between the lobby and its regional clients is probably played by M. Hossein Bor, an Iranian-American corporate lawyer at the New York law firm of Entwistle & Capucci and a former adviser to the governments of the United States, Afghanistan and Qatar. It would be relevant to know whether among his corporate clients there are any companies interested in investing in Balochistan.

Redrawing the map

The Baloch lobby accepts that the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan can no longer be considered allies of the United States. Accordingly, they seek to re-establish American influence in Southwest Asia by undermining and breaking up the three neighbouring“enemy” states – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran – and creating a new state (or possibly more than one) that would be totally dependent on the U.S.

Political, financial and military support for the Baloch secessionist cause is an important part of such a strategy. As the Baloch homeland straddles the border between Pakistan and Iran, this policy would be directed against Iran as well as Pakistan.

Iran might also be targeted by support for other secessionist movements inside that country – in the Arab southwest, the Azeri northwest and the Kurdish west.

With regard to Afghanistan, the Baloch lobby advocates shifting support (including the provision of arms) from the Karzai government back to the Northern Alliance – the Uzbek and Tajik warlords in northern Afghanistan whose ground forces helped the U.S. defeat the Taliban regime at the beginning of the intervention. This policy, which would be feasible only with the full cooperation of Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, points in the direction of a north-south partition of Afghanistan.

It is very doubtful whether Pakistan as a state could survive the loss of Balochistan. A unified Pashtunistan, controlled by the Taliban and its allies, may emerge in northern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. The provinces of Punjab and Sindh may then draw closer to India. This would more or less complete the redrawing of the map of southwest Asia along ethnic lines.

What about Pakistan’s nukes?

Whatever advantages the U.S. might conceivably obtain from the strategy pushed by the Baloch lobby, it would entail enormous dangers. Dismantling Pakistan raises the question: what happens to the country’s nuclear weapons? Will U.S. Special Forces seize and disable them? Hopefully, caution will deter the U.S. from embarking on such adventures.

Hopefully too, all those well-intentioned people who think that ‘we’ should act to ‘free oppressed peoples threatened by genocide’ will ponder the real considerations that guide the foreign policy of capitalist states.

Stefan

The Chinese in Britain (1969)

From the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

One more minority problem is developing here and seems likely to be dumped on the government’s plate should unemployment increase sufficiently to force the matter into the front rank of problems.

According to L. Wong (Overseas Chinese in Britain) there are 45,000 Chinese here; 30,000 immigrant workers from Hong Kong, with the remaining 15,000 consisting of students and nurses from other countries such as Malaysia and the West Indies, and more are coming in all the time.

They are not a homogeneous group in terms of dialect spoken, education, or country of origin, and moreover each group looks upon all others as alien. For instance, many of the Chinese here are villagers from the Hong Kong area, but are subdivided into Hakkas (the original inhabitants of the province of Canton, centuries before the Cantonese arrived) and the Cantonese. But these days the mutual hostility has greatly diminished, and intermarriage is quite common. Then again, the urbanised educated from Hong Kong find little in common with the villagers.

The Malaysian Chinese students regard Hong Kong Chinese students as ‘different’, and vice versa.

Many of the working-class Chinese find employment in the Chinese restaurants which have become quite a popular institution in Britain, enlivening our world of bricks and mortar with an exotic splash of colour, and sometimes relieving the housewife of her chores at the kitchen stove. There are about 1,000 of them, with more opening all the time, of which 200 are in London.

Some restaurant workers are resentful of the long hours they have to work and complain that employers are able to conceal this from the officials.

There are clubs and associations for each of the different groups here, including restaurant workers. Some of these clubs hold one or two religious observances during the year, but in common with workers all over the world, the Chinese are steadily dropping all mystic beliefs. On Ch’ung Yand day, one of the Chinese traditional days of mystic ritual, at the Chinese cemetery in London’s East End a few years ago only 25 people were present, Ng Kwei Choo reports in The Chinese in London.

The clubs are the battlegrounds where the Nationalists and so-called Communists compete for political loyalties.

The Nationalists are the political party who represented the capitalism of developing China before the second world war. Since last century, when China was overrun by Western capitalists, exploitation was carried on through a Chinese middleman—a compradore, a variety of capitalist peculiar to China. For instance, commercial crops were bought and collected by a compradore’s organisation in the interior of of China which also provided transport to the required treaty port where the Western merchant company took over and proceeded to clean, sort, pack, ship to the West, and finance. The compradores, though originally tied to Western enterprises, began over the years to operate in their own right and eventually with other budding capitalists formed their own political party under the leadership first of Sun Yat-sen then Chiang Kai-shek. Their policy, although phrased in pseudo-socialist terms, was to develop China largely by private enterprise for the benefit of the indigenous ruling-class. They lost the civil war with the Communist Party and retired to the island of Formosa. Here, with American aid, they act as a thorn in the side of the Chinese government on the mainland.

On the other hand, the so-called Communist Party of China, who control the Chinese government, are committed to state capitalism for the major industries, and battle for the support of the Chinese in Britain.

For instance, a visit to a Communist Party film-show in London typically starts with a playing of the national anthem, at which the audience stands to attention. Among the films is one entitled A Stroll in Peking depicting the contrast between Peking under the Nationalists’ regime and the new Peking. Another entitled Change of Circumstances depicts the Communist Chinese as saviours of the oppressed with the Nationalists and Japanese as the villains of the piece. This film works up hatred for the Japanese and helps the audience to become patriotic Chinese.

The Chinese in Britain are in many ways a miniature of the Chinese in the world at large; they have their sectarian loyalties but it is no contradiction to say that in essentials they have very much more in common with British workers than they have differences. We are all workers of the world.

Frank Offord

Material World: Myth of Peaceful Buddhism (2014)

The Material World Column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many have a soft spot for Buddhism as a religion and it frequently escapes criticism. After all, it is a religion where the belief in gods is not a necessary pre-requisite. The popular conception is that all Buddhists are peaceful, simply by virtue of the fact that they call themselves Buddhists. Nothing could be further from the truth. States where Buddhism is the dominant tradition have engaged in many wars and other conflicts over the past centuries. And Buddhist monks have a long tradition of supporting kings and warlords in their conflicts. Particularly in south-east Asia, Buddhism has been the religion allegedly followed by many feudal rulers, in the form of an hierarchical organised religion. Buddhism holds a certain amount of political influence in Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Buddhists are just like people of other faiths: subject to desire, anger, and ignorance. Buddhism differs only in that it offers the promise of freedom from desire, anger and ignorance to those who seriously practise. Many so-called Buddhists do not engage in serious practice. The thing about these ‘peaceful religions’ is often a product of the Western imagination, the idea of these far-off people living these incredibly peaceful and wise lives.

Buddhism certainly has much within its precepts about pacifism but as with the Christian crusaders or Islamist militants violence has been justified in the name of a higher good. Buddhist rulers and monks have been no exception. Any religion sooner or later enters into a pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings for support, patronage and order and kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only they confer. When Buddhism has become an established religion and a theocracy you have as brutal a feudal despotism as any other, for instance, the monastic version of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Lamaism. Until recently the Dalai Lama was in effect head of state, not simply a religious leader. This often led to political rather than theological disputes with other leading religious Lamas.

Buddhist nation states have historically sought to use Buddhist doctrine to justify war. The links between Zen Buddhism and samurai warrior culture were partly responsible for the collusion of Zen and Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s. For several years Japanese jingoism seized Zen, and its teachings were twisted and corrupted to excuse killing. Zen institutions not only supported Japanese military aggression but raised money to manufacture war planes and weapons.

Tamils are Hindus and they constitute a majority in Northern Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese are Buddhist and have been perfectly willing to exercise ruthless violence against Tamils. In the Sri Lankan civil war hard-line monks were at the vanguard of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, which viewed the Hindu Tamils and Sri Lanka’s smaller Muslim population as outsiders. They joined the government with their own party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya or National Heritage Party. The monks used their new power to argue vociferously against any self-determination for the Tamils in the north, opposing even the more limited measure of autonomy. In religious terms they justified the suppression of the Tamils on the grounds that a fracture in the nation state is a tear in the sacred fabric of a land which represents the well-spring of their belief. Roads have been renamed after Buddhist monks. While many Hindu temples and Christian churches were destroyed in the war, new Buddhist stupas and statues are being built.

In Rakhine State, Myanmar there has been civil strife between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims whom the Burmese government views not as citizens but as illegal immigrants and therefore affords little protection,  and this has led to a refugee crisis as the Rohingya flee from pogroms inspired and led by Buddhist monks. Dr. Muang Zarni, a Burmese human rights activist and research fellow at the London School of Economics has described the 969 movement as a neo-Nazi Buddhist organisation. 969 stands for three things: the 9 stands for the special attributes of Buddha, the founder of the religion; the 6 stands for attributes of his teachings of dharma; and finally, the last 9 stands for special characteristics or attributes of the clergy (LINK.).

Buddhism can easily be used to support reactionary politics. The conflict between Buddhists and Muslims is often over land and nationalism. Buddhism is neither better nor worse than any other organised religions in its role as an agent of social control.

ALJO

Material World: Taming the Uighur (2019)

The Material World Column from the April 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in September 2014, we carried an article on the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority.

The Uighur are more akin to the Turkic peoples of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, than to the Han Chinese. Following a policy conducted in Tibet, China has promoted the mass migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang – the autonomous region in western China, home to approximately 11 million Uighurs, with the effect of trying to reduce Uighurs to a minority on their native land, pre-empting any possibility of independence that many Uighurs seek.

In August 2018, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination voiced ‘deep concern’ over the situation facing Muslims who were being treated as ‘enemies of the state’ and held in secret ‘re-education’ camps. The Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported that a fifth of all 2017 arrests in China were made in Xinjiang. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the detention centres are located in specially-built facilities or converted government buildings where detainees are held, unlawfully and without charge, as a result of religious ‘offences’ such as excessive praying or non-religious acts such as accessing proscribed websites or contacting overseas relatives. Other aspects of the security crackdown include all-encompassing social media surveillance, mass deployment of police and severe regulations against religious practices and dress.

Inmates at those gulags are forced to criticise their own Islamic beliefs and sing Communist Party propaganda songs for hours each day and give thanks to the ruling Communist Party. They are compelled to shave their beards and have been forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Former detainees described beatings and deaths despite authorities’ tight control of available information. Likewise, the government also operates orphanages for Uighur children taken from their parents, in a process to disconnect them from their ethnic heritage, a punitive policy targeting indigenous peoples seen all across the world at various times in history.

China is an economic superpower which the world relies on heavily for trade and there are signs that economic factors are the reason deterring diplomatic protest or humanitarian intervention from the rest of the world. Many states including Islamic ones fear the economic consequences and possible retaliation they could receive if they challenged or sanctioned China for this blatant ethnic cleansing of the Uighur people. China has invested $62bn in the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which will connect Kashgar in Xinjiang to the southern Gwadar port in Pakistan. Despite Pakistan highlighting the plight of Muslim minorities, when it comes to Uighurs, Islamabad protests are muted.

‘It’s quite striking that while Pakistan often laments the plight of Rohingya, Syrian, Kashmiri, and Palestinian Muslims, you rarely hear Islamabad making statements in solidarity with Uighurs’, according to Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia programme at the Wilson Center. He says ‘The Muslim world on the whole, with a few exceptions, has taken a position of studied silence because of a desire not to upset a key global player that offers investments and other useful benefits’.

Particularly revealing were the comments from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who, on his recent visit to China, voiced support for China’s campaign against ‘terrorists’ and its ‘de-extremization’ camps. Did we really think that China or Saudi Arabia would allow some Uighurs to get in the way of Saudi Aramco’s $10 billion deal for a refining and petrochemical complex or the signing of 35 economic cooperation accords worth $28 billion? Chinese-Saudi trade reached $63 billion in 2018. As long as economics matter, the Uighurs will not likely find an ally in Saudi Arabia.

Turkey has been the only majority Muslim country to criticise China, with the Turkish foreign ministry calling China’s treatment of Uighurs ‘a great cause of shame for humanity’.

China is able to disguise anti-Uighur actions under a cloak of the global ‘war against terror’ to counter and de-radicalise Islamic fundamentalism. China is taking advantage of the global trend to weaponise Islamophobia to drive its racist programme of state-sponsored Han dominance.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi justified the ‘re-education camps’, stating, ‘the efforts are completely in line with the direction the international community has taken to combat terrorism … if we can take care of prevention, then it will be impossible for terrorism to spread and take root’.

Other government officials defended the forced detention claim that Islam is an ideological illness, depicting the camps as more like hospitals to ‘cure’ people from the Muslim infliction. China’s ambassador to the USA, Cui Tiankai, stated that the country is trying to turn the Uighurs into ‘normal people’. China is instituting the very same calls made by some Western politicians to criminalise expressions of Muslim identity such as the wearing of hijabs in an effort to heal Muslims of their ‘sickness’.

Maya Wang of the Human Rights Watch campaign explained that while authorities claimed the camps were about combating terrorism and separatism, they were in fact designed to assimilate Uighurs. Amnesty International described the detention centres as comparable to ‘wartime concentration camps’.

The Socialist Party is fully conscious of the sufferings of many of our fellow-workers and we wish to promote a kaleidoscope of cultures but candour compels us to point out that only the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism can put an end to national chauvinism and race prejudice.

ALJO

Material World: China’s Wild West (2014)

The Material World Column from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese authorities this year imposed restrictions on Uyghur Muslims during the month of Ramadan, banning government employees and school children from fasting They justified  the ban by saying it is meant to protect the health of students, and restrictions on religious practices by government officials are meant to ensure the state does not support any particular faith. Along with government employees, children under the age of 18 are barred from attending mosques. For centuries, parents sent their children to maktaps, part-time schools at the mosque, where they memorised the Quran – but this practice, along with most organised religious instruction, is now prohibited. Under Chinese law, only state-approved copies of Islamic literature like the Quran are allowed. Human rights groups say it is an attempt at systematically erasing the region's Islamic identity. This is not about atheism, but political control. Uyghur resentment toward Chinese rule has been reinforced by China's policies of cultural ‘genocide’ on Uyghur identity, religious beliefs and practices.

Xinjiang has a majority Muslim Uyghur population - a Turkic ethnic group with a language and culture closer to Central Asia who scholars consider to be descendants of a mix of European and East Asian. Uyghurs are classified as a ‘national minority’ rather than an indigenous group—in other words, they are considered to be no more indigenous to Xinjiang than the Han, and have no special rights to the land under the law. The region is home to some of China's largest deposits of oil, natural gas, and coal. Before the region was absorbed into the People's Republic of China in 1949, almost everyone was Uyghur, but the numbers have since declined, dropping to below half by the year 2000, as tens of millions of Han Chinese were encouraged to settle by the government, who provided jobs, housing, bank loans and economic opportunities denied to Uyghurs. The same story as in Tibet, Manchuria and Mongolia. It is sad but in these instances there are only two options: assimilation or confrontation.

On 1 March 2014, a group of Uyghurs with knives attacked people at the Kunming Railway Station killing at least 29 and injuring 130 others.

On 18 April 2014, a group of 16 Uyghur refugees engaged in a shootout with Vietnamese border guards after seizing their guns as they were being detained to be returned to China.

On 30 April 2014, two attackers stabbed people before detonating their suicide vests at an Ürümqi train station.

On 22 May 2014, twin suicide car bombings occurred after the occupants had thrown multiple explosives out of their vehicles at an Ürümqi street market. The attacks killed 31 people and injured more than 90.

Such acts provided the Chinese government with the excuse for its propaganda that it faces a Muslim terrorist threat, in order to win public opinion both in China and the world and silence criticism of its neo-colonialism.

China claims that ‘Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of China since ancient times’, Xinjiang in Chinese literally means ‘New Territory’. The use of ‘East Turkestan’ by Uyghurs is criminalised. The Chinese Red Army occupied the short-lived East Turkestan Republic in October 1949 and pacified the people through executions and massacres. Tens of thousands of Uyghurs were killed in China's conquest of East Turkestan. The promised self-rule was soon reneged on after annexation and the ‘Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region’ established in 1955. Chinese state corporations exploited the huge reserves of natural gas, oil, gold, uranium, coal and other minerals found in the region. What is more, China tested 45 nuclear devices, both under and above ground, between 1964 and 1996 in East Turkestan, polluting air, water and soil with radiation.

Chinese soldiers' have been accused of extrajudicial and indiscriminate killings of Uyghur men, women and children. This systematic repression of Uyghur people and their subsequent resistance to it, has been described as a fight against ‘Islamic terrorism’. Moderate Uyghurs such as Professor Ilham Tohti and linguist Abduweli Ayup who had tried to work within the Chinese system were denounced and arrested. Others out of desperation have committed horrific acts of political violence against not only Chinese security forces, but also against settlers. The July 2009 Ürümqi riots were a series of violent riots over several days that broke out in the capital city of Xinjiang and targeted Han Chinese. A total of 197 people died.

This oppression is all the worse for being done in the name of socialism whereas socialism ‘will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex’.

ALJO