Red Snapper: Sound bites and unsound nibbles (2005)

The Red Snapper column from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

” I don’t look like a millionaire, I don’t act like a millionaire, I am not a millionaire.”

George Galloway, RESPECT MP, ahead of addressing the Washington senators who have accused him of receiving vouchers for millions of barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein’s regime. Daily Mail, May 17th.

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” They chose me. Can’t you find it even within yourself even to congratulate me?”

George Galloway again on his election victory to Jeremy Paxman, from The Guardian, May 7th.

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” We expect the Revolution will create entirely new genres to expand the definition of video games,” he said to loud cheers in the hall.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, on a new console, BBC Technology, May 17

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“People remembered why they had lost trust in Tony Blair, but they couldn’t see any real difference between the Tories and Labour, so we lost out on that.”

Lynton Crosby, Tory Party campaign director, Independent, May 20

” A student who misbehaves gets two verbal warnings, then detention for one hour and finally a day in the isolation unit. It is very rare that a student gets sent there for three days.”

Sir Dexter Hutt, executive headmaster of three schools in Birmingham, where he has introduced isolation rooms, Sunday Times, May 15

Mason’s ‘Marxists’ (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

13th March 1979

Dear Mr. Mason,

My attention has been drawn to the fact that in the Panorama programme on 12th February 1979 you made the statement that the Provisional IRA are ‘Marxist based’.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to all other political organisations, including the IRA, and would claim to be Marxist based. However, we are also opposed to violence as a political means, and take the view that a transformation to a socialist system of society can be made only by democratic means, when a majority sees the need for it and is prepared to run such a society. We are prepared to defend this position in public debate, and find it regrettable that you should have made the erroneous statement which you did, at a time when our comrades in our Irish companion party are doing all they can to dissociate themselves from the terrorism and senseless violence which are the stock-in-trade of the IRA.

I am therefore writing to challenge you to a public debate on these issues with a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, at a time and place to be agreed. I am sure you would not wish to evade the responsibility you incur in making statements of the kind you did in the programme in question.

Bill Valinas 

(General Secretary)

Reply:

29 March 1979

Dear Mr. Valinas,

Thank you for your letter of 13 March to the Secretary of State (your reference 76/10/2.4). Mr. Mason has asked me to reply on his behalf.

Mr. Mason notes that you object to a remark made in a recent Panorama programme to the effect that the Provisional IRA was ‘Marxist based'. He is sorry that you are concerned about this but he would not agree that this description is either inaccurate or other than fair comment. The Provisional Movement’s own newspapers frequently attempt to describe the violent campaign in Northern Ireland in terms of a Marxist class struggle. And remarks in a sense similar to his own have also appeared in print in England. To take only one example, Mr. Jeremy Paxman, writing in The Listener of 15 December 1977, said:

  “Although the Provisionals were founded by military-minded veterans of previous IRA campaigns they now include in their ranks a growing corps of battle-hardened young men who owe their allegiance as much to Marx as to the traditional concept of a united Ireland. Tensions between the two groups are strong, but they are united in a belief in the legitimacy of violence.”

I have also been asked to say that Mr. Mason entirely accepts the statement in your letter that both the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion party in Ireland are committed to the democratic transformation of society to a socialist system; and that both parties have been outspoken in their condemnation of terrorism such as that perpetrated by the Provisional IRA. In describing the Provisionals as ‘Marxist based’ it was never his intention to suggest that other Marxist based parties necessarily supported their aims or methods, and he does not believe that his remark would have been generally understood in that sense.

J G Pilling

Reply:

If an organisation calling itself the Society for the Elimination of Suffering consistently advanced a policy of genocide, no doubt Mr. Mason would feel justified in describing it as humanitarian. Where is his evidence that the IRA adheres to the theoretical system of Karl Marx? Apparently, it is that ‘if the Provisionals and the BBC says so, it must be true'. So much for political argument.

Editorial Committee

Blogger's Note:

See also April 1979 Socialist Standard, Belfast Diary: Mason's 'Marxists' .

Who loves you, baby! (1995)

TV Review from the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

This last month has been enlivened by the government's recent attempts to shoot the messenger, alias the media. For not content with alienating a normally docile and compliant press, the Conservative Party hierarchy has now turned its attentions to television and, in particular, the BBC— the newly christened Blair Broadcasting Corporation. The most immediate result was unexpected. A temporary thaw in relations ensured between the Tories and the BBC as they joined forces to protest at the Prime Minister being banned from BBC television in Scotland by the ruling class’s own judges, who accused the BBC of misconduct during a local election campaign.

Jonathan Aitken, a man who knows a thing or two about how to manipulate the media, and Jeremy Hanley—a man who despite his theatrical connections evidently doesn't—have been in the forefront of attacks on alleged BBC bias against the government. Their onslaught has been assisted by Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, who is responsible for such matters. With Hanley acting like a demented cheerleader at a Cup Final Aitken and Howard have alleged that BBC journalists Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys adopt an overly-aggressive manner when interviewing government ministers, so much so that the BBC's own supremo John Birt has seen fit to give them a public warning. In particular, Humphrys occasioned Conservative wrath for chairing an allegedly “anti-government” education rally debate in Westminster (although the Tories neglect to mention that a government spokesman was invited to participate and that Humphrys was paid for taking part) and this was compounded by an incident which led to Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark to be officially censored for using a "hectoring tone" in an interview with the absurdly coiffured Michael Portillo.

This all tells us something. Not that the BBC really is biased against the government, for all governments think that, especially ones that are going through a rough time. What it does tell us is that somewhere in the twisted minds of the Tory party leadership plans are being made for a General Election.

There are many historical precedents for this sort of behaviour. In the late 1960s Harold Wilson, who had previously enjoyed a rather convivial relationship with the television media, launched a series of attacks on the BBC and ITV for biased news reporting as he made plans to renew Labour's mandate. Throughout her long reign Thatcher did the same for the Conservatives, most famously and successfully under the direction of Norman Tebbit. He set up a monitoring unit before the 1987 election to keep an eye on precisely the amount of coverage each of the main parties were getting and to ascertain the percentage of that coverage which was positive, neutral or damaging.

It would appear that the Tory leadership is now again in General Election mode, and they don't want unduly favourable coverage of Blair and his cohorts at the expense of their own boys and girls.

Bong!

It was thought for many years—and not just in the Tory Party—that the BBC had a rather pro-left wing bias in its news reporting and current affairs coverage and that ITN, under the guidance of that cringeworthy Tory Alistair Burnett, veered in the other direction. In the 1992 election, there were signs that the roles were reversed, perhaps as a result of political pressure and memories of the 1987 campaign with Tebbit’s attack on the BBC and Labour’s counter-attack on ITN.

In reality, the major capitalist political parties have little to fear. Coverage of them is remarkably neutral between them most of the time in Britain— unlike say Spain or Italy, where news channels are dominated and even sometimes owned by the major political parties, or the US. where the size of your campaign chest speaks loudest. The real losers, especially in Britain, are those organisations that currently represent "minority opinion", unable even to receive a five-minute Party Political Broadcast unless they have the funds and desire to stump up enough money for fifty parliamentary candidates. Between elections coverage is little better. Just how many smaller parties get represented on Question Time or other current affairs programmes? Are we really to believe that they have nothing interesting to say or is it that the news corporations simply dance to the collective tune of the mainstream political parties and the values they represent? They are, after all, values which largely coincide with their own.

And finally . . .

Let us know how you feel, for one thing is certain. If socialists are not to be marginalised on the fringes of the political process television news coverage is vital and so is access to current affairs programmes where the upholders of the capitalist system can be directly challenged. If political intervention on the subject of television coverage is left to the Peter Mandelsons and Jonathan Aitkens of this world, we will only have ourselves to blame—although admittedly our task is much harder than theirs. We, after all, cannot bank any assistance from the sharp-suited executives at Broadcasting House or the doughty old buffers in dusty wigs. Through the strength our ideas if not presently force of numbers we can but try. and try until we succeed.

Dave Perrin

In A Real State (2001)

TV Review from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the last couple of years BBC2’s Newsnight has been compiling monthly features about life on a couple of tough estates in an inner-city area of Salford, Greater Manchester. Last month they followed this up with a four-part special documentary series examining the successes and failures of New Labour’s approach to the problems of social deprivation in the area. It made for compelling viewing.

The series—called Real Estates—took a hard look at life in the Langworthy and Ordsall areas of Salford to examine the progress made there since Blair came to office on education, health, employment and regeneration. Narrated by Jeremy Paxman, it highlighted local examples of the initiatives taken by the Blair government to tackle social deprivation and examined their effectiveness by focussing on how they affected individuals in the community. The answer to whether these initiatives had been successful was entirely predictable of course – as by and large, they clearly haven’t been. So much so that even when a particular problem has been contained in one area or school, it has only been at the cost of it emerging in another.

Running like a thread through the programmes were the major manifestations of the social problems that are rife and seemingly unstoppable amongst the most poverty-stricken elements of the working class in countries like Britain—most obviously unemployment, crime, truancy, drug abuse and ill health. The government agencies and their operatives dealing with these problems were often well-meaning enough (at least when there were cameras present). The social workers, truancy and probation officers, health workers and even the police officers were all attempting to bring some semblance of what passes for “normality” to the rows of terraced streets and partially boarded-up council estates that make up the area. But their struggle was necessarily an uphill one and the overall story one of minor and isolated successes amongst much wider despair and frustration.

Not all those watching Real Estates would have reacted in the same way to it. The typical knee-jerk reaction to the problems identified in the series would have been to say that the people at the centre of them all were just a bad lot, and that it was their “human nature” which made them rob, attack one another and take drugs despite the best efforts of the government and social services. Indeed, some would no doubt even argue that to invest money into tackling the social problems of areas like Salford is just to throw good money after bad. What Real Estates demonstrated to the more open-minded observer was something rather different.

It was that people living in communities such as those in Salford are battling against the elements even more than the agencies and government workers who are apparently trying to set things straight. In most instances they show a genuine care and warmth towards their families and friends but have to contend with a hostile social environment, just as their parents and parents’ parents did before them. Indeed, it was clear that there is nothing intrinsically evil about the dispossessed of the inner-cities like Salford. Unlike the little Coronation Street morality plays of the fictional Salford currently served up week after week by Granada TV in their desire to compete with the increasingly appalling EastEnders, the denizens of the real Salford have more tangible dramas and concerns. These are influenced and determined by the real evil that is all around them and which infects their every thought and move—poverty.

Philosophy of poverty

As each programme in the series demonstrated so visibly and movingly, the best intentions of those deprived of what society deems to be acceptable are just simply not enough. From the schoolboy who wants to avoid the older kids on the estate lest they get him into trouble and wreck his chances of a ‘decent job’ when he leaves school, to the young criminals who want to go straight and get off drugs, a life in poverty is never simple. For the truth is that in capitalism lack of money and the means to effectively get it is the deciding factor in people’s social existence. And even those without money who attempt to play by the official rules of the game will always be influenced or affected by all those around them who won’t or can’t.

In such a situation the Daily Mail and its ilk can bleat away forever about people’s lack of respect for authority and their lack of social responsibility. After all, why should people respect their supposed ‘betters’ when they have nothing and are never remotely likely to have anything unless a huge (and hugely unlikely) stroke of good fortune comes their way? To use the type of language the tabloids would understand, what incentive do they have?

New Labour—like many other governments before it – recognises the existence of this problem and is keen to do something about it, hence the much vaunted talk of “stakeholders”, “social partnership” and of the balance between “rights and responsibilities”. But recognising that a problem exists is not enough—you have to know what keeps causing it before you can seriously do anything constructive in response.

This is Labour’s own particular difficulty and it is the perennial one faced by reformist governments. This is because, as Real Estates showed clearly, poverty is not an individual choice or a curse bestowed from above as a punishment for evil but is instead a product of the way society is organised. Jeremy Paxman didn’t narrate this in quite those terms, but it is the obvious inference from a programme which movingly depicted the daily struggle of people against an economy and social structure which first casts them as victims and then as villains.

If it did anything, Real Estates showed how desperate situations—like in Salford—breed desperate people who think nothing of breaking the “norms” the rest of society may aspire to live by. But it also showed that Tony Blair and his Cabinet can in all probability set up all the task forces and social exclusion units they want. For when it is society itself that creates poverty amongst riches as a matter of course and then pits the poverty-stricken against one another in a desperate fight for survival, there is never going to be any solution in piecemeal reform and cosmetic initiatives.

Indeed, that way lies another century just like the last one. And that was a century where reformist schemes and promises persistently counted for little in the larger scheme of capitalist reality.

Dave Perrin

Between the Lines: A Question of Thought (1994)

The Between the Lines Column from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Question of Thought

1994 brought the news that the BBC has decided on a replacement for Peter Sissons as host of its flagship current affairs programme Question Time. The job has gone to David Dimbleby, the BBC's Election Night host and brother of Jonathan, chair of Radio 4’s Any Questions'? There’s nothing like keeping it in the family.

Though Sissons finished his stint on Question Time in a more assured style than when he started, he proved to be a rather tetchy host at times, bringing all the elan one would expect of a dour newsreader. He was certainly different from Sir Robin Day, though not necessarily better. Day himself was a generally rude and bad-tempered chairman who was saved on TV by his many idiosyncracies which made him appear to be more interesting than the politicians, something that shouldn’t have been too difficult. Sissons had little such advantage and tended to blend into the set rather than create his own distinctive style of chairmanship. Dimbleby could go the same way, though his previous experience of the format and his performances on Election Nights suggest he won’t.

The real key — as with Dimbleby’s producers — will be not just how he treats the politicians, but how he interacts with the audience. If the mood took them both Day and Sissons could stop the audience from questioning the politicians and their motives too closely, as some Socialist Party members found out. "Yes, that’s enough of that . . . now to the lady in the blue rinse" was not an uncommon reaction, particularly when dangerous words like capitalism and socialism were mentioned.

Intimidating a TV audience is not difficult for an experienced host, and as Ben Elton would say, it’s not big or clever. Day and Sissons both seemed far too satisfied to be up on the big table with the assorted "statesmen" to be seen to give the underlings much of a say. At times, the audience participation in Question Time has been reduced to the level where members of the public are invited not so much to think for themselves but simply to agree with the pronouncements of the various politicians: yea or nay. Conversely, the best editions of the programme have been those occasions when the studio audience has been able to get on the back of a particular politician and then pepper him or her with focused comments, questions and suggestions that the chair has been powerless to stop.

A Licence to Kill 

Sadly, the candidate for the Question Time post who would have proved the most interesting of all didn’t get the job — namely Jeremy Paxman, from BBC2’s Newsnight. Paxman is foremost among the rottweiler school of political interviewing, and his "yes, but isn’t that just complete bollocks" line of questioning has brought him a certain degree of admiration from those who consider themselves "anti-system" and a fair amount of disdain from those who are very much a part of it. With Paxman, politicians get away with relatively little. The big question mark would be over whether he could restrain his aggressive style with an audience. Paxman can sometimes resort to sneering, and that would be no use at all on a programme like Question Time. Indeed, it has been noticeable that when Newsnight has involved an audience panel the laid-back Francine Stock or Peter Snow usually make a better job of it than Paxman. who seems less effective when unable to directly bait politicians.

For whatever reason, viewers of Question Time are stuck with Dimbleby, but never fear, socialists can point him in the right direction. For one thing that would definitely improve the programme would be the actual presence of socialists. Given the BBC’s past record, a socialist member of the panel might be too much to hope for (though we note that the confusion-mongers of the SWP have had members on more than once). So "Between the Lines" recommends that readers of this column write in to the BBC for tickets to the new series of Question Time so as to make the genuine Socialist case heard on TV. You never know, we might at the same time be able to help turn Question Time from being a forum for posturing and prattle into a Programme for public information.

Dave Perrin

Greasy Pole: Jeremy Spanks the Baby (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every so often the political firmament witnesses the emergence of a Rising Star, suitably welcomed by the party leaders as evidence of their resolve to bring fresh minds with new ideas to their tortured deliberations. For the Rising Star as well, it can be exciting, with hardened journalists pursuing them for their behind-the-doors revelations on the latest Cabinet scandal, the anguish of rivals left beneath them as they ascend the Greasy Pole and, as climax to all this, assumptions about record sales for an audaciously revealing volume of memoirs. And of course there would be the quivering excitement from the terror of television appearances fending off a notoriously ruthless interviewer while defending government policies in some current emergency.

Accountant
Conservative MP for North Norwich, Chloe Smith, came into the Commons in July 2009 as a Rising Star and, aged 27, the Baby of the House. She took the seat previously held by Labour’s Ian Gibson, who resigned over irregularities exposed in his expense claims. Fresh-faced as a member of the school hockey team, flashing a wide, ready smile, Smith may have been a relief to the Norwich voters after the tawdry scandal of the fiddling by those outworn parliamentary manipulators. She held the seat at the 2010 election and, after a spell as a Conservative whip, was abruptly elevated to Economic Secretary to the Treasury – in fact benefiting from another scandal, that of Tory Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, who had to resign over his relationship to his ‘adviser’ Adam Werrity. Among the resentful mutterings of disappointed rivals (“inexperienced but super loyal” was one grouse) there were suggestions that perhaps Smith’s promotion was intended to pacify women voters after the cuts in Child Benefit rather than through any merits of hers. In fact, at the time the Prime Minister, Cameron, was under the impression that she was a Chartered Accountant – which seemed to be a recommendation to him on the theory that anyone qualified in that way was sure to be able to control and direct capitalism into an ordered, beneficial society – something his government was clearly unable to do. In any case, when Smith owned up to him that she was not an accountant he dismissed this as irrelevant, and with the words, “never mind!” he welcomed her into his Cabinet.

U Turn
Safely on the Front Bench, Smith had a name – the Ice Maiden – which she earned for her coolness under the kind of pressures which ministers are expected to meet pretty well daily. This was pretty seductive stuff and it may have persuaded her to put herself forward for an assignment which many of her colleagues would have gone to some lengths to avoid. This came when the government announced that it would postpone a rise in fuel tax the day after insisting that it would impose it. The move was hailed as yet another policy U-turn, symptoms of a government that was disastrously muddled in its efforts to manage the economy. Smith volunteered to appear on Newsnight in the hope of representing the U-turn as good news for everyone, although she knew this would expose her to being grilled by the merciless Jeremy Paxman, whose victims include the likes of Michael Howard, William Hague and Tony Blair. Smith seemed quite unable to have memorised the kind of transparent evasions which are commonly used by politicians when they are in such straits. Not at all the super-cool informed minister, she fumbled her way through, allowing Paxman to ask at one point: “Is this some sort of joke?” and at another: “You ever think you are incompetent?” Which in one sense helped Smith as it diverted some of the Tories’ anger onto Smith’s boss George Osborne who was taking a relaxed dinner at Number Eleven while she faced Paxman at his most rampant.

McBride
Such are the perils of a minister’s job it is often necessary for them to be ‘briefed’ before explaining away some embarrassing facts. A master practitioner of this art was Damian McBride, one of Gordon Brown’s most aggressive spin doctors, who recalls a session to prepare the new Prime Minister by shouting abuse at him in a private room at the Treasury: “Blood on your hands…!”; “You’re a murderer…!”; and, in summary: “Sod off you Scottish git!”. This degrading but typical episode is illustrative only of the brutal cynicism of capitalism and the demands of its politics. In any case, would it have helped Smith if she had been subjected to the same preparation? We might all have our own ideas about the style of the abuse she deserved, except that that would be no less futile than McBride’s sessions with Brown. And then there is the fact that Smith has presented herself as one Baby who could be pretty tough. At university her interests were not politics but “drinking and dancing with the best of them”. She expels any tensions playing badminton, swearing or “turning the air blue” as one opponent put it. She tells us that as a minister “I focus very hard on the job in hand,” which in her case includes child poverty, the size of which is testified by many published facts and figures. The Department for Communities and Local Government recently stated that there are still more than two million children living in what is officially termed as poverty, with a 14% rise to over 50 thousand in households officially accepted as homeless – the highest since 1998. There is no sign that this situation is about to get any less desperate but Smith is not impressed: there is, she says trendily, “no Plan B, certainly not” because “we know Plan A is working.”

Paxman’s job gives him an opportunity at times to rile us with his exposure of the deceptions and diversions of capitalism’s political leaders. Smith’s job is to lie her way through the system’s implacable misery and waste, even if at the cost of her humiliation. Neither of them is interested in a proper response to this – a valid, ready method of so changing society as to leave the politicians and preening media stars to a disreputable past.

Ivan

A Trotskyist Sect By Any Other Name (1997)

No comment.

TV Review from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month—5th February to be precise—saw an unusual occurrence. The Socialist Party was featured on a BBC TV news report. Less unusually for the BBC, the report was not entirely accurate. We do not wish to whinge unnecessarily, only to set out the facts on the basis that some recognition from the BBC, however inadequate, is probably better than none at all. In any case, we were not the main victims of the broadcast—there was a far more deserving candidate for that.

The day after this news item the Trotskyist sect previously known as Militant held a conference to re-launch itself as “Socialist Party”, and its newspaper as The Socialist. So BBC2’s Newsnight filed a report on this organisation’s attempt to refurbish its tarnished Trotskyist image, while purloining the name of an existing political organisation—us—in the process. Mark Mardell, who is rather more used to swanning around the Palace of Westminster in search political titbits, compiled a feature which included footage of our Head Office and an interview with a Socialist Party member about Militant’s latest (and possibly temporary) venture into political banditry.

However, if Mardell’s reporting of us is anything to go by it is understandable why MPs are getting so upset with the media these days. In his voice-over he claimed that we had changed our name too, from the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the Socialist Party, the clear implication being that it was a bit rich of us to complain about Militant’s own change of name. In this attempt to make an interesting story even better, Mardell got it wrong, though whether it was deliberate or simply because he has a very bad memory we do not know.

The fact about this is that throughout our existence since 1904 we have used the full and shortened versions of our name interchangeably, though for what must be fairly self-evident publicity and propaganda reasons we have for some years preferred the shortened version. The BBC Newsnight team were made well aware of this, as if a visit and look around our Head Office was not evidence enough.

Rather more galling than this minor irritation, however, was Mardell’s description of Militant as being our “comrades” before we fell out over usage of the name Socialist Party. Such a comment is so inaccurate as to be laughable in many ways, though unfortunately it has more serious implications. The idea that a genuine socialist organisation committed to the overthrow of capitalism in all its forms should be lumped in with an elitist sect deserves comment from us, especially a sect which has always opposed the socialist project in favour of reforms and state-run capitalism.

Militant meanderings

The Militant Tendency—in all its various forms over the years—has been an implacable opponent of genuine socialism and democracy, and like the rest of the Left, has shown an unremitting hostility to real socialists and our attempts to win workers away from support for the profit system. Our disagreement with Militant is not the product of some Monty Pythonesque sectarianism or factionalism, as portrayed on Newsnight, merely disguising a quibble over tactics or personalities, but is a thoroughgoing disagreement about politics in its entirety. Apart from the fact that we both lay claim to the word “socialist”. Militant and the Socialist Party have nothing common at all, as anyone with even a passing acquaintance with either of us must know.

For starters. Militant favour political leadership and centralism, whereas we believe in the widest possible democracy. Militant stand for state-run capitalism under the rule of the vanguard party (themselves), we stand for the complete abolition of capitalism along with its economic categories of money, profits and wages, and instead agitate for common ownership and production solely for use. Militant have always told workers to vote for the capitalist Labour Party, we have always resolutely opposed it, advising workers not to put their class enemies in charge of the machinery of government and the armed forces. Militant thought Russia to be an advance on western-style private enterprise capitalism. Right from the outset we said it was a hideous dictatorship over the working class which led to state capitalism and warned the working class about the would-be Bolsheviks in Britain who would use the workers for their own gain . . . organisations like the Communist Party, the SWP and Militant themselves. Need we go on?

When Jeremy Paxman interviewed Militant “leader” Peter Taaffe at the end of the item it was a pity no Socialist Party members was allowed to engage in the brief discussion to point all this out. It was also a pity that Paxman didn’t go for the jugular in his accustomed manner, adopting a (somewhat understandable) air of weariness to Taaffe’s meanderings about nationalising the top 150 monopolies and introducing a two-hour week, or whatever it was, to cure unemployment. He should certainly have pressed Taaffe on his organisation’s plans to stand 28 candidates in safe Labour seats, and asked him whether Militant would tell workers to vote for the Labour Party as usual everywhere else—this, after all, being a party they now cynically describe as “pro-capitalist”, as if it wasn’t before!

Perhaps on reflection Paxman didn’t feel the need to press Taaffe harder on any of this, because most of what he said was nonsensical and this must have been obvious enough to the viewers. Indeed, the abiding impression left by Taaffe was that there must be a village somewhere that has been deprived of its idiot, though one suspects that if this is the case they will manage to get along quite well without him. The same could be said of the working class as a whole who, beleaguered by the profit system and its representatives, need Militant’s support for capitalism and Taaffe and co.’s tactical posturings like the proverbial hole in the head.

Dave Perrin

Between the Lines: Chasing the dragon (1994)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chasing the dragon

Aaah! Just when you thought it was safe to come out in the dark, she’s hack . . . and Nicholas Broomfield was out to make a documentary about her whether she wanted him there or not. (C4, 9.30pm, Thursday, 19 May.) The subject in question is Margaret Thatcher, a one-time Prime Minister who said that there was no such thing as society. See the Postcards from Hell on other pages for a more vivid guide to her preferred habitat. Broomfield, who is used to following around confirmed fruit and nutcases (it was he who made that superb documentary about the mad Boer, Terre Blanche), was as welcomed by the Thatcher groupies as a cockroach at a cocktail party. It Is good to see just how small and foolish "the mighty" really are.

In the same week the BBC was chasing the story of the Chinese political prisons where countless detainees are locked up for speaking out against the government. Down at the BBC they have no need to lock up the journalists who are vetted by MI5 before they can have a job and then only allowed to interview those whose words have not been banned by government edict. That’s what they call capitalist democracy, that is. On Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30pm, Wednesday, 18 May) Jeremy Paxman interviewed a smarmy businessman who insisted that human rights abuses should not interfere in commerce. Paxman put it to him that to trade with a state that can do this makes him and his fellow capitalists collaborators. Quite so. And what’s new about that? When have a few camps filled with tortured victims ever stood in the way of a healthy profit? Perhaps next time Paxman interviews Douglas Hurd he would care to ask him whether as a major arms-seller to Indonesia his government feels just a tiny bit like collaborators in the slaughter of the people of East Timor.

What’s all this then, Arfur?

ARFUR: 'Ang on Phil, I’m reading this ’ere election manifesto.

PHIL: Reading? You goin’ soft or something Arfur?

GRANT: You want me to sort him, bruv. That’s how we do things in the East End see. We put the boot in first and ask questions later. Right?

ARFUR: It says ’ere in this ’ere Socialist Party manifesto that all politicians are out to take us for a ride. Now, I’m only a simple bloke, as you well know, but 1 can’t ’elp thinking that they might have a point. What you think Michelle . . . I mean, you’ve been to that there university, ’avn’t you?

MICHELLE: Well, according to what I’ve been reading this totally leaves out of account the post-modernist critique of metatheoretical discourse. I mean, haven’t these socialists ever read Lyotard? Anyway, I’m off to tell my daughter that’s she’s really my cousin.

GRANT: Yeah, and I’m off down the Arches to sort out some geezer with a shooter who reckons Minder was just a comedy.

[Enter an old drunk with a blue suit and a political rosette who looks a cross between that dodgy lawyer used by the Mitchell Bruvvers to get them off at their last court appearance and at least half the members of the House of Commons]

SWINDLER: Hello there, jolly working folk. I’m your candidate . . . 

ARFUR: Ah, perhaps you can ’elp us. I was just reading this Socialist stuff about the likes of you being a lot of useless leaders. They reckons ’ere that the emancipation of the working class can only be the . . . 

SWINDLER: Put it away, my good friend. Subversive nonsense. Pure idealism. You can’t run your lives without us. Any chance of a G and T?

PHIL: You saying we can’t run the world without being led by a load of old duffers like you?

GRANT: Want me to sort him, bruv?

SWINDLER: No . . . what I’m saying is that the likes of you — decent working chaps that you are — need the likes of me — educated at Jesus and the bar, you know — to do a few things to improve life for you. A couple of new beds in the local hospital, for example. And free chiropody for all those of ninety-five and over. Jobs for everyone . . . 

ARFUR: Well thank you very much indeed. I’ll put this socialist stuff away right now. And buy this man a large G and T on me.

DOT: Did somebody mention Jesus?

BIG RON: Did somebody mention a late bar?

MICHELLE: Oh, hasn’t anyone ever told them that they’re just pathetic caricatures of workers invented by people who drink in wine bars. No wonder they’re stupid enough to be taken in by another bloody politician.

Steve Coleman

Russell Brand Attacks Capitalism (2013)

From the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

... and its ideological guard dogs come running

When Russell Brand was invited to guest edit the New Statesman at the end of October, he took the opportunity to write a long feature article on a subject which he deemed important enough to devote his whole piece to. He did not choose to write about his work as a comedian or actor, or his current worldwide live tour which had already almost sold out. He did not write about his sexual reputation as a ladies’ man, or about which toothpaste he uses. He wrote with passion about how the world is organised and how all main stream politics serves the same global economic elite. He made a great number of insightful, thought-provoking observations.

A few days later he further elaborated on several of these points when interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on BBC TV’s Newsnight. He certainly succeeded in stimulating debate, and since then there has been a frequently heated exchange of views, both with and about Brand himself, but also further afield, with the You Tube video of that interview having had millions of hits even by early November.

What Did Brand Actually Write?

There was a lot of distorting of the things that Brand actually wrote and said, so let’s start by setting out clearly and accurately what he actually expressed. The feature article, ‘We no longer have the luxury of tradition. But before we change the world, we need to change the way we think’ (New Statesman, 25-31 October), started out with one statement which was later seized on in particular by many of his opponents as a terrible sacrilege:

‘I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites.’

He says those who ‘fought in two world wars’ to protect the right to vote ‘were conned’, adding that ‘total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that’s not on the ballot.’ But rather than the focus on voting, his main and far more important theme was the fundamental inability of our present social system to meet the needs of the majority of people.

His written piece claimed, first, that the majority of (‘non-rich’) people have become disaffected from the whole political process and lost all interest in politics, as the main parties and politicians are virtually indistinguishable from one another. They are all dishonest and self-serving and all stand to represent and run a system in which human needs always take second place to the further accumulation of financial surpluses by a tiny minority who already have huge wealth and power. The apathy of the oppressed majority is an understandable reflection of the apathy of the social order about meeting our needs. But for society’s problems to be solved, this apathy must first be challenged and replaced with a passion for real change. All these points were argued in detail and eloquently by Brand in his article.

The Goal: A Co-operative Society

He rightly takes the Left to task for being so po-faced and urges a spirit of fun and excitement in the movement for social change. He thoughtfully bemoans the way in which defenders of capitalism have taken the ideological advantage by tying their cause to the selfish instinct for individual survival. But, as he explains very clearly, we have now reached a stage in human history where our success and survival as individuals is more connected than ever before to ensuring our survival as a whole community or species:

‘Fear and desire are the twin engines of human survival, but with most of our basic needs met these instincts are being engaged to imprison us in an obsolete fragment of our consciousness.’

At this point Brand departs momentarily from this rational extrapolation of the social, political and economic roots of human suffering, to argue that the solution is ‘part spiritual and part political’. He defines spiritual as ‘the acknowledgement that our connection to one another and the planet must be prioritised’. He then states very clearly his goal, paraphrasing Buckminster Fuller: ‘to make the world work for 100 per cent of humanity...through spontaneous co-operation without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone’.

Brand does not mention it, but in fact there is one precondition for this rational and democratic use of the world’s resources to serve the needs of all. The ‘one percent’ who monopolise all the natural resources and productive machinery of society have to be legitimately dispossessed, so that the world and all that is in it can become at last the common heritage of all. Without doing that, we do not even have access to the resources we seek to co-operatively manage. And for this we do indeed have to organise political and democratic action, including voting, which will be a lot more exciting and far-reaching than the mere choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee just twice each decade.

The Contradictions of Capitalism

Those of us who complain about there being a small class of billionaires and multi-millionaires for whom, directly or indirectly, the rest of us work as waged or salaried servants of capital, do not do so out of some hate-filled jealousy. Like Brand, we recognise that this is a global system which has outlived its usefulness. That the problem is systemic and not merely a question of attitude or of clearing away just the worst excesses of greed. In the words of William Morris, ‘there are rich and there are poor, and the rich are rich because they rob the poor’. Yes we do begrudge the fact that shareholders (or bureaucrats, in the misnamed ‘socialist’ countries which run state capitalism) own and control the productive resources of the world, because that is what stops the other 99 percent of us from accessing those resources and turning them over to production for need rather than profit. There is a profusion of research reports from the World Health Organisation and others, showing that without the artificial limits placed on production by the billionaires’ need to be sure of a market before production is permitted, then the actual global resources would be sufficient to feed, clothe and house several times the current world population.

Meanwhile, in the social system which currently exists throughout the planet, in Brand’s words,

‘The price of privilege is poverty. David Cameron said in his conference speech that profit is “not a dirty word”. Profit is the most profane word we have. In its pursuit we have forgotten that while individual interests are being met, we as a whole are being annihilated. The reality, when not fragmented through the corrupting lens of elitism, is we are all on one planet.’

A ‘Total Social Shift’

Brand condemns the ways in which scapegoats are constructed and people turned against each other, so that ‘the wrath is directed to the symptom, not the problem’. He describes revolution as not violent rioting or misdirected fury, but a dignified and complete withdrawal of consent, a mass refusal to accept the current social relationships of production and ownership, which are inherently exploitative. Whilst not denying that human behaviour has elements of greed or insecurity as well as co-operation and common interest, he asks why should we continue to base our entire social fabric on the worst traits rather than the best aspirations of humanity?

’My optimism comes entirely from the knowledge that this total social shift is actually the shared responsibility of six billion individuals who ultimately have the same interests. Self-preservation and the survival of the planet. This is a better idea than the sustenance of an elite.’

He writes that he does not have a precise or perfect blueprint for the future, but seeks nevertheless to emphasise that ‘the only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity’. By this measure, clearly, capitalism in all its forms must be ended. ‘We cannot afford...old-fashioned notions like nation, capitalism and consumerism simply because it’s convenient for the tiny, greedy, myopic sliver of the population that those outmoded ideas serve.’

At this point his prescription for change does become slightly vague and somewhat romantic, advocating that we meditate, love indiscriminately, reserve our condemnation exclusively for those with power, and revolt spontaneously in whatever way we want; though he is careful to specify ‘without harming anyone’. He calls for a revival of the old values of the working class movement typified by the Tolpuddle martyrs, so that today’s young people might realise that there is ‘a culture, a strong, broad, union, that they can belong to, that is potent, virile and alive’. He makes a final call for a ‘revolution of consciousness’ and makes the optimistic observation that we are far from impotent, as proved by the huge twin efforts of propaganda and repression which have to be used to contain dissent around the world, the ‘institutions that have to be fastidiously kept in place to maintain this duplicitous order’.

The Paxman interview

A few days later, he was interviewed on Newsnight, and Paxman lost no time in trying to ridicule and belittle all of this radicalism. He set the tone for other critics to follow, by arguing quite illogically that, because Brand declines to choose between the virtually indistinguishable brands of capitalism which we are offered to vote for once every five years, that therefore he has no ‘right’ to voice any opinion about how human society should be organised in the world. Brand dealt with this admirably, arguing right from the start that we can at least state what human society should not do: ‘Shouldn’t destroy the planet. Shouldn’t create massive economic disparity. Shouldn’t ignore the needs of the people.’

He explained that he does not set himself up as a political or technological expert, and that he defers to others who are more equipped than he is to fill in the gaps as to how we can best use our planetary resources to feed, clothe and house our several billion members of this human community. What he needed to point out, however, is that the current global system of minority ownership and control of resources cannot ever do that. But he did make the excellent point to Paxman that it is those who do defend the present social order who must be called on to answer for it. ‘The burden of proof is on the people with power.’ The system we have is indeed indefensible. The debate then is not whether to have a complete change of social system, but how best to quickly enact this urgent and obvious need, before capitalism causes even more carnage both socially and climatically.

When pressurised by Paxman to come up with a specific plan of how the alternative would work, Brand suggests:

‘A socialist egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth, [with] heavy taxation of corporations...I think the very concept of profit should be hugely reduced...I say profit is a filthy word, because wherever there is a profit there is also a deficit.’

He goes on to say that there would have to be a democratic central administration rather than a government. When pressed further, he urges Paxman not to ask him to ‘sit here and devise a global utopian system...I am calling for change’. And he was absolutely right to say this. No great social change has ever come from constructing an ideal ‘doll’s house’ society, with a rule-book full of minutiae, and imposing it on the future. We need urgently and democratically to replace minority ownership with common ownership, and production for profit with production for needs.

This will not involve the ‘redistribution of wealth’, however, as that implies there would still be owners and non-owners. The only alternative to capitalism is to have common ownership of all productive resources, across the world community. All of those billionaire shareholders, plus the stony-faced bureaucrats of the state-capitalist regimes, have to be legitimately dispossessed by a conscious, determined, educated, peaceful majority. Then and only then can we start to produce for need, not profit. And this also has nothing to do with ‘heavy taxation’, as taxation is a levy on profits and therefore is a mechanism only relevant to capitalism itself.

Brand then explains what it would take for him to want to vote, telling Paxman that people are bored with politics because what’s on offer is not a radical enough change, hence the frequent eruption of rioting and civil unrest. But ‘when there is a genuine alternative...then, vote for that...but until then, why be complicit in this ridiculous illusion?’. He praises the Occupy movement for at least introducing into the popular lexicon the idea of the one percent versus the ninety-nine per cent, and making large numbers of people aware of vast economic corporate exploitation. He also turns the argument around on to Paxman, pointing out that he of all people must see through the charade of politics, since he has spent thirty years in interviews berating politicians of all parties for their lies and their failed promises.

How was all this received?

The responses to Brand’s comments were replete with distortion, misrepresentation and personal attack, showing just how much venom is often trained against the merest whisper of dissent from the assumptions of the present world order. In the Guardian’s weekly politics podcast on 31 October, associate editor Michael White unleashed a torrent of venomous, spluttering, reactionary bile against Brand, without even having read or heard what he had said:

‘I listen to him and I think, what a turd he is. I have made it the two principles of my working life not to read the Sun or watch Newsnight, they’re both up themselves too far, so I didn’t see this interview, but I know what he’s like...’

White went on to accuse Brand of ‘proto-fascism’ and of wanting to have a revolution ‘in which probably he can do a lot of screwing around, because that seems to be one of his more important priorities. Pass the sick bag’. White has revealed more about himself than anything else in this misinformed and vindictive response. Reporter Shiv Malik on the same podcast, again with breathtaking disregard for the most fundamental journalistic principle of reporting what people say rather than what you would like them to have said, asserted that ‘[in his article] Brand dropped in ‘non-violent’; but really I think he meant ‘violent’, and just go out and riot’!

Other reactions also came thick and fast. Simon Kellner acknowledged in the Independent on 24 October that ‘Russell Brand is far from trivial. On Newsnight, he made Paxman look ridiculous. This was the old guard against the new, and the new came out on top.’ Paxman himself had the decency and intellectual honesty a few days later to concede that Brand had been right about ‘the whole green-bench pantomime in Westminster’. Writing in the Radio Times he agreed that people are disgusted by the ‘tawdry pretences’ of politics, and even admitted that he had himself not voted in a recent election, as the choice of candidates was ‘so unappetizing’. Nick Clegg responded to this on LBC Radio, setting himself up as a sitting duck by whining illogically that Paxman was ‘sneering about politics’ despite making a good living from Westminster, and that he treated all politicians as ‘rogues and charlatans’. With Clegg’s party holding the dubious honour of being amongst the biggest liars in recent political history (student fee rises ring a bell, Nick?), one has to ask, what else should Paxman treat them as.

Fellow comedian Robert Webb patronizingly took Brand to task via an ‘open letter’ in the following issue of the New Statesman, in which he sings the praises of the last Labour Party government (how short is his memory?) compared with the current Coalition, and bemoans Brand’s call for social revolution, since ‘We tried that again and again, and we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder...please read some fucking Orwell.’ Brand in turn responded to this in a long interview with the Huffington Post:

‘Just for the record, in case anyone else from Peep Show is worried, I'm definitely against death camps...definitely no killing. I'm against that; I'm a vegetarian, I think we're all equal. I'm not saying smash people's stuff up, and definitely no killing.’

Most of the criticisms blatantly ignored all of Brand’s points about present day society and what is wrong with it, and focussed purely on the supposed ‘crime’ of refusing to vote in elections. But in this respect, he is hardly alone. In recent UK elections, well over a third of voters could not find the motivation to go and choose between the options on offer. And what of the sham elections conducted by dictatorial regimes elsewhere, do these critics condemn those brave enough to abstain? The voting process is important, and socialists have long had a policy of writing ‘world socialism’ across their ballot paper in the absence of any genuine socialist candidate. Again, this is something which Brand has also mentioned. In a follow-up piece for the Guardian (5 November) he mentions his friend’s 15-year-old son who, he says, prefers the idea of spoiling ballots rather than not voting, ‘to show we care’, and Brand adds, ‘maybe he’s right, I don’t know’.

In the same piece he also writes movingly of an encounter whilst on tour with his show, at Watford, with some soldiers and some Muslim women. It led to thoughts about the insanity and legalised murder of warfare and the hugely important recognition that: ‘The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for.’

He does go on to propose that the billions being used to bail out banks, or the unpaid tax of tycoons like Sir Philip Green, should be used to ‘create one million jobs at fifty grand a year’. However, this would not be a lasting solution since it would leave intact the same root cause which has led to all of this in the first place: the existence of capitalism. We must go further and end the institution of working for wages or salaries itself as it is this, the wages/profits system, which is causing all of the social contradictions from which we suffer.

Let us all take up Russell Brand’s proposition. The need to get rid of capitalism is urgent. We do need to think outside of the constraints of the profit system. The solution is very clear. Common ownership of all productive resources. Democratic control of society. Production for need, not profit. This needs to happen now, and the only remaining missing ingredient is a conscious and well-informed majority determined to take democratic action to make it happen.

Brand acknowledges movements like Occupy for putting on the public agenda the idea of the power of the one per cent which prevents the freedom of the ninety-nine per cent. We owe Russell Brand some thanks now for helping to put the idea of revolution back into public discussion too, at a time when a complete change of social system is more urgent than ever.

Clifford Slapper