Refinery strike - class not country

There’s a shit-storm brewing in Lefty inter-web land: Everyone wants to show solidarity with workers in struggle – but what if they’re racist ?

There’s all sorts of spurious analogies being drawn between the refinery workers' action and the Dockers walking out in support of Enoch Powell – or even the Ulster workers’ sectarian strikes and the Chilean truck drivers.

Nonsense. The wildcat refinery strikes against work going to an Italian firm employing cheaper labour is fundamentally a class issue not a racial one:

Recessions promote competition between workers and some will become undercut by others prepared to work for lower wages and conditions. Sadly it’s a scenario as old as the hills – divide and rule - organised workers pitted against brothers and sisters who are worse off, un-unionised, and bussed in from ‘outside.’ The modern angle is that the process is now ideologically enshrined in neo-Liberalism and legally protected by the EU.

Under EU employment law so long as the minimum employment requirements of workers in their home countries are being met, this trumps the minimum requirements of the country in which they are employed. And that didn’t come about because of a commitment to the free movement of labour it’s about a charter for employers to maximise profit wherever they see fit.

There’s no need for the Left to tie itself in circles – certainly not for those of us who never abandoned class politics in the first place. It might pose problems however for New Labour and their fellow travellers who are committed to the EU project and the international solidarity of capital it promotes.

Of course things are never clear cut – some of the British refinery workers may harbour – or even voice – racist attitudes, and doubtless the BNP are rubbing their hands in glee. These attitudes need to be challenged and where necessary confronted if fascists try to intervene on the picket lines.

But there can be no question of not supporting the refinery workers.

Goodbye Habeus-Corpus

In a case that has gone backwards and forwards through the courts of appeal, but has received surprisingly little attention, Socialist Party member Lois Austin brought a case of unlawful imprisonment against the Metropolitan Police.

Along with thousands of other anti-globalisation protesters she was detained for seven hours at Oxford Circus back in 2001. The police, as has now become a standard tactic of crowd control, sealed off exit routes and kept the protesters in a cordoned area.

It's been seen on countless occasions that far from calming down a volatile situation, this creates a pressure cooker environment guaranteed to piss-off the most peaceful of demonstrations. And of course for the police - when they send in their snatch squads of tooled-up goons - it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Anyway the House Of Lords has now had the last word on this and in language that seems to have come more appropraitely from Orwell's Ministry Of Truth than the mother of parliaments has ruled:

"Anyone on the streets must be taken to be consenting to the possibility of being confined by the police."

Be afraid.

Hysterical history

I'm all for reclaiming our pagan heritage from those Roman imperialist attempts to falsify these islands' history with an onslaught of Christian propaganda - but this is just bollocks.

These blokes look more like extras from a particularly camp Wagnerian operatic production than Viking warriors. Where are the beards, the long braided hair, the tattoo sleeves, the eyeliner and the clothes washed in cow's piss that our Nordic ancestors were famous for ? Surely everybody knows these days that Vikings never wore helmets with horns or wings - that's straight out of Flash Gordon.

The Northern Islands does have a genuinely strong Norse heritage - evident in language and dialect, place name and archaeology - but the 'Up Hely-A' festival has no place in it. Apparently it dates all the way back to the 1870's when the locals were looking to celebrate civic pride and have an excuse for a bit of a piss-up. Although they didn't look any less unconvincing then:

'Street activities'

Not often that I get to label a post both‘politics’ and 'martial arts'. But then it’s not often that someone disagrees with the analysis in a leaflet that you’re giving out to the extent that they start throwing punches at you.

The guy wasn’t too coherent – he had just come out of the pub – but I think the gist of his beef was that he wasn’t happy with us linking the situation in Gaza with western imperialism and oil interests. Fair enough I suppose. After a few minutes of abuse he tore up the leaflet and threw it in my face. Not really acceptable but also not worth escalating.

But then he started grabbing me and pushing me – I warned him a couple of times to back off and move on. At which he launched himself at me, we exchanged a couple of punches, I managed to get my hand under his chin and back him into a bus shelter and was ready to finish him off, but ended up giving him a very half-hearted head butt – I told him that I didn’t want to fight him and gave him a shove on his way. Nothing worth televising - really more of a stand-off than anything else.

Nevertheless with any encounter you end up replaying the scene in slow motion repeatedly in your head. Technically you could say the training worked - but in the bigger scheme of things I made a couple of basic mistakes:

I’m torn as to whether I should have finished him off when I has the chance rather than letting him go away thinking he had pulled off more than he really had. Or on the other hand maybe I should have just launched a pre-emptive strike once he had crossed the line and started putting his hands on me. Giving him a warning when I had papers and leaflets in one hand wasn’t, on reflection, that smart and it meant that for the vital first seconds I took a glancing blow that I only partially covered.

More basically though I have to question whether I should have allowed the situation to develop at all. The old adage is to either fight or not fight – and nothing in between. Instead I confronted the guy when I didn’t really want to have a stand up fight in public with all the shit and bad PR that could bring down (the reason we were there was to leaflet for a meeting not to brawl random nutters). Rather than confront him and give him no way out other than to fight or lose face I should have found a way to defuse the situation – (a warning isn’t going to make a drunk aggressor back off – he’ll only take it as a challenge). Even once we had started scrapping in the back of my mind I had the thought that I didn’t really want to be doing this and so I mistakenly tried to contain the guy rather than finishing the fight as soon as possible. I was lucky that I was able to regain the upper hand, and lucky again that once I had and I gave him the option of backing down he chose not to continue. Given a more serious aggressor the outcome could have been different.

I often hear it said that every fight in the real world being worth years of training and it’s certainly giving me something to think about as to how to manage the build up of aggression in a pre-fight situation.

Local Anarchist Anniversary

‘In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the officers' table... Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend - the kind of face you would expect in an Anarchist,though as likely as not he was a Communist…’

The opening paragraph from Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia pretty much sums up how I feel about anarchism. Although I’ve been a Marxist all my adult life, I have a gut inclination of emotional sympathy with anarchism. Trouble is though anarchists seem so often in the flesh to turn out to be … wankers.

Jan 23rd is the centenary of the ‘Tottenham Outrage’. Anarchists locally and nationwide are getting ready to celebrate an event that happened in my own backyard.The story pretty much sums up anarchism then and now:

In 1909 Tottenham, as it still is, was a working class district with a large immigrant population. It was home to two Jewish-Russian anarchists who decided to rob the payroll of a local rubber factory.

From the start the operation was a cock-up. They chose a factory practically next door to the local police station. They failed to make a clean getaway and consequently were chased by a posse of armed police and locals whilst they made their escape to Walthamstow. Eventually in Chingford they were cornered and shot themselves.

Along the way they shot off an estimated 400 rounds, killing one policeman and wounding seven others. They tried to hi-jack a tram with passengers aboard but were given short shrift by the driver, and then continuing in the farcical theme, tried to escape on a delivery cart that overturned because they left the brake on. Less comically they also managed to kill a ten-year-old baker’s boy who got in their way, and also wounded seventeen other assorted civilians.

Their only achievements were to unite the local working class community behind the police, and to stir up a general wave of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. And of course to enter permanently into anarchist folklore. Wankers.

Brave New World ?

I said at the time of Obama’s victory that it was more a case of a sigh of relief than a whooping for joy. But watching the incredible scenes of his inauguration yesterday it was impossible, unless you had absolutely no sense of history, to feel unmoved.

As I watched a few random thoughts popped into my head:

Such scenes would be unthinkable in the UK – and I don’t say that as either a positive or negative, simply a reflection on our very different political cultures. Of course under our quasi-feudal constitution there is no equivalent of an inauguration but if there was it would probably involve brass bands and lots of marching about – certainly not Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce.

It’s easy to be cynical about the naivety of the hopes around Obama, and the ultimately emptiness of his rhetoric. But that too misses the point – dashed hopes are a powerful driver of radicalism. I think we’re going to see plenty of both in the coming years.

One point that I an amazed nobody seems to have pounced on though:

The Gaza ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal coinciding with the US presidential handover. Not so much because the Israelis see Obama as a champion of the Palestinian people but because they saw a window of opportunity to stamp their authority before the departure of the Bush administration - their most powerful and most dependable ally.

Given that Obama’s was one Western voice that could have made a difference - you have to ask how many children in Gaza have paid with their lives for his respect for protocol and reluctance to speak out against Israeli aggression ahead of yesterday’s ceremonial.

Kwoon reunion

Saturday afternoon was spent eating Dim-Sum in Chinatown at a reunion of the old boys from our Wing Chun school. It's now 25 years since our teacher opened up a ‘backyard kwoon’ in the basement of a builder’s yard in North London. Looking around the table at the twenty or so other guys who were amongst his earliest students I felt very much the baby of the group with a mere 18 years with my sifu.

Inevitably we've now scattered to many parts of the world, but just about everyone was still training: Some of us have stuck with the successor-school in London that has kept the original idea going, and others have opened their own schools, but all in the same backyard tradition - word of mouth, invitation only, no uniforms, no rituals, no fancy premises just blood, sweat … and laughter and friendship.

Of course a lot of reminiscences were swapped. One of my own memories sums up the ethos of the place that has kept me coming back for more:

The first time I visited the school was for a Sunday afternoon chi-sau session. I was naïve enough to tell my teacher that I had previously trained somewhere else – under a teacher I later found out he had a pretty poor opinion of. He got me to chi-sau with another new guy who had also recently joined from the same school. For ten minutes we stood toe-to-toe and whacked the crap out of each other. In retrospect it was horrible – ugly and unskilled - and I’m sure from what I now know our teacher would have been cringing at the sight – but we were pretty proud of ourselves.

Once we had got our breath back our teacher told me:
“You’re obviously keen and you’re welcome to train here but I have to warn you that if any of these other guys tells me that you’re an arsehole, then as far as I’m concerned you’re an arsehole because these guys are my friends…”

Roots

An unusually productive day at work using some downtime to research my family history online:

As a child my family circle was small and ageing, even more so nowadays, so maybe there is some psychological need I’m fulfilling. But primarily there is simply a buzz from discovering , and also a very personalised sense of social history. I haven’t got beyond the census returns from 1841 to 1911 yet, but even from this, and with a bit of a deduction, some limited family memories, and a bit of knowledge of the period, a fair picture can be built from the ten-year snap shots.

My main fear was that I might discover some toffs or Tories lurking in the family tree. I found neither (I think) - all four grandparents’ sides of the family seemed to be fairly representative of the varying fortunes of the ‘respectable’ Victorian working class.

One line of them, from the 1800’s through to the 1960’s made their living from the River Thames as watermen, lightermen and boat-builders. For most of the nineteenth century they are living in the same house, and the eldest son has the same first name from generation to generation – in fact the same name that I have. Another line, from the other end of the country are seafarers for several generations. Both sets of families are large with a continuous history and I can picture them as solid and reasonably affluent artisan dynasties.

On the other hand, the other two sets of families reveal the fragility of a family’s fortune. One line shows an elderly widowed mother working as a seamstress with three young children, two of which disappear from the record at a worryingly young age and the third joins the army. He retires and gets a position as the town’s resident fireman, starting a tradition that then runs in my family for three generations. Another line of the family loses the father at a very young age and the siblings are dispersed, living with grandparents and then becoming adopted. Their fortunes seem to vary with one sibling being listed as ‘labourer’ and the other in the relatively new and upwardly mobile occupation of ‘newspaper reporter’. Another noticeable trend is quite how patriarchal the Victorian family was. Daughters quickly get lost in the record – either because they get married or because they move away and live-in as domestic servants.

I’m not too sure where, if anywhere, any of this is going to end up but I have to admit to becoming hooked and fairly blown away by the thought that I can now trace back my oldest relative, my Great, Great, Great Grandfather who was born in 1787.

Kensington Gaza Demo

Yet again I spent a day on a good-natured demonstration consisting of people of all ages, races, religions and shades of political opinion coming together to protest against injustice. And then I went home to watch the TV reporting another event that apparently happened at the same time and place but which I could barely recognise.

I didn’t even recognise the ‘tiny handful of troublemakers’ that always seems to carry the can for turning a demo into a riot. Granted there are some who mistakenly think that doing the windows in at Starbucks will somehow free Palestine or bring Capitalism to it’s knees.

(It always does seem to be Starbucks by the way, although I’m unconvinced that they are worse than any other global brand on the high street that makes obscene profits from third world producers, treats its staff like shit and drives local independent shops out of business. The quality of their coffee alone probably renders them a legitimate if not always appropriate target).

The real troublemakers at the Gaza demo on Saturday were considerably more than a handful and were all too conspicuous on account of their paramilitary uniforms, and their armoury of hardware. They had also effectively engineered the violence in advance by denying permission for a rally in Kensington Gardens that would have taken the crowd away from the flash point of the Israeli embassy. And so when the demo inevitably became stuck by the embassy, these troublemakers sealed off escape routs down the side streets creating a claustrophobic bottle-neck of pissed-off and panicky protesters.

In such circumstances the same good-natured protesters are rapidly transformed in to an angry mob. Even the most mild mannered individual is inclined to lash out at bullying figures flouting arbitrary authority, and engage in a one-sided battle with a superior force that they know they cannot ultimately hope to beat.

It’s the reason why kids throughout the world will throw stones at tanks. And dare I say it; in a very very small way and for a only few brief moments, it is a taste of why people in Gaza may be inclined to fight back against a brutal army of occupation.

Sitting on the Gaza fence

Watching the BBC news last night, they seem to attempt a bi-partisan approach to their reporting of the Israel’s invasion of Gaza. This is naturally an improvement on the Zionist cheer – leading of Fox (and presumably other US networks).

But it still misses the point. It reinforces an attitude of resigned neutrality – a kind of ‘plague on both your houses’. And so, at best, the West continues to sit on the fence whilst the horror in Gaza unfolds.

So, whilst it shouldn’t be necessary, there is a need to state simply and unequivocally that Israel and its backers are the bad guys here, and whatever Hamas may or not be, does not diminish this.

As A Very Public Sociologist explains it’s fine to emphasise the disproportionately of the current Israeli offensive – with an asymmetrical ‘kill ratio’ in excess of roughly 40-to-1. But this doesn’t address what is the fundamental cause of the suffering – forty years of illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Over the years there have been changes in tactics; from occupation to isolation and blockade - and now what appears to be an outright campaign of military conquest.

But the fundamental cause of Palestinian suffering hasn’t changed - aggressive and expansionist nationalism in the form of Zionism.

Philistines of the world unite ...

Whilst many families will start the New Year worrying about the credit crunch, not so the Duke Of Sutherland. It looks like the £50 million that he wanted for part of his art collection has been raised, helped by the Scottish government’s pledge of £17m of public money.

Having your fortune tied up in old masters apparently is a real pain in the arse. The duke’s collection has been on loan to the National Gallery since 1945 but like many collectors he faces a problem if he wants to sell to a private buyer - the government tends to step in and place restrictions on such art going out of the country. What a bummer if you need to liquidise your assets. But the good news for his Grace today is not only that he can sell it ‘to the nation’ but also, and unbelievably, he will not have to pay tax on the deal either.

This seems to be a rare issue that unites both toff-twat conservative critic Brian Sewell and darling of the wadical new wave Tracy Emin, who both feel that it is a matter of national importance to preserve this bit of our cultural heritage.

But a minority voice in the art world points out that the National Gallery already owns many Titians – so many that they can’t even all be on public display – and that from an art scholarship point of view the pieces in question don’t add anything to our understanding of the artist.

From a more mundane point of view Ian Duncan MP points out that Titian can hardly be considered as part of ‘our’ heritage as he says ‘it’s not as if it was Jock McTitian’.

It all sounds like a case of the aristocracy and the chattering classes colluding to make a buck and indulge their own tastes at the expense of the rest of us.

From the barricades to panto

I would normally make a point of avoiding 'Celebrity' anything, especially Celebrity Big Brother, but I had to tune in last night to witness the car crash of Tommy Sheridan entering the house.

Whether he's driven like a moth to the glare of publicity, or whether he just needs the money, it does seem like the culmination of a downward spiral. I've heard Tommy speak many times and still maintain that from a purely agitational and emotional point of view he is one of the best I've ever heard. He is just about the same age as me, and reading his autobiographical 'Time To Rage' was inspirational and full of resonance for our generation radicalised in the 1980's.

In the 'Tommy-gate' SSP S&M scandal there was a sense of tragedy when former comrades turned on each other. And now there is a sense of farce as Tommy follows in the footsteps of Galloway. (I never had much time for Gorgeous George but his one saving grace - his bravura performance at the US Senate Hearing - has been eclipsed by visions of him crawling around in a cat suit).

Apart from a certain sadness the only thing to take from this is that socialists should be wary of leaders and personalities and that nobody is above time, place and circumstance. It's happened before and I'm sure it will happen again - Think of Plekhanov who devoted his life to the struggle, was the elder statesman of Marxism for a generation, and then when the Russian Revolution came along, found himself on the wrong side of history.

We would do well to remember that in the next few days when no doubt a lot of bile will be brought forth from opponents on both Left and Right to re-write Tommy's history and the organisations with which he has been involved.

And possibly in the future, remembering Tommy and before him Derek Hatton, we should also be a bit more wary of potential leaders with a predilection for sharp suits, sun beds and the sound of their own voice.

Training ?

The kwoon has been shut for a fortnight and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms.I've been to the gym most days but that just isn't the same. It's not that I feel a need to sweat and exercise per se. Of course the gym provides this although - despite having done so for years now - pushing weights bores me and the sauna and steam room are definitely the best bits . I find the gym no more than a necessary evil for fitness and strength maintenance and more generally a corrective for sitting on my arse for a living (if I had a more active job I'd probably just concentrate on the martial arts). In otherwords it's 'training' rather than fun.

I had a conversation about this with an old friend who is a serious distance runner. He's has some injuries which meant an enforced lay-off. We both said that we were missing 'training'. But then we came to talk about it more we wondered if training wasn't a misnomer.

In my case, I'm not training for anything. I don't compete - there's no big fight I'm preparing for. Some people talk about 'training for the street' but that is just macho bollocks - life is too short and if you look you for that kind of trouble you will almost certainly find it. You could say that I train to get better - but at the risk of sounding too zen - it's when you consciously try to improve that you usually end up worse. My running friend does compete, and at quite a high level, but equally much of the time he runs only for the sake of running - without a stopwatch and without much idea of where he's going to end up.

Truth is martial arts isn't really training at all. It's fun, or at least it should be - done simply for the sheer hell of it. Why else would you choose to make it a lifelong pastime? Or anything else for that matter ?

Blogs 2008

In work today with a whole lot of fuck-all going on.

I could blog about Israeli outrages in Gazza but I don't think the inter-web needs another keyboard-jockey freedom fighter at the moment.

So as I did last year it seems like an appropriate time to make my personal blog awards for this year.

1. For bikes – an easy one - it has to be Quad Cam Bastards - dedicated exclusively to the art of back-street customising the Harley Davidson Sportster. Pure motorcycle porn.

2. For martial arts – another easy category because most writing on the subject makes me cringe – so it is a return of Dojorat- the equivalent in its own field to the Quad Cam Bastards – celebrating the cult of the backyard dojo (or kwoon).

3. Politics – a very much harder category because of the excess of Left blogs – most of which do nothing to dispel the image of activists as humourless party automatons . Fearful that I might inadvertently promote one that harbours an incorrect position on Kronstadt (or something) I’ll opt for one that at least makes me chuckle: Daily Quail

4. Life – if you think you’ve had a bad day and work is stressing you out – read Random Acts Of Reality- get things in perspective, this is literally a matter of life and death.

5. And finally for its earnest silliness in celebrating the fine British institution of the greasy spoon café - Egg Bacon Chips & Beans

Henry Marten: Republican. Freethinker. Libertine.

And now for something utterly unseasonal: Thought I’d share a newly discovered hero – Henry Marten, a sixteenth century revolutionary … and general good ‘ole boy.

I only became aware of him through reading Geoffrey Robertson’s The Tyrannicide Brief, and have just done a quick bit of personal research.

A lawyer from Oxford, Marten was probably the first on the parliament side to come out as an open republican. Whilst those who would later be seen as radicals were talking about wooing the king away from his ‘evil councillors’, Marten made it clear that he thought the institution of monarchy should go altogether. For thinking the then unthinkable he was expelled from parliament in 1643 by Pym and the Presbyterian Party. He returned to the parliament following the ascendancy of Cromwell and the Independents, having in the meantime raised a regiment of horse that was absorbed in to the New Model Army.

Marten’s aligned himself with the Levellers and the army, and signed the Agreement Of The People – which called for the king to be held to account. It was no surprise then that he was one of the most prominent judges at the king’s trial, and a signatory to his death warrant. He opposed Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump Parliament in 1653 and disappeared from public life (largely because he was in prison for debt) until the parliament was recalled in 1659.

When the monarchy was restored in 1660 Marten made no attempt to escape but surrendered to the authorities and fearlessly defended his actions when tried as a regicide. He was imprisoned for life and died twenty years later in Carisbroke Castle.

All stirring stuff but so far typical of many seventeenth century radicals.

But Marten was far from typical. A self-proclaimed sceptic in matters of religion he spoke out for complete freedom of conscience at a time when almost every political idea, even radical ones, were expressed in terms of religion. To an extent unheard for the times, this toleration even included Catholics and led him to oppose Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland.

Described as ‘a puritan but a man of lose morals’ Marten’s personal life was a far cry from the usual image of the godly radicals. He first offended the king, long before the civil war, when he had Marten removed from the horse races for his offensive and licentious behaviour. Drinking and gambling kept him in debt throughout his life, and he was a notorious womaniser. Following the death of his wife he lived openly with his mistress Mary Ward with whom he had three children, leading Cromwell to denounce him as a’ whoremaster’.

Fantastic stuff – why isn’t there a statue to him somewhere ?

Property & the masses

I had hoped that one of the few silver linings to the recession is that we might have seen the demise of the 'reality' property tv genre. But Tory aristo-totty (can't see it myself) Kirstie Allsop was on the radio promoting her latest series.

Apparently this will reflect the present climate by focusing on home improvements rather than on buying and selling property. Kirstie sees this as a kind of public service but was at pains to point out that she still very much 'believes' in the property market.

'Believes' ? - acknowledges its potential for making a fast unearnt buck - well ok - but 'believes' ?

But then, post-Thatcher, the property owning democracy has become a belief.

Once entrepreneurs built engines, railways and cities, the conditions of their workers might have appaling, but they could claim to be progressing the fabric of society: Today's equivalents feel that by re-painting their window frames and sanding the floors, they have made similar a contribution.

It's a lie. Buying a house doesn't make you a captain of industry. (If that's what you want to be). You need a roof over your head and whether you buy or sell at the right or wrong time is pretty much a lottery. And the particular Thatcherite lie (which still has a tight hold) is that this represents some form of popular capitalism where everyone can be an entrepreneur.

That's a bit fucking rich coming from the Honourable Kirstie Allsop, daughter of a baronet and former chairman of Christie's auctioners...

Corporate cheek

It's a time of year when traditionally, following six weeks of manic seasonal peak, work is dominated by various company piss-ups and client entertaining. Instead I find myself with my head buried in spreadsheets producing the 'tenders' on which the business nowadays survives.

The problem is that - in business bollock speak - our relationship with our clients is 'asymmetrical'. Or in other words, they're all big businesses and we're a little one so we're always going to get screwed.

And although I'd like to think we're pretty good at what we actually do, we are ill-equipped to go through all the bureaucratic corporate hoops that are required in these formal tenders. The worst aspect we have to contend with though is another bit of bollock-speak - 'transparency'.

In the context of tenders this means the client demanding the right to know exactly what our costs are so that they can see in turn how much profit (if any) we are making on their work.

Fair enough you may think. Except like many small businesses we do not have a particularly sophisticated cost analysis and in truth our business plan is simply to keep the whole thing going for another year. Which is why I am tempted to tick the box on the tender form that says "none of your fucking business".

Or possibly next time I'm in a supermarket I'll tell them that I'm running a beverages procurement tender and require full transparency of their costs of producing a jar of coffee. Just how much do they pay the poor sods who actually grow and pick their beans ? And how exactly can they guarantee year on year reductions for the next three years ?

I imagine they'd just have me escorted from the store...

X-tremely bland and depressing factor

Back in the day you formed a band with your mates. You played in somebody’s Dad’s garage. At least one member was in the band only because he had an amp. If you were lucky you got a gig at the school disco. That was pretty much the apogee of success, long before which most bands had either imploded because of artistic differences, the unavailability of the garage, or a growing self-awareness that they just didn’t have the talent.

A tiny tiny minority went on into adult life maintaining the passion and naivety to keep the flame burning. Such bands graduated to playing pubs. Some soon gave up but others stayed on the circuit for years working for beer money. Or no money at all.

In turn a minority of these maybe got to make a demo tape. And an even tinier minority maybe went on to become proper musicians.The process was called paying your dues. And it was the bed rock of what rock ‘n’ roll was / is about.

On the other hand, fast forward to the more likely modern scenario:

Turn up with a few thousand other wanabees armed with nothing more than a modicum of talent (optional), a burning ambition above all to be famous, and a sob story about how you’re doing this for your family.

For an interminable number of weeks you can then demonstrate the blankness of your canvas and go through the process of being molded by a svengali-like egoist. So long as you can then win the hearts of a number of key demographics – the granny vote, the teeny-bopper vote – the camp ironic kitsch vote - the regional loyalty vote - fame and fortune will be yours.

Thank fuck for YouTube. The virtual-garage of a new generation. Perhaps

You'd get less time for murder ...

Bit of a personal milestone for me today and one that's not very usual these days - 20 years with the same company. Fucking hell !!!

I never wanted a career, just a job - more or less. Armed with a degree from a prestigious university which was of no practical use at all as I didn't fancy a 'profession', academia, or an accelerated promotion scheme in big business - I got myself a trade. So I did a vocational course, got the then all-important union card and unintentionally maintained the family tradition of being 'in the print'. And here I am.

I've been lucky I guess - the firm (so far) has survived a couple of 'new technology' revolutions and I've had the chance to do three or four different jobs over the years. We're still a (large-ish) small business, and as tends to happen in such organisations, I slipped into senior management just by sticking around and getting involved.

This hasn't come from any great ambition on my part - basically I'm just a compulsive picture straightener who in any given situation can't help trying to make things 'right'. (Or at least I have enough cockiness to think that's what I'm doing).

Most of the time though I feel like a fraud who is over-paid for doing a job that brings nobody any practical benefit at all. Sometimes that depress me and I think I'm wasting myself. More often though I'm just looking over my shoulder waiting to be found out ...

King Oliver ?

Oh dear. Just as I was singing the praises of 'The Devil's Whore' for putting the Civil War back in the limelight it deserves and for rehabilitating the cause of parliament, it all went horribly wrong last night.

I was happy to overlook the bodice-ripping and swash-bucking, even the usual over simplification of Cromwell's campaigns in Ireland. But the climax last night saw Edward Sexby attempting to assassinate Cromwell on his way to be crowned king. The tolling of the church bells at the end was a dramatic sign that Sexby had failed and Cromwell had finally betrayed the cause.

NOOOOO !!!! Lest there are any viewers out there who might actually believe this, here are the facts:

Cromwell was proclaimed Lord Protector for life on 16th December 1653. There was no 'coronation' - only a simple swearing-in ceremony. And for the rest of his life he turned down any suggestions that he should style himself as monarch. Ultimately his powers as head of state, although far exceeding those that Lilburne or Rainsborough ever dreamed of, were still subject to the vote of the Council Of State.

On the otherhand Edward Sexby, who in real life was a Leveller and did oppose Cromwell's assumption of presidential-like power, also turned to the Spanish and the Cavalier party in-exile for support in overthrowing Cromwell. His involvement with a conspiracy to assassinate Cromwell was discovered in 1657 - four years after Cromwell's proclamation as Lord Protector. Despite his treason he was not executed but sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower Of London.

Does anybody care ? They should because yet again the truth about the struggle for democracy in this country is being misrepresented, and the vital role of the all too short lived Commonwealth is being denied.

Cromwell certainly had his faults - ultimately he did betray the aspirations of the Levellers and other proto-democrats and radicals. But he was a reluctant dictator, and never a king.

40 Years After Paris '68

It’s not entirely true that we learnt our democracy from the Greeks. In this country we owe at least as much to the tribal systems of the Celts and Anglo Saxons.

But we could learn a thing or two from the Greeks right at the moment.

We have a police state creeping in by stealth under the guise of ‘law and order’ and the ‘war on terror’. But our news media is more concerned with falling house prices.

In Athens a fifteen year old lad is killed by a trigger happy copper for the crime of shouting abuse and throwing a bottle of water at a police car. And the response is not much short of an uprising. Days of rioting by students and young people and now a general strike of 2.5 million workers.

Wonder if Jacqui Smith still wants to arm the police on the streets of our cities with potentially lethal tazer-guns ? Probably…

For the lads ?

'Lad's mags' work to a winning if cynical formula. Football, gadgets, bloke-lit writing Andy McNab style ... and tits. It's s all a bit crap really but it's the tits that have got them in trouble and now there's a move to have them treated like porn.

Strange really - they are also fixated with horrible ghoulish freak-show images of 'the boy who is turning into a dolphin' or gore-fest images of horrendous injuries. But apparently that's all ok - it's the tits that really seem to upset people.

Much like the page 3 of an earlier generation the women featured are all non-threatening 'girls next door'; reality TV rejects and wannabes, soap cast-offs and the latest phenomena, amateur 'high street honeys'.

In an age when the real thing is only a couple of clicks away it is fairly evident that this isn't porn - its cheap titillation.You might not like it but try legislating about it and you're going to end up looking pretty daft.

It all falls apart when you try to define and quantify what is and isn't deemed acceptable. From there it's but a short step to counting nipples and formulating bizare formulas that a bare bottom is the equivalent of six topless pictures. And before you know it you've banned McGill's saucy postcards and Carry-On films.

I've blogged about this before. The only safe way through the moral maze is to forget our own tastes and remember that it's just pictures. There's plenty of truly horrible shit in the real world to get worked up about - let's concentrate on that.

The new undeserving poor

The fall out from the ‘Baby P’ and Karen Matthews cases continues. I don’t know if the individuals concerned are best described as mad, bad or sad – but I can see a disturbing and predictable reaction brewing.

Arch-wanker Kelvin McKenzie is on the BBC this morning talking about the government’s scheme to force unemployed parents to seek work if their children are a year old. Apparently that's not going far enough. Presumably he would be satisfied if a program of eugenics for the underclass was adopted.

Cameron talks about society being broken. He’s not talking about his ‘society’ though – not Nottinghill and the Bullingdon Club cronies. He’s not talking about the ‘society’ of the Tory’s electoral base either – smug Middle England in the shires and suburbs. He’s talking about another society - of inner city sink estates and families trying to live on benefits.

It’s a society a million miles away from his own world that shocks and scares him - and in a perverse way this gives him a bit of a thrill. It's the combined thrill of moral censure and morbid delight in the very ‘otherness’ of this distant society.

The Victorians had the same relationship with their ‘undeserving poor’. Those incorrigibles who couldn’t be trusted to improve themselves through education or self-help, so had to be coerced into it by workhouses and harangued by evangelists.

But the same Victorian middle class had a salacious desire to walk on the wild side and visit the scary other world. So there was the phenomenon of the toff’s who slummed it visiting ‘the abyss’ of Whitechapel in the 1890’s.

You could dig out any of the popular newspapers of the day and find an echo in what is being said now: The victims of poverty described in the same way as an anthropologist would a newly discovered tribe - and with the same sense of sanctimony tinged with cheap thrills.

At the factory gates

Up at 5am this morning to go and leaflet one of the few remaining factories left in the area for the National Shop Stewards' Network. It's an auto-component plant that is affected by the struggle to keep the Ford plant open in Southampton.

It's been a while since I did any activity like this. I am reminded of when I first joined the Socialist Party - or the Militant Tendency as it was back then in the 80's.

In those days, when we were 'underground' in the Labour Party, recruitment was a bit more circumspect than now, and student recruits in particular were treated with suspicion. So for six months I was a 'contact' before I became a full member.

One of the regular activities that I attended was a paper sale at a factory gate - at 6:30am on the other side of town. Week after week myself and one other comrade would brave all weathers, with very little success.

Shortly after I finally became a proper member, the factory sale was quietly dropped from the program of activity - clearly it had been adopted only for my benefit, as some sort of test.

On reflection this may seem mad - but there was some method in playing hard to get. The odd right wing Labour 'mole' did try to infiltrate - and it also detered students who might have frivolously joined out of ideological tourism. As a result, unlike many others on the Left we were insulated from the worst aspects of middle class student-ism. And to this day we remain a predominately working class organisation.

It was still fucking cold and miserable on those paper sales though.

It's not Clarkson - it's the Allman brothers !

One of the perks about being the boss is having control of the music in the studio. Most of the time I have to defer to the democratic wishes of the majority which means enduring some dire chart and dance stuff. But I do have the ultimate sanction; a fuck-off speaker set up hooked up under my desk.

It's been a bit of a slow day here today - so I took control of the sounds. After a few bars of Jessica - I was asked:

Isn't that the theme tune for Top Gear ?

No it fucking isn't! - it's the Allman Brothers !

The guys who had their finest hour long before sodding Jeremy Clarkson and his sycophantic sidekicks came up with the winning bloke-TV formula of fast cars and smug Daily Mail bile.

If you don't know the Allman Brothers - you should - check them here. They pretty much defined the Southern Rock genre - and without draping themselves in a Confederate flag - and at a time when multi-racial rock bands anywhere were a rarity let alone in the South. And they were into their motorcycles - at least two band members lost their lives in bike crashes. OK I know I'm biased but that pretty much seals it for me.

Play Ramblin' Man- if it doesn't make you want to jump on your bike and head off into the sunset in a Southern landscape then I really have nothing left to say to you.

Misplaced sentimentality

My first ever pair of trainers were ‘Winfields’ – Woolworths’ own brand – and at primary school I think I was decked out in ‘Ladybird’ clothing. Some of the first LP’s I brought also came from Woolies.

But I do not share the emotional outpourings over the demise of the high street chain this week, just as it was about to approach it’s centenary.

From all the sentimental shit being spoken at the moment you would think we were mourning a cherished institution that had enriched our lives – something along the lines of the NHS. But when FW Woolworth imported his stores to this country from the US he had no more noble a mission than that of selling cheap crap for the masses. Doubtless in the process many independent family corner shops were driven out of business.

Sounds familiar ?

It’s like our grandchildren getting upset about the collapse of Tesco, McDonalds, Starbucks or whatever other corporate empire eventually bites the dust in the future. And one of them inevitably will – such is the capitalist circle of life.

Squeezing the rich ?

Sometimes it’s not what you say – it’s what people think you say – and their reactions.

Back in the 70’s Labour Chancellor Dennis Healy talked about ‘squeezing the rich until the pips bleed”. He didn’t really mean it of course – he might have started life as a Communist but by 1974 he had put all that way behind him – but his words were enough to get the Tories and big business running scared that class war had been declared.

Alistair Darling’s no socialist either. Actually fuck knows what he is – at least Healy was an honest social democrat (sort of). But Darling's pre budget report seems to have pissed off a lot of the right people. All it took was a teeny-weeny attempt to tinker with a regressive tax (VAT) and to introduce a teeny-weeny bit of progressive taxation in the form of a higher income tax band for high earners.

Polly Toynbee sees in this a radical departure and an abandonment of the New Labour project in favour of good old-fashioned social-democracy. It's no such thing, it's a half-hearted Keynesian measure to stimulate retail spending. Measures that would actually make a difference to people’s lives – like a cap on fuel bills are conspicuous by their absence.

But what’s significant is not what comes from New Labour but from the Tories.

Cameron’s compassionate conservatism and eco-populism is not worth a toss. Faced with the most nonthreatening of measures, their reflex reaction is to defend the interests of the wealthy and begrudge any meagre concessions to the working class.

Same old Tories. Same old (New) Labour.

The Devil's Whore

The English Civil War and 17th Century radicalism are something of an obsession for me. So I had to watch Channel 4’s new mini-series The Devil’s Whore.

Historical Dramas tend to be the stuff of Sunday evening viewing – a bit of Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy with performing costumes filled by familiar faces from soaps providing non-threatening comfort viewing for Middle England. Of course of late there have been a few honourable exceptions:

The Devil’s Whore is certainly not comfort viewing. It has just the amount of bodice-ripping and sword play not to be overly-worthy. But it also goes beyond the familiar image of romantic Cavaliers and kill-joy Roundheads that we are usually fed. It engages with the Big Ideas of the time – and of today - democracy, freedom of expression and the struggle between rich and poor.

And it gets the period details pretty much correct too – visually you can’t really tell the two sides apart – maybe slightly lacier collars for the Royalists and less curls for the Parliament men. No puritan primness either. Both sides are a lot lustier and earthier than the Victorians historians who gave us most of those misconceptions of the era – and probably more so than the usual costume drama audience today.

But most importantly it reclaims this – the most important period in English history – and places it centre stage.

In the US there is a strong tradition of the Western – it has developed from the ‘white hat goodies’ v ‘black hat badies’ of the Gary Cooper era to the gritty revisionism of HBO’s Deadwood. But there is never any question that the mythology of The Western, despite the violence and genocide of the real thing, is a central part of the American story.

On the other hand in this country the equivalent formative part of our history has been airbrushed out. Hearing the ideas of Rainsborough, Lillburne and Saxby in The Devil’s Whore and you can see why – they are still revolutionary today.

It also manages to make Charles 1st look like a bit of a twat. And a complete bastard too. Enjoy.

BNP - Fascists outed

The propensity of the Far Right to self-destruct is a source of continual amusement and comfort. The news that a hardline member of the BNP, disgruntled at the party’s supposedly moderate / populist turn towards a UKIP audience, has published the entire membership on line is, frankly, fucking hilarious.

As is Nick Griffin’s response that the member will come to regret this as ‘the worst decision of his life’. On the other hand he has bleated on about the infringement of his members’ civil liberties. His response goes to the heart of two old chestnuts about the BNP.

Firstly their respectable façade – Griffin may now be on Radio 4 laughably citing the Human Rights Act, which he so strongly opposed, but his initial reaction was nothing more than a thinly veiled threat of violence to sort out the trouble maker in his midst.

And secondly the question - should the BNP have the same rights as any other political party ?

- This shouldn’t need explaining again, but for the hard of thinking the Fascists (for that is what the BNP really are) are NOT just any other party. They are not simply a misguided bunch of loons. They actively promote racial hatred wherever they go. Their ranks include streetfighters who engage in physical attacks – both racially motivated and against political opponents. Much of this activity is illegal – but even if it wasn’t, it would be grounds not to tolerate their intolerance.

Far from amusing though is how the membership list reveals their penetration of mainstream society; in particular the police, the prison service, the army, teaching and other ‘public’ services.

For those agonising over the justification of the ‘outing’ of the Fascists, here it is: Membership of a racist organisation is simply incompatible with the role of someone who is in a position of care or public trust because they cannot serve the community even-handedly.

I'm not going to post the link here - but you maybe able to follow a trail from here - if steps haven't been taken yet to cover over the traces. If you see anyone you know feel free to get in touch with them to discuss their odious little secret. And if any of the named are working in the public sector – let’s get the fuckers sacked.

Royalist tearoom

On the basis of 'shit you just couldn't make up', I had to share this. It was sent to me by a friend who shot it through the window of a tea shop in Brighton. Fantastic - whether it is a bit of post modern ironic royalist kitsch or the work of a genuine monarchist lunatic.

Although naming the top of the range pig-out option after someone who was notoriously bulimic may prove to be a marketing error ...

Haringey Child Abuse Scandal

I don’t want to join in the current witch-hunt against social workers.

Let’s face it nobody takes the job for the money or an easy life.

And the same witch-hunters who are making so much noise now were probably last week bemoaning a socialist conspiracy to undermine families by putting children into care. Few seem to have made the obvious connection that the reason social workers in Haringey have twice the average national caseload is because they have twice the social problems here in one of the country’s poorest communities.

But that said - as a ‘citizen’ of Haringey, I wouldn’t trust the council to run a jumble sale. Admittedly I try to keep my contact with them to a minimum – but in the past months, three experiences spring to mind:

• The electoral register - I responded immediately when I received the form through the door, by registering online. Six months later I am still being pursued, by more letters through the door, and people twice coming to the house to check up. I now appear to be locked into some sort of Kafka-esque nightmare; when I try to register again I’m told that I can’t – because I’ve already registered.

• Warning stickers on piles of rubbish – fly tipping is a real problem in the borough. But rather than just clearing it away somebody actually inspects it, puts a sticker on it and then leaves it. About a fortnight later, by which time the pile of crap has become a focus for even more fly tipping, it is finally cleared away.

• Re-development – the high street in Tottenham is dying – typical of many inner city high streets it consists of derelict units, ‘pound’ shops and fried chicken franchises. Except one area where there is a covered market with a thriving community of local independent traders. After consulting with the residents, who all wanted the market left alone, the council is going to pull it down and replace it with a mall of chain retail outlets. To 'regenerate' the area.

In other words our council appears to be a haven of fuck-witery, jobs-worth-iness with a culture of box ticking underpinned by a condescending implication that we should be grateful that in a place like this that we get any local services at all.

All of which would be funny if it didn’t seem all to familiar when I read about the horrific child abuse of ‘Baby P’ and the incompetence of Haringey social services department.

So round here, shocking though the case is, it is also no great surprise. We deserve better from our local council.

Socialism at the weekend

This weekend I was at Socialism 2008 – the annual weekend school of the Socialist Party.

After 25 years (!) of being involved I don’t really need to ‘hear the case for socialism’ but now that I’m not as active as I once was, I make a point of going each year to recharge my batteries a bit. And to get the day-to-day grind of life under this fuck-awful depressing system of capitalism into a bit of perspective.

It’s also a chance to see the Left at its best - and worst.

The best – a bit of inspiration like the guy from a small Trotskyist group inside China, risking so much to fight for democratic socialism in just about the hardest of circumstances.

Or less dramatically, just seeing old friends: Ordinary people with jobs and families who refuse to succumb to the pressures of daily life and continue year after year to do their own unspectacular bit to make the world better.

The worst – dickheads from one of the 57 varieties of loony group-lets who are attracted to these events. Like the bloke who criticised us for not supporting China in Tibet and defending North Korea’s right to nuclear arms. Stuck forever in 1941, he cited as justification for his current idiocy Trotsky’s position of sixty years ago: The Soviet Union as a deformed workers’ state should be defended at all costs from imperialist aggression - although he did forget to mention that this was at the time of the Nazi invasion . He was even trying to look like Trotsky – goatee beard, unruly curls and Russian workers’ cap. Funny - but a fucking liability to have around and confirming the worst Pythonesque stereotypes of the Left.

Remember Remember

Remembrance Day and Fireworks night are always linked in my mind. Not just because they occur at the same time of year.

We didn't have fireworks at home because they brought back memories of my mum's East End childhood in the Blitz. Even now she still has the same flashbacks.

With good reason; her house was twice damaged by incendiary bombs. Her dad was in the River Police out on duty in the docks during the air raids and her uncle was a firefighter. At the same time the family waited for news of other uncles - one at sea on the Atlantic convoys and the other in the army in the Far East.

Now days we would call it post-traumatic stress and demand counseling - back then it was just a fact of life. So she remembers just the little things; like taking shelter under her school desk during one raid, being sent home for forgetting her gas mask and taking her exams in a shelter.

Evidence of quite how close the war came to home is still all around us: At work there is a gap in the terrace opposite still propped up by wooden supports sixty years after a bomb took out the building. At home, in the park at the end of our street, there is a memorial to 20 people killed in a single direct hit on an air raid shelter.

In the winter of 1940-41 there were eleven continuous weeks of nightly attacks on London by the Luftwaffe - 20,000 civilians in London were killed in those attacks alone and 60,000 in the whole of the war. A quarter of a million Londoners were made homeless and a third of all the city's housing stock was damaged. That's worth a moments reflection at this time of year.

It also makes you wonder who ever thought it would be a good idea to call our local American football team "London Blitz".

Overdue landslide for Obama

Not a day for cynicism or smart-arse comments.

The extraordinary scenes of euphoria from the US are personified in the tear-stained face of Jesse Jackson; from segregation to a Black president within a generation . Personally I just feel a sense of immense relief.

Whether or not this is the end to the era of Reganite neo-con ascendancy, the end of the USA as the bad guy on the world stage, and even more importantly whether this is real change for ordinary working class Americans - black and white - the jury will be out for a while.

I imagine we will be recalling how McCain labeled Obama - he meant it as a slur - 'a socialist'. And thinking 'we wish'.

Regime change imminent

At the weekend I heard on the radio a community activist from Chicago describe Obama as an ‘empty vessel’ - filled with the aspirations of all those who felt themselves denied a political voice. (Or those that Sarah Palin would call not 'real Americans').

That sounds just about spot-on; and it also implies the inevitable disappointment of these aspirations. And I’m sure that disappointment will come later, but at the moment it seems a certainty that the world will have, for the first time for many years, a US president that we can’t ridicule because he is stupid, senile or a serial-shagger. And one that we don’t have to fear either because he is a neo-con and/or ‘mentalist Christian.

Unless that is in the next 24 hours the Republicans somehow manage to produce a secret crack addict Obama relative living on benefits, or evidence of a gay lover who is also an islamo-terrorist, or, if all else fails, dodgy ballot punch card machines to produce some hanging chads. Or even just scare people back into their racist bunkers.

So here’s a thought: Given that these elections will not only elect a US president but also the single most powerful leader on the planet, and given the global nature of the world economy and the increasing unimportance of the nation-state - maybe the rest of us should be allowed a vote too. Possibly not the same as US citizens proper – just a tenth of a vote would do.

Otherwise we’ll just have to cross our fingers …