MP's money

Difficult to believe in the current climate, but the idea that MP's should be paid a wage was once a progressive one. It enabled ordinary working people, like Keir Hardie, to enter parliament and so broke the monopoly of the political class, landowners and business men, whose 'private incomes' freed them for the need to earn a living.

Although under the current Tory set up, the toffs in the form of Cameron and Boris, are making something of a comeback, the new version of the political class is nowadays that of careerist apparatchiks - as equally divorced from the vast majority of the people they represent as their nineteenth century predecessors.

Whereas there used to be talk of a class that was 'born to govern' (and it wasn't said in a sense of irony) there is now talk of having to attract 'the best and most talented'. This reasoning is behind the argument that MP's must not be underpaid - with the implication that if they are then potential politicians will be tempted away to other fields, or at the very least tempted to top up their salaries by making dodgy expenses claims.

The concept of 'underpaid' is very odd - and one that I have not heard seriously challenged. Underpaid in relation to who ? Certainly not the majority of the electorate, not the average elector and not even public sector middle managers. The benchmark appears to be the most senior professionals in private practice and top management in large corporations. Implicit in this is a naive assumption that the job market is some sort of meritocracy where the most talented are the best paid.

A quick look at the real world would disprove this: At my workplace the highest paid group are not skilled craftsman, nor senior mangers with responsibilities, but salesmen whose skill set is primarily schmoozing, brown-nosing and bullshitting. I am sure that anybody could find similar examples in their own lives - and I haven't even mentioned teachers or nurses.

So why do so many people accept that MP's should be amongst the highly paid ? In all the talk of MP's salaries and their abuse of expenses hardly anyone seems to be arguing that it is a privilege to be a representative of the people and - dare I say it - an element of sacrifice is to be expected. And even fewer have made the glaringly obvious suggestion that MP's should take only the average wage of the people they represent so as to stay in touch with them and so prevent the growth of that new 'political class'.

And finally - back to those salesmen at work: it is 'within the rules' for them to put in expenses claims for pencil sharpeners and erasers. But at the same time it is generally accepted that for a highly paid individual to make such petty claims is a bit demeaning and marks them out as a bit of an arsehole - so they don't do it. It comes to something when salespeople have more sense of shame than our elected representatives.

Life's A Riot (still)

On a whim I've just stuck on Billy Bragg's "Life's A Riot" on the i-tunes at work.

Great lyrics - crap voice. So crap it's actually good. If I ever sang in the bath it would sound just about identical.

Those lyrics are filled with 80's references. Just listening to it is a nostalgia rush - until his aberrational flirting with the Kinnock-ite Red Wedge movement - Billy Bragg was the epitome of the young radical of the era. Down to his Doc Martin shoes, black 501s with turn ups and flat-top. (I was never one of those people by the way - too much of a headbanger back then - but I loved the lyrics and the fact that someone could sing like that and get away with it - proper modern folk music)

I don't think anyone who was involved at that time can now hear 'Whose Side Are You On?' ; 'Between The Wars'; 'It Says Here' or 'World Turned Upside' without the hairs on the back of their neck standing up. The sad thing is 25 years on and in these times it all seems so relevant again...

The end at Visteon ?

It's no longer news that the former Visteon / Ford workers at Enfield and Basildon have voted to accept an offer that goes most of the way to matching the Ford contracts they had been promised all along (with reservations about pensions and shift allowances). In other words; a victory. Like the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikers they have proved that in spite of the recession, in spite of anti-union laws and in spite of docile union leaderships, victories are possible if you're prepared to fight for them.

Having been involved on the sidelines of many disputes over the years - from the big ones like the miners strike and the Wapping dispute, to the small ones like the Addenbrookes cleaners or JJ Fast Foods - I know that we need victories more than we need noble defeats. So I'm not one of those (and there will inevitably be some on the Left) who will deny ourselves a moment of celebration.But having gone up to visit the pickets on Saturday it came home to me that the celebration is tempered by the sadness that goes with any factory closure.

Sitting outside the gates in Enfield , it is striking that the factory there is surrounded by derelict and empty sites that once were a thriving industrial belt in North London along the A10 corridor. Now it is becoming an industrial graveyard.

Because the Visteon plant was highly unionised, it was also unusual nowadays in maintaining the kinds of pay and conditions that generations of workers in the manufacturing sector once took for granted. And in its sense of community: Many of the workers have spent twenty years or more there, there are families working alongside each other - I even met several retired workers who came back to join the picket line. That has all gone now.

Although the workers will continue their pickets until the redundancy payments have actually been paid, there is also a sense of sadness as the ex-Visteon workers disperse. Inevitably the solidarity and camaraderie that has grown out of the dispute will also disperse with them .

However like in so many other disputes before, one thing that repeatedly comes up when talking with the workers is how much they have changed: In their views of the world , of politics and of activists of all hues who they previously regarded as an alien species. I've also heard the workers say a number of times how shocked they are that people they don't know have gone out of their way to support them. And how in spite of what is said, people aren't just out for themselves but are prepared to stick up for each other.

It's a simple message but a pretty fucking inspiring one - and one that will outlast the closure of the factory.

Visteon. Struggle. Solidarity.

Socialist Party. Socialist Workers' Party. Socialist Labour Party. Socialist Alliance. "Why can't you all just work together and have one 'proper' party?". I've heard it from my daughter, thinking about politics for the first time, and I've heard it on the picket line at Visteon. It's a very familiar question to anybody on the Left ... and still a very fair one.

If ever there was an instance when different groups could and should suspend their differences and rivalries it is their support for workers in struggle. But still inevitably there are points of departure between the various groups that actually speak volumes about their differences. And these are important, far more so than sterile debates about whose forebears had the 'correct' position over Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia in 1936. Or something.

This has certainly been what I have seen in the Visteon dispute at Enfield.

Take the SWP: At the start of the dispute they turned up in very large numbers - now, from what I've seen on the picket line, they seem to have evaporated. Why? I suspect because they thought there were no quick wins for them to make. On the other hand now that the conveners at Visteon in both Enfield and Basildon have joined the Socialist Party and are standing as N2EU candidates in the Euro elections they are condemning the platform as chauvinistic and nationalist. Just as they did with the Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute, they have put themselves outside one of the most significant developments in the labour movement. N2EU is not ideologically 'pure' and is quite possibly not the best tag for a new Left movement - but it is happening right now and it is real. Strange that the SWP were a lot less fussy about far more 'incorrect' Islamo-nuts in the Stop War The Movement. But then again of course that was their own 'thing' that they could pretty much control.

Or take the anarchists. Actually I have a lot more time for them. They don't parachute in and out of the picket line, in fact they work pretty tirelessly in their support. Occasionally they can seem like they inhabit a different planet from ordinary workers with cars, mortgages and the other conventional trappings of modern life. But more seriously, they are so suspicious of anything 'official' or that smacks of the organised Left that whenever there is talk of spreading the dispute - of approaching other union branches or stewards, or lobbying this or that union official, they have very little to say. Tellingly their main focus has been on being support from the general public rather than within the labour movement.

Supporting a struggle is not about simply cheer-leading. If you genuinely think that you or your organisation has something to offer to help build success then you have not only a right but also a duty to share it. Not in a sectarian way and not by lecturing or maneuvering. And if you believe that there is also a bigger picture, that disputes should be linked up and movements built it is perfectly legitimate again to try and get people to join your organisation. And most importantly if you don't convince them you go ahead with the practical support work anyway and don't sulk in the corner. I'd like to think that this approach is why a number of the Visteon workers, including two of the conveners have agreed to join the Socialist Party.

All of which is a preamble to talking about Rob Williams. He is the Unite convener at Linmar in Swansea, formerly a part of Visteon before it was re-badged in previously shenanigans to outsource the manufacture of auto components. It is Rob who has played a major role in taking the cause of the Visteon dispute to various parts of the Ford empire and around the movement generally. I have no doubt that he is the major reason that Visteon workers have turned to the Socialist Party.

Yesterday Rob was dismissed from his job at the Linmar plant. In support the other workers there walked off the line and joined him in an occupation of the union office on the site whilst the police were called to try and evict them. To give Rob your support - send messages to robbo@redwills.freeserve.co.uk

Feelgood weekend

It's come a bit late this year but it was the first Spring-like weekend of the year. (Or at least the first one when I had a bike on the road which is the only sort that really counts).

Each year the first feel good factor of a bit of sun in your face is a reminder of our primeval and pagan instincts. And this weekend just about every aspect of my usual pastimes was improved by the sun:

Saturday morning - I visited the Visteon picket line. The mood of the workers was good and optimistic with progress made in involving other Ford sites, and the various supporters actually seem to be working (more or less) together for once.

Saturday afternoon - I picked up my 883R/1200 from the workshop after its chain conversion and took it for a run up to the High Beach tea hut. It was about closing time but I got into chewing the fat for half an hour with a couple of guys from the Rider's club who were up there.

Sunday morning - I got to messing about in the garden doing some forms for the benefit of my kids. I did the long pole form (Luk Dim Boon Gwan) for once - I don't often get to do that during weekday training as it takes up too much space so I was happy to find that I could still do it.

Sunday afternoon - into town to the Globe Theatre for a performance of Romeo & Juliet. First we got in a tour of the nearby excavation of the Rose Theatre. I love the idea of that part of Southwark as the sleaze centre of Elizabethan London. Bear-baiting, brothels, violent ale houses and the stench of open sewers running through the street - it's a nice contrast to the sensibilities of today's' 'theatre-going public'. And walking over the Millennium foot bridge to St Paul's for the tube home - the same route that Christopher Wren would have taken every day in a ferry boat possibly steered by one of my ancestors - there is a sense of continuity (both good and bad) with what it has always meant to be a Londoner.

Laptops. Kuniyoshi. Graphic craftsmanship.

My laptop died at work. Pathetically I felt completely impotent for a day, not sure what could be salvaged or whether to restart on-going projects.

So whilst the IT boys here worked their magic to rebuild the laptop, I sneaked off for a couple of hours to the Kuniyoshi exhibition at the Royal Academy.

The demographics of the visitors were a pretty good guide to the appeal of the exhibition. It was a quiet mid-morning but there was a mixture of the usual chattering classes - 'friends of the RA' types - Japanese tourists (unsurprisingly) - students - and some tattoo 'alternative' types. The latter because of course both the style and subject matter are very similar to the Japanese school of tattooing.

I was struck mainly by how very modern the prints looked. The craft of making the prints from wood-cuts makes them look like tattoos - or comic books - like both these processes a black outline is filled with colour. And the colours:the reds ,blues and greens are much more vivid than you would find in western prints of the same era.

There was one glass case explaining the print-making purpose I was struck by the interplay between the art and the craft.This is a subject close to my heart - at work we occupy the space where in graphic terms art and craft meet, and it's a pet subject of mine that the creative disciplines can only be as good as their less glamorous artisan poor relations. It's why I struggle with 'conceptual art'.

I've just read a book - Colour by Victoria Finlay - which pretty much says the same thing: We only view art through the lens of the practical crafts that execute it. So for example; our modern view of Turner is defined by the fact that he didn't seem to give a toss about the quality of the paint he used. Consequently the crappy colours have degraded over the years and given a much softer and subdued effect than he ever intended.

... Meanwhile my laptop has now been restored to its former glory. Nothing 'business critical' has gone but I'm extremely pissed off to have lost five years worth of my i-tunes library.

Another bullying bastard in uniform

Picture taken just before the footage everyone has seen on the BBC: Tiny woman armed with orange juice carton threatens giant angry cop who responds with 'proportionate force' by swatting her with a back-hander and then bringing her to the ground with a steel baton to the legs.

There's a sweet irony that the all-invasive use of CCTV and cameras that has turned us into a surveillance state is now being used to expose police brutality.Which is no doubt why this cunt has obviously tried to hide the numbers on his epaulets to escape identification. Happily it didn't work and he's now been suspended.

Anything less than a conviction for GBH would be a whitewash - let's hope for a custodial sentence I imagine he'd be in for an interesting time inside.

Older brother for Sportster

I have been getting increasingly pissed off whilst my bike has been off the road waiting for parts to do a chain conversion. Matters came to a head last week and so I did the obvious thing - I brought a spare Sportster.

I've often thought that it would be handy to have two bikes so that I always had one on the road. Common sense would say that the second bike should be some cheap reliable hack - like a Japanese 250. But then again I've also often thought that it would be cool to have a project bike to fuck around with - this would just have to be a Harley. So I put the two ideas together - and brought a second Sportster.

It was an impulsive buy but not as extravagant as it may sound - this was a very low mileage 1989 XLH1200 model that had been stored for some time. It is distinctly tatty and needs a bit of tidying up. It also is festooned in "Live to ride. Ride to live" crap that will have to go. Along with the hideous buck-horn bars and pannier supports.

On the positive side it is of an age when chain drive was standard - so my recent experiences of belts snapping won't be repeated. On the negative side it is of an age when the four speed gearbox was still to be updated. These are agricultural at the best of times, but I suspect that the clutch on mine is shagged anyway. There seem to be any number of false neutrals but I can never actually engage the real neutral !

This makes riding in town 'interesting' to say the least. But on the open road it rides very nicely - and differently from my 2003 XL883R/1200 conversion. It certainly made the bank holiday Southend run without any problems - and even got a few admiringly looks for its old school / lived-in 'vintage' charm alongside the gleaming weekend-only bikes of some of the HOG-types

Despite having all sorts of plans - apart from sorting the transmission - I'm resisting all temptations to mess about it without it too much until I get the other one back on the road. Watch this space ...

Kettling & Ian Tomlinson

I was going to post the link to the Guardian's video footage showing the attack on Ian Tomlinson by the police that led to his death at the G20 protest. But I didn't - because I can't really think that there is anyone who still hasn't see it - and I now see that the ICC have got the Guardian to take it down in case it 'jeopardizes their inquiry'.

Instead have a look at this online debate - taken from the UK Police forum.

Imagine just for a moment that it was one of their own who had died in similar circumstances. And then think about the arguments being advanced by the coppers to explain/justify/defend the police role at the G20: 'Provocation', 'reasonable force', 'shouldn't have been there' 'brought upon by his own actions', even simply 'blame shared by all' or 'tragic accident'.

Blah-fucking-blah - if a copper had died on a demo after being pushed to the floor by protesters there would be a national witch-hunt as there was after the killing of PC Blakelock at Broadwater Farm.

I'm not calling for the framing of some random policemen to satisfy the public outrage - although of course that is precisely what happened after Broadwater Farm. But at the very least this must immediately lead to the end of the police practice of 'kettling' protests - it is an affront to civil liberties and tragically it was only a matter of time before someone died.

(By the way have a look at the picture again - see what's on the back of the jacket of the copper with his arm raised... maybe he's just trying to revive someone vigorously ...)

Visteon - occupation at Enfield site

I wrote about leafleting a local factory a few months ago. At the time I was fairly downbeat about the situation there and sank into reminiscence. Turns out I was wrong and that the redundant workers at Visteon Enfield are now in a roof top occupation of the plant. I was there again this Saturday for a rally to support them.

What has happened at Visteon is pretty much a tale of what has happened to British manufacturing industry in general. Ten years ago this was a Ford plant but a decision was made to 'outsource' component manufacturing and so the former Ford staff were transferred to Visteon under their previous terms of employment.

More recently production at the Visteon site has been progressively run down as suppliers with cheaper labour costs have been used - there are rumours of production moving to South Africa . In what can only be seen as a cynical use of a good day for bad news - the week of the G20 was used to announce the closure of the plant. The workforce were told that the company had gone into administration and that they were to quit the building more or less immediately. Contrary to the promises made by Ford, the redundancy payments from Visteon do not honour the old contracts.

Regardless of the legality or morality of the situation - unless the dispute now spreads to Ford itself it is difficult to see a way forward. But this is a real possibility, and the way in which the occupation has snowballed from Visteon's Belfast factory to the Basildon and Enfield sites is an indication of how these situations can be escalated.

I don't know how this is going to play out, but I am sure though that this dispute, and others like it, are are of far more significance than breaking a few windows at a bank.

Messages of support to:
supportvisteonworkers@hotmail.com

They predict a riot

And despite all the hype it didn't happen. Even with the smashing of a bank's windows, the death of a protester and the heaviest police presence in London that I can remember.

The much-touted images of some isolated violence were counter-balanced with those of a carnival of ridicule: The massed crowd in Trafalgar Square sang happy birthday to Tony Benn, a bloke dressed as Jesus holding a placard reading 'drive out the moneylenders' hilariously interviewed by the BBC, and a vintage armoured car decorated as a police riot vehicle with the occupants nicked for being (very unconvincingly) dressed as coppers.

But the riot-hype did go somewhere to achieving it's goal of demonising protest and promoting the idea that protesters are something other than ordinary people. Talking at work, I can see that this lie has taken some hold and I needed to do some convincing that the same people who go on demonstrations have jobs, families and watch Eastenders.

Yesterday showed not only that, to paraphrase Lenin, the state depends upon truckloads of tooled-up coppers, but also, to paraphrase Gramsci, that it needs to win hearts and minds too. The very fact that this is necessary in itself shows a fear of an emerging consensus that capitalism is possibly not such a great idea.

All of which eclipses the G20 summit itself:

The fact that it is at the Excel conference centre makes me think that it is probably as meaningless as business events that I have attended at the same venue. The comparison holds up because ultimately the G20 produces no votes and no decisions - just a 'consensus statement'. Very much like a business conference - verbose key note speeches that don't really say anything other than bland platitudes. And endless 'networking' opportunities so that inanities can be exchanged such as 'did you have to come far?'; "how was the traffic?'; and 'did you enjoy Jamie Oliver's dinner last night?' Meanwhile the real deals and decisions are made over a mobile phone in the car park.

Hail to the chief

I'll scream if I see another cut-away drawing of 'Air Force One' or the presidential car 'the beast' . Or hear any more stories of the medical team that is accommodated on the president's jet, or the electronic counter-weapons on board, or the sealed panic room inside his car that can withstand a chemical attack.

Don't think for a moment that it's simply about practical security - it's a carefully constructed image that is supposed to impress upon us a sense of awe at the power of the US state.

But just like the dark glasses and the mormon suits on the secret service guys - it all just seems a bit silly and over-blown.

It also seems ironic that what is supposedly the world's most powerful democracy is so concerned about the safety of one man - and that he is treated with the reverence accorded a medieval monarch or pope.

But flaunting all this in a foreign country seems particularly insensitive and arrogant. Let's face it - the president faces a far greater risk of assassination from some homegrown white-supremacist redneck than he does from an islamo-mentalist or a European anarchist.

Put People First

A guilty confession - I ended up missing the G20 "Put People First" demo on Saturday as I had fixed up to have my latest tattoo, started three weeks ago, finished off. I'll have to make up for my self-indulgence later in the course of the week. (See - I just can't shake off that ex-Catholic guilt thing even when it comes to political activity)

So, for once from the position of an observer rather than a participant here are a few random thoughts:

The broad nature of the movement from church groups to anarchists confirms that there an opposition consensus is forming that something is not right in how our world is ordered. Herein lies both a strength and weakness - it can easily amount simply to a cry of 'why can't we be nicer to each other ?'

If this is left unanswered then the movement will easily become a moment that is assimilated into the status quo much like "Make Poverty History' was. Signs of the assimilation are already evident. The Sunday papers were hilariously occupied with 'how not to dress like a banker' and patronising profiles on previously demonised anarchist Ian Bone.

Of course the qualitative difference this time round is a looming Depression that is transforming our daily lives in a way that just wasn't the case at the time of the 2005 G8.

Interesting times ...

Bike withdrawal

My bike is off the road and I am thoroughly pissed-off.

I woke up in a good mood last weekend - it was a sunny Saturday and an early start for a two day martial arts seminar I was helping to organise. Jumped on the bike - went to pull away - and then nothing except a familiar sinking feeling. Familiar because it has happened to me twice in 30,000 miles - my drive belt had snapped. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Reading the reams of online debate about the subject it seems that the Harley world both here and in the US is divided over whether belt drive is the best thing since sliced bread or a royal pain in the arse.

I'm contemplating going over to a chain drive conversion - seemingly a retrograde step since Harley abandoned it in the late 90's. They're dirtier and require a bit more maintenance than a belt - but at least they don't mysteriously break without warning. All the custom boys seem to favour chains - there's more flexibility when it comes to tyre sizes; and in my case I'm probably overdue changing the gearing since my re-bore to 1200cc. And they do appear to be considerably cheaper.

But for the moment my bike is stuck in the shop waiting for parts and I'm just thoroughly pissed off. So sick of public transport that I am even contemplating buying a push bike.

And I so desperately need some motorcycle inspiration that I am surfing the brilliant custom Sportster site that supplied the logo above - and catching up online with US TV biker-soap Sons Of Anarchy. AAAARGH !!!!

The new 'national question'.

The whole ‘British Jobs For British Workers’ controversy has come close to home this week: My Mum and Dad, both in their eighties, after many years as activists and local councillors have finally resigned from the Labour Party.

They showed me their letter of resignation. In probably unconscious imitation of Woodrow Wilson – it gave their reasons for leaving in 14 points:

13 of these were very good (albeit almost twenty years too late); the illegal war in Iraq, failure to tackle increasing social inequality, failure to defend education and the health service, failure to reverse Thatcher’s privatisation and anti trade union laws, lack of party democracy and the courting of the City rather than ordinary people. Not exactly a programme for radical change but heart-felt and I can imagine quite an emotional rift for them after years of involvement with the party.

But then there was the shock – one of their points cited Labour’s failure to ‘tackle’ immigration. Basically they took the position of John Crudas.

They live in an area that has not been affected by immigration in recent years, there is a pretty well-integrated community up the road with a significant Sikh population. Despite the occasional verbal clumsiness of their generation (talking about ‘coloured people’) they are not racists.

But I was wrong-footed and my clumsy attempts to put forward a ‘no borders’ counter position didn’t get very far and in fact only provoked some fairly nationalist criticisms of the EU. So it came home to me quite how difficult it is to take these questions up – and also how wrong it is to simply label all those who express these confused views as reactionary bigots.

The controversy over the Lindsey Oil Refinery strike was an example of exactly how this can be skilfully navigated and also something of a litmus test for the Left – with those who prefer to live in sectarian ivory towers (usually in a middle class district) lining up on one side, and socialists who are capable of dealing with the real world on the other.

And so to the news that RMT has put its weight behind a campaign to stand anti-EU Left candidates in the European elections.

Predictably, some have hailed it as a significant step in the breaking away of the trade union movement from the Labour Party, and will intervene in it to build support for a socialist alternative. But others will stand on the sidelines and denounce it as ideologically impure and politically incorrect.

I hope I can intervene similarly in my own family’s split with Labour. I've started by sending my Dad this link.

John Lambert & The Instrument Of Government

Another significant anniversary – on this day in 1653 the monarchy was formally abolished.

This lead to the adoption of the world’s first (and England’s only) written constitution – The Instrument Of Government. This was essentially a patrician republican, not a democratic constitution, but it did establish:

• A president for life – under the title of Lord Protector – as an elected rather than a hereditary position.

• The executive (the Lord Protector) answerable to an elected Council Of State

• Parliament to be the supreme legislature, with the Lord Protector having the right to delay but not veto legislation

• Joint control of the armed forces by parliament and the Lord Protector

• A parliament consisting of a single elected house

• A guaranteed term for parliaments of three years with sessions of a minimum of five months

• Electoral boundaries that reflected the shifting population and the growth of urban areas

• Freedom of worship and assembly for all except Roman Catholics

It wasn’t the system envisioned by the Levellers or the other radicals and it wasn’t even the system that lasted for any period of time – the instability of continuing civil wars led to the proto-military rule of the Major Generals, the inherited Protectorate of Richard Cromwell and ultimately to the restoration of the monarchy.

The Instrument was the work of General John Lambert – one of the ‘army grandees’ who represented the narrow but powerful social base of the radicalised upper middle classes – prepared to break with the old order but wanting strong and stable government and above all reluctant to allow the masses onto the political stage. Tellingly the reforms to the electoral boundaries were geared to enfranchise the growing urban middle class and end the domination of the gentry. But with the property qualification set at £200 it certainly did not include the ‘honest freeborn artisans’ that the radicals drew on for their support.

Nonetheless it does represent a milestone in the struggle for democracy and like so many of the achievements of the English Revolution, is still in some respects to be equaled.

Lambert is an ambiguous character: Having been the architect of Cromwell’s Protectorate he later fell out with him. He plotted at various times in a confusing succession of twists and turns with just about all the parliamentary factions. To some extent this reflected the narrow base on which his power rested. However he did lead the opposition that ended the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell and helped replace it with a short-lived revival of the Republic. And he did try to prevent the Restoration of the monarchy at the very last minute by staging a military uprising , symbolically raising his standard at Edgehill, the site of the first battle of the civil war.

Isolated from many of his former allies, he was easily defeated and arrested. Under the restored monarchy he escaped execution, partly because he had been campaigning in the North at the time of the king’s trial, and partly because many of the parliamentarian turncoats who stage-managed the Restoration had been implicated themselves at some point in Lambert’s various machinations.

He spent the remaining twenty four years of his life in various prisons and in the process went insane. A sad footnote to a largely forgotten episode in the history of our struggle for democracy.

Alan Moore and a sense of honour

Marx predicted that under capitalism all social relations would become reduced to the 'cash nexus'.

But it still grates to see talentless wannabees desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame and a cheque from Hello magazine losing any semblance of dignity on 'reality' TV. Or incompetent banking executives pocketing fat bonuses and pensions failing to see the problem when their customers are losing homes and savings.

The idea of honour has always been a movable feast and specific to time and place but it seems that our age is possibly the first where it seems to have no place at all.

There have always been contradictions and hypocrisies when it comes to honour - but even the very fact that there was hypocrisy at all is an indication that there was some sort of universal ethic. Individual behaviours may slip but honour gave legitimacy, particularly to societies' leaders: So decadent Roman emperors stabbed each back whilst citing the civic principles of the long dead Republic, Henry II arranged for Thomas A Beckett to be assassinated and then had himself flogged as public penance. More recently Victorians stuck kids up chimneys and built a brutal empire whilst talking about philantrophy, civilisation and progress.

But the naked attitude of 'greed is good' and 'fuck the rest of you' has only really gained the upper hand in our own time of late capitalism.

What brought on this rant ?

Actually the comforting news that genius graphic novelist Alan Moore has signed over the earnings from the film adaptation of 'Watchmen' to the illustrator. He has disowned the film which he feels does not justice to his original concept - exactly as he did with From Hell - The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V For Vendetta. Sometimes honour is found in the unlikeliest of places.

Comic Relief

The target for Comic Relief this year is £40million. A conservative estimation of the UK working population is 28 million. The cost of a new nuclear submarine is about £50 million.

So; we could fore go some useless life-threatening hardware or everyone in work could pay an annual levy of £1.50.

Either way we would save ourselves an evening of crap TV as celebrities attempt to revive their failing careers, or a day of attention seeking office jokers making tits of themselves.

I've just dodged a guy in the street dressed as a giant ladybird using his comedy-antennae to block innocent passers and saying 'you can't get passed me without giving to comic relief'. Now there's a challenge.

Saracens' demise ?

I stopped playing rugby at university where I was put off by the whole rugby club scene that was synonymous with just about everything that I found repulsive during my time in the belly of the elitist beast.

But I do love the game, so a few years on I (briefly) started playing again. I also became a regular supporter at my local North London club, Saracens. That was at the end of the amateur era when Sarries were regular giant-killers beating the likes of the then dominant Bath and Leicester. We were always the poor relations in National League One (pre Guinness Premiership of course), playing on a municipal park that had to be cleared of dog shit before a match.

Amateur status may have been the refuge of the Colonel Blimps of the game, but it did give it all a rather wonderful homely nature. In the club house the half time food was prepared by the players’ partners, and after a game you could find yourself in the bar next to an international player you’d seen on the telly the week before. There were teams going doing to the level of 4ths and 5ths, along with juniors and vets, all of whom could claim to be part of the same club family as the occasional capped superstar.

That all went with the professional era. Along came a ground share with the local football club – Enfield Town. For a few glorious seasons the games were played in front of packed crowds – there was an influx of international big name players and the feeling that the club had entered the top flight. But the whole inclusive family thing was gone – insidiously the club experience switched from participation to spectacle.

A few years later there was the move to Watford FC. Initially there was some long overdue silverware won, but ground sharing with a Premiership football club meant that there was huge over-capacity and invariably soul-less empty stands at most games. The initial success of the early professional era waned and Sarries have since become long-term mid-table underachievers in the Premiership. At the same time, my own support also waned - once a regular at every home game I now maybe make one or two games a season.

Then came the news last week: The coach has departed and 15 players will go at the end of the season. Saracens will be bailed out by South African Investors Limited who want to turn the club into a rugby home for exile South Africans. Now there’s rumours of moving the ground to South London – Fulham’s Craven Cottage - and even of changing the shirt colours to green and gold.

It’s not a unique story - it’s happened before at many clubs, in all sports, and I suppose it is inevitable when sport becomes a business - but it still fucking depressing.

Lessons for the next generation

A few weeks ago my daughter went to a ‘silent rave’ –a flash mob event in Trafalgar Square - a pretty daft concept maybe but an essentially harmless one. She tried to go to another one but was prevented by a heavy police presence who stopped anyone looking young-ish who looked they might be in the pursuit of some innocuous fun.

Understandably she was pissed off – she asked me what gave the police the right to prevent a peaceful public gathering – and anyway didn’t the public spaces of central London belong to us all anyway ?

Aptly given that this week is the 25th anniversary of the start of the miners’ strike: I found myself reminiscing about the time in the Summer of 1984 when I found myself in a mini-bus from the Miners’ Support Group being stopped on the motorway and turned around as we crossed the Nottinghamshire county line.

It’s an odd feeling when events that you personally took part in enter in history. At the time for anyone who was involved, in any capacity, it was clear that this was an all-out class war. What was less apparent was that the results would have such enormous consequences and that the progressive erosion of our civil liberties can be dated back to that struggle.

So to answer her questions – I said that the police had the right to stop her because our governments are scared of people gathering together and we have not challenged unjust laws because we have been bullied and scared. And no - ‘we’ don’t own the public spaces of central London – that’s down to the Duke Of Westminster and various others.

It’s all part of her education I am afraid.

Blitz tube deaths anniversary

The anniversary today of the Bethnal Green tube disaster. The worst incident of civilian casualties in the Second World War when 173 people were killed during an air raid in 1943. Fearing for public morale the affair was effectively hushed up and it is only recently that local residents have taken up a campaign to commemorate the victims.

It wasn't actually enemy action that caused the deaths but panic amongst the crowd going down the steps into the station after the warning sirens had sounded - ironically a panic induced by the unfamiliar sound of a new anti-aircraft weapon being fired in a nearby park. But the whole story of the use of underground shelters (and Bethnal Green was not the only disaster) belies the mythology of the 'spirit of the blitz' and cheerful cockneys.

The truth is that at the start of the war the government had made little provision for public air raid shelters. In fact some thought that they would be bad for morale and would discourage people from continuing their normal business in the face of bombing ( the same logic that said parachutes would be bad for pilot morale in the First World War). In the early raids the police actually locked the gates at tube stations to prevent people from taking shelter there.

This was perceived as a class issue - many better-off Londoners had private shelters built in their gardens. Notoriously lavish shelters were built in some of the West End hotels and gentlemen's clubs. Communist MP for Stepney Phil Piratin led an occupation of the Savoy Hotel shelter to expose these double standards. In fact the campaign for public shelters that led to the opening of the tube stations was largely led by the Communist Party. More so than most, Communists would have had memories of the horror of aerial bombardment of cities in the Spanish Civil War.

Equally they would have been aware of the double standards of the wartime patriotic rhetoric. Far from the mythology that has since arisen, Churchill and the royal family were jeered and booed when they visited the East End in the early days of the Blitz. And the Queen Mother's famous comment about being able to look the East End in the eye after Buckingham Palace was bombed (whilst the royals were secure in their shelters) was literally all too true.

NABD at The Ace

To the Ace Café at the weekend for the NABD day (National Association Of Bikers with a Disability).

For obvious reasons, trikes predominated. Ratty matt black post-apocalyptic trikes based on Reliant engines, kit-trikes based on VW Beatles, bonkers track-ready trikes based on Suzuki-Hayabussas or, my own favourite a V-12 Dodge engined trike.

All had some sort of adaptation to suit the personal needs of the rider – hand operated gears – multiple levers on one side of the handlebars – carrying racks for wheel-chairs. I saw guys without the use of the their legs literally crawl on to their machines and tie themselves on to the seat with ratchet straps.

Every now and then there’s some debate in the bike magazines about who is a real biker – is it the one-piece leathers plastic rocket brigade - or the hardcore build your own chopper in the garden shed faction - or the old boys who ride the same BSA Bantam in all weathers for 40 years?

These NABD guys get my vote – the unique mixture of independence, mutual support, ingenuity and sheer bloody-mindedness in never accepting any sort of limitation is surely what being a biker is all about.

The apprentice

In my other life - the day job - I was invited to the government's apprenticeship roadshow. A seminar at Excel with a panel of Alan Sugar, Ed Balls and John Denham, an audience of captains of industry, assorted hangers on ... and myself.

I was one of the few not in a suit, definitely the only one who checked in a crash helmet at the cloak-room, and probably the only member of a Far Left Organisation there.

I don't have a major problem with the apprenticeship drive in itself - it was me who introduced the Modern Apprenticeship scheme at my work - hence the invitation I suppose. Despite its imperfections its not a bad scheme - almost as good as the union-run apprenticeships, and City & Guilds qualifications back in the supposed 'dark ages' of the print industry.

The crowd was a collection of familiar stereotypes - apparachiks from public sector quangos who are serial conference attenders, slimy big business types doing a PR job to show that offering training in shelf stacking is really making a contribution to society, and chippy small businessmen who complain the government should ' do something' to help them but in the same breath moan about being burdened with too much tax, red tape and political correctness.

Ed Balls and John Denham span the government-line with consummate polish whilst giving the impression that they have no idea about manufacturing industry at all. Alan Sugar (can't bring myself to call him 'Sir Alan' ) was greeted like a celebrity - the people's entrepreneur. In comparison to the oily politicians his bluntness was refreshing although he did lose a bit of credibility when in the Q&A session having berated business for not getting involved with the scheme, he also made it clear he has no idea how it actually operates.

In a similar vein at one of the interminable 'networking' breaks I got talking to some worthy from a housing trust - who had a go at me when I voiced my skepticism about how many apprenticeships and vocational courses actually led to proper skilled jobs - I asked him how many apprentices he had taken on in his organisation - the answer was none.

This is not surprising - the government is some 10,000 places behind its own targets for apprenticeships - and the poorest uptake is in the public sector.

Left Book Club

Saw my parents at the weekend and was surprised to be given my Grandfather's collection of Left Book Club editions. I know little of this Grandfather who died when my own Dad was a boy. I do know he had been a Father Of the Chapel, but I had no idea that he was on the Left, or possibly even a Communist Party sympathizer.

The titles of the books, all from the late 1930's, show the uncritical attitude of many of the Left at that time to the Soviet Union. There's the Webbs' 'Soviet Communism - A New Civilisation', and Sloan's 'Soviet Democracy'. But perhaps Cole's 'The People's Front' best sums up the spirit of the times, when many otherwise independent lefts saw the Soviet Union as the last bulwark against rising Fascism. Almost impossible for our own post cold war generation to imagine.

Hilariously there is also an edition of Orwell's 'Road To Wigan Pier' - with a preface added by Victor Gollancz himself warning readers that the Left Book Club did not necessarily endorse Orwell's views. Particularly his skepticism about the Soviet Union and his criticisms of middle class socialists as 'cranks, pipe-smokers, fruit juice-drinkers and vegetarians' (all still perfectly valid today of course).

Apparently Gollancz refused to publish 'Homage To Catalonia' and subsequently put out a later version of 'Wigan Pier' with the offending sections censored out. To his credit though , following the Nazi-Soviet pact he himself became disillusioned with the CP.

At its peak just before the outbreak of war the Left Book Club had just under 60,000 members paying 2s 6d for a monthly book club choice - politics, economics, history or culture - always in an economy paperback edition with distinctive orange covers.

A fantastic concept that could be revived - without the Stalinism - maybe this time round as an online subscription service ?

Nazi nostalgia

Depressing but maybe not altogether surprising news that the BNP have won a council seat in Swanley in Kent – one of the working class ‘white-flight’ bastions that the fascists target these days.

On a more cheerful note though:

Dame Vera Lynn (she wot won the war for us and all that) has threatened to take legal action against the BNP over the use of her ‘The White Cliffs Of Dover’ on a fund raising album they have produced. Clearly she does share their politics – nor I imagine do the Black or Jewish artists also featured on the compilation.

With typical charm a BNP spokesman had responded:
"She can complain but it is not going to do her any good. We have to raise money for the European election campaign and this is selling very well - a lot of our members like reminiscing about the Second World War. I really don't see why we should take it down, but if she wants to provide us with a really good reason rather than a legal threat we might consider it."

How about this for a reason: When these Nazi fuckwits are reminiscing I wonder if it occurs to them that they were on the OTHER side ?

Nuclear subs near miss

Setting aside the possibility of some horrendous apocalyptic accident, which does take the funny edge off a bit, there is something undeniably comic about but the two nuclear subs in mid-Atlantic.

All the gags have been done about the stealth technology being just a bit too good and of course the obvious danger of the French Triomphant being on the same side of the road as the British Vanguard. So I won't re-visit that now.

But surprisingly nobody seems to have asked the obvious question - what the fuck are these submarines for in the first place ?

The usual arguments about the wonderfully benign roles of military forces in the new world order just don't apply to these levithans :

They can't act as a peace keeping force in regions beset by civil war, they can't deliver humanitarian aid in the even of catastrophe, they can't keep the sea-lanes safe from piracy, they can't conduct a surgical-like regime change, and I even doubt they deter 'rogue states' run by religious mentalists.

But they do apparently cost something like £5 billion each.

Joint Socialist Party & Respect meeting

Friday night I was at the Friends' Meeting House for the joint SP / Respect meeting with Keith Gibson, SP member and one of the Lindsey Oil Refinery Strike Committee, and Jerry Hicks, Respect member and the Left candidate for Unite (Amicus) general secretary. I may be getting a bit long in the tooth to be enthused by meetings - but I went along - and enthused I was. For two reasons:

Firstly because here was that all too rare a thing these days- a victory for an unofficial strike - in spite of the trade union leadership who at best sat on the fence. And a victory in spite of the anti-union laws that the leadership would have us believe are to be treated as sacrosanct. And most importantly a victory that required some skillful intervention to prevent the dispute being hi-jacked by xenophobia and the Rar-Right. A victory that secured jobs on TU rates and conditions for those workers who had been kept off the contract, but, and this needs emphasising, NOT at the expense of the migrant workers' jobs.

Secondly because the meeting provided an also rare taste of what a united Left might look like. Certainly there are still differences between Respect (obviously in its post SWP incarnation) and the SP. But here the two parties came together to make common cause, with the general secretaries of both organisations speaking from the floor in a manner which was at the same time respectful and yet didn't hide their distinct politics.

The same could not be said of some other Left groups . The SWP, Workers' Power and The Sparticists all opposed the strike to varying degrees, on the grounds that it was a reactionary dispute aimed against migrant workers.

Interestingly with one of the strikers on the platform, none of their speakers had the balls to actually call the strikers racists - in fact sickeningly they had to congratulate Keith and the strike committee on their attempts to steer the dispute away from the dangerous slogan of "British Jobs For British Workers".

One London Underground worker from the RMT, representing probably one of the most diverse workplaces in the country, summed up these groups when he said they 'would not recognise a genuine proletarian struggle if it bit them on the arse'.

I was reminded of the miners' strike and those middle class wadicals who were so shocked to discover that the miners might harbour sexist, homophobic or racist attitudes. For such people it's all very well to admire the workers class from afar - like heroic figures in a Soviet poster - but up close they're not quite so comfortable.

There's all sorts of horrible shit attitudes in capitalist society and some of it sticks - even shock horror - to workers in struggle. You can recoil from this and sit on the sidelines ... or you can engage with it and transform it into something else.

Bike pin-ups

Stumbled upon these images on the excellent ArtBiker site. They are the work of a US artist called David Uhl - really evocative of a golden age of motorcycling; combining old-school bikes with the airbrushed pin-up girls of Alberto Vargas.

If I ever fulfill my fantasy of living like Steve McQueen in an old aircraft hanger full of stripped pine and moto-memorabilia then I would definitely want this artwork on the walls.

Thank You NHS

No posts for a while – here’s why:

Ironically after my previous post - I ended up being taken into hospital with a suspected stroke. Thankfully it wasn’t - just a virus of the inner ear that fucked up my balance, which in conjunction with my high blood pressure gave the symptoms of the stroke. Not having seen a doctor fro 15 years I didn’t know about the blood pressure – I do now. So along with all the tests and brain scans I’ve had over the past few days I can take it as a positive that I’ve had a thorough MOT and 10,000 mile service.

In the course of my stay in hospital I have pretty much run the full gamut of emotions from terror to contemplation of the state of the NHS at the sharp end.

At one point when I thought I was having a stroke - and possibly a fatal one at that – I did think it was the end. It’s said that there are no atheists in foxholes – however I can honestly say that isn’t true. As my body felt it was literally about to explode my thoughts were possibly predictable and clichéd but I did not turn to an imaginary maker. I felt that I wasn’t ready to die; I thought about my loved ones (although I also strangely felt overwhelmingly alone at the same time) and I regretted that I hadn’t been a better person, but there was absolutely no spiritual moment for me.

(Interestingly though I can now understand why our ancestors thought that trepanning was a good idea …)

The NHS ? Well I suppose as an emergency medical service it would be grossly ungrateful to say that it was nothing short of superb – the doctors were excellent throughout and I shudder to think at the cost of the CT and MRI scans .

In every other respect though I would have to say the NHS was found desperately wanting: Machines were constantly being borrowed from ward to ward because they were broken and there was no one to mend them. There were simply never enough nurses. I had to wait a stressful three days for my MRI scan, which was actually a mobile unit on a truck trailer in the hospital car park (outsourced from a private health company).

The nurses were ill-equipped in every respect to do their job. Most were committed to doing their best for their patients but still in the main failed them – hemmed in by protocols and working procedures that went out from other industries thirty years ago. The result was endless arguments between themselves as to whose job it was to perform any given task.

Many patients were rude and aggressive to the staff and this attitude was returned, not helped in many cases with language issues and cultural misunderstanding. This creates a vicious circle were it seems that only the stroppy and demanding survive.

Certainly this applied to the vulnerable, the elderly and the confused. In the opposite bed to me I watched an old man with althzhiemer’s die of cancer over the weekend. A sad and lonely way to end a life. The nursing staff could not make his wife understand that this was the end and that she should consider taking him home and so he died alone with little dignity.

Tragedy was then rendered into farce when one of the many teams of doctors attending him turned up the next day only to be told by the next shift of nursing staff that he had been discharged home. Another patient was lost overnight when he went out for a smoke and decided to discharge himself. Rather than call security or call the patient’s family the nurses dithered about for hours and then phoned the junior doctor at home. Another patient managed, though some mis-communication, to go unseen by any doctor for four days.

I still believe that the NHS is the finest achievement of the labour movement.

And to be around an organisation whose sole raison d’etre is to help people as opposed to making money (the word I live in most of the time) is inspiring and a small glimpse of what socialism might look like one day.

There’s a lot wrong with it of course: One of the main activities of all staff, at pretty much every level, seems to be wandering about with handfuls of paper looking for things or people who aren’t there. The manager in me can see that all those things that have transformed most organisations have passed the health service by – flatter hierarchies, more transparency for users (patients), more empowered staff and the liberating effect of information technology for starters.

It’s not just about more money, but more money would be a start. And I know this isn’t original; but we could start talking about reforms when they are collecting for tanks and missiles on street corners rather than kidney machines – or MRI units.

But most of all – I am just ridiculously happy to be alive.

Winter wonderland

A few inches of the white stuff and its the best of times and the worst of times.

A deserted West End. Usually stone-faced commuters talking to each other. Sliding down the middle of empty streets usually packed with traffic. Outside Ronnie Scotts someone made a snowman - complete with a fag in his mouth and a bottle of beer in his hand. And my own favorite sight - two Hari Krishna devotees in Soho Square having a snowball fight in their saffron robes.

On the other hand: On the tube incomprehensible messages of delays and cancellations mumbled through the tannoys and the surly fuck-wit LU platform guy telling passengers to look at a map when they asked for advice about alternative routes . No buses (at all!) and no joined-up thinking between the bus companies, TFL and the local authorities.

Or more seriously when one of our guys collapsed with a suspected stroke at work - the ambulance service after an half hour wait phoning back to tell us to get a cab for him.