Alan Davies' & Teenage Revolution

I've been watching Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution - his autobiographical TV journey through 80's Lefty-hood, from minor public schoolboy to lovable Mockney everyman.

Apart from his truly appalling Jonathon Creek Sunday evening drama-thing, it's hard to really dislike Alan Davies as his heart seems to be more or less in the right place. The ground he covers in revisiting 80's activism is very close to home for me - Maggie Thatch, CND, the Miners' Strike, Wapping, the Poll Tax, Billy Bragg etc ....

But apart from his rather selfish view that the defeat of the Left  wasn't a complete disaster because at least we got alternative comedy, there was something else that really grated on me: The nauseating way he fawned on Kinnock and presented his notorious '85 Labour Conference speech  not as the day when the door was opened to New Labour but as the day Labour rid itself of the stranglehold of the  Left. 

Of course it's a well established point of view, and one that many on the 'Soft Left' did, and still do,hold. But what was truly sickening - and bemusing - was the ease with which Davies switched from fawning over Kinnock to fawning over (ardent SWP member at the time) Mark Steel.  

Anyone who was around in the 80s will recall how passionately the Swoppies disowned the Labour Party at a time when it actually did have a powerful Left-ward magnetic pull. Militant Supporters inside it were dismissed, at best, as confused 'centrists' with illusions in Labour reform-ism. But even at the time bizarrely enough, SWP-ers and non-Marxist Labour Lefts seemed to get along perfectly well on a social basis despite their diametrically opposed ideologies. On the other hand us Militants were generally treated as pariahs by both groups - and the most unlikely of bed-fellows would unite is spitting venom at us. Of course it's  very different now and the SWP's  old accusation that the Labour Party is no place for socialists is actually true - in the same way that even a broken watch will tell the right time twice a day. 

Even so - certainly in our local anti-cuts campaign - the chumminess between SWP-ers and the few remaining Labour Lefts is very noticeable. And this isn't just social - the SWP seem to make a political distinction between the ConDem's cuts programme and its reluctant implementation by   Labour Councils. Most importantly they don't seem to want to antagonise possibly sympathetic  Labour members by calling for councillors to either vote for an 'illegal' needs budget - the only really  viable position against  devastating imposed cuts - or to stand down to make way for representatives who are. I'm genuinely puzzled by this SWP / Labour Left axis -  just as I was in the 80's.

Bon anniversaire

Today is the anniversary of the adoption of the French Revolutionary calendar in 1792 - 1er Vendemiaire. Sweeping away the hodge-podge of old Roman emperor's names and pagan gods the revolutionaries kept to twelve months - each of thirty days - and a decimal ten day week. The names of the months and days were  innocuously based on nature and agriculture to mark the changing seasons. Nowadays only three seem to be remembered: 

Thermidor by foodies because it's a lobster dish

Germinal by literary types because it's a novel by Zola

and 

Brumaire by Marxists - because of Marx's classic study of Louis-Napoleon's seizure of power in 1852.

I'm not sure whether the idea of changing the calendar to mark a new order is  just bonkers or admirable.

It's easy to ridicule the Jacobin's cult of reason and their turning of old churches into 'temples of the supreme being'. But the significance of the break with every whiff  of the old regime went on to inspire later revolutionaries  when the republican calendar was re-adopted by the Communards of 1871. It's a whimsical idea nowadays - and probably has too many dodgy associations with the Khymer Rouge and their own 'year zero'  to ever be taken up seriously again. 

But in an age when medieval religions of various varieties  pose such  a threat to the world, the thought of a little bit less superstition and a little more enlightenment is still an attractive one.

The next generation of reaction

Buried away in the news last week there was a founding conference to set up some sort of UK equivalent to the Tea Party movement.  Drawing on home grown right-wing organizations such as the  sinister and contradictorily named Freedom Association and the Taxpayers' Alliance,  a  US think-tank called 'Freedom Works' is trying to export their brand  of reactionary populism.

So far it looks like they have mainly manged  to attract the young headbangers who are the un-reconstructed Thathcher-ite  heirs to the Federation of Conservative Students' tradition of obnoxious  posturing in '80s.

On the plus side, the very existence of these people gives the lie to Dave-bloody-good-bloke-Cam's 'we're all in it together' new version of  Tory one-nation-ism. Best of all though -  all is right with the world when the bright young things of your enemy look like this ...

Skin

When is a fascination for skin diseases, books bound in human skin, mummified tattoos, icky medical procedures and anatomical illustrations not puerile and voyeuristic ? Apparently when it's a 'multi-disciplinary, multi-media' exhibition for the chattering classes.

I'd been hooked by the posters of the tattoo man and knowing that the exhibition runs out in a week, I thought I should get myself down to the Wellcome Collection's 'Skin' exhibition.

Just looking at body-art alone - its aesthetics, history and anthropology  - would have done it for me, but there are plenty of other stories to tell about skin:  the development of medicine, changing concepts of beauty, ideas of race, attitudes to disability ... The exhibition hinted at some of these  - but didn't actually do any of them justice. Instead we got wax-molded anatomical figures showing disfigurements, pictures of pustules  and  wounds, and old medical teaching videos. All annotated with captions of pseud's corner pretentiousness.

As a fan of the slasher-genre and all things generally tacky and violent I'm not squeamish  or judgmental about this - let's just be honest about it: This is  the stuff of the freak-show at the end of the pier but the chattering classes  and hiptsers wouldn't feel comfortable with that - they prefer an art installation for their kicks.

Roll on the more honest pleasures of the London Tattoo Convention next week...

Pope not welcome

I was still at (Catholic) school when the previous Pope came here in 1982. By that age I was already a convinced atheist and managed to avoid the hysteria whipped up around me. Although at the time I found all that adulation heaped on one man extremely weird and ... well you could say, down-right idolatrous ... at least the whole event was a private Catholic affair. That's to say it was a 'pastoral' visit  - paid for largely by the church and Catholic community in this country. The Pope didn't even meet prime minister Thatcher because of sensitivities over the Falklands War.*

It's very different this time around though  - this is a state visit. 

The pretext of this is the existence of the mickey-mouse Vatican State - an entity of just over 100 acres and just under 1,000 people. It only exists at all because the Pope at the time did a deal in 1929 with the Fascist government of Italy to stay out of each others' affairs. The Holy See - which by some sophistry is not quite the same thing as the Vatican State - is a 'government' without any actual citizens at all,  but whose 'authority' over millions of followers globally supposedly trumps that of democratic nation states.

Because this time it is a state visit the government, the great and the good, will all be queuing up to fawn over the pontiff and press the flesh.  It also means that the £12million bill for the visit is being picked up by me and you. 

Most importantly though the fact that it is a state visit sends out a signal of endorsement by this government  - in our name.

Which is why this time we tax-paying atheist citizens don't have to sit back and let the Catholics get on with their fun. We are fully entitled  to say the Pope is not welcome. And fully entitled to have the 'bad manners' to  mention his opposition to condoms in Aids-stricken Africa; his denial of womens' right to control their own fertility, to his homophobia; his concealment of child abuse in his own organisation; or even his rehabilitation of the reactionary and Nazi-appeasing predecessor Pius XII.

(Not because the Pope saw the Falkland War as a cynical attempt to prop up an unpopular government on a wave of jingo-ism but because the latin-speaking world was largely behind the Argentinians and even Popes know better than to piss on their own doorsteps.)

Winstanley & The World Turned Upside Down

I was going to write something on the anniversary of Gerrard Winstanley's death in 1676 but I see that Dorian Cope has got in first on her excellent blog.

I grew up not that far away from the Digger settlements at Cobham and St George's Hill. In fact as a kid I did a bit of weekend caddying at the St George's Hill golf course. Sadly the site of Winstanley's most famous communal experiment is now a gated private estate and  the golf club is the playground of  reactionary and snobbish arseholes .

The history of the Diggers and their contribution to the English socialist tradition are well documented  - and for the moment I won't add anything more  - but Billy Bragg singing 'The World Turned Upside Down' should tell you enough for now ...

Book burning

In a country where apparently 18% of the people believe erroneously that their president is a Muslim, they would probably be better advised to  concentrate on  reading rather than  burning books.

In principle I much prefer the US's  First Amendment in contrast to our own archaic blasphemy laws in the UK - I see no reason at all why religion should be singled out for exception from ridicule or abuse.  

The notion of  a text being the product of some kind of divine dictation is ludicrous.  In fact  even the most hard-line headbanging fundamentalists of any persuasion at some point have to contextualize their  holy books on linguistic or historical grounds. And  as soon as they do so, they logically open the door to the subversive idea that their religion might just be 'man-made'.

But the problem with burning the Koran - or any other kind of book - is not so much fear that it offends its followers as the fact that it tends to identify the burners as ignorant fuck-wits who lack the ability to tackle it intellectually. Or just xenophobic bigots. Although I suspect though that it was not this that has now inhibited the Pastor Terry Jones from holding a Koran-burning at his Florida church to marked the 9/11 anniversary.

Personally I tend to think there is something in general sacred  about any book- which is why our house is groaning under the weight of a lifetime of never throwing any away. I certainly wouldn't burn anything - not even Mein Kampf .... or a Jeffrey Archer.

70th anniverasry of the London blitz

Looking at Docklands today, with its monstrous corporate buildings and yuppie residences it's hard to imagine it as a teaming industrial and commercial area with dense working class communities - and a battleground where 60,000 were killed.

Like many elderly people my parents are increasingly prone to reminiscing vividly about their childhood. We saw them this weekend - and my daughters' gripes about going back to school for the new term brought on some memories of them being at school during the blitz - and occasionally having  lessons in air raid shelters. 

It's often in the trivia - and humour -  of these reminiscences that the full and shocking gravity of the daily situation that so many  ordinary Londoners faced:

Living at that time in Brockley in South London, the family were right in the bombers' flight path to the  docks. Mum remembers how they found their Anderson shelter damp and claustrophobic so they tended to stay in their house during the raids. But as a river-policeman my granddad had observed that in bombed-out houses the stairs were often left standing -  so my mum was made to sleep in the relative security of the cupboard under the stairs. 

His job meant that, like my firefighter uncle, he would often be on duty in the docks and out in the middle of the bombing - during one raid he would jokingly tell how he  found himself, along with a couple of other burly coppers  taking  instinctive but purely psychological cover when he dived under a flimsy table-tennis table at an aid post.  

Strangely though on the other hand  no family stories have been passed down of the horrors they must have witnessed on a nightly basis...this was the stiff-upper lip generation.

Meat is murder but racism is worse.

I've always been of the view that Morrissey was a tosser.

Frankly the nauseating spectacle of a grown man ridden with adolescent - I'm so sensitive the world doesn't understand me - angst, is enough to earn my distaste. 

But his continuing flirtation with racism takes him beyond merely irritating to positively odious. Already on the record as a Little England-er, his latest outburst described 'the Chinese' as a 'sub-species'  -on the basis of a lack of animal human rights legislation, and  culinary tastes that are less squeamish than in the West when it comes to discriminating between different  animal products.

Let's face it  - there's no shortage of horrors  to hold against the Chinese regime  - but  frankly lack of animal rights would be a long way down the  list - certainly behind  the record on human rights, democracy, capital punishment, or environmental damage (just for starters).

I'm not prejudiced - some of my best friends are vegetarians - but my antenae twitches when I hear animal libbers spouting right wing bollocks.  Just as super-sensitive Morrissey  apparently once cancelled a gig because he could smell meat cooking yet has no trouble describing the largest ethnic group on the planet as sub-human, so Hitler would lecture dinner guests on the disgusting nature of meat-eating whilst planning the holocaust over coffee.

If there is a circle of hell reserved for Morrissey and his like  surely it should involve being chained for eternity to Tony Bourdain.

Troubled Tory boy

It's probably an indication of how un-'liberal' and unreconstructed the Con-Dem coalition really is that William Hague's reaction to being possibly outed was to retort that he is happily married and that his wife has suffered a number of mis-carriages.  It seems that he feels the need to defend the fact that, unlike  that lovely David and Samantha couple, his is not the head of a nuclear-family as prescribed by Tory Central Office. 

Hague has quite possibly had a whole number of  suppressed personal troubles over the years and I wouldn't want to belittle them or play into the hands of the bigoted mob-press... 

... but remembering the nauseating and precocious Thacherite 16 year old, the original Tory Boy with a picture of Maggie on his bedroom wall (by his own admission), I'd say that if anyone deserved to be relentlessly bullied at school it was Hague.

View from a self-loathing (ex) Catholic

Back to blogging after the family holiday:

Catching up on the news in the Sunday papers there seems to be some talk along the lines of 'we're an oppressed minority too' by English Catholics in anticipation of the Pope's visit this month. This not only doesn't wash - it also strikes me as pretty offensive to draw comparisons with Islamo-phobia or antisemitism. A distasteful sort of  me-too-ism when there are real problems facing genuine minority groups.

Catholics in England - and I make the distinction here between England and Scotland or Northern Ireland where ascendant Presbyterian sectarianism has created a very different situation - haven't faced oppression for probably over a hundred years. To be a Catholic in England is now no more than a minor eccentricity with the added bonus of an education system that perpetuates your faith and is subsidised by the state. Any restrictions on marrying into the royal family and succession to the crown are archaic anomalies of our ludicrous pseudo constitution rather than a serious affront to any one's human rights. (In a historic context actually they are fairly understandable given the Church's uncanny  knack of being on the wrong side of most political disputes in this country ever since Pope  Innocent III excommunicated the rebel barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta and then declared the charter 'null and void').

As an ex-Catholic Atheist I can say all this without bitterness - I am not unduly damaged by my religious upbringing - it left me only with a possibly over developed since of 'duty' and guilt and gave me an education that was undeniably better than the equivalent non-faith state school up the road. I'd even argue that it is unfair that the first association in most people's minds with the Catholic Church is paedophilia - statistically I believe priests are no more likely to be abusers than many other groups: The real problem is a more fundamental and universal one that Catholicism simply propagates nonsense that is both dangerous and damaging to society and mankind as a whole.

A sober pause

I'm not big on the rituals of baptisms, weddings and funerals. But on Sunday I attended such an event that stirred some genuine emotion for once:

Some people are so ever-present that they become part of the scenery and  Jamie (Panster) was one of these.

I wouldn't presume to say that I knew him, but he was a familiar face on the local bike scene from before I got into Harleys - at the tea hut, on toy runs, and just generally out and about on his beautiful old machines. And later, once I'd got my first Sportster, we would take a few minutes to chat whenever we bumped into each other - and he patiently helped me out with some sage technical advice.

Inevitably perhaps you take it for  granted that such people will always be around  - so I was more shocked than I could have imagined to hear that Jamie had been killed in an accident on his way to a rally last weekend.

He had requested that his ashes be scattered at the tea hut at High Beech - and this was what happened on Sunday. I can't think of a better resting place - now he will truly be a part of the scenery he loved. 

In all honesty I don't believe in an after-life, and I have no idea what 'RIP' means. But he certainly deserved a few respectful moments to mark his life - and  my thoughts are with all those who knew Panster better than I did.

What's in a name ?

I live in the London Borough of Haringey - it is not a place name that has any great sentimental pull on most of its inhabitants. Most people who live there would probably identify themselves as residents of a more specific and recognisable district - in my case Tottenham.

I would probably go as far as to say that the more artificially contrived  the name of the local government body of an area the less likely people are to identify with it. For example my home town of Staines is now officially the Borough Of Spelthorne - an even more  anodyne and bland name choice.

The rationale behind these place names is not really historic or geographic but political. They both revive some fairly obscure historic connections  - Haering  was a Saxon chief who gave his name to the district of Harringay which confusingly is just a very small part of Haringey and Spelthorne was a hundred recorded in the Doomsday book. In other words these names may mean  bugger-all to the inhabitants for generations but they don't actually offend anyone or stir up any local rivalries.

Strangely, although  the  suburb where I grew up feels  a world away from the inner city borough I now live in , both are part of the same historic  county of Middlesex. So purely by coincidence  and in a theoretical sense only, I've spent almost all of my life there - despite the fact that the county hasn't existed as a local government entity since 1964 - just before I was born. But it did  live on  as an optional postal address -  however the final nail in Middlesex's coffin has been driven  in now that  it has just been announced that the Post Office is going to remove counties from postal addresses.

Over the years my 'homeland' has been messed about with quite a bit as far as local government goes - at various times it has  been:

• The land of the Trinovantes (the pre-Roman tribal area)

• Camulodunum / Londinium (under the Romans)

• Maxima Caesariensis (the Late Roman province)

• Middlesex (land of the Middle Saxons)

• Essex  (transferred following Saxon internecine wars)

• Mercia (transferred again to avoid being taken into the Danelaw)

• Then back to Middlesex for  nine centuries or so ...

• Until in  1889 when  the metropolitan bit was hived off to become  the County of London ...which in 1964 was re-branded as Greater London, with the remaining bits  of Midldlesex parceled out to neighbouring Surrey and Hertfordshire.

In these days when local government is the main deliverer and consequently now the main cutter of public services there are unquestionably far more important issues to get worked up about than place names.

But in fact the two things are not unconnected - it comes down to  entitlement, accountability and democracy - and people feeling that an area belongs to them. Names are political and can be manipulated to change how people feel about them. Just think of the ever changing names for our main welfare state body in recent years - the DHSS, the DSS, the DWP  -  all bureaucratic nonsense perhaps -  but also an effective  and cynical tactic to make these bodies appear more obscure and less readily defended by the people that need them.

Right on Tony

A working class hero is something to be - and unfortunately Tony Benn isn't. But without a doubt, outside of  small introspective activist circles, he's the most universally respected and authentic voice on the Left.

The statement he has issued today  offers nothing  that hasn't already been said before -  but it still puts everyone else in the Labour Party to shame. So much so, it's worth repeating in full here:

'It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government's budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services.
The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers' profligacy. The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.
Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors.
We reject this malicious vandalism and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative, with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries.
This government of millionaires says "we're all in it together" and "there is no alternative". But, for the wealthy, corporation tax is being cut, the bank levy is a pittance, and top salaries and bonuses have already been restored to pre-crash levels.
An alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control, and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich, plugging tax loopholes, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abolishing the nuclear "deterrent" by cancelling the Trident replacement.
An alternative strategy could use these resources to: support welfare; develop homes, schools, and hospitals; and foster a green approach to public spending – investing in renewable energy and public transport, thereby creating a million jobs.
We commit ourselves to:
• Oppose cuts and privatisation in our workplaces, community and welfare services.
• Fight rising unemployment and support organisations of unemployed people.
• Develop and support an alternative programme for economic and social recovery.
• Oppose all proposals to "solve" the crisis through racism and other forms of scapegoating.
• Liaise closely with similar opposition movements in other countries.
• Organise information, meetings, conferences, marches and demonstrations.
• Support the development of a national co-ordinating coalition of resistance.
We urge those who support this statement to attend the Organising Conference on 27 November 2010 (10am-5pm), at Camden Centre, Town Hall, London, WC1H 9JE.

Signed:
Tony Benn
 

Relaxing not killing

I've got a lot of time for Benjamin Zephaniah - but I have to say that in  one of the captions for his  photo-story in The Guardian today illustrating a recent trip to China, he reinforces a cliche about the martial arts:   

'I checked myself into a kung fu/t’ai chi school for two weeks. People in the west perceive t’ai chi to be a gentle form of exercise – what they don’t realise is it’s a deadly martial art. This girl is 15 and a t’ai chi master – she could kill someone within a moment if she wanted to...'

It's all been said before... technique triumphs over force, what appears gentle actually kicks ass, blah blah blah. We all know the potential for maximizing the effectiveness of physical violence so how about a different take ? :

'These guys are the best of friends and they're really just having fun together. One is a scholar and the other a successful businessman much-respected in his community.  Their training helps  maintain their mental health when coping with the stresses of daily life. They don't want to kill anybody':

The power of a pantone reference

In my industry - 'pre-press' - we used to describe ourselves, rather archaically and ungrammatically as being part of 'the print'. Sometime in the 90's when Apple Macs replaced paste-up and PDFs replaced film colour-separations we slipped into becoming a part (sort of) of the design industry.

So increasingly  I've come to understand how real designers like to distance themselves from the commercial consequences of their actions: Look in the coffee shops of Hoxton where all those young creatives have a copy of Noami Klien's No Logo in their messenger bags next to the latest Mac laptop. They're grabbing an over-priced Americano before returning to the studio to knock out another piece of work for some brand that's getting fat on the sweat of off-shored labour somewhere.

Here in London, today is the launch of the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme. As has been said elsewhere it is probably going to turn into the most all-pervasive corporate branding deal we've ever seen. From a professional point of view I can't help noticing that the colour of the  branding that  appears all over the West End is that old favourite 'Pantone Process Cyan'.  

Conveniently  Barclays' corporate blue was there all along in TFL's own corporate colour palette. Was that convenience or conspiracy ? And what came first the branding or the deal ? Did the whole sponsorship/partnership spring from the mind of an executive with a design background ?

Sometimes I wish I wasn't associated with design - and its bastard offspring of branding - and that I could just get back to being 'in the print'.

Small but necessary beginnings

Went to the meeting of our new local anti-public sector cuts alliance last night:

There's talk of these alliances mushrooming into a movement to re-energize the Left - and  analogies are being made with the anti-poll tax movement of 20 years ago. Maybe. I hope so.

It's a fairly modest start at the moment but it's easy to forget that there was a definite period of 'phoney-war' before the anti-poll tax unions took off. And  that there were distinct differences of opinion - over non-collection by council workers, or a boycott of non-registration, until the clear non-payment platform emerged. Even then it wasn't until the court summons were going out and ballifs were calling that the movement really spread beyond the usual activist suspects. 

I imagine it may well be the same this time around. This is complicated by what has been done to the public sector since the last recession - the insidious and diluting rise of quangos, agencies and voluntary sector bodies has made it harder to  see where the services are actually coming from. And there's no denying the ideological triumph of private good / public bad' that has conned a layer  of working class people into being turkeys looking forward to Christmas.

But these complicating factors are eclipsed by the simple truth that inner city areas like my own, with industries long gone and a crumbling and overwhelmed social infrastructure, need public services. Desperately. Taking away what is already inadequate could just  be lighting the touch-paper that ignites a movement.

Until that happens it will be a case of patiently laying the ground work and getting the structures of resistance prepared - much as it was in the early days of the poll tax. This isn't necessarily going to be easy - if TUSC was euphemistically called 'a fragile coalition' - then this could be doubly so.

Even last night I saw Labour Lefts who were upset every time it was mentioned that it was a Labour council who would be administering the cuts, anarchists who were strong on community networks but flinched at the idea of a trade union sponsored conference, and of course enthusiastic Swoppies who  everyone else suspects will hang around  only until a better offer comes along from another campaign.

Maybe it's just  a case of keeping this hanging together for a few months - events have a knack of overtaking everything else...    

Cop-killer v killer-cop

I'm struck by the ironic juxtaposition of the Raoul Moat case and the refusal to prosecute PC Simon Harwood - the killer of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 demo:

Raoul Moat was enraged with a grudge against the police - hence the  unprecedented mobilisation of armed police to hunt him down in the almost farcical replay of 'Rambo - First Blood' that obsessed the nation for  a few days. (Although  as events unfolded I couldn't help noticing that the same newspapers carried footnote stories of more 'expendable' inner-city youths stabbed in  parts of the country where the crack police units and their media entourage conspicuously weren't).

On the other hand PC Harwood gets a free pass from the CPS,  despite  being so psyched-up and spoiling for a fight that he assaulted an innocent by-stander who wasn't even on the demo he was supposed to be policing.  

And despite having all this captured on camera - and witnessed all over the world - there apparently isn't even a case to answer. Nor has there ever been for any other police officer in this country who has  killed a member of the public.

Sleepless sportster owner seeks fix

I'm prone to insomnia at the best of times. These muggy Summer nights don't help. But I'm also somewhat obsessive about my bikes - if one isn't working it gnaws away at me in the small hours. 

Following the 10,000 mile service on my grey bike it was running sweetly and I thought I'd treat it to a bit of TLC. A thorough clean (that doesn't happen often) and a bit of cosmetic tinkering - including re-locating the tacho. And then when I came to fire it up in the evening -  nothing. A quick check showed no spark at the plugs. Fuck-ety Fuck  Fuck -  I hate electrics.

Seat off, tank off, check all connections, spray them all with WD40 - still nothing. Get out the multimeter and the service manual and pretend that I know what I'm doing. There's power getting to the coil but still no spark. Maybe's there's water in the coil from where I washed it. Leave it overnight - but still no spark in the morning. In the evening  start looking at replacement coils on ebay. Go to bed - can't sleep.

Then it comes to me. What happened in between it sparking and not sparking ? I'd only been thinking of washing it and the possible introduction of water somewhere it didn't belong. But I'd moved the tacho' too - what if something was wrong there ? It's an electronic item so it is linked into the bike's main circuit - could a short there trip the ignition ? I'd like to say that I checked the wiring diagram but I have to say that I tend to find these as useful as hieroglyphics. But I do remember the Sherlock Holmes axiom though: 'when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'.

So  I got up early in the morning. Took the tacho apart. Put it back together. Flicked the starter - and bingo. Fuck yeah - I can't recall being so pleased with myself for a long while... then I remembered that it was my own  initial cock up that had caused the  problem in the first place.

Multi-culturalism up close ?

The other day we were invited to a family barbecue party. The couple hosting it are a 'mixed marriage' - he's Jamaican and she's Bengali. Both cultures big on extended family and hospitality - hence a large party with lots of kids playing on a water slide in the garden - and mountains of great food brought by the guests. And also two cultures superficially on an apparent  collision course: The Jamaicans  loud and extrovert - the women colourful in skimpy summer finery. The Begalis decidedly quieter -  separating into distinct pockets of men and women - with the latter dressed in varying degrees of modest Islamic dress. But in fact  just  enjoying a bit of rare sunshine, tucking into the food and watching the kids enjoying themselves managed to  cut across any divisions and everyone just got on with having a good time.

This is what multi-culturalism looks like in practice and it's such a typical everyday scene in most parts of London that I wouldn't ordinarily even bother to mention it. But then this weekend I see that some   of the Sunday tabloids were cheering on the French ban on the hijab - and claiming that there is a consensus to follow suit in this country (presumably following a quick straw-poll taken from the regulars at the 'Racist's Arms' somewhere in Middle-England-shire). 

Personally I feel pretty strongly that religion - in all its forms -  is mad, bad and often both.  But I'd challenge anybody who advocates any sort of state  ban on its expression - whether a racist bigot fretting over the erosion of 'English-ness' or a crusading secularist liberal - to come and spend a sunny weekend in North London and enjoy a dose of simple live-and-let-live. No apologies  if that sounds soppy and naive; the consequences of living any other way just don't bear thinking about ...

Raoul Moat - rogue male ?

The Rauol Moat saga continues. Pop psychology/sociology would have it that the bizarre solidarity shown for him in death (30,000 fans on Facebook and piles of tribute wreaths) taps into some kind of alienation of an emasculated white working class. I find this deeply depressing. 

In fairness no one with a healthy distrust of authority couldn't help, initially at least, to see the funny side of hundreds of paramilitary keystone cops failing to find a lone nutter hiding in a small area they had thoroughly surrounded. But then as Moat's  back-story emerged other reactions took over: On the one hand, displaying a-sinking-of-the-Bellgrano-like sensitivity the red-tops reacted to Moat's death with triumphant 'Got Him' headlines - as if a rabid dog had been dispatched. And on the other hand the myth-making started in certain quarters as Moat emerged as an everyman folk hero.

But the whole point of the myth of the romantic outlaw (and it's the myth that matters here) - be it  Robin Hood or Jesse James -  is built upon the idea of the home-loving, peace-loving man who is forced to take up the sword in pursuit of righting some perceived injustice. Moat -  a  bullying inadequate, self-pitying and misogynistic, a wannabe fantasist obsessed with weapons and body-building, with a revenge psychosis fed on a steroid addiction, and  a record of domestic abuse including an attack on a nine year old girl - hardly belongs in this pantheon of folk heroes.

The argument that he was  a victim of a syndrome affecting the post-industrial working class male who has lost his role in society, or some kind of metaphor for our  times, belittles the vast majority of ordinary men who  struggle to find their way through economic and personal hardship, suck it up  and just try to do the right thing. Without attacking their loved ones or any other innocent who happens to cross their path. And it's these working class men - and women - not middle class liberals, who have to share the same estates and town centres on a Saturday night with violent  lumpen-ised nutters like Moat.

It's not every man that can live off the land*

I took a day off for what has become my annual pilgrimage to the Fens - it's our version of  vast open spaces and big skies in this little country: A bit of an overhaul for the 'grey bike' and a chance to catch up with my  friends who have swapped their inner-city custom bike shop for a small-holding up there.

  

My friends aren't unique - there's a whole little economy  of small-holders, making a living by trading with each other, supplemented by  odd bits of casual work  (such as working on Harleys). They also support each other - one of their neighbours  was hit by a car whilst I was there -  and everyone was rallying around to help tend his animals whilst he was act of action. 

You could call it a  kind of localised communalism or mutual self-help. It's not necessarily about hippies or townies fleeing to the country. Most of them seem to be ordinary people with connections to the area - possibly returning after some time away  - or after farming has skipped a generation in the family. They are not middle class drop-outs like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  They just want to promote a traditional way of life and do something 'real'.

There's  an ideology that goes with this that's suspicious of big business, mass production and factory farming and  promotes local small producers, 'real' products and low-intensity agriculture. The Fens is an area where cheap Eastern European casual labour in agri-industry is well established so it could easily be  xenophobic or racist -  but actually it isn't. Animosity is mainly directed at the supermarkets who are forcing the race to the bottom. There's  a  definite disdain though for a generation of 'native' locals who are prepared to go along with this, and lack the gumption to do something for themselves.

It's not a lifestyle  for everyone. Politically it isn't a viable alternative on any meaningful scale to the rat race. But  I'm damn sure that my friends get more satisfaction from their work than I am getting from mine at the moment. 

* Every time I visit I'm reminded of the scene in Easyrider when they stop over at farm to fix a puncture and share a meal with the family. Wyatt turns to the farmer and says: 'It's not every man that can live off the land, you know. You do your own thing in your own time. You should be proud'.

Dated but still true

I found myself staying up last night to watch BBC4's documentary 'To Kill A Mockingbird Turns 50' - followed by the 1962 film version of the book. I hadn't seen it or read it for many years - becoming a standard text in schools or featuring in  lists of 'must reads' is a death sentence for any book: 

My memories of the film (and the story itself) are of of it being very dated: The brutality of Southern segregation undeniably  sanitised for genteel consumption - very much anti-racism through the lens of the white middle class.  I'm pretty confident that history shows that justice - social or racial - doesn't come through benevolence  or enlightenment but from struggle and self-emancipation.

But emotionally, the simple message of the humanitarian need for empathy cuts across this sophistication. On a practical daily basis, when forced to rub along with every kind of -ism, small-mindedness and ignorance you keep coming back to the simple wisdom of Atticus  Finch; You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Which is why an old cynic like me found himself slightly choked up at an old black-and-white film in the small hours of the morning.

'Leave them kids alone...'

There's been a regime change at my daughters' school. Dressed up in modern management speak about 'outcomes' and 'milestones' it seems to be a profoundly reactionary attempt to turn educational values back thirty years. Most visibly evident in a new uniform code that requires pupils to wear blazers and staff to wear 'smart office dress'.

Rather more sinister though is the creation of a biometric database of the pupils. To allow cash-less payment for meals in the school canteen. For fuck's sake! Whatever happened to 'dinner money' ? Or, if the intention was to save the humiliation of those pupils who get free school meals - then how about a pre-paid swipe card system ?

As I get older I get more paranoid about the creeping pervasiveness of authority's surveillance and control. Collecting and digitizing kids' fingerprints to create a database  suggests a normalisation of this kind of thing under the guise of a seemingly  innocuous pretext. In a couple of years we will probably next see an introduction of RFID tagging of pupils on the grounds of monitoring their  health and safety. 

Education has always had a large component of socialisation  - and it seems that kids are now being conditioned in their formative years to accept the Big Brother state. 

Judging by the small minority of parents who have opted to take their kids out of the scheme it looks depressingly like that sinister shit is working.

Getting to play god.

I've had a week or so in the position - which I still find bizarre - of being a 'grown-up boss': I have been recruiting a couple of new junior staff. In a small-ish business like ours  this is very much a one-person job without much formal process. It's also something of an eye-opener.

Unless you are a completely cold bastard it's impossible not to feel a paternalistic glow when offering someone a job that will give them the first foot on the ladder of their chosen career. Or equally -  feeling awful when you  have to dash others' hopes with a rejection. 

In reality it's often only a very precariously narrow thread that divides the two. It's inescapably a buyer's market at the moment. From an overwhelming field of qualified  and deserving candidates, you inevitably start making decisions by weeding out the badly laid-out CVs and the spelling mistakes in covering letters. (Although given that we are a graphics arts business that's not quite as arbitrary and heartless as it sounds).

And when you do get to the short-list for interview - at which point, given that this is a first job position there is pretty much a level playing field - you inevitably  fall back on choosing  the people you like best:  My own prejudices are not sexist or racist, but they do  favour people who I think are quirky and not boring - people who dress with a bit of individualism or display interesting tattoos - or better still people who are into any of my own extra-curricula interests.

Worse still, a sad reflection of the present economic climate, and the state of my own industry, is that the only objective criteria of differentiation is often the number and variety of unpaid internships that these candidates have undertaken.

In all this I'm always  very conscious that my own 'career' (for what's it worth) has hung off a few lucky breaks and twists of fate. And having kids of my own I'm very conscious that theirs' will too. But I have nothing to offer on any of this - you just try to do the right thing in the context of what is in front of you. 

It's depressing to reflect on how much talent is wasted and how many lives never get the chances they deserve. And if you don't stop and ponder that once in a while then you're well on the way to becoming just another arsehole-cog in the capitalist machine.

World Cup Madness

I'm confused:

I'm groaning inwardly as I look around me at my workmates: St George's flags everywhere, grown men in replica team shirts, and that endless talk about whether E-N-G-E-R-L-A-N-D can salvage something of the spirit of '66. I'm not sure if it's simply nationalism or a form of tribalism and psychological displacement  that enables the terminally un-athletic to refer to 'their' team  as 'us'.

But then again I find myself bristling  with class solidarity when I read the condescending smugness of the Guardianistas looking down their liberal middle class noses as the 'false conscious' of those masses who can get so excited about what is after 'only a game'. For fuck's sake lighten up - its no wonder that  much of the Left are so alienated from the working class.

Footy (or soccer) isn't my game. But I can appreciate the passion and the drama of it. I can even sometimes appreciate the beauty of it when Brazil are at their best - although that does seem to be a completely different sport from the one that England play.

Just like Finchley ?*

The findings of the Saville report published today only confirm what should have been known all along - that this was an act of military repression against unarmed civilians. 

It's real significance lies  not in these  conclusions but in the reactions that it still provokes from unionists and apologists for the British authorities: That it was a 'waste of money' or that it should be set against attacks on the British army - particularly the Warren Point shootings - in a tit-for-tat manner. They show as little understanding now as they did at the time.

Unlike many people brought up as Catholics in this country, I am not of predominately Irish descent (one great-grandmother from County Leitrim). So  I didn't grow up on a diet of nationalist songs or tales about the 'boys back home' - although history O level at my school - taught by a priest - did spend a disproportionate time on Parnell and Home Rule, and prayers were offered for the Maze hunger strikers.

It wasn't really until I developed socialist ideas  that I came to understand  the injustices perpetrated in the name of British people in Northern Ireland. And that nationalism wasn't an abstract sentimentality but was inextricably linked to day-to-day struggles for employment and housing. 

And there lies the powerful significance of Bloody Sunday  - then and now - this wasn't a march commemorating some distant historical event or a tribal sense of communal pride - this was a march for civil rights. And those killed were very ordinary - and largely very young - working class people facing the full force of the state.

* Thatcher notoriously  claimed in 1981 that 'Northern Ireland was as British as Finchley'.

Henry Vane The Younger

Continuing the occasional series of anniversaries of  slightly more obscure characters and events from the English Civil Wars:

Today is the anniversary of the execution in 1662 of Sir Henry Vane the Younger. To be honest it's not so much his life as his death that  I find most admirable:

He certainly doesn't really belong in the radical-pantheon of proto-democrats and socialists. In the Leveller disputes  he definitely took  the side of the men of property. He should be categorized as a patrician-republican in a similar vein to Arthur Hesilredge. Characterized by his belief in religious tolerance and the supremacy of parliament over the army, he belonged to  neither the Presbyterian  nor Army factions.  Consequently he followed a precariously independent path during the Republic and Protectorate.

With the restoration of the monarchy he was not initially targeted for retribution like so many leading parliamentarians. Essentially a 'moderate', Vane had actually refused to take part in the king's trial and  sentencing, but even so, the 'not-so merry monarch'  Charles II simply  deemed him 'too dangerous a man to be allowed to live'. 

At his execution he was noted for his calmness in delivering a long speech justifying his actions and those of the Republic. He also warned the axe-man to take care not to inflame the pain he was experiencing from a particularly large boil on his neck.

Vane is also thought to have probably had the distinction of coining the phrase 'The Good Old Cause' -  the rallying call for generations of radicals evoking the memory of the heady days of the English Republic.

The lonely musings of the long distance commercial traveller.

Back in the days when I was a studio manager I was virtually welded to my desk. I would regularly work a 12hour shift and felt that I couldn’t be away from the studio for much longer than it took to get a sandwich or I would loose control of what was going on. 

This was probably bollocks – but the thought of running my own diary and swanning around to meetings would have been a fantasy then. Nowadays it’s a curse – and I’ve just come to the end of a fortnight particularly dominated by having to doing it.   

But happily  ‘business travel’ is still far from typical of what I generally do and so has enough of a novelty to make me stop and think:

One trip was to Zurich, to pitch our services to a US owned multinational. Between the airport, the railway station, and the anonymous corporate HQ, I had no sense of actually being in Switzerland – or anywhere else specific for that matter. Staffed by shiny-eyed young aspiring execu-types drawn from across Europe and the US this was truly big business transcending nationality.

Another was to Thessaloniki to do a press pass on behalf of one of our clients - at least a  chance to use my technical skill rather than mere corporate whoring. I got only glimpses of the economic crisis in Greece. Lots of anarchist graffiti – a cab driver who suddenly became much more friendly when he discovered that I wasn’t German (for some reason I’m often mistaken for a German) – and a heavy riot police presence guarding some event at a conference centre. Staying at a typically ‘international’ business hotel didn’t really broaden my experience. Nor did my attempt to get a bit of culture in my downtime – the ancient city with all its associations with Alexander The Great and the Byzantines seems to have been rebuilt as an extensive shopping mall by the sea complete with Starbucks and GAP.

Strangely  the only trip in the past two weeks that actually made me think was to Blackburn, to pitch to a long established local business – one of the few still going up there.

I was shocked by the overwhelming post-industrial grimness of the town. Boarded-up shops, derelict factories, and significantly intact  BNP posters that anywhere else would have been defaced. It’s certainly not that I live a sheltered life – by any measurement my hometown of Tottenham is one of the poorest in the country. But even the most deprived parts of London have a certain life and vibrancy to them. In Blackburn there seemed to be a sense of hopelessness – from the Asian cabbie who took me to my meeting and regretted leaving his shop in Southall to join his family up here twenty years ago and now couldn’t afford to move out - to the white cabbie who took me back  - and jovially moaned about the ‘fooking pakis’ all the way. 

I suppose I really knew it already – but it was a reminder that London and the rest of England are very different places.

John McDonnell. Bad taste old boy ...

Poor old John McDonnell - what little chance he had to be a serious contender for the Labour leadership was probably scuppered by his gag at the GMB hustings about going back in a time machine to assassinate Thatcher. It's not a great gag maybe  but it's an honest reaction probably shared by any socialist  who has lived through the Thatcher years, the Blairite betrayal and is now thinking 'here we go again' with the ConDems. Actually I suspect quite a few people will think that  a bit of passion and honesty makes a refreshing change from politeness and spin.

I remember a similar tumble-weed moment when I was on a Labour Students executive dominated by Clause4 / Democratic Left types (remember them  - they eventually morphed into the fresh-faced Blairites of '97 ?).

This was at the time of the IRA's Brighton bombing: At an  executive meeting one of these characters said we should put something out about the bombing and Thacher's narrow escape. Me -  being sensible for once -  said well yes obviously it was tempting and would be funny and all that -  but we should be careful about  how it might be perceived. Cue shocked faces all around and an awkward tumble-weed moment....

Whilst we're on the subject  -  I wonder how long it will be before it is considered acceptable for history students to speculate what would Britain have looked like if the bombing had succeeded ? 

It's just a thought of course  - I'm not implying anything - obviously that would be in poor taste ..

Fight for your right to party ?

My daughter wanted to go on the Gaza demo this weekend. Remembering the demos from last year I wasn't too keen on her going on her own. I felt a bit bad about this - I went off on plenty of demos when I was her age - although back in those days the police hadn't become the twitchy rottweillers they seem to be now. I then felt worse when I heard that the Gazza protest had passed off without incident.

Then I head about this - a water-fight arranged for a hot afternoon in Hyde Park by some kids on Facebook. Perhaps disappointed by the lack of action at the Israeli embassy the  neathanderal coppers decided to treat the party as if it were a riot.

History subverts religious nonsense

I can't understand  parents who bemoan their kids growing up. One of the biggest joys of being a parent is watching them figuring out the world for themselves. We had one of those impromptu family discussions in our house yesterday prompted by one of those delightfully innocent questions that cuts through all the bullshit of the polite grown up world - just why do religious people believe such obvious nonsense ?

I should explain that our kids have grown up in a thoroughly free-thinking household - but at their school they seem to be  largely  surrounded by friends who are either practicing Muslims of varying degrees of orthodoxy, or Evangelical Christians.  Either way - happily my kids genuinely struggle to comprehend the barminess of their friends' beliefs - both in  theory and practice - whether it's the concept of an imminent apocolypse and the bodily resurrection of our ancestors, or having at all costs  to cover your hair and not consume shellfish. 

We can try  to explain it to them in terms of psychology - religion gives people comfort, or in terms of sociology - it affirms people's cultural identity.  But on  a purely abstract level, having encouraged the application of reason in  every other aspect of their education, it's very difficult to explain religious belief in terms of anything else other than  wanton stupidity and simple superstition.

However I've found help  in the unlikeliest of places -  the BBC's 'History Of The World in 100 Objects' -  this week they have been looking at the rise of the major world religions. They do so in terms of power - both political and economic. The 15 minutes a day programmes chart why the big four religions we are stuck with today triumphed over other local 'pagan' religions. And clearly slow that was not because they were any more intellectually vigorous or morally superior, but because they won by  military conquest (Islam), or by providing the fabric of empire (Christianity and Hinduism) or by trade networks (Buddhism). Maybe the disciples of the Flying Spaghetti Monster were just less fortunate in their historical breaks.

Wallpaper and revolution

I am trying  my best to resist gracefully slipping into middle age. But my parents, with good intentions knowing my taste for history, recently gave myself and Mrs Journeyman a present of National Trust membership: I felt that I had finally become a card-carrying member of the tea-shop frequenting, garden viewing, beige wearing ranks of geriatric Middle England.

One of the first uses of our membership was visiting William Morris' Red House in Bexley Heath over the bank holiday weekend. The visit was a perfect example of the 'twee-ification' of history rendered by the National Trust to suit the bland palette of its constituency and demographic.

The house is of course very nice to look at. As are the well-tended gardens and the cafe in the coach house where 'light refreshments' are served. The terribly posh and earnest guide talked with passion about the architecture, the  hand-printed arts-and-craft wallpaper, and the neo-medieval frescos Morris had painted in the house. But managed at the same time to say virtually nothing about who Morris was or what he was about.

Nothing at all about his status as one of the unsung homegrown pioneers of English Socialism. Or the fact that the wallpaper and the frescos were an intrinsic part of a personal evolution that led to his disillusion with capitalism and adoption of revolutionary socialism. Or his sadness and frustration at the irony that the products of his design and manufacturing business could only be afforded by the middle classes .

I can guess how he would feel about the reproductions being sold in the gift shop. If nothing else I was inspired to dig out my copy of EP Thompson's biography of Morris.