'Some day our prince will come' ?

Like many other sane people I'm groaning under the weight of the media frenzy surrounding the marriage of William Windsor and Kate Middleton.

I find myself reaching for the calendar to remind myself that - yes it is really 2011 and still we are having to endure this monarchic nonsense. But on reflection there is a fairly recent new twist to this reincarnation of the people's princess: 

Previous royal-worshipping has been underpinned by deference and difference. They might display an occasional  condescending/endearing 'common touch' but ultimately the message is that the royals are simply better than the likes of you and me.  This time around though the message is that Kate is actually just like us. You know the sort of thing - her great grand-father was a miner and she's the ultimate girl next door (assuming you live in a fucking big house in Berkshire). 

Consequently her social trajectory is being portrayed as the ultimate evidence of an open society and the fulfilment of  some sort of American dream played in tweed and pearls.

In different ways the issue of social mobility has popped up in a few recent posts. In particular how  the most meaningful vehicle for social mobility - universally accessible free education to the highest level the individual is capable of attaining - is now being denied.  

In that context the whole  Middleton-phenomena is quite significant. It draws a line under the meritocratic mythology of the post-war boom - of working class boys done good through their own efforts and abilities - whether it was the grammar school technocrats of the Wilson era or  the cheeky geezers of swinging London. In it's place we have a return to the Cinderella story of the poor working  girl who becomes a princess.  

Of course having aspirational parents who own a successful business, a £1 million property in the shires, and being hockey captain at £30,000 a year Marlborogh College does give a girl a bit of a head start...

Clerkenwell crafts - nostalgia and melancholy

A really nice glimpse into a world of craftsmanship in Clerkenwell  today over at one of my favourite blogs.

My first job 'in the print' was in Clerkenwell. When I describe it to people now I am conscious that it sounds like something from the 1500's - in fact it was only the late '80s. I was  a production junior in pre press - having done a short course at the then London College of Printing - it was a backdoor route into the trade and the possession of that precious union card at a time when four year appenticeships were the norm and graduates virtually unheard of.

The first couple of years I spent in a small trade house was a fantastic education. My duties were general dogs-bodying around the studio and no small part of this was being a runner dropping off and collecting work around the small concentrated area of tenement-style buildings behind the Clerkenwell Road . These buildings were a warren of small businesses often with only half a dozen guys occupying  a single room and  engaged in  some very specific operation in the spectrum of arcane crafts that made up the 'print'. We were a lithographic planning/plate-making house - and that was all we did - so  a typical project would require me to scuttle back and forth from  the scanning house around the corner, the cromalin company next door, the wet proofers in the basement and the typesetters at the end of the street.

Thinking about it now I have no idea of how costs were recorded or even who was working for who - the client / supplier relationship would oscillate between different projects - often several times a day. It wasn't really clear either who was the management - most of the businesses were owned by one or two working managers who themselves were hands-on or 'on the bench'. Everybody seemed to have worked with - or for - everyone else at some point. And everyone of course was in 'the union'. In fact the union acted as part HR department and part recruitment agency - the officials were usually of the same generation as the working owners and they colluded in  placing their old mates in the best jobs. This was the age of the 'green list' and 'white card' when vacancies in other houses were only advertised by the union, from which you had to get a permission slip in order to go for an interview - to be presented to the Father Of Chapel before you spoke to  a prospective employer.

I'm almost getting dewy-eyed as I type all this - but of course the reality was a far cry from some sort of workers-controlled halcyon age. The system was rife was nepotism and corruption and a self-perpetuated  clique that kept out outsiders - particularly women and minorities - and a culture of bullying apprentices / juniors was almost institutionalised. But for centuries it created a layer of affluent skilled workers who took immense pride in what they did and didn't take too much shit from anyone. I feel privileged to have been a small part of that world for the last decade of its existence. By the mid '90s Thatcher, Murdoch and the Apple Mac had effectively killed it off. Some of us are still going having reinvented ourselves several times over in a digital age and shrouded ourselves in the bullshit of the 'creative industries'.

I suppose we are still a privileged little world - as working environments go it is probably better than most and a damn site better than the service industries and soulless white-collar jobs that nowadays  are the norm. But I can't helping thinking that nearly all those things that first drew me to it are now a part of history. And whilst there might be a whole lot of  renewal currently going on in  Clerkenwell, I did notice the other week  that the workshop where my first company was is now a gastro-bar packed with media-lovies...

War by other means

The anniversary of the first man in space - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin - is being celebrated not just by nostalgic  Stalinists but also in some unlikely places - with praise for Gagarin's proletarian origins or with wonder at the achievements of a 'planned ecomony'(albeit in a deformed workers' state).

But I just can't bring myself to join in this romantic view of the desire to 'boldy  go where no man has gone before'. Because you can't separate space exploration from the political context any more than you can detach adventures in the  exploration of the 'dark continet' from the brutality of the race for empire. As imperialism goes it doesn't get much more distasteful that the cold-war-by-other-means that was represented by the space race - culminating in the ultimate absurdity of sticking the stars and stripes in the moons surface and then going home again.

The thought that this represented some sort of pinnacle of  human achievement when at the same time as it was rushing to the stars, the Soviet Union was sending its own people to the gulags - or  the United States was busy  bombing an impoverished ex-colonial nation 'back into the stone age' -  is all rather obscene. 

As far as Yuri Gagarin  himself goes - by all accounts was a lovely chap from humble origins - but at the risk of repeating previous posts I'm afraid social mobility is no more evidence of social progress in space than it is here on earth.

Young bullshit detectors

Owing no doubt to the large number of evangelical churches in my neck of the woods I have come  to accept the sight of people wandering around the streets clutching bibles like security blankets. 

Stepping back for a moment this is actually quite bizarre. I mean  they can't all be on their way to and from church and I can't imagine many real life scenarios in North London which require instant access to the surreal guidance of a holy book. To be fair though may be I underestimate the practicality of some of the seemingly crazy-shit advice such as this gem from Deuteronomy: 'If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity'.

It says something about my reaction to my own religious background that -  in a house groaning under the weight of books - until last week we didn't have a copy of the bible. 

Unlike myself, my kids have been brought up as freethinkers (and I use that old-fashioned term intentionally). So when my eldest asked if she could have a bible I didn't feel too concerned or threatened - she is of that age now when some of her friends are 'finding' religion and was just intrigued to check out what the attraction was.  Ironically through her friends she was probably better informed about Islam than she was about Christianity. So last time I visited my parents I borrowed on her behalf one of their several bibles (approved Catholic versions of course). 

A week later  I'm very happy to report that her independent findings are that from a historical, logical and ethical point of view the bible is every bit as nonsensical as I concluded myself at a similar age. In fact whilst I may have attuned my expectations to my environment she is stunned and outraged that so much dangerous and reactionary rubbish is treated with so much respect.

The revelation that 'religion is nonsense' is hardly an original topic for a blog post - but these days as a parent I set great store in trying to view things through the eyes of a young mind untainted by forty years of 'experience'. Sometimes it opens your eyes and makes you question some long held assumptions  - and just occasionally it reassures you of some fundamental truths that are worth be reminded of.

Is it ironic or just taking the piss?

We already know from  his outrageous lying and betrayal of  angst-ridden liberal Middle-England fretting over tuition fees that Nick Clegg has no sense of shame. Now in taking on the role of the government's champion of social mobility he  shows he has no sense of irony either.

You have to question just what PR genius came up with the idea of putting a toff  - with a few Russian aristocrats in his family tree who got his first career break when old-man got him an internship at a merchant bank and  who got into politics via the European Commission gravy train with the help of family neighbour Lord Carrington - in charge of social mobility. Even some hard-nosed mean spirited lower-middle class  type from the provinces (remember a certain  shopkeeper's daughter ?) would have had a bit more credibility.

I've said before that social mobility isn't all it's cracked up to be. And the obsession with getting 'ordinary' kids to Oxbridge as an index of this mobility (and take this from one such kid)  is hardly representative of a fairer society. BUT a lack of this mobility , or declining mobility such as we have nowadays, is conversely a pretty good indicator of a society that is choking on privilege and inequality.

And putting the bloke who probably more than any other in the ConDems personifies the shitting on the aspirations of working class kids - with the removal of EMA and increased university fees - just looks like gloating.

In-fighting: actual & political

Like most people I live my life in neat compartments. In my case they correspond to the sub-headings of this blog. Once in a while one of these will spill into another:

My chosen martial art of Wing Chun has a pretty bad rep these days. Thirty years ago it was the bad-ass of the martial arts world. Partly this is a question of fashion - Karate exploded in the west in the sixties then in the seventies Wing Chun was the enfant terrible. The original  style of Bruce Lee  that by-passed the stylised formality and choreography  of traditional Karate and replaced it with the simple practicality of Hong Kong street fighting. Then along came along Brazilian Ju Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts - the new kids on the block that made everything that went before look staid and unrealistic. Of course none of this is, or has ever been, true or does justice to any of these arts but always  in fashion perception is everything.

And the Wing Chun world imploded. We lacked the discipline and structure of the Japanese and Korean styles, which were also reinforced by the need for governing bodies for their sporting aspects, and we turned in on ourselves. Rival schools and lineages engage in wars of words - and less frequently of fists – trying to prove they are purer/more authentic / more effective than each other.  Some of this is just simple commercial rivalry – and some of it is born of a sense of inadequacy. Go online and have a look at any Wing Chun forum - it is a depressing minefield of infantile bitching and macho posturing. 

So sadly the style that I love and have practiced now for over 20 years is in some respects now frankly something of an embarrassment in the wider martial arts community.  But that doesn’t make we want to give up or change to another style - although it does make me less mindlessly loyal to my own tribe and a bit more reflective and respectful of other lineages, styles and traditions. Funnily enough talk to most mature practitioners of any martial art and you’ll often find the same. Maybe it’s because if you’re confident in what you doing, tolerance and open-mindedness isn’t a betrayal of your tradition.

And there’s an inescapable parallel to be drawn with the politics of the Left …

Nice cop. Nasty cop. Lying bastard cops.

Of the 201 people arrested on Saturday's demo - 145 were from the distinctly fluffy UkUncut occupation at the discerning toff's favourite tax-dodging grocer Fortnum & Mason.

Have a look at the footage below and the exchanges between the softly-softly female chief inspector and the legal observor inside the store and contrast with the robo-cop from the TSG a short while later:

The nice inspector tells the protestors that they are going to be 'let go'  and that as they are 'non-violent and sensible',  that on leaving the store they will be taken to a safe area to avoid getting themselves caught up in some breaches of the peace so that they can then 'get away to the tube stations'.

What happens next is that the protestors are taken into a kettle manned by the likes of  robo-cop, where they are held, a few of them are smacked around a bit and then they are all individualy arrested -  and subsequently held at police stations for hours until charged on Sunday.

Empty rhetoric to the right. Stunts to the left.

Like one of two others I marched - or to be more accurate wearily but happily trudged - on Saturday's demonstration. Being somewhere near the back I didn't get to Hyde Park until after 4pm - and then I had a wander around Oxford Street and the West End to have a look at some of the other actions there.

Earlier on when I had spotted my local MP,  'David - pull up the ladder behind me - Lammy' and a contingent from the local Labour Party I feared that the march was in danger of being hijacked by an unrepresentative minority. My worst fears were later confirmed when I saw on TV the speech from Ed Milliband that I'd missed in the park. (Incidentally remember a time when Labour leaders at least felt obliged to join in with marches ? None of that nonsense for our Ed). A number of ConDems have quite justifiably pointed out the hollow opportunism of this - despite all Ed's talk of the civil rights movement and the Suffragettes  essentially  Labour has the same position as the government on the cuts.  They claim that for every £10 the government cuts Labour would cut £9 - and in local authorities such as my own this is already what is  happening.

On the other hand on Saturday night we put up at our house  a few of my daughters' friends from out of town that she had met on other student protests.  They'd missed their coach back after having been run around the West End in the evening and were buzzing with tales of the actions there against shops and banks. Most of this was youthful bravado and I imagine they were  cheerleaders rather than hardened activists of the black bloc - but it got me thinking. If I was their age - and most importantly if I hadn't grown up in the context of a Labour movement background in the 1980s with some political points of reference that weren't completely useless - I think I would feel the same way. 

Re-reading that sentence it could me misconstrued as patronising - it really isn't - I think the instincts of this new generation are fantastic, I just wish they were better focused:

We need stunts - and let's be clear occupying a shop or trashing a bank are publicity stunts not 'violence'. We also even need a bit of rhetoric - although not the empty rhetoric of a bankrupt leadership. But most of all we need action - industrial action. Because at the end of the day only that will stop these attacks on our living conditions. We can argue the niceties of the slogans - an all out general strike or a public sector strike, 24 hours or indefinite, official or unofficial - but above all we need action.

The cliche of the slumbering giant of organised labour is  over-used but if ever it was appropriate it was on Saturday. And when everything else settles down  the most important thing to take from the demo is that it might just be a step in building the confidence for it to finally stir out of bed.

The sheer cheek of it.

When I came home from work to find a personalised letter from Haringey Council Leader Claire Kober I assumed it was just another vacuous piece of feel-good PR from the council along the lines of the cringe'worthy 'Haringey People' magazine that is regularly sent to all residents of the borough. 

However closer reading showed it to be from the councillor in her Labour Party capacity. Asking around a few other local people none of them had received it - so I can only think that my name must be on some database as a former Labour Party member. It's safe to say that they must be getting pretty bloody desperate - I think I left the Labour Party as recently as 1991 or 1992. I can't be sure because embarrassingly I didn't have the badge of honour of actually being expelled. I just didn't renew my subs, and even  that was  after a year or two of simply  ignoring the local party as the irrelevant and moribund organisation it had become over the poll tax period.

Essentially the letter  explained how horrible the ConDems were  and how the cuts they were making would devastate Haringey - along with an explanation of how in spite of this the local Labour Party  were heroically doing their best to mitigate the damage. 

So as well as giving me her reassurance that they will save what they can (apart obviously from all the stuff they voted a couple of weeks ago to cut), I am invited to join Councillor Klober in her 'campaigning against these savage cuts'. And most extraordinarily to join her in marching for an alternative on 26th March...!!!

March for the alternative-or more of the usual ?

There's a lot of talk  about parallels  between the TUC anti-cuts demo on the 26th March and the anti-war demo of 2003 -  and the dangers of allowing the  mood to similarly evaporate. Fair enough. I would also throw in memories of the TUC demo against pit closures in 1992 - a huge demo that really turned out to be nothing than more than a wake for something lost quite a while before. But despite being a jaded old veteran who has been marched up and down the hill many times over, I'm not embarrassed to say that I'm actually getting excited at the prospect of next week's demo. 

Although this is not also without a degree of wariness:

The TUC - having clearly gone in to full panic mode upon realising that they have probably unleashed something they can't control -  seem to be in danger of turning the demo in to one focused against themselves.   Of course there's the usual  phenomena of both them and the Labour Party trying to use the event as some sort of  pressure release valve. You know the drill - have a day out in the capital, get roused up by Tony Benn then go home and hope that everyone is  too distracted to notice that it's Labour councils delivering the cuts and the union leadership standing back to allow them.  A new development this time  though is TUC's plans for stewarding - from the use of private sub-contractors to an unprecedented integration with the police control and communications.  This would seem to indicate a conscious tactic to use the stewards as the first line of policing. More surprisingly Liberty - an organisation I've always had respect for -  have allowed themselves to be compromised by being co-opted into the operation as 'officially sanctioned' legal observers. 

All of which will on the day re-direct the anger of a significant layer of the demonstrators towards the march's orgainisers. And on this other side of the fence some people are already seeing the 26th as the catalyst for some sort of quasi-insurrectionary moment. Amidst the perfectly justified plans for 'unofficial' actions and platforms there is also an awful lot of bollocks being spoken about the politics of  the street and the creation of autonomous zones.  Don't get me wrong here I'm all for the idea of camping overnight in Hyde Park to make a point about who legitimately  controls public spaces - but talk of turning the park into Tahrir Square not only massively mistakes the current political situation it also dis-respects the position facing comrades in Egypt. And if not carefully handled can be a form of vanguardism that will provoke the full wrath of the state on a wider layer.

And in the interests of being even-handed in my wariness: My heart sinks when I see that my own organisation - no doubt like most others on the Left - has inevitably set targets for paper sales and recruitment. It all looks horribly like the crap I have to put up with at work and is equally ineffective motivationally.

Demonstrations are just that - demonstrations of a wider movement.  They are not revolutions - although historically they can and have been the catalysts for revolutions but there's always a context to this. More often they are milestones in building something. And they are no less important for that.

Kronstadt anniversary

By sheer coincidence,  following my piece about a rapprochement between Anarchists and Marxists, I got asked to write something for On This Deity around the anniversary of Kronstadt.

I attempted to write it in the spirit of 'truth and reconcilliation' - if it pisses off the polemicists from either side of the debate then I'll know I've hit the right note.

Self determination. Yesterday. Today. Always.

It's a hobby horse of mine so indulge me for a moment - this is going somewhere:

Maybe it's because I had a Roman Catholic background, maybe it's because I just have a thing for hairy 'barbarians' - but I tend to regard the Roman Empire as the root of many present day evils. Perhaps  my on-going  collection of iron-age tattoos is some kind of subliminal protest.

I've blogged before about how it was historians from later empires - and most notably the British one - who presented the Romans as the great civilising force of the Western world.  This has increasingly been challenged by a generation of archaeologists and historians who paint a picture of indigenous peoples doing quite nicely thank you on their own before the Romans ever came along. In particular the 'Ancient Britons' have been shown to have a sophisticated and far-reaching culture based on exchange rather than conquest. The latest example of this is a road in Shropshire previously assumed to be an example of that  Roman engineering that brought civilisation to the dark and savage corners of Europe - such as Britannia - but in fact has been discovered to pre-date the Roman invasion of Britain in 43CE.

But why should this matter to anybody other than people like myself with an eccentric interest in our distant past ?

Because again there is an ideological offensive around the civilising role of empires. We see  this in the  thinly disguised propaganda of  Niall Fergusson's pompous new tv series. And most urgently we  see it in the Blair-ite concept of liberal interventionism in the Middle East and the call for western nations to step in to 'help' democratise the region.

Whether in Shropshire two thousand years ago, or in Libya today, history is testament to mankind's infinite capacity to struggle to improve its environment - physical and social - and to do so best when left to it's own devices.

Sign Of The Times

Shit you couldn't make up: 

I'm sitting in a noodle bar in the West End having my lunch when I notice that the suit sitting next to me has one of those complimentary nylon briefcase things that they give out at conferences and exhibitions - usually with the sponsors' branding. 

Only this one says "Public Sector Efficiency Expo" - and the strapline reads 'doing more with less'... Fuck.

Is the Olympics bollocks ?

Well if you take the view of my other half that essentially all sport is bollocks - then obviously so is the Olympics. I feel the same way about ballet, opera and a lot of classical music but that gets me branded as a philistine.

More seriously though, if you take the view of community activists you would also conclude correctly that the claims to be giving a social and economic leg-up to a particularly depressed part of London are nothing more than a thinly disguised bit of big business' brand promotion and nationalistic willy-waiving.

Despite  acknowledging the politics of  all this, even so I have found myself applying for tickets today - for boxing, judo and wrestling. I can't even claim to be a follower of any of these sports  - although they come closest to my own martial arts - so I suppose I am just going for the spectacle. My dad still talks about going to the 1948 Olympics and it simply  feels too much like a once in a lifetime opportunity to let pass.

Although I do hope for suitably shambolic opening and closing ceremonies. Something quintessentially  British - maybe a brass band, morris dancers and Bruce Forsyth as master of ceremonies. Recalling the grandiose  Fascistic precision of the Beijing celebrations still sends a shiver down my spine.

Census snooping

I had a little peak inside my census form yesterday. Fucking hell ! I do tend to suffer from a kind of form-o-phobia at the best of times but I don't remember it being as extensive and intrusive  as this ten years ago. 

I've heard it said on a few occasions now tin the anti-cuts movement that we should encourage everyone to fill it in to ensure that we get the public services we need. Hmm. I'm not so sure  there's anything 'progressive' about the census it seems suspiciously like another excuse for the big brother state to stick its nose even further in to our lives.

The people who argue this used to be called Left reformists'  - they have a vision of socialism by social engineering. Ironically often they're the same people who talk about  the Second World War as being the time when the economy was best planned  for the common good (unless you happened to live in Hamburg or Dresden of course). But guess what? - 1941 was the one ten-year interval that we didn't have a census. Just a thought.

A piece in The Guardian reports that we've been feeling  suspicious about the census ever since it started up in 1801.

Like many others I've used the historic census returns published online to get a snap shot of my family history. The early censuses were 'taken' by officials actually calling on people's homes and asking them questions.  Infuriatingly for any historian it's often a bit hit and miss. Names are spelt inconsistently. Place and date of birth varies over the years. In some cases the census taker's scrawl is illegible and throws out some wacky transcriptions - one military ancestor  of mine is recorded as being a private in the 10th Huggers (I'm pretty sure it's meant to say 'hussars'). I've another relative who manages to get recorded in two places at once,  and several who are fishermen and manage to disappear from the record altogether presumably because they were at sea in boats too small to have their own records.

However questionable the data recorded may have been, there weren't many other options at at time when there were few other statistical databases and the great unwashed  masses (often illiterate) couldn't be trusted to fill in and return a form by themselves. But today we now live in an age when we are all barcoded, profiled and indexed many times over   - by all sorts of bodies. So much so that it is difficult to believe that all the information ever needed doesn't already exist somewhere else already. In fact  I'm surprised that  the government doesn't just ask Tesco or Amazon if they can borrow their databases  ... or even just cross reference the information they must surely already have.

Maybe I'm just paranoid.

Friend or foe ?

Having just  got nicked for an illegally sized number plate on my ride to work this morning in an affable but totally ludicrous police mass spot-check,   I have to say this through gritted teeth -  but there's some interesting stuff over at the Third Estate about the Left's attitude to the cuts now facing UK police forces.

Inevitably references are being made to the fantastic scenes from Wisconsin where police joined municipal workers occupying the state capitol building in protest at local  union-busting policies aimed at state employees:

But I can't help wondering if in a similar scenario any force in this country would behave in the same way. This may be another instance where things here are not in fact so much more progressive and enlightened than they are in supposedly reactionary US.  Listen to the speech made by the  police office at the Wisconsin occupation. He cites 'protect and serve' as his ethos and duty as a public servant.

I just don't think coppers here have the same consciousness - after all they take an oath of allegiance and talk about keeping the 'queen's peace' - whatever the fuck that means these days. That's not just  a matter of semantics - it  seems ingrained that they apart and distinct  from the communities they police. 

Of course there's no denying the  humour in watching the Police Federation squirm to defend themselves and even try to behave like the very trade unionists and activists they have happily beaten the crap out of for years now. But that's a road to nowhere.  At some point we will need to have at least elements  of the police come over to our side. Recent events in Egypt showed that the defection of some of the state forces was a tipping point - as it has been in pretty much every revolution.  That won't  be achieved by our attitudes alone - it will essentially  be by the pressure of events - but having a hostile attitude is a sure-fire way of ensuring that it won't happen at all. So I'll grit my teeth and defend the 'workers in uniform'.

HD - 'return to core brand values' ?

It's just  been announced that Harley Davidson has struck a deal with the unions - the International Association of Machinists and the United Steelworkers - that will keep open their plant in Kansas City Missouri. 

At a price - under a new seven year agreement the workforce will be cut from 685 full time jobs  to 540 with a further 145 'flexible 'positions - albeit for unionised labour.  

It looks as if the Moco has pulled the same kind of blackmail on the unions there that it did to the workforce after the 2007 strike at the much larger plant in York Pennsylvania - sign up on the company's terms of they will pull out of the city altogether. The same stunt was also  pulled last Autumn  at the historic headquarters plant in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

The financial problems that precipitated the most recent shenanigans - the first losses in a quarter for 16years - resulted largely from problems in the credit and financial services market. And some dumb decisions like the bizarre acquisition of the super luxury performance MV Augusta brand. And maybe just a few too many branded cuff-links and cheque-book covers.

None of this is really news. The HD brand-personality of an iconic union-made product for the American working man has been wearing thin for years with the emphasis on a recreational lifestyle brand with all the branded products that go with this. 

But the fact that this has just happened at the plant where they make the Sportster and Dyna models is particularly telling - and not just because I own a pair of Sportsters.

I would have to say that of all the HD ranges, these two models are the truest to that now largely bullshit brand-personality that has been contrived by the MoCo over the years. They are basic,  no-frills motorcycles simple and accessible to work on and customisable  for the ordinary enthusiast. They are also probably the least glamorous and most neglected models in the HD range - despite the fact that the rest of the range - with the exception of the big tourers  - aren't much more that factory copies of the kind of customised machines that people have been knocking out of their garages at home for years. Only with cringe-worthy silly names like FatBoy, Crossbones, Rocker, Heritage and Streetbob for aspirational types who want a bad-ass accessory of the shelf.

So rather than continuing to push out a plethora of these models with just tiny differences in the paint work or different combinations of parts why not just re-emphasise the 'pure and raw' appeal of the  Sportster and Dyna models backed up with a range of custom-goodies that can keep the owner-enthusiast hooked for a lifetime of ownership ?  Perhaps a return to core brand values for HD might not just have an emotional appeal - it might even make good business sense too.

Commonsense and good humour

Just resurfacing now after a few days feeling very sorry for myself with a dose of man-flu:

I went to the discussion  day / conference of my local anti-cuts campaign at the weekend. After the protest and occupation of the council chamber a week or so before the turnout was a bit disappointing - but I actually went away inspired.

After the more spectacular mass events, the composition of the meeting has returned to the usual(familiar suspects)  Anarchists, SWP, a handful of us SPers, Greens, community activists - and who knows maybe even the occasional Labour Party member although if so they were keeping it quiet. But despite all the fuss about competing  anti-cuts bodies, and despite the differences over attitudes to Labour Councils - there was unanimous support for the opposition to all cuts and a challenge of 'fight or resign' to Labour.  

Maybe the local SWP comrades are not quite 'on message' with the national line, or maybe its a practical realisation that our borough is a one-horse Labour sinecure and that the cuts here are some of the worst in the country with a disproportionate impact on this already royally-fucked up and fucked-over area. Either way I'm not crowing - I'm just genuinely  pleased that we can agree.

Which was pretty much the tone of the whole day. 

And that's my point - sometimes inspiration comes from the spectacular - maybe revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East - or maybe protest on your doorstep where new people are galvanised for the first time. But it also sometimes  comes from  the mundane. Such was the weekend's meeting - a prevalence of commonsense and genuine good humour. Too often scare commodities on the Left and sadly too often missing from our various party programmes.

The (original) February Revolution

I wrote this piece a few weeks ago as a guest spot for On This Deity.  

I never thought that the mechanics of how revolutions unfold would have been so topical ...

Bury the historical hatchet ?

Looks like Kronstadt is being re-fought (online of course) at Socialist Unity and Ian Bone's site.

Bloody hell it's depressing. No - the anarchists are not the enemies of the labour movement. In  terms of actual damage done I'd have to say that New Labour is far better cast in that role - but I'm not even going to go there - we know who the real enemies are - the ConDems and the Far Right. Everything else is infantile sectarian nonsense.

Are some anarchists - especially the 'life-stylists' - irritating  and disruptive pricks ? You bet - but I don't have any more time either for the android party-hacks often found in the 'Trot' ranks either. So let's just accept that all traditions have their own crosses  of embarrassment to carry.

When it comes down to the politics - I have to say that I find much more in common with the anarchists than I do with supposed 'left' Labour councillors who whinge that they have to make cuts -  or with some of their apologists.  Of course there are differences - the whole SP/NSSN thing was evidence of that -  and there are still very clear distances between us on the question of attitudes to trade union structures and the tactics of elections.

But here's a heretical thought: The Left in general often has an unhealthy preoccupation with its own past worthy of the most bigoted Ulsterman. We Trots are accused of being obsessed with dead Russians but I'd have to say that anarchists are often every bit as  pre-occupied with Makhno and Durrati. Now by training I'm a historian and see the need to understand the past more than most -  but isn't it time to move on ?  Actually it's now 145 years since the First International split - 90 years since Kronstadt - 70 years since Trotsky was murdered - and come to that it's now over 20 years since the Soviet Union fell apart. 

So how about a bit of 'truth and reconcilliaton' ? We are living in a post-just-about-everything world these days and yet the political labels we wear  are often references to the defining moments of previous generations.  I have to say that if we left some of the adopted baggage of our various traditions at the door we much actually find that the landscape on the Left  was in fact quite different from the one that many of us assume.  And dare I say it - we might even find that unity - without trying to hide our differences - is strength. 

Now I'll duck for cover - incoming accusations of naivity and revisionism from both sides ...

The embarrassment and dangers of strange bedfellows

Those of us of a certain age will remember the WRP of the 1980's with a mixture of horror and humour:

In many respects it was a nightmarish  parody of a wannabe revolutionary organisation - complete with their  'Marxist College of Education' where its  full-timers could learn the use of small arms and short-wave radios - and the monstrous leader Gerry Healy with his coterie of celeb hangers-on and harem of young female members subjected to a revolutionary 'droit de signeur' - in fact a leadership cult much  like the corrupt gurus of a sixties.

But most of all it brings back memories of the party's  slavish admiration of Gaddafi's regime  and his 'green book'  pseudo-theory of third way Arab radical nationalism. 

To quote a WRP congress resolution of 1980: "the Workers Revolutionary Party salutes the courageous and tireless struggle of Colonel Gaddafi whose Green Book has guided the struggle to introduce workers' control of factories, government offices and the diplomatic service, and in exposing the reactionary maneuvers of Sadat, Beigin and Carter... We stand ready to mobilize the British workers in defense of the Libyan Jamahiriya and explain the teachings of the Green Book as part of the anti-imperialist struggle."

Not surprising at the time the WRP's extraordinary feat of producing a daily colour newspaper - The Newsline - was attributed to funding by Gaddafi. More sinisterly there were also rumours of Newsline photographers sending Libyan security services pictures of dissidents on demonstrations in London.

Partly for this reason, and partly because of the details about the party regime revealed at the time of their very acrimonious and very public split in 1985 the WRP became something of a laughing stock on the  Left.  

But there were all too real dangers too: Healy was a monster and it was simply  good luck that he was only in the position of leading a small political sect - he would have been equally qualified to  head up some horrible regime in a deformed workers' state.

But most importantly the story of the WRP show the  propensity of some so-called Marxists to grasp onto the most unlikely and dangerous sources of inspiration. Theirs' wasn't the first instance of this - and it won't be the last -  Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam  have all fulfilled this role - as has guerillaism,  'third-worldism',  various nationalisms and most recently radical' Islam.. all in the name of anti-imperialism.

Ultimately I can only think that this phenomenon is born of desperation in dark times of political downturn and defeat - and a lack of confidence that the working class has the ability to re-assert itself politically.  But whatever comes out of the current events in Libya is testament to that ability. 

The fetishisation of commodities

Marx was very struck by his visit  to the Great Exhibition of 1851 - the show meant to be a celebration of the progressive and civilising  effects  of Victorian capitalism on the world. But his  views on capitalism sometimes surprise first time readers - the humanist liberal in him  morns the degradation of the human spirit resulting from  the reduction of all relations to the cash nexus and the alienation of people from their own labour.  But the historian in him doesn't flinch from acknowledging, in relative terms, the progressive role of capitalism in developing society. 

Of course in his day capitalism was  quite young and was still playing the role of dragging society out of the last vestiges of the middle ages. But nowadays  capitalism is sickly and creaking. And if Marx visited an industry trade show at the Birmingham NEC - as I did this week - I don't think there would be anything ambivalent about his reaction - there  certainly wasn't about mine:

Forget about faith in a bold progressive future and civilising forces - what I saw amongst the stands, the seminars and most of all the 'netwoking areas' was a display of sad little men and their tedious  little worlds. I say sad  - but actually false joviality is more accurate, and I say little - but bloated and red-faced would be more appropriate; they are however invariably  men.  And so much waste -  if not of talent then certainly of energy -  in getting over-excited about the progress in whatever esoteric  gadgetry they are responsible for . But most of all in the snatches of overheard conversations - endless conspiring and gossiping about the labyrinthine internal politics and jealousies of their companies -  like a strange cross of plotting  Renaissance courtiers and bitching adolescent schoolgirls.

And somehow I seem to have found myself stranded in this world ...

'Break the law not the poor' ?

I've commented before on my amazement at the sometimes bizarre common ground between the SWP and so-called Labour Lefts - and the resulting easy ride that the SWP gets as a result: Look at the column inches (if there is such a thing in cyberspace) devoted to feigned outrage at the NSSN's launch of an anti-cuts campaign at the initiative of the Socialist Party. I'm not re-opening that debate  -but just  compare it to the relative non-controversy of the recent anti-cuts meeting of the  SWP (sorry) Right To Work Camapign (sorry) People's Convention.

The main point of contention there seems to have been the attitude we should take  to Labour councils who make cuts.  It appears that the SWP  are  saying that we must work with Labour councillors who argue that some cuts may be necessary - and that they are better made by people who will try to minimise the damage than  by Tories. 

This is no more than  a re-hash of the 'dented shield' argument put up by some 'Left' councils in the 80's. It was a crock of shit then and it's a cock of shit now - a moral fig-leaf for capitulation  - just as it was when Liverpool and Lambeth councils were left to fight on their own.

In fact history is repeating itself as farce - first time round these Labour Lefts at least started off by talking up a fight - but this time their equivalents have jumped right into defeatism from the off. Ironically changes in the law since the 1980's actually mean that councillors who pass deficit /needs budgets actually do not  risk the same personal penalties that the Poplar councillors did in the 30's of the Liverpool '47 did in the 80's.

So why this bizarre defence of the indefensible by the SWP ?  

I'm not stupid or sectarian enough to  believe that it's because they aren't actually serious about fighting the cuts. I  can only think there are  fundamental political political reasons behind it: They seem to have the   impression that the Labour Party is being /will  be radicalised  again after the post-election  increase in membership. Or maybe they really think that the resources of the Left are so weak - or so finite - that they must make desperate bed-fellows.

In typically python-esque Left fashion accusations of the "Third Period-ism' have been thrown at the SP and of "Popular Frontism' at the SWP.  I'm not going to go there - personal experience of working together locally in TUSC reminded me that there is more that unites us than divides us. So I won't dig up any unhelpful and over-dramatic obscure historical analogies. But how about a simple common sense formula ? - That the anti-cuts movement should be working with any group or party (that isn't fascist or racist)  so long as it refuses  to implement austerity cuts.

One man and his shed .

News from the domestic front:

After a particularly pointless tantrum I had to have my garage door replaced. Not quite sure how I managed it but in throwing it open with an angry flourish I managed to fuck up the 'up and over' doorsbeyond redemption so I've replaced it with the old-fashioned kind - which is much more in keeping with my workshop which was built long before 'garages' were considered a household necessity.

Apart from the outlay for the new doors I also had the floor levelled - and this spurred me to have a thorough clear out. It took me most of the day on Saturday. And then - because I now have a proper workshop that is comfortable,  clean and tidy - I spent a far bit of Sunday buggering about with my bike.

In most aspects of my life I don't consider myself  a hoarder by nature in fact - unless it comes to books and CDs  - I actually get a perverse kick out of throwing things out. Or so I thought. But apart from the inevitable generations of kid's discarded toys - the garage seemed to have collected a ridiculous number of bike parts. 

I made a point of throwing away all the broken bits of bikes that I don't own any more - including some I haven't owned for over ten years. Even so I seem to have an alarming quantity of parts for my current Sportsters - including five exhausts, four seats, three  sets of bars, three carbs and air cleaners, and two trays of miscellaneous spares.

I blame the addictive power of ebay...

The future is plural

Contrary to Cameron's Munich (slightly unfortunate choice of venue) speech - I'd have to suggest that multiculturalism is actually easier in practice  than it looks on paper.

Sometimes it's difficult to take on board that the Tory-boy lives in the same city as I do:  Any time spent  in  an inner city would reveal that multiculturalism is simply the default setting for ordinary people going about the daily business of making lives for themselves and their families. Sometimes there are tensions, often there are misunderstandings, but on street level it works because it has to. 

Just on my own street Polish shops sit cheek by jowl with Kurdish shops. My daughters' anglo-french-jewish-hungarian heritage is probably the least exotic and most ethnically homogeneous of their circle of friends.  Nobody I know even  notices or cares.

So what is the alternative Cameron proposes - monoculturalism ? 

He hankers after a state-defined set of national values taught in schools and  measured by a citizenship test. Examples of country's with such imposed artificial constructs  being the USA and France -  both far less integrated societies in practice than the UK  and with ethnically defined ghettos in their cities the  like of which simply don't exist over here.

Or maybe he just wants to sentimentalise some  non-diverse national heartland - like the parts of this country that are still demographically homogenous. I grew up in one of these  - the London suburbs of  thirty years ago. 'British' values - specifically the values of the affluent working class and the lower middle class  - ruled the roost without challenge - mowed lawns, washed cars, pubs and Sunday roasts.  It was fucking tedious and depressing...fortunately it is dying a natural death.

Scandinavian Crime Wave

I started with Stig Larson - but I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with Scandinavian crime fiction.  Ive watched all three of the TV versions of Wallander - my favourite being  Rolf Lassgård   - and now I'm starting on the books.  

At the moment though I'm reading the Martin Beck series from Marxist husband-and-wife duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Brilliant noir crime writing and  definitely a cut above Stig Larson and the latest Scandi-crime blockbuster following in his wake -  Jo Nesbø.

At the same time  on TV I'm really enjoying the Danish series 'The Killing' on BBC4.

As far as TV goes it's not just the Scandinavians either - the French series Spiral was excellent too.  In fact with the exception of British produced on-location in Rome TV series  Zen -  which felt like a particularly lightweight   coffee-advert -  it seems that crime with a foreign accent is just that much better than  our homegrown English Tourist Board sponsored efforts - Morse, Lewis or god-forbid Midsummer-fucking-Murders.

History Is Ours ...

I have a poster at home - very similar in style to the one on the left - that I have kept for almost thirty years. I borought it from the Chile Solidariy Campaign when I was an 18year-old member of the YCL (!?!) off to university to read history.

It bears one of my favourite quotes  - from Salvadore Allende in 1973: 'History Is Ours For  It Is Made By The People'. 

For any socialist  there is nothing more inspiring than seeing this history actually unfolding in front of your own eyes. Just as we are at the moment watching the extraordinary scenes from Egypt. 

The quote reminds us - or at least it should do - that history is not made by the mastabatory analysis of radical intellectuals from the safety of meeting rooms far behind the frontline - or in online forums either.

So I'm only going to add three brief  thoughts to what is being said about the situation in Egypt:

1.Those on the left who have been cozying up to reactionary Islamo-mentalists  will have some answering to do - although if they haven't already learnt from the experience of  Iran in 1979 I doubt they will now.

2. The organised working class still remain  the only section of society capable of securing a progressive democratic socialist regime in the region - or any region - not the amorphous 'nation' and certainly not a radical faction of the army.

3. Trotsky's theory of  Permanent Revolution -  far from being past its sell-by date still provides the best framework for understanding what is going on.

But most of  - and my final thought:

4. The revolution will carry on without asking my opinion.

Crime down your way

There's a joke that goes around my neck of the woods that the police round here don't bother taking down those yellow crime scene 'can you help boards' - they just change the wording around. By any standards it is not a good area for crime - especially street crime. 

The recent stabbing of four teenagers - one of them killed - was only a couple of blocks away from my front door. (Incidentally what was originally portrayed as an example of gang-culture now looks to have been  the tragic result of a generation of 'care in the community' policies involving  an outpatient of a local mental health facility). But knife crime here  does seem to an epidemic  and the regular killing of  local kids - usually working class and often black - doesn't even make it beyond the local news.

And that does make me pause for a moment- as a teenager I seem to have found myself in inter-school (pre post-code wars) altercations about once a month. I took a few black eyes and split lips - but there was never for any moment the thought that anyone could die from these incidents. As a parent now  inevitably I feel for my kids growing up with the stakes so much higher. And I'm relieved that I have girls not boys who have to grow up having to  navigate  their way around gang politics.

But generally I don't give it too much thought. And neither I suspect do most other  people here - it is simply a fact of life -  and life goes on. So  I imagine that the police's recent publishing of the UK crime maps, despite painting a pretty damning picture of the area will not have caused much of a ripple locally - or in other areas like mine. 

But I do imagine it is of great interest to those middle classes who discuss house prices at dinner parties, estate agents who use the information as a sales tool, the police themselves trying to manipulate clear-up rates - and of course to politicians trying to play upon fear.   Fear of the unknown - the dark forces that lie only just up the road, and from which they are told they  need to differentiate and protect themselves. 

That's a dangerous phenomenon and one that Micheal Moore explores so effectively in Bowling For Columbine. In the US it's a fear that leads to gun-obsession and white-bread middle class families arming themselves out of fear of invasion from inner-city 'others'. It's different here in the UK  - turning up the heat on fear  is just another step in building up a willingness to extend police powers - like stop and search. And so we become just that little bit more willing to incrementally sacrifice our civil liberties in the name of safety.