Shiraz Socialist

His wife was recruited by the NHS to do hard, low-paid work in our health service. While giving birth, she was unlawfully killed by the very hospital she worked in. Her husband, who hoped to make a life with his family in Britain, is now to be deported. What a FUCKING DISGRACE!

Good to see Unison taking up the case: Unison activists should congratulate Prentice for his statement and build a union campaign. The rest of us should lobby our MP’s, write to the Home Office, do whatever we can. We’ll keep you informed of any campaign or activity that emerges.

Wanna blast Jacqui Smith (cool name: uncool chick!) for her, like, totally fascist decision to do something uncool about shit and weed, man? No use hanging with these uncool squares at “Shiraz”, droning on about Israel and the Labour Party and other uncool shit, man!

Mosey on over to Dave’s, like, totally cool , unsquare place for where the real vibe’s like, happening, man!

“Yes, the impulse to side with the Palestinians, the demand for justice for them, the criticism and denunciation of Israel for its treatment of them in the Occupied Territories - all that is consonant with the basic stuff of the left. All that is not only ‘justified’ but necessary for any decent socialist.

“The conclusion from it? The only conclusion consonant with the authentic left is to seek justice for both sides; to propose mutual recognition of both peoples’ rights. The only possible programme for doing that now is two states - an independent Palestine side-by-side with Israel.

“The objective anti-semitism of the ‘absolute anti-Zionist’ left is defined by its rejection of accomodation, its opposition to two states, and its self-identification with the chauvinist Arab or Islamic proposal to destroy Israel and, at the very least, deprive the Israeli Jewish nation of self-determination.” (Sean Matgamna: ”‘Left’ anti-semitism is no myth“). 

As the 60th anniversary of the proclaimation of the state of Israel approaches, the professional Israel-haters, “anti-Zionist” fanatics, and conspiracy theorists are lining up to denounce the state as uniquely illegitimate (on a par, they claim with apartheid South Africa, if not Nazi Germany!), and Zionism as an especially racist ideology (unlike other forms of nationalism, which contain no racist or preferential elements, of course).

I was going to entitle this piece “Congratulations Israel”, as a sort of “up yours” to the anti-Israel fanatics and ignoramouses that inhabit the left, liberal-left, right and loony-far-right, and who are all too often indistinguishable from each other in their “anti Zionism”… whilst I accept that not all anti Zionists are anti semites, it is undoubtably the case that, these days, all anti semites are anti Zionists.

But I decided not to use that provocative masthead for one reason, and one reason only: the Palestinians. The Sean Matgamna quote at the top of this piece sums up my feelings: the Palestinians are the main victims of the present impasse in the Middle East and our first instinct must be solidarity with them. But, as Matgamna eloquently argues, solidarity with the Palestinians does not require us to endorse Arab / Islamist anti-semitism: unfortunately, much of the so-called “left” does exactly that. Not just the likes of the SWP, Socialist Resistance and ‘Respect’: who cares about those ignorant clowns? No, important sections of the “mainstream” labour movement left, including both wings of ‘Unite’, the leadership of Unison and the Campaign Group of Labour MP’s, habitually go along with the idea that Zionism is a form of racism and that Israel is uniquely evil - even when they formally support “two states”. Sean’s polemic was written in response to a piece in the Graun (6 March 2006) by a “mainstream” commentator and former advisor to Robin Cook, David Clark. And I know from my own first-hand experience, that trivial anti-Jewish racism (in the form of jokes and asides) is considered acceptable on the mainstream labour movement left, in a way that no other form of racism would be.

Johnathan Freedland has some sensible things to say about all this in today’s Graun. 

The Israeli so-called “new historians”, plus the poisonous Lenni Brenner, and the academic / professional ‘victim’, Ilan Pappe, have given a great deal of intellectual succour to the “absolute anti-Zionists” over the years.

Here’s a pretty effective demolition of at least one of the “new historians” (albeit one who’s since transformed into a rather right wing Zionist). And more detail from the same writer, here.

Finally, to deal with Ilan Pappe, an Israeli academic whose Walter Mittyish misrepresentations of his own situation and role in Israel are so outrageous as to be either outright lies, or the products of a deranged mind. Similarly his misrepresentations of Israeli and Middle Eastern history. For instance, this strange man wrote in the Morning Star of April 25 2008:

“The zionist community in Palestine was powerful enough to carry out the ethnic cleansing and to fend off the later limited military attempt by some Arab governments to try to stop the operations in May 1948.”

I will return to Pappe’s allegation (not entirely untrue) of “ethnic cleansing” later; but for now, I want to concentrate on his description of a “limited military attempt by some Arab governments”…

What this charlatan is referring to is the attempt, immediately Israel was declared, by the regular armies of Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Egypt, to wipe out the new state. The generally pro-Palestinian historian Peter Mansfield acknowledges in his authoritative book “A History of the Middle East” (Penguin, 1992),

“If Zionist resistance (to the Arab attack -JD) had collapsed there is little doubt that even King Abdullah (the most conciliatory of the Arab leaders in 1948 -JD) would have been obliged to continue until the state of Israel had been strangled at birth.”

So, yes: the foundation of Israel was, indeed, al-Nakba for the Palestinians. And there were massacres like the killing of 250 inhabitants of the village of Deir Yasin by Irgunists on 10 May 1948. But the main cause of the Nakba  was the rejection by the Arab ruling classes of the UN’s partition proposals, and then those same rulers’ military attack on Israel. None of this excuses Israel’s subsequent treatment of the Palestinians: but it does expose the one-sided misrepresentation of Middle Eastern history that is all to common on the so-called “left”. And it also explains why recognition of Israel’s right to exist within pre-1967 borders is an essential prerequisite for a just peace and a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Whilst we at Shiraz have always been a proudly disparate bunch, it is doublessly clear that there are several friends of this blog whose politics would loosely be definable as “Labour Left”. You may well have read their sites before, as well as this one - and if you haven’t then you should.

Indeed, until very recently I myself would broadly have fallen into that category. I was never totally comfortable with attempts by sections of the left to pull away from the Labour Party, which I had been brought up since childhood to see as “my” party, and which latterly I had come to see as a vehicle via which the Labour Movement could exercise its influence in the party political field: Lenin’s classic formulation of the “bourgeois workers’ party” could not describe it better. In spite of a brief spell as a member of the Socialist Alliance, I quickly rejoined Labour and argued tooth and nail with comrades that things hadn’t changed so very much.

It is now self-evident that I was wrong. The sheer scale and weight of the evidence of the past few years demonstrates that the Labour Party is not now, nor feasibly ever could be again, a vehicle for working class participation in politics. Not only do I refer to the nauseating and shameful policies of the past decade, from University tuition fees to the war on Iraq. I do not merely seek to address the unbelievable corruption in “our” government, from the dodgy dossier to cash for honours at Westminster, to “our” Ken’s lavishing of telephone-number salaries on the coterie of Socialist Action members in his administration. That is all important, but I do not merely refer to those things. I also refer to the fact that there is clearly no way to improve things within the Labour Party.

Even back in the days of Callaghan, Wilson, Jack Jones and Frank Chapple, or even going back previously to Gaitskell’s time, Labour leaderships and governments would routinely ignore the decisions taken by “democratic” party conferences. The membership would become outraged, but nothing much would happen. The brief, failed flare-up during the Benn era was an exception to this rule. What I think the shrinking remnants of the Labour Left have to accept, is that such a rising will never and could never happen again. With the “Bournemouth Deal”, the unions surrendered even the right to pretend to influence decisions made over party policy. Further, their leaderships (with notable exceptions) still seem happy enough to be used as cash cows within the party structures, whilst even left-controlled Executives conduct such struggles as they can manage outside of that arena. And anyone who believes that the CLPs are anything other than the driving force of the party’s right, is deluding him/herself beyond belief.

Further, the complete bankruptcy of the party in the eyes of the public is demonstrated by Thursday’s electoral melt-down. This was capped off by a man who struggles to tie his shoelaces beating “our” Ken Livingstone to the London mayoralty. This in spite of a Labour campaign in London which at times was so hysterical as to give the impression that we were witnessing an election between the SPD and the Nazis in 1933, not a fight between a tired and tarnished mayor and an upper class fop in 2008. A lot has been made of the fact that Livingstone’s vote in London was better than Labour’s nationally. Not only is that a false comparison (had he been running for Sheriff of Surrey, one imagines he would have had a total kicking rather than losing narrowly), but it also fosters delusions on the left. Some people almost seem to be under the impression that Livingstone got as good a vote as he did because of his left-wing political stances. Now, whilst it is undoubtedly true that Livingstone’s stance on the Iraq war did him no harm, it is simply untrue that Britain’s richest city is a giant reservoir of left-wing voters. The fact that the left tends to be a closed circle not only politically but in terms of people’s whole lives (it is dominated by relatively secure, unionised and middle-class public sector workers), we don’t see quite the same picture of what a broad spectrum of the public thinks, as those people actually do. The reality is that it’s highly unlikely Livingstone would have gained those extra votes (with which he still lost the election) on the back of being marginally to Brown’s left. Indeed an endorsement from the RMT or other active London unions would almost certainly have lost him more votes than he would have gained. It is sadly the case that the unions - and I remain a proud trade unionist - cannot always carry their own membership’s votes by endorsing a candidate, let alone those of the wider public.

Why then do people stay in the Labour Party? The usual answer from LP members (including my friends Stroppy, Dave and MarshaJane) is something along the lines of “what else is there to do”? Well, that is not an adequate answer, comrades. You need to come up with a reason to be in what is very much New Labour’s party, a party with a shattered “left” that is impotent and, in many cases, not that left wing, and a party which has no moral authority at all to lay claim upon the loyalties of ordinary working people in this country. I and others who remain outside (my own LP membership expired last year and I have not renewed it) need not explain ourselves - the evidence is there for all to see.

Indeed, the best I have seen thus far in terms of strategies offered by online Labour leftists is “J4L 08″, AKA a repeat of John McDonnell’s 2007 attempt to launch a challenge to Gordon Brown. Even the aforementioned MarshaJane Thompson, who worked on McDonnell’s first campaign, appears in her post on the subject to concede that not only would McDonnell not win but also that his candidacy would rely on the endorsement of right-wingers even to get on the ballot paper. A flop in the making therefore, even if McDonnell should “succeed” in losing to Brown on a cross party vote rather than “failing” even to get to that stage.

There is, it seems to me, no alternative to the slow and patient work of building a working class political movement outside of the Labour Party. Such a stance may even entail endorsing a vote for certain Labour candidates at times, or candidates from other parties such as the Socialist Party or the Greens. I’m prepared to cherry pick in that sense. What I’m no longer prepared to do is pretend that the right-wing husk which is today’s Labour Party in any sense represents me or my interests. Time to wake up and smell the coffee, comrades.

On May 1968’s fortieth anniversary Shiraz Socialist publishes exclusive extracts from legendary Marxist Perry Anderson’s forthcoming memoirs, Apodic Aporiae (necessary doubts). Unlike many Anderson has never reneged on his class origins. He remains today as committed to the left as he ever was. With a rare personal voice Anderson sheds light on the key moments of 68, at home and abroad. These passages describe the unfolding of the événements. An English translation will soon be available. Andrew C

Extracts:

“Clachtoll Broch. The 1st of May, 1968. I knew something was afoot. That morning I hailed the Gillie, “Tha latha math ann an diugh.” “Aye, young Master, it is a-raining in the field.” A glint came into his eye. “The beaters say we dinna see the best of it yet.” Prescient words! Surely the best was to come.

Lunch. Tariq had just arrived. His palanquin was still outside. ‘Gorge Rouge’ Blackburn, had come, post-haste, from his London Red-Base. Tom Nairn was there, fresh from his triumphs in Tossing the Caber at the Sutherland Games. In the kitchen, the ‘chicks’ (unreconstructed were we, alas), Germaine Greer, Juliet Mitchell and Hilary Wainwright were preparing some amuse-gueules, and roast Osprey. As Homer might have described us, ές ‘Нλΰόίου πεδίου.

The wireless crackled. As hôte I deftly tuned to Radio Luxembourg. Our comrade ‘Danny’ was on the microphone. “Nous, on a demandé, la semaine dernière, qu’on puisse visiter les nanas dans leurs chambres. On nous a dit non! C’est la répression bourgeoise. Faut faire la révolution!” Outraged I forgave the failure, after the clause, ‘last week we asked’, to employ the subjonctif imparfait. The right to visit female students in their rooms denied? Truly an act of repressive intolerance. Had the doomed and inert capitalists bared their teeth at last? Danny would show them his own molars.”

……..

“We took to Boat-train to Calais. Paris was ablaze. At the Gare du Nord a charming poulbout from Montmartre disrobed us of our bourgeois wallets. Inside les Deux Magots Sartre and Castor were ebullient. Radical discontinuity ruled. Wordsworth described well the atmosphere of a similar Revolution. As the lesser known line goes, ‘When Reason seemed most to assert her rights..’ While I mused, Guy Debord popped in, “It’s ze societie of the Spectacle, hein?” He shoved a paving stone under my chin, “On the beach, the stones to throw.” He paused, and spoke to a companion, Ian Bone, “Où sont nos pintes?” Althusser rose from a nearby table, “Only through theoretical practice will the class struggle be won.” As the rock reached his head he seized his sword-cane and poked Debord in the eye.

I was seized by doubt. Would there have to be a Niederwerfungsstrategie? What would be the calibration of means and ends? That evening from the occupied Sorbonne, I addressed an attentive audience of thousands. “Solidarity! A coherent and militant student movement has not yet emerged in England. But it may now be only a matter of time before it does. Hornsey Art School is in our hands as I speak. The LSE will soon fall. The Oxford Union is a Soviet under the joint leadership of Comrade Tariq and Comradette Benazir Bhutto. Hasta la Victoria, siempre! ” Deafening applause followed.”

……..

“Looking back, forty years on, what have we learnt? Perhaps it’s the origins of the present crisis. Try the protasis, what if… It is revealing, the supine remains supreme. . For the if stands as fungible property, in a world where radical opposition has drained into new channels. A revolution in the revolution. Oneself? A Watchtower, Nairn, a Flag, the Saltire, Blackburn, a Pension Fund, Tariq, a Leading Liberal Democrat supporter, the ‘chicks’? Perhaps the deepest revolution of them all: soon to publish a joint soc-fem Cookery Guide, ‘Alternative Appetites’. The future? States dissolved. National democracy reborn. Alterglobalisation. There are no certainties here; so far, all that is possible are proposals and conjectures. Jottings more than theses, they stand to be altered or crossed out. The old Mole grubs on….”

I saw Persepolis the other night, and thought it was brilliant.

Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi, a bright, imaginative girl growing up in post revolutionary Iran where brightness and imagination and girlhood are severely suppressed.  Her kind parents and her tough, wise grandmother suffer under the stupid petty thuggery of the regime, while one uncle, a communist, is executed.  Afraid that Marjane’s rash behaviour will get her into trouble, her family send her to Vienna, where she takes up with a crowd of cool spoiled cynical Westerners.  She finds the culture hard to adjust to.  There’s a particularly comic caricacture of a shouty lead singer in a punk band.  The Westerners are indifferent to politics, which are literal life and death to her family in Iran.   She returns home but living there is difficult.  She is studying art, and the authorities have rubbed out Venus in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and the life class model is draped in a burkha.  So she leaves Iran again for France and exile.

I don’t read graphic novels and I haven’t seen many animated films either, so what I got out of it might be old hat and obvious to those used to those genres.  To me it was a revelation the way that the form works by forcing your attention, uncluttered by the distractions that human actors offer.  When you watch an actor performing a part you see the well-known face and the mannerisms.  With illustrations you concentrate on the emotions conveyed by the drawing.  You are focused, you are directed, as when following the narrator’s voice in a novel. 

That narrator’s voice and point of view is what you normally lose when putting a novel on screen.  Look, says the novel’s narrator, at Hetty’s eyelashes and Adam’s response to them, and the actors do their best with it.  But with animation you can do it in stylised short-hand – Hetty’s eyelashes, longer than they could ever be even with prosthetics, and Adam’s response, cruder than a competent actor’s could be but clearer and sharper. 

The objects like the swans Marjane’s uncle carved from bread in prison and the jasmine that falls from her grandmother’s bra have a magic power. The white swans sail on her bed and the white jasmine flowers fall and they, white on the black background, seem to glow with meaning.  This is how the world appears through Marjane’s eyes, for instance when her boyfriend arrives like an angel bathed in light then turns into a goofy idiot.

The characters are arranged to form designs e.g. curves (the women Revolutionary Guard) framing with menace a cylinder (little Marjane).  When Marjane moves house over and over again in Vienna she gaily jumps from one roof top to another. There is charm, comedy, anger and grief within this film, which filled me with fresh delight.

It looks as though Boris has kicked Ken’s arse (or “ass”, if you’re one of our US friends).

Some people on the left (including even our own Voltaire’s Priest) don’t think Boris is such bad news. I beg to differ. Of course, I don’t go along with Livingstone’s and his ‘Socialist Action’ bag-carriers’ ridiculous and counter-productive allegations that Johnson is some sort of Nazi. No: it’s that Johnson (like Cameron and - come to that - Blair) is simply a reminder that male, white, upper-class Bertie Wooster-types still have far too much power, privilege and influence in this country. Even if they are amusing good eggs from the Drones Club.

And, of course, a Johnson victory makes a Tory victory at the next general election that much more likely, which - whatever you think of New Labour - can only be bad news for all workers and progressives.

That 10p tax outrage - a blatant attack on the low-paid - is, clearly, the main cause of the disastrous national result. Livingstone has paid the price for New Labour’s national unpopularity, which is probably what has been decisive in London. But Lord Redken of Gobshite’s personal arrogance and political corruption hasn’t helped either.

Sharon Horgan (writer and actor) is spot-on (in yesterday’s Graun G2):

“If I woke up and Boris Johnson was mayor I’d want to give Ken Livingstone a big kick up the arse because it’s his fault. Boris Johnson is as much Ken’s fault as bendy buses. In fact, Boris Johnson is the human eqivalent of the bendy bus: looks like fun but essentially is dangerous and annoying.”

Janine, over at Stroppyblog, makes much the same point, but in more detail.

Finally, however horrible the situation, we do need a laugh: here’s the always amusing Ollie:

http://ollysonions.blogspot.com/2008/04/london-mayor-latest-boris-johnson-core.html

It would be churlish not to congratulate David T and the Harry’s Place team on their snazzy new look - especially as they now link to us.

But I am a bit of a churl and can’t resist this:

Courtesy, Will Rubbish.

May Day greetings to all our friends and comrades.

The late, great Humph had only one chart hit, ‘Bad Penny Blues’, a boogie-woogie number with pianist Johnny Parker, played as an afterthought at the end of a recording session in April 1956. Largely as a result of producer Joe Meek’s addition of artificial echo to the sound (something that Humph did not agree to and, on initial hearing, recoiled in horror from), the record became a British hit-parade success.

Here’s a later (1970’s, by the looks of it) reprise, with added coda:

Thanks for that to Byas’d Opinion.

Whilst we’re at it: thanks to Bruce for pointing out that I hadn’t made it clear that despite his aristocratic origins, Humph was a committed socialist throughout his adult life.

I also forgot to mention the wonderful (and true) story about Humph’s ancestor’s involvement with the Gun Powder Plot: the first Humphey Lyttelton was a leading conspirator in the plot to blow up Parliament. Humph commented: “He (the first Humphrey Lyttelton) was hanged, drawn and quartered at Guildford…the family was, naturally, terribly upset…not so much about the hanging, drawing and quarterting…but… GUILDFORD!”

By a remarkable coincidence, Humph’s early jazz sidekick, the clarinetist Wally “Trog” Fawkes, is a decendent of Guy Fawkes.

And, finally: given the title “Bad Penny”, this number simply must be dedicated to that multiple recidivist ignoramous of both jazz and Marxism, the man whose surname cannot be given because he’s such a threat to the British ruling class…  Mr John ‘G’!