US voters in Britain feel the Bern
This article first appeared in the Morning Star:
With Super Tuesday tomorrow, ERIC LEE examines Sanders’ prospects with expat Democrats
TUESDAY March 1 is known as “Super Tuesday” in the US Presidential election, because it’s the first day in the long season of primaries and caucuses on which more than one state gets to vote.
Until now, each individual state had its moment in the sun. Hundreds of reporters from all over the world filled every hotel and guest house in Iowa and New Hampshire.
But on Super Tuesday voters in a dozen states get to choose between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. And Republican voters get to choose between Donald Trump and several other contenders, most of them equally odious.
Some of those states could be easy wins for Sanders, including his home state of Vermont. But others are seen as fairly solid for Clinton, especially some of the Southern states.
What the mainstream media has largely ignored is the 13th state holding a primary that day.
I’m referring to Democrats Abroad, the official Democratic Party group that represents some six million US voters who live overseas. Those voters get to choose 13 delegates who will go to the Democratic National Convention in July in Philadelphia. Any US citizen can show up at voting centres around the world, produce their passport and vote. In Britain there will be such centres in London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and St Andrews. Voting takes place over the course of a week, and there are also options for absentee ballots, including post and email.
The last time there was a contested election inside the Democratic Party, the upstart candidacy of Barack Obama did exceptionally well, beating Clinton two-to-one in the Democrats Abroad global primary.
This year, Clinton stands to lose as well. Sanders is the most likely winner of the global primary. Let me explain why.
Hillary Clinton has a formidable political machine behind her. She’s been able to raise tens of millions of dollars from wealthy backers, including from US citizens living abroad. Her campaign held fundraising events in places like Singapore and Shanghai. In London the Clinton campaign has largely consisted of just such fundraising events. At an upcoming event in London, one can meet Chelsea Clinton — Hillary and Bill’s daughter — for just $500. For another $500, one can be photographed with her.
But there is no evidence of a Clinton campaign on the ground — for example, among the thousands of US students studying in Britain.
The Sanders campaign in London and elsewhere is entirely different. The closest thing to a fundraising event has been the production and sale of some “London for Bernie” T-shirts. There have been several well-attended public meetings, including a launch event in the House of Commons, hosted by a Labour MP, in November, and a more recent event held in union Unite’s headquarters. Both of those events were addressed by Bernie Sanders’s older brother, Larry, who has lived in Britain since the 1960s. The Sanders campaign team, including a very enthusiastic group of students, meets weekly, and has conducted extensive canvassing in the streets of London. It also has a strong online presence on Facebook and the web.
So we can expect the Sanders campaign to win simply because it is better geared up for an election, but there are other reasons as well.
US citizens living abroad are far more likely to be Democrats than Republicans (the Republicans don’t bother to hold a global primary). And among the Democrats, they tend to be on the left wing of the party.
US voters living in Britain, for example, are likely to understand the advantages of single-payer health care based on their experiences with the NHS. In Europe and elsewhere, where public universities are tuition-free, Bernie Sanders’s advocacy of such policies doesn’t come across as particularly radical.
And even Sanders’s embrace of the words “democratic socialist,” which are thought to be a liability among some US voters, are far less likely to scare off US citizens who have lived in countries with large, well-organised labour and social democratic parties.
For those reasons and more, and regardless of what happens in states like Arkansas and Alabama on Super Tuesday, Sanders supporters in Britain are confident that he will win the majority of delegates — but only if people turn out to vote. In conversations with US citizens, including students, it turns out that the vast majority are unaware of the global primary. For that reason, the entire effort of the campaign in the next week or two is devoted to raising awareness and boosting voter turnout.
- For more information, check out www.londonforbernie.org
Now NUS loons denounce Tatchell … for defending himself against their slander
Readers may remember the incident a week or so ago when Fran Cowling, the NUS lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) representative, said that she would not share a stage with Peter Tatchell, whom she described as “racist” and “transphobic”. The row was covered in some detail by Comrade Coatesy here, and in the Guardian here.
Tatchell, a long standing campaigner for gay rights and human rights more generally, quite understandably, decided to mount a public defence of his good name against these outrageous slurs. As a result of doing so, he was denounced yet again, in this hysterical Open Letter – which includes the truly Orwellian charge of Tatchell referring to a “confidential email chain” that had been forwarded to him “without permission”, thus apparently making Tachell’s accuser the true ‘victim’ of this story!
The signatories include not just the usual NUS suspects and their petty bourgeois and authoritarian friends in academia, but shamefully, the editor of the anarchist Freedom News has signed, too.
It’s a depressing read, but serious in its way, as an example of the anti-free speech, authoritarian logic of extreme identity politics and the hysteria it can induce.
Note, in particular, this paragraph:
“Tatchell has a long record of urging that public platforms be denied members of ethnic and religious groups, especially Muslims. He has called for banning so-called “Islamist” speakers from Universities. He has even demanded mosques apologise “for hosting homophobic hate preachers” and give “assurances that they will not host them again.” Tatchell claims the right to decide who qualifies as a “homophobic hate preacher”; what counts is not inciting violence or any tangible threats to LGBT Londoners, but rather simply expressing religious opinions about homosexual acts. The peculiar urgency with which Tatchell targets Muslims lends credibility to the charge of racial insensitivity.”
So, at some point, it has apparently become acceptable for supposed leftwingers to consider speaker tours for homophobic bigots to be a matter of indifference, and that it is “racially insensitive” for LGBT rights campaigners to object to people expressing “religious opinions about homosexual acts“. Most decent lefties (and liberals) will find this euphemistic description of far-right hate preachers pretty sickening. Now, some might disagree with Tatchell on minor tactical issues of precisely how he approaches this, but my gut response, when ‘lefties’ tell gay rights campaigners to shut up about organised far-right bigotry is: “fuck off”.
Also: “The particular urgency with which Tatchell targets Muslims“? Well – which Muslims? All of them? An attack on a far-right preacher who thinks all gay people are animals is an attack on all Muslims? Isn’t it “racially insensitive” to identify all Muslims with the hard-right ideologues that Tatchell feels “urgent” about?
What a wretched, hypocritical shower these self-righteous NUS authoritarians and their academic friends, are!
John Chilton: gentleman and scholar of jazz
When I was a lad first getting into jazz I wanted a copy of Eddie Condon’s biography, ‘We Called It Music’, which I’d heard was an informative and entertaining read: but how to get my hands on a copy? The old memory’s not all it might be these days, so I cannot recall how I got the idea, but somehow I learned that a jazz trumpeter called John Chilton ran a bookshop in Bloomsbury, London and so I sent the shop a book token I’d been given, with a note asking if they had a second-hand copy. The book arrived a few days later, plus a friendly note from John and postal order for the change I was owed! That was my only direct dealing with John Chilton, who has died aged 83.
I did, however, get to hear John play on several occasions, starting with a Sunday lunchtime session at a rather grotty pub in Clerkenwell called the New Merlin’s Cave, and then at a number of rather more prestigious venues where his Feetwarmers were backing George Melly. In fact, the Feetwarmers became Melly’s backing group and John his de facto road manager and musical director from the mid-70’s until the early 2000’s.
But John had a parallel career as a jazz historian and writer. His seminal ‘Who’s Who Of Jazz’ was described by Phillip Larkin as “one of the essential jazz books” and his biographies of Coleman Hawkins, Louis Jordan, Sidney Bechet and (together with Max Jones) Louis Armstrong won many awards and remain indispensable works on their subjects.
He also happened to be, by all accounts, a very decent and generous human being – well, he did, after all, send me that postal order.
Revisiting his ‘Who’s Who Of Jazz’ for the first time in a while, I’ve just noticed this forward by one Johnny Simmen of Zurich., which I think stands as a good, brief, epitaph:
“Rex Stewart, Bill Coleman, and Buck Clayton were the first to mention the name of John Chilton to me. They all said that he was a fine trumpeter and led a good band. ‘That boy is amazing’, Rex told me, ‘and I mean it’, he said, emphaising the point. Later on, when Bill and Buck expressed similarly flattering opinions, I concluded that Chilton had to be a pretty exceptional musician. I finally managed to hear a few of his solos and realised at once that they had not exaggerated one bit.
“Some time later, I received a letter from England, turning the envelope I saw to my surprise that the sender’s name was John Chilton. Perhaps he wanted me to investigate the possibilities of an engagement in Switzerland? No, there was no mention of this, but John – he had received my address from Bill Coleman – that he was in the process of writing a dictionary of American jazz musicians, from the very beginning up to the inclusion of musicians born before 1920. He asked if I had any information on doubtful points.
“From the tenor of the letter, I could tell at once that John is as deeply involved in the history of jazz and the men who play ‘the real thing’ as he is in his playing and arranging. Having gradually got fed up with phoney ‘jazz journalists’ over the years, I was glad to find out that John Chilton is an entirely different proposition. He has the ability, perseverence, and enthusiasm to tackle and finish such a demanding work. It is my opinion that this is one of the truly valuable books on jazz musicians. It is the work of a musician whose knowledge of jazz and love and devotion to ‘the cause’ is unsurpassed.”
Below: John on trumpet with the Bruce Turner Jump Band in 1961 (the still picture shows trombonist Johnny Mumford):
NB: Telegraph obit, here
As junior doctors announce more strikes: the truth about Hunt’s statistics
The British Medical Association (BMA) has announced three further 48-hour strikes of junior doctors. The BMA also announced that it is to seek a judicial review into the government’s plans to impose new contracts.
The dates planned for industrial action are 9 March, 6 April and 26 April. All are scheduled to begin at 8am. Emergency cover will be maintained.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s controversial push to impose new terms and conditions on all 45,000 junior doctors has exacerbated the bitter and long-running dispute.
We publish, below, a detailed critique, by science writer Les Hearn, of Jeremy Hunt’s “evidence” of excess deaths at weekends, used to justify imposing the new contract. This article first appeared in Solidarity:
Lies, damned lies, and Jeremy Hunt’s statistics
The government’s argument in their attack on junior doctors’ pay and conditions has been that they had a manifesto commitment to introduce seven-day access to all aspects of health care and that this was necessary to reduce excess deaths among weekend hospital admissions.
The government’s approach seems to amount to forcing junior doctors to work more at weekends for less pay. But, unless they also force them to work longer hours, this must reduce the number of doctors on weekdays. If the original problem of excess deaths was due to a lack of junior doctors at weekends, the result would be to equalise death rates by lowering death rates following weekend admissions and raising those following weekday admissions. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was very keen to talk about the evidence of excess deaths to justify his actions and, of course, evidence is very important. He claimed “We now have seven independent studies showing mortality is higher for patients admitted at weekends.” We will look at this evidence.
The DH says there is significant evidence of a “weekend effect” where patients admitted over the weekend have higher rates of mortality.1 The DH lists eight pieces of what they call research in support. 1. The major study cited by DH is from the British Medical Journal (Freemantle et al., 2015):2 one of its co-authors is Bruce Keogh, National Medical Director of NHS England. It found that death rates were higher for patients admitted on Fridays (2% higher), Saturdays (10% higher), Sundays (15% higher) and Mondays (5%) than on other days. Since the overall death rate within 30 days for all admissions is 1.8%, this means that the 15%-higher Sunday rate is 2.1% or 3 in 1000 “extra” deaths. We need to understand why and this is where it is important to look at how ill patients are on the day of admission. Risk The study informs us that, while 29% of weekday admissions are emergencies, on Saturdays the figure is 50% and on Sunday 65%. Using another criterion, mortality risk from all factors except day of admission, while 20% of weekday admissions were in the highest category, 25% on Saturdays and 29% on Sundays were in this highest risk of dying group. On these bases, we would expect an increased death rate for weekend admissions of anywhere between 25% and 125%. The observed “excess” of 15% on Sundays should be a cause for congratulation.
This paper is an update of the previous study by Freemantle et al. (2012)3 (see 5 below), also including Keogh. The findings were broadly similar except that the death rate on Saturdays and Sundays were very significantly lower than the average for weekdays. In the update this curious fact, which certainly needs discussion and explanation, is barely mentioned. To summarise, death rates for admissions on Saturdays and Sundays are increased by 10 to 15% but death rates for those already in hospital are reduced by 5 to 8%. Thus, the main source of support for the government’s Seven Day NHS plans does not provide any evidence for it. The weekend death rates for all patients are in fact far lower than one would predict from the seriousness of their illness. Read the rest of this entry »
Help Luqman Onikosi
In 2007 Luqman Onikosi came to the UK from Nigeria to study at the University of Sussex. Whilst in the UK he developed chronic liver disease. After finishing his degree, he began to work in the Nigerian High Commission, before becoming to ill to continue work. In 2012, the Home Office attempted to deport Luqman. If he had been deported in all likelihood he would have died. Fortunately a successful campaign kept him in the country. Now the the Home Office is trying to deport him again. Support Luqman’s appeal for further legal advice, and the campaign to prevent his deportation so that he can access the treatment he needs to stay alive:
George and Nigel: a new study of this profound and moving relationship
Original artwork by John Rogan … this could become a collector’s item:
Comrade Coatesy notes that this all comes as a complete surprise to Galloway’s erstwhile lap-dogs and bag-carriers, as Kimber says for the SWP,
It was nauseating to see George Galloway appearing at the Grassroots Out rally last night and campaigning against the EU alongside the racist Ukip’s Nigel Farage.
The socialist stance on the EU and the referendum
This article is slightly adapted from the editorial that appeared in the 10 February edition of Solidarity:
On 9 February, in Berlin, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis launched a new “Democracy in Europe Movement”. It seems not so much a movement as a personal vehicle. But the spirit of its manifesto — demanding, by 2025, a EU constituent assembly that will create a democratic federal Europe — is right. It aims beyond the petty “what’s best for our little corner” or “what’s safest” calculations which dominate the official debate, and dares to restate the old ideals which motivated calls for a United States of Europe as early as the mid-19th century. “A Europe of reason, liberty, tolerance, and imagination, made possible by comprehensive transparency, real solidarity, and authentic democracy”.
The first radical journal which Karl Marx wrote for was called the German-French Yearbooks. He looked to a day when “the day of the German resurrection will be heralded by the crowing of the Gallic cock”. His Communist Manifesto was written for an international organisation, mostly of migrant workers, active in France, in Belgium, in Germany, in England. Marx was educated in German philosophy, learned socialism from French workers, formed the outlines of his distinctive theory in Brussels, and gave most of his life to studying Scottish and English political economy.
The creation, from a continent wrecked for centuries by incessant national and dynastic wars, of a Europe of mutual enrichment, and melded traditions, inspired many other democrats. In all fields, a Europe of cosmopolitan culture, free movement, diminished borders, is an advance not just “for Britain”, or for this or that grouping, but for the whole continent.
To take an offbeat example: as recently as the 1930s, André Weil became an epoch-making figure just because he broke the chauvinist barriers which had stopped French mathematicians learning from German mathematics. There was an equivalent in England in the 1820s: a students’ revolt at Cambridge University was needed to break down the narrowmindedness which had paralysed English mathematics for a hundred years after the death of Isaac Newton, banning the use of “German” notation.
The arrogance, and shameless capitalist dogmatism of the EU leaders, their drive to make the rules of the single market and the eurozone axioms to be enforced by unelected officials whatever the cost to human lives, is drowning those ideals in a quicksand of bureaucratism. And in so doing, it is nourishing narrow-minded reflex responses, nationalism, xenophobia, migrant-hating. Varoufakis is right: “The European Union will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!” He is also right in his warnings: “If we return to the cocoon of the nation-state, we are going to have a fault line somewhere along the River Rhine and the Alps. Everything to the east of the Rhine and north of the Alps would become depressed economies and the rest of the Europe would be in the territory of stagflation economics, of high unemployment and high prices. “This Europe could even produce a major war or, if not an actual war, so much hardship that nations would turn against each other… We would have condemned the whole world to at least one lost generation. “Out of such an event, I counsel my friends that the Left never benefits. It will always be the ultra-nationalists, the racists, the bigots and Nazis that benefit”.
The mess of the major campaigns aimed at Britain’s EU in-or-out referendum, to be held on 23 June, confirms his judgement. Three campaigns are squabbling over who gets the official Electoral Commission franchise as “the” exit campaign. Vote Leave is run by Dominic Cummings, previously the Tory party’s “director of strategy”, then an adviser to Michael Gove as education minister, notorious for his arrogant abuse even of other Tories and other officials. It is figureheaded by former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, who is now mostly active as a climate change-denying crank.
Shamefully, the leading Labour MPs who support exit, Kate Hoey and Kelvin Hopkins, first linked their Labour Leave campaign to Vote Leave. Now Hoey and Hopkins, but not John Mills, the millionaire who’s been financing Labour Leave, have jumped ship to Grassroots Out (GO). Not an improvement, because GO is financed by UKIP millionaire Arron Banks, was founded by two right-wing Tory MPs, and advertises UKIP leader Nigel Farage as a key supporter. Bizarrely, at its recent public meeting in London, GO introduced George Galloway (who some people still consider to be a left-winger) as its surprise “big name” speaker, alongside Farage. GO may merge with the third campaign, Leave.EU, also funded by Banks, also backed by UKIP. If there is a shade of difference between Leave.EU and Vote Leave, it is that Leave.EU is more straight-for-the-nerve anti-migrant and Vote Leave is more for a free-market Britain, free of annoying “over-regulation” (read: worker protections) from the EU.
Although some genuine left-wingers back exit — Kelvin Hopkins is a soft Stalinist who writes for the Morning Star — they have no distinct voice, and figure in this squabble only as backers of this or that Tory/ UKIP faction. That is logical. Re-raising borders between Britain and the EU countries may contribute to the racists’, xenophobes’, and ultra-capitalists’ aims of excluding migrants and destroying worker protections. It cannot possibly contribute to left-wing aims.
On the “in” side, Britain Stronger in Europe has no rival for the official Electoral Commission franchise. It argues that remaining in the EU is good for “stability”, for “security”, for “business”. The message is as uninspiring as a wet sock to the millions whose lives have been made unstable and insecure, and who have been exploited or sacked by “business”, through the global capitalist crash of 2008 and the EU leaders’ management of its sequels in Europe. Labour, anxious not to repeat the fiasco of its merging with the Tories in the Better Together campaign in Scotland, has an independent “in” campaign, Labour In For Britain. But notice that — “for Britain”, not for workers. The campaign is led by Labour right-winger Alan Johnson. Its profile is feeble, and mostly an echo of the arguments of Britain Stronger in Europe, with a quiet footnote about workers’ rights.
Socialists need a campaign which opposes exit from the EU, not in the name of endorsing the existing EU, but in the name of taking it as the start-point for battle to bring down barriers, level up conditions, extend democracy, and weld workers’ solidarity across the continent. In order to do that, Solidarity has initiated the Workers’ Europe campaign, and works with the Another Europe Is Possible campaign.
- See also: Tendance Coatesy
Harper Lee’s great novel of civil rights and social justice
Nelle Harper Lee: April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016
wrote this in 2010 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The article first appeared in the US paper Socialist Worker (nothing to do with the British SWP):
AS NEW debates erupt about racism, provoked by the bigotry of the Tea Partiers and the rush to judgment about Shirley Sherrod, this summer marks the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which is being celebrated around the country with festivals, re-enactments, book clubs and even “mocktails.”
While the celebrations are in part a commercial gimmick to sell more books, they’re also a testament to the lasting legacy of a novel that is among the most read (and most loved) books of 20th century American literature. Lee’s only novel [prior to the controversial publication in 2015 of Go Set A Watchman – JD] earned her a Pulitzer Prize, has sold over 30 million copies, is taught in 75 percent of U.S. high schools, and has been titled “our national novel” by Oprah.
According to the BBC, its appeal goes beyond borders, beating the Bible (although not Pride and Prejudice) to come in fifth in a British poll for World Book Day. Among British librarians, it was the number one book they would recommend.
Narrated by Jean Louise Finch, better known as Scout, an articulate 6-year-old, Mockingbird covers two years in Maycomb, Ala.–from 1933 to 1935. Dismissed by some as simply a children’s book, the novel is far more than a simple coming-of-age story in the old South. For Scout, her brother Jem and friend Dill (based on Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote), growing up means being increasingly at war with the world of the Jim Crow South.
It’s as an anti-racist novel of the civil rights movement, with its deep commitment to social justice and full equality–this is what earned it such a wide appeal. While the limits of the novel’s politics have often, with good reason, been the focus of debate among scholars and critics, it’s because it stands against racism and for social justice that Mockingbird is listed second among “books that have made a difference” to one’s life, according to ABC News.
Set in the 1930s and published in 1960, the novel straddles both periods and can best be understood, as Patrick Chura argues in the article “Prolepsis and Anachronism: Emmett Till and the Historicity of To Kill a Mockingbird” in the Southern Literary Journal, “as an amalgam or cross-historical montage.”
Through her depiction of the fictional town of Maycomb during the 1930s, Harper Lee exposes the poverty and class inequalities that plague the town, while introducing the reader to the segregated world of the Jim Crow South. Published just five years after the Montgomery bus boycott and the brutal murder of Emmett Till, it’s clearly a novel inspired by the civil rights movement despite being set 30 years earlier.
While Lee has stated that no one trial provided the inspiration for the trial of Tom Robinson that dominates the second half of the novel, it’s clear that two cases in particular left their mark on the novel. In 1931, in Scottsboro, Ala., nine men ranging in ages from 12 to 19 were arrested and falsely accused of rape and assault. A lynch mob of hundreds gathered around the prison, forcing the National Guard to intervene.
Over the next decade, the “Scottsboro Boys,” as they became known, were national symbols of criminal injustice in the segregated South. An all-white jury convicted all nine men, with no due process and virtually no defense. Their case would later be taken up by the Communist Party, which helped bring it to national attention, mobilizing a campaign that put the Southern criminal justice system itself on trial.
In 1955, Emmett Till’s brutal murder became a lightning rod in the nascent civil rights movement as a symbol of the barbarism of Southern “justice.” Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was tortured and murdered while visiting Mississippi for the alleged “crime” of whistling at a white woman.
The trial of the two men responsible for his murder made front-page national news, as an all-white jury took just 67 minutes to exonerate Till’s murderers. The foreman noted, “It would have been a quicker decision…if we hadn’t stopped to drink a bottle of pop.”
Both cases galvanized a generation of activists and provided the political impetus for Harper Lee’s novel. In Mockingbird, Tom Robinson’s trial doesn’t spark a mass movement, but it nonetheless leaves an indelible print on the children’s changing consciousnesses, making it impossible for them to ever see their town–a microcosm of the South as whole–the same way again.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
THE FIRST half of the novel chronicles the adventures of Scout as the town and its social relations are introduced. The oppressive weight of Southern society and the alienation it produces are most clearly expressed through the unforgettable character of Boo Radley, the juvenile rebel turned adult recluse, one of the novel’s “mockingbirds,” who is the object of the children’s fascination.
Maycomb is a segregated Southern town where racism is unquestioned, poverty is everywhere, and one’s last name determines one’s place in a narrow-minded society. Being a Haverford “is synonymous with being jackass”; being a Cunningham means you’re poor, but refuse to take charity (i.e. the “good” poor); and being a Ewell means you don’t bathe, don’t go to school and do as little as possible except for signing relief checks (i.e. the “bad” poor).
GO campaign brings scum together
Nigel Farage and George Galloway at the the Grassroots Out rally at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters
The Graun‘s excellent John Crace reports:
Step forward George Galloway, never one to turn down an opportunity to self-promote. There were boos as his name was announced and more than a hundred people left in protest. The GO campaign was finally beginning to make sense. Its aim had been to bring together politicians from across all parties and it had done just that. Unfortunately they were all ones which most normal people would go a long way to avoid.
Shiraz Socialist 