2
April 2007: The Ambridge Socialist
(Thanks to Keith Flett for the following) Oyez
Oyez. While Eddie has to do a shout in Italian, Bert Fry has got to do one
in Swedish. The Ambridge Socialist says: to whichever of the Archers
script-writers is involved in a Town Crier contest, give it a bleeding
rest please. More.
29
March 2007: Andorra "In their 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign Andorra finished bottom of a group featuring Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Holland, Estonia and Cyprus, losing all ten of their matches, conceding 36 goals and scoring just five. Their heaviest defeat was a 1-7 demolition at home to Portugal."
source.
29
March 2007: On the definition of anti-fascism I've
noticed that the Wikipedia
along with other online sources has a number of
pages which present definitions of "anti-fascism" as
"militant anti-fascism", with the implication being that the
former amounts to the latter plus not much else. I think that does some
disservice to the history of the movement. Of course, in Britain, there
have been groups such as Anti-Fascist Action, which have played at times a
useful role. To present them as everything, however, is to reduce the
history of movements which have involved hundreds of thousands of people
to a story of small groups which have rarely had an active support of more
than a few dozen. Even the first historical example of "militant
anti-fascism" in Britain, the 43 Group, was something very different:
a combination of a small number of ex-servicemen, who did indeed believe
in knocking fascism off the street, with a different style of politics,
including the production of propaganda, and the use of newspapers: in its
ways akin either to the ANL style of the 1970s, or certainly Searchlight
today. How then to write about anti-fascism in a way that incorporates all
of the above? As an example my own analysis, I've recently posted an old
dictionary entry I wrote back in 2003 on the
definition of anti-fascism. Other sources on fascism and anti-fascism here.
27
March 2007: The Ambridge Socialist
(Thanks to Keith Flett for the following) Once
Again On Drink: Sometimes the weather gets set into a pattern that it just
can't shift, and so it is with the Archers. Drink still dominates in
Ambridge and if you don't believe the Ambridge Socialist on this take a
look at the BBC website. In its pages devoted to the Archers a weekly poll
is held. Last week surfers were asked if Lillian or Eddie was more likely
to break their vow of abstinence for Lent first. This week's poll asks
whether Lillian should confess to Matt that she is drinking [amazingly so
up themselves are hardcore Archers fans that 41% say 'yes' which will
represent several thousand people]. More.
27
March 2007: Louisa Dempsey I've
mentioned previously in passing here
my great-great grandmother Louisa Dempsey, about whom I know almost
nothing except that she married my great-great grandfather John Torr, the
Liverpool MP, and predeceased him, dying in 1868. Many thanks therefore to
Patrick Glencross who has just sent me the following. More.
26
March 2007: strikes in Egypt Thanks
to Ian Birchall for forwarding this link to an excellent piece by Joel Beinin and Hossam
el-Hamalawy on the current strike
wave taking place in Egypt.
26
March 2007: more on abolition Fine
blogging by Histomast on the end
of slavery.
26
March 2007: Opposition picks up in Zimbabwe Protests
have recently become much more visible in Harare, in advance of the
general strike which is due to take place on April 3-4. For those who know
little of the country's politics, one of the facts I find remarkable about
Zimbabwe is the extent to which the national resistance is the product of
a tiny handful of key leaders almost all of whom (with the notable
exception of Morgan Tsvangirai) were, by the end of the 1980s, Marxists,
or influenced by a particular trend of thought within British Marxism.
I've written previously about the International Socialist Organisation,
which despite its few numbers is one of the most remarkable left-wing
parties in the world. Among its former members and fellow-travellers are a
remarkable number of the leaders of the MDC left: not least Arthur
Mutambara, Lovemore Madhuku and Tendai Biti. Some of the history is told here
and here.
I've also written about ISO Zimbabwe here.
25
March 2007: Football, best watched or heard? I
was recently in Barcelona for the first leg of Liverpool's Champions
League tie. Sat among the gods at the Nou Camp, it occurred to me that I
hardly ever get to watch football live these days. My most intense period
of watching Liverpool at Anfield goes back to the late 1980s, and was
brought to an end by Hillsborough. There have been other periods of my
life when I would watch my team whenever they were on television. Living
in Liverpool the year of our three cup triumphs under Gerard Houllier,
every week the team was on television, in one or another competition. It
was easy enough either to get tickets, or to find a pub. More.
24
March 2007: CLR James and the Black Jacobins
Many
people contributed to the abolition of the slave trade; including those
African authors such as who Olaudah Equiano were freed and then protested
against the conditions in which they had been held; as well as the Jacobin
workers of the London Corresponding Society who demonstrated repeatedly in
favour of abolition; and even those parliamentarians (more often named
than they deserve) who joined the campaign belatedly and have been the
heroes of our current government's celebrations. At the head of the list,
without a question, the true and greatest champions, were
the rebellious slaves of St. Domingo (today's Haiti). More.
24
March 2007: Fighting in Kinshasa Troubling
reports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Jean-Pierre
Bemba, who came a close second in the country's recent presidential
elections is said to have been charged with high treason. He's now in hiding
in the South African embassy. Several dozen people appear to have been
killed. Context to the story here.
23
March 2007: War minus the shooting? Cricket
is a sport often misunderstood by those who've never watched it keenly. In
normal times, it suffers from the admiration of those whose vision of
society really does have old maids bicycling to holy communion through the
morning mist. In England, we still inhabit the echoes of its last period
of intense popularity. The Ashes victory of 2004 gave the sport a future.
Without it, cricket would belong with equestrianism or rowing. Cricket
fades - in England - in moments of normality. It lives in the exceptional
moment, when something touches the general consciousness. But a game that
relies on vigour faces with the violence of Bob Woolmer's death a crisis
as bad as any has known. More.
23
March 2007: The Ambridge Socialist
(Thanks to Keith Flett for the following) On drink: As regular readers
will know in yet another of the religiously inspired storylines of the
Archers, Lillian and Eddie signed the pledge for Lent together with an
accompanying agreement to donate money to Church funds. The Ambridge
Socialist is prepared to believe that this kind of thing still goes on
somewhere, but for it to become the main storyline in the Archers is
surely pushing matters rather a lot. More.
20
March: Very Deeply Dyed in Black Graham
Macklin's new book on Mosley's attempted postwar revival; reviewed here.
19
March: Campaign for a Living Wage Thanks
to Nick Wall for sending me details of his campaign for a living wage:
which I take to mean a significant increase in the current minimum wage.
The method by which the living wage should be calculated is set out here.
Further campaign materials here.
Petition on the No. 10 site here.
(I should stress how timely the demand is. Seasoned Gordon Brown watchers
could hardly fail to have noticed the recent plaudits he won from the Financial
Times for increasing the existing the national minimum wage by a rate
lower even than inflation. Until now, each year it has at least gone up
with RPI. The Tories, planning a future government, were unsurprisingly
delighted).
17
March: CLR James and the West Indies' hegemony Following
Gary Younge's Guardian
piece on the hegemony of West Indies cricket in the 1970s and 1980s , and
the Observer's
give-away of CLR James tshirts (note: the offer still has 3 days
outstanding), I thought I would remark on CLR James and this same
hegemony. If we date the days of triumph from 1975, the West Indies'
victory in the inaugural cricket world cup to 1988 (West Indies third
successive overwhelming series victory over England), then for all this
period James was writing about cricket. He was in his 70s and 80s
admittedly, but the pen did not stop. For all this period, James'
continued to publish, often on cricket. And yet he had very little to say
about Richards, or Garner, or any of the "blackwash" victories. More.
15
March: CLR James In
honour of the West Indies victory in the first game of the World Cup, I've
posted a short piece on CLR
James' Beyond a Boundary, by common consent the greatest book on
cricket ever written
15
March 2007: Chartism After 1848 Keeping
up the Keith Flett line - have just reviewed his new book on Chartism.
12
March 2007: The Ambridge Socialist
(Thanks to Keith for the following) Brian Aldridge, 62, is thinking of selling the farm. What motivates these thoughts we’re not sure. It could be a later-life crisis over his son; it might be a realisation that with Debbie getting acting honours elsewhere, Charles Collingwood needs to move on to if he is to get recognition for his acting talent. Or it might be a grasp of the way British capitalism is going and a belief that private equity is the way forward for capitalism. Then the farm can be asset stripped and turned into a housing estate, providing many new characters and storylines for the Archers.
Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said 'One thing we can be sure about. Whatever happens about this particular storyline, it won’t happen
quickly.' More.
9
March 2007: webgizmos Thanks
to Chris at the Virtual Stoa for this
useful link to a "Naziometer", a device which enables you to
tell how many times the word 'Nazi' appears in Melanie Phillips' online diary. (The answer is
currently a modest 3). Thanks also to the Great
Firewall of China: from which I learn that this site is banned in the
People's Republic. Hurrah! Those seeking a crash course in Sinology are
guided to the Mao
of Pooh.
8
March 2007: William Morris Gallery threatened More
details of the campaign and online petition here.
5
March 2007: The Ambridge Socialist
(Many thanks to Keith Flett for news of the following)
Ambridge
faced a fresh crisis this week as Clarrie padlocked the Grundy's cider
barn to prevent Eddie, who has entered a bet that he can stay off the
booze for Lent, from having an illicit drink. Meanwhile takings at the
Bull are believed to be significantly down after Lillian Bellamy undertook
a similar pledge. Her partner, corrupt fat cat Matt Crawford, has
padlocked the drinks cabinet, meaning that when it comes to booze it is
one law for the rich and the poor in Ambridge. Ambridge Socialist Editor
Keith Flett said, 'We don't doubt that drinking too much is bad for the
health, and not something to be encouraged in the labour movement. At the
same time not drinking at all and talking about it is also bad, at least
for the mental health of Archers listeners.' More.
5
March 2007: Daniel Guerin Thanks
to Dave Berry for news of the conference he organised on Daniel Guérin, at Loughborough
University in September 2004. The proceedings have now been published as a special issue of
the French journal, Dissidences. Further articles and a comprehensive bibliography of D. Guérin will shortly be published on the
Dissidences web site. The original versions of conference papers given in English
are here.
1
March 2007: Nigel Harris, The Terrorist Along
with David Harvey and Mike Davis, I find Nigel Harris one of the most
interesting writers still working - if loosely - in a tradition of Marxist
political economy. It is not hard then to convey the pleasure, then, with
which I saw that his new book is a novel, and more than that, a serious
attempt to explain the tradition of contemporary Islamist terrorism. Nigel
lectured at the American University in Cairo in 1998, and has been a
strong influence on a generation of activists in that city. You couldn't
find a more interesting topic, or a person better placed to write about
it. More.
1
March: LSHG Banner spotted on demo
I'm
not in the picture and was unable to make the demonstration,
except very briefly, but still it makes me rather proud to see
this image (originally from Indymedia) of the London Socialist
Historians' Group's banner on last Saturday's anti-war march. Two
friends Keith Flett and Ian Birchall are carrying at either end,
with Toby Abse elsewhere in the photo.
27
February 2007: Review My
book on the Anti-Nazi League
reviewed by Toby Abse here;
a response to the review here.
25
February 2007: Victory I've
posted before about the two large
protests meetings that have been held on the estate where I live in
opposition to plans to introduce CCTV. It's very pleasant then to be able
to confirm that following two separate ballots of residents, CCTV has been
decisively thrown out, and the organisation which had proposed to
introduce it (Homes for Islington) confirms that the scheme has been
withdrawn. More coverage (by way of context) here,
here
and here.
25
February 2007: Kinder Scout: 75 years on A
quick plug for the new website to celebrate this April's anniversary of
the Kinder Scout mass trespass:
when workers from Sheffield and Manchester demonstrated for the right to
roam, and the moment from which today's access rights spring.
23
February 2007: Tom Mann I've
put up here before Ken Weller's comments on Tom
Mann, the agitator at large who by the 1930s was a prominent member of the
Communist Party of Great Britain. This led to a correspondence with Charlie
Pottins, who has now been kind enough to send me the text of Mann's
famous letter to the paper Red Flag, an early Trotskyist periodical,
In
September 1933,
he writes, the monthly organ of the Communist League, British section of
the International Left Opposition, Red Flag, sent an Open letter to Tom
Mann, drawing attention to the arrest and imprisonment in China of Chen du
Siu, and asking why the International Labour Defence was not making
efforts for his release.
(The implied answer, of course, was that the ILDU only campaigned on
behalf of Communist prisoners, whereas Chen du Siu had recently left the
Chinese Communist Party and was now a Trotskyist). The following month, this appeared:
"Tom Mann has sent us the following
letter, date September 7th, In reply to our 'Open Letter' which appeared last month's
Red Flag: 'Dear Comrade, I have read the letter addressed to me which appears in the Red Flag.
When In China in 1927 I attended the opening of the Chinese Communist Party
Congress at Hankow and 1 considered Comrade Chen Du Siu and his colleagues a
capable and courageous body of comrades. When the arrests and imprisonments
followed I have on many occasions at public gatherings emphatically protested
against the imprisonment and demanded the release of all class war prisoners.
If my signature is of any value by way of protest or demand I am ready to append
the same, and I count it my
duty to continue to develop opinion till it shall be equal to demanding and securing the release of our comrade.
(signed) TOM MANN.'
19
February 2007: The Ambridge Socialist
(Many thanks to Keith Flett for news of the following) Ambridge has last discovered climate change as scriptwriters work their way through
the list of issues that will form Blair’s ‘legacy’ carefully avoiding as they always have,
Iraq. Nigel is worried about the impact climate change will have on tree life in the village and
has determined to give up his car to make a personal contribution to attempts to
address the crisis. Concern has also been expressed about the air miles impact of goods that can be found
in shops in Borchester, such as stripy shirts. Unfortunately the catchphrase ‘local shops
for local people’ is already taken by another soap. More.
19
February: a few quick plugs First
for the Big Picture website, run by
an old friend Marcus Morrell, which now has an astonishing range of
interviews with various celebrities mainly of a green persuasion: Annie
Lennox, Carline Lucas, Susan George, Naomi Klein and George Monbiot ... my
own favourite in the politics section: the ever-reliable Danny
Schechter on Murdoch's war against the print unions, and Blair's role
in the Murdoch ascendancy. Also, for anyone else who (like me) missed the
Unite Against Fascism conference on the weekend, Headancer
has some great photos of the event. Finally, a renewed plug for the Walden
1647 event being run to commemorate the 360th anniversary of an
important event from the very heights of the English
revolution.
16
February 2007: 'Trotsky' now available in Spanish A
big thanks to all at Ediciones Tutor in Madrid, for having translated and published
my book on Trotsky. I probably shouldn't
admit this, but seeing the book on my shelf leaves me feeling quite
embarrassed with pride.
16
February 2007: petition launched: keep the British Library free Nearly
ten years ago saw the last set of rumours to the effect that the
government was thinking of charging readers to attend the British Library.
At that time, the move was defeated thanks chiefly to a campaign run by a
then SOAS PhD
student, who galvanised such a large and vibrant campaign around
her that the Library (and the government behind it) had no chance but to
back down. Ministers now seem to be trailing proposals to the same effect again,
and a petition has been launched here.
15
February 2007: commemorating republican Spain
Thanks
to Charlie Pottins for
sending me the details of the following event: there will be a meeting
dedicated to the memory of Christopher
Caudwell, a British volunteer in the International Brigades who was
killed in the battle of Jarama, 1937, this coming Saturday afternoon,
17th Feb., 3-5pm at Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street, Aldgate.Dave
Rosenberg is speaking
about Cable Street and the fight against Mosley's Fascists, Alan
Spence on Proletarian Philosophy in 1930s Britain, and David Margolies
on Poets and the Popular Front.Admission
is £3.
15
February 2007: BNP member convicted of explosives offences Good
coverage here,
here
and here.
12
February 2007: new philosophy football t-shirt
Thanks
to Mark Perryman for sending me the details of philosophy
football's new t-shirt (right), which has been launched in
celebration of the British Battalion of the International
Brigades, founded in December 1936. More details here.
I'm not the only person on the left to have long had a soft spot
for Tom Wintringham: one of the very first of the British IBers,
and the subject of a very fine biography (advertised here)
by Hugh Purcell. Wintringham famously hoped to turn the Home Guard
into a people's militia. The War Office, equally famously, were
utterly hostile. If we armed the people, they said, who will stop
the people turning their arms next on us?
4
February 2007: Raph Samuel The
first historian I ever met was a scarecrow. He struck me as short: around
five and half feet tall. (Memory may be playing tricks). His hair, he wore
parted on both sides. The effect tended to accentuate his spreading
baldness. He was in his fifties. And he knew everything. Why were their so
many names on the war memorials? When did class begin? What was fascism?
Who first had used the image of the red flag? Most important of all the
questions, and the one uppermost in my mind was this: what should I do to
finish the A-level dissertation which I had just begun?More
31
January 2007: what does one want? In
a week when Radio Five Live is selling its soul to Wills' and Harry's alma
mater (their morning show will broadcast on Friday from Eton College),
thanks are owed to Ian Birchall for the following correspondence: 'While looking for something completely different',
he writes, 'I found this in Socialist Worker for 17 June 1978: "Eton had never seen anything like it. Right to Work marchers met Rock Against Racism punks weaving through the streets of Eton behind Crisis, a band pounding out driving rock music from the back of a lorry. Two movements coming together outside Eton public school, heart of privilege and pomp.
The chants, 'Annihilate the National Front', fake upper-class accents, 'What does one want - the Right to Work', 'Eton boys rather naughty, Liverpool boys rather good'."
More.
25
January 2007: for stealing a pair of handkerchiefs I
just recently came across a superb site,
containing verbatim reports of seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
century Old Bailey trials. Searching it at random, I came across the case
of James Nelson, indicted in January 1824 for stealing a coat, a waistcoat, a pair of
trousers, a hat, a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, two handkerchiefs, a comb, a key,
and some lose change. The defence? Nelson had served in the British army
for 16 years. he attempted to set up a business, which failed, and he
found himself, as he put it, 'destitute of every thing'. The sentence?
Death.
25
January 2007: three plugs Women
of Zimbabwe Arise have just put up a short film
about their campaign on YouTube, as have members of the T+G for black
history month. Meanwhile Philosophy Football have an event
with Robb Johnson and Leon Rosselson to celebrate the seventieth
anniversary of the Spanish Civil War.
19
January 2007: another occupation
I
just came across this telling quotation in Paul Ginsborg's book on postwar
Italy. From an anonymous American officer stationed in Italy in autumn
1947 and quoted in a contemporary US magazine: 'The Italians can tell you the names of the ministers in the government but not the names of the
favorite products of the celebrities of the country. In addition, the walls of the Italian cities are plastered more with political slogans than with commercial ones. According to the opinion of this officer there is little hope that the Italians will
achieve a state of prosperity and internal calm until they start to be more
interested in the respective merits of different types of cornflakes and
cigarettes rather than the relative abilities of their political leaders' (Paul Ginsborg, 'A History of Contemporary Italy 1943-1980' (Penguin, 1990), p. 247).
17
January 2007: Green reps (again) At the
start of November, I wrote a short piece arguing that trade unionists
should campaign for the extension of the rights currently open to
workplace union learning or health and safety representatives to other
groups, chiefly workplace green or environmental reps. Two weeks ago, the
government launched a consultation, one of whose main consequences would
be precisely this reform. More.
17 January
2007: Engage and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty One of
the candidates in the campaign to become next General Secretary of the
education union UCU Roger Kline has posted on his blog criticism of a
certain 'campaign' called Engage (which I've blogged on previously), and
which is attempting in its usual meretricious fashion to intervene in the
elections. More.
14
January: is my memory playing tricks with me? I
seem to remember that at Christmas 1994, following that year's World Cup,
then US defender and occasional grunge guitarist Alexei Lalas was quoted
(in that year's Socialist Worker Xmas quiz no less), describing himself as a Marxist in
the tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. Does anyone else remember
the quote? Was all it just a rumour, sparked perhaps by Lalas' red beard? In view of Lalas' new role, as the manager to LA Galaxy, and
therefore to brand Beckham - I would love to know if it was
true.
10
January: Review added (Nigel
Copsey, from the new issue of Extremism and Democracy) at the When
we Touched the Sky website.
10
January: Palash goes Frontline Congratulations
to my old friend Palash whose new blog launches
shortly on the Frontline
site. It was for CLR James, but it should have been for Palash that the
following lines were penned: 'Immensely amiable, he
love[s] the fleshpots of capitalism, fine cooking, fine clothes, fine furniture and beautiful women, without a trace of the guilty remorse to be expected from a seasoned warrior of the class war.'
6 January:
E. P. Thompson and Leon Trotsky Reading
the Maps has a fine, closely-argued piece,
pointing out some flaws in Paul Blackledge's recent article on Thompson
and the New Left. When I read Paul's piece, I felt instinctively that
it suffered from a series of problems (without perhaps being able to identify
them), and it's useful to see these brought out. After all, given the
marginality, diffusion and heterodoxy of IS to British politics in this
period - acknowledged in the past by David Widgery and Ian Birchall - it's
just a bit daft to use the organisation as a revolutionary exemplar
against which to set the much larger New Left. But having said all
that, I'm not entirely convinced by Maps' replacement of one
undifferentiated advocacy (Blackledge's for the IS) by another (Map's for
Thompson). More.
1
January 2007: thanks to Martyn Everett
For sending me details of the Walden 1647 programme.
What's
so wrong with supporting Trinidad and Tobago? here More memories from the 1970s here More on the local elections here Calling any readers in Rome Berlin or Paris
here
Memories from the ANL in Manchester here Not all Essex history is so radical here Punk etymology here How to write about migrationhere Tracing Rosita Forbes here Who needs to find a millionaire? (cont./d)here Radical history of Essex here More on Frank Ellis here Some recent cases in race discrimination law
here
