Sunday, 28 June 2009
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Are Racists Racist ?
The British National Party is to be investigated because its membership and employment policies may break the Race Relations Act. Well, there’s a surprise.
But even more surprising is the reaction of that nice Mr Peter Tatchell. Asked for his view by The Guardian, he said if only people had known beforehand that non-whites can’t become members then maybe some would have thought twice about voting for them at the European Parliament elections.
How often are we going to have to put up with elements of the left in denial about the casual racism of our society ? Last week, Romanian people living in Belfast were hounded out of their homes by an admittedly very tiny minority of racist thugs. Sky News spoke to locals about it. They blamed the credit crunch.
But even more surprising is the reaction of that nice Mr Peter Tatchell. Asked for his view by The Guardian, he said if only people had known beforehand that non-whites can’t become members then maybe some would have thought twice about voting for them at the European Parliament elections.
How often are we going to have to put up with elements of the left in denial about the casual racism of our society ? Last week, Romanian people living in Belfast were hounded out of their homes by an admittedly very tiny minority of racist thugs. Sky News spoke to locals about it. They blamed the credit crunch.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Twits
Iran was my first experience of revolutionary violence. As a 12 and 13 year old I sat captivated in front of the TV set as ordinary citizens took to the streets in what seemed a thrilling expression of people power.
To a youngster it seemed a simple story; the public didn’t like an corrupt old king who had failed to use the country’s oil wealth for their betterment.
So, they were throwing him out and replacing him with his fiercest critic, an old guy with a beard who promised justice for the poor.
It seemed fair enough. Replace a tyrant with justice and the chances are you will end up with a better society. But even in 1979, from western eyes at least, it seemed an odd manifestation of a socially-progressive change in the way things worked.
For a start the old guy with the beard was a religious leader and he was creating a theocratic state based on a code of law and governance that harked back to the middle ages, if not before that. To us, it still seems a strange choice for a society to make; reject the new and make way for the old.
But that was to take a secularist approach to history. It ignored the fact that Iran had a high number of pious poor people who perhaps welcomed the certainty that rule by religious fundamentalists brought.
And there now seems no doubt that amongst the educated, more prosperous part of society there was an element of nationalism at play. At a time of Cold War tensions Iran could have swung to the left amid the melting pot of revolutionary fervour. Left-wing groups were involved on the streets in the overthrow of the Shah and perhaps fancied their chances of a secularist, nationalist, left-leaning nation either non-alligned or maybe even a Soviet client state.
But that didn’t happen. Largely because there was little popular support for it. That in turn seems to have been guided by the intermingling of nationalism and religion.
Iran is one of the very few Muslim countries with an overwhelmingly Shia majority. That sense of difference, not just from the western values of Socialism, but also of ‘otherness’ from Sunni countries may have helped convince many of the need not just for a revolution to topple a tyrant, but for a specific ‘Iranian’ type of revolution.
Perhaps. Maybe it was because Ayatollah Khomeini was simply the most prominent, long-standing critic of the Shah. The opponent with the loudest voice and who shouts the longest has the best chance of convincing people of his ideas. You can’t rule out, as well, that his ideas also convinced some within the ruling clique, most crucially sections of the military.
Once you have a revolution, though, you have to sustain it and history tells us the easiest way is through war. Saddam Hussein was largely to blame for the nine year Iran-Iraq conflict. It was a kind of hell for both nations but Iran used it to build its revolutionary creed, entrench an autocratic, theocracy and, in the minds of many, create an image of a united nation-state able to defeat a more powerful neighbour.
The revolution was a success, the war was a kind of success, and Iran, at huge cost, had some reason to feel good about itself. But the power invested in the revolutionary ideals must have suffered a shock with Khomeni’s death.
Crucially, before the old man died, a succession was sorted out. But since then the power struggle has been for the heart of the revolution, played out between conservatives and reformers.
The former always seem to have the upper hand simply because the architecture of state, put in place by Khomeini before his death, gives the religious leaders, not the political ones, all the real power.
Hence the recent election and its aftermath has a crucial subtext; politicians in Iran are elected but have limited power to direct policy. They can’t even stand for office unless they have first been approved by the religious leaders. Mir Hossein Mousavi claims he lost the election fraudulently and his supporters have taken to the streets. He is the ‘leader’ of this new revolution, according to western analysis, but he is an establishment figure.
His supporters shout ‘Death to the dictator’ but they don’t mean Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the man who ‘won’ the election. Instead they want the head of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, because he’s the guy that runs the place; the President is merely his puppet.
There seems little doubt that is what has precipitated this whole crisis. Khameini took one look at the way the semi-democratic wind was blowing and didn’t like what he saw. He would much rather have someone in his own image as the political figurehead.
Which raises the question of what a Mousavi presidency would be like. Some Iranians liked the idea of greater freedom of expression and a more liberal social environment their man was promising. There are some too who weary of all the confrontation with the west and with Israel. But they voted for Mohammed Khatami in 1997 with similar hopes in their heart and got very little in return because he lacked the powerbase and, ultimately, the determination to force his reforms to a conclusion in the face of likely opposition from the religious elite.
Even if they get their wish of a new election and Mousavi wins what are the chances that they will get what they want ? Will they end up disappointed and the Islamic revolution still unwilling to give them the real change they so evidently want ?
That is why the protestors now have to decide what to do next. They have been told by the Supreme Leader to pack up and go home. In effect, he’s saying the party’s over, I’m still in charge, things aren’t going to change so you can like it or lump it.
By continuing the protests they change their meaning. At the outset there was anger at apparent election fraud. Now the state has laid its cards on the table as far as that one goes, the next step from there is an open challenge to the regime itself.
From an appeal to get the ‘right’ President inside the existing framework of the Islamic Republic the only way forward is either to challenge that framework or to challenge the existence of the right of the religious leaders to rule at all.
If they want to end the Islamic Republic then it would appear they need new leaders because Mousavi is not really their man. And, after all, why would someone who had invested so much time and effort in setting up and sustaining the theocratic state want to pull it all down ?
But his response to the intransigence of Khameini and the apparatus of state repression will be crucial. His apparent claim to favour ‘martyrdom’ suggests militancy but he still appears to be a man willing to work within the system. He will accept compromise, that’s for sure, especially if more people within the establishment come over to his way of thinking and more politicial pressure ensues on the clerics. And it seems the majority of those in green would probably settle for the same and go home.
However, those out battling the riot police have moved their own goalposts. The Twitterers are starting to call for freedom. What does that mean, other than the end of the old regime? But they lack one crucial aspect, real leadership. Which, in turn, tends to suggest talk of a 1979 regime-change scenario is unlikely. Those who would use the protests to overturn the revolution have no Khomeini and will flounder without one.
The best outcome for the greens ? More politicians back Mousavi and some limited reforms are introduced. The worst case would be intransigence on both sides and more deaths. With the outside world unwilling to interfere until the dust settles on the internal wrangling it could be more of the latter than the former.
To a youngster it seemed a simple story; the public didn’t like an corrupt old king who had failed to use the country’s oil wealth for their betterment.
So, they were throwing him out and replacing him with his fiercest critic, an old guy with a beard who promised justice for the poor.
It seemed fair enough. Replace a tyrant with justice and the chances are you will end up with a better society. But even in 1979, from western eyes at least, it seemed an odd manifestation of a socially-progressive change in the way things worked.
For a start the old guy with the beard was a religious leader and he was creating a theocratic state based on a code of law and governance that harked back to the middle ages, if not before that. To us, it still seems a strange choice for a society to make; reject the new and make way for the old.
But that was to take a secularist approach to history. It ignored the fact that Iran had a high number of pious poor people who perhaps welcomed the certainty that rule by religious fundamentalists brought.
And there now seems no doubt that amongst the educated, more prosperous part of society there was an element of nationalism at play. At a time of Cold War tensions Iran could have swung to the left amid the melting pot of revolutionary fervour. Left-wing groups were involved on the streets in the overthrow of the Shah and perhaps fancied their chances of a secularist, nationalist, left-leaning nation either non-alligned or maybe even a Soviet client state.
But that didn’t happen. Largely because there was little popular support for it. That in turn seems to have been guided by the intermingling of nationalism and religion.
Iran is one of the very few Muslim countries with an overwhelmingly Shia majority. That sense of difference, not just from the western values of Socialism, but also of ‘otherness’ from Sunni countries may have helped convince many of the need not just for a revolution to topple a tyrant, but for a specific ‘Iranian’ type of revolution.
Perhaps. Maybe it was because Ayatollah Khomeini was simply the most prominent, long-standing critic of the Shah. The opponent with the loudest voice and who shouts the longest has the best chance of convincing people of his ideas. You can’t rule out, as well, that his ideas also convinced some within the ruling clique, most crucially sections of the military.
Once you have a revolution, though, you have to sustain it and history tells us the easiest way is through war. Saddam Hussein was largely to blame for the nine year Iran-Iraq conflict. It was a kind of hell for both nations but Iran used it to build its revolutionary creed, entrench an autocratic, theocracy and, in the minds of many, create an image of a united nation-state able to defeat a more powerful neighbour.
The revolution was a success, the war was a kind of success, and Iran, at huge cost, had some reason to feel good about itself. But the power invested in the revolutionary ideals must have suffered a shock with Khomeni’s death.
Crucially, before the old man died, a succession was sorted out. But since then the power struggle has been for the heart of the revolution, played out between conservatives and reformers.
The former always seem to have the upper hand simply because the architecture of state, put in place by Khomeini before his death, gives the religious leaders, not the political ones, all the real power.
Hence the recent election and its aftermath has a crucial subtext; politicians in Iran are elected but have limited power to direct policy. They can’t even stand for office unless they have first been approved by the religious leaders. Mir Hossein Mousavi claims he lost the election fraudulently and his supporters have taken to the streets. He is the ‘leader’ of this new revolution, according to western analysis, but he is an establishment figure.
His supporters shout ‘Death to the dictator’ but they don’t mean Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the man who ‘won’ the election. Instead they want the head of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, because he’s the guy that runs the place; the President is merely his puppet.
There seems little doubt that is what has precipitated this whole crisis. Khameini took one look at the way the semi-democratic wind was blowing and didn’t like what he saw. He would much rather have someone in his own image as the political figurehead.
Which raises the question of what a Mousavi presidency would be like. Some Iranians liked the idea of greater freedom of expression and a more liberal social environment their man was promising. There are some too who weary of all the confrontation with the west and with Israel. But they voted for Mohammed Khatami in 1997 with similar hopes in their heart and got very little in return because he lacked the powerbase and, ultimately, the determination to force his reforms to a conclusion in the face of likely opposition from the religious elite.
Even if they get their wish of a new election and Mousavi wins what are the chances that they will get what they want ? Will they end up disappointed and the Islamic revolution still unwilling to give them the real change they so evidently want ?
That is why the protestors now have to decide what to do next. They have been told by the Supreme Leader to pack up and go home. In effect, he’s saying the party’s over, I’m still in charge, things aren’t going to change so you can like it or lump it.
By continuing the protests they change their meaning. At the outset there was anger at apparent election fraud. Now the state has laid its cards on the table as far as that one goes, the next step from there is an open challenge to the regime itself.
From an appeal to get the ‘right’ President inside the existing framework of the Islamic Republic the only way forward is either to challenge that framework or to challenge the existence of the right of the religious leaders to rule at all.
If they want to end the Islamic Republic then it would appear they need new leaders because Mousavi is not really their man. And, after all, why would someone who had invested so much time and effort in setting up and sustaining the theocratic state want to pull it all down ?
But his response to the intransigence of Khameini and the apparatus of state repression will be crucial. His apparent claim to favour ‘martyrdom’ suggests militancy but he still appears to be a man willing to work within the system. He will accept compromise, that’s for sure, especially if more people within the establishment come over to his way of thinking and more politicial pressure ensues on the clerics. And it seems the majority of those in green would probably settle for the same and go home.
However, those out battling the riot police have moved their own goalposts. The Twitterers are starting to call for freedom. What does that mean, other than the end of the old regime? But they lack one crucial aspect, real leadership. Which, in turn, tends to suggest talk of a 1979 regime-change scenario is unlikely. Those who would use the protests to overturn the revolution have no Khomeini and will flounder without one.
The best outcome for the greens ? More politicians back Mousavi and some limited reforms are introduced. The worst case would be intransigence on both sides and more deaths. With the outside world unwilling to interfere until the dust settles on the internal wrangling it could be more of the latter than the former.
Saturday, 20 June 2009
It's Amazing What's On YouTube
And I bet they didn't have problems with kids hanging around street corners drinking Buckfast and White Lightning claiming they had nothing to do.
I love the bit where Willi Stoph, Prime Minister of the GDR and Politburo member of the SED, inflates and plays with his own beach ball. Brilliant !
Thursday, 18 June 2009
A Word On Expenses
A work colleague can put £40 worth of petrol in the tank of their car, drive to a job 180 miles away, and back, and claim mileage from their employer that amounts to more than £300. They have done nothing wrong. It is all within the rules.
The same work colleague expresses dismay, disgust and horror that an MP can claim food expenses of £400 a month and can rack up a total expenses bill, in a year, of almost £200,000.
Who is right ? More to the point, who is without sin ? When it comes to the Westminster expenses saga indignation comes cheap and hypocrisy is curiously ignored.
Yes, some MP’s were on the make. But most were only doing what they knew they would get away with. That is the way of the world. Few fiddled their expenses but a lot knew how to maximise them. Many people with allowances from their work follow exactly the same rules. The difference appears only to be one of scale.
By all means punish the buyers of duck ponds and while you are at it you can change the rules so there is less money bandied about. After all, who earns £64,000 a year and needs a food allowance ? But the disgust of the ordinary office worker who would never dream of being out of pocket for any costs incurred as part of a day’s work. That we can do without.
The same work colleague expresses dismay, disgust and horror that an MP can claim food expenses of £400 a month and can rack up a total expenses bill, in a year, of almost £200,000.
Who is right ? More to the point, who is without sin ? When it comes to the Westminster expenses saga indignation comes cheap and hypocrisy is curiously ignored.
Yes, some MP’s were on the make. But most were only doing what they knew they would get away with. That is the way of the world. Few fiddled their expenses but a lot knew how to maximise them. Many people with allowances from their work follow exactly the same rules. The difference appears only to be one of scale.
By all means punish the buyers of duck ponds and while you are at it you can change the rules so there is less money bandied about. After all, who earns £64,000 a year and needs a food allowance ? But the disgust of the ordinary office worker who would never dream of being out of pocket for any costs incurred as part of a day’s work. That we can do without.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
What's left of The Left ?
Not much, it would appear. Even the doyens of socialist thinking are lining up to have a pop after the dismal performance of the Socialist and Social Democratic parties in the European Parliament elections.
When no less a person than Professor E.G. Hobsbawm starts carrying on like Dad’s Army’s Private Fraser then it really is time to start worrying. This is the man who taught most of us everything we needed to know about imperialism and why it’s a bad thing. This is a man of the real left. And yet, and yet.
“The left is in trouble everywhere,” he said in The Guardian recently. “The European left relied on a working class that not longer exists in its old form and in order to recover it will need to find a new constituency. That may be hard.”
Unduly pessimistic ? Some would say. Some include Poul Nyup Rasmussen, the leader of the Party of European Socialism in the European Parliament. “There is a need to reflect and reconnect with the voters. But I am not persuaded these (European) elections provide overwhelming evidence of a crisis in European Socialism.”
No ? What about Labour and its 15% at the polls on June 4th ? What about the German SPD reduced to a rump ? What about the emaciated Italian left, seemingly powerless to halt Berlusconi, who wins votes as he makes those same voters wince with his antics ?
The people who care most about this are the party members themselves, especially those still in elected office and who see that power and influence disappearing at the next set of elections. And the policy wonks who float around the sidelines of power.
They are now in turmoil. After twelve years of power in Britain Labour’s now jumping about realising it’s all slipping away. Quick, lads, lets get some new policies, that’ll help.
But maybe old Eric’s right. Perhaps the damage has already been done. How many people who voted Labour in 1997 as thought it were the most natural thing in the world now do so ?
Many fewer, even in Scotland where the party was ten points behind the SNP at the recent election. The writing was on the wall here two years ago when Labour couldn’t even form a coalition government at Holyrood. They have lost their natural constituency, that’s for sure.
But is that down to changes in society or changes in the democratic left ? Are there fewer poor ? There may be fewer manufacturing workers but the number of people who would consider themselves part of a working class can’t be any lower than in days of old.
And yet, when it comes to voting time those people are scattered to the four winds when left alone in the polling booth. In Scotland, of course, many have found solace in the Scottish National Party; broadly speaking, of the left but avowedly independent of thought. Others have gravitated to the Greens or the hard left since devolution although that revolutionary option seems to have passed though what seems to have been, ‘just a phase.’
But why has this happened ? Of course, now the Labour Party has found itself standing on the edge of a precipice its bright, young intellectuals have been given the task of pulling it back from the edge.
Neal Lawson is the Chairman of the leftist Compass group within the party. He says it’s not the people to blame for Labour’s demise, it’s changes to the party.
“The New Labour or Blairite belief is that everything starts with the individual. It is up to us to think and act based on our own view of our own best interest. The role of the state is to empower us as individuals to spend and demand.”
In other words, no wonder people from Labour’s natural pool of voters started to drift away when Tony came along.
This is the view of shattered dreams. The Labour Party in power presented to naturally left-leaning people a great chance. But they ended up disillusioned as the Labour leadership increasingly aligned itself to interests its core vote viewed as incongruous.
Blair had his head stuck up some very surprising backsides whether it was what old-fashioned Labourites would have dismissed as ‘captialists’ or George W. Bush.
And his next door neighbour Broon was busy handing out baubles to Sir Fred Goodwin and his friends at the same time, so even when the mantle of power switched between enemies even the slowest ship in the convoy could see there was, ultimately, no difference. Both were New Labour, appealed to big business, middle England and traditionally centrist voters. It won them elections, of course it did, but those elections were won not in Labour heartlands but in middle class England.
The class comrades were marginalised and the longer it went on the more disillusioned they became.
Now Labour is finally awakening to the reality of the situation. Its old voters won’t vote for it because they no longer see Labour as the party that represents their interests. And their new constituency is rejecting its suitor because they think Labour’s rubbish at the economy and is putting up taxes.
But don’t fear because the party will use this crisis to rediscover its soul.
Lawson’s even started using the ‘S’ word.
“Socialism should be defined as the ability of people to exert the maximum control over their own lives. For this, people have to be more equal; to have the resources to live a free life. But they must also act in concert with others – as citizens shaping the big things in their life and not just as consumers buying the small things that change too little.”
And, never fear, here comes John Cruddas quoting Antonio Gramsci. ”We do not know what the next election will bring nor can we predict the fate of the Labour party. The task now is to begin building a progressive left movement that, unlike New Labour, will break with the legacy of Thatcherism and establish a new hegemony.”
Ah, there’s nothing like a bit of the old time religion. Except that there are still plenty in the party who want nothing to do with Socialism or legendary Italian Communist thinkers. And while some plot against the leader and while others try to redefine the party’s role nothing is done to convince people they should vote Labour. Mind you, that’s hard when so many within the party seem unable to agree WHY people should do so.
They could start by offering a vision of equality. They could do more to appeal to the poor, the downtrodden, the disposed. They could start to do less simply to stand on the centre ground devoid of ideas that appeal to the centrists.
In many ways, the real crisis of the Labour party is a crisis of belief that goes far beyond its membership.
New Labour tried to reflect a trend in society away from belief. Ideology was binned because people didn’t have an interest in it. Captialism was sold to them as a rising standard of living, increasing consumption and general happiness. New Labour accepted that and tried to put its own spin on someone else’s song.
But now we have a bubble that’s burst, anger against greed, the challenge of global warming and the dangers to our environment. People don’t like greedy bankers and they seem happy to recycle their rubbish, buy low-energy lightbulbs and rein in their previous credit-funded spending.
Labour must be ideological again and it must explain why it is so. People face tough choices, they have to be shaken out of their consumerist apathy (if they haven’t already done it for themselves) and be told they cannot go on like before.
By being socialist, green, by helping the poor and making the rich pay their share, by making the case for high taxation and high public spending, by defending jobs and protecting minorities, by encouraging immigration to fill skills and labour gaps, by not being afraid to nationalise key public services, by doing all of these things they can appeal to what is fair and really mean it.
And if people reject it all at the polls and vote for the small government of the Tories, where the poor have to rely on handouts from charities, where the rich get tax break and our key services are run for profit ? Well, they’ll get the leaders they deserve. But at least the left will still be left to survive and fight on.
When no less a person than Professor E.G. Hobsbawm starts carrying on like Dad’s Army’s Private Fraser then it really is time to start worrying. This is the man who taught most of us everything we needed to know about imperialism and why it’s a bad thing. This is a man of the real left. And yet, and yet.
“The left is in trouble everywhere,” he said in The Guardian recently. “The European left relied on a working class that not longer exists in its old form and in order to recover it will need to find a new constituency. That may be hard.”
Unduly pessimistic ? Some would say. Some include Poul Nyup Rasmussen, the leader of the Party of European Socialism in the European Parliament. “There is a need to reflect and reconnect with the voters. But I am not persuaded these (European) elections provide overwhelming evidence of a crisis in European Socialism.”
No ? What about Labour and its 15% at the polls on June 4th ? What about the German SPD reduced to a rump ? What about the emaciated Italian left, seemingly powerless to halt Berlusconi, who wins votes as he makes those same voters wince with his antics ?
The people who care most about this are the party members themselves, especially those still in elected office and who see that power and influence disappearing at the next set of elections. And the policy wonks who float around the sidelines of power.
They are now in turmoil. After twelve years of power in Britain Labour’s now jumping about realising it’s all slipping away. Quick, lads, lets get some new policies, that’ll help.
But maybe old Eric’s right. Perhaps the damage has already been done. How many people who voted Labour in 1997 as thought it were the most natural thing in the world now do so ?
Many fewer, even in Scotland where the party was ten points behind the SNP at the recent election. The writing was on the wall here two years ago when Labour couldn’t even form a coalition government at Holyrood. They have lost their natural constituency, that’s for sure.
But is that down to changes in society or changes in the democratic left ? Are there fewer poor ? There may be fewer manufacturing workers but the number of people who would consider themselves part of a working class can’t be any lower than in days of old.
And yet, when it comes to voting time those people are scattered to the four winds when left alone in the polling booth. In Scotland, of course, many have found solace in the Scottish National Party; broadly speaking, of the left but avowedly independent of thought. Others have gravitated to the Greens or the hard left since devolution although that revolutionary option seems to have passed though what seems to have been, ‘just a phase.’
But why has this happened ? Of course, now the Labour Party has found itself standing on the edge of a precipice its bright, young intellectuals have been given the task of pulling it back from the edge.
Neal Lawson is the Chairman of the leftist Compass group within the party. He says it’s not the people to blame for Labour’s demise, it’s changes to the party.
“The New Labour or Blairite belief is that everything starts with the individual. It is up to us to think and act based on our own view of our own best interest. The role of the state is to empower us as individuals to spend and demand.”
In other words, no wonder people from Labour’s natural pool of voters started to drift away when Tony came along.
This is the view of shattered dreams. The Labour Party in power presented to naturally left-leaning people a great chance. But they ended up disillusioned as the Labour leadership increasingly aligned itself to interests its core vote viewed as incongruous.
Blair had his head stuck up some very surprising backsides whether it was what old-fashioned Labourites would have dismissed as ‘captialists’ or George W. Bush.
And his next door neighbour Broon was busy handing out baubles to Sir Fred Goodwin and his friends at the same time, so even when the mantle of power switched between enemies even the slowest ship in the convoy could see there was, ultimately, no difference. Both were New Labour, appealed to big business, middle England and traditionally centrist voters. It won them elections, of course it did, but those elections were won not in Labour heartlands but in middle class England.
The class comrades were marginalised and the longer it went on the more disillusioned they became.
Now Labour is finally awakening to the reality of the situation. Its old voters won’t vote for it because they no longer see Labour as the party that represents their interests. And their new constituency is rejecting its suitor because they think Labour’s rubbish at the economy and is putting up taxes.
But don’t fear because the party will use this crisis to rediscover its soul.
Lawson’s even started using the ‘S’ word.
“Socialism should be defined as the ability of people to exert the maximum control over their own lives. For this, people have to be more equal; to have the resources to live a free life. But they must also act in concert with others – as citizens shaping the big things in their life and not just as consumers buying the small things that change too little.”
And, never fear, here comes John Cruddas quoting Antonio Gramsci. ”We do not know what the next election will bring nor can we predict the fate of the Labour party. The task now is to begin building a progressive left movement that, unlike New Labour, will break with the legacy of Thatcherism and establish a new hegemony.”
Ah, there’s nothing like a bit of the old time religion. Except that there are still plenty in the party who want nothing to do with Socialism or legendary Italian Communist thinkers. And while some plot against the leader and while others try to redefine the party’s role nothing is done to convince people they should vote Labour. Mind you, that’s hard when so many within the party seem unable to agree WHY people should do so.
They could start by offering a vision of equality. They could do more to appeal to the poor, the downtrodden, the disposed. They could start to do less simply to stand on the centre ground devoid of ideas that appeal to the centrists.
In many ways, the real crisis of the Labour party is a crisis of belief that goes far beyond its membership.
New Labour tried to reflect a trend in society away from belief. Ideology was binned because people didn’t have an interest in it. Captialism was sold to them as a rising standard of living, increasing consumption and general happiness. New Labour accepted that and tried to put its own spin on someone else’s song.
But now we have a bubble that’s burst, anger against greed, the challenge of global warming and the dangers to our environment. People don’t like greedy bankers and they seem happy to recycle their rubbish, buy low-energy lightbulbs and rein in their previous credit-funded spending.
Labour must be ideological again and it must explain why it is so. People face tough choices, they have to be shaken out of their consumerist apathy (if they haven’t already done it for themselves) and be told they cannot go on like before.
By being socialist, green, by helping the poor and making the rich pay their share, by making the case for high taxation and high public spending, by defending jobs and protecting minorities, by encouraging immigration to fill skills and labour gaps, by not being afraid to nationalise key public services, by doing all of these things they can appeal to what is fair and really mean it.
And if people reject it all at the polls and vote for the small government of the Tories, where the poor have to rely on handouts from charities, where the rich get tax break and our key services are run for profit ? Well, they’ll get the leaders they deserve. But at least the left will still be left to survive and fight on.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Turkeys And Christmas
You could call it the parable of the turkeys voting for Christmas. Surely the central paradox of the European Parliament elections, at least in the UK, was that the people most motivated to vote were the ones who liked the institution they were voting for the least.
The result was not surprising. The majority of the British MEP’s sitting in Brussels and Strasbourg over the next five years will be at best lukewarm to the European Union itself and, at worst, advocates of the UK’s removal from it completely.
If these people were to use their mandate in a logical and consistent sense they would, indeed, be turkeys voting for Christmas.
How has it come to this ? The simple answer, and it has been given by just about anyone, is that no-one cares much about the EU. And there are others who just hate the whole thing.
Why ? At the political level there has been a narrowing of support for the project that works inversely from the snowballing of its ambitions. As an economic club of equal members trading freely with one another it had enough support to survive.
But throw in social and political integration and support amongst previously agreeable groups has, no doubt, been eroded. And there is little doubt also that the main reason for such second thoughts has been pressure from the populace as a whole.
So just why are people so against a union of nation states across the continent ? Maybe it is just a fear of the unknown or perhaps a general feeling of a lack of control over your own destiny.
But it could be part of a deeper process that has been ongoing since the end of the Second World War. In 1945 a whole era of political unrest, economic upheaval and mass politicisation came to an end in heaps of rubble and a list of tens of millions dead.
At an individual level, those who survived must have felt they had been conned. Especially those living in Germany who had given their faith to Adolf Hitler in the hope things would turn out all right. But those who had lost a loved one (and everyone had) in any country touched by the conflict could have been overtaken by the thought that the fighting had not been worth the human cost.
It might not be so surprising if those same people had recoiled from the political sphere as being not for them. They had more pressing matters; finding a house, making sure they had enough to eat and finding a job to provide the money for those necessities.
For those people politics, running the economy and the civil administration was best left to others. There were more important things in life. And so, outside the Soviet bloc, European countries entered a contract with their politicians. Give us jobs, houses and increasing prosperity and we will let you get on with things. And if you let us down we will use free elections to tell you so and vote the other lot in, just as long as we can trust them to fulfil exactly the same bargain.
Leaders and led detached themselves from each other and people became less politicised and even more focused on the familial and the personal, and they could do so because the politicians seemed to be able to deliver much of what they wanted.
But with succeeding generations that social contract morphed and as the original bargain faded into history it became something else.
A point was reached where politicians and people became so detached as to lose touch completely. To an increasing number all that mattered was what happened within their own family or their own personal lives. They could neither see their connectedness with other people in similar positions or how their own situation was linked to a bigger world.
Understanding of political issues dropped, fewer people voted because they could see no relationship between what leaders did and their own lives. People stopped believing in anything, whether ideology, or God, or in a sense of responsibility to others. Political participation dropped, union membership declined.
This idea that our own lives are the only thing that has any importance ended up being reflected in Margaret Thatcher’s portrayal as the individual as king, a philosophy of “I’ll do as I please” without reference to a wider society. As official Government policy it simply gave voice to what many had been feeling for more than forty years.
A European project, though, takes an opposite view. Even the very words that marked the scheme from the outset, “community” and “union” go against this individualistic streak reflected in the monadism of everyday post-war existence.
Robert Schumann and his friends were idealists. They were liberals and they were capitalists but they believed in sharing and co-operation. They were about ‘us’ not ‘me’. There was an element of self-interest in what they envisaged but it was not individualism that was their mantra.
Economic co-operation was something most on the centre-left and centre-right could agree on as it was based on trade and the enrichment of everyone. But was that enough ?
For those who had conceived of European co-operation as a way of making sure the horrors of war never returned to the continent there must have been a belief that there was more to continued peace and prosperity than one big free trade area.
Especially those politicians who saw the post-war world divided between the USA and the USSR and who perhaps hankered for a chance to sit at the top table. Britain and France alone no longer wielded influence. But Europe might. And so off they went. Everything from a European foreign policy to a single currency ensued.
And on their adventure they have incurred the ire of those who want to be left alone. The populations who believe in nothing, who are not idealists, who have no greater desire than to live in a narrow, exclusive world and who definitely do not want a grand vision.
That frightens them. They are so disengaged from politics they fear any loss of control of their small world from Big Brother; the world of regulations and loss of freedom to do as they please.
Is it any wonder that into the gap between the rulers and the ruled jump UKIP and the eurosceptic Tories ? So that’s how they vote and that is what we get. And the ones that don’t vote at all don’t care because their lives are so remote from Brussels and Strasbourg that they fail to make any connection between them.
And, it seems, the European project is broken too. Its idealism and vision stymied by fear of the unknown and a lack of comprehension about its overall purpose. A European Union will, of course, continue to exist piecemeal, but as for an all-embracing totality the composition of much of the new European Parliament would tend to indicate one big, NON !
The result was not surprising. The majority of the British MEP’s sitting in Brussels and Strasbourg over the next five years will be at best lukewarm to the European Union itself and, at worst, advocates of the UK’s removal from it completely.
If these people were to use their mandate in a logical and consistent sense they would, indeed, be turkeys voting for Christmas.
How has it come to this ? The simple answer, and it has been given by just about anyone, is that no-one cares much about the EU. And there are others who just hate the whole thing.
Why ? At the political level there has been a narrowing of support for the project that works inversely from the snowballing of its ambitions. As an economic club of equal members trading freely with one another it had enough support to survive.
But throw in social and political integration and support amongst previously agreeable groups has, no doubt, been eroded. And there is little doubt also that the main reason for such second thoughts has been pressure from the populace as a whole.
So just why are people so against a union of nation states across the continent ? Maybe it is just a fear of the unknown or perhaps a general feeling of a lack of control over your own destiny.
But it could be part of a deeper process that has been ongoing since the end of the Second World War. In 1945 a whole era of political unrest, economic upheaval and mass politicisation came to an end in heaps of rubble and a list of tens of millions dead.
At an individual level, those who survived must have felt they had been conned. Especially those living in Germany who had given their faith to Adolf Hitler in the hope things would turn out all right. But those who had lost a loved one (and everyone had) in any country touched by the conflict could have been overtaken by the thought that the fighting had not been worth the human cost.
It might not be so surprising if those same people had recoiled from the political sphere as being not for them. They had more pressing matters; finding a house, making sure they had enough to eat and finding a job to provide the money for those necessities.
For those people politics, running the economy and the civil administration was best left to others. There were more important things in life. And so, outside the Soviet bloc, European countries entered a contract with their politicians. Give us jobs, houses and increasing prosperity and we will let you get on with things. And if you let us down we will use free elections to tell you so and vote the other lot in, just as long as we can trust them to fulfil exactly the same bargain.
Leaders and led detached themselves from each other and people became less politicised and even more focused on the familial and the personal, and they could do so because the politicians seemed to be able to deliver much of what they wanted.
But with succeeding generations that social contract morphed and as the original bargain faded into history it became something else.
A point was reached where politicians and people became so detached as to lose touch completely. To an increasing number all that mattered was what happened within their own family or their own personal lives. They could neither see their connectedness with other people in similar positions or how their own situation was linked to a bigger world.
Understanding of political issues dropped, fewer people voted because they could see no relationship between what leaders did and their own lives. People stopped believing in anything, whether ideology, or God, or in a sense of responsibility to others. Political participation dropped, union membership declined.
This idea that our own lives are the only thing that has any importance ended up being reflected in Margaret Thatcher’s portrayal as the individual as king, a philosophy of “I’ll do as I please” without reference to a wider society. As official Government policy it simply gave voice to what many had been feeling for more than forty years.
A European project, though, takes an opposite view. Even the very words that marked the scheme from the outset, “community” and “union” go against this individualistic streak reflected in the monadism of everyday post-war existence.
Robert Schumann and his friends were idealists. They were liberals and they were capitalists but they believed in sharing and co-operation. They were about ‘us’ not ‘me’. There was an element of self-interest in what they envisaged but it was not individualism that was their mantra.
Economic co-operation was something most on the centre-left and centre-right could agree on as it was based on trade and the enrichment of everyone. But was that enough ?
For those who had conceived of European co-operation as a way of making sure the horrors of war never returned to the continent there must have been a belief that there was more to continued peace and prosperity than one big free trade area.
Especially those politicians who saw the post-war world divided between the USA and the USSR and who perhaps hankered for a chance to sit at the top table. Britain and France alone no longer wielded influence. But Europe might. And so off they went. Everything from a European foreign policy to a single currency ensued.
And on their adventure they have incurred the ire of those who want to be left alone. The populations who believe in nothing, who are not idealists, who have no greater desire than to live in a narrow, exclusive world and who definitely do not want a grand vision.
That frightens them. They are so disengaged from politics they fear any loss of control of their small world from Big Brother; the world of regulations and loss of freedom to do as they please.
Is it any wonder that into the gap between the rulers and the ruled jump UKIP and the eurosceptic Tories ? So that’s how they vote and that is what we get. And the ones that don’t vote at all don’t care because their lives are so remote from Brussels and Strasbourg that they fail to make any connection between them.
And, it seems, the European project is broken too. Its idealism and vision stymied by fear of the unknown and a lack of comprehension about its overall purpose. A European Union will, of course, continue to exist piecemeal, but as for an all-embracing totality the composition of much of the new European Parliament would tend to indicate one big, NON !
Monday, 8 June 2009
What Kind Of Protest Is This ?
So, a UK government minister feels most of the people who voted for the British National Party at the European Parliament elections did so because they felt, “excluded and ignored.”
Well, John Denham, it’s comforting to know that they weren’t voting BNP because they were fascists, racists, white supremacists or even British Nationalists, although I doubt if anyone even knows what a British Nationalist is.
What do we need to do to stop them voting BNP ? Give them a hug ? Tickle their tummy and tell them they’re wonderful ? No, apparently, politicians need to listen to them more and talk more about the issues that matter most to them. Like what ? Well, his fellow Labour MP, John Cruddas, says we should be talking about housing, the recession, unemployment, immigration.
Immigration ? Wait a minute, his pal just said they didn’t vote BNP because they were racist. If they’re not racist then why should they be that bothered about immigration ?
Another friend, Andy Burnham called the election of two English BNP Euro MP’s a protest vote. Some protest. Normally, tactical voting involves putting your X on the ballot paper next to the name of the nice chap from the Liberal Democrats.
Now thousands, no hundreds of thousands, of people are prepared to vote for a party that wants to pack people born in Britain onto planes to live in a country they’ve never visited, simply to protest at the way the country’s being run ? Are you serious ?
Sure, if you want to shock the political elite out of what you perceive to be their complacency then that is one way to do it. But how many people who genuinely want to register their discontent with the major political powers in the land feel compelled to vote Nazi just to do so ?
But still the main parties come up with the ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do’ line. A protest vote is a protest vote, whether it’s for fascists or the Greens. If that’s true, and voting intentions are reduced to a game of sticking the tail on the donkey then what does that say about our level of democratic sophistication ? No, don’t answer that.
So what are we left with ? People susceptible to the casual, off-the-cuff, discrimination against those who might be easily described as “not like us” because they have dark skin, wear strange clothes, or have “funny sounding” names.
But we are not allowed to call these people racists because their viewpoints are based largely on ignorance and once we make them see the folly of their muddled thinking they will all be champions for race relations.
Hang on, though, these “others” that they see as a threat because they fail to understand them properly have been here for decades. We’ve had plenty of time to explain their differences in non-threatening terms, plenty of time to change attitudes, make the places we live in multi-ethnic.
And it has not all been a failure.In real numbers those voting BNP are still a small minority, and most of us would have no truck with the party. However, there is obviously still work to be done if enough votes can be mustered to elect the BNP in a national poll. Pretending that the majority of those votes are cast by people who are not racist suggests there are some who simply want to wake up in the morning and find out it was all a bad dream.
David Cameron can talk all he wants about the “shame” of his country sending BNP members to Brussels and Strasbourg. But surely now is the time for him and Messrs. Denham, Cruddas and Burnham to stand up and fight racism in ways that mean something, rather than try to make limp excuses on behalf of those who are induced to misuse democracy for the aims of right-wing extremism.
Well, John Denham, it’s comforting to know that they weren’t voting BNP because they were fascists, racists, white supremacists or even British Nationalists, although I doubt if anyone even knows what a British Nationalist is.
What do we need to do to stop them voting BNP ? Give them a hug ? Tickle their tummy and tell them they’re wonderful ? No, apparently, politicians need to listen to them more and talk more about the issues that matter most to them. Like what ? Well, his fellow Labour MP, John Cruddas, says we should be talking about housing, the recession, unemployment, immigration.
Immigration ? Wait a minute, his pal just said they didn’t vote BNP because they were racist. If they’re not racist then why should they be that bothered about immigration ?
Another friend, Andy Burnham called the election of two English BNP Euro MP’s a protest vote. Some protest. Normally, tactical voting involves putting your X on the ballot paper next to the name of the nice chap from the Liberal Democrats.
Now thousands, no hundreds of thousands, of people are prepared to vote for a party that wants to pack people born in Britain onto planes to live in a country they’ve never visited, simply to protest at the way the country’s being run ? Are you serious ?
Sure, if you want to shock the political elite out of what you perceive to be their complacency then that is one way to do it. But how many people who genuinely want to register their discontent with the major political powers in the land feel compelled to vote Nazi just to do so ?
But still the main parties come up with the ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do’ line. A protest vote is a protest vote, whether it’s for fascists or the Greens. If that’s true, and voting intentions are reduced to a game of sticking the tail on the donkey then what does that say about our level of democratic sophistication ? No, don’t answer that.
So what are we left with ? People susceptible to the casual, off-the-cuff, discrimination against those who might be easily described as “not like us” because they have dark skin, wear strange clothes, or have “funny sounding” names.
But we are not allowed to call these people racists because their viewpoints are based largely on ignorance and once we make them see the folly of their muddled thinking they will all be champions for race relations.
Hang on, though, these “others” that they see as a threat because they fail to understand them properly have been here for decades. We’ve had plenty of time to explain their differences in non-threatening terms, plenty of time to change attitudes, make the places we live in multi-ethnic.
And it has not all been a failure.In real numbers those voting BNP are still a small minority, and most of us would have no truck with the party. However, there is obviously still work to be done if enough votes can be mustered to elect the BNP in a national poll. Pretending that the majority of those votes are cast by people who are not racist suggests there are some who simply want to wake up in the morning and find out it was all a bad dream.
David Cameron can talk all he wants about the “shame” of his country sending BNP members to Brussels and Strasbourg. But surely now is the time for him and Messrs. Denham, Cruddas and Burnham to stand up and fight racism in ways that mean something, rather than try to make limp excuses on behalf of those who are induced to misuse democracy for the aims of right-wing extremism.
Saturday, 6 June 2009
Winner Takes All ?
Simon Jenkins is a clever man; he has edited The Times, something I will never have the opportunity to do. His cogent analysis of the latter Blair years, and of the incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan, shows he is not without some great insight and influence.
But even the wise can let their hearts rule their heads and when they do the results can sometimes be nasty. Amid all the current talk among the intelligentsia about democratic renewal there has been much pontificating about a new politics. Not much about elections, though.
Mr Jenkins jumped in this week with a full-blooded assault on proportional representation systems. They put too much power in the hands of the party machine, he claimed. They decide who the candidates are, and in the case of multi-member constituencies put barriers between the voter and his representative that single-member ones don’t.
Best, he says, to incorporate parts of the American system with our own. He advocates primaries for candidates which would allow voters a say in who actually stands for election. And retaining a first-past-the-post voting system maintains a direct link between the politician and man on the street.
He then concludes by saying the countries that have a PR system are fed up with them because they produce endless coalitions but not strong government, thereby depriving the electorate of a mandate by putting policy into the hands of the men in smoke-filled rooms.
To be honest, I could find a Standard Grade Modern Studies student to come up with a better analysis of the voting systems than this.
Proportional representation is not all bad. Let’s start with the selection of candidates. It is no more or less democratic than the ways that are used to select them at present. The parties still decide who we will be allowed to vote for. In many cases it’s the bigwigs who do the picking, not even the grassroots. So how is that more democratic than a closed list. Under STV parties could even choose their candidates as they do now.
And what about the method of voting ? If we stick to STV there is one huge advantage; you can vote for the people you want and vote AGAINST the ones you don’t. You get two votes. By ranking candidates in order you can help someone get elected AND help stop someone else getting into a position of power you don’t think should be there.
It is, as the title suggests, proportional. So, roughly speaking, the number of votes each party gets is reflected in the number of elected representatives it gets. How is that anti-democratic ? Is it any less democratic than allowing a party absolute control of a legislature when fewer than 50% of the electorate has voted for it ? Mr Jenkins is silent.
And as for the relationship between individual electors and politicians being lessened in a multi-member constituency, well, apparently it, “denies the MP as sole embodiment of a territorial group of voters.” Eh ?
If I am a Labour voter in a first-past-the-post system and have a Conservative MP I would much rather he was not my embodiment, thank you very much. If we had STV in a multi-member constituency there is more of a chance of me voting Labour and getting a Labour representative. Tories could vote Tory and get one of their own, and so on.
Rather having just one MP we could have many. With four or six MP’s in one constituency we could still choose to see one of them as “our” MP, most likely the one whose party we voted for, although we could just as easily choose them on the basis of where he was from, or whether we liked him as a person. But we could also decide to have many MP’s, and if we had a problem or an issue we required representation on we could select the one we thought had the most expertise in that area. We could even switch between some, or all of them, using our many elected representatives as we saw fit. Empowerment or Hobson’s Choice, and this is supposed to be anti-democratic ?
As for a lack of strong government, do you mean elected dictatorship, Mr Jenkins ? Because that’s what Britain gets just now. At least in Scotland, where we have some proportionality, and no overall control, voters of a number of parties get to see some of their policies implemented as a result of what you call “a continuous minority grip on power.” Are governments less effective because they are more consensual and inclusive ?
I rather think Mr Jenkins must have been struggling for an idea with a deadline approaching when he came up with this. The worry is the number of people who seem to agree with him.
But even the wise can let their hearts rule their heads and when they do the results can sometimes be nasty. Amid all the current talk among the intelligentsia about democratic renewal there has been much pontificating about a new politics. Not much about elections, though.
Mr Jenkins jumped in this week with a full-blooded assault on proportional representation systems. They put too much power in the hands of the party machine, he claimed. They decide who the candidates are, and in the case of multi-member constituencies put barriers between the voter and his representative that single-member ones don’t.
Best, he says, to incorporate parts of the American system with our own. He advocates primaries for candidates which would allow voters a say in who actually stands for election. And retaining a first-past-the-post voting system maintains a direct link between the politician and man on the street.
He then concludes by saying the countries that have a PR system are fed up with them because they produce endless coalitions but not strong government, thereby depriving the electorate of a mandate by putting policy into the hands of the men in smoke-filled rooms.
To be honest, I could find a Standard Grade Modern Studies student to come up with a better analysis of the voting systems than this.
Proportional representation is not all bad. Let’s start with the selection of candidates. It is no more or less democratic than the ways that are used to select them at present. The parties still decide who we will be allowed to vote for. In many cases it’s the bigwigs who do the picking, not even the grassroots. So how is that more democratic than a closed list. Under STV parties could even choose their candidates as they do now.
And what about the method of voting ? If we stick to STV there is one huge advantage; you can vote for the people you want and vote AGAINST the ones you don’t. You get two votes. By ranking candidates in order you can help someone get elected AND help stop someone else getting into a position of power you don’t think should be there.
It is, as the title suggests, proportional. So, roughly speaking, the number of votes each party gets is reflected in the number of elected representatives it gets. How is that anti-democratic ? Is it any less democratic than allowing a party absolute control of a legislature when fewer than 50% of the electorate has voted for it ? Mr Jenkins is silent.
And as for the relationship between individual electors and politicians being lessened in a multi-member constituency, well, apparently it, “denies the MP as sole embodiment of a territorial group of voters.” Eh ?
If I am a Labour voter in a first-past-the-post system and have a Conservative MP I would much rather he was not my embodiment, thank you very much. If we had STV in a multi-member constituency there is more of a chance of me voting Labour and getting a Labour representative. Tories could vote Tory and get one of their own, and so on.
Rather having just one MP we could have many. With four or six MP’s in one constituency we could still choose to see one of them as “our” MP, most likely the one whose party we voted for, although we could just as easily choose them on the basis of where he was from, or whether we liked him as a person. But we could also decide to have many MP’s, and if we had a problem or an issue we required representation on we could select the one we thought had the most expertise in that area. We could even switch between some, or all of them, using our many elected representatives as we saw fit. Empowerment or Hobson’s Choice, and this is supposed to be anti-democratic ?
As for a lack of strong government, do you mean elected dictatorship, Mr Jenkins ? Because that’s what Britain gets just now. At least in Scotland, where we have some proportionality, and no overall control, voters of a number of parties get to see some of their policies implemented as a result of what you call “a continuous minority grip on power.” Are governments less effective because they are more consensual and inclusive ?
I rather think Mr Jenkins must have been struggling for an idea with a deadline approaching when he came up with this. The worry is the number of people who seem to agree with him.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Poles Apart
Twenty years ago today Poland went to the polls. It wasn't any ordinary election; it marked the end of a torturous (in more senses than one) process that had no single beginning. It might have begun in 1945 when Soviet imperialism was more-or-less established. Or the start may have been 1956 when worker revolts broke out, or 1970 when protests over food price increases ended with 40 people being killed by the security forces, or in 1980 when the Solidarity trade union was born.
No matter. The 4th June 1989 marked the day when Poles could legally say all of the things their forebears had tried to, that they no longer wanted to be part of the Soviet empire. And they were allowed to express that view in a semi-free election because the imperialists and their Polish bidders realised their time was up; the imperial game was over and the emperor was, indeed, naked.
They voted in droves and hardly any of them supported the so-called communists. Embolded by this they sought and won further concessions. The old regime was on its way out, and quicker than anyone expected it was gone. Elsewhere in the same socialist bloc they took their lead from the Poles. Some used elections, others people protests, and in a couple of cases violence ensued to topple the existing order.
Twenty years on, the events of that day are commemorated in a series of events across Poland. There are academic conferences, singing, rejoicing and solemn remembrance. There's also been a very traditional Polish way of remembering; politicians have fallen out over who should take the credit for those events.
But the one way Poles don't seem to want to mark the anniversary is going back to the polling booths. Indications are that turnout in Sunday's European Parliament election will be no higher or lower than in most other EU countries.
A sign perhaps that after twenty years Poland has become a 'normal' country concerned with the everyday, personal and private world of family and friends and no longer the nation that had to lead others in a crusade to change the shape of Europe.
Some will say 'Let them be', allow them to be just like us because, surely, that was what they wanted back in 1989; to be part of a western, democratic world where they could enjoy the fruits of a captialist, free-enterprise system.
Give them, then, the chance to be similarly apathetic about elections to a parliament that seems remote just like Britain, France, Germany. But what about those in the hard times who stuck their heads above the parapet ? Those who endured the prison, persecution and martial law ? Would they advocate apathy ?
When we were at school and reaching the age of democratic consent, it was always impressed on us how people had died in wars so we could vote in elections. Is a similarly impressive argument falling on the deaf ears of a nation that changed the world ?
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
With Friends Like These
A Tory candidate in the European elections tried to persuade me that people were not going to fall into the arms of the smaller political parties because of the Westminster expenses scandal.
Who would vote for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) he asked ? Two of their MEP’s got caught out fiddling their own expenses. Another, he suggested, was a horse whisperer who would communicate with his constituents using extra-sensory perception.
Nutters, he said. If our politician ends up being sent back to Brussels and Strasbourg he may well wonder if his new-found political friends are not just as loony. And, if he does, he will have David Cameron to blame.
The UK Conservative leader wants to take his Euro MPs out of the main Christian Democrat group within the assembly and plonk them in with some more eurosceptic allies.
Except that some of the proposed new friends might not sit so easily with normal right-of-centre politicians from western democracies. Take the case of Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, Poland’s Law and Justice party; a group that headed a coalition government in Poland between 2005 and 2007.
Its elected representatives may not talk to horses or fiddle their expenses but their Prime Minister declared homosexuality “unnatural” and the administration was generally in thrall to the more rabid elements within the Catholic church.
In the Euro election campaign the Law and Justice leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, started foaming at the mouth when German MEP’s suggested it was wrong to have expelled Germans at the end of the Second World War from parts of pre-war Germany that had been ceded to Poland by the victorious powers.
Kaczynski claimed such sentiments were “treating Poland like a rubbish bin.” That’s despite his own historical predecessors fuming just as loudly in 1945 that the ancient German lands that were being handed over to the Polish state weren’t part of Poland and couldn’t ever be considered so.
These people can only be considered hard right, as are some of his other potential European bedfellows, who include the Latvian Party that takes part every March 16th in a parade commemorating those Lavtians who fought for Hitler.
But, hey, you know if it stops the United States of Europe, the invasion of the Euro, and uniformly bendy bananas, then being pals with people who want to ban homosexuality and abortion will be OK. Won’t it ?
Who would vote for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) he asked ? Two of their MEP’s got caught out fiddling their own expenses. Another, he suggested, was a horse whisperer who would communicate with his constituents using extra-sensory perception.
Nutters, he said. If our politician ends up being sent back to Brussels and Strasbourg he may well wonder if his new-found political friends are not just as loony. And, if he does, he will have David Cameron to blame.
The UK Conservative leader wants to take his Euro MPs out of the main Christian Democrat group within the assembly and plonk them in with some more eurosceptic allies.
Except that some of the proposed new friends might not sit so easily with normal right-of-centre politicians from western democracies. Take the case of Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, Poland’s Law and Justice party; a group that headed a coalition government in Poland between 2005 and 2007.
Its elected representatives may not talk to horses or fiddle their expenses but their Prime Minister declared homosexuality “unnatural” and the administration was generally in thrall to the more rabid elements within the Catholic church.
In the Euro election campaign the Law and Justice leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, started foaming at the mouth when German MEP’s suggested it was wrong to have expelled Germans at the end of the Second World War from parts of pre-war Germany that had been ceded to Poland by the victorious powers.
Kaczynski claimed such sentiments were “treating Poland like a rubbish bin.” That’s despite his own historical predecessors fuming just as loudly in 1945 that the ancient German lands that were being handed over to the Polish state weren’t part of Poland and couldn’t ever be considered so.
These people can only be considered hard right, as are some of his other potential European bedfellows, who include the Latvian Party that takes part every March 16th in a parade commemorating those Lavtians who fought for Hitler.
But, hey, you know if it stops the United States of Europe, the invasion of the Euro, and uniformly bendy bananas, then being pals with people who want to ban homosexuality and abortion will be OK. Won’t it ?
Statues And Statutes
It was once said that the Soviet Union was the only country in the world where it was impossible to predict the past. For the last couple of years the accusation that the Medvedev/Putin alliance in the Kremlin was trying to take Russia back to the USSR has been gathering pace.
Now the terrible twins multifarious enemies are again jumping up and down with conclusive proof that the bad old days are back; the Russians are trying to re-write history much in the way they did when Stalin made Trotsky mysteriously disappear from all those photos.
Now the terrible twins multifarious enemies are again jumping up and down with conclusive proof that the bad old days are back; the Russians are trying to re-write history much in the way they did when Stalin made Trotsky mysteriously disappear from all those photos.
They cannot resist the temptation to change the past, they say. This time the Russian government has set up a group of experts going under the title, “The Commission on Analysing and Suppressing Falsifications of History Detrimental to Russia”, and its aim, primarily, it seems, is to fight back at claims the Red Army was not the glorious liberator of European peoples from Nazi tyranny in 1945.
It is even suggested this new commission might draw up laws making it illegal to denigrate the Soviet Union’s role in eliminating fascism from the continent. Such ideas have brought a furious response both from inside Russia, where critics say the commission will end up re-writing school textbooks, and in wider Europe where there are more claims about Russia trying to bully its ‘near abroad’ into submitting to its will.
The commission has just one genesis; the break-up of the Soviet empire starting with Poland’s semi- free elections in 1989 and ending with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. From the moment Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine and the rest were allowed to assert their own independent national identities there was a chance there would be trouble because their pasts were at odds with Soviet history.
Released from the constraints of communist dogma they could say what they wanted; that the Soviet ‘liberation’ of their homelands from Nazi Germany in 1945 was not the freedom they would have chosen.
It was a reasonable assertion to make, if it had been made in a reasonable way. But it didn’t turn out like that. Instead, Latvians decided to organise parades involving Waffen SS conscripts who they claimed were freedom fighters against Soviet occupiers. In Estonia, a famous bronze statue of a Soviet soldier in the centre of the capital city, Tallin, was moved to a less conspicuous location because it offended their sense of national independence.
And it wasn’t just radical nationalists wielding the cudgel. National governments joined in. Latvia sent a bill to Moscow for reparations caused by the Soviet occupation. Now Ukraine wants a murder investigation into the country’s famine of the 1930s.
It is that kind of entrenched position that has led to the setting up of Medvedev’s commission as an equal and opposite reaction, and the threat of jail to anyone who dares suggest that the Red Army were slightly less than glorious as they kicked out one lot of despots and replaced them with their own imperial rule.
The new Russian talking shop has been dubbed a ‘truth commission.’ If it weren’t so serious it would be funny. But maybe Russia , and every country in central and eastern Europe, would benefit from a proper truth commission, and, if need be, headed up by Desmond Tutu, as he did in South Africa.
After almost twenty years of tit-for-tat point scoring wouldn’t they all be better served to admit the real truth ? The Poles must accept Soviet imperial rule was not the same as the Nazi racist terror, while the Russians must be clear and say sorry for deporting thousands of Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists to Siberia.
Estonians and Latvians must come clean and say they were wrong to join German forces in a futile last stand against the Red Army. But Russians must also accept that although their presence in these countries after 1945 was part of a much bigger geo-political picture, it was nevertheless an unwelcome occupation.
But they won’t. They will carry on with their own re-writing of history, each refusing to face up to reality, preferring hostility to engagement and anger to rapprochement. And why ? Because no-one can admit errors and everyone’s afraid to say sorry in case it’s seen as a sign of weakness.
It is even suggested this new commission might draw up laws making it illegal to denigrate the Soviet Union’s role in eliminating fascism from the continent. Such ideas have brought a furious response both from inside Russia, where critics say the commission will end up re-writing school textbooks, and in wider Europe where there are more claims about Russia trying to bully its ‘near abroad’ into submitting to its will.
The commission has just one genesis; the break-up of the Soviet empire starting with Poland’s semi- free elections in 1989 and ending with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. From the moment Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine and the rest were allowed to assert their own independent national identities there was a chance there would be trouble because their pasts were at odds with Soviet history.
Released from the constraints of communist dogma they could say what they wanted; that the Soviet ‘liberation’ of their homelands from Nazi Germany in 1945 was not the freedom they would have chosen.
It was a reasonable assertion to make, if it had been made in a reasonable way. But it didn’t turn out like that. Instead, Latvians decided to organise parades involving Waffen SS conscripts who they claimed were freedom fighters against Soviet occupiers. In Estonia, a famous bronze statue of a Soviet soldier in the centre of the capital city, Tallin, was moved to a less conspicuous location because it offended their sense of national independence.
And it wasn’t just radical nationalists wielding the cudgel. National governments joined in. Latvia sent a bill to Moscow for reparations caused by the Soviet occupation. Now Ukraine wants a murder investigation into the country’s famine of the 1930s.
It is that kind of entrenched position that has led to the setting up of Medvedev’s commission as an equal and opposite reaction, and the threat of jail to anyone who dares suggest that the Red Army were slightly less than glorious as they kicked out one lot of despots and replaced them with their own imperial rule.
The new Russian talking shop has been dubbed a ‘truth commission.’ If it weren’t so serious it would be funny. But maybe Russia , and every country in central and eastern Europe, would benefit from a proper truth commission, and, if need be, headed up by Desmond Tutu, as he did in South Africa.
After almost twenty years of tit-for-tat point scoring wouldn’t they all be better served to admit the real truth ? The Poles must accept Soviet imperial rule was not the same as the Nazi racist terror, while the Russians must be clear and say sorry for deporting thousands of Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists to Siberia.
Estonians and Latvians must come clean and say they were wrong to join German forces in a futile last stand against the Red Army. But Russians must also accept that although their presence in these countries after 1945 was part of a much bigger geo-political picture, it was nevertheless an unwelcome occupation.
But they won’t. They will carry on with their own re-writing of history, each refusing to face up to reality, preferring hostility to engagement and anger to rapprochement. And why ? Because no-one can admit errors and everyone’s afraid to say sorry in case it’s seen as a sign of weakness.
I'm On Twitter
In 1981 my father bought a PC, brought it home and sat it in the corner of our living room. It was a Commodore PET and had 16K of RAM. He would sit in front of it and type in mysterious groupings of numbers and letters and, having hit the return key, got something back which only he understood.
When my friends came round I would introduce them to this wonderful object, the like of which they had only ever seen on television. The problem was, I wasn’t very sure what it was for.
One classmate asked the obvious question, ‘What does it do ?’ He wanted to know if it could tell you what the time was in China right now or if it could say which year the Battle of Waterloo had taken place. When I said that I didn’t think it could he seemed wholly unimpressed.
I don’t know what happened to that friend once he left school but I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to work for Microsoft. That was my first ever lesson in the transformative nature of technology; if something can’t do what you want it to then it’s no use to you at all.
People of my father’s era used computers as number-crunchers and had to be able to understand complex mathematical formulas to get the answers they wanted. Now they are simple hubs allowing us to bring old and new media together and use that information as we see fit.
And there’s the point. Where early PC’s were exclusive and the preserve of the few, they are now democratised and open to all. And the people who understand all the high-tech stuff that makes them work will only stay in a job if they can find new ways for the rest of us to make computers work for us.
Someone asked me just a few months ago, ‘Are you on Twitter yet ?’
I had never thought I would have any need for Twitter or Facebook. Why would I want to use a PC to exchange boring, inane everyday stuff to people I could simply talk to ?
After all, there is only one answer to ‘What Are You Doing ?’ And that is, ‘I’m sitting in front of my PC typing this.’ Until I put prejudice, and maybe snobbery, aside and took the time to investigate.
That was when I got my next lesson in how people transform technology simply by finding their own uses for it. Because I found out quickly that almost no-one on Twitter was bothering to say what they were doing for the simple reason that were too busy doing what they were doing.
Twitter as a technology is being transformed by the people who use it into an information exchange beyond the personal and everyday. It is both a source and a means of dissemination for journalists, propagandists, coup d’etat plotters, salesmen and, eventually, pornographers too.
It is not alone in the new media. Take any example. Facebook was once a way for youngsters to swap details about whose house a party was taking place and at what time. Now Iranian opposition politicians use it to get round censorship in the old, traditional media.
But it is no use to say simply that by transforming the new media to suit our own ends we are creating some brave new world where newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations fold up the deckchair and go home. Because there is the danger that no-one is following you.
As Roland Barthes said, “A text’s unity lies not in its origins but in its destination.” It all depends on effectiveness, on their being an audience for your tweets and that means all those seeking to take the power of Twitter to a different level must learn the lessons taught by Ashton Kutcher.
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