ISSN 1758-5708 TheThe www.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk Issue Number 7 SocialistSocialist Winter - February 2010 CorrespondentCorrespondent

Quantitative easing: printing money to throw at the bankers PAGE 4 ScenesScenes fromfrom workingworking classclass lifelife PPAAGGEESS 66 aanndd 77 UK elections are seriously out of favour PAGE 8

el: anything the SPECIAL 12 Page Isra BURNS SUPPLEMENT US will not support? 250th Anniversary PAGE 24 Man Of His Times by Alex Davidson TheThe brutalitybrutality ofof The Immortal Memory GermanGerman fascismfascism diddid by Bill Sweeney notnot beginbegin withwith thethe Robert Burns’ Internationalism holocaustholocaust PAGE 28 The Master of Political Song - Jim Tait ISSUE NO. 7Contents WINTER - FEBRUARY 2010

Discussion, debate and authors’ opinions To encourage the broadest possible discussion and debate around the aims of exposing capitalism and promoting socialism, we hope our readers appreciate that not all the opinions expressed by individual authors are necessarily those of The Socialist Correspondent.

Commentary Israel: anything the Comment on this issue’s content. US will not support? Page 3 TOM BERNEY Reports on the depressing signs from America. Quantitative easing: printing Page 24 money to throw at the bankers LESLIE MASTERS Romania: life after the Explains why the Bank of England is printing money counter-revolution to deliberately stoke inflation. PHIL CHAMBERS Page 4 Reports on life in Romania after two decades of capitalism. How ordinary citizens Scenes from Page 27 are drowning in debt working class life JANE McKINNON The brutality of German Looks at the key findings of a Citizens Advice report fascism did not begin “Drowning in Debt”. with the holocaust Page 6 LEO KUNTZ Translation by Pat Turnbull of an article that Charlie: a 21st Scenes from appeared in the German journal RotFuchs. working century worker class life Page 28 JANE McKINNON Reports on conditions at the Hewlett Packard Mittelbau Dora computer assembly plant in Bishopton. Concentration Camp Page 7 PAT TURNBULL Page 30 UK elections are seriously out of favour Cooperation is a The Darwin JAMES THOMSON powerful survival trait discussion Looks at the Labour and Conservative parties’ elec- A. B. CAIRNS toral prospects ahead of the General Election. Argues that humans survived because they Page 8 cooperated with one another. Page 31 SPECIAL BURNS SUPPLEMENT Reader’s Letter Pages 11 - 22 LESLIE MASTERS On Darwinism, Marxism and Dialectical The Socialist Correspondent Materialism. conference Page 32 Details of The Socialist Correspondent conference on 6 March 2010 and how to register for it. Page 23 The Pictures Socialist Unless otherwise stated all pictures are courtesy of Commons Wikimedia. For further information go to: Correspondentwww.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk http://commons.wikimedia.org

2 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 The To contact The Socialist Correspondent email the editor: Socialist [email protected] Correspondent www.thesocialistcorrespondent.org.uk

Bankruptcy of Capitalism Israel The absurdity of paying bankers huge Commentary When Israel’s foreign policy (like their bonuses, one year after the banking criminal attack on Gaza one year ago) system had all but collapsed, is seen debt” are a further indication of who is is criticised then the critics are labeled as absurd by everyone except the paying for the capitalist crisis. ‘anti-Semitic’. bankers. That is because they believe James Thomson in his “UK elections This has been the strategy of that finance capitalism is at the core are seriously out of favour” argues that Israel’s rulers and their allies for a of the whole system and so the system the current situation does not lead to long time. Labelling depends on them. more people voting. On the contrary, critics ‘anti-Semitic’ The argument is made that if given there is little to choose between provides a smoke- bonuses are not paid then bankers will the parties, more people will choose not screen for the bar- take their expertise to another bank; to vote. The turnout at elections in baric acts commit- and to remain competitive banks have 1950 and 1951 was 80%. It has ted by the Israeli to pay the market price (ie the declined to some 60% at the last two state in its so-called bonuses). In other words it is a elections and may be even lower at the defence. feature of the system. next General Election. Tom Berney in Thus bankers themselves make the Generally speaking a low turnout his article on Israel best case for the bankruptcy of the favours the Tories and as we saw in the describes these attacks on Palestinians capitalist system. European elections when the Labour and exposes the contempt shown by vote stays at home the BNP, without the Israeli state for the international Quantitative Easing increasing their vote, can win seats. community. Until the USA (and The BNP now has access to Britain and the West more generally) the mass media. In a situation withdraw support for Israel’s aggres- of rising unemployment, easy sive and imperial aims then there will scapegoating and understand- be no peace in the Middle East. able cynicism about the main parties, organisations like the Robert Burns BNP may be the main bene- 2009 was the 250th anniversary of the ficiaries. birth of the Scottish poet, Robert Burns. In this issue we have a special Fascism section devoted to Burns. We have re-produced an arti- In January every year Burns cle from the German journal, Suppers are held throughout the RotFuchs (Red Fox), on the develop- world to celebrate the works of the Les Masters in his article ment of German fascism in the 1930s. poet. At these “Quantitative Easing: printing money The article makes the case that German events it is tradi- to throw at the bankers” explains how fascism did not start with the holocaust. tional for a toast the current crisis is actually making A very well-funded and unremitting to be given to the money for the banks and the bankers. campaign has sought to engender the Immortal As Masters points out the govern- belief that all victims of Nazism were Memory of ment’s preferred solution to the bank- Jews. In fact many trade unionists, Robert Burns. ing problem may encourage “the socialists and com- This toast was financial institutions to repeat many munists were early given by Bill of the practices that triggered the pre- victims of German Sweeney at the vious crash.” fascism. Burns Supper Meanwhile there is much talk of the The story of hosted by the public debt and how we will all have Albert Kuntz relat- South African High Commission in to pay. That is, all but the bankers. As ed here is one South Africa House, London in 2008 the bankers get their ludicrous bonus- example of this and is reproduced here. In addition es more people join the dole queue. grim history. there are articles on the songs of This is especially true of young peo- Israel is at the Burns and the period during which he ple with some 18% of the 18-24 year centre of perpetuat- lived. age group now unemployed. ing the myth that it The American Revolution and War Les Masters also points out that we was only Jews who of Independence and the French now have 1 million people working were victims. Revolution happened during his life- part-time (not through choice) the This Zionist time and these momentous events highest number since figures began to propaganda is helped to shape his view of the world be recorded in 1992. assisted by those as did his upbringing as the son of a The figures showing the depth of right-wing com- poor tenant farmer. the personal debt problem in “How mentators who are Robert Burns’ poems and songs ordinary citizens are drowning in “holocaust deniers.” have a universal and enduring appeal.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 3 Quantitative easing: printing money to throw at the bankers Quantitative easing: printing money to throw at the bankers

The site of Debden Security Printing Ltd. (owned by De La Rue plc.) in Loughton, Essex where the Bank of England gets its paper money printed. Coins are minted in Wales.

The Bank of England, among others globally, is practising assets” – such as “securities” based on what it calls “quantitative easing” to assist the capitalist sub-prime mortgage debts – which drove a number of banks to the wall, economy out of its recent collapse. and brought others to their knees to such an extent that they had to be LESLIE MASTERS explains why the Bank of England is bailed out with public money, even in printing money to deliberately stoke inflation. the USA, which evinces an extreme aversion to such things. By buying up “Quantitative easing” is one of those services will be forced upwards. such assets, the Bank of England – and, euphemisms that the ideologists of the For some, this may cause a transient thereby, the public purse – takes on the bourgeoisie like to invent to hide their increase in apparent profitability, lead- unmanageable debts entailed by them. real intentions, such as “downsizing”. ing them to attempt to expand produc- And, in addition to the funds it sup- What the Bank of England is hiding tion to exploit what appears to be an plies to the previous owners, the exist- is the fact that it is trying to cause increase in demand for their products. ing assets the latter had earmarked to inflation – the bête noire of official However, unlike genuine increases in cover these debts, also become available capitalist thinking, and something the demand (arising, say, from a pay for further lending. Bank usually professes to be fighting. increase in some sectors), these suppli- If that does not sound such a bad At the time of writing, the Bank of ers will soon find that the same phe- thing, it should be borne in mind that England’s “quantitative easing” pro- nomenon that has increased the prices the commercial banks are themselves gramme has involved printing £200 of their products has also increased the just as responsible for modern inflation billion in bank notes to buy assets from prices of their raw materials, and so on. as state banks such as the Bank of banks and other companies. Indeed, if pay rises do not match the England or the US Federal Reserve. Printing large quantities of dollar bills increase in prices, they may eventually They provide credit – mainly to com- by the Americans is what blew the find themselves facing a fall in demand. mercial, not to domestic customers, far Bretton Woods agreement out of the Of course, if workers do attempt to in excess of the value of their own water, and led to the rampant inflation maintain their real wages in the face of assets, once more placing more money of the 1960s and ‘70s. Regardless of rising inflation, the same voices cur- in circulation than is required by the where or how the Sterling notes are rently raised in support of the Bank of demands of circulation. spent, they will represent a vast increase England’s actions will be turned against That this practice will continue is in circulating medium over and above them in loud condemnation, and they obvious from the fact that the banks are the amount required actually to circu- will be blamed for that inflation. insisting on retaining the “bonus cul- late the goods and services available. The situation will be made worse by ture” that saw a few staff – mainly sen- Since there will be, in effect, more the “assets” that the Bank is buying ior - walk away with millions while their money chasing the same goods and from other banks. Not their most prof- banks sank beneath them. services, the prices of those goods and itable ones, for certain, but the “toxic The huge bonuses paid to senior staff

4 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Quantitative easing: printing money to throw at the bankers

for the profits they brought in encour- overextension of credit. Classically, matched by an equal reluctance to age an extreme short-termism in their during inflation, the debtor benefits: the provide any assistance to producers or outlook: it is not the low-risk, long-term, amount of the principal does not distributors of commodities. low-yield investments that bring in the change, but they have more funds with According to the Office for National huge profits, or the huge bonuses. which to repay it. Conversely, they suf- Statistics, by September of this year, “Easing” may help the economy in fer during deflation, because they now unemployment had reached 2.46 mil- the short term: the greater availability of have fewer funds with which to pay the lion. The quarterly increase for July to money, and particularly credit, may same debt. September was represented as the low- encourage increases in production. But financial institutions have lent est increase in unemployment since Such increases have been reported: the the same money to several different March-May 2008. Office for National Statistics reported debtors simultaneously. And often, the In assessing the real situation, we also that, in September, manufacturing out- “assets” on which they base their lend- need to take into account latent unem- put rose by 1.7%, compared to a ing are themselves actually papers – ployment – people in part-time work decrease of 2% in August. such as share certificates – representing through no choice of their own. It remains to be seen whether this others’ debts to them. Government statistics show there represents a sign of genuine recovery. The whole system is based on the were nearly 1 million people (997,000) And, if it does, it may have nothing to notion that, out of all these debtors, employees and self-employed persons do with the Bank of England’s “quanti- there will be sufficiently few failures to working part-time because they had tative easing” (though they will prevent the whole system collapsing like failed to obtain full-time work – the undoubtedly claim the credit). a house of cards. Inflation, by making it highest figure since 1992, when such It is, perhaps, unsurprising that the easier for debtors to repay, protects the figures were first recorded. City is claiming that the Bank’s actions system; conversely, deflation, by mak- Two more telling statistics are: an are inadequate. They express this con- ing repayment harder, brings the whole increase in unemployment among 18- cern in apparently altruistic terms: they thing closer to collapse. 24 year olds (to 18% of this age group) are concerned with the possibility of Each debt to the bank is treated by – many of whom will be trying to find deflation. A general decrease in prices the bank as an asset, upon which it can their first jobs; and a decrease in the will not help the economy recover in base further lending. Each default number of advertised vacancies. There the short term, since it will also bring shows how worthless such assets really were just 428,000 of these at the end of with it an initial decline in profits. are. The more defaults there are, the October 2009. Classically, this would eventually be more we see how worthless an entire All of these wholly or partially unem- balanced by the general fall in prices bank is, as the financial collapses of last ployed individuals represent a signifi- making production costs cheaper. year demonstrated. cant reduction in demand for a wide However, Britain operates in the con- range of goods and services. If the text of a global economy: if deflation is Government, instead of printing money local, British producers will not be able to throw at the bankers, were to provide to compete on the world market for any these people with meaningful work, the raw materials that have not suffered a increase in demand would provide a deflationary fall in prices. real boost to the economy, and one The City’s concern is anything but which would not entail the risk of ram- altruistic, and their self-interest is two- pant inflation. fold. Firstly, aside from the City institu- Of course, neither form of tions which have gone under, the finan- Government assistance to the economy ciers have done very well out of the will provide a permanent solution to the government’s “solutions” to their prob- The financiers, of course, constitute problems of capitalism. Rising demand lems. The British government, for the long-dominant element of the ruling will be followed by rising supply, which instance, pumped billions into the City class. It is inevitable that the govern- will inevitably overshoot demand, to “nationalise” or otherwise prop up ment will be constrained to assist them bringing prices and, thereby, produc- tottering establishments. out of the crisis which, in its more tion, crashing down once more. That money had to be borrowed – peculiar respects, is largely of their – The Government’s preferred solution from the City! That is, it went straight the finance capitalists’ – making. may just well speed up this process by back to where it came from, only now It is equally inevitable that the assis- encouraging the financial institutions to with interest attached to it. The ideolo- tance will take a form which is as little repeat many of the practices that trig- gists of the bourgeoisie usually decry injurious as possible to those same fin- gered the previous crash. state handouts to failing businesses, on anciers. Yet, while financial operations Even without Government help, this the grounds that it constitutes “interfer- dominate the economy of this country, will happen anyway (though possibly ence” in the workings of the market. it remains the case that it is the produc- more slowly). Sub-prime mortgage But the bourgeoisie itself has never tion of commodities (here or abroad) lending, investment in toxic securities objected to state handouts – as long as that provides the source of the vast based on that lending, overextension of they come to them. wealth that the financiers manipulate credit to “reliable” customers (100%- Marx once described the state as a and transfer between each other. plus mortgages, etc.) largely arose joint-stock company for exploiting the Assistance to this sector of the econ- because of the huge quantities of sur- wealth of a nation on behalf of the cap- omy would actually provide a surer way plus capital in the financial sector. italist class. Even if the average capital- of pulling the economy out of its slump The bankers needed to find some ist does not admit this, even to himself, than the inflationary measures being way of investing it at a profit. If these he understands it instinctively. practised by the Bank of England. ways remain closed to them (voluntari- Secondly, the City would suffer the We have seen that the Government’s ly or otherwise), they will find others, consequences of their own massive eagerness to help the financiers is equally risky.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 5 How ordinary citizens are drowning in debt How ordinary citizens are drowning in debt

While the Government bails out Britain’s debt-ridden banks The with billions, millions of ordinary citizens are deep in debt Socialist and struggling to cope. “Drowning in Debt” is the latest Correspondent’s report from the Citizens Advice Bureaux service in Scotland. Scenes from working class life JANE McKINNON looks at the report’s key findings.

Citizens Advice Scotland’s report, er cost credit options such as home Disabled and Sick Debt Clients “Drowning in Debt” was published in credit, doorstep loans, higher interest 41% of Citizens Advice debt clients cite June 2009 and is based on a survey of credit cards, pay day advances etc. illness or disability as reasons for their debt clients from a representative sam- Low income debt clients are more debt problem, as opposed to 33% in ple of bureaux across Scotland. likely to owe money to a local authori- 2003. Sick or disabled debt clients had Although it deals only with Scotland, ty and three times more likely to have an average of six debts and owed an it is certain the report’s findings will be debt with a utility company than debt average of £20,588. mirrored acrosss the whole of Britain. clients with a higher income. Households with sick or disabled Below are some extracts in comparison people were significantly more likely to to its last survey in 2003 Older Debt Clients have a utilities prepayment meter Older people have the highest levels of Nine out of ten said debt had a neg- Lone Parents debt of all ages ative impact on their health Amost all The average total debt for lone parents owing an average said debt affected their mental health since 2003 has increased by a quarter of £26,010. Their and a third their physical health. from £11,469 to £14,963. debt level has Lone parent debt clients face signifi- increased by Young People cant “debt stress”. For every £1 of almost 50% in the Clients aged 16-24 have a lower level of monthly income, lone parents owed on last two years. debt than other age groups - £9,679 average £19 of debt compared to £14 They have the compared to an overall average of in 2003. lowest income and £20,914 Just under 50% of all debt clients the highest num- However, their average level of debt have gone without essentials to manage ber of debts over- has nearly doubled since 2004 and is their debt compared to 33% in 2003. all, averaging almost increasing twice as fast as that for all It is the norm for low income lone seven debts each clients. parents to go without to provide for compared with around six for Citizens The proportion of young people with their children. Advice debt clients in general. credit card debts has increased by near- Relationship breakdown, as a reason Usually levels of debt increase with ly 50% since 2004. for debt, was mentioned by just under age but incomes reduce resulting in the Young people were more likely to a third of those surveyed. over 60 age group having less opportu- hold overdraft debts (59%), catalogue nity to repay their debt. debts (41%) and hire purchase agree- Low Income Older people are less likely to borrow ments (18%). Around a half of debt clients have from family and friends with 12% doing monthly household incomes of less so compared to 43% of those under 25. Creditor Behaviour than £800 and a quarter less than Twice as many clients than in 2003 £400. Just under a half have no were being threatened with informal income other than pensions or benefits. debt recovery action Over 50% cited persistent low Just under 50% of Creditors have taken some form of income as the main reason for financial Just under 50% of recovery action on four out of five difficulties. debts, with Local Authorities, student Debt problems are often caused by all debt clients loan companies and UK Govenment changes in family circumstances that agencies most likely to take action. reduce incomes - job loss, relationship have gone without Almost one in five debt clients felt breakdowns and higher cost of living. pressured to re-finance their debt or to Even small reductions in income can be borrow more money. significant for those on a low income. essentials to Those on a low income are less like- Citizens Advice Scotland’s Drowning in ly to have access to low interest main- manage their debt. Debt report can be accessed on their stream credit and instead rely on high- website www.cas.org.uk

6 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Charlie: a 21st century worker Charlie: a 21st century worker

Charlie was unemployed for 10 months. He is a victim of The SocialistThe the recession which has, and still is, having a particularly Correspondent’s brutal effect on the building trade. Scenes from JANE McKINNON reports on conditions at the Hewlett working class life Packard computer assembly plant in Bishopton. Charlie signed on at the dole every fort- He'd dearly love to be employed at his back on the workforce who helped night whilst applying for jobs, without own trade where he earned more than make it the profitable company it is any success. His £128.60 a fortnight double what he does now: but Charlie today. Earlier this year the company Jobseekers Allowance didn't go far and is not thinking that far ahead. announced it was closing its Bishopton Charlie had to drastically curtail nights His employer is one of a number plant and transferring the work to the out with his mates and ditch the idea of operating within the Hewlett Packard Czech Republic. a holiday with his girlfriend. plant. At the same time around 800 skilled Becoming despondent and feeling he Like other villages in the area and unskilled workers were made was never going to be employed again, Bishopton grew to accommodate an redundant out of a total workforce of Charlie answered an advert for a job influx of migrants from the cities of 1,300. Those remaining, are mostly with one of the contractors who operate Glasgow and Paisley, attracted by the employed by companies like Charlie's for Hewlett Packard at their massive rural setting and quieter way of life but that provide a component supply chain computer assembly campus in a rural also by the opportunity of employment and customer support. setting in the Bishopton-Erskine area, with one of the biggest employers in the However, the future of these jobs is 13 miles from Glasgow. area. uncertain with the announcement by Charlie was pleased to get the job but Hewlett Parkard that there was no cast his wages and conditions leave much to iron guarantee these jobs would remain. be desired. He works three 12 hour But Hewlett Packard are not only shifts a week and does an additional planning to close their operations in one shift a month to bring his weekly Scotland, they have also closed their hours to 39. manufacturing base in Germany and He is paid £5.99p an hour and his altogether made 6,000 workers redun- annual salary is £12,139. His employ- dant throughout Europe, the Middle ment is for a six months period on a East and Africa. This, despite making Temporary/Fixed Term Contract a £5 billion profit last year. which carries with it a three months’ Hewlett Packard claim that for it to probationary performance review. remain competitive and survive, they As a temporary worker Charlie miss- have to cut jobs and they need to relo- es out on some of the benefits afforded cate to a lower cost, out-sourced site in to the company’s permanent staff and the Czech Republic. his annual holiday entitlement is only How many times have we heard this 15 days per annum. At that time, the biggest employer argument and how galling that compa- The company work their shifts so was the Royal Ordnance Factory which nies like Hewlett Packard will continue that production is on a 24 hours basis. began production in 1940 during to maximise their profits at the expense Charlie's shift begins at 6.45 a.m. and World War II. of their workers. finishes at 6.45 p.m. Within this peri- In 1987 the computer company Charlie is one of thousands of od he is allowed four breaks. Compaq arrived and built the massive workers who have been deeply affected His travel to and from work is diffi- assembly and production plant but by the recession. He is one of many cult and expensive due to the location after running into difficulty, it was who are forced to accept low pay and of the plant and his early start. taken over by Hewlett Packard in 2002. poor working conditions under a sys- While Charlie thinks he is lucky to That year also saw the Royal Ordnance tem that exploits them while at the have a job, he is anxious that he might Factory cease production. same time their bosses are searching the be paid off after his three months’ pro- At one time Compaq had 2,500 of a world for another workforce to exploit bationary period. Another concern he workfore but around 700 of those jobs even more. has is that, if he is kept on, his tempo- were lost in the takeover by California- Last week I said to Charlie “How's rary contract will only be for another based Hewlett Packard. the job” and he said “fine”. Then he three months and he might not be able And like its predecessor, Hewlett looked me in the eye, shook his head to find another job when it finishes. Packard is now planning to turn its and said ”No, it's terrible.”

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 7 UK elections are seriously out of favour UK elections are seriously out of favour Britain’s General Election battle lines have been drawn. In the words of Willie Bain MP (pictured below), Labour’s successful candidate in the Glasgow North East by-election, “It is Game On” between Labour and the Tories. JAMES THOMSON looks at the Labour and Conservative parties’ electoral prospects in the run up to this year’s General Election.

For the first time in many months, feared that the racist-fascist British Labour has cut the Conservatives’ lead National Party (BNP) would do well in the opinion polls following its com- perhaps even eclipsing the Tories and fortable victory in the Glasgow North saving their deposit, something they East Westminster Parliamentary by- have never before achieved in Scotland. election on 12 November (see Tables 1 That did not happen but nevertheless and 2). the BNP’s 4.92% share of the vote, its This victory has buoyed Labour best ever in Scotland - a party requires leaders because, as they know, unpopu- 5% to save its deposit - should give no lar Governments rarely win by-elec- one any comfort. This deeply reac- tions so near to their end of term. tionary force in British politics will not There is one problem though which thing both parties say or promise before go away soon. is that although the polls suggest the the election since all they are interested The appalling turnout in Glasgow Labour Party might close the gap on in is saying what is likely to help change North East underlines, if ever it needed the Tories, the same polls claim the opinion polls and get them elected. it, the all time low regard in which Gordon Brown is still regarded as The only real recent poll of how politicians of all parties are held. Labour’s biggest liability. The third voters are feeling was the Glasgow Politics as we know it and electoralism failed plot to remove Brown - on North East by-election in November. as we know it are seriously out of January 6 - by Blairites, Geoff Hoon What was signifcant about that result, favour. and Patricia Hewitt is evidence that was not so much that Labour held on In France, in that country’s last voters and many in the Labour Party to a 74 year old stronghold, but that the Presidential election, voter turnout was itself believe Brown is Labour’s greatest vast majority of that constituency’s over 90%. That level of turnout sug- impediment to success. electorate - a record 67% - chose not to gests the population as a whole are Nevertheless, it seems certain that vote at all. engaged with the political and electoral Brown will lead Labour into the The turnout among Glasgow North process. It also suggests they under- General Election. If he chooses to give East’s 62,475 voters was only 32.97%. stand its relevance and importance to himself all the time he can to try and This is the lowest ever recorded for a their lives. claw back the Tories’ lead, that should UK Parliamentary by-election in In Britain, politics and elections are mean a May or June election. Scotland. The previous low was 36.2% fast becoming a minority interest. Alternatively it could be March. The in the Falkirk West by-election in Britain’s population is around 61 mil- Chancellor’s Pre-Budget report in December 2000. lion and its electorate fluctuates around December singularly failed to give any This record low turnout followed the the 43 million mark. detail on Labour’s widely expected low of 34.5% in the June 2009 In the 1987 General Election, 32.5 public spending cuts and tax rises. That European Parliament UK elections and million people voted, a turnout of detail will most likely be forthcoming in the equally poor turnout at the English 75.3%. the Budget at the end of local elections also in June. In 1992, 33.5 million voted, a March/beginning of April. Obviously a Glasgow North East was the seat of turnout of 77.4%. spending cuts/higher taxes Budget the disgraced former Speaker of the In 1997, it was 31.3 million: turnout would be bad for Labour. A March House of Commons, Michael Martin - 71.2%. election, before the real Budget is now Baron Martin of Springburn - one In 2001 only 26.4 million, the lowest announced, might be Labour’s best of Labour’s biggest casualties of the since 1918, went to the polls, a turnout prospect. Westminster MPs’ expenses scandals. of 59%. Already it is clear that the biggest Glasgow North East voters had good In May 2005, 27.1 million voted, a battles will be fought over who can best reason therefore to be turned-off and, turnout of 61%. and speedily bring about Britain’s eco- by a margin of over three to one, they From 1987 to 2005 therefore - the nomic recovery. Drastic cuts in public voted to stay at home. years of Kinnock/New Labour - more spending will also be a major battle- In this depressed political atmosphere than five million more voters chose not ground. It is hard to take seriously any- and the resultant vacuum, progressives to cast their vote, a turnout drop of

8 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 UK elections are seriously out of favour

Table 1POLL OF POLLS: 2006-2009 Table 2 GLASGOW NORTH EAST BY-ELECTION 12 November 2009 PARTY VOTES %SHARE Tories Labour Lib-Dem Labour 12,231 59.39 Scottish National Party 4,120 20 50% Conservative 1,075 5.22 British National Party 1,013 4.92 Solidarity (split from SSP) 794 3.86 40 Lib Dems 474 2.30 Total votes cast 20,595 Voter turnout 32.97% 30 GENERAL ELECTION 2005: Glasgow North East PARTY VOTES %SHARE 20 Speaker-Michael Martin 15,153 53.3 SNP 5,019 17.7 Socialist Labour 4,036 14.2 Scottish Socialist Party 1,402 4.9 10 Scottish Unionist 1,266 4.5 BNP 920 3.2 Independent 622 2.2 Total votes cast 28,418 Voter turnout 45.8% Source: BBC News. 2006 2007 2008 2009 Tories and Lib-Dems did not contest as it was the Speaker’s seat.

14%. In 2005 around 15 million voters the ‘caring Conservatism’ of David USA, with two main parties that have voted with their feet and stayed at Cameron’s Tories. very different roots and histories but home. And if you can’t tell the difference have become very similar parties. If the June 2009 EU Elections, the between the two political parties who New Labour, compliant trades English local elections and the Glasgow are certain to form the next govern- unions and a defeated left were the North East by-election turnouts are fac- ment, it is possible you will decide not result within the labour and working tored into the forthcoming General to vote. Given that “they are all the class movement of nearly two decades Election, that stay at home figure could same anyway”, you’ll get the same of that Thatcher-Tory dominance. be anywhere between 15 million and 30 result - the same sort of government - In the subsequent decade, Blair and million! If this year’s pattern continues whether you stay at home or turn up to New Labour became the defining force there is every possibility that fewer than vote, so why bother? in British politics winning three elec- half the population of Britain will vote Margaret Thatcher and her tions in a row. Caring Conservatism at this year’s General Election. Conservatives pretty much dominated and a new leader - David Cameron - Such is the depth of the disenchant- politics in Britain during the 1980s and were the result of that decade of New ment with all three main parties and the 90s. It is over 26 years, nearly a gen- Labour dominance. During Thatcher disengagement with the electoral eration, since Neil Kinnock, aided and Labour shifted to the right and into the process, it is hard to predict which of abetted by his right hand man Peter centre ground of British politics. Then them will come off best or worst when Mandelson, became leader of the during Blair’s New Labour decade the voters do go to the polls. Labour Party. Kinnock began the Tories also eventually changed tack to How the various ‘classes’ of UK soci- process of forcing the left in the party regain the centre. ety voted in 2005 and in 1999 can be and in the broader Labour and trade These shifts have resulted in two seen in Table 3, Page 10. union movement into retreat. main capitalist parties which are very A significant percentage of the That process reached its apogee with hard to tell apart. The British people appalling turnout at Glasgow North the formation, by Blair, Mandelson and have had a generation of this East can be put down to the recent Brown, of the New Labour Party, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee main MPs’ expenses scandals but as the removal of Clause 4, the diminution of party politics and it has been an elec- above figures show, UK voters’ disen- trade union influence and of course toral turn-off. chantment pre-dates the current and New Labour’s complete endorsement Their different roots and different continuing pecuniary infamy of our of British capitalism and imperialism histories mean they have different con- elected and un-elected representatives. “as the only way”. stituencies to whom they must appeal. Most probably it is because the The positioning of the Labour Party New Labour’s No.1 electoral strate- majority of voters find it virtually “resolutely ... in the ... centre of British gist, Baron Mandelson knows there is impossible to separate the New Labour politics”, as Mandelson puts it, has left less than a cigarette paper between of Blair, Mandelson and Brown from the British people, like the people of the New Labour and the Tories on the fun-

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 9 UK elections are seriously out of favour

damental issue of sup- Table 3 report will not come out until port for British capital- after the General Election. ism and imperialism. WHO VOTED FOR THE PARTIES % support in 2005 (% in 1997) He also hoped his attendance But to win the votes of TORY LABOUR LIB-DEMS at the Inquiry would be after traditional Labour sup- Men 33 (28) 38 (47) 21 (17) the election. But he has seri- porters he knows they ously mis-calculated the need to convince voters Women 32 (35) 38 (43) 23 (17) impact the Inquiry has had in Labour heartlands that AB (middle class) 37 (43) 32 (30) 24 (21) on his role. He is now sched- there is a difference. C1 (lower middle class) 34 (35) 35 (37) 24 (21) uled to attend in mid- Labour needs to get C2 (skilled workers) 32 (28) 43 (52) 18 (13) February, two weeks after the every working class voter star of the show, Tony Blair’s who is thinking of stay- DE (unskilled workers) 28 (21) 45 (58) 19 (15) performance, and it is clear it ing at home out to vote. Age 18-24 24 (25) 42 (50) 26 (17) is likely to damage him as That’s why Mandelson Age 25-34 24 (27) 42 (50) 26 (17) much as Blair. and Brown are summon- Age 35-64 33 (31) 38 (43) 22 (18) The pattern of evidence ing up the really old from Britain’s top military Labour past - Labour’s Age 65+ 42 (38) 35 (42) 18 (15) chiefs, diplomats, spies and foundation at the turn of Home Owners Blair’s former cabinet col- the last century as the with mortgage 30 (32) 39 (41) 23 (19) leagues is that Blair was mass party of the work- Home owners indeed Bush’s poodle. With a ing class. owning outright 43 (42) 30 (36) 20 (16) few exceptions - Alistair Brown’s ‘class attack’ Council Tenants 16 (15) 56 (65) 19 (13) Campbell - the witnesses on David Cameron’s ALL VOTERS 33 (31) 36 (43) 23 (17) sought to distance themselves Etonian schooldays, the from Blair’s dodgy, some say Party Political Broadcast Source: ICM. illegal, decision for war. Blair showing footage of was the box office witness on Labour’s origins in the democratic and of the developments that is currently 29 January and his already tarnished progressive struggles of the 1900s and helping Labour enhance its appeal is reputation was further sullied as mil- again during the decades from the the relative absence of the Blairite cam- lions watched him at the Inquiry trying 1920s to the 1950s, are all designed to paign to remove Brown. and failing to squirm his way out of his dupe party and people into believing Since last summer when Mandelson admission, to the BBC’s Fern Brittan there is a fundamental difference was elevated by Brown, Labour has had on 13 December 2009, that weapons of between the two main parties. some appearance of being united, or at mass destruction or not, he would still If there is a difference today between least not dis-united. Mandelson’s pres- have followed Bush into war the Tories and Labour, it is no longer a ence at the centre of things re-assures By letting the inquiry he established difference of ideological substance - of even the most ardent of Blairites who blame Blair, and then committing more capitalism vs socialism - but merely a loathe Brown that, their erstwhile British troops to the war in difference of degree. leader’s legacy is in safe hands. Afghanistan, Brown is endorsing US One difference of material substance But there is only so much that one President Obama’s dumb analysis that is the affiliation of most of Britain’s man can do to protect the “beloved Iraq was a “dumb war” and trades union to the Labour Party. leader” Tony: the Iraq Inquiry is a case Afghanistan is somehow a “just war.” Sadly, as a force for progress and in point. This was set-up by Brown to This helps him cultivate an image of change Britain’s trades unions are still take the heat off himself as the new a Prime Minister who is on the side of struggling to reverse the strategic set Prime Minister, which he needed badly, Britain’s “dedicated and valourous” back they suffered during the 1980s and to put the blame where it chiefly troops who are defending the British when Margaret Thatcher’s belongs, with Blair. way of life from evil Islamist jihadis. Conservative Government defeated the The carpet under which the British From the public turnout and miners’ union in their fight against pit ruling class has swept thorny issues applause which returning troops - dead closures and introduced a series of anti- over the centuries must surely be a mile and alive - receive as they parade along trades union laws. high. Brown could easily have swept Britain’s high streets, and the fact that Kinnock’s and Mandelson’s first Iraq under the same carpet and left it army recruitment has risen by 25%, moves to shift the Labour Party to the for half a century before historians Brown knows public support for British right coincided with that period of unearthed some of the truth. troops in Afghanistan is high and he trades union retreat and made all the But he quite deliberately chose not to cannot afford to be seen to be equivo- easier the subsequent Labour leader- do so. Brown knows he, like all mem- cal or distant from that support. ship attacks on trades union influence, bers of Blair’s Cabinet at the time, is Supporting Obama’s 18-months notably over the one member one vote complicit in the decision. Nevertheless “surge” in Afghanistan and playing on rules change. he took the calculated risk that the British fears of Islamist terror, Brown will Not only has the left been defeated inquiry’s revelations about his role as go into the General Election hoping he inside the party, the trades unions have Britain’s war accountant would be as has done enough to create an image of been forced to the margins and are only nothing compared to that of “Yo himself as a Churchillian Prime Minister, tolerated as a secure source of funding. Blair’s” zealous determination to stand leading his country in a ‘just war’. The only dividing line in the New shoulder to shoulder with George W If he can avoid any further PR gaffes Labour Party these days - like the divi- Bush and US imperialism as they set and disasters, Brown should fight the sion between Labour and the Tories - about wreaking vengeance for the 9/11 is no longer between left and right, but attacks on American soil. largely personal - Brown vs Blair. One Brown has ensured the Iraq Inquiry’s Continued on page 26

10 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

RobertRobert BurnsBurns 250th250th AnniversaryAnniversary

ROBERT BURNS born, 25 January 1759 in Alloway in Ayrshire, Scotland. Died, 31 July 1796 aged 37 in Dumfries.

Burns’ birthplace. ManMan ofof hishis timestimes

Burns lived during a time of momen- By Alex Davidson eties in its speed, scale and intensity ... tous change. It was one of the most Scottish industrialisation was explo- dramatic and far-reaching periods of sive; that of England, cumulative, pro- technological change in human histo- Indies, both of which relied on the tracted and ... evolutionary in charac- ry. He was born at the beginning of slave trade. Edinburgh was the second ter.”(2) the industrial revolution. largest city in Britain after London; Some fifty years earlier, in 1707, the and Norwich was the third largest Economic Development Scottish parliament had agreed to join reflecting the predominantly agricul- Burns was aware of these economic the English parliament mainly because tural mode of production at this time developments and commented on Scotland was promised free trade with prior to the industrial revolution. (see them. England and England’s colonies. With table, page 12) After a visit to the Carron Iron this, Glasgow, in particular, developed In the 1760s and 1770s the social Works, near Falkirk, built in the year a very profitable trade in tobacco from and economic structure of Scotland of his birth, he wrote: Virginia, “the huge prize of the began a “process of transformation “We cam na here to view your warks union”,(1) and sugar from the West unparalleled among European soci- In hopes to be mair wise

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 11 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

Population of Towns/Cities in Britain 1750-1840 Year Edinburgh Glasgow Norwich Birmingham Leeds Liverpool Manchester c1755 57,195 31,700 36,169 30,804 17,121 34,407 27,246

1801 81,600 83,700 36,832 73,670 53,163 79,722 90,399

1810 103,143 108,890

1821 138,000 147,000

1841 62,344 190,542 151,870 264,298 296,183

But only, lest we gang to hell moved to work with Boulton at his Norwich was by-passed by the indus- It may be nae surprise.” factory in Birmingham in 1767. It was trial revolution and the great industrial Three years after the opening of the here that his engineering developments cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, iron works there were 1200 workers were put to widespread use in indus- Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow employed by the Carron company.(3) try. Prior to his move, Watt had been emerged. (see table) When Burns was a boy the spinning associated with the Lunar Society, a In this rapidly changing economic of cotton was revolutionised by the club of industrialists and intellectuals environment there was to be found in inventions of Hargreaves, Crompton based in Birmingham, a centre of the Scotland a brilliant intellectual life in and Arkwright, who in collaboration industrial revolution. philosophy, aesthetics, medicine, law with David Dale, established New Its members included Matthew and the natural sciences. It was the era Lanark in 1784. By 1799, three years Boulton, Erasmus Darwin (physician of the Scottish Enlightenment. after Burns’ death, Robert Owen, and grandfather of Charles Darwin), Dale’s son-in-law, had taken over New Josiah Wedgwood (the potter, and The Scottish Enlightenment Lanark and was employing more than Charles Darwin’s other grandfather) Intellectual development in the 17th 2000 workers in what was the biggest and Joseph Priestley (theologian, polit- century had been severely curtailed by cotton mill in Scotland. ical theorist and discoverer of oxygen). the church and religion. However, this Economic advance was stimulated There are several monuments com- changed in the following century. by inventions such as James Watt’s memorating the club and its members In the vanguard of this was the development of Newcomen’s steam in Birmingham including, the gilded Scottish philosopher and historian, engine. James Watt (1736-1819), born bronze statue of Watt, Boulton and David Hume (pictured below) (1711- in Greenock, established an instru- Murdoch, known as “The Golden 1776). He “uproot(ed) all traditional ment making workshop at Glasgow Boys”. Many of the Lunar Society certainties: matter, the soul, God, University, where he became a close were leading abolitionists (ie for the Nature, causation, miracles”(4) And friend of Joseph Black (1728-1799). abolition of slavery). The Medallion, he had a view that ‘almost all’ govern- Black’s discovery of latent heat was an created by Wedgwood, depicting a integral part of Watt’s invention of the negro slave in chains became the separate condenser. emblem of the Abolitionist movement When Matthew Boulton took over (see page 18). the patent of Watt’s invention, Watt There was a revolution in communi- cations with the building of canals (Trent and Mersey), bridges (Severn) and roads through the works of Thomas Telford and John Macadam. Burns took part in the trial of one of the earliest steamboats on Dalswinton Loch in 1788. It was one of the first ships to have an iron hull. Its engines were built by William Symington and the design was by the engineer, ments had their origin in violence.(5) Alexander Nasmyth, who was also a His scepticism drew towards him painter. It is his portrait of Burns enemies from church and state. He which is the most familiar today. He offered compelling criticisms of stan- was the father of James Nasmyth, dard theistic proofs. He wrote against inventor of the steam hammer. the common view that God plays an People moved from the country to important role in the creation and the towns to find work in the new fac- reinforcement of moral values. Hume The gilded bronze statue of tories. There was a huge growth in the offered one of the first purely secular Matthew Boulton, James Watt and size of towns and they grew exponen- moral theories, which grounded William Murdoch in Birmingham. tially over the next hundred years. morality in the positive and useful

12 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

consequences that result from our the architect, Robert Adam. The New actions. Hume travelled widely in Town of Edinburgh was completed Europe, and was for a period a close just after the death of Burns. Not sur- friend of Rousseau. He returned to prisingly given this intellectual climate Edinburgh and was employed as the first Encyclopaedia Britannica was Librarian at the Faculty of Advocates published in 1771 in Edinburgh. in the 1750s during which he wrote his Moreover, these intellectuals were in ‘History of England’. touch with Continental and American After a diplomatic career in France thought. Rousseau was a close friend he settled in Edinburgh from 1769 and of David Hume for a time. Benjamin was a considerable influence on, and Franklin, one of the founding fathers friend, of Adam Smith. of America, travelled to Birmingham The Scottish Historical School was in 1758 and returned again in 1760 to both realistic and progressive, with conduct experiments with Matthew Adam Smith, the champion of the Boulton in electricity and sound. claims of competitive capitalism, at the Voltaire commented, “It is a remark- centre. Its main representatives apart able result of the progress of the from Smith were professors of the uni- human spirit that at the present time it versities – Adam Ferguson of is from Scotland we receive rules of Edinburgh, John Millar of Glasgow, taste in the arts – from the epic poem William Robertson of Edinburgh – and to gardening.” there were a number of Scottish digni- Burns mixed with many of these taries of the time who were associated people and knew their work. Adam with them, such as Lord Kames, James Smith took four subscriptions for the Dunbar and Hugh Blair. Edinburgh edition of Burns’ poems This school of thought was based on and tried to procure a government a humanist and rationalist outlook. sinecure for the poet. As a boy, Walter There was a belief in the fundamental Scott met Burns at the home of importance of human reason com- Professor Adam Ferguson in bined with a rejection of any authority Edinburgh and later recounted his which could not be justified by reason. impressions. So Burns was not a They were denounced by opponents ‘heaven-sent ploughman’ as some as atheists. would have it, but rather a man of his A number of circumstances con- time. And, it was a historically unique tributed to the formation of this type Adam Ferguson in his ‘History of period: the beginning of industrial of thought in Scotland. These includ- Civil Society’ argued that with the capitalism, with all its attendant revo- ed the situation in the universities and existence of private property, a princi- lutionary changes. It was the period of the general social environment in ple of political development is given – the Scottish Enlightenment. which they were set. “The university “property is a matter of progress”. lecturers formed a society cut off from Further, property produces “civil England but in close intellectual antagonisms”. Ferguson showed that FOOTNOTES: exchange and even personal touch the division of labour comes into being (1) Devine, TM “Three Hundred Years of with France (cf Hume and Smith). only with the existence of private the Anglo-Scottish Union”, p4, in ‘Scotland The Scottish universities were not, like property. In writing of the division of and the Union, 1701-2007’, ed TM Oxford and Cambridge, situated apart labour he asserts that “thinking itself Devine, Edinburgh University Press, 2008. (7) (2) Devine, TM, “The Spoils of Empire”, from the turmoil of commercial life, has become a peculiar craft”. p91, in ‘Scotland and the Union, 1707- (6) but in the great cities.” John Millar, one of the first sociolo- 2007’, ed TM Devine, Edinburgh University Adam Smith, born in 1723, became gists, extended some aspects of the Press, 2008. Professor at the age of 28 and pub- general criticism of eighteenth century (3) Johnston, Tom, “A History of the lished his ‘Wealth of Nations’ in 1776. society. He expressed opposition to Working Classes in Scotland”, p367, Smith’s method, when dealing with the growth of the power of the Crown, Forward Publishing, 1923, Glasgow. almost every aspect of society, was to advocated parliamentary reform, (4) Willey, Basil, ‘The Eighteenth Century review its historical growth under dif- Background’ quoted in Smout, TC, ‘A spoke against the counter-revolution- History of the Scottish People, 1560- ferent forms and relations of property. ary campaign for intervention in 1830’, p451, Collins, Glasgow, 1969. He defined four types of society dif- France and his lectures contained a (5) Gilmour, Ian, “Riot, Risings and ferentiated by different modes of pro- strong critique of slavery.(8) He was a Revolution”, p41, Hutchinson, London, 1992. duction – hunting, pasturage, farming member of the Society of the Friends (6) Pascal, Roy, “Property and Society: the and commerce. According to Smith the of the People. Scottish Historical School of the process of social development was not At this time there were also to be Eighteenth Century”, p168 in the Modern governed by a supernatural (religious) or found James Hutton, the father of Quarterly, Volume 1, Number 2, April 1938. a moral principle but was a completely (7) This statement is quoted several times modern Geology; Robert Foulis, the in the works of Karl Marx secular, material process. Frederick artist and printer, who established one (8) Whyte, Iain, “Scotland and the Engels referred to Adam Smith as the of the earliest Academies of Art; the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838”, “Luther of Political Economy”. portrait painter, Henry Raeburn; and p59, Edinburgh University Press, 2006.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 13 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

TheThe ImmortalImmortal MemoryMemory ofof RobertRobert BurnsBurns

“Burns ... Mair nonsense has been By Bill Sweeney potential of their vocabularies. uttered in his name Many in this gathering, growing up Than in ony’s barrin’ liberty – and This is an edited version of in the complex linguistic and social Christ.” the toast delivered at the nexus of South Africa, will have expe- Thus Hugh MacDiarmid, in the 2008 Burns’ Supper rienced a similar sense of having one midst of a diatribe against the Burns in South Africa House language from childhood, perhaps cult, in his poem of 1926 “A Drunk hosted by the Xhosa? and others, Afrikaans? English? Man Looks at the Thistle”. South African High Commissioner not only as media for communication, in association with ACTSA Your Excellency, Ladies, Scotland. but also as signifiers, carriers of sub- Gentlemen, friends – it is an honour to stantial elements of the meaning be asked to propose the “Immortal underlying these communications. Memory of Robert Burns” in such dis- But we have also had: Burns the tinguished company; an honour – and Internationalist and Burns the Patriot, a problem! Whose memory is it that Burns the Early Socialist and Burns we propose to make immortal? the Friend of the Nobility, Burns the Psychologists tell us that our own Faithful Lover and Burns the memories are not only fallible, but are Shameless Betrayer, Burns the Jacobite as much reconstructions, re-interpreta- and Burns the Covenanter, Burns the tions (even inventions) of the past as Enthusiast for the Old Traditions and much as anything else. We see the Burns the Iconoclast, the Modernist. past through the filtering lens of our All of them true – and none of them! present consciousness, our present But none wholly false either. hopes, our present sense of ourselves. Popular misconceptions? Yes, but Does this invalidate the whole idea there were more than 350 Burns Clubs mark the words of Étienne de of such a toast as the “Immortal worldwide: How many different Senancour, a younger French contem- Memory”? Rabbie’s were they toasting? porary of Burns: Does it make us lift our glasses more We Scots take a pride – perhaps “It is good to observe error without cautiously? Or does it give us a better naively – in his universality. No other disdain: the universality of men would sense of the complex richness and poet has taken such a transcendent not have believed it if it had not so potential of the human spirit? grip on so many imaginations: not much relation to, and so many points When individuals become heroes – Shakespeare, not Goethe, or Dante, of conformity with, the truth.” (From even literary heroes – something of not even Homer! But with such pride “Reveries sur la nature primitive de them becomes detached, becomes, in a there must come a measure of reflec- l’homme – Thoughts on the primitive real sense, public property. Their tive humility. With so many imper- nature of Man”) spirit is called as a witness in support sonations, appropriations, can there be If we are to clear away the accumu- of current popular sentiment, validat- anything authentic left, anything left lated fog of received opinion on Burns ing and reinforcing it, even to the unfiltered, the pure drop? we need, I think, to do two things. extent of becoming a barrier to critical We used to be told that Burns was One is to separate Burns the Man dissent. the ploughman poet, an barely lettered from Burns the Poet and the other is Burns’ name has often been called rustic, from whose unsophisticated to understand the social landscape, upon in support of completely contra- spirit verses sprang like Minerva fully cultural and political, which formed dictory ideas, although perhaps not as armed from the head of Zeus. both Man and Poet. often as those deities of all kinds This was nonsense. He was the son What I am suggesting is that the whose blessing is conferred on the bul- of a tenant farmer, not a fee’d labour- Man has some responsibility for creat- lets which zip across No-Man’s-Land er. He was well-educated and widely ing the Poet, but the Poet and what he in both directions and who are later read in English and Scots literature produces ceases to be responsible for invoked to comfort the widows and and the Bible and also had some the Man, otherwise we can never rise bereft mothers with the sanctified jus- knowledge of Latin, French, above the level of the tabloid press or tice of both causes. Arithmetic, History and Geography. of the tunnel-visioned fanatic for one So, there have been all-white Burns From an early age he was aware of or other “moral” cause, for both of Clubs in the racist states of the Deep the linguistic duality of the educated whom the detection of the Man’s feet South of the USA, active at the same Scot, aware of the different registers of clay is a means to avoid dealing time as the haggis was being piped and the significance of the social usage with the Poet’s ideas. into Burns Suppers in Leningrad and of both Scots and English languages - In another country and another cen- Moscow. By the early 20th century, and of the sense, substance and rich tury Yeats’ flirtation with 1920s fas-

14 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

cism (with “Celtic” hogwash substitut- Misfortune, By far my elder brother in ing for “Aryan” tripe) should not the Muse”. He found the grave, and blind us to his poetic stature, his abil- found it unmarked, so Burns raised a ity to deliver beautiful and uncomfort- subscription to erect a headstone and able truths about the human condition. wrote an Epitaph for it: Scotland in the 18th century was “No sculptur’d marble here, nor still a backward agricultural society pompous lay, and Burns was a strong advocate of No story’d urn nor animated bust; modern farming methods, although he This simple stone pale SCOTIA’s way seldom had the quality of land with To pour her sorrows o’er her POET’s which to deploy his ideas with much dust”. success. Then, mercilessly, he hits his target: There were pockets of wealth in the “She mourns, sweet, tuneful youth, thy cities, where the mercantile classes had hapless fate, recovered from the disastrous Darien Tho’ all the pow’rs of song thy fancy expedition, after which much of the fir’d; Scottish aristocracy, having lost their Yet luxury and Wealth lay by in state, investments in this failed attempt at a And thankless starv’d what they so Scottish Empire, had consented to much admir’d” have their debts paid (via, amongst During the 1770s, Fergusson had others, the novelist Daniel Defoe in his written a poem, “The Daft Days”, cel- role as agent and spy for the Crown) ebrating the days between Christmas in return for their votes for the Act of and the New Year. In it, he says: Union of the Scots and English parlia- “Fiddlers! your pins in temper fix, ments in 1707. And roset weel your fiddlesticks; Thereafter, Scotland’s colonial Statue of Robert Fergusson But banish vile Italian tricks ambitions were satisfied by the supply outside the Canongate Kirk on Frae out your quorum; of Highland clan followers – now Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Nor fortes wi' pianos mix; - described, much to their incompre- Gie's Tullochgorum.” hension as “tenants” – as foot soldiers that he was a radical by noting that “Tullochgorum” is a traditional of the British Empire. Jesus Christ himself had been seen as Scots fiddle tune, but Fergusson’s bold The Highland regiments were par- a radical in his day, this observation dismissal of these ‘vile Italian tricks’ ticularly prized in this respect. Even was met from the bench by Lord might be belied by his professional the lowliest ranked Highland soldiers Braxfield’s outburst: “Aye, and muck- experience in providing additional regarded themselves as “gentlemen” le the guid it did him – he was hingit!” verse for a production of Arne’s opera and thus blinded themselves, apart (Yes, and much good it did him – he Artaxerxes in 1769, while his artistic from one or two notorious mutinies, to was hanged!). sympathies could hardly have run the mendacity of their officers. It was an era of political repression, wholly counter to the development of General Wolfe said of them in Canada, but also of philosophical enlighten- a friendship with the famous castrato before the Battle of the Plains and ment. The title of Arthur Herman’s Tenducci. Heights of Abraham of 1759: “They book “The Scottish Enlightenment: The musicologist David Johnson are hardy, intrepid, accustomed to How the Scots Invented the Modern notes: “… he had a most exact knowl- rough country….and no great mischief World” perhaps overstates the case, edge of what an opera orchestra if they fall”. Thus Scotland became but the 18th century was the era of sounded like. Fergusson was certainly complicit, complementary, but subor- David Hume (1711-76) – many would a person who knew his way round the dinate in the great Imperial project. say our other greatest Scot. classical music culture.” Politically, Scotland was run as a He was a friend of the French To explain the squib, Johnson sug- satrapy, notably by the Dundas family Encyclopaedists and was the man who gests a change of heart on Fergusson’s – Henry Dundas was William Pitt’s sprang philosophy free of the strangle- part, but in the context of the publish- right-hand man in Scotland. There hold of metaphysics, applying a pene- ing, performing and composing reper- were radical, democratic movements, trating scepticism to all propositions toires of the eighteenth century, his notably amongst the weaving trades and establishing the philosophical position may be better understood as and these were often underpinned by basis for scientific methodology. representing a persistent duality in the the thorny, disputatious wing of It was also the era of Adam Smith national psychology when presented Presbyterianism. They found inspira- (1723-90), not only the apostle of cap- with problems of identity and interna- tion in the American Revolution and italism’s break from mercantilism, but tionalism, or tradition and modernism. in Thomas Paine’s book “The Rights also one of its first, and sternest, crit- The consequences of this dualism of Man”, possession of a copy of ics. It was a nation in a state of flux: for Scottish art, music and literature of which led to a sentence of transporta- economically, politically, philosophi- the nineteenth century, were likened by tion for Thomas Muir of Huntershill, cally and culturally. MacDiarmid to a “specific aboulia” i.e. a leader of the radical faction of the When Burns visited Edinburgh in what the Oxford dictionary refers to as “Friends of the People”. 1787 he found, in Canongate “an absence of willpower or an inabili- At his trial, when Muir attempted to Kirkyard, the grave of the poet Robert ty to act decisively, a symptom of defend himself against the accusation Fergusson, Burns’ “elder brother in schizophrenia or other mental illness”.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 15 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

The fact that this is no long-dead In itself, this was a heroic task: col- debate could be gleaned from the let- lection of material, joining up frag- ters page of The Herald in recent years, ments from different sources, the where a controversy sparked off by a invention of material to fill gaps and poll on public funding of the arts had the selection of appropriate melodies. some correspondents excoriating, These were brought together first of ‘…non-indigenous classical art-forms all for James Johnson’s “Scots Musical rooted in feudal patronage’ and ‘… Museum” and then for the Edinburgh powerful minority support for an elitist publisher George Thomson. and alien cultural art-form’, while oth- This monumental labour still repre- ers made the case for, ‘… enough cash sents one of the most far-reaching and for all the arts to flourish and ... a tra- artistically brilliant acts of ethnomusi- ditional broad-based Scottish educa- Burns’ home in Dumfries cology in the history of human culture, tion that gives the arts their place but even here the duality remains. among life’s more utilitarian demands’. his temperament, joined to his Thomson wanted to avoid the affecta- In opposition, an appeal to moderni- German education, under the celebrat- tions of the Italianate style in his ty and internationalism was posed by ed Stamitz … this great composer has accompaniments to the songs. He the rhetorical question, ‘Do you want employed himself chiefly in sym- wanted the essence of Scots song to be Scotland to be a laughing stock in phonies, but in a style peculiar to him- brought out and for it to take its place Scandinavia for the paltry level of its self. While others please and amuse, it in the modern world so he sent the public funding for classical music, is his province to rouse and almost tunes (without the words!) to Vienna, opera …?, while an article by the overset his hearer. Loudness, rapidity, to be set by the great composers of the music critic Conrad Wilson went so enthusiasm, announced the Earl of day: Haydn, Beethoven, Weber and far as to suggest that ‘… by their abil- Kellie. What appears singularly pecu- others, such as Kozeluch. They, of ity to stage the Ring, civilised coun- liar in this musician is what may be course, made their settings in their tries must be musically judged …’ called the velocity of his talents.” own idiom – what we would now refer The notion of ‘alien’ influence Now the psychological divide repre- to as the “Classical” style. brings in questions of social values and sents itself within the bounds of art The tunes, however, did not behave identity, privileging and authenticity. music itself and the most advanced as they should! For example, Scots The sharp division of literature into style in the development of musical music tends to avoid graceful, prepared Scots or English characteristic of the thought is represented as a throwback modulations from one musical key to late eighteenth century was displayed to manners of speech, gesture and another, it simply swings back and starkly in the work of both Fergusson intellectual temper which the enlight- forth, straight to and straight back from and Burns. enment forces rejected as each tonal centre. (In many ways just Musical repertoires displayed a sim- ‘Scotticisms’. Kellie later retreated like African “pendulum” harmony.) ilar dualism (Italian, or Italian-influ- from public musical life and his work, In addition, Scots tunes often fail to enced works side-by-side with until recent times, was forgotten. come to rest on the tonic, the tonal ‘National’ songs). This sharp division This cultural paradox affected centre of the tune: there is often the is only possible with the existence of a Burns too: his adoption of Scots or (deliberate) feeling that the tune has strong sense of a distinctive culture English as the medium for his poetry been left in mid-air, so to speak. The with its own idioms, associations, carried its own message. In Scots, we resulting Viennese song settings were iconography and values; but the flight find ardent love songs, deep reflections intriguing. from one idiom to the other demon- on nature and human nature and bit- Some composers edited the tunes to strates a cultural, even psychological, ing social satire – “The Holy Fair”, fit their own style, while others, crisis, reflecting uncertain reactions to “Holy Wullie’s Prayer”, “Twa Dugs”. notably poor Kozeluch, displayed the growing hegemony of economic, In English, there is a tendency to for- increasing exasperation, littering their linguistic and moral values, represent- mal speech, high-flown similes, much scores with pointed accents, like musi- ed as modernism at the time, but less dissonance and much more ease cal expletives in the tune’s margins. wrapped up in the association with with the order of society. The outcome is still hotly contested. England which has been characterised Perhaps it is too easy to contrast the One of my distinguished colleagues, as ‘complementary subordination’. Scots of: Dr Kenneth Elliot, has described them The confusion of ideas and national “The rank is but the guinea-stamp, in print as “generally disastrous”, self-image is exemplified in the case of The man’s the gowd for a’ that” while another, Professor Marjorie Thomas Erskine, the Earl of Kellie, - with the equivocation, in English, Rycroft, has devoted years of research born in 1732, now recognised, in of: in preparing and correcting manu- MacDiarmid’s words, as “one of the “In politics if thou woulds’t mix scripts for the authoritative Haydn edi- few musical geniuses Scotland has so And mean thy fortunes be; tion and having the results profession- far produced.” His work was discussed Bear this in mind, be deaf and blind ally recorded. by Thomas Robertson in his “Inquiry Let great folks hear and see.” I hope that I won’t be accused of into the fine arts” of 1784: “In his Too easy? But there is a battle cowardice if I here suspend my judge- works”, we read, “ the fervidum inge- going on. ment between two such heavyweight nium of his country bursts forth, and Perhaps this conflict lies behind intellects. But I will leave some of the elegance is mingled with fire. From Burns’ later turning to the collection of evidence, in the shape of recordings of the singular ardour and impetuosity of folksong. the Burns/Haydn repertoire, with Your

16 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

Excellency Ms Lindiwe Mabuza, for The Tree Of Liberty of rustic curiosities. The Scots lan- her to sift the pros and cons and come guage could be portrayed as a historic to a considered judgement: if not of Heard ye o' the tree o' France, relic, or a sign of backwardness, a Solomon, at least of Kwazulu Natal! I watna what's the name o't; mark of the lower classes, its currency What did the Scots do when pre- Around the tree the patriots dance, as a vital literary language under- sented with this kindly meant misrep- Weel Europe kens the fame o't. mined. resentation of our national genius? It stands where ance the Bastile stood, The generations after Burns gave lit- Well, of course, we adopted the style A prison built by kings, man, tle consideration to his persistent as our own! And throughout the next When Superstition's hellish brood return to Scots as the medium for his century or so, even up to this day, one Kept France in leading-strings, man. finest work, of his steely determination can hear Scots songs sung to well- to pursue his craft in the most difficult behaved, irrelevant accompaniments, Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit, circumstances. His fallible humanity fiddlers sawing away at bowdlerised Its virtues a' can tell, man; in respect of womankind became glo- rhythms and ranks of accordions It raises man aboon the brute, rified as an excuse for the misogyny of crashing through tonal gear changes. It maks him ken himsel, man. the all-male drinking club. Times and styles do change, however Gif ance the peasant taste a bit, The icon, “Burns the Man”, the and there is now a healthy contest of He's greater than a lord, man, “lad who was born in Kyle” supplied “authenticities” and borrowings, And wi' the beggar shares a mite the feet of clay for the Poet. Above all although it is not Vienna whose cultur- 0' a' he can afford, man we were reminded – we’re Scots, let’s al tanks are on our lawn, but not get above ourselves. These atti- Nashville’s. Let Britain boast her hardy oak, tudes obscured the significance and Something of the same process Her poplar and her pine, man, universality of the Poet. Here is an affected our traditional national dress. Auld Britain ance could crack her joke, extract from Burns’ poem “The Tree In contemporary Scotland, “High- And o'er her neighbours shine, man of Liberty” (see panel) land” dress is now a popular feature, But seek the forest round and round, This breath of poetic fresh air is often adopted for weddings, gradua- And soon 'twill be agreed, man, worth fighting for. This association of tions and other formal occasions. That sic a tree can not be found the real, material world with idealism, But it is a tradition largely invented 'Twixt London and the Tweed, man. a humanist vision of the possibility of by the novelist Walter Scott, who cob- change and of the fruits of change, this bled together an adaption of some fea- Without this tree, alake this life is worth fighting for. tures of the traditional clothing of the Is but a vale o' wo, man; Hugh MacDiarmid (pictured) iden- Gaelic Highlands to fit the corpulent A scene o' sorrow mixed wi' strife, tifies the process as “Revolutions in figure of King George IV on the occa- Nae real joys we know, man. the dynasty o’ live ideals” and in his sion of his visit to Edinburgh in 1822. We labour soon, we labour late, poem “By Wauchopeside”, suggests The King’s outfit of kilt, bonnet, To feed the titled knave, man; that we can catch a glimpse of it “like brilliantly-buttoned jacket, ornamental And a' the comfort we're to get, a louch look in a lassie’s een.” dagger et al was completed by a set of Is that ayont the grave, man. Today, Burns’ legacy is still contest- salmon-pink tights worn beneath the ed, still misappropriated, so let us cel- kilt, a feature that was soon aban- Wi' plenty o' sic trees, I trow, ebrate and assert a doned, but is surely due for a come- The warld would live in peace, man; more truthful back? The sword would help to mak a plough, image, let’s rescue This outfit, too, became an adopted The din o' war wad cease, man. the Poet from the image, an image with a meaning for Like brethren in a common cause, embrace of medi- Scots and for the outside world. We'd on each other smile, man; ocrity and men- Another colleague (and you must now And equal rights and equal laws dacity. Perhaps be imagining that the University of Wad gladden every isle, man. we can only catch Glasgow carries a rather disputatious a glimpse of the crew!), Alan Riach, who is Professor totality of the sig- of Scottish Literature describes: still do): a dour, serious expression nificance of his work as part of the “ … a situation where the “real” suggests the conscience and determi- “Revolution in the dynasty o’ live nature of Scottish culture had become nation of the set of his character, star- ideals”, but however tantalising, the ‘… invisible in the sense that many of ing straight at the camera: a direct glimpse is still necessary and its major artists, composers and writers man, without subtlety or humour. enriching. were exiled from their own national The seriousness, to us, seems at odds So, to propose a toast in the spirit of identity and became bulwarks of the with and yet part of his self-important causing as much trouble as possible to British establishment’ and at the same costume: the bonnet, the kilt and the the dealers in half-truths, intellectual time replaced by a series of stereo- outlandish sporran.” spivs, racists, apologists for imperial- types: ‘Perhaps the best example is Riach sees this image as representa- ism and peddlers of superstition, I one of the most famous photographs tive of: “….the disintegration of the propose a toast to the Immortal ever taken: of John Brown, standing national culture in the project of Memory of Robert Burns. just to the left of Queen Victoria (who British Imperialism”. Thus the rough is on horseback)… the image of John edges of our culture, including the Bill Sweeney is Professor of Brown presents the features that were uncomfortable insights of genius, Music at Glasgow University. He to hold sway (and in some respects, could be tamed and framed as a series writes in his personal capacity.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 17 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

RobertRobert Burns’Burns’ InternationalismInternationalism

One of the acid tests of a progressive By Alex Davidson enslaved Africans taken to the then as now is support for the struggle Americas. in other countries, even if it is against This was at a time when Lord your own government. Robert Burns ander in Chief of the American Forces Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the was one of those and he was not just and first President of the United States Colonies, could state, “We cannot an internationalist in the abstract of America was toasted by Burns in allow the Colonies to check or discour- In Burns’ day with the American his ‘Ode for George Washington’s age in any degree a traffic (slave trade) Revolution and War of Independence, Birthday’. Burns wrote, in reference to so beneficial to the nation.”(1) America fought Britain and Burns George III, Burns sympathy with the enslaved supported it. And then in 1789 came “See gathering thousands, while I Africans was reflected in his poignant the French Revolution with Britain sing song, ‘The Slave’s Lament.’ (see soon at war against France. Burns, A broken chain exulting bring panel). despite intimidation and pressure, sup- And dash it in a tyrant’s face.” Not long after the loss of her ported France. And in his ‘Ballad of the American American colonies, Britain took the War’, he sarcastically wrote: Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch American War of Independence “And did nae less in full Congress in 1795. The interior of Southern 1776-1783 Than quite refuse our law, man.” Africa between 20 and 30 degrees lat- Burns unequivocally supported the At the same time as showing his itude south was actively promoted as a Americans against his own govern- support for the American revolution- new home for “loyal Americans” and ment. George Washington, Comm- aries he expressed sympathy with the other settlers.

The Slave’s Lament(2) It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral, For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O: Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O.

All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost, Like the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O: There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow, And alas! I am weary, weary O: There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow, And alas! I am weary, weary O:

The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear, In the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O; And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear, And alas! I am weary, weary O: And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear, 1795 - The Official Medallion of the British Anti-Slavery Society And alas! I am weary, weary O:

18 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

French Revolution 1789 The French Revolution of 1789 took place when Burns was 30 years of age. It fanned the flames of political reform in Britain. Secret societies were form- ed to support the French. The Society of Friends of the People was formed in Edinburgh in July 1792. The year before, Part I of Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man” had been published and when Part II was pub- lished in February 1792, Paine was indicted for treason. The book was banned and an estimated 200,000 were sold. Burns had become a Customs and Excise Officer and transferred to Dumfries in 1790. In 1792 he cap- tured the smuggling schooner “Rosamund”. When the contents of the “Rosamund” came up for auction, Burns paid £4 for 3 carronades (short cannons made in the Carron Iron Works). These he sent to the Revolutionary Government in France. So, his internationalism was more than words. Thomas Paine The Excise Commissioners sum- moned Burns on a charge of having a “leaning towards democracy”. returned to a witchunt and at his trial Australia.(3) At the same time, the Glasgow was sentenced to 14 years transporta- In the month that Muir was sen- advocate, Thomas Muir, was active in tion to Australia, which was thought to tenced Burns wrote in “From Esopus establishing Societies of the Friends of end in certain death. to Maria”: the People and he played a leading The judge at Muir’s trial, the noto- “The shrinking Bard adown the alley role at the first General Convention of rious Lord Braxfield, worked on the skulks the Friends of the People in basis that you “Hang a thief when he And dreads a meeting worse than Edinburgh in December 1792. is young and he’ll no steal when he’s Woolwich hulks auld”. Though there his heresies in Church One commentator, Lord Cockburn, and State characterised Braxfield as follows: Might well award him Muir and “Party politics, Scotch Law and Palmer’s fate.” obscenity were the full range of his The witchunt, which had led to conversation and of his thoughts. Muir’s transportation, had subsided Every hour of his life not occupied by somewhat by 1794 when Burns, in a professional business was devoted to letter to Mrs Dunlop(4), re-affirmed claret, whist and less pure enjoyment”. his view of the French Revolution. In On the basis of Muir having agitat- a reference to the execution of Louis ed for enlargement of the franchise he XVI and Marie Antoinette, he wrote, said to the jury: “Mr Muir might have “I cannot approve of … whining over known that no attention could be paid the deserved fate of a certain pair of to such a rabble. What right had they personages. What is there in the deliv- to representation? ... A Government ering over of a perjured blockhead and … should be just like a corporation, an unprincipled prostitute to the hands and in this country it is made up of the Thomas Muir of the hangman, that it should arrest landed interest, which alone has a right for a moment, attention, in an eventful to be represented.” hour, when as my friend Roscoe in Against some opposition he read the So Muir was sentenced to 14 years Liverpool gloriously expresses it: statement from the “United Irishmen” transportation. Due to the popularity ‘When the Welfare of millions is hung to the Convention. of the cause and Muir’s martyrdom in the scale In 1793 Muir was arrested on the Authorities had to move him to And the balance yet trembles with charges of sedition but released on London where he was held in a ship’s fate.’” bail. He travelled to Paris whilst on hulk at Woolwich along with the bail and met Thomas Paine and Dr Reverend Palmer, who had also been William Maxwell, Burns’ doctor. He sentenced, before setting sail for Continued on page 22

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 19 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

Burns:Burns: thethe MasterMaster ofof PoliticalPolitical SongSong

“Ploughman poet” is probably the By Jim Tait bard’ would, by today’s litigious stan- most popular description of Robert dards, be regarded as an out and out Burns throughout the world. music requires no guess work whatso- plagiarist. He certainly pushed a plough and he ever: the Burns’ canon of songs not For his genius was not as a compos- certainly was a poet as his wonderful only survives, it positively thrives. er of new melodies, but as someone work - To A Mouse, On Turning Her Linn Records of Glasgow have com- who breathed new life into existing Up In Her Nest With The Plough pleted a landmark recording - The ones, usually old fiddle tunes, by set- (1785) - testifies. Complete Songs of Robert Burns - ting new lyrics to old songs. As the title states, Burns’ inspiration containing all 368 songs in a volume And in so doing he single-handedly for To A Mouse was when he disturbed of 12 CDs. Around a hundred singers saved hundreds of old Scots songs and a mouse while ploughing on his fami- and musicians were involved in that tunes from extinction (See Immortal ly’s farm at Mossgiel in south east project led by Dr. Fred Freeman. Memory, Page 14). Ayrshire. Yes he was a ploughman, yes However, as a composer of tunes Take just one example: his most he was a poet; but that description tells and melodies, Scotland’s ‘national famous song, Auld Lang Syne (see less than half the story of Burns’ panel). The first reference to Auld genius. Lang Syne by Burns was on 17th Of the 559 works that make up the Auld Lang Syne (1788) December 1788, in a letter to his ‘official’ complete works of Burns, friend, Mrs Dunlop: “... Two veterans some 368, or 65%, are songs. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, of the 'men of the world' would have That number shows that Burns was And never brought to mind? met with little more heart-workings foremost a lyricist and arguably the Should auld acquaintance be forgot, than two old hacks worn out on the greatest Scottish lyricist of all time. And auld lang syne! road. Apropos, is not the Scotch And his songs of life, love and liberty! phrase Auld lang syne exceedingly live on in the music of today. His Chorus. expressive? There is an old song and song, Auld Lang Syne is sung by mil- For auld lang syne, my dear, tune which has often thrilled through lions all over the world every year as For auld lang syne. my soul. You know I am an enthusiast the old year passes and the new one We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet, in old Scotch songs. ... Light be the begins. For auld lang syne. turf on the breast of the heaven- In Scotland in the latter part of the inspired poet who composed this glo- 18th century he was Bob Dylan and And surely ye'll be your pint stowp! rious fragment! ...” John Lennon all rolled into one: in my And surely I'll be mine! The origins of Auld Lang Syne - old opinion his poesy found its finest And we'll tak a cup o'kindness yet, kindness - can be traced back to 1527 expression when he put it to music. For auld lang syne. and the anonymous ballad of Auld There is always an exception to Kyndness Foryett. Two hundred years every opinion and Burns’ poem, Tam Chorus later it was still very much alive and O’ Shanter is my own exception to my kicking and being re-worked by own opinion. It is music-less and it is We twa hae run about the braes, Scottish and English poets and magnificent. And pou'd the gowans fine; songsters. It had many incarnations If you wish to hear one of the best But we've wander'd mony a weary fit, long before Burns worked his magic renditions of Tam O’Shanter, by Edith Sin' auld lang syne. on it. Findlay, see page 22 for details of a CD In the Scots poet, Allan Ramsay’s Chorus which Edith, Marilyn Crawford and I publication, The Tea-Table produced especially for the 250th Miscellany of 1727, Auld Lang Syne We twa hae paidl'd in the burn, anniversary year of Burns’ birth. Edith appears as a song about soldiers Frae morning sun till dine; says Tam O’Shanter is, “a unique poem returning home from war. But seas between us braid hae roar'd which tells a story that is vivid, colourful, Here is the first stanza of that ver- Sin' auld lang syne. humorous, spooky and any other sion of Auld Lang Syne which was description you wish to use ... and it is Chorus published over 30 years before Burns brilliant.” was born: So Burns was a songwriter and col- And there's a hand, my trusty fiere! Should auld acquaintance be forgot, lector of old Scots folk songs. But And gie's a hand o' thine! Tho they return with scars? how good a musician, fiddle player And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught These are the noble hero’s lot, and singer he was we can only guess. For auld lang syne. Obtain’d in glorious wars: That he had a wonderful ear for music If Auld Lang Syne’s lyrics had many and a natural gift for putting words to Chorus manifestations, then the tune also had

20 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

its alternatives. Writing in September A Man’s A Man for A’ That when he penned this song of love in 1793, to one of his two main song (1795) old age. publishing collaborators, George Again it is an auld Scots song which Thomson, Burns acknowledges this, appears in the "Merry Muses". It is a Is there for honest Poverty “The air is but mediocre [not the tune coarse and bawdy lyric in which a wife That hings his head, an' a' that; to which it is now sung]; but the fol- complains about her aged husband’s The coward slave-we pass him by, lowing song, the old song of olden lack of sexual performance. Burns We dare be poor for a' that! times, & which has never been in transforms it into one of his most For a' that, an' a' that. print, nor even in manuscript, until I tender and moving ballads: Our toils obscure an' a' that, took it down from an old man’s The rank is but the guinea's stamp, John Anderson, my jo, John, singing; is enough to recommend any The Man's the gowd for a' that. When we were first acquent; air ...” Your locks were like the raven, Auld Lang Syne, “the old song of What though on hamely fare we dine, Your bonie brow was brent; olden times” which Burns said was Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; But now your brow is beld, John, “heaven-inspired” was clearly one of Gie fools their silks, and knaves their Your locks are like the snaw; his favourites and one on which he wine; But blessings on your frosty pow, worked many hours perfecting his A Man's a Man for a' that: John Anderson, my jo. version. For a' that, and a' that, As for the air he writes about to And just as in his attitudes to Their tinsel show, an' a' that; Thomson, musical scholars of Burns’ women, Burns’ attitudes to the politics The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, work, including the American Serge of his time have equally been fought Is king o' men for a' that. Hovey, have also unearthed that the over down through the years. tune to which Auld Lang Syne is sung His support for Scottish independ- Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, as a New Year’s anthem throughout ence - Such A Parcel of Rogues In a Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; the English-speaking world, is not the Nation - his alleged Jacobitism and Tho' hundreds worship at his word, tune Burns favoured but was one support for a Scottish King sit beside He's but a coof for a' that: which Thomson chose. his undoubted republicanism and rad- For a' that, an' a' that, “The old song of olden times” is the icalism which he conveys in his song A His ribband, star, an' a' that: one Burns knew and was faithfully Man’s a Man For A’ That. (see panel) The man o' independent mind reproduced by his other main musical Once more we see the multiple Burns He looks an' laughs at a' that. collaborator, James Johnson, the pub- and in today’s febrile Scottish politics lisher of the Scots Musical Museum. - in which we have the first ever A prince can mak a belted knight, That original tune can be heared on nationalist government - Burns’ life, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; the Linn Records, The Complete legacy and politics are a veritable But an honest man's aboon his might, Songs of Robert Burns, Volume 3, battleground. Gude faith, he maunna fa' that! Track 4 Auld Lang Syne sung by Burns wrote hundreds of songs on For a' that, an' a' that, Ronnie Browne, formerly of the the subjects of “love and wine” but he Their dignities an' a' that; Corries and by myself on the afore- went to great lengths to continue the The pith o' sense, an' pride o'worth, mentioned CD with Edith Findlay and proud and ancient tradition of political Are higher rank than a' that. Marilyn Crawford. song that coninues to thrive. Today, The fact that Auld Lang Syne has Glasgow Caledonian University’s Then let us pray that come it may, become a New Year’s anthem around Centre for Political Song is not only a (As come it will for a' that,) the world is testament to the song’s library of political songs, it also stages That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the expression of universal and everlasting concerts dedicated to the art. earth, friendship and humanity. The list of Burns’ political songs is Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. Burns biographers and experts of all huge and it would be no exaggeration For a' that, an' a' that, ideological persuasions over the past to claim that he was a master. It's coming yet for a' that, 250 years have variously sought to Ye Jacobites by Name, the Battle of That Man to Man, the world o'er, canonise or condemn him or use him Killicrankie, MacPherson’s Farewell, Shall brothers be for a' that. to condone or oppose this or that The Slave’s Lament, A Parcel of Rogues moral or political position. In a Nation, Song Compos’d In August Burns was a writer and collector of gandie” in his rhymes and his real life (Westlin’ Winds) to name but a few are bawdy - some would say pornograph- bears testament, Burns had many sides all political song commentaries, often ic - songs, as a reading of the Merry to his character: multiple Burns. intertwined with “love and wine”, on Muses of Caledonia shows. He called At one moment he could craft a the big political events of Burns’ time. them songs of “houghmagandie”- for- song of tender love and longing - Ae Old fiddle tunes he heard, or played nication - which he acknowledged fond Kiss - and at another, he could on his own fiddle, old lyrics he heard were, “not quite ladies’ reading.” pen one of obscenity - Gie the Lass Her his kinfolk and acquaintances singing Early male biographers of Burns Farin’. were all grist to Burns musical mill. tried in vain to clean-up and bury this He took many old Scots bawdy He collected all of these scraps and ‘laddish’ side of the man and his muse. songs and crafted them into new gems re-worked them into new songs about Later biographers such as Catherine of love, kindness and humanity. The his abhorrence of slavery, his con- Carsewell were less forgiving. song, John Anderson My Jo, is a case tempt for the aristocracy and even the As his fondness for “houghma- in point. Burns was 30 years of age gratuitous slaughter of animals during

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 21 Robert Burns 250th Anniversary Supplement

the “Glorious 12th”. song; but will be allowed, I think, to be Robert Burns’ Concerning any doubts as to Robert two or three pretty good prose Burns' humanity and his republican, thoughts, inverted into ryhme ..." Internationalism radical and yes revolutionary sympa- The revolutionary "prose thoughts" thies, his song, A Man’s A Man For A’ were Paine's and the revolutionary Continued from page 19 That, (see panel on page 21) written a "rhymes" were Rab's. What a combi- year before he died, should, I believe, nation - what a song! The Tree of Liberty dispel most of them. Canonise or condemn him if you During the Revolution the French put "Rights Of Man" by the revolution- wish, but what nobody can deny is up poles decorated and garlanded in ary Thomas Paine was a best seller that the strong and continuous strain their town squares and called them and Burns was both reader and and spirit that spread through his life “Trees of Liberty”. Sympathisers in admirer. (see page 19). A Man's a and especially his songs, was his Britain imitated them. Man is Burns' paean of praise to humanity and his opposition to In one of his late poems, The Tree of "Rights Of Man". tyranny and oppression. Liberty, Burns was not afraid to point In a letter about a A Man’s A Man That immortal spirit of Robert to the gains of revolution in another For A’ That to George Thomson in Burns that lives on today and is country (See panel page 17). January 1795, Burns wrote, "A great celebrated every January around the “Like brethern in a common cause, critic (Aikin) on songs says that love world is captured in the slogan of We’d on each other smile, man; and wine are the exclusive themes for the French Revolution he so admired And equal rights and equal laws songwriting. The following is on and supported, “Liberté, Egalité, Would gladden every isle, man.” neither subject, and consequently is no Fraternité.” A Man’s a Man for a’ that During Burns’ lifetime there were two very big international events, the O THE MMORTAL EMORY American and French Revolutions. TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY Both countries found themselves at war with Britain. Robert Burns, OF ROBERT BURNS despite the intimidation, savage Marilyn Crawford, Edith Findlay and Jim Tait reprisals and witchunting atmosphere Marilyn Crawford, Edith Findlay and Jim Tait in Britain, stood at one with the perform some of the best-known and American and French revolutionaries well-loved songs and poems of Robert Burns. against the British government. His song, A Man’s a Man for a’ that, has become something of an internationalist anthem. It begins by asserting that there is no shame in honest poverty and ends with the triumphant, optimistic and interna- tionalist affirmation: “For a’ that an’ a’ that It’s coming yet for a’ that That man to man the warld o’er Shall brothers be for a’ that.”

EDITH FINDLAYINDLAY JIMIM TAIT MARILYN CRAWFORD FOOTNOTES: (1) “The years 1791-1800 had seen the British slave trade at its most grandiose – 1. YE JACOBITES BY NAME 10. SONG COMPOSED IN AUGUST J Tait (4.08) J Tait (5.20) nearly 400,000 slaves had been landed from about 1340 voyages” (Hugh Thomas, 2. SWEET AFTON 11. JAMIE COME TRY ME M Crawford (3.30) M Crawford (1.16) “The Slave Trade”, p540, London, Picador, 3. TO A MOUSE 12. JOHN ANDERSON MY JO 1997). E Findlay (2.25) M Crawford (1.27) (2) Senegal was captured by the British 4. THE SLAVE’S LAMENT 13. MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN from the French in 1758. M Crawford (2.35) E Findlay (4.31) (3) Muir survived the 3 month voyage to 5. TREE OF LIBERTY 14. SUCH A PARCEL OF ROGUES ... Australia and 18 months later escaped on E Findlay (4.06) J Tait (4.16) an American ship, the “Otter”. He finally 6. A MAN’S A MAN FOR A’ THAT 15. AE FOND KISS J Tait (3.37) M Crawford (3.05) reached France in 1798 after a trip involv- ing various stops including imprisonment 7. ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID 16. OF A’ THE AIRTS THE WIND ... E Findlay (3.07) J Tait (1.50) in Cuba. He was welcomed as a hero of 8. CA’ THE YOWES TO THE KNOWES 17. TAM O’ SHANTER the French Revolution. M Crawford (3.41) E Findlay (12.09) (4) Burns wrote more letters to Mrs 9. TO A LOUSE 18. AULD LANG SYNE Frances Dunlop than any other correspon- E Findlay (2.24) J Tait (4.16) dent but she took offence to this particu- burns250crawfordfindlaytait.co.uk lar letter and did not reply nor to several others before relenting and writing to The CD is available at the above website Burns on his death-bed.

22 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent Conference

SocialistThe Correspondent CONFERENCE Saturday - 6 March 2010 - 10am - 5.30pm University of London Union, Malet St., London

The Socialist American countries will be Correspondent looked at. conference takes place at Politics in Britain a time of global capital- including the upcom- ist recession, climate ing General Election, change, war and Tory austerity plans, threats of other wars. state of the trade Discussion will unions and the future include the capitalist of the Labour Party economic crisis and will also form part of imperialism’s strategy the discussion. of re-stabilisation. To register for the Examples of resist- Conference please ance to imperialism’s complete the form aims including that of below and send to The Venezuela and other South Socialist Correspondent.

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FORM

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Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 23 Israel: anything the US will not support? Israel: anything the US will not support?

As the Israeli Defence Force continues to bomb Gaza, rhetoric in Egypt in June 2009 about a Palestinians have been given very little reason to expect any new beginning, “the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable” and change in US policy towards Israel. on settlements that, “there can be no progress towards peace without a halt TOM BERNEY reports on the depressing signs from to such construction”, building and America. expansion of settlements has continued. Just three weeks after Hillary Clinton In an interview on ABC TV, former territory or rights had never crossed her had praised Israeli Prime Minister Vice Presidential candidate and current mind. She responded “Israel has to Netanyahu “for showing unprecedent- ideological doyen of the Republican build homes for their people.” ed restraint in settlement growth” nine Party, Sarah Palin was asked for her Satisfied with that, the interviewer hundred new houses were approved for views on the Middle East. moved on to another topic. Jewish occupation in Israeli occupied No comments at all on America’s ille- Such is the level of discussion in the East Jerusalem. There is nothing new in gal wars - her reply was just, “Israel United States on the continuation of that. The Israelis have consistently should be allowed to build more settle- the slow motion genocide of Palestine used the ploy of promising to freeze ments.” Her interviewer asked, “Even that shames the world. settlements while in fact continuing to if they are on Palestinian territory?” Sadly it is not just Palin and her sup- expand them. Palin looked blank for a moment, as porters. Barack Obama was elected That, of course, is presently com- clearly the idea of Palestinians having with great expectations. Despite his airy bined with their shameless project of evicting thousands of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem. Indeed Netanyahu openly boasted about it on the steps of Downing Street in declar- ing that, contrary to UN resolutions, Jerusalem’s status as the capital of Israel was non-negotiable. Beside him UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown shuffled uncomfortably and muttered about ‘useful discuss- ions’. It is, therefore, no wonder that Palestinians have become disenchanted with President Obama’s “more of the same” administration. Professor Haidar Eid of Gaza recent- ly published a bitter open letter to Obama in the Palestinian Chronicle, “About six months after your election, you gave a speech in Cairo, addressed to the Arab and Islamic worlds; which some peo- ple found impressive. I found it impres- sive in form, but not in substance because your actions have not matched your rhet- oric. Why did I not buy the new language of the new American administration? Because while you were giving your speech, we were burying my neighbour, a terminally ill patient, who needed treat- ment in a hospital abroad, since, thanks to the siege imposed by your own adminis- tration and Israel on the Gaza Strip, the facilities that would have saved his life are not available in Gaza. Like more than 400 terminally ill people in Gaza, my neighbour lost his life. In spite of the fine

24 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Israel: anything the US will not support?

Arabic words of peace, “salaam aleikum,” you made it crystal clear that the point of reference in any negotiations in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is Israel's security. By doing that, Mr. President, you are effec- tively marginalizing the whole issue of Palestine, and unfortunately setting the stage for renewed Israeli assaults against a starving Gaza, an entity that has, thanks to your "unbreakable” ties with Israel, been transformed into the largest concen- tration camp on Earth.” Most of the world was delighted to see the back of George Bush and the election of a new President with a Democratic Party majority in both Houses of the US legislature, but it was probably naive to think that US foreign policy in relation to Israel would signif- icantly change. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party leader, is a good example. Israel’s con- tinuous three week onslaught on Gaza in January 2009 in which hundreds of bombing raids by F16 fighter bombers, also congratulated Israel for having that in this instance the Israeli military Apache gunships, artillery, tanks and a "facilitated humanitarian aid to Gaza." failed to meet its obligation under inter- naval bombardment were launched Despite the fact that the International national humanitarian law to care for against the virtually defenceless one and Committee of the Red Cross had and evacuate the wounded. It considers a half million people crammed into one reported precisely the opposite - that the delay in allowing rescue services of the poorest and most densely packed the Israelis had actively obstructed help access unacceptable” areas on earth made thousands home- for the injured, “The ICRC/PRCS team The Obama and Pelosi administra- less and incinerated children with illegal found four small children next to their tion’s attitude is a very marked contrast phosphorous shells. dead mothers in one of the houses. They to former President Jimmy Carter’s A UN statement condemned the were too weak to stand up on their own. reaction. He visited Gaza in the after- attack saying Israel "committed actions One man was also found alive, too weak math of the onslaught. He said he had amounting to war crimes, and possibly to stand up. In all there were at least 12 to hold back tears when he saw the crimes against humanity" ... as the corpses lying on mattresses. In another extent of human misery there and said Israeli operations ... "were carefully house, the ICRC/PRCS rescue team the Palestinians “are treated like ani- planned in all their phases as a deliber- found 15 other survivors of the attack mals.” ately disproportionate attack designed including several wounded. In yet another Visiting the American School in to punish, humiliate and terrorise a house, they found an additional three Gaza, damaged in Israel's three-week civilian population.” corpses. Israeli soldiers posted at a mili- operation, Mr Carter said, "it's very dis- Israel is refusing to cooperate with an tary position some 80 meters away from tressing to me". He said the school investigation into its actions. It is this house ordered the rescue team to leave had been "deliberately destroyed by expected that the Obama adminstration the area which they refused to do. There bombs from F-16s made in my country will veto any attempt by the UN were several other positions of the Israel and delivered to the Israelis". Security Council to refer the matter to Defense Forces nearby as well as two Mr Carter also criticised Israel's the International Criminal Court. tanks.” blockade of the Strip, which prevents Pelosi and the Democratic Party’s "This is a shocking incident," said all but humanitarian basics entering response was to pass a resolution Pierre Wettach, the ICRC's head of del- Gaza and extends to a ban on virtually defending Israel, calling "on all nations egation for Israel and the Occupied all building materials. “Gazans are … to lay blame both for the breaking of Palestinian Territories. "The Israeli mil- treated more like animals than human the calm and for subsequent civilian itary must have been aware of the situ- beings ... Never before in history has a casualties in Gaza precisely where ation but did not assist the wounded. large community like this been savaged blame belongs, that is, on Hamas.” Neither did they make it possible for us by bombs and missiles and then been She even redefined international law or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist deprived of the means to repair by declaring it acceptable for any the wounded." The Israeli army had itself," he said. nation to kill large numbers of civilians prevented ambulances entering so the And that situation is continuing. So if it could claim the other side initiated ICRC eventually had to evacuate chil- while Netanayahu and Palin wring their the conflict. dren and the wounded on donkey carts. hands and claim the Israelis must not Indeed the Democrat’s resolution The Israeli Defence Force also delib- be deterred from building new homes went even further than Bush! He and erately delayed access to other areas for their expansion of illegal settlements Condoleeza Rice had, at least, support- where wounded families were huddling tens of thousands of Palestinians are ed the initial UN resolution condemn- in shattered buildings. 1,400 condemned to spend the winter in tents ing “All acts of violence and terror Palestinians were killed and thousands or inadequate shelters scavenged from directed against civilians” Pelosi con- more wounded. The ICRC issued a the wreckage of their former homes. demned only Hamas. Her resolution statement saying: “The ICRC believes They are denied not only the materi-

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 25 Israel: anything the US will not support?

Israeli blockade. The list Gaza under Israeli of embargo items is Blockade - June 2009 entirely at the whim of  the Israel occupation. 40% unemployed Even Senator John Kerry  750,000 receive was moved to protest at UNRWA food aid the extent of the embar- go when he noted that  No petrol or diesel since even pasta (!) was Nov. 2008 (except UN) refused entry. At the time of writing  Recently blocked items: the Israeli Air Force has light bulbs, candles, just bombed Gaza and matches, books, musical killed more Palestinians instruments, crayons, on the pretext of destroy- clothing, shoes, mattresses, ing the tunnels. The sheets, blankets, tea, Israeli embargo and the coffee, chocolate, nuts bombings are clearly much more to do with  Virtually no building the continued suppres- materials allowed in. sion and demoralisation of the Palestinian people than with any realis- ments. But they have all continued to Source: UNRWA and World Bank tic security considerations. support Israel when they refused to do Jimmy Carter and John Kerry can see so. als to rebuild them, but also access to that. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Bill Clinton in frustration with his the basic necessities of sustenance. President Obama actually displayed powerlessness against Netanyahu once Their only lifeline is the tunnel network some justification for his Nobel Peace remarked “Who the F*** does he think to Egypt. Imports through the tunnels Prize by actually doing something he is! Who is the F****** super power are thought to account for about 80% about it rather than continuing his pre- here!” I expect Barrack Obama might of Gaza’s economy. decessors’ traditional reluctance to feel much the same after his recent Tunnels are their only means of antagonise the US’s grotesquely influ- humiliations. The question is - will he obtaining the essentials - from food, to ential Zionist lobby? find the answers? Or will he just give fuel, to even newsprint paper for their Every US president for 30 years has us more on his country’s “unbreakable newspapers - that are embargoed by the asked the Israelis to stop building settle- ties with Israel”?

UK elections are seriously out of favour

Continued from page 10 How much success UKIP will have- liament and that with 20 MPs, the SNP under its new, capricious and very right could hold the balance of UK power. General Election in as good a position wing leader, is uncertain. In 2005 These claims, made before their dis- as it is possible to be given all his tra- UKIP failed to make any decisive mal result in Glasgow North East, now vails since becoming Prime Minister in inroads in Tory heartlands and it could seem like fantasy and there is every June 2007. He should also go into the very well be the same outcome again as likelihood they will be squeezed out by election with his party as together as it Euro-sceptic Tory voters are forced to Labour whose key message will be that, is possible to be due to Mandelson’s weigh-up what is most important to unlike the Scottish Parliament, influence among the increasingly them: getting Labour out or having Westminster is a two-horse race marginalised Blairites. another kick at the EU. between Labour and the Tories. For the Tories, Europe is still the My bet is that the closer the General The SNP will also be disappointed issue that may see them haemorrhage Election comes the more those Tory that after nearly three years in votes in their heartlands to the anti-EU, Euro-sceptics who voted for UKIP in Government, their flagship policy of anti-immigration UK Independence June will drift back to the fold, swayed independence is, according to the latest Party (UKIP). UKIP came second in by the inevitable message that voting poll, opposed by 60% of Scots. the EU elections last June and they UKIP again would be a waste of their For Labour, the SNP is not the threat have a new leader, former Tory peer, vote: the classic two main parties’ it was when Brown first became Prime old Etonian and insurance millionaire, squeeze message. Minister and for the Tories, UKIP and Malcolm Everard MacLaren Pearson - Labour will employ the same squeeze the EU are unlikely to be the burning Baron Pearson of Rannoch - who owns message in Scotland against the issue they were in June. a 12,000 acres estate in Scotland. Scottish National Party whose leader It really is, “Game On” between Immediately following his election, and Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Labour and the Tories. For those of us Baron Pearson called on the Tories to Salmond predicted his party would who would prefer not to choose hold a referendum on the EU’s Lisbon increase its number of MPs at between Tory cuts or Labour cuts but Treaty - which came into force on 1 Westminster from six to 20. He also between fundamentally different pro- December 2009 - and said he’d postulated that the outcome of the grammes - socialism vs capitalism - we disband UKIP if they did. General Election could be a hung par- will, I’m afraid, be sorely disappointed.

26 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Romania: life after the counter-revolution Romania: life after the counter-revolution

Romanian university professors and media folk I met following in Romania, abstract symbols are never detached from the images of showed as little enthusiasm for capitalism as for former people which, as icons, are credited with president Ceaucescu. a kind of life of their own. All of which makes the 1989 monu- PHIL CHAMBERS spent three days in Iasi in Romania. ment look oddly out of place. Critics of He reports on life there after two decades of capitalism. socialism (or of Ceaucescu) acknowledge that before 1989 there were many busy With a gesture that reminded me of the Public sector workers are feeling the factories in and around the city famous Monty Python 'Life of Brian' pinch and fighting back: the day before which were closed down in the interests sketch, 'What Have the Romans Ever I arrived there was a widespread of the new capitalist order. Done For Us?', one pointed admiringly strike. After 20 years the 1989 'revolu- In the countryside, small-holders to his shelves of good-quality, afford- tion' feels much more like the counter- cannot afford the basic equipment - able art books published in the socialist revolution it really was. machines, fertilisers, etc. - that former period. co-operatives were able to during The daughter of a doctor told socialism by pooling resources and get- me that for most people the health sys- Public sector workers are ting state loans or grants. tem is worse under capitalism. Gypsies feeling the pinch and Someone joked ‘At least it’s all organ- look like one potential scapegoat for the fighting back: the day ic’. The rural workforce is ageing fast negative impact of not-so-free market as the young seek work in the cities or economics, including the opportunity before I arrived there abroad, which in due course will make for young people to work for low wages was a widespread strike. agriculture unsustainable. abroad. Prediction: small-holders will be Church attendance is up. The last This was never going to be fast for- forced to sell their land at low prices to time I saw this many nuns and priests ward to capitalist prosperity. Even if capitalist enterprises thus further deep- was in the Vatican (it's a living). The the clunkily cruciform monument to ening social division. Farmland will surprisingly large number of stray dogs the events in 1989, between the Palace shrink as a proportion of the total, as look well-fed (better-fed than the beg- of Culture and the oldest (renovated) better-off people build villas on it gars, at any rate) and some even use church of St Nicholas, was meant to instead of using it for crops or grazing. zebra crossings. look inhumanly abstract, it now But it seems that even the villas are Since imperialism wants Romania looks tatty as well, as if no-one really being paid for on credit, so the whole and other smaller former socialist coun- believes in or cares about it. ludicrous and vicious business of cater- tries as a convenient source of cheap At least all the other monuments in ing to profit rather than need risks labour, its EU membership is a mixed the city are figurative, and in Orthodox crashing down, and the ordinary people blessing. Christianity, which has the strongest will ultimately have to pick up the pieces. But at least the sun was shining while 1978: Nicolae Ceaucescu with US President I was there. One afternoon, a bunch Jimmy Carter, reflecting Ceaucescu’s desire of serious-looking old men in singlets or to distance Romania from the USSR. jackets, with not a sheet of music in sight, sat in a semicircle on a bandstand in a local park and struck up a spirited waltz or three on a wonderful assort- ment of rather battered trumpets, tubas, cornets and things-in-between. And between the gentlest of showers and on the lightest of breezes, the yel- low Linden-leaves fluttered down as if in time to the music. Romanians deserved a better socialism than was available in the cold war even under the relatively freewheeling Ceaucescu. Now they deserve better than capitalism, but that might not be as easy to dislodge as Linden-leaves, however hard they try.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 27 The brutality of German fascism did not begin with the holocaust

2/4&5#(3 The brutality of 4 2)"Ä.%&Ä2+/--5.)34%.5.$3/:)!,)34%.).$%543#(,!.$ RotFuchs is a monthly journal in German. The journal’s title means German fascism Red Fox and it describes itself as a communist-socialist journal for politics and economics, culture and science. did not begin with RotFuchs was founded in 1998; it now has a wide readership in Germany, particularly in the east, and readers in a further 36 countries. It the holocaust also has a web site where the journal can be read as printed. RotFuchs is independent of any By LEO KUNTZ. Translated by Pat Turnbull from the party and relies solely on its readers German journal ROTFUCHS (see panel). for financial support; there are an increasing number of RotFuchs sup- porters' groups which hold discus- sion meetings as well as spreading the journal and organising support for it. RotFuchs can call on excellent writers on a wide range of topics. Many were active in the realms of scholarship, journalism, the armed forces, the intelligence service and other areas of social activity in the German Democratic Republic. RotFuchs says, "What do we stand for? Our aim is socialism ... We are so old-fashioned as to hold true to the scientific socialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin in theory and prac- tice. We mean a social order which can only be achieved as the result of unremitting class and mass strug- gles. Its base is the political power of those exploited by capital and social ownership of the most impor- tant means of production. ... For us the GDR remains the good Germany - not because it was without faults and blemishes but because for over 40 years it took the power and property from the bourgeois and barons. And because it helped to secure peace in Europe." RotFuchs’ editor Klaus Steiniger worked in the German Democratic Republic as a public prosecutor, mayor, television journalist and in the 1928: Hitler and Hermann Göring with SA stormtroopers - the Brownshirts - Foreign Ministry of the GDR. From at Nuremberg. 1967 to 1991 he was on the editorial staff and a foreign corre- When history is written in the Federal was conducted almost solely by the spondent of the newspaper 'Neues Republic of Germany, it is the usual ‘men of 20th July 1944’. Deutschland' (New Germany). He practice to refer to the persecution and To give a true historical picture, we reported from many countries, includ- murder of more than six million must guard against two falsifications of ing Japan and the USA, where he European Jews by the fascists using the the actual events. The defenders of the reported on the trial of Angela Davis. word ‘holocaust’. (The Jewish victims Nazi past deny the extermination of From 1974 to 1979 he was a themselves call it the Shoa.) millions of Jews by the Hitler fascists, witness to the revolution and counter- This expression, imported from the or even attempt to justify it. The revolution in Portugal. His own USA, conceals the full extent of the British Bishop Williamson, rehabilitated accounts of his experiences are pub- crimes perpetrated in the name of the inside the church by the Pope, has lished in 'Bei Winston und Cunhal: German people and without any mass excelled himself recently in this respect. Reporter auf vier Kontinenten' (With resistance from them. On the subject This monstrous lie is rejected by all Winston and Cunhal: reporter on four of resistance: according to the interpre- democrats far into the bourgeois camp. continents), published by edition ost, tation of today’s Federal Republic, this Particularly stubborn proponents are Berlin.

28 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 The brutality of German fascism did not begin with the holocaust

even confronted with the law. grey-green prisoner’s clothing and Without stopping again the bus drove There is, however, another tendency smelling terribly of iodine. An experi- to the underground station. As a result in the official media representation and ence that has never left me, above all of this man’s courageous action we writing of history in the Federal because that was the last time I saw my were saved. We never went back to the Republic of Germany: the attempt to father. After eleven years of uninter- flat. That is how ‘normal’ fascism narrow down the brutalities of German rupted captivity, he was beaten to death began for us. Nazi rule over Germany fascism to the persecution and extermi- by the SS during interrogation in the was characterised by the terrorist perse- nation of the Jews. Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. cution of communists and other anti-fas- Hitler’s brown dictatorship directed But my confrontation with the reality cists, by an arbitrary regime of fear. itself first towards the brutal elimination of Nazi rule had other aspects. Shortly Only later did the systematic policy of of political opponents: communists, after the turn of the year 1932/33 – I extermination against Jewish fellow citi- social democrats, bourgeois anti-fascists was out with mother on a shopping trip zens begin. This required a further pre- and principled Christians. Fascism in Mueller Street, one of the main com- condition: the creation of a ‘conscious- meant the subjugation of other nation- mercial streets of Wedding [working ness’ of belonging to the ‘master race’. alities. An entire network of concentra- class quarter of Berlin, called Red The Nazis created a chauvinist fren- tion camps, the murder of millions of Wedding in a contemporary song] – we zy of superiority among the mass of human beings from almost every were suddenly aware of the thudding of Germans. In doing this they could base European country, the extreme rhythmically stamping boots. themselves on corresponding ‘trad- exploitation of forced labourers and A marching column of brown uni- itions’. The motto in the times of the prisoners of war to the advantage of formed men approached bawling a Kaiser was already: ‘The world should German concerns and landowners song. People were jammed in at the enjoy Germanness.’ characterise the situation. sides of the road. I saw many fists At the school I went to in 1937 I had It is my own experience of German raised threateningly. Suddenly I heard to participate in so-called race investi- fascism which is always before me. I the command: ‘Halt, chin-straps down, gations. I was classified an exemplary was five when, late one evening, men right and left, clear the street!’ An orgy Aryan because of my athletic build. A dragged my father Albert Kunz into the of beating began. Mother grabbed me ‘good German’ was an Aryan, superior flat. His head and clothes were covered and we ran into a shop. Someone to all ‘inferior races’ to which Jews, in blood. I now know that this hap- showed us the back door and unpre- ‘gypsies’ and Slavs belonged, classified pened on 25th May 1932. Father had vented we found the quickest way to as ‘sub-human’. And so the ‘Aryans’ been stabbed in the head with a knife our flat in African Street. Saved! kept quiet when in 1938 the mass per- while defending Wilhelm Pieck (see A few weeks later, in March. I was secution of the Jews began. Anyone picture) who went on to become the on my way home from school and as who refutes this chronology of events first President of the German usual walked through the grounds of a under fascism does so with a purpose – Democratic Republic] against an SA kindergarten. Someone I knew came to deny or devalue the resistance of attack in the Prussian parliament. running towards me shouting: ‘Get communists, social-democrats and other anti-fascists. The merciless per- secution of all opponents of the Nazis and the toleration of anti-semitic excesses which led to Auschwitz made the mass of Germans compliant in par- ticipating in the huge carnage which was unleashed by Hitler in 1939. Added to this was the lie of the ‘national community’ to gloss over the continuing capitalist class rule. The arms drive in particular brought enor- mous profits to the German bosses. Anyone who reduces German fas- cism to the genocide of Jews described in the word holocaust, is silent about the more far reaching barbarism of Hitler fascism: 25 million Soviet citi- 1926: Wilhelm Pieck at a Communist Party of Germany event in Berlin. zens, millions of Poles, Sinti and Roma were victims of that savagery. The Deeply shocked by this picture, I home quick, the Browns are coming!’ political heralds of the Federal Republic took in only the outrage of the grown At our flats we were greeted by loud of Germany proclaim themselves ups and the groans of the wounded screaming. Windows were flung open, friends of ‘the Jews’, seeking to give the man. The next day father had disap- furniture and beds were thrown out. impression they have conquered the peared. He was the organising secre- On the paths brown uniformed men brown past, while the womb that bore tary of the Communist Party of were beating people up. it is in reality still fruitful. Germany leadership in Berlin and to Before they turned up at our home, For them it is not a question of ‘the protect him from the fascist terror the my mother left the flat with me, carry- Jews’, but only of the state of Israel, party leadership sent him as political ing a suitcase, to go to the bus stop; but which is an aggressive and racist out- secretary to Hesse. we were followed by SA men who had post of imperialism in the Near East. It was not until a year later that I saw noticed us. The bus driver, who recog- As far as we are concerned, we stand in him again in the police prison at nised our desperate situation, drove solidarity with all the people in Israel Langen near Frankfurt am Main, in close enough for us to jump on. who oppose this course.

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 29 Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp

Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp By Pat Turnbull.

As Leo Kuntz says (see page 29), his father Albert was killed by the SS in Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp. This camp had a particular character. On 17–18 August 1943, 433 RAF bombers raided Peenemuende, where the German V weapons, the V1 flying bomb and the V2 rocket, were being manufactured. Because of extensive damage, production was suspended, and a search was begun for under- ground caves to be used as a factory. The place selected was near Nordhausen, in the Harz mountains, where a subterranean complex of caves, tunnels and galleries had already been built long before the war for the secret storage of war materials, poison gas and sulphuric acid. This underground site was adapted and production of the V weapons started there. Overall responsibility for the project was held by the Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Scientific 1945: Supervised by American soldiers, German civilians from the town of and technical organisation was in the Nordhausen bury the corpses of prisoners found at the Mittelbau Dora hands of Wernher von Braun and his concentration camp in mass graves. Photo: United States Holocaust team. The code name of the project Memorial Museum. was Dora and the underground factory and adjoining concentration camp was known as Mittelbau Dora. (Harmondsworth 1974) say that process. In one particular atrocity over The adaptation of the galleries began London was hit 517 times by V2s and 1000 prisoners were locked in a barn in August 1943 and was undertaken by the rest of England 537 times, so it may which was set on fire the next day. groups of prisoners from Buchenwald, well be that some of the rockets fell in The Americans removed all the rock- then from other concentration camps the sea and others aimed for London ets and installations and later captured along with prisoners just arrested. fell elsewhere. Among other cities, par- Wernher von Braun and his team in the Both in the construction work and in ticularly hard hit was Antwerp – 1,265 Bavarian Alps. Far from coming to the subsequent weapons production, times. trial, they were taken to the USA to working and living conditions were hor- Among the earliest prisoners to arrive work for the military, and were subse- rific. There was no daylight and only at the camp were organisers of resistance quently honoured for their achieve- the dimmest artificial light. Prisoners from other camps. Albert Kunz was ments. stayed underground for weeks working their leader. A special task was to try to According to the Yalta agreement of twelve to fourteen hours a day. 20,000 sabotage production, working as slowly February 1945, the Americans left the of the total of around 60,000 prisoners as possible, delaying dispatch and trans- area on 1 July and the Soviet army took who were brought to Mittelbau Dora port of components, assembling them over. The galleries were blown up and died. incorrectly and misconnecting wires in the entrances to the tunnels solidly Despite the construction of the neigh- the rockets’ electrical circuits. blocked. Mittelbau Dora, situated in bouring concentration camp, in January This was very courageous and dan- what was to be the German Democratic 1944 about 7000 prisoners still lived gerous activity. The high rate of rock- Republic, became a Place of underground. The prisoners were from et failures alerted the SS to the possibil- Remembrance and Warning, with many 21 different countries: 9,481 Soviet peo- ity of sabotage and to intimidate the visitors over the years. ple, Poles, French, Germans, Belgians, prisoners, victims, especially young A monument was built there by Italians and others. Soviet men, were hanged from jibs and Juergen von Woyski. In Len Crome’s The plan was to produce 12,000 V2s gantries at the entrance to the tunnels. book ‘Unbroken – Resistance and in 13 months, but only 6000 were Many activists were arrested and tor- Survival in the Concentration Camps’ assembled and many of these were tured before execution. Among these (Lawrence and Wishart 1988), he faulty. Some exploded on testing, oth- was Albert Kunz, beaten to death on 22 describes the monument as ‘a group of ers did not start, exploded on the January 1945. gaunt and resolute men’ and adds: launch platforms or did not reach the The Americans entered the camp on ‘Such men never ceased to believe in target. 11 April 1945 by which time most pris- ultimate liberation, worked for it and Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint in oners had been evacuated by the offered all resistance possible under the their book ‘In Total War’ German guards, many dying in the cruellest of circumstances’.

30 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010 Cooperation is a powerful survival trait

The Darwin Cooperation is a discussion powerful survival trait

Deeply embedded in European folklore and literature is a fear of dence that can be placed in the results the wolf as a species, more so probably than any other animal. of any research. Of course scientific research takes A. B. CAIRNS argues that humans survived because place in a social context and this can have a profound effect on what is they cooperated with one another. researched and in some cases can lead to inconvenient results being sup- Wolves are social animals, they hunt in independent peers. pressed.(4) packs and this makes them successful Those peers also have to agree that If an ideology, religious prejudice or predators and our folklore records that. the test chosen is a valid one. It is only commercial interest subverts the How could puny humans survive on then that the original assertion will process then the resulting pseudo sci- the plains of Africa which they shared begin to be accepted as possibly true. ence can lead to very serious conse- with stronger and faster predators? For this to work, terms have to be quences. Only by cooperating with one anoth- defined very precisely, everyone must In the 20th century this was well er. Cooperation within a species is a know exactly what is being talked illustrated by the use of pseudo scientif- very powerful survival trait. about. ic intelligence tests to deny the vote to Evolution by natural selection must When you put vinegar on your chips black people, the compulsory sterilisa- have favoured that trait within the you don't really know what is in it but tion of large numbers of the 'feeble human species. People who cooperat- it contains some ethanoic acid. When minded' and the lobotomisation of the ed were more likely to survive and a chemist carries out a procedure using unruly. These things happened in reproduce. 0.05 molar aqueous ethanoic acid solu- many of the United States. We are all the product of successful tion he/she knows exactly what is being In the Soviet Union the pseudo sci- ancestors. As Richard Dawkins points added. Darwinian is a vinegar kind of entific theories of Trofim Lysenko(5) out; “Not one of your ancestors died term. based on a rigid and distorted view of young. They all copulated at least Marxist theory caused massive setbacks once”.(1) Evolution tells us that we “Evolution tells us that we for Soviet agriculture over many must have a pre-disposition to cooper- must have a pre-disposition to decades. ate, it is essential for the continuation of cooperate, it is essential for the This continued up until his denunci- our species. continuation of our species.” ation before the Soviet Academy of I suspect that very few of the billions Sciences in 1964. Denunciation came of humans alive today could survive The outcome of the scientific process because lying in science is ultimately without the complex social infrastruc- is knowledge which can be accepted as found out. If crops don't grow as you tures within which they live. Without true with a fairly well defined degree of claim they should, it shows. A religious that infrastructure not just we as indi- confidence. New knowledge gained in example from the 21st century is the viduals would perish but also every- the future may lead to refinement but rejection of polio vaccination by many thing which defines us as human. for now the knowledge works, it has Muslim leaders in present day Nigeria. Could we have built such structures been tested and confirmed independ- (6) if cooperation were not part of our ently. If it does not work that will Vaccination is a western plot to natures? It could be argued that some become obvious and it will be reject- undermine Islam and it spreads Aids kind of socialism is a biological imper- ed(3). apparently. The UN programme, ative. Most areas of enquiry aspire to this aimed at eradicating polio in its last But a term like Darwinian, miss- level of rigour even where what is being stronghold, Africa, has been halted and used in a social context as a shorthand examined doesn't have the homogeneity in fact put into reverse by the spread of for a 'devil take the hindmost' view of of laboratory chemicals nor are there polio from Nigeria to other parts of society just illustrates an ignorance of the kinds of tools needed for precise Africa. the complexity of the science of evolu- measurement, as are available to Before we accept any idea we must tion. Also it does Darwin a great dis- chemists. ask, what is the evidence? How much service. Sociologists for instance may struggle confidence can be placed in that evi- The natural sciences, physics, chem- to gather opinions from a disparate dence? For decades vested interests istry and biology are based upon a very population and they have to take the have denied Global Warming. One of rigorous methodology.(2) Without resulting uncertainty into account when the tools used to do this is the fact that going into detail, every assertion has to considering their results. This kind of science cannot make 100% accurate be tested. The test used and its difficulty is not of course a reason to predictions and probabilities are fairly methodology must then be capable of abandon scientific method, it is a rea- easy to distort. being repeated elsewhere by other, son to consider the degree of confi- If we say that there is knowledge not

Winter - February 2010 The Socialist Correspondent 31 Reader’s letter

amenable to scientific enquiry we are READER’S LETTER to The Socialist Correspondent saying that it is not open to being inves- tigated. That is we must accept it as an XISM act of faith. That gives it a religious DARWINISM AND MAR dimension. Religion being the one area of human experience which demands to I agree with much of what Comrade Cairns says in his letter (‘Darwin and be accepted without evidence. This is Complexity from Simplicity’) in issue No. 6, particularly in relation to the just a nonsense, without some evidence supreme importance of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. it is not knowledge. However, I think his argument is incomplete, and leaves room for a Having arrived at my materialist and creator-God after all. atheist views because; all the evidence I have ever come across points to their Darwin’s theory only applies to the evolution of living organisms. It does validity, I must reject religion and any- not – and cannot – explain how the earliest living organisms on Earth thing else claiming to be above a actually arose from non-living matter. Thus, while we no longer need accept the Biblical fairy tales of a human race created directly by God, requirement for evidence. there is still a gap to be filled here, much further back in the development That is not to say that evidence must of life on Earth. Christians (and practitioners of other religions) who accept equate to 100% proof. I believe a well evolution as a reality, fill this gap with a creator-God. ordered socialist society would be a bet- ter place to live than a chaotic capitalist Even if we gloss over this gap, there exists a problem further back in time: one. That belief is based on such evi- the origin of the Universe. Most scientists accept the Big Bang as the event dence as the fact that crime rates that formed the Universe, but that of itself does not remove the role of the increase as social inequality increases. creator-God, even in the minds of some cosmologists. (Stephen Hawking Assuming the converse is true then a comes to mind: his A Brief History of Time makes clear his acceptance of socialist society will be safer. Of course the existence of God.) What caused the Big Bang? this is only one factor. In the end how- ever I do not have absolute proof and Evolution by natural selection does not, as Comrade Cairns puts it, must accept that I may be wrong. “provide the final part to a wholly materialistic understanding of the The fact that apologists for capitalism universe.” Dialectical materialism fulfils this role. have used a theory of evolution to jus- tify right wing 'struggle of the individ- In his Anti-Dühring, Friedrich Engels showed how dialectical materialism ual is natural', 'its all just human nature' made a creator-God unnecessary at any stage in the development of the ideas/policies and justifications, does Universe. One element of dialectical materialism is even starting to find not undermine the science, it illustrates acceptance in bourgeois science – and, in respect of our subject, perhaps their ignorance (possibly/probably the most telling one. In recent years, more and more scientists have started deliberate) of the complexity of the sci- to accept what they call the law of emergence. ence. Evolutionary biology certainly does Simply put, this law states that, as any system becomes more complex, new not justify a 'devil take the hindmost' laws of development arise from within it by which the system acquires politics or social practice. Genetics is further levels of complexity. Dialectical materialists will immediately recog- not about some deterministic blueprint nise this as a restatement of the law of the transformation of quantity into for an organism; it is about possibilities quality – the accumulation of quantitative changes in a system eventually and probabilities relating to adaptation. results in qualitative transformations. Evolution could not occur if all out- comes were pre-determined. Thus, we do not need to invoke a “creator” either at the formation of the And by the way, what Darwin cer- Universe (qualitative transformation – or acquisition of a new level of tainly did not do, was justify capitalism. complexity - in whatever existed before the Big Bang) or at the formation of the earliest living organisms on Earth from previously existing inanimate FOOTNOTES: matter. Whether we ever work out precisely how these events occurred is (1) Said by Dawkins during a debate with a Rabbi - published in the The New Yorker another matter – profound qualitative transformations such as these tend to (September 9, 1996) destroy the evidence, so to speak. (2) This is elementary for any science student, for those not familiar Wikipiedia One of the consequences of the operation of the law of emergence is that has a good article detailing the process. the development of complexity within a system should accelerate as the (3) You may remember the excitement over system evolves. Once again, the transformation of quantity into quality, this Cold Fusion some years ago. Where is it time treating the accumulation of complexity itself as the quantitative now? change. (4) Dr Ben Goldacre writes a 'Bad Science' column in the Guardian newspaper, much of his findings can be read at In terms of the evolution of life, this does away with the back door for http://www.badscience.net/. He details “Creationism”, intelligent design. This is predicated on the notion that many recent abuses of science humans, and other higher life forms are “too complex” to have evolved (5) Marxism and the Philosophy of from the simplest life forms unassisted, even accepting an “old Earth”, as Science: A critical history by Helena dated by geologists, rather than by Biblical “calculations”. The development Sheehan 1993 gives a concise account of of complexity in evolving living organisms was not linear, but exponential. the biology debate that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920's. Leslie Masters (6) Martin Robbins article in The Guardian, Saturday August 8 2009.

32 The Socialist Correspondent Winter - February 2010